First North American rights

email: polaris93@aol.com 112,400 words

Dragon Drive
Volume 2: Eye of the Storm

Book 5: Dragon Fury:

Burstworld – the Fire This Time

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
che la diritta via era smarrita.

Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura

esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte
che nel pensier rinova la paura!

Tant’ è amara che poco è più morte;

ma per trattar del ben ch’i’ vi trovai,
dirò de l’altre cose ch’i’ v’ho scorte.

Dante Aligehieri, Inferno I: 1-9

One upon a time we had a love affair with fire . . . .

R. R. McCammon, Swan Song (Pocket Books, 1987), p. 5

Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the
land of Egypt: and there shall arise after them seven years of famine;
and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt; and the
famine shall consume the land; and the plenty shall not be known in
the land by reason of that famine following; for it shall be very
grievous.
– Genesis 41: 29-31

“First, you fall down a hole . . .”

– Eshda Drake, explaining how she and Lu’ gained admittance to
Club Vesta
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Part 1: Signs and Portents

. . . According to a May 2007 paper published in Science magazine, this increasing

level of aridity [in the American Southwest] would be similar to the Dustbowl years or
the 1950s droughts – except this time the changes will be permanent.
Snowless springs, hotter summers, and harsher droughts will all increase the
vulnerability of the Southwest to perhaps the most feared agent of all: fire. California
has historically been particularly prone to wildfires; it has suffered more financial losses
than any other state over the past century. Already there is . . . evidence that the number
of severe wildfires suddenly increased in the mid-1980s, thanks to longer summers and
earlier snowmelt – and the fires that do break out have been burning for weeks at a time.
In 2003 wind-whipped wildfires tore across southern California, even reaching the
outskirts of Los Angeles. Firefighters could only stand and watch as massive tornadoes
of flame rose above the conflagration.
According to projections for the future drawn up by the Forest Service and
academies based at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the number of ‘escaped’
out-of-control wildfires could increase by more than 50 percent in the San Francisco
South Bay area, and soar by 125 percent on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada farther east.
Only the foggy and damp northern coast would escape the flames. Nor would California
be the only affected area; most of the Southwest, the Great Basin, and the northern
Rockies would face two to three weeks more of high fire danger each year.
All these different impacts point to a single outcome – a very different American
West from the one we know now. As the mountains lose their snow, so the cities lose
their water and the farmers lose their fertile fields. As summer droughts dry out
grassland and forest, people will wait for that single spark that will set their world aflame.
Fire crews may arrive, but their trucks will be empty and their hoses useless. There will
be nothing to stop the burning.
Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (The National Geographic
Society: 2008; ISBN 978-1-4262-0213-1; http: //www.amazon.com/Six-
Degrees-Future-Hotter-Planet/dp/142620213X/ref=sr_1_1?
ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215206620&sr=1-1 ), pp. 166-167

Many great pre-War cities have burned: London, in 1666; Seattle, in 1889; San Francisco, in 1906.
After all, almost everything in a large city is, from fire’s point of view, so much fuel, and especially in cities
that grew up before 1800, there was little in them to hinder fire’s passage beyond men and horses and
inadequate fire strategies and resources. The burned cities were rebuilt to make large fires far less likely
than before, and as a result, generally experienced architectural, economic, and cultural renaissances.
The Great Los Angeles Firestorm of 2022 was different. On top of everything else, it destroyed the
Basin’s natural geology, making life nearly impossible there for any natural forms of life for many years
afterward. And, after the War and the three years of Nuclear Autumn, when the rains there failed
completely, there was virtually no water to nurture what life it did have, save in deep underground water-
tables, where every drop of the precious resource was jealously hoarded by invertebrate and fungal life
lining the rock walls of those hidden aquifers . . .
The run-up to July 16, 2022 should have warned all of us who lived in the Basin that the time was
almost up for us to save ourselves. Perhaps, if we had heeded and acted appropriately on the signs and
omens of approaching disaster, left the Basin for other parts of the country in spite of the hardships
necessarily entailed in that, maybe just moved far enough up or down the coast that commuting to work
would still have been possible, but we’d have been out of the danger zone, millions more would have
survived what was coming than just the pitiful handfuls that did somehow escape the flames. Instead,
though we could have clearly seen the handwriting the wall for what it was and gotten out before the
firestorm rang down the final curtain on the Los Angeles Basin, we didn’t. We grumbled, even ranted and
raged, about the weird changes in the weather that went with radical climate change, we bitched and
pissed and moaned about all the inconveniences we had to suffer because of those changes, we
sympathized with friends and neighbors all over Southern California who had been burned out by one or
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another of the great wildfires that periodically consumed the South Coast area, and raged at the ever-
increasing property and other taxes that went to pay the salaries of the emergency responders who fought
those fires, carried the living and the dead away from the flames, and did what little could be done to save
the tens of millions of citizens living in the area from our own folly. And then, on July 16, 2022, it all went
to shit in a few ghastly hours of sheer horror, the Basin consumed by flames towering literal miles in the
sky, almost everything in it, alive, dead, and non-living, turned to so much carbonized organic material,
melted metal, shattered and melted rock, and sand converted into weird, polychrome glasses by the nearly
inconceivable heat of the fires, heat like that of a red dwarf star.
Here are signs and wonders foretelling our doom . . .

Much of what we know now about the firestorm came from a fireman and his family who came to
Diablo Keep in October 2022. He had worked at a station out of Burbank, but lived in the San Fernando
Valley. Upon getting up the morning of July 16 and seeing the news stories, he realized that by now the
streets all through the Basin were so jammed with cars he couldn’t get to work. So he and his family,
which included his wife and two boys, ages 9 and 12, quickly got everything they could into their pickup,
including the dog, cat, and African grey parrot, pulled the tarp over the bed of the truck, and headed
northwest, out of the San Fernando Valley, toward Simi Valley. Like so many others, they assumed that
L.A. would be nuked at any moment, and since he couldn’t even try to go to work, thanks to that
monumental gridlock throughout the Basin, there was no point to staying where they were. On the way to
the Santa Susana Mountains they watched black smoke rising above the Basin, and then flame. Their truck
threw a rod before they could get farther than a low mountain just north of the San Fernando Valley that
gave them a good vantage point for observing what happened in the Basin. From there they watched as the
fires got larger and larger, finally coalescing into a gigantic, Basin-wide tornado of fire unlike anything
he’d ever seen or even heard of before. Finally the storms from the north roared down and smothered the
fires, keeping them from progressing into the San Fernando Valley or otherwise growing any larger than
they already were. He and his family camped out in their broken truck for a while, huddling together under
the tarp to keep warm, parceling out food to everyone, pets included, in small mouthfuls. They melted and
boiled snow for water, and marked out an area some distance from the truck for a latrine. They weren’t
able to return home, and in any event none of the pre-War services or food distribution networks existed
any more. So they survived by salvaging what they could from abandoned homes and vehicles, and did
rather well for themselves. They ranged farther and farther afield from where their truck had broken down
until, on one salvaging expedition, they discovered Diablo Keep, or rather what would become Diablo
Keep. The Keep gladly took them in, sending people out to help them bring their belongings to the Keep.
The fireman was extremely knowledgeable and experienced concerning all sorts of things that were
necessary to life and health in the new Keep, such as how to vent cooking and heating fires to make sure no
one was made sick or killed by the byproducts of combustion, how to purify water, etc.; his wife had been
a registered nurse before the War, and was almost as good as an MD when it came to things like delivering
babies, healing wounds, etc.; both boys had been Scouts before the War, the younger one a Cub Scout, the
older one a Boy Scout, and the merit badges they’d earned were all for things that were of great practical
use; the dog was well-trained, an excellent watch dog, and very protective of children; the cat, who stayed
very close to home, was hell on rats; and the parrot was a master entertainer, as well as a great bug-catcher
(she didn’t eat them, just liked to play with them for a while; and she knew the names of many species of
them, and would proudly declare, “I just caught a [name of bug]! Where’s my stock option?”, which
always cracked everybody up – except when the “bug” in question was a mosquito or something else that
could carry dangerous pathogens, in which case a general call for a bug-hunt was put out, and everyone
went looking for a population of the things, which they would exterminate if they found them).

Before the War, of course, the firestorm that destroyed the Los Angeles Basin simply couldn’t have
come to pass. There were just too many active fire departments ready and willing to battle fires; help from
outside was available; the water needed to battle fires was coming from elsewhere; and, as had not been
the case during the tragic great fires that had ravaged Southern California before 2007, the reverse-911
system was in place and working perfectly, and because of it countless lives could be saved that would
have been lost in the years before. Fire lanes in excellent repair were open on major highways and
freeways to allow fire trucks and other emergency response vehicles to get to where they were needed most
as quickly as possible. And when the Santa Ana Winds began to moan, police and fire personnel were on
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high alert, ready to roll at the first sign of fire, with police forces already checking outstanding warrants and
other files to determine where known arsonists were living in the area so that they could pre-empt any
attempted setting of fires by detaining them in “protective custody” (and never mind that what was being
protected was Southern California, not the arsonists, though at court trials over lawsuits and criminal cases
later, police and fire officials could reasonably make the case that as angry as residents of Southern
California generally were over arson-set fires, known arsonists detained for the duration in local lockups
actually were much safer there than out in the field, where they just might be lynched by outraged citizens).
There were legendary precursors of the Great Los Angeles Firestorm, the firestorms of 2003, 2005,
2007, 2010, 2012, from which we should have realized that more and worse was on the way if we didn’t act
now to head such horrors off. There were proposals to use cleaned wastewater to restore water-tables in the
area – which, of course, thanks to the equally legendary corruption of local governments of Southern
California, never materialized. Tentative plans were made in 2008 to return wastewater to the soil in those
areas of Southern California at greatest risk for disastrous wildfires, test-runs of water-drops by helicopters
and planes were carried out in 2009, and the results were analyzed in great detail by experts in forestry, soil
ecology, fire ecology, etc. Their findings, which showed that the plans were do-able, not too expensive,
and were indeed likely to retard the progression of fires and make it harder for fires to turn into the monster
firestorms that had ravaged So. Cal. In previous years, were passed to the city councils and mayors of all
the cities in So. Cal, as well as to the county commissioners of each So. Cal. county. And nothing else was
ever done about it, in spite of the gigantic firestorms of 2010 and 2012. Possible reason: the local
governments were all run by their accountants, whose only concern was minimizing losses and maximizing
gains over each fiscal quarter. Somehow they couldn’t see that spending a million dollars to save the
billions of dollars that the fires would otherwise inflict on Southern California was a wise investment.
So . . .

2006

The International Astronomical Union votes to “demote” Pluto and other Kuyper Belt bodies to the
status of “dwarf planet.” Professor Cziller, himself an astronomer and born on November 11, 1947, in
Lima, Ohio, at 7: 22: 30 a.m., who thus has a surfeit of the energies of Mars, Pluto, Saturn, and Scorpio in
his natal chart, nearly goes supernova himself, so outraged is he.

2007

As I was in the midst of telling Monty about the 2007 firestorms in Southern California, I suddenly got
a fit of the giggles. Monty asked me why. I told him about a Youtube video, “Heroes of the San Diego
Firestorm 2007,” memorializing the fires in San Diego County in Autumn of 2007, which had a patched-
over soundtrack that began with tragic music from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar and
then changed to “Holdin’ Out for a Hero,” a song made famous by the rather emotionally volatile Bonnie
Tyler, whose singing technique often verged on the overdone. I said, “Did you ever read ‘The 10 Most
Terrifyingly Inspirational '80s Songs’ on Cracked.com? The man who wrote it said, ‘With her standards so
high, nobody gets to bang Bonnie but the Justice League of America.’ Well, I can just see Bonnie, standing
there appalled, as several thousand heroes suddenly roar into the area and begin battling those fires. She’d
have thrown her hands in the air and run off screaming in terror of all those heroes. The Justice League of
America couldn’t’ve held a candle to those firefighters – whose interest in Bonnie about that time would
have been minus zilch and falling at warp speed.”
Monty, roaring with laughter, said, “I never paid much mind to Ms. Tyler myself, anyways. She was
always just a little too too-too for me, if’n you catch my meanin’. LOUD women just don’t do a thing for
me, you know?”

2008

From the journals of Professor Gary Cziller:

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More smoke on the eastern horizon

Blog entry by Professor Gary Cziller, vacationing in Seattle, WA

Jul. 7th, 2008 | 09: 00 pm

This evening, looking out my eastern French sliding glass doors, I see once more a
vast spray of grey-brown munge mixed in with mist and clouds. The evening Sun, just
now setting, which I observed a little while ago when I went down to water the
hydrangeas, had even more of that gorgeous mythic cast in a sky of lavender much more
intense than it was yesterday evening, as well.
All that new torrent of smoke swarming back there on the eastern slopes of the
Cascades and plunging down the passes in vast, noxious plumes are heralds of yet more
fire -- or firestorms -- to the south. Where is it this time: Oregon, or California? Or
maybe from Idaho or even northern Nevada? The West is burning, burning . . .
Why in the name of seven Hells haven’t the UN, the US government, various other
nations, and the various states of this country used satellites to track fires at anything like
the resolution or usefulness which firefighters and forestservice agencies of numerous
nations need to fight such fires effectively? People are dying in job lots out there as a
result of those fires, dying of third- and fourth-degree burns and inhalation injuries
sustained when flames trapped them in their own homes; dying of exposure afterwards
because, having successfully fled the flames, but losing everything but the clothing on
their backs in the process, they had nowhere but open country to stay, without food, safe
water, or clean clothing, because their government did not think to provide shelter for
them and supply their other needs; dying because they were too young, too old,
invalided, or otherwise unable to care for themselves, abandoned by the roadside by their
families as they fled the fires, because those families could not or would not care for
them; dying because they were robbed and rolled by armed thugs and gangsters who,
taking advantage of the chaos and confusion generated by emergency conditions, preyed
on them when they had no one to protect them, no one to intervene. And the world’s
governments aren’t doing a damned thing to keep it from happening.
Why? Is this a not-so-subtle method of population control – let the fires take them
down so we don’t have to herd them into death-camps? Or are those governments simply
stupid beyond belief? I’m betting on the latter – in today’s news there was a heart-
breaking story about Congressman Al Jenkins, a Democrat representing the Sixth
Congressional District in Northern California, who, along with his wife and three
children, died horribly when flames swept over the SUV in which they were trying to flee
the flames that had overtaken their home in Santa Rosa. That happened last week, but the
story didn’t break until this morning because the pathologists and coroner who have been
examining the remains of those dying in the fires in that area didn’t release the names of
the dead until around 6 a.m. this morning.
For the last five weeks, similar stories have been appearing all over the news,
Internet as well as more traditional newspapers, as news has come in from all over the
settled world about the fires ravaging the land everywhere. Europe, the Soviet Union,
China, Japan, America, Canada, Mexico, Central America, South America – everywhere
but Antarctica and Greenland, and you can bet that in just a few more decades, such
stories will be routine there, as well – have all been battling their own horrendous
wildfires and accidentally- or arson-caused urban fires, and again and again stories have
come out of those fires of high-ranking politicians and even aristocrats cremated alive in
their own homes or on the road, fleeing for their lives, by the great mass fires which,
driven by global warming and the aridity that comes with it, seem to be devouring the
world.
I despair of civilization. We are losing great art treasures as world-famous museums
and palaces, world heritage sites, are destroyed in these fires. We are losing huge
numbers of homes, from humble shacks in Ciudád Mejico’s huge slums to row after row
of apartment buildings in the suburbs of Paris and London, to great mansions and vast
estates in what are vulgarly called the world’s high-rent districts. We are losing the
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ancient forests and restored forests and woodlands and Darwin’s “tangled banks”
everywhere by the day, and soon there will be nothing worth saving on our world. And
even as government representatives lament the losses and wring their hands and promise
endless amounts of emergency funds to help those made homeless and those who have
been put in burn wards and those who have died and whose families are now without
breadwinners or the children that are their future, they continue to act in utterly stupid
ways, such as shunting money away from satellite deployment and use that could help us
save at least some of what we are losing, and putting it into pork-barrel projects or to help
utterly incompetent senators, congressmen, presidents, prime ministers, premiers, and
other beneficiaries of what ought to be called the ultimate government welfare programs
return to office again and again, and help screw up everything even worse than it already
is. . . .

Safe disposal of nuclear wastes

Blog entry by Professor Gary Cziller

Jul. 10th, 2008 | 05: 27 pm

First, some background:
Space -- which includes all the universe at large, which has a diamter of at least 26
billion (a billion = one milliard = 109 = a thousand million; the prefix “giga-,” affixed as a
suffix to a noun, as in “gigayears,” means a billion of the things, as in “gigayear” = one
billion years) -- is unpollutable. You can pollute planets, and for that reason you shouldn't
release awful chemicals and that sort of thing into their biospheres, and should at all costs
avoid dropping vast amounts of certain elements and chemical compounds into stars that
you don't want to go nova or supernova prematurely or at all. You can't, however, pollute
space as such. The reason is that once you add a large amount of liquid or gaseous
material or plasmas of any kind to it, it begins at once to spread out into space, heading
for the farthest reaches of the universe. The radius of our universe -- which is mostly
empty space -- is at least 26 billion light-years across. The volume of a sphere (3-D) =
4/3 x π x r3 (π = 3.14159 . . .), where r < /iv > r = 13 billion light years. The length of a
light-year, if space is flat or very nearly so, is then equivalent to:

Ten trillion standard kilometers

Exactly 9,460,730,472,580.8 km
10 Pm (a Pm is 1015 meters, so 10 Pm = 1016 meters)
About 5,878,625,373,183.61 international miles
About 63,241 astronomical units
0.3066 parsecs

So a universe with a radius of 13 billion light-years is about 26 x 10 16 meters across.

Assuming it is of three dimensions, its volume is around (1016 meters)3 x 4/3 x 3.14159 =
4.188786667 x 1048 cubic meters as converted to cubic light-years, which comes down to
what you could tuck into the smallest corner of that space, yet still have huge volumes of
completely empty space left over to put other things into. Send something off-Earth to be
allowed to drift at a fairly rapid clip, say, that of a nuclear-powered (NERVA) spaceship,
and as long as its ballistic is aimed at something far beyond the Solar System and out of
the galactic bulge/plane, it won't hit other stellar systems or free-floating planets out there
before just about all its radioactivity and radioactive atoms have decayed away to
nothing. Also, space, which contains a virtually infinite amount of plasma, hot gas, novae
and supernovae which generate endless amounts of radioactive crud every time they
happen, egregiously more volumes of radioactive crap in 50 years than Earth has ever
produced in all her 4.5 billion year long history.
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If you give your radioactive wastes a vector that will take them away from Earth and
everything else in the plane of the Solar System (the only ones that aren't in that plane do
not harbor life as we know it, and such a package would be likely to miss them all, in any
event) and the galaxy, it won't impact anything out there before all its radioactivity has
been long since decayed, and in the meantime it will have spread out in all directions so
far that there will be about 1 atom of it for every million cubic meters or an even lower
desnity. This is a far lower density than that of Avogadro's Number,* meaning that the
amount of this material in space in any significant volume is far too small to participate in
chemical reactions anywhere).
In other words, you can't pollute space, and waste ejected into space will end up with
a desnity so low it isn't even effectively a poison, let alone a radiation hazard.
So how do we get that waste into space?
Ans.: Build a space elevator . . .

*A mole is the amount of substance of a system which contains as many elementary entities as there are
atoms in 0.012 kilogram (or 12 grams) of carbon-12, where the carbon-12 atoms are unbound, at rest
and in their ground state.[2] The number of atoms in 0.012 kilogram of carbon-12 is known as the
Avogadro constant, and is determined empirically. The currently accepted value is
6.02214179(30)×1023 mol-1 (2007 CODATA).
According to the SI, the mole is not dimensionless, but has its very own dimension, “amount of
substance”, comparable to other dimensions such as mass and luminous intensity.[3] (By contrast, the
SI specifically defines the radian and the steradian as special names for the dimensionless unit one.)[4]
The SI additionally defines the Avogadro constant as having the unit reciprocal mole, as it is the ratio
of a dimensionless quantity and a quantity with the unit mole.[4] However, if in the future the kilogram
is redefined in terms of a specific number of carbon-12 atoms (see below), then the value of
Avogadro's number will be defined rather than measured, and the mole will cease to be a unit of
physical significance.
The relationship of the atomic mass unit (u[6]) to Avogadro's number means that a mole can also
be defined as: That quantity of a substance whose mass in grams is the same as its formula weight.
For example, iron has a relative atomic mass of 55.845 u, so a mole of iron has a mass of 55.845
grams. This notation is very commonly used by chemists and physicists.
Chemical Engineers sometimes measure substance amount in units of gram-moles, kilogram-
moles, pound-moles, or ounce-moles; these measure the quantity of a substance whose molecular
weight is not equal to its mass in grams, kilograms, pounds, or ounces. The SI mole is identical to the
gram-mole.
To put it in perspective, 1 mole of marshmallows would be enough marshmallows to make a 12
mile thick layer of marshmallows covering the entire face of the Earth. A mole of donut holes would
cover the earth and be 5 miles (8 km) deep. [7] A mole of blood cells would be more than the total
number of blood cells found in every human on earth.

Elementary entities

When the mole is used to specify the amount of a substance, the kind of elementary entities
(particles) in the substance must be identified. The particles can be atoms, molecules, ions, formula
units, electrons, photons or other particles. For example, one mole of water is equivalent to 18.016
grams of water and contains one mole of H2O molecules, but three moles of atoms (two moles H and
one mole O). Whereas a mole of electrons is the Faraday constant, ca. 96,500 [C·mol-1]. One mole of
photons is called an einstein. The thermal Energy R*T has the unit joule per mole, due to the definition
of the gas constant R. A short summary with simple calculations is provided here.
When the substance of interest is a gas, the particles are usually molecules. However, the noble
gases (He, Ar, Ne, Kr, Xe, Rn) are all monatomic, that is each particle of gas is a single atom and only
Van der Waals forces act between them. An ideal gas has a molar volume of 22.4 litres per mole at
STP (see Avogadro's Law).
A mole of atoms or molecules is also called a “gram atom” or “gram molecule”, respectively.
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A defining biological trait

Essay by Professor Gary Cziller

July 4, 2008
This evening I went down to the lake that abuts the property where I am vacationing
to watch the fireworks shows put on by several homeowners and people in Bitter Lake
Park, just across the lake from my building. I love fireworks. I love the smell of cordite
they leave behind in their death-throes, I love their gorgeous colors and brilliant light and
the overwhelmingly loud BANGs they make, scaring local dogs and cats and human
toddlers out of their wits, and bringing the night alive with light and color and sound. I
love their reflections in the lake's lovely blue waters. And when the ducks, coots, grebes,
and geese coming skulking back the next day after heading for the hills to avoid the
fireworks -- I can imagine mama ducks teaching their babies, “It's almost that time again!
We'd better make tracks out of here.” “Why, mama?” “Because the two-legged monsters
let these giant things out just about this time of year, and if we don't get away from the
things, they'll catch and eat us!” -- I love that, too. I love the pellucid blue of Seattle
North End's evening July skies, filled with drifting red-pink clouds that rapidly become
red-pink clouds of cordite, lit up from below by the city lights, their colors augmented by
the occasional bursts of local origin as well as the giant pyrotechnics set off over at
Gasworks Park -- red, blue, and the white of street-lights and, sometimes, the Moon.
Tonight the Moon was a narrow fingernail crescent in the West, setting maybe a n hour
and three-quarters after the Sun, occasionally obscured by streaks of cloud which went
from magenta-and-lavender to dark blue-purple to dark indigo as the light in the west
finally died.
I got to thinking about why we set off fireworks -- not just Americans, and not just in
celebration of our Independence Day, but all over the world, for any and no occasion.
Humans love fireworks, or, at least, most adult humans do, and that's why people take so
many risks and shell out so much good money for their pyrotechnic entertainment. No
other species on Earth does that. No other species on Earth makes and uses fireworks for
entertainment. That's been true since the first fireworks were ever made and used purely
for fun, centuries ago. (Well, maybe in the deep past, long before humans were even a
gleam in Mother Nature's eye, there were other species that made fireworks and loved
setting them off for the fun of it, but so far we haven't found any evidence of that. Except
maybe at Chixulub, but I won't mention that if you don't.
Anyway, humans love to play with fire -- if nothing else, the Burning Man Festival
carried out every year in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada proves that. The taming of fire
freed us from a host of constraints, from the cold of Winter and inability to eat certain
foods because they would only yield their nutritional treasures to our weak teeth and
unspecialized gastrointestinal systems and livers and kidneys if they were properly
cooked. Fire gave us tools of unparalleled utility, such as fire-hardened wooden adzes
and ship keels, and, much later, metal tools that could cut through almost anything. It
freed us from extremes of weather and climate, enabling us to live nearly anywhere on
Earth. What most of us hesitate to admit is that fire also gave us unparalleled means for
sheer, unmitigated fun. Sometimes, as is the case of pranks that go a little too far, setting
one's entire neighborhood on fire, that fun was not the nicest in the world. But even so,
there are all sorts of tricks fire can be trained to perform -- and fireworks are among the
best of them.
No other creature makes and uses fire. Yes, a raven can quickly grasp the idea of
striking a match against a brick to produce a flame to set afire kindling and charcoal
placed in a brazier; when the fire is going well, the raven will then hover over it, holding
his wings open to catch the sparks in his wing-pits. This is called “anting with fire.”
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“Anting” comes from the use such birds make of biting ants, which they tuck into their
wing-pits; the bite of the ants apparently gives them a real thrill, for the reasons for which
you should probably turn to your friendly local dungeon-master. The sparks serve at least
as well as biting ants for this purpose. It is thought that the legend of the Phoenix first
arose from observations of startled priests of various religions of ravens suddenly
swooping into their temples and, wings outspread, hovering over their braziers full of
burning incense to catch the sparks in their wing-pits. “Yeeeee-haaaaah!” But for the lack
of hands with which to make tools, including that ultimate tool, fire, ravens would
probably have ended up ruling the world. Anyway, we got stuck with that job about two
million years ago -- that's how old the fossil traces of hominid campfires, cookfires, etc.
date to -- and se have never let the rest of the living world forget it, either. Which is
unfortunate -- it would be so nice to find another type of creature, somewhere, that liked
to play with fire, too . . .

2009

In response to a question concerning the occurrence of Santa Ana wind conditions and the wildfires
these encourage, California State Fire Marshal Ewan Oliver tells CBS.com Anchorwoman Judy Freund, at
CBS’s Los Angeles news bureau, “Unfortunately, it seems that fire season in Southern California is now a
year-round sport.”
Freund: “Do you mean by that that the Santa Ana winds are now occurring year-round?”
Oliver: “That’s exactly what I mean. They can – and do – occur at any time of year now. Just why
that is isn’t clear; climate scientists tell me that they’re yanking their hair out over it. A team of such
scientists at the University of Washington led by Dr. Peter Ward are still trying to determine the
phenomena responsible for the shift of the Santa Ana winds from their former stable Autumnal pattern to
an unpredictable one which can occur in any month of the year, a shift which has taken place over the last
two years for unknown reasons. Climate and weather are chaotic phenomena, in the scientific sense –
small changes in input can make for huge changes in output. The climate has been shifting everywhere due
to global warming, though in small and random ways, but apparently, at least in our part of the world, that
has resulted in very large, sudden changes in what had been age-old weather patterns –”
Freund (finishing Oliver’s sentence for him): “And because the Santa Ana winds seem to cause many
people to become wildly unstable, and bring out the worst in people, that means that the sort of people who
like to set fires will come out to play year-round in Southern California. Or, at least, could do so at any
time, whereas before, they were much more likely to do that in early or mid-Autumn, when the Santa Ana
winds began to blow, than at other times. Which means the possibility of catastrophic, human-caused fires
now exists all year round in Southern California.”
Oliver: “That’s right. Basically, it comes down to our not being able to relax our vigilance during
certain times of the year. We have to be prepared for the worst at all times now, not just in Autumn. Of
course, we have to be prepared to fight fires at any time, but until a couple of years ago, we really only
needed to prepare for the worst beginning in August, and only saw the worst fires over at most a two-month
period beginning around mid-September and ending somewhere around mid-November, give or take a
week or two at either end of that period.
“Now, however, we don’t dare let our guard down at any time, night or day, regardless of the season.
When the Santa Anas blow, all it takes to burn down a county is one spark – and there are plenty of
deviants around who’d just love to add that spark. And now, rather than restricting their fun and games to a
given season, the recreational artists can do their thing on any day of the year.”
Freund: “That’s . . . disturbing.”
Oliver: “Yeah – the same way that the Pacific Ocean is wet. Now, me, I find it downright terrifying,
and so, I imagine, do most people living in Southern California . . .”

There is a re-vote by the International Astronomical Union on the status of Pluto and other “dwarf
planets” which, this time, includes 95% of it and not just the original 4%. They vote 91 to 4 to return those
planets to their original, non-dwarf status, and define “planet” as “any body with mass lower than a brown
dwarf which is large enough to have attained hydrostatic equilibrium and is hence spheroidal.” The
majority also vote to create several categories for the planets of the Solar System, categories which could
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also be applied to the bodies in other stellar systems if appropriate: the inner, rocky worlds (Mercury,
Venus, Earth, Mars); the Belt between Mars and Jupiter, which actually contains at least one planet, Ceres;
the two Gas Giants, Jupiter and Saturn; the two Ice Giants, Uranus and Neptune; the Kuyper-Belt bodies,
including, e.g., Eris, Pluto, Sedna, Haumea, etc.; the Centaurs, bodies with orbits ranging as far out as
Neptune and as close in as Jupiter, including Chiron, Pholus, etc.; the Oort Cloud, a spherical halo around
the Solar System extending from somewhat farther out than the Kuyper Belt to the limits of the heliopause;
the Apollo Asteroids, which have average orbital radii greater than that of the Earth and perihelia less than
Earth's aphelion (1.017 AU); the Aten Asteroids, which have average orbital radii closer than one
Astronomical Unit and aphelia of greater than Earth's perihelion (0.983 AU), placing them usually inside
the orbit of Earth; the Amor Asteroids, which have average orbital radii in between the orbits of Earth and
Mars and perihelia slightly outside Earth's orbit (1.017 - 1.3 AU) (Amors often cross the orbit of Mars, but
they do not cross the orbit of Earth); and any other collection of Solar System bodies which can be clearly
defined by their orbital locations relative to the Sun and other groups of Solar System objects.
The head of the IAU, who had arranged for the secret vote of 2006, commits suicide. Mike Brown, the
Cal Tech astronomer who was one of the 4% that had voted to “demote” the KBOs, is by now so clumsy he
can’t handle any equipment without breaking it, and has to have his grad students do that for him. He may
be half-mad, as well. His wife has divorced him and left, taking the kids with her. The rest of ‘the Fucking
Four Percent,’ as they’ve come to be called in the scientific community, maintain very low profiles for the
next few years, or take up new careers entirely.
Professor Cziller cheers and cheers and cheers.

2010

Somehow, between the various state and federal environmental agencies working to prevent a
recurrence of the 2007 and 2010 fires, and local fire and police departments working overtime to the same
goal, only local, controllable wildfires had broken out between 2007 and 2010, and were put out without
too much destruction. But then October 2010 came in – the Magick Month for fires here – and the Santa
Anas began to blow, and between swarms of pyros running around, setting fires, not just from here, but
from upstate and back east, even, and the accidents and fights that the winds invariably brought, howling
blazes started up seemingly everywhere. Some of them burned for a week, though others were quickly
contained and then extinguished, and we were all scared spitless by what could have happened.

2011

From my own journals of May 2011, a year after wildfires that had nearly destroyed Southern
California, a year before even greater wildfires and firestorms devoured homes and wilderness areas and
business districts from Tijuana and Tecate, Mexico to Santa Barbara and Lancaster, California:
At a party, I asked a fundamentalist why she refused to believe that global warming was even a
possibility, let alone be already happening, and why she refused to even look at any evidence to support the
claim that it was happening. She said that the Devil was responsible for putting the idea of global warming
in people’s minds, and making them believe in it. More questions elicited her statement that global
warming was simply another pagan faith – that global warming itself was a pagan faith, not just the science
that described and predicted it – and that God was testing the faithful by giving all the signs of global
warming to see if they would fall to believing it (“fall to believing it” was her term for it, not mine). I
asked her, since recent firestorms in Southern California had come about due to record long-term aridity in
the areas where the fires had broken out, and that that aridity was highly abnormal, something that only
global warming could account for, if fundamentalist friends of hers who still lived in that area got caught in
yet another such firestorm and perish of it, would they go to Hell for being roasted alive by that fiery
illusion, as she called it? Her response was to storm away, screaming that everyone present was going to
Hell and that she didn’t want anything more to do with any of us.
At another such gathering, I asked a libertarian why he refused to believe that global warming was
even a possibility, let alone be already happening, and why he refused to even look at any evidence in
support of those ideas. He said that it was all due to a conspiracy on the part of scientists to con people into
supporting their Socialist agenda or get grant money for useless, worthless research projects because they
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were too lazy to do real work. I asked him what substantive evidence he had in support of the existence of
such a conspiracy. His response included a long dissertation about Ayn Rand, and quotes from Thomas
Jefferson and Tom Paine that were blatantly inaccurate, but hey, our memories do strange things as we age,
don’t they, and the statement that global warming was just another product of quack science. I pointed out
that he himself lived in Southern California, about ten miles from where firefighters had brought an
egregiously powerful firestorm to its knees and then, in spite of its last pitiful struggles to survive, killed it
dead, an event that took place just a year before. I asked him, “Ted, if you get cremated alive by the next
firestorm in that area because you can’t get out in time, does that mean you are a Socialist?” His response
was to mumble something about having to tend to some urgent business and wander out of the room,
presumably leaving the scene of his intellectual crime for good.
The Greens, of course, don’t deny the reality of global warming. But when it comes to effective
measures that might work to keep it from getting worse, they are either unable to agree on which of those
measures might be acceptable, or even what those measures might be, acceptable or not. Desalinate
seawater? Well . . . maybe. But no fair using nuclear reactors to do so – in spite of the fact that nuclear
reactors are one of the few things that can be used to desalinate seawater fast enough, in sufficient
quantities, to do the job, and that doing whatever is possible to restore groundwater levels to something that
can support plant life and cool large areas down to bearable temperatures has an immediate priority far
higher than avoiding the long-run risks of nuclear power. If you die of thirst because you refuse to use
electricity generated by nuclear power to desalinate enough water for your survival, it’s your own damned
fault – and if huge numbers of people and wildlife of all kinds die of thirst because you won’t let them use
nuclear power to desalinate seawater, you’re guilty of mass murder. Well, how about acquiring vast
amounts of power from the Sun using orbital collectors, and using it to generate enough electrical power to
do all that electricity can do for the whole world, power that is virtually free, affordable even for the very
poorest of families in the developing world. It wouldn’t add anything to the atmosphere’s burden of carbon
dioxide, and in fact would eliminate almost all sources of CO2, especially if electric cars and electrically-
driven mass transit became widely used. But no, said various Greens I got to know around the campus, that
would pollute space, and anyway, the collectors would be made of plastic, and plastic is bad for the
environment. I tried to explain that you can’t pollute space – you’re talking about polluting the entire
universe, which is at least some 26 billion light-years across, with whatever Earth might put into outer
space, which simply isn’t possible. To which they said that anything more than zero pollutants in space
was simply unacceptable, as was any plastic whatsoever. And so on and on and on. In other words,
environmental deterioration is bad, but doing anything effective to reverse environmental deterioration of
any kind is far worse, no matter how high a priority the latter may be. Remember, many Greens are the
same people that believe that burning down Mother Earth to save her is the best way to show one’s love of
her. And nothing anyone can say to them makes a dent in their attitudes and resistance to learning anything
new.
If such arguments as my opponents in those verbal interchanges gave on this subject sound irrational,
join the club: that’s exactly what they are. Numerous people who are eminently sane in any other aspect of
their lives are completely irrational when it comes to arguments against doing something effective about
any dire environmental peril. The fundamentalists believe they are going to heaven when they die – but
only if they refuse to “believe in” (as opposed to believe that, i.e., that there is enough evidence to show
that such-and-such is real, as demanded by rules of evidence acceptable to a court of law or the scientific
community) such things as global warming; otherwise God will send them to Hell. They can do anything
they want in life, perpetrate any crime, act like barbarians, and be forgiven by God; they are, they say, pre-
forgiven of all sins (i.e., crimes, violent or otherwise) once they have been baptized, with the exception of
modifying any of their beliefs, whether those beliefs have to do with the Bible or not. Science is just a
conspiracy cooked by scientists to promote their religion of science and con the world into accepting the
“mark of the Beast, 666,” that’s all. The libertarians and the Greens have their own versions of this sort of
resistance to acquiring new concepts, testing them against previously acquired evidence and models and
theories that have been satisfactorily proved out, and working up practical applications for what they have
used. Most of them, each in his or her own scary way, has turned their beliefs concerning the environment
and the planet as a whole into very real religions, and are out to proselytize those religions any way they
can – with the sword and/or the torch, if need be. As for the rest . . . Well, if you check the stock portfolios
of the wealthiest of them, you will discover the most amazing things, such as investments in industries and
properties whose continued financial well-being depends on quashing all legislation and private efforts to
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protecting and healing the environment. In other words, make money until the world ends, because by
then, you’ll have long since died and gone to whatever your Beforelife reward might be, and who gives a
damn about their descendants?
To be fair, most of those who either refuse even to look at evidence supporting the reality of global
warming, or effective ways to do something constructive about it before it’s too late, really mean what they
say about such issues. They are victims of ideational systems (i.e., philosophical systems, to the well-
educated, which most people aren’t any more) which, though they proved helpful in many ways, also have
serious drawbacks, especially when it comes to trying to come to terms with reality, whether we like our
universe or not. Such systems give those who believe in them common cause with other believers, make
them feel important (though often, unfortunately, at the cost of seeing all those who don’t believe in them
as well as the natural world as so much trash, to be ignored or even murdered out of hand), a way to get
together with like-minded people for social events as well as such things as political meetings, and
numerous other social and personal benefits. But when it comes to objective reality, they fall down
horribly, teaching adherents to ignore all objective evidence opposing any part of the belief system in
question, even just one tenet, as utterly evil (of the Devil, Communistic, anti-environmental, etc.).
One example of this can be found in the teachings of Scientology, according to which, 75 million years
ago, the evil Galactic Overlord Xenu had dissidents protesting his rule thrown into the volcanoes of Hawaii
to rid himself of them. Guess what? Any rock-hound worth his salt, not to mention a host of geologists,
ecologists, tourists, and those living on the Islands know that the Hawaiian Islands are only two million
years old. Way to go, L. Ron! Let's hear it for twisted ignorance! A number of Scientologists who had
had decent educations in the physical sciences voluntarily became ex-Scientologists, simply walked away
from it and never came back, over that very issue. Unfortunately, given the damage Scientology did to so
many people, most Scientologists didn’t have that educational background, or were so mesmerized by its
teachings that nothing short of a nuclear bomb could have made a dent in their embrace of their faith. So,
united by a collective delusional system, most Scientologists remained among the faithful right up until the
War, when just about all of them perished, either because they were too close to one or another ground
zero, or contracted one or another of the new and viciously virulent pestilences set loose on America’s East
Coast by the incoming asteroid that started the War, or were prevented by rigid adherence to Scientological
beliefs from acting in their own best interests, and died in stupid accidents and of preventable disasters
even though they were far from any cities that had been hit with the Bomb, or areas hit by the plagues.
Similarly, in the year after the Two-Day War, numerous fundamentalists committed suicide because
they had become convinced by what they imagined to have been Armageddon and the fact they hadn’t been
Raptured away to heaven that they were damned for eternity. Now, just why being damned should prompt
someone to commit suicide is a puzzle – in that case, most of us would want to go on living for as long as
possible, to put off that eternal hellfire for as long as possible. But psychologists who have worked with
such fundamentalists and their families, trying to keep the former from committing suicide and giving grief
counseling to the latter when all their efforts go for naught, say that suicidal fundamentalists were so
distraught over, as they conceived it, the loss of God’s love that unbearable despair pushed them over the
edge of the Abyss. The same sort of thing because of which rejected lovers and parents whose children
have been killed kill themselves, to end the very real agony of love and the objects of love lost.
Libertarians are now somewhat less prone to suicide, save over the loss of family and friends from the
many catastrophic changes in the world as a result of the War, which is something the entire planet-wide
human zoo has been prone to since probably forever. They are also much more likely to survive than a lot
of people sharing none of these belief systems were even before the War. The rampant consumerism,
passive watching of spectacles and sports events on TV, and other behaviors and behavior patterns that left
no room for exercise of any kind and promoted junk food above any sort of health-giving meals sealed their
doom. Many libertarians, however, dipped into Survivalist literature and discovered ways to make life
good without a killing cost of one’s health and well-being, such as how to survive in the wild, what herbs
and vegetables and fruits you could grow in your own back yard, and how to protect yourself and others
with weapons of all kinds as well as unarmed combat. Because those keeps that have come into existence
and survived since the War, with the exception of Fresno keeps and others like it here and there, promote
the same survival-positive ideas and behavior that such libertarians espouse, most of today’s libertarians
don’t have many problems with non-libertarians, though they do keep insisting that “global warming is just
a scheme cooked up by pre-War scientists to get grant money.” That, in spite of all the evidence for global
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warming, which they refuse even to consider for a moment. Their collective belief system doesn’t allow
for that, so therefore there’s no point at looking at the evidence for its reality.
As for the Greens . . . well, I certainly can’t say they didn’t believe that global warming is real. They
did. The few that seem to have survived to the present – or, at least, haven’t emerged from hiding – are still
trying to proselytize their Luddite philosophy, and do so in the face of the fact that technology, the more
advanced the better, is absolutely necessary not only for human survival on our ruined world, but the
survival of what’s left of Earth’s nonhuman life. They share with the fundamentalists and libertarians the
trait of confusing belief in with belief that, of confusing religion and its analogs with science. From
everything that has come out about the phenomenon since well before the War, they are not able to learn
how to “do” science and, in many cases, mathematics. It’s not willful ignorance on their part – they
genuinely lack whatever inherent mechanism, whether genetic or cultural, it is that throws up giant,
uncrossable roadblocks before their intellects that scream, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,”
concerning study of objective reality, not to mention those areas of social studies that don’t accord with
their belief-systems. Either something genetic is missing from their genes, or nutrition while they were in
the womb was somehow deficient, or the way they were raised did not allow for development of the
requisite skills. Whatever it is, most of them cannot learn those skills and the viewpoint which regular,
ongoing exercise of those skills gives rise to. As for the rest, it’s likely that even if they once had those
skills, they let them rust away due to lack of use as mandated by their religious and philosophical beliefs.
To this day, all three groups – adherents of certain religious beliefs; those who have embraced what, in
all justice, should be called “strict libertarianism,” as opposed to more open-minded versions of that
philosophy; and Greens – are still resistant to anything that contradicts any part of their beliefs. And, from
time to time, some of them go so far as to show just how lively that resistance is, by causing trouble of
various kinds and degrees of severity. As far as they’re concerned, it’s the same old world it always was,
perhaps with a lot fewer people where they are than there used to be, all other people residing somewhere
over the hills where they can’t see them. Yet. Collective psychoses like these have been responsible for a
great deal of the woes of the world. Their adherents may be perfectly sane in every other way – but when it
comes to their belief systems, they talk and act as if they were quite mad.
Such people are unable to grasp the philosophy of science or much else about it, especially when it
comes to planetology, ecology, and other biological systems sciences. The same is true of mathematics.
It’s not that they just never wanted to study these fields – they cannot grasp their basic principles. Nothing
else accounts for their weird explanations as to why they don’t just reject the idea of global warming, but
actually turn away from any and all substantive evidence to support its reality, as if they were about to
vomit at the very idea of looking at it; attack anyone who claims it is real as being a member of some
enormous and impossible conspiracy to con the public into believing it, for reasons ranging from religious
(demonic possession, Satan’s inspiration, etc., etc., all in the name of sending souls to hell), political (e.g.,
to gull people into accepting total Communism), and so on; and otherwise behave in ways that, to someone
familiar with the psychology of addictions, are for all the world classic examples of denial.
There was another, far more primordial reason for such reactions to the idea that global warming was
real and already happening: fear. Such people used the ancient and, all too often, failed Magickal ritual of
throwing words at whatever they feared in hopes that would kill it. It didn’t. Another reason, which
worked hand-in-hand with that one, had to do with expectations as conditioned by one’s situation: if the
perceived environmental surround of the moment and one’s social expectations demanded a set of
responses in direct contradiction to what was actually happening, the latter took very much the poorer place
in one’s system of values relative to the former. For example, during the horrendous Southern California
firestorms of the 20-naughtrs, 20-teens, and the first two years of the 21st centuries third decade, there were
people who were either pulled from their homes, kicking and screaming, by firefighters and/or relatives and
neighbors, declaring that there was nothing wrong and to please put them down so they could go watch
their favorite TV show . . . or were cremated alive because no one realized they hadn’t evacuated yet, or
couldn’t get to them to evacuate them because the fires made it impossible. Were they simply stupid, or
what? Psychologists who have studied such phenomena believe that in humans there is a tendency to place
sociocultural reality above all other aspects of their world. For most of us, an emergency such as a growing
firestorm in one’s near neighborhood smartly overrides that tendency, but for some people, that doesn’t
happen. Reality is whatever social occasion they’re involved in, or what they believe their neighbors or
their preacher’s God expects of them and wants them to do, or whatever pleasurable activities they’re
engaged in at the time, and nothing else counts.
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2012

Another two years went by, with few wildfires, none of them very serious. And then, in October 2012,
Southern California went up like the carbon bomb it was, all that fuel on the hills and in the valleys, much
of it structures and landscaping, a feast for firestorms. From Durango, Durango and Mulego, Baja
California on the south, going north as far as San Luis Obispo, with reflecting fires up through Northern
California, Oregon, and Washington State, it seemed like the entire West Coast was going up in smoke, one
vast blow-up. Every wildfire seemed to be a crown fire that then mutated into a firestorm. Fire whirls and,
even more frightening, full-scale fire tornados a thousand feet across moving at least as fast as any Midwest
tornado, stalked the land. County-wide clouds of dark brown and sepia and utterly black smoke shot with
fiery yods and ribbons and bolts of scarlet and crimson and yellow fire turned noon into twilight and then,
in some places, to night. Some of those clouds were mammatus clusters, mattress-like blankets of black
crud from the bottoms of which projected heavy-looking, rounded things that looked for all the world like
so many breasts. Only these breasts weren’t made of soft, relatively cool flesh – they were filled with fire,
with fiery lines and sparks of fire erupting from their surfaces and glowing from within as if to say, ‘Here is
Our Lady of Fire in all her glory!’ At times those clouds covered most of the sky from Mexico to Central
California and from the Pacific to the Central Valley and Palmdale and other communities hovering along
the near neighborhood of the San Andreas Fault. The world was burning, burning, melting down, and there
Bill and I were, living and working in the midst of it, wondering when we’d have to grab the cat and make
a frantic getaway before the Ring of Fire closed in on us completely and sealed our fate.
Conservative commentators – all based well away from where the fires were – made sniggering
wisecracks about the situation, implying it was all somehow the fault of Leftist politicians, while liberal
commentators blamed it all on conservative politicians. I began to wish that I could take all their agendas
and shove them up their collective rear ends – the very ground beneath our feet was burning, the good
Earth that had never harmed any of us, burning down to sand and ashes, nothing that could ever be true soil
again, and the great flood tide of burned-out residents, human and otherwise, coursing out of the fire zones
beggared belief. It was one enormous tragedy, one harming or destroying millions of people, not to
mention the wild creatures out there, and I began crying all day long, crying at unexpected moments,
weeping over all the lands and creatures displaced or killed by the fire, seeing fire everywhere whenever I
looked out any window or actually went outside and wondering when – not ‘if,’ when – Bill and I would
have to evacuate. I went to the campus, taught my courses, did some perfunctory work in my office, which
had air-conditioning and was like a breath of heaven, called Bill over at his office, asked him when he’d be
ready to go home, meet him in the parking lot, head for some fast-food place with air-conditioning and
have something cold and sweet to drink along with burgers and fries, stop by the supermarket to pick up
something nice for Pogey, and head home, where we ran the air-conditioner 24/7 because otherwise the
place would have been uninhabitable. After giving Pogey his treat, Bill and I would shower together, then
air-dry, which cooled us off and made us marginally less miserable. Then we’d fall into bed and sink into a
black morass somewhere between waking and true sleep, and linger there until morning, Pogey lying on
our feet the whole time, cherishing the comfort of our presence enough that our body-heat and the sick,
miserable stuff that passed for air in the Basin could be ignored.
Of course, it didn’t help that that was the year that the New Agers and their affiliates had decided
would be the end of the world, specifically on December 21, 2012. Nor that it was the year that Betelgeuse
finally went supernova, on October 31, 2012, filling the night skies of November and December of 2012
and January and February of 2013 with its catastrophic omens of destruction.* One of the few good things
I can say about that terrible year was that it was not the year that my friend Professor Cziller died; in fact,
he didn’t pass away until two years later, and thus was able to see the astronomical event of the millennium
– brighter and more awesome even than SN 1006, one of the greatest astronomical events in recorded
history, according to any number of professional astronomers – and follow its aftermath until it became too
faint to see even with a good back yard telescope. I never knew a happier man than Gary was as, eyes
glued to telescopic eyepiece, he spent long evenings studying the fantastic, drawn-out spectacle of a giant
star’s catastrophic death.
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*I should say, that it was the year that Betelgeuse appeared to undergo its fiery death in a vast supernova
explosion. The supernova itself had occurred somewhere between 600 and 660 years before; it took
light from that event that same number of years to reach Earth.

Development after development, hillside after hillside, business district after business district was
burning all around us. The sky was a sepia horror by day and the black of the Pit at night, save where the
fires leaped up, and the pitifully inadequate streetlights and other artificial illumination struggled to
compete with the fires. Light pollution? Don’t make me laugh! At night it was as black as the Devil’s
armpit, and during the day it wasn’t much better, save when we were inside a building and could turn on
the lights there. Even inside, though, the air was ripe with the stench of burning, thick with smoky debris
and hints of char, and a great many people, generally asthma and emphysema sufferers, gave up on
everything else and fled into the ice-cold air-conditioned chill of local movie theaters, which were, next to
the upscale business district’s tony shops and huge office buildings, the best places to be – during Santa
Ana events, the theaters made mucho dinero because of that air-conditioning and the magnificent food
pavilions they all sported, becoming people-magnets in spite of the exorbitant prices they charged for food
and drink and the fact that the air-conditioning units in those theaters were set low enough to give
pneumonia to an Eskimo. The air wasn’t just chilled in those theaters, it was actually cleaned of particulate
matter, and charged with negative ions by enormous, industrial air-purifiers even larger and more effective
than anything even USC Medical Center had in its wards. It tasted and smelled like mountaintop air in the
Alps or Himalayas was said to back before the beginning of the 20 th Century, as if it had wafted in across
millions of acres of pure snow, bringing the benison of the Dali Lama with it. Of course, the water
fountains, though cooled by the same machines that air-conditioned the theaters, were still supplied with
L.A. water, which meant the water they gave was stiff with crud from the fires, not to mention more than a
few nasty microbes. But I guess you can’t have everything . . .
As it turned out, we didn’t have to evacuate. And while at one point it looked as if UCLA was about to
burn down, what with uncontrolled fires on three sides of the campus and most firefighters tied down
elsewhere, fighting even scarier fires, somehow the wind shifted, and the water-tankers came roaring
overhead, dropping vast loads of water and fire retardant, and the students and faculty of UCLA, myself
and Bill included, got out there and fought the fires ourselves, and firefighters were rotated in to help after
some of the lesser fires were finally extinguished, and the worst didn’t happen. Oh, a few trees at the edge
of the campus burned, and a few vans parked over that way were cremated, but that was it. None of the
buildings were burned, nobody was hurt or killed there, and Westwood Village was spared, as well. So,
come the weekend, Bill and I went over to an Outback Restaurant and had ourselves sirloin tip and baked
potatoes and big green salads and those fantastic sherbet desserts to celebrate, and brought home some of
the steak for Pogey, and gave it to him along with peach ice cream, one of his favorites, and breathed
easier.
And then, for ten wonderful years, at least as far as wildfires were concerned, there was almost
nothing, certainly no dangerous fires in Southern California – or, for that matter, anywhere along
America’s West Coast and western Mexico. The fires of 2012 had scared everyone nearly to death, and
citizens, local agencies, state agencies, and the federal government did everything they could to ensure that
it wouldn’t happen again. We came that close to a Peshtigo-type firestorm here, only one spanning all of
Southern California and points north and south of it, and, with the handwriting on the wall, for once both
citizens and government on all levels did all they could to head off any more firestorms. People were out
there cutting brush with everything from axes and machetes to bulldozers equipped with heavy blades,
denuding hillsides, ripping out pretty but eminently flammable landscaping and replacing it with succulents
and beds of colored pebbles, control-burning everywhere they could safely do it, you name it, the combined
energy and will power invested in trying to fireproof the area would easily have gotten us to the
Andromeda Galaxy if it had been pointed at that goal!
And that was how it went for the next five years or so, between 2012 and 2017: highly motivated
armies of homeowners and forestry employees and local and state agencies all out there doing all the things
you’re supposed to do to prevent fires, zealously giving their all to the project. . . . And then, as always
happens, after no dangerous wildfires happened over those five years, people became complacent, and the
money that had been going into fire-prevention efforts carried out by those agencies was diverted to other
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things as politicians realized that wildfires weren’t an ISSUE any more, and brush began to creep up the
hillsides again. The homeowners, tired of those cacti and pretty pebbles, returned the lovely flower beds
and rhododendrons and flowering trees to their property, and by 2022, it was almost as bad here as it had
been just before the fires of 2012. An ‘extreme fire watch’ condition was declared in the first few days of
July 2022, with patrols and spotter planes everywhere, looking for outbreaks of fire, but of course they did
little good come July 16, what with all the panic and the ‘bursts’ throughout the Basin.”
In 2012 e.v., in a number of cases, rioting and other chaotic activities almost caused holocausts like
that which, ten years later, destroyed the Basin. However, in 2012 a nuclear war involving America hadn’t
broken out, nor were there other absolute strategic hindrances to bringing in help from outside, as there was
in 2022, so the worst didn’t happen then. There was no nuclear war, no real-world panic, and help from
outside could come into Los Angeles to supplement what the local fire departments and related agencies
were doing – and the latter were able to carry out their jobs because the Basin wasn’t in total gridlock.
Hour upon hour, whenever Bill or I were home, we sat in front of the TV, watching the news coverage
of the fires, or online, looking at videos of the destruction posted the same day it happened by countless
amateurs living in the area, unable to digest most of what we were seeing, feeling a terrible sense of
helplessness.

Details of 2012 – the panics over the end of the world, etc. – see 2012 articles and videos on both sides
of the “Is this the end of the world?” debate

2014

Professor Cziller dies; Bill and Batrix arrange for his burial and funeral.

2017

Pogey dies on August 30, 2017.

2022

The enormous firestorms of 2007, 2008, 2010, and 2012 should have been a warning to everyone that
water-tables in Southern California were dangerously depleted. They could have injected cleaned
wastewater into the ground in high-risk areas – Los Angeles had perfected the technology for cleaning
wastewater, and Bandini Fertilizer had for decades used solid material in sewage for making fertilizers
which they then sold at a good profit. But nobody thought of it – or if they did, nobody except firemen
listened to them, and those in high places didn’t listen to the firemen. And then came the firestorm that
destroyed the Basin, in part because of the Santa Ana winds, the terrible drought, and high aridity
everywhere, so that even the earth itself burned.
The days immediately preceding the War and the firestorm, as experienced by those in the Basin,
resembled nothing so much as the words of Frank Tilton, describing Peshtigo just before the great firestorm
of October 8, 1871: “Thus sped the days – fearful days – but they brought no relief. The sky was brass.
The earth was ashes.” (As quoted by Stephen Pyne in Fire in America, p. 199)
An “extreme fire danger” watch was out beginning in May 2022, persisting right up until July 16 of
that year, with patrols and spotter planes and drone overflights everywhere. But these did little good . . .

This enormous, bustling, thriving megacity, comprising countless thousands of home improvement
centers, nurseries, manufacturing centers, auto-body shops, gas stations, refineries, all replete with
flammable and explosive materials, was about to find out just how accurate “Never again!” might be.

Water: San Diego (nor any other place) doesn't get its water from the Colorado River. It is, however,
a Fleet base, and should have a nuclear reactor, or more than one such, providing power for water
desalinization, taking the seawater right from the Pacific for that purpose. I'd guess that started even before
the War, when Feather River water from Northern California became inadequate to supply the state's needs,
and the Colorado was already a deadly toxic soup nobody could use for irrigation or anything else.
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 Part 2: Apocalypse Now
The Two-Day War and
The Great Los Angeles Firestorm

Prologue

As Bill Jamieson discussed in his graduate thesis for his Masters of Science and Business
Administration at USC, a physical firestorm is a nearly perfect analogy for human violence. Bill: “A jihad
is a lynch-mob writ large – one which is, moreover, superfueled by ideological zealotry and sanctioned by a
supposed higher authority. Unlike mundane lynch-mobs and riots, in the aftermath of its violence, its
members thus feel no need to be ashamed of their actions during their part in the jihad, virtually
guaranteeing positive-feedback processes that will keep the jihad going until it has destroyed everything
available and dies for lack of “fuel.” It is therefore to an ordinary mob or gang of rioters what a firestorm
of the sort that ravaged the German cities of Dresden and Hamburg and the Japanese cities of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki during World War II, and Peshtigo, Wisconsin in 1871, is to a minor and easily extinguished
wildfire: pure chaos and horror incarnate as fire.
In that thesis Bill used Loki, the God of the fires necessary to the founding and growth of all human
civilization, as an example of humanity’s ambivalence about fire. Loki, for all His mischief, is nevertheless
Himself one of the Aesir, the Gods informing all civilization and dependent on it for Their very existence.
Other avatars of humanity’s love-hate affair with fire include Satan, God of Hellfire; Shaîtan, the Peacock
Archangel, embodied in the form of a gigantic jet of blazing natural gas erupting from a crack in the deserts
of Iraq, Whose people, the Yezidi, were considered the most terrifyingly able fighters of the Islamic world;
and other Gods associated with fire as necessary to civilization and/or destroyers of it. He discussed R. R.
McCammon’s 1987 novel Swan Song and the demon in it that tries to destroy the whole world by fire; that
novel’s literary architecture is exactly that of Dante’s Inferno, and the correspondences between the “jihad”
of the Army of Excellence, the demon’s delight in burning up everything, and the firestorms caused by the
Bomb as examples of the human collective unconscious’s recognition of the parallels between mob
violence/jihad and the destruction caused by fire/firestorms. He proposed the use of “backfires” in the form
of “controlled mobs” to extinguish wild (uncontrollable) mobs/jihads, showing that armies, police forces,
etc. are just such “controlled mobs,” at least in that context. The three things necessary for physical fire –
oxygen, fuel, and heat, in the correct proportions, have their analogs in the formation and fate of human
mobs, as do things that put out fire (extreme cold, smothering with water or crash foam, etc., running out of
fuel, etc.), such as establishment of martial law, tapering off of rewards for violence on the part of members
of a mob, reduction of levels of enthusiasm, etc.
Bill, who took his Bachelor’s degree in System Science at USC, with a minor an economics, then went
on to take his Masters in Systems Science and another in Business Administration at the same institution,
often compared fire to the less pleasant aspects of human moods and activities. His Master's thesis in
Systems Science, an analysis of the nearly exact analog of a physical firestorm to the sudden formation of
lynch-mobs, riots, jihads, and other violent human behavior, listed numerous striking similarities between
human-based systems and all other types of biological and ecological systems.
Bill discussed Loki, the God of the fires necessary to the founding and growth of all human
civilization, Who, for all his mischief, is nevertheless himself one of the Aesir, the Gods informing all
civilization and dependent on it for Their very existence; Satan, God of Hellfire; Shaîtan, the Peacock
Archangel, embodied in the form of a gigantic jet of blazing natural gas erupting from a crack in the deserts
of Iraq, Whose people, the Yezidi, were considered the most terrifyingly able fighters of the Islamic world
(after their conversion to Islam); and other Gods associated with fire as necessary to civilization and/or
destroyers of it. He discussed R. R. McCammon’s 1987 novel Swan Song and the demon in it that tries to
destroy the whole world by fire, the fact that its literary architecture is that of Dante’s Inferno, and the
correspondences between the “jihad” of the Army of Excellence, the demon’s delight in burning up
everything, and the firestorms caused by the Bomb as examples of the human collective unconscious’s
 Day of the Dragons
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recognition of the parallels between mob violence/jihad and the destruction caused by fire/firestorms. He
discussed the use of “backfires” in the form of “controlled mobs” to extinguish wild (uncontrollable)
mobs/jihads, showing that armies, police forces, etc. are just such “controlled mobs,” at least in that
context. The three things necessary for physical fire – oxygen, fuel, and heat, in the correct proportions –
have their analogs in the formation and fate of human mobs, as do things that put out fire (extreme cold,
smothering with water or crash foam, and lack of fuel), such as establishment of martial law, tapering off of
rewards for violence on the part of members of a mob, reduction of levels of enthusiasm, etc.
In his Masters thesis Bill said, “A jihad is a lynch-mob writ large – one which is, moreover,
superfueled by ideological zealotry and sanctioned by a supposed higher authority. Unlike mundane lynch-
mobs and riots, in the aftermath of its violence, its members thus feel no need to be ashamed of their
actions during their part in the jihad, virtually guaranteeing positive-feedback processes that will keep the
jihad going until it has destroyed everything available and dies of lack of ‘fuel.’ It is therefore to an
ordinary mob or gang of rioters what a firestorm of the sort that ravaged the German cities of Dresden and
Hamburg and the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, and Peshtigo,
Wisconsin in 1871, is to a minor and easily extinguished wildfire: pure chaos and horror incarnate as fire.”
When Bill and I and those who fled the Basin with us on that terrible day in July 2022 finally had the
time to relax and collect our wits, they found that if anything, Bill’s Masters Thesis had massively
understated the case for the worst of what both fire and human evil could do . . .

As Gess & Lutz’s Firestorm at Peshtigo says concerning scientist Increase Lapham’s analysis of that
firestorm after it was all over, there are three main types of variables involved in the formation of such a
storm: availability of fuel, which is easily calculable; temperature/aridity, ditto; and wind. Of the three,
wind is a wholly chaotic variable, in the scientific sense; it depends on a host of factors such as terrain,
moisture content, and so on, none of which are easily modeled – sort of the “3-body problem” of
meteorological and fire science.
Human violence, on the other hand, likewise depends on both easily predictable/measurable and
chaotic factors. The chaotic factors in question of course are those involved in information flow and
general communication among those involved in the violence, as well as between them and others, either
innocent bystanders or those who try to contain the violence, such as police. This is true of any incidence
of violence in any sociological and sociobiological context, from the simple exchange of harsh words that
goes no farther than up through fisticuffs exchanged by two individuals, murder, serial killings, mass
murder, and so on all the way up to global thermonuclear war and beyond, and from isolated pairs of
battling individuals up through communities and nations, all the way up to the world as a whole and
beyond.
Human violence has a ready esoteric analog in the form of the Element Fire; and communication's
esoteric analog is Air, or Wind.
Just as the degree to which the behavior of fire is predictable depends upon that to which the behavior
of wind and other volatile meteorological factors is predictable, so the degree to which the course of a
given incidence of violence is predictable depends on that to which communication factors and information
flow in the community in which the violence takes place is predictable. In other words, the relationship
between fire and wind is exactly that between human violence and human communication. That that is so
should make it easier to model that aspect of human behavior and its consequences entailed in violent
behavior of any kind among human beings.
I

Chapter 1: In a Dark Wood: Lucifer in Starlight

Lo giorno se n’andava, e l’aere bruno

toglieva li animai che sono in terra
da le fatiche loro; e io sol uno

m’apparecchiava a sostener la guerra

si del cammino e si de la pietate,
che ritrarrà la mente che non erra. . . . .
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Dante, The Divine Comedy,

Book I: The Inferno
Canto II: 1-6

On the evening of Friday, July 15, 2022, I read the last couple of pages of Daniel James Brown’s
Under a Flaming Sky: The Great Hinckley Firestorm of 1894, finishing the book. This was one of a
number of books I was using to prepare for a class on the history of the American Midwest I was to teach
the coming Fall Quarter. I’d read Denise Gess and William Lutz’s Firestorm at Peshtigo: A Town, Its
People, and the Deadliest Fire in American History the previous week, as well, and was planning to obtain
several other books having to do with the impact of great fires on the young nation as well as numerous
other nations down the ages, and the centrality of fire in all human cultures, to mine them for ideas and
inspiration, such as Stephen J. Pyne’s Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997) and his many other fine books on the subject. It was to be
a brand-new class in the UC system, a showcase class, and a tremendous test for me. If I could pull it off, it
would make my career, and catapult me onto the national stage as a scholar and academician. Fire, fire,
fire . . . I could almost hear the flames crackling all about me, smell and even taste the searing, acrid, soot-
and dust-filled air of a great fire filling all the world, as those who perished in those terrible fires must have
sensed in their last, horrific moments of life. Poor Bill – maybe I’d better take a break from all that
concentrated reading and thought about firestorms! He was becoming very worried for me, and I wasn’t
holding me end up when it came to chores and making our meals the way I should. A few days, maybe,
while Bill and I took a little vacation, go over to Santa Anita and watch the races, or just tour around and
see the sights, then finish up with a lovely day at Disneyland.
As I drifted off into slumber, my thoughts focused for a moment on a poem by George Meredith
quoted by James Brown at the beginning of Chapter 1 of Under a Flaming Sky, “Lucifer in Starlight”:

On a starr’d night Prince Lucifer uprose.

Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend
Above the rolling ball in cloud part screen’d,
Where sinners hugg’d their spectre of repose.
Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.
And now upon his western wing he lean’d,
Now his huge bulk o’er Afric’s sands careen’d,
Now the black planet shadow’d Arctic snows.
Soaring through wider zones that prick’d his scars
With memory of the old revolt from Awe,
He reach’d a middle height, and at the stars,
Which are the brain of heaven, he look’d, and sank
Around the ancient track march’d, rank on rank,
The army of unalterable law.*

*Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900. George
Meredith [1828–1909]. 776. Lucifer in Starlight)

My last thoughts before drifting off to sleep were of a vast, monstrous dark mass hovering over the
Basin, staring down at the city through enormous solar-yellow eyes with jet-black, star-shaped pupils,
aiming a fire-tipped spear at Los Angeles, preparing to hurl it into the heart of the city, the great crimson,
flame-fanged maw that gaped open below those terrifying eyes roaring with laughter as the demonic
apparition hurled its spear into the heart of the city . . .

