Then he saw his first flames.
Orange embers danced in the air, and it appeared some of the vicious stowaways had found a community of mobile homes off the highway. Three of the trailers in the center of the park were ablaze, smoke pouring skyward, some chemical in the siding giving the flames a purple tint.
He raced down the cleared emergency route until he found the exit from the 710. The surface roads were mostly empty going into the city, and he used the satellite device to send Holly a quick text: Landed safe. Heading to find Cat now. Will call soon. What a preposterously calm message, as he looked up to see the ridge of Griffith Park glowing a pitch-dark amber. He crossed into Franklin Hills, and he began to understand.
Many of the homes in the hills were ablaze, as if the fire was picking and choosing, executing at random like a bored king. The sound was deafening, a freight train roar. Trees candling, grasses smoldering. He had the windows up and still the bonfire smell overpowered him. Embers suspended in the air like fireflies, smoke and flakes of ash forming a permanent silk haze. The power was out, but those burning homes at the top of the hills made it bright as day. Dogs and cats ran wild in the streets, and he honked the horn to avoid flattening a lost retriever.
He turned onto Hyperion Avenue, following the sat-nav. As he sped down the empty street he came to an intersection where sparks sizzled from a downed electrical line. The frying wires looked like a firework, sparks spraying into nearby shrubbery, and he was forced to make a right turn. He whipped the Suburban left down another street as his navigation redirected. It was a residential neighborhood; big, beautiful homes, most still without fire, except here was one, with just the wooden porch aflame. And here were either homeowners or looters, carrying a couch to the back of a truck, risking their lives for whatever salvageable prizes lay inside. They didn’t even glance at him as he drove by.
He heard the horse’s whinny before he saw the animal. It came streaking out of a yard, its fur smoking, hurtling into the street in a panic, and Tony slammed the brakes. The horse had a choice—either dart across the road or pull back to avoid him—and it lost itself in indecision, so Tony made the choice, yanking the wheel hard left, missing the animal, crashing into a blue recycling bin, and he thought he was safe, when something to the right of the car exploded.
The way his skull smacked the window felt like a bat to the side of the head. He lost control of the SUV and found himself spinning, spinning, spinning, and he felt the tree catch the hood with the simultaneous crunch of metal and pop of the airbag, and he thought he was blacking out but maybe not. Maybe he was smelling himself burning alive.
It was hard to tell how long he sat there. He was awake but also not. Aware enough to hear the fading cries of the horse, but unable to recall why that mattered. At some point he realized he’d thrown up. A pile of vomit lay in his lap. Then he remembered Catherine, and he looked up and around, his fog blowing away. Something was on fire. He touched the side of his head where it had thunked off the window, but he wasn’t bleeding. As a kid, he’d taken a hit to the head during a game of backyard tag. Got your bell rung, his father had said, examining the knot on his head. Then he was lost in a memory of his dad passing away.
Tony stumbled out of the car into the inferno. He’d driven into the trunk of a palm tree, and this tree was in the process of going up. On the other side of the car, he saw pieces of what looked like a rocket or mortar buried in the side of the vehicle, and he stupidly looked around, wondering if some Mad Max crew of postapocalyptic thugs had taken a shot at him. Then across the street he saw one of the burning homes, saw the mangled remains of a grill, and understood. Someone’s propane tank had exploded. Launched sideways like a missile into the car.
He went back to the Suburban, spitting to clear the acrid taste of fumes, and of course the vehicle was done. The bucketing noises of an engine grinding uselessly. He couldn’t find breathable air, so he grabbed the sat-nav and hurried out, eating smoke and then hacking it back up in painful upchucks. He tried to follow the blue line of the map pointing the way to Catherine, but he saw a gas station on the horizon, and he really needed water. His eyes, itchy and swollen, kept filling with tears, and he couldn’t stop coughing. All he could picture was clear cold water.
The gas station convenience store was locked, but he found a cinder block around the side, threw it through the glass, and crawled through the shattered spikes. The air inside was marginally cooler. Barely able to see, he made his way to the back row of beverages and grabbed the first plastic bottle he found. He cracked a Gatorade open and dumped its sticky contents on his face. After he washed his eyes out, he swigged from another bottle. His nose was bleeding. His head spun and throbbed. His skin itched like crazy from the smoke. Outside, the roar of burning structures was like standing under a jet engine. Gas station not the place to be. Keep moving.
He bagged the remaining four bottles of Gatorade (there was no actual water left in the place) and crawled back through the door. There was a dog waiting for him. It could have been the brown retriever he’d swerved to avoid or, given the dizziness, it could have been a hallucination. It looked at him hopefully.
“Can’t help you, dog.”
He was less than half a mile from Catherine’s. He went south as fast as he could, and the dog followed, trotting along at his side while a small metal heart tinkled on its collar. A glance back to the north and he saw the way the fire had marched out of the hills and into the city, sending its deadly ember emissaries as shock troops, all those tightly packed homes offering the perfect kindling.
Near a dark Goodwill store, the dog ran ahead of him to sniff at a pile of clothes heaped on the sidewalk. It took him a moment to realize that the pile was a man lying dead under a heap of rags. He was about to walk around it when the dead man spoke.
“Nice pup.” He was older, Black, bald, and missing teeth.
“It’s not mine,” said Tony. He didn’t want to stop. Not for anything, but he did. “Hey man, you’ve got to get out of here. Look around.”
As if for the first time, the old man did. “Yeah, but where to go?”
“South, buddy. Get to the 10. That’s where they’re trying to hold it.”
He smushed his lips in skepticism. “Nah. Thought I’d stick around and see if I couldn’t move in one of them houses when everyone’s gone.”
This was not a conversation worth having. “Get out, pal. Right now. While you can. The fire’s already hitting a few blocks away.”
“God won’t let it touch me. Know how many times God’s had my back?”
“Whatever.”
Tony kept on. For a moment the dog looked indecisive about who to follow, but when Tony turned the corner, the dog yipped and bounded after him.
Catherine’s apartment building was as dark as the rest of the city, but the gate was propped open, likely by residents trying to carry out belongings as they fled. He bounded up the stairs to the second floor, found her number, and began pounding. The dog stood alongside him, tense, then it started barking.