The New Normals Chapter 9

“It looks red almost,” said Roland.

“So does the whole desert,” retorted Kit.

“That’s a good point. But that looks like a wave.”

The ground continued to rumble and churn. The salesman was shaking where he stood.

“It feels like a stampede,” commented Roland.

“Do y-you know what a stampede feels like?”

“Yes actually,” responded Roland, paying the salesman little mind now.

“Looks like it’s fifty feet tall… and moving fast…” appealed Kit.

“I think it may be closer to a hundred actually,” countered Roland.

“Do you think we should get to higher elevation?” asked Kit, the concern in his voice growing. The falling turds were almost enough for him to forget about the policeman at the bottom of the oasis. The tsunami approaching them from the opposite direction of the coast, now, was overkill.

“I’m all f-for higher elevation,” seconded the salesman.

“I was beginning to think so too. That parking garage up the street looks like it can weather a storm,” posited Roland. And with that, Kit and Roland’s nervous new companion started toward the parking garage. Kit followed a little less frantically, and Roland less frantically still.

The whole city was shaking now. The alarms of parked cars blared as people moved feverishly about. The cars whose drivers had lingered had formed into a miles long line of unmoving congestion. Bystanders stood staring as a still-distant wave barreled through the open desert toward them. Many sprinted in the opposite direction. Some held their heads somberly in their hands and prayed silently.

“It really is like those disaster movies,” said Roland, a little self-amused, as he boarded the elevator of the parking garage.

“Electricity’s still good.”

“You don’t think the stairs would be faster?” asked Kit.

“I’d say we’ve got at least a minute before that wave hits us.”

Kit boarded too, followed by the increasingly shaky car dealer.

“Top floor?” Roland asked as Kit answered by jamming the button for him.

“Wait!!” yelled a frantic mother with a pudgy infant in her arms. Roland put his arm in the elevator door as it began to close on him; the door stuttered and retreated. Sweating and out of breath, the mother labored her way toward the elevator.

“See? Disaster movies. What’d I tell ya.”

“For the love of God! I’m taking the stairs,” fumed the car dealer. He darted for the stairwell as the mother and child entered the elevator in his place.

“Top floor?” Roland repeated facetiously. Neither Kit nor the mother found that escaping the aberrant desert tsunami approaching the city was a fit subject for humor. The doors closed and the elevator elevated. They’d arrived a floor shy of the building’s roof.

“Walk the rest of the way? Although we do have poop cover here…” Roland mused.

The wave barbarically tore its way into the city, quickly leveling some of the one-story establishments on its outskirts. The roof of a gas station was ripped from its supports as the pumps were simply trampled by the crushing force of the wave. It wholly devoured the cars, stop signs and street lights in its path. The desert sand had reddened the water. It was nearly as red as gushing blood and surely fuel for the doomsday cultists a few stories below. That the wave seemed to have no end in sight was all the more apocalyptic.

The rushing torrent bombarded its way around every street corner, rivers flowing furiously down every sidewalk. Many buildings seemed to disappear entirely within the deluge. Kit watched as a two story apartment building was ripped into two under the force of rising water; one half was carried down Frank Sinatra Boulevard as the other half disappeared quickly and quietly into a rising, rushing sea of red.

The sweaty, trembling salesman torpedoed through the doors of the stairwell that sat beside the elevator. He stood there looking slightly dumbstruck as he struggled to catch his breath.

“Glad you could join, too,” Roland teased encouragingly.

It was clear the salesman hadn’t expected company. The building gave a sudden lurch and the eyes within the room darted back and forth to one another.

“Mommy wook! Kool-aid!!” belted the toddler with a firetruck on his shirt.

“I don’t think that’s kool-aid dear,” replied the despondent mother. Kit seemed to suddenly grow very alert. His eyes sped toward Roland’s.

“What was that other thing that guy in the desert said?”

“Before the shitstorm you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“About the… uhh… ?”

“No, not that.” Both were relieved not to discuss the dead patrolman any further.

“About the hawk?”

“No, I think there was one other thing that he said…”

“About the end of the world?”

“Well, yes, that, but there was one other thing still…” Kit paused and thought to himself. He looked down at the devastation in the city.

