Something scraped softly in the darkness of the tunnel. Walt turned. It shuffled again. He clicked on his light. Tucked in the corner where the floor met the wall, the black eyes of a rat glared back at him. Behind it, a spongy orange layer of matter globbed the mosaic wall.
"Oh," Walt said. "Oh shit. Oh, grand, sloppy piles of shit."
"What?"
He pointed at the orange and dropped his voice to a murmur. "I've seen that stuff before."
Lorna leaned forward, lips parting. "It looks like fungus."
"Could be. I don't know if it's food or bio-insulation or carpet or what. But it's alien. It's all over their homes."
She drew her pistol. "Are they here?"
"I don't know. But we shouldn't be."
They hurried quietly down the street, guns out, the magic draining from Mexico City. His wonder had probably never been genuine in the first place. Just a projection of a mind overwhelmed by weeks in the blooming chaos of the jungle. Walt jogged at a casual pace that, even loaded down as he was, he could sustain for several miles. They weren't out of the city before he ran out of breath. Or before darkness fell. They walked on anyway. Crickets and beetles chirped from the bones of the churches. He smelled no smoke, heard no cars. The city was a graveyard. Like everywhere else. Humanity could never grow large enough to reclaim it before the wind and rain took it for themselves.
Long after midnight, they stopped at a gas station at the very fringe of the city. For the first time in weeks, they took watch. Walt saw nothing during his term. He didn't catch up on his sleep for a couple more days. He kept one eye on the skies and the other on the hills. It had been shortsighted to assume every single alien who'd survived the destruction of the mothership had stayed cooped up in L.A. So much of the world had been forfeited by humans. The invaders could claim any of it.
The land rose. The air dried out but stayed hot. Within the span of a couple days, the green hills became a yellow plateau. The canvas water bags grew lighter and lighter. Outside another sprawling city—Zacatecas, claimed the signs on the highway—Walt stopped and dug out his binoculars.
"Water's running out," he said.
Lorna shrugged. "There's always some in the city."
"Yeah, but I'm concerned about what we find in the desert on the other side."
"Or what we won't."
"Right." He lowered the binoculars and wiped his bare arm across his gummy mouth. "I like walking. I think it's safer. But the equation inverts when you walk across a wasteland."
She unscrewed her canteen and swigged. "So why don't we get down there and steal us a car?”
11
If Martin had asked later, which he didn't, she wouldn't be able to say why she did it. Maybe she had too much rage and pain to keep to herself. Maybe she simply needed, in a deep-down, thirst-level way, to hurt someone. Or maybe she could no longer stand to watch a strong man hurt someone weaker.
She jumped on a table, vaulted onto the bearded man's back, and stabbed him deep in the shoulder.
The man hollered like he'd been set on fire and slapped at his shoulder. She pulled out the knife and stabbed between his shoulder blades. His holler became a scream. He turned his hips and slung her off. Raina landed in a controlled but painful fall, rolling to her feet, knife out and dripping blood. The man yelled and charged. She held her ground and crouched down, flicking the knife at his knee. He hopped back.
"You set down that knife, girl."
"So you can stomp in my face?" she said. "Come and get it."
He feinted. She flinched but didn't fall back. He straightened, glancing around him to see how the crowd was taking his fight with a teen girl. They gazed back, drinks momentarily forgotten.
He smiled and made a fist. "You got a knife. Good for you." He raised his left forearm. "How many times you think you'll have to cut this before the other one strangles you dead?"
He lumbered forward. Raina edged back. Behind the bearded man, the small man swayed to his feet, produced an icepick, and inserted it into the base of the bearded man's skull. The man stopped and waved an unsteady hand. He opened his mouth and vomited a puddle of blood. He thudded to the streaked white tile of the McDonald's floor.
Across the bar, a man shouted and stood. The thin man with the icepick grabbed Raina's wrist. She raised the knife.
"Hey now," he said. "Time to run."
