"PURPOSE," it tried at last, claws spinning in what Ness had come to take as its gesture of frustration/anxiety. "BREAK PURPOSE EVIL"
"So you came here to correct us," he wrote back. "By killing us all."
It shook its head, claws spinning. It began to twitch its tentacle over its pad, but the pad lit up. It went still, listening to a message Ness couldn't hear. It looked up, drawing its tentacle back in the sinuous gesture Ness could now understand without the pad's interpretation:
"TOMORROW"
Ness had expected as much. On the off chance Roan meant to drill him daily, he spent a few hours doing what he was supposed to be here for—surveying the groves for ease of irrigation—then drove back to the plant, where he asked for and received permission to see Shawn. A guard escorted Shawn to the lab, then sat against the wall, folding a dog-eared copy of Maxim over his lap, presumably to ogle the models who were no less attainable now that they were all dead than they'd been when the magazine was printed. Ness swore. The man's presence was going to make things a whole lot harder.
"What's up?" Shawn said.
"How goes your effort to earn your citizenship?"
"Slow and steady," Shawn shrugged. "Didn't expect it to happen overnight."
Ness glanced at the guard, who turned the page. "What if it could?"
His brother squinted one eye, then smiled slowly. "I'd jump."
"Really? You almost seem happy."
"Because it's a load more practical than stealing the guns to shoot our way out, you dork." Shawn looked lazily at the guard, who remained engrossed in the glossy pages. "It's called working within the system."
"But if there were another way?"
"Then fuck the system."
Ness grinned. "Be ready."
Shawn gave him another squint. "What have you got up your sleeve, little bro?"
"You'd never believe me."
"Guess I'll sleep with my shoes on."
They caught up for a while, exchanging the trivial details of their progress with the ethanol and the fence, respectively. The guard broke it up to escort Shawn back to his own room.
Ness spent the evening fantasizing about their escape. The alien would crawl in from the ceiling vents, just like in Aliens, strangling a guard in one tentacle, tearing another to ribbons with its claws, and halving a third with its lightsaber-like laser. It would get shot, but Ness would catch its laser in midair and blast down the guard before the enemy could finish the job. As Ness supported the alien on his shoulder, laser in hand, Shawn would range ahead to the gates, sneak up on Roan, and snap her neck. They'd ride out in the jeep, deliver the alien to its friends at the river, shake limbs, and go their separate ways.
That was the dramatic route. More likely, the alien would surreptitiously lase the locks from their doors and they would hide in the shadows of walls until the guards walked away on their routes. From there, they'd go climb the fence, or wade into the river, swim to the other side, and disappear into the city.
Or the alien would cut straight to the chase, land a jet on the roof, extract them, and fly away before the guards had the chance to lace up their boots. These things had destroyed a civilization. How hard would it be for them to bust two people out of jail?
He never got the chance to find out. The alien waited for him in the orchard, tentacles held tight to its body, morning sunshine glistening on the dewy grass. The words were already spelled out on its slim black pad:
"MELT DOWN"
30
Tristan breathed out in a hot rush. "You were going to sell me into slavery?"
Colin mashed his head against the window, trying to escape the pressure of her shiv. "That's how it works. Bring them a worker, they lay out the red carpet."
"Use me as a tool to escape, then sell your tool to someone else."
"That wasn't the plan! I wanted to help you. To find your brother."
"Then I made the mistake of telling you to keep your dick to yourself."
He smiled tightly. "That's not it at all."
She worked the blade back into the gash she'd dug in his skin. He inhaled through his teeth. She shifted her weight, holding the shiv steady. "Then why?"
"Because they've got something here. Power. Security. A future. No more scavenging. No more pawing over dead bodies for cans of Campbell's. That's not a life. That's hell."
"The old way wasn't a right. Half the world was born into lives worse than we have it now."
"Anyway, it wouldn't be forever. You can earn your way out. Alden's here, Tristan. Play their game for three years, five, whatever they ask, then you can take him and be on your way. Spend the rest of your lives together."
