H2O (14 page)

I didn’t have
a lie ready to go and maybe that was why I went with the truth. Or maybe I went
with the truth because somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought that by
telling Victor Crow the truth, he might let down his guard for a fraction of a
second and I’d be able to tell if he knew the secret of Black Rock.

“We were
following the water,” I said and met his eyes, searching them to see if my
answer had triggered any concern. But his dark eyes were inscrutable. Telling
him the truth had yielded nothing.

“And where did
it lead you?” he said.

“We hit a dead
end.”

“You sure
did,” he said, then stood up and headed to the door, leaving me confused.
Wasn’t he going to interrogate us further? He passed the Fibs standing guard
and said, “Take them out and shoot them.”

“What?!” I
said. “We’re deserters, not marauders!”

But Crow was
already out of the room.

The two Fibs
stepped forward and motioned for us to get up. I was stunned at the turn of
events. I knew that the Fibs were reckless and aggressive, but I never expected
this. Crow
had
to know what was going on at Black Rock. That had to be
the reason he wanted us dead.

Using their weapons, the two Fibs
marched us outside onto the back patio. Six Fibs were already there, waiting
for us, firing-squad style. One of them ordered us to stand at the edge of the
patio and we did as we were told. Again, there was no way of escape, but this
time it was do or die so I checked out everything around us, looking for a
miracle.

Strung across
the lawn, I saw the laundry lines, heavy with clothes, and that reminded me
that families lived in the lodge. I had a flicker of hope that a mother or a
grandmother or a sympathetic soul would see what was happening out here and run
out to stop it. But I knew the reality. The odds were that these families, like
most families in the Territory, were avoiding the Fibs.

The Fib in
charge told us to turn and face the lodge.

We did.

Then he
shouted, “Weapons ready,” and the other five lifted their weapons.

“Aim,” he
said.

The Fibs
trained their guns at our heads, and I realized Lily and I had been dead from
the second we saw that golden space tanker. I looked over at her. I wanted her
to be the last person I’d see before dying. The fierce, lemon-haired beauty
whom I’d fallen in love with. Our eyes met and a huge explosion suddenly rocked
the lodge. Flames and debris erupted from the second floor windows.

The Fibs hit
the ground like a trained unit, then flipped around, and pointed their weapons
at the lodge.

I grabbed
Lily’s hand and pulled her off the patio and we ran across the lawn, ducking
under the laundry lines. As we bolted into the forest, I heard the lead Fib
barking out chaotic orders, but we kept running, stumbling forward in the dark
and picking ourselves up when we fell. I wanted to get as much distance as
possible between us and the Fibs and just as I was thinking that I’d have to
spend the rest of my life doing that, we ran right into two figures. We
scrambled away and I braced for gunshots.

Instead I
heard a voice. “Let’s go.” A calm voice. Crater’s voice.

We followed Crater and the other
man, whom we soon came to know as Tarkin Miloff, deeper into the woods. They
knew where they were going, so Lily and I were no longer stumbling. We were
moving fast and fifteen minutes later, we arrived at a dirt road and a car.
Lily and I climbed into the back, Crater slid into the passenger seat, and
Miloff keyed the ignition. We started down the dirt road and seemed to be
heading even deeper into the woods.

“You know about
Black Rock,” Crater said.

“Why didn’t
you just tell me about it?” I said. I couldn’t hide my anger. “You sent me
right into the hands of the Fibs.”

“If you didn’t
see Black Rock for yourself, you would’ve never believed it,” he said, not
reacting to my anger at all. “And as for the Fibs, they weren’t part of the
plan. They shouldn’t have been in Yachats. Not yet, anyway.”

“So that was
an accident?”

“A bad one.
Much worse than you know. And we’ll get to that part. But right now, we want
your help.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

As Miloff
drove further into the hills, Crater filled me in. He and Miloff were
marauders,
but
marauders weren’t marauders. The Fibs had thrown that
label on them. Marauders didn’t plunder and loot. They were outsiders who knew
the truth, and Crater told us more about that truth.

