The Walk

CHAPTER NINE

T he building was ablaze and they were trapped on the top floor, cornered by the flames below.

“What are we going to do?” Fred Astaire asked him.

Marty handed him a rope. “Tie yourself to the pillar, we’re going to blow the water tanks on the roof.”

“We could all drown.”

“You ever heard of anybody drowning in an office building?” Marty gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “Trust me. I’ll get us out of this.”

Marty did a quick pass through the room, checking on everybody, making sure they were securely tied in place. Once he was certain everyone was ready, he strapped himself to a pillar alongside Paul Newman.

“You’re the bravest sonofabitch I’ve ever met,” Paul said.

“I’m just an ordinary man in an extraordinary situation.”

“We got a word for that,” Paul looked him right in the eye and morphed into Buck. “We call ’em heroes.”

“As soon as this is over, I want to see that napkin collection.” Marty took out the remote control and pressed the switch, igniting the explosives.

The entire building shook and the roof caved in, spilling 50,000 gallons of water into the room, the torrent sweeping tables and chairs and people right out the windows. He held on tight, the current raging against him. Suddenly, Marty’s rope slipped free of the pillar and he felt himself tumbling across the floor towards the San Francisco skyline and a 90-story drop.

“No!” he screamed, the water carrying him out into the night sky, sending him plummeting in cartwheels to the ground.

Suddenly the piss blankets around him pulled taut, and he was dangling in daylight just a few feet over the doomed 747, stewardess Karen Black staring up at him through the gaping, ragged gash in the cockpit. Her eyes told Marty everything, told him of her desperation, her fear, her need for him. Without him, they had no hope.

Marty looked up, following the string of piss-blankets back to the Army helicopter that was maneuvering him towards the pilotless airliner. He motioned to them to bring him down even closer, until Karen was able to grab him by his belt and guide him inside the plane.

As soon as his feet touched the cockpit floor, he grabbed hold of the pilot’s seat to steady himself and released his urine-soaked lifeline. The helicopter immediately veered off to watch the drama unfold from a safe distance.

“Thank God you’re here,” Karen clutched him like a long-lost lover which, he realized, he probably was. “There’s nobody flying the plane.”

“There is now,” Marty gently pulled himself away from her as her uniform transformed into a one-piece bathing suit. The old lady smelled of coconut oil and held a roll of toilet paper out to him.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll bring this baby down safely.”

Marty settled into the pilot’s seat, only now it had become the driver’s seat of a pick-up truck. He confidently took the steering wheel in his hands, wrenching it hard to the left, barely missing the fireball that shot out of the La Brea tar pit.

The pick-up truck skidded across Wilshire Boulevard, another fireball blasting the asphalt away in front of him. He wrenched the wheel again, the truck nearly rolling over as he skillfully avoided a streaking ball of molten death.

“Hold on,” Marty yelled to Anne Heche, the beautiful, headstrong, presently heterosexual geologist beside him. He brought the car to a skidding stop. “Get out!”

They dived out of the truck just as a fireball slammed into it, blasting it to bits.

“Run!” Marty took Anne’s hand and together they ran through the rain of fire spilling from the geyser of lava that towered over the LA County Museum.

At last, they were outside the reach of the molten spray, safely shielded by a tall building. He squeezed her hand and turned to her. “We made it.”

Only Anne was gone. He was holding her dismembered arm.

Marty dropped it, screaming, and looked back the way he came. And then he saw Molly, trapped in her Volvo, slowly being consumed by the hellfire, her eyes pleading with him…

The sound of the gunshot shattered the image like glass and Marty bolted upright on the couch, eyes wide open, disoriented, frightened, his heart pounding.

Marty was in the lobby of an office. A breeze, and shafts of sunlight, came in through the blown out windows on the eastern side of the floor.

Then it all came back to him.

Where he was. What had happened.

Scattered memories of the nightmare, both the real one of the day before and the imagined one of his slumber, drifted across his mind.

Marty looked at his watch. It was 6:50 Wednesday morning. His mouth was dry, his lips chapped. His skin itched under clothes as stiff as cardboard. His ankle throbbed in the same spot where it fractured in the second grade. Even so, Marty felt a lot better than he did last night.

He reached down to unzip his pack and winced in pain. It felt like he was snapping muscles instead of stretching them, as if he was waking from the dead and discovering his body frozen by rigor mortis. He found a bottle of Evian, cracked it open, and drank it hungrily, letting the extra water spill over his lips and down his cheeks. He was tipping his head back for that last, glorious drop of water when his gaze fell on the chair across from him.

