Captives (29 page)

19

"Sounds awesome," Walt said. "Where do I sign up?"

"You just did." Soo turned her back to the ocean, shading her eyes against the sun slashing over the mountains. "What do you do?"

"Sit around, mostly. Read. Take elaborate vacations in my head."

She laughed. "No, what do you
do
? Are you a farmer? A tailor? Can you build boats?"

"I bet I can steal them. Why? Is this a placement exam?"

"Something like that. There's always much to be done and not enough doers."

"Give me a second. I've had to wear a lot of different hats since the plague." Which was true, but he mostly needed a moment to think through the role that would be most likely to put him in front of Carrie. "I'm a pretty good scout. Urban and wilderness."

"Ah," Soo said. "Security."

"Can never have too much of that, can you?"

"Except in times of gravest trouble, only the Sworn are allowed to join our defense."

"The Sworn?"

She shaded her eyes, reading his face. "Those who've sworn their allegiance to Anson and the People of the Stars."

"Will I be allowed to do that?"

"In time, it's possible. Assuming you ever figure out what you do."

"I'm a pretty good tanner," he tried.

She gave him an odd smile. "It's Southern California. We're
all
good tanners."

"Of animals. Their skins. I like working with them." This wasn't true—in fact, he hated tanning—but Carrie was creepily good at it. If she'd been put to work here, it would be among her most prominent talents.

"Ohh." Soo laughed, blushing, holding her hand to her mouth. "Why would you tan animals when there's still so much good clothing out there for the taking?"

He couldn't stop himself from smiling. "Others have raised similar questions. I suppose it's nice to know you can make your own clothes if you find yourself without a Target."

"Well, I can ask. I don't think we have a tanner yet."

"Maybe later, then. What do you think the People of the Stars need most right now?"

"People who can fish," she said with deadly earnestness. "We've got a whole ocean and we're barely scratching it."

"Is this the kind of place where we get our vocations tattooed on our forearms?" he said. "Or can I change my mind later?"

"You can do whatever you like. So long as it helps the People."

"Then sign me up for fishing duty."

"Just so happens there's an opening on our boat," she grinned. "Want to see your new home?"

"Lead the way."

They didn't have far to go: the Santa Monica pier, its roller coaster intact but its lights off. Out to sea, a modest-sized sailboat bobbed on the waves. She took him inside a Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., the interior of which had been repurposed as living quarters, and showed him to an empty bunk in a room that smelled vaguely of fish scales.

"This is the men's side," she said. "The others are out to sea. It's my day off."

Walt lowered his pack to the bed. "Are you usually assigned to babysit strangers on your day off?"

"I figured Gene and I were the closest to the signal," she said. "The crew won't be back until lunch. Why don't I show you around?"

It was a nice offer, but there wasn't much to see: the women's bunk room, a kitchen with a wood stove, a patio with charcoal-burning hibachis, an add-on shack with a solar shower. Tubs for catchment and tarps for condensation. Plenty of storage for food, water, supplies. All told, it was a pretty sweet setup. No sign of handcuffs, chains, or locked cells, either. Good for them, what with their freedom, but less good for him: finding Carrie and the other captives looked like it would take some snooping around.

Each bed came with a personal dresser for clothes and gear. When he returned to his bed to put away his things, the top drawer held a bound notebook. A white star was drawn on its black cover. Inside, in handwritten block capitals, the front page was titled "THE BOOK."

Across the room, Soo said, "If you have any questions about that, feel free."

He waved it in a way he hoped wasn't too blasphemous. "Is this like your… bible?"

"We don't like to put labels on it. Those only turn people away. Think of it more like a guide."

"I'll do that." He put it back in the drawer. "Would you mind showing me more of the area? Are we free to wander around? Is there anywhere we're supposed to stay out of?"

"Inside our zone, you can explore as you please. If you go outside it, you have to take your partner with you."

"My partner?"

"Probably me," she smiled. "We'll see about that."

"What if I want to go somewhere by myself?"

"Against the rules. Anyway, aren't things better when they're shared?"

"Gotcha," he said. "What happens to you if you break the rules?"