Chapter 2: Highway to Hell

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§ 1: Rude Awakening

July 16, 2022

5: 30 a.m., Westwood Village, California:

“Batrix!”
“Mmmm?”
“Honey, wake up!”
Slowly, trying to blink the sleep out of my eyes, I stared up at Bill in the half-gloom of the early
Summer morning. Muzzily I mumbled something like “Time is it?”, preparing to turn over and go back to
sleep.
But Bill’s big hand clamped on my shoulder, preventing me from doing so. “Honey, you’ve got to get
up!” Bill told me. It was the note of alarm in his voice as much as anything else that kept me from falling
back to sleep. “Come on, now. – Here, listen to this.”
A moment later, not quite knowing how it had happened, still clad only in a thin nightie, I was on my
feet, standing before the little television set in our bedroom, wide awake and staring in horror at the screen.
“– just in,” the announcer was saying. His expression wasn’t just grave; it looked as if it had been
frozen in place with a shot of liquid helium, then dropped and shattered. Not physically, of course, but his
aura simply screamed horror, and his face, which should have been the same lovely mahogany as his
hands, was a dingy gray from shock. Shuffling papers laid out on the desk before him, not looking at them
for cues, but rather moving them around nervously with shaking hands as if for something reassuringly
normal to do, however minor, he said, in a voice like that of a man who had just witnessed a whole school
bus full of young children roar off a high cliff and burst into flames when it impacted the ground, “Word
has come from Denver, Colorado that early this morning, New York City and Washington, DC each
became the target of at least one and perhaps two 25-megatonne thermonuclear devices. These events took
place an hour or two after the impact of some sort of asteroid or comet off the coast of Maine at 2 a.m.
Eastern Standard Time . . .”
The screen divided in half. On the left was the announcer, describing, in a shaky voice like that of a
zombie, the unspeakable, unbelievable events that had impacted the world in the last six and a half hours;
and on the right were framed, one after the other, films taken of the events themselves.
“Six hours after a large asteroid impacted the nation’s east coast, triggering a tsunami of monstrous
proportions that ravaged not only our shores, but those of western Europe and Africa, causing a number of
shipwrecks, scuttling countless other vessels, and destroying the Grand Banks fisheries, the waters have
receded, leaving tens of millions dead, more tens of millions homeless, and the infrastructure of southern
New Brunswick and Nova Scotia as well as our coastal states from Maine to Massachusetts completely
destroyed . . .”
To the right of the announcer appeared overhead shots of America’s northern Atlantic coast. One after
another, views of what the announcer said were the eastern coastlines of Maine, New Hampshire, and
Massachusetts appeared on the screen beside the announcer. It was hard to tell what they were, not only
because they flipped by so quickly as the announcer struggled to tell the story coherently within a time-
frame of mere minutes, but because they had little or no resemblance to anything that either Bill or Batrix
knew of that region.
“Dear God, Batrix, look at that – that’s Boston, but it looks like – like the Devil himself sat down that
city! It looks like a big, messy tide-flat somewhere – there’s nothin’ there but mud an’ a jumble o’ junk!
You can’t even see there was ever a city there!” Bill said, his voice slightly hoarse from sheer horror.
Then a shot of Maine’s eastern coast evoked an inarticulate cry from me – like the shot of Boston a
moment before, all it showed was an endless panorama of slick mud, empty flats awash with water, and
some flotsam and jetsam that might once have been buildings – or open forest and brushland. Neither of
the two shots showed anything that looked alive, human or otherwise.
Then the picture on the right of the screen segued quickly into a night-shot in which a white pencil of
light spalling off sparks of white fire in wholesale lots extended from the heavens to the Earth within
seconds. It touched down at a place hidden by distance and intervening masses that might have been
mountains. There was a pause of two or three seconds – and then a much brighter beam of white light,
 Day of the Dragons
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straight as a ruler and emerging at a different angle than that which the first beam had made to the Earth,
shot back into the heavens, coruscant with polychrome lightning running up and down its length.
An overhead shot replaced that one, showing vast waves, their crests picked out brightly by the light of
the Moon overhead, racing east, north, and south from a night-dark coastline that should have been bright
with artificial lighting – and then, in turn, it was replaced by the image of a map showing the east coast of
North America and the Atlantic beyond, clear out to the British Isles and Europe. According to the
announcer, areas on the map that were colored red showed the places that had been washed clean by
gigantic tsunamis spawned by the bolide that had impacted off Maine at 2 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, just
a few hours before, while a small, star-shaped symbol indicated the place the bolide had touched down.
Bill and I moaned simultaneously – that point was almost due south of the Bay of Fundy, and the great
masses of scarlet blotching the map covered everything from southern New Brunswick and all of Nova
Scotia down to Cape Cod.
“We have just been notified that the United States has officially moved to a military configuration of
Defcon One and that a state of war now exists between us, the People’s Republic of China, and the Soviet
Union – but apparently Congress has either not yet issued a declaration of war, or hasn’t yet notified us of
that fact. However, when Congress will do that is . . .” As the map disappeared from the screen and was
replaced by another one showing the Mid-Atlantic and Southern states down through the Florida Keys, the
announcer, his face so grey now it was a wonder he hadn’t passed out, drew a shaky hand over his eyes.
Obviously fighting to get his emotions under control, he said, dropping his hand and recommencing the
shuffling of the papers in front of him on the desk, “As you can see from the new map now on the screen,
other events have . . . enormously complicated the . . . constitutional processes of . . . of government.
The . . . the black stars on the adjoining map indicate where . . . indicate areas which, earlier this morning,
have been targeted by thermonuclear devices of sizes which have not yet been determined, but which had
to have been very large, at least 20 or 30 megatons apiece . . .”
On the map, the largest of the black stars was centered over what had to be – or once have been –
Washington,. DC. The second-largest, according to the legend on the large yellow arrow that pointed to the
star, was centered on New York City. Another, smaller one marked the grave of what had once been
Miami, Florida. The announcer said, his voice as grey as his face, “The first such device or devices,
comprising somewhere between 20 and 25 megatons of explosive power, targeted New York City, hit at 3:
30 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, or 12: 30 a.m. Pacific Time. The second, a MIRVed missile which hit its
target, Washington, DC, only a few minutes later, at 3: 35 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, comprised at least
50 megatons. The third targeted Miami, Florida, d-d- . . “ He stopped for a moment to regather his self-
control, then continued: “The third, which targeted Miami, Florida, detonated at 6: 35 a.m. Eastern Time,
with a force of, of 25 megatons. It is thought that that last bomb had entered the Port of Miami in the hold
of a ship of some sort; the characteristics of the blast, as determined from satellite photos and other
sources, rule out an airburst, clearly showing that that device had to have been detonated at ground level,
which is not a characteristic of missile-launched nuclear attacks. . . .”
Now, one after another, the right half of the screen showed the results of those attacks – the smoke-
covered island of Manhattan, shifting rents in the smoke temporarily exposing the cherry-red and solar-
yellow wounds in the burning city; the vast, fiery crater that had been the nation’s capital, blazing so
brightly in places that the smoke couldn’t compete with the fires that generated them, dispersed on hot
winds to the four quarters of the world before they could congregate above the Gehenna in which millions
of citizens and the nerve-center of a great nation had been cremated by an ICBM missile; the blazing
column of fire that served as the grave-marker of Miami, which had been one of the great hubs of economic
and political power of the Caribbean.
“Nor,” said the announcer, staring down at his hands, still aimlessly shuffling papers on the desk,
“have we on the West Coast been spared the, the winds of war.
“Somewhere between 4: 30 and 5: 00 a.m. this morning – we are still working to narrow that down,
and will soon be able to give the exact time – an . . . an event took place in Puget Sound, Western
Washington, the result of which was the eruption of . . . Geologists are beginning the call it one of the
largest volcanic eruptions of all time,” he said, unaware of dropped phrases and other narrative problems.
And why not? The pictures now appearing to his right told most of the story for him.
On the screen was something that might have been taken of the Moon from lunar orbit – except that
the Moon didn’t glow with its own light, and wasn’t almost entirely covered with a shroud of clouds. This
did, and was. The screen showed a vast area which, though heavily overcast, was brilliantly lit here and
 Day of the Dragons
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there with the hotly burning reds, flaming cadmium, and blazing yellow-white of great fires, or perhaps
burning lava flows.
“According to incoming reports,” said the announcer in that horrible greenish-grey voice, “the cities of
Corvallis and Salem, Oregon are now virtually nothing but blazing rubble, victims of massive quakes that
struck the Pacific Northwest right after the . . . event. Although odd quirks of the shock of the quake
somehow left some buildings standing even there, subsequent fires starting as a result of the quake as well
as red-hot debris from the disaster in the Puget Sound area have begun growing into what threatens to
become a firestorm sweeping through much of that state. President Gebhardt, who was in Seattle at the
time, campaigning for fellow Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell, who . . . was running for another term in
the Senate, is presumed to have been lost in the catastrophe, as are Senators Cantwell and Wallace, several
members of the House of Representatives, and numerous others with them. So far the exact whereabouts of
Vice-President Sharpton, who is currently on a fact-finding tour in sub-Saharan Africa, still hasn’t been
determined, and there have been no communications from him in the last several hours . . .”
As he talked, the view on the screen behind him continuously changed as satellite cameras swept
across the blasted, blazing terrain, gradually revealing a panorama of Hell itself that covered everything
from the northern reaches of Vancouver Island, BC to Vancouver, Washington. Vast clouds of roiling
steam and heavy overcast covered most of the region, but between gaps in the clouds, especially over the
western portions of Washington State, there could be seen blazing-red and bright yellow spots testifying to
what must have been enormous fountains and floods of lava. Nothing at all could be seen of Puget Sound,
which was probably obscured by the rolling cloud-packs and fogs formed of the water from its basin that
had been boiled away by magma.
“The . . . event was . . . was the result of what seems to have been the detonation of a 25-megaton
thermonuclear device at sea-level in Puget Sound. Like the device that destroyed Miami, Florida 55
minutes before it, this one probably entered Puget Sound and tied up at dockside in Seattle, Washington,
the day before. When it was set off, it is now thought, the force of the blast, directed straight downward,
punched a hole into an arm of the great magma chambers extending westward from Mt. Rainier and other
volcanoes in the Cascade range of mountains that extended some distance beneath Puget Sound. The . . .
the cold waters of Puget Sound, falling into the hole, hit the white-hot rocks of the mantle, and . . . and . . .
The scientists call it ‘sublimation,’ the near-instantaneous conversion of liquid water to steam. When
masses of water that large sublimate all at once, the result is a vast explosion – in fact, geologists say that it
was this sort of phenomenon that caused the tremendous explosion of the volcano Tambora in 1815, far
larger than the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, which . . .”
On and on the announcer went, describing the inconceivable event that had destroyed Western
Washington an hour and a half earlier. Suddenly, in the midst of his slow, carrion-voiced, almost
poetically-cadenced recounting of the death of Western Washington State, the room and everything in it
was caught up in the monstrous fist of a strong earthquake, shimmying like a belly-dancer on a week-long
meth binge.
Reaching out to grab the TV and keep it from falling off its rack, Bill wrapped his other arm around
me, keeping me on my feet and shielding me from falling objects with his own body until the shaking
finally stopped. The quake lasted at least two minutes, and by the end of it numerous objects within our
apartment had dropped to the floor, the bookcases in the front room, utensils and canned goods out in the
kitchen, pictures and photos in the frames on the wall, some of them shattering as they hit. Out in the
kitchen we could hear that leaky faucet we’d been complaining about for a month to the owner of our
building spraying water into the sink – the gasket had finally given up completely under the strain of the
quake.
The electricity was still on, however, and the TV continued to play. The program we were watching
was a local news show on KTLA, which got feeds from CBS, CNN, and C-SPAN, and the announcer, Ron
Westminster, a local man whom we recognized from previous news broadcasts, had himself just ridden out
the same earthquake that had shaken us up – the papers on his desk were mostly gone, a nearby chair lay on
its back, castors in the air, and a great crack ran through the lower part of the plastic framing of the wall
behind him. The split in the screen was gone; there was only the announcer and, on the wall behind him, a
panoramic display of a map of Western Washington and, beside it, in full, glorious color, such as it was,
images of the devastated landscape of Western Washington.
Suddenly the announcer broke down completely, wracking sobs convulsing his body. Finally, looking
up at the camera again, he went on, with great difficulty: “It’s . . . it’s gone! It’s all gone! Seattle is . . .
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gone. All of Western Washington is gone, all the way from Bellingham to Vancouver! Vancouver, BC,
and Victoria are . . . are gone, too. Tacoma, Everett, Port Townsend, Yakima, Wenatchee, Bremerton – it’s
all gone! Gone!”
His hands still trembling badly, slowly the announcer turned and, pointing up at the great screen
behind and above his desk, he said, “This is what just came in via satellite reconnaissance photos, a few
minutes ago . . . ”
“Oh, shit!” Bill hissed, unthinkingly drawing in a breath.
“What is it?” I asked in a shaky voice. “That looks like pictures I’ve seen of Volcanoes Park in Hawaii
–”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the commentator was saying, “what you see there on the screen above me,
here, is . . . what is left of Western Washington and the southwestern tip of Canada after that, ah,
thermonuclear device was detonated in Puget Sound, resulting in a, a tremendous volcanic explosion
involving the entire area. This is . . . this is a . . . all that’s left of Western Washington is . . . a crater . . . ”
Then he did break down completely, unable to go on any longer. As he stood there sobbing, another,
older man came into the room and, gently taking the younger man’s arm and steering him off camera as he
sobbed brokenly, returned, taking a seat at the desk before the camera.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, his deep voice husky with emotion, from time to time glancing at
notes he held in one hand, “I’m Paul Robards of KTLA television news, taking over for Ron Westminster,
the young man who has just left. Please excuse him – several of his friends and colleagues – and mine –
were living in the Seattle area at the time the . . . disaster occurred.
“To fill in for those of you who have just tuned in, a few minutes ago a strong earthquake shook the
Los Angeles area and the rest of Southern California. Initially estimated to be about 6.5 on the Richter
earthquake scale in the first few minutes after the quake, this quake is now believed by scientists at the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California to have been the ‘daughter’ of a far larger one
that took place at about 4: 30 a.m. Pacific Standard Time this morning, roughly two and a quarter hours
ago. That quake, the epicenter of which was somewhere between Puget Sound and Mt. Rainier in
Washington State, had a magnitude exceeding 9.0 on the Richter Scale. Exactly how great that earlier
quake was, we are not yet sure, and may never be, because of the difficulties involved in measurements of
its magnitude due to the particular nature of the quake. In addition to everything else, due to rebound and
ricochet of the energies of the first quake throughout the crust and mantle of the Earth, in nearby states and
Canada a number of such ‘daughter’ quakes were generated. These quakes, taking place at varying times
depending on the nature of the bedrock and the mantle under the regions in which they occurred as well as
distance from Washington State, where the first one occurred, had magnitudes ranging from 3.1 near San
Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico to over 8.0 in places in Northern California, Idaho, Oregon,
Montana, Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, and Canada. (By the way, this morning’s original earthquake in the
Pacific Northwest was apparently unrelated to the impact of an asteroid a kilometer in diameter slightly
east of Liverpool, Nova Scotia at about 2 a.m. East Coast time this morning, more on which shortly.)
“Damage estimates as far south as Southern California and as far east as Colorado so far indicate that
even that far away, the earthquake and the ‘daughter’ quakes it eventually spawned did as much damage as
a quake in the 5.0-6.5 ranges. And in Northern California, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana, the impact of the
initial quake itself, felt even at that distance, was at least that of a 7.8-8.5 earthquake. In the latter areas,
whole forests were knocked down by the shock, while cities such as Redding and Yreka in Northern
California now look as if they had suffered a quake of the magnitude of the San Francisco Earthquake of
1906. According to all reports, the cities of Corvallis and Salem, Oregon are virtually nothing but flaming
rubble; although odd quirks of the shock of the quake somehow left some buildings standing even there,
subsequent fires starting as a result of the quake as well as red-hot debris from the disaster in the Puget
Sound area have begun growing into what threatens to become a firestorm sweeping through much of that
state.”
As he talked, the view on the screen behind him continuously changed as satellite cameras swept
across the blasted, blazing terrain, gradually revealing a panorama of Hell itself that covered everything
from the northern reaches of Vancouver Island, BC to Vancouver, Washington. Vast clouds of roiling
steam and heavy overcast covered most of the region, but between gaps in the clouds, especially over the
western portions of Washington State, there could be seen blazing-red and bright yellow spots testifying to
what must have been enormous fountains and floods of lava. Nothing at all could be seen of Puget Sound,
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which was probably obscured by the rolling cloud-packs and fogs formed of the water from its basin that
had been boiled away by magma.
“The quake and even some of its aftershocks were felt as far away as Beijing in the People’s Republic
of China,” the commentator continued, “and citizens of St. Louis, Missouri report that objects fell off
shelves and some structures collapsed in their city at the time the shockwaves reached them. Enormous
tsunamis – tidal waves – are now streaking across the Pacific Basin at up to 400-600 miles per hour, and
are expected to impact on the coasts of Japan and Hawaii within a few hours, with enormous damage to
property expected. These areas are now being efficiently evacuated, though, so loss of life there should be
minimal.”
Now the hellish panorama on the screen behind the commentator was replaced by a 3-D schematic
diagrams depicting Puget Sound, a nearby, semi-dormant volcano, and the crust and mantle around and
below the volcano. As the commentator talked, the diagram continuously evolved in tandem to give a
graphic picture of what he was talking about. The volcano was not in eruption, but the diagram showed a
magma chamber below it in which magma was continuously boiling due to convection currents, and the
colors of the diagram indicated the extreme heat of the magma in the chamber. The volcano itself was
labeled “Mt. Rainier.”
“You see, the quake itself was apparently the result of a much greater catastrophe, one which was
triggered by the detonation of a thermonuclear device in Puget Sound, close to Seattle, northwest of Mt.
Rainier, located right above a long arm of the great magma chambers which provide magma to all the
Cascade volcanoes, including Rainier itself. At this time it is believed by military experts that the device
had entered Puget Sound in the hold of a Chinese supertanker which had docked there to offload cargo and
take on supplies, but that hasn’t as yet been confirmed.”
Now the diagram on the screen showed an object sitting in Puget Sound, represented by a circle
labeled “device,” and an arrow pointing straight down at the bottom of the sound, labeled “direction of
force.” The circle suddenly erupted in an enormous starburst, giving off a great shower of rays, many of
whom went straight down to the bottom of the sound and beyond, into Mt. Rainier’s enormous magma
chambers. “Because of that explosion, which injected a tremendous amount of energy into the magma
chambers below Mount Rainier, Rainier and Mt. Baker, another active and potentially very dangerous
volcano, exploded cataclysmically in simultaneous eruptions which made even bigger cracks in the floor of
Puget Sound than those made by the original thermonuclear burst. The ice-cold waters of Puget Sound,
rushing into those cracks, encountered the white-hot magma in the magma-chambers fueling those two
volcanoes, which extend far below the ground all the way from the Cascades to well beyond the eastern
shore of Puget Sound.” The diagram, which had expanded to show that the volcano was situated on a long
ridge of land or massif which also included a number of other volcanoes to the north and south of the first
one, now clearly showed all of Puget Sound. West of the massif, the huge body of water was flanked east
and west by mainland and a peninsula. At the detonation of the thermonuclear device in the Sound, the
volcano erupted violently by way of reaction, apparently in reaction to sharp, extreme compression of the
magma in the western side of the massif by the horrendous shock-wave generated by the thermonuclear
strike. A gigantic crack was suddenly shown snaking out from somewhere near the western flank of Mount
Rainier, through the massif and out under the waters of Puget Sound. Now the diagram began to shrink
until it focused exclusively on that appalling crack, into which the waters of the Sound began to flow.
“When the waters of Puget Sound hit the magma below, they sublimated, that is, instantly flash-boiled,
turned into inconceivably hot vapor.“ On the screen, the animated diagram showed that as the waters of the
Sound contacted the white-hot magma below, they suddenly turned into a great cloud which, rising off the
magma, began fountaining back up through the crack through which the water had come. “The vapor,
under enormous pressure due both to its temperature and the vast tonnage of water that entered the magma-
chambers all at once, exploded with a force that has been calculated to lie somewhere in the gigaton range
or beyond, that is, to be equivalent to the force released by the explosion of several billion tons of
thermonuclear bombs.” Now, in the diagram on the screen, the land overlying the mantle peeled outward
due to the force of the exploding steam, and all of Puget Sound and much of the land around it disappeared
in the blast. The land all around it began shaking and grinding as the mantle below started to bounce,
reacting to the blast. Again the diagram expanded, now showing the areas surrounding the Cascades,
finally including all the land from southwestern Canada and portions of Alaska to Northern California,
north to south, and from the Pacific Ocean to western Montana, east to west. Concentric circles, their
epicenter on Western Washington, representing the first quake, began to expand outward so that all the
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surrounding areas were touched by them; new sets of concentric circles, their epicenters scattered all
across that vast territory, began to expand as well, representing the numerous quakes set off by the first one.
Clearing his throat with difficulty and running a long, slender brown hand through his close-cropped,
graying hair, the commentator continued, “According to the scientists at the California Institute of
Technology, the force of the explosion was so great that it may have ruptured a portion of the westernmost
boundary of the North American plate, the tectonic plate extending beneath the Pacific Northwest as well
as most of the rest of the continental United States, Canada, and Mexico.” Now the screen showed a
wedge-shaped cross-sectional diagram of the Earth’s interior from core to crust that included most of the
Pacific Northwest. On it, the great plate, labeled “North American Plate” in the diagram, upon which most
of the North American continent is sited, rafting on it across the incandescent material of the mantle below,
showed a deep crack running from the crust near the Pacific Coast of what had been Washington State
down almost to the upper mantle. From that crack spewed a continuous fountain of lava, and force-rings
expanded from it to represent the earthquake set off by its formation. “It is known that tremendous,
incandescent fountains of rapidly flowing lava – what magma is called once it has emerged from beneath
the earth – along with enormous outbursts of poisonous gases, ash, and huge chunks of red-hot rock called
‘lava bombs’ are continuing to erupt from the . . . wounded lands into which Western Washington and
adjacent portions of Canada have been so suddenly transformed. At this time, those eruptions show no
signs of abating; indeed, in some areas they are increasing in violence, and new ones have been
continuously manifesting over the last half hour, according to US Air Force and Geophysical Survey
reports.
“As a result, nearly all of Western Washington State, like much of that state east of the Cascade
mountain range and the southwestern portions of British Columbia, has become one vast volcanic crater, a
highly active one which is continuously spewing out uncounted tons of lava, ash, toxic vapors, and lava-
bombs from countless vents.” Now the screen began to show more satellite photos and films of the blasted
lands that had been Washington State, from a somewhat different perspective than the original series.
These, according to the accompanying subtitles, showed the land around Yakima, Washington, where the
cloud-cover was thinner than that over Western Washington. Great smoking fumaroles had opened in the
earth in the area where Yakima had been; nothing remained of that city, which had been turned into a
jumbled holocaust reminiscent of scenes from Threads, the BBC production on nuclear war and its
aftermath. “The earthquake generated by the simultaneous eruptions of Mt. Baker and Mt. Rainier and,
perhaps, smaller vents between them, together with its numerous ‘daughter’ quakes, has left much of
Oregon, Idaho, Eastern Washington, Southern Canada, Montana, and even Northern California devastated
wastelands.” Now the view on the screen changed again, showing both satellite and aerial flyover shots of
those states. From great old-growth trees in the forest of Oregon brought low by the quakes to flattened,
burning, or flooded cities in Oregon, Idaho, and California, the screen showed unrelieved destruction. “In
those areas, where countless people have died and a tremendous number of homes and business have been
destroyed, huge regions have suffered catastrophic flooding due to the breaking-down of dams and dikes,
and enormous forest-fires have already begun to sweep through those areas which were not initially badly
harmed by the quake. Other volcanoes in the Cascade volcanic chain are now showing imminent signs of
eruption, including Mt. Shasta in Northern California, and Mt. Hood and Mt. Helens in Oregon.
“Tens of thousands of now-homeless refugees, enormous numbers of them badly injured, are now
trying to evacuate to safer areas, but because so many roads have been destroyed by the quakes and, closer
to Western Washington, covered by debris due to the torrential outpouring of material from the huge crater
there, it may be impossible for a great many of them to reach relatively safe shelter any time soon. Army,
Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps air transports and Coast Guard surface craft are on their way to the
stricken areas to try to air-lift the survivors out, or bring them away by ship; at this time we have no idea
how successful they are likely to be in this operation.
“In addition to other factors complicating search-and-rescue efforts and attempts to determine the exact
details of the current situation in the Pacific Northwest and surrounding areas, one of the disastrous side-
effects of the catastrophic explosion in the Puget Sound area has added an almost insupportable burden to
those attempting such operations. That is the EMP – Electro-Magnetic Pulse – generated by the explosion
itself, which was several orders of magnitude greater than even the largest thermonuclear weapons
available today in the world’s nuclear stockpiles. The disturbances generated by the subsequent eruptions
of Mt. Rainier and Mt. Baker and the collapse of the Cascade volcanic massif generated their own EMPs,
as well. The initial, enormous electromagnetic pulse knocked out all electronic media for hundreds of
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miles around Western Washington, effectively frying the circuits of all electronic equipment in those areas
not hardened against EMPs or protected by several layers of non-conducting, insulating material. The
eruptions that followed almost immediately added to this effect, as well as filling the upper layers of the
atmosphere with countless tons of highly ionized debris. That debris is still interfering heavily with radio
and television transmission in areas as far from Washington State as Newfoundland, Canada, Mexico City,
and even the Hawaiian Islands, and will probably continue to do so for quite a while. Those of you who
use cable television and radio services should have no problem with reception of broadcasts from areas
widely removed from the blast and eruption site, as long as their stations transmit via cable. But for at least
the next several weeks, those who are trying to access the media via broadcast signals may find that at best
reception will be chancy and poor. The combination of these two effects – the EMP generated by the initial
thermonuclear strike in Puget Sound, which was almost instantly followed by the far greater eruption in
that area which it triggered and the EMP that gave rise to; and interference with broadcast reception due to
highly ionized material injected into the upper layers of the Earth’s atmosphere by the eruptions of the
Cascade volcanoes early this morning – has seriously crippled this country’s communications industry, and
is making it extremely hard, if not impossible, to gather and communicate data about what has happened in
Washington State.
“Even telephone services, many of which depend heavily upon satellite relays for long-distance calls
of all kinds, especially those involving the Internet, have been seriously disrupted. Though the satellites
themselves orbit our world far above the atmosphere, and so do not come anywhere near the debris from
the volcanoes, transmissions between them and the surface that come through such debris are garbled and
static-filled – or completely blocked, not getting through at all. Thus even telephone services are suffering
from the effects of this morning’s disaster. This is especially true of areas relatively close to Western
Washington, where most telephone circuits have been partially or completely knocked out by the EMPs
generated by the disaster.
“So for those trying to call or email relatives, friends, or colleagues in or near the Seattle area, please,
please, please desist from doing so until informed that it is all right to do so by authorities. Already
functioning telephone circuits are so overloaded by attempts of people around the world to contact loved
ones in or near the Pacific Northwest that even in areas as far away as Mexico City, New York City,
London, and Tel Aviv, switchboards and relays are hopelessly jammed, and normal communications of any
kind are virtually impossible. Ham radio operators are having marginally better luck, but the atmosphere
above most of the Pacific Northwest is now so hopelessly fouled with radioactive, highly ionized debris
that radio communication to and from anywhere near that area is essentially impossible. For more detailed
reports on that situation, we will have to wait until observers from the various armed services and other
government agencies are able to report back and we receive word of what they have learned.
“In the meantime, do not try to drive into or near the stricken areas if you live outside them! Do not
try to call into the area, or even to send emails to people there. All you will succeed in doing in the first
case is put yourself in danger, and risk arrest by armed services personnel now being airlifted to the areas
surrounding the devastated regions in order to control entrance to them. And as far as trying to
communicate directly with any survivors in the area, all you can do is make the already terminally
overloaded telephone networks even more so, with no hope of learning anything useful as a result.
“And . . .” Suddenly the sheen of tears shone in his eyes. Closing his eyes for a moment, he took a
deep breath, bowed his head for a moment as if in prayer, gathered himself together with great effort, and
went on: “As for the rest of the country, in addition to understandable panic and distress over what has
occurred here on our coast, an as-yet unknown number of cities have been the targets of attacks by enemies
whose identity is, as yet, undetermined, though informed sources believe it may be the People’s Republic
of China and her allies.
“Yet during the last five hours or so, China herself seems to have been the target of an unknown
number of nuclear and thermonuclear strikes, as well as biowarfare and chemical attacks, and attacks with
conventional weapons. It is not yet known which countries initiated these attacks.
“The same is true of the Soviet Union, the European Union, and a number of Middle Eastern countries.
Understandably all of this has added greatly to the confusion as well as to communication problems
everywhere. More on that later.
“Closer to home,” he said, taking a deep breath, “large areas of Oregon, California, Utah, Idaho,
Nevada, and even Arizona and New Mexico have sustained tremendous damage as a result of the quakes
attending the eruptions of the various Cascade-range volcanoes. A tsunami alert has been issued for the
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entire western coastline of North America and Mexico. Southern California may or may not be protected
from the expected tsunamis by the Channel Islands lying just off the Southern California coast, but the rest
of the coastline is definitely vulnerable to them, and strong efforts are now being made to evacuate those
areas.” Now the screen presented a diagram of a large-scale meteorological system whose progressive
evolutions illuminated the commentator’s next remarks.
“Understandably, the weather-patterns of this continent are going to be strongly affected by . . . by all
this,” he said, carefully wiping off the sweat beading his forehead with a large handkerchief, which he then
neatly folded and put back in his shirt-pocket, as if the manual exercise helped keep his mind on an even
keel. “Torrential rains are already pouring onto the ruined slopes of the Olympic Mountains, which
shielded the coastal areas of Washington State to some extent from the gargantuan blast, and are inundating
northern Oregon as well. This gives an extreme likelihood of tremendous flooding of those areas in the
very near future, with subsequent loss of life among the few survivors of the earthquakes that have ripped
through that region, and destruction of whatever property was not previously destroyed by those quakes.
The clouds, which are rapidly expanding and moving, are expected to cover all of Oregon state, Northern
California, and much of the rest of the Pacific Northwest within two to three hours.
“According to current scientific understanding, volcanic eruptions liberate enormous amounts of water
in the form of water-vapor, and between that water-vapor and the tremendous tonnage of ash, dust, and
gases that have been blown into the atmosphere by the eruption, rain-clouds extending hundreds of miles in
all directions will soon be drenching much of the western United States, and will continue to do so into the
indefinite future. In fact, many scientists predict that this could be the beginning of a new Ice Age, due to
the formation of massive amounts of ice crystals high in the atmosphere as a byproduct of the eruption –
‘volcano winter’ or, perhaps we should say, ‘nuclear winter,’ the term coined by scientist Carl Sagan and
his colleagues for the likely results of a thermonuclear war.
“In the meantime, Alaska, which was also rocked by the quake and its aftershocks, may be the next
area to feel the hammerblow of catastrophic volcanic eruptions. Its own volcanoes, already active, are now
threatening to erupt at any time, a phenomenon apparently triggered by the earthquakes which struck that
state earlier this morning. Local, state, and federal officials are now preparing to evacuate as many citizens
as possible from Alaska, but, again, that effort may be foredoomed to failure as a result of the tremendous
disruptions of transportation and communications throughout the West, and the tsunamis and storms now
turning the Pacific Ocean off the Alaskan coast into a maelstrom.
“However, ladies and gentlemen, as bad as this all has been so far, it . . . pales into insignificance
compared to the catastrophe which has befallen our East Coast.
“We don’t as yet have all the details of what has happened there, but so far this is the information we
have:
“At 2 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time this morning (or 11 p.m. Pacific last night on our coast) a nickel-iron
asteroid about half a kilometer in diameter fell into the ocean just off the coast of Maine, slightly south of
the mouth of the Bay of Fundy, just east of the edge of the continental shelf. Apparently it ultimately
impacted the join of the abyssal plain, the deep-sea area two miles below sea-level that begins where the
continental shelf ends, and the continental shelf itself, burrowing deep into the material of the continental
shelf. The impactor generated an initial wave at least 700 meters high, and triggered a tsunami with a fetch
or height of as much as 28 kilometers which effectively destroyed coastal Maine, Nova Scotia, and
southern New Brunswick. The impactor itself didn’t do nearly as much damage to the coast of Europe,
because the resulting tsunamis were lensed mostly to the south, southwest, and southeast by the topography
of the seafloor in the immediate impact zone. But marine travel throughout the Northern Atlantic has been
completely disrupted, and there has been tremendous damage everywhere where the tsunamis generated by
the impact have touched land. Even Northern Atlantic coastal areas shielded to some extent from the
tsunamis by the fortuitous impact of the asteroid at the foot of America’s eastern continental shelf have
suffered great damage, while those not so shielded have been completely devastated. It is not known for
sure at this time whether the impact was an entirely natural event or the result of deliberate human
sabotage; the Department of Defense and the Federal Emergency Management Authority haven’t yet
released any information as to the nature of its cause.
“We have heard that due to the current emergency, early this morning the family of the President of the
United States have been evacuated to a safe shelter located somewhere in Delaware. Many surviving
members of the Supreme Court, Congress, and the President’s cabinet have likewise been taken to places of
safety. More details on the whereabouts of our top officials as soon as we have them.
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“The impact on the East Coast of that asteroid and the catastrophic damage it has caused to countries
bordering both sides of the Atlantic are in addition to the more conventional military strikes against our
cities on the eastern seaboard and further inland, which have been many and grievous. As soon as we have
more information on the events that have taken place on our East Coast since late last night, we will present
it to you here. In the meantime, please do not try to telephone loved ones in those areas! FEMA and local
emergency services are having tremendous communication problems due to attempts by people everywhere
to make calls to that area. For similar reasons, all commercial travel by air and railway has been suspended
for the duration of the emergency, and it is strongly advised by both local, state, and federal government
agencies that travel in any form be avoided at all costs except in cases of all-out emergency. This includes
travel by automobile and local mass-transit, as well. So unless you absolutely have to go somewhere,
please stay where you are at the present time and do not attempt to travel elsewhere, or make telephone
calls other than locally, and only then in case of emergency!
“In the meantime, according to volcanologists who have been studying Mt. Rainier and other Cascade
volcanoes over the past decade or so, before the horrifying events of this morning, both Mt. Rainier and Mt.
Baker, which is located near Bellingham, Washington, had already been in the process of heating up,
becoming active and potentially very dangerous. These two volcanoes were connected with each other and
the other volcanoes of the Cascade chain by one enormous massif which, extending from the Canadian
border to Mt. Shasta in Northern California, contains the great chambers of magma or incandescent rock
fueling all these volcanoes. Thus the dynamics of Rainier and Baker were interlinked with and affected by
those of all their sister volcanoes in the chain. According to geophysicist Dr. Evans Lichter of the
California Institute of Technology, at least potentially, every mountain in the long Cascade mountain range
is a volcano, though most have either been dormant for millennia or are currently quiescent – or, at least,
were quiescent, up until early this morning. So it isn’t surprising that the explosion of Mt. Rainier this
morning triggered the simultaneous eruptions of Mt. Baker and, it appears now, several of the mountains in
between Baker and Rainier.” Now the screen showed a general schematic of the whole Cascade mountain
range, with its several distinctive volcanoes, the great magma-chambers shown below ground-level, all
interlinked in one enormous underground system.
“As previously mentioned, the detonation of the thermonuclear bomb in Puget Sound this morning
caused a huge rupture in the layers of earth and rock underneath the Sound, the frigid waters of which
immediately rushed in to fall upon the white-hot magma below in Rainier’s magma chambers, which
extend all the way from the Cascades clear out to and beneath the Sound. Upon hitting the magma, the
superheated water at once flash-boiled, causing a far greater explosion. That explosion left virtually all of
Western Washington and the southwesternmost portions of Canada a vast, fiery ruin of jumbled, ash-
covered rock, boiling lava, and smoking vents emitting gases so poisonous that scientific observers dare not
approach within ten miles of even those they could manage to get to overland or observe from aircraft.
Tsunamis generated by that enormous explosion are now sweeping the Pacific, threatening communities
from the Bering Straits in the north to Japan and Siberia in the east and the various islands of Polynesia in
the south. As a result of the explosion, enormous quantities of extremely dangerous chemicals such as
hydrofluoric acid may have been released into Puget Sound, which would render it a lifeless death-trap for
anyone foolish or unlucky enough to enter it, should there be anyone left alive in that area to do so. Lake
Washington and many of the other beautiful lakes of Washington State almost certainly no longer exist in
any form, as is true of many of the waterways of northern Oregon. The Columbia River cannot be seen on
any of our satellite photos, though of course that area is now covered by clouds and it may be that the river
is only hidden, not gone. And the beautiful wild coastlands of Washington State, and the lovely beaches of
northern Oregon, are now half- or wholly destroyed by the disaster, nothing but desolate jumbles of rock
and sand, the debris of homes and businesses, smashed boats, corpses of all descriptions.
“Alaska’s indigenous volcanoes are also now threatening to erupt, probably as a result of the
tremendous quakes that have rocked the Pacific Northwest and western Canada as a result of the
Rainier/Baker disaster. Southern California and many other portions of the American Southwest have
likewise been hit by strong quakes, causing tremendous damage and much loss of life, though not nearly as
much as the devastation of Oregon, Northern California, Idaho, and western Montana due to the explosion
of Washington’s volcanoes. The whole world is reeling from the shock of this disaster together with the
one that struck our east coast late last night. The destruction of Western Washington is expected to
permanently damage or destroy Pacific-Rim trade and industries of all kinds, while the legacy of the
disaster on our east coast will very likely be the devastation of both our economy and that of Europe. In
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response, the stock market is expected to show a tremendous drop as of this coming Monday evening, the
18th of July, though it is still too soon to tell, especially because Wall Street . . . is no longer . . . there.”
Now the commentator, looking as if his tie were close to strangling him, loosened it and then, pulling it
from his neck with one impatient jerk of his hand, laid it down on the desk in front of him. There were now
huge, dark sweat-rings under his arms, staining his initially pristine, well-starched light-blue, short-sleeved
shirt. Behind and above him, comsat views of the Pacific Northwest played across the giant screen there, a
study in the Day After Armageddon. For a moment he paused, bowing his head with his steepled hands
raised almost to his chin, again as if he were praying. Then, looking up at the camera again, he continued:
“We are still trying to get more information on the catastrophe that has taken place off our New
England coast, and on the various strikes on our cities and those of many other nations in the last six to
eight hours or so. We will share with our audience all the information we have on these and other relevant
matters as soon as we have it. In the meantime, let us not give way to panic, which would make an already
explosively dangerous situation much worse than it now is. Please, please, please do not try to call into,
travel to, or send email to the Pacific Northwest, including western Canada! This station, like all others,
will keep you informed with whatever news we have from that area as soon as we receive it. There is
nothing to be gained by trying to obtain it on your own. If authorities require your aid in evacuating any of
the affected areas, or to help with survivors and cleaning up after the aftermath of the disaster that has
befallen us, please do all you can to cooperate with them! For now, our government is doing all it can to
deal with the present emergency, and we will keep you appraised of any developments as they occur. . . .”

§ 2: Saddling Up
As I finally gathered my wits together and set about getting dressed, I asked Bill, “Why did you get
up? Was there –”
“Didn’t feel nothin’, honey. Guess I had a dream or somethin’, but I can’t remember it if I did. Just
serendipity, I reckon.”
Silently thinking that it was fortunate we’d put off having a child until now – who’d want to bring a
baby into the world into the midst of this? And Pogey – oh, thank heavens we’d seen him safely out of the
world well before this day! – I said only, “We have to leave, don’t we?”
“That’d be best, darlin’,” Bill told me. “Somebody’s probably drawin’ a bead on downtown Los
Angeles with a nuke any time now. Gettin’ outta Dodge looks like our best option at this point. Let’s load
up the car an’ head up into the mountains fast as we can. I do not want to be at ground zero if somebody
does want to nail L.A., you know?”
All around and within our building, we could hear the chaotic cacophony of all-out pandemonium,
from throat-cracking screams of outrage to wails and shrieks of terror. Very clearly, our neighbors were
also aware that what might yet become the Last War had begun, and each in his or her own separate way
was rapidly losing all semblance of sanity. Or so, at least, it sounded.
Pulling on clothing as quickly as we could – Bill insisted that in spite of the heat we both dress warmly
in jeans, flannel shirts, heavy socks, and boots, and set out our sweatshirts and sweat pants to go with them,
as well; what the days ahead might bring, as far as weather went, could be anything from more of this
infernal Summer heat to the cold of Ragnarok, and we might as well be prepared – Bill and I set about
putting together the things we would need for whatever was coming to load into our van: food, vitamins
and minerals and whatever other nutritional supplements we had on hand, Bill’s guns, the crate of bottled
water I’d picked up the previous day because it was on sale at Ralph’s, the big first-aid kit we’d always
kept well-stocked and easily accessible for any emergencies, a couple of fire-extinguishers, several changes
of clothes, a few paperback books, Bill’s Bible, my English translation of the Torah, and other essentials.
Taking turns, as one of us put more and more of our possessions in our front room, near the door, the other
took up an armful of it and carried it downstairs and into the basement garage, loading it into the van, re-
locking the door of the vehicle, and then coming back upstairs for more. Fortunately Bill always kept those
two ten-gallon drums of gas in the back of the van filled, just in case – when the 25 gallons of gas the van’s
tank held now (thanks to topping it up the previous evening) was gone, the likelihood that we’d be able to
get gas anywhere in the Basin today or any day in the foreseeable future was zip to none.
Some of our neighbors were in the basement garage, either fretting over what they should do or fretting
about what to take with them when they, too, split from the Basin.
“Hey, Bill!” cried one of them.
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“Hey, George!” Bill said as he helped me stow the crate of bottled water in the van.
It was George Fogle, one of the other tenants in their building, fair-skinned and blue-eyed and of a
build Bill referred to as “wudgy,” almost certainly from too much junk food and too little exercise, who
lived across the hall and one unit down from us. We really didn’t know that much about George and his
family, which consisted only of Alyssa Johnson, George’s short, skinny, dark-haired, sour-natured, bad-
tempered wife, and their daughter, little three-year-old Canela, whose exquisitely fair skin and lustrous dark
hair should have made her beautiful, but whose best efforts were sabotaged by what seemed to be chronic
depression. Bill had always thought of them as “one more set of California blahs,” but I, who usually got
home from teaching my last class of the day at least an hour before Bill did, wasn’t so sure – the screaming
fights I’d heard coming from the Fogles’ apartment in the afternoons were definitely “dysfunctional
family” syndromes. Alyssa, who rarely came out of the apartment, had a voice that could have etched
metal and could be heard clear across the hall and through both doors, and when she wasn’t screaming at
her husband, she was yelling at their daughter. Sometimes it was both. There didn’t seem to be any sign of
physical violence directed by Alyssa at either Canela or George, and whenever Canela was visible she was
always well-dressed and never showed a sign of bruises or worse injuries, but the things Alyssa said in
those fights and the sheer bad language she used, right in front of that little girl –! No wonder Canela
always seemed depressed and downcast, poor little thing! George, however – there’d always been
something about him of the cat that had just been simultaneously introduced to the canary and the milk-can.
I wouldn’t have trusted that man to tie his own shoes properly, let alone care for a little girl like Canela!
The angrier Alyssa seemed to be, the happier he looked. A closet sadist, maybe? Theirs was not a
marriage made in heaven. George taught political science at UCLA; Alyssa, one of the most angrily
depressed individuals I’d ever met, who was, for obscure reasons, unable to work or otherwise get out
much, was a Randian Objectivist – usually at the top of her lungs. George was a radical feminist; Alyssa
was an admirer of Phyllis Schlaffley. George was pro-gun control, Alyssa was anti. And so it went,
through every aspect of their lives. Maybe they’d only stayed together for Canela’s sake – but I had a
sneaking hunch that not only was George Fogle a closet sadist, Alyssa was a closet masochist with a martyr
fetish as well as a not-so-closet passive-aggressive type, and the two of them stayed married because they
loved the infighting with each other.
As for Canela . . . poor little Canela, caught in the middle, had the worst of both worlds. The weirdest
part of it, however, was something I’d learned from Chris “Ceecee” Ryder, the lady who ran the daycare
service over on campus for parents who taught there and couldn’t leave their children alone at home:
George often took Canela to work with him, dropping her off at the daycare center for the day when he did,
and Canela was registered there as “Canela Johnson” and not “Canela Fogle.” That Alyssa had kept her
maiden name, or maybe her previous husband’s name – I didn’t know, and had always been reluctant to
ask, for fear of provoking one of those screaming rages of Alyssa’s – wasn’t so strange; lots of women did
that now. But that Canela had her mother’s last name and not her father’s? The way Canela clung to her
Daddy whenever they were out and about, why wouldn’t he have registered the girl in his last name rather
than that of his wife, who clearly didn’t much like her daughter, let alone love her? Weird. Both of them.
And probably, eventually, Canela, too, assuming the parents didn’t divorce, or kill each other and maybe
Canela as well before long.
But right now, George’s expression was like everyone else’s: disturbed, and more than a little
frightened. He had both Alyssa and Canela with him, too, and, like him, Alyssa looked frightened. Canela
looked frightened, too, though it might have been more from the change in both her parents than anything
else, nothing like the demeanors either of them usually wore.
“Bill, you guys taking off?” George asked.
“Yeah, we are. You heard the news, I trust.”
“Yes. They could bomb this place any time, you know.”
“What – and end all this confusion?”
That was Charley Riley, who winked at Bill as he said it. He and his wife, Alice, had the apartment
right next door to the one occupied by Bill and I. They and their adolescent son, Gene, were delightful
antidotes to the Fogles. Charley, who was maybe 34, and Alice, about 35, were bright, cheerful, can-do
types who always had something pleasant to say and met every problem with solutions, if such existed, and
grace and good humor regardless. Charley, who taught physics over on campus, was always available to
help if there was a problem. So was Alice. Her name was so like Alyssa’s, but her temperament was
completely different – sunny, outgoing, kind. She worked at the same daycare center where George parked
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his daughter when he took her with him to work, the one run by Ceecee. And Gene, now 13, was bright,
inquisitive, responsible, and always willing to help a neighbor if they needed it.
Oh, please, please, PLEASE let the Rileys come with us! I prayed, carefully not letting myself think
about the Fogles in any context – like the young Scots father explained as he ran away with the one candle
when the doctor said, “Bring that back! I think there’s a fourth one coming!”: “I dinna dare! It attracts
them!” Thoughts had real weight, and no matter what you thought, it could attract what you thought about
even if you wanted the opposite.
“Hey, Charley, you comin’ with us?” Bill said, smiling.
“Sounds like a plan, man! Yeah, I think we’ll do that thing,” Charley told Bill. “Our station-wagon
has a lot of room in it, you know, one of those heavy-hauler types from Nissan. We already have most of
what we’ll need loaded into it – we were going to go camping for a week or so, and loaded it up last night.
We can fit a couple of extra people in there, too, if somebody needs a ride.”
“Well, maybe best you don’t advertise that,” Bill said, lowering his voice. “What’s supplies for a few
weeks for three’ll only be good for a couple of days for a crowd.”
Surreptitiously glancing around at those in the increasingly crowded garage, Charley said, turning back
to Bill, “Um, yes, you’re right. Okay, we’ll join you, and we do have plenty with us. – Hey, who’s this?
Young lady, what are you doing out and about? Your mommy and daddy’ll worry about you if you don’t
get back home soon!” Charley said, laughing, as he stooped down and picked up a long, slender, pale
creature with a bright-yellow bandit mask.
“Iodine, you bad girl, what’re you doin’ out?” Bill said to the creature, joining Charley in laughter as
he reached out to scratch between the animal’s ears.
“Oh, get it away!” cried Alyssa. “It’s loathsome!”
“It’s just a ferret, Alyssa,” said George – if anything had ever been calculated to put Alyssa on to boil,
it was that. She hated ferrets, something that did not endear her to Bill and me – we both liked the
ingenious little mischiefs. We’d have kept ferrets of our own if not for my late cat, Pogey, and the fact that
he hadn’t been dead all that long. Between Pogey’s quirks – he liked weasels, and thought ferrets were
cool, but live with one? Oh, you’ve got to be joking! – and the memories of his gallant soul, grief that still
tore at our hearts, we hadn’t yet taken the plunge. However, Bill was a sucker for any ferret in the
neighborhood, and when the Allens, the proud possessions of little Iodine (Bill’s name for her, both
because of the bright yellow coloration of her thick undercoat and the markings on her otherwise whitish
fur, and her antics, so like Little Iodine, the eponymous heroine of an old comic-strip Bill had loved as a
boy; the Allens had named her “Buttercup,” but “Iodine” fitted her much better), moved in on the lower
floor of their building, and Bill and I got to know them through a housewarming party given to them by
everyone in the building, Bill had instantly fallen in love with the little dickens.
Iodine barked sharply.
“What’s wrong, baby?” Bill asked her.
Another bark – a high-pitched “Yip!” of the sort that ferrets sometimes give when upset.
“Uh, I think the Allens took off without her,” said George. “I saw them pull out of here like a bat out
of hell just before you guys came down,” he told Bill.
“Uh-oh, we’ve got an orphan here,” I said. “Bill –”
“I know, hon’,” Bill said. “We’d better take her with us. If this all turns out to be a false alarm, we
can bring her back with us an’ give her back to the Allens, but for now I think she’d best come with us.”
I smiled. “Want to put her in something so she won’t run loose while we finish packing?”
“Hey, you won’t run off if I leave you on the seat o’ the van, will you, baby?” Bill asked Iodine, taking
her from Charley, who held her out to him. “Otherwise we might not be able to take you with us when we
head outta here, an’ that wouldn’t be good.”
“Yip!”
“That’s a ‘Yes,’ I take it. Okay, Iodine, you stay there on the front seat while me’n Batrix get packed
up, that’s a good girl,” said Bill as he opened the driver’s door of the van and carefully deposited the ferret
on the seat on that side. It was one more testimony to Bill’s awesome Ferret Powers that Iodine did indeed
keep her place on that seat until Bill himself entered the van, picked her up, and put her inside his jacket –
where she resided at all times thenceforth for the duration, except when he put her down somewhere and
bade her stay there or to let her go potty or eat her dinner – before I entered the van on the passenger side,
and we took off for the mountains.
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Meanwhile, George Fogle was still jittering around the garage, generally being a nuisance and
distraction to everyone else, while Alyssa, though still frightened, carped and carped and carped about
everything and nothing, her normal mode of communication with the world. Little Canela was trying to
follow her daddy around, but hard put to do so, as nervously active as he was; finally she gave up, drifting
over to their Geo Nissan, glumly slumping against the bumper while she waited for her parents to do
whatever they were going to do down there and then call her back to them. “Bill, you think we ought to
take off from here?”
Bill and I and the Rileys exchanged glances. I shrugged. Bill, annoyed, said, “George, we just said
that. If you’ve got any sense, you’ll do the same, get your kit an’ git.” He wouldn’t have said even that
much to Fogle had not Canela been there – that little girl didn’t need to be stranded down here in the Basin,
watching the world fall apart here, and maybe becoming victim to the Bomb or, knowing the general tenor
of Angelinos at even the best of times, looting, rapine, and rioting.
“Where are you going?”
“North side of the Basin, as far up into the mountains as we can get in the next couple of hours.”
“Can we come, too?”
“It’s a free country, dude – you do what seems best.”
“What should we take?” whined Alyssa. “I just can’t decide!” she said in that tone that always set my
teeth on edge, the tone that almost invariably preceded one of her screaming rants at somebody.
“Look,” said Bill, “if you need somethin’, really need it, best take that. But you don’t need a stereo
system, you don’t need scuba gear, you don’t need your livin’-room furniture, you don’t need all that fancy
Teflon cookery, no need to even try to truck that stuff all over creation. You need food, you need a good
cast-iron skillet an’ somethin’ to boil water in, you need your medicines, you need some good sturdy
clothes, an’ maybe you might find a use for your skis, an’ they’re light, you can tuck them up on top your
car, so you want those, too. As for stuff like coffee, tea, whiskey, an’ white sugar, yeah, I’d take those –
for tradin’. Push comes to shove, you can trade those for food. An’ if you’ve got some hefty authority of
some kind, the stuff the government’s banned but come real handy for killin’ ‘possums for the table, say,
not to mention protectin’ your womenfolk an’ children from types that really don’t care about the law nor
the Bible, I’d bring it along, too.
“But if you don’t need it, an’ can’t see why you might in the future, particularly a bad future, leave it
by. If it turns out this is all a false alarm, you can come back later an’ sort things out here an’ you’ll
probably still have all that stuff. But if it ain’t – if the shit has hit the fan for true, all that stuff’ll do for you
is take up space that somethin’ you do really need should be occupyin’, load you down an’ git in the way.
An’ you’ll probably have to just throw it away anyway before the day is out. So figure out what you really
do need, an’ take that with you an’ leave the rest behind, because otherwise you may not see many sunsets
beyond this’n today.”
“Are you taking . . . your guns?” Fogle said, almost panting it. I couldn’t decide whether he found the
idea terrifying or, just maybe, erotically compelling.
“Shit, yes!” Charley Riley exploded, coming to the rescue. “We’re taking ours, too! In a situation like
this, we’d be idiots not to!”
“You’ve got guns?” Alyssa said, almost coy in her incredulity, a smile lurking around the corners of
her perpetually sour expression. “I had no idea!”
“Never mind,” snapped Alice, for once losing her customary graciousness. “Whoever’s going, you’d
better do whatever you need to now and get ready to roll, because I don’t think we’ll have much more time
for it. – Honey, where’s that pair of pliers? This thing is stuck again, dammit.” “This thing” was the bolt
she and her husband used to secure their locker in the garage, because they didn’t trust available padlocks
or key-locks to do the job. There were too many thieves around, most of them easily able to get through
any lock made. In time they might even have popped that bolt, at least with judicious use of some
gelignite, but so far the fact that the likelihood of anything left in the locker being worth a damn after
explosives had been used to get through the door had deterred them.
“Here, Al,” Charley said, passing the pliers to her. He’d been using it in the process of squaring things
away in the back of their station-wagon when Alyssa’s remark had finally exhausted his patience,
prompting him to blow up at her. “You and Gene finish packing while I go back upstairs and get the rest of
our stuff – Batrix, you need to get stuff from your place?” he asked.
“Sure. Let me go with you . . .” A moment later and the two of us were headed upstairs to our
respective apartments, to see what still needed to be ported downstairs.
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§ 3: Treasure Hunt
When I emerged from the apartment where Bill and I lived, carrying two duffel bags full of Bill’s
guns, ammunition for them, and everything from the bathroom shelves that could be stuffed into any
remaining space in them, I was joined in the hallway just outside the apartment by Charley, who was
carrying a box filled with bags of Starbuck’s coffee, two bottles of whiskey, a stack of books, seed-packets
of every variety and description, and bottles full of nutritional supplements. At my startled expression, he
said rather sheepishly, “The coffee and booze? Trade goods. We just might need them, to trade for food or
whatever. The books are my wife’s collection of Adelle Davis’s books on nutrition, her PDR, that sort of
thing – we may have to be our own doctors for awhile, you know? Our first-aid kit is already down there,
but we don’t want to leave these behind.”
“Hmm . . . that reminds me,” I said. “I’ve got some of Adelle Davis’s books, too, and we don’t need to
duplicate them, but . . . Let me go back for just a second, here . . .” I set the duffel bags on the floor and
went back into the apartment. A few minutes later I came out again, this time with a stack of books of my
own, which I began trying to put in the already crowded duffel bags.
“Here, let me take those,” Charley said, setting his box on the floor. I gratefully surrendered the stack
of books, which Charley began putting into his box. “Wow! Natural Medicine by Pauls and Niall! And –
what’s this? The Pilgrim’s Progress? And The Oxford Concise Encyclopedia of History?”
“Well, if we’re up there long enough, we may need some reading matter. Those are classics,” I said
shyly.
“That they are! Not to worry – I’m taking Feynman’s Six Easy Pieces and his Six Not So Easy Pieces,
myself. We can start a club.”
“ ‘The Unregenerate Literati’?” I said, giggling in spite of the worries of the day, as I picked up the
duffels and made for the stairs.
“Or maybe ‘Intellectual Survival for Dummies’,” said Charley, picking up his box and following me.
“I noticed you’ve got a ’cube of Tank Girl in there, too.”
“I couldn’t bear not to take her with us – otherwise I may never see her again, you know? That ’cube
must weigh all of a fifth of a ki or less, and I figured it won’t harm us to take it. – Oh!”
“What?”
“Bill should take his comics collection! It’s priceless – he’s been collecting for at least thirty years,
ever since he was a boy, and he’s got mint-condition copies of everything from the earliest issues of MAD
Magazine to half the stuff Kitchen Sink Press ever published to – oh!”
“Careful there,” said Charley, holding his box in one hand and putting out another to steady me – I’d
nearly tripped and fallen on the stairs.
“Thanks. – I’m all right, just a little . . . you know.”
“Sure. You want me to carry one of those?”
“No, no – it’s okay, Charley, you’ve got enough to carry there. I’ll be fine.”
“You’re sure?”
“We’re almost there. It’s okay.”
When we reached the garage, carrying the duffel bags, I hastened over to Bill’s and my van, where Bill
was engaged in an argument with George Fogle over who was to take what, and where they were to go.
“Look, fella, you do what you want to do, an’ go where you want to go, an’ we’ll do the same! If those
ain’t the same thing, fine. If they are, that’s fine, too. But I’m not gonna change my mind just to keep you
happy. I – oh, hello, honey,” he said, reaching out to take the bags I’d been carrying from me. I gratefully
surrendered them to Bill, heavy as they were – I hadn’t been lying to Charley, not really, but on the other
hand, those gun-filled bags weren’t exactly goose-down pillows. So why hadn’t I taken advantage of his
kind offer? Because I’m damned if I’ll give in to the fact that I’ll never see the low side of 50 again, I
thought grimly. Everyone tells me I don’t look a day over 35, but if I start coddling myself now, it won’t be
long until I’ll look and feel as old as the calendar says I am! Fitness is as does, so . . . “Anything I can
help with?” I said – I knew damned good and well that George Fogle was the current problem, and that
nothing much could be done about him other than ignoring him, which was impossible once he made up his
mind to try to join in whatever activity was going on at the time, but maybe it’d distract Fogle so that Bill
and I and the Rileys could get on with loading up and getting the hell away from here.
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“I – nothin’, sweetheart,” said Bill. “I just told George, here, we’re gonna take Sunset from here to
either Coldwater Canyon Road or Beverly Glen Road, whichever looks more promisin’ when we get there,
an’ keep goin’ north an’ east until we get into the mountains, takin’ back roads whenever possible. You
just know that by now every major artery in the Basin is already jam-packed with cars. George, here,
wants to take the San Diego Freeway south to Long Beach an’ then head down the coast on Highway 1, an’
if he wants to go that way, well, that’s fine, I wouldn’t, but that’s his an’ Alyssa’s business. But there’s no
way in hell I’d take that route – you’d be caught up in total gridlock within the hour, an’ who needs that?
No, Batrix, the best way is up into the mountains, on back roads an’ trails, which nobody much is gonna
take until it gets so bad on the freeways they won’t have the choice – an’ by then, they’ll be stuck.”
“Have we got everything we need?” I asked, before George could start in on Bill again. Something
was nagging at me from the recesses of memory, something they were forgetting to take –? I’d brought
down all the food that would keep for a reasonable time in Rubbermaid containers, we had all our clean
clothing that was worth a damn, she’d packed enough Kotex and tampons for the next millennium, all those
rolls of toilet-paper, the spices, the supplements, batteries, Bill had packed the Coleman lantern and stove
and the tanks of Coleman fuel – oh, well, if Bill didn’t think of it, it probably wasn’t worth taking, anyway.
Oh!
“Bill, do we need food for Iodine?” she asked him.
“I – you know, come to think of it, yes, we should pick up somethin’. – Oh, hey – cat-food’ll do for
awhile for her, an’ we still have that bag o’ kibble left over from Pogey, don’t we?”
“Oh, hell, Bill, that couldn’t be much good,” said Charley, coming over to him, holding out a large bag
of cat food. “I sort of lifted this from Ken and Dot’s place – they left early this morning, and aren’t likely
to return. They’d left their door open, and I picked this up on the way down here. I don’t know why they
didn’t take it, unless they abandoned their cats or something.”
“Uh-oh,” said Bill, reaching out to take the cat-food from Charley. “I know they love those cats, they
wouldn’t abandon them. Maybe the cats didn’t like this stuff an’ they got somethin’ else for them, an’
that’s why they left this behind. We’ll take it. I agree, the Nelsons ain’t likely to come back any time soon
– once they get out there on the road somewhere, if they haven’t gotten far enough away by now, they
won’t be able to come back or get out, poor bastards.
“Okay, I think that’s it, Batrix. Can’t think o’ nothin’ else –”
“Oh, I just remembered: Bill, you shouldn’t leave your comix and science-fiction collection behind!
All those –”
“Oh, honey, I love you for thinkin’ of it,” Bill said, looking sad, “but I already decided we’d have to
leave that behind. There just ain’t enough room for all of it, an’ it’d take me forever to sort out what to take
from what really wasn’t all that great an’ should get left behind. I already stashed a few o’ the best o’ the
best in the van, you know, things like Healy an’ McComas’s Adventures in Time an’ Space, a couple o’
those bound copies o’ Neil Gaiman’s graphic novels, those two collections o’ Whelan’s best work, a few
novels, that sort o’ thing. There just ain’t no room for anythin’ more. Survival’s more important than
anythin’ else, an’ after stowin’ everything aboard the van we’re gonna need up there, there’s just no way
we can take anythin’ more along those lines.”
“Oh, Bill . . .” Coming over to him, I threw my arms around him and hugged him close. For a few
moments we stood there, holding each other close, Bill’s chin pressed against the crown of my hair, so that
he could catch its sweet scent, something he loved to do whenever he could.
Then, with an effort, he smiled and, stepping back from me, he said, “Okay, let’s go. Anyone else
wants to come with us, time to saddle up an’ get goin’. Charley, Alice, Gene – you comin’?”
“Oh, yeah!” Charley told him. “Come on, Al, let’s stow the last of this stuff and get ready to rock.”
“Right-o. – Do we need to bolt the locker again?”
“No, I really don’t think it’s necessary,” he said, his grin turning sardonic. “We’ve got everything out
of there worth taking, so whoever wants the rest is welcome to it.”
“Good. I really did not want to take all those old National Geographics with us, and as for that tatty
paisley slip-cover for the car . . .” They both cracked up.
Then, sobering, Charley said, “Ready, honey?”
“As ever, darling, as ever!” she said brightly, opening the forward door on the passenger side of their
station-wagon.
“Me, too!” said Gene, getting into the back seat.
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“We’re coming too!” Fogle said suddenly. He sounded anxious, as if he were afraid the others would
deliberately leave him behind.
“Anyone else?” said Bill, tacitly approving Fogle’s choice – he really wasn’t happy about having to
deal with the Fogles in what might prove to be a much longer stay up there than any of us were prepared
for, but there was Canela, and this might be her only hope of survival, and he hadn’t the heart to scotch it
for her.
“We’re coming!” said Penny Wright, one of the people who lived on the floor below ours. Short, dark,
petite, and beautiful no matter what she wore or how she was or wasn’t made up, like Alice Riley, normally
Penny also had one of the world’s sunniest temperaments. A librarian at our local branch of the Los
Angeles County library system, she was one of a number of librarians who participated in Story Hour,
reading books to youngsters most of whom probably had never otherwise been read to by adults. “Me’n
Ellis’ve already got our stuff all loaded up. We’re all systems go – we’d love to come with you.” Ellis, her
husband of six months, a teaching assistant for a biology class over on campus, who was perhaps a year
younger than Penny’s 25 years, wore an expression rather like a puppy frantically trying to get a treat from
his master, or maybe avoid a beating for some or another infraction. Bill couldn’t help smiling – he liked
the kids, as he thought of them, and if they wanted to come, he certainly wouldn’t object. “Sure, that’ll be
fine. Anybody else?” he said, looking around.
“Yes, us.” That was Andrew Singh. Andrew, 26, taught mathematics over on campus. Chandrika, his
19-year-old wife, another beauty, who was even darker than Penny’s coffee-colored skin, taught chemistry
there. She was carrying Ranjeet, one of their 5-month old twins; Andrew was carrying Rajani, the other
twin. They looked scared – and they had reason to. Chandrika had a problem with her thyroid, and would
need medication for it, and the twins – well, at that age, anything could happen. But they also looked game
for whatever might come, and they were not only some of the most scrupulously honest people Bill and I
had ever known, and brilliant enough to give Einstein pause, but also, in better times, the life of every
party, and tremendous fun to be with. And they, too, had thought ahead, been enough aware of the way the
world was heading to prepare for it: “I already have our guns in our vehicle,” said Andrew. “And we have
plenty of food – for a while, at any rate. One way or another we got about a year’s worth of Synthroid laid
aside for Chani in our first aid kit – never figured we’d need it, but, you know how it is.
“And . . . well, I guess we’re as ready as we can be. You can only do so much, but we will share
whatever we have with anyone who needs it. We even have extra gas – I added an extra fuel-tank into the
back of the vehicle, so we have maybe 75 gallons, and if anyone runs dry . . .” He let the sentence hang;
the implicit offer was clear.
“We’d love to have you along, Andy,” Bill told him. “All ready to roll?”
“Yes, sir,” Andrew said in his precise, almost fussy way. The son of Paramartha Singh, a famous
physicist from Mumbai, and Lydia McCoran Singh, a world-renowned artist, he tended to startle people
with his outrageous sense of humor – it was hard to believe that such a pedantic-sounding young man loved
a good joke, including one directed squarely at himself, and had a laugh that would have done credit to a
Viking. “As my lovely wife would put it,” he said, turning slightly to smile at Chandrika, “we are good to
go.” Chani – her nickname among the Singh’s good friends, among whom Bill and I counted ourselves
fortunate to be – added, “I think that we had all best get going now. There can’t be much time left before . .
.”
She left the sentence hanging, but everyone else in the group could fill in the rest: “ . . . before traffic
becomes so bad we are not able to leave/before the Bomb drops on us here.”
“An’ Iodine wraps it up, looks like,” said Bill, opening the door on his side of their van. “Okay,
everyone who’s goin’, we’re off!” So saying, he climbed into the driver’s side of the van and, after tucking
Iodine safely into his half-zipped bomber jacket, and putting on his seat-belt and urging me to do the same,
he started up the van, slamming the door on his side as he did so.