Marty gasped, choking on the water, coughing and gagging as he stared in horrified disbelief at what was sitting there.

Buck was slumped in the chair, his stiff body completely caked in dried mud and flecks of broken glass. The bounty hunter had clawed his way out of the grave to haunt him.

This wasn’t possible. It had to be a mirage.

Marty picked up the empty Evian bottle and threw it at Buck. The bottle bounced off Buck’s forehead and rolled across the floor.

Buck’s eyes flashed open and Marty yelped again, startled.

“What the fuck’s the matter with you?” Buck rasped, straightening up in the chair.

Marty stared at him. “Are you for real?”

“Did you just throw a fucking bottle at me”

“It was empty,” Marty stammered.

“Is that how you usually wake somebody up You could show a little fucking consideration, especially after what I’ve been through.”

Marty examined Buck closely. It was unbelievable. Impossible. Nobody could have survived that flood and found him.

“You’re actually here, alive.” Marty said, more as a question than a statement.

“You got a problem with that, Marv?”

“It’s Marty. How many times do I have to tell you?”

“Whatever. Give me one of those frog waters. It feels like someone took a shit in my mouth.”

Marty tossed him a water.

Buck caught it, twisted off the cap, and took a big swallow, gargling the water and spitting it out on the floor. He spit a few more times, then drank the rest of the bottle.

Buck stiffened, his eyes widening. “Oh, shit.”

He abruptly leaned over and heaved a stream of vomit that would make Linda Blair proud. Marty scrambled out of the way, taking his pack with him. Buck kept heaving, his whole body spasming with each violent discharge.

When it finally stopped, Buck hunched over, exhausted, resting his elbows on his knees and letting his head sag down between his legs.

“Jesus,” Buck muttered. “I must have swallowed the entire fucking stairwell.”

“You were in the stairwell?” Marty asked.

“How the hell do you think I got in here?”

“I have no idea,” Marty sat on the arm of the couch, looking at him. “It makes no sense to me. I saw you walk away. You weren’t anywhere near me or this building.”

“I doubled back and followed you.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re so goddamn helpless. I wanted to make sure you at least got to Cahuenga alive,” Buck lifted his head. “I never thought you’d end up saving my ass.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Marty said. “I didn’t even see you.”

“I was just standing there, staring at that fucking wave, when you bolted right past me. Snapped me out of a fucking trance. I ran after you into the building, but the water caught me just as I got to the stairwell. I couldn’t see a fucking thing, I could barely move. It was like swimming through wet cement. Just when I thought I was gonna drown, I hit a railing, grabbed it, and started pulling myself through the shit, and I mean shit. I got out, crawled up a few steps, and fainted like a fairy. Woke up two hours later beside the fucking woman from Jaws.”

Marty didn’t want to think about the woman in the stairwell again. “Sounds to me like you saved yourself.”

“I followed you,” Buck said. “You led me into the stairwell, therefore you saved my life. Almost makes me sorry I shot you.”

“You’re forgiven.”

“Fuck you. I said almost, asshole. You’re lucky I don’t have my gun or I’d be tempted to shoot you again.”

“You lost it in the water?”

Buck jerked his head toward the hall. “I loaned it to dickhead.”

Marty suddenly remembered the gunshot that woke him up and it all came together. “Jesus Christ, Buck! The guy was suicidal.”

“I know.”

“You knew?”

“Why the fuck do you think I loaned him the gun?”

Marty dropped his pack on the couch, slipped his bare feet into his crusty tennis shoes, and without bothering to tie them, headed down the corridor towards the conference room.

Buck groaned, got up, and lumbered slowly after him.

The conference room was empty. All that was left was a clean table and garbage can, its rim scorched, smoke still pouring from inside it.

Marty came out of the conference room, nearly colliding with Buck, and started moving through the hall, peering into every office.

“How could you give him your gun?” Marty asked.

“He was standing in front of a window but didn’t have the guts to jump. The loser asked me to push him. There was no fucking way I was gonna do that, so I gave him my gun.”

“Which office?”

“The big one in the corner.”

Marty rushed down the hall. Buck trundled after him.

They found Sheldon Lemp sitting in the big, executive chair with the lousy lumbar support, the back of his head blown off. The mud-encrusted gun was still in his hand, his arm loosely hanging off the upholstered arm-rest.

“You could have just walked away, Buck,” Marty said. “He might still be standing at that window if you had.”

