The Breakers Series: Books 1-3

by Edward W. Robertson

  "I'll scale the walls. Kill the guards in the towers with my knife so no one hears."

  "And what about the big metal doors in the keep?"

  Bryson smacked his lips. "Ain't a door can keep me out. Cover me, and I can break us in."

  Raina smiled. "They've done us a favor. Most of their soldiers will go home to their own beds."

  "Sure," Mauser said. "That only leaves us up against Karslaw's personal guards. His best troops. Armed with lasers that never need to be reloaded in a fortress we don't know anything about."

  "I didn't say the odds were good. But they may be the best we'll get." She gazed across the waiting faces. Most were stony. Some were eager. A few were scared. "Are you ready to take your vengeance?"

  "Hell yeah," Bryson said.

  Vince shook his kind old head. "Don't see as how they gave us any other choice."

  "For my son," whispered Mrs. Grundheitz.

  "My father taught me the ocean brings both life and death," Raina said. "If you know the sea, you can take life from it. Fish and crabs and clams. You can dry it out for salt and make that food last until you're ready to eat it. The sea has all you need.

  "But it can hurt you, too. Its currents can suck you under to drown. Its monsters can bite your flesh and poison your guts. Its storms can smash you on the rocks or pull you down to places so deep your spirit can never get out. You have to always watch the ocean, because the moment you turn your back, thinking you've conquered it, that you know all its secrets, it will send a wave to knock you down and drown you dead."

  She whipped her tanto from its sheath. Lantern-light played on the watermark running down the length of the blade, a pearlescent rainbow of steel.

  "The Catalinans have turned their back. Tonight, the ocean brings them death."

  The bunker was so silent she could hear the ringing of her own ears. After three seconds, Bryson clapped and laughed and snarled. The others joined him, their wordless voices bouncing from the walls. They shook rifles and pistols over their heads. Raina's hair stood up from her arms, a tingle crawling down her spine and up her scalp.

  They packed their bags, taking little but food and water and weapons. Raina led them up the metal stairs to the twilight world. The sun was in the place that was neither night nor day and a neutral wind blew in from the sea. As Mauser had trained them, they walked quickly down the road in two columns. They reached her old home on the beach an hour after the last of the light had fled. Hot inland air swirled down through the hills, blowing strongly southeast. This was good. Even with the time it took to rig and ready the ship, they could reach the island well before daybreak.

  Martin's mom knew a little about rigging. So did Estelle. Raina left them to prep the ship, then raced northeast back into the hills. The night felt good. Like a thing to be taken. The moon had just begun to rise over the northern mountains, a sliver-thin crescent, its prongs pointed up. It was a claw. A fang. A wicked blade.

  Carl opened the door with a vaguely curious look on his face and a half-empty green bottle of beer in his hand. "Is it that time already?"

  "It's felt like a lifetime."

  "How many of you are there?"

  Her gaze didn't waver. "Twenty."

  "That many?" He pushed his lips together, impressed, and took a swig of beer, liquid sloshing in the bottle. "It's too bad you're so set on dying young. You could have turned this city into an empire of your own."

  "The gods didn't ask me whether I wanted to be born in evil times." She bowed at the waist. "Thank you for all you taught me. I will try to die well."

  She turned and dropped down the steps. The bottle smashed in the yard. She spun, knife out.

  Carl jogged down the steps, shaking out his arms. "It's a nice night, isn't it?"

  "Very."

  "I don't know why my dad taught me kali. To live vicariously through me, I suspect. And to hang onto his homeland in a foreign country." He gazed up at the stars. There were so many. "Kali was created to set people free. What if the real reason he taught me was so I could free us from the Catalinans?"

  Her skin prickled at the thought of such wisdom. "You think he knew?"

  "Who knows." He jerked his thumb at the house. "Let me grab my things."

  She smiled. He smiled back, but it was a smile for good things now gone, for facing your fate on your feet. The screen door banged behind him. He returned with a holstered pistol and sheathed knives and a small pack. Together, they ran down the dark streets.

  The others had the ship all ready. As she climbed the ladder to the deck, Mauser saluted. "Where to, Captain?"

