"Mine is mine."
His laser hung from his hip. "I didn't know anyone was here."
Her fingers curled around the handle. "No one does."
"Wait," he said. She was no more than 14, and under the dirt and darkness on her face may have been younger yet. Her blonde hair was hacked short, sprouting in greasy twists. "We're going to destroy them."
"The angels?"
"The aliens. The ones who gave us the disease."
The girl slipped forward half a foot, keeping her soles close to the floorboards. "You'll die. That's all."
"Then let me die trying."
"My dad showed me how to salt meat. To smoke it over a fire and dry it."
A wave of hot prickles tingled over Raymond's face. "Let me go. I won't hurt you."
She raised the thick blade. "I know."
"The thing on my belt is a gun," he blurted. "It looks like a Nintendo controller, but it's killed people. Humans. I don't want it to kill any more."
Her nostrils flared. She shifted her grip on the tape-wrapped handle. She slid back, feet rasping, disappearing inch by inch into the blackness beyond the flashlight. He shifted the beam but she was gone. He sidled for the door, reaching for the laser pistol. At the door, there was a moment he had to glance down to reach for its handle, and he was certain it would end, then, the cold bite of the jungle-knife's steel smashing through his throat. Then he was in the street, where palm fronds whispered and bugs piped from rotting wood.
He found bottled water in the back of a garage and returned to the gazebo. Anna and David were asleep in the blankets, his arm slung over her chest. Raymond stared into the night.
The road carried westward, a warm corridor between the mountains and the sea. Days later, at Lompoc, a sign pointed them toward the base, and they followed that road over low hills and the shrubs and the grass, smelling pollen, salt, and a cold that never quite came no matter how late the hour.
He expected bunkers, silos, flat pavements, barb wire on concrete ramparts. Instead, Vandenberg's main presence was a big white building block, one face painted with a giant American flag, which stood across from a factory-like jumble of curved pipes and liquid reservoirs, all massive. A huge scaffold rose from the flattened top of a hill. Narrow roads ringed the site, turning off for scattered outbuildings. Waves washed the shore a hundred yards away.
Amidst the scaffolding, naked missiles waited in the sun.
30
"Well, kid," Otto said, gazing at the blue and yellow cloth, "I'm damn sure glad my friends are too dead to witness this sorry business."
Walt laughed. He couldn't help it. He'd been laughing since he thought of it: their superweapon, a wad of circus-colored nylon. A basket that had once carried wealthy lovers in the sunrise above the California coast would instead lift as many of the highest-yield, lowest-metal explosives Otto could rig up. It was perhaps the dumbest idea Walt could have thought of, and back in the Thai restaurant where they'd waited out the enemy jets, Otto had said as much.
"You think they don't have radar? Only chance we got is if they're laughing too hard to shoot straight."
"Balloons don't always show up on radar. Depends on the equipment. The weather."
"These are an advanced species that smashed us like a wine glass at a Jew's wedding."
"Wrong. It doesn't have to be a wine glass."
Otto scowled, hunched over the booth's table. "Why don't we steal a fighter jet instead? Crash it into the carrier's bridge?"
"Because," Walt said, stepping to the boards across the windows, "I don't know how to fly a jet."
"You do a balloon?"
"My parents owned them. We take it up at night, up high, then drift down, as slow as we can. They hunt by movement. Maybe their sensors do too."
"And if they do see us, what then? You gonna bail out the side?" Otto shook his shaggy head. "Falling from a mile up, the ocean's like concrete. The sharks will spread what's left of you on their toast."
"Probably. So the fuck what?"
Otto spread his thick, callused hands. "I'm just getting this out here so I can scream I told you so on the way down."
That had been that. On the spot, Walt had checked the restaurant's voluminous yellow pages—if this thing worked, they'd have to establish Phone Book Day—and found a purveyor of hot air balloon rides a ways up the coast. He'd returned to the tunnels for supplies and struck out the next night while Otto stayed behind to build more things that went boom (he claimed he'd manufactured his own C-4 when his platoon ran out in Vietnam) and try to scout out the structure of the monstrous ship hanging over the bay.
