Struck (10 page)

Mom’s eyes held mine, unblinking. “You can’t help me,” she said, her voice regaining some of its usual slow dreaminess. “I’m lost. Lost in the dark. In the Valley of the Shadow.”

She looked at the TV. At Prophet.

“He says a storm is coming to finish what was started. The storm that will be the end of all things. He says it is God’s will and God’s plan.”

The tiniest of smiles lifted one corner of Mom’s mouth.

“He can protect us.”

I punched the power button on the TV, and the screen went dark. “He’s nothing but a televangelist, Mom. See how powerless he is? I push a button and he disappears.”

She flung herself at me, arms flailing, and I was sure she was going to hit me.

But she didn’t hit me. She pushed me. Pushed me to the side, out of her way, and turned the TV back on. Once again Prophet’s face filled the screen.

She breathed deeply and smiled into his empty eyes. “Go away,” she said to Parker and me without taking her eyes from Prophet’s.

“What happened?” I asked Parker when we were in the kitchen, where Mom couldn’t overhear us.

He shook his head. “I went to check on her. She seemed calm enough. She was sitting there on the bed, watching
The Hour of Light
. Then Prophet started talking about how a storm was coming, and when it arrived it would bring another earthquake. Mom heard that, and she freaked.”

Quentin’s words played through my mind.
There’s gonna be a catastrophic storm followed by an even worse earthquake
.

Everyone was singing the same tune these days.

My jaw began to ache, and I realized I was clenching my teeth. Of course it had been Prophet who set Mom off. That was his MO, wasn’t it? Scare people into submission. And he’d picked the perfect way to do it. Everyone wondered whether lightning striking the Puente Hills Fault had caused the quake. And whether it was even more likely to happen again when this new storm arrived, with the ground in the Waste cracked open in rifts that went down for miles, exposing the fault line.

And a false prophet would rise to power on a tide of destruction
.

“Mia,” Parker said, his eyebrows angled with worry, “we have a problem.”

“Last I checked we had more than one.”

“Well, add this to the list.” He shook the half-dozen pill bottles in his hands. I expected a sound like maracas, but there was no sound at all.

They were empty.

I grabbed one of the bottles out of Parker’s hand and held it up in front of my face. “Where did they go?”

“Maybe Mom’s been taking too many.”

I started to shake my head, and then stopped. Usually I oversaw Mom taking her meds to make sure she got the right dosage. But I left the pills in her medicine cabinet, and she spent plenty of time alone in her bedroom. She could have taken more pills at any time.

I remembered how she’d snapped at me that morning when I asked her if she was sure she’d taken her meds. I wanted to march into her bedroom and confront her, but not right now. Not after the way she’d screamed at Parker and me to leave her alone.

Acute Stress Disorder wasn’t normally supposed to last more than four weeks, but even then it often transitioned into Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which was nearly as bad. Parker and I couldn’t take care of her unless she was doped up.

“I’m going to see the Dealer,” I told Parker, and pounded up the stairs to my bedroom to raid my rapidly diminishing store of cash.

Parker followed on my heels. “You promised you wouldn’t go back there after what happened last time.”

“It wasn’t that big a deal. People get mugged every day.”
I grabbed the wad of cash I kept hidden inside the Monopoly box in my closet. I counted out the bills. Two hundred and seventeen dollars. Enough for another week’s supply of Xanax and Thorazine, but I’d have to forgo Mom’s sleeping pills.

“Maybe there’s some other way to help her,” Parker said. “Like that earthquake survivor’s group at school. She might not even need the meds anymore. She seems a little better … sort of.”

“She had another episode,” I reminded him. “With the amount of Thorazine she’s taking—
over
taking—that shouldn’t happen anymore.”

“Then let me go instead!”

“No. The Dealer won’t sell to you. He doesn’t know you.” The Dealer only accepted patrons by referral, and I’d lucked out in making a connection to him through one of our neighbors, a woman who now bought her insulin on the black market for ten times the amount she used to pay. But it was either fork over the money or go into diabetic shock.

I shoved the cash deep into my pocket. “I’ll be careful,” I said, but where I was going, it wouldn’t matter how careful I was.