  The island was a blank black mass to the south. The wind blew Raina's hair past her face. She tried to hear her father's voice in its song but all she could hear was the beat of her own heart.

  "To the island—and to death."

  34

  "What the fuck!" Lorna said. "How did you get back here?"

  Walt smiled. "I'm not going to tell you. Isn't that mean?"

  "You have got to be the luckiest man alive. What did you do? Kill them and take their boat? And now you're here for your revenge."

  "Wrong," he said. "I'm here for the guns."

  "The guns?"

  "The lasers. The sci-fi deathrays I delivered to you people. I did the work. They should be mine."

  With his knife at her neck, she sneered up from the pillow. "We're the ones who put our lives at risk to get them. You want them? Go get them."

  "Yeah, that's my plan." Walt pushed the blade closer, denting her skin. "I need to know how to get to them. So here's the question you need to ask yourself. Are you better off helping me? Or being a stubborn dick?"

  "How am I supposed to help? Every soldier on the island's got one. Good luck getting them all."

  "Funny, because I know where you keep your guns, and you don't have one. I'm guessing Karslaw confiscated them as soon as you set sail from the mainland. For all his talk about the strength of 'his people,' he's the only one he trusts to lead you."

  She rolled her eyes. "What do you even care? You escaped death. Yet again. Why don't you go take advantage of your luck for once?"

  "I had plans to do just that. Then a crazy person broke my heart and threw me on a beach to be murdered by aliens. I thought it was time to adjust my priorities. I'm not sure it's the best idea, but right now, it feels pretty good."

  "You won't get off the island alive."

  "And if you don't talk, I'm going to find which would win in a fight: my knife, or your throat."

  She closed her eyes and sighed through her nose. After a moment, her body relaxed beneath him. "You crazy motherfucker. They're in the palace."

  He grinned. "How do I get in the door?"

  "Tried knocking?"

  "Not the front door. The secret passage in Karslaw's chambers. Where's the entrance?"

  She shook her head, heedless of the steel hovering above her throat. "Once I tell you that, you have no reason to keep me alive. You can't leave me here. You know I'll go straight to Karslaw."

  "If you don't tell me, you can guarantee I'll cut your throat. But if you help me? Well, you never know what the future holds."

  Lorna laughed. "I don't care, Walt. Cut my throat. Blow out my brains. You think I want to live any longer?"

  He eased back the knife, keeping his knees pinned to her arms. "Wait a minute, what's the point of a knife if you won't listen to my demands?"

  "Sit on it and find out."

  Walt bore down again, drawing blood. A pleading look entered her eyes. He bit the blade deeper, then pulled back. "Oh, god damn it. Hold still."

  She snorted. "Or what?"

  "Or I'll cut you everywhere it hurts and nowhere it kills." He pulled out the gun he'd taken from her dresser and held it on her while he rummaged through his bag.

  "What are you doing?"

  "I should drag you out to an island to be judged, but I don't have time. This will be my down and dirty equivalent." He set down the gun and produced duct tape stol
en from the Scaveteria. He wrenched her right wrist behind her back. She swore and wriggled and he poked her between the ribs just hard enough to part the skin. She gasped. He took the opportunity to clamp both her wrists in his right hand, holding the duct tape under his knee as he peeled it off with his left hand and then tore it with his teeth.

  "Here's my best offer, Lorna. I'm not going to kill you. I' going to lug you down to the basement and tie you up. Once I'm back in L.A., I'll toss a message in a bottle into the sea. If you've been a good person, I'm sure someone will find it and let you go."

  She squirmed again and he dragged the tip of the knife down the tender flesh of her inner forearm. She yelled and he hit her. He instantly felt guilty, then got mad instead. Just a few days ago, she'd tried to sacrifice him to a hostile alien species. Chivalry could go to hell.

  Anyway, it calmed her down. He wound the tape around her wrists, elbows, and upper arms, then did the same for her ankles and knees and thighs. He wrapped it around her mouth multiple times, ensuring her nostrils were clear, then finished off the roll of tape and tied her arms and legs again with thin but sturdy rope.

