"Why not just blow up the damn boat?"
Jill laughed humorlessly. "You think that's the only one they've got? You think that's all their manpower? If you blow up one boat, what do you do about the three that come after it?"
They talked more, but that was the end of it. Raina waited for the crowd to break up and for the last of the hangers-on to leave Jill alone. She approached then, gesturing up the bare hill where they could talk by themselves. Jill sighed but followed up the summer-browned grass.
"What is it, Raina?"
"Is that true? About the union?"
The woman gazed downhill. The market had resumed. Vendors entertained travelers and crafted small wares. "The union's a pipe dream. A cover story. We will make a legitimate proposal. I don't expect the islanders to accept it."
"And when they don't, we fight."
"That's the plan."
"Why don't we ambush them tomorrow? How many more of them are on the island?"
"Lots," Jill said. "Enough to squirt us between their toes even while they're dealing with the gangs over in Long Beach."
Raina gestured vaguely south. "How do you know? Have you ever been to Catalina?"
"I know because a different batch of soldiers steps off that boat every time it comes for taxes. Two months, three, we might have enough people to stand up to them. Is that so long to wait?"
"Not for me," Raina said. "But it might be for my mom."
"This is ridiculous. I used to be a substitute teacher." Jill sighed and shook her head. "You want to make progress? Guns, Raina. Lots and lots of guns."
Raina left her on the hill. She was tired of hearing about guns. It was all these people thought about. Carrying them. Using them. Fighting over them. Such stupid things. Anyone could use them. Anyone could pull a trigger from across a field. They rewarded cowardice. They made people think that violence was a quick and clean and easy thing. If the men on the boat had to kill with their hands, not one in ten would have the stomach for it.
The bunker was nearly out of guns and she was keeping the few that remained in reserve for herself. Reduced to aimless scavenging, she wandered up the coast from her old home, checking houses methodically. There was no telltale sign or pattern for where you might find a gun. Most had been looted, hoarded, or lost. Taken from one place and abandoned in another. Even so, she went first to the rich houses of the Beach Cities. People with wealth would have wanted to protect it.
She climbed the winding roads in the green hills of Palos Verdes, rummaging through lavish homes that looked stolen from Spain or Boston or Italy. She stayed away from houses she wasn't sure were empty. The afternoons were hot but cooled as soon as the wind turned. It took as much as an hour to search each home—you could do it faster, but the true valuables, the guns and jewels and dollars owners once yearned to protect, those were often hidden or locked away in safes and closets, some of which she could find keys for if she looked hard enough. Most times these stashes were empty, but now and then they turned up a pistol or bullets.
Some houses searched must faster. Some had been completely hollowed out, dust resting in the scratches on the bare wood floors. Others had been used for squatting, chairs burned for heat, rooms cleared to eliminate hiding spots for rats and roaches. At such places, she spent five minutes searching for secret compartments, then headed to the next house down the street.
This part of the coastline was miles away from the market and she traveled alone and slept in empty houses. Over the course of seven days, she turned up twice as many guns. She brought them back to Jill and returned to the hunt in the hills. She resented the time lost when she could have been training with her knife—alone and away from her dummy, she could only practice her more rudimentary and abstract skills—yet it was this time away from her training that gave her the opportunity to revolutionize it.
She exited a shed in the back yard of a house on the edge of the sea. The patchy grass sloped into a decline that was almost but not quite steep enough to call a cliff. Black rocks ringed the shore below it, buffered from the ocean by a narrow beach. Light flashed from the sand.
The man was shirtless. Tanned as brown as herself. Two streaks of gray in his dark hair. The skin on his face and arms and belly looked old, but his muscles moved smoothly. He had a knife in both hands and she thought he was dancing.
But that was only because his movements were so fluid. Flowing like the ocean washing up and down the shore. Knives flashing. Slow rolling motions that exploded into blurs of light and steel. She knew as certain as she knew her own name that he had been doing this for longer than she'd been alive.
