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They reached the opposite curb and stepped up simultaneously. As they split to go to their respective houses, he called back to her, “Does that make me a bad firefighter?”

  She smiled warmly. “It makes you human, Ritz.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Friday, October 17, 2025

  Santa Monica, California

  Danny held his phone up above his head and against the smoke-filled sky. He couldn’t get a signal. The phone was useless. That meant he wasn’t getting updates from his news apps. He was riding blind, or he would have been had Gilda’s truck moved more than a foot in the last twenty minutes. They were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic as bad as any he’d ever seen. He scooted forward in the truck bed and stood.

  He brushed soil from his pants and the backs of his arms and held up his phone again. Even the added height didn’t make a difference. He glanced around at the drivers and passengers in the other cars around them. Most of them were doing some variance of the same thing, checking their phones for a connection.

  The passenger-side door to Gilda’s truck opened, and Arthur hopped onto the pavement. He squeezed between the side of the truck and the Volvo station wagon in the next lane and leaned on the side of the bed, folding his arms on the liner and rapping it with his knuckles.

  “Not exactly a quick escape, is it?” he said.

  “Nope,” said Danny. He squatted down onto his heels in front of Arthur. “Not at all.”

  “I’m not sure how safe it is for us to be sitting here,” Arthur said. “You see what’s happening?”

  Danny followed Arthur’s eyes and spun around. His jaw dropped. “Whaa…?”

  He’d been so focused on searching for a cell signal, he hadn’t noticed the deteriorating conditions they’d left behind. The sky, much darker east of them, appeared post-apocalyptic.

  The underside of the black smoke throbbed red from the flames that occasionally reached above the manmade horizon. Helicopters moved swiftly, their noses tilted downward, racing in and out of the chaos. If he strained his ears and focused on the frequency, he swore he could hear a chorus of sirens.

  “It’s bad,” said Arthur. “It’s a good thing we left the diner when we did. We might be running for our lives if we didn’t.”

  “As opposed to being sitting ducks?” Danny asked absently, his focus on the burgeoning disaster behind them, farther from shore. It didn’t seem real.

  A sensation of familiarity washed over him. He’d seen this before, in a dream or in that not-quite-lucid moment between sleep and consciousness.

  He swallowed against a surprising knot in his throat, and a vision of water flashed in his mind’s eye. So much water. Rising faster than it could drain.

  Arthur was talking to Danny, suggesting alternative modes of transportation: bicycles, their feet. Danny was still lost in his thoughts and images that whirred through his mind like he was looking through an old red View-Master, pulling the orange plunger to spin the photographic disc from one three-dimensional image to the next. It was a vintage toy his mother had once purchased for him at a thrift shop. He’d loved the concept then. He didn’t love it now.

  The apocalypse in his mind shifted from water, back to fire, then to drifts of gray ash, and men in orange biohazard suits blocking his path. He saw a man shot at an ATM and people crowding his corpse to steal his withdrawal. There was blackness. A deep, unsettling darkness that consumed everything. He felt weightless, then nauseated, feverish, and cold. All of it happened within two blinks of his eyes, and then the images were gone.

  As soon as the slideshow had begun and his emotion had welled, they subsided. The helicopters spun in the distance, and the smoke bloomed higher into the afternoon sky. Flames poked through the thickest of the plumes.

  “Are you listening to me?” asked Arthur. “Danny? You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” he said. Then he shook his head. “No, I’m not fine. I mean, nothing’s wrong.”

  Arthur’s expression compressed with worry.

  “I don’t know what I mean,” Danny said. “And I don’t know where we should go.”

  He gestured at the traffic with a resigned look on his face. The passenger door opened again. Claudia came into view with the attitude of a woman stiffed of a tip. She slammed the heavy truck door shut with both hands.

  “You left me in there with Gilda the Good Witch?” she asked Arthur and slugged him in the shoulder.

  The big cook grabbed his arm and faked outrage. “Ouch. What was that for?”