§ 4: Get Ready to Party

“Honey, where’s that cell-phone?” he asked me as he carefully steered the van toward the exit from the
garage. Someone had thoughtfully rolled the gate back and locked it in the open position – he wouldn’t
have to mess with the electronic opener now, for which he was grateful. The damned thing never seemed
to work right, and he had no desire to delay one more minute on that God-forsaken gate if he didn’t have to.
“Here, sweetheart,” I said, holding the phone out for him.
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“No, I can’t take it an’ drive this thing right. I need you to call Freddy, my old drinkin’ buddy over
there in Bellflower. You know, the guy we went out to dinner with back last May, him an’ his girl, we all
went over to the Olive Garden together. You need his number?”
“What is it?”
“Uh, I put his number in the memory there, punch ‘85’, that’ll do it.”
“Okay . . . Hello, is this Fred? – Oh, sorry, Jeannie, this is Batrix. I’m with Bill, driving up into the –
yes, I’ll wait. – Fred? This is Batrix – you know, Bill Jamieson’s fiancée? – That’s right, you met me –
yes. Okay, Bill and I are on our way, uh, out of town right now. Bill wanted to know what you – okay, I
will. – Bill, will it be too much of a distraction if I hold the phone up to your ear while you drive?”
“Uh, I don’t think so, Batrix. Just want to know if he’s gonna be all right.”
“Okay, here he is . . .”
She held the phone against Bill’s right ear. Trying to concentrate on his driving, he listened as best he
could.
He frowned. “I –” he started to say.
Suddenly the phone erupted with “– gonna party like it’s 2099!”
“That’s not Freddy –” Bill began.
And a roar like the end of the world came over the phone. Bill, swearing, nearly had an accident.
Fiercely hauling on the steering-wheel to get the car back under control, he said, “Dear Jesus, what was
that? Is Freddy –”
He glanced over at me, hoping Freddy had pulled one of his pranks, anything but what he feared had
happened.
“The line’s dead,” I told him simply. My eyes must have been wide and round with shock, and my
expression told the tale.
“Oh, dear God – is it just his line, or the whole system?” Now we were coming up to the fork where
Beverly Glen branched off from Sunset. Making a lightning calculation, Bill took the right fork, heading
east on Sunset Boulevard. At this point, our best bet was Laurel Canyon Boulevard, headed north, into the
mountains – getting out of the Basin as quickly as possible was imperative, and Laurel Canyon was the
quickest way out. We’d already passed way too many cars for his comfort – Sunset wasn’t crowded, not
yet, but more and more cars were edging their way out onto it from side-streets, and it was clear that he
wasn’t the only one to have realized that the freeways weren’t the place to be right now. With four other
vehicles following ours like so many ducks after their mama, and hell itself about to let out for breakfast
behind us – as it sounded like it was already starting to do, that infernal blast of static and feedback with
which the call to Freddy had ended had made that pretty clear – it was no time to pick and choose among
roadways, just take the best and shortest shot at a way out of the Basin and go from there!
I punched a couple of numbers into the cell, listened, punch another, listened, turned off the phone and
put it away. “I dialed our place, and it rang, so the system is still up. I tried the campus, and got a busy
signal – a regular one, not a fast-busy, so it probably means the switchboard there is jammed, but the
system around it is fine. Then I dialed the time signal – it works just fine,” I told Bill.
“So, what time is it?” he said, smiling faintly – it was funny, though not that funny.
“You really don’t want to know,” I told him.
“Honey –”
“Seven something. On the near side of seven, not seven-thirty yet.”
“We got it all together that fast? My, my! Okay, babe, we’ll make it! I just wish –”
“What?”
“Just . . . that I could’a made a few calls to see if Mama an’ the rest o’ the folks are all right. But it’s
too late for that – or too early. Once we find someplace safe up there, guess we can try then. If the towers
are still workin’, that is – cell-phone service may not be workin’ after today.”
“Thank heavens neither of us are teaching classes this Summer!” I said,
“Amen to that! – Honey, look back there for me, can you see the others comin’ along behind us?”
I twisted around in my seat. Boxes and bags piled high in the back blocked my view. Impatiently I
rolled down the window and put my head out to see. “Yes, I can see the Singhs’ van, and the Rileys’
station wagon, right behind them. Can’t see the others yet – they’re probably hidden by the ones in front
of them.”
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“Well, we’ll just have to assume they’re still with us. – Not,” he said grumpily, “that I’d be all that
unhappy to lose the Fogles, though I’d like to give their little girl a chance. Those two, they really don’t
deserve that child, do they?”
“What if she grows up to be like the Katzenjammer Kids?” I said, provoking a reluctant smile from
Bill. He loved that old comic strip, and he’d infected me with the same disease – it was definitely an
acquired taste. I’d even taken to calling those two vicious little Tyrannosaur chicks in the Late Cretaceous
sequence of our ’cube of Walking With Dinosaurs, which we’d just about worn out from playing it all the
time, “Hans” and “Feetz,” after the parody of the strip which MAD Magazine had run somewhere in its first
couple of years, back in the early ’50s.
“If there’s anything to the idea of genetic inheritance, darlin’, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. – Oh, shit!”
“What?” I said, turning to see what had caused the exclamation.
“Damn near hit a deer back there! Thing ran out on the road before I could see what it was gonna do –
pulled back at the last second, though, or we wouldn’t be havin’ this conversation. Nothin’ like hittin’ a
deer at 90 klicks an hour to really mess up your day . . .”
“Not to mention the deer. What the hell was a deer doing all the way down here, in the city, anyway?”
“Darlin’, they’re all over the place now. You know how they talk about cockroaches an’ rats inheritin’
the Earth when we’re gone? Well, those critters’ll have to fight it out tooth an’ claw with the deer for who
gets to sit at the big table then. Not to mention the coyotes – I swear those damned things could survive
anythin’, even stuff the rats, roaches, an’ deer couldn’t! – Shit! Speak of the devil . . .”
A hard bump! and a cry of agony testified to the cause of that last.
“Coyote?”
“Coyote, and be damned to him! – That’s strange. I know they’re all over this area, but normally
they’re savvy critters, avoidin’ the roads an’ open spaces wherever humans are, unless they absolutely have
to risk showin’ themselves for some reason. An’ then they – shit!”
The explosive epithet had been provoked by yet another suicidal coyote which, darting into the road in
hot pursuit or attempted evasion of phantoms, had been taken down by the left front tire of their van. Bill
turned hard right to correct the skid caused by the accident, then turned back into his original vector as soon
as he’d regained control of the vehicle.
“They’re acting as if they’ve gone mad!” I said, appalled. We’d almost gone over the side of the road
with that one – and there’d been a hundred-foot drop down into tract-home division there. If Bill’s reflexes
hadn’t been as good as they normally were, say, if he’d had a few, or had been badly rattled by
something . . .
And, speaking of rattlers, another Thump! beneath the van told of the demise of a big snake, possibly a
rattler, though heaven knew that, what with so many creatures hitchhiking to California from all over the
United States on trucks and other vehicles, it could have been anything.
“You see that one, Batrix?” Bill said, pulling out a handkerchief from his jacket pocket with his left
hand and using it to mop sweat off his forehead while he steered with his right.
“Yes, I did.”
“Snakes don’t come out on the roads in the daytime, not if they can help it. They come out at dusk or
dawn to hunt, and at night to warm themselves on the roads. But this is broad daylight! Wonder what that
guy was doing out there?”
“Maybe the damned winds drove it as crazy as everybody else,” I said . . .

In the meantime, material from the catastrophe in Washington State rises higher and higher into the
atmosphere, until the ultra-cold of the edge of space turns it into ice, and it begins to descend as it spreads
out and out and out, generating precipitation at lower and lower levels above the ground . . .

Chapter 3: L.A. Woman: The Firestorm

It began with the Santa Ana winds.

They had been blowing for days, sending already extraordinary mid-Summer temperatures soaring to
unheard-of heights, drawing the very last of the water out from already parched vegetation and turning
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everything not merely bone-dry, but Moon-rock-dry, Outer Space-dry . . . and doing strange things to the
minds of everyone in the area.
Some blamed the craziness erupting all around the Basin on the unending keening of the wind, like
damned souls wailing, wailing, wailing as demons drove them on through the endless torments of Hell.
Others blamed it on the positive charge with which the winds painted every surface and infected even the
interiors of buildings and vehicles and gadgets, inhaled into lungs and quickly passed on to the brain, due to
the ionization of every available surface by the non-stop winds. Still others blamed it on astrology – but
you can blame anything on astrology if you fuss with a chart long enough. A smaller number blamed it on
sorcery – sorcery practiced by [hated political group of your choice] to fuddle the minds of the [loved
political group of your choice] to render them powerless and, just incidentally, screw everyone else up
everywhere.
Regardless, it all came together in one gigantic, explosive mixture on the morning of July 16, 2022
e.v., when the world awoke to find that during the night an enormous chunk of nickel-iron lobbed at the
Northern Hemisphere by agents of some piss-ant Islamist terrorist group had destroyed half of America’s
East Coast and inundated the other half with brand-new, utterly deadly pathogens that would soon begin to
move in all directions in the form of super-epidemics like none ever seen before, and in the process starting
what ultimately came to be called by the survivors the Two-Day War.
For that last week just before the War blew the world and human civilization apart, however, it was
those damned Santa Anas, moaning and screaming around everyone’s ears, stealing every last bit of
moisture out of everything that needed it and carrying it west to the Pacific, which didn’t, that occupied the
minds of everyone in the Basin, day and night. Sleep was impossible. So was work.
So was play – people rushed to theaters all over the Basin by day and by night, staying in them for
hours, hoping that those frigid, air-conditioned entertainment palaces would give them both amusement
and, more important, a respite from the damned endless wind, only to find out the hard way that even
though the theaters were indeed almost ice-cold and a sure refuge from the terrible heat, their ability to
keep out the increasingly ionized atmosphere was nil. Once inside the theaters, after trying in vain to
immerse themselves in what passed for entertainment on the big silver screen – 2022 hadn’t been a great
year for entertainment, and its best offerings were the same mediocre attempts to please an audience that
had long since become jaded by the dreck that had been Hollywood’s standard for decades – those who
didn’t simply get up and leave and head for the malls, which had even better air-conditioning and were a
lot more entertaining, often decided to make their own entertainment by taking something sharp or heavy or
explosive out of backpacks, briefcases, or other concealment and use them on their neighbors in the theater.
Beset by one of the prolonged droughts that were becoming increasingly frequent in the area, when the
Sun set the evening of July 15, 2022, from the San Fernando Valley to Redlands, and from the mountains
in the north to the Pacific Ocean on the south and west, the Los Angeles Basin was dry as the bones of an
ancient mummy. Worse, a Santa Ana wind had begun blowing eight days before, never letting up since,
and, if anything, was blowing more strongly than ever. Once upon a time, the Santa Anas – the colloquial
name for which was “Sundowner Winds,” though their technical name is “Katabatic Winds,” cousins of the
Föhn of Switzerland and Germany, the Chinook wind of Alaska and the Yukon, and the Mistral of France,
and nastier by far than any of them – held their sway over the Basin for at most 4-5 days, and even then, by
Day 2 of their siege, their energy had begun to die down to something bearable. And in those halcyon days
of Los Angeles yore, the terrible winds had visited the Basin at most three times a year, and usually no
more than once or twice, always in early or mid-Autumn.
No longer: Now the Santa Anas – truly named the Devil Winds – ripped through the Basin at least six
times per year, each one lasting anywhere from three to eight days, and might occur at any time. This latest
siege promised to last even longer, perhaps as much as ten or eleven days, and it was worse than any of its
predecessors that even elderly natives of the region could remember. After eight straight days of it,
everything from what was left of lawns, gardens, and the weeds with which vacant lots were rife to the
sedge, bracken, and brush on every hillside, the stands of trees in the Los Angeles National Forest, and the
very timbers and other materials of which every building in the Basin was made, was tinder-dry, needing
only a spark to set it alight. The worst of it was that the level of every reservoir in the Basin was low and
sinking fast. The Feather River Project, like every other project designed to bring water from the lush
northern areas of the state down to the dehydrated Basin, had never quite lived up to hopes and
expectations. And Arizona wasn’t about to give up any more of its water to Southern California, either – in
fact, the eastern banks of that part of the Colorado River that separated Arizona from California were lined
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with artillery and men ready to put those weapons to use should California, backed by Almighty
Washington, DC, decide to try to take Arizona’s water by force majeur, something that had occurred
repeatedly in the past. No more. Arizona needed all its water – and then some – for its own people,
industries, and wild country, and had none to spare for those thieving Californians. Washington, DC,
deciding it had bigger fish to fry than overseeing a stupid in-house brawl like that, had thrown up its hands
and said to the two states, “Screw it, you two will have to fight it out between you!”
So, ever since the preceding February, there had been a total ban in the Basin on using water for the
lawns and gardens of private and even for those of the area’s historical landmarks, hospitals, municipal
complexes, and tourist meccas such as the L. A. Opera House and the area’s many museums. The sole
exception among them was Disneyland in Anaheim, technically not part of the Basin and thus not subject
to its laws, but still drawing to some extent on L.A.’s precious and dwindling hydrological resources –
Disneyland’s magnificent engineering, the legacy of its founder, Walter Elias Disney, ensured that even in
high Summer, the world-famous theme-park lost at most two percent of the water circulating through it to
evaporation and other sinks. And just in this last year, its engineering staff had found ways to pare even
that small amount of water-loss down to only .03% – a fantastically low level, guaranteeing that almost
alone of everything in or near the Basin, it would have all the water it needed to meet its needs, both for
park attractions such as the Riverboat Ride in Adventureland and for the humans throngs, staff and visitors
alike, crowding its every nook and cranny at all times between dawn and dusk of every day.
As if the drought wasn’t bad enough, the endless Santa Ana winds that had been haunting the area for
more than a week were piling on one last, unbearable burden on the beleaguered region:
A föhn wind, a species of which the Santa Anas are technically considered to be, occurs when a deep
layer of prevailing wind is forced over a mountain range, such as the Alpa, or the Sierra Nevadas. As the
wind moves upslope, it expands and cools, causing water vapor to precipitate out. This dehydrated air then
passes over the crest of the mountains and begins to move downslope. As the wind descends to lower
levels on the leeward side of the mountains, the air heats as it comes under greater atmospheric pressure,
creating strong, gusty, warm, and dry winds. Föhn winds can raise temperatres in the areas they move
through by as much as 30°C (54°F) in just a matter of hours. Winds of this type are called “snow-eaters”
for their ability to make snow melt rapidly. This ability is based not only on high temperature, but also the
low relative humidity of the air mass. Föhn winds are also associated with the rapid spread of fires, making
some regions which experience these winds particularly prone to runaway fires, both wildfires and those
occurring in suburban or urban environments.
The name föhn originated in the Alps of Switzerland, and because of them Central Europe enjoys a
warmer climate than it would otherwise. Föhn winds are notorious among mountaineers in the Alps,
especially those climbing the Eiger, for whom the winds add additional difficulty in ascending an already
difficult peak. Such winds are often associated in popular mythology with illness ranging from migraines
to psychosis, for which reason the Santa Ana winds are often called “the murder winds.” A study by the
Ludwig-Maximiians-Universitåt München found that suicide and accidents increased by 10 percent during
föhn winds in Central Europe. The reason for the pathologies associated with such winds is probably the
enormous burden of positive ions they carry with them, due to the mountainous terrain over which they
have passed on their way to low-lying areas and the gigantic charges of static electricity generated by the
friction of dust-against-dust and sand-against-sand they carry, built up to ever-higher levels as they leave
the mountains, bearing down on the lowlands as they head for the sea. Significant amounts of positive ions
in the atmosphere have been shown to strongly correlate (to confidence levels as high as 98.92%; see
Larame and Poulson, “Katabatic Wind Formation in Montane Regions of the Southern Portions of Arizona
and California,” in American Jrnl. of Environmental Sciences, Vol. IX, No. 2 (Nov 2018), pp. 8-15) with
such conditions as acute psychosis among individuals as well as mob violence, skyrocketing suicide and
homicide levels, egregiously violent assaults on small children, serial rape, and other violent crimes and
acts. The level of concentration of positive ions sufficient to bring about such pathologies is about 4% or
less.
Santa Anas are created by air pressure buildup in the high-altitude Great Basin between the Sierra
Nevadas and the rocky Mountains. This air mass spills out of the Great Basin and is pulled by gravity into
the surrounding lowlands. The air circulates clockwise around the high pressure area bringing winds from
the east and northeast to Southern California (the reverse of the westerly winds characteristic of the
latitude). Many believe that the air of which the winds are composed is heated and dried as it passes
through the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts, but, according to meteorologists, this is a popular misconception.
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Normally the Santa Ana winds form during Autumn and early Spring, when the desert is relatively cold.
The air heats up due to adiabatic heating while being compressed during its descent. It is further dried as it
passes over the Transverse and Peninsular Ranges. The great masses of air comrpising the Santa Anas are
then forced down the mountain slopes and out towards the Pacific coast, and then are further heated by
compression as they drop in altitude before reaching the Los Angeles Basin and western San Diego County
at typical speeds of 35 knots. Before the beginning of the Third Millennium and the most evident phases of
global warming, the Southern California coastal region got its hottest weather of the year during Autumn
while Santa Ana winds blew. However, from 2000 onward until about 2038, when the Santa Anas began to
fall back into their original Spring-Fall pattern, they came with increasing frequency during the height of
Summer, even as early as May or June, making the Summers inceasingly miserable and the season of
Autumn unbearable.
During Santa Ana conditions it is typically hotter along the coast than in the deserts, and humidity
plummets to less than 15% – and, after 2024 and the end of the rains of Nuclear Autumn, less than 1%.
Even in mid-July of 2022, after eight straight days of the endless blowing, blowing, blowing of the devil-
winds, humidity was down to 2% and falling fast. As the Santa Ana winds are channeled through the
mountain passes they can approach hurricane force. The combination of wind, heat, and aridity turns the
chaparral into explosive fuel for the infamous wildires of the region. Wildfires fanned by Santa Ana winds
burned nearly 300,000 hecatres in two weeks during October 2003, and it only got worse after that.
The long and short of it is that by the time the Santa Ana Winds finally hit the Basin after their long
journey from the Great Basin, they’re loaded with positive ions – so much so that they’ve been known to
crash even computer systems protected by Faraday Cages. And what they do to the central nervous
systems of vertebrates of all kinds, including humans, whose huge, top-heavy brains have always been
somewhat prone to the occasional catastrophic glitch, is unspeakable, putting everyone in range into
nonstop torment, throwing sand and rocks into the grinding gears of thought, cranking up stress and
emotional tension to the breakpoint, and bringing out the worst in everyone from humans, cats, dogs, and
other commensals of the human species to all the wildlife of the region, driving coyotes to run mad in the
street and deer to rampage through backyards and vacant lots, savaging anyone foolish enough to get in
their way. The winds send crazed insects floating through the air in huge buzzing swarms like the wrath of
Beelzebub, prone to dive-bomb swimming pools and the drinks of humans sitting around those pools,
killing virtually every plant which had somehow been hardy enough to withstand the terrible drought up
until then. Again, the level of concentration of positive ions sufficient to evoke pathological conditions
among vertebrates and other forms of life is generally considered to be somewhere between 2 and 4%. The
positive-ion content of the air constituting Santa Ana föhn winds can be as high as 70% – up to 70% of all
atoms in a given mass of a given Santa Ana wind can be positively charged due to their passage across the
enormous reaches of land-area between the Great Basin and the Pacific, implying that that particular sort of
ill wind blows not much of anyone, of any species, any good at all.
The average positive-ion concentration of such a wind is around 10%, but that only means that some
areas in the Basin get far more of a bad dose of medicine when the Santa Anas blow than do others, and
that even those only lightly visited by the winds tend to be not to be at their very best at such times . . . to
say the least. Countless mistakes are made by nearly everyone when the devil-winds blow. Sometimes
those mistakes prove to be lethal, sometimes to the self, sometimes to others, sometimes both. More traffic
tickets for every sort of traffic ciolation are given out during Santa Anas than at any other time – and more
of those are successfully contested by the recipients than at other times, due to mistakes of judgment made
by the officers who give out those tickets. More acts of violence are committed at such times than at any
other – and, again due to mistakes on the part of arresting officers, booking officers, 911 dispatchers, and
every other official involved in the process of arresting, charging, and otherwise dealing with offenders,
more of the arrestees manage to escape before being hauled away to jail than at any other time, either
directly, by somehow getting away from the arresting officers and fading away into the region’s countless
highways and bywas, or indirectly, by successfully contesting their arrest, the charges made against them,
or other aspects of due process.
This siege of Santa Ana winds was the worst the Los Angeles Basin had ever suffered, by far.
But one more variable needed to be added to the explosive conditions prevailing in the Los Angeles
Basin in July of 2022 before catastrophe struck: fire.
All pantheons reflect the civilization and values of those who believe in them. For example, in the
Norse pantheon – the Aesir – Loki is one of the Aesir, yet is also capable of great msichief, such as His
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trickery that led to the death of Baldur the Beautiful. Loki’s name is cognate with Lugh, the name of the
Celtic God of Fire. Loki reflects the fires of civilization and high-energy technology, without which
metallurgy and even the hearth-fires of individual dwellings would not exist. He is thus an inalienable
member of the Aesir, just as fire and the making of it are essential to civilization in all forms. But just as
Loki is dangerously mischievous, so the fires of civilization can break their tethers and run wild far beyond
their permitted boundaries, destroying everything in their path. This is especially true in regions prone to
mild Winters and hot Summers, where there is a great deal of brush and wildland foliage kept alive by rains
that fall just frequently enough to permit plenty of late Winter and early Spring growth, but not enough to
keep trees and foliage moist through increasingly hot Summers. Such areas – and the pre-War Los Angeles
Basin was typical of them – are prone to frequent bouts of wildfires as well as fires that often invade
suburban and urban areas, destroying numerous structures and, all too often, accounting for the deaths of
many creatures, human and otherwise. In those pantheons that have a God of Fire, there are usually Gods
Who control the fire and turn it to good ends: e.g., Thor, the Forge-Master, in the Norse pantheon;
Hephaestos and Vulcan, Who did the same service for the Greeks and the Romans; to some extent, Hades,
Lord of the Fires of the Underworld, and His Roman counterpart Pluto. But when the cat is away, the mice
will play, and the Lord of Fire breaks free when not closely watched by those Gods that Control Him.
There are three main types of variables involved in the formation of a firestorm: availability of fuel,
which is easily calculable; temperature/aridity, ditto; and wind. Of the three, wind is a wholly chaotic
variable, in the scientific sense; it depends on a host of factors such as terrain, moisture content, and so on,
none of which are easily modeled – the “three-body problem” of meteorological and fire science, with
every small change in the factors that give rise to the winds, enormous changes in the winds can result.
Human violence, on the other hand, likewise depends on both easily predictable/measurable and
chaotic factors. The chaotic factors in question of course are those involved in information flow and
general communication among those involved in the violence, as well as between them and others, either
innocent bystanders or those who try to contain the violence, such as police. This is true of any incidence
of violence in any sociological and sociobiological context, from the simple exchange of harsh words that
goes no farther than up through fisticuffs exchanged by two individuals, murder, serial killings, mass
murder, and so on all the way to global thermonuclear war and what might exceed that in a spacefaring
culture, and from isolated pairs of battling individuals up through communities and nations, all the way up
to the world as a whole and beyond.
Human violence has a ready esoteric analog in the form of the Element Fire; and communication’s
esoteric analog is Air, or Wind. Just as the degree to which the behavior of fire is predictable depends upon
the predictability of the behavior of wind and other volatile meteorological factors, so the predictability of
the course of a given incidence of human violence varies as such factors as communication and information
flow in the community in which that violence takes place. In other words, the relationship between fire and
wind is exactly that between human violence and human communication. That that is so should make it
easier to model that aspect of human behavior and its consequences entailed in violent behavior of any kind
among human beings.
Politics is the sociological equivalent of the fires on which civilization depends; mob violence and war
are respectively those of fire and firestorms. As the most able generals have long known, when war breaks
out, they have failed their job, which is to keep the peace. The same is true with respect to police agencies
vs. gang rule and crime.
On this day of days, Los Angeles learned those lessons the hard way.

Chapter 4: Burstworld
The material that was lofted up to the very edge of space by the catastrophe in Western Washington
state is still descending, still spreading out rapidly. As it does so, it begins to precipitate out in the form of
snow, ice, and hail . . .

[Use my own series of drawings of that name at the beginning of this part]

§ 1: Los Angeles Burst One

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Lo buon maestro disse: “Omai, figliuolo,

s’appressa la città c’ha nome Dite,
coi gravi cittadin, col grande stuolo.”

E io: “Maestro, già le sue meschite

là entro certe ne la valle cerno
vermiglie come se di foco uscite

fossero.” Ed ei mi disse: “Il foco etterno

ch’entro l’affoca le dimostra rosse,
come tu vedi in question basso inferno.”

– Dante Alighieri, The Inferno VIII: 67-75

Well I just got into town about an hour ago

Took a look around, see which way the wind blow
Where the little girls in their Hollywood bungalows . . .
– Jim Morrison, “L.A. Woman”

It started in the town of Compton, not far south of Los Angeles . . .

6: 30 a.m. PDT, July 16, 2022 e.v., Compton, California:

The firestorm began in an alley off North Tamarind Avenue. The alley, lying between East Compton
Boulevard to the south and East Magnolia Street to the north, paralleling both streets, ran east from North
Tamarind most of the way from there to North Alameda Street. It dead-ended just behind a large Sherwin-
Williams paint-store fronting on the west side of North Alameda, which wholesaled to construction
companies as well as selling to retail customers.
Located at the intersection of North Tamarind and East Magnolia was Li’s Best of China, a fireworks
store run by ethnic Chinese-Americans. As members of an officially recognized minority group, the
owners of Li’s had obtained permission to make and sell fireworks, filing a claim that because fireworks
were a necessary part of Chinese religious celebrations, such as the Chinese New Year festivities, they
should be allowed to make fireworks and stock and sell them. The city of Compton and the county of Los
Angeles, cowed by Political Correctness, went along with it. So the pyrotechnical equivalent of a good-
sized armory, none of which was stored safely, was sitting right there at the corner of North Tamarind and
East Magnolia.
There were also numerous specialty paint and art-supplies stores in the same area, at least five within a
three-block radius of Li’s, all of them stocking enormous amounts of highly combustible paints, solvents,
and related products. As Lou Phillips, a local editorial cartoonist for The Los Angeles Times, had once said,
Compton frequently brought to mind an image of a giant, dark spheroid at the top of which was a sputtering
fuse – with the word “Firebomb” splashed across it in bright red paint.
There was a dumpster where the alley dead-ended, backed up against the paint store. Around 7 a.m.,
Xavier Washington, a tall, heavy-set, nineteen-year old black man living two blocks north of East
Magnolia, hearing about the breakout of the War on his Walkman, went around the neighborhood,
whooping with glee, gathering up his buddies and telling them, “It’s the end of the world, brothers! We’re
gonna party like it’s 2099!” Looking like a pirate with gold earrings in his pierced ears and bling covering
nearly every square centimeter of the vest that was the only clothing he wore above the waist, the garish
tattoos which, so legend had it, covered every inch of his body save for his eyeballs and maybe his dick, his
missing front teeth, and the long, thin scars which, courtesy of a near-fatal encounter with a knife-fighter
whose girl Washington had reportedly raped, wound their way up from his left collarbone along the left
side of his neck, lower jaw, and cheek, across his eye-socket (just missing his eye), and forehead, all the
way into his hairline, Washington commanded more than enough respect (and, truth be told, outright fear)
from the others that none of them thought even briefly of rejecting his summons to party, and soon more
than a dozen other young men had joined him out there in the alley.
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The group of other teenage hoodlums thus recruited by Washington rounded up as much in the way of
flammables as they could find – gasoline, turpentine, paint, ammunition from Daddy’s illegal and unlocked
gun-safe, some old dynamite left in a chest behind a local police outfitter’s store, anything else readily
burnable and/or explosive – and threw it into the dumpster. Then, before touching it off, they sat down for
a pull on a crack-pipe, popping some interesting pills and washing them down with some whiskey one of
the Boyz snatched from his old man’s secret stash in a backyard shed.
Seventeen-year old Tom King, one of the young men in the group, had just begun to join his buddies in
building their celebratory fire when he suddenly realized that the Sherwin-Williams was just the other side
of that wall from the dumpster, and that Li’s Best of China wasn’t all that far away, either. In that same
revelatory moment, he also knew that his buddies were in no mood to listen to reason. So, carefully
backing out of the alley, he turned and beat feet south for all he was worth, putting as much distance and
strong brick walls as possible between himself and that about-to-be-catastrophe in the alley as quickly as he
could. As he ran, pushing himself to a spectacular speed, Tom thought he caught Washington yelling,
“Where the fuck you think you’re goin’, homeboy?” Concentrating on getting up to speed as he was, Tom
couldn’t be sure he wasn’t just imagining things, and besides, it didn’t matter much – especially if he didn’t
put as much distance between himself as possible between the Boyz around the dumpster and the dumpster
itself before –
And then, two streets and two rows of buildings away, when Tom stopped to catch his breath, turning
to look back as he did so, the cry of “Fire in the hole!”, made whisper-faint with distance, came to him as
somebody in the alley tossed in the first – and last – burning matchbook of the season, and God or
somebody said, “Let there be light!” And light, by God, there was!
The dumpster went up like a tactical nuke, the flames jumping what seemed to the absconder to be
many kilometers into the sky.
An instant later, the Sherwin-Williams went up, as well, with a flash so bright it could be seen tens of
kilometers away. Burning fireballs in his eyes that seemed to take forever to fade, Tom turned away from
the blast and began running even faster, pouring on the coal without regard for the burning strains in the
abused muscles of his legs and hips, somehow managing to put another two streets between him and the
conflagration in progress before a huge blob of blazing paint about 10’ thick lofted up from the paint store
landed on the roof of Li’s Best of China, along with tonnes of bricks and rapidly burning lumber from the
paint store and surrounding structures, spreading the fire like hot gossip going through a crowd. Seconds
later, the weight of all that burning junk on its roof broke through into Li’s upper floors, falling right into
crates upon crates of illegally closely-packed fireworks, and Li’s went up with a flash so bright that for a
few seconds everything in Compton was awash in blinding white light. Tom, still running, and already
having vision problems from lack of oxygen as well as inhaled gases coming from the fire now hot on his
heels in spite of his best efforts, was aware of a strong, hot wind coming from the general direction of the
fire.
And then came the noise: the Godzilla motherfucker of all sounds, blasting Tom’s slender body from
all directions, hard enough to leave bruises, slamming him down against the pavement. Stumbling, he
picked himself up to find that because of the stumble he had just missed running full-tilt into an enormous
pile of blazing, paint-covered wreckage that had landed right in front of him. So full of adrenaline by now
that he was nearly floating, he picked himself up and, pivoting on his left foot, began sprinting due east,
down East Myrrh Street, crossing the railroad tracks and continuing on for blocks before he finally ran out
of energy and collapsed. At that point, at the intersection of East Myrrh and South Pearl Avenue, his older
brother, Mike, happened to be driving by. Mike King, a construction worker, had been on his way to work
when he passed Tom collapse on the street.
Mike stopped the car with a screech, leaving the engine running, ran over to Tom, grabbed his brother
by the seat of his pants and scruff of his neck and threw him bodily into the car on the passenger side. As
Mike did so, he happened to glance up the street, in the direction from which his brother had been running
– and saw sky-clawing flames leaping and surging to the north and west.
His eyes widened impossibly. His jaw dropped so far it was a pure miracle he didn’t dislocate it.
“Oh, fuck!” Jumping back into the driver’s seat of his ancient, buff-and-rust-red Chevy Impala, Mike
slammed his door, slammed the car into gear, and, flooring the accelerator and burning rubber all the way,
took off like a bat down Pearl, fleeing the scene of what seemed to him to be nothing less than a terrorist
attack, with half of Compton blazing behind them and the rest about to follow. Mike figured that if they
were all gonna die in the holocaust bearing down on him, he wanted to do it by the ocean, which he had
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loved all his life long, and determined to head south and east as fast as he could go until he reached the
Pacific.
After rescuing his brother, Mike continued on his original southerly heading at about 90 mph until they
reached Long Beach, turning on Ocean Blvd to head southeast until reaching the Pacific Coast Highway,
and then continuing southeast along that route, just ahead of the rapidly growing wall-to-wall gridlock that
would soon completely jam all of southern L.A.’s roadways.
Eventually they reached Laguna Beach (Mike had gassed up his car the night before and hadn’t gone
anywhere in it until hearing the next morning that war had broken out and he’d taken off and encountered
Tom and picked him up), where they decided to stop and try to get something to eat. They were able to
pick something up at a local AM-PM Mini-Mart. The guy who ran the place, an elderly man named Mort
Butler, had not yet jacked up his prices to take advantage of the flood of people likely to come by during
the day (in fact, the flood hadn’t even started yet in that neck of the woods, and so far Mort, who had the
TV news on in the store but had been too concerned with inventory and serving the few customers who’d
come in so far that morning to be able to catch the details on what was going down in the world, or he’d
have known what was coming and prepared to take advantage of the situation). So the King brothers were
able to nearly buy out half the store with what Mike had in his wallet, paying with cash for food, drinks,
and other things they’d likely need in the next few days, along with two Slurpees to go.
“Where you two goin’, anyway?” Mort asked them, staring somewhat suspiciously at the bills Mike
handed him.
Mike said, “Anywhere south of here. You seen what’s goin’ on back up that way?”, pointing
northwest in emphasis.
“No, I haven’t.”
“Here, look, you take credit cards?” Mike asked, drawing out his wallet. “We really ought to stock up.
– An’ yeah, I got my picture ID with me, too. California driver’s license, photo-ID credit-card, too.”
“Well . . . okay, I reckon you’re nice boys,” said the old man, gold teeth flashing in a grudging smile.
He looked back up at Mike – Mort, who’d never been very tall, had begun to shrink some with age – and
said, “Sure. What you think you’ll need?” Nervously smoothing down the white smock he wore over his
short-sleeved tan work-shirt and his dark trousers, he looked expectantly at Mike.
“At least three weeks worth of basic foods.”
“Yeah – white sugar, white sugar, white sugar, an’ booze,” Tom said, a goofy grin spreading across his
face. He seemed in shock.
“Don’t pay no ‘tention to my kid brother, here,” Mike said, “he had this accident, fell on the sidewalk
and sorta hit his head.”
Mort looked the boy over sympathetically. These two weren’t criminals – couldn’t be. The tall,
muscular, older one was dressed in a light blue chambray work shirt and pressed tan slacks, obviously on
his way to work when – whatever it was had happened. The young one, though . . . he did look as if he’d
been hurt. In a fight? Or what? Looked like a nice kid, but a bit weedy, shorter than his brother. Well,
you never could tell, give him a few years and maybe he’d get into athletics or something, make a name for
himself. “What’s going on up that way, anyway?” he asked Mike, jabbing his chin in the same direction
Mike had pointed.
“Big fire. And I mean, big fire! Like, Firezilla! Terrorists must’a hit Los Angeles big-time.”
Mort opened his mouth to say something like “Oh, gotta be joking!” – but just then a bulletin came on
the TV news, the volume going way up of itself, a network ploy to attract attention.
“This just in!” cried an announcer. “A tremendous explosion and fire has just broken out in Compton,
south of Los Angeles! Emergency responders are converging on the scene, which looks like something
from Beirut or Managua! On-site reporter Janey Preis for KTLA News has got Captain James Li-Ling of
the Los Angeles Fire Department with her, and . . .”
Open-mouthed, the two young men and the much older one turned and stared at the television. They
found themselves looking into what seemed to be a raging sea of fire, in the foreground a woman and a
man, the lady, who was holding a microphone with the blue-and-red-on-white KTLA-NEWS logo on it,
dressed in a dark pant-suit, the man wearing a black, yellow-trimmed LAFD rubber overcoat, his yellow
hard-hat tucked under one arm as he answered the lady’s rapid-fire questions, or tried to (she was so
excited herself that her questions came thick and fast, too much so for him to be able to answer in much
detail). Though their stature would normally have seemed enhanced by perspective, somehow they seemed
dwarfed by the flames of the fiery background. Maybe it was the roar of the fire, drowning most of what
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they were saying in spite of the news channel’s audio enhancement technology. They caught “Ten-alarm”
and “– FEMA has been notified” and “ – fifteen-block sector completely destroyed so far!” and a few
other, random bits and pieces of sentences, but little else.
“Jesus God! Christ come Judgment Day!” whispered Mort, unthinkingly stroking the right side of his
face, where a long, thick, long-healed scar and a dented cheek-bone testified to some ancient, catastrophic
misadventure.
“You said it,” Mike said in a subdued voice.
“Four food groups!” laughed Tom. “Gotta have your four basic food groups a day!”
“Hush,” his brother told him. Then, turning back to Mort, he said, “You know where there’s a motel
or somethin’ where we could stay down the coast?”
Still staring at the color set hung up there on the wall, Mort opened his mouth, closed it, opened it
again. Then, shaking his head, he turned back to the younger men. For a moment he gave Mike a long,
searching stare. Then, making up his mind in one lightning-quick assessment, he said, “Oh, hell, you could
stay at our place, you want to. I think . . . I think I’m gonna need somebody there. Mama – that’s m’ wife,
Lizzie, she’s got some sort o’ condition, multiple, multiple –”
“Multiple sclerosis?”
“Yeah, that’s it. Not yet very advanced, but she can’t do much of anything, an’ if push comes to shove
. . . an’ looking at that,” he said, glancing at the TV, then back to Mike, “shove’s just about an hour away
or maybe less, she can’t fend for herself. I do what I can, but I’m goin’ on 65, praise Jesus, she’s about two
years older’n me, so you know what kinda shape she’s in, an’ . . . Lemme ask you this, son,” he said,
setting his jaw and leaning toward Mike. “Can you use a gun?”
“Sure! Daddy was in Nicaragua, back in ‘01, stayed in three yeas after that to get his GI benefits. He
taught me, Andy – that was our middle brother, he died a few years ago in a nasty freeway accident – and
Tommy, here, how to shoot, gun safety, all that stuff. I’ve got a piece in my car – ain’t legal, I know, but if
somebody comes at you in the middle of the night, sort of thing that happens all the time where we live,
well . . .”
“Okay. I’ve got more’n one piece. I’ve got a disassembled American Kalashnikov automatic rifle an’
three semiautos, a Glock .40, a Colt .40, and a Firestar .45, put up at home. Two o’ the semiautos are
loaded, others need cleanin’ an’ loadin’. I also got an 8-gauge an’ another shotgun I ain’t supposed to have
on account of the barrel’s a lot shorter now than it was when it left the manufacturer’s,” he said with a grin.
“Then there are the revolvers – well, anyways, what I meant to ask was, how’d you like to put up with me
an’ Mama for awhile? Place is clean, we got lots o’ canned goods down in the basement (when I was a
boy, we lived up in the Central Valley, with Mormons on both sides, made friends with ‘em, I know what
they say about Mormons an’ our folks, but these were good people, an’ they taught us about keepin’ one or
even two years’ worth o’ food on hand, just in case). You’re both welcome to stay, long as you help
around the house, watch out for Mama, that sort o’ thing.”
“Deal!” said Mike, putting out his hand. “We’ll be glad to!”
“Deal it is,” Mort said, taking the younger man’s hand and giving it a surprisingly strong squeeze.
“Okay, here’s how you get there. We don’t live far away, just about four blocks south of here, not counting
the turns, close to the beach. Bought the place years ago from a guy whose wife had died, he just wanted to
get outta here as quick as he could, go back to Alabama, where his family was from, get away from the
memories, so I got it for a song, you see. Me an’ Mama been livin’ there all alone ever since – we never
had no kids, doctor said somethin’ about pollution messin’ up m’ sperm count, an’ o’ course Mama had
that condition startin’ up when she was a young woman, they couldn’t see it then, but her chemistry was
prob’ly a little wonky from the git-go, they said. So it’s always been just her an’ me.
“Anyways, you go round the back o’ the store, there’s a narrow road goes straight south from the
property line, you’ll see it at once. Go two blocks south along that road, then turn left, onto Phyllis, go one
block east, then make a right onto Adler an’ take that south for two more blocks. The house is on the
southeast corner o’ Adler an’ B Street, which is the last east-west street before the beach. Number 401, you
can’t miss it.
“I’m gonna tidy up here, make sure the stuff in the basement here is locked up tight – oh, yeah, we got
about six years worth o’ food an’ other stuff, even ammo, down there, nobody knows about!” he said,
grinning. “Then I’ll head home m’self. You go on there, wait for me to get home so I can let you in. I’ll
call Lizzie, let her know you’re comin’,” he said, “but she can’t get to the door herself, so she can’t let you
in. I’ll have to do that.”
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“Maybe you should do that right now,” said Mike, staring up at the TV. Those flames . . .
“I reckon you’re right,” said Mort, following his gaze. The two little images of the reporter and the
fireman were still there, but both were now staring at something behind them. Suddenly, a great yellow-
white-blue fireball exploded in the field of view, the two figures disappearing within it. And then the
picture was gone, replaced by a field of polychrome snow, the roar of the flames transmuted into white-
noise static.
“Oh, shit!” said Mort. “Lemme call Lizzie right now, I gotta cell phone, that’s prob’ly still workin’
even if the land-lines ain’t! You two go on, wait for me at the house. Can you remember the route?”
“Sure – take the road out behind this place, go two blocks straight south, turn left, go one block east,
turn right, go two blocks south, you live in Number 401 on the corner of Adler and B Street, a block north
of the beach!”
“Great! Okay, Mike, see you later . . .”
Grabbing his groceries in one hand and his brother’s arm in the other, Mike hurried out of the store. A
few minutes later they were pulling up in front of Mort Butler’s house, then into his driveway, finally
coming to a stop just before the big doors of the two-car garage attached to the beautifully kept-up white,
two-story house with the sky-blue trim and slate roof, kept good company by the trim little bungalows and
old but well-loved former fixer-uppers to either side as well as lining the other side of the street.
After turning off the engine, for a moment Mike and Tom sat in the car, listening to the gentle susurrus
of the surf a block away. Above, a flock of gulls swooped by, headed south, their eerie cries haunting the
morning, disturbingly like the pleas of lost souls for salvation. It was so peaceful here, so peaceful . . .
. . . until you looked north and west. There, gigantic pillars of brown-black smoke writhed against the
sea-green sky, trails of bright yellow and red sparks falling from them in long fire-falls, enwrapping them
like blazing veils enwrapping a burning bride. Mike found his brain hunting for fiery metaphors, gave it
up, stared at that inferno consuming the northwestern skies until his eyes hurt. His heart hurt. His . . .
“Mike . . .”
He looked up. It was Tom, his eyes sane again, looking up at his brother in concern. Battered, bruised
all over, dried blood from his mouth staining the side of his face magenta, he had forgotten his own hurt in
his growing worry over Mike.
Touched, Mike said, “Come on, Bro’, we gotta get this stuff outta the car, take it up to the porch.”
“Yeah.”
Mike got out of the car, helped Tom out, and then said, his voice hardening, “Okay, what happened?”
Tom, eyes puffy and bloodshot, huge purple bruises and burns all over him, not to mention the dirt on
his clothes and body from rolling down the street earlier back in Compton, swatted along by the explosion
as if he’d been a badminton bird, looked up at his brother and said, “I didn’t do it!”
Mike, knowing his kid brother and the hoods he hung with very well, said “Oh, yeah? What did you
do?”
“I . . . I just ran!”
“Okay – from what?” said Mike, picking up a big bag of groceries from the back sea of the car and,
gesturing to Tom to do the same, heading for the house.
Slowly, haltingly – among other serious hurts, due to the explosion, he’d hit mouth-first on the ground,
and his teeth and gums didn’t feel really great (later, he’d realize that two of his front teeth had been broken
somewhere in there) – dragging his aching ass up the walkway to the front door of the house, Tom was
very glad he could truthfully say he hadn’t done anything he shouldn’t have. My God, I don’t have
anything to confess – the shit hit the fan and I didn’t do anything wrong! “I – well, Bro’, it started like
this . . .”
Shaking his head as he heard Tom’s story out, Mike set the groceries down on the house’s front porch,
had Tom do the same, and then, shooing his brother ahead of him, went back to the car to get the rest.
“Maybe it’s a good thing Daddy’s not alive to see this day,” he told Tom. “He’d’ve had another heart-
attack, just like the one he passed from, just lookin’ at your scroungy self an’ seein’ you like this! And
Mama –” He stopped himself. They didn’t talk about Mama any more. When she ran off with Nat Helms
some years ago, a year before Daddy had his fatal heart attack, she had become a forbidden subject at
home. Ever since Daddy’s death, Mike, a responsible, hard-working man who took his obligations to
family seriously, had been head of the household, his remaining little brother, Tom, now his cross to bear.
And now this! – whatever this was. “Never mind the dickens you was up to at that dumpster. – I know you
was, I know you, Tom. At least this time you stayed out of it – or did you?” he asked Tom, eyes narrowed,
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as they took seats on the big old porch swing there by the front door, waiting for their benefactor to come
home and let them in.
“Yeah, I did,” said Tom, dropping his eyes, carefully not mentioning just how close he’d come to not
staying out of it – and, in the process, becoming charcoal-broiled steak or so much superheated vapor like
the other guys.
Just as carefully not inquiring any farther into his brother’s probable spiritual state, Mike said, looking
back up at the sky to the northwest, “Well, whatever’s goin’ on back there, at least you’re well out of it.
I’ve still got a family, what there is left of it. Please, Tommy, please stay out of trouble now, okay? I
don’t want to lose you, too – not after losin’ Andy the way we did, then Mama walkin’ out, then Daddy
dyin’. You’re the only one I got left now, Bro’!”
Tom stared at his brother, shocked. This was the first time in years Mike had said anything like that to
him. His heart was in it, too, Tom could tell.
Mike felt a hand steal into his, give his fingers a squeeze. “I love you, Mike,” came Tom’s whisper. “I
do. I don’t want to lose you, ever.”
Mike slipped a hand around Tom’s shoulders. In silence, they sat together, staring at that horrifying
sky, hearing the sad, ghostly crying of gulls in the distance as more and more flocks of them came down
from the north and the west, listening to the sound of the surf, the same surf that had rolled against all
Earth’s shores since God made the world. And it was thus Mort found them as he pulled into the driveway
next to Mike’s battered Chevy a couple of hours later, the two young men staring at the sky, the tears
rolling down their cheeks at the sight of the world they’d known going up in smoke.
Two days later, they heard on the battery-operated radio that Mort had that the Two-Day War was
over. That’s when they found out that L.A. hadn’t been nuked – it had been burnt to white ashes because
of the firestorm that started with that explosion in the alley off North Tamarind. Of all those actually living
in the Los Angeles Basin, Mike and Tom were among the relatively few survivors of the Great Los Angeles
Firestorm of 2022, all because Tom had the sense to run when he did, in the direction he did, and the fact
that Mike had taken off for work when he did. Amazing how that worked . . .
Some years later, they also learned about a few others who had survived by getting into the Los
Angeles River culvert, which was made out of concrete, and heading for the Pacific Ocean at the final
outlet of the river. Clawing their way over the top of the high wire fencing that bordered the culvert on
both sides most of the way from the San Gabriel Mountains to the Pacific, or slipping down into it around
bridge abutments where roads like East California Boulevard crossed the culvert north of Los Angeles, or
ramming whatever vehicles they had or could beg, borrow, or steal into the fencing, sometimes through it,
sometimes only part way, climbing up on the hoods and roofs of the vehicles and from there to the top of
the fencing and then down the other side, into the culvert, they found temporary refuge in the damp river-
bed below.
And, if they were canny, or with people who knew about the county water-systems, they took refuge in
the giant storm-drains that gave into the river-bed, their vast open maws towering one or two stories above
the river-bed, providing welcome shelter in the cool darkness within. Far back within the hundreds of
kilometers of tunnels and storm-drains, those canny and/or lucky few found air to breathe funneled in from
the south, from sites near the ocean where the firestorms didn’t reach. And if they stayed there until the
firestorm burnt itself out, they lived. They had to scrounge for food afterward among the ash-heaps and
collapsed buildings of the Basin, or beg for it from the luckier ones who lived well south or well north of
the Basin, or try to steal it, kill for it, peddle their flesh for it, become slaves for it.
For those who hadn’t fled the Basin at the first sign of the smoky pillars rising up above the cities of
the plain like the judgment of God, however, or gotten down into the storm-drains and then beyond, into
the tunnel-system beneath the city, survival wasn’t even a moot point. It wasn’t a point at all, unless,
perhaps, they hold arguments over such things in Heaven or Hell or whatever fate awaits the newly dead.
They died in the midst of Hell on Earth, with one consolation: Within at most a day or so, and often within
an hour, or even a few minutes, they were gone, their Earthly suffering over with.
For those who survived, however, suffering and death, want and privation became their constant
companions, and for many of them, death could not come soon enough . . .

§ 2: Los Angeles Burst 1.5

Bellflower, California, 7: 18 a.m., July 16, 2022

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The burst that some Fleet wag later titled “Burst 1.5” erupted in Bellflower right about the time that
Bill and I got on the road to the mountains. We do know that it was somewhat smaller than the Compton
Burst – if “not quite energetic enough to burn down all of Bellflower but more than enough to take out the
suburban core” should be considered to be “smaller” – and that it took place within a block of Bill’s friend
Freddy Johnson. Freddy lived at 15552 Blaine Avenue, in Bellflower. For Bill to have heard the cry of
“—gonna party like it’s 2099!” over his cell as he talked with Freddy, it was likely that the owner of that
voice was no more than 50 feet away at the time, right behind Freddy’s place
The Bellflower Burst initiated with that cry almost certainly started as a dumpster fire that then
touched off an explosion somewhere nearby. The fuel for the explosion was never determined, but we do
know that it burned extremely hot, and that there were fireworks in the mix, their gorgeous displays caught
by one and another satellite speeding past above.
Nothing was every heard from Freddy again, nor from his neighbors.

§ 3: I Left My Heart in San Onofre . . .

6: 31 a.m.:

The only nuke used anywhere near the Los Angeles Basin (on the West Coast, the only nuclear devices
used targeted San Francisco, Portland, OR, and Seattle, WA, all well away from the Basin) is a small one
that hits San Onofre and wrecks the reactor there, causing the venting of radioactive material. Apparently,
as determined by spotty radio traffic intercepted by the United States Navy and relayed on to archival
servers in the Hawaiian Islands, Surinam, and other locations which were not themselves directly impacted
by the War, the attack was launched by missile from an ancient diesel submarine manned by North Koreans
under the direction of factionalists from mainland China who themselves were aboard a trawler stationed in
the eastern Pacific near Clipperton Island.

§ 4: Los Angeles Burst Two

Are you a lucky little lady in The City of Light
Or just another lost angel . . .2

Meanwhile, the Basin . . .

6: 50 a.m. PDT, July 16, 2022, Carson, CA:

“Oh, wow! Cool!”

