Shooting it out with Presidential mercenaries in a deadly wasteland is easy. Raising a teenage daughter is hard.
“Chaos, coincidence, or Kali. Call it what you like.” Children of the Salton Sea is an adventure thriller set in a near-future in which current events are taken to logical, frightening extremes.
When their headstrong teenage daughter falls in love with the wrong kind of boy, the tribe stumbles upon a terrible secret, attracting the wrong kind of attention. Suddenly plunged into a deadly conflict, they must face a moral choice: Hide and survive another day? Or stand up and fight for what’s right?
In this cut-throat game the wild card is a legendary treasure sought after by a cannibal megalomaniac. But does the nomads’ destiny lie in their own hands? Or are they are simply the playthings of Kali, the beautiful goddess of destruction, and the namesake of California?
Excerpts:
From Santa Barbara to Tijuana the beach cities had been scoured to skeletons by the constant storm surges. And a tsunami had covered the streets with sand which was promptly colonized by coastal grasses. Huge rusting hulks of oceangoing ships were beached in the surf among the rocks.
Idaho stepped ashore into a town alive with activity beneath a sky so bright blue it was almost white. Sweat had already started trickling under his shirt. Mostly buried in soft, pale, beach sand, the old city of Del Rey was tiny, smoky, dirty, and surrounded by a tall palisade of rusted steel containers on which armed guards paced slowly.
While it was obviously possible to survive here, it couldn’t be easy. The extent to which materials were recycled was simultaneously inspiring and depressing. In a corner of the marketplace, a dozen children were making sandals out of used tires. The straps were made from braided roots that they’d chewed to make soft. Idaho’s heart was in his throat as he watched them sanding the edges against chunks of concrete with tiny calloused hands.
The Future of the Western StatesNo one called it California anymore. No one said the name Nevada either, nor Arizona, nor Utah. The land itself still existed but not the states. New Mexico had been cut in half and Colorado had lost a third. Same with Oregon and Idaho. All that territory had been stripped of statehood, placed under a military government, and renamed the Special Administrative District for the Former Western States, or S.A.D. for short. The Sad. The locals called it Cali and most of it was buried in sand. If you were there, chances were you had sand in your underpants. So most locals didn’t wear any.
For all the noise in the square, it was surprising not to hear any machinery. Sprouting above the smoky alleys were solar panels, satellite dishes, and neon tubes bent into obscene pictures. Dust covered everything and everywhere signs advertised drinking water with exclamation marks. The prices surprised him even though he thought he was prepared, and he jiggled the duffle on his shoulder to hear the reassuring sloshing sound of the large water bags inside. If one word define Cali, it was water. Or rather lack of water. But that was three words, Idaho smiled to himself.
Their horses’ hooves padded silently mile after mile along the soft grassy Harbor Freeway, which stretched straight as a Roman road toward the skyscrapers of downtown. Los Angeles was the largest ward in the S.A.D. An estimated three thousand denizens populated the 400 square miles of abandoned suburbs that surrounded the riders.
They saw no one from their vantage point on the raised freeway. But occasionally Idaho would spy tattered laundry hanging from clothes lines on a termite-riddled roof, or a group of tents in a vine-tangled high school stadium. These were places that were defensible with rudimentary moats or palisades. Everywhere he looked there were fields of abandoned cars, melting into piles of rust.
Behind the city, shifting dunes from the interior spilled over the shoulders of the San Gabriel Mountains. Down the streets of Los Angeles, the sand poured like baker’s sugar, burying neighborhoods in dunes hundreds of feet high. It flowed through storm drains into reservoirs that were empty but for waist-high yellow grass which waved in the cool ocean breeze.
As they entered downtown, they left behind old blockish, brick and stucco buildings for towers of steel; round, cylindrical, angular, reaching high into the bright sky. The three riders were dwarfed by skyscrapers that had not a single window remaining. One building they passed – a museum or concert hall – must once have been a truly inspired masterpiece of urban splendor. Brushed stainless steel curved liquidly against a painfully blue sky, the lines of the roofs joining and blooming into a blossom of copper several stories above the streets. But the copper had corroded to a dull green and naked I-beams showed through gaps where the steel had been pried loose for salvage.
