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Los Angeles Wednesday-Friday
Friday Morning
The west coast of North America, from Juneau, Alaska to Santiago, Chile suffered through a devastating night of fire from the sky. Streams of red, yellow, and green smoldered in the sky as asteroids ravaged the city of Los Angeles throughout the night.
Many meteors flew far out over the Pacific Ocean. Others exploded brilliantly in the sky followed by air bursts and rocky debris destroying houses, buildings, cars, and roads. Large space rocks crashed through the atmosphere, slamming into Earth wreaking havoc on the cherished objects and things built by man. The meteor blasts devastated the neatly arranged homes and streets of modern suburbia scattered across the continent. Homes, buildings, shops, and malls burnt to the ground, leaving only ash and bone. Burned-out washer/dryer units and water heaters are the skeletons of a once vibrant society. Untold thousands died that fiery night.
Everything is not destroyed. Everything is not dead. The storm may have destroyed a building or house may while the next building stands untouched. Entire areas remain miraculously the same as the day before, but it isn't the same.
Sirens howl. Smoke from a thousand fires fill the air. Power and data networks are out in many areas rendering bands and VUE lens useless. AutoCars, noms, and actualizers sit idle unable to receive instruction. Survivors emerge at dawn. Some take advantage of the chaos to loot stores. Some wander aimlessly while others sit alone in their homes crying.
For most people, the reality of their world is entirely digital. Life is a stream of data enabling social connections, work, meal preparation, transport, and entertainment. Life as they know it is out of service destroyed by fiery rocks crashing from the sky. Life has ended before death arrives.
The one form of communication still working this morning when others have failed is AM radio. The government requires Smart-Band and VUE lens designs to include AM radio for emergency messaging. Most people don't know their device has a radio but this morning, for many the single shining ray of hope comes from a tinny voice transmitted over an amplitude-modulated radio wave.
The governor’s voice announces that people can find shelter in an underground city called Edendale, built beneath the tall skyscrapers in downtown Los Angeles. She tells people there is food, shelter, and room for all. Everyone from Los Angeles and Orange counties are to make their way to this city prepared for them. The message provides directions to several entrances of the underground city. The governor directs people in Northern California to another city, named Ambrosia located under Sacramento.
Everyone receives the message, and it’s rebroadcast every five minutes. Roads jam quickly. Vehicles of every type converge from all directions on downtown Los Angeles.
As people arrive downtown, they leave their autos and move to the underground city entrances. The line of empty cars and trucks becomes so long that all movement on the freeways stops. Freeways become clogged for miles and miles with abandoned vehicles. There is no choice but to abandon transport and walk. A parade of people of every type, color, shape, and size slowly wander their way toward the hope of shelter and safety.
Wednesday Night–Los Angeles
When Eddie Martinez arrives at his house the night of the Pasadena meteor event and announced to his wife Selena that they will leave their perfectly good undamaged home to go live in an old mine. A weird project she didn’t fully comprehend funded by some old lunatic. She flatly refused.
“Rodrigo is heading up there with Isabella, Inez, Edgar, and the kids. We need to go. It’s happening just like old Rob said,” Eddie pleads.
Selina looks down at her newly manicured nails turning her hand this way and that studying the deep red hue applied by the manicure nom. She slowly looks to Eddie with a flick of her head that tosses her hair over a shoulder. “We’re meeting Gloria and Louis for dinner and drinks. We haven’t seen them in ages. Louis booked a table at Le Domaine. I’ve been dying to go there. God knows you won’t take me, so we’re going. Get cleaned up and dressed.”
“Baby, did you see the news? Look what’s happening in Baltimore. It could happen here! An asteroid blew up in Pasadena, killing people, wrecking cars, and buildings. You act like nothing happened. All you think about is trying to keep up with Gloria, to see who can outdo the other. I’m trying to keep us alive, not see who has the prettiest dress and the best hair. God damn!”
“The news said those asteroid things happen once in ten million years, or something. It’s like Baltimore hit the lottery, and Pasadena got five numbers out of six. Once in a bazillion, million, odds it will ever happen again. Old Rob’s crazy. You said it yourself. I can’t believe Rodrigo fell for all his mumbo jumbo. Come on, honey. It’s just one dinner. If you want to show me that cave, we can drive up Saturday.” Selina ends with a seductive twist of her wide hips.
Eddie and Selina went to dinner with the Robles. No asteroids exploded or crashed into the restaurant. Everyone survived the evening.
The only person injured was Eddie who suffered taunts and jibes as Selina told Louis and Gloria all about the project to convert an old mine into a doomsday hideaway. She told them its location in the mountains, how Eddie and Rodrigo work with a crazy old man to make an end-of-the-world shelter, and how Eddie came running home insisting they move into the cave. Eddie reminded Selina the project is a secret and she shouldn’t tell anyone about it. His statement only caused more laughter and ridicule.
