The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [152]
Wayne pushed on through a working-class neighborhood of bungalows and ranches. Every window was open. Some people had moved into their cars, which were idling in driveways with the seats reclined and the air-conditioning cranked. He could see elongated shadows moving slowly inside the houses. The air was thick with the smell of smoke, but Wayne couldn’t see any flames except for the occasional candle burning on a living room bookcase.
59
FROM THE THICK charcoal plume in the sky, it was clear the fires to the west were not under control, and from the AM radio, he knew the flames were advancing slowly east. Despite the lake on its edge, the city was short pressure for the hydrants, just as the park was short clean water for drinking.
With the help of some of the less agitated Whole Foogees, Bobby had moved some makeshift barriers and repositioned his car on North Avenue, directly between the park and the big house. From there, he could keep an eye on the unrulier elements from the relative safety of the driver’s seat.
There was a constant volley of noise from the park, punctuated with angry spikes. As the day grew late, boredom and thirst were giving way to drunkenness and stupidity. In the sweltering lawlessness of the park, arguments turned too quickly into fights. Weapons were plentiful—a rock, a knife, a pillow, scissors, a flashlight, a rope. There would be no investigations, no questions, no autopsies. Bobby knew it was just percentages, a matter of time before there was a body count here, too.
Someone had toppled a barrier and parked a huge black pickup in a clearing of brown grass, where it now operated as a gas-powered generator, providing loud music and keg refrigeration and battery power for a medium-size television. For twenty dollars, anyone could enjoy fifteen minutes of air-conditioning, a service for which there was now a long and impatient line. The overstressed portable toilets still hadn’t been emptied, and the stench radiated into an unpopulated fallout zone, which widened in radius every hour.
Very few of the Whole Foogees had been diligent about climbing the many flights of hot stairs to their steaming apartments for a change of clothes. Most everyone was wearing the same thing they’d had on when they had decided to retreat to the outdoors. The entire park was costumed in filthy outfits of despair.
A large gray cloud promising rain but never delivering paused overhead. Just pour already. Another rain would help push back the insurgent fires and help cool their roasting bodies and help heal the eczematous ground and help wash away the grime and shit.
Instead, the darkest clouds always passed silently overhead, sometimes exploding into a shower over Lake Michigan, the one place in the Midwest that didn’t need relief.
Throughout the evening, a dozen or more cars had arrived, passing through the gate and disappearing into an obviously massive underground garage. Black sedans and SUVs and limousines, all of them with tinted windows and all of them, Kloska imagined, chauffeured. Not only had Gary Jameson not gotten the message from the near riot in his front yard, it also looked like he was having a party.
Jesus, Bobby thought. That’s balls.
A line of refugees three deep had lined up across the street, protesters booing each arrival. Bobby felt like booing himself. Instead, he identified himself as a cop again. This time, they hesitated, and he wished he had his star, but with some stern looks and clipped shouts, he was able to push them all back.
Something struck him as different and Bobby looked up in the sky. The news helicopters were gone, to the West Side probably. A firecracker made him jump. And then another sound he knew too well, like a firecracker but more menacing, followed by the thumpthumpthump of rocks meeting the side of his truck.
60
“OH JESUS,” the voice said, and it wasn’t a voice inside her head, it wasn’t a dream voice, and it wasn’t coming out of her own aching mouth. She was being rolled over,