  "You look like a caterpillar," he said.

  Her eyes bulged, furious. She tried to spit at him but the tape muffled her face.

  "You know who you remind me of?" he said. "Me. That's why I fell in love in the first place. I wanted to fix you. To heal you up. To show you that it really does get better. It does, you know. If you hadn't been a fucking psychopath, you would have seen that."

  He tried to sling her over his shoulder, but she bucked so hard he dropped her back on the bed, springs bouncing. That marked the end of his sympathy. He grabbed the cords around her ankles and pulled her off the bed. She hit the carpet with a thump. He dragged her down the stairs to the basement. Her head bumped a couple times, then she had the good sense to tuck her chin against her chest. Moonlight peeped through the narrow basement windows. He shoved her against the cinderblock wall and leaned his face close to hers. She bucked again, nearly driving her forehead into his. He jolted back and laughed.

  "Don't wiggle around too much," he said. "You pull those ropes too tight and you might wind up losing a hand or a foot. Do you know you can go for a week without food or water? If you've got any friends, one of them will probably come looking for you before then."

  He winked at her and went upstairs. There, he got his pack and rummaged through her house for a working flashlight and more ammunition and double checked all her drawers and closets for lasers. There were none. He stole a jug of water and some dried fruit and ran west up the hills toward the palace.

  A large part of him regretted not killing her. It was a major risk and she really, really deserved it. But despite all she'd done to him, he still felt sorry for her. He didn't think she was beyond redemption. There had been points in his life when he hadn't been such a great person, either. He liked to think he'd gotten better. Maybe there was hope for her, too.

  Anyway, she'd been on to something on the deserted island. There was something extremely enjoyable about sticking someone in an impossible situation without killing them outright. None of the guilt, all of the fun.

  The scant light of a fingernail-thin crescent moon speared down from the heavens. He loped up the hills, then descended into the long valley. The dark shape of the palace squatted in the night. Laughter pealed across the humid air. Probably celebrating their successful campaign. Walt moved off the road and slowed to a walk. He had all night to find the secret passage.

  He pulled up a few hundred yards from the castle's wooden outer walls. Lantern-light and songs poured from the windows of the keep. It must be very nice inside. He wouldn't know. He began a slow, wide spiral toward the palace, glancing up from the ground now and then to see if there were any lights in the towers.

  He had found the tunnel during one of his many meetings with Karslaw. Big as the man was, his bladder wasn't without limit, and when the would-be emperor had left Walt in the room to relieve himself, Walt opened the plain wooden door in the wall behind the throne. It led into an earthen tunnel. Walt turned on his flashlight, illuminating a long tunnel that sloped gently upward. Wooden beams reinforced dirt walls. He walked inside. A good hundred feet further on, and with no end in sight, he got nervous and ran back to the throne room before Karslaw could return, carefully closing the door behind him. He'd returned to his plush chair and crossed his legs, cup of coffee in hand. Karslaw had gotten back less than a minute later. As far as Walt could tell, he didn't suspect a thing.

  But Walt had come away with a few suspicions of his own. Even so, he hadn't put the pieces together until his isolation on the island. There was something about utter solitude that clarified your thinking. Alone on the island of agave and raw eggs, it had become very obvious that it would be smarter to sneak in through the side hatch than to mount an offensive against the main gates. He'd hoped Lorna would tell him the exact point of ingress to the tunnel, but he didn't need her. All he needed was a little time.

  He moved through the grass, walking slowly to make sure he missed nothing in the full gloom of night. Crickets chirped in a steady haze. Surf crashed to the north. Even up in the hills, it was a warm night, and the constant movement left his Scaveteria clothes damp with sweat. After a bit of walking, he found a stick and used that to prod the ground in front of him, listening for any hollow wooden taps.

  One by one, the lights in the windows flicked off. The songs and laughter dried up and died. The palace slept. Walt continued his long spiral toward the building, shuffling his feet to feel for anything unnatural. The moon climbed up the sky. An hour passed, then two. He knew it was a long way till dawn, and that the men inside would be sleeping off the night's celebrations until well after daybreak, but his stomach sank. He was stumbling around in the darkness hunting for a door that might not even be there. Each time he circled the castle, drawing inexorably nearer its wooden palisade, he grew further tempted to sprint headlong toward Avalon, steal a boat, and hustle back to Los Angeles.

