“I’m sorry?” I offered.
The SWAT member shook his head. “You’re building’s getting demolished, and we’re under orders to get you all out.”
“Can I at least get my car out of the garage?” Robert asked. “It’s a black Mercedes C Class. I left it near the stairwell entrance.”
“Just keep moving!” the SWAT guys shouted.
Robert grabbed random things while Debra continued to point to numbers on a piece of paper at him. He made a grand sweep of his desk into his gym bag.
“Change my voicemail, would you?” he asked me. “Say something about how I’m out of the office but can be reached on my Blackberry.”
“No, I’m not saying anything like that,” I said, voice quivering as a SWAT member shoved me forward.
Debra fought against the SWAT team as they had grabbed her by the arms and tried to steer her toward the doors.
“No!” she said. “My office is downstairs. I have lotion in there!”
“Ma’am!” one of the SWATters said. “Your life depends on it!”
She struggled against their force and was only able to manage to slightly flail her hands. “This is police brutality!” she cried. “Would you treat your mother this way?”
There were loud protests from other people being brought down so I couldn’t hear the rest of her commotion, but she did manage to kick the guy in the groin with those upsettingly tall stiletto heels. He howled in pain but kept his grip on her.
Frankly, I don’t know if she was allowed to get her lotion, but at that point, she certainly had the right do-or-die attitude that might be necessary for survival, which I wondered if I might need in the future.
CHAPTER 2
Wants vs Needs
WE WERE WHISKED into school buses that waited outside. I walked up the aisle, searching for a seat, only to see weary fugitives in dirty suits and skirts. Finally, I sat next to a small, nervous-looking man, his fingers shaking as he clutched a briefcase.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “You’re not…” I hesitated, thinking about what I’d seen with virus-stricken coworkers and how to diplomatically find out what my chances were of now acquiring it. “…sick are you?” I slowly finished.
“I need the back row,” Robert announced, standing over me. “Make some room.”
Without a word, the small, nervous-looking man stood and moved farther down the bus. Robert happily took his seat.
With that, we were driven to an abandoned junior high, which now serviced as a quarantine station about ten miles away. I stared out the windows, taking in the demolished cityscape. I can’t begin to tell you how depressing the trip was. So many things were gone, or were in stages of crumbling. I saw people standing around, lying down, maybe they were dead. I don’t know.
There were people in yellow hazard suits, walking back and forth with sensors. We stopped at a traffic light long enough for me to notice one of the yellow-suited men lift his sensor arm and had it come down savagely on a homeless man. I turned away and checked to see if there was a signal on my phone.
* * *
We were one of several vans that pulled into the quarantine unit, which looked as if it had been quickly assembled, by way of stacked cinder blocks and a loosely tied down tarp, possibly the day before. As soon as the van stopped, we were quickly ushered out. One of the men shoved Debra forward, and she broke down and started to cry.
“Ma’am, I’m sorry,” the man said. He held out a hand to help her up.
“You should be!” She sniffed. “I’ve never done anything wrong and you treat us like dirt! Ever heard of civil rights?”
I had never felt bad for her before, but I did now. She was so put together and made so much more money than I did. It was a weird feeling. I kept my gaze down on the ground and pretended as if I didn’t notice anything.
It was freezing for December in Los Angeles, but no one was actually used to how cold it was. Usually, this was a time of year when people complained about the temperature, but it was never actually jacket weather. This winter was different from any other than had ever come to the city. The sky had a greenish tint and a light drizzle that stung your skin.
“Verdell!”
I heard a familiar voice and frantically looked around. Bruce stood in a nearby line, and our gazes locked on one another. He waved and smiled, wearing a black hoodie I had purchased for him for the Christmas before. I waved back, but not as enthusiastically.
I had bought him a generic black hoodie as a gift out of sheer panic from our third Christmas together and no idea what to get him. I smiled back and waved again, momentarily pleased that his hoodie was one of the only things he had chosen to take with him. I took a mental picture of this event and added it to my pros column on the Bruce list. My mind wandered to my apartment and the scattering of gifts from him shoved in a closet that I could have brought with me, but I didn’t think twice about it.
Poking the person in front of him, he asked, “Save my place, would you?”
He strode over to me with his stocky legs in dirty jeans.
“Hey, sweetie,” he said, putting his arms around me, kissing me on the cheek. “What has it been, like a month?”
It had been a month. I thought back to our last conversation.
“Traffic’s going to be murder getting back,” he’d muttered back on that day in the break room. “Maybe we can just hang after my rehearsal instead.”
“But karaoke,” I said. “And Tatiana thought it might be fun to—”
He’d held his hand up. “Please.”
And then he’d taken off, heading quickly to the elevator. I knew he had made it back because he texted two days later, asking if I wanted to go to his roommate’s wedding that weekend. I’d looked out and saw dark fiery clouds and had simply responded back, “Let’s see what happens.”
“You’re here!” I said. “You’re okay!”
“I know,” he said. “Probably should have texted you. Or you could have texted me. I was around.”
I shook my head. “You could have called. For all I knew you were buried under that naked girl painting your roommate was so damn proud of.”
“Oh, I never went home,” he said, then suddenly stopped and looked up at the ceiling. “I wonder how Matt’s doing.”
“Excuse me?” I asked. “Where did you go?”
“They wouldn’t let anyone leave your office, so I’ve been hanging out on the tenth floor this whole time.”
I stared at him. “You couldn’t come upstairs? Didn’t people know you didn’t actually work there?”
“We were all living in a lot of fear,” he said. “But it’s so good to see you now. So glad you made it.”
I thought about that pros and cons list Tatiana had made me do and mentally marked that sentence as a con.
“You know what burns me up the most?” he asked. “I was in play rehearsals too. Opening night was supposed to be two days ago. And I really liked my part.”
I smiled coldly. “You would have been really great in it as that one guy.”
I didn’t even know what play he was in. Had the Incident not happened, I would have gone to his opening night and applauded when the show was over, but after three years of his trying to break through the glass ceiling of the acting profession and getting nowhere, all I could really offer was blind encouragement.
“Thanks,” he said. “Your support is what keeps me going.”
“Move along!” shouted someone in a hazmat suit.
“Sorry!” I said. I turned to Bruce. “What are we standing in line for, anyway? No one’s answering any questions.”
The guards came up behind us and a whole group of others and ushered us into the gym. We were shoved past a wall of lockers, which made me wonder if kids still had their things inside, hoping they’d come back to school to get them.