“What is it, Dougie?”
Dougie – his full name was Douglas O’Brien, but everybody called him “Dougie,” because, as one of
the guys who hung with Dougie’s older brother, Mark, said, “He looks like a ‘Dougie’ “ – looked at his
friend, Kenny Lister. “That,” said Dougie, grinning, pointing slightly northeast. “Fireworks!”
Dougie might not have been the sharpest hypodermic needle in the alley, but he was still one hell of a
lot swifter than Kenny who, after turning to look at the prodigy that had just erupted in the sky somewhere
above Compton, took what seemed to be an eternity to make up his mind as to its real nature. Finally,
turning back to Dougie, the skinny, lank-haired Kenny said, “Yeah, I guess that’s what it is, all right.”
“They must’ve nuked us!” Dougie cried excitedly. He didn’t sound at all frightened, the way most
would upon considering such a prospect. He sounded . . . eager. Glad. Joyous, even. Like some explorer
lost in the dark heart of a vast continent who, having for decades looked unsuccessfully for some sign,
some trace of his own people, suddenly stumbled across a whole city full of them. Big, his body filled with
flat, hard muscles, in contrast to the lack of their intellectual equivalent between his ears, Dougie had
always had an air of “All dressed up and no place to go.” Now, in just instants, he had been transformed
from Man Without a Country into Man With a Definite Destination and a Way to Get There, his pale blue
eyes lit with the same fires that in other men might have signified the reception of some fantastic religious
epiphany.
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“Nukes? You think somebody hit us with a nuke, Dougie?” asked Kenny, visibly quailing at the
prospect. Though Kenny was even farther from geniushood than Dougie, whose acquaintance with
anything remotely resembling intellectual brilliance was usually about that of a frog with the General
Theory of Relativity, he had a surprisingly strong appreciation of nuclear war and what it could do to
people, thanks to some of his Uncle Mike’s collection of holocubes purchased from Rotten.com, the
website catering to the fulfillment of all your sick & twisted desires . . . such as what people look like after
they’ve been cremated alive in a car-wreck, say, or run over by an 18-wheeler barreling down a 15% grade
on the freeway at 128 kph. Some of the ‘cubes in Mike’s collection had been put together from ancient
films the US government had taken back in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s of tests of nuclear and
thermonuclear devices in Nevada and the South Pacific, showing exactly what those mothers could do to
just about anything within 20-plus kilometers. Others had been shot in the ruined cities of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, Japan, by Allied Forces as well as Japanese scientists shortly after the end of World War II and
the beginning of the post-WW2 American occupation of Japan, while a few contained footage somehow
pirated from classified Soviet films on what their Tsar Ivan Bomba, which had packed in at least 50
megatons, had done to some 32,942 km2 of their Novaya Zemlya nuclear test site in 1962. The films taken
in Japan had included shots of both living human beings in those two cities who had been horribly burned
or otherwise injured by the Bomb, and corpses found everywhere in the two cities, while the Soviet films
had captured the dying agonies of pigs, sheep, dogs, and condemned prisoners who had been exposed to
Tsar Ivan’s radiation, shockwaves, and fallout at various distances from Ground Zero. Right there, those
films were enough to put anyone off his feed for weeks. And then there were the copies Mike had made
illegally of such films as the American-made The Day After and the British production Threads, two films
originally released in theaters in the 1980s, then on ’cube a couple of decades later, dramatized versions of
the likely impact on ordinary people of all-out nuclear war. As the introductions to both films said, they
were probably vast understatements of just how bad such a war and its aftermath would actually be – if
such a thing ever came to pass, people, assuming any survived it, would only wish things could be as good
as things were in those films in the aftermath of nuclear war.
Every time Kenny watched one of the things, he vomited and cried and vomited again and cried some
more and, come the night, cried himself to sleep. Finally Mike, whose own IQ, though not precisely in the
stratosphere or, truth be told, anywhere near it, was seemingly as far beyond both Kenny’s and Dougie’s as
the aforementioned frog was from Primordial Ooze, had lost patience entirely with Kenny and had snapped,
“Why the hell do you watch those stupid ’cubes, then, if all they do is make you shake and hurl and have
nightmares for a week afterward? Clara’s gettin’ suspicious – maybe I should just lock the things up and
not let you watch ‘em anymore! Otherwise, if she finds out – and I’m thinkin’ of tellin’ her myself, just to
get you off my back about the ‘cubes for good and all – she’ll ground you for a month, and she’ll never let
you set foot in my place again!”
Clara was Kenny’s mother and Mike’s sister, and this was a potent threat – when upset, Clara had been
known to throw things at the objects of her ire, ranging from various food-items to kitchenware, to sharp
kitchenware, to glass bottles, to busted glass bottles, to various other household items, to extremely heavy
other household items, up to and including bathroom and kitchen fixtures and various pieces of living-room
furniture. Kenny himself had been the target of some of her rages, as had Mike, and both had the scars and
healed-up fractures to prove it. Even so, what Kenny then said in his own defense gave Mike pause:
“Everybody’s always sayin’ how stupid I am, Mike. But none of ‘em knows squat about nuclear war and
how bad nukes are, and I do. I know a lot more’n just about anybody about them! And if I know about
nukes and nuclear war, then maybe I can teach at least some people more about it. It’s somethin’ they
should know about! The Russkies got nukes, the Chicoms got nukes, we got nukes, and you just know
someday something’s gonna happen that starts a nuclear war, and when that happens, it’ll all go at once,
and it’ll probably be the end of the world! But . . . but if at least some people know somethin’ about it,
know what to do, how to protect themselves, maybe . . . maybe at least a few people will survive, and
maybe things’ll get better after that. I know that sort of thing won’t help me or anyone else who ends up at
Ground Zero, that’s what they call the actual spot where a nuke goes off, but away from there, if you can
protect yourself from the fallout, and know what else to do, maybe you could survive. And maybe I could
help people with that.”
“You know,” Mike said, ruffling Kenny’s hair affectionately – a familiarity Kenny hated, except in
cases like this one, when somebody he loved and admired was showing him approval that way – “maybe
you aren’t as dumb as people think. You better watch out – otherwise, one of these days men will come
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around from one of those government schools and snap you up and we’ll never see you again,” Mike said,
smiling to take the barb out of it.
And in fact, over the years Mike had noticed things in Kenny that just about everybody else, Clara and
her ex-husband Ferris, Kenny’s long-absent dad, had missed. Kenny wasn’t really all that stupid. He was
timid, though, and a lot of his timidity was expressed in the way he tended to hide his virtues, such as his
surprisingly vast funds of knowledge on various arcane subjects such as nuclear war and the strange
physics that went with it, which some of those ‘cubes talked about in the course of describing just how
nuclear bombs did their dirty work. Kenny couldn’t read worth shit – but then, who his age could, these
days, what with the mess the schools were in? – but he could listen, he could listen up a storm, and he’d sit
quietly for hours before the holoprojectors, watching those ‘cubes, taking in everything they had to say,
then slowly but steadily chewing it all over for days afterward, like a cow would a week-old cud.
Was Kenny an idiot savant, like those prodigies they discussed sometimes on the Discovery Channel,
the ones who could multiply 8-digit figures in their heads in less than a second, or who knew to the minute
when each New Moon fell over the last 2,500 years, that sort of thing, but had the social graces of a
backward chimpanzee and the common sense of a mad dog? No, Mike had thought, no, that wasn’t Kenny,
he was socially aware enough, just not . . . very swift. His tested IQ lay somewhere in the range of 85-90,
they thought, but such as it was, the best of it was rarely on display, mostly because of Kenny’s timidity
and his worry that people would laugh at him if he did anything more than huddle in the corner and try to
make like so much air.
And the gifts possessed by those idiot savants, Mike remembered one commentator saying, were
“islands of genius in a sea of chaos,” talents unconnected to social skills, common sense, or anything else
of much use on a day-to-day basis. They fell into a class of dysfunctional people known as “borderline
personalities,” people who were not completely dysfunctional, but mostly so, their weird talents all the
weirder for their possession by people who in many cases had real trouble tying their own shoes, and who
were almost always social disaster areas.
That wasn’t Kenny. Kenny knew what was going on when it came to people, or at least enough to
avoid most of the trouble that came with dealing with them. But he was no Einstein, either, Mike thought
sadly. The likelihood that those government schools would ever mistake Kenny for the sort of intellectual
cannon-fodder that were their stock in trade was zip to none.
Unfortunately, in some cases Kenny’s talent for scoping out potential trouble spots when it came to
other people fell down in certain areas. Those areas had to do with the people he took up with – like
Dougie O’Brien.
Dougie, who was an alpha-male type only because he was careful to hang around with people whom
he could dominate and influence to an unconscionable degree, was, on the other hand, trouble on two legs,
Trouble spelled with a capital “T,” a walking disaster area practicing hard to become a full-blown
catastrophe of truly global scope. At 22, two years older than his pal Kenny, he had already racked up an
amazingly long rap sheet, his many and various crimes ranging from the relatively mundane sort –
breaking-and-entering, grand theft auto, assault, assault with intent, battery, rape, and related felonies – to
the distinctly weird sort. These latter included such delights as graveyard robbing and desecration of a
corpse – that one he’d been busted for at the age of 14; they’d caught him in the mortuary, literally with his
pants down, having carnal knowledge of the corpse of a six-year-old boy who’d died of leukemia – and
serial arson, the earliest instance of which he’d committed at the age of five, when he’d poured gasoline
over a neighbor’s little Pomeranian dog and set it on fire.
When the juvenile-court judge had asked him why he’d done it, he said, “I was bored, an’ there was
nothin’ to do, and I hated that dog, it was always yappin’ at me!” Because he was so young, they’d put him
on two years’ probation and sent him home with his parents, who’d then beaten the tar out of him about a
hundred times because he’d shamed them so bad. In revenge, two days later, he’d set the clothes in his
father’s closet on fire, and nearly burned down the house, which is why they’d locked him up in an
institution in El Monte for a year, where he had to see a shrink every day and had 24/7 supervision. After
that, he’d gotten crafty about his fire-setting, and only got caught at it a few times since then, because he’d
catch the bus and go at least 15 kilometers from home to set a fire, and then only when he was sure he
could set the fire and get away without being caught. A few times, as it turned out, he’d miscalculated, and
did get caught, and back to the institution he’d go for another stint of 24/7 observation and having to talk to
the shrinks every day, but hey, every good thing comes with its risks, it was all part of the game! And the
last six or seven times he’d gotten caught at it, he’d only had to stay in the institution for about three
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months each time because it was packed to the rafters with inmates, many of them a hundred times nastier
than Dougie’d ever thought of being, so they’d let him out way early because they needed the room there
for incoming.
If it hadn’t been for Father Mark Donahue, though, he’d have done a lot more time by now than he
actually had, and in prison rather than just a short-term institution. The Father always accompanied
Dougie’s mother to each hearing concerning her son – after the incident of the fire in the bedroom closet,
Dougie’s dad had made tracks for the tall timbers and had never come back – and swore on Jesus, Mary,
and every Saint in the Church Calendar that Dougie would never do it (whatever the current “it” was, there
was quite a list of them) again, and the judge would sigh, and would usually turn Dougie back to his
mother’s custody, because the jails were full, the institutions were full, and they simply didn’t have enough
room for all the hard-core perps, let alone small-time nuisances like Dougie (and never mind that some of
his escapades were a lot worse than nuisances, like the time he’d tried to burn down Father Mark’s own
church and got caught at it, and that other time, when he’d raped a 14-year-old girl, she was only one year
older than he was, and, well, let’s just say there were quite a few things way beyond Nuisance Country and
all the way into Catastrophe World which Dougie had done, but hey! What’re a few felonies among
friends, anyway?)
Dougie’s outstanding lifetime achievement was that, unlike Kenny, who could barely make out the
alphabet, he could read. And not just dumb stuff, like those Dick & Jane readers for little kids, or Walt
Disney comic books, or other junk. No, he could actually read real long books, the sort adults read, even
the sort that only very smart people could read, and did regularly, because of their work, say. Like books
on chemistry. And books on firefighting. And books on forest ecology and urban renewal and stuff like
that.
Because Dougie had an interest in, nay, an obsession with, one subject: how to start fires. And not
just any fires, either. Big ones. Hot fires. Fires that would reach temperatures of over 1,500° C within way
less than a minute, then spread like bastards, mushrooming up and out until they took down whole city
blocks, or vast tracts of brushland and forest. Fires like the one that had burned halfway through the
Malibu Beach development area about five years back – he was real proud of that one! They never caught
him at that one, either – they’d suspected, oh, yeah, they suspected he’d been involved in that, but there
was this little thing called an alibi, and he had one that was air-tight: he had been at home, helping his
mother clean up their ratty little apartment, the one Housing Authority paid most of the rent on, starting
three hours before that fire broke out and lasting for some eight hours worth of good, hard work.
His mom had been real surprised when he volunteered to help her with the Spring cleaning that day –
okay, it was halfway through the Fall, in the middle of one of those godawful blistering hot, bone-dry
Indian Summers that afflicted the Basin every so many years, nobody wanted to expend any more energy
than absolutely necessary during times like that, but he’d come to his mom and told her, “Hey, it’s your
birthday coming up, Mom, tell you what, let’s get this place in order like you said you wanted to do, and
I’ll do most of it. Would you like that?”
She was delighted, and took him up on it then and there. And so for eight hours they’d worked and
worked – as he’d promised, he contributed the brunt of the labor, as well as all the difficult parts – and by
nightfall their place was as close to spotless as it had ever been, or ever would be. She was so proud of
him, and so was Father Mark.
And then the fire-fuzz came around to ask him some questions, and not only his mom, but several of
the neighbors testified quite truthfully that on that at day he’d been home well before the Malibu Burn
(that’s what the papers and the Web-zines online called it) had started, and stayed home until well after
dusk that same day, helping his mother clean out and clean up the apartment, taking bale after neatly- – and
tightly- – packaged bale of old newspapers and throwaway flyers and junk mail out to the curb, cleaning
the windows of their apartment, beating the dust out of their ancient rag-rugs and throws, doing laundry,
and everything else needed to get their place into better shape than it had been since they’d first moved into
it, seventeen years before, after Dougie’s dad walked out on them and Mom had to get herself a job and
couldn’t keep up the payments on the house they’d lived in before then.
Mind you, the neighbors had all been real surprised, seeing Dougie help his mom with that – their
normal mode of interaction was one screaming fight after another, when it wasn’t Dougie bringing his
hooligan friends home and telling them to make free of the premises while his mom impotently railed on
and on at all of them. But Father Mark had said Dougie had promised to “try,” and hey, miracles really do
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happen, because finally he really was trying, that is, trying to be of some use rather than a total asshole, the
way he usually was, and they were all for it.
The fire-fuzz hemmed and hawed and, finally, shrugged and made it clear they’d be keeping an eye on
Dougie. But he didn’t care. They’d never get him on this one. That timer he’d set up there on that one
property on Mulholland Drive had worked perfectly, giving him a full twenty-four hours to go home, get a
good night’s sleep, get up, offer to help his mom clean the place up, then set to work and get well into it
before that little package of thermite and C4 went up like Krakatoa and set Malibu to burning, burning,
burning until they were afraid that it would spread all the way down the coast to Santa Monica and all the
way up to Oxnard and beyond. And Dougie had been nowhere in evidence when it started, had, in fact,
been a good many klicks away, at home, helping his mom clean the place up. And the fact that the
explosion that started the fire had taken out the entire device and anything connected with it, such as his
fingerprints, which might have helped ID him as the perpetrator, had been a plus, too.
It had helped, of course, that the property where he’d set up his nice little surprise package was
derelict, a half-hectare of woodsy land with an old two-story house gone to the bad and a barn gone to the
worse after the man who’d owned the place had died in his bed and his relatives had taken the place over,
but couldn’t get anyone to buy it. That had been two years before, and they were planning to demolish the
house – they never had been able to get the stink out of it – and the barn with it, then build condos on the
property and sell the condos to some big corporation based in San Diego. But they still hadn’t started
demolitions work when Dougie decided that would be the site of his next Project, and as no one came
around there at night – kids believed the place was haunted, while adults, more mundanely wise, feared that
they’d either be shot as potential looters or mugged by some lay-in-wait type if they went out there – it was
the perfect place for what he had in mind. Which was, setting the Biggest Fire of All Time, something to
cap his proud career of serial arson, which he could hug to himself at night when he was alone, whacking
off in bed, thinking of the gorgeous flames that would arise from it, something no one would be able to tie
him to because he was so crafty about the way he set it up, all of which he’d gotten from his strangely
voluminous, omnivorous reading.
For a man with a tested IQ of about 98, Dougie was one hell of a lot smarter in many areas than
anyone ever gave him credit for, and it all came from his reading. He was so proud of that. Over a lifetime
much of which was spent either behind bars, or behind the walls of one or another institution, or grounded,
at home, on probation whose terms were almost as bad as being in jail, he’d had a lot of time on his hands
and nothing to do – except for reading. And while he was no scholar – the novels of Dickens, Thackery,
Hawthorne, and Melville held about as much interest for him as lettuce would for a famished wolf, while
the works of Chaucer, W. B. Yeats, Goethe, Marlowe, and Shakespeare were as far beyond his ken as
rocket-science was that of the average barnyard chicken – within his narrow specialty, the science of the
chemistry, physics, ecology, and related aspects of Fire in all its glorious forms and incarnations, he was
something of a genius. If he’d ever gone into the military – they wouldn’t have touched him with a ten-
kilometer pole, of course, not with his record, but if he’d ever managed to join up, they’d have had him in
Demolitions so fast that a photon (and he knew what that was, from his reading) would have had trouble
catching up with him (and he knew about the speed of light, too, also from his reading). He even knew
something about nuclear physics and nuclear devices – Kenny’d gotten him interested in that, as a matter of
fact, though he was still way behind Kenny in that subject, ‘cause he’d only started up with it in the last
year or so, while Kenny’d gotten into it at least twelve years before, thanks to his uncle Mike’s ‘cube
collection. But give him time, and someday, someday . . .
Of course, he knew about those government schools, too. Everybody did. So he’d been careful never
to show just how much he knew about chemistry, physics, even a lot about ecology and biology (the things
he read about forests and woodlands and even urban areas that helped him decide how and where to set his
fires for maximum effect) around just about anyone else, especially teachers, school snitches, his probation
officers, or anyone else who might decide maybe he wasn’t as stupid as they thought he was and have him
hauled off to one of those government places where they kept the eggheads for the rest of his life. (It had
also occurred to him that the more people knew about how much he knew about things related to Fire, the
more likely he was to get his ass locked up in some other sort of place for the rest of his life, like
Atascadero State Hospital for the criminally insane.) No, best not share that with anyone else, not even,
say, Father Mark. Though of course the Father wasn’t supposed to reveal what he heard at confession to
the cops, you just never knew – with one exception: Kenny. Kenny Lister was, if anything, Dougie’s
Right Hand Man, i.e., patsy and general gopher. Kenny was easily dominated, and he was, frankly,
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terrified of Dougie – like everyone else, he’d heard all about some of Dougie’s nastier exploits, and unlike
just about everyone else, he was positively fascinated by Dougie, as if Dougie were one of those nukes that
Kenny’d learned so much about from his obsessive ‘cube-watching, and wondered when and how it, i.e.,
Dougie, would go off, and he was also scared shitless of Dougie, and thus easily terrorized into going along
with Dougie and helping him with . . . things, even though he really didn’t want to. Dougie didn’t even
have to threaten Kenny or his family, not in so many words. Dougie’s reputation was more than enough to
do the job, all by itself.
And now, here they were, Dougie and Kenny, standing there together in the street, staring northeast at
that apparition of Fire that had just bloomed there in the skies above the developments south of Los
Angeles, Dougie practically creaming his jeans over it, Kenny just about shitting his in terror.
“Nuke?” Dougie said. “Naw, that’s no nuke – come on, Kenny, you’ve seen maybe a bazillion films
on nuclear tests, you know if it was real nuke, it’s so close it’d have burned our eyes out by now or
somethin’. You know what it is?”
“Uh, what?” said Kenny, shying back a little, like he didn’t really want to know.
“The war, stupid! Didn’t you hear about the war yet?”
“What war?”
Sighing heavily – Kenny could be so dense – Dougie proceeded to explain: “Okay, late last night,
there was this asteroid that hit us just off the coast of Maine. That’s what the radio was sayin’ when I got
up this morning. Mom had it on, and she was sittin’ there at the table, knockin’ back one beer after
another, her face all pale, and I asked her what was the matter, and she said, ‘It’s war, honey, the Last War
just started! It’s Armageddon, and Jesus is comin’ to judge us all!’ The radio also said that about 4: 30
a.m. this morning, there was a nuke, it hit Seattle, which basically sort of ain’t there no more. Touched off
a volcano there or something. You must’ve felt that earthquake this morning?”
“Oh – oh, that.”
“Yeah, oh, that.”
In fact, Kenny had come roaring out onto the street in front of his and his mom’s place, which wasn’t
far down the street from where Dougie and his mom lived, looking wild-eyed and babbling about the
earthquake, which had tossed him out of bed and made him scramble into his clothes and run for safety
outside his apartment building. For some reason, that rickety old fire-trap – heh – of an apartment building
that Kenny lived in with his mom hadn’t fallen down on top of them. It was still standing, though a lot of
people living there had, like Kenny, come bellowing out into the street, looking around to see how bad it
was. It had been a what, 7-pointer or more? Hefty, anyway. The quake had shaken up Dougie’s building,
too, but again, it hadn’t collapsed or anything, though doors were sprung everywhere in it, windows had
cracked, and who knew what would happen next?
The quake had happened about half an hour after Dougie had gotten up and gone into the kitchen to
see what there was for breakfast and had found his mother sitting there, face white as a sheet, listening to
the radio and crying and knocking back those beers. It hadn’t awakened him and his mom – she’d gotten
up maybe around the same time that nuke hit Seattle, 4, 4: 30 a.m., something like that. Why? She’d had
one of her “premonitions,” she said. Over the years, Dougie’d learned to trust those – he hadn’t told his
mom that, because otherwise he’d lose some of his power over her, but she was genuinely psychic,
clairvoyant, something like that, with dreams that came true, or almost did because once you heard about
them you did something else and just missed getting creamed, and hunches that were even stronger and
more trustworthy. And one of those premonitions, coming to her in a dream, got her up. And then he got
up – maybe it was a premonition of his own, though generally speaking, he didn’t remember his dreams,
and he couldn’t remember whatever dreams he might’ve had this morning. And he’d listened to the radio
with his mom, and he’d learned there’d been more than one nuke – Washington had eaten it, so had New
York City, and there were reports coming in from all over the world about this, that, and the other place
that had been pasted with nukes, or hit with big non-nuclear bombs like fuel-air injection types of devices,
or with biological warfare matériel, you name it.
So he’d come out onto the street himself, to see what he could see – maybe there’d be a bomb here,
and if so, he’d love to see it close up and personal, go out with a bang, not a whimper, the best way. And
here was Kenny, and . . . there you were.
And now that explosion kilometers away, probably in Compton. Crescents and stars and sunbursts of
polychrome radiance blazing forth in the heavens! Made a man feel good to be alive!
“Hey, Kenny?”
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“Wh-what?”
“Look, let’s try something. I’ve got this sweet little deal over in that maintenance shack behind the
recycling place down the street. You know the place?”
“Uh-uh . . .” Kenny looked like a bunny confronted by a rattlesnake: eyes starey-wide, body shaking,
he knew what was coming and couldn’t, for the life of him, do the sensible thing and run, not from Dougie.
It was always better to face Dougie than turn your back on him, and Kenny knew it. Unfortunately for
Kenny, so did Dougie.
“Here, come on,” Dougie said kindly, putting a companionable arm around the shorter man’s slender
shoulders, feeling the trembling running all through Kenny’s skinny frame. God, what a wimp! “Let’s go
over there, I’ll show you . . .”
The shed was only about fifty yards away. Reaching it within a minute or two, they paused in front of
it. No one was around – they could hear people shouting, crying, screaming for kilometers around, but
once behind the recycling center, which was closed for the day – it was only open on weekdays, and on
Saturdays it was locked down tight, to prevent thefts – they were completely alone. There was the little
maintenance shack, door likewise tightly locked – but Dougie, grinning broadly, reached into his pants’-
pocket and pulled out a key-ring stuffed with keys, at least 20 of them, all shapes and sizes. His keys to the
apartment building where he lived and his and his mother’s apartment in it, plus almost two dozen others,
all of them made at various locksmithies around town from wax impressions of keys and keyholes to locks
on doors all of which guarded things in which he had a strong interest. Like the things that were kept in
that maintenance shed. He never told the locksmiths who made keys for him from those wax impressions
what those keys were for, and they never asked – he paid his good American dollars to have the keys made,
they took the good American dollars for work well done, and that was that. In the case of this shed, the
lock that fit one of the keys on his key-ring protected something that was to Dougie close to the Holy Grail
itself: about one hundred kilograms of dynamite of various ages and constitutions; some actual C4, maybe
six or seven kis of it; and – in a basement below the shed accessed by a trap-door in its floor – such
goodies as thermite, two jerrycans partially filled with gasoline, a two-liter plastic container filled with
turpentine, several cans of paint, two boxes of highly illegal Tijuana Special Black Cat fireworks, three
boxes of double-ought buck shotgun shells, and at least twenty boxes of .40-calibre ammo, probably for
semiautos of one sort or another. Somebody was using this place as his own private ammo dump and
contraband storage area, probably someone who worked as a maintenance man for the city and sort of
mixed business with pleasure, you might say. And only Dougie knew about it – not even whoever had
stored some of this stuff here knew about Dougie, or else he’d have moved it all out by now. So it was just
Dougie’s little secret. And now Kenny’s.
Half a minute more and they were inside the shed, looking over its contents, Dougie proudly
describing the various items it held as well as those that lay out of sight below, in that basement beneath the
trap-door in the shed’s floor, Kenny standing beside him, shaking in his shoes, becoming more and more
upset by the second as Dougie went on and on about his favorite subject, Fire and How to Create It. And
then Dougie said, “Now, here’s what we’re gonna do, Kenny. You stand over there, and hold this –”
This was a long piece of rag stinking of gasoline that Dougie scooped up from the floor of the shed.
Terrified of Dougie’s likely reaction should he refuse, Kenny did not object when Dougie slapped the rag
onto his hand. And then, before Kenny could gather his wits together and react, before he even really knew
what Dougie intended, Dougie had a cigarette lighter out, flicked it alight, and touched the flame to that rag
...
And then Dougie, laughing maniacally, sprang back out of the shed, slamming the door behind him,
locking it, locking Kenny inside with all those demolitions, incendiary devices, box after box full of
ammunition, and accelerants and other flammable chemicals. “Dead men tell no tales!” came Dougie’s
gleeful voice, fading away with increasing distance.
And then it was just Kenny, locked into that shed, holding a long twist of rag now beginning to blaze
brightly as the fire climbed along its gasoline-soaked length, staring at it as the flames came closer, closer,
closer –
Screaming so loudly it lacerated his throat, Kenny hurled the blazing rag away from himself, toward
one of the few bare spots on the floor – only realizing, a little too late, that all that dust lining everything in
the shed was one big powder-train waiting for a hot-point to turn it into an inferno, just incidentally setting
off horrendous explosions in the shed, not to mention secondarily setting off, a bare handful of seconds
later, the ammunition, fireworks, and thermite below . . .
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Though it wasn’t nearly as spectacular as that first, volcanic pyrotechnical eruption in Compton, which
would go down in history as “Los Angeles Burst One,” you could still see the Carson Explosion for
kilometers in all directions, the second of the chain of such events that ultimately culminated in the Great
Los Angeles Firestorm. Like the Compton Blast, it was captured by several passing military satellites, a
few of which, before they were shot out of the sky or had their works fried beyond redemption by nearby
nuclear explosions or the tremendous amounts of radioactive crud lofted into the sky thereby, managed to
download the films to the US Navy base at San Diego, hardened underground lunar installations, and
several other sites that escaped the general devastation of what came to be known in the vernacular and
then the history books as the Two-Day War.
As he ran from the shed and into the maze of tumbledown buildings, derelict outbuildings, dirt alleys,
and vacant lots surrounding the blazing shed that had become Kenny’s pyre, Dougie, the author of the blast
that Fleet archivists would eventually label “the Carson Explosion,” “the Carson Flare,” and “Los Angeles
Burst Two,” gleefully noted crescents and stars and sunbursts of polychrome radiance rising high into the
sky above him. Soon he was blocks away from the Furies set loose by the detonation of the various
explosives in the maintenance shed as they ate their way down and sideways into the surrounding sewer
and gas lines and touched off the methane collected in the former and the natural gas conveyed by the
latter, with no potential witnesses having seen him in the vicinity of the shed. A bare handful of minutes
later, he had found a battered old hulk of a ‘13 Pontiac sedan standing in front of one of the rattletrap
buildings – probably the possession of some stupid greaser not that long off the coyote wagon whose assets
weren’t sufficient to allow him to purchase anything better – and, opening the door and leaping into it, had
hot-wired it and exited the area at a sedate 45 kilometers per hour, not so fast as to attract the attention of
police and the Highway Patrol, but more than fast enough to get him out of the spreading danger zone well
ahead of the inferno building behind him, heading south, toward Route 11. Twenty minutes later he was on
the coastal highway and US 1, heading north. An hour later, even as millions of Angelinos woke to the
news of the asteroid strike on America’s East Coast and the outbreak of nuclear war, Dougie, laughing like
a loon but still holding to the speed limit – 90 kph out on US 1 – had passed Oxnard and was nearing
Ventura. Reaching Ventura, he turned off on Route 33, heading through the Los Padres National Forest
toward Ventucopa, where he ditched the old beater for a much better car, a ‘21 Chrysler Panther with a full,
120-liter tank of gas. The Panther purred like its namesake in every gear, cornered like a dream, took just 5
seconds to accelerate from 0 to 95, and had brakes tighter than 8-year-old pussy.
The owner of the Panther wouldn’t require it any more, not after the gigantic hole in his skull Dougie’d
given him with the tire-iron he’d found in the owner’s garage while he was looking over the Panther – the
owner, whose name, according to the driver’s license Dougie found in his wallet along with two credit-
cards and some $150 dollars in cash, was Seth Morris, had come into the garage, surprising Dougie as
Dougie was preparing to hotwire the Panther and take off with it. That was all right – along with the
driver’s license and the cash, Mr. Morris had had the keys to the Panther and those to his house in one of
his pants pockets. Using the keys, Dougie’d gone back into the house and ransacked it for the best of the
food and numerous other useful items he’d found there, putting what he’d found into the garage so he could
load it into the Panther. Then Dougie’d gone back into the house to see what else he could find worth
taking away with him, and had discovered Seth’s wife coming down the stairs, armed with a shotgun.
Apparently the woman wasn’t familiar with firearms – trying to use the gun, she’d forgotten to take the
safety off, or hadn’t known to do so, and it was the work of a few seconds to take the gun away from her.
Then Dougie had forced her to the floor and raped her – a slight, fragile woman, she was helpless in the
face of the assault. After raping her – he’d never even gotten her name – Dougie snapped her neck like a
dry stick, then went upstairs, took a shower, and looked through the bedroom closets and drawers to see if
any of Seth’s clothing fit him. Seth was just Dougie’s size, it turned out, and Dougie appropriated five
pairs of trousers, six shirts, one of them silk, seven or eight pairs of underwear and an equal number of
socks, and three pairs of Seth’s shoes, dressing himself in a pair of jeans, a red cotton shirt, and a pair of
dark brown shoes, and stowing the rest of the clothing in the trunk of the Panther.
Dougie had no fears of anyone raising the alarm over the break-in and rape – on his way in, he’d seen
at least half of Ventucopa peeling out of the town at top speed, heading for either I-5 or US 101, probably
expecting bombs to come whizzing down at any moment. He’d listened to the radio in the first car, the one
he had abandoned here, as he drove up Highway 1 and then Route 33, and it was clear that even this early,
only 8: 30 a.m. or so, like the rest of the nation, Southern California was a seething cauldron of panicked
citizens and emergency workers who were swamped with demands on their time and skills. The
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unheralded, swift deaths of two citizens in a jerkwater little town like this one would be less than a dry
straw in a firestorm. Nobody would be following up on the burglary, rape, and murders of these two
citizens – as panicked everyone out on the streets were by now, nobody would notice him driving away
from here. No, the Panther and the loot he’d just loaded into it were his, all his, and he would disappear
into Central or Northern California like a handful of dust thrown onto desert sands.
As he got back on Route 33, heading north, Dougie reflected that on top of the fireworks show he’d
given all his homies, that lovely piece he’d ripped off the late Mrs. Morris, and all the goodies he’d taken
away from the Morris domicile in the back seat and the trunk of the Panther, the real cherry on top of the
sundae was that he’d never have to put up with his mom’s nagging and hysterics again. He hoped she liked
the (heh) warm farewell party he’d thrown for himself just before leaving the ‘hood . . .

§ 5: Gridlock: Panic in the City

L.A. Woman, L.A. Woman
L.A. Woman Saturday afternoon*

6: 50 a.m. – 9: 30 a.m. PDT

The Santa Ana winds that had been keening about the Basin for more than a week, inspiring every
pyromaniac and other murderous lunatic to come out and play, had already begun to drive up incidents of
road rage, drive-bys, psychopathic crime sprees, murder, rape, and other violent crimes to a terrifying
degree. Now their impact on those in the Basin, interacting synergistically with thousands of other irritants,
escalated by orders of magnitude into Hell’s own hammers, turning the Basin into a psychological witch’s-
brew of volcanic proportions.
By no later than 9: 30 a.m., the Basin hit total gridlock due to panicked residents, tourists, and
commuters all trying to escape the Basin before the nuke came which they assumed would obliterate it.
The situation wasn’t made any better by rumors that nearby areas had been nuked, probably fueled by an
actual nuclear attack on the San Onofre reactor a little south of the area, however picayune that actually
was. Frustrated motorists and even pedestrians were already beginning to exhibit extreme forms of road
rage. Drivers and their passengers climbed out of their vehicles and hurled themselves on others who had
likewise climbed out of their vehicles, or even upon those on foot, and began to brawl. If they’d used all
that adrenaline-fueled energy to make a run for it, at least some of them might have gotten far enough away
from the locus of the horrors to come to survive them. Instead, they began mixing it up with everyone
around them, venting their anger on other, equally angry drivers, passengers, and pedestrians, and, in the
process, losing whatever chance they had of survival. Those who were at least a little emotionally and
mentally fragile to start with broke down completely.
From the cover of the corner of a tall office building near 6 th & Spring streets in downtown Los
Angeles, a young man covertly watched a trim, fit, well-dressed, youthful-looking woman who might have
been in her early 50s stalk up and down the sidewalk along one street, angrily muttering, “Muvver says . . .
Muvver says! My muvver SAYS!!” When a passing pedestrian stared at her, she suddenly whipped out a
pistol from her purse and shot him.
The young man didn’t stay to see what happened to the woman, but turned around and, running down
the alley behind the building to 5th Street, found he had indeed correctly remembered the ancient
underground air-raid shelter entrance posted there, hurried down the stairs to the shelter, and then, from the
shelter’s ill-maintained, badly corroded back wall, found his way down into the sewers and from there into
a branch of the concrete-covered Los Angeles River system, through which he eventually reached the
Pacific Ocean and safety.
On Wilshire Boulevard, a man wearing an ultra-high-end business suit, white silk shirt, narrow Armani
power-tie, a pair of stiletto-toed Italian shoes that had probably set him back some $400, and enough
diamond-studded gold bling to have ransomed the President of the United States, carrying a heavy
briefcase full of business documents in one hand and a top-of-the-line latest-model Blackberry in the other,
wandered aimlessly through the Wilshire business district, muttering to himself. Suddenly, dropping his
briefcase and tossing his blackberry a good fifty feet away into the street, a huge, goofy smile spreading
across his face, he squatted down on the sidewalk, pulled down his pants, and proceeded to relieve his
bowels right there in front of God and everybody. Then, using his own feces, he set about making pretty
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designs on the sidewalk and the wall of the nearest office building. People hurrying by along the sidewalks
swerved clear out into the street to avoid him – and one and then another and then another of them were hit
by cars speeding by. The district itself had few cars left anywhere in it, because so many people who might
otherwise have gone to work on that hellishly hot Saturday were instead attempting to leave the Basin after
having been rudely awakened by the early morning earthquake that had shaken the area, gotten up, turned
on the news, and found out that as they’d slept, World War III had broken out. The streets of the Wilshire
district had thus been left surprisingly empty of vehicles, so that any in or traveling through the district
could speed through this area as they fled from somewhere to somewhere else, trying to get as far away as
possible for what they assumed would soon be Ground Zero for a nuke.
Not everyone had fled the Basin by then, however. In fact, by 9: 00 a.m. or so, thanks to ever-
increasing gridlock, some ten million people still occupied the Basin. Most of them were there unwillingly,
or for some reason had not yet heard the news about the war or otherwise had seen a need to leave the area,
but a few stalwart souls were both aware of unfolding events around the world and nevertheless believed
that they still had business in the Basin whose importance was so great that they were more than happy to
remain there long enough to conclude it.
A group of PETA activists living in Sierra Madre, somewhat east of Pasadena, got the news about the
War fairly early on, around 7: 30 a.m. Five of them decided to head over to Animal Control to “kindly,
gently ease the poor animals” out of their misery via chemical euthanasia. Around 9 a.m., they got into
their van, equipped to do the job, and headed out, bound for the downtown L.A. branch of animal control,
in the shadow of L.A. General Hospital, a.k.a. USC Medical Center, where L.A.’s juvenile hall and some
other civic agencies were located. As they drove toward their goal, they communicated with Mindy
Dworkin and Ralph Dogood, two other PETA activists who had decided to head up into the hills north of
Monrovia to carry out the same sort of operation on horses they knew were stabled up there. The two who
had volunteered for that mission never did find the horses – the owners had likely loaded them into trailers
and driven off with them, taking Interstate 210 east from Sierra Madre to San Gabriel Canyon Road and
turning north onto the latter, heading for Crystal Lake or even going through the San Gabriel Mountains to
Piñon Hills or Lancaster. Because of their unsuccessful quest, however, the two of them made it to Crystal
Lake themselves, and stopped in a nearby campground, There they survived both the firestorm and the
great storms from the north that followed. They were thus able to provide testimony later on as to what
happened to their five friends who had headed into Los Angeles on a mission to euthanize all the animals at
the main Animal Control shelter there.
By the time the five PETA members in the van, taking I-210, a.k.a. the Colorado Freeway, west from
Sierra Madre to the Pasadena Freeway, getting on the latter at the junction of the two major arteries, the
freeways were already jammed with vehicles driven by panicked people, and the situation was getting
worse by the minute. The intrepid crusaders finally took an off-ramp near Elysian Park and from there, on
a series of narrow streets which were crowded but not yet tied up tight in gridlock, they finally arrived at
the Animal Control building about 11: 00 a.m. – just in time to find out, from a handwritten memo tacked
to the building’s front door, that Animal Control officers, of their own initiative, had driven into L.A.
around 6 a.m., loaded up all the caged creatures in vans, and headed for US 1. They intended to go up 1
through Malibu, then turn up a north-bound road which, going through the mountains, would take them to
Lancaster or Palmdale. They hadn’t wanted their helpless charges to be nuked, if in fact the Bomb was on
the way, and cared enough about them to evacuate them from the city in that fashion.
The furious PETA group, finding nobody at home to murder, then tried to get back into traffic and
head back to Sierra Madre – only to find that they couldn’t, because by then, the Basin was in total
gridlock. They sat there helplessly, fuming, trying to figure out what to do next.
Then Jake Ashbury, sitting in the front seat of the van next to Winter Laine, the driver, looked up and
saw enormous curtains of what seemed to be thick, grey air pollution rolling toward them. “Hey, guys –
look at that smog!” he called out to those in back.
“Jesus – you’d think even the Earth-bashers would’ve gotten sick of it by now and done something to
keep that sort of thing from happening, wouldn’t you?” said Ann Zellerbach, a former student in Women’s
Studies at UCLA – she’d dropped out in order to concentrate full-time on their animal-salvation efforts, the
far lower priority of women’s needs as compared to protecting and delivering animals from the cruelty of
humanity so overwhelmingly obvious to her that she couldn’t have done anything else, though her Earth-
trashing father, who’d been footing the bill for her education, hadn’t thought so.
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“Uh . . . kids, have you ever seen smog like this before?” said Winter, craning her head out the window
to try to get a better look at the phenomenon. “I mean, you could cut this shit with a knife! And it’s so
thick I bet visibility is down to about twenty feet here.”
“It’s . . . black, too,” someone else in the back said. “Why is it turning black over there?”
“Mindy, are you getting all this?” Jake called into his blackberry. “I hope you’re recording – we need
to sue the bastards for all this smog!”
A thin voice came back to him, hashed by static but still partly understandable: “Yes, we can . . .
What’s hap- . . .”
“We’re surrounded by smog so thick you’d need dynamite to get through it, I swear! – I’m
exaggerating, but only a little. You oughtta see this shit! Are you recording?”
“Yes . . . Got . . . Tape is . . .”
“Okay, keep recording. The scumbag Animal Control assholes took all the animals out in vans a
couple of hours ago. We’re stuck in traffic here, and even if we weren’t, visibility is down so far that we’d
have to go about ten kilometers an hour or less to keep from wrecking ourselves! I don’t know what the
fuckers have – what’s that, Pete? It’s hard to hear you back there.”
“Um, something’s happening, can’t you see it?” came the voice of Pete Washington, who was sitting
just behind Jake.
And then slowly, almost coyly, the smoke-curtains opened – on brilliant red-orange-yellow flames 200
meters or more in height rolling straight toward them. Suddenly the temperature inside the van leaped from
a barely bearable 32°C or so to 80° and more, and climbing from there in 10° and then 50° increments by
the second as the monstrous convection column spawned by those towering flames leaned over the van,
venting broiler-level heat at them.
“Oh, my God!” shrieked Winter. “That’s fire!”
And then, as the paint on the van began to scorch and peel, then burn, for several seconds screams
filled the van, followed by a terrible silence, then a roar as the van exploded and added its own miniscule
cargo of combustibles to the fire . . .

Meanwhile . . .

§ 6: Burst Three
Motel Money Murder Madness
Let’s change the mood from glad to sadness

– Jim Morrison, “L.A. Woman”

7: 15 a.m. PDT, July 16, 2022 e.v., Downey, CA: Los Angeles Burst Three, a.k.a. The Downey Burst

A member of Earth Liberation Front sees the eruption above Compton, then the one above Carson, and
yells, “Right on, brothers – let’s send the destroyer-bastards a message!” He thereupon sets about
preparing yet another explosive fire – one in which, to his enormous surprised, he is cremated alive . . .

More Greens join in one the fun “to help save the planet by sending a message,” etc. – then likewise
discover to their horror that they are about to become part of the message as the flames sweep toward them,
blocking off the only avenues of escape . . .

§ 7: The “Bandini Burst”

9: 30 a.m. PDT, July 16, 2022 e.v., 4139 Bandini Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90023:

The vast explosion of the Bandini fertilizer plant, located at 4139 Bandini Blvd, Los Angeles, CA
90023, was either Burst 6 or Burst 7 – by then, a number of other large, showy explosions had been picked
up on various satellites and by observers in aircraft flying above or near the city and were ultimately
archived by the Fleet. It was never clear exactly what caused it – a runaway fuel tanker truck? A
deliberate assault upon it by terrorists or gangs? All that was known for sure was that at 9: 30 a.m. on the
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morning of July 16, those reconnaissance satellites above that area at the time that were subsequently able
to download their data to hardened installations or other safe sites that were spared the brunt of the Two-
Day War suddenly experienced total saturation of all visual recording media aimed in the direction of the
great fertilizer processing plant. For several seconds the only thing seen on films of the event was a
complete whiteout – an explosion so large and hot that even at the height of surveillance satellites it
exceeded the capability of such instrumentation to capture more than that ultra-white all-field radiance
must have occurred there. The fact that on that day and later, no satellite or other instrumentation ever
captured the barest hint of radioactivity in the vicinity of the plant made it clear that enough manure and
fertilizer stored in the plants enormous settling towers by themselves were responsible for the burst – no
surprise, considering just how much explosive material in the form of nitrates, nitrites, and nitrous
compounds was contained in the plant. Whatever might have set it off would have paled in comparison to
it – no nuclear materiel was involved, just a source of heat and explosive force that could easily have been
provided by, say, a fuel tanker or a small high explosive missile fired from a hand-held launcher. It could
even have been set off by the approach of one of the many “small’ firestorms that had begun even this early
to sweep the Basin, such as the one near downtown Los Angeles in which the PETA activists described
above were engulfed.
Regardless of the nature of the trigger, as closely as could be determined from the data from the
reconnaissance satellites as well as eyewitness testimony given by survivors who were many miles away
from the blast at the time, Bandini Fertilizer Co., a very long-lived company in Los Angeles that got started
in the 1940s as a way to turn raw sewage into fertilizer which could then be sold at a profit (the brother-in-
law of the then-current mayor got the contract for the new company; it would be Los Angeles that began
recycling in a big way as normal business as usual, i.e., internal corruption), went up with a roar around
9:30 a.m. Seen all across the Los Angeles Basin and even from points at least 20 miles out to sea, as well
as for a long distance up and down the coast from the Los Angeles area, as one surviving eyewitness, an
astronomer who observed it from the Mt. Wilson Observatory, one of the few structures on the westward
slopes of the San Gabriel Mountains to survive the firestorm that otherwise stripped everything from those
slopes, it “looked like Hell let out for breakfast, like somebody’d set a nuke off somewhere near downtown
L.A.”*

*Mike Preston, professional astronomer and professor of astrophysics, in personal correspondence via
email with Admiral C. G. Resh, Northkeep North, Center City, Lodestar (Polaris I-5), 3419 e.v. As
ascertained from notes left in her journals in the last few years of her life, Hannah Eisenstein also
heard this anecdote about five years before her death because her second husband, Governor Steve
Yeats of New California, had been corresponding with Dr. Preston, and had said the same thing to
him, but Hannah was not able to document it. More than a millennium later, Preston, one of the great
success stories of the Berkeley Clinics and Royer Life-Systems, recalled the original event as well as
his recounting of it to the then-governor of New California in an email to Admiral Resh, and
confirmed that yes, he had in fact said the very same thing about the event to Governor Yeats, who
shared it with Hannah. – Paul Royer, 3428 e.v.

Nuclear devices or not, the Bandini Burst was so large and violent that it propelled countless tons of
blazing material of all kinds, including incandescent metal, concrete, and stone along with furiously
burning fertilizer, for tens of kilometers in all directions, much of it landing on structures made of
flammable materials, such as frame housing and the like. Of the rest, so hot was all that fiery material from
the initial blast, even after traveling many miles through the air, that upon impact with normally non-
flammable structures and other objects, it set many of these ablaze, too. Houses, apartment buildings,
factories and other industrial installations, parkland, schools, gas stations – everywhere that fiery rain came
down, everything began to burn, starting several new firestorms in all directions over a roughly circular
area some 16 kilometers in radius, all by itself. Reservoirs hit by tons of blazing junk drained dry in
seconds after their dams or walls collapsed due to the impact, the water itself flash-boiling, dispersed as
superheated steam into the agonized skies above by the heat. Underground gas mains, broken open as tons
of hot material rained down on the streets, contributed their own share of volatile hydrocarbon compounds
to the resultant infernos. A chemical plant about eight kilometers from the Bandini plant went up with a
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roar, setting off its own rapidly expanding circle of fire. Everything was fuel for the fire – and vulnerable
to it, even many kilometers away.
This scene, repeated on much smaller scales, happened again and again across the Basin as nurseries,
home improvement centers, and any other place where large stores of fertilizer were kept exploded and
burned due either to deliberate vandalism or accidental misadventure involving material from the fires that
were already erupting everywhere in the Basin. As observed from space and captured on surveillance
satellite films, “small” bursts announced nitrate explosions in independent nurseries, Home Depot outlets,
and other places selling and/or storing fertilizer, as well as those originating from illicit sources, such as
chemicals, especially hydrocarbon fuels, stored illegally inside structures not properly prepared to hold
them safely. It has been estimated that 10-15% of such “small” bursts were due to such sources.
Many of the larger bursts, on the other hand, indicated the detonation of propane storage-tank facilities,
natural gas facilities, petroleum tanks, refineries, companies and hospitals using or storing large numbers of
oxygen and flammable gas tanks, etc. Using archived Los Angeles street maps and, where applicable,
surviving GPS satellite data, Fleet analysts compared the maps to photos of the Basin, orienting the photos
by means of archived GPS data from various places in the Basin. By comparing each burst with street
addresses obtained from archived electronic copies of Los Angeles County and Orange County telephone
directories, they were able to match 98% of the bursts to known businesses, factories, apartment
complexes, hospitals, etc., and in 88% of such cases, they were able to determine the cause of each bursts
(fertilizer explosions, oil refinery fires, jet-fuel storage depots at LAX, etc.). They obtained some data on
the causes of bursts, etc. from survivor reports, which pinpointed causes of the first three bursts.*

*E.g., in 2027, as described above, Douglas O’Brien, the pyromaniac who was responsible for Los Angeles
Burst Two, who left the Basin before it was too late to escape, eventually showed up in Fort
Sacramento. He got drunk in a Fort Sac bar and started bragging about his role in the fires in the Basin
to another drunk. He happened to be overheard by Joe Cabrini and Carl Bedloe, who were in the bar
trying to pick up leads – Carl on stories, Cabrini on criminals – was busted by Cabrini and two other
state cops in the bar before he could escape. Cabrini called in Fleet intelligence analysts to talk with
the perp, who, having been caught, had nothing to lose by telling the Fleet officers about his “exploits”
– like any sociopath, O’Brien had a huge ego, was utterly narcissistic, and enjoyed impressing people,
even if only by nauseating them. After Cabrini and his men got everything out of O’Brien they could,
in early 2028 Cabrini turned the perp over to Bill Jamieson and me to deal with him as we saw fit,
sending him down to Diablo Keep via armed escort on horseback, since I was now L.A. County CEO.
Bill, Monty, and I took O’Brien out into the wasteland north of the Keep and staked him out for the
weather, fire ants, and scavengers to finish him off, putting a sign up nearby to let passersby know
what he’d done and why we had staked him out there.

Regardless, after the Bandini Burst, researchers and analysts stopped numbering them in order,
referring to all that occurred after that one in terms of their GPS location and a time, e.g., 33° 48’ 49” /
118° 18’ 10” W / 9: 58 a.m. (2022.07.16).

“I know a little about that one [the Bandini Burst],” Al said, surprising me – again. Clearly he was
lonely, missing his family, and for the time being we had probably become his family, surrogate variety,
drive hands and all. I knew he got on well with Steve Yeats and even Buddy; what I hadn’t expected,
given Monty’s original grouchy assessment of him, is that he would come to like us, as well. “Admiral
Resh told me that his Fleet scientists looked over the data from everything they had, including satellite
photos, cell phone calls in that area just before it happened, and even eyewitness data obtained months or
years later from people who somehow escaped the firestorm. In the case of the Bandini burst, there were
two cell phone calls and one somewhat fuzzy satellite photo, a frame from a film it was taking, really, that
indicated that someone in a runaway gasoline tanker was headed for the plant’s loading dock. The still was
recorded about three seconds before the burst, the calls were picked up maybe five seconds before the
tanker or whatever it was hit the dock. Putting together the scant evidence they had, it looks as if a burning
gas tanker did the job, but who was in control of it – if anyone was, at that point – isn’t known and, I’m
sure, never will be.” – From Dragon Drive Vol. 3, Book 30.
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Exploding fuel tankers and trucks, trains carrying nitrates, nitrites, fertilizer, or fuel. Lumber yards and
recycling centers catch fire and burn.

Any place with ammunition, fuel, etc. goes up

Municipal dumps, littered streets, etc. add to the carnage

§ 8: Exodus
9: 35 a.m. PDT

Bill and I and the people accompanying us finally reached the lowest foothills of the San Gabriels,
after a long and often start-and-stop trip from Westwood Village.
To Bill’s great surprise, in spite of all the confusion and the interruptions we’d encountered while
preparing for our getaway, we’d finally made it out of the garage and started on our way north around 7:00
a.m. Normally it would have taken us at most 25 minutes or so to get from Westwood Village to the
mountains via the San Diego Freeway and then either US 101 or Highway 210, depending on exactly
where we wanted to go. But today, what with the freeways jam-packed with people trying to get out of the
Basin, and lesser-traveled roads increasingly clogged with people trying to get to the freeways, even though
we’d chosen to stay well away from the main arterials, several times in the last hour we’d had to slow our
pace to nearly a crawl in order to avoid collisions with other vehicles as well as maximize our chances of
spotting an open side-road that we could take to get away from the worst of it. Sometimes we’d had to go
way out of our way to get around huge multi-vehicle wrecks. Once, we’d almost gotten shot by an irate
property-owner who, for unknown reasons, was mad as hell at the vehicles passing by his property and was
trying to shoot them all.
Going up Sunset Boulevard as far as Silver Lake Reservoir, we’d turned off there onto Glendale
Avenue, which, after turning into Canada Ave, had taken us as far as Foothill Boulevard. From there it
began to get ugly.
To our left, Foothill was blocked by yet another gigantic, smoking multi-vehicle wreck, this one
involving an illegal three-trailer semi-trailer rig, a Dodge van, a pickup truck, and six cars, all of them
burning furiously. To our right, all the traffic that hadn’t been able to get out of the Basin along Foothill to
the west had made U-turns to try the eastern branch of the road, which headed toward La Crescenta and
Highway 2. And no wonder: they’d already noticed several huge plumes of ugly black smoke rising above
the southern and central parts of the Basin. Clearly the Basin was rapidly becoming a really great place to
be from – as far from as possible. Problem: the foothills of the San Gabriels were chock-full of
combustible materials, from manzanita and chaparral forest to the houses, cabins, outbuildings, and other
structures peculiar to human habitation, all the vehicles parked at curbs or in garages, and the inevitable
cargo of Coleman fuel, turpentine, paint, propane tanks, and even more potentially explosive materials
stored or out in the open on those properties. True, there were several reservoirs and numerous streams,
creeks, and rivers up there, too, and those might yet prove to be viable refuges. But if those fires were to
merge and begin advancing to the north . . .
“Batrix, hang on – I’m gonna try somethin’,” Bill told me as he hauled left on the steering wheel.
“What –?”
Before I could even frame the question, it was already answered for me: we whipped into a fast left
turn across the road, barely avoiding a collision with heavy oncoming traffic, and were bumping our way
over a wide but potholed unpaved road, headed almost due north.
“Oh, my God, Bill, you could have gotten us killed!”
“Yeah, well, stayin’ on that road much longer would’ve got us killed for sure, if not by all those other
people on the road, then by those fires startin’ up below! We’ve got to get as far away from here as we can,
an’ this is the only way I can see!”
He’d made a good choice. The road he’d turned onto, almost certainly somebody’s private road, or
maybe an old Forest Service access road they’d never bothered to pave, was completely empty. We could
make very good time up the new road, at least compared to the snail-crawl we’d been reduced to for the last
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45 minutes, though we’d have to slow down to negotiate the bumps and bends and wends in the road and,
probably, the wildlife that lived nearby.
“Where are we, anyway, Bill?”
“Not too far from the Big Tujunga Reservoir, if I don’t miss my guess, darlin’. It may be the best
place for us, unless they’ve drained it or somethin’ by now. Which they could’ve, you know – the idiots.”
“Why would they drain a reservoir? We need all the water we can get!”
“Yeah, but some bunch o’ Green fanatics could’a sued to have it closed or somethin’, you know how it
goes. Anyway, we can try that. If this road goes that far. I ain’t sure – it don’t seem to be on the map.”
An hour ago, Bill had asked me to take out our Rand-McNally folding map of the cities along the
northern part of the Basin, including Pasadena, La Crescenta, La Cañada, Monrovia, Sierra Madre, and
associated regions, and tape it to the dashboard where it could easily be seen, but not interfere with his
driving. “You see it anywhere there, honey?”
I leaned close to the map. “Uh, let me get out my reading glasses . . .”
Reaching into my purse, I took out my readers and put them on, then tried again. “No, I don’t see any
sign of it. It might be a USGS Survey or Forest Service road, one they never put on the map because they
didn’t want anyone else traveling on it.”
“Why the hell didn’t they put up chains to block it off, then?” he said as he carefully negotiated their
way around an unusually deep pot-hole. “An’ by the way, are our friends still with us?”
As I turned to look back through the passenger-side window, I said, “I noticed two rusted white posts
there as we turned onto this road, one of them down and the other canted over. There could have been a
chain attached to one side, but I didn’t notice. – Yes, here they come. I see the Rileys’ station-wagon, and
the Singhs’ van. Can’t see the Wrights or the Fogles yet . . . no, here come the Wrights in their wagon.
And the Fogles are right behind them.”
Was that a muttered “Damn!” from Bill. I grinned as Bill said, “I know it ain’t very charitable of me,
but I was kinda hopin’ . . . Don’t look at me like that! Jesus Himself wouldn’t’a been all that happy about
havin’ the Fogles follow Him around.”
“By the way,” I said, “how’s Iodine doing?”
A sharp “Yip!” from inside Bill’s jacket gave answer. I grinned – Iodine was in it for the long-haul, all
right, and was still hanging in there, in spite of what must have already become for her unbearably high
temperatures, there next to Bill’s long, rangy body.
“Bill, look,” I said, thinking about that, “why don’t we pull over for a second so you can take that
jacket off? You must be roasting alive in that thing!”
“Who, me? I only got that mesh shirt o’ mine under it, an’ Iodine ain’t a problem – are you, baby?” he
said, glancing down at his chest with a smile.
The coat wriggled, or rather, the small lump in it that was Iodine did. “Yip!”
“See, Batrix? Best two out o’ three wins, you know. – No, let’s not stop until we have to. If this road
goes far enough, we can make it to either the upper arm o’ Mt. Gleason Avenue or the Angeles Forest Road
in not too much more time, an’ check out the Big Tujunga Reservoir on the way. If the reservoir ain’t full,
or there’s some other problem, I want to try to get over the mountains, head for Palmdale or someplace like
that. We could still get nuked here – and there’s all those fires down there, you see ’em?”
“Oh, yes.” I gulped. From here, though they covered a much smaller area, they looked almost as bad
as some of those vistas on Youtube videos of the gigantic firestorms of 2010 and 2012.

Chapter 5: Mojo Risin’

The frozen, charred rubble and ices from the Event that destroyed Western Washington State just a few
hours earlier is still spreading out and out, and precipitating out over northern Oregon . . .

§ 1:
Looting began to spread across the Basin. Many of the looters, concentrating on gathering up their
loot, didn’t realize until much too late that when they were getting ready to carry off their loot, they were
already surrounded by flames, and they died in the midst of plenty – horrifically.
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Wildland fires fall into three general classifications: ground fires, which progress slowly by creeping
through the litter on forest floors, or actually go underground and maintain themselves by means of
smoldering roots; surface fires, which move much more rapidly through brush and undergrowth, and
which produce flames of moderate height; and crown fires, which erupt into the forest canopy, rapidly and
violently whipping through the tops of the trees. Once they have crowned, fires often behave erratically,
surging ahead chaotically in fits and starts and enormous leaps, destroying everything in their path in some
areas, but leaping over other areas leaving them virtually untouched.
By the time a fire has built up enough strength to reach into the crowns of trees, it has enough energy
to create a convection column. Convection is the process by which heated gases or fluids rise until they
cool enough to begin to sink, only to be heated again and rise again, setting up a circular flow, the same
process that occurs when you put a pot of porridge on the stove to cook. When a forest fire gets hot enough
to punch a hole in an overlying layer of cooler air, the same process occurs in the atmosphere above the
fire. The superheated air surging up through such a hole creates a convection column, a tower of gas and
smoke that may rise 9 or 10 kilometers or more above the ground. As the gases and smoke rush upward in
the column, fresh air is sucked violently inwards, toward the base of the column, to fill what would
otherwise become a vacuum. At the same time, the heated air at the top of the column begins to cool and
sink back toward the ground. The result is a complex pattern of winds generated by the fire itself. As they
interact with the naturally prevailing winds both on the ground and aloft, these convective winds both lend
strength to the fire and also complicate its movement.
When fires reach this degree of intensity, they often develop multiple fiery fronts where before there
was only one such front. Sometimes tornado-like cyclones develop in the column, causing fire whirls –
tornadoes of fire – that off from the main fire. Burning combustible gases produced by the main fire, they
dance across the countryside, igniting new fires wherever they touch down. In other cases,
horizontal vortices – essentially tornadoes of fire laid on their sides – may develop, so that the fire literally
rolls forward on the ground like an enormous, blazing rolling pin, a horizontal cylinder of concentrated
flame that rolls over everything in its path, crushing and devouring it with fire.
Such fires, called mass fires, are also referred to as firestorms. And when the source of their fuel is,
rather than wildland brush or forest, is an urban area replete with countless tonnes of combustible materials
such as hydrocarbon fuels, wood beams, and furniture and upholstery, high explosives used for purposes
legal and illegal, police armories, and a host of others, their sheer power and the destruction they cause can
be magnified and multiplied a thousandfold over anything known in nature. Think of the heart of London
on the night of December 29, 1940 under the hammering might of Nazi Germany’s air force. Think of
Dresden and Hamburg in Germany, and Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, Japan . . .

Spot fires ignited in advance of the main fires, flaring and throwing more spots. “Crown fires” in the
urban cores, roofs, and higher structures igniting as found fires captured building after building, erupted
with special fury, sending blazing sparks and firebrands in all directions as the winds shifted and shifted yet
again, starting new fires well away from the main fronts. (See Pyne, Fire in America, pp. 203-204)

The refusal of many Angelinos and out-of-area tourists trapped in the Basin that day to believe that
they were in peril of their lives isn’t as unusual as it might seem. Psychologists who have studied the
behavior of people in emergencies have found that fires and other disasters often reveal the extent to which,
without realizing it, we live our lives according to internal scripts. These scripts tend to dictate our
expectations of what roles we and those around us should play – who should do what, and how – as well as
what can be expected to happen at a particular time, in a particular place. The research also demonstrates
that we are surprisingly unwilling to step out of our expected roles, even when staring certain death in the
face, when breaking out of those scripts and running for one’s life is the only thing that might offer
survival.
Daniel James Brown, in Under a Flaming Sky: The Great Hinckley Firestorm of 1894 (Guilford, CT:
The Lyons Press, 2006), gives the following example of expectation-driven behavior in the face of a life-
threatening emergency:

In a 1979 fire at a Woolworth’s in London, most of the shoppers who were already
standing moved out of the building as soon as they became aware of the fire, but people
seated at the lunch counter were for the most part unwilling to follow them. They had
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waited for a seat, they were comfortably off their feet, and they finally had hot food in
front of them. Their scripts didn’t include leaving a perfectly good meal on a counter and
going back out into the rain. Ten of them died on or near their stools.

– ibid., p. 111

As Brown says, when confronted by an emergency, at the very moment when thinking outside the box
could mean the difference between survival and a horrifying death, the minds of most of us, most of the
time, entrench themselves inside the box and cling to that position with manic determination, with the
result that we are paralyzed by our own expectations of how things should play themselves out.
Another example of this sort of denial in the face of oncoming disaster is:

Holiday Shoppers Keep Buying During Fire

http: //news.aol.com/topnews/articles/_a/holiday-shoppers-keep-buying-during-
fire/n20061207161009990003

Updated: 2006-12-08 16: 08: 53

AP
MENTOR, Ohio (Dec. 7) – An electrical fire that filled a department store with thick
smoke didn’t deter holiday shoppers, and firefighters had to block the doors to keep
customers from coming in, authorities said.
No one was injured in the fire at Dillards South at Great Lakes Mall on Wednesday,
but some bargain hunters were inconvenienced.
“It was amazing,” said Mentor fire Battalion Chief Joe Busher. “Even though there
was heavy smoke in there, they all wanted to stay and shop. We even had to put people at
the door to keep people from coming in.”
The fire burned circuits of a high-voltage electrical panel near a women’s dressing,
firefighters said. It took them eight minutes to put it out.
Busher estimated fire damage of about $30,000 and about $100,000 in smoke
damage to merchandise.
Manager Mary White said the store would reopen Friday.

This is a perfect example of human behavior during emergencies. Most people live their lives
according to “scripts,” even when thinking and reacting out of the box might save their lives, such as in the
midst of a disaster like a dangerous fire.
The astonished residents of the Basin and the tourists visiting there that ghastly day who had not yet
found themselves surrounded by towering flames, gaping at desperate and disheveled refugees from those
areas of the Basin already fully involved in the firestorm, were not ready to throw down whatever they
were doing and run for their lives. They hadn’t yet seen what was coming at them, and couldn’t
comprehend it It just didn’t fit their expectations of How Things Are Supposed to Be.

§ : Burned to Death
Fire kills in a number of different ways, depending on circumstances. Some of them are far worse than
others. The luckiest of fire’s victims die in their sleep, something that is surprisingly easy to do. All fires
consume large amounts of oxygen and emit large amounts of carbon monoxide. They may emit a number
of other gases as well, depending on the fuel that feeds them, and many of these gases, like carbon dioxide
and cyanide, can also kill. But carbon monoxide kills the overwhelming majority of fire victims. Because
it is tasteless and odorless, sleeping victims often never awaken to see, hear, or smell the fire that kills
them. The brain struggles furiously to get more oxygen if carbon dioxide builds up in the lungs, often
rousing its owner to an equally energetic struggle to get oxygen-charged air that may save his or her life,
but carbon monoxide’s effects on the body are insidious and, in consequence, much more deadly. Like the
best of assassins, it is a superb stealth killer, setting off no alarms as it creeps up on its victim. Silently it
fills the lungs and then, bonding to the hemoglobin in the blood 250 times more readily than oxygen,
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forming a compound called carboxyhemoglobin (COHb), it rapidly displaces oxygen in the bloodstream.
The brain and other vital organs are caught unawares. Suddenly deprived of oxygen, deprived of all
options, vital organs such as the brain simply and swiftly shut down. When the level of COHb in the
bloodstream reaches 90 percent, death comes in minutes.
For many victims, however, death by fire is not always so merciful. If surrounded by adequate oxygen
as well as flames, fully conscious victims may remain aware of everything happening to and around them
until the flames have reached them and begun to consume their flesh. Ordinarily, levels of atmospheric
oxygen are about 21 percent, but generally humans remain conscious as long as that level doesn’t fall
below 9 or 10 percent. Even if the flames themselves don’t make it to conscious victims, sometimes air
superheated by those flames – air that still contains some oxygen but is so hot that it burns away the soft
tissues in the mouth, throat, and vocal chords of anyone inhaling it – is the only source of oxygen available
to the victim, and perforce they must inhale it or die. At least for a few moments, these unfortunate souls
know what it is like to be burned alive from both without and within. If someone caught in a fire does lose
consciousness and therefore stays in one place and continues to breathe the hot gases generated by the fire
for a prolonged period of time, the damage done to him by those superheated gases may extend into his
lower respiratory system. Then even the alveoli, the 300 million or so tiny air sacs that line the lungs and
transfer oxygen to the bloodstream, may be burned away. Even this, however, is not the limit of the worst
that fire can do to a victim.
Fire always radiates heat. Radiant heat travels away from its source at the speed of light, so, for all
practical purposes, it is felt instantaneously by anyone in the vicinity of a fire. Sitting in front of a fireplace
on a cold winter’s evening, it is the fire’s radiant heat that you feel on your face. Raise your hand to shield
your face, and the heat on your face disappears immediately. Remove your hand, and the heat returns at
once. The radiation emitted by a fire falls away rapidly with distance, according to the inverse-square law
of energy emission, so if you move your chair across the room you probably won’t feel any noticeable heat
on your face, though the air in the room may well be heated by convection from the fire. If the fire is big
enough – say, a bonfire on a beach – you may have to stand a good way away from it in order to be
comfortable. But in the case of a large forest fire, you may not be able to get far enough away from it fast
enough to avoid being broiled alive. This is the cruelest way fire kills, by the sheer application of heat. It
is only likely to happen when the victim has enough oxygen to breathe for a sustained period of time – thus
remaining fully conscious – but is still near enough to an overwhelming source of heat to be killed by it.
Fortunately, since large fires consume enormous amounts of oxygen, this is relatively rare. But if that fire
covers an enormous amount of ground, say, as large as a great modern city, or even larger, in its early
stages, in which the capricious flames avoid some areas altogether even as they cremate others completely,
victims trapped in temporary islands in the fire still free of flames themselves are roasted alive well before
they are finally carbonized by the flames which eventually, inevitably overrun the deceptively fire-free
area.

Later, those still stuck in stalled cars or in gridlock on overpasses, underpasses, and roads in general
were gradually surrounded by the growing fires, all escape cut off. As the fires swept around and then over
them, huge shadows of writhing occupants of vehicles and those who had gotten out of their vehicles being
cremated alive were cast against bridge abutments, on-ramp and off-ramp walls, and other vertical surfaces
by the flames – the dense black smoke obscured the actual victims, but the light from the fire cast
enormous, distorted silhouettes of them against nearby structures and walls.

§:
Pyromaniacs compounded the holocaust immeasurably.

Witnesses included TV and radio station announcers whose broadcasts were caught on tape as well as
in audio files on the Web in places far removed from Los Angeles, picked up and rebroadcast by satellites
and other feeds as long as those survived the War (most were out commission within a few hours). “I see
pillars of smoke rising in the direction of Pico Rivera and Monterey Park . . .” “Smoke and flames rising
over Burbank . . .” “Wall of fire obscuring the view of Palos Verdes Peninsula . . .”
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Over in Griffith Park, some zoo officials, picking up the start of the fires on radio and TV as well as
seeing flames and smoke begin rising over Hollywood, Burbank, Glendale, and other nearby communities,
got on the horn and alerted all other zoo employees on station, issuing orders to turn on the sprinkler
systems everywhere in the park to wet everything down as much as possible. This was one of the reasons
that many zoo animals survived the fires, however chancy their circumstances became afterward. It limited
damage to the great observatory there, as well. (After observing what happened to an observatory just like
it in Australia as a result of one of their enormous, catastrophic brushfires, I am not all that certain that the
Griffith Park Observatory couldn’t have been badly damaged by such a fire.)

A shrieking as if from a myriad raw demonic throats filled the air. A great deal of it was due to the
powerful winds generated by the fires, which whipped around, over, and through structures everywhere in
the Basin, the complex architecture of many of the structures acting like enormous wind instruments played
upon by the Aeolian players. But human throats contributed to it, too, as over ten million people ran
screaming for their lives down streets and through alleys, or frantically piled into vehicles and tried to get
away from the fires that way – and when, inevitably, the fires caught up with most of them, the shrieks and
cries they emitted then doubled the volume of that Hell’s chorus.

§ : Cars Hell-Bent on Revenge

Paramount, California, 6: 45 a.m., July 16, 2022
Not that the vehicles themselves were remiss in adding to that chorus as they, too, tried to escape the
flames.
Last night, John Curry, the childless widower who lived in that pretty little house on the northeast
corner of San Carlos Street and El Camino Avenue in Paramount, had come home after work with a
propane tank for his barbeque grill in the trunk of his car. For once nothing was going to go wrong with the
annual company picnic. Unlike last year, when it was discovered way too late to do much about it that
there was no fuel for the barbecue that Al Myston had brought for cooking everybody’s hot dogs and
hamburgers, and they all had to adjourn to a nearby Arby’s to get their dinner, this time there was fuel in
plenty for the barbecue grill. Now, if Bill Beeson brought those kegs of beer as he’d promised to do, and
Jeanie and Paul Myers brought the hamburgers and ’dogs they’d signed up to bring, and Carol and Bud
Riley brought the ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, and relish, courtesy of Riley’s Neighborhood Grocery,
Bud’s brother’s store, they’d have one hell of a bash this afternoon.
Now, having just heard the news about the war that had just started on the bedroom TV set, John dove
into his clothes, grabbed up a double armful of groceries from the kitchen, and raced for his car, which he’d
left parked out by the curb last night, all the better to load goodies for the picnic into it. The one thing on
his mind now was the need to get the hell out of Dodge as fast as he could before the shit hit the fan.
Which meant that the news about the war had crowded out all thoughts of the picnic – and of the
propane tank he’d left in the trunk of his Nissan Urbanite.
Overnight, some of the gas from the tank had escaped the trunk of the car and had entered the
passenger compartment.
When John turned the ignition key, the spark from the ignition touched off the propane fumes that had
begun to fill up the passenger compartment, which was engulfed in a short-lived ball of fire. Then the fuel
tank ruptured, and the gasoline in it caught, as well.
The door on the driver’s side of the car, which was now fully involved in fire, opened. A dark figure,
completely wrapped in flames, could be seen by horrified neighbors as it lurched, then fell, out of the car.
Then it began to crawl over the curb and onto the sidewalk in front of John’s house, trying to make it onto
the lawn and, from there, to the front door of the house. The attempt failed; the crawling, blackened thing
that had been John Curry, his attempted screams reduced to broken whispers as his charred windpipe
struggled unsuccessfully to cry for help, his heart staggering in his chest, then failing completely, stopped
moving just as he reached the edge of the sidewalk.
Jake Rogers, who lived on the southeast corner of San Carlos and El Camino, just across the street
from Curry, tried calling 911, but was frustrated by the endless fast-busy signal every time he did so. Then,
as the cell towers that relayed calls in Paramount to other areas failed, his cell went dead. Cursing, he
threw it against the wall, then ran out to see if there was anything he could do to help.
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Many of his neighbors were already out there, well east of the corner where John’s house was, trying
to figure out how to approach John’s body without coming too near the still-blazing Urbanite. As Rogers
joined them, they were holding a debate on whether the Urbanite would explode or not, and whether they
should find a hose and try to put it out.
And then the brake lines of the Urbanite burned through. The car began rolling along San Carlos,
which had a slight downhill slope going from west to east, trailing a streamer of burning gasoline behind it.
It hit a parked, cobalt-blue Subaru wagon two houses down San Carlos, where it came to a halt. The
merrily burning river of gasoline which had been following along behind ran beneath the Urbanite now ran
beneath it, and then under the Subaru. Seeing this, the crowd that had now collected half a block north of
Curry’s house on El Camino and half a block east of it on San Carlos drew even farther away from the
corner on both sides, some of them even turning to run, seeing what was coming and trying to escape it.
And then someone, it wasn’t clear who, but the voice indicated it was a woman, looked up and saw the
wall of fire bearing down on them from Compton, to the west, and screamed at the top of her lungs. As
both the Urbanite and the Subaru exploded, all of them save those nearest to the two blazing cars, who were
felled by flying, burning debris and then cremated alive under it, headed east at top speed any way they
could.
Jake alone remembered that there was an ancient bomb shelter underneath a nearby office building two
blocks over. He headed for it, hoping his neighbors would follow. Reaching it a little before the fires from
Compton hit his neighborhood, he double-timed it down the stairs to the basement, where the shelter was
located, and, finding its door unlocked, slipped inside. He waited as long as he could to see whether
anyone else would try to join him. When no one did, he shut the door and locked it.
That gave him time to explore the dark shelter. Finding candles and matches, he lit a candle and began
hunting around. Soon he found that there was a door at the back of the shelter. It, too, was unlocked – it
had been a long time since the beginning of the Cold War, back in ’46, and people had stopped worrying
about the possibility of nuclear war.
Opening the door, he found himself peering into a deeper dark over a drop. Cold air came up from
below.
Feeling around just below the threshold of the drop, he ran across the top rungs of a ladder that led
downward.
Going back into the shelter, he looked around to see what supplies, if any, it might contain.
There was a footlocker near the outer door that held tools, several rolls of duct tape, and climbing rope.
Another, larger one, over against a wall, held a jackpot: what seemed to be hundreds of MREs! Along
with those the locker contained a plastinated map, which diagrammed the Los Angeles River System, to
which this shelter was connected, and several thick Army blankets. According to the map, the captured
river was around 100 feet below the level of the shelter’s flow, meaning that, since heat always rises, the
fires outside wouldn’t do much to heat the waters of the river.
Another locker held several changes of clothes, some for men, some for women, plus clothing for
children, and even diapers and Kotex.
Finally, there was a First Aid kit, stocked with everything one would need to take care of medical
emergencies while waiting for an ambulance to arrive, and instructions on how to use those vitally
necessary supplies.
Jake piled MREs, tools he thought he’d need, two rolls of duct tape, two climbing ropes, three changes
of clothes for himself, and a box of Kotex onto one of the blankets, which he spread out on the floor of the
shelter. Then, using duct tape, he bound the blanket up tightly. Attaching another length of climbing rope
to it to use as a handle, and another length of rope to a second bound-up blanket containing supplies from
the First Aid kit as well as candles and matches, he headed for the door into the Los Angeles River.
Making two trips down the ladder, one to deposit one bundle on a ledge next to the flowing water, the
second to bring down the second bundle and shut the door behind him as he headed downward, never to
return, he lit a candle and pored over the map of the river system, deciding which way he ought to go.
A little later, the bundles now tied to his back with duct tape and rope, he began to walk along the wide
maintenance-access ledge in a generally southward direction. If the map was accurate, there was a cross-
tunnel about a mile south of the place where he’d entered the system, and that tunnel would take him
southeast, east, and then south again, toward Huntington Beach. It was a long trek, but it had the serious
advantage of bypassing Signal Hill which, he had a feeling, was no place to be near now, what with all the
oil rigs still pumping away there.
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Jake was one of the relatively few who made it out of the Basin alive and in good shape. As near as
can be determined, none of his neighbors did.

Lynwood, California, 6: 58 a.m., July 16, 2022

Later, it could not be determined whether the fatal accidental missile came from Carson, or from
secondary explosions from Compton. All that observers, including the one who managed to make a last
cell call to friends who had already left the Basin, knew about it was that on or about 6:58 a.m., a brightly
blazing clot of debris fell about five feet away from a Dodge Riviera parked at 3226 Flower Street in
Lynwood, setting off a chain of events that culminated in one of the most interesting sights the residents of
that area had ever seen in their lives.
Apparently shrapnel thrown up by the impact of the whatever-it-was with the street cut the vehicle’s
brake lines. The car, which was either in Park or between gears, began to roll along the street, which had a
slight downward, northeast-to-southwest slope. As it began to pick up speed, it edged out into the street at
a point at which there were no other cars in the way and then made for the other side of the street, where it
hit an old, classic VW van that was kept in mint condition by its proud owners, who’d paid quite a bundle
for it two years before at the Classic Car Exposé in Culver City. The impact jarred the van and got it
rolling, too. Now there were two vehicular guided missiles rolling down the street. It wasn’t long until
other vehicles had been impacted by the two vehicular miscreants, both of which were now blazing
brightly, thanks to the shrapnel kicked out by the impact of a second pyrotechnical bomb from who-knows-
where.
The Riviera exploded, followed by the VW van, followed by several others cars that had been targeted
by the same angry Jove that had done the deed to the Riviera and the van. And all of them that hadn’t been
totaled by the impacts were now rolling along the street, looking for more prey . . .

