"The Catalinans?"
"That's what it sounds like, but my sources are the type to be drunk before noon. We'd better see for ourselves."
"Where's Martin?"
Mauser flapped his arms. "Out seducing a calculator, probably. If we don't leave now, it could be over before we get there."
She had her knife with her, along with her basic travel bag, so she was ready to leave on the spot. They ran north past the park and the big empty stores until they reached the highway, then jogged east toward the endless docks of Long Beach. Heat rolled off the blacktop. Sweat stuck Raina's shirt to her sides. Without slowing, she drank lukewarm water from her canteen.
Rusty cranes climbed from the grimy docks of the former cargo platforms. At a break in the warehouses, Mauser stopped and pointed. A half mile away at the marina along the closed-up shops and bars, a small fleet of sailboats sat at rest, sails fluttering in the sun.
"Maybe my source wasn't so wetbrained after all."
"I don't hear any shooting," Raina said.
"Typically a good sign, yet I remain strangely anxious." Mauser glanced at the palm trees on the waterfront. "Wind's blowing east. Could have been a showdown without our hearing it."
"Let's go find out."
They walked toward the docked fleet, eyes sharp for movement among the buildings near the shore. At the next onramp, Mauser led them off the highway to approach from the tangle of shops knotting the waterfront.
Raina stopped cold and grabbed Mauser's arm. He grunted, then froze with her. A few blocks down, bodies littered the intersection, blood soaking through their black and silver uniforms. A few men walked among them, dropping to one knee to go through their pockets, stripping off necklaces and ammo pouches and shoes. Raina knew the victors must be the Catalinans even before the big bearded man strode up and passed among his men, clapping them on the shoulders and offering a wide white grin.
"They wiped out the Osseys," Raina said.
Mauser turned off the main street and holed up in the doorway of a smashed-out jewelry store. "Well, let's not jump to draw conclusions. Maybe Karslaw found them like that."
"They were off preparing. This whole time. If we'd acted, we could have hit them before they were ready."
"Could be. Oh boy, that was a lot of dead people."
"If I were him, I wouldn't stop with the Osseys," Raina said. "Where's he going next?"
"I'll stay here and find out," Mauser said. He ran his hand down his face. "You go back to the Dunemarket and tell Jill to prepare for war."
28
They smacked him around until he quit squirming, then cuffed his hands and feet and carried him like a hog into the cabin of a boat. One of the soldiers chained him to a handhold with a third pair of bracelets, then hugged Lorna, went outside, and closed the door behind him. Lorna gazed down at Walt, untroubled by the gentle sway of the tides.
"What's this about?" Walt said.
She laughed once. "Are you really that stupid?"
"Is it the baby? I wanted to stay here."
She kicked him in the ribs. She bent down, face hovering above his, her eyes on fire with contempt. "Hannigan was my husband."
"What the fuck?"
"You could have stopped them. You knew they were coming. But you let him die on the beach."
"He was your husband?" Walt's hold on the world splintered. "What the hell are you talking about? I told him there were aliens. That we had to run. If he'd listened, he'd be alive and celebrating the massacre of the O.C.'s right now."
"He thought there might be survivors in the wreckage. He was a great man. He would never leave one of his own behind."
"Well, it's not my fault he was born without a functional sense of self-preservation."
She spat in his face. He shrugged up his shoulder to wipe it away and she bared her teeth and punched him in the eye. "It's all your fault! You should have killed the aliens when you had the chance. All of them. Instead, you left them to become someone else's problem, and the only man I ever loved is dead."
Walt laughed, eye clenched shut against the pain. "This is probably the single biggest display of ingratitude in the history of humanity. So what was our relationship about? Your revenge? Get me to fall in love, then break me in half?"
"Karslaw was right to give you to me. You don't have any vision."
"Wait. It was all tied into Karslaw's delusions of empire, wasn't it? You were just making sure I'd stick around. Guaranteeing I'd do anything to help your people take down the aliens and get ahold of their weapons."
