Jackson Ford - Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air

Stumbling. Hands out in front of him. He can hardly see them now, let alone the ground. More than once, he’s certain he hears voices in the trees, and whirls, ready to defend himself. But there’s nobody there. He just ends up losing his direction again.

“They don’t understand,” he mutters, not realising how hard he’s shivering. “I have to do this. I want to.”

He takes another step – and his shoe fills with water. Icy, shocking. He yelps, yanking his foot out of the unseen puddle, and sits down hard on the cold forest floor. Then he lashes out, shredding the earth in a fifty-foot radius, ripping and tearing, hurling up clouds of dirt. A tree topples over with a crunching bang, loud enough to make him whimper.

He needs to see where he’s going. That’s it. He’ll just… get higher.

In moments, he’s rising on a column of earth, half-crouched on it, wobbling for balance. It’s hard – much harder than anything he’s ever done. The column snakes up past the canopy, bearing him on it, his teeth gritted. Despite the cold, sweat slicks his forehead.

He turns in a small circle, fists clenched at his sides. The tree canopy stretches away in all directions, a dark, undulating sea of leaves and branches. He can’t see the campground, of course. He can’t see anything. Even the stars are hidden behind low clouds.

Dizzy. Really dizzy, all of a sudden. As carefully as he can, Matthew lowers himself back to ground level. In his mind, he’s taking it slow. In reality, the column of earth drops in big, lurching increments, nearly throwing him off. He sits on the ground, panting, then scrambles to his feet and starts to run. He’s very cold now – running will keep his heat up. He read that somewhere, didn’t he? But where?

A tree rears in front of him, its trunk death-black against the dark backdrop of the forest. He swerves around it, ripping it up by the roots almost as an afterthought. He reaches out, hunting, desperate for contact with the ETS zone. He’s only just aware that he’s started crying, tears dribbling down his cheeks. He can’t even remember which direction he’s supposed to head in now. All he knows is that he has to keep going.

Somewhere, very distant, a bird calls.

The funeral for Paul is held at the United States Naval Academy Cemetery in Annapolis, Maryland. There’s a small memorial service held later in the Naval Academy Chapel, too.

We hold one of our own.

At our place.

Well, kind of our place. Paul’s Boutique is gone, of course. We talk about having the get-together up at his ex-wife’s place in San Diego, but that idea doesn’t last long. Annie saw her at the funeral, and she was… not good. Neither was his son, Cole. Mostly because the way he died is next-level top secret. They don’t know what China Shop Movers really was ( is, dammit, is ), and they think he was killed when the office collapsed.

Of course, Annie’s not doing so well herself.

We decided to hold the memorial at the last place we all hung out together – Sandra-May Cruz’s house. Watts got hit just as hard as everywhere else, but her home is still mostly intact, although part of the back kitchen wall has collapsed, and there are cracks snaking through the rest of the house. There’s no power, either. Plenty of places in the city haven’t had it restored yet, and spots like Watts and Compton are definitely low on the list. Some things never change.

Not that Sandra-May gives a shit. She’s found a generator, had one of her neighbours hook it up, filled the house with food – God knows where she got it all from. As far as I can tell, she invited damn near every single person in Watts. She’s zooming around the house now, making sure everyone has enough to eat and drink, her dog Rocko trailing at her heels. She drags her wheeled oxygen cart, her emphysema barely slowing her down. I get the feeling she’s a little scared to stop moving. I catch her at odd moments, looking out one of the broken windows, gazing at nothing.

I’m in the packed living room, squashed up against one of the house’s few unbroken windows, drinking a warm beer. People keep giving them to me – Bud Lites and Coors, pressed into my hands whenever I get halfway down a bottle. I’m drunk – getting there, anyway. God, I wish Africa was here – he’s the kind of person who is really good at parties.

Nobody knows where he is. Shortly after the chopper lifted off from Van Nuys with Annie and me onboard, he stole one of the ATVs and took off. I assume he went to look for Jeannette – probably figured there was nothing more for him to do. I’ve thought about heading to Skid Row, or to his apartment, trying to find him. I haven’t gotten up the energy to do it yet.

I hope he’s OK.

It’s loud in here. Voices raised to the damn roof. People with paper plates of pizza and nachos and sandwiches, waving beers in the air; somebody passing around a bottle of whiskey. It’s still cool outside, but there’s no rain – and inside the house, it’s hot enough to slick my skin with sweat.

When I was growing up in Wyoming, I used to fantasise about going to parties like this. Teenage parties, kids packed in tight, drunk and sweating and making out. This isn’t exactly how I saw it go down.

There’s a big photo of Paul propped in one corner, in full Navy uniform. Taken maybe ten years ago, when he was just starting to lose his hair, grinning at the photographer like an idiot. Sandra-May has placed lit candles around it, and I smile to myself when I imagine him telling us that it’s probably a major fire hazard. Earlier, somebody asked Sandra-May why we were celebrating some old white Army dude; the earful she gave him would have charred concrete.

The booze suddenly gets me, flooding my skull and turning the room woozy. I push off the window, start to wind my way through the crowd. I get a few curious glances – little white girl, hanging around a party in Watts – but nobody hassles me.

Even if I wasn’t welcome here, I don’t really feel like going back to the place I’m staying – a miraculously still-functioning two-star hotel in Pomona. It’s crazy far out of LA – almost forty miles from my own place. But it’s packed out, so I can only imagine the strings Tanner had to pull to get rooms for me and Reggie. Hard bed. Antiseptic bathroom. No kitchen. Not that I’m complaining, really: my apartment in Leimert Park is a no-go. It’s… not destroyed, exactly, but it’s in real bad shape. Huge cracks in the walls and ceiling, windows broken. And I swear to God it’s actually tilting a little to one side. I gathered as much of my stuff as I could, as many clothes and cookbooks and records as the Batmobile would take, and got the fuck out.

It sucks. I liked that apartment.

At least I still have my car. The Batmobile lives. I found it back where I left it, outside the remains of the Boutique. Took me a while to get back there, but seeing that damn Jeep was the fucking best.

It’s been about two weeks since our little adventure in Washington. Cascadia has not gone off.

I have no idea how… but I think we saved the world.

They never found the kid. Tanner pulled in every favour she could: satellite imagery, infrared scanning, dedicated tracker teams. Drones and choppers, like Burr said. They scoured that forest for two weeks, and found nada.

And that probably sounds weird, doesn’t it? All those resources, all those eyes, and the kid still never pops up? Yeah, I thought it was strange too. Strange, and scary.

When you have a stomach bug that won’t quit, or a strange rash on your arm, you start Googling for solutions – even when you know shouldn’t. When you have a psychotic four-year-old who could end the world at any moment and who is missing in the woods, you do the same thing.