§ : The Fires of Life

Firestone Boulevard and Bowman Avenue, South Gate, California, 9:28 a.m., July 16, 2022

At around 9:28 a.m., the noise of impact, followed by grinding, ping-ing sounds and the crackle of
flames, announced the occurrence of a terrible accident at the corner of Firestone and Bowman. Someone
in a panic, probably due to news about the start of what was very likely World War III, had jumped a curb
and crashed into a light-pole there at the corner at high speed. Gas leaking from the car’s tank had caught,
and the car had exploded in flames. As other in-area vehicles drew away from the wreck, people came
running from all around to see what had happened.
Life is so rugged, so tough and enduring, that its very tenaciousness can be unspeakably cruel. As
Thomas Rivera, one of those living nearby who, at the sounds of the crash and the explosion and fire that
followed it, had run to see what they could do to help any survivors of the wreck peered through a side
window of the still-burning car, he saw one of the five or six occupants in the back – it was hard to tell just
how many there were because of the way the fire within had reduced them all to one vast mass of charred
flesh, the individuals making it up barely distinguishable as such from one another – suddenly hitch
upward, pulling slightly away from the roasted lumps of flesh to either side, making it easier to make out
the outlines of what was left of its face, chest, and limbs. A hole opened in the jet-black, carbonized
surface of what was probably its face; a gout of blood streamed from it, then another. What was probably
its chest heaved, and heaved again.
Turning his head away, tears in his eyes, Rivera thought briefly about what he should do. Then, his 3-
second fugue ended, he turned back to the car again.
The gush of blood from what was likely the figure’s mouth was just ending, only a drop or two more
spewing from that appalling opening in the roast’s maybe face, the heaving of the middle portion of the
figure that might have been its chest stopped, and it fell back against the blackened remains of the seat.
Life had finally departed from it. By the time the man outside had turned to look again, there was nothing
to see but an almost homogeneous, amorphous mass of charred flesh in the back seat, and three others
like those making up the mass in the back in the front seat, the smallest testifying to what had most likely
been an infant held in the arms of the black lump on the passenger side of the front seat before the crash
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had wrenched it from those arms and deposited it between her (him?) and the driver, to be consumed by the
same fiery horror that had cremated everyone else in the car alive.
Rising to his full height again to stretch his back, Rivera saw for the first time the gigantic tongues of
fire beginning to reach for the heavens in several different directions from his neighborhood, which hadn’t
yet been visited by flames. Vast blankets of dirty smoke were beginning to drape themselves across the
sky, testifying to countless tonnes of combustible material feeding those fires.
For a moment the world seemed to slow down to a crawl, then come to a complete stop. In spite of the
43° C heat, he felt as if ice water were trickling down his spine. Oh, my God – Angela! Maria!
His wife and daughter were inside their home, cleaning up the breakfast things and getting ready for a
day-trip to Balboa Island they’d planned for a week later in the day.
Somehow his muscles unfroze, and he found himself running at top speed for the house, two blocks
south of the intersection where the crash had occurred, on Southern Avenue. Bursting inside the front door,
he cried out, “Angie! Maria! We’ve got to get out of here!”
His wife and 7-year-old daughter, who were in the front room, and who’d been packing a picnic
hamper and putting changes of clothing inside the backpacks they would wear when they got to Balboa
Island, looked up from the things they had laid out on the big coffee table, annoyed.
But in doing so, Angela ended up looking through the big front bay window, which was right behind
her husband, as well – and she closed her mouth with a snap before she could say anything. Her eyes went
wide, like a frightened horse’s.
Realizing what Angela was seeing, Rivera moved to one side, to give her a better view of the fiery
doom bearing down on their neighborhood. “Angie, let’s just take what you’ve got packed and go – we
wouldn’t be able to get out of here in our car, I can guarantee that, so let’s head for that fallout shelter at the
Bank of America over on Alexander. You got shoes on?”
“Y-yes,” Angela told him, shaken.
“Maria?”
His daughter, who had also seen the fires to the north through the front window, just nodded, unable to
speak.
“Okay, let’s head over to the bank,” he told his family. “It’s just two blocks away. We should be able
to make it in under ten minutes.” Thinking: Do we have ten minutes?
Without further discussion, after yanking on their backpacks, and, in Angie’s case, latching the picnic
hamper closed and carrying it with her, Angie and her daughter jogged out the door, heading for the
sidewalk, Tom right behind them. Not letting herself think about all she was leaving behind – who knew
what would happen to their house now? Tom locked the front door behind them, but fire was the sort of
thief who knew no bars – Angie kept her eyes straight ahead, focusing on the reaching the nearest
intersection, where Southern Avenue crossed Alexander Avenue, where they would turn left and head one
block north, to where the Bank of America was located. As she jogged along, she helped her daughter
maintain the pace she was setting. After half a block, though, Tom came up behind Maria and scooped her
up in his arms, jogging on beside his wife. “Keep going, Angie, keep going!” he panted. “I’ve got Maria!”
They made it to the bank in less than seven minutes. During that time the flames that encircled much
of South Gate drew closer and closer, but were still many blocks away when the three of them reached the
ramp that would take them down to the fallout shelter.
The door to the shelter stood wide open. Either some good soul had left it open for whoever might
need it, or it had been left open by accident. Whatever, soon the three of them reached the shelter itself,
and, sitting down on cots that were sitting there, set up with blankets and sheets for beds, caught their
breath and thought of what to do next.
“You kids okay?”
A middle-aged man who had clearly seen hard times was standing in the doorway to another room
behind the one they’d entered. Something about him was reassuring, though – while stubble on his cheeks
and chin testified to a lack of shaving over the past few days, he was dressed in neat, clean, carefully
patched clothing, and his voice was that of a gentleman, sober and quiet, with a hint of a good education in
it.
“Who –” Rivera began.
“Jefferson Foster,” said the man, coming close to them and holding out his hand. Tom took it, saying,
“I’m Tom Rivera, and this is my wife, Angela, and our daughter, Maria.”
“Very pleased to meet you, sir, ma’am,” Foster said, executing a low, brief bow.
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“Can you tell me what’s going on, sir?” Rivera asked him. The events of the last half to three quarters
of an hour were beginning to catch up to him – and he still had no idea of the causes of those flames rolling
toward their neighborhood.
“I am sorry to say that World War III seems to have started,” Foster told him gravely. “And for
whatever reason, apparently the local citizens have decided to burn down Los Angeles rather than seeing it
nuked.”
Tom stared at him, hoping against hope that Foster was joking, that it was a bad joke, a prank. But
between Foster’s drawn expression and what they’d already seen back up at ground level, Tom finally had
to admit that Foster was telling him the truth.
“I have a radio with me that you-all can listen to, to get the news,” said Foster.
“I – oh, God, I believe you,” Tom told him. “Do you think they’ll . . . Do you think we’ll be bombed?”
“I don’t know,” Foster told him, running a long, narrow hand through thinning brown hair. “I truly
don’t. Everyone is frightened, of course – the war apparently started late last night, with some sort of
impact off the East Coast.” His voice sounded hollow, weary. “I watched the TV news for several hours
last night and this morning, and decided to head down here, just in case. I live about five blocks west of
here,” he said.
“No family?” Tom asked him.
“No, sir – not since my sister died last May. She was 48, had lung cancer, probably from smoking at
least two packs a day of Marlboroughs for the last 20 years, combined with good old L.A. smog. No, it’s
just me. I never did marry. I guess I’m too old now, as it is. I’ll be 52 next month.
“Anyway – mind if I take a seat next to you on that cot?”
“No, no,” Tom told him, moving a little to make room for Foster.
“Thanks,” Foster said, taking a seat next to Tom. “Anyway, I have a hunch even this shelter isn’t safe.
But there’s a better place to go from here.”
“What’s that?” Tom asked him.
All the while, Angela had been silently taking in everything the two men were saying. Now she spoke
up. “Safer, you mean?”
“That’s right, Mrs. Rivera. Much safer. And it’s got a way out of the Los Angeles Basin, though we’d
have to walk quite a distance to get there. I’m thinking of the Los Angeles River system. One of the
tributaries runs right behind this bank, underground, and it’s accessible through a door in that room I just
came out of. I was checking out what this shelter had to offer and found that door and looked in, and you
can hear the river there, running along to the sea. I understand that’s true of a lot of fallout shelters all over
this area. As it happens, the river here dives down about 100 feet before leveling out, and it heads toward
the coast just beyond the Basin. The three of you game for a trek like that?”
“How did you learn about that?” Tom asked him.
“I used to be a maintenance man for the Los Angeles County public works department, and my job had
me checking for problems with the Los Angeles River system, which had become completely encased in
concrete by the 1980s or 1990s. Then I got arthritis so bad I couldn’t work any more – that was about a
year ago – and my sister took me in for a few months while I worked on getting Social Security Disability.
I finally got that about a month before she died.” Reaching into a front pocket of the red-checked cotton
shirt he was wearing, Foster drew out a wallet and, opening it up, held it up for Tom to look at. “See,
there’s my work ID card – I kept that after I had to give the job up, don’t really know why, but at least it
proves I’m what I say I am.”
Sure enough, the laminated card, which bore Foster’s photograph and a Los Angeles County work ID
number, gave his position as “Safety & Security officer level GS-12.”
Tom, reading this out loud, said, “GS-12 – that’s pretty high up the totem pole. They should have
transferred you to a desk job.”
“Yeah, well, you know what’s happened to this country under those damned Socialists – the county
has been approaching bankruptcy asymptotically for the last 25 years, and they’ve had to let more and
more people go. They did help me get Social Security Disability, Food Stamps, and that sort of thing, but
with their budget falling to pieces the way it was . . . well, they just didn’t have any options other than
letting me go. I did get workman’s compensation for a while – they didn’t contest that, of course, they’re
pretty cool in some ways – and that helped, too. Funny – the state of California is about to go through
bankruptcy for, what, the fourth time? But they’re still shelling out workman’s comp, and for that I will be
eternally grateful to the sons of bitches. In spite of everything,” he said, laughing a little.
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Tom snorted laughter. He had been prepared to dislike Foster, but he found himself liking the man.
Very much so. “Well, what do you think we should do?”
“I think the four of us should book out of here, that’s what I think. Head into the L.A. River system
and make for the sea, down toward Huntington Beach. There are cross-tunnels connecting up the various
branches of the system, and we can use them to go from this one, which heads to a location on the coast
between the longitudes of Long Beach and Rolling Hills, and runs way too close to Signal Hill for comfort,
to one that goes well east of there, a bit southeast of Huntington Beach. You game?”
“I – yeah, I think we’d better,” Tom said, remembering those towering flames not so far from South
Gate, and adding in what Foster had just told him about World War III starting last night. Suddenly that
horrific crash at the corner of Firestone and Bowman came back to him in a rush, and he began to shake.
Would the fires cook them to death down here, the way the flames that had consumed that wreck had
roasted its occupants alive? He realized that from the moment he’d heard the noise of the wreck as he’d
stood out on his lawn, checking the weather to see if it would be a good day for the beach, and running
toward the source of the noise, to the present, he’d somehow pushed that wreck deep into a corner of his
mind where his intellect was aware of it, but not his emotions. And how his outraged emotions were
having their revenge.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost, fella,” Foster said, concerned, laying a hand on Tom’s.
“I –” Quickly, Tom told him what he’d witnessed earlier, and of his run back to his house to gather up
his wife and daughter and head for the shelter.
“Oh, Lord, I am so sorry,” the older man told him. “That’s the hell of a thing to have to deal with.”
“It’s okay, I . . . I’ll be fine,” Tom told him. “And yeah, I think the four of us had better make for the
river system, like you said. Here, I feel like a lobster in a pot, just waiting for the water to come to a boil,”
he said, glancing over at Angie and Maria. “The river is better than this . . . this concrete tomb, I guess.”
“That it is,” Foster told him. “Okay, there’re a whole bunch of supplies in that room just beyond that
door where I came in here,” he said, pointing. “Let’s sort through it – I found the flashlights in there, so
we’ll have light – and figure out what to take and what to leave behind, and then bug out. What do you
say?”
“Let’s do that thing,” Tom told him, rising to his feet.
A couple of hours later, richer by two cases of MREs, blankets, several bottles of water, numerous
useful medications, tools, and even a number of paperback novels, which they distributed among their
backpacks, the four of them were carefully making their way down the South Gate branch of the Los
Angeles River, heading toward a connecting tunnel that would take them over to the branch that ended
south of Huntington Beach. As they walked along, Angela said, “Thank God we never got a dog – and
Arnold died last month, poor old guy, so we’re not leaving him behind.”
Foster cocked an eyebrow at her.
Smiling wanly, Tom said, “Arnold, a.k.a. The Terminator, was our Siamese cat. He was about two
months older’n God – we got him originally from a shelter, and they thought he was around 9. We’d been
talking about getting a kitten, and then we saw this poor old thing in there and sort of fell in love with him.
He died of a heart attack, the vet thought – he never was all that healthy, and I guess the damned smog got
to him. But at least he had a loving home for the four years we had him, and he was happy with us. The
thing is, he’d go outside every day, and he’d get into fights all over the neighborhood, and he’d win every
one. He was fixed, you understand, but he was still courting the ladies right up nearly until he died. I miss
him . . .” Tom shook his head, grinning, remembering the feisty old cat.
“I think they have a special place in heaven for cats like that,” Foster said, returning the grin. “No
other pets, then?”
“No, but all my plants . . .” Angela began. And then her face crumpled. She stopped, put her face in
her hands, and began to weep.
“Oh, Lord, the avocado tree,” Tom said in a low voice.
Suddenly Maria said, startling the three adults, “When we get out of this place, lets find some avocado
seeds and plant them and start a new garden, Mommy. And we can have flowers, too.”
Angela raised her head. Tears were still rolling down her cheeks, but she was smiling as she looked at
her daughter. “You’re all the garden I need, sweetheart,” she told Maria. “You and your daddy, and our
new friend, here.”
And it was all right, and they walked on through the rest of the day, and the next day, and the next,
catching naps and eating meals whenever they could but walking most of the time, and though it got very
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warm down there in the tunnels, because they were so deep in many places it never got unbearably hot.
They all emerged a bit east of Huntington Beach on July 21 st, 53 years to the day after the first men walked
on the Moon “for all mankind.”

§ : Samarra Redux
El Monte, California, 10: 15 a.m., July 16, 2022

A pleasant suburban street in El Monte, CA, northeast of Los Angeles and east of Alhambra and San
Gabriel, close to the San Bernardino Freeway:
People were gathered in the street, looking uneasily at the gigantic clouds of dark, red-tinged smoke
growing in the distance to the south and west, looming closer and closer. They conversed among
themselves, almost in whispers. They knew something was terribly, terribly wrong, but they hadn’t yet
reached the point where they were ready to flee – whether they knew it or not, flight was no longer an
option. They’d waited way too long, and even now the escape routes to the mountains were either lethally
strangled by total gridlock, or else crossed by part of the firestorm, heading up into the hills.
Suddenly, behind them, a blazing gasoline tanker roared down off the freeway and into the street,
careening wildly from one side of the street to the other as it came on, blundering into one parked vehicle
after another, weaving back and forth, back and forth – its driver, somehow still alive and partially
conscious in spite of the flames that enswathed him, was trying to steer it, but couldn’t quite manage. From
one side of the street to the other and back again it went, smashing cars, curbs, pedestrians, panicky pets
and small children, adult pedestrians, and everything else in its path, until finally it fetched up against a BP
gas station, where it and the station exploded in a vast ball of fire that destroyed most of the neighborhood.
The scene was as observed by one of the residents of the street, whose first awareness of the tanker
was the sound of a badly laboring tanker motor dopplering up from behind him, and the sound of vehicles
smashed by the tanker and the screams of people and pets who had been hit by it. At first, startled by the
sound, he continued staring straight ahead at the growing wall of dark, fire-lit smoke in the distance, and
didn’t realize what he was hearing. The street ahead was still a tranquil suburban scene, and the sound was
at that point only a strange, anomalous intrusion. But as the tanker came closer and closer, then
fortuitously passed him by without hitting him, he turned to see where it had come from, and slowly took in
the horrific scene left in the tanker’s wake, blood all over the street, bodies in the road, people screaming
on the sidewalks and in the street over the carnage that included their loved ones. Paralyzed by horror, he
was still standing there, unscathed, right up until the moment when the tanker hit the gas station – and then
he, too, like his neighbors, became one more grim statistic among the millions of Los Angeles’s dead, in
his case dying due to a combination of the extreme heat of the fireball and the flying stanchion that pierced
him through, entering his body over his heart and exiting near his kidneys . . .
And only one last frantic cell call out of the Basin to a friend living in the San Fernando Valley told the
tale.

§ : Death Takes a Businessman’s Holiday

Oddly enough, the only nuclear weapon targeting Southern California was the small one that hit San
Onofre early in the morning, right after the Compton Burst, wrecking the power-generating nuclear reactor
there, causing the venting of radioactive material. But then, the Great Firestorm didn’t require a nuclear
device for its inception. Learning about the opening shots of the Two-Day War, the asteroid impact off
America’s east coast, the Seattle catastrophe, the demise of Washington, New York City, and Miami, the
good citizens of the Los Angeles Basin became panicky. Rioting began. So did the celebrations – there’s
something about the impending end of the world that gets people’s blood flowing . . . usually away from
the big head and toward the little one. As one young man said, just before being vaporized in the cataclysm
that was birthed by a celebratory dumpster-fire that he and his confederates had decided to touch off right
behind a local paint store and a fireworks establishment, it’s an occasion for partying like it’s 2099! And
so they did.
As people a few klicks away in one direction and another saw the smoke rise and the fireball erupt
over Compton, they decided to party in similar wise, as well. Sometimes, to paraphrase Sigmund Freud, a
dumpster fire is just a dumpster fire – but sometimes it’s a catastrophe in the making, as many of the
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dumpster fires started that awful day in the Los Angeles Basin turned out to be. Like the eponymous Irving
of the ballad, essentially Los Angeles gunned itself down, one dumpster fire inspiring the next, and the
next, and the next, one disastrous dumpster explosion catalyzing the explosion of a neighborhood, the fires
spreading to the next neighborhood, and the next, until, by mid-afternoon of July 16, 2003, the entire Los
Angeles Basin was afire, flames clawing the sky, reaching clear up into the stratosphere, the blazing chunks
of particulate matter wafted along by the winds generated by the fire in some cases rising as high as 9 to 10
kilometers and more into the sky. The Jet Stream, picking up the soot and burning bits of what had been a
great city and its hapless citizens, the heat bucking it higher and higher into the heavens, carried its
grievous burden north and east, across the North American continent, the Atlantic Ocean, Europe, Asia, the
Pacific, and back to America’s west coast once more.
Things began to burn. Lots of things. To make thing worse, it was hot, very hot, temperatures even at
dawn above 32° C and rising, and a Santa Ana had come up by the time the Sun had cleared the horizon.
Panic began to spread up and down the coast, growing greater and greater as the skies above Los Angeles
became more and more obscured by veils of thick brown-black smoke. By noon, nearly everything from
Malibu nearly down to Laguna Beach was heavily involved in fire, the individuals fire finally coalescing
into one all-consuming, Basin-wide firestorm by 2 p.m. or so.
Otherwise, the only weapons of mass destruction used anywhere in Southern California were
biowarfare matériel, released by a group of unknown origin in the Santa Barbara area, who then exited via
boats that had tied up in the Santa Barbara Municipal Harbor, and a canister of mustard gas that was
dropped unopened from a crop-spraying plane into the parking lot of a Wal-Mart Supercenter in Ventura,
California on the first day of the War, only doing its dirty-work because an off-duty member of the Ventura
Police shot at it as it fell out of the plane. The pilot of the plane buzzed away, headed north, never to be
seen again; the cop and six of his neighbors, who’d come out with him to see what they could do to help
mitigate the emergency, were caught in the caustic yellow fumes that billowed out of the canister, and died
right there in the parking lot.

Bill did manage to get his cache of arms out, which, along with the very few arms provided by those
who came with us on the first day of the Two-Day War, became the beginning of the Keep’s armory. This
included a couple of Glocks, several revolvers, various automatic rifles, some older semiautomatic pistols,
and three shotguns of 8-, 12-, and 16-gauge calibers, as well as ammunition for them and the means to load
a good deal more ammunition. On the way to the mountains we passed a house belonging to some of Bill’s
friends, who had also had such a cache. The front door was open; inside, we found his friends dead, their
house thoroughly looted. But their arms, ammo, and loading equipment, which they kept in their cellar,
were intact, because the only access to that cellar was through a concealed backyard blind and a locked
door to which, fortunately, Bill had a key. So we added that to the armory before proceeding on to the
hills.

Chapter 6: The Culmination: Ring of Fire

I see your hair is burnin’
Hills are filled with fire
If they say I never loved you
You know they are a liar
Drivin’ down your freeways
Midnite alleys roam
Cops in cars, the topless bars
Never saw a woman
So alone . . . 2

Lo buon maestro disse: “Omai, figliuolo,

s'appressa la città c’ha nome Dite,
coi gravi cittadin, col grande stuolo.”

E io: “maestro, già le sue meschite

là entro certe ne la valle cerno,
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vermiglie come se di foco uscite

fossero.” Ed ei mi disse: “Il foco etterno

ch’entro l’affoca le dimostra rosse,
come tu vedi in question basso inferno.” . . .

– Dante, The Inferno VIII: 67-75

[Video shot:
a beautiful, dark-haired woman caught up in the throes of sexual ecstasy,
eyes opening and closing as she moans and calls out,
her voice no more than a whisper under the crackling roar of flames,
her long hair tossing about her head as her head rolls back and forth,
all seen through a curtain of flames that opens, closes, opens, closes, opens . . .
She could be black, white, Hispanic, or some mix of these;
all that matters is that she is beautiful.
As the fire rises higher and higher,
even as her features morph into flame,
she slowly fades away, becoming a ghost, a mist, nothing . . .]

§ 1:
Extreme mass fires like the firestorm at Peshtigo grow so intense and violent that they become
discontinuous, leaving long strips of forest or urban areas bordering gutted landscapes, and towns and fields
left untouched next to devastated areas. The mosaic of light, intermediate, and heavy fuels are all but
meaningless as far as controlling the raging fire. Great piles of trash, garbage, or lumber might be spared,
while areas containing only small outbuildings, bedded flowers, lawns, and other light fuels are so totally
consumed that the ground is nothing but grey ash mixed with sand up to ten- or even twenty-feet plus
down. While this was not the case for most of the Basin, it was near and in Griffith Park, in parts of the
Wilshire Boulevard District, and some other places in the Basin. But elsewhere nearly everything was
gutted, and what wasn’t gutted was ravaged by flying debris and other fire effects. And of the living, who
did not burn was suffocated, asphyxiated, murdered by the results of the fire’s greed.

Biblical images from Exodus and Revelation come to mind – nothing else comes close.

Notes from Stephen Pyne’s Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire
(Princeton University Press, 1982; ISBN 0-691-08300-2 (http: //www.amazon.com/Fire-America-
Cultural-Weyerhaeuser-Environmental/dp/029597592X/ref=sr_1_1?
ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209349674&sr=1-1)):

When the fire arrived, it came not as a wave or a surge of flame, but as though
suddenly dropped from the sky. The landscape was instantly enveloped in a “tornado of
flame,” a “hurricane of fire.” Firewhirls traveled 6-10 mph, “the pine tree tops were
twisted off and set on fire, and the burning debris on the ground was caught up and
whirled through the air in a literal column of fire.” One witness exclaimed, “it was a
waterspout of fire.” Its winds, like its heat, sometimes preceded, sometimes coincided
with the advent of the main fire and reached staggering velocities. Surface winds were
rarely excessive, frequently 15-40 mph, but the turbulence from the violent convection
was awesome. Winds of 60-80 mph uprooted trees like match sticks; a 1,000-pound
wagon was tossed like a tumbleweed. Papers were lofted by the winds from Michigan
across Lake Huron to Canada. The peculiar physics of mass fire had multiplied its fury
into a maelstrom of energy equivalent to the chain reaction of a thermonuclear bomb.
There was no defense for the populace but flight.
Ibid., p. 206.
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The peculiar physics of mass fire had multiplied its fury into a maelstrom of energy
equivalent to the chain reaction of a thermonuclear bomb.
Ibid., p. 206

“Most fires are containable, controllable; few ever reach dangerous proportions. In
a firestorm, size is not as important as intensity, unpredictability, and the kaleidoscopic
effects produced from such extremes of heat and movement. A firestorm’s operatic voice
displays incredible range, from the barely audible soft crackle to the roar. Its
choreography is multipatterned; it slinks, streams, snoots, vibrates, marches, pitches,
bursts, stalks, and rolls forward, upward, backward, and in circles. Because it is blind
and deaf, it cannot be trusted to make distinctions, will not see or hear the pain of
children, the cries of women, the shouts of men. A firestorm knows no empathy, only
hunger – and never thirst. Wind is the invisible bully at its back, whipping flames into a
frenzy of lust gorging. It must eat and cannot get enough and the more food it consumes
the hotter and more passionate it becomes. It cannot contain itself and blows its volatile,
noxious breath sky-high in whirring convection columns as the cold air rushes in at its
feet, pumping its overheated, bloated belly full of hot air upward. Sand will feed it, bark,
kerosene, hay, sawdust, clothes, coal, leaves, wooden buildings, trees, flesh. Anything
combustible will do. Stay alive is all that matters for a firestorm.”

– Denise Gess and William Lutz, Firestorm at Peshtigo: A Town, Its People, and
the Deadliest Fire in American History (New York: Owl Books, 2002; ISBN
0-8050-7293-4), pp. 101-102

The first sign of impending doom for most communities was a preternatural
darkness. . . . Descriptions suggest that the darkness came from clouds not unlike the
towering swirls of dust that swept out of the Great Plans in the early 1930s, except that
these were charged with soot and firebrands instead of earth. . . . [Noon] became
midnight; a man could not see his hand before his face. The darkness contributed
measurably to the panic and confusion that followed. Families became separated.
Disorientated people dashed in wrong directions.
When the blackness was rent by violent firewhirls brightening the sky like flashes of
lightning, it seemed that the apocalypse was at hand, that the Day of Judgment had
come . . .
Stephen Pyne, Fire in America, op. cit., pp. 204-205

[The] darkness came “currents of air on fire,” a “sirocco,” a withering blast of heat.
In areas otherwise untouched by the fire itself, heat and hated gases claimed lives. So
fierce was the heat that it alone drove hundreds to shelter in root cellars, wells, and stone
buildings. The majority of those who fled to cellars perished from asphyxiation; those in
wells, from asphyxiation and incineration; and those in buildings, from suffocation and
flame. Some lived but it is difficult to understand why even panicked masses would seek
refuge from fire in a combustible building. Heat was the apparent cause: the landscape
for miles ahead of the flames was violently preheated and desiccated.
The fire itself was preceded by a barrage of firebrands and a thunderous roar. A
“storm of firebrands, cinders, and ashes” showered the landscape with “fire flakes.”
Other people spoke of “balls of fire” and “fire balloons,” probably bubbles of heated
gases distended from the main burn itself and ignited by radiant heat. Many of the
“balloons” exploded above ground, blasting fire like shrapnel. An island half a mile out
in Lake Michigan erupted into fire. One terrified eyewitness described the fires as a
“veritable cyclone of flames. There came, as it seemed to me, great balls of fire from the
sky, and when they were within 20 feet of the ground, they burst, sending down a heavy
rain of flashing sparks, like a mighty sky rocket exploding with a brilliant display of
flashing lights.”
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Overpowering everything else was the roar. It sounded like thunder, the pummeling
of a dozen cataracts, the pounding of heavy freight trains, and “all the hounds of hell.” It
was unleashed like a “heavy discharge of artillery,” and one Civil War veteran thought
for an instant that he was returned to Chancellorville to face again the Confederate
batteries. The noise so resembled the sound of a cyclone that some fled to holes, as
though they needed protection only from a windstorm.
Ibid., pp. 205-206

[An] Egyptian darkness torn only by ribbons of flame.

Ibid., p. 209

When the blackness [of the sky and environment] was rent by violent firewhirls
brightening the sky like flashes of lightning, it seemed that . . . the Day of Judgment had
come.”
Ibid., pp. 204-205

Spot fires ignited in advance of the main fires, flaring and throwing more spots.
“Crown fires” in the urban cores, roofs, and higher structures igniting as found fires
captured building after building, erupted with special fury, sending blazing sparks and
firebrands in all directions as the winds shifted and shifted yet again, starting new fires
well away from the main fronts. (See Pyne, Fire in America, pp. 203-204)

It’s possible that in some areas of the firestorm, temperatures rose so high that it became hot enough to
ignite atmospheric nitrogen there. There have been rumors that that had occurred, but no one is sure. The
Fleet believes that that did happen in a few places, such as right over the Bandini plant when it went up, but
the data don’t give conclusive results. Nitrogen ignites at temperatures around 1,000 K. NOx is the
dominant reaction at temperatures above 2000° F (1400° K) (http://books.google.com/books?
id=_wN6T32wMdsC&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=nitrogen+oxygen+nox+temperature&source=bl&ots=vS
AY9GhTrP&sig=pyK0AN6hxUt0HkoYWLdTN1zH9OU&hl=en&ei=zGpKSufyLojblAekt6Q0&sa=X&oi
=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5)

Professor Mike Brown, one of those scientists involved in the “great Pluto demotion of 2006,” is
trapped on the Cal Tech campus on 1200 East California Boulevard in Pasadena by the growing fires, and
perishes miserably there.

After the L.A, firestorm, for many years the calcined skeletons and heat-mummified bodies of victims
of the firestorm were found in basements, air-raid shelters, air-conditioning conduits in office buildings,
sewers, etc., by scavenging parties and others. The firestorm was in fact so intense that combustion itself
became discontinuous, flames, heat, and convective winds becoming separated, and individually felt.
One major difference between the Peshtigo firestorm and the Basin firestorm was the sheer mass and
volume of high-octane and other extremely volatile fuels, which exist above ground with vanishing rarity,
or, in many cases, not at all, not to mention non-existent at the time of the Peshtigo firestorm, such as
plastics, gasoline, jet fuel, etc.

Islands in the fire: Lone gas pumps, undamaged though soot-streaked, standing amid a moonscape,
forlornly surveying their lost world

Fire-sprites leaping from the fire to start new fires

Firestorms throw huge blobs of superheated plasma out ahead of them which, landing on structures,
hay, or anything else that can burn, cause them to explode into flames instantly. the blobs are often black
due to the burned material they pick up on their flight through the air, and because of the way they move,
they look a bit like the Blob until they catch fire. The Bandini Burst generates the first mass fire in the
Basin, and it begins to throw out such blobs of plasma and runners of flame, setting off more fires.
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The fires were so intense that radiant heat from them alone roasted and calcined everything alive in
their vicinity in mere seconds, cremating it alive from the inside, due to inhalation of superheated air and
gases, as well as outside. The lungs and airways were instantly desiccated by the heat, closing down,
admitting no air to the body. Burns from radiant heat can be as bad as radiation burns of the sort sustained
by people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan when those cities suffered nuclear bombing at the end of WW
2. The top layer of skin is so thoroughly seared from such heat that the skin bloats and stretches tautly over
the bones, especially when the face is exposed to such heat; as it is stretched over facial bones, the skin
seals the eyelids closed, and the heat may sear the retinae.

The Great Los Angeles Firestorm was an extreme example of a mass fire (see, e.g., S. Pyne, Fire in
America, p. 204, paragraph 2).

The firestorms generated by the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in the last days of
World War II each arose from the detonation of one bomb, one point-source, which became the discernible
center of the firestorm for which it was responsible. As a result, these two firestorms, each radiating out
from the central source, forming a roughly circular area in which the fires it caused burned, thus presenting
a minimal circumference in relation to the fire area where new sources of atmospheric oxygen could be
taken in to maintain its burning, and limiting the amount of new oxygen thus gained available to it before it
essentially died of asphyxiation due to lack of oxygen.
While the areas carpet-bombed with incendiary devices by Allied bombers on Hamburg and Dresden,
Germany during 1943, and on Tokyo, Japan, in the Spring of 1945, were geometrically irregular, thus
making available more oxygen to the firestorms caused by those bombing raids than would have been the
case if a Hiroshima-sized nuclear bomb had been used on each, the effects of each raid were concentrated
within an area no larger than the target city itself, large enough and more as far as fire-victims within the
city in question were concerned, but still not significantly larger than, say, the city of Pasadena or Santa
Monica, California. As a result, these firestorms likewise ran out of oxygen and perished of asphyxiation
before the they could consume even larger areas. The same is true of the horrific raid on London by
German bombers on the night of December 29, 1940. As a result of that raid, during which countless
incendiary devices were dropped by the bombers into the very heart of London, one square mile – 2.5
kilometers – of that city ended up ion firestorm – but the concentration of the bombers over a specific
district of London, containing many of its great historical treasures, made the firestorm of limited,
constricted scope, making it vulnerable to the same weakness that killed the aforementioned great urban
firestorms, which, along with the heroic struggle of Londoners against the firestorm, brought it to a close
before it could spread beyond that one district. As terrible as these urban firestorms were, at least they
were limited in physical area, and died because they ran out of oxygen before they could advance well
beyond their original scope.
Only rarely have America’s monster fore-fires generated true firestorms. Some of these have been
ghastly beyond measure – the 1871 firestorm at Peshtigo, Wisconsin and the 1894 firestorm at Hinckley,
Minnesota come to mind. Generated by a combination of weeks of dry end-of-Summer weather and other
enabling meteorological conditions, massive stores of fuel in the form of huge piles of pine-slash and
sawdust generated by the lumber industry of the regions, numerous smaller fires set during the dry Summer
by settlers and loggers alike by way of clearing the land, and terrain conducive to the rapid buildup and
spread of brush- and forest-fires once these began, such fires have grown to monstrous proportions within
very short spans of time. Fortunately, in the case of most forest-fires, terrain, often the villain of the piece,
can also play the hero by providing firebreaks in the form of rivers and lakes, bare rocky ground not
conducive to the spread of fire, and other limiting factors. Until the outbreak of the Two-Day War, urban
and wildland firestorms were the only experience humanity had with great fires, and they shaped the
expectations that people, especially those living in highly urbanized areas, had concerning the behavior of
fire, the sizes to which it could grow, and the damage it could do.
That was all about to change, however.
When, over the space of five hours or so, numerous fires, many of them set off by means of high
explosives, are deliberately set over an area of nearly 5,000 square kilometers that is bounded on the south
and west by a large ocean and on the north and east by great mountain ranges, solid physical boundaries
which thus form a great bowl through which powerful winds – the demonic Santa Anas – are blowing, the
stage is set for a fiery catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. Each deliberately set fire, often of
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extremely high temperatures to begin with, rapidly spreads to every nearby structure, tract of woods and
brush, and anything else that can burn. Within a short span of time, sometimes as little as five minutes or
so, it joins up with another such rapidly growing fire. While, by itself, especially if highly trained and
organized professional firefighters equipped with the most up-to-date tools of the trade are out there
battling it, each such fire might run out of oxygen before it can grow to uncontainable size. But when tens
– or even hundreds – of such fires, each already large and very hot, many of them due to vast explosions,
are set off all across a wind-scoured, impermeable bowl some 50 kilometers deep north-to-south and 90-96
kilometers wide east-to-west in the space of a few hours, you have a recipe for Hell let loose on Earth.
One such fire occurring in the midst of a great city, with all the hot-points and flammable materials
available to it that such a city would provide, at a time when emergency workers of all kinds had either fled
that city or were so tightly locked up in traffic that they could not have gone to fight that fire to save their
souls, could have started a firestorm, and in fact probably would have done so. But the lifetime of that
firestorm would still have been limited by the amount of oxygen available to it along its fringes before it
was exhausted and the fire perforce died in its tracks. But hundreds of them, acting in concert and
ultimately combining with one another to form an inferno beyond the wildest imaginations of any hellfire-
and-damnation preacher? Only a miracle could have put it out before it spread beyond even the confines of
its geological and marine straitjackets to areas far outside its birthplace. As, in fact, did happen – but no
man, seeing that hideous perversion of the fires upon which all civilization depends, could have dreamed
that such a miracle would in fact take place . . .

Visions of those towering fires roaring through the Basin and onward in all directions, and Johnny
Cash’s song “Ring of Fire” comes to mind.

The ultimate result of the conjoining of all those fires in the Basin was a fire hurricane, or even a
hypercane, not so much because of its width, which spanned more than half the Basin, but because of its
sheer power and height. At times, that formation rose as high as 30,000 feet, its byproducts lofted 100,000
feet or more into the heavens by the sheer heat of the fire, and it bred tornado- and hurricane-force winds
which, in some areas, literally shredded buildings to pieces.
Huddled in our shelter in the mountains, Bill, the others, and I felt the relentless pull of the growing
low-pressure area formed as the firestorm reached out for more and more oxygen to feed itself. That we
were behind a ridge, dug in below the carport and the house it adjoined, saved them from being sucked into
the fire. But the carport and house themselves were ripped to pieces above us, only the foundations and
part of their frames remaining afterward, listing sadly and ultimately knocked down and strewn about by
the storms from the north.

Destruction of the gorgeous Assyrian Palace Samson Tire and Rubber Company/Uniroyal Tire
Company building located at 100 Citadel Drive, Suite 480, Commerce, CA 90040. See DS02F_Notes.doc
for details of the history and construction of that building.
Other landmark sites in the Basin that were badly damaged or destroyed included (what)?
Oddly enough, thanks to shifts in the wind, most of the Baldwin Estate near Santa Anita was spared,
including the street running along its western border where the peafowl lived – after the fire was over, the
peafowl, miserable but alive, emerged from a large concrete shelter into which they’d fled during the fire.
Eventually their descendants included a vast population that ranges throughout Southern California, many
of them sporting strange characteristics due to mutations, some lineages good to eat.
The estate of Jim Baldwin’s daughter Ann, Anoakia, not far from Santa Anita, was also spared, at least
most of it, though many of the buildings there suffered smoke damage.
Like those other two properties, the racecourse at Santa Anita was mostly undamaged, because the
firestorm hadn’t made it that far when the storms hit the Basin and put them out. Its buildings suffered
water- and smoke-damage, though, and two or three outbuildings were burned to the ground after
windborne blazing material from the firestorm hit them.

The heat of the firestorm created industrial-grade ceramics, sapphire, etc. from various materials in its
path, bonding metal to concrete and paving-stones and building materials and glass, and turning a witch’s
brew of chemicals into objects of great beauty but, often, deadly toxicity.
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Due to the enormous heat of the firestorm, train tracks running through the Basin were warped and
twisted completely out of true, as happened during the Hinckley firestorm of 1894, turned into what look
like giant spaghetti strands. Long stretches of freeway burned – not just the cars on them, but the tarmac
under the cars, and the dirt in the median strips along with the landscaping. Overpasses lost great chunks of
concrete and roadway when fires burned beneath them.

Survivors caught under rubble who later managed to extract themselves, or were somehow able to
phone others safely away on cell phones, experienced terrifying episodes of explosions and fire erupting
nearby, as happened in the aftermath of 9/11. Then the storms hit, and they were deluged with ice-cold
water, hailstones, and snow sifting down – and even then the fires, which raged on unchecked underground
for weeks and even months, continued to erupt close to them.

On September 1, 1967, an uncontrolled wildfire slashed through an area of dense timber just east of
Priest Lake, Idaho. Named the Sundance Fire after a mountain near its point of origin, it blew up about 2:
00 p.m., and by 11: 00 p.m. that evening it had run over 14 kilometers on a front six and a half kilometers
wide, consuming more than 20,234 hectares of forest. It reached its peak intensity at about 8: 00 p.m.,
when it temporarily stalled in the area of the Pack River. At that point, its convection column towered
nearly 11 kilometers above the appalled forest. Within that column, vertical wind speeds – the speed of the
winds rising upward in the column – were about 72 kilometers per hour. Surface winds, mostly generated
by the flow of air inward toward the base of the convection column, approached 200 kilometers per hour.
Before the fire ever reached them, thousands of trees were knocked down by those winds, and many
hundreds more had their tops snapped off 18-22 meters above the ground. Afterwards, trees that had been
knocked down by the winds generated by the firestorm were found to be pointing in different directions
depending upon their locations, showing that the winds preceding the fire were erratic and cyclonic. When
the fire stalled at the Pack River and merged with the spot fires it had thrown out ahead of itself, its energy
output surged explosively as it concentrated its rage on a single area, releasing nearly 5.3 x 1012 ergs of
energy per second, roughly the equivalent of a Hiroshima-sized nuclear bomb going off every five to
fifteen minutes.
Once a fire achieves the intensity of the Sundance Fire, it no longer fits into any of the three traditional
wildfire classifications of ground, surface, or crown fire. It has probably been all of these in the course of
its maturation, but it now grows into something radically different: a mass fire, to use the term applied by
Stephen J. Pyne in his landmark study, Fire in America. All mass fires have certain characteristics that set
them apart from ordinary wildfires. They are typically born when two or more smaller fires – often a main
fire and the spot fires that it has spawned around its periphery – suddenly merge into a single, explosive
eruption of flame. Their fiery fronts may tower as high as 30 meters above the treetops, 60 meters above
the ground. Their advance may be as swift as 25 kph on level ground – much faster on a slope – and
release energy at rates as high as 3.1 x 1014 ergs per 30 centimeters of fire-line per second. They create
enormous convection columns that loom over the surrounding countryside, radiating heat downward and
drying out everything combustible in their path until it is tinder-dry, ripe for the burning.
At one point, toward the peak of the Sundance Fire’s intensity, observers saw the entire side of a
mountain, the west slope of Apache Ridge, burst into flame in a single instant. The angle of the ridge had
exposed the mountainside to an enormous amount of radiant heat from the convection column, quickly
drying out the forest and raising its temperature to the kindling point. The first ember to land on the
mountainside set the whole thing off at once as if it had all been soaked in gasoline.
Mass fires also generate titanic, hurricane-force winds. Sometimes these winds begin to rotate,
becoming cyclonic, creating fire-vortices or fire-whirls – tornadoes of fire which in many cases advance
well ahead of the main front of the fire. Because of the tremendous updraft in their convection columns,
mass fires typically pick up thousands of blazing firebrands and glowing embers, some as large as burning
logs. The winds loft their cargoes of fire as high as 5.5 kilometers into the air before hurling them several
kilometers ahead of their fronts, spawning spot-fires wherever these burning materials land in anything that
can serve as fuel. And because mass fires consume their fuel so rapidly, they often exhaust all the available
oxygen in the air before they have finished burning all the carbon and volatile gases that they have released
from their fuels. As a result, they produce vast clouds of black smoke, black because the smoke carries a
heavy load of unburned carbon. As this superheated smoke rises, it eventually encounters enough oxygen
to allow combustion to resume, creating fiery sheets streaking across the sky. To people on the ground it
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appears that the sky itself is on fire. Most spectacularly of all, glowing bubbles of the gases released by fire
– bubbles that may be as big as a car or even a house – may float some distance ahead of the fire like
gigantic balloons dancing in the sky before igniting suddenly right over the heads of horrified onlookers.
As two or more already large fires approach one another, they often engage in a tug-of-war as they
compete over the available fuel and oxygen in the space between them. During this time, which may last
for just a few minutes, their pent-up energies build toward climax. Both generate tremendous winds, but
the area between them – the eye of the storm – may seem almost calm, a result of the fact that the
competing winds tend to neutralize each other. This area between them also grows extremely hot as both
fires radiate heat down onto the surface. Then, suddenly and violently, this state of equilibrium collapses
as one of the fires pulls the other into itself, and at that moment the fires will erupt, or blow up, to use the
firefighter’s term. The area between the separate fires, already heated and dried by these smaller fires, is
likely to be incinerated in a matter of moments, and the mass fire that results is likely to be far larger and
more dangerous than the . . . separate fires whose marriage gave birth to it.
That was what was happening in the Los Angeles Basin The fires that began with Burst 1, Burst 2,
Burst 3, the Bandini Burst, and numerous smaller explosions and conflagrations around and about the Basin
had arrived almost simultaneously near downtown Los Angeles, in the vicinity of the Music Center, the
Los Angeles County Building, and the County Courthouse. Many were now burning on fronts about as
wide as the Sundance Fire at its peak. All had spawned numerous spot fires in and around the Basin. Few
of the main fires and spot fires yet qualified as mass fires, but together they were about to become one far
larger than even the biggest of them. The roiling black-and-red monster that citizens in Central Los
Angeles had seen bearing down on them from Compton was consolidating its titanic energies, getting ready
to sweep through the Basin in an inconceivable orgy of destruction . . . , the perfect fire.
When it began to move, it would consume more than 466,000 hectares and better than five million
lives in a little less time than the Sundance Fire took to burn a mere 20,234 hectares, its aftereffects
ultimately adding another five million lives to the ghastly total.

As people a few kilometers away in one direction and another saw the smoke rise and the fireball erupt
over Compton, they decided to party in similar wise, as well. Sometimes, to paraphrase Sigmund Freud, a
dumpster fire is just a dumpster fire – but on rare occasions it’s a catastrophe in the making, as many of the
dumpster fires started that awful day in the Los Angeles Basin turned out to be. Like the eponymous Irving
of the ballad, essentially Los Angeles gunned itself down, one dumpster fire inspiring the next, and the
next, and the next, one disastrous dumpster explosion catalyzing the explosion of a neighborhood, the fires
spreading to the next neighborhood, and the next, and the next, until, by mid-afternoon of July 16, 2003,
the entire Los Angeles Basin was afire, the fires clawing the sky, reaching clear up into the stratosphere,
blazing chunks of particulate matter wafted along by the winds generated by the fire in some cases rising as
high as 20 or even 30 kilometers and more into the astounded sky. The Jet Stream, picking up the soot and
burning bits of what had been a great city and its hapless citizens, the heat bucking it higher and higher into
the heavens, carried its grievous burden north and east, across the North American continent, the Atlantic
Ocean, Europe, Asia, the Pacific, and back to America’s west coast once more, combining with similar
detritus from too many other locations, darkening the skies over most of the world for years to come.
Things began to burn. Lots of things. In job mega-lots. To make thing worse, it was hot, very hot,
temperatures even at dawn above 32° C and rising, and a Santa Ana had come up by the time the Sun had
cleared the horizon. Panic began to spread up and down the coast, growing greater and greater as the skies
above Los Angeles became more and more hidden in veils of thick brown-black smoke. By noon, nearly
everything from Ventura nearly down to Laguna Beach was heavily involved in fire, the individuals fires
finally coalescing into one all-consuming firestorm by 2 p.m. or so.
Huge black blobs of superheated gases coated with tarry smoke and chart floated ahead of the fronts of
the main fires. Wherever they landed – on buildings, gardens, small zoos, orchards, parkland, automobiles
stalled on jam-packed freeways, crowds of terrified people – their targets instantaneously burst into flames,
in many cases completely consumed in less than a second.
Aluminum melts and then burns once it becomes molten, assuming oxygen is available to it; it doesn’t
stop burning until it runs out of air. In the heart of the firestorm, molten aluminum ran down into culverts,
pipes, basement levels of buildings, liquefying in them and, eventually, solidifying there in weird shapes.
When the aluminum frames holding them melted and slumped, the bricks and other ornamentation of
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facades fell to the ground, the street, the sidewalk in huge heaps and piles. In a firestorm, as long as any
oxygen remains to enable them to do so, concrete burns, and so do bricks, so high are the temperatures.
Close to the flames, the horrible taste and stench of the air, which was filled with noxious gases, ash,
soot, the vapors from burning flesh and molten metal, made it almost impossible to draw breath without
immediately beginning to vomit. Those farther away suffered low-level anoxia. People around the
fringes of the Basin and down in the L. A. River culverts and other apparent shelters began gasping for air.

At the height of the firestorm, lightning bolts spawn a peculiar phenomenon: much of the water
released by burning materials is lofted by thermals kilometers high into the atmosphere, where it becomes
very cold. When the ice crystals thus formed rub up against one another, static electricity is generated,
creating huge lightning bolts and also setting off hailstorms all over the Basin.
One man, seeing hail falling as flames bear down on him as he talks to someone outside the Basin on
his cell phone, is amazed. Another just outside the Basin has to duck under a nearby awning to get out
from under the hail, which is in some cases as big as baseballs -- and yet there to the west are those
enormous flames and convection columns and towering pillars of smoke, and he is as terrified by the hail
as he is by the fire because the juxtaposition of the two is so weird:
Suddenly Jim felt something hit the back of his hand, and another like it hit the top of his head. To his
vast surprise it was cold, cold as the Styx. He looked up.
As if tossed about in the hands of a giant, several brightly colored blobs of what looked like ball
lightning arced through the smoke-filled sky, long, snaky tendrils of blue-white fire connecting them to the
others as they flew along their trajectories, thunder ripping through the heavens with the birth of each such
tendril. Jim hadn’t studied the sciences enough to understand what was happening; to him it looked like a
magic show, or maybe the pyrotechnics they set off at the rock concerts he liked to go so. In fact, the
countless megatons of particulate matter that had been lofted up by the convection columns generated by
the growing, rapidly multiplying fires were taking on vast amounts of charge from the flames, fiery scarves
of plasma, i.e., highly excited and ionized gases. The friction of contact among them also generated its
own huge cargo of charge. When the charge in any area of the sky built up to a certain level, it discharged
in blinding sheets and streaming bolts of lightning, some hitting the ground, others ripping across the sky
and lightning up the heavens like titanic magnesium flares. In turn, those discharges that took place at high
enough elevations, where the individual particles in the smoke each became coated with a monomolecular
rind of ice, the ice was thereby liberated to fall earthward, combining with other bits of ice as it did so on
the way down, until larger and larger chunks of ice were thus constructed and sent tumbling toward the
ground.
The two small missiles that had hit Jim’s hand and head were hail – hail created as a by-product of the
fiery holocaust now beginning to consume the Basin.
Vast bolts and sheets of lightning generated by the megatonnes of burning crud, dust, smoke, and other
particulates lofted into the air by the thermals generated by the firestorm, rip through the Basin, adding to
the pandemonium, killing countless people, pets, livestock, and wildlife not already dead from the flames.
Lightning bolts shearing through the flames, spreading out across the vast clouds of smoke. Sheets of
lightning enwrapping the sky, writhing around burning buildings.
Also, at the height of the firestorm, the Basin is filled almost wall to wall with a vast, rotating, fiery
cyclone or hypercane, which incinerates virtually everything it touches. Before it can get even worse,
however, the storms from the north finally reach the Basin and ultimately kill it.

Up in the hills, wildlife was dying, asphyxiated, cremated alive, crushed by rockfalls as creatures
scrambled to try to take shelter in caves and ravines, drowning in reservoirs, rivers, or streams, or struck by
fire-generated lightning.

Small aircraft such as Cessnas piloted by private pilots, with frightened last-minute passengers on
board, labored fruitlessly to gain headway out of the Basin. Save at the very fringes of the Basin and one or
two other exceptions, all such aircraft, along with their passengers, and crew, finally fell prey to the fire,
tumbling about out of control in the unthinkable thermals, falling out of the sky with wings on fire, their
pilots confused and blinded by ever-darker and thicker smoke and running into tall buildings and other
obstacles.
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The Great Los Angeles Firestorm only grew to the size it ultimately did, spanning almost the entire
Los Angeles Basin, because it started as many small but rapidly growing fires strung out across 80-plus
kilometers, from the western to the eastern side of the Basin, and from the foothills of the San Gabriel
Mountains to the Pacific, all fed by countless megatonnes of petrochemicals, building materials,
landscaping, and other fuels packing the Basin wall-to-wall. Otherwise it might have run out of oxygen
and died before it could get anywhere near that big. The front of the firestorm ultimately spanned 80-90
kilometers east to west, 30-50 kilometers from the foothills on the north to the Pacific.
UCLA, USC, and the other university and college campuses in the Basin everywhere were ablaze, their
great libraries on fire, their priceless treasures of literature, scientific works, artworks, and historical
documents turned to so much ash and char and melted metal within mere minutes. Cal Tech, the
Huntington Museum, JPL, the Basin’s great hospitals, and a thousand and one other priceless institutions
and landmark sites were all completely destroyed by the firestorm. Among other victims of the firestorm
that hideous day were the La Bea Tar Pits, the Museum of Industry, the Museum of Fine Arts, the
Goodyear “Arabian Nights” palace on the way to Huntington Park from Pasadena, and the Santa Anita
Racetrack, gone, all of them gone, never to be restored.

At a bargain theater (“$2.00 all night!”) down on Melrose, people were watching either The Ice-plant
That Came in From the Cold or the 1990’s disaster-flick Volcano – the theater had been subdivided into
two so that the management could double their profits, and each partition had its own screen, showing a
different movie than the patrons in the other were treated to. The theater patrons were trapped in the
theater by the fire, unaware of it until too late to get out, and were cremated alive. They may not have
deserved it, but those two schlock movies sure did . . .

The metal of vehicles melting and burning, bonding with the earth and macadam below, the charred
bodies and plastics within them, whatever other substances were in their vicinity, so great was the heat of
the firestorm. Vehicles exploded in the extreme heat, especially fuel tankers, ditto refineries, factories,
concrete and roadways burning, blazing.

LAX: With few or no firefighters left to halt the blaze beyond the airport, and flying shrapnel from
vehicles and some buildings exploding when hit by the fire, the aircraft on the runways, in the hangers were
soon burning and exploding everywhere, especially when the flames hit the jet-fuel dumps.

Pawnshops, like jewelry stores, became sources of what Leah Royer eventually dubbed “blurbs,” big
melted conglomerates made of mixed metals – both precious and commercial, such as iron – gems, glass,
and other materials due to the heat of the firestorm.

Human beings and other creatures vaporized in the fantastic heat of the firestorm. A rattlesnake in the
hills above the Basin struck and struck again, over and over, at the vast yellow-and-orange monster bearing
down on him. Overloading with heat, he sank into the darkness of unconsciousness before the fire reached
him, cremating him alive and leaving only a long, black shell of ash in the shape of a striking snake in its
wake.

Economy Cars Attack! – a car caught fire, and its brake fluid began to evaporate. Its hand-brake
wasn’t set; the transmission fluid evaporated, and the blazing car began lurching forward, then rolled,
faster and faster, into vehicles and structures, setting them on fire, as well, adding to the havoc. Cars
trapped in the massive gridlock jamming all the Basin’s roadways exploded – with their drivers and
passengers still in them. The same fate met trapped fuel-tankers, hazmat haulers, trucks, military vehicles,
buses, countless other vehicles. A car on the edge of the firestorm, somewhere on Highway 1, caught fire
from burning debris lofted that way by the fire. In fact, the fire never caught up to it there, because it was
just a bit too far south and west, and by then the set of the winds was beginning to turn the tide of the
firestorm. The occupants of the car were unable to escape before the car crashed against the side of a high,
bare earth embankment. People lining the ocean side of the road there, watching the firestorm, ran to try to
help anyone who might be left alive in the vehicle. The occupants of the car all turn out to be total roasts.
One would-be Samaritan saw the chest of one of those carbonized husks of once-normal humanity still
moving – whoever it was (he could no longer tell the sex, age, or much of anything else about the victim)
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was breathing! The Samaritan reflexively flinched, turning his head aside for a moment – and when he
looked back, blood was beginning to pour from the charred slot in the head of whoever it was, and the
victim’s breathing ceased. Retching, the Samaritans and those with them left the car and begin heading
down the road, away from the fires . . .

The heat of the firestorm created industrial-grade ceramics, sapphire, etc. from various materials in its
path, bonding metal to concrete and paving-stones and building materials and glass, and turning a witch’s
brew of chemicals into objects of great beauty but, often, deadly toxicity.

Some people in the Basin fled from the firestorm into the storm-drains and the Los Angeles River, now
completely encased in concrete. The problem with that was that that whole system was essentially one
vast, almost horizontal chimney with multiple entrances and exits. Those in the northerly portions of the
system – uphill from the rest – were thus exposed to the great heat coming in downhill from the firestorm,
and were cooked alive. Only those in the southern portions of the system – relatively close to the ocean
and far from the mountains – had a chance at survival.
Bill, myself, and those who fled the Basin with us reached the mountains and managed to survive there
only because of a freak of nature combined with the odd topography of the spot where we went to ground,
which channeled in the freezing-cold winds and precipitation coming down from the north to our area, and
with them, oxygen, and at the same time shielded them from that part of the fires that managed to make it
any distance up those mountains before the frigid storms put them out. Those who end up in the northern
end of the great Los Angeles river system were cooked alive, yet Bill and I and those with us weren’t, due
to the fact that even though we were about the same distance up the mountains, the details of our respective
situations differed just enough that those in the tunnels were cremated alive, while we were saved – as
always, survival of the luckiest.
But details matter. Only those in tunnels that were mostly filled with superheated air fried. Those
farther from the fire did have a chance. The amount of draught depended on the rise from the fire to the
outlet, the length of the tunnel, and the size of the outlet. Storm drains in the street were relatively small,
and numerous. Besides letting out the superheated air, they also let in cooler air, which puddled at the
bottom and kept any area far enough from the fire livable until the fire overran the area and cut off the
supply of cool air. Therefore anyone who got lucky and stumbled into the right tunnel survived, but most
did not. Most of the survivors were near the end of the tunnels or close to areas that did not burn hot. They
were sick and scattered, numbering no more than in the low hundreds.
The firestorm formed as a result of the eventual coalescence of countless smaller but growing fires,
and where the heat was, and where it went, at least on very localized scales, was a matter of chance, at least
until the firestorm was in full blaze all across the Basin. Survival under those circumstances was as much a
matter of luck as anything else.

Witnesses included TV and radio station announcers whose broadcasts were caught on tape and in
audio and video files on the Web in places far removed from Los Angeles, picked up and rebroadcast by
satellites and other feeds as long as those survived the War (most were out commission within a few hours).
“I see pillars of smoke rising in the direction of Pico Rivera and Monterey Park . . .” “Smoke and flames
rising over Burbank . . .” “Wall of fire obscuring the view of Palos Verdes Peninsula . . .”

Panicked birds wheeling in flocks all over the Basin were cremated alive in flight. Some escaped, only
to die a short time later of inhaled toxins combined with burns and exhaustion. Bill, myself, and their
followers had half-roasted birds of all kinds falling on us as we arrived in the place that became our redoubt
high on the mountain, where heaps of avian and insect carcasses are found lying everywhere. The corpses
of insects, some roasted whole, some badly burned, some apparently intact (these died of inhaled toxins)
covered the landscape and fell on the windshields of vehicles driven by those trying to get out of the Basin,
causing numerous accidents, many fatal, and in other cases preventing the occupants of vehicles fleeing the
fire from getting out in time. Waves of live cockroaches, rats, and other refugees fled the Basin just ahead
of the flames, coming from the outskirts of the area ravaged by the firestorm – those farther in were
consumed, little or nothing of them left to mark that they had ever been there.
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Hollywood and all the world-famous landmarks associated with the film industry there went up in
flames.

The sound of the fire ranged over a dozen octaves or more, from extremely low infrasound to
extremely high ultrasound, in places exceeding 400 decibels, becoming auditory white noise and then
silence because, up close, the ultra-high amplitude and ultra-low frequency roar couldn’t be heard (the
crests of the sound waves were too high and too far apart for the human ear to pick up). Instead, they were
felt as hammer-blows, a harsh, agonizing torture of the living, and a tremendous grinding pressure on the
unliving parts of the city, literally crumbling them away. The pandemonium wailing of the winds: the cry
of the land itself, shrieking in agony.

The reason that the fires spread so quickly, so far, getting irreparably entrenched and growing the way
they did, besides any other factors, is that emergency personnel who might otherwise have been able to halt
the spread of enough of the fires to keep it from turning into a firestorm either got inextricably stuck in
gridlock as millions of Angelinos jumped in their cars and poured out onto the freeways and access roads
and other streets in an attempt to flee the Basin, creating one gigantic, Basin-wide traffic jam, or said the
hell with it, grabbed their families, jumped into their own vehicles, and ended up stuck in gridlock anyway
as they tried to flee the Basin. More than anything else, panic on the part of millions of people not only did
them in, but also did in nearly everyone else, as well. We got lucky only because a) we woke up when we
did, thanks to the earthquake; b) Bill was a hard-headed pragmatist who had been thinking about things
like this for years, had his priorities straight, and was a natural leader; and c) Bill, who was driving, had
gotten to know the Basin and all its highways and freeways and all else over the years, and knew the one
possible route that could get us out of the Basin before the gridlock he knew was coming would lock us
into it and seal our doom. Our neighbors who came with us got lucky because a) they liked Bill and me;
b) knew that Bill knew what he was doing; and c) were willing to be followers to his leader. Anyone else
who managed to escape before the firestorm claimed the Basin must on average have been graced with the
same combination of factors – luck, brains, common sense, and a strong feel for where the possible escape
routes lay. Some might have been able to grab a boat from one of the marinas and head out to sea until the
firestorm burned itself out; others might have been on their way to work in the San Fernando Valley well
before the fires began to spread, simply avoiding the Basin from then on, maybe even jumping back into
their cars and heading north to relative safety (though with the tsunamis that hit later, such options were
limited mostly to the mountain passes); others still may have been on their way to work in Orange County,
and, once they heard about the start of the War or the chaos in the Basin, headed south from there, toward
La Jolla, Newport Beach, San Diego, or points even farther south By luck, good or bad, combined with
intelligence and experience, or lack thereof, people lived and died. And the overwhelming majority of
those who died in the firestorm didn’t deserve to.
I still wince thinking about the plight of small private aircraft trying to fly through all that horror. And
about small watercraft moving north and south along the coast (water skis, kayak, and other such). They
could move far enough to evade the worst of it, but were still in dire peril from the storms that finally
descended on the Basin from the north. Above all, surfers, especially windsurfers, must have been like
wood chips caught up in the winds of Hell.
By 4 p.m. in the afternoon of July 16, 2002, the Basin was filled nearly wall-to-wall with towers of
flame which in some places together spanned as much as 35 kilometers of massed phalanxes of fire.
The coastal strip from Los Angeles to Ventura was burned over, but the fires didn’t go far inland,
because the storms killed them before they could do so. Fires also started in the San Fernando Valley and
the Los Padres and the Angeles National Forests before the storms arrived, but the storms put them out
before they did much damage. Burning material from the firestorm lofted high in the air by thermals was
responsible for those potentially dangerous spot-fires, and the national forest and much of the coast way
beyond Ventura, including the Los Padres national forest, could have gone up in flames, but the storms
prevented that. The South Coast from Ventura on the north to as far south as Newport Beach was pretty
much a burned-over wasteland. The northern and western portions of the Los Padres National Forest had
been spared the Great Fire, as had the Santa Barbara region, but south of there everything east to the coastal
mountain ranges was a charred barrens filled with the rubble of homes and businesses and the blackened
revenants of national forests, parklands, farmlands, and open countryside. The firestorm was ready to
invade the Los Angeles National Forest and the San Fernando Valley in force when the storms hit. Fires
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had already started in those areas, but few and not too bad, and the storms put them out for good, as well as
halting in the L.A. firestorm in its tracks and then killing it dead.
Fullerton, east of Pasadena, but not all that far east, was also spared the firestorm. There was a ragged
edge to the eastern extremity of the firestorm, parts of it extending way to the east of Los Angeles County,
depending on combustible material available to the firestorm and the lay of the land, and some of it not
extending very far east at all, because the topography, the set of the winds, and other factors that didn’t lend
themselves easily to the firestorm’s ferocious appetite for fuel. So some areas way out there were heavily
involved in fire when the storms hit, while others just as far out were spared completely, though they did
get the smoke and toxic gases, and were robbed to some extent of oxygen, while the fires further west
blazed away, and they got hit by those mammoth winds generated by the firestorm, as well.
So many details of what happened that day came from military and other comsats, faithfully receiving
and then transmitting the images received to places where they are ultimately archived for all time, such as
certain ships which were part of the core nucleus around which the Fleet formed later on. They observed,
and then they reported. They didn’t not last very long, but as long as they did, they gave very graphic
testimony of what the firestorm did from beginning to end. By the luck of the draw, some of them actually
lasted until the Two-Day War was over.

§ : Alien Nation
Homeless people, some alone, some in camps and welfare hotels – what happened to them? A few of
the inhabitants of Skid Row might have escaped into the sewers, but if so, there fate is not known.

§ : The Mad
The Basin’s latest New Age superguru, Elaine Dharma Light, went on TV to blithely assure everyone
who was watching that morning that they shouldn’t “develop bad karma by losing faith” and booking out of
the Basin. She went on and on and on about what “the stars” were doing “to protect everyone” (and, of
course, getting the astrology all wrong – much later, I erected the event chart for when the seed of the
firestorm was planted: 6:30 a.m. PDT, July 16, 2022, Compton, CA. It’s an ugly chart, but dammit,
somebody’s gotta do it . . . Seriously, with Leo rising and the Sun in Cancer in the 12th ruling and quincunx
Saturn in the 8th House in Aquarius, this is a glaring example of a catastrophe chart. Other things in the
chart suck, too). Bill and I actually picked up that broadcast on our vehicle’s little onboard TV, and of
course I made smart remarks about how lousy the lady’s astrology was (at the time, little did I know just
how bad). In the middle of the lady’s cheerful babble, her interviewer and several others flee from the
room, realizing the fire was coming way too close and deciding to run for it while they still could. In
response to this desertion, Ms. Dharma Light, still being picked up by the cameras, which were on autopilot
at that point, huffed, “I don’t see what all of you are so upset about, obviously there’s nothing to worry
about as long as you don’t believe there is! The mind is stronger than anything, and . . .” She glanced out
the window – and stopped in mid-huff. Her jaw dropped – the camera, still connected to the transmitter,
the computer handling it well, gave viewers a fine view of Ms. Dharma Light – and her mouth formed an
“O” of horror. Suddenly flames appeared right outside the windows, clawing at the glass, eager to get in.
The windows blew out from the extreme heat. Ms. Dharma Light began to scream as the fire invaded and
engulfd the room. The massive suction generated by the fire pulled her toward the window and through its
remaining daggers of shattered glass and out into the heart of the fire itself, not quite killing her via the
Death of a Thousand Cuts before her hair and her lacerated body began to crisp and burn in the fire, still
screaming, though now voicelessly due to the quick destruction of her vocal cords by inhaled superheated
gases. Then the screen went dark . . .

§ : The Deserving: Monsters and Mayhem

Among all the people who didn’t deserve it who died in the firestorm, there were at least a few who
most certainly did deserve it, and died screaming, at least a little justice meted out in the midst of sheer
horror. For example, there were the owners of that great big house on the southwest corner of the
intersection of East California Blvd and Sierra Madre Blvd, the site of some of my worst childhood lucid
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nightmares, who were wealthy and addicted to strange, murderous pleasures. Another bunch of candidates
would be those infesting the belowground level of an innocent-seeming 8-story office building that
contained doctors’, dentists’, and other professionals’ offices way out on East Colorado Boulevard – they
didn’t live there, they just had their little get-togethers in the basement every so often, using equipment
from one dentist’s office in the building (in fact, that dentist was one of them) among the other tools used in
their ghastly pastimes.
In the first case, the teenaged son and daughter of the owners of the house had the sense to take off in
the family SUV about 5 a.m. on July 16 after learning about the asteroid impact and the death of Seattle
from a news bulletin that suddenly cut into the MTV show they were watching. They didn’t try to take
their parents with them – for one thing, their parents had been partying hard all night with friends in the
basement dungeons, using up a couple of party-favors in the form of screaming children they’d hired a
couple of goons to abduct for the purpose from less affluent areas in the Basin, and, having finally run out
of gas about 2 a.m., had fallen asleep right there in the dungeon, prey to the hangovers that were surely
sneaking up on them even then. Why bother? The old man had raped the girl dozens of times, and his
friends had used his son, a year younger than the girl, much the same way over the years, and his wife, their
mother, hadn’t done a damned thing to stop it. So the kids took off, heading for San Diego, where they had
friends they knew from Internet blogs and Instant Messaging, without bothering to disturb their parents,
who doubtless would have just screamed at them, anyway, then gone back to sleep. And it was in San
Diego where they testified to the California Highway Patrol and Fleet agents about their parents activities
over the years, testimony I was able to access later for these memoirs.
In the latter case, a janitor who knew what had been going on in that haunted building but hadn’t dared
to tell anyone what he knew for fear of reprisals happened to be visiting friends in Lancaster when the War
started, and was out of the Basin when the firestorm erupted there. Learning about the firestorm and
knowing that none of the bastards who’d been doing their thing in the basement of the building where he’d
worked would be a danger to anyone ever again, including himself, he went to the police and reported what
he knew. That, too, was documented, and the information eventually found its way to Fort Sacramento and
the office of Joe Cabrini, head of the New California Highway Patrol. And from him I acquired that
information, as well.