Thursday morning, the sun rose brightly. It was a beautiful day. Eddie worked alone on a home remodel project. The work went slower without Rodrigo. Eddie didn’t mind working late. He was in no rush to get home. He still suffered from the burn of humiliation from the previous night.
When Eddie arrived home, it surprised him to see several autos parked in front of his house. As he walked through the front door, he dodged nieces and nephews running around the living room playing VUE games. When he entered the kitchen, he found his wife and her sister having a loud, excited conversation on a video call. A puck on the kitchen counter projects the images of several women.
Selina excitedly repeats her description of the hideaway. “Oh, my God! I swear it's a real cave house carved into the side of a mountain. Eddie said its huge. It’s not that far away just north of Arcadia. It has a farm inside with real crops like lettuce and corn.” The group of women on the call soak up the gossip like wet sponges.
“It’s next to that bridge to nowhere. Just ask your lens. You’ll see. It’s across the bridge, right Selina?” adds Margot, Selina’s sister who is apparently familiar with the story.
“Great, first you make me look crazy in front of Gloria and Louis at dinner now you’re telling all your friends. OK, yes. I built a secret cave house. Your husband works for a crazy old man. How do you think we paid for this kitchen?” Eddie says angrily. He motions over the puck; the projected screen evaporates ending the call.
“Eddie! Those were my friends,” cries Selina.
“You love making me look stupid, don’t you?”
Margot raises a finger and tilts her head. “No, she was making Rodrigo look stupid. He’s the one who dragged his family up there.”
Eddie never cared for Margot. He refers to her as Selina’s stupid sister. He reserves little patience for her, but if he picks a fight with Margot, he will suffer a thousand cutting words from his wife later that night. He doesn’t want to ruin his evening, so he bites his tongue.
Eddie looks to his wife. “Why is she... why is everybody here? What’s going on?” Eddie asks.
“Honey, I told you. It’s Junior’s birthday. I would never try to make you look silly, baby. George and Hector are in the back. Join them. Hector brought real steaks. Have a beer. Relax, babe.”
“I don’t like you telling your friends about the mine. Rodrigo is taking care of his family,” Eddie says before leaving the room.
Margot waits until Eddie is out the door. “The secret mine,” she says in a spooky tone. Selina and Margot break out in laughter.
Hector and George stand at the barbecue holding beers. Hector wears a white apron and a chef’s hat. He holds tongs in one hand, waiting for the right moment to flip his steaks.
“I’m grillin’ these babies with tender loving care Georgie. One hundred percent Grade-A, USDA Prime beef steaks. The real thing not from a food actualizer. Tonight, we feast!” Hector and George high-five each other. Eddie grabs a beer and joins them.
Hector holds his beer in salute. “Eddie! I got to give it to you, man. You kept that place secret all this time. You never told us one thing about it.”
“And you got Selina to keep your secret, at least until now. That’s incredible,” adds George.
“Anyone who can get my sister to keep a secret for three years, man. That’s an accomplishment,” says Hector before guzzling down half a bottle of beer.
“Respect,” says George as he downs an entire bottle.
Eddie tips his bottle back, taking a long slow drink, and then looks up to the sky. “I know crazy Rob is crazy, but he’s such a nice guy. So genuine and down to Earth. He has a passion, you know. You get sucked into it.” Eddie pauses.
“And I heard he pays really good,” says Hector, chuckling and motioning with his tongs.
“It's a fun project. The place is cool. The old man thought of everything. You could live in there for years,” Eddie says, looking at the darkening sky.
Eddie spots an object in the sky. It looks like an aircraft flying faster than normal. Lights flash like aircraft lights. One light becomes three, then six, now twenty, then whatever it was silently breaks into hundreds of long streams of light. George sees it and nudges Hector to look up. Hector, busy with his perfectly timed steak-flipping, ignores the nudge. Eddie isn’t sure what he’s seeing. Did a plane blow up in the sky? The pieces aren't crashing; they continue to move across the sky.
George points to the sky. “There's another one... Oh, and another. What the hell? Hector, look!”
Hector flips the last steak and looks to George who’s pointing at the sky. Hector looks up to see the sky burning with a dozen fiery rocks.
“Oh shit! Crazy Rob was right. Selina!” Eddie yells for his wife as he runs into the house.
A meteor explodes over Long Beach, making a tremendous sound like nothing they’ve ever heard. Seconds later a burst of burning wind sweeps through the backyard blowing the chef’s hat off Hector’s head singeing his hair and eyebrows as his apron flutters in the hot wind. More meteors explode in the sky crashing into distant houses and neighborhoods. Hector leans over the barbecue, protecting his steaks.
