Edward W. Robertson

© 2013

CONTENTS

BREAKERS

Part I: Panhandler

Part II: Contact

Part III: Liftoff

MELT DOWN

Part I: Panhandler, Redux

Part II: Landfall

Part III: Predators

KNIFEPOINT

Part I: Feral

Part II: Scour

Part III: Usurpers

From the Author

I:

PANHANDLER

1

If he'd known the world had already started to end, Raymond would have kept the drugs for himself. At least that way he wouldn't have to lie to his wife about it. It wasn't the drugs themselves that were the problem—they were casual smokers, Mia would greet the pine-skunk scent with a smile—or the amount, two ounces of weed, no more than he'd handled in college whenever he needed a few extra bucks. Instead, it was what the drugs meant: very soon, they would be out of money.

He turned away from the overgrown back yard, the wood of the deck creaking beneath him, and finished his lie. "We can even get a dog soon. Isn't that what you've been wanting? To clean stains out of the carpet five times a day?"

Mia's dark hair fluttered around her chin, the breeze bringing with it a whiff of salt. "I want to get a great big one. A wolfhound. Something big enough to eat you if you kick it."

"You think I'd kick our dog?"

"People get up to all kinds of bad things when no one's looking."

He smiled back. "Gotta run. Interview in Beverly Hills."

"Look at you."

"I won't be coming home in a Porsche. The guy just wants some cover art."

She cocked her head, brown eyes questioning. "He needs an interview for that?"

"Psychologist," Raymond shrugged. "Don't ask me. But if it works out, he's got some other projects he wants me for." He leaned in and kissed her before she could say anything more. She tasted like fresh peaches, lip gloss sticky as melted sugar. "If I get the gig, we'll go out for Indian."

Inside the bungalow, he grabbed his wallet and hustled out the front door exactly as if he had a traffic-filled 90-minute drive into the city ahead of him. Wilting heat breathed from the door of his '96 Altima. From the outside, all looked good: crisp white paint, sunroof. Inside, the left turn signal didn't work, the speedometer crapped out half the time, leaving him to estimate his speed by RPMs, and the AC took a solid five minutes to quit blowing hot air. He was sweating before he left the cracked driveway.

It was a lie, but not one he felt particularly bad about. The details might have been bullshit, but the basics, those were whatever the opposite of bullshit was. Grass, maybe. Or a fine, aromatic meal. Probably not a productive line of thought.

He did have an interview. Of sorts. In any event, he would soon be handing over $400, borrowed from Kelsey, which he would exchange for two ounces of wholesale weed. He could flip that to his friends and friends' friends for $800. With Mia's part-time, $800 would get them through the month. If he hadn't picked up any extra design work by then, he'd give these guys another call and repeat. Clean. Simple. Low-risk. As loose as LA weed laws were, he doubted he was even committing a felony.

With the city waiting uselessly to the north, Raymond swung south on the Pacific Coast Highway, cruising past the Thai massage parlors, organic grocers, and colon hydrotherapy salons of the South Bay. Lukewarm air flushed the swelter from his open windows. On the cliffside hills above him, smooth white manors contemplated the ocean, protected from the syrup-thick traffic by winding residential roads, gates, and the inborn social understanding that you have no business there. The lesser hill of the PCH dumped him into Torrance.

Strip malls and chain shops bordered the boulevard. When he idled at long red lights, exhaust and the smell of hot asphalt poured through the windows. He swung off the PCH, passing a bowling alley, liquor stores. He'd written himself directions from Google and drove in the far right lane, peering for street signs. Pastel bungalows lined the side streets, two-bedroom joints that still appraised at $500K despite the bubble and recession. Not that anyone was buying. When he'd poked around his options for selling the house his mom had left them in Redondo, every realtor in town advised him that unless he was desperate, he should just rent and wait it out for a year or three until the rebound catapulted the old home back up into low seven figures. But Mia had always considered herself a California girl at heart, and from 1000 miles away outside Seattle, finding new jobs sounded perfectly simple, something normal people do every day. They'd moved down.

Nine months later, Mia was lucky to get 15 hours a week at the clinic. He snagged odd jobs on Craigslist, ebook covers and logo design for website startups, but biddings-wise it was a race to the bottom. In a lucky month, he could cover the utilities and gas for the car. His checking account had died a slow bleed. He didn't even have a credit card. He was reasonably certain they could mortgage the house, but he didn't even rightly know what a mortgage was besides something he couldn't pay. What happened with the electric company in three months? What happened when their bank account was as empty as their fridge?

He parked in a weedy lot behind a beige rectangle of apartments. When he'd left Redondo, it had been comfortably warm, just a few degrees above cool, but the Torrance heat was almost painful. The difference between coast and inland, separated by no more than five miles of six-lane avenues and CVS pharmacies, could be a twenty-point jump on the thermostat. Transitioning between the two always made Raymond feel insane, as if he'd left not just his hometown, but his entire reality.

The blacktop shimmered. He closed his door, yanking his hand away from the scalding metal. A couple blocks away, traffic whooshed like surf. A crow cawed, was abruptly silenced by the bleat of a child's whistle.

Two ounces in broad daylight in an empty parking lot. Bobby had set this thing up for him, and he'd been buying from Bobby since bumming him a cigarette outside a bar on the pier three months back, so it's not like he was worried, exactly, but that wasn't exactly how he planned to do business himself. Ideally, he'd deal out of the house, but Mia was back by 1:30 in the afternoon. He'd have to drive to clients, set his phone to silent to disguise his sudden popularity. On the other hand, why not tell his customers that if they weren't at his house by 1 PM, they'd be out of luck? Telling stoners to be up and at 'em by early afternoon was a little like lecturing a dog to chew with its mouth closed, but he'd be the one with the pot. The power. It'd be his way or the dry way.

At the mouth of the lot, a gleaming black sedan turned off the road, bass thudding so hard Raymond could feel it in his chest. The car eased into the spot next to his. Engine idling, the passenger window slid down, washing Raymond's face with icy air. A skinny white guy with a shaved head leaned across the seats.

"You Raymond?"

He patted his pocket for the envelope of bills. "Are you Lane?"

"Get in."

Raymond popped the door and inserted himself in the passenger seat. Cool air rushed over his arms, raising his fine blond hairs. Lane stared at him like a bald basset hound. "Money?"

"Yeah. Two ounces, right?"

Lane nodded. Raymond squirmed the envelope from his pocket and passed over the last of his cash, most of which had been borrowed. Lane lifted the flap with one finger, shook the envelope up and down. "Cool."

"So?"

The man smiled like a kindergarten teacher. "You never done this before, have you?"

"Everybody does it their own way."

"Our way, you pay me the money, I send you to Mauricio. That dapper gentleman up there." Lane pointed to an apartment balcony across the way. Behind the black rails, a fat shirtless man sprawled in a lawn chair, a silver beer can propped on his gut. "Nobody's straight-up trading money for shit. Anything happens, we're all protected."

"Sounds like a good system." He raised his eyebrows. "When I sell this through, can you get me more?"

"There's always more." Lane stuck out his knuckles for a bump. Raymond fumbled for the door handle. Sunshine smothered him; Lane's car backed up and swung for the lot exit, gleaming. Raymond swept sweat from his hairline and scanned for the stairs. Heat roiled from the pavement. Sweat tickled his ribs as he jogged up the balcony to Mauricio.

"What's up?"

The fat man dragged a damp cloth over the folds of his neck. "Sup?"

Raymond gestured at the empty lot. "Lane sent me up."

Mauricio's shoulders lumped together. "I don't know any Lane."

"The guy in the car. Shaved head. We were just down there."

"I saw him. Don't know him."

"He knows you. What is he, your stalker?"

The man wriggled upright in the lawn chair, grabbing his beer before it splashed over the concrete landing. "Look man, I don't go into this stuff. I'm an upstanding citizen. But that guy, I think he ripped you off."

Raymond's face prickled. "You'd be in a pretty good position to know that, wouldn't you?"

Mauricio spread his blunt palms. "I've just been sitting here. If they made that illegal, I need to go on the lam, man."

"What if I call the cops?"

The man's belly shook. "About how you were trying to buy weed? With intent?"

"I'll tell them Lane robbed me." He blinked sweat from his lashes. "Give them his plate."

"I wouldn't do that, bro."

"He's got my money."

"I just wouldn't do that. That would be rude. But mostly it would be a very bad idea."

"That was all I had left."

"Seriously?" Mauricio smiled past his beer. "My first lapdance tonight is going out to you."

The parking lot's heat thudded over Raymond's skin. He drove off on autopilot, lighting a cigarette—he usually only smoked when he drank; the battered pack of Dunhills had been in the glove box for weeks—sweating, face burning, swearing at everyone who switched lanes without a signal, which was fucking half the population of Los Angeles. The AC pumped hot air into his face. He drove past the turn to his house and parked two blocks from the pier where there were no meters to feed.

The coastal breeze was a cool hand. He scuffed over the time-fuzzed boards of the pier, past bars and fast food stands and the seafood places with the live crabs clambering over each other in the windows. At the far end, Asians and Hispanic guys lobbed lures into the waves beyond the breakers and waited for a bite. Could he do that? At least they'd have food. It's what his great uncle had done during the Depression—once a week, he and his brother and sister and parents would go to the creek and catch their limit, forty trout apiece, two hundred trout in total, and they'd eat trout until the next week rolled around and they did it again. His uncle had died unable to eat fish ever again, but they'd made it through. How would Mia feel about fish?

But he couldn't put fish in his gas tank or in the envelope to the water company. Besides, all the time he'd spent down on the pier, he'd never seen anyone catch a single fish. The Depression was another world. There were too many people to live off the land. That was the lesson from the parking lot. This America, you made money or you died.

Mia had been saving a couple hundred dollars towards a laptop that didn't crash three times an hour. She'd have a paycheck at the end of the week. If they ate beans and rice and left the heat off, he figured they could last about two months. Maybe enough time to find a real job. This economy.

Gulls bobbed on the swells. A pelican drifted ten yards above the water, then dropped like a feathered stone, tucking its wings the moment before it shattered the surface. Kelp and fish guts mixed in the breeze. He'd moved here for Mia—if they'd just sold the house, even at the current market, neither of them would have had to work for a decade. But she'd wanted the sunlight. The palms. The ocean. A place where winters were only a memory. He'd wanted her to be happy—for them to be happy together. It was time to stop hiding, to give up the dream of design freelancing, or at least put it on hold for a while. It was time to come clean to Mia and work it out together. They were supposed to be there for each other. If he kept trying to go it alone, he'd destroy them.

He texted Mia to get ready for dinner. He watched the waves a while longer, drove home, changed, and took her to the Indian place down the street. She waited until the naan arrived, then, over the smell of garlic and coriander, asked him how it had gone.

"I didn't get it."

She reached across the table, lips forming a concerned O. "I'm sorry, cutie. Next time."

Raymond nodded, rallying his nerves. Reminded himself that, no matter what happened next, all he could control was his reaction. He took her hand. "What if there isn't?"

She snorted. "Like what if an earthquake kills us tomorrow? No! I haven't even chosen a cemetery!"

"We're out of money." He stared at their hands on top of the red table. "I owe money. I don't know what to do."

2

In the city that prided itself, quite wrongly, on being the center of the universe, Walt Lawson moaned and carefully returned Vanessa's breakup letter to the drawer where she kept her theater tickets.

A letter. How like her: dramatic, elegant, and perfect. Slyly impersonal, too, another symptom of her actress' ability to make everyone and thus no one the full center of her attention. Worst of all, it was permanent. A decade from now, he'd still have to read the same words he'd read minutes ago. If she'd told him face to face, even a phone call, his self-defense systems could have gone to work, distorting his memory, convincing himself, day by day and month by month, that her words had been selfish, crazy, bitchy. Enough time, he might even have been able to make himself believe he'd left her. But a letter? That was a preemptive strike. He couldn't interrupt, he could only listen to a decision that couldn't be swayed. And her side was on record. His side, if she'd been able to deploy her handwritten sneak attack before he'd stumbled on it (quite innocently; he'd just wanted to check what she'd seen last night, catch up on the reviews), would be jangled, panicked, shameful. Every time he'd reread that letter, he'd be reminded of his own tongue-tied response, supporting evidence of the very inadequacies her carefully regretful sentences had cunningly accused him of.

Of course, she knew he wouldn't be able to throw it away.

Six stories below the window, cars and cabs raced and weaved, the perfect combination of mass and aggression to smash out his brains and lungs. Or should he go somewhere higher—the Empire State Building? Shouldn't his last action be a big one? His last seconds strange ones? There should be more to it than simply dying. He didn't want a neighbor recognizing his face. He wanted obliteration. The kind a gun couldn't provide (besides, he didn't have one) or he could count on from the currents and fish of the Upper Bay (nor would he trust himself not to kick for shore after the first salty gulp). The plain truth, a truth he'd faced several times a day for the four years they'd been together, was he'd rather not exist than be without her.

Traffic banged over the metal plates welded over the holes in the asphalt. He was six stories up, but the roar was such the cabs and delivery trucks may as well be driving straight through his bathroom. He crossed to the window and shoved it open, smelling exhaust, kebabs, and humidity. Did he feel small because he lived in New York? Or did he feel small because he was?

He hated those metal plates. He could sleep through horns, car alarms, drunks shouting from ground-floor bars, but each time a truck crashed over one of those plates, he woke with a heart-yanking jolt. Instead of laying a thunderous iron plate over the potholes, why didn't they just fix the fucking holes?

Walt withdrew his head from the window. So Vanessa thought she was leaving. She thought he was a pothole. What if he could create a plate for himself?

Not in the sense of something to be run over. In the sense of a temporary fix with the illusion of permanence. The letter had once more mentioned her gauzy desire to move to LA, implying it might not be so much that she wanted to leave him as that she wanted to leave New York. And she hadn't actually given him the letter yet; there existed the possibility she didn't intend to—straw-grasper!—or, less unlikely, that she was waiting for a particular time to hand it over. Assume the possibility he could alter the destiny she intended for him. How could he convince, trick, or strongarm her into staying?

He quickly rejected several alternatives. If he left this instant on a days-long trip, she would have no address to deliver his letter to, but that would only cement her perception of him as unreliable. Nor could he take her on a breathless tour of romance, hansom cab rides and dinners in Little Italy, a balloon ride from his parents' place in Long Island. Being such an expert herself, she had a nose for manipulation. He could make a visible display of renewed effort on the novel he'd been working on for months (and, counter to her epistolary claims, he had been working, even when it didn't look like work; at times he suspected the cliche of "the rudderless, irresponsible writer" had poisoned her opinion of his ambitions), but that could easily backfire. Much easier to dump a person who has something to keep them occupied through the upcoming period of mental anguish. Hell, great art came from pain, didn't it? To her, leaving might spur him to a literary success that would console his broken heart.

He smiled, cold as a Kubrick flick. He would pretend to be sick. It would take a person of intense cruelty to inflict breakup-level emotional pain on someone already suffering physically. Especially when she could be confident she'd have to wait no more than a few days, at most a couple weeks, before he cleared up. Once healthy, she could deliver her letter guilt-free.

Walt knew it wouldn't be enough to restore her love, but spooning someone chicken broth could hardly be more intimate, could it? He could call off work at the bodega, too. With all those free hours, he could plot out a more permanent plan, something to forestall the letter forever.

Vanessa came home on a breeze of lavender and fresh sweat. He sat up from his couchside nest, blinking, remembering to cough. What time was it? Ten? Midnight? She slung her coat on a hook and pulled the pencil from her swept-up hair, loosing her locks over her shoulders.

"How was your day?" he croaked.

"Don't ask," she laughed, splaying the fingers of one hand. "Don't even ask. By the time I finished someone will be dead."

"Preferably neither of us."

"So okay. Mark hardly knows any of his lines. No, that's being too kind—he doesn't know any. He's got fewer lines than a baby's ass. He thinks he'll be ready next week?"

He cleared his throat. "Is that where you were all this time? Mark's?"

She stopped teasing out her straight dark hair to give him a look of dying annoyance. He didn't like that look. It said: Calm down: he won't be here much longer. "What, we're going to rehearse in the park? Get stabbed mid-soliliquoy? I know, we could practice on the platforms at Union Square. Treat the commuters to a sneak preview."

"It was a question, not a snake. Don't get so wound up."

"It's not the question. It's the tone."

"Sorry." He cut himself short with a coughing fit. "Got the flu or something. Voice sounds funny."

She frowned. Disbelief? Concern? "You don't sound good. Need some water?"

"Tea?" he tested.

This time, her smile was as soft as her skin. She clicked to the kitchen while he watched from the couch. She ran the teapot under the faucet, leaning over the sink, breasts hanging against her shirt. He was already half hard. In ten or twenty years, Vanessa might be as fat as her mom, but at 25, her swollen tits and musical hips drove men's imaginations to feverish degradation. He'd possessed that body for four years now, touched it thousands of times, fucked it hundreds, but he still couldn't go swimming with her without wearing a jockstrap under his suit to bind his erection. She caught him staring and smiled over the stove. So what if she privately hated him? She lived to be looked at.

She handed him a steaming floral-print cup. "Maybe you should see a doctor."

"A doctor?"

"You know, one of those guys who pats you on the head until you feel better?"

"I'm familiar with the word. I didn't know you were."

She shrugged, breasts rising. "I don't want you to be sick."

He sipped. He didn't even like tea. "And normally you'd be pestling up some herbs right now. Doing the Dance of Good Humours."

She rolled her eyes. "Please."

"Thanks for the tea." He reached for her thigh, squeezing its springy muscles.

"De nada. I'm going to take a shower. I stink."

She rose, leaving him on the couch. The bathroom door snicked. He frowned over his tea. She didn't believe in doctors for anything short of cancer. Suddenly she was ready to ship him to the waiting room? Was he onto something with his ersatz illness? Would she strike as soon as he improved? And what about the Mark factor? She wouldn't leave him, Walt, unless she had someone else to go to. He knew better than that. That's how he'd gotten her himself, after all, prying her away from a high school boyfriend she'd been looking to leave since getting to NYU, some sad-sack future electrician who'd eventually agreed to an open relationship rather than dumping her like he should have. That had been the dude's death-knell. She'd told her good friend Walt the news on a Friday; Saturday night, he'd talked her into bed.

Ten minutes into her shower, he stripped down and snugged into bed. The shower hissed and splattered, muffled by the door. He closed his eyes and imagined the soap slipping down her skin. He wanted to be the soap, clinging to her curves and folds, touching all of her at once—but he already was the suds, wasn't he? Slipping away from a body he could no longer hold onto. Rinsed down a drain into darkness and shit.

Twenty minutes later, she slid in beside him, kissed him once, and turned her back. A truck banged over a metal plate.

* * *

In the morning, he let her overhear him scheduling a doctor's appointment for that Friday. He shuffled around the apartment, sipping tea, a sheet wrapped around his shoulders. When she left to read lines with Mark, he walked up to Washington Square Park and bought a falafel. Old men of all races played chess on the boards at the park's corner. Tall, thin black guys cruised through the cool spring sunlight, hawking drugs with their one-word mantras. College kids, mostly white, smoked cigarettes in the dry fountain and watched the skateboarders tricking on the asphalt hills.

After a couple hours, he went back home to ensure he'd get there first. She wasn't back until 11:37 that night.

Thursday, when she left to meet Mark for more work, he followed.

He watched her hips roll from a half block back. He was dressed in a sweater he hadn't worn in years and a knit cap he bought yesterday. The morning was cold and steam drifted from the corner grates with a smell of laundry and sewers. Vanessa only looked back once; he'd ducked into the gap between two parked cars, heart on fire. At the Bleecker Street station, she jogged down the stairs for the 4-5-6 trains. He swiped his card and pushed through the turnstiles in time to see her descending to the uptown 6 local.

He went home. The next day she had a shampoo audition; he ate soup and a sleeve of saltines, claiming an upset stomach. She bought him ginger ale and vitamin C. He left for the "doctor's" and wandered all the way down to Bowling Green, where he watched the gray waves of the Atlantic.

Whenever he tried to think about how to hang on to her, he found his mind mired in sick, hesitant hate for Mark (what were they doing together all those long hours? He was an actor, too—did he look like one?) and sick, overwhelming love for Vanessa. That love was a boulder, an anchor, a devouring cancer that had eaten a hole through the man he'd used to be (another part of him said: the hole had always been there, he'd just let himself forget that). At first he'd been faking, but now he grew nauseous whenever he thought of her, unable to put down more than cereal and chicken soup. He felt infected, hot, dizzy. The world looked like a puked-up joke, unstoppable, crashing.

She had another meet-up with Mark that Sunday. When she left the apartment, he donned his sweater and cap. When she cut east for Bleecker, he sprinted north, then jogged parallel for Astor Place. The train pulled in as he hit the platform. The doors bonged, closing. What would he tell her if she caught him? The doctor's appointment? A call from an agent uptown?

He didn't have to worry. He pressed his nose to the scratched glass until he was certain she wasn't in the next car, then crossed forward, rocking on the narrow platform between cars. As usual, Vanessa was at the very front of the train. One car back, he slouched down in a seat. She detrained at 86th. Uptown.

The street smelled like bread and rain and Chinese chicken. She stopped in front of a brick walkup less than a block away. On the stoop, a man stood. His grin looked permanently installed in his jaw. His jaw looked like it spent the day breaking rocks. Vanessa grinned back at him, gave a tight, waist-high wave. He leaned in, kissed her—lips? Or the cheek? Typical overfriendly actor-greeting, or the hello of newly-minted lovers? They disappeared inside the building.

Walt found himself cold and half-lost in Central Park. He bought a soft pretzel, chewed down half, tossed the rest in bits to pigeons. Was she already gone? Then what the fuck did it matter what he did? He could propose to her, burn down her apartment, hold her mom at knifepoint. It wouldn't matter. She was gone.

He sat down in the grass. The dew seeped into his jeans. If he had a box with a button that could erase his existence, he would have pushed it.

This same park had been the start. In another sense, the year and a half of NYU classrooms and dorm rooms and Village bars where he'd dogged her had been the start, but the start, the start that had launched their first movie together, their first night of moany, eye-buzzing sex together, their first morning-after when he'd descended to a gray and silent Sunday AM in a city so empty it could have been built just for the two of them—all that had sprung from this park.

How had he talked her into coming here? He could no longer remember. He suspected it wasn't the particular words that had finally convinced her to a date with him, but rather his steady, undaunted presence. His persistence. So on that cool Saturday afternoon in spring, spurred, perhaps, by the dying of her last shreds of respect for the future electrician, she'd agreed to hop the train up to the park, where they walked around the paths before lying down in the grass on a quiet hill where she rested her head in his lap and he touched her hair above her ear and felt he'd never need to be anywhere else. They didn't move for an hour. It probably wouldn't sound that special to tell someone about. Everyone, at some point, sits in the grass with the person they love.

But after a year and a half of fruitless and corrosive pursuit, fueled by a desire his roommate Ajit kept calling "obsessive," it had been perfect. How often do you get to realize a dream? To put your hands on the exact thing you've always wanted?

Now that he was losing it, what wouldn't he do to keep it?

As if it had always been there, he had his answer. Stolen right out of The Royal Tenenbaums, which she'd seen, too, but tweaked just enough to elude notice. Smiling the unweighted smile of a man who's staked everything on the turn of one last card, he went back to the subway station, rode home to their apartment in the Village, and practiced his worried-face in the mirror. When Vanessa got home, it took her two minutes of how-was-your-day talk until she noticed.

"Everything okay?"

"The doctor called."

"What've you got? The flu?"

"There's a problem." He looked down at the carpet. It was a nice carpet, so thick your toes could get lost in it. He'd miss it if she kicked him out. "With my heart."

She reached for his shoulder, gaping, horrified. Her fingers never felt so good. "Your heart? Are you going to be okay?"

"I don't know. They want me back tomorrow." He covered his eyes with his hand, shoulders shrinking. "I'm scared."

3

Across the desk from Raymond, Lana Englund turned from her monitor, the wrinkles around her eyes highlit by the Santa Monica sunshine spilling through her great glass window. "We have a problem here. Our ad specifically asked for a degree in Communications."

"I minored in it."

"And maybe if you'd minored in English you'd know words have meanings."

He cocked his head. "The ad said experience would be the key factor."

"So it is. Your resume mentioned web work. Can you elaborate?"

"I've designed graphics for a half dozen different sites. I've been designing and writing my own blogs since before there was a word for them. I had a popular one that covered art supplies—pens, brush brands. I think that will carry over here."

She frowned, round cheeks puffing. "Traffic?"

"For my site?"

"No, for the 405. I was thinking of running out for some tapas."

"Before I moved on, I was drawing about 1500 unique visitors a month." Raymond's mouth twitched as Lana literally rolled her eyes. He'd been trying to keep things pro. "Is something the matter?"

"Something? No. Some things? Take your pick." She ticked off her points on her fingers, bending them back until the knuckles cracked. "You don't have a BA in the field. No direct experience writing copy. The best you can muster is a website that wasn't even a blip on the screen and has been dead for years. What I'm not understanding is who cleared you for an interview in the first place."

"I know my resume isn't a knockout. That's because I'm the only guy in LA County who doesn't lie on it. That's what I'm offering: honesty. I can do this job."

"I don't need a guy who'll tell me when my ass is looking big. I need a guy who can write me crisp, compelling copy. You're not that guy."

Raymond stood. "Fuck you."

"Excuse me?" She drew back in her chair, chin disappearing inside her high collar.

"You're talking to me like you never expect to see me again. So fuck off."

"Security's going to squash you like a toad." She reached for the phone and they probably would have, but he'd already left, walking down the sidewalk in a wrap of sunshine, smelling salt from the shore and grilled carne asada from the truck down the block. He hadn't told her to fuck off out of anger, but more out of the conviction that if you don't make a habit of standing up for yourself in the small moments, you'll never be able to do it when the big ones rolled around. Well, that and some anger. Anyway, it would make a better story for Mia.

Mia, when he'd told her they were out of money, that unless something changed, within two months they'd be living out of his car or, with luck, a spare room at one of his siblings', had been exactly the woman he'd married: concerned but forgiving, miles from petty, focused on nothing but making it together. She'd reached across the table and taken his hand and said they'd be okay.

He'd fully resolved to put his graphics career, if he could use the word without stringing quotes around it, on hiatus. A man on a mission, he'd replied to every feasible want ad on Craigslist. Most hadn't replied. A handful scheduled interviews. Lana Englund had been his first.

Mia smiled when he relayed his day. "Nowhere to go but up."

"Or postal."

"It's one interview."

"Maybe I should stop wasting time on the ambitious positions. I can worry about liking my job after I've stopped worrying about starving to death."

"You know what?" She grabbed his waist, shaking him like the beautiful thing you're compelled to destroy. "We should do something fun."

"You look like you already are," he said, voice rattling as she shook him.

"We should go live on the beach this weekend. I mean with tents and vodka-canteens and public urination."

"All of that is illegal."

"Who cares?" She released him, tugged open the crumbling curtain that overlooked their wild backyard, the lemon trees and wildflowers and the fifty-foot magnolia tree with its red, corn-cobby buds. "If we have to leave soon, why not have some fun? Enjoy the damn place? This is Southern California. Let's love it while we can."

He had to smile. "Of all the things you have to choose from, you want to go camping three blocks from your house?"

She put up her dukes, hopped forward, and tapped him in the gut with a fist. "It's free, isn't it?"

He couldn't argue with that. In between emailing his resume around and clipping coupons, he went down to the basement, a half-finished space cluttered to the point of unnavigability by books, tools, jars of screws, camera lenses and developing fluid, and half-painted, rough-sawn wood scraps from his dad's old projects. Decades ago, before his birth when they too had been too poor to do much else, his parents had been campers. Between two sawhorses and beneath a layer of dust thick enough to write your name in, Raymond dug up a tent, metal stakes, some tarps, canteens, and a tackle box that still smelled like bait, plasticky and fishy.

Saturday morning, they drove to the beach. He left most of the gear in the trunk until dark. They made up some rules: no leaving the beach unless a) the bathrooms were closed or b) to stow the tent in the mornings. When smoking weed, make sure no one could see the fire. Bag up all their trash. And absolutely no talk of money.

The sun bounced off the water and the sand; within an hour, Raymond had to break the first rule to go buy stronger sunscreen. It was late March and he knew the water in the bay had carried down the coast from Alaska, but he waded to his knees, coaxing Mia out into the curling surf until the soles of their feet went numb. They combed for shells, smelling salt and kelp and warm sand. On the rocks at the south end of the bay, where the mansions of Palos Verdes clung to the cliffs on eighty-foot stilts, small black flies swarmed in thousands over brown mats of drying kelp. He overturned stones, searching for crabs.

"I've been down here two dozen times and I've never seen a single fish," he said. "How hard can it be to find a fish in an ocean?"

"Maybe they just don't like you," she smiled. They'd been swigging warm vodka from a metal flask.

"Then they must know something you don't."

"Or vice versa. I've seen you naked."

"Maybe we should educate them."

After midnight, drunk and grinning, they carried two towels down to the tideline, laid one beneath them and one over them, and made love amidst the sand, the moon, the waves. Once they finished and Raymond had caught his breath, he popped up, naked, and faced the sea.

"Get a good look, fish. One night only." He plopped down on the towels, pawing in the moonlight for his underwear. "Why can't I shake the feeling this is a trial run for how we'll be living a few weeks from now?"

She waggled a finger in his face. "No money-talk, remember?"

"Who said anything about money? I'm talking about bindles and cans of beans."

"We'll have to memorize the train schedules."

"I think a barrel with two straps would look very flattering on you."

"We can't go homeless when we have a home, can we? Maybe we can get a thing. A lien."

"No money talk!" She sprung from the sand in a flash of light brown, her skin speckled with the darker spots of her nipples, belly button, and the gap between her legs. She tackled him on his back and smushed a towel into his face. "Gonna follow the rules? Or do I have to smother you?"

They woke sticky-mouthed and sunburnt, hungry and hungover. Between a couple covert puffs, packing the tent in the trunk, and a walk through the not-quite-cold morning, the fog lifted from their heads, the poison washed from their flesh. Just past the breakers, dolphins paralleled the shore, sleek gray fins shedding seawater.

When they drove the half mile home on Sunday afternoon, Raymond felt no less charged and refreshed than if they were on their way back from a trip across the Pacific. An interview request waited in his inbox. Wednesday morning, a video store just a few blocks up the street. Part-time clerk position. He didn't care. Low stress and more time to build his freelance career.

"Good luck," Mia kissed him. "You'll do great."

He walked, meaning to save gas and pick up some exercise. Besides, the weather, as usual, was glorious, a clear-blue day with the typical breeze tousling the towering palms. He, like everyone, had heard about Los Angeles weather before moving here, but after living through a fall, winter, and the early part of spring without feeling any temperature below 42 degrees, he still had a hard time believing that on any given day he could walk outside in a t-shirt—that in the middle of November, it had been too hot to do anything but jump in the ocean. Cars grunted down the PCH. A young Hispanic woman with a smooth belly trotted after a gasping dachshund. By the time he reached the video store, a light sweat filmed his back.

He nailed his interview. He was roughly the same age as the long-haired guy who questioned him and was able to make him laugh repeatedly, finding common ground over the greatness of Dead Alive and Repo Man. When they discussed Raymond's post-college two years with a UPS store, the guy had flat-out said it sounded harder than his own job. He promised to let Raymond know by the end of the week.

Raymond walked out feeling good. Like he had a chance. He knew he shouldn't count on it until he walked in for his first day, and that it was almost certainly a tedious job, one he'd be sick of six months in and ready to quit two years later, but it meant he'd be okay. He'd eat. He and Mia would sleep and wake in their own house. Miles from rich, but in exchange for five hours of his day, five days a week, he could continue a reasonable approximation of an American existence. Strange how fast everything changed. A couple weeks ago, he'd been concerned about their very ability to go on eating from non-Dumpster sources, and sending out dozens of resumes and getting back virtually nothing in response had done nothing to dam his rising tide of fears. Yet an hour at a video store had reduced those worries to a placid ebb.

Up the block, a beefy bald man in a blue suit spilled out of a Thai restaurant, clamped his hands to his knees, and vomited into a strip of grass.

Raymond jogged forward. "Hey, you okay?"

The man heaved again, yellow noodles mingled with bright red fluid—curry sauce? Raymond held up a few feet away, reached for his cell. The man straightened, pale as a page, swaying like a palm in a coastal storm. Red tears dribbled from his eyes.

"Sir?"

The man waved one thick hand, groping for something that wasn't there. Viscous reddish drool gleamed from his chin. He panted in shallow hitches, head bobbing with each breath, as if he were slamming it to a punk show beneath the stage of the Whisky A Go-Go and not puking, mid-afternoon, on the sidewalk of Redondo Beach.

"Run," the man said. Blood trickled from his eyes. Without warning, he fell straight backwards, stiffly awkward, head cracking the sidewalk like a bottle wrapped in a blanket.

Raymond took a step backward. A siren shrieked up the PCH. Under the warm California sun, the stranger's blood sank into the sidewalk's spidery cracks.

4

Walt was glad to see Vanessa sick. Real-sick, not fake-sick, be it his forced coughs or some nebulous notion of a weak valve that could collapse on him at any time. Which, incidentally, had cut both ways. On the one hand, she cared again. She didn't stay out so late. She replied to his texts within minutes instead of hours/never. Brought soft tacos from the Ecuadorian place down the block. Held his hand while they watched movies on the couch. Even fucked him, after a two-week drought, gently and apologetically and with an earnestness that let him believe they were back on track.

But she couldn't keep her mouth shut, telling his parents about his "condition" even after he'd asked her not to. They had, in usual fashion, scheduled an appointment for him with one of their own specialists on Long Island.

So when Vanessa got sick—well, there was a sweetness to that. A little payback. It kept her in the apartment, too. She depended on him. She just felt too weak, she said, and seeing the way she coughed, one hand clenched to her mouth while the other waved as spastically as if she'd swallowed a moth, well, he could believe it. She wasn't the type to take sick days. After the report of the death in Idaho, that limb-curdling cough worried him, undercutting his pleasure, but then he'd bring her a mug of green tea and she'd smile at him, a smile he hadn't seen in months, that summed up her simple beauty like the green flash of the last second of a tropical sunset, and he'd remind himself people died of the flu every year, especially old people who lived in Idaho, and that she'd be fine in a few days.

But as improved as things seemed, when she went to the bathroom and he checked the drawer where she kept her ticket stubs, the letter was still there.

Three days later, she couldn't sleep from coughing. He paced to the window, considered the traffic. "I'm calling a doctor."

"No doctors," she said, ensconced in the comforter, voice ragged with phlegm.

"You were fine with them when I got sick."

"And you came back thinking you could die at any moment."

"You'd rather I dropped dead without warning?"

"I'd rather you lived to forever and had a spout that dispensed tea."

"That would require a lot more doctors." He sat down on the bed. The heat of her body felt strong enough to cook breakfast. He reached for her hand. "We're going to make a deal. If you're not better in two days, I'm making you an appointment."

She frowned, wrinkling the corners of her glassy brown-green eyes. "That sounds more like an ultimatum than a deal."

"So your fever still hasn't zapped your thinking. I'll have to wait until you're delirious to ask you to change your will."

She rolled her eyes but laughed, thick barks that morphed into a wet and gloomy cough. Two days later, she was no better; sometimes she had to lean on him on her way to the bathroom.

His doctor was booked for the next two weeks.

"That won't work," he told the receptionist over his cell. "In two weeks she'll be better."

"Then what do you need a doctor for?"

"In case she isn't."

"Then we'll see what we can do for her at that time."

"Say it's something serious. Do you know how many times a person can die in two weeks?"

The man sighed. "What's she got? The flu? Just like everyone else? Plenty of water, some orange juice, a decongestant or three, hey. All better."

On the off chance the receptionist was currently operating a telescope, Walt scowled uptown. "Is that your professional opinion?"

"As a state-licensed, Hippocrates-sworn nobody? Absolutely."

"Look, what if she were growing a third hand? Or had blood squirting out of her belly button? There must be a protocol for vaulting the queue."

"Go get her some NyQuil," the man spat. "If she's improved before you're scheduled to come in, please cancel the appointment in advance, will you?"

"Anything to help." Walt hung up. The corner bodega was out of anything resembling NyQuil, Advil, Cold-Eeze, or Flintstones chewable vitamin tablets. Up at Yukio's, where he wasn't due in for another four hours, he fared no better.

"Walt?" Behind the counter, Yukio pushed his white cap to the back of his head. "You're early, man. Like, by most of a day."

"My girlfriend's sick, but apparently we're no longer concerned with profiting off the illnesses of others."

Yukio grinned, ducked under the counter, and flipped a green NyQuil bottle at Walt, who promptly fumbled it, allowing him, as it skittered across the shoeprinted tile floor, to discover the bottle was plastic.

"Been saving it," his boss said. "We sold out days ago. Make it last—we're supposed to get more next week, but the way this city's coughing right now, I'm doubting it."

Walt tapped the bottle in his palm. "Thanks. See you tonight."

He brought the bottle home to Vanessa, then went back out to hit up every bodega, grocery, and Duane Reade he could find. He wasn't a scaremonger—after 9/11, every grocer south of 14th Street had run out of bread, milk, and everything else with an expiration date by the day after, which only made him roll his eyes and swear about having to walk up to Midtown for a fucking bagel—but unlike most of these surgeon-mask-wearing dipshits stocking up on cold medicine and face masks, Vanessa actually needed it, and given his proximity to her, he probably would soon, too. In the grocery stores, the white ladies wore transparent plastic gloves. An empty circle appeared around anyone who coughed. He tried three more pharmacies before he found a Walgreens with a single bottle of aspirin. The selfishness of it floored him. Unless the entire goddamn city was sick, no way that should be happening.

But the whole city wasn't sick. A lot of coughing, yeah, a handful of pale faces and people resting against street signs while they waited to jaywalk, but for the most part, you still had your same old hustling crush of pedestrians. Middle Eastern guys still sold fruit from sidewalk stands, and behind them, the Gristedes and Cafe Metros and Chinese joints still saw a constant flush of customers. That meant people were hoarding. Preemptively stealing resources out of the fear there might not be any left if they ended up needing them later on, thus guaranteeing people went without them now. It made him feel like knifing somebody. Several somebodies. After buying up all the Band-Aids in town.

The squeak and clunk of his shoes on the hardwood woke Vanessa. She squirmed upright, rubbing yellow gunk from her eyes, tucking her greasy hair behind her ears.

"Brought you some aspirin." He rattled the bottle. "Had to go to like eight different places. Half the city's sick and the other half's a bunch of assholes."

She smiled, a beacon beneath her patina of illness. "You're so sweet to me."

And he was. Whatever his faults (and Walt presumed he had a few), whenever someone close to him needed something, he gave without complaint or hesitation. At times it was practically a compulsion, so reflexive Walt didn't always consider it a virtue. Nor did he resent sacrificing his time or money or self-interest. If someone needed, they deserved; if he could give it, it was theirs.

Vanessa, though, sometimes she forgot it was a sacrifice. She felt entitled. Partially, he blamed it on the acting: when you come to expect eyeballs on your every word and gesture, pretty soon you start to expect the hands and brains behind them to start giving as well. Whatever the case, it had been weeks? months? since she'd expressed more than bare thanks when he did the dishes, took her clothes to the laundromat, or made vindaloo, her favorite, spiced so ruthlessly it made their noses run.

Hearing her now, he almost had to turn away. "It's nothing. People who love each other go to eight million stores for a stupid bottle of aspirin."

"I'm not sure. A hell of a lot of people treat each other like servants who can't even remember which side of the toast the butter goes on." She sat up further, pressing her fingers to her sweat-damp chest. "I hate getting sick, but a part of me loves it. It's the only chance I get to slow down. It's easy to miss what's in front of you when you're always flying past at 90 miles an hour."

He smiled. Vanessa and her aphorisms. "Just remember this when I catch whatever you've got."

"No such luck. I'll dump you down in the boiler room and lower in some water twice a day."

"Twice a day? Ritzy."

He went in for his shift at the bodega, where people bought bread and disposable gloves and herbal supplements that hadn't moved in months. Three days later, with Vanessa more or less the same, he left work at two minutes after midnight and walked down a Broadway that was deserted even by the sparse standards of the hour. As with the hoarding, he hadn't seen Broadway this empty since 9/11, when he'd been able to stand smack in the middle of the street at ten in the morning to take pictures of the buses lining both sides of the street like a hollow aluminum fence. He didn't see another pedestrian until he crossed 8th Street and entered NYU territory, where freshmen smoked on dorm steps and argued books from the benches in Washington Square. The tower-channeled wind smelled as cold as it felt. He stopped for takeout at the Indian place on MacDougal, bombarded by cumin and cardamom. Where decongestants failed, a vindaloo might be the only thing to knock down the wall of phlegm inside her sinuses.

He buttoned his coat collar before returning to the street. From a stoop, a white guy with a shaved head jerked his chin at Walt. "Hey."

After nearly a decade in the city, Walt could have ignored a man dressed in nothing but a trumpet codpiece. He went on by.

Feet scuffed the sidewalk behind him. "Hey, you got a quarter?"

Walt did pass out change to out-and-out bums, no matter how obviously insane or drunk; if anyone deserved a plastic bottle of booze, he figured it was the homeless. Besides, he considered it a karmic investment on the not-insignificant chance he someday ended up streetside himself. But when a guy like this asked for change, a guy in clean jeans and a black bubble jacket without any stains or tape-mended tears, that hit Walt's obnoxious-button. It felt unsavory. Shameless. It wasn't about deserving, it was about demanding.

"Hey, I'm asking you a question. It's an easy one. All you gotta do is stick your hand in your pocket."

Walt glanced back, giving the guy the chance to catch up and circle around in front of him. Walt shifted his takeout to one hand, dug into his pocket, and tried to keep his inner scowl from touching his face. "Yeah, I think I got something."

"That's great. I was gonna go to Gray's, you know, some fruit juice to wash down my dogs, but then I remembered their special went up."

"Yeah." Walt retrieved four of the ten-odd coins in his pocket and jangled them in his open palm, making sure there was at least one non-penny in the bunch. "Hope this helps."

From under his bubble jacket, the man removed a short and shiny blade. Almost sadly, he smiled under the never-dark of the streetlights. "You know what's next."

"What? Come on, man."

The man gestured with his knife. "Exactly. Come on and hand over your shit and we can both go home."

Slowly, Walt reached for his wallet. "There's like five bucks in there. Can't you go rob somebody on 86th Street instead?"

"Know what, I wasn't lying about the hot dogs. I'm fucking starving. Give me the bag, too."

Walt reached up to rub his eyes. The guy feinted at him with the blade, freezing him. He raised his palms. "It's for my girlfriend. She's sick."

"So's my grandmother. Buy her some chicken noodle, not this spicy shit." The shaved-headed man pocketed the wallet, snatched the bag, and raised his eyebrows. "We cool?"

"Totally. Want to go play some pool when you finish eating?"

"Don't be a dick," he frowned. The knife flashed, pointing the way. "Get on home now. Your girlfriend needs you."

Walt turned, stone-faced, and crossed the empty street. His cards, his cash, even his food...but what, you're going to get stabbed over five bucks and a curry? It was insane, when you thought about it, how easily the things you owned could be taken away, be it via knife or foreclosure. Incontrovertible proof the whole thing was a sham, wasn't it?

It wasn't so much the physical loss that bothered him. Literally just a few bucks. He could cancel his debit card, order a new one and a new license with a few minutes of phone calls. Could probably call the bank that night, in fact. The wallet itself was some black fake leather knockoff. Finding another in Chinatown would be easier than finding wet in the shower. Aside from that, he'd lost little more than a bunch of useless receipts, unnecessary rewards cards, and expired phone cards he should have thrown away years ago as soon as he got a cell. The only thing he truly regretted losing was a worn-edged photo of a bikinied Vanessa grinning on the shore of Brighton Beach, but knowing her, she'd have plenty more self-photos stashed somewhere.

Two things troubled him. The powerlessness, of course, an itching raw thing that had him imagining himself going back in time, taking the man's knife away, and slipping it so far inside the man's guts Walt could feel the warmth of kidneys on his hand. Still, after years with Vanessa, he was used to feeling that—the powerlessness, that is, not the kidneys.

The worst thing of all was very simple: the disruption of the illusion of safety. That if you were a good person who worked hard and stayed within the law, you'd always be okay. Every time he was reexposed to the truth, the whole city looked different. Hungry. Predatory. And utterly, terrifying indifferent.

He thought about turning back for another curry for Vanessa until he remembered he had no way to get more money. At least, not without resorting to violence himself. He thought they still had some soup in the cupboard. He wouldn't tell her about the curry; no need to worry her, to disappoint her with what could have been. To make himself look weak.

It was nearly 1 AM by the time Walt got home. On the good chance she was sleeping, he slipped the bolts home as softly as he could, easing over the hardwood floor toward the bedroom. By the time he hit the doorway, he could no longer deny the stink: wet and sour, metallic and hot, so thick he could have stirred it with a spoon.

"Vanessa?"

She lay in bed, a silent lump under the shapeless down comforter. One foot dangled off the bed's edge. Her dark hair splayed across the pillow. Walt called her name again. Beyond the windows, traffic clamored against the ceaseless rush.

5

"There's someone outside."

"Probably a possum." Raymond didn't open his eyes. Beside him, Mia sat up, pulling the covers away from his bare chest.

"That scraping is shoes. What kind of possums wear shoes?"

"Possum marathon runners."

"What?" She grabbed his shoulder and shook. "Go look before we got shot!"

"If I'm going to be shot, I'd rather do it in my sleep." Directly below their bedroom window, the backyard gate clicked. Raymond sat up so fast the sheet billowed around his waist. "Oh shit."

"I guess that's just a six-foot-tall possum? With hands?"

"Lock the door behind me. Call the police. I'm going to get the gun." He swung out of bed, naked except his boxer-briefs, and scrabbled through the closet for his keys. He crept into the dark hall. Mia locked the door with a metal snick. The buttons of her phone beeped softly.

Past the kitchen, he heard the low creak of the deck steps leading to the back door. The loose step near the top scraped against the stucco. Splinters snapped. Something heavy thudded to the wood. A man swore.

Raymond ran into the spare room, panic tickling his skin like hot ants. Years before his dad had left the house and their lives, the old man had kept a couple pistols stashed around the house, ostensibly to protect them from all the burglars who would rather rob a 1940s bungalow than the 4000-square-foot imitation Tuscan villa neighbors. After the death of his mom, he and Mia had moved down to a house of clutter and relics. Cleaning it out took weeks. In the drawer below the oven, hidden beneath a stack of greasy casserole dishes, Raymond had found an old six-shot Smith and Wesson revolver. His dad had brought him shooting enough times as a kid for him to know he didn't want to leave it where anyone, self included, could get to it without a hassle, and locked it in the closet of a room they always left closed.

Wise, except for the part where it was about to get him killed.

At the back door, metal skittered on metal. Raymond tried three keys before the closet's lock turned. The revolver rested in a leather holster, a stag carved on each side of the yellowed faux-ivory grip. The piece felt unnaturally heavy, old and fearsome. He thumbed open the cylinder catch. In the gloom, all six chambers were dark. Loaded. He snapped it shut and clicked back the hammer, drawing the trigger back with it.

It felt good. Solid. More real than it looked. More real than the dark house around him.

From the living room, the fish tank's filter splashed through the darkness. Raymond crouched behind the kitchen doorway, right arm leveled at the door, left hand gripping his forearm. The lock clunked, sprung. The rubber lining the door's lower edge huffed over the tight carpet his parents had inexplicably glued to the kitchen floor decades earlier. A man's silhouette filled the back door.

"Don't move," Raymond said, regretting his decision to cock the revolver early; it would have made the perfect exclamation point to his command. "I have a gun. The police are on their way."

"Bullshit," the man said. He dropped his lock pick and reached for his belt. Raymond's heart thumped. He jerked the revolver up and squeezed the trigger. His hand flew back. The boom clapped from the kitchen's tight walls. The shot chunked through the ceiling, showering the carpet with paint and plaster.

"Five left," Raymond said.

Wordlessly, the man leapt back out the way he'd come in, screen door snapping shut. Stairs rattled and thumped. Raymond shouldered the door closed. He set the lock, the bolt, and the three small hinge plates spaced between the top, middle, and bottom of the door that he'd been too lazy to bother to close since two months after moving down. The bedroom door cracked open.

"Ray? Are you all right?"

He flicked on the light, standing in the carpeted kitchen in his underwear and a grin, the heavy old S&W pointed at the ceiling. "There was a burglar!"

"Did someone get shot?"

"Just the house. Don't worry. It had it coming."

"Jesus. Jesus!" She barred her arms over her t-shirted chest. "We could have been killed. What's going on out there?"

"Some guy is running off to tell his friends I'm the dirtiest dude in town."

"A town with very strict gun laws."

"Right. Right." He closeted the gun, washed his hands, dressed. By the time he finished, his head was halfway back to normal. "So where the hell are the cops?"

Mia shrugged, shoulders rising under her thin white tee. "Twenty minutes, they said."

"Do they think burglars are running around with muzzle-loading muskets? Twenty minutes?"

"That's what they said."

Raymond's adrenaline-charged exultation slowly soured to a wearying, worrying fear. The police showed up over an hour later, an older white guy with a buzz cut and a uniform-straining gut and a tall Hispanic man about Raymond's age.

"Hi," Raymond said. "What took so long?"

The older cop made a line of his mouth. "Kid, half the town's booked it for their ranches in Montana. You're our third B&E of the night."

He had Raymond give him the rundown, then sent his partner out to the deck while he continued rehashing the details. The man's pale blue eyes settled on the fresh hole in the ceiling.

"Who fired the shot?"

Raymond nodded. "The burglar. Would-be burglar."

"He breaks in, takes a shot, and then leaves empty-handed?"

"I was yelling at him. From behind the bedroom door. I told him you guys were on the way. I don't think he expected anyone home." He gestured to the living room with the bulky old TV, the Super Nintendo, the rickety wooden chairs surrounding a scratched dining table layered with paperwork. In one corner, half-empty boxes stood stacked to shoulder height. "Anyway, you see anything worth stealing?"

The cop closed one eye, squinting at him with the other. "Lot of old stuff here. If that included an old firearm, maybe one so old everyone forgot to register it, well, the new residents might want to do something about that."

"So I'd imagine," Mia smiled. "Can I make you some coffee?"

The cop rubbed the bristle on the back of his neck. "Only if you want me to propose."

They didn't stay long, leaving Raymond with a desk number and another hardly-concealed warning about the criminal penalties for unregistered pistols. He left the porch light on as they drove away.

"Think that was a good idea? Lying to them about the gun?"

Mia frowned over her coffee. "Is it registered?"

"My mom left it under a casserole dish for fifteen years. So yeah, the registration's probably under a cookie sheet somewhere."

"They could have arrested you. Or confiscated it. Then what do we do when the next guy's breaking in and they're an hour away? Retreat to the Bat Cave?"

"Well," he said. "You know where it is. You know where the key is."

"I'm just glad you're safe."

He fell back asleep sooner than he expected, which was nice, because his cell woke him earlier than expected. "Hello?"

"Raymond? This is John. From Choi's Video."

"Hey. Hi." He sat up, rubbing sleep, heart racketing at the long-haired clerk's voice. "What's going on?"

"Just dying a little inside every time somebody rents Transformers 2. You?"

"The normal. Waving revolvers at criminals."

"Sure, sure." John cleared his throat. "So, look. Your interview went great. You're obviously overqualified, but that never stopped anyone else from working in a video store."

Raymond squeezed the back of his head. "But?"

"But Mr. Choi won't hire anyone without meeting them himself, and right now Mr. Choi's sick. So, I don't know. You won't starve if I can't get you in to see him until next week, will you?"

"Sure. Two weeks, though, I hope you can speak skeleton."

Raymond closed his phone and set it on the end table and picked up a glass of water. Call it two weeks until he started. Two weeks after that to see his first paycheck. Cutting it close (they were already eating the heels of bread, preparing dinners like spaghetti with pepper and oil, and rooting around the basement for old metal, bottles, and print they could drag down to the recycler's), but four weeks, that could work. He wandered to the living room, meaning to put on a Bourne movie or something, but Mia was tucked into the recliner, feet tucked beneath her, scrolling through the Netflix titles.

"No work today?"

"Huh uh. Between everyone getting the flu and everyone else leaving town, we've had about 75% cancellations. They're running a skeleton crew until things pick back up."

"Um," he said. "I think I'm going to go look for more jobs."

"Heard anything back from the video store?"

"Yeah, but I don't think we can count on anything right now." He showered, clothed himself, gelled his hair, laced his shoes, and still felt underdressed. He wandered into the bedroom, snagged the extra set of keys. When Mia went to the bathroom, he went to the closet, snapped open the revolver, replaced the spent casing with a heavy, blunt-headed shell, and ran it out to the glove box of his car so she wouldn't feel it in his waistband when she hugged him.

Just having it close made him feel better. It was getting strange out there. Like the old rules had begun to bend.

Traffic on the PCH was light enough for the surgeon-mask-wearing pedestrians and dogwalkers to jaywalk at will. Raymond cruised north, flashing past darkened shops with handmade signs printed on neon paper hung beside their "CLOSED" signs. Northward and inland, smoke hung over the sprawl, drifting eastward on the ocean winds. Faraway sirens burbled through his open windows. He hadn't had much luck jobhunting in the upscale, mostly residential Beach Cities, so he swung inland, where the $1.5 million imitation Spanish plantation-houses quickly faded into condos, apartments, and bungalows no bigger than his own, replaced, in turn, by warehouses and office buildings. Spotting a fish and aquarium store that didn't look too bad to clerk, he pulled into the same kind of dingy but shoppable strip mall he'd seen in every corner of the country.

From the Ralph's on the other side of the lot, a white guy rushed from the entrance, pushing his shopping cart in front of him like a game show contestant. Blue bottles gleamed and clanked from his cart. A navy-jacketed security guard raced behind him.

Raymond popped his glove compartment, stuffed the revolver under his belt, and stepped into the sunshine.

At the automatic doors, a second shopper sprinted into the parking lot. Raymond jogged forward. The guy with the liquor bottles stopped beside a pickup with rusty wheel wells, yanked down the tailgate, and got tackled to the ground by the security guard. Raymond crossed into the sweetly air conditioned store.

Cashiers continued to ring up shoppers while the shoppers watched in shock as other patrons ran down aisles flinging food into their carts. A bottle of spaghetti sauce smashed across the tile. Loose cereal crunched under shoes and rickety wheels. At the cigarette counter, a bulky manager yelled into a phone. A middle-aged woman in platforms pushed past Raymond, cart loaded with Saran Wrapped steaks.

He'd already reached his decision. The city cops were overstrained, incapable of showing up to a fucking armed break-in in time to do anything more than harass Raymond about an 80-year-old revolver. Around him, people screamed while others shoveled armloads of food into their carts. The scene was already far too chaotic for one security guard and one well-muscled manager to do a damn thing about. Load up, get out, drive home. In five minutes he could secure two weeks of food for himself and Mia. That would be all the cushion they'd need. Anyway, it was just one chain store. They'd be insured. And what if this was just the start of a trend? What if, by the time they could afford groceries, there weren't any left?

He grabbed a cart and jogged toward produce, loading up potatoes, bananas, bell peppers. As screams kicked up from the front of the store, he rushed down the cereal aisle, sweeping cardboard cartons into his cart, then swerved for the breakfast meats, where he pitched packages of bacon three at a time. Others clogged the aisles, ignoring each other as they snatched up frozen pizzas, 12-packs of Coke, plastic rings of peeled shrimp. Trampled bags of chips spewed greasy crumbs across the floor. In dairy, a bald man tore a half gallon of creamer from another man's hands. The victim cocked back his fist and punched the bald man into a display of taco shells.

Raymond skidded through a slick of strawberry soda, grabbing at pasta and bottles of alfredo, then swung around to the opposite aisle to top his cart with bagels and bread. It was a good thing, he reflected on his way to the doors, the chains stuck to such ironclad, marketing-bolstered floor plans; with a layout nearly identical to the Ralph's down the street from him in Redondo, he'd wasted almost no time tracking stuff down.

He flew for the doors with tight-chested glee. A faint guilt, too, but he'd hardly been the only one plunging into the chaos. And you know what? He highly doubted anyone in that store was a month away from potentially starving. They weren't taking because they needed it. They were taking because everyone else was and they feared there might not be anything left tomorrow. They were taking because they were scared a few old people had died barfing blood. They were taking because talking heads on NBC predicted billions of dollars could be lost to sick days, potentially cratering the recession into outright depression, while talking heads on FOX claimed the flu pandemic was directly attributable to government involvement in the American medical system.

Right then, Raymond didn't really give a shit. He just wanted to get his stuff home, stick it in the freezer, and sleep a little easier knowing that if Mr. Choi took three weeks to get back to business instead of two, he and Mia would still have something to eat.

Sirens roared. Sunlight struck his face, even brighter than the store fluorescents. Sweat glued his shirt to his back. Shoppers scattered across the parking lot, bound for their cars or homes. At the turn-in to the lot, a police cruiser skidded in hard; two officers sprinted for the looters, reaching for their batons.

Raymond broke left for his white Altima. Soles slapping the asphalt, he weaved around a broken case of beer, glass shards bright amid the hoppy-smelling foam. He pulled up to his car, shopping cart clunking into his bumper. He popped the trunk and started dishing food inside.

At the exit fifty feet from his Altima, two more cruisers screamed into the lot, one weaving toward the Ralph's while the other swung in to block the exit. An officer unloaded from the passenger side, unholstered his sleek black pistol, and sunk in behind the car door. He pointed his gun at Raymond.

"Hands up!" he screamed.

Raymond reached for his gun.

6

Walt walked to the bed, pulled the comforter away from Vanessa, and shuddered, groaning. Half-dried blood weighed down the sheets, clinging to her cheeks and pooling around her neck, a stinking, chunky flow of red and phlegm and chunks like ground beef. He reached for her mucky chin. It was slick and room-temperature. Her mouth sagged open without resistance. Her bruised tongue oozed, sluglike, past her lips. Her glassy eyes stared through a question they couldn't form.

He called 911, sat on the floor, and cried. They'd take her away this night, wouldn't they? Would his last sight of her be at her funeral? Would her parents even invite him? He struggled to his feet, lurched to the bed. Paled by sickness, crusted with blood and spittle, her beauty hadn't been completely masked and erased—the lines of her cheekbones were graceful as ever, her lips soft and wide, her nose small and straight and freckled. He would never see or touch or hold her again. Numbly, he reached forward, palmed her heavy left breast, and squeezed.

He raced for the bathroom and heaved until the paramedics buzzed up.

They asked him quiet questions and he gave them clipped answers, replying even when they asked if he'd tried to get her in to see a doctor.

"Just like that," he said. "She was fine. I left. She died."

The paramedic pressed his fist to his forehead. "She's not the first. Girlfriend?"

"We'd turned things around. We had a future."

"Hey, kid, you still got one. Hang on."

Walt didn't see much point to that. He didn't see much point to anything. The paramedics left with her body. He got drunk and called her parents. He couldn't remember falling asleep.

Time became strange. He spent his days glued to his computer, combing the news for NYC death toll updates: dozens, then hundreds, soon thousands. The trajectory was mirrored around the nation, the world. Governments advised people to stay indoors, wash their hands, and handle their own food. Wash their hands! Three-quarters of the country was sick and they were telling people Remember: soap exists. Face in his hands, Walt laughed. He was glad they were dying. They deserved it. This was what everyone deserved.

Walt threw out the comforter. The sheets. Hauled the mattress to the curb and slept on the couch. He got a temporary debit card so he could drink Jim Beam straight from the bottle like the worst of cliches. He didn't care.

His parents called to ask him to come back to Long Island. He said no. Unless they floated off in one of their balloons, there was nowhere they could go where people weren't barfing up blood.

He'd never been religious. Not past 7, anyway, when he'd asked God for a bike. A couple weeks later, at the Unitarian church his parents brought him to, Walt left Sunday School and saw the feathery pulp of a baby bird ground into the sidewalk by strollers and well-shined shoes. No one else bothered to look down. He never got his bike. Instead, he believed in the goodness of man, their natural rights and inherent dignity.

With Vanessa's body somewhere under a hospital, Walt watched the LA riots with a smile. He nodded in satisfaction at the twelve-fatality trampling in the London tubes. The reverend Frank Phillips preached on TV about Revelations. Two days later, his cough forced him off a live broadcast mid-sermon. Walt set up a Google Alert for his obituary.

Four days after Vanessa's death, he decided to hunt down his mugger and stab him to death before the plague could get him.

A cold spring wind blew off the bay. Sunlight glittered like ice. Uptown was supposedly a ghost town, but the Village was still reasonably populated with its native artists, transgenders, college students, and professionals who imagined they were still cool, unaware the entire neighborhood hadn't been for at least a decade. Walt crossed the narrow streets with no particular pattern, jiggling the butterfly knife in his pocket. He knew there was no real chance the man with the shaved head would be in the coffee shops or cafes (the ones that were still open, anyway), but checked regardless, nauseated by the smells of espresso and fried plantains and kung pao. On the sidewalks, people lifted their surgical masks to talk quietly on their cells. Others hurried past, coughing into their fists, driving oncoming pedestrians to the other side of the street. Walt walked until his toes blistered, until his nose numbed in the wind, until the sun went down, then he bought a new pint and walked until he couldn't. He sat on the stoop where the man had sat and leaned against the iron rail that lined the stairs.

He woke sometime before sunrise, stiff, hungover, colder than stone. He dragged himself home and slept on the couch deep into the afternoon. The apartment still smelled like blood and the gritty blue cleaning powder he'd used to scrub it out.

He put down some water, whiskey, and toast. Before he'd managed to dress, he heard chanting in the street. A clump of protesters marched north, parkbound, clapping gloved hands, waving signs that said "VACCINES KILL" and "WHERE'S THE CURE?" and "SICK CROPS, SICK PEOPLE."

Walt brought his coat, a bottle, the knife. Washington Square swelled with students, middle-aged women in glasses, gray-haired men in corduroy vests. The drug dealers retreated to the shadowy, tree-thick corner, hands in the pockets of their black hoodies. Walt circled the fringes, hunting for bald white heads. A woman with a frizzy ponytail descended to the center of the dry fountain, propped up a picture, and lit a candle. Notes and photos appeared as if conjured. Walt smelled wax, incense. The standard protest sights: a bearded kid slapping his bongos, 2-4-6-8 anti-government cheers, short-haired 50-year-old women yelling into megaphones. A squad car rolled to a stop alongside the arch on the north entrance of the park. An officer swung his legs out the door, leaned against the car, and muttered into his radio.

The crowd chanted, made speeches, told anecdotes about crowded hospitals and delayed appointments and insurance discrimination. People poured into the park by twos and fours, clogging the concrete around the fountain. On the south edge, a column of kids in red and black filed into the park, circled A's painted on their signs and sweatshirts and masked faces. They carried plastic shields and black batons. The cop near the arch grimaced and leaned into his car. Back by the swing sets, a man with a shaved head flagged down a college kid and bummed a cigarette.

The mugger lit up, squinted, spat smoke between his teeth. Walt walked over, hand in his pocket.

"Hey."

The man closed one eye. "What's up?"

"How was the curry?"

The man cocked his head, confused, then grinned slowly. "Tasty, man. I gotta go back to that place."

Three more squad cars joined the first up by the arch. Inside his pocket, Walt unfolded his knife. "My girlfriend died."

The grin seeped from the mugger's eyes. "Yeah, well, she's not the only one."

"If you hadn't stopped me, I might have gotten home in time."

"To do what? Suck the poison out? Cast a spell? I lifted your wallet, not your fucking medical license."

On the south side of the park, a man barked like a drill sergeant. The anarchists formed four orderly lines. Some belted riot masks under their chins while others raised transparent shields. Sirens squealed up on 5th Avenue.

"Maybe I'd have seen her."

The anarchists jogged forward in formation. Protesters shouted, deserting the square, shoving onlookers into the fountain. Someone screamed. By the arch, two mounted police clopped behind a knot of NYPD holding tasers and batons.

"She died," the man with the shaved head said. "Ain't nothing worse than your girl dying on you. But if you're trying to blame me for that, you need to get yourself some fucking grief counseling."

Wordlessly, the anarchists broke into a sprint. The outnumbered cops held their ground. The two mounted units trotted forward. The front line of red-and-black anarchists raised their riot shields above their heads, the curved plastic tonking under the horsemen's batons. The second line of anarchists rushed forward, surrounding the horses, and yanked the two cops out of their stirrups. Their own batons rose and fell. Sirens yowled over the screams. The horses reared. A kid in black collapsed, convulsing. From the arch, a policeman charged for the downed mounties, pistol drawn, emptying his clip into the anarchists beating the two downed cops.

Walt lunged forward, slashing at the mugger's face. The man shouted and threw up his hands. The knife cut a deep red line across his fingers. He swore, stumbling back a half step, then crouched low with his hands extended. Walt jabbed for his ribs. The mugger grabbed his wrist, folded it, wrenched away the knife. Walt smelled the man's sweat, heard the whuff of his breath. A bright point of pain burst through Walt's gut. Two more followed. The man drew back. Walt collapsed. Metal clattered on the concrete. Walt moaned, dry-mouthed, wet-handed.

"You fucking idiot," the mugger said. He turned and ran. Walt rolled on his back and clutched his stomach and thought: I want this. A bearded face poked into the narrowing tunnel of his vision. Words he couldn't understand. He saw Vanessa smiling, lying on her back in a field in Central Park.

* * *

"Get up. Hey, Stitches. Time to get up and go home."

Walt shook his head. Something tugged his nose, pinching. He pawed at his face. A strong hand grabbed his wrist.

"Let me take care of that for you. Don't want you losing any more blood."

The pressure on his nose increased, then disappeared. Something pinched his forearm instead. A black guy in scrubs stood beside his bed, winding thin clear tubes with strange, sharp smells of plastic and antiseptic.

"Can you walk? The answer better be yes."

"I'm in a hospital?"

"For the next five minutes, maybe."

Walt eased upright. "What kind of hospital wakes a stabbing victim up to kick him into the street?"

"One with two thousand sick people hacking their guts across the parking lot."

He leaned forward, wincing at the stitches tugging his stomach. "Am I...in trouble? Police-wise?"

The nurse pushed out his lower lip. "Officer came by a couple days ago, but you were out. Now they're a little busy with the fire up in Midtown to give a damn about whatever earned you a knife in the belly."

"Which hurts exactly as bad as you'd think getting stabbed hurts. At least give me some painkillers. The sick people don't need painkillers, do they?"

"Just a bed and someplace to die."

Walt laughed. The nurse didn't. "You're serious."

"Kid, if you're not sick yet, the last place you want to be is a hospital."

"You're talking like we're all going to be wearing tires and spikes by next Tuesday."

"All I know is I haven't seen one person bounce back." The nurse peeled back his sheet. "Get dressed. I'll get you those pills."

Walt had to lean across a chair to pull on his pants without stretching his stitches. The nurse opened the door, flipped him a rattling bottle, and gestured him out. As soon as Walt shuffled into the hall, the nurse rolled a second bed into his room. Walt went to the drinking fountain and swallowed a pill.

Patients in gowns slept on benches and coughed from chairs, dabbing blood from their lips. The air stunk of copper and warm raw meat. Walt hobbled to the receptionist, holding his stomach with one hand while he signed out with the other.

"I don't have any insurance."

She gazed at him over her glasses. "Then it's a good thing you didn't get stabbed a week ago. Get out of here."

He ran a hand through his greasy hair. "Since when could you walk out of a hospital without paying a pound of flesh?"

"Feds have suspended hospital billing until the Panhandler's finished," she explained, obviously not for the first time.

"Panhandler? Like a homeless guy?"

She snorted. "You been in a coma or something?"

"Maybe?"

"They traced it back to some wheat farmer in the Idaho panhandle. Thus—"

"Idaho doesn't have a panhandle. It's vertically oriented. More like a bottle neck."

"What are you, a cartographer? Just pretend somebody's holding the pan down by their side."

The front doors flew open, disgorging a pair of paramedics wheeling in a young girl vomiting blood onto the white tile. The receptionist stood, yelling questions; the medics yelled back.

Walt hobbled for the door. Vanessa was dead.

Ambulances clogged the front drive, lights whirling in the dusk. A queue of cabs let out coughing passengers who stood on the sidewalks, swaying, until a panting nurse emerged from a side door to escort them inside. Dozens of tents bivouacked the parking lot, overseen by dark-eyed doctors and a small patrol of soldiers in camo and gas masks. Walt got out his discharge papers. Nobody bothered to ask.

A block from the hospital, the firehose of traffic reduced to a drippy faucet. He crossed Second Avenue without breaking his slow stride. The sidewalks glittered under his feet. Metal bars shuttered storefronts on both sides of the street. Faraway laughter echoed between the towers. Walt limped down the stairs to the 28th St. 6-train. Two young guys waited on the opposite platform. His was empty besides a dead woman and a tacky pool of blood.

A breeze blew down the tunnel, carrying the scent of cold wet laundry. At least the trains were still running.

Home, first thing he did was get in front of a mirror and tug up his shirt. Three inch-long sets of stitches tracked the left side of his stomach, looking sickeningly like ingrown hairs, but deliberately placed, as if he'd been plowed and seeded. He let his shirt fall back into place.

Online, he learned he'd missed Vanessa's funeral. Google alerted him to the death of the Reverend Frank Phillips, 72, infamous picketer of soldiers' funerals, dead of the Panhandler virus. MSNBC.com estimated the American death toll in the hundreds of thousands, with more by the minute. Millions worldwide. His mom had left five messages on his phone. She and his dad were sick.

She didn't answer his call. He stuffed some clothes in a backpack, washed a hydrocodone down with some whiskey, and caught the subway up to Grand Central, where he bought a ticket to Long Island. A towering black cloud rose from Midtown, spilling out over the Upper Bay. His fellow passengers—a dozen or so, three of whom, like him, showed no sign of the cough or watery, bloodshot eyes that formed the virus' early symptoms—watched in silence, detraining one by one in the quiet Island townships. He got off in Medford a little after eleven. His mom still wasn't answering her phone.

Though he'd quit a few months back, he bought a pack of Camels at a Shell station that, by the look of it, was the only open store on the street. On his way to the exit, he turned around and bought three packs more. After so long, the smoke tasted ashy and bitter. The way nonsmokers smell it. His head went tingly and light. If he hadn't had to slow down to keep his balance during the head rush, he would have tripped over the body sprawled on the sidewalk.

Walt crossed to the far sidewalk. Crickets chirped tentatively from dark lawns. TV screens threw pale flickers on closed curtains. A dog whined from behind a chain link fence. The windows of its house were black. Walt crossed the yard, dew dampening his Converse, and knelt in front of the small black dog, which waved its thick tail and battered at the fence with heavy white paws. He fed it Bugles from the bag he'd brought with him and scratched its ears. He barely felt his stitches; his breathing felt good. He told the dog it was good. He drank from his pint of whiskey, glass glinting in the darkness. The base of his throat burned but his stomach felt warm.

"Good dog."

The dog whined, licking his hand as hard as if he'd been swimming through butter. He had another drink. He was delaying. He stood, stomach tugging, and walked on.

He let himself inside. His parents' house smelled the same as his apartment the night he'd come home from work. His mom was a bloody thing in her bed. He found his dad crusted to the wheel of his Jaguar. The car was off and the tank was still a quarter full; probably, he'd died of the virus instead of exhaust.

Walt took the money his dad kept above the bookshelf, found a butcher knife and a steak knife, then gathered up the bottle of scotch his dad had been saving since Walt had been born. He sat down on the front porch and had a drink from the scotch and lit another cigarette. Once he'd smoked it to the butt, he called the police and walked back to the train station. He fell asleep watching cartoons on his apartment couch.

While everything else began to shut down—schools, local governments, Taco Bell, commercial airlines, the borders—television stayed strong. Amidst Wile E. Coyote and Marvin the Martian blowing themselves up, Walt heard sirens, gunshots, screams. While Stimpy gave Ren a sponge bath, Walt smelled smoke and tear gas and burning meat. When the news informed him an estimated 35 million Americans had died, that an estimated 90% of the remaining populace showed signs of infection, with similar incidence rates worldwide, Walt got up, roamed the apartment, and reread Vanessa's letter.

At least she'd never actually broken up with him.

Maybe she'd never intended to. He had no way of knowing. Maybe she'd written it to see how it would feel, to see if she believed it. Vanessa was gone now. The letter, her rehearsals with Mark (had he died, too? Walt hoped so, that hard-abbed prick), Walt's hopes for another day with her like their day in Central Park, those were nothing but lost possibilities, could-have-beens rendered moot by an invader too small to see. Walt sat down on the bare box spring that had held the mattress where Vanessa had died. He didn't see a future where the rest of mankind didn't die with her. Whatever Obama said, with three quarters of a billion dead just three weeks after the first case and with no cure in sight, Walt figured an average cricket match would outlast civilized society. But the Panhandler didn't just mean the extinction of people. It meant the extinction of dreams.

Walt had wanted to write books. He'd never finished one, had never seen his works go to print where they'd shout This is how I feel. If you feel like me, that means we're not alone. He supposed it wouldn't matter soon. Soon, people wouldn't be using books to find understanding. They'd be using them for kindling.

His parents had been talking about retiring soon. Scaling back, at least, to pilot their balloons on trips of their own, challenging records, touching down in Greek islands where the seas were as green as skinned avocados. They'd died having worked their whole lives. And honestly enjoyed it, by and large. But they'd wanted, expected, and deserved more.

Vanessa had wanted to move to Los Angeles, to see if she could make the leap from stage to screen. She'd never made it out. He supposed he was partly to blame: whenever she brought it up, he said little and changed the subject readily, not wanting to leave the city that had become his home, fearful that removed from his environment, adrift among the millionaires and fakers of LA's shallow social seas, he would lose her to a producer in a Mercedes, a confident fellow actor-on-the-up. What was so great about the place, anyway? Along with Woody Allen's arguments, which were irrefutable, weren't they coughing up blood and bleeding out their eyes the same in LA as they were in New York? All the sea breezes and sunny weather in the world couldn't combat that. Vanessa's letter had once again declared her intent to move there. What had she expected? To be carried into town by a parade, delivered at the feet of Steven Spielberg, and be cast on the spot as the lead in The Woman So Beautiful All the World Loved Her Forever? Delusions. Delusions and ignorance, most of it willful. The second time she'd brought it up, maybe he should have agreed to go with her, just to prove there was nothing magical about the place, that plenty of people more talented than either of them had failed and starved there on the edge of the Pacific, that it doesn't matter where you are, all that matters is who.

But she was dead now. The dinosaurs had all died, too, along with their dinosaur dreams. A world capable of such genocidal indifference didn't deserve its own existence. Walt wanted to watch it wither, to crumble into shit and dirt, fertilizer for a future that would one day crumble itself.

He decided to walk to Los Angeles. He intended to die along the way.

7

Under the afternoon sun, Raymond touched the warm metal revolver. Sweat slipped down his temples. Lights whirled from the cruiser's roof.

"Get your hands up and step away from the car!" the officer shouted.

Time became something that happened elsewhere. Raymond could see the silvery snaps on the cuffs of the officer's sleeves. The sight at the end of his pistol. A mole on the side of his neck.

"I'm just here to feed my family."

"Hands up or I spread you like mustard!"

Half hidden behind his car, Raymond eased out the revolver, slung it into the far corner of the trunk, and raised his hands. They'd find it. He knew that. He just wanted to introduce deniability. He took a slow step from the car. The cop sidled from behind his door, relaxing his elbows, black pistol swallowing the sun.

From the front of the Ralph's, three quick shots spooked a flock of screams. Raymond flinched down, shoulders scrunched against his head. The cop twitched his gun, following him, then aimed it upright and charged across the sunny lot. His partner spilled out of the car and followed on his heels. Raymond pawed the rest of the groceries into his trunk, slammed it, squeezed in behind the wheel, and pulled out. Shoppers ran past, covering their heads and ducking, pinging erratically across the asphalt. Raymond swung around a woman carrying a kid in her arms. A shopping cart banged off his bumper. The abandoned cop car stretched across the exit. He rolled up beside it, left tires shuddering over the concrete-bordered strip of grass that ran alongside the lot, then jolted back down into the road with a harsh metal screech. Back at the front of the Ralph's, gunshots popped in the humid air. Raymond finally registered the upcoming light was red and stomped the brakes, his car bucking stopped six inches from the rear bumper of an Expedition.

Hands shaking, he waited for the light to turn.

His senses returned homebound on the PCH. It had happened so fast, shortcircuiting his rational thought. The cop with the gun, had he known or suspected Raymond of looting? Had he been stopping everyone to sort it out? Had Raymond seriously considered, however briefly, pulling his gun? Had he intended to bluff, or try to shoot his way out, envisioning arrest for armed robbery, an impossible bail, years without Mia? On the other hand, why not?—but maybe for a lesser crime. Was it better to go to jail than to go broke?

He didn't know. All he could remember was the glint of the officer's buttons, the small black brick of his pistol, the sense his world was about to slip beneath the breakers. Yet he'd thrown down the gun. A stranger had fired his own instead. Raymond's future had popped above the waves, taken a juddering breath, and resumed paddling.

He pulled into his driveway. Time to recohere. You become what you pretend, so pretend to be something good.

In the trunk, he hid the revolver under an old coat and started hauling groceries. Mia smiled at him from the recliner. "How went the job hunt?"

"Riotous."

"At you? Or with you?"

"Literally." He set down an armload of cereal and tomatoes and shook his head like they were discussing a 6-year-old dragged under by a shark. "I'm picking up some applications at this strip mall, right. So I see the Ralph's is having this big sale. Go inside, load up my cart, and all of a sudden everyone starts looting the place."

Mia sat up, plunking her elbows between her knees. "Looting? Really? Did the Lakers win again?"

"I think people are afraid."

"Should we be?"

"Do you feel sick?"

"No." She smiled then, chin tilted. "So you robbed the place blind, right? How much bacon did you get?"

He looked up, thinking. "About five packs?"

"Wait, you did?" She glanced to the side, as if seeking the support of an unseen audience. "Does this mean I'll finally realize my lifelong dream of sleeping with a felon?"

"Possibly. Will you still be turned on if it turns out I'm just a misdemeanist?"

"So what happened?"

"One minute I'm piling up the rice and things, the next minute everyone's screaming and stampeding for the door. Somebody had a gun, was waving it at the checkout lines. I just got out of there."

"And the groceries got with you."

He shook his head again. "It all happened so fast. I didn't have time to think. Do you think I should take them back?"

"I don't know." She tapped her teeth. "I think if you go back, you're confessing. Places like that have insurance, don't they?"

"I think so." He jerked his thumb toward the door. "Want to give me a hand?"

Mia unfolded from the recliner. "What, and be an accessory?"

Which was exactly why he hadn't told her the truth. He waited for a knock, a call, a radio crackling from his back steps—he had to protect her from those consequences. He went online to see what the news had to say about them and found his looting had been the third of the day. A Best Buy in Long Beach, the usual stereos and TVs carted out through broken windows by brown people, but also a Sprouts in Torrance, blonde mothers clinging to their kids with one hand and stuffing organic heirloom tomatoes into their purses with the other. Watts caught fire the next day, smogging the valley. At night, sleek black SUVs rolled down the curvy lane. Glass shattered down the street; later, Raymond rose for a glass of water and saw his windows painted by the spinning lights of a cruiser. Two young Hispanic guys lay facedown on the sidewalk, hands cuffed behind their backs, a potbellied white cop shouting at them as he paced. Raymond could see no obvious evidence of a crime. He moved the revolver to a drawer in the bedroom.

Craigslist blossomed with security-wanted ads. Raymond embellished his resume, added a paragraph about his home invasion defense experience. He got a call later that day for an interview up the street in Palos Verdes.

While Mia, still home from work, researched mortgages and liens and applied for credit cards (both of them had somehow made it this far in life with nothing more than debit cards), Raymond drove up the winding roads into the ocean-gazing hills, his dusty Altima conspicuous among the glassy-bright Benzes and Porsches, and pulled onto the long driveway of a Tuscan-style manor fronted with whip-thin, forest-black pines. From the third story of its wide-windowed turret, a curtain fell closed.

A middle-aged Asian man in suit and glasses answered the bell. Raymond's sneakers squeaked on the stone floor. Should have worn something black and shiny as a beetle's back. Oh well, regrets were no use: Just do better next time. The servant led him to a well-lit study of thick white carpets. A fresh marine breeze slipped through the slats built into the wall. From behind a glass desk, Kevin Murckle picked at a stain on his wash-worn t-shirt, looked up, and snugged his surgical mask into place.

"Frankly, I'm looking for someone bigger. Possibly blacker. A shaved head helps."

"Sure," Raymond nodded. He wasn't surprised; he was 5' 9", 155 pounds, with arms that neither popped nor wilted. "But try squeezing one of the big guys into the air ducts when your daughter's kidnapped."

Murckle laughed, creasing his tanned face. "You've seen my movies."

"I'm smart. I've got my own piece. I can start today."

"Your experience is a little flimsy. Some might compare it to a greasy Fatburger wrapper."

Raymond leaned back in his wireframe chair. "Why haven't you skipped town?"

Murckle waved at the ocean sparking below his window. "I live here."

"And two or three other places, right?"

"Five."

"Everyone else in your tax bracket has fled for a ranch in Wyoming or a mountain in Colorado. You've got something you want to protect—your house, your business, your girlfriends."

"Something like that."

"I've got something I want to protect, too. She's ten minutes away. You find yourself with an emergency, that puts me ten minutes away from providing backup. Day or night."

The man stuck out his chin, scratched his thumbnail along the salt-and-pepper whiskers lining his neck. "We'll get back to you. Show yourself out, will you?"

Raymond kept putting in applications. At night they smelled the smoke from Watts. The news started running death tolls: first hundreds nationwide, revised to thousands by the next day. The warble of ambulances yanked them from sleep. Murckle called him three days later.

"Swing by tonight."

"Great," Raymond said. "What tipped the scales?"

"You were the only applicant without a criminal record."

"Sure. I'm a clean-cut guy."

"I don't consider that a positive. But I need somebody with a clean record. Now get over here so my doctor can stick a needle in you."

The middle-aged man in suit and glasses led him to a dustless garage where two other men waited, one big bald black guy and one big bald white guy, both in their underwear. Small metal instruments and syringes rested on a glass table.

Raymond raised one hand hello. "What's up?"

The white guy elbowed the black guy. "Bet you fifty when the doc draws his blood he collapses like a used condom."

"That's disgusting," the black guy said.

"Remove your clothes, please," said the man who'd answered the door. He waited in perfect stillness while Raymond tugged off his shirt and dropped his pants, then took them away before Raymond had a chance to look confused, folding them with crisp snaps of his wrists. Raymond thought he heard him sniff. An old guy with a laurel-leaf of white hair fringing his head walked through the door.

"Okay, boys," the old man said, tugging the hems of his jean jacket. "A little jab, a quick physical, and we'll send you on your way."

The white guy gave the other man another elbow. "That's the same line you use on the dudes, isn't it?"

"Christ."

The doctor drew their blood, checked their breathing, prodded the glands around their throats. "Naturally, if you are ill, you will not be invited back. I will call with your results tomorrow afternoon."

Raymond turned out clean. So, apparently, did the other two. He met them the next afternoon in Murckle's sun-splashed foyer, their arms folded, bulging in their tight black suits.

"You will wait here," the doorman said. His footsteps echoed up a curled flight of stairs.

"We better be on the clock," the black guy mumbled.

They stood in silence a couple minutes, shuffling, eyeing the airy living room, red couches on white carpet, lurid old movie posters framed on the walls. When he couldn't take it, Raymond introduced himself, earning a handshake from Bill, the guy who'd spoken a minute earlier, and a nod from Craig.

"You guys done this kind of work before?"

Bill gave him a wry smile. "So it says on our resume."

Craig tipped back his head, eyes slits in his beefy face. "You packing?"

"Of course," Raymond said.

"Let me see your piece," he beckoned. Raymond handed over his revolver butt-first. Craig cracked the cylinder and cackled. "Yo, check this out."

"You steal that thing off a Confederate?" Bill said.

"Sure. Everyone knows they can't fight back."

Craig shook his head. "You're in here in street clothes packing some John Wayne cap gun and we're supposed to feel good you got our backs. What kind of desperate-ass times are these?"

"I know how to use it," Raymond said.

"Sure. Just aim and run away." Craig tipped the gun and tapped the cylinder, clattering shells over the stone floor. Raymond held out his hand. Craig sniffed and passed it over. Raymond held it a moment, feeling its reassuring weight.

The doorman cleared his throat, scowling from the top of the stairs. Craig gazed back placid as a cow. The doorman descended, planted himself in front of them, and folded his hands behind his back.

"I am Mr. Hu. Naturally, Mr. Murckle will not risk himself to exposure when he has no idea where you go home to each night. I will therefore introduce you to the facilities and function as the go-between when Mr. Murckle has tasks beyond keeping the grounds safe from burglars, looters, and assorted ill-wishers."

"How are we supposed to guard his body when we can't even see him?" Craig said.

"By ensuring no one else is able to see him, either."

Bill chuckled. Craig socked him in the arm as soon as Hu turned his back. Hu showed them the entries, the ground-level windows, the yards, the cliffside deck where a mild fog speckled Raymond's face, the security pads (but not how to work them), the panic room, the control room and its nine TVs, where Raymond toggled cameras like a pro while Craig struggled to zoom. Straightforward enough: watch the monitors, prowl the grounds if anyone showed up, be ready to use your weapon. Could you really just hire a man off the street to use deadly force while on your property? Would he even be able to pull the trigger on another person? He wasn't at all certain of either. He was all but certain, however, that it didn't matter on either count. There wasn't going to be any house-to-house looting or roving bands of harm-doers burning down hillside manors and running off with the jewelry. This bodyguard thing was just an absurd fad. One he would take advantage of to earn a few bucks while he waited for the video store to officialize his hiring.

Hu told them their schedule—Craig had first shift—then showed Bill and Raymond to the porch. With the evening sun pouring over the Pacific, Bill jiggled a Marlboro from his pack and lit up.

"I feel like we're into something strange here."

Raymond squinted. "Yeah?"

"So this dude is looking to hire himself some security." Bill glanced at the windows, lowered his voice. "Somehow none of the three guys he hires has any direct experience?"

"Everyone's got the flu. Anyone who isn't is probably tending to their own family."

Bill shrugged his thick shoulders. "Look, you seem like an all right guy, you know? Watch out for yourself."

He went home to bring Mia the good news. A frown fought a smile for her face. "I'm glad you're working. I was starting to get scared about moving out. But now I have to be scared for you at work instead?"

"It's not a big deal." He clicked open the cabinet under the microwave, snagged the bottle of Captain Morgan Private Stock she liked. "It's sitting behind a desk in a little tech room watching screens."

"And getting shot like a redshirt if something goes wrong."

"The guy's Hollywood. If something goes wrong, he'll have a SWAT team in three minutes."

She mashed her lips together and absently accepted his celebratory rum and Coke. "Don't get hurt, okay? If anything happens to you, I'll run away with the mailman."

He woke before his alarm, rolled up to the manor eight minutes early. Craig met him on the porch, blear-eyed.

"Have fun, kid. I was too bored to beat off."

He learned quickly what Craig meant. For all the break-ins, looting, riots, and fires around Los Angeles County, none of that manifested itself on Murckle's quiet cliffside street. He had the nine closed-circuit screens to watch, but except for the constant soft sway of the fronds, he may as well have been watching nine still lives of palms. He tried to find an internet radio feed for the Mariners and discovered the games had been postponed. For the Mariners, that was probably a mercy.

He wandered the grounds. A light fog clung to the cliffs, dewing the grass and the planks of the deck. He went back inside. The radio reported riots in a park in New York, three deaths and a couple dozen injuries, armed anarchists clashing with police over accusations the disease was an escaped government project. In Atlanta, crowds had been forced away from the CDC with live ammunition.

Bill clapped him on the shoulder that afternoon. "Anything go down?"

"Just my heart rate."

"Guess them crooks haven't figured their way up to the hills yet."

Before he left, Hu asked him to drop off a box of files in Hawthorne. The windows of the looted Ralph's were dark, gaping, glass glittering on the asphalt. Men stood on their front porches eyeing pedestrians and traffic, baseball bats and golf clubs dangling from their hands. At a Spanish bungalow with an iron fence around its rooftop barbecue, Raymond handed off the box of files and got home an hour before dark.

"I made $96 to sit in a room and watch a bunch of TV screens," he told Mia. "I think we'll be okay."

She gathered her long dark hair behind her head, sticking out her lower lip. "No one tried to break in?"

"It was so quiet I could hear the mice in the walls plotting their heist."

So was the next day. When Bill showed up to relieve him, Hu handed Raymond an address. "Mr. Murckle has some files he needs delivered to Torrance. Do you know Torrance?"

"Enough to get around."

"When you arrive, knock on apartment 218 and return to the car. When the man comes downstairs to the car, pop the trunk. Do not speak to him. Once he accepts the files, return here and see me before you begin your rounds."

Down the hill in Torrance, tarps fluttered from smashed windows. In the Sprouts parking lot, cops stood over a line of men cuffed and laid out on their bellies. Ambulances howled down the PCH, shepherding the thinned traffic to the sides of the road. Raymond turned off, passing a bowling alley, liquor stores. He parked in a weedy lot between two beige stucco apartment buildings, stepped out into an afternoon as warm as a dog's breath, climbed the stairs, knocked on 218, and returned to the car.

A minute later, a skinny white guy with a shaved head and the long, drooping jaw of a basset hound jogged down the steps, reached into the open trunk, and pulled out a briefcase.

Raymond drove back to Murckle's. Hu opened the door before he could knock. "Everything went well?"

"Perfectly," Raymond said. "Hey, I think I left something in the control room."

Hu nodded and gestured him upstairs. Raymond took them at a walk. In the control room, Bill clasped his hands behind his head and gazed blankly at the ceiling. Raymond knocked on the open door and Bill flailed to keep from falling from his chair.

"Christ, man, I'm trying to goof off in here."

Raymond closed the door. "You were right. We're into something strange."

Bill glanced at the door and leaned forward, suit drawn tight over his shoulders. "What's up?"

"I think we're dealing drugs."

8

Walt wanted to die, but he didn't want it to be easy. He packed extra shoes, a toothbrush and toothpaste. He packed as many lighters and matchbooks as he could find and then went to the nearest open bodega to buy more. He packed six pairs of his least-worn socks, a flashlight and extra batteries, his fuzzy-cornered copy of Catch-22. He packed the aspirin and cold meds he'd gotten for Vanessa, a mostly-full box of Band-Aids, some old rags, a tube of Neosporin, an extra pair of jeans, and two shirts. He packed his rusty old jackknife and a half-eaten bag of beef jerky and a box of saltines. He moved to a second backpack, filled it with a small pan, scissors, paperclips, three pens, two more pairs of socks, a pair of gloves, a windbreaker, some vitamins, a plastic water jug, a sleeve of bagels, a legal-sized notepad. Because, well, fuck it, he combined his remaining whiskey, vodka, and rum into a single handle and jammed that into the first pack.

Then he sat down, because his stitches hurt, and he dug out his handle of mixed business and poured a drink and thought some more. He decided to wait until he'd recovered enough to walk without pain. He didn't want to die midway through the Bronx or Jersey City, dropped by blood poisoning or because he couldn't hobble away from some thug with a crow bar. He could only die once. He wanted to make the most of it.

But he did want to die. The urge was like a hand pulling him below the soil, as if the dirt were water and his feet were covered in oil and all he could do was sink and drift and fall, a voiceless lump plummeting through the lightless caverns beneath an empty sea, alone and lost. Vanessa's lavender scent hugged the couch pillows. Her cursive handwriting graced the fridge lists and the end table beside the bed where she logged her dreams, inspirations, and performance notes. By comparison, the death of his parents was a small and sighing thing: he'd accepted long ago they'd die before him. All he'd wanted was to be with Vanessa until the far-off day one of them winked away.

Nothing seemed worthwhile—why work when the woman he'd worked for was gone? Why move, why watch, why breathe? Walt ate listlessly, cramped by constant nausea, microwaving canned soup and buttering toast. He left his apartment once the day after his return from Long Island. He bought things that would last: beef jerky, canned beans, alcohol. He didn't know whether the whole world was ending or just his own. Either way, money no longer mattered; instead of plastic jugs, he bought handles of Crown Royal, the fat bottles like fantastical potions. Anyway, the couple liquor stores still open had run out of the cheap stuff.

He watched the city from his window. Ambulances painted their lights on apartment walls, idling while pairs of men in biohazard suits dragged lumpy black bags down to the street. At sunset, a speeding SUV slammed into an oncoming sedan, smearing the sedan's driver over its hood and catapulting the SUV's into the middle of the intersection, where he lay, moaning, until he bled to death. At midnight, a yellow pickup braked behind the wreckage. Two big dudes got out, failed to start the SUV, and finally tried to push it out of the way. As they sweated in the cold, a taxi swung around the corner, tires screaming, and plowed into the remnants of the sedan, jolting the SUV backwards over one of the two men and pinning him under a tire. As his blood filled a black pool in the street, his friend ran screaming. The cab driver got out and approached the pinned man. Moans filtered through the window. The pinned man stretched a bloody arm across the pavement, pawing at the cabbie's shoelaces. The cabbie skipped away, vomited into the gutter, and jogged away down the street, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

By morning, the street was impassible, a rubble of abandoned cars and hovering flies. A rat crouched on the pinned man's corpse, eating his nose. From his window, Walt took this for a sign. The ultimate metaphor for what happened when you tried to do good.

It rained that night, a steady beat that washed the blood and debris into the drains. Maybe the fish would get sick, too. Gunshots popped every few minutes, dampened by the mist. On the sidewalk below, a man shuffled forward, dropped his umbrella, and collapsed to his knees, phlegmy blood dangling from his mouth in strands.

Jets rattled his windows that morning, jarring him awake. The pain of his hangover felt right—the stabbing temples, the slow crush of his stomach, the sluggishness that made everything look less real than it already did. Heavy squeals and metallic shudders echoed between the buildings. Walt leaned out the window. Upstreet, a platoon of camo-wearing, rifle-swinging soldiers jogged across the intersection. With a rumbling, ear-wrenching shriek, a tank followed them down the street, pluming exhaust.

They came for him the next day.

The door pounded. His head did, too; he sat up from his blanket-nest on the couch, gum-eyed, parch-mouthed. "What?"

Quick, muffled talk from behind the door. "Open up! U.S. Army!"

Walt rose, naked except his underwear, and draped a sheet over his shoulders. He leaned his mouth against the door. "What can I do for you?"

"We're here to take you to a safe place."

"I'm pretty safe in here."

"What about your family? Any roommates?"

"I think they're pretty much dead. Let me check." Walt sniffed, gazing dumbly at the floor. "Yeah, all dead."

"Sir, I need you to step outside and come with me. In the event of noncompliance, we are authorized to break down your door."

"Authorized by who?" He unbolted the bolts, unlocked the locks. A pair of armed soldiers stood in the doorway, helmeted and vested, protected by gas masks and rubber gloves. "I appreciate your belief that you can keep me safer than I can keep myself, but I'm doing fine here."

The taller soldier shook his head. "We're authorized to round up all the survivors."

"The fact we are survivors might just imply we don't need your help."

"Sir, we don't have time for this. Come with us or we'll drag you down the stairs."

"Doesn't sound like either of us would enjoy that," Walt said. "Just tell them nobody was here."

The shorter soldier passed his rifle to his partner, grabbed Walt's wrist, and twisted until the bones rubbed each other sideways. Walt wilted to his knees. Stitches tugged his gut. The soldier clamped his wrists together, tying them tight with a plastic strip-cuff.

"Drag him out."

"I'm in my underwear here," Walt said from his knees.

"There's no time."

"At least put on my shoes. You expect me to walk through fucking New York City barefoot? People were shitting, bleeding, and puking in the street. And that's before the Panhandler."

The soldiers exchanged gas-masked glances. The one who'd hogtied him swore. "Where are your shoes?"

They let him pull on some pants and his Converse, then draped his coat around his shoulders and fitted him with a surgical mask and thin, transparent gloves.

"What's this about?" he asked on the way down the cold stairwell.

"Rounding up the survivors to keep you safe," said the soldier who'd cuffed him.

"Brilliant, gather us all together. The best way to guarantee that if we can get sick, we will."

"Has anyone told you you stink like whiskey, sir?"

They exited the building to an overcast noon. The streets smelled of smoke and blood and sour biology. Walt thought about running—he doubted they knew New York any more than he knew whatever non-New York backwater they'd coagulated in, and if they truly intended to scour the entire goddamn city for survivors, there was a fair chance they wouldn't waste time coming after him—but then again, they had guns. And tanks. And troops on the corners. Helicopters ruffled the clouds overhead. The soldier led him to a high-roofed truck and gestured him up a ramp. Twenty-odd other survivors sat on the truck bed, surgical masks in place, eyes bored rather than glassy or watery, no coughing or blood staining their masks. Only two of them were handcuffed. Walt sat down and leaned his back against the truck's side, glad for the shade. His stomach twisted, wringing itself like a beery old sponge.

They sat there a long time. The soldiers brought down an old woman in a black coat and led her into the truck, then a scruffy bearded guy around Walt's age. The soldiers cracked a can of paint, splashed a bright red X across the door, and moved on to the next building.

A woman asked to go to the bathroom. The soldiers told her to hold it. She asked again and a soldier glanced down the street, smashed in the door of a Starbucks with the butt of his rifle, and gestured her in. Walt napped, woken constantly by the truck bed jostling with new arrivals, by the whirr of choppers and the sky-tearing sound of jets, by people sobbing, the crackle of radios, the squeak of tank treads, by his own headache. Sometime midafternoon—he'd left his cell beside the couch—the truck grumbled to life and weaved slowly down the street, dodging abandoned cars, sprays of glass, sometimes a body.

Earlier, he'd asked a soldier where they were headed and gotten a vague non-answer. He didn't bother asking the other passengers. They rocked in the truck bed, staring blankly, as unresponsive to the contact of their neighbors' shoulders and knees as if they were down on a cramped 4-train to Yankee Stadium. The truck hooked south down Lafayette and rumbled through Chinatown, where shutters barred the stalls and seafood markets and t-shirt shops. Goods carpeted the sidewalks—shirts, wallets, belts, toys in cheap bubble plastic, sunglasses, squashed bananas, trampled cabbage, crushed crabs, some still waving their claws from the gutters. It stunk like old fish and rain-sodden greens. The truck turned down a street Walt didn't recognize and stopped cold. Radios squawked from up front.

Truck doors thumped. Boots hit the sidewalk. Ahead, metal scraped asphalt. Men swore, chattered over radios.

Out past the tailgate, three strangers wandered toward the truck, a slow shuffle punctuated by coughing jags. They wiped bloody fists on their pants and continued closer.

"Stay where you are," a loudspeaker blared from the truck.

"We're sick," a tall, thin man called from the trio. "We need help."

"Wait on the corner," the soldier replied. "Help will be sent as soon as it's available."

"You're the third truck that's told us that!"

Windows opened from a handful of apartments. Two more people turned the corner, leaning on each other for support, and joined the trio. Up front beyond Walt's sight, something heavy and hard grated over the pavement. He took shallow breaths. He'd been thinking he might throw up for a while now. At least the truck was canvas-topped, open around the sides. Fresh air.

Down on the corner, the crowd grew to a dozen. Five minutes later, with the soldiers still struggling to clear whatever was blocking the road, and Walt wondering why they didn't just take a different street, the gathering of the sick swelled to more than thirty, shivering, coughing, spitting wads of blood on the sidewalks.

"Where are you taking them?" a squat woman shouted. "Do you have medicine?"

"My apartment's full of fucking corpses," a hefty guy hollered in a Brooklyn accent. "How about you show us a place to sleep that doesn't smell like a Red Lobster's Dumpster?"

"Help is on the way," the soldier said. "Stay where you are."

"Like hell!" The hefty guy started forward. After two steps, the crowd followed in one of those strange mass movements, muttering, shouting, crying for answers and aid.

"This is a quarantined vehicle. Stop where you are and turn around."

Two soldiers ran to the back of the truck and knelt, raising assault rifles to their shoulders. The hefty man sneered and limped on.

"You're taking them to the cure!"

"Please don't leave us!"

From the advancing crowd, a thin blonde woman staggered away, hugged a lamppost, and sicked blood across the gum-dotted sidewalk. Someone in the truck moaned.

"Stop now or we will open fire," the loudspeaker blared.

Fifty feet away, the man laughed and broke into a run. Others lurched to keep up.

"Oh fuck," one of the kneeling soldiers said. Gunfire battered Walt's ears. The hefty man's chest puffed in three places, blood misting the people to either side of him. They fell alongside him, holes in their foreheads, chests, legs. Those in back screamed over the gunshots. One woman froze, clamping her arms to her face. Holes burst in her elbow, the back of her hand. The others turned and ran, stumbling and shrieking, disappearing around corners and through open doorways. The gunfire stopped dead. A dozen bodies lay bleeding on the pavement, some gurgling and clawing the asphalt, others as still as the streets beyond. Pale faces watched from windows. In the truck, people moaned, scrabbled their feet on the floor and pushed their backs against the walls, gagged, prayed.

"Shit," the first soldier to fire said.

"Hold your fire!" A man with stripes on his shoulder jogged from the side of the truck.

The soldier stood, shouldering his rifle. "Sarge, they charged us. Another two seconds and—"

"I know." The sergeant leaned in, grabbed the younger man by the neck. "You followed the protocol. You remember that tonight. Those people were already dead."

"Key word people," Walt called, dazed, tingly, jarred free from himself. "Not some goddamn zombies."

The sergeant turned on the truck, vaulting up onto the bumper. "Who said that?"

Walt shrunk against the side of the trunk, suddenly paternalized, pinned down by the authoritarian bark of a teacher quick with the detention. Across the truck, a dark-haired woman pointed him out. The sergeant clambered in over the tailgate and stuck a finger in Walt's face.

"Listen up. People are dying out there. You want us to leave you with them, just say the word."

Walt lifted his cuffed wrists. "This look like I volunteered?"

The sergeant grabbed him by the belt and frogmarched him to the tailgate, where he shoved Walt's front half over the ledge and planted a boot on his ass. The pavement waited below. "Just say the word!"

"At least cut my cuffs!"

"Say the word. You know how many bodies I seen the last week? Say the word and over you go."

"Okay," Walt said. "Please set me down. Please, officer."

"I'm not a fucking officer."

The man shoved him aside and jumped out the back. Walt eased himself back against the truck's side, stitches tingling. He flushed, furious. Why not jump? He was cuffed in the front; he could run home, get inside, find a knife to saw through the plastic. The truck juddered to life, pulling forward. But what if he snapped his wrist in the fall? Cracked his head? Were there any hospitals left? He hadn't kept up with the news. The city had fallen overnight, becoming a cemetery instead, its dead memorialized by the mausoleums of skyscrapers, the catacombs of the subways, the island-tomb of the unknown citizens. The military's plan, that was dead in the water. What would they do, ship everyone to Antarctica to trade stocks from their igloos? The plague had already taken the world. It had come too fast, spread too far to be stopped now. Everything else was delusion.

If he knew that much, why hadn't he jumped?

The truck rolled into a broad garage with red axes and thick fabric hoses strung along the walls. The soldiers waited for the doors to creak shut, then offloaded the civilians, split them by gender, and shuffled them into two locker rooms. An armed soldier ordered them to strip and deposit their clothes in a wheeled canvas cart.

"What are you doing with them?" a chubby guy said through his thick black mustache.

"The same thing we're about to do to you," the soldier said. "Now get in the showers."

"Oh Jesus," said the lanky young Jewish guy next to Walt. A soldier clipped Walt's cuffs. He showered, got dusted with a sharp-smelling powder by two anonymous people in full rubbery biosuits, then got ordered to shower again. In a tight benched room, a soldier passed Walt a pair of sweat pants and a loose white t-shirt that billowed past his waist. After he dressed, a man in a mask and a lab coat called the captives one by one into a room that until recently had been a personal office; photos of somebody's daughters hung on the walls, with bowling trophies occupying a corner shelf. The doctor drew Walt's blood, checked his breathing, his pulse, pressed his fingers to the side of Walt's throat and made him swallow, examined his stitches and told him they looked good.

"What's going on?" Walt said.

"We're seeing if you're sick."

"I wasn't before I got hauled onto that truck. Couldn't tell you for sure now."

The doctor smiled with half his mouth, skin crinkling around his eyes. "If you aren't already ill, chances are you never will be. Besides the cold, the flu, and cancer, of course."

"If we're doing fine, why scoop us up at all?"

"In the hopes you can help those who aren't so lucky."

"I can think of safer places to base the world's salvation than an old fire station in downtown Manhattan."

The man laughed, tapping his nose. "That's why we're shipping you to Staten Island. We've already disabled the bridges." He flicked his fingers apart. "Kablam!"

A short man with angry blond brows led him in silence to a small dorm and locked him in. Walt paced the tiles, fuming and muttering, castigating himself for not asking the doctor why they needed so many subjects, for not pulling the old man's lab coat over his head and punching him in the back of the skull. If Walt didn't want to be here—and he'd already begun to consider clocking his head against the wall until it or he cracked—why hadn't he done anything to get himself out? Were the solutions to his desires supposed to manifest themselves by magic? Did he expect, when he silently asked the universe to return him to his apartment, it would give him a thumbs-up, a grinned Heyyyyy, and poof him back to his ratty couch?

The blond man brought him a plate of hamburger and rice. Walt chewed sluggishly, forcing himself to swallow. He couldn't finish. The man returned for his plate, exchanged it for a glass of water and a bucket.

Walt tried to sleep on the sheeted twin bed. Instead, he remembered Vanessa. He remembered how long it took him to tell her he loved her. He remembered wanting to ask her about Mark. He remembered sitting next to her in a theater in college before they started dating, their arms resting so close on the arm of the seat he could feel the warmth of her skin, the brush of her tiny translucent hairs, and he wanted to put his hand in hers and smile at her, but he was afraid she'd pull away, that she'd say no, that the time wouldn't be right, that he'd never have a chance to find the moment that was. She'd kissed him, finally, two months later.

He'd lost two months he could have spent with her. Lost the better part of their junior year to a fun-but-light relationship he couldn't properly enjoy for always wanting more. When she'd started practicing lines with Mark, he'd lost weeks to gut-crushing anxiety.

For all those worries, here he was trapped in a room, shitting in a bucket and waiting to be shipped to a quarantined island. Vanessa was dead. He'd never have another minute with her again.

The labs came in the next afternoon. Walt was released from his room. The cafeteria smelled like sweat and Lysol and boiled meat. Walt counted heads. Three missing. He asked around. No one knew where they'd gone.

The doctor drew more blood. Soldiers sentried the exits like gas-masked gargoyles. At dinner, driven by the instinct they were no safer here than they'd been on their own, Walt sat down across from a girl with rows of tight black braids and asked about the missing men.

She frowned, spoonful of mashed potatoes halfway to her mouth. "You say there were three of them?"

"I counted on the ride in. A few times. I do things like that."

The girl chewed potatoes. "They killed them."

Walt glanced at the door. A soldier scratched the mask strap beneath his neck. "How do you know that? Did you see the bodies?"

"My room's got a window looks over the courtyard. Last night I heard three shots—pop pop pop."

"Maybe they were popping champagne to celebrate their upcoming non-execution."

The girl smiled. He noticed she was pretty. He went to his room and closed the door. That night he dreamed of wrestling the soldiers' rifles away, of leading a charge for the exits to a city too bright to see. But when he faced down the last guards between himself and freedom, he raised the rifle to his shoulder and couldn't pull the trigger. The people around him fell and died, eyes blacked out by bullets, shots connecting dots across their chests. The world faded to something he wouldn't remember when he woke.

He stared at the wall. Cinderblock. Painted white. No windows. That was clearly a fire code violation. He went to the cafeteria, tried the double doors that led out into the halls where they'd been showered down and prodded by the doctor. A chain rattled from the other side. Across the room, a masked soldier pushed off from the wall and closed on Walt.

"Please step away from that, sir."

Walt tried the other handle. "What if I told you to unlock this and get out of my way?"

"Sir, I would try not to laugh."

"I'm not a beanbag chair. I'm not a beagle. I'm not your property."

"Orders say we keep you here." The mask muffled the soldier's voice as thoroughly as it did his face. "They think we can break this thing. It's time for all of us to step up."

Days crawled by, as foolish and horrid as a half-crushed spider, as divorced from life as a button on a calculator, marked by blood-draws and meal times and the morning/evening lights-on/lights-off. Without notice, Walt was rousted by a heavy knock four days later. He dressed in darkness, angry and sleepy, and joined the others in the garage, where they milled for most of an hour before a pair of soldiers ordered them into the truck.

The truck blew through streetlights that kept changing despite having no one to change for. Walt rocked as they turned southwards. Cold wind cut through the gaps in the canvas and he snugged his loose clothes to his body. Once, he thought he heard a gunshot; another time, a scream. The truck strolled along, weaving irregularly. Out the back, in the dimmest light he'd ever seen in downtown Manhattan, Walt saw bloody bodies in the lanes, charred shells of burnt-out cars. Despite their sluggish pace, the drive didn't last long.

To Walt, the port looked how he imagined the rest of the world would look in another fifty years: dingy and abandoned, a useless leftover of the dead. Grime marred the grout between the time-beiged tiles that covered the floor and the lower half of the walls. High-backed wooden benches lined the terminal, the wood's grain fuzzed by salt air and the asses of countless passengers. The room smelled like mold and salt and far-off sweat. The soldiers marched them up a ramp where a massive orange ferry idled alongside a palisade of sea-soaked logs. The wind ruffled Walt's hair, stinging cold, and he was glad for the two-week stubble shielding his face. Out in the bay, lights speckled the black lumps of islands.

A pair of soldiers shepherded them over to the gently rolling ferry and up the flight of stairs to its top deck. Another pair brought up the rear, posting up at either side of the staircase. The survivors fanned out, taking seats on the plastic benches, gazing silently across the dark bay. Across the two rivers that bracketed Manhattan, the towers of Jersey City and Brooklyn stood dark, pricked by sporadic lights. Boots clunked on the lower deck, just audible over the burbling grumble of the engines. Staten Island. And they'd blown up the bridges. Walt had ridden the ferry there once in college just to see the fifth borough. He'd been shocked to find suburban neighborhoods complete with lawns and wooden fences.

The engines growled up, churning water and foam. The ferry pulled off with a neck-swaying jerk. The four soldiers watched the two dozen survivors with dispassionate professionalism, rifles slung from their necks, pockets bulging with gear. Beyond the windows, the rails of the observation deck painted dim orange lines over the silhouette of Brooklyn.

Walt's heart beat so fast he was sure the soldiers would be able to count his pulse by the throb of his carotid. He breathed slowly, inhaling through the nose, exhaling between his lips. That only helped so much. He had no intention of getting hauled to Staten Island just to get locked up there, too.

He thought he might die. He had resolved to risk it. A large part of him welcomed it. But he still feared—what? The irrationality of death? Even those who thought they had all the answers, the right Reverend Frank Phillips, for instance, well, those answers made no fucking sense. If there were a heaven, which there wasn't, how could it possibly function? His heaven would be with Vanessa; he had no delusions hers would include him, at least not in any capacity greater than an awkward semi-friendship. How could the two paradises coexist? In his perfect heaven, would his Vanessa be just a specter, a perfect simulacrum, while the real Vanessa spent eternity in her own separate bliss, charming men at parties, chugging champagne without hangovers, her face on every cloud? Yet how could it be perfect if he knew the woman he was with wasn't the real thing? Was heaven then a series of parallel paradises, each one honed for its individual inhabitant, no more or less real than any of the others? If so, what about the alternate-Vanessa forced to inhabit his heaven? Wouldn't he effectively be raping her? The alternate-her wouldn't even know the real her would never share his bed. So either Vanessa would be forced to be with him, or he'd be forced to be without her. Either way, one would suffer. One wouldn't know heaven.

He knew the out: in the divine hereafter, earthbound romance would seem irrelevant, a gravel-crumb's worth of joy beside the mountain that is His Truth. That, above all else, proved it was all a sham.

Hell was more laughable yet, a ghost story meant to scare kids from stealing toy cars at the supermarket. Reincarnation was pointless because, with no knowledge of your past lives, you may as well never have lived them in the first place. Heavens, hells, rebirths—what else was there? The great crushing nothing, the permanent mute button? Too absurd to dissect. If there were nothing, you wouldn't even know it when you began to experience that nothing. Regardless, that nothing, he believed, was the truth, but—

Outside, the ferry cut east, putting more space between itself and Brooklyn as it vectored to Staten Island. He was out of time.

Walt raised his hand. "I need to go to the bathroom."

"Hold it," a soldier said.

Walt didn't really have to piss—just a bluff, a pardon to get up and walk around—but something about being denied the base right to go to the bathroom made him want to choke the soldier until vertebrae cracked free of the man's skin like ice cubes from a tray. Walt stood and sprinted for the doors to the deck. A soldier shouted behind him. He slid the door open and rushed onto the concrete platform. Sea winds buffeted his face, stealing his breath away, wetting his eyes with tears. He sprinted down the deck toward faraway Manhattan, thumping the metal floor.

A soldier spilled out the open door and leveled his rifle. "Stop right there!"

Walt laughed madly. "I didn't kill my wife!"

The soldier stepped forward. Walt thought: I love you. He vaulted the gut-high rail, palm slipping on the spray-damp metal, and plunged headfirst over the side. The ocean roiled above him, the liquid sky of an upturned world.

9

How did you keep upright when the ground kept sliding away beneath your feet? Two days after Raymond discovered his ostensible boss Kevin Murckle was a drug dealer, which meant Raymond himself had been unwittingly slinging, Murckle dispatched Hu to call him and Bill into his office. Raymond stuck a smile to his lips and nodded.

"I'll be right there."

It was one thing to have wanted to sell a couple ounces of weed to his friends. Murckle deceiving him into delivering bricks of God knows, coke or heroin or meth, that could get him locked up for years. It was the lie as much as the crime that bothered Raymond. Murckle could've hired any number of couriers who'd have no qualms making dropoffs for a payday. Instead, he'd turned to the desperate, exploiting them for twelve bucks an hour. Raymond walked into the office ready to resign.

From the far side of the sun-bright room, Murckle held up his palm. "You two just stick right there, why don't you." The white of his surgical mask stood out from his tanned orange skin. "These carpets are too nice for me to start upchucking blood on them."

Bill smiled tightly. "What's up?"

"I've got something here that needs to be in the city. Here isn't the city."

"My goodness."

"That's what I said. But then I thought, Hey, I've got you two. You two can take it into the city for me."

"Today?" Raymond said.

Murckle wagged a finger. "Tonight. The recipient is a night person."

"I have plans with my wife."

"Do those plans include explaining how you got fired less than a week after you got hired?"

"That would be a crummy idea of a date."

"Then take her out tomorrow instead. Problem solved." Murckle shook his shaggy head. "See why I get the big bucks?"

He turned to his computer, tilted back his head to see through his reading glasses. Bill and Raymond shared a look and saw themselves out.

"What do you think?" Raymond murmured in the hall.

Bill rubbed the stubble on the back of his head, lips pursed. "Nighttime delivery to east LA? Can only be one thing: bibles."

"What do you think he'd do if we said no?"

"Fire us for sure. Possibly frame us. Or hire some boys off Craigslist to shove a boot up our ass."

Raymond frowned at the abstract painting down the hall, as if expecting to spot Hu's eyes blinking behind two holes in the bright splashes of color. "Maybe we should think about calling the cops."

"With my record, man? We might as well cut out the middleman and drive straight to Lompoc." Bill folded his thick arms. "Look, guys like Murckle, you don't walk out on them with a handshake and well-wishes for your future endeavors or some shit. You got to leave with enough leverage so they don't hit back."

"So we take pictures of where we're going and who's picking it up."

"For a start. I'm going to let Craig know what to do if we don't come back."

"Does he know?"

Bill's chest bounced with laughter. "You kidding? If Craig knew the details, he would kill that man. Not over the dirtiness of the deed, mind you, but because Murckle's not giving us our cut."

Raymond came back that night with the revolver and a digital camera. Hu pulled a seal-sleek black sedan up to the gates and repeated the address. Bill got in behind the wheel, grinning as he closed the door.

"What do you bet this thing's registered to somebody's grandma in Arizona?"

Raymond shook his head. "I'm so far out of my element right now I'm expecting to see fish any minute."

The ocean roared in the dark behind them. Bill wound down the cliffside road, city lights twinkling from Malibu to Long Beach, and cut through town to the 110. The freeway was wide open as Montana, sparsely dotted with headlights. Abandoned cars gleamed from the shoulder.

"I never seen it this empty," Bill said. "Place is deader than my dachshund."

"I heard they're mobilizing the National Guard."

"What do you think? This the end times we got here?"

"During World War I, an outbreak of the flu killed like fifty million people."

"Jesus. We're talking about like the Black Death here."

"The thing about diseases is the deadly ones burn themselves out." Raymond fiddled with the camera, checking the zoom, its light levels. "A strain can't pass itself on if it kills its host too fast. AIDS used to kill people in months. Now nobody dies from it."

In the dim light of approaching headlights, Bill smiled with half his mouth. "Not here where we got money. But tell that to Africa."

He switched lanes, peeled down an offramp. Two- and three-story apartments crowded the lots. Silhouetted men crouched on stoops, metal glinting in their hands. In an Albertsons parking lot, people slept on rows of cots under plastic tarps, attended to by men in masks and white coats. While Bill idled at a light, a man pulled a windowless van into the lot, hopped out, and snapped a pair of rubber gloves past his wrists.

Bill whistled. "Be grateful you live in your little beach world, kid."

"What's going on out here?"

"If some too-big-for-its-britches flu can kill fifty million people before we put a monkey into space, why can't its great-great grandson take out a billion?"

Sirens bayed. Raymond gripped the camera in his lap. A cop car tore down the boulevard, whooshing through the intersection. The light changed and they rolled on. Chain link fences bordered weedy lots. Smashed windows gaped from storefronts, some covered by taped-down tarps. Garbage spilled from corner bins. Upstreet, a man jogged across the empty lanes.

Bill swerved around a burnt-down couch, cursing under his breath. Debris caltropped the outer lane, toppled chairs and busted bottles and sharded plates, funneling the car to the turn lane. Ahead, a metal gate stretched across the middle of the road.

"What the hell is this?" Bill slowed. Beyond the gate, a man in a leather jacket stood with his feet apart, a rifle angled over his shoulder. "You got your piece?"

Raymond touched the bulge in his waistband. "Maybe we should turn around."

"Hang on. Stay frosty."

The car rocked to a stop. The man strode around the gate, keeping the rifle shouldered, and approached the driver's side. From five feet away, he bent at the waist and rolled his hand in the air. Bill cracked the window a couple inches.

"What's up?"

The man leaned closer. "What's your business in the neighborhood?"

"My business?" Bill cocked his head. "I got a delivery for one of your villagers, man."

"Who you going to see?"

"I'm just a pizza boy, I'm not the Godfather. I got his address."

The man glanced past the gate while Bill recited their destination. He nodded absently. "You get in and you get out. Any problems, don't expect to leave."

He strolled toward the gate. A radio crackled on his hip. He mumbled into it, eyeing the car, and swung the gate back with a rusty creak. Bill edged forward. Raymond smelled smoke. Two blocks on, a bonfire gushed flame and smoke in an empty lot to their right. Beside it, two men with white rags over their mouths swung a long, heavy bag between them, building momentum, then chucked it into the fire and stumbled back. Plastic melted away. An arm flopped between the timbers. The men walked to a pickup with its tailgate down and hauled another body off the bed.

Bill leaned forward and squinted through the tinted glass. "Should be that apartment block up there."

"You mean the one with the skull and crossbones spraypainted on the doors?"

"That's the one." Men watched from the opposite sidewalk as they pulled into the lot. Bill let the car idle, glancing front and back. "This is a dumbass plan. Just sitting."

"Repeat after me: twelve bucks an hour. Twelve bucks an hour."

"Take this shit for ourselves. Find some palace on a lonely Mexican hilltop until this thing goes away."

Raymond unbuckled his seatbelt. "Why haven't you left town?"

Bill shrugged his big shoulders. "Where am I going to go? At least here I know my way around."

A man walked out from behind the apartment block, hands in his jean pockets, shoulders drawn tight. Raymond sat upright. "Suppose that's him?"

"See if he responds to Murckle's Bat Signal." Bill flashed the headlights, twice short, once long. The man bobbed forward and leaned down to the window, toothpick tucked in the corner of his mouth.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah what?" Bill said.

"You my guys?"

"Guess so. Stuff's in the—"

Raymond elbowed Bill in the ribs. "He wasn't supposed to speak to us."

Across the street, a man hollered, "Don't you open that door! You keep your sickness in there!"

"What?" Bill said.

"He's supposed to go straight to the trunk," Raymond said. "That's the routine."

"We got a problem?" the man with the toothpick said.

From the apartment stoop, an old man with a crown of white hair waved his fist at a small crowd that had pulled up in the middle of the street at a safe distance from the plague-house. The man gritted his teeth and took a gingerly step toward them.

"Not another step, old man!"

"What did you say your name was?" Bill said to the man beyond the window, one hand drifting toward his waistband.

The toothpick-chewing man beat him to it. The streetlamps gleamed on the sight of his black semiauto pointed at Bill's face. "It's Mister Hand Over Your Fucking Shit."

Raymond's heart roared. Bill slowly raised his hands. "It's cool, man. Stuff's in the trunk."

"So open it before I open your skull."

"I have to reach for the button. Be cool."

Flame sparked from the street. Two men jogged toward the old man, burning bottles in hand, and slung them through the ground-floor windows. With a deep whoomp, fire blossomed inside, lighting the faces of those in the street. The man with the toothpick flinched, glancing toward the flames. Bill swept out his own pistol. The window shattered; three ear-cracking bangs roared from the gun. Raymond smelled spent gunpowder. Beyond the broken window, the man with the toothpick stumbled back, air leaving his lungs in compressive grunts, and dropped to the grimy asphalt.

From a dark window on the third floor, a gun flashed and popped. The people in the street screamed and scattered. Two retreated in a crouch, going for guns, firing back. Smoke gushed from the downstairs windows. A young couple piled out the front door dragging two young girls behind them, their free hands pressing bloody handkerchiefs to their mouths. Gunfire erupted from the far sidewalk, pummeling the family down in the doorway.

"What the fuck," Bill said.

"Go!" Raymond found his revolver. His hand shook too hard to aim. The car jolted backwards, tires whining. Something ripped into the rear door with a great metal clunk. "They're shooting at us!"

"Get your fucking head down."

Glass sprayed inward from the rear window. In the street, a young man in a white wifebeater went down hard, spurting blood. The car chunked over the curb, jolting Raymond's spine. Smoke clogged the street, lit by irregular flashes of gunshots, pierced by screams and sobs. Bill tore down the middle lane. Before the gate, he swung right, hunched over the wheel, hunting for an unblocked route back to the freeway. Beyond terse directions, neither of them spoke until they were back on the wide empty lanes.

"I am not one to pass judgment lightly," Bill said, knuckles clinching the wheel, "but fuck that."

"That was crazy. That was more East Berlin than East LA."

"I'll tell you this. Murckle's smarter than he looks. He saw the writing on the wall."

Raymond shoved the revolver back in his waistband. The cold metal stung his skin. He wanted suddenly to be away from it, to pitch it out the window. He'd been pretending at this for reasons he didn't completely understand—as if he needed to prove he could be as scary as the world was quickly becoming—but now all he wanted was to be home.

"I'm not coming in tomorrow. I'm not a guy who shoots people. I thought I could do it to protect myself, but that family on the stairs—"

"I am a man who'll shoot a man, and none of us are coming in tomorrow." Bill wiped sweat from his chin, glaring past the steering wheel.

Raymond leaned his elbows on the glove box. "I just need the money so bad."

"You got a family?"

"A wife. We're about to go under."

"We'll get paid. This is no time to be broke."

Raymond sat back and took a long breath. "What about you? You got a family?"

"Yeah. I got someone."

"She's lucky."

"And jealous," Bill grinned. "So don't start crying on me. Those types can smell the tears, you know."

They flew down the barren freeway. The meaning of the violence at the apartments eluded Raymond, as half-glimpsed as the dim cars left along the sides of the roads. And who decided to walk away from their cars mid-freeway? Had their drivers left them in the midst of a jam to be hauled off the road by the city? Where had all the passengers gone—the sunset? Had some of them died, coughing and puking, blood dribbling from their tear ducts, behind the wheel? There was no longer any sense that Raymond could see.

But sense was what you made it. That was the lesson of life, repeated in every tragedy, every windfall, every mystery of a long-lost city or a whale washed on the beach. He would get his money. If Mia was the only thing that mattered, the only plan that made sense was to go home to her and stay with her until things got better.

On the PCH, he could smell the sea blowing in through the empty window. Bill snaked up the steep cliffside to Murckle's estate. From inside the control room, Craig rolled open the gate, then met them at the door. One look at Bill and he cocked his big stubbly head.

"What happened out there?"

Bill glanced upstairs. "Where's Murckle?"

"Out. With Hu."

"Establishing an alibi." Bill bared his teeth. "Murckle's slinging."

Craig snorted. "He's a fucking Hollywood hack."

"You think that makes him less likely to be in the shit?"

Craig leaned forward, brow beetling, and sniffed Bill's shirt. "You fired a gun."

"Damn right. I'd be dead if I hadn't." In quick, specific strokes, he relayed the relevant details, starting from Raymond's trip to the Torrance parking lot, where he discovered he was couriering drugs, to their eastside delivery-turned-battle. Craig paced the room, face red as raw steak. By the end, his hands dangled by his side, still as a dog that's heard a distant bark, his back turned, ears burning, a vein squiggling on his neck.

"Still got your piece?" he said softly.

Bill nodded. "Going to need to ditch it, though. Murder weapon."

"You." Craig jammed a thick finger at Raymond. "Get up to the control room."

Raymond glanced at Bill. "What's going on?"

"Shut it off. All of it. Cameras, alarms. I want this house as dumb as a dropped baby."

"I'm about to be involved in a crime. How about you at least let me know what it is?"

Craig stepped so close Raymond could smell the musk of his skin. "Heavy burglary and vandalism, all right? Now get your fucking ass upstairs."

Raymond jogged up the cushily carpeted stairs and installed himself in the sterility of the control room. Things were happening too fast again. As fast as the looting at the grocery store, the shootout at the apartments. His fingers pounded the keyboard, shutting down cameras. The screens winked off one by one. He unplugged what he could, then wiped the keys down with the hem of his shirt and ran to the landing. In the foyer, Bill tapped his palm while Craig shook his head, skin bulging on the back of his neck.

"Cameras are down," Raymond said. "Still don't know how to shut off the alarm."

"It's okay," Bill waved. "We'll be out before they're back."

Craig strode straight for the paintings, shoes thumping tile. He yanked the frames from the walls, spraying paint and plaster, tiny nails clicking off into corners, and leaned the pieces beside the front doors. Bill hefted a bronze statue of a stylized penguin and set it in the foyer with a tile-chipping clunk. He raised his black brows at Raymond at the top of the stairs.

"Come on, kid. Steal till you can't steal no more."

On moving to the house in Redondo, Raymond had imagined he'd be able to build a fat financial cushion selling off his mom's old things. After a few weeks of cleaning, sorting, and combing the internet, he sold a box of long-limbed, creepy-eyed boudoir dolls for $100. Drunk with Mia, he'd rifled the silverware drawers, peering at the backs of his grandmother's Depression-era spoons and forks for the names of their manufacturers, grinning like a fool when he found the silver alone was worth thousands, that a set of the right sterling could hold them afloat for a good six months. The next morning, he called an antiques dealer. Scheduled a visit later in the week. Inside their living room, the dealer pursed his lips, mustache fluffing, and told him it was nothing but plate.

In the house of Kevin Murckle, Hollywood producer, drug-runner, Raymond went straight for the kitchen.

The silverware disappeared into his double-layered trash bags with an avalanche of screeching metal. He twisted the bags' necks, tied them off, walked them up front. Craig and Bill lifted the flatscreen from the wall, sweat beading their brows, and deposited it by the door. Raymond bounced upstairs, heart racing, and opened Murckle's bedroom door.

He could hear the breakers curling in the dark, their breath-like advance and retreat on the rocks below the cliff. He clicked on the light. The bed was a round red lozenge, maroon silk sheets puddled at its foot. Bamboo shades covered the windows, flanked by vents that let in the smell of salt and seaweed. In the teak dresser, Raymond found gold watches that weighed as much as his foot. Small gem ear studs. Rings of a strange deep silver. He stepped back, pockets sagging. Was it okay for him to take this just because Murckle was an asshole? Amendment: an asshole who owed him money. And had put his freedom and life at risk without informing him of those risks. Too, some unknown quantity of the man's money was earned through drug sales. Like Raymond's dad had said, when you try to take advantage of someone, you open yourself up to be taken advantage of.

He rubbed three of the five rings off on his shirt, returned them to the drawer. Replaced all but one of the watches. His pockets felt lighter.

A man shouted from downstairs.

Craig and Bill held guns on Murckle and Hu. Around them, the foyer and front room were piled with paintings, electronics, statues, upturned cushions, toppled chairs, bunched rugs, strewn papers.

"I'll tell you what's going on here." Craig's voice echoed through the vaults, the fine glass of the chandelier. "You hired us on to watch the place, then used us to deliver coke."

Murckle laughed. "That's anything new to you two?"

Craig muscled his pistol into Murckle's face. "How about a new hole through the back of your head?"

"No, I don't think so. My stylist is out of town."

"I only want to hear two more things out of you: where's your money, and where's your stuff."

Murckle laughed again and rolled his eyes. "If I had money, you think I would hire you three?"

Hu watched, stony as the cliffs below, while Craig leveled the pistol at the assistant's face. "Give it up or he gives up the ghost."

"Go ahead," Murckle shrugged. "Would you be kind enough to shoot him in the chest instead? I always thought I'd have him stuffed."

Raymond started down the steps. "Craig—"

Craig clicked back the hammer. "Give it up, you inscrutable fuck."

Hu flinched, lips pulled back in a silent snarl. "There is a safe beneath the third stone of the path in the back yard."

"You son of a bitch," Murckle said through a disbelieving grin.

Bill pointed the gun at the ceiling. "What's the combo?"

"36-24-36," Hu said.

"I'm taking anything they steal out of your pay," Murckle said.

Craig swiveled the gun to Murckle's face, his triceps swelling like an incoming wave. "You think you can take and take and take and the money will keep you safe. You know what the best part of this is? Everyone's too busy dying to give a fuck."

Murckle's jowls sagged like a shirt in need of a wash. The crash of the gun pounded from the high, bare walls. Murckle's head snapped back, exit-blood fanning the white carpet, a limp stream gushing from the hole in front. His legs folded beneath him with a wet pop. Raymond tried to step backwards, caught his heels on the stairs, and thumped to his ass. Hu shuddered away, blinking and licking his lips. On the floor, Murckle's left hand wiggled like a shoelace being drawn across a carpet.

Hu let out a long, shaky breath. Craig turned and shot him three times in the chest.

Bill threw up his hands. "Craig!"

"What? He was Murckle's right hand here. Guilt by association."

Bill shook his head at the floor and put away his gun. "What if he was lying about the safe combo?"

"Oh. Shit." Craig wiped his nose, jerked his chin at the piles of paintings and TVs and laptops. "Well, we'll still have all that."

Bill considered the paintings. "Least it's abstract. They won't even notice the blood."

The step creaked under Raymond's descent. Craig's shiny scalp swiveled. "Where you going?"

"Home." Raymond's chest felt filled with motes of painless light. "To my wife."

Craig shook his head. "See, the problem is I can't let you do that."

"It's all right." Raymond took another step. Craig raised his pistol.

"What the hell you doing?" Bill said. "You think he was in on it, too? He's the one who tipped me off."

"I know he's fine on that. I also know he witnessed us kill three men tonight."

Raymond gave his head a tight shake. "I'm not judging."

"That's comforting, but you know who will? The judge you're put in front of."

Bill lifted his hands to his waist, palms down. "Craig."

Craig's eyes flickered and his jaw hardened. "I'm keeping us safe, Bill. It's all right."

"You shoot that boy, I will leave you. This is no joke."

Craig's mouth drooped open, slow as a sunset. "You kidding me?"

"I just explicitly said it wasn't a joke. Do you ever listen to me?"

His jawbone bulged the thick skin beneath his ear. "You're willing to put us at risk over this guy?"

"Murckle could have landed me in jail," Raymond said. "He almost got us killed tonight. You think I care if he's dead?"

Bill smiled with half his mouth. "I wouldn't say there's any 'if' about it."

Craig craned back his neck, teeth bared, and stuffed his gun in the back of his pants. He closed on Raymond. His stubble looked like it could scour pans. "Your word. Give it to me."

"It's yours."

"Come on, kid, convince me. Tell me you won't tell a soul. Not your wife. Not Jesus Himself if he took you out for a beer at Dodger Stadium."