For a minute, she did nothing but watch, hunched in the wild weeds at the edge of the decline. Something came alive in her. All the while she'd been training, she'd had to keep a persistent doubt at bay. Karslaw was so much bigger than her. So much stronger. Mauser's lessons were practical, effective, but she feared they weren't powerful enough to overcome the bearded man.
But nothing could stand against the man on the beach. His knives could split the wind.
At once, he stopped, bounced down to his haunches, and wiped his palms in the sand. Her heart lurched—was he about to leave?—and then he drank from a blue plastic bottle and started his practice again. Raina backtracked to a trail down the cliff, ran to the beach, and walked up behind him.
"I want you to teach me to do that."
He whirled, knives out. He was at least fifty years old. He lowered one blade. "Why would I want to do that?"
"Because I want to learn," she said. "Because I want to be the best."
He smiled, pulling wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. "No."
"Because someday you will die but your skills can live on."
He sheathed his knives and bent to pick up his bag. "Are you appealing to my ego? I don't care about my ego. Or yours."
She dogged him as he headed up the beach. "Because I can give you anything."
"You've already given me a headache." He gave her an amused look. "Just what do you think you have to offer? All I see is a pair of shoes and a flagrant lack of shame."
"I find things. I know this place. Whatever you want, I can get it for you."
"Do you imagine I'm so busy I can't poke around the rubble for myself?"
"What will take you less time?" she said from beside him. He was only a couple inches taller than her. "Ferreting out the treasures from all this sprawl? Or teaching me to do what you do?"
He glanced over at her for the first time since walking away, squinting against the wave-reflected sunlight. "There's nothing I want."
Her heart beat harder. "Then I'll make you teach me."
"If you could do that, what more could I possibly teach you?"
She jogged around front of him, got out her knife, and lunged, leading with her open hand. His mouth tightened. He slapped her wrist away, stinging it. She flicked her knife under their crossed hands, going for his gut. He pivoted on his heels, pulling his body out of harm's way. She jabbed toward his face. It was just supposed to be a feint, an uncommitted strike to rattle him, but he intercepted her forearm with his palm, guided it away from his body, and, still holding her arm in place, slammed the extended knuckles of his other fist straight into the soft flesh of her inner forearm.
She yelped and dropped the knife into the sand. He hit her with a flurry of blows, dazzling her, knocking her to the beach. She tried to get up and her elbow folded. Her face skidded into the sand.
He set his hands on his hips. "Now you have blood on your nose and sand on your face and I'm still not going to teach you."
Raina pushed herself up to her knees. Too many parts of her hurt to locate them all. "Teach me because I want to kill the man who killed my father."
"Do you think I just stepped out of the 36th Chamber?" He walked on. She jumped up and got her knife and put herself in front of his path.
"Teach me again, sir."
He laughed, pressing his palms to his cheeks and then dragging them d
own so she could see the wet red lids below his eyes. "Are you that devoted? Then here's my deal. Bring me a Chagall, and I'll teach you."
"What's a shoggle?"
"Who."
"What?" she said.
"It's not a what, it's a who."
"Who is Shoggle?"
"Chagall," the man said. "He's a painter."
"You want me to bring you him? How do you know he's still alive?"
"He's not. He's very dead."
"Do you want me to bring you his body?"
He stepped back and shook his head at the sand. "This is absurd. I retract my offer."
"No! Tell me about Chagall."
"Bring me one of his paintings. Not a print. Not a replica. One of his. If I like it, I'll teach you kali."
"Where can I find you when I do?"
"If you can find a Chagall, you can find me."
"Then I'll find your Chagall," Raina said. "And then I'll find you."
He smiled. "Sure you will."
She ran up the slope. At the top, she crouched in the brush and spied on him. He lived three blocks from the beach in a house half the size of his neighbors. She went back to the basement where she'd concealed the guns she'd scrounged and ran back to the Dunemarket, arriving at sunset. At the house, Mauser pan-fried sausage links while Martin pointed at the pan and babbled about ideal heat levels.