  “I can only handle silence for so long,” she said. “I tried making conversation. She’s all business. Too serious. I don’t know about her.”

  “And you’re sure you’re not the problem?” asked Arthur. He recoiled as he said it, anticipating another punch.

  Claudia narrowed her eyes and mocked Arthur in a whiny voice. “You’re sure you’re not the problem?”

  “Mature,” said Arthur. “Very mature.”

  Danny sensed, not for the first time, a spark between Arthur and Claudia. There was always the hint of flirtation, but Danny chalked it up to their years they’d worked together in the diner. Both had been there a decade, Danny couldn’t remember exactly how long. Squatting in the back of the truck, so close to both while they bantered, he wondered if it was more than flirtation.

  Had Arthur come back to the diner because Claudia was there?

  It was inconsequential, really, compared to the grander scale of things facing them. But it was a momentary and welcome distraction from the challenges he was sure lay ahead and beyond the frozen river of traffic.

  The truck shuddered and went quiet. It lurched and stopped. Gilda’s door opened, and she stepped out onto the street. She walked along the side of the truck, putting Danny in the middle between her and his coworkers.

  “What’s the plan?” she asked.

  “No plan,” Danny said. “That’s the problem. We don’t know what to do or where we’d be heading if the traffic was moving.”

  Gilda sighed, her gaze dreamy. She pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. “I was heading toward the beach,” she said, her white blonde hair struggling to stay put in a sudden stiff breeze. “That’s going to take forever. I don’t want to be stuck in this if the fire keeps coming this way.”

  The smoke was pouring into the sky. It was obsidian. The fires were out of control.

  “We could leave the truck and start walking,” said Arthur. “We could easily put ten miles between us and this truck in a few hours. How far is your place?”

  “My place is in the opposite direction,” she said, motioning to the left with her head. “I was headed somewhere else, somewhere safer.”

  Claudia slapped her hand on the truck and pointed at Gilda. “I knew it,” she said, the thickness of her faint accent intensifying. “You’ve got something working. You’re not who you say you are.”

  Gilda rolled her eyes and grunted. She threw her hands up in the air and then set them on her narrow hips. “What are you talking about? What grand scheme am I working?”

  “You said before you were taking us to your house,” said Claudia, suspicion dripping from her sneer. “Now you take us in the opposite direction to some supposed ‘safe place’.” Claudia made air quotes with her hands.

  Danny cringed. His ex used air quotes.

  “Sheesh,” said Gilda. “Don’t go with me, then. Seriously. Leave. Be on your own.”

  Gilda waved her hands, shooing Claudia off into the traffic. She glanced at Arthur and then Danny. “Both of you can go too. I seriously was trying to be a good person. Clearly no good deed goes unpunished.”

  Danny shifted his weight and leaned toward Gilda. “I’m not leaving,” he said. “I don’t have anywhere to go. Might as well stick with you.”

  Three sets of eyes turned to Arthur. He took a step back, clearly uncomfortable being the center of attention. He shrugged and stammered unintelligibly. Danny watched Claudia watch Arthur. She was expectant, biting her lower lip. She searched him for an
answer.

  Admittedly not the best judge of women, Danny was now certain Claudia liked Arthur, loved him even. She wore the face of a jealous woman asking her man to choose. Her issue with Gilda had everything to do with Arthur and nothing to do with Gilda.

  “I’ll do whatever Claudia wants to do,” he said finally. As he spoke the words, he exhaled. Claudia exhaled too. She’d been holding her breath.

  “Well, Claudia,” said Gilda, “what’s your verdict? You in or you out? Either way I’m good with it. But if you stay, you gotta stop with the conspiracy crap. There is no conspiracy.”

  Claudia reached out and linked her arm with Arthur’s. She lifted her chin and cleared her throat. She blinked several times.

  “We’ll stay,” she said. “How far to this safe place?”

  Gilda didn’t answer at first.

  “How far?” Claudia repeated.

  Gilda smirked. “With traffic or without?”