The aliens unleashed the Virus
because there were just too many of us to control. They needed just enough of
us to run the infrastructure for their mining colony, but not too many. Too
many would mean the secret would get out and their perfect front would crumble
and they’d have to use more of their own resources to mine our water.

The marauders
had concluded that the aliens had perfected this system of mining water over
millions of years and across thousands of planets. They knew how to exploit a
planet’s indigenous population without that population ever suspecting. On
Earth, they used three simple techniques to keep their slave labor force from
discovering the truth: Fear over the deadly Virus, absolute control of information
through the Line, and the destruction of scientific knowledge.

And Crater
told us that Crow and the Fibs weren’t in on the secret. They, like everyone
else in the Territory, were being manipulated. But for years the marauders
couldn’t figure how this worked. Why were the Fibs jailing and killing anyone
who threatened the mining of water, if they, themselves, didn’t know the
secret?

The marauders
got their answer when they came up with a way to tap into the Line. Once they
were able to monitor the communications between the towns, and the messages
going to and from the Fibs, they noticed something peculiar. Sometimes
information appeared on the Line out of thin air, and that information was
always false. Different kinds of lies built around one big lie: The Fibs had
been led to believe that Black Rock was a reservoir that supplied water to the
rest of the world. They believed this water traveled through aqueducts from
Black Rock to ports on the coast of what was once Texas. From there, ships
carried the water to surviving towns all over the world, and the Fibs and
truckers were paid a premium to keep that water flowing and to keep the entire
operation secret. They had no idea they were part of an alien mining colony.

This explained
why rumors of other surviving towns made the rounds in the Territory. It
stemmed from the lie that the Fibs were protecting. And that lie was the
perfect front for the true nature of the mining operating. Let the slave labor
force spend their time suspecting the existence of other towns rather than
suspecting even a grain of the truth.

Crater
emphasized the importance of the Line. He said that even though the marauders
had been able to tap into it, they still hadn’t been able to figure out how the
aliens controlled it. And the Line was the key to keeping the whole façade
going.

We turned onto a tiny rural road
and followed it for twenty miles or so. It turned into a dirt road which we
followed until it ended in the middle of a forest even more untamed than the
one we’d just driven through. From there, we began to hike through the woods
and I broached a topic that I was sure Crater wasn’t going to bring up himself.

I asked him
about the salamander in the dirt. He denied drawing it, but I didn’t believe
him. And just as I was ready to press him about it, he launched into the story
of Jonah Wolfe, the man who first discovered the secret of Black Rock.

Jonah Wolfe was from Port
Huemene, a town on the southern tip of the Santa Barbara Channel. Port Huemene
was a fuel town. Everything revolved around the extraction of oil and every
family worked the rigs. It was hard and dangerous work. Before the Virus, the
Channel had been home to twenty-seven platform rigs. After the Virus, it was
home to four, and those four provided the fuel for the Territory.

After the
crude oil was extracted, it was trucked south to Rapahanoc for refining and
then trucked all over the Territory. At least that’s what those who were privy
to information about commerce believed. But the truth was that after the oil
was refined, only some of it ended up in the scattered towns of the Territory.
Most of it ended up in Yachats where tank trucks used it to fuel the
transportation of water.

Jonah and his brother worked the
rigs, just as their father and grandfather had. By the time they were in their
thirties, the brothers had worked all four rigs. Platforms Gina, Gail, Gilda,
and Grace.

Platform Grace
killed Jonah’s brother. A thick steel cable snapped, swung violently across the
deck and into his brother’s stomach. It all happened in the blink of an eye and
Jonah found himself holding his brother in his arms, trying to push his
brother’s guts back into his stomach. He tried to stem the flow of blood and
pull the torn flesh back into place. But his brother died in his arms.

With a heavy
heart, Jonah buried him.