It took two days to find the balloonery. Two more to make sure all the equipment was available and working and then get back to Otto. Another three to load up their wagons—literally; they'd picked up little red wagons in a Toys "R" Us, thinking they'd be easier to move than wheelbarrows and more stable than shopping carts—and roll up the coast to the hills. They spent one last day preparing, testing and setting up the gear, going over Otto's dozens of sketches of the gigantic ship's external geography and hypothetical interiors. That evening, with the balloon spread on the grass, its deflated nylon envelope tethered to the ground, Walt waited for the night to deepen.
He kept one eye on the sky, waiting for the meteoric streak of the ICBM that would spell the final death of the city. Otto said Lompoc was some 150 miles upstate, the air force base just past that. It had been more than a week since the others had left. Even if Raymond and company stayed on foot, they could be there by now, making the final calibrations before turning the key.
"Will you quit the skygazing?" Otto groused. "You'll get your chance to kill yourself soon enough. No way they figure out how to get a missile off the pad, let alone aim the damn thing."
"About as likely as taking down a mothership with a hot air balloon."
"You're darker than a snake's asshole, son."
A mist had rolled in with the night, blocking out the stars. He would have liked to see them one last time. The clouds had their silver lining, though. He wouldn't have to rig up anything to conceal the burner's flame.
"I'm going to miss it," he said.
"Shit."
"This isn't a 'wax nostalgic because I'm about to die' thing. I didn't get enough time. I was afraid for so long."
"Yeah, well, life ain't fair, is it."
"Obviously not."
Otto squinted up at the clouds. "You had another eighty years to live, what would you do?"
"I would walk around," Walt said. "Catch fish. Build fires. Go swimming. Sail. Watch stars. Fry mushrooms. Read books and throw them away."
"Simple life, huh? What if you break your leg fifty miles outside Vancouver? Or you get to be sixty and your knees start barking any time you walk further than the corner? What do you do then?"
"Die."
Otto grinned. "Me, I was looking forward to a couple decades of couch-side NFL Sundays and cold Millers."
"If you can build bombs, you can brew your own beer." Above, silent black clouds drifted inland, bound for mountains and rivers and deserts. "I wouldn't wait to do what I want to do or for things that are wrong to get better on their own. You keep moving forward. Every day, you walk on."
Otto nodded. Walt watched the clouds. Finally, it was time.
He lugged out the fan—gas-powered, fortunately—and started it up, packing cold air through the balloon's mouth. The envelope rippled, slowly swelling. Otto leaned into the bulging nylon, smoothing it against the light wind. After ten minutes, the envelope was plump, approaching round. Walt slid on his gloves and flipped on the burner with an airy whump. Flames shot for the balloon's open mouth. Heat reached Walt's face. The envelope tautened, began to bob from the ground. Finally, it rose, righting the wicker basket with it, tugging its tethers.
He helped Otto load the basket with blanket-wrapped blocks of what the old man had assured him was C-4. He frowned at the burner. Well, whatever. Waking up in the morning was a risk, too. Otto
handed him a pack of laser pistols and bottled water and rope and thick plastic hooks. Walt waved him in. The old man climbed into the basket with knees bent, hands outstretched like he might fall overboard at the slightest sway. Walt smiled and cast off the lines.
He opened the burner. The basket lifted, rocking faintly. Otto hunkered down against its wicker wall, knuckles tight on the lip. The balloon lifted into the darkness. The field fell away.
Otto swallowed. "If I jumped out right now, think you could rig this stuff on your own?"
"Quit barfing and try to enjoy yourself."
They were high enough to see the ship now, a great disc of lights and bays half-hidden by the low marine clouds. The wind blew from the sea, nudging them inland, and Walt took the balloon higher, hunting for a stream that would take them out to sea. The air cooled. An enemy jet lifted from LAX, blue lights winking. It soared and banked north. Towards them. Walt hung there, hand on the switch of the silent burner.