Raymond raised his right hand. "No one."

Craig drew back, giving Bill a look. "This lands us in jail, I'm finding me a nice Aryan boy."

"Thanks," Raymond blurted. He stepped over Hu's silent body, smelling copper and feces. "I'm going home. Good luck."

Bill waved. Craig stared at nothing. Raymond opened the front door. Fog wisped from the ocean, slicking the rails along the porch steps. On the way to his car, Raymond had to fight to keep from running. He drove downhill at a crawl, lights blooming the fog, imagining his brakes would fail at every stop. He parked at the esplanade and took the ramp to the beach where he watched the breakers until his shoulders quit shaking.

"Where have you been?" Mia said when he stepped through the door. She grinned from the recliner, lit only by the pale blue light of the television. "It's past midnight."

"The boss kept me late."

"Hunting the undead? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"No," he said. "But I may have seen a few get made."

She grinned again, mistaking it for a joke. As he stood silent, she covered her elbows with her palms. "What are you talking about?"

"We just needed money so bad."

"What happened?"

He closed his eyes. "I don't want to tell you. But if I don't, that will it easier for me to make the same mistakes again."

He gave her the broad strokes—the inadvertent drug-dealing, their plan to extricate themselves, the chaos in LA and then in the mansion in Palos Verdes. Confessing felt like a breeze through his body, like the events he described had happened to someone else.

After he finished, Mia stared at her hands for several seconds. "But you didn't kill anyone?"

He shook his head hard enough to dislodge a tooth. "No. Of course not. I was just there."

"That's crazy. That's crazy, Raymond."

"Should I have done something to stop them?"

"What could you have done?"

"Gone to the police. Or quit going in to Murckle's before it got that crazy. We could have picked up and driven to Albuquerque. I could have done a million things different."

She sniffled, steepling her fingers over the soft point of her nose. "It's different when you're living it, isn't it? I think it's a lot easier to know what you should have done after it's happened."

"Yeah," he said: but wasn't that just another excuse? He felt better, though, like he always did when he spoke up, when he confronted feelings and doubts; he always felt stronger, capable of grappling any problem; if nothing else, of resolving to do better next time. And Mia, she still loved him. She stared at the TV a minute before unpausing it. A cartoon kid made a fart joke.

She glanced at Raymond. "You know what I read today about how it got its name? The Panhandler?"

"What's that?"

"It nickel-and-dimes you. Drop by drop—your blood, I mean. Once it's weakened you far enough..." She spread her hands in front of her in a gushing motion.

He told her he needed to go to bed, but he thought maybe that was how you lost yourself, too: bit by bit, by nickels and dimes, until one day you look inside and there's nothing left at all. But money, you could always earn more. If you lost what was inside, could you save it back up?

* * *

Like his long night at Murckle's, the end of the world came too fast to know what to do.

The city burned. Raymond and Mia stayed indoors, curtains drawn, and followed the news on their laptops. When that grew exhausting they watched horror movies over the Xbox with the lights turned off and the sound low enough to hear footsteps in the driveway. When they went to bed Raymond placed the revolver in the dresser and locked the bedroom door. Sirens dopplered down the PCH night and day.

Ambulances and cop cars came to their formerly quiet street as well, double parking in front of Cape Cod manors and haciendoid mansions while the paramedics gathered up the bodies and piled them in back.

Raymond's email overflowed with mass-mailed funeral notices, with scared and sentimental goodbyes from friends he hadn't seen since high school, with strange, fevered queries from total strangers. At first he read each one; later, he skimmed; later yet, he deleted them unread. Mia's parents pleaded for them to come back to Washington, but nonessential flights had been grounded to try to limit the spread of the disease. Trying to drive the thousand-plus miles struck Raymond as beyond suicidal.

Anyway, it looked like there might be hope. The power stayed on. The water stayed on. The garbage collectors missed their pickup, which Raymond was glad for; he pulled the empty juice and soda bottles from the recycling and filled them with water and stored them in the basement. He and Mia began rationing food, shifting most of their meat to the freezer and eating crumbled bacon over rice they fried in the bacon grease. On the news, reports of cures shriveled away, replaced by increasingly vague international death counts presented with little commentary and by federal advice to stay indoors, minimize contact with the infected, and to report household deaths immediately.

"I don't think it's going to get better," Mia said softly during the end credits of A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge.

"I don't know, I'd say the credits are a big step up from the rest of the movie."

"Not that." She sat in the recliner with her knees to her chest, eyes bright in the TV-washed darkness, staring at the wall as if a cryptic threat were written on the dirty pink paint they'd never gotten around to redoing. "The world."

"Oh. That." He leaned forward, shoulders hunched, room tilting. "Just the world we know, right? Not the Earth itself."

She drummed her bare feet against the floor. "Yep. Still there."

"And so are we."

Mia smiled through the shadows. "Don't say that's all that matters."

"Isn't it?"

"Will life be worth living without ice cream?"

"Who says it's the end of ice cream? We'll still have cows. We'll still have snow." He stood, crossed to his laptop. "Guess we'd better start downloading survival guides before the internet disappears, huh?"

"See if there's anything about how to sew tires into coats."

He smiled. The days passed same and strange; locked in the house, he could almost pretend he was in the midst of a long weekend, happily isolated, with and wanting no one but his wife.

The moment they made plans, that illusion was shattered. They decided they would wait for the Panhandler to die down, only leaving the house to forage when they were down to a few days' food. They'd take the car, grab canned food, water, pasta, rice, and anything else that could be cooked simply over a fire or in boiling water. Longer-term, they'd find out whether any of their neighbors were still alive and in residence. Try to find walkie-talkies, as many batteries as they could carry, establish some sort of neighborhood watch. Keep the radio tuned to emergency channels. Put together a couple survival packs and be ready to move in minutes if things got worse.

The sirens thinned day by day. Within a week, they stopped altogether.

Raymond woke one night to the beeping keen of the smoke detector. He burst from bed and grabbed the revolver; but it was useless against the smoke and fire beyond the door.

10

Walt knifed feet-first into the water. An icy fist closed over his head. The cold of the water crushed him, clamping his muscles; he gasped, plastering his palm across his mouth and nose. He thrashed his feet but couldn't tell which way was up. His head throbbed. He burst from the water just before his lungs began to sear.

Behind him, the ferry's slow bulk drifted away, engines gurgling and rumbling and burbling. Walt slipped below a wave, gasped, and kicked out of his shoes. They sank unseen into the sea. Wonderful: shoeless in Manhattan. If he didn't die by drowning, he'd die of gangrenous AIDS-feet.

Paddling, he forced his shallow pants into long, regular breaths. Muscle by muscle, he willed himself to relax. He started kicking for the dark towers of the city.

Shouts carried over the water behind him. A minute later, the searchlight of a small vessel bobbed on the water just past the ferry terminal. Walt laughed bitterly. The docks of Brooklyn looked a zillion miles away. He swung right anyway, angling away from the direct line between the ferry and the boat dispatched to track him down, pacing his kicks. He'd always been a strong swimmer, taking lessons at the country club when he was five, then transitioning to a beach rat a few years later, talking his parents into driving him to the shore every weekend he could. Things changed in his late teens when a mounting dread of the creatures lurking beneath the foamy waves drove him back to their backyard pool. He hadn't been over his head in a lake, river, or ocean since he was 19.

The bay yawned beneath him, a miles-wide mouth of cold black water.

The ferry chortled into the distance. Walt swam on, salt in his mouth, limbs clumsied by the cold. His neck strained from tipping back his chin. His loose shirt billowed in the swells, caressing him like a supple, grasping hand. The scattered lights of Brooklyn waited. How far? A mile? A mile he could walk in 15 minutes. How long would it take him to swim? Half an hour? Was that another way of saying he might have as little as thirty minutes to live? Like a man out of a precognitive sci-fi story, he knew more or less the precise time he would die, but the information was totally useless. He wasn't in position to make the most of his dwindling minutes by hopping on a roller coaster or the classiest hooker in the yellow pages. He would spend his final minutes swimming, skin frozen while his muscles and lungs burned, salt dripping in his eyes, pitched by swells.

Roughly halfway to shore, he was certain he wouldn't make it. His arms felt like overcooked ramen. He couldn't catch his breath. Salt seeped down his nose into his throat, sickening and thirsting.

He kicked and stroked and swam. He swam until his arms and legs seemed like the property of another body. He swam until he couldn't think of anything besides keeping his head above the waves, of riding the inward ebb of the current, of inhaling when the water dropped away and exhaling when its icy hold clambered up his neck to his mouth.

He swam.

And with the pilings rising and falling from the water some three hundred yards away, he decided he'd come too far to die. Maybe the hypothermia would get him shivering on the docks. Maybe he'd be eaten by rats or starving survivors. But he wouldn't drown. Not with Brooklyn so close. Drowning now would only prove what he already knew: jumping from the ferry had been the stupidest idea of his life.

He kicked and paddled, nose blowing bubbles in the waves. In the moonlight, a dark, tilted slab stood on narrow wooden pilings a few feet above the water; beside it, a tall steel dock rose twenty feet above the soft waves, skeletal and pitted. He pushed for the slab. His muscles felt like ten thousand ants withering in a fire. His breath gushed out of him in ragged huffs. The pilings swung close enough to bash his brains out. He reached out, plunging beneath the water as he lifted his arms, and grabbed the slippery wood. Splinters and barnacles shredded his palms, a dull burn beside the total pain of his body. He hugged himself to the piling and rested there in the motionless cold until he found the strength to lift his arms above his head. The plank above him groaned under his weight. Arms shaking like they were ready to fall apart, he hauled himself up to the platform's lip, wormed his weight over its edge, and flopped onto a pile of loose, fish-stinking boards. He shivered there for a while.

A breeze swept goosebumps across his skin. The night wasn't that cold—if he hadn't been carrying 900 gallons of seawater in and on his skin, he could have survived in a light jacket—but he felt like he would die if he stayed there and slept. A narrow gangway led to an ocean-rotted wooden ladder up the side of the metal dock. He yanked on the rung above his head. It held. He climbed hand over hand, resting both feet on each rung before moving on. Rust clogged his nostrils. Corroded metal rods projected from the dock's rectangular frame. At the top, Walt crawled across the gappy planks to a crumbling factory. Glassless windows stared dumbly out to sea.

He walked inside to a grimy concrete platform. His shirt was wet. He needed to be not-wet. He peeled his shirt off, shivering hard enough to snap his neck. On his bare stomach, his closed knife wound was hot and pink and ticked by stitches. Walt grabbed the shirt at its hem and strained, trying to tear it in half, but his biceps quivered like a scared dog. He took the hem in his teeth and yanked. It gave way with a wet rip.

He stuck a foot inside each sleeve and knotted the sopping fabric around his ankles. They weren't good shoes. In fact, they were shit. Cold, wet shit that threatened to fall off his feet just a few steps into the dark factory. He reknotted them and shuffled on. On a dusty shelf, he found a pile of burlap sacks. The corners shredded easily. He stuck his arms through the holes and crouched down in a ball until he stopped shaking.

The front doors were held by a heavy iron chain. He swung his legs out a window and dropped down to the street.

Graffitied, rust-colored factories flanked a wide, weedy street. Walt ducked through a hole clipped through the chain link fence, scratching his ribs on a sharp wire. He straightened, gritting his teeth. A dog trotted down the street, nails clicking, tags jingling. It had been days since the world stopped working. Had the pet tasted blood yet?

Down the block, Walt opened a newspaper dispenser and stuffed his burlap shirt with wadded pages of the Village Voice. Metal shutters sealed the corner bodega. He swore, dropped to the gutter, and scooped his palm into the stagnant, cool water there. It tasted like dirt and sweetness and life. He allowed himself three palms full, then gargled out the last of the salt.

He walked on. Smelled decay and bad meat. A lumpy, blanketed body sprawled from the stoop of an apartment. Brown blood crusted the top step. The paint around the door handle had been scraped down to the wood. Walt lifted the burlap over his nose and untied the dead man's running shoes. He smelled death, sour and rotting and hot as a sleeping baby. When Walt pulled the second shoe free, a glistening tube of foot-skin gave way with a wet slurp.

He scrabbled back and vomited into the street.

The right shoe fit. The left, he couldn't squeeze over his heel. He tied his shirt back over his unshod foot and limped on.

He hadn't had much of a plan till then—"Don't drown or freeze to death," yes, but given that was high on everyone's daily goals, he didn't think that counted. He was somewhere on the western shore of Brooklyn. The bridge into Manhattan would be a few miles north; his apartment a couple miles further up from that. He knew there was an R-train around here somewhere. With luck, it would still be operational, and he could ride into the Village, grab his stuff out of the apartment, take another train up into the Bronx, and start the long march west. With no luck, or rather the standard of luck to which he'd become accustomed in the last few weeks, he'd have to hoof it the whole way.

He didn't know if he could handle that just now. He'd made it the few blocks from the docks on a cocktail of I-almost-died adrenaline and the need to get moving and warm. He could feel the weakness, though, the worn-out tremor of his calves and thighs. He'd need to rest soon. Somewhere warm. Somewhere with clean water.

Thin clouds skeined the sky above the silent streets. Drapes flapped from open windows. Black gum spots stained the sidewalks. The cars clung to their parking spots, motionless, forgotten. If Walt had come from another time, he might have mistaken them for cramped metal huts.

Beneath a raised highway, Walt could actually hear the traffic light click from red to green. His shirt-shoe squished across the asphalt with wet, irregular tracks. He walked past a VFW, a sporting goods store, a Greek cafe, one- and two-story storefronts with hand-lettered signs and exhaust-grayed paint. He didn't know where he was. Without the towers of Manhattan to guide him or the Citibank skyscraper rising in blue glass loneliness from the middle of Queens, he could have wandered away into Long Island.

There was a logic to New York, though, one that ran deeper than its numbered grid. Live there for a few years and every neighborhood starts to feel familiar. Walt may not have known precisely where he was going; the wrong turn, and he could easily stumble into a block of weedy lots, blank brick walls kudzued by old graffiti, and suspicious-eyed locals who looked teleported straight out of Soviet Russia. But soon enough, Walt would get where he was going. At times, the city felt like a dreaming giant. Walk through its mind for long enough, and it starts to tell you where to go.

He spotted the subway station two blocks later. The marine green rails, the black board with the bright yellow alphabet of the routes, the hole in the sidewalk to the platforms that, under normal circumstances, smelled pleasantly of laundry and unpleasantly of urine.

Now it smelled like death.

Walt waited at the top of the steps for the better part of a minute. Faint, buzzing light illuminated the grimy steps. He didn't know what he was waiting for: the rumble of a train, the crank of a turnstile, or maybe just a wise vagrant to pass by, roll his prophet-bright eyes, and warn him to move on. Finally, it came to him. A weapon. You don't descend into dark underground places without a weapon. He glanced down the street. A few spindly trees bordered by tight black iron fences. Wire trash can chained to the traffic light. Hamburger wrapper. More gum stains. Parking signs. A shuttered fried chicken joint. Out front, a green sandwich board resting on its side, white chalk lunch specials half-erased. He shuffled over, grabbed one of its legs, and yanked. He gave his three-foot club a swing, lashing the air, enjoying the hiss. Would probably break the first time it hit anything of person-level density. Still. Better than nothing.

The handrail along the stairs was greasy with humidity and the ongoing touch of thousands of passengers. Crunchy, rusty stains tracked a thick line down the center of the stairs. The stench had been gaggable at street level, but halfway down, he had to draw his burlap shirt over his nose again. It didn't help. He breathed shallowly through his mouth, burlap scratching his lips. The glass of the token booth was spiderwebbed with cracks. A fluorescent bulb buzzed, casting flickering pale light over the concrete and turnstiles. If he'd had the energy, he would have jumped them just for kicks; instead, he scuffed along through the wide-open metal-banded door to the platform.

The air was still and close and hot, so thick with stink it felt like it would coat his skin and stick inside his throat. Flies whined. He swallowed down warm bile. Something rustled in the mud and puddles along the dimly gleaming tracks. Walt raised his stick and edged out onto the platform. To his left, fat black bags mounded the platform to shoulder height.

A viscous brown puddle collected around the pile's base. The bags on the lower strata looked like proper thick body bags, but those on top were black plastic garbage sacks. Arms and bloated yellow faces protruded from the rips and holes. Brown blood smeared split lips and blackened noses. Dozens of bodies had spilled from the pile onto the tracks, a rotting landslide of the dead. A second mound rested on the opposite platform, stretching away into the darkness.

Walt backed away, gagging. He banged his hip into the metal door and collapsed on his ass. He scrabbled backwards until his palm skidded through a crusted smear of brown slime. Hastily, he wiped his hand on the tiled wall and ran up the steps to the damp, cool air of the street. He ran around a corner and slumped against an apartment block until he no longer smelled the sludge of former people.

Eight million people had populated New York City proper. Most—90%? 99?—were now dead. They'd had to store the bodies somewhere.

He didn't know when the last semblance of law had left the city, but he guessed it had been right around the same time they started stuffing the subway tunnels full of corpses. Yet as desolate as the streets looked, he knew he wasn't alone. He'd survived the virus. So had the dozens of survivors the military had cooped up and ferried off to Staten Island. There had to be others out there. He had no intention of spending the night anywhere but his home.

The corner bodega was locked but unshuttered. Walt bashed in the glass door with his stick. Spilled couscous gritted the floor. Jars of pickles lay smashed across an aisle, the briny juice smelling like a withered sea. The shelves had been stripped of everything but a few candy bars, some freeze-dried lunch noodles, scattered cans of off-brand soda. Walt ate a Snickers in big chewy bites and walked to the back where "I HEART NEW YORK" shirts and hoodies hung from the wall. He stripped naked and toweled down his damp crotch and thighs, then pulled a t-shirt and a hoodie over his chest. He found the extra-larges and stepped into a shirt, pulling the sleeves over his legs, then did the same with a navy blue sweatshirt, his balls dangling in the hood. From a third sweatshirt he reeled out the drawstring and belted it around the loose fabric at his waist. Dressed, if rather unfashionably, he cracked a fizzing can of soda and chugged until the last drops slid from the can's mouth. He crumpled it and dropped it on the tile. A series of belches foamed up his throat.

The dried salt still scummed his skin and hair, but he felt refreshed, capable of at least attempting the trip back. Briefly, he considered trying to steal a car, but nobody in this city would have left their keys in the ignition, and besides, on the empty streets, it would be an awful lot of attention. He'd take a bike if he found one.

He wasn't banking on that, though. He found a canvas bag behind the register and filled it with sodas and 3 Musketeers and jars of peanuts. He found a baseball bat there, too, but no guns. Just as well. All he knew about guns was they had a trigger and they went bang.

He still wasn't too jazzed about his shoes. He had something like 3000 miles of walking between himself and Los Angeles. He didn't much feel like ruining his feet before he'd left Manhattan.

The door to the four-story walkup beside the bodega was locked. Walt circled around to the side where a chain link fence walled off a small garden. He scaled the fence and dropped into the yard. A rake leaned against the back porch. He used it to unhook the fire escape and snag its lower rung. The stairs swung down with a metal creak. On the second-story landing, he smashed in the window and crouched out of sight. After a minute of silence, he cleared the jagged glass with the baseball bat and clambered inside.

After the stink of the subway, the rot inside the apartment was a nasal Sunday drive. A fat body moldered in the bed, yellow underwear clinging to its crotch. Walt opened the closet. The dead man's loafers were three sizes too big. Walt slipped on three pairs of gold-toed socks. The loafer fit.

In the kitchen, he took a paring knife and a box of matches and climbed back down to the street. He saw his first person five minutes later, a short, thin figure that scooted across the asphalt a block ahead. With the Brooklyn Bridge bobbing above the walkups, something growled from a stoop. Walt jumped back, bat in hand. A German Shepherd's eyes glinted in the gloom. Walt backed away and walked on.

He was used to a New Yorkerly rush, but he forced himself to stick to a light pace that barely upped his breathing. A door slammed and Walt hid in the shadow of a tree. Far off, a car engine purred, followed by a single gunshot. He passed a body every few blocks. Some sat upright in alcoves; two lay in the middle of the sidewalk; others rested behind car wheels or slumped against apartment windows. For the most part he didn't see them at all. He supposed most had died in their homes, or been gathered up and burned or stored in the subways. As fast as the Panhandler had flashfired through the world, it hadn't struck people dead on their feet. It had given them just enough time to hide away.

A rhythmic whapping echoed down a side street. Walt got out his knife and snuck forward. A man leaned over the hood of a car, pants around his ankles, hem of his shirt halfway down his pale, tensing buttocks. Beneath him, legs and arms lolled across the car's hood. Slapping flesh echoed from the brownstone fronts. Walt moved on.

Lacking his cell phone, he wasn't sure how long it took him to reach the base of the spidery Brooklyn Bridge. A couple hours, he guessed. Long enough for his feet to hurt. Blister on his left pinky toe, he thought. His shoe was too tight. He stopped for another candy bar, a couple handfuls of peanuts, a soda. His teeth felt fuzzy. He must remember to take a toothbrush with him.

Dead cars scattered the lanes below the footbridge. He leaned up the curving ramp. Cables webbed him in on either side. The twin gates of the bridge loomed ahead, silhouettes of skyscrapers rising behind them. He had a bad feeling. Manhattan was an island. If you controlled the bridges, you controlled Manhattan—for whatever that was worth when there was nothing left to control.

The white line dividing nonexistent bike traffic from nonexistent foot traffic carried him to the tall brick gates. Walt paused where the boardwalk split, meaning to pop off his shoes and give his feet a rub. The waves of the East River capped and rolled. Walt heard a metal click.

A thin man in a leather jacket moved sideways from the huge stone pillar. He held a black pistol. The pistol pointed at Walt's head.

"Your money."

"Does it look like I've got any money?" Walt laughed, surprising himself. "My balls are in a fucking hoodie."

The man stepped forward. A thin brown beard fuzzed his cheeks. "Nobody crosses the bridge without paying the troll."

"Trolls are supposed to live under bridges."

"Trolls with guns live wherever the fuck they want. Drop the bat and put up your hands."

Walt let the bat go. It clattered, wood on wood, and rolled toward the steel cables at the side of the bridge. "I'm just trying to get home here."

The man flicked his gun in a come-on motion. "Give me the bag."

"Fine. Hope you like candy bars."

Walt lobbed it at the man's feet. The man knelt down, keeping his gun trained on Walt's chest, and pawed open the plastic sacks. Silver wrappers winked in the moonlight.

"This is all you got?"

"I had to take a swim across the bay earlier tonight. That meant leaving my gold bricks at home."

The man switched his gun to his left hand, biting his lip. "Take down your pants."

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

"I said take down your pants or this bullet will take you down."

"Just because the world's over doesn't mean we have to turn into a pack of rapists!"

"One more chance. Then I shoot out your knees and make you get down on them."

"No." Walt took a step. The man jerked his gun to aim between Walt's eyes. "You will take nothing from me. I'll die first." His hands shook. His heart felt divorced from his body, a crated dog hurling itself against the bars.

The thin man edged back. "I can make that happen."

"Promise me you will."

"I solemnly swear."

The tip of his trigger finger twitched. Walt ducked and bowled forward, plowing into his ribs. The gun crashed. They staggered back together, reeling over the boards. Walt jammed him into the steel cables with a hard jolt. The pistol fired again, stinging the side of his face and dazzling his ears. He wriggled his elbow against the man's neck, grabbed his belt, and toppled him over the side.

The man screamed. The gun fired a third time, the bullet whirring crazily as it ricocheted from the bridge. The man hit the road below with a thick squelch, gun flying one way, guts another. His arm raised, wavery as a puppy, then collapsed against his smashed chest.

Walt spit over the edge. To his surprise, he felt no guilt. Just a vague sense of disappointment he pinned down at once: he was still alive.

That and a tug on his side from his old stab wound. He lifted his shirts. Saw no blood. Just a warm pink line. Once his heart and breathing slowed, he walked on.

The bridge dropped him into a downtown as deserted as Brooklyn. The steeple-like crown of city hall rose above the darkness. Red X's crossed the doors of apartment buildings and hotels. On the corner, a scorched Humvee rested on its side, dead soldiers slumped behind its cracked windshield. A block further, the stench of corpses roiled from a subway entrance. He tucked his mouth below his sweatshirt hem and crossed the street. Ten minutes ago, he'd killed a man. His own life—no different than before. The event may as well have never happened. What did that mean? That if a tree chopped down another tree in the forest and no one was around to see it, the first tree didn't have to feel sorry? If emotions were created for social creatures, did they cease to exist as soon as society disappeared?

He got home without incident. Past the front door's red X, the lobby's smell of dust was a welcome change from the putrefying meat of the street. Walt stripped naked and lowered himself to the couch. From nowhere, he began to cry. Vanessa was dead, and he wanted to be.

He woke with late afternoon sunlight slashing the dust motes in front of the window. He showered and soaked his feet in saltwater and bandaged his blisters. His apartment had gone untouched; his bags of food and gear were still ready to go. He moved with a cold momentum, in no particular hurry, stiff and sore, intending to keep out of the streets until after sunset. To his bags he added two paring knives, a long meat knife, tennis shoes and sandals, three pairs of shoelaces looted from Vanessa's old shoes, a second box of Band-Aids, a printed Google map of the United States, and a metal bowl. He guessed anything metal would have great utility from here on out.

A couple shots of whiskey passed the time. He added a few more to his stomach's collection and opened the window to listen to the silent city. When the sun faded to nothing, he put on his coat and slung a backpack from each shoulder.

He descended to the building foyer, opened the front door, and stepped outside.

The humidity had him sweating three blocks later. He didn't see another living person until he reached Washington Square, where a man on a bench stirred beneath his blanket. Walt drew his knife and came up close.

"What are you doing?"

The man blinked and sat up straight, tugging his blanket around his neck. "I don't want trouble. I'm not bothering anybody."

Walt gestured at the red brick walkups lining the north of the park. "You think anyone lives there anymore? What are you doing sleeping in the park?"

The man scratched his black beard, wrinkling his forehead. "Being stupid, I suppose."

"Good luck." Walt walked on. The man waved and stood up.

Every few blocks, silhouettes stirred behind windows; a couple times an hour, shoes scraped the pavement, dark figures ducking into doorways or behind parked cars. In total, he saw evidence of a couple dozen survivors between the Village and the hotels of Midtown. No doubt more were hiding or had fled. Still, how few did that leave throughout the city—five thousand? Ten? On 53rd Street, the white walls of a tower were scorched black. Beyond, the charred rubble of a skyscraper mounded the street, wafting the faint smells of smoke and cooked meat. Walt made a quick detour, then cut north at a light jog. On the south front of Central Park, a horse lay in a stiff-legged heap, still reined to its hansom.

He leaned against a glass-faced storefront and scanned the park. Water. Arable land. Would it become a co-op farm? Or a tribal battleground, its waist-high stone walls converted into perimeters, the plaza above the lake raised into a keep? He wouldn't see it, would he? After nearly a decade, the full run of his adult life, he was leaving New York. Even if his foolish quest succeeded and later that year he found the cool Pacific washing over his ankles, he doubted he'd ever see his city again.

In one sense, that was already true. If he stayed, he'd never again stand on a subway platform and feel the warm, moist breeze of an incoming train. He'd never taste the flag-like pizza slices with their sweet marinara; the absurd, delicious fusions of curried lamb BLTs with cumin mayonnaise; the endless pots of tea, perfect for a hangover, before and after his kung pao at Suzy's. He'd never again see the sidewalks that glittered like the open sea on 3rd Avenue. Never sneak down from the nosebleed seats during a Mets game. Never get woken up by those fucking trucks banging over those fucking metal plates.

And rather than the devouring sadness of the loss of Vanessa, the sadness of this loss felt sweet. He'd had good times. He'd known a place. Now, that place was gone. For all he hadn't done—the Statue of Liberty, closed since 9/11; a Jets game, too far in Jersey—he couldn't have asked for more.

He rested on the corner of the park, listening to the wind shuffle the leaves and eating a bagel that had grown hard in the days since the army had extracted him from his home. He wished it had lox. He'd probably never taste lox again, too.

He walked through the white baroque facades of the Upper East Side, the brownstone walkups of Harlem. The bridge to the Bronx was clogged with empty cars. Walt slunk along the gnarled, bolted metal girders. His feet were sore again and so was pretty much the rest of him. The train tracks lifted from underground to elevated rails; beneath their shadows, he smelled urine and decay. No trolls this time.

Alongside the flags at the front of Yankee Stadium, a woman's body dangled from a light pole. Walt was glad he'd never had kids.

The air took on the warm, moist smell of approaching morning. Walt hurried for the George Washington Bridge, resolving to steal a watch at his next opportunity. Dawn broke across his back in the suburbs of New Jersey. Between townships, he tromped a few hundred yards into the woods, plunked down beneath a tree, and discovered he'd done something very stupid: forgotten to pack a blanket.

A blanket. A watch. And something to eat besides these damn bagels. He had a lot to learn.

He rose the next afternoon, thighs and hips and feet sore, toes and soles blistered. He shadowed the road to the outskirts of a town, then waited for darkness to sweep over the quiet green streets. The lights stayed out. On the far edge of town, the blank white walls of a Wal-Mart stood like a modern castle in the black moat of its lot. Walt clicked on his flashlight and stepped over the broken glass carpeting the entrance. He wandered past baskets of blue-fuzzed tomatoes and bins of spinach and cilantro collapsed in their own deep green juices.

In sporting goods, he found a large duffel bag and filled it with the contents of one backpack. The battery racks were bare of AAs and Cs, but he found some by the registers. He bypassed the digital watches in favor of an analog—digital didn't feel right anymore. He wandered back to the sports aisles and stuffed the duffel with a lightweight sleeping bag and a crinkly emergency blanket. He grabbed a few sleeves of Pringles, a plastic bottle of orange juice, the last bag of beef jerky in the store, and as many tins of almonds and cashews as he could fit in his backpack. On his way out of the dark store, he turned around and replaced a couple jars of peanuts with a couple rolls of toilet paper.

Walking gave him something to think about besides Vanessa. When he had to stop to rest or pop a blister, he remembered her smile, the way her nose wrinkled when she laughed, her easy elegance whether sheathed in a black dress or lounging in a pair of cutoff jean shorts. He'd always have those memories. Then why bother with this journey at all? Even if he made it to Los Angeles, what would he do then—shoot himself? Why not cut to the chase?

Every day he woke up, thought the same thoughts, packed up his camp, and walked on.

The endless townships of Jersey gave way to open, empty forests of short pines and broad-leafed oaks. Somewhere in eastern Pennsylvania, following the highway along the rolling hills, with the daytime humidity lending soft edges to the ridges and skies, he ran out of food.

He wandered off the highway into the woods, roughly paralleling the road as he searched for—well, he didn't know. Something that looked like it could sit in his belly without being violently ejected a few minutes later. That ruled out mushrooms. But walnuts, strawberries, wild carrots? Would he know a wild carrot if he saw it? He didn't think he would.

A gunshot cracked the sky, echoing among the hills. Walt shrunk down, hand scraping the rough bark of a tree. He counted down a minute before rising.

"Got to be around here somewhere," called a high, rasping voice downhill. "What do you want to do with 'em when we find 'em?"

"Leave him on the border," replied a clear baritone. "Let everybody else know to stay the hell out."

11

Smoke whispered along the ceiling. The alarm screamed from the hallway. Raymond pulled on his clothes, leaving his shoes unlaced. He threw their emergency bags in the back of the car by the time Mia dressed. Flames whipped along the roof, fed by the night breeze and by weeks without rain, pouring gray smoke into the black sky. The neighbor's house burned, too; across the street, half the block crackled and roared, spitting sparks, turning the street as bright as dusk. Raymond heard no sirens.

"What now?" Mia asked from the sidewalk.

"There's a hose around back." He dashed down the side yard, fumbling with the latch on the back gate. Hot smoke tickled his lungs. He opened the spigot far as it would go and stuck his thumb over the hose nozzle to jet water at the flames. Fired from two floors below, the spray mostly spattered the wall and the open bathroom window. What little reached the roof disappeared into the shifting wall of yellow and red.

"The whole block's on fire," Mia said from the gate. "We have to get out of here."

Raymond bared his teeth, face heated by the flames. "I can't just leave it."

"The rest of the street's being redecorated as ash. Even if you can save it with one hose, do you know how to patch a roof?"

"It can't be that hard."

"Raymond!"

He turned. Her brown face was paled by the flickering light. The hose drooped in his hand. "It was my mom's."

"And the last thing she'd want would be for you to die trying to save it." She touched his shoulder and lowered her voice, barely audible over the rumbling, snapping fires. "There are other houses out there."

He let out a long breath. Dropped the hose. Water soaked his untied shoes. "Is there anything you need inside?"

"Yeah. But I'll live without it."

Out of habit, he closed the gate behind them. "I know where we can go."

Fires burned along the hill, throwing wavering light on the clouds of smoke above the city. Raymond stopped at the red light on the PCH, frowned, looked both ways, and pulled through. Down by the esplanade, the sea air was cool and soft and damp. The city had rebuilt the sidewalks just a couple months earlier, installing upscale stone trash bins and planting cacti and flowers amidst the fresh cement. Without maintenance, how long before the upgrades washed away?

He swung south, wound his way up the cliffside road to the dark manor where he'd fled a murder, and parked outside the gates.

"What do you think?"

Mia squinted at the pillars flanking the front porch. "Is this where you were working security?"

"Pretty, isn't it?" He nodded to the high white walls and their whip-thin pines, the circular window near the top of the four-story turret, the all-glass extension to the left of the house complete with reflecting pool. "Gates, cameras, even a panic room."

"And a body in the living room."

"Wrong."

"I thought you said they killed the owner?"

"Two bodies in the living room."

"Damn it." She slapped her palms to her thighs. "At least we know the owner won't be coming back."

"Unless this turns out to be a zombie thing."

"Don't even joke."

Raymond scaled the wall, punched in the gate code, and pulled the car into the quiet drive. Far down the hill, a yellow blanket of fire smothered their old home. The door to their new one stood open. Raymond could smell the nauseating cloud of death from the front steps.

"Oh wow," Mia said. The bodies had bloated, blackened and reddened, become swollen-fingered things that looked like God's failed lab experiments. Rusty blood caked the carpet. The paintings, statues, and TVs were all gone, hauled off by Bill and Craig or any other looters who'd come through in the meantime. At least that made it easier to get around.

"I'll go get the cleaning stuff," Raymond grimaced. "Want to bring in our gear and find us a bedroom?"

She shook her head, black ponytail metronoming. "I'll help. We have to start getting used to the bodies sometime, right?"

He found bleach, towels, rubber gloves, trash bags, air freshener. Murckle's limp arm squished when he grabbed it, releasing a fresh bloom of old meat. Raymond fell back, gagging.

Mia nodded at the trash bags. "Maybe we should wear those ourselves."

"Wish we had some goggles. And boots."

"Or one of those power suits from Aliens."

They tore holes in the bottom of two bags and slid them over their heads. Static lifted strands of Mia's hair into a black halo. Sewage leaked from Murckle's clothes when they swung the body onto a layer of plastic bags. Learning from this, they pulled bags over Hu's head and legs and rolled him into another layer of black plastic. Mia crinkled her nose and fitzed copious sprays of air freshener into the high-ceilinged foyer.

"What now? Raymond said. "Fling them off the cliff?"

"No way. You want a bunch of rotting bodies below our beautiful new home? How am I supposed to eat fish when I know they might have been nibbling on these guys?"

"Could bury them if we can find a shovel. Bet Murckle's the kind of guy who hired out all his yardwork." Gloved hand covered in goo, he wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm. "The lighthouse."

"You're not a sea captain. I am not living in a lighthouse."

"It's out on that big point. We drop the bodies off the cliffs there, they won't wind back up in the bay."

She nodded. "They'll make your car smell worse than it already does."

"So steal us one that doesn't offend your delicate olfactory sensibilities."

"Maybe I will. Go pop your trunk."

His grin lasted until they hauled Murckle's body out to the car. Mia's grip slipped on the steps and he let go, too. The corpse smacked the top step and thumped down to the walk.

"Hang on, will you?" he said. "These aren't the groceries."

She gave him a look, but held tight until they manhandled the body into the trunk. They dropped Hu's in beside it without any problems. Raymond peeled off his gloves and trash bag before getting behind the wheel. The road spooled along the cliffs down to the silent lighthouse. Lights pricked the shore of Malibu to the north. They dragged the bodies to the cliff's edge, spray misting their faces.

"Should we say something?" Raymond panted.

"They sounded like jerks," Mia said. "Maybe it'd be better to say nothing."

Instead, they rolled Murckle's body over the edge, then Hu's. The trash bags flapped in the wind on the way down, disappearing into darkness.

The house stunk as bad as when they'd left. Mia poured bleach over the stains, covered them in towels, and walked over them to soak up the residue. Raymond opened windows and the shuttered vents beside them. The sun rose. Clouds rolled in from the sea, gray and low. Rain spattered the windows as they went to bed.

The rains extinguished the fires. They seemed to extinguish the city, too. A few times a day, Raymond heard the crack of gunshots, the moan of engines. Once, a helicopter blatted across the sky. Besides that, everyone had disappeared.

Murckle's house didn't have much in the way of food. The Ralph's up the PCH had been hollowed out, but they came out with rice, soda, crackers, fruit juice, eggs, potatoes, green peppers, and a couple loaves of Wonder bread. They continued on to a CVS and loaded up on soap and shampoo and deodorant and razors, on floss and toothpaste and batteries, on chips and tequila and candy bars. Mia hopped the pharmacy counter and, reading off a list cobbled from the internet, bagged up antibiotics, birth control, painkillers, and cough syrup.

"We should go to Home Depot," she said.

"Oh, did you want to redo the master bathroom? I thought it looked a little cramped, too."

"They have that huge garden section. The food in the stores won't last forever."

"I'm so glad you've got a brain to match your ass."

"Be more glad I'm taking that as a compliment."

They went everywhere together. That was the deal. He carried the revolver, she carried a knife; if she was keeping guard while he gathered supplies, they switched weapons. From Home Depot they took baskets of seeds and two flat orange carts loaded with seedlings and cuttings for raspberries, bell peppers, basil, orange and lemon and avocado trees. They took seed packets of cilantro and mint and carrots. They took shovels and pots and soil, filling the car, and spent the rest of the day weeding and planting and fertilizing, sweating through the afternoon, cooled by the steady inward breeze off the bay.

They adapted faster than Raymond would have guessed possible. In a way, the Panhandler had been too big to grapple with its subtleties, had struck too fast to deny. Like their old house, the world had burned down overnight. It hadn't rotted for years while Raymond shrugged off the mold in the walls and the termites in the foundation. It was gone.

So what use was it to pretend otherwise? Between driving and looting and cleaning and planting, Raymond barely had five minutes at night to be saddened with thoughts about lost friends and relatives. In a strange way, his life with Mia was hardly any different than it had been for the last six months—the two of them, together, building something they meant to last. Most of the time, he was happy.

In part, it was the house. The approximate size of everywhere else he'd ever lived put together, it had stone floors, lush carpets, a four-story turret, spiral stairs with a gleaming black iron rail, a deck on the second floor and on top of the roof, and, most stirring of all, floor-to-ceiling windows facing the ceaseless sea. He'd loved how close the water had been to the house in Redondo—he could walk to the beach in five minutes if he hurried, which he usually had—but from the deck of the old house itself, he'd only been able to see thin strips of blue between the condos on the horizon. Late enough at night for the blatter of cars to fade away, if the wind and surf had been right, he'd been able to hear the breakers whomping the shore, a cacophony like titans tearing down the walls around them.

From the house on the hill in Palos Verdes, he could hear the surf in his sleep, the seals arping from the empty marina, the harbor bell clanging forlornly. If he opened a vent, he could smell the salt. If he opened a curtain, he could see the waves stretching until the Earth curved away. It was where he'd always wanted to live. Mia found him there on the back deck, just watching, all that sun on all that water. He wiped a tear.

"What's wrong?" she said. "Just too beautiful for you?"

He shook his head. "I miss baseball."

"Jesus. Seven billion people die, and you're sad because a few of them were baseball players?"

"We used to be so safe. So prosperous. We paid money to spend three hours watching men mill around on a grassy field."

"You remember what made that world possible? A handful of men who let millions starve so they could buy homes like this one."

"Yeah," he said. "But they're all dead now."

A few days after they moved in, Raymond woke and found the toilet didn't refill when he flushed. The sink spat air and a few fizzing flecks. The lights wouldn't flick on; the clock by the bedside showed a blank black face.

There was no longer anyone at the controls.

12

Walt leaned in against the trunk of the tree and reached for the knife on his hip. Downhill, boots crunched through leaves. A man chuckled. Walt didn't hear any dogs, which seemed like a stupid oversight if these yokels were at all serious about tracking down and stringing up strangers in the middle of a forest that could have been straight out of Middle Earth. If he'd been killing interlopers, he'd have dogs. Big baying ones that would put the fear of God in his quarry. With these fools, all he had to do was wait for them to pass by.

He smelled chlorophyll. His stomach growled. A leaf fell, clicking through the branches. He saw nothing but leaves and dirt and creeping vines. Leaf-crunching footsteps faded downhill. Walt edged out from behind the tree.

"You take one more step, better make sure you enjoy it," a voice said from the trees. "Because it will be your last."

"What are you guys?" Walt froze. "The spirits of the woods? What do you care if I'm out here?"

"Disease can't spread if everyone stays put." The man raised his voice. "Mark! Harold! We got our little bunny."

"You guys have been out here too long. The virus is done. Everyone's dead."

"You shut your mouth and keep it shut."

A bearded man with a puffy green coat and a rifle crunched up the leaf-strewn hill. He leveled his gun at Walt from ten feet away. "What do you think you're doing out here, kid?"

"Going to Los Angeles."

The man's beard ruffled in a grin. "You gonna be a movie star?"

Walt shrugged. "I'll probably have to do porn first."

The tree beside the bearded man shook and rustled. A leg jutted down from the screen of branches. A bald man with glasses swung onto a low branch, dangled his legs, and dropped to the ground.

"Just let me go," Walt said.

"No, I don't think so," the bearded man said in his high rasp. "On top of putting all our lives at risk with sickness, you been trespassing. And when there's trespassing there's stealing. You hang a thief, pretty soon the other thieves quit thieving."

"Either that or, feeling threatened, they gang up and eat you with rice and sliced ginger."

The man with the beard shook his head. "Lewis, will you tie this punk up already?"

The bald man knelt and rifled through his backpack. Cold anger slithered through Walt's veins. "Let me go or I will kill you. I'll leave your bodies in the woods where no one will know you died."

Lewis emerged with a rope and a grin and wrestled Walt's hands behind his back. Rough fiber sawed over his wrists. "You hear that, Harold? What should I tell your wife? Wait, my God! I'll be dead, too!"

Harold smiled through his beard. "You're soft, kid. Soft like mud."

As Lewis bound Walt's hands and took away the knives on his hip, a chubby teenager—Mark, presumably—hiked up between the trunks, huffing.

"What took you so long?" Harold gestured to his bags with the barrel of the rifle. "Grab his stuff."

"Who's the thief now?" Walt said.

"Just taking back what's ours."

"The only thing I have of yours is the dirt between the treads of my shoes."

Harold leaned in and slugged him in the gut with the butt of his gun. Walt doubled over, gasping, tears oozing from his eyes. Rage roared over his pain.

Lewis snugged the ropes tight, jerked his wrists. "All set."

"I'll kill your son, too." Walt nodded at Mark as the kid hoisted his bags over his round shoulders. "Right before I kill you. Not over some bullshit about apples and trees, but because it's what you deserve."

Mark's bulging chin dropped.

"Christ," Harold growled. "Let's get him back to town before I shoot him before we can hang him."

Lewis shoved Walt in the back, sending him stumbling downhill. Afternoon sunlight trickled through the colander of branches. Harold lit a cigarette, the smoke trickling back to Walt's nostrils. He wanted one. He slipped in the loose leaves. Down on the road, they shoved him into the back of a pickup truck and slung his bags in behind him.

"You too, Mark," Harold rasped. "I don't want to waste gas chasing him down if he decides to hop ship."

"I hate riding in back," Mark said. "It's so windy."

"Get your ass up there or I'll strap you to the hood instead."

Mark mashed his lips together and clambered up into the pickup bed. Walt stared at him, the folds of skin on his neck, the plump softness of his wrists. The three men piled into the front. The engine rumbled alive.

"Harold's your dad?" Walt said over the wind and the rattle of the truck on the road.

Mark nodded, eyes slitted at him. "Sure is."

"Your dad's a bad man."

"He's just trying to keep us safe."

"Do you think I'm a threat?"

He shrugged. "You said you'd kill us. I don't consider that something a civilized person would say."

Walt snorted. "Nobody's civilized when men with guns are planning to hang them."

"Well, maybe you shouldn't have broken the law."

"How the fuck was I supposed to know there were laws? Do you have 'No Trespassing' signs posted in the middle of nowhere? Are you doing flyer campaigns? Sailing around in a blimp with a sign saying 'STAY OUT! WE'RE CRAZY AS SHIT' flapping from the tail?" The truck jolted, clacking Walt's teeth together. "If I had a couple friends and a couple guns, I could declare it illegal to walk down the street without doing a little jig, and if you didn't jig, by God, I'd spackle the walls with your brains. I could declare—"

"Shut up!" Mark kicked his heel into Walt's shin. "You're crazy. I don't have anything to do with this. Just be quiet."

Walt stared at him across the jouncing truck bed. The sun drifted below the hills. The wind blew cold on his skin. The truck pulled into a Shell station on the edge of town. From the blank streetlight, a body twisted from a rope, toes transcribing half a circle as they slowly rotated right to left, left to right. The truck doors creaked open. Harold popped the tailgate down and gestured at Walt with the rifle.

Walt smiled. "You want me to help you kill me?"

"All right, then." Harold handed his gun to Lewis, hopped up in the truck, grabbed Walt's bound hands, and dragged him out the back. Walt scrabbled; his ass clunked hard on the bumper. He dropped into the gravel, knees stinging. Harold yanked him to his feet. "Can you walk on your own, big boy? Or you want me to drag you around until I'm carrying the stubs of your arms?"

Walt got up. Harold jabbed the rifle into the middle of his back, marching him beneath the street light.

"Hey Lewis, get the rope?"

Lewis pushed his glasses up his nose. "What rope?"

"The one we're gonna wrap around this boy's neck, smart guy."

"I don't have a rope."

Harold planted his fists on his hips. "How the hell you going to hang a person without a rope?"

Lewis spread his palms. "How was I supposed to know we were gonna be doing any hanging? I don't walk around with water skis just in case somebody shows up with a boat and a river."

"Christ on the cross." Harold flung an arm at the gas station. "Mark, you take him in there and you watch him till we get back." He quirked his mouth at Lewis. "We're gonna need two ropes, you know. Second's for you."

"Hell," Lewis said.

"You're going to leave me alone in there with him?" Mark said.

"He's all tied up," Harold said. "What's he going to do, shoulder you to death?"

"Well what if someone else comes by?"

"Oh, for Pete's—Lewis, give him your pistol, will you? Will that keep the boogeymen away?"

Lewis patted his coat pocket. "Why don't you give him your gun?"

"Because I'm not the fool who left the rope at home." Harold folded his arms. "Get a move on. It's getting dark."

Lewis did some grumbling and handed over a silvery automatic to Mark, who held it at arm's length and thumbed the safety on and off. "Thanks, Lewis."

"We'll be back in a jiff," Harold said. "You just stay in that gas station till then."

The truck door slammed. They pulled out, spitting gravel from the tires. Mark flicked the pistol's barrel towards the dark station. "Well, come on."

"You should let me go," Walt said.

"So you can kill us?"

"I was angry. I didn't mean it."

"Come on," Mark said. "I don't want to have to shoot you."

"You don't have to shoot me." Walt started across the asphalt. "You don't have to help your dad hang me. You don't have to do anything anymore. You never did. It's just more obvious now."

Mark held the door open, then locked it behind them, staring out on the empty highway and the trees going black in the dusk. Inside, the shelves and counters stood grayly in the gloom. Mark flipped on a flashlight and set it light-up on the counter.

"Now we wait."

Walt lowered himself carefully to the floor. "Both my parents died."

"So'd my brother."

"I lost my girlfriend, too. I was going to marry her. She died in our bed. One of the first."

Mark wiped his nose, glanced out the door.

"The bed was covered in blood," Walt said. "I mean, I could have wrung out the sheets. She was all I wanted. She was so beautiful—her face wasn't striking like a model, but there was a light in it you could get lost in. When she died, I wanted to, too." He lowered his head, squinting at a stain on his jeans. "I still do. When I'm walking down the highway, I hope a BMW will zoom by and smear me across the lanes. I hope when I'm up in the hills I stumble off a cliff and crack my skull like a big pink egg. You know what I see? A hole. A great black hole in everything. My girlfriend wanted to try to make it in LA. When she died, I decided to walk there, but no matter where I go that hole's still there."

"Sounds like hanging you would be a favor."

He nodded ploddingly. "But when I think of my ghost after this, I think he would be angry."

Mark tilted his head. "You believe in ghosts?"

"No. Or in justice or fairness or any of that. But I know I don't want to die being hanged over nothing."

Mark set the pistol on the counter with a soft metal click. "Are you hungry?"

"Let me go."

"If I do that, my dad—"

"Tell him I untied myself. That I jumped you and stole your gun. He'll blame Lewis."

Mark stared out across the empty lot. Crickets whirred in the night.

Walt strained his ears for the rumble of the truck. He gave it a couple minutes before pushing again. "Do you think I should die?"

"No."

"Then what are you doing?"

The boy grimaced. "Promise you won't hurt anyone."

Walt looked him in the eye. "I promise. I'll be long gone before they're back."

Mark circled behind Walt, knelt, tugged ropes. Fibers chafed Walt's wrists. Dusk deepened beyond the window. He'd be out his bags, all his stuff. He thought no particular thoughts, just a dull red roar that thudded in his ears like tribal drums.

Mark fussed and fiddled for minutes. Finally, the ropes fell away. Walt rubbed his wrists like any prisoner—not because they hurt, but more as if to reassure himself they were no longer bound.

"Thank you." He rose, eyes locked with Mark, and took the pistol from the counter, then two packets of peanuts from the ransacked shelves. Headlights peeped down the highway. Walt smiled. He stepped outside and pressed his back against the pumps.

Mark stood in the gloom of the doorway. "What are you doing?"

"It's too late to run."

The headlights poured over the parking lot. The truck ground to a halt. Harold cut the engine and jumped into the twilight, laughing; Lewis got out from the other side, rope in hand. Walt clicked off the safety of the pistol.

"Dad!" Mark screamed.

Harold reached into the truck. Walt rolled out from behind the pumps. He pulled the trigger, shattering glass over Harold, the crash of the shot crackling between the hills. Harold came up behind the door and fired a wild shot from the rifle. Walt strode forward, pumping shots into the door. Harold swore, wrenched open the bolt, jammed another round home. Walt fired again and the man's head snapped back. Blood gleamed black in the moonlight.

Lewis had frozen on the other side of the truck, knees bent, shoulder stooped. "Don't shoot, man. I'm unarmed."

Walt smiled and circled around the truck. "What's that in your hands?"

The man glanced down as if he'd forgotten the weight of the rope coiled in his arms. He met Walt's eyes, mouth slack. "It was Harold's idea. He just wanted to keep us safe."

With his left hand, Walt pointed to the corpse hanging from the street light. With his right, he pointed the pistol at Lewis' flannel-covered chest and squeezed off three shots.

The rope thumped the pavement. So did Lewis' body. His hands twitched on his chest, tendons so tight they looked like they'd tear through the backs of his hands. He gurgled wetly and went limp.

Mark moaned from beside the pumps. Walt whirled on him.

"You promised," Mark said.

Walt sighted down the silver weapon. His jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached. He flipped on the safety and stuck the gun in his waistband. He took the rifle from Harold's hands. His bags waited for him in the back of the truck. He slung them over his shoulders and started down the dark road.

"Where are you going?" Mark hollered. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Whatever you want," Walt said. "It doesn't matter now."

He walked for an hour, waiting for headlights to rush up behind him and Mark to leap out rifle in hand, but he hadn't seen another car by the time he dropped off the shoulder into the woods to eat some peanuts and unroll his sleeping bag. He felt calmer than a pond, as if he'd spent the day reading Zen or napping on the beach. He examined the pistol until he figured out how to eject the clip, then thumbed out the shells. Three left. The rifle had a catch beneath the bolt to release the magazine, which had four rounds of its own.

He didn't think seven shots would hold him all the way to LA.

Before he went to sleep, he resolved to pick up more ammo and find something that didn't require any. A big steel sword. Possibly an axe. Something that would never jam or misfire or run dry.

He smashed in the window of a house in the woods and ate cold SpaghettiOs. He added cans and a can opener to his duffel along with a bag of dried bananas, a jar of cashews, and two new knives to replace the ones the men had stolen from him. Water bottles grew dusty in the garage. He drank two, used another to shave his beard, and added five more to his backpack. With no bodies in the beds, he decided to stay there overnight.

In theory, he'd go thirty miles a day. That had been his original goal. It hadn't seemed farfetched: eight hours a day at a fairly easy pace of four miles per hour. That would leave him another eight or so hours a day to forage, rest, and nap. Los Angeles was around 2800 miles by road from New York—rounding up for diversions, call it an even 3000—thirty miles a day, a hundred days of walking. Even at a 20% margin of error to account for injuries, detours, and the like, he'd planned to enter the city limits in four months, which was amazing when you thought about it. In April, he'd been swimming in the Atlantic; by August, he could be paddling around the Pacific.

In practice, he got blisters. He got tired. Sometimes he had to spend hours combing hills for a stream and then precious minutes more gathering kindling to boil his water. Four miles per hour was doable on a flat road, but when the asphalt sloped up or he had to hike through woods and fields to avoid the towns, hampered by his swollen heels and toes, he found himself reduced to half that pace. Counting by highway mileposts, he managed ten to twenty miles a day.

Along the road, flies clouded bodies lying gape-mouthed in cars. He drank when he could find it, which was often. Dogs barked behind dark windows. Their owners made no appearance. Except, perhaps, when the dogs licked their blood-dirty muzzles.

His mind was often numb. When it wasn't, he experienced his hurt from a remove, as if he were isolated outside the fence of a park while inside a man struck a goat with a cane until it bleated and bled. And sometimes it all hit him with a shock as icy and total as when he'd jumped into the Upper Bay. Then he lost track of his own steps, mumbling to himself, ears ringing in the silence, a black stricture tightening around his neck, fingers tingling with the cold of it all. And if his thoughts were trite—indifference was universal; everyone would die some day; no one would get what they want—that was just a reflection of the world's own triteness, an existence where dogs ate their dead owners only to starve in the locked house that once kept them safe.

He walked on.

A cough laid him up in a white house in an Ohio suburb. He waited for flecks of blood to show up in his phlegm or to seep from the corners of his eyes, but after three days he felt well enough to keep moving. In a quiet parking lot, hundreds of VW Bugs had been arranged in a snaking conga line. The black, quartzlike Sears Tower thrust from the skyline miles beyond. On the plains, he saw men in chains dragging plows and hacking hoes into the soil while two men with guns watched from chairs at the end of the field. Walt ducked into a ditch on the far side of the road and crawled forward until his jeans clung to the rubbed-raw skin of his knees. An hour later, he almost went back for them, but it was getting late and he was tired.

When he passed in and out of the cities, he looted houses for canned food and dry goods; many had already been broken into, windows shattered over living rooms, kitchens littered with spilled coffee beans and moldering bread, but enough had gone untouched to keep him alive, if bored, on a diet of all the unwanted things families donated to canned food drives: beans, carrot soup, cream of mushroom. Outside the cities, he walked across dusty farms, plucking carrots from the dirt and tomatoes and soybeans from the vine. He'd picked up some ammo back in the green hills of eastern Pennsylvania—most houses he'd broken into there had a gun collection somewhere—and sometimes when he was off in the woods and fields he shot at squirrels and rabbits. Once in a while he even hit them. He ate these roasted on sticks over fires lit with lighters, inured to the greasiness of the meat and the occasional tendon or small bone missed by his clumsy butchery.

His feet grew calluses so thick he couldn't feel it when he poked them with a knife. He slept in the grass and listened to the wind. It couldn't tell him where it had been, but it seemed to carry other secrets, a wistful sadness of the constant traveler that sometimes exploded into the righteous gales of the wronged. Birds twittered, too, and screamed at each other or themselves to hear anything besides the rustling wind. He heard cars no more than once a day; once, a single-engine plane buzzed like a fly beyond a window; another time, the chug of a lawnmower blatted from somewhere in a wooded village.

During a muggy and miserably rainy summer day in Missouri, he left the road, shoes squelching, and climbed a low rise to change his socks; they wore harder when they were wet and he was down to three pairs. Rain lashed the forest canopy, thumping his hat with thick drops. He stripped off his soaked socks, rubbed his feet, drank some water.

Down the way, the road bent around the hill. Some two hundred yards along, four cars had been parked lengthwise across the lanes.

He put on clean socks and his shoes and picked up his pistol and the rifle. He left his bags beside a broad-leafed maple and crept downhill, keeping a screen of trees between himself and the road. He knelt beside a trunk and fitted his eye to the scope of the rifle. The cars were silent, empty. Beyond them, a man climbed up the road's shoulder, rifle in hand, and stared down the way Walt had come from.

Walt backed away and crept a couple hundred yards through the woods along the road, now grateful for the rain that pattered the leaves and obscured their crackles. The road wound around the hill, hiding him from the man with the gun; he cut across and circled back, peering between the dripping branches. On the slope above the cars, smoke stagnated in the soupy air. Two men sat with their backs to a tree, cigarettes in hand, rifles propped beside them.

Walt didn't need a pile of skulls to know what they were. He lined his crosshairs on a forehead, waited for his breathing to slow, and squeezed the trigger. The scope jolted as the stock shoved into his shoulder. The man's head snapped into the tree and rebounded forward. He slumped, drooping between his sprawled legs. His partner grabbed his rifle and bounced to his feet, sweeping the trees. Walt's shot took him through the right lung. As he lay gasping in the damp brown leaves, Walt aimed, waited, and shot him through the head.

Discarded wallets littered the ground beneath the tree. The men wore gold rings on most of their fingers, heavy watches on their wrists. The rain washed the blood down their bodies.

The old masters said if you met another Buddha on the road, you should kill him. All reality is an illusion: if you think you've found the incarnation of enlightenment, destroy that illusion on the spot. But the real world is real. Therefore, if you meet a bandit on the road, you should kill him. Anyone who seeks to make a bad world worse is a monster and an alien. You don't hope they'll come around for the same reason you don't hope the weeds in your garden will realize the error of their ways and convert to a life of cornhood. To lock these men up or threaten them would be no more effective than imprisoning the milkweed or shouting at the kudzu.

So the universal tendency is to entropy and chaos. Most of the universe is cold, airless, bereft. The first step to reversal is to eliminate anything aligned with prevailing universal philosophy.

Walt flung the bandits' rifles into the woods, stole their food, went back for his bags, and moved on. He slept when he was tired. He ate when he was hungry. He walked when he could. There were few days now he didn't cover twenty miles. Once he went two days without water, lips cracked and skin burning, until he left the road for the wooded hills and scouted the draws until he found a creek. For the most part, water wasn't a worry—he gorged himself when it was plentiful, rationed when it wasn't, checked any gas stations and houses and canals he found.

At times the walk grew hypnotic, the slow unspooling of a land he'd never seen. Cornfields, the morning gold of the Mississippi, and town after town after town. Other times, the outer world was lost to him. Instead he swam in a dim memory-sea of Vanessa's face, of the taste of falafel and vindaloo and pierogies with sour cream, and of his dream, now pointless, of writing literature so powerful it could lift hearts and inspire readers to right wrongs. Frequently, he walked miles with no memory of what he'd just seen.

13

"No," Mia said when she tried the shower, a clean reach of dark slate and cool tan travertine. The faucet stood silent. "Noooooooo!"

"I don't think we should count on that coming back any time soon."

Mia sunk to her knees, laughing ruefully. "Well, it was fun while it lasted."

"There's fog here like every day. Look how green it is compared to Redondo."

"Do we have tarps? Buckets?"

They found several of both in a shed bracketed by lemon trees in the back of the yard. They tied the tarps to the bottom of the deck, funneling the lower ends to waiting buckets. That night, stirred by the silence, Raymond wandered the house, candle in hand, and found a radio. They sat in the couch in near darkness and twiddled the dial. Static ruled the FM side from start to finish. On the AM, a garbled voice quoted scripture. A few ticks on, a sleepy-sounding kid DJed sets of electronic music. Mia got up and swung her arms in the Monkey. After sitting through a set, Raymond dialed on. A springy man's voice rose from the static.

"...steer clear, it's Bakersfield, where armed gangs are reported to be enslaving other survivors and putting them to work on the farms. As if you needed one more reason to stay out of Bakersfield! The tourism board is going to have problems this year. In the meantime, for the first time in its history, Los Angeles has stopped burning. As the I-5 remains permanently clogged, visitors are advised to arrive via foot, boat, or flying machine. This has been your daily travel report with WTFN news."

"He's going to get in trouble," Mia said. "Callsigns that start with W are reserved for stations east of the Rockies."

"Where's he getting his info? This could be crucial if we ever go anywhere."

"Where are we going to go? Our summer home?"

"What if I decide to steal a yacht for our anniversary?" He shrugged. "It would sure be useful to know the South Pacific's swarming with pirates before I sail you to Tahiti."

The tarps worked just well enough to keep them alive. They drove back to Home Depot, loaded the car with dozens of orange mixing buckets which they left in the yard to gather rain. At the old house in Redondo, they found a burnt-out shell with black stakes rising from the foundation. Somehow, the basement had survived; amongst ashes and old books, Raymond rooted out a camp shower to hang from the deck alongside the tarps. They gathered up loose sticks and branches and leaves and hauled them in a stolen truck to their new house, where they stashed the kindling in the shed in the back yard and used it to barbecue hot dogs and boil water for rice and potatoes and drinking.

Cilantro sprouted beside the green onions and mint. They sowed artichokes, potatoes, tomatoes. Mia suggested restricting candles to the back of the house where they couldn't be seen through the front windows. Cars crept by a couple times a week. From a sporting goods store with smashed-in display cases, they took two more pistols, a .308 with a scope, heavy boxes of ammunition, a bow and scores of arrows. They wrote lists of goods and made weekly trips to the grocers and pharmacies. After a month, most of the shops had been emptied out. Meat rotted in black piles. They listened to Josh Jones' hourly show on WTFN every night, heard about the growing colony in Portland, where hundreds of survivors policed a few square blocks from looters and gangs, and the fires that reduced Phoenix to a charred wasteland. Jones relayed theories on where the Panhandler had come from: accidentally released from the CDC labs, stolen from Russian facilities by Middle Eastern terrorists, a naturally lethal mutation of the flu.

"Remember, folks, in our brave new world, dogs are no longer man's best friend," Jones declared over the sough of the surf. "It's potatoes. An acre or two of potatoes can keep a man alive for a year. Plant 'em early and often and you won't be eating each other come winter. Have you ever tasted human meat? Much too fatty in this country. You'll die of cardiac arrest before you get the chance to die of good ol' fashioned cholera. God may not be watching, but with all those eyes, you can be sure the potatoes are."

Weeks went by in a soft blur of gardening, gathering, and jury-rigging the house for the long haul: filling the garage with extra jugs of water collected during heavy rains, testing the fireplaces for the couple weeks in winter when they'd need them, digging a proper firepit and lining it with stones taken from the walk of the home next door. After another dinner of rice and beans, Raymond crumpled his paper plate and dropped it into the firepit.

"I miss meat," he said.

"I miss ice cream."

"Let's get some meat."

Mia nodded. "Let's get some ice cream first."

"I'm serious. We should get chickens or something. We can have eggs. Grow more chickens and eat those chickens."

"Look, we can't just go 'get' chickens. We'd need things. Cages. Chicken food. It'll be work."

"And with these high-stress jobs of ours I'm sure we can't find the time." He plopped down on the couch they'd dragged out to the back porch. "There used to be this place on the PCH that was like a bulk pet store but for farm animals. I doubt anyone's looted that."

"We could use dog crates for coops." Mia frowned in thought. "So where are we going to find the chickens?"

"The Chicken Depository should have a few."

"Of course." They picked up crates and heavy bags of seed from the supply store. In their free time, they parked in the valley in the middle of the peninsula's hills and roamed the silent yards. It had been a horse-heavy community, with crossing signs posted on many of the main roads, and Raymond had hoped that some of the people who'd been willing to husband animals as big as horses would have raised some chickens as well because why not, but over two weeks of searching they only found two coops. Both were closed. Inside, mounds of feathers ruffled in a breeze of faint decay.

Once they saw a curtain swirl in a window. Another time, while they tramped up a grassy ridge, a car pulled up alongside theirs. Mia watched through the scope of her rifle as two men tried the doors, exchanged a few sentences, and drove off.

Summer arrived. They left the windows open at all hours, retiring to the shade beneath the deck during the afternoons of a week-long heat wave. As the garden wilted, they tapped the jugs in the garage to keep their food alive; when the jugs dwindled, they drove to the ocean, filled them with seawater, and boiled huge pots under tarps slanted to catch the steam. Raymond wiped ash from his hands, sweat tickling his ribs. How did plants turn water and sunshine into bananas and peppers and blueberries? It was magic. True-life alchemy. Every day, Raymond played apprentice to this sorcery, watering the spreading leaves, plucking thorny weeds. He learned the difference between a thistle sprout and a budding cilantro or basil plant.

Mia talked him into driving to a surf shop on the PCH, where they grabbed a few boards and a couple wetsuits. On days when the work was light, they walked down to the beach and taught themselves to surf. They grew tanned, lean, taut-muscled, bobbing on the breaks. Dolphins paralleled the shore, dark fins cutting the water. Pelicans tucked their wings and splooshed into the waves. They fished from the shore. Often they caught nothing. When they brought home a catch, they fried it over a fire lit with eyeglass lenses, eating the fish skin and tails along with the meat.

"Rumors have flowed from New York for weeks about a secret government vaccine," Josh Jones reported. "And isn't it just like the feds to slam the barn doors after the horses have run off? First, they made us take off our shoes in airports after a single failed shoebombing that would never be repeated. Now, they funnel their resources into a cure for something that's already killed everyone who could die from it. Do they even know how viruses work? Do they think infections just chill out when their hosts die? Wrong. Wronger than a Noah's Ark carrying two of each wrong. When the host dies, the virus dies. Oh, the Panhandler was a great virus, all right: it got everyone. Not one in a hundred was immune. But it was a very stupid virus, too. It burned down every house it could possibly live in. Now it's gone. If, God forbid, you pop a kid out into this wasteland, you can sleep easy knowing that whatever else the little tyke has to face, he won't have to worry about the Panhandler.

"Well, that's all moot now. The government hideout on Staten Island got blowed up. Witnesses report soldiers fleeing in lifeboats and helicopters. They were not headed in the same direction. Are there other government holdouts out there somewhere? Oh, no doubt. But if you're waiting on them for salvation, well, you better be wearing comfy shoes."

"Because you've got a long walk ahead of you?" Mia said. "That doesn't really make sense."

Raymond stretched his sore legs. "I am not sure this man is a professional."

Mia kept track of days on a kitchen calendar. On August 13, on a trip to the rambling homes near the south of the hills, Raymond heard clucks and cackles from a fenced yard. Five scruffy chickens pecked beetles from the grass.

"How do we get them in the car?" he said.

Mia laughed. "We probably should have brought a sack. That's what chicken-thieves use, right? A big sack?"

"Um." Wind tousled the grass. "We'll just sort of drop them in through the sun roof, how about."

"Wow. We're going to die, aren't we?"

He hopped the fence. Chickens milled, pecking and cooing. He lined up behind a white one and leaned in for the grab. It squirted away, kicking dirt.

"I just want you to know you're being foiled by a chicken," Mia said.

"Let's see you do better."

"No, I think watching is more fun."

Another scooted away. Raymond adjusted his tactics, squatting down and leaning in as slowly as a stalking cat. Rather than striking, he just reached in and grabbed the body of a brown-feathered bird. It flapped its thick wings, yellow feet kicking, then settled down in his arms.

"Who's the king?" he said. "Now take this chicken and throw it through the roof of my car."

Mia grinned, grabbing the bird without incident, and deposited it through the sun roof. Raymond had a second waiting for her by the time she got back. They loaded up the others and turned home, birds clucking, whuffing their wings, scrabbling around the seats, stirring up a smell that was half sour and half pleasingly alive. At the house, Mia hopped out and opened the gate. He pulled into the garage.

"You definitely need a new car," Mia said.

He craned around. White liquid streaked his seats. "I look forward to killing them some day."

They transferred the birds into dog crates and carried the crates beneath the deck and scattered seeds in the crates.

"Now we just need a rooster," Mia said.

Raymond didn't know where everyone had gone or whether they'd ever see anyone else, but he didn't think he would mind. They ate eggs by the end of the week, the rich yolks sopping into their rice. Some days he didn't change out of his track pants. During the next hot spell, he and Mia didn't dress at all unless it was time to work, lying naked in the shade of the deck, her slim brown body filmed with sweat.

Once a week, they broke into a house and pulled dry goods from pantries and shelves, snagging batteries and books and clothing; they drove to movie theaters and collected cases of M&Ms and Coke and unpopped popcorn, some of which they planted to see what would happen. Beyond foraging, tending the garden, and their water-gathering, they had little work. With no insurance payments or oil changes, no junk mail to sort or Facebook to update, no jobs or dental appointments or dry cleaning, Raymond marveled at how little time it took to survive. The days stretched as broad as the ocean beyond their window. They surfed, went on walks, picnicked in the grass in the shadow of the lighthouse, fucked on the sand in the open sunlight. They napped and read and explored. One day, Mia surprised him with a carload of paints and brushes and canvases. He converted one of the empty bedrooms to a studio and started painting: the bay, the silent smokestacks of the power plant in Redondo, the misty hills of Malibu.

He was simply happy, and so was she. Find a partner. Find a piece of land and make it your own. That's all it took. This was more or less what people were trying to do pre-Panhandler, too, but that had been complicated by the pursuit of money, which was necessary to obtain all the things you couldn't do for yourself (such as, for almost every first-world citizen, grow your own food) and to support yourself into old, old age—80, 90, 100 years old!—in the midst of a world of 7 billion people, all of them seeking a plot of good land for themselves, with most of the best stuff already owned by a small fraction of humanity. No wonder life had sucked for most of them, self included. There just wasn't enough to go around. Not if a happy life required working toward watching a 59" 1080p HDTV after 27 years of retirement at age 92.

Not that returning to subsistence farming and dying at 64 would have solved all Western woes. Raymond recognized that much of what he and Mia had now was the result of the labor of millions who were no longer around to need it. He sure as hell couldn't have been able to forge himself a shovel, let alone build the batteries they used in their flashlights and radios. Some day, possibly within his lifetime, there would come a time when all these materials would be used up, leaving the next generations to relearn how to navigate by sea and extract metal from dirt. Their life by the sea would no doubt be much meaner if they had to grow enough not just to feed themselves, but to barter for all the goods they were currently lifting from the empty homes and stores.

Whatever, though. No matter how you broke down the causes and what-ifs—and he had all the time in the world to do that—he was happier than he'd ever been just gardening, surfing, fishing, foraging, and having sex. The only technological entertainment that entered the picture was listening to AM radio at night when the broadcasts were clearest and it was too dark to do anything else.

"And now," Josh Jones said, voice carrying over the wash of the surf and the warm, moist air of an early September night that would change everything all over again, "the report that will ruin whatever credibility I've built with you fine survivors of Southern California. I know you're out there. We dealt with way too many earthquakes, mudslides, floods, and fires to be done in by a silly old plague.

"To business, then. Really, I don't even know how to put this. Do I just come right out and say it? Because it's going to sound crazy. It's going to sound as if I am a crazy person, or at least a person who is capable of saying crazy things. Beautiful women—if there are any left in the world—will refuse to sleep with me. Dogs will laugh as I pass. Even the kindest of flowers will turn their heads in embarrassment. Maybe some of you out there are recording these broadcasts for posterity or because you know your kids won't be able to read. In that case, there would be a permanent record of my madness. I'll be mocked for generations."

"He sounds like he has gone crazy," Mia said.

"So you know what, I'm not going to say it. Not explicitly, anyway. I'm just going to tell you to go to your windows and look towards the ocean. It doesn't matter if you can't see the ocean because you were too dumb to move to Venice Beach after all its former residents checked out. Just go to the window, look west, and try to find a soft place to faint."

Raymond grabbed the radio and jogged upstairs, Mia on his heels, and opened the door to the deck. Above the dark bay, points of light hung in the sky on graceful strings, as if the stars had lined up and learned to dance. A great black orb drifted toward the city, blocking the stars behind it. Individual lights cruised below its mass. A low, penetrating whirr fought with the crash of the waves, a gusty roar like the wind of a semi on the highway. Against the dark background, the vessel was too high to get a good sense of scale, but its simple presence was enormous.

"Seen it yet?" Josh said over the radio. "Does that thing look human to you? I've seen just about everything human there is to see, and that does not look human to me."

Raymond dropped a step back. "What's he talking about?"

Mia raised her hand to her throat. "That thing is huge."

"First spotted in Japan a few hours ago," Josh said. "You might want to batten down the hatches."

"What the hell is going on?"

"The plague," Mia said. "It all makes sense."

II:

CONTACT

14

On Route 40 nearing Amarillo, Texas, Walt saw a mile marker for a town called Panhandle. Maybe that's why he detoured the opposite way just minutes later, angling south from the highway towards something called Greenbelt Reservoir. More likely he diverted because he already had a collapsible fishing pole and hadn't seen anything more exciting than a soaring hawk for well over a hundred miles, and if he didn't change it up soon, the boredom would do what the plague, riots, U.S. Army, and 1,500 miles of bandits and madmen couldn't: strike him dead.

The same green-yellow prairies and soft hills followed him south. He sweated lightly, then shivered as it evaporated in the cooling dusk. By nightfall, he still hadn't reached the reservoir, but a full moon lit the disused road well enough to continue. He would go on until he got tired, then camp and sleep a ways from the road; if the reservoir wasn't visible when he woke in the morning, he'd turn back and get back on track for LA.

He couldn't have planned it better. After another hour's walk through the dark grass, he crested a modest hill. Moonlight rippled on the surface of the wide, low lake. Birds cooed from shifting reeds. He descended slowly, smelling the mud of the shore and a humid sweetness he hadn't encountered since somewhere east of Oklahoma. The ground stayed hard until he reached the banks. The breeze was too soft to trouble the waters, but small ripples arose from breaching fish.

He spread out his blanket and unfolded his rod and dug out his jar of bait, ridiculous, garlic-stinking, nuclear-colored artificial marshmallowy goo that supposedly brought the fish leaping straight onto shore. He cast, somewhat poorly, then squinted at his bobber, losing it repeatedly amidst the black water.

Either the nostril-hair-withering bait lived up to its billing, however, or the fish had been screwing their fish brains out in the few months since there were no longer any humans around to catch them, because Walt landed two within twenty minutes. He cleaned them inexpertly, flinging the guts back into the water. He slipped the cleaned fish into a Ziploc bag and walked away from the green shore, flashlight in hand, to gather dry grass, twigs, and small sticks, which he tented on the bare ground and lit up with a faltering lighter. He'd shot enough small game along his walk to have picked up a couple pointed metal rods which he used to skewer and roast the fish.

He slept under the stars. That was nothing new. He slept outside more than most dogs. The constellations had grown familiar to him, though he didn't know what they were: the tiny kite, the squashed W. When he got up he ate some stale Rold Gold pretzels, then stashed the bag and pulled up a handful of cattails instead, stripping away the husk around the base and chewing up the clean, pulpy stems. Minnows flicked in the shallows, retreating when his shadow crossed them. Red-tailed blackbirds chirred from the reeds. For a while he simply wandered along the lake's edge, overturning stones, poking at waterstriders and snails with a stick, staring beneath the surface for trout. Flies buzzed disinterestedly. By noon, it was warm enough to drive him to peel off his shirt and wrap it around his forehead.

He suppressed the nagging feeling he should get back to the highway and on toward LA. A line weaved through the grass; he froze, waiting for the snake to slip away. Ahead, a short, flat spit of land projected into the lake. Weeds swayed in the shallow water between it and a minor island some thirty feet from shore. If he lived here, he could build a simple bridge to it, or find a rowboat somewhere and paddle to it at night to stay safe from animals and survivors. It was an idle thought. Still, he could swim there right now. See what there was to see. But he'd get wet. He might step on something sharp. Anyway, it was just a little circle of land. It wouldn't be any different from everything else around him.

He snorted, peeled off his clothes, stepped into some flip flops, and, otherwise naked, waded into the water. In the shallows, it was calm and warm. Slimy fronds waved around his ankles. Rocks ground underfoot. A school of minnows turned and beelined for the shore to his left. The water rose to his thighs; another step dropped him to his hips. Two more and he was forced to swim, the water warm around his shoulders and neck and frigid when his feet kicked too deep. A few feet from the island, he halted to paddle and extend his legs. Stones turned in the mud. He waded ashore and wiped the extra water from his body.

The air cooled his wet skin. He walked the perimeter to work off the water, turning over riparian stones. Worms squiggled into the mud. Nymphs waved pincers and paddled away. Waterstriders skimmed over the ripples. Red glinted from the mud. Walt poked it with a stick, dislodging a tarnished, algae-swamped Coke can.

Besides a bird's nest containing three ruffle-feathered gray chicks, the can was the most exciting thing he found. He pulled up two more cattails and ate the stems. Fish rose lazily. He swam back across and toweled and dressed.

It wasn't yet noon. He shouldered his gear and circled the lake until he found its source, a modest creek oozing between a jumble of smooth rocks. Trout as long as his palm swatted sunlight from their tails. He cast his line a few times, but the fish did little more than glance the neon bait's way. Light woods surrounded the stream, fuzzing the short hills. After a couple miles of tramping along the trickling water, he stopped to build a fire, fill a pan with water, and fish while he first boiled the water, then moved it off the fire to cool. He gazed at the hills where the creek must source. When the boiled water stopped steaming he refilled his empty bottles and started back for the lake.

He hadn't thought much in the hours since he'd been awake and moving. There'd been too much to see. Exploring the lake had reminded him of a real-life version of The Legend of Zelda, the last of which he'd played a couple years ago. It wasn't exactly the same, of course. The Zelda dungeons had a designed, logical procession to them. You went into one room to drain the water to reach the lower levels of the next room where you found the small key to unlock the door to the next room where you climbed across the vines on the walls to reach the grappling hook you needed to cross the chasm to reach the big key to open the door to the boss you defeated in order to increase your life meter and make you that much tougher for the next dungeon and the boss at its end.

He didn't know what the real-life equivalent of that would be. Something like searching the grounds of a nearby house to find the key to get into the garage to find the scrap wood he needed to build a raft to float to the island in the lake where he'd find the Coke can he needed to trick the baby rattlesnake at the foot of a tree to slither inside so he could climb up to the one branch suitable to make the fishing pole he'd use to catch the trout that would nourish him through the next leg of his walk. Faced with that, you'd just go smash in the window of a Big 5 instead.

But the feel of the worlds was the same. Walt was alone in the woods to explore lost lakes simply to see what was there and what he could do with it. A mundane find like snagging a trout or stumbling into a strawberry patch felt like a blessing. The discovery of a bottle of Ibuprofen or Jim Beam was an outright miracle. Even when there was nothing special to find, when the fish wouldn't bite or Busch Stadium was nothing but an empty crater of grimy seats and patchy grass, the finding of these places, the witnessing of their existence, was holy, in its way. Perhaps when he made it to LA he'd travel America's backroads, mapping lakes and rivers and woods for their own sake. He could go far south, too. Witness the old places, the temples and ruins and ziggurats enfolded in the jungles of the Yucatan.

Walt returned to the highway. He headed west. Some ways past Amarillo, tilted monuments jutted from the plain. He stepped into the wind-swept grass. Amid the dust and sunlight, cars rose from the soil at uniform angles. Each was wrapped in a skin of graffiti. Wind whisked through fenders and side mirrors. There was no sign of smoke or tilled fields in sight. Walt walked down each row of painted cars before doubling back to the highway.

He'd done a fair amount of exploring as a kid. A few blocks from his back yard, the fenced properties disappeared, replaced by forests on uneven hills and dark canyons laced with weedy trails. Squirrels barked from the boughs. Rabbits burst from the brush, kickstarting his heart. No doubt the land was owned by someone, but there were no fences. No signs. No shacks or roads or parking lots or barns. Walt didn't even know how far these backyard wilds stretched—he'd once followed the trails all the way to a two-lane highway, a walk that lasted until the sunlight gave no warmth and he worried his mom would be home from work before he returned. The sun set minutes before he slipped in the back door.

Another time, he cut west from the trails, hoping to reach an empty stretch of beach. A couple miles into his walk, he descended a slope into a shaded stand of trees. Water rested in the muddy footprints across the path. Overhead, a treehouse spread across the branches of the oak.

Walt stepped off the path. Horizontal boards were nailed across the trunk in an easy ladder. "JV + KM" had been carved inside a heart scratched into the bark. Above it was a word Walt had heard on the playground but didn't understand. Crumpled beer cans rested in the weeds.

Cold stole over Walt's stomach. This was a place where the older kids came. He knew they carried knives and drank beer. He didn't know what they'd do if they found him in the treehouse he desperately wanted to climb to. He'd be hurt and miles from home. He saw his bleeding face pushed into the mud and the treehouse took on a sudden weight of shadows and mystery, a violent unknown where strangers did bad things far from sight of their parents and police. Walt turned in a circle. The sunlight couldn't fight past the leaves. He turned and ran for home.

The Stonehenge of cars brought back whiffs of that same feeling. They had clearly been planted and painted as a whimsical gesture, as strange, stark art in the middle of an equally stark prairie. But whoever'd put them here was dead. They were now symbols whose meaning was lost, steel gravestones to an unknown intelligence.

A bend in the road eclipsed the upright cars. Days began and ended. Sometimes he didn't think of Vanessa for hours at a time.

Except when he ran low on supplies, he approached most cities by night; not all the bodies in the street were long dead. He liked the night better anyway. Late morning was the worst of all: though the heat was less than what would later cook the prairie, the heat of pre-noon was an itchy kind, a stifling closeness that woke you, dehydrated and cramped, through the walls of a tent that smelled like hot, musty plastic. It was a time for death and regret. Early afternoons were far better. He never felt bad for sleeping through their dozy warmth, and if the morning had been chilly, as they'd been back East, the sun's high strength was welcome. Late afternoon to dusk was a busy time, a time for assembling kindling, mending clothes, catching fish, and studying maps. It was productive and confident.

Sunset he didn't much care for, except after storms when the skies looked sharp and bright as shattered glass. Otherwise, they were too portentous, a bad, gusty border-time when it was too dark to work but too light to walk without fear of being spotted on open ground. Early night rarely saw harsh cold. It had an electricity to it, a charge that spurred animals and self to lean forward and cover ground. There was a foreboding to late night, when a weary brain saw looming strangers in place of mailboxes and heard lurking leopards in every shuffle of the wind, but the time made him feel like night's agent, too. Something to be feared.

But he liked the minutes before sunrise best of all. The sun wasn't yet visible, but its foremost rays were strong enough to clarify the shadows into grayscale reality. It was a vanishing time, just long enough to put away your knife and pretend you've been good all along. It was in the predawn that he most fully felt his survivordom. He felt more alone then than at 3 AM, but pleasantly so, the last witness of darkness and the first to touch the new day's dew. The time and the feeling it produced burnt off so quickly. Within minutes, the sun was up and you could forget at once there had ever been a buffer between night and day.

The miles rolled on and on, forgotten lands and leftover homes. Walt started smoking again. It passed the time. He spent entire weeks traversing the hard beauty of the grasslands, scrublands, and deserts of Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico. By that point, according to his maps, his trip was more than two-thirds complete. He didn't consider delaying. Instead, he perspired his way through a range of dry, yellow mountains, pausing to towel his sweat from within the shade of rest stops and under the sickly-sweet smell of pollen-swollen trees. On the far side of the pass, pines and green meadows carpeted the old stones. He knelt in the grass around a soggy-banked stream and stripped naked. Rather than the punishing, can-feel-the-UVs-cancering-my-skin burn of his trip through the desert, the day's sun felt simple and soft on his shoulders and face.

He soaped himself up, rinsed off, and sat naked on a rock to hack at his beard and hair with scissors, navigating through touch and his blurry reflection in the blade of a knife. Reasonably manicured, he lit a cigarette and sat back on the rock to dry himself in the sun.

Rocks clattered among the trees where he'd left his bags. He squinted through the sunlight. Smoke trickled from his nostrils, dry and sweet. The stream jangled among the smooth pebbles. Back near the trees, the rocks clicked again. Walt had left the guns with his bags. Stupid. Weak. He hadn't expected anyone else to be out in these wilds. Now he would pay for it. He reached for his knife.

The pines' lower branches waggled. Walt was struck with vertigo as the nearest tree appeared to lean forward. Brown-gray rods emerged above the waist-high wall of grass. Walt breathed out, smiling. Could he take down a buck with just a knife? His bare feet wouldn't be a problem. His soles were as thick as gardening gloves.

The antlers glided forward. Beneath them, what should have been a lean tan deer resolved into an angular, ridged mess of beaks, multi-jointed limbs, and hard skin the bright gray of wind-churned waves. Round, irisless eyes goggled from an oversize bulb of a head. The creature slid away from the trees on somewhere between four and eight legs—some also lifted from the ground to waver like antennae or a questing hand. It looked part crab, part squid, part dinosaur, part nothing. It paused, limbs lifted to the air, as if testing the wind.

15

"What makes sense?" From the deck, Raymond gestured to the huge dark wedge and its soaring strings of lights. "That thing? If I were to make a list of all the things that made sense, I would be dead before I got to the giant fucking mothership over Santa Monica Bay."

Mia hugged her elbows to her chest. "You think it's a coincidence that thing shows up just months after the plague that wiped us all out?"

"Maybe they're just passing through."

"If they want an inhabited planet, why waste soldiers and resources? Why not let a little bug do the job?"

Raymond rubbed his mouth. "If that's true, what do we do now?"

"We've got a car."

"The radio said it first showed up in Japan. We don't know if it'll stay. And unless Martha Stewart survived the Panhandler, I don't think we'll find a nicer home."

"We could die here."

"We could die anywhere. What if we go to Palm Springs and it turns out these things love high heat, golf, and pretty blue pools?"

"So we stay put," Mia said.

"We don't even know for certain they intended to attack us. Maybe this is a reverse War of the Worlds where they came to bring us peace and love and accidentally gave us space-AIDS instead." He gazed at the star-occluding ship rumbling toward the city. "I think we need to see what they do before we make any decisions ourselves."

"If they hover over here with one of those blue beams of death, you're getting the world's loudest I-told-you-so."

"Let's go inside. Put out the candles."

They locked the door, which Raymond found both absurd and comforting. Smoke wiggled from the snuffed candles. He and Mia stood hand-in-hand by the window and watched the ship drift to a stop over the downtown some twenty miles north. Smaller lights disgorged from the belly of the carrier and cruised over the dark buildings.

"Think one will blow up the Hollywood sign?" Mia said in something near a whisper.

"As long as they're here, I think I'd rather be where I can see them."

"When you put it like that, I think we should keep watch. Sleep in shifts."

"Let me guess," he said. "I get first watch."

"Well, it was my idea that's saving our lives here."

Raymond sat in darkness before the bedroom window overlooking the ocean. Mia slept soundlessly behind him. The massive wedge of the ship relocated somewhere around Venice Beach, hovering hundreds of feet in the air. Small vessels came and went in ones and twos, drawing slow loops around the cities or disappearing beyond the hills that ringed the valley. No more than six or eight of the smaller ships patrolled at any one time; sometimes as few as one streaked above the black streets. They left dark contrails, rumbling lowly, banking and climbing like standard jets. If they were capable of UFO-style zigzags or sudden bursts of eyeball-shattering speed, they weren't showing off.

"How's the Earth doing?" Mia slurred when he shook her awake five hours later. "Still existing?"

"Just a lot of buzzing around. Whatever they're here for, it's not to entertain us."

With Mia watching out, he fell asleep easily. A sky-shredding shriek woke him at dawn. A silvery plane streaked in over the water to the south.

"That's one of ours," he said.

"No shit. An F-16."

"Does this mean we still have a military?"

Two jet-sized triangles swung away from the giant black body of the carrier and raced forward on thin white contrails. As they closed, the alien fighters let loose a volley of compact rockets that tumbled away and then leapt forward as if stung. The F-16 pulled up hard, ejecting sun-bright flares that fell away on jagged columns of smoke. The rockets followed straight through the clouds. The jet curled off into a tightening corkscrew; as if they were tied to it on strings, the trailing rockets spun with it. Two collided in a white bloom that absorbed the missiles around it. Raymond wiped his eyes, blinking at the afterimage.

The alien vessels dovetailed apart. The F-16 slowed and swooped in behind the one that had vectored left. Missiles lanced forward. The alien craft banked hard, then burst in a shower of hot splinters. The boom reached Raymond a few seconds later, a deep thunder in his chest.

The surviving triangle swung in behind the F-16 as smoothly as if they'd choreographed it.

"They set him up," Mia said. "They were willing to lose one to take him down."

Electric blue light pulsed between the fighters. The F-16 crumbled. Flaming metal tumbled into the Pacific. Raymond didn't see a parachute. "Is that it?"

"Why send in a single plane? Feeling out their capabilities? Or did we just watch Maverick get blown up?"

"Identifying F-16s, talking tactics—what are you, Sun Tzu?"

"I used to paint miniatures when I was a kid. My uncle liked wargames."

"Weird." The motionless carrier threw its shadow over the beaches. Another blue triangle left a port on the carrier's smooth side and paired up with the inbound survivor. They curved over the bay, then turned south, shooting over the house in a window-rattling pass.

"So they're hostile," she said.

"Or defending themselves."

"They fired first. They killed us with a plague and then showed up with a battle fleet. You want to wait until they kick in the front door with their tentacles before you admit they're not here to make friends?"

He rubbed his stubble. "Yeah. All right. It doesn't look good."

The lines melted from her forehead. "So what do we do?"

"If we're going to leave, we need to be ready. That means putting together food. Water. Maybe some gas. And finding out about the highways. I don't want to peel out of here just to run into a permanent traffic jam on the 405."

"You really should have been an accountant."

"What kind of a thing is that to say to the man you love?"

"I'm just saying you're logistically-minded." She smiled and leaned in to kiss him. "Where should we start, General?"

The two fighters swooped in from the south and beelined for the carrier, startling him. "I don't really feel like driving around in broad daylight. Not when they've got a Death Star parked over Santa Monica."

"What, you don't think a car can outrun an alien jet fighter?" Mia flicked her thumbnail against her teeth. "So what if we forage the neighborhood on foot? We've got a lot of walking-distance homes we haven't been to yet. Then to check the highways..."

"What?"

"Just considering whether it's completely insane to grab a couple bicycles and check out the roads via velocipede."

He laughed huskily. "You're seriously proposing we run a bicycle ninja mission down the LA freeways while the Alpha Centauri Air Force buzzes the skies."

She lifted her palms up, then slapped her hips. "Don't think that I don't think this is incredibly, incredibly weird. It's just a whole lot less weird than it would have been six months ago."

He couldn't argue with that. Aside from a fat-bellied squarish vessel that disappeared into the rises of Beverly Hills that afternoon, the alien ship didn't do much more besides hang there exactly the way a brick wouldn't. That night, he and Mia dressed in black and jogged from the house carrying the revolver, a crow bar, a duffel bag, a siphon, and three red plastic gas jugs. Mia smashed passenger windows, popped gas caps. Raymond sucked gas into the jugs, wiping his tongue on his sleeve.

"We should have brought some god damn Scope," he whispered, tongue stinging.

"Keep sucking."

Dizzy, he sat on the curb while the gas drizzled into the jug. A point of light tracked across the misty skies. It had been a strange run: the dwindling money that had threatened to ruin their life together; the plague that had threatened to end their lives together; the gardening and foraging that had brought them closer than ever in this new silent world; now an alien invasion that threatened to—? That, he couldn't say. Maybe they were here to finish their eradication of humanity and he and Mia would die together in a flash of heat and light. Maybe they would round the survivors up and restrict them to subsistence on reservations. Or maybe, so long as the survivors left Earth's new arrivals alone, humans would be able to run free in the jungles, the mountains, the icecaps, whatever scraps of land the aliens didn't want.

Maybe it was just the gasoline talking, but Raymond was amazed by the idea that, barring complete eradication, people somewhere would adapt and survive. Despite the horror of the past and the chaos of the present, life went on. Cosmically, life in some form would always exist—if there were two sapient species, there were likely to be hundreds, possibly millions, condensing from primal sludge on far-flung worlds into beings capable of crossing the lightyears of vacuum that separated them from the others. Even if he was soon to be vaporized by one of these neighbors, he found it strangely comforting to know that uncounted species would continue to exist all across the universe until the day the last star burned down to a cold cinder.

He filled both jugs from a single Ford Excursion. At last there was some use for the things.

He waddled down the street after Mia, gas sloshing. In a white-trimmed Cape Cod manor, they found a basement pantry filled with cases of Sprite, bottled water, and modular transparent drawers of Wheat Thins, Ritz, orange peanut butter crackers, fruit snacks, granola bars, trail mix, dried fruit, snack-size Snickers, and bags of pretzels and Ruffles and Sun Chips and beef jerky.

"Mormons," Raymond said.

"What? How can you tell?"

"They're supposed to keep a year's worth of food in the house to help wait out disasters. Guess there wasn't much Jesus could do about an alien virus."

Mia tucked a black strand behind her ear. "Well, they can rest happy knowing they're still providing Christian charity. Start grabbing."

He managed to wedge a plastic drawer under each jug-laden arm and headed for home, sweating through the humid, neutral night. There, they stashed the goods in their garaged car and stood panting in the candlelit gloom.

"This'll take all night," she said. "We should just take the car over and load it up."

Raymond rolled his lips together. "I don't know."

"Because it'll waste gas? It's three blocks from here. We'll be fine."

"Not if an alien fighter jet decides we're stealing the food they rightfully earned via plague."

"You're no fun," she smiled.

"We'll compromise. I think there's a wheelbarrow in the shed."

The tire sagged, but the thing rolled. They bumped it up the steps to the foyer of the Cape Cod mansion and piled it high with drawers of food and cases of water. As they started down the sidewalk, a rising car engine blatted from around the bend.

"Get off the road," Raymond said.

"We already are."

"Leave the food." He grabbed her hand, rushed through the open iron gate of a white three-story Tuscan, and knelt behind a square stone pillar, dew soaking the knees of his jeans. A hollow keen skirled beneath the roar of the engine. Headlights bloomed in the fog up the street. A black Porsche swerved around the bend, slick with mist, and tore past their hiding spot, tail lights waggling as it skidded on the shoulder. Its engine faded.

"Yeesh," Mia murmured. "If you're going to drive drunk, you should do it in something less awesome than a Porsche."

She began to rise. Raymond grabbed her belt and forced her back down. "Normally when somebody's fleeing, it's from something."

The second half of his sentence was overwhelmed by a rising keen from up the street. A pale blue light burst through the fog some twenty feet above the ground. Raymond squinted in the glare. A truck-sized black oblong cut through the air, its edges ridged like a scallop. It hurtled past on a blast of wind and disappeared around the bend toward their house.

"Holy shit," Mia breathed.

"Let's wait a minute. It might not be the only one."

"Did that thing spook somebody into jumping into their car and taking off? Or did it see the car moving and fly in to run it down?"

Far down the hill, the night rang with the bang of high-velocity metal instantly becoming no-velocity metal. Screams filtered through the fog.

Raymond waited through a minute of silence, then rolled the wheelbarrow down to the house and pulled the garage door shut behind them. They lit a single candle apiece that night, whispering to each other in the shadows. The ship hung over the bay.

When they woke, it was gone.

They watched the skies from the window, then ventured onto the deck. With no sign of the carrier, its fighters, or the scout that had run down the driver of the Porsche, Mia watered the garden and fed the chickens while Raymond went inside for the radio and left it on the deck tuned to Josh Jones' station. It fuzzed and hissed. Raymond picked spinach and rinsed it in a bucket under the deck. He mixed pepper, vinegar, and crushed almonds and brought Mia a salad they ate in the sun.

"Maybe they don't like 72-degree days," she said.

"Or hovering-mothership ocean views."

"Where does that put us now?"

Raymond could only shake his head. His hands were sun-browned, rough-palmed. "They're crazy aliens. If we try to figure out what they're up to, we're just guessing, aren't we? For all we know, they didn't leave, they just flew a few miles up to drop a really big rock on us. The only thing we can do here is plan for the worst."

"That they'll come back, disintegrate me, amputate your limbs, and let their alien women repeatedly have their way with you."

"When does it start getting bad?"

She spritzed him with her spray bottle. "So we check the highways. See if they're traversable. Otherwise, business as usual."

"We'll check tomorrow night. Make sure they're really gone first."

Rather than surfing or going for a walk, he watched the ocean from their back yard, aware that if they had to drive away or the aliens came back with alien-nukes, he might never see it again. White foam lined the shore. Breakers rose and slapped the sand. Pelicans and gulls rode the winds and bobbed along the surface. The sea was both larger and smaller than his mental image of "the sea," with finite edges at Malibu on the north, the rocks beneath their house on the south, and the sudden straight-line terminus on the western horizon, which looked no further away than the green shores of Malibu. Yet he knew it stretched on and on and on, thousands of miles of unseen water, speckled here and there by islands you'd miss if you didn't already know they were there, so huge he could only see a bay-sized fraction of it at a time, and only then its wind-chopped surface. How long would he have to stare at the bay before he saw every drop of water circling through the Pacific?

"Well, hi out there, fellow incredulates," Josh began at 9 PM on the nose. "So the big news, in case you just awoke from a hospital coma, is an alien fleet rolled in, shot a few people, snatched a few others, and then left for more probeable pastures. Sources say they lit out for Las Vegas, but as we haven't heard from them in hours, I offer this as nothing more than rumor. Go nuts.

"Down to brass tacks and hard facts. If the military's out there preparing its inspiring resistance, all we've seen was a single F-16, possibly piloted by a madman, who managed to blow up one enemy fighter before being swallowed by the mighty Pacific. The good news: the bad guys don't have force fields or invincible polycarbon armor. They can be destroyed. Hypothetically, we can fight back.

"The bad news: they do have lasers. Or zappy light-things that resemble what we think of as lasers. They've got a big ship, too. A really, really, inconceivably huge ship. The silver lining is that as far as we know, there's just the one of these Imperial Star Destroyers. Which may be why it had to stroll off to Las Vegas itself to see what there was to see.

"Oh, right, and the other bad news: they're probably here to kick our ass. Hope some of you boys with crop dusters in the barns also have a few missiles stashed away in your grain silos."

Mia stood. "Let's go."

"What?"

"Josh said the ship's in Las Vegas. That means we can check out the freeways."

"Why can't that man just give us a damn traffic report?"

They drove down the hill in the black late-model Charger they'd stolen from one of the lots down in Torrance after deciding the increased fuel economy of a Civic hybrid wouldn't be worth the possible risk of not being able to outrun Mad Max-style attackers. Mia rolled down the window and leaned out her head to scan the skies. On the PCH, two men scattered in the headlights, bags bouncing heavily from their shoulders. After a few miles, the sprawling lanes of the 110 snarled with abandoned cars; at the edges of the Charger's headlights, a burnt-out trailer stretched across the road, packed in by the charred shells of sedans and SUVs. Raymond rolled to a stop, engine idling.

"That doesn't bode well for the I-5."

Mia nodded, frowning. "I don't suppose you ever took a whole lot of flying lessons you never told me about."

He threw it in reverse, did a head check, laughed to himself, then flipped around and, with a strange little thrill, drove the wrong way back to the onramp. Cool sea air flowed through Mia's window. The 405 stayed drivable all the way to Santa Monica, where one of its banking turns became tangled with shorn metal and fire-bubbled paint. Raymond clucked his tongue and got out on foot. His flashlight swept over bones and sun-tautened skin. The pileup was only a couple cars deep, but beyond, stalled and silent cars clogged the road like shiny boulders.

"Seen enough?" he said.

"The PCH runs north for hundreds of miles."

"You want to check every one of them?"

"Just the ones that lead out of here. If they're serious about wiping us out, the city will be the worst place we could be."

He backtracked down the highway and swung into Santa Monica, which he knew about as well as Bangkok. Figuring the streets he'd heard about before he moved to the area must go somewhere, he drove in widening circles until he intercepted Wilshire, then cut west among sand-colored apartment complexes, pink storefronts, and palm-lined sidewalks. A white sheet painted "HELP" flapped from the roof of a department store. He jagged the car around a wreck, glass crunching under the tires. On the corner, a man in a fur coat stared them down, ambling to the middle of the street as they drove past.

Wilshire flowed into the PCH. Dark cars angled the shoulder, but the road stayed navigable as the city sprawl cleared out into a solid row of beachside houses to one side and yellow hills to the other. He drove for three miles, headlights splashing the pavement, engine whirring through the emptiness.

"Pull over," Mia said.

He slowed, guided the car into the crunching gravel. "What do you think?"

"We could go right now. Just keep driving."

"Where would we go?"

"Somewhere with a stream. Or a lake. These days every house in the world is a mountain cabin without the mountain. Why not find a real one?"

He bit the skin inside his lower lip. "We'd lose the garden."

"Damn! If only plants could grow."

"Maybe all the sun and sea breezes have wiped your mind, but it's September. In places like mountains, that means it's fall. And you know what comes after fall?"

"Bourbon and eggnog?"

"Where are we going to find that? Or anything else we need?"

She cocked her head. "With all that food we found, I don't think we'll have a problem making it through a couple seasons."

"What about winter coats? Snow gloves? Axes or hunting rifles or great big piles of wood to burn when it gets cold?"

"So we'll stop by the first sporting goods store we see. We put our house together in like four months. Do you really think it would be that hard?"

He stared at the blank dashboard. "I like it here. I don't want to leave."

"Even if that means getting vaporized by aliens?"

"What happens when they come to the mountains? Do we go to the desert? The South Pole? The moon?" He ran his hands through his hair, clasping them behind his head. "How long do we run? Are we happy? If we're not, how do we find a place where we will be? I think if you find a place where you're happy, then you have to take risks to preserve it. Staying in the city's a risk. But so is lighting out for the mountains in the middle of the night when we don't know what we'll find there any more than we know what the invaders are going to do from here."

A slow smile lit her brown eyes. "I didn't know you felt that strongly."

"Do you really want to go?"

"I think we'd be safer. But I don't think we'd be happier."

He started the Charger back up and nosed his way across the median to the opposite lanes. Wet, cool air swirled through the windows. He would have missed that moist-salt smell, would wake every morning to the confused sense that something had been lost.

"Stop the car?"

He braced himself for another change of mind. Instead, she asked him to get out, then took him by the hand and led him to the moonlight-lined beach, where she laid their clothes on the sand as a blanket, then unzipped his pants and straddled him. On the way home, he drove shirtless and shoeless.

"Apparently sin truly is reserved for humanity," Josh Jones reported a few days later, "because the aliens buzzed out of Vegas in just two days. Grapevine hears tell of men on the ground. Alien men, that is, or possibly women, or men-women, or cloaca-sporting lobster-monsters who find our human penises and vaginas so sickening they crossed the inky void just to stamp us out. In any event, these things are said to have lots of spindly arms and legs, with skin as hard and crusty as old sourdough. Supposedly they spent a lot of time going into hotels and coming out with corpses. Not mummy-bones, either—big wet fresh ones. Like going down to the farmer's market, you know, except instead of coming home with ripe red tomatoes, it's dead bodies. These ground troops have been seen in Vegas after the ship set sail.

"And speaking of sourdough, the mother ship was last reported lumbering west for San Francisco. Stay safe, friends."

Raymond and Mia resumed gardening and water-gathering and foraging. In concession, he took a trip to the REI, where they went in with flashlights and loaded up the car with parkas, sleeping bags, axes of various sizes, lanterns and replacement lights, freshwater fishing tackle with its bright pink PowerBait, jack knives and hunting knives and scaling knives. Every single rifle was gone. Brass littered the floor, spinning away over the hard white tile and brown stains of dried blood.

Josh's reports grew sparse. More house-to-house alien raids in San Francisco, then up to Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, where fleeing motorists were destroyed by scalloped black fighters with platoons of alien infantry remaining behind to scour the cities. For several days, Josh had no news of the aliens at all: the carrier had disappeared somewhere over Canada.

Raymond woke two weeks after the carrier's departure to see it hovering above the bay. Lumbering, beetle-like vessels disappeared into the city while the wedge-shaped blue fighters circled overhead. After striking out at two more sports stores, Mia had ventured back to the former house of the Mormons. She'd come back with a pair of scoped rifles, a .45 and a 9mm pistol, and green cardboard ammo boxes that felt far too heavy for their size. The morning of the aliens' return, she stuck the .45 in her belt and handed him the 9mm.

"Don't leave home without it."

That night gunfire crackled from the beach cities below them. Unseen ships keened below the cliffs. Fire blossomed a short ways inland, thick gray smoke angling into the sky. It burnt out by morning.

There wasn't much to do but watch from the windows. They held hands in silence. With warm afternoon sunlight banking off the waves, one of the heavy ships detached from the carrier and, flanked by two fighters, flew straight for the hills.

Mia pulled him away from the window into the lushly carpeted hallway, where they flattened their backs against the hall. The bass oscillation of an engine approached, climaxed, began to fade, then abruptly ceased.

"What's the plan?" Raymond said.

"Nothing to do but sit tight, is there? Unless you'd rather get blown up in the car."

"No. We can't afford the insurance bump."

He locked the door and drew the curtains. Hours passed with little more than the deep warble of the heavy vessel and the high whines of the fighters. Once, they heard the dry pop of pistols. With the sun hanging just above the horizon, an engine growled nearby. The staccato clatter of steps struck the asphalt.

Raymond parted the curtains. Up the street, alien foot troops fanned out from a boxy covered vehicle. Metal glinted in clawed limbs. While three took up position behind it, one of the beings strode to the picture window of the house two doors down and bashed the butt of a long rifle through the glass. Another team of four broke toward the neighboring house; behind them, four more trampled the overgrown flowers of the front yard on the way to their gates.

"Oh Jesus," Mia said.

Raymond's head buzzed numbly. "The panic room. Now."

He ran to the back bedroom and the painted steel door set into its wall. The handle wouldn't budge. From outside, metal groaned and clanged against the pavement.

"It's stuck," he said.

"Let me try." Mia bumped him out of the way and pulled with all her strength. With a frustrated shriek, she leaned on the brushed steel handle and rammed her shoulder into the door. "Did you lock this?"

"How would I lock it from the outside?"

"How should I know? I grew up in a trailer, not this ritzy mansion bullshit—" Downstairs, glass cascaded across the stone floors. A Y-shaped vein pulsed on Mia's forehead. She grabbed his hand. "Come on."

She raced for the back deck, closing the door behind them. A soft breeze countered the sunlight washing Raymond's skin. Below the deck, the yard terminated in a waist-high stone fence, cliffs and sea below. He bared his teeth. Even if they could leap clear of the rocks, the water would be no more than a few feet deep.

"Boost me up," Mia whispered. He goggled at her; she slapped him and cradled her hands in example. "Snap out of it and give me a boost!"

He laced his fingers together. She stepped in, steadying herself against the wall as he lifted her, forearms straining, her bare foot secure in his hands. She grabbed the lip of the roof and wriggled her chest and hips up over the edge as he pushed her feet up from below. She turned around and dangled her arm down.

Raymond crouched and jumped. Stucco scraped his fingers. His knuckles strained, supporting his weight as he kicked his legs against the wall. Mia clamped his forearms and heaved. The roof's edge sheared skin from his chest. He got a knee up and rolled on his back, panting. Mia pressed her body to the shallow pitch and army-crawled away from the edge. Muffled footsteps filtered from below.

16

Grass tickled the creature's cloth-wrapped abdomen. A flock of sparrows swooped over the creek. The creature spun, two noodly limbs shooting upright and tracking the vector of the birds' cheeping flight. Walt eased himself off the rock into the cold water. Slick rocks clacked under his soles. He crouched low, submerging himself until the rushing water soaked the back of his head, face upturned to clear his nose. He steadied himself against the rock with one hand and brought his knife to just below the surface.

Grass threshed. A three-fingered, stick-like limb parted the green wall at the bank of the creek. The creature glided forward, limbs splashing in the shallows. Rocks clonked beneath it. Walt's fingers tightened around the knife. The thing tapped the rock he'd sunned on with two brown-gray arms, planted them firm, and leaned its disclike body and bulbous, octopine head over the gurgling water. Walt took a good long look at the ridges of its neck, a supple thing that broadened to a fat stock where it connected to the body, which was shaped like one of the water-smoothed pebbles under his feet. A collar of fine fabric wrapped the base of its neck, flowing into a skintight blue wrap of its body with long holes on both sides to sleeve its several arms. It craned forward, slowly turning the two rubbery arms through a wide arc. The creek jangled.

The arms withdrew. The creature retreated from the rock into the grass and padded back for the clump of trees, disappearing from sight. Walt slipped from the cold water, sun beating his skin, until he could see the back of the creature's head. An instant after he'd risen, the being whirled and tore straight for him.

Walt shouted and warded one arm in front of him, knife hand close to his chest. The thing turned sideways as it closed, sticking a bushel of slapping arms and kicking legs between Walt's body and its head and two noodly arms. A leg struck Walt's shin. He grimaced and slashed at an incoming arm, flaying the tough skin down to its bone. Yellow fluid spattered the grass. The creature made no noise beyond the tapping of its feet on the stones. It picked up a rock in a pair of narrow claws and swung for Walt's head. He ducked, jabbing at its nearest leg. The thing reared up and bulled forward, knocking them both into the water.

The current pulled him downstream. The thing planted its thinner legs between submerged stones, poling along while its flatter tentacles threshed water. It closed on him in moments. He'd kept a death grip on the knife, which he waved in tight, fast flicks at a probing arm. A claw snaked in from the side and grabbed his wrist. Pain circled his arm as it crushed his tendons against his bones. He strained his trapped wrist closer to his chest, extending its arm, and slammed his other palm into its joint.

A nauseating crack shot over the burble of the water. The thing let go of his wrist and paddled backwards against the current, still silent despite its broken bone. Walt leaned into the stream, jogging forward in exaggerated strides to clear his knees of the water, and grabbed a trailing limb. He pulled down hard as he leapt out of the water, leveraging himself onto its back. His knife blade thunked against a hard skull. As arms whipped his back and clubbed the back of his head, he grabbed the creature's neck, dug in with his nails, and stabbed down hard into one wide, unblinking eye.

The thing bucked, spraying white slashes of water to all sides, flinging Walt back into the hustling creek. He tucked his head. His ribs jarred down on a rock, stealing his breath. He thrashed for his footing; before he could stand, the still-writhing body of the thing knocked him off his feet. He plunged under the water, taking an involuntary breath at the cold shock. For a panicked moment he couldn't tell which way was up. Sunlight. Air on his waving arm. He bumbled into a smooth, protruding rock, and, toes slicking over the moss, clambered his naked body up to its damp surface. He coughed, spitting water. Downstream, the slowly tumbling body lodged in the reeds at a bend in the creek.

Once he'd found his breath, Walt laughed.

He waded across the stream and dragged the corpse through the grass to dry land. There, he scanned a full arc of the light woods and meadows and the low mountains behind him. Wind shushed the grass. The stream tinkled. A bird chirred. He went back for his gear and dried himself off and put on pants and socks and shoes. He shouldered his stuff and lugged it back to the body. He laid a pistol on top of his duffel bag, spread out a tarp, selected a butcher knife and a paring knife, and rolled the creature's damp body onto the blue plastic.

He was no doctor. Despite the last few months of sporadic fish and game, he wasn't much of a butcher, either. But he was enough of a mathematician to add two and two, and either the thing in front of him had come from Earth or it hadn't; either some company had been so deep into biotech it was capable of creating humanity-erasing viruses and crab-hybrid monsters, or it had come from outer space, in which case he already had more than a few suspicions about the source of the Panhandler, too. (Though even then, there were other possibilities—if they were aliens, perhaps they were planetary vultures, and had swooped in after their monitors reported mankind was no longer an issue.)

Either way, he knew how to get to the guts of the matter.

He sliced the creature's clothes away from its body, set them aside, then stabbed the butcher knife down hard. Its skin was smooth but tough, resisting the knife like fingernails or hardened leather. Walt leaned into the blade. Clear and yellow goo slimed his hands. He sawed through the skin, knife jarring into unseen bones, some of which he was able to crack by leveraging his weight against them. Sweat beaded his brow and back. At a bone-free spot, he peeled back the hard skin and sliced it away from the membranes beneath.

The inside of the cavity looked like a mass of swollen spaghetti and meatballs colored the yellow of beached kelp and floating in a pot of watery yellow marinara. It smelled no better. He lifted out handfuls of rubbery tubes, knotted here and there by fleshy nodes the size of marbles and tennis balls. Snotty fluid glopped from his hands, pattering onto the tarp. Rubber gloves. He needed to loot some rubber gloves. The tubes and nodes hung by membranes from narrow bones.

Walt moved to the oversized head. Most of it was like the body, tough skin around fibrous lumps, but a third of the interior, including the eye sockets, was taken up by a bony ball punctured here and there by tube-choked holes. After two minutes of sawing at one of the sockets, his knife had only worn a small notch in the inner skull. He went to the creek, swooshed his hands around the cool water, and returned with a rock the size of two closed fists. The skull smashed on the third blow.

Beneath another membrane, he sorted through a pulpy, semi-solid mush of loosely connected gray-blue matter.

So at least it had a brain. All the rest of its organs, any lungs or kidneys or livers or spleens or anything like that, they were like nothing he'd ever seen before. He didn't want to believe it. Not that he didn't think they existed. He just didn't believe they'd possibly come here. But the nasty yellow muck he was covered in offered only one explanation: the thing he'd killed hadn't come from Earth.

Aliens, then. Aliens. Aliens with a bunch of small nodules instead of obviously vital targets. Headshots, he supposed. At least they had big heads.

He dragged the body into the creek and shoved it away with a long stick. The alien's clothing was spotted with pockets. He found a tin of dried, crumbling food with whiffs of salt and seaweed and rot. A pouch of water that smelled like a distant ocean. A blank pad that wouldn't respond to his touch or voice. A bag of metal balls inscribed with rings of pictographs. A gray, finger-sized tube with a small screen and what he thought might be a touchpad. And a hard rubber case filled with smooth, unyielding cards printed with shimmering figures and abstract icons. He ditched the food and water and added the rest to his bag. Whatever weapon it had been holding in its hands and claws had been lost in the water. He walked upstream and refilled his canteens and jugs.

This time, he traveled overland, paralleling the road from a distance of a couple hundred yards, skirting Albuquerque and the stretch of small towns that followed through the gently rising desert. Hostile aliens. Just that much more proof for how fucked up reality was. He didn't see how this changed his goals. Aside, that is, from the fact the invaders would probably nuke the shit out of the cities, or, if they were environmentally conscious, fire- or neutron- or unimaginably-advanced-alien-technology-bomb them. Then again, unless they were comically incompetent, they would have taken care of that before romping around the New Mexican wilderness. Whatever had happened to Los Angeles must have already gone down.

He tromped among the sage and yellow grass. As he descended from the foothills, the heat ascended. He napped under the shade of trees in a draw between two hills, troubled by flies, moving on in the just-warm dusk.

Aliens. Motherfucking aliens. As a kid, he'd immersed himself in Asimov and Heinlein and Clarke, all the classics, warm possibilities where the future was positive and our stellar neighbors meant us no ill-will. (Not that Heinlein, with his killer bugs and mind-controlling slugs, envisioned a hand-holding galactic UN. Still, beneath the warfare was the sense we would prevail, if only we tried hard enough and held true to ourselves as individuals and a people. Even in the barbarian-ravaged future of Asimov, the ingenuity of brilliant men carried the day.) He'd internalized this positivism—or they'd encapsulated his inborn instincts, who could be sure—but while these future-forward feelings lingered through high school, resisting the constant rot of fact and experience, this warmth had eroded during college like the wave-worn pilings below a dock, a process hidden from his higher mind. Even then, he'd paced the unsteady surface, ignoring the creakiness of the boards under his mental feet.

Vanessa's death had swept it away like a meteor-driven tsunami. In the psychological wreckage, the revelation of aliens, of other life, was nothing more than the ridiculous gilding of the absurd lily, the duh-duh coal brought before drooling, crazy-eyed Newcastle. When the social structure of the supposed greatest nation on Earth was one of under-your-nose slavery where 1% of the country owned half its wealth, what surprise was it that an alien race would want to destroy us for their own selfish ends? It was as natural as the dust around him or the dry, nostril-clogging pollen of the desert night. Of course the aliens wanted him dead. Who didn't?

In sharp contrast to this daily horror—and, in a way, making it all the worse for offering a glimmer of something better—were the balloon trips. The couple times a year when his parents took him up in the vehicles of their business were the only days he voluntarily woke before dawn. He sipped coffee from a thermos while his mom drove them to the grassy field where the first sunlight cast the surrounding trees in shades of gray. Walt shivered in his jacket while they filled the balloon with cold air from a fan. When his dad held the balloon's mouth clear while his mom finally lit the burner, waves of heat washed his hands and face. The bright Dacron swelled, tautening in the pink dawn until the fabric lifted clear, swallowing the sky overhead.

His dad said the same thing every time they stepped into the rickety wicker basket: "Welcome to the Cloudward Express, now offering one-way travel to Heaven if you lean too far over the side. All aboard!"

His dad had started saying that when Walt was just a little kid—possibly before he was born—but even once he'd grown old enough to consider it hokey as hell, he never rolled his eyes. The acts of preparing the basket and filling the balloon were somehow spiritual, a cleansing, fiery ritual that matched the red of the rising sun. And then the balloon lifted, lurching him up in a flimsy shower-sized basket held together by ropes and crowded with two other people going about the business of keeping them afloat, and if they let the bag get too hot, or he tripped over the side, he'd be dead just like that.

But he didn't care. Not when the green grass lay so far below. Not minutes later when the roads ribboned the woods and the houses clustered the roads and he could see the Atlantic like a field of glinting mercury. It was the stillness of it all, a long, centered silence broken by tweeting birds, far-off cars, his dad's sporadic jokes, and the occasional whuff of the flame, an interruption like a watchdog rousting from sleep before settling its head back between its paws. More silence, more stillness.

In these times, maybe two hours every three months, Walt felt a simple, fragile peace. Peace and an ache inside his chest: what made the time in the balloon so special and every other moment so hard?

Soon, the balloon began to descend. With the spell snapped, his parents chattered about what they had to do for the rest of the day, pinging him with questions about school and girls and his friends. He answered from that automatic place in his head, silently pleading for the balloon to rise again. A few minutes later, the wicker basket brushed the ground.

Three days and seventy or eighty miles from the creek in the woods, a keening whine pierced the sky. Walt hunkered in the yellow brush and set his bags in the dirt. He squinted at the blue sky, eyes watering, until he picked out a black speck curving through a wide circle miles overhead.

No real cover. Just scrubby green plants clinging close to the dirt and scraggly brown brush he'd lose a few layers of skin trying to hide beneath. He tucked in beside a dry, tangy shrub, resolving to wait until the flier headed away.

It banked through another circle. By the next circuit, Walt could no longer deny it: the ship was moving in a tightening downward spiral, a black oblong sweeping the desert for—what? Survivors? The person who'd killed the alien at the stream? How would they possibly know where to look?

His heart went cold. Too angry to swear, he unzipped the pocket of the duffel where he'd stored the dead alien's things.

17

Glass smashed inside the house. Raymond pressed his back to the roof, digging in his bare heels and pushing himself up from the ledge. Mia grabbed his wrist. A scout ship whined from up the hill. Beneath them, hard feet thunked stone and hardwood. Dishes shattered across the floor. The search moved with methodical swiftness, footsteps and the clatter of dropped objects moving from one room to the next. If the aliens spoke, Raymond couldn't hear them. Sweat slicked his palms and waistband, pooling in the small of his back. Aliens tromped up the steps, muffled by carpet, fanning into the bedroom directly beneath them. The soldiers paused.

With a soft rumble, the door to the deck slid open.

An alien clicked onto the wooden planks. It strode to the railing, scanning the silent yard with its oversized eyes, two thin limbs waving over its head. Raymond's foot slipped, scuffing over the rough roof. Mia's fingers clamped his wrist. The alien didn't budge. It raised a smooth, curved object like a buttonless remote to its head, one tentacle twitching near its waist, and eyed the rich brown dirt of the tilled and weeded garden. It put the remote away and walked inside the house.

The creatures thumped around for a while longer, opening doors and knocking things onto the carpet, then clacked down the front steps into the driveway. Mia scooted to the edge, legs dangling, flipped around so her stomach faced the roof, and dropped to the deck with a light thump. Raymond followed her down. She crept to the landing above the stairs. The front door hung open. Chairs had been overturned, closets opened, coats and shoes slung over the carpet. They retreated to the bedroom and hunkered below the windows beside the bed. Scouts whined across the skies. Troops clumped down the street. Once, gunfire crackled downhill, followed by a single sustained scream.

The sun sunk below the waves. The dome of its light retreated with it, shrinking into the blue, a wall of navy darkness advancing on its heels. At nightfall, Mia rose, knees popping.

"I need a drink."

"I might need two," he said. She bolted the front door while he mixed warm Jim Beam with warm ginger ale. He passed her a glass and sipped his, vaguely troubled. There were no ice cubes clinking around inside his glass. He still hadn't gotten used to that. They put the scattered coats and shoes away, cleaned up the stuffing ripped from the couch in one of the living rooms. The house carried an odd, tidal pool smell, like drying kelp and withered mussels. Mia spritzed lavender air freshener while he opened windows.

"Well?" she said as they sat in bed, curtains drawn. A single candle flickered near the door.

"Well what?"

"They just went house to house. You still want to stay?"

"Maybe they'll consider the neighborhood all clear."

"And maybe this was just a preliminary sweep and next time they'll come back with alien Rhoombas made to vacuum up blood."

Raymond didn't know what to say. If the aliens stayed, they'd be fools to stay themselves. Those things could come back any minute. Start dropping bombs. Chemicals. Leaving carried dangers of its own, but if they could get a toehold somewhere remote, a cabin in the Rockies, say, they'd probably be able to live for years without being discovered by the aliens. Possibly their entire lifetimes. The creatures hadn't brought a planet-wrecking fleet; he hadn't seen any superweapons; it even seemed plausible the combined military of Earth could have driven them back, if only every nation in the world hadn't been wiped out by the Panhandler. The aliens simply wouldn't have the resources to scour every last human from the planet. Not in this generation. So long as the survivors clung to their nooks and crannies, insect-like, and didn't try to bite or sting the new dog on the block, it seemed plausible they'd simply be left alone.

Deep down inside, he'd already made the decision to leave, but something was holding it back, like his intentions were a bubble trapped under tar. Inevitably, it would rise to the surface, but it was still working its way through the layers of his brain. He couldn't say when it would burst free.

Leaving meant giving up everything they'd worked for. Handing over the few scraps of green they'd collected from the soil, the few jugs of blue water they'd gathered from the sky and sea. Leaving would mean leaving their home, their last real link to the old world, to their old lives, a world capable of creating iPods and Charleston Chews and new episodes of Lost. Driving off into the wild yonder would mean accepting, finally, that it was all over. Whatever the future held, it would be nothing like the one he'd expected to live into old age with.

Dumb as it was, then, to want to stay in a place where alien beings were actively seeking to unroot the human remainders, he couldn't help it. He wasn't ready. His brain was still clearing the path for his emotions to follow.

"We'll stay prepared," he said. "If they leave again, we'll drive off. We'll head for the Rockies."

He meant it as a stall. As the virus had proved, everything could change in the span of days. The American army could arrive in force and blast the aliens into thundering rubble. The creatures could take a look around, consider humanity sufficiently ruined, and blast off to destroy another civilization in star systems unknown. Or announce the whole thing had been one big misunderstanding—who knew. Nobody, that's who, and that was the point. Whatever they believed today could be turned on its head tomorrow.

"What if they don't go?" Mia traced a smiley face in the thin condensation on her glass; he'd moved the whiskey and soda to the deck, where it had cooled compared to the warm indoors. "What if they keep searching?"

"Then we'll leave."

"Not by car. They're attracted to them or something."

"So we escape on bikes. Or via rowboat. Or use these big fleshy things dangling from our hips."

She took a drink, swished it around her mouth. "There's a bike store down on the PCH. Near the Thai place."

"I know. You've wanted one of those bikes ever since we moved here."

She grinned, swatting at him drunkenly. "A purple one."

"I want red." He tapped his teeth. "Now there's just the small matter of getting to them without being zapped into a small pile of ash."

Alien ships patrolled the skies from then on out, their low rumbles and high shrieks bursting the clear air by day and slicing through the hillside fog by night. He doubted they'd be able to pick out two people slipping through the night on foot to the bike shop—the things hadn't noticed the two of them hiding out on the roof, after all—but the possibility was paralyzing. As was holing up in their house all day, sneaking out under cover of dark to water the wilted bell peppers or pick a little cilantro to add flavor to food they could no longer cook over an open fire.

Drop ships came and went, ferrying soldiers to cities up and down the bay. Even after the carrier departed, the smaller craft remained, buzzing in and out of LAX, cleansing neighborhoods Raymond had never visited. Staying had been a mistake. The house, the yard, the garden, the ocean view, that wasn't what made their home a home. It was the freedom they'd had. The simple, unobstructed life they'd built for themselves. Cooped up and scared, they didn't have a home. They had a cage.

Like that, the bubble burst free. He was ready to leave.

A mountain in Colorado. They'd steal a couple bikes, rig them up with baskets loaded with as much food, water, and medical supplies as they could carry, and pedal out of the city under cover of darkness. Beyond the aliens' sight, they'd find a car and forage for supplies along the way. Grab a house in a town in the foothills of the Rockies, somewhere out of the way, of little interest to genocidists, and wait out the winter there, building up supplies, scouting the mountainsides for cabins, ideally near a stream or a lake where they could irrigate a garden and maybe even do a little fishing. Depending on the violence of the snows, they might be able to put in a bit of work on the cabin in the meantime. In the spring, they would move in and get to work chopping wood, planting seeds, digging a hole to store food and keep it cool. They weren't likely to be entirely self-sufficient by the winter after that, but they could augment what they grew and caught with preserved food rustled up from the town below.

That was the plan. It was a good plan. It was practical in a way that appealed to Raymond's sense of order, based on few assumptions (that the aliens wouldn't notice two people on bikes; that they'd be able to find regular supplies of gasoline along the way; that they'd be able to traverse a snowy mountain well enough to find a cabin before spring). It was elegant and flexible. Disasters could happen, of course, alien attacks or car crashes or blizzards, but these things weren't worth worrying about. They were too large, too total. Besides, they just weren't all that likely. Things normally went to plan, and when they didn't, they had a way of working themselves out regardless.

The one problem with the plan was he didn't know the way to Colorado. They had no maps besides one of the LA freeway system tucked into the Charger's glove box. The internet was long gone. He didn't even know, strictly speaking, where Colorado was—he knew it was one of those square states, but was it above Nevada? Under Wyoming? Somewhere to the north and east, that much he knew. And he supposed that was all he needed to know. Once they got out of the city, they'd head northeasterly, pick up maps at a rest stop or tourist center or glove box somewhere along the way. Things would work out. It made Raymond feel bad to think about, but there was simply too much stuff abandoned by the dead for him and Mia to starve along the way, no matter how many times they had to backtrack on their way to Colorado.

That left just one other hole: getting the bikes. Prior to being eradicated by disease, the citizens of the beach cities had been health nuts, cycling along the strand that bordered the beach, walking dogs on the esplanade sidewalks, sometimes combining the two, terriers and poodles trotting on leashes alongside muscly-legged men ensconced in their bikes. With near certainty, they'd be able to find a couple bikes in a garage somewhere down the street. But Mia didn't like the idea of breaking into random houses. It'd be noisy, attention-grabbing. Who knew how long it would take? Raymond nodded, citing the possibility the aliens had left monitoring devices behind, or traps, or other incidental viruses. They knew precisely where the bike shop was. It was no more than two and a half miles away. Walking the back streets, they could be there within 45 minutes, then bike back. The whole thing would be quick and simple and clean. Much more so than breaking into one garage after another.

They left for the shop that night, dressed in black, pistols in hand, a hammer and a pry bar dangling from Raymond's hips. A pair of binoculars swung from Mia's neck. They walked down the hill at a swift pace, swishing through the grass under the palms in the green strip that lined the road. Something rattled a can down the street, startling them. Raymond crouched beside a palm's rough, pinecone-like bark. Mia held her pistol to her chest. In the moonlight, a skunk hopped into the gutter, waddling, its brushy tail held high.

"I should shoot it on principle," Mia whispered.

"No way. They may be our last line of defense against the aliens. Bet you they've never even heard of tomato juice."

His heart rate calmed by the time the steep hillside street fed into the esplanade. Waves struck the beach in great and sudden bursts. Raymond frowned; out to sea, a single white light rose and fell on the dark water.

"Come on," Mia said.

Yellow two-story apartments fronted the road toward PCH. The lightest of breezes sifted the palms. Ahead, a row of silent people stood along the median. Raymond jolted, blood cold. The illusion quickly resolved into parking meters. A few cars remained untouched in their parking spots. How long it would take them to rust away in the steady daytime ocean winds? He stumbled on something light and clattering. Bones gleamed whitely from stiff clothes, connected by dry strings of flesh, the rest rotted away or eaten. It had no smell. He swallowed down his dinner of cold canned ravioli.

Six months ago, these few square blocks had been one of the most pleasant spaces in a city that was almost nothing but pleasant, a pedestrian-friendly collection of sidewalk cafes, shoe and dress shops, and quiet, tasteful bars. Walking down the sidewalk, Raymond had smelled pepper-roasted lamb, buttery calamari, the hot metal of the heating lamps the restaurants turned on to combat the evening breezes.

Friday afternoons, rain or shine, a farmer's market had opened on a side street, selling boxes of strawberries, lemons and limes and oranges, rich green spinach and bunches of dewy cilantro. One van sold potted avocado trees and fat-leafed dragonfruit plants. Mia worked part-time doing reception for a dentist down the block, and when Raymond drove over to pick her up in the late afternoons, sunlight pouring through his windshield so hard he could barely see the road, he'd park, feed the meter, and dawdle down to the market while he waited for work to let her go.

It amazed him they could sell heads of spinach for a dollar apiece, a bin of strawberries for two—less than half what he'd pay at the Ralph's or the Albertsons. As their money bled away, he paced their off-red deck with the half-rotted planks at the far end and willed the patch of yellow grass along the fence to morph into a deep brown field with tidy rows of leafy green. Meanwhile, the weedy stretch of dirt beside the driveway could be the perfect herb garden. It seemed possible, even easy, to grow their own tomatoes, basil, lettuce, and bell peppers, to halve their grocery budget to butter, eggs, and packs of chicken thighs. All for the cost of a few seeds and daily water.

Between the job hunt, fooling around with Photoshop on spec projects, and watching Star Trek streamed over Netflix, he'd never found the time. Instead, most Fridays he bought a twist of spinach for garlic mashed potatoes or a flat of strawberries for crepes, consoling himself with the thought that even two dollars saved per week would add up to a hundred by year's end. Every little difference mattered.

The market was gone now, a dark side street fronted by black-windowed apartments. Dry leaves and garbage littered the sidewalks of the cafes and salons. Metal tables and chairs sat in the open, dotted with heavy layers of rain-spotted dust.

They slunk along the road parallel to Pacific Coast Highway, meeting up with the main street the block before the bike shop. A tattered tarp fluttered over the lot. Dozens of bicycles rested in rows in front of the store, left out during the pandemic, dirt clinging to their stylish, colorful frames. They weren't even chained. Gaps in the rows indicated a few had been stolen, but most of the survivors, like them, must have been concentrating on food and cars and guns and medicine.

Mia wiped a clean line through the dirt coating a basketed bike, revealing a light purple paint job. She smiled and stage-whispered, "Regulators, mount up!"

Raymond found himself a red one, holstering his pistol. He hadn't ridden a bike since he'd gotten his driver's license over a decade ago, and he was afraid he'd spill into the street in a disaster of skinned elbows and torn jeans, but Mia pedaled off without hesitation. After an initial wobble, he rode smoothly.

Cool air whisked past his face, countered by the heat of his muscles. Mia leaned forward and turned off the PCH toward the empty cafes. The low slurp of rubber tires on asphalt was obliterated by the banging roar of sustained automatic fire.