"Congratulations. You only got smart when it was far too late."
"Damn, that's some cold shit." He blinked. His eye felt swollen. "Know what, I don't believe it. In the jungle, we had something together."
"A fever," she laughed. "A sickness."
"It was real. It was there. Then something broke."
Lorna looked ready to laugh again, then the left side of her face trembled.
"Me," she said, voice cracking. "Because every time I closed my eyes, I saw his. Open. Staring. I didn't even get to bury him."
"We'd been chased into the jungle by pissed-off aliens."
"Just shut up. You make me so sick I can taste my liver rotting from your poison."
For just a moment, Walt had thought he might be able to talk her off the brink. But he'd been letting himself get lost in hope for too long. He leaned against the side of the cabin and lowered his gaze to the floor.
"Are you even pregnant?" he said.
"Why would you care?"
"It might impact my decision to kill you."
She stood, dislodging the tears from her eyes. "Goodbye, Walt. It will all be over soon."
She kicked him in the balls, then went out and closed the door, leaving him alone. He dangled from his shackles, groaning. If he hadn't been handcuffed at the wrists and ankles, he would have hanged himself out of sheer embarrassment.
He wriggled against the cuffs, but had made zero progress by the time the troops returned, unlatched him from the handrail, and dragged him belowdecks to a small room that smelled like stagnant water. They chained him to another rail—the damn things were everywhere—tromped back upstairs, and clapped shut the door, leaving him in darkness.
A bit later, he swayed. The boat was pushing off. The ensuing trip gave him plenty of time to reflect on the enormity of his mistakes. How every time he'd expressed doubts about their quest, Lorna had thrown herself at him, convincing him there was something to go on for, a future to find together. Her act hadn't been some improvisation she threw together after Hannigan's death, either. From the very start, she and her husband had interacted like nothing more than comrades. If that's what it took to lure Walt to Los Angeles, the pair had been prepared to sacrifice Lorna to Walt's love or lust regardless of what it meant to their marriage. Where had they gotten that from? The Maya? Karslaw's "vision"? The simple deduction that a hermit would be particularly vulnerable to sex and affection?
Well, it had worked.
It wasn't all his fault. When a beautiful person strips you down, screws you, tells you they can't make it out without you, you don't generally suspect them of intending to use you as a human lock-pick to break into an alien vault. A tool to be discarded like any other object that's outlived its task.
But he was to blame, too. Lorna hadn't played her part perfectly. Her act had shown plenty of cracks. He just hadn't had to the courage to test them, to push until the whole thing collapsed or proved it had the strength to hold fast no matter what pressure was placed against it. He'd been too afraid to lose her. He didn't know if it was because he'd gotten lonely sitting around on Chichen Itza by himself, but somewhere between when he'd dropped the mothership into Santa Monica Bay and when Lorna and her team had come down to find him in the Yucatan, he'd lost his nerve.
So he'd let her have her space. Her time. And now his had run out.
"This fucking sucks," he said into the darkness.
Waves beat hollowly again
st the hull. Wasn't that always the way. You mustered up the strength to get off your ass and do a good deed, and the next thing you knew you were party to the slaughter of dozens of strangers at the hands of a crazed warlord deluded by his own success and lofty words. Karslaw's actions still didn't make a whole lot of sense. Walt had the impression the big man had wavered between wanting Walt to become a part of his people and in handing him over for Lorna's revenge. He supposed the surprise attack against the O.C.'s had been the final test. Walt had proven himself incapable of seeing the big picture, so Karslaw ushered him off to the slaughterhouse and washed his hands.
A hell of a thing to get suckered into. And a hell of a way to go out. He figured that bringing down the mothership made him and Otto the undisputed champions of the entire species. But after this, he probably ranked right up there with its all-time fools, too.