On my way out the door, I grabbed the can of pepper spray and slipped it into my other pocket.

9

THERE WAS NO
other place in the world like the Ocean Front Walk on Venice Beach. If you took a circus, a hippie commune, an insane asylum, a homeless shelter, a gypsy caravan, and an inner city ghetto, mixed them up until they were jumbled together, and then set them down in front of a beach polluted by sewage where people still dared to surf and sunbathe, you’d have the Ocean Front Walk.

Of course, that had been before the quake.

Strolling down Ocean Front Walk was no longer an amusing way to spend a sunny afternoon. Now it was a good place to get mugged or beaten or maybe shot.

Here’s what happens when several square miles of the poorest, highest-crime areas of Los Angeles are destroyed, and the city offers the former inhabitants of those areas no alternative but to migrate west, away from the ruins of their homes; offers them nowhere to stay, nothing to eat, no clean water to drink, no showers but those used to wash sand and saltwater off after a swim in the ocean or a day of sunbathing.

Here’s what happens …

* * *

I did my best not to look conspicuous as I struggled through the crowd on the boardwalk, trying to reach the other side, where beyond a small, grassy rise lined with swaying palm trees lay the beach and Tentville. Getting across the congested boardwalk wasn’t much easier than attempting to walk through a concrete wall, and it was difficult not to stand out when you were one of the only people in sight who’d showered in the last couple weeks. I noted several sets of eyes following my progress, and I knew what the owners of those eyes were wondering.

What does she have that I need, that I might take?

I met those eyes with defiance. I couldn’t let them think I was weak. I’d made that mistake before.

You don’t want to mess with me
, I thought as I met the eyes of anyone who paid too much attention to me.
I came prepared this time
.

I touched the bulge in my pocket, the can of pepper spray. I understood now why Militiaman Brent touched his Taser so lovingly.

Fighting my way across the flow of people packing the boardwalk was like trying to swim through a fast-moving river. The rank smell of unwashed bodies filled my nostrils. And the noise … so many voices talking at once. Loud. Angry. Children crying. Babies shrieking.

I didn’t normally have problems with claustrophobia. Small spaces didn’t bother me, but crowds … crowds were another story. Having so many people surrounding me, pressing against me with their unfamiliar dirty bodies, panic began to override all other brain functions.

I came to a standstill. I couldn’t move, and no one else seemed to be moving either. Faces were the only thing
I could see. Faces everywhere. And eyes. All looking at me. Seeing me for what I was. Not one of
them
. I didn’t belong here and everyone knew it.

A baby screamed next to my ear.

My paralysis snapped.

I broke through to the other side of the boardwalk and stumbled up over the grassy knoll, past the palm trees, where I could look out over the expanse of sand to the water.

Over the weeks, Tentville had come to resemble a sort of medieval village, only it was vast, stretching as far as I could see in either direction. A pall of smoke hung low over the area, fed by constantly burning cook fires. People huddled around those fires, even during the warm hours of the day, just staring into the flames. Children wandered lethargically through the space between tents, slow with hunger and exhaustion, their cheeks streaked with soot, ashes in their hair, their clothing getting looser by the day.

Many of the tents had been brightly colored nylon when Tentville was first founded, but were now gray and faded from smoke. But one tent stood out from the others. This one was as broad as a small house, and large enough to stand up in. A heavy, canvas army tent, only it was not camo-colored. It had been painted a deep shade of purple. The color of royalty.

The Dealer thought highly of himself.

“Do you have an appointment?” The guard standing outside the Dealer’s lair looked like a retired linebacker.

“No,” I said. “But I have cash.”

He stared past me. His arms were so large and lumpy with muscle, he appeared to have babies stuffed up his sleeves. The Dealer probably gave him a discount on steroids.

“You need an appointment,” the guard said. “The Dealer is a busy man.”

“I’m a regular. Doesn’t that give me some sort of privileges or something?”

“No.”

“Look, just poke your head in there and tell him Mia Price is here. He’ll see me, I swear.”

