by J. Thorn
He stalked off across the grounds. Jeeps and massively long flatbed trucks sat empty, dirt caking their windows. An assault rifle rusted in the weeds. Birds twirped from the tall white radar stand, nests woven into the crotches of its metal joints. He walked to the curve in the road and stared out to sea. It was just as empty, wasn't it? He turned to brush dust from the window of a metal shack, peering inside at dark computers, radios, and desks. When he finished his sweep, he reconvened with David and Anna at the metal doors of the big white block that seemed to serve as the command station. David strained against a metal bar he'd levered under the handle. Anna stood back, arms folded. The door rattled; David fell away, panting.
"Let Raymond give it a shot," she said.
"There's something at the bottom." Raymond pointed to a flat white strip glued across the door's lower edges. "Let me take a—"
"You just have to lean into it." Anna took the rod from David and bore down. The veins in her forehead squiggled under her skin. The door popped open, juddering, the white strip snapping free. Its broken edges glittered with bright metal. "Told you."
Dust and death wafted from the dark entry. They fetched flashlights from their packs. David tried the lights to no luck. Down a dusty hallway, another set of doors stood closed, sealed by some kind of magnetic lock that now lacked the power to keep them out. The corridor opened to a wide, spacious room that had been emptied of all equipment and furniture. On the floor, bodies lay in two rows. Desiccated skin hung from the bones. Brown stains spread beneath the remains. There was little smell.
Further on, the computers were black, lifeless. Raymond didn't know why he'd expected any different. He was about to sit down there in the middle of the floor when David found the stairwell to the basement. The man nodded, cheeks wrinkling around his small smile.
He had the generator on in minutes. Lights flickered, blinking over the dust griming every chair, keyboard, and monitor. On the top floor, the Pacific sunset streamed through the dirty windows, illuminating two dried-out bodies in uniforms, a fallen pistol, and a pair of keys glinting from the room-wide terminal.
David reached for one with a single finger, withdrawing as soon as he made contact. "Oh my."
Anna stared at the controls. "Is that all we need? Can we do this?"
"I'll have to get into the software. We have no idea where those things are currently aimed—China, I'd expect, perhaps North Korea. The targeting will have to be reconfigured entirely."
"That's not telling me the answer to what I asked."
"This is military software. It may have military-grade encryption. I won't know until I dig in."
"Start digging. I'm going to get on the radio and see if the ship's still there."
Raymond honked with laughter. "We don't even know if it's still in LA?"
"So what? The 'I' in 'ICBM' doesn't stand for 'in-state.'"
In the orange glow of the waning sun, he laughed again. Had the plan really been so threadbare? What if the keys hadn't been here? The generator hadn't worked? What if the mothership had since left for parts unknown? Rolling around on that dingy subway platform, this had been his big bright idea? At the time, lost in the fog of the bombing in the street, it had felt foolproof. Now that he was standing in the control room, hours or mere minutes from a launch, he didn't see how they'd even made it this far.
"Oh." David leaned over his monitor. The text was too far away for Raymond to read. "There's no security at all."
"This is strange," Raymond said.
"What's strange is those nukes weren't launched just for the fuck of it." Anna pointed at the two withered bodies. "That's why they're dead. One of them wanted to."
"You weren't here."
"When you remove all other explanations, the one that remains must be correct."
David clacked keys. "I don't know what I'm doing. With a few hours, I may be able to rectify that."
"Take your hours. I'll be on the radio." She strode from the room. Raymond drifted to the window and stared out as if he were keeping watch. David didn't seem to notice. The window faced west and the sun was on the sea and sinking so fast he could see it moving through the mist. It seemed like it should hurt, staring at it like that, but it didn't. The sun slipped away. He blinked against the greenish afterimage floating across his eyes.
"Can you really do this?" he said.
"Perhaps if I didn't have to answer questions about whether I can do this."
"Oh."
"Sorry, I'm all frizzle-frazzled here." David shook out his fingers, breath whooshing. "I don't tell missiles when and where to explode. I code websites about pre-Elizabethan leather-tanning."