The boat slowed. The waves sloshed harder. Feet trampled around upstairs. Things bumped the side of the ship with hollow clunks. Voices spoke back and forth. The trapdoor opened, bathing Walt in hard yellow light. He shielded his eyes. Lorna's face poked into the doorframe, backed by white clouds and a pretty blue sky.
"Come on," she said. "It's time to hand you over to the aliens."
III:
USURPERS
29
She jogged lightly until she was a few blocks away, then ran as hard as she could, footsteps echoing in the valleys of the ruins. Her knife bounced in her belt. After seeing the scores of bodies sprawled in the blood and wreckage of the streets, her blade felt very small.
The Dunemarket was as quiet as when she'd left it. Raina ran to Jill's camping supply booth. Her assistant said she'd just stepped out. Raina scanned the traders and travelers, then ran up the hills toward Jill's underground home, slipping through brown grass and fallen palm fronds. Off to the right, Jill stepped out from behind the tarp strung up around the latrine, still buckling her jeans.
"The Catalinans came back to Long Beach," Raina said. "They brought a whole fleet. The Osseys are dead."
"All of them?" Jill's eyebrows spread apart. "What are the islanders doing now?"
"Mauser thinks they may come here next."
"But they haven't shown any intent to attack."
"You can't sit here when their whole army is right down the highway!"
Annoyance flashed across Jill's face. "I need you to run for me. Visit all the homes east of Gaffey. Let them know to gear up and meet here at once."
Raina nodded and dashed across the hills to the main road. She stopped by their house first, but Martin was out. She left a note on his pillow and rushed down the bungalows packed into the side streets set off from Gaffey, pulling open waist-high gates and knocking on the doors of pink stucco houses. She only knocked at places she knew had residents; often, she skipped whole blocks at a time. Many didn't answer. Maybe they'd moved away from the threat of the gangs and the pirates. She had only found and alerted some fifteen households by the time the horn blew from the Dunemarket.
She ran back. Her water was out and she detoured to the house to refill her canteen, but Martin still hadn't come back. She jogged on. In the road nestled between the hills, merchants rolled up blankets and slung them over their shoulders. Up on the hills flanking the market, men with rifles spoke in urgent tones, pointing down the street toward Long Beach.
"They're on the march," Mauser said from behind her. "Ships are coming this way, too, although most of the troops are coming overland. They'll be here within half an hour."
Raina glanced at a pair of people fleeing downhill from the market. They should stay and fight, not run away. There were maybe eighty people here in the market—enough to fight back, especially if they took cover in the hills—but half of them were packing up to go. A few reinforcements might arrive from the homes she and the other messengers had notified, but they would still be outnumbered. She wanted to leap on the backs of the people running away and pound their faces until they got mad enough to stand up to Karslaw.
"Have you seen Martin?" she said.
"Not since last night."
"He probably ran away."
Mauser nodded. "He's a bright lad. Maybe we should take a cue from him."
She whirled. "We're not leaving."
"Raina, are you even planning to use a gun?"
"Until I get close enough to use my knife."
"I counted about 150 of them. We'll be lucky to have a third as many assembled before they're here. Do you really think the two of us will make any difference?"
"Yes," she said.
"Then I question your analytical process," he said. "There's no shame in walking away from a fight you can't win. And if there is, then I think we need to seriously evaluate whether shame is worth caring about in the first place."
"I don't need to defeat them all. I just need to kill one man."
She turned and crunched through the grass up the hill. Men rested rifles over rocks, squinting down scopes. She found a space near the end of the loose line of rebels and crouched in the dirt beside the trunk of a tall palm. Mauser borrowed a shovel and piled up a mound of dirt to crouch behind. He didn't look happy.
Ever since the day at the house, she'd tried not to think of her father, because she could only remember his death. But she might not have another chance.
She had hated it like poison at the time, but in hindsight, her first days with her new family had been pretty funny. They'd had to tie her legs together so she wouldn't run away. One of them stayed with her at all times. When the chores were done, they both sat with her while she lay in bed, talking to each other, asking her questions about where she'd come from and what happened to her family. In a week of questions, Raina didn't answer a single one.
