Captives (49 page)

"It's time to evacuate everyone who wasn't fit to fight," he said. "If we can, we'll try to lose the enemy up in Palos Verdes—see how that tread-wearing son of a bitch handles the forest—but if they don't take the bait, our only duty is to put ourselves between them and our people. Understand?"

Jensen frowned. "How are we supposed to beat that thing?"

"At this point? We're not. All we can do now is try to buy the civilians enough time to get out."

Some of the warriors muttered or swore, but none had the energy to protest. They jogged off to inform their people of the revised plans. Mia watched them go, observing the defeat on their faces with clinical interest, as if she were an ethnographer or a god on a mountain peak. From her perch, she could see it unfolding: they were going to lose. Not just the battle, but everything: so far, they had been able to keep themselves from being utterly smashed by retreating whenever the tank and its personnel support had come too close.

But defending the evacuees, particularly against the mounted, mobile Sworn, would require standing firm. They would be destroyed. And once they were gone, the people would be, too—or, more likely, they would be absorbed by the People of the Stars, divided across the city's numerous work-tribes. Anyone who bucked would be shot, enslaved, or delivered to the aliens. Those who didn't would be isolated from each other. Converted through the subtle but inevitable coercion of being alone among believers. Beguiled by the promise of advancement to the Sworn. Within two years, maybe three, there would be no remnant of the Place besides the bones left in the fields.

The final moments of San Pedro: the skies going smoggy with smoke, the hard light of late afternoon turning it a sickly yellow-gray. The smell of her sour sweat and the tang of the gunpowder on her hands. The shouts of confused warriors receiving their superiors' commands. The whirr of bikes as dragoons rode off as fast as their flagging strength allowed, meaning to gather the people hiding in their homes and shepherd them to an unknown shelter.

The creeping, whining drone.

There was another way, though. One that would expend her like a bullet. Yet as soon as she saw how it could be done, that was what she became: a bullet in flight. Stripped of all weight, restrictions, and doubts. Composed of nothing but herself, her target, and her purpose.

"Mauser," she said. "I need a bomb."

He glanced away from a conversation with a bloody young woman. "No dice. Blew the last one on the bridge."

"Doesn't have to be Fat Man. A grenade will do."

"I'm not positive we've even got that much." Exhausted and grimy, he looked ready to leave the matter there. Seeing the look on her face, though, a wan light came to his eyes. "Hey!" He turned to the departing troops, waving his hands above his head. "Grenades! If you have them, I need them."

The warriors stood there, glancing back and forth, empty-handed. Mia's dream receded. From the back, a man shouldered his way forward and delivered two black cylinders to Mauser.

He presented them to Mia with a flourish. "Anything else?"

"A white cloak," she said. "And something to draw them to us."

He grinned, but she could see the sadness stirring beneath his impish cynicism. He understood. As he dispatched runners, and Raina dealt with the overwhelming logistics of an evacuation and a retreat, Mia found Henna and explained what she needed.

The girl listened intently, eyes going narrow. "What about for your exit?"

Mia shook her head. "There won't be one."

"We're not going to stand back and watch as you throw yourself away."

"You won't be. You'll be waiting with the others. Ready to bring this invasion to an end."

A group of the Sworn appeared on a hill, forcing them to run back to the safety of the main group. Mia moved as if she were in a dream. Moments of time seemed to leap like cuts in a movie. A cloak appeared—bloody, dirty; one of the Sworn's. Mauser came to her and told her the course he'd planned out, but she had no memory of the conversation itself except at the end, when he looked down and hugged her.

And then it was happening. She was lying in the street. A car to either side of her. The cloak draped over her body, warm and smothering, the fabric scratchy with filth. In her left pocket, she carried two cylindrical grenades. In her right, she had the blunt black gun she'd been carrying ever since Vandenberg.

The tank's engine moaned, blocks distant. Now and then a shout penetrated the noise, but she didn't dare look up to see how close they were. After all, she was supposed to be dead.