Raymond stared out to sea. "Will we have to shield our eyes?"
David swiveled in his seat. "Does it look like you can see Los Angeles from here?"
"From the launch."
"The launch. I wouldn't think so."
"I'd like to watch it. It should be remembered."
David hunched over his keys. Clouds massed, thick and gray. The light flowed off to the west. Anna returned some time later, yanking him away from memories of trying to find Mia purple shells along the beach.
"They're still there," she said. "If you can trust somebody from Salt Lake City, anyway."
"Mm," David said.
"How's it coming in here?"
"Along."
"Good. Goodness." Her protruding eyes settled on Raymond. "What are you doing for the cause?"
"What am I doing?"
"You look like you're reading over David's shoulder. Nobody likes it when you read over their shoulder."
"What else is there to do? Should I sweep up?"
"You could be looking for food and water. There must be some. I bet they have some very nice guns, too. Do you think the batteries in this alien shit will last forever?"
"I'm going to watch the rocket launch," he said. "The Twinkies and M-16s will still be there in the morning."
She cocked her head and stepped forward. "What, does your leg hurt?"
"Get out of my face."
"Did you watch the sunset, too? I bet you did. I bet you sat here and thought poetry to yourself."
"Get out of my face. Step back and stay back."
"Or do you miss your girlfriend? Need some alone time to go wet those cheeks?"
Heat blasted through his nerves. He hooked his fist straight into her jaw. Anna's head snapped back, eyes wide and wild. He swung again, clumsily—the last time he'd been in a fight had been in a snowfield beside the middle school gymnasium—but with all the horrid power of his fury. His third punch knocked her to the linoleum. Her lip dribbled blood. The skin around her left eye was pink and already starting to swell. Raymond forced his foot to stay still and not smash into her teeth. If he started, he wouldn't stop until he saw brains.
"I'm going to walk outside and watch the rocket go." His voice shook. "Then I'm going to walk away. If you come after me, I'll jam my thumbs into your froggy eyes and scoop them into the dirt."
Anna gagged sticky blood into the dust.
"Bye, David," he said. "Good luck."
The man gaped at him, hand pressed to the base of his throat. "Are you sure this is the right idea?"
"Never."
He got his pack. His feet echoed in the stairwell. The night was cold. He put on his coat and walked up a short slope to the parking lot, where he sat down on one of the low concrete spot-markers. The missiles waited on the pad, sixty-foot silhouettes, monuments to a dead people that would soon be used to end another. He zipped his coat up to his neck. The wind ran in the grass. His nerves fluttered like he'd had too much coffee. He watched for the front door to open, fanning light onto the dirt, but Anna stayed inside.
He had no way to know how much time had passed when he heard the rumble; he'd broken his watch sometime in the city and hadn't bothered to replace it. Clouds filled the sky from edge to edge, dark and low. He thought it might be thunder, but thunder faded. He widened his eyes as far as they would
go, as if that would wipe away the clouds and splash sun across the sky, and then he saw the lights: a pair of blue dots inbound from the southeast, sweeping in over the hills.
His stomach coiled. He bolted for the command center. At the top floor, Anna scuttled back from him, knocking down her chair.
"They're coming," he said. "They found us."
32
The ship thrummed in the night, undershot by a deep whine that could shiver the bones from your body. Walt flipped on the burner, maintaining altitude, but he could still feel the noise in his ribs, sharp as an icepick and chthonic as a cavefish. Otto retreated from the basket's edge to hunker down and swab mist from the lenses of his binoculars.
"It's dank as a submarine's basement."
Walt glanced over the side. "Anything?"
"All the clouds you could ever want to wear."
"Keep looking. If we're going to get splashed across its side, I'd like a moment to curse a few people first."
Otto shook his head, mumbling, and scooted back to the basket's side, where he nudged his chin past the wicker edge and clamped the binoculars to his eyes. "We even close?"
"Getting there. I'm about to start easing us down. Try not to piss yourself."
