Blackout

by Edward W. Robertson

  Ness ramped up the sub's engines to full power.

  Tristan rocked back. "What are you doing?"

  His face had gone pale. "They're not gonna let that stand. They're going to come hit Catalina. Before then, we have to get as many people off the island as possible."

  "For the record, I think this is supremely dumb." Tristan moved to the control room doorway. "But if we're doing this, we have to let the islanders know we're almost there. We won't have time to wait for them to show up."

  Ness glanced away from the helm, smiling at her. "I'll get a little closer, then pop us above the surface. You give them a wave."

  She ran toward their bunk and grabbed the sheet off the bed. The engines hummed steadily. She headed for the ramp and climbed to the top, waiting for the status light to indicate they'd cleared the surface. As soon as it switched over, she popped the hatch and hauled herself out into the gray midday.

  The sub was already slowing in preparation to dock. On the shore, a handful of people had emerged to goggle at the wreckage of the jet sinking beneath the waves. Others watched the skies. Some turned their attention to the sub. Tristan whipped the white sheet over her head and whipped it back and forth. Given the crudity of her semaphore, she wasn't sure if the message would transmit, but a few people ran off to their houses.

  By the time the sub came alongside the pier, close to twenty people were gathered along it, with more jogging in from the streets.

  "Get in as fast as you can," Tristan hollered, assembling the gangplank. "If you're carrying anything that's slowing you down, throw it into the water. Move!"

  They ran toward her like she was opening a Wal-Mart on Black Friday. As she helped them up the ladder of the tower, her walkie talkie squawked.

  "What's up out there?" Ness crackled. "Everything all right?"

  "For now," Tristan said. "Got twenty people here. Another ten on their way."

  "That leaves space for thirty more. Forty, if we pack 'em tight."

  Replying would only aggravate him. Right then, it wasn't a matter of space. It was a matter of time.

  By the time the initial twenty were inside, the first of the stragglers were jogging down the pier. As their shoes thumped the sub's hull, the keen of a jet engine pierced the sky.

  Goosebumps shot across her body. Head tipped back, she lifted her walkie. "Ness. Get ready to go. Pronto."

  "I've only seen a few more show up. We still got plenty of room."

  "Listen." She held up the walkie talkie, keeping its talk button pressed down. The wail of the engine grew louder by the instant. "Hear that? That's a Swimmer jet."

  "There's still people out there. We leave them and they'll die!"

  "And if we stay another minute, we'll die with them." On the shore, an old man was running toward the dock, listing under the weight of the luggage in his right hand. Tristan climbed into the tower and closed the hatch over her head. She lifted her walkie. "The hatch is sealed. No one else is getting in."

  "God damn it!" While Ness was still swearing, the engines hummed to life.

  Tristan waited for the hatch status to indicate they were underwater before descending into the ship. The refugees smelled like sweat and fear. She jogged past them and made way for the control room.

  They were running at periscope depth. As the town receded, three wedge-shaped fighters streaked across the clouds. Lights winked from their bellies. A dozen lances of smoke stabbed toward the land.

  The shores of Avalon vanished beneath a blanket of fire.

  4

  Every war unfolded in its own way, but the road to victory always followed the same course. First, you removed your vulnerabilities from the field. Second, you found the enemy's weak underbelly. And third—you tore it open.

  With the submarine and its crew on the way to Catalina, and her people packing up their belongings to depart the Dunemarket, Raina was hardening her armor against harm. No citizens to protect meant no territory to protect. Her warriors could flow as they pleased, pressing or retreating wherever it was advantageous to do so.

  The next step was to grow eyes and ears across the L.A. basin. Scouts. Some on foot, others bicycle-mounted dragoons. She summoned her warriors to the grove in the Seat, assigning some to the coast, where they would watch from the buildings, and others inland, where they would roam, seeking any sign of the foe.

