The Walk

CHAPTER EIGHT

6:47 p.m. Tuesday

In the movie Earthquake, the Capitol Records building was one of the first to collapse, toppling like the stack of LPs it was designed to represent. But there it was, still standing, two blocks up from where Marty and Buck were, in the intersection of Sunset and Vine. One more thing the movies got wrong.

Uprooted palm trees were tipped at crazy angles or lay broken across the Sunset Boulevard, cars piled up against them or crushed underneath. The Cinerama Dome theatre, to Marty’s left, was riddled with cracks and resembled half of a discarded eggshell. To his right, the Quantum Insurance office tower rose from a courtyard of broken glass, which the setting sun transformed into a field of glittering diamonds. It was almost beautiful. But Marty kept a wary eye on the tower, afraid it might topple at any moment.

Buck tipped his head towards the Cinerama Dome. “I live over there, on Yucca. Just a few blocks over.”

“It’s out of my way,” Marty motioned towards the Capitol Records building. “I’m heading north.”

“What about my bathroom?”

“I really want to get home. My wife is waiting for me.”

Buck nodded. “Yeah, well, Thor is probably anxious to see me, too.”

“Thor?”

“Yeah, Thor. My fucking dog,” Buck looked genuinely hurt. “Haven’t you listened to anything I’ve told you?”

Was this guy for real? Marty thought. Did Buck really think he was hanging on his every word?

“Forgive me, I’ve been a bit distracted. You know, with the earthquake, hanging from overpasses, that kind of thing.”

“Right, whatever.” Buck pulled out his gun and, for an instant, Marty was afraid he was going to get shot again.

“You want it?” Buck offered him the gun. “Strictly as a loaner.”

“What would I do with a gun?”

“Shoot people, dipshit. It’s only gonna get worse out here.”

“No thanks,” Marty replied. “I wouldn’t want to deprive you of the opportunity to pick off a few more looters.”

“I got plenty of guns at home.”

“I’m sure you do. But really, I don’t need it.”

“You’re making a fatal mistake,” Buck shoved the gun back into his holster and held out his hand to Marty. “If you survive, we’ll do lunch.”

Marty shook it, not out of any sort of friendship, but in an effort to speed Buck on his way. He never wanted to see this man again. “Sure, that would be great.”

Buck nodded and strode off down the street. Marty watched him go until he lost him in the crowd. He wanted to make sure Buck wasn’t going to follow him any more.

Satisfied that he was truly on his own, Marty continued on up the street, a new determination in his stride. This was a turning point in his journey, and a positive one at that.

When Marty set out on his trek that morning, he didn’t anticipate Molly, Buck, Franklin, the bum, or the old lady with vinyl skin. There were no explosions or rescues, toxic clouds, or uncontrollable bowels in his scenario. But despite all that, Marty was where he wanted to be, roughly on schedule. The worst of his ordeal was behind him.

Martin Slack was finally on top of the situation, a man in charge of his destiny. And he enjoyed that terrific feeling, in all of its richness, for a full fifteen seconds.

And then came the aftershock.

His first thought, in the instant he both heard and felt the massive subterranean thunderclap, was that he’d become a joke in a cruel, celestial sitcom. He would never dare think he was in control of his life again.

Marty stood in place, trying to maintain his balance as the ground undulated beneath his feet, the terrified screams of the people scrambling around him muffled by the heavy, sonorous rumble of destruction. Buildings seemed to melt into the ground. Huge fissures moved up the street, ripping the asphalt open like zippers. Glass splashed like raindrops onto the rippling sidewalks.

But just as the shaking began to ebb, he heard a tremendous roar, something so deep and so sustained it overwhelmed the earth’s rumble in sound and in motion, growing in intensity and resonance as it came closer.

Yes, closer.

That was Marty’s first, intuitive warning that this was something different. It wasn’t like the quake, which he felt all over, all at once. This was coming, strong and ferocious, from the hills.

And then he saw it, and for the longest second of his life, was so awe-struck by its horrific magnitude that he couldn’t move.

A gigantic wave of water, roiling with mud, trees, cars, power lines, and entire houses, surged over the Hollywood Freeway and smashed into the Columbia Records building, absorbing the rubble in its ferocious maelstrom.

Marty ran screaming in terror, knowing there was no escape, no higher ground, that in seconds he would be buried under a liquid avalanche of rubble, muck, and corpses.