“‘A cascade…’ I think he said…”

“Well, I’ll be damned. He did say that.” Roland paused and peered out over the city as well.

“Well it’s definitely… cascading…” Roland said aloud to no one’s relief. Distant screams emanated from the sinking city. For a moment Kit felt as though learning why this was happening might offer them solutions. Disappointed when no such solutions arrived, he sat down in frustration. At that moment, a straggler turd made an impressively diagonal voyage through the parking garage’s opening in order to sit at his side.

A couple hours went by and the water continued to rise. The building gave another sudden lurch. Kit felt stoic and numb.

“Looks like the water is at about level three now…” commented Roland. Their lives were in jeopardy and the nearing echoes of car alarms within the parking garage seemed only to confirm this. Screams, too, seemed to grow nearer now.

“I think there are two people struggling down there,” remarked Kit soberly as he pointed toward them.

“I think there’s a lot more than that,” admitted Roland.

“No I mean, almost within reach. Caught on some debris down there.”

“Oh,” Roland looked where Kit was pointing.

“Still have that bungee cord in that bag of yours?”

Kit fished into his bag and grabbed two long bungee cords and his slightly dusty pair of binoculars.

“What are they floating on?” asked Roland.

Kit dusted off the binoculars and handed them toward him.

Answering his own question, “He is floating on what looks like… a sex doll,” Roland said aloud.

“So it’s just one of them?” asked Kit

“The sex doll is male too,” countered Roland before looking more closely.

“I think that’s supposed to be a… Brad Pitt… No! Leonardo Dicaprio! Anyways, let’s see if we can’t save this kid.”

Kit looked into his bag for anything else that might be of aid and found little besides an increasingly useless pile of cash.

“Ey kid! You holding on okay down there?” Roland yelled to get his attention but he went unheard over the gushing torrents of water. He repeated himself more loudly and prompted a vague nod from the kid in his general direction.

“I don’t think he can see us. I’m just gonna toss it and hope he finds it.”

Neither Kit nor Roland seemed too hopeful about this battle plan, but Roland tied the two bungee chords into one and tossed one of the hooks into the floodwaters below.

Roland maneuvered the hook of the bungee cord skillfully through the water. Surely enough, after little more than a minute, the kid had found it; Kit and Roland airlifted him from the water. The salesman even emerged briefly from the corner he was wallowing in to aid in the effort.

The kid was shell-shocked. The clothing he wore would have looked plain enough if it weren’t so deeply saturated with red. Instead he looked like a scared tomato. He appeared no older than thirteen.

“Never thought I’d get out of there…” he stammered.

“Thank you so much…” he continued. The salesman was quick to accept partial credit. Kit looked dubiously toward the salesman, then curiously toward the kid.

“Glad you made it out of there… are you okay?”

“Everything just happened so fast.”

Roland joined Kit in his curious glance toward the child.

Roland removed his jacket and placed it over the child’s shoulders before suddenly turning on a dime and saying aloud, “I’m beginning to think introductions are in order.” Seeing no immediate volunteer he continued, “Being as you’re the new guest, would you like to start, kid?”

“I’m Joshua,” he replied as he continued meekly dripping. He spoke quietly. Roland gestured professorially for the next person with a friendly smile.

“I’m Molly,” she said with a glazed, distracted look in her eyes. “And this is Matthew.” Matthew, too, was distracted, but gleefully so. “Spidew-man in da kool aid!” He exclaimed suddenly. Following a brief nudging from his mother, he looked briefly toward the other members of the apocalyptic circle that they all stood huddled in before returning his attention back to the costumed Spiderman struggling to stay afloat on the colossal coke-a-cola billboard drifting down the river that had replaced Rainbow Boulevard. The man looked desperate. The seriousness of the scene was lost on wide-eyed Matthew.

“I’m Elliot,” the salesman blurted after a brief pause.

“I’m Kit.”

“And I’m Roland. I believe that’s everyone?”

“I’m beginning to get sick of this… whatever… attitude of yours,” spat Elliot, gaining a little composure.

“Realistic,” responded Roland.

“Huh?”

“My attitude. It’s realistic. I don’t see much use in panicking over something we can’t do much about. What do you suggest we do?”

The sudden sound of music spared Elliot from having to respond.