Then there was Hollywood, a.k.a. Hollyweird. As many have noted, the pre-War Hollywood scene
was full of twisted types. But it was the little people who took the brunt of the firestorm there, teenaged
male and female prostitutes, drug-dealers, the “respectable” adults who patronized them, but also the
innocent bystanders, far and away in the majority, such as the people working in and patronizing a local
Rite-Aid pharmacy or a supermarket, the cop on the beat who knew his job entailed doing the impossible
but still trying nevertheless to do it honestly and well, paramedics who came to help an old man who’d just
had a heart-attack right there on the sidewalk, shoppers coming and going from the stores there, and so on
and on in their tens of thousands. Most of those who died in that horror didn’t deserve to – this memoir is
really about them, the story of their agonizing and unnecessary horrific mass death everywhere in the
Basin, after all. Survival that day was, by and large, survival of the luckiest, and death the lot of the
unlucky, and in almost all cases, morality didn’t figure into it at all.

§ : Innocence and Experience

Cruelty has a human heart,
And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
And Secresy the human dress.

The human dress is forged iron,

The human form a fiery forge,
The human face a furnace sealed,
The human heart its hungry gorge.

– William Blake, “A Divine Image”

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A house in Arcadia, not too far from the Santa Anita race track:
Six men in a house owned by one of them, a man who is single. The night before the War broke out,
they gathered there for the weekend, the guests planning to go back home late Sunday night. These men,
whose socioeconomic statuses range from upper-middle class to upper class – the owner of the house is the
wealthiest of them – share a very private hobby: “collecting” children which they spend a day or two
murdering in various creative ways.
On Friday night, the night before the War, one of them, Fred Johnson, brought the offering of the
week: a pretty little black schoolgirl dressed in a light summer frock, perhaps 9 years old, whom he’d
kidnapped right out of her back yard by dint of a rag soaked in chloroform held over her face until she
passed out. It had been about 8: 00 p.m., close to sunset, and he’d managed to get the girl out of the yard
and into his car in the alley behind the house without being seen. Her parents hadn’t been at home at the
time – he’d cased the joint beforehand and saw them leaving, perhaps headed for a movie or a night out
with friends. The fact that Fred was himself black had helped, too – the neighborhood, a tony section of the
eastern side of Pasadena, had a lot of well-off black families in it, and he hadn’t stood out there, may not
have even been noticed by anyone before he kidnapped the girl and took off. At any rate, the girl slumped
unconscious beside him in the front seat of his Porsche, he’d then headed for Larry Masson’s place, which,
being in Arcadia, several kilometers away, would not have been a likely place for anyone to look for the
girl if he had been seen, arriving after sunset. Larry’d helped him take the girl down into the basement,
where they tied her up and gagged her, and left her there for the next day’s entertainment. (Larry is white,
as are Pete d’Avigny and Charles Soros; Chester Gonzalez is Hispanic, and Martin Lu is Chinese-
American. They’re all at least fairly well off, and Larry is rich.)
The six men with the strange hobby, for whom these weekenders are times to rest and relax and get
away from the cares of the workaday world by immersion in their hobby, sleep in until noon. They awaken
then, and toss on bathrobes, preparing for a leisurely breakfast of bacon, sausage, ham, pancakes,
scrambled eggs, and toast, with plenty of butter, syrup, and fruit preserves for their meal. They hear some
commotion outside, but it seems to come from a distance, and they don’t pay much attention to it. Finally,
around 2: 00 p.m., one of them turns on the television, just to see if anything newsworthy is on – and that’s
when they discover that war has broken out and L.A. may be among the next targets for nukes.
Forgetting all about the girl – let her stay and be nuked, who cares? – quickly they dress and, gathering
up some supplies, pile into Larry’s big SUV. They pull out of Larry’s driveway with a screech – only to
find, to their horror, that the streets in all directions are clogged with cars, as if the city had been scored
with a thousand cuts and had bled out cars which had then clotted in every intersection. In the distance, to
the south and west, they can see huge walls of smoke that seem to become darker by the minute.
Abandoning the car – once on the street it is quickly blocked in by other vehicles – they take off running,
heading for Santa Anita, where they think they can find shelter or some road which, by some rare miracle,
may be open, and a vehicle they can hot-wire to take it. They actually manage to reach the business district
of Arcadia and take shelter in an old air-raid shelter beneath one of the area’s older but well-kept office
buildings, a large, square, squat affair that looks as if it might very well protect them even from a nuclear
strike, assuming the strike wasn’t too close. (None of them have more than the vaguest idea of what a nuke
can actually do, how much damage it can inflict on an area, and how wide that area might be.) By the time
they get there, the great curtains of dark smoke suddenly open up right down the middle, and red-and-
yellow flame pours through the gap. They manage to get into the building and down into the basement
before the fire reaches the building. Once down there, it takes them a while to find the shelter, which isn’t
clearly marked, and the fire is already sweeping over the building as they open the shelter door, dive in, and
slam the door shut against the flames.

§ : Summary
Each “Los Angeles Burst,” as it was labeled much later, initiated a spot-fire that quickly turned into a
mass fire, spreading wildly into its immediate neighborhood and then beyond, ultimately evolving into a
conflagration which might by itself have been considered to be a true firestorm. However, within a
relatively short period of time, the Basin suffered numerous such “bursts,” one of the largest being the
explosion of Bandini Fertilizer’s main plant near downtown Los Angeles. As these bursts grew in number,
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with smaller incendiary events (as the Fleet referred to them later), some started accidentally or from
burning material from other fires lofted into the air by the Santa Ana wind sweeping into the Basin that day
and deposited at appreciable distances from the parent fires, and some deliberately set, connecting the dots
between, gradually these “normal” firestorms spread far and wide and began to meet up with one another,
finally coalescing into one giant hyperfirestorm the width and length of the entire Basin. This is the only
way such a gigantic mass fire could have come into existence, rather like giant galaxies cannibalizing all
smaller ones nearby to maintain their growth and sheer size, because otherwise any one of those first mass
fires in isolation would eventually have extinguished itself by gobbling up all the oxygen in its vicinity and
then smothering into quiescence. Even a few such fires, spaced well apart from one another, would have
done the same before they could otherwise have managed to coalesce and take on such monstrous
proportions.
The result was an incendiary monster that dwarfed the WW 2 firestorms due to Allied fire-bombing of
Germany and Japan, or even those set off by the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan
by the United States at the end of the World War II. The Los Angeles Basin encompassed some 4700
square kilometers, and the Los Angeles firestorm filled it virtually from edge to edge and from the Pacific
Ocean to the San Gabriel mountains. Fed by the endless wealth of hydrocarbon fuels, plastics, road-tar,
and other organic material found everywhere in the Basin, and even, due to its extreme heat, by concrete
and some metals (contemporary accounts report that during the Great Chicago Fire, concrete and stone
buildings burned, so high were the temperatures – it wasn’t just the wood in them, but the actual mineral
content of the structures, which contained elements that do combine with oxygen at high enough
temperatures).
What caused each burst, for example, Los Angeles Burst One, the Bandini burst, or any of the others?
Were they due to accidents, such as a runaway fuel tanker hitting a building in which flammable or
explosive materials were stored? Or were they set deliberately, the bastard children of idiot pyromaniacs,
or of someone trying to make a “statement”?
This was by no means a “normal” firestorm, if there were any such oxymoronic phenomena, but
something so far beyond anything ever experienced before the Two-Day War that its extraordinary impact
on the atmosphere above the Basin and its dynamics, and on every other aspect of physical reality in that
area, before the storms that ultimately extinguished it reached the Basin on that terrible day, are almost
impossible to describe in any sort of coherent fashion. “Ordinary” firestorms spawn “fire-whirls,”
tornadoes of fire. This one bred “hyperwhirls” and, ultimately, a vast, utterly remorseless “hypercane,”
with wind velocities far beyond those of normal tornadoes and hurricanes, and so hot that everything they
touched was instantly obliterated in a burst of flame so hot that even from orbit, films taken of them by
military satellites were overexposed to the point that almost no details came through. Those same
satellites, which transmitted their intelligence to a number of archival data-collection sites across the globe
as well as on the Moon before being shot out of orbit or fried by EMPs or military lasers, were not able to
collect enough data to determine in detail exactly what happened to trigger most of the spot-fires and mass-
fires which eventually coalesced into this, the Perfect Firestorm. Even so, they captured enough data that,
together with eyewitness testimony later given by survivors of the firestorm, it is clear that ultimately the
monster firestorm that swept the Los Angeles Basin on July 16, 2022 generated numerous fiery tornadoes
each of which would have dwarfed the worst tornadoes the American Midwest could have produced, all
finally coming together into a “hypercane” the diameter of which took up most of the Los Angeles Basin,
the temperatures occurring in which must have at times reached the melting point of steel and beyond.
In particular, in the case of the Bandini Burst, all evidence points to the collision of a runaway gasoline
tanker or other large vehicle filled with flammable or explosive materials with the loading dock at the main
Bandini plant, triggering the explosion now referred to as “the Bandini Burst” and “Los Angeles Burst
Bandini.” Where the vehicle came from, or why it suffered such a collision is unknown – the collision
could have been a true accident, or it could have been the result of a deliberate act by, say, a terrorist or,
quite possibly, a driver who had simply been driven mad by the endless, abnormally long stint of Santa Ana
winds that had bludgeoned the Basin for the previous ten days.
As for the overall thermodynamics of this firestorm of firestorms, when you have 4-5 firestorms going
simultaneously and then merging into one another, with all the flammable and explosive materials
everywhere in the Basin, the limits on intensity are problematic. Experts have argued over the matter
literally for centuries: just how high did temperatures go within the hyperfirestorm, the child of the
marriage of the smaller mass fires, and for how long? Once that ultimate Perfect Firestorm came into
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existence, everything not set afire or exploded before – say, materials far enough underground that the heat
of the smaller mass fires didn’t set them off – finally caught fire or exploded, at least momentarily upping
the internal temperatures of the firestorm. The firestorm was the product of several smaller mass fires, and
thus beyond the experience of anyone up until that time. Think of several Dresdens or Hiroshimas all
merging together over the space of a couple of hours, at least in terms of square kilometers involved. And
for a few hours before the storms from the north that finally extinguished the firestorm arrived, there were
precursor fronts of cool, moist air pushed ahead of those storms into the Basin, feeding oxygen to the fires
even as the fires used up the oxygen initially available to them, sustaining the firestorm beyond the time it
would otherwise have run out of oxygen. Only when the snow, sleet, and hail from the storms hit did the
firestorm begin to back down, cut down by cold and smothered by precipitation. The results, beyond how
many square kilometers were burned flat or other salient considerations, is in the realm of speculation, for
example, the aforementioned question about the firestorm’s ultimate internal temperatures and that sort of
thing. Eventually scientists from Fort Sacramento, the UNC system, and the Fleet would make expeditions
into the Basin to examine the area that the firestorm had encompassed as well as its immediate
neighborhood and find evidence that would give more detailed and accurate ideas about the temperatures
experienced during the firestorm, variations in its chemistry across the Basin, and so forth. Detailed
analysis of films from comsat transmissions provided spectra and other relevant data on the bursts, dead
giveaways when it came to figuring out what materials contributed to the explosions, and how hot the
explosions were. Unfortunately those films either didn’t cover the entire Basin or were overexposed due to
the high energy output of many bursts, and many of the views were obscured by smoke and debris lofted up
by the fires. As a result, much of what we believe happened during the firestorm is necessarily speculative
in nature. The closest analogs to the Basin firestorm were those that occurred at Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
Japan, at the very end of World War II, and from what is known of the what happened to the islands in the
South Pacific where the United Sates of America conducted its nuclear tests during the period 1946-1963
and related matters, and even those are only partially useful – the chemical mechanics of those firestorms
and the action of nuclear and thermonuclear devices upon landforms were significantly different from the
Basin firestorm not only as to degree but in kind. So it is reasonable to conclude, after developing various
scenarios, calculations for well-documented parts of the firestorm, and calculations of various factors from
what the firestorm did to the Basin as far as soil chemistry, geology, etc. goes, that some of it will never be
perfectly understood, and that a good deal of our analyses are and must remain in the realm of speculation
until such time as a working time-travel device is made and used to examine the Great los Angeles
Firestorm first-hand.

§ : Went to the Rock

Bill and I and those with us in the hills, trying to dig in somewhere.

Chapter 7: Dragons of Eden: Survivors

Now the icy detritus from Western Washington has reached as far south as southern Oregon and
even, in places, Northern California, and is beginning to descend there as snow and ice. Behind it, back
toward the great, glowing, 250-mile long crater that Western Washington has become, vast blizzards are
sweeping the land. Unable to compete with the raging heat from the lava-fields of what once were the
lovely green lands and gorgeous lakes and rivers of Western Washington, upon coming within a few
hundred feet of the inferno below it is once more lofted up into the sky, though at lower levels than before,
and begins the whole cycle anew, filling the frustrated air with blinding-white sheets of snow and ice.
Western Oregon is now the recipient of much of the precipitation from the Event, however, as is northern
British Columbia. Only the Cascades form a barrier between Western Washington and Eastern
Washington and Idaho now, keeping back the storms as they try unsuccessfully to sweep over the passes
and cover the lands to the east – and ultimately even those lithic giants are defeated in their purpose as
winds take the snow and sleet and icy rain descending now on Oregon and sweep much of it eastward and
northward again, to fall in Central and Eastern Washington and western Idaho . . .
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Motel Money Murder Madness

Let’s change the mood from glad to sadness

Well, I just got into town about an hour ago

Took a look around, see which way the wind blow
Where the little girls in their Hollywood bungalows

Are you a lucky little lady in The City of Light

Or just another lost angel … City of Night
City of Night, City of Night, City of Night, woah, c’mon

L.A. Woman, L.A. Woman

L.A. Woman, your my woman
Little L.A. Woman, Little L.A. Woman
L.A. L.A. Woman Woman
L.A. Woman c’mon
– Jim Morrison, “L.A. Woman”
§ : Bugged
A UCLA scientific laboratory at the very eastern edge of the Basin is spared by the firestorm, which
doesn’t quite get there. The biologists there have been studying a new variation of Jerusalem Crickets; the
original species has been common in the Basin and elsewhere in the American Southwest, but this new
variant has just turned up. It is probably the result of environmental pollution acting on the germ-plasm of
ordinary Jerusalem Crickets (potato bugs or “earth babies,” the latter nickname because the things look so
much like tiny, appallingly ugly embryos). These are the creatures that will eventually be called Baghdad
Crickets – see Dragon Drive, Part 15, page 30. They have a selective advantage that enables them to
proliferate in the form of eusocial behavior, in this case, protection of the females and young by males, and
their venom and their swarming behavior on the part of all the creatures in a colony under threat, by which
they overwhelm would-be attackers and kill them with their venom.

§ : Down to the Sea

Yael: On the beaches, hundreds or thousands of people are clustered, dumbly watching the flames
mount above the Basin and the nearer structures and open areas being swept and consumed by flames.
They can’t leave, because the fires block the roads. Some are able to get inside small sea-caves in the cliffs
where the heat is minimal and some oxygen remains. Others, who have been sunbathing, suffocate and
roast, victims of anoxia and the radiant heat given off by the fires, which do not have to physically touch
the victims to burn them, so intense are they. Still others are cut to pieces by sandstorms generated by the
fire’s ferocious winds.
Soon great webs of sand and job-lots of kelp, sand fleas, umbrellas, beach balls, birds, sea-wrack,
driftwood, cigarette butts, little TV sets, CD players, holoplayers, cars, beach-bags, beer coolers, six-packs
of beer, wine, and soft drinks, picnic baskets, and surfboards are pulled into the fire from the beach from
the beach along with hapless, screaming human beings, dogs, Frisbees, etc.
Fire trucks along the coast or near it are sucked into the fire, as is everything, vehicles and otherwise,
farther in.

POV: Someone out in the Channel west or south of Los Angeles, in a power-boat maybe 30-40 klicks
offshore and due west of Los Angeles when the War starts. A fanatical fisherman, he’s having the time of
his life – then he sees the plumes of smoke starting to rise above Los Angeles . . .
Profile: an upper middle class gentleman of about 35 who is doing a time-share on a condo on Santa
Catalina Island. When the War breaks out, he’s just come to the condo for two weeks of fun in the Sun and
fishing. He takes his power-boat out with a couple of friends just before dawn on July 16, 2002, and hears
nothing about the War before he sees those plumes of smoke and fire begin to rise all over the Basin. At
that point, he and his buddies turn on the radio to find out what the hell is going on. They pick up local
news broadcasts from farther and farther out in the L.A. suburbs and then outside the Basin as studio after
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studio in the Basin shuts down or is overrun by flames and burns down. They also have a TV on board,
and finally think to turn it on, and get some stations in Santa Barbara and Newport Beach, which are line-
of-sight to the boat, but can’t pick up much from them. They start hearing about the War between
increasingly panicky new reports from local radio broadcasters, and think to turn to CBS or some other
national network, but by then the Grid is going down and those stations are falling off the air. San Diego
continues to broadcast, but with the fires in the Basin beginning to coalesce and those storms coming down
from Western Washington as well as thermonuclear and nuclear airbursts over some American cities and
the truck-bombs that go off in others, the radio air soon becomes too dirty with static for good reception,
and they finally give up trying. They head back to Santa Catalina, and finding general panic there, after
refueling the boat (there’s a large underground fuel depot there in a members-only marina for subscribers
only, and this man is a subscriber, so they can refuel there without being seen by island residents and
tourists), they have a planning session, trying to decide what to do next, where to go, and so on. They load
the boat up with food and supplies, and finally decide to head down to San Diego. By then, the bomb that
takes out San Onofre has gone off, but there’s little in the way of fallout, since it was a neutron bomb.
They finally get to San Diego, and two of the men sign on with the Fleet, while the first man moves in with
a brother he has there.

Cargo ships: Container ships are large and fast but have small crews. 20 to 30 is normal. The ships
can make passage from Asia to L.A. in about 15 to 20 days, and they normally carry supplies for 40 to 60
days. Fuel might be a problem, however. General bulk cargo ships have smaller crews and are much
slower, at a speed of 8-10 knots, as apposed to 15-20 knots. Container ships are also big, wide, and long
mothers, often 15-18 meters wide and 120-210 meters long being about normal. Few smaller ports can
handle them. At others they anchor offshore and have the cargo containers brought in by smaller local
boats, a process that takes two to four times as long. On Day 1 of the War, Long Beach and L. A. were
useless; in Southern California, only San Diego remained fit for traffic.
In the beginning the fire was small, and not a meteorological phenomenon. As the day progressed,
however, the winds inbound from the ocean to the land grew very strong, completely reversing the
nighttime pattern of the unseasonal Santa Anas.
With the dawn to the beaches of California come those who love the sea, surfers, day sailors, beach
lizards – all come to greet the Sun and spend a Summer day well away from the inland heat, and in
somewhat cleaner air.
Today those that came and lived would bless the concept of Summer vacation.
At first the clouds of smoke meant little to those near the beaches, fires were contained and put out in
the city. Everyone knew that! Why else spend all that money on firemen?
Those in their homes however knew better, Mars had come to visit and all the old peaceful truths were
changing. In Venice California, Herbert Walker watched in stunned hurt as the carefully built and
protective walls of his world crumbled.
Out to sea the small private boats, sailboats mostly moved out to sea and to the north or south away
from the growing smoke cloud. not so much afraid as to stay in clearer air. None of them wished to sail
through a fogbank of smoke. It wasn’t safe – and it smelled bad.
A few young wind-surfers moved away, followed by several dozen older kayakers out for a day’s
pleasure at sea. A few were stricken with a strange fear that drove them on- away from the spreading fire.
By the time the true firestorm developed the beaches were almost bare of people.
In Venice, Herbert and his friends had become aware that the roads were no longer anything but
parking lots. Knowing well enough how hard their little suburban area was to get out of normally, they
agreed to stay. Crowds of people were roaming the streets looking for direction, safety, or something to do.
Then, in the south end, people far from home started to fight with one another.
No one ever knew why. They just did, perhaps fighting just to be fighting.
Fortune smiled on Herbert and his friends. Venice, California, like its European namesake, had canals,
wide waterways intended to allow the residents to have boats and access to the sea. They were, just
incidentally, also great for stopping the spread of a riot.
When combined with the high velocity wind from the sea of damp air, the fairly large back yards that
fronted the canals on both sides and the not so recently killed grass and shrubs halted the fire in its tracks.
That most homeowners had removed the dead herbage after it died, or pounded it into the dry soil with
their feet, made the area a fair to excellent firebreak.
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As the firestorm grew in power it had the curious effect of making this place safer from fire. However,
wind and, with it, wind-driven junk, was a whole different story.
For protection from the fire, any reasonably fire-resistant wall would do, but only a strongly built
building was proof against the wind. Light structures collapsed as the winds grew stronger. Houses here
mostly dated back to the early 20th century, for the most part built by craftsmen for the wealthy as vacation
homes. They had been built to last, and most withstood winds their builders could never have dreamed of.
Dozens could shelter in a home for every one individual who might have lived there in better days.
Many a garage became a life-saving refuge.
Herbert, however, had a far more precarious shelter. Battered by wind and blinded by windblown
sand, he crawled under his neighbor’s SUV and used his pocket knife to depress the valve stems of the
tires, deflating them, letting the massive vehicle sink until it was low to the ground. Holding onto the drive
shaft for dear life, Herbert made a pact with God. “If I live through this I’ll never make another porno
movie again! I swear I’ll find a good woman, and if she’ll have me, this 13-inch magic wand will be for
her alone. I swear it!”
Eight hours later the winds died down. Locally the firestorm had exhausted all the available fuel.
Slowly, like the half mad, frightened animals they so resembled, the survivors came forth, looking out
across the canal, seeing a desolation, endless kilometers of burned-over rubble where before there had been
the suburb of Venice, California. It didn’t matter where you looked, north, east or south. At best, in any
direction, only a narrow strip or small clump of unburned land could be seen.
Wise with the ignorance of extreme youth that denied the preconceptions held by the older and more
experienced, a young voice rang out, “Mommy! Mommy! Where are we going to go out to eat at? All the
good places are burnded up!”
Painfully dragging himself out from under the all-but-destroyed SUV, Herbert heard her answer, in a
slow, confused, and wondering voice, “Baby, baby . . . maybe Mommy had best learn to cook.”
Helped to his feet by his fellow porn star and neighbor, Herbert shook his head and, squinting his eyes
to more clearly make out the rising storm to the north, called out, “Best bring that experiment inside,
ma’am --” pointing in the northerly direction – “or that’ll rain on it.”
She came over to him with her four year old son. The woman was Jennie Schwartz, and her little boy
was named Toby. With their help he was able to reach safety. He and Jennie would stand together for the
next twenty decades. And he kept his word to God, not once regretting having made his vow.
Others were not so fortunate. None of the others who took shelter beneath cars are known to have
survived. Of those who had put out to sea, those aboard sailboats fared the best. Some of the power boats
ran out of fuel – and, with a hurricane-force wind blowing toward the beach, that was very nearly a death
sentence.
Kayaks, Hobie Cats, canoes, windsurfing boards – a few survived and escaped from the firestorm
using all of these and other light craft, but the vast majority of those who attempted to flee the flames in
such craft failed. Most found that they were so low to the water, and so, lacking any shelter for those
aboard, most of them simply drowned.
Some were swept from their boats by increasingly angry seas; others filled their lungs with sea water
that had been blown from the surface and mixed with the air by the power of the wind. Without a sheltered
calm where they could breathe, their lungs filled with water and they died. Most were never seen again.
Others had their rides swept into shallow water where the waves broke, waves two, three, even five
meters in height. Once out in that, no ship could have been saved. These, too, were never seen again.
Those that lived now had a choice, a grim one. Move after the storms abated, (if so where?), or stay
and hope for rescue. A very lucky few had the means to stay and survive, Herbert and his friends were not
counted among them.
Herbert, his neighbors, Mrs. Swartz and her son, worked for over a week to clear the rubble from the
street so Hammy Truman’s 10-meter cat could be hauled out of storage and into the water with the only
truck they could find that still ran.
Loaded well past safe limits with the 14 people and what little they could both salvage and carry, the
good ship Blue Flea made her way to sea. Riding low in the water as she approached San Diego Harbor,
she presented a brave but forlorn sight.
By design the Flea was intended for five tonnes of cargo and six people. Brave ship that she was, she
carried 14 souls and nearly nine tonnes of cargo to safety.
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Two years later she burned and sank while fishing off San Diego. Hammy Truman went down with
the ship. He fought the fire to the end below decks, buying time for the other fishermen to escape.
Like Hammy, hundreds of those who escaped the Great Los Angeles Firestorm and the storms from
the north that extinguished it, and made their way to safe ports, still could not escape death at sea. For their
courage and the gift of food it brought to San Diego we should be forever grateful.

§ : The Day the Music Died

Rides and exhibits at Disneyland were destroyed, but not by the firestorm – instead, terrorists invaded
the park and set off bombs there, leveling a good deal of the place. During the second day of the Two-Day
War, July 17, terrorists fire high-explosive missiles into Disneyland. But a great deal of the park was left
undamaged, or not seriously damaged. The terrorists may not have been Islamists or even Reconquista
fanatics; they could have been Skinheads or Aryan Supremacists. But most of them were shot dead by
residents in the area – this wa Orange County, after all, where the 2nd Amendment was taken seriously
even if it was so mostly underground – and the rest took off and were never seen again.

§ : The Reluctant Dragon

The division of Spielberg Labs responsible for the creation of the Godzillas is located between March
Air Force Base and Lake Perris, not far southeast of Riverside. When it is deserted by human staff, the
Godzillas, realizing they’re on their own, break out and at first head due east, to Lake Perris, which fills a
small basin surrounded by low hills, some of which contain caves. The Godzillas head that way because
they understand English as well as Japanese very well, and knew the lake was that way – not to mention the
four directions of the compass – from conversations among staff they’ve overheard over the years, as well
as questions they asked the staff, who were delighted at their intelligence and made every effort to explain
the world to their brilliant creations. The Godzillas instinctively duck into a cave to hide out, not so much
from the fire as from possible recapture by human beings – they are now so angry and grief-stricken at their
abandonment by the human beings they loved that they want nothing to do with them again. There in the
cave, which runs quite deep and has its own water supply in the form of trickles from underground streams,
they hide for several days, subsisting on animals such as rabbits, coyotes, etc. that flee from the flames into
the caves. When they are sure it is safe to come out again, they exit and continue on eastward, humanity’s
children in exile, their hearts broken.

§ : The World Turned Upside Down

Survivors included hobos; psychopaths, including tramps, former inmates of Atascadero State
Hospital for the criminally insane, and others; some refugees from the psychiatric wards of hospitals;
some street urchins; some surfers who put out to sea on their boards and manage to stay afloat, drifting
southward or northward along the shoreline with the currents until it’s safe to come to shore (not many, but
a few, those mainly north of Malibu and south of Long Beach)

§ : Walk the Fire

In a suburb in the eastern end of the Basin, a group of fire-walkers – some there for fun, some to teach
physics to a bunch of slavering students waiting to see them cremate themselves alive, some as a religious
devotion, including a few local firefighters. Seeing the smoke rose up over the Basin, they turned on the
TV and got the news. Then they calmly headed out to the east, away from the Basin. As they left, a
student asked the physics teacher, “Is that [the firestorm] part of the final exam for the class?” “Son,” said
the teacher, “I think class is out for good.”

§ : “A Domino factum est istud; et est mirabile in oculis nostris.”

Leah Herzog’s parents grab their little girl and flee for their lives.
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§ : Dancers to the Music of the Night, or, Ladies from Hades

As in any good story, some of the tales here ended well. Consider the four prostitutes and the madame
who managed them, the madame driving around in a flashy, large-capacity, limo-style car, ferrying the girls
to one john or another and picking them back up again afterwards. She was a canny woman, and the girls
were street-wise and canny, as well. Around 7:00 a.m. she was picking up the last of the four girls in Santa
Monica when one of the others turned on the car radio, and they heard about the outbreak of the War and
what had just happened to Seattle. A quick thinker, it didn’t take her long to realize which way the wind
was blowing now. She knew that at the best of times Angelinos weren’t entirely bolted down, and she
could easily imagine what was coming. The freeways would likely be jammed tighter than a monk’s
jockstrap within a couple of hours as everyone tried to leave the area all at the same time. However . . .
They had been heading back through downtown Santa Monica, bound for the hotel where the girls stay
when not working, which is located near Wilshire Boulevard, but the madame pulled into a 7-11 parking-
lot, turned around, and came back out, this time heading toward Highway 1. “Where are we going?” asked
one of the girls. “Upcoast,” the madame tells her. “Malibu. Then we’ll take the first road going north
from there – we do not want to be anywhere the naval base at Port Hueneme now!”
The 190-liter gas tank was full – the madame had gassed up on the way to pick up the girls – and,
using back roads, they took US 1 to Route 23, went up 23 through the Simi Valley to Fillmore, took 126
east from Fillmore to I-5, went up I-5 to 138, took 138 east to the Palmdale area, and then stopped around
4:00 p.m. at a restaurant in Palmdale to discuss options. The roads the madame took to Palmdale had been
almost completely empty of traffic – most of California had headed for the nearest freeway upon getting the
news about the War, it seemed, leaving the back roads open – so they’d traveled quickly and safely all the
way.
The restaurant was still open, and so were some little stores and a couple of gas stations nearby. The
girls were flush – it was a good night – and so was the madame, who had been planning to bank some of
the cash she’d on hand before they all turned in that day. They all pooled their assets, and before leaving
Palmdale for points farther east, they topped off the tank of the limo, loaded up on food and bottled water,
filled two gas cans with more gas and stored those in the car, and took off again, still heading east, staying
awake on bennies and lots of food until they got to Twenty-Nine Palms not long after dark. There they
found a motel that was still open – out there, people had heard the news, but weren’t much concerned about
it yet; to most there, it was remote, something that only happened to the big cities, and the motel and
store and gas-station owners only thought about all the lovely money that was rolling in from frightened
tourists, in cash and via credit-cards – and rented rooms for the next week using the madame’s Chase
Manhattan credit-card. “The lines are down, ma’am,” says the proprietor, “but I can write down the
number of your card and put it through once the lines go up, that okay?” “That’s fine,” she tells him,
secretly grinning – those lines are never going back up, and all that that plastic is worth now is just that:
the plastic the card is made of. This way, they can keep the real assets they do have, which is a) their cash,
b) the goods they bought back in Palmdale, and c) their booties and what they can rent them for to whatever
customers there may be out here.
By then, the storms from the north had hit the Basin and everything east of it hours ago, and the roads
were not navigable, thanks to all that snow, sleet, black rain, and sky-junk that kept sifting down. The
madame, a native of New England who’d relocated to the West Coast when she was 18 and still believed
she could make it in the movies in Hollywood, now 45 and much wiser, had just barely made it all the way
out here those last few hours, and did not want to travel any further until the storms let up, assuming they
ever did – they all knew now that the War was a nuclear shooting war, and they’d heard all about Nuclear
Winter scenarios their lives long from various sources, so this was an iffy question.
The motel owner gave up and shot himself through the roof of the mouth three days later when he
realized money was worth nothing any more, and the world was truly going to Hell. The madame and the
girls quietly took the place over and did well by taking in travelers and, when applicable, giving them
certain services in exchange for barter. One way and another they made a living of sorts until things got
better. By then they’d collected enough jewelry and other valuables from desperate travelers in exchange
for shelter that the madame was able to start a general store in North Shore, a town on the northeastern
shore of the Salton Sea, and she and the girls became able merchants who, in later years, become very
respected citizens of the area and the state as a whole. The madame became a state senator, the girls
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invested their earnings in various ventures in the state, and they all were able to afford Berkeley’s
rejuve&regen treatments, finally joining the exodus from Earth to emigrate to Providence.
Meanwhile, during that catastrophic first day of the War, that enormous mega-church up the hill from
the girls’ former territory in Santa Monica and West L.A. was hit by a vast plasma blob during the first
hours of the firestorm, exploding when the heat caught up with the blob and set it all on fire
instantaneously. Fortunately, it was Saturday, and nobody but a janitor and the minister who used to
organize evangelical teams to proselytize the neighborhood and try to convert as many people as possible
were in the building at the time, hiding from the firestorm. The evangelical teams’ favorite beat was the
same one where the girls did most of their business and the hotel they stayed in was located . . .

§ : Animal Fair
At Griffith Park Zoo, someone released the animals, giving them a chance at survival. Afterward, he
went up to the Griffith Park Observatory and helped the scientists take in survivors and keep the flames
from reaching the observatory.
Over in Griffith Park, some zoo officials, picking up the start of the fires on radio and TV as well as
seeing flames and smoke begin rising over Hollywood, Burbank, Glendale, and other nearby communities,
got on the horn and alerted all other zoo employees on station, issuing orders to turn on the sprinkler
systems everywhere in the park to wet everything down as much as possible. This was one of the reasons
that many zoo animals survived. It limited damage to the great observatory there, as well. After observing
what happened to an observatory just like it in Australia as a result of one of their enormous, catastrophic
brushfires, I am not all that certain that the Griffith Park Observatory wouldn’t otherwise have been badly
damaged by the fires.
Here, taken from what my late first husband, Monty Eisenstein, told me about what he first entered
Southern California, trying to find work, is the story of that kind man who released the animals:

When Monty finally reached the Los Angeles Basin [2027], coming around from the
northeast, he explored a little, and finally rode up the hill leading to the Griffith Park
Observatory. Getting to the top and letting the horses rest and graze for awhile, he
looked down at the terrifying wasteland spread out before him, remembering the full
Spanish name of the city that had grown up there and then died so horrifically: El Pueblo
de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles del Rio de Porciuncula. Shaking his head in
sorrow, Monty decided to do some more exploring. He was able to enter the observatory
through a half-open door (left that way by the people with whom Leah Herzog’s parents
teamed up right after the War when all of them left to seek their fortune elsewhere); to
his sorrow, he found that time, the elements, and rats had done a great deal of harm to the
exhibits, and that the big telescopes were rusted, their mirrors heavily damaged.
Something in him stirred to life, a hot flame of anger and determination. Not sure why,
he found himself vowing to come back somehow, someday, and restore this magnificent
20th-century cathedral for the worship of the stars by the followers of starry wisdom.
He spent the night there, making a meal for himself, letting the horses eat their fill of
the tough grasses and the odd, weedy flowering plants that had sprung up on the hillside
and along dusty the margins of the broken road leading up to the observatory, and get a
good rest. The next morning they set out again. They stopped by the Griffith Park Zoo,
finding most cages empty, but some – the ones that had contained alligators, venomous
snakes, and monitors – with their doors locked, the skeletons of their dead occupants
sprawled across the floors, their shattered skulls testifying to someone’s marksman skills:
they hadn’t been left to burn, at least. In the case of the alligators and other water-loving
reptiles, the cause of their deaths wasn’t as clear – they’d probably retreated into the wide
moats provided for them when the fire got too hot for them, and come out again when the
fire had passed by. In many cases, there was no evidence of the headshots that had done
for other reptiles; their skeletons were often damaged in other ways, though, possibly
due to wounds from those with whom they’d shared their cages. For some reason the
bears, wolves, big cats, and other large carnivores had all been freed, their cage doors
standing open, no skeletons in the cages.
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As Monty gazed in wonder at those empty cages, a sudden sound startled him.
Turning, he found an aging man standing there, dressed in ragged clothing, and looking
either more than a bit crazy or like some sort of religious mystic, which, Monty couldn’t
be sure. He had a longish, full beard, mostly white but with some streaks of brown still
in it. He had to have been at least 50 years old, or even 60 – he seemed to be fit enough,
so it wasn’t easy to tell his age.
The man chuckled, saying, “You’re wondering about the big guys. The tigers. The
bears. I let them out. I let all of them out once everyone was dead or fled, when they
couldn’t hurt anybody. Gave ’em a chance.”
“Why not the ’gators an’ the other reptiles?”
“Couldn’t be sure. Tried to give ’em food, but I couldn’t find any they liked – and
most snakes won’t eat dead food, anyway, ’cept maybe in small chunks. I tried cutting
the meat up into chunks, but they wouldn’t eat that, either. The ’gators – well, there was
about ten times more of ’em in there than you can see now when they started – the bigger
ones et the smaller ones, and then the biggest ones were all that was left, and they sort of
fought it out, and what you’re seeing there are the skeletons of the last of the losers and
the very biggest one. Dunno why the biggest guy didn’t eat the other two there – maybe
he was sick. I’d already used up most of my ammo on the snakes – you don’t want to let
the venomous ones or the big constrictors loose, because they’re just too likely to cause
real mischief – and didn’t have enough left to use on the big reptiles, except for the
monitors, which were just too dangerous to turn loose around here. I’d already taken care
of them the day of the fire.”
“An’ the bears an’ tigers an’ primates an’ other big mammals – they didn’t try to hurt
you?”
“Gotta be a perfesser, you do, talking like that – ‘the other big mammals’,” the man
says, chuckling. “Where you from, boy?”
“Arizona. Place is fallin’ apart, an’ my last . . . situation sort o’ went west, so I went
west with it. So, what’s your story, sir? – An’ what do I call you?”
“Perlite sort, ain’t you? – No, no, son, I’m not laughing at you, I appreciate the
courtesy. My name’s Vincent,” the old man told Monty, holding his hand out. They
shook hands. Vincent then launched into a brief sketch of his life since the War and how
he’d come to be where Monty’d found him.
Vincent Pablo Warren-Gonzalez (his mother had named him after her two favorite
painters), had worked for the L.A. County Park system in Griffith Park as a supervisor of
cleanup crews in the Griffith Park Zoo, living in a neat little unit in the housing provided
by the city of Los Angeles for parks department employees, in the shadow of the Griffith
Park Observatory. He got the news about the War at 5 a.m. – his radio-alarm had been
set to go off then – and, after absorbing the terrible news (it took a few tries; he’d been
out drinking with friends the night before, and was groggy when he first awoke), he
headed over to the zoo. He loves the animals there, and realizes they could all be toast by
nightfall. Then he notices the panic among everyone in the area – and sees the columns
of smoke begin to rise up over different parts of the Basin. Nobody but him is in the zoo
now, and it doesn’t look as if many are anywhere nearby, so he gets the keys to the cages
and begins letting the animals loose. Even big predators such as bears and lions are too
spooked by the scent of fear coming from countless human beings, the smell of smoke
and burning everything, and the ash that is beginning to drift down from above to pay
him any attention when he opens their cage doors; they rush through the doors and begin
heading up toward the tops of the surrounding hills without so much as a backward
glance. He let out almost all the animals, save for a few really poisonous snakes and big
constrictors, which he shot dead, using the L.A. County-approved semiauto he carried
everywhere in a shoulder-holster, just in case – he didn’t want them to burn, but they
were just too dangerous to let run loose and too hard to spot in time to avoid them if they
were loose. The alligators and crocs and turtles, however, were in habitats with large
moats into which they were already retreating, which should have protected them from
the fires, and the big, dangerous mammalian predators were so cowed by the approaching
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fires, however, that he figures that they’ll observe a fire-truce – and from what he was
still getting on his radio and the TV in the employees’ lounge at the zoo, it’s clear that
everyone who hasn’t already left Los Angeles for regions as far from the city as they can
go is trying to do so, and the big animals aren’t likely to be a problem. He figured he can
give them a chance to get away, which is better than nothing – and he doesn’t have
enough ammo to do the job on them all, so it’s let them go or leave them in the cages to
burn.
Just as Vincent was finishing releasing the zoo animals, he saw the sprinklers
coming on, soaking the ground throughout the park. The sprinklers ran for over three
hours, saturating the grounds and the flammable vegetation, forming a vital firebreak
later in the day. This preserved a large swath of the park, protecting the buildings
upslope and the personnel inside them. No one recognized the voice on the radio that
gave the order to turn them on, and no one hesitated to follow it, either.
Once all the animals in the zoo were either released and on their way up into the
hills, dead from a bullet through the brain, or hunkered down in their moats, Vincent
headed up to the observatory and let himself in with the keys he carried. The observatory
probably didn’t need the watering from the sprinklers, except for temperature control –
built as solidly as the pyramids, it could have withstood anything but a direct hit with a
nuke. But everything else needed it – and then some . . .
The old man’s eyes narrowed as he detected the sudden trace of sorrow in Monty’s
voice. “You lost somebody you cared about a lot, didn’t you, son? I’m sorry. It’s been
hell these last five years, it really has. Looks like you got your own share of it.
“Well, I’ll tell you about the big guys, the bears and big cats and gorillas and such:
they’re not dumb. Not anywhere near as dumb as we arrogant human bastards would like
to think. When everyone else left, the city on fire all around ‘em, they knew they were
all in deep, deep shit. Then I come along and knocked the locks off their cages any way I
could. All they did was stand back and look at me like I was some kind of angel come
directly from God, you better believe! When I pulled the doors open and stood back a
ways to give ’em a clear way out, they waited a minute or two to make sure I wasn’t
gonna pull a gun or anything like that, and then just lit out as fast as they could go,
heading away from the flames. Fire didn’t take these hills much – not sure why, but the
most likely thing was, the wind set wrong for it. And somebody’d ordered the sprinklers
turned on all over the park, water ran for three hours or so until it finally ran out or was
turned off or the fire got to the pumps or something, and that turned the ground to mud all
through the park, nothing that could burn. The big observatory up there,” he says,
pointing, “it could’a rode through a nuke attack without a problem, and the hilltop up
there was mostly clear of brush and anything else, ‘cause of that big old parking-lot in
front of the observatory, so the ones that made it up there were able to ride it out pretty
much, at least without getting burned to death. I know, you see,” he added at Monty’s
skeptical stare, “’cause I ran up there myself when it got real bad. They didn’t touch me
at all. Fire-truce – you ever hear of that?”
“Oh, yeah. Animals runnin’ from brushfires an’ forest-fires that make it to rivers or
lakes or oases huddle there for the duration without doin’ anythin’ to one another.”
“That’s right, son. And that’s what happened up there, on Observatory Hill, the first
day after the city burned: me and the bears and big cats and wolves lay around up there,
panting hard, trying to get oxygen – there was some even during the firestorm, but it was
hot as the tailpipe of a Fortune 500 racecar in the middle of a race, and damned little
oxygen in it, let me tell you! But there was enough – I lived, and so did most of the big
critters. There were even gophers and a bald eagle and a lot of chickadee-type birds and
native snakes and lizards up there, all in the same boat as the rest of us.
“The middle of that first afternoon, though, it suddenly started raining, hard! I’ve
heard since that there was this unbelievable volcanic eruption up around Seattle early that
morning, spewed about a trillion tons of water vapor into the atmosphere and created
fast-moving fronts in all directions. The one moving southward reached here about, oh,
I’d say maybe 4: 30 p.m. that afternoon. It didn’t just rain cats and dogs, either – more
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like dire wolves and saber-toothed tigers, yessirree Bob! Not to mention hail the size of
grapefruit – if it hadn’t been for those overhangs on the observatory and the cars and
trucks still parked in the parking lot, I don’t know what me and some of those animals
could’a done to get away from ‘em. The bears, now, they just got around to the lee side
of the observatory, and the big cats and wolves followed them, and they waited it out
there – the hailstones were coming in almost horizontally at times, but the big guys
moved with every shift of the wind so they were always in the lee of the building,
protected by it, and they rode that out just fine. There was some snow mixed in with that
lot, too. Weird weather. You know about that volcano?”
“Yeah, I heard some of it, anyway. Somebody set off an H-bomb in Puget Sound,
punched a hole down into the big magma chambers comin’ out that way from the
Cascades. When the seawater in the Sound hit those white-hot rocks, well, you can
imagine. Blew the whole area to hell.”
“That fits with the bits and pieces I’ve heard.”
“You been up here long?”
“I hang out here. There’s game I can catch, caches of stuff all over – not far south of
the park, here, is what was left of a great big mall with a supermarket and everything.
That all burned down, but the storerooms underneath still have stuff in ‘em. I go down
there ever so often to get a new wardrobe and maybe some aftershave,” he said, winking.
“Anyone else around here?”
“There were, right after the city burned down, a whole group of ‘em up here in the
Observatory. They holed up in there the day it all started, locked up tight, and stayed that
way for about two weeks. Then they came out and started exploring. They fed me for
awhile, gave me some stuff from their first-aid kits. Rather kind people. I gather most of
‘em were observatory staff. Scientists, some of ‘em, and technicians. But they left after
awhile. Some others came in the meantime, and joined ‘em, left with ‘em when they
pulled out. I stayed – I was born in Hollywood, lived here all my life, and I’ll be damned
if I’ll leave now.”
“Why’s the observatory open to wind an’ weather like it is?”
“The open door, you mean? When the observatory staff an’ the others with ‘em
finally left, they left it that way – propped it open so they could get their stuff out without
having to open and close it, open and close it. I left to go do something while they were
getting ready to head out, and when I got back, a couple of days later, the door was stuck
in an open position, like you saw, and I haven’t been able to get it shut since. A shame –
place’s built like a fortress, perfect protection from the weather and everything else. But
with that door open – well, it could be a death-trap. You’d settle in there and then one
night something or, more likely, someone gets in and you wake up with whoever it is
between you and the door and next thing you know, his knife is in your throat, or he’s
shot you, and you’re fucked. I found this little outbuilding back down Observatory Hill a
ways, built out o’ concrete and has just one way in, big heavy metal door that opens and
shuts just fine, one I can lock tight. Got it set up with pretty much everything I need, so I
guess I don’t need the big place.”
They talked a little longer. Monty shared some food with the hermit, including
venison jerky, and Vincent invited him to spend the night there if he wanted. Monty took
up Vincent’s offer, staying in Vincent’s concrete hut, which was actually rather large, and
even had a place where Monty could stable his horses. The next morning, as Monty got
ready to leave, Vincent told him that he might want to head up into the San Gabriel
Mountains. There were people living up there who could use Monty’s talents and
experience. The place was at the end of Diablo Canyon – Vincent got out a set of pre-
War Rand McNally road- and area maps of the region to show Monty where it was.
Thanking him, and giving Vincent a couple of the treasured science-fiction novels
Monty’d been carrying with him forever as a gift for Vincent’s kindness – the hermit
loved science fiction, and, like Monty, had been a fan of Golden Age science-fiction for
most of his life – Monty headed out, toward the San Gabriel Mountains and Diablo
Canyon, to look for the place called “Devil’s Keep.”
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§ : Samarra Deferred
Benjamin, a.k.a. Benj, a small-time thief and some time dope dealer, was released from the LA County
Jail at 2 a.m. on July 16. Jackson, a.k.a. Lacks, picked him up, and they headed inland. Lacks has a
warrant out for him on old parking tickets, so he figured to leave LA until he could pay them off.
Around 3 a.m. they stopped at their house to load up their belongings. The lease was up, and they are
already late leaving.
By 4 a.m. they were loaded and moving inland, away from everything they knew, off to visit Lacks’
uncle, who owned the only gas station on a back road leading down past the Salton sea into Mexico.
The group spends the next 3 years smuggling items and people back and forth across the border.

§ : Child’s Play

For Mercy has a human heart

Pity, a human face;
And Love, the human form divine;
And Peace, the human dress.

– William Blake, from Songs of Innocence and Experience, “Divine Image”

The girl who had been kidnapped by one of the men with the strange hobby, Bonnie Akesha Campbell,
a savvy child who’d had plenty of dojo training – well, anyone can be outnumbered, and Fred’s chloroform
trick had caught her before she’d had a chance to react – wakes up in the dark cellar and, as she emerges
from that groggy state in which the chloroform had left her, rapidly puts together what facts she has and
realizes what’s happened. Making as little noise as possible, she works her way out of her bonds, hands
first. She’d been trussed up in plastic-coated clothesline wire, a plus because the coating was somewhat
slippery to start with, and became even more so due to condensation of water vapor from the air on it as the
air in the cellar dropped from the ferocious highs it had had during the day. Once out of her bonds,
including the duct-tape gag, she searches the cellar until she finds a way out, a narrow framed window at
ground-level which is just big enough for her to scramble through, a feat she manages without letting the
window bang down behind her. Gently closing the window behind her, she wriggles through the hedge
planted several inches from the house wall, then ghosts her way out to the street, staying out of any direct
lighting, moving in the shadows. When she is three blocks away from the house where she’d been held,
she finds a street going toward downtown Arcadia. It’s close to dawn now. She’s still dressed in her
summer frock, and even has her shoes on – “Amateurs!” she thinks in disgust. Just as she comes upon a
little all-night mom-&-pop grocery store, a woman pulls into the parking lot before the store. Seeing the
girl there, the woman, startled, rolls down her car window and says, “Hey – what are you doing out here all
alone?”
The girl looks her over, then, deciding that the woman is probably decent, tells her, “I was in my back
yard and somebody grabbed me. I never saw who he was, I just woke up in somebody’s cellar and got out
of there as fast as I could. Where are you going?”
“You want me to call your mama?” asks the woman, who is also black. “Where do you live?”
“Pasadena, ma’am – my parents went up to Big Bear for the weekend, so they’re not home.”
“They – and they didn’t take you with them?”
“No, ma’am,” bonnie tells her. “They go off like that all the time.”
“Without leaving a sitter with you?”
“My cousin Sheryl was supposed to come by and stay with me until they came home, and maybe she
did – I don’t know, because whoever it was grabbed me while I was out in the yard, waiting for Sheryl to
get there.”
“Well, maybe we’d better call the police to take you home. In the meantime, would you like
something to eat? There’s an Arby’s across the street, we can have breakfast there and then call the police
and let them take a report.”
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“I’d like that,” Bonnie tells her with a shy smile. This woman’s all right. She can be trusted. “Um,
ma’am?”
“Yes?”
“What’s your name, please? Mine is Bonnie – Bonnie Campbell.”
“You have the loveliest manners,” the woman tells her, returning the smile as she turns off the engine
of her car and gets out. “My name is Coretta Parker. I’m a widow – I live just down the way here. I was
on my way to work, but that’ll keep for awhile – my shift at Arcadia Hospital doesn’t start until noon. I
was going to pick some stuff up along the way I’d been needing for several days, and figured I could get
some of it here. Lucky, I guess.”
They go to the Arby’s. Just as they get in the door, the manager rushes out from the back, into the
dining area, and cries in an excited, agitated voice, “Ladies and gentlemen, I think you’ll want to hear this!”
And then, over the speakers that normally play country & western or “elevator” music for the patrons,
comes the voice of a radio announcer, who rattles off the facts of the destruction of Maine several hours
before by a large bolide of some kind, followed within a few hours by the nuclear bombing of Washington,
DC and New York City, and the spectacular end of Seattle. “It’s the Last War!” someone cries. “We gotta
get outta here!”
Most of the patrons stampede for the exits. Coretta, keeping her cool as much for Bonnie’s sake as her
own, quietly finds a waitress and asks if they can have some food to go. “This little girl hasn’t had
anything to eat since yesterday, and her energy’s low. I’m taking her home – she got away from a bad
situation. Could you make up a bag full of sandwiches and fixings for us, with maybe a couple of Cokes?
I’ve got plenty of cash on me, no problem.”
“Uh . . .” Looking at the girl, who looks calm and together, the waitress figures it’s all right, this is on
the up and up. “No problem. Let me go get that for you . . .” A few minutes later, the waitress, now
shrugging on her sweater, with a purse slung on her shoulder, comes back with two very large bags each
holding several sandwiches, pickles, potato chips, and other goodies, and two Cokes in a pressed-paper tray
with wells in it for the drinks. “Just leave the money at the register – Mary’ll pick it up, I told her about it.
I’m getting out of here myself. They could nuke us at any time.”
“I know. Thank you so much, you’re a saint!” Coretta tells the waitress, smiling. “Come on, Bonnie,
she’s right – we’d better get going. We can call your house and let your parents know where you are on the
way.”
“Where are we going?”
“I . . . maybe Palmdale, or someplace near it. Nobody’d nuke the desert – the area behind the
mountains should be safe. You up for it?”
Bonnie, who had listened carefully to the broadcast, is definitely up for it. Los Angeles isn’t safe. As
for her parents – well, maybe they’ll be smart and head east themselves, and she can find them later. “Yes,
that works.”
They make the call from a pay phone, then take off, headed for Palmdale. Fortunately Coretta gassed
up the car, a compact Subaru wagon, just before she ran across Bonnie, so they have more than enough gas
to get there. They are well out of the Basin long before the crunch comes, the roads wide open before them
all the way. Coretta has kinfolk in Palmdale, and that’s where they’ll stay.

At that time, Palmdale was probably about the safest place to be at such a time. The one problem there
was resources such as water, but staying there for a few weeks until they figure out what to do next
wouldn’t present any problems. The next place to go would be a place with wells for water, and did
Palmdale have wells. Because Palmdale was out in the desert, though not in the most arid part, it wouldn’t
attract a lot of travelers, and the residents would probably know how to secure their water supplies, would
have septic tanks and so on, and while many might leave there, any who stayed and those who joined them
would probably have more than enough to keep them going for quite a while. The next place to go would
probably be around Lake Havasu, because there was water there. As for lots of travelers trying to take
refuge there, between the panics of the two days of the War and the carnage they caused, and the fact that
most people would head for larger cities and avoid the smaller towns, little towns like Palmdale and Lake
Havasu would stay relatively tranquil. So for a few months, at least, Palmdale would be a good place to go.

§ : Lower Hell
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“Ma ficca li occhi a valle, ché s’approccia

la riviera del sangue in la qual bolle
qual che per violenza in altrui noccia.”

– Dante Alighieri, The Inferno Canto XII: 46-48

Per ch’io mi volsi, e vidimi davante

e sotto i piedi un lago che per gelo
avea di vetro e non d’acqua sembiante

Non fece al corso suo si grosso velo

di verno la Danoia in Osterlicchi,
né Tanaï là sotto ’l freddo cielo,

com’ era quivi; che se Tambernicchi

vi fosse sù caduto, o Pietrapana,
non avria pur da l’orlo fatto cricchi.

E come a gracidar si sta la rana

col muso fuor de l’acqua, quando sogna
di spigolar sovente la villana,

livide, insin là dove appar vergogna

eran l’ombre dolente ne la ghiaccia,
mettendo i denti in nota di cicogna.

Ognuna in giù tenea volta la faccia;

da bocca il freddo, e da li occhi il cor tristo
tra lor testimonianza si procaccia. . . .

Ibid., Canto XXXII: .22-39

Meanwhile, the shelter in which the four gentleman with the strange hobby, one of whom had
kidnapped Bonnie, had taken refuge does protect them– to some extent. They are all still alive after the fire
has passed by, several terrible hours later. But their troubles are only just beginning. At one point the
building’s very walls began to burn, molten metal from steel reinforcement, aluminum in various places,
and other sources pouring down into the shelter as its ceiling cracked in the heat. It had been a long time
since the shelter had seen any maintenance – it had been built in the 1950s for a war that never came . . .
then. After the 1970s, when almost no one foresaw that bomb shelters might ever be needed in the area, its
very existence had been forgotten, even by janitors working in the building.
The building as a whole, though well-kept, was much older; it had been built in 1920, and not with a
firestorm in mind. Somehow enough air was left to the six survivors to keep them just barely alive, but
none of them were able to completely avoid inhaling the toxic smoke and by-products of combustion
generated by the fire or the superheated air that mingled with the cooler air along the floor – none of them
had had the sense to breathe through their handkerchiefs, or wet them down with the only available
moisture, their own urine. And they’d been spattered with molten metal, some only sustaining apparently
superficial burns, but others badly burned over extensive areas of their bodies. And once the fire had
passed by, they’d had to work to get out of that shelter, the building’s cellar, and the building itself, so
much of it had been destroyed by the firestorm.
Now their problem was cold – burn victims suffer hypothermia after the burn. In a hospital burn unit,
patients are kept warm under special lamps, but here there were no lamps, in fact, none of the civilized
amenities, just endless sleet and black rain and snow and hail slamming down on them like the wrath of
God. Burrowing back into what was left of the building, they huddled together for warmth, their clothing
in rags and unable to keep them warm. They needed water, food, and pure oxygen, not to mention the
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latest burn therapies to treat their burns and the disease processes those burns were setting off in them.
What they got was freezing-cold air still tainted with contaminants, snow and rain caught in a cup one of
them found in the ruins of the building, nothing at all to eat, no medical treatment at all, and nothing to kill
the increasing pain they were all feeling. Over the next week or so, one by one they succumbed to
hypothermia, hypermetabolism that fed so savagely on the proteins of which their bodies were made that
they visibly wasted away before one another, shock, and the other byproducts of burns. And at the last,
only carrion birds, rats, and other scavengers marked the place of their passing . . .

§ : Fire and Ice

And now the icy storms from Western Washington State have reached as far south as Bakersfield and
San Luis Obispo. Those that come down west of the San Gabriel Mountains will start rising somewhat as
they finally reach the Los Angeles Basin, thanks to the tremendous heat of the firestorm that has engulfed
it, but those that came down east of that range, heading down Central California’s great valley over I-5
and 99, will swoop down over the passes of the San Gabriels, heading for the very redoubt where Bill,
Batrix, and their friends are now huddled . . .

Describe the titanic clash of the firestorm with that cold front down from the north, the vast bolts and
sheets of lightning due to the supercharged air relative to the many high-voltage sources in the Basin.
Signal Hill explodes.
When the storms coming down from the north first hit the firestorm, at first the firestorm blazes up
brightly due to the new source of oxygen, but then begins dying due to the extreme cold. Scene: As the
freezing sleet, snow, and hail hit the Basin, red-hot and white-hot metal snaps and explodes, and things
built out of them not already turned to rubble go down with it. Burning tires are extinguished by the cold
and coated with a thick rime of ice mixed with ash and char.

§ : Refugees From Paradise Lost

Survivors of the firestorm, mostly at the Basin’s fringes, gather in clots and clumps to lick their
wounds and bury their dead. The worst off among them, burned over more than 20% of their bodies or half
asphyxiated and sick unto death from inhalation or ingestion of huge amounts of soot, tars, dust, and other
pollutants from the fire, beg to be shot or otherwise eased out of it.
One group of survivors has formed at the eastern extremity of the burn area. Half-mad and despairing,
in agony from burns, in danger of pneumonia because of damaged lungs, sick because of all the crud
they’ve inhaled or swallowed, they are astonished by the sudden sound of a truck pulling up nearby. Two
men get out of the truck. The truckbed and part of the cab are loaded with foodstuffs, first-aid supplies,
blankets, and other things the men had brought from somewhere farther out; among other things, there are
several bottles of whiskey and vodka from a tailgate party the night before in the truck. The two men start
unloading the truck, starting with the booze, which, in the absence of opiates and other prescription
painkillers, can provide some relief from pain for those who need it most. It’s also a great topical
antiseptic. The men have found a working water-tap somewhere, and after they get the truck unloaded,
they drive back to the tap and fill up some buckets they’ve also brought with them, then bring the water to
the little group of survivors. They keep one bucket back, stirring salt into it they’ve brought with them;
salt water is nature’s original antiseptic, and will help clean out wounds such as scrapes and cuts. Of
course, those with burns don’t need the pain of salt in their wounds, but gauze from the first-aid kit can be
soaked in salt water before being placed on burns, which will help to reduce infection, one of the inevitable
consequences of horrible burns of the sort many in the group have sustained.
The medical supplies the men have brought help a little, but there’s not enough to do a proper job. The
two men get back in their truck and drive back toward a town that wasn’t touched by the flames, and whose
inhabitants had all fled for parts farther east. There’s a pharmacy there, miraculously untouched by
looters. They break into it and load up all the medicines, including pain-killers, first-aid supplies and
equipment, vitamins, minerals, food, and anything else that might be useful into their truck, then return to
deliver these to the survivors, keeping back a few things for themselves and their own families.
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The two men go back into town, this time breaking into a police station, where they find plenty of
firearms and ammunition. They bring these back to the group, dispensing most of the guns and ammo, but
keeping some for their own needs.
Then they leave at last, after emptying out their truck, going home to protect their families. Those they
helped remember the two men as their “Nameless Angels.”
In the group, one man, physically untouched, wanders among the injured and dead stretched out on the
ground, mumbling, “We’re damned, we’re all damned – we’re all going to Hell . . .” A woman who had
been a nurse and wasn’t badly hurt, and who had gratefully accepted a revolver and a box of ammunition
from the “angels” in case of need against the possibility of attacks on the group by looters or worse, finally
has enough of the mumbling man and, taking him by the elbow, steers him away from the group and out
behind a cluster of burned-out buildings. A shot is heard. The nurse returns – alone. Wearing a grim,
satisfied look, she starts tending to those who need it. Nobody questions her actions – the man was getting
on all their nerves. A former minister of a fundamentalist church, before the two “angels” showed up, he’d
begun to rant about “God’s punishment on us all for our sins,” in spite of the fact that some of the injured,
dying, and dead among the group are young children, innocent of blame. He may have been insane – God
knows, it would have been understandable – but he had been known to some of the people in the group
before the firestorm, and never had been very pleasant company. With him gone, many in the group
breathe a sigh of relief.
Another, this one a woman who had been a well-known psychiatrist dealing with children who had
been chronically traumatized, was apparently uninjured, with only a few rents in her clothing to mark what
she has been through. She’s even still wearing the high heels she’d had on when the firestorm began and
she’d fled into the eastern edges of the Basin in her car. The car had broken down not far from the group of
survivors, and she’d gotten out and come over to join them. She starts to harangue the heavily burned and
the dead to “Get up – stop goldbricking!” Two other relatively unharmed members of the group escort her
away, leaving her several hundred yards from the group, in the shattered entrance to what had been an
office building. They return to the group. A few minutes later, a shot rings out. Several people go to see
what’s happened. She is now sprawled out on her back in the building’s entrance, blood running from her
mouth, the back of her head a red mush of bone and brains. She had had a pistol in her designer purse, and
had used it to blow her brains out, unable to cope with the fact that everything in her world was now
completely beyond her control. Suicide will become a common reaction among survivors to the
overwhelming destruction and realization that most or all the control over their lives has been taken from
them, and that the world as they know it is gone forever. This isn’t a matter of moral deficiency, but rather
an understandable act born of despair and stress on the part of people who truly have no way to deal with
the world as it has become after the War, especially those who were a little (or a lot) emotionally unstable
to begin with, either temporarily, due to the endless, days-long, out-of-season Santa Ana winds, or
chronically, due to long-term, festering mental disability.

