The Filter Trap by A. L. Lorentz Page B

secure with you ,” Lee reminded them. “This little Sunday drive wasn’t in our playbook; your pals left our evac out here.”
    The first private shrugged. “Sorry. It’s been nuts out here since the Event.”
    The other private stopped him from saying any more. “We’ve got better things to do than look for some egghead buddy of the president. People up there on the Presidio are cold, tired, wet and hungry. The rest of ‘em are dead.”
    “Thank you for the flare, Private,” Lee said with palpable disdain, turning to the bubbas and Allan. “Onward and upward.”
    The doors of the trucks closed behind them ten steps up the street. Before the engines started up, a door opened and the more obstinate private sprinted over.
    “Look, it wouldn’t be right to let you leave without telling you: we’ve heard chatter of armed breakins and assaults on survivors. I’ll make sure he takes it slow on the way back, and we’ll keep a channel open for you.” He pressed a long-range walkie talkie into Lee’s hand.
    “What’s your first name, Private Thompson?” she asked, looking at his nametag.
    “Friends call me Pete.”
    “Thanks, Pete.”
     
    After the trucks left, the group trudged down Lombard towards Russian Hill. As they climbed higher on the hill, they saw water more than two feet high still gushed and pooled down cross-streets only a few blocks away.
    “Might as well be gasoline around our ankles,” Nana said. “Ain’t doing nothing to put out all these fires.”
    “Must look like the Taiwan Sky Lantern Festival from the sky,” Lee emoted.
    “What’s that?” SIMI asked.
    “A thousand little flames flickering inside boxes eking farther away.”
    “Leave it to you to think of something pretty, Fairy,” SIMI chuckled.
    Allan thought about pretty things too, but didn’t want them to know. Few of the charming old houses of Frisco still stood. On most blocks, with those higher up faring the best, little remained of the once proud Victorians but concrete foundations and a few lonely walls. Allan wondered if the Painted Ladies had also been reduced to dust up on Nob Hill, just south of their route.
    “You see that?” SIMI pointed to one of the windows of a home on the corner, light flickering inside.
    “Christmas tree all lit up?” Lee guessed.
    “Menorah,” LARS noted as they drew closer.
    “It’s still intact,” SIMI noticed with amazement.
    “Thinking about converting?” LARS asked.
    “Maybe. You heard Doc back at Edwards: ‘God did all this.’”
    “I said no such thing! I said it’s beyond our power to understand how this happened.”
    “So, a higher power?”
    “That is not what I meant.”
    “Call it what you want, Doc. I plan to side with the winning team.”
    “Hey!” Lee turned back. “What if your God is trying to kill us with this shit? You think he’d send a tsunami through the whole coastline just to get your ass to San Francisco and show you a perfect menorah? What kind of a God is that?”
    “I’m just sayin’, I ain’t gonna refuse His help right now.”
    “His help ? We wouldn’t need his help if he didn’t start this mess. I need you here with us, siding with us . Right now it doesn’t matter how this happened. We’ve gotta find our evac so she can tell us how this happened.”
    Allan raised his hand. “I very much doubt Jill will know more than—”
    “Shut up!” the exasperated soldiers shouted, taking out their buried qualms with each other on the poor doctor. They quietly prowled the streets further east.
    “Mile and a half to go,” LARS said after a half hour.
    SIMI countered, “Without electric lights it’s hard to tell where the hill stops and the sky begins.”
    “You’ll know it when you get to it,” Allan said from experience. “Your calves will tell you.”
    The hill felt like an endless climb, followed by a slippery descent into a rushing river more than five feet deep rolling down Columbus Avenue cutting between Russian Hill and