“Or not.” Buck walked over to Lemp and examined the back of the chair. “Want to hear something funny Guess what company insured my apartment?”

All the ugly ramifications hit Marty at once. This was getting worse with each second. “You’re telling me you essentially murdered the man.”

“No, I’m telling you why I essentially don’t give a shit that he’s essentially dead.” Buck pried his gun out Lemp’s hand.

“The police might have a different interpretation.”

“You gonna tell them?”

Marty looked Buck in the eye. They both knew Marty wouldn’t.

“This company insured your apartment. This guy squandered all their money. And he was shot with your gun,” Marty said emphatically. “I think they can come up with a pretty convincing motive for murder all by themselves.”

“Not without the gun, Columbo,” Buck jammed it into his holster, “and not without the bullet, which went out the fucking window with most of his brain.”

“What about physical evidence A hair, a fiber, a fingerprint?”

“Oh yeah, right. Have you seen this fucking place?” Buck snorted, walking past him into the corridor. “Is there a kitchen around here?”

Marty took another look at Lemp. Buck was right, no one would care, not after the thousands who’d died in the quake and certainly not after they found out what Lemp had done.

And the truth was, Marty really didn’t care either. He just wasn’t used to people dying. But that was changing.

T hey gorged themselves on a breakfast of potato chips, granola bars, Oreo cookies, Pop Tarts, and five different flavors of warm Snapple.

It was the best meal Marty ever had.

Afterwards, Marty gathered up a bunch of bottled water, some more granola bars, and shoved them into his gym bag, then went looking for skin cream for his sunburned face and neck. He went through the secretaries’ desks and discarded purses. Women always carried skin cream. His faith in female human nature was rewarded. He found some Neutrogena and took it with him to the bathroom.

It looked like someone had shot the place up with an Uzi. The floor was covered with shards of glass and tile which crunched under his feet. He stepped carefully, remembering that scene from Die Hard when Bruce Willis had to pull the broken glass from his bloody, bare feet. Marty was wearing tennis shoes, but he still wasn’t taking any chances.

Marty glanced at the toilet stalls and wished he had the urge to crap. He didn’t know when he’d come across a toilet and a latched door again. Even though there was no running water, Marty pissed in the urinal because that’s what you’re supposed to do, even if it wasn’t working.

Buck felt no such obligation. Right after breakfast he pissed out the window and told Marty how wonderful it felt.

Marty zipped up his fly and went to the sink to apply his skin cream. When he looked at himself in the cracked mirror, he was startled by the face that stared back at him. The boyishness that had always characterized his face, that he had used to his advantage for so long, was completely gone. It wasn’t the gash on his forehead, the dried blood and dirt in his hair, the sunburn, or the stubble that was responsible.

His blue eyes always had a sparkle, even when he was angry, and his face had a relaxed, easy charm that appeared to veil an incipient grin. But now his blue eyes were dulled, as if they’d darkened a shade, and there was a strange tautness to his skin, like setting clay. It scared him.

He didn’t look like a network executive or a writer any more, that softness and sterility that comes from being kept fresh in cool, recirculated air under artificial light was gone. He was unkempt, and dirty, and a bit desperate, like a homeless person, but without the necessary aura of defeat and aimlessness. There was something else, something new and yet familiar.

Marty studied himself closer, his face not quite fitting together, cut into puzzle pieces by the cracked mirror. He recognized it now: it was the face of one of those perspiring submarine sailors in a war movie, waiting for the next depth charge to blow. The sailor feeling so many things all at once: Claustrophobia. Resignation. Fear. Bravery. Uncertainty.

Or was it something else What was that expression That look in the eye Who was he now

Oh, stop it! Your face is fine, he scolded himself. How can you judge yourself in a broken mirror Anybody’s reflection would look strange in dim light and broken glass. It’s just fatigue and sunburn, nothing a little sleep and some cream won’t cure. Don’t worry about it. You’re the same man you always were.

But as Marty rubbed the lotion into his face, he knew that wasn’t true. Something was different.

Marty and Buck met in the lobby a few minutes later as Marty was pulling on his rigid socks.

“Good news,” Buck said. “There’s a fire hose on the floor. I bet every floor has one.”

“So”

“We’re going to need it to get out of here.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Because you aren’t half as smart as I am. Ask yourself how we’re gonna get out of here.”

“The same way we came in,” replied Marty, though he dreaded the prospect.

