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Earth’s Survivors: Los Angeles

Los Angeles in the midst of the largest extinction event in
thousands of years. Billions worldwide will die. Millions will die in North
American. #ApocalypticFiction #Readers #Books #BookLovers #WGSweet
#EarthsSurvivors

EARTH’S SURVIVORS: LOS ANGELES

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Art © Copyright 2024 Dell Sweet

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Billy and Beth

March 15th

It was late afternoon when Billy awoke. Somewhere in the day, Beth had wound up beside him, two
spoons in a drawer. He lay still unwilling to let her go; his hand was curled
protectively around her. Beth moved and he felt the sleep leave her body. One
moment all soft and willing, the next a live wire.

“You didn’t cop a feel did you?” Beth asked in a mumbled half sleepy voice.

“Beth, can’t you ever just say something like, I don’t know, good morning?”

She twisted her head around and smiled. The secret smile she rarely ever gave out. The one that had
started him falling in the first place. “Good late afternoon,” she said and the
smile slipped away. There was still something there, but it was not that
secret, vulnerable glimpse into her heart that it was usually. She stretched,
yawned, and her feet came up against the door. “Next vehicle we get is an SUV
so we have some place to sleep too.”

“I don’t know, I kind of liked this,” Billy said before he could shut his mouth down.

Beth laughed and it was the unguarded Beth once more. “As long as you know what the deal is.” She
twisted her head once more, and then her entire body so she was looking
directly in his eyes.

“I… I know the deal,” Billy said. The press of her body was maddening.

“We really don’t need to talk it out?”

“You know how I feel, Beth.”

“I do,” she nodded and her eyes became sad. “Let me just say these few things.” She took a deep
breath and then began to speak. “I am attracted to you. I considered sleeping
with you before you became my friend, before I knew it could not work between
us. I even considered it after… Maybe ten minutes ago too, but it would cost
me a friend because it wouldn’t mean to me what it would mean to you.” She held
his eyes as if willing him to understand.

“It’s like you see me as this fragile little princess, and I am so far from that, Billy. So far. You
have been on the bad side of me and so I can’t see why you still try to see me
that way.” She laughed. “It’s a thing men do. Like… As if that is love, you see.
Instead of love just being about all the other, stuff… The things I admire
about you, you about me. The things in common, the things that we share, the
parts of you and me that are real that end up in the mix… But no, I am a
princess, unattainable beauty, something to worship, and it has nothing to do
with what I really am at all. I have lived that way, tried to live up to that. It
is not possible… The man I need is out there, I hope. Just someone that looks
at me as me.” She watched his eyes.

“I think I can do that,” Billy told her.

Beth laughed.

“No, really. I think I can separate those things… I’m pretty sure.”

“Yeah? I think you like the idea of me… I think you want to fuck me… I think it might even
hold together in a situation like this… At least for a while. And I think you
could talk me into that comfort we could give each other, and I think you would
feel completely different about me once that happened. You would think it meant
that we were together, and it would not mean that at all. It would mean we were
scared and we took some comfort in each other… Because the attraction was
there, and because it can just be about that sometimes.” She drew a breath.
“But I think then I would go from princess to whore, because that’s the way
this world works, princess to whore in sixty seconds. I have seen it… I have
felt it… And then I lose my friend, and I also hurt my friend, because he
doesn’t want to see it, I mean really see it for what it is.” She reached one
hand up and pushed Billy’s dirty blonde hair away from his eyes. That hair, and
the way it hung across his eyes was one of the things that had nearly made her
give in. He looked like a little boy, vulnerable, maybe he would love her
forever, never hurt her, never treat her badly, never leave, but he would be
reacting to something in her that did not really exist. Something only he saw.
That little boy, awestruck, in love, but not the kind of love she needed him to
feel, to be in with her… She sighed again. She could see the hurt in his
eyes.

“We probably should get going,” Billy said. A smile played across his lips. Tentative, but there.

“Okay,” she laid her head against his chest. “I need a toothbrush… That little bastard made me
lose my toothbrush.”

Billy laughed. “I got extras.”

She lifted her face up, “Really?”

“Really.”

