"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.