  Around the back of the castle, a couple hundred yards from the walls, a thin strip of grass lay flattened. He followed it. His stick thumped a hollow, wooden patch of dirt. Dust billowed from a two-foot square. He kicked it aside, revealing a trapdoor. He pulled on its ringed handle. It budged, but something was holding it fast.

  He swore. Of course it would be locked. He tried again, just in case luck liked him that night, but the door rattled just a fraction of an inch. Which meant it wasn't locked. It was latched.

  Candles burnt in two of the keep's windows. Walt set down his little pack, got out the line he'd taken from the Scaveteria, and tied it to a fishing hook. He dangled the hook through the gap, dragging it until it clicked into something metal. The hook skipped right over it. He tried again, finessing the line, but the hook skittered off again. He couldn't see a damn thing. For all he knew, the hook was too small. The latch was only a few inches below the surface, but his big knife was too fat to fit and his small knife was too short to reach.

  He tried again, wishing he still had his laser. The hook snagged, then popped loose. Cold sweat sprung up on the small of his back. He couldn't stay out here all night. Going back to the Scaveteria for a thin strip of metal to slide down there would be suicidal. He didn't even know for sure there was a latch.

  The hook caught. Gently, he pulled, praying the fishing line had been intended to stand against true monsters of the ocean. It pulled loose with a sharp yank—but at the last second, he'd felt something give.

  He opened the door with a squall of hinges. Moonlight poured into an earthen tunnel. Walt climbed down wooden steps laid over the bare earth. A narrow tunnel swallowed him whole. The moonlight faded behind him. He didn't dare turn on his flashlight, so he shuffled along, tapping with his stick. His breath echoed from the damp walls. After a couple minutes, his stick clunked into a wooden door.

  He entered the throne room.

  A bit of light sprawled through its meager windows, silhoue
tting the couches and chairs. Walt paused to listen for talk or snoring or fucking. The room was as quiet as a grave. The earthy smell of old potatoes emanated from the northern door to the pantry. He crept to the eastern door. To the stairwell. The treasures were always kept down deep.

  In the close darkness of the staircase, he listened for any sound from the upstairs bedrooms, then felt his way down the steps, aided by his stick. He reached the bottom, stopped to listen again, then tapped around until he found the doorway. It fed into a hallway that was just as black as everything else.

  He moved into it, cupped his palm over the end of his flashlight, and flicked it on. Reddish light seeped past his palm. He moved his hand partly off the lens, spilling light into the tunnel. The ceiling was a good ten feet high. Unfinished walls extended past the limits of the flashlight's beam. Doors opened into both sides of the hall. The first led to a room of shelves filled floor to ceiling with paper goods: toilet paper, paper towels, Kleenex. The room opposite held cleaning supplies, soap and shampoo and sprays and white jugs of bleach. Further down the hall, the shelves were heavy with medicine, hundreds of amber pill bottles and green liquid cold medicine and opaque white bottles of aspirin. Next came room after room of canned food and bins of wheat and dried corn.

  The end of the tunnel fed onto a concrete landing. A staircase descended to both sides. He took the left. At the bottom, a metal door hung open, leading into another tunnel. Dust coated the floor in a solid sheet. On both walls, iron bars fenced off small cells. A bucket sat in each room. An actual fucking dungeon. Walt walked to the end of the hall, then turned back, climbed the stairs to the landing, and took the right fork.

  The metal door at its bottom was open, too. Footprints marred the dust. Most of the tracks led to a room halfway down the hall. Inside, rows of blunt black pistols rested on the shelves.

  The weapons were heavy, a couple pounds apiece, most of that concentrated in what he assumed was a battery in the grip. He loaded two dozen into his backpack, climbed back to the supply basement, clicked off the flashlight, and ascended to the throne room. Moonlight touched the empty silence. He took the escape tunnel back into the open air.