Jason had been one of the lucky ones. He’d been on an early morning coffee run and not in his building when the quake hit. The building that was no longer there. Everything he owned was in his apartment. Every memory he’d built was destroyed, but when he thought of his neighbors, none of whom could have made it out alive, material possessions meant nothing. He had followed the general evacuation, moving north, trying his family’s and Nathan’s cells repeatedly, but having no luck getting through. People scrambled around him, all trying numbers on cell phones, cursing at the lack of signal. Most were shocked and panicked, some just standing in the street, blind in the dust that choked lungs.
He knew he had to get away from the center of the city, out to the suburbs. To Nathan. He should try and get to Nathan, up in the hills, north of the city. It had to be safer there.
The crowd stopped at a designated evac point, as far away from the tallest skyscrapers as they could. An hour of half running, half stumbling brought them away from the worst of the fires; they were the lucky ones. An officer with a bullhorn called for calm. Army-uniformed men with masks mingled in amongst dazed civilians.
Jason tried to listen, moving to the edge of the crowd, but still he couldn’t hear enough to have any idea of what was going on. He caught a few words over the whimpering and crying and stunned disbelief that hung in the air around him.
“Fires.”
Jason heard the tail end of a man speaking behind him. He turned and saw an Army uniform speaking into a radio, his face streaked with dust and cuts. “…need to get people south. We have forest fires on the hills to the north. We’d be sending people there to die—south.”
Jason didn’t wait to hear more. Nathan was in the hills. What if he was trapped, what if the fires were… Nah, south was no good. What the fuck? North was where it was at, and slipping easily past the crowd in all the confusion and noise and past the Army sentries herding people south of the city, he started his way north and to his best friend.
He was about a mile from the base of the hill, just before the freeway, before he was stopped, caught, and herded away, all the time protesting that his friend was in the hills.
Frustrated, he stood at the barrier set by the fire department and the police, refusing to move, determined to at least stand as close as he could to his friend until he was found, or until all hope was lost.
Jason watched every arrival at the blockade, watched as each person was dealt with efficiently and passed on to separate teams who he assumed treated the varying degrees of injury or suffering.
He had counted one hundred twenty-seven so far—children, parents, whole families, individuals, some crying, some stoic, some still, some in flustered panic—but no Nathan.
He had listened. He wasn’t stupid, and he knew the fire was past the valley edge where Nathan had his apartment in the secluded complex with the park area and the beautiful views.
It was all gone.
The next 4x4 arrived. It was Ryan he saw first, stumbling from inside the car with something in his arms. Ryan— What the fuck is Ryan doing here?
Jason ducked under the cordon, ignoring the shouts of the officers in charge, and dove towards the new arrivals, calling Ryan’s name, watching as the tall man’s head lifted and his eyes searched for the source of his name. His gaze finally came to rest on Jason, his shoulders straightening. Jason reached his side, pulling him into a one-armed hug, removing his arm as he encountered wet cloth and realized it was blood soaked.
“Ryan?” He searched Ryan’s eyes, asking for a reason for the blood.
“Nathan—in the back,” he said gruffly, his voice raspy and smoke damaged. Jason moved to the back door, opening it and looking in at his friend, pale, bruised, covered in blood, unconscious, as still as death.
“Jesus…fuck.” He looked back at Ryan. “He’s not…”
“No, we…” Ryan couldn’t get the words out, and he pried away Laurie’s hands, passing her protesting body to Jason, who took her without a moment’s thought.
“Keep her,” he whispered. “Don’t let…process her…my back.” Jason could see Ryan was losing it. He had felt Ryan’s blood on his own hands, scarlet and fresh.
“I’ll look after her.” Ryan slipped to the ground against the car door.
People—doctors, officers, nurses—buzzed around them, pulling Ryan and Nathan this way and that, turning Ryan over, meaning that Jason could see his back. It was a mass of bruises and deep cuts oozing fresh blood, the material of his shirt stuck into the wounds. He had never seen anything like it and watched in sickened amazement as the paramedics attempted to peel back the material of the shirt to irrigate the wounds. At this point, it seemed Ryan had lost consciousness. Shit, Jason was surprised he’d even made it this far.
He hovered like a mother with her baby birds, feeling Laurie relax into him inch by slow inch. The fact that Ryan had handed her to him seemed to make him someone she could trust. They tried to take her away from him, but he refused. Laurie Allen, aged three, with a Christmas birthday, was staying with her new uncle Jason, and that was that. He answered the questions that he could. He knew almost everything about Nathan, and equally hardly anything at all about Ryan.
Next of kin for Ryan? I don’t know, Nathan’s family may know. Can you get to them through Nathan’s family? Allergies? Nathan, no, Ryan, I don’t know. It was a blur. Where are you taking them now? The hospitals in LA. Is it safe? I’m going with them, Laurie too. I’m not arguing with you, I’m going.
The earth chose that moment to shake, a mild aftershock, sending a ripple of fear through the civilians and causing frantic movement for the rescuers. Jason was waved through without comment, climbing into the same evacuation vehicle as both Ryan and Nathan. He tried his cell phone, and on what must have been his twentieth attempt, he actually connected.
“Jason?”
“Adam, shit, I’m with Nathan. He’s fine, he’s—we’re in evac. They say some broken ribs. We’re moving out; I don’t know where they’re taking us.”
“Thank God.”
“Can you pass on that Ryan is with us? He’s cut up quite bad, but he’s here, so tell his parents and text me their contact details.”
“Will it get through?”
“Fuck knows. I’m not having a—”
Then static.
They arrived at the next evacuation area to organized chaos. Jason was torn between following Ryan or Nathan, deciding instead to hover with the coordinator, Laurie still in his arms. The coordinator looked at him disapprovingly, but he stared her down. He wasn’t moving. From where he stood, he could see CNN on a laptop showing the fires downtown and the evacuation, and it chilled him to the bone. It was as if he was watching a disaster movie—none of it was real.
The wind had changed, chasing the fire away from the highways, leaving devastation in its wake. Most of the downtown fires had been contained, but some were still burning. Reports of estimated death tolls were climbing every minute, five thousand, ten thousand, seventeen thousand, more. He didn’t know what to focus on first. He leaned against the wall, Laurie asleep against his shoulder, even in the confusion and noise of intake.
He watched people enter Nathan’s cubicle, then saw them leave half an hour later, heads together. He waited as they discussed something, then slipped inside. Nathan lay still and unmoving, his face deathly pale. At least his breathing was steady. Jason stood for a short while until the curtain moved, and the coordinator appeared, looking directly at him. He readied himself for a battle, but she looked exhausted.
“We are setting up for emergency blood donations. Can you donate, sir?”
“I can donate. I’ve been checked, so I can do that.”