She did. Martin followed them into the cool night. Back inside, a man yelled. The thin man darted across the street between two strip malls. The McDonald's door banged open, spilling firelight into the street. The thin man laughed in exasperation. Raina fought to keep up. He vaulted a low chain-link fence, ran up the back porch, and yanked open the door. Raina put her knife in front of her and followed him into the darkness.
Martin pressed in behind her. The man was silhouetted in a room of couches and speakers and a big black TV. He gestured them over and popped down behind the couch. Raina crawled around its arm and hopped to the floor.
"Probably ought to just sit here a spell," the man whispered. "Think I might have hurt that guy."
"You stabbed him in the brain!" Martin hissed. He grabbed Raina's sleeve. "What are we doing with him?"
"Not getting hanged," she said.
The thin man chuckled, then leaned forward. "Hey, it's you. Little Annie Oakley."
"What?"
"The girl with the guns. Threw them at Jill's feet. Yeah, everyone was talking about you. Aren't you getting ahead of yourself? Teenagers are supposed to rebel against their parents, not murderous pirates."
Feet pounded the asphalt outside. Men jabbered back and forth. A flashlight beam whisked over the window, lighting up the ceiling. Raina pressed her back against the couch. The men continued down the alley, footsteps fading.
"I don't have parents," Raina said. "The pirates took them."
"Ah. Revenge. My favorite form of venge." The man stuck out his hand. "I'm Mauser."
She shook it. "Raina. That's Martin."
"Funny, he looks like a Martin," Mauser said. Raina snickered. The man straightened his light leather jacket. "So what did Jill say? Are you in or out?"
"Out," Raina said.
"In," Martin said.
"She wants us to get stuff for her," Raina said.
The man gave her an owlish look. "And you'd prefer to kill."
"That's what they did to my dad."
He held up his hands in mock innocence. "Did I say there was something wrong with that? I'm just clarifying."
"We won't be scavengers forever," Martin said. "Jill made it sound like you could be a soldier later."
"She was lying," Raina said. "I'm not too young to shoot a gun. She just doesn't want me to get hurt before I get her guns."
Mauser drummed his fingers against the back of the couch. "I'm trying to decide if this would make me a bad man, and if so, whether I would care."
Raina raised her knife to her knee. "What are you talking about?"
"Helping you," he said. "Possibly by hurting you."
"You're talking like a fool."
He burst out laughing, then glanced toward the window and made a face like he'd been bad. "Here's the thing. If you show Jill you know how to get guns, she's going to use you to get more guns. If you show her you know how to fight, she'll use you to fight."
"I don't like this," Martin said.
"You think we should attack the islanders," Raina said.
"That would be insane," Mauser scoffed. "I think you should attack some total strangers."
"Like kill the first stranger who walks into town?" Martin said. "You're crazy!"
"Keep your voice down. Anyway, they might not be strangers. You kids heard about the O.C.'s?"
"The Osseys?" Raina said.
"The O.C.'s. As in, from..." Mauser paused, then shook his head. "From one of the many places that no longer exists. Anyway. They're from down south, and they've been giving trade on the eastern roads a hell of a time. Jill and her dude are right mad about it."
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"Robbers?" Martin said. "Bandits?"
"When they're feeling nice."
Raina wiped her bloody knife on her pant leg and put away the blade. "So we should get rid of them. Clear the road. Prove to Jill that we can fight."
Mauser scrunched up his face. "Well, I'm not sure I'd go that far. There are kind of a lot of them, although they aren't super well-put-together. What I think is that if you can get them to stop attacking Jill's messengers and merchants, she'd be inclined to upgrade you from delivery boys to special agents."
"Then let's go."
"What, me?" Mauser said. "I'm not messing with the Osseys."
Raina leaned in close. "I saved your life."
He laughed, barking with it, abruptly stopping. "Oh hell. You're serious."
"That makes you mine. I want your help."
"I feel like I'm on the verge of being forced to swear a blood oath." The man pinched the bridge of his nose. "Okay. All right. On one condition: I get half."
"Of what?"