"Why would you break the rules of a place you believe in?"

He didn't have a good answer for that. She took him across the street, pointing out the apartment building where the Salvage Team lived, then the community garden where the two groups pitched in to supplement the vegetables they were brought from inland.

"Where do you find room for farming around here?" he said. "Seems like the whole damn basin's paved over."

"The hills do a lot of it," she said, waving north. "I hear it was quite a project."

He filed that away. She turned back to the pier to show him the second boat they were working to patch up. As they looked it over, the sailboat floated in beside the pier. Soo moved to catch the lines they tossed on the dock. Three women and two men unloaded, watching Walt with naked curiosity.

"Guys," Soo said. "This is Dalton. The newest member of our little band."

"Hey." Walt smiled, waved. The others smiled back. Beyond politeness—more like siblings who haven't seen each other in years. One by one, they walked up to him and embraced him.

He smiled back, suddenly reminded why he and Carrie had lived alone.

* * *

She put him to work on the boat as soon as they finished with lunch. Since the greeting, there hadn't been any overt awkwardness or weirdness. As they ate—fish, crab and cabbage stew, a bit of bread—the others jabbered and joked like normal people. He even heard some swearing. Not exactly the clean-cut, pure-souled believers he'd expected after talking to the old tom.

The crew clambered aboard the ship they'd docked at the pier, an expensive-looking sailing vessel that had been modified with nets, winches, and other fishing-related dealies Walt didn't have the terminology for. Men and women scrambled about the boat, pulling some ropes this way and other ropes that way. A middle-aged man named Frank walked among them, chatting and smiling, patting them on the shoulder. It took Walt a minute to understand he was the captain, and that he was delivering orders.

The ship hove from the pier and toward open sea. Walt's knowledge of boats included the facts that a) they floated and b) sometimes they had barnacles, leaving him to stand around watching. Once the sails were doing their thing, Soo glanced over, gaze lingering. She set down a net she'd been fiddling with and approached Frank. After a minute of conversation, Frank laughed and nodded. Soo bowed her head and walked along the railing to Walt.

"I thought you knew your way around a trawler!"

"I imagined this would involve more poles and hooks." Walt glanced over at Frank. "I'm not taking you away from your job, am I?"

"This
is
my job," she said. "Helping you learn is an investment in the People. If I put in a few days of my time, you can help us build for years to come."

She showed him a few knots, then explained what exactly the others were doing as they trimmed sails and tightened lines. He did his best to care. Earning her trust was critical. Much easier to garner what he needed from an eager teacher than to go skulking around before he knew the lay of the land. He'd only arrived in the city that morning. If he kept up this pace, he'd have Carrie's location in no time.

Most of it wasn't particularly hard work. Not in the sense that it was difficult to master. It was, however, dangerous enough to require steady attention to detail. Time passed quickly. The wind blew steadily, salty and neutral, neither warm nor cold. Pelicans bobbed on the swells. Soon, a pair of women were hauling in a net, swinging it into the recessed hold near the prow, disgorging a mess of flapping silver fish. Walt was not at all surprised to find himself assigned to the duty of cleaning them.

Before he'd finished with the first batch, they dumped in a second. The ship turned about and made way for the pier. Walt's spirits rose; it was only mid-afternoon. Unless he was about to be saddled with a second job, he'd have hours ahead of him to feel out Soo and/or the city.

They unloaded, hauled the remaining fish up to the cleaning station on the pier, then began to secure and swab the boat. While Walt was finishing up the last of the catch, a clopping, rattling sound filtered from the base of the pier. A horse-drawn wagon had appeared. Two of the others used a shopping cart to deliver the cleaned fish to the waiting team.

"Good job today," Soo said.

Walt shrugged. "I didn't do much."

"Are you kidding? You could build a dragon from all the fish scales stuck to your arms. Why don't you clean up and we'll go for a walk?"

He did as he was told, making thorough use of the solar-heated shower at the Bubba Gump. The water pressure left much to be desired, but that didn't stop it from feeling incredible. When he exited the wooden stalls, dressed in a towel, Soo was there to meet him.