  That was a dig. Danny bit the inside of his cheek to suppress his laughter. As much as he liked and respected Claudia, he thought she’d been unfair to Gilda. The woman hadn’t done anything other than help them. There was no sign of anything nefarious, yet Claudia had treated her as if she were taking them to slaughter.

  Danny knew, as did Arthur and Claudia or anyone who lived in Los Angeles for more than an audition or two, that the distance between two points was always measured by those two options: with traffic and without traffic. The latter was only useful between the hours of two and four in the morning. Other than that, the only reasonable way to measure how long it might take to get to a destination was with traffic.

  “With,” said Claudia flatly.

  “It’s a bit north on the PCH,” Gilda answered. “Right on the coast in Pacific Palisades.”

  The four of them exchanged glances, but none of them said anything. Danny eyed the logjam of cars, trucks, and SUVs ahead of them on the road. Both directions were stopped, and there was no sign, even in the distance, that anyone would be going anywhere for a while.

  “I say we walk,” Danny suggested.

  “What do we do with the truck?” asked Arthur. “She can’t leave it right here in the middle of the road.”

  Danny checked over his shoulder to one side and then the other. He pointed to a grassy spot between a traffic signal post and a utility box off the side of the road.

  “How about right there?” he said. “We’re out of the right-of-way. Nobody’s going to try to tow it, not until this is over. We could be back here by then.”

  Gilda scratched her temple and used both hands to tighten the knot of hair atop her head. She surveyed the snarled right-of-way in both directions. She sighed and slapped the sidewall of the truck bed, startling Danny.

  “Okay,” she said. “I like it.”

  She walked around the front of the truck to check how much room she had to maneuver; then she motioned for Danny to hop out of the truck, and asked him to help guide her.

  He hopped up onto the curb. Arthur and Claudia stepped around the back of the truck and joined him. Danny could feel the stares of other drivers as he shouted directions to Gilda. She had her window down, arm hanging out of the truck.

  It took several attempts, with absolutely no help from the drivers in the cars in front of and behind her, but she managed to hop the curb and park the truck between the two prescribed points. Danny moved over to the driver’s side in time to see Gilda grabbing something from the glove box.

  “Is that a gun?” he whispered.

  Gilda slapped the glove box shut and gripped the holstered handgun in her right palm. She locked the box with a key and motioned with her head for Danny to step back so she could roll up the window. She didn’t answer him until she’d stepped from the truck, locked it, and tucked the handgun in the small of her back underneath her shirt, which she bloused at the waist.

  “Yeah,” she said. “It’s a gun.”

  Danny didn’t know if Arthur and Claudia, who’d been engaged with each other, had noticed the weapon.

  “Is that legal?” he asked quietly.

  Gilda shoved her keys into her pocket. “Yes, it’s my gun, and I have a CCW.”

  Danny’s brow furrowed with confusion.

  “Concealed carry permit,” she said. “I have a permit that lets me have the weapon with me in public. I’m not breaking any laws.”

  “Why do you have a gun?” he asked. “I thought guns were for…”

  “For what?” Gilda said sharply.

  Danny shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “I’ve never known anyone who owns one.”

  Gilda eyed him up and down. “Figures.”

  That put Danny on the defensive. “Figures how?”

  “Nothing,” she said with a now familiar smirk. “Forget about it. Let’s go.”

  She walked ahead, forging her way past him and his coworkers. Danny could make out the vague shape of the holstered gun against her shirt fabric.

  Gilda walked quickly, marching to a beat that wasn’t easy to match. Arthur was particularly heavy-footed and breathing heavily as they wove their way past people and vehicles.

  Danny tried to match his own breathing to the rhythm of his cadence: inhale, step, step, step, exhale, step, step, step, inhale. Each breath brought with it the scent of acrid smoke. He tried to think of words other than acrid or stinging or foul to describe what he smelled.

  Pungent, he thought.

  That was the best he could do. Despite his intelligence, he’d never been a wordsmith. His ex, who’d been a copywriter for a small advertising firm, had always corrected his grammar or his speech. She’d even send him text replies with the corrected versions of words he’d misspelled. She’d highlight them with asterisks.