The Quantum Insurance building loomed in front of him, and he rushed into it because it was there, because he could hear the roar of the water and feel its muddy spray as it gained on him. Only then, as he ran across the lobby, and saw the open door to the stairwell, did he have an idea of how he might save himself.

He dashed into the stairwell and scaled the metal steps as fast as he could. The wave pounded into the building, rocking it like a boat, jolting Marty off his feet. He grabbed hold of the rail and kept climbing as water burst into the stairwell from the lobby, a swirling, dark mass rising up for him.

Marty scurried frantically up the stairs, barely ahead of the surging waters. The building continued to shudder as the water, and the enormous chunks of debris, continued to slam against it.

Suddenly, the doors above him exploded open, thick water pouring down the stairs, swamping him in a muck of debris that felt like a stream of razor blades, slicing his clothes, his skin.

Marty screamed in frustration and terror, slipping and sliding on the slick metal steps, desperately afraid of falling and being sucked into the whirlpool chasing him up the stairwell.

A desk chair shot through an open doorway above him, propelled by the water, and tumbled towards his head. He flattened himself against the rail and it banged off the walls past him, splashing into the churning muck and disappearing below. He kept climbing, as fast as he could, his screams like a cheering squad, driving him on, driving up and up and up.

File cabinets and desks piled up against the doorways as he passed, clogging them, slowing the streams of water coursing into the stairwell. He just kept screaming and climbing until finally, he passed doorways where no water at all was coming out.

Marty stopped and risked a look back. Several flights below, the churning monster had given up its pursuit and even seemed to be slowly retreating. Panting, soaked, and bleeding, he slumped down onto a step to catch his breath and stare down at the water.

A woman’s face bubbled up out of the morass, eyes wide, skin bulging. He yelped and staggered back.

Beth.

It couldn’t be. He blinked hard and looked again, just as the severed torso bobbed up onto the surface. She wasn’t his wife, she was another young woman, perhaps the meaning of some other man’s journey. She was a woman once loved by someone, now just a piece of floating debris, already starting to rot away. No one would ever find her, no one would ever know what happened. No one except him, and he didn’t even know her name.

Marty continued up the stairs, unable to take his eyes off the mutilated corpse, until it finally lolled over, face down in the water. He backed out through the first doorway he came to, and found himself in the seventh floor lobby of Quantum Insurance.

Standing there, amidst the wood paneling and leather furniture, staring at the open, stairwell door, Marty could almost believe that what just happened was merely a waking nightmare, a delusion.

It wasn’t possible to drown in an office building stairwell. How could it have nearly happened to him?

But his soaked clothes, the sting of his cuts, the smell of rot already coming from the stairwell, reinforced what he knew was true.

It did happen. A mountain of water roared down Vine Street and chased him up the stairs of a building.

And he’d survived.

He’d beaten it.

He was Charlton Fucking Heston.

Air whistled through the lobby, kicking up papers, magazines, and plaster dust, catching his attention. He turned from the stairwell and stumbled into the offices. Fluorescent light fixtures, tangled in fallen ceiling panels, dangled over the rows of toppled cubicles. Forgotten briefcases, purses, and jackets were scattered everywhere, evidence of a quick evacuation.

Maybe if he searched the purses, Marty thought, he’d find the woman in the stairwell. Or maybe she wasn’t from this building or even this block, maybe she was swept off her front lawn miles away and carried down from the hills, her body tossed and dismembered in the swirling waters.

Marty told himself to stop thinking about her, put her in that place in his mind where Molly already was. Close the door and try to barricade it behind the useless mental clutter of restaurant phone numbers, advertising jingles, and the names of cartoon characters.

As Marty moved down the wide corridor, he peeked into the abandoned offices, which looked as if they’d been ransacked, the windows gone, wind whipping in and tossing up the mess.

Windows.

It suddenly occurred to Marty that he was high above the destruction, that if he wanted to, he could see what awaited him on the ground. He carefully made his way into one of the corner offices, afraid he might trip on something and fall out the big opening.

What he saw made him dizzy, made him reach out to the wall for support. The enormity of the devastation was almost too much for his brain to absorb.

The Hollywood Dam had collapsed, spilling the Lake Hollywood Reservoir out into the city, washing away the hillside and all the homes on it. The avalanche of water wiped away the Hollywood Freeway and buried the mouth of the Cahuenga Pass before spreading out into city below, scraping off entire blocks in its wave of debris.