"Should have brought parachutes," he said.
"I'd prefer a rocket launcher."
The vessel tracked closer, rumbling below the clouds. It would be on them in a minute. Walt's stomach sank. He'd wanted to set foot on the carrier, at least. Get off a single bomb. Show them they weren't untouchable. Otto put his hand on his shoulder. Walt nodded.
The jet curved out to sea, lifting toward the waiting carrier. Walt laughed and hit the burner. It roared, spouting flame into the waiting envelope. Sea-mist pickled his face. Gauzy clouds wrapped them up, freeing Walt to rise and rise until he found the stream.
The balloon slowed its inland drift, swayed. He cut the burner. The balloon eased toward the shore.
Toward the waiting ship.
31
Three metal spears rose sixty feet from the tarmac, sleek and cold and massive. Scaffolding buffered the rockets, one side of the support structure a blocky rectangle taller than the missiles themselves, metal steps like a fire escape running up its side, the second section standing there like a metal power pole, wires dangling between it and the rocket. The weapons looked more than ready to down an alien ship. They looked ready to end the world.
"Amazing," David said.
"I thought they'd be underground," Raymond said. "In Wyoming."
"They must have brought them here during the virus. Ready to strike down the perpetrators."
"It'll just take one," Anna said. "What do you want to do with the other two?"
Wind ruffled the grass. The afternoon warmth had leeched away, lost as the sun dropped into a half-haze of spray and what might soon be clouds. Unseen, a red-tailed hawk shrieked across the hills. It felt unreal, something from a dream, a half-remembered story told to him while he was high.
"Let's move," Anna said. "Split up and secure the grounds."
Raymond straightened. "I think we should stick together. It isn't that big."
"You got lungs, don't you? Something happens, make them shout."
He glanced to David for support, but the man was already fumbling his laser from its improvised holster. Anna worried him. Her assumption of leadership was a disaster in the making: she was impulsive, angry, enthusiastic to the point of being crazy. They could easily have been killed during the beach massacre. Vandenberg looked empty, but right there nuclear missiles sat out in broad daylight. They were power incarnate. The kind of thing that would attract survivors and occupiers alike.
With sudden clarity, he knew he should shoot her. It was what Walt would have done. There would be no arguing her around. But too much of him simply didn't care. Of course she was crazy, a ready murderer, maneuvering to seize power even in situations, like their hypothetical future society, that didn't yet exist. That was just the way things worked. That's what Mia's death had revealed to him. People could be killed at any time, be it on purpose, accidentally, or through cosmic indifference. No dream was guaranteed—most would fail, no matter how hard you worked. Everything decayed, and too often, people were actively helping to make things break down that much faster. All you could do was get away. That's what he should have done. He should have gone to Colorado with Mia. Built his own little corner of the world with the person he'd loved.
He stalked off across the grounds. Jeeps and massively long flatbed trucks sat empty, dirt caking their windows. An assault rifle rusted in the weeds. Birds twirped from the tall white radar stand, nests woven into the crotches of its metal joints. He walked to the curve in the road and stared out to sea. It was just as empty, wasn't it? He turned to brush dust from the window of a metal shack, peering inside at dark computers, radios, and desks. When he finished his sweep, he reconvened with David and Anna at the metal doors of the big white block that seemed to serve as the command station. David strained against a metal bar he'd levered under the handle. Anna stood back, arms folded. The door rattled; David fell away, panting.
"Let Raymond give it a shot," she said.
"There's something at the bottom." Raymond pointed to a flat white strip glued across the door's lower edges. "Let me take a—"
"You just have to lean into it." Anna took the rod from David and bore down. The veins in her forehead squiggled under her skin. The door popped open, juddering, the white strip snapping free. Its broken edges glittered with bright metal. "Told you."
