Autumn in the City of Angels (9 page)

We motored down Sunset Boulevard, and I noticed a large glass tower of electric Smart cars across from a theater I used to go to.  I marveled at the shiny display of the little cars, their bright colors out of place in the now-desolate Hollywood landscape.  They seemed so happy and unaffected, locked up in their glass tower - a time capsule.  In some ways, they reminded me of Ben, Rissi and I.  I knew at some point, the glass would be broken, and the cars would be at risk from the elements, just like we would be if we couldn’t find water to take back.  I was lost in such deep thought that it took me a moment to realize Ben was speaking.

“Maybe we should head back.  I don’t like how far we’ve gotten from home,” he said.

Before I could answer, a flock of birds took flight from another parking lot turned meadow.  It was a very large flock, and I wondered what’d startled them.

Three seconds later, I had my answer.  We heard the rumbling first.  Then the ground started to vibrate under our tires.

“Earthquake!”  Ben said, setting the brake.  We sat there for a moment, waiting and clutching the side of the cart.  But it got worse.  The ground suddenly rocked wildly under our cart, throwing me off balance.  The telephone polls above us swayed as the electric cords on them danced.  “Get under something!”  Ben yelled.  I jumped out and looked around for anything stable to crawl beneath, but I saw only a plastic bus bench.  I dove under it and looked back for Ben.  He was running toward an eighteen-wheeler sitting in the middle of the road, half-hidden by grass growing up around it.  He ducked out of sight beneath it as the ground shuddered violently.

I clutched the leg of the bench and felt the earth rolling under me.  I was sick with fear, my stomach churning.  When would it stop?

I heard Ben yell distantly but was distracted by a sudden shower of sparks that rained down on my bus bench.  I peeked out and saw the telephone poll wobbling, straining against the power lines holding it up.  It leaned toward me for a moment, then loomed closer.

With the earth still dancing under my feet, I scrambled out from under the bench and ran out of the path of the telephone pole.  And not a moment too soon.  The power lines broke with loud, static-charged pops, and then the heavy brown pole fell, snapping the plastic bus bench into a million shards.

Not watching where I was going, I tripped on the curb and fell.  Electricity buzzed in the air around me.  And then it was quiet and still again.  I stood up, checking my hands and knees.  No bleeding, that’s good.

I turned to look for Ben, and heard a distant shout from further down the street.

“Ben!”  I yelled.  His shout sounded like one filled with terror.  Stricken with fear, I ran to the truck he’d taken cover under but found it empty.  I ran around it and came face to face with the same heavily muscled man I’d seen from my terrace that first week after The Plague.  I jumped back, startled.  He didn’t have the giant gun slung across his back like before, but he was still wearing the camo pants and black tank top.  He was huge.  He looked down at me, and I took a step back.

“You look familiar,” he said as he scanned me up and down.  I didn’t answer.  I glanced around.  Where was Ben?  He couldn’t have gone far.

“You okay?”  The man asked in a gentle tone I didn’t trust.  “That earthquake was something, wasn’t it?  Had tuh’ve been at least a sixer.  My name’s Hart.  Who’re you?”  He tried to smile, but it looked more like a sneer.

“Uh,” I said, stalling.  “Have you seen anyone else?  My friend, he was right here a second ago.”  Ben, where
are
you, I thought.  I edged back a step.

“I haven’t seen anyone except you.  Why don’t you come with me?  You look like you could use some help. Let me carry your bag.”  He reached for my backpack, but I ducked away.

“Hey, now, there’s no reason to be jumpy.  I ain’t gonna hurt you.  I’m just trying to help.”  His voice was sad and cruel, and the way his eyes roamed over me made me feel like I was wearing much less than my jeans, t-shirt and jacket.

“No, thank you.  I should be going.  I need to find my friend.”  I turned away from him, heart thumping, and walked quickly around the side of the eighteen-wheeler.  When I was out of his line of sight, I began to run.