“The stairwell and lobby are gonna be stuffed with cars, trees, houses, who knows what-the-fuck else. Even if we could climb through it, all that shit has got to be unstable. So we’re gonna go down to the first floor, tie a fire hose off to something solid, and lower ourselves out. Comprendo?”

Marty nodded, tying his shoes. “ Comprendo.”

“So where we going after that?”

“We”

“Are you fucking brain dead or just an asshole?” Buck let his eyes bore into him.

Obviously, Buck had no place to go to, and no one waiting for him, and was too proud a man to admit he was lonely or afraid. Marty knew that, but his compassion couldn’t seem to get past his innate dislike of the man. Why couldn’t Marty admit to himself that he was overjoyed that Buck was alive That he was thankful he wouldn’t have to make the journey alone

“An asshole,” Marty conceded.

Buck just grunted, not the least bit mollified by Marty’s admission.

“Here’s my plan,” Marty said. “We’ll head south until we’re away from the worst of the flood damage, then work our way back northwest and take the Sepulveda Pass into the valley.”

Buck was still glaring at him. “What if you need some help lifting your house off your wife, did you think of that?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Which means you’re brain dead and an asshole.” Buck walked off towards the stairwell.

Marty figured he deserved that. He put on the leather work gloves he stole from the grip truck, adjusted a dust mask over his nose and mouth, slipped his bulging gym bag on his back, and followed Buck into the stairwell.

8:04 a.m. Wednesday

The repulsive stench of decay in the stairwell was unbearable, but it was a rose garden compared to the street, which they could smell even as they wriggled down the fire hose from the first floor.

Bodies, and pieces of bodies, were strewn everywhere. Not just men, women and children either, but dogs, cats, horses, even birds. The corpses were all enmeshed in mountainous, decomposing tangles of rotting food, electric wires, slabs of concrete, clothing, motorcycles, and bus benches, among all the other things, large and small, that make up a city.

Marty and Buck had to wade, and climb, and crawl over it all, while trying not to see, breathe, or touch any of it out of the natural fear that death was contagious.

The two men weren’t alone on the streets. There were survivors rooting through the wreckage, desperately searching for lost loved ones, and the rescue workers helping them pick through the rubble, sharing their senseless hope for a miracle.

But Marty didn’t look at those people. He concentrated on just moving forward, distracting himself from the overpowering smell and the grotesque mosaic of violent death by thinking of Beth, of the life he was returning to, the life they had before their world changed.

I know it doesn’t make any sense. We’re both married, and we both love our spouses. But you can’t deny there’s something powerful between us.” Beth stood in front of him and took a step closer, moving into those few inches of space between two people reserved for lovers.

“I can,” Marty read the words in the script, he didn’t try acting them. He didn’t know how. It was one of the many reasons he felt awkward helping Beth rehearse.

“Bullshit,” Beth said. “Look into my eyes and tell me you don’t want to kiss me.”

“I don’t want to kiss you.”

She took another step closer. “Tell me you don’t want to hold me.”

“I don’t want to hold you.”

She came even closer, their bodies nearly touching. “Then what do you want?”

Marty looked down at the pages in his hand, embarrassed that it was shaking, and read aloud: “Logan suddenly grabs her shirt and rips it open, buttons flying, and buries his face hungrily between her breasts in a lust-driven frenzy.”

“Do it,” she said huskily, staying in character.

“What?”

“Do it.”

He dropped the script on the floor, grabbed the front of her shirt, and tried to rip it open, but the damn buttons wouldn’t tear off. He yanked again. And again. Beth began to laugh, and so did Marty.

“What did you do,” Marty asked, grinning, “weld these buttons on”

“Weakling,” she teased.

“Okay, Wonder Woman, you try it.”

Beth pushed his hands away and tried to rip open her shirt herself. The buttons wouldn’t tear for her either, which only made it funnier. Neither one of them could stop laughing.

“Maybe if I undid a couple buttons,” she untucked her blouse and opened a few buttons at the top, revealing a hint of cleavage. “Try again.”

Marty slipped his fingers between the buttons, made sure he was holding tight, and pulled as hard as he could. One, lousy button came off, the others held fast. The two of them erupted into laughter again, leaning against one another in a clumsy embrace.

“I bet Lorenzo Lamas isn’t going to have a problem doing it,” she said.

“Fuck him.” Marty replied.

“I will,” Beth smiled mischievously.

“Oh yeah?” Marty grabbed her by the front of her blouse and yanked, ripping it wide open. She drew his face to her breasts and kissed the top of his head, running her fingers through his hair.

“You’re just like an actor, Marty. All you need is the right motivation.”