She glanced down the road to the chain link gate. The Prius was quiet enough for her to hear a rumble permeating the dry desert air. It was a seductive thought. Put in her time, work hard, then move on once she'd earned out. Little risk. Much less than whatever she'd take on breaking Alden from captivity.
She had already grown tired of this life, this endless need to be on her guard, to read the truths behind the lying eyes. It would be so much simpler to put her life in someone else's hands for a while. To let them watch out for her while she earned her daily meals. She'd have more time to watch out for Alden, too. The people who ran this place wouldn't want any harm to come to their investments. She didn't have to go it alone to keep her promise to her mom. Maybe the best way to keep her brother safe would be to sacrifice herself. It wouldn't even be forever.
"I'm at the gate!" Colin had the radio to his mouth, fingers clamped to its button. He'd snuck it from beneath the seat while she watched the fence. "Get someone out here! Hurry!"
But that was just a comforting delusion. A way to shrug off responsibility. Once they had her inside the fence, they'd never let her go.
She drove the knife through his neck. Instinctively, he clamped down his chin, catching her forearm against his chest. She reached over, popped the door, and shoved him out with both her legs. He gargled, blood spraying the windshield. The seatbelt caught him halfway out the door; he flailed one hand, keeping the other tight against his cut throat. She unclicked his belt and he thumped to the dust. She threw the car into reverse, backing over him as she swung around and tore back down the road.
She watched in the rearview as the distant gates swung open. Two men ran outside. She thought she saw rifles on their shoulders. The car dipped down the road, pulling the men from sight. The suspension jounced as she pushed the Prius up to sixty. A college campus spread to her left. She pulled in and parked among the abandoned cars. The dust on their windows was so thick you couldn't see through, but her car was dirty enough to blend in at a distance. She grabbed a bag and ran for the entrance, where she watched from the window for an hour until she was certain there would be no pursuit.
She needed a gun. Binoculars. Black clothes. She found all three looting the houses on the north end of town. The pistol's ammo box was half empty, but if she needed more rounds than that, she probably wasn't going to get out alive anyway.
She drove back to the campus, parked, napped inside an office beneath a blanket and all her clothes. After nightfall, she pocketed her knife and her gun and shouldered a purse heavy with ammo and water and Lay's chips. She walked north, paralleling the road from a distance of a hundred yards. Plenty of space to hide in the sage should headlights shine down the road. A low thrum penetrated the night. Two giant pillars of steam climbed into the sky, highlighted by the glow of the half-moon.
Tristan stopped three hundred feet from the fence. A gate barred the road. Gatehouse beside it. Movement in its dark windows. Electric lights washed the grounds far inside the compound. A man strolled through the circle of light around the main building and disappeared back into the shadows. Bare-bones patrols—it was ten minutes before she saw another soldier—but the fact they ran patrols at all, out here in the middle of nowhere, belied an organization and a paranoia that would not make her task any easier.
Twenty-odd buildings
were scattered around the tall, white-capped building near the compound's center. Alden could be in any of them.
Lights gleamed across the river. She struck east, hit a bridge. For ten minutes, she crouched in the sage and watched it through her binoculars. No sign of guards. No lights, either. She headed across, slinking along the high rails at its sides. On the other end, the road hooked toward a cluster of low, rectangular buildings surrounded by a high wire fence. Forty-foot towers projected above it all, spindly watch-stations of wood and aluminum spaced along the fence. Each sported a spotlight, like something out of an old prison movie. She stooped across the cold and dusty field. A dog barked, waited, barked again. She rose and it bounded forward, angling toward the fence. Tristan froze. It was a Shepherd mix, tall, solid. It barked until she turned away and hustled across the field.
She found a hill nearly a mile east of the fences and set up a short ways from its crest. Should have brought an emergency blanket. She napped fitfully, woken by the cold. She walked around to stir her blood, then curled up again. At dawn, she woke for good, positioning herself below a generous clump of sage, where she propped herself on her elbows and fitted the binoculars to her face.