"Why does he want a painting?" Mauser said when she explained. "Who's he hoping to impress, the Empress of The Burnt-Out Ruins That Used To Be Los Angeles?"
"I don't know," Raina said. "But he wants it. I'm going to get it."
Martin nodded and backed off from the fire pit. "When do we leave?"
"Tonight. We're going to Malibu. Crossing the entire city. Best to travel at dark."
"I'll go get packed."
Mauser's mouth hung open. "You can't just run off on some ridiculous quest. We're in the middle of a rebellion here."
"Jill moves as slowly as mold. She won't miss us for a few days."
"In case you forgot about the war we started, the Catalinans and the Osseys are at each other's throats right now. Don't you think we'd better stick around for that?"
"No," Raina said. "See you later."
"At least eat dinner."
She went to her room to add a few long-term items to the travel pack she'd carried while hunting for guns on the coast. Freeze-dried food. A third lighter. Spare safety pins. Martin met her in the hall.
"I've never been to Malibu," he said. "Is it far?"
"It's on the other side of the bay," she said. "Thirty or forty miles."
"Do you know what the paintings look like?"
"Don't all artists sign their work?"
Martin adjusted the strap on his pack. "Probably. But it will probably be faster if we know what we're looking for."
"Brilliant thinking, chief," Mauser said behind them, legs churning to catch up.
"I thought you weren't coming," Raina said.
"And I thought you were bright enough to know about the magic of libraries and museums. We're not going to Malibu. We're going to the Getty. It's time you two got cultured."
"That sounds ominous," Raina said.
Wind shuffled the palms, carrying the scent of the smoke of the Dunemarket campfires. Raina kept one eye on the dark streets, but thought mostly of the man on the beach, and all the ways she would hurt the Catalinans once she learned to make her knives dance.
18
"We've seen them on the shores," Karslaw said. "Little ones. Children of the stars. Offspring of our murderers, raised by the gravekeepers of our world. Monsters with clapping beaks and more limbs than a spider."
"Sure," Walt said. "Aliens. I've seen a few."
"Of course," the man smiled. "After all, that's why you're here."
"Well, in my official capacity as your military advisor, I would advise you to shoot them."
Karslaw laughed, baritone whoops echoing off the stone walls of the keep. A small fire crackled in the hearth, smoke drawn up the flue. The stone was worn, dusty. Naked beams upheld the high ceiling. Outside, the wooden palisades were new and blond. The mortar in the stones of the keep walls was only lightly stained and showed no moss. But this place, the heart of the keep, it felt much older, decades if not centuries, as if Karslaw and his people had built their fort around a venerable mansion. A museum, maybe. For all Walt knew, it was the former main hall of an Ivy League college. Whatever it was, they hadn't built it—they'd found this place, this hilltop estate, and adapted it into a castle. Taken the bones of the old world and made themselves a new home.
It was like this everywhere, he suspected. People were scared, tired, eager for anything to shelter them from the storm of the end. They didn't have time to build from scratch. They'd hole up in the empty shells of anything they could find. And not just in the literal sense of old buildings, but in everything, picking up old beliefs and dreams and judgments. Hermit crabs of the Earth.
Karslaw drank from his stein, a pewter hulk with an attached clapper-lid. The smell of coffee wafted through the breeze-cooled room. "Shoot them. Sure. It sounds so easy."
"Isn't it?" Walt said.
"Gets a lot less easy when they shoot back. Here's the problem, Walt. I'm not running a squad of SEALs over here. I got a whole people to worry about. A nation. A small one—Vatican City with fewer miters and more guns—but I'm responsible for hundreds of lives nonetheless. It isn't just aliens I have to worry about. I got gang problems on the mainland. My people are patrolling the shores and the city every day. That's manpower spent keeping the peace instead of tilling the earth. I got to ask taxes from the settlers on the peninsula just to keep my people in salt and soap."
"'Ask'?" Walt said. "As in, 'Would you prefer to pay my taxes or be shot?'"
