were saying, or assuming there was a fire or something like that—otherwise, why were people screaming?
The screams weren’t coming from the crowd on Main Street. They were in the woods, it sounded like. People running and crashing through the undergrowth up behind the buildings. The band had stopped playing, and within a minute, almost the entire crowd had stopped speaking. They were all listening, trying to make sense of the cries off in the distance.
Then people were dropping their beer coolers, their shopping bags, abandoning empty strollers on the curb.
Panic spreads as fast as sound.
The voices of the crowd rose up in a roar of confusion, everyone trying to develop a reaction at the same time. Weaver took Patrick’s hand and towed him straight through the remaining ranks of open-mouthed holiday-goers to the railing around the parking lot, and from there—nearly gettinghit by a florid man in a station wagon—they forged on toward the White Whale.
They locked themselves inside and sat up front. The exit to the parking lot was pandemonium. Patrick was all for joining the motorized exodus.
“We don’t know what’s wrong yet,” Weaver said, reasonably.
Patrick folded his arms. “I don’t want to be stuck in this place when we find out.”
“Patrick,” Weaver said, again with that irritating lack of panic, “we’re sitting in a thirty-six-foot rolling hotel room. We don’t have to go anywhere. Unless it’s a forest fire, we’re probably better off sitting still in here than joining rush hour over a cliff.”
“As soon as traffic lets up, though,” Patrick said, going for a threatening tone.
They stayed parked where they were and listened to the talk on the CB radio and sat very still while the smaller vehicles surged and honked all around them.
People were using their cars like rams. A couple of fender-benders happened right in front of the RV. Only the first one excited any interest; the second didn’t even get the drivers out of their vehicles. They just kept on going. Patrick watched a couple shove their screaming kids into a minivan. The kids had balloons tied to their wrists. The back door slammed on a string and the balloon was cut loose to drift into the sky.
“I’m not going to suggest we try to do something about this,” Weaver said. “This isn’t a crowd control situation.” It hadn’t occurred to Patrick to do anything, so this came as a relief. The CB radio seemed to be mostly occupied with truck drivers describing an immense traffic jam to each other, people trying desperately to get into the city in one direction and out of it in the other. The drivers with police scanners reported the authorities were on it, but overwhelmed. It was all happening with bewildering speed. Hundreds of accidents and stalled cars in-lane from Downtown to Santa Monica, and the roads were getting impassable to the east, as well, in the direction of Forest Peak. Then one of the truckers described thousands of people streaming past his rig on the 405 Freeway, on foot, moving through the standstill traffic. He said people were abandoning their vehicles. He said:
“I can see right down the hill at the top of the pass between Hollywood and Studio City, and there are people swarming up the hill here, goddamn, it’s like bugs, the cars can’t do nothing. I ain’t moved ten feet in ten minutes.Folks are going past the truck right now, scared shitless. I dunno what’s going on but it’s bad, I don’t see no smoking gun of a mushroom cloud but it’s bad…
“Christ, they’re running now, people running up this big damn hill through the cars, people getting out of their cars and they’re running, too.”
The squelched sounds of screaming could be heard in the background as the unknown trucker lowered his window.
“I can’t make it out, they’re yelling about something coming but I’m a good nine feet off the ground, I don’t see shit coming. But some folks are falling down. I can see down
The screams weren’t coming from the crowd on Main Street. They were in the woods, it sounded like. People running and crashing through the undergrowth up behind the buildings. The band had stopped playing, and within a minute, almost the entire crowd had stopped speaking. They were all listening, trying to make sense of the cries off in the distance.
Then people were dropping their beer coolers, their shopping bags, abandoning empty strollers on the curb.
Panic spreads as fast as sound.
The voices of the crowd rose up in a roar of confusion, everyone trying to develop a reaction at the same time. Weaver took Patrick’s hand and towed him straight through the remaining ranks of open-mouthed holiday-goers to the railing around the parking lot, and from there—nearly gettinghit by a florid man in a station wagon—they forged on toward the White Whale.
They locked themselves inside and sat up front. The exit to the parking lot was pandemonium. Patrick was all for joining the motorized exodus.
“We don’t know what’s wrong yet,” Weaver said, reasonably.
Patrick folded his arms. “I don’t want to be stuck in this place when we find out.”
“Patrick,” Weaver said, again with that irritating lack of panic, “we’re sitting in a thirty-six-foot rolling hotel room. We don’t have to go anywhere. Unless it’s a forest fire, we’re probably better off sitting still in here than joining rush hour over a cliff.”
“As soon as traffic lets up, though,” Patrick said, going for a threatening tone.
They stayed parked where they were and listened to the talk on the CB radio and sat very still while the smaller vehicles surged and honked all around them.
People were using their cars like rams. A couple of fender-benders happened right in front of the RV. Only the first one excited any interest; the second didn’t even get the drivers out of their vehicles. They just kept on going. Patrick watched a couple shove their screaming kids into a minivan. The kids had balloons tied to their wrists. The back door slammed on a string and the balloon was cut loose to drift into the sky.
“I’m not going to suggest we try to do something about this,” Weaver said. “This isn’t a crowd control situation.” It hadn’t occurred to Patrick to do anything, so this came as a relief. The CB radio seemed to be mostly occupied with truck drivers describing an immense traffic jam to each other, people trying desperately to get into the city in one direction and out of it in the other. The drivers with police scanners reported the authorities were on it, but overwhelmed. It was all happening with bewildering speed. Hundreds of accidents and stalled cars in-lane from Downtown to Santa Monica, and the roads were getting impassable to the east, as well, in the direction of Forest Peak. Then one of the truckers described thousands of people streaming past his rig on the 405 Freeway, on foot, moving through the standstill traffic. He said people were abandoning their vehicles. He said:
“I can see right down the hill at the top of the pass between Hollywood and Studio City, and there are people swarming up the hill here, goddamn, it’s like bugs, the cars can’t do nothing. I ain’t moved ten feet in ten minutes.Folks are going past the truck right now, scared shitless. I dunno what’s going on but it’s bad, I don’t see no smoking gun of a mushroom cloud but it’s bad…
“Christ, they’re running now, people running up this big damn hill through the cars, people getting out of their cars and they’re running, too.”
The squelched sounds of screaming could be heard in the background as the unknown trucker lowered his window.
“I can’t make it out, they’re yelling about something coming but I’m a good nine feet off the ground, I don’t see shit coming. But some folks are falling down. I can see down
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