A helicopter buzzed overhead, firing a rocket into theday. The explosion rattled her windows. She couldn't see what had been blownup, but she hoped the explosion had taken plenty of those things with it. Shehalted the vehicle at a stop sign, more out of habit than anything else. Otherthan the noise of the helicopters in the sky and the haze that crept throughthe city, it seemed like nothing more than an ordinary day in Portland. Whatwould she be doing now if this were just a typical day in June? She'd probablybe making lunch for Kevin while her husband bashed away on his laptop, tryingto craft some sort of young adult fiction novel that would sell in themillions, so he could quit his job. He said he knew the formula. He said he hadcracked the code. She believed him, though there was no proof that he heldwithin his head the code to capture the hearts of millions of teenage girls.
She would probably be putting together some sort ofsandwich assortment, ratcheting up the air conditioning, and fighting thetemptation to open a bottle of wine. Kevin would be in his room playing videogames or down the street playing street hockey with one of his many friends,dirty little things whose noses always seem to be runny. There she would be,fighting the urge to get drunk by slathering mayo on generic, grocery storebread. The new world wasn't all bad, she guessed, as she grabbed the openbottle of wine off the seat next to her and took a long slug from it. It wasone of those single-serving bottles. Just enough for a good pug in the car.There was a pile of them in a shopping bag on the passenger seat.
Sometimes, in the world before, Katie would pick up acouple of them, and knock them back in the car while waiting for Kevin tofinish up with soccer practice. Soccer... there was one thing she wouldn'tmiss. A bunch of kids running around kicking a ball for ninety minutes whileover-aggressive parents rooted on little Johnny as if he were actuallysomething special. Kevin was nothing special. She knew that. She was realistic.He probably would have grown up to be a banker or a sales rep somewhere,something average, something soul-sucking. Katie lowered the window and tossedthe empty bottle out of the window. She grabbed another one and wasconcentrating on opening it up when a garbage truck flew by her parked car andplowed into the steel loading door of a warehouse across the street.
She managed to twist the cap off of the bottle of wine,and she knocked it back. Nothing like a little Crane Lake chardonnay, while youwatched your favorite new soap opera, How the World Stopped Turning. Shewatched the legs of a dead thing jitter back and forth as it tried to extricateitself from between the shredded steel of the rolling door and the nowdestroyed van. On the back of the van was a smiling plumber in blue overallsholding a toolbox. "What are you so happy about?" she asked.
There was no answer, so she stepped on the accelerator.Memorial Coliseum was only a few miles away, but she had already gone throughthe easy part. Now she was entering North Portland, a vastly more populatedarea of the city, home to hotels, convention centers and the two big arenas inthe city, the Memorial Coliseum and the place where the Blazers played. Thatbuilding's name had changed so many times, that she wasn't sure what to call itanymore. For the first decades of its life, it had been called the RoseGarden... everyone still called it that, though the rights to the building hadbeen dealt to some corporation or other. No one cared. It was still the RoseGarden, and it was far larger and more secure than the Memorial Coliseum.
She drove down Grand Ave. to get there. She was familiarwith the road, due to the fact that every time Kevin made the honor roll, hewould inevitably get a coupon for a free Blazers ticket. Only his ticket wasfree; whoever accompanied him had to pay. Most of the time, her husband wouldgo, but she had wound up being forced to go a few times. Kevin loved theBlazers, as did seemingly every boy that grew up in Portland, and most of thegirls too. Katie found them disgusting, self-involved, and sporting egos thatseemed to barely fit within the confines of the Rose Garden. But she loved herson, so she went, spending exorbitant amounts of money on beers as she sat andwatched Kevin root his team on, arguing every call, and cheering with everybasket.
Grand Ave. was not empty. In normal times, Grand Avenuewas a wide street, several lanes across that ran south to north throughPortland. It was a couple blocks removed from the Oregon Convention Center, andit was lined with hotels, office buildings, and restaurants. Some sort of conventionmust have been going on, because many of the people she saw were wearinglanyards with credentials around their necks. They were dead, of course, stuckattending a convention for the rest of eternity. They blocked the road withtheir large backsides and cheap suits, blood staining their generic, button-upshirts.
As she wove through the people, she wondered what sort ofconvention they had been attending. They didn't look like comic book geeks orauto enthusiasts. Maybe it was a boring conference, like one of those one'sthat Jason sometimes attended, flying off to some boring town in Iowa orMissouri to attend a conference about teachers and teaching. Katie neverunderstood why he even bothered; it wasn't as if he was going to learnanything new.
She decided against a teacher conference as she dodged aplump man, his belt lashed on too tight to create the impression that he had adouble
