He hopped onto the I-5 and headed south. The first few miles were fine, but right before he reached the Burbank area, he had to slow way down due to the amount of abandoned cars on the road. At one point, the road was so obstructed that he had to exit the freeway and then get back on.
Thankfully, he didn’t have to leave the I-5 again until he reached the airport exit at Hollywood Way. He could feel his anticipation growing, sure that there would be people at the survival station, good people who would offer him food and a place to sleep instead of trying to steal his car. And, God willing, Martina would be there, too.
His excitement began to wane as the airport came into view. He’d expected the runways to be full of tents, but they were empty, the whole area quiet.
Perhaps everyone was inside the terminals, he thought.
He continued to the turnoff that would take him into the airport, but there he stopped.
Someone had pounded a makeshift sign into the ground right at the corner. Spray painted across it:
SURVIVAL STATION LOCATED AT DODGER STADIUM
He laughed in relief. He must not have been the only one to think about trying the airport. He pulled out the map and checked it. Dodger Stadium was near downtown. All he had to do was get back on the I-5 and it would take him there.
He made a U-turn and returned to the interstate, feeling that finally things were going right. Once he passed the 134 interchange, the freeway widened by several lanes, but his hope that it would be easy sailing the rest of the way quickly vanished.
The traffic jam started a few hundred yards before the interchange with the 2 Freeway. Ben let his car roll to a stop, then hopped out and climbed onto the hood so he could get a better look. Cars filled both sides of the interstate for as far as his eyes could see, all the vehicles pointed downtown. While most looked empty, a few still had people in them.
If Ben didn’t know any better, he would have thought it was just another traffic-filled day in L.A. But from the dust on the cars, he could tell the vehicles had been sitting there at least a week and would probably do so forever — one long monument to the city of cars, a memorial of a world that would probably never be seen again.
Clearly, the freeway was no longer an option.
Ben backed up his car to the previous exit and rolled down the ramp. When he reached the bottom, he found the road as congested as the freeway above.
Where had all these people been going? he thought. He hadn’t seen similar jams in the other cities he’d passed. Having no idea what the answer was, he focused on what he should do next. He could always backtrack to see if he could find another way around, but what if it was just as blocked as this way was?
He knew from some of the signs he’d passed that he was getting close to downtown. If he couldn’t drive, he might as well walk.
He put his extra bottles of water into his bag and climbed out. After deciding the freeway would be almost as difficult to travel on foot as in a car, he chose to stick to surface streets. He headed west on Fletcher Drive, hoping to get beyond the hills that paralleled the freeway. It wasn’t long before Fletcher fed into a road called Glendale Boulevard, which then veered left and through a mixed area of grocery stores and banks and bars and apartment buildings. When he reached the top of the hill, he caught sight of several high-rises in the distance.
Downtown.
His energy renewed, he headed down the hill and under a freeway overpass into a small valley that he thought opened up at the other end into the L.A. basin.
Smiling broadly, he started jogging down the middle of the road. He knew, just knew he would find Martina at the survival station. The sooner he could get there, the sooner he would see her, and the sooner everything would be all right. They’d have each other. Whatever happened after that wouldn’t matter.
Gabriel Dixon hadn’t meant to finish off both cans of ravioli, but he couldn’t help it. He’d been burning a lot of calories these past few days and seemed to be constantly hungry. Still, his little overindulgence came with a price. If he was going to eat again at lunch, he would have to hunt around for something else. Not that doing so would be much of a problem. Los Angeles being a big, empty city meant all he had to do was walk through the front door of any house or apartment or store and he’d pretty much have his pick of food.
Of canned or dry goods at least.
At some point in the past week, the power had gone off in this part of town, so anything kept in a refrigerator or freezer had gone bad. He would have killed for a hamburger at that moment. Ironic, given that he was sitting in a Jack in the Box fast-food restaurant, where hundreds of hamburgers must’ve been served the day before everything went down.
A fresh loaf of bread. He might kill for one of those, too. Any bread he found now that hadn’t gone bad was basically hard as a rock. But that was the price you paid when you were working the front lines.
He brushed the crumbs off the table into a paper napkin and wadded the whole thing up so he could dump it in the trash on his way out. Just because civilization had ended didn’t mean he should forget his manners.
Sliding out of the booth, he pulled on his worn leather jacket — careful not to drop the napkin — and donned his pack. After a final check to make sure he’d cleaned up properly, he grabbed his rifle and headed for the door.
It was time to start his rounds.
Wrapped in his cocoon of hopeful thoughts about Martina, Ben didn’t notice the door of the Jack in the Box restaurant open a block ahead. It wasn’t until the man wearing the leather coat and carrying a rifle stepped all the way outside that Ben picked up on the movement.
He stopped and slowly lowered himself next to a parked car, hoping he would blend into the background.
The man at the restaurant took another step forward, but then he, too, stopped. In what almost seemed like slow motion, the guy turned to his right and stared down the road in Ben’s direction.
For a few seconds, Ben thought the man couldn’t see him. But then—
“Hey! Hey, you!”
First Iris, then the two punks the night before, and now this man with a rifle.
“Hey!” the man called again as he started walking toward Ben.
Ben whipped around, looking for a way out. There were no nearby roads leading off Glendale on his side of the street, but there was one almost directly across from him, leading up a hill into what looked like a residential area.
“Buddy, I just want to talk to you!” the man yelled.
Ben shot out from his crouch and ran across the street.
“No, no, no! I don’t want to hurt you! Where are you going?”
By the time the man finished asking the question, Ben had reached the other road, and within seconds was hidden from the man’s view by the building on the corner. Up the hill he raced, pushing himself hard.
“Hey! Stop!”
Ben looked over his shoulder. The man was at the bottom of the street.
“I can help you! That’s what I’m here for! Hey!”
As Ben neared the top, he could see the road he was on ended at a street that appeared to run along a crest.
“Come on! Don’t make me go up there!”
Reaching the new road, Ben paused for a second, looking both ways. To his right, the road went back down the hill. To his left, a slight rise.