Captives (5 page)

She was burbling away with robot noises when Dim returned from deeper within the maze. "I have good news and bad. The good news is Liam's scheduled to perform here. The bad news is it's not for another three weeks."

"I can't wait that long."

"To speak frankly, neither can the lady."

Walt glanced over the rows of roses toward the dark towers of downtown. "Any chance he'll go outside like a normal person within the next day or two?"

"The Forged Ones have a culture of discouragement against leaving the compound. Now, to your typical tom, cultural norms aren't much more than a curiosity. But as their house cat, Liam is forced to behave or risk being flung to the wolves." Dim bulged the side of his cheek with his tongue. "Additionally, swift-wing'd rumor reports he's got a new groupie. We'll be lucky if he leaves his
room
between now and the gig."

"Forget lying in wait. We'll have to go inside. Point me out of here before I start Kool-Aiding through the walls."

Dim brought him outside and they grabbed their bikes and pedaled back to the offices and apartments of the downtown. To get a broader perspective, Walt climbed the stairwell of one of the buildings across the street and exited to its roof. The cold wind clipped his ears. Candles burned in a few of the windows of the Forged Ones. The roof of their building was a dense garden broken up by barrels and tubs for collecting and purifying water. It was approaching midnight and some of the lingerers had dispersed from the front steps, but sentries moved across the grounds every minute or two, accompanied by the jangling collars of their dogs.

"If anything, it looks more daunting from above," Dim said. "I had forgotten there was a second fence."

"The fence isn't the problem. I'm much more concerned about the armed guards, barking dogs, and fighting my way up and down a cramped stairwell."

"You begin to see why I have not retrieved it for myself. I feel at times like the penguin I once read of as a boy, wishing for wings that worked."

"Penguins wouldn't need wings if they had thumbs," Walt murmured. "We're not going in from the ground. We're going in from the sky."

Dim cocked his head, gazing up at the neighboring buildings. "Precisely how do you intend to accomplish this?"

"Easy." Walt pushed off from the concrete barrier at the edge of the roof and glanced around the interior. "Is there a sporting goods store around here?"

4

"That's not possible," Thom said. "They knew each other."

The woman lifted a dark brow. "Strangers hurt us far less often than lovers and friends."

He reached for his glass and took a bracing drink of beer. It was bitter and lukewarm. At the other tables, locals laughed with each other, sopping up chicken soup with lumpy hunks of bread, peeling the oranges that grew in profusion around the hills.

"And he told you this."

The woman looked away, moving her index finger in a circle on the surface of the table. "Late one night. We'd been drinking. I don't remember what we'd been talking about beforehand, what led up to it. Only that he began to cry. He tried to brush it off, but I could see it had been weighing on him. Smothering his soul." She met Thom's eyes. "Are you sure you want to hear this?"

Thom's throat had gone dry. He took another drink. "I just want to know the truth."

She was quiet a moment, finger still circling. "It happened years ago. After the plague and the invasion, but before the ship had been destroyed. They were here in Los Angeles. Fighting back. Walt, Raymond, a handful of others. Walt was leading them, but things went bad fast. After one of their raids came back with two more dead, Raymond stood up to him. Said they needed to try something else. They started shouting. There was a scuffle—Walt wasn't clear on the details—and a gun went off."

"A gun went off? Like it decided to fire itself?"

"That's what he said. 'A gun went off.' I'm so sorry."

Thom's entire body tingled. "And the others were… okay with this? Why didn't they throw him out? Put him to death?"

The woman bit her lip. "He didn't say. Probably, they were too scared. It wasn't long after that before they took down the ship." She shrugged."I guess they thought that was all that mattered."

"I can't," Thom said, and discovered he didn't know how to finish the sentence. "How did you know him? Walt?"

"He found me in Mexico. The middle of the jungle. I had been unwell and we decided to come back to L.A., hoping it would be better. Along the way, we became lovers. It was good until it wasn't. When he found out I was pregnant, he left. Said he wasn't done killing aliens yet."

