He began making better time and his confidence surged as he began to recognize the occasional street name. There was a cigar store on the junction of Fallbrook and Saticoy, its large walk-in humidor a regular hangout for Jim, when he had lived here, and across from it, a Taco Bell; Lark’s favorite fast food. He had passed by both as he made his way west along Saticoy. He knew he was less than a mile from his home when he finally crossed over Woodlake.
There had been a strip-mall set back from the street at the junction of Saticoy and Woodlake. It had contained the usual smattering of convenience stores: a large supermarket, hair-salon, a discount liquor store, and a gas station.
That was all gone.
In its place, a smoking gash ran diagonally across Saticoy, slashing through Woodlake; a smoldering pit thirty-foot deep and at least the same distance across that extended into the flaming ruins of what had once been a gated-housing community. Now it was so much rubble and broken timber.
The tail fin of a Boeing 787 jutted incongruously out of the remains of the food-store, its charred skin blackened and smoking. Jim guessed from the devastated housing estate and fields of fire he could see in the distance, that the jet had collided with the ground right here, tearing away the tail section and sending the body of the plane careening off before finally coming to rest somewhere west of the housing community that now lay in ruins.
It had all but obliterated the road ahead of him. If he wanted to reach his home, he was going to have to get across the massive trench running between him and his destination. He could walk around it but that would add too much time to his trip and the fire was spreading rapidly. If he didn’t get to the house soon then there might not be a house left — assuming it hadn’t already been consumed by the fire.
His decision made, Jim moved to the edge of the pit and peered cautiously over the edge. A chunk of blacktop broke free under his weight and slipped into the hole, escorted to the bottom by a cascade of gravel. He stumbled back, barely in time to save himself from following the rubble into the crevice.
“Shit!” he said, scuttling away from the lip of the crevice on all fours. Heart thumping audibly in his chest, Jim waited until his pulse began to slow before flipping over onto his belly and sliding carefully toward the lip of the crevice until he was able to look safely down into the pit.
On the opposite wall of the fissure, halfway down the wall of dirt, a broken water-main spewed a torrent of water the ten remaining feet to the bottom of the pit. Below, a muddy lagoon had formed and a river of brown mud sluiced off downhill. The action of the water against the dirt walls was rapidly eating away at the soft earth, forming an overhang in the fissure. The outcrop of road did not look like it would support the weight of the ground above it for very much longer.
As Jim watched, assessing his next move, a six-foot long piece of the overhang collapsed with a giant splash into the water below, sending waves rolling downstream and splashing him with dirty droplets of muddy water. The gap was gradually increasing in width as the water eroded the sides. If he was going to get across, he was going to have to do it now before it became too large.
Pushing himself a little further over the edge, Jim looked down at the wall of mud and clotted earth on his side of the pit. He could make out the sister piece of fractured water piping on his side of the pit. It jutted out from the wall of earth about a foot, enough for him to get at least one of his feet onto. A slight incline in the pit wall would allow him to slide down and onto the exposed piece of pipe.
Jim said a quiet prayer it would hold his weight and swung himself around until his legs dangled over the edge of the pit, flipped himself onto his belly and began to inch out. When his midriff reached the lip of the fissure, he dropped his legs until he felt his toes rubbing against the loose soil. He kicked at the wall of earth until he created toe-holds he was confident would support at least some of his weight while he shifted his torso out far enough to see whether he was positioned correctly over the pipe.
Pebbles of gravel sliced at him as he slid his upper body cautiously over the edge; he glanced down, his left foot positioned directly over the pipe, about four or five feet above it. This next part was the difficult bit, his nerves were singing their discomfort as he slowly allowed his body to drop down, his elbows taking the majority of his weight until his arms were fully extended. At this point, the only thing stopping him from falling the remaining ten-feet to the floor of the pit below him was his tenuous hold on the thin crust of road above him.
Less than a few hours ago, he was talking on the phone to his literary agent. If someone had told him back then he would soon be attempting the equivalent of a rock climb while trying to avoid a fiery death, he would have laughed in their face. But with his newly regained vigor Jim felt as though he could achieve virtually anything; he let go of his handhold.
His knees scraped painfully against the sides of the pit as he slid downwards, he felt a nail on his right hand fray and break as he tried to grab at the wall to slow his slide. He felt his right foot connect with the pipe and his downward slide stopped abruptly and jarringly.
Jim’s breathing came in quick ragged bursts. He buried his face into the cool soil and a bitter laugh escaped him. He was halfway down. Glancing down to his right he could see that the wall of the gully curved down at a much steeper angle toward its base. He cautiously repositioned his right leg on the pipe, maneuvering his body until he faced the opposite wall.
Crouching down as carefully as he could, Jim swung his right foot off the pipe and allowed his hands to take the weight of his body as he lowered himself to a sitting position. Then, slipping himself slowly off the pipe, he slid the remaining few feet down to the bottom of the scree-strewn slope.
At the bottom of the massive furrow, the walls looked a great deal higher than the thirty feet he had estimated. Looking up at the sky, filigreed with gray strings of smoke, he imagined this was what it would look like to gaze up from ones grave. Dismissing the morbid thought from his mind, he turned his attention to escaping from the gully.
The lagoon of water from the fractured water pipe was growing rapidly; fed by the waterfall cascading down the side of the furrow from the broken water pipe. The ground along the edge of the newly formed stream was sodden, water logged, and his shoes sank deep into the muck up to his ankles.
Jim stopped to catch his breath and he felt the mud sucking at his feet, pulling him deeper. This quagmire would pull him down until he couldn’t escape if he didn’t keep moving, and then this really would become his grave.
His foot came free with an obscene slurp as he pulled it out of the mud. If he headed upstream away from the source of the water, he would eventually reach dry ground. Trying to stay as far up the crumbling bank of earth as he could, Jim edged his way along the margin of the growing pool of water.
In the minute or so he had been at the bottom of the pit the water level had increased by over two inches, eating away at the thin vein of flat ground he had expected to be able to use to move freely upstream. Now the water was lapping at his knees and with each step his foot slipped down the loose scrabble of earth and deeper into the water.
Finally, he stepped onto firmer ground. His feet and lower legs were saturated and frozen, his sodden trousers flapping like rain soaked flags as he rubbed furiously, trying to get some feeling back into the blocks of ice he had once called legs.
As feeling returned Jim began moving further upstream, away from the cataract of water. Up ahead, he could make out a feature he spotted when he first reconnoitered the fissure from up top. A large piece of the road had collapsed, due he surmised to some underground geological abnormality, exposed when the jet had carved out the land. The collapsed road had formed a steep ramp from the bottom of the pit and standing at its base, he could see it reached all the way up to ground level and the newly formed corniche.