Dozens of people emerged from the long simple housing blocks. They milled in the cold yellow morning and sat at the benches arranged under off-blue tarps. They were too far away to make out more than heights and builds. Several might have been Alden or possibly just slender women. Men with guns and dogs hung around the fringes. The ground between her and the fences held nothing but sage and weeds and dust.
She rationed her water, making it to nightfall with no worse than an angry stomach. She didn't see a way to get any closer without getting captured. She walked back to the campus, put together a bag with food and water and shoes and a gun and two sticks and two knives, returned to the hill east of the farm, and buried the bag at the base of a sage.
Unarmed, she walked to the farmland gates.
A man shouted from one of the towers. She stopped and waited. Two men in black caps ran from the gate with rifles drawn. They gave her a quick pat-down and led her to a shed with a concrete floor and a couple of folding chairs.
She explained with minimal elaboration. Four days ago, her car had broken down outside of town. She'd walked in and tried to find another, but couldn't track down a working battery. No, she hadn't thought to find a generator and charge one that way. As she tried car after car, she noticed the clouds rising from the north. At first she'd thought it was the smoke of a brushfire, but from her house in the hills, their nighttime lights gleamed like sweet promises. Finding her neighborhood low on water, she attempted to move to a house by the river, but had wound up run off by a pack of half-starved dogs. After that, she'd walked straight here.
"Here at Hanford, we got a system," the guard-captain said, a man in his late thirties with shaggy brown hair and glassy red eyes. He'd introduced himself as Hollister. "You want to live here, you got to earn it."
"I expected no less," Tristan said.
"Hard work. We got a farm. That's where most residents go. But you could wind up assigned to anything. You good with cars? They'll take you to the garage. Can you sew? Well, there you go." Hollister smiled at himself, glassy eyes crinkling. "Most people, they wind up on the farm."
"We've all got to eat."
"And I need you to know just what you're getting into. We expect a three-year commitment. Signed. We're investing in our residents the same way you're investing in our community. Can't feed you for nine months to see you run off right before harvest."
"What happens after three years?"
"Reassessment."
"What if I try to leave before then?"
Hollister stared her down. "Don't."
She shifted in her chair, attempted to look thoughtful. "In exchange, I get food and water? A place to sleep?"
The man nodded once. "Showers, too. Clothes machines. 'Lectric lights. Aren't many places in the country can say that anymore."
"Where do I sign?"
He favored her with a lopsided grin and produced a clipboard. "Right about here."
The document was more or less exactly what he'd just explained. Short. Unlawyerly. She signed as Billie Winslowe.
"Billie," he read. "I like that. Tough girl, Billie?"
She mustered a small smile. "These days, who isn't?"
Hollister showed her to a room in one of the longhouses. Six beds. Two empty, the other four soon to be occupied by the women currently brushing their teeth and removing makeup, jockeying for space at the two mirrors in front of two metal basins.
"I thought you said you had water," Tristan said.
"We do," he said. "But only so much that's halfway clean. Got to preserve it. You'll get enough to keep yourself pretty."
She smiled, trying to soften the edge she felt rising in her gut. He left her with the bag of clothes she'd brought with her. The women introduced themselves; she promptly forgot their names. She didn't intend to need to know them.
She stayed up half the night worrying whether she'd done the right thing. She should have spied longer, made certain Colin hadn't lied about Alden before surrendering herself to contractual slavery. But skulking in the shrubs, it could have taken days, weeks to pinpoint her brother, assuming he wasn't working indoors at the plant across the river, where she might never see him, depending on how strictly the lords confined their servants. In the meantime, she'd have no way to tell how he was treated, whether he was being beaten—or worse; her mind approached the possibility with morbid semi-glee, then retreated in angry horror—by the guards in charge of their human cattle. If anything were to happen to him while she dawdled in the wastelands, she could never forgive herself.
