Jackson Ford - Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air

“He is nothing like me.” I don’t mean to snarl the words, but it happens anyway.

The first quake might have been an accident – maybe he didn’t know his own power. I definitely didn’t, when I was that little. But it looked like he made it happen – it wasn’t an accident. So why do it a second time? Unless…

Unless he wanted it to happen. Unless he meant to do it. Destroy Los Angeles.

What in the name of fuck are we dealing with here?

“We gotta get Reggie to a doctor,” Annie says, at the same time as I ask, “Does Tanner know about this?”

Annie raises an eyebrow.

“Yeah, OK, yes, we will absolutely do that,” I say. “The doctor, I mean.”

“I’m fine,” Reggie says.

“Maybe get a doc to decide that.” Annie wipes her mouth. “You were under there for a while. You’re definitely dehydrated, that’s for damn sure. Maybe concussion too, along with God knows what else.”

“Reggie,” I say. “Does Tanner know?”

“No. The second earthquake hit right after I found out. Whole building came down on my head.”

“So you’re telling me… You’re telling me that we are the only people, right now, who know that this quake was caused by an actual person? No one else knows?”

Annie squats, getting her arms under Reggie, lifting her up. Her legs are shaky, and she nearly drops her – Africa has to lumber forward to help, supporting Reggie under the shoulders.

“What happened to your teeth ?” Reggie says to Africa, horrified.

“These sai sai people wanted to rob us, huh?” Africa lisps.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“We have to tell people,” I say. “If this kid does it again—”

“We’ll take you to the Speedway,” Annie tells Reggie. “There were National Guard trucks. They might have a doctor.”

“I’m telling you, I’m fine.”

“Reggie, we have to tell someone —”

“ Look ,” says Annie. Her voice is brittle. “We can’t do shit about the kid right now. We don’t know where he is, if he’s even still in LA, or what. We get Reggie to a doctor, we get some food inside us, we figure out a plan. Let’s go.”

In the movies Amber has seen, people manage to talk to each other just fine while travelling in helicopters. They’re able to have whole conversations. They must have been different helicopters to this one. It’s a big chopper, with a huge belly, and it is loud .

The pilots up at the front have headphones with huge earcups, mic stalks jutting out. Amber doesn’t. Neither do the soldiers, or the thirty other people crammed into the back of the chopper. Each wall is lined with uncomfortable metal-framed seats, the passengers secured to them by rough, red straps. Every few feet, there’s a circular window. Amber and Matthew are on either side of one, and she finds her gaze continually drawn to it. Despite the chaos below, she can’t help but marvel at the view.

She’s never been in a helicopter before. Never even been on a plane.

At some point on the road to Big Pines, there was a truck. A soldier in camo, helping her into it. A bumpy ride in the packed flatbed, a dozen people talking to her, asking her if the dozing boy in her arms was OK. When the soldiers finally let them all out, it was into the parking lot of a ruined Walmart, the destroyed blue and yellow frontage somehow still lit by flickering floodlights. And there was a chopper.

Matthew had taken in the trickle of people, the small groups of them being ushered to the helicopter.

“I thought there’d be more,” he’d mumbled. “The lady at the museum said so.”

Then the helicopter. Soldiers saying they needed to move people to a central location. Someone yelling about Dodger Stadium. At first, it made no sense to Amber – surely if they had helicopters, they’d want to get people further away? Then again, if you had a city full of folks in need of urgent help, you don’t waste time trucking them out into the countryside. You want to bring aid to them, and preferably do it in a place they can reach themselves, if they can’t get to a chopper.

And before she knew it, Amber was in the air.

Matthew is glued to the window, gawking at the view, his frustration over the earthquake temporarily forgotten. He says something to her, his voice lost in the furious whir of the blades.

“What’s that, honey?”

“How long does it take to get to the stadium?” he yells.

“The soldier said twenty minutes.”

She doesn’t hear Matthew’s reply. A shadow falls over her, and she looks up. One of the soldiers, thrusting something into her face. A clipboard, pen attached. He barks an instruction at her, one she can’t make out. The other passengers have clipboards too.

Amber scans the page. Name. Family members. Next of kin. Contact numbers. The helicopter’s vibrations make it hard to write legibly.

She starts to write, then stops herself, hastily scratching out the letter D she put down next to First Name. She’s not Diamond Taylor anymore – she has to remember that. Diamond Taylor was a con artist, and not a very good one. She’s gone. It’s Amber-Leigh Schenke now, and she’d damn well better remember that.

Across from her, the soldier is dealing with a woman in what used to be a neat skirt suit. The woman looks like she’s in shock, refusing to take the clipboard, tears pouring down her cheeks.

Matthew yells something in her ear.

“What?”

“I said , I want to get closer to the ground. I need to see.”

At that moment, Amber’s bladder gives a horrifying wrench. The pain overrules the fear she feels of leaving her son when he wants something, and she unclips herself, looking around for a bathroom. For once, she ignores her son’s angry look.

A sudden horror. What if they don’t have one? Planes always do, she knows that, but military choppers might not—

There. At the far end of the interior, someone – a soldier or relief worker more quick-thinking than the others – has dragged a porta-potty on board, tied it down with thick canvas straps. Amber stumbles over to it, yanks the door open. The hollow plastic shell dulls the roar of the chopper’s engines, but only a little.

When she’s done, she stands and wipes herself, almost primly. The single-ply toilet paper nearly dissolves in her damp hands.

Ajay had to have known the earthquakes would happen, or something like them. How could he have made them leave the Facility? She should have confronted him, told him to find another way. Too late now. Far too late.

In a fog, she stumbles back to her seat. Matthew glares at her. “Where were you?” he yells.

Before she can answer, he says, “Tell them to go down to the ground. I wanna see .”

She can barely hear him, has to yell her reply. “Sorry, honey, they’re not going to do that.”

“You’re an adult,” he says. In the few minutes she’s been away, he’s become even more impatient, anger building like steam trapped in a pipe. “They’ll listen to you. Ask them.”

Amber half-rises, wavers, sits back down. How can he think they’ll do that? There’s no way, no way at all.

She doesn’t need to look at Matthew to know he’s furious. Anger radiates off him. He twists to face her, straining against his own straps. “I wanna see the ground!” he yells.

There’s no dirt here , she tells herself. Nothing for him to throw .

But there is.

Mud slicks the floor of the chopper. Everyone is dirty, their clothes crusted with it. Amber’s jeans are almost black, all the way up to the knees. And on cue, as she looks down, the lumps of mud on her shoes begin to move. Trembling, like they’re alive, slowly rising upwards.