“We’re getting reports that the fire has jumped the 101 near the Hollywood Bowl, and at least thirteen firefighters and rescue workers are dead. The fire apparently leaped over the Cahuenga Pass when wind speeds picked up. We’re now seeing winds gusting at upward of eighty miles per hour and that is pushing the flames down into the city…”
Tony had his phone out, looking at flights to Los Angeles, and of course this was stupid, there were no flights to Los Angeles. All of them delayed or canceled, LAX suffocating. Ten minutes later, the harried CNN reporter was back on: the governor had ordered the evacuation of Los Angeles.
“This is unprecedented. As many as five million people ordered to leave their homes, as multiple fires converge, and the winds—I think it’s difficult to explain just how hard the wind is—”
Tony snatched up the remote and turned off the TV. He sat staring at the blank screen. Tyrion perched on the armrest, green eyes locked on him. You’re wasting time, old man.
His phone rang. Holly.
“I know,” he said.
“Dad, they’re evacuating the city. I didn’t even know that was possible.”
“Yeah.”
“What about Catherine? She’s still not answering.” Holly sounded less frightened than furious at her irresponsible little sister. Tony could not recall being this scared in his life. Not when his mom passed away when he was a boy. Not following Gail’s diagnosis. Not when he opened the envelope and rubbed his fingers together to test the consistency of that powder.
“Your track-a-friend thing still says she’s in her apartment?”
“Yes. Dad, I’ve called every emergency line in LA. It’s fucking pandemonium. All her friends I know of are already gone. No one knows where she is, and they’re sure as hell not turning around to go look for her.”
“Okay,” said Tony. “Okay.” His phone beeped with an incoming call. “Hold on, Holly, it’s my colleague. Let me take this.”
“What’s strange about these fires,” said Hasan, not bothering with any phatic drivel, “is how far the flames are reaching into urban areas. The factors involved are quite interesting.”
Tony rubbed his head and considered hanging up.
“What makes these particular fires so pernicious is fountain grass.”
“Grass.”
“Yes. It’s an invasive species, highly flammable, and it grows best in areas burned by fire. On top of that, the horticultural trade actually promotes it. People plant this in their yards! Which is helping the flames carry down into the city.”
“Ash. Stop.” The other end of the line went quiet. “My daughter is in Los Angeles. I can’t get a hold of her.”
“Oh.” He paused. “I’m sorry to hear that. Where does she live?”
“Silver Lake. Right around Sunset and Hollywood.”
“That’s…” He could almost hear Ash pulling up a map. “That is not a good place to be right now.”
“I know.”
“Have you tried contacting local officials?”
“Local officials appear to be busy.”
“Of course.” He hesitated, probably trying to come up with anything that didn’t make him sound like a mutant. “Would you like me to send over the executive summary I’ve drafted for the congresswoman?”
Tony snorted. “Sure. I gotta go.”
He hung up without waiting for a reply. He stood in his living room watching the same cell phone and helicopter footage repeat on CNN, though they’d changed the chyron to GOVERNOR ORDERS EVACUATION; CHAOS AS HIGHWAYS CLOG. Just in case anyone didn’t know to panic. He felt detached from his own skin, unable to pull himself back into the moment. Tyrion whispered past his ankle. Then he remembered he’d hung up on Holly, but he didn’t call her back. He didn’t know what he’d say.
His phone buzzed. Hasan again.
“What.”
“Tony? It’s Ash.”
“I know, it says that.”
“This may be dangerous and perhaps unethical, but I think I’ve found a way you could get to Los Angeles before nightfall.”
Tony sat down. “How?”
“The airports in the area surrounding Los Angeles are all closed, but there are special dispensations for disaster response professionals flying into emergency zones. I can get you on a FEMA plane bound for Ontario, California. President Randall is sending every available resource, so I’ll recommend you as a climate variability expert—”
“A what?”
“It’s a made-up title. Ontario is roughly an hour away from the city. Once there, I can have a car waiting for you through FEMA channels. Officials are turning all incoming highway lanes to the city outbound, but there will be an emergency route in. I’ll figure that out while you’re in the air. Of course, you have to understand the danger, and I simply can’t ask anyone to accompany you—”
“No, of course not.” Tony caught his breath, and then he hurried into his bedroom to pack a bag. “Ash—my God—thank you. Thank you so much. I can’t even…”
It was like a wire had tripped inside him, the fear blown back by this chance he’d been given.
“If you can get to the New Haven airport in the next hour, I’ll route you through Chicago where you can catch the FEMA plane. You should read my executive summary despite your skepticism of my methods. It would be best if you had some background on the behavior of large-scale fire events in case of emergency.”
“This is incredible of you, man. I swear to Christ, I’ll never forget this.”
“I was thinking of how my sister and her husband, Peter, would behave if it were their child, and that allowed me to think creatively about the situation.” He said it like such a fucking robot, and Tony felt such warmth for him. “I just hope you find your daughter.”
He packed a change of clothes and a toothbrush. He called Holly on his way to the airport.
“Are you out of your fucking mind? Dad, the city’s being evacuated. People are dying in car accidents on the highways trying to get out.”
“What choice do I have, Holly? Your tracker still says she’s in her apartment, right?”
“Yeah, but—”
“So I’ll get into the city and find her. The fires are still well north of her.”
“Not that far north! Dad, this is a terrible idea. You don’t know if she’s even—”
“What the hell do you want me to do, Holly?” He immediately regretted shouting at her. He had to keep a lid on his fear. He lowered his voice. “I can’t sit in my goddamn house and watch the city burn down knowing she might be there. And you, Older One, should have told me about her problems.”
Holly was silent for a moment. Tony was almost at the airport.
“I guess I thought if I told you, you’d do something stupid like fly to Los Angeles in a firestorm.”
Tony couldn’t help but laugh. God, these girls were just too much, all the time, they were too much, and he loved them so intensely it made him insane.
“We don’t need to argue. I’ll be fine.”
Total flight time six hours. In Chicago, he transferred to a FEMA plane packed with bureaucracy, men and women huddling over maps and spreadsheets, wizarding away on phones, and a few watching movies or slumped into VR sets. Tony didn’t make friends, and no one appeared to recognize him. He tried reading Ash’s report to pass the time.
Fountain Grass, Soil Moisture, Wind Speeds, and the El Demonio-Los Angeles Complex Megafire in Context: Plans and Protocols for Containment was forty-six pages long and began with a tedious description of the proliferation of fountain grass that Tony mostly skipped. More importantly, Southern California had been in a state of periodic drought since the early 2000s with spates of wet years that would interrupt these longer spasms of rainless winters and diminishing snowpack in the mountains. The years of rain, however, simply grew more fuel, and when the heat returned, months of sun and wind depleted fuel moistures, leading to climatic whiplash. Bark beetles took their toll and chaparral was moving higher into the mountains as the region warmed. The summer of 2031, the entire North American West had been a tinderbox. Firestorms raged, leveling whole towns, sending people fleeing down highways on foot. There were currently two hundred large fires burning across twenty-one states with nearly forty thousand people fighting them, including volunteers from Mexico, South Africa, Portugal, Chile, and Australia. Many of the ignitions were due to humans, as was typical, but there was also lightning. The storm that had begun the Flower Lake Fire in Montana produced twenty thousand bolts of lightning in a single day. There was simply no precedent for that kind of pyrocumulonimbus behavior.