“Hector, we’ve got to get out of here. Come on, man,” George shouts.
Hector stalls until George grabs him pulling him into the house as more asteroids fill the sky. Hector whimpers as he leaves his steaks on the grill.
The rest of the night is a frantic blur. Eddie insists everyone drives to the mine. Hector leaves his children, Hector Junior and Claudia, with Eddie and Selina while he drives to pick up his wife at the hospital where she works as a nurse. They agree to meet at the mine.
Eddie, Selina, Margot, George, their two kids, Angel and Princess, and Hector’s kids, Junior and Claudia and Grandma all pile into Eddie’s large truck. Eddie drives the city streets, assuming the freeways will jam as the asteroid storm continues.
The firestorm intensifies. The sky looks like a puffy gray cloud blanket embroidered with red and yellow streaks. Eddie is now driving through downtown Los Angeles. He takes Second Street and continues East under the 110 Freeway. Fireballs crash into the tall skyscrapers, concert halls, and county buildings that loom over the roadway. The sight of the buildings disappears as the truck enters the Second Street tunnel under Bunker Hill. The white tile walls of the tunnel gleam with the reflection of the trucks’ headlights. Eddie pulls over and stops two hundred feet from the end of the tunnel, intending to take a short pause from the destruction.
A fast-moving car honks and swerves around Eddie’s truck. As it speeds out of the tunnel, the car gets pelted with molten spherules. The car, riddled with holes, crashes into a cement wall. The driver never exits the car.
Eddie and family spend the night in the tunnel. Several other cars also find refuge in the iconic Los Angeles tunnel. The firestorm recedes before dawn. Eddie wakes with first light and pulls out of the tunnel. Broken glass, metal, and chunks of cement litter the city streets. The tall buildings stripped of their glass exteriors look like iron skeletons.
Eddie navigates the city streets avoiding the freeways. Progress is slow as they make their way through East Los Angeles. As he turns onto Huntington Drive, everyone in the truck receives a message from the governor telling them to find shelter in Edendale below downtown Los Angeles. Selina begs Eddie to turn around and follow the governor’s instructions, but Eddie does not turn around he’s finally picking up speed. He isn’t going back.
Forty minutes later, they are driving up East Fork road. When the truck finally approaches the Bridge to Nowhere, they see what looks like a space shuttle parked on the side of a wide gravel-covered area. The boys, Angel and Hector Junior, are excited hoping to explore the spacecraft that surely crash-landed in the mountains. Eddie notices the wheels below the craft and smiles to himself. Crazy old Rob made it to the hideaway.
Eddie eases his truck onto the cement bridge, drives across and parks on the dirt patch that is the end of the road. He leads his wayward band along the narrow trail as quickly as they will go.
Selina and Margot help their mother and the boys heft suitcases. Princess carries her dolls and Claudia carries a box. Eddie moves to the hidden entrance, unlocking the cyclone fence gate and opening the wooden door. As he moves deeper into the mine, the steel blast door opens. Rodrigo stands in the door with open arms to welcome his brother.
Eddie hugs his brother. Rodrigo speaks softly in his younger brother’s ear. “I’m so happy you all made it. How is it out there?”
As Eddie releases the hug, his smile fades. “The city is destroyed. Thousands are dead. People don’t understand what’s happening. Edendale is the only hope for most, but I don’t believe it can take everyone.”
Rob stands behind Rodrigo and counts the number of people in the narrow tunnel. “We’ve been watching it on the streams. They say more than a million people are trying to crowd into the mysterious underground city. Who would have thought to build an underground city as protection from an asteroid storm? And you called me Crazy Rob! Ha-ha!”
Eddie and Rodrigo laugh nervously.
The line of people standing in the mine shaft look shell-shocked and hungry.
“Eddie let’s get your family inside they look exhausted. Please come in. Welcome. Welcome, everyone.” Rob greets each one as he gestures for them to walk past him down the mine shaft and into the main gallery.
“Eddie, you have such a large family,” Rob says as he counts nine people, including Eddie.
“This is Junior and Claudia. They’re the children of my wife's brother, Hector and his wife, Jean. Hector and Jean should arrive soon,” Eddie says, patting the children’s heads as they walk past him.
Rob counts on his fingers. “That will make eleven plus the twelve we already have. Oh, my. I think we need to modify the sleeping arrangements.”
The new arrivals straggle into the large main room dazed and out of sorts. Isabella and Inez rush over to hug Selina, Margot, George, and the kids. Courtney and Maria carry food to the large dining tables. The kids—Alyssa, Ethan, Mary, Carlos, and Clara, who are already friends—walk together to greet the new kids welcoming them to their new home in Munday’s Hideaway.