"I'm sorry." The response was automatic, yet he meant it. "Do you know where he went?"

"I haven't seen him in months. Sorry I can't be of more help."

"You've already given me more than I've found in years."

The woman didn't raise her eyes from the table. "If you found him, what would you do?"

He shook his head. "I don't know."

He wanted to convince himself this wasn't true. That he wasn't the man he had become, another angry spirit cut off from the light. Yet it was obvious what he would do: he would kill him. To honor Raymond, and to punish the man who no one else had dared to touch.

He had no leads, but San Pedro was full of travelers and traders and refugees. The kind of place you could set up camp and wait for news and rumor to come to you. He decided to make it his home. He had been sleeping in an apartment above a former pizza shop in the strip mall across from the inn, but spent the next day scouting the dry, quiet neighborhoods above the bazaar known as the Dunemarket. None had power or water—not that he'd expected as much—but not far from the canal, he found a two-story place with good windows that would make the most of the winds if he was still here in the summer. The grass had died, replaced by cheat grass and legions of yellow-flowered weeds that looked thorny but weren't, yet three mature citrus trees grew in the yard: two oranges, one lemon, dozens of ripe fruits hanging from the boughs like orange and yellow Christmas balls. As an added bonus, there were no skeletons inside the house.

The next few days were consumed by hauling out all the time-stained furniture and yellowed clothes, then sweeping out the dust and brittle leaves layering the floors. Down the street, he met a woman who seemed friendly enough and promised to let the others in the area know Thom had claimed the property.

It wasn't ideal. The nearby shops had all been looted of everything expendable or cool. There were no obvious sources of food, either. The gardens and small farms were all owned by others. He spotted the occasional tree bearing oranges or avocados, and sometimes stumbled into shaded patches of strawberries or melons, but these were always picked over. Food would be a problem. He would need to start fishing, set up a garden, or establish a trade of some kind to barter at the market.

Then again, he already had a trade. One that would allow him to pursue his primary goal of locating Walt Lawson. Two days after settling on his new home, with the sun sinking behind the high western hills between him and the sea, he headed down the road through the Dunemarket and into the tavern. People stood shoulder to shoulder at the bar. Rather than shoving his way in, he waited for a space to open, then took a seat.

As always with travelers, conversations seemed to open themselves. He heard stories of the latest power struggles in Las Vegas. Of bandits far across the basin in West L.A. Of aliens rumored to have been seen in Tijuana. He heard nothing of Lawson.

To make inroads with the locals, and in hopes of coaxing a decent meal out of one, he began to relay stories of his own. The one about the couple from Tucson earned him a free beer. The tale of the mare who outran the wolf pack picked him up a chicken leg and thigh. They were small tellings, two or four people paying attention while the others chattered away with their friends.

He started in on an old favorite: the Battle of Milwaukee. Despite its heroics and repeated underdog victories—most of which were true, as far as Thom had been able to glean—it was little-known outside the Midwest, and he always enjoyed bringing it to a new place. It was a long one—too long for a single night even if he'd wanted, and anyway, Scheherazade had been onto something—so he limited himself to the first two "stanzas."

Midway through the second, he looked up and discovered half the room was watching him and the others had hushed to not interrupt. Earlier in life, the awareness of their attention would have shut him down on the spot. He'd left that self-consciousness behind, though, lost it somewhere on the highways between settlements.

"Naomi pulled herself inside the stairwell," he concluded. "She kicked the door shut. Like that, the lights went out."

He gave a small nod to signal the end. The audience drew back with blinks and downcast eyes. A woman exchanged glances with her friends. "Well, did she live?"

"We'll see about that tomorrow," Thom smiled. "Don't want to wear out my throat."

"That explains the scarf," one man laughed.

But another bit on the prompt and bought him a beer. He didn't have to pay for anything else for the rest of the night, which was good, as he had few things to trade and lacked the laundromat tokens the locals used as currency. On the surface, it was impressive they
had
currency, but Thom had noticed it only tended to be used for minor, cheap things like drinks, vegetables, or clothes you might be able to find with a few hours of scavenging. Objects of significant value were only bartered for labor or each other.