Dust and death wafted from the dark entry. They fetched flashlights from their packs. David tried the lights to no luck. Down a dusty hallway, another set of doors stood closed, sealed by some kind of magnetic lock that now lacked the power to keep them out. The corridor opened to a wide, spacious room that had been emptied of all equipment and furniture. On the floor, bodies lay in two rows. Desiccated skin hung from the bones. Brown stains spread beneath the remains. There was little smell.
Further on, the computers were black, lifeless. Raymond didn't know why he'd expected any different. He was about to sit down there in the middle of the floor when David found the stairwell to the basement. The man nodded, cheeks wrinkling around his small smile.
He had the generator on in minutes. Lights flickered, blinking over the dust griming every chair, keyboard, and monitor. On the top floor, the Pacific sunset streamed through the dirty windows, illuminating two dried-out bodies in uniforms, a fallen pistol, and a pair of keys glinting from the room-wide terminal.
David reached for one with a single finger, withdrawing as soon as he made contact. "Oh my."
Anna stared at the controls. "Is that all we need? Can we do this?"
"I'll have to get into the software. We have no idea where those things are currently aimed—China, I'd expect, perhaps North Korea. The targeting will have to be reconfigured entirely."
"That's not telling me the answer to what I asked."
"This is military software. It may have military-grade encryption. I won't know until I dig in."
"Start digging. I'm going to get on the radio and see if the ship's still there."
Raymond honked with laughter. "We don't even know if it's still in LA?"
"So what? The 'I' in 'ICBM' doesn't stand for 'in-state.'"
In the orange glow of the waning sun, he laughed again. Had the plan really been so threadbare? What if the keys hadn't been here? The generator hadn't worked? What if the mothership had since left for parts unknown? Rolling around on that dingy subway platform, this had been his big bright idea? At the time, lost in the fog of the bombing in the street, it had felt foolproof. Now that he was standing in the control room, hours or mere minutes from a launch, he didn't see how they'd even made it this far.
"Oh." David leaned over his monitor. The text was too far away for Raymond to read. "There's no security at all."
"This is strange," Raymond said.
"What's strange is those nukes weren't launched just for the fuck of it." Anna pointed at the two withered bodies. "That's why they're dead. One of them wanted to."
"You weren't here."
"When you remove all other explanations, the one that remains must be correct."
David clacke
d keys. "I don't know what I'm doing. With a few hours, I may be able to rectify that."
"Take your hours. I'll be on the radio." She strode from the room. Raymond drifted to the window and stared out as if he were keeping watch. David didn't seem to notice. The window faced west and the sun was on the sea and sinking so fast he could see it moving through the mist. It seemed like it should hurt, staring at it like that, but it didn't. The sun slipped away. He blinked against the greenish afterimage floating across his eyes.
"Can you really do this?" he said.
"Perhaps if I didn't have to answer questions about whether I can do this."
"Oh."
"Sorry, I'm all frizzle-frazzled here." David shook out his fingers, breath whooshing. "I don't tell missiles when and where to explode. I code websites about pre-Elizabethan leather-tanning."
Raymond stared out to sea. "Will we have to shield our eyes?"
David swiveled in his seat. "Does it look like you can see Los Angeles from here?"
"From the launch."
"The launch. I wouldn't think so."
"I'd like to watch it. It should be remembered."
David hunched over his keys. Clouds massed, thick and gray. The light flowed off to the west. Anna returned some time later, yanking him away from memories of trying to find Mia purple shells along the beach.
"They're still there," she said. "If you can trust somebody from Salt Lake City, anyway."
"Mm," David said.
"How's it coming in here?"
"Along."
"Good. Goodness." Her protruding eyes settled on Raymond. "What are you doing for the cause?"
"What am I doing?"
"You look like you're reading over David's shoulder. Nobody likes it when you read over their shoulder."
"What else is there to do? Should I sweep up?"
"You could be looking for food and water. There must be some. I bet they have some very nice guns, too. Do you think the batteries in this alien shit will last forever?"
"I'm going to watch the rocket launch," he said. "The Twinkies and M-16s will still be there in the morning."
The Breakers Series: Books 1-3 Page 29