"Thought you might like these." She handed over a t-shirt and jeans. "Here I would try not to imply this is because your others smell, but you've been handling fish guts for hours."

He laughed, thanked her, and went back inside the rickety stall to dress. Once he was outside, they set off together down the warm sand.

"I thought there would be more people here," he said.

"There are. It's a big city, that's all."

"So why try to own all of it? Where are the others?"

"In their zones. Knowing where we belong helps us keep watch on everything, but there's more to it than that. Anson wants us to be able to grow into our lands. To make them our own. And for there to be plenty of room to expand our families—and welcome in new people like you."

"Makes a lot of sense," he said. "Still, it's kind of a shame to bring all these people together only to separate them into zones."

"Sometimes we share dinners. Hold dances." She wrinkled her nose. "That probably seems silly. But you can learn a lot about a person by dancing with them."

"Sounds very Amish."

"I suppose it is. But Amish is a big step up from the cavemen most people live like." Soo laughed. She stopped to look at the waves, then sat in the sand, sweeping her palms across the dry grains. "It won't stop at this, either. The problem is that progress doesn't come overnight. Most of us, when we're out in the wild, we're thinking about tomorrow. What am I going to eat? What tools do I need to find? At most, we might think for a season: have I stored enough food for the winter? What about firewood?"

"Or you move to L.A. and render all those questions moot."

She smiled wryly. "We think in seasons, too. Is it the rainy season or the dry? What if it doesn't rain again until October? Can I save enough crops from the spring to make it through the summer? How about the fish, are they running? Should I build another catchment tank in case there's a drought?"

"Whenever this stuff comes up, it reminds me how insane it is that we ever left the equator."

"But we're not bound by what's easy. Not if we think long-term. That's what Anson does. He's not thinking about the next day or the next season. He's not even thinking about next year." Her eyes were shiny, as serious as a state of the union. "He's thinking about what it takes to get back what we had. Power. Plumbing. Manufacturing. We can't pick up where we left off. But if we start now, we can condense hundreds of years of progress into a few generations."

"This Anson sounds like quite a figure." Walt picked up a small white shell and began digging a hole in the sand. "Do we ever get to see him? Or is that reserved for the Sworn, too?"

"He's not the Pope." Soo leaned back on her elbows, crossing her legs at the ankle. "Every two weeks, we have a city-wide gathering. He loves meeting new members of the family."

He bit his tongue. "When's the next one?"

She wagged her big toe side to side, thinking. "Saturday. Three days. Are you that eager to meet him?"

He shrugged. "The way you guys talk about him, it sounds like meeting Santa Claus."

Knowing that he'd be able to move ahead soon soothed him like ice on a burnt finger. By all accounts, Anson sounded like the kind of man who just loved to tell you who he was and what he believed in. The gleaming beacon of a cult of hope. Probably felt like he didn't exist unless he was surrounded by breathless followers, their faces reflecting his light back upon him.

That was the problem with communities. Villages. Tribes. They all had a leader. Leadership was ego. A specific brand that drank up love and admiration like the Mojave absorbed water. If that was what nourished you, then that's what you cultivated. And the decisions that produced love and admiration didn't necessarily have anything to do with the decisions that were right.

If such leaders were in any way competent, however, they supplemented themselves with advisors, strategists, and the unpleasant men whose hands had been born dirty. All Walt had to do was present himself as someone with bigger talents than gutting fish. Once he was inside the yurt, court, or castle Anson used as the heart of his fledgling empire, figuring out Carrie's whereabouts would only be a matter of time.

After a while, they returned to the pier. The smell of fried fish wafted from ahead. As dinner was served at the outdoor tables, Frank cleared his throat and stood.

"Looks like we've got a new face at the table today." He winked at Walt. "Dalton, it's a pleasure to have you with us. Work hard and do right, and you'll fit right in." He paused. Smiles appeared around the table. Frank grew sober, looking inland to the hills ringing the city. "A day like this is always special. Because it's a reminder of how special this
place
is. I don't imagine there are many corners of the world that would serve a stranger dinner the same day they met him. You ask me, they're more likely to serve him
as
dinner."