Mia swerved in among the parking meters. "That's coming from the—"

Blue bolts flashed from the beach. A spray of tracers lashed the darkness. More gunfire kicked up, crashing over the surf, ricochets whining. Shouts and screams drifted on the wet air. Fifty yards from Raymond, a silhouette popped up from the stairs leading to the beach. Before the woman took two steps, a lance of blue light knocked her to the ground.

"We've got to get out of here," Mia said. "Like ten minutes ago."

The wounded woman's groan was riddled with pain. She rose to her hands and knees, a black lump, then collapsed back to the pavement.

Raymond gestured. "She's hurt."

"By the same laser that will hurt us if we stay!"

"We can't just leave her," he said. "Not when we can help."

He pushed off the curb and pedaled with all he had. Dead ahead, blue beams cleaved the night.

18

He flung the pad and the cards and the metal balls into the weeds. Above, the whining vessel banked, bleeding altitude. Walt stood in an open slope of gray dirt, yellow grass sprigs, and short green bushes. A series of bluffs staggered the flatlands a half mile away. The road lay a couple hundred yards in the opposite direction. No help there, either; more scrubby high desert bordered by dry mountains. No plants rose higher than mid-thigh. No buildings at all. Nowhere to hide.

The small black ship made a wide semicircle above the highway. Searching for their lost friend? Seeking vengeance on the one who'd killed it? Whatever the question, Walt's death was the answer. He ran for the tree-speckled bluffs, bogged down by the heavy bags bouncing on his back. Over his shoulder, the ship floated less than a mile above the road. Walt swore, skidding to a halt in a cloud of dust. He ducked the bags off his back, slung them behind a clump of bushes, and sprinted for the bluffs.

Stupid move, hanging on to the dead alien's stuff. He'd kept it partly as a trophy, partly with the hope that, with time and the right equipment, he could learn from it, spy on their communications network or track their movements or download some freaky alien porn to shame them out of the Solar System. Really, his thinking hadn't been practical at all, drawing from the primal instinct to take the possessions of those you killed. Possessions that had clearly included a tracking device of some kind. Assuming the aliens were capable of any emotion at all, Walt guessed their reaction to finding their friend's gear in a human's hands would involve powerful ray guns and attack-tripods.

After two thousand miles of walking, he was in willow-trim shape. He loped through the dust, breathing easily. Still, the bluffs stood impossibly far. The whining engines fell silent. The ship touched down on the road on insectlike legs. A portal rolled open. Walt stumbled, arms flailing, and put his eyes forward. If they caught him before he reached the low trees in the folds of the bluffs, there wasn't much he could do. He had a pistol belted to his hip and a jackknife in his pocket. That was it. That's what he'd have to defend himself against their guns or lasers or rockets or hypernuclear black-hole bombs. But it didn't matter: he would shoot at them until his clip ran out, and then, if he could get close enough, he would stab them, and if they took his knife he would punch and claw and bite their tough smooth skin.

Not so long ago, the understanding he would die would have caused him to question whether there was any worth to resisting a foregone conclusion. If his death were assured, better to subvert fate by taking control of the method, by letting the aliens shoot him, or better yet, by shooting himself, pulling the trigger with his middle finger.

Fuck that. If they were going to kill him, they'd have to root him out of the trees. Blow up the whole hill. Until the onset of the blackness, he would be shooting. Stabbing. Punching.

He charged across the desert field. At the road, four aliens milled around their ship, twiddling things too small to see. As if his looking at them had caused them to look back, one of the aliens stiffened in a universal posture of wary surprise and assessment. Walt spurred himself harder. He'd be at the scrabbly trees in less than a minute. By the time he glanced back, the aliens had left the road behind, running after him on smooth, many-legged strides.

Walt clattered into the loose rocks that blanketed the slope. It was steep going, and not far to his left the bluff simply rose in a sheer cliff, but here it was runnable, scablike swathes of broken rock between brambly green bushes and crumbly dirt. He leaned forward, balancing with his hand. The ground leveled into yellowing grass and pokey trees with pale green leaves. Another couple hundred yards on, the ground fell away at an unseen angle. Probably empty desert beneath. Walt pulled in behind a tree, gun in hand, and shrank against its thorny trunk.

Below, the aliens glided across the plain. They stopped at the spot where he'd tossed away the dead one's gear, then halted a second time when they came to his bags. While one stared motionless in his general direction, the other three spread out, poking among the dirt and the weeds. Walt panted, shirt sweat-stuck to his back. The nights had been cold lately—the signs for the previous towns boasted higher elevations than populations—but the days were still hot, borderline scorching. His mouth felt as dry as the bark scraping the side of his face. Far across the field, one of the aliens lowered itself and scuttled in the dust. A few yards away, a second reached down with a thick tentacle and hefted Walt's duffel onto its flat back. A third dangled his backpack from a sticklike arm. The group reconvened, waving their arms at each other in quick, flicking patterns as graceful as a swimming fish or a martial artist practicing his forms. With some consensus reached, they started back toward the road. A moment later, the one who'd been watching the bluff turned its back and followed.

Walt simmered as they hauled his things back to the ship. Had they taken his gear out of base cruelty, expecting him to now die in this dry place? Out of clinical curiosity, hoping to study his equipment and extrapolate the fundamentals of human survival? Out of a shrimplike fastidiousness that didn't allow artificial objects to lie in a natural setting? The fact he could only speculate, and therefore didn't know just how much to hate them, somehow made it all the more frustrating.

They took their sweet alien time getting back to their ship and even longer taking off. By the time the black vessel lifted into the sky, the sun was nearly touching the western mountains. Walt waited to move until he could no longer see the ship's dark oval or hear its high engines.

Not a single one of his things had been dropped or discarded. The only thing left behind was a bunch of shallow round holes where they'd tromped around. Yellow grass wavered in the waxing breeze and waning light. Already, the wind raised the hairs on his bare arms. He had no idea how far he was from the next town. They'd been few and far between lately, sun-withered things full of trailers and weedy lots. He passed just two or three a day, and they'd been thinning. Walt had the impression he was about to head into a true American wilderness where you might go dozens of miles without encountering a single home or gas station. He'd passed a small town earlier that day; if he backtracked along the road, he might be able to make it in five or six hours.

It would lose him a day of travel. Not that he had some neurosurgery appointment awaiting him in Los Angeles. Getting there in January would be no different from getting there in December. Did he have to keep going at all? Like pausing on a magazine ad before flipping to the next story, he entertained the thought of stopping, of finding a house back in the suburbs of Albuquerque and just...staying. But he knew he would hate it, rooting through the houses of the dead for boxes of Rice Krispies and rolls of toilet paper, returning home to watch from the window while the shadows stretched across the street. He had a goal in LA. He had a goal, and however arbitrary it might be, he was enjoying its pursuit.

He headed for the rising western road. He pushed harder than his standard pace, meaning to make the most of these last minutes of light; without the heavy bags, it felt easy, oddly fun, like leaving work early when no one will notice. He'd left his coat in the bag and the night was cool and getting cooler. The sun slotted into a notch in the mountains and sunk into another part of the world. He felt like a lone hunter, keenly aware that his survival was now on the line. He hadn't had such a strong sense of purpose in ages. Possibly, he never had—he needed to find food, water, and shelter, and the only way to do it was to walk on. Meaning through purpose: that was the lesson of the end of the world.

This feeling lasted until the cool became the cold of the high desert. Walt was tired and thirsty. He envisioned himself lying in the dirt beside the road, weeds prickling his bare arms, woken repeatedly by his own shivers, the gusting breeze, the furtive rustles of rodents seeking seeds. With no idea whether the next town was thirty miles away or just around the next bend, he began to make deals with himself, promising to lie down and try to get some sleep in another half hour, and when that half hour turned out to be a dull stretch of empty moonlit roadside, to go for another ten minutes, and when those ten minutes went by, just another five, because anyone can walk for five minutes—until finally, with an audible sigh, he dropped off the road into the dust, found a rock-free patch of dirt, and balled up, one arm pillowing his head, the other tucked inside his shirt for warmth.

His stomach gurgled. Whenever he woke, which was often, his tongue was so dry he had to wipe it around his teeth until it no longer felt like the arm of a desiccated starfish. After a little less than three hours, he was shivering too hard to go back to sleep. He got up, stretched, silently cursed out the aliens, and walked on, jogging intermittently once it grew light enough to see the road was clear. When it warmed up, he napped in the partial shade of a waist-high bush that smelled like pollen and dried-out sage.

The land rolled on, bristly yellow weeds over scabby gray dirt. Walt was already starting to think about slicing off parts of the bushes and gnawing them for moisture or trying to shoot a rabbit with his pistol and drink the blood. He should have carried three bags, not two, with the third a fanny pack or neck-pouch filled with the critical essentials: bottled water, high-energy food like fruit and nuts and dried meat, a couple of lighters and bandages, an extra box of bullets, and a thermal blanket. Enough to keep him healthy and focused for a couple days if he ever again had to ditch the rest of his gear.

Assuming he lived, he'd get right on that.

He hadn't even thought twice about drinking his own urine before he turned a bend into a spread of houses down the hill. An obvious main street, a tic-tac-toe board of side roads, a few splashes of persistent green among the shriveled yellow lawns and wind-driven dust. A place where a few hundred humans had once lived among the luxuries and conveniences of the era.

A 76 station waited at the edge of town, gas prices fixed at $3.19 for 87-grade. A dust devil twirled in from the neighboring desert, spinning itself out over the hot pavement. For a minute, Walt just waited, letting his senses sense and his instincts instinct. He crossed the lot and stepped inside.

The shelves had been emptied. Completely. The fridges, too, even of the rotting, clotted milk cartons he'd expected to find there. The trash cans offered the butt of a hot dog, now reduced to a foam of dry brown mold. The bathroom key was still under the register. Walt went inside the dark room to try the faucets just for fun. They didn't work.

A small local supermarket sat down the block, shopping carts rusting beside the cars, front windows smashed out. The front rows were just as empty as the gas station. He walked into the gloom of the back of the store, shuffling his feet, trailing one arm along the dusty shelves. Of the few objects he found—packaged rubber gloves, rawhide dog bones, boxes of toothpicks and straws—none were edible or potable. Something like frustration expanded from the center of his chest, squeezing his organs, but the emotion had a rawer, wriggling edge to it: the bone-deep animal panic that he might never taste food or water again. He found three boxes of something powdery, flour, possibly, or muffin mix, and shuffled for better light. Nope. Baking powder. Son of a bitch.

"Hold up there." A man's voice echoed among the scoured aisles. Walt dropped his boxes and went for his pistol. A hammer clicked. Through the sun-dazzle on his dark-adjusted eyes, Walt made out a man's silhouette, his arms extended, a pack clinging to his shoulders. "What do you think you're doing?"

It took two tries before Walt could speak around his dry throat. "Trying to find something to drink."

"You won't," the man said. "We took it."

"From the whole town?"

The man nodded. Walt could see a little better now, well enough to make out the man's brambly brown beard, his slight paunch, his t-shirt and cargo shorts.

"That seems excessive," Walt said.

"Not when nobody's making anything new." The man flicked his pistol. "Set down your gun and walk out the door."

Walt dropped his cocked elbows a couple inches. "I just want some water. Something to eat. Just enough to get me to the next town."

"Got anything to trade?"

He started a mental inventory of his packs before remembering he had nothing but his clothes and the contents of those clothes' pockets. The aliens had once more taken everything from him: first Vanessa, then his family and his friends, and as if that hadn't been enough, as a final measure they'd swung by in person to take away his food and his water, his sleeping bag and cookware and all the rest. He smiled. He knew he wasn't being personally persecuted, that he wasn't the human Job to their alien Jehovah, but he couldn't help feeling that way. Honestly, at some point it had crossed the line, become too much and too absurd to maintain his anger towards. He could still feel it there, deep down, but right now what he really wanted to do was laugh.

"No," he said. "Lost everything but what you see."

"Then put down your gun, walk out those doors, and get on down the road."

"How about you be a proper host and give me something to drink? That way I won't stink up your nice little town when my body collapses on Main Street."

The bearded man shook his head. "Don't make me ask a third time."

Walt squinted. The man's voice was young; eyes adjusting to the sunlight, Walt saw his face was, too. Not any older than himself. No doubt a local—no traveler would have pitched a permanent tent in this desolate place—one of at least two survivors, because he'd said "we," but no more than five, ten at the very outside, given Panhandler survival rates. Walt's gut said it was fewer. Possibly just the kid and his girlfriend. He had just enough to lose to be afraid to risk leaving this place in search of somewhere better.

A town's worth of food between two people. Laying claim to it by virtue of their ability to take it—so if they refused to share, with himself in danger of dying as a result, did that allow him to just take from them what he needed? He set this kettle of thought on the backburner—he did possess something he doubted they had, actually, way out in this nowhereland.

"I've got information."

The kid's pistol drooped fractionally. "About what?"

"The Panhandler. Where it came from."

"The Midwest, Iowa or somewhere. Some big pig farm where they grew piglets in vats."

Walt laughed. "I wish all we had to worry about were pigs. I've seen the truth, and if you want it, it'll cost you—" He did some quick mental arithmetic of what would get him through the next couple days. "To the tune of three bottles of water and four candy bars. Alternately, two cans of soup or ravioli, or one bag of potato chips. Family-size."

The kid shook his bearded face. "Two bottles of water, one Butterfinger, and one fun-sized bag of barbecue Lays."

Silly, considering the info he was about to pass on could save the kid's life, but unless Walt was about to cross into Death Valley (which he was pretty sure, but not absolutely so, was a ways into California), it should be enough to keep him going. Anyway, giving up the info wouldn't cost him anything, and he really wanted water. He stuck out his hand.

"Deal."

The kid lowered his pistol. "Was it the CDC, then? Like the smallpox got out? Or mutated Black Death from India?"

Walt couldn't help smiling. "Aliens."

"Aliens?"

"Aliens. From outer space."

The guy's beard ruffled, his brows knotting. "Come on, dude. I'm serious."

"Same here."

"Yeah." The kid waved his free hand at the sunny street past the windows. "I don't see any Martians out there."

"Well, that's because you're kind of nowhere."

"How do you know, then?"

"I've seen one. It attacked me and I killed it. They look kind of squiddy and spidery. Crabby, maybe. Definitely something with a shell and little pinchy-claws and—"

The other man shut his eyes and waved his splayed palm, as if suffering a flutter of chest pain. "Stop it. Please, just walk out of here and leave town."

"Where's my snacks?"

"Come on. You don't know anything."

Walt regarded him silently. He had no way to prove it. No pilfered laser guns or floating holo-balls or stuffed severed heads. Nothing more convincing than his word. They'd had a deal and he'd told the truth. Somehow this felt more important than the fact that leaving without water could be a death sentence. They had a deal. The kid had broken their deal because why not? There was no one around to enforce it. It wasn't a covenant carved on stone tablets, the violation of which would result in a punishment of locusts and plagues. It was just a fleeting arrangement, something the kid could yank back if, in his own judgment, the rules no longer applied.

It wasn't much. The kind of snack you would pop down to the bodega for on a stoned afternoon. A few calories of matter and ounces of fluid. The kid probably had as much in his pack right now. If he and his girlfriend had really rounded up everything in town, they had enough to last for years. Likely it would go bad before they could consume it all. Yet the kid clung to it, likely from some combination of righteous principle (Walt had "lied" to him) and the baseless, instinctual terror of want that manifested itself in greed. The toddler's pout that it's mine and you can't have it. If the snacks and water in question just disappeared, the kid wouldn't miss them in the slightest. To Walt, it was the difference between reaching the next town or in collapsing in the weeds three days from now, gum-eyed, gazing at the faraway clouds.

"Give me what we agreed on," Walt said.

"If you'd done what we agreed on you'd be munching on that Butterfinger right now. Instead you try to feed me some cock-and-bull story about..." The kid mashed his lips together, fluffing his beard. "Invading ETs here for our Reese's."

"If I were a betting man, and I could trust the guy I was betting with to actually give me my stupid fucking bag of fun-size chips, I would bet they sent the disease to soften us up. You don't need to bring many tanks and shit when you can just wipe us out with galactic ebola."

"I don't want to hear any more of this stupid crap! Just get out and—"

Rage splashed Walt like a bucket of paint, shocking and vivid and total. He flicked up his pistol and fired into the right side of the kid's chest. The bang rang down the empty aisles. The kid spun, hands sprawling, gun skiddering away. He flopped on his face and gasped. As Walt walked up, he struggled to a seated position, left hand clamped to his upper chest, and kicked his heels at the floor, scooting away.

"You shot me!"

Blood pattered the white tile, coppery and hot. "And you might die. But you might not. I think that's pretty good."

"You shot me!"

Walt was almost annoyed enough to plug him again. "I heard you the first time, you god damn whiner. We're going to make a new deal right now. Is there food and water in your pack?"

The kid nodded, skin blanched beneath his beard. "The water and candy, plus some—"

"I'm going to take that and your gun. You're going to stay here and keep quiet for fifteen minutes while I leave town. Don't try to come after me. In exchange, I won't shoot you dead and go rape your girlfriend before I kill her too."

He'd been guessing about the girlfriend; the guy had something keeping him here, and Walt hadn't seen a wedding ring. Given the dread, hatred, and terror wrestling for possession of the kid's face, Walt guessed he'd guessed right.

"You leave her alone."

"I will. Now give me your pack."

The man gaped. Walt twitched the pistol. The kid winced and slipped the pack's straps from his shoulders. He held out the bag, left hand slick and red and shaking. Walt took it and backed off and crouched down to fight with the zipper. Metal-foil packaging, crinkling wrappers, ribbed clear bottles. Walt shouldered it and picked up the fallen pistol.

The kid stared at him, eyes bright with pain. "Don't you touch her."

"Don't worry," Walt said. "We have a deal."

He walked out the front door, half expecting a melodic beep from the dead sensor. Sunlight struck his skin. He jogged down the main street. He was thirsty as hell, but he didn't pause for a drink or a bite of the crispy Butterfinger until he was a half mile beyond the trailers and adobe houses shimmering in the still-hot autumn sun. He didn't see anyone on the road behind him. For a moment, he imagined going to a bar to meet the kid and his girlfriend, who would be a little chunky but pretty in an alternative way, a lopsided haircut and a nose with a strangely attractive lift to its tip, and they'd laugh over beers and argue but in a friendly way about Pynchon being over- or underrated and whether Nolan was the new Kubrick. He didn't think the kid would die of the gunshot; of infection, maybe, but not blood loss or internal damage. The pair had scoured the whole town. They'd have the antibiotics to get by.

Walt reached the next town in a little under two hours. He smiled wryly as he entered a mini-mart and loaded soups and soda and bottled water into the pack.

He broke into a silent two-story house, checked for bodies, then napped in the upstairs bedroom. At dusk, groggy, he found a backpack and filled it with a blanket, a can opener, a couple of cooking knives, a fork and a butter knife and a spoon, packets of kitchen matches illustrated with old presidents, two flannel shirts, a metal cup, some Band-Aids and Neosporin, a small and a large pair of scissors, some balled-up gold-toe socks, a couple of too-large shirts, and an unopened bottle of scotch. With the sun sinking into the mountains, he had a few slugs from a half-empty fifth of Jack Daniels, his elbows resting on the stone-capped island in the darkening kitchen. It didn't feel the way it used to. An empty habit. He left the bottle on the island.

Days came and went. He watched the skies, saw nothing but clouds. For all he knew the aliens had left. He crossed into Arizona. The days began to cool, the nights to freeze in the high hills; he slept in houses when he could find them. He saw some signs of others, smoke rising from chimneys, now and then a distant engine, but even fewer hints than before. Maybe the survivors were hiding. Maybe they'd simply run out of food.

More mountains, more desert, hours passed picking through houses, adding binoculars, a Swiss army knife, a lightweight sleeping bag, Bic lighters, gel ink pens, canned and packaged food, bits of wire and string, a replacement pair of shoes (keeping his old ones in the replacement duffel), a carton of Camels which he smoked as the mood struck him. There was an odd purpose in his exploring and gathering, a deeply-rooted need that left him serenely Zen-like. He entered houses looking for nothing in particular, picking through the dusty objects in drawers and closets, turning them over in his hands, contemplating their manifold uses, discarding the overspecialized and the no longer necessary, taking only the emergency and the everyday. Once, a rifle shot crackled over his head on his way through the middle of a town. He traveled overland until his water began to run down. He didn't resent the shot. A warning, no more. That was how you did things. Make your intentions clear, then follow through.

Somewhere in the desert, but a less-desert where green things were possible and scraggly trees grew in the folds of the hills, he stopped, stone-still, and reached for his binoculars. A mile off the highway, cone-like structures rose amidst the weeds and shrubs, steep and deep blue and thirty or forty feet tall, a few higher and thicker. Spindly-limbed things sidled among the tall cones, pausing to do things Walt was too far away to see. Hemispherical ground vehicles glided over the dirt on a blur of motion that could be treads or dozens of short legs. Perhaps a hundred or more of the cones, a couple dozen of the creatures, a handful of the cars.

It took Walt an embarrassingly long time to realize he was looking at a city.

19

Blue bolts licked the darkness, touching the clouds and disappearing as if they'd never been there at all. The shot woman lay facedown in the street, shins propped on the sidewalk. Raymond braked, the rubber of his tires grabbing hard at the pavement, and dropped to his feet. The air smelled like burnt hot dogs. The woman's eyes were shut. Her ribs swelled within her camouflage shirt. On her left lower back, a scorched hole exuded a wisp of smoke. The wound was dime-shaped and puzzlingly devoid of blood. On the beach eighty feet below and a couple hundred yards away, dark figures shouted and ran, lit by sporadic bursts of rattling gunfire and electric blue lasers. Armored aliens splashed along the tideline.

"Are you awake?" Raymond said over the hollers and bangs. "Can you move?"

She stirred, groping at the asphalt, lifting her short-haired head to blink at him. "Help me."

He'd let his bike drop to the ground. Mia sat on hers a few yards away, staring unreadably. He propped up his bike and gestured hard. Mia pedaled forward and pulled to a stop.

"Raymond. Aliens with lasers. We have to go."

"Help me get her up!"

She opened her mouth to say more, then gave one abrupt shake of her head and knelt beside the struggling woman. They hooked their hands under her armpits, guiding her to her feet. Raymond shouldered her weight. She groaned, face pinched.

"What now?" Mia said. "Think you can cram her into your basket?"

"Get on the seat," Raymond said to the woman clinging to his shoulders. She licked her lips and reached out with one hand, leaning clumsily for the seat. He helped her lift her leg over the bar, then, with Mia supporting the bike, knocked out its kickstand and jumped on. The woman wrapped her arms around his middle. A searing white blast rocked the beach below, followed by a huge, gut-thumping crump. As Raymond pushed off, wobbling, falling sand tickled his face and hissed on the sidewalk.

He biked for the hill, Mia just ahead of him. It was hard work, a strain on his thighs and his balance; if he hadn't spent the last several months gardening, surfing, hiking around, and hauling wood and water from place to place, he might not have made it. A man screamed from the beach, a long wail that penetrated the staccato thunder of gunfire. A blue line flashed over their heads. Raymond didn't risk looking back. A widely-spaced row of mansions appeared along the rising cliff, buffering them from the battle on the beach. Mia kept glancing back at him, face tight. A light fog enshrouded them. The sounds of battle became hollow, spectral, echoing in the cliffs, fighting with the thump of the surf. A deep buzz mounted to a crushing bass, then dopplered away. Seconds later, a string of explosions formed a constellation across the beach. The injured woman grunted. Raymond opened his mouth to ask if she was okay, but was silenced by a rolling wave of tremendous booms.

Things got a lot quieter after that. A few bursts of gunfire, a couple of shouts. Mostly nothing but the slow rhythm of the breakers folding over the shore. The silence was more frightening than the clamor and ruckus of the battle.

Mia unlocked the chained gates. Raymond stopped in the driveway. The woman was awake enough to dismount, eyelids fluttering in pain.

"Get inside," Mia whispered. "Get inside, get inside, get inside."

"We're getting," Raymond said. He helped the woman up the steps, then reached down for one of the flashlights they kept inside beside the door. With the light on, he froze, his mind clicking in dry little circles. He had no idea what to do, where to start.

"We should get her upstairs," Mia said, as if sensing his paralysis. "One of the spare rooms."

"Yeah." He pulled his head back to face the woman. "Think you can climb some stairs?"

"This is a nice house," she said in a dried-out voice.

"That's why we stole it."

Flashlight in his free hand, hugging her ribs with his other arm, he led her step by step to the second floor. Below, Mia rattled around in the closet where they kept their medicine. Raymond stumbled the woman into the room next to theirs and maneuvered her beside the bed. She went unconscious the moment she left his shoulder, thumping leadenly into the comforter, legs dangling off the bed's edge. Gingerly, he swung her feet up and rolled her on her back, then, after checking the curtains were drawn, went to their bedroom for candles.

Mia popped into the room with bottles and bandages just as he finished unbuttoning the woman's camo jacket. "What are you doing?"

Raymond gave her a look. "Not that. Give me a hand here."

The woman's smooth belly was unmarred. They stripped off the jacket, flinging it to the side of the room, and rolled her on her stomach. The wound penetrated some two or three inches into her back, black-fringed, just wide enough that Raymond could have stuck his little finger inside, a bizarre, sudden desire he quashed as quickly as he'd had it. There was almost no blood. Just erratic drops that slid through the invisibly fine hairs on her back.

Raymond sat back on the bed. "So, what? We just sort of clean her up?"

Mia pursed her lips and gave a little shrug. "Then slap a bandage on her. I don't really think it will matter."

He glugged rubbing alcohol on a fistful of cotton, breathing through his mouth to avoid its sharp smothering scent. "But she's hardly bleeding."

"What, you've never watched a medical drama? Shock? Infection?"

"We've got some antibiotics." He swabbed the edges of the wound, the hot red circle surrounding it. The task was both disgusting and automatic, the kind of thing that would make him shudder with revulsion if he gave it a moment's thought. Would they have been better off leaving her for a medic on the beach? Then again, everyone there had been blown up or driven off.

"Will they be the right kind for whatever infects her?" Mia patted a wad of cloth over the woman's back and, with Raymond holding her up by her shoulders, began winding a long tan bandage around her middle. "I just don't think people with big dirty holes gouged through them have very high survival rates."

He supposed she was right. If so, he thought the woman's death would be a failure, a nullification of whatever he'd achieved in getting her out of the combat zone. But trying to do what's right in the moment it's happening—isn't that all you can do? Mia clipped the bandage in place. He blew out the candles and went out to bring the bikes inside. Later, in bed together, the door open in case the woman called out, Mia touched his shoulder.

"That was a crazy thing to do, do you realize that?"

"She'd just been shot."

"I'm not saying it was the wrong thing to do."

"Oh."

"But if something had happened to you—what would I have done?"

"Grabbed a baseball bat and raced down to the beach to hit some alien-head dingers, I bet." He smiled over a small pang of annoyance. Nothing bad had actually happened. Instead, they might have saved someone's life. Now more than ever—cliched as he knew it was—that was one of the most important things in the world. Too much longer like this, and there might not be any of them left at all.

* * *

Her name was Sarah Campbell. She woke two days later, calling for water, sweating through her tank top. After they'd explained what happened and where she was, she told them about the attack on the beach by the Bear Republic Rebels, a resistance movement of soldiers and civilians based somewhere in the northern mountains. They'd come to Redondo to—well, she couldn't say; to find something, or to find something out, Raymond gleaned that much, but Sarah grew elusive whenever she began to approach anything like a fact about the mission. She was somewhat less vague about the BRR: a few hundred members and growing, some access to weapons and vehicles, in sporadic contact with several other cells around the world. All working towards the same rather obvious goal. So far, they hadn't had much luck.

"They've just got the one big ship." Mia gazed down at Sarah's pale, dirt-streaked face, her close blonde hair. "Why doesn't someone just nuke them?"

"They tried. Russia. The ship shot down the missile, then carpet-bombed St. Petersburg. Same deal in India. Not just incendiaries. Some chemical thing that poisons whatever's left of the rubble."

"But only after we strike first?"

"Seems so."

Mia frowned. "So we've got the choice of sitting on our thumbs and getting wiped out day by day and month by month, or taking a swing and getting annihilated all at once."

Sarah nodded, wincing. "Aliens seem content to kill us at their leisure so long as we don't try anything stupid. We need to start thinking sneaky instead of flashy."

"Are the Bear Republic Rebels accepting recruits?" Raymond said.

"Always."

He glanced at Mia. "What do you think?"

Sarah struggled upright. A waft of pus and burnt meat rose with her. "You don't want any part of that."

"Those things have been going door to door," Mia said. "The only way we stay here long-term is in a mass grave."

"Like it's any different if you try to fight back? Did you see what happened on the beach? The fucking hole in my back?"

"If you'd seen what's been going on here—"

"Look, it doesn't matter, okay? They blew up most of the airfields from orbit. Even the ones they missed, you think our pilots had a miracle cure? They're just as dead as the generals and the Marines and the guys who drove the tanks. Word is the enemy is setting up manufacturing plants. They'll wear us down until we're spraying AKs at their fighters like the god damn Taliban. Better to run off to the woods and live out our lives than get massacred like we did down on the beach." Sarah wilted back among the sheets, suddenly pale, sweat glistening on her brow and on her chest above her tank top. "You guys have each other, all right? You need to hang onto that."

"Speaking of which," Raymond said a moment later, "we've got some work to do. Just holler if you need anything."

"Thank you," she said softly. "And thanks. For picking me up."

"Didn't seem to me like I had a choice."

They didn't really have much to do—clean up the bikes, maybe, but it was still too light out to risk feeding the chickens or tending the garden—but Raymond knew when a person needed some time to themselves. In the garage, he and Mia oiled the bikes amidst the soupy, clinging, asphalty fumes. Yellowish fluid grimed his fingernails. Mechanics had always made intuitive sense to Raymond, fitting as neatly to his stolid, careful mind as the bike's chains fitted to their gears. He wished he'd pursued such things years ago, learning to maintain cars and work simple machines, unknowingly preparing for this blown-out present. Could have earned them a good living in the meantime, too. If he'd had a few more years, maybe he could have made it as an artist and graphic designer, but there'd been no guarantees; given everything that had happened over the last eight-odd months, he felt regretful he hadn't been more practical, resentful that he'd chased his dream at the expense of their future.

Mia wiped oil from her fingers with an old shirt. "What do you think?"

"I think if these bikes get any greasier we can fry them for dinner."

"About the resistance. The BRR."

He sat back, sweating lightly. "You want to go?"

"It makes sense, doesn't it? If we're going to fight back, we have to do it now. Before they're settled in. While there's still enough of us to matter."

"Yep."

"Wait, you agree?"

"It's one thing to run off to the mountains when it sounds like everybody else has thrown up their hands and walked off. But if we ran and hid now—" He set down a wrench with a small metal click. "What if we wound up with a kid some day? Knowing it was just a matter of time before some alien ship spotted the smoke from our chimney?"

"You're cute when you're trying to predict the future." Her grin faded, gradual as a sunset. "Then there's Sarah."

"She can come with if she wants. If not, I don't see why we can't leave her the house."

"She'll need recovery time."

"You normally do when you're shot in the back."

"If we have to go before she's better, can you leave her behind?"

He cocked his head. "Let's do whatever we can to prevent ourselves from having to answer that. Like getting another bike."

Mia nodded with a drawn-in little smile that told him she'd already decided for herself. Patrols buzzed the skies the next few days, pinning them inside until the middle of the night. Then they went to the yard to gather eggs and lettuce and slosh around water for the plants and dry corn for the chickens. Sarah slept a lot. Raymond spent some time thinking about how to get the BRR's exact location out of her despite her being dead set against ever seeing them again. The rains came back, dampening the October days, shrouding them in cloud and mist. Sarah began to walk by herself, to empty her own bucket by day and plod to the latrine in the corner of the yard by night. She showed no signs of infection. Once she was able to walk easy, and with the patrols diminished to a scattering of lone ships around the city proper, Raymond took Sarah out for a tour of the grounds.

She watched the chickens peck at the fog-dewed grass. "Where'd you find those guys?"

He gestured into the hills. "Up there somewhere."

"Suppose there must be plenty of loot out there if you look hard enough." She stretched. She'd taken a bath earlier, her first proper one since arriving. Her short blonde hair had feathered out a bit, buffeted by the unsteady sea breeze. Moonlight caught the freckles on her bare, toned shoulders. "And a garden, too. You two self-sufficient?"

"Some of the plants are still coming in," he said. "I think we would have been by next spring, summer. There'd be more than enough preserves to see us through then."

"Why in hell would you want to run off and join the army when you got a house and a garden above the sea?"

"Why are you so quick to run off after one setback?"

She gave him a hard-eyed gaze that looked for a second like it would lead to punching. That look burned off, replaced by a flicker of humorless laughter. "It wasn't the first." Her tone was worn-out, resigned. "You think anyone got off that beach? Besides me?"

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

"Anyone who ran got hunted down. They always are. Only thing for us to do is melt into the wilderness and hope they'll let us live in peace."

"Well, no matter what Axl Rose says, this isn't exactly the wilderness. We have to go."

Absently, Sarah stroked her upper arms. "That's too bad. You built something special here."

"It only took a few months of work. We can do the same somewhere else."

She gave him a long look, heavy with an emotional calculus he couldn't integrate. "You could, couldn't you."

While Sarah slept that night, Raymond combed the neighborhood until he found a third bicycle. He didn't see any sign of people or aliens during the hour he was out. On the way back, he heard the whine of a jet engine, but it was far off, obscured by the dark and the mist.

He woke to the sound of screaming. Sarah lay in bed, pale and sweating, the muscles of her arms and legs as tight as piano strings. He checked her wound. It had scabbed about an inch below her surrounding skin, but it looked no worse from when he'd helped change her bandage a few days earlier. Raymond gestured Mia out of the room.

"I think she's infected."

"Her skin doesn't look red."

"It could be something internal. Or in her bones. I don't know, I'm not a doctor-man."

Mia swept stringy hair from her face. She'd kept up combing it, but they'd had to ration their water more strictly since Sarah's arrival, and she hadn't bathed in days. "We've only got so much medicine."

"We've got boxes of it."

"Enough to last another forty years?"

He set his mouth. "If we don't give her anything and she dies, you get to haul her corpse out of here by yourself."

"Jesus." Mia laughed, startling him, "Did you ever think we'd be having a discussion like this? Threatening each other with dead bodies? What happened?"

"I don't know." He laughed with her in a way that felt very strange. They gave Sarah an antibiotic twice a day, parceled out painkillers. At night she staggered to the latrine and Raymond helped her back to bed. Mia set up three packs with food, water, meds, lighters, knives, extra socks and shoes, a knife and fork and spoon, lightweight blankets. She packed the pockets of three coats with extra gear—needles and thread, boxes of ammo, a small wrench set and spare nuts and bolts for the bikes, some string and wire and flashlights and matches.

Not that Sarah was in any shape to ride if something happened. Without speaking, he and Mia had agreed on that much. They hadn't again broached what they'd do if they had to leave and she couldn't. No use risking a fight over something that might never happen.

He began to hope that decision would stay hypothetical as Sarah's health picked back up. Over the next couple weeks, she was walking on her own, if weakly, and coming out to sit beneath the deck to watch them work the yard or to smile down on the dark waves. He asked her about the BRR on a few occasions, including where exactly they were located, but she brushed him off each time.

"I think you're nice people," she said over the ruffle of surf. "Fact, I know you are. Most people would have left me by that beach to learn who's better at scooping up dead meat: outer-space aliens or California sea gulls. You wouldn't give the BRR up to the invaders. Not like most."

Raymond sipped his water. "Then what's the problem?"

"You're good people. I can't help good people sign up to get slaughtered."

"Don't you think that should be our decision?"

She gave him another one of her long gazes, full lips parted, eyes flickering with a strange mercy quickly quashed. "Me and my boyfriend went into the movement together. Adam. Looked a little like you but more muscle. He'd been in the army—Iraq. 18 months. We lived in Bakersfield, which fell apart as fast as anywhere else. Didn't matter with Adam. He got us out before the worst hit and found us a farm by the hills. It's pretty dry there. I didn't see how we'd last any longer than it took the apples to rot off the trees.

"I think he could have done it. He'd done some stuff in Iraq, which is hardly any wetter—digging wells, outhouses, all the things you have to do to make living in a shithole a little less shitty. Anyway, it was just the two of us. You don't need a ton of good land to feed two people.

"We saw the ships a few months later. Don't know what they were doing way out in BFE. Checking out the old oil fields, maybe. They sure spent a lot of time poking around the derricks. Their mistake. Third time they came by the same field, Adam was waiting for them. Mowed them all down with an M-16, then dynamited their ship. When another one flew in to see what had got the first, he and his buddy Chris took them out, too.

"Long story short, he talks me into joining this resistance group he's heard about on his ham, and the two of us and Chris drive off to this lake outside LA to find this group of ex-Marines and Navy and so forth. At first it's mostly scouting the aliens out, intel, and we can't believe the things we're seeing—groups of people rounded up and executed in the streets, others hauled off in these makeshift handcuffs for God knows what. Once we get a read on their movements, we start hitting 'em. Taking down their scouts. Adam booby-trapped their patrol routes with IEDs. Took out more than a few. Learned a few things, too. They look an awful lot alike, you know. Not just because they're fucked-up aliens. Their height, their features, their claws—hardly any difference from one to the other. Like they're clones, or hive-born.

"Then they started to crack down. Kicked our asses whenever we tried to penetrate the city. Somebody in charge gets a brilliant idea for an amphibious smash-and-grab down in Redondo. Me and Adam were on the same boat along with the rest of our platoon. Had an engine, but we paddled in to come in under the radar, so to speak. We got the salt-spray coming in with every splash and the waves weren't big but you feel every inch in your stomach. Whole place is dark. The breakers start to push us in hard and the next thing you know we're grinding sand. We jump out into the surf and rush up to the rally point at a lifeguard station.

"Only Adam doesn't make it. This blue bolt just cuts him down right above the tideline. His head, it makes this popping noise, and my face is stinging and hot and I'm standing there wearing his brains, his skull. I'm screaming. Everything's going to shit—lasers, bullets, shouting, aliens up on the ridge just wasting everybody. I don't even remember what's next. I'm running up the ramp, I'm up on the sidewalk, and one of those blue flashes lights me up, too."

She'd been gazing out to sea, to the constant wash of waves over sand. She turned to him now, fixing him with fever-bright blue eyes.

"If Adam couldn't make it, if he just dies there like he was nothing at all, what shot would you have?"

"Not much, probably." He didn't know what else could be said. They sat in silence until she started shivering. He helped her inside.

Maybe her infection broke. Maybe lifting Adam's weight from her shoulders made each step a little lighter. Whatever the case, within days Sarah was up and about on her own, if visibly thinner and paler. Raymond fed her more spinach with her salads, slaughtered one of the chickens and left the fat on when he cooked it. She began to smile, to help them weed the garden at night, sprinkling water on the peppers and lettuce and herbs, sweeping out the ground floor and the back porch without asking.

She looked good. On the mend. Strong enough to walk, if not to ride a bike for more than a few blocks.

Just when Raymond thought he might be able to talk her into leaving with them—to Colorado, if not the BRR forces—the aliens came to the base of the hills, spraying long plumes of fire from their racketing, hemispherical tanks. The world erupted in heat and flame.

20

He wanted to kill them.

Cold, cruel vengeance. To kill every living thing in that alien city growing from Earth soil. Walt imagined wrenching their tough-skinned limbs right from their sockets and snapping them over his knee. Stabbing their bulbous squid-eyes. Slashing open their bodies and watching their knotty guts and mucosal blood soak into the desert floor.

Not very wise, attacking a camp of hundreds by himself, armed only with a pistol and a couple of knives. Not very wise at all. But he wanted it so bad it felt as if he'd already done it. He spun through the possibilities—rush in, shoot as many as he could, steal a ship, blast off—but he wouldn't know how to fly it, would he, and they would just track him down and destroy him. Sneak in under cover of darkness instead, knife them in their beds (did they have beds?), skulk away. That one was at least plausible. He had the idea their eyes, for all their size, weren't so good. Before killing it, he'd crouched immediately below the one he'd fought in the stream, and it hadn't seen him until he moved.

Still, risking his life to kill a handful of aliens hardly seemed worth it. The blue cones in the distance could house at least a couple hundred of them, and with no sign of their scout ships, let alone the mothership or invasion fleet that must have carried them here, he had to guess Earth now housed several thousand of the creatures at the very least. Not worth it. If he still had the itch to stomp some aliens after he made it to LA, he had the feeling they'd be around.

He rose to a low crouch, meaning to slink along the brush and weeds until he'd cleared line of sight, when a large, dust-spewing version of the hemispherical vehicles trundled to the edge of the buildings, parked a short ways from a tall, spindly cone-tower, and disgorged 25-odd naked humans into the sunlight.

Walt sunk back down behind a prickly brown bush. He watched as, in what he took to be the universal sign of oppression, three aliens with rods or guns of some sort herded the people into a simple pen—he couldn't see the wires, and for all he knew the creatures used force fields to fence off their livestock, but it was a rectangle set off by a series of twenty-foot poles, anyway, and the captives stayed inside even when two of the aliens disappeared into the nearby cone-tower.

The humans milled about, some cupping their hands over their genitals, others not bothering. A couple of people tried to talk, but from what Walt could see, nobody was much interested in chatting.

The first person to sit down did so after just five minutes, easing himself onto the flat dirt. He was joined over the next few minutes by a couple of others. The bulk stayed standing for nearly an hour until, within the span of a single minute, all but three of the captives lowered themselves to the ground.

Walt sipped water, chewed some crackers. The late afternoon sun had been plenty warm while he'd been walking but was now wholly neutral. He'd spent enough weeks in these high deserts to know that, an hour after sunset, it would be downright cold.

Maybe the woman who started throwing rocks had reached the same conclusion. Maybe she simply didn't like being penned like a human chicken. Walt couldn't say. He just watched as the woman knelt, scooped several somethings from the dirt, and began hurling the somethings—rocks, most likely, but it was too far to see—at the tall poles.

The woman stopped a moment later and tipped back her head toward the blue cone-tower. She slung out her arms, waving violently, possibly shouting, then knelt for more rocks. When she resumed throwing, it was at the tower.

A blue line speared from the structure, so brief and faint Walt couldn't be certain he'd seen it. The woman crumpled straight down. Around her, the others leapt up screaming, crowding away from the sudden death.

The sun was most of the way to the hills before the aliens went in the pen to bring out the body.

Activity elsewhere in the city calmed down, the ground vehicles parking along the unpaved streets, most of the aliens dispersing into the steep, conical buildings. The people gathered into a huddle just before sunset. After, most of them filed one by one to a corner of the pen, where each squatted for a minute before drifting away to a seat in the dirt.

Walt already had his plan, so much as you could call it that. He watched through the settling darkness. A single light popped on from a high corner of the pen, casting the field in a twilight of long shadows. The rest of the camp or city or whatever the hell it was sat under a similarly half-hearted light. Lack of resources? Or already complacent that nothing and no one would be coming at them from the darkness?

Walt napped. He woke a couple hours later, watching the tower while his brain and body woke up. This time, he took his pack with him.

He moved past the camp, then cut across the open field, pausing at intervals to scan the grounds through his binoculars. No searchlights fanned out from above. No alarms wailed through the night. When Walt was within a quarter mile of the pen, one of the vehicles lumbered from the far side of the city heading for the highway. He dropped prone, waited for its bluish lights to swing onto the road and fade into the distance.

He crawled the last hundred yards on his belly. Dust swirled in his nostrils. Rocks jabbed his stomach. This close, he could make out the wires enclosing the pen, electric or something like it.

Everyone inside looked asleep. As he crawled up to the pen's edge, a young woman lifted her head, arms barred over her breasts.

"Who's out there?"

"Shut up," Walt hissed. "Put your hands above your head."

Hesitantly, she raised her hands, shivering. With her back to the light, it was too dark to get much of a look, but Walt smiled anyway.

"I'm kidding. My name's Walt. I'm—"

"What are you doing out there?"

"No time for questions. This fence—"

"I asked first. What are you doing here?"

"Getting you out of there." He pointed at the wires enclosing the grounds. "Is that electric? How does it work?"

"How should I know? For all I know it's sorcery."

Again Walt smiled. "How many of them are in the tower?"

Her shoulders rose to meet the edge of her dark hair. "Three? Nine million? I haven't been making them sign in and out."

That jibed with what he'd seen, though who knows what they'd been up to while he'd slept. "Listen. I'm an idiot, so I'm going to go inside that building and try to disable the fence. I need you to wake up the others and tell them to get ready to move. If any of them makes a peep, I'm running away without looking back."

She squinted at him, leaning closer to the wires, long legs silhouetted. With some will, he stopped himself from glancing at her crotch.

"Who are you?"

He put a finger to his lips. "Take care of business. I'll take care of mine."

She watched him turn away. By the time he crawled to the deep blue face of the tower, he heard her whispering to the others, shushing their confusion. He drew his longest knife, a Vietnam-era-type combat knife with a seven-inch blade and a broken compass in its pommel. The door was just a little too wide and a little too tall and sported a T-shaped handle on its right-hand side. Purely mechanical. It opened without trouble; either their door technology wasn't up to par with their interstellar travel, or they were way out in their version of the boonies. Walt supposed that sort of limitation explained why they'd only managed to kill 99% of humanity so far instead of the whole damn thing.

The door opened to a tight, spartan entryway with a bulky, fridge-shaped object to his right and a spiral staircase to his left. He paused, listening. An electric hum just soft enough to drive you crazy. Elsewhere, further up or possibly outside, the shuffle of a large creature's weight. Oddly gloomy, like the twilight of a theater before they turned the lights down all the way (an experience, some distant part of him registered, that he'd never have again). He stepped onto the stairs.

His foot missed. He fell forward, knee banging into the surface. He gripped his knife and froze. By the time he'd convinced himself nothing was on its way to investigate, he'd seen the stairs weren't stairs at all—just a long, smooth, inclined ribbon of some rubbery, sandpapery material that these things apparently oozed right up.

Between strings of mental swearing, he gave long thought to backing out the door and running west as fast as he could. He couldn't, of course. Someone in the pen would shout out at him, calling down the aliens. He should have thought of that beforehand. Everyone was in this for their own survival. Those human cattle in the enclosure out there, they wouldn't give a shit if he died running away. All they'd care was some coward hadn't died trying to save their own pointless lives.

He smiled, angry. This was why you never try to help.

There wasn't even a handrail. He planted one foot on the ramp, preparing to crawl, but found the hard, rubbery surface gripped his shoe as firmly as a handshake. He leaned up another step, then straightened until he was nearly upright. A strange vertigo hit him—his feet felt sturdy as roots, but his upper body felt dangerously unbalanced, as if he might topple over if he blinked in the wrong direction—and he lowered himself to a crouch. Above, the ramp spiraled along the wall all the way to a dim hole in the ceiling and an unseen room beyond. The center of the tower was empty, just disturbing, dizzying empty space.

He crawled up on an improvised combo of hands, knees, elbows, and feet, proceeding with the speed of a hungover turtle. Some fifteen feet up, the ramp flattened out, giving way to a short landing and an oval alcove set into the wall. A single glance at the recess told him all he needed: empty space, just large enough for one of the many-legged creatures to insert itself within, and two narrow windows facing black mountains and pinpricks of stars. And, a couple feet to the left of the windows, a rack of what were recognizably guns.

He picked one up. Pistol-like, with a short, fat barrel and a grip like the handle of a sword, a slightly flared cylinder with a round knob at the end. One button on either side of the barrel. Holding the grip, he could just reach the buttons with his thumb and forefinger. It was surprisingly heavy and he saw no obvious sign of a clip. He carried it in his left hand, knife in the right, and continued up.

More landings. More alcoves. He paused often but heard nothing beyond the background hum. He was more than halfway up the ramp and was certain he'd be incapable of safely moving up or down any faster than a literal crawl. If one of those things came in from down below or up top, he'd be a squatting duck.

His luck, if you could call it that—he didn't think any such term applied when you'd deliberately chosen to clamber around an alien guard tower manned by hostile monsters—held to the top. The ramp rose to a wide, round hole. Above, the same dim lighting showed little besides a wide window and a curved ceiling another fifteen feet up. No visible aliens. Walt straightened, inch by inch, until his eyes cleared the ledge.

The hole opened into the corner of a room as barren as the rest of the tower. Windows paneled a circular space some thirty feet across. One of the creatures was inserted into an alcove, its back to him, curled up more tightly than he could have imagined. Another stood twenty feet from the first in front of something that looked like a computer designed for slobbery dogs: its graphics were Atari ST-simple, and they changed little despite the at-times frantic typing, twisting, sweeping, and signing-like gestures of the limbs waving and poking at a combination of keys, trackballs, and empty spaces above gleaming black pads.

Neither turned his way. Guided by a growing hunch, he crept towards the one at the computer even more slowly than his scuttle up the ramp. The alien tapped and jabbed at its terminal. He drew up behind the alien, smelling its odor of fish oil and drying kelp. Its claws and tentacles twitched above the motion-pads, poked keys, massaged knobs. For a minute, Walt just watched its motions; he had every doubt he'd be able to replicate them and navigate the system, but who knew. Besides, there was something very sweet about this moment, of knowing the alien's fate while it remained clueless. He wondered if one of them had felt the same way when they'd unleashed the virus on Earth.

Fast as a viper, he raised his knife. The alien stuck up its two antennae-like limbs, swiveled its head, and fixed him with giant squid-eyes that looked like the perfect image of cartoon surprise. Walt barked out a laugh and slammed the blade down into its right eye. The knife plunged easily, sending a spray of clear, watery liquid followed by thick inky goop. The alien hissed and jerked away, limbs spasming, clubbing Walt's face. The knife slipped from his grasp, embedded in the creature's brain. It fell, tentacles slapping the rubbery floor, one bony leg sweeping Walt's feet from under him.

Feet thumped behind him. He reached for the knife waggling in the dying alien's eye but was driven back by a wall of writhing limbs. The alien from the alcove bore down on him, its eyes as widely, comically angry as the other's had been surprised. Walt leveled the alien pistol and jammed down the buttons, bracing himself for the bang and the kick. A beam of electric blue light appeared between himself and the alien. Skin crackled, sending fat sizzling into the air with the smell of fresh battered cod. The alien didn't make a noise as Walt waved the beam back and forth, severing limbs, slashing black gouges across its body and the pink, strappy thing it wore around its middle. It collapsed in an avalanche of charred parts that slammed into Walt and drove him back into the still-twitching body of the first.

Because there didn't seem to be anything else to do, he swore.

He arose from a mess of singed limbs and briny goo. The first alien hadn't sensed him until he'd jerked up the knife. The one by the stream hadn't noticed him until he'd moved, either. So they could sense bodily motion, but imperfectly. He remembered reading that sharks and some other species could sense the electrical charges of contracting muscles or something like that, but all the animals that could do that lived in water, which Walt was pretty sure could carry a charge much better than air. On the other end of things, he wasn't certain the aliens could hear at all. They seemed to communicate through motion, too, and they sure as hell didn't do any shouting or screaming when they died.

Walt shoved bits of dead alien away with his feet and turned to the computer. The screen meant nothing to him, abstract rods and squares and zigzag lines with no clear icons, pointers, or even text. Within seconds of fiddling with the controls, he was ready to walk outside and simply laser through the wires around the pen.

A pen that was rectangular. Just like the leftmost object on the screen. And the rods were the towers and the zigzags the mountains—could it be that easy? Experimentally, he moved his hand over one of the motion-pads, hoping to conjure up a pointer he could drag to the pen. Instead, the screen switched to a wall of glyphs which he couldn't turn back no matter how he waved his hands. After a minute of conducting an orchestra that wasn't there, he went to the hole, lowered himself onto the ramp, and scooted down to the ground floor.

He could hear the gasps from the pen as he walked outside, hunched his back to shield the light as best he could, and simply lasered through the lower wires.

"You were in there a long time," the young woman whispered.

"Did you miss me?"

"Who would miss a failure?"

"Get the others over here," he smiled. She went and whispered to the crowd of two dozen, who ducked under the clipped, still-smoking wires and stood shivering in the night air.

"Now get down and crawl until we're outside the light," Walt whispered to the group.

"We're naked," hissed a stocky man with a hairy stomach.

"Would you rather get a thorn in your balls or a laser in your back?"

"Can't you steal a car?"

Walt raised the laser. "Crawl."

They did. Through weeds and rocks and dust, through whimpers and soft yelps, pale asses bobbing in the moonlight. After a hundred yards, Walt stopped them and pulled out his binoculars. The camp was as still as it had been before he'd approached the pen. He rose to a stoop and gestured the prisoners on. Men and women rose and followed, knees and elbows rubbed raw and pasted with dirt. They ducked along with their hands splayed over their breasts and genitals, hissing through clenched teeth when their feet struck a stone; once, a young man fell and had to be helped along on the shoulders of two others. They reached the highway with no sign of alarm from the colony. On the blacktop, Walt dug out four bottles of water and handed them to the young woman and three others, watching with mild interest as each escapee glugged down as much as they thought they could get away with before passing it on.

"Well," he said, "good luck."

"Good luck?" the stocky man said. "With what?"

"I'm not your shepherd. Besides lying down in a big human bull's-eye, traveling in a group is the stupidest thing we could do. They'd find us in an instant." Walt waved at the dark hills. "I'm leaving. On my own. If you like living, you should do the same."

"That is insane." The young woman splayed her hands at the crowd, disregarding her nudity. "We're hungry. We're tired. We don't even have any goddamn clothes. They shipped us in here from San Francisco and I don't even know where here is. People are going to die. You can't just walk away."

"I got you out. You can figure out what to do next."

He turned away. When they followed, he jogged off the road into the cheat grass and brambles; their crunching bare-footed steps diminished. When he glanced back a couple minutes later, they were still standing there, silhouettes as straight and still as human cacti.

* * *

After that, he stayed well off the road, risking contact only to meet the demands of water and food. The land descended, mountains rolling down to hills, but stayed desert the whole way, mile after mile of yellow grass, spiky green-brown shrubs, and gray dust. According to the highway markers, he was nearly forty miles into the state before he realized he'd crossed into California. Other than a two-day stretch so hot he slept out the second afternoon in an empty rambler with all the doors open, the weather ranged from slightly warm in the day to slightly cool at night. It felt exactly as he'd always imagined California would feel.

He saw an alien jet once, streaking over the southern sky. He crouched among the weeds until the drone died away. Sometimes, he imagined at least a few of the prisoners had made it out. The girl, maybe—she'd been young, strong. Who knew.

Another set of hills rose to the west. By nightfall, he climbed up the highway, a patchy set of lanes unfurling along the sides of crumbling hills. Peaks swelled beside him, massive and silent in the darkness. Green weeds appeared in tufts beside the shoulder, then leafy plants, trees in the crags and scree. Dawn broke behind him and he moved through the brush, smelling the dew on the grass and the sweet-choking scent of flowering weeds.

After panting his way up an innocuous crest, he stopped cold. In the thin daylight, one vast cityscape carpeted the valley, too long and boundless to see its ends.

21

Down the hill, a crew of aliens fanned across the roads, metal glinting from their claws. Dome-like armored vehicles ranged ahead, squirting flame into houses and condos. Thick white smoke bellowed into the skies and was blown inland in streamers by the steady offshore breeze.

Raymond's voice was soft as church. "What the hell are they doing?"

Sarah turned from the window, giving him a steady eye. "Burning out the vermin."

"That's it," Mia said. "Time to go."

Sarah cocked her head. "You want to leave?"

"I have a thing about getting burned to death."

"They got an army out there!"

"And we'll have a barbecue in here if we stay."

"Mia's right," Raymond said. "We've got everything we need. We're ready to go. We can bike south along the coast and slip through Long Beach. Find somewhere the aliens aren't."

Sarah shook her head in wide, slow strokes. "Middle of the day? We go out there, they'll cut us down. We don't know they'll get all the way up here. Even if they do, we can hide in the yard, use those rocks by the cliff's edge—"

"You haven't been here long enough," Mia said. "They keep coming, keep rooting out the survivors. They're going to keep at it until the entire city's dead."

"And you haven't been out there with them. There's no surviving out in the open. We wait this out, they're not gonna bother coming back when they think they've burned everyone out."

"We'll stay," Raymond said. Mia's head snapped his way. "Until nightfall. Then we get away from monsters for good."

Sarah's blunt face went red from brow to chin. "You'll be killed! You think a couple of housemakers are gonna survive where a company of trained soldiers gets slaughtered like cows?"

"We're not going to try to fight them. Running's much easier."

"And what about me?" She twisted, clawing up her shirt to reveal the scabby hole in her back. "How far you think I can ride a bike?"

"You'll be okay," Mia said.

"What if I'm not? What if this thing tears open and I can't keep going?"

Raymond let out a breath. "Then we'll stop and get you patched up."

Sarah laughed. "While they're shooting us with fucking lasers?"

"We're going," Mia said, low. "If you don't want to come? You can stay. You can have the house. All yours."

"No." Her eyes flicked between Raymond's, her lips parted. "No, I can't stay by myself. I'll come."

"Good," he said. "Get together anything you want to bring with. We'll be in the garage."

Blue light flashed from a flaming cul de sac at the base of the hills. A tiny figure raced across a lawn, one hand clamped to their mouth. A thick blue beam winked on for a full second. As the figure's upper body fell to the ground, severed across the hips, their legs stumbled forward and tumbled into the grass.

Raymond turned away. Sarah stared after him as he headed down the hall, eyes so bright he was afraid her fever had resurged. That would explain her mood, too. He and Mia tested the bike's chains and wheels, doublechecked the supplies in their packs. They hadn't collected any seeds from the garden. The bell peppers would have seeds inside, but for most everything else, they'd be out of luck. How many details had they overlooked? For all their work and preparation, how much would they wind up wanting in the next few days and weeks? But that was just how things always went. You couldn't waste too much time worrying about being perfect. They'd done their best. They'd make do.

"Think she'll make it?" Mia said, as if running her thoughts down a parallel track.

He toweled oil from his fingers. "I think she has a better chance coming than she does staying."

She smiled with half her mouth. "Beneath the surface of that optimism lies something very, very depressing."

There wasn't much work to do: their bikes and gear were perfectly fine, and any other tasks, sweeping or weeding or washing dishes, all that felt pointless now. Raymond wandered the house, staring at beds and counters, opening cabinets and gazing at the dusty glasses, and finally, after a long look out on the fires creeping up the hill—he could smell the smoke now, he thought, though the wind continued to blow inland—he stood by the back window to watch the foamy, everlasting sea.

"You gonna miss it?" Sarah said from behind, startling him.

"Nothing's more peaceful."

"Those waves sure are pretty." She'd changed into a tank top, a smaller one of Mia's. She wasn't wearing a bra.

"Feeling okay?" he said.

She nodded at the garden, the ocean beyond. "You sure you want to leave? Think what you could build with another body around."

"We'll find that out some place that isn't about to be burnt to the ground." He scratched his neck; he should go shave. "Though I think we may wind up with the Rebels."

Sarah ran her fingers through her choppy blonde hair. "I'd better go get the last of my things."

He watched the waves until sunset, then went outside to free the chickens and feel the sea breeze on his skin. Smoke-scent mingled with seaweed and salt. Goosebumps flushed his arms. Quite suddenly, he remembered it was November, and most of the north would soon see snow. It was so easy, down here where winter meant cool rains that could be replaced by 70-degree sunshine as early as New Year's Day, to forget how cold it could be and how long it would last. If they didn't wind up with the BRR, they'd have to stay in the Southwest until spring. Waste a couple seasons somewhere temporary before finding themselves a new home in the mountains. Well, it would only be a few months.

Back in the house, there was a strange stillness to the air, an anticipation. The floor creaked under his feet.

"Raymond?" Mia called from downstairs. "Raymond, can you come down here?"

The beam of his flashlight wobbled as he jogged down the steps. Candles flickered in the garage. "Time to go?"

"For her," Sarah said. She clamped one arm around Mia's neck. The other held a pistol to the side of Mia's head. "You and me are staying right here."

22

Walt could hear it now, a steady sough that sounded so much like the wash of traffic he had almost convinced himself the next crest would reveal a coastal California that had never fallen to plague and invasion. Cars jamming along sunny streets. Taut-legged women in jogging shorts leading muscly, well-groomed pit bulls down the sidewalks. Men in sunglasses arguing breezily into their cell phones from behind the wheels of their red convertibles. After 3000 miles of walking, he'd find the one place in America that was still America.

But despite the cloudless skies, that false sound of traffic was punctuated irregularly by a heavy, crackling thunder. And the walls of nearby houses were scorched black or flattened in an ugly rubble of charcoal, jutting timbers, and gray, yellow, and black debris, things that had once been shoes and dishes and CDs and books and figurines, now nothing but torched, rained-out garbage. In his two-and-a-half-day march from the hills, he'd been shot at once, seen a handful of faces whipping drapes closed or ducking into doorways, heard the buzz and the whine of strange ships hurtling across the sky. This place was dead, too. A graveyard waiting for the last of its walking dead to wise up and bury themselves.

He wondered what Vanessa would think. It was exactly like and exactly unlike he'd imagined. The hills ringing the valley had held old ramblers and the 1960s' vision of the future. Descending brought him through miles of dirty streets and dirtier tenements, cars and buses damming whole blocks. At a glance, LA's middle had shown nothing but bilingual strip malls, grassless soccer fields, Spanish signs, and boarded-up taco shops, but there had been surprises, too: dirt lots packed with forty-foot stacks of pallets; iron grilles on the ground-floor windows of every home; bulk fabric outlets; three-story paintings of Jesus' face on the sides of warehouse walls.

And the highways—the fucking highways. Great gray ribbons of concrete soaring like bizarro Roman aqueducts. At one point, the highways were stacked four deep, one sunk into the ground, the other three crossing one on top of another until the last stood a hundred feet above the ground. Dogs gnawed bodies in the weeds. Stretches of the lanes were as blank as the desert roads; others sat clogged with vans and trucks and SUVs and sports cars, some torched black, leathery-skinned corpses sprawled on hoods and slumped behind wheels. Back in the cities, entire blocks resembled the burnt-out husks of a long-ago war, stray papers flapping in the breeze, glass glittering from porches and sidewalks. Other neighborhoods looked like model homes that had never seen a tenant.

After months of overland travel through woods, deserts, plains, and small towns, it felt nearly as alien as the field of blue cones where he'd freed two dozen people from the wired-up pen.

He knew Vanessa would have loved the weather, if nothing else. He hadn't been keeping strict track, but it was late October or early November and any kind of sustained walking left him dewed with sweat, morning or night. The skies were warm and blue. A bit chilly at night, but a light jacket was all he needed.

Two and a half days later, he could hear the wash and crash of surf.

Lines of tall palms fluttered in the constant breeze. Dead ahead, the sun gleamed hard and yellow, less than an hour from the horizon. He crested the hill. Half a mile away, a gap of silvery-blue sea glimmered between the beachside condos. Hacienda-style mansions squatted on the meandering residential roads to his right, a twin set of smokestacks rising some ways further. A couple miles to his left, a big hill or a small mountain rose in a round green lump, wreathed in sea-blown mist and the smoke boiling up from its base.

Something bad was happening over there. Logically speaking, he should have hidden for another hour until he could move with the relative safety of darkness. But the ocean was right there. He could hardly stop himself from sprinting, his pack thudding into his lower back, the sunshine soaking his skin but offset by that steady bay wind, a journey of three thousand miles reduced to a thousand final steps. He loped down the sidewalk, crouching down at intersections to watch for movement. Machines groaned a mile to his left. A single scream hung in the humid air, stopping as abruptly as an answering machine clicking off.

The strip of sea grew closer. Gulls screeched. Birds with wingspans as wide as his arms soared in twos and fours. Surf rustled and thundered. He could smell the sea more strongly than his own sweat now, a different scent from the beaches of Coney Island or Long Island—tangier, kelpier. He crossed another intersection, hand shielding his eyes from the onpouring sun, and reached the edge of what was once American civilization. A set of stairs led down to the sandy beach, flanked on one side by a blue Cape Cod-style home and on the other by a weathered apartment block with a rusty satellite dish sticking from its side. He jogged down the steps, stopping at the landing halfway down. The beach was cratered and scorched but clear of aliens or people. A rock jetty protruded a short ways to his right; further on, a wooden pier extended into the waves. South showed nothing but lifeguard stands and bathrooms on the way to a rocky beach set beneath sheer cliffs, all half-obscured by a light screen of smoke.

He headed straight across a bike path at the bottom of the steps. His shoes sunk into the sand. A tingling numbness swept over him. Ragged volleyball nets flapped in the wind. Spray speckled his face. Just before water's edge, he crossed a line of bulbous brown kelp, small white shells, and coin-sized lumps of what looked like tar. A fringe of gulls waddled away, murmuring squawks of complaint.

Walt stopped a couple feet below the tideline. Foam curled up the beach, bubbling away into the wet sand. At once he collapsed. For her, of course, Vanessa, the woman he would never see again, her megawatt grins and airy charm. But also for the knowledge—as sudden as his drop to his knees, as deep as the waters on the blue horizon—that whatever they'd had together had been gone long before the plague arrived. He cried for the complete and stupid loss of everyone and everything, of thousands of years of culture and growth swept away in the span of days. And lastly, for himself—not in self-pity, for he no longer felt any of that, but for his journey here, the sheer endurance and will of it, for the idiocy and impossibility of his nearly arbitrary quest. He'd fucking done it. He was here. He was alive.

He should have brought something of hers to give to the ocean. A picture, a necklace, a pair of her damn panties. She'd wanted to live here. Some part of her could have, and if he'd been a little wiser, he could have done more for her in death than he'd probably ever done for her in life. He sat back in the sand, disappointed in himself for the first time in a long time.

The sun hung over the horizon, round and red. It was suddenly cold. His shoelaces were bright blue.

Because they were Vanessa's. One of the pairs he'd brought to replace his on the road, which he'd done a couple weeks before losing his bags to the aliens. Hurriedly, he stripped off his shoes, tugged out the laces, stood, and splashed into the shockingly cold water until it swirled around his thighs. He balled up the laces and flung them as far as he could.

Back on the beach, he toweled off with a stiff blanket. He felt placidly empty. He thought about what he should do now. Automatically, he considered suicide. That had been the goal, anyway, to die somewhere along the reach of those endless highways. But the desire was no longer there. It had been burnt out somewhere along the way, as bygone and lost as the civilization of iPhones and stretch SUVs and high fructose corn syrup.

He supposed he should survive, then. Go see what there was to see.

He decided to watch the sun go down. It was his first glimpse of the Pacific, after all, and the ritual would put a hard cap on the trip he'd just completed. The sun sat a few degrees above the horizon, a red bloom amid the salty haze on the straight blue line of the sea. He sipped bottled water. The sand was still warm under him; the air was just now cool. Walt felt timeless, an anonymous, ephemeral witness to a process that had played out daily for billions of years, a cycle whose significance was clear even when its mechanics were misunderstood. (And if humanity survived now, isolated pockets in the unwanted jungles, deserts, and icy wastes, how long before they once more forgot the Earth revolved around this setting sun?) He could sit there forever, observing and confirming the process of tide and moon and bird and sun and dolphin, somehow becoming the world, as far removed from mortal fears and neuroses as the breakers rolling endlessly and unstoppably to the shore. The sun sunk halfway below the waves; was he far enough south to see the green flash of its final moment?

An explosion roared over the condos and the yellow grass.

He rose to a crouch, spell broken. Bits of debris and trailing smoke ribboned the air to the north. Screams and automatic weapons drowned out the waves. Another explosion ripped through an apartment building overlooking the beach, sending its face sloughing down the slope in a clattering thunder of stone, wood, and glass.

Walt zipped up his pack and ran for the bike path lining the bottom of the harsh hills, laceless shoes flapping on his feet. On the pavement, he stuffed his shoes into his pack and turned south for the tall green cliffs. Staircases and ramps punctuated the slope every couple hundred yards. No good; he couldn't be sure what was happening up in the streets. The smoke he'd seen while cutting across town roiled a handful of blocks inland from where the shore curved along the rising hills. He'd follow that curve, by night if he had to, until it took him to a place that wasn't on fire.

Engines thrummed above. The sun was minutes set by the time Walt reached the curve in the beach. The cliffs soared a hundred feet vertical, mounted near the top by spacious decks with long, red-timbered legs. The sand gave out to a rubbly carpet of sharded rock and browning kelp. Surf welled between the stones. In the sea's quiet moments, a sound like angry static drifted from the heights. He knelt to thread new laces into his shoes and started along the rocks, splitting his attention between his footing and for any possible passage up the sheer walls.

His foot turned on a slimy stone, spilling him into a damp and stinking mat of kelp. Thick black flies clouded his face. He struggled up, knees soaked, palms stinging. In the dimming light, he could see nothing but rocky shore and rising cliffs.

Ahead, the cliff jagged inward, slumping from a sheer incline to one that was merely stupidly dangerous. Fallen rocks piled around its base. Grasses, shrubs, and small trees poked from its pitched face.

The last of the daylight was slipping away. He could wait out the night down here, risking the tides and whatever the aliens were up to. Road-honed instinct told him it was something big. There might not be any city left come morning, and tucked away as he might be below the cliffs, if it spilled out to him, he'd have nowhere to run.

He started up the scree, planting a hand for balance. Smoke touched his nose. A third of the way up the climb, the rubble stopped, replaced by a fast rise staggered with flatter stretches. Walt leaned into the rock, planting each step, grabbing for the stumps of brush and trailing branches. Halfway up, he stopped on the flat top of a boulder to catch his breath. Waves rolled beneath him, dark and indistinct. He was already having a hard time seeing his handholds. Within minutes, he'd be groping along under the confusion of full night.

Foot by foot, he carried upward, fingertips bleeding, shoulders and biceps burning. Just below the top, the slope transitioned to a sheer cliff. Walt hung there a moment, squinting to left and right for an alternate route, but the nooks of the rock wall were blurred by darkness. He reached up and scrabbled for a hold. He raised his knee, planted his foot. The rock beneath him shifted and tumbled away, racketing down the stone rise. Walt's legs swung into empty space.

He gasped, sweat slicking the rock beneath his clenching palms. Above, a muffled gunshot clumped across the early night.

23

Sarah shifted her grip on the gun, teeth bared. Raymond's head buzzed so hard he thought he'd fall over. He blinked repeatedly, as if that would wash the nightmare away.

"Put down the gun," he said.

"So you can ride into a massacre?" Sarah smiled. "I shoot her now, at least just one of you buys the farm."

"And then you and I live here in bliss."

"That's right."

His face felt numb. "There is a problem with that plan."

Sarah squeezed the crook of her elbow tighter to Mia's throat. "What's that?"

"The part where you shoot my wife."

"Everyone loses people. You get used to it."

"Yeah, you seem to have come out with flying colors," Mia said.

Sarah ground the barrel of the pistol into Mia's hair. "Shut your fucking face. You're a dead person. Dead people don't get to speak."

"How do you think you'll get him to stay when that happens? Chain him to a bed and break his legs?"

"Shut up!"

"Maybe you just make great iced tea. And know how to make ice in a place where it never freezes."

The blood fled from Sarah's mashed-together lips. She stood across the garage just in front of the door, too far to charge. The other guns were with their packs near the middle of the room; much closer, but Sarah's index finger only had to travel a fraction of an inch. Raymond edged forward.

"You stop right there." Sarah pointed the gun at him, then quickly returned it to a spot above Mia's right ear. "You don't move. You move, and I stucco the wall with her brains."

He held up his hands. "Don't shoot. I'm frozen."

It was true. What was the logic? Did she truly believe she could kill Mia and then convince him to live with her in loving harmony until the aliens burnt the whole hill to the ground? The only thing that made sense was that Sarah had gone moon-barkingly, chair-eatingly crazy, that the months of watching everyone around her die, first to the plague and then to aliens, had broken her mind completely, reducing it to a howling, mad wreck. How could he try to reason with that? How could you talk an insane person into doing something sane?

"Maybe we don't have to leave," he said. "Maybe we can all stay right here."

"So you can tie me up in my sleep? Knife me?"

"Nobody's going to knife you."

Sarah jerked her chin at Mia. "She'll talk you into it. Then you'll make your little excuses, and be sad for a while, but you'll ride away and you'll forget me."

"Jesus," Mia said. "How about we take your picture and promise to pray to it every night?"

"Enough!"

"I saved your life." Raymond was on the verge of tears. He didn't understand how that could mean so little to her, how she could justify taking whatever she wanted without the barest shred of gratitude. "Doesn't that mean anything?"

"And now I'm gonna save yours."

She sneered at Mia, fingers shifting on the grip of the pistol. Raymond's heart disintegrated, floating away like cold mist. It hit him in a hot rush, questions and conclusions he'd only be able to sort out after the fact. His wife was about to be shot by a crazy person and he was utterly helpless to stop it. Not only that, but it was his fault—he'd saved Sarah, he'd brought her back here, helped restore her health, allowed her to stay although she was a stranger with no claim whatsoever to the life between himself and Mia. It hadn't occurred to him that the mysterious relapse of Sarah's fever had been nothing but a ploy to get them to stay at the house with her, to stave off discussions of sending her off on her own. Mia'd had some suspicions, vague as they were, but he hadn't even begun to question the unknown woman in their home. He couldn't or wouldn't see the bad in a person, and now Mia would die.

Yet he couldn't have just left Sarah on the sidewalk above the beach to bleed to death, either. What should he have done? Made her leave as soon as she was able to walk? Snuck out with Mia in the middle of the night? How would he know to do these things without the foreknowledge of what was happening right now? Maybe any notion of power or control was just a laughable illusion—21st century humanity had been wiped out by a plague it could never have suspected. He and Mia had weathered that, had built themselves a new life amidst the wreckage, but now that was going to be blown away, too. It had all been a sad delusion.

Sarah pointed the gun at his legs, frowned, and pulled the trigger.

The bang was impossibly loud, tearing through the garage with a force as terrible as the bullet plowing through his left thigh. The impact staggered him. He banged into a toolbox and fell hard on the concrete floor. The pain hadn't yet hit. Instead, its threat waited in his nerves like the afterimage of lightning in the seconds before the thunder strikes.

"Not going anywhere now, are you?" Sarah said. She swung the gun back Mia's way. "Not once there's nothing to leave for—"

Mia darted forward, grabbing Sarah's wrist and jabbing her stiff fingers at Sarah's eyes. Sarah shouted and cringed back, hand to her eyes. Mia hammered her wrist into Sarah's forearm. The gun jarred loose. Mia punched her in the nose; Sarah yelped, stumbling back into the bikes. She tumbled down in a crash of metal.

Mia picked up the gun and pointed it at Sarah's teary face. "I don't know who the fuck you are. I'm not sorry I won't find out."

"Don't shoot!" Sarah thrust up her hands. "I'll go. I'll leave right now. I'll—"

Mia pulled the trigger. Sarah's body flew back into the toppled bike. Her arms flopped limply, elbows bent like a butchered chicken. Mia righted her aim and fired three more times, hands bucking.

"Are you okay?" Mia leapt over the boxes of food and jugs of water, kneeling beside Raymond and his blood-soaked thigh. "Don't move. I'm going to find one of those blood-tying things."

"Tourniquet."

"Don't move."

She rushed into the house. Raymond clamped his palms to the wound and tried not to faint. It hurt now, a knifing burn; the bullet had passed clean through his muscle, and blood dribbled from both holes. Mia returned with a handful of rags, a fifth of Grey Goose, and an abbreviated extension cord, stray wires poking from the end where she'd chopped it short.

"You cut that up?" Raymond said. "What if we need to plug something in out back?"

"Take off your pants."

He unbuckled and unzipped, breath hissing into his lungs as he peeled his jeans away from his leg. "You killed her."

"I fucking did."

"I mean, you killed her."

She splashed vodka over the bullet holes. He arched his back in pain as she swabbed blood. "Honey, she shot you. She was about to kill me."

"I know." He did know. He did know that. Something was wrong. Besides the hole in his leg. And the corpse sprawled over the bike. Those were obviously wrong. This wrong was a different wrong, like remembering a memory but maybe that was just something you dreamed or got told. He frowned. Mia taped the rags around his leg and he screamed. She knotted the cord around the top of his leg. The pain brought him around. "How are we going to leave?"

Mia tucked a sweaty strand behind her ear. "The alien army down there will be a strong incentive to figure that out. Drink this."

He swallowed from the bottle of water. Room temperature, but it tasted amazing; he drank half the bottle in one long chug. "I'm sorry. I should have known."

"Rest here. I'm going to check the window. Maybe we can wait another day."

She left him with his pain. He sat up, panting. He willed himself to stand. He owed it to Mia. If he couldn't move, she'd have to go without him. He grabbed hold of a shelf of oil cans and pesticides. It was his fault. If he was able to weather the fire, they could arrange a place to meet—Angels Stadium, any landmark south of LA. Leaning into the shelf, he pulled himself to his right foot, sweat popping along his hairline, pain throbbing through his thigh. They could do it. She could take a gun and he could hide in the yard and follow her after the flames were gone. From there, take a car to Arizona or New Mexico, just the two of them, and wait out the winter. Just the two of them. He stood, quivering.

Mia popped through the door. "We need to leave. We can walk the bikes if we have to. We just have to outpace the fire."

Raymond grabbed a five iron from a dusty bag of clubs and caned his way to Sarah's body. He knelt, grimacing, and rolled her body off the bike. She was warm and yielding. Hot blood soaked his palms. Mia crouched in front of the garage door, grabbed the handle, and rolled it up with a hollow rumble.

On the other side, a man stood in the night, short and lean and blank-faced behind his patchy beard. He raised a strange pistol to Mia's face.

24

Walt scrabbled his toes against the cliff face. Beyond its edge, another burst of gunshots clapped its approval. Walt's biceps shook, his fingers stiffened. The pack pulled on his back like something alive. He lamented never lifting weights.

He wouldn't let go. He wouldn't fall. Arms jittering and burning, he hauled himself straight up, feet groping. A rock loosed, kicked down the cliff. Dangling from his taut right arm, he reached with his left and dragged himself another foot up the stone. His toes found a ledge. He rested there for some time, waiting for the burn to seep from his arms. When he resumed, the climb was surprisingly easy, the cliff yielding hand- and toeholds so readily it was like it wanted him off just as much as he did. The slope leveled out. He crawled the last few feet on his belly, rolling into the overgrown, dried-out grass of a dead person's back yard.

Gunshots. Possibly gun shots fired at a god damn alien. He could smell the smoke with every breath. Orange fires lined the dark neighborhoods a few hundred yards downhill. Spotlights blazed on windows and doorways. Gouts of flame spurted from hemispherical tanks.

The shots had come some way to his right, further out along the curve of the point. Walt jogged out to the sidewalk, passing an Italian-style home with vacant, broken windows and a wide-open front door. The neighboring joints looked worse, if anything; weedy, yellow yards, shattered windows, broken-down fences, loose papers flapping in shrubs and iron grilles. Southern California looked like shit.

Ahead, a dusty car sat in the driveway of another monstrous home ripped from a Tuscan fairy tale. Green things grew in the side yard, sprouting from rich brown soil in neat leafy rows. Curtains shaded intact windows. Hard to tell in the darkness, but those windows didn't look too dusty.

He opened the iron gate and crept into the driveway, laser pistol in hand. Voices from the garage—a woman and a man. No sign of aliens. Walt turned for the street. The garage door cranked up. He whirled, sighting his pistol at a thin, pretty young woman whose olive hands were painted with drying blood.

He glanced at the youngish blond guy with a bloody bandage around his leg, then back to the woman. "Did you shoot him?"

"No!"

Walt flicked his gun at the stretched-out blonde woman with the holes in her face and chest. "Did you shoot her?"

"Of course I did." She glanced at the corpse and snorted. "My husband rescued her from an alien attack on the beach. She was part of a resistance movement. The rest of her platoon got killed on some mission. Maybe that drove her crazy. Maybe she was crazy before. Either way, things got all Single White Female in here. After she shot my husband, I shot her." She cocked her head. "Who the fuck are you to care, anyway?"

Walt met eyes with Raymond, who was pale with shock or bloodloss or both. "That what happened?"

"She wanted to kill my wife and stay here with me. She was nuts."

Walt considered the bloody mess that had once been a fit young woman. She was now quite dead. Of course, if everyone who'd killed another person deserved execution, Walt himself would need to be hanged, electrocuted, gassed, and guillotined. There was the matter of whether they were lying about the particulars of the woman's death, but he didn't think so. The man had been undeniably shot. The dark-haired woman had a righteousness to her. A clarity, too. Anyway, who gave a damn?

He lowered his gun. "Okay. Let's load up the car."

"Can't," the woman said. "They can sense cars. We're leaving on bikes."

"Bikes," he smiled. "Why didn't I think of that."

The man, Raymond, glanced to his wife. "I don't know."

"Me neither." She turned to Walt, fixing him with a crossbow stare. "Who are you?"

"My name's Walt. I'm from New York. We have to go."

"So take one of the bikes. We've got a spare."

He waved the pistol. "This thing shoots lasers out of it. That makes me like God from the Third Testament where all He does is kill aliens. Only this God doesn't know Beverly Hills from Bakersfield."

Raymond's mouth parted. "What?"

"You can come with us tonight," the woman said. "Once we're out of here, so are you."

"Agreed." The couple had pretty much everything ready: the bikes, packs of gear, a sort of trailer, hitched behind a purple bike, loaded with water and blankets and more backpacks. The woman belted on a pistol. Walt threw his leg over the bike with the trailer.

She stared him down. "That one's mine."

"Just trying to help."

"Help different."

She kept one eye on him as she gently helped Raymond lift his wounded leg over his bike. The man shut his eyes, breathing hard. Mia smoothed sweat from his brow. Walt smothered his frown. She'd stay with her husband, he saw, even if it meant stopping altogether, dying in the same blast from an offworld weapon.

"Where are we going?" he said.

The woman's attention stayed on Raymond's wavering effort to keep himself balanced. "South."

"Where south?"

"Not-here south."

Raymond hopped from the garage on his good leg, bike wobbling beneath him. "We should have stolen a tricycle."

The woman smiled and walked her bike beside him. Walt trailed, gun in hand. As they crossed the driveway to the street, Raymond glanced back at the house with wistful near-regret. A look like leaving for college for the first time. Like wandering through your back yard and discovering the grave of your first dog.

An explosion kicked up downhill, fierce and close enough for the shock to strike Walt's skin. Raymond inched uphill, one hop at a time. Walt moved beside him and supported his handlebars.

Even so, Raymond had to rest less than half an hour later, dropping off the road into the scrubby grass that fringed the cliffs. Mia gave him water, some crackers. Walt watched the silent road, ready to race off if more than a scout appeared. If worse came to worst, he'd leap off the cliff and see what happened.

The aliens stayed downhill, torching the million-dollar homes with all the patience of incoming tenants who plan to stay for the next ten or twenty million years. Raymond declared himself rested a few minutes later. They made good time then, aided by the road, which first flattened out and then ran downhill. The road angled into a sharp point; at sea's edge, a dark tower rose into the night. A light flickered through a window at its peak, disappearing a second after Walt saw it.

He reached for his weapon. "We could rest here."

"I don't think so," Mia said. "It's a dump."

"And I hear it's haunted," Raymond laughed.

Walt rolled his eyes. Couples. Like their histories were so much more special just because they'd had someone to share them with. They moved on, stopping a quarter mile or so down the road at a railed overlook. Walt could no longer smell smoke, just the salty sea, the sweat griming his clothes, the sweet-sick scent of weeds blooming across forgotten yards. For a while after that, there were no houses at all, just empty slopes and the rolling road. Besides the beach, it was the first open and undeveloped land Walt had seen in days.

Raymond stopped in front of a steepled church, leaning over his handlebars. "I think that's all I've got."

"It's okay," Mia said. "We're far enough for now."

The church's front doors were locked. Walt walked to the neighboring field, picked up a rock, and threw it through the door's window. He swept broken glass with his foot while Mia helped Raymond inside. She returned to help him wheel in the bikes, storing them in a kitchen at the back of the church, then hauled the packs to an upstairs office with a couple of couches. Raymond lay on one, shoes off, scanning his leg with the help of a flashlight.

"How's it look?" Walt said.

Raymond made a face. "Shot."

"Guns will do that." He grabbed a pillow from the other couch and dropped it to the floor with a dusty plop. The blankets from the bike-trailer had the same smell as the couples' house. Wordlessly, Mia spread a blanket on the other couch and sat down to shuck off her shoes.

Raymond watched him make his bed. "You said you're from New York?"

"Yeah."

"How'd you get here?"

Walt pointed to his feet. "Those guys."

Mia narrowed her eyes. "You walked. For thousands of miles."

"If you only do one thing all day long, you can get a surprising amount of that thing done."

She smoothed hair away from her forehead. "Why?"

"Because there is a lot of time in a day."

"Why'd you walk from New York to LA?"

"Oh. To kill myself."

She laughed through her nose. "You didn't do too hot."

"My life has not been an unqualified success."

Her smile melted, replaced by something he couldn't read. Raymond clicked off his flashlight, ruffling into his blankets. Walt was suddenly conscious of the man's breathing, of Mia's, of every shift among their bedding, however minor. He raked up his blankets.

"I'm going to find a couch somewhere."

Mia shifted on her bedding. "I was going to suggest the same thing."

Walt squinted, found the flashlight, and wandered down the hall, boards squeaking under the thin carpet. In another office, he locked the door and curled underneath a desk. He fell asleep before he'd decided where to go next.

In the morning, he climbed the steeple and surveyed the hills with his binoculars. Smoke rose inland. Black specks keened from the north. He climbed down to poke around the church, but found nothing more interesting than a couple of basement vending machines which he broke open for a breakfast of peanut M&Ms and Coke. He'd never really liked Coke. After months without anything like it, it tasted ambrosial.

Footsteps creaked overhead. He found Mia right before the front door.

"Some scout ships out there," he said. "Don't go far."

"I don't need to run a marathon to take a piss."

He handed her a can of Coke when she got back. "You should tow Raymond in that bike trailer. He keeps bouncing his balls around like a bunny with a stroke, your kids will be senile before they're born."

"We're not having kids."

"They can't hear, either," he went on. "The squid-crabs, I mean. The scrabs. No, that's terrible." He licked his thumb, wiped Coke from his lip. "But they can sense motion. So if you're stuck in an elevator with one, fart all you want, just don't try to exit before them."

"They can't smell, either?"

"No, the sound. Possibly they can't smell, but a lot of ocean creatures seem to do nothing but smell other things. I expect their sense of smell is at least adequate."

She gave him a look like he'd asserted he could speak to housecats. "Are you being serious?"

"I've killed a few of them," he said, swinging back to things that might be relevant.

"How?"

"Stabbed two through the eyes. They have brains and they don't like being stabbed in them any more than we do. Lasered a third. They have distributed organs or something like it, though. I get the impression it would take a lot of bodily damage to take them down; explosives would work, shotguns probably, too. Swords. I expect swords would be great. I had a sword for a while, but I had to leave it behind when they hunted me down after I killed the first one."

"You know a lot about them." Mia popped her Coke with a pleasant hiss. "Where are you going now?"

"I had been thinking south. I think there are interesting things in the south." He shrugged. "Do you know where the rebels are? The ones the woman who shot your husband was rolling with?"

"She said they lived at a lake outside LA. The only place I know like that is on I-5 on the other side of the mountains."

"There, then."

"You want to fight back."

He shook his head. "I have to."

Mia nodded slowly. "Before last night, we wanted to go there, too. Maybe we could go together. It'd be safer."

"You mean than for you to try to make it with a husband with a hole through his leg."

"And for you to actually find the place instead of winding up in a Mexican whorehouse."

"That doesn't sound so bad."

"These whores have been dead for eight months. After bleeding out of every orifice."

"All right." Walt crumpled his empty soda can and chucked it to the floor. "We're all going to die, you know."

* * *

Two weeks later, Walt sighed down at the lake. Flattened patches of canvas flapped by its shores. Outhouses stood at two corners of the camp, doors hanging open. Though Walt could see wheel ruts all the way from their place on the ridge, there were only three cars, two of them burned.

Raymond eased himself from his bike trailer and leaned against its side. "Think the aliens got them?"

"Don't see any bodies."

Mia tipped her head. "Maybe they took them. Like the prisoners you found in the desert."

"Don't see any signs of explosions, either. Aliens roll in, I don't think these guys would just throw up their hands and say 'Well, you got me.'"

Raymond poked his makeshift crutch at the dirt. "So what do we do now?"

It had been hard for Walt not to get his hopes up the last couple weeks. There sure wasn't much else to do. He'd taken point on their bike-mounted march across the suburbs of Long Beach and Anaheim, but didn't encounter anything more frightening than a starving black labrador. Raymond slept a lot. Mia asked him a lot of questions about his trip and the aliens, which he'd mostly answered except when he didn't feel like it. When Raymond was awake, he readily accepted Walt's orders and asked a lot of questions about Walt's trip, too, though he had the impression it was more about hearing about rescues and escapes than Mia's specific inquiries about where he'd first seen the aliens and what the government had been trying to do in New York before he escaped. He liked them, in a vague way—they clearly loved each other—and hated them for the same reason.

Smoke rose from Los Angeles County. They crossed the mountains to the east. Walt's impatience rose with the smoke. Its particles contained timbers and curtains, roof-tar and bedsheets, but also, no doubt, the aerosolized remains of human beings. Every day it took the three of them to reach the rebels was one more day they wouldn't be helping to kill the beings doing that burning. The ones who'd seen Earth, decided they wanted it, and kicked over the anthills of humanity. The ones whose plague had taken her away.

Up on the ridge above the lake, he couldn't help wondering that if he'd biked by himself, freed of Raymond's trailer and regular need to nap, whether he could have caught the resistance before they slipped away.

"Just one thing we can do," he said. "Get down there and find out where they went."

A short ways up the hill, a dirt road branched off the cracked highway. Walt drew his laser and walked his bike down the switchbacking dirt, Mia and Raymond behind him. Besides the lake, there wasn't much to see: collapsed tents, a firepit, outhouses that still stunk vaguely of shit, a pile of fish bones by the shore, a long stretch of picnic tables. A simple wooden shack roughly near the center of the abandoned camp. Shaky, prophetic, all-caps graffiti blazed from its side, bright red words about angels and end times. Suspecting the shack had been the command post, Walt creaked open the door. The front room had a lightweight desk with empty drawers. The back room held a cot and a bucket. The cot was empty; the bucket wasn't. Walt scowled and went outside. He and the couple wandered the grounds, poking around under the tents, occasionally calling each other for leads that wound up false—a paperclipped set of marching orders that turned out to be from April, before the aliens had arrived, and a string of penciled numbers that turned out to be the scores from the last ten Super Bowls (Raymond, a fantasy football player, had cracked that one). If there was any sign of where the rebels had gone, Walt couldn't see it.

The sun hovered above the peaks a couple miles away. Once it disappeared, the night would come fast. Back beside the wooden shack, Walt knelt to inspect a scrap of paper. One side was blank. The other showed a stick figure of a man with enormous balls.

"If our time weren't worthless, I'd say we were wasting it." Walt crumpled the paper. "We don't even know if they left us a sign."

"Well, they wouldn't leave anything the aliens could figure out," Raymond said. "What kind of sign could only a human understand?"

Walt sat back on his heels. "Culture."

"Culture?"

"Simpsons quotes. Star Wars references. Cave paintings of a guy with a mustache bellowing about soup. Anything we'd get that they wouldn't." He cocked his head, reached for the crumpled sketch, and smoothed it over his thigh. "Is this a Jackie Treehorn reference? Where did Jackie Treehorn live?"

"Who's Jackie Treehorn?"

"The Big Lebowski. Come on, he's a known pornographer."

"That guy. Um." Raymond pressed his fist to his forehead. "Malibu."

"Where's Malibu?"

"Just north of LA."

"Could the rebels be there?"

Raymond squinted one eye until it was nearly closed. "If they like getting incinerated by raging fires. It's like right there."

Walt turned the sketch one way and the other, looking for letters hidden in the lines of the sketch, for numbers or coordinates embedded in the curly hairs on the figure's testicles.

"What are you doing?" Raymond said.

"Malibu, then. It's the only lead we've got."

"You guys seen this graffiti?" Mia called from outside. "This is some prophetic shit."

Walt met the other man's eyes. Together, they rushed from the shack. Walt circled the building, reading out loud the messy red paint sprawled around three of its walls: "IN THE REALM BETWEEN ANGELS AND GIANTS / SAINT STREISAND AWAITS THE COMING / OF A RED DAWN ON THE WRONG HORIZON."

"Obviously," Walt said.

"Giants and Angels," Raymond said. "Between San Francisco and Anaheim."

"Well that fucking narrows it down."

"Saint Streisand?" Mia laughed. "Who's the superfan?"

"Saint Barbra Streisand?" Walt glanced at Raymond. "That mean anything to you?"

Raymond tipped back his head, lips parted. "Santa Barbara. It's a city up the coast a ways."

"So what the fuck does—"

"Red Dawn." Mia's eyes flared with comprehension. "The Patrick Swayze movie where the locals fight off the Soviet invasion."

They stared at each other in the fading sunlight. Walt dropped the sketch in the dirt. "Well, that was easy."

* * *

"Why did they fly out here at all?" Mia said. "It's so much effort."

Raymond peeked under the bandage on his leg and frowned. "Could be for water. Look at them. They crawled out of an ocean or a river somewhere."

"But water's everywhere. There's water on the moon."

"Not the kind you can swim around in."

"If they can fly all the way here, I think they can melt a few blocks of ice."

Walt tapped out a cigarette, flicked his lighter. The cherry glowed orange in the darkness of the park. The smoke chased the scent of trees and weeds. They'd been on the road three days and he expected they'd reach Santa Barbara sometime the next day. For better or worse. For all they knew the rebels had moved on again, or been wiped out, or the graffiti on the shack had been nonsense, some war-crazed trauma victim's idea of a joke. Walt inhaled, smiling. He supposed that would be funny: scrawl some gibberish on a wall, let travelers try to make sense when there was no sense to make. Watch from the hills while they rolled out on a wild goose chase. If their search for the BRR didn't pan out, maybe he'd give that a try himself.

Mia gave him a look. "I still can't get over that.

"Over what?"

"You survive the Panhandler, and what do you do? Start smoking."

"I already smoked."

"You'll regret not quitting next time you have to outrun a bear."

He let smoke trickle out his nostrils. "Bears have to eat, too."

"They don't have to eat you."

Raymond popped a big blue antibiotic. "Not so long as you can outrun me."

Walt flicked ash. "It doesn't matter. The aliens will get me sooner or later."

"You don't know that," she said. "There aren't enough of them to police the whole planet. You could hide in the mountains. That's what we're doing if we can't find the resistance."

"The thing is I'm not going to leave them alone."

Mia considered him across the moon-bleached blackness. "Why do you think they did it?"

"Water," Raymond said.

Walt glanced into the patchy black woods beside the clearing. "Why do you think?"

"Just to kill us off." She leaned forward, conspiratorial. "They wanted to take us out before we could become a threat. There's no other reason to come all this way when other resources must have been so much closer. Is there?"

"There are a million possible reasons. I doubt they'll ever bother to explain."

"Don't you want to know?"

He stubbed out his cigarette. Tiny orange embers blinked away. "What would it change?"

"Don't you sound tough."

"Well?"

Mia sat back, staring into the space between them where they would have lit a fire if Walt hadn't ruled it out. "It would make sense. The plague. The invasion. The extermination. It would all make sense."

"How the hell can the end of the world—"

Behind him, a man cleared his throat. Walt spun, the cool smoothness of the alien pistol appearing in his hand. Three silhouettes stood twenty feet away, assault rifles glinting in the thin silver moonlight.

Walt rolled his eyes. "Haven't we all seen enough guns already?"

III:

LIFTOFF

25

"Are you the resistance?" Raymond said.

"Get on your knees!" A bear-shouldered man rumbled forward, gun out, barely a toy in his swollen arms. A thick gray mustache carpeted his snarling lip. "I said get down!"

Raymond lowered himself to the damp grass, bracing his knee. Mia reached for his hand. Walt stayed on his feet.

"We look like aliens to you?"

The hulking old man raised his elbows as if to jam the barrel of his rifle into Walt's face. "I'll have all the time in the world to read your guts you don't kneel down right now."

A tall, thin man stepped next to the first, glasses winking over his cadaverous cheeks. "Otto, you really think they'd play dress-up just to fool you?"

"They must first know us before they can destroy us."

"They have bombs for that."

The grass soaked Raymond's knees. His leg throbbed. "We're looking for the Bear Republic Rebels."

The third figure edged forward, nearly as thin as the tall Asian man, a bony, bright-eyed woman in her mid-30s. Her dark hair was bound behind her head. "Are you soldiers?"

"Who isn't?" Walt said.

Mia lowered her hands fractionally. "We found the sign. It said the resistance was here."

"What sign?" Otto said. "Did they send you here?"

"I can barely walk." Raymond undid the lace keeping his slit pant leg together, exposing the blood-spotted bandage. "I don't think 'they' would send a crippled guy to take you down."

Walt shrugged. "Unless that's a cunning ploy to lower their guard."

The tall man rolled his eyes. "Don't encourage him."

Otto snapped away his gun. "You'd be better off if you were on their side. You won't find nothing here."

Raymond rose, teeth gritted. The tall, gaunt man was David, the woman Anna. They led the newcomers down a path through the woods. A mile from the road, collapsed tents lay beneath the leafless branches. Cold ashes waited in the dark. Dew gleamed from a flipped Jeep. Under the scent of moisture on fallen leaves, a faint whiff of feces clung to the night.

Walt laughed. Raymond eased himself to the ground. "What happened?"

Anna's eyes, so wide she constantly looked like she was preparing to sit down to her first meal of the day, went rounder yet. "Well, they disappeared!"

"We think they left," David said. "I don't see any bodies, for one."

"Because the squids took 'em." Otto wiped his glasses on his shirt and gazed into the black woods as intently as if they'd caught fire. "They're here for meat. Our meat."

Mia crinkled her brow. "That's a long way to go for sausage."

Walt gazed at Raymond. "Remember that next time you're thinking of taking a solo trip to Alpha Centauri."

"Hilarious," Mia said.

"Shit, he could be right, though. I busted out a bunch of people they had penned up like pigs."

Otto snorted. "A little elf like you led an alien jailbreak?"

Raymond expected him to come back with withering bluster, but Walt just stood there. Raymond rubbed his leg. It hurt in that dull but insistent way that was somehow more aggravating for the knowledge it wouldn't fade soon.

"Have you been here long?" he said. "Is it safe?"

"Nowhere ever has been," Anna said.

"A few days." David caught Otto's eyes. "What do you say? Mind if they split the camp with us?"

Otto laughed, a phlegmy chuckle of Marlboros and old wars, and swung his chunky hand at the field of musty tents and dented, empty cans. "You sure we got space?" His gaze honed in on Walt. "No. You want to sleep, find some place that isn't next to me."

"We're not going to hurt anybody," Mia said, puzzled.

"At least not from this planet," Raymond said.

Otto lifted half his mustache. "Look, you came out here to go stomping around with the rebels. You see any rebels here? Any flags? Jets? Choppers? Tomahawks? You got nothing for you to stay here."

Raymond stood, leg shivering. "You're here."

The old man snorted again, then shook his head. "It's a free country. But you so much as look my way while you think I'm counting sheep, I'll put one between your baby blues."

"I'm glad we could be reasonable."

They had their choice of tents, but Raymond had to sit and rest his leg before he'd finished hammering the second stake. He watched with jagged annoyance while Walt took over—it seemed like he'd never have another moment alone with Mia again; he estimated he'd last another two or three nights before he'd have his first wet dream in years—but as soon as the tent was up, complete with its moist-tent smell, Walt set off to find another for himself. Raymond crawled through the flap and struggled off his shoes. He was suddenly exhausted, unable to stand, barely capable of nodding when Mia asked if he was tired. She began to unroll their blankets, but he couldn't bring himself to help.

David boiled coffee in the morning while Otto patrolled the fringes and Anna tried to coax a squirrel from a tree with a handful of peanuts. The other two were still in their tents. Raymond and Mia had quit building fires at the house once the aliens got too serious and the coffee was the first he'd tasted in weeks. He lifted his mug, a dirty white thing printed with music notes and a smutty one-liner about piano teachers, then sipped.

"I think those things flew all this way for dark roast."

"I had to crush the beans with a hammer." David nodded at the sock he'd used for a filter. "Don't worry, it was clean. In a relative way."

"Who ever thought brewing coffee could be such work?"

"It's remarkable how fast it all went away. How long would it take you to learn how to build a car? I can conceive of living in a cave rather than attempting to set a foundation. A cave!" David laughed, wryness shot through with wonder. "If we didn't have those damned crabs kicking over our sand castles, I think it could be honest fun to try to piece it back together."

Raymond rolled coffee over his tongue. "Think we could do it?"

"Sure. We can still read, can't we? If our visitors up and left this afternoon, I can envision running water within a year."

"I'd kill for that."

David leaned forward, elbows on knees. "Don't try to fight some silly war. You have a beautiful young woman. Find someplace to be with her where nothing will interfere."

He nodded but said nothing. Part of him wanted to do just that. If Colorado was a dream, it was one that could be willed into reality. If the aliens were having that much trouble quashing the cities, how long would it take them to win over the wilderness? Did he owe it to his species to help fight? How did you measure that responsibility against the responsibility to keep those you love happy and safe? He suspected this wasn't a question for the head. Instead, it was for the heart, the guts, any of the squishy things below the brain.

The coffee was cold when Mia woke, but he poked up the fire. Her eyelids fluttered at the roast potatoes and rosemary.

"Let's go for a walk," she said once she finished eating.

"My leg hurts."

"Exactly. We'll stop when it gets to the bad kind of pain."

He found a long, sturdy, and reasonably straight stick. The woods smelled like pine needles and a coldness that might never come. Mia matched his erosion-slow pace. Birds cheeped from the branches. After a few hundred yards, he was hot enough to ditch his flannel. After a half mile of knotty woods and open grass, the pain forced him to sit in the sun on a broad, flat boulder, where he knuckled the muscles around his throbbing wound.

"What do you think we should do next?" he said.

She grinned. "You ever done it in the woods?"

When they finished—he'd stayed on his back, which felt like it had a couple new scrapes, not that he'd noticed while he was cupping her breasts and she was grinding him into his discarded clothes—he thought until he remembered his question. "About the Bear Republic Rebels. Now what?"

Her chest rose and fell under his flannel. "I don't see any rebels to do anything about."

"They could have relocated. Gone out on a mission."

"And they could all be feeding alien larvae."

"I'd like to stay," he said. "Just for a while. If they haven't come back in two weeks, we'll decide from there."

"Okay." Her voice was dreamy. He let his eyes rest along with his leg. He never slept so well again.

Otto rarely offered more than a handful of words, but made no further demands for them to move on, either. Walt passed the time lugging in water from a stream beyond the hill, gathering edibles with Anna, who was some kind of botanist, and keeping watch over the trailhead to camp. David brewed his coffee and combed his radio dial for anything besides static. After Raymond's fourth afternoon of limping through the woods with Mia, he returned to find Otto sitting in front of their tent, a cigar squiggling smoke from his lips.

"You're working hard. That's good. But you're going to get hurt. That's not so good."

He swept his forearm across the sweat on his hairline. "We'll be okay. Mia's keeping her eyes open."

"You need to find a woman who can build a set of crutches." Otto nodded at a pair he'd leaned against the tent, stripped blond pine branches knotted together with fibrous white twine. "See if those don't help the leg."

Raymond sat down to inspect them. The wood was smooth, the bonds tight. "Thank you."

"If you're gonna be here, you need to be healthy. You hunt?"

"When I was a kid."

"Well, start reminiscing. The winter won't kill us, but three straight months of baked beans sure might."

Otto shoved off, knees and knuckles popping, and shuffled in the direction of the trailhead. Raymond watched until he disappeared around the bend.

That night, they all ate together for the first time, gathered around the fire as it roasted potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, and red bell peppers from an overgrown garden a couple miles up the road. David cooked them on a fine mesh screen, fastidiously speckling them with pepper and flaky rose sea salt, then forked the slices out on paper plates and topped them with a chutney mashed from garden mint, cilantro, and chilies. Raymond dug in while it was hot enough to burn the roof of his mouth, leaving small strips of skin he wiggled free with his tongue.

"I've been thinking about this for a long time now," Walt said when they'd been reduced to licking tomato juice and salt from their fingers, "and what I can't figure out is how the three of you came to form this little A-Team."

Anna straightened her dark ponytail. "What d'you mean?"

"Daffy scientist, dapper, epicurean survivalist, and grizzled old gun-lover. It's like you met on a reality show."

"You think I'm daffy?"

"Don't be offended by a snap judgment. It's true of anyone who cares about squirrels."

"My story's same as yours." Otto's plate was crumpled on his belly. "Met these two here trying to find the army. They broke down up north. Couple of geniuses who'd never seen a fan belt before."

David folded his paper plate in half three times, then dropped it into the fire. He used a rag to wipe down his knife and fork. "I was a history professor at Pomona with a mildly successful blog about pre-modern technology and solutions to problems we no longer have. It was a curiosity, then, or a hobby for green advocates who'd rather spend their money on iron cookware and goose farms for fletching than they would on alternative energy, but now the wind farms are powering nothing and I know how to boil leather, so there's that.

"My Sasha and I both proved immune to the Panhandler. We had a cabin in the mountains where we lived while the violence boiled off into steam and the stovetop patina of the dead. We spent some time discussing the ideal place to relocate—right where we were, where we had the advantage of familiarity? Canada, for the isolation? Central America, to avoid winters and achieve a yearlong harvest? An island in the Gulf seemed attractive, too, but neither of us knew much about nautical matters.

"Ultimately, we decided to travel to Eastern Washington. It's relatively isolated, it's a desert clime with mild winters, and despite the summer heat, which frankly sounds barbaric, you can make good work farming due to volcanic soil and the Columbia River, which, we predicted, would also once more become a potent source of salmon. So. The truck was loaded. Routes were mapped. Food canned and tubbed. Gas siphoned.

"I-5 is an interesting route, if you've never taken it. The interior of northern California is positively Mediterranean, if lacking a gorgeous blue sea or the centuries of cultural tradition. But the olives are just as green.

"We were attacked outside Redding. Mountain town, very pretty. Sasha died on the highway. We were holding hands and she fell into the weeds. The shot entered the back of her head and one look at the remainder told me enough. I ran into the woods. I lived there like a native until it got too cold. I supposed I'd come south for the weather, but really I was hoping to run into my attackers. Motorcycle people. They wore orange. I saw no sign of them. I detoured to Monterey to see whether the aquarium still had any minders—she'd been a marine biologist, Sasha, relished our trips there. She loved to roll her eyes at the guides."

In the silence, a log crackled, startling Raymond. David stared at his hands. Anna gave him a gentle smile.

"I was working for a Monsanto team up north," she said. "Altering seeds. It was reeling, dizzy stuff. We made DNA sing and dance and sprout horns. If I still had that team, these aliens would be toast. Chomped up by fifty-foot carnivorous corn cobs. I'm not kidding. Well, kind of. I wasn't surprised by the virus or the invasion. I think I'd been assuming the agricultural conglomerates would take care of the apocalypse within the next decade themselves.

"I don't know why I headed south? Mexico, I think. Oaxaca. Pictures of the cliffs. And then Chichen Itza. I thought if I saw those ruins I could understand our own. I took Highway 1 because what's the hurry? The ocean's nice." She nudged David's hunched shoulder. "I bumped into this guy staring at a bunch of dead fish."

Mia dug a seed from her teeth. "What about you, Otto?"

"Already told it."

"Come on, there's no TV out here. I'm dying."

"Kids didn't take to the sickness," he said simply. "Figured I'd go to Alaska. Always wanted to live there before I had my girls. But when I found these two outside Monterey without a rifle, sidearm, or spitball gun between them, well, it seemed like murder to leave."

Raymond couldn't tell if there was an edge of annoyance to David's smile. Anna's seemed wholly pleased. "So you three?" she said. "Let's don't stop story hour here."

"Well, we inherited a house in Redondo Beach," Mia said.

"And were about to lose it," Raymond smiled. "Or be forced to move out of, anyway."

"Then, you know, the world ended."

"And after our house burned down, we realized all those much nicer houses on the hill didn't have owners anymore. So we moved into one. We had a garden, a system for water. It was really nice."

"Then we looked outside and there was a mothership hovering over the bay." Mia laughed, sobering up as she checked off the alien sweeps and their measures to clear out the city, the botched raid by the Bear Republic Rebels, how they'd taken Sarah into the house. "She shot Raymond as we were trying to flee. We bumped into Walt in the street on our way out of town. That was just, what, two weeks ago?"

The faces around the fire turned toward Walt. "I walked there from New York." He tossed his paper plate into the flames. "It took a while."

"You walked?" Otto said. "From New York City? Has the East Coast not heard about cars?"

"It made sense at the time."

The fire coughed sparks. At the time, Raymond thought, it always makes sense. Even here and now, camped out with strangers waiting for an army that might not exist, forced into the wilderness by aliens and plague, it made sense, in its own particular way; he knew the chain of events that had brought him here, could see the shape of several routes from here. But should they have moved into the house on the hill? Should they have gone to Alaska? Mexico? Eastern Washington?—well, no, he'd driven through the place enough to know that. But the point stood. It would be cliched to think that, no matter how narrow the rapids ahead looked, he had a million options at any point in time, but the truth was he did have a million options. Some better than others, no doubt, but he couldn't know which for sure until he gave them a shot, and if he found himself in the midst of a bad current, he could switch course at any time. A million boats could clog any river. All he had to do was jump to a different deck.

In a literal sense, though, he had a bullet-shaped hole through his leg that was still on the mend. So he hobbled through the woods on his crutches, Mia handing him bottled water when they stopped. Walt, ever restless, announced he was heading back south for a few days to seek out sign of the BRR. The others lodged no complaint.

Even as Raymond was living those days—smelling the pines, feeling the grit of the trail under his feet, the sharp yet sweet pain in his thigh when his weight landed too strongly—he knew they'd be ones he looked back on with no second guesses about what other boats he could have taken instead. They were simple and clear and good. They reminded him of the first days Mia had moved in with him in Seattle to his dingy apartment shared with two male friends and a small German Shepherd, none of whom ever raised a finger to clean. It was dirty and they had no AC in the summer and Raymond supplemented his job cataloguing books at a bookstore with food stamps, but his friends were right there and Mia liked them and he knew the neighborhood. The two of them had to stretch $180 to cover a month's groceries, and he knew if they were still living that way in their 30s, something would have gone terribly, dreadfully wrong, but at the time, it was a perfect balance of work, sleep, sex, vodka, video games, art, weed, sobriety, and movies, with just enough nights out at the bars, restaurants, and parks to keep from getting cabin fever.

The culmination of this period, which had lasted two years until he and Mia moved into their own apartment minus roommates and dogs of any kind, had come on a Fourth of July weekend when his roommate Matt talked them into driving to the lake and barbecuing in the heat beside the dazzling cool water, where they ate beer-marinated bratwurst and passed around fifths of Dr. McGillicuddy's Fireball Whiskey while playing a strange game involving golf ball bolas and PVC pipe wickets. In the morning he and Mia had dismissed their hangovers with a puff of smoke (but not too much to drive) and he'd taken her down to a motel on the Oregon Coast, which she'd somehow never seen, and it was rainy and windy and cold, but they poked at sand dollars and crabs on the shore and ate seafood caught that day and then went back to the seaside motel where they'd screwed so hard he was surprised the headboard hadn't pounded down the walls and bucked them right into the neighbor's room.

That was it, one weekend, a stereotypical summer holiday with his friends and one more day spent on vacation proper, but the memory was so clear to him he could have narrated every detail on command—how the sun had disappeared in mist as they crested a ridge past Portland; the scallops at dinner at a restaurant where the carpet was so worn it was shiny; the dirty word they'd found carved into a colossal and wave-worn trunk washed up on the sand; the color of the mugs—white outside, teal inside—at the coastal-hipster coffee-and-sandwich place they'd walked to before driving back north. Two days that felt endless because each moment was so rich it could have fed a full day of its own. He and Mia had had that time together in the house on the hill before the aliens arrived, and now, walking and screwing and chatting in the quiet, cool woods outside Santa Barbara, they'd found it again. That was what life was about. Building times so good they felt like forever.

A week later, Walt came back from LA with two more alien lasers, a pack full of bows and arrows, and an idea. He plunked down by the fire. Otto, upset that Walt hadn't properly identified himself before he drew down on him at the trailhead, was mollified when Walt handed him one of the short-barreled foreign pistols for examination.

"Don't suppose you found this piece in a Hollywood pawn shop."

Walt shook his head. "I lifted it from its former owner, who made no objections to me taking it after being very thoroughly shot."

"Just how thorough?"

"Skull like a bowl of gazpacho."

"I take it that's a soup."

"You take right." He leaned in toward the heat, face yellowed by the firelight. "I found a way to fight back."

Otto nodded, the stubble on his neck rolling. "Nuke 'em. I know where three silos are in-state."

"We can't nuke them," Mia said.

"Says who? Now's not the time to be worrying about a few flipper-babies."

Raymond frowned. "They've tried. We heard about it on the radio. Everywhere they've launched a nuke, the aliens knocked it down and leveled the place."

"Did Americans try?"

"Not that I know."

"There's your problem."

"It's not nukes," Walt said. "It's the opposite. I don't know how many of those things there are—five thousand, ten—but I know how many there aren't."

David ran a thumb along the wrinkles below his jaw. "Guerrilla warfare. The tactic of occupied lands throughout history."

"They can't fly in reinforcements overnight. If we can kill them one by one, until they don't have the men to crew their ships, we can beat them."

"This plan," Anna said, "sounds like it could be rephrased as 'choke their rivers with our dead.'"

Walt laughed. "I'm not asking anyone to come with me. You don't have to decide right now. What I'm telling you is I'm going to go back to Los Angeles to kill as many of those genociders as sneakily and evilly as I can."

Otto stood, as if ready to ride off on a stallion then and there. "They killed my daughters. I been waiting for some army, but if I haven't seen it now, I doubt I ever will."

Raymond glanced at Mia, who was already searching for his eyes. "I don't know about us. We'd need to talk."

"I'll go," David said. "All the knowledge in the world is no use if you're disintegrated before you can teach it to the children."

"Um," Anna said.

Walt hugged his knees to his chest, his face still and distant as the full moon. "Take your time. I'd like to radio around. Spread the idea. See whether anyone else is already trying it and what they've found out. Should take me a couple weeks before I'm ready. Do whatever you think's right."

Raymond shifted, thigh jangling with a sudden shot of pain. A new boat floated down that river.

26

Smoke tumbled from the chimney of the false hacienda, rising in a pillowy white language even aliens could understand: humans live here. Down the block, Walt shied his left arm away from the thorns of the brush he was hidden beneath and listened to the keen of the coming ship. Could be in for a bombing. That would be some bad luck. Have to scrap the whole campaign, at the very least resolve for a longer slog than his most patient projection. If they couldn't count on luring the squids out to play, whittling them down could take years. Years Walt may well wouldn't see; his spot was just thirty yards from the hacienda's front door, and if the bombs came largely or sloppily enough, his last moments would consist of the transition from being Walt into becoming a foul-smelling mist of vaporized guts, carbonized bone, and superheated shit.

Well, he'd find out soon enough.

Something hefty and ceramic crashed from the second floor of the house where Walt crouched in the shrubs. He scowled. While Walt was out roving and broadcasting, Mia had trained with the others at camp, ranging from competent to natural at everything she tried, be it firing pistols or bows, building and lighting fires quickly, or hiding in just the right place to have full coverage of a park trail while remaining nearly invisible. But first time in the field and she was smashing vases like an epileptic steer. He turned over the idea of walking out on the group and continuing on his own. Then again, no need to decide while he was still waiting for the bombs.

The engine-noise swelled until it was ready to jiggle the windows from their frames and his teeth from his jaw. Through the thick screen of branches, the scalloped black oblong of a flier descended vertically, disappearing behind the clay tile rooftops a couple blocks away. Dust plumed above the houses, dispersing in the faint wind. At once, the keening snapped off, leaving Walt's ears ringing with the tiny wail of a muted TV.

Three aliens rounded the corner, carrying weapons in claws and tentacles, dressed in their perverse pink straps that reminded Walt of a pandering anime character. He had the sudden urge to laugh. Less than a year ago, he'd had to worry about taking out the trash, given himself ulcers over whether an unknown young stage actor had the kind of abs that could shatter an already-cracked relationship. Now, he was hiding in a bush with a laser pistol in one hand and a grease-blacked katana in the other while a team of human-hunting alien seamonsters slapped their way down a sunny Los Angeles suburb. Why ever plan for anything?

The three beings crossed the lawn of another Spanish-style manor three houses down, sticking near its front as they advanced towards the smoking chimney. When they reached the neighboring house, one squid posted up behind a pillar and aimed its guns up at the blank windows. The other two crossed an overgrown, yellowing side yard for the porch of the smoking house.

Up and across the street, a flock of pigeons burst from a third-story window. The aliens whirled. From the window above and behind Walt, a needle-pointed arrow slashed the air, thunking through the closest alien's skull. Yellow fluid splashed the porch. A second arrow pierced the body of the posted-up squid before it could return fire, crumpling it in a sprawl of squiggling limbs. Blue lines appeared between their claws and Mia's window. Under the brush, Walt took aim and lased through the neck of the unwounded squid. The arrow-wounded survivor rose, uttered a noise exactly like a human gasp, and turned its weapon on him.

Another arrow knocked it back down, jutting from one of its many armpits. Walt fired, singeing its face before it yanked itself away from his beam. A return shot scorched the thorny brush three inches to his right, clogging his nose with thick wet smoke. His next shot missed. An icy heat licked across his left forearm; his hand jerked reflexively, firing wild. He smelled burnt hair and sausage. The alien picked itself up, guns leveled. An arrow hissed between them, piercing its throat and pinning it to the patchy yard.

Walt rolled out from under the bushes. Laser ready, he jogged up to the pinned body. Yellowy, mucosal blood guttered from its wounds. He raised his katana and struck off its head.

Down the street, Otto kicked open a front door and sprinted around the corner where the flier had touched down. Walt severed the heads of the other two creatures and knelt for their guns, carefully tapping the pads he'd discovered that sent them into a safety-like sleep mode. Across the street, the door creaked open.

"Don't have too much fun there," Mia accused, bow slung over her shoulders.

He flicked his sword, slinging gore. "Enjoyment in one's work is one of the keys to a fulfilling—" A gut-shaking explosion downstreet made them both wince. Greasy smoke uncoiled over the rooftops. Otto's shoes smacked pavement. Walt grinned, slung the pistols into his pack, and sheathed his sword. David wanted to study the aliens' gear, so Walt knelt to gather it up, disabling the tracking devices with a sleep mode similar to that on the guns—they'd hunted him down in Arizona because he hadn't seen a simple on/off switch. "Don't even think we needed the pigeons."

She jerked her chin at his forearm. "Are you hurt?"

He glanced down at the raw spot. His skin was pinkened, an uneven line of hair obliterated or reduced to small black curls. "Like the wise man said, pain don't hurt."

"God, I miss movies." She glanced at Otto as he pulled up beside them, panting. "Did you blow the ship?"

"To seven different hells, girl."

"Bikes," Walt said. "Gloat later."

They were near the crest of the hill before they heard the far-off whine of another flier; by the time the bombs fell, crumping, as removed as the howls of a wolf, they were more than a mile away. Walt pulled off the road anyway, holing up in a shoe store in a busted-up strip mall.

"Question," Mia said in tones that would have passed in a library. "Did anyone think that would go that well?"

Otto shrugged his bearish shoulders. "We got surprise, planning, cunning, homefield advantage. Can't ask for much more." He twitched his gray mustache, considering. "Besides a column of armor and some Warthogs up high."

"That went about as well as a monster-fight can go. It was like we had the cheat code for Contra."

"Well, the next level of a video game is always harder than the last." Walt had a bad feeling as soon as he spoke the words; absurdly, he remembered playing Battletoads as a kid. Specifically, the level where his toad-warrior mounted up on a hovering scooter and he had to dodge upright obstacles that resembled giant sticks of original-flavor gum. They came one after the other, faster and faster, until his scooter was speeding so fast it inevitably resulted in his craft being smashed and his froggy body being flung to its death on the far side of the screen. By the end of the course, reflexes were simply not enough. The only way to make it out the other side was to know in advance the location of every single stick.

That was a video game. You could memorize it. It didn't adapt to you. Eventually, if you played it enough, memorizing each of its obstacles, you would beat it, no matter how many times your toad died along the way.

He glanced at Mia, the contrast between her delicate face and the taut muscles beneath her sun-browned skin, and thought, suddenly, of kidnapping her, conking her out and running away to live in an igloo to train penguins to bring them fish through the winter.

"What are you smiling about?" she said.

"Alternate realities."

This, too, was truer than the glibness that had spurred it. No matter how fast the obstacles came or how often they changed, he couldn't stop playing when the game was the only chance he had to see every last one of those things dead. As for Mia and Raymond, he was less certain. In a small, strange way, he'd been disappointed when they told him they were in with his mini-resistance. He'd wanted them to go somewhere—the Caribbean, Brazil, the outlands of Patagonia. Anywhere but LA.

Instead, Raymond said they'd given it a lot of thought, and at the end of the day, they'd decided living like there's no future would only guarantee it. Or something equally hokey and cliched, who could remember such things? He'd even tried to talk them out of it, told them they didn't owe him, humanity, or anyone else a damned thing, that when happiness slows up enough for you to catch it, you grab it with both hands and lock it in your closet. Mia had just given him this look that only a woman can give a man and told him he'd watched too much Die Hard. Well, what can you do. You can't force a person to not go ambush nightmarish killers from beyond the stars.

After the success at the house, they repeated their trap in a Beverly Hills radio station, replacing the smoking chimney with a broadcast signal and the pigeons with two goats they found cropping the grass of an elementary school. They roamed through and lived in the subway tunnels—that LA had a subway was both news and hilarious to Walt—camping in the cavernous gloom at the base of the stairs, retreating to the platforms with candles and flashlights to sleep, stirred at night by the skitter of rats and the sudden panic that they lived in a concrete cave that smelled like mold and stagnant water and that if their lights burnt out they'd have to stumble through total darkness while their hands trailed along the cold tile walls. But it was safe, inasmuch as anything was these days. Anna watched from a rooftop of an art deco apartment, binoculars clamped to her eyes, walkie-talkie in hand, while Walt led David and Mia to plant two IEDs—David and Otto had combined forces to gin these up—at the entrance to the Staples Center, where they'd seen pairs of squid visit for reasons that probably had nothing to do with basketball.

And then, like that, the missions dried up. Not for want of waiting or watching. That, aside from occasional midnight scavenger runs from the tunnels, was essentially all they did. But because the aliens disappeared. Not the ships; those still scorched the sky on a daily basis. Their base at LAX was only growing, too. Walt spent long hours watching the creatures erecting their cone-houses and milling around, but he couldn't think of a way to tackle the airport that wouldn't result in a lemming-like display of self-destruction. It was the foot patrols which had stopped. The only time when the aliens were vulnerable to six people on foot armed with hand-lasers and equally silent bows and arrows.

"They got wise," Otto said, a dim hulk on the candlelit subway platform. "They may look like dog vomit, but they ain't dumb."

Raymond paced the edges of the light. His limp was almost gone. "It was working, wasn't it? So what do we do?"

"Draw 'em out."

"How's that?" Walt forked up a cold meatball. "Parachute naked into LAX?"

"I thought you were the idea man, idea man."

"If they've wised up to us picking them off, they'll wise up to us drawing them out to pick them off."

Mia tugged her blanket around her shoulders. "Do you think we should stop?"

"I say we bomb them," Anna said. "See how they like it."

Despite the darkness, Otto squinted. "Push came to shove, I could fly us a helicopter. Doubt I'd even have to remember how to land it."

"Are those automated now?" David frowned. "I didn't think autopilots had progressed past in-flight duties and...oh. You're laughing."

"Other ideas?" Walt said.

"Sabotage?" David said. "It would require access to their ships."

Anna rubbed her nose. "Poison them. Just poison the shit out of them."

"With what?" Otto gestured to the empty rails beyond the light. "You got a spare truck of Martian Big Macs down that tunnel?"

"Did we conclude they eat people? We can find corpses, fill the corpses with poison, and leave them in the open. The rest takes care of itself."

"They're not going to eat bodies off the sidewalk!" Mia said. "Would you?"

"I prefer my meat freshly killed through humane methods. But these creatures appear crustacean in nature, from which we might conclude they are not only carrion-eaters, but—"

"We don't know they eat people," Walt said through a mouthful of marinara. "Think better than you're thinking right now."

"Why don't we keep doing what we're doing?" Raymond glanced around the candlelight. "I haven't even gotten out there yet. How do we know the patrols won't come back tomorrow?"

Otto palmed his gray stubble. "The fact you want to go to war tells me you've never been in one."

"You have?" He raised his brows at Otto's nod. "Which one?"

"Which one you think? I look young enough to have been plunking camel jockeys? I'm talking about the jungle. Churned clay. Socks that never dry out." He drew a long breath, puffing his chest. Walt should have guessed he was a Vietnam vet, and a specific kind at that: he who thinks final authority in all matters rests with those few who'd been at Khe Sanh or Hamburger Hill. "I'll tell you something," Otto went on. "One day I'm on recon with a roughneck named Samms. The sun's starting to go down, which you don't like, because it's still hot as a dog's mouth and meanwhile the night-bugs are starting to make so much noise you couldn't hear a Panzer brigade sneaking up on you. The shadows, too. Fronds that could be men or their guns. You see everything and nothing and the only reason you don't head straight back with a false all-clear is the guilt of walking the others into the unknown.

"We reach the edge of a clearing, Samms and me, and the sun comes back. It's yellow on the green grass and the brown water. Down the way, a dozen VC with AKs are yelling at unarmed civilians and kids. I don't understand a word of what the civilians are saying back but you can tell they're scared. That break in the voice means the same in any language. It's open field between us and them and Samms and me know we can't get any closer without getting plunked.

"They're arguing for a while, the soldiers and one rice-skimmer, and then one of the men with the guns gets bored and he shoots the farmer. We're far enough away it's a second between when the farmer drops into the muck and when we hear the report. The other civilians—there must be forty of them, fifty—take off across the sopping fields. Mud's splashing their knees. The soldiers just stroll after them like they just finished a nap. No hurry at all. After the civilians have made a hundred yards, we see why.

"Across the field, there's a barb wire fence. The woman and the kids are streaming into the fence and they're screaming and tearing themselves apart trying to squirm to the other side. Caught in the spikes, the soldiers walk right up to them and shoot them dead. Less than a minute after the first farmer got shot, the field is quiet and the barb wire is heavy with the bodies."

Otto leaned back from the circle of candlelight, shoulders sagging like a weary bear. "Samms and I had tried to help, we'd be two more bodies in the field. Samms knew it. I knew it. But every day since I know I should have tried. I should have given everything to stop those monsters at the wire."

Walt scowled down the gloomy tunnel. The old man was ready to die. Probably, he was just as ready to seize command if Walt decided to turn back or if the aliens persisted in staying beyond their reach. He supposed they were all doomed anyway; whether they died tomorrow or two years from now, there was no stopping the enemy. Otto was too war-sure. David, too theoretical; Anna, too scattered; Raymond and Mia, too—domestic. They'd killed a few aliens together, sure, but it was too fantastical to go on.

Something was coming. After moving in together after college, Vanessa had adopted a six-week-old chihuahua, an all-black female with floppy bat ears and round black eyes. He'd resisted the move, as much as he could—she'd brought it home without a word of warning, walking through the door with a velvety little thing that could hardly run without falling down—but had wound up serving as its primary caregiver on the long nights while she auditioned, rehearsed, then unwound in a Village bar. That meant housebreaking. He laid down newspapers, even the diaper-like puppy pads that were supposed to convince dogs to go in one spot, but on countless occasions he looked up from a Mets article on his laptop to find the little dog squatting on the middle of the carpet, urine dribbling from its vagina, its black eyes so blankly stupid he wanted to crush the thing in his hands until it stopped squealing. His anger was so thorough, so mind-erasing, he had to count out loud until it boiled away.

Here they were, six little puppies piddling across Los Angeles. The force that smashed them would be furious.

* * *

It began to rain. It continued to rain. It rained until water spilled down the subway steps and sluiced onto the tracks, forcing them deeper into the tunnels. They jugged all the water they could, took impromptu showers with soap and shampoo looted from the smashed-out CVS on the corner. David constructed an elaborate filtration device from charcoal, sand, and a trash can with a drain punched through its side. Anna wandered back from a midnight run to Home Depot to seed carrots and lettuce in the sidewalk planter. Otto watched with mustached disapproval from the bottom of the steps where he spent every waking minute ensuring he'd see the aliens before they saw him.

Walt doubted the man had to worry. They hadn't seen alien foot patrols for three weeks. Even the aerial presence had lessened, as if the invaders were equally discouraged by the ceaseless rain. Walt had waited for them to relax their guard or for another strategy to emerge, but there existed a hypothetical point where waiting would backfire—when reinforcements would arrive from the stars, or the aliens began breeding, or humanity simply lost the numbers and will to fight back. He wandered the platforms, flashlight in hand, in search of ideas. Instead, he turned a corner and found Mia hastily wrapping a towel around her lithe, damp, candle-shadowed body.

Water dripped from her dark hair. "You'd think I could find some privacy in the LA subway even before everyone else died."

"Didn't know this was the ladies' room."

"Now that you do, will that make you more or less likely to come back?"

"I'd rather not start making enemies with humans, too."

"Sounds smart." She slicked back her hair, pattering water on the concrete. "What are you doing down here?"

He kept his eyes on her face. "Thinking."

"Well, sorry to interrupt you."

"Who says I stopped?"

She smiled, eyebrows puzzled. "When I start shivering in a few seconds, it's cold, not because—"

Footsteps rasped down the platform. Adrenaline jolted through Walt's solar plexus—he envisioned driving his flashlight into the alien's throat—but then a candle wobbled into view, followed by Raymond. He frowned at Mia's towel, the bucket of soap and water.

"Need a hand?"

She glanced over her shoulder. "He got lost."

"I know where I am," Walt said. "It's just not where I meant to be."

"Okay," Raymond smiled, confused.

Walt waved and turned down the tunnel, afflicted by the sudden need to jerk off. It was past midnight, but Otto was still on watch behind the newspaper dispensers he'd fortified at the base of the stairs. Rain punished the streets. Through the screen of mist, the mile-wide lights of the mothership hung to the west, implacable behind the black swirl of clouds. Walt went behind the counter of the CVS, where he had just enough light to complete his business, then went back into the tunnels to tell the others the ship had come back.

"About time," Otto said.

David ran his finger down the ridge of his ear. "What does this change?"

"I'm sure they'll be texting me that info any second," Walt said.

"I'm ready to go," Raymond said. "Just let us know what we need to do."

What they needed to do was watch. That was the whole strategy: minimize risk while grinding away. In that vein, they watched from the rooftops in the foggy night, rain thumping the tarps they carried for cover, and returned to the tunnels half an hour before dawn. Otto took the bathroom mirror from the CVS, carefully smashed it in half, and left the shards at the top entrance, standing the largest piece upright. He settled in down the stairs and watched the reflected street through his binoculars. Late in the afternoon, he woke Walt from a platform nap. The patrols were back.

"They can track cars really well," Raymond said. "We can drive one a few blocks, pull over and set up down the street, and see who comes out to play."

Otto smirked. "Good luck finding a battery that isn't deader than Ethel Merman."

"Who?"

"Could work," Walt said. "Any idea how big the blast radius is on their bombs?"

"Under a block." Anna sketched an intersection in the dust, circled a quarter of it. "I spent a while in San Francisco on my way down. Ran with these soldiers for a week or so. Crazy crew. When they weren't having orgies on top of Coit Tower, they were strolling over the hills with SAMs on their shoulders. Eventually, they all got killed, mostly in bombings that were hot and awful, but wouldn't frizzle your hair from a block away."

"Still a variable," Walt said. "A bad one."

"We haven't done this before," Raymond said. "They'll think we're from out of town."

He didn't like it. He didn't trust cars. Maybe that was just the New Yorker in him. "Find something we can drive."

Otto insisted on aiding Raymond's search, likely because he'd die of withdrawals if he didn't get behind the wheel and under the hood of something stat. He returned equally proud and ashamed of his find: an old-model Tempo, paint flaking from its roof, hood, and doors, one of which was crumpled by a generous dent.

Otto toweled oil from his knuckles. "Your power locks don't power, your automatic seatbelts would earn you a ticket in 48 states, and from the rattle I'm guessing your catalytic's been taken behind the barn and shot years ago. But it runs."

He'd jammed it in neutral so they could push it down to Santa Monica Boulevard without turning over the engine and risking an early visit from alien fliers. The rest of the team gathered up lasers and bows, taking pistols, swords, and hammers for emergencies. Once they were ready, Walt ran them through the plan a second time: David in the crow's-nest, spotting. Himself and Mia holed up a few blocks down, lasers ready. Otto and Anna another block further. Raymond, driving, would roll past, park three blocks past Anna and Otto, and run back to join them. If nothing came by to investigate within twenty minutes, they'd relocate their shooters down the street and try again.

