Slow Apocalypse by John Varley Read Free Book Online Page A

they might need, and worry about paying for it all later.
    An army surplus store in the Valley sold olive drab five-gallon metal jerry cans that might have been left over from World War Two for all he could tell. There was a lot of empty shelf space around the ones they had left, which was eight. He bought them all and earned a dirty look from a guy who came in the store as he was paying for them.
    The Target store at Santa Monica and La Brea had sold all their plastic gas containers. He called around to some other stores and found they were out, too. But at another surplus store on Hollywood Boulevard he found another dozen metal containers. He bought them all. Then he found a Shell station on Sunset and got in a line with six cars ahead of him. He killed the engine and waited.
    When he got to the pumps he first filled the Escalade. Then he opened the back and started in on the gas cans. As he topped off the third one an attendant approached him. He had bought gas there before and never seen the attendant leave his post behind the counter.
    He said, “Sir, we’re asking customers to only fill two containers, plus their gas tank.”
    “Why is that? It just makes it inconvenient for me, I’ll have to find another station and wait in line again.”
    “I don’t really give a damn.” He looked hassled and frustrated. “It was up to me, I’d sell you all the gas you wanted. But I got a call from the distributor, and he said that’s what we gotta do.” He shrugged. “It won’t matter pretty soon, anyway. I’m gonna be dry in about another hour, and the tanker don’t come by till day after tomorrow.”
    “Just one more can?”
    “You already done three.”
    He was right. Dave could see the people behind him were impatient, so he closed the rear gate and set off in search of more of the precious fluid that he’d taken for granted all his life.
    He found a station with only two cars in line and managed to fill the rest of his cans. On the way home he passed a station with a sign out front that said NO GAS .
    He unloaded the full gas cans and stored them away in the basement.
    On the way back to the Valley he did something he had thought about all day. He called up the members of his posse and invited them over for a friendly game of poker.
    He didn’t remember who first started using “the posse” when referring to his writing team on
Ants!
It wasn’t all that original, but they all liked it better than “the team,” or “the group.” Who wouldn’t? There were five of them, all but one of them first-timers at working together as a comedy-writing team.
    The exception was the oldest, Bob Winston, who had worked on three successful shows before Dave’s, and became a sort of mentor to the rest of them. The sad fact was that Bob was a bit of a burned-out case. He had lost what the rest of them called his comedy mojo, though they would never say it to his face. They respected him, he knew the ropes, how to handle the fickle and demanding higher-ups. Though Dave was the titular leader of the posse, Bob was the father figure, and naturally the one he turned to that day.
    It took a little convincing, but Bob agreed to contact the others when Dave told him how important it was. Naturally, Bob assumed it would be about a new project, which he wasn’t all that interested in, being pretty much retired and well-set for life with residuals coming in steadily. He had invested well when he was one of the hottest writers in town. He had a big house in Holmby Hills that backed up on the Los Angeles Country Club, in the same neighborhood as the Playboy Mansion and the Spelling estate.
    “Can you give me some notion of what your idea is?” Bob asked.
    “It’s not really…” Dave decided it might be easier to assemble everyone if they did think it was a story idea.
    “It’s not a comedy,” he said. “More of a continuing drama.”
    “Give me a hint. Are we talking
The Sopranos
?
Law and Order
? Or more in the