I heard Hart’s pounding feet on the pavement behind me, but didn’t turn to look.  He was probably a faster runner than me.  I looked about wildly for Ben.  We had to make it back to Rissi.  I couldn’t imagine what would happen if we didn’t. 

I ducked through a gas station on the corner, hoping this station’s tanks had been emptied and the lids carelessly left off.  Maybe my pursuer wouldn’t notice.  But as I threw a glance over my shoulder, I saw him jump over one of the gaping holes without looking down.  A fresh surge of fear ripped through me, and a new realization dawned on me.  He was going to catch me.

In desperation, I grabbed at a newspaper stand as I flew by and flung it to the ground behind me.  I chanced another look back just in time to see the top-heavy stand smash to the ground, the bottom of it flying up in the air and catching his leg.  He crashed to the ground with a grunt.  A knife skidded across the pavement.

The sight of the knife pumped fresh adrenaline in my veins, and I continued sprinting east.  I knew it wasn’t safe on the main streets, so I scanned the area looking for a place to hide.  I glimpsed a mural covering the side of a large building.  Smiling faces of old movie stars in their heyday shined down on me, and I realized it was the theater at Hollywood High School.  My heart jumped, and I ran even faster, leaping up the front steps and to the entrance, then skidded to an abrupt halt.  The front of the building was in shambles, crumbled down over the top steps.  Was this from the earthquake?  What if the boy and his friends were inside when it hit?

My heart thumped loudly in my ears as I tried to round the building without stumbling on the debris.  I desperately looked for a way in, but every entrance seemed to be caved in or blocked with rubble.  I heard gasping and knew instantly it wasn’t my own breath.  I turned as a hand swiped through my hair, pulling out a few strands, but never finding a solid grasp.  I screamed and pushed the burly man.  He stumbled over a large pile of bricks behind him and fell.  I jumped over the last few piles of rubble, landing in the grass and streaking into the street.

I felt the entire weight of everything in the backpack as it yanked hard on my shoulders with every leap I took.  I was getting tired, fast.  I needed a hiding place, but the school was no longer an option with no entrance point.  I heard Hart cursing less than a block behind me now.

I tried to think about the note the boy left me.  I’d looked at it hundreds of times, thousands.  I recited it to myself mentally as I ran.  “If you need me, come to Hollywood High through the H&H underground metro gray.”  H&H was Hollywood and Highland, an outdoor shopping complex that also housed the Dolby and Chinese Theaters with a subway entrance inside.  It was only a block away from the school.  The Gray Metro Line had to be beneath it.

I pushed myself until I got to the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue.  I scanned the area until I saw a Metro sign and an escalator going down.  Sweat dripped down my back, and I panted heavily.  My legs felt like noodles.  I looked back.  Hart was half a block behind me, and closing fast.  I couldn’t let myself stop now.  There was a large clump of bushes shielding the escalator going down to the Metro.  From the angle Hart was running, he might not see me.  So I ran for it.

I nearly fell as I ran down the motionless metal steps.  I hadn’t seen signs for a gray line, but it was too late to turn back and look for a subway map.  It got dimmer as I went further down, with the majority of the lights having burnt out.  I finally reached the subway platform and paused.  I heard Hart jumping down the last few stairs, and I scrambled behind one of the pillars into a patch of complete darkness.  I tried to breathe quietly.  Hart stopped and looked around, scanning the area.  His eyes paused on my hiding place, then slowly started toward me.

My heart jumped up, and I swallowed, my throat burning.  The air was too thick.  I felt heat on my legs and glanced down.  From what I could see in the near darkness, I was tramping through the remains of a fire.  Some of the embers were still glowing.  Confused, I jumped out of it and looked around, my eyes beginning to adjust to the darkness.  There was a wood stack, a small table with some food wrappers and some books and maps... and right at my feet was Karl, his head propped on a bedroll, eyes closed, fast asleep.  I felt the urge to faint as the weight of the moment caught up to me.  Darkness tried to close in over me and a dull hum started overtaking my ears, but I forced myself to bite it back.  I shook my head, silently.  I wouldn’t go like this.

