Slow Apocalypse (8 page)

Actually, he hoped Daddy could take care of any necessary ugly business before his little Addison had to shoot at all, but you could never be sure.

Dave stowed the hardware in a place he was sure even his nosy daughter didn’t know about. Then he went back to the main house and found Addison still hard at work on her computer.

“Mom called,” she said.

“Yeah? What did she have to say?”

“Just that she would be back tomorrow, but she had to take a later flight. I wrote down the flight number.” She handed him a Post-it, then smiled up at him with wide, innocent eyes. “I didn’t tell her about the guy in the black van you spent so much time with. Or about the things wrapped in blankets you brought into the house. I presume they were golf clubs?”

“Golf clubs are lethal weapons if you know how to handle them. Did anyone ever tell you it’s not polite to snoop?”

Her smile just got broader. “Politeness is highly overrated. And besides, I may snoop, but it’s not sneaky if I tell you I did it, is it?”

“I’ll have to think on that one. Addie, I’m going out for a while, there are a few things I need to do.”

“Can I borrow your credit card?”

“What for?”

“Don’t worry, I won’t gamble all your money away at a Honduran Web site or subscribe to a lot of porn sites. I found some books that we can get FedExed that I thought might come in handy.” She had printed out a list, and she handed it to him.

It all looked like useful stuff, from how-to books to survival manuals to something called
The Anarchist Cookbook
, which taught you how to make bombs from common household chemicals. As he looked over the list, he was struck by just how little most people know about so many basic things, things our pioneer forefathers probably did routinely. How do you dress out a rabbit, or a deer? Clean a fish? How do you make cloth, or soap? What wild mushrooms and berries are edible? Who knew if they would need any of this stuff, but he agreed it was best to have it on hand. At some point they might not be able to Google it up.

“Okay,” he said, “but anything you win in Honduras, I get half.”

On his way out, Dave stopped and studied his house in a way he had never done before. Every man’s home is his castle, they say. It had always been a figure of speech, but how did this house stack up, as a literal, defensible castle?

There was no moat or drawbridge, but other than that, it was a lot better than most American homes. The architect had never considered that anyone might have to defend himself inside but had taken something else into consideration: the penchant of Hollywood hill dwellers for privacy. Many houses were built on tiny lots that were the next thing to vertical. Most people built right up to the curb on the street side, with only a door and a driveway entrance.

On the street side of his house there were just two windows on the second floor, and they were narrow. What you saw from the street was that bit of second floor looking over an unbroken eight-foot wall of thick, stucco-covered brick, painted white, broken only by a solid metal electric gate. The street door was right next to the driveway gate and was just as sturdy. His wall joined his neighbors’ walls on both the east and the west. The east side of the house had no windows on the ground floor, and just two more on the second, which looked out over his neighbor’s sprawling ranch-style house, patio, and pool. The stucco wall continued on the west side of the property and down the hillside for about fifty feet, to the edge of the property on the next street down. The south side of his property was pretty much wide open, but if he were a Goth, Hun, or Vandal he’d think twice about storming the castle from that side. A six-foot retaining wall kept his patio and pool from sliding down the hillside, and at the bottom of the wall it was a slope of forty-five degrees, held in place by thickets of ice plant. There was no path to the bottom.

He wouldn’t want to approach the house from that direction if he were intent on doing the residents harm. The entire time they had lived there no one had ever ventured down except gardeners, and they didn’t go very often. At one time there had been more substantial plantings on that slope, shrubs and a few small trees, but he had had them all removed one summer when there was a big fire scare. Now there was nothing growing anywhere near the house, as the LAFD advised. The flat roof was concrete, with a small array of electricity-generating solar panels, and surrounded by a low parapet trimmed with red ceramic barrel tiles.

He decided that the east boundary was the most vulnerable side. The slope was not quite as steep, and the ground cover not as thick. But someone in one of those two upper windows with a shotgun could make it very uncomfortable for anyone coming up the street from that direction, and once an invader got to the top, he wouldn’t have achieved much. There was a narrow gap between the north wall of the house and the street wall, and Dave would be filling that in if things got nasty.

He couldn’t put his finger on it, but when he got down out of the hills things felt a little different. It was a hot day, so maybe that accounted for some of it, but it seemed to him that a lot of people were driving more aggressively, less politely, than usual. On the other hand, traffic was fairly light. He made his way across town easily, but he did notice that the parking lots of all the grocery stores were at capacity and beyond. There were lines of cars in the street, waiting to get inside.

