Captives (2 page)

It still hadn't hit him yet. Not in the way he knew it would. He and Carrie had been together too long for the calmness inside him to last much longer. He'd met her shortly after the unpleasantness in L.A.—check that, the
most recent
unpleasantness in L.A.—and they had become a couple a few days after the morning she'd stumbled on him, half starved, and shared his fish. Once her stomach was full enough for her brain to begin functioning, she'd grown warier of him, but he'd been in a good place. Right with the world. Happy to wait. It had only been a matter of time until she'd decided she wanted a piece of that action.

She wasn't perfect, mind. She was on the serious side (though who wasn't these days). Liked to get up too early and work too much. Thought there was a future and that they should be working toward it. Despite these flaws, he'd liked her immediately. He didn't like to think of the years ahead in the way people once had—it was all too fragile, an egg balanced on its end—but when he did allow himself to do so, he saw it with her.

The highway rolled through Carmel, cut across a dense forest, then weaved into the Spanish-style homes of Monterey. Smoke rose from two camps along the beach; the days were warming up and the nomads were already on their way from Southern California and Mexico. He didn't know what prompted them to slog north for hundreds of miles only to head back the other way six months later. SoCal had been pretty turbulent over the years; could be they were fleeing their warm winter dens for places with more cover and fewer people.

He could also believe there
was
no real purpose and they were moving around for the hell of it. Seeing what was out there. Trolling for mates or more stimulating experiences than sitting around a silent cabin darning their socks. Along with the loss of indoor plumbing, the biggest change bestowed on them by the apocalypse was the boredom. Since the war had wound down, he'd bet that curiosity had killed more people than the aliens.

He swerved off the highway to a road leading to the beach. A paved bike trail ran along the sand and he backtracked to one of the two camps, a collection of three tents set around a central fire. Plentiful white smoke poured from the flames, dragged inland by the wind. People sat around the fire. As he neared, two of the men stood, gestured to the others, and moved forward, unslinging rifles. Walt braked to a stop, set his kickstand, and lifted a hand above his head. The two men exchanged a glance and continued toward him, lowering their weapons but keeping them in hand.

Walt padded through the sand. He stopped twenty feet away, standard-issue "not close enough to ruin your day with a sharp object" distance, and nodded to them. "You all seen a green van come through here a few minutes ago? The driver may have resembled a human-shaped rat."

The older of the two tipped his head fractionally. "Could be."

"I'm sure it's easy to forget, given the traffic around here."

"Or the fact I don't know you from Adam."

"I wouldn't want to stick my nose into a stranger's business, either. Not unless I was looking to lose it so I could quit smelling how bad everything stinks. If you do see the van, though, you might want to keep your distance. They're kidnappers."

The younger man took a step forward. "We heard an engine. Less than an hour ago. Didn't see what it was attached to, but it's the first time in three days I heard something humming."

"Appreciate it." Walt turned to go.

"Got any news?" the older man rasped.

"Afraid that's it. You?"

"Bit noisy down south. Hence why we're north."

Politeness insisted Walt wait a second and a half before nodding and jogging away. He jumped on his bike and got back on the highway. On the turn toward Salinas, he called an audible and stuck to the coastal road instead, meaning to question anyone he saw while the trail remained hot. He crossed a bridge over a canal and breezed through two miles of farms so mangy with weeds he couldn't tell what they'd once grown as crops. Ahead, a dinky little town claimed a crossroads of highways. Walt stopped at its northern fringe.

He'd seen no one and could hear nothing. There was no longer one road to follow, but two—three, if you counted the fork leading back to Salinas—and it had been at least ninety minutes since Carrie had been taken. By now, they could be fifty miles away, cruising north into San Francisco or raising a dusty roostertail down the slope of the dry mountains overlooking the vast valley to the east. There were no witnesses, just weeds and dirt. He had lost the thread.

A year to build it, less than two hours to lose it. That, at last, was when it hit him. Shaking so hard he could barely hang on to his laser, he turned around and hit the road for Salinas.