I quietly backed away from him.  My heart thumped so loud, I was sure it would wake him.  I heard Hart call out to someone.  I backed further into the darkness away from Karl and, thinking it would be the best place to hide, I slipped over the edge and dropped silently onto the subway tracks.

Another figure appeared beside Hart.  He was a short, fat, bald man.  He looked like he could have been my high school chemistry teacher.

“Hey, Bernie, you seen a teenage girl run through here a minute ago?”  Hart asked him.

“Uh, no, I haven’t.  Makin’ more friends?”  I heard a sleepy voice reply back to him.

Hart kept looking around him while he talked to Bernie.  “Not sure she made it down here.  I lost her in the mall upstairs.  Sure was quite a looker.  Big green eyes.  Freckles.  Long red hair.  There ain’t many reds left now-a-days.”

“Hey, you feel that earthquake about twenty minutes ago?  Man, that was something!”

As I listened to them, I tried to fathom why, of all places, Karl and his cronies would be camping here, so deeply underground, when any number of lavish hotel suites and multi-million dollar homes were likely unoccupied and much more comfortable.  It didn’t make sense.  Either way, I couldn’t stay.  I was too close.  But I most certainly wasn’t going to go running through a pitch black subway tunnel.  I backed farther into the darkness, keeping my hands on the wall as a bearing, and wondered how long I’d have to wait until they all left and I could escape back home.

“Why are you back so soon, Hart?”  I froze as I heard Karl’s voice not ten feet from me.

“I was chasing a girl.  Tried to get her to come with me, but she ran, and I followed her here.”  Hart was still trying to catch his breath.

“She must be with them if she knew to come down here.  And she slipped right by you, too, eh Bernie?  Dammit, she’s probably halfway down one of the tunnels by now.”

At these words, my heart leapt.  Could Karl be talking about the boy’s group?  And did he mean this was an entrance they used?  The boy’s note had said to use the Gray Metro Line at Hollywood & Highland.  I wasn’t sure what color line ran through here, but it made sense to have such a concealed entrance if they were trying to keep their location a secret from The Front.  He had also said they would be in the basement of Hollywood High School.  All the surface entrances to the school had been blocked.  Maybe this was their secret, underground entrance.

Taking care to stay in the shadows, I peeked onto the platform to check the directional signs.  To my left was the Universal City stop, which was north.  Not the direction I wanted to go.  To my right was the Hollywood & Vine stop, which was east.  The school was south.  I guessed east was better than north.

Praying Karl would continue to berate Hart and Bernie for letting me escape and not turn his attention back to searching for me, I began creeping my way into the eastern tunnel.  The platform seemed bright as I left it behind and plunged into the dark yawning mouth of the subway tunnel.

I hated walking in the dark.  With everything Ben had remembered to pack in my bag, he hadn’t thought of a flashlight.  That would have been useful and comforting.  I walked with one hand grazing the southern wall as a bearing.  I kept my other hand hooked into the strap of my backpack instead of stretched out in front of me like a person suddenly stricken blind.  It made me feel calmer if I forced my body to behave normally.  I couldn’t shake the unsettling image of headlights from a rumbling subway train appearing in front of me, though.  Just thinking about it terrified me, even though I knew it had to be impossible.

The cement bricks of the wall were dirty and crackly beneath my fingertips.  Even though my touch was light, the rough surfaces bit at my raw skin.

I forced my breathing to slow to normal and my mind to clear.  Memories of the boy had taken up all the space in my head since I’d heard Karl speculate his group was down here, somewhere.  His presence in my mind was comforting.  And the thought of possibly seeing him again made me breathless with anticipation.  I suppose that technically, I’d be seeing him for the first time, since I’d never actually laid eyes on him before.