Karslaw made a face. "Somewhere in the middle. The citizens like paying them about as well as anyone has ever liked paying taxes, which is to say they'd feel less violated if I knocked on their door and actually fucked them. These people would be wiped out without us, but do they care? All they see is my men leaving with their food. They don't see our tireless work to keep them safe."
"Sounds like a heavy crown," Walt said. "How did you come to bear it? Pander to the Ohio swing voters?"
"Hah. Long story. When the virus hit, I saw the writing on the wall damn quick. I lived in Hermosa. Took my family here. Figured we could quarantine it. Wait out the Panhandler."
"Smart. But it didn't work, did it?"
Karslaw smiled wryly. "I wasn't the only one with smart ideas. We lasted three weeks longer than the mainland before someone brought the virus here. Within another week, it burned through us like a fire."
"I'm sorry."
The man narrowed his eyes, smiling the sharp smile of a man examining a hopeless fight. "My losses were no more special than anyone else's."
Walt shook his head. Impossible as it seemed, he took for granted that the natural state of the world was to be ruined, but there were times when it all came flooding back. "It's all so fucked up."
"So was I. Then, on a trip to the mainland, I found a man half-dead on the beach. Brought him back here. We nursed him back to health. It made me feel like there was hope after all. For months, that's what we did. Found survivors and brought them here where twenty miles of ocean could keep them save from thugs and gangs. We planted crops. Gathered medicine. Built a life.
"Then the aliens came, and we quit going to the mainland. Even after you brought them down. At that point we had more mouths than food. It was time to consolidate and care for those of us who were already here. We'd become a people."
He drank from his stein, coffee dribbling into his beard. "But I think long-term, Walt. This island won't protect us forever. Not if we let the aliens breed their foul hives. That's why I sent for you. We need to wipe them out now. While we still can."
"Cool," Walt said. "Except we totally can't do that."
Annoyance flickered on Karslaw's brows. "Don't be so fast to doubt my
men's resolve."
"What I doubt is their ability to secure the whole planet. The aliens are everywhere. We ran into them in Mexico, too. Unless you're planning one hell of a crusade, you can't get rid of them all."
He shook his head and leaned forward, reaching toward Walt with a scarred hand. "I'm not insane. I know we can't save the world. But we can save Los Angeles."
"Maybe," Walt said. "Here's what I can tell you, anyway."
He dropped all he knew. How they appeared to be deaf but could sense motion instead. The vulnerability of their heads, especially their oversized eyes. How they'd established towns during the invasion but seemed to have abandoned them all after he downed their ship. Their apparent loyalty to each other. When he told Karslaw about the hot air balloon, the man laughed until he cried into his beard.
"Outrageous," Karslaw said when he'd sobered enough to speak. "And obsolete. Here is our challenge: the ship may not be able to fly, but they're still using it for their home."
"Big deal. Sail over there, toss one of those big rubber circus tents over it, and exterminate them."
"We've tried. Something has changed since you dropped it into the sea, Walt. Anything that tries to approach it now is destroyed."
"What? Like how?"
"Like in a great big explosion."
"Well, that's weird. How many times have you tried to come up on it?"
"A dozen times or more." Karslaw sipped his coffee. "The most recent attempt was less than three weeks ago. When our boat got within half a mile, a missile arced from the ship and destroyed it."
Walt glanced up at the naked beams and did some thinking. "What kind of stuff have you sent toward it?"
"Unmanned vessels. I wouldn't send my people on suicide missions."
"Yeah, but like Predator drones? Origami boats? What?"
"Sloops and cutters, primarily. Once we tried a speedboat loaded with explosives. Even at full throttle it couldn't get close. Does it matter?"
"The reason the balloon worked is because it was so stupid," Walt said. "Too stupid to defend against. So here's the question. Is this defense system something new? Did the aliens who survived the crash amend it to hit even the dumbest targets? Or have your approaches just not been stupid enough?"
The Breakers Series: Books 1-3 Page 89