PollyWannaCracker
Really Experienced
- Joined
- Oct 25, 2021
- Posts
- 125
"La Brea"
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Another day in Los Angeles had begun for Kalani "Polly" Walters, sure to be just as boring and unadventurous as any that had proceeded it. She'd moved to California from a little island in the South Pacific just over two years ago, hoping (as did so many young, beautiful women) to find her way into modeling or acting. She'd often been told she had the body and talent for the work. But once she'd gotten here, she'd come to realize that the business required far more than that from a person, and while entertaining potential photographers, directors, and producers on the 'casting couch' was part of that, that wasn't all that had stopped Polly from getting ahead in the industry.
She'd been through a couple of dozen no-future jobs since arriving in the States. She'd been through a dozen men and three women, too, once again with no future there. Over that time, the only thing she'd gained other than six maxed out credit cards was her nickname, 'Polly', which had obviously been derived from her place of origin, Polynesia.
Every morning she got up, showered (to warm up her muscles), exercised, ran, ate, showered again (to clean off those muscles), dressed, and headed out into the city to look for that perfect job that would finally make having traveled more than 6,000 miles to LA worthwhile. She was getting close to being forced into fulfilling her mother's greatest wish these days, which of course was to come home to their little island village and have babies.
This morning, though, would change her life forever, and not necessarily in a good way. She'd headed out to an interview and then to get an inexpensive lunch (all she could afford) when she saw a sign for the La Brea Tar Pits Museum. She'd never been to the historical site before, and she had the time as her next interview wasn't until 3pm. She pulled into the parking lot, retrieved her ID from her wallet, left her purse in her locked up car, and headed toward the museum.
She never made it.
Before she got out of the parking lot, the world around her began to shake. Polly had heard of Southern California's earthquake problems, and coming from an island on the Ring of Fire, she wasn't entirely unfamiliar with the concept either. But it wasn't long before she began to sense that this one was different somehow.
She was relatively far away from any buildings or other structures that might fall atop her, so for the first few seconds she just stayed right where she was. Then, to the south of her, beyond the Museum and just a bit in front of the site's largest 'tar pit', something unbelievable began happening: the earth began to disappear before her very eyes. (Google map, if you want to see the area.)
Polly didn't immediately understand that a sink hole was opening up. She had no experience with such natural (and sometimes human caused) phenomena, and all she could do was just stare as the ground continued to disappear in an ever enlarging circle. Dust and dirt and other natural debris and man made items were rising upwards as the shaking of the earth disturbed the air above it.
The reality of what was happening before her struck Polly when a woman nearer to the growing hole turned to run, screaming in horror, and then simply disappeared. Vanished! Down into the pit that, Polly realized with her own horror, was rapidly coming her way.
She looked about for a safe destination to which to escape, but the earth beneath her feet was beginning to shake harder, then roll almost like waves upon her beloved South Pacific. Polly started to run west but fell when the ground buckled beneath her. She tried to rise, only to again be shaken to the ground.
She looked back south, in the direction of the hole, only to find the asphalt parking lot between it and her disappearing downward as well. And then...
********************
Polly didn't remember falling, didn't remember the sink hole swallowing her up. Her last thought as she came back to consciousness was a sudden feeling of weightlessness, like the one and only time she'd ever skydived. Now, however, she felt everything, with pain being the most obvious sensation.
She was laying on her back on cool, damp grass, looking up into a perfectly blue, perfectly clear, dust and debris free sky. Grimacing, she rose to a sitting position and looked about her, realizing in an instant that she had no idea where she was. It certainly wasn't the Miracle Mile of LA's Wilshire Boulevard.
As she rose slowly to her feet, looking for injuries but finding only that she was sore from seemingly been bounced about violently, Polly surveyed her surroundings and found herself very confused by what she saw. She was in the middle of a clearing of grassy knolls with some scattered shrubbery and trees, which in turn was surrounded on all sides by a tall, thick forest.
Her first thought was that she was in a large, suburban park or maybe farther away from the city in a national forest somewhere else in California, far from downtown LA. That didn't make any sense to Polly, of course, because what she thought were only moments earlier she'd been in the middle of the city, watching the earth literally collapse before and then beneath her.
And yet as natural as the landscape looked, she also found herself surrounded by manmade things, most of which showed signs of damage or total destruction: buildings, cars, light poles, asphalt parking lots, and more were broken, bent, smashed, and crushed, sometimes beyond recognition. And while she was sort of surprised to realize what it was, she also recognized the giant plastic Mastodon statues that had stood on the shore of or were actually in the goo of La Brea's largest still active 'tar pit' (actually, natural asphalt), meant to give visitors a sense of how the giant creatures came to get trapped in the thick substances, dying when they couldn't get out again.