The force of the water, thick with the rubble it had sucked up, dissipated the wider it spread and the more obstacles it hit, thinning out over an ever-widening plain of ruin. Piles of assorted wreckage( mangled swingsets, twisted lightpoles, chunks of freeway lanes, entire buses-were washed up against the tallest buildings, caught against them like seaweed and driftwood as the water streamed past.

Marty quickly moved from one office to another, checking the views out the windows, racing to see as much as he could before the details were swallowed up in the smoke, dust, and near-darkness that was rapidly enveloping the city.

The water was still moving, thinning out to a trickle in a wide “V” that stretched to Western on the East and La Brea to the West, and as far south as Melrose. Helicopters swarmed over Hollywood now, search-lights raking the flood plain, searching for survivors or taking measure of the futility of the effort.

And then Marty realized that somewhere under all the mud and debris clogging the streets was Buck Weaver, his guns, his dog, and his collection of cocktail napkins. Marty couldn’t help but imagine Buck, facing off defiantly against the wave, daring it to come for him, firing his gun pointlessly into the wall of water and screaming obscenities at it. He felt a strong, almost physical sadness, and it surprised him.

Marty had only known the guy a few hours, and what he knew about Buck he didn’t like. So why were there tears in his eyes?

Their relationship, if it could even be called that, wasn’t The Odd Couple. There was no hidden affection at the center of their conflict. Buck was a danger to them both and Marty was glad when he finally got rid of him. But Marty never wanted him to die.

Two people he’d met today, actually talked to and got to know in some small way, were dead. Perhaps that was what the tears were all about, he thought. The shock of immediate death and the realization that it could just as easily happen to him.

Maybe it wasn’t sadness he felt. It was fear.

Whatever it was, it was overpowering, crippling, and he had to get past it, or he would never be able to leave the building.

He thought again about Beth, about how important it was to get back to her. She was his center. He told himself that as long as he concentrated on her, he could get past any emotion, any obstacle.

Obstacles.

Marty looked out the window again. There was no way he was going to get through the Cahuenga Pass now. He would have to find another way to get over the hills into the valley.

The reason he’d chosen the Cahuenga Pass, besides the fact it was his nearest escape route, was that it was a wide expanse of generally flat land through the hills, there were no dangerous cliffs to worry about, and he could stay clear of unstable slopes that might collapse on him in an aftershock. He also had three routes to choose from through the Pass: Highland Avenue, Cahuenga Boulevard, or the Hollywood Freeway.

There were several canyons that snaked through the hills into the valley, but they didn’t offer the same advantages as the Cahuenga Pass. They were all narrow, winding, and crammed with homes clinging precariously to the sides of the canyon. Long stretches of roadway were cut into slopes, leaving a steep drop on the other side. One landslide, one sheared-off chunk of road, and he’d have to turn back.

To the northwest, immense clouds of dust hung over Laurel Canyon, a sign that landslides had probably already closed off that route for him or, at the very least, made it too risky to attempt. And Marty could see the glow from the fires raging in the hills above Sherman Oaks, raising the ominous possibility that even if the other canyons were clear, they soon might be choked off by flames.

There were two other ways into the valley. He could follow the San Diego Freeway and Sepulveda Boulevard through the Sepulveda Pass or, as a last resort, follow the Pacific Coast Highway north, then cut across either Topanga Canyon or Malibu Canyon.

But one, frustrating fact was certain: whichever route Marty eventually chose, he wouldn’t be making it back to Calabasas tonight.

It would be a few hours at least before the water receded and he could even attempt leaving the building, much less slogging through the mud, the rubble, and the bodies on the streets. And even if he could, did he really want to do that in the pitch darkness of a blacked-out, demolished metropolis?

A horrible thought came to him. Come daylight, there would be hundreds of corpses. Mutilated. Bloated. Strewn everywhere, washed up by the flood. Marty didn’t think he had enough corners in his mind to hide all the death he was going to see. He doubted anyone did.

Going home crazy wouldn’t help Beth very much, would it?

No, he told himself, it certainly wouldn’t.

So maybe it would just be better for everyone concerned if he just found a comfortable chair and waited until things out there were under control. At least until the National Guard finally showed up and started covering the bodies.

And Marty was tired, so very, very tired. Every tendon and sinew in his body ached. He could feel the sting and pain of every scratch, bruise, gash, and bullet wound. His feet were swollen, scored with blisters. And he reeked of piss, blood, coconut oil, sweat, and drying mud.