His voice echoed in my head, asking me questions, telling me not to be afraid.  I remembered the way my name sounded on his lips and how the sweater he wore against the nighttime chill was a perfect scratchy softness against my bare arms.  I continued to think of those details and not about walking blindly through a subway tunnel.  I recalled how he wrapped my scraped hands and inspected the cut on my head with his warm fingertips.  Chills broke out over my skin at the memory.

I felt better at first, more confident as I thought about him, but after what felt like an hour, tripping several times, and finding no sign of him or his group, I became certain I was missing something.  I tried to push the panic out of my mind, but fear crept up inside me, trying to force me to panic.

My foot made contact with something, and I leaned on the wall to step over it, but the cement gave way, and I gasped.  I grabbed at the wall trying to regain my balance, but it crumbled away, and I fell forward, scratching at the cement wall to catch myself.  I felt the flesh rip on my hands, and the familiar pain brought me back to last time I’d cut my hands in such a way.  I couldn’t help smiling through my tears, hoping it was an omen of some kind.

I picked myself up and reached forward to inspect the rubble where the wall had been.  I pushed away more loose rock and reached through, finding nothing solid behind it.  I realized this was an offshoot tunnel, and it was headed south.

This had to be it.  I knelt over and felt deeper in.  My fingers met empty air.  Without thinking, I got down on my knees and eased myself into the hole.  The manmade tunnel was angled up slightly.  That gave me hope, but before I got three feet in, I got stuck.

I couldn’t move forward, I couldn’t move back.  I hadn’t thought to remove my backpack, and now I was wedged in tight.  I desperately wiggled to no avail.  Claustrophobia had never been a big fear of mine, but it was swiftly becoming one.  I couldn’t breathe, and I wanted to scream, but I knew it wouldn’t help and would probably bring unwanted attention.  I couldn’t have imagined a worse way to die.  I’d almost rather have one of Karl’s cronies kill me quickly than die in this tiny hole.

All the strength drained from my muscles.  I was so tired.  I couldn’t move my arms enough to get the heavy backpack straps off, and they were too thick to break through.  I laid my head on the hard cement rock of the man-made tunnel.  I was resigning myself to my fate, when suddenly I had a revelation.  The straps on my backpack could be tightened and loosened by plastic buckles.  If I cinched the heavy buckles between my fingers and pulled, the straps would disconnect completely, freeing my arms.  All I had to do was wiggle my hands far enough back to reach the buckles.

I twisted and strained with new vigor.  I could do this.  I eased my elbow back as far as possible and found the buckle with my fingers.  I couldn’t seem to get an even hold on it to make it move, so I wriggled harder and was just able to get the buckle up to my mouth.  I clamped down on it with my teeth and slowly started to pull.  I felt the tension start to give and then, I had one arm free.

I started to breath deeper, fighting the claustrophobia.  I gave myself only a minute to recover before starting to work on the next buckle.  I repeated the process and, though the hard buckle was painful on my teeth, I succeeded.  I wriggled free from the bag and continued on, leaving it, and all of the thoughtful things Ben packed inside, behind me.

After what seemed like years of pulling myself through the ascending tunnel, I came to the end and dropped into a dark hallway.  I lay there for a minute, the lower half of my legs still in the tunnel.  I reveled in the open space around me, thankful to be free.

Suddenly, a beam of light flooded my vision, and I gasped, covering my eyes in pain.

“Hello there.  You alone?” asked the deep voice of a man.  I scrambled back, dragging my legs out of the tunnel and squinted past the brightness to see him holding the flashlight.

I tried to remain calm.  If this was someone with the boy’s group, I would need to explain myself.  “Yes, I’m alone.  A boy told me a group was here.  Six months ago, on the Westside, he saved me, but it was dark, and I don’t know his name.”  I wasn’t making any sense.  The bright light dazzled my eyes.  “Could you turn the light away, please?  It hurts.”