  As they prepared to depart, she drew aside Becka, a dark-eyed girl Henna had always spoken highly of.

  "For you, I have a special assignment," Raina said. "I'm sending Walt and Carrie with you."

  Becka cocked her head. "He led the victory against the first invasion. I'm honored."

  "It is an honor. But it's also a responsibility."

  "How so?"

  "I believe he is skilled. I also believe he is loud and prone to letting his pride turn him into a fool."

  The girl smiled thinly. "I will keep him safe. From Swimmers and from himself."

  Raina clenched the girl's shoulder, then climbed onto a stump to address the others. "If you see the aliens, do nothing but watch them. If they come too close, you are to run away. The only time you fight them is when your life depends on it. Do you understand?"

  "Not really," Walt said. "If we have a shot at one of them, why not take it?"

  "Because there is a chance they're not here for war," Raina said. "And if war is what brings them here, then I don't want to show them the length of our claws until we're poised to rip out their throats."

  This seemed to satisfy him. The scouts departed, scattering across the streets. Raina watched in silence. Why had she been given so little time to organize her new nation? With a few more months, she might have drawn her townships closer together, or worked out ways for them to speak across distances, like the old people had done. The scouts had too much territory to cover and too few tools to police it with.

  Then again, too much to do and too little to get it done with seemed to be the new way of the world.

  Late that afternoon, Wendy returned to report that everyone within the borders of the Greater Dunemarket—which extended west along Palos Verdes Peninsula, east to the harbor, and as far north as PCH—had been alerted to the aliens' return and Raina's response to it. The majority had volunteered to fight.

  As they discussed dispatching a long-range venture to secure enough arms and ammunition for an extended fight, a faint whining noise sounded to the northwest. Across the low hills of the Seat, men and woman tipped back their heads.

  A triangular vessel shot forth from the hills, ripping across the blue of the sky. Straight toward San Pedro. People cried out, dashing for the cover of the trees. Seized by an impulse she didn't understand, Raina wandered away from the grove to stand in the knee-high grass. The jet swept forth, outspeeding the sound of its own travel; reminded that sound took time to cross distances, Raina better comprehended how light could, too. The plane passed overhead and continued out to sea.

  Mauser ran up to her, brushing the dust from his t-shirt. He must have thrown himself flat. "What in the name of Thor do you think you're doing, Raina? Trying to get yourself strafed?"

  "I wanted them to see that I wasn't afraid."

  "Well, I am. If you die, our imaginary constitution names me as your successor. Do you think I want to deal with this bullshit?"

  "It wasn't here to attack," she said. "It's doing the same thing we are. Taking the measure of the enemy."

  Mauser squinted across the Seat. "Then it would behoove us to relocate our capital someplace less public. The Home Depot ought to be spacious enough."

  It was close and it was vast. A good choice. They spent the remaining daylight moving their operations up the road to the store. Bullet holes pocked its walls, mementoes of the battle when Anson had seized the Dunemarket, but the structure was sturdy.

  Night fell. The Home Depot was cavernous, exposed to the offshore breeze; Raina was given a coat. As she considered a massive map of Los Angeles looted from the DMV down the street, Mauser rejoined
her, a sour look on his face.

  "We've heard back from Anson's former colony in Compton," he said. "Most of them are on their way here. But a non-insignificant fraction refuses to leave."

  "Why not? Those who can't fight will be taken to safety. And those who can fight will help us win."

  "Oh, they have any number of excuses. Some don't want to leave their homes. Others think we don't have a chance to win, so fighting will only make it worse. And so on."

  "Send someone back to them. They will not refuse my order."

  Mauser rolled his lower lip between his teeth. "Before the ship came, your orders as ruler would have drawn water. After today's revelations, however, I'm afraid too many are being ruled by fear."

  * * *

  As the smallest hours of the night arrived, she still hadn't slept. Neither had many of her warriors and aides. At last, however, the Home Depot grew quiet enough for her to slip away and jog through the coldness of the night to the house she kept in the neighborhood south of the Dunemarket.