And he didn’t
return to Platform Grace. Or to Gina, Gilda, or Gail. He wanted to run from
Port Huemene. His brother had been his only friend. It’d been that way from the
start. When Jonah first spoke, at the age of two, he spoke to his brother. His
brother was four years older and he listened and answered. That had never
stopped.

Those
conversations had been enough for Jonah. He didn’t need anyone else.

After his brother’s death, Jonah
applied to the Port Huemene Town Council for a visa to leave town. He wanted to
go to Obispo, a town with a handful of people. They farmed for themselves and
didn’t trade with other towns. Jonah figured he’d farm a small plot of land and
on that land, he’d talk to his brother. Even if his brother never answered.

But the Town
Council didn’t want to lose Jonah. Oil rig workers were hard to come by. Not
many people wanted to do those jobs. The Town Council denied his visa and told
him to go back to work.

Jonah left
Port Huemene, anyway. He journeyed north and somewhere along the way, he
realized that there were a hell of a lot of trucks headed to Yachats. Trucks
loaded with either gas, diesel, or water. So he traveled to Yachats and
discovered the water storage facility. But he didn’t know anything about the
Territory’s water supply and concluded that this must be the Territory’s
central water distribution hub, which made sense. What didn’t make sense were
the comings and goings of the double and triple tank trucks. They all left and
returned within a couple of days. None of their trips lasted any longer. How
could they be hauling water across the entire Territory? To him, it looked like
they were hauling water to one location then coming back for more. So he stowed
away in the back of one of the cabs and made it out to Black Rock and, there,
he saw the golden space tanker loading up on water and bolting up into the
infinite blackness of space.

Jonah didn’t
like to talk to others, but now he had to. He had to tell others that they were
all part of a slave labor force. Slaves that mined water for an alien race. But
even though he wanted to tell others, he didn’t know whom to trust. He was sure
those in charge already knew the secret and that they were protecting it. If he
talked to them, they’d kill him. His solution was to find others like him,
outsiders, people who wanted to leave their towns, but weren’t allowed to.

Jonah would
tell those people what he’d seen and if they didn’t believe him, he’d bring
them to Black Rock. He wanted their help. He wanted to free the Territory from
the aliens. And most of all, he wanted to avenge his brother’s death. He now
understood that his brother hadn’t died providing for his family and his town.
His brother had died mining water for these aliens.

Over the next few years, Jonah
put together a group of outsiders. First, by taking them to see the golden
space tanker themselves, and then, by setting up a base camp in the western
part of what used to be New Mexico. By now, the Fibs were calling this band of
deserters ‘marauders’ and considered them criminals and not just deserters. But
this didn’t stop Jonah from moving forward. He used his thirty years of pent-up
words to inspire his followers to take on the mission of freeing the Territory
and soon he and two dozen marauders began to implement a plan.

They needed
cars and fuel, so they stole them. They used the fuel to create incendiary
bombs. Jonah wasn’t a scientist, but growing up in Port Huemene, he’d learned
enough about gas and oil to build simple and deadly bombs. Bombs which the
marauders would launch at the space tanker.

It took them
two years to gather and build what they needed and, during that time, a few
more men and women joined them. These newcomers were different than the people
whom Jonah had recruited. The new arrivals came with technological and
scientific knowledge and one of them even redesigned the incendiary bombs. They
were drawn here because they’d managed to learn enough to suspect that
something wasn’t right about the Territory and they’d heard that Jonah Wolfe
might know what that something was.

Jonah welcomed
them. He knew that the marauders needed them. The enemy was far more
technologically advanced than the marauders would ever be. He thought the new
arrivals were so valuable that he didn’t allow any of them to go on the mission
to Black Rock. He feared that there’d be many casualties and he didn’t want to
risk losing any of them. He understood that, in the end, the marauders’ most
effective weapon would be knowledge. That was why the aliens had destroyed as
much of it as they could without raising suspicion, and continued to wipe it
out whenever it was rediscovered.