In the street, the rain sifted down in tiny specks just like it had in New York, like dust in an afternoon sunbeam, the kind of more-than-drizzle that would take forever to soak your clothes but leaves your skin slick and cold in seconds. Despite that and the late December date, it wasn't truly freezing. Winter and midnight and the worst LA could offer was a chill. These people hadn't known how good they had it.

A scout ship keened from miles away, lost in the charcoal skies. They took turns pushing the car, two on the bumper with one at the wheel. The remainder watched the clouds and the street. The gutters were clogged and gray. The ankles of Walt's pants grew sodden, clinging to his legs.

They double-parked beside a blue Civic with a skeleton behind the windshield. David started up the stairwell to an office roof. Otto jogged off to scout the street. The dome light flipped on when Raymond opened the door. He stopped halfway into the seat, teeth clenched, leg jutting from the car.

Mia started forward. "Let me help."

"I've got it." He didn't have it. He struggled and wiggled, hanging from the door frame, but when he tried to swing his leg into the car, he closed his eyes and went pale. "Give me a minute."

"Hell no." Walt leaned in to pull him from the car. "You can't be gimping it up if they send a jet on the way. Driver's got to get out of the blast radius the instant he shuts off the car."

"Or she," Mia said.

Raymond stumbled from the car. "No way."

"Like it's so much safer to hide in the rain waiting to shoot Cthulhu's bastard sons with a laser gun?"

Raymond glanced at Walt. Walt shrugged. "If there were kids here, I'd let the kids fight, too."

"I don't like it," Raymond said.

Mia reached for his elbows. "If we can't do this all the way, we shouldn't be here at all."

Raymond leaned in close to her and said something too soft to hear. When they broke, Mia slung herself behind the wheel and poked at the controls until the wipers swished rain from the windshield. She turned the key. The engine kicked over, idling with a metallic rattle. Exhaust wafted into the dank air. Mia turned off the car. Walt could no longer hear the keening of the scout. The dark, rain-slicked streets looked alien, a gray netherworld from a primal past or an exhausted future. He suddenly wanted to leave. The street, the city as well. His skin prickled.

Otto ambled back to the group, rifle pouched in the crook of his arm. "All clear."

Walt gazed down the street, waiting for a sign that wouldn't come. If he'd been on his own, he would have walked away.

"Walt?" David said over the walkie-talkie, infuriating him instantly—they were reserved for emergencies, who knew whether the aliens could pick up their signal. "I think something's coming."

Clouds flowed inland, black and thick. At first Walt thought his ears were making up the sound, giving themselves something to hear besides the spatter of rain from the eaves of empty bars and Thai joints and dress shops. Then a ship slashed below the clouds, furls of vapor trailing in its stream. Down street, it braked sharply and turned on its tail.

He blinked. "Run."

"Get away from the car!" Mia turned the key, gunned forward on screeching tires. Raymond cried out. The car jolted forward and the alien vessel screamed back to meet it. Light flared from the ship's belly. Mia dove from the car into the street, rolling on the wet pavement, elbows raised to shield her face.

The street ahead became a white sun. Walt lost himself in heat and light and sound.

27

Raymond's ears rang. His head thumped. His skin stung. His nerves were a burning web of numb fire. Smoke hazed the street. Bits of falling rock clinked on pavements and parked cars. Someone was screaming. He couldn't feel his feet. A round, smoldering crater bridged the street ahead. The car was gone. So was Mia.

Someone grabbed his arm. Walt. "Come on!"

"Where's Mia?"

"It's making another pass. We have to go."

Raymond staggered forward, but Walt's arm clung to him like a wet rope. "Okay. I'll just get Mia."

That rope-like force tugged him back from the crater. Mouth gaping, David spilled from the office doors into a scree of shattered glass. Anna goggled at the sky. Otto gave them a blank look and sprinted down the cross street. Walt pulled Raymond after the old man.

Otto swerved alongside the shelter of the buildings. Raymond's leg ached. He still couldn't see Mia. Puddles splashed around his shoes. A jet hummed way up in the sky. A human jet? Why would a human jet have bombed them? Were they killing everything that moved? His left cheek was warm and tingling. He tasted briny metal.

His existence seemed to blink off for a few minutes. Then he was down in the dark, candles flickering over the grimy tiles of the subway, seated on the platform. He stood, leg twingeing. Otto muttered with Walt across the way. Raymond limped toward him. The skinny stick of shit barely had time to flinch before Raymond punched him in the eye. Walt's head snapped back. Without a word, he bounced to his feet, jabbed Raymond in the nose, and doubled him over with another strike to the stomach. Wheezing, Raymond plowed his shoulder into Walt's midsection. The thin man jolted into the concrete.

"You dumb shits!" Otto's heavy hands pawed them apart. Walt wriggled against the old man's granite grasp, eyes fiery windows in the blank wall of his face.

"You killed her!" Raymond bucked his shoulders. "You put her in that car!"

"I sure did."

He blinked. "Then you killed her!"

"Aliens killed her."

"On your orders."

Walt just nodded, eyes dimming. Water trickled down the tunnel. Raymond tensed.

"She saved us," Otto said in his ear. "Do you understand that?"

"What are you talking about?"

"The car was the target. She hadn't hauled ass away from us, we'd all be belly-up."

"I watched from the roof." David's eyes were sunken, dark. "I didn't think any of you had survived."

Otto's hand was hot on his shoulder. He would have killed Walt if that grip weren't there, leeching away his rage, a meaty, dangling lamprey. Raymond's knees went out. He sat down hard, a tangle of legs. His howls echoed down the empty tunnel. Anna's eyes bulged. Otto shuffled. Then Raymond was crying too hard to scream, his ribs bouncing against the cool stone, tears and snot slicking his tipped face; soon, he was too tired to do anything but lie still and breathe and breathe and breathe.

By the time he finished they were gone. Raymond relit a candle and rose, shaky and strangely relaxed. His feet moved on their own. Otto and Walt murmured to each other down the platform; further below, he heard snoring. He watched himself walk up the dust-colored steps past posters of dead rappers promoting vodka and of movies that had never made it to public screens. The air was thick like a bathroom after the hot showers he no longer had. He smelled mold and washed-out urine.

The mouth of the exit was as gray as the walls. He snuffed his candle and swayed up steps still moist from the rain. A weak breeze touched his face. The street was silent, the rain finished. Broken windows gaped blackly from offices and banks and ground-floor restaurants. The city was nothing more row after row of useless, walled-in spaces. A sodden bee's nest lost under a board in a vacant field.

He wandered in a way he hadn't wandered since he was a kid. Black hills bracketed the city to the north. Soaked paper stuffed the gutters. Crashed cars rusted in intersections, the desiccated bodies of their drivers as broken as the windshields and hoods. In an alley between a tattoo parlor and a waffle house, a child's body lay under the tires of a smashed van, its leathered skin rain-soaked, its long black hair a snarled lump. When they'd moved into the house in Redondo, the basement had been filled with two generations of belongings. Box after box of his grandma's clothing scraps, patterns, zippers, and lace fringe, all yellowed and crusty. A wheeled chair, its vinyl seat hard and brittle. Tubes of paint with age-spotted labels, paint caked inside. A box of broken desk lamps with two-pronged cloth cords. Mason jars of loose screws and bolts and washers. Envelopes of undeveloped film with expiration dates in 1935, the blank photo paper separated by black tissue that shredded to the touch. All of it—every magazine, plastic bag, and screwdriver—coated in a tactile layer of dust and grime, yellow and gray and greasy. Things no amount of cleaning could make proper. Nothing could be sold or salvaged. The only thing to do was pile it up and set it on the curb.

In Los Angeles, yellow buildings rested in gray streets. It didn't matter what happened to it now. There was nothing left worth saving.

Raymond wandered until his feet blistered and his leg throbbed. When he returned to the tunnels, even Otto was asleep. In the morning, they gazed dumbly into their cans of cold beef stew.

David cleared his throat. "I think it's time we talk about where we go from here."

"Talk away," Walt said.

"I've been thinking about the structure of LAX. Specifically the sewers. If we can find a map, or devote the time to mapping them ourselves, I don't see why it would be impossible to gain entry to their local base of operations and...well, explode it."

"Start planning."

"I'm quite serious."

"Then start planning. In the meantime, we'll keep looking for chances to pick them off."

"We're not going to kill an alien invasion two and three at a time." Anna's voice was low and hard as the platform. "We'll be dead before spring. And they'll still be squirming in their towers, spawning, squirting their sperm over the Earth."

"At this point we're cavemen," Walt said. "What more can we do?"

"We can nuke them," Raymond said. They all turned his way. He hated the pity and patrimony in their eyes. "The big ship is back. It just takes one big missile."

"Boom," Anna said.

David blew into his knobby hand. "At this point, it does make for an attractive possibility."

"To prompt those things to blow up the city," Walt said. "Along with us and everyone else who's hiding in it."

Raymond rolled on his back and smiled at the black ceiling. "Where are the nukes, Otto?"

"Don't tell him."

"Otto. Where are they?"

"It won't help. It'll just get people killed."

"We're all going to die, Walt. Bombed in the street. Shot on the beach. Burned in our homes. We'll starve and we'll freeze. We'll nod out behind the wheels of cars and beside the road when we just can't go on. We'll die alone, or we'll die telling someone we love them. What does it matter? We're all dead. You can die here, setting traps for the things who killed our whole species before they set one tentacle on the dirt. Or you can die trying to kill them all. To make sure no other human feels what we've felt."

Droplets tickled down the tunnels. Otto's mustache twitched. "Vandenberg. Right north of Lompoc. Not far out of Santa Barbara."

Raymond wanted to rise that moment and walk out of this hell. Leave Walt to the creatures. But some dull, pedantic quarter of his mind informed him he didn't have the time or the energy. He wanted to run. He wanted to scream. He wanted to sleep until everything on the surface wilted to dust.

"God damn it." Walt's lighter splashed his face with quick orange light. Tobacco mingled with the mildew of the subway. "If you want to go, then go. Disappear. Don't put the rest of us at risk."

"Fuck you, Walt," Raymond smiled. "Who's coming to Vandenberg?"

Anna tipped back her chin, mouth pursed. "Staying here is stupid. I'm not getting bombed. That's for Arabians."

Raymond laughed at the roof. All this and still the old bigotry. "David?"

"She was your wife, wasn't she?" David said.

"She was."

"Sasha was mine. I'll go."

Raymond chuckled again. Walt was about to be as alone as he felt. "Otto? You want to show us the way?"

The old man hunched his heavy shoulders. "No, I don't think so. Don't think I will."

"What?"

"I get why seeing what you seen gets you ready to take out the knives. I don't blame you. She was about my daughters' age, you know." Otto smoothed his gray mustache with downward strokes. "No matter how big a boom those missiles make, I don't think it's gonna wake any of them back up."

"Fine." But it soured him, reduced his victory over Walt to a trivial, meaningless moment. Raymond was sick of his emotions pinging around like a ball-bearing on a concrete floor. "I'm going to sleep. We'll leave tomorrow night."

He half expected Walt or Otto or both to try to talk him down, to physically stop him. Walt just watched him rise to gather his gear. Otto looked at his own hands, turning them over each other, rough skin rasping. Raymond brought his things to the lower platform and clicked off his flashlight. On the cold stone, he shivered.

* * *

The ache in his leg fueled his march toward the hills. The mist returned, fogging the windshields of the silent cars, sliming him with clammy dew. Their feet scuffed the dark sidewalks. Raymond had two moods now. Despair came with no warning, rogue waves of helplessness that sucked him out on a rippling tide. When it receded, he was left with a dry and pulsing rage. That fueled him, too. He carried one of the laser pistols in hand. He hoped he'd finally get to use it. Aliens. Looters. It didn't matter. Just one thing prevented him from making some extra noise and light right there in the street and killing whatever crawled out to investigate: getting to Vandenberg, and smashing that mothership out of the sky.

Like the night before, Walt hadn't offered any serious resistance. Just talked some bullshit about how they'd need keys and codes and electricity and the whole thing would be a stupid waste. Raymond figured those bunkers were built to last a long time. Their own generators. There would be overrides, backdoors into the system. For all Walt knew there was a big red button Raymond could mash down with his fist. If it really needed some special key or code, a general, colonel, or buck private would have stayed there till the bitter end, bleeding out every orifice, but still waiting for the president's command to rain down hell on whichever country had unleashed the virus that had killed America dead.

Walt had laughed at that ("Nobody's going to iron their uniform and run up the flag while their wives and mothers are coughing blood"), but Walt thought everyone else was just as amoral as he was. There were those who remained devoted to their duty no matter how dim the candle got. If just one soldier had stayed true to his responsibility while the rest of the world scattered and died, Raymond would free the Earth from the monsters who'd wrecked it.

As they headed west, art deco highrises shrunk to apartment blocks and the shells of sushi-fushion joints. Surf rumbled ahead, hollow and rhythmic. Beyond the sand of Santa Monica, waves foamed in the clouded moonlight. The lights of the ship hovered in foreign constellations. At the first sight of color to the east, Raymond pulled them off the PCH down a curling, palm-lined street, where they holed up in a clay-tiled hacienda the size of a high school gym. Out back, the pool was half full of green sludge. He slept in a dusty canopy bed and was awakened twice by the rumble of engines from the highway.

David and Anna heard them, too, and readily agreed to stay put until nightfall. Raymond watched the street through the curtains while they discussed trajectories and targeting. The sill was cold against his elbows. He remembered holding Mia.

They returned to the road with the return of the night. The upscale density of Santa Monica transitioned to stark houses on dead lawns. A short hill rose just past the highway. On the other side of the road, cream-colored manors on stilts crowded the black sea.

Ahead, chaotic thrashing broke the metronymic wash of the waves. White spray drifted on the buffeting sea wind. Raymond hunkered down beside a damp white wall and peered down an alley between two houses. Past the sand, dark shapes fought against the breakers, leaping and plunging, jerky yet graceful—and all wrong.

He got out his binoculars and leaned into the night. Three of the creatures stood on the beach, silent and still. Past them, dozens of others tumbled and tussled and grappled. At times, they fell without being touched. One lashed the water with its tentacles, splashing everyone near it.

One of the three on the beach waded into the water. By the time it reached the pack of swimmers, their heads bobbing and disappearing in the swells, the sea reached only to its swollen carapace.

Raymond lowered his binoculars. "They're children."

28

"We should have killed them."

Otto glanced at him over top of his glasses. "Unless you had a Stinger in your back pocket, I'd say that jet was a little out of range."

Walt poured a bottle of rain water over his hands, scrubbing sweat and grime. "Raymond. The others."

"I don't know who raised you, son, but unless it was a Khan, you don't kill a man because he disagrees with you."

"If they launch that nuke, they'll kill anyone who's left here."

The old man spat on the platform. "They won't be launching a nuke any more than they'll call the squids over for a handjob. An ICBM is not a video game. Why d'you think I told them where the damn things are in the first place?"

"What do you think the army was doing when the bodies were clogging the street?"

"The hell should I know? I took the president off my speed dial when I discharged."

"In New York, the military rounded up the survivors for lab rats. The normal protocols got chucked into the East River the moment the dead outnumbered the living."

Otto eyed him through his thick and scratched-up lenses. "Yeah, well I don't see you hunting Raymond down and slinging him over the hood of your car. What's going through your crooked mind?"

"We destroy the mothership first."

"Just blow it right up."

"To bits."

"And you've got an idea how?"

"Yeah."

"To smash it all to hell."

"It's not to invite them over to watch the Jets."

Otto laughed, a honking, hooting laugh that should have been paired with a hat slapping a knee. "Then why the fuck have we been shitting in these tunnels all winter?"

"Because," Walt said, "it's a terrible plan."

"Quit making me thrash the bush here."

He sucked in his cheeks. "We capture one of their jets, load it up with explosives, and fly it to the carrier."

"You're talking about that movie. With the guy who talks too much."

"No, Jeff Goldblum uploaded a computer virus to alien software. We're going to upload a plane full of bombs."

Otto tapped his thick finger into Walt's chest. "And they blew up the White House, those disrespectful sons of bitches. Independence Day. You think the squid blew up the White House, too?"

"I don't think they gave a shit."

"Never bought that myself. I think you stick a word like 'psychological' in front of 'warfare,' you're losing sight of the real objective."

"So you think it'll work?"

Otto hooted again. "Hell no, you idiot. But what else do we got?"

Walt hadn't expected any other answer. He didn't know how they'd get a ship. After failing to make more than the scantest progress with the alien computer in the desert, he didn't see how they'd possibly get one of the jets off the ground, let alone handle it well enough to thread it inside the carrier's belly without ruining a bit more than its paint job. It was all stupid, frankly. Cruelly, horrifically stupid. They ought to just leave. Shoot themselves. Worst of all, the idea was inspired by Independence Day, the brainchild of the guy who'd directed the fucking Godzilla remake. All the dozens of sci-fi books and movies he'd absorbed over the years—his favorite hangover treatments had been lemon-lime Gatorade, darkness, and a flick like Omega Man or ID4 or 28 Days Later—and the best he could do was rip off one of the most widely-mocked solutions in the history of the apocalypse.

He supposed that was the truth of it. Any species advanced enough to reach Earth would be so overwhelming that the only thing to do was hide until you died. Even this lackluster bunch—capable of mustering just a single carrier and a few thousand troops instead of the tens or hundreds of thousands you'd need to occupy (rather than annihilate) a planet, bearing technology which was human-superior but nothing unimaginable or godlike—had easily quashed everything the survivors had thrown at them. The outcome, except possibly the moment before the first nuke had been launched, had never been in doubt. This wasn't Die Hard. It wasn't Star Wars or First Blood or Red Dawn. There was no victory. If there was a point to fighting back, it was for the simple joy of hurting creatures who'd hurt them first.

He knew of worse ways to pass the time.

"You know those mines you rigged at the Staples Center?" he said. "You know how to make anything bigger?"

Otto chuckled. "You kidding? When the Y2K or Peak Oil hits, you want a bomb, you got to know how to build it for yourself."

* * *

Otto squinted from behind the BMW whose trunk he'd keyed with "BUY AMERICAN" while Walt was scattering tracking devices across the parking garage. The old man's glasses glinted with a stray glimmer. It was nearly pitch black down there, musty with old rain. Silent shells of cars waited in the darkness for drivers who'd died months ago. Horror movie stuff. Walt shivered, then rolled his eyes. Real monsters were on their way, and he was still spooked by the make-believe ones.

They'd spent two days preparing. While Otto put together explosives of all different size and shape, Walt had planned and scouted. Lure in a flier, kill the crew, try to figure out how to fly the thing before anyone noticed it was missing. Meanwhile, if Raymond had risked pulling a car off the side of the road, his crew could already be balls-deep in a nuclear bunker, smoking cigars and running the final check before sending their missiles winging to LA. Walt should be treating every moment as if it were his last. He should be thinking poignant thoughts and writing them down to enlighten and shame alien scholars sifting through the ashes of the civilization they'd destroyed. He should at least be praying for forgiveness from Vanessa for not being more of a man, from his parents for not calling more often, from Nate in 3rd grade whom Walt had jump-kicked in the stomach after Nate intentionally booted a kickball over the fence.

But they were all dead. They couldn't hear him. These were apologies he should have made in the moment they happened, not after months of the distanced hindsight and soothing regrets that make every man's intentions as pure and bright as a glacier. In this world, the world of scared truths, Walt's last words might be no more than a tacit agreement with Otto's somewhat obsolete message about supporting the local economy.

Out in the mist, an engine wailed, faded, wailed, faded.

"Circling," Otto said. "Ideally not so as to find the best angle to open the bomb bays."

"They'll come down."

"Says who?"

"When one goes missing, others come. They care about each other. That's how we're going to kill them."

"You should have worked for Nixon, boy."

The engine keened closer until grit and scrap paper blustered against the narrow windows near the garage ceiling. The ship touched down. Its engine spooled to silence. Walt could hear his own blood in his veins. Feet and claws stomped the street, became muffled, then returned twice as loud at the top of the ramp to the basement garage.

Two of the creatures slapped down the slope. Pale light fanned from metal handhelds. The looted tracking devices continued their noiseless broadcast. The soldiers raised their rubbery sensor-arms, turning them slowly through the gloom. They glanced at each other, flashed hand signals. One gestured up the ramp. The second plodded forward. Walt grinned and brace himself.

Orange light flared from the front columns. A nauseating bang shook dust from the ceiling. Twisted metal shotgunned the parked cars. Walt's guts splashed inside his ribs. He rushed through the dust, laser and sword in hand. Yellow remains smeared the ramp, bubbling, slipping down the concrete in the stink of burnt powder and vaporized flesh. Otto ran beside him, chuckling, holding up his pants with his free hand. In the street, swirling lights painted the apartment complexes around the landed flier. A blue beam flicked above Walt's head.

He dove behind a Porsche. Otto flopped in beside him, popping up to exchange lasers with the soldiers around the plane. Walt dropped flat and sent beams slicing beneath the undercarriage of the Porsche. An alien fell, tentacles flailing. Another volley and the tentacles relaxed across the pavement.

"Got to kill that crew before they start blabbing," Otto panted.

"Give me one of those pipe bombs."

"You aren't gonna hit them from here, Johnny Unitas."

"Light one up and hand it over before your fat heart gives out."

Otto's salt-and-pepper mustache twitched with laughter. Walt poked around the car to pepper the squid moving from the flier's wheels to the cover of an SUV. In the whirling lights, their octopoid, deepwater bodies looked like something from a dream that can't be wholly forgotten nor remembered. A laser appeared between the aliens and the Porsche's headlight cowl, sizzling the orange paint. Walt ducked.

Otto passed him a shockingly heavy metal rod with an honest-to-god fuse hissing from its end. Feeling like a cartoon, Walt said, "Cover me."

The old man swore, dropped the laser pistol, and unslung his bolt-action rifle. He triangled his elbows across the Porsche, aimed, and squeezed off a round. He'd fired a second before Walt rolled out from the car, ducking alongside the line of parked Lexuses, Hummers, and Nissans. The rifle bellowed over the crackle of blue bolts. A beam caught Walt on his pack, melting the plastic into the shoulder of his jacket. A rifle round clanged into the hood of the distant SUV. The aliens flinched back. Walt's fuse had nearly disappeared into the bomb's rounded end. He skipped forward, planted, and slung the fizzling pipe end over end toward the cluster of soldiers.

It fell from the whirling light, rattling across the asphalt. Walt crouched behind a van and pressed his palms to his ears. A shot echoed between the apartments, followed by a second. Adrenaline tingled across Walt's gut. Otto must have botched the fuse, the chemistry. This was it.

A metallic bang splintered the night. Shrapnel pinged into car doors, shattering windows. The van rocked against his back. Walt stood. A blinding light burned from the side of the dark oblong flier. At first he thought it was a weapon, but then there was light and noise and force and darkness.

And Otto stood over him and he could smell blood and burning and plastic and smoke and his ears keened and the sidewalk under him swelled and rippled, carrying him nowhere. Otto was saying something. He said it a few times more before Walt understood.

"Sure," Walt said, standing to prove it. His knees buckled. Otto grabbed his arm with tough, knotty knuckles.

"That doesn't look like any fine I've seen."

"Well, see it." He frowned. "Where did the ship go?"

"Davy Jones' of Mars."

"Those aren't words."

"Come on, kid."

"We have to get the ship." A craggy heap of metal smoldered where the ship had rested. It must have taken off, but he couldn't hear it. Just the ringing in his ears. The crackle and whip of flames. And Otto chuckling ruefully.

"Oh, you got it. Now lean on me. We got to be gettin' ourselves."

Walt tried to resist, pawing at the smoke as if waving it away would reveal the flier, but Otto pulled him along like a leashed beagle. By the time the keen of a second ship whined across the skies, Walt understood. They were already a mile or so from the explosion, but he mumbled something about holing up in a nearby boarded-over Thai restaurant to wait out the search. Otto helped him through a gap in the boards, then grabbed a newspaper from the table by the front bench and swabbed dust from a booth.

"Well, shit." The big man eased himself into the padded seat. "It was a good idea, kid."

"It was an awful idea."

"Don't see anyone else doing any better."

"Can't try the tracking devices again. They'll just bomb us. Then bomb our bombed-out craters."

Otto retrieved a red handkerchief and swabbed his sweaty face. "It ain't the end of the world. If Los Angeles is about to get turned into a silicon parking lot, you don't need a Ph.D. to know you might be better off hitting the trail."

Walt leaned back into the squeaking plastic seat, sighing with something a lot like relief. It felt good, in a way, to be done. Not just with this campaign. It had been a long time since he'd wanted to die in LA. If he left—and the fact that, one way or another, the city was about to be destroyed made that "if" something of a nondecision—he couldn't imagine himself rejoining the fight in San Francisco or San Diego or wherever the hell else there were still people trying to do something about the uninvited guests. He could no longer pretend resisting would do anything for the survivors or the ghost of Vanessa or even himself. It would simply be suicide in another form, a helpless admission of a lack of imagination. He supposed he'd like to watch the city blow up before moving on. That would probably be pretty spectacular. The hills would probably be far enough away to be safe. Or get up above it all somehow, watch from the skies. If they noticed, there would be worse ways to die.

He went very, very still.

"I changed my mind," he said. "I'm going to die after all."

Otto's brow wrinkled. "Look, I don't see how's there any reason to stay. You're young. You go be a pirate or some such."

"I have a better idea. In that it's much, much worse."

29

"That's it, then," David said under the sound of the surf. Down the beach, alien children tumbled in the waves. "There's no hope. They'll outbreed us."

Raymond rubbed his mouth. "There's always hope. All we have to do is get to the nukes."

"They could have these creches everywhere."

"And if we take out their carrier, they won't have anything to defend them with."

"You propose we stay the course," David said.

"Let's get out of here before they see us."

Anna wagged her head. "We can't leave."

Raymond frowned. "It's dark. We'll just cross the street and sneak north."

"Those are monsters in our ocean. If you see a monster, you don't say 'Oh, I hope the water's not too cold.'"

"What are you talking about?"

"We should...you know." She mimed a machine gun with her hands, made a "sh-k-k-k" noise down in her throat.

He cocked his head. "They're kids."

"For now."

"No, that makes sense," David said. "Every day they continue to grow, they will become that much more threatening to whoever eventually contends with them."

Raymond glanced between them. "What if we get hurt? Who will get to the missiles?"

"What's going to hurt us?" Anna said. "I count three adults and a whole lot of nothings."

"Kids."

"So what? You find a baby rattlesnake in your bed, you grab the biggest boot you got. You think after we kill all their parents, we can just hug them up and say 'Hey, now who wants some s'mores?'"

Raymond was struck with sudden mental vertigo. Who were these people? "We don't know how those things think. We can cross that bridge when we come to it."

Anna laughed, cold as a Northwest rain. She kicked to her feet and sprinted from the alley onto the dry sand. She whooped and drew her laser. David glanced at Raymond, eyes wide as hubcaps, and started after her. Blue light streamed between her and the whirling adults. They fell as fast as she could press the button. Amidst the breakers, the children froze, silent as always, all the more terrifying for having no voice. Raymond raced after David, slowed by the sand.

"Stop it!"

Anna charged the nearest child, black hair flapping behind her. Her laser knocked the youth into the surf. David shot, too, screaming, not as a battle-cry, but something wilder, the scream of a man falling off a ledge. Electric lines criss-crossed the beach, lighting up those long, bug-eyed faces, their whipping tentacles and quivering claws. Raymond slowed, drifting to a stop beside a clump of stinking kelp. Anna whooped, surf splashing her knees. David held his gun in both hands with his elbows tucked tight against his belly. The last child ran parallel to the water, glancing behind itself, Anna high-stepping at its heels. She drew close enough to grab it, then shot it down.

Bodies bobbed in the waves. Others twitched on the tideline, cold water foaming over their punctured shells. Limbs rolled in the shells and seaweed. Raymond felt thrilled and sick and frozen. His leg throbbed. David blinked by the water, clearing his throat. Anna shot the last corpse again, then turned and strode back down the beach.

"Let's get the fuck out of here," she said. "It's starting to stink."

* * *

"I believe our first order of business should be to restore power." David snuggled his blanket over his shoulders, cheeks gaunt in the blue-gray dawn. "That in hand, all our subsequent actions require all the less labor."

Anna poked a handful of almonds into her mouth. "Yeah, if that includes one damn big electric fence. Once those things are out of here, it's the people who'll come back."

"Well, security will have to be accounted for, of course. I suspect we won't be lacking for bravos to fill out that niche."

"I say that's our numero-uno. Find some guys we can trust, set them up with some lasers, and we're gold."

"We won't be dealing with peasants used to cleaning themselves with their own hand. I think the best way to forestall internal dissent is to reinstall the basic comforts—light, plumbing, refrigeration."

"Which we just hand right over to the first pack of assholes with AKs."

"I suppose we'll have to divide our labor. Know anything about windmills, Raymond?"

He glanced up. He'd barely heard their conversation. After the beach, they'd marched miles up the road, finally stopping at the first threat of dawn to hunker down behind a stand of trees. He'd tried to focus on his feet, counting steps, playing games where he pushed off with the balls of his feet rather than letting them roll forward into the next step, but his mind kept coming back to Mia and the beach. Seeing those things die had been marvelous and hollowing, like the invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11: justified, even righteous, but also sickening, because any way you sliced it death was death, and some of those who were about to suffer deserved it far less than others.

He didn't know for a fact the young ones were innocent. Maybe they tore their way out of their dying mother at birth, or survived the first few weeks through cannibalism. Maybe they were already being trained to enslave and slaughter the human survivors. In any event, they'd grow up, in all likelihood, to finish the genocide or at least accept the fruits of its happening. Part of him was filled with a vicious joy to see their goopy blood boiling away from the holes lasered in their hides and faces.

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 glaze."

"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 shit 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, napkins, 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 stores, 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 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.

Toward the waiting ship.

31

Three metal spears rose sixty feet from the tarmac, sleek and cold and massive. Scaffolding buffered the rockets, one side of the support structure a blocky rectangle taller than the missiles themselves, metal steps like a fire escape running up its side, the second section standing there like a metal power pole, wires dangling between it and the rocket. The weapons looked more than ready to down an alien ship. They looked ready to end the world.

"Amazing," David said.

"I thought they'd be underground," Raymond said. "In Wyoming."

"They must have brought them here during the virus. Ready to strike down the perpetrators."

"It'll just take one," Anna said. "What do you want to do with the other two?"

Wind ruffled the grass. The afternoon warmth had leeched away, lost as the sun dropped into a half-haze of spray and what might soon be clouds. Unseen, a red-tailed hawk shrieked across the hills. It felt unreal, something from a dream, a half-remembered story told to him while he was high.

"Let's move," Anna said. "Split up and secure the grounds."

Raymond straightened. "I think we should stick together. It isn't that big."

"You got lungs, don't you? Something happens, make them shout."

He glanced to David for support, but the man was already fumbling his laser from its improvised holster. Anna worried him. Her assumption of leadership was a disaster in the making: she was impulsive, angry, enthusiastic to the point of being crazy. They could easily have been killed during the beach massacre. Vandenberg looked empty, but right there nuclear missiles sat out in broad daylight. They were power incarnate. The kind of thing that would attract survivors and occupiers alike.

With sudden clarity, he knew he should shoot her. It was what Walt would have done. There would be no arguing her around. But too much of him simply didn't care. Of course she was crazy, a ready murderer, maneuvering to seize power even in situations, like their hypothetical future society, that didn't yet exist. That was just the way things worked. That's what Mia's death had revealed to him. People could be killed at any time, be it on purpose, accidentally, or through cosmic indifference. No dream was guaranteed—most would fail, no matter how hard you worked. Everything decayed, and too often, people were actively helping to make things break down that much faster. All you could do was get away. That's what he should have done. He should have gone to Colorado with Mia. Built his own little corner of the world with the person he'd loved.

He stalked off across the grounds. Jeeps and massively long flatbed trucks sat empty, dirt caking their windows. An assault rifle rusted in the weeds. Birds twirped from the tall white radar stand, nests woven into the crotches of its metal joints. He walked to the curve in the road and stared out to sea. It was just as empty, wasn't it? He turned to brush dust from the window of a metal shack, peering inside at dark computers, radios, and desks. When he finished his sweep, he reconvened with David and Anna at the metal doors of the big white block that seemed to serve as the command station. David strained against a metal bar he'd levered under the handle. Anna stood back, arms folded. The door rattled; David fell away, panting.

"Let Raymond give it a shot," she said.

"There's something at the bottom." Raymond pointed to a flat white strip glued across the door's lower edges. "Let me take a—"

"You just have to lean into it." Anna took the rod from David and bore down. The veins in her forehead squiggled under her skin. The door popped open, juddering, the white strip snapping free. Its broken edges glittered with bright metal. "Told you."

Dust and death wafted from the dark entry. They fetched flashlights from their packs. David tried the lights to no luck. Down a dusty hallway, another set of doors stood closed, sealed by some kind of magnetic lock that now lacked the power to keep them out. The corridor opened to a wide, spacious room that had been emptied of all equipment and furniture. On the floor, bodies lay in two rows. Desiccated skin hung from the bones. Brown stains spread beneath the remains. There was little smell.

Further on, the computers were black, lifeless. Raymond didn't know why he'd expected any different. He was about to sit down there in the middle of the floor when David found the stairwell to the basement. The man nodded, cheeks wrinkling around his small smile.

He had the generator on in minutes. Lights flickered, blinking over the dust griming every chair, keyboard, and monitor. On the top floor, the Pacific sunset streamed through the dirty windows, illuminating two dried-out bodies in uniforms, a fallen pistol, and a pair of keys glinting from the room-wide terminal.

David reached for one with a single finger, withdrawing as soon as he made contact. "Oh my."

Anna stared at the controls. "Is that all we need? Can we do this?"

"I'll have to get into the software. We have no idea where those things are currently aimed—China, I'd expect, perhaps North Korea. The targeting will have to be reconfigured entirely."

"That's not telling me the answer to what I asked."

"This is military software. It may have military-grade encryption. I won't know until I dig in."

"Start digging. I'm going to get on the radio and see if the ship's still there."

Raymond honked with laughter. "We don't even know if it's still in LA?"

"So what? The 'I' in 'ICBM' doesn't stand for 'in-state.'"

In the orange glow of the waning sun, he laughed again. Had the plan really been so threadbare? What if the keys hadn't been here? The generator hadn't worked? What if the mothership had since left for parts unknown? Rolling around on that dingy subway platform, this had been his big bright idea? At the time, lost in the fog of the bombing in the street, it had felt foolproof. Now that he was standing in the control room, hours or mere minutes from a launch, he didn't see how they'd even made it this far.

"Oh." David leaned over his monitor. The text was too far away for Raymond to read. "There's no security at all."

"This is strange," Raymond said.

"What's strange is those nukes weren't launched just for the fuck of it." Anna pointed at the two withered bodies. "That's why they're dead. One of them wanted to."

"You weren't here."

"When you remove all other explanations, the one that remains must be correct."

David clacked keys. "I don't know what I'm doing. With a few hours, I may be able to rectify that."

"Take your hours. I'll be on the radio." She strode from the room. Raymond drifted to the window and stared out as if he were keeping watch. David didn't seem to notice. The window faced west and the sun was on the sea and sinking so fast he could see it moving through the mist. It seemed like it should hurt, staring at it like that, but it didn't. The sun slipped away. He blinked against the greenish afterimage floating across his eyes.

"Can you really do this?" he said.

"Perhaps if I didn't have to answer questions about whether I can do this."

"Oh."

"Sorry, I'm all frizzle-frazzled here." David shook out his fingers, breath whooshing. "I don't tell missiles when and where to explode. I code websites about pre-Elizabethan leather-tanning."

Raymond stared out to sea. "Will we have to shield our eyes?"

David swiveled in his seat. "Does it look like you can see Los Angeles from here?"

"From the launch."

"The launch. I wouldn't think so."

"I'd like to watch it. It should be remembered."

David hunched over his keys. Clouds massed, thick and gray. The light flowed off to the west. Anna returned some time later, yanking him away from memories of trying to find Mia purple shells along the beach.

"They're still there," she said. "If you can trust somebody from Salt Lake City, anyway."

"Mm," David said.

"How's it coming in here?"

"Along."

"Good. Goodness." Her protruding eyes settled on Raymond. "What are you doing for the cause?"

"What am I doing?"

"You look like you're reading over David's shoulder. Nobody likes it when you read over their shoulder."

"What else is there to do? Should I sweep up?"

"You could be looking for food and water. There must be some. I bet they have some very nice guns, too. Do you think the batteries in this alien shit will last forever?"

"I'm going to watch the rocket launch," he said. "The Twinkies and M-16s will still be there in the morning."

She cocked her head and stepped forward. "What, does your leg hurt?"

"Get out of my face."

"Did you watch the sunset, too? I bet you did. I bet you sat here and thought poetry to yourself."

"Get out of my face. Step back and stay back."

"Or do you miss your girlfriend? Need some alone time to go wet those cheeks?"

Heat blasted through his nerves. He hooked his fist straight into her jaw. Anna's head snapped back, eyes wide and wild. He swung again, clumsily—the last time he'd been in a fight had been in a snowfield beside the middle school gymnasium—but with all the horrid power of his fury. His third punch knocked her to the linoleum. Her lip dribbled blood. The skin around her left eye was pink and already starting to swell. Raymond forced his foot to stay still and not smash into her teeth. If he started, he wouldn't stop until he saw brains.

"I'm going to walk outside and watch the rocket go." His voice shook. "Then I'm going to walk away. If you come after me, I'll jam my thumbs into your froggy eyes and scoop them into the dirt."

Anna gagged sticky blood into the dust.

"Bye, David," he said. "Good luck."

The man gaped at him, hand pressed to the base of his throat. "Are you sure this is the right idea?"

"Never."

He got his pack. His feet echoed in the stairwell. The night was cold. He put on his coat and walked up a short slope to the parking lot, where he sat down on one of the low concrete spot-markers. The missiles waited on the pad, sixty-foot silhouettes, monuments to a dead people that would soon be used to end another. He zipped his coat up to his neck. The wind ran in the grass. His nerves fluttered like he'd had too much coffee. He watched for the front door to open, fanning light onto the dirt, but Anna stayed inside.

He had no way to know how much time had passed when he heard the rumble; he'd broken his watch sometime in the city and hadn't bothered to replace it. Clouds filled the sky from edge to edge, dark and low. He thought it might be thunder, but thunder faded. He widened his eyes as far as they would go, as if that would wipe away the clouds and splash sun across the sky, and then he saw the lights: a pair of blue dots inbound from the southeast, sweeping in over the hills.

His stomach coiled. He bolted for the command center. At the top floor, Anna scuttled back from him, knocking down her chair.

"They're coming," he said. "They found us."

32

The ship thrummed in the night, undershot by a deep whine that could shiver the bones from your body. Walt flipped on the burner, maintaining altitude, but he could still feel the noise in his ribs, sharp as an icepick and chthonic as a cavefish. Otto retreated from the basket's edge to hunker down and swab mist from the lenses of his binoculars.

"It's dank as a submarine's basement."

Walt glanced over the side. "Anything?"

"All the clouds you could ever want to wear."

"Keep looking. If we're going to get splashed across its side, I'd like a moment to curse a few people first."

Otto shook his head, mumbling, and scooted back to the basket's side, where he nudged his chin past the wicker edge and clamped the binoculars to his eyes. "We even close?"

"Getting there. I'm about to start easing us down. Try not to piss yourself."

"This mist, you couldn't even tell."

Walt kept one hand on the vent's control line, trying to feel a descent he couldn't see. Between the cold and the clouds sucking up the heat, he doubted he'd need the vent at all. A minute later, he waggled his jaw, popping his ears.

"See anything?" he said.

"Nothing count?"

"Nothing is something."

"Then I see something."

"Good."

He continued to let the balloon sink of its own accord. They were higher than the ship, he knew that much. He thought they were on top of it—it was a big enough landing zone, that was for sure, and the droning, penetrating hum of its engines and systems sounded more or less straight down, which was something. A something a lot like Otto's, maybe, considering that maneuvering a balloon that's the passive reactant to heat and winds is clumsy in the best of circumstances, let alone when you can't see a damn thing, you're probably fifty pounds past your recommended weight limit, and the continuing existence of humanity is at stake—but still. Something.

His ears popped again. He glanced over the side, saw nothing but darkness and swirling particles of water. He could definitively feel their descent now. He reached for the burner to slow their fall.

Otto craned over the edge, too excited to remember to be afraid. "I got something!"

"What kind of something?"

"Oh, I think you probably ought to take a look for—"

The basket whammed into solid metal, throwing Walt against the covered bundles of C-4. He struggled to his feet, hip and knee stinging. The balloon's envelope sagged downward, pulling sideways, scraping the wicker basket over the solid metal beneath.

And to all sides, too, a flat stretch that quickly disappeared into the mist. Not much question of where they were. Not unless somebody had just replaced the ocean with a million billion tons of black metal.

The basket skidded over the hull. Walt heaved bundles of explosives over the side. They landed on the ship with muffled thumps. Otto shook himself and pitched in. A sudden gust yanked the basket hard. Walt glanced up at the bobbing envelope. He'd intended to deflate it, reduce the risk of it falling past a window, but there was no time. He vaulted over the basket's edge. His feet hit, sliding on the rain-slick metal. His elbows banged into the hull. He clawed and scrabbled and then there was nothing beneath him but mist and open air.

He dangled from a smooth metal bar, legs penduluming in the gap. The balloon skittered away, sinking behind a drop in the ship's hull. Walt strained his arms, lifting one elbow onto the slippery surface, but his other hand slipped loose, dangling him from one awkward wing.

A rough, heavy hand grabbed his upper arm. Another took hold of his collar. Otto hauled him bodily to solid ground. Behind him, a rift yawned across the deck.

"You son of a bitch," Otto panted. "You trying to leave me all alone up here?"

"Just impatient to get inside."

"Well, on your feet, then. We got a bread trail to follow."

The hull extended to all corners of the compass, a flat black range interrupted without earthly reason by open gaps and fat, ten-foot-high triangles that may have housed delicate equipment or may have been bolted on just to look scary as hell. Not that there were any visible bolts. There were hardly any seams, either, as if the whole goddamn half-mile vessel had been poured into a single mold. Otto stooped for a cloud-sodden canvas bundle of C-4. Another rested in the gloom twenty feet on. They found five of the six packages and spent fruitless minutes circling for the last before Otto pulled up and gazed over the metallic horizon.

"We could spend all day up here, kid. What we've got will either dunk this bird or it won't."

Walt tapped his toe against the solid hull. "Having my doubts on that front."

"Yeah, well, that ain't all we got in store for these assholes, is it?"

"I've got my doubts about that one, too. Any clue which way the engines are?"

"Figure we walk far enough in one direction, we'll learn soon enough."

The ship vrummed up through the soles of his shoes. He saw no windows or portals of any kind. A blustery wind came and went, misting his jeans and jacket. He would have said it felt like the surface of the moon, but as far as he knew the moon didn't make a rubbery clank if you stepped down too hard. Moonside visibility wasn't restricted to thirty feet in front of you, either. They shuffled forward, skirting the holes and unclimbable rises. Massive cupolas cast blue towers of light into the skies, spaced widely enough to leave whole sections in near-total darkness.

The wail of an incoming flier cut over the ship's organ-rattling hum. Walt shrunk against a house-sized black block. His fingers were stiff with cold; he kept one hand in his pocket for warmth while keeping the other out to ward against falls, switching them every few minutes. After a while, his mind gave up any notion of trying to make sense of where he was or what he was doing, settling into an alert blankness. He walked.

Without warning, he stood on the edge of a steep downward arc. Beaded mist trickled down the slope.

"Fifty/fifty," Otto said, jerking his chin right and left. "Bet you that's the best odds we see from here on out."

Walt cupped his hand over one ear, then the other. "I can't tell."

"Well, don't look at me to hear the way. I've logged a few thousand too many hours behind a black powder pistol."

"Okay." It felt and sounded like there were engines to all sides, but in another sense, that made his choice all the easier, because what did it matter if he was wrong? "I never much liked the left, anyway."

Walt started right, skirting the abrupt curve into blackness. The going was smoother along the rim, less fraught with sudden pits, but the clouds stopped him from any sense of how far they'd gone and how much might remain. One step after another, rubber squeaking on metal. They stopped to catch their breath and sip bottles of water. They hadn't brought any food. Walt hadn't expected to eat again, and he began to regret he hadn't taken along what would once have been a simple treat, a bag of M&Ms or a Peanut Butter Cup, as a sugary memento of everything that had been lost. He could have sat down on the hull with it and eaten it and for a moment he wouldn't have felt so cold or forlorn.

He carried on. A steep ridge peaked from the surface, forcing them inland. Had he already seen that trio of bulges off to the right? The ship was circular; could they have already have completed a full revolution?

The hull's thrumming swelled. Ahead, the mist glowed like moonlight. The steep curve led down to round nozzles jutting from the ship's side, monstrously wide, steam boiling in their glaring light. Walt laughed.

"Those things are volcanoes. We'd need to be supervillains to take them down."

Otto swabbed moisture from his brow. "I know a crank like you's popped a balloon or two in his day. You put a crack in the side of something that big and nasty, it'll do the rest of the work for you."

"Balloons," Walt said. "Thanks for putting it in a language I can understand."

He walked on. Once the first engine was directly downslope, Walt stepped out of his shoes and lined them neatly on the edge. He unshouldered his pack, unzipped his coat, peeled off his shirt.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Walt squeaked his bare foot against the damp metal. "If I start to slip, my skin's going to stick to this a lot better than my clothes."

He dropped his pants and, down to his threadbare black jockey shorts, laced his shoes back on; his clothes might not have much stick, but against the wet surface, his rubber soles clung like a terrorized cat. Otto knotted the slender rope. Walt slid it over his shoulders and tightened it around his waist. The cord was light, thinner than his pinky.

"If I slip, this thing is just going to tear me in half, isn't it?"

"Naw." Otto gestured at the featureless metal plain, void of anything to hitch the other end of the rope to. "You fall hard enough to do that, you'll just pull me right off the edge." He plunked down. "Good thing I'm fat."

Walt emptied his pack of everything but a heavy bundle of C-4. "Just slap it right on?"

"Just slap it right on."

"If anything goes wrong..."

"Yup."

Walt exhaled and lowered himself to the surface. It was witheringly cold, a sharp metal bite against his skin. He crawled feetfirst down the slope, lowering himself on his side whenever he threatened to slip, stabilizing himself with the full surface area of his arm and side and legs and shoes. He could support his own weight until halfway down the curving slope. Welcome warmth rose from the engines. The rope strained around his hips. As the hull steepened, he slid down on his butt until it bumped against his heels, then lay flat and stretched down his legs for another scoot. It was exhausting and freezing and painful and slow, but it worked, and he wormed his way down, two feet at a time, until he stood on top of the giant nozzle's base, heat rolling over him in drowsy waves. He unwrapped the explosives and mashed the white, clay-like material into the crease where the engine protruded from the hull. Once his hands were halfway warm, he started the climb back up.

"Get it?" Otto said when he emerged minutes later.

"Got it."

"Wish someone could see this," the old man grinned. "Doesn't much matter, I suppose. Homer himself wouldn't have words."

Walt caught his breath, then jogged in place until the feeling returned to his hands and knees. The remaining engines were a monotony of scooting down cold, clammy metal. When he finally finished, he flopped down on the hull, his ribs swelling like a landed dolphin's. Otto draped his clothes and jacket over him. His hands and shoulderblades burned where the skin had rubbed away. His toes were soaked and stiff and his left pinky toe pulsed like it might be broken. His head was too heavy to lift from the metal.

"You got it in you?" Otto said softly some minutes later. "I can head in myself. Leave you with the detonators."

The very question brought him back, marshaling his anger, his defiance, his existential need for revenge. Within a minute, he was sitting upright. He stood to put back on his clothes. They were nearly as clammy as his skin, but the leather jacket felt like steel mail on his shoulders.

"Waiting on you," he croaked.

Otto's groundside sketches of the ship made it easy business to reach the metal spire that marked the spot below which the landing bay doors took in and let out the jets, fliers, and dropships. Walt expected another grueling descent from the top of the hull to the bays, but Otto's crude maps didn't show the spiral ladder that led straight down to a platform clinging to the ship's dark side. They got out their pistols and entered a manual door. The well-lit tunnel led to a scaffold high inside the quiet bays. Below, landing strips led out to the cold and misty air. They huddled on the scaffold, watching. Walt didn't know the time—2 AM, 5—but the bays were empty as a midnight alley, and in the course of five minutes of waiting, a single crewman had strolled across the dim runways.

"Any further in, we're liable to take a laser to the noggin," Otto said.

Walt nodded. "Fuck these guys."

Otto dug out the detonator, clicked a home-built cap off the simple switch. "Fifteen minutes." He laughed, deep chuckles that bunched his sides. "For all the good that will do us."

He flipped the switch.

33

Anna advanced on Raymond, all fear of him forgotten. "You brought them."

"How the fuck did I do that?"

"They weren't here until you went outside."

"Neither were the clouds. Did I bring those, too?"

David turned from his computer, eyes darting between them. "Did they follow the radio signal? Is the radio still on?"

Anna's eyes widened. "Of course not."

"We must have tripped a tracking device. We have to find it!"

"David!" Raymond shouted. The gaunt man spun to face him. "It's too late for that. How long until the nukes are ready?"

"I'm trying to refine the target coordinates. Hypothetically, they can be launched at any time."

Raymond crossed to the south face of the sprawling room and pried open the blinds. The blue lights blinked beneath the clouds, tracking closer.

"Keep working. We'll try to hold them off as long as we can."

The wild light receded from David's brown eyes. "Sir."

Anna shook her head hard. "You have to launch now."

"We have a single opportunity for success! If I miss by a fraction of a mile, all will be lost."

"What if they bomb us?" She pointed repeatedly at the alien vessels closing on the base. "What then?"

"That depends on where their bombs detonate. If it's on the building itself, we will be vaporized. If it's an air burst—"

"Then we're stupid fucking corpses, and stupid fucking corpses can't launch missiles. Now turn those keys."

Raymond started back across the room, hand dangling near his gun. "Wait. Keep working. If we see their missiles launch, if they start circling, you turn those keys."

David rolled his lower lip between his teeth, gaze flicking between Raymond and Anna. He nodded. "If you see anything at all—"

"I'll say the word."

Anna's face blanked. She wandered to the southern windows. The jets careered closer, lights brightening, then swung out to sea, slowing until Raymond could hardly believe they could stay aloft. David's fingers clattered over the keys. The two jets turned straight for the base. Raymond held his breath. Rather than the blue triangles of the fighter jets, these two craft were fatter, almost lumbering, flattened ovals nearly the size of passenger jets. The vessels sunk lower and lower, glided past the shore, hung in the air above the far end of the landing strip, and began to descend in a dark swirl of dust.

"I'm going downstairs," Anna said. "I'll fortify the doors."

Raymond exhaled. "Good luck."

"Lock the doors behind me."

He nodded. She drew her pistol and ran down the stairwell. Raymond clicked the lock, wedging an office chair beneath the door handle. Anna's footfalls faded away. He bent his knees and grabbed hold of a filing cabinet. Metal squealed across the tile. David glanced sideways, annoyed, then returned to his monitor. Raymond shouldered the cabinet in front of the doors, swept a desk clean, then flipped it on its edge and shoved it some twenty feet from the entry, broad side facing the doors.

Out the window, white lights flooded the tarmac. Dust blustered away from the grounded vessels. Aliens descended short ramps, waggling claws and tentacles in the pale spotlights.

Straight below, a dark figure raced from the base of the command center, hunched down in the night. Anna rushed into the lee of an outbuilding, paused to peer at the aliens, then bolted north for the open fields.

"God damn it," Raymond murmured.

"What's wrong?"

"Get ready to wrap it up. We don't have long."

An open buggy bounced down the broad ramp. It hit the pavement and peeled out, veering north. Four aliens jounced from its back. A fifth manned a spindly turret mounted at the nose. Raymond pressed his face against the cold window, breath fogging the thick glass. A floodlight spilled from the buggy's front, silhouetting Anna as she sprinted across a dirt road bordering the airfield. Her tiny figure stumbled. She picked herself up, firing a spray of blue lines over her shoulder. The buggy's turret opened fire. Thick, strobing light seared across the cold field. Anna's upper body tumbled away from her churning legs.

The buggy swung to a halt, dust whirling in its floodlight. The grounds were still. An alien leapt down, padded over the dirt, and fired three blasts from a hand laser into the dark grass. It remounted the vehicle. The buggy circled back, rendezvousing with a squad of creatures just beyond the nearest outbuilding.

Raymond resumed piling chairs, desks, and computers against the doors. With the room's furniture all but completely rearranged, he bunkered up behind the upturned desk, sweating, chest heaving. Several stories below, a loud bang rattled through the building.

David stood, cracking his knuckles. "I suppose that's my cue."

"Is the missile locked on?"

"Well, you have to ask yourself, exactly where is their ship? Right over the bay, yes, but we can't say for sure. I checked with the network's satellites, but they're all dark." David rubbed his nose. At the bottom of the stairwell, the doors burst in with a metallic clang. "I decided to get creative. Why launch one missile when we've been graced with three? Assigned each a different airburst coordinate, varying the heights and X-Y plots of the bursts, should allow us to cover quite a lot of ground. Or air, as it were."

"Meaning?"

The man shrugged his narrow shoulders. "If they're anywhere in that bay, they are not going to be very happy about it."

Raymond let out a long breath. The air tasted sharp and piercingly sweet. He crossed to the control board, its knobs and flat screens. The two keys waited in their steel circles beside unwinking red lights.

David reached for one. Raymond gripped the other. The cold metal seemed to cling to his fingers. Appendages smacked up the staircase. Through the eastern windows, the rockets sat ready on their pads.

"The true ultima ratio regum," David said. "Ready?"

"Fire away," Raymond said. David began a countdown. Beneath the count and the tentacles hammering against the doors, Raymond tipped back his head and whispered, "I love you."

They turned the keys.

The missiles were silent. Raymond tried and failed to twist his key further. "What's the matter?"

"Is your key turned?"

"As far as it goes." The doors thunked, rattling against the mounded files and desks. A chair jarred loose and crashed against the floor. "Are all the...buttons pushed?"

"They're pushed." David blinked peevishly at the board. "Perhaps I missed something. A last level of security."

Another barrage of blows assaulted the doors, the hardest yet. At once, the aliens stopped their attack, leaving Raymond and David in thudding silence. Raymond didn't know whether to laugh or scream.

"It was a trap," he said. "Why would they do that?"

"Eh?"

"You really think those things would leave functional nuclear missiles two hundred miles from one of their main bases?"

"I hardly think they know the location of every warhead on Earth. Anyway, what would be the point?"

"David, they're aliens. The thrill of the hunt. Religious ritual. Maybe it's a super clever plan to draw out the most cunning and ambitious survivors. Whyever they did it, they left everything we needed to hope—and now that it's time to launch those rockets, they're standing there like dead trees."

"How...how rude."

Rude. Perfect. Like life is a job at a call center and every day brings nothing but threats, complaints, and insults from strangers who don't give a shit about you. That, ultimately, was why Raymond couldn't feel particularly angry or frustrated or tragic about their failure. Mostly he just felt forlorn. If it's all rudeness, the only thing is to find a few people who love to know you as deeply as you love to know them. To cling to, enjoy, and protect each other. The callers on the other end sure the hell won't. He hadn't known Walt, not really. He sure didn't get to know Otto or Anna or David—not unless being aware the former professor could give you a dozen different recipes for stewing mutton counted as knowing him.

Searing light flared from the top of the doors, tracing a white-orange line through the metal. Molten droplets hissed on the desks below.

He'd taken a gamble with them because he couldn't face how hopeless it all really was. They'd been conquered. By aliens. That was it. Time to pack up the blankets and go home. Time to light out for Colorado with the one person left alive who cared whether last night's dreams were good or bad.

After cutting horizontally through a foot-wide stretch of door, the blinding force cut a sudden line straight down.

He'd chosen to chase delusions of glory. The weed-dealing. Security for Murckle. The commando nonsense in the city. His reward was to die beside a stranger. He couldn't argue with that. He had his pistol in his hand. He didn't intend to use it.

The arc light cut 90 degrees again, tracing the third edge of a square, then jogged up, completing the shape. The smoking metal square jangled against a file cabinet. A fist-sized ball hurtled through the hole in the door.

Raymond closed his eyes and remembered a 4th of July weekend when he and Mia watched the moonlight on the waves of the Oregon coast.

Light filled the room.

34

Cold wind stirred the cavernous landing bay. Eighty feet below and two hundred feet away from their place on the catwalk, a conveyer hummed into life, drawing a dark, pilotless jet into a massive tunnel and the storage cells beyond. White lights blinked alongside the tarmac, leading the way. Two of the creatures stood near the slowly moving vessel, exchanging gestures Walt could barely see. He leaned forward. To the right, another spiral ladder descended to the bay floor; the catwalk continued across the walls, disappearing into shadow.

"Given how fucking ludicrous this is," Walt whispered, "I don't think any strategy is off the table."

"Bridge is front and center," Otto shrugged. "Literally, I mean. I figured we'd just mosey on that way."

"Through a foreign ship a half mile wide."

"All roads lead to Rome, don't they?"

"Shit." Walt glanced down the catwalk. Mist gleamed on the metal. "Suppose we'd better stay out of sight as long as possible."

He crouched forward, gaze switching between the far-off aliens and the web-like walkway ahead. There were no handrails, probably because those things didn't have hands, but the path was at least wider than human-normal, nearly six feet across, and Walt was able to largely pretend there wasn't eighty feet of open air between him and the runways below. Otto shifted behind him, shoes squeaking. The conveyor finished hauling the jet into the depths of the bay. The two aliens followed it out.

Walt hurried on. A black door opened off the catwalk, tall and ovoid. A recessed silvery circle sat in its center at neck height. Walt pushed the circle. The door cracked down the center, the two halves retracting into the walls. Beyond, lights flicked on noiselessly, dim but more than enough to make out the rounded, high-ceilinged hallway that extended for dozens of feet before gradually curving out of sight.

"Pray we don't run into Darth Vader," he muttered. He stalked forward, pistol in hand. Doors passed on either side. The tunnel unfurled further and further, curving leftward with each step. Behind them, the lights faded to nothing, leaving them in a perpetually advancing circle of illumination and granting Walt no way to tell how far they'd traveled.

"You tell which direction we're headed?"

"Starting to get off track," Otto murmured. He tipped his head at one of the featureless oval portals. "Want to see what's behind door number three hundred?"

Walt shook his head and continued on. Too easy to get lost down a rabbit hole, to stumble into the main barracks. Their only hope of reaching the bridge was, like Otto implied earlier, to follow the big roads—which, of course, meant risking run-ins with anything else putting them to use. If so, no big loss. Alive or dead, the bombs would go off in another twelve minutes.

Finally, the tunnel branched, a six-way intersection with a steeply pitched hexagonal ceiling. Glyphs played on its high walls, providing useless instructions. Walt glanced at Otto, who pointed down the rightward-veering branch. This kept on like the previous tunnel until suddenly widening into a bright lobby. To one side, windows overlooked a wide and dark room, sparsely furnished with perversely tree-like metallic chairs and stands with as many limbs as the aliens themselves. Walt skirted past. Far down the curved tunnel, lights flicked into being.

"Back," Walt hissed. He jogged back to the lobby, Otto beside him, and knelt beside the doors to the gym-like room. Otto extended his weapon. The soft smack of feet and treads filtered down the hall. The light followed, first as faint as starlight, but quickly advancing to something he could have read by.

A pair of aliens padded into the lobby, lightly dressed in glyph-marked straps. Their fat, ovoid heads swung toward the two humans. Surprise flashed in those watery, oversized squid-eyes. Walt opened fire.

Otto's target dropped in an instant, smoke curling from the dime-sized hole between its eyes. Walt's leapt back in a confusion of limbs, yellow fluid pattering from a scorched hole beside its mouth. Walt fired off five more shots as fast as the pistol would let him. The thing dropped, tentacles flapping against the smooth floor.

The hallways were dark at both ends. Otto gestured toward the gym. "Try the doors."

They opened easily, swinging outward in conventional fashion, so long as you overlooked the apparent total lack of hinges. Otto grabbed hold of a mess of limbs and dragged the body for the doors, the alien's tentacles still twitching, claws opening and closing dumbly. Walt went for the other body, stashing it beside Otto's in the corner of the room of metal trees.

"Ought to pick up the pace." Otto palmed viscous yellow blood onto the thighs of his pants. "Right now surprise is the only advantage we got."

Walt didn't argue. They jogged onward, dogged by the lights, soon passing another vast room thoroughly filled with stools and roundish things that could have passed for tables. At its far end, creatures stirred in dim light, metallic bowls flashing in their tentacles. The windows to the cafeteria began at knee height; Walt flopped to his belly and wriggled along, Otto army-crawling behind him. When the tunnel once more narrowed around them, they rose and hustled on.

Past a pair of retracting doors, the tunnel expanded into a massive hangar of wide-open spaces and canyons of freestanding shelves forty feet high. Black machinery rested in the walls and dangled from ceilings too high to see. Metal clicked on metal. A hundred yards down an alley of shelves, an alien carefully selected a steely rod from a drawer of identical pieces. Walt aimed his pistol and edged on. The alien didn't turn.

Emptiness, stillness, and desertion, as if the ship were a closed museum, a place that no longer was. It could have housed tens of thousands, even millions, but Walt had seen no more than a skeleton crew, the ushers left to sweep the stadium after the game has finished. Were they that low on manpower? Were these creatures interstellar Pilgrims, a handful of outcasts gone far to sea for a new home? No reinforcements, then, no swarming billions with lasers clamped in their claws and knives clenched between their beaks. Just a small sect with a good idea: let the virus do the fighting for us. Bound by strict scriptures and baffling beliefs. And when they'd arrived and found a few of the locals still kicking—now what?

At once he was convinced it was true. It would explain so much: their lack of a cohesive plan. Their inability to finish the job. Their hesitance to just bomb the hell out of anything left. And why he and Otto had been able to plant bombs on the engines and slip inside their floating fortress. They just weren't that smart. Certainly no smarter than most of the humans through the history of their own invasions. That understanding filled him with a cold and questing fury, and when he and Otto reached a round hub of identical doors, digital glyphs shifting above each one, he knew precisely what to do.

"What do you think you're standing around for?" Otto said.

He turned in place, slowly scanning the readouts above the doors. "A guide."

"We got about two minutes before the engines go, son. After that, it's apt to get messier than a pet store Dumpster."

He continued turning. He didn't have to wait long. Piping lit around one door, outlining it in soft blue; the glyphs above stabilized, flashing twice. The doors opened, revealing a roomy and well-lit pod and disgorging a lone alien into the round hub. Its sensory forelegs reared in surprise. Walt shot it through the throat. It gurgled yellow goo onto the rubbery floor. Walt shot it in the head, kicked it back into the pod, and stepped in behind it.

"What the hell?" Otto hissed.

"This place barely has a crew. The only ones here must be going somewhere important."

"Or straight to the barracks."

"Or the bridge."

"Or the shitter."

"Shut up." The doors glided closed. Hammocks webbed the high walls. Walt snarled his arm into the lines and braced his feet. The pod accelerated at a shallow downward angle, lurching his stomach. Otto swallowed and burped.

The pod jolted, lifting Walt's guts. Otto glanced at his watch. His brows and mustache jumped. "Well, that would be the bombs."

"Did they work?"

"Let me just ring up one of the engineers here," he scowled. "How in God's name would I know that?"

The pod slid to a swift but smooth stop. The doors parted. On the other side, a waiting alien hopped back in horror. Otto bullrushed it, laying into it with his pistol. A second being scurried into the short, curved foyer. Walt dropped it with a quick blue pulse. Otto gritted his teeth and ran right, Walt on his heels.

He found himself on the upper terrace of a vast, stadium-style auditorium that led down like a giant's staircase to an oval command center of officers and computer banks. The far wall was a single transparent pane, huge and perfectly clear. Beyond, whitecaps surged inland, washing Venice Beach. Black mountains rose behind the silent corpse of the city. The scene tilted subtly downward, as if the ship were a rollercoaster just past its zenith.

Inside the auditorium, dozens of aliens throttled the space above their control pads, gesturing furiously to each other, signing orders with flailing limbs. Others rushed for the elevator-pod. An eerie silence hung over the chaos, as if Walt were watching through soundproof glass; no yelling, no alarms, just the clicking of their ball-shaped keypads and the thump of their feet on the spongy floor.

Otto flanked left along the smooth blue wall, gunning down a pair of creatures on their way to the elevators. The flash of his pistol spurred a score of sense-limbs to leap upright. Other creatures stayed bent over their controls. Otto fired, aimed, repeated. Walt sprayed blue light at every alien in easy range and ran along the upper tier toward more of the unarmed crew. They splayed shot in their seating-hammocks, limbs coiling and flopping. Others ran down the broad circular tiers, sprawling over spindly desks, collapsing them. Something small and silver blurred from below. Otto hollered and poured back fire.

At the end, a half dozen of the things clustered together at the very lowest terrace, tentacles intertwined, clutching and plucking at each others' leathery bodysacs, limbs held before them—warding, pleading, praying. Walt strode down the tongue of carpet, pistol extended. He didn't begin firing until they were close enough to touch.

The bodies of captains and admirals dropped no different from the others, mucosal blood slopping together. Monitors flashed soundlessly. Walt panted, wide-eyed, the world literally tipping beneath him.

He found Otto seated halfway up the wide steps, one bloody hand held to his glistening belly. The old man grinned, eyes pinched. "What are you staring at? You ain't finished yet."

Walt nodded. Like a Luddite god, an avenging aspect of the billions of dead, he circled the bridge, shooting every monitor, black box, and control pad he could see. Plastic smoke curdled in the air. Sparks spritzed from shattered circuits. Otto hadn't moved from his seat on the steps.

"What the hell are you waiting for? Get out of here!"

Walt gestured for the window, now half filled with the black waves below. "The ship's going to crash!"

"I can't think of a better reason to abandon it."

"What about you?"

"Don't give me shit about how you can't leave me behind. I'm an old man with a gut wound. I've got less chance than the Cleveland Browns."

"Save your breath," Walt said. "I just reached the same conclusion."

"You son of a bitch," Otto laughed. Blood seeped from his side. "Get somebody to write me a song or something. Anyway, another few weeks, you're gonna be hurting for things to do."

"It was fun, Otto."

"You have yourself a boy and you name him after me. That won't be any possible unless you quit this sewing circle right now."

Walt grinned. He turned and ran up the terraces, swerving around toppled desks and smoking hardware. Yellow blood oozed down the tilted floors. The elevator door closed automatically behind him. He could hardly feel its angled ascent. The silence inside pressed on his ears like swimming to the bottom of the pool. Three aliens waited at the far end. One managed to squeeze off a shot before he cut it down.

He sprinted through the huge warehouse, shoes banging, and down the curving tunnels past dark windows. Many of the doors now hung ajar; aliens scrambled down intersections clutching strange, spiky tools. He shot anyone who gave him a second look. Most failed to see him at all, or deliberately ignored him, rushing instead for whatever repairs or escape pods they expected would save their lives. Walt was back on the catwalk above the landing bay in five scant minutes. Below, jets taxied from storage, cramming the runways in the rush to launch. Engines blared, painting long shadows from the harsh white light of their boiling engines. His feet clanked on the metal walkway. And then he was through the last door, the last tunnel, standing in the cold wind on a thin platform overlooking the calm waters of Santa Monica Bay.

He laughed all the way down.

EPILOGUE

He had it all. Canned ravioli. Bags of spaghetti. A pot and a bowl and a knife and a fork. Lighters, matches, flint. The alien pistol and a hunting rifle with two boxes of bullets. A blanket. Leather gloves. Extra shoes. Three pairs of socks. Fishing line and hooks. A flashlight with a spare pack of batteries. A bigger knife and a second small one because you can never have enough knives. Needles and thread and a lightweight rope. A change of clothes. A box of Butterfingers he'd found in the back of a liquor store. Some aspirin and generic antibiotics and a bottle of Famous Grouse scotch and a bag of Bali Shag with an extra pack of rolling papers. That was it. It was enough to carry. Anything else he needed, he'd find it along the way.

He'd woken up high on a beach amidst dead fish and great bundles of kelp rotting in the morning fog. He smelled horrible; he'd vomited at some point. He tried to stand up and passed right back out.

His next try, Walt wobbled to his feet and climbed uphill. The afternoon sun warmed the sand. He soon fell to his hands and knees, crawling until he reached a street where the houses hadn't been leveled by the ship-borne wave. Behind him, its ruined engines bulged above the ocean, still smoking, faint white plumes mingling with the sea's own mist. He smashed in the window of a pretty blue Cape Cod house and shuffled over the creaking floorboards until he found bottled water in the moldy fridge.

Two days later, frame-rattling explosions jarred him from bed. Smoke grimed the sky above the airport. He went back to bed. In the morning, the skies were clear.

He got his act together, spent a week gathering up his gear. By then, he felt strong enough to go for runs along the beach, adding weight to his pack every day to rebuild the strength he'd lost recovering from the crash. He took the pistol with him; the smoke of campfires rose from the hills and beaches now. Once, the crack of a rifle had echoed down the streets. He didn't feel forced out by these new neighbors. He'd never been the LA type anyway.

Elsewhere, it was still winter. He headed south, sleeping under stars that no longer looked so far away. He figured he would stop in a place where it was nice to fish. San Diego was on fire. He went around it.

On a dry Baja beach, he caught four fat, green-silver fish with scalloped fins. He roasted them on sticks, skins and all. After he ate the first, a man appeared up the beach, waving his hands over his head. He was young and sunburned and hungry. So was his wife. Walt offered the kid a fish. It turned out they had beer, Negra Modelo in thick-bottomed brown bottles. He was named Vincent, his wife Mickey. College kids in a past life.

They talked for a while about where they were headed (them: Panama; him: somewhere), where they'd come from (Idaho; New York), what they'd seen recently (a pair of aliens hunted down with dogs and rifles; lots of sand).

"Yeah," Mickey said, tugging the strap of her tank top, "but like how did it even come to that? I mean, did you ever think we'd be taking them down with dogs? Did like one of them get drunk at the wheel Exxon Valdez-style?"

"Oh, that?" Walt said. "That was me. Me and this Vietnam vet named Otto. He was probably an asshole in the Bush years, but he was a cool guy when I met him." He sipped his beer. "We landed on the ship with a hot air balloon. Blew stuff up until the thing went down."

"And then what?" Mickey said. "You hang-glidered to safety?"

"I jumped. From what I remember, it was fun."

Mickey laughed, white teeth flashing in the firelight. Vincent smiled and put his arm around her shoulder. For a moment Walt bristled, ready to protest, to insist it had happened, that they weren't laughing at a tall tale, but events which had, for the second time in the last year, cost the lives of everyone he knew. But if he'd heard his story from a stranger, he'd laugh too, wouldn't he? A handful of nobodies couldn't save the world. No doubt a hundred better stories had already cropped up around the globe.

But he wouldn't change his. He owed that much to those who'd been with him.

Walt left before they woke. It was the wind that spoke to him now, in whispers and urgent hisses; the sea that murmured to itself like it had forgotten something from a list. He walked when he was ready and slept when he was tired. When he had nowhere else to be, he sat beside the waterline and watched the sun go down, listening to the wash of the sand. He thought he heard names, sometimes, but then the waves receded, a scrub of foam and salt, snatching them back before he could be sure.

He decided to walk to the end of the southern world, the cold hills of Patagonia, where no people had lived even when people lived everywhere. Maybe the breakers would speak clear names there. Maybe he would find something to make him stop.

He intended to live along the way.

I:

PANHANDLER,

REDUX

1

Even after the plague hit, the worst thing in Ness Hook's life was his brother Shawn. Shawn returned to their mother's house without warning on a Sunday afternoon while Ness attempted, for the third time that week, to stop his fiddler crabs from escaping their tank. Shawn lugged a mattress over the threshold to Ness' bedroom, fabric hissing over the shine-worn carpet.

Ness stared. "What are you doing?"

"Returning to the homestead. Get your shit out of the way."

"Why do you have a mattress?"

Shawn glanced down at the stained bed clamped under his armpit, mock-surprised, as if it were a piece of gum he'd just discovered jammed in his sole. "Is that what this is? That's handy, 'cause I plan to sleep on it."

"You can't bring your bed into my room."

"You gonna stop me?"

"What are you even doing here?" Ness said. "Did you leave your house in your other pair of pants?"

Shawn's face went dark. He shoved his mattress against the wall and kicked the clothes massed on Ness' floor. "Get your shit out of the way before I shovel it out the window."

Ness set down the wire mesh he'd been gluing around the aquarium filter and stepped over the Burger King wrappers bulwarking his computer desk. He grabbed the mattress, grunted, and heaved, inching it back toward the door.

"You think so?" Shawn laughed. Casually, he shoved Ness to the ground. Ness' knee scraped the gym-style carpet. Shawn booted a crumpled shirt across the floor, flopped the mattress to the ground, and wiped his hands on his jeans. He wore Wranglers, a red flannel over a ribbed white wifebeater, and a new and stupid mustache. "Great to see you again, little brother."

Panic, anger, and baffling shame flooded Ness all the way to his neck. He scrabbled out of the bedroom and dashed to the double-wide's living room, where his mom sat at the breakfast nook mumbling at her Facebook game, a block-shooter that would have looked primitive on an original Nintendo. For once, the quaintness of her game didn't bother Ness.

"Shawn's in my room," he said.

His mom blasted another block. "Get used to it."

"What happened to his house? Did he try to drink it?"

"Lost it. Couldn't pay for it. You even know what a mortgage is?"

"Mom," he whined. "He can't be in my room."

"Your room?" A falling block crushed her cursor. She swore and swiveled to face him. "If you've been paying rent, the checks have been lost for five years now."

"I pay for my food."

"That just leaves the roof, hot water, your cell phone, the electricity to that computer—"

The screen door banged. Shawn trundled down the hall, a cardboard box in his arms. Their mom turned away and started up another game.

"What am I supposed to do?" Ness said.

"Get used to it," his mom said. "Shit's tough. You think he's any happier about this than you?"

Ness watched her play her stupid backwards game, waiting for her to come to her senses, rise from her cat-shredded office chair, and banish Shawn from the house. She did nothing. Ness returned to his bedroom, not quite daring to go in. Shawn thumped down a box and yanked off the tape. He wadded the tape into a lumpy silverish ball, lobbed it into the corner, and began unpacking small green boxes of ammunition.

Shawn didn't look up from his work. "Did you just run off to tell Mom?"

Ness knew the lie was foolish—Shawn had been coming in and out, he'd probably snooped the whole conversation—but couldn't stop himself. "I was helping her with her computer."

Shawn chuckled. He jerked his head at one of the aquariums, a ten-gallon freshwater flickering with a school of tetras, their blue, red, and silver scales flashing under the tank light. "Can you use those things for bait?"

"Don't touch my fish," Ness said.

"Look like the perfect size for a hook."

"I said don't you touch my fish."

"Tell you what. Why don't you set up a new tank with all the ones you don't like?"

Ness' neck was hot and itchy. In a moment, he would either start screaming or hit Shawn, and either way would end in tears. He darted into the room, grabbed his shoes, and ran for the door. Shawn laughed.

Ness ran down the driveway past Shawn's truck, gravel jagging his socked feet. He sat down where the road turned in to the drive and laced up his shoes. He didn't have the first one tied before an orange bolt burst from the knee-high grass and leapt onto his shoulders, purring. He shoved Volt away and she jumped right back up.

Once his shoes were on, he headed straight up the mountain. Volt trotted beside him, flinging herself at the moths that staggered from the grass. It was spring and the sky was cloudless but it would have been cold if he weren't moving. Behind him, Moscow, Idaho filled the shallow valley, a hive of naive undergrads and fearful locals. He reached for his iPod, but he'd left it on his desk.

The road ended. A pheasant spooked in a blast of wings and Ness threw his arms above his head. The bird settled in a pine, clucking like a car that's just been shut off, tail angling from the branch. Volt put back her ears. Other people said exercise made them feel good, even high, but Ness took walks to vent the tension. This time, the climb wasn't helping. Back in his room, Shawn was unpacking his things—his shotguns in their cloth camo cases, his subscriptions to Guns & Ammo and Soldier of Fortune, his rap CDs with their cracked cases—leaving oily fingerprints on the aquariums and saturating the room with his stink of beer sweat, engine grease, and Winstons.

He couldn't believe his mom had done this to him.

His feet crushed weeds just released from winter, stirring chlorophyll, the scent of milky sap, and one repeated thought: unfair, unfair, unfair. He reached the thicket of pines along the ridge. Volt had disappeared sometime in the last half hour. On the other side of the mountain, the trees gave way to another grassy slope that leveled off into the Rogers' farm, winter wheat rising in a short green blanket. Widget barked from the front steps, saw it was him, and wagged her flaggy tail.

Mrs. Rogers let him in to Tim's room. Tim sat on the carpet, shooting Germans on his 21" TV. Ness frowned. The landline was choppy as ever. He grabbed the second controller, waited for the match to end, and joined up.

"Shawn moved back in to the trailer," he said.

"That sucks," Tim said.

"He's in my room right now."

"Why? He has that sweet house. Who wants to drink beer with their mom?"

Ness' avatar was shot by a sniper and fell into the fields of France. "The bank took it. You know he drank up all his money at the Plant. That's his problem."

Tim paused to mash buttons until he died. "Well, what do you want? He can't just be homeless."

"He's been talking about 2012 since Y2K. He can live in the hills and stab grubs for breakfast. That's what he wants."

"He's your brother."

"He's a dick."

"Well, what are you going to do? Get a job? Move out?"

Ness' neck itched. He shot a German in the head and swung his view to the body, then emptied his clip into the fading pixels. "He should just leave."

"Yeah, but he won't, will he?" Tim died again—lag—and swore. He threw down the controller and shut off the PlayStation. "Well, I have to eat dinner."

Ness left. By the time he got home, Shawn's truck was gone from the driveway. For a minute, he let himself hope his brother had gone for good, but his bedroom was still full of unfamiliar clothes and magazines and Shawn's stained mattress. He fed his fish and scrubbed their tanks and logged onto his game.

Shawn returned after midnight, letting the screen door slam. He swayed up behind Ness. His breath stunk like beer. "How long have you been on that thing?"

Ness didn't turn from his laptop. "How long were you at the bar?"

"You never even been drunk."

"It kills brain cells."

Shawn leaned over his computer, breathing sour liquor. "Does it take a lot of brains to live with your mom and stay up all night shooting your fake faggot friends? You ever want to shoot a real gun, come out with me to the range some weekend."

"It smells like you ate an outhouse," Ness said.

Shawn went to the bathroom, which shared a wall with the bedroom, exposing Ness to every rattle of the medicine cabinet and echoing bout of flatulence. Shawn hawked phlegm, flushed the toilet. He came back to the room, flopped on his mattress, and inhaled deeply.

"Your cat pissed my bed."

Ness didn't look up. "No she didn't."

Shawn sniffed harder yet. "I can smell it. Right here."

"Maybe it was you. Volt is trained."

"Whatever." Shawn fumbled with his alarm until it beeped once. For a while, all Ness could hear was the soft burble of the aquariums, the gentle clatter of his keyboard, and his friends joking over chat. His guild was waiting on a respawn; if they could loot it fast enough, they'd go raiding after.

"Will you turn that thing off?" Shawn said. "I can't sleep over here."

"Have another beer."

"We're out." Sheets rustled. "I said turn that fucking thing off."

"If you don't like it, go back to the house you couldn't pay for. The bank probably won't shoot you."

Shawn rushed from bed, stomped across the room, and slammed the laptop shut.

"What the hell!" Ness yelled.

His brother grabbed the back of his chair and tipped him over. Ness' head hit the carpet. On his back, he swung for Shawn's balls, but Shawn bent his knee and dropped it onto Ness' chest with all his weight. Pain shocked through Ness' body. He shouted.

Shawn slapped his face. "What are you gonna do about it?"

"Get off me!"

Shawn slapped him again. "I told you to turn that fucking thing off. Some of us got jobs. I'm not gonna wake up tired 'cause you spend all night whacking—"

"What are you two idiots doing?" The lights flashed on. Their mom stood in the doorway, face puffy with sleep and red with anger.

Shawn eased his knee from Ness' chest. "Trying to sleep."

"You tried lying down instead of beating your little brother's ass?"

"Does that work for you?"

"He hit me," Ness said.

Their mom tucked her chin to her chest, gazing down at him with wide and skeptical eyes. "Would you like to file a formal complaint?"

She left the room. Ness unplugged his laptop from the wall. Shawn buried his face in his mattress and breathed. "I smell piss."

Ness went to the living room and plugged in his laptop and logged back in, but his guild had already entered the instance. He shut down, went outside, and called Volt in from the fields. She licked his face until he fell asleep.

Shawn had picked up a wiring gig the next day, and between that and the bars, Ness didn't see much of him for three days except when he came home for his lunches. Then, he complained about Volt, who he insisted had peed on his bed again. When he left, Ness bent over the mattress and sniffed, but all he smelled was ashes and sweat.

The gig ended. Ness suspected that was why Shawn had become an electrician in the first place—it paid well enough to let him sit around and drink through the frequent days off. But jobs had been scarce lately, and faced with the choice between Natty Lite and a mortgage, Shawn had gone with the one he could pick up from a gas station at one in the morning.

The day his gig was done, Shawn slept later than Ness, only rousting himself when their mom fried bacon and eggs. After his morning routine of repeatedly spitting into the toilet, his nasal honks cutting through the thin walls, he took the last of the coffee and poured his mug full of cream.

"I been thinking," he said, seating himself.

Mom twiddled with her phone. "Oh boy."

"I've been thinking about you, Mom. You know I'll start paying rent next month after the house is cleared." He jerked his thumb at Ness. "But what about this guy?"

"What about him?"

"He's 25. I had a job at 15. Don't you think he's about nine years past pulling his weight?"

"I bought the eggs," Ness said.

Shawn smiled. "And I'm sure both dollars are going straight to Mom's retirement."

She tucked her chin and gave Shawn her look. "Good luck prying him from that computer."

"I just don't think it's fair that I pay rent and I have to share a room with someone who doesn't."

"You don't pay rent," Ness said.

"I'm about to."

"You sure you can fit it into the beer budget?"

Shawn held out his palms, beseeching their mom. "Do you think it's fair?"

"Tell you what." She set down her phone. "You start paying rent, I'll make him, too."

"Mom!" Ness said.

"What? What's your plan, anyway? Squat in your room until I die of shame? How you going to pay to keep this place up? You ever heard of a thing called property tax?"

"I'll invest."

"With what money?"

Ness' neck itched. "Dad's insurance."

She snorted. "You can hardly pay for Cheerios. Figure it out, kid. You want to live under this roof, you got to find a way to pay for it."

Shawn nodded. "And tell him to stop letting his cat piss my bed."

Ness rolled his eyes. It was idle talk. Shawn hadn't been able to keep hold of his own house; he'd never be able to afford rent. As for Mom, she'd been grumbling for years, and every time she said her piece, Ness went back to his games and she went back to hers. The matter dropped as swiftly as the water glasses Volt nudged off the table.

Shawn sopped up his yolks with charred toast, kissed their mom, grinned at Ness, and walked out the door. His truck rumbled to life.

Ness returned to his computer. Shawn returned hours later with a new gig. That night, instead of driving off to the Plant or Blue Mondays or one of the other bars where he tried to pick up disinterested college girls, he went to the WinCo and came back with a thirty-pack of Natty, which he took to the porch with his pack of Winstons. He was still out there drinking, smoke swirling into the cold mountain air, when Ness went outside to call in Volt.

"You're gonna learn, Nestor," Shawn smiled from his folding camp chair, one beer in hand, another tucked into the cup holder built into the chair's arm.

"What are you even doing?" Ness said.

"A favor. For you. The best one anybody ever done you."

"Trying to get me to die under a bridge, that's a favor? Then what kind of Hallmark card will you have to buy me if I take your shotgun to your face?"

Shawn leaned forward and shook his head. His expression was perfectly sober except for his eyes, which swam as unsteadily as a fish Ness would soon have to scoop from the bottom of the tank.

"You got to learn to take care of yourself, bro," he said. "One day, Mom won't be there. I won't be there. Then what?"

"I'll do better as soon as the market rebounds," Ness said. "Anyway, they don't just let people starve."

"Foodstamps? A Hook doesn't take fuckin' foodstamps."

"Mom did after Dad died."

Shawn crumpled his beer and chucked it at Ness' head. Ness ducked and the can soared past, spraying beer, and dented the trailer's siding. "Don't you dare compare yourself to Mom. She's never done less than everything she could. All you do is jerk off to elves in chainmail bikinis."

The night smelled like wood smoke. Volt rushed in from the weeds. Ness bent to scoop her up and she vaulted to his shoulder.

Shawn cracked a beer with a hiss. "Get a job, man. It isn't that hard."

Ness went back to their room, put in his earbuds, and curled under his sheet. Shawn didn't understand. Ness didn't have any proper college. He'd managed an AA, but when he'd looked into applying to the state university in town, the numbers didn't add up. Even living as a commuter student, he couldn't afford the tuition. So what was he supposed to do? Get a job at the Subway? Toasting sandwiches for drunk frat boys wasn't a career.

But it would pretty much have to be something in customer service and Ness just wouldn't fit. When one of his neighbors said hello, his only response was to smile. He didn't get how strangers held conversations—what were you supposed to talk about? Yet he was supposed to deal with a constant stream of them eight hours a day, five days a week? The idea horrified him worse than if he were to lift a spoonful of Lucky Charms and find a wolf spider swimming in the marshmallows. And the meds only helped so much.

Anyway, the bus didn't come out to the hills. He'd have to get a driver's license and an old beater to drive. A degree he couldn't afford, a license for a car he didn't have, a hunt for a job he didn't want, the strangers he couldn't speak to—the whole thing overwhelmed him, made him as itchy as if he'd dived into a lake of hair. So he stayed at home, stuck in his online world. His mom had learned to stop complaining.

Even so, he didn't like that he could barely pay for his own food. He didn't like feeling so incapable. At times, he felt like he'd been born in the worst possible point in history. In an earlier era he could have sold his ingenuity to the wealthy, finding a patron among the court or the merchants to take care of the quotidian details of life that overwhelmed him so easily, leaving him free to experiment and innovate. Meanwhile, in a later time, it would all be automated, computerized. He could work from home without ever leaving his laptop. Take classes, too. Deal with all the bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo. Everything handled remotely, cleanly, stress-free, on his schedule. It wasn't far-fetched at all. It would happen within a generation.

In the meantime, he was stuck in a time he didn't belong in. Even so, he'd found a way to be happy, in his way.

Until Shawn had come home.

* * *

A week later, Shawn walked through the front door, sweaty, begrimed, and cobwebbed from squirming around in some professor's crawlspace, and thunked a wad of cash onto the table. He fanned it out and whistled, a high-pitched blast meant to call in the dogs.

"Cold cash," he said. "So when does Ness move out?"

Ness closed the fridge. Their mom leaned out of her chair and limped to the table. She fixed her reading glasses to her nose and poked the wad with her index finger, sliding one of the bills from the pile.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say this was legal tender."

Shawn folded his lower lip between his teeth and smiled, showing his canines. "I'd say it's March rent."

She removed her glasses, tucked her chin, and gazed at Ness. "Looks like you get to find yourself a job."

"Mom," he said.

"Tomorrow."

"You know no one's going to hire me."

She rolled her eyes. "McDonald's hires retards. You can't handle a retard's job?"

"I can't talk to people, Mom. What am I supposed to do?"

"Walk through the door and ask for an application. You need me to drive you?"

Ness blinked at the linoleum. "This isn't fair."

"Fair?" She planted her palms on the table and leaned over. The wooden legs squeaked on the slick, dirty floor. "You know what isn't fair? You expecting me to feed you until the day I'm feeding worms instead."

Shawn didn't say a word. He didn't have to. Ness went outside to call for Volt and so they wouldn't see him cry.

The next morning, his mom made him hashbrowns and coffee. He dressed in his collared shirt and his black shoes and put on deodorant and combed his hair. Shawn was already at work.

At the door, she smiled, eyes crinkling. "Good luck, Ness."

"Thanks." He walked down the hill out of the trailer park and took Rodeo Drive (pronounced not like the famous Los Angeles street, but like the popular bullriding and roping event) through the subdivision to the highway. There, instead of waiting for the bus by I-95, he doubled back through the vacant lots and hiked over the mountain to the Rogers' farm. Widget barked from the porch, but nobody answered the door.

He wandered around the fields, scaring baby grasshoppers. He was missing a guild raid. He should have brought his laptop to Tim's, but his mom would have asked too many questions. In the afternoon, he walked back to the highway in case they were watching, then doubled back to the trailer.

They were waiting for him at the table. His mom grinned. "Well?"

Ness headed for the bathroom. "It went good."

"Where's your applications?" Shawn called.

"I dropped them off already."

"You filled out that many on the spot?"

"I didn't want to have to take the bus again." Ness closed the bathroom door. Footsteps creaked down the hall, following him.

"How'd you get them your ID?" Shawn said though the door.

"I'm in the bathroom!"

"I mean, you left your wallet on the desk."

Ness flushed and took a long time washing his hands. He opened the door. His mom stood outside, arms crossed over her chest.

"Did you even look?" she said.

A blush flooded his face. "I made a list of where I want to apply. I'll do the actual applying tomorrow."

"Goddamn right you will. Because I'm going to drive to every business in town, and if you don't walk out the door with an application fluttering in your hand, I'm going to drag you back in by the ear."

"You can't do that."

She laughed and glared down the hall. "The free ride just crashed into a wall. You come with me tomorrow, or I call the police and tell them I got a trespasser in my house."

He stared numbly. "I need to go clean my aquariums."

He didn't—the only algae on the walls was in the crab tank, which he hadn't cleaned in a while because removing the lid from the mesh was a hassle—but he needed to be with his fish. He dropped a crab pellet into the tank. It blooped into the gravel and began spitting tiny grains of feed into the water. Ideally, the tank would be self-sustaining soon. That was the concept: to form a functional ecosystem. He'd already managed it in one tank, where the sunlight fed the algae, the algae fed the snails, and the snails fed the puffer. Supposedly, the crabs could consist solely on the waste of the tiger barbs they shared their tank with, but he wanted to be certain they'd adjusted to the environment before he took them off their pellets.

His heartbeat slowed to normal. Tending to his tanks always calmed him. He could found them, tweak them, perfect them. Raise them from rocks and water into tiny closed worlds. If he did it right, he could become a watchmaker god, setting his creations in action, then leaving them to grow and flourish on their own.

That night, Shawn went to a bar for the first time in a week. To celebrate, no doubt. While he was gone, Ness put his pillow in the litterbox, sifted it with a handful of litter, and placed Volt in its center. She pawed, squatted, and peed.

He had too much coffee in the morning. His mom beckoned him out to the old Subaru. He prayed it wouldn't start. She took him to the Burger King, the Taco John's, the Jack in the Box, where she bought him a bacon double cheeseburger. The parking lot smelled like fry grease. He crossed the lot to the strip mall and picked up applications from the UPS Store and the shoe store and the Papa Murphy's. Back at the car, his mom made him go back out and get papers from the tanning salon, too. After the Office Depot and the Albertsons, she even drove him over the hill south of town to the Plant, the bar where Shawn spent so much of his money on the red mixed drinks they served in oversized mason jars. By daylight, the wooden floors were filthy, scarred in thin stripes by the too-high heels of drunken girls.

At last, they drove home. From the bedroom window, Ness heard the tinny sound of a woman orgasming through computer speakers. Shawn shut it down by the time their mom unlocked the front door.

He nodded at the papers rolled in Ness' hands. "Nice haul."

Ness brushed past his shoulder. The bedroom smelled like lavender air freshener, Winstons, semen, and burnt fireworks. Shawn's bed had been stripped bare of sheets and pillows. He smiled when he thought Ness wasn't looking.

At bedtime, Ness called for Volt for thirty minutes, staring into the darkness every time the cold north wind stirred the weeds. His heart grew tighter and tighter.

He closed the door. Mom glanced over from her computer, where she was breaking blocks. "She'll come back in the morning."

"She never stays out."

"She'll be back."

Ness knew better. He closed his fists to control the trembling. In the bedroom, Shawn lay shirtless on his mattress, freshly laundered sheets draped across his waist. Pistols gleamed from the pages of the glossy magazine spread over his knees. A shotgun stood propped in the corner.

Ness reached for it. "Did you shoot my cat?"

2

When Tristan Carter told her parents she intended to move back in after graduation, they exchanged one look and laughed.

Tristan set her fork into her risotto al funghi. "I hope that's sympathy laughter."

Her father smiled his indulgently bemused smile. Tristan had seen that smile often, back when she'd been small enough to lurk in his office without causing embarrassment to those who came to see him. He donned it whenever a member of his management approached for a raise without bringing the data to back it up.

"Guess again," he said.

"I'm about to graduate."

"The defining feature of a graduate is his or her degree," her father said. He owned the Redding Marriott. When she'd been accepted to Berkeley five years ago, a different smile had warred with a scowl for his face: he loved the prestige, but hated the students. "They typically employ this degree to get themselves employed."

"I've looked."

"Look harder."

"Dad." She looked to her mom for help, but her mom regarded her with lifted eyebrows, a sweating glass of pinot gris paused halfway to her lips. Those eyebrows were as slim and perfect as ever. She needed them to be for the realty signs all across town, but she hardly needed to pluck; she was in her mid-40s, but still had the ability to make Tristan feel as dull as sand-worn glass. At Tristan's elbow, Alden dropped a wadded-up marble of bread into her water. "Dad, I know you know about the economy."

He pushed his frameless glasses up his nose. "And I know you are two months away from a double major at Berkeley. Anyone who can't get a job with a double major from Berkeley is unfit to operate her own fork."

"You don't think I'm trying?"

"I think you're trying to move home."

"Right, that's always been my dream," she said. "To live with my parents forever. To be the Cheetos-stained belle of the shut-in's ball."

Her mom set down her wine glass. "Isn't this something you should have been working on since the start of the year?"

Tristan poked an unfamiliar species of mushroom half-submerged in the creamy risotto. "Right now you have '08 grads who are still working internships. Unpaid. It's not like you guys had it. When you stepped off campus and the firm threw a net over you and hauled you off to your brand-new job."

Her dad laughed. "When I was your age, I worked in a Sears shelving blenders."

"And that's why you sent me to college? To shelve blenders?"

He smiled angrily. "Can I still tell you to go to your room? Honey, am I allowed to banish her?"

Her mom tipped back her chin and considered Tristan. "I think a child who wants to live with their parents—even a child who can legally vote and enlist and drink all our wine—remains legally and eminently banishable."

Tristan spooned up the wad of bread Alden had dropped in her glass, slipped it under the table, and splashed it into her brother's lap. "This is my future we're ha ha-ing about."

Her dad sawed the fat from his pork. "Well, you sound like you want your future to look a lot like your past."

"I feel like it would be easier for me to find the kind of job I went to school to get when I'm not busy flipping burgers all day just so I can scrape by in a one-room apartment with a communal toilet shared by the whippit-heads down the hall."

"Whippit-heads?" her mom said.

"So you want us to continue supporting you," her dad said, "for an additional and indefinite length of time."

Tristan drank around the crumbs floating on her water. "Well, when you put it like that, it just sounds disgraceful."

"Tell you what. You want to move back home, you have to be our maid."

"And chauffeur," her mom said. "I hardly have time to keep up with Alden's schedule these days."

"Make that our maid/chauffeur/nanny."

"Wow," Tristan said. "Your terms are almost as generous as the firms who want me to work as an unpaid receptionist for six months before deciding to keep me on for six more unpaid months."

"Would you rather flip burgers?"

"When am I supposed to have time to look for a job when I'm acting as chief steward of Carter Manor?"

"Your father and I both have jobs," her mom said. "We still manage to keep the house looking just mildly nuked."

Her dad dabbed his mouth with his napkins. "That's the offer. Take it, or start memorizing the Taco Bell menu."

Tristan's risotto had begun to look positively gruelish. "I don't think this is especially fair."

"Alden has his kung fu lessons tomorrow," her mom smiled. "Why don't you drive him there and then start bitching about how tough your life is?"

Tristan decided to leave it at that. After dinner, she found four texts waiting: three from Pete, one from Laura. She replied to Laura, who was busy that night, but was free for drinks tomorrow. By the time their conversation ended, Pete had sent a fourth message. Tristan ignored it. It was her spring break. She was supposed to be enjoying herself. Instead, she was back in her middling mountainous hometown, two hundred miles north of the Bay Area, and her only options for company were a younger brother who was already off with his online shooter and a boyfriend she had no intention of speaking to any time soon.

She told her parents she was going to see Laura at the bar, then took her hand-me-down Lexus to the lake up past the mountain road. It was a shitty drive, gravelly and far too dark, and she could never quite shake the dread of running into a bear or a bearded killer, but the pines were black, the stars were bright, and the waters were calm. She squelched down the shore, small round stones grinding under her shoes.

She hadn't known what to expect from her folks, not really. She'd hoped they'd say yes, no questions asked, and that would be the end of it. Graduation had come out of nowhere, looming like the Titanic's last date. Months ago, she'd applied for many, many dream jobs—the ones her music degree might conceivably qualify her for, from whom she'd heard back exactly nothing—and shied away from the communications-centric ones, largely from fear she might actually land one. More recently, though, she'd been applying for anything and everything that hadn't sounded obviously god-awful. She had been offered internships and the promise of return calls that never came.

She'd begun to doubt she could even find a nightmare job, at least in time to start paying rent by the end of school. And quite frankly—although it would sound horribly bitchy to speak aloud to friends like Laura who had been working since high school—she resented the very idea of having to apply as a dental receptionist or a server or whatever. If that was all she could do, why had she worked so hard in high school to attend a good college? Why had she studied so hard at said college? What was the fucking point?

Especially when her parents were more than well off enough to go on paying for a few extra groceries and gallons of gas while she lived at home and searched for the job she'd spent the last eight years working toward. It wasn't like she felt entitled to that support, exactly. Her parents had already done more than enough for her. But if they did just a little more, at the cost of three, maybe four hundred dollars a month, they could spare her years of misery.

The moon shimmered on the water. The answer was very simple. She would just have to be very, very nice to them, and hope they remembered just how much they loved her.

In a few weeks, when people started dying, she would look back on this thought in stark horror.

* * *

For breakfast, she made goat cheese omelets, sliced cantaloupe, and cappuccino brewed with beans she'd brought back for herself from San Francisco.

Her dad gave her a look. "Is this supposed to redeem the $200,000 of room, board, and tuition we've spent in the last four years?"

"It might once you try it."

He seated himself and allowed himself to be served. He cut off the smallest corner of omelet, as if he were wholly prepared to pitch the rest in the trash, and chewed skeptically.

"This is a $200 omelet," he conceded. "Which leaves a mere $199,800 to go. Not counting, of course, whatever living expenses you incur today."

"Sharecropping is illegal in this country, Dad."

"Then it's a good thing it's still perfectly legal to exploit your children."

With nothing else to do until Alden's kung fu lesson that afternoon, she spent the morning reading. For fun. After four years of assignments that left her with no time for leisure reading during the semester and no desire for it during the summer, it was a revelation just to read some good ol' fashioned garbage, as well as an engrossing way to totally ignore Pete's texts massing on her phone.

Twenty minutes before they were supposed to be at his lesson, Alden came to the foyer in jeans, t-shirt, and tennis shoes.

"That's your uniform?" she said.

Alden cocked his head at the exact angle their dad did. "Sifu says he likes to practice in the same clothes he'd be wearing in a street fight."

"Is that so? How many brawls have you been in since you began your training?"

"Tristan, we're not supposed to use it on anyone."

She stepped out the front door into the afternoon light. "Then why do you learn it at all? To impress girls?"

"No, come on," Alden said. Was he blushing? "At first I just thought it would be cool, but it's really fun."

The lawn smelled like fresh clippings; Ernesto had been there this morning. She wound her way out of the subdivision. When they'd moved in twelve years ago, three-quarters of the lots had been vacant, yellow weeds in gray dirt. Now they were boxed in by McMansions. Not long ago, Tristan had considered their brickwork, floodlights, and scalloped roofs stately, but after four years on and around campus, surrounded on all sides by proper cities, they now struck her as gauche, hopelessly, hideously tasteless. Now, every fourth house had a "FOR SALE" sign on the front lawn. Two were accompanied by pictures of her mother's perfect, eager face.

"Dad says you expect life to be handed to you on a platter."

Tristan laughed. "What did you just say?"

Alden rolled down the window to let in the cool mountain air. "He says you'd rather hold out your hand than get it dirty."

She sat at the stop sign a moment, stunned and stung, then turned out of the subdivision. "What do you think?"

"That you don't want to work? Sounds pretty lazy to me."

"It's not that I don't want to work. It's that I was promised something more than what's out there."

"Who promised you that?"

She thought a moment. "Everyone. Mom and Dad. Teachers. Politicians. The movies. They all said if you work hard in school, you won't have to suffer some shit job all your life." She glanced at him. "Sorry."

Alden gave her the side-eye. "Dude, I'm thirteen."

"Fine. Just don't swear in front of Mom and Dad."

"So you're saying I shouldn't work hard in school."

"No!" She swerved into the turn lane at the last moment. She'd lived in Redding all her life and was already starting to forget how to get from one end to the other. "Look, if you bomb out in school, you guarantee yourself a shit job. I shouldn't complain. But Mom and Dad have money. Several monies. I don't see why they can't help me out for just a little longer."

He slumped down in his seat, gazing out the window at the blue-green mountains and their white crowns. "Dude, you're crazy. I can't wait to move out from them."

She frowned. He pointed the dojo out to her, a long, barn-like building between a gas station and an AA center. She pulled into the gravel lot.

He opened the door and leaned back inside. "Class lasts until seven, so I guess you can just pick me up then."

"I'm coming inside. I want to watch you kick ass."

The mortification on his teenage face would be worth the two straight hours of boredom. It also didn't hurt that it gave her an excuse to be out of the house if Pete called or dropped by. She hadn't given much thought to what the instructor would look like—a small Chinese man with a wise smile, assumedly—but found, to her racist embarrassment, a middle-aged white guy with a substantial gut and long, curly hair that wouldn't have been out of place on a Fraggle. He tried to talk her into joining the handful of students on the dojo floor, but she laughed and shook her head.

"Maybe if I lived in Oakland."

Pete texted again before class was over. He was beginning to be a worry. On the mats, Alden glanced at Tristan every time he stumbled or the instructor gently corrected him; she hurriedly looked down at her phone, pretending to text. Otherwise, her brother grinned a lot. That was good. Despite Tristan's increasingly sporadic replies, her mom's weekly emails had grown worried about him. Probably having a hard time adjusting to the fact he was a teenager now, just a year away from high school, and the little blond boy who hugged her first thing every morning was gone, never to return.

When they got home, their dad was unloading scallions and organic chicken breasts from his green canvas grocery bag.

"Well, look at that," he said. "You drove your brother there and back and somehow didn't drop dead from exhaustion."

Tristan popped open the fridge. "Is this your plan to convince me I'd rather be a grownup in the big city?"

"Is it working?"

"Like a dream."

After dinner, as she racked the dishes into the washer, her phone rang. She glanced at its face, ready to deny the call, but it was Laura. Twenty minutes later, they were seated together at the Hoof & Tanner, a tourist-sucking drinking hole that was patterned, for totally arbitrary reasons, after a quaint English pub. But Laura worked there, which meant that as long as her manager was out, Laura didn't pay for drinks and her friends got doubles at the price of singles. Strictly speaking, Tristan should have been saving every penny in her pocket, but drunk at half price struck her as a pretty good deal right then.

Laura was a born bartender: pretty, tough, able to let the most offensive statements slide by without a blink. While Tristan had found herself shockingly unsentimental about losing touch with the rest of their high school friends, Laura was the one person she genuinely missed even in the deepest throes of city and school. Whenever she got back to Redding, their conversation resumed without missing a beat, as if Tristan had been off in the bathroom for five minutes rather than away in Berkeley for the last six weeks.

"I want to tell you something," Tristan said after her third screwdriver. "But it's going to sound totally entitled and awful."

Laura's expression didn't budge. "You think that makes me want to hear it less?"

"My parents want me to get a job."

"The horror."

"Any job. When I want to work in music."

Laura snorted. "So does everyone. That's why they start off giving it away on the street corner. Speaking of, what's your plan B?"

"Move back here. With my parents."

"I feel like this is the part in the Katherine Heigl movie where the friend who's not quite as pretty tells Heigl to get over herself, get out there, and find what she wants before it's too late."

"First—no." Tristan stirred her drink. "Second, I don't want to hear what Sarcastic Sidekick thinks. I want to hear what you think."

Laura nodded. "Get over yourself, get out there, and find what you want before it's too late."

She laughed. "Come on."

"If you really need another year or whatever to figure shit out, then move back home. All the cool kids are doing it. Me? I think you've got a much better shot landing anything remotely connected to the playing of consecutive, melodic notes if you're down in San Francisco."

"Berkeley."

"Whatever." Laura waved her hand. "It doesn't matter. You're not going to drop dead if you make a decision now and regret it a year later. We've got so much time, Tristan."

Tristan sipped her drink. The vodka bit beneath the sour surface of the orange juice. "Well, as long as we're getting my life in order."

"Is this going to be about Zeke?"

"Yeah."

Laura leaned nearer, conspiratorial. "Is his name really Zeke?"

"A guy can't be named Zeke?"

"Not unless he's about to take you up to the hayloft."

Tristan finished her screwdriver. "Again, I have two points. One, I cleaned the hay out weeks ago. And two, I took him."

"Does Pete know?"

"That I appear to have a thing for guys with two e's in their name? Did you get Pod Personed?"

Laura rolled her eyes. "You get that you don't even like Pete at this point, right? He's yesterday's lunch. He is the soggy Styrofoam that once contained yesterday's lunch. Throw him away."

"Okay," Tristan said.

"Okay? I was expecting much more fight. Great. Can we move on to my problems now?"

Tristan laughed. Once she was home—Laura's friend had driven them, Tristan would pick up the Lexus in the morning—she went to the back deck to watch the stars. She resolved to call Pete the next morning.

Three days later, they still hadn't spoken. With plans to drive back to Berkeley that Sunday, she hadn't even texted him. Her failure just made her feel worse. It wasn't that Pete was even bad. He just wasn't...for her. Not the Tristan who was about to finish college. He was a relic, a walking photograph of a younger woman, one charmed by the tall boy's comfort in his own skin. In high school, where they'd met, that had been a rare thing. By the end of college, it was as common in the Berkeley men as open shoes and stupid haircuts.

That's what made her disinterest so hard to explain to anyone who wasn't Laura. From the outside looking in, she and Pete were storybook. She'd been a sophomore in high school, he'd been a junior. She'd been his third, he'd been her second. They weren't the prom king and queen, nor the high school couple you felt certain would wind up with eight kids together, but they just seemed well matched: equally handsome (weird to self-apply the term, but if she were being honest, it was true), equally competent—she in a career-woman way, he in a handy, sturdy way that would find work as a carpenter or ski instructor or manager of a local auto mechanic.

Yet she no longer wanted that from a partner. She hadn't wanted that for a long time. Still, even when she left for college while he stayed in town to work in one of the lodges in the mountains, she had remained faithful—and as far as she knew, so had he—for three and a half years.

And then Zeke. If Pete & Tristan were a story, she was ready for it to end.

She felt more guilty about not telling Pete about her drifting feelings for him than she did for cheating on him. In a way, that was worst of all, because the guilt only made it that much easier to keep putting off her confession. To wait on the chance, however slim, for Pete to hear about her indiscretion from someone besides herself. Or for Pete to get so frustrated with the growing distance between them that he'd break up with her. Put plainly, her reticence to speak was stupid and it was selfish.

And knowing that didn't help one bit. She was frozen, stuck mid-stride, waiting for the world to rise to meet her feet.

* * *

In the mornings, she made her family breakfast, then retired to the deck overlooking the sloped back yard to read from her mom's sci-fi collection, a down comforter cloaking her shoulders to nullify the mountain chill, a cup of coffee steaming on the granite end table. In the afternoons, she browsed the SF Bay Area Craigslist for music work, including unpaid internships; she figured her dad might spring for another six months of rent if she had a foot in the door. Proof of her dedication and work ethic. Not that she'd floated the idea of taking an internship to him. She hadn't heard back from anyone yet, and didn't particularly expect to. No sense descending into another foolish argument over something that wasn't even on her radar.

She burned her afternoons in Redding driving around, either on family errands, or simply cruising the back roads. If she did snag a job in the next eight weeks, she might not see much in the way of forests for a while. Anyway, she just had to avoid Pete for another few days, and then there would once more be two hundred blessed miles between them.

When she got back from her drives, she helped prep dinner, or acted as a living dummy for Alden to practice his kung fu on, which he did every day. He was a skinny little kid and she outweighed him by more than a few pounds, but he could unbalance her at will just by grabbing her wrist and dropping his weight in a sudden, foot-tromping jerk. Except when she resisted. Then he screwed up his baby-smooth face (which showed no sign of acne yet, though his sweat stank like a boy who'd begun puberty), yanked on her wrist, and told her she was cheating. She laughed and let him try again.

After that came dinner, and after dinner came TV or a movie, and soon enough it was time for bed. It was all pleasant enough, but she soon began to miss the rhythm of the city, the ability to go to the coffee shop at any time of day and find her friends there writing screenplays on their laptops or arguing about Lacan and Foucault. She no longer belonged here. To visit was nice, but to stay was wearying.

That Saturday, the day before she was scheduled to return, she asked Alden if he wouldn't rather practice his kung fu at the park instead.

He dropped his gaze to the carpet. "Nah."

"Come on. Fresh air. You can karate chop a pigeon."

"It's not karate."

"You can kung fu chop a pigeon."

He glanced at the front window. "They have salmonella."

"Come on, it'll be way more fun." She squinted at him, then grinned. "Are you afraid of being seen?"

"No."

"But you're way good!"

He glanced up, a spark of pride in his eyes, then grew guarded again. "A true master of kung fu doesn't engage in prideful displays."

Tristan laughed. "Nobody's going to see. And if you don't come with, I'll post the clips I've been taking of you on YouTube."

His jaw dropped. "You've been filming me?"

"Only always."

He ran to get his shoes. She drove them across the river and swung down Victor. It wasn't much of a park—isolated pines, grass, bathrooms, the requisite gazebo—but it was a sunny day and the grounds were busier than she'd anticipated. A car followed her into the turn and parked down the lot. On the soccer field, a squad of eight-year-olds was holding a pickup game, turf flying from their sneakers. A couple about Tristan's age was lodged in the tall grass, the girl's head resting on the man's lap. Tristan led Alden past a pair of middle school girls giggling at the couple from beneath the safety of a tree, then came to a stop at an isolated patch of grass on the north end of the park. Small white bugs fluttered clumsily from the grass.

Alden stared off at the girls. Tristan waved a hand in front of his face. "Well? Let's get awesome."

He scowled at her, then began his stretching process, an eight-part routine he claimed was traditional in China and included symbolic gestures like drawing a bow and pouring a bowl of water over one's own head. To help him feel less like an idiot, Tristan joined him. By the end of the routine, she was ready to peel off her sweater and he was ready to begin his forms no matter who might be watching.

While he was punching, kicking, and mangling the air, Tristan gestured to the two middle school girls, who'd been watching them the last five minutes. They laughed behind their hands and conferred. Tristan gestured again. After another, lengthier conference, the pair walked across the grass and stopped in front of Alden, who quit his form mid palm strike and blushed furiously.

"What are you doing?" the dark-haired girl asked. "Karate?"

"Kung fu," Alden mumbled.

"Like in the movies?"

"All the good ones," Tristan said. She socked Alden on the shoulder. "Come on, don't quit. They want to watch."

"Yeah, that was cool," said the other girl, a short-haired blond who hadn't quite grown into her height. "I liked how you were twirling your wrist."

Alden shot Tristan such a helpless look of embarrassment and wrath she burst out laughing. "You've done this a million times. Consider this the next step in your training—it's time to step out of the temple."

He froze, gazing toward her car with naked longing until Tristan feared he might actually make a run for it. Then he snapped his eyes forward, let out a long breath through his nostrils, and picked up exactly where he'd let off. The girls clapped. When he finished his form, they gave him a proper round of applause.

Alden gave her another look, then. One close to gratitude, at least as much as a thirteen-year-old can feel for his older sister. She winked.

"Do you know anything cool?" the dark-haired girl asked.

"Well, I know a pretty good trap," he said. "Here, give me a slow punch at the chest, followed by one with your other hand."

She punched. He intercepted. She struck with her other fist and he blocked again, tangling their arms. The blond girl laughed. "He's so smooth!"

"You're a tough lady to find," a man called from behind.

Tristan whirled. "Pete? Why are you here?"

He grinned, gazing up at her from beneath his eyelashes, mock-shy. He had veiny arms she'd once admired and a goatee she'd always despised. After the last few minutes looming over the thirteen-year-olds, Pete made her feel very short.

"Hunting wild you," he said.

"Wait, that's not a joke, is it? You followed me."

His grin contracted. "You don't give me much choice. I been by your house three times. Where you been all week?"

Tristan barred her arms over her chest. "Busy."

"Too busy to send a text? What've you been working on, a moon launch?"

"I've been trying to find a job. At graduation, I'd prefer not to step off the stage and straight into the gutter."

Off to her side, Alden flipped headfirst into the grass. Her heart lurched. Before his head could smash into the grass and crack his spine, he bent his right arm over his upturned head, met the ground, and rolled forward. He popped up to his feet, dew streaking his back. The girls laughed.

Pete shook his head. "I haven't seen you since Christmas. You never call. You text so little I got afraid your hippie friends convinced you literacy is the tool of the oppressor. I mean, what the hell?"

"I was going to call."

"When? Once you were back at school? Safely removed from the picture?"

She clenched her teeth. "And following me to the park like a creep so you can yell at me when I'm trying to spend time with my brother—that really makes me want to call."

Pete spread his arms as if readying to pin her to the grass. "Don't you try and turn this around on me. I'm not the one running off like some damned bitchy gazelle, leaping from—"

"'Bitchy gazelle'?"

"African deer, they're always jumping—"

"That's not the part I object to," Tristan said.

"Well, if you don't want to get called certain words, you shouldn't act like one of them!" Pete smiled angrily at the mountains looking down on the town. "Look, you want to pretend everything's fine, to know there's a problem yet refuse to step up to it, then I will. Is there somebody else?"

She blinked. "Of course not. Somebody else? The whole problem is I don't have time for one somebody right now. I've got graduation. A job hunt. Finding a place to stay. Does that sound like it leaves a lot of time for fooling around?"

To the side, the girls scooted away, faces upturned. Alden stood on a pine branch eight feet above the ground, clinging to the branch above him to steady himself.

Tristan's blood froze. "Alden—"

Alden jumped headfirst at the ground. He bent his right arm over his head. His eyes went wide; an instant before he hit the grass, he jerked back his hand.

His head hit the ground with a crunch. His legs flopped flat. He went very still.

3

Shawn sat up on his mattress and grinned. "Did I shoot your cat?"

"Why does it smell like gunpowder in here?" Ness said.

"Are you crazy?"

"You were mad at her for peeing on your bed."

"So you admit it!"

Ness spun toward their mom. He fought to breathe. "He shot Volt. He shot her!"

She swayed back on her heels, frowning, eyes crinkled with suspicion. "Shawn, did you go and shoot Volt?"

Shawn snorted. "Mom, you really think I'm going to shoot a fucking cat?"

Relief flooded her face. She turned to Ness. "There you have it. Cat's fine. I'm sure she'll turn up in the morning."

"He said he was going to do something to her!" Ness screeched. "Get him out of here! Call the police!"

"That's what this is about," Shawn said. "He wants me out of our room. You know how he makes stuff up."

His mom lurched forward. "Calm down, Ness. You're gonna have an attack."

Ness stumbled away. Tears blurred his eyes. He was still wearing his coat and shoes from calling for Volt. He shoved the door open and ran into the night.

"Ness!"

Gravel ground under his heels. He headed straight up the road toward the top of the mountain. His breath burst from his mouth in hanging clouds. The stars burned like blind and angry eyes. Back at the trailer, his mom yelled at Shawn to follow him. Shawn whined, indistinct. Ness wanted to call out for Volt, but he couldn't slow down. He had a two-minute head start by the time the trailer door banged from far down the hill.

"Ness!" Shawn hollered, voice echoing in the night. "Nestor!"

Ness sprinted harder. He reached the stands of trees that fringed the mountain's upper reaches and paused there, leaning against one of the pines. Tacky sap stuck to his fingers. Shawn shouted again. Far downhill, footsteps crackled in the leaves. Ness burst up the slope. Minutes later, deep in the woods, he hunkered behind a tree, pulled his hood over his head, and fought to control his breathing.

"Ness!"

Five minutes later, a branch cracked a hundred yards to Ness' right. He stayed frozen. Shawn yelled again, uphill and further to the right. Ness stood and walked straight to his left. He heard one more call.

Ness didn't stop walking until he crossed the ridge to the far side of the mountain. Way, way below, the Rogers' farm lay in darkness, a black pool of wheat. Ness' hands were cold. He shoved them in his pockets. He couldn't go back to the house. Not after that. Later that night, maybe, after Shawn and Mom had gone to bed.

But he didn't want to wake to Shawn's snores. To face his smirk at breakfast. He wasn't quite as sure as he'd been twenty minutes ago, but he was still pretty sure Shawn had shot Volt. He shot things all the time—pheasant, chukar, squirrels, pigeons, deer. A cat was much smaller than a deer. If Shawn could shoot a deer without qualms, he would have no problem shotgunning a cat. A cat that had probably been peeing on his bed ever since he'd moved back. Ness grinned, then felt sick.

The fact of the matter was he didn't want to go home at all. Hesitantly, approaching the idea the same way he'd approach a body in the woods, he understood he didn't have to.

He had his wallet. The only real place to get food that was still open was the Jack in the Box, and it was drive-thru only this late, but the donut shop down on Washington kept weird hours to cater to the college drunks, and if he really got hungry, he could walk across town to the WinCo for some beef jerky and Ruffles. His fish didn't need his attention; they were more or less self-sustaining, and the ones who weren't could go days without food. If Volt was still alive and unshotgunned, his mom would be sure to feed her. He had a PVP raid scheduled tomorrow night, but it suddenly seemed unimportant. There would be other days. Other raids.

He waited another ten minutes to make sure Shawn had given up, then dropped down the mountain and headed for Rodeo Drive.

It was right about freezing, but with his hood up and his hands in his pockets, he wasn't cold so long as he kept moving. He circled wide around the trailers and cut through the weeds between two housing developments, smelling the dew on the grass. Sprinklers chugged from the yard of a dark house. A dog barked, startling him. He ran until he was far enough away that no one could blame him for provoking it. He hit the highway and headed south toward town.

It took three minutes for the first car to pass, its headlights glaring in his eyes. Bass crumped from its closed windows. It sped down the highway and disappeared. It felt good to be away from the house. The muscles of his neck felt looser than at any point since Shawn had moved back home.

The donut shop was closed. He walked stiffly through the downtown. Two frat boys led a laughing girl out of a bar and onto the sidewalk. Ness crossed the street to get away. At the Jack in the Box, a dozen cars idled in the drive-thru, exhaust curling into the night. For just a second, he considered knocking on the window of a friendly-looking station wagon and asking if he could pay them to buy him two Jumbo Jacks with no onions, but how was he supposed to just ask a stranger for a favor like that? Anyway, they would probably drive off and eat the hamburgers themselves.

His feet ached already. His sense of adventure had faded as quickly as Shawn's calls. He didn't know where he would spend the night, but he was beginning to understand that if he did spend the night away from home—on a park bench? Under a bridge, for real?—that meant he had run away. Like a little kid whose big brother had broken his favorite toy. He rubbed his eyes and redoubled his pace toward WinCo.

It was a two-mile walk. The red letters hummed from the face of the store. The aisles were bright and empty. He could probably stay here all night if he wanted. Handling the bell peppers. Frowning at the fat content of the jalapeno chips. Men joked at each other, restocking the shelves with half-dissected pallets. A woman wrangled a floor-buffer down the aisles, engine blaring. Ness selected a packet of beef jerky and a family-size bag of Ruffles, which was too large for his immediate needs, frankly, but its per-ounce price was nearly half as low as the medium-sized bag. He did some quick arithmetic versus his bank account and chose a coffee-flavored Rockstar. Logically, he should try to stay awake and moving until the sun rose, then sleep while his clothing was able to absorb its warmth.

He wasn't sure whether he could be arrested for loitering, so he ate while he walked. The silvery curve of the Kibbie Dome rose from the hill. If he wanted, he could have turned around and crossed the border into Washington within five minutes. Become an interstate runaway, all because he crossed a line not five miles from his front door. Instead, he walked toward campus, peeling off the main road into the brick path between the dorm-towers. Scattered laughter and a stereo's bass filtered from the windows. It was nearly four o'clock. He hurried past the dorms and sat on a bench outside the Mormon church, where he ate potato chips until he felt logy. He called Volt's name once, then glanced to the apartment block next door to make sure no lights had turned on. He slumped down on the bench, letting his hood bunch around his ears.

"Are you all right, sir?"

Ness' heart jolted. He jerked upright. A policeman stood over him, flashlight dazzling his eyes. He shaded them, staring at the officer's shoes. "I fell asleep."

"How much have you had to drink tonight, sir?"

Greasy Ruffles fell from his coat. "Nothing. Drinking's bad for your brain."

The officer leaned closer, peering into his eyes, nostrils flaring as he tried to catch a whiff of Ness' breath. "Then what are you doing on this bench, sir?"

"I think I ate too much."

The flashlight swung between his eyes. Ness blinked. The policeman clicked off the light. "Are you aware you're sleeping on public property?"

"No I'm not. I'm awake on public property." Ness flushed. "I didn't mean to fall asleep."

The officer glanced at the bag of beef jerky sitting next to him, the rumpled sack of Ruffles. "Then maybe you should get home. I hear homes have beds."

Ness stood, brushing crumbs. His limbs were stiff with cold. "Thank you, officer."

It wasn't yet six. Headlights crept down the street. Ness' head thudded. He looped around town for another couple hours, blisters mounting on his toes and heels, and went into the library as soon as it opened. The inside smelled like old books and heater-singed dust. He took up a seat at a computer and dozed for a few hours until the librarian had enough and kicked him out.

He went to the Jack in the Box and was pleased to find it was still serving breakfast. As he walked outside, his mom's beige Subaru crawled down the block. He flung himself into the damp grass behind the shrubs and waited for her to roll from sight.

Once the coast was clear, he walked to the park in the hills on the east end of town, stopping at a Walgreens to buy Band-aids, Neosporin, and a pair of sharp-nosed fingernail scissors. In the park bathroom stall, he popped his blisters with the scissors, cut away the dead skin, spread disinfectant on his bandages, and let his feet air out for a minute. His legs were sore from hips to toes. He couldn't remember walking more in his life.

He rested in the park for a while, watching kids chuck a baseball around, take awkward swings in front of the backstop. When his feet stopped stinging, he walked slowly back to the Jack in the Box, taking the side streets through the bars, and ordered two Jumbo Jacks without onions.

On some level, he had no idea what he was doing. He could return home at any time. His mom would be too happy to be angry. But he felt that his point, whatever it was, hadn't yet been proven. Shawn would still be there. Volt would still be gone. Anyway, in a strange way, he was enjoying himself. He felt contentedly removed from life, a secret observer of the college students and the locals on their daily routines. Worried about their girls and their jobs. It was so stupid. One day, they would all be dead.

He went back to the library, read Ender's Game until they closed, then returned to the post-sunset of winter's end. It was cold again. Brittle brown maple leaves spotted the sidewalks. He texted Tim again and returned to the park east of town to take a nap. He woke at 11:07 PM hungry and sore. He had just enough time to walk to the Jack in the Box before they shut their lobby for the night.

He wasn't sure what he would say to the cashier if it was the same teen girl who'd served him earlier, but a balding man waited behind the counter instead. Ness treated himself to a bacon double cheeseburger with jalapeno poppers and a Dr. Pepper, then headed back toward the park, cutting across the tree-lined downtown streets.

In a bar parking lot, three college kids peeled from the back stoop, cigarette cherries glowing orange. Their feet scuffed behind him. He quickened his pace. So did they. He cut into an alley between a mechanic's and the grain silo. One of the boys whistled and they broke into a run, circling in front of him.

They were all tall. They lifted weights. They could have been tight ends for the Vandals. The one who spoke had gelled and frosted hair.

"All that running's got me hungry."

Ness froze. Someone snatched the paper bag from his hands. He yelped. They laughed. One of them kicked his knee and he buckled to the pavement, skinning his palms. Someone grabbed his ass. He prepared to scream, but they were just taking his wallet. The boy with the frosted hair thumbed out his cash, his debit card, and flung the wallet in Ness' face.

"Got any weed?"

"No," Ness said.

One of the boy's friends had eyes like pine-knots. "Check his socks."

"I don't do drugs!"

They laughed and peeled his socks past his ankles. The third man tore open his poppers and chewed one whole, licking the grease from his fingers.

"I don't do drugs," the boy with the frosted hair laughed. He sniffed hard. Ness had heard UI had a cocaine problem. Should he run? A cop car cruised past the far end of the alley. He thought about shouting but it was too late. The boy sniffed again, jerked his chin, and turned away. The other two followed.

Ness headed home.

Shawn's truck was still parked in the gravel driveway. The lights were out. Ness whispered to Volt, then strained his ears for the rustle of weeds, for her inquisitive mewl. Five minutes later, he headed back up the mountain. He had stopped crying by the time he crossed the ridge.

The Rogers' lights were on, flooding the yard with yellow. Widget wagged at Ness. He waited at the edge of the light, hoping Mrs. Rogers would appear silhouetted in the doorway and ask who was there so he could emerge and sheepishly wave. Widget snugged her head between his paws. After ten minutes of waiting, Ness clunked up the wooden steps and pressed his nose to the window. The TV flickered, but the couch was empty.

Heart hammering, he went to the side door and found it unlocked. The house smelled like copper and farts. The fridge buzzed down the hallway to the kitchen. In Tim's room, the DVD screensaver bounced from one corner of the TV to the other. Tim was sprawled beneath the blankets. Ness cleared his throat, then tried again, louder. He stood there for three minutes before he realized his friend was dead.

4

"Alden!"

Tristan streaked across the grass. The blond girl screamed. The girl with dark hair clamped her hands to her mouth and danced back. Tristan slid into the damp grass beside her brother. She touched his head, as if that would tell her anything, then circled her fingers around his wrist. His pulse thumped beside the tendons of his forearm. She wanted to scream.

"What should I do?" Pete said.

"Call an ambulance and get the fuck away."

He flipped out his cell. "Like hell. I'm not going anywhere till we know he's safe."

Alden's chest rose and fell, but otherwise he didn't move. Should she turn him over? What if his spine were broken? She reached for his hand. It was warm from exercise. Pete finished with the dispatcher and hung up.

"I'm going to call your parents."

Tristan nodded numbly. He was trying to reinsert himself into her life, she knew that, but she was too overwhelmed to protest. Ten feet away, the blond girl cried, the edge of her palm pressed to the flesh beneath her nose.

"It's okay," Tristan said. "You don't have to stay."

The girls disappeared, were replaced by a small crowd of kids and joggers. A shirtless man gazed blankly, his German shepherd panting happily by his side. A few feet away, a black chihuahua strained at its leash, arfing at the oblivious shepherd. Tristan clung to Alden's hand.

"Mrs. Carter?" Pete said into his phone. "It's Pete. There's been an accident."

A siren moaned in the distance. The ambulance swung into the lot and a pair of paramedics jogged across the grass. A husky man with a buzz cut and a mustache knelt beside Alden.

"What happened?" he said.

Tristan pointed to the tree. "He jumped. I'm his sister."

"Have you moved him?"

"Was I supposed to? Is he okay?"

The man clicked on a penlight. "Are you going to ride with us or follow in your car?"

"My car," she said dumbly. "I can't just leave it here."

Pete shook his head. "I'll drive. We're not sending two Carters to the hospital today."

Tristan tightened her jaw. Pete slipped his hand under her elbow and she let herself be led away. The paramedics wheeled Alden to the ambulance and clunked the back door shut. Tristan fumbled her keys to Pete, who closed her door and slung himself behind the wheel.

The car smelled like warm plastic and moldy laundry. She rolled down her window. On I-5, the wind buffeted her face, stealing her breath.

"He's going to be all right," Pete said. "Probably just rattled his brain."

"You don't know that."

"Kung fu heroes don't get hurt jumping from trees. If he'd been saving the Emperor's daughter, maybe that's another story."

Pete smiled at himself. Tristan gazed at him, simultaneously repulsed and wishing he'd pull over and crush her to his chest. The stony smell of the river whisked through the window. At the hospital, he dropped her off and pulled out to park. She sat in the waiting room with her hands folded so Pete wouldn't try to take one. They'd have to go back together to get his car, wouldn't they.

Her parents arrived with each other. Her mom's hair was sweaty and frazzled, as if she'd run the whole way. Her dad's eyes were penned behind his frameless glasses. A doctor appeared, murmured something soothing about X-rays, and went on his way.

"How did this happen?" her dad asked.

"He was practicing his tumbling," Tristan said. "Like, when you get thrown."

Her mother swung her head from side to side. "I just don't know what to say, Tristan."

Her dad leaned forward, voice as sharp and thin as a paring knife. "The doctor said he jumped from a tree?"

"He was trying to impress some girls," Tristan said.

"And you let him."

"I didn't let him. He's not three years old."

Her dad's brow bent. "You think thirteen-year-olds have better judgment?"

"It was my fault," Pete said. Her parents jerked their heads, as if just noticing he were there. "I dropped by. Caught Tristan off guard. We start talking, argue a little, next thing you know Alden's got his Superman cape on." He glanced away. "I'm sorry."

Her dad removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes closed. "Is this what things will be like if you move back home, Tristan?"

She clenched her jaw so hard it ached. Pete reached for her hand. She bolted from her chair and went to the drinking fountain, then continued deeper into the hospital, finding herself in the courtyard. It was shady and cold and sparrows peeped from the trees. She watched them play until she felt capable of speaking more softly than a shout.

When she got back, the doctors had a verdict. His spine appeared to be fine. He had a mild concussion and a broken collarbone. They wanted to keep him another day, but they thought he would be okay.

Her parents exhaled like pearl divers. Her dad went outside to call work. Tristan muttered something about making a call, too, then wandered the parking lot until she found her car. She drove.

Ten minutes later, stopped at a light, her phone rang. She almost didn't look at it, certain it would be Pete, but Laura's name showed on the small display. She'd heard Alden had been hurt.

Tristan fed her the details. "He'll heal. Unlike my relationship with my parents."

"Do you need to talk?"

"Yes. Yes I do."

"I've got lunch in a few minutes," Laura said. "Swing by?"

She drove straight to the bar. Laura was out back smoking a Parliament. She wrapped Tristan in a hug, holding her cigarette away from their hair.

"So your parents are freaked?"

Tristan laughed hollowly. "If I don't answer my phone later, just check the nearest hill. I'll be the one dangling from the cross."

"Jesus," Laura laughed. "What about you?"

"Well, it's my fault, isn't it?"

"Your fault? Did you leave out the part where you shoved him from the tree?"

"I wasn't watching him," Tristan said.

"He's thirteen," Laura said. "He'll be attending high school this fall."

"And if he'd landed just a little different, he'd be attending a cemetery."

"If anything, this is Pete's fault. He's the one who stalked you across town like that astronaut with the diaper."

"You know why Pete was there?" Tristan said. "He's worried about our relationship. And he should be. Because there isn't one."

Laura blew smoke from her nose. "It was an accident. Why do you want to make yourself feel like shit?"

"If I'd been honest with Pete, none of this would have happened. Instead, I fucked some guy I've got zero long-term interest in because deep down, I hoped that would be enough to break us up. And it would—if I had the balls to tell Pete about it. Instead, I ran and hid. Because it was easy. And now my baby brother doesn't know what day it is because his skull lost a fight with the ground."

"Wow."

"Yeah."

Laura stubbed her Parliament out on the stucco wall. "I think you convinced me. Congrats. Now what are you going to do?"

Tristan let out a shaky breath. "I'm going to get my life together."

She drove back to the hospital to see Alden, but the nurse told her he was asleep. In the lobby, Pete rose and took her elbow.

"I want to talk to you."

"No you don't," she laughed.

He raised his thick brows, straightening his spine so he could look down on her from all his height. "Pretty sure I do, Triss."

"I fucked another guy."

Pete's smile froze on his face mid-patronize. "What?"

"A guy named Zeke. He has an ironic mustache and won't listen to music with electric guitars."

"What?"

"I know," she said. "Not even Hendrix?"