Then, the true horror of the moment came to Polly when she saw a human corpse just yards away. It was a woman, perhaps her own age, laying on the ground, face down, with a city light pole across her back. Polly was about to rush over to help, but the expression on the woman's lifeless face told her it was already too late.
Looking around, searching, Polly began to find other dead as well. Some showed no signs of what had taken their lives, while others had so obviously been crushed or slammed by this thing or that. Polly turned and retched all over the ground when she caught sight of a head laying on the ground near a car. It would be determined later that the man had tried to exit his car during the mayhem, only to have the door slam violently shut on his neck, beheading him in a not so clean fashion.
Polly realized eventually that she was one of the only survivors of whatever had happened to currently be up and around. As she moved about, she came across others: men, women, and children were regaining consciousness, rising, milling about. She greeted each with the same questions: "Are you okay? Are you hurt? Do you know what happened?"
No one had any more knowledge of the earthquake, sink hole, or their current location than Polly did, but she continued to move about greeting people and checking on their status. She rallied a handful, then a dozen, then a score of survivors to search the area for others. Most of those who'd survived were alone here, either because they'd been that way before the event or either couldn't find their friends and family or had lost them to what everyone assumed was a fall.
After an hour or so, most of the survivors had moved to a central open space, where injuries were being examined and food and water distributed from a couple of trucks that had taken the plunge with them. Without any obvious authority structure (there didn't seem yet to be no police or fire fighters or politician types), Polly took charge for the moment, sure that ultimately someone else would step up.
"I can't tell you what's happened here, and if anyone has any ideas, any 'realistic' ideas, I'd love to hear them," she called out after stepping up atop an overturned pickup truck, "but for right now, I think we need to get ourselves organized. We have injured, so we need to know, are there any first responders amongst us, any doctors, nurses, firemen?"
There were, thankfully, some positive responses. Polly continued, "We need someone with some managing skill to get everyone's name. Find some paper and a pen or maybe a tablet or laptop to record names. We need to know who's missing loved ones or friends or coworkers, people who may have fallen here with us but aren't with us right now. There are others, dead but possibly alive, out there in the forest, and we need to find them."
Polly was already aware of a group of four who were combing the nearby woods, where more debris had fallen from Los Angeles. There could be bodies there, too, both living and deceased. "We need to collect food and water, first aid kits. I saw an EMT vehicle over that way, and there was a 'Sparkles' filtered water truck over there. We need to see if the water bottles survived the fall."
"Was it a fall?" someone called out. "Did we fall? And where are we?"
The crowd erupted in conversation and argument, and it took Polly some time to quiet them down so that she could continue, "I don't think any of us really knows what happened to us, but right now, we have to be more concerned with the here and now--"
"Who the fuck put you in charge?" a man snapped from the far side of the crowd.
Most of the survivors turned to look at him, then slowly the faces turned back to Polly. She answered him simply: "No one did."
Then, she gestured to the underbody of the vehicle on which she stood and challenged, "Come on up if you want to be in charge. I didn't ask for this, nor did I ask to have to take your shit for trying to help."
Out in the crowd, some of the others began snapping at the man, telling him to either step up or shut up. He went silent, allowing Polly to continue, "I'm not 'in charge'. I only trying to help."
"Keep going, girl," one of the older women hollered, getting a few agreeable comments and cheers.
Polly couldn't help but smile, pleased with the support. She continued, telling the person who'd volunteered to do the 'census', "We need to know who can do what: types of jobs, type of education, abilities, hobbies--"
"Why?" someone asked, not challenging Polly but just curious. "Why do you need to know stuff like that?"
"We don't know how long we're going to be here," Polly explained. "A day, two days? A week, a month? We need to know who our nurses and doctors are, for obvious reasons. But we may also need to know who can protect us, who can build shelters, who knows what we can or can't eat and drink--"
"We have food," another voice spoke up.
"Yes, for now," Polly pointed out. "But that food isn't going to last us long. There's, what, 40 of us here right now..."
She gestured off to her right where two men were helping an injured but still living survivor back to the clearing. "...and we're finding more. We need to know whether or not we can eat the local plants and animals."
"Flora and fauna," a helpful voice spoke up, clarifying, "Plants and animals."
She continued talking to the others for several minutes before she descended from her 'pedestal' and went to speak to the others individually about what they needed or what they had to offer.