Several of those who'd listened swung by to ask questions or chew the fat. When possible, Thom pried for intel about Walt, careful to imply it was for the purposes of learning more about the legendary figure. Too many people thought too highly of him for Thom to adopt a tone of anything less than bland respect.

After the well-wishers dispersed, a man emerged from the back and leaned across the other side of the counter. He was heavyset and balding, with the kind of sideburns and mustache that would once have gotten him teased, but were probably good for business these days.

"You say you've got more like that?" he said.

Thom laughed. "Easier than trying to find a new spot to tell it every day."

"Thought you sounded like a pro. Tell you what. You come in three nights a week and do your thing, and I'll make sure you'll never want for eats and drinks." He smiled smugly. "Assuming the clientele doesn't take care of you first."

They shook on it, introduced themselves. The man's name was Earl and he ran the saloon as well as the neighboring motel, where he indicated Thom might stay if things kept up half as well as they had that night.

"Looking forward to it," the man said, shoving off from the bar. "I think you're just what this place has been missing, Thom."

Like that, he not only had an excuse to hang around swapping stories all night, but his food situation had been solved as well. Feeling pleased, as well as three-quarters drunk, he shuffled off to his home on the other side of the market.

Five days came and went with neither incident nor progress. For the first time in a long time, Thom felt impatience. In earlier days, he might have wiled away the hours scrubbing, painting, and patching his new home, but he had other concerns now. The man would be dangerous. Extremely so. Thom had no intention of facing him on fair ground, but the fact was that he was out of practice. He burned daylight combing through the malls and homes, hoping to turn up anything worth swapping for extra 9mm ammo used in the Glock he'd carried for years. He had a magazine in it and two spares, but he needed some to burn.

The buildings in the hills were picked down to the bone. In some cases to the marrow. This was the downside of a place being so peaceful and orderly: people were unafraid to roam around in the open, taking as they pleased. Thom turned up little that wasn't common. He began to regret not honing a craft that produced something tangible. As much as people valued news and diversion, when placed against the dry goods of survival, his words were worth about as much as a nice cup or a pretty rock.

Yet one find made all his scavenging worthwhile: a compound bow complete with a quiver of arrows. He had used bows off and on for years. One just like it had seen him through the winter in Missouri. The advantage of the silence of the weapon couldn't be underestimated. Especially if Walt had friends.

In his back yard, he lugged in a disintegrating hay bale and set up a target. He discovered he was still an adequate shot. He resolved to make himself a great one.

He was out back doing just that in the cool morning sunshine when the men came to see him. One was young, twenty at the utmost, dressed in board shorts, a leather jacket with the sleeves clipped short at the elbows, and rugged sandals that appeared to have been fashioned from tires and rope. Small bones and walnut-sized skulls dangled from his zippers and necklace. He carried a bow and two long knives, one on each hip, along with an expression so earnest Thom wanted to give him a noogie. The man with him was roughly thirty, Thom's age, with a slight build and a spark in his eyes. Compared to the boy, he was dressed rather boringly in jeans and a black t-shirt featuring a green UFO zapping a hapless skeleton.

Thom kept his bow in hand, an arrow held loosely against the string. "Can I help you?"

"You're the one they call Thom?" the boy said.

"That's right." He stared at the boy's bow. "If you're here to use my range, there will be a small fee. Hay doesn't grow on trees."

The man in the t-shirt smiled wryly. The boy narrowed one eye and stepped forward. "Is it your intention to stay in the Place?"

Thom frowned. "Which place would that be?"

"Why,
the
Place, of course," the man said, flicking an exasperated look at the boy. "Loosely defined as the Palos Verdes Peninsula and everything south of PCH between Torrance and Seal Beach. Alternately, you may refer to it as 'those lands so blessed as to fall under the protection of the cunning and fearless Raina.'"