His voice became brittle. His well-muscled arms hung useless from his shoulders. "I don't believe this."

"Then take some time to wrestle it down, because it's true. We'll talk more later. Swear. But right now I need some time with my family. If you promise you won't talk, I'll drive you back to your car."

The skin around his mouth twitched as if it were infested with worms. "I couldn't. You done more than enough for me today."

He strode across the dirty tile. Tristan glanced at her parents seated a few rows away. "Did you hear any of that?"

Her mom winced. "If I pretend I didn't for long enough, do you think I can convince myself to believe it?"

"Well, I'm sorry. And I'm sorry about Alden. Pete shouldn't have been there. I've been confused."

Her dad scowled at his copy of TIME. "Apparently."

"He's going to be all right, right?"

"They still have a couple tests," her mom said. "But my heart has stopped competing for Olympic Gold. I think he'll be fine."

"I'm going to go home and search for jobs," she said. "Call me when he wakes up?"

Her dad glanced up from an infographic on rising mortgage failure rates. "Try and stop me."

Tristan drove home. The house was deeply quiet. A lawnmower buzzed from down the street. She flipped open her laptop and copy/pasted every Craigslist wanted ad in the greater Bay Area into three different files: "DREAM JOB," "YOU GOTTA DO WHAT YOU GOTTA DO," and "PLEASE GOD NO." Starting with the first file and working her way down, she spent the next three hours tweaking and emailing resumes.

She sent out a few dozen all told, for positions ranging from a PR gig at a startup indie label to receptionist at a shoe factory in Oakland. It was bracing. Invigorating. A shot of espresso straight to the nerves. Was that all it took? To just...act? Already, she couldn't believe she'd told Pete. All the guilt and worrying and avoidance annihilated by a few simple sentences. The fallout would certainly require many more sentences—pages and pages of them, an endless, Kerouac-style ream of them—but if the closure of their relationship were an essay, she was thoroughly prepared to turn it in half-assed. After all, a D was much better than an F.

Her dad called as she was scrubbing down the kitchen.

"Not to pry you away from finding a future outside our house," he said, "but Alden's awake."

She rushed out the door. At the hospital, Alden sat up in bed and grimaced. A sling cradled his right arm. He didn't have a shirt on and a morbid red-purple bruise stained the skin around his shoulder.

"You're alive!" she said.

He blinked at her. "Did the girls see?"

"That's what you care about right now?"

"Well, did they?"

"Are you kidding? They had a front row seat."

He frowned at his splayed toes. "At least they don't know my name."

"Do you feel okay?" she said.

"All except my head. And my shoulder. And my me."

She laughed, then grew sober. "Alden, I'm so sorry. I should have been paying more attention."

He tried to swivel his head to meet her eyes and winced so hard he showed his teeth. His voice was strained with pain. "I'm not three."

"That's what I told Mom and Dad!"

"So did it look cool? I mean, before I crashed?"

"For sure. It looked like you were ready to deck Morpheus."

He lowered his chin and laughed. "Totally worth it."

The remaining tests came back negative; visiting hours ceased. Her dad drove them out for cheeseburgers and took them home to eat and shower before the return to the hospital. The kitchen smelled like french fries and microwaved bacon.

Her dad dabbed his napkin to his mouth. "Apply for anything interesting today?"

"A few," Tristan said. "As well as a lot more not-so-interesting things."

"You know," her mom said, "even the crummiest job isn't a death sentence. Nothing lasts forever."

"That's very comforting."

"Well, it doesn't. As today proved, to my everlasting horror."

"I know." Tristan took a long drink of Sprite. It was painfully sweet. She had successfully eliminated high fructose corn syrup from her diet since her third semester at Berkeley—it wasn't a looks thing, it was just bad for you—but she felt no regrets breaking her streak. "I'll find something. I'll make it work until I find something better."

Her dad finished his cheeseburger and folded the wrapper into eighths. "Your mom and I were talking."

"Why do I have the sudden urge to run?"

Her mom rolled her eyes. "Ho ho."

"Figure out what you want to do," her dad went on. "Whether it's get any job you can and stay in the city or come back here until you find the one you want. Figure that out, and we'll talk."

"Wait, really?" Tristan said. "When we go back to the hospital, can I get a sample of your blood?"

Her mom made a face. "What are you talking about?"

"Because you've obviously been replaced by aliens and I'm going to need proof."

"We're your parents," she said. "We want you to try, but we know things are different these days. Until things change, it's our job to keep you happy. To keep you safe."

Tristan frowned, eyes going watery. "I am trying. I'll let you know what happens."

They returned to the hospital. Her dad finished his TIME. Her mom pawed through a collection of Philip K. Dick's short stories. Tristan exchanged texts with Laura. As the hospital thinned out, her dad volunteered to sleep there overnight. Her mom drove Tristan back to the house.

"You shouldn't blame yourself," her mom said while Tristan brushed her teeth. "It wasn't your fault."

She spit white froth into the sink. "It was a little my fault. But I'll do better."

She couldn't have been more exhausted if she'd spent all day playing fast-pitch softball with boulders. Alden came home the next morning. They'd given him some painkillers and he fell asleep on the couch watching Five Deadly Venoms, which Tristan had rented for him. And then it was afternoon, and it was time for Tristan to drive back to Berkeley.

Her dad hugged her in the driveway. "Keep us posted."

"I hope I have something to post you about," Tristan said.

Her mom squeezed her tight. "No one says no to a girl as pretty as you."

"Well, I'm glad to see we're finally being judged for our brains."

Her mom grinned and slapped her on the shoulder. Tristan got in the car and drove slowly from the development. It smelled like grass clippings again. Trash bins lined the sidewalk.

She swung onto I-5 and headed south down the valley through the endless fields of grapes and olives and walnuts. If you squinted, you could almost pretend you were driving down the middle of Italy. Sunlight smashed through the windshield. The hills were yellow and the fields were green. She had a CD player, but let the radio play what it would.

The drive took a good four hours. She got back to her apartment just before sunset. Her roommate Connie sat on the couch with a beer and a Wii remote, flicking her wrist to send the bowling ball tumbling down the lanes. It smelled vaguely of pot; a joint had been tamped out in the ashtray.

"How was home?" Connie said.

"I fought with my parents, broke up with my boyfriend, and almost let my little brother die." Tristan dropped her suitcase to the worn carpet. "You?"

"I thought about going outside."

"We all need dreams."

She didn't particularly want to do her reading for Monday's class in The Letter as Literature, but she did so anyway, diving into Rilke's Teutonic madness with the same vigor she'd used to dump Pete. Pete, incidentally, didn't text or call once over the next three days. Two employers did, though, arranging interviews with her for the next week. Wednesday afternoon, she checked her phone after class and found a new message.

She flipped it open hungrily, anticipating another interview, but it was from her dad. She frowned. Her dad didn't call much. That was Mom's job.

"Tristan, your brother's back in the hospital," he said through the crackling message. "He's sick. They don't know what it is."

5

As Ness processed Tim's death, the world honed to a focused beam. Tim's sheets were crimson, obscuring the color of the stains, but when Ness leaned in, all he smelled was blood, excrement, and a general organic miasma. He pinched the sheets between his thumb and forefinger and pulled them from Tim's head. Tim's eyes were open and withered. Blood crusted his tear ducts, his mouth, his ears. Ness sniffed again, but got no whiff of decay. Blood. Bowels. Phlegm. That was it. Tim's forehead was still warm.

Ness straightened. Physically, he entered a state of sheer terror—sweating, trembling, his whole body hot as a brick oven—but if he had a superpower, it was the preternatural calmness that came to him in the face of the right kind of danger.

Mrs. Rogers was obviously dead as well. If not, she would've taken her son to the hospital, not left him to bleed to death in bed. He went to her bedroom to confirm. Her bed was empty. Out of town? He found her in the tub. The water was as crimson as Tim's sheets. It had pruned her skin, seeping into the creases and staining them pink. Her skin was cool, but that could have been the conductive properties of the water at play rather than an indication of an earlier time of death.

Ness went to the kitchen and washed his hands three times. Heavy metal poisoning? That could cause hemorrhaging. If it were in their food, it could easily have affected mother and son.

But its symptoms might not present for weeks or months. Tim's body hadn't yet stiffened. He and his mom had died within a day of each other, probably a few hours. Mom in the tub while Tim shivered and bled in bed. Radiation poisoning? It would have to be an awfully strong source to take them both so fast. But not impossible. On the off chance Mr. Rogers' last business trip had been to sub-Saharan, ebola-plagued Africa, Ness found a fresh cloth in the linen closet, soaked it with water, and tied it around his mouth. He found rubber gloves under the sink and donned them.

He didn't spend much time thinking about what he was looking for. He doubted he would find a Soviet ICBM parked in the garage. Without a doubt, he should just leave. But two people had died in very strange circumstances, and that was too interesting to run from.

A bowl of noodles sat soggily on the counter. In the garbage, he found a WinCo receipt dated four days ago. They'd been in circulation that recently, at least. If it were radiation, it would probably have to be something from a shared space—the bathrooms, the dinner table. The car. He found nothing in the bathroom but the usual assortment of conditioners and razors and hairdryers. There was nothing on, below, or near the table besides a couple of candles and a tablecloth.

He flipped on the garage light. The room was simple, uncluttered; they kept the farm tools in the shed and the barn. The wall shelves held two flashlights, a rake, a mallet, and a shovel. A sack of wheat spilled into the corner of the outer door. He checked the truck. There was a tarp in the bed, but nothing beneath it. Nothing under the seats. A few maps and menus and matchbooks in the glove box.

If it were radiation, he should probably be going. He returned to Tim's room to make sure there was no obvious pornography sitting around. For once, there wasn't, but now that Ness' eyes were open to change, he spotted the difference at once.

A metal canister sat on top of the TV. It hadn't been here last time he'd been to Tim's the same day Shawn had moved into Ness' room. The canister looked like brushed nickel. A bit darker. Its stark curves reminded him of the elegant soap dispensers in the Bed Bath & Beyond catalogues his mom clipped coupons from but never wound up using. The device was shockingly heavy. The sides were blackened and damascened like copper plumbing. He shook it. It rattled lightly. He turned it over and shook two wheat kernels from a hidden hole in its top.

He took the canister to the garage and knelt beside the bag of spilled wheat. A paper tag was tied to the burlap handle. The address was Willy Shoreman's. Ness had seen him at the Rogers' before. Shoreman was another farmer who lived a couple miles across the mountain.

After the heat of the house, the cold night struck him like one of Shawn's fists. He gazed toward the Shoreman's farm, but the mountain was dark. His blisters throbbed. His stomach squealed. Instead of heading to the Shoreman's like he wanted, he went back to the garage for the shovel and buried the canister beside the bare-branched larch in the back yard. He went inside to wipe his fingerprints from the doorknobs and return the rag and gloves. He went outside. His cell was nearly dead, but it called 911 with no problem.

The police and the ambulance took nearly twenty minutes to arrive, sirens keening up the mountainside, lights washing the grass in bands of red and blue. They skidded in the farmhouse's gravel drive, dust blossoming from their tires. While the paramedics went inside, two policeman spoke to Ness.

The younger policeman scratched notes on a yellow pad. "You say your friend hadn't been responding to texts?"

"Not in at least a couple days," Ness said.

"And when you got to the house, what did you do?"

"The door was unlocked and I was cold. I went inside. The lights were on. I found Tim first. I didn't think his mom would leave him like that. That's when I found her in the tub. After that, I came straight outside and called you."

The officer nodded, scribbling notes. "Did you notice anything unusual while you were inside?"

Ness pretended to think. "No."

They asked him several more questions. He stuck to his story, telling the truth whenever he could. Something strange had happened to Tim and his mother. Something awful. Something Ness didn't want to get wrapped up in.

The paramedics emerged several minutes later. They looked pale. They pulled the two officers aside and murmured in the night. One of the paramedics climbed in the ambulance cab and clicked on his radio. The two cops watched Ness steadily. The paramedic clambered back out and nodded to the older cop whose hair was as flat and gray as the deck of a battleship.

"Look, son," the older officer said, "they'd like to take you down to the hospital and give you a little exam."

"What's wrong?" Ness said.

"Well, nothing, we hope! But you were inside that house. You seen it. We'd like to make sure whatever happened to those folks isn't about to happen to you."

"But I was only inside for a second."

"What's that the women say?" The cop's eyes crinkled. "It only takes a second?"

"I live right on the other side of the mountain." Ness pointed west toward the trailer. "I'll call you if I start to feel anything funny."

"Listen, you've been straight with us, so I'll be straight with you. Right now, this isn't what you'd call a choice."

An itch spidered up Ness' neck. "I don't want to go."

"Here's the deal. You either take a ride in the back of their car." The gray-haired cop pointed to the ambulance, thick thumb extended to the side. "Or you take a ride in the back of mine."

Ness wanted to run. Why had he called the police? Someone else would have found Tim and Mrs. Rogers eventually. They weren't going to be any less dead because the paramedics were hauling their bodies off on a Tuesday instead of a Thursday. He'd tried to do good and now he was trapped. He couldn't say no to the police. That would be a Shawn-style move, resulting in another Shawn-style arrest. There must be some way to talk his way out—to cite law, to plumb for sympathy—but Ness couldn't begin to find the words. He felt frozen, helpless.

He nodded to the ambulance. "I'll go with them."

The cop's eyes crinkled. "I knew you looked smart."

One of the paramedics loaded him into the back while the other climbed behind the wheel. The ambulance lurched off and headed downhill.

"What about Tim and his mom?" Ness said.

The paramedic glanced over his shoulder toward the house, face as sober as a snowfield. "Someone else is coming for them."

"But I'm fine."

"I'm sure you are. To confirm that, we're going to run a few tests there in the house. And a few on you to confirm everything's normal."

In other words, they wanted to collect in-depth forensics. The ambulance bounced down the dark mountain road, jolting Ness' spine. Forensics for what? The Rogers' had possibly been murdered. The method of murder would have to be an unusual one—heavy metal poisoning or exposure to radiation—and again, unless those substances were present in extremely high doses, it was unlikely Tim and his mother would both die within such a brief window of time.

Ness' skin prickled. The possibility of exotic disease no longer seemed so far-fetched.

He glanced at the paramedic, wanting to ask for some rubbing alcohol. Hand sanitizer. Anything. But he didn't want to give himself away. And he'd already thoroughly washed his hands. If there were a virus in his body, there was nothing more he could do about it. His stomach rolled. His head felt light. He could see it, the virus floating through the fluids of his body, little bundles of matter so small and mechanical that biologists still couldn't agree whether they were truly alive, attaching to his cells, penetrating the cellular walls, rerouting interior production, and tricking his own body into duplicating those undead bundles until the infected cell swelled and burst, flooding his guts with fresh attackers.

On and on until he bled to death in bed, pale and sagging.

The ambulance descended to the back road and swung onto the asphalt. Tim had been his only real-life friend and there were times he doubted Tim had even liked him that much. Tim had died in bed. It looked like it had been painful. Ness believed things happened for reasons. Not for a reason. Not according to the guidelines of a higher power's plan that was ultimately benevolent and would, in hindsight, be comforting and joyous, no matter how atrocious the individual links of the chain that composed these events.

But he believed things happened according to logical chains of events. He believed that everything could be understood if you looked carefully and closely enough. What chain had ended with Tim's death? Except the chain didn't end there, did it—what did it mean that the next link led to him?

The ambulance's lights poured over the red brick and blue glass of the hospital. Ness was taken to an exam room and told to wait. A nurse checked his blood pressure and temperature, drew blood, asked him for contact information for his family, and told him to wait for the doctor. When she opened the door, angry voices rang in the hall. Ness waited as he was told. The nurse hadn't been wearing a mask. Atop the exam table, Ness swung his feet, crinkling the paper he was seated on. The room was cold. Someone had taken his coat as he'd been led into the hospital. He got up and walked around to keep his blood flowing.

The doctor was a thin man with thinner hair, and a goatee clipped as close as a putting green. Ness immediately returned to the exam table.

"Good evening." The man fiddled with his paperwork. "How are you feeling?"

"Cold," Ness said.

He looked up sharply. "Shivering?"

"It's cold in here."

"But you don't feel feverish. Okay, Nestor, I've got a few simple tests for you here."

"Do you think there might have been something at the house?"

"Well, that's what we'd like to eliminate as a possibility." The doctor directed him to take off his shirt. He complied.

"What are you trying to find?" Ness said.

"Right now we're just going to do a few simple tests to establish a baseline. That way, if anything changes, we'll know and be able to respond appropriately."

"How long do you need me here?"

The man got an otoscope from the drawer and instructed Ness to turn his head. "Well, that's what we're going to find out."

He checked Ness' ears, his throat, his breathing. At the end, he scribbled notes on his pad and nodded to himself without looking up. "Have you or anyone you know recently been to Africa?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

Ness stared at the doctor. Was he being made fun of? "I think I would remember if I had visited the Congo in the last two weeks."

The doctor nodded. "Wait here for the nurse, please. She'll only be a minute."

She was much more than a minute. Ness didn't know what to make of all this. The procedure, so far, had been little different than a checkup with his family doctor. The thin, balding doctor hadn't worn a mask, either. Either they weren't seriously worried about a disease, or the staff hadn't been informed.

When the nurse returned, a pale green mask was perched over her mouth, a metal clip pinching it to her nose. She wore gloves. She guided him from the exam room to another room with a single bed. At no point did she touch him.

"We'd like to keep you overnight," she said. "We've called your family—your brother? They know you're here and you're safe."

"Can I see him?" Ness said.

"Visiting hours are done for the day. I'm sure you can see him tomorrow. Do you have any questions?"

He wanted to ask what would happen if he wanted to leave, but he didn't want to put her in the awkward position of telling him he had to stay. He shook his head.

"Great." Her eye crinkled above her mask. She pointed to a beige intercom on the end table beside the bed. "Just buzz me if you need anything. Everything's going to be fine."

Her smile melted. She closed the door. From the outside of the room, the lock clicked. Ness waited two minutes to make sure she'd left, then tried the door. It didn't budge.

Something had changed.

He didn't like that. There now existed the non-zero chance that his life was no longer his. If they believed it were a disease, they could ship him to Boise or Seattle or Denver, even the CDC at Atlanta. There would be nothing he could do about it. He would be a public health risk, perhaps even classified as a national security risk. If this were something fatal or unknown, he would be tested until he died of the disease or they determined there was nothing more to learn from him. That process could take—well, he had no idea how long. Months, easily. After his release, followup tests could be ongoing for years.

He didn't like this line of thinking, but he couldn't stop his brain from clicking down the rails. Once again, he imagined a single virus penetrating the walls of a single one of his cells. Diverting his resources to double its RNA again and again. Bursting free. Destroying the cell. Attaching to its neighbors. Repeating. He fought to breathe.

Two hours later, the lock clicked, the door opened, and Shawn walked into the room.

"What the hell have you gotten into?"

Ness rolled out of bed and stood straight. The tile was cold under his socks. "What are you doing here?"

Shawn blinked at him. "I broke in, idiot."

"You can't break into a hospital."

"I'm standin' here, aren't I?"

"You could be arrested."

"I'll play dumb."

"I don't think that will require much playing."

"Good one." Shawn glanced at the door, then crossed to the bed. "Where have you been? Mom's gone half crazy. One of her friends said they saw you up in Coeur d'Alene. Your phone goes straight to voicemail. Good damn thing, too. She'd keel over if she heard—they say you found a couple bodies?"

"Tim Rogers and his mom," Ness said. "They were dead in their house."

"Well, that's right fucked up. What happened?"

"They bled to death."

"Shot? Stabbed?"

Ness glanced at the door. "Spontaneous internal hemorrhage."

Shawn rolled his eyes. "Try again, minus the asshole."

"They bled out of every hole in their head. Possibly their rectums, too. I didn't check."

"Are you for real right now? What could even do that?"

"Poison," Ness said. "Or maybe an infection."

Shawn leapt back. "Did you touch the bodies?"

"Of course not."

"But you were in the house."

"Just long enough to see they were dead," Ness said.

"What's the matter with you? Why didn't you say something? What if you've got it and now you just gave it to me, too?"

"That's not how it works. I couldn't possibly be infectious yet. The virus wouldn't have had long enough to—"

"Oh, you're a fucking doctor now?" Shawn mashed his lips together. He took one step forward, fist bunched, then remembered why he was mad and got spooked. He backed toward the door. "What if you've just killed me? What's mom gonna do? You stupid son of a bitch."

The door opened. Above her mask, the nurse blinked at Shawn, face going hard. "Who are you?"

Shawn whirled. "Nobody. I got lost. Can you direct me to the exit, please?"

"Sir, you need to stay right here." She melted out the door and locked it.

Shawn rushed up to it, grabbed the handle. He pounded his fists against the door. "Hey! I'm not supposed to be in here!"

"That won't help," Ness said.

"I'm not sick!" Shawn pressed his ear against the door. He swore, backed up, and kicked it with all he had. "Hey, morons! I'm not sick in here!"

"That should convince them."

Shawn kicked the door again, rattling it. "Let me out of here!"

"If they think I have something, do you really think they're going to let you out?" Ness smiled. He couldn't remember seeing Shawn put out like this, turned impotent, fearful as a poisoned dog. "We're being quarantined."

6

"What kind of sick?" Tristan said into the phone. Across the path, Sather Tower spiked above the campus, its white stone pinked by the sunset. The buildings around it were the same milky stone, propped up by pillars, capped by red roofs. Tristan had never been to Greece, but it looked very Greek to her.

"They don't know." Her dad sounded tired. Froggy. Tristan had no doubt he'd kept up his work schedule at the hotel on top of all the visits to the hospital. He was getting older. When she'd lived with them, she hadn't noticed how her parents aged, but whenever she drove home for the weekend, she was struck by the graying of their hair, the lines on their faces. Even her mom, whose face was, she often complained, half her business. They weren't old old, but she could now see how they would look when they were.

"What do you mean, they don't know?" she said.

"He's got a fever. A bad one. Dizziness. Some trouble breathing."

"From the concussion?"

"That would explain the dizziness. About the rest..."

"Well, I don't know how they can't know what it is."

"It isn't like they can toss all the sick people into a change-sorting machine and see what shakes out." He cleared his throat. "A lot of the time, all they have to go by are a few symptoms. It's like trying to guess what a living brontosaurus looked like when all you've got is a kneecap, a vertebra."

"There's no such thing as a brontosaurus," Tristan said.

"What? Since when?"

"Like fifteen years, Dad."

"Well, that just proves my point."

"How bad is he? Should I come home?"

"It's not—critical. Yet." Her dad sighed into the line. "But if you've got the weekend free, I'm sure Alden would love to see you. He looks up to you. Big sister in the big city."

Tristan smiled at the tall white tower. "I don't have class Friday. I'll leave tomorrow night."

She headed straight home and began packing, mostly to give herself something to do. Connie glanced over from the couch.

"Going somewhere?"

"My brother's sick." She rolled a sweatshirt tight and stuffed it in the bottom of her backpack. "I'm going home again tomorrow."

"The flu that's going around?"

"What flu?"

"The flu that everyone's got."

"I don't know," Tristan said. She grabbed spare socks and underwear and returned to the living room. "It sounds pretty bad."

Enfolded in the couch cushions, Connie wriggled to get her elbows beneath herself. "Whatever it is, you know he got it when he was in the hospital. I don't know why people even go to those places."

"Because those people are full of deadly, deadly sickness?"

"Going to the hospital means surrounding yourself with hundreds of people with way worse stuff than you've got. And all the doctors want to do is prescribe, prescribe, prescribe."

"That's what's going to kill us," Tristan said. "Sooner or later, antibiotics will breed a bug we can't stop."

"It's like if Jesus carved his own cross," Connie laughed. Her eyes went wide. "How weird would that have been?"

At Thursday's meeting of Blue-Grass: Drugs, Depression, and the Soul of the Musician, three of the twenty-odd students were missing. Two others coughed rhythmically. Halfway through, a shaggy-haired boy rose, mouth pursed in the awkward way of someone who has to spit but is in polite company, and walked swiftly from the room. He didn't come back.

Afterwards, she walked home under a half-clouded spring sky, a cold western wind slicing through the houses. She packed her toothbrush and deodorant and the hairspray Connie disapproved of and drove north to Redding. Cars dammed the freeway, opening up only when she was well free of the city.

Her parents' house was empty. She called her mom, who explained she had an open house, but that Tristan's dad was down at the hospital if she wanted to visit. Tristan promised she would, then hung up and went to the fridge for some orange juice, needing a few minutes of quiet and stillness before she got back in a car. She sipped the sweet juice, losing herself in the kitchen. It always stunned her. She'd last seen it less than a week ago, but the contrast between it and her dingy apartment kitchen with its scratched linoleum and grease-stained walls made it hard to believe the two specimens belonged to the same species of rooms. Cherrywood cabinets mounted above pearly marble counters finished with elegant chair rail. A different marble tiled the floor, this one the warm brown of commercially-brewed espresso, veins of pink quartz matching the pink highlights of the counters. Potent steel appliances kept sentry over the beauty.

How much had it cost her parents to create this kitchen? $30,000? Enough to keep Tristan alive for two years in the city, provided she ate plenty of pasta. Their kitchen was worth roughly one-fortieth of a human lifetime. Where had that wealth come from? People paying for a place to stay in her dad's hotel? The commission her mother earned selling others homes containing kitchens of their own? Bought with money earned through thousands of hours spent pouring foundations and driving trucks and bagging groceries. All that money, all that labor, all those life-hours, funneled into the creation of a kitchen that probably wasn't measurably better at its core functions—storing and preparing food—than her own filthy, worthless, rented rathole.

She set her empty glass in a dishwasher that would have paid two months of rent and drove to the hospital, where she texted her dad for the room number. He sat in a chair beside the bed, eyes baggy behind his glasses. Alden was asleep, a clear tube running from a stand to his arm.

"How's he doing?" she said.

Her dad shook his head. "No worse. Fever's pretty high."

"How high is pretty high?"

"If it were a quiz score, he's earned extra credit."

She frowned at Alden. He was pale and his brow was wrinkled tight, as if he were in pain. She touched his arm, then sat beside her dad, whose head drooped toward his shoulder within minutes. His gentle snores whooshed uncannily like Darth Vader's breathing.

Very quickly, and against all sense of propriety, she was bored. She should have brought a book. Her iPod. She felt terrible, being bored while her brother fought his fever—potentially, fighting for his life, a thought she quashed as quickly as she had it—but couldn't help wondering what good it really did Alden for them to sit several feet away from him while he slept. This was for their own benefit, wasn't it. The confidence that comes with the illusion of control.

She listened to the heating ducts for thirty minutes before Alden stirred. He woke angry, blue eyes bright, the skin around them folding into rills of pain. She laughed.

"What's so funny?" he croaked.

"The way you squint. You look like Lil' Clint Eastwood."

"Maybe Clint Eastwood feels like crap every minute of his life."

"Sorry." She composed herself. "Do you not feel good?"

He sat up, scowling at the tube in his elbow, and reached for the glass of water on the table beside the bed. "Aren't you supposed to be in school?"

"That's the great thing about college. You've already paid for it. They don't care if you actually show up."

"Sounds way better than my stupid school."

"Middle school's the worst," she said. "High school will be better. You'll see."

He drank the glass to the bottom, eyeing her skeptically. "Why's it so much better?"

"The girls are cuter. Or the boys, if that's your thing."

"It's not!"

She smiled at his culturally-endowed homophobia. "High school's better because of the freedom. You get to choose more of your classes. You've got a car. Some of your friends are really starting to think for themselves. And then you get to college, and it's like that a hundred times over."

"What about after college?"

She laughed. "Then you work for someone else until you die."

He smiled, pain relaxing from his face. "Maybe you should just stay in college forever."

"Don't think I haven't thought about it. They call that becoming a professor."

Alden laughed, then turned away and coughed violently, skinny ribs wracking. Tristan snagged his glass and went to the sink for water. Once his coughing settled, he drank heavily, eyes watering.

"Mom and Dad seem pretty worried," he said.

"That's because their darling baby boy is in the hospital," Tristan said. "A very fine hospital. Which I'm sure you'll leave very soon."

"Why are you so sure?"

"Because thirteen-year-olds are universally infected with the Annoying Virus. This virus is so powerful that it overwhelms any other disease that tries to enter the thirteen-year-old's body. That way, he can be back on his feet Annoying others in no time at all."

Alden laughed again, then coughed again. "I'm glad you're not a doctor."

"I'd be a great doctor," she said.

"Well, I wouldn't go to you."

After a while, he slept. Her dad woke and her mom came to replace him. She looked just as tired, just as haggard. Skilled application of makeup had hidden the bags, but it did nothing for the glazed eyes, that look of someone half-lost in the foggy wilderness of their own sleepless, anxious head.

"You're here!" Her mom smiled, lifting the fog from her eyes. "Any news?"

"Nope. It's been perfectly boring."

"Good. I've had enough news to last me for the next couple years."

There was no news over the next two days, either. The doctors surmised it was a staph-induced respiratory infection and started Alden on targeted antibiotics. He got no better nor no worse. Tristan took over Alden-watching duties at the hospital, lugging along next week's reading and her mom's sci-fi books. Coughs rang down the halls. Nurses jogged from room to room, feet slapping the linoleum. Tristan washed her hands six times a day, both to keep herself infection-free for her upcoming finals and because the hospital made her hands feel strangely greasy.

She had the house to herself Saturday afternoon. Her parents hadn't had time to clean it in two weeks and she killed the daylight dusting and vacuuming and scrubbing until the kitchen marble shined under the track lighting. She ate leftover sesame chicken from the fridge and turned on the TV. Her dad was supposed to be back in an hour, at which point she'd return to the hospital.

Someone knocked just after eight. She muted the TV and jogged to the door; her dad had probably forgotten his keys again. She opened the door. Pete grinned on the porch, a brown paper bag in hand.

"Hey, Triss. Thought you could blow off some steam." He stepped inside before she could say no, craning back his neck at the vaulted ceiling, as if seeing it for the first time. "Been a while, hasn't it?"

Tristan nodded, abruptly sad. There had been a time when Pete ate dinner at their house three times a week. A time when he'd been makeshift family, clearing the dishes from the table, her mom laughing at his jokes. By her junior year in high school Tristan had assumed they'd marry, live their lives together. Her parents openly joked about it. Seemed happy at the prospect. As Pete wandered to the kitchen, lost, brown paper bag dangling from his hand, she missed that time keenly, that certainty of her future, that she'd found who she wanted and he'd always be there with her.

"I brought something." Pete tugged the paper bag away and clanked a bottle of Jose Cuervo Gold onto the marble island in the middle of the kitchen. He grinned with half his mouth, eyes hooded. She'd seen that same grin every time he pulled her jeans down her hips and past her knees.

"Can't," she said. "Headed back to the hospital in a minute."

"Do you remember when we first had this?" Without hesitation, he opened the upper cabinet where her parents kept their port and sherry and Glenlivet and took down two shot glasses. He clapped them on the island, unscrewed the tequila, and poured them to the brim. "I gave Mike P. twenty bucks to give his older brother to buy us a fifth. I drove us up to the lake and you hit it so hard that within an hour you were bellowing into the night. Just belly-roaring over the water until it bounced from the mountains. Remember that?"

He handed her a shot. Tequila dribbled over the lip of the glass, cold on her fingers.

"Amazingly enough, I do," she said. "Though not much about what came after the yelling. A lot of puking, I think."

"You were so funny." He clicked his glass to hers and drank. Blaming the nostalgia, she tipped hers back, too. It burned her throat and stung her eyes. His hand lifted to his chest, as if he were about to wipe the tequila-induced tears from her eyes, then hung there in empty space. "What happened?"

She didn't have to ask what he meant. "It was nothing you did."

"'It's not me, it's you.' Then what happened to you?"

"We grew into different people."

"Come on with the cliched BS." He poured another pair of shots. "Maybe this'll get you talking."

"I really can't," she said. The nostalgia had begun to slip away. The happy years had been years ago. They were just things to return to in quiet moments with herself, luxuries she couldn't afford to dwell on when she had so many real problems at hand. "My dad's going to be back any minute and I'll have to drive over to see Alden. I'm supposed to stay with him tonight."

"Just one more. You'll be fine. Your dad gets here and I'll leave."

She sighed and picked up the shot. "You shouldn't try to keep up with me anyway. That's a good way to go blind."

He laughed, glancing at the microwave, as if seeking support from the green numbers on its clock. "You're not that different."

They drank. It didn't sting as much this time. Her mouth salivated. "Would you consider yourself a feminist?"

He looked back at the microwave. "Me? Hell no."

"That's why we're not together anymore."

"Because I'm not some apron-wearing puss? A guy who helps lace up his wife's combat boots while she barks about how life is unfair?"

She knew her test itself had been unfair, a total piece of Pete-bait, but the fact he could be so easily baited was proof enough. "Because that's what you think feminism is."

His brow beetled. "So you go off to college. San Francisco. Four years later, you're too good for me."

"I'm not too good, just too different." She set her shot glass on the island as silently as possible. "And it would have happened wherever I went. I just didn't know it yet."

"So that's it."

"That's it."

He lowered his head. A pang spiked her chest. She knew he'd get over her in time. Whether next week, next month, or next year, he'd find someone else. Knowing him, his looks, his chest-deep confidence, it would be sooner than later—impossibly, the thought filled her with a jealousy that burned as hotly as the tequila—and his yearning for her would recede like the snows on the mountains surrounding the town. One morning, he'd sit in his kitchen drinking his coffee, just resting there before he got ready for work, and his new girlfriend would walk from the bedroom and smile, and he would smile back and realize he hadn't missed Tristan in months.

Pete poured a third round. "One last shot, then. To us."

Tristan gazed at the yellowish liquid under the white glow of the track lights. She already felt warm, fuzzy, her breathing relaxed. "You said the last one was the last one."

"That was when I thought we still had a chance." He handed her the small cool glass. "To the end."

The pang returned. She shook her head. "Then it's time to go."

They clicked, drank. He leaned his palm on the island and gazed across the kitchen, nodding to himself. "I forgave you, you know. I was going to ask you to marry me."

"Pete."

"I mean, not here and now. Christmas break. But I could tell something was wrong. When I came here and went to hug you, you tensed up like I was warty Aunt Martha who smells too much like her cats."

"It wouldn't have been the right time."

"I figured it was the distance stepping between us. I figured after you moved back, we could work it out." He swung his eyes to meet hers. "Can we do that? After you graduate—can we try that?"

Tristan looked away, brushing her hair past her ear. "It's too late."

"It's never too late. Not until you're dead. You could try, you just don't want to." He poured two more shots and held hers in front of her nose.

"I can't."

"You can't? Like if you tried to swallow, nothing would happen?"

"I'm already half drunk. I've got to drive."

He waggled the shot, splashing tequila on the floor. "So drive drunk."

"Pete." She pushed his wrist. "It's time for you to go. If you can't drive, you can stay here and watch TV. Sleep in my bed if you need to. But my brother is sick and I have to go see him."

He laughed hollowly, the sound bouncing off the hard marble. He strode around the island and shoved the shot glass at her mouth. It clinked against her teeth. She tasted tequila, gasoline and desert flowers.

"Stop it!"

"Take the shot and I will."

He pushed harder, jamming the glass into her lips. She jerked her head. Tequila splashed the floor. She shoved him in the chest, but it didn't move him; she fell back a step instead. He considered the liquid gleaming on the brown marble floor.

"That's alcohol abuse. Guess I'll have to do both to make up for it." Pete drank his shot, then refilled hers and drank it too. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and planted his palms on the island, which she'd circled around to put between them. He smiled his I'm-taking-off-your-pants smile. "Vegas. Let's go. Right now."

"Ha ha," Tristan said.

"We'll tie the knot. Make it work. You just have to want it."

She glanced toward the front door. Where was her dad? "We're not going to Vegas, Pete."

"No? You'd rather consummate things right here?"

"You're going to bed. I'll call you a cab."

She dug out her phone. He slapped it from her hands, sending it skittering over the marble, then grabbed her wrists and ground them together.

"Let go of me!" she said.

"What's the matter?" He leaned in, tightening his grip on her arms. "What's so different? We've fucked a thousand times. What can once more hurt?"

She twisted her arms, fighting to free them. Her skin burned in his grasp. Fury poured over her, choking her. She hated the power he had—the power he thought he had. To shame and to ruin with sex and rape. He squeezed her wrists harder, mashing her bones together with his right hand, grabbing her collar with his left. She tore her right hand free and slammed her fist into his nose.

He made a gagging nose and covered his bleeding nose. "What the fuck?"

His face went as hard as the marble. He clenched his fists and lunged. She grabbed the tequila bottle and jabbed it straight at his face. He came in low, meaning to tackle her, driving his head straight into the end of the bottle's neck. Blood squirted from his forehead. He crashed to the marble floor, screaming, kicking his legs, blood washing between the fingers clamped to his head. Tequila glugged from the bottle in her hand, pattering to the ground. She sprinted for the front door. Her head buzzed with panic and liquor. The night was as cold as death. She slammed the front door and pounded down the driveway to her car, flinging the bottle into the yard. By the time she screeched down the road, the front door still hadn't opened.

She blew through a stop sign by accident, rolled through the next, and forced herself to slow down. She spent more time watching the speedometer and her rear view mirror for signs of Pete than she did the road. At a stoplight, she adjusted the mirror. Her hand was smeared in red. Disgusting. Unclean. In a daze, she wiped it on the seat of her car.

She parked at the hospital and walked through the front doors, breathing shallowly so no one would smell the booze on her breath. Visiting hours were over and her mom and dad waited in the lobby.

Her mom cocked her head. "Something wrong?"

"Pete," she said. "He came to the house."

She explained briefly, clumsily. Her dad jerked to his feet, pale as a page. "Is he still there?"

Tristan shook her head. "I don't know. I might have hurt him."

"I'm calling 911." He dialed, swaying as the dispatcher picked up. "I'd like to report an attack."

Her mom grabbed her shoulders. "Are you okay?"

"I let him in." Tristan shuddered. "I let him stay. It could have been so much worse. I just stood there thinking he'd leave soon, and he kept getting weirder, and if I hadn't—"

Her mom hugged her tight. "You couldn't have known. It's Pete. You know him."

"He wanted to..."

Her mom pulled back and shook her head. "I had a Pete, too."

"You did?" Tristan rubbed her eyes. "When?"

"College. Of course. Before your dad and I were dating. Jerry something." She glanced at her husband, who'd hung up the phone. "Do you remember his name?"

Tristan's dad pressed his fist to his mouth. He was ashen, sweating. "Jerry Molsen."

"Jerry Molsen! Honestly, it was just like this. We'd broken up the week before. He came by my dorm and said he wanted to talk, so I let him in. I thought he might take it better if I let him just spill his guts. Maybe cry a little. He'd never done anything remotely violent. He looked like a poet, he had this long hair. Did you ever get that vibe from him, Dean?"

Tristan's dad swallowed, blinking. He shook his head and swallowed again.

Her mom let out a stressed huff of air. "I let Jerry inside. And he talks a lot and he cries a little, and I hug him, and that's when I feel it. He's got a knife. It's poking my stomach just deep enough to scratch me and he grabs me by the hair and he tells me to take off my clothes."

"Jesus!" Tristan glanced across the lobby. "What did you do?"

"I told him I had to pee. And he let me go to the bathroom, the gullible sack of shit." Her mom laughed through her nose. "Then I locked the door, opened the window, and screamed and screamed and screamed."

"What did he do then?"

"What do you think he did?" Her mom laughed, toying with the buttons on her collar. "That cowardly little fucker ran away and slammed the door behind him."

Tristan laughed. Her dad's mouth twitched in a smile-like grimace. He planted his hands on his knees and bent over, sumo-like, and vomited blood across the hospital floor.

Her mom jolted back. "Oh my God! Doctor!"

Her dad sank to one knee, swaying. Tristan froze. Three days later, he was dead.

7

"Quarantined?" Shawn spat. "What the hell you talking about?"

"In a few hours, the labs will come back," Ness said. "If they find anything, it won't be anything they like. They don't have the facilities to deal with that unknown, unlikable thing here. They'll send us to Boise. Or the CDC in Atlanta. From there—"

"They can't just haul us across the country. We're citizens. We got rights."

"If they believe you're a credible threat to the public health, they can do whatever the hell they want. A carrier of an unknown and fatal disease might even fall under the purview of the Patriot Act."

"Well, you can quit your fucking grinning right now," Shawn said. "We're not sticking around to let them crate us off to Atlanta."

Ness' glee drained away as if he'd been tapped. "But we don't have a choice."

"What do you mean, we don't have a choice?" Shawn walked to the window and threw back the curtains. "If some general walks in here with a gun and says, 'Sorry, boys, for the good of the country I'm gonna have to shoot you dead,' do you have no choice but to stand there and get shot?"

"Yeah, but if you run, he'll just shoot you."

"No wonder you still live with Mom."

"So do you!"

"Just 'cause the bank screwed me over a barrel." Shawn unlatched the window and shoved. It swung out from the sill, squeaking to a stop after opening to a six-inch gap. "Now start tying sheets together."

Ness laughed in disbelief. "This isn't The Fugitive. You're going to get us in trouble."

"More trouble than sticking around a plague-ward until they fly me to a lab and cut my ass into slides?"

"They'll just make me tell them where you went."

"Oh, I don't think so." Shawn shoved the stuck window. Its hinges creaked. "Because you're coming with me."

Ness backed away from the window. "You can't make me."

"I'm supposed to go home and tell Mom I left you here to be dissected? I'd rather take my chances with the men with the white coats and scalpels." He stripped the sheets from the bed and knotted them together with the casual expertise of a former Eagle Scout. He glanced up, saw Ness was serious, and set his mouth, mustache quirked. "You either climb out this window on your own two feet, or I toss you out and use you as a landing pad."

"Why would I want to go with you?" Ness glanced at the locked door. Should he go bang and shout? "If it is a disease, the best place for us is wherever they want to take us. That's where they'll make the cure."

"You seen a lot of AIDS cures lately? You think they got a pill for Ebola? Ness, I am not messing with you. If there's a plague and you're sick, there's not a damn thing they can do for you. And if you're not sick, you really think a damn hospital is the place to be? Think!"

Ness gazed at the dark parking lot beyond the window. "Since when you are the expert?"

"You think I trust the Soviets to keep their smallpox sample locked away in a bunker? Now take off your pants."

"What?"

"We're three stories up, son." Shawn shook the knotted sheets in his face. "We're gonna need a longer rope."

Ness went to the bathroom, took off his shoes, stripped off his jeans, and put his shoes back on. Back in the main room, Shawn's triceps bulged as he tugged his jeans tight to the makeshift rope. He glanced at Ness' pale white legs and whiter briefs and shook his head.

"It's a good thing your right hand doesn't have eyes." He tied Ness' jeans to the bottom of his rope, rolled the bed to the window, and knotted the sheet to the frame. With the line secured, he wrapped it around his elbow and clambered onto the bed. His head fit through the window's narrow gap, but his hips and butt stuck. He lowered himself back inside, squinted at the frame, grabbed hold of the window's edge, and shoved. Metal creaked. "Come up here and give me a hand."

"You want to break a hospital window?"

"It's either that or some egghead examining little bits of our corpses through a microscope. Get your bony ass up here."

Ness climbed up onto the bed and took hold of the window's lower edge near the outer corner.

"On three," Shawn said. He counted down. On three, Ness shoved all his weight against the edge. Shawn pushed in a series of hard jerks. Screws squealed against the wood. Shawn grunted. The hinges popped; the window flew open another foot. Ness spilled over the sill.

Shawn fell straight down on him, pinning him to the sill and preventing him from tumbling to the asphalt below.

"Hang on there, Jet Li," Shawn said. "That's what the rope is for."

He flung the line out the window. Jeans and sheets unfurled, flapping in the frigid air. Ness wished he had his coat. Shawn gestured to the makeshift rope. Ness grabbed hold and slithered one leg into space.

"If you fall, try not to scream," Shawn said. "I don't want them coming after me before I've got a head start."

"Shut up." Ness' heart thundered in his chest. He inched his butt onto the sill, grabbed the rope with both hands, and lowered himself out the window, inching around to face the outside wall. The sheet strained; his grip slid down the smooth fiber. He moaned and clamped down, arresting his descent. His feet banged against the wall. He was going to fall. It would be much easier to fall.

Shawn leered down at him. Ness clamped his jaw tight and let himself slide past a darkened window to the knot where the first sheet met the second. He laced his legs around the rope and climbed past the knot hand over hand. He slid again, reaching the jeans, and climbed down, fingernails biting into the denim, until his feet touched the ground.

Shawn gave him a thumbs up and bailed out the window, sliding straight down. He thumped into the asphalt, knees bowing, running three steps as he burned off momentum. He turned back for his knotted jeans and fished out his wallet and keys.

He started across the lot at a swift walk. Ness glanced back over his shoulders as if his head were on a swivel. At any moment, he expected men in black with sleek matte rifles to burst from the hospital and force his face into the pavement with their boots. He smacked into Shawn's back. Shawn swore, unlocked his primer-patched pickup, leapt inside, and popped the passenger door.

The truck rumbled to life. Shawn whooped and backed up. "Here's the plan. We head to the trailer, grab whatever we can carry, then hike into the mountains. No phones. We'll come tell Mom what happened as soon as she gets back."

"Why don't we stay at the trailer?"

"They got satellite photos of the bacteria in your colon, dumbass. You think they don't got your address?"

Their headlights splashed across the hospital walls. Shawn turned out of the lot without stopping. The truck trundled past the deserted downtown and Shawn stopped at the stubborn light on Washington. Ness craned his head, scanning for cops. The truck lurched forward. Shawn curved north onto Main and transitioned to the dark highway. At the trailer, he skidded to a stop, spitting gravel, and rushed inside.

Ness grabbed a pair of pants and stepped into the legs, Shawn doing the same. While Ness stuffed extra socks and underwear into a backpack, Shawn grabbed his toothbrush and shaving kit and added it to an already-full bag waiting in the corner.

"How did you know to pack?" Ness said.

"I didn't." Shawn stuffed a pistol into his waistband, slung the bag over his shoulder, and crooked a shotgun under his arm. "When it comes time to go off-grid, you don't always got time to pack your boxers."

"You're retarded." Ness grabbed his flossers and a razor and his hair gel and his cell charger. Shawn grabbed the charger from his hand and chucked it across the room.

"No phones."

"How paranoid are you?"

"Men did fine without cell phones for 50,000 years. I think we'll survive two weeks."

"Well, I guess I'm ready."

Shawn locked the door behind them and grabbed a heavy backpack from under the tarp in his truck. He shouldered it with a grunt. Far down the hill toward town, a siren shrieked across the night.

"Take this." Shawn passed him the shotgun.

Ness held it awkwardly in front of him. "Why do I need this?"

"Because this shit's heavy. And because you need something to fire back with if the cops catch up."

Ness' breath curled from his mouth. "You're enjoying this, aren't you?"

Shawn snorted. "I'm hiking up a freezing mountain crushed under sixty pounds of gear and the serious fear I've been infected with African blood-plague. It's a real wet dream."

"But this is exactly one of your end-of-days fantasies come to life. I bet you'd prefer it if it turns out there is a plague. I bet you have a cabin hidden away up here!"

"No I don't."

"Really? I would have bet money."

"Just a tent."

The smell of pines drifted from the slopes. The smell of coming snow, too. Clouds hid the stars. Ness hoped he was wrong. It normally didn't snow past February except in the upper mountains, but Canada could belch a blizzard on them at any time. Shawn broke into a jog, pots jangling in his pack. He smoked cigarettes (along with weed; he tried to hide it from their mom, but came inside smelling of it nearly every night he had off work), and he was carrying half of Ness' body weight, but Ness had to struggle to keep up. He had grown used to his body—his paleness, his poky ribs, the sad little pouch on his belly—but felt his cheeks flushing. He would not complain.

Shawn curved north up the slope. Ten minutes later, lungs burning, legs weak, a stitch tugging his stomach, Ness was ready to cry out. As if reading his mind, Shawn stopped on a level patch of ground and knelt in the pine needles. A chain tinkled. He drank from a canteen and passed it to Ness, who choked on the sweet taste.

"Is this Coke?"

"Burning a lot of sugar right now." Shawn dug a pair of binoculars from his pack and peered down at the trailer. "They must be pretty serious."

He passed Ness the binoculars. His magnified view swung dizzily past the trees. Three cop cars blocked the trailer's driveway. Men in uniform tramped through the weeds, flashlights glinting.

"How you feeling?" Shawn said.

"It's only been a few hours. I wouldn't be sick yet."

"I mean, you ready to run?"

His breathing had barely settled; still, he refused to complain to Shawn. "I'm fine."

Shawn zipped away the binoculars and jogged up the slope. Needles slid under Ness' feet. He was panting again in seconds. Shawn shot him a disgusted look and slowed to a walk. Ness' face burned. How was he supposed to know he'd wind up racing up a mountain on the run from the authorities? He didn't need to be fit. He viewed the fitness craze as a madness, a sickness of the mind. Starting in the '80s, the men in movies brimmed with muscle. Everyday guys had been racing to catch up ever since. He had gone to high school with boys who took steroids. Everyone was supposed to have a gym membership, lift weights for fun. All because a few actors had to look better and better to land parts over the other actors.

Ness had refused to take part in this cultural sickness. Instead, he read and learned, versed himself in the internet, where the body you were born with had no bearing on how strangers treated you. It meant he felt too self-conscious to go swimming, and that he'd never date a model—not that it stopped him from believing he would, someday, once he had his own business—but day to day, his brittle little body made little difference in the quality of his life.

Wheezing up the mountain was the first time he'd regretted this decision. It would not be the last.

He didn't have a phone or wear a watch, so he didn't know what time it was when Shawn finally stopped inside a stand of pines, swept the leaves from a small mound, and pulled away the tarp beneath with a plastic rumple, revealing three large bags. Ness clicked on a flashlight.

"Turn that shit off," Shawn said without turning.

"I was just trying to help."

"You need to learn to operate in the dark. Cavemen did fine with it. We haven't had flashlights much longer than we've had cell phones."

"Let me just tune up my echolocation," Ness said.

Shawn dumped metal rods to the ground with a hollow rattle. "You think this is a joke?"

"I can't believe you have all this here. What did you think was going to happen? Asteroids? Zombies? Asteroids filled with zombies?"

"We'll see who's laughing a week from now."

Ness shucked the tent from its sack. "You think we'll be up here that long?"

"Should be long enough to know whether there's an outbreak." Shawn found his hammer, the bag of stakes. "If there is, well, just be glad it's March instead of November."

Ness was virtually useless at helping set up the tent. After a minute of struggling with the springy rods, Shawn dispatched him to clear a patch of ground. Ness scuffed his shoe through the needles, sweeping them away, toeing up any stones embedded in the dirt. After the tent was up, he expected Scoutmaster Shawn to start a fire, but his brother peeled the lid from a can of beef stew and passed it to him cold, staring him down, daring him to complain.

When they finished, Shawn buried the empty cans and unrolled two sleeping bags across the floor of the tent.

"If you get too cold," he said, diving into one of the fleece-lined bags, "that's too goddamn bad."

Way, way, way back at the start of the day, Ness had expected to sleep under the stars again. Well, he'd gotten that much right. It was everything else he couldn't believe.

* * *

He woke several times to the rustling of the night. Bears? Wolves? Wolf packs had been back in Yellowstone for years; they could easily have pervaded Idaho by now. Could be cougars, too. Cougars had never left. Twenty feet from the tent, slow steps swished the field of needles. Ness stared into the pitch black. The tent walls felt terribly thin. He couldn't see what was outside, but they could smell him, his unnatural human stink of soap and deodorant and gel.

Shawn shoved him awake some time after dawn. Ness' head throbbed. His feet and legs ached.

"Wakey wakey," Shawn said. "You got a latrine to dig."

"Why do I need to dig a latrine?"

"Because I got shits to take."

"Why do I need to do it? You're the one who knows what he's doing."

Shawn yanked open the tent zipper with a metal whine. "You're not building a Mars lander. You're digging a hole for last night's stew."

Ness rubbed the crust from his eyes. "I haven't even woken up yet."

"Besides, I got to preserve my strength. I'm going to see Mom tonight."

"Is that why you want the place all civilized? You really think Mom will be impressed by a literal shit-hole?"

Shawn shook his head. "I'm just going to let her know we're all right. And that she needs to go out and buy all the food, ammo, and toilet paper she can—then get home and stay home until we know it's safe to step out of the bunker."

Ness climbed from his sleeping bag into the morning cold. He gritted his teeth and reached for his coat. "Do you really think there's a plague?"

"Something killed the Rogerses, didn't it? I don't mind crapping in the woods for a week if there's a chance this country's about to turn into The Stand."

Figuring there was no chance whatsoever of coffee, Ness found the canteen and took a long swig of flat, mountain-chilled Coke. He laced his shoes and crawled through the flap into the overcast morning. He was still cold from sleep and his muscles tightened and quivered. Away from camp, his urine steamed on fallen leaves.

At the tent, Shawn sat on a tarp, sorting supplies from one of his cached bags. "Where's breakfast?"

"I don't know where anything is."

Shawn set down a Vietnam-era combat knife and looked Ness in the eye. "What's your problem?"

"What?"

"Where do you think the food is?"

"Knowing you, it's tied to the top of a pine tree surrounded by land mines and tiger traps."

"It's in the bags," Shawn pointed. "The same bags everything else are in. You been living with Mom too long, Ness. I don't have the time nor the energy to tell you every little thing that needs doing."

"I was just asking where the food was." Ness' face tingled with heat. He crouched over the bags and pawed through them. "Now I know. And I don't have to waste your precious time asking."

Shawn went back to laying out his tools, rustling the tarp. Ness found the bag of canned food, searched until he saw a split pea soup, and handed it to Shawn. Ness hid his grin, but Shawn didn't even look at the can as he located the opener from the pile on the tarp and cranked open his soup. Ness found himself a lemon chicken with wild rice.

"Weird how much better this is when it's warm," he said.

Shawn didn't look up. "No fire."

"I didn't say I wanted a fire."

"If you're cold, go dig us our bathroom."

Ness rolled his eyes, finished eating, and carried the shovel to a level spot a hundred feet from the tent where line of sight was blocked by the thicket of pines. The soil was hard, nearly frozen. He had to lean his foot against the shovel's head to pry away each load of dirt. He didn't know how deep or how wide to dig it, but if he went back to ask Shawn, his brother would just find one more way to call him a useless baby. He dug a shallow line five feet long and stopped to rest. His weakness forced him to stop three times more before he reached his goal, sinking the hole nearly two feet into the ground.

At the tent, Shawn had disassembled his shotgun for cleaning. Ness shook his stinging hands. "All done."

"Good for you."

"Don't you want to come see?"

Shawn sighed and set down his grime-streaked rag. He followed Ness to the latrine and set his hands on his hips. "It's about twice as deep as we need. And it's uphill from camp. What happens when it rains?"

"I guess we die."

"Do you have a 'DUMB' switch you flick in your brain just to mess with me? I thought you were supposed to be all logical." Shawn squinted at the dull light filtering through the pines. "You know where we are?"

"On our own," Ness said bitterly. "Where stupid gets you killed and black helicopters could descend from the sky at any time."

"Where we are in relation to town. To the trailer. If I blindfolded you and dragged you a half mile off, would you know how to get back here?"

"Well, the mountains up north are pretty obvious. And the trailer's..." He spun in a slow circle until he pointed at what he thought was the southwest. "That way."

Shawn adjusted his arm by several degrees. "More like that way. Your next job is to learn where you are. If I send you off for firewood, I don't want to have to come hunting for you three hours later."

"Why would we need firewood when we aren't allowed any fires?"

"Get walking."

"Why should I? We're not going to be out here for long. You don't own the mountain."

"These are things you need to know!" Shawn whirled on him, fists tight. Ness cringed. Shawn clenched his jaw and shook his head at the trees. "What do you think happens if something happens to me?"

"Fine," Ness said. "Want me to make you a map, too?"

He strode into the woods before Shawn could say more. Shawn wasn't in charge. Ness could walk off at any time. Go home, where he wouldn't shiver in the morning eating cans of cold stew. He didn't feel at all sick yet. Tim and his mom probably had been poisoned. This whole jaunt to the mountains was all about Shawn's desire to be a big man. To justify his self-persecutorial delusions. To fulfill his stupid survivalist obsession with a world where he'd finally be worth a damn.

Angry as he was, Ness couldn't convince himself it was poison. The paramedics and the hospital staff had acted too weird. That level of radiation would have damaged the Rogers' skin, their hair. If it were a disease, Ness probably should know his way around their mountain hideaway. But why did Shawn have to be such a dick about it? He acted like Ness was still some thirteen-year-old kid. In response, Ness did act like a child, which made him angry and ashamed, which made him all the more stubborn. That right there was why Shawn was unfit to lead. He had no touch for it.

Once he was out of sight, Ness cut southwest, maintaining elevation with the camp until he reached a clearing where Moscow lay spread out like a map: the highway, the grain elevator, the tall dorms and the tree-lined campus. The trailer lane was easy to spot, isolated on the northeast fringe of town, bracketed by weedy fields. He saw no sign of police.

He returned to camp, where Shawn ignored him, then walked in ever-expanding circles around it, finding landmarks—a fallen tree, a rusted-out pickup, a four-foot-deep gouge. By dinnertime, he could wander out of sight in any direction and find his way back with no trouble. As the sun departed and the cold returned, they ate a dinner of trail mix, popcorn, and beef jerky. With nothing better to do, Ness took one of Shawn's pocket knives and started whittling a stick of pine into a sharp point.

After a while, he napped. Shawn shook him into angry wakefulness some time after midnight.

"Time for this bear to head back down the mountain," Shawn said. Ness rolled his eyes. Shawn handed him the shotgun and shook a red box of shells. "I want you to stay awake and keep this close until I get back."

"You expect me to have a shootout with the cops?"

"So you don't have to have a claw-out with a mountain lion." Shawn had his pistol on his hip. He shouldered a light pack. "I'll be back in a couple hours."

He crunched away through the fallen needles. Ness went inside the tent and zipped it up until it was nearly closed, leaving a two-inch gap to watch through. The shotgun rested over his lap, heavy and cold. As far as he could tell, there was no safety on it.

Owls hooted. Small creatures rustled the leaves. The moon fought with the clouds. It smelled like cold again, like leaves that had ceased rotting in want of warmer days. Ness shifted position to keep his legs from going numb. A long time later, steps shuffled through the needles. He brought the shotgun to his chest. A silhouette emerged from the trees, pistol glinting in its hand.

Shawn whistled. Ness unzipped the tent. "Was Mom there?"

"And scared three-quarters to death." Shawn grinned ruefully. "The cops had been by. Doctor from Boise, too. You and me, we're a couple of plague dogs."

Ness' blood went as cold as the elevated air. "What do you mean?"

"People are sick all over—Moscow, Troy, Genessee."

"So the feds won't care about us anymore, right? Can we go home?"

Shawn laughed. "Ness, you hearing me? There's an outbreak. People are dying. We're gonna be up here for a long, long time."

8

The hospital insisted on an autopsy. Tristan's mom scheduled the funeral for four days later. The cops questioned Tristan about Pete twice, first to take her statement, then to grill her after the MRI turned up brain damage. They'd found him half-conscious on the Carters' lawn asking where Tristan had gone. His mom wanted to press charges. Tristan answered the detective's questions without hesitation, unable to feel fear, anger, anything but a world's worth of grief.

Two days after the death of their father, Alden's fever broke. The day after that, their mom began to cough.

She announced the funeral had been postponed, then held a private burial of the empty casket. After, she led Alden to the car, closed his door, and beckoned Tristan to the sidewalk.

"I'm going to the hotel," she said.

"Do you want me to drop you off?" Tristan said. "When should I come get you?"

Her mom shook her head. "I'm sick, Tristan."

"Then you should be at home. Not some lonely hotel room."

She laughed dully, then coughed, turning her chin away. "That's the point, daughter-mine. I don't want you and Alden getting sick."

"Is that why you brought your bag? Just what do you think is going to happen?"

"I think you are going to drive me to the hotel, go straight home, and take care of your little brother until I get better."

Tristan blinked. The afternoon was a non-temperature, the sunlight touching her skin without warmth. "What if you get worse? Who's going to take care of you?"

"I'll be fine." She exhaled shakily. "And if I'm not, I won't be the only one. In that contingency, the plan is to shut down the hotel and convert it into a temporary care facility. I'll have professionals to look after me with medicine even stronger than a daughter's love."

"And I'm supposed to stay home and pretend like nothing's wrong."

"I'll call you three times a day. Now drive me to the hotel before I strangle you and have to waste my afternoon hunting down a nanny."

Tristan was too tired to argue. The funeral had sapped her, withered her. She drove automatically, pulling up in the loading zone in front of the hotel her mom now held sole ownership of. Behind it, green mountains gazed at the bluest sky.

Her mom twisted in her seat to face the back seats. "Alden, I'm going to stay here for a few days. Tristan's in charge. I don't want to hear a single complaint against her. Which I would, because I've bugged the whole house."

Alden's face was drawn, tear-tracked from the funeral. "What's going on? Why are you leaving?"

"I just need a few days in isolation, that's all."

"Are you sick?"

She tipped back her face. Tristan could see the lies forming inside her head. "Yes. But I'll be better soon. I'd like to give you a hug, but I can't, so instead I'm just going to tell you I love you very, very much. I'll see you in a few days."

She popped her door and stepped into the sunlight, smoothing her black dress over her thighs. Tristan pulled the trunk release. Her mom heaved out her suitcase and walked to the sidewalk, heels clopping, then smiled and waved. Tristan waved back. Alden sat stock-still. Only then did their mom's smile waver. She waved again, turned, and disappeared inside.

The car idled. How did her mother get so strong? The woman's husband had just died. She might well be sick with the same illness that had killed him. Yet she'd walked away as if Tristan were dropping her at the airport for a weekend trip to L.A. Had she always been like that? Or was it something she'd become? If so, had that strength been the result of a path she consciously sought, or a coincidental outcome of all that life had thrown at her? It had to be the result of effort, didn't it? Or had her mom just been born that lucky?

"What are you doing?" Alden said.

"Waiting for you to get up front," Tristan said. "I'm not your chauffeur."

He switched to the front seat. She drove home. The fridge hummed from the kitchen. She set down her purse and gazed at the floor, searching for the spot where Pete had bled and bled and bled, but there was no trace of red soaked into the grout between the brown and pink marble tiles. Her mom had called a cleaner as soon as the police were through.

That night, she made spaghetti, but Alden didn't eat much, and she didn't try to force him. Her hunger was far-off, too. She watched it the same way she'd watch a loose dog at the far end of the street. It wasn't her problem.

Her mom called at eight sharp.

"How are you feeling?" Tristan said.

"Tired," she said. She sounded it. "But I don't know if I know how to feel anything else right now."

She nodded, then realized her mom couldn't see. "I made spaghetti. If you could burn noodles, I think I would have."

"Give Alden a big hug for me."

Alden sat blankly through another hour of TV, then went to bed. Tristan absorbed another hour of news. The flu had begun to get press. A handful of deaths around the US and Canada. Bird flu, they thought; vaccines were on the way. It was only ten, but Tristan clicked off and went to bed. She had missed a class that day, but couldn't remember which one.

Alden slept late, then spent the morning motionless on the couch, the TV tuned to cartoons he hadn't watched in years. Their mom called. Alden stayed planted on the couch through three that afternoon. Tristan hovered over him. On the TV, a cartoon squid fled from an exploding pineapple, the squid's ten legs whirling.

"Why don't you show me some kung fu?" Tristan said.

Alden turned his hip to indicate the sling on his right arm. "Can't."

"You've got two arms, don't you?"

"I don't feel like it."

"Well, if you do, I'd like to learn."

He looked at her for the first time that day. "Why?"

"Why do you like it so much?"

"It makes me feel good." He leaned forward. "I like the way the warriors think. I think they'd make the world better."

She forced a smile. "Well, this is your chance to boss me around."

He gazed at the TV. She sighed and turned to go. He shifted, couch springs creaking. "Do you know how to punch?"

"Sure." She made her face serious and threw a right hook.

"That's not how you punch."

"Really? I made a fist and everything."

"That's not how we punch." Keeping his slung arm perfectly still, he extended his left fist straight from his chest, elbow pointed down. "If you wish to be my student, you must first forget all you once knew."

"You watch too many movies," Tristan laughed. She mimicked him, but her elbow flared to the side. "How do you do that with your elbow? You look like one of those boxing nun puppets."

He walked around the couch and pushed her elbow into position. "Call me sifu. Then I will teach you the Way."

The next two hours, he taught her to punch, how to position her feet—an awkward stance, the toes tucked in, the knees bent, fists held at her ribs with her elbows poking behind her—and how to throw a half dozen of the basic blocks. Alden giggled more than once, adopting his wise master persona whenever she asked a question about what to do with her elbow or how to roll her wrist. When they finished, she was hungry for the first time in days. She warmed up a frozen lasagna and poured them each a glass of milk. Their mom called again. She felt no better and no worse.

After Tristan hung up, Alden let her watch the news. The flu was the lead story. A CDC spokeswoman told the anchor people should wash their hands often and get their vaccines. Outbreaks had emerged on both coasts, with similar cases reported in Germany, Brazil, and Singapore, but the CDC woman reminded the anchor that new strains of flu evolved every year and the government anticipated this evolution accordingly.

"Is that what Dad had?" Alden said.

Tristan glanced over. His face was blank. "They haven't told us yet."

"He runs a hotel. He probably got it from a Chinese person staying the night."

"Why would you say that?"

"Because that's where the bird flu comes from."

"Oh." Her college-honed instincts to leap on anything racial receded. "Guess I'd better cancel our trip to Beijing."

"You think we need vaccines?"

"Um. I think if we haven't caught it yet, we probably can't. We were right there with Dad. But that's a good question. I'll see what Mom thinks tomorrow."

The phone stayed silent throughout the morning. Tristan waited until the microwave clock hit noon, then called the hotel. Ingrid patched her through to her mom's room. The phone rang fifteen times before Tristan hung up. She waited twenty minutes and tried again.

"I'm going out," she told Alden. "Don't let anyone in."

He gave her a wise look. "The student can't leave without master's permission."

Wavelike, Tristan's anxiety receded for just a moment, then came flooding back. "Mom needs me to bring her a few things. While I'm gone, why don't you prepare our next lesson?"

"Silence! The student does not tell the master what to do. The master finds instruction from the Way."

"And what if the student is part of the Way?"

Alden frowned. "Then she would be too humble to notice."

Tristan smiled and locked the front door behind her. Traffic was easy, even on the highway. The gas station across from the hotel was empty, but cars brimmed the hotel lot. A fleet of RVs occupied the back. Tristan parked and sat in her car for a long minute. On her way to the sliding doors, a woman in scrubs helped a man in glasses from his car. He doubled over, hands planted on his knees, coughing onto the asphalt.

Tristan covered her mouth and headed to the front desk, pleased to see Ingrid was still working. She explained the situation. Ingrid nodded somberly and passed her an extra keycard.

"Did she tell you she's converting the entire fifth and sixth floors into a hospice?" Ingrid said. "Your mom, she's..."

"I know."

The coughing man and his nurse waited for the elevator. Tristan took the stairs to the sixth floor; elevators were a waste of electricity anyway. People complained about their utility bills, they wished for thinner waists, then they spent all day idling in a lobby waiting for a machine to lift them a few feet off the ground.

The sixth floor had the particular hush of hotels everywhere. She padded down the floral carpet. People coughed apologetically behind closed doors. At her mom's room, she knocked, waited, knocked again. Heart racing, she keyed the lock and stepped inside.

The room smelled of meat left on the counter. Her mom lay in bed. Blood flecked the wall behind the headboard. Tissues overflowed the tiny bin her mom had set beside the bed, the Kleenex wadded with phlegm and blood. The curtains were open, but the sheers were closed, shrouding the room in dim, overcast daylight that made everything look gray.

"Mom?" She edged nearer. The TV flickered, muted. She took another step. "Mom?"

"Don't come near me."

Tristan jolted back, adrenaline bursting through her solar plexus. "Sweet Jesus!"

"Stay right there," her mom croaked again. "You shouldn't have come."

"You didn't call. I thought something had happened."

"It has."

"Mom—"

Her mom rolled over, pulling the covers away. Her eyes were hollow, hungry, recessed lights in the pale wall of her face. "Take care of Alden."

Tristan's lips parted. "What are you talking about? In a few days, you'll be back home failing to get him to shower."

Her mom laughed like the shuffling of paper. "Tristan. I'm about to die."

"Mom! You don't know—"

"I've been talking to doctors. Your dad wasn't the first. Do you know how many people have come to stay in these rooms the last few days? Do you know how many have left?"

"You're talking like this is the bubonic plague over here."

"The plague can be cured." The bedsheets rustled. Her mom fought to sit up, neck corded. "I'm going to say this again because I need you to believe me. I'm about to die. Hoping can't change that. In fact, when your hope dies, you begin to see things very clearly. Things are about to get worse, Tristan. Much worse. It's time to stop hoping and time to start doing."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Tristan's eyes stung. "You talk like you've given up."

"There's a safe in the closet in my bedroom. The spare key's taped inside the bathroom fan. The safe has cash. Your father's pistol. Don't be afraid to use them both."

"Mom!"

"Forget your normal life for now. Keep Alden safe. Keep yourself safe. You'll know when it's okay to go back."

Tristan stepped toward the fetid bed. "Mom, get up. You're coming—"

"Get the fuck away!" her mom shouted. A cough bent her spine. Blood sprayed her hands. She raised them, red blood and yellow-green mucus sliming to the sheets. "Do you see? Go home. Protect Alden. I love you, Tristan. I won't see you again."

Tears gushed down Tristan's face. She wanted to rush across the room, to sweep her mom's brittle body in her arms and will her own health into the woman's ruined flesh. Her mom sounded so hopeless. So alone. Words couldn't reach her. Only touch could do that.

But Alden was waiting at home. If she touched her mom, what was in her mom would coat her skin, penetrate the liquids of her eyes and nasal cavity, wriggle into her lungs. Maybe it already had.

"I love you, Mom," she whispered.

Her mom smiled and closed her eyes. She descended back into the comforter, a tide receding from the shore.

Tristan ran down the stairs and drove straight home. She'd forgotten to return the room key. In the driveway, she composed her face. Alden didn't look up from his cartoons. She brought a chair to the bathroom to get up close to the fan, then went to the garage for a screwdriver. Inside the fan was a key. Inside the safe in her parent's room were six bundles of cash, a small black pistol, and two green boxes of bullets.

And then she cried again, muffling her mouth with a pillow that smelled like her mother's hair, her shoulders jouncing, her dark hair spilling onto her face. After, she removed $800 from one of the bricks of bills, locked the safe, pocketed the key, and went to the bathroom to wash her face.

Downstairs, she posted herself between Alden and the TV. "Want to go grocery shopping?"

He gave her a look. "I'd rather go fingernail-puller shopping."

"Come on. We'll get whatever you like. Mom gave me some money."

Alden straightened. "Did you see her?"

"She's still pretty sick. I think she's going to be at the hotel for a while. Go get your shoes."

She took the highway to the Safeway. Inside, the aisles looked perfectly normal. Mothers with young children. Busy for a weekday. Tristan loaded the cart with bacon, boneless chicken breasts, macaroni, spaghetti, and a dozen jars of sauce, alfredo and red. In produce, she filled bags with the things that would last for weeks: bell peppers, broccoli, cucumbers, potatoes. She picked up three bottles of Ibuprofen, four packs of NyQuil, two bottles of cough syrup. She had to fight down the giggles. She felt like a crazy person. A hoarder. Someone who owned a bunker. Then she remembered her mom's fever-bright eyes burning in the shadows of the hotel room, and she no longer felt like laughing at all.

The grocery bill came to $446.27. Part of her wanted to scream and put it all back. Still feeling like another person, she paid with a sheaf of twenties.

Back home, she moved her dad's car to the street and parked in the garage. She made a list of everything in the house. After dinner, she went to the Walgreens and spent nearly three hundred dollars on toothpaste, toothbrushes, mouthwash, floss, hand soap, bar soap, shampoo, deodorant, razors, toilet paper, paper towels, tampons, rubbing alcohol, Q-tips, Band-Aids, and Neosporin. The clerk's look made her blush, but they'd use it eventually.

She went home and locked the doors.

The news reports began to take on a spooked tone. Pharmacies had run out of vaccines; the vaccinated were still coming down with the flu. Two days later, MSNBC.com reported looting in LA. Fires. Shootings. An automated recording called to inform Tristan that Alden's middle school had been canceled. At night, gunshots crackled in the streets beyond their secluded subdivision. On FOX, reporters wearing surgical masks stood in front of bagged bodies being loaded into garbage trucks and demanded that Obama roll out the cure.

"That looks like I Am Legend," Alden said.

Tristan sat transfixed. "I can't believe they're showing this."

"What are we going to do?"

"We're going to stay right here. Wait for a cure. For things to calm down."

"What if they don't?"

She gave him a dazed look. "No disease kills everyone. Even the worst plague of all time, the Black Death, only killed a third of Europe. And that was back in the days when they thought the best way to cure someone was to remove all their blood."

"What about smallpox?" Alden said. "I don't see a whole lot of Indians around."

When had he gotten so old? "Well, the government's not going to just let everyone die. Who would they have left to tax?"

The news grew more manic by the day. People were advised to stay indoors. Nonessential government functions were suspended. Tristan concocted a plan to fly somewhere remote—an island, Hawaii or Tahiti or St. Kitts—but when she went online, she found all the flights had been grounded. Hospitals closed, overfilled; the attorney general announced it was safer to remain home and wait for the fever to break on its own.

Alden continued to teach Tristan kung fu. She got down the basics of punches, chops, blocks, kicks, and footwork, but her technique was poor. She had to think about every little movement. Often, she panicked at his incoming practice punch, slow as it was, and flailed at it, which never failed to make him smirk. She began to practice by herself, watching her motions in the mirror inside her parents' closet doors. She did so more for the good of her own mental health—every second she spent fighting the air was one second she didn't feel like crying or screaming—than out of some delusion she'd suddenly become the female Bruce Lee, capable of protecting herself against whatever the fuck was going on out there.

Other than the news, she simply didn't know. She hadn't been outside the house in nearly two weeks. Not since the trip to the grocery store and the Walgreens. She hadn't spoken to her mother. A couple of her friends had called the week before, but no one had tried to reach her in days. With this realization, her guts sank—her friends were probably sick. Possibly dead. Definitely too consumed by the fresh chaos of their own lives to keep up with anyone else's.

When they ran out of vegetables, she took Alden to go back to the Safeway and discovered they had missed the apocalypse.

Their front lawn had grown long. No children played in the yards of the McMansions down the block. Tristan turned onto the main street and found she had it to herself. She drove slowly, making a wide curve around three burnt-out cars wrecked and abandoned in the intersection. A body lay in the sidewalk, face-down, its arm stretched across the white stripe of the crosswalk as if salvation waited on the far corner. It was too bloated and greasy to tell if it had been a man or a woman.

"That's a dead person," Alden said.

"Don't look."

"That isn't going to make it go away."

She pulled past it. "And looking won't do any good."

A black lab trotted down the sidewalk, glancing guiltily at their car. The streets were nearly vacant, with no pedestrians and few cars parked along the curb, but for the same reason she wouldn't run through the Parthenon, she felt compelled to drive as slowly as if they were in a school zone.

A cop car waited in the Safeway parking lot. Hope rose from a deep part of her stomach. She swung beside it, rolling down her window. A blast of decay hit her in the face. Two cops lay on the asphalt. Black blood curdled beneath them. Fat green flies winked on their hands and faces. Shiny brass shells scattered the lot.

She goosed the car past them. The Safeway's front windows had been smashed. Glass glittered on the black pavement. Behind the store, green mountains judged in silence. The car idled.

"I think everyone's dead," Alden said.

"Quiet." The store's windows were dark. She hadn't brought the gun. So stupid. The world had changed while she lounged in a marble kitchen and a black chenille couch.

"So why don't we just go inside?"

She didn't say: because I have to make sure nothing happens to you. Instead, she watched the gaping windows. From the gloom, light glinted on metal.

"Oh fuck." She reversed, stomped the gas. A boom rattled the parking lot.

"What's happening?" Alden yelled.

She spun the car around the police cruiser. A second shot shattered the sky. Tristan roared for the exit. She turned hard from the lot, seatbelt gripping her waist and shoulder, the car's right wheel banging down from the curb. A third shot whumped into the back of their car.

Tristan squealed down the center of the empty road. "Are we being followed?"

"No!"

"Are you sure?"

"Not unless you're scared of those crows. Was someone shooting at us?"

Her instinct was to lie to him. But the world had changed. Protecting her brother meant teaching him to protect himself. "Yes. Someone was shooting at us. I'm guessing they've taken over the store and they don't want to share."

Alden twisted in his seat, staring out the back window. "Didn't they ever go to kindergarten?"

Tristan snorted, surprising herself. "They can have their Safeway. It always cost too much anyway."

She didn't slow until she was back among the overgrown yards of the subdivision. She pulled to the curb, idling, and waited a minute to ensure no one was tailing them. She pulled into the garage and double-checked the locks.

"I'm going to go out tonight," she told him. "When I do, I want you to stay here and stay awake."

"Where are you going now?"

She pulled the drapes over the front windows. "The hotel."

He fell silent for several seconds. "Is Mom still there?"

"Truthfully? I don't know." She met his eyes. "I haven't heard from her in a long time."

Alden looked away sharply. He nodded, then walked from the room. Tristan didn't go after him. She went upstairs and spent a long time staring over the back fence. Automated sprinklers rinsed the neighbor's garden. She set an alarm for midnight, but couldn't get herself to nap. At 1 AM, she took the gun from the safe. She had no idea how to check if it were loaded. She asked the internet, learning how to unlatch the magazine, to thumb the safety. She should have at least taken it out to test once. But she'd had no idea things had slid so far, and now that they had, the last thing she wanted to do was announce her presence to all the world just so she could fire a few rounds at a target. Really, how hard could it be?

She found her black button-up coat, put the pistol and a spare magazine in her pockets, and told Alden she was leaving. She contemplated walking: it would be far less conspicuous, but it would also take much longer, extending her risk of exposure, and if she were seen, she would have nothing to save her except her own two feet and very shaky aim.

She drove instead, cruising down the highway at 40 MPH to give her time to respond to any hazards or traps. Twice she had to swerve around abandoned vehicles, but she exited without incident. Three blocks from the hotel, she shut off her lights and swung onto a side street that curved illogically between small businesses and storage sheds. She waited a minute before getting out.

A handful of lights sprinkled the hotel windows. More than should be on at this hour. The lobby appeared to be open, but Tristan crept to the staff door around back, shoes stirring the scent of dewy grass. She used her dad's keys to get inside. The thick stink of death plugged up the halls. She gagged, pulled her shirt over her nose. It didn't help.

She took the stairwell to the sixth floor, easing the door closed behind her. Something clunked down the well-lit hall. Her heart jarred. The familiar noise of ice rattled down the machine. Her mom's room was empty. Not just of her mom, but of the sheets, the mattress, the curtains. Blood stained the carpet in brown blotches. The faint smell of chemical disinfectant fought the scent of death.

She descended to the basement storage, taking everything that wouldn't easily spoil: flour, sugar, coffee, commercial-size cans of clam chowder and tomato bisque. The smell of rotten shrimp gagged her. She lugged the food to the car and drove away.

At the house, Alden poked his head from the kitchen. "Did you see Mom?"

"She was gone."

"Did she..?"

"I mean she was literally gone." Tristan pressed her palms to her eyes. "I'm going to tell you the truth. Last time I saw her she looked pretty bad. I don't think she made it."

Alden broke then, slumping to the floor and sobbing. Tristan crouched down and hugged him and cried with him. The gun dug into her hip. When they were through, she went to the garage and stocked the food in the pantry.

They continued to wait. She had no plan. But she had food, heat, running water, a house that had so far remained safe. Every day, she expected the whirr of helicopters, the groan of tanks, the army marching in to retake control and bring them somewhere safe. But all she heard was the laughter of crows, the sigh of the wind in the pines, the rap of faraway shots.

She knew she should do something. Their food would only last a few months longer. The power could drop at any time. But where could she go that would be safer than her house?

So she locked the doors. Practiced kung fu with Alden. Baked cookies and bread to make use of the flour. Filled all the jugs she could find with water. Tended her dead neighbor's garden. And waited to be saved.

The knock came at night two weeks later. Frantic, pounding. Tristan saw nothing through the peephole. She opened the door. Laura sprawled on the front step, panting, blood dripping from her face and chest.

"I'm so sorry," Laura said. Tears smeared the blood on her cheeks. "Lock the doors. Hide away. They're coming."

9

"Here's what we do first," Shawn said. He spit on the moonlit ground, stirred needles over it with his toes. "You drop and give me twenty."

"Huh?"

"Get down on the ground—dropping's the fastest way to get there—and give me twenty pushups."

Ness laughed through his nose. "You starting your own militia?"

"That's right. I'm General Shawn now. So drop. Twenty. Now."

"I'm not doing any stupid pushups."

"Really?" Shawn rubbed his goatee. He still shaved every other morning. Ness' face was sharp with stubble. "Then I'm not giving you any more food."

"Okay."

"And you're not sharing my tent."

Anger flashed through Ness' skull. "You can't just order me around! You're being a total asshole."

"You want my help? My stuff? Then you do what I say."

Ness folded his arms. Shawn shrugged, bent through the tent flap, and zipped it behind him.

"Fine!" Ness said. He got down in the dirt, pine needles prickling his palms, and started counting pushups. By ten, his triceps burned. By fourteen, he could no longer push himself back up. He rested on the ground, breath steaming.

"That's why you're doing this," Shawn said. "'Cause right now, you're a liability."

"Like it's so goddamn important I look like a model." Ness pushed himself up. "Fifteen."

"It's so goddamn important you can pull your own weight. Mom's too tired tonight, but I'm going back for her in the morning. Something happens to her because you're too weak to run for two minutes without losing your wind, I will shoot you in the head and chuck you off this mountain." He shoved Ness' ribs with his boot. "Five more, faggot."

Ness didn't dare let the sting in his eyes progress to tears. He rose again, arms shaking. Blood pulsed in his ears. He lowered himself to the forest floor and forced himself back up. His second-to-last, he pushed against the ground with all he had left, straining like a four-cylinder trying to get a start up a hill. He had to rest for nearly a minute before the burning in his arms receded enough to finish number twenty.

He rolled on his back, chest heaving. "Happy?"

"Sublimely," Shawn said. "I'll take mercy on you. No sprints until daylight."

He wasn't joking. At dawn, Shawn kicked him in the side and forced him to run circles around the camp before he'd be allowed breakfast. After five minutes of sliding through the needles, Ness pulled up, a stitch in his side.

"I'm going to barf," he said.

"That's the sign this is working. Mush, doggy!"

Ness straightened and ran on. A minute later, he took sour pleasure in vomiting bile on Shawn's boots.

Shawn grabbed his collar and pulled him upright. "You got the entire forest to yark in and you aim straight at my boots? Well, now you get to scrub them."

Ness retched again and spit into the brush, acid thick in his throat. "Fuck you."

Shawn grabbed the back of his head and forced it toward his reeking boots. "Clean them up or I do it with your face."

"Stop it!" Ness grabbed at Shawn's shin with one hand. The stench of his own vomit gagged him. "I'm doing it!"

"Then take them off me. I'm not touching that shit."

Ness tugged at the slimy laces. "I thought you were going to get Mom."

"And you just set me back twenty minutes. Now get scrubbing before I lose my temper."

Ness held the boots at arm's length, grabbing a jug of water. He carried them out of sight of camp and sloshed water over the boots, rinsing away the chunks, but had nothing to scrub with. He grabbed a pinecone and went to work. Finished, he sniffed them. The sour tang was still there, but faint enough Shawn might not notice.

He came back and handed them to his brother, who held them at eye level and turned them in the cold sunlight. "What'd you use to clean 'em?"

Ness stiffened, bracing himself to be struck. "A pinecone."

"A pinecone! Not bad." Shawn sat on his folding camp chair and laced up. "Well, come on. Need you to watch my back at the house."

"What about breakfast?"

"That can wait. I want to get Mom up here before any cops haul themselves out of bed. Put it this way—what d'you think will hurt worse? Missing out on your corn flakes? Or taking a 9mm to the belly?"

Ness went to the packs hanging from the tree and dug out two granola bars. "Ready when you are, Ranger Rick."

"Then where's your shotgun?"

He fetched it from the tent. Shawn started downhill, pistol on his hip, eyes sweeping the path ahead. They reached where the trees thinned in front of the long field down to the trailer and Shawn knelt and lifted his binoculars.

"Looks clear." He passed the binoculars to Ness. "You know which end of these to look through? Or do I need to write you instructions?"

Ness grabbed them away. "It's like a quarter mile to the house. How am I supposed to watch your back with a shotgun? Fire it into the air and pray I shoot a plane down on top of them?"

"Just yell." Shawn stood, knees popping. "Not like you'd be better off with a rifle. You couldn't hit the broad side of a barn if you were standing inside it."

Ness crouched beside a tree and spied on the trailer. At the base of the hill to the park, a car sat running, belching gray clouds into the morning cold. A pheasant bobbed in the grass a hundred yards up from their mom's home, its long tail straight as an arrow. Otherwise, the grounds were still. Shawn socked him on the shoulder, banging the binoculars into Ness' eyebrows, and started downhill.

Shawn walked with his head down, pistol tucked under his coat. He didn't seem hurried. No SWAT teams leapt from the bushes. Shawn simply walked to the trailer, unlocked it, and disappeared inside.

Everything was so dramatic with Shawn. Lookouts. Guns. His little boot camp. He was the child, off playing commando in the mountains. Ness' one consolation was that once this was all over, Shawn would look like every other end-of-days jackass, as wrongheaded and moronic as those reverends with their Rapture. The recession had turned everyone stupid. Willing to believe the USS Civilization could crash with one wrong turn.

Totally illogical. Any cataclysm significant enough to force humanity back into some hunter-gatherer, off-the-grid, survivalist BS would be so strong it would extinct us in the process. Anything less than that—eco-terrorists eliminating the gasoline supply with petroleum-eating bacteria, solar radiation EMPing every piece of electronics on the planet—well, it just wouldn't be enough. Simple technology would continue to exist, as would knowledge of advanced technology. It might be a few decades before someone was manufacturing new iPads, but even an idiot like Shawn could rig up a windmill and patch it into a power grid.

Still, some part of Ness understood why they got sucked into the fantasy. He believed in personal responsibility, too. Real liberty. The freedom to make your own choices and reap the rewards or suffer the consequences. Over the last few decades, that America of old had been stolen, snatched up by nanny state, soft-headed do-gooders on the left and wealth-obsessed sociopaths on the right who clearly believed their money meant they belonged to a superior species. They'd leveraged that money to make the laws reflect their first-class status.

Normal people just didn't have a way anymore. They had to spend their whole lives earning jet fuel for the plutocrats, and in the meantime, they couldn't enjoy what little life-hours they had to spare for themselves, thanks to horrified, oatmeal-eating, Prius-driving parents who knew what was best for the safety, well-being, and health of every other person on the planet. Best to wipe it all out. Start over. See how well the plutocrats and Prius-drivers handled it when their lives depended on catching their meals for themselves. That's what Shawn thought, anyway, or something like it. If there really were a plague going around, it kind of made a lot of sense.

A figure emerged from the trailer. Ness lifted the binoculars. Far down the hill, Shawn looked both ways, then beckoned their mom out from the home. He carried a backpack over each shoulder. She carried a lot of weight and a left knee that didn't work too well. Shawn slowed to a pace he would've kicked Ness for keeping. All the way up the grassy hill, Shawn glanced from one shoulder to the other, but absolutely nothing happened on their ascent to the trees.

"Ness!" His mom wrapped him up, crushing him into her potpourri perfume. He hugged back with one arm. She dropped back a step and looked him up and down. "You're just going to run away without telling anyone? I ought to pound you into the ground like a stake."

"I got a mallet up at the camp," Shawn said. "Let's get moving."

Ness rolled his eyes. "I wouldn't have ever gone anywhere if my room hadn't been taken over by a dumbass who can't balance a checkbook."

They slogged uphill. Their mom had to stop often to catch her breath. In less than a mile, she was grimacing, rubbing her knee.

"Come on, Mom," Shawn said. "Just a little further."

"That all? Where'd you set up, Santa's bunker?"

It took nearly two hours and multiple rests to reach the camp. By then their mom was sweating, red-faced and damp-haired. She took one look at the grounds and grimaced.

"I know," Shawn said. "Its kind of rustic."

"Rustic?" she said. "You got a tent and a hole. I've seen less rustic caves."

"Beats dying, don't it?"

"That depends how long I have to go until my next shower. Anyway, the three of us squeezed into that little tent, who's to say I don't get the flu from one of you?"

Shawn frowned. "Well, Ness practically made out with Mrs. Rogers' dead body, so I'm pretty sure he's immune."

"I did not," Ness said.

"I was in the hospital where they took Ness and the bodies and I'm fine, too."

"And I'm you two's mother," she said. "So who says I'm not immune, too?"

Shawn spit. "It ain't just the flu we got to worry about."

She laughed and flapped her arms. "Oh, don't start in on that again."

"Well, come on. If this thing is that bad, you think they'll let us come and go as we please? They'll lock this town down like it shot a cop."

Ness planted himself in one of the folding chairs. "Which raises the question of why we don't just drive somewhere else."

"Because we don't have to!" Shawn stuck his hands on his hips and walked across the camp, back turned. "I know you think I'm some paranoid fool who can't wait to start drinking my own moonshine and shooting the neighbors. Well, people are getting sick, aren't they? They're dying. You give me a week. If everything's okay then, call me all the names you want and go on home. I'm willing to look like an idiot if it means keeping my family safe."

Their mom lowered herself to the chair beside Ness. "A week, huh?"

"One lousy little week." Shawn gave her a stare. "Look, Mom, when those police came by, did they look happy to you?"

She squinted into the pines. "They looked like they'd eaten month-old fish."

"And they'll probably wind up just as sick, too." He scuffed fallen needles. "Just give me one week."

He could have asked for much less. Three days later, helicopters blatted over the horizon. The squeak of tank treads pierced the valley as they rolled down the highway and commandeered the campus. The army had arrived.

* * *

"I'm going to move the latrine," Ness said.

Shawn looked up from his twine and knife. "You think?"

"We're going to be up here for a while, aren't we?"

"Unless you'd rather get rounded up with the other cattle." The day the army arrived, Ness had gone with Shawn to the fringe of trees a quarter mile above the trailer. Through the binoculars, they'd watched men in camouflage roust people from their homes and cart them off to the dorms, where they appeared to have set up their base of operations.

"Then I'd better move the latrine," Ness said. "It looks rainy. Mornings are bad enough without waking up in a pile of your own crap."

"Sage words," Shawn said. "Let me know if you need a hand."

Ness took a shovel and leather gloves and tromped downhill. The animosity between them had cooled since their mom had joined them. That was probably the only reason Shawn wasn't ordering him to do more pushups right now, but after seeing his mom huff her way up the hill, Ness had taken to jogging up the mountain every morning before breakfast. Perhaps by taking the matter of his fitness into his own hands, he'd roughly stolen it away from Shawn.

He found what felt like a good spot—downhill, near enough that it was within easy shouting range in case of trouble—and started digging. Maybe he was imagining things, but it didn't feel as exhausting as the first time he'd dug their bathroom. When he finished, he drank some water, took a short rest, and went to fill in the old latrine.

Later, Shawn led him and their mom around the camp's perimeter, pointing out the alarms he'd strung between trees, twine and empty soup cans. A gunshot echoed from the hills below. Shawn cocked his head. Two more shots echoed and were answered by a thrum of automatic fire.

"That would be the army," Shawn said. "That's why we're not lighting any fires."

"What would they be shooting at?" Ness said.

"Oh, I don't know. Whoever shot at them first?"

The mornings grew less bitterly cold. Ness no longer needed a coat on his jogs. Except for troop trucks, all traffic on the highway north of town stopped cold. Ness assumed the same was doubly true of the highway feeding the Washington border. One night they walked down the ridges all the way to the mall on the south end of town. Floodlights glared on the highway. Concrete blocks barricaded the road. Armed soldiers in surgical masks kicked back behind sandbags.

Ness prepared dinner the following night. He sprayed Cheez Whiz onto Ritz crackers, drawing a yellow line of cheese-product along the crackers' circumference, then crossing it with an X to maximize cheese-product distribution. Shawn dug in without looking down.

"Say they got a pandemic down there," his mom said. She brushed crumbs from her heavy breasts. "Where you think that pandemic came from?"

"China," Shawn said.

Ness swallowed down his cracker. "How are you remotely sure it's China?"

"They want to be the new superpower. Hell, maybe one of their birds did it on its own volition."

"The radio says it's all across the country," their mom said. "Sounds like an attack to me."

"What do you think?" Shawn said.

"I don't know," Ness said. "I don't think we have enough data yet."

"'I don't think we have enough data,'" Shawn mocked. "We're just talking over here, not trying to pass the bar exam."

"If they began the attack here in Moscow, they picked a damn strange place to start."

"Got to start somewhere, don't you?"

Ness rolled his eyes. "Sure. New York. Moscow, Russia. If somebody was aiming there and hit here, I hope they got fired for incompetence."

Gunshots filtered up from the valley a couple times a day. Shawn muttered something about putting together a more permanent residence. Without being asked, Ness hiked uphill and sawed off the biggest branches he could drag back to camp. Shawn leaned them between two pines, tying them together with twine, weaving smaller branches in to conceal the camp from anyone approaching downslope. Their food cache stayed strong—they hadn't yet emptied one bag, and Shawn had three more buried in camp—but their bottled water started to dwindle. All the while, their mom sat in camp, radio perched in her lap. If the AM stations could be believed, the deaths had reached several thousand nationwide. The infected numbered in the tens of thousands. Growing by the day.

May approached. On a blustery, rainy spring morning, automatic gunfire crackled from the campus for thirty seconds without stop. Shawn grimaced and spat into the brush.

"That would be an execution."

"Oh yeah?" Ness said. "Is that what your Spidey-Sense tells you?"

"My common sense tells me your whole squad doesn't rattle off its whole clip in one burst. Not unless you got a lot of people lined up in one place."

Ness shook his head. Another minute of gunfire followed in the next hour, and then the hour after that. With the sun sinking toward the low yellow hills of the Washington border, a thick plume of smoke spewed from campus.

Shawn spit again. "That would be the bodies."

Ness watched the smoke until it reddened the sun above the hills. If Shawn was right, that meant there was no cure. They had advanced to containment—in its most desperate form.

Shawn waited until the following night, then took Ness and all the empty jugs they could carry down to the trailer. The neighbors' doors had been spray-painted with red X's. The lights were off across the entire park. Their door had been crossed out, too. Inside, the water ran cold and clear. They filled their jugs and loaded their packs and hustled back uphill. Despite the weight and the slope, Ness didn't have to slow down until well within the safety of the trees.

"What you got there?" their mom said on their return. "Is that my shower in those backpacks?"

"Not exactly," Shawn said.

"Next time you leave, if you don't come back here with my shower, you better just stay gone."

"Expecting to meet your future husband?" Ness said.

She shot him a look. "Not quite. I'd prefer not to meet any lice, either."

Shawn muttered, but started working on one of the tarps the next day, poking holes in its middle, threading twine through the metal-reinforced grommets around its edges, and hanging the makeshift bag from a branch a hundred yards from the tent. Their mom rubbed her hands together and shooed them back to camp.

A minute later, she screamed. The boys bolted to their feet and ran.

"Keep away!" she hollered. "It's just cold."

She came back in a towel and a grin. Shawn groaned. Ness left to try it out for himself. The water was frigid and limp and he doubted he'd rinsed all the shampoo from his hair. He understood why old-timey people favored baths.

Days passed. Ness dragged more logs and branches into camp and Shawn added a second wall to the makeshift cabin growing beside the tent. Helicopters buzzed in and out of the valley. Shawn taught Ness to make snares. They were fine on food for now, but with no certainty their mom was immune to the disease that had wiped out the town (and, according to the radio, was well on its way to doing the same to the nation), they couldn't risk scavenging food from the houses below.

Running water ceased at the trailer. Shawn headed over the mountain for the stream on the other side. A couple days later, he dispatched Ness with a backpack of empty jugs. Ness climbed through the warm morning, cresting the ridge and swinging north, as per Shawn's directions. The smell of pollen stirred with every step. The grass had gone verdant. Birds had returned to the heights, robins and sparrows and all kinds Ness didn't recognize.

The stream carved a green channel down the mountains. Ness crouched to fill his jugs with the cold water. After, he followed it downstream to get a feel for the surrounding lands. The creek descended quickly, a lush green band through the piebald grass. He recognized the Rogers' farm to his right, the fields patchy with wheat and weeds. The stream cut through the lands of another farm uphill and west of the Rogers'. The Shoremans'.

Ness dropped the jugs and sprinted back to camp without stopping.

"Where's the water?" Shawn glanced up from two branches he was knotting together. "Carrying it in your hump?"

"Where's Mom?"

"Showering away the last of our water."

"No!" Ness rushed through the pines. Sweat clung to his skin. Shawn thrashed along behind him.

"What's going on?"

"The water from the creek. It's infected."

"What? How?"

Ness skidded in the mulch. His mom stood beneath the shower, arms raised as she shampooed her hair, loose flesh hanging from her biceps. Pale flaps of skin slumped from her back and hips. She whirled, throwing her arms across her swaying breasts.

"What the hell's the matter with you! Too blinded by all this white to see I'm damn well naked?"

Ness stopped short. He wanted to shove her out from under the water dribbling from the shower-bag, but he couldn't bring himself to touch her naked body. "Get out, Mom! Get out of the water!"

Her anger shifted. "What's going on?"

"The water's infected," he said. "That's why it spread so fast—there wasn't one infection point, there were hundreds. Thousands. Every faucet that stream feeds. There must be others, too. All around the world. Otherwise, it couldn't have spread so fast. Maybe it was locked in the snows, and when they melted, it—"

"What the hell are you talking about?" Shawn said.

Their mom spat, then spat again. She wrapped up in a towel and scrubbed herself down with another. "He's saying I may be in very deep shit."

Shawn's eyes darkened. "We don't know that. We're fine. You're our mom. If we're immune, you must be, too."

Ness didn't try to correct him. It would just make him angrier. Their mom shivered long after she was dry and dressed.

Two days later, she began to cough. The day after that, when she pulled back her hand after another coughing jag, blood gleamed under the late spring sun. She tried to laugh it off, but the gesture was hollow, frightened.

"Come over here," Shawn said to Ness after she'd cleaned up. "I want to show you how snares work."

"I caught a rabbit just yesterday," Ness frowned.

"Yeah, despite all your best efforts to the contrary. Now get over here."

Ness followed him down the slope. A couple hundred yards below camp, Shawn stopped cold and ran his hands down his face. "We got to go into town."

"But the army's there."

"Exactly. They're still there. They must have a cure. We need to sneak on down and steal it before Mom joins the bonfires."

"So we can die, too? You've seen what they do to civilians."

"Only if they catch you." Shawn grinned savagely. "And the only thing they'll catch from me is a bullet in the eye."

The old ant-tickle crawled up Ness' neck. "We don't know they have a cure."

"I won't let her die! You're smart. You'll know where to find it and how to get to it. I need you, Ness. She's the only mom we got."

Ness shook his head, as if trying to shake loose the dozens of thoughts stirred by Shawn's plea. He wanted to laugh at him, to strike him, to walk away, to thank him, to hug him. But he already knew his answer. In a situation like this, he had no capacity to say no.

Shawn's grin was hard enough to cut stone. "You and me, bro. Let's do this."

Ness' plan was simple. Shawn's truck was still parked at the trailer, which was up a hill, which was itself hundreds of feet above the town. The road to the highway ran up, but the southbound back road that fringed Moscow was a gentle decline that lasted for two miles—enough to take them nearly parallel to the college where the army was based. They could coast in neutral the whole way, engine off, then go on foot through the tightly-packed downtown, cutting between the bars and fast food joints until they reached the campus. From there, they would improvise. Quietly take a hostage and threaten him until they got the location of the cure.

It was far from perfect, but they knew the town well, and with the truck so near, they could flee back to the mountains at the first sign of fubar. Even so, if it had been anyone but their mom, up to and including Shawn, Ness would never have tried it.

They geared up. Shawn produced eyeblack and painted their faces as dark as the night. He took his pistol. Ness carried the shotgun. At the trailer, Shawn set the truck in neutral and let it slide from the driveway. Ness gave it a shove to start it down the hill and hopped back in the cab. Shawn blew through the stop sign and they coasted south past the darkened homes.

"This is just dumb enough to work," he grinned.

They glided through the night. Ness had to get out and push twice more, but the truck coasted along, as silent as a bird on the wind.

Just before the intersection where the Baptist church sat across from the auto body, Shawn jammed on the brakes. A jeep blocked the road, lights off. Moonlight glinted from the machine gun on the platform on its top. Men in camo shouted to their right. The troops rushed toward the intersection, automatic rifles in hand.

"Oh shit." Shawn reached for his pistol. "They're gonna kill us. Just like they killed all the others."

10

Tristan slammed the door and bolted it. "Who's coming? Are you okay?"

Laura tried to stand and collapsed back to her knees. Blood dripped from her face to the foyer carpet. "The Empty Skulls. All of them. They'll be here any second."

"A gang? They did this to you?"

"They'll do this to all of us." Laura clenched her head in her hands and let out a half-second scream. Tristan flinched. Laura shook herself like a dog. "And then they'll kill us. I never should have come here."

"Did they see you?"

"I don't know. I was running so hard."

Tristan's blood ran as cold as the lake in the hills under snowy skies. "Alden. Go to our parents' bathroom. Lock the door and lie down in the bathtub."

"The tub? Why?"

"Just do it!"

She ran up the stairs and fumbled open the safe. She took out the pistol and both spare magazines. Alden had followed her. His face was pale and drawn. She jerked her free hand at the bathroom. "Go!"

He turned. She trampled back down the stairs. Laura rested on hands and knees in the foyer, blood sliding from the gash on her temple.

"Lie face down over there." Tristan pointed to the patch of living room clearly visible from the front door. "Don't move. Play dead."

Laura swung up her head, gaping dumbly. A kick rattled the front door.

"Move!" Tristan stage-whispered. Another kick jarred the door. She scurried up the stairs and crouched behind the railing. She braced her arm, elbow down and locked in the position Alden claimed granted unbreakable strength to all his kung fu. Her arm shook like she were standing beside a passing train. Laura dragged herself from the foyer and flopped on the carpet.

The fifth kick burst the lock. The door banged against the wall. A man stumbled inside and grinned at Laura. He carried a pistol. With his other hand, he reached for his belt. Tristan's whole body felt wooden, immobile. She couldn't move her finger. Couldn't pull the trigger. The bullet would destroy him, char his skin, smash his bones, dump his blood from his body. She couldn't do it. Not to another living person.

The man jutted his chin, scratched the beard running down his neck, and advanced on Laura. Down the upstairs hallway, Alden thumped into the tub. The man whipped up his head, mouth parted, and raised his gun.

Tristan squeezed the trigger. The roar of the gun clouded her ears. The man fell. Blood misted the tile. He writhed. She shot again. He went still.

"Jason?" A voice called from outside. "Hey, Jason?"

Tristan kept still. She'd flipped on the porch light when Laura had knocked and the porch beyond the open door was empty and well-lit. Tristan moved from the landing and clicked off the upstairs lights, then hunkered back down behind the railing. Laura raised her head and glanced back at the dying man.

"Don't move," Tristan hissed.

"Jason?" the outsider called again, voice pinched.

The man's blood spread over the stone in a widening circle. An edge of the pool hit the front mat and absorbed into the weave. Tendrils of red advanced along the grout joints.

Motion stirred the darkness beyond the door. In perfect silence, a silhouette rose up the steps. The man hung outside the doorway, peered inside, and slipped inside the house. He wore a ratty green jacket and the face of a hunter. A steel revolver glinted in his hand, pointed at the ceiling. He glanced down at Jason, then Laura, then looked straight up into Tristan's eyes.

She shot him in the stomach. He fell, screaming. Her second shot tore into the wooden floor six inches from his chest. Her third took him in the head.

Quiet enveloped the house. Outside, men hooted. A gunshot cracked the night. Glass shattered; a rock tumbled over the living room carpet. Laura screamed. Another rock burst through the den window. A third thumped the outside wall. The men hooted louder, higher. Tristan smelled blood, spent gunpowder, the powerfully rotten stench of the man named Jason's punctured guts. Her knees were growing sore and stiff on the wooden landing, but she didn't move.

Windows smashed upstairs. The backyard gate creaked open and banged against the fence. Feet thudded in the grass. Another window broke. Laura dragged herself from the entry and curled against the wall. A shot slammed into the upstairs wall, followed by three more. The yard went silent.

"Beau!" a man yelled. "Hey, Beau! You all right?"

Others called out for the dead man, a half dozen hooting his name into the night. "Beau! Beau!"

The voices cut short. The rocks stopped clunking into the walls and windows. Cricketsong drifted through the broken panes. The silence stretched on for one minute, two. Tristan shifted her aching legs. She strained her ears. Two minutes became five. What were they waiting for? Were they going for fire? Had she run them off, unwilling to lose any more members? Were they waiting for morning to regroup and kill whoever was inside?

The hallway creaked. She whirled. Alden stood in the gloom, face pinched with fear. "Are they gone?"

"Go back to the tub," she murmured.

His eyes tracked to the pistol. "You shot them, didn't you?"

"Go back to the tub. I'll tell you when it's safe."

His jaw worked, but he turned and disappeared down the hall. A moment later, skin squeaked on porcelain. Laura hadn't moved since crawling to the wall. It was too dark to see if she was still bleeding. With a sudden pang of anger, Tristan hoped she was: she was the one who'd brought these monsters here.

Tristan regretted the thought as soon as she had it. It wasn't Laura's fault she'd been attacked. She was just trying to save herself. Even so—it was her fault the men were here. If they pressed the attack, and something were to happen to herself, to Alden—. She stared at Laura's unconscious body and thought for a long time about leaving her by the door while she went to her parents' room and led her brother to the attic.

Instead, she waited. For hours. Head hurting from lack of sleep. Jolting at every scrape of leaves. Until the black patch of the open door turned first gray and then green as the sun revealed the wild-grown lawn. Even then, she waited twenty minutes more before she rose—she could barely force her legs to straighten—and stalked from window to window, gun in hand, scanning the yards for outsiders. She saw nothing but grass, fences, the dead neighbors' still-green tomatoes.

"Are they gone?" Alden stood on the landing. He had a pocketknife in his hand.

Tristan gazed down on the silent yard. "They must not have wanted to lose anyone else. Either that or they're horribly disloyal. Whatever the case, we've got to move."

"What? Why?"

"Because two of their people just died. They'll come back for us. Tonight, I bet."

"But this is our house."

"We're not going to leave it for good." Tristan pulled the drapes. "Just for a week or two. Long enough to convince them that we're gone. Or that we never lived here in the first place."

Alden crouched behind the railing. The men lay in the foyer, long done bleeding. "What if they come back and they burn the house down?"

"Then I'd prefer not to be in it at the time." She put her gun into her waistband. Broken glass was everywhere. Cleaning it up would give it away that they lived here, but if she left it out, Alden could cut himself so easily. She gritted her teeth. It was a different world. She could try to keep Alden safe, but babying him would only leave him unprepared to face it on his own. She needed him to be competent for selfish reasons, too: to watch her back, to stand guard while she slept, to go for food or help if she got sick.

"Go pack up," she said. "Clean up anything that makes it look like we've been living here. And do not cut yourself, or I'm rolling you in bubble wrap and storing you in the basement."

"Why do I have to clean up?"

"Because I have to make sure Laura doesn't die. Would you rather stitch her up yourself?"

Alden made a face and disappeared into his room. Tristan gathered up the dead men's guns and closed the front door. She set the guns on the marble island in the kitchen and knelt beside Laura, whose skin was hot and dry. Black blood crusted her scalp and ribs. She moaned, pulling away from Tristan's touch.

"Come on," Tristan said. "Let's get you up in a bed. We're leaving this afternoon and I need you rested."

Laura hung onto Tristan's collar and let herself be hauled to her feet. She clung to the banister on the way up and half-collapsed into bed. Tristan stripped her shirt over her head. Laura gasped, eyes flipping open. Blood seeped from a gash on her ribs; the shirt had scabbed to her side.

"Should I clean this?" Tristan said. "I don't know what I'm doing. I might hurt you."

"If the alternative is dying of infection, then hurt me away," Laura said. She rolled onto her side to give Tristan better access to the wound.

Tristan left for a damp rag, rubbing alcohol, Neosporin, and one of her dad's undershirts. She swabbed the cut and wrapped the shirt around Laura as a bandage. "Okay, that wasn't hard at all."

"I don't need stitches?"

"If you do, you're doing them on yourself." Tristan went to the bathroom to wash the blood and Neosporin from her hands. She couldn't stand when they were dirty. A bit of grime, and she hated to move them, let alone use them, letting them dangle from her wrists until she could insert them under running water and return them to normalcy. She padded to the bedroom. "What happened? Who were they?"

Laura pulled the covers to her chin. "You haven't seen the Empty Skulls?"

"I haven't left the house in weeks. The news stopped running. I had no idea it was so bad."

"It's total Mad Max out there. The Empty Skulls seized the ARCO down by the train tracks. The Safeway. At first all they did was defend their turf, but now that there's nobody left, they're ranging around town as they please. I got jumped while I was raiding one of your neighbors. I figured it was so quiet out here nobody would have thought to scavenge it yet."

"You're by yourself?"

Laura nodded, then winced. "Honestly? I figured you'd bit the dust like everyone else. But I had nowhere else to run."

The drapes flapped in the breeze through the broken window. "Do you think they'll be back?"

"I don't know. There aren't that many of them. If they knew they'd been run off by a girl and a thirteen-year-old boy, for sure, but I don't think they'll risk it." Laura closed her eyes. She smelled of sweat and blood. "I'm sorry I brought them here."

"It's okay. You didn't have a choice." Tristan was shocked to find she no longer believed that. Everything was a choice. Including the choice to put others at risk to make yourself safer. Nothing had forced her to let Laura in. That, too, had been a choice. It could turn out to be a very bad one. "I need to go pack. Holler if you need anything."

Downstairs, she found Alden pointing the revolver at the broken kitchen window. "Put that down."

He gave her an annoyed glance. "I've seen the movies. I know how to use it."

"Oh my God. Put that down before you kill us both."

"What happens if those guys come back? I should go hide in the bathtub again? That's so stupid."

"Alden! I'm not your mom. I don't know what I'm doing. Sure. If they come back, you can use the gun. But right now, I want you to put it down, and I don't want you to touch it until I have time to sit down with you and explain a few things."

He set it on the island with a metal click. "Well, why not right now?"

"Because we need to get out of here. They could be back any minute."

"Sounds like a pretty good reason for me to carry a piece," he said sullenly. "Which car are we taking?"

"One in the garage," Tristan said. "I don't want to go outside until it's time to leave."

She packed hurriedly, taking anything the Skulls might want—food, water, Advil, her dad's hydrocodone, cough syrup, NyQuil, vitamins, flashlights and batteries, the guns, the best knives, soap and toiletries, her dad's wrench set, assorted screwdrivers and hammers and pliers, quarts of oil. She didn't take much in the way of clothes, but made sure to take three pairs of shoes and two coats, one light and one heavy, along with several sets of her mom's shirts, jeans, shoes, and coats. They'd fit Laura better.

She woke Laura, helped her down to the car, where she stretched her out across the back seats. Alden piled in the passenger door. Tristan backed out, closed the garage, and drove slowly through the four blocks to the Hausers'; Gina Hauser had worked with their mom, and Tristan had been to enough Christmas parties and 4th of July barbecues to know her way around. She parked in the driveway.

"It smells funny," Alden said inside the front door, which had been locked until Tristan bashed in one of the front panes. It was kind of amazing how easy it was to break into a house. In hindsight, it was hard to believe her parents' place, with its flatscreens, emerald jewelry, and genuine silver flatware, hadn't been robbed on a weekly basis.

"You'll get used to it. Help me get Laura inside."

They arranged Laura on the front couch. Tristan told Alden to keep an eye on the street, then checked the house top to bottom for bodies. It was clean. The Hausers must have left town when the sickness hit. The cabinets had soup, instant potatoes, cereal. She went back to Alden and they unloaded the car together. The sprawling house had five bedrooms, including a ground-floor guest room. She helped Laura to the bed, then chose an upstairs room overlooking the street.

Downstairs, Tristan sat down on the couch to think about their next move and promptly dozed off. Someone shook her shoulder and she batted at the hated hand.

"Wake up, Droopy." Alden grinned down at her.

"Leave me alone."

"Why don't you go use your new bed?"

"Because I'm so tired I'd shoot myself just to get a little sleep."

Alden laughed. "Then go upstairs and sleep. I'll keep watch down here."

A part of her could not accept the words he'd spoken. They were grammatical, logical—after the previous night, they really should keep watch; she'd been right about to toddle off to bed without a second thought—but the concept those words conveyed was too absurd. Keep watch! It was like they'd stumbled into a George R.R. Martin novel. And she had begun to play the part.

She washed her hands again before bed, but when she slid her hand under the stranger's pillow, she could still smell the gunpowder burned on her fingers.

* * *

Laura's cuts looked worse than they were. She had some deep bruises, too—she'd fought one of the men with her bare hands before escaping to the house—but after some water and rest, she was back on her feet in a couple of days. She helped sweep up the dust, gather up the garbage from the numerous dens, living rooms, and bathrooms. The Hausers' place was nice, Tristan decided, lush with wood paneling and antique brass faucets, fixtures, doorknobs, and hinges, but she preferred her parents' house more.

After her initial doubts, Tristan was glad to have Laura around. For one thing, she actually knew something about firearm safety, such as the fact revolvers didn't have safeties. She taught both Tristan and Alden the basics—commonsense stuff like don't point at anything you don't intend to shoot, check to see if it's loaded each and every time you handle it, etc.—and one morning they left at dawn and drove to the lake, where the Empty Skulls might not hear them, and practiced firing off a few rounds. They had brought fishing poles, too, and spent the afternoon fishing the rocky banks until nightfall. Tristan drove back with the headlights off.

"How are you doing on gas?" Laura asked when they pulled into the garage. Tristan had found the keys to one of the SUVs and moved it to the street.

Tristan squinted. "Half a tank."

"But how many gallons do you have when that runs out?"

"None."

"None as in zero? No gallons?"

Tristan smacked her head. "And with the Indy 500 just days away!"

"You do realize you can't just run out and fill 'er up, right? Not without a running gang battle?" Laura turned in a slow circle, taking in the dusty garage. "Think they got any siphons?"

"Let me go check the siphon-rack."

Laura shook her head. "This is something you need to do. You really don't have anything but what's in the tank?"

"I'm sorry, I'm still a little new when it comes to this whole 'end of the world as we know it' thing."

"Well, let's find us a tube. It's time to get lootin'."

Tristan nodded, careful to keep the annoyance from her face. She hadn't explicitly invited Laura to stay. Nor had Laura asked. Now, Tristan felt a keen and strange resentment at Laura's orders, her intrusion into Tristan's tiny tribe.

Still, she did need spare gasoline. She found a hose in the garage. Laura cut off a three-foot length, then asked for a towel and a hammer. Tristan grabbed the gas jug for the lawnmower and a disused plastic storage bin. They didn't have to go far. In the dark, cool street, Laura pointed to an SUV with thick ripples of dust on the windows, wrapped the hammer in the towel, and smashed open its front window.

She popped the gas tank, poked the hose inside, and passed the other end to Tristan. "Suck. Then get out of the way, because this stuff tastes even worse than what you're used to having in your mouth."

Tristan laughed and took the hose. They filled the jug, then the bin. Full, it was shockingly heavy. Tristan had to let Laura carry it while she took the jug, the red plastic banging against her knee with each step, the sloshing fluid tugging her off balance.

They stayed inside during the day. Every few nights, Alden kept watch from the upstairs window while Tristan and Laura ventured into the cricket-sung darkness to empty the pantries of the McMansions. At the corner, a red skull had been spray-painted across one house's face, a dripping question mark emblazoned on the skull's round forehead.

Laura joined Tristan and Alden's kung fu sessions the first time she saw them practice. She took to it with the same bravado she brought to everything, but her elbows strayed constantly from her centerline, and whenever they approached real-time speed, her hands flailed like light-mad moths. After a week of practice, she still couldn't reliably block one of Tristan's low-speed punches.

"How do you do that?" She withdrew her arms from Tristan's and yanked open the fridge. She cracked a beer, scowling over the foam.

Alden tipped back his head sagely. "Ancient Chinese secret."

"Yes, a tightly-guarded secret known as 'practice.'" Tristan fought a smile. Laura had always been more athletic, making varsity in basketball and lacrosse while Tristan couldn't make it through the first few practices. Here, Laura's natural skill was a detriment. She thought she should be good at once and became frustrated when she wasn't.

But it took patience. Dedication. Repeating the same motion ten thousand times until throwing a block was as easy as punching a button in Mortal Kombat. After a few months, Tristan could block with one arm and strike with the other while shifting her hips for extra momentum or stepping aside to slip one of Alden's hallway ambushes. None of that required any thought. She still had to choose which specific techniques to use, but if the fighting style were a piece of software, she knew all the keyboard shortcuts. Laura still had to hunt each command down manually, dragging her cursor through her mental menus until she found the appropriate response.

Two weeks after their move to the Hausers', with the moon bright enough to light the way, Tristan returned to her parents' home. A single light burned upstairs. The doorway was open. She watched for some time from the hedge across the street. She approached hesitantly, creeping across the neighbor's lawn, pausing often. The red icon of the Empty Skulls stood spraypainted on the front door. The bodies had been taken from the foyer. Dark blood crusted the floor. It smelled vaguely fecal—someone had taken a dump in the middle of the kitchen. Mice had added their own leavings to the cabinets, pillaging the two sacks of rice she'd left behind. Another emblem had been painted across the kitchen wall, its crimson dribbles long dried.

Gun in hand, she went room to room. Papers had been strewn about, down pillows shredded, feathers stirring in the breeze through the broken windows. The Skulls had been back for their dead. Must have expected a fight, too. Failing to find that, they'd trashed the place, but halfheartedly, like a dog peeing on the fourth tree of its walk.

Tristan placed a square of toilet paper just above the waterline in each toilet. She walked out, leaving the door open, then yanked out one of her hairs and tied it from the inside deadbolt to the lockplate embedded in the frame.

She came back three days later. The door still stood ajar. Her hair was unbroken. The toilet paper remained inside the lids. No one had been back. Certainly no one was staying here. She cleaned up the shit in the kitchen, then went for Alden and Laura and brought them home.

Together, they swept up the glass, binned it, and tarped up the windows. They'd need to come up with something more permanent come winter, but even without running the heat, the days had grown warm enough to keep the house bearable through the cool mountain nights. With sprinklers running daily, the neighbors' garden continued to thrive, but so had the weeds. They stripped these from the ground and returned home with tomatoes and strawberries and cabbage. After so many days of eating out of boxes and bags, the crisp leaves and gushy fruit tasted like the wonders of another land.

One morning, Tristan woke to find her alarm was blank. The lights wouldn't click on. The bathroom faucet hissed, spat foam, and went silent. She went to the living room to think while the others slept.

An hour later, Laura emerged from bed. Her hair stuck up from the side of her head. "I think your house is broken."

"We're in trouble," Tristan said. "The power finally died."

"So what?"

"So how do we cook? Clean? Not die of thirst?"

"Fire, brooms, and wearing a rut between here and the river."

"We can't build fires," Tristan said. "The Skulls will see."

"Then I hope you like your spaghetti extra crunchy." Laura raked her fingers through her hair. "There has to be another way. We can cook in the fireplace in the middle of the night."

"How are we going to keep the leftovers cold?"

"I don't know, I'm not Bear fucking Grylls. Keep them in the basement in the dark? Eat a lot of raw veggies." She swept open the curtains and gazed at the silk-wrapped corn rising above the neighbor's fence. "Who knew the apocalypse would be so good for your health?"

For a while, it wasn't so hard. They ate from the garden, supplementing the raw bell peppers and squash with packaged granola bars, dry Corn Pops, and Asian-style trail mix. Every few days, they risked a fire in the fireplace, boiling up great pots of spaghetti and eating it for two days straight. With the automatic sprinklers dead, the abandoned gardens yellowed in the summer heat. The three of them roamed the neighborhoods by night for as many veggies as they could eat, stirring the smell of dew and damp soil, returning with backpacks full of tomatoes and cucumbers.

The house became a sweatlodge. They abandoned the stifling upstairs between dawn and dusk. At night, the soggy air sat limply, refusing to stir through the broken windows. As summer drew on, they spent more and more time in the half-finished basement playing cards, reading books, and practicing kung fu.

They went to the pine forests above town for firewood. Drove to the river for water. Dug a hole in the neighbor's yard for their waste. Laura unbolted the toilet and she and Tristan manhandled it from the bathroom, smearing its wax sealing ring over the marble floor. They set it atop the boards over the outdoor latrine and grinned.

Gunshots rang from town every few days, but they had no choice but to continue building fires a couple times a week. They had to boil their water. There could be bodies in the river. Feces. Dying of cholera was low on Tristan's bucket list. Dirt filled the crescents of her fingernails. Sweat and dust grayed the lines of her hands. She washed them as she could, but every quart she spent rinsing her hands was another quart they had to haul from the river.

And every trip from home exposed them to the Empty Skulls. The men screeched pickups across town, shirtless gangsters with rifles jouncing on the truck beds.

Doubt itched Tristan harder every day. What would they do when winter came, killing the gardens, enfolding the house in snow? What good were all their sacks of rice when the smoke from a boiling pot of water invited attack from a gang of men who killed without qualm?

One night in July, they drove to the river, empty bins and jugs bouncing in the trunk. She and Laura carried pistols. Alden sat in the back, scanning the back roads for movement. Tristan turned onto the dirt road beside the bridge and parked on the soft sod. She hauled jugs from the trunk and plodded downstream to where the banks flattened out enough to descend, leaving Alden with the car as a lookout.

A breeze brought the smell of pines and flowing water. Stars winked on the river. Tristan dipped her plastic bottle into the river, cold mountain-water flowing over her fingers. They filled the wheelbarrow with jugs and turned back for the car.

A small orange light flared from beside the car. Tristan pulled Laura down into the brush. At the car, smoke snaked from a man's cigarette, its tendrils pulled apart by the weak breeze. Tristan smelled ashy tobacco and old sweat. Her heart hammered. She saw no sign of Alden.

The man circled the car, prodded the tires. He touched the hood. Tristan knew it would still be hot. The man blew a long drag through his nostrils, dragon-like, and glanced downstream. Moonlight touched the black barrel of his rifle. His chest was bare. A red bandanna wrapped his head.

Branches crackled upstream. The man unshouldered his rifle and jogged forward in a crouch. A silhouette slid from the trees beside the car, a short, thin-limbed figure. Alden.

Tristan ran to the car, gesturing Alden to follow. They piled inside, closing the doors as quietly as they could, leaving the jugged water behind on the banks. Tristan reversed down the path with her lights off, then spun around and ripped onto the road. She watched her rearview mirror all the way home.

In the garage, she lit a candle and led Alden and Laura into the kitchen. It was hotter inside than out. Sweat clung to her shirt.

"It's time to move," she said.

"But this neighborhood's as safe as it gets," Laura said. "We just need to drive further upstream. The Skulls can't control the whole damn river."

"Not to a new house," Tristan said. "To a new city. A new state. A new world. If we stay here, we're going to die."

11

Ness' blood froze. His mind went as still as a glacier. As the troops ran across the road, he could see the branches of their future as clearly as the moonlight glinting from the soldiers' long rifles. If he and Shawn got out and ran, they would be shot. If Shawn turned on the truck and tried to flip a U-turn back to the mountains, they would be shot, or chased down in the jeep and then shot. If they got out and surrendered, they would be taken to the killing grounds and shot.

He had about three seconds, maybe less. He made himself move.

"We're getting out!" Ness shouted from the truck window. "Don't shoot!"

"What are you doing?" Shawn said.

"Get out. Get ready to push."

"Great thinking. We can surely outrun them with our shoulders bent to a ton of Ford steel."

Ness turned on him. "You have three seconds to get out and push. Then we die."

A pair of soldiers edged closer. "Out of the fucking car! Hands up!"

Shawn's lips curled from his teeth. "Fuck!"

He shouldered the door open and hopped onto the road. Ness followed him out his door, putting the truck between them and the soldiers.

"Push," Ness said. "Push with all you've got."

Shawn laughed madly and leaned against the door, palms splayed.

"Stop right there!" The nearest soldier stepped sidelong, moving to intercept the truck. He wore a gas mask and rubber gloves. Ness pushed the truck's frame with one hand, using the other to pull the wheel left. His shoes gripped the pavement. The truck glided down the shallow slope and angled toward the jeep. Ness reached for the shotgun. The soldier regripped his rifle. "Stop that car or we will open fire!"

"Duck," Ness murmured. He jammed the shotgun into the gap between the door and the hood and pulled the trigger. The bang bounced from the walls of the dark houses. The soldier spun to the pavement.

A dozen rifles roared, battering the truck. Glass shattered. Bullets chunked into the sides. Ness hunkered down beside the rolling truck. Shawn screamed, covering his head with one hand, firing blind over the hood. The truck bounced into the jeep and jarred back.

"The machine gun!" Ness said. "Come on!"

Shawn gaped at him, then rolled to the back of the jeep. It was open-topped, the .50 caliber machine gun mounted on a metal frame, but the gun was protected by a peaked metal shield. Ness dropped prone beside the truck and ejected his spent shell. Boots thumped nearer as the soldiers closed. Bullets cranked into the truck, spraying sparks onto the road. Ness fired, pumped, and fired again.

Light and thunder blazed from the machine gun. Shawn gripped its handles, sawing it across the incoming troops. Bodies fell to the pavement. Men screamed. Ness fired at a retreating pair of boots. Brass shells clinked over the truck, the road. The weapon roared and roared.

The banging stopped. The last brass rattled across the asphalt. Shawn stood and whooped. Ness' ears rang. His elbow stung, scraped. He stood. Soldiers littered the intersection. Shawn vaulted from the framework and ran to a writhing man.

"Where's the cure, buddy?" He yanked the soldier's mask away. The man was pale, eyes rolling. "Where's the cure?"

"Don't shoot me!"

"Little late for that. Tell me where the cure is and I won't subject you to round two."

The man struggled to wrench his collar from Shawn's grasp. "There's no cure, you crazy asshole. They're all dead. We all are. We just don't know it yet."

Shawn straightened, blinking. "Then how are you all still alive?"

"We're not." The man coughed, spraying blood onto the asphalt. "85% casualties. The rest of us don't drop mask except to eat. It's just a matter of time until we get Panhandled, too."

"It's time to leave," Ness said.

Shawn glanced toward the black hills. "Mom's still up there. She's still sick."

"And we just had a shootout with the army." Panic clogged Ness' throat. "What do you think happens from here?"

Shawn pushed his fist against his forehead. "Truck's shot to shit. Get in the jeep."

Ness climbed in. His body felt like it was moving on its own. His heart was beating far too fast. Shawn swung the jeep around, sped toward the hills.

"Slow down," Ness said.

"Dude, I hear a chopper. We ain't slowing down until we're back in the mountains."

Ness' veins felt ready to burst from his skin and wriggle in the street like cut worms. He leaned over the side of the jeep, seatbelt pressing into his chest, and vomited into the wind.

"Knock that off," Shawn laughed. "Heroes don't puke. What the fuck, man! Where'd you come up with that?"

Ness retched again. Sour mucus dribbled from his nose. His eyes watered in the wind of the jeep. He couldn't catch his breath. The thump of a helicopter rolled between the houses of the dead. His heart hammered. His vision went black and white.

"Hey Ness." Shawn shook his shoulder. "Nestor!"

"What."

"How'd you know that was gonna work?"

"I didn't." He belched, gagged.

"Come on."

"Every other option would have left us dead. I chose the one that had the chance of a different outcome."

Shawn swung the car sharp right. The ground tilted as they climbed the hill to the trailers. "All that in about three seconds."

Color returned to Ness' eyes. The smell of a cool late spring night flooded his nose—pollen, wet weeds, the gunpowder on his hands. His left arm stung where hot brass had landed on it. Beyond that, he was unharmed.

Shawn parked the jeep in a neighbor's trailer. He gazed down at the dark valley. A set of lights drifted across the sky, the chuff of the helicopter's blades cutting over the quiet.

"Well, come on. Time to run."

Ness obeyed numbly, glad to have orders. They didn't slow down until they were in sight of the camp. Their mom stood in silhouette, painting a flashlight across the trees. "Shawn? Nestor?"

"We're here," Shawn grinned.

"Sweet quarterbacking Christ!" She swept them into her arms. She smelled of potpourri and blood and the cave-like odor of illness. "I heard all that shooting and I thought I'd lost you both."

"With Ness on my side, they never stood a chance," Shawn grinned. He pulled back and his smile faded like something left too long in the sun. "Mom."

"Shawn."

"How you feeling?"

She shrugged her burly shoulders. "Been better. But God's got a plan for us all, doesn't he? It'll be all right."

It wasn't, of course. Ness hadn't seen someone progress from up close. The change was startling in its speed. The next day she coughed without stop, shoulders jiggling. She dabbed blood from her lips with an old cloth. Bruise-like circles ringed her eyes, a sharp contrast to the white of her face. The day after that she could barely lift herself from the floor of the tent. She called Shawn inside that afternoon. He went out, rummaged through his bags of gear, returned inside, and reemerged a couple minutes later bearing a cup. He held it at arm's length and walked into the woods.

Her breathing rattled from the tent with the sound of leaves scratched over old concrete. That night, Shawn stayed with her inside the tent. Ness lay under the stars and listened to her breathe. Shawn murmured too softly for Ness to hear. His brother's voice stopped some time after midnight, replaced by snoring. Her breathing stopped two hours after that. Ness didn't rise. He watched the stars track slowly across the sky.

In the morning, Shawn cried, then made Ness help wrap her in a tarp and drag her far down the hill, where they buried her in a natural clearing in the pines. Shawn nailed two sticks together in a cross and jammed it in the earth. He stepped back and brushed his hands on his pants.

"I don't know what to say."

"Do you think she can hear you?" Ness said.

Shawn turned on him, face drawn into a hatchet of anger. "Are you making fun of me?"

"I'm asking you, very literally, if you think she can hear you."

Crease by crease, Shawn's face turned pensive. "No. She's just dead."

Ness nodded. After a minute, he turned and walked away.

* * *

The bear pawed at the log upstream, impatient, splinters of bark chipping from its claws. Ness watched for some time before hiking back to the roofless cabin they'd built two miles above the Shoremans' old farm. Shawn sat on the chair in the pine-cast shade reading a university textbook on the chemical composition of gunpowder.

"There's a bear down by the stream."

Shawn put his thumb in his book. "You want me to go get rid of it?"

"No. Just don't get eaten."

"Oh." He frowned. "Well, thanks for the heads up."

Shawn still hadn't adjusted to him. He was still trying to play older brother/dad. In truth, Ness hadn't entirely adapted to himself, either. He still caught himself worrying about the smallest things: whether they'd baked the trout long enough to kill the worms, what they'd do if they couldn't find more tabs of vitamin C. But he brushed these anxieties away as lightly as the spider-silk glimmering between the trees every morning when he rose to pee. The itch on his neck was gone.

They'd moved to the other side of the mountains two days after the death of their mother. Shawn had said it was to be closer to fresh water. Ness dug a new latrine. Removed from soldiers' earshot, they hacked down trees and built the cabin. It would have been easier to move into the Shoremans' homestead, but Shawn declared it would be better for them to learn to build their own home, and Ness surprised him by agreeing. They still hadn't decided on the best form of roof, but they had months before the high cold of autumn mountains made that a necessity.

They fished, foraged the abandoned farms, dug a cellar to store food, reinforcing the earthen walls with planks. The simplicity of their needs clarified things. Where once Ness had been frozen by indecision—there had been too many choices, too many possibilities to know which one was right; easier to watch The Matrix again, to spend all night raiding enemy guilds with his friends—he found each day's decisions simple and immediate. If they needed wood for a fire to cook their food, he gathered it. If they needed nails to hammer their walls together, he raided one of the farms.

There was a logic to everything. That meant it could be attacked, broken down to its component pieces and overcome bit by bit. If winter was cold, then they needed to find a way to generate heat. If they were hungry, then they could hunt, fish, forage, scavenge, or grow their food. It was basic math.

Shawn no longer baited, insulted, or tormented him, either. Not unless he got to thinking about their mom. At those times, Ness wandered the mountain, mapping the creek, the stand of wild walnuts he'd found upstream, the rotting, long-lost farmhouse deep into the northern woods.

