Breakers (37 page)

But the beach hadn't been a battlefield between uniformed soldiers. It had been something
they
would have done. Now those kids could never grow up under
human
rule, a benign captivity where they lived among Earth's natives, but with the back-bending shame of knowing what their parents had done before being defeated. That would have been the best punishment of all.

"What?" he said.

"Do you know anything about windmills?" David repeated patiently.

"Why would I know anything about windmills?"

"Life teaches a person all sorts of interesting things. If I had the proper clay, kiln, and plants, I could craft you a set of dishes right here. Complete with gaze."

"I don't know anything about windmills."

"Ah. We may need windmills to power our initial infrastructure before we get the old gear up and running."

He stared at David, those sharp cheeks, the quick intelligence in his brown eyes. Was he insane? Already they were talking as if the aliens were incinerated on the wind and not occupying the ruins of the world's greatest cities. As if another week from now, two at the utmost, they'd all be back to playing Xbox and ordering General Tso's chicken for delivery, thinking back on the last ten months as a hiccup, an eye-rolling yet adventurous detour when we all had to live in the woods and eat out of cans. Without warning, Raymond found himself crying, heaving sobs that bobbed his shoulders.

David glanced from him to Anna, alarmed, then patted his shoulder.

"I don't think we should have elections," Anna said. "Those never really worked."

He was woken more than once by the rumble of ships hunting for those who'd killed their babies. By afternoon it was silent, and Raymond agreed when Anna stated it was probably safe enough to continue north. Privately, he didn't think this was true—he thought the aliens would keep searching for a long time—but a part of him longed to be spotted, to be vaporized and blown out to sea before he knew what had happened.

He walked. When the others rested, he did too, his mind throbbing with his leg and his feet. They slept sparingly. Pelicans drifted on the constant seaside wind, the great big Vs of their wings throwing fast shadows over the sand and sidewalks. He stared out to the west, pinpointing the precise place the sky merged with the sea.

The road curved west. Mountains sprung up to the north, folded brown ridges and green foothills dense with brushy chaparral and open grass. Past the sickle of yellow sand, the ocean was so blue he could almost forgive the invaders for wanting it. Midafternoon, he shed his jacket and walked in shirtsleeves, the sun and sea air drawing a light sweat from his skin. Palms swayed above the clean glass and red roofs of a college that was all the prettier because there was no one left to use it. The dumb chug of a lawnmower wafted from the city center.

Their water was low, so when they set camp in a beach gazebo, Raymond offered to go forage. Night settled on Santa Barbara like the evening's first drink. His breath hung in the salty air. He walked fast to stay warm. The ARCO off the highway was dead empty, rats rustling in the wrappers, nakpkins, and smashed glass. The Rite-Aid was bereft of water, candy bars, toilet paper, soap, contact lens solution, even makeup. He wasn't surprised. Gas stations, grocery stories, pharmacies, those were the obvious survival caches, the first place looters would look. Raymond clicked off his flashlight and headed for the Spanish-style church on the corner: it would have snacks and water and canned goods in the basement, the stuff of picnics, socials, and charity.

The bell tower projected from stark white stucco walls. The doors groaned, huge old oak lined with iron. He held his flashlight up and away from his body. The light splashed over a dried-up fountain, dusty benches, and a foyer with a coat room to one side and an office to the other. The main chapel held row on row of cobwebbed pews. It smelled like dust and dried-up water. His footsteps echoed through the arched whale-belly space. Something scraped in the darkness. He flicked his light over candle-packed cupolas, the stage and its dusty podium.

Another scrape behind him. He whirled. The flashlight beam glared from a machete and two hard eyes. He was too frozen to scream.

"Who are you?" Her blade was cocked back, ready to strike for his bare neck.

"I'm looking for water."

"Mine is mine."

His laser hung from his hip. "I didn't know anyone was here."

Her fingers curled around the handle. "No one does."

"Wait," he said. She was no more than 14, and under the dirt and darkness on her face may have been younger yet. Her blonde hair was hacked short, sprouting in greasy twists. "We're going to destroy them."

"The angels?"

"The aliens. The ones who gave us the disease."