**************************
Characters:
Note: To participate, PM the hostess.
Another day in Los Angeles had begun for Kalani "Polly" Walters, sure to be just as boring and unadventurous as any that had proceeded it. She'd moved to California from a little island in the South Pacific just over two years ago, hoping (as did so many young, beautiful women) to find her way into modeling or acting. She'd often been told she had the body and talent for the work. But once she'd gotten here, she'd come to realize that the business required far more than that from a person, and while entertaining potential photographers, directors, and producers on the 'casting couch' was part of that, that wasn't all that had stopped Polly from getting ahead in the industry.
She'd been through a couple of dozen no-future jobs since arriving in the States. She'd been through a dozen men and three women, too, once again with no future there. Over that time, the only thing she'd gained other than six maxed out credit cards was her nickname, 'Polly', which had obviously been derived from her place of origin, Polynesia.
Every morning she got up, showered (to warm up her muscles), exercised, ran, ate, showered again (to clean off those muscles), dressed, and headed out into the city to look for that perfect job that would finally make having traveled more than 6,000 miles to LA worthwhile. She was getting close to being forced into fulfilling her mother's greatest wish these days, which of course was to come home to their little island village and have babies.
This morning, though, would change her life forever, and not necessarily in a good way. She'd headed out to an interview and then to get an inexpensive lunch (all she could afford) when she saw a sign for the La Brea Tar Pits Museum. She'd never been to the historical site before, and she had the time as her next interview wasn't until 3pm. She pulled into the parking lot, retrieved her ID from her wallet, left her purse in her locked up car, and headed toward the museum.
She never made it.
Before she got out of the parking lot, the world around her began to shake. Polly had heard of Southern California's earthquake problems, and coming from an island on the Ring of Fire, she wasn't entirely unfamiliar with the concept either. But it wasn't long before she began to sense that this one was different somehow.
She was relatively far away from any buildings or other structures that might fall atop her, so for the first few seconds she just stayed right where she was. Then, to the south of her, beyond the Museum and just a bit in front of the site's largest 'tar pit', something unbelievable began happening: the earth began to disappear before her very eyes. (Google map, if you want to see the area.)
Polly didn't immediately understand that a sink hole was opening up. She had no experience with such natural (and sometimes human caused) phenomena, and all she could do was just stare as the ground continued to disappear in an ever enlarging circle. Dust and dirt and other natural debris and man made items were rising upwards as the shaking of the earth disturbed the air above it.
The reality of what was happening before her struck Polly when a woman nearer to the growing hole turned to run, screaming in horror, and then simply disappeared. Vanished! Down into the pit that, Polly realized with her own horror, was rapidly coming her way.
She looked about for a safe destination to which to escape, but the earth beneath her feet was beginning to shake harder, then roll almost like waves upon her beloved South Pacific. Polly started to run west but fell when the ground buckled beneath her. She tried to rise, only to again be shaken to the ground.
She looked back south, in the direction of the hole, only to find the asphalt parking lot between it and her disappearing downward as well. And then...
********************
Polly didn't remember falling, didn't remember the sink hole swallowing her up. Her last thought as she came back to consciousness was a sudden feeling of weightlessness, like the one and only time she'd ever skydived. Now, however, she felt everything, with pain being the most obvious sensation.
She was laying on her back on cool, damp grass, looking up into a perfectly blue, perfectly clear, dust and debris free sky. Grimacing, she rose to a sitting position and looked about her, realizing in an instant that she had no idea where she was. It certainly wasn't the Miracle Mile of LA's Wilshire Boulevard.
As she rose slowly to her feet, looking for injuries but finding only that she was sore from seemingly been bounced about violently, Polly surveyed her surroundings and found herself very confused by what she saw. She was in the middle of a clearing of grassy knolls with some scattered shrubbery and trees, which in turn was surrounded on all sides by a tall, thick forest.
Her first thought was that she was in a large, suburban park or maybe farther away from the city in a national forest somewhere else in California, far from downtown LA. That didn't make any sense to Polly, of course, because what she thought were only moments earlier she'd been in the middle of the city, watching the earth literally collapse before and then beneath her.
And yet as natural as the landscape looked, she also found herself surrounded by manmade things, most of which showed signs of damage or total destruction: buildings, cars, light poles, asphalt parking lots, and more were broken, bent, smashed, and crushed, sometimes beyond recognition. And while she was sort of surprised to realize what it was, she also recognized the giant plastic Mastodon statues that had stood on the shore of or were actually in the goo of La Brea's largest still active 'tar pit' (actually, natural asphalt), meant to give visitors a sense of how the giant creatures came to get trapped in the thick substances, dying when they couldn't get out again.