Would he really be any good to Beth returning home like this?

He couldn’t go on, not tonight.

Maybe not even tomorrow.

What he needed was a rest. A long one. Marty started looking for a place to sit.

The leather chair in the office wasn’t bad, one of those big, over-stuffed executive models. It offered status, class, and absolutely no lumbar support, but it was perfect for what Marty had in mind. He was just about to try it out when he heard the whistling.

It wasn’t really a tune, more of an aimless, semi-musical improv, the sound people make when the body is at work and the mind is on hold.

Marty followed the whistling down one corridor and through another. As he got closer to the sound, he also began to smell smoke.

The corridor curved and led him to an enormous, wood-paneled conference room. The long table was covered with stacks of files and computer disks, which a balding man, still in his Versace suit, was feeding into a fire he had going in a custodian’s metal garbage can.

“If you’ve come to file a claim, we’re closed,” the man spoke without looking up, startling Marty, who didn’t know he’d even been seen.

“Do you work here?” It’s not that Marty really cared, but he wasn’t leaving for a while and he wanted to know who he was stuck here with.

“I’m Sheldon Lemp, the CEO of Quantum Insurance. And if you have a claim, you’ll have to come back another time, though we won’t be able to help you then, either.”

“I just want to stay here for a little while, if that’s okay. It’s safer than being on the street right now.”

“You’re right about that,” Lemp dropped diskettes into the fire by the armful. “This building is made of solid steel with a spring-and-roller suspension system that allows it to ride out a quake. Most homes, by comparison, are made of wood and concrete which, no matter how much they are reinforced, will just crumble. Eighty percent of the properties we insure are homes.”

“I thought most insurance companies got out of offering earthquake coverage after Northridge.”

“They did, so people flocked to us, checkbooks wide open,” Lemp lifted an entire stack of files in his hands and dropped them into the fire. Sparks flew out, forcing him to step back.

“Hey, take it easy,” Marty said. “Those sparks could set the whole building on fire.”

“It’s okay, we’re insured.” Lemp laughed with delight bordering on hysteria. Marty watched him warily, trying to judge if the man was a danger to him.

When Lemp’s laughter finally ebbed, along with the flames, he dumped more files into the fire. “This quake wasn’t supposed to happen for another twenty or thirty years. That’s what all the experts said. Did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Since 1994, we’ve written 17,000 residential earthquake policies in Southern California with an average annual premium of $1400. That generated an enormous amount of cash, which I invested to capitalize our reserves and maximize profits. Since I’d been assured there wouldn’t be another quake for decades, I felt comfortable with a greater level of risk than our board of directors did, so I found inventive ways to circumvent their oversight.”

“I see,” Marty glanced again at the hundreds of files and disks that covered the long table. “You made some bad investments and now you don’t have the money to pay your claims.”

“There will be some legal issues to contend with,” Lemp flung disks into the fire one-by-one, like little Frisbees. “Thousands of civil suits, certainly, as well as criminal prosecution on state and federal charges.”

“So you’re destroying the evidence.”

Lemp laughed again, an anxious twitter. “Oh, there’s far too much of that. I can only hope to hide one, negligible aspect of my financial activities, some modest loans I granted myself as token compensation for the valuable, additional services I was rendering for the company.”

“Doesn’t telling me all about it kind of defeat the purpose of covering up the crime?”

“Not really,” Lemp smiled at Marty. “When I’m finished burning all this, I’m going to kill myself.”

Marty wondered how long you had to talk to someone before their death had any emotional impact on you or whether just seeing someone before they died was enough.

He checked his watch. His eyes were so tired, he had a hard time focusing on the dial underneath the cracked crystal. It was nearly 8 p.m.

“Look, Sheldon, I’m going to find a couch and lie down,” Marty said. “Could you do me a favor? Try not to set the place on fire before you off yourself.”

“Sweet dreams,” Lemp chucked a hard-drive into the fire and started whistling again.

Marty left the conference room and went back to the front lobby, which had three nice couches to chose from. Lemp may have squandered the company’s cash, but at least he bought some good, comfortable furniture before it was gone.

He stripped off his pack, letting his wet, crusty jacket slide off his shoulders with it, then kicked off his shoes. His socks were stuck to his feet like a second layer of skin. Marty sat on the edge of the couch and carefully peeled them off, placed them on the coffee table to dry, and then he lay back, letting his body sink into the soft cushions.

Marty was asleep before he even closed his eyes.