"This mist, you couldn't even tell."
Walt kept one hand on the vent's control line, trying to feel a descent he couldn't see. Between the cold and the clouds sucking up the heat, he doubted he'd need the vent at all. A minute later, he waggled his jaw, popping his ears.
"See anything?" he said.
"Nothing count?"
"Nothing is something."
"Then I see something."
"Good."
He continued to let the balloon sink of its own accord. They were higher than the ship, he knew that much. He thought they were on top of it—it was a big enough landing zone, that was for sure, and the droning, penetrating hum of its engines and systems sounded more or less straight down, which was something. A something a lot like Otto's, maybe, considering that maneuvering a balloon that's the passive reactant to heat and winds is clumsy in the best of circumstances, let alone when you can't see a damn thing, you're probably fifty pounds past your recommended weight limit, and the continuing existence of humanity is at stake—but still. Something.
His ears popped again. He glanced over the side, saw nothing but darkness and swirling particles of water. He could definitively feel their descent now. He reached for the burner to slow their fall.
Otto craned over the edge, too excited to remember to be afraid. "I got something!"
"What kind of something?"
"Oh, I think you probably ought to take a look for—"
The basket whammed into solid metal, throwing Walt against the covered bundles of C-4. He struggled to his feet, hip and knee stinging. The balloon's envelope sagged downward, pulling sideways, scraping the wicker basket over the solid metal beneath.
And to all sides, too, a flat stretch that quickly disappeared into the mist. Not much question of where they were. Not unless somebody had just replaced the ocean with a million billion tons of black metal.
The basket skidded over the hull. Walt heaved bundles of explosives over the side. They landed on the ship with muffled thumps. Otto shook himself and pitched in. A sudden gust yanked the basket hard. Walt glanced up at the bobbing envelope. He'd intended to deflate it, reduce the risk of it falling past a window, but there was no time. He vaulted over the basket's edge. His feet hit, sliding on the rain-slick metal. His elbows banged into the hull. He clawed and scrabbled and then there was nothing beneath him but mist and open air.
He dangled from a smooth metal bar, legs penduluming in the gap. The balloon skittered away, sinking behind a drop in the ship's hull. Walt strained his arms, lifting one elbow onto the slippery surface, but his other hand slipped loose, dangling him from one awkward wing.
A rough, heavy hand grabbed his upper arm. Another took hold of his collar. Otto hauled him bodily to solid ground. Behind him, a rift yawned across the deck.
"You son of a bitch," Otto panted. "You trying to leave me all alone up here?"
"Just impatient to get inside."
"Well, on your feet, then. We got a bread trail to follow."
The hull extended to all corners of the compass, a flat black range interrupted without earthly reason by open gaps and fat, ten-foot-high triangles that may have housed delicate equipment or may have been bolted on just to look scary as hell. Not that there were any visible bolts. There were hardly any seams, either, as if the whole goddamn half-mile vessel had been poured into a single mold. Otto stooped for a cloud-sodden canvas bundle of C-4. Another rested in the gloom twenty feet on. They found five of the six packages and spent fruitless minutes circling for the last before Otto pulled up and gazed over the metallic horizon.
"We could spend all day up here, kid. What we've got will either dunk this bird or it won't."
Walt tapped his toe against the solid hull. "Having my doubts on that front."
"Yeah, well, that ain't all we got in store for these assholes, is it?"
"I've got my doubts about that one, too. Any clue which way the engines are?"
"Figure we walk far enough in one direction, we'll learn soon enough."
The ship vrummed up through the soles of his shoes. He saw no windows or portals of any kind. A blustery wind came and went, misting his jeans and jacket. He would have said it felt like the surface of the moon, but as far as he knew the moon didn't make a rubbery clank if you stepped down too hard. Moonside visibility wasn't restricted to thirty feet in front of you, either. They shuffled forward, skirting the holes and unclimbable rises. Massive cupolas cast blue towers of light into the skies, spaced widely enough to leave whole sections in near-total darkness.
