“Then there’s Bert. See the way he loses his temper? Man, remember how he blew away that kid in the Trans Am, the night we left L.A.? That was just for openers. Bob Tony, he’s killed five people so far. That I know of. For diddlyshit things. Holding back on a case of powdered milk, for God’s sake, so he shoots the family’s oldest boy.”
“Does Mercer have the details on that one?”
“Mercer’s got the details on everything.”
“I know where you’re coming from. Okay, how about me?”
Ted looked at him. “Want it straight, or funny?”
“Straight.”
“Bob Tony, you haven’t been out of this house in over three weeks. You won’t let us even open the curtains. You’ve lost what, fifteen pounds? The more you try to run things, the less you look like you’re doing it.”
“Anything else?”
“Shauna’s sicker than hell, and nobody’s done a thing about it, because she doesn’t talk about it and neither do you.”
“Everybody’s got skin troubles, Ted. And the runs, and flu, and we got typhus and typhoid in Salinas and Watsonville. All the doctors are working their butts off.”
“Jesus, Bob Tony, call one in for a day and have him just take a look at her, would you? She’s lost twenty-five, thirty pounds. She coughs all the time, she hardly ever talks, and she’s doing some kind of drugs.”
“Shauna is a big girl; if she’s really feeling bad she’ll tell me. And she’s not taking drugs.”
“Was I ever wrong in the old days? You used to say I saved you a fortune just by keeping the dopers out of the company. Anyway, Sarah is not a big girl, and she’s really fucked up.”
Allison leaned back on the couch and crossed his arms and legs. “I don’t want a lecture about Sarah. She’s had a hell of time, sure. But at least she’s safe and secure.”
“You know she shits her pants? She walks around holding onto Lupe’s skirts, with her thumb in her mouth. She—”
“I said she’s had a hell of a time. She’ll be fine. Don’t say anything else about her.”
Ted rubbed his face. “Sure, Bob Tony. Hey, if I said anything out of line, I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. Listen, I need you to be up front with me. Now I’ll be up front too. I’m taking you off the Leadership Committee. Like a holiday.”
“What—”
“You can stay on here at the ranch. You and Suzi and Ken can do the jobs you’re good at, but without the responsibility of being on the Committee. We’re making some heavy decisions, and it gets to us all, one way or another. So take a break. Give us advice, but let us take the heat. Be a devil’s advocate.”
“Sure.” Ted stared at the wall. “Any objection if we check out?”
“Check out? Leave?”
“Back to L.A. I don’t want to overstay our welcome, and I think I left a tap running.”
Allison stood up. “Please yourself. I just can’t give you any gas.”
Couriers began arriving at the ranch around noon; Mercer, in Monterey, relayed news as soon as it came in. The MLZ seemed to have escaped the worst of the quake, though it had been bad enough: scores of dead in Salinas and Watsonville, fires in Seaside and broken water mains everywhere, CB radio reports, through bursts of flare static, gave a far worse picture of cities in the north. The dead in Santa Cruz alone were estimated at well over three thousand. A fragmentary message from Paso Robles, to the south, seemed to indicate that the whole town had collapsed.
Allison sat in the living room, curtains drawn and lanterns burning, while the messages arrived. Bert was in now and then, offering advice or asking questions. At three in the afternoon, Mercer himself arrived.
“‘We are in some trouble,” he said when the room had been closed off. “Half the people in Monterey and Pacific Grove are out in the streets. Lots of houses just came down, bang. Lots more will come down next time somebody sneezes. Most of the MLZ has no water. Ord’s okay. Some of the old barracks are kinda creaky, but the concrete ones are good.”
“Can we move people into them?” Allison asked.
Mercer put his muddy boots up on a Barcelona chair and sighed. “Sure, Bob. But once we got ‘em there we gotta take care of them. Food. Clothes. Bedding. Some way to heat those buildings. They all got electric heat, you know. Even if we had enough generators to heat and light all those buildings, we’d use up all our gas in about two days.”
“Gas. It always ends up with gas. What about that salvage team? They come up with anything yet?”
“Not much. They say they might be able to do somethin’ if the tanker was right side up. But it turned turtle.”
“Shit. I want the leader of that team up here right away, tomorrow. He can show me how he’s going to salvage the boat, or he’s fired.”
“I’ll have him here. But listen: we better face the fact that we just might not get all that good stuff. Then what?”
“Have to go liberate some,” said Allison, rubbing his beard.
“You talkin’ more expansion?”
“No, just some quick raids.”
“Better plan on liberatin’ some food too. We’re running short already, and winter’s comin’.”
“Okay, okay. But we can’t expand any more.”
“Raids are no good. You clean out some place, and their locals will come down here and beat us to death. Come on, man.”
“Hey. We had an earthquake today. Let’s worry later about conquering the world.”
Mercer stared wearily at him. “When the food runs out, you and me don’t have any later.”
That was the trouble with opportunists, Allison reflected: they lost heart when they couldn’t see an opportunity. Somehow he would have to make sure that Mercer never saw a new opportunity arising somewhere else, or the black son-of-a-bitch would sell them all out without blinking.
“We got this far, Odell. We’ll have more later than most people… Off the subject, can you get a doctor up here, the next day or two?”
“Somebody got the sniffles? You think my doctors don’t work enough?”
“By tomorrow afternoon, Odell. You can have him back tomorrow night. Now, let’s get back to relocating all these people. How about putting them in those barracks and not worrying about heat and light?”
“Bob — I just said they’d need food, clothes, doctors. And we’d still need gas and oil.”
“Okay, okay — let ‘em sit where they are. Or come up with a better idea.”
“See what I can do.” Mercer stood up and put on his olive-drab baseball cap with the eagle on it. “Like you said, we got this far.”
At ten that evening, Allison took a tray upstairs. Shauna had taken a sleeping pill around noon, and hadn’t even stirred when Sarah had been put to bed at two-thirty. The child was still asleep; Shauna was just waking.
“Hi,” he said softly. “I brought you breakfast in bed.”
“Oh.” She sat up drowsily. “Put it on the night table. Gotta go pee.” When she returned, she took only the coffee; the bacon and scrambled eggs slowly cooled.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Tired. My head always aches.”
“I’ve been neglecting you. Too much going on.”
“Was the earthquake bad?”
“No. Listen, how’s that sore on your neck?”
“Still there. So what?”
“Can I see it?”
“What the hell for?” She was angry. “You come up here just to stare at my sore?”
“Hey.” He took her hand. In the harsh light of the Coleman lantern, she looked gaunt and haggard. “I worry about you. You’re a tough cookie, you never complain, and you let things go on too long. I should’ve had somebody look at it a long time ago. C’mon”