A month after their encounter with the jeep, they crept into town on foot to go to the Ace for screws and something to mortar the cabin's log walls. The streets were dark. Utterly silent. The roadblock on the northern highway was abandoned. They jogged through the dark bars and grimy patios where girls in tank tops should have been drinking beer in the neutral night surrounded by frat boys Ness had once envied. The dorms were dark, too. No smoke rose from the quads. No engines or generators thrummed. In the alley between the two-floor apartments fringing the campus, a man in camo lay motionless. His decaying skin was as blackened as the asphalt.

The rest were dead, too. Their jeeps and Humvees left behind. Few bodies rested in the grass. When taken by the Panhandler, most victims had just enough strength to crawl to a bed to cough away the last of their lives.

Shawn kicked one of the fallen troops. "Cocksuckers."

"You've got one of their yellow stickers right on the back of your truck."

"Which they shot. Hence the cocksucking."

Ness knelt beside the dead man. The skin had pulled from his cheek, revealing brown sludge on white bone. "I have my doubts all these men were gay."

"You don't got to be gay to be a cocksucker."

"I wonder if they were following orders—if shooting everyone in town was meant to contain it—or if they were acting on their own. To keep themselves safe. Or to take over."

Shawn tugged his shirt over his nose to dampen the smell. "Who cares?"

"If there are any of us left in two hundred years, and they tell stories about what we did, that's going to define how they see themselves."

"Sounds like their problem. Now let's go take some shit."

Food preservation would be their biggest long-term challenge. Their scavenging runs brought in more canned and dry food than they consumed, but this would run out or spoil eventually. Ness found canning equipment at the Rogers' and bottled wild blueberries. Shawn shot a couple of pheasants and Ness took what they didn't eat that night and experimented with smoking it over fires of differing heat and wood. Winter wheat grew wild in the fields. He found books on bread-baking at the university and ground his own grain. It was simple enough to bake dough in a pan. It cooked into flatbread, very plain. Their next trip into town, he took all the salt he could find. If they ever ran out, they might have to drive to the salt flats of Utah, or take the highway to the Washington coast and spend days boiling sea water away from the minerals within it. Were there mines somewhere closer? He had no idea. So much knowledge was lost already.

He was by the stream contemplating the best way to irrigate a plot of wheat when the grass stirred behind him. He turned, reaching for his shotgun. Something orange romped from the grass and leapt for his shoulder. He fell into the grass and the cat nibbled his ear and purred.

"Volt!"

Her fur was matted, dirty. One of her ears had been split at the tip. Ness hugged her in one arm and jogged back to the cabin, sweating in the swelter of high summer.

"Look who came back!"

"Told you I didn't kill her," Shawn said. He glared over the top of his textbook. "But if she pees on my bed again, there will be no mercy."

Shawn wanted to build the cabin roof from nothing but items they could find and manufacture themselves—planks and woven branches, in other words—but Ness talked him into tar and shingles with the promise they'd go au naturale on the shack they planned to build beside their home. He fed Volt scraps of trout and pigeon smoked over wet wood. There were flies everywhere.

He spent the hot afternoons reading in the shade. He wanted to learn to tan leather before Shawn started hunting deer. He gathered wheat. The Rogers' truck battery was dead, so they hiked over the mountain to the jeep and went back to the Ace for brick and mortar, which they lugged in wheelbarrows up the mountain, their shirts tucked in their waistbands, sweat swamping their skin. It was simple enough to build a fireplace inside the shack. Construction was just the process of securing one thing to another thing. People used to hire professionals because they didn't have time to learn for themselves, but when you had nothing but time and no one else to do it for you, there was nothing you couldn't learn.

One day in August, a jet engine crackled across the sky. They grabbed their binoculars—they both had a pair now—and walked down to the clearing. Volt padded at Ness' heels. The jet was squat, black, triangular. It banked, cutting a low circle above the mountains.

"That's one weird-ass plane," Shawn said. "Got to be Japanese or something. They just got to be different."

The ship banked again, bleeding elevation. Ness couldn't say for certain when he knew; the knowledge came from somewhere deep down, a chthonic eureka that had been brewing for months. But he felt no surprise as the jet circled and slowed and circled and slowed, descending, at last, vertically into the Rogers' fields.

"Got to be a Harrier," Shawn said. He grunted. "Tell me, Brain. What's a Harrier doing touching down onto Mimi Rogers' lawn?"

"It's not a Harrier," Ness said.

"Like hell. It just landed like it was dangling from a string."

"Watch."

Shawn snugged his binoculars back atop his nose. Dust whirled around the craft, raking the front of the Rogers' house. A door swung up from the jet's side.

Ness smiled. "Try not to shit your pants."

In the yellow August sunlight, spindly legs spiked from the ship. Tentacles wavered. Alien flesh touched dry earth.

II:

LANDFALL

12

"A new world?" Laura said. "Have you been building a rocket while I wasn't looking?"

Tristan spread her hands, indicating the city outside the dark house. "Somewhere else. Somewhere that isn't overrun by a gang of jackals who were writing memos and playing fantasy football six months ago."

"Like I said. Another planet."

"San Francisco."

"Same thing. You think it will be better in San Francisco?"

"I know someone there with a boat. We're going to Hawaii."

"I'm sure it's a real paradise." Laura reached out and knocked on Tristan's forehead. "You think it's going to be any different? You think the bug didn't hit it, too? The whole world's gone."

"What's the alternative, Laura? Wait for the Empty Skulls to die in a backyard wrestling accident? I've spent months waiting. For help. From anybody. Well, nobody's left. If they are, they're off saving themselves. We need to start doing the same. That means we fight back—which I'm not going to risk—or we move."

Laura took a step back, frowning. "Well, sailing off the edge of the world in a boat sounds crazy."

"Then you don't have to come."

"What does Alden think?"

Tristan cocked her head. "Don't you bring him into this."

"Lord. I'm just asking."

Tristan turned to Alden, who watched them in silence from the other side of the kitchen. He frowned. "What do I think? I think this house sucks. It's too hot and there are bugs everywhere. And I don't know if you guys know this, but the back yard smells like shit."

"I don't think he likes it," Tristan said.

"So here's the plan, as I'm hearing it," Laura said. "Drive to San Francisco, a city that, for all we know, may be overrun by radioactive cannibals. Then steal a boat that may no longer be there and use our nonexistent piratical skills to sail thousands of miles to an island that's probably even worse off than the mainland."

"Do you have a better idea?"

"Thousands of them!"

"Well, this one is mine." Tristan went to the fridge; out of habit, they'd kept the beer there even after the power died. She grabbed a lukewarm bottle and screwed off the cap. "Could be it's hell there, too. But the virus can't have wiped out everything. I want to find where it hasn't."

Laura shook her head and grabbed a beer for herself. "I'm going to need time to think about this."

"Take all the time you need. We're leaving in two days."

Tristan took a candle to the living room. Alden followed her in. "Are we really going to Hawaii?"

"We're going to try."

"So you can check out surf-dudes?"

"Because it has a year-round growing season and it's very isolated." She rifled the desk for paper and a pen. "Also the surf-dudes."

She devised her list based on what she'd need for a really long camping trip. Food. Water. Clothes. Gasoline. Medicine. Toiletries. A tent. Sleeping bags. Binoculars. Candles. Lighters. Flashlights. Batteries. Pistols. Knives. A few tools and eating utensils and a radio. In the morning, she steeped tea from sun-warmed water, a process that took forever and resulted in a thinly-brewed fluid tragically low on both taste and caffeine, and started packing.

"You're serious?" Laura said.

"About not dying in the winter?" Tristan said. "Pretty serious, yeah."

"I thought maybe your head was all stirred up. Like, 'Wow, I went to the river and almost got shot. Better run to Hawaii, where that can never ever happen.'"

"Nope."

Laura paused. "Is everything okay?"

Tristan didn't look up from rolling up her socks and bras. "Yeah. I'm mad."

"At me?"

"Yes, you dirty bitch." She swung up her head and laughed. "No, I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at this thing for happening. I'm mad at myself for sitting around for so long, waiting like a princess in a castle for President Mario to swing by with a cure and the National Guard. I'm mad at my parents for not being immune. I'm mad at whoever caused this, if someone did, and if nobody's to blame, then I'm mad that something like this can just happen."

Laura laughed. "That's a lot of mad."

"Do you think I'm being stupid?"

"How the hell should I know? I can't start a fire without gasoline and a flamethrower. I don't know what we should do."

Just hearing Laura admit she didn't know any better helped set Tristan's mind at rest. Or if not at rest, then at a less-anxious pitch. It was hard not to worry, as she loaded the car with their gear, that she was making a terrible mistake. One that could easily get all three of them killed. She knew staying in Redding would be a mistake of its own—and in its way, a worse one, since the only reason to stay in a place where you couldn't get your own water without being menaced by gunmen was one of sheer inertia. The fear of traveling into the unknown. The fear that, as bad as things were now, if they went somewhere else, it could get even worse.

But they needed to find a place where civilization endured or where there were no people at all. No bandits and madmen making this new life even harder. She hadn't been raised by Inuits or Highlanders or Bedouins. If she was going to learn to live off the land, she wanted to do it someplace where the land was her friend. Not in these savage mountains where one bad winter could literally bury them.

Still, she doubted. And she knew that, no matter what she did or where she went, she'd have to second-guess all of her decisions for a long time to come.

They readied the car. Did a second sweep of the house for anything they didn't want to leave behind. She didn't try to take all the food or water; if disaster struck, she wanted a safe haven to return to. Late that afternoon, Laura hauled open the garage and Tristan backed into the street. Laura pulled the door back down and jogged to the car.

"Road trip!" she said. "Boat trip?"

Tristan accelerated down the street. "Multivehicular voyage."

"Congratulations, nerd-girl, you have just ruined all the fun."

Grass yellowed in the hard sun. Dust mottled dead cars. A body lay in its yard, a genderless knot of desiccated skin and stained bones. Tristan took the back roads from the subdivision and turned onto 273 to parallel the freeway. At the merger to I-5, a wall of torched cars had been dragged across the road, blocking it. A red skull had been sprayed over the charred paint.

"Fuck," Laura said. "Double-fuck."

Tristan idled. They had the windows down against the heat. Back in town, an engine roared across the silence.

Laura twisted in her seat. "Turn around and go home. Before they get here."

Tristan's pulse roared. All that time spent waiting, and now that she'd finally got in motion, the way forward was blocked. She punched the roof. "Joyful Cooter."

"What?"

She swung the car around and accelerated back the way they'd come. "Happy Valley Road. Remember high school?"

She peeled left onto a serpentine side road. Scruffy pines and empty brown fields blurred past the windows. She turned onto Happy Valley, tires squealing. In the rushing wind, she could no longer hear the other engine. Single lots lurked behind tree-lined drives, separated by stretches of sun-dead weeds.

"Joyful Cooter!" Laura hooted. "I always knew we'd get murdered on this road."

"Can we not be murdered?" Alden said.

"That's my current thinking," Tristan said. "Let me know if you change your mind."

The road straightened. Tristan juked around an abandoned van, pushing the car to 60 MPH. Her arms were locked tight against the wheel and her triceps quivered. She watched her rearview all the way to the turn that would link them back to the freeway.

She willed the onramp to be clear. Hot air thrummed through the windows. The road ahead was empty, baking. Her heart gentled.

The wind plastered Alden's hair into his eyes. "Why would they want to stop us from getting out?"

"For our own good, obviously," Laura said. "I mean, who would want to leave Redding?"

"Do you think they're eating people?"

"No way," Tristan said. "There are far too many cans of Campbell's in the world."

Alden palmed his hair from his face. "They're probably taking sex slaves."

"What the hell, Alden?"

"Well, it's true."

The sunlight in the great northern valley looked like something out of Field of Dreams. There had been so much green when she last drove to Berkeley. In the weeks without power, the valley fields had gone a monochrome yellow. Browned grape vines hung crucified from trellises. All that was left living were the trees, gnarled things that clung to the dirt like a nonagenarian's hands.

They reached the Bay by sunset. Cool winds swirled through the windows. The Bay Bridge hung intact, its plain white pillars rising from the sea. Part of her had expected to see a charred hole where downtown San Francisco once stood, but the skyscrapers remained, windows shining orange in the sunset. Cars gobbed the freeway on the approach to the marina. Tristan detoured east, then dropped down into Berkeley.

Laura gazed behind them. "You do know boats tend to be found on water, right?"

"We're going to my friend McKenzie's." Tristan slowed at an intersection clogged by a wrecked bus. She climbed the curb, car tilting as she threaded through the gap. "Her dad owns the boat."

"Have you talked to her?"

"Not since leaving school."

"Then how do you know she's..?"

Lush pines enfolded the winding roads north of campus. "She's not. I know she's not. But on the one percent chance she is, she can make our lives a hundred times simpler."

A pack of dogs trotted through the twilight, gazing at the car, noses low. Tristan parked in front of the brick home. The white picket fence was still closed. Behind it, purple, pinecone-shaped blossoms spurted from an aster-leafed bush. The front yard smelled like damp needles and the green onions growing in the box beside the door. No one answered Tristan's knock. Laura and Alden stood behind her on the brick path, watching the street.

The door was unlocked, but Tristan had to shove hard to get inside. The remains of a golden retriever were wedged against the door. Dried blood stained the carpet beneath its paws. The inside of the door was raked with claw-ruts. Bones scattered the living room. McKenzie rested on the floor beside her bed, blond hair clinging to her cleaned skull. Her ribs and pelvis remained, but her limbs had been taken.

"What now?" Laura said softly.

"We go to the marina. Find a boat."

"Won't we need a key?"

Tristan closed the door behind them. "Since when were sails motor-powered?"

Smoke rose somewhere up the hill; a motorcycle whined in the distance. They saw no one on their way to the marina. Cars sat silent in the lot. Tristan took her pistol from the glove box. The dock thumped hollowly beneath her. Boats creaked in the minor tide. The pier they were on was dominated by sailboats, small white sloops twenty and thirty feet long, their sides dull in the fading light. It smelled of salt and mussels and algae.

"So we can just take whichever one we want?" Alden said. "That's so cool."

"I don't think it's wrong anymore, is it?" Tristan said. "I mean, it's like picking up a shell from the beach. Nobody owns it."

Laura thumped the side of a sloop. "It's totally cool. Worst thing that happens to us is some rich-ass zombies come stumbling after us for their yacht."

Tristan gazed between the bobbing boats. She thought they would need one of the larger ones to cross half the Pacific, but beyond that, she had no idea how to choose their vessel. For a moment, she was paralyzed—this whole idea was so stupid, she wouldn't be able to navigate one of these things out of the marina, let alone across thousands of miles of open ocean—but she squashed that thought before it could sweep her under the waves. It didn't matter. They could figure it out. All they had to do was try.

She pointed to the nearest of the larger boats. "That one. We'll check it out, then grab our stuff from the car."

Alden and Laura followed her lead. Tristan climbed the metal ladder up the side. The cabin was dark, empty. It smelled of seawater. There were no bodies. Space was tight; they wouldn't have much privacy. Alden would be embarrassed. Well, he'd live.

They lugged bags and boxes from the car, piling them up inside the musty cabin. On their third trip, a man stood on the pier in front of the boat, water dripping from his wetsuit. A speargun rested on his shoulder. Tristan froze, dropping a bag of assorted pasta and reaching for the pistol in her jacket.

"Good evening," he said in what sounded not quite like an Australian accent. "Moving in, are you?"

"We're taking this boat," Laura said. "It's not yours, is it?"

"Might be."

"Then I'm just going to keep loading it up with our stuff until you figure that out."

He grinned with half his mouth. "Fair enough. You going somewhere, then?"

"Might be," Tristan said.

"Listen, I'm what you might call a water-troll. Seeing as this here quay is my bridge, if you'd like to use it, I'm going to have to exact a toll."

"How about you skip it?" Laura said. "Housewarming gift."

He shrugged, speargun rising up his shoulder. "I'd like to make an exemption, but it's a union thing."

"And what's your toll?"

"A kiss." He grinned, shark-like. "Nah, I'm taking the Mickey. Just tell me where you're from and where you're going."

"Here's a compromise." Laura stepped forward. "You get out of our way, and we don't rehome twenty bullets into your lungs."

The man pulled back his chin. "Now that's downright unneighborly."

Laura reached for the back of her waistband. "Then maybe you should move to a more friendly location."

"What does it matter?" Tristan said. "We came from Redding."

The man glanced at her, mouth open in thought. "Up north?"

"Couple hundred miles."

"How is it?"

"Overrun by a gang. I was hoping we'd do better down here, but I forgot to account for the trolls."

"Trolls are plenty good people. Keep out the riffraff." He slicked water from the back of his head. "So where you off to?"

"He doesn't need to know that," Laura said.

"What's he going to do, swim after us?" Tristan said. "Hawaii. We're sailing to Hawaii."

"Good one, I hear it's beautiful this time of year." He smacked the boat's smooth side. "You know how to run her then, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"You sure? Last guy who tried to swing out of this little cove had an odd idea about parking." The man pointed off the dock. Tristan peered into the darkness. A mast projected from the water, its drenched rigging weaving in the currents. The man waggled his eyebrows twice. "I'd rather not have my little waterway snarled up any further."

Tristan cocked her head. "Do you know how to sail?"

"Reckon so."

"Then it sounds like you'd better teach us. Because we don't know shit."

"Tristan!" Laura said.

"Who cares? What could he possibly do with this information?"

"Then why does he want to know?"

"I'm right here, you know." The man scratched the stubble on his neck. "I ask where you're from 'cause I'd like to know where to go. I don't know if you've been outside lately, but the world's a bit of a mess."

"Have we got a deal, then?" Tristan said.

"Sure. Long as you let me come with you."

"Trapped on a boat we don't know how to use with a man we don't know," Laura said. "I think my mom warned me about stuff like this."

Tristan stuck out her hand. "Teach us to sail. If you're not some maniac, we'll see about taking you to the islands."

* * *

The man's name was Jack. He was from some place in New Zealand Tristan had never heard of. He had a weak chin and strong arms and never shut up.

Every morning, he arose from his boat across the marina and swam across the cool water to their pier. For days on end, he spoke of nothing but ropes. The standing rigging that supported the mast. The running rigging that maneuvered the sail. He taught them knots for cleats and ropes. He shredded a plastic bag, tied it to the top of the mast, and delivered lengthy lectures on wind.

"The wind is your friend," he said, stamping across the deck, where he insisted they spend as much time as possible to get a feel for the sea. "But it is also your enemy! Do you know why, Alden?"

"It's like fighting a stronger opponent in kung fu," Alden said. "If you try to resist his force, you'll be broken. But if you can redirect his energy, you can use it against him."

"Very good. As the ancients knew, the wind hates karate."

"Kung fu."

Jack flipped his hand. "Ah, the wind doesn't care about your words. Or your intentions. Wind doesn't care what you want. It's going to just yank you right along. Your job as a sailor is to keep it from overpowering you. You don't get to be boss of the wind. All you can do is come along for the ride, preferably in a way that's not going to tear you to pieces."

He shielded his hand against the glare on the water. "There's a great metaphor for this. It probably involves a tiger. Hang on a minute, almost got it."

"If you're going to ride one," Tristan said, "make sure you don't let go?"

"Nah, that's no good. Forget it, let's just pretend I explained it using tigers. Now then, Alden, when you're sailing, where's the best place to have the wind?"

Alden shrugged. "At your back?"

"Heh! Hardly. Not unless you fancy getting clubbed in half by a runaway boom. And that's if you know how to wing the jib. If not, your mainmast is sitting right behind the jib sucking up all its wind. Not too efficient, eh? What you want is wind in both sails. That means running at an angle."

There was much, much more of this, most of it gibberish Tristan could hardly begin to absorb. After several days of lectures and lessons, she began to despair: Jack might not be wear-your-skin crazy, but she feared he spoke an English only he could understand. They'd hitched their wagon to a loser, a madman. Every day they spent on the pier, skin burning and peeling in the late summer sun, she felt that much further from Hawaii.

Then he took them out on the water.

He untied all the lines, started the engine with a bulky key that clearly wasn't standard-issue, and motored them out of the marina. At a clear berth from the rock breakwaters, he cut the engine, leaving the sails down as he let the wind straighten the boat.

"Out of the way, damn it," he said, guiding Laura ungently from the sails. "Think of it like a sex club. You don't get to touch until you've watched."

He reeled up the main's halyard, sail flapping in the wind, and tied off the line. The boat pulled forward, cutting into the chop; Tristan braced herself. Jack trimmed the main, angling them against the wind, and set to work on the jib. The sails flapped madly. He worked with the assured snap of someone who's spent years honing their expertise. Within moments, he calmed the sails. The ship struck southeast, straight for the red rise of the Golden Gate Bridge.

"Pretty easy, right?" he hollered.

"Oh sure," Tristan yelled into the wind. "As easy as crashing into a bridge."

He loosened the main. "What you don't want is all this flapping. Is there any situation where flapping's a good thing? Flap your gums, balls flapping in the breeze. Those of us in the know call it luffing, and it's a good way to ruin your sails."

He demonstrated how to tighten the main just to the point where it ceased flapping. He loosened it again and beckoned Tristan over. "Give it a shot. You probably won't dump us overboard. And if you do, the sharks have probably already eaten."

She laughed hollowly and took up the rigging. The line pulled hard. She pulled back, tightening the sail. Its flapping shrank in volume but increase in speed until it was a single long noise. Then it smoothed and she could hear the hull slicing over the sea.

"Well done!" Jack smacked her on the back. "Who said women were bad luck on boats?"

Tristan grinned. The wind ripped at her hair. Spray misted from the prow. Sunlight glanced from the downtown windows. Her heart thumped with the power of a task overcome. Alden laughed and joined them.

"Can I try?"

"I dunno," Jack said. "Think you got what it takes to wrestle the sea?"

He let them play with the rigging for three hours, taking over whenever they began to drift too far or the wind shifted too drastically. Laura declined her turn, watching the sea and the shores instead. For the better part of an hour, soaked by mist, battered by wind, enthralled with the boat's clumsy responses to her clumsier maneuvers, Tristan forgot the world had ever ended.

At last, Jack took back over and turned around, showing them how to work against the wind. At the mouth of the marina, he struck the sails and used the engine to navigate back to the dock.

They barbecued fresh fish in the parking lot and boiled pasta. Jack charred the fish skins black, the pepper searing Tristan's nose, and forked the meat onto paper plates. She drained the spaghetti and dumped in one of their two jars of alfredo.

"Went great out there today," Jack said around a mouthful of hot whitefish. "You take to sailing like a fish to whatever it is fish live in."

"When do you think we'll be ready to set sail?"

"Couple weeks? This is insane, you know. You won't know hell-all about navigation. You better pray to Poseidon I don't die of scurvy mid-trip, or you'll be more screwed than a thirteen-year-old's beanbag chair."

They sailed for hours every day. When they weren't at sea, they struck out at the shops around the marina, gathering up any food they could eat without any cooking. Jack guessed it might take them three weeks to make Hawaii under ideal conditions. Another week or two if there were storms or they missed it the first time past. A restlessness coiled and grew in Tristan's stomach. Jack combed the other boats for analog gear: maps, stopwatches, compasses, a sextant, a barometer. They collected bottled water and fishing gear and lifejackets.

They set a date. Before Tristan knew it, it was time to go.

Laura asked her on a walk on the eve of their departure. The night was cool, still. A stray dog trotted down the street, nails clicking.

"We're really doing this?" Laura said from under the trees lining the marina.

"I didn't spend the last three weeks trimming jibs just to get this glorious tan."

"It's been so quiet here. Maybe we should stay."

"What are we going to do when the Trader Joe's runs out of garbanzos?"

"Move to one of the other thousand Trader Joe's in this state?"

Tristan shrugged. "How long until all the old things are broken and gone? Five years? Ten? I don't want to wait until I'm desperate to start learning how to live."

Laura scuffed the sidewalk. "And you trust Jack to not gut and scale us the second we can't see land."

"We stopped keeping watch like three days after we got here. He's had a million chances to butcher us."

"I suppose if he gets the ocean madness, I can just shoot him." Laura laughed. "Leaving us adrift with no fucking clue how to get home."

"That's the spirit."

They made the last of their preparations with the dawn. Jack had found a tri-corner captain's hat, which he donned before gunning the engine.

"And now begins the first journey of the Fool's Errand." He grinned back at the others. "I rechristened the ship, by the way. I know it's tradition to bust a bottle of champagne, but I reckon a new era calls for new traditions. We'll drink it instead."

"Can I have some?" Alden said.

"Of course!" Jack said. "There's no law at sea!"

They hove across the waters. Gulls soared beside them, cawing foul. The ship glided past silent Alcatraz toward the red span of the bridge. Its shadow engulfed them. Tristan whooped.

Jack turned and winked. He angled the boat southward. Beneath the wind, a vast hum sounded in Tristan's bones. She scanned the patchy skies, but couldn't find the jet.

Laura stumbled back into Tristan's hip, knocking her against the cabin. "Oh my God."

Tristan swore, righting herself before the pitching waves could toss her to the deck. Laura shrank into the cabin wall. Tristan followed her gaze west.

A black orb hung in the sky, as massive as a moon. For a crazed moment, Tristan thought it was the moon, inbound to dash the Earth into dust—but the object held steady, miles out to shore, engines humming for miles and miles. Tristan was too frozen to scream.

13

There above the Rogers' farm. Shawn's hand clawed into Ness' shoulder. "No way."

"They're coming for the canister," Ness murmured.

"What canister? What they?"

"The aliens. The aliens who gave everyone the Panhandler." Ness didn't dare move. "Could it have been an accident? The infection? Wait, couldn't be. There's no way the virus would kill humans unless it was designed for us."

Down the mountain, the creature settled onto the lawn and turned in a slow semicircle, two meaty tentacles raised above its head.

"That means they're hostile," Ness said.

"The alien invaders?" Shawn's voice cracked. "No fucking shit."

"Aliens wouldn't necessarily come here to kill us."

"Then why else would they fly all that way? To sell us space insurance?"

Two more creatures disgorged from the craft. One spread its tentacles and tipped back its head to the sun, like a man receiving the prophet's word.

"Maybe they're here to tell us the good news," Ness said. "The fact they haven't disintegrated the two of us implies either they haven't seen us, or they don't care about us."

Shawn slicked sweat from his forehead. "So what do we do?"

"I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know? You're the one going all Sherlock Holmes up in here."

A prickle climbed Ness' neck, as if a hungry tick were on its way to the safety of his hair. He shivered in the August heat. "How should I know? What about you? All that time you spent dreaming about the end of the world, you never thought about what to do if you were attacked by crazy aliens?"

"That's enough." Shawn's voice was calmly forceful, a brick wrapped in terrycloth. "If you're gonna sit there shaking like Elvis' left hip, I'll tell you what we're going to do. Nothing."

"Nothing? What do you mean, nothing?"

"This is our land. Our home. We're staying."

Far down the slope, one of the aliens turned their direction, two ropy tentacles held over its head. The other two beings scuttled around the side of the house, disappearing from sight. Ness held his breath. If he could have held his heartbeat, he'd have done that too. The first alien turned and followed the others.

Shawn turned to look at him. "You don't want to just give up our home, do you?"

"Our ancestral estate? The one with the dirt floors and the shit-pit?"

"Our shit-pit. That we built with our own hands. If they want it, they can try to come take it."

Ness wanted to object that they had already, in essence, taken the entire world, but that would be a rational argument, and Shawn wasn't exactly approaching this from a rational perspective. And how could he? Down the valley, life that wasn't born on Earth was strolling around one of Earth's many nondescript patches of grass.

"We could run away," Ness tried.

"Yeah? You know someplace that's guaranteed alien-free? How do we know these guys won't fly back to the mothership in five minute and leave us in peace?"

Panic curdled Ness' nerves. He wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. Why didn't Shawn just pack up their stuff and drive them away? Why should Ness have to convince him they could always come back later, or build a new home? How was it his responsibility to not be the dumb one? It was overwhelming. Too big to grapple.

Even in the moment, he knew he was falling back into old patterns. But that only made him want to give up more.

"Fine."

Shawn grinned and adjusted his binoculars. With the jet engine spooled down, Ness could once more hear the buzz of the flies. Something tickled his leg. He jerked his foot, slapping at it, then froze and stared downhill. Insects whirred in the heat. Shawn shifted occasionally, wiping sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. Ness tried to think through the implications of the ship in the front yard and its alien crew in the back yard, but even in the shade, the heat seemed to boil his brain. He returned to the same premise over and over—there were aliens, and they didn't like us—but the fuse never burned any further than that, never sparked an explosion of epiphany. The solution was always the same simple thing. Get somewhere the aliens weren't, and stay there.

An hour later, the three beings returned to the front yard, gestured at each other for a minute, climbed into the ship, and launched into the hot blue sky.

"Told you." Shawn stood and stretched, grimacing at his stiffness. "Now don't you have a ditch to dig or something?"

Ness had planned to smoke more meat that afternoon, but couldn't stomach the idea of sending up a big white signal screaming "HERE I AM." Instead, he wandered the slopes with his shotgun, pretending to hunt pheasants while he watched the skies. At dusk, Shawn stoked the evening's cookfire and Ness strained his ears for any rumble of engines. Shawn grinned at the tinder, jabbing it with a brass poker taken from the Rogers'. Ness liked to think he could hide his anxiety, but somehow Shawn always knew.

The creatures stayed gone the next day. Ness fiddled with the radio, heard nothing but static. It would have been the perfect time to start working on the bow he'd meant to build—bows were silent, and their ammunition easily manufactured—but that was going to be a complicated project, one he didn't want to interrupt should the invaders return. Instead, he pieced together an atlatl, a lever with a small notch or basket at the end that was used to throw spears with extra strength and distance.

After three days, he began to doubt what they'd seen. Perhaps it had been a prank. A bizarre hallucination. Shotgun over his shoulder, he dropped down to the Rogers' farm. The yellow grass was scorched in a wide circle. Prints marred the dirt: deep gouges from their pointed, crablike legs; shallow furrows left by their squirming, eel-like limbs.

He was experimenting with using pine sap as an air-tight sealant for the chinks in the walls when Volt charged into camp in a blur of orange limbs and leapt into the food cellar.

"Your cat takes after you," Shawn laughed. Ness scowled at his sappy hands. Downhill, an alarm-wire jangled. The mirth drained from Shawn's face. "Probably just a raccoon."

"One of those day-raccoons." Ness rose. "I'm with the cat."

He grabbed his shotgun from the corner and hurried down the ladder to the dirt cellar. It was cool, dark. Another alarm jangled. Shawn slid halfway down the ladder and silently pulled the door closed, sealing them in a deep gloom. Before Ness could make fun of him for freaking out, twigs snapped from the edge of the camp.

Ness breathed through his mouth. Something heavy dragged through the needles and leaves. The cabin hinges squeaked. Footsteps thumped the dirt, muffled yet harsh, far too rapid to be human or mammal. A second set of steps rattled the boards of the horizontal door to the cellar.

Ness tasted bile. Shawn raised his pistol. Dirt sifted through the gaps around the door. Under a card table topped with boxes of crackers and oatmeal, Volt's tail whipped side to side.

The low, thoughtful hum of a truck engine drifted from downhill. The steps ceased. Shadows flickered through the gaps. The door rattled. Footsteps pounded back down the hill, fading quickly.

Shawn tipped back his head, mouth agape. They waited in the darkness. Two minutes later, a faraway explosion rattled up the slopes.

"Should we run?" Ness whispered.

"Grab your cat." Shawn took three quick breaths and eased open the door. Sunlight flooded the cellar. Shawn disappeared into daylight. Ness followed him up. The same sharp gouges he'd seen at the Rogers' littered the clearing around the cabin. Shawn gestured uphill. They ran.

Ness didn't glance back until they reached the clearing on the plateau above camp. Down near the Rogers', oily smoke geysered into the air. Shawn didn't stop until they reached the old campsite on the other side of the mountain. Ness was breathing hard, but could have kept going.

"We leave tonight," Shawn said. "Any objections?"

"That we didn't leave three days ago."

"Duly noted."

They took turns napping until evening. Long after sunset, they returned across the ridge to the cabin. When they'd first taken to the mountains, Shawn had insisted they each pack an emergency "Oh Shit" bag full of the basics—food, water, weapons, tools, medicine, a blanket, extra shoes. Now, they grabbed these from the cabin, along with as much extra food and water as they could stuff into their other backpacks. The night hung on to the day's heat, but Ness wore his coat; he didn't have enough space to carry it.

Volt trotted after him up the slopes. On the western side, they descended to the stolen army jeep. Shawn coasted past the trailers and as far into town as he could, then grimaced and turned the key. The battery worked. Headlights off, he threaded through the downtown bars and headed to the main drag.

Ness glanced behind them, wind buffeting through the open roof. "Where are we going?"

"Anywhere they don't got villainous lobsters raining down from the sky."

He hit the highway and flipped on the lights. The road curled between endless hills of yellow grass. Ten minutes later, it descended into Pullman, the college town across the border, once infamous for its campus-wide parties. Blackened bodies twisted from the power poles. As they roared across town, a flashlight blared from the roof of a dorm. Ness scrambled up behind the machine gun and swung around. The flashlight clicked off.

Shawn floored it up a long, steep hill. Pullman disappeared. They drove through a land that had always been empty. The speed-borne wind was cool and smelled like sagebrush and dust. They peeled through a small town, its main street fronted by brick banks and baroque woodwork from the first decades of the 20th century. Within two minutes, they were back in the desert. Dead farms fronted the road now and then, but most of the land was empty dirt scruffed with sage and weeks-dead weeds. After the better part of an hour, the highway split into a T, one road continuing west, the other south.

Shawn stopped in the middle of the intersection and gritted his teeth. "What do you think about Seattle?"

"The likeliest spot in the entire Northwest for villainous lobsters."

Shawn nodded and took the southbound fork. They climbed into a scabland of basalt cliffs. Tumbleweeds clogged barb wire fences. Mice darted across the road. Crickets sang and sang.

It took an hour for the farmland to resume. Signs sprung from the side of the road advertising fresh blueberries and apples and cherries. Vineyards rested in the night.

"I'm about to crash over here," Shawn said. "Your choice as to whether it's into a bed or a guard rail."

"Let me think."

They started down a long and shallow hill. Miles away, the distinct blackness of buildings surrounded a vast river winking in the moonlight. A few miles north of town, Shawn pulled into a motel at a small cluster of buildings: a truck stop, a McDonald's, an ARCO, an actual general store. He gazed up at a sign even bigger than the one at the McDonald's.

"King City? Whoever named this place was full of shit."

Ness frowned at the closed motel doors. Maybe they could break a window? As he tried one handle after another, Shawn strolled into the two-room office that had served as reception, jumped the counter, and walked out with a key to room 237. The room smelled agreeably of dust and sported two full beds. They grabbed their stuff from the jeep. Volt vaulted onto the nearest bed. Shawn turned on the Coleman lantern with a hiss. It sprayed the room with harsh white light and equally harsh shadows.

"Are we going to stay here?" Ness said. "There's a whole town to scavenge down the road."

"Dunno yet." Shawn toweled the sweat from under his arms. "Awfully hot."

"There is a river."

"Yeah, and it flows west. To a part of the country that doesn't look like what's underneath God's bed when He forgets to vacuum for a year."

Ness brushed his teeth and gargled with a mouthful of water. Shawn clicked off the lantern. Ness lay in bed listening for the rumble of engines. Maybe they shouldn't have run at all. Maybe they should have stayed in the mountains of Moscow and accepted whatever fate came their way. It would have been much easier than this drive into the desert of nowhere, the first leg of a search that could go on forever. It was no longer humanity's world. He should have let the government take him after he'd found Tim's body. They would have taken care of him. Brought him somewhere safe. It would have been better than putting in so much work with so little guarantee they'd still be alive next week. What if the aliens kept coming? How long would they have to keep running? Didn't you reach a point where it just wasn't worth it? What if they already had and just didn't know it yet?

In the morning, Shawn was gone. Ness found him in the parking lot smoking a Camel and gazing west. Volt lay sprawled in sunlight that was already far too warm.

"Want to show you something," Shawn said.

He led Ness up a hill behind the motel. Dust and cheatgrass seeds popped with every step. At the top, Shawn pointed back north and to the west.

"You see that?"

Ness accepted Shawn's binoculars. White clouds rose from the plain. At first Ness thought it was smoke, that the city was burning, but instead of a field of flames, the clouds rose from a cluster of squat round vents.

"Know what that is?" Shawn said.

"I don't know."

"'Cause those don't look like the cooling towers you're used to."

"Cooling towers?" Ness said. "Like, a nuclear power plant?"

"Not just any nuke plant. Hanford. The one that built the plutonium we dropped on Nagasaki." Shawn's lighter flicked. Tobacco roiled from his mouth. "And it's still running."

14

The boat rose and fell with the waves. The dark orb hung in perfect stillness, the vibration of its engines shaking the meat on Tristan's bones.

"What is that?" Alden said.

"An incredibly large object," Jack said. "Personally, I've made it my life's mission to stay away from those."

Tristan reached out for the side of the cabin. Spray misted her face. "It's a ship, right? Do you guys hear its engines?"

"Reckon so," Jack said. "Never knew my guts had ears."

Laura shrank to the deck, hugging her knees. "They're aliens."

"Well, that's one possibility."

"That thing's the size of an island! What else could it be?"

The jib began to flap. Jack absently tightened its thin rope. "An actual island? Maybe Hawaii heard our pleas and decided to come to us. Everyone's always going to it, but when does it get a holiday?"

Dark, sporelike specks fell away from the craft, angling north, south, and directly inbound. Tristan glanced back at the towers of the city. "I think we should turn around."

"Dunno," Jack said. "Those things will be on us before we make landfall."

"They'll be on us either way. We're totally exposed out here. I don't want to wait around to be snatched up like the last beer at a party."

"It doesn't matter." Laura's voice was a monotone with a glassy edge of despair. "You can't run. You can't hide."

"You don't know that," Tristan said.

"Look at that ship. All those jets. It doesn't matter what we do. In five minutes, we're dead."

Tristan glanced at Alden, who was mesmerized by the vessel, then knelt in front of Laura and jabbed a finger at her face. "We're all going to cry until we can't move—once we're safe and away. For now, keep your fear away from my brother."

"Hell," Jack said. He angled the jib. The boat pulled southward. By the time it swung its prow to the high glass buildings, the first of the jets streaked overhead, dark wedges that left corkscrew contrails across the sky. Tristan hunkered against the cabin, as if that would hide her. The jets flew past and banked above the city, circling.

Jack zigzagged between south and southeast, fighting the inland wind. The shore grew, a thin strip of jumbled rocks fronting stone steps up to bright white buildings. A second wave of craft floated from the main ship. These were fatter, lumbering like bumblebees. The sailboat ground into the rocks as the first of the followup ships buzzed into the city.

Tristan flung their backpacks ashore. Alden hung onto the railing, jarred by the waves, leaning over the side to examine the water. Tristan took a deep breath and swung over the side. The water was witheringly cold. Her feet struck the bottom; she found she could stand.

"Come on!"

Jack followed her down. He and Tristan held up their arms to Alden. He leaped and they half-caught him, holding his head clear of the water. Laura closed her eyes and flung herself over the rail. She emerged from the water, coughing. Jack grabbed her by the shirt and hauled her up the broken rocks.

Tristan scooped up her pack. One of the bumbleships veered from its path and headed toward the grounded sailboat.

She ran up the steps, shoes squirting seawater. Engines thrummed overhead, paused above the plaza just ahead of them, and descended on a cushion of air.

"Might I suggest a different route," Jack said. He dashed south.

"Dude, they are aliens," Alden said. "They look like if an octopus had sex with the aliens from Aliens!"

Creatures surged from the landed ship. Balloonish heads projected from ovoid bodies. Sticklike legs clattered over the concrete square. Tentacles dove into pouches and waggled furiously at the others around them. The things streamed south, following the humans into the city.

Glass-fronted shops faced the street, staring blankly as Tristan and the others pounded along. A torso lay under the wheels of a delivery van. The arm had been gnawed to tendon and bone. Skyscrapers climbed in the north. Tristan didn't recognize the streets. Jack zagged down the roads as if he were still steering the boat against the wind.

"Where are we going?" Tristan said.

"I was letting my legs decide that one," Jack panted.

The clatter of claws echoed behind them. "I think they're gaining."

"Well, it's not exactly fair, is it? They've got ten legs and we've just got the two."

The clean white stores shifted to brick walkup apartments. The streets narrowed. They could try a car, but even if they found one with keys, the batteries would no doubt be dead. The sewers? No time to pry up a manhole. They needed to get out of sight. Get lost in a maze. They swerved down a back street behind two apartments blocks.

"There." Tristan pointed to a corroded fire escape, its lower ladder stuck some nine feet above the ground. "We get inside, go out the front of the building, try to lose them."

"Worth a shot." Jack sprinted toward the ladder. He knelt, laced his hands into a basket, and nodded at Alden. "Ready for a jump, chief?"

"No sweat," Alden said. "I know what to do if I fall."

"Scream?" Jack grinned. Alden stepped into his hands. Jack boosted him up, arms straining. Tristan got beneath her brother and pushed on his butt. His arms waggled. He grabbed the lower rung of the ladder and pulled, one of his feet kicking Jack's head. Jack pushed him up by the feet and Alden crawled up onto the platform.

Jack beckoned at Tristan and crouched down. She stepped into his hands, grabbing his shoulders. He grunted, lifted. She grabbed at the ladder. It was deeply pitted. Rust scraped her hand. The ladder creaked, jolted.

"Reckon you might want to hurry," Jack said, voice pinched.

She scrambled up the ladder. It groaned and dropped an inch beneath her. Alien feet chattered from the entrance to the street. Tristan leapt from the ladder to the landing. The ladder gave way with a shriek. Its legs hit the street and it tilted like a falling tree, hitting the pavement with a sharp clang.

Beneath her, Laura leapt and leapt, her upraised hands feet below the platform. "Help me up!"

Creatures flooded the far end of the street. They'd be on the apartment in seconds. Tristan turned and kicked in the apartment window. She used her pack to sweep the jagged top edge clean of glass and shoved Alden inside.

"Let me up!" Laura screamed. Rust flaked from Tristan's feet, speckling Laura's upturned face. "You bitch!"

Jack bolted away from the oncoming horde. Laura turned and found herself alone. Tristan tumbled through the broken window. The apartment smelled of faded death. Filtered sunlight touched the avocado-colored carpet. She ran for the entry. From the street, Laura screamed, a rising howl. It cut off before it reached its peak.

"What about Jack and Laura?" Alden said.

"Come on." Tristan grabbed his shoulder and pulled him through the front door. Their footsteps echoed in the cramped stairwell. The lobby's tiles were grimy and gray. The street was empty. Jets rumbled in the distance. She sprinted toward what she thought was east, pulled her bag over her shoulder, and pawed out her pistol. The grip was tacky with seawater.

"We left them," Alden said, voice soft with understanding.

"There was no time. Those things were right there."

"But they're dead now."

"Probably. And if we'd stayed for them, we'd probably be dead, too." Anger shuddered across the panic that had taken her body ever since she'd seen the massive vessel hanging over the Pacific. "But we're not. Because we kept moving."

She jogged down another side street. Two cars sat smashed at its center. Broken glass ground under Tristan's shoes. She emerged onto a broad avenue of shoe stores and coffee shops and wine bars. A squadron of aliens scrambled down the street. One pointed a tentacle. The others rushed straight toward the two humans.

Tristan leveled the pistol and pulled the trigger. It clicked impotently. Twice, three times. Worthless. Dampened in her leap from the boat. She stuck it in her pocket and ran.

Dozens of footsteps clattered behind her. A jet ripped across the sky, pursued by the scream of its own engines. The footsteps closed, striking the pavement in a spider-dance of chitinous points. Alden's foot hit a pothole. He dropped hard and stayed down.

Tristan closed her eyes. She whirled, putting herself between her brother and the monsters, and formed her kung fu fighting stance, left hand extended in a guard, right held close to her chest to strike.

"Come on!" she screamed. "Come and take him!"

The aliens slowed, fanning out. Their swollen, irisless eyes stayed level as their legs churned beneath them. Tentacles darted forward as if tasting the air. Tristan screamed again, a wordless cry, and charged.

An alien extended its tentacle. A canister gleamed in its treaded grip. The canister hissed, engulfing Tristan in pale mist. Her limbs felt soggy, as heavy as drenched clothes; she fell in stages, flopping at the aliens' pointed feet.

Her head swam. One of the creatures clicked forward, tentacles snaking smoothly from its body. Her world went dark.

15

Ness stared across the yellow hills at the steaming vents of Hanford. "What do you think?"

Shawn spit in the dust. "I want to know what you think, Sherlock."

"Do we want to live somewhere with power?"

"I don't give a damn about having working alarm clocks. What I want to know is whether we can use it to fight back."

"Well, then the question is who's running it," Ness said slowly. "Some vestige of the government? Real scientists? Or scavengers like us?"

"What's it matter?"

"The government is apt to blow us up for coming too close to their high-security nuclear power plant," Ness said. "Scavengers are apt to blow us up because they don't know how to run a high-security nuclear power plant."

Shawn huffed smoke from his nostrils. "We got aliens crawling around the hills blowing people up. I'm not exactly afraid of a few leftover bureaucrats huddled in a silo. If it turns out it's a bunch of schoolteachers and auto mechanics in there, we'll be on our merry way."

Ness rubbed the gunk from his eyes. "I wish we had coffee."

"You know where they'll have coffee? The same place they're building nuclear bombs."

They ate a breakfast of smoked pheasant, Tostitos, and a warm two-liter of Pepsi. Ness called in Volt. Shawn busted into the truck stop and returned with a map. The plant was across the river and twenty miles back the way they'd come; they'd have to drive through town and swing back. Ness was grateful for the breeze generated by the jeep. It had to be nearly ninety degrees already. He sweated steadily, underwear sticking to his crotch. Sage and weeds lined the highway into town. Tall brown hills rose to the south. Water towers and grain elevators rose from the sprawl of houses and strip malls. Spent brass glittered in the parking lot of the community college. Bodies matted the asphalt, limbs twisted, skin mummified by the endless sun.

The highway turned west up a long hill. For two miles, the land was scorched black, fields barren, houses burned to the foundation. They crossed the Columbia, blue and steady, a cool draft rising from the mile-wide waters. The highway spit them onto a northbound main drag fronted by foreign-food restaurants, pubs, and gas stations. One of these was a blown-out crater that had strewn rubble and dirt across the road. Shawn detoured around it and continued north.

Yellow yards gave way to yellow fields. Hot air tumbled through the open jeep. Ness saw no obvious signs of life. If there were people left, they were waiting out the worst of the day in basements and shade.

The wasteland lasted for miles, a brown-yellow moonscape mocked by the blue river flowing a few hundred yards to the right. After a ways the road peeled from the river into a sea of broken black rock, clumped yellow grass, and crumbly gray dust. Ness could see why they'd built the plant here. If anything went wrong, there was nothing here to ruin.

A tall rectangle rose from the desert, its top third white, its lower two-thirds gray. The jeep blew past a sign: "COLUMBIA GENERATING STATION." After another mile, the road forked. The way to the plant was blocked by a chain link fence. A guard station waited beside the road. Dust grimed the dark windows. Shawn rolled to a stop, chuckling, and leaned past Ness.

"Yeah, I'll take two nukes and a side of unprocessed uranium. You want anything, Ness?"

The station window swung open. An automatic rifle poked through, held by a man in slacks and a collared shirt. "Step out of the jeep."

"Whoa," Shawn said. "We're not here to—"

The man raised the weapon to shoulder height and sighted down the barrel. "Out."

Shawn tightened his jaw. His eyes flicked toward the jeep-mounted machine gun. He popped the door and hopped out into the blazing sun. The jeep door scorched Ness' hand. A rumble permeated the air, steady and deep, as if the desert itself were growling at the intruders. The guard opened a door in the side of the station and exited, gun trained on Shawn. He held a radio to his mouth.

"I have two stray dogs here," he said. "Should I escort them to the pound?"

The radio futzed. "Affirmative."

"Come on," the man said to Shawn.

"Can I bring my cat?" Ness said. "It's really hot."

The man frowned. Volt sprawled in Ness' seat, blinking sleepily. The man raised his radio. "I got a cat, too. A literal one."

The radio was silent for a couple seconds. "Whatever, Cam. Just bring them in here."

Cam got a pad from his pocket and pushed a button. The chain link gate buzzed and separated. Ness smiled—it had been so long since he'd seen anything automated. Cam beckoned with his gun. Ness called to Volt, who licked her own ruff, then bounded over the side of the jeep and followed.

Cam walked behind them, tersely guiding them through the outbuildings surrounding the power plant. Shoes scuffed the cracked asphalt. Cam halted them at a steel door and radioed inside. Another man opened the door, also in slacks and dress shirt. Frigid air raised the hair on Ness' skin. For a moment, he completely forgot he was a prisoner.

"Have you searched them?" the man asked Cam. Cam shook his head. The man raised his eyebrows at Shawn. "Spread them."

"Spread them?" Shawn said. "What are you guys, accountants?"

"We're the guys who you do what we say."

"Got it. Accountants who watch too many movies."

The man pressed his lips together and leveled his pistol. "Spread your arms and legs. Cam, pat him down."

Shawn gave the man a sharky stare and lifted his arms from his sides. Cam's search produced a Swiss army knife and three jackknives. The other man turned the gun on Ness.

"Your turn."

Shawn went still. "Why don't you point that gun away from my brother before I double-windsor it around your throat?"

The man swung the weapon at Shawn. "You're trespassing."

"This is your nuclear power plant, is it? Mind if I see your deed?"

"It's okay," Ness said.

The man gestured with his gun. "Turn around and put your hands behind your back."

"Maybe you misplaced it," Shawn said. Ness' stomach churned. He wanted to run. Shawn took a step forward, leering. "You got it stashed at the bank? Should we take your car or mine?"

"Turn around, shut up, and put your hands behind your back."

"What happens when I don't?"

The man centered the pistol between Shawn's eyes. "Then we get a real good look at what's wrong with your brain."

Shawn took another step forward. The man's hand flinched.

"Earth has been invaded by aliens," Ness blurted.

The man didn't glance over. "Count of three, kid."

"One." Shawn took another step, his head inches from the gun. "Two."

"They look like lobsters," Ness said. "Or octopuses. Octopodes. They're the ones who brought the virus. They wanted our planet and didn't want to have to fight us for it. That's my guess. It's not like I've Skyped with them."

"Stop," Cam said. Worms of doubt crawled beneath his face. "Are you serious?"

"We're from where it started. Moscow."

Cam's eyes widened. "Are you spies?"

Shawn rolled his eyes. "Idaho, dumbass. And last time we saw it, it was crawling with space-lobsters."

"Oh, stop it," the other man said.

Cam's brows darkened. "It's plausible, isn't it, Leonard?"

"Plausible? Do you know how long it would take an alien species to reach Earth?"

"If they started from the nearest star? A minimum of roughly four years and three months. There are 135 known stars and star-like objects within a twenty light-year trip to Earth. I've had dogs live longer than that."

"Really?" Ness said. "I knew cats lived that long, but—"

"That's enough!" Leonard said. "This is nothing but a ruse, Cam. Cuff them and call in Roan."

Cam frowned. Ness' skin crawled. He had no way to prove it. He would just sound like a fool. A liar or a maniac. He crossed his wrists behind his back and stared into nothing.

"They're flying these vee-shaped jets," Shawn said. "But they got VTOL capability. We watched one touch straight down on the neighbor's farm. Ness, you know why they were there. Tell 'em."

Ness blinked. "Well, I don't know."

"You sure as hell knew when you were telling me. Come on, who cares if they think you're a nutsack? You might be the only one on the planet who knows the score—leastways, the only human."

Ness' mouth was dry. "A few months ago, I found a canister. It was made of this weird metal and it had all these scorch marks on it. I think they were burns from atmospheric entry. I think it spread the virus to the water supply. I don't know if it was on a timed release, or if it landed in the mountains and got flushed down with the meltwater. But the aliens came back for it."

Leonard's pistol drooped. "This is patently absurd."

"No one ever discovered where the Panhandler originated, did they?" Cam said.

"It was the flu. A hog farm. Excessive proximity of livestock."

"Oh please. That was entirely speculative. The tests I saw indicated no genetic link between porcine flu and the Panhandler."

Leonard rolled his eyes. "Yet it still strikes me as more plausible than some yokel's claim that it was the opening salvo in a campaign of interstellar warfare."

Cam turned to Ness. "When did these beings arrive?"

"A few days ago," Ness said. "They came to our cabin yesterday. That's why we ran."

"I don't know what to make of this," Cam said to Leonard. "But it isn't impossible. On the off chance the fate of mankind is at stake, I, for one, would feel more comfortable passing that decision on to Roan."

Leonard narrowed his eyes. He smiled wryly. "I suppose she can't think any less of us."

"There's that, too."

Leonard beckoned down the hall. "This way. No more talk. Any talking will be answered with shooting."

Ness looked to Shawn, who shrugged and followed Cam down the beige hallway. Ness scooped up Volt. Cam opened a door to a windowless office. Monitors and computer towers hummed from desks.

Ness stopped four feet inside the room and stared in wonder. "Do these have internet?"

"Oh sure," Cam said. "It's the rest of the world that isn't hooked up too well."

"Don't touch anything," Leonard said. "We'll be back."

The door closed and locked. Shawn slung himself into an office chair, spinning himself in circles. Ness bent over a keyboard. Volt climbed up the slope of his shoulders and came to a rest at the base of his neck, purring. Ness booted up Chrome, which kicked back a connection error, but the local network showed dozens of links.

"These things have power."

"Sweet," Shawn said. "They got Minesweeper?"

"This can't be the only part of the world that's still running. If they've got their own servers, we could get news from outside."

"Great. You'll be hit on by fifty-year-old men again in no time."

Ness straightened. Shawn dug something from between his front teeth and scraped it back off into his mouth. Ness turned away. "You don't seem very concerned."

Shawn didn't look up. "Should I be?"

"Men with guns have locked us in a room a few hundred yards from an active nuclear fission reaction."

"Yeah, but they're pussies."

"They have guns!"

"They could have a Sherman tank. There'd still be a pussy in the turret."

"You are so stupid." Ness' pulse thundered. He wanted to pace, but he had to sit down or risk toppling over. "You appear genuinely unconcerned about our imprisonment. There are no laws anymore. We could be shot! Shot and buried in the desert. They wouldn't even have to leave their back yard to do it."

"Save some of that aggression for them," Shawn laughed. He kicked his legs, spinning his chair. "We have a shootout with the army and you're worried about getting locked in a cubicle farm by a pair of office boners? If I kick down that door, will you quit hyperventilating?"

Ness was too frustrated to speak. He stewed instead, glaring at the geometric screensaver bouncing between the monitor's corners. Why had Shawn acted like a jerk at the gate? If they'd announced themselves officially, they probably wouldn't even be in trouble. And now he thought it meant nothing that they were locked up here. Ness wanted to die and melt from the earth. He didn't want to follow Shawn, but he didn't know where else he could go. The serene green mountains felt very far away.

Roan arrived twenty minutes later, a woman in late youth or early middle age, brown hair ponytailed behind her head. She had the shoulders of a pole-vaulter, the gait of a leopard, and a face as incapable of expression as an iguana. She wore jeans and a tank top and carried no guns and no papers. She gave one look at Ness and honed in on Shawn.

"Why did you come to Hanford?"

Shawn slung his boots up on the desk. "I wanted to glow in the dark."

"You drove straight to the gates in a US Army jeep. Do you represent the US Army?"

"I won the car in a drinking contest."

Her expression remained as flat as a tile. "Is your name Shawn Hook?"

"Nuh uh," Shawn said. "I want to talk to your boss."

"I am the boss."

"I find that hard to believe."

"Believe what you want."

"Yes, that's his name," Ness said. "And I'm—"

Shawn whirled on him. "Don't you tell her that. Don't you tell her my name."

"Who cares? I thought we came here to help."

"Well, that was before they started acting like dicks."

Roan had remained inscrutable as they talked. "You say you left Moscow, Idaho after you were attacked by aliens."

Shawn leaned back, springy chair creaking. "We never said that."

She nodded. "There were no aliens."

"Oh, there were aliens. But they never attacked us."

With no apparent anger, Roan drove her heel into Shawn's unbalanced chair, tipping it. He dropped straight to the hard, tight carpet.

"What the hell was that?" he spat.

She didn't stand. "To help you focus and respect our time together."

Shawn's mouth pulled toward his ears in something that wasn't a smile. It was an expression Ness had seen many times before, too often from far too close, and he wanted to call out, to warn the woman. Instead, he froze, watching as closely as if he were a rolling camera, as if his recording the memory were a vital act, as important as if he had actually interceded.

Shawn rocked to his feet, cocked his elbow, and swung at Roan's face.

For the first time, her expression changed. She grimaced, eyes narrowing in a flinch. She spun her chair to her right, rotating her head away from Shawn's incoming fist; simultaneously, she raised her left hand to intercept, fingers pointed straight up, the back of her hand facing Shawn. As their wrists met, she pulled her hand back as if brushing her hair, guiding his fist past her head. She hooked her hand around his wrist and yanked.

Shawn's momentum plowed him straight into the floor. He groaned. Still holding his wrist, Roan wrestled his arm behind him, dropped her knee into his back, and punched his turned face three times. He shrieked, groaned, went silent.

She stood, chest rising shallowly, and turned on Ness. "Your name."

"Ness. Ness Hook."

"Why did you come to Hanford?"

"Because we saw the steam."

"That's it? I will advise you to stay away from Yellowstone."

Ness blushed. "I don't know what our plan was. I guess to tell you what's happening and see if you wanted to fight back. Shawn knew this place builds bombs."

She stared at him, reptilian. "What do you say these aliens look like?"

"Spiders. Or octopuses. They have all these sharp, pointy legs and a lot of rubbery, eely arms. Big heads."

"Have you fought one of them?"

He shook his head. "They're bigger than us. All we've done is run and hide."

Wordless, Roan turned for the door.

"What happens next?" Ness said. "What if Shawn's hurt?"

"Pound on the door if he dies."

She locked the door with a click. Computers hummed. Ness sat there, head awhirl, then crouched beside Shawn. He couldn't bring himself to reach for a pulse. He tilted his ear to listen for breathing. Shawn's breath was the damp, shallow huff of someone breathing around a thick tongue. Ness immediately felt stupid. Of course he was alive. He'd only been punched. With a fist, not a chainsaw. Ness sat in a chair and waited.

Shawn stirred. He pushed himself to his knees and cried out. He drew his right arm to his chest and held it there as he sat up. "Where'd she go?"

"I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know?"

"She walked out that door a couple minutes back. For all I know, she hijacked an alien jet to Pluto."

Shawn stood, wincing, breath hissing between his teeth. "Why didn't you do something?"

"Like what?"

"Fucking hit her! You're supposed to have my back, Ness."

"Did you see how fast she moved? Probably not, considering she was making an omelette of your brains."

Shawn scowled at him, shoulders bunching, then grimaced, his face draining of color. He slumped against the wall and closed his eyes. "Well, that's great. How am I supposed to get out of here when I got a busted arm? How you gonna just let that happen?"

Ness glared at the floor. "Quit whining."

"What?"

"I said quit whining." Adrenaline flooded from Ness' center. "I'm sick of it. You're always trying to start fights. Well, this time someone fought back. That's why your arm's hurt. Deal with it."

"Look at you," Shawn sneered. "Pretty easy to be tough when I can't hardly walk."

"Oh, did she hurt your leg, too?"

"Why don't you shut up and let me think."

"About what?" Ness said. "Your daring escape?"

"Damn right."

"Okay. You let me know once you've got a plan."

Shawn smirked and shook his head at the floor. Footsteps shuffled down the hall. A chair scraped outside the door. A man coughed. Lights buzzed. After a while, Ness curled up on the floor beneath a desk. Volt padded over, purring, and stretched out across his neck.

The door clicked hollowly, awakening him. A well-built man stood in the doorway. A machine gun hung from his neck.

"Bathroom time," the man said.

Shawn remained in his chair. "Don't have to go."

"Then you'll be pleased to know we have a bucket." He glanced at Ness. "How about you?"

Ness stood. The man let him out and locked Shawn in, leading Ness to a clean white bathroom, which Ness used without incident. Back in their office-prison, Ness and Shawn sat in silence for another twenty minutes until an older man entered with steaming bowls of macaroni and cheese. After days of dry, cold food, Ness set right to it.

Shawn didn't touch it. "My arm hurts."

The older man didn't look up. "I'll let someone know."

"Might be broken."

The man blinked over his glasses at Shawn. "Then you have suffered it with admirable stoicism."

He left. As the door closed, Ness glimpsed the man with the gun seated across the hall, a black e-reader perched on his knees. Shawn stared dully at the door. Ness saved the last of his macaroni for Volt, who licked the cheese off his plastic spoon and chewed up a few bites of pasta before licking the bowl bare.

Shawn sulked. Ness slept. That was their routine for two days: periodic marches to the bathroom, two meals a day (including a can of water-packed tuna for Volt), and idle fiddling on the computers, with Shawn playing Minesweeper while Ness poked around the local network. Most of the files were password-protected. Many of those that weren't were daily planners, now defunct, and spreadsheets that made no sense. At least it killed the time.

Two days later, the lock clacked. Ness' stomach rumbled in response, but Roan entered. "Come on."

"Think I'd rather stay," Shawn said.

Ness picked up Volt and went into the hall. The man with the gun was there as always. Roan went to close the door. Shawn sighed dramatically and joined them.

Roan walked without sound. She took them to the front door. Sunlight blared. Heat pounded Ness' skin. He groaned, then glanced quickly at Roan, fearful she might strike him for speaking out of turn. She didn't acknowledge him.

Dust billowed from their feet. The black pavement shimmered with silvery promises of water that disappeared as they approached. Roan took them inside the tall building with the whitecapped roof and striated gray base. Steam rose from two clusters of squat cooling vents, while pillars of vapor bending in the meager southwestern breeze. Small brown birds chirped from the brush.

The air inside the main building was cold and infused with a chemical tang. The rumble of machinery vibrated in Ness' lungs. Roan took them to an elevator. There had been millions of elevators once. It was possible this was the last.

They wound up in a room that looked ripped from Isaac Asimov's dreams. Gray-blue panels lined the walls, set with a galaxy of buttons, knobs, and lights. Keys sat in switches below round orange button-lights. A flock of L-shaped levers rose from a control bank, their bases bright red, yellow, or blue.

"Is this the main control room?" Ness said in tones meant for a library.

"Indeed," a voice said from behind them. A tall man with a full gray beard stood in front of a chair, the fluorescents gleaming from his glasses and bald scalp. "You're Ness and Shawn?"

"That's right," Shawn said, cutting Ness off.

"I'm Daniel." He gestured to the man beside him, who was taller yet, with thick lips, heavily hooded eyes, and tanned, wind-chapped cheeks. "This is Larsen. Roan tells us you've had a run-in with some unusual visitors."

Ness was far from eager to speak in front of strangers, but his enthusiasm overwhelmed him. "Did you see them, too?"

"We have confirmed their existence," Larsen said grudgingly, as if each word cost him ten dollars.

"Roan tells us you came here with thoughts of dealing with them." Daniel rubbed his hands together. "We'd like to hear your plan."

Ness flushed, his tongue thickening.

"Well," Shawn said. "You dudes make bombs here, right? Nukes?"

The two men glanced at each other. Larsen smiled in disgust. "Hanford's participation in the active production of weapons-grade plutonium ceased in 1987."

"Then what the hell do you do here?"

"At this reactor?" Daniel frowned, stirring his beard with his index finger. "We generate power. The rest of the site is—was—largely dedicated to the cleanup of radioactive materials produced during the plutonium era."

"Was that your big plan?" Larsen said.

"Well." Shawn glanced back at Roan. "Look, I just heard about you all on the History Channel."

"I'm sorry for wasting your time, sirs," Roan said. She turned to the man with the machine gun. "Back to their cell."

"Wait," Ness said. "Do you still have radioactive material here?"

The two men burst out laughing. Even Roan cracked a smile.

"How many tons?" Larsen said.

"Liquid, solid, or in between?" Daniel said.

Larsen's face returned to its humorless plane. "Why?"

"To me, they look like sea creatures," Ness said. "Crabs or octopuses or something. Something that's very sensitive to radiation."

"How interesting." Bemusement danced behind Daniel's glasses. "You're suggesting we become terrorists."

Ness nodded. Shawn swore. The plant rumbled like the laughter of a long-dead god.

16

Tristan woke to orangeness. Her hands were dim and orange. The walls were soft and orange. Orange light traced a square a few feet above her head. She sat up, blood rushing from her head, and stood. The ceiling hung just above her. She pushed her palms against it. The spongy surface didn't budge. She was trapped inside a box.

The air was damp, cool. She stepped toward the wall. Soft fabric rustled around her pelvis. She was nude except an off-white diaper strapped around her waist. Sickness rose in her gut. The curdling, hollowing sickness of violation. They had taken her here in her sleep.

There was just enough light to see that the box was empty, but she shuffled from corner to corner regardless. Her neck itched. Her fingers brushed cool metal.

She jumped back, stumbling into the spongy orange wall. It was lightly damp. She pulled away, slapping at her moist shoulder, but there was no escaping the orange beneath her bare feet. The liquid the wall left on her shoulder was thicker than water, salival. She had nothing to wipe her hands on except her diaper.

The thing on her neck was a finger-sized metal tube. She tugged it and fingers of pain reached into her spine. She gasped and sat down on the floor. Beneath her thighs, the surface felt like skin left too long in the water.

She was alone. Alden was gone.

She called out, but her voice died within the spongy walls. She struck them with her fist and her fist stopped without pain. Her knuckle prints faded from the porous, sweating surface.

Tristan stayed on her feet until they grew sore, then rested on the slimy floor. Sometimes she thought she felt it moving beneath her and she'd jerk into a low crouch, but it was too dark to see. She managed to nap. When she could no longer hold it, she peed into her diaper, which absorbed thirstily. She slept again.

Greenish light sliced into the box. The lid peeled away and tentacles burst over the lip, coiling, grasping. One slid around her thigh and tightened, its skin as damp and firm as the walls. Two wide eyes appeared above the rim. A beak clacked. She shrieked and pulled from the tentacle. Others joined it, squeezing the breath from her ribs, and hauled her into the green light.

A row of tall orange boxes lined three of the walls. She hung above the broad and empty floor, tentacles gripping her limbs. In the edge of her vision, a small tube flashed green. Metal scraped the metal port in her neck. She gagged. Her limbs went limp, half-numbed. The creature laid her on a table and rolled her through an empty hall. She could barely blink at the recessed lights glaring from the ceiling. The thing swung her into another room and receded from her sight. Metal instruments shined in the fringe of her vision. A door whooshed closed.

She couldn't turn her head. It was just as damp in here as in her box. A cool that verged on cold. Across the room, something was breathing. The door swished. A second alien loomed above her, face masked in an agile plastic. It rolled her on her side. Another woman lay on a table across the room, her deep brown skin bare except for the white fabric around her pelvis. A short canister glinted from the woman's neck. She breathed steadily. Something warm flooded into Tristan's blood. She choked. A machine whirred, stopped, whirred. The being's feet thumped the ground. It walked to a counter, picked up a metal canister shaped like a headless soap dispenser, and jabbed it with a blunt syringe.

The alien returned to Tristan's side. Its tentacles pressed her into the table. A second burst of fluid entered her neck. Tristan gasped, tears pooling against her nose.

The thing walked to the door, exited. She was left in the low hum of machines and the woman's even breathing. After a few minutes, Tristan's muscles de-numbed enough to shiver.

"Hi."

The woman's eyes were open. Tristan's tongue felt as thick as a foot. She shook her head a fraction of an inch.

"They don't mind if we talk," the woman said. "My name's Cindy."

"Tristan," she slurred.

"It's all right, Tristan. They haven't killed any of us yet."

"It gave me a shot."

Cindy nodded, face somber. "That seems to be what these things do best."

"Have you been here long?"

"I'm not sure. Haven't seen a window yet, let alone a clock."

"I'm looking for my brother," Tristan said. "His name's Alden."

"Lot of people here," Cindy said.

"He's thirteen. Blond hair. Green eyes. Skinny. About 5' 4"."

The woman shook her head. "I haven't seen any kids here."

Tristan fought to sit up, but she could barely stir her arm. "Where did they pick you up?"

"L.A."

"I was taken in San Francisco. They must be stealing people from all over."

Cindy's eyes became mineshafts of pity. "I'm sure you'll find him, Tristan."

Her throat was too tight to answer. The door swooshed. One of the beings tugged the diaper from her waist, tentacles slipping down her thighs. The thing carried her to a side room with bare walls and a drain. Lukewarm water blasted her skin. A machine groaned, blowing most of the moisture from her. The thing re-diapered her and returned her to the fleshy box. The ceiling self-sealed with a slurp, enclosing her in the orange dim.

Movement slowly returned to her limbs, but she had nowhere to go. She turned Cindy's words over and over. She hadn't seen any kids. Were they keeping them separate? The woman had been taken from Los Angeles. How far had the aliens roamed? Was there more than one place like this? Why were they here? Why were they being kept alive?

She had no sense of time. Two urinations passed before she was taken from the box again. The creature doped her, brought her back to the lab, where the alien in the mask gave her another injection from one of the metal canisters. It set down the syringe and squirted a sack of water into her mouth. Tristan gagged—it was lightly salty and as cool as the room—but then drank readily. It was the first water she'd had orally since arriving. The thing fitted a catheter to the port in her neck and left the room.

"Come here often?" Cindy said.

Tristan shrugged her shoulders, scooting her numb body a quarter of an inch at a time to face the other woman. "You're back."

"One of these days they may even ask me first."

Tristan laughed through her tingling lips. "Is there a way out?"

"They brought us in, didn't they? Most ins double as outs."

"Have you seen anyone get brought in?"

Cindy shook her head, hair flattening against the hard, smooth table. "How'd you get caught?"

"I was in San Francisco," Tristan said. "We were going to sail to Hawaii. We'd just shoved off when the ship appeared. We went back. Tried to run. My friends..."

"You were sailing to Hawaii? You got a boat?"

"After I stole it from some dead rich guy."

Cindy laughed. "To think I just moved to Santa Monica. Should have stolen a palace in Malibu. Those people would never buzz an alien through the gates."

"They'd have loaded them right into the squad cars," Tristan said. "How did they take you?"

"They just busted in the door. Scooped out the whole block like an avocado."

The door swished open. Cindy went quiet. Tristan was cleaned and returned to the orange box. She pressed her hands to the ceiling. The lid slurped, attempting to seal, but green light seeped through the open gap. Her hands sunk into the spongy pad. Her drug-weakened arms shook. She lowered them and the gap closed, locking her back in the gloom.

She felt sorry for herself through one more cycle of imprisonment, injections, cleanings, and the return to the box. Then she practiced kung fu. The box was humid and she sweated freely. The floor squicked beneath her shifting feet. The action centered her mind, cleaning it as thoroughly as the scouring showers washed her waste from her legs. Her stomach burbled, but she was able to practice for what felt like hours on end; her injections must have included nutrients. They wanted her healthy.

Yet the next time she saw Cindy, the woman had a cough.

"What do you do while they've got you in the orange?" Tristan asked.

"The orange?"

"Your box. Your cell."

Cindy frowned at the ceiling. "I dream."

"You just sleep?"

"I dream when I'm awake, too. There aren't any sounds in there besides your own belly. After a while, you stop feeling the damp. I lie there and I dream of how it used to be. My husband. He was sweet. We fought too much. I didn't understand how sweet he was. You married?"

"I was proposed to," Tristan said.

"Well? Yes or no, damn it?"

"I said no."

"You regret it?"

"I never had time," Tristan laughed. "He tried to kidnap me as soon as I said no. I brained him with a bottle."

Cindy laughed, then went quiet. "You serious?"

"Well, there was a reason I turned him down."

Cindy gazed at the ceiling.

"But it isn't just my man," she said without prompting. Machines hummed quietly from the walls. "It's all of it. I miss watching movies. On the couch and in the theater. I should have snuck in more food; they wouldn't have done anything to me. A whole industry of people just want to make you happy for a couple hours. I miss making dinners. Turn a knob and the stove's hot. The ocean, too. I lived in Los Angeles my whole life, you know how often I went to the beach? Five times. Five! I could have driven there every damn day."

Tristan laughed. "I grew up in Redding. We were the same way about the mountains."

"I'll tell you something. They ever let us out of here, I'm going to live on the beach. Build myself a sand castle. Hire a couple of seals to keep out the trouble."

Tristan grinned. The meds had made her pleasantly woozy and warm. They cleaned her and brought her back to the box. She forgot to try to keep the lid open.

She continued to practice her fighting. The yielding walls made a perfect punching surface. Her knuckles snapped into the sponge with wet smacks. But how could you block a tentacle? The bone-breaks Alden had taught her, would they work on the chitinous limbs of the invaders? She laid down on the clammy ground and visualized fighting the aliens, how their arms might slither free, how she'd gouge her fingers into their froggy eyes.

Tristan's next visit to the lab, Cindy tried to say hello and coughed instead, curling into a shuddering ball. When she finished, she drew her hand away and stared. Crimson gleamed from her palm.

"Aren't you immune?" Tristan said.

"Yeah. I am." Cindy wiped her hand on the table and squeezed her eyes shut. "They gave us this shit in the first place, right? What if it was on purpose?"

"On purpose?"

"You think they got us here for our health? What d'you think is in those needles, Tristan?" Cindy rocked to the side, rolling her drug-addled legs off the table. She limped to the door, feet dragging, and pounded it with a clumsy fist. "You motherfuckers! You open this door!"

The being that cleaned them emerged while Cindy's hand was halfway to the door. Its eyes bugged, cartoonishly angry. It slathered her in a mess of tentacles and dragged her to the floor.

"Tristan!" Cindy's hand jutted from the net of gray, worming limbs. "Help!"

Tristan rolled to her side. Her legs worked. The creature extended a pincer and plucked a syringe from the counter.

Tristan let herself go limp. "I can't move!"

"Help me!"

Cindy thrashed her neck, yanking the port on her neck away from the needle. The alien bore down hard, many-jointed limbs flexing. Cindy rasped for air, coughing blood. The needle flashed. Cindy went still. The creature laid her on her slab and wheeled her from the room.

Back in her box, Tristan stared at the orange lid. The thought Cindy had impregnated in her head was impossible to unthink. Over the span of a few months, two impossible events had taken place: first viral apocalypse, then alien invasion. It was impossible the two things weren't connected. The only thing that was hard to believe was that Tristan hadn't put the two together sooner.

They'd brought the disease, but they hadn't finished the job. A small fraction of the populace had proven immune. Even if the Panhandler had taken 99.9% of the world, that would leave 7 million humans to gum up the aliens' landing. Here in this facility, the enemy was searching for a new strain, the variation that would knock the survivors as dead as the rest.

On her next treatment cycle, Tristan was alone in the lab. The masked creature plunged the syringe into the canister. Body-hot bile bubbled in Tristan's throat. The alien swung the needle toward her neck. She tried to scream, but could only groan. The fluid burned in her veins.

The masked alien left. As she waited for the one that cleaned her to arrive, she practiced one of Alden's exercises, tensing every one of her muscles as she breathed out, then relaxing them all as she breathed in. It was a chi exercise, meant to build awareness and strength of breath, but it was also designed to teach pinpoint muscular control. By the time the second alien arrived, she had worked the feeling back into most of her body. By the time it returned her to the orange, she had the strength to keep the lid from slurping closed.

She braced the fleshy top open with both palms, waiting until the clatter of the alien's feet receded and the door whooshed closed. Then she slid one of her hands into the gap of green light. The lid kneaded her hand like a blind mouth, fighting to reseal itself. She wedged her other hand beside her first. Inch by inch, she forced them past the damp mouth into the lighter air beyond. She stood on her tip-toes until her arms were through to the elbow, then clamped herself to the side, dug her toes into the porous surface of the wall, and squirmed. Forcing her head through the gap was the worst: the damp, slick sponge tongued her brow, her nose, her mouth, brackish and cold. Her shoulders popped free. She wriggled her torso out into the green-lit room. Gravity expelled the rest of her from the box with a flatulent sigh. She fell.

She tucked her right arm above her head, letting it meet the ground, and rolled like Alden had taught her, distributing the impact along her body. The room was silent. She approached the door and it whispered open.

The hallway was empty. She didn't know the way out, but she guessed the labs would be closer to the center of the facility than the holding pens would be. She headed the opposite way from the lab, her bare feet gripping the slick floor. The hallway was too high to be human. She jogged past several closed doors. Like the others, they were knobless, but she'd never seen one open unless it was approached directly. Her heart raced. She was shoeless and nearly naked, but she could deal with that once she got outside. She glanced around for a weapon—a club, anything—but the hallway was barren.

The corridor terminated in another door. She glanced back down the silent hall and stepped forward.

Beyond the doorway, a wide window showed a cloudless night. Tristan held her breath. A few seating-slings and pedestals stood around the room. A desk of sorts. It might have been a lobby, but Tristan saw no sign of aliens. She stepped inside. The door whisked closed behind her.

She glanced around for exit signs, then almost laughed out loud. Her mirth dried up as she scanned the walls. There were no signs of any doors at all. Were they somehow hidden? She ran up to the exterior wall, tracing it with her fingers. It was smooth and cold and damp.

A light bloomed in the window. At first she thought it was a jet, but it was awfully low. A motorcycle? An alien car? She shrank behind one of the pedestals and waited for it to pass. The light expanded, brightening. A school of gray fish floated past the window.

She stumbled forward. The fish darted away from her movement, tails stirring bubbles in the water. She slumped to the ground, palms squealing on the window. There was no way out. She would die here. Wherever Alden was, he would too.

They found her a few minutes later. She gave no resistance as they dragged her back to the orange.

17

"It's not like that, Shawn," Ness said. "They invaded us. Tried to wipe us out. It's not like we have some global army to fight back with."

Shawn snorted. "Yeah, but that doesn't make us terrorists."

"Call it what you will," Roan said. "It's smart fighting."

Daniel tipped back his chin, combing his fingers through his beard. "It is, isn't it? Are we reasonably convinced these men aren't spies or seditionists?"

Larsen stuck out his lower lip. "Reasonably."

"Then let me ask you this," Daniel said, swinging to face them. "We have a society of sorts in this place. Certainly not enough for a state. More along the lines of a tribe. As we struggle to resurrect the necessities of life, to say nothing of the luxuries, we find ourselves with more work than we have hands. May I ask your plans for the future?"

"Well," Shawn said, "I imagine I'll be killing some aliens."

"And you, Ness?"

"I'd like to try to help get the internet back."

"That's the most pathetic thing I ever heard," Shawn said. "We got real goddamn aliens pouring out of the sky and you want to hop online and pretend to be an elf chick."

Ness scowled. "To communicate, dumbass. To figure out where the enemy is going and what they're doing. What's the alternative, irradiating the whole planet and hoping they blunder into the hot spots? Sweet idea. If we can't have Earth, no one can!"

"This is moving past the point," Larsen said.

Daniel patted the air. "Agreed. We have a foundation to lay before we begin to hope of active resistance. Do you two have any special talents? Skills?"

"I'm an electrician," Shawn said.

Ness rolled his eyes. "And you were so good at it you lost your house."

"I'm certified."

Daniel's gray brows rose. "We could certainly use one of those. Right here at the site, in fact. How about your brother?"

"He was too lazy to ever do a damn thing," Shawn said. Ness opened his mouth to protest, but Shawn drowned him out. "But he's smart. Plenty smart. A problem-solver. You put a knot in front of him, he'll pick it loose before you know it."

Ness was too stunned to speak. Shawn winked.

"I'm sure we'll have a use for that, too," Daniel said. "Larsen?"

Larsen finally smiled. "I can think of something right now."

* * *

Ness stared at the hoe in his hands. The sun beat down from the sky, whaling his neck and his face, its rays as heavy as a wet canvas.

"What're you waiting for?" Larsen gestured at the hoe. "Never seen a screwdriver before?"

Tidy green rows stretched out before him. Ness was close enough to smell the river. "Sure. Just not one this large."

"There are weeds in the rows. Apply as necessary."

The large man stepped away. Ness almost let him go, too afraid to speak up, but he could imagine Shawn shaking his head. "I have a question."

Larsen turned. "Then question."

"This is farming."

"Not a question."

Ness' blood ran hotter. "I was hoping to help reconnect your internet. Start talking to people."

Larsen nodded. The flat sheets of his freckled cheeks looked designed to absorb the sunlight. "Do you have a degree?"

"No."

"Work experience?"

"I've spent my whole life online. With a little bit of time—"

Larsen nodded at the housing at the far end of the farm. "Do you know how many people we have at this settlement?"

"If I did, wouldn't that be highly suspicious?"

"237. And counting. Do you know how many of those people need to eat every day?"

Ness sighed through his nose. "That depends on whether you like them."

Larsen gazed blankly, as if his lips and lids were too heavy to move. "Most of the men and women who knew how to manage the nuclear reaction going on across the river have died. The few who are left don't have time to pull weeds. You want power? Weed the garden."

As the man watched, Ness turned to the endless rows of green sprouting from the brown furrows. Sweat trickled down his neck. He bent and hacked at the cheatgrass and dandelions hiding between the crops. He looked up a minute later. Larsen was gone.

Ness worked hard for five minutes. Dust clods burst, gray clouds sifting on his shoes. The rhythm of his chops grew sparse. He needed to conserve his strength in the heat. Anyway, they had a whole city to scavenge from. A couple hundred people could survive for years on all that had been left behind. It would be more productive for him to be going door to door, sacking up bags of linguini and cans of tomato paste.

And if there were really 237 survivors here, few of them appeared compelled to join him in this oh-so-crucial business. A handful of others hunched over the rows, hoeing and spraying pesticides from big green jugs. The remainder must have been back in the longhouses at the far end of the farm. Enjoying the air conditioning. Ness stopped to drink from his water bottle. There was no shade for hundreds of feet in any direction.

After a while, he set to work again, slashing the grass and dragging it away from the crops. He didn't know if the uprooted weeds needed to be segregated in this fashion, but dragging a fallen one away was less work than whacking a new one out of the ground. Anyway, no one was watching.

He worked halfheartedly for an hour, then quarterheartedly for a couple hours after that. By the end, he was hardly advancing at all, bashing listlessly at long-uprooted weeds until they were reduced to an oozing green mulch. His clothes were soaked with sweat. It wasn't that he was exhausted. Not physically, anyway; his time in the mountains had trained his muscles to accept hours of low-level manual labor in exchange for little more than occasional breaks and plenty of water. It was a mental thing. A fundamental lack of motivation he remained unable to do anything about. Experimenting with meat-smoking? That was interesting. That was something he'd happily dedicate hours to. Whole days. Working the fields of strangers he'd just met that morning? That was another story. A much duller one.

Why couldn't he be like everyone else? Working away for hour on hour without complaint? It was like they could block those hours out. Forget about them like last week's garbage. He just got depressed. His depression, his lack of motivation, that just made it worse, eroding his ability to keep going like icicles melting in the sun, destroyed not only by the sunlight, but by their own meltwater as it slipped to the ground.

A man in a baseball hat hollered the workers in from the field for dinner. Men and women sat at dozens of picnic tables under a canvas roof with open sides. They were fed plates of spaghetti with a spoonful of grated cheese and a single strip of bacon apiece, which Ness watched the others crumble over their pasta. It was the first bacon he'd tasted in months and the meat was so salty and the fat so sweet that it hurt him to have to swallow.

"Hey."

Ness glanced up and met inquisitive eyes. The kid was a couple years younger than him and wore a mustache that looked like it needed to be erased. He spoke with a soft Spanish accent. Ness shrank into his chair. Had the kid been watching him in the fields? Seen him slow down, working the same spot over and over to kill time until the day was done?

"What do they look like?"

"I don't know what you mean," Ness said.

"Man, you know. The aliens."

Ness looked down at his plate, the sparse parmesan clumped around his remaining noodles. "Like you'll never eat crab legs again."

The kid snorted. "Never knew why anyone ate those to begin with. Big, nasty water-spiders. My name's Nick. You just got here today, huh?"

"Yeah."

"I been here a while. Hard to say, really."

Ness frowned. "Do you have amnesia?"

"No, man." Nick twirled a finger at the fields. "Like, how long I been at this farm? A few months. This life? Since always."

"You were a..?"

"My parents moved here when I was just a little kid. We followed the harvest. When strawberries were ripe, we picked strawberries. When cherries were ripe, we picked cherries. Apples, apples. This place right here, it's like my life's no different at all."

"Do you like it?"

"Who likes picking fruit?" Nick laughed. "So you ever like fight one of them?"

"Dude, they're like seven feet tall," Ness said. "They got all these little pincers. I heard them blow up a truck once. That was right before we decided to run."

"That's crazy." Nick tore off a piece of bread that hadn't been soft in days. "Well, better here than out there with them, I guess."

They slept six to a room, multiple rooms to a house, each room accessible from the outside only, motel-like. Each person had a bed and an end table and a dresser. The lights switched off at nine o'clock that night. The sun had barely set. Ness unpacked in the darkness. They'd let him keep Volt. He went outside and called softly, not wanting to wake the others, but she was too far off in the fields to hear.

In the morning, Nick followed him into the fields to give him some pointers on how to speed up his work. Ness hadn't asked—Nick just wanted to help, and, in the way of all experts, to demonstrate his expertise—but despite Nick's intentions, Ness couldn't help resenting it. Having someone with him meant he had to work hard.

He was too embarrassed to take his shirt off like the other men. His hands blistered. He went to the barn where they stored the workers' gear and got a pair of yellow leather gloves, signing them out from the older woman whose entire duties consisted of sitting at a card table and making sure no one stole tools and equipment. Truly irreplaceable gear, that. Why, to get a new pair of leather gloves, you'd have to drive ten whole minutes to the city to the south.

He hated the work. It was as simple as that. He didn't see why he had to weed corn and harvest cabbage when it had been his idea to dirty-bomb the aliens. And he was producing far more food than he could eat. There were scores of workers here at this farm. Scores more left every morning in trucks bound for more farms down the road, dust devils spinning from their wheels. Just how much food did their little tribe need?

In exchange for this labor, Ness and the others got an hour of electric light before bedtime, which he spent reading books from the makeshift library in the lodge's common room. He supposed they had running water, too, although there was never enough hot water to go around. Anyway, the showers were communal. Mortifying. He'd almost worn his underwear into the grimy, tiled bathhouse, but he decided that would be even more embarrassing than the other men seeing his genitals. Instead, he showered sparingly, late at night or very early in the morning. He asked Nick about going into town—they had Sundays off—but gasoline was reserved for farm business and emergencies.

An old man with weather-beaten brows woke them every morning. Breakfast began at six o'clock. They were expected in the fields by eight. They worked unsupervised until noon, then were given a two-hour break for lunch and personal business, after which they returned to the rows until evening. Now and then a pair of men with guns drove down the dirt roads enclosing the fields, cigarettes rolled into the sleeves of their flannel shirts, but they were mostly watching the wastelands, the gray dirt and the yellow grass. Nick ate most meals with Ness. They complained about the weather, exchanged stories of their lives before the plague.

The fourth day in the fields, Ness worked quickly until he reached the very end of the furrows. The others were back toward the middle, bent over their hoes. He dropped down to the irrigation canal and followed the sluggish water back to the river, where he skipped stones and poked at bugs until dinner.

On Sunday, a pickup thrummed over the bridge to the south and turned for the farm. Ness sat in the shade at the picnic tables. The truck pulled into the gravel drive, dust breathing from its tires. A half dozen people hopped out. Shawn saw Ness and grinned.

"How's it going, baby brother?"

"Okay."

"Just okay? Taken any farmer's daughters up to the hayloft? Hey, you guys got any beer?"

"There's water in the coolers," Ness said. "Sometimes we get Kool-Aid."

"Ritzy," Shawn said. "You get nap-time, too? Where are the graham crackers?"

"Overseen by a surly old woman with a ledger and trust issues."

"Well, it sounds like you guys are doing great out here," Shawn said. "Daniel and Larsen are shipping all kinds of stuff up north."

"They are?"

"Sure. Colony up in Spokane."

"They're trading?"

Shawn nodded, sipping his grape Kool-Aid. "Gasoline. Hogs and chickens—haul 'em here live, butcher them in one of the old labs. Some clothes, they got a real tailor up there or some shit."

Ness stared at the blisters on his palms and fingers. He'd popped a few of them and the skin had whitened and died. "What about the bombs?"

"Hell if I know. I'm just a grunt. A wire-monkey. They got me stringing stuff up for miles."

"If they're not going to fight back, maybe we should go find our own place."

"I dunno, man. I'm getting addicted to showers." Shawn crumpled his cup and tossed it at a trash can. "You bored? Why don't you come into town with me and find some Playboys?"

Ness blinked. "They let you go into town?"

"What, they got you cooped up here all day? No wonder you're going stir-crazy."

They made plans for the next Sunday. Nick showed Ness how to soak his blisters to cool the pain, how to wrap them in bandages small enough so he could still wear his gloves. He worked the fields at his own pace, jabbing idly at the never-ending grass and weeds hiding close to the roots of the corn and the wheat. For a few days, the temperature dropped to the 80s before climbing back to low triple digits. Volt came back for a couple of nights, chewing his earlobes in the morning, then went back out to the wasteland. Across the river, the steam of the plant clouded the sky.

"Hey." Nick plunked down across from him at the picnic table. A few bits of tomato dotted their plain spaghetti.

"Hey," Ness said.

"What's up?"

"Not much."

"Yeah." Nick twirled his pasta. "Hey, it's like not really my business. But some of the guys have been talking."

"People do that."

"Well, you might want to put in more effort, is all."

"More effort?" Ness said.

"Yeah, you know." Nick chewed, eyes on his plate. "Out in the fields."

"Or what?" Ness said. "They'll beat me with a sack of doorknobs?"

"I mean, we've all got to work."

"Where do you think all this food is going?"

"We had salads for lunch."

Ness laughed. He tossed the last of his dinner and wandered the fringe of the farm, calling softly for Volt. She didn't come. At work, he stuck to his own pace, chugging his water and returning often to the tarp-roofed tables for more, or heading to the lodge to pee. Most of the men went right there in the field. He could feel their eyes on him. He didn't care. He was doing enough.

On Thursday, Ness hurried through his dinner and went back to his room to read. They had a swamp cooler in the room and it hummed loudly, fighting to bring the air down to a tolerable temperature. He'd just sat down in bed when Nick knocked on the door.

"Hey, Larsen's here," he said. "He wants to see you."

Ness' heart jolted. Outside, Larsen stood in the hot yellow light of evening, arms folded. He watched Ness with his hooded eyes. "Walk."

Ness walked, dust clods crunching under his shoes. "What?"

"What." Larsen made a noise that might have been a single chuckle. "Your weight is going unpulled."

"I do plenty."

"People have complained."

"Sounds like they have too much free time."

Larsen made his almost-chuckling noise again. "Do you know how hard it is to keep people motivated when there's no money? When they see someone else not working, do you know how fast their motivation decays?"

Ness rolled his eyes. "None of us would have to work so hard if you weren't shipping everything we make to Spokane."

"For necessary goods for the good of us all."

"Tailored suits. Really fucking necessary."

"Tailored suits?" Larsen stopped and stared Ness down, his face as flat and hard as the basalt slabs by the river. "I don't know what you've heard. I do know what I've heard. Work. Or provide worth by becoming an example instead."

Ness was too frustrated to argue. "Fine."

"Good."

Larsen left, taking his vague threats with him. How scary. Was the man lying about the tailor? Or was he too stupid to know where the food was going? Ness wasn't going to be bullied. Larsen didn't own him. The man wasn't President Larsen of the Most Worthless Pile of Dust in the Remnants of the Former United States. Ness wasn't a slave. He just looked bad because the others didn't care how hard they had to work so long as they had a roof and some air conditioning and three meals of starch and salt.

The weather-beaten old man never came back to check beds after his nasal morning wake-up call, so Ness stayed in bed the next morning, stretching under his too-warm sheet. He finally got up in time to get to the fields for the noontime meal call, bending over his hoe like he'd been there all along. No one said anything, so he did the same thing the next day, too.

The third day, Larsen grabbed his wrists and yanked him from bed while he was still in his underwear. His hip hit the floor. He cried out.

"I warned you," Larsen said.

"Let go of me!"

"There are rules."

"Really? I don't remember reading anything before you dropped me off over here."

"We haven't had to write them down. Most people have sense to know for themselves."

"Let me put my clothes on," Ness said. Larsen let go of his wrists. He hit the ground again, sharp tears springing to his eyes. He turned away and pawed through his dresser. "Where are we going, anyway?"

Larsen was silent a moment. "To whip you."

Ness rolled his eyes and followed Larsen outside. What a joke. A little scare before Larsen frogmarched him to the field to look over his shoulder at every stroke of the hoe.

But the other workers weren't in the fields. They were crowded around the picnic tables. A post rose from the dust a few paces from the shade of the tarps. Ropes dangled from its top. Nick was in the crowd, too. His eyes were round with sorrow.

"What's going on?" Ness said.

"Take off your shirt," Larsen said flatly.

A hot wind scattered dust into Ness' face. He obeyed, mechanically peeling his shirt from his sweating ribs. The men in the crowd stood as still as the post. Something stirred in their eyes: the hard hunger to see the wicked get what they deserved.

18

The orange. The lab. The needle. The shower. Tristan endured her routine with the detachment of a man falsely condemned. Two days after Cindy's death, another patient replaced her on the other table, a middle-aged woman who wept each time the aliens touched her. Once, the masked alien left and the woman said hello. Tristan didn't respond. The woman didn't speak again.

Back in her box, Tristan punched the air and kicked the walls. Her practice was automatic, an act without joy or release. Her body was her canary. One day, she would throw a punch and stir the phlegm collecting unseen in her lungs. She would cough, then. See blood. When that day came, she would know it was over at last.

She never felt the tickle that would signal the start of her release. Some weeks later, the alien who served as her nurse unsealed her box, lifted her from the orange—she had stopped struggling against them long ago—sedated her, and wheeled her the wrong way down the hall.

The wheels squeaked. Lights flashed overhead. Four sets of doors swished open and shut. At the fifth, the nurse-alien paused, tentacles dancing in front of a green panel set beside the door. It opened with a low rumble. They passed into a damp and airy chamber. Water dripped from all sides. The ceiling was too dim and high to see. The creature rolled her up a ramp. An enclosure swallowed her up. Tentacles slithered under her arms, tightened around her hips. The alien laid her on a spongy floor and strapped her down.

The thing departed, wheels of the cart soughing over the yielding floor, then banging down the ramp. It was only after its wheels faded that Tristan could hear the breathing of the others strapped in beside her.

The creatures carted a new body into the chamber twice a minute. Something whirred; the chamber dimmed as the outer doors closed. Several people shrieked.

"Shut up," Tristan commanded. "Your screams won't help."

To her surprise, they went quiet. Were they afraid of her? In the darkness, she smiled. Engines vibrated through the spongy floor. For a moment, she allowed herself to believe they were about to be cremated, their ashes left to wash away in the tides, feeding the coral and the starfish and the bottomfeeding crabs. Then the whole thing lurched forward, straps digging into her shoulders, and she closed her eyes and tried to sleep.

Pressure bulged against her ears. Air hissed from vents. It smelled metallic, scrubbed. Over long minutes, the pressure eased. Without warning, the vessel popped upwards, peaked, leaving Tristan momentarily weightless, and slammed back down. People moaned, screamed. Above the clamor, waves smacked hollowly against the sides of the craft.

The engines whined higher. The vessel lifted smoothly from the surface. Tristan's ears popped. She slept.

She was jolted awake hours later. The engines spun down. Dull clanks penetrated the walls. Servos spun within the walls. The doors parted, splashing daylight into their faces. Spindly legs clumped inside, the aliens silhouetted by the relentless sunlight. One by one, the passengers were taken from the craft. Most screamed. Tristan squeezed her eyes shut; she had a headache.

The straps were yanked from her shoulders. A tentacle groped her belly and circled her chest. The being carried her across a hot and dusty tarmac to a round orange building. It stripped her diaper, removed an agile faucet from the wall, and hosed her down. The water had a chemical tang. She stared into the alien's plate-sized eyes. It didn't look back.

After she was dried, the alien loaded her into a wheeled, hemispherical truck. There were no straps or seats. Two dozen other naked humans were packed in around her. The others were her age and up, male and female. None were Alden. A woman's skin pressed against hers. The close space smelled of disinfectant and what she thought was fear. The truck started off, bouncing over rough ground. A blond man gazed openly at her swaying breasts. Tristan stood, keeping her knees bent to absorb the jounce of the truck, and snapped a straight punch into his nose. He flailed, blood spurting over his mouth. Tristan sat back down. The others looked away.

"Did anyone recognize the field outside?" she said. The blond man pinched his blood-sopped nose and glared at the wall.

"What does it matter?" a bald man said across the truck. He looked half-melted from weight loss, skin hanging in long flaps from his sides.

"We're in a truck," Tristan said. "Wherever they're taking us, it isn't far from where we landed."

"It was a desert," a red-haired woman rasped.

"Good. What else?"

The bald man considered his lap. "I saw mountains."

"Does that rule out Texas?" Tristan said. "Is this the Southwest?"

He sighed. "We were underwater, weren't we? We could be anywhere. We don't even know if this is Earth."

Tristan frowned. "I saw an old Coke can crushed in the weeds. Either their marketing was successful beyond their wildest dreams, or we're still on our own planet."

No one had better answers. She supposed it didn't matter. They were off to a new lab. A new virus. Once the aliens finally found the strain to wipe out these survivors in the truck, they would unleash it across the world. The Earth would be theirs alone.

A few minutes later, the truck stopped. The engine snapped off. The doors clicked open. An alien loomed in the dust, pointing a blunt gun into the truck. It gestured them outside. Tristan's bare feet sank into the dust. Blue cones rose from the plain. Three of the things herded the humans into a high pen fenced by wires. The aliens closed the pen and entered a tower beside the enclosure. A moment later, the wires buzzed.

Sunlight pounded Tristan's pale skin. Except for a few moments during their transfer, she hadn't felt its heat in weeks. She stood naked beneath it. Something seemed to unlock inside her, something so basic she was horrified to realize it had been missing: hope.

The others milled around the pen, turning their backs to hide the worst of their nudity. Most were middle-aged. Gaunt, too, their skin hanging slackly. The aliens had met their nutritional needs well enough—none of Tristan's teeth were loose from scurvy, and while her hair had started to tangle, it still seemed strong enough—but after spending weeks or months confined in boxes smaller than some closets, her fellow prisoners were in dire need of a little exercise.

Not good. When it came time to escape, they'd be more of a liability than an asset.

She gazed around the enclosure. The wires were clearly electrified. Too tightly-spaced to squeeze through. Not unless Tristan took a few lessons from Trinity, anyway. Guard tower. Would night help, or did they have infrared? Aliens skittered around the city of cones. Tanks groaned through the unpaved streets. Strange they'd set up camp in the desert, considering they appeared to be so at home in the ocean. Was there something specific they wanted from this place? Or was it a test of their survival skills on this new world, the equivalent of a human base camp established in Antarctica?

The sun deflated toward the western peaks. Tristan found a rock to sit on and made the mistake of lowering herself with her hand. Dust coated her fingers, gritty and distressing. She wiped it as best she could on her leg, which was prickly, unshaven, but the dirt clung to her hand.

She frowned and gouged her heel into the dirt. As if absently, she gazed at the tall blue cones, pivoting her heel in the dust, digging through layer after layer. Four inches down, she still hadn't hit a foundation. She doubled its depth to eight inches down into the crumbly dust and loose reddish rocks. Had they sunk the support posts straight into the dirt? Had they bothered to embed more wires beneath the ground? Did they understand humans could dig? She'd spent weeks with them, yet knew virtually nothing about them. How much did they know about humans? Other than the fact they apparently hated mankind's soft, stinking guts?

She'd find out tonight. Dig until she hit something or they found her out and made her stop. Maybe the creatures were counting on the desert and the prisoners' shoeless nudity to keep them in check.

"Hey assholes!" A young woman cupped her hands to her mouth, face tipped toward the high tower. The ends of her hair were faded blue. "Why don't you just let us out over here? Haven't we done enough for you? I promise not to sue for malpractice."

A few of the others exchanged worried glances. The bald man stood and relocated ten feet away. The tower remained silent.

"Can we at least have some pants?" the girl said. She grabbed her right cheek and jiggled. "This is gonna burn pretty bad tomorrow. Or do you like it extra crispy?"

"Heavens," a bony old man murmured. "Are they planning to eat us?"

"Just be quiet," the red-haired woman told the shouting girl. "You really want them coming down here?"

The woman with the blue-tipped hair laughed. "You prefer to get baked to death when the sun comes up?" She jerked her chin at the old man. "Hey, I know. We can use that guy's balls for shade."

The old man blushed. The red-haired woman shook her head. "They didn't drag us all the way out here just to let us die."

Tristan watched in silence. How close an eye were their captors keeping on them? The young woman crouched down, raked together a handful of rocks, and began slinging them at one of the poles suspending the fence wires.

"Knock knock!" she yelled. She pitched another stone, ringing the pole. She had a good arm. Might have played softball earlier in life. "I would like to register a complaint about the quality of your service!"

She bent for more rocks. This time, she hurled one at the tower, striking it square. She cocked her arm for another throw. A blue beam connected the tower to the woman. She gasped. Possibly it was the sound of her lungs exploding. Blood burst from her chest. Charred meat-smell filled the pen. She collapsed into the dust.

Tristan jolted back, rocking in the dirt. The others screamed, rushing close to the live wires shutting them in, calling for help, wailing, praying. Tristan kept both eyes on the tower. The sun sank. The people returned to their seats in the dirt, keeping a clear circle around the body. Some time later, two aliens strode to the pen. The buzzing of the wires went dead. They opened the door. The prisoners pressed to the far end of the pen as the things dragged the body from the pen. The sweet stink of burned meat persisted through the sunset.

The bald man called a meeting, apologetically suggesting they confine their waste to one corner of the pen. Several people looked relieved. One by one, they went to the corner. The smell of urine and feces overcame the dead woman's scorched guts.

Light melted from the land. Tristan drew her knees to her chest and waited for the aliens to fall asleep, which she wasn't sure they did. She waited for the humans, too. Alone, she might be able to make it. No way two dozen of them could flee without being noticed.

Stars twinkled, as bright as they'd been above the lake back in Redding. Alden must be alive. He had the same genes she did. If they'd found a strain he were vulnerable to, they'd have sickened her with it, too. The air grew cold. She shivered. One by one, the others laid down, balling up in the dust. The last of them had just gone to bed when she heard the scrapes outside the pen.

She peered into the darkness. Stone ground against stone, stopping instantly. Something rustled, paused, resumed. Too large to be a desert rat. Too regular. Too furtive.

"Who's out there?" she said.

"Shut up," a man whispered from so close she jolted back. "Put your hands above your head."

Tristan raised her arms and honed in on the voice. The man popped his head up from behind a ridge of dirt. He grinned, eyes dropping to her chest.

She smiled in angry disbelief. Imprisoned in the desert, miles from anywhere, amidst a city of dozen or hundreds of aliens, and he was staring at her tits? She quashed her anger. The man was outside the pen. She could use that.

"I'm kidding," he said. "My name's Walt. I'm—"

"What are you doing out there?"

"No time for questions. This fence—"

She shook her head. "I asked first. What are you doing here?"

Walt scowled like a bearded Elmer Fudd. "Getting you out of there." He gestured at the pen. "Is that electric? How does it work?"

"How should I know?" Tristan said. "For all I know it's sorcery."

His scowl inverted to a bright smile. Her anger softened. It had been a long time since she'd seen a happy face. Walt flicked his eyes at the high blue cone overlooking the grounds.

"How many of them are in the tower?"

She shrugged. "Three? Nine million? I haven't been making them sign in and out."

Quick mental arithmetic crunched across his face. "Listen. I'm an idiot, so I'm going to go inside that building and try to disable the fence. I need you to wake up the others and tell them to get ready to move. If any of them makes a peep, I'm running away without looking back."

A pang of frustration pierced her stomach. Of course he'd want to free the others. Worthless do-gooder. They'd only slow the two of them down. She squinted, sizing Walt up. What if she could convince him she was special? That the others weren't worth the risk? She stood, planting her legs shoulder-width apart, and leaned forward, making no effort to cover herself.

"Who are you?"

Walt put a finger to his lips. "Take care of business. I'll take care of mine."

He disappeared beneath the crest of dirt. She swore. He rustled through the dirt, advancing on the tower. Two silhouettes sat up from the dust, watching her. No doubt they'd heard every word.

"Who was that?" the red-headed woman hissed.

"Our knight in shining armor," Tristan said. "Help me wake the others. If somebody makes a sound, snap their neck."

The woman laughed. Tristan wasn't certain she was joking. The woman rose and moved from person to person, touching shoulders, speaking gently. Tristan followed suit. When she touched the bald man's ankle, he sat up with a gasp. A sleep-erection poked from his pubic hair. She slapped her palm to his mouth.

"Be quiet," she murmured in his ear. He shifted, crossing his legs. She withdrew her hand, keeping her eyes on his face, which blushed so hard she could see it in the starlight. "Someone's here. He's going to help us escape."

The man nodded and sat still, unwilling to meet her eyes. She supposed she should be embarrassed, for him and herself, but she'd been diapered or naked so long she no longer automatically thought of her body as a thing to be guarded. Besides, months of training—first with Alden, then in the orange—had left her smooth and lean. Her flesh had become more than a vessel for food and a perch for the male gaze. It had become a weapon.

She smiled sharply, ashamed at last, and moved on to wake the next woman.

They waited in silence. Tristan watched the tower. Its top window flashed with the same blue as the bolt that had struck down the woman with the rocks. She waited for an alien to burst from the door, gibbering, lasers lashing from each of its tentacles and pincers. Instead, a man as lean as herself dropped from the doorway.

The others gasped. Tristan whirled on them, glaring them into silence. Walt jogged up and winked at her. He crouched down, blunt black pistol in his hand, and lasered through the wires.

"You were in there a long time," Tristan said.

"Did you miss me?"

"Who would miss a failure?"

Walt smiled at her. "Get the others over here."

She padded to the others. "Time to go. Unless you'd rather take your chances with the space-monsters."

They followed, wordless. Tristan bent under the smoking wires, contorting her body away from their razory ends. The prisoners filed from the pen one by one.

Walt gestured at the ground. "Now get down and crawl until we're outside the light."

"We're naked!" the bald man whispered.

"Would you rather get a thorn in your balls or a laser in your back?"

"Can't you steal a car?"

Walt fingered the gun. "Crawl."

That shut them up at last. Tristan stayed beside Walt, eyeing the gun; if he were shot, it would be her first move. Rocks jabbed her knees. Dust ground into the scrapes. Her elbows rasped through yellow grass. Behind her, whines and pained gasps punctured the night. She fought the urge to stand and run as far from them as she could get. Walt stopped, gesturing them to do the same, and got out a pair of binoculars. He stared back at the tower for some time, then stood and motioned the others to follow. They stepped lightly, hands cupped to their groins. Dust caked their knees. Tristan kept her eyes on her feet, one hand held before her, as if expecting to meet a wall at any time.

Walt leaned forward, jogging up a sudden slope. Tristan's feet hit asphalt. The tarred pebbles had never felt so good against her bare skin. Walt passed around water. As they shared, he glanced back toward the dark city repeatedly, but his eyes held no particular fear. She watched him as closely as he watched the silent grounds. He hadn't been surprised by the alien city, that much was clear. He was a survivor. Not in the sense that he hadn't died. In the sense that he actively refused to.

"Well," Walt said abruptly, "good luck."

The bald man laughed. "Good luck? With what?"

"I'm not your shepherd," Walt said. "Besides lying down in a big human bull's-eye, traveling in a group is the stupidest thing we could do. They'd find us in an instant. I'm leaving. On my own. If you like living, you should do the same."

"That is insane," Tristan blurted. She flung her arm at the others, appealing to whatever misplaced goodness had caused him to rescue them in the first place. "We're hungry. We're tired. We don't even have any goddamn clothes. They shipped me here from San Francisco and I don't even know where here is. People are going to die. You can't just walk away."

Glacial coldness swept over his face, killing the happy-go-lucky action-boy who'd busted them loose. Involuntarily, Tristan fell back a step.

"I got you out," he said flatly. "You can figure out what to do next."

Walt walked down the road. The bald man hesitated, then followed behind him, joined by a half dozen others. Walt turned, scowled, and swerved off the highway into the brambles. One by one, the prisoners stopped and watched him go, their shoulders slumped in the starlight.

"What an asshole," said the red-haired woman. "What do we do now?"

Tristan scanned the side of the highway for anything she could use as shoes. It was like the old joke about being chased by a bear: she didn't have to outrun the bear, just the people she was with.

"At best, we've got a few hours before they find us," Tristan said. "They'd have to be blind to miss our tracks."

"Do we know for sure they aren't?" said the red-haired women.

"You've seen the size of their eyes. Or do you think those things are implants?"

The woman snorted. "What, then? Follow the road?"

The others began to drift back from the field. The bald man wiped sweat from his brow. "He's gone. He just walked right off!"

"I saw that," Tristan said.

"Why would he do that? Let us loose and leave us to die?"

"Because we don't have to die. Not unless your master plan is to stand here all night."

The man flung out his hands, then quickly covered himself back up. "Then what do we do?"

"Split up," Tristan said. "Half one way, half the other."

"How do we decide who goes which way?"

"It doesn't fucking matter!" Anger flooded her nerves, tapping the oceanic reservoir that had gathered in her ever since her capture. It was all she could do to stop herself from driving her elbow straight into the bald man's prissy lips, or from kneeing his shabby little cock. Instead, she turned and strode down the road.

Footsteps rasped behind her. The entire group was following her. Not a single one had turned to try the other way. She clenched her jaw until it ached. She wasn't their leader. Their mother. She wanted to spin on her heel and run the other way, but she knew they'd reverse with her, following like a school of bait fish. She upped her pace. Their steps slapped behind her, keeping up. Such idiots. So, so stupid. Weeks in captivity had stripped them of any ability to choose for themselves.

But if a willingness to follow was their flaw, hers was her frustration. She saw this too clearly not ten minutes later when the alien city across the plain blazed with blue and orange lights. These strobed through the darkness, stirring the creatures from their homes, their hives. Engines blasted through the still night.

Tristan ran. The others ran with her, twenty naked shadows, far too pale beneath the white of the stars.

19

The post stuck from the dust like a warding finger. Ness' mouth was dry. Gulls laughed from way on down the river. Larsen nodded, his face as flat as a tablet. The eyes of the workers urged Ness forward as strongly as a hand to the small of his back. He stepped to the post and raised his arms above his head. Gently, Larsen tied the thin ropes to Ness' wrists. Sweat prickled his back and brow. He twisted his head around. A whip dangled from Larsen's hand.

"No speeches," the tall man said. "You all know what this is about. Don't make me repeat it."

"Do you really think this will make me work harder?" Ness moaned.

"Hell if I know," Larsen said. "Five lashes. I'll keep track if you can't."

The first stroke fell before Ness had time to tell him he was ready. It hit his back like something molten. His knees collapsed and he dangled from the ropes, writhing, spikes of heat searing his spine. He screamed and choked. He had no frame of reference for the pain: a hundred bee stings, followed by a hundred more, followed by a hundred more—pain without end, his back tensing so hard he thought his bones would break. Sweat dripped from him in cataracts, soaking his shorts, pattering to the ground. Blood mingled with it; the crowd was so silent he could hear it hitting the thirsty dust.

On the second stroke, he wet his pants.

The third stroke stole what little strength was left in his legs. He hung there, too dizzy to find his feet, panting without end or ease, white sparks overwhelming his sight. Time became a single awful thing. He forgot to scream. Spit dribbled from his lips.

There was no fourth stroke.

"Looks like enough," he heard Larsen say. A strong arm wrapped around his shoulders. Ropes scratched his wrists and fell away. Larsen carried him to his bed and laid him on his stomach. Someone cleaned his back while he was still too dizzy to speak. Nausea cramped his belly. He emerged from the fog and wished he hadn't. Pain beat his back like a tide, drawing back just enough to think it would soon drain away before surging back in a white-hot roil that left him gasping for breath. The swamp cooler strained at the window. He sweated through his sheet.

"You don't look too hot," Shawn said from behind him.

He opened his gummy eyes. He'd somehow been asleep. The light from the window was the yellow of late afternoon. "Feels like I was left in the oven too long."

"They said you haven't been working. I'm shocked, man."

Ness rolled a couple inches on his side, back burning. It was worth it to sneer at Shawn. "Why are we here?"

"To kill the aliens. As long as they're on our dirt, that's the only duty we got."

"I'm not sure how many aliens I'm going to kill by growing corn for the tailors of Spokane."

"Shit." Shawn sighed and sat on the neighboring bed. "We all got to do work we don't want to, Ness. That's what life is all about. I thought you'd turned that corner already."

Ness shut his eyes. "That's such bullshit."

"Maybe you never noticed, living under Mom's teat all your life, but none of us liked our jobs."

"I liked it in the mountains."

"Me too. Right up until the plague-lobsters rode up in their jets."

Ness closed his eyes. He hurt too badly to argue. Even if he were fit, whole, he doubted he could express what he felt to Shawn. He could feel the shape of the lie being passed from the people across the river, but Ness didn't yet know it well enough to describe.

"What do they have you doing over there?" he said.

"Wiring stuff," Shawn said. "I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"Nope. The less I know, the less I have to understand."

Ness shook his head into his pillow. "You don't even sound mad. That would be a first."

"I heard they warned you."

"They did."

"Well, then you got to take responsibility for what happened, don't you?" Shawn stood, mattress springs creaking. "This won't last forever. You just need to buckle down and ride it out."

His boots clomped across the wooden floor. Ness drank the last of his water and napped again, woken a couple hours later by his roommates returning to change out of their work clothes and towel off. No one spoke to or looked at him. Nick showed up after dinner, gazing at the floor.

"You okay?"

"I'll live," Ness said. It was a cliché, but the words slapped his awareness like an open hand. He tried to sit up, but a wave of pain arrested him as soon as he tensed his back.

"That's cool." Nick picked up a book from Ness' bedside table and ruffled the pages. "Man, I tried to warn you."

"It's not your fault. I didn't think anything would actually happen."

"That shit was crazy. That was like something out of the Bible. A lot of the guys are actually mad at Larsen."

Ness eased onto his stomach. His pillow was stained with sweat and drool. "I'm not."

"You kidding me?" Nick laughed. "I'd want to stab the guy. With his own bones. That's what I'd do—cut off Larsen's arm, carve the bone into a knife, and stab him."

Ness laughed, pain pulsing through his back. "What do you expect him to do while you're whittling his ulna? Stand there and wait?"

"I don't know, man. He looks pretty dumb. If they weren't stuck to his legs, I think he'd forget which feet were his."

Nick left. Past the window, people laughed, clanked dishes. Ness was hungry but had no appetite. He napped more, waking to snores and the wash of moonlight through the window. The air conditioner blattered on. Ness rolled slowly from bed and walked stiffly to the bathroom. He could feel himself bleeding beneath his bandages.

After he peed, he stood outside in the dust, shirtless and barefoot. The night was dry and just this side of cool. He could smell the river. Crickets chirped from all sides. His back ached dully. But he was alive. He had been whipped—literally whipped, like a slave or an old English criminal—yet here he was, not twelve hours later, and he could walk. That knowledge seemed to turn a key in him. He had expected to wallow in bed for days, soaking in the soothing bath of his self-pity, but the notion repulsed him. When Larsen came to his room in the morning, hours after the others had left for the fields, Ness looked the man in the eyes.

"Come to finish the job?" Ness said.

"To make sure you're alive. Never whipped a man before."

"Could have fooled me."

"But you're all right."

Ness stretched gingerly, stopping as soon as the lash-wounds began to sear. He still felt sick, weak, and woozy, but he knew it would pass. "I question the wisdom of your methods. How long do you think it'll be before I can swing a hoe again?"

Larsen gazed into his thick hands. "Is there something you'd like to do better?"

"Win the lottery. Exist without hurting."

"I am asking you if there is another job you'd rather do."

Ness cocked his head. "You're serious?"

"I don't like to mismanage my resources."

"I don't know," Ness said. "I'm not really sure how this place runs yet. I don't know what I can do that you need."

Larsen cracked his knuckles. "Think on it. I'll be across the river."

"When should I go back to work?"

"When you're ready." The laconic man nodded at him and left. Ness eased himself back into bed. Everything hurt. Even walking to the bathroom left him sore and exhausted. Nick brought him meals, water. It was several days before he could walk well enough to fetch his own food. He spent a few days shuffling along the fringes of the fields, doing what he could to regain his strength. Men glanced up from the rows of tall green shoots. Ness wanted to get back beside them, prove he belonged.

He didn't know what they were doing across the river—besides keeping the power plant operational and overseeing the safety and resources of the community, of course—but the structure on this side was simple enough. Some twenty percent of the citizens managed the workers and the logistics of their labor while the rest cultivated the fields. Sometimes they were allowed to use combines and tractors and trucks, but for the most part labor was done by hand. Ness sent a letter to Larsen asking for a chat. Larsen crossed the river two days later.

"Why don't we run the tractors all day long?" Ness gestured at the tall green corn. "There must be thousands of gallons of gasoline back in town."

"Less than you'd think," Larsen said.

"Even so."

"One day, the tractors would stop."

"And one day we'll all drop dead."

Larsen eyed him. "Sustainability. Don't do anything we can't still be doing in a hundred years. No bad habits. No crutches. That's how we survive."

Ness leaned on the stick he'd taken to carrying. "Then why are we trading with Spokane?"

"To get what we don't make for ourselves."

"I thought we want to make everything for ourselves."

"Once the silos are full." Larsen pointed his thick finger to the high, steely grain elevators projecting from the eastern fields. "We're producing more than we consume. That's good. Once we have enough to outlast disaster, we can start peeling people off to work on other things."

It made sense. Ness went to the old woman at the warehouse and requisitioned a pen and a notebook. As he rested in his room or in the shade of the trees by the river, he wrote to himself, thinking things through. When it came down to it, the Hanford colony ran a very simple economy. Ness had participated in one of those once. Before finally giving up on it, he'd played the Star Wars Galaxies MMO for far too long, sticking with it more out of a loyalty to its half-assed universe than to the mechanics of the game itself. Its biggest virtue was its economy: while enemy NPCs dropped loot like any other game, a sizable portion of its weapons, armor, spaceships, clothing, and vehicles were craftable by players—in some cases, such as housing, exclusively so. Ness had started life as a smuggler, sticking with it despite the thorough shittiness of the class, but once they introduced spaceships to the game, he became addicted. Soon, he dropped more and more combat skills in favor of the newest crafting class: the shipwright.

At first he sold nothing. Despite two years of play, he only had a couple million credits, and he could barely afford the mines to begin extracting resources needed to craft his parts. Meanwhile, established weapon- and armorsmiths literally hopped ship, investing tens of millions into new factories and resources to immediately crank out the best TIE Fighters and blasters and engines.

Bit by bit, Ness grew his business. Got better resources. Made better parts. Soon, a few people dropped by his shop. He tracked resources obsessively, relocating his few extractors as soon as rich new veins opened. Every credit he made went back into the business. Soon, he was relocating entire fleets of extractors weekly. He hit his limit on the number of buildings he could set down at once and hired more spots from players who didn't use them. People flocked to his store. He spent less time in his ship PVPing and more time combining parts from his factories. He upped his prices, but still couldn't keep up with demand. By the time he retired from the game a year later, he was the server's top shipwright, with nearly a billion liquid credits to his name and untold wealth in his parts, buildings, and resources.

But if he'd had the credits to start with, he could have skipped months of development.

The currency of Hanford was labor. Labor produced the food they needed to survive. If he could expedite the food-creation process, they could skip months or years of development, peeling off farmhands to learn other trades. They had more electricity than they could ever use, but gasoline was limited. Unrenewable. Without it, the labor-saving devices of old civilization—the tractors, cultipackers, backhoes, and flatbeds—sat idle.

He walked the cornfields, pushing himself until his back burned. Amid the swaying green crops and their waving yellow heads, he found his solution.

He asked and received Larsen's permission to go into town. The driver took him to the abandoned library at the WSU Tri-Cities branch. The agricultural department was extensive. Without computers, it took several hours to find his material, but once he collected his texts, he discovered that producing corn-derived ethanol was shockingly simple.

He scheduled a meeting with Larsen and Daniel.

They met him at a conference room inside the white-capped building that controlled the reactor. The air conditioning calmed Ness' nerves. He laid out his plan very simply. Begin immediate experimentation of ethanol fermentation. Set aside a percentage of their corn yield for the production of fuel. Once their production methods were sound, start widescale fermentation at once. Devote that fuel to the harvest of this year's crops and the growth of next year's, increasing production several-fold over their projections.

Daniel removed his glasses and wiped them on his shirt. "That is...ambitious."

"It fits your philosophy to a T," Ness said. "How much food are you shipping to Spokane? Why not use that food to create our own fuel? Their gasoline won't last forever. As long as we depend on them, we won't be independent."

"This makes sense," Larsen said.

Daniel raised his gray brows. "How long before this investment begins yielding results? What if we're struck by crisis while our food stores are tied up in the production process?"

Ness pushed a paper across the table. "Fermentation only takes a few days. All we need is yeast, ammonia, a couple other things. They'll have yeast at the wineries. Ammonia anywhere there's farm stuff."

"Farm stuff," Daniel muttered. "And what expertise do you have to oversee this endeavor?"

"None."

"A ringing endorsement."

"That's why I'll need a few of your people. You've got some chemists here, don't you?"

Larsen drew his thick lips into a smile. "A few."

Daniel gestured at the walls, the rumble that permeated every inch of the plant. "We're short-staffed as it is. I propose our limited pool of labor is best spent ensuring the nuclear reaction going on beneath us continues to react as intended."

Ness scratched his neck. He hadn't shaved in days. "Ask for volunteers. All they have to do is teach me how to do it myself. I'll pick a couple of farmhands to help me over the long-term."

Daniel shifted in his chair. "Well."

"I'll ask," Larsen said. "We'll see."

Ness rode home with a smile. Across the river, the workers ate at the tables beneath the tarps. Ness hobbled up to Nick. "Well, I'm now an ethanol baron. Want to help me run my empire?"

Nick wiped salsa from his mouth. "You sit on your ass all day and they promote you to baron? Man, I thought this was a meritocracy."

He got his volunteers two days later: Brandon, a man in his forties who walked with a sway to his shoulders and looked more like a surfer than a chemist, and Kristin, a woman who didn't look much older than Ness and whose quick eyes flew to every caw of the crows or sway of the wind. The three of them drove to the college and filled the pickup with a still, bags of chemicals, glassware, hydrometers. Brandon guided them to a winery across town and they combed through the warehouse with flashlights for yeast.

"So what's your background, Ness?" Brandon asked on the drive back.

"Computers," Ness said.

"Programming? Web stuff?"

"Games, mostly."

"Design?"

"Playing."

Brandon glanced across the cab. "And now you're in charge of our fuel supply. Brave new world."

"Ever play EVE?" Kristin said.

Ness laughed. "For like two straight years."

"Oh my God." She sat in the middle. Her slim leg jostled his. "The scams I used to pull. They hated me."

The process was as simple as it sounded. They mashed up corn still in the husk and dumped the lumpy meal into a watery drum, then boiled it for about an hour, keeping careful track of the temperature. After it cooled, they stirred in the yeast and moved the drum to the corner of Ness' room, where the straining air conditioner would keep the heat from getting lethal. Brandon was a chronic over-explainer, breaking down every part of the process no matter how trivial or tangential; Kristin spoke up rarely, augmenting and contradicting Brandon's points. Ness kept a close watch on the drum. Even at room temperature, bubbles churned constantly, toiling viscous mash to the surface.

After three days, the bubbling ceased. Kristin plumbed it with the hydrometer. "5.7%."

"Is that good?" Ness said.

"We are approaching Natty Ice." Her eyes darted to him. "Hey. We should make beer. We're running out of the good stuff."

"You guys have beer?"

"The fact I haven't committed suicide indicates that yes. Yes, we do."

They boiled away the ethanol, separating it from the water and condensing it via tube in another, smaller drum. They poured the purified fuel into a red jug and brought it to a tractor waiting in the yellow afternoon. It wasn't yet quitting time, but most of the farmhands had gathered to watch, grinning, joking about all the naps they'd be taking if the tractor turned over.

Brandon planted his hands on his hips and rocked his heels. "Fill 'er up."

Ness tipped the jug into the tractor tank, smelling the sharp tang of the fuel.

Kristin pressed the keys into his hand. "Want to go for a ride?"

He smiled uneasily and climbed into the high seat. He put the key in the ignition. An intense wave of heat washed over his body, prickling the scarring lash-lines on his back. A week ago, the stuff in the gas tank had been swaying in the wind. Brandon and Kristin, did they have the first idea what they were doing? Why did they think they could do this? What if it exploded, coating him in flaming fuel, crackling his skin, killing him in a final minute of shrieking agony?

Kristin vaulted into the seat beside him. "What if this whole thing just blew up right now?"

"Stop it," Ness smiled.

"We'd look pretty stupid, wouldn't we? Boom!"

"Maybe you should turn it on while I manage from a bunker."

She reached for his hand at the ignition. "Will you turn the damn key already?"

He nodded, took a deep breath, and turned the key. The engine coughed. Rattled. Roared. Outside the dust-streaked windshield, fifty men and women grinned and clapped.

Brandon and Kristin returned with him to the college for more and bigger stills. Ness boiled a big new batch, then experimented with several smaller ones, varying the temperature at several points along the way. The old woman cleared space for his vats and drums at the warehouse, where the air conditioning was potent enough to keep the temperature in the yeast-friendly 80s even with the full might of the sun pounding the metal roof. With Brandon and Kristin busy at the power plant, Ness asked Larsen whether Nick could be spared to assist him. When Nick heard that he was going to be pulled from fieldwork, he bent at the knees and pumped his fist.

In the warehouse, Ness pulled the lid from one of the smaller vats, releasing the sweetish smell of fermenting corn. Bubbles and chaff turned the surface. Ness dipped a pH stick into the fluid and shook it.

Nick leaned forward, frowning at the sludge floating on top of the mash. "What's all this for, anyway?"

Ness glanced up from the stick. "You don't even know what we're doing? Then why were you so happy to help me?"

"Because I don't have to pick any more damn strawberries."

"We're making ethanol. Gasoline, basically."

Nick gave him a look. "Oh, is that what you used to start the tractor? Gasoline?"

"I can bust you back to scything corn in no time flat."

"What's it all for?"

"You have to promise not to tell anyone."

"Why?"

"Because I don't want everyone to be mad at me if it doesn't happen."

Nick shrugged. "I promise."

"I want to have enough to power all the machines for the harvest." Ness replaced the lid on the vat and wandered past a row of coiled hoses. "If I get them running, the harvest won't take weeks, it'll take days. I'm going to ask Daniel if we can use our free time to go into town and pick up a few things to make life here a little less cave mannish."

"Like what?"

"Real air conditioners. Something to eat besides pasta. More washers and dryers."

"No joke," Nick laughed. "The lines on Sunday are so long I just take my stuff down to the river."

Ness wiped off his hands, gave the stills one last check, and walked out into the afternoon. The heat wilted him, stole the breath from his lungs. "Anyway, that's my hope."

Nick gazed across the river at the steam rising from the wasteland. "They got all kinds of gas already, don't they? How come they won't let us use that? Think they're huffing it?"

"They don't want to spend more resources than they take in." Ness watched the plant with him. "They're being kind of stingy, aren't they?"

With Nick's help, he boiled a new batch of mash each day. With limited corn at hand, they walked a wagon to the untended orchard up north where apples browned in the grass. Ness collected a truckload of big blue jugs and filled them one by one. He didn't know how much they'd need—hundreds of gallons, most likely—but the main harvest wouldn't come until late October. He thought they might make it.

Brandon came twice more to check on his process, then ceased making off-hour visits across the river. Kristin still visited regularly, delving into the nitty-gritty of the chemical process, interrupting herself with wistful comments about making beer and loading up an old copy of Doom on the Hanford computers. Ness made a note to track down some hops. Shawn dropped by now and then, too. He seemed genuinely impressed with the mounting collection of blue jugs.

Weeks passed. The days cooled. Ness' back scarred. He gathered unwanted vegetation, boiled it, fermented it, purified it. On a trip into town for more yeast, he found some old hops and attempted to put together a batch of beer.

One day in early October, with a morning rain drying in the dust, Larsen came to the warehouse and said he needed to take the jugs back to the plant.

"All of it?" Ness said. "Why?"

Larsen shrugged. "Daniel wants to do some tests. And doesn't like the idea of incendiary matter sitting under the same roof as our farming supplies."

"So we'll build a shack for it."

"It'll be right across the river," Larsen said. "Stop worrying."

Ness watched in stony silence as the big man loaded the truck with his fuel. He found himself on the verge of tears. He'd worked toward this for weeks. He knew it wasn't gone—it would still be waiting for them come harvest time—but the river made the nuclear plant feel much further away than the mile of road separating it from the farm.

Volt didn't come home that night. Ness couldn't sleep. While the others snored, he went to the fields to find her, bringing the same things he always took when he walked in the night alone: some water, a snack, a knife, his walking stick, binoculars, a flashlight. He stalked down the rows, calling Volt's name, pausing to listen for her querulous mews.

An engine hummed to the south. Ness wandered through the tall, dark corn until he emerged into the thin strip of green grass between the field and the river. Russian olives rose from the shore, smelling of a sick and artificial sweetness. Headlights headed up the road to the plant. Ness had never heard a truck out this late. He lifted his binoculars. A large truck pulled to the gate where he and Shawn had first been stopped. After a moment, the truck pulled through. It disappeared behind an outbuilding, then drove into the floodlights surrounding the white-capped control center. Ness couldn't make out the truck's lettering, but he recognized the orange stripe across its side. It was a U-Haul. And it appeared to have a machine gun mounted to its roof.

It stopped a stone's throw from the control center. Men debarked into the pool of light. Others emerged from the command building. The two groups faced each other, gesturing. The Hanford men returned to the building and emerged a minute later, great blue jugs dangling from their hands, and delivered them to the back of the U-Haul, where the arrivals were busy offloading bulky wooden crates.

Ness made sure his knife was still on his belt, then ran straight for the bridge across the river.

20

Lights whirled miles away across the desert. Tristan's bare feet pounded the pavement, her soles scraped and stinging. The other prisoners dogged her heels. Weeds lined the road. She saw nothing in either direction along the highway—no houses, no stores, no cars, nowhere to get lost. If they left the road, their feet would be destroyed in minutes. Their only hope was to find somewhere to hide before the aliens tracked them down.

Engines keened. Searchlights slashed from light and low-flying craft, scouring the desert floor. Tristan headed up a gentle rise. The other captives strung out behind her, breathing hard in the cool night. Lights splashed from wheeled vehicles fanning across the flatland toward the road. Tristan crested the hill. A half mile down the road, a small cluster of buildings rested in the starlight.

A craft whined nearer and nearer. Its searchlight swooped forward, gushing over the pack of prisoners. Some stopped, pinned in place, deerlike. Others ran harder. The light followed the runners down the road, leaving the ones who'd stopped in darkness; the jet banked, taking its spotlight with it, and circled around for another pass.

"There are buildings down the road!" Tristan shouted. "I think I see cars!"

"No way the batteries aren't dead," said the blond man she'd punched on the way to the prison camp.

"They'll grab us any minute," she said. "What other chance do we have?"

The red-haired woman sprinted forward. Like schooling fish, the others followed her lead, racing downhill toward the dark buildings. Tristan fell back. Once she was a few yards behind the bald man, who panted heavily, grasping his gut, Tristan cut off the road and flattened herself among the weeds.

The searchlight caught up to the prisoners just before they reached the cluster of buildings. The alien cars reached the road and sped downhill. Tristan ran through the dust, putting a hundred yards between herself and the highway, then hid behind a wall of sage. Headlights blared past. She got up and ran again. The jet circled, painting the rooftops with light. The ground vehicles converged on the site. Screams joined the moans of the circling craft.

Tristan was a mile across the desert by the time the cars pulled away from the houses and returned to the city of blue cones. The jet made three wide circles, searchlight zooming through the yellow grass.

After a few minutes, all Tristan heard was the crickets.

She took stock while she waited. Her feet bled from a dozen different cuts. Dust clung to the bloody lines of her soles. She needed to find disinfectant cream. Antibiotics. Then again, she was buck naked in the night. She needed to find a lot of things.

She supposed she was better off than the others.

She laughed, startling herself, then sunk under a wave of horrified guilt. She'd tricked them. Wielded their own willingness to follow against them. She'd known there wouldn't be any working trucks at the farmhouse. No way to run or place to hide. A couple of them might have been smart enough to hide in the weeds like she had, but most had been returned to the pen.

It was their own fault. They should have listened to her when she told them to split up. When they refused, they left her with no choice but to look out for herself. Being recaptured with them would have served nothing. She did not regret what she had done. She would do it again right now if the universe called a do-over and reset to the moment the searchlight had first hit them. She wouldn't hesitate.