The wail of an incoming flier cut over the ship's organ-rattling hum. Walt shrunk against a house-sized black block. His fingers were stiff with cold; he kept one hand in his pocket for warmth while keeping the other out to ward against falls, switching them every few minutes. After a while, his mind gave up any notion of trying to make sense of where he was or what he was doing, settling into an alert blankness. He walked.
Without warning, he stood on the edge of a steep downward arc. Beaded mist trickled down the slope.
"Fifty/fifty," Otto said, jerking his chin right and left. "Bet you that's the best odds we see from here on out."
Walt cupped his hand over one ear, then the other. "I can't tell."
"Well, don't look at me to hear the way. I've logged a few thousand too many hours behind a black powder pistol."
"Okay." It felt and sounded like there were engines to all sides, but in another sense, that made his choice all the easier, because what did it matter if he was wrong? "I never much liked the left, anyway."
Walt started right, skirting the abrupt curve into blackness. The going was smoother along the rim, less fraught with sudden pits, but the clouds stopped him from any sense of how far they'd gone and how much might remain. One step after another, rubber squeaking on metal. They stopped to catch their breath and sip bottles of water. They hadn't brought any food. Walt hadn't expected to eat again, and he began to regret he hadn't taken along what would once have been a simple treat, a bag of M&Ms or a Peanut Butter Cup, as a sugary memento of everything that had been lost. He could have sat down on the hull with it and eaten it and for a moment he wouldn't have felt so cold or forlorn.
He carried on. A steep ridge peaked from the surface, forcing them inland. Had he already seen that trio of bulges off to the right? The ship was circular; could they have already have completed a full revolution?
The hull's thrumming swelled. Ahead, the mist glowed like moonlight. The steep curve led down to round nozzles jutting from the ship's side, monstrously wide, steam boiling in their glaring light. Walt laughed.
"Those things are volcanoes. We'd need to be supervillains to take them down."
Otto swabbed moisture from his brow. "I know a crank like you's popped
a balloon or two in his day. You put a crack in the side of something that big and nasty, it'll do the rest of the work for you."
"Balloons," Walt said. "Thanks for putting it in a language I can understand."
He walked on. Once the first engine was directly downslope, Walt stepped out of his shoes and lined them neatly on the edge. He unshouldered his pack, unzipped his coat, peeled off his shirt.
"What the hell are you doing?"
Walt squeaked his bare foot against the damp metal. "If I start to slip, my skin's going to stick to this a lot better than my clothes."
He dropped his pants and, down to his threadbare black jockey shorts, laced his shoes back on; his clothes might not have much stick, but against the wet surface, his rubber soles clung like a terrorized cat. Otto knotted the slender rope. Walt slid it over his shoulders and tightened it around his waist. The cord was light, thinner than his pinky.
"If I slip, this thing is just going to tear me in half, isn't it?"
"Naw." Otto gestured at the featureless metal plain, void of anything to hitch the other end of the rope to. "You fall hard enough to do that, you'll just pull me right off the edge." He plunked down. "Good thing I'm fat."
Walt emptied his pack of everything but a heavy bundle of C-4. "Just slap it right on?"
"Just slap it right on."
"If anything goes wrong..."
"Yup."
Walt exhaled and lowered himself to the surface. It was witheringly cold, a sharp metal bite against his skin. He crawled feetfirst down the slope, lowering himself on his side whenever he threatened to slip, stabilizing himself with the full surface area of his arm and side and legs and shoes. He could support his own weight until halfway down the curving slope. Welcome warmth rose from the engines. The rope strained around his hips. As the hull steepened, he slid down on his butt until it bumped against his heels, then lay flat and stretched down his legs for another scoot. It was exhausting and freezing and painful and slow, but it worked, and he wormed his way down, two feet at a time, until he stood on top of the giant nozzle's base, heat rolling over him in drowsy waves. He unwrapped the explosives and mashed the white, clay-like material into the crease where the engine protruded from the hull. Once his hands were halfway warm, he started the climb back up.