The Walk by Lee Goldberg

Author:Lee Goldberg [Goldberg, Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Five Star
Published: 2009-05-30T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

Getting to Know You

10:20 a.m. Wednesday

Marty’s feet were killing him. He’d been walking on blisters all morning, and it was only getting worse. It was hard enough working his way through rubble, but now slogging through the muck, each step was like pulling his feet out of a bucket of moist chewing gum.

Marty and Buck had worked their way south down Vine to Melrose Avenue, where the flood seemed to have lost most of its destructive force, and were taking the street west towards Beverly Hills. Melrose Avenue was a literal dividing line between poverty and wealth, the grime of Hollywood and the grace of Hancock Park. The north side of Melrose was lined with run-down apartments, car repair garages, pawn shops, and a Ralph’s Supermarket that was surrounded by a white, wrought-iron fence and guarded by armed security personnel. Across the street, estate homes and elegant condominiums abutted the tip of the exclusive Wilshire Country Club Golf Course, hiding the perfect green grass from passing cars.

Those class differences were irrelevant now. Both sides of the street here were in ruins, the rich and the poor, identically swathed in blood and despair, huddled miserably together on the streets, the front lawns, and the parking lots, tending their wounds and waiting for the ground to stop shaking.

Over the last hour, several small aftershocks rippled through the ground, reminding Marty and everyone else the earth wasn’t finished with them yet, widening cracks, toppling lopsided homes and slanted buildings, breaking what little glass hadn’t broken yet.

It had been over twenty-four hours since the Big One, and in that time, Marty didn’t feel he’d gone very far in distance and yet, at the same time, knew he’d traveled a long way from where he’d been before. It wasn’t only his reflection in the shattered mirror that made him think that.

For one thing, Marty realized he was a stronger, more capable man than he ever thought he was. He’d rescued a child, survived a flood, and waded through an unspeakable landscape of death. He never would have imagined he could do one of those things, let alone all three. And, at the same time, Marty was ashamed to find depths of weakness and cowardice within himself he never suspected were there. He did nothing for Molly, leaving her to die, and would have done the same for Franklin, if Buck hadn’t forced him into pulling off a rescue. Somehow, the cowardice wasn’t nearly as unexpected as the heroism and endurance.

As much as Marty disliked Buck, he couldn’t deny that somehow this one-dimensional TV character, this caveman in a polyester suit, had brought out the best in him even while trying to get him killed. Yet all Marty knew about Buck was that he was a bounty hunter, drove a Mercury Montego, lived alone with a pit-bull named Thor, decorated his bathroom with cocktail napkins, and disliked women with slanty breasts.

“Tell me something, Buck. Who are you?”

The question didn’t throw Buck at all, he answered

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