And that was exactly what scared her.

She sat on her feet and thought things through. She'd probably die if she spent a full day naked in the sun. Her mouth was already dry, her tongue pebbly. Who knew how far she'd have to walk to the west before she found any place with food and water. Her best option was to go to the farmhouse where the others had been captured. If she wanted to get any further than that, she'd better take the road to get there, too. Another mile shoeless through the desert night could leave her feet too shredded to use.

She waited another hour, watching the black plain, listening for the whine and whuff of foreign engines. The alien settlement had once more gone silent, a handful of white lights gleaming from its cones. She rose and rejoined the road. Asphalt yanked at the cuts on her feet. She slowed to a dawdle; she had hours before daylight. She paused a couple hundred yards from the farmhouse. Crickets chirped innocently. No sign of life, human or alien.

An analog gas pump stood from the gravel and dust. Paint peeled from the house's wooden walls. A truck sat on blocks, its windshield opaque with dirt. Her heart grew grim—the site might have been abandoned decades before the Panhandler—but the home's windows were intact, and inside, the dust on the floor looked months old, not years. It was incredibly dark. She eased the door closed and shuffled to the kitchen. With no real hope, she tried the faucet. Dead. She opened the fridge and wished she hadn't. The stink of rot overwhelmed her, cloying and diarrheal. Too dark to see if there were any untainted bottles or cans. She closed the door, unwilling to reach inside blind.

She took the hand towel from the oven handle and swabbed the dust from her feet, cleaning it from her cuts with what little spit she had to spare. Upstairs, three bodies lay tangled in the master bedroom bed, starlight exposing the skin dried to their skulls. Tristan checked their drawers. The wife's panties were hopelessly large, but the man's Wranglers fit when belted. So did his plaid button-up shirts. His socks, too, but her toes waggled inside his shoes. She'd blister. Have a hard time running. She went to another bedroom, hoping the third body in the bed was a teenage daughter with normal feet, and immediately rammed her little toe into a dresser corner. Pain sparked across her eyes. She collapsed, holding her foot tight.

It was too dark and she was too tired. She made sure the bed was empty, then undressed, climbed beneath the covers, and slept.

Sunlight snuck through the window. Her feet hurt. Her eyes were gritty. She didn't have to pee. Not a good sign.

The house had already been looted. Possibly more than once. The fridge was a mess of sludge in plastic bags. It held no bottles of water or cans of soda. No drinkable liquid of any kind. The pantry contained one can of garbanzo beans, one six ounce can of tomato paste, a box of Kraft macaroni, a bottle of A1, a half-empty bottle of sherry, assorted spices, packets of dry gravy, and powdered Gatorade. She couldn't find a can opener. She took the garbanzos and tomato paste to the garage, laid their rims against the concrete step, and hammered open the garbanzos. Gooey fluid spurted the dust. She yanked the can straight and drank the bean syrup inside. It was salty and sweet and ran out far too fast.

She smashed open the tomato paste, scooped it out with her fingers, and mixed it in with the cold garbanzos, eating it all. No sense rationing. Food wasn't her worry now. What she needed was water. Her plan was simple. Find a town, enough food and water to rest and recover, then find Alden.

She got a backpack from the daughter's room and spent the daylight gathering gear. Extra clothes and socks and shoes. Cutlery. The hammer. A bar of soap and a roll of toilet paper. A couple of sheets. A thick-bladed kitchen knife. Scissors. A roll of string from the garage. An empty plastic bottle in case she found water.

That filled the backpack. The day's heat cooked the house. Miles across the plain, vehicles stirred the dust at the alien settlement. Tristan descended to the cellar to wait out the heat. A tall white water heater took up the corner. She found a crescent wrench in the garage and cranked open the valve, but nothing came out. Her tongue was dry again, bumping over the rough ridges of her mouth. She went upstairs and gazed out the eastern window. The road rolled on for miles, its shoulders blank, a useless expanse of killing desert.

She was going to have to do it, wasn't she.

She got a bowl from downstairs and, for reasons she couldn't quite explain, went to the bathroom, where she squatted over the bowl. Her urine was yellow and odorous. She waited for the metal bowl to leech her body heat from the fluid. She wanted very deeply to open the window and fling the bowl into the dust and sun.

But those were the old instincts. The old prejudices. Vestigial revulsion left over from a time when water just poured out of taps. She didn't know how far away the next water would be nor how to coax it from the mummified soil. If she was going to find Alden, she'd likely have to do far worse along the way.

It tasted brackish and foul, a salty poison. She gagged, but held it between her teeth and lips, refusing to spit or spill. She swallowed, breathed hard, and chugged the rest, trying to get it down before the taste could taint her brain. After, she wiped her tongue on a towel. Her eyes tried to water but couldn't.

Much later, she might tell Alden this story, as much to gross him out as to make him laugh. For now, she was glad no one else had seen.

She slept in the cellar until twilight. Her mouth was completely dry. Her head ached and her stomach twisted. She made another pass of the grounds to make sure she hadn't missed a gun, then grabbed a pitchfork from the barn, hoisted her backpack, and set off down the road.

Bugs sang in the night. She thought about trying to catch some, but it wouldn't be worth the bother. She needed water. Badly. And treatment for her feet, which were so sore she couldn't manage more than a plodding walk. The road unspooled through the empty hills. A sliver of moon crawled up the sky. Tristan stopped to rest. She took three shells of macaroni from the box and tucked them into her cheek, hoping to remind her saliva glands how to work.

Dawn came far too soon. She watched the eastern hills with tired anger, wishing she could push back the sun with the strength of her gaze. She'd put several miles and hills between herself and the aliens, but there would be no escape from the daylight. Blue-gray dawn drew the weeds from the darkness. The sun climbed above the mountains, its itchy heat needling her skin. She stopped sweating after an hour.

She laid one of the bedsheets in the dust, draped another between two clumps of sagebrush, and did her best to sleep, dreaming of featureless faces and gleaming tentacles creeping from the cracks in the desert floor to drag her through the thorns. When it grew too hot to sleep, she gathered up her sheets and continued east.

It was amazing how fast she fell apart. Her legs weakened, going noodly. Her feet landed in strange ways, straining her ankles. Not that she felt it. Her eyelids stuck to her eyes when she blinked. When she stopped to rest, it took her several minutes to remember which way she'd been going. At one point, she stopped and turned back, convinced she'd passed a farmhouse, but the vacant desert stretched from hill to hill.

Past another slope, a town baked in the heat. Trailers and single-story homes with yellow yards. Her right knee went out. Tristan sat down hard, right hand resting on the boiling asphalt. She could smell the tar. Her chest rose and fell. Her breath felt like a drug. She just needed a moment. She lowered herself to her elbow. Something hard and hot rested beneath her head. Was it the road? How odd. She hoped her brother would have a happy life.

21

Ness ran across the bridge, cool air wafting from the river. Water trickled over itself and lapped against the broken rocks of the far shore. The idling U-Haul kicked into gear, headlights swooping behind the plant. It passed through the gates and headed south. Its engine was a low murmur by the time Ness reached the chain link fence.

He scaled it and dropped to the other side. Floodlights illuminated the lot where the men had made their exchange. Men pulled machine guns from the wooden crates and examined them in the hard white light. One of the troops whirled on Ness with a shout.

Ness stopped cold, heart threatening to batter its way from his ribs. "I want to see Larsen!"

"On your knees!" The man stutter-stepped forward, pistol pointed at Ness' face. "Hands behind your head!"

Ness obeyed. They handcuffed him, yanked him to his feet, marched him to the same room where they'd imprisoned him and Shawn when they first arrived. He had several minutes to feel very stupid.

Larsen entered, his flat eyes bloodshot and puffy. "You're lucky you weren't shot."

"Why did you do that?" Ness said.

"Specifics."

"You took my fuel. You took what I made and you sold it for guns."

Larsen pulled his chin to the side. "No, I didn't."

"Well, somebody did. I just watched them do it. I needed that ethanol for the harvest. Do you guys even care what it's like over there?"

"Get calm. I'll be back."

Larsen left for a long time. Ness' head beat with a dull and useless anger. On Larsen's return, he beckoned Ness into the hall. "If you want answers, ask questions."

"Why—"

"We're asking Daniel." He brought Ness upstairs to a conference room. Daniel faced a black window, hands clasped behind his back. Larsen shut the door and stared at Daniel, his thick hands hanging by his sides. "Did you trade our ethanol for guns?"

Daniel turned, frowning in distaste. "No. I did not."

Larsen didn't move. "Then we have a thank-you note to write whoever donated those crates."

"I traded our fuel for safety."

"From what?" Ness said. "Dust devils?"

Daniel removed his glasses and scowled at a recalcitrant speck on the lens. "The aliens, for one."

"Funny you start caring about them now. Have you even started on the bombs?"

"Of course. But this exchange isn't just about the aliens. Those men represent a group settled beyond what used to be the Oregon border. Most are ex-soldiers. They control the Umatilla chemical weapons depot."

"Appeasement," Larsen said.

Daniel nodded sharply, a small smile on his mouth. "The power lines through the hills are dead. I had to find another way to convince these men we're reasonable. Friendly. Meanwhile, they have armed us, making us even less attractive as a future target. I thought it quite an elegant solution."

Ness' shoulders sank. "But we needed that fuel for the harvest."

"You can make more, can't you? I thought that was the whole point of this enterprise."

"Yeah, with all that extra corn I don't have. It will go perfect with all the time I don't have, either."

Daniel ran the nail of his index finger through his beard. "I'm sorry, but fuel was the only thing they wanted. Perhaps we could divert you some of the gasoline stores for the harvest instead. Would that work?"

"I guess," Ness said.

"Why didn't I know about this?" Larsen said.

Daniel's brows flickered. "Do you know how fast this came together? Anyway, if I'd known you were going to raise such a fuss, I would have made sure to consult you."

"Consult."

"Yes, consult. What more do you want?"

"I don't remember the vote that put you here."

Daniel rolled his eyes. "Listen, get someone to drive him back to the farm, will you? If you must yell, let's do it in private."

Larsen's eyelids drooped. He nodded and brought Ness outside. The plant's men had disappeared, taking the crates and guns with them. "What do you think?"

"I don't know," Ness said.

"Yes, you do."

"No, I don't?"

Larsen rubbed one eye. "Everyone has an opinion at every time. When they don't share, it's because they're polite or scared."

"He should have asked first," Ness said. "I'm the one who made it. Everyone across the river helped grow the corn, too. Who made Daniel boss?"

"No one." Larsen smiled. "Does that scare you?"

Ness went back to work, but his enthusiasm had been lost somewhere across the river. He was starting over from scratch. With less than two weeks till the start of harvest, he'd be lucky to get in two good batches, and that itself depended on collecting enough fallen apples from the northern orchard to fill the stills with mash.

"It's not that big a deal," Nick said. "You know this stuff grows right out of the ground, right?"

"Wrong," Ness said. "It grows out of next year's ground."

"So we spend one year picking by hand. Who cares?"

"If I have to eat spaghetti one more time, there is a nonzero chance I will kill myself."

Nick examined the thermometer in one of the vats of mash. "Can you shoot yourself in the head? If your body's intact, I can make some pretty good meatballs."

Ness watched the skies for aliens, but saw nothing. If he hadn't seen them for himself, he'd suspect the whole thing were a lie, a boogeyman invented to keep people scared. To prevent them from protesting when Daniel allocated them just twenty percent of the gasoline they needed for the harvest, and declared there would be no fuel for any more trips into town.

The old man woke them earlier than usual for the first day of harvest. Ness tried to take to the fields with them, but a hefty man named Erasmo shook his head and barred Ness' way. "Those bony little arms won't do no good. You want to help, you get those tractors running."

Ness followed them out anyway, raking up any fallen or discarded cobs and lugging them back to be smashed and boiled. It was pointless, really. He'd be lucky to have twenty gallons ready before they finished up a few weeks from now. It would hardly be enough to run the tractors for an hour. The combines grumbled through the early part of the morning, but burned through their fuel rations before noon. Men and women pulled wagons through the fields, yellow corn piled so high it spilled with every bounce of the wheels, and rolled their loads to a warehouse to be binned and dried.

"How goes the great chopdown?"

Ness startled, dropping wormy cobs onto the warehouse floor. Kristin stood in the doorway in sweatpants and a tank top that showed no obvious stains, which was more than Ness could say about any of his own clothes. Her hair was combed and ponytailed. Ness had the urge to duck below the table. Their water heaters had been acting up and he hadn't showered or washed his shirt in days.

"Laboriously," he said. "Someone had the bright idea to run the harvest with fleshy, people-shaped machines instead of those great big metal ones."

"I heard about the ethanol. That's so weird. We've got guys with guns just standing around in the hallways."

"I thought everyone on your side of the river was a nuclear scientist or something."

She shrugged. "I don't recognize these guys. I think they're new."

"Did they show up in a U-Haul?"

"I didn't see. Just one day and wham, the whole plant looks like an airport on September 12." Her eyes locked on a stack of small green bottles in the corner. "Hang on a minute. What is that?"

Ness followed her gaze. "Beer."

"Beer?"

"The hops were old. It's not very good."

She walked forward slowly, as if in a dream. "You're talking to a girl who happily bought things with 'Lite' and 'Ice' in the name. Who thought Steel Reserve belonged on the middle shelf."

Ness' pulse picked up. "Want to try some?"

"With you?"

"I guess I could just give you some."

She rolled her lip between her teeth. "No. If there's something wrong with it, I'd like to be able to stab you before I go blind."

Ness laughed. "Well, I share a room with five other guys."

"Tempting. Why don't you just bring some over to the plant instead."

"Tonight?"

"Sure. We could all get hypernuked by Martians tomorrow. Better drink all the beer while we still can."

He watched her go. Nick chuckled from the other side of the floor.

Ness scowled. "How long have you been there?"

"Long enough to know you need to hit that."

"'Hit that'?" Ness said. "I was hoping the one good thing to come out of the apocalypse would be the death of that phrase."

"Sorry."

"Anyway, I don't even think she likes me."

"Man, you're dumb."

"What?"

"No," Nick said. "You're hopeless."

After dinner, Ness loaded twelve bottles of the label-less beer into a backpack and walked across the bridge, pack clanking. At the gate, two men with machine guns waited in the shadows of the guard station, smoking cigarettes.

"Business?" one said.

"I'm here to see Kristin," Ness said. "She's expecting me."

"Kristin's last name?"

"I don't know. Do you have a lot of other Kristins here? Did that particular name protect them from the plague?"

The man gave him a long look, then muttered into his radio. A moment later, he buzzed Ness through, gates sliding back with the rattling of chain. Ness walked to the open space around the control center and drifted to a stop. He had no idea where Kristin lived. He turned in a circle, straps of his pack digging into his shoulders.

"Ness!" In the last of the light, her face appeared from a third-floor window in a nearby outbuilding. "Stay there. I'll be right down."

He adjusted his pack. In a field between her housing and a windowless metal structure, chain link fence lay in tightly stacked rolls. The October night was this side of chilly. Kristin emerged in a hooded sweatshirt, grinning at his backpack.

He jangled it. "Where to?"

Her eyes darted between his. "The river, obviously. That's the only proper place to drink moonshine."

"What about in the back of a moving pickup?"

"But one of us would have to drive. Illegal!"

"That never stopped my brother." Ness started back east toward the river. The reactor thrummed under his feet. Cold air rolled from the water. Green grass lined the banks, overhung by thick trees with browning leaves.

"Should have brought a blanket." Kristin popped down in the grass. "Oh well. Everything's a hardship these days."

Ness unzipped his pack and handed her a beer. It was air temperature, cool but not truly cold. He'd fitted them with twist-off caps. Kristin palmed hers open with a hiss. She sniffed, gaze darting between him and the bottle, and drank.

"Any good?" he said.

"It's beer," she said.

He opened his and had a drink. It was strongly bitter and lightly metallic. "I don't even like beer."

"Then why did you make it?"

"To see if I could."

She grinned, teeth white in the moonlight. "I thought so."

He drank, bubbles tickling his throat. "This is weird."

"Tastes pretty much like beer to me. You did great."

"Not the taste." He gestured the bottle at the river. "Like, if you're just sitting here, and here's the river, and there's a fission reaction rumbling behind us, and there's the lights of the farm on the water, and there's a beer in your hand—you can forget that any of it ever happened."

"Would you want to go back?" She laughed, holding her bottle in front of her mouth. "Wow. Has there ever been a dumber question? Besides 'do you want another beer'?"

"I'd only go back if I could know what I know now."

"You weren't happy before?"

"I didn't do anything. I didn't know what to do."

"Don't tell me you lived in your mom's basement," Kristin laughed.

"Ha ha," Ness said.

"So what do you know now?"

He shrugged. "That you can learn to do just about anything. Most things aren't that hard if you put in the time."

She finished her beer. Ness passed her another bottle and chugged his to catch up. By the time he drank his second, he was half drunk. Kristin asked him about the harvest and floated the idea of grabbing up the computers at the campus and setting up an internet server.

Ness tipped back his bottle. "Assuming anyone else has power."

"Sure they do. We hear them on the radio sometimes. They've probably got solar or whatever."

"I thought radios were a security risk."

"Not if you don't transmit anything back. Sounds like the aliens have mostly stuck to the cities, anyway. I don't think they place a high priority on bombing a guy with a windmill and a CB."

"What about a guy with a nuclear power plant?" Ness said.

Kristin grinned. "I always knew working here would be the death of me. I don't know. I think Daniel's hoping to keep a low profile and wait for someone else to take care of our unwanted guests."

"That sounds like a good way to wind up atomized, sucked into the upper atmosphere, and distributed over several thousand square miles of land."

"Well, I've always wanted to travel."

He laughed. She was easier to talk to than most girls, and not just because she would get his WOW references. He reached for another beer. Had she kept coming across the river because she was interested in him? Or was she just curious about his projects? He wished he could have met her before. Texting, instant messaging—with an electronic buffer between him and the girl he was talking to, it had been so much easier to be explicit, in all meanings of the term.

But with a live person in front of him, he felt trapped in a block of ice, knowing what he wanted, but physically unable to take the steps to achieve it. If he leaned over and kissed her, what was the very worst thing that could happen? What was the worst she could do? Besides drowning him in the river, scattering bottles around the shore, and writing his suicide note. At worst, she would push him away, he would go back to the farm, and she could stop coming to see him. In many ways, that would be better than the confusion he'd grappled with for the last few weeks.

One more beer. That would do it.

Stars glinted on the river. Short waves lapped between the rocks. Kristin wedged her bottle into the grainy dirt, leaned over him to fetch another beer from the pack, and pressed her mouth to his.

She withdrew a moment later. "Good?"

"Good."

"Thank God," she laughed. "You went so tense I thought I missed and was making out with a tree."

He shifted to hide the bulge in his pants. "I was just kind of surprised."

"You brew a girl homemade beer, take her and the beer down to the river at night, and you're surprised?"

"By the moment."

Her eyes darted between his, metronymic. "Do you want to stop?"

"Hell no."

She grinned and drank her beer and kissed him. She tasted like bitter hops and sweet skin. After a few minutes, he moved his hand over her shirt to her breast. She laughed and unzipped his pants. Ness hadn't had sex in more than two years since responding to one of the Craigslist ads he used to peruse, but he lasted a good five minutes. She made him pull out. He wasn't sure she'd come and couldn't quite ask. He offered his socks for her to wipe off with.

"How romantic," she said, still breathing hard. "Do you feel like cavemen?"

"It wasn't too rough, was it?"

"I'm talking about the grass under my butt. The wind in my everything."

Ness smiled. "Next time I'll bring a club. I'd hate to be interrupted by a mammoth."

She pulled her beer from its makeshift cupholder in the shore, muck slurping from its base. "We should do this again. Clubs optional."

He agreed, then saw her to her room and went home, beer in hand. He stopped halfway across the bridge to piss into the river. His head felt very clear. He resolved to go see her again tomorrow after harvest wrapped up for the day. It had been fun. He liked her, and she liked him, too. Life could be so easy when you let it. All you had to do was decide Hey, this is what I want, and I'm going to take my shot. That's all it took. That was the entire secret right there. He grinned and chucked his empty beer into the river. The bottle spun end over end, catching the moonlight and taking it under the black water.

When Ness woke, it was to the same shame as always. The vague yet pervasive sense he had done something wrong. He raked in corn and brought it back to the warehouse to boil. They were still in the throes of the harvest and he worked so hard he often forgot all about her. Four days went by. He doubted he would see her again. It was better this way. Easier. It was tough enough to work out your own life. Add another person to the mix, and it became downright impossible.

She came across the river on the fifth day, finding him in the warehouse amid green husks and white-yellow silk. "This place is a mess."

He stirred fresh-boiled mash, steam rising into the cool air. "It's been really busy."

"Too busy to do any brewing?"

"I bottled some new stuff last night. But I think it's even worse. It tastes like I filtered it through an old sock."

"Not the one you keep beside your bed, I hope." She grinned. "Well. Want to take that stuff down to the river with me again?"

He glanced at her. Was it that easy? Should he tell her he was too busy? It would be so much simpler. Get lost in the work. Forget it all. He felt stuck, trapped inside the same old block of ice. Kristin smiled, eyes tick-tocking between his, asking for a decision. But he was capable of movement, wasn't he? It was the ice that was stuck. He just had to will his limbs to move.

"I'll be there," he said.

He spent the night with her and returned to the harvest at dawn. Day by day, they cleared the fields, hacking down swaths of green and baling them into wagons to be dried. He saw Kristin every second or third day. At night, the desert air grew so cold he thought the dew would crust into frost, but the weather held through Halloween. One day, he realized he hadn't seen Shawn in weeks. He wasn't sure if he missed him.

At the plant, the lights stayed on late. Sometimes, when he wasn't too exhausted, Ness took his binoculars to the river's edge and watched men with guns patrolling the grounds. Rains came and went. At sunset, dust set the horizon aflame with orange and pink and red.

Larsen's heavy hand stirred him from the middle of the night. Ness startled, scrabbling to the edge of his mattress, back pressed against the cold wooden wall.

"Get up," Larsen said.

"Where are we going? Do I need my shoes?"

"Only if you like your feet."

Ness dressed and got his shoes. Larsen strode through the cornfields, crunching through dried stems and broad, striated leaves, cutting to the banks of the river where the water would smother his words.

Larsen stared at the silvery ripples for so long Ness began to shiver. The tall man planted his foot on a rock and heeled it into the river. "There are no bombs."

Ness hunched his shoulders tight against the wind. "Is that a Zen thing?"

"Daniel doesn't think they'll work."

"He doesn't think high doses of radiation will kill things made out of flesh and blood?"

"Do we know they have blood?"

"Okay then, flesh and goo."

Larsen gazed across the river. "Daniel thinks two things. First, that the fact they were able to survive a trip of unknown light-years proves they're radiation-resistant. Second, that we shouldn't fight."

Ness breathed into his hands. "Sooner or later, they'll come for us."

"Unless they don't."

"Yeah, they're probably perfectly cool with us running a nuclear reactor. Just so long as we keep our yard trimmed and don't let any missiles pee on their rose bushes."

"Again, he sees two things. Someone else drives them off. And we're fine. Or the resistance fails, and we're dead no matter what we do."

"What if we could have made a difference?" Ness said.

Larsen swiveled his flat-cheeked face toward Ness. "He thinks the chances of that are so low that it's not worth antagonizing the invaders."

"I don't get why you're telling me this."

"To do with it what you wish." Larsen sniffed and turned from the river. Ness followed him for three steps, then fell back. The conversation was over.

He returned to the river and sat down. He watched the ripples until his mind was ready to move. Larsen wouldn't have come to him to prompt him into speaking to Daniel. Ness had no special evidence. No proof of concept in the bombs. If Larsen couldn't talk the old man into action, Ness wouldn't have a prayer.

The tall man could be coming to him to vent. Ness had the impression few people liked Larsen. Maybe he didn't have any friends. Or maybe he'd come to Ness because he knew Ness had no power nor the will to grab it, and that he could spill whatever he pleased without fear that Ness would use it against him, to discredit or betray him to Daniel.

No, he didn't think so. Larsen wasn't so different from the farmers and locals back in Moscow. If he had a problem, he'd do something about it—or keep it to himself.

He had given Ness this information so Ness would put it to use. So Ness would go on strike? Stop producing ethanol until Daniel started producing bombs? Daniel would just get Brandon to do it. Or bribe Nick.

Ness went still. He knelt and tapped a wave-lapped rock, reassuring himself with its solidity. Daniel could replace one person. He couldn't replace a hundred.

Ness went home. He woke so nervous he couldn't eat breakfast. He spent hours rehearsing what he would say, discarding one phrase after another, searching for the perfect line of logic. He still wasn't sure he'd found it when the workers came home from the fields for dinner.

He waited until most had finished but few had left the tables. Then, heart beating so hard he thought his heart would squirt from his ribs, he climbed on top of his picnic table and cleared his throat.

"My name's Ness. I'm the guy who was so lazy he had to be literally whipped." A few people chuckled uneasily. His entire body itched. "Since then, I've tried to get my head on straight. Because I thought we were working toward something important. I thought we were working to kill the aliens who took our families away. Who are still fighting to wipe us out. But I don't think we are fighting back. I think we're working toward something else instead. Something the people running this place don't want you to know about."

Nick looked up at him like Ness' teeth had fallen out one by one while he was speaking. "What are you talking about?"

He almost lost his nerve. "We're not working for our safety or our future. We're working so the people in the plant can take what we make and sell it for themselves." He described the arms deal, the meat they ate, the radios they had access to, the computers and the trucks and the hired soldiers. "That plant isn't just across a river, it's in a different world. One where everything we create gets sent to them and we're left with the scraps.

"Daniel tells us all this hardship is about fighting the aliens. But someone in his camp just told me he doesn't plan to fight back at all. Therefore, I can only conclude that we are being used—and will go on being used until we do something to stop it."

He broke off; he'd had more, but he forgot it abruptly. He stood on the picnic table, biting the skin around his thumbnail, their sunbeaten faces watching him from under the shadows of the tarps.

"Is that true?" Erasmo said to the old man who woke them every morning, who still hadn't moved. "They get to just drive into town?"

The old man shrugged. "How should I know? Don't tell me shit."

"This whole time they said they were building bombs," said Ellen, a hefty woman who swore every time she rose from tending the rows of crops. "If they're not looking to give the squid a taste of what we did to Nagasaki, just what the hell are they doing over there?"

Ness shrugged. "Selling our stuff for other stuff we'll never see."

"So what do you want to do about it?" Nick said.

Ness could have hugged him. "Nothing. I want to do nothing. Quit working. Go on strike."

Ness hadn't known what he expected. Cheers? Applause? Boos and a hail of tomatoes? Instead, they met his proposal with blank silence, looking away when he climbed down from his perch. He walked to the river and wandered the banks until long past dark. He thought about going to Kristin, but it wouldn't do any good. He'd failed.

In the morning, the workers rose, ate breakfast, and stayed at the picnic tables, watching each other, as if waiting for someone to break rank and Ness' spell with it. The old man stood with his arms folded, toothpick wiggling from his teeth. He caught Ness staring and nodded.

A half hour after they were scheduled to start the day's harvest, the people dispersed. Some went back to their bunks. Some went to the river to wash their clothes. Others walked south, packs on their backs, to spend the day foraging in town. None went back to the fields.

At the tables, Nick sipped his water and laughed. "It's like we're all skipping school. Know what happens next?"

Ness shook his head. "I never skipped school."

"They send security to get you."

Ness laughed through his nose. His humor was as short-lived as his rebellion. The next morning, while the workers were still waiting on their oatmeal, trucks rolled onto the bridge. They crossed the wide gray waters, wheels spitting dust, and came to a stop at the end of the road to the farm. Men with rifles leaped from the backs and advanced on the workers. Ness stood and prepared to run.

22

Teeth swam above her head. Two white rows of teeth. Teeth divided by narrow gray seams. They sank toward her neck, a pink tongue-tip protruding from the incisors. Tristan tried to scream.

Water touched her lips. She swallowed. She had done this before. She choked and sat up, water dribbling down her shirt.

"It's alive!" said the woman who owned the teeth. "Glad to see we're not just wasting the stuff. Starting to feel like I was pouring it down a pretty little drain."

Tristan sat up, taking in the plain white sheets, the bare and water-spotted walls. "Where am I?"

"Williams," the woman said. "Williams, Arizona. Former United States of Earth."

"So you know about them."

"We're not living in a basement just to keep cool."

Tristan reached for the water glass, finishing it. The water was room temperature and tasted like dirt. "They're trying to wipe us out. I didn't know anyone was left."

"Oh, was there a plague or something?" the woman said. "That would explain why all my friends dropped dead."

"They're working on a second plague. A final strike."

The woman pressed her lips together. "Doubt there's enough of us left to kill."

Her name was Jen and she was gently plump. His name was Mikel and his brown eyes were as bright as his smile. They were married, both in their late thirties. They lived in the basement of a former Grand Canyon gift shop and diner beside a large blue lake. Mikel had found Tristan on the road while scavenging their designated sector of the town—even before the Panhandler hit, Williams had just three thousand people, most of whom knew each other by face if not name. After the Panhandler hit, it was reduced to 22. One Sunday after the dust had settled, a former volunteer firefighter went door to door to invite the survivors to the Lutheran church to learn who'd lived and hash out what to do next.

After the meeting, six survivors left town to seek different fates. The sixteen who remained in Williams split scavenging rights between themselves as equally as possible—although it had taken more than a few arguments to settle who got what share of the propane shop on the north end of town—including shared and unrestricted passage to the two lakes and two reservoirs. There hadn't been a single significant squabble since.

Jen told her all this over a breakfast of potatoes, eggs, and homemade bread. Tristan held the velvety yolks in her mouth before swallowing. "So you just split up the whole town? Is there anything left?"

Mikel poured her more water. "Food, guns, gas, and Coke? That's all been hauled back to our lairs, which ought to tell you a thing or five about a people's values. Nonessentials haven't been picked quite so bare."

"Where'd you come from?" Jen said. "You looked like a scarecrow come to life."

Tristan dug into her potatoes. "West. I ran out of food. I meant to restock along the road. Turned out the road was out of water, too."

After another day of rest, Tristan felt well enough to get up and do some wandering. Like Mikel said, the town had been picked free of food. She found a duffel bag upstairs in the gift shop and walked to the sporting goods store on the east end of town, which still carried a few things deemed too common or useless to be worth hoarding: a canteen, a compass, two silvery emergency blankets, two Swiss army knives, a radio, a collapsible fishing rod, artificial bait. All the guns were gone. The biggest knives, too. Tristan shouldered her bag, climbed onto a bike, and rode back to the house, dropping the bike off in the bushes down the street and stashing the bag in the passenger side of a dust-caked Cadillac.

She volunteered to help clean their home. Jen grinned and showed her to the broom, dustpan, mop, and bucket. Tristan took care of the basement, spending extra time in the couple's bedroom, then moved upstairs to the gift shop, careful to sweep all the closets and storerooms as well.

Along the way, Tristan discovered Mikel kept three guns in his bedroom and another nine wrapped in coats in a box in the attic. He'd hidden spare ammo in a chest, the small boxes buried beneath shot glasses printed with tiny pictures of the Grand Canyon and Flagstaff. Tristan waited for the couple to fall asleep, then crept to the attic, where she took a scoped rifle and an automatic pistol. Using a pen light taken from the kitchen, she compared the ammo in the guns' magazines to what was in the green cardboard boxes—she hadn't had time to do so earlier, too afraid of being caught—and returned downstairs.

A man waited in the darkness, gun pointed at her head.

"What you got there?" Mikel said.

"Two of your guns," Tristan said.

"What are you thinking?"

"That the rest of the world isn't likely to be as nice as Williams."

"Man, we don't need all these weapons. You could have just asked."

Tristan shrugged. "People say yes more when a gun does the asking."

Mikel sighed. "You got food? Water?"

"I've got water from the lake. I was going to go to the reservoir and catch a few fish before dawn."

"You can't drink straight out the lake, you'll shit your brains out. Go wait outside while I kit you out right. And for God's sake, be quiet. Jen hears you robbing us, you'll break her heart."

Tristan went out to the car and got her bag. Mikel crept outside and handed her a pillowcase heavy with small boxes and bottles.

"You know there's an alien camp down the highway?" she pointed.

"I've heard the jets."

"You heard about any others like it?"

The light of the quarter moon glinted in his eyes. "Who you lose?"

"My brother." She slung the bags over her shoulders. "I'm sorry. Tell Jen whatever you want."

She walked to the end of the street and got the bike from under the bushes. Its basket was big enough to hold both her bags, so long as she bungeed them down, but she had to carry the rifle slung on her shoulder. She'd taken a map from the gift shop. It was cartoonish and poorly-scaled, but all she had to do to find Flagstaff was follow the highway.

She biked east into the lukewarm night. She could spend an eternity combing the country and still never find Alden. She needed news. That meant she needed people. People carried news like STDs.

She was still weakened from her bout of exhaustion. It took her two days to bike the 35 miles to Flagstaff. In between, she holed up in a rest stop. From the east, a line of mountains oversaw the city. Flagstaff was smaller than she expected. Smaller than Redding. Snows held to the heights of the two pyramidal peaks beyond the town. She climbed a hill a mile outside the city. The grass had died during the summer, but the outskirts were dotted with gnarly pines that smelled of needles and bad syrup. She scanned the streets through the scope of the rifle, keeping her finger outside the trigger guard.

Extrapolating from Williams' numbers, Flagstaff could have as many as five hundred survivors. If so, they were doing a damn good job of hiding from each other. Anything green and orderly stood out from the desert like a malleted thumb, but she saw a bare handful of gardens scattered around the town.

It had been one thing to deal with a gaggle of naked, traumatized prisoners and a too-kindly couple. It was another thing entirely to stroll into a strange town demanding answers from total strangers who'd been through unknown trials of their own. Could she connive her way into another household? Someone nice. Popular. A former reverend or elementary school teacher. Sponge them and their connections for knowledge.

But it would take too long to set up, be too risky. Anyway, she wasn't sure she had the stomach for some elaborate con. It hadn't been that long ago she was campaigning the streets of Berkeley for gay marriage rights. Some part of her—the same part of her that believed Alden was still alive—continued to believe others deserved respect, honesty, fair treatment.

She channeled her inner Clint Eastwood and walked her bike down the middle of town. When that drew no notice, she picked out a two-story house, checked it for people living and dead, tore a square of cardboard from a box in the garage, and wrote a message in block Sharpie. After thinking for some time on the apocalypse's equivalent of the saloon, she biked around until she found the Walmart and duct taped her sign to the front doors:

"NEED INFO ON ALIENS, ESP. PRISON CAMPS. WILLING TO BARTER. LEAVE TERMS HERE."

She returned to her home, which had enough canned fruit and soup to last her a week or better, and killed the rest of the day raiding the neighbors. When she returned to her sign the following afternoon, she found it had been defaced with two names, a drawing of a penis, and a request to meet at 5 PM, no date given.

She turned in a circle, eyeing the parking lot. Several RVs rested at the far end. She cleared them one by one and settled inside the second-largest, prying open the windows to convince a breeze to flush out the sweltering air. She found an unopened bottle of grapefruit juice in the pantry. It was blood-warm but smelled fine. She drank it as she watched the lot.

The sun was still well above the horizon when the man walked to the door and stopped to gaze across the baking asphalt. He lit a cigarette and stepped into the shade of the entry. Tristan examined him through the scope. He wore baggy sports shorts, but despite the heat, a light jacket covered his torso. Probably had a pistol on his hip. She made sure she could draw hers, then popped the door and dropped down the steps.

His eyes locked on her. As she crossed the baking lot, she kept her attention on his right hand, which he used to hold his cigarette. Dry, bitter smoke dispersed across the cars.

She stopped out of arm's reach. His gaze skipped from her chest to her rifle to her hips. "What's your name?"

"What's it matter?"

"All relationships are based on trust. How can you trust when you don't know who to hold accountable?"

"Tristan."

"You lying to me, Tristan?"

She squinted against the smoke. He hadn't shaved in a week and his long hair was held behind his head in a samurai knot. She rolled her eyes. "You'll have to forgive me. I left my birth certificate back with civilization."

"Got a boyfriend, Tristan?"

"I left him with my birth certificate. What do you know about the camps?"

He drew on the cigarette. "Do you suck?"

She took a moment to process that was what the man had really said. "Do you?"

"How bad do you want to know about the camps?"

"If you know something, we can deal. I have food."

"Me too. What I don't got is a girl. Or enough flexibility to pretend."

Tristan glanced at a crow pecking at something in the sun-splashed parking lot. "It's just information. It won't cost you anything."

"And all I want for it is five minutes of your time." He dropped his cigarette, stamped it out, keeping his eyes down. "No one has to know. Nobody's left to know. It only seems like a lot because we used to treat it like a lot."

"It's not on the table. The table has been burnt and left on the side of the highway."

He nodded, gazing at a planter where crickets chirped in the shadows of the weeds. "Same question as before: how badly do you want it?"

"Enough to be here."

"Same here. So why don't we satisfy our wants together?"

She met his eyes. He raised his brows and glanced back at the crickets. Tristan considered her gun. "Would you have talked this way before the plague?"

"What's it matter?"

"I want to know whether I should worry about turning into a pathetic little vulture, too."

He smiled angrily and reached for her face. "Listen, that's no way—"

Tristan moved with him, pivoting to the left, away from his reach, while thrusting her left palm forward and intercepting his forearm with hers. At the same time, she snapped her right fist into his nose.

Tristan would replay that moment for days, weeks, years. Enough times to know with bone-down clarity she could have ended it then and there. But she was too used to punching walls. Too conditioned by solo one-step sparring, where each strike and block was followed by a pause and a reset to her default stance.

She struck his face. He staggered back. She paused.

He swung for her cheek. She lifted her left to block with her wrist, but she caught him too near the elbow and his fist hinged into her face. She'd diverted half the force, but the remainder stung her, making her hesitate again. He drew his pistol from his hip and leveled his arm.

She grabbed his wrist with her left hand, straining to keep his aim offline, and slammed her right fist into the veiny softness of his inner forearm. The gun flew from his hand and spun over the pavement. His left hand, free and clear, hammered into her head. She dropped to one knee. He hit her again, knocking her down, and dropped his knees onto her chest, driving the air from her lungs. The rifle dug into her back. She groped for her pistol, but he spread his knees apart, pinning the weapon and her left hand to the sidewalk.

He swung his right fist and she slapped it past her ear. His left struck her eye, bouncing her head against the concrete. Stars burst across her sight. His next punch slammed into her mouth, tearing her lip over her teeth. She tasted copper. He hit her again and again. She felt two of her teeth uproot from her jaw, strings of gum-flesh yanking away. She prepared to die.

The man grabbed her throat, pushing his thumbs into her windpipe. The short respite brought Tristan back into the world. She clawed for his eyes, nails scraping furrows of skin from his cheeks. His hold relaxed; he cried out and jerked his head, biting for her fingers. Her right index finger slipped inside his wet cheek. He bit down until his teeth clacked together. White fire exploded from her hand. Her finger was a one-knuckled stump. He spat her severed finger into her face and bore down on her throat.

Her vision grayed. He leaned forward and she jerked her left arm free from his knee. She groped for her pistol, but he spread his knees further, covering the gun. His shorts rode up his hairy thighs. She snaked her hand inside one leg of his shorts and grabbed his testicles.

She twisted, pulled, and squeezed.

He yelled and leaned down, thumbs crushing her throat. She felt something give in her hand, a semihard, gelatinous orb breaking into pieces. His hands disappeared from her neck. He arched his back and screamed, pulling away. She yanked her hand toward herself, grinding her palm, nails slicing his skin. He fell to his side and clamped his hands to his bleeding crotch. She picked up the fallen pistol in her left hand, her right dripping blood. The man had enough survival instinct remaining to push himself up on his hip. She punched the pistol into his mouth, shattering his teeth.

"Suck."

His eyes went wide. She pulled the trigger. Pink goo fanned the sidewalk. His head yanked back. He slumped, head lolling, blood watering the ground. Tristan jerked her hand, slinging the gun away. She dropped to the ground. Blood dribbled from her face and squirted from her finger. Nausea cramped her guts. She retched, thin streamers of blood mingling with spools of saliva and bile. Pain thundered over her with every heartbeat. Her knucklebone peeked from her finger. The man's head was a hollowed gourd. She lay on the ground and sobbed.

She couldn't stay here. She was exposed. Badly hurt. She sat up. The blood left her head in a welcome rush; for a moment, the pain faded. Its return was as sharp as chipped glass. She used her pocketknife to cut away the hem of the man's shirt, holding the nub of her finger away from her grip, then awkwardly wound the cloth around the stump of her knuckle and clamped down until the pain defeated her. She spat blood from her mouth every few seconds. A red puddle grew beneath the man's head, seeping through the sidewalk's cracks, crawling past her fallen teeth.

Tristan hauled herself away, gun in hand. She gargled a mouthful of water, managed to get down a drink. She needed to get off the streets. Get home. She stood and waited for the blood to return to her head. Each step jarred the wounds on her face. She hugged herself, the pistol in her hand digging into her ribs.

She forced herself not to stop. Even when she vomited again. Even when the pain grew so bright the street shrank to a fuzzy gray circle. She was a half block past her house before she realized she'd gone too far. Inside, she bolted the door and lowered herself to the rug in the wood-planked foyer.

She stayed there until the flames of pain burnt down to aching embers. She found a half-full fifth of vodka in the pantry and used it to swab her finger and face. Her cheeks and eyesockets felt swollen, distended. Possibly broken. Would she be ugly? She sobbed again, not so much for her vanity as for being unable to stop herself from having the thought.

She knew she needed to find antibiotics, but she had no strength left in her limbs. She drank a bit of warm Sprite and lowered herself to bed.

She woke in the night, but lacked the strength to do more than drink the rest of her Sprite and a bottle of water and choke down two handfuls of kettle chips. Come morning, she ached just as bad, but she made herself scour the neighborhood door to door, checking medicine cabinets, refusing to let herself see the face in the mirror. Her hopes were low, but she found the right pills within an hour. And more than that. Painkillers. She took two of each and returned to the house.

She stayed indoors for days, stepping out only to go to the bathroom in a corner of the sun-browned yard. As her physical misery ebbed, doubts played in the spaces it left in her head. She should have just done it. It would only have taken five minutes. If she had just been able to get over herself for that long—to block it out, to think of England, to crush her hateful awareness beneath the understanding of the act's purpose—she could be on her way to find Alden right now.

She wallowed in this for three days, hating herself and her weakness. She tried to drown it with pills and the nightly AM broadcasts of a chatterbox named Josh Jones. But she kept coming back to the doubt, worrying at it like a dog chews its own cuts, heedless of the damage.

A single thought silenced the others. The man hadn't been entitled to ask. She wasn't a device for his physical release; she'd done nothing wrong in wanting to find her brother. Anger coursed through her, hotter even than the pain when the man had bitten off her finger, an anger so loud and insistent and consuming she laughed and cried in wrath. She wanted to destroy him all over, to smash his teeth and hollow his head a second time. She lurched from bed, sheets falling from her shoulders, and took up her pistol and her rifle and walked down the streets in broad daylight, hoping someone would step out and try to stop her so she could shoot them dead.

The body was still there in front of the Walmart, but the face was gone, chewed away by dogs. The brains had been lapped from the sidewalk. Brown blood sheeted the ground. Tristan hadn't known exactly what she meant to do—shoot him, drag him around—but nature had done its own work.

It wasn't enough to quell her rage. That showed all signs of lasting. Even so, it couldn't extinct the doubts, which emerged in the small moments of the night to remind her of her low worth and massive guilt, to ask whether it might not be better to be dead. She had no escape from this. She feared she never would.

There was a single silver lining to her time in recovery in the dark and too-hot house. Josh Jones' nonstop mouth blabbered through the nights, passing on news and rumor from all corners. Aliens laying waste to Chengdu. Gang warfare leaving Milwaukee in flames. And a cryptic message about a resistance movement named the Bear Republic Rebels, a group Tristan worked out was based somewhere outside L.A.

She still hurt, and still hadn't met her own gaze in a mirror, but she was ready to move. Her best chance of finding Alden was to find the people dedicated to tracking and fighting the aliens.

She detoured south to Phoenix, meaning to bypass the prison camp in the desert. There, she swapped out her bicycle for a Vespa—the bike, for all its advantages, was limited by her own legpower, and if she got injured along the way, she couldn't afford to be stranded again in the desert. She strapped the scooter with a red plastic gas jug and a siphon tube and cut straight west for Los Angeles. Her radio killed three sets of batteries along the way. Listening to Jones each night, she gleaned the rebels were encamped somewhere north of the city.

That left an awful lot of ground. But they'd need water. Even with that to narrow it down, it took three weeks of riding through the mountains to find them at Pyramid Lake along I-5.

They weren't much. Men and women in camo tents. Jeeps and SUVs parked under beige tarps to shield them from sight of passing jets. Two men climbed the switchback trail to meet her, rifles raised. She had to make a fist to stop from going for her gun.

She killed the Vespa and stepped into the gravel, hands empty. "I need to see the man in charge."

"I bet a lot of people would," said a tattooed man in his twenties. His gaze skipped around her scarred face, focusing past her shoulder. His voice softened. "What do you want?"

"To kill aliens."

The older man chuckled. "Leave your weapons with me and I'll see if she'll see you."

"She?" Tristan said.

He raised his brows. "Last I checked."

"When did you check that?" the tattooed man said.

"Well, never, I suppose. Guess I've always just taken her word for it." He crunched through the gravel to Tristan. Heart beating, she handed over her guns and knives. The old man passed her weapons to his partner. "Mind if I search you?"

"Yes," Tristan said.

"Well, you got to understand we're not in the habit of marching potentially armed strangers straight to Dear Leader."

"I didn't say I wouldn't do it."

He scowled, creasing his beard. "Quit making my job tough, would you? You want me to do this, or want me to bring up one of the girls?"

She cocked her head. "You're fine."

He proceeded, businesslike, only pausing when he saw the scarring nub of her right-hand finger. After, he led her down to the lake, where the rebels caught fish and scrubbed clothes. Tristan accepted a bit of trout and a mealy bowl of boiled and mashed roots.

"She'll see you now," the older man told her a few minutes after sunset. He brought her to a cabin. Inside, a woman in her early thirties gazed down at a desk full of papers.

"Kerry tells me you want to join up," the woman said without looking up.

"Kerry's wrong."

The older man coughed. "Hey now, you said—"

"I said I wanted to kill aliens," Tristan said. "And I will. If they get in my way. What I want to do is find my brother."

The woman frowned, wrinkling her young face. "We're not a search and rescue team."

"And I'm not dumb enough to expect you to be. The alien prison camps. Do you know where they are?"

"We'd be pretty bad at this if we didn't."

"Any with children? Teens?"

"Could be," the woman said. "It's not a priority."

Tristan placed her four-fingered hand on the table. "They're taking kids and that's not a priority?"

"Tonight, I won't give it a second thought, and I'll sleep fine. Our one and only priority is the survival of the human race."

"Not to me."

"Sure enough." The woman tapped her fingers on the desk. "Not here to enlist? This meeting is through."

"I need to know where the camps are," Tristan said. "I need to find my brother."

"Then I'd advise you to get walking."

Tristan gazed across the desk. "It's just information."

"And it's also need-to-know." She stood, chair scraping. "Kerry will show you out."

Tristan stood perfectly still. Kerry wore a rifle on his shoulder; she'd need to take that away. Twist it to entangle his arm in the strap, then drive her elbow into his head. Take him down and turn the gun on the woman until she talked. Use her as a hostage as Tristan retreated to her scooter. Would be an awful lot of guns trained on her when she walked out the door of the hut, but she didn't have a choice.

The woman smiled slowly. "You're thinking about killing me."

Tristan shook her head. "I'd need you alive. Talking. Convincing your soldiers not to shoot."

She laughed, shooting a bemused look at Kerry. She tapped her finger on the table. "You ever seen one of them in person? Do you have any idea what you're getting into?"

"They kept me captive for weeks. Last month, I escaped one of their camps. I was the only one to make it out."

"That where you got those scars?"

"The one on my neck." Absently, Tristan stuck her tongue into the gap where her left canine and nearest incisor had been knocked out. "The rest came afterwards."

The woman rolled her lips together, suddenly pensive. She rubbed her nose. "Farms east of Fresno. Somewhere off 168. That's where I hear they're keeping the kids."

"Thank you."

"Been a while since I heard that. Might not be any good."

"Then I'll keep looking."

The woman snorted. "No doubt. If you could kill a few of the squids while you're there, it would really give us a hand."

Kerry led Tristan outside. "She must have liked you. Sure I can't talk you into staying?"

"Where are my guns?" Tristan said.

He chortled. "Take it that's a no."

She'd grabbed a state map from a rest stop as soon as she'd crossed into California. She knew Fresno wasn't far, all things considered, but when she saw it was less than 150 miles north, she smiled for the first time in weeks.

She coasted down the mountain slope, buzzing past the yellow deadlands of Bakersfield. Smoke rose from the city. The grumble of machines. She needed gas, but she didn't stop to siphon any until she was on the very edge of town. Even then, she listened to the wind for engines or gunshots before she paused to take fuel.

She throttled the Vespa to its top speed, 40 MPH on flat ground. Twisted orchards flashed by, leafless and brown. Dusty signs denounced a senator for causing the drought. One denounced her for causing the Panhandler, too.

At the interchange, she peeled off I-5, Fresno-bound. An anxious readiness tingled in her veins. Field after field faded behind her, browned-out by the sun. Isolated patches of green exposed the people clinging to the land. She hit Fresno and followed the road through Clovis, heading for the hills. She thought she might face days of searching, but the blue cones stood from the heights like signal fires.

She parked by the road and crouched in the brush, sighting the alien camp through the rifle. Her heart sank with the sun. Besides the swaying grass, the grounds were motionless. She waited for nightfall before she climbed up the hills and entered the settlement.

She found no aliens. No vehicles. No people. If Alden had once been here, he'd been gone for a very long time.

23

Soldiers tromped across the dusty grounds. Ness stood still, fixated. The workers went quiet. A few trickled from the lodges to stand with the others. Curtains stirred in the windows.

Daniel walked behind the soldiers. Roan was with him, steps as smooth as a leopard's. A machine gun hung from her shoulder. Ness counted fifteen other troops, all armed.

Daniel clapped his hands and smiled. "I heard there's been a strike. That true, Howard?"

The old man—Howard; it was the first time Ness had heard his proper name—tugged on the bill of his faded baseball cap. "Looks like."

"Would someone like to tell me why?"

Faces turned to Ness. His went hot. He searched for words.

Erasmo stood. "Because you're working us to death and you're not even fighting back."

"Is that what you want to do?" Daniel said. "Fight back?"

"Hell yeah."

"All of you? You want to put your lives on the line assaulting superior beings who've already reduced humanity to far-flung tribes?"

"Better that than waiting for them to wipe us out," Ness said.

Several others murmured their assent. Roan found each speaker, her eyes lingering, as if fixing them in her mind.

Daniel ran his thumb through his beard. "I'd like to fight, too. Very much so. If it made sense, I'd devote every spare erg to the cause. But that's the thing. It doesn't make sense."

"You said you had tons of nuclear waste," Ness said. "How many dirty bombs would that be good for?"

"Hundreds," he shrugged. "Thousands. But after we set them off—assuming they have stationary bases worth bombing, and that we can reach those bases without being bombed ourselves—we will discover they just don't work."

"Radiation—the thing that kills everything—won't kill these things."

Daniel shook his head, morning light bouncing from his glasses. "Do you know how much cosmic radiation these beings must have absorbed over the course of their flight? Even if we assume they're capable of traveling at light-speed and that they came from the nearest extrasolar star, they spent five years in flight. It's more likely they spent ten. Twenty." He tipped back his chin and pursed his mouth tight. "A two-year flight would expose a human to enough cosmic radiation to cause a breakdown of the DNA. This, in turn, would case fatal cancer."

Ness glanced around for help. "So maybe they've got shields."

"Cosmic radiation differs from earthbound radiation in one key aspect: it's traveling very, very fast. As fast as matter goes. No amount of shielding could protect them from it."

"Well, they didn't take the fucking highway! Obviously they got through it somehow."

Daniel nodded soberly. "Indeed. Because they're immune."

"Immune to radiation?" Erasmo said.

"That's one option. The other—and, from a logical standpoint, perhaps more likely—is that they don't exist at all."

Ness gaped. Several people spoke at once. Howard's rangy voice cut through them all. "Better explain yourself, boss."

Daniel gestured at the sky. "Do you see any aliens? Have you ever seen any aliens?"

"I have!" Ness said.

"So you say."

"Because I'm in the general habit of saying true things. And am just concerned enough about my fellow man to want to warn him about the interstellar monsters that landed in my back yard."

Daniel tugged his nose and sniffed. "Where was that, again?"

"Moscow. Idaho."

"So the first and apparently only place the aliens stop when they finally reach Earth is a town so obscure you have to clarify which state it's in."

Ness' skin prickled. "You told me you knew about them. Do you actually believe what you're saying here? Or is this another lie to keep us happy and hoeing?"

Daniel blinked, affront spreading across his face. "I don't know whether there are aliens. All I know is what you say and what I've seen. I haven't seen any. Neither have the people we're in contact with in Spokane. Or Umatilla. Could there be aliens? Hypothetically. But the physical evidence suggests they'd have an awful hard time getting here. And if they were capable of such a thing, of absorbing or deflecting lethal doses of radiation, I don't see why they'd be incapable of continuing to do just that."

Ness could only shake his head. All that radiation stuff, was that even true? It sounded plausible enough, scientific enough, but—well, he supposed there was no but. It didn't matter whether it was true. It mattered how it sounded. Most of the audience around him had even less education than he did. Fieldhands like Nick. Old farmers like Howard. All they knew about space was it was really big and you couldn't reach it no matter how high you jumped. He could already see their doubt, their furtive glances.

Daniel made a pleading gesture with his palms. "We've been doing very well here. Power. Water. Plenty of food. Thanks to Ness, it's looking like we'll soon have cars again. Working farm equipment. I'm sure you'd all appreciate that."

The old scientist rubbed his temples, face a portrait of concern. "We're staring down a critical juncture. We're in the middle of harvest. If we finish reaping what we've sown, we'll find ourselves with abundance. Next year, we'll be able to divert that much more resources to the luxuries we're all missing. To making life better. We've all seen how fast things can change for the worse. Well, things can change for the better, too. But it's going to take a lot of hard work. If you've got questions, those I can answer. But if things stay where they are, all that food we've worked for will rot in the field. We'll lose a whole year. I may know how to maintain a nuclear reactor, but I can't turn back time."

The people did have a few questions—whether they would all have access to cars once the fuel came in, whether the settlement could divert the resources into getting the farm another pair of washing machines and dryers—but the answers didn't matter. He had already won them back. Roan found Ness' eyes and smiled.

They went back to the fields that afternoon. For lack of anything better to do, Ness went back to the stills.

"Did you really see the aliens?" Nick asked.

"They came right up to our cabin."

"Then why did Daniel say they didn't?"

"He's either ignorant or a liar." Ness pulled the lid from a fermenting tub. "I don't much like it either way."

The wagons returned with corn and wheat. The nights grew colder. The harvest finished days behind schedule. Kristin sent him a note asking him to cross the river, but when he went to see her, they wound up fighting over the dumbest of things—whether Bush had been right to invade Iraq; Kristin thought the evidence had been fabricated, but Ness argued it didn't matter, not when Saddam Hussein was a ruthless dictator—and he went straight home, shivering in the north wind. The first frosts fell. The days alternated between cold and clear and cold and damp. He and Kristin made up, but fought again the next week. With Ness feeling the lowest he'd been since their mother had died, Shawn came to see him.

"What do you want?" Ness said. He was in bed reading one of the communal library's paperback mysteries. The cover had fallen off. He suspected his bed had fleas, too. He hadn't yet caught one, but he had small red bumps on his arms and legs.

"Just wanted to catch up with my baby brother."

Ness rolled his eyes. Shawn knew he hated that term. "Nothing to catch up on."

"Really? 'Cause I heard you were a little Che Guevara out here."

"Nope."

"Well, okay." Shawn plopped down on the end of the bed, jolting Ness' book from his hands. "Then I guess you don't care they just hired me to build a fence around you guys."

"What?"

"Now, a thinking man might ask, 'Why do they want an electrician to build them a fence?' But this here man just needs to think a little harder. What if the fence were electric?"

Ness set down his book. "Why would they do that?"

Shawn shrugged. He looked good. Tan. Well-fed. "Normally you rig one of those when you don't want your cattle getting loose."

"Do you know how Daniel broke our strike? He told them the aliens weren't real."

"Tell that to the shit I dropped when they came to the cabin."

"Well, thanks for coming by to rub it in. After I kill myself, I'm going to haunt you. You'll never jerk off in peace again."

"I didn't come here to rub your nose in it," Shawn said. "I came here to do something about it."

"Like what?" Ness said. "Capture an alien?"

"Well, I was just gonna go yell in the streets or something. But yeah. Let's go bag us an alien."

"You're serious."

"Why not?"

"Where are we going to get an alien?"

"Last time I saw one, it was banging down our front door. Ness, I think it's time to go home."

Ness laughed, surprising himself. "Do you think we can take one alive?"

"Why? You want to do some probing? Give them a taste of their own medicine?"

"I want to poison one with radiation until it dies."

Shawn's face puckered. "You're sick, dude."

"Is that a yes or a no?"

"I'll get the jeep. You get planning."

Ness rolled out of bed. "Can you give me a ride across the river? There's someone I need to see."

"Hot piece of tail?"

"Don't talk about her like that."

Shawn snorted. "I bet."

The sun had set a few minutes earlier. Shawn's headlights slashed across the black water. He dropped Ness off in front of the three-story outbuilding and Ness jogged up the stairs and knocked on Kristin's door.

"What do you want?" Her eyes were bloodshot, tired. "Think up some brilliant new defense of strike-first fascism?"

"I'm leaving," Ness said.

Her lips parted. "Ness. It was just a silly fight."

"Not you. And not long. Just until I bring back an alien."

Kristin drew back her chin, eyes darting between his. "Are you trying to impress me? Flowers are more traditional."

"Daniel's going to build an electric fence around the farm," Ness said. "To pen us in. And the only way I can get the others to do anything about it is to prove the aliens exist—and that we can kill them."

"I think the electric fence might be enough to get them off their butts."

"He'll just tell them it's for their own safety. I have to prove he's been lying about everything."

She rubbed her fist against her forehead. "Wow. Holy shit. What if you don't come back?"

"Then tell my friend Nick," he said. "And consider running away before things get any weirder."

They kissed, long and sweet. Ness put his hand up her shirt. She laughed and closed the door behind them. Down below, Shawn honked the horn.

"I think I hate your brother," Kristin said.

"He gets that a lot. Love you."

He hadn't meant to say it. Judging by her expression, she hadn't expected to hear it. He blushed furiously and ran down the steps. As he jumped into the jeep, Kristin opened the window and waved.

"Kind of skinny," Shawn said.

"Shut up."

Shawn told the guards he was taking Ness home for the night, then turned onto the southbound road. Cold air gushed through the roofless cab.

"How'd you get the jeep?" Ness said.

"Obviously I stole it. Guns are in back."

Ness twisted in his seat. The weapons gleamed from the floorboards. "How are we going to take them alive?"

"You got two and a half hours to figure that one out, smart guy."

Ness sat back and spent the next ten minutes wishing he'd brought a thicker coat. They roared through town and circled around to the highway, blowing past the defunct wineries and desiccated blueberry fields. The stars blazed from the sky. When he leaned close to the windshield, Ness could see his breath; it could snow soon. Cliffs of black basalt flanked the road. Wastelands of cheatgrass and sage blew past the car. Pullman was completely silent. No lights, no smoke of chimneys. The bodies dangling from the poles were months old.

"Well?" Shawn said as they drove into Moscow. Moonlight glinted from the curved metal roof of the Kibbie Dome. "What's the big idea?"

"Shoot them until they're dead."

"I could have thought of that. I did think of that."

"Well, what are we going to do, stuff a chloroformed rag in their beaks and hope they have lungs?" Ness pushed his wind-mussed hair from his forehead. "Anyway, they don't need to be alive for us to bombard them with radiation."

"That's messed up, messing with dead bodies like that," Shawn said. "Good way to wind up with a bunch of Godzillas."

The town was dead silent. A crater yawned across the intersection to the WinCo. Shawn slowed to the shoulder and stopped the jeep.

He huffed into his hands, breath roiling. "This place looks all jacked up. What say we proceed on foot?"

"Beats getting blown up on jeep."

Shawn handed him his old shotgun and a machine gun with three spare magazines. "It's set to three-round bursts. Nothing fancy about it. Your basic point-and-shoot interface."

"Thanks for putting it in my language." Ness turned over the matte black machine gun. "Where'd you get this?"

"Again, stealing. Let's roll."

Shawn jogged past the crater. The streetward faces of the dorms were pitted and scorched. A skeleton lay facedown in the patchy grass, legs missing, shriveled skin and ligaments clinging to its elbows and ribs. They crossed town without hearing anything but the calls of nocturnal birds and the rustle of rodents. At the hills on the east end of town, the trailer showed few signs it had been abandoned for the better part of a year. Cobwebs on the siding, wind-blown dirt. A profusion of half-dead grass. The windows were fine, though. A bit of cleanup and they could live there again.

They climbed into the pines and crossed the mountain. As they approached their old cabin, Shawn crouched low, gun ready, and slowed to a silent creep. Shredded boxes and bags littered the grounds; something big had gotten into their abandoned food cellar. The cabin appeared untouched.

Shawn stopped when the pines gave out. The Rogers' farmhouse waited down the mountain, as dark as the fields around it. He watched it through his binoculars for a long time, then passed them off to Ness.

"What do you see?" Shawn murmured.

Ness panned across the vacant grounds. "Whole lot of nothing. No ships. No cars. No creatures."

"Me neither." Shawn exhaled through his nose. "We might have just gone on a wild lobster-chase, man."

Ness' hopes sank by the moment. Perhaps the things had finished their research here and moved back to quash the major cities. He and Shawn could try Seattle. Portland. But that could add days to their venture. Who knew what was happening on the farm in the meantime. Even if they drove all the way to the cities, there was no guarantee they'd find any of the creatures there, either. If he and Shawn simply drove away, what then? What about Nick? What about Kristin?

"Want to check it out?" Ness said.

Shawn shrugged. "We came all this way."

They slunk through the high grass. No sirens sounded. No lights strobed. Keeping one eye on the house, Ness circled to the tree in the back where he'd buried the canister. A bowl-like hole had been dug in the ground. Winds and rains had softened its edges, half-filled it with dirt.

"Shit," Ness said.

"Shit?"

"They got what they came for." He didn't know why the aliens wanted the old canister so bad, but that's what had brought them to Moscow, that much was clear. "They must have been gone for months by now."

"Shit," Shawn said.

A blue bolt burned past Ness' head. He screamed and fell into the grass.

24

Tristan walked up the hill to the city of cones. Footprints told stories in the soil. Narrow, deep divots announced where aliens had walked. Five-dotted treads told of human toes. She shucked off her shoe and placed her feet next to the human prints. Almost universally, her feet were larger.

She approached one of the cones. A door unzipped itself and disappeared into the wall, producing a moist noise that reminded her of the orange. Tristan jerked up her pistol. Inside, the cone was nearly pitch-black, weak moonlight shining through the slitted windows. A ramp spiraled up the inside walls. She crawled up it, feeling her way forward with her four-fingered hand while keeping her gun ready in her left. At intervals, the ramp expanded into alcoves hollowed from the walls and flat platforms extending into the center of the cone. After reaching the top, she clicked on her penlight. The spaces were just as empty as they felt. Like the orange, the blue surfaces of the cone had a semi-organic feel, but were dry and pebbly beneath her fingers.

She poked around a bit, then walked back down the road to a one-story rambler with a functioning well and pump. At daylight, she returned to the city of cones for a longer look, but found nothing more than old footprints and empty buildings.

The trail went cold.

She returned to the Bear Republic Rebels to let them know the site had closed and to ask them to keep their eyes open. The woman asked her to join them. Tristan shook her head and walked back to the Vespa.

Los Angeles was half burnt; alien ships keened across the skies. She rode south to Anaheim, which had fared little better, and then to San Diego, where she parted with half a box of ammunition in exchange for the location of two more camps up in Oregon: one in Eugene, one in Corvallis. She motored north up I-5. Once, two wedge-shaped jets creased the sky, contrails spiraling behind them. A foreign tank had been blown across four lanes of the highway through Sacramento, its hemisphere cracked, burnt shards gleaming in the autumn sun. After the long yellow valley, she detoured around Redding and climbed into the mountains, where pines and redwoods thrust from the slopes to surround the serpentine road. Past the grasslands of south Oregon, she found the two camps. They were as empty as the one outside Fresno.

The days drew short and cold. Hope became a distant thing. She went back to the rebels and found they had gone. Perhaps they'd been wiped out.

She siphoned gas, collected food, rigged a second basket to the Vespa to tote her water. Learned what she needed and what she didn't. Her scars healed. On the off chance Alden had gotten free and returned home, she braved a trip to Redding, stashing the well-worn scooter south of town and approaching on foot through the woods. Smoke and engine-noise rose from the railroad tracks. Red skulls blazed from the walls of houses, grinning under the full moon.

The house, too, was empty. She stood in her old room and gazed at her old things. She went to the bathroom to pick up the extra toothpaste they'd left behind. Something flashed in the darkness. She drew her pistol; so did her reflection. From the safety of the shadows, she faced herself. Halfway down its slope, her nose crooked. A web of white scars snared her right eye. When she grinned, blackness gapped her leftward teeth. She smiled gently, eyes stinging. It was better than she had expected. Even so, it wasn't her.

September became October. The nights grew sharp. She scavenged a heavy leather jacket and a proper helmet. She avoided the cities as best she could, speaking to the survivors flung across the farms and small towns. After a while, and two shouting matches that had nearly become shooting matches, she developed a system: sit down a couple hundred yards in front of any obvious habitation—smoke and gardens were the most obvious giveaways; clean cars, too—raise a sign saying "TALK?", and wait for the survivor to emerge. Most times, the curtains ruffled once and not again, and Tristan rode away. Often enough, however, the survivor walked into the daylight, one hand raised, and Tristan stood and met them.

They were so eager to talk. So eager to hear. About the survivors. The aliens. The roads. The dangers and safe harbors she'd seen along the way. After soaking up five minutes of her stories, they were ready to tell her whatever she wanted about alien camps, other towns, whether they'd seen any thirteen-year-old blond boys. She drove through the damp chill of Portland and Seattle, then followed I-5 through the pine-choked hills to Bellingham. Miles outside Vancouver, she stopped the bike. The black ship hung above the city, impossibly large, a false moon above the field of pines.

She returned to southern California to build a cache and wait out the winter. When she wasn't riding, she practiced her kung fu. Alden hadn't taught her anything about weapons, but she began to integrate sticks and knives into her shadow-fights, finding the flow of her attacks adapted easily to short blades and batons. After so much practice using both hands at once—block and attack, simultaneous offense and defense—wielding two knives concurrently and independently was no challenge at all.

One after another, all their tips about other camps or descriptions matching Alden failed to pan out. She settled in Oceanside as a base of operations, scavenging at night, when it was too dark to approach homesteads without risking gunfire, and continued her sit-down parlays during the day. The mountains stood in easy reach if the aliens came to lay waste to the town. Midway between L.A. and San Diego, she was positioned to catch and filter news from both.

And that was how she met the old man.

She found him on the beach, shirtless, three fishing lines flung into the breakers. When he saw her walking down the sand, he reached for a pistol, holding it in his lap as she stopped and produced her sign. He narrowed his eyes and nodded.

They put their guns away. Tristan offered him water; he accepted. She swept her greasy hair from her face. "I'm looking for my brother. Thirteen, nearly fourteen. Blond. Last time I saw him, he was thin, couple inches shorter than me."

The man glanced at his fishing lines. "And when was the last time you saw him?"

"Months ago. The aliens took us."

"Probably not beneath the couch cushions, then. Or in the fridge. I can't count how many times I left the remote in the fridge. Keys in the other pants. Like they had little legs of their own."

It was sometime in November—she hadn't been keeping close track of the days—but the wind from the ocean remained a neutral non-temperature. "My missing key does have legs. I don't suppose you've seen him."

The old man scratched his beard so hard she winced. He examined his nails, wiped them on his cutoffs. "La Jolla Country Club."

She nodded. She'd run into too many maniacs to be disappointed. "If it helps, I saw the ship coming into Los Angeles a few days ago. Thanks for your time."

She turned down the beach. The man called after her. "I heard there's a man who turned the La Jolla Country Club into his own little fiefdom. Got his own knights. Horses and swords and lances. Makes 'em swear oaths of fealty."

"I'll try not to offend His Liege, then."

The man shook his head, tanned face scowling. "Will you let me finish, young lady? He's got peasants, too. Which is a very polite way of putting it, if you ask me. Turns out the king has a thing for blonds. Male and female."

"Kids?"

"Them, too."

"Know where he gets them?"

The man shrugged his mole-mottled shoulders. "Sends his knights a-ranging."

"I appreciate it," Tristan said. "Anything I can do in return?"

He looked suddenly out to sea. "A hug."

"A hug?"

"Don't have to."

"A normal, hands-in-the-right-places hug?"

He glanced sharply back to her. "Don't know what you're implying, ma'am."

She shook her head. "Sorry. I've spent too much time with the wrong crowd."

"These days, it's hard not to."

She extended her arms, ready to jab his eyes or twist out his beard if he got funny. He smelled like sea salt and less sweaty than she expected. After a long moment, he disengaged.

"Been so long since I felt anyone but myself." He went red beneath his beard. "Not to say—"

"I know what you mean," she smiled. By the time she got back to the bike path, he'd gotten back to his poles.

She went to the house to ready her gear and her cover story. She was the employee—the agent—of a wealthy man. One with specific tastes of his own. A man whose vast wealth had survived the Panhandler perfectly intact, if in different forms: gasoline, women, groceries, orchards, a small fleet of working cars, boats, even jets. She consulted her map and got on her bike and rode down the coast.

It was a quick trip. Thirty miles, if that. With only one major traffic snarl to detour around, her Vespa killed the distance in just over an hour. Palm fronds waved from the drive to the club. A wall of stakes barred the turn into the parking lot. Tristan stopped and killed the engine.

"Halt! Who goes there?"

Tristan peered for the source of the voice. An ostrich feather bobbed behind the stakes. The sunset gleamed from a metal cap. A man planted his feet and stared down the road, a pike in one hand, a machine gun in the other.

"Tristan Arthur," she improvised; could have done better, but at least the last name couldn't link her to Alden. "I seek an audience with the king."

"Is His Majesty expecting you?" The guard had a deep Southern accent, Tennessee or Georgia.

"He is not. However, I represent a lord of San Francisco, and I believe the king may find the proposition I bear more than fruitful."

The man leaned the pike against the stakes and raised a walkie-talkie to his mouth. It futzed and clicked. After a short talk, he holstered it and gestured with the gun. "Well, come on in, milady. Leave your steed at the gate. 'Less you think it's likely to bolt."

Tristan dismounted the Vespa and threaded through the stakes. The guard requested her guns and knives but left her with the two foot-long batons she wore strapped around her left shin as an apparent brace. A woman raked leaves from the shoulder of the asphalt path. Other fieldhands chopped at yellow stalks in the fields beyond, which were interrupted by sand traps and putting greens. Beyond the high barb wire fence enclosing the grounds, the ocean glittered in the sunset. A horse clopped down the path. The guard stepped off, scowling at Tristan until she did the same, and doffed his plumed cap to the rider, who glanced their way and carried on.

An expansive white building waited at the end of the path, glossy black solar panels glinting from the shallow pitch of its roof. Inside, the guard presented Tristan to Lady Winslowe, a forty-year-old woman with a swan's build and a chandelier of braids dangling from her head. Electric lights beamed from the ceiling. The lady took her to a former office repopulated with cushions and candles, and used her walkie-talkie to summon a servant for coffee.

"You have electricity," Tristan said.

"His Majesty believes in gilding tradition with modern advances," said Lady Winslowe. "Does your lord lack power?"

"Only help skilled enough to act as quickly as My Lord would like," Tristan smiled. "Lord Hugo expects to have the grounds repowered by spring."

The woman chuckled. "Well, I hope you haven't come to poach our man."

"Bear no such worries. I am here for the purpose of...my lord's diversion."

"The harem," Winslowe said casually. "Well, if you're hoping to part Lord Dashing from his pleasure, I hope your own king is wealthy indeed."

"Lord Dashing?" Tristan said.

The woman eyed her levelly. "Our king."

"My lord's resources are expansive," Tristan recovered. "And as his agent of the field, I have been granted full power to disburse them."

Lady Winslowe nodded, braids swinging. They chatted a while—weather, roads, the likelihood of alien attack—then the lady withdrew with promises to return soon. Tristan sat still. The black hemisphere of a security camera lurked in the corner.

Winslowe took a full thirty minutes to come back. "The king will see you at his table."

"An honor." Tristan followed her up a broad staircase. Men with rifles stood at arms, ostrich plumes twitching in the fan-stirred air, which was moist and warm despite the snow growing on the mountains. Servants bustled past, eyes downcast, plates clanking on their trays. They moved with the precision of those who know their task and the consequences of its failure.

King Dashing took his dinner on a patio overlooking the sea. A cherrywood table glowed in the light of two electric lamps. Blackened whitefish steamed on his plate, adorned by mashed avocados and a careful tower of orange wedges heavy with molten sugar. Two guards stood blankly behind him, rifles held to their shoulders. Black hair flowed from his widow's peak, a braided silver crown circling his head. He had the long, hawkish nose of a Roman lord and the dark-rimmed eyes of a man who's been up all night drinking.

"My liege." Tristan knelt, bowed her head. "I bear greetings from Lord Barry Hugo, ruler of the kingdom of North San Francisco. As his agent of the field, I—"

The king set his fork on his plate. "Don't patronize me."

"Patronize you, my lord?"

"You talk like a fucking hobbit."

"The rest of your men—"

"This isn't Camelot. This isn't Westeros." The man waved his hand as if dispersing noxious smoke. "This is a pageant. This is how I roll. Does this Barry Hugo even call himself a king?"

Crickets chirped from the golf course cornfields. Tristan lifted her eyes. "I believe he's related to a French baron."

Dashing forked up a bite of whitefish and chewed around the meat's heat. "Look, talk however you like. Spit it out in iambic pentameter, if that's what gives you a kick. But if you think I'm a madman playing dress-up, you're going to leave with nothing but bad news."

"Thank you for correcting me," Tristan said evenly. "To my distress, I'm somewhat ignorant of courtly etiquette. Should I be seated?"

"I forgive your ignorance, since it's shared by nearly the entire damn world. You may sit and stand after securing my permission. Address me as 'my Lord,' 'Your Highness,' 'Your Grace So Generously Endowed That None May Doubt the Proof of God's Love,' et cetera." He considered her across the night. "Basically, follow the Leaden Rule: treat me as you would treat any other man surrounded by a compound of men with guns."

"Noted." She sat. "Then allow me to flatter you. Your estate is run like Mussolini's wet dream."

"Men crave order. Remind them of that and their lives get much happier."

"Happiness in servitude?"

Dashing snorted. "What were you before? College girl?"

She nodded. "Berkeley."

"Thought so. You have the arrogance of one. Probably why you caught that beating."

"I 'caught that beating' defending my family," she said. "Defending my lord."

"Mind your tone, lass," he smiled. "Anyway, we're off point. Did you know what you wanted to do? At Berkeley?"

"I majored in music."

"You wanted to be a musician?"

"I don't know," she said. She had a hard time dredging up the memories; that life had been erased like yesterday's errands. "I just wanted to work in something related. I hadn't really figured out what."

He pried an orange wedge from the syrupy tower and bit off its end. Hot juice squirted the table. "That's my point. When you're told you can do anything, you wind up certain of nothing. Where would you rather be? Dropped off in the jungle, for all its lushness? Or set down a clear, straight road?"

"Some roads are rougher than others."

"Yeah, but at least you always know where you're supposed to go next. That was the problem with the old world. Too many choices. With too many choices, you wind up with doubt. When you doubt, you hesitate. When you hesitate, you lose and you second-guess and regret. Everyone's a sad sack of shit. I made millions selling houses and all I could think was 'Jesus, I should have been a quarterback.' That's what we had before. Endless opportunity and endless misery." He pointed the tines of his fork at her face. "I guarantee you, you'd be happier as one of my whores than working PR for some longhaired, guitar-toting whiner."

"I doubt that," she said. "My lord."

"I'm sure you do. But consider this. You'd know when to rise, what to wear, how to rear my children. I'd give you purpose. What's more important than knowing why you exist?"

"What about the blond boys?"

"What about them?"

"I majored in music, not anatomy, but it could be a long wait before they bear any of your kids."

Dashing sucked pulped fish from his teeth. "Yeah, well, their purpose is their lord's happiness. Doesn't get more important than that." He waved his fork in a wide circle. "All these people here, you think they're happier when I'm happy? Or when I'm pissed off?"

Tristan considered the grain of the table. "I'm sure that's a great comfort to them."

"Far better than trying to make it out there. Want me to prove it?"

"I already have a lord, my lord."

The king smiled, thumbing his crown up his brow. "And he can come rescue you, if he loves you as well as I would."

She met his gaze. "Is this a threat?"

"It's a talk."

"I'm here as a businesswoman. Not a new piece of your burgeoning empire."

"Sure. You want my boys. Strange, traveling five hundred miles for that. Did San Francisco get nuked? Or did your guys' strain of Panhandler only hit the blonds?"

Tristan's veins tingled. The man's voice carried a detached curiosity, but she could see the shape of the knife inside the sheath. "Your Majesty's reputation for wise judgment and taste has traveled further than you might think."

"If you were here to open diplomatic channels, you would have just said so." He speared another slice of orange. "The question, then, is what truth does the lie conceal? Does Mr. Hugo want me for his vassal? Are you here to scout the lay of the land? Report back with the weaknesses Hugo can exploit to make me his slave?"

"Your Majesty is tragically mistaken," Tristan said. Heat rose up her spine. "My lord has no designs on you nor your empire. I am, quite frankly, shocked that a man of your stature would feel threatened by the visit of a lone woman."

He rolled his eyes. "I sold houses, girl. I know lies like mothers know sons."

She crossed her legs, reaching under the table for the batons strapped to her shin. "Again, my Lord, I can assure you—"

"Enough. Guards! Seize her!" He laughed, clapping. "Oh, I've longed for an excuse to say that."

The two guards unfroze, circling the table. More feet pounded toward the balcony. Tristan yanked free her batons and flung herself at the nearest soldier.

25

Ness fell into the bristly grass. Another laser flicked across the night, electric blue, sizzling into a pine with a pop of boiling sap.

"What the hell's their problem?" Shawn said, prone beside Ness. He snugged his assault rifle to his shoulder and pumped a burst into the house. "We were supposed to ambush them!"

"We should call ahead next time." Ness pulled the trigger. The stock juddered into his shoulder; he winced away from the bang. "Make sure we're all on the same page."

Another laser flashed overhead. Shawn returned fire. "I'm only counting two points of contact. What say you circle around to the front door and hit them from behind?"

"You do it. It's your brilliant idea."

"Then we should make sure I stay safe enough to keep having more."

Ness fired blindly through the grass. His shots thunked into the wood of the outer wall. "I wouldn't even know what to do."

"Pretty simple, man. If the door's open, sneak in. If it's not, kick it down. I'll keep 'em so busy they won't even notice."

"Why can't you do it?"

"Damn it, Ness, you spent years hanging out in this house!" Shawn shot another burst and crawled on his belly toward a tree. Lasers strobed in the darkness, smoldering the grass, filling the night with hot and bitter smoke. "Anyway, chances are you flush them straight into me. You want to be in my place then?"

Ness followed him through the half-dead grass. "Why don't we just stay here until we hit them?"

"Because that gives them the time to act first. You ever wondered why all the shit I pull works so well even when it's dumb as hell? 'Cause I make them react to me." He fired again, then hurled a pine cone as if it were a grenade. The lasers ceased. "Now get up. Act. Make them fuck up."

Ness wanted to scream. It was like his brother could switch off his brain whenever he pleased. Well, Ness couldn't. He could see all the ways he could fail. Rush inside and meet a whole hive of aliens. Miss his most crucial shot. Get his head boiled by a blue bolt until it burst like a microwaved tomato.

He could see all these things and a dozen more. Yet he crawled from the tree and circled around the house.

The autumn rains had revived the grass. It flattened beneath him, dew soaking his elbows and jeans. Shawn's rifle roared in three-round bursts. Blue lightning lit the way in regular pulses. He wasn't sure what had spurred him to move. His brother's faith in him? Being so close to the proof of the lie keeping Nick and Kristin in slavery? Or just inborn familial stupidity? Whatever the case, his fear remained, but his hesitation melted like February snow in a southern wind. He crawled around another corner. The lights and noise of battle faded. Ness faced the front door.

Shawn had been right about one thing: Ness knew the house well. Sleeping over as a child, he'd made countless trips through the dark to the fridge, afraid that a single light or creaky step would send Mr. and Mrs. Rogers flying from bed to shriek in his face and call his mother to come pick him up. By the time he turned twelve, he knew the house well enough to be able to rise without waking Tim, slip into Tim's older sister's room (while she was out, of course; not to say he hadn't thought of going in while she slept and—kissing her? Seeing if she slept naked? His thought process had never made it beyond entering the darkened room), and examine her things, as if seeing a teenage female's natural environment would unlock his understanding of how such creatures worked.

It had been years since they graduated high school. Ness hadn't slept over more than a handful of times since then. But childhood memory ran deep. He could find his way from front door to back with his eyes closed.

He switched out his rifle for the shotgun. The door was unlocked—who knew if aliens even knew what locks were. The foyer was dark. Blue light flashed from the family room in sharp and jarring bursts. Ness curled around the doorway, sweeping his shotgun across the entryway where he used to stomp off the snow and pry off his boots. The boards along the wood-paneled wall were sturdy and hardly ever squeaked. He crossed to the linoleum kitchen. Shawn's rifle boomed. Plaster sprayed in puffs from the family room wall. Glass shattered, spraying the floor. Tentacles rose from the couch and wriggled like tapeworms exposed to the air.

Ness stalked forward. He moved in perfect silence, but two fat limbs climbed to face him. A bulbous head popped up from behind the couch, fist-sized eyes goggling. Ness shotgunned it. Mucosal blood globbed the curtains, thick and yellow. A second alien swung out from the cover of the couch, slashing its blue laser across the room. Ness ducked, the beam sizzling into the wooden side of the counter behind him. He fired back. A tentacle spun across the room. The beam jerked upward, burning through the ceiling. Ness pumped, fired again, hulling its body. Kelpy organs slithered to the shag carpet, the guts off-yellow and quivering. The thing staggered. Ness shot it again, dispersing its head across the coffee table.

He fell to a crouch, sweeping the shotgun across the starlit room. A piece of glass fell from the window frame. Ness jerked so hard he fired the shotgun into the wall.

"Shawn?" he called.

"You in there, buddy?"

"I got them!" He leapt around the couch, clearing the space between it and the wall. Cold wind gushed through the broken sliding doors. "What now?"

"Cover the front door. Hang on."

Ness turned to face the front of the house, straining into the darkness. Outside, feet whispered through grass and crunched over glass. Ness glanced back to the shattered windows. Shawn stepped high over the jagged glass in the bottom of the sill.

"Holy Moses, it stinks like yesterday's crab legs in here." He gazed over the fallen aliens, laughter barking from his throat. "You ruined these sons of bitches. 'Mad Dog' Hook. That's what we're gonna call you."

"No we're not," Ness said. "Shouldn't we be clearing the house?"

"Yeah, if you don't feel like getting shot."

Shawn went room to room, sweeping his rifle around corners like a SWAT officer. They found no more aliens. Just various tools, spindly and metal; small metal bits stamped with icons, like the pieces of a strange game; a few displays and touchpads. Ness' heart leapt. Alien computers?

"We'll worry about those in a minute," Shawn said. "Right now we got to bring the jeep around."

They jogged down the steep mountain road, following it to the base of the mountain. They found a couple of bikes in a house on the main road and raced around the mountain to Moscow. The jeep was still waiting by the crater in the road. Shawn nosed the car around the hole and drove straight on back to the gravel road to the Rogers' farm. There, he climbed into the turret of the .50 cal and watched the house until he was certain nothing had shown up in the hour they'd been gone.

Together, he and Ness hauled the first body to the jeep. Its tentacles were as rubbery as they looked. Its pincer-limbs wore a foamy layer over the hardness of their chitin.

"I think they've got some kind of sixth sense," Ness said. "Either that or eyes on the back of their butt. I didn't make a noise and one still sensed me coming."

"Maybe it could smell your fear," Shawn said. He grunted and leveraged the body onto the hood of the car, stew-thick blood spattering from its gunshot wound. "Give me a hand here."

Ness gaped. "This isn't a trophy buck. This is proof of the alien presence on Earth. You don't just sling it over your car!"

"You want to prove these things are real, right? What's more convincing than riding into town with a goddamn alien tied to the hood of your jeep?"

Ness shook his head, failing to find a counterargument. He helped push the sagging body up the jeep, where Shawn tied it down with bungee and extension cords. As a compromise, they loaded the other corpse into the back. Ness bagged up the two lasers along with several of their tools and knickknacks, carefully wrapping the devices he suspected were computers in Tim's old shirts.

Shawn rolled his eyes. "You even find a way to make a gunfight nerdy."

"Two kills under my belt," Ness said. "How many you got?"

Shawn chuckled and started the jeep. The dash clock read 3:53 in the morning. His adrenaline long gone, Ness slept most of the drive back to Hanford, woken often by the wind's cold grasp and the slap of tentacles against the hood of the car.

Shawn shook him awake for good. The dash said it was nearly seven in the morning. The eastern hills showed hints of dawn. Dust spewed behind the jeep. Shawn banged across the bridge, the river a black band beneath them, and skidded to a halt in front of the picnic tables. Coleman lanterns painted hard white light across workers blinking over the steam of their breakfasts.

"Behold!" Shawn leaped from the car, sweeping his hands at the alien tied down to their car. "Holy fucking shit!"

A few workers edged closer, asking how Shawn killed it, where he'd found it, whether there were more. Most people kept their distance. Strangely quiet. Suspiciously undisturbed by the abrupt delivery of an interstellar cadaver.

"No big deal," Shawn said, frowning at Ness, tracking the same train of thought. "I mean, here we got E.T.'s bloody corpse, but whatever. I'm sure you'll remember to scream once you've had a little more coffee."

"There are aliens," Nick said. "We know."

"What do you mean, you know?" Ness flung his hands wide. "When we left last night, you guys were denying their very existence."

"That's when they came by to let us know." Nick nodded off to the side. In the shadows of the nearest longhouse, four men with machine guns watched the proceedings. One lifted a radio to his mouth and murmured into it, eyes locked on Ness. Nick gazed in disgust at the alien body. "Daniel said he'd just heard the news. Someone took down the mothership, man. The aliens, they're toast."

Ness stared blankly. "How? All of them?"

"I don't know. Somebody kamikaze-crashed the ship into L.A. No survivors."

Shawn spat and swore. "Somebody could have thought to mention that before we rushed off to get our asses barbecued."

Ness could only go on staring. He was still trying to figure out what to do when Roan arrived from across the river to arrest him for treason.

III:

PREDATORS

26

She rushed the first guard, a smooth wooden baton in each hand. She swept the first stick through an outward arc, intercepting the tip of his rifle, then drove her hand forward, leveraging the gun away from her body. It fired, bullet banging past her. She rammed the other baton end-first into the knight's solar plexus.

She was not a large woman. She hadn't weighed herself in months, but she doubted she cracked 120 pounds, meaning the man she was currently reducing to a moaning heap outweighed her by half as much. She hadn't practiced with a live partner in nearly as long as she'd last stepped on a scale. Not since Alden's abduction. After so much static practice, adjusting to the reactions of a living, breathing opponent wasn't too different from trying to swim on dry land.

All these things worked against her. Working for her, she had surprise and madness.

The man fell with a groan. A second rifle swung toward her chest. She cracked her right-hand baton into the soldier's knuckles, splitting them to the bone. The rifle boomed, the round going hopelessly wide. She jabbed her other stick straight up into the soft hollow beneath his jaw. His teeth clacked. He staggered back into the wall, grasping his throat, rifle forgotten, lungs rasping as he fought for breath. Tristan whirled on King Dashing. His deep eyes rounded. He backed up, banging into the table.

She didn't see the blow that dropped her. Her beating was more gentle than in Flagstaff. When they finished, they dragged her to a bare room and laid her on a futon. Lady Winslowe gazed out the dark window as a young woman with a long brown braid tended to Tristan's wounds.

Tristan watched her, too exhausted and aching to rise. "I'll kill any man you try to put on me."

Winslowe rolled her eyes. "Please. His Majesty is no savage. His stock must have teeth."

"Then why are you cleaning me up? Why not put a bullet past what's left of my dentistry?"

"Because Lord Dashing needs servants to tend to his stock."

Tristan stared at the off-white ceiling. Cobwebs grayed one corner. "And you expect me to serve. And not run, flee, or commit regicide."

Lady Winslowe smiled in bemusement. "You'll serve. That's what Yvette here is for."

Tristan eyed the brown-haired woman washing the blood from her body. Yvette was no older than Tristan herself. Thinner and lighter, too. If Winslowe thought this waif was going to hold Tristan down, she was deluded.

She soon learned what Winslowe really meant. Tristan was put to work the next day. Ribs aching, face puffy, she followed Yvette room to room through the harem on the upper floor, removing dirty dishes from dressers, stripping stained sheets from the beds, emptying trash bins spilling over with wadded tissues. Everywhere she went, Yvette went with her, brown eyes following Tristan's every move. Meanwhile, armed knights slouched about the lounge, playing pool and flirting lazily with any woman allowed downstairs.

Despite the presence of Yvette and the knights, Tristan tried her first escape that afternoon, making a run to the patio while Yvette peeled potatoes with her back turned. The rumble of the sliding door gave Tristan away; Yvette screamed out before she hit the grass. Two knights rode Tristan down just as she caught sight of the fence: high fieldstone topped by three lines of barb wire.

The riders returned her to her room without comment or harm. Lady Winslowe arrived minutes later.

"Everyone gets one chance to learn there's no escape," she said.

"What happens after the second try?" Tristan said.

"His Majesty's mercy takes a vacation."

Winslowe locked the door behind her. The bedroom had no books, no stereo, nothing to divert Tristan. Her ribs were still too sore for full kung fu practice, so she drilled her forms instead.

Yvette didn't return for another two hours. Without a word, she began folding her laundry, eyes intent on the lavender-scented linen.

"Why would you yell?" Tristan said.

"They'd beat me if I didn't."

"Just give me a one minute head start."

"You shouldn't try to flee from the man who safeguards your well-being," Yvette murmured.

"You don't really believe that."

"That he wants to keep us healthy and safe? Why does he feed us? Clothe us? Guard us from raiders?"

"As a cheap source of docile labor?"

Yvette gave her a side-eyed glance, then flicked her fingertips at the world beyond their room. "And survival out there is so simple and carefree."

"Right now?" Tristan said. "It's easy enough. There's enough food left in the houses to keep all the survivors alive for years. I'd rather feed myself through robbery than prostitution."

Yvette smoothed a camisole and threaded its straps through a hooked hanger. "He's gentler than you'd think."

Tristan watched her fold another strapped shirt. "You want to be one of them, don't you? That's why you yell."

Yvette pursed her lips and turned to her socks. "You'd rather scrub dishes and mop floors ten hours a day?"

"I'd rather hop that fence."

"Please don't. I don't want to yell again. Our lives could be worse, Tristan."

Tristan let her have the last word. Less than a year ago, Yvette's capitulation would have outraged her, filled her with a hapless fury and the irresistible urge to lecture her about the dangers of accepting the assumptions of a patriarchal hierarchy designed to keep everyone with a vagina underpaid, undervalued, and permanently available for uncompensated childcare. Not that she would have used all those terms, exactly, but neither had she considered her position the slightest bit extreme. As if wanting more than 15% of the seats in Congress or equal pay for the same job was so "radical."

But that had been the Tristan of another world. She no longer had the time or energy to convert this woman. Not if she wanted to escape and find Alden. There was a bitter edge to her mindset, too. Yvette wanted to serve up her body in exchange for meals and a roof? Then that was what she deserved.

Escape, however, proved quite impossible. Tristan was locked up all night. All day, Yvette followed her like a judging shadow—while they worked, while they ate, even while she went to the bathroom. The young women and boys in the upstairs bedrooms hardly gave Tristan a second look, but Yvette's eyes never left her.

Neither did those of a twenty-something man who acted as squire to the knights, which meant, given their propensity to hang around the pool table drinking canned beer, that the young man spent as much time in the clubhouse-palace as he did out tending to the horses. When he was inside, he waited at the lounge wall, one eye on the knights in case they wanted another Bud, while his other eye followed Tristan on her duties. He had a lined jaw and active eyes that seemed to carry as many answers as questions. After enduring three days of his wordless gazing, Tristan finished vacuuming, coiled up the cord, and walked right up to him at the wall.

"What?" she said.

The young man smiled. "Just watching you move."

"That's creepy."

His eyebrows shot up. "No, not creepy-watching. I'm trying to see if I can believe you beat down those two guards."

Tristan shrugged. "All they had were guns."

"So it's true?"

"All housemaids know kung fu. Guild by-law."

He laughed, corners of his eyes crinkling. "My name's Colin, and I like you."

She stared at him levelly. "Let me know when that will do me any good."

"That depends on what you want," he grinned.

She glanced at the knights. One leaned over the pool table, cue plunging forward and back as he sized up his shot. Another sat on a leather loveseat, one arm wrapped around the waist of the woman seated in his lap, the other hand moving rhythmically beneath her dress. Tristan hadn't yet figured out which of the harem were off-limits and which were literally up for grabs. This was how Dashing sustained the knights' loyalty, she supposed. The woman's gaze was a million miles away.

"To find my brother," Tristan said lowly.

"That's why you came here?" Colin said.

"I heard His Majesty had boys who looked like him. Even if my brother weren't here, Dashing might have had an idea where to find him."

"What's he look like?"

Tristan described Alden, named him, mentioned the circumstances of their capture. "Why? You know a lot of teenage boys?"

"The universe is a mysterious place," Colin said. "You never know when it will burp up what you want."

She frowned at him. Yvette stared at her from across the room. Tristan rejoined her, accepting a thick-bristled brush to swab out the fireplace with.

Days disappeared into the past. She rose before dawn to clean the kitchen while the angry old woman who ran it cooked homegrown vegetables and mixed them in with canned goods. After she and Yvette brought the meals to the women upstairs, they returned downstairs with the harem's dirty sheets and washed them in big plastic garbage bins—the clubhouse had power, but no running water. Afternoons they spent cleaning the palace, dusting, scrubbing, and vacuuming each room on a weekly cycle.

After dinner, they were locked in their room, which was placed on the second floor of the clubhouse. Windowless. An old storage closet or something. It locked with a key; the screws on the lock plate were on the outside of the door.

Two weeks into Tristan's confinement, Lady Winslowe entered with two guards. Yvette looked down at her stitching. Winslowe went straight for Tristan. "Stand."

Tristan uncoiled slowly. One guard kept a pistol trained on her while the other hauled her mattress from the box spring. Tristan's heart raced with angry despair. The guard handed her shiv to Winslowe, who examined the sharpened plastic comb with open disgust.

"What was this for?" the woman said.

"Flossing," Tristan said.

"With a blade?"

She lifted her lip, revealing the two-tooth gap on the left side of her mouth. "I get whole pigs stuck in here sometimes. Have to stab them till they wriggle out."

Winslowe gazed down on her with the air of a husband who's caught his wife's new dog shitting on the rug. "Or perhaps you fancied a room to yourself."

She departed with the guards. Yvette threaded another cross through her pattern. "Is that true?"

"That you sold me out?" Tristan said. "Most definitely."

"That you planned to stab me."

"Why would anyone want to stab a sweet young thing like you?"

Yvette glared up from her fabric. "Because they want to run off. In silence. Bought with a knife."

"It wasn't much of a knife." Tristan lugged her mattress back into place. "I was going to have to work pretty hard to get your head off."

Yvette's mouth dropped open. "You're a monster."

"I wasn't really going to cut off your head. It would take too long. All you need is a line across the throat."

"A king doesn't let monsters walk free through his castle. See what you get."

Tristan went still. "What are you talking about?"

"You'll see. You'll see what you get."

She did, and very soon. Winslowe returned with a set of prison-issue leg bracelets. The guards held Tristan down while the Lady Winslowe clamped the chains around her ankles. At full extension of the chain, Tristan almost but couldn't quite take a full step. Running was out of the question. Each step jerked just short of what she was used to. She could have throttled Yvette. Beaten her as the man in Flagstaff had beaten Tristan. Winslowe left the cuffs on her at all times. Even when Tristan complained that she needed to change her jeans, Winslowe simply had one of the knights cut them right from her legs, along with her underwear. Tristan crouched in a corner, envisioning how she would break their arms with thrusts of her palms, collapse their throats with chops from her hand's edge, burst their eyes with flicks of her fingers.

Winslowe clicked back out into the lobby and tossed a dingy cotton dress in her face. "That should come off and on easily enough."

The knight who'd cut off her jeans grinned. "Want me to give that a test?"

"Oh, Vincent. Don't you have enough toys upstairs?"

"They're getting worn out," he pouted.

"Women don't get 'worn out,'" Winslowe said without a hint of humor. "Though I've known some men to grow soft with age."

The man went red. The other knights laughed. Tristan returned to her mop, chains scraping the marble floor.

Colin watched from across the room. He'd seen the whole thing, of course. When she went to clean the lounge, he detached from the wall, keeping his eyes on the knights in case they had some urge or desire for him to quench.

"I heard they found a shiv in your room," he said.

Tristan rubbed at a stubborn smear on the otherwise shining tile. "You hear a lot."

"Question is, do I hear right?"

"They didn't chain me up for washing whites with colors."

He chuckled, rubbing his stubble. "Why exactly does a chambermaid need a shiv?"

"Roommate troubles."

He met her eyes. "For real?"

She snorted. "Do you intend to stick around here forever, Colin? I'm a little more ambitious."

"Oh, I'm not so content with my lot in life, either. Or hadn't you noticed I have a shadow, too?"

Tristan frowned. He nodded across the room. Another young man sat on a bar stool reading an old copy of National Geographic. She'd seen him before, and always around Colin, come to think of it, but hadn't put two and two together.

"Last question," Colin said. He leaned close enough for her to smell his Irish Spring. "Would you have done it?"

She stared into his sky-blue eyes. "Nothing will stop me from finding my brother."

He nodded, smiled at his shadow seated across the room, and turned away. A moment later, a knight demanded another "ale," and Colin disappeared into the kitchen, smile still seated on his lips.

She watched him go, allowing herself to hope, however guardedly, that he had something up his sleeves beside arms as leanly muscled as her own. A week later, and her hopes were as dead as the yellow corn stalks the peasants continued to clear from the golf course in preparation for the spring planting. Rains swept in from the sea. The temperature plunged to the high forties. Without warning, King Dashing ordered a party for the next day. Tristan's heart sank—had she grown so inured to the passage of time?—but when she consulted a calendar, she discovered Christmas was still a week away.

She and Yvette were conscripted to pluck chickens and prepare the dining hall for feasting. The old woman swore over pots of boiling stock, back door open to suck out the steam. Tristan lingered there, watching the sea, then returned to the hall to scrub down the walls. By the time they finished stringing bunting and whomping out the royal carpets, she was too exhausted to even think about slitting Yvette's throat.

The feast was scheduled for mid-afternoon. Tristan hauled folding chairs from a shed out to the patio, grass snarling her chains. Lady Winslowe demanded row after row of seating, concentric half-circles facing a wooden throne erected by the knights, who had been forbidden from drinking until completing their task.

"Just how many people does Dashing expect to show?" Tristan said. "What's he announcing, the resurrection of the NFL?"

Yvette wrestled another chair into place. "His Majesty has invited the peasants."

"I didn't think they were allowed within smelling-distance of the palace."

The atmosphere of pregnant excitement swelled through the morning. At noon, the knights broke out coolers of Budweiser and set up a ping pong table with Jose Cuervo and salt and limes. Ragged clouds streamed in from the sea. The humidity staved off the worst of the cold, but Tristan had left her coat in her room. Going back would mean convincing Yvette to come with her, trudging up the stairs in her chains. Instead, Tristan worked harder, keeping her blood flowing.

Shortly before two o'clock, a man in a pheasant-feathered cap walked to the throne and faced the palace of the clubhouse, a trumpet glinting in the thin sunlight. He piped a three-note blast, the final note dying in a blatter of spittle. Peasants filtered in from the fields, faces scrubbed and suspicious. The knights continued to joke, drink tequila, and ignore everyone else in sight. Even the harem was let outside, dressed modestly in sweatpants and jackets; some went to sit up front and take shots with the knights, while others sat alone in the back rows and pulled their jackets around their shoulders.

"Citizens of the Kingdom of Better San Diego!" the trumpeter hollered from before the throne. "Be seated, one and all!"

Tristan sat at the edge of one of the back rows. Yvette sidled past her and took the next seat.

"Now rise for your king!" the herald said. Tristan rolled her eyes and stood, chains scraping. The crowd craned their necks toward the palace doors. Dashing emerged onto the patio, a knowing smile embedded in his face. He strode down the strip of AstroTurf carpet and took the throne.

"So kind of you all to come." He smiled at himself, eyes glittering from within the dark circles surrounding them. "Yesterday, a messenger came to me with a little bit of news. I've spent the last day deciding how to break it to my loyal subjects. With the pomp and drama it deserves? Teasing you, one hint at a time, bringing you closer and closer to understanding until you're screaming for me to finish?"

King Dashing smiled again, absorbing the laughter of the knights. "But sometimes you've got something so big you just can't hold back. So here it comes, people. We took down the fucking aliens."

His words struck the crowd into total silence. A moment later, they rose and roared. Caps flew into the air, feathers flapping. Knights grabbed harem-girls and swept them into deep kisses. Colin caught Tristan's eye and grinned.

"We knocked their mothership right into the sea," Dashing said once the crowd quieted enough to hear him. "It's sticking out of Santa Monica Bay. Smashed. Wrecked. The bodies of those monsters tumbling in the breakers. We got the bastards. Earth is free."

They cheered again, voices climbing so high they thundered in Tristan's chest. She remained cold. Since her escape from the camp, the aliens had been a peripheral concern. A link to Alden, little more. Now that the invaders' power was broken, what would they do with their remaining prisoners? Execute them, flee into the remote corners of the world, isolate themselves from humanity? That's what she would do. Their efforts to finish humanity with a second plague had failed. It was time to cut their losses.

And she was trapped by madmen.

The knights passed out beers. Someone switched on a stereo, blasting Snoop Dogg and Deadmau5 and Boston. Tristan tried to go inside, but Yvette, wanting to dance, complained to Winslowe, who reminded them the celebration was to be enjoyed by all. She ordered the knights to chain Tristan to a post while the others drank and danced.

Cleanup took two days. There was trash to rake. Chairs to fold up. Great chunks of turf to reseed. Post-alien life at the country club went on with little difference besides a few more visitors from the roads and more numerous sojourns of the knights into the surrounding lands. Tristan scrubbed sheets and floors and plates. She grew used to the gait required by her chains, which were never removed, even when she bathed. Yvette stuck to her as closely as the shackles.

Dashing seemed content to screw his harem and boss around the peasants, who cleared the old cornstalks from the golf course and seeded it with new kernels. A clean slate, all the world's resources at his disposal, and this was what Dashing chose to do with it. Construct a pleasure-pen, laws enforced by half-drunk men with horses and guns. Keep some servants in chains and others imprisoned through simple fear. This was how it would always be, wasn't it? Even if Dashing had the vision, splitting the spoils of the land equally among his free people, it would collapse as soon as he died—or, more likely, was assassinated. All it took was one selfish or venal or mad leader to rot the whole fruit from the inside. This rot was inevitable. Unstoppable. Every bit of good would someday be undone. It didn't matter if King Dashing would rather lead a life of easy leisure than struggle to shoulder a better way. Even if he built a city on the hill, it would only die like everything else.

Tristan began to consider suicide.

Colin came to her while she was hanging wash from the lines. Yvette had gone back for more water, trusting Tristan's chains to keep her in place. It was February, but no one had told the weather; hot sunlight poured from the sky, slicking Tristan's bare shoulders with sweat.

"How's life?" he said. "Everything you would have wanted?"

"I've been having a tough time lately," Tristan said. "Should I hang myself? Or kill Dashing first, and let the knights end it for me?"

Colin laughed, then covered his mouth, blue eyes gone wide. "You're serious."

"I'm a slave, Colin."

"Well, that answers my question."

She could barely bother to ask. "Which is?"

"Do you want to leave?"

She raised her knee, jangling her chains. "Turns out my wants aren't as strong as steel."

Colin nodded, rubbing his stubble. "Well, if you ever want out of those, just let me know. I know where the key is. Oh, and one more thing."

"You can get me the keys?' Tristan said. "What more could there be?"

"Nothing much." He grinned broadly, enjoying his moment. "I found your brother."

27

Troops in black trained matte black machine guns on Ness and Shawn. Roan bound their hands behind their backs with nylon zip ties. She turned her reptilian gaze on Nick, reached a snap decision, and tied him, too. A guard pulled a black hood over Shawn's head.

"What the hell?" Shawn said. "Like we don't know where we're going?"

Dark fabric slid over Ness' face. He tossed his head. Hands yanked him into the back of a van. Shawn swore. Doors thunked closed. The engine grumbled to a start.

"Don't move," Roan said from nearby. "I will shoot."

Shawn snorted. "No seatbelts? Don't get too itchy on the trigger when I start sliding across the floor."

"Don't speak."

Ness could imagine Shawn's face curling in contempt, but for once his brother stayed silent. The van's wheels scraped on the asphalt, shifting tone as it entered the bridge. No one spoke. The van stopped on the other side, engine idling. Roan exchanged words with a man outside the car. The gate buzzed open. A minute later, the van stopped for good. Someone grabbed Ness' wrists and marched him through a series of echoing halls.

Someone seated him. Yanked the hood from his face. Fluorescent light blinded him. The rumble of the core shook the floor. Ness was seated between Shawn and Nick in a windowless room. Daniel and Roan sat across from them. Roan had a pistol on her lap. Guards fidgeted at the closed door.

Daniel frowned at his collared shirt, smoothing it. "You boys have committed some serious crimes."

"Taking our own jeep for a spin?" Shawn said. "Sorry we didn't ask permission, Mom."

"You willingly attacked a foreign species. You put the entire settlement at risk of reprisal."

"Who cares? The aliens are all dead, ain't they?"

"You didn't know that," Daniel said.

Shawn shrugged. "No harm, no foul."

"Not all are dead," Roan said. "We don't know how many weren't in the ship when it crashed."

Shawn sniffed. "Either way, sounds like they got much bigger worries than what we might or might not have done to two aliens so lowly they got assigned to mountain farmhouse duty in BFE, Idaho."

Roan rose while he was still speaking. She waited for him to finish, then struck him in the face. Shawn grunted, head snapping back, blood spurting from his lip.

"We are at war," Daniel said gently. "The terms of that war are to be decided by the commanders. Not two rogue actors. What you have done is treason. Treason, in the United States, is a crime punishable by death."

"Is that where we are?" Ness' heart pounded. "I haven't heard from the President in a while."

"It doesn't matter where we are. What matters is that you have betrayed us." Daniel removed his glasses, huffed on the lenses, and swabbed them with his shirt. "But while you have caused harm to our settlement, it isn't logical to execute you. Not when you can work to heal that harm instead."

Ness smiled, sick to his stomach. "You want me to keep making ethanol."

"We have a use for Shawn as well."

"What about me?" Nick said.

Roan didn't glance his way. "Be quiet."

"We never should have come here," Ness said. "I choose exile instead."

Daniel pressed his lips together. "Exile isn't among your choices. You can repay your debt one of two ways: with sweat, or with blood."

"Starting with Shawn," Roan said.

"Oh please," Shawn said. "You're not gonna shoot me any more than you're going to grow wings and fry yourself from dinner. Shoot me, and what have you got left to threaten him with?"

Roan stood and moved behind them. Ness twisted around, adrenaline setting his nerves on fire. Roan lifted her pistol. Before Nick had time to show his fear, she shot him in the head.

The bang clapped across the room. Ness jerked away, falling to the tile floor and clawing from Nick. Shawn kicked back with a scrape of his chair. Nick lolled from the chair, blood pumping from the hole in his skull.

"Sweet Mother Mary!" Shawn yelled. "You shot him!"

Roan leveled the pistol at his face. "Choose."

"Why are you doing this?" Ness cried.

"Because we have to!" Daniel stood, face strained, and paced to the wall. "Paradoxically, the aliens kept us safe. None of the other settlements were willing to risk war when it could draw the invaders' attention. Now that the aliens' back has been broken, what's keeping the barbarians away from the gates? Threats and bribes, that's what. Without the fuel to back up both these prongs, this whole place will be put to the sword. One of mankind's last candles will be snuffed out."

He planted himself in front of Ness. "This is what you must believe: there is nothing I won't do to prevent this place from falling."

Blood pattered from Nick's slumped body, bright red on the dirty white floor. Ness picked himself up, dizzy, and looked to Shawn for answers, but his brother was too scared to speak.

"Please don't shoot him," Ness said.

Daniel raised his gray brows. "Do we have a deal?"

Ness nodded. The world shrank to a small gray hole.

* * *

This time, he was to stay on the plant's side of the river. Roan showed him to his new lab, a broad clean space that smelled like rubbing alcohol. Steely stills gleamed under the fluorescents.

"Shawn has two guards with him at all times," Roan said. "If you try to run, he gets shot. If you try to sabotage, he gets shot. If you try—"

"I get the picture," Ness said.

"Then get to work."

He was surprised to find himself left largely unattended. A guard or two milled around outside the lab, and they locked him in a converted closet every night, but for the most part he was free to move and work as he saw fit.

Because they were right. They didn't have to keep him under close watch. Not when escape or sedition meant a bullet in his brother's brain.

He worked numbly, mashing, boiling, and yeasting the increasingly withered and rotten corn castoffs hauled across the river. The first snow fell overnight and melted in the morning sun. Often, he heard gunshots to the west, where Daniel's Umatilla-hired mercenaries had set up a firing range. Twice, he heard shots to the east, across the river at the farm.

Day by day, a fence crept around the distant fields. A watchtower climbed into the sky, followed by three more, simple things with wooden frames and corrugated aluminum walls and roofs. They hadn't thought it through. Come summer, the heat would boil the guards alive. Dogs bayed across the fields.

Soon, the bushels trucked to him switched from frost-withered mold-dotted cobs to dried, healthy kernels. Daniel was tapping into the food supplies.

"Experiment," Roan ordered him. "The watchword is efficiency. Get the most from what we've got."

"Fruit."

She cocked her head. "What did you say?"

"Fruit is more efficient than corn."

"And corn is what you have."

"Where's Larsen?" Ness said.

Roan went to the door. "Get to work, Ness."

For several weeks, he saw no one but Roan, the guards, and the man who drove the truck with his grain. Shawn was kept locked in another room elsewhere in the facility. Ness had made no mention of Kristin; he didn't want her to become the next person put to the gun to push him to work. He had asked about Volt, once, but Roan had paid him as little mind as his question about Larsen. Ness knew Volt would be all right. She was a survivor. She'd seen far worse winters in the mountains of Moscow. Here in the desert, it was hardly cold enough to snow.

Once in a while, between testing temperature, pH, and alcohol percentage, his work engrossed him enough to forget the hole in Nick's face. The rest of the time, he thought about drinking half a gallon of pure ethanol in one go. He'd never been happy, not really. Even his old life with his mom had been a waiting game. Fifty-some years whittled away by computers and TV shows until he'd be allowed to die. It would not have been so bad.

There had been one exception. The cabin in the mountains. That had been good. That had been fun. Allowed to pursue his own interests without the pressure, expectations, or fear of failure that had always cowed him into inaction elsewhere in life, the days had reeled on with the pleasant exploration of a limitless world. If he could do it over, he would never have come here.

A part of him yearned savagely to walk away into the desert and leave Shawn to his fate. Better one of them find happiness than both staying enslaved.

But he was tipping self-serving poison into his own ear. For all their fights, Shawn had always been there for him. Protecting his back. Trying, in his own way, to push him forward. Ness couldn't leave him behind to be shot. But he couldn't see a way out of the woods, either.

Life wasn't worth living. It was now a matter of how much longer he could resist that truth.

In mid-January, they allowed Shawn to see him at the lab. Shawn hugged him, thumped his back.

"Still at it, huh? Bet you could make some badass bourbon by now."

Ness glanced at the door. "Don't give them any ideas."

"You seen the fence across the way?"

"Hard to miss."

"Almost done." Shawn nudged one of the stills with his boot. "They got this new program in the works, 'Earned Citizenship.' You get thirty credits, you get promoted to full-fledged member of the community. Votes and shit. The fence will get me ten credits."

"They'll raise it to forty right before you reach thirty."

"Look, I don't know. Maybe I'll make it and maybe I won't. They got to do something to prove Daniel's not Dr. Doom."

Ness itched his nose. "It's a trick, Shawn. So long as a few make it over here from the farm, the others will go on working, because they think they can make it, too. Most will die in the same place they were born."

"You don't know that. I'll talk to somebody. See if you can start earning credits, too."

"They're just waiting for me to perfect the process," Ness said. "Then they'll kill me. Just like they did Larsen."

"Larsen isn't dead," Shawn said. "I seen that big Swedish bastard working at the farm just the other day."

Ness laughed. "Even better."

"Well, until you got a better idea, I'll keep plugging away. What else is there to do?" Shawn turned for the door, but stopped with his hand on the handle. "Look, Ness, where'd that brain of yours go? We aren't gonna get rescued by dragon-riding dwarves. You want out of here, you got to figure a way out."

Ness watched him go.

More snows fell, smothering the dust. Ness wrote a note asking permission to scout the feral orchards around the river. Next summer, the fruit trees could bolster his ethanol output without touching the staple crops. That was his out-loud rationale, at least. What he didn't say was that he was so bored he would do anything to get beyond the fences of Hanford, and that he held hope, however slim, he'd see something in the wilds to help him plan an escape.

One night, as he laid down in his converted closet to go to sleep, the door creaked open. Light sliced into the gloom. He sat up hard, pulling his sheet past his bare chest.

"Kristin?"

"Shh!" She closed the door behind her, enfolding them in the darkness. "Sweet pad you got here."

"How'd you get in?"

"I bribed the guards."

"With what?"

"What do you think?" she said, an edge of sharpness to her voice. "Civ IV and porn."

He rose and hugged her. "They'll kill Shawn if I try to leave. I didn't want to get you in trouble. I didn't know if you'd want to see me again."

She pulled back. It was too dark to see her face, but he could hear her breathing. "Why wouldn't I?"

"I don't know."

"You are strange." She kissed him. "I would have come sooner, but it's been crazy. They're trying to lay a backup water pipe into the reactor because Daniel's all paranoid about getting bombed by our rivals. The new pipe would have taken a miracle before the apocalypse. It's been soaking up every spare minute. I didn't even know they had you here until last week."

"Well, I'm glad you came."

The smile was audible in her voice. "Not yet."

He got her there with the second try. After, they lay tangled in the darkness. The closet was close and their sweat stuck their skin together. Their breath panted from the walls.

"Have you ever thought about leaving?" she said.

"Every day," he said. "Then I remember they'll shoot my brother if I do."

"Seriously? I thought you were joking."

He shook his head. "They say we committed treason."

"There was a riot at the farm last month. Did you hear? They shot two of the workers. They've been shipping in new ones ever since. I see them on the trucks."

"Where from?"

"I don't know." She brushed her hand across his chest. "But judging from the chains, they'd prefer to go back."

"I wish we hadn't killed the aliens," he said. "Maybe they could have saved us."

She laughed. A while later, she caught herself snoring and jerked awake. She had to be gone before the guards changed shift. She kissed him goodbye. She didn't know when she'd be back.

It was all right. He understood. And at last, he had an idea.

He asked to speak with Daniel. It was days before the old man granted him an audience. Roan watched from the far wall of Daniel's office, pistol on her hip.

"We brought some things back with the jeep," Ness said. "Alien things. I'd like to take a look at them."

"Why?" Daniel said.

"Because they look interesting."

"Like the lasers," Roan said.

"No." Ness flushed. She'd seen straight through him. He supposed that was a good sign. To pass among snakes, you must think like one. "Do you know how bored I am in there? Dipping sticks in vats of old corn all day? I'd rather be back in high school."

Daniel raised a skeptical brow. "And you think tinkering with strange gadgets will make you more productive."

"Look, I don't know. I thought it might be cool. I don't care." And it was true: it had all been a ruse, an effort, however unlikely, to get his hands on one of the lasers, or to discover if one of the other items held secret powers—something that could blast down a wall or reduce a man to a shocked skeleton. Roan had defused that spark at once. Even if they gave him something, it would be an impotent trinket, incapable of violence unless he threw it straight at their heads.

Yet it was his exasperated indifference, oddly enough, that changed everything.

"We'll see," Daniel frowned. "What about this other suggestion of yours? These feral orchards?"

"Fruit ferments best," Ness said. "That's why you don't see a lot of corn champagne."

"The old farms. Which you propose to visit for yourself."

"Visit once," Roan said. "As he sprints right past them."

Ness rolled his eyes. "So you can put a bullet in Shawn's ear? If I wanted to escape, I'd run from the lab while the guards aren't looking. Those guys don't do their jobs for shit."

"What about your other duties?" Daniel said.

"I'm just messing around in there. Killing time until I have more material. The stills won't have me overworked until the next harvest." Ness stood. "Well, I thought I could help. Take me back to the lab."

"Christ, you're a sullen one," Daniel sighed. "We'll discuss it."

Ness doubted that, but the old man was serious. Two days later, a guard delivered him a handful of small objects they'd taken from the aliens: two flat metal circles etched with strange sigils; four abstract idols that might resemble chess pieces, so long as you didn't look too closely; a narrow plastic rod of no obvious use. As Ness gazed at these in disappointment, the guard mumbled about going to the truck, then came back with a touchpad attached to a small square screen.

"Mr. Wizard said to tell you there's no wireless on this one," the guard said.

"Mr. Wizard?"

"The old man. King Daniel."

Ness laughed and took the items to his desk to start playing. It took him more than an hour to learn how to turn the pad's screen on—there were no buttons, and the touchpad wasn't supposed to actually be touched; instead, it responded to gestures made in the space above it—and even then there was little in the way of navigation. The screen showed shapes as abstract as the tiny chess-idols. He could change the display, sometimes, by waggling his hand around the air above the pad, but the symbolism remained inscrutable.

The other items were even less interesting. The metal was pretty, a smooth, iron-like surface swirled with iridescent colors, but the objects themselves were inert. He took to carrying one as a good luck charm, absently running his thumb over the symbol-etched surface whenever he grew stressed.

A couple days after the delivery of the trinkets, a driver arrived to chauffeur Ness to the wild orchards up the river. They fueled the pickup with his own ethanol and took off for the backroads. The rows of trees were long done fruiting, de-leafed by the winter. Grass grew thick between them. Many looked outright dead, or at least well on the way, but others sported hopeful green buds. Ness sketched rough maps and rougher tree-counts. The next day, he took the alien screen with him to kill the long drive into the fields.

The first few trips, the driver shadowed Ness at all times. The next few, the man wandered off on his own, seeing whatever there was to see. Ness was left to his own devices until the driver called through the orchard to let him know his time was up. Very soon, the man didn't leave the pickup at all, listening to old Metallica tapes on the car stereo while Ness tramped between abandoned rows of apple trees. Getting the fruit back to Hanford would have logistical issues, but given the labor to pick it and load it, it would pay for itself several times over in fuel.

By mid-February, the guard arrived to tell Ness he'd be allowed to drive himself. Ness frowned—he'd never liked driving, and the truck looked as awkward as a boat—but the man didn't look willing to argue.

At least that meant Daniel and Roan trusted Ness was too cowardly or devoted to run off without Shawn. He could use that, should the chance present itself.

The opportunity came much sooner, and in far different form, than he could have imagined.

Wintry light sliced through the knobby branches. He'd stopped counting apple trees half an hour ago. The more time he spent in the orchards, the less actual work he did. Instead, he pretended he was elsewhere, exploring terra incognita, mapping parts of the world no one else had ever seen. He could live here. Eat the apples. Build bridges between the trees and never touch the ground except to dig up the food he buried to get through the winter. He could do that right now, couldn't he? Hide away from Roan and her men in plain sight of the steam rising from the plant. They'd never find him. He could drive the truck into the river and strike out on his own that same day. If not for Shawn.

He was wondering how long the guilt would last when the alien stepped from the trees and lifted its tentacles above his head.

28

Tristan grabbed Colin's collar. "What do you mean, you found my brother?"

Colin tried to pull away, scowling at her white knuckles. "Alden Carter, right? Blond kid? Fourteen?"

"Thirteen," she corrected before remembering his birthday last month. "Where is he?"

"No, no, no." Colin glanced around for Yvette and the man who served as his own shadow. He lowered his voice. "I can't tell you that until you help me get out."

"If you can get me out of these chains, exactly what do you need my help with?"

Colin continued to gaze across the grass. "Parting me from my shadow."

Tristan didn't look. "That's why you wanted to know what I planned for Yvette."

"And to satisfy my general curiosity about you."

"You're sure he'll scream if you run?"

Colin rolled his eyes. "He's a loyal subject."

"So you can give the order, but you can't pull the trigger."

"Is that supposed to be a character flaw?" He softened his voice. "Look, I like him, all right? I don't want to do this to him. But he's left me with no choice."

Tristan poked her tongue into the gap in her teeth. She could think of no clear motive for a setup. He could be lying about his motives for leaving the killings to her—he could be less squeamish about the blood than about being caught with it on his hands—but his intentions, at least, sounded legit.

If they weren't, she could always kill him, too.

"When?" she said.

Colin smiled. "That didn't take much convincing."

"I'd be long gone if Yvette weren't afraid to take a single beating. She banked that I'd roll over as easily as she did. She was wrong."

He smirked. "One o'clock. Tomorrow night."

Colin strode away, winking at Yvette as she waddled up with a fat tub of water. Yvette smiled back. She saw Tristan at the wash lines and her smile withered like the vineyards in the valley south of Redding.

She clunked down the tub at Tristan's feet, splashing her ankles. "You'd get more work done if you spent less time talking to boys."

"I'm a shameless flirt." Tristan bent over the washboard. "What are you going to do? Tell Mom?"

Yvette tossed her head. "Maybe I will. It's not very fair to me when I work twice as hard and we both go back to the same room every night. How do you think that makes me feel?"

"Resentful," Tristan said. "I'm sorry. This has been such a big transition. I know I could have handled it better."

Yvette frowned, wrung out a sweatshirt, clipped it to the line. "Well, you won't be happy until you start to put your heart into it."

"You're right."

Yvette laughed. "Maybe you should talk to more boys. You're much more reasonable when you're happy."

"I'm just seeing things differently, that's all."

Tristan found it easy enough to fake her amiability. She just had to turn back the clock to the person she'd been a year before. If she could make it through 36 hours of this polite pliancy, she'd be back outside the walls. So she worked hard and without complaint. Yvette gave her several pointers, nodding in satisfaction when Tristan gave them a shot. Tristan watched Yvette when she wasn't looking. She felt no qualms about the plan. She could make herself feel guilty, if she sought the emotion out, but mostly what she felt was rage. A part of her wanted to kill Yvette. The woman was weak. Would rather bow to every one of Winslowe's rules than to stand and resist. She was a weasel who hid in the master's skirts, waiting for prey to fall, wounded and helpless. Humanity didn't need people like her.

Playing demure helped hide Tristan's nerves, too. Those buzzed like her fourth cup of espresso. Her stomach fluttered. But these biochemical reactions didn't climb to her brain. That remained detached. Focused. Resolved.

The day after she agreed to the plan, with just seven hours until it was scheduled to begin, Colin drifted up to Tristan after dinner. He gestured toward the patio where the servants were allowed to smoke, chat, and grab some fresh air, so long as they didn't leave its cement boundaries. After the warmth of the kitchen, the nighttime marine air gripped Tristan's body in a clammy fist.

"Still ready to get a little exercise?" Colin said.

She zipped up her jacket. "Hard to run when your legs are in chains."

"Oh, that. Maybe this will help." He reached for her hand. She started to draw back. He pressed something sharp and metal into her palm. In case anyone was watching, she held his hand for a minute, then moved the keys to her pocket.

"Where did you get these?"

He grinned with half his mouth. "Winslowe."

"She hates me. She'd never just hand these over."

"No, but get an orgasm or two in her, and she sleeps like a stone." He gazed at a roly-poly crossing the patio. "Don't judge me. We all do what we have to."

"I wasn't about to stone you. After tonight, you'll have a couple of boulders to chuck my way." She glanced inside. Yvette watched from a chair by the window, gaze ticking between Tristan and Colin. "What's the plan?"

"Take care of your chains. Take care of your shadow. Then come to my room and take care of mine. He's an absurdly light sleeper. Expect him to wake the second you open the door."

"From there?"

"Hop the fence. I've got supplies waiting down the hill."

"How?"

"Same friend who found your brother. You get us out of the house. I'll take it from there."

Tristan nodded slowly. "If this friend can do all that, why doesn't he get you out?"

"Because he's not that good a friend. And he's not a fan of being executed." Colin glanced at the window. "We've been out here too long. That shadow of yours can't seem to keep her eyes off me. What do you think, should I ask her out?"

Tristan returned inside, ignoring Yvette's stares, forcing herself to keep her hand out of her pocket. She read a National Geographic article on oceanic volcanoes until the bell sounded for bedtime. Yvette gave her the cold shoulder as they brushed their teeth and dressed for bed. That was fine with Tristan.

Winslowe came by to lock them in. Tristan waited in bed, listening to Yvette's breathing. Tristan had a digital wristwatch Winslowe had given her to keep up with her chores; every few minutes, she cocooned herself in the covers and pressed its light function to check the time.

At 12:58 AM, she removed the key from under her mattress and fit it into her shackles. The right cuff popped free with a metallic click. Yvette breathed on. She released the second cuff and pulled her feet up to her butt, leaving the shackles beneath the sheets. Her ankles felt incredibly light. She unzipped her mattress cover one tooth at a time and slid her fingers into the cut in the fabric. She touched plastic. She withdrew her second shiv, a long-toothed comb. She'd worked on it for weeks, sharpening its handle against the grout whenever she went to the bathroom, using the noise of the toilet and faucet to cover the sound of the scrapes.

She rose, careful not to stir the shackles. Light peeped from the base of the door. Yvette slept on. Tristan leaned in. She clamped one hand to Yvette's soft mouth and slashed the shiv across her throat. Blood spurted over her hand. Yvette tried to scream, gargling on her own blood. Tristan jabbed the shiv into her heart and dropped her weight. Plastic scraped the girl's ribs. She shuddered. Tristan bore down on her shiv and Yvette's mouth. The blood stopped pumping. The girl's chest stopped rising. After another minute, Tristan eased off and cleaned herself on Yvette's sheets.

She dressed in pants, shoes, and a jacket. The door was closed with a bedroom/bathroom handle, reversed so it locked from the outside and keyed from the inside. But Colin had given her a key for this, too. She slipped it into the lock, feeling it glide over the tumblers, and turned.

The hallway was bright and empty. She paused in the doorway, heard the buzzing of lights and the muffled moans of the king enjoying himself upstairs. She crept down the hall to Colin's room, turned the lock, and slipped inside.

It was a converted office, boards nailed gracelessly outside the window so the moonlight cut through in silver slats. Both men sat up in their beds. Tristan held the shiv in front of her and stared at Colin's partner.

"You're going to be very quiet," she said.

The man pushed himself against his headboard. "You're leaving, aren't you?"

Tristan advanced on the bed. "You have a choice to make."

The man shuffled his feet in the sheets, as if trying to force himself through the wall. "I won't say a word."

"Convince me."

"I've seen you together. I saw Colin give you the keys. I could have said something."

"Why didn't you?"

He laughed, burbling and off-kilter, then covered his mouth, eyes wide. "You kidding? I saw what you did to the guards the night you came here."

Tristan turned to Colin. "Come on."

"This isn't what we planned," Colin said.

"Shut up and get your shoes."

"We can't risk him—"

"He's smart," Tristan said. "Smart enough to prefer a beatdown to a comb through the heart. Right now, the king is upstairs with one of his brides. In sixty seconds, I'm out this door."

"Break your word the moment you step through my door." Colin fumbled for a shirt, pulled it over his smooth chest. He jammed on his shoes and laced them tight. "Great way to earn my trust."

Colin's partner stared through the moonlight. "You made her promise to kill me?"

"It was nothing personal."

"I'd say that's pretty fucking personal!"

"This is no time for couples counseling," Tristan said. She pointed at the man in the bed. "I'll leave the door unlocked. Wait ten minutes, then you can leave, too."

The man's brow creased. "Why can't I leave with you?"

"Because I'm not friendly." She pocketed her shiv. Yvette's blood lined her nails. "The hard part is over. Wait ten minutes, then run."

Colin pulled on his coat and picked up a small black bag. "Ready to go? Or do you plan to literally shoot us in the foot first?"

She stared at him, then opened the door. The hallway was still empty. The moans upstairs had ceased. She went to the back stairs and leaned over the railing. The kitchen was dark. She descended and moved to the light blinking on the alarm beside the back door. She'd been watching Winslowe reset it every morning. She punched the code. The light went green. She slid open the door, glass rumbling.

Cold air touched her face. She jogged across the dew-soaked lawn Dashing had the peasants mow every Sunday morning. Colin kept pace. She didn't look back until they reached the high fieldstone wall. No extra lights had gone on at the palace.

She climbed straight up the rough stone, flattened herself under the first string of barb wire, and held down a hand to help Colin up.

"Who are you, Spider-Woman?" he whispered once he'd struggled his way up top. "What do you need me for?"

She smiled. "We'll see."

They dropped into the grass beyond the wall. Still no lights or alarms from the clubhouse. It would be another two or three minutes before Colin's shadow made his move. And he would, too. Colin had misjudged him. She understood the urge to keep their conspiracy to a tight two, but it would have been less messy to include the man than to kill him.

Colin's shoes smacked asphalt. She followed him down the road between the dark mansions of Oceanside. Or was it still Oceanside? It was Dashing's land now. The territory of Better San Diego. The kingdom was a joke, but it was real, too. The institutions that had made it Oceanside were all dead. If a stranger were to come and draw a map, an update of what the country had become, Dashing's claim would be the accurate one, the one that should be set down in ink. How many micro-nations bloomed on the blackened corpse of the United States? Even with the aliens gone, there was no hope for restoration, was there? Too many people had died. The few who were left would persist in pockets like Dashing's for years. It could be generations before rulers had the resources to begin conquering and consolidating, pulling these new cities back into proper states. It could be hundreds of years. Progress was not inevitable. It was always easier to burn than to build.

The fog of her breath hung in the night. Colin jogged down a long hill, scanning house numbers, then turned into a driveway and knelt beside an overgrown flower bed. He lifted a stone owl and fished a key from the dirt.

"Just as planned," he grinned. He led her through the dark house to the garage. A black Prius sat in the gloom. He laughed and grabbed her and hugged her to him. "Can you believe it?"

"Maybe." She put her shiv to his neck. "Now where's my brother?"

Colin went very still. "What are you—? I'm on your side!"

"Then you'll be happy to tell me where Alden is."

"Did the squid swap your brain with a crocodile's? If you stab me, you'll never find your brother."

"Unless I start with your extremities and work my way in. If I cut off your balls, how long do you think it would it take you to bleed to death?"

"Cartwheeling Christ," Colin said. "Washington State. A nuclear power plant made it through—it's called Hanford. They got all kinds of slaves there. What's your problem?"

Tristan lowered the knife. "How do you know all this?"

He popped the driver's door and leaned in for the keys. "Same guy who set me up with this car. Old high school friend. He's a coyote now, been driving people up there for weeks."

"A guy like that is your friend?"

"Look, I just know the guy. You got a problem with that? Maybe you can go talk it out with Yvette."

"Just want to know what we're getting into." She pulled the trunk latch. Water. Food. Blankets. She closed it, the click echoing in the three-car garage. "We got out. That was the deal. Why are you helping me now?"

He crossed his arms, rocking on his heels. "I had a little brother, too. He made it through the Panhandler. He wasn't so lucky with what came after."

She met his eyes. They were steady, bright. She went to the garage door and hauled it up with a metallic clatter. "Let's go."

He smiled unhappily and started the car. Brake lights flooded the garage. The engine was far softer than her Vespa. Colin wound through the palm-lined streets and the silent Spanish manors. He reached the highway and headed north. The gas engine kicked in, grumbling through the car's sleek frame.