An odd new smell tickled Idaho’s nose. It was earthier, dustier than the sea air. The sky wasn’t quite right, either, he noticed. The blue was hazing over into a nicotine yellow and the whole landscape took on a dusky color. The wind began to howl, gritty against his face, and as Idaho looked up his jaw dropped.
The mountains ahead were gone, vanished behind a rolling cloud of black that stretched across the whole horizon. It towered above the skyscrapers of downtown like a moving cliff, and bore down on them like a predator. Flocks of tiny birds fled ahead of it.
A choking earthy smell flooded his nostrils moments before the skin on his face and hands began to sting and the sandstorm pelted them in a howling blast, forcing Idaho to turn away to shield his face. He couldn’t see in any direction and his horse was panicking beneath him.
Nova and Idaho
Idaho frowned, which was unfortunate because he had a severe face with high cheekbones and deep-set, black eyes so when he was mildly frustrated he looked like an axe-murderer. Nervously, he scratched his chin as he watched for her reaction.
“You don’t like them.”
“They’re beautiful," she said. "And my favorite color.”
His smile returned, bright and wide. He rubbed his forearm with his free hand and mopped the sweat from his brow with the back of his forearm.
“You see,” explained Idaho, trying to be helpful, “it’s a tradition for a guy to pick flowers for a woman that he, uh, likes. It’s a courtship ritual.”
Anger flashed across her face and he stopped. “I know the tradition, Mr. Idaho. I’m not a barbarian.”
Beyond the lakebed, the painted desert stretched away to the horizon, barren and beautiful.
“Imagine, Jerome.” Robin’s blue eyes had a far-away look. “My image on the coin of the realm. Robin the First. That portrait in there,” he pointed over his shoulder, “stamped into solid gold. In my mint! Passed from hand to hand from here to the Mississippi. Even beyond! ”
Jerome loved to watch this transformation of Mr. Robin into Robin the First. Before him, Robin grew taller, broader. Hairier.
“Think about it!” Robin was on a roll. “A hostile kingdom on America’s flank. An empire on a solid financial footing. Using the gold standard! How many nations can say that? And populated by the toughest people on the continent.”
Jerome pretended not to have been glancing at his watch as Robin faced him.
“America. How she’ll cringe!”
That specific smile always bothered Jerome. It was Robin's empire-builder smile. When he smiled like that, Jerome could totally picture what Robin’s head would look like as a skull.
Val and Daffodil
“Dad.”
“Hey, punkin. How you holding up?”
Val held up his arm and she stepped in to him. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and they stood together looking out over the deadly land. She let go first.
Looking down at her, he noticed something odd hanging around her neck. Three military dog tags hanging from a beaded, metal chain. He lifted them and read the names.
“They came from the tunnel,” she said flatly.
Her eyes were wet but her expression was hard. They belonged to the three men she had shot.
Val wished his little girl could stay young and innocent forever. But Cali was not that kind of world, if such a world ever existed.
“Why do you wear them?” he asked. “Trophies?”
“No!” She reacted like she’d been slapped. “Oh, never mind.” She grabbed the tags and dropped them inside her shirt.
Val watched her fume silently for a moment.
“You do it to remember them,” he said.
She breathed in heavily and nodded, staring out at the desert rather than meet his eyes. He stared out into the distance, too. “It’s good to remember them. To not enjoy killing. Because that is a danger, believe me.”
A strange figure appeared, striding gracefully down the street toward him – a woman so black she was blue. As she walked toward him, each building that she passed turned old and crumbly and the windows broke, the glass falling to pieces, each piece fragmenting tinier and tinier until they were just bits of silica sand blowing sideways through the air into nothingness. The walls dissolved under the rain and wind of a thousand years of erosion in just seconds.
The schools of taxis she brushed by froze in their tracks, tires screeching. Their paint flaked away like amber fish scales exposing their bare stainless steel skin which instantly burned brown with rust, dissolving into a powdery oxide that poured in rivulets down onto the hot pavement.
