Page 91 of Heart of the Sun

“They might. But I think it’s safer leaving it here than attempting to drive it into the city.”

We took our backpacks from the trunk, stuffing them with the remaining provisions and then rounding the building. We looked out to the city beyond, or what we could see of it, anyway, from where we stood. Smoke rose from several spots, whether from fires that had broken out naturally for one reason or another, or from people who’d set them, I had no way to know.A set of pops met our ears and Emily looked at me in alarm. “Gunfire?”

Probably. “Let’s go this way,” I said, leading her in the opposite direction, away from the sounds. A distant human wail rose up, and then a few more.

Emily’s eyes met mine, and my guts cramped. I fucking hated walking her into what I knew very well would be a dangerous landscape, and yet, what choice was there? I couldn’t drive into a scorching wildfire burning out of control, one that, in the absence of water or planes to drop fire retardant, would burn indefinitely. I wouldn’t drive around randomly, either running out of fuel or encountering one roadblock after another until so many popped up that we were trapped.

My choices were to head out into the desert, driving as far as a car could go in terrain like that and scavenge for food and water, hopeful that we’d find enough not to starve. Or we could make our way to my uncle’s house, hopeful that we could stock up on provisions there and—with him—begin the journey on foot to Emily’s parents.

Decisions needed to be made quickly at this point because everything was devolving very rapidly now and what was already bad would only get worse from here.

We walked through an industrial area, many of the buildings burned out, any businesses that had once operated here looted of everything. We stuck our heads in a Dollar General, the shelves utterly barren, and what looked like blood smeared across the floors. Next door, a Department of Motor Vehicles sat vacant, chairs overturned, and counters toppled. I assumed there’d been computers and phones present, but they were gone now and why anyone would take the time to lug those things away considering the circumstances was beyond me. Perhaps, in some cases, it was just human nature totakeand that’s what had happened here.

We continued on. This area of town had been completely stripped.Even the cars sitting in the streets here had been emptied, doors, glove boxes, and trunks standing open, and even some of the engines missing. No wonder very few people wandered the streets and the ones that did, averted their gazes and turned quickly away. They knew at this point that information and help wasn’t coming and that other people only represented danger.

“There’s no smog,” Emily murmured as we came to the top of a hill with a better view of the city. I’d been so focused on looking down every block and skirting doorways, that I hadn’t noticed the sky. But I looked up briefly now and noticed she was right. Even despite the massive fire that burned miles away, the brown cloud that typically coated Los Angeles in a dirty haze was gone.

But before I could comment, a smell rose up and both Emily and I put our hands over our noses. Emily coughed, tilting her head toward me. “Dead bodies,” she said, both of us familiar with the putrid scent by now.

And when we turned the corner, we saw why. What had once been a tent city of homeless people was now a pile of rotting corpses. “Oh God,” Emily said, turning her face into my shoulder. I wrapped my arm around her and led her in the opposite direction.

A man stood on a street corner, one hand raised, the other clutching a Bible as a group of people stood before him. The people started swaying as the man’s voice boomed, “And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.”

His voice faded as we moved on, and the screams and wails we’d heard in the distance grew closer. The occasional noise of an engine revving could be heard,and dog howls rose into the crystal sky.

It appeared that lots of people had already left.

But many had also stayed.

I’d heard once—somewhere—that on any given day, New York City had less than a week’s worth of food for every man, woman, and child. If the same was true of other major metropolitan areas, Los Angeles had run dry a week and a half before. But even that was generous considering many would horde and leave none for others. In some places, people had gone hungry on day one and stores that sold groceries had been stripped bare within a couple days, if not hours.

As we walked, we discussed in low tones the best route to take to my uncle’s house in Lynwood. From where we were, it would take about three hours to walk, and though I wanted to attempt jogging to get there more quickly, I also knew caution was key.

“We could try to make it to my condo instead,” Emily said. “I have food there.”

“My uncle’s house is closer,” I said, glancing toward the west where Emily lived. It was also where the majority of the smoke was rising from, and where I could hear engines gunning. My best guess was that it’d been taken over. “Plus, you don’t have the keys to your condo, and we can’t scale the building.”

“It’s all electronic,” she murmured. “I don’t know if that means it’s wide-open, or inaccessible.”

“Either way, we’d be shit out of luck.”

We put our hands over our noses again as another block of bodies stretched before us. Goddammit, these poor people. They’d lived desperate lives on the streets, and then been the first ones left to die. Next to me, Emily swiped her eye and looked away. “What’d they die from?” she asked.

“Most lack of water, probably. Some needed medication. Violence. No way to tell.”

The farther we walked, the more people we saw, some rooting through overflowing trash cans of food that—if there was any there—would be long-rotted by now. Just like Hosea had said, disease was going to spread quickly in a landscape like this, if it wasn’t already. Awful scents of death and garbage and pungent, smoldering fires assaulted our noses and the sound of children and babies crying made us both wince.

“Tuck, look,” Emily said, grabbing my arm as she stopped and pointed to the end of a wide street. I stared, taking a moment to make sense of what I saw. It was a pile of wreckage sitting in the middle of the road, a crumpled helicopter with a news logo barely visible that had obviously crashed onto the tops of several cars.

“Jesus,” I muttered, wondering again how many aircraft had been in the sky when the solar flare hit and whether all of them had crash-landed like ours had. How many survivors were there and how many hadn’t had pilots as good as ours?

We walked through a neighborhood of small family homes, where there were red and blueX’s on many of the doors. I remembered back to news footage I’d seen of Hurricane Katrina and the houses with theX’s spray-painted on them indicating a dead body was inside and wondered if that was the case here too. But authorities had marked the houses then; there were no authorities anywhere in sight now.

A man walked by us with a dead seagull in his hands and when I turned toward him to ask about thex’s, he pulled out a knife as he whipped the dead bird behind him and screamed, “Get back!”

I raised one hand and grabbed Emily’s arm with the other. “We don’t want your bird,” I said. “I was just wondering why there arex’s on the doors.”

The man blew out a rattly breath and took another step back, still holding the seagull behind him, which I assumed he was planning on eating. “Gangs,” he said. “Turf wars. Downtown is the worst.They’ve already taken over hotels and restaurants. Those who fought back died. They control the streets and the food down there. Some of the smaller gangs are laying claim to residential areas. No homes are safe.” He looked up the street as though thinking of his own home and then mumbled, “I gotta go. Good luck.”

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