Footsteps entered the street two blocks away. Gear clicked and rattled as the People of the Stars cleared the way ahead. A set of steps diverted, heading straight toward her. They stopped. Through the weave of the hood, Mia made out a figure staring down at her. Abruptly, the noise of the engine doubled. The man glanced toward its source, then ran ahead.

Rifles fired back and forth from the direction the man had run toward. The asphalt vibrated beneath her. The engine grew so loud she wouldn't have been able to hear herself speak. The wheels within its tracks squeaked like gibbering demons. Its gun went off with an ear-ringing roar; she flinched, then forced herself to go still. Fumes washed over her, hot and stifling, but rather than gasoline, they smelled like rubbing alcohol and drying laundry.

And then it was before her, a great, dark shape in the gauzy view through her hood.

She pulled the fabric from her face. The vehicle's sides were curved and smooth, but its top was relatively level, providing a platform for the turret—and for entry. A platform that stood eight feet from the ground. It began to pass her by, its flanks scorched and pitted by the earlier skirmishes.

Mia stood. Before lying down, she'd unlatched the rusty tailgate of the pickup ahead of her. She ran at it, jumped into its bed, then vaulted to its cab. Behind her and the tank, men watched in confusion. As she vaulted from the top of the pickup onto the side of the tank, the white cloak flapped behind her like a banner.

She landed two feet down from the platform. Her shoes slid down the curve of the vehicle's body. She reached for the top edge, but the turret remained out of reach, falling further away with each moment. She dug the edges of her shoes into the tank's side. As she tipped upright, she drew her right leg beneath her, bunched her muscles, and sprung.

She slapped her hands down on the flat surface, using the friction of her sweat-moist arms to hold on and haul her body onto the tank's top. She rolled up behind the turret. It swiveled with an electric whirr. Praying it wasn't about to go off, she moved to the broad, oval hatch. This was split down the middle to form two doors, each of which sported an upright handle in the shape of a concave cylinder. She tugged one, then the other. They held fast.

A man yelled from somewhere behind her, but she didn't look up. She crouched over the hatches, facing the turret and sweeping her cloak around her to conceal her movements. She drew the laser and pushed the buttons on either side of the grip.

A blue line seared into the surface. Metal slagged from the hatch. Slowly, she guided the laser around a circle four inches in diameter, connecting the line to its beginning. The circle held fast. She straightened, raised her knee high, and slammed down her heel.

The circle popped loose, revealing a glimpse of an interior lit by displays and status lights. She smelled atomized metal and the stink of burnt rubber. Without warning, the turret's main cannon went off. She dropped on her rear, dazed by the force of the report, hearing nothing but the high-pitched note in her ears. She withdrew a grenade, pulled its pin, and dropped it down the hole. Unable to hear it land, she got out the second and inserted it in as well.

She stood, ran to the platform's edge, and jumped as far as she could. To her right, a soldier pointed at her, his mouth moving senselessly. She landed on the hood of a sedan and slid forward to fall off the other side and put the car between herself and the alien tank.

The street behind her became a white sun. She lost herself in heat and light and silence.

* * *

In all her years of searching, the worst moments had come when she was at rest. When she had seen him smiling up at her from a towel on the beach, his short-clipped hair sticking up where he'd rubbed it with the towel, sand on his elbows and feet—and she awoke from a feeling so vivid that she felt cheated by the flimsiness of the real world.

The blackness that enveloped her, folding over her skin even as it spilled from inside her—it wasn't new to her. She had felt the same gentle, floating tide after the bombing in L.A. Even then, though, it hadn't felt like anything new. It felt like she had
always
been in it. That it wasn't the blackness that was the interruption, but her consciousness.

They were in bed together in their first apartment in Seattle. It was after midnight, but if anything, the sticky air felt hotter than it had during the day. They had no air conditioning and would have been too broke to run it anyway. Generally, she had a hell of a time sleeping without a sheet pulled up to her shoulders, but on that night, she slept on top of the sheet, separating herself from him by three inches—the touch of warm skin was intolerable.