The girl slipped forward half a foot, keeping her soles close to the floorboards. "You'll die. That's all."

"Then let me die trying."

"My dad showed me how to salt meat. To smoke it over a fire and dry it."

A wave of hot prickles tingled over Raymond's face. "Let me go. I won't hurt you."

She raised the thick blade. "I know."

"The thing on my belt is a gun," he blurted. "It looks like a Nintendo controller, but it's killed people. Humans. I don't want it to kill any more."

Her nostrils flared. She shifted her grip on the tape-wrapped handle. She slid back, feet rasping, disappearing inch by inch into the blackness beyond the flashlight. He shifted the beam but she was gone. He sidled for the door, reaching for the laser pistol. At the door, there was a moment he had to glance down to reach for its handle, and he was certain it would end, then, the cold bite of the jungle-knife's steel smashing through his throat. Then he was in the street, where palm fronds whispered and bugs piped from rotting wood.

He found bottled water in the back of a garage and returned to the gazebo. Anna and David were asleep in the blankets, his arm slung over her chest. Raymond stared into the night.

The road carried westward, a warm corridor between the mountains and the sea. Days later, at Lompoc, a sign pointed them toward the base, and they followed that road over low hills and the shrubs and the grass, smelling pollen, salt, and a cold that never quite came no matter how late the hour.

He expected bunkers, silos, flat pavements, barb wire on concrete ramparts. Instead, Vandenberg's main presence was a big white building block, one face painted with a giant American flag, which stood across from a factory-like jumble of curved pipes and liquid reservoirs, all massive. A huge scaffold rose from the flattened top of a hill. Narrow roads ringed the site, turning off for scattered outbuildings. Waves washed the shore a hundred yards away.

Amidst the scaffolding, naked missiles waited in the sun.

30

"Well, kid," Otto said, gazing at the blue and yellow cloth, "I'm damn sure glad my friends are too dead to witness this sorry business."

Walt laughed. He couldn't help it. He'd been laughing since he thought of it: their superweapon, a wad of circus-colored nylon. A basket that had once carried wealthy lovers in the sunrise above the California coast would instead lift as many of the highest-yield, lowest-metal explosives Otto could rig up. It was perhaps the dumbest idea Walt could have thought of, and back in the Thai restaurant where they'd waited out the enemy jets, Otto had said as much.

"You think they don't have radar? Only chance we got is if they're laughing too hard to shoot straight."

"Balloons don't always show up on radar. Depends on the equipment. The weather."

"These are an advanced species that smashed us like a wine glass at a Jew's wedding."

"Wrong. It doesn't have to be a wine glass."

Otto scowled, hunched over the booth's table. "Why don't we steal a fighter jet instead? Crash it into the carrier's bridge?"

"Because," Walt said, stepping to the boards across the windows, "I don't know how to fly a jet."

"You do a balloon?"

"My parents owned them. We take it up at night, up high, then drift down, as slow as we can. They hunt by movement. Maybe their sensors do too."

"And if they do see us, what then? You gonna bail out the side?" Otto shook his shaggy head. "Falling from a mile up, the ocean's like concrete. The sharks will spread what's left of you on their toast."

"Probably. So the fuck what?"

Otto spread his thick, callused hands. "I'm just getting this out here so I can scream I told you so on the way down."

That had been that. On the spot, Walt had checked the restaurant's voluminous yellow pages—if this thing worked, they'd have to establish Phone Book Day—and found a purveyor of hot air balloon rides a ways up the coast. He'd returned to the tunnels for supplies and struck out the next night while Otto stayed behind to build more things that went boom (he claimed he'd manufactured his own C-4 when his platoon ran out in Vietnam) and try to scout out the structure of the monstrous ship hanging over the bay.

It took two days to find the balloonery. Two more to make sure all the equipment was available and working and then get back to Otto. Another three to load up their wagons—literally; they'd picked up little red wagons in a Toys "R" Us, thinking they'd be easier to move than wheelbarrows and more stable than shopping carts—and roll up the coast to the hills. They spent one last day preparing, testing and setting up the gear, going over Otto's dozens of sketches of the gigantic ship's external geography and hypothetical interiors. That evening, with the balloon spread on the grass, its deflated nylon envelope tethered to the ground, Walt waited for the night to deepen.

