Warday by Whitley Strieber & James Kunetka

Author:Whitley Strieber & James Kunetka [Strieber, Whitley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: post-apocalyptic
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2015-05-02T05:00:00+00:00

Documents

California Dreams

The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

—Ninth Amendment, the Constitution of the United States

THE DAZZLE OF THE WEST

Long cars on long roads; restaurants and bars open round the clock; supermarkets that sell everything from toothbrushes to pasta machines to mountains of food; bars where piña coladas and pink silks compete with Coors and Steam Beer; enormous flounders served in light, bright, Muzaked restaurants; Pinot Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon; sun-bleached hair and the thick scent of Ray-Ban Coconut ’n’ Aloe.

America, in other words, ten years ago.

California today. But also: illegal immigration warnings posted on every wall and in every bus and trolley; Whitley and I on the run; holding camps and returnee camps and prison camps and four new gas chambers in San Quentin; military uniforms everywhere; black market Sony and Panasonic televisions; meatless Fridays and the wonderful red interurban trolleys; “finder” columns in the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle; the Beach Boys; Meryl Streep defying the police by producing and acting in the banned play Chained.

I am dazed by California. Sometimes, walking the streets with Whitley, I get a joy in me, and I think to myself that the past is returning like a tide, and soon all will again be well. There is energy and movement here—danger too, of course—but there is a little of something else that I think is also an important component of the American spirit—frivolity. Not much, I’ll grant you, but it isn’t dead yet.

Of course, the place is also tension-ridden. In Los Angeles, militant Asian Returnists whose native countries won’t let them come back compete for barrio space with Chicanos and hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from the other states. The American illegals are by far the worst off. Because they are de facto criminals, they are helpless and are ruthlessly exploited. The division between rich and poor is exceedingly sharp. Beverly Hills and Nob Hill glitter with Rolls-Royces and Mercedes-Benzes.

In California, the rest of the United States is thought of as a foreign country, poverty-stricken and potentially dangerous. The local press reports it only incidentally. A bus plunge killing a hundred in Illinois will appear at the bottom of page forty of a Times that headlines the discovery of strontium 90 in Anaheim.

It is possible to be greedy here. It is possible to be blind. Impressions:

A movie is being made at the corner of Market and Powell as we leave San Francisco—massive reflectors, Brooke Shields looking like a goddess as she steps from her air-conditioned trailer.

There are casting calls in Billboard West and The Hollywood Reporter.

Street-corner newsstands, which used to line up the porno papers, now feature half a dozen small-time political journals, state and Chicano separatist papers, the Aztlan Revolución, and Westworld and Ecotopia, the journals of two geographical separatist movements.

In California, more than anywhere else, you hear talk of dividing the United States. “California First” and “Forget the Rest” are common T-shirt slogans.

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