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The green path moved them steadily forward, past busy office buildings. Traffic swerved around them magically. "This is the Los Angeles of 2051 A.D.," the voice continued, "but only a few hundred feet from here begins another world, one seldom seen by human eyes."
A barrier blocked Wilshire Boulevard. The green path humped and carried them over it. Beyond lay ruin. Buildings balanced precariously on rotted and twisted beams. They were old, of archaic styles, and seawater lapped at their foundations.
Ollie nudged Gwen, his face aglow. "Will you look at that?" It was a flooded parking lot, ancient automobiles half-covered with water. "That looks like a Mercedes. Did you ever see what they looked like before they merged with Toyota?"
"How long is your memory?" She peered along his pointing arm. "That ugly thing?"
"They were great!" He protested. "If we could get a little closer- Hey! We're walking in water!"
It was true. The water was up to their ankles, and deepening quickly. Magically, of course, they stayed dry.
The recorded narrator continued. "The entire shape of California was changed. It is ironic that attempts to lessen the severity of quakes may have increased the effect. Geologists had tried to relieve the pressure on various fault lines by injecting water or graphite. Their timing was bad. When the San Andreas fault tore loose, all the branching faults went at once. Incredible damage was done, and thousands of lives were lost..."
The water was up to their waists, and nervous laughter was fluttering in the air. "Hadn't pla
"We could ski
Tony clamped his hand down on hers. "Hold it, there. Not for public consumption, dear heart."
Acacia stuck her tongue out at him. He bit at the tip; she withdrew it hastily.
The water was at their chins. The small dark man had disappeared. "Blub," he said. All twenty sightseers chuckled uncomfortably, and a beefy redheaded woman in front of them said, "Might as well take the plunge!", gri
Seconds later there was no choice; the Pacific swirled over their heads. At first it was murky, as mud clouded their view. Then the silt settled, and they had their first look at the sunken city.
Tony whistled appreciatively. The lost buildings of Wilshire Boulevard stretched off in a double row in the distance. Some lay crumpled and broken; others still stood, waterlogged but strong.
The green path carried them past a wall covered in amateurish murals, the bright paints faded. To both sides now, a wide empty stretch of seabottom, smooth, gently rolling, with sunken trees growing in clumps, and a seaweed forest anchored among them
the Los Angeles Country Club? Beyond, a gas station, pumps standing like ancient sentries, a disintegrating hand-lettered sign:
CLOSED
NO GAS TILL 7:00 AM TUESDAY
The small Mediterranean type said, "These are not props. They were taken with a camera. I have been skin diving here."
As the green path carried them down, they saw taller and taller buildings sunk deeper in the muck. Where towering structures had crashed into ruin there were shapeless chunks of cement piled into heaps stories high, barnacled and covered with flora. Fish cruised among the shadows. Some nosed up to the airbreathing intruders and wiggled in dance for them.
Acacia pointed. "Look, Tony, we're coming up on that building." It was a single-story shop nestled between a crumbled restaurant and a parking lot filled with rusted hulks. The path carried them through its doors, and Gwen grabbed Acacia's hand.
"Look. It isn't even rusted." The sculpture was beautiful, wrought from scrap steel and copper, and sealed in a block of lucite. It was one of the few things in the room that hadn't been ruined.
The building had been an art gallery. Now, paintings peeled from their frames and fluttered weakly in the current. Carved wood had swollen and rotted. A pair of simple kinetic sculptures were clotted with mud and sand.
The narrator continued. "Fully half of the multiple-story structures in California collapsed, including many of the ‘earthquake-proof' buildings. The shoreline moved inland an average of three miles, and water damage added hundreds of millions to the total score."
The green path was taking them out of the art gallery, looping back into the Street.
Acacia shook her head soberly, lost in thought. "What must it have been like on that day?" she murmured. "I can't even imagine." Tony held her hand and was silent.
Once people had walked these streets. Once there had been life, and noise, and flowers growing, and the raucous blare of cars vying for road space. Once, California had been a political leader, a trend-setter, with a tremendous influx of tourists and prospective residents. But that was before the Great Quake, the catastrophe that broke California's back, sent her industry and citizenry scampering for cover.
But for Cowles Industries, and a few other large companies that believed in the promise of the Golden State, California would still be pulling itself out of the greatest disaster in American history. The tranquil Pacific covered the worst of the old scars... but they were looking under the bandage now.
Beneath a crumbled block of stone sprawled a shattered skeleton, long since picked clean. Eyes in the skull seemed to flick toward them. Acacia's hand clamped hard on Tony's arm, and she felt him jump, before she saw that a crab's claws were waving within the skull's eye sockets.
Now bones were everywhere. Impassively, the recorded voice went on. "Despite extensive salvage operations, the mass of lost equipment and personal possessions remains buried beneath the waves..."
A woman whispered fearfully to her husband. "Charley, something's happening."
"She's right, you know," said Ollie. "We're seeing more bones than before. A lot more. And something else... there isn't so much mud and barnacles on these old cars."
Gwen almost stepped off the green path, trying to get close enough to check for herself. "I don't know, Ollie..."
Now he was getting excited. "Look, there are more scavengers, too." This was readily apparent. Fish darted into heaps of rubble more frequently now. A pair of small sharks cruised through the area.
They passed another skeleton, but, disturbingly, not all of the clothing had been torn away, and there were strands of meat on the bones. Tiny fish fought over them, clustering like carrion crows.
A pleasure launch had smashed through the window of a jewelry store, and it was surrounded by a mass of wriggling fish. There were no barnacles on it at all.
The recorded narrator had noticed nothing. It blathered on:
"Despite, or perhaps due to, the grotesqueries found in these waters, they are a favorite location for scuba divers and singlesubs..." But nobody was listening. An undercurrent of startled wonder ran through the group, as stones began to shift apparently of their own accord.
"Look!" someone screamed, the scream followed by other fearful, delighted outbursts. A skeletal hand probed out from under a stone, pushed it off with a swirl of suddenly muddied waters. The skeleton stood up, teeth gri
"Over there!"
Two waterlogged corpses floundered from within a shattered bank, looked around as if orienting themselves, and began lumbering toward the green path. They passed a flooded dance hall where death had come in mid-Hustle, and there were additional laughing shrieks as the disco dead boogied to life.
The water swarmed with scavengers of all sizes, and now full-sized sharks were making their appearance. A shark attacked one of the walking dead. The green-faced zombie still had meat on its bones. It flailed away ineffectually as the carnivore ripped off an arm.