I heard a chuckle, and the flashlight beam illuminated the ceiling.  I rubbed my eyes in relief and stared up at the man standing before me.  He was about thirty, barrel-chested, and he towered over me like an obelisk.  This certainly wasn’t the boy from the alley.

“Are you... the good guys?”  I asked, intimidated by his size.  He would have looked like a bouncer at a club were it not for his wide, childlike eyes.  When he didn’t acknowledge my question, I continued, “I was told this was a safe place.”

“Safe is a relative term, sweetheart.”  He paused a second, then said, “Well, you don’t look too threatening, but I’m warning you, if you’re a rat sent by The Front, well, let’s put it this way.  There are a whole lot of places for graves here in The Underground.”

I was slightly taken aback by his hostility.  “I wasn’t sent by anyone, I promise.  I was trying to find water when my friend and I were separated by the earthquake, and then I ran into that big guy, Hart-”

“Okay, okay.  I got it,” He interrupted and gave a large sigh, as if to tell me what a burden I was. “Guess you’re with us now.  Come on.”

He turned his back and started walking down the corridor.  With his flashlight showing the way, it seemed much smaller than I’d imagined before when I was in the dark.  He rounded another corner and started up a staircase.  I wondered how much more lost I could possibly get.  I paused a moment at the bottom of the steps, realizing that with every step I took, the further I was getting from ever seeing Ben and Rissi again.  Would they ever find me down here?  We’d planned to meet back at The Water Tower if we got separated, and this was the furthest thing from that plan.  I hoped he’d made it home, back to Rissi, and I hoped even more that I would find a way to get him a signal to let him know I was safe.

“Your legs broken or something?” the man asked in a booming voice.

“What?”  I said, as if I hadn’t understood the question.

“Keep up.”

“I’m sorry,” I said and began to climb the stairs after him.

“What’s your name, kid?”

“Autumn.” 

“I’m Todd.  Come on, Autumn.”  He seemed to be warming up to me a little.  Of course, it might be my imagination.

“How much farther?”  I asked

“Not far.”

It seemed like an endless journey, though I’m sure it only took a couple minutes.  We went through a bizarre room of old stage props, then climbed up another set of stairs.  Finally, I saw a light that wasn’t coming from Todd’s flashlight.

We entered a wide hallway turned into living quarters.  Mattresses lined the walls, along with boxes of what I presumed to be personal possessions.  Everyone looked pale and tired under the humming fluorescent lights.  As I searched the hardened faces for a boy who could match the memory in my head, I suddenly felt guilty for spending the last nine months tucked away in a penthouse apartment.  It looked like these people had a much rougher time surviving.

“We can fit you here for now,” he said, as he opened what appeared to be a utility closet.  “We used to have another kid in here.  He was a couple years younger than you, I think,” he said, as he gestured to the small mattress.

“Where’d he go?”  I asked, stupidly.

In the dim light I saw the grimace on Todd’s face.  “It’s a tough life down here, kid.  Gotta be careful about who you trust.”

“Oh,” I said.  I didn’t completely understand, but the look of distrust on Todd’s face was clear enough.

“Stay here.  I’ll be back for you in a couple hours and then we’ll talk.”

I nodded, and he looked at me once more, as if unsure about something, and then said, “I mean it, don’t go wandering around.  Wait for me to come get you.”

I nodded again.  I was beginning to wonder what I’d gotten myself into.  He turned to leave, but I called out to him.

He turned back to me, “Yeah?”

“The boy who told me about you all six months ago.  I never saw his face, and I don’t know his name.  Do you know who that might have been?”

Todd shrugged his massive shoulders.  “Could have been any of our guys.  Everyone had to go out on scouts in the beginning.  Get some rest.  You look like you need it,” he finished awkwardly.  My heart sank.

He was gone before I could ask any more questions, and I sat down on the bare mattress.  I felt a million miles away from home.  I was the outsider here.  And if I understood the underlying warning in Todd’s comment about the young boy who used to sleep in this room, outsiders were not to be trusted.  I needed to find my nameless friend now more than ever.