2

Thom knew this much: his brother had last been seen in Los Angeles, in the company of a small band of survivors—strangers, mostly—who had accomplished nothing less than saving the species from extinction. They'd dunked the mother ship right into Santa Monica Bay. In the process, most of the band had vanished. Never to be heard from again.

But one of the warriors was still out there. If one had survived, maybe his brother had, too.

The obvious starting point, the city of Los Angeles, held the silent sobriety of a battlefield after both sides had left. As he searched it, the northeast hills were burning, hazing the bowl-shaped valley that enclosed the endless city, the skyscrapers at its downtown fighting to shine through the smoke and accreted dirt of the year since everything had fallen apart. Thom made his way south toward the address, following the coastal highway past glossy little malls, banks, and restaurants that had offered food from every corner of the now-lost earth.

At the top of the high hill in Manhattan Beach, he stopped in his tracks. A greasy, gray sheet of smoke and clouds swept across the coastal cities, hemmed in by the green hills of the peninsula. The sun fought to get through but only emerged in alarming red streaks, like the veins of an infected man. Flakes of ash tumbled on the wind. The smell of fire hung in the air. Much of what lay ahead was burned, too, but the damage was months old, the embers long dashed. To his right, the Pacific was flat and gray. The dark plane of the ship angled from the surface.

He knew Raymond's house would be among those taken by the fires, yet seeing it in person made his heart do funny things. The black timbers. The charred clothes. The burnt, bubbled photos.

Ashes sifted around him, eddying on the oil-stained driveway like lost little ghosts.

* * *

He spent months searching the city. There were so few people. Fewer than you'd ever believe. The plague, of course, but additionally, the aliens had returned to L.A. repeatedly over the course of the war, scorching whole neighborhoods, bombing the cars of fleeing survivors. At the time, it had been hell. Yet it was the predictability of the aliens' attacks that had doomed them.

Through it all, some of the locals had stayed put, weathering the assaults from the safety of apartments, attics, and underground parking garages. Others had returned once they heard the ship was down. The stories differed, but they all carried the same core: the loss of everyone they knew to the plague, and just as they began to adapt to the new world, the fresh chaos of the invasion. As Thom made the rounds, many of the survivors ran him off with threats and warning shots, but a surprising number were ready to talk, babbling like fountains. Always, they looked away as they did so, staring at the green hills, the skyscrapers, the ocean, as if they were reading the words of a book only they could see.

None had seen Raymond.

The closest he got was on the Manhattan Beach pier. He had gone to it for a better look at the ship, walking down the concrete path toward the rotunda at the end, touching the mist on the teal railings. He had looked north to the black disk of the cracked ship, and the next time he'd glanced down the pier, he found himself staring into the barrel of a rifle.

Its owner was a man named Pill who refused to explain how he'd come by the name but was willing to do Thom the courtesy of not shooting him. He was Hispanic, overweight, the loose skin hanging from his triceps suggesting he'd once weighed even more. He lived in the aquarium at the end of the pier, and in a genuine miracle, he'd managed to keep most of the fish alive. They swam in safety behind the glass, colorful scraps of orange and blue.

"Why?" Thom said.

Pill gave him a funny look. "You'd rather they ate each other? Like we're doing?"

"You could dump them in the ocean."

"These are tropicals, fool. They'd freeze. Anyway, I need something to keep me sane while I keep watch on that thing."

Through the sunglasses that never left his face, Thom gazed at the wreckage. "Do you know how they did it?"

"You'll never believe me. Hot air balloon."

"You saw it?"

Pill shook his jowly head. "Was too dark to see much. But I saw the balloon floating around the days before. Then, the night it happens—I was in one of the mansions over there; no reason to let them go to waste, right?—I see explosions out the window. Ran outside. Then wished I hadn't, 'cause the wave that came in after the crash almost drowned me good. Ship put off just enough light to see the balloon on the water."

Thom put his hands in his pockets to conceal the tremble. "Were there any survivors?"

