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And then he remembered. He squeezed his arms around his aching middle and looked around. The candles had burned down, and the only light was that of the kerosene lamp. He took a deep breath, trying to quell the fear that threatened to overwhelm him. He saw the 3 mattresses on which lay his brother, Stacey, and Mrs. Del Carlo. The situation was easy to assess: the 3 of them were alone in the darkness and only he, Richard Billie, was their only protection. Mr. Del Carlo sat curled in a ball on the old stuffed chair. He gritted his teeth and determined he would not allow any harm to come to his family - no matter the cost. When he raised the lamp to look down on his mother, he saw her eyes following him. ."Water..." she murmured. She swallowed with difficulty.
He hurried to the table and poured a glass of now tepid water, then gently raised her head and helped her drink, slowly feeding her the water, drop by drop, until the glass was empty. Until that moment he hadn't realized how much hair she had lost until he saw her bald patches as he raised her head. He then placed her head back on the pillow and rubbed her forehead in a circular motion, hoping it would bring her some comfort and relief, trying to soothe her. He noticed that the bangs of her hair had been burned to a singe, and he began to cry, having never seen anything so heartbreaking before. To make matters worse, he saw oozing burns on her arms and legs. He was overwhelmed even more by the sight of those injuries and the thought of what she must have gone through. He felt a deep sense of sorrow and anguish, and his stomach churned as he tried to comprehend the horror of the situation. He must find a way to get help for her now, no matter what it was like outside!
He moved to Washington's side, crouched down, and touched his forehead. Hot, terribly hot. When Richard wet a cloth and held it to his brother's face, Washington stirred, opened his eyes, and moaned. "Sorry, Richard, I'm truly sorry. Just can't....can't....."
"All right, Washington, all right. Just rest. I'll be back in an hour with the paramedics."
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As they walked to the road, Richard couldn't resist glancing above to where his home should be, but in the smoky air anything more than 10 feet away was lost. "Wait here, Stacey. I want to see if the house...."
"Where you go, I go." She took his hand. Cautiously they moved up the street, past the fallen tree, a smoldering skeleton now, to the home his mom and dad had bought after years of looking, the hoe they had put most of their savings into.
Stacey gasped. "Oh, Richard...."
Richard swallowed the hard lump in his throat. Hardly anything remained, except part of the outer walls. All his records and baseball cards, all of Washington's books, the piano....gone!
"C'mon," he said abruptly. "They're just things." As they moved on down the street a dozen other losses flooded his mind---their clothes, all that made his life comfortable, all the family photos.... He wiped the back of his hand across his eyes, gripped Stacey's hand harder, and turned away.
In the gray gloom, which smelled so strongly of smoke, he glimpsed power poles leaning away from the blast, their wires sagging. The beautiful old trees that had made their street so special, stood bare, skeletons. Across the street the fire hydrant, broken at its base, spouted water. The home downhill from the Del Carlo's had burned, and the one beyond that, too. Should they stop and search for survivors, or would their owners have risked fallout and scurried, like rats, to the next home and the next? Where had the fire stopped? Had the whole of La Canada gone up in flames, except for those rare houses made of brick, roofed with tile, like the Del Carlos'?
The road lay thick with cinders and debris, and for a moment Richard worried about radioactivity. But then he had a reassuring thought. When the bomb exploded, the Santa Anas had been blowing, pushing desert air towards the Pacific Ocean. though the fire at home was due to a gas line bursting, it had been caused by the blast, rather than the direct heat of the explosion. Maybe, then, all these ashes might be "clean."
"Oh, my God...." Stacey cried at each new horror. "Mom! Bridget! What could have happened to them? Hurry!"
After they had walked a block, Stacey's hand tightened suddenly in his, then she pointed and shrieked. Before he could stop her, she broke into a run. "Jarrod! Jarrod!" she cried, falling to her knees before a hill of burned leaves and tree branches, under which he glimpsed a dog's head. "Oh, Jarrod...."
Stacey's dog had often jumped the 6-foot backyard fence and come up to their house in search of her. Richard put a hand to his mouth and stifled an urge to puke. Jarrod's eye sockets were empty, his fur singed.
"Stacey, get up!" he cried roughly. He yanked her to her feet, frightened by the wide-eyed horror in her eyes and her awful, endless screaming. She tried to pull out of his grasp, but he held her firm, hugging her tight until the screams subsided into sobs.
"Now listen," he said. "I told Mr. Del Carlo you were a tough cookie, so don't go making a liar out of me." Tears burned his throat.
She continued sobbing, her face in his shoulder, as if she hadn't heard. "Jarrod's dead," he went on, "but you're alive, and so am I and Washington and the Del Carlos. Now quit crying and help me find your family."
The assurance in his tone, an assurance he didn't feel himself, considering what they'd seen so far, seemed to impress Stacey. She pulled herself together at last, took one final look at Jarrod, then took his hand again. They started off at a quick pace.
Richard urged her along, wondering with each step if they'd find anyone, anything else alive. It was so eerily silent for this time of morning. No dogs barking or cars swishing by on the highway. No birds singing on the power lines. He'd seen no one and had been unwilling to investigate an overturned Camaro, thrown up on a blackened lawn.
On Vista del Valle his heart pounded as he heard the first normal sound---a car engine firing up! Stacey cried out joyfully and together they ran towards it. Richard recognized the woman at the wheel of the brown Accord as a young mother who often waved to him when he was out running. He ran along beside the car while it rolled backwards, pounding on the window. It seemed as if the woman didn't want to see or hear him.
"We need help!" he yelled desperately.