The blue woman stepped closer now. Thin, muscular arms, too many arms, fanned out to both sides, each holding a different golden-handled weapon. She wielded each instrument of death independently; sword, cutlass, hatchet, battleaxe, sickle, scythe, spear, dagger, hammer, straight razor, six-shooter, grenade, all sparkling golden in the sun. All dripping blood like fruit juice. Droplets spattered the pavement at her feet, dripping on her toenails.
She was topless. In Manhattan? They’ve changed the dress code, he thought. This used to be a family place.
The frightened refugees started shoving and the chain link rattled around them. Idaho braced his feet and stabilized himself by leaning hard into a corner pole of the fence. He kept his eyes on the praying mercenaries.
The chaplain raised his voice against the tumultuous crowd. “And he said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side.”
The mercenaries turned to face the people, spreading apart at arms’ length. Their eyes were hidden behind mirrored sunglasses. And they un-slung their rifles.
“And go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp,” read the chaplain.
The mercenaries racked a round in unison, simultaneously flicking their safeties off. The chaplain’s voice rose to a crescendo.
“And slay every man his neighbor.”
A woman near him screamed and turned her boy’s face away, shielding him with her body.
The chaplain snapped his bible shut and raised his face to those assembled.
“And slay every man his brother.”
The Cali Strike
The explosion was stunning. Brown jets of dirt and rock obscured both canyon walls, arching over the GPs and dwarfing them like toys. The shockwave punched Noori in the chest, shoving her onto her back, tearing off her goggles and rolling her helmet away. She was blinded and choked by the dirt pelting her face.
Then the earth lurched and dropped out from beneath her. She reached out with both hands but there was nothing to grab onto. She fell feet first, swimming through rocks and dirt until her feet hit something solid and she felt herself being shoved into the moving ground, wedged against piles of dirt. Something hit her hard in the face and her left arm was twisted behind her.There was a ringing in her ears. Nothing felt broken, but both her feet were twisted uncomfortably. Noori pulled at her left arm, trying to free it. She coughed out a mouthful of dirt and spat. Blinking, she ran the back of her free hand over her face, struggling to see. Her hand came away bloody, but tears of shock came, washing her eyes, and she could see again.
A crow leapt into the air from a Joshua Tree just as the tree lit up like a luau torch. As the crow flapped hurriedly toward No-nose, it burst into flames in mid-air, shriveling like jerky before it hit the flaming ground beneath it. No-nose’s eyes bulged as he saw the wide, burning stain on the ground spread, travelling in a calculated path straight across the valley toward him. Toward them.
“Oh, no!” whispered No-nose.
His eyes went wide with fear, his composure gone. He yelled but the aircraft’s roar swallowed his voice, rattling the rafters as it passed overhead.
No-nose jumped to his feet, scrambling across the floor in a mad dash toward the stairs.
“All hands abandon ship!” he screamed, and he heard the banging of doors below and the thumping of pounding feet. As he got to the bottom of the stairs, he shouted, “It’s headed right for …”
But his words were overwhelmed by a great whooshing sound. A blast of heat licked his skin and every flammable surface immediately caught fire at once. The plywood on the windows became sheets of flame. The roof overhead spouted glowing sparks and the wooden beams became engulfed in fluid light. The doors, even the railing outside, all was on fire. The inferno sucked hot wind into the building, filling it with choking black smoke. He couldn’t see.
photos: Camels; Jet, Cali map, & Unravelling Star by Doug Pearce; Rhyolite by tahoenathan; Sketches of Camels on Overpass, of Camels Downtown, of Petty, and of Nova by Lincoln Idaho; holding hands by cae2k.com; Barbed Wire by todayeye.wordpress.com; Explosion by strangedangers.com; Laser Plane by photo credit: popsci.com; Agrippa I Coin by aeqvitas.com; Ghost Town: Kolmanskop, Namibia by craphound.com; Refugee Camp by AFP File - Wisam Sami; Datura by calflora.net/eastmojave; Drone Visual Readout by Doug Pearce
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