Not that she'd have the chance to seek that forgiveness. She'd be killed by guards after killing whoever had hurt her brother.
For better or worse, she was inside the fence. Whether or not Alden was here, she needed to think of a way to get out, not rake the muck of regret. The fences buzzed, electric; she'd need to dig out, like she had in the alien prison, or find some insulated snips. Did the fence border the river, too? Or could she and Alden wade into the water and float to safety? Could she use pesticides to poison the dogs? They roamed free at night; she'd need some method to neutralize them, even if that were simply devising a way to escape during the day.
In the end, it simply didn't matter. Whatever it took—cultivating a conspiracy, fucking a guard, leading a revolution—she would get it done.
She woke before dawn, stomach growling. While her roommates snored, she practiced her kung fu, stepping lightly, soles a whisper on the unfinished hardwood. At first light, an old man opened the door and grunted a wake-up call without glancing at the women inside.
Tristan filed out to the breakfast tables and lined up for a bowl of steaming oatmeal dusted with white sugar and for a cup of Kool-Aid from concentrate. She sat at the far corner of the tables, paying more attention to the others than the blandness of her food.
A teen boy wandered into the morning, blinking against the hard daylight with sleep-angry eyes. His blond hair jutted at all angles. Chemicals bloomed from Tristan's middle, surging her with tingling lightness. She stood.
He glanced her way. Just as she'd imagined a thousand times—in the orange and fleshy jail, in the house of the kindly couple in Williams, in the locked room with Yvette in the fiefdom of Lord Dashing—Alden did a double-take.
"Tristan?"
He moved toward her, casually at first, perhaps not allowing himself to believe it, then broke into a sprint that nearly bowled her over. She crushed him to her chest. His half-fed bones dug into her hip and shoulder. He smelled like old sweat, but also something much older: the same scent of skin and specific Alden-ness she'd smelled every time she went into his bedroom at the house in Redding.
To her surprise, she was still able to cry.
31
The words meant nothing to Ness. They may as well have been written in whatever
alphabet the aliens used for themselves. It was as if he had taken a word like "soft" and repeated it—soft, soft, soft—until it no longer represented softness, but only itself, a tautological negation. He stared at the black pad, trying to understand.
"Meltdown?" he wrote. "At the nuclear plant?"
"YES MELT DOWN"
"You mean it's going to blow up?"
The alien wagged its head side to side. "NO MELT DOWN RADIATION LETHAL"
"How do you know?"
Its tentacle danced above its pad. "BECAUSE WE DID IT"
"What???" Ness scrawled. "Why?"
"KILL DANIEL ROAN"
"And everyone else!"
The pad flashed. "KILL DANIEL ROAN"
"You can't do that."
It gazed at him. Its milky eyelids wiped its baseball-sized eyes. Its two thickest tentacles climbed over its rubbery back and wavered against the backdrop of branches.
"ALREADY DID"
Ness fumbled his pen. "Right now?"
"NO TONIGHT MELT DOWN"
He reached behind himself, as if seeking a wall for support. Very clearly, he saw that this was his fault. Not the killing of the creature's gutbrothers—that had been an act of war, nothing more or less, and after the aliens' attempt at genocide, he and Shawn could hardly be blamed for killing two of the enemy who'd landed in their back yard.
But blaming Daniel and Roan—he had done that. He had invited the aliens to strike back, hoping to divert them from discovering he was the killer and lead them to destroy his captors in one fell swoop. It had seemed so elegant. So brilliant. But he'd been trusting aliens to act like humans. Aliens who'd already shown no compunction about killing nearly seven billion humans. For all he knew, they intended to keep fighting despite the loss of their mothership, executing an ongoing guerrilla war for final control of the Earth. In that light, taking out two of their personal enemies alongside several hundred impersonal ones, and at the same time wiping out one of humanity's few functional power stations—well, that was a solution every bit as elegant as his own scheme.
The Breakers Series: Books 1-3 Page 64