At last, she stopped and rolled down the window a crack. "What do you want?" She looked years older than he remembered. Her face was filthy with soot, her eyes sunken and dark. She looked like she hadn't slept in days. "Go away! Hear? Get the hell away from me, or I'll kill you! See, I've got a house full of strangers, burned, bleeding, sick people. We have no water, no drugs---I've got my own to worry about! I can't help you!"
It was then he noticed the small child slumped in the seat beside the woman. The small child was wearing a dirty t-shirt with food stains, and their eyes were glazed over from exhaustion. The child's body seemed limp from lack of energy.
"Yes, you can!" he cried. "I'm going to the hospital, too! And Stacey needs to get home. It's right on the way...."
The woman considered for only an instant, then rolled up the window and backed away on the double, mumbling something he couldn't hear.
"We'll find someone else," Richard said. "If she's alive, if her car works, there'll be others. Let's go." He took Stacey's arm and they returned to the road.
Not all the homes along the way had burned down. Some had stood up well, with only broken windows and fallen trees. He guessed the streets were empty due to the radio warnings. The few people he saw carried others or hurried from house to house. At the man road they came upon a tangle of buses, cars and trucks turned every which way, some still smoldering. The road would be impassable for days. If it was this way here, it must be just as bad everywhere. It would take an army of tow trucks to clear the roads so firemen and paramedics could get through. The brown Accord had been abandoned, and the young lady they had last spoken to was running downhill, the child in her arms.
He looked up as he heard the sudden flutter of helicopter blades off in the distance. The powerful, wonderful sound came closer. He scanned the smoke-filled sky but couldn't see anything. Still, the sound got his hopes up. Once he got to the hospital and told them the situation, they'd surely send a chopper to pick up Mom and Washington.
But Stacey chided him when he voiced his hopes. "If you can't see them, what do you think they can see? They can't land where they can't see!"
"Hadn't thought of that," he answered lamely. She'd used that same tone Washington so often used when Richard had offered some half-baked thought.
"Besides," she added, picking her way over broken glass and roof shingles, "with so many people hurt, it could be days before they'd get to them."
He stopped short. "Then what am I doing going to the hospital? I've got to get back there and find something----I don't know---a sled, a wheelbarrow---something to move them in!" His voice broke. "I can't leave my mom like that. She'll die!" He turned and started to run back in the direction they had come.
"Richard, wait! WAIT!" Stacey came after him. She grabbed his arm, but he moved on, dragging her. "Please come with me. My mom might be buried under the house. She could be burned just like your mom. Please! I helped you. Help me!"
"I can't, Stacey. I want to, but I can't," he said, still moving.
"It's just another block! Please!" She began to cry. "If you come with me now, I'll go back with you....if my mom and Stacey are okay...." She began hitting him. "Stop! I can't stand it! Don't you realize? My Dad works downtown! All I've got is Mom and Bridget!"
He paused, torn between her fears and his own family's needs. They were wasting so much time! How much longer could his mother go without medical help? And Washington. And what about his father? He thought about the young mother they'd met. She'd known her priorities. When the world was coming to an end, you didn't waste time on others. It was me first. Mine first!
"Damn!" he said, turning back. "All right! Come on!" He began leaping over the obstacle course of debris with Stacey following. He supposed he was making a dumb decision again, that Washington wouldn't go off on a tangent like this in the same situation.....Angry with himself, he yelled back at Stacey. "Dammit1 C'mon!"
In a few minutes they managed to reach the back of Stacey's home by detouring around down trees, a power line that was sparking, and the ever-present soot and debris and burning embers. But her house was standing.
Stacey came up behind him, panting. She pounded on the door, screaming, "Mama! Mama! Open up!"
There was no answer. Richard moved around the house until he found a low window, its glass broken, through which they could enter. It was the dining room. The crystal chandelier lay in shards all around the room, and the china closet's contents littered the dining table and floor. Stacey cried out, then hurried on to the kichen, calling.
The kitchen, too, was a shambles, with most of the dishes and cans from cabinets strewn all over the floor. "Oh!" Stacey cried. "Where are they?" But a tour of all the rooms turned up nobody.
"Would she have gone somewhere? Left a note?" Richard asked.
"Yes, maybe. But where?" They searched in the kitchen rubble, kicking at the layers of mess until Richard found a sheet of paper half-buried. He picked it up and handed it to Stacey.
"They're in Burbank!" she exclaimed, laying and crying at the same time. "With my grandmother! Look! Mom says to warm up the cheese enchiladas in the fridge for supper. She'll be back about eight!" Biting her lip anxiously, she looked at Richard. "Is Burbank....how far is it from downtown?"
"Pretty far," Richard said, though he didn't truly know. "Farther than we were from ground zero."
"Oh! Thank God!" Stacey's face broke into a brilliant smile. "Now I feel better. Let's go! Now I can stay with you and Washington and help your mom."
They were on their way back for just a few minutes when it seemed as if the number of people in the streets had suddenly doubled, even tripled. Most of the people outdoors looked hurt or ill. They stumbled along downhill or were helped by others. Richard stopped a boy he recognized from high school. "What's up? Any news?"
The boy was trying to maneuver a bicycle, on which his sister precariously perched, through a maze of debris. "Radio says the radiation danger isn't great. It's up high and drifting over the coastal cities. But they figure once the winds quit, that radiation cloud's gonna drift right back. Five, six days, the fallout's gonna start coming down good. I gotta get Eliana to a hospital." He pushed on.
"Yeah."
Richard quickened his pace, pulling Stacey along. He had to get his mother and Washington to help fast. If the wounded started moving out of their shelters to the hospitals, pretty soon there'd be wall-to-wall bodies there. Then what kind of care could they get?
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