For a moment I thought the guard would choose to ignore me completely. But he turned and stuck his head through the tent flap. I heard him mutter something, and the high, almost whiny return of the Dealer’s voice, and then his cackling laugh, making my spine go rigid. The Dealer’s laugh always gave me the creepiest of creeps. He sounded crazed. Unstable. He had access to all these psychotropic meds; he ought to try some, instead of whatever he used that made his pupils dilate to the size of M&M’s.

“Send her in,” I heard the Dealer say in a lilting singsong.

His guard held open the flap for me.

I squinted as my eyes adjusted to the shadowy interior of the tent. The purple paint that had been used to coat the canvas blocked out the light, and most of the air, too. It was so hot and stuffy inside, I began to feel faint and sick to my stomach. I could still smell the paint fumes. The chemical scent combined with the smell of the Dealer’s jasmine candles to make the inside of my head feel like it was full of bees and clouds.

“I think this place is violating a few fire safety codes,” I said.

The Dealer lounged on a patchwork pile of colorful pillows at the back of the tent, looking like some kind of ghetto maharaja. Most of the candles were placed behind him, so his face stayed in shadow. His hand rested on a huge black rottweiler that let out each breath in a rumbling growl.

“Didn’t think I’d see you again so soon, Mia Price. Mia, Mia, Mia Price,” he sang, and then cackled. “It’s always a pleasure to see you, though, m’dear. You’re one of my favorite customers.”

“I’m honored.” I wasn’t sure how I’d come to be a favorite, but if it got me what I needed, I was happy to accept the status.

“Come,” the Dealer said, patting the pillows. “Have a seat. Tell me what I can do for you.”

“Actually, I’m kind of in a—”

“Have a
seat
.”

The rottweiler growled and licked its chops with a pink tongue the width of a shoe.

I sat, keeping as much distance as I could between the Dealer and the rott and me without seeming impolite. Or afraid. Showing fear was as dangerous in this tent as it was on the boardwalk. The Dealer fed on it.

“Closer,” the Dealer said. “I’m not going to bite. I can’t speak for Rosemary here, though.” He patted the rott’s thick skull.

I told him what I needed.

He whistled, impressed.

“You went through that fast, girl.”

“It’s not for me.”

“Mm-hmm.”

I shook my head. It didn’t matter who the Dealer thought the meds were for. All that mattered was that he sold them to me. I pulled out my cash and counted two hundred dollars. A hundred dollars per bottle.

I handed the money over. Rosemary watched my hand like it was a steak dripping blood.

The Dealer counted the money, and then shook his head sadly. “It’s not enough.”

I blinked at him. “But that’s how much I always pay.”

He sighed as though it broke his heart to tell me. “Stock is low. I’ve had to raise prices.”

My chest felt tight. “I can pay a little extra.” I shoved the remaining seventeen dollars at him, but he kept on shaking his head.

“You know how many desperate people there are in this city? People who need what only I can provide, and will do whatever it takes to get it? I’m afraid prices have doubled, dearest. Two hundred per bottle.”

The walls of the tent seemed to be collapsing around me. “I … I can’t pay that much. You said I was one of your favorite customers. Can’t you cut me a deal this time or something?”

“Spoken like a true addict,” he said, his eyes laughing and cruel. He was enjoying this.

“I’m not an—”

“You know what I tell addicts like you, the ones who come to me and turn out their pockets and it’s still not enough, and they ask me, ‘Isn’t there anything I can do?’ I tell them … yes. Yes, there is.”

The Dealer’s eyes lowered from my face and scanned down my body. My hand inched toward the pepper spray in my pocket, but froze when Rosemary snarled a warning.

“She likes you,” the Dealer said. He reached out and curled a hand behind my neck. His pupils were enormous black marbles. “I like you.”

Fear gripped my heart until I thought it would burst. “Never mind,” I said. “I don’t need the pills. I’ll … I’ll just go.”

The Dealer’s smile dropped off his face. “No,” he said. “I’m going to give you what you came for. What you really need.”

My hand raced for the pepper spray and lost.

I didn’t have time to scream. It wouldn’t have done any good even if I had. This was Tentville. The residents were used to screams.

The Dealer lunged on top of me, pressing me into a pile of pillows until I thought I would disappear, that we would both sink below the surface of them, sucked under like we were in water.