That evening, late July 16, 2022, people huddled against the cold in their homes in Laguna Beach,
somewhat south and west of Los Angeles, heard strange sounds coming down Highway 1 from the north, a
moaning, soughing sound which at first didn’t resolve itself into individual sources. But soon it began to
separate itself out into cries, moans, whispers, whimpers – the sound of suffering humanity, humanity
pushed far beyond its limits, all the way to the brink of madness and death and over, into Hell itself.
Drawing on coats and winterwear, the locals went out to see what had happened. They all knew about the
firestorm – they’d been listening to reports of it all day, first on TV, then on area radio stations, finally, in
the case of those who had shortwave radios operating on batteries, on broadband and CB radio. Reluctantly
they left their homes and went out to stand on porches or walk all the way out to the roadways, looking for
the source of those troubling sounds.
The moment they left their homes, in spite of the wet snow still sifting down from the heavens, legacy
of the storms that had battered Southern California earlier and were still blanketing the area, though in
somewhat muted form, they found themselves nearly drowned in a wall of noise cobbled together out of the
commingled cries, wails, shrieks, pleas, and groans of a vast horde of humanity heading toward them from
the north, from the Basin, begging for help and succor.
Most of those in that mind-numbering infernal horde were on foot – though In many cases, to say that
those in this ghastly throng walked is a misnomer. Rather, they stumbled along, lurching from one foot to
the other in a horrifying parody of the walk of a healthy individual. Many held their arms out stiffly before
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them, crying and begging someone to help them – and when the onlookers, moved to pity and impelled to
do what they could to help these pitiful survivors of the awful events that had swept the Basin hours earlier,
came to them and reached out to take their hands, to their horror they found that the skin and flesh of the
arms and hands they tried to grasp simply slipped off the bones they should have clothed, and fell to the
ground, cooked and lifeless, when the hands of the would-be helpless, opening in involuntary spasms of
revulsion, let them slip away.
Some in that throng were virtually faceless, their faces so bloated, swollen, and blackened from fire
that none of their features could be seen. In the case of those whose faces could be recognized as such,
eyes no longer graced the sockets where eyes should have been – like some survivors of the nuclear
bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, the cooked revenants of those eyes had
dribbled down from their sockets onto their cheeks and stuck there in stringy messes liked cooked white of
egg.
Some were burned over 80-90% of their bodies, with burns all the way to the bone in many places and
tattered shreds of blackened flesh hanging from their limbs, faces, and torsos; these, now barely conscious,
often hung from the shoulders of more able survivors, who had been holding them up all during the long
walk down from the Basin. In some cases, the lips of these mortally wounded people had been burned off,
only gaping black holes oozing thick gobbets and runnels of rapidly clotting blood left to mark the places
where their mouths had been. Others had had their ears or noses burned away, the latter struggling to get
enough air in through blocked airways or past tongues bloated and swollen in reaction to the burns that
covered them everywhere – one of the nastier side-effects of serious burns is the bloating of tissues that are
in some cases far from burn-sites, and when some of those burns are in respiratory organs due to inhalation
of superheated, richly toxic gases, such bloating of airways can become lethal, preventing the inhalation of
any air, unless the victim receives oxygen via intubation within minutes after suffering such burns. Indeed,
some victims, who at first glance didn’t seem to have suffered any injuries, were nevertheless in deep
shock, being carried by others because they were unable to move under their own power – these were the
ones that the fire had savaged from within, via their respiratory tracts, which, due to fire-caused injuries,
had become so swollen and inflamed that they could barely breathe at all.
Still others, with long gashes in their bellies and backs through which bluish-purple loops of intestines,
greyish-black hints of lungs, or yellow-brown corners of livers or kidneys protruded, thanks to wickedly
sharp pieces of metal or glass or wood hurled through the air by gale-force winds generated by the
firestorm, impacting their defenseless bodies before they knew what had hit them or had a chance to avoid
these inadvertent missiles, were little better off. In addition, many of the survivors’ feet were bare, bloody
and deeply wounded from searing-hot pavement, rocks, sharp bits of metal or glass, etc. encountered on the
road or back in the Basin.
A great number of the survivors weren’t hurt at all – not physically. Often, these helped to carry and
comfort others in that horrible parade. But in other cases their eyes, though sighted, were dead to the world
around them – these were the eyes of children and adults who had seen their loved ones cremated alive,
crushed by falling walls, flayed alive by shards from shattered windows flying through the air in the hot
tempest generated by the fire, right before their eyes. One, a little girl dressed in little more than rags
which might once have been a pretty pink Summer dress, was carrying the corpse of a cat from whose body
all the hair and much of the flesh had been burned; she crooned to it, oblivious of all else around her and of
the fact that the cat was not just dead but beginning to reek of putrefaction, while a woman who wasn’t too
badly injured kept a protective hand on the girl’s shoulder, helping to steer her onward.
To make things worse, the clothes of many of that grim army of the living dead were no more than
scorched rags, or had been burned away entirely. Of the rest, all but a very few were wearing more than
light Summer clothing. In the freezing cold and the driving snow, sleet, rain, and hail that had been coming
down now for the last several hours, even those who had somehow miraculously avoided injury from the
fires and collateral damage caused by them had become chilled to the bone, and the badly-burned or
otherwise seriously injured among them were close to death from hypothermia and exposure.
Yet in spite of their appalling injuries and the inroads the sudden wintry weather had made on them,
even those in that hellish throng who were naked or close to it frequently carried with them the sad
mementos of the lives and careers they had just had stripped from them by the firestorm. Some clutched
fire-warped, blackened, and useless cellular phones, PDAs, Blackberries, iPods, laptops, MP3 players, or
calculators. Others clutched charred briefcases filled with scorched and fire-blackened business papers or
schoolwork. Some carried carbonized books in student book-bags or in torn, charred backpacks slung over
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their shoulders by one remaining, torn or frayed strap, others held struggling, terrified pets – or the bodies
of dead ones. Some mumbled strange incantations which were in fact stock-market quotations that had
been hot off the boards just 24 hours before, others carried paper bags filled with odds and ends of clothing
and other items that were all their worldly possessions and had been for some years. Some carried tin cans,
battered hats, or Salvation Army Tupperware bowls that announced their calling of beggary. Others,
usually in pairs but sometimes alone, carried television sets and other appliances with shattered screens,
scorched and warped chassis, cut-off power-cords, and even worse damage as they staggered blindly along,
not realizing yet that their looted treasures would never be worth anything to anyone again. A few carried
the black bags that were the trademark symbol of physicians the world over, many of those bags now
scorched and charred around the edges, some no more than shreds of black leather from whose slashed
sides and bottoms peeked out those medical instruments that hadn’t yet fallen out; others carried burned
briefcases filled with legal briefs; and small groups of people armed with shotguns,. Rifles, and revolvers
bunched up to give cover to big men carrying canvas bags filled with money from casinos in the towns
south of Los Angeles – money that would never again be worth anything except, perhaps, much later, to
numismatists and museum curators.
One man whose eyes seemed to look out on some vista no one else could see, the eyes of a saint or,
perhaps, a zombie, held a dead hen without a mark on her by the feet in a grip so tight that it took three men
fifteen minutes to pry his hand open and make him release the bird. Several people led by a priest carried
the holy relics from their church, the priest carrying the tabernacle. A coven of Wiccans, around fifteen
people, including eight women, four men, and three young children, all dressed in ragged, scorched and
even charred clothing, staggered along, five of the adults carrying the holy instruments of their Craft and
the rest tending to the children, who, half-frozen from the cold, some in terrible pain from burns and other
injuries, and ready to drop from fatigue, had at best a 25% chance of surviving the night. More, and more,
and still more came, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, neopagans, SubGenii, followers of the
First Church of NheeGee, a few more traditional Satanists, practitioners of Voudon, ranting atheists,
Mormons, Communists, Mennonites, even a few Amish, Republicans, Democrats, libertarians, Randian
Objectivists, Socialists – virtually every religion and political group was represented in that vast
purgatorial throng, and none of them had been spared the fire and its aftermath.
Children clutched toys, some whole, some damaged or charred through. In one ghastly case, a little
girl held a woman’s severed, scorched left hand with a tarnished wedding-ring on the ring finger by the
wrist, and screamed and wailed so piteously when well-meaning adults tried to get her to let it go that they
finally gave up and let her keep her treasure – or, maybe, the very last of what, only a few hours ago, had
been her family.
One man carried a burned little monkey that coughed and gagged continuously in spasms that
threatened to tear his little body apart, weeping over it – clearly it was his beloved pet. Another had a
small, live, and wiggly pet boa constrictor around his neck – a veterinarian among those who had come out
to try to help these unimaginably wounded people finally decided that the little constrictor was much too
small to pose a danger its owner, and told his neighbors to let the man keep the snake, news they received
with a certain relief (nobody really wanted to try to pry that little creature from its chosen perch – you just
never knew what an angry snake, however small, might do under such circumstances.)
Only a scant few of the refugees drove vehicles, all of them moving along at no more than 10
kilometers per hour or less, often much less. Most of the vehicles were pickups and vans, each carrying its
terrible cargo of suffering flesh and, all too often, corpses. A few were sedans and station-wagons carrying
mismatched occupants and, in a few cases, food and supplies. The remainder were bicycles, skateboards,
and even less substantial transportation. The overwhelming majority were on foot – or supported on the
arms of their fellows, or carried by them. And all of them were suffering – suffering from appalling
injuries, suffering from the cold, suffering in soul and spirit, none of them untouched by what had
happened up there in the Basin – save for those that were unconscious, close to death, or past help of any
kind. And most of the living among the refugees who still had minds capable of recognizing their
circumstances and understanding of their implications envied the dying and the dead.
Many of the appalled onlookers and would-be rescuers threw their hands into the air and rushed back
into their homes, slamming and bolting their doors, unwilling to even try to stem the tide of agony now
limping down the Highway to Hell which US 1 had become. Others, made of sterner stuff, gently steered
the suffering people into their yards, had them sit or lie down on porches or on snow-covered lawns, went
into their homes and brought out blankets and tables and other things to make into shelters for them, even
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brought some of the survivors into their homes. They fed the ones who could still eat, gave water to those
who could still drink, laid the worst-off down on their living-room floors and tried to tend them. Some of
the locals, nurses and doctors and others in the helping professions, began doing triage, leading those who
might benefit from whatever treatment they could provide into places where they could start that treatment,
directing the walking wounded into other areas, and gently, so gently, taking those who could not be saved
off to still other areas, where they laid them out in what comfort they could provide, bidding neighbors and
the walking wounded to stay by the dying ones and give them company until death took them.
The number of these survivors of the firestorm that had destroyed the Los Angeles Basin that had
made it this far south on US 1 might have numbered as many as 10,000, no more. Of all the millions who
had occupied the Basin when the fires that gave birth to the firestorm first broke out, these were the
miniscule remnant. Other survivors may have made it out of the Basin on the north and west, or crossed
the mountains and headed east – in most cases, none of the locals ever found out. These walking dead –
dead in body, dead in spirit – who had descended upon them were more than enough for anyone to have to
handle. It didn’t help that most of the worst off died before the night was over, and that many more
followed them within a week. For the bodies of the dead had to be disposed of properly lest they generate
pestilence, which meant burial – or burning. Burial was impossible. And the only method of cremation
that could do the job fast enough was to stack the bodies in piles ten, twenty, thirty deep above a bed of
hastily assembled kindling, pour gasoline over them, and touch it off. The stench of that burning haunted
the living for years – many never were able to eat pork again, so terrible was the memory of that horrific
smell.
As for those who, whether wounded in body or not, were irrecoverably wounded in soul and spirit by
what they had witnessed and endured in the firestorm, all that could be done for them was to take them
into the locals’ homes, provide for them as best the locals could, try to give them love and comfort and
acceptance as long as possible, and pray for their recovery. Eventually many of these soul-wounded simply
turned their faces to the wall and died without any sign of physical injury, or found one way or another to
make an exit from the world. The worst cases were children and the developmentally and mentally
disabled. Many of them never recovered their wits, and would sit for hours, rocking back and forth as they
sat in chairs or on the floor or the ground, humming or mumbling to themselves or in silence, their eyes
focused on infinity. The fire had taken their minds and souls and spirits, and only death would end their
agony.

Non-human refugees, having survived only God knows how, pour out of the Basin: dogs, cats, snakes,
rats, horses, swarms of insects, etc.

§ : On the Loading Dock

A Wal-Mart Supercenter in Fullerton, on the eastern fringes of the firestorm is spared. Burned, dazed
survivors dragged themselves into the shelter of the awning over the front and onto the loading dock,
huddling under the aluminum shading there. Store employees who had clustered in the store until it was
clear the danger was past, came out to see what was happening, and found those injured and, in many cases,
dying fire-victims. Torn by pity, they raced back to the big store’s dairy area and brought back 4-liter jugs
of milk, giving them to the refugees. Other employees pick up six-packs of bottled water, bottled soda, and
other drinkables and brought those out to give to the thirsty refugees. The water actually helped those who
drank it – it was kept in sealed, air-tight bottles until being doled out, and carried few or no microbes – but
the soda, energy drinks, and fruit juices cause problems due to gas build-up. The milk posed a different
danger, especially in the cases of 4-liter jugs of it that had been opened for an hour or more, and the crates
full of such jugs standing on the loading dock:
Big, deep burns are just about the worst thing that can happen to a body other than immediate
dismemberment and death, say, by drawing and quartering. No other type of injury creates the same kind
of long-lasting physiological mayhem, the same unspeakable agony, the same huge level of uncertainty
about the outcome, the same kind of permanent disfigurement for those who manage to survive such burns.
If left untreated, any burn that is second-degree or higher – reaching the dermal layer of skin or deeper
– covering more than 20 percent of the body’s surface sets in motion a cascade of dangerous events within
the body. In a process called fluid shift, large volumes of plasma, the liquid component of blood, seep
through the walls of blood vessels and into surrounding tissues, producing edema, a severe and often
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grotesque swelling, particularly in the lips, genitals, throat, and mouth. As these tissues relentlessly swell,
they press harder and harder on blood vessels and internal organs. The swollen linings of the airway
threaten to close off the flow of air to the lungs. Along with its load of plasma, the bloodstream loses the
proteins, fats, sugars, and electrolytes that it normally carries, including elemental ions such as potassium
and magnesium, which regulate muscle-function and the action of various vital organs. Now lacking its
liquid constituent, the victim’s blood gradually thickens into a kind of sludge that the heart struggles ever
more desperately to pump around the body. The lungs fill with fluid. Blood pressure drops precipitously.
Body temperature drops, threatening hypothermia. Patients shiver uncontrollably, even in a warm
environment.
Then it gets even worse, as burn shock sets in.
With the onset of burn shock, the flow of urine slows to a trickle or stops completely. The victim’s
pulse grows weak and erratic. Fingertips and other extremities turn blue. Individual cells begin to die, and
tissues begin to fail, and organs may fail entirely. The victim often becomes lethargic and unresponsive.
And very often, that’s the end of the story – the victim dies then and there.
But that’s just what happens in the first twenty-four hours or so after the victim is burned. If he or she
victim survives that first, critical period, an army of other threats are waiting to descend upon the victim at
the first opportunity. Serious burns are unusual in that they do not generally heal themselves as time goes
on, the way most other kinds of injuries do. Instead, they get worse. As Barbara Ravage points out in her
highly informative book, Burn Unit: Saving Lives After the Flames, “. . . a burn is an evolving wound; the
initial injury is only the beginning of an ongoing disease process that must be stopped or it will end in
death.”*

*Barbara Ravage, Burn Unit: Saving Lives After the Flames (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2004;
ISBN 0-306-81419-6), p. xii.

As Ravage says, heat inflicts a wound with far-reaching effects, many paradoxical or bizarre in the
extreme, many of them still not well understood by those who study and treat burns. Burns often trigger
hypothermia, abnormally low body temperatures. The deeper the burn, the less painful it is, because of the
destruction of the nerves in the dermal layers that signal pain. The inflammatory response that the body,
overwhelmed by the extent of the damage, launches in an attempt to heal the burns may spin violently out
of control. The immune system, exhausted by this response, leaves burn victims prey to deadly microbial
assaults not only from outside the body, but from within it as the integrity of different organ systems are
compromised by the evolving burn and the damage it does to everything else, the consequences spreading
far beyond the area of the original burn. A flood of hormones, leukocytes, macrophages, and chemical
messengers and mediators washes through the body, setting off reactions that alter the body’s physiology in
unpredictable and often destructive ways – expanding vessels that should be contracting, clotting blood that
should be thinning, killing off cells that should be left alone, releasing toxins that damage vital organs.
People caught in fires frequently die without any outward signs of a burn, their respiratory systems
collapsing as their airways narrow and close to internal burn injury. Burn victims may literally drown as
tsunamis of fluid surge from their blood vessels into their lungs, flooding the lungs and leaving them
without air. Their hearts may stop, their kidneys may shut down, their gastrointestinal tracts may become
paralyzed. Many burn victims swell grotesquely until their features can’t be seen.
In those victims who survive those first critical hours after being burned, deprived of oxygen under
dead tissue, burns penetrating the dermis may actually expand over time, working their way deeper into the
underlying tissue and spreading outward as macrophages and scavenger cells sent to destroy dead cells
attack and destroy adjacent living cells instead. As more time goes by, the body may begin to cannibalize
itself on a larger scale. By the second day after the initial burn injury, the victim is likely to undergo a
condition called hypermetabolism. In order to feed the runaway inflammatory process, the body needs
enormous amounts of fuel and oxygen. In response to this need, the metabolic system goes into overdrive,
burning calories at a furious rate. And oddly, for biochemical reasons that are not fully understood, the
hypermetabolic body doesn’t burn fat as it ordinarily would, but rather begins to consume protein – the lean
meat and sinews our bodies are made of. The victim begins to waste away, consumed by his own
metabolic system, becoming emaciated and then starving to death as the burn stampedes his metabolism
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into wilder and wilder acceleration, turning his body into a suicidal machine hellbent on consuming itself in
a orgy of catabolism, while its ability to take in and assimilate nutrients shuts down.
That, unfortunately, sets the stage for even more trouble. As the body’s lean-mass diminishes, so does
its ability to fight infection, the ultimate cause of death for most burn victims who survive the first twenty-
four hours.
From the moment the flames subside, a legion of microbial life begins to attack the burn victim from
both inside and outside the body. Many of the invaders are familiar to us and to our bodies. They live on
or in us, either doing us good by breaking down the food in our digestive tracks or at least doing us no harm
living in small numbers in folds of our skin, under our nails, on our clothes, on things we touch, safely kept
at bay by our intact skin, the closed system of our digestive tract, and our immune system.
But a serious burn injury is a party invitation for microbes. It breaks the protective seal of our skin
and, in a process similar to fluid shift, it allows the normally helpful bacteria in our guts to penetrate the
lining of the intestines and escape into the bloodstream.
The burns themselves create ideal environments for bacteria – moist pockets of dead flesh often sealed
safely away from oxygen by layers of overlying dead skin, perfect havens for the oxygen-phobic anaerobic
bacteria in particular. Among those who are likely to come to the party in the first few days are
Streptococcus, E. coli, Clostridium perfringens, and Staphylococcus aureus. A bit later, Klebsiella
pneumoniae, Escherichia, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa may show up. A number of these organisms
move downward through the burn itself and enter the bloodstream. , giving them access to the victim’s
entire body and further compromising the immune system. By now, the partygoers have completely
overwhelmed the body’s defenses, and the door is thrown wide open for yeasts like Candida albicans and
filamentous fungi like Aspergillus to move in and take up residence. Without effective intervention, the
inevitable consequence of this feeding frenzy is sepsis, organ failure, and death.
When the burned, increasingly dehydrated survivors of the holocaust in the Los Angeles Basin thirstily
swigged the milk that had been standing for a couple of hours on the loading dock, many of them already
carried on and within their bodies the invisible agents of their impending, agonizing deaths.
None of the Wal-Mart employees realized that beer might have been a much better bet for the refugees.
Not only does beer contain a certain amount of potable alcohol – the world’s second-oldest naturally
available antiseptic, just after salt and salt-water – but it also contains a wealth of carbohydrates, and, at
least in the case of the best beers, easily assimilated carbohydrates, all of which are desperately needed by
badly burned fire victims. Beer is mostly water, too, and it is water, above all, that the rapidly dehydrating
bodies of those with serious burns, especially internal burns involving the respiratory tract, need if they are
to have any chance of survival. And beer would have had one other advantage: in the USA, at least, all
beer sold commercially had to be pasteurized if it was to pass USDA inspection. Even more than bottled
water, which would also have been pasteurized immediately before being bottled in air-tight containers, the
store’s supplies of beer of all kinds, numbering in the thousands of liters due to Americans’ love of this
product, whose first appearance in the human world went back as far as fourteen thousand years or more,
would have been the perfect source of water for even those with the most serious burns that had taken
refuge outside the store.
But the training of Wal-Mart employees – not to mention their education in those enlightened times
just before the outbreak of the Two-Day War – did not include the sort of history, science, or related
courses that would have enabled them to think things through and select beer and bottled water as the best
and only things to give the refugees to quench their terrible and increasing thirst. Instead, with the best of
intentions, they grabbed case after case of cold milk, soda, energy drinks stiff with sugar and perhaps
caffeine and little else besides artificial flavorings and other additives, and fruit juices with far too much in
the way of additives and far too little water to be helpful and carried it all out either to the porch or the
loading dock. Once those employees who had headed to the loading dock saw the crates of milk stacked
there that had been delivered hours before, and finding them cold due to rapidly falling temperatures from
the storms now sweeping down from the north, they helped the refugees huddled there to open up the 4-
liter jugs of milk and distribute them to those needing them the most. Like the beer back in the store, and
the bottled water that some employees had finally recovered their wits enough to realize would be the best
of drinks for the refugees and begun to distribute among them, that milk had indeed been pasteurized
before bottling. But not only had it been sitting there on the loading dock for quite some time, but between
those bottles whose caps had been pulled off earlier by thirsty refugees who had then only drunk some of
the milk, leaving the rest for others, and those which had been pecked through by hungry birds, in spite of
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the growing cold, microbes which had found their way into the milk through the damaged or missing caps
had begun proliferating in the milk in those bottles, which had by now become prolifically fertile microbe
farms. Many of the microbes now growing wildly within the milk were anaerobic bacteria, potentially
deadly to anyone ingesting them, especially those whose badly burned bodies were now beginning to break
down everywhere from the effects of their burns.
Even the pharmacists who had begun hauling out everything they had on hand to treat burns and other
grievous wounds, including painkillers of all kinds as well as wound-dressings, burn salves, antiseptics, and
everything else that might help save lives and speed healing among the refugee had never learned anything
that would have made them think of beer as a superior source of water and internal antiseptic. Ralph
Macklin, the senior pharmacist at the store, whose brother had for years worked as a nurse at USC Medical
Center’s state-of-the-art burn center, did think to nix giving any more milk to burn survivors. Thanks to
such books as Barbara Ravage’s outstanding monograph, Burn Unit: Saving Lives After the Flames, and
Daniel James Brown’s Under a Flaming Sky: The Great Hinckley Firestorm of 1894, which his brother
had insisted he read, in case he ever needed the knowledge, he realized at once that rather than being an
ambrosial gift from God in the form of excellent food combined with cold, water-rich fluid, which
normally it would have been was the last thing that should be given to burn patients. And, reacting with
horror when he saw store employees giving bottled and canned colas and other soda drinks to the burn
victims, he had them take the sugar- and caffeine-rich, gassy drinks away from the refugees and start
handing out bottled water to them, instead. By then, store employees had begun bringing out every case of
bottled water on hand to the porch and the loading dock and handing them around to the men, women, and
children huddled there, anyway, and in fact most of the refugees preferred the water, especially those who,
having swigged down some of the milk or soda or energy drinks, had begun to feel bad. There was also a
good deal of bottled fruit juice in the store, all of it, by state law, pasteurized before bottling, and that could
be given to those not seriously burned, especially youngsters, who normally had two hollow legs as it was,
and needed all the carbohydrates they could get, along with the valuable nutrients fruit provided. But the
milk could only be given safely to those who hadn’t suffered significant burns, and then only as long as it
had not been opened or taken from the cold chest before being put to use.
So all those crates of bottled milk on the loading dock had to be abandoned. Ralph, who had been
raised on a farm and loved animals, and had, before opting for pharmacology as a career, had thought about
becoming a veterinarian, decided to give the milk to others who could make the best use of it. He could
hear cats and dogs and other creatures crying out in the area around the store, and he told several of the
stock-boys to take the crates of milk down onto the ground behind the loading dock, open their tops, and
leave them there for whatever creatures wanted to make use of them. He had to explain his reasons in some
detail before the young men and women would do what he ordered – it seemed like such a waste of good
food! – but once they understood the dangers of the milk to burn victims and even to those who had not
been injured, they complied, albeit not without misgivings.
Ralph also decided to recruit a couple of the older pharmacists to tend to the injured and sick among
those animals. It wasn’t entirely out of compassion – almost alone of all the store personnel, he knew that
in the days to come, food would become scarce, and today’s pets might be the sole potential sources of
tomorrow’s food. Nor was that all. Most of the creatures down there behind the loading dock were
predators by nature – cats, dogs, even a coyote or two, observing the fire-truce for now but soon to become
a menace to the others with whom they now shared the milk. While no decent person wanted cats and dogs
preyed on by coyotes, there were animals out there which could soon become nuisances and worse than
nuisances, such as rats and mice and rabbits and numerous other small creatures that had for thousands of
years haunted the nightmares of humanity, especially farmers, librarians, and others whose calling it was to
produce, tend, and guard the food and other things their communities valued and the future of their
communities demanded. Worse, rats sometimes preyed on human children, especially when food was
scarce and there was nothing else available to the rodents for food – and they had been known to mob and
injure or even kill adults who had spooked them. God bless the coyotes if they could keep the rats in check
– and that meant the coyotes had to live, too. That milk wasn’t going to waste – it was a down payment to
humanity’s Insurance Gods, that’s all.
And so Ralph and his fellow Wal-Mart employees labored on through the night and the next day, and
the next and the next, doing what they could for those who had come to them out of the dark and the storm,
fleeing from the fires and the cold. They provided the refugees with blankets, warm clothing, medicines,
food, and water from the great cornucopia that was the big Wal-Mart Supercenter, brought the refugees in
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and made room for them in the warmer parts of the store to sleep and shelter from the storms, breaking out
Coleman lanterns and stoves to light the night and cook food as the Grid failed and there was no more
electricity to be had at any price. They began catching rainwater and snow and hail still coming down like
Ragnarok in buckets, and boiled it with the use of Coleman stoves to sterilize it, covering it to keep it from
becoming contaminated by microbes or parasites, and setting it back outside to cool after boiling so it
would be cool enough to drink and to use for washing. They treated their wounds and burns as best they
could, provided insulin or antipsychotic medications as needed to diabetics and mentally ill people whose
own pharmacies were “back there, someplace,” i.e., just a few more handfuls of ash and char in the midst
of the desolation the Basin had become. They delivered babies, comforted those who loved ones had died
or were dying now from burns and injuries. They organized the least injured and most coherent and
competent into teams to bury the dead, tend the sick, and scout for food and other necessities of life within
the store – and, eventually, to defend the store against would-be looters who came singly or by ones or twos
or threes to ransack the store. After the third such attempt, beaten back by store employees and able-bodied
refugees hurling cast-iron utensils and rocks and using the long poles originally meant to pick products off
high shelves and hand them to customers as quarterstaffs, they had enough guns and ammunition for them
to repel any more such attempts. The word got around. The few looters left in the area went elsewhere to
try their luck.
– Such as Manuel Delgado’s little mom-&-pop bodega, located about a quarter of a mile south of the
great Wal-Mart Supercenter. At the time of the War, Manuel and Maria Delgado, now in their 70s, had had
their store for perhaps 45 years. Born and raised in Mazatan, a little town about sixty miles southeast of
Hermosillo in Sonora, Mexico, they had married early, both of them just 19, and set out to make a life
together. But times were hard in that area, as they were in most places in Mexico’s desert states, and after
having two children and finding it harder and harder to make ends meet as time went on, they decided to try
to enter the United States and find jobs there. They were helped in this buy Manuel’s Uncle Jorge Morales,
his mother’s brother-in-law, who had certain connections and an excellent job as a computer technician
working for the Mexican federal government. He got the little family of four legitimate entry into the
United States aboard an American Airlines flight direct from Hermosillo to Los Angeles, each of them
carrying a genuine passport and even a green card that would see them through at least the first few months
in the USA. Once in Los Angeles, they went directly to the Mexican consulate there for advice and
instructions about applying for US citizenship and, in the meantime, getting jobs and childcare for their
children – Manuel and Maria had decided, before they left Mexico, that it would be best for them all if, for
at least their first year in the United States, both parents worked to support themselves and their children
and save up as much money as possible so they could buy a car, make a down payment on a house, and
maybe, just maybe, start a family business.
Manuel’s first job was another unexpected benison from God: equipped with his high-school diploma
and high test-scores on a test taken at the consulate, he found a position at once as an assistant manager of
an Albertson’s store in Garden Grove. It did not take him long to rise to the position of store manager, and
then to that of district manager for the company, a position he kept for the next 10 years as he and Maria
accumulated the money they would need to start their own business and then get it underway.
Maria, meantime, with the consulate’s help, applied for a position with Nordstrom’s Department
Stores. Her scores on the test given to her by the company were very high – as intelligent as her husband,
she, too, had graduated from high school with high scores. Because she had attended Catholic parochial
schools through grades 1 through 12, those scores translated into something much higher than they would
have if she had gone to a public high school in Los Angeles County, and the company saw her potential
value at once. They put her through a 6-week training program during which she received a minimum
wage of $13.28 for each hour of school actually attended – she never missed a day, and attended class
every one of the six hours each day of class required – and put her to work at once as a sales supervisor.
Within six months she had risen to the position of assistant manager of the Nordstrom’s of Buena Park – at
the time, she and her husband were renting a house in La Palma, not far from either of their respective
places of employment – and within a year, she had become the store manager. As was the case for her
husband, her lack of a college education was actually an asset when it came to landing her first job, for her
employer wouldn’t have to spend a lot of time, money, and effort to train her out of old patterns before
training her in the new ones. And Nordstrom’s actually covered her childcare expenses, providing a
childcare department in the store at which she worked where her two children could interact freely and
safely with other children throughout the working day, saving the Delgado’s a great deal of money in
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childcare-related expenses. They even had a babysitter program for the times when Maria was not at work
and needed a babysitter, charging her only $10 per hour for dropping her kids off at the store for the
duration, where they would be looked after by highly trained and certified childcare experts. She didn’t
have to worry about possible perverts Doing Things to her children when she was not with them, as
sometimes happened when you hired a babysitter for the evening or took your child to a childcare
establishment with which you weren’t all that familiar and which you hadn’t been able to run checks on
beforehand. All in all, it was a great deal for the little family, and between Maria’s career and her
husband’s (and the fact that they had uneasily and secretly decided to use contraceptives to make sure they
didn’t have any more children until they could afford to; the priest wouldn’t have understood, but God
probably would, and so why bother the Holy Church over a small matter like that?), by the time they were
both 27, they had more than enough saved to begin renting a space in a little two-story building over in
Fullerton for a bodega of their own.
Within two years of their arrival in Los Angeles, they had made a down payment on a new home of
their own in Cypress, a little farther away from work, but close to a nice parochial school, and having
plenty of Hispanic-Americans, some native born Americans and others naturalized citizens, living close by.
Now, with the establishment of a little store of their own in Fullerton, they “traded up” their first house for
a less expensive but much larger one located about two blocks east of the store. Fullerton also had a good
parochial school as well as a beautifully kept and heavily attended Roman Catholic church, and with the
acquisition of their new home, with much lower mortgage payments than had been the case with their
previous house, Maria was able to quit her job with Nordstrom’s and start working full-time in the new
store – when she wasn’t taking time out to have the next child. The older kids could begin learning how to
be salespeople and clerks in the store, the younger ones play in and around the store, and she kept the very
youngest in bassinets or strollers as appropriate right next to her desk at the back of the store, where she
could make frequent checks on them, change diapers as necessary, and nurse them when they got hungry.
For the next several years, Manuel could only spend a few hours a week in the store – they still needed
the income from his position with Albertson’s – but that was okay, because now that money was beginning
to come from their store – “M & M Fullerton,” their large, bright blue-and-pink neon sign outside the store
proudly proclaimed – they could begin bringing their parents and siblings into the country, giving the
siblings jobs in their store and their parents a safe home where they could be watched over by Maria and
Manuel and other family members. Thanks to rapidly dwindling supplies of safe water in Sonora and
increasing corruption on the part of elected officials everywhere in Mexico, Mazatan had become
something of a death-trap, not only ecologically and economically, but also in a very real, physical sense,
with drive-by shootings taking place more and more frequently (Padre Diego Garza, who had served
faithfully at their church back in Hermosillo, had died two years before, “drive-byed” at the hands of a
gang of young hooligans that had shot him down like a dog because he’d dared to speak out against them
during his sermons, hitting like a bolt from the blue; the padre never saw it coming, and now there was no
priest at all in that near-empty town). So, with Uncle Jorge’s help – Uncle Jorge and his own family
following almost immediately in the wake of the others, Mexico was becoming too hot even for him, an old
hand at survival in even the worst of times – Manuel’s and Maria’s parents and siblings and their siblings’
children finally arrived in Los Angeles to stay, and were immediately taken in by the Delgados in their
great big comfortable home in Fullerton. The brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts went to work in the
store, too, when they didn’t have jobs of their own, and their children all took turns at the store, as well,
learning the trade and becoming model citizens and members of the American work-force in the process.
Many of them went on to bigger things, the ladies took time out from work to raise their own families, and
the young men went into the Army or the Marines or the Navy or Air Force or Coast Guard for two or three
years before getting honorably discharged and coming home again. But once back home again, most of
them now renting or purchasing homes not far from the big house belonging to Maria and Manuel Delgado
and their children and the rest living with them until they could make other arrangements (or, as in
Mamacita and Papacito Delgados’ case, for the rest of their lives, so they could have constant care from the
Maria and Manuel and the children, necessary because they were increasingly subject to the infirmities of
aging), frequently helped out at the now much larger store – they’d moved into a larger building down the
street about two years after the grand opening of their store – or even became its permanent employees. So
there were always plenty of hands to help out at the store, which was, in the Anglo phrase Manuel had
come to cherish because it sounded so amusingly weird, doing a “land-office business.”
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And not a few of those hands were quite familiar and comfortable with the use and care of firearms.
When the Two-Day War broke out, Manual’s oldest brother, Adán, was Fullerton’s newest Chief of Police.
Before entering the civilian police force in 2011, Adán had served in the US Marines for five years, then
had been honorably discharged after losing a leg in a firefight with insurgents in Belize. So able was he
with his prosthetic leg, however, that, thanks also to provisions added to the Americans With Disabilities
Act in 2003, that he was readily accepted by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s as a candidate for their law-
enforcement training program. Succeeding with top honors – his brother officers swore he got along better
with his one leg and the prosthetic than most Olympic candidates did with two whole legs – he was
inducted as a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy in 2011. He rose rapidly through the ranks, due as much
to his skill at defusing potentially violent situations and his grasp of the need for a bureaucracy functioning
at the best possible level as to his talents with firearms and unarmed combat, and became departmental
detective in 2016. There were programs operating in the department giving paid time off for officers to go
back to school to undergo training in forensics, police science, and related disciplines at local schools, and
he quickly took advantage of these, returning to school at UCLA and matriculating with a Masters’ degree
in forensic science in 2020 (he’d already attained a Bachelor’s in Business Administration back in 2015,
taking night-courses in addition to working full shifts as a county sheriff’s deputy. His colleagues swore he
could sleep anywhere, anytime, even standing up, and come awake as quickly as a cat when it was time to
act; and surely that was the only way he could have managed to get his degree while working full-time as a
deputy!). In 2021 he had run for the position of Fullerton’s Chief of Police and had won handily – most
people in Fullerton knew and liked the Delgados, and their relatives all had “approval by association” with
them. Any relative of the Delgados had to be a good guy and a smart one, too, and since the only other
candidate running for the position, a big fat Democrat who was very good at cultivating “contacts” among
his political cronies but lousy at impressing the general population, Adán won by a comfortable margin of
ten thousand votes.
Like Adán, nearly all the other male relatives of the Delgados and several of the female ones had
firearms, knew how to use and care for them, and had no qualms about using them in self-defense. Sure,
they had had to acquire some of them by means that were at best in a great grey area, legally speaking, and,
all too often, not legal. But as unfair as the laws about gun-control were – laws Adán hated with all his
being, since they deprived citizens of legal means to defend themselves and their families from predators an
criminals – this was one of the very few things for which the Delgados, their children, and their relatives
were willing to bend or even break the law. They all had guns, and knew how to use them. And use them
they often had, mostly to discourage would-be robbers from trying to burglarize the store, but, in a few
cases, when the would-be criminals weren’t discouraged by the mere sight of a gun, to wound or even kill
them to prevent them from harming themselves and innocent bystanders. And those who, like Adán, were
in one or another area police force, quietly helped to arrange things so that charges weren’t brought against
the defenders.
Thus, when, on the night of July 16, 2022, a gang of perhaps eight young men, among the very few left
in that part of Southern California, the rest all fled or dead, tried to invade M & M Fullerton, waving guns
and yelling obscenities at the woman they saw at the front counter, it shouldn’t have been a surprise when
the woman, Maria Delgado, now in her 70s but still lovely in an autumnal sort of way, dropped to the floor,
rolled around the counter, and opened fire on them with an 8-gauge shotgun she’d seemingly pulled out of
nowhere for the purpose (it had, of course, been sitting behind the counter, loaded and well-maintained and
ready for action at all times) and used it to drop three members of the gang with it, pumping several rounds
of buckshot into them with shots so closely spaced that it was hard to believe the shotgun wasn’t an
automatic weapon.
At the same time – again, surprise, surprise! – Manuel Delgado, appearing from the shadows at the
back of the store, where he’d been quietly taking cases of food and other things that his own family would
need in the hard days to come from the store shelves and stockroom and down into the fireproof basement
below the store, stepped out and put four fast rounds from his vintage but beautifully kept M-1 into three
more of the gangsters, two clean head-shots and an extra round to bring down one he’d only managed to
wing with the first shot.
That left just two gangsters, both stunned at the sudden reversal of fortune they’d just undergone at the
hands of two old codgers who hadn’t seemed as if they could hurt a fly. As they stood there, mouths open
stupidly, unable to think of what to do next, Adán Delgado and Emiliano Morales, Uncle Jorge’s youngest
son, who, like Adán, had likewise served in the Marines, and had been working for the Anaheim Sheriff’s
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Department when the War began, stepped into view from either side of the store. Raising their weapons –
Adán, like his brother Manuel, had an M-1 he’d acquired from an old World War II veteran years ago,
while Emiliano had a 12-gauge pump shotgun – they neatly put paid to the criminal aspirations and
everything else of the last of the gang.
And then, carefully carrying down the rest of the non-perishables into the basement from the store, the
four of them, Maria, Manuel, Adán, and Emiliano, carried the perishables and a few cases of canned food
out to Adán’s Dodge pickup, which he’d carefully hidden in a large, disreputable-looking shed behind the
store that various family members had used for a garage when working in the store in order to hide their
vehicles from would-be criminals in an increasingly dangerous neighborhood, and loaded them into the bed
of the truck. Then, Maria literally riding shotgun in front with Adán and the other two men riding in back
with the things they’d taken from the store, they drove away, heading back to the Delgados’ big house,
where the whole family was now staying for mutual protection and aid. If worst came to worst, the
Delgados had had a vast basement complex underneath their home, one safe from all but the hottest fires
and impervious to assault by anything short of high explosives, and hidden from view by the clever way it
had been built and incorporated into the overall structure of the house. They could all fit down there if they
needed to. With the firestorm finally out, and most people having left the area, their worst enemy in the
terrible days to come would be the bone-chilling cold now beginning to enfold the Basin and surrounding
areas as the storms down from the north continued unabated. Maybe they would have wildlife to contend
with, maybe not, but as far as rodents and that sort of thing went, the family cats, ferrets, and dogs should
be able to keep the pests well in hand. Insects could be kept at bay with citronella candles and similar
things. As for injuries or burns, Maria had learned well from Mamacita Rosaria and Mamacita’s mother.
Honey was antiseptic, and, poured on wounds, including burns, would keep them clean. Salt water was an
excellent topical antiseptic. Water – well, they had plenty of activated charcoal units for filters they had all
over the house, and they could boil water if they needed to, for there was plenty of wood available in the
woodlots separating neighborhoods in their area, and the buildings now standing forlorn and abandoned,
their owners either dead or fled from the Basin in the first few panicked hours after the quake that had
rocked the Basin early in the morning, would provide more in the days to come. They had boxes upon
boxes of ammunition for all the many guns owned by the Delgados and their relatives. Nobody, thank
God, had diabetes, and none of them were badly injured, but if, God forbid but it could happen, they had
need of powerful medicines and medical treatment, they had enormous amounts of first-aid medications –
and they knew where to get more. Adrián Morales, Uncle Jorge’s next-youngest son, had taken his MD
back in 2012 from UCLA and, at the outbreak of the war, was a highly respected Chief Surgeon at USC
Medical Center overseeing several surgical wards there, and doing rounds as well at a local clinic for the
indigent a couple of days a week. Over the years he had helped Manuel install a generator in the basement
of the Delgado home, and then a huge freezer and a large refrigerator for the storage of various medications
that had to be kept cold if they were to retain their efficacy. He’d helped them stock the appliances, too,
both by giving them prescriptions to have filled at local pharmacies and by sneaking some from the clinic
and USC Medical Center, too, such as insulin, painkillers, antibiotics, and other things which might
someday help save lives. Now, hidden away in the Delgados’ basement, these things become literally
priceless treasures against need as the world fell into darkness, the return of the light far away. And
nobody was going to take these things away from the great extended family that had grown here from the
humble beginnings of the Delgado family. They would be glad to give what they could from that precious
trove to those in need, but they would never let criminals and the desperate take them. Never.
And when the light finally began to return, the Delgados’ children and relatives (Maria and Manuel
having died of great old age within days of each other, in 2043) would receive the accolades of area
families who had only managed to survive the darkness because of those wise and courageous and
generous-hearted people.

As for the gentlemen with their strange hobby who had fled together from Arcadia, the shelter did
protect them – to some extent. They were all still alive after the fire has passed by, several terrible hours
later. But their troubles were only just beginning. At one point the building’s very walls began to burn,
molten metal from steel reinforcement, aluminum in various places, and other sources pouring down into
the shelter as its ceiling cracked in the heat. It had been a long time since the shelter had seen any
maintenance – it had been built in the 1950s for a war that didn’t come . . . then. The building as a whole,
though well-kept, was much older; it had been built in 1920, and not with a firestorm in mind. Somehow
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enough air was left to the six survivors to keep them just barely alive, but none of them were able to
completely avoid inhaling the toxic smoke and by-products of combustion generated by the fire or the
superheated air that mingled with the cooler air along the floor – none of them had had the sense to breathe
through their handkerchiefs, or wet them down with the only available moisture, their own urine. And
they’d been spattered with molten metal, some only sustaining apparently superficial burns, but others
badly burned over extensive areas of their bodies. And once the fire had passed by, they’d had to work to
get out of that shelter, the building’s cellar, and the building itself, so much of it had been destroyed by the
firestorm.
Now their problem was cold – burn victims suffer hypothermia after the burn. In a hospital burn unit,
patients are kept warm under special lamps, but here there were no lamps, in fact, none of the civilized
amenities, just endless sleet and black rain and snow and hail slamming down on them like the wrath of
God. Burrowing back into what was left of the building, they huddled together for warmth, their clothing
in rags and unable to keep them warm. They needed water, food, and pure oxygen, not to mention the
latest burn therapies to treat their burns and the disease processes those burns were setting off in them.
What they got was freezing-cold air still tainted with contaminants, snow and rain caught in a cup one of
them found in the ruins of the building, nothing at all to eat, no medical treatment at all, and nothing to kill
the increasing pain they were all feeling. Over the next week or so, one by one they succumbed to
hypothermia, hypermetabolism that fed so savagely on the proteins of which their bodies were made that
they visibly wasted away before one another, shock, and the other byproducts of burns. And at the last
only carrion birds, rats, and other scavengers marked the place of their passing . . .
Give the progression of burn trauma from burn Unit and Under a Flaming Sky.
Also, use same sources to show how fire kills.

§ : 500 Miles From Home

Bill, Myself, & the Others, Sheltering in the Mountains

La giorno se n’andava, e l’aere bruno

toglieva li animai che sono in terra
da le fatiche loro; e io sol uno

m’apparecchiava a sostener la Guerra

si del cammino e si de la pietate,
che ritrarrà la mente che non erra.

– Dante Alighieri, The Inferno II: 1-6

Bill was the one who kept the rest of us from panicking and trying to run for it when the firestorm
approached their shelter. Otherwise we’d have died in the flames or, in the unlikely event of surviving the
fire, we’d have starved to death in the mountains or been murdered by bandits, depending on which way we
went.
The heat begins to build and build.
When the storms from the north hit the Basin, freezing-cold precipitation met white-hot rock and
metal, and as a result, the latter split, shattered, and spalled off chunks of material, accompanied by
cracking and other sounds. It sounded like an endless artillery barrage, and in many places survivors were
almost deafened by it.
Then there was the stench. For hours we were macerating in it. When it finally came, the smell of
relatively clean air seemed like a gift from heaven. Anyone close enough to be deafened by the noise
attending the firestorm would already most likely be dead, of course, but it was bad enough where we were,
a grinding rumble mostly felt through the ground, not actually heard. That subsonic vibration was felt
throughout the Basin, and even beyond.
Huddled together in our makeshift basement shelter, we could hear the approach of the flames as the
firestorm reached out hungrily for all the fuel and oxygen remaining on the slopes of the San Gabriels,
praying we wouldn’t be asphyxiated or cremated alive by the approaching wall of flames. The sound of the
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wind roaring over our shelter and the hills in which it lay on its way to the fire and the grinding vibration
felt everywhere through the ground beneath them and the walls of the shelter threatened to shake our teeth
loose – I was terrified that it might become so loud that it would simply vaporize us, as I had once heard
that the monstrous sounds of a rocket ascending from its launch-pad would do to anyone unlucky or foolish
enough to stand nearby, even before the backwash of the rocket had a chance to obliterate them in its
golden fire. Nothing was stable, nothing was safe anymore.
The temperatures in the shelter rose and rose, and rose again. The back of my legs began to smart
under my jeans, and the hair on the back of my neck rose until it stood straight out from her skin, not from
heat but fear. Still the temperatures continued to rise, until I felt as if she were beginning to get a bad
sunburn all over. Was that hot-iron smell that had begun to permeate the shelter from her clothing and that
of the others beginning to scorch? It was becoming more and more difficult to draw breath, to get enough
oxygen into my lungs. Judging from the sound of Bill’s panting, he was enduring the same difficulty, and
so were the others in the shelter with us.
Suddenly poor little Canela, whose relatively sheltered life back at their apartment building had never
prepared her for anything like this, began to wail, expending precious stores of oxygen in an attempt to get
comfort, get help, get relief from the relentlessly increasing heat: “Mommy, Mommy! It’s hot! Make it
stop! Please make it stop!” she cried, her panicked shrieks so loud they could be heard even above the
noise of the firestorm and the earth’s agonized battle against it.
But “Mommy” wasn’t compos enough to respond in the way Canela needed, and, for that matter,
neither was Daddy. Indeed, Alyssa Johnson was huddled in a ball in a corner of the little basement room,
calling out over and over for her own mother, her hands covering her ears, trying to stave off the worst of
that world-enveloping, cacodaemonic symphony of the firestorm, trying to pretend it was all no more than
some petty mistake that would soon be cleared up by the Proper Authorities (however non-Randian that
hope might be). As for “Daddy” – oddly, Canela did not call out for him, just for her mother – he was
curled up in the corner of the basement diametrically opposite the one against which Alyssa had taken
refuge, whimpering something that sounded like “This bar fucking sucks!” and pleading for something
“tall, cold, and alcoholic,” a plea remarkably coherent and complex, considering the fact that he was
otherwise totally out of it.
Reflexively I rolled far enough to one side to grab the terrified child, then rolled back, Canela clutched
against my belly and chest, until the child and I were huddled against Bill, who, in a similar reflex, had
turned to face us, so that, like the quietly whimpering Iodine, Canela, struggling mindlessly to escape their
grip, was protected by the cocoon formed by Bill’s and my bodies. If the temperatures finally relented
before we were all cooked alive, perhaps Canela could survive – though if she were the only one here to
escape the flames, it was very unlikely that all alone, unprotected, with no one to feed her or care for her
other needs, she’d survive the aftermath. My unsleeping unconscious mind – later, I’d remember what it
had caught with crystal clarity, as if I’d witnessed it consciously, but right now I was as oblivious of it as I
was of such irrelevancies as I was the positions of the planets and Moon in the heavens above our shelter –
was aware that just a few feet away, Andrew and Chani had likewise rolled to face each other, their bodies
closely sheltering Ranjeet and Rajani between them, and that the Rileys, farther away, were doing the same
for Gene, their son – though Gene, who at 13 had gone through puberty and was now an adolescent with a
well-developed sense of chivalry, was struggling to throw off his parents’ unthinking grip on him so that he
could swap places with his mother and protect her with his body as she was trying to do for him now.
Hotter. And yet hotter.
Canela’s body suddenly limp. Still not really aware of what I was doing, I held one hand to Canela’s
nose and mouth, and felt the barest traces of hot breath on her hand: alive. Canela was still alive, only
passed out from the heat and, very likely, her own panicked exertions of the last few moments. Bill and I
drew closer still to each other, trying instinctively to protect the toddler with our own fragile flesh.
Our lips had gone dry as new tissues; the lining of our mouths and throats was stippled with fire, the
signature of superheated air beginning to invade the shelter. I tasted hot iron, and the stench of burning was
rank in my sinuses. The Singhs’ babies had fallen silent, too, their bodies, unhindered by panicky
consciousness, mindlessly fighting for air, for relief. We were all panting for air now, trying
simultaneously to minimize the intake of that throat-scraping air and maximize intake of oxygen, an
impossible task. Alyssa Johnson moaned in her agony; her husband, George, had fallen silent now.
Prayers escaped the lips of many of us, chanted as mindlessly and instinctively as our outraged lungs
struggled to get air. Making matters worse, the heat in the shelter had finally become so great that it had
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exceeded the capacity of our bodies to produce sweat. Dry, now, our skin had begun to redden and blister.
Only the youngest ones, sheltered between the bodies of adults, were still able to sweat, and it wouldn’t be
much longer until their sweat-glands, too, failed. The saliva in our mouths had long since dried up,
protective mucus taking its place before it, too, began to dry up, the body’s ability to produce it starting to
break down as the temperatures continued to climb. Paradoxically, many of us began to feel cold, started to
shiver uncontrollably as the central nervous system, its orderly processing of sensory data overridden by
too great input of heat, became confused, responding inappropriately to the heat.
Now I knew she was about to die. Bill, facing me, was praying – able to open my heat-swollen eyelids
only a little, I could see his mouth moving. But the sounds of the approaching Fury of the firestorm, which
pummeled me relentlessly through the bucking earth and the scorching air, did not permit me to hear the
content of those prayers. Never mind – I knew what they had to be: the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostle’s
Creed, and all the other rich tapestry of Christian prayer, faith, and commitment unto death to the Lord of
Hosts and His Son, Jesus Christ, the Savior. My own lips moved weakly now: Sh’ma Yishroel, Adonai
Eluhenu, Adonai Achad. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord Our God, the Lord is one . . .” At least, I thought, red-
shot blackness beginning to envelop me as the oxygen in our shelter fell to dangerously low levels and the
superheated air began to fill my throat and lungs with fire, the babies are unconscious. They’ll never know
what happened to them. Fragments of an old song flashed back and forth through her mind: “Don’t fear
the reaper . . . Love of two is one / here but now they’re gone . . . Don’t be afraid / Come on baby . . .”
– Whaffuck?
Suddenly the blackness and the crimson sparks that swarmed it began to dissipate. My God, is that –
cold? Cold for real? I’d known that the cold she’d been feeling was illusory; the blisters beginning to
bubble up on my lips and forehead and hands and elsewhere on my horrified body had told me so. But now
–
I struggled to raise my head. Canela, swaddled in Bill’s and my bodies, stirred, lifted her head, began
to cough. All around her, I could hear others doing the same, some of them muttering or calling out to
others. My God, what’s happened? I can hear again! – And it’s freezing cold! And what’s that noise
outside?
As confused and foggy as I and the others were, it wasn’t clear to any of us what had happened, what
had changed. It was only when Big Bill realized what those patter-patter-CLANG! noises on the roof of the
carport meant, and sang out, “It’s hail! That’s hail comin’ down! I dunno what brought it, but it means
we’re saved!”, that the others began to hope that they might survive the inferno alive and in one piece.
The storms coming down from the north, legacy of poor, murdered Seattle, had just hit the Basin.
Freezing-cold precipitation met white-hot rock and metal head on, and, as a result, the latter split or
shattered outright, spalling off chunks of material ranging from colloidally-fine dusts to pieces as large as a
car, a building, larger. The cracking and grinding that accompanied that process sounded like an endless
artillery barrage, and in many places survivors swore they were going deaf from it, though in fact anyone
close enough to the source of those noises to be deafened would already most likely be dead. In fact, the
barrage of sound was more of a grinding rumble mostly felt through the ground, not actually heard, a
subsonic vibration felt throughout the Basin and beyond.
Freezing winds bearing black, frigid rain, snow, sleet, and hail had begun sluicing down the mountains,
some of them following the slope into their shelter and out the other side, instantly dropping the
temperature from far above boiling to 100, 90, 48, 30, 20, 10, 0, then below 0°. Soon we began to fear that
rather than baking to death, there was a real possibility that extreme cold would soon claim us. But now we
had a surfeit of cold, clean air bearing plenty of oxygen and loaded with moisture our skins and throats
needed so desperately, and the fire no longer had any hope of reaching us. The pandemonium of the
howling, raging firestorm began to fade as the stygian north wind and the burden of icy water it bore forced
the firestorm into retreat, to be replaced by the long, low keening and moaning of the wind coming to us
down the mountain, into our shelter.
If not for the chaparral and conifer forest lining the western slopes of the San Gabriels, and the sharp
but pleasant tang of wood-smoke and turpines released as the fire began its rush up the slopes, the
commingled stenches of scorched metal, burning plastics and building materials, and roasted and charring
flesh from the fire would have been unbearable. As it was, between the dark, toxic smoke, superheated air,
and the appalling stink of tens of millions of humans and other creatures being cremated alive, buried as we
had been in the stench of burning for hours, we were hard put not to begin vomiting. All that kept us from
doing so was the knowledge that once we began vomiting, we wouldn’t be able to stop short of rupturing
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our GI tracts and bleeding to death, or passing out from the horrendous stresses afflicting us, falling face-
first into puddles of our own vomitus and drowning in it. The perfume of supercooled, water-laden,
oxygen-rich air that suddenly began sluicing through their shelter on its way down the mountain, into the
firestorm, was a gift from Heaven itself. That without that pure, freezing water-laden air we would have
been cremated alive if we didn’t perish from scorched airways and lungs, or be roasted alive by the heat of
the approaching towers of flame was a realization that came later, after we had lain in our shelter, pulling in
one giant gulp of that air after another, reveling in the bliss of being able to draw breath without the
attendant agony of the fire-impoverished, particulate-laden, scorching air that had been all that was
available to them just moments before. How Bill had managed to recognize the sound of hail on the fallen-
down tin roof of their shelter for what it was and cry out joyfully as he just had was a miracle I would
wonder about for years.
Suddenly Alyssa Johnson cried, “I’m freezing!” More of a whine than a genuine distress call, it
scraped along Batrix’s nerves, as Alyssa’s complaints always did. “Somebody give me a blanket! George,
where are you?!”
Wisely – or maybe he was now truly unconscious – George Fogle said nothing.
Bill reached behind him, grabbed a blanket from the heap of coverings and clothing they’d stacked to
one side, threw it to Alyssa. “Here, cover yourself with this, Alyssa,” he called to her, his voice seeming to
ring off the shelter’s walls.
So strong, I thought dimly. He’s so strong, stronger than the mountains, stronger than the sea . . . it’s
his faith, his belief in God that does it. I was still shivering, but now from actual cold, not the paradoxical
reaction to temperatures too high for the mammalian nervous system to cope with. Even so, knowing I
could take blankets from the same pile from which Bill had drawn one for Alyssa to bundle up against the
cold when I could finally take it no longer, I lay there for a while in the bliss of the cold and the oxygen-
rich air.
It was Canela, between me and Bill, that brought my thoughts back to more immediate concerns. “I’m
cold,” whimpered the little girl, her voice so faint I could barely hear it. Unlike her mother, whose whole
life seemed to have been one of calculated, passive-aggressive demands on everyone around her for
attention, Canela was far too young – and now too stressed by what she had just endured – to calculate
much of anything. She was in genuine distress, and my heart went out to her. “Here, baby,” I said, “it’s
going to be all right, it’ll be all right.” Looking up at Bill, I blinked a question at him. Wordlessly he
reached behind himself for another blanket, drawing it over and down until it covered Canela, working with
me to bundle Canela up in the blanket, swaddling her in its woolen folds, keeping her between them as they
did so.
“Warm now?” Bill asked the child.
“Yes . . . but my mouth hurts.”
“Okay, hold on . . .” He reached into his jacket pocket, drew out lip balm, handed it to me. I took it
from him and, unscrewing the cap, carefully applied it to the little girl’s blistered lips. “Better now?” I
asked Canela, my voice hoarse and barely audible.
“Y-yes. No,” said Canela.
“We got some vitamin E caps here somewhere,” Bill told Batrix. “We can get those out for her –”
“Hey, catch!” It was Andy Singh.
Bill raised up one long arm to catch the plastic bottle that came flying through the air, somehow
managing to snatch it out of the air before it could fly on past him. “Thanks, Andy.”
“No problem – we’ve been using it on the babies’ lips and mouths,” Andy said. His voice was as
hoarse and cracked as any of the rest of us, yet somehow he managed to make himself heard across the
shelter, even over the increasing noise of the storm, the hail, and now the thunder that had been begun to
batter the firestorm, chasing it down and down and still lower down the mountains. I marveled at that voice
– wasn’t Andy in a men’s choir on campus, a Glee Club or something? – No, that was it, he was involved
in Summer Theater and even some film productions they were making there. Had been making. Now all
that was gone, had to be gone. Except for Andy’s voice, I thought deliriously. That voice – almost as
strong as darling Bill’s.
Now Bill called out, “People, we’d best draw as close together as possible! That way the blankets
we’ve got can cover us in several layers, with some left over. Come on over this way so we can do that.”
“Canela . . . Where’s my baby?” came Alyssa’s voice, not quite weakly enough, a little too shrill.
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“She’s fine, woman!” Bill told her. “She’s over thisaway, between me’n Batrix. You an’ George an’
the others come on over here an’ we’ll get you covered up against the cold.”
Cold it was. I couldn’t tell for sure – how could you, without a thermometer, and your own nervous
system still so freaked out by the heat that had nearly killed them all that it couldn’t estimate the
temperature accurately for love nor money? – but I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn it had already
fallen well below freezing. Was that snow drifting in now through the end of their shelter?
It was, more and more of it. Some was even beginning to clot on her boots. Patiently I endured as Bill
pulled more and more blankets from the stacks behind him and began to throw them to those who now had
bundled close to them. Alyssa, still in her corner, was whining a blue streak, but weakly enough that we
couldn’t hear most of it, for which I thanked God. George, however, had drawn his body close to Bill’s,
then interposed it between Bill and the stack of blankets and other goods, and had even begun to pull
blankets from the stack and hand them to Bill, who in turn handed them to others.
We all ended up in a large knot of blanket-covered bodies, Canela still cradled between Bill and me,
the Singhs doing the same with their own babies. The Rileys were beside me, with Alice Riley’s slender
body now between Charley and Gene, who were both broad-framed and muscular and thus not as
vulnerable to the cold, and Gene between his mother and Batrix while Charley was on the outside. The
Singhs huddled at Bill’s and Batrix’s heads, with Chani nearest to and Andy farthest from them. Penny and
Ellis Wright were huddled at Bill’s and Batrix’s feet, while George lay with his back to Bill, and Alyssa lay
with her back against his belly, spoon-fashion. Bill was right – curled up close together that way, we had
plenty of blankets and excess clothing to cover them all several times over. Every so often Alyssa
complained about something, and once she struggled out from beneath the blankets and went to the farthest
corner of the shelter, where she relieved her bladder. At least the bitch has the sense and decency to go
there to do her business, I thought in a dull haze as I lay in a half-doze under the blanket. I’d never have
thought she’d have the good taste and sense . . . I wished she could do more now – I was beginning to feel
hungry, not to mention thirsty, and the others probably were, too, and if I were only able to get up, maybe I
could find something for all of us, water-bottles, something, anything. But for now, all I could do was lie
there, Canela’s warm little body and Gene Riley’s body-heat keeping me tolerably warm. I hope my
bladder doesn’t burst before morning . . . no way am I gonna get out from beneath these blankets until then
...
Through it all, Iodine, the ferret, only whimpered a little, and not often. Content against Bill’s warm
chest and belly and poor Canela’s tiny body one side, warmed on the other by Charley Riley, mostly she
dozed. How had she managed to survive the crushing, baking heat of those first hours? Perhaps it was the
way she seemed to estivate when conditions weren’t to her liking, going into a kind of suspended animation
in which she needed very little air, expending a minimum of energy, until conditions improved and she was
ready to tackle the world again.
In the middle of the night, I felt the cold rim of a glass bottle pressed to my lips. “Drink, sweetheart,
you need it,” came Bill’s voice. I opened her mouth a little, and a cold trickle of Gator-Ade ran into it.
Coming awake, I propped herself up on one elbow, took the bottle in my other hand, and took a hearty
swig from it. Then, knowing Canela must be terribly dehydrated, she said, “Bill – Canela –”
“She already had a good drink, sweetheart. You take all you want, hear?”
“I – yes,” I said, no longer trying to push the bottle away, gulping down the chill benison of the drink.
After a few moments, having enough for now, I whispered, “Anyone else need some?”
“Already passed around plenty – you missed it. Want some bologna?” I heard him chuckle.
“Bologna – where’d it come from?”
“Andy an’ Chani’s hamper. They handed around a package o’ bologna an’ another o’ cheese. I kept
two or three pieces from each of ’em for you before turnin’ ’em over to the Rileys. You want any?”
“Oh, yes!” I said, gratefully taking two limp pieces of bologna and two slices of cheddar cheese from
Bill and gobbling them down. Then, remembering Canela, I felt ashamed. “Oh! Is there any left for –”
“Canela? Yep,” he told her, chuckling, his voice becoming stronger and less hoarse by every passing
minute. “She already had some of each, an’ a piece of apple from one Andy cut up and handed out.”
“Where was I during all that?” I asked, chuckling, noting that my own voice had regained some of its
normal strength and timber. “Sound asleep, near as I could tell, sweetheart. Anyways, everybody else has
had somethin’ to eat, even Iodine – gave her a piece o’ bologna an’ another o’ cheese cause I couldn’t get
at that cat food, and she liked those just fine.”
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Above the roof of our shelter thunder cracked, once, twice, and then again, making us flinch. Canela
barely stirred in her sleep, but the Singh’s twins both came bolt awake and began to howl. Their cries,
though muffled by the blankets tented above them and their parents, could be clearly heard in the silence of
the aftermath of the thunder, then fell away into silence themselves. Under the blankets, Alyssa cried out
something that sounded like a curse; George murmured something to her, and she subsided.
“Wonder where this cold weather came from?” I said, just loud enough for Bill to hear.
“God provides, darlin’. I dunno, but could be it came down from Seattle – that was just like a volcano
there, only much bigger. Volcanoes generate a lot o’ water, and it goes up an’ up an’ up into the
stratosphere, where it cools way down. Could be that did it.”
“You think anyone else made it, Bill?”
“You mean the war? Oh, hell, I reckon so. People are a lot tougher than they know, until they get put
through it and learn just what they’re made of. Bound to be plenty made it through – hell, we did, though
by the skin of our collective teeth. They didn’t even nuke L.A. – believe me, honey, if they had we’d sure
as hell have known it! Nothin’ like that happened, just a bunch o’ fools settin’ fires an’ not realizin’ what
they’d done till it all went south.”
“We’ve got a shortwave radio somewhere in here – should we listen for news about the war?”
“Darlin’, it’s gonna be a damn dirty radio sky for some time. Even local broadcasts are gonna be hard
put to get through the junk fillin’ the sky here, so you can imagine how bad reception’ll be everywhere else,
until all the smoke an’ crud an’ dust that’s been hoist into the air by bombs an’ everythin’ else rains out or
falls out, an’ any residual radioactivity fades to near background levels again. Maybe two, three weeks or
more.”
“Ah, well, it’s not that important . . .”
Slowly I drifted back to sleep. My dreams featured a gigantic, dark-winged, fiery monster shaking its
fist at me and my companions in the shelter, cursing us all for escaping its clutches, impotently promising
revenge upon us, then, turning, launching itself off a nearby hill and flying off into the frozen night,
reflected starlight glimmering from its jet-black hide . . .

Chapter 8: The Last of the Wine: Day 2 of the Two-Day War

Much of the surviving wildlife and humans die in the extreme cold of the storms from the north, or are
hit by lightning attracted by manzanita or generated by the storms.

Chapter 9: Elegy: The Overall Destruction Summarized

Around 13 million people were in the Basin during the firestorm, including commuters, tourists,
residents, the homeless, those in area hospitals, an d countless others. Of them, around 10 million of them
died during the firestorm. Another 2.8 million died within a week or two from burns and other injuries,
illness, shock, starvation, dehydration, and exposure, some wandering through the ruins like the surviving
inhabitants of Hiroshima through the wasteland that the Bomb made of their city, others laid out in
improvised camps on pallets made up of everything from real beds to salvaged mattresses to heaps of old
clothing and rags to you name it, still others in various places outside the Basin who did manage to escape
the worst of the flames, but fell prey to subsequent hazards. Of the remainder, around 200,000 people,
many escaped because they were at the very fringes of the Basin and made a successful getaway, though
many of these dies in the weeks and months that followed the Two-Day War due to a variety of causes.
The situation with respect to wildlife, pets, work-animals, and livestock was similar, but entailed a much
higher number of deaths in the short- and intermediate run, because many of those animals had no way to
leave the Basin and died, trapped by fallen buildings, burning cars, or otherwise in the flames. As for
plants, whole nurseries burned, lawns turned to ash or were completely atomized by fire, landscaping
everywhere was destroyed, orchards were turned to so many charred stumps, meadows and fields were
burned down to bedrock, and wild brush and trees, grass, forbs, and herbs were obliterated. Everywhere
the Basin had become a burned-over moonscape, almost devoid of life.
Surviving tourists and other visitors to the Basin were perhaps the worst hit, especially those who had
never been in the area before. None of them had much acquaintance with the Basin, its resources, and the
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escape routes from it. They were also unfamiliar with local customs, recognition signals, and the other
things necessary to getting a group to take you in and help you survive in the midst of strategic desolation.
Their numbers few to start with, many of them died soon after the firestorm, within a few weeks, at most,
unless they were very, very lucky.

The Great Los Angeles Firestorm, confined as it was to the Basin, was far smaller in geographical
scope than the Southern California firestorms of 2010 and 2012, which had swept the South Coast and gone
well back into the region’s interior. But the earlier firestorms had spared many places, too, and had finally
been contained, then put out by firefighting teams thousands strong using advanced technological systems
to get ahead of the fires and head them off in many places. The Reverse 911 system had worked well in
those earlier conflagrations, too, so that no more than 50 lives were lost in the 2010 firestorms, and only 23
in the 2012 disaster.
In contrast, there had been no possibility of employing the Reverse 911 evacuation system during the
Great Los Angeles Firestorm, no firefighters from L.A. or outside the county to help put it out, nothing but
weather and chance, and out of 13 million people in the Basin that terrible day, some 10 million perished,
and of those who survived the firestorm, perhaps 80% or more died in the next few weeks.

Chapter 10: The Aftermath: City of Dreadful Night (Alt. Title: The
Firebird)
Luogo è là giù da Gelzebù remoto
tanto quanto la tomba si distende,
che non per vista, ma per suono è noto

d’un ruscelletto che quivi discende

per la buca d’un sasso, ch’elli ha roso,
col coros ch’elli avvolge, e poco pende.

Lo duca e io per quel cammino ascoso

intrammo a ritornar nel chiaro mondo;
e sanza cura aver d’alcun riposo,

salimmo sù, el primo e io secondo,

tanto ch’i’ vidi de le cose belle
che porta ’l ciel, per un pertugio tondo.

E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stele.

Dante Alighieri, The Inferno XXXIV: 127-139

In the morning, the stench of unwashed bodies, feces, and urine filled the shelter, as did something far
worse: the odors of rotting charred bodies of humans and other creatures from downslope, fire-blasted
trees, burned soil, scorched metal, and other damage from the firestorm of the previous day, a ghastly
charnel-house stench that is almost more than those in the little shelter can stand. Awakening to that
hideous effluvium, one by one we, the occupants of the little shelter, struggled into our clothes and
swaddled up the children against the cold, then made their way to the opening from the shelter, emerging
on the hillside just outside.
We came out to a world changed beyond recognition.
Bill was the first to exit our bolt-hole underneath the house that had sheltered us, enabling their
survival, the rest of us numbly letting him, torn between getting out of the all-enveloping stench that had
built up in the shelter over the last 12 hours, into the air and light of the outside world, and putting off
viewing whatever horrors awaited them out there as long as possible.
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Two steps beyond the opening, Bill came to a dead stop, standing there, blocking the exit from the
shelter, staring out over the Basin for what seemed to be forever.
Finally, right behind Bill, I cried, “Bill – move out of the way! What the hell’s going on out there?”
Wordlessly Bill stepped aside and beckoned to me to come out herself and join him.
Poking my head high enough out of the ground to be able to take a look around, I, too, came to a halt,
clinging on reflexively there in shock, there half in, half out of the shelter, staring at the unrecognizable
landscape of devastation stretching down the mountains and outward to the southern, eastern, and western
horizons.
The civilization that had filled the Los Angeles Basin was gone. In its place was a vast wasteland of
smoking, steaming rubble stretching all the way from the San Gabriel Mountains to the Pacific Ocean.
Here and there the sleet, snow, and hail of the previous day blanketed the giant’s junkyard the Basin had
become, and small to medium-sized shallow lakes of meltwater dotted the landscape everywhere. But even
among the frigid temporary ponds and lakes and beneath the occasional blankets of snow and ice, flames
and plumes of smoke could be seen leaping up from crevasses and cracks in the earth or blazing up from
low mountains of rubble in long scarlet, yellow, and orange dragons’-tongues edged with brown and black,
as if the Basin had become one great volcanic plain, incandescent lava showing between cracks and
sinkholes in the dark, half-solidified strata above. Below us, those dragon-tongue bursts of fire clawed
their way out of the ground, as if some huge, red-orange beast were trapped down there, struggling
frantically to escape. In other places the fires still burning beneath the earth vented themselves
volcanically, creating blazing fountains of plasma and hot gas almost gay in their bright, deadly play.
Nor were the heavens immune to the fire. Vast bolts and sheets of lightning still crashed through the
skies above and all over the hills, engendered by the vast tonnages of dust, soot, half-carbonized junk lofted
high in the air, sand, and precipitation.
Suddenly I felt a push from behind – the others wanted out, too. Wordlessly, like Bill, I stepped aside
to let them come out. And then we were all standing there in silence, staring at the devastation all around
and below us. Tears began to course down our cheeks, making muddy runnels in the dirt covering our
faces. Somewhere behind Batrix, Andy Singh began to pray, the twins cried out in distress, little Canela
started to cry.
Standing there on a snow-covered, half-carbonized hillside, amid the drifted snow and heaps of hail
covering the blasted wasteland, we gazed out over the Basin, weeping, aghast at what we saw.
For a long time we stood there silently, staring and staring, endlessly weeping without knowing that we
did so, helplessly . . .
It was all gone – our lives, the vibrant cities of the plain, civilization itself, wiped from the face of the
Earth in just one day.