"You crazy? That thing's the size of a mountain."

"And it was knocked out of the sky by a handful of people and a hot air balloon. I'd say that proves
anything's
possible."

"Guess so." A wave rocked into the end of the pier, throwing spray. Pill didn't flinch. "Shit. I never believed it, but my buddy Erasmo, he says he pulled a guy out of the water that morning. Says the guy was babbling, talking shit about how he was the one who'd busted the ship. Erasmo didn't know what to believe. Left him on the beach and never saw him again."

"That's how you treat the man who saved the world?"

"After raving for a while, the dude starts trying to fight Erasmo. Telling him to let go of him, he has to go back for his friend. Next thing Erasmo knows, the guy's unconscious. Erasmo sees some weird shit in the water, thinks it's aliens swimming ashore, and runs off. By the time he comes back, dude was gone."

Thom considered the sand. "Did he say anything about his friend?"

"Nope." Pill was quiet a moment. "Dude's name was Walt. From New York City. Walt Lawson. Walked all the way here to kill those motherfuckers. So if you're ever in the 212, buy that man a drink."

* * *

He spent the better part of two weeks combing the shoreline, hunting for witnesses in the manors and condos overlooking the twenty-mile crescent of sand between the mountains of Malibu and the green hills of Palos Verdes. As before, he received his share of threats and warning shots, but when they saw Thom had no interest in anything besides what they might have seen and heard, most were willing to spare him a few minutes of their time.

A few did so eagerly, inviting him in to share a meal and to tell him of safe places to spend the night. But there was a hunger behind the eyes of these people. One that disturbed him. Like awkward high school boys, their neediness assured they would never get the company they craved.

It was about Raymond, though. The only family Thom knew had survived the plague. He clung to the idea like a rope in a tossing sea. It was his only hold to a place that still made sense. He knew there was a chance Raymond was dead. Maybe a good chance. But there was also a chance he wasn't. He'd made it through the Panhandler. That was the biggest hurdle of all. The lack of evidence meant nothing about whether he had made it through the end of the invasion. All it meant was that Thom hadn't been searching for long enough.

By late spring, with no new credible intelligence since his talk with Pill, he decided to pursue the one lead he did have: Walt. Walt from New York. Studying maps, there were two good routes between the man's starting point and Los Angeles. One of these routes diverged as many as five hundred miles south of the second. If Walt had actually walked all that way, he almost certainly would have taken the warmer path. It was reasonable to think he might have gone home, too, likely by the same familiar route.

Thom drew up a course, prepared a bike, gathered supplies. The highway climbed into the hills. Reborn grass thrust from the blackened slopes. At the top of the range, he stopped and turned to see the entire basin at once. Mile on mile of buildings, streets, schoolyards, parking lots, offices, malls. You could search it for years and never find what you were looking for. Yet on a map of the country, all that space would be no more than a dot on the page.

The other side of the mountains was hot and dry. As empty as Los Angeles was full. Thom hurried through the desert, biking during the mornings and evenings, exploring and napping when the sun grew too grueling. Three days in, having seen no one, he was already thinking about turning around. Then he found an old woman who owned a well and told him about the travelers between L.A. and Las Vegas. Vegas had restored electricity, briefly, bringing newcomers, but the source had been seized by a warlord and destroyed in the process. Refugees were deserting the city as fast as they'd come in.

She asked for news from outside and Thom told her about Walt from New York. The old woman had never heard of him, but was so delighted to learn about the battle that Thom couldn't help embellishing some of the gaps in the facts. He asked the woman to ask the refugees about Raymond, then moved on.

Finding a survivor in the desert restored his resolve. He turned east down I-40, biking through the wasteland. In an Arizona town as dried up and brittle as the newspapers caught in the chain link fences, he found a young couple operating a general store, providing goods for barter. He was bearded and thick in the middle. She was quiet and watchful. The man didn't know Walt by name, but as soon as Thom repeated Pill's description, contempt spread across the man's face. Something else, too: fear.