"The cash. The loot. The wonga, in whatever form or avenue that wonga may take: anything we steal, beg, or bargain. Point is, I'm not going to tangle with a violent tribe-gang unless it's going to make me rich."
"Take their ears for all I care," Raina said. "I just want to prove myself to the rebels. I can't fight the islanders by myself."
"Which I convinced you of," Martin said. "So you should listen when I tell you running off to fight a bunch of bandits is just as crazy as running off to fight a bunch of pirates."
"Sure, but at least the bandits will negotiate," Mauser said. "They just want money. Stuff. Things. Far more reasonable than those idiots with the boat. They want power. Not a lot of bargaining to be done there."
Martin folded his arms. "What if we go to them and they rob us?"
"Won't happen. Not if we handle them right."
"Like you handled the man at the bar?"
"That man stole my drink! That's not the sort of thing you just let slide."
"When can we leave?" Raina said.
Mauser shrugged. "As long as we steer clear of pursuit, we can head out now. Won't make it there tonight, but we'll have a good start on tomorrow."
"Do you need to get your stuff from the inn?"
"Inn?" He gave her a blank look. "No, I wasn't staying at the motel. I was going to sleep in a ditch somewhere."
He got up, padded to the front door, slipped outside, and looked both ways down the street. He beckoned the two of them out. Raina didn't hesitate. Martin sighed theatrically and followed her out.
They walked swiftly down the starlit streets. Voices drifted down from the Dunemarket, from the inn across the boulevard. Mauser headed north, taking them away from the men who'd followed them out of the bar, glancing back and forth between the dirty little houses sitting on the scruffy hillside. After a few blocks, he angled back toward the main road and followed it past a park on one side and a bunch of huge stores on the other. Raina had been into those stores a few times—the Home Depot still had a few useful things, and the Wal-mart had so much stuff on the shelves you could still find good food until late last year—but another few blocks marked the furthest she'd been toward Long Beach since the plague.
She kept one eye on Mauser, hand near her knife. She needed his help, but if this was a trap, she'd be ready to cut him instead.
"Is it safe to talk?" Martin said.
"What kind of a question is that?" Mauser peeled off the road and jogged up a freeway onramp. "Well, what did you want to talk about?"
"Are the Osseys really bandits?"
"You keep using this word 'bandits.' They're not Robin Hood's Merry Men. They won't rob you at sword-point and send you on your way with a swat on the butt. They'll take whatever you've got—food, weapons, virginity. They prefer to let people go, because you can always fleece a sheep again next year, but they don't mind killing. It gives them street cred."
"Street cred?"
"Respectability." Mauser gestured outward, puffed his chest. "Badness. The reputation of a crew you don't want to fuck with." He glanced at them. "Pardon my French."
"French?" Raina said.
"Where are you from?"
"Why doesn't anyone stop them?"
"Who's going to do that? Jill?" He laughed. "She doesn't have the manpower for that."
"But she's going to fight the Catalinans."
"With the help of every fisherman, farmer, and scavenger in the South Bay. Even then, it's dicey. If you didn't have the personal revenge angle going, I'd tell you to steer clear of the whole damn thing."
Martin jogged to keep up with the man's quick strides. "If Jill can't fight the Osseys with the whole Dunemarket behind her, how are we supposed to fight them with three of us?"
"I've been thinking about that," Mauser said. They reached the top of the freeway, which swung east over a canal dug between the star-gleaming ocean and the fractal piers of Long Beach. "Seems to me we should offer them a bargain. Take half the guns you were going to give to Jill and offer them to the Osseys instead in exchange for free trade-related passage. Don't give them everything at once—just one or two at a time. Like slinging drugs. You got to keep them coming back for more. Don't want to blow the whole stash on them just to see them PCP-Hulk out on you and eat your liver."
Raina didn't understand half the things he said, but she picked up the gist. "What do you get out of it?"
"Some of the guns and bullets, duh. Unless you have something even more interesting." He gazed out to sea. From atop the bridge, the dark blot of Catalina was clear on the horizon, many miles away. "Sound good?"