Later, Bill, Batrix, Chuck Riley, and Andy Singh carefully negotiated a path down the mountain they’d
found in order to take a look at the damage lower down. Among other things, they found rocks that had
slumped, gone runny like egg yokes being fried by an inexpert cook. Stunned, I stared at them a those
rocks. I asked Bill, “Does . . . does that mean what I think it does?”
“Batrix, if you mean, was that rock heated to the melting point, yes, I think it does,” Andy said, his
voice terribly shaken. He looked pale, but whether that was an effect of the cold or due to what the rocks
themselves were telling them wasn’t clear.
“I took a couple geology classes in college, guys,” said Chuck. “And yeah, looks as if the
temperatures downslope here got hot enough to melt rocks. At least those rocks,” he said, pointing at the
object of their collective concern. “Just how hot that was depends on their chemical composition –
carbonaceous chondrite, which I’m sure these aren’t, would’ve been partly burned. Granite, now, granite is
a conglomerate material, basically silicate products containing elements such as silicon, oxygen, aluminum,
sodium, and potassium, though some granite rocks may also contain healthy loads of iron and magnesium,
as well. It takes quite a bit of heat to melt granite, around 1700° Celsius. Then there’s basalt, which is
composed of magnesium and calcium oxides and some other materials. It melts at around 1100° to 1200°
Celsius. These guys here look like granite, so you have to figure that the heat here was very high, 1700°
Celsius or more, though maybe only for a short time.”
“Jesus,” said Bill. A one-word prayer.
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Beside him, Andy was praying silently, his head bowed, his hands steepled. Batrix heard one word:
Devi. And then Kali. And then Parvati. The rest, spoken in a whisper too low for her ears, she couldn’t
make out at all.
“Why . . . why are we still alive?” Batrix asked, her voice gone hoarse and thready from the shock of
Chuck’s analysis of those terrifying rocks.
“Well, way I figure it,” said Chuck, “is that the heat reached a maximum here just as those storms hit
us. There might also have been a strong wind running under that shelf just above us – see it?”
The others looked up. No more than an inch above Bill’s head was a long grey shelf of rock that
extended out and well beyond the slumped rocks. Its underside looked strange.
“What the –” Bill began, staring at it.
“See how it’s bubbled there? The heat that slumped those rocks also caused that bubbling and
discoloration of that shelf. And if a wind came whipping around the rocks on one side or the other, it could
have channeled heat from below and concentrated it here. I’ll bet good money that if we dig into the side
of the mountain here, we’ll find it pitted and cracked all to hell and gone, even if the surface looks good.
The heat would have slumped some of the surface and smoothed it out, but behind the surface the heat
differentials could have busted everything up for some distance in.
“Anyway, just as it got hot enough here to start melting these rocks, the storms hit. The air column
hadn’t heated up all the way to where we were, or we would have cooked in there, and believe you me,
folks, I thought we were goners there for a while. Anyway, the heat rose from below, but the worst of it
had only got about this far when the storms hit and cooled it all down. I didn’t notice anything like these
rocks up where we are, though there was the sort of blackening of surfaces you’d expect from how close it
got.”
“Looks like the good Lord preserved us,” Bill said, starting to smile. “I wonder just what He has in
mind for us now? We got a job o’ some kind to do, which is why we’re all still here.”
Andy, raising his head, smiled, and said, “Yes, that is it. And does not Christianity teach that of
whom to much is given, much will be expected? I do not know what the future holds for all of us now, but
I have to agree, God definitely wants us to do His good work.”
Later, after they had returned to the shelter above, when the others weren’t around, I found an
opportunity to ask Andy, “I’m curious – what is your religion? Not that I’d mind, no matter what it is. But
I heard just a little of your prayer when we were looking at those rocks down there, and it sounded as if you
mentioned three different Hindu Goddesses,” I told him, smiling to show her interest was friendly.
Andy had been hers and Bill’s friend for some time, and understood I meant no harm. “Batrix,” he
said, “all the Gods and Goddesses are aspects of the one God. All proceed out of the mind of God, and all,
at the end of time, return to God. God creates all things, and to God all things eventually return. Those
three Goddesses – well, two Goddesses; ‘Devi’ is the core and essence of all Goddesses and of the energy
and activity of the Gods, while Kali and Parvati are aspects of the great Mother Goddess Durga – are
manifestations of different thoughts, ideas, and actions of the one God out of Whom all things come. Kali
destroys, though more like an editor does, taking away what should not be there and leaving seeds for new
life to grow. Parvati brings Justice. And Devi is the rich, creative female energy of the universe Who
informs and makes possible all creativity, Who underlies fertility and nurturance and procreation. All are
good, for all are aspects of God, Who is nothing but good. Hinduism isn’t really incompatible with
Christianity and Judaism. One must make . . . adjustments to find the bridges among them, but once one
does, it is clear that God is within all things, behind all things, the creator of all things, the Alpha and
Omega and everything in between.”
Taking his hand, I told him, “I love that, Andy. Believe it or not, that is very comforting.” And I
smiled, too.

Many years later, I – now Mrs. Hannah Eisenstein – would tell West Texas’ governor, George Walker
Bush,

It was the saddest landscape I’d ever seen – sad, and horrible, the sight almost
impossible to bear. It was as if some fiend had tortured the land until it went mad, its
madness transmuting into a psychedelic wonderland that became a lovely, riotously
colorful mask over the face of Hell itself.
 Day of the Dragons
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Deserts are just as full of life as any other region that has evolved due to natural
forces, though their life, adapted to their aridity and extremes of temperature, isn’t typical
of other places on Earth. This desert, created by the firestorm that had swept the Los
Angeles Basin, step-child of the older desert that had made up most of Southern
California before Easterners came to settle there, stealing water from all over the West to
support their agricultural and industrial projects and satisfy the soaring demand of the
private sector, was no exception.
But the desert forming here would be unique, or, at least, as compared to the toxic
wastes which, after the War, began to spread from the Pacific coast throughout Southern
California, Arizona, Mexico and Texas, all the way to Texas’s Gulf Coast. Here, in this
polychromatic wasteland, so gaily colored in a rainbow patchwork by the partially burned
plastics, paint, and other pre-War substances, the detritus of a suicidal civilization, it
supported a host of weird life-forms, many of them creatures descended from artificially
created organisms escaped from one or another laboratory or theme-park, others the
descendants of organisms whose genes had been warped and twisted all out of true by the
poisons created by the firestorm from the chemistry of that lost civilization. Fairy Gila
Monsters, several new and highly poisonous variants of Latrodectus hesperus, the Black
Widow spider native to this region, carnivorous succulents and spicebush variants never
before seen anywhere on Earth, countless brand-new microbes, many of which were
deadly new pathogens, gigantic, mutated forms of larger carnivores suffering chronic
pain due to genetically based illnesses and deformed limbs and organs that would attack
and eat anything that moved, the appalling giant Tyrannobos cattle – all these and more
would stalk this horrendous new toxic desert. And there was no one anywhere equipped
to halt the growth and spread of that egregiously toxic desert once it began its eastward
march to the North American Heartland, no water to give struggling new, normal growth
that might otherwise have held the soil in place and given everything else sustenance to a
chance at survival . . . nothing to hold back the night falling on the bones of the
marvelous, gigantic civilization that had once occupied this area. Night was falling, and
here, the desert’s bastard step-child would be victorious king for lack of any contestants
to its rule.1

The Tree:

Turning back to Dubya, I said, “You were asking.”

“Yes. I think we – those back home – need to know what life’s been like for you-all
out where you live. You started with so much less – and from all reports, you seem to
have done far, far more than just about anybody else could have, anybody else has done,
even with so much more to start with. Monty can catch me up on the administrative and
military details. I figured you’d have a stronger feeling for the, er, spiritual side of it.
What it was like to live through that firestorm, struggle to make a new place to live, do
everything you’ve done with it. We need to know – because we have no right to give up,
and that all of you there have done so well, starting with so little, shows us why. Please
tell me – if that’s possible. I understand if it’s too difficult – those must be nasty
memories, many of them. But if you can, I’d like to tell our people back home about it.”
“Um.” Patiently he waited while I thought about it. Finally, I said, “Well, if you
approach Diablo Keep from the southwest, say, a few miles west and half a mile or so
south of it, before you reach its South Face you come to a . . . tree.
“Or what’s left of it. Even after a quarter of a century, it’s still there, something of a
miracle, given the weathering it’s been through.
“It was an oak. Its trunk is about six feet high, ending in charred black shards that
stick up like fingers on a dead man’s corpse. That sounds rather greasily melodramatic,
except it isn’t, not once you see it. Some of the most literarily picky people that have
ever been, our governor, Steve Yeats, included, have used just those words to describe it.
 Day of the Dragons
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“Everything left of that tree above ground is just that color, charcoal black, except
for the translucent, greenish-brown glass that encases it clear up to those sky-pointing
shards. It is charcoal, in fact, underneath that weird glass coating.”
I suddenly realized that everyone else in the room had fallen silent, and was hanging
on my every word. Somehow I plowed gamely on: “Before the War, that tree was
maybe 45-50 feet high, a great California live oak. Big Bill and I, and those who came
with us from the Basin on that first day of the War, had found shelter in a carport
attached to an abandoned house up there in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains,
about a hundred feet from that tree, just as the edges of the firestorm that was sweeping
the Basin were coming near us. The firestorm came closer and closer to where we were
huddled on the concrete flooring of the carport, and Bill and I and a couple of the others
were digging frantically into the side of hill against which the carport and house were
built, hoping against hope we could dig it out deep enough to protect us when the fire
reached the house. We were lucky – as it turned out, the basement of the house extended
under the carport, and we broke into it before the fire reached that area. Even so, if it
hadn’t been for the storms that hit us about then, and that downdraft from the slopes
above . . .
“Well, anyway, the fire, which by then was sucking rocks and sand and dirt and
windfall and everything else not nailed down into its maw from the slopes above, along
with most of the oxygen in the vicinity, finally reached that oak and engulfed it. Just as it
did, Bill, who was attacking the floor of the ditch he was digging with a crowbar
somebody’d left behind in the carport like John Henry laying track on his last day of
work, yelled, ‘There’s a basement here, Batrix – I just broke into it! Come on, all of you
– get your asses down here right now if you don’t want to be barbecued!’ We all dove
for that hole, dragging what we’d been able to salvage back home and from the
abandoned house down into it with us. We stayed there in that concrete-walled basement
for half a day or more while the blizzard came up and put the fire out – the freezing-cold
air coming down from the north that afternoon was all that stood between us and
asphyxiation and cremation alive.
“When we emerged the next morning, the house next to the carport and the carport
itself burned flat to the foundations, the War virtually over and the Basin a burned-over
wasteland, we looked at what was left of that tree. Like I said, essentially it was a six-
foot high cylinder of charcoal swathed in semi-transparent glass. Even all that way up
into the foothills, the firestorm was so hot and so needy for oxygen that it sucked down
half a hillside of sand against that tree, completely covering it to that height, the heat of
the molten sand instantly converting that part of the tree covered by it into charcoal. A
good deal of the sand, converted to glass by that indescribable heat, had been cooled in
place around the tree’s trunk by the sleet and snow of the blizzard that had hit the area the
previous afternoon. Everything above the part of the trunk that was buried in sand had
been burned away, and the rest, inside the glass, where it was deprived of all but a little
oxygen, was converted to charcoal rather than being calcined to ash that would have been
blown away on the wind, like the rest of the tree.
“I imagine there were places in Hiroshima or Nagasaki in August 1945 where you
could find the remains of trees or wooden structures swathed in glass like that. And even
now, a century later, there are craters at the old Nevada Test Site completely covered in
the same sort of greenish-black glass, vitrified by the enormous heat of the nuclear bombs
they tested there back in the middle of the 20th century.
“That tree . . . for me, it symbolizes the War, and the remains of the city that once
filled the Basin, burned-out hopes and burned-out dreams and the crud underneath the
glitz that was once los Angeles, covered and preserved in place by the glassine shroud of
unthinkable catastrophe. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust – and desert to toxic desert.”2

“ ‘Alas, alas Babylon’3,” Bill said softly as he took in the desolation.

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For a few moments Batrix was afraid that in their terror, despair, and shock, the little group of
survivors would fall completely apart. But then Bill’s strong voice suddenly broke the silence, the words of
the 23rd Psalm seeming to fill the world as he recited them slowly and clearly:

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art
with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with
oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house
of the Lord for ever.

Slowly, one by one, the rest of us joined him, the words almost drowned in their tears, which took a
long time to stop flowing.
When Bill finished the Psalm, Charley Riley picked it up next, with the Lord’s Prayer:

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name.

Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil:
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever, amen.

Suddenly Iodine, the ferret Bill had rescued, began chattering. Everyone turned to see what the noise
was, and saw Iodine poking her head out of Big Bill’s bomber jacket: “What’s up, everybody? Why are
you making those noises? What’s happening? What’s the buzz?” she barked impatiently.
Smiling in spite of himself, Bill pulled her from his jacket and held her in his arms. “Come on, baby,
everything’s gonna be okay,” he told her. “Here – have a cracker,” he said, holding her in one arm while
he pulled the remains of a squashed Nabisco saltine from his pants pocket and gave it to her. She gobbled
it down in two bites, and the others chuckled in spite of themselves. Even little Canela, who had followed
Bill and Batrix outside, laughed in delight at the ferret’s antics, and the tiny twins, held in their parents’
arms, ceased crying and bubbled their own chuckles, echoes of their parents’.
Then George Fogle – of course, it would have been George – cried in despair, “What are we gonna do?
It’s the end of the world!”
“It may be the end of the world,” Bill said, sighing – he did not need George’s killjoy wet-blanket
attitude now, none of them did – “but we’re still here. If we want to go on bein’ here, we’d better start
thinkin’ about food and shelter.”
“Um,” I said, “we’ve got some food down there in that basement. We really ought to start sorting that
out.”
“That, and water,” someone else says.
“We can boil water for that,” Bill says. “There’s plenty of it around here, too, at least for now – take a
look at those drifts o’ snow, an’ those heaps o’ hail all around us. So let’s make a fire so we can do that,
and maybe fix something to eat.”
And slowly, wearily, we set about the business of survival.

Bill did manage to get his cache of arms out, which, along with the very few arms provided by their
followers, became the beginning of the Keep’s armory. This included a couple of Glocks, several
revolvers, various automatic rifles, some older semiautomatic pistols, etc., as well as ammunition for them
and the means to load a good deal more ammunition. On the way to the mountains they passed the house
of friends of his who had also had such a cache. The front door was open; inside, his friends were dead,
their house thoroughly looted. But their arms, ammo, and loading equipment, which they kept in their
cellar, were intact, because the only access to that cellar was through a concealed backyard blind and a
 Day of the Dragons
By Yael R. Dragwyla
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locked door to which, fortunately, Bill had a key. So they added that to the armory before proceeding on to
the hills. A great deal of the food they ate during that first year was taken with those guns.

Our basement shelter, flooded by the storms, was unusable within the day, and we had to abandon it.
For a week, two weeks we searched for some sort of shelter from the freezing rains and remaining snow.
Finally Bill, who rescued Iodine, the ferret, before leaving the Basin, set Iodine down. Suddenly becoming
excited, she started digging into the side of a hill as if live game were in there. Investigating, Bill found a
cave there. One way and another, that was the beginning of Diablo Keep.
It was Bill who kept us all alive, us them from panicking and running away, to starve to death in the
hills or be murdered by bandits, depending on which way they went, kept us all working together to start
turning the first little cave we took shelter in into something like a home, then carving more and more
rooms out of the hills until the core of what would become Diablo Keep was established. For those first
five years of the Keep’s existence, somehow Bill kept it all together, kept people working together instead
of taking off in different directions or picking fights with one another, got everybody doing what they
needed to do in order to survive, scavenging everything they could find down in the valley and beyond.

And so the Locust Years began . . .

Endnotes

Part 10
1
From the journals of Hannah Eisenstein-Yeats. Provided by the trustees for the estate of Mrs. Hannah
Eisenstein-Yeats, with the cooperation of the Royer Foundation for the Preservation of Terrestrial
History.
2
From Part 25 of Dragon Drive, by Mrs. Hannah Eisenstein-Yeats. Provided by the trustees for the estate
of Mrs. Hannah Eisenstein-Yeats, with the cooperation of the Royer Foundation for the Preservation of
Terrestrial History.
3
Revelations 18: 10, NT, the King James Bible: “Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying,
Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! For in one hour is thy judgment come.” See also
Pat Frank’s post-nuclear novel Alas Babylon [1959; ISBN 0-553-13260-1 (1979 edition)].)
 The Dream

Batrix tells Monty about a recurring dream she has had since the fire, of a brave cat named Mindy:

*****

The Warriors

Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.

The soul that knows it not, knows no release
From little things;
Knows not the livid loneliness of fear,
Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear
The sound of wings.
– “Courage,” Amelia Earhart Putnam (1898-1937)

Mindy, herding her babies ahead of her as she went, had been running and dodging and doubling back
for what seemed like hours in an increasingly futile attempt to escape the fires that were consuming her
world. Caught out by the growing fire in the alley where she and her babies had made a home these last
few weeks, Mindy had looked around frantically for refuge, settling on the huge warehouse building that
backed up to the alley on the east. Thank Bast her babies were old enough to see and walk on their own! It
made the job of getting the kittens to head for the opening in the base of the big building she’d spotted so
very much easier. She certainly couldn’t have carried them all, not on her own – if only that damned dog
hadn’t suddenly showed up on the lawn that horrible day and chased her away from the only home she’d
ever known! She wouldn’t have been in such deadly danger now – or, if somehow she had been, and had
had her kittens with her, Jack would have helped, Jack would have known what to do!
Jack . . . A lump rose in her throat as she remembered her daddy, Daddy Jack, who had loved her, who
had fed her so well, taken such good care of her, right up until that Day From Hell when the Dog-Fiend
lunged at her and she’d had to run for her life, across the street, through a yard, into another yard, into the
back of that pickup truck, all to get away from the dog! Then, as she huddled there under the tarp in the
back of the truck, prepared to outwait the dog and then leave when it was safe once more, the truck had
started up! She hadn’t dare move then, hadn’t dared to jump out until, a little while later, the truck came to
a halt. When she’d poked her little grey nose out to look around, she found herself in a place she’d never,
ever seen before, never been in before, one filled with strange humans wandering around, vehicles going
back and forth, and a low building before which the truck had parked, a building filled with shiny tools and
dirty tools and the mingled stenches of gas and oil and related chemicals, enough to make her gag. A man
was coming out of the building, toward the man who’d got out of the truck, and the first man was asking,
“What can I do for you?” And the other man was saying, “I’ve got a funny noise under the hood, and her
performance is down. Can you take a look at ‘er for me, see what’s wrong?”
Mindy didn’t stay to listen to the rest of the conversation, which didn’t mean much to her. Jack had
talked like that when he was working on his car in the back yard of Mindy’s home, so it probably had to do
with this truck. But she didn’t care – all she wanted to do was go home again.
So Mindy’d jumped down from the truck, and begun her long search for Jack and home.
She’d never found her home. Home wasn’t very far away, but she didn’t know that. Her home was in
San Marino; Ralph’s Autobody Shop, where the truck was now, was in San Gabriel, just a few miles east
of San Marino and home. But it might as well have been on the back of the Moon for all Mindy knew;
Mindy had no maps, no knowledge of the odd patchwork of towns and districts of the Basin, to help her
find her way back. So she was all alone now, with no way home, completely on her own.
For days Mindy roamed the area where she’d found herself after jumping off the truck, at first looking
for her home, then, with greater and greater urgency, looking for something to eat, water to drink, a safe
place to sleep. Her first meal in this strange, threatening new world was half a can of tuna somebody had
left on the ground behind a large building not far from Ralph’s Autobody. When, her empty stomach
 Day of the Dragons
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growling, she’d stuck her nose in the tuna, preparing to devour it, she found out the hard way that it already
belonged to someone else – a big ginger tom who served as the vermin-abatement service for the company
in the building, whose “paycheck” for the day was that can of tuna. Hissing like a snake, all his fur bristled
out so that he looked far larger than his already heft size, he’d lunged at Mindy, and she’d fled in terror,
only slowing down when she was at least three fences away from the place where the can of tuna had been.
Some hours later, she finally found something she could eat: a bowl of dog chow that had been set out
in somebody’s back yard. The dog wasn’t anywhere around, either. There was also a bowl of water set
there. Dog food wasn’t her favorite food, and she wouldn’t have touched this on a bet if her own good food
had been available, but there was plenty of the dog food, and nobody around to take it from her, and she
dove in, her hunger so great by now that she’d have eaten carrion if there’d been any around. She tucked
into it with a right good will, eating until she was uncomfortably full. Then she drank her fill of water from
the dog’s bowl.
Her hunger and thirst sated, realizing that the dog might come back, her self-protective instincts
coming back to her, she retreated back under the fence that surrounded the yard, coming out onto the
alleyway behind it, and began casting about for a place to hole up and sleep for a while. If possible, she’d
stay near this place – the dog was probably fed every day, and why it hadn’t eaten this time she didn’t
know, but if she had no other source of food, she could try this one again, at least in the deeps of night as
she had this time.
Six houses up the alley she found a likely place to sleep, a tool-shed with a door that hadn’t latched
properly and had opened just far enough for her to scoot inside. The only other creatures in it were spiders
and insects. She didn’t mind the spiders, whose requirements as far as bedding went weren’t the sort of
place she liked to sleep, and as for the insects – well, the spiders took care of those in a hurry, even those
big crickets with faces like those of tiny human babies that could put up the very devil of a fight when
cornered! This was a good place to sleep, at least for now. There was even a big huddle of old rags in one
corner she could use for a bed. And so, climbing up onto the pile of rags, she curled up in a ball there and
went to sleep.
The days came and the days went after that. Six Full Moons filled the sky and then shriveled into
slivers and died and came back to fatten into Full Moons once more. She didn’t starve – she seemed to
have a knack for finding food, or even catching it herself when processed human or dog or cat food wasn’t
available, and unlike most poor cats and dogs thrown out on her own, she didn’t become malnourished or
die of starvation or dehydration or become deathly ill due to a starvation-challenged immune system. But
she didn’t get fat, either. And then, one night . . .
It was on a Full Moon night. He was a great black tomcat. Unlike most toms she ran into there on the
streets of San Gabriel, he was . . . gentlemanly. Yes, that was it: a gentleman in his treatment of her. He
even brought her most of a fresh fish he’d somehow managed to snatch from the stalls at a local market,
and let her eat her fill of it. She thought of him as noble, even lordly – his regal bearing, great poise, and
tremendous self-confidence all warranted that description. He saved her from an enormous dog, in fact, a
dog of the sort which her long-lost daddy Jack had often called “one of those fucking pit-bulls,” a dog
which had caught her in mid-alley and backed her into a corner made by two fences and was about to kill
her. He’d landed on the dog with all claws out, biting into the dog’s heavy, jowly face with his great
canines, driving the dog back and back and back as he raked it everywhere with his claws. If the tom,
whose name was apparently “Black Jack,” a wonderful omen, hadn’t jumped that dog the way he had,
taking the dog by complete surprise, maybe things would have turned out differently. But the dog, whose
attention had been completely taken up by Mindy, hadn’t seen the tom coming at all, and the tom must
have seemed like a supernatural apparition, albeit one that bit and clawed with the best of them, something
so frightening that the dog had streaked away howling, almost screaming in terror.
Mindy and Black Jack had a good laugh over that. And then Black Jack had offered to take her around
to see the better places in his neighborhood, show her the best places to get food, and meet the Betas in his
clowder, his long-time friends and their girlfriends. Mindy found herself falling in love with him.
A couple of nights later – Black Jack was never one to rush things – they consummated their love.
Two days after that, tragedy struck – a tragedy in which Mindy’s life was saved by Black Jack’s
unthinking self-sacrifice. The two of them were strolling along their alley – she already thought of it as
theirs, not just hers – when some wild kid in a muscle car turned into the alley, tires screeching, and roared
up the alley trying to avoid two black-and-whites which, red-and-blue lights flashing on their tops, were
trying to catch him.
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Caught in the headlights of the oncoming muscle-car, the two cats reflexively froze . . . And then
somehow, out of some supreme instinct, Black Jack threw himself at Mindy, knocking her to the side of the
alley, out of the way of the oncoming vehicles.
Black Jack himself wasn’t so lucky. The muscle car hit him, hard, knocking him slightly to the side.
And then the two police cars rolled heedlessly over his inert body . . .
Her eyes wide in horror, Mindy saw it all as she crouched there in the shadows, watching her love die.
She sat there for a long time after the cars were gone, weeping softly in short little mewing sounds. Her
love, her protector and defender, was gone. Now what?
Now what, indeed. Within a few days she knew she was pregnant. Oh, Bast, what was she to do?
She’d do what she had to do, it came to her. She could catch her own food if it came down to it. And
Black Jack had shown her all the places where she could almost always find something to eat – the loading
docks of the market, the places where people put out food for their pets, even a few places where kind
humans would sometimes give you food if you asked for a handout. He’d showed her where sources of
water were – a little park with a small pool, a leaky faucet behind the market, lots of places to get water.
And there were safe hiding places all over where she could sleep and, when she’d given birth, raise her
kittens (though that was a bit dicier – there were things around there that would have regarded a little kitten
as one-course dinner. Things like rats, and dogs).
Sighing, she remembered Gloria, her daddy’s new mate. Gloria hadn’t moved in before the Day of the
Dog, but she would probably have soon. Gloria was so kind, and Mindy already loved her. Would Gloria
and Jack have babies together? Maybe in time. Sad that she probably would never know the answer to that
last question, Mindy set about finding a good place to sleep for the night and to think over her options. She
had to plan for her babies’ future now, and the prospects for that weren’t good.
Even so, by the time Mindy had given birth to three little kittens, one black, like her beloved lost love
Black Jack, one grey, like Mindy herself, and one a tabby (now, where had he come from? As far as she
knew, neither of Mindy’s parents had been a tabby, or descended from a tabby, and who knew about Black
Jack’s ancestry?), she’d found a wonderful nest for herself and her kittens in a back room of the San
Gabriel Farmer’s Market, only a couple of blocks from the place where that truck had delivered her on the
Day of the Dog. The nest was in an abandoned cupboard in a corner of the room, a cupboard which had
apparently been used as a dump for old clothes before it was completely forgotten. So she had lots of old
holey sweaters to use as material for her nest, and while the cupboard was locked, there were several fairly
large holes in its sides big enough for a small cat to crawl through but not anything larger, so it was easy to
get in and out of it. The room itself gave access both to the store in front and the alley in back through
several ventilator holes – more wonderful escape and entry routes, because these, too, weren’t very large,
and certainly wouldn’t have enabled any dog larger than one of those tiny teacup jobs she could easily have
whipped with both front paws tied behind her back, or, for that matter, a large tomcat of the sort that would
likely have tried to kill her kittens or even her, to get through them. And, best of all, the market was a
cornucopia of food, wonderful food, food of all varieties from fish to beef and pork and lamb, shavings of
which ended up on the ground all the time as a result of the virtuoso performances of the butchers working
in the market, who would cut off pieces of meat or fish as desired by their patrons right there in front of
Bast and everybody!
And bits and pieces of food that market patrons carried with them and ate right there in the market,
including hamburgers and all sorts of other great things, could be found all over the market. Humans were
sloppy! – not that she was complaining, mind you, seeing as how she benefited from that trait, but still.
Waste was never good. – Well, she had to admit, certainly, between her and the pigeons and the other
creatures that haunted the eaves and rafters and gloomier places in the market, none of it went to waste.
But she remembered her daddy growling imprecations over people throwing away perfectly good things –
especially food – saying, “You know, people in Africa are starving, and just look at the way we waste food
and everything else!” and she had to agree, waste was a very bad thing.
But for now, she couldn’t burden herself with such thoughts – she had found such a wonderful place to
have her babies, and all she really wanted to do was offer up praise-song after praise-song to Bast for
providing her with such a blessed place! There were even places to get plenty of pure, clear water –
overspill from the hoses they used to spray down the meat and fish every day and keep the produce clear of
flies and other vermin, leaky faucets, tanks of water for fresh-water prawns, and a big fountain out front
which ran all the time, from which she could easily drink by standing on the outer rim and lapping from the
large pool it contained.
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[She has her babies]

And then came the Devil Winds . . . [They drive her up the wall, and she worries that her milk might
not come the way it should. Her babies are distressed by the incessant wailing of the winds, discernible
even through concrete walls, and that strange, all-pervading aura that comes with them – she doesn’t know
about Katabatic flow and positively charged ions, but her body knows that something is wrong with the air,
and deep inside her soul something cringes, knowing that an Evil is coming.]

[The fire begins. Mindy is in the “tunnel” she found inside the walls of the building where she’d taken
refuge with her kittens from the fire, only to have the fire invade that building and come after her and her
kittens. ]

. . . It was hot. So very hot. The scent of her own fur scorching made her want to retch. Her throat
and nostrils and lungs were on fire, filled with a terrible metallic smell commingled with the stenches of
soot and smoke, and the superheated air she had to breathe had almost seared her nose and windpipe shut.
Darkness filled the air, not only from the smoke that had begun to fill the entire passageway between the
walls, but also due to her dying vision, courtesy of her advancing hypoxia and the sparks and the blazing
claws of flame that had lashed her face again and again as she and her kittens ran through the building,
trying to escape the fire. Now, here in the confines of the opening between the walls of the building they’d
found and taken in a last, desperate gamble, trying to get away from the flames, they no longer ran, or even
walked, but limped on agonized feet whose tender pads had been lacerated to raw meat by the fearsome
heat and the rubble that filled the little tunnel.
Still on she trudged, carrying the small black kitten in her mouth, herding the grey and the tabby
kittens, who were stronger than their black sibling and still more or less ambulatory, ahead of her as she
went. It was so hard to keep going – she was staggering from foot to foot, getting weaker by the moment,
and trying to carry one kitten and push the other two ahead of her was a ferocious drain on her increasingly
depleted energies. So hot it was, so hot . . .
Suddenly, something bit her hard on the flank! It was only a tiny bite, but that hungry orange
monster that loped after her, its ten thousand tongues lolling out in laughter as it closed in on her and her
babies, would soon get the whole meal if she didn’t find a way out of this concrete trap within the next
couple of seconds. Behind her she could smell the hideous stench of scorched rat-meat, legacy of the fire’s
most recent victims – she hated rats, but now, the smell of the smoking and charred fur on her narrow
flanks fresh in her nostrils, she wouldn’t have wished a death like that on any of them. She may have hated
the rats – but this fire was an enemy far beyond any she’d ever known, and as her mind became more and
more muddled due to dropping oxygen levels in the walls of the building to which she’d fled when she had
first seen it coming, a strange picture of the fire gnawing on itself came to her, causing laughter to bubble
up through her soul. If only. If only . . .
Now the coils of dirty-brown smoke and tongues of fire file the tunnel behind them, and brown blisters
and spot-fires appear everywhere on the walls of the tunnel ahead of them. Darkness fills the tunnel end-
to-end. Slowly Mindy and the two kittens ahead of her collapse onto the floor of the tunnel, their fur
smoking. The black kitten is already unconscious, dying from lack of oxygen and thermal injuries inside
and out.
A tongue of fire bit her again. This time, the pain was so sharp that she dropped the black kitten in
shock. Almost dead from rising heat and lack of oxygen itself, the little kitten made no sound as it fell onto
rough shards of concrete and plaster lining the horizontal opening in the walls. Its siblings had likewise
gone to their knees and fallen onto the rapidly heating surface, and Mindy despaired of saving the kittens –
and never mind herself. She knew she was about to die, but if only she could have saved her babies! They
certainly didn’t deserve this!
Now Mindy has only a few instants of life left. She and her babies are huddled in unmoving,
smoking heaps on the rubble of the tunnel. Their fur already blazing, in seconds all four will be only so
much charred meat and bone – and then, scant milliseconds later, just so much superheated, ionized gas,
commingled with all the other products of combustion of the blazing building all around them. Like her
three kittens, Mindy is now well over the boundary-line between life and death.
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Turning, Mindy braced herself to make her last stand against the flames, futile as she knew it was.
Emitting a long, furious hiss at the flames bearing down on her, she reared up –
“Hotlahoya!”
“Hotlahoya!”
“Hotlahoya . . .”
What on Earth –
Suddenly a grey mist rose between Mindy and the advancing flames. A wind swept down, enveloping
her and the kittens in a balm of cold that was like heaven after those flames.
What –
And now, coming through the mist, she saw a vast dark shape advancing toward her. How could that
be? The flames had been at best an inch away from her – but this great thing looming toward her seemed
to have had miles to approach, and even now was several feet away from her, though coming closer and
closer with every step. It was much taller than Jack, her long-lost Daddy, had been, topping out at at least
six of her own body-lengths higher than Jack was tall. Crying out in a long, high-pitched shriek of a sort
she’d never heard before – Mindy had never ever seen a horse in all her life, never heard its neighing – it
reared up on its hind legs, pawing the air with its forelegs. Great hard hooves flashed over her head, then
carefully settled back to Earth, cool black soil, now, not the scorching-hot rubble and smoking bits of wood
which had constituted the surface she and her babies had been trapped on just second before –
Seconds. – No, days, months, years. She was no longer in pain, no longer wounded by the
incandescent claws of the fire, no longer unable to draw even the slightest breath without being consumed
by the agony of a mortally burned respiratory system. And beside her, one by one, her babies, even the
black kitten, were slowly coming back to life, struggling to their feet, mewing little inquisitive cries:
Mommy, what’s happening? What is this place? It’s so nice and cool – the Bad Thing is gone! Mommy,
I’m hungry! Mommy, what’s happening? . . .
And now, as that vast four-legged beast before them slowly sank down and down and down, a hand, a
hand like that of Gloria, Jack’s mate, that even smelled a bit like Gloria, was reaching down to them all.
“Come, little warriors! Come to me – we will take you home,” said a soft voice that somehow seemed
bigger than the whole world, bigger than infinity, bigger than eternity, loving and kind, but with an edge of
steel in it, and a power that penetrated everywhere. The owner of that voice would never have been
defeated by the Orange Beast! Oh, no, not her!
And then all four of them, Mindy and her three kittens, were scooped up in that huge but lovely hand,
carried up and up as the Big Four-Legged One whom the owner of that hand was riding once more rose to
its full height, carried higher and higher yet and then, so gently, deposited on top of a hard leather thing just
in front of the owner of the hand, a slim, well-armored giantess. And now the Big Four-Legged One was
rising into the dark, cool air, carrying them all, Mindy and her kittens and the humanoid giantess, onward,
upward, toward the stars, which were beginning to come out in the blessed dark sky. And before them was
a great, long, well-lit building, from whence sounds of celebration and feasting rose.
And out of the building, which sat on what seemed to be an enormous white cloud, came a man,
likewise a giant, walking on the cloud – or the air, perhaps, for there were wings on his vast feet! He was
smiling – how could she see that smile from so far away, miles away? Yet she did! And she heard the man
say, his smile wreathed in a heavy grey beard, his one eye bright flashing happiness and good humor,
“Hail, Rota! And welcome to Aesgard, little warriors! You are welcome here forever, valiant ones – this is
the place where courageous warriors are rewarded forever for the valor and bravery!”
Behind the giant man with winged feet came another giant, this one with a great ruddy beard, his blue
eyes twinkling with good humor and kindness. And into his hands it was that the giant woman who had
rescued Mindy and her babies placed them all, saying, “You said you needed some cats, Thor – here are
four of the best that ever were, a true warrior and her babies, who will certainly grow up to be brave
warriors themselves, with a mother like that! She fought the fire, the great fire that is burning up
everything down there!”
“Thank you, Rota – there’s plenty of room here for a brave, brave cat,” the red-headed giant told the
giantess. “Well, then,” he said, turning to Mindy and her kittens, “you must have some good food now, and
rest. And then you can tell us your story, Mindy,” said Thor, looking down on them with tremendous love
as he carried them into the big building, accompanied by the one-eyed giant. And as he did, Mindy noted
with wonder a host of humans – of normal size like Jack and Gloria had been, but dressed in a plethora of
strange clothing, big yellow coats a little like raincoats, or blue uniforms, carrying odd tools that could cut
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and dig and lift or make those loud BANG!! noises, or even, in a few cases, dressed only in scorched rags
and carrying nothing, but all smiling broadly – coming out to watch Thor bring her into the great hall.
“Welcome to Aesgard, Mindy,” Thor told her, his kind smile like the Sun in springtime. “This is your
true forever home, for you are one of the greatest of warriors, She Who Fought the Giant Orange Beast! –
Hey, I think somebody’s coming who knows you . . .”
And then she saw him: Jack!! Oh, it was Jack! And Gloria! And they were running toward her, tears
of joy running down their cheeks, arms outstretched, and Jack was crying out, tears in his voice, “Oh,
Baby-Cat, where were you? Daddy missed you so much!”
As they came up to Thor and petted and fussed over Mindy and her kittens, Thor told her, “They didn’t
know what happened to you. That bad dog that chased you off – he won’t be here, he’s gone . . .
somewhere else. But Jack and Gloria never stopped trying to find you. They’re here because the kids at
the special school next door to their home, you know, those kids who had problems talking and moving and
so on, the ones who lived in the school all year round, they didn’t know until too late that the fire was
coming, and everyone at the school who could have helped them had gone away, fleeing the War that had
just started, afraid that a bomb would kill them all at any moment. The fire and police department weren’t
around to help, either. So Jack and Gloria went over there and tried to get the kids out, because there was
nobody else to help. And so here they are . . .”
And Jack was lifting her up from Thor’s huge, pale outstretched hand, taking her into his own dark,
gentle hands, the things Mindy loved most about him, and Gloria was taking the kittens in her arms, and
Jack’s tears began to soak into Mindy’s fur, but it was all right, she was back home again, which was Jack,
wherever Jack was, and he loved her, and the great kind giant was smiling down on them all.
And then, best of all, Thor was stooping down to pick up something – no, someone, and – oh! It was
Black Jack! He was here, too, and he was purring as Thor picked him up! And Thor said, “I think you
forgot this guy – we couldn’t keep him outta here, not after the way he saved you that night in the alley . . .”

*****
 Appendices

Appendix I
Oddly enough, the astrological chart for the inception of the Great Los Angeles Firestorm was very
much in line with what, as near as can be determined from intercepted radio and television broadcasts,
Internet transmission just before the utter failure and final collapse of the Internet, and other archived
sources, actually occurred:

Inception of the Great Los Angeles Firestorm

Data:

Note: In this chart Mars in the 10th is in mutual reception by house with Saturn in the
8th. The 8th house rules death, and Saturn rules catastrophes. The Moon, ruling all
changes from birth to death, is in the same house. See the Part of Death and the Part of
Catastrophe in the list of Arabian Parts below.

Data: July 16, 2022, at 6: 30 a.m., Compton, CA (longitude 118 deg 13.15' west, latitude
33 deg 53.75' north).
Analysis:

Inception of the Great L.A. Firestorm

Saturday, July 16, 2022 6: 30: 00 AM
Event
Compton, California
Time Zone: 07: 00 (PDT)
Longitude: 118° W 13' 09”
Latitude: 33° N 53' 45”
Placidus House domification
Tropical Zodiac
True Nodes
Day Chart

Chart Analysis

PLANET POSITION (HOUSE)DIGNITIES

Sun24Can01 (12)
Moon 03Pis10 (8)
Mercury23Can43 (12)
Venus 28Gem12 (11)
Mars 07Tau48 (10) detriment (traditional)
Jupiter08Ari28 (9)
Saturn 23Aqu58 (8) dignity (traditional)
Uranus 18Tau18 (10) fall
Neptune25Pis22 (9) dignity
Pluto 27Cap26 (6)
Ascendant 00Leo37 (1)
Midheaven 20Ari12 (10)
Moon’s North Node 20Tau17 (10)
Moon’s South Node 20 Scorpio 17 (4)
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Part of Fortune 09Pis46 (8)

Chiron 16Ari26 (9)
Ceres 26Can49 (12)
Pallas 05Gem26 (11)
Juno 21Pis16 (9)
Vesta 06Pis36 (8)
Vertex 12Sag30 (5)

IN MUTUAL RECEPTION: None

DISPOSITORS: Sun disposited by Moon

Jupiter disposited by Mars
Moon disposited by Neptune
Saturn disposited by Uranus
Mercury disposited by Moon
Uranus disposited by Venus
Venus disposited by Mercury
Neptune disposited by Neptune
Mars disposited by Venus
Pluto disposited by Saturn

RULER OF CHART: Sun

PLANETARY HOUR LORD: Saturn

SIGN MODALITIES: Planet Points Percent

Cardinal 542 %
Fixed 325 %
Mutable433 %

SIGN ELEMENTS: Planet Points Percent

Fire 18 %
Earth 325 %
Air217 %
Water 650 %

Ascendant: Fixed Fire

Midheaven: Cardinal Fire

HOUSE MODALITIES: Planet Points Percent

Angular217 %
Succedent 433 %
Cadent 650 %

HOUSE ELEMENTS: Planet Points Percent

Life 217 %
Substance 325 %
Relationships 18 %
Endings650 %

ANGULAR PLANETS: Chiron

Ceres
Pluto
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IN CRITICAL DEGREES: (Mansions of the Moon):

Mars

MOON PHASE: Waning

MOON LATITUDE: 04 S 56
MOON DISTANCE: 366370.1 km. Close Distance
MOON SPEED: 14.52875 deg/day Fast Speed

OUT-OF-BOUNDS DECLIN.: Ceres

DOMINANT CHART HARMONICS:

ODD LOWER-ORDER: 10.92382
70.99053

EVEN LOWER-ORDER: 80.99333

40.99848

ODD HIGHER-ORDER: 161 0.92728

57 0.95683

EVEN HIGHER-ORDER: 82 0.97975

50 0.98188

Supplemental Calculations

Declinations:

Sun 21 N 19 Sat 14 S 43 MNN 17 N 49 Jun 02 N 07

Moo 14 S 56 Ura 16 N 56 MSN 17 S 49 Ves 15 S 11
Mer 22 N 50 Nep 02 S 56 PF 07 S 55 Vtx 22 S 17
Ven 22 N 41 Plu 22 S 46 Chi 08 N 16
Mar 12 N 26 Asc 20 N 01 Cer 25 N 21
Jup 02 N 06 Mid 07 N 53 Pal 02 S 08

Week Day: Saturday

Julian Day: 2459777.0625
Sidereal Time: 1h 14m 35s
Delta T: 91.57149 seconds

Table of Arabic Parts

Arabic Part Location House
Assassination 14Pis52 8

Astrology 06Lib02 3

Bondage25Gem18 11

Brothers and sisters

15Vir07 2
Catastrophe24Lib57
4
Children (female)
25Sco39 5
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Children (male) 05°

Virgo 55’ 2
Commerce 00Leo19
12
Death 20Can09 12

Desire and sexual

attraction 18Aqu17 7
Discord and
controversy01Can17
12
Divorce28Sag12 5

Faith 21Sag10 5

Father 00°Capricorn
40’ 6
Fortune 09° Pisces
46’ 8
Fortune in marriage of
women 26° Pisces 23”
9
Friends 15° Taurus
28’ 10
Goods 29° Leo18’ 2

Honor 25° Aries

36’ 10
Imprisonment,
sorrow 15° Cancer
01’ 12
Increase 15° Aries
04’ 9
Inheritance,
possessions 09 Leo
49’ 1
Karma (fate) 00°
Pisces 34’ 8
Love and deception
by women 04° Cancer
48’ 12
Love and marriage
20° Libra 20’ 4
Marriage 03° Pisces
02’ 8
Mother 05° Aries
35’ 9”
Organization 04°
Aquarius 02’ 7”
Passion 14° Taurus
25’ 10”
Peril 00° Leo 37’ 1”

Perversion 10° Virgo

30’ 2”
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Private enemies 06°

Cancer 50’ 12”
Public enemies 07°
Cancer16’ 12”
Servants 10° Pisces
03’ 8”
Sickness 14° Libra
27’ 3”
Spirit 21°Sagittarius
28’ 5”
Sudden advancement
16° Leo 25’ 1”
Surgery 16° Taurus
46’ 10”
Travel by air 00°
Libra 10’ 3”
Travel by land 10°
Cancer 53’ 12”
Travel by water 21°
Sagittarius 39’ 5”
Understanding 14°
Taurus 42’ 10”
Vocation 29°
Scorpio 21’ 5”
Web of deceit 01°
Aries 58’ 9”

Oddly enough, the astrological chart for the inception of the Great Los Angeles Firestorm was very
much in line with what, as near as can be determined from intercepted radio and television broadcasts,
Internet transmission just before the utter failure and final collapse of the Internet, and other archived
sources, actually occurred:

Inception of the Great Los Angeles Firestorm

Data:
Saturday, July 16, 2022 6: 30: 00 AM
Compton, California
Time Zone: 07: 00 (PDT)
Longitude: 118° W 13’ 09”
Latitude: 33° N 53’ 45”
Placidus House domification system
Tropical Zodiac
True Lunar Nodes
Day Chart

Placement as to Dignity/detriment Mutual Receptions

Planet Sign and House
24Can01 (12) Rules With Venus under esoteric
Sun dominion; with Jupiter
under exaltation; with
Saturn under traditional
detriment
Moon 03Pis10 (8) Esoteric ruler
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Mercury 23Can43 (12) Alchemical ruler

Venus 28Gem12 (11) Exaltation With Sun under esoteric
dominion
Mars 07Tau48 (10) Detriment (traditional)
Jupiter 08Ari28 (9) Esoteric detriment With Sun under exaltation
Saturn 23Aqu58 (8) Rules (traditional) With Sun under
traditional detriment
Uranus 18Tau18 (10) Fall
Neptune 25Pis22 (9) Rules
Pluto 27Cap26 (6) Esoteric ruler
Ascendant 00Leo37 (1)
Midheaven 20Ari12 (10)
Moon’s 20Tau17 (10)
North Node
Moon’s 20Sco17 (4)
South Node
Part of 09Pis46 (8)
Fortune
Chiron 16Ari26 (9)
Ceres 26Can49 (12)
Pallas 05Gem26 (11)
Juno 21Pis16 (9)
Vesta 06Pis36 (8)

DISPOSITORS (traditional):

Sun disposited by Moon

Jupiter disposited by Mars
Moon disposited by Neptune
Saturn disposited by Uranus
Mercury disposited by Moon
Uranus disposited by Venus
Venus disposited by Mercury
Neptune disposited by Neptune
Mars disposited by Venus
Pluto disposited by Saturn

RULER OF CHART: Sun

PLANETARY HOUR LORD: Saturn

SIGN MODALITIES: Planet Points Percent

Cardinal 5 42 %
Fixed 3 25 %
Mutable 4 33 %

SIGN ELEMENTS: Planet Points Percent

Fire 1 8%
Earth 3 25 %
Air 2 17 %
Water 6 50 %

Ascendant: Fixed Fire

Midheaven: Cardinal Fire
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HOUSE MODALITIES: Planet Points Percent

Angular 2 17 %
Succeedent 4 33 %
Cadent 6 50 %

HOUSE ELEMENTS: Planet Points Percent

Life 2 17 %
Substance 3 25 %
Relationships 1 8%
Endings 6 50 %

ANGULAR PLANETS: Chiron

Ceres
Pluto

IN CRITICAL DEGREES: (Mansions of the Moon):

Mars

MOON PHASE: Waning

MOON LATITUDE: 04 S 56
MOON DISTANCE: 366370.1 km. Close Distance
MOON SPEED: 14.52875 deg/day Fast Speed

OUT-OF-BOUNDS DECLIN.: Ceres

DOMINANT CHART HARMONICS:

ODD LOWER-ORDER: 1 0.92382
7 0.99053

VENUS LOWER-ORDER: 8 0.99333

4 0.99848

ODD HIGHER-ORDER: 161 0.92728

57 0.95683

VENUS HIGHER-ORDER: 82 0.97975

50 0.98188

Arabic Part/Planet Aspects

The Planets & Their Positions and Their Aspects to Arabic Parts & Their Locations

Pallas at 05Gem26 TRI Astrology at 06Lib02

Neptune at 25Pis22 SQR Bondage at 25Gem18
Sun at 24Can01 SQR Catastrophe at 24Lib57
Sat at 23Aqu58 TRI Catastrophe at 24Lib57
Neptune at 25Pis22 TRI Children (female) at 25Sco39
Pallas at 05Gem26 SQR Children (male) at 05Vir55
Vesta at 06Pis36 OPP Children (male) at 05Vir55
Ascendant at 00Leo37 CJN Commerce at 00Leo19
Mid at 20Ari12 SQR Death at 20Can09
Uranus at 18Tau18 SQR Desire and sexual attraction at 18Aqu17
Venus at 28Gem12 OPP Divorce at 28Sag12
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Mid at 20Ari12 TRI Faith at 21Sag10

Juno at 21Pis16 SQR Faith at 21Sag10
Part of Fortune at 09Pis46 CJN Fortune at 09Pis46
Ceres at 26Can49 TRI Fortune in marriage of women at 26Pis23
Mid at 20Ari12 OPP Love and marriage at 20Lib20
Moo at 03Pis10 CJN Marriage at 03Pis02
Ascendant at 00Leo37 CJN Peril at 00Leo37
Part of Fortune at 09Pis46 OPP Perversion at 10Vir30
Vesta at 06Pis36 TRI Private enemies at 06Can50
Vesta at 06Pis36 TRI Public enemies at 07Can16
Part of Fortune at 09Pis46 CJN Servants at 10Pis03
Juno at 21Pis16 SQR Spirit at 21Sag28
Chiron at 16Ari26 TRI Sudden advancement at 16Leo25
Juno at 21Pis16 SQR Travel by water at 21Sag39
Note that the Part of Fortune (PF) is in Pisces, and thus considered traditionally to be the Part of
Misfortune, and in the 8th House, which, among other things, rules death.

The chart image is herewith attached.

Here are the asteroid/planet aspects:

Asteroid/Planet Aspects

Planets & Their Positions and Their Aspects to Asteroids & Their Location

Pluto at 27Cap26 OPP Amor (1221) at 28Can10

Mar at 07Tau48 SQR Apollo (1862) at 08Leo06
Jupiter at 08Ari28 TRI Apollo (1862) at 08Leo06
Uranus at 18Tau18 SQR Arachne (407) at 18Aqu36 R
Sun at 24Can01 TRI Astraea (5) at 23Pis25
Mer at 23Can43 TRI Astraea (5) at 23Pis25
Uranus at 18Tau18 SQR Bacchus (2063) at 17Aqu29 R
Pluto at 27Cap26 OPP Ceres (1) at 26Can49
Juno at 21Pis16 OPP Circe (34) at 21Vir47
PART OF FORTUNE at 09Pis46 OPP Cupido (763) at 09Vir00
Pluto at 27Cap26 TRI Dembowska (349) at 26Tau48
Ascendant at 00Leo37 TRI Diana (78) at 00Ari25
Sat at 23Aqu58 SQR Dike (99) at 23Tau42
Chiron at 16Ari26 SQR Eros (433) at 17Can09
MOON’S NORTH NODE at 20Tau17 TRI Eurydike (75) at 21Vir16
Juno at 21Pis16 OPP Eurydike (75) at 21Vir16
Sun at 24Can01 TRI Frigga (77) at 23Sco23
Mer at 23Can43 TRI Frigga (77) at 23Sco23
Sat at 23Aqu58 SQR Frigga (77) at 23Sco23
Sat at 23Aqu58 TRI Hebe (6) at 23Gem36
Mar at 07Tau48 OPP Hidalgo (944) at 08Sco30 R
Pluto at 27Cap26 OPP Isis (42) at 28Can21
Sun at 24Can01 CJN Kassandra (114) at 23Can27
Mer at 23Can43 CJN Kassandra (114) at 23Can27
Mid at 20Ari12 SQR Lilith (1181) at 19Can47
Mer at 23Can43 OPP Minerva (93) at 22Cap49 R
Juno at 21Pis16 TRI Persephone (399) at 21Can46
Neptune at 25Pis22 TRI Proserpina (26) at 25Sco10
MOON’S NORTH NODE at 20Tau17 TRI Psyche (16) at 19Vir18
Jupiter at 08Ari28 SQR Sappho (80) at 08Can51
PART OF FORTUNE at 09Pis46 TRI Sappho (80) at 08Can51
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PART OF FORTUNE at 09Pis46 TRI Sisyphus (1866) at 10Can01

Venus at 28Gem12 SQR Themis (24) at 27Pis16
Ceres at 26Can49 TRI Themis (24) at 27Pis16
Mar at 07Tau48 SQR Toro (1685) at 08Leo18
Jupiter at 08Ari28 TRI Toro (1685) at 08Leo18

Declinations and thus parallels of declinations (note Luna is contraparallel Saturn, which acts like a
conjunction, and that Saturn is the Great Malefic, while Luna rules timing in any chart):

Supplemental Calculations

Declinations:

Chart element Chart element Chart element Chart element

Sun 21 N 19 Jupiter 02 N 06 Ascendant 20 N 01 Chiron 08 N 16
Moon 14 S 56 Saturn 14 S 43 Midheaven 07 N 53 Ceres 25 N 21
Mercury 22 N 50 Uranus 16 N 56 MOON’S NORTH NODE 17 Pallas 02 S 08
N 49
Venus 22 N 41 Neptune 02 S 56 MOON’S SOUTH NODE 17 S Juno 02 N 07
49
Mars 12 N 26 Pluto 22 S 46 PART OF FORTUNE 07 S 55 Vesta 15 S 11

Week Day: Saturday

Julian Day: 2459777.0625

Sidereal Time: 1h 14m 35s

Delta T: 91.57076 seconds

Table of Aspects

ASPECTS ANGLES ORBS

Sun CJN Mer 0° 18’ 0° 18’
Sun SSX Venus 25° 49’ 4°
11’
Sun TDC Jupiter 105° 32’
2° 28’
Sun INC Sat 150° 03’ 0°
03’
Sun SXT Uranus 65° 43’
5° 43’
Sun TRI Neptune 118° 39’
1° 21’
Sun OPP Pluto 176° 35’ 3°
25’
Sun CJN Ascendant 6°
36’6° 36’
Sun SQR Mid 93° 49’ 3°
49’
Sun SXT MOON’S NORTH
NODE 63° 44’ 3° 44’
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Sun SES PART OF

FORTUNE 134° 15’ 0° 45’
Sun SQR Chiron 97° 35’
7° 35’
Sun CJN Ceres 2° 48’2° 48’
Sun SSQ Pallas 48° 35’ 3°
35’
Sun TRI Juno 122° 45’ 2°
45’
Sun SES Vesta 137° 25’ 2°
25’
Moo TRI Venus 115° 02’
4° 58’

Moo SXT Mar 64° 39’ 4°

39’

Moo DCL Jupiter 35° 19’

0° 41’
Moo CJN Sat 9° 12’9° 12’
Moo SOK Neptune 22° 12’
0° 18’
Moo DCL Pluto 35° 44’ 0°
16’
Moo INC Ascendant 147°
27’ 2° 33’
Moo SSQ Mid 47° 02’ 2°
02’
Moo CJN PART OF
FORTUNE 6° 36’6° 36’
Moo SSQ Chiron 43° 16’
1° 44’
Moo BQT Ceres 143° 39’
0° 21’
Moo SQR Pallas 92° 16’ 2°
16’
Moo VGT Juno 18° 06’ 0°
06’
Moo CJN Vesta 3° 26’3°
26’

Mer INC Sat 149° 45’ 0°

15’
Mer SXT Uranus 65° 25’
5° 25’
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Mer TRI Neptune 118° 21’

1° 39’
Mer OPP Pluto 176° 17’ 3°
43’
Mer CJN Ascendant 6°
54’6° 54’
Mer SQR Mid 93° 31’ 3°
31’
Mer SXT MOON’S NORTH
NODE 63° 26’ 3° 26’
Mer SES PART OF
FORTUNE 133° 57’ 1° 03’
Mer SQR Chiron 97° 17’
7° 17’
Mer CJN Ceres 3° 06’3° 06’
Mer TRI Juno 122° 27’ 2°
27’
Mer SES Vesta 137° 07’ 2°
07’
Venus TRI Sat 124° 14’ 4°
14’
Venus NOV Uranus 39°
53’ 0° 07’
Venus SQR Neptune 92°
50’ 2° 50’
Venus INC Pluto 150° 46’
0° 46’
Venus SSX Ascendant 32°
25’ 2° 25’
Venus SXT Mid 68° 00’ 8°
00’
Venus DCL MOON’S
NORTH NODE 37° 55’ 1°
55’
Venus TDC PART OF
FORTUNE 108° 26’ 0° 26’
Venus QTL Chiron 71° 46’
0° 14’
Venus SSX Ceres 28° 37’
1° 23’
Venus SOK Pallas 22° 46’
0° 16’
Venus SQR Juno 96° 56’
6° 56’
Mar SSX Jupiter 29° 20’ 0°
40’
Mar QTL Sat 73° 51’ 1°
51’
Mar SSQ Neptune 42° 27’
2° 33’
Mar SQR Ascendant 82°
48’ 7° 12’
Mar VGT Mid 17° 37’ 0°
23’
Mar SXT PART OF
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FORTUNE 58° 03’ 1° 57’

Mar SOK Chiron 21° 23’
1° 07’
Mar SSX Pallas 27° 38’ 2°
22’
Mar SSQ Juno 46° 33’ 1°
33’
Mar SXT Vesta 61° 13’ 1°
13’
Jupiter SSQ Sat 44° 30’ 0°
30’
Jupiter NOV Uranus 39°
50’ 0° 10’
Jupiter QTL Pluto 71° 02’
0° 58’
Jupiter TRI Ascendant 112°
08’ 7° 52’
Jupiter NOV MOON’S
NORTH NODE 41° 49’ 1°
49’
Jupiter SSX PART OF
FORTUNE 28° 43’ 1° 17’
Jupiter CJN Chiron 7° 57’7°
57’
Jupiter TDC Ceres 108° 20’
0° 20’
Jupiter SXT Pallas 56° 58’
3° 02’
Jupiter VGT Juno 17° 12’
0° 48’
Jupiter SSX Vesta 31° 52’
1° 52’
Sat SQR Uranus 84° 20’ 5°
40’
Sat SSX Neptune 31° 24’
1° 24’
Sat SXT Mid 56° 14’ 3°
46’
Sat SQR MOON’S NORTH
NODE 86° 19’ 3° 41’
Sat SXT Chiron 52° 28’ 7°
32’
Sat INC Ceres 152° 51’ 2°
51’
Sat BSP Pallas 101° 28’ 1°
23’
Sat SSX Juno 27° 18’ 2°
42’
Uranus SXT Neptune 52°
56’ 7° 04’
Uranus QTL Ascendant 72°
19’ 0° 19’
Uranus SSX Mid 28° 06’
1° 54’
Uranus CJN MOON’S
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By Yael R. Dragwyla
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NORTH NODE 1° 59’1° 59’

Uranus SSX Chiron 31°
52’ 1° 52’
Uranus VGT Pallas 17° 08’
0° 52’
Uranus SXT Juno 57° 02’
2° 58’
Uranus QTL Vesta 71° 42’
0° 18’
Neptune SXT Pluto 57°
56’ 2° 04’
Neptune TRI Ascendant
125° 15’ 5° 15’
Neptune SXT MOON’S
NORTH NODE 54° 55’ 5°
05’
Neptune SOK Chiron 21°
04’ 1° 26’
Neptune TRI Ceres 121°
27’ 1° 27’
Neptune QTL Pallas 70°
04’ 1° 56’
Neptune CJN Juno 4° 06’4°
06’
Neptune VGT Vesta 18°
46’ 0° 46’
Pluto OPP Ascendant 176°
49’ 3° 11’
Pluto SQR Mid 82° 46’ 7°
14’
Pluto TRI MOON’S NORTH
NODE 112° 51’ 7° 09’
Pluto SSQ PART OF
FORTUNE 42° 20’ 2° 40’
Pluto OPP Ceres 179° 23’
0° 37’
Pluto SXT Juno 53° 50’ 6°
10’
Pluto NOV Vesta 39° 10’
0° 50’
Ascendant QTL MOON’S
NORTH NODE 70° 20’ 1°
40’
Ascendant BSP Chiron 104°
11’ 1° 20’
Ascendant CJN Ceres 3°
48’3° 48’
Ascendant SXT Pallas 55°
11’ 4° 49’
Ascendant TRI Juno 129°
21’ 9° 21’
Ascendant BQT Vesta 144°
01’ 0° 01’
Mid SSX MOON’S NORTH
NODE 30° 05’ 0° 05’
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Mid NOV PART OF

FORTUNE 40° 26’ 0° 26’
Mid CJN Chiron 3° 46’3°
46’
Mid SQR Ceres 96° 37’ 6°
37’
Mid SSQ Pallas 45° 14’ 0°
14’
Mid SSX Juno 28° 56’ 1°
04’
Mid SSQ Vesta 43° 36’ 1°
24’
MOON’S NORTH NODE
QTL PART OF FORTUNE
70° 31’ 1° 29’
MOON’S NORTH NODE
SXT Ceres 66° 32’ 6° 32’
MOON’S NORTH NODE
SXT Juno 59° 01’ 0° 59’
MOON’S NORTH NODE
QTL Vesta 73° 41’ 1° 41’
PART OF FORTUNE DCL
Chiron 36° 40’ 0° 40’
PART OF FORTUNE SES
Ceres 137° 03’ 2° 03’
PART OF FORTUNE SQR
Pallas 85° 40’ 4° 20’
PART OF FORTUNE CJN
Vesta 3° 10’3° 10’
Chiron NOV Vesta 39° 50’
0° 10’
Ceres SPT Pallas 51° 23’
0° 03’
Ceres TRI Juno 125° 33’ 5°
33’
Pallas SQR Vesta 88° 50’
1° 10’

Internal
Communication Index: 370
Also attached: graphic display of aspects with 100% orbs

Note that Chiron here is in Aries in the 9th House. Chiron rules cyclically repeated Bad Things, such as
serial killings. Obviously you could only “do” the Firestorm once – so maybe the Gods decided that here,
Chiron represented lots of Bad Types involved in One Bad Thing rather than lots of Bad Things done
repeatedly by one Bad Type. ;-)
 Unconsolidated notes
Biblical images from Exodus and Revelations come to mind.

Titles of songs by Jim Morrison of the Doors to use for chapter titles: “Light My Fire,” “L.A.
Woman,” “People are Strange,” “Break on Through,” “Strange Days,” “When the Music's Over” (last
chapter), “Roadhouse Blues,” “Blue Saturday” (the actual song title is “Blue Sunday,” but the firestorm
took place on a Saturday; this would be good for the next-to-last chapter, about the broken thousands
struggling down that road to Newport Beach), “Celebration of the Lizard,” “Poontang Blues” (about those
Ladies of the Evening who actually got out ahead of the firestorm and survived very well, and those in the
megachurch on the hill above their normal haunts who died in the firestorm), “The End” (another end-
chapter; maybe the one just before “When the Music's Over,” “L'America” (a chapter mostly about
Batrix), “Celebration of the Lizard” (the Green who wants to “send a message to the Man), “Crawling King
Snake” (a pyromaniac), “Riders on the Storm” (looters?), “Next Whiskey Bar,” “Waiting for the Sun,” etc.,
etc.
Any suggestions about chapter-titles appreciated. Know any more that have to do with fire,
whether by Morrison or anyone else? We've got a lot of chapters here.

Here are the lyrics to Jim Morrison’s “L.A. Woman”:

Well, I just got into town about an hour ago

Took a look around, see which way the wind blow
Where the little girls in their Hollywood bungalows

Are you a lucky little lady in The City of Light

Or just another lost angel..City of Night
City of Night, City of Night, City of Night, woo, c'mon

L.A. Woman, L.A. Woman

L.A. Woman Sunday afternoon
L.A. Woman Sunday afternoon
L.A. Woman Sunday afternoon
Drive thru your suburbs
Into your blues, into your blues, yeah
Into your blue-blue Blues
Into your blues, ohh, yeah

I see your hair is burnin'

Hills are filled with fire
If they say I never loved you
You know they are a liar
Drivin' down your freeways
Midnite alleys roam
Cops in cars, the topless bars
Never saw a woman..
So alone, so alone
So alone, so alone

Motel Money Murder Madness

Let's change the mood from glad to sadness
Mister Mojo risin', Mister Mojo risin'
Mister Mojo risin', Mister Mojo risin'
Got to keep on risin'
 Day of the Dragons
By Yael R. Dragwyla
Page 149 of 149

Mister Mojo risin', Mister Mojo risin'

Mojo risin', gotta Mojo risin'
Mister Mojo risin', gotta keep on risin'
risin', risin'
Gone risin', risin'
I'm gone risin', risin'
I gotta risin', risin'
Well, risin', risin'
I gotta, wooo, yeah, risin'
Woah, ohh yeah

Well, I just got into town about an hour ago

Took a look around, see which way the wind blow
Where the little girls in their Hollywood bungalows

Are you a lucky little lady in The City of Light

Or just another lost angel..City of Night
City of Night, City of Night, City of Night, woah, c'mon

L.A. Woman, L.A. Woman

L.A. Woman, your my woman
Little L.A. Woman, Little L.A. Woman
L.A. L.A. Woman Woman
L.A. Woman c'mon . . .