Sun-Dogs (ePub)

With just hours to go before the Flashback, L.A. explodes in racial unrest ...

From Sun-Dogs:

It happens so fast we barely have time to notice how wrong everything it is, how incongruous-how empty the intersection at Florence and Normandie feels, how the palms and other vegetation-the grass itself-all seem to have grown and multiplied. Or that the streets are now full of abandoned cars and trucks-as though everyone has just gotten up and wandered off, wandered into the smoke-or that we are being triangulated from the instant we touch down: triangulated and set upon-all of it before we've even unloaded our equipment or Peter has shut off the engine. All of it in a virtual eyeblink.

All of it, in short, in a perfect whirlwind-as the jackals, the wolves, the fucking emus (only with lashing tails and monitor lizard teeth), descend on us like flies, like marauders. As Peter takes the helicopter up and I do the only thing I can; which is pretty much to drag Sunny into the nearby Chevron (even as the engine whines and the animals scatter), and, ultimately, watch her bleed out and die in my arms.

And then it's over, and I'm alone, and there is nothing but the television squawking and a lone siren. Then it's just me and Bizarro L.A. and Patty Severinsen-Wood-the eleven o'clock news anchor-who apparently hasn't gotten the memo.

"It is, ah, now eleven o'clock and, ah, tonight a community is venting its fury over the verdicts in the Troy Harper beating trial. Fires are raging in South Central Los Angeles at this hour-a testament to the anger and frustration felt by many of its residents. It began just a few hours after the verdicts were announced, with people looting stores and setting them on fire, but quickly escalated to assaults and beatings; four drivers, at least, pulled from their vehicles and attacked. Chaos also erupted at the downtown Parker Center, L.A.'s police headquarters, where scuffles broke out throughout the evening. Meanwhile, police in riot gear can mostly just stand by, hoping by their presence to somehow keep a grasp on order. We're going live to one of our news …"

But I'm no longer listening, only tittering uncontrollably. I'm no longer doing much of anything but marveling at the absurdity of it all-the futility. And then I'm not even doing that; but just staring at Sunny. Then I'm crying as the tv drones on and the whump-whump of the helicopter slowly remanifests.