"Do the Osseys always travel together?"
"No. They do this thing where a few of them split off, go their own way for a while, then gather back up into one big pack. Why?"
"Then we don't have to fight all of them," she said. "We can find them by themselves and kill them and take their heads back to Jill. That will prove who we are. And the more of them we kill, the more powerful we grow."
Mauser frowned at her. "Let's call that Plan B, Hannibal. I think they'll listen to greed."
The road ran straight across the waterfront, overlooking a thicket of masts, many sunk, some still bobbing on the sheltered swells. Cranes jutted from the docks, climbing a hundred feet into the night. It felt like the graveyard of great and horrible beasts. A place where the ancient things had come to die. Raina drew her circle between her brow and chest and hoped they'd be away from it soon. Music played across the black waters, spiked by bursts of men laughing. A lantern shined between the buildings. Once it was behind them, Mauser led them four blocks off the freeway to a uniform store where the stairs to the second story had collapsed.
He took them to the upper floor, climbing a metal shelf and a series of spikes someone had driven into the walls. "You see? Untouchable as a nun's twa—heart. Because she's married to Jesus, you see."
Raina made bedding out of mildewed nurse's uniforms. They smelled like dust but were soft enough. Mauser snored like her dad. She didn't like that she was sleeping in the same room with him—she'd only known him a few hours—but the best offerings she could find for the quarter-moon moon were a spider and a cricket. She tore off their legs one by one, then smashed them into goop. The moon gave her no sign of its acceptance, but it was still feasting. It would take whatever it could get.
Even so, she found a yellowed newspaper, quietly crumpled the pages, and set them in a ring around her bed so they'd crinkle if Mauser tried to creep up on her while she slept. He went on snoring all the while.
She got up at dawn and looked out the grimy window. She didn't recognize the empty streets. She felt very far from home.
They left before the sun had climbed over the mountains ringing the basin. The road was snarled with cars but the sidewalks were clear. Mauser's gaze darted among the buildings.
"Should be an hour before we see them, but look sharp," he said. "There's this big long canal, but only one surviving bridge. Aliens proba
bly bombed the others. Dirty sons of bitches. Anyway, that's how they get you—you get on the bridge like 'Hey, no problem, a bridge,' then suddenly there's Osseys on both sides."
"This still sounds really dumb," Martin said.
"What do you know? You're just a kid."
Martin looked mad. Raina smiled. The road forked down a long passage of busted-out bars and cafes. They crossed a short bridge, both shores lined with rusting boats, and soon reached another, six lanes wide and hardly a hundred yards long.
Mauser stopped at its foot and cleared his throat. "Hel—"
Two men and a woman emerged from a copse of trees beside the road. All three had guns and wore blousy black shirts with a picture of a silver pirate with a helmet and two curved swords. The woman pointed her pistol at Mauser.
"Jewelry. Weapons. Drugs. Now."
"It's okay, we're not here for that," Mauser said. "We're here to make a deal."
She centered her pistol at his heart. "Here's my deal: give me your shit, and I don't give you this bullet."
"I doubt Preston will approve of you shooting people when they're trying to make him rich."
She exchanged looks with the two men. Raina touched the knife inside her jacket. The woman tossed her head.
"This way."
Mauser turned to Martin. "See, you big baby?"
The woman took them to a church a couple blocks away. They waited in the foyer, guarded by the two men while the woman went through the great wooden doors at the other end. She came back a minute later. Wordless, she gestured them inside.
Pews ran from the back all the way to a dais up front. Melted candles coated the alcoves. Raina walked lightly to make no echoes. On the dais, a man no older than Mauser sat up in bed, shirtless, and held up a palm to stop them. A portable television played at the foot of his bed. Someone on the screen made a joke. The man on the bed laughed and turned it off.
"You act like you know me," he said, voice booming down the pews. "What do you want?"
"I know of you," Mauser said. "And I'd like to make you a deal. One that will mean you can put a stop to all this exhausting robbing."
The Breakers Series: Books 1-3 Page 82