He kept one eye on the sky, waiting for the meteoric streak of the ICBM that would spell the final death of the city. Otto said Lompoc was some 150 miles upstate, the air force base just past that. It had been more than a week since the others had left. Even if Raymond and company stayed on foot, they could be there by now, making the final calibrations before turning the key.

"Will you quit the skygazing?" Otto groused. "You'll get your chance to kill yourself soon enough. No way they figure out how to get a missile off the pad, let alone aim the damn thing."

"About as likely as taking down a mothership with a hot air balloon."

"You're darker than a snake's asshole, son."

A mist had rolled in with the night, blocking out the stars. He would have liked to see them one last time. The clouds had their silver lining, though. He wouldn't have to rig up anything to conceal the burner's flame.

"I'm going to miss it," he said.

"Shit."

"This isn't a 'wax nostalgic because I'm about to die' thing. I didn't get enough time. I was afraid for so long."

"Yeah, well, life ain't fair, is it."

"Obviously not."

Otto squinted up at the clouds. "You had another eighty years to live, what would you do?"

"I would walk around," Walt said. "Catch fish. Build fires. Go swimming. Sail. Watch stars. Fry mushrooms. Read books and throw them away."

"Simple life, huh? What if you break your leg fifty miles outside Vancouver? Or you get to be sixty and your knees start barking any time you walk further than the corner? What do you do then?"

"Die."

Otto grinned. "Me, I was looking forward to a couple decades of couch-side NFL Sundays and cold Millers."

"If you can build bombs, you can brew your own beer." Above, silent black clouds drifted inland, bound for mountains and rivers and deserts. "I wouldn't wait to do what I want to do or for things that are wrong to get better on their own. You keep moving forward. Every day, you walk on."

Otto nodded. Walt watched the clouds. Finally, it was time.

He lugged out the fan—gas-powered, fortunately—and started it up, packing cold air through the balloon's mouth. The envelope rippled, slowly swelling. Otto leaned into the bulging nylon, smoothing it against the light wind. After ten minutes, the envelope was plump, approaching round. Walt slid on his gloves and flipped on the burner with an airy whump. Flames shot for the balloon's open mouth. Heat reached Walt's face. The envelope tautened, began to bob from the ground. Finally, it rose, righting the wicker basket with it, tugging its tethers.

He helped Otto load the basket with blanket-wrapped blocks of what the old man had assured him was C-4. He frowned at the burner. Well, whatever. Waking up in the morning was a risk, too. Otto handed him a pack of laser pistols and bottled water and rope and thick plastic hooks. Walt waved him in. The old man climbed into the basket with knees bent, hands outstretched like he might fall overboard at the slightest sway. Walt smiled and cast off the lines.

He opened the burner. The basket lifted, rocking faintly. Otto hunkered down against its wicker wall, knuckles tight on the lip. The balloon lifted into the darkness. The field fell away.

Otto swallowed. "If I jumped out right now, think you could rig this stuff on your own?"

"Quit barfing and try to enjoy yourself."

They were high enough to see the ship now, a great disc of lights and bays half-hidden by the low marine clouds. The wind blew from the sea, nudging them inland, and Walt took the balloon higher, hunting for a stream that would take them out to sea. The air cooled. An enemy jet lifted from LAX, blue lights winking. It soared and banked north. Towards them. Walt hung there, hand on the switch of the silent burner.

"Should have brought parachutes," he said.

"I'd prefer a rocket launcher."

The vessel tracked closer, rumbling below the clouds. It would be on them in a minute. Walt's stomach sank. He'd wanted to set foot on the carrier, at least. Get off a single bomb. Show them they weren't untouchable. Otto put his hand on his shoulder. Walt nodded.

The jet curved out to sea, lifting toward the waiting carrier. Walt laughed and hit the burner. It roared, spouting flame into the waiting envelope. Sea-mist pickled his face. Gauzy clouds wrapped them up, freeing Walt to rise and rise until he found the stream.

The balloon slowed its inland drift, swayed. He cut the burner. The balloon eased toward the shore.