And sleep, it turned out, was impossible. After forty miserable minutes, she got up and went to the terrace, which wasn't a terrace so much as an enclosed foot-wide platform extending from the glass door set in the living room. The one nice thing about the building was the view: the downtown piers, the lights of the boats and ferries plying the Sound, all framed by the black, jagged lines of the Olympics. It wasn't appreciably warmer outside than in, but the metal railing was cool beneath her arms.

Raymond appeared beside her, rolling his eyes and grinning, leaning on the rails to consider the city beyond. He was saying something. She couldn't make out the words, but she understood: it was a promise. Everything out there, the city and the sea and the mountains, that would be theirs.

Together.

* * *

There was a gap. With no sense of time, she couldn't have guessed how long it lasted.

After a while, she could feel that she had a body and that it was in movement. She didn't like this, however, so she made herself fall back into the black instead.

* * *

They were swimming. The water was moving; it was the ocean; probably, they were floating beyond the breakers of the Redondo beach, except the waters there were cool, if not downright cold, and this water was as warm as blood. There were some buildings overlooking the beach, though. Cliffs off to her right. It was night yet she could see perfectly well. Raymond had cut his hair short before they'd moved down from Seattle, but after a wave swept in behind them, enfolding them in comfort, he had to sweep long strands from his face and tuck them behind his ears.

"Are you all right?" he said.

"Yeah," she said. She reached through the water and found his hand. "Are you?"

"Isn't this beautiful?"

"We should live here. Here in the water."

He nodded, deadly serious. "We should have done this a long time ago."

She floated, bobbing on the waves. Though she hadn't thought it was fuzzy, her head began to clear. Orange lights shined from the condos above the staircases from the beach. "Raymond?"

He turned to her, wonder in his eyes. "You're back."

"It's funny," she said. "I searched for you for so long, but I could have found you at any time. You were right here."

"So were you."

"I felt like I was alone!"

"But you weren't, were you?" He smiled. His back was to the lights, his eyes white and wise. "You were always right here."

She was beside him in the water, yet when the wave came, it came only for him, lifting him above her. He continued to smile, eyes dimming, leaving only the shape of his face and the flash of his teeth. She could have reached to him, but there was no need.

* * *

The face above her wasn't staring down at her anymore. He was staring past her. He no longer looked any bit serene; instead, his face was creased, pinched. She was warm, but she was no longer wet. Most surprisingly of all, he wasn't Raymond. He was Mauser.

She croaked, "Did I get it?"

Mauser startled, throwing his arms about his head. "Sweet filibustering Christ, you're awake. Are you okay?"

"I don't know."

"This is—
fuck
. I wasn't sure I'd see those big brown eyes again."

"Mauser," she said. "Did I get the tank?"

His laugher rolled across the night, strangely hollow. "Oh, you got it, you crazy idiot. And yourself, too. And when I tried to get you back, you nearly got me to boot."

"Did we win?"

"Like Flynn."

She struggled to her elbows. A neutral wind blew over her face, rippling the sails overhead. To the aft of the boat, black waves peaked and troughed. A mile away, yellow lights flickered around the cranes on the docks.

"Is that San Pedro?" she said. "Did we have to sail away after all? Then how did we win?"

Mauser smiled, lips pressed tight. "We're alive, aren't we? I'd notch that up as the biggest win of them all."

She wanted to ask him so many questions, but sitting up had taken away all her strength. She drooped to her back. Above the city, the sky was cloudy, hazy. Some was gray, but much of it was orange. Glaring. It was the moon, wasn't it? Furious at them for failing it. For fleeing its lands and handing them to an outsider. It would curse them forever.

No: that was crazy. It wasn't the moon, it was fire. The coastline was burning. She'd been smelling the smoke for some time.

She shut her eyes and wept. A hand reached up to her from the darkness. She took it. This time, she intended to stay.

EPILOGUE

The hills stood above them, brown and bleak. Halfway up the road, Walt stopped, stuck the toe of his shoe behind the wagon's front wheel, chocking it, and lifted his binoculars. A warm wind blew across him, taking some of his sweat with it. Ahead, the highway was just as vacant as the part of it they'd put behind them.