  Inhale, step, step, step, exhale, step, step, step, inhale.

  Bitter, he considered.

  Danny was more of a math and science guy. He’d never been a great communicator, which was one of the many problems with his marriage. He’d never enjoyed reading or writing, with the exception of comic books or graphic novels, and most of them had some science-fiction element that intrigued him.

  He especially enjoyed comics about mutants or zombies. The more obscure the story, the better. He’d collected all the issues of a series called The Deadwardians and another called The Revival. He had been forced to sell them to pay off some of the debt he and his ex had accrued. It had killed him, so to speak, to part with them, but he’d had no choice.

  Inhale, step, step, step, exhale, step, step, step, inhale.

  Sharp. That was another good one.

  His ex considered his love of comics, and sci-fi in general, to be immature. She’d never understood it, he later learned. It was funny, in a sad way, that she’d left him for a guy who employed the tools of sci-fi to create new, innovative, real technology.

  He’d wondered if the irony was lost on her. Then he’d wondered if he truly understood the use of the word irony.

  Gilda was moving adeptly through the obstacles ahead of them, apparently unconcerned as to whether or not Danny and his coworkers were keeping pace. Clearly, it was up to them if they wanted to follow her there.

  Danny swallowed hard against a deep breath and then puffed his cheeks to exhale. He’d unconsciously slowed a bit, drifting behind the others, when he heard a radio through the open window of a late model sedan. The driver had his eyes closed and had his seat back at a forty-five-degree angle. His mouth was open, and Danny was pretty sure the guy was asleep.

  He stopped at the open window and listened to what was clearly a news report, with live information about the litany of fires that were still devouring southern California. The driver didn’t seem to notice or care.

  The reporter was a man whose voice was vaguely familiar. It was deep and carried with it an air of importance. He spoke as one who knew everything about everything.

  “…told that resources are stretched thin across the Southland,” the man said, his voice booming through sparks of static in
the transmission. “Not only are the wildfires spreading and converging to make fighting them incredibly difficult and dangerous, but the west LA fires are out of control as well.”

  The driver shifted in his seat, and Danny backed away for a second.

  “We know it started at a nail salon,” said the news reporter. “It quickly spread. There were electrical surges that caused issues at power substations. Failsafe systems failed at two of the substations, sparking ancillary fires. That has crippled the power grid through much of west Los Angeles. Cellular signals are sporadic, and traffic is snarled.”

  In the background of the transmission, Danny could hear sirens and people yelling. The reporter paused and cleared his throat.

  “The lack of easy communication and the impassability of major thoroughfares has made it incredibly challenging for first responders to get to the scenes of these newer fires. Command tells me they cannot get their crews to where they need to be.”

  A woman’s voice cut in during the reporter’s pause. She spoke clearly and slowly, but Danny heard the alarm in her voice.

  “And, Bob,” she said, “we understand the primary communication tower for both LA Fire and Police was caught in the middle of the flames. The Mount Chapel Fire compromised that critical facility.”

  The ambient noise of sirens accompanied the reporter’s response. He cleared his throat again and coughed.

  “Yes, that’s correct, Donna. We know that the City of Los Angeles Central Communications Facility is down, and there’s no fixing it. That’s a major blow to the emergency response. It looks like, as one veteran firefighter told me, this is going to get worse before it gets better.”

  Danny stepped back from the car. He’d heard enough, and he was falling far behind his traveling partners. He could barely see their heads bobbing up and down as they maneuvered through the cars up ahead. He sucked in a deep breath and leaned into a jog. He needed to catch up before he lost sight of them.

  Acidic, he thought. Acidic is a good word.

  ***

  Danny pulled even with Gilda by the time they hit the Pacific Coast Highway. She was on the sidewalk now, heading toward Topanga State Park and, beyond that, Malibu. He was sweating and thirsty. His mouth was dry, and there was a sting of thick pain with every thump of his pulse at his temples.