They gave up on the questions. Instead, her father read to her, a lantern burning on the end table, a paperback folded in his rope-callused hands. Raina nestled under the covers and stared at the ceiling as he told her stories of hobbits and elves and princesses. She let herself get lost in those worlds, feeling the warmth of foreign suns, gaping at the bloom of magic from staves and gestures. For the first time since the plague, she began to sleep through the night.
They took the fetters from her feet. He read to her every night for a month. She stopped thinking about running away. But one night her new dad read her a story about a boy whose parents were killed by soldiers while he was washing their clothes at the stream. When he came back, he found them dead in their home, and with the roads snowed in, he had to make it through the winter on his own—and there were goblins in the night.
"Why do you keep reading those things?" she said in the lantern-light of her new room with its smell of the sea and the flowers on the hill. "There's no such thing as goblins."
Her new dad looked up, book spread on his lap, sudden pain etched in his eyes. "They're just stories."
"They're stupid. None of those things are real. That's the only reason the people in them are safe at the end."
He put away the book and said goodnight and blew out the lantern. She was ashamed then, and wanted to call out for him to come back, but her shame blanketed her more thickly than her comforter, and she rested in it instead; the next night, when her dad tried to read her a story about a boy and his hatchet, she refused that, too.
He never tried to read to her again.
Down in the street, men shouted and pointed. Raina moved in front of the palm. Mauser quit digging and joined her. Below, more than a hundred men marched up the street toward the Dunemarket. Karslaw walked at their front, sun gleaming from his bald head.
Jill stood in the middle of the abandoned market. Her husband stood by her side, arms crossed over his gut, sweat trickling into his thick mustache.
"Just what do you think you're doing?" Jill said.
Karslaw planted his feet. The wind had died and he spoke loudly enough for his words to reach the top of the hills. "I am here to accept your surrender."
"My surrender? Did I sleep through a war?"
/> The big man smiled, but it was an angry smile, cold and serene. "I know of your rebellion, Jill Benson."
She hunched her shoulders. Raina was too far away to hear what she said next.
"No more lies," Karslaw boomed. "You are traitors, so you can't be surprised that one of your own has betrayed you to me. You planned, with viperish cunning, to kill me and my people. So here are my terms."
He recited a list of names, starting with Jill's. Nine or ten in all. "These are the ones who must die. In exchange for their lives, I will spare everyone else here. The Dunemarket, San Pedro, and the entire peninsula through Long Beach will henceforth be the territory of the Free State of Catalina."
Up in the hills, Jill's people exchanged glances. Jill stood silent in the middle of the road, considering whether to give up her life to snuff out the war. Raina never got the chance to see how she'd respond. Her husband stepped forward. Maybe to shield her. Maybe to threaten Karslaw. That, too, would never be known.
A lance of blue light appeared from behind Karslaw. Jill's husband dropped straight to the street and didn't move. Jill screamed and ran to him. She went for her pistol. A cat's cradle of blue beams knocked her from her feet.
"That's a fucking laser," Mauser said. "No wonder the O.C.'s were all dead."
Rifles opened up along the ridge, ricocheting from the asphalt, striking the front row of Catalinans. Karslaw roared. His troops split into three columns and charged the hill, firing as they went, dispersing to the palms for cover. Mauser knelt behind his mound of dirt and squeezed off a round. Guns crackled from the hills on the opposite side of the road, cutting into the Catalinans' backs, but only a handful staggered or fell.
Raina kept both eyes on Karslaw. He ran up the hill with his people, firing blue burst from the mouth of a fat black handgun. Smoke curled from scorched leaves. The riflemen aimed and fired, picking off a few of the islanders. Most shots plunked into trees or hit nothing at all. It was all happening with terrible speed and she saw no way to get close to Karslaw without coming in easy range of dozens of his men.
The Breakers Series: Books 1-3 Page 99