She bent and kissed his forehead and then rose from the seat and looked around at the scrub brush
and sand before she rose all the way up and sat on the edge of the seat while
Billy straightened his long frame out and sat on the driver’s side of the seat.

“That felt sort of, I don’t know, brotherly… That kiss.”

“I hated my brother,” Beth said. She levered the handle and stepped down to the ground.

“Hey?” Billy said. Beth stopped and looked back at him, her eyes careful.

“I’ll work at it… I mean,” he looked at a loss. “I don’t want to lose our friendship.”

Beth smiled. “Thanks… I mean it. Now get out here and get me a toothbrush, Billy Jingo.”
She laughed as she finished.

“So, look.” Billy jabbed his finger at the map and Beth leaned across and looked at the map.
“Teddy Roosevelt Lake… Tonto National forest… Connected to Gila National
forest… Cibola National forest. Pretty isolated.”

Beth turned her eyes back to the desert. There was little to see, but twice she had hit bushes that
popped up out of what seemed like nowhere. They had passed under the truck, but
there were cactus out here too in places, and she was sure a cactus would not
just pass under the truck.

“So… Why there?” Beth asked.

“Just a place to get our shit together: Breath for a few moments, really look the map over and pick
a destination.”

“Isn’t that taking us closer to Yellowstone, or whatever is causing the problems to the north?” Beth
asked.

“It is… But,” Billy checked the scale and did some quick measurements. “Still close to a thousand
miles away from there.” He looked up. “I think it is Yellowstone. I heard
something just before the shit hit the fan, something about the park in
Yellowstone.”

“What was it?” Beth asked.

“I don’t know,” Billy, answered. He shrugged. “I wasn’t paying attention… Wish I had been…
Something like everyone in the park went off line… As if they could not reach
any of the stations, rangers, whatever you call them… Something like that.
And seismic activity, like an earthquake centered there.” He shrugged once more
and shook his head.

“So it’s a good place to stay away from,” Beth said.

“Yeah… I would say
so, but we’ll be a thousand miles away.” Billy shrugged once more.

“So?”

“So, head north… We
will have to cross a few highways… Just keep out from the cities… I mean
Phoenix turns to suburbs that spread out a long way at least that is what the
map looks like. Like it just kept spreading and so they just kept adding
names.”

Off to their left the city was easy to spot. There were fires all through it. In some places, huge
sections were on fire, in others it was scattered fires. There were no areas
that did not seem to be affected, and with the fires, it was easy to track the
edge of the cities as they drove.

Beth laughed. “So, they just added names. Well, couldn’t the same be said about New York? About
any large city as it grows. Isn’t that the way it works?”

“I guess… I hadn’t thought it out, I guess.”

“Going to have to cut through part of the city,” Beth said a few moments later.

Billy looked up from the map as the truck rolled to a stop. “A river.”

“Probably a canal…” Beth said. “Either way we can’t drive over it… Does it break anywhere?” She
turned the truck and began to run along the side of the canal heading for the
city once more. In the distance, several fires burned, but the fires seemed to
be a few mile distance, nothing close. “Like a housing development or
something,” Beth said a few minutes later as the truck bumped up onto a road
that was paralleled by a brick wall. The wide concrete gutter was bone dry, the
pavement smooth after so much time in the desert

“Not on the map…” He shrugged. “I just don’t know, Beth.”

Beth had stopped on the edge of the housing development. It was dark, lit only by the headlights of
the truck. Cars and trucks sat neatly in driveways. The streets were empty.
Heavy dust seemed to blanket the whole scene. Little trails cut from place to
place.

“Fucking spooky,” Billy said. “Volcanic ash?”

“Probably… What do you think the trails are?”

Billy frowned. “It has to be dead.”

“It doesn’t have to be dead… Could be small animals raiding house to house… No garbage any more
so they have to get into those houses and get what they can or starve… Or it
could be the dead.”

“Great, you had me ha…”

Something hit the truck hard and it rocked on its springs. The smell of death hit them about the
same time, and Beth hit the gas, mashing the pedal into the floor boards.

A rotting hand came through the open back window and fastened around Beth’s throat, her hands left
the wheel as she was yanked backwards, and the truck spun hard to the left and
accelerated, her foot still mashed on the gas.

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