The gun shop he visited was crowded, and some of the patrons were angry. A guy behind the glass counter was raising his voice.

“No guns today!” he shouted. “Everything you see has a red tag on it, which means it’s been sold, and the owner is waiting for the background check. I’m expecting a shipment in two days, handguns, rifles, and shotguns, but I’m not taking orders. Come back later and see what we have. Meantime, all I have is ammunition.”

There was some grumbling, but most of the people left, though others kept arriving to replace them. An assistant was writing a notice on a piece of cardboard to tape to the front door. Dave moved up to the counter and told the man what he needed. He started pulling boxes from the shelves behind him.

“Has long has it been like this?”

“About a week.” The man shrugged. “Same thing happened right after 9/11, though it wasn’t this bad. It was
real
bad after the Rodney King riots. Every now and then something happens, gets folks scared. Like a Democrat getting elected to the White House. That’s always good for business. If I could legally sell machine guns and bazookas, I’d make a fortune.”

He wouldn’t sell Dave as many 12-gauge shotgun shells as Dave asked for, but he felt lucky to get what he had. He bought several boxes of .357 cartridges after the guy told him they were the same caliber as regular .38 ammunition but packed a lot more punch. He paid for it all with a credit card.

He had to buy a canvas bag to put it all in. All that lead was amazingly heavy.

He went to the bank and withdrew his limit on all of his cards, and closed his account. He had a thick stack of twenties and hundreds when he was done. What would it buy in a week? A month? A year? Even if the worst fears didn’t come true, it seemed certain the country was headed for very bad economic times. Buy gold? Last time he checked it was very expensive, and going up as people grew more worried. He was no economist; he didn’t know which way to jump. Best to lay in real wealth in the form of food and fuel, and then see how things developed.

He stopped at the Home Depot on Sunset and Western and loaded up on the cheapest grade of quarter-inch plywood they had. It wouldn’t stop a bullet but it would slow down an intruder scaling his castle walls. While he was there he realized that many of his tools were electric. He bought an old-fashioned hand drill and an assortment of saws, then picked up a small gas chain saw and a wood splitter.

When he got home there was a big flatbed truck backed up in his driveway. He screeched to a halt and hurried to the open gate. When he got through he saw two large fellows unloading bales of hay.

“What the hell…?”

Addison was standing by the garage, looking nervous but determined.

“Addison, did you—”

“Yes, Dad, I did. I…” She stopped, and glanced at the workmen, then came to him and pulled him by the arm. She stopped at the edge of the retaining wall, well away from any listening ears. She spoke softly.

“If we’re not going to have any gas,” she said, “well, we’re not going to get over to Burbank every day to take care of Ranger. I’d worry about him. And besides, a horse is a good way to get around.”

“This is what the credit card was about.”

“Yes, plus the books and other stuff. I’m sorry, Dad, I know I shouldn’t have tricked you…but you can see we can do it. We have two spare stalls in the garage, and I’ll clean up after him, and the hay and grain is pretty cheap, really.”

He followed me home, Daddy. Can I keep him?

He sighed. “I guess we better move him today. Do you know if we can rent a trailer at the equestrian center?”

“We could, but I have a better idea.”

Addison had her arms wrapped around her father as he cautiously descended the hill to Sunset. It had been a while since he had driven a motorcycle, and the scooter was a lot smaller and less powerful. He didn’t entirely trust the brakes, so he kept it very slow.

Actually, he didn’t entirely trust their ability to get the horse from Burbank to the Hollywood Hills safely, but he figured they’d better start getting used to doing things in a different way. He made it to Sunset without incident, then east to Cahuenga and along the 101 freeway, past the Hollywood Bowl, and up and over Cahuenga Pass. Soon they were in Burbank and he swung the scooter through the entrance to the Equestrian Center and on to the building that housed Ranger’s stall. Addison hopped off and ran to her horse, who seemed glad to see her.

They filled a canvas bag and the small pannier on the scooter with what gear they could carry, tack and brushes and a pair of riding boots. Addison saddled the beast.

Ranger handled the traffic like a pro, as if he did this every day. There were a few people who honked their horns, even though horse and rider were not blocking anything on the wide streets, but most drivers seemed delighted at the sight of the girl on the horse. They got lots of smiles and thumbs-ups.