  There, she went into the den, lifted a crumbling couch cushion, and picked up a sack. Its contents clicked hollowly. She went to the garage, dragged out her bike, and eyed its metal frame. She didn't like bikes. Their wheels and speed separated you from the land you traveled through, dulling your senses to its ways and moods. The best way to travel was on your own feet. That was the only way to feel a place as it was.

  But that night, she didn't have the time to let her feet lead her to answers. With a silent apology to the hills, she saddled up and rode south, whisking through the black streets, dodging around fallen palm fronds and lime-sized stones kicked onto the asphalt. As the road met the coast and bent west, she glanced out to sea. Where was the submarine? How many people had it ferried from Catalina? If the wind knew the answers, it held its tongue.

  After a few miles, she turned down a side road and wound through the hills. Waves washed against the sand. She came to a stop, leaning over her bike as she gazed at the house where she and her adoptive parents—her real ones had died in the Panhandler—had lived in the days before Karslaw sailed from Catalina to conquer the peninsula.

  It was a place of great power. Her father had died there, slain by the barbarian king. And in that same moment, Raina had been born as Raina.

  She walked to the sand beside the dock. The boat she and her father had used to fish was long gone. She found a spot above the tideline that was free of kelp and sat. From the bag, she took out two white objects. One was the skull of a shark. His name was Reek, though he was too old now to do much of that. And the other was the skull of Karslaw.

  Overhead, the moon was a silver claw scratching at the clouds. Thin. Hungry.

  She held Reek in her hands. "You haven't spoken to me in a while. Are you ashamed that you failed to look out for my family? Well, I failed, too. Before I could do that, I had to become more than I was."

  She set the shark's skull in the sand and took up Karslaw. "And you were the one who taught me what I needed to become. Do you resent me for killing you? I wouldn't blame you. But I did what you only dreamed of. I united the peninsula. And much more. You should be proud that your student surpassed you."

  Both skulls were quiet. The surf wasn't, but it was only humming tunelessly. She closed her eyes, smelling the salt and the rot of the kelp, which was almost pleasant. When she opened her eyes, no new truths had appeared.

  She lifted her eyes to the moon. "And you. I've always served you. Perhaps you expect another offering. And I tell you this: you are too greedy. You ask for too much. Your hunger knows no end. I don't need to make you an offering, because you have already decided the fighting must never end—and that you will thus always have all the sacrifices you need."

  Raina stopped, allowing the sliver of moon the chance to answer, or for Reek or Karslaw to offer criticism or support. When none of them spoke up, she took off her shoes, picked up the skulls, and approached the surf. Cool water washed over her feet, bubbles swirling and hissing as the water met and mixed with the earth and the air. This was where no element held sway. Where everything changed by the second, pulled in all directions.

  "Maybe I have been wrong about this place," Raina said. "Maybe it doesn't want us here. All these troubles, is that its way of warning us that it's poison? That it will kill anyone who tries to feed from it? I thought it was mine, but perhaps it is its own. Or was I right all along? And it is worth so much that everyone wants it.

  "I know this: I'm being tested. I don't mind this. Places must be earned. So must survival. Those who expect their lives to be handed to them will get nothing—or have those lives taken away. But how many tests must I endure? First came the Panhandler. Then the aliens. Karslaw. Anson. And now the aliens have come back. If a test never ends, then how can you pass it? All you can do is cast it aside and walk away."

  Jaw clenched, she gazed up at the moon. "Is that what you're trying to teach me? That there is no winning? I am tempted like never before to take my nation from here. Once I was a warrior, so war was all I knew. But now I am more. A leader. And my people deserve more. Whether this land is good or evil, there are other places. I doubt any of them are as troubled as here."

