Drought (44 page)

Brenda opened her desk drawer, took out three sets of car keys, and said, ‘We have a Sonic or a Cruze. Or a Prius.'

‘I'll take the Prius. I don't want anybody saying that I don't do my bit for climate change.'

Once he had gone down to the parking garage and picked up the car, he drove home to Fullerton Drive. Home. He liked the sound of that. There were two things he had to do first. One was to go to his apartment at Hummingbird Haven and collect all his clothes and the rest of his stuff. More important than that, though, he had to take Tyler to San Bernardino Community Hospital.

Maria was sitting up in bed when Tyler rapped at her door, watching TV. Her face was still swollen, but the bruises around her eyes were turning yellow, and her lips were healing, although she still had several scabs.

‘
Tyler
!' she said, and her eyes widened. ‘They told me you'd been arrested. What are you doing here?'

‘Is it OK?' Tyler asked her. ‘If you don't want to see me, I'll go.'

‘No,' she said. ‘Stay. I wanted to tell the police that you didn't shoot Papa. I asked the nurses but they said that no cops could come to see me, because of the riots. I asked again yesterday because I thought you were in prison but they still said no.'

‘You will tell them that I didn't shoot him, though, won't you? I mean, when all of this rioting is finished and they can come see you.'

She held out her hand to him. Her wrist was bandaged and two of her fingernails were missing. ‘Tyler … of course I will tell them. It wasn't you. It was that Big Puppet. I can tell the police what he looked like, everything.'

Tyler was tempted to tell her what had happened to Big Puppet, but decided it was better if he said nothing at all. He took her hand between his. Although her face was so bruised, he thought that she still looked beautiful. ‘The other thing,' he said, with a catch in his throat.

‘What other thing? What do you mean?'

‘What I did to you. What that Big Puppet made me do to you. I'm so sorry. You must hate me for it. I'm really so sorry.'

Maria shook her head. ‘It wasn't your fault, Tyler. I know that. In fact I'm glad you did it because he would have killed both of us, like my Papa.'

‘Is it OK if I come see you tomorrow? I'm sorry … I didn't bring you anything. Most of the stores are smashed up so there's nothing to buy.'

Maria smiled at him. As she did so, rain sprinkled against the window, and as they both turned their heads to look outside, they could see clouds tumbling hurriedly across the sky, as if they had an urgent appointment to keep.

Martin picked up the last box of books and looked around his empty apartment. He had left the TV because it was eight years old and in any case it had been given to him by Shirelle in the office because she no longer needed it and otherwise she would have sent it off for recycling.

This was one place he wasn't sad to be leaving. All it reminded him of was lonely evenings and Hungry Man dinners and one-night stands with girls who had known that he was never going to get serious with them.

He heard the front door open. ‘Tyler?' he called out. ‘Just coming!'

He carried the box of books out into the corridor. There was somebody standing in the open doorway but it wasn't Tyler. It was a skinny, unshaven Hispanic man with wild black hair and a sagging green linen coat, underneath which he was bare-chested, with thick curly chest-hair. He wore baggy gray pants that hung down so low that Martin could see the waistband of his Calvin Klein shorts.

He was toothlessly grinning and he was pointing a gun at Martin, which he was holding sideways in approved gangsta fashion.

‘Jesus,' said Martin.

‘Catched up with you at last,' said Jesus. ‘I been looking and looking but I couldn't find your ass noplace. Friend of mine knew that you lived here, gave me the heads up that you was back. You probably know him. Juan, the janitor. I always razz him, call him the Juanitor.'

‘What do you want, Jesus?'

‘What do I want? What do I want? What do you
think
I fucking want? You pushed my head down the john and I want what's-it-called? Retro-bewshun. That's it. Nobody pushes my head down no john and lives to laugh about it, man. Ezzie told everybody about it, of course she did. If there hadn't been no drought, man, you could have drowned me.'

‘So now you've come to get even?'

Jesus shook his head so that his earrings waggled. ‘I want more than even. I want to make sure that you never stick your nose in my life never again, nor nobody else's life, come to that.'

He cocked the automatic and aimed it directly at Martin's head. Martin tensed, ready to throw the box of books at him, in the hope of deflecting his aim.

‘Any last words, Mr Social Service loser? How about an apology? How about, “Sorry, Jesus, for pushing your head down the john”? Not that it would make no difference. I'm still going to waste you, whatever.'

What Jesus didn't realize was that Tyler had now quietly come up the steps to Martin's apartment and had appeared right behind him. Martin remained expressionless, but Tyler indicated that he was going to make a grab for Jesus' gun.

Martin said, ‘Yes. Good idea.'

Jesus was taken aback. ‘What does
that
mean, man? “Good idea”? It's a good idea that you apologizes? Well, if it's such a good idea, then do it. Like, apologize. “Sorry, Jesus, for pushing your head down the john.”'

Tyler reached out and grabbed Jesus' wrist, wrenching it upward. Jesus fired one shot into the ceiling before Tyler twisted his wrist around so violently that he had to let go of the gun. Martin dropped the box of books on to Jesus' feet and then punched him in the face so hard that he dislocated his jaw.

Jesus was left standing there with his mouth gaping open and his tongue hanging out, gagging and choking, unable to speak.

‘Now get the hell out of here, Jesus!' Martin barked at him. ‘And don't ever let me see your miserable face ever again. The water supply's back on, so next time I
will
drown you, I swear to God!'

Martin and Tyler stood at the top of the steps watching Jesus scuttle across to the parking area, where he had left his yellow Mustang.

Tyler handed Martin the automatic. ‘Something to add to your armory, Dad.'

Martin turned the automatic this way and that. It was a battered old Browning, with duct tape wound around the butt because it had lost its wooden grips. ‘Thanks. And thanks for saving my life.'

‘You saved my life, Dad. You saved
all
of our lives.'

Martin said, ‘I'll tell you something, Tyler, I'm so tired of all this. Sometimes I think, this is the twenty-first century. Why the hell do we have to keep fighting each other, just to stay alive?'

‘I don't know, Dad. I don't know the answer to that one. I don't think anybody does. Maybe God, but He's not telling.'

N
o bodies were ever found at Lost Girl Lake.

Park rangers came across three burned-out tents outside the entrance to the cavern, and over the following weeks and months they found items of clothing and personal possessions including wallets and keys, all of which were scattered over a very wide area.

They also found respirators, belts and Kevlar body armor, all of which were identified as belonging to Empire Security Services in San Bernardino, although ESS representatives insisted that they were unable to explain how they had got there.

Inside the cavern they discovered several boxes of canned and dried food. Most incongruous of all were the twisted remains of an M2A1-7 military flame-thrower, which was illegal for civilian use in California.

The evening before Thanksgiving, three young Chemehuevi Indians from the Twentynine Palms Mission reservation were flagged down by highway patrol officers on the Utah Trail because they were driving a Cadillac Eldorado convertible with a broken headlight. They were unable to produce driving licenses or any documents relating to the vehicle, but they protested that they hadn't stolen it.

They had found it abandoned in the Joshua Tree National Park and considered that it was ‘a gift from Mother Earth'.