Then, the true horror of the moment came to Polly when she saw a human corpse just yards away. It was a woman, perhaps her own age, laying on the ground, face down, with a city light pole across her back. Polly was about to rush over to help, but the expression on the woman's lifeless face told her it was already too late.
Looking around, searching, Polly began to find other dead as well. Some showed no signs of what had taken their lives, while others had so obviously been crushed or slammed by this thing or that. Polly turned and retched all over the ground when she caught sight of a head laying on the ground near a car. It would be determined later that the man had tried to exit his car during the mayhem, only to have the door slam violently shut on his neck, beheading him in a not so clean fashion.
Polly realized eventually that she was one of the only survivors of whatever had happened to currently be up and around. As she moved about, she came across others: men, women, and children were regaining consciousness, rising, milling about. She greeted each with the same questions: "Are you okay? Are you hurt? Do you know what happened?"
No one had any more knowledge of the earthquake, sink hole, or their current location than Polly did, but she continued to move about greeting people and checking on their status. She rallied a handful, then a dozen, then a score of survivors to search the area for others. Most of those who'd survived were alone here, either because they'd been that way before the event or either couldn't find their friends and family or had lost them to what everyone assumed was a fall.
After an hour or so, most of the survivors had moved to a central open space, where injuries were being examined and food and water distributed from a couple of trucks that had taken the plunge with them. Without any obvious authority structure (there didn't seem yet to be no police or fire fighters or politician types), Polly took charge for the moment, sure that ultimately someone else would step up.
"I can't tell you what's happened here, and if anyone has any ideas, any 'realistic' ideas, I'd love to hear them," she called out after stepping up atop an overturned pickup truck, "but for right now, I think we need to get ourselves organized. We have injured, so we need to know, are there any first responders amongst us, any doctors, nurses, firemen?"
There were, thankfully, some positive responses. Polly continued, "We need someone with some managing skill to get everyone's name. Find some paper and a pen or maybe a tablet or laptop to record names. We need to know who's missing loved ones or friends or coworkers, people who may have fallen here with us but aren't with us right now. There are others, dead but possibly alive, out there in the forest, and we need to find them."
Polly was already aware of a group of four who were combing the nearby woods, where more debris had fallen from Los Angeles. There could be bodies there, too, both living and deceased. "We need to collect food and water, first aid kits. I saw an EMT vehicle over that way, and there was a 'Sparkles' filtered water truck over there. We need to see if the water bottles survived the fall."
"Was it a fall?" someone called out. "Did we fall? And where are we?"
The crowd erupted in conversation and argument, and it took Polly some time to quiet them down so that she could continue, "I don't think any of us really knows what happened to us, but right now, we have to be more concerned with the here and now--"
"Who the fuck put you in charge?" a man snapped from the far side of the crowd.
Most of the survivors turned to look at him, then slowly the faces turned back to Polly. She answered him simply: "No one did."
Then, she gestured to the underbody of the vehicle on which she stood and challenged, "Come on up if you want to be in charge. I didn't ask for this, nor did I ask to have to take your shit for trying to help."
Out in the crowd, some of the others began snapping at the man, telling him to either step up or shut up. He went silent, allowing Polly to continue, "I'm not 'in charge'. I only trying to help."
"Keep going, girl," one of the older women hollered, getting a few agreeable comments and cheers.
Polly couldn't help but smile, pleased with the support. She continued, telling the person who'd volunteered to do the 'census', "We need to know who can do what: types of jobs, type of education, abilities, hobbies--"
"Why?" someone asked, not challenging Polly but just curious. "Why do you need to know stuff like that?"
"We don't know how long we're going to be here," Polly explained. "A day, two days? A week, a month? We need to know who our nurses and doctors are, for obvious reasons. But we may also need to know who can protect us, who can build shelters, who knows what we can or can't eat and drink--"
"We have food," another voice spoke up.
"Yes, for now," Polly pointed out. "But that food isn't going to last us long. There's, what, 40 of us here right now..."
She gestured off to her right where two men were helping an injured but still living survivor back to the clearing. "...and we're finding more. We need to know whether or not we can eat the local plants and animals."
"Flora and fauna," a helpful voice spoke up, clarifying, "Plants and animals."
She continued talking to the others for several minutes before she descended from her 'pedestal' and went to speak to the others individually about what they needed or what they had to offer.
**************************
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