  She waded a step deeper, the tide gushing around her shins. "But I can't leave now. Because this test feels like it's the final one. As all the others, I will defeat it. And if it is not the end—if I cast it down and another test rises to take its place—then I will truly know the tests are endless. That we will need to seek another home."

  Raina let out a long breath. "Some of my people refuse to accept what we face. They'd rather hide in their holes. But you used to drive fish from their caves, Reek. And you, Karslaw, used to drive people from their homes. For their own good, I will do the same."

  She drew her sword and held it to the moon. Silver light glinted along its killing edge. Would the moon see this bloodless gesture as a taunt? Then let it. Raina would no longer be guided by something whose hunger could never be filled.

  * * *

  In the morning, she woke to the smell of dust and wood. She was in the Home Depot. She didn't like the space, but that was the least of her worries.

  There were many reports to digest. During the night, a pair of scouts had heard a jet along the coast to the north. A lone alien had been reported in the streets of Long Beach, but it had evaded pursuit in a park. They had heard nothing from Catalina, which boded well for the evacuation.

  Bike-riding scouts had returned from Anson's former colony in Glendale. As in Compton, some of Raina's new citizens had agreed to convene in San Pedro, but half had not.

  "This isn't real to them," she said. "So I will go and make it real."

  Mauser's brow arched high enough to span the bay. "You want to go talk to these idiots yourself?"

  "When the hawk comes, it's the mouse's instinct to go to ground. That's what we did yesterday when the jet flew over our land. I will drive them out of hiding."

  "And while you're out, what happens if the aliens make a run at us and we need you here to make a decision?"

  Raina smiled at him. "Then we'll have to rely on your counsel instead."

  "These people are too stupid to remove themselves from harm's way, yes? Then maybe it would be better for the realm's gene pool if we allow them to get themselves killed."

  "If they were wise enough to lead themselves, they wouldn't need me."

  "I think this calls into question your wisdom," Mauser said. "Take bikes, at the very least. And please don't get yourself killed trying to rescue these clowns."

  She stretched down and touched her toes, then the ground. "I'll be back within three days. By then, the submarine will be finished with Catalina and can bring the last of our people south."

  She put together a team: Becka, Red, Mia, and two other warriors, including Shana, who was one of the best shots with a rifle outside of Bryson. A small enough group to pass unseen, but large enough to handle most trouble. They requisitioned bicycles and rode north up Vermont
. To their right, the 110 freeway hung above the streets, a river of concrete. Cars rusted on the sides of the road. They swerved their bikes past the wrecks clogging the intersections.

  Sunlight failed to reflect from the filthy windows of the shops and apartments lining the street. Raina took the measure of the air. It felt apprehensive, but not yet threatened.

  "You know these places," Raina said to Red. "How many are in each?"

  Red scratched the beard that gave him his name. "Couple dozen. Anson liked to keep his communities small."

  "Do you know the people there?"

  "A few by name. But it's not like we were going out bowling together."

  Raina gripped her handlebars.

  They skimmed through Carson, then cut east. Weeds grew from the schoolyards. The houses had bars on the windows. Raina had seen them before—growing up, one of her houses had been barred as well—but she was still struck by them. They were cages. Cages were supposed to teach people that they were animals, or that the cage was the only place they could be safe. But some people learned a different lesson: how to escape. And how to keep yourself from ever being caged again. She wished more of these people had survived. They would have been a great boon to the Dunemarket. But the virus had killed everyone equally, the weak and the strong alike.

  Red directed them to the high school where Anson had established the colony. A baseball backstop sat behind a field of green shoots. The residents were now Raina's citizens, but she approached the school's brown front doors with caution, keeping her hands where they could be seen to be empty.

  The door creaked open. A man emerged, heavyset and tan. He wore a pistol on his hip, but the expression on his face was too stressed for that of a warrior.

  "I know you," he said, homing in on Raina. "What do you want?"

  She gestured to the building and the city. "Bring me everyone who remains here."