"What do you think you'll do once you find him?" Colin said.

"Kill whoever's got him."

"I meant after that, Terminatrix."

"I hadn't really thought of it." She gazed out the window at the flat, black Pacific. "Find a place. Stock up. Go from there."

"I want to find a few people. Just a tight little group. No psychos like Lord Dashing."

"You don't want to go it alone?"

"No way," he said. "Who's going to watch your back against the wolves? Anyway, you'd get lonely, don't you think? I mean, my hand makes great company, but it's awfully clingy."

"You could get a mannequin," she said. "Dress her up however you like."

"Just you and your brother." He laughed, gazing across the car at her. "What are you going to do when he wants to find a girl?"

"I told you. Mannequins."

"Well, he is fourteen. He'd probably go for that."

With the aliens gone, they drove straight through Los Angeles, slowing to weave through the wrecks blockading the lanes of the highway. Smoke rose from a handful of chimneys, but entire stretches of the landscape had been burnt to the foundations. Tristan looked out Colin's window, trying to catch a glimpse of the sea and the disc of the ship jutting from the waves, but the highway was too far inland. Another time.

They stopped at a gas station in the cleft of the hills north of the city. Tristan peed in the weeds, then made a pass through the convenience mart, but it had been stripped bare. Colin topped off the tank with one of the two jugs in the trunk. Tristan bashed in the window of an SUV and siphoned the jug back to the top. They continued on.

"You smell like gasoline," Colin laughed.

"Peril of the age," Tristan said.

"Got some gum if you want it."

"You kidding? I'd kill for gum."

"I don't doubt it," he chuckled. He dug into his pocket and passed her a stick of Orbit. Sharp spearmint. Her mouth watered around it. He grinned. "Good, right?"

She blew a pathetic little bubble, cracked it between her teeth. "Best thing mankind ever did."

They stopped for the night at a motel on the road north of Bakersfield. The eastern mountains grayed as they prepped for bed. Tristan's twin bed smelled musty and the room was cold enough to see her breath, but she piled the covers high, napping in fits and starts until the early afternoon.

Awake, she was eager to hit the road. Colin snored on, shirtless, hair sticking up from his head. She got out some granola bars and Cheese Nips and crunched them as loudly as she could. He woke with a sharp intake of breath, blinking at the unfamiliar white ceiling. He saw her and smiled.

"You chew like a gorilla," he said.

"Shared a lot of dinners with the larger apes?" she said.

"Every Thanksgiving." He rose, twisted his back, grimaced, and stripped down to his jockey shorts. He plopped beside her on the bed and scooped up a handful of salty orange crackers. She passed him a bottle of water. He swigged and scratched his chest. "Eating cheese crackers on the road with a pretty girl. My sixteen-year-old self would be so proud."

"This life has its moments," she said.

She packed up and waited for him to dress. She offered to drive, but he shrugged her off and pulled back onto I-5. The Prius thrummed up the endless valley. Snow rested on the peaks to both sides, but the valley floor looked better than the last time she'd seen it: the winter storms had brought it fresh water, returning hints of green and green-gray to the swaths of brown and yellow. The road climbed into the mountains. Patchy and half-melted snow covered the grass, a worn-out white blanket. She called their first stop a few miles south of Redding so they could use the bathroom and switch seats.

"There's bad people here," she explained. "I know a way around."

Colin squinted up the desolate road. "You're from here?"

"Yeah." She closed her door. "You?"

"San Diego. Loved it. All this white stuff on the ground is kind of freaking me out."

She thought about asking him more, but there didn't seem to be any point. It would be like asking about the life of a stranger. A stranger with nothing but bad memories of lost family and friends. She detoured around the city and rejoined the highway.

Mount Shasta swelled to the east, its white heights painted pink by the sunset. Colin guided her off the junction at Weed. Sunlight disappeared from the road through the forest. The highway swooped and fell, embedded in a mass of primeval pines that blotted out all but a narrow strip of starlight. Up in the pass, snow obliterated the road. Tristan slowed to a crawl, heart thudding at every curve, frustration mounding with every minute they crept through the unkempt roads.

The pass dropped. The snows receded, revealing beautiful black pavement. Wary of black ice, Tristan didn't press past 50 MPH until they reached Bend, Oregon.

"Why don't we call it a day?" Colin said.

"The day stops at midnight."

"Which is what, ten minutes from now? Hanford's another 250 miles from here. Through two-lane highway. It's going to be five o'clock before we get there. I don't know about you, but I get cranky when strangers knock on my door at five in the morning."

Tristan slowed the car and clenched her teeth. "Fine. But we stop early, we start early."

"Good by me. I don't want to get there after dark tomorrow anyway. I don't know what this place is like. It could be just as crazy as Dashing's."

She exited the highway and started looking for a quiet subdivision where they could break into a house. "What do you know about this place?"

He gazed up at the cloud-skeined stars. "Not much. They've still got power, which is cool. And slaves, which is a lot less cool. But I don't think they're totally swinging from the chandelier. I've heard there's a way to buy your way in to citizenship."

"With what? I doubt they care about cash. Unless they've got a shortage of toilet paper."

Colin shrugged. "I didn't get the specifics."

"Is Alden a slave? What will they want for him?"

"I'm as clueless as you are, Tristan. If they're doing business with my friend, I'm sure they'll do business with us."

She pulled into the driveway of a darkened home. The door was locked, but the neighbor's wasn't. She yanked open the empty garage and Colin guided in the Prius. Using a flashlight from the trunk, she scavenged the house, turning up a few cans of green beans and boxes of cereal. No milk, of course, but she'd gotten used to pouring water on her Rice Krispies long ago.

Colin rattled around the den, emerging a minute later with a bottle and a grin. "Look what I found."

She turned the flashlight on him. A brown bottle of Jack Daniels glinted in his hand. She smiled with half her mouth. "How thoughtful of them to leave the liquor cabinet unlocked."

He raised his brows. "Fancy a party?"

"We've got to get up early."

"Come on. We're escaped fugitives. All the best criminals drink bourbon."

She snatched the bottle from his hand and showed him the label. "This is sour mash, not bourbon."

"Sounds even tougher."

She took a swig, eyes burning. He winked and tipped it back. His voice went hoarse. "God, I've missed that. Think the brewmaster survived? Or is the secret of JD lost forever?"

Tristan found candles in the bedroom and brought them to the living room. They passed the bottle back and forth, discussing what to expect in the morning. He wanted to drive right up and talk their way in. She wanted to watch from a distance before exposing themselves.

"You're so cautious," he said from beside her on the couch. "Sometimes you've got to just go for it."

"So cautious," she said. "Like yesterday. When I broke us out of that Fellini-esque kingdom."

"We'll creep up on it, then. But I'm telling you, it'll all be fine." He smiled at her. She could see it coming from a mile away. He let a moment pass, as if waiting for her to absorb his smile, then scooted next to her and took her in his arms. As he leaned in, she placed two fingers at the base of his throat and pushed. He jerked back. "What's the matter?"

"Well, Colin, I'm just not that sort of girl."

"It's the end of the world. Who cares what kind of boys and girls we used to be?"

"My uterus, for one."

He grinned in the darkness. "I've got protection."

She snorted. "That was optimistic."

"There are other things we can do."

"Like?"

"Mouths can't get pregnant."

She smiled, bringing her hands to the front of her chest, where she could strike quickly if needed. "You realize I don't owe you anything, right?"

He cocked his head. "For the ride up? I'm not doing this to put you in my debt."

"I'm talking about me." She gestured at herself. "I'm not here for you."

"You have the wrong idea, Tristan." He met her gaze, his eyes soulful and serious. He shook his head and reached for the bottle. "It's not a demand. It's an offer. If it came off otherwise, I'm sorry."

She mashed her lip between her teeth. "Me too. Look, these days, it's tough."

"What?"

"Letting down your guard."

"I think you just did." He found his grin and handed her the bottle. "To peace."

She drank. "Peace."

They went to bed soon after, she on the couch, he in one of the beds. She stayed awake a while, pleasantly drunk, but he was snoring within minutes. She slept.

He didn't mention it in the morning. They were back on the road by nine. The pines shrunk, grew scrubbier. Hard black rocks jutted from the weedy fields. Within a couple hours, they were back in the desert, where the sagebrush was the tallest plant in sight and tumbleweeds clustered the barb wire fences of forgotten farms and pastures. A bridge carried them over the wide Columbia into Washington. Colin stopped in the gray and snowless hills to have a snack and hit the bathroom.

Tristan tromped into the dust and picked out a sage to take care of business behind. As she finished up, a muffled crackle drifted on the wind. She went still. It repeated twice more, staticky and brief.

Back at the car, Colin leaned against the trunk, gazing north across the hills. "Ready to roll?"

"Did you hear something a minute ago?" Tristan said.

He shook his head at the hills. "Like what?"

"Nothing. Probably just a coyote." She got into the car.

Not twenty minutes later, they crested a long hill and a city spread out before them. Single houses, strip malls, bands of green along the river. Brown circles of old farms. Two towers of steam rose from the river north of the city. Colin cruised along, slowing as the highway entered town. After several miles of lost civilization, the desert resumed. The towers of steam grew nearer and nearer. Colin watched the road. They curved around a spur of rock, revealing a striated gray building with a square white cap, dozens of industrial outbuildings, and mile on mile of fence. The road led straight to a gate.

"Stop the car," Tristan said.

"What? We're almost there."

"I know. Stop the car."

"What's your problem?" he smiled.

She whipped out her shiv and pressed it to his throat. "Do I need to tell you again? Or is the blade more convincing?"

He blinked, slowed, guided the car to the shoulder. He put it in park, leaving the engine on. "You want to tell me what this is about, you crazy bitch?"

Tristan tightened her grip on her shiv. "Where's the radio?"

"What radio?"

She pushed the point into his neck until a bead of blood bloomed at its end. "The one you used to call ahead."

He cried out, lifting his hand to his neck. She dug in harder and he froze. "Under the seat!"

"Is my brother really here?"

"Yes!"

"Then what aren't you telling me?" She leaned into the shiv, peeling apart the skin of his neck. Blood washed onto his collar.

"Stop it! Don't hurt me!"

"Then tell me the truth, motherfucker!"

"I made them a deal!" he shouted, eyes wild. His chest rose and fell. His breath smelled like Cheese Nips.

"What were the terms?"

"A simple exchange: my citizenship for your slavery."

29

Ness screamed. The alien lunged forward, limbs lost in the snarl of branches. A tentacle wrapped around his mouth and squeezed. Others grabbed his torso and lifted him from the ground. Something slithered into his pocket, groping. He struggled to free his nose. The tentacle smelled brackish, wormy.

The alien set him down, jarring his knees. The tentacle uncoiled from his mouth. He gasped for air. A pincer stabbed at his face. Between its claws, Ness' round metal luck charm winked in the wintry light.

Another pincer produced a compact black pad. One of its tentacles executed a complicated dance above it, tip snapping. It lifted the pad, which was inscribed with a single white word:

"WHERE"

Ness fainted.

It shook him awake, thrust the pad back in his face. Its tentacles squeezed the breath from his limbs.

"Hanford!" he squeaked. "Washington State. I don't know!"

It spun one pincer in a tight circle, then performed another tentacle-dance. The text on the pad shifted: "WRITE"

It let him go and jabbed a stick at him. Ness gaped. He pointed at the stick. Impossibly, the alien nodded.

He reached for the stick, hand shaking so hard he nearly dropped it. After a glance at the alien's goggle-eyed face, he lowered himself to a crouch and wrote in the dirt: "Hanford, Washington, USA."

It shook its bulbous head, flailed the metal charm, and refreshed the pad. "WHERE WHERE WHERE"

Ness pointed downriver, then wrote in the dirt. "I got it from the man who runs the power plant."

"AND FROM WHERE"

Ness frowned, swept the ground clear, and wrote again. "Where did he get it?"

The alien nodded so hard he thought its eyes would roll loose like misaimed cue balls. It squiggled its tentacle, shifting the white text on the black pad. "YES FROM WHERE"

"Why?"

It stiffened its spindly limbs, looming above him, hideous and great. "GUTBROTHERS"

A headache thundered over Ness' thoughts. What the hell did that mean? He pointed at the metal charm in its claw.

"YES GUTBROTHERS"

Heart beating so hard he thought it might break his own ribs, Ness bent to the dirt. Drawing each line and loop with careful precision, he wrote: "Your gutbrothers were killed by a man named Daniel and his assistant Roan."

The alien's limbs shook like a storm-tossed tree. Ness fell back, shielding his head. It shoved the pad in his face. "HERE TOMORROW"

"Me?"

"YES HERE TOMORROW"

Hesitantly, Ness nodded. The alien whirled and trampled through the brush, fallen apple leaves speared on its pointed feet. Ness crouched there, glancing around for others. When he could no longer hear the alien's thrashing, he dashed to the truck, slammed the door, and peeled out for home.

He replayed the conversation over and over. It had been so quick. So—alien. Minutes later, he could no longer be certain he understood a word it had said. Typed. Whatever. In the moment, it had made its own peculiar sense, but now it felt as foreign as the logic of a lost dream.

He pulled up to the northern gate, sure the guards would be able to see it on his face, to somehow smell it on him, but they buzzed him through without a second glance. He parked the truck and headed to his room to think.

The metal trinket came from the aliens he and Shawn had killed. It could be an ID chip of some kind, a radio or a tracking device. It might have taken the others this long to hone in on it, or perhaps they'd been waiting for it to emerge from the compound at Hanford. Whatever the case, they had found it.

And Ness had pointed them straight to his enemies.

He couldn't be certain, of course, they were here for revenge. They were squibbly aliens, after all. He couldn't be sure they knew what revenge was. But he'd find out soon enough. He wouldn't miss tomorrow's meeting for the world.

He drove back to the orchard under the glare of the mid-morning sun. He passed Roan on the way; she turned to watch him go by, her face as inscrutable as a trout's. Ness pretended not to see her. Miles upriver, he parked beneath the apple trees and wandered around. Perhaps it had been waiting for him, perhaps his timing was just good, but the alien crackled from the trees not ten minutes later.

"Hello," Ness scratched in the dirt.

It snatched him up, coiled him close, carried him to the river, and strode into the water.

He screamed, managed to snatch a panic-shortened breath just as the icy water closed over his head. Bubbles swirled past his face, troubled by the creature's thrashing limbs. Something gleamed in the murky water. The alien's legs left the rocky bottom and it propelled itself along instead, tentacles whipping spirals of bubbles behind them. Ness' lungs burned. The alien hauled him into a cave. Ness blew the air from his mouth, trying to trick his lungs into holding on just a few seconds longer. Machines whirred. The water flushed away, gurgling madly, draining through the slotted floor. Ness panted and shivered. Dusty-tasting water spattered away from his soaked clothes.

"What are you doing?" he shouted. The alien trundled forward without a sign it had heard. It took him through a tight tunnel to an open room with a curved ceiling. Four other aliens were ensconced in alcoves along the wall, like wasps in their comb, waving their tentacles as Ness' captor carried him into the room. It waved back and set him down. The floor was rubbery and spongy and squeaky with water.

It got out its pad, flicked its tentacle above it. "TELL"

Ness gestured at the floor and spread his hands helplessly. Semitransparent lids flickered over the alien's eyes. It turned to one of the others, tentacles gesturing violently. The other gestured back with equal fervor, disgorged itself from its hole in the wall with a quiet slurp, and disappeared down the tunnel. Water dripped from Ness' clothes and was absorbed by the floor.

The second creature returned with a notepad and a Bic pen.

"TELL," the first alien wrote on its pad.

"Tell what?" he wrote back.

"TAKERS OF GUTBROTHERS"

"Daniel and Roan," Ness wrote. "The ones who run the nuclear power plant."

The alien snatched the notepad away and held it to the others to read. They whipped and writhed their tentacles at each other for some time. After a consensus had been reached, the alien gestured over its black pad.

"THANK YOU"

Ness laughed and gestured for his notepad. "That's it?"

"WHAT"

"That's all you wanted to ask me?"

"YES THANK YOU"

He knit his brow. "Well, what are you going to do now?"

The alien danced its tentacle over the pad. "KILL"

Ness backed away, face contorted in horror. The alien wagged its head back and forth. "KILL DANIEL ROAN"

"When?" Ness wrote.

"NO"

"What do you mean?"

"NO"

He rubbed his temple, staring at the googly-eyed thing. He bent over his notepad. "Can I ask you something else?"

"YES ASK," it wrote back.

"Why did you kill us all?"

It twirled a pincer in a quick circle. "NO DANIEL ROAN"

Ness shook his head and tried again. "Why did you send the disease? Why did you attack us? Why did you come here?"

It straightened, clacking several of its claws rapidly. Ness cringed. It turned to the others and wiggled its tentacles. Their conversation lasted even longer than the first time. The wiggles and whips of their limbs were far too fast for his eyes too follow. More often than not, they weren't even looking at each other as they "spoke." Were they somehow feeling each other's movements? Reading the vibration or displacement of air the same way the pad translated the wormlike movements of their limbs into English?

The first alien shoved its pad in his face. "TAKE"

Ness squinted at it, then reached for its pad. The alien pulled it away and moved a claw in a broad sweep, shaking the pad again: "TAKE"

"Yes, to take the planet," Ness scribbled, "but why?"

"WASTE"

"I don't understand."

"YOU WASTE PLANET"

"Pollution?" Ness wrote. "We were going to destroy the Earth, so you took it away?"

It shook its fat head in exaggerated sweeps, claws clicking rapidly. "INEFFICIENT WASTE PARTS DESERVE EFFICIENT"

He held out his palms, wrote, "I don't understand."

"INEFFICIENT WASTE DIRT AIR WATER"

"We were ruining it?"

The alien jounced up and down. "NO NO NO WASTE WRONG USE"

Ness pushed the knuckle of his thumb against the bridge of his nose. "We were using the dirt wrong."

"YES"

"How should we have been using it?"

"RIGHT"

"How right?"

"WHAT"

"How were we supposed to be using it?"

"RIGHT"

Ness laughed in frustration too deep for words. Or gestures. Or any other known form of communication. Here he was not five feet from the answers to everything that had happened in the last year—probably the only human to have ever been faced with this opportunity—and they were locked in a Who's On First routine. It was enough to make him want to cry. Or shoot something. Or shoot something while crying.

"What is the right way to use our dirt?" he wrote.

The alien paused, gazing at its pad, a few of its claws twirling in what Ness was beginning to suspect meant frustration. "AS THE DIRT WANTS"

"How does the dirt want to be used?"

Its claws snapped back and forth. It calmed itself, squiggled its tentacle above the pad. "HARD TALK" It erased that and made a new series of gestures. "AND WATER"

"We were using our water wrong, too?"

"YES AND WE WANT"

"You wanted our water?" Ness wrote. "The universe is full of water!"

"HARD WATER BAD WATER"

"Hard water? You blew us up because melting Titan's ice was too much work?"

It began to gesture, but the tentacles of the ones in the wall cut it off. A minute later, it turned back to Ness. "GO"

"Now?"

"GO" It tucked the pad into a pouch in its strappy clothes, grabbed him up, and scuttled down the hall.

"Hang on a damn minute!" Ness said. It hurried down the tunnel to the room with the grated floor. The door hissed closed. Cold river water flooded the chamber. Ness breathed hard as it climbed to his shins, his thighs, his belly. His clothes hadn't even begun to dry. The water rose to his chin. Outer doors whirred; water clapped into the room, filling it. Once the surging tide calmed, the alien swam forward, using its tentacles as rotors, and struck straight for the surface. Ness' head broke the surface. He gasped.

It delivered him to the shore and got out the pad, which showed no sign of being harmed by its trip through the water. "GO"

Ness yanked up a cattail and drew in the mud. "My brother and I are prisoners at the power plant."

"YOU ARE HERE"

"But I have to go back," he wrote. "Can you help us get out?"

"NO"

"Why not?"

"NOT GUTBROTHER"

"But I told you what happened to your gutbrothers."

The alien paused, pincers tracing slow circles. "TOMORROW"

"Hot date with a prawn?" Ness said out loud. He wrote in the mud, "Why tomorrow?"

"FOR THINK"

The creature whirled and delved into the river. Bubbles popped in the swirling current. Water dripped from Ness' clothes. He peeled off his coat and shirt and wrung them out. The rest would have to wait till he was home. His shoes squelched on the walk to the truck. He shivered hard. On the drive back, the vapor from his clothes humidified the cab; he swept his sleeve across the fogging windshield, smearing it halfway clear. He parked in the car lot and went to turn in the key.

"Why are you wet?"

He startled. Roan faced him, the fuzzy flaps of a bomber jacket raised around her neck and chin. Ness glanced down at his damp jeans, as if just noticing.

"I was climbing a tree to get a better look at things," he said. "I fell in the river."

"You've spent enough time out there."

Heat prickled Ness' neck. "But I haven't even been to half the orchards."

"We won't have the manpower to get to them for years," Roan said. "By then they'll be completely changed. You're wasting time."

He stared at her, lungs stinging, wanting to shout it wasn't fair. But fair meant nothing to her. His mind shifted gears, clicking from itchy panic into cold analysis. Roan cared about order, efficiency. Ness scrambled for the right lie.

"Some of the orchards are on lower ground than others. They can be irrigated easily. If this can be done in time for summer, it would only take a handful of workers at a satellite farm to produce enough apples to generate hundreds or even thousands of gallons of fuel. Far more than if those same workers were helping to grow corn."

Her gaze was as steady as the southwest wind that had him shivering in his clothes. "I need reports."

"Of course."

"And a proposal. You have two weeks to find your location. If it takes longer than that, it can wait till next year."

"Thank you, sir," Ness said. She strode away. He turned in his car keys and went to his room. Only then did he grin. After years of lying to Shawn and his mom to stay out of trouble, it had become as natural and effortless as setting down his foot. He'd bought himself two weeks. Fine. For all he knew, the aliens would move on Daniel and Roan tomorrow.

He drove back out in the early morning, taking a change of clothes with him. Once again, the thing was already waiting for him in the cold shadows of the orchard.

"WHY HERE," it wrote on the pad.

"Because this is where we met before," he wrote on his.

"NO WHY YOU HERE"

He cocked his head. "To learn from you."

"BUT YOU HATE US"

"No," Ness wrote. "Well, yes. It's complicated."

Its semitranslucent lids slid across its fist-sized eyes. "NOT GUTBROTHERS"

"Us?"

"YES NOT"

He scratched the pen over his notepad. "What is a gutbrother?"

It spun its claws in circles. "IT'S COMPLICATED"

Ness laughed. Sparrows flitted from the branches, undisturbed by the alien presence. "Then why are you here?"

"YOU'RE NOT AFRAID"

Ness laughed at that one for some time. "Yes I am. I'm one tentacle-punch from shitting myself." He crossed that sentence out. He had to be simple. It wouldn't understand figures of speech any more than he understood its talk about dirt. "I'm very afraid. But my curiosity is even stronger. And so is my want to help my gutbrother."

"DON'T USE"

"Don't use what?"

"OUR WORD"

"Gutbrother?"

"YES NOT"

"Why not?"

"HUMANS CAN'T BE" It swung its claws up and down, eyes rolling. Thinking? Frustration? It waggled its tentacle over the pad. "GUTBROTHERS TALK WITHOUT MOVING GUTBROTHERS DON'T LEAVE GUTBROTHERS HUMANS ALWAYS LEAVING"

"Wrong," Ness wrote. "I could leave right now. I don't because it would mean leaving my brother to die."

"WORDS BAD DON'T GRASP TRUTH"

"I know."

"COME FOR GUTBROTHERS ALWAYS ALWAYS"

"And you wouldn't come for me?"

It clacked its claws rapidly—laughter? Or extreme sobriety? It had reacted the same way when he'd asked the absurdly large question of why they'd sent the plague.

"THE HELL NO"

"Have you been watching our TV?" Ness said out loud, laughing. He wrote, "I still don't know why you're here."

"OWE"

"You owe me? For telling you who killed your gutbrothers?" he wrote. It wagged its fat head up and down. Ness gazed into the trees. "Then what will you do to repay me?"

"HOW RELEASE GUTBROTHER"

"You'll help me get my brother out?"

It retracted its claws. "DEPEND HOW RELEASE GUTBROTHER"

"They keep us locked in two rooms," Ness wrote. "There are a few guards nearby. That's it."

"DANGEROUS"

"I know."

"TALK OTHERS"

"Tomorrow?"

"TOMORROW"

Ness nodded. It was as much as he could have hoped. "What did you mean when you said we used the dirt wrong?"

It considered him with unblinking eyes. "DIRT WANTS LIFE"

"But we bury our dead in it? Is that sacrilege?"

"NO TO BE LIFE" It reached out a tentacle and tapped his notepad. "DEAD DIRT NOT-LIFE"

Ness pointed at its black pad, writing, "That looks pretty dead to me, too."

It shook its head. "INSIDE LIVE"

"What about that?" Ness pointed at the straps of its clothing.

"EXCEPTION"

"That's convenient."

"YOUR WHOLE WORLD EXCEPTION"

Ness laughed; had he just annoyed it? Well, the alien could deal with it. Ness himself was still a little angry over their whole apocalypse thing. With that thought, he was struck by situational vertigo: he stood in a quiet orchard trying to ally with one of the monsters that had nearly wiped out his entire species. That had killed his mom. That would have killed him, if not for whatever quirk of genetics had left him immune. Why wasn't he angrier? Shawn would have already tried to kill it.

Himself, he just didn't seem to care. He couldn't take the invasion personally. Ironically, that same lack of personal involvement that had made it so hard to connect with other people was the same quality that left him equipped to speak with the creature in front of him.

To try to, anyway. He attempted, with minimal success, to explore its concept of live dirt and dead dirt, live air and dead air, but he got the impression it would not have been simple even if the alien had been a native English speaker. It seemed to believe this was a basic organizational principle—that all matter wanted to become life, and thus to shape matter into dead, inert things was to violate some sort of fundamental will, to sin against the very universe—but so much of that was reading between the lines, his human interpretation of its blocky, chopped-up words.

"PURPOSE," it tried at last, claws spinning in what Ness had come to take as its gesture of frustration/anxiety. "BREAK PURPOSE EVIL"

"So you came here to correct us," he wrote back. "By killing us all."

It shook its head, claws spinning. It began to twitch its tentacle over its pad, but the pad lit up. It went still, listening to a message Ness couldn't hear. It looked up, drawing its tentacle back in the sinuous gesture Ness could now understand without the pad's interpretation:

"TOMORROW"

Ness had expected as much. On the off chance Roan meant to drill him daily, he spent a few hours doing what he was supposed to be here for—surveying the groves for ease of irrigation—then drove back to the plant, where he asked for and received permission to see Shawn. A guard escorted Shawn to the lab, then sat against the wall, folding a dog-eared copy of Maxim over his lap, presumably to ogle the models who were no less attainable now that they were all dead than they'd been when the magazine was printed. Ness swore. The man's presence was going to make things a whole lot harder.

"What's up?" Shawn said.

"How goes your effort to earn your citizenship?"

"Slow and steady," Shawn shrugged. "Didn't expect it to happen overnight."

Ness glanced at the guard, who turned the page. "What if it could?"

His brother squinted one eye, then smiled slowly. "I'd jump."

"Really? You almost seem happy."

"Because it's a load more practical than stealing the guns to shoot our way out, you dork." Shawn looked lazily at the guard, who remained engrossed in the glossy pages. "It's called working within the system."

"But if there were another way?"

"Then fuck the system."

Ness grinned. "Be ready."

Shawn gave him another squint. "What have you got up your sleeve, little bro?"

"You'd never believe me."

"Guess I'll sleep with my shoes on."

They caught up for a while, exchanging the trivial details of their progress with the ethanol and the fence, respectively. The guard broke it up to escort Shawn back to his own room.

Ness spent the evening fantasizing about their escape. The alien would crawl in from the ceiling vents, just like in Aliens, strangling a guard in one tentacle, tearing another to ribbons with its claws, and halving a third with its lightsaber-like laser. It would get shot, but Ness would catch its laser in midair and blast down the guard before the enemy could finish the job. As Ness supported the alien on his shoulder, laser in hand, Shawn would range ahead to the gates, sneak up on Roan, and snap her neck. They'd ride out in the jeep, deliver the alien to its friends at the river, shake limbs, and go their separate ways.

That was the dramatic route. More likely, the alien would surreptitiously lase the locks from their doors and they would hide in the shadows of walls until the guards walked away on their routes. From there, they'd go climb the fence, or wade into the river, swim to the other side, and disappear into the city.

Or the alien would cut straight to the chase, land a jet on the roof, extract them, and fly away before the guards had the chance to lace up their boots. These things had destroyed a civilization. How hard would it be for them to bust two people out of jail?

He never got the chance to find out. The alien waited for him in the orchard, tentacles held tight to its body, morning sunshine glistening on the dewy grass. The words were already spelled out on its slim black pad:

"MELT DOWN"

30

Tristan breathed out in a hot rush. "You were going to sell me into slavery?"

Colin mashed his head against the window, trying to escape the pressure of her shiv. "That's how it works. Bring them a worker, they lay out the red carpet."

"Use me as a tool to escape, then sell your tool to someone else."

"That wasn't the plan! I wanted to help you. To find your brother."

"Then I made the mistake of telling you to keep your dick to yourself."

He smiled tightly. "That's not it at all."

She worked the blade back into the gash she'd dug in his skin. He inhaled through his teeth. She shifted her weight, holding the shiv steady. "Then why?"

"Because they've got something here. Power. Security. A future. No more scavenging. No more pawing over dead bodies for cans of Campbell's. That's not a life. That's hell."

"The old way wasn't a right. Half the world was born into lives worse than we have it now."

"Anyway, it wouldn't be forever. You can earn your way out. Alden's here, Tristan. Play their game for three years, five, whatever they ask, then you can take him and be on your way. Spend the rest of your lives together."

She glanced down the road to the chain link gate. The Prius was quiet enough for her to hear a rumble permeating the dry desert air. It was a seductive thought. Put in her time, work hard, then move on once she'd earned out. Little risk. Much less than whatever she'd take on breaking Alden from captivity.

She had already grown tired of this life, this endless need to be on her guard, to read the truths behind the lying eyes. It would be so much simpler to put her life in someone else's hands for a while. To let them watch out for her while she earned her daily meals. She'd have more time to watch out for Alden, too. The people who ran this place wouldn't want any harm to come to their investments. She didn't have to go it alone to keep her promise to her mom. Maybe the best way to keep her brother safe would be to sacrifice herself. It wouldn't even be forever.

"I'm at the gate!" Colin had the radio to his mouth, fingers clamped to its button. He'd snuck it from beneath the seat while she watched the fence. "Get someone out here! Hurry!"

But that was just a comforting delusion. A way to shrug off responsibility. Once they had her inside the fence, they'd never let her go.

She drove the knife through his neck. Instinctively, he clamped down his chin, catching her forearm against his chest. She reached over, popped the door, and shoved him out with both her legs. He gargled, blood spraying the windshield. The seatbelt caught him halfway out the door; he flailed one hand, keeping the other tight against his cut throat. She unclicked his belt and he thumped to the dust. She threw the car into reverse, backing over him as she swung around and tore back down the road.

She watched in the rearview as the distant gates swung open. Two men ran outside. She thought she saw rifles on their shoulders. The car dipped down the road, pulling the men from sight. The suspension jounced as she pushed the Prius up to sixty. A college campus spread to her left. She pulled in and parked among the abandoned cars. The dust on their windows was so thick you couldn't see through, but her car was dirty enough to blend in at a distance. She grabbed a bag and ran for the entrance, where she watched from the window for an hour until she was certain there would be no pursuit.

She needed a gun. Binoculars. Black clothes. She found all three looting the houses on the north end of town. The pistol's ammo box was half empty, but if she needed more rounds than that, she probably wasn't going to get out alive anyway.

She drove back to the campus, parked, napped inside an office beneath a blanket and all her clothes. After nightfall, she pocketed her knife and her gun and shouldered a purse heavy with ammo and water and Lay's chips. She walked north, paralleling the road from a distance of a hundred yards. Plenty of space to hide in the sage should headlights shine down the road. A low thrum penetrated the night. Two giant pillars of steam climbed into the sky, highlighted by the glow of the half-moon.

Tristan stopped three hundred feet from the fence. A gate barred the road. Gatehouse beside it. Movement in its dark windows. Electric lights washed the grounds far inside the compound. A man strolled through the circle of light around the main building and disappeared back into the shadows. Bare-bones patrols—it was ten minutes before she saw another soldier—but the fact they ran patrols at all, out here in the middle of nowhere, belied an organization and a paranoia that would not make her task any easier.

Twenty-odd buildings were scattered around the tall, white-capped building near the compound's center. Alden could be in any of them.

Lights gleamed across the river. She struck east, hit a bridge. For ten minutes, she crouched in the sage and watched it through her binoculars. No sign of guards. No lights, either. She headed across, slinking along the high rails at its sides. On the other end, the road hooked toward a cluster of low, rectangular buildings surrounded by a high wire fence. Forty-foot towers projected above it all, spindly watch-stations of wood and aluminum spaced along the fence. Each sported a spotlight, like something out of an old prison movie. She stooped across the cold and dusty field. A dog barked, waited, barked again. She rose and it bounded forward, angling toward the fence. Tristan froze. It was a Shepherd mix, tall, solid. It barked until she turned away and hustled across the field.

She found a hill nearly a mile east of the fences and set up a short ways from its crest. Should have brought an emergency blanket. She napped fitfully, woken by the cold. She walked around to stir her blood, then curled up again. At dawn, she woke for good, positioning herself below a generous clump of sage, where she propped herself on her elbows and fitted the binoculars to her face.

Dozens of people emerged from the long simple housing blocks. They milled in the cold yellow morning and sat at the benches arranged under off-blue tarps. They were too far away to make out more than heights and builds. Several might have been Alden or possibly just slender women. Men with guns and dogs hung around the fringes. The ground between her and the fences held nothing but sage and weeds and dust.

She rationed her water, making it to nightfall with no worse than an angry stomach. She didn't see a way to get any closer without getting captured. She walked back to the campus, put together a bag with food and water and shoes and a gun and two sticks and two knives, returned to the hill east of the farm, and buried the bag at the base of a sage.

Unarmed, she walked to the farmland gates.

A man shouted from one of the towers. She stopped and waited. Two men in black caps ran from the gate with rifles drawn. They gave her a quick pat-down and led her to a shed with a concrete floor and a couple of folding chairs.

She explained with minimal elaboration. Four days ago, her car had broken down outside of town. She'd walked in and tried to find another, but couldn't track down a working battery. No, she hadn't thought to find a generator and charge one that way. As she tried car after car, she noticed the clouds rising from the north. At first she'd thought it was the smoke of a brushfire, but from her house in the hills, their nighttime lights gleamed like sweet promises. Finding her neighborhood low on water, she attempted to move to a house by the river, but had wound up run off by a pack of half-starved dogs. After that, she'd walked straight here.

"Here at Hanford, we got a system," the guard-captain said, a man in his late thirties with shaggy brown hair and glassy red eyes. He'd introduced himself as Hollister. "You want to live here, you got to earn it."

"I expected no less," Tristan said.

"Hard work. We got a farm. That's where most residents go. But you could wind up assigned to anything. You good with cars? They'll take you to the garage. Can you sew? Well, there you go." Hollister smiled at himself, glassy eyes crinkling. "Most people, they wind up on the farm."

"We've all got to eat."

"And I need you to know just what you're getting into. We expect a three-year commitment. Signed. We're investing in our residents the same way you're investing in our community. Can't feed you for nine months to see you run off right before harvest."

"What happens after three years?"

"Reassessment."

"What if I try to leave before then?"

Hollister stared her down. "Don't."

She shifted in her chair, attempted to look thoughtful. "In exchange, I get food and water? A place to sleep?"

The man nodded once. "Showers, too. Clothes machines. 'Lectric lights. Aren't many places in the country can say that anymore."

"Where do I sign?"

He favored her with a lopsided grin and produced a clipboard. "Right about here."

The document was more or less exactly what he'd just explained. Short. Unlawyerly. She signed as Billie Winslowe.

"Billie," he read. "I like that. Tough girl, Billie?"

She mustered a small smile. "These days, who isn't?"

Hollister showed her to a room in one of the longhouses. Six beds. Two empty, the other four soon to be occupied by the women currently brushing their teeth and removing makeup, jockeying for space at the two mirrors in front of two metal basins.

"I thought you said you had water," Tristan said.

"We do," he said. "But only so much that's halfway clean. Got to preserve it. You'll get enough to keep yourself pretty."

She smiled, trying to soften the edge she felt rising in her gut. He left her with the bag of clothes she'd brought with her. The women introduced themselves; she promptly forgot their names. She didn't intend to need to know them.

She stayed up half the night worrying whether she'd done the right thing. She should have spied longer, made certain Colin hadn't lied about Alden before surrendering herself to contractual slavery. But skulking in the shrubs, it could have taken days, weeks to pinpoint her brother, assuming he wasn't working indoors at the plant across the river, where she might never see him, depending on how strictly the lords confined their servants. In the meantime, she'd have no way to tell how he was treated, whether he was being beaten—or worse; her mind approached the possibility with morbid semi-glee, then retreated in angry horror—by the guards in charge of their human cattle. If anything were to happen to him while she dawdled in the wastelands, she could never forgive herself.

Not that she'd have the chance to seek that forgiveness. She'd be killed by guards after killing whoever had hurt her brother.

For better or worse, she was inside the fence. Whether or not Alden was here, she needed to think of a way to get out, not rake the muck of regret. The fences buzzed, electric; she'd need to dig out, like she had in the alien prison, or find some insulated snips. Did the fence border the river, too? Or could she and Alden wade into the water and float to safety? Could she use pesticides to poison the dogs? They roamed free at night; she'd need some method to neutralize them, even if that were simply devising a way to escape during the day.

In the end, it simply didn't matter. Whatever it took—cultivating a conspiracy, fucking a guard, leading a revolution—she would get it done.

She woke before dawn, stomach growling. While her roommates snored, she practiced her kung fu, stepping lightly, soles a whisper on the unfinished hardwood. At first light, an old man opened the door and grunted a wake-up call without glancing at the women inside.

Tristan filed out to the breakfast tables and lined up for a bowl of steaming oatmeal dusted with white sugar and for a cup of Kool-Aid from concentrate. She sat at the far corner of the tables, paying more attention to the others than the blandness of her food.

A teen boy wandered into the morning, blinking against the hard daylight with sleep-angry eyes. His blond hair jutted at all angles. Chemicals bloomed from Tristan's middle, surging her with tingling lightness. She stood.

He glanced her way. Just as she'd imagined a thousand times—in the orange and fleshy jail, in the house of the kindly couple in Williams, in the locked room with Yvette in the fiefdom of Lord Dashing—Alden did a double-take.

"Tristan?"

He moved toward her, casually at first, perhaps not allowing himself to believe it, then broke into a sprint that nearly bowled her over. She crushed him to her chest. His half-fed bones dug into her hip and shoulder. He smelled like old sweat, but also something much older: the same scent of skin and specific Alden-ness she'd smelled every time she went into his bedroom at the house in Redding.

To her surprise, she was still able to cry.

31

The words meant nothing to Ness. They may as well have been written in whatever alphabet the aliens used for themselves. It was as if he had taken a word like "soft" and repeated it—soft, soft, soft—until it no longer represented softness, but only itself, a tautological negation. He stared at the black pad, trying to understand.

"Meltdown?" he wrote. "At the nuclear plant?"

"YES MELT DOWN"

"You mean it's going to blow up?"

The alien wagged its head side to side. "NO MELT DOWN RADIATION LETHAL"

"How do you know?"

Its tentacle danced above its pad. "BECAUSE WE DID IT"

"What???" Ness scrawled. "Why?"

"KILL DANIEL ROAN"

"And everyone else!"

The pad flashed. "KILL DANIEL ROAN"

"You can't do that."

It gazed at him. Its milky eyelids wiped its baseball-sized eyes. Its two thickest tentacles climbed over its rubbery back and wavered against the backdrop of branches.

"ALREADY DID"

Ness fumbled his pen. "Right now?"

"NO TONIGHT MELT DOWN"

He reached behind himself, as if seeking a wall for support. Very clearly, he saw that this was his fault. Not the killing of the creature's gutbrothers—that had been an act of war, nothing more or less, and after the aliens' attempt at genocide, he and Shawn could hardly be blamed for killing two of the enemy who'd landed in their back yard.

But blaming Daniel and Roan—he had done that. He had invited the aliens to strike back, hoping to divert them from discovering he was the killer and lead them to destroy his captors in one fell swoop. It had seemed so elegant. So brilliant. But he'd been trusting aliens to act like humans. Aliens who'd already shown no compunction about killing nearly seven billion humans. For all he knew, they intended to keep fighting despite the loss of their mothership, executing an ongoing guerrilla war for final control of the Earth. In that light, taking out two of their personal enemies alongside several hundred impersonal ones, and at the same time wiping out one of humanity's few functional power stations—well, that was a solution every bit as elegant as his own scheme.

Not for the first time, he wished he'd never been born.

It was absurd how much could hinge on a single decision. Terrifying. Every one of Ness' instincts screamed out for him to run, to hide away while Hanford died under a raging storm of radiation, to put it behind him and move on. He could drive off right now. No one would know his part in this except the aliens, and no human would ever ask them. A crime was only a crime when it was known.

But he couldn't leave Shawn—and Kristin—to die.

"You have to stop it," he wrote. He didn't know if it could feel guilt, but it had told him about the meltdown for a reason. It had to be vulnerable somehow.

The alien's tentacle wriggled above its black pad. "NO"

"My brother's there and I can't get him out. You're going to kill my gutbrother."

"DON'T USE WORD"

"He's my gutbrother!" Ness wrote. "I will always go back for him! And you are going to kill him!"

Its claws rolled in fast and tiny circles. "NO NO NO"

"He's the reason I survived your plague." Ness looked up from his pad and met the thing's dead-puppet stare. "Now stop the attack."

"CAN'T"

"Then help me get him out!"

The alien went still. Slowly as a toppling boulder, it turned its face to the sky. Ness didn't bother to try to read its face, or even to guess its thoughts. That could only mislead him. Whatever logic it was arranging in its swollen brain, it wouldn't follow any human pattern.

It moved its tentacle with clear reluctance. The pad lit up. "I HELP"

Ness blinked against sudden tears. "What do we do?"

"I COME TONIGHT"

"There's a girl, too." Ness paused his pen over his pad. Did these creatures even date? Marry? Mate? "She is also like a gutbrother."

"WE WILL ALL LEAVE TOGETHER"

Ness' smile overwhelmed his face. "Thank you." It only stared. "What's your name?"

It rotated one of its claws side to side. "NO WORD"

"I just thought there might be something you'd like me to call you."

It clacked its claws, then tapped its tentacle through an intricate succession of motions. "SEBASTIAN"

"Sebastian?"

"YES CALL SEBASTIAN"

"Like from The Little—" Ness stopped and scribbled that out. He didn't want to know. "Where will you come? To my room?"

"YES HAVE MAP"

"There are guards."

"YES GUARDS DIE"

"What should I do?"

"GO BACK WAIT FOR SEBASTIAN" It lurched toward the river. After several leaf-skewering steps, it turned and held up the pad. "TONIGHT BYE"

Ness drove back to the plant. He sought permission to see Shawn, but Roan was out, and the guard refused to make the decision on his own. Ness supposed it didn't matter. What would Shawn do with a few extra hours when Ness didn't even know how to tell him to prepare?

He wandered the dusty grounds, watching the steam rise from the clusters of round vents. The rumble of the reactor felt no different than normal. Had the aliens already begun their work? Would Daniel know? Would the old physicist have any hope of stopping it? Sebastian made it sound inevitable. What would Daniel and Roan do if Ness came to them right now? At the very least, he would have to reveal he'd been in contact with the aliens. His imagination played the sequence of events as deterministically as a movie. Once he explained, they would lock him up. The reactor would melt down, killing him in his cell, or they would somehow avert it. Then Roan would come to his cell, shoot him, find Shawn, and shoot him, too. They would not brook a second betrayal. They'd made him take notes on the entire ethanol process. It would be simple enough to divert Brandon to the task. To promote someone from the farm. It didn't take a nuclear scientist to mash up corn and boil it a couple times.

That was why he didn't go to Kristin. She would just try to stop it. Questions would arise; fingers would point. Roan was too canny to miss all the time he'd spent outside the fence. The alien artifacts he still had in his lab. She would follow the links back to him.

Anyway, he didn't want to stop it. These people deserved to die. Daniel as the despot, Roan as his enforcer, the scientists and engineers and techs as his enablers and willing minions. The workers at the farm would be collateral damage. They'd had their chance to stand up after he'd given his speech. They'd sat back down as soon as Daniel bothered to cross the river. Because of them, Nick was dead.

Ness sat silent in his room and waited for the alien to deliver him.

He woke to the sound of something scrabbling at his lock. He leapt up, looking around for a weapon. The best he could do was his pen. He clenched it like a dagger. The door swung open. Moonlight lined Sebastian's many limbs. A guard struggled at the alien's feet. Its tentacle coiled around his throat like an eyeless anaconda. The man's face was purple; he made small sputtering sounds. Sebastian lifted one of its pointed legs and stabbed down through the man's open mouth.

Ness went for his notepad. He'd fallen asleep in his shoes. "Is it happening?"

"YES"

"How long do we have?"

"HOUR"

"Until it starts? Or finishes?"

"FINISHES"

Enough time to get several miles away even if they couldn't find a car or bikes beyond the fence. Ness grabbed the machine gun from the dead guard. The grounds were silent except the omnipresent grumble of the reactor. His heart raced, but he found it oddly comforting to have Sebastian beside him. The alien gazed down at him expectantly. Ness gestured it forward. He jogged to the shadow of the next building, a high, dark warehouse, and paused to stare across the empty space between them and the next patch of cover, a concrete bunker he suspected was used to store spent nuclear fuel. Shawn was housed just beyond it in another cluster of storage sheds. He still hadn't seen any more guards; either Sebastian had killed them all, or they were elsewhere on the sprawling grounds.

He circled around the light ringing the bunker, then angled straight for the sheds, Sebastian skittering beside him. Ness drew up beside Shawn's door, gestured at the padlock. Sebastian raised a blunt black pistol to the lock and crowded around it. Blue light flared, bright enough for Ness to write by.

The padlock thumped to the dust. Ness held up his pad to the creature. "Stay out here. I need to explain."

Sebastian wagged his bulbous head. Ness swung open the door, painting the cramped space with moonlight. Shawn waited just inside, half-crouched in the darkness, fists held out from his body.

"Ness!" Shawn straightened, grinning in disbelief. "We out of here? Where'd you get the gun, Rambo?"

"Shawn, we're not alone."

"Yeah. Mercs everywhere. I'll shut my damn mouth."

Ness glanced to his side. Sebastian waited beside the wall, perfectly still and surprisingly compact. "I mean, I have help."

Shawn moved for the door. "Your girlfriend? About time I got a look at her up close. Was starting to think she was another Canadian internet thing."

Ness grabbed his brother's arm, stopping him cold. Shawn frowned down at Ness' hand. "Shawn—I made contact with a group of aliens. One of them is right outside this door. It's going to help us get out."

"Ness."

"I'm not joking. I'm telling you this so you won't scream or punch it or ruin things with any other typical Shawn business. There's an alien outside, and it's my friend."

Shawn peered at him for any hint of a put-on. "You know what, I believe you. And I am unsurprised."

Ness took a deep breath and stepped back from the door. Shawn followed in his wake, glancing left, then right. Sebastian turned its head to meet his gaze. Shawn hopped straight in the air, eyes bugging as hard as the alien's, but to his credit, he didn't scream.

"Jesus," he breathed. "Fucking. Christ."

"Nope, its name's Sebastian," Ness said. "Come on."

He led them around the bunker back to his shed. Kristin's converted apartment building rose past the roof of another warehouse. As Ness halted in the shadow of his former home, light flicked from the wall of the warehouse. A black-dressed security man lit a cigarette and blew smoke into the cold night.

Slowly, Sebastian leveled its pistol. The man spat, gazed across the dust, and turned back the way he'd come. While Ness considered how best to circle around him to Kristin's, Sebastian burst forward, feet hardly stirring the dirt, and disappeared after the mercenary. Something grunted in the darkness. Sebastian backed around the corner, dragging the body behind him.

"Glad that dude's on our side," Shawn murmured.

"It told me why they attacked," Ness said.

"Human babes?"

"I'll tell you after we're clear."

Sebastian beckoned them forward with a lithe tentacle. They moved in fits and starts to Kristin's building, pausing often to watch for security men. The front door was unlocked. Ness crept up the metal staircase to the third floor. Harsh bulbs glared down the empty hall. He sidled to Kristin's door, directed Sebastian to the side, and knocked softly. He waited three seconds, skin itching, and knocked again.

Her voice was sleepy, annoyed. "Who is it?"

"Ness."

The lock clicked. She cracked the door, grinned at him, and opened it wide. She was dressed in a thigh-length nightgown whose gauzy fabric did little to conceal her nipples. She saw Shawn and closed the door to an inch-wide crack.

"Hey!"

"Wait till she sees the other guy," Shawn said.

"This is my brother Shawn," Ness said. "Can we come in?"

She glared through the crack. "A little notice would have been nice. Hang on."

Her footsteps withdrew into the room. Shawn elbowed him in the ribs. "Nice pick."

She returned in a t-shirt and sweatpants and introduced herself to Shawn. "Aren't you guys supposed to be locked up?"

"Get your shoes on," Ness said. "We have to run."

"Oh yeah? Is the video store about to close?"

"The plant is about to melt down."

She blinked at him, eyes skipping between his. "Glad to see you've picked up your Ph.D in nuclear physics."

Ness laughed helplessly. "Somehow that's more believable than the truth. The reactor has been sabotaged by aliens."

"And they gave you a heads-up? Did you help one of their grandmothers across the street or something?"

"I told them Daniel and Roan killed their friends. One of them likes me, I don't know." He gestured at her bare feet. "Shoes. Now."

She crossed her arms. "Ness, modern nuclear reactors don't just melt down. There are a billion safeguards."

"And how many of them are devoted to stopping terrorists with tentacles?"

"Ness—"

He pursed his lips, stepped out the door, and gestured Sebastian inside. Kristin gasped and choked. She fell and scrabbled on the rug, heels kicking, driving herself away.

"Ness!"

"Shh!" He ran to her, crouched down, and hugged her. "It's my friend. It's going to get us out of here."

Kristin tried to speak and choked on her own spit. She pounded her chest, voice strained. "We have to stop it."

"I said it's here to help."

"The meltdown. I know how to shut down the reactor. Sort of. It could still overheat, but—"

Ness snorted. "Why?"

"Why would you want to stop a nuclear leak that could kill hundreds of people? I don't know, because we're not Satan?"

"You didn't say shit about a meltdown," Shawn said.

"Because it's totally out of my hands," Ness said. "And we've only got like forty minutes before it's too late."

"Well, that's more than enough time to drop the rods and shut it down," Kristin said.

"I don't care about any of these people!" Ness said. "They shot my friend in the head! Right in front of me. They're keeping hundreds of slaves. Goddamn slaves. The government died and these people went straight to selling each other as property. The future looks bad enough as it is. We don't need them around to make it worse."

"I have friends here," Kristin said. "A meltdown will leave this whole area unlivable for thousands of years. It could kill anyone who wanders through town. We have to stop it."

Sebastian's tentacle wriggled over its pad. Kristin and Shawn flinched back; Kristin rolled her eyes, Shawn chuckled. It held out the pad: "WHY TALK MUST LEAVE"

"What!" Shawn said. "You taught the lobster English?"

"It learned on its own," Ness said. "Some gestures, too. Freaky, right?"

"Make it flip me off."

Ness got out his pad, wrote, "Hold on."

Sebastian rolled its claws in a tight circle. "RADIATION KILLS HUMANS"

"Thanks for the intergalactic wisdom," Ness muttered. He turned to Kristin. "Unless you'd like to test its claim, we need to leave. We can have this argument ten miles from now."

"Leave away," she said. "I'm going to go stop our personal Chernobyl."

"Need a hand?" Shawn said.

Ness' mouth fell open. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Shawn shot him an annoyed look. "I ain't some monster, Ness. I don't have tentacles and big stupid googly-eyes. I'm not gonna let all these people die."

"But this place is horrible!"

"Seems to me that's because of Daniel and that bra-wearing pit bull who does his bidding. Mercs won't care who's paying their checks. We take the two of them out, we run this place however we please." Shawn held out his hand. "Run away or come with, Ness. But if you're leaving, give me your gun."

32

Alden hung on and didn't let go. "Where have you been?"

Tristan laughed, squeezing him tighter. "Where have I been? What about you?"

"I thought you were dead." He pulled back, turning away to wipe his tears, as if she hadn't already seen them. "Did they take you, too?"

"Spent months in a slimy orange box. Practiced my kung fu the whole time."

"Me too!" he laughed. "What if we were right next to each other? We could have just punched our way through!"

Tristan smiled. "God knows I tried. Anyway, we were at separate facilities. No kids at mine."

Alden glanced at the other corner of the dining area, where a man in a black uniform and a shouldered rifle watched them dully. "How did you find me?"

"I just kept searching."

He frowned at the dust, then glanced at her face. "Is that how that happened?"

Her smile tightened. "You should see the other guy."

"No way," Alden laughed. "Bet you killed him. He'd be all rotten and wormy."

"I just sent him to his room without pizza. What about you? Have you been okay?"

His smile emptied; she hoped hers had been less visibly hollow. "Yeah. Fine. Bored."

"How long have you been here?"

"Like a month."

"Has anyone hurt you?"

Alden's smile recovered some of its enthusiasm. "Why? Would you beat their ass?"

"And whatever else that ass is attached to."

"They've been fine," he said quickly. "Just strict."

He was still so young. Too young to lie well: he looked away, grinning nervously, some part of his childhood still resisting the idea of telling his parents anything but the truth. She supposed he'd get the chance to learn with her. A large part of her still couldn't believe that he was here, that she could reach out and run her fingers through his hair, could lean in and smell his skin. In terms of absolute time, they'd only been apart what, nine months?—the length of a school year, a pregnancy—but in terms of relative experience, it felt like a lifetime. She didn't fight her grin.

And now was not the time to ruin their reunion with talk of what happened to him during that separate lifetime. That could come later. When they were gone. When they were safe. Anyway, if something had happened to him here, she couldn't afford to let her anger compromise their escape.

They sat together and ate. Her breakfast had gone cold in the chilly morning. Too soon, one of the armed men rose from their own table of Lucky Charms and coffee and called the residents out to work. Tristan was directed to a column of several dozen people assigned to a pile of lumber at the edge of a fallow field. Apparently housing was running low on this side of the river; while others cut pieces, she was assigned to sand the rough edges. The sandpaper rubbed her fingertips raw and red. They were granted two short breaks, including lunch, then wrapped up with the sun inches from the western hills, its pink light interrupted by the steam rising from the power plant.

The day had not given her much to work with. After dinner, Hollister, the red-eyed captain who'd processed her arrival, pulled her from the mingling crowd.

He nodded at Alden. "You know that boy?"

"Why?"

"This morning, he called you Tristan. Before you'd said a word to him."

She raised her brows. "Is that a crime here?"

"Of course not. But signing a false name to your work contract is."

She nearly asked him why it mattered; there were no more drivers licenses, no Social Security numbers, no databases of debt and credit and citizenship. In this era, you were whoever you said you were.

"I used to babysit him," she said instead. "In my hometown. I hadn't seen him since I left for college."

"I see." A shrewd light pierced the fog of whatever drugs he was on. "And if I asked him, he'd say the same thing?"

"I couldn't believe it when I saw him. Everyone else I know died in the Panhandler or the collapse. I thought everyone on Earth was a stranger. Then I come here and the first thing I see is the little blond kid who used to hide fruit snacks in the toilet tank."

"And he called you Tristan because?"

"That's my first name," she said. "I started using my middle name in college. Do you need to change it for the forms?"

Hollister rubbed his puffy eyes, frowning at Alden, who sat at another table giggling with a girl a year old than himself.

"Better," he said. "Roan runs this ship just like her asshole: tight and squeaky-clean."

"Person like that probably wouldn't be happy to hear you speaking that way."

The man shot her a fierce look, fog clearing from his eyes. "Are you threatening me?"

Tristan pushed out her lower lip. "That depends on whether you think she'd be mad."

"Papers. Come on."

She followed him to an office adjacent to the bare concrete room where they'd received her application for citizenship. He found her papers in a green file cabinet and went over them point by point, filling in many of the places he'd left blank the first time around: place of birth, parents' names, education. By the time they finished, lights-out had been called; the man accompanied her back to her room, where she brushed her teeth in the dark.

Dumb of her to not work this out with Alden the second she saw him. She couldn't let them know they were brother and sister. It would be far too easy to leverage that information against her. She resolved to clear this with him first thing in the morning.

She never got the chance.

Alden wasn't at breakfast. Tristan ate her meal—grits, homemade; three women were still grinding corn for the latecomers—then found the dark-haired girl her brother had spoken to the day before.

"Seen Alden today?"

"Not since yesterday." The girl combed her fingers through her hair, glancing at Tristan's face, her shoes. "You're his..?"

"Babysitter."

The girl's lips tightened. "Isn't he like fourteen?"

"From when he was younger," Tristan laughed. The girl was worried about unknowingly talking with—and being attracted to—a loser. "He knows kung fu."

"I know, right?"

Tristan got up and wandered around the longhouses. She still hadn't seen him by the time they were called to work. As she helped sort and stack lumber, an icy nausea curled in her stomach. Most likely, Alden had been reassigned to another task—forty people toiled back at the housing, carrying away the dirt a backhoe excavated from a growing hole at the end of the buildings; even more worked in the fields far upriver, hacking away the weeds that had begun to poke from the soil, preparing to seed the earliest crops—but she couldn't shake the feeling something had happened to him. Something precipitated by her arrival.

Work ceased. She returned to eat, mechanically chewing the cornbread and the spaghetti with red sauce poured straight from labelless jars. The sun left. She slept.

It was the same thing the next day and the day after. The nausea ate her from the inside, hollowing her, rasping her nerves from the bone. Her calm resolve eroded, replaced by twin imps of panic and rage. Had Hollister taken him? Relocated him? Imprisoned him as some perverse punishment after ferreting out Tristan's lies? The security chief had given no sign he disbelieved her babysitting story—in fact, he'd said nothing to her at all—but it could not be coincidence. And if she went to ask, she could only expose herself, confirming his suspicions.

And then—what? Would she be imprisoned? Exiled? Executed? For all their talk of work contracts, this place was not a carefree commune. Armed guards watched their every moment. An electric fence penned them in. Every hour of their day was scheduled: lights on, breakfast, work, lunch, work, dinner, lights out. She doubted a challenge to that control would be dismissed with a simple slap on the wrist.

So she hollowed, devoured by a doubt and indecision she hadn't felt since the Panhandler had taken their parents. She knew she would act soon, whether or not it was wise.

On the fourth day of Alden's disappearance, with Tristan still working on lumber, a man shouted in pain. He cursed, flung down his handsaw, and booted his sawhorse into the dust.

"That's it," he said. He walked in a circle, sucking on his bloody finger. "I'm done. That's it."

An older man came to him, speaking too softly for Tristan to hear over the death metal blaring from the security officer's pickup. The wounded man shoved his friend away.

"I'm done, okay? I'm going at this stuff like some dumb lumberjack? If they ran an extension cord out here, I could rip a Skilsaw through this stuff in three hours. Without cutting my fucking finger open, either. They don't want me to work? Fine. I'm done."

The officer clicked off his music. In the abrupt silence, Tristan could hear the murmur of the river through the trees. A radio hissed static from the cab of the truck.

Most of the others returned to their tasks. The older man argued in low tones with his angry friend, who stomped on his overturned sawhorse until it cracked to pieces, then sat on the rubble and nursed his bleeding finger. Another truck rolled down the dirt ruts to their makeshift lumberyard, its high tires birthing dust devils behind it. It swung to a stop, high frame rocking, clouding them in fine dry dust. Hollister jumped from the cab. The passenger door opened and Alden hopped down to the ground, blond hair hidden under the black cap of a security guard.

Alden trailing behind him, Hollister walked to the seated man. "What's up?"

"I'm done." The man shook his head at the stacks of unstained wood. "Not until you get me some proper tools."

"You've got what you've got."

"A big old pile of bullshit? You try it. You pull that saw through boards all day, then tell me it makes any goddamn sense not to run a cord out here." He flung his arm at the pillars of steam rising across the river. "I mean, what's all that about? That thing could power half of Seattle. They afraid a single saw's gonna brown us out?"

Hollister rubbed his thumb and forefinger in the corners of his eyes. "Stand up. Pick up your saw. Work."

"Get me a Skilsaw and you'll have to drag me to bed."

Hollister grimaced, as if he were struggling with a bout of gas, and turned to Alden. "Just like I shown you. You ready?"

Alden stared at the seated man. "How will I know when it's good?"

"I'll say when. Don't hold back. That's how you wind up hurt."

Work had stopped across the yard. Gulls cawed from the river. Alden reached for a flat black baton dangling from his belt. The seated man smirked. Alden swung the baton down on his head.

Frozen by his disbelief, the man didn't flinch until the last moment. The baton caught him on the side of his head. He toppled off the lumber, catching himself on one hand, barring the other above his head. Alden's first swing hadn't been all that strong—his forearm had been too tense, his elbow hesitant and stiff—and the surprise, if anything, was what had knocked the man over. But the first blow unstuck something in Alden. His eyes flashed. His second strike carried the same loose power he put into his snapping punches. The stick cracked into the man's wrist. He yanked back his hand and yelped. Alden followed him in, aiming another blow at the man's head; the man twisted, catching it on the shoulder instead.

That was the last real defense he mustered. Alden unleashed strike after strike, short, snapping bursts that whipped the baton into the downed man's ribs and head. Wet thumps and sick cracks echoed past the gaping workers. Alden's mouth twisted, lips peeling from his teeth.

Tristan read the pain on his face as clearly as a billboard. Whatever he'd suffered in the months since the aliens had snatched him away—the hurt and helpless wrath—he now turned it on the fallen man.

Tristan launched forward, grabbed Alden's biceps as he cocked another strike, and pulled him away. "Alden!"

He turned on her, eyes burning, struggling against her grip. His left fist jabbed for her ribs. He saw it was her and shortened his punch, knuckles tapping her side.

Hollister moved at the edge of her vision. She let Alden go. Hollister swung his club at her head in a flat arc. She stepped back with her left foot while pivoting toward him on her right, lashing the blade of her left hand into Hollister's wrist. At the same time, she wheeled her right elbow across her body and into his chin. He'd been stepping into the blow and the combined momentum clotheslined him. His feet left the ground, swinging up as his head jarred back from her elbow. He thumped to the dust.

The guard who'd radioed him in skipped sideways from the truck, rifle pointed dead at Tristan's chest. Hollister groaned and rolled facedown. He pushed himself up, snatched up his baton, and pulled back his elbow. Tristan bent her knees.

"Don't!" Alden said.

Hollister looked to the boy. The rage froze on his face, quenched by cold calculation. "Stand down, Moises."

The guard lowered his rifle. Hollister replaced his baton at his belt. He smiled at Tristan. "You can't blame a girl for wanting to protect her little brother."

Tristan's heart jolted. She brought down her hands to her sides. "I'm sorry. I don't know what happened."

"You reacted to a threat." Hollister circled her. "Must run in the family. Alden's got it, too. It's going to make him a great soldier."

She kept her face blank. That explained his absence. They'd pulled him from gen pop to convert him into a guard. "Alden—"

"Do you know the penalty for striking an officer?" Hollister said.

"I don't imagine it's one of those good penalties."

"A whipping. And no, it's not one of those good whippings." He glanced at Alden, the mist gone from his glassy eyes. "But you're new. You didn't know. Things got heated. Part of good policing is knowing when to crack down and when to show mercy."

"Sure," Alden said.

Tristan smiled. "Whatever you think best."

Hollister considered her, confidence receding from his eyes the longer she stared back. He turned to the other guard. "Get that man to medical. The rest of you—" He twirled his finger at the crowd of workers. "Slack-jawed staring isn't in your job description. Don't make me come back here."

The guard went to the unconscious worker and dragged him by his wrists from the scattered lumber, stirring the smell of sawdust. The others bent to their tasks, boards clattering, saws sighing. Hollister beckoned to Alden and Tristan. Alden sat between them in the cab of the truck. Hollister flipped the car around toward the barracks just inside the gates.

"What do we do with this sister of yours?"

Alden shrugged. "She was just trying to protect me."

"And our laws are here to protect our way of life. Tough call, man. Very tough. That's another angle to the job—judgment. You'll have to learn that one on your own, out in the field."

"Yeah."

Tristan gazed out the windshield. "Did you volunteer for this, Alden?"

"Lieutenant Hollister asked."

"When?"

"The day after you got here. Why?"

"Because your sister's too clever for her own good," Hollister said. "I hope we aren't going to have any issues."

"Did you enjoy hitting that man?" Tristan said.

Alden squirmed. "I don't know. He wasn't going to work."

"The laws are the laws," Hollister said. "You don't enforce them, how is anyone going to respect them?"

"Are you going to make Alden hold my whip?" Tristan said.

Hollister grinned. "Don't tempt me."

"I'm not going to whip you," Alden said.

Tristan gestured back toward the lumber yard. "If that man recovers and still won't work—"

"Enough," Hollister said. "More than enough. One more word, and I'll void your contract for sedition."

Tristan laughed bitterly. "What's the penalty for sedition? Beheading?"

"Sedition goes straight to Daniel Morgenstern." Hollister slowed, tires grinding the gravel in the barracks lot. "Last kid convicted hasn't come back."

He rolled from the cab. Tristan got out and waited while Hollister clapped Alden on the back and pointed him inside. "Great job out there. Get you to Sergeant Fredricks. And don't worry, I'll go easy on your sister."

"Thanks," Alden grinned. He jogged inside.

Hollister turned on Tristan, jaw tight. "Don't fuck with me."

"You started it."

"Inside." He gestured her through a door further down the barracks. It opened to a spacious office. A poster of a blond woman draped over a red convertible hung from the wall. A space heater grumbled from the corner. Hollister didn't offer her a seat. "I have decided not to whip you."

"I'm jumping for joy," Tristan said. "Inside, of course. Wouldn't want to threaten you with sudden movement."

"I should put you on your knees and shoot you. This isn't the first time you've tried to betray me."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You've lied to me since you washed up at the gates. That was no accident. You came here to find your brother."

She tipped back her head. "Did you put it together yourself? Or did he have to tell you?"

"You never meant to stay. Signing that contract meant nothing to you. The rules, the law, this fragile light in the darkness—you'd sweep it all off the table if it meant taking him away with you."

Hollister moved around his desk and smiled in her face. "Well, he's mine now. And if you try to take him—if you try to leave—I'll give him a choice: shoot you in the head, or I'll kill you both on the spot."

33

Ness couldn't catch his breath. His head went light. He felt himself stagger.

"Ness?" Kristin grabbed his arm, helped lower him to the floor. "You okay, Ness?"

"Dizzy," he heard himself mumble. The spots receded from his eyes. Somehow, he'd seated himself. The three others watched him from above, Kristin's eyes flicking between his, Shawn's creased with annoyed impatience, Sebastian's froggish and unreadable. Ness found his feet and shoved Shawn in the chest. "What's your problem?"

Shawn caught himself on Kristin's dresser. "What's yours?"

"What do you care whether these people live or die?"

"Plenty of these people are no worse than you or me. They're just here doing their thing, trying to grab hold of a little peace."

"You're such a piece of shit."

Shawn laughed in disbelief. "For wanting to save their lives?"

"You've been a dick to me your whole miserable life. Just when I found a little peace, you bust through the wall and try to get me kicked out of Mom's."

"I didn't try to get you—"

"That's what you wanted, wasn't it?" Ness shoved him again. Shawn's lips went white. Ness flinched but held his ground. "Don't fake like you care about them. You don't even care about your own brother. All you care about is looking like the cool guy."

Shawn sidestepped another shove, tugging his jacket back into place. "How about we shelve the family drama until a time when we're not about to eat a nuclear inferno?"

"There you go again. Oh, look how rational you are. I'm sure Kristin's real impressed. The alien who can't even fucking hear you is surely about to hold out his pad for an autograph."

"Stop it!" Shawn stepped forward, clunking his forehead into Ness'. "You think I liked seeing you hide out in your room all day? Snickering over your computer? You were supposed to be at college getting laid and learning to make those games. What happened?"

"I don't know!" Ness shouted. "Maybe if you and Mom weren't always breathing down my back! How am I supposed to go anywhere when she won't let me go and you're always pushing me back down?"

"You mad, bro?" Shawn said.

"What do you fucking think?"

"Good." Shawn grabbed him, hugged him. "That was what it was all about. Getting you mad enough to do something about it."

Ness wriggled, fruitlessly trying to escape. "That's why you moved into my room, huh? Not because you lost your job and your house?"

"You had it easy since the day you were born," Shawn said. "You got so shook-up when Dad left that Mom never had the balls to give you a kick in the ass. She never tried to send me to college. Know what she said to me when I turned eighteen? 'You can pay rent to me or you can pay it to a stranger. You got two months to figure out which.'"

"That's so cool of you to take it out on me."

Shawn released him, stepping back and gazing at the floor. "I won't deny it. I resented the hell out of you. That was part of it. But most of all, I didn't want to see you get lost."

Ness stared down, too. For all Shawn's protests, not all of his spite had stemmed from a Fight Club-ish, "Boy Named Sue"-esque strategy to goad Ness into angry self-improvement. More than a few of Shawn's taunts and punches had come from the mean-spirited glee of knocking little brother down one more peg.

But he'd never seen Shawn talk like this, either. Except, perhaps, after their mother had died. He'd been as hurt then, too. As humble. As willing to let down the walls. No longer too afraid of looking dumb to be honest or to trust.

That was his own flaw, too, wasn't it. Except where Shawn turned it outward, he turned it inward. Shawn hid behind bluster; Ness, a computer. He was trying to hide away again. To let the aliens take care of it for him. To erase this place. To salt its fields with spent uranium. While he dissolved into nothing.

Himself at sixty, alone in a chair, the cold light of a monitor piercing the darkness of the room.

Ness bent over his notepad, scribbled, held it up to Sebastian. "I need you to understand this. We're going to stop the meltdown."

The alien gestured frantically, waved its pad. "NO CAN'T"

"Yes we can," he wrote back. "Kristin knows how. Do you know what Daniel and Roan look like?"

"YES PICTURES"

"We're going to stop the meltdown. Then we're going to kill Daniel and Roan. For all they've done and all they'd do in the future. Do you understand?"

The alien stiffened its body, limbs shaking like a tree on the fringe of a storm. Ness forced himself not to step back. To keep his eyes open. To stay present.

"TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADERS," its tentacle waggled. "KILL DANIEL ROAN"

"No way," Shawn laughed, glancing from its pad to Ness. "Does it know—?"

"They probably didn't decide to kill us until they spent the whole trip watching our TV." Ness hoisted his rifle. "If you two are too stupid to let this place die, let's get going."

Kristin arched her eyebrows. "Glad to hear that saving my colleagues is stupid."

"How about the part where we're running toward the nuclear meltdown?"

"Okay, yeah. That part is stupid."

Despite all their yelling, the hallway was still empty. No one had even pounded on the wall. Probably hadn't wanted to tempt trouble with the maniacs. Ness led the way down the metal stairs, holding up his palm as he exited into the moonlight. Still no sign of security or alerts. He gestured the others out and they jogged to the control building, sticking to the walls of the buildings along the way.

Security cameras watched them from above the door, but if anyone was at the monitors, they didn't protest as Kristin scanned her card, punched her code, and ushered in two traitors and an alien killer.

"This makes no sense," she whispered in the concrete entry. "If there were a meltdown in process, the security systems would be going nuts."

"Maybe the systems don't know about it," Ness said.

"Whatever's happening, we need to get to the control room. If something's up, we need to drop the rods in the reactor and shut it down right now."

"We'll hop right on that," Shawn said. "Or how about you do it while we stick a gun in everybody's face."

A black-dressed guard stuck his head around the corner, frowning hard. Sebastian's claw flicked up. A blue stream appeared between its pistol and the man's head, which popped with a burst of pink steam.

Kristin screamed and clamped a quivering hand to her own mouth. She turned on Ness. "You can't let that thing loose in the control room."

"All it cares about is Daniel and Roan," Ness said. "As long as your friends stay calm, they'll be fine."

"I'll just tell them to ignore the eight-foot crab-monster."

"No, I will," Shawn said. "And they'll listen. Now can we get on with it?"

Kristin let out a shaky breath. "You realize this is ridiculous."

She jogged down the hall anyway. Ness caught up, rifle in hand. She bypassed the elevator, slipping her card into the stairwell lock instead. It went green. She held the door, turning her head as Sebastian clattered past. At the door to the upper floor, she pressed her palms to her forehead, composing herself, and entered the control room.

"I need everyone to stay calm," she said to the handful of faces turning her way, the skeleton crew keeping an eye on the monitors through the midnight hours. "Because everything is crazy enough as it is."

Shawn swung through the door. "In other words, stay seated and shut up."

Ness followed him, sweeping his rifle across the workers. One man and one woman screamed. Ness pointed the gun at the ceiling. "We're not here to hurt anyone. We're here to stop the meltdown."

A bald man wrinkled his forehead. "There's no melt—"

Sebastian ducked through the doorway, tentacles writhing. The bald man's eyes rolled back and he fell as if he'd been shot. The woman screamed again.

"Next time we leave the alien at home," Shawn grumbled.

"It's not here to hurt you," Ness said. "It's the one that told me about the attack on the plant."

A thin woman stood from her blinking panels, eyes wide enough to swallow her own head. "Okay, well, first I'd like to note that it's generally against protocol to let space aliens inside the master command of a nuclear reactor. Second, everything looks perfectly fine."

Kristin threaded around the desks. "Let me see."

The woman moved aside. Kristin bent over a monitor wedged full of small green figures and pressed her palm to her forehead again. "This is current?"

"It better be. Wouldn't do us much good to work with yesterday's figures."

Kristin straightened, glanced across the room at a man in wireless frames. "Miller?"

The man hunched his bony shoulders. "Acceptable parameters over here."

She gritted her teeth and sat down at a monitor next to a panel of levers shaped like upside-down Ls. Her fingers weaved over the keyboard. She shook her head, first slowly, then hard enough to knock things over.

"Everything's fine, Ness."

He tried to ignore their stares. The ones that made him feel so small. Ears burning, he wrote on his pad and held it up for Sebastian. "There's no meltdown."

The alien shook its head. Miller laughed in shock. Sebastian gestured at its pad. "BLIND"

"You can't see?" Ness wrote. It shook its head again. Ness wrote, "The sensors?"

"YES THEY SEE THE OLD"

Ness turned to Kristin. "You sure that's current?"

Kristin spread her palms. "Like Zooey said, the only reason to display yesterday's numbers is if you want to spend today barfing up what used to be your lungs." She went white. "Oh. Shit."

She bent over the keyboard, fingers clacking. Her mouth dropped. She hit another string of keys, pounding the last one three times.

Every one of the green figures changed.

"What the fuck," Zooey said.

"What do you want to bet that's not what the reactor looks like, either?' Kristin nodded to a vast screen on the far wall. Ness had thought it was an abstract picture, but now that he focused on it rather than the scared faces of Kristin's coworkers, he saw it wasn't static. Water shimmered over concentric circles of blue, green, and yellow. The image looked like a neon subway tunnel, but after a second, his perspective shifted—exactly as if he were staring at the random dots of a 3D picture as it coalesced into a schooner or a sunset—and he saw that he was looking down into the water-cooled reactor rumbling deep beneath their feet. A circle of steely rods sat at its very bottom, their pattern matching the abstract grid shown on a monitor in front of Kristin.

She typed more. The image on the screen shifted to a mess of steam, condensation dripping from green-blue walls that had appeared submerged an instant before.

"What the fuck!"

"I'm dropping the rods," Kristin said. Miller rushed at her. Ness lifted his rifle. The skinny man cringed, pointing to the seat beside her.

"Can I help? Or do you want to see what we all look like beneath our skin?"

"The help one," Ness said.

Miller nodded warily and sat beside her. Their fingers hammered over the keys.

"There's like no water in there at all," Zooey said.

"I know," Kristin said.

"Water is a crucial component of preventing reactors from overheating and melting through their containment chambers."

"I know."

"And even if you shut down the reaction, the core will continue to produce heat, until—"

"Damn it!" Kristin spun around in her chair. "Yeah. Not Dying in a Nuclear Accident 101. Do you have any suggestions for what to do about that, professor?"

Zooey raised her brows at the floor. "Just sayin'."

Kristin turned back to the keys. Ness watched the main screen as a series of rods poked into view, descending through the boiling reactor. Alarms shrieked from the walls. Everyone winced except Sebastian.

"These things are cooled by water?" Shawn shouted.

"What did you expect, a force field?" Kristin shouted back. "Why do you think they built this thing next to a giant river?"

"Because the U.S. government didn't care if a hunk of worthless desert got blown up?"

Kristin cut off the alarms with the stroke of a key. Ness' ears rang. A security man burst through the door. Without turning, Sebastian shot him down. The creature stuck its pad beneath Ness' nose. "DANIEL ROAN DANIEL ROAN"

"Don't worry," Ness wrote back. "They'll come to us soon enough."

"Slap me for being stupid," Shawn said, "but why don't you just turn the water back on?"

Kristin pressed her lips tight. "Because the pipeline appears to have been critically compromised."

"So should I go grab a bucket?"

"Better make it a helicopter. The core's down, but it's still generating heat. Without water, it will melt straight through the floor."

Ness stared at the neon nightmare on the screen. The world clicked into place. "The backup pipe."

Kristin hit more keys. "Never finished."

Shawn goggled at the glowing blue core. "There's a backup? How close to finished?"

"I mean, it's right up to the cooling station," she said. "With a six-foot steel cap on the end."

Shawn gave Ness a wry smile. "Don't suppose you got a six-foot pipecutter in your pocket."

Ness pointed at Sebastian. "It does."

"I didn't even know lobsters shit. That thing's a plumber, too?"

"Think its laser can cut through steel?"

A grin flooded Shawn's face, washing away the lines of worry. "Only one way to find out."

Ness wrote on his notepad, held it up for Sebastian, and pointed at its laser. "Can I borrow that?"

"NO KILL DANIEL ROAN"

"Without that, we're all going to die!"

It reached a claw into a seamless pouch in its bandolier-like clothing and handed him a second pistol. "A PRESENT"

Ness passed the rifle to Shawn and transferred the blunt alien weapon to his left hand. He wrote back to Sebastian with his right. "How do I use it?"

"BOTH BUTTONS BANG BANG"

Ness touched his thumb and index finger to the raised buttons on both sides of the thick handle, which sported a groove perfect for the circular claws of the aliens and fit his own fingers reasonably well. He looked up at Sebastian. It nodded. He pointed the gun at the carpet and tightened his grip. Blue heat lanced to the ground, setting a dime-sized spot of carpet on fire. Ness jerked the pistol, anticipating a recoil, but there was none. He removed his thumb. The beam stopped. He stamped out the fire. Hot, chemical-scented smoke burned his nose.

"All right," Shawn grinned. He raised his eyebrows at Kristin. "Want to show us your pipe, girl?"

"Are you sure you two are related?" She turned to Miller and Zooey. "You two got this from here?"

"Oh sure," Miller said. "Just give us a shout before our imminent demise."

The rumble of the core pitched up, a billion angry bees converging on a single intruder. Kristin ran to a stairwell at the back of the room and keyed them through. The stairs and walls were bare concrete. Silver-white lights strobed from the walls. Kristin's footsteps echoed from the tight walls. Near the bottom of the stark well, Ness realized he hadn't heard the chitinous strike of Sebastian's claws in some time.

"Where'd it go?" he said.

Shawn looked over. "Where'd what go?"

"The giant space-monster."

"It bugged out a couple floors back."

"Why didn't you say something?"

Shawn pushed his brows together. "I'm not gonna throw stones at a dude for running off in the midst of a nuclear disaster. I mean, yes I will. But I'll put a little less zip on 'em."

Kristin stopped at the next landing. "If I've got the layout right, we can take this tunnel to the cooling station. If you can get the cap off and get the water flowing into the reservoir, we might be okay."

Ness frowned. "And if you've got it wrong?"

"Then we'll plunge into the reactor and be incinerated like Gollum at the end of Return of the King."

"What!"

Her eyes skipped between his. "Totally kidding. Then we'd get lost, and hopefully find our way back before the core melts into the ground and shreds our DNA like a puppy with a Kleenex."

"I can't believe they let someone like you have access to this place."

She opened the door. "Hey, I did my grad work at Stanford. Ph.D from MIT."

"Really?" Ness said. "I think you might be too good for me."

The halls beyond forked three ways, bare concrete lit by recessed white bulbs. Ness followed Kristin down the rightward branch. The rumble of the reactor rose through his shoes and settled in his chest.

"Is it safe in here?" Shawn said.

"Not really." Kristin sprinted over the cement. "But it's a lot safer than if that thing crashes through the floor."

The walls were windowless. Their footsteps bounced from the tight spaces, echoing forward and back, multiplied. Ness glanced behind him repeatedly. Their own shadows shrunk and loomed as they streaked past the lights. They passed a featureless metal door, then a second with signs indicating a stairwell. He was certain they were far underground. How much concrete hung between them and the surface? If the core melted, would the foundation collapse with it?

Shawn grinned at him. "So what do you say we do about the bossman and his pit bull? String 'em up? Or show mercy, and just jail 'em for life?"

"I promised," Ness said. "If we don't kill Daniel and Roan, Sebastian will whack us together like he's trying to make fire."

Kristin turned another corner. The tunnel widened in all directions. A culvert ran down its center. Above the culvert, a massive pipe extended from one end of the tunnel to the other, supported beneath by steel beams as thick as Ness.

"Shoot, that thing ain't six feet across," Shawn said. "Barely two."

Kristin rolled her eyes. "Does it really make a difference?"

"Imagine it did to the guys who carried it in here."

"Yeah, those trucks were real complainers. Wouldn't shut the hell up."

"Is that where all the gas was going?" Ness said. "To run Daniel's pet projects?"

"How should I know?" Kristin said. "I'm not completely omniscient."

A big metal button shined from the wall beside the pipe. As they approached, it seemed to grow from the wall; it was another pipe, just as wide as the other, sealed on its end by a welded cap. They halted in front of the wall. Machinery shook the walls, Ness' guts. Their footsteps echoed for a second after they stopped running.

"How was it supposed to stop terrorists when the pipes are right next to each other?" Ness said.

"The backup intake is a half mile upstream from the first. They just converge here." Kristin pointed to the channel running down the middle of the concrete floor. "There are drains in the floor. After I saw the backup coolant was down, I rerouted the pump to push anything in drainage back into main cooling. All we have to do is flood the place."

Shawn gazed up at the pipe, hands on his hips. "And this thing's got pressure?"

"I sure hope so."

"Well come on! Give me that laser and stand back." Shawn held out his hand. Ness passed him the alien weapon. Shawn winked, braced his feet, and aimed at the pipe. A blue line flicked to the metal, scorching it, drawing the first bead of silvery melt.

Shawn's head snapped forward. A bang clapped down the tunnel. Shawn swayed and toppled to the concrete. Blood painted the cap of the pipe.

Ness turned. Thirty feet down the brightly lit tunnel, Roan pointed her pistol at his head.

34

She was about to lose him again. Not to the endless rolling spaces of the country, but to the even vaster spaces of the head. And this time, if she lost him, there would be no getting him back.

She felt him growing further by the day. Alden was relocated from his bunk in the longhouse to one in the barracks. At meals, security segregated its seating from the workers. Not by official fiat—Tristan could walk across the open dining space if she wanted—but the officers would stare her down the whole time she spoke to Alden. No privacy. No hope of opening his eyes. In the five days following Alden's beating of the man who'd set down his saw, Tristan had held one proper conversation with him, at breakfast the morning after. Alden had risen from his bench with the other men in black and crossed to her picnic table. She was seated alone, but he stayed standing.

"What did Lt. Hollister do to you?"

She glanced across the tables to the guards, who laughed together, gesturing broadly. "He didn't tell you?"

"He said he gave you a warning."

"A little more than that. More like house arrest. With probation."

"Why'd you have to hit him?"

She frowned at him. "He was about to hit me. With a stick. Sticks are generally used to break things."

He scowled at the dirt. "Well, can you not do it again? They're calling you Wonder Woman. One of them asked me if he could ask you out."

She kept her face blank. How had they turned him that fast? Teens were probably even more pliable than children; so willing to fit in, so needful of unjudged acceptance. It was more than that, though. They were tapping his anger. His fear. His impotency. All the feelings simmering inside since the Panhandler had wiped out everything they knew: parents, security, friends, a future. She blinked at the other workers in horror. They all felt it, didn't they? She sure as hell did. It had felt great to smash Hollister from his feet, and not just because he was about to strike her. Because she had finally been able to hit back.

Everyone felt it. That was the aliens' legacy. They had turned the world into a grave—and the few survivors into agents of a deathless wrath.

Including her own brother.

"Why?" she said. "Do you like it here?"

"It's pretty cool," Alden shrugged. "Lt. Hollister is going to show me around the power plant."

"I don't know if we should stay."

"Why not?"

She smiled dryly. "They've made you a security guard. What do you think you're guarding?"

He angled his head, searching her face for tricks. "The settlement."

"Is the electric fence there to guard the settlement, too?"

"I mean, yeah."

"So why is it twelve feet tall? To keep out eleven-foot-tall bears?"

Alden shrugged. "Well, they can't just let people run off. We need them."

She ran her fingernail into the weather-worn wood of the picnic table. "I thought we'd go somewhere together. That's why I let myself be captured."

"Like where?"

"Anywhere. We can do anything, Alden. Be anything." She smiled at him. "If you really wanted, we could be like Caine from Kung Fu. Wandering warrior-monks who right wrongs one episode at a time."

"Who's Caine?" He made a face at the ground. "I mean, we'd starve, wouldn't we? Do you think anywhere else even has power?"

She pressed her tongue against her teeth. "Here's the thing. We can't stay here. This place, it isn't good. If we don't—"

"What's going on over here?" Hollister strolled up behind her, gazing down his nose in concern. "Come on, Alden. I told you about mingling. Discipline!"

Alden straightened. "Sorry, Lieutenant."

"Get back to your people. Sergeant Fredrick's got a job for you."

Alden's face brightened. He saluted, then glanced at Tristan. "Well, see you later."

He jogged off. Tristan nodded slowly. "Is that the plan? Isolate them? Convince them they're different? Special? Would be hard for them to beat someone they spend breakfast with, wouldn't it?"

Hollister thumbed his dry right eye. "Standard matter of discipline. Dunno where this conspiracy shit's coming from."

"You're conscripting fourteen-year-olds into your little army."

"I don't see any schools out there. We're back to the apprentice system."

Tristan took a half step nearer. He reached for his baton. She rolled her eyes, half surprised he hadn't gone for his gun instead. "I'm his legal guardian."

"You got a court order?" Hollister laughed. "I'd say I'm his guardian now. And if you don't watch the way you talk to my ward—and to me—I'm going to make your life hell."

He lifted his brows, waiting, then smiled and returned to his men. She didn't want to push him. Things were too delicate already. If she lost all contact with Alden, she might not be able to get him to leave once she was ready.

So she walked away, too, trying to see the farm with fresh eyes. Digging a tunnel was out of the question. Even if she could trust all five of her roommates in the longhouse room, extending a tunnel from beneath her bed to beyond the fence would take weeks, if not months. She didn't think she had that long before she lost Alden for good.

Digging a hole right beneath the fence was more plausible. She might be able to do that much within an hour. But even if she were able to pull that off without being seen, she didn't see how she could leave her room without waking her roommates. Their rooms were padlocked at night; they had four windows, two on one wall, two on the opposite, but they weren't made to open. Which was an obvious fire hazard. She would have to raise the issue with Daniel Morgenstern straightaway.

It would be easier to dig a hole under the fence by the river, grab Alden, and float downstream in broad daylight. But Hollister would notice Alden's absence within minutes. He'd send the dogs after them. That meant they needed enough of a head start to reach a vehicle before security realized they were missing. They could only do that by leaving at night.

She woke to the old man's voice every morning and worked all day. While others poured the foundation for a new longhouse, she was given a handsaw and boards marked with thick pencil. She soon learned why the other man had complained. Even a tool as simple as a saw took touch to use right; the teeth often skidded off her line or dug too deep and got stuck. For several days, she had to concentrate just hard enough that she could spare no thought to her schemes, and even after she got the hang of the tool's use, her thinking time was fragmented, constantly broken up by the delivery of more boards or the orders of Jorge, a kindly but driven man who'd found himself managing twenty of the workers after Hollister discovered he'd once been foreman of a work crew of his own.

Her talks with Alden were rare and brief. When they arose, she probed for information on the progress of his apprenticeship, pushing any point where he showed signs of doubt. Even when she bent his confidence, his desire to stay held firm. Even so, she expected he would follow her out if she showed up in the middle of the night, but in the meantime, she couldn't count on him to help.

Despite that, piece by piece, her plan came together.

Tristan complained of blisters, which was true, and was granted the use of a pair of leather gloves, which she had to sign out of a warehouse of goods from an old woman with heavy jowls and a pen tied to her wrist. Two days later, Tristan returned for a roll of duct tape and a plastic tarp.

The old woman glared over her bifocals. "For?"

"My job," Tristan said.

"For what at your job?"

"They've got me cutting lumber. Every morning I go to the pile and there are spiders everywhere. I've seen black widows."

The woman's jowls bunched in a frown. "You've got gloves."

"Think those will stop a rattlesnake?" Tristan laughed at herself. "Look, I'm not asking for a battleship. But if I throw down one more load of boards because a wolf spider's racing up my arm, I'm going to pitch myself in the river."

The woman craned her neck at the rows and rows of racked goods, then leaned forward and rolled from her chair. "Duct tape. Tarp."

"Can you make the tarp a clear one? I'd prefer to see the snakes before I get within striking distance."

"Duct tape. Tarp, transparent."

The woman disappeared into the stacks. Tristan swore silently. She couldn't push the woman with another request. She'd have to steal. She signed for her materials and took them to the site. The site itself had any number of tools—including several hammers, which she made sure to note the locations of—but no wire cutters. Scissors wouldn't be thick enough. She kept her eyes open, scanning benches and workstations as she shuttled cut lumber back and forth. And spotted a pair of fat-headed tin snips.

She kept one eye on them through the rest of the day, tracking them from one workstation to the picnic table used as a makeshift tool bench and back to another station. As the sun drew toward the western hills, she snagged them from the station, wandered to the pile of uncut lumber she had yet to get to, and hid them under the boards.

Whistle blew for cleanup. Workers picked up stray tools and delivered them to the portable shed for the night. Jorge padlocked the shed and the crew filed away for dinner. Tristan ate quickly, exchanging a few words with her coworkers, then rose for a walk through the dusk. She wandered toward the fields, which the farmhands had all but completely plowed, then moved past the lumberyard. She knelt for the snips, glanced back toward camp, and headed straight for the river. Within sight of its banks, deep in the smell of the mud and the leafy decay of spring, she took her leather gloves from her pocket and clipped the lowest wire of the fence.

The sun was all the way down when she replaced the snips beneath the pile of boards. She didn't dare check whether the fence had been mended the following morning. She didn't have to; she was counting on security to let her know that.

They obliged the afternoon of the second day after she'd made her cut, calling for a safety check of all the workers' bedrooms. She watched as they entered her room. Their feet thumped across the floor. Drawers rustled as the men in black turned them out. She wasn't worried. There was nothing to find. Security finished up and returned to the barracks. They had given no explanation for the search, but Tristan didn't need that, either. They'd been looking for whoever had made such a clean cut in the fence.

Two days to find it. The fence wouldn't be any problem, then. They'd notice she and Alden were gone long before they noticed the wires had been cut. Even so, on the chance her test run had stirred them into greater vigilance, she intended to wait several days before making her run. Give them time to get complacent again.

Then Alden came to tell her he was going to war with Spokane.

"It's not a war," he laughed.

She rolled her lips together. "You just told me Hollister's taking ten of you to help put down a rebellion. You know another word for rebellion? Civil war."

"We're just like advising the people in Spokane and stuff. Training their troops."

"You've had two whole weeks of training and you're qualified to teach people yourself? Pretty accelerated program Hollister's got you on."

"What's your problem?" Alden glared at her with teenage defiance, his face contorted, frighteningly reptilian. "It's going to be like training for me, too. Like field work."

"When?"

"I don't know. In a few days."

She ran her fingers down the scars on the left side of her face. "I don't want you to go."

His glare deepened. "Well, you don't really get a vote. Those are reserved for people who earn it. Like I'm going to."

"Where do you sleep in the barracks?"

"Why?"

"Where do you sleep?"

"1F," Alden said. "It's not a big deal. That's where all the recruits stay."

Tristan rolled her eyes. "1F? The back corner without any heating, I bet. Nice view of the fence."

"There's heating. Who cares if you can see the fence?"

She managed not to smile. "I thought you were signed up with Hollister to protect the community. How is getting shot to death in Spokane going to do one damn thing to help Hanford?"

Alden shook his head, smiling at her obvious stupidity. "I'm not going to get shot."

"You can see the future?" she said, abruptly furious with this little know-it-all. "Then why aren't you running from me?"

"What are you talking about?"

"How I'm about to pick you up by the ankles and dash you against that tree."

"Did you just threaten one of my officers of the law?" Hollister said, appearing once again at the worst possible moment, as if he'd been lying in wait. He squinted at her through the sharp post-dawn light, mouth half open.

"I threatened my brother," Tristan said. "No uniform is going to stop a person from threatening their own family. Anyway, what kind of hypocrite are you? Sending a fourteen-year-old to war?"

"The state of Hanford is not engaged in any wars."

"Really? This Blackwater bullshit you're trying to pull in Spokane? Just what are they giving you in exchange for your 'police'?"

Hollister turned his bloodshot eyes on Alden. "That was classified information, Cadet Carter."

Alden scowled at Tristan. "I'm sorry, sir."

"Barracks. Now."

The boy spun on his heel and hustled for the security housing. Hollister tapped his nails on his baton, nodding at Tristan. "I feel like we've been here before."

"Child soldiers?" she said. "That's a new one to me."

"Oh please. He won't see the first hint of trouble until he's finished his training." Hollister worked his jaw. "Training you're compromising with insidious doubt. You know what doubt does to a soldier?"

"Restores his sanity?"

"Ruins him. Gets him killed. Threatens his brothers in the field."

"What's apt to get him killed is the fact he's fourteen!"

"You're done." The man cut his palms through the air. "You are no longer to have any contact with Alden Carter. Any efforts to defy this decision—if I so much as see you look at him—and you will be whipped."

She had to turn away to stop herself from striking him. "You can't do that."

"Says who? I run security on this side of the river. This isn't a joke. This isn't an idle threat I'll forget tomorrow. Talk to him again, and I will tie you to a post and whip you."

To stop herself from whipping the blade of her hand into his windpipe, she resolved to leave in two days. Not that she had much choice; Alden would be bound for Spokane within a week. But she had her gear together already. Her plan. The last piece of the puzzle had been discovering where Alden slept. The barracks was structured like a roadside motel—the front door led to a "lobby" and, she presumed, the upstairs where the security team gathered to strategize and drink Miller, but the bunk rooms themselves were accessed through outside doors, with no interior passages connecting them to each other. The front door was locked, but for whatever reason of philosophy (never leave your weapons behind), hubris (no one who's not a security officer would dare step into their rooms), or just poor planning (oops), the bunkroom doors didn't even have locks.

"Understood," Tristan said.

Hollister's focus swam through the red-rimmed murk of his eyes. "You're taking this awful gentle."

"What else am I supposed to do?"

"The Tristan I know? Throw a fit. Or a fist."

"How can you move forward when you're always stopping to fight?"

"Smart girl." He watched her go.

She got her gloves and went to the yard with the others. Amid the rasp of saws, the low jokes of the men, and the caws of gulls picking at the scraps around the picnic tables, she worked with patient diligence, cutting her marks and loading them up on the wagon for the men to haul off to the dig for the new longhouse. Her feeling of peace ran so deep Hollister could have walked up, slapped her in the face, and forced Alden to eat dirt at gunpoint, and she still would have borne it with a smile.

Because it would all be over soon. In less than two days, they would be gone from here, somewhere on the roads through Oregon or Northern California. That was her provisional plan: head south, stock up for a couple of weeks, and find somewhere permanent before the end of the spring. Somewhere they could grow a garden. Have fresh water and a means of fuel to boil it clean. Find a streamside cabin in the woods beyond Redding. Somewhere past a ridge so the Empty Skulls wouldn't see the smoke of their fires. If they could find a cabin—and between wealthy skiers, grizzled survivalists, and cartel pot operations, there were more than a few even in the remotest mountains of the Shasta Cascades—all they'd have to do was store enough wood to keep them warm through the winter. There was still more than enough food in the homes of the dead to see them through while they grew their garden and learned where to fish and how to hunt.

It felt good to have a plan again. A future, however fragile. It meant she had hope, too, for the first time in a long time. No matter how hard the work ahead, no matter how much chopping and planting and cleaning it took to set up their home, after everything that had happened in the last year, it would feel like the sleep at the end of a long journey.

By dinner, her numinous optimism had been sucked away like rainfall on the dust. By bed, her doubts had sprung back to life like poison spores. Yet again, she'd let her anger get the best of her. Banned, under threat of actual whipping, from speaking to Alden. What if circumstances changed her plan and she needed his help after all? What if he didn't even want to come? Was she so sure he'd leap out the door as soon as she showed up? He seemed happy here. Accepted. He was even looking forward to this idiocy in Spokane.

That idea drew the darkest blood. What if Alden were genuinely happy here? She wasn't his mother. Taking him away from here to be with her would be, in its way, just another form of imprisonment. For his own good, yeah. His safety. But she had been safest in the kingdom of Lord Dashing: locked in a room, knights warned to keep their hands to themselves, fed and housed and protected from all the wrongs lurking beyond the high stone fence. Safest, yes. Happiest? Not close.

She shut these thoughts out. She would take him from this place. And once she taught him how to think well, that's when he could start to make his decisions for himself.

At breakfast, she didn't glance Alden's way. At work, she stuck to her cuts. At dinner, she took the duct tape and tarp back to her room, dawdling along the way to give her roommates time to clear out, and hid the items under her mattress. Alden was still in camp the following breakfast. When work finished at sunset, she took a hammer and the tin snips behind the shed, tucked them into her waistband, and went back to her room, where she scrubbed her hands and face until the last of her roommates left for dinner.

The room was silent. She pressed her ear to the walls of both adjoining rooms and heard nothing besides the empty tone of her own ears. This was, perhaps, the biggest gamble in her plan. She had a cover story in case one of the woman who bunked in her room returned early—she had slipped while trying to hammer a loose nail into the sill—but even if they bought the lie, her plan could be spoiled.

She pulled back the thick brown curtains on the eastern window. Fleeting sunlight showed a field of sparse weeds between her and the fence. The window was framed into eighteen-inch quarters. She tore at the duct tape, laying it in strips across the lower left quadrant of the window, first forming a square, then filling in the glass with a many-pointed aster. Last, she plastered the top of the square of tape to the upper edge of the sill.

Tristan wrapped a sock around the hammer's head, grinned foolishly, and bashed the taped-over center of the window.

It fell apart neither as cleanly as she'd hoped nor as disastrously as she feared. The noise was a muffled crack; a few shards fell outward, hitting the yellow grass beneath the window. The bulk of the glass hung from the tape holding the window to the upper frame. She donned her gloves, pulled over a chair, climbed up, and removed the broken window from its frame. She brought it to her bed, splinters tinkling on the floor, and hid the mess underneath the bed frame. She hurriedly covered it in her dirty laundry and backtracked to sweep up the fallen pieces with her gloved hands. Heart racing, she cut out a square of the clear tarp and taped it into place in the empty window. She pulled back the drapes.

The sun's edge had already fallen below the hills. In a few minutes, it would be night. So long as the wind didn't pick up and ripple the tarp—and even then, it would have to blow out of the east instead of its usual southwestern source—the window should go unnoticed until morning.

She went outside, hastily buried the pieces that had fallen into the grass, brought her gloves inside and washed up, and went to the tables for a late dinner. Workers murmured, chuckled. She was glad she hadn't made any friends. No one had bothered to note her absence.

Tristan knew she should eat, but her nerves drowned out her hunger. She swallowed what she could and retired to her room for what would be the longest night of her life.

She brushed her teeth and washed up, gaze flicking across the room whenever one of the women went too near the east window. Settled into bed, she feared falling asleep, but she couldn't exactly do jumping jacks while waiting for her roommates to drift off. She lay on her side with her knuckles digging into her ribs and remembered all she could of Alden. The first day he'd come home from kung fu, flushed and sweaty and smelly, throwing punches at their mother's stomach. His first day of middle school a week before Tristan left for Berkeley where he refused to tie his shoes because he said no kids tied their shoes anymore. The day their dad had driven them to get the puppy—a baby black lab with the fattest cannonball belly you'd ever seen—and it had licked Alden's baby face and he'd cried and tried to squirm away.

After remembering for an hour, she discovered she recalled his birth, too. His beginning. Pink. Squalling. She'd hated the hospital; it smelled like her dead grandparents. There was nothing to do. And the baby, Alden, was such an awful whiner.

In the cold of the longhouse on the farm, stretched in deliberate discomfort beneath a worn-out down blanket, smelling her roommates' skin and the cut lumber of walls that were younger than the virus that had destroyed it all, Tristan laughed and covered her mouth. She'd wanted to run away so badly after her brother was born. She had gone so far as to make herself a baggie of baby carrots and another of ranch dressing (spilling as much on the floor as in the Ziploc) and two boxes of an electric orange drink masquerading as juice and headed for the woods above the subdivision. A survivalist from the start.

Pines so high they must tear holes in the sky. Squirrels yelling from the boughs. The smell of sunlight on fallen leaves. At the time, she would have sworn she'd climbed within a stone's throw of the very peak of the mountain. In truth, she couldn't have made it more than a half mile from the end of the manicured lawns before eating her snacks and turning back. Her dad was still at work. Her mom hadn't even noticed she was gone.

It was time.

She rose, dressing in the darkness. She put on her jacket and carried her shoes. Leaving the blinds in place, she peeled the tape from the sill as gently as she could and lifted the tarp. She flung her shoes into the weeds and dropped her pack into the grass. Her shoulders barely cleared the frame. She wriggled partway out the window like a half-dead snake. There was no room to sit on the sill, to right herself and drop down to her feet. Tristan prayed for no broken wrists and let herself fall face first toward the ground.

She caught herself and half-rolled, half-flopped to her back. Her wrist twinged, but the pain faded as she laced up her shoes. Bugs chirped from the halfhearted grass of spring. She went straight for the fence, put on her leather gloves, got out the snips, and cut a six-foot strip from each of the lowest two wires. She crawled through on her belly.

On the other side, she sat up in the cold night and grinned. The stars burned like angry souls. She crawled on hands and knees for several hundred yards, then crouched behind a clump of sage and turned to watch the enclosure.

Across the river, faint blue light flashed behind the buildings. The color was unnatural, wrong. Her instincts told her to go back. She should have listened. She swore silently and continued on. It took her the better part of an hour to find the sage where she'd buried her gun and her gear; she only found it by walking in ever-wider circles until she literally stumbled over the mound.

She was halfway back to the camp when the alarm screamed into the night.

Tristan froze. The croon of an air raid siren soared and ebbed. Not from the barracks—it was too distant, too night-muffled. From the plant. She dropped to hands and knees and crawled through the weeds. Men jabbered from over by the barracks. A dog barked. Tristan wriggled under the fence and jogged back to her housing, meaning to pull herself back in through the window and try again tomorrow.

"What was that sound?" one of the women said inside the still-dark room. "Are we about to be bombed?"

Tristan gritted her teeth. Of course the alarm had woken them. The circuit breaker for the lights was cut off every night, but her absence would be exposed the second they lit a candle or clicked on a flashlight. Or simply realized she wasn't joining their anxious conversation about the siren.

The alarm died mid-whoop. The women inside the longhouse went silent, listening. All Tristan could do now was crawl back to the wasteland and hope everyone returned to bed. It was still deep in the night. There was little chance security would spot the gap in the fence. She could return once the guards went back to sleep.

"Turn around," a man said from her side. "Slow."

He was dressed in the black of security. A rifle glinted in his hands. He edged closer. "Drop the pack and put your hands on your head. You twitch, you speak, I shoot."

The pistol was zippered in her pack. No way to get to it before he pulled the trigger. She slid the pack from her shoulders and raised her hands. He circled behind her, yanked down her hands, and knotted them tight with a zip tie. He grabbed her backpack and prodded her toward the barracks.

"Move."

She walked. Her legs felt numb. Her thoughts went thick. She should have tried to grab his gun when he'd gone for the plastic cuffs, but she'd been so wrapped up in her interrupted plans her brain hadn't been ready to shift gears. Headlights flared in front of the barracks, illuminating the turreted U-Haul they belonged to. Security milled around the vehicle. A man pulled the lever locking its gate in place and the slatted metal cranked up into the truck roof. Cannibalized car seats lined its walls. A rack of guns stood at the far end.

The guard marched her straight to Hollister. "Look what I got. Found her outside her bunk."

Hollister eyed her. "What's in the pack?"

"Heads up," the man said, chucking it to the lieutenant.

Hollister caught it, went straight for her gun. He held it up by two fingers, as if intending to preserve her prints for evidence. "I don't have time for this shit. Throw her in the truck."

"Lieutenant—"

"I'll figure out what to do with her on the way. Don't take your gun off her for a second."

"Sir." The man grabbed her wrists, pushing her toward the truck. He grabbed her belt and hauled her over the metal lip. Done, he backed off and held the gun on her. "Same terms as before. You move, I airbrush your brains across this truck."

She nodded. Some people would try to talk their way out, but she was thinking too hard. Hollister barked orders. Men climbed into the truck one by one, thumping into the seats arrayed around the truck. Feet clanked on the metal rungs welded to its side, then scrabbled over the roof, finding the turret. Alden leapt up on the tailgate, stopping and staring when he saw Tristan's face.

"You're coming with us?"

She smiled, jerked her elbow around to show the tie on her wrists. "Don't have a choice."

"Shut up," warned the man with the guard. "Cadet Carter, do not speak with the prisoner."

The engine idled, vibrating beneath Tristan's folded legs. Hollister hauled himself inside a minute later. He walked behind Tristan. "Turn around."

She wriggled to face him. "What now?"

"Where did you get the gun?"

"I had it buried outside of camp."

"And you brought it back here. To get your brother?"

She kept her face blank. "I thought I heard a prowler."

Hollister sniffed. "Would have shot any of us who tried to stop you, huh?"

"We'll never know."

"I think I do." He gestured one of his men out of the chair nearest her. The man unbuckled, moved down to another seat. Hollister lowered himself to the vacated chair, resting his arms on his knees, pistol in hand. "And I think I know what to do about it."

"Are you going to execute me?"

"What should we do with traitors?"

That settled it. Whatever had set off the alarm was plenty serious; nearly the entire barracks had piled into the U-Haul. Hollister wouldn't want to waste one of them guarding her. He'd do it at the plant. Wait until Alden went inside, then shuffle her around the side of the truck and shoot her in the head. Tell Alden she'd been relocated to the plant jail to be judged by those who ran Hanford.

She wouldn't push Hollister any further. She shrugged and lowered her eyes. She could feel his gaze lingering. If he was mad enough, he might not kill her right away. What he'd do instead would be even worse.

The last man piled in and pulled down the gate, locking the lever into place. Hollister pounded on the wall to the cab. After a minute, the engine grumbled up. The truck lurched forward. Hollister holstered his pistol and buckled in. Gravel popped under the tires. The truck turned right, pulling Tristan off-center. She sat up a few inches closer to the back door.

The floor of the truck was metal. Tristan slipped her hands under her butt. Every time the truck bounced on a dip or pothole, she dropped her weight as hard as she could. On the fourth bounce—the transition to the bridge, judging by the changing swish of the tires—the plastic zip tie broke.

She listened to the rhythm of the road, trying to anticipate the next bounce. When it came, she slammed her fist down on the gate latch and yanked the door up into the truck. Hollister shouted. She leapt off the back and did her best to roll, momentum tumbling her across the asphalt, scraping her knee, jarring her shoulder.

"Stop the truck!" Hollister screamed. "Stop this god damn thing!"

Brakes screeched. Tristan tried to find her feet but stumbled back to her knees. Hollister jumped from the tailgate, pistol in hand. She'd meant to sprint to the edge and fling herself into the river; she'd come back for Alden later. But Hollister already had his gun trained on her.

"This is the last bite of your bullshit I'm going to swallow!" His eyelids were puffy, nearly swollen shut. He must have taken something to get to sleep and another something to wake up for the alarm. "Now your brother gets to watch."

Tristan rose, knee shaking. "Leave him out of this. Just get it over with."

"Cadet Carter! Outside!"

Alden's face swam above the tailgate. He lowered himself to the road, expression pinched, eyes darting.

Another security man leaned out from the truck. "Lieutenant, the plant—"

"Fuck the plant!" Hollister composed himself. "Drive over. ASAP. I'll catch up."

"Lieutenant—"

"I said drive!"

The man mashed his lips together, then turned and yelled at the driver. The gate cranked closed. The U-Haul lumbered down the bridge. The river gleamed to either side. Steam rose from the power plant, but the pillars were patchy, interrupted.

Hollister stepped toward her, pistol black beneath the moonlight. "Cadet Carter."

"Please, Lieutenant," Alden said. "She's my sister."

"I don't see a sister. I see a threat. To you. To the institution you belong to. To the safety of our entire community."

"Lieutenant, no! She wouldn't hurt us."

"Wrong. She had every intention of doing just that. There are bad people in the world, Cadet Carter. Alden. Used to be they had an easy time hiding among us. Passing for us. But their true colors burn bright now that the rest of the world's turned the color of shit."

"She's not bad," Alden said. "She went to college. She helped my mom when our mom got sick."

Hollister snorted. "Bad people wear good faces all the time, Alden. That's what makes our job so vital. You have to learn to spot them. And once you've found them, to remove them." He held the gun to the side of his body, keeping its barrel pointed at Tristan, gesturing at Alden to take it. "This is what you'll have to learn, Cadet Carter. This is what it takes to make it. Can you do it?"

Alden shook his head, moisture flashing from his cheeks. "Don't."

Hollister held the pistol out to him a second time. Alden backed away. Hollister blinked at him, then sighed. Tristan tensed, preparing to sprint for the railing at the side of the bridge.

"Fine," the lieutenant said. "Some learn by doing. Others learn by watching."

He pointed the pistol at Tristan and shot her in the chest.

35

Roan strode down the concrete platform, gun steady in her hand. Condensation slicked the tunnel-length pipe. Warm liquid dribbled over the back of Ness' hand. A single red drop slid between the tendons of his index and middle fingers. He shook Shawn's shoulder. His brother's head lolled, spilling blood across the concrete.

"Don't move," Roan said. "Hands up. I will shoot."

"A little late for that!" Kristin shrieked. "You shot him!"

"Sabotage of a nuclear power plant—"

"It's about to melt down, okay? For all I know it already has. If you stop us, we all die."

"Shawn?" Ness said.

The whisper of Roan's footsteps ceased. "There is no meltdown."

"Really?" Kristin said. "Did that Glock come with a diploma? Have you seen the core? It's nearly dry, you fucking idiot."

"Shawn," Ness said.

"There would be alarms," Roan said.

"Yeah, I turned those off when I figured out the only thing that could save us was to get to this pipe you won't let us fix." Kristin began to rise.

"Don't move." Roan's gun clicked. "You. Get away from the body."

"That body is his brother. Who you just shot."

"I should let you all die," Ness said to the floor.

"Very generous of you to keep your powers in check," Roan said. "Get up. Move."

"You're a crazy person," Ness said. "You are actually insane. You just shot my brother and now you expect me to do what you say."

"Wrong. I expect you to do what my gun says."

As Shawn had fallen, his knee had trapped the alien pistol to the concrete. Ness turned slowly, supporting himself with his palms on the rough floor. "Has anyone ever told you no?"

Roan's smile didn't reach her eyes. "Not twice."

Ness crawled a half step forward. He touched Shawn's knee, then felt the smooth plastic. "Threats only work on those with something left to lose."

She straightened her pistol, the end of its barrel a dark and unblinking eye. "Let me see your hands."

"Goodbye," Ness said, not knowing whether it was to Shawn or for Kristin.

He dove forward. Roan fired. The bullet cracked over his head, whining off the concrete wall. Ness clenched the buttons of the alien weapon. A blue beam lanced down the tunnel. He swung it across Roan's ankles. Her jeans blackened; meat snapped and popped. Sweet smoke clouded the tunnel. She staggered, shins detaching from her feet, and toppled. She fired mid-fall. The bullet struck the wall and ricocheted away. She landed on her side with a gasp, eyes level with Ness. Smoke curled from her severed feet.

Roan screamed and swung the pistol at his face. He lased off her hand halfway up the forearm. She pointed her stump straight at him, muscles twitching as she tried to command fingers that were no longer a part of her body. Ness rose into a low crouch and ran for her gun. She smacked at it with her blackened stump. He grabbed it, pulled it from her limp fingers, which were still curled around the grip, and threw her seared-off hand into her face.

She cried out and rolled away, raising her arms to block her face. Ness fired the laser past her head, scorching the cement.

"Look at that," he said. "I missed." He fired past her head again. She flinched away, the light of the laser shading her face an alien blue.

"Ness," Kristin said. "Save it for the pipe."

"I'm almost done." He feinted at Roan. She covered her head with both arms. He burned off her left arm inches from the shoulder. It hung from a last shred of skin and flopped onto the concrete. Roan screamed. Ness stalked up to her and reached for her head. She waved her stumps. He grabbed her hair and pulled her into the culvert, rolling her down the hard slope. At the bottom, she banged into one of the metal arms holding up the pipe. Ness spat on her. "Think you can swim without any hands and feet?"

"Help me!" Roan flailed all four stumps, wallowing at the bottom of the dry canal. Her expression broke. "What did you do to me?"

Ness turned and walked back to the capped pipe. Shawn hadn't moved and he never would again. Ness lifted the pistol. He stared at the pipe.

"Ness," Kristin said.

"They don't deserve to live," Ness said. "They preserved this place through the fall, and what do they turn it into? A prison."

"You realize we're underground, right? Under the ground the reactor is going to melt into?"

He shook his head. "We deserve to die, too."

"I don't!" Kristin laughed, barking. "What did we do?"

"We didn't stop them." Ness lowered the laser. "Now we can."

"Ness!" She grabbed his shoulders, eyes skipping between his. "Do you think this is what Shawn would want?"

He yanked away. "Don't!"

"Ness—"

"Don't you dare try to use him against me. He's right there. You can see his—" He broke down, face crinkling, tears stinging his eyes.

Kristin didn't reach for him again. "And this is what he died doing."

His whole body shook. "Don't. Please don't."

"Ness. Don't let it be in vain."

He closed his eyes. The last of what was left in him melted down, as out of reach as last year's rain, as lost as his mother, as gone as that childhood sense, soft and yellow, that you would always be safe. Shawn's eyes hung half open, vacant, pictures of the void.

Ness lifted the pistol and touched its buttons.

It took several seconds for the first drop of steel to sizzle to the floor. Water shot from the pipe in a line as straight as the laser, soaking Ness' chest, filling his nostrils with the smell of the river. He moved to the side and turned the gun back on the pipe. Water hissed against the wall. Steam roiled from the pipe, painfully hot, clinging to the hairs on his arms in frostlike beads and dispersing the laser's swift beam. He moved to the other side of the pipe and burned a new hole. He moved again, carving off a corner of the cap. Water sluiced into the culvert. He turned the beam on the top edge of the cut, extending it straight to the top of the pipe, then moved to the side and sliced away another hunk of steel. It clanged to the concrete and swept into the stream, spinning away.

Roan screamed. The gun warmed in his hand. Metal melted and globbed into the water, popping, spraying his pants with boiling water. The last of the cap peeled away with a dull clunk. A cataract of water spilled onto the sloped floor and gushed into the culvert.

Ness lowered the gun. "Is that it?"

"From here, it'll drain back into the main system," Kristin said. "That's all we can do."

"Then it's time to find Daniel."

He ran back down the tunnel. Roan floated facedown in the murky, turbid water, bumping against one of the struts holding up the main pipe. Ness' feet echoed ahead of him, Kristin's a half step behind.

"Left," she murmured.

He turned down the fork. Down the tunnel, the stairwell door banged open. Daniel stumbled onto the concrete, arms and legs flailing. He saw Ness and grinned, lips peeling from his teeth, eyes aflame with a terrible sickness. Ness raised the laser.

Daniel retched. His spine bent. A tentacle burst from his mouth, showering the concrete with blood. The alien emerged from the doorway, feet clattering, lifting Daniel from his feet, a living puppet. The man's arms and legs writhed and went slack. Sebastian flung him to the floor. The smell of guts and shit flooded the tunnel.

The alien's tentacle danced. It shoved its pad in Ness' face. "KILL ROAN"

Ness grabbed his rolled-up notepad from his pocket and unclipped the pen from its spiral binding. "She's dead."

It spread its tentacles like a gray sunburst. "GUTBROTHERS JOIN THE SAND"

"I'm glad we could avenge them," Ness wrote. Dimly, he remembered the alien's vengeance should have been brought down on him. "What now?"

"GUN MEN ABOVE"

"What's it saying?" Kristin said.

"Security's upstairs," Ness said. "Is there another way out?"

"Next floor up. There's another stairwell to the back. They might not have blocked it yet."

Ness nodded and wrote on his wrinkled page, holding it for Sebastian. "Where are you going now?"

"RIVER MEET FRIENDS"

"Can I come with you? Away from here?"

Its tentacles stilled. "WITH ME WHY"

Ness bent to his notepad. "I'm done with this world."

Sebastian paused, staring at him with its bulbous, unreadable eyes. It nodded.

"Let's go," Ness said.

Kristin took them up to the next landing, then led the way into another series of concrete tunnels. Valves jutted from the walls. A glass case of radiation suits waited by a door. Kristin jogged right past them. Ness didn't know if she'd seen them; he didn't care. The permeating rumble of the reactor carried on as always. Slightly lower in tone, maybe. Or maybe his ears were tricking him.

Kristin opened the door to another well-lit stairway. Ness went first, pistol ready, and stopped on the landing. He heard nothing but their breathing and the vibration of the core. Kristin headed upstairs, emerging into a stark room with a metal detector, a bench, and a security booth. She ran through, detector beeping, and opened the door to a plain room with a heavy door. It fed them into a cold and noisy night.

A truck engine rattled from the other side of the building. Men shouted, half-muffled by the reactor. Ness stood outside a house-sized outpost a hundred yards from the control building. A single floodlight lit a white circle of dust. Sebastian skirted the light and scuttled toward the river.

Ness followed without looking back. They could shoot him if they liked. The land sloped gently toward the black water. Russian olives loomed from the shore, snagging his coat with finger-length thorns, clogging his nose with the bittersweet smell of their pollen. The alien ducked through them with disturbing grace. Two shots rang from the control building. Dogs barked madly. Through the gaps in the trees, he saw men silhouetted beside the high gray tower of the control station, gesturing as they shouted at each other, dogs trotting in confused circles, chains dangling from their necks.

"Where are we going?" Kristin whispered.

"Away," Ness said.

"Should we take a truck? What about the dogs?"

"They won't find us."

"How do you know that? They look like they have noses to me."

"Because they won't."

She was silent a moment. "Are you okay, Ness?"

"Come on."

He trampled through the grass. His pants were already too soaked for the dew to make any difference. Sebastian kept glancing at the river and gesturing over his pad. The shouts and barks faded behind them. Lights blazed across the river, illuminating open fields and the long, shack-like housing where Ness had once lived. Downstream, light flashed from the middle of the bridge. A gunshot crackled over the river. Sebastian didn't slow down. Seconds later, another shot rolled from the bridge. Screams. A final shot. Ness followed in the alien's wake. The bridge went quiet.

Sebastian stopped a hundred yards from the foot of the bridge and stared into the dark water.

"Not a great place to stop," Kristin said. "Look, maybe you and I should just go back. Explain what happened. They can't arrest us for saving the whole damn site."

"Sure they can," Ness said. "They can do whatever they want to do. If they want to kill us, they'll kill us. There is absolutely nothing to stop them."

"Except, you know, right and wrong."

Ness just shook his head. Insects chirped from the weeds, fucking and eating.

Kristin scuffed the dirt. "Okay, well logically speaking, if we're not going to run back, then shouldn't we run away—? Oh, holy shit!"

Thirty yards from shore, bubbles churned the current. A black tower broke the surface and climbed ten feet into the open air. A huge, shallowly curved oval emerged from the river, moonlit water streaming from its smooth top as it bobbed up and down.

"What is that?" she said.

Sebastian turned to Ness, tentacle waggling. "READY SWIM"

Ness took a deep breath. He nodded. The creature enfolded him in its ropy limbs.

"Ness?" Kristin's voice climbed. "What's going on? Ness!"

The alien trudged from the shore. Cold water climbed Ness' legs.

"Ness! Where are you going?" A rock plunked into the water. "Drop him, you monster! Ness!"

Water swirled to Ness' waist. He turned in the creature's embrace, tapping its chitinous carapace. It stopped. The current tugged Ness' pants and jacket. He stared across the black water at Kristin, wordless.

"You're leaving," she said. "Do you even know where you're going? That thing's not your friend. It could kill you. Ness! I love you!"

"Take care of Volt."

He turned away and tapped the alien's side. It strode toward the waiting vessel. Ness felt himself slip beneath the water.

36

Tristan slammed into the asphalt. Alden screamed. A warm tingle bloomed through her chest. Then the pain hit, and she screamed, too.

Hollister lowered the gun, tracking her fall. He stepped forward. "Hard choices, Alden. We all got to face them. Later on, you'll regret your choice, no matter which way you made it. There's no stopping it. You know what will save you?"

Alden drifted behind him, face bright with tears. Tristan squirmed, clutching her ribs. Her hands were warm and wet.

"The knowledge of your strength." Hollister took another step. "That you have proven there is nothing you can't do. That you will survive no matter what you must face. Including your own regrets."

He straightened his arm, lining the barrel of the gun up with her eye. She kicked at the pavement, trying to scoot away. A fresh barb of pain lanced into her side.

"Watching this will make you stronger," Hollister said. "In time, you'll see."

He thumbed the hammer. Alden screamed and, with perfectly practiced form—back foot maintaining contact with the ground even as he pivoted on his heel—he slammed a roundhouse into Hollister's groin.

The man dropped to one knee, grabbing himself with his empty hand and catching himself on the road with the other, clacking his gun into the pavement. Tristan surged to her feet. Side searing, feeling as if it would split in half, she stomped her left heel on his gun hand, planted, and drove herself forward, spiking her right knee into Hollister's face. He jerked back, hand grinding under her heel, and yanked free. She staggered back. He pointed the pistol again. Alden leapt on his arm, pushing it off-target. He shot, the bang bursting over the river. Alden flinched from the sound, then bit the man's forearm as hard as he could.

Hollister screamed and dropped the gun. He swung a left hook into Alden's temple. Alden groaned and fell away, mouth a crimson mess. Blood gleamed from Hollister's arm and smashed nose. He crawled forward for the gun. Tristan rose up, ribs burning, wheeled her elbow over her head, and dropped her weight straight down.

The point of her elbow smashed into Hollister's skull. Her arm went numb to the shoulder. He splayed his arms and fell, head conking against the asphalt. Tristan booted his face and flung herself at the gun, butt skidding over the road.

Alden got there first. He stood five feet from Hollister, feet planted, both hands gripping the pistol.

Hollister groaned, rolled onto his side, spat blood and teeth. He planted his palms and pushed himself upright. "Alden. I am your commanding officer. Put down the firearm and slide it to me."

Alden's elbows shook. His voice cracked. He lowered the pistol. "I can't do it!"

Hollister grinned, blood webbing his face. He lurched toward Alden. Tristan stood, legs quivering, head going light. She took the gun.

"You don't have to." She aimed Hollister down. "Yet."

She pulled the trigger. Hollister's eye disappeared inside his skull. His head yanked back. Blood spouted the asphalt. He fell onto his side, air gurgling from his lungs.

Tristan sat down hard. The horizon spun. Her tongue felt thick. Alden knelt beside her, grabbed her shoulder.

"Tristan? Are you all right?"

She grunted. She felt very tired. Her ribs ached. It was hard to breathe, which annoyed her. You should always be able to breathe.

"Tristan, I think we should go."

"Just a minute."

"What if the truck comes back?"

"I'm tired," she said. "Just a minute to rest."

Blood seeped through her fingers. Silhouettes thrashed through the brush on the far bank. Something was wrong with one of them. It had too much of itself, legs poking this way and that. It was one of them, wasn't it? Were they here to take her back to the orange? She tried to stand, but her arms could only shiver.

It was okay. Alden could still run. In a minute, she'd tell him to go.

Across from the three figures, a black column climbed from the river. She knew at once it was a submarine—the river was so big—but the underlying shape was all wrong, teardropped and fat.

Alden tugged at her arm. "There's something coming out of the water. Can you get up?"

She shook her head. The woman on the bank screamed, but Tristan couldn't make out the words. The creature grabbed up the other person and dragged him into the water. More screams. Didn't the aliens know they'd lost? The fight was over. Time for them to leave.

The alien sank beneath the surface. Tristan tried to shake her head. The creature popped back up beside the sub, scrabbling at its slick sides, then disappeared inside the waiting column. The vessel slunk beneath the ripples. On the bank, the woman let loose a long and wordless scream.

"Tristan."

"Just a minute," she said.

The world went gray. Something shook her shoulder, but soon all she could feel was the beat of her heart. No pain. No words. No self.

* * *

She woke in an office. Sunlight shined from blank computer monitors. An ECG beeped beside her. Her eyes were gummy, sore, as dry as her mouth. She tried to sit up and search for a glass of water but pain stabbed her ribs. She shouted and collapsed into the sheets.

The door thumped open. A middle-aged woman bustled into the room, eyes widening at Tristan. "She lives!"

Tristan untensed her balled-up muscles. "Am I under arrest?"

"This is a hospital."

"But the bridge."

The woman frowned. "Your brother told us what happened. You're not under arrest. Dr. Larsen's put everything on hold while he sorts the whole mess out."

"Dr. Larsen?"

"Speaking of holds, I'm going to flatline you now." The woman grinned and unplugged the ECG. "Gotta preserve power."

Tristan eased herself upright. "Am I still at the nuclear plant?"

"Yeah, but it's sort of melted down at the moment."

"Sort of?"

"I'm a vet tech, not a physicist. It's safe. It's off. That's all I know."

Tristan gazed at the ceiling; the lights were off, too. The only thing brightening the room was the sunlight through the window. "Is Alden okay?"

"Perfectly." The woman went to the sink. "I'm guessing you're thirsty."

"Yeah." She accepted the glass and drank it in one ongoing gulp. She sat back, belching, water dribbling to her chest. "But you still have some power."

"We're running generators till the brains get the reactor back online. Mean, green ethanol, baby. Been keeping you alive for days."

"Will I live?"

"Your spleen has seen better days." The woman put her hands on her hips, considering Tristan's bandaged torso. "Could be a problem down the road. For now, you're awake, you're alert, you're looking good."

"Where's my brother?"

"Asleep. Next office over. Want me to grab him?"

"Please."

The woman winked and went out the door. Murmurs filtered through the wall. A minute later, feet pounded to her door. Alden flew inside, face open with worry.

"Tristan!" He ran to her, arms spread, but halted just before he crushed her up. "Are you going to be okay?"

"Give me a hug. Be gentle." She grinned. He leaned in, touching her shoulders. She smelled his hair and his skin. She hugged back with her right hand, keeping her left at her side. "I should be fine. But I doubt I'll be going anywhere soon. We may be stuck here for a while."

He withdrew, tears brimming. He turned and tried to wipe them away, as if she hadn't seen. "I don't care where we are. So long as we're there together."

She moved her throat, but she found herself unable to speak.

* * *

Spring turned into summer, long hot days that left her sweating in bed. There was no air conditioning; the plant remained off, and while the workers had cannibalized some of the solar panels from town, their meager output was dedicated to essential plant operations. So she gathered from her doctor's gossip, anyway. As the heat climbed, they were allowed to run fans through the worst three hours of the day, but Tristan had had enough. She asked for and received permission to move from ongoing care to her own room in the basement.

Dr. Larsen called a meeting at the farm across the river. Tristan went with Alden, who helped her into the back of the turreted U-Haul, which had been recommissioned as a bus, complete with foam benches. The farm looked strangely naked: the fences had been torn down.

Dr. Larsen sat on a chair mounted on one of the picnic tables, a tall umbrella shielding him from the killing sun. He had heavily hooded eyes that seemed to be set in a shelf in his wind-chapped cheeks. There was a gravity to him, a hidden wound he seemed to remember each time he paused his choppy speech.

"First thing," he said. "Our army's done. Don't need it. Not unless someone wants to pick a fight. I don't see that happening." He paused, staring flatly at the crowd of hundreds. "We will need a sheriff. Two deputies. That should be enough. Draw up some laws. Simple stuff.

"Former members of the army can stay. Everyone can stay. Anyone who stays will have to work. Plenty to go around. We need to get proper housing over here. More running water. Husband some animals. Get us some meat."

This drew more than a few cheers. Larsen glanced up, surprised, then went on. "Maybe a lot of meat. Anyway, you want to stay, line up and come talk to me. We'll get you enrolled as a citizen. Anyone who wants to leave will be given food, water, and a ride into town. Ready to choose, line up now, but you don't have to decide right away."

A heavyset Hispanic man raised his hand. Larsen's lips widened; he seemed uncomfortable accepting the gesture. "Yeah."

"When will the plant be back online?"

"Don't know," Larsen said. "Suffered some damage in the incident. May never get it back online. If we do, it'll be a few months before we've got things safe enough to fire it up." He raised his eyebrows. "Other questions?"

"How is this going to work?" a young and brown-haired woman called out. "Like, are we going to have popular votes? Representatives? Or are you our new dictator for life?"

"Hell if I know." Larsen stood, knees popping, and clambered down from the table. "We'll figure it out. Now come on."

Tristan elbowed Alden. Her ribs twinged. "What do you think? Want to be a deputy?"

Alden shook his head. "No way. Those guys were all so weird."

"Well, you want to stay? Doesn't have to be forever."

His gaze drifted to the U-Haul parked at the edge of the gravel. "That thing is so cool. How do you think they got the turret on it?"

"I don't know," Tristan said. "Bet they'd teach you if you asked."

She signed them up for citizenship. There was no contract or commitment beyond two weeks notice if they decided to leave. The sun baked the dust, shimmering off the wide blue river. The plant vents sat silent, steam-less.

Alden fell in with the mechanics at the garage on the other side of the river, riding with them as they scoured town for as many scraps and spares as they could salvage. Each night at dinner, he filled Tristan in on what they'd shown him that day. He could never get the black crescents of grease out from under his nails.

Guessing she should pick up something useful of her own, Tristan signed on for the fermentation program, which was spearheaded by an eager if flighty young woman named Kristin. The process of creating usable fuel was shockingly simple; once you got used to dealing with the flames needed to boil the big metal stills, it was just a matter of running a few tests and spending a lot of time stomping corn and apples down into mash. Within two weeks, Tristan could have done it by herself.

She was fully recovered by mid summer. Alden seemed happy enough, so she made no plans to leave. In her free time, she gathered equipment from town and made two small stills of her own: one for fuel, one for vodka. Kristin signed off on both, granting her use of some of the lab's more esoteric materials in exchange for a cut of the output.

Tristan didn't plan to hoard it anyway. Mostly, she wanted the vodka around for use as a crude medicine. That and to have something to share at the harvest fair.

The day after the farmhands finished hauling in the last of the corn, Hanford's whole population gathered on the eastern bank of the river. The engineers tethered a barge to one of the small islands near the center of the water. While the crowd waited, drinking vodka mixed with apple juice, eating fresh corn and bacon served over sliced apples with bread, men futzed about on the barge, their orders and curses hanging over the cool water. The sun hid itself in the hills.

A spark launched from the barge. It climbed higher and higher into the twilight, a silver star carving across the purples and reds and navy blues of the sunset's last seconds. The star wavered through its apex and disappeared. The crowd groaned.

It burst so brightly Tristan had to look away. The bang shot through the night. The men and women around her laughed in surprise, then lifted their hands above their head to applaud, cheering the men on the distant barge, who raised their hands and waved back.

"That's awesome!" Alden yelled in Tristan's ear. He'd actually asked if he could drink; Tristan had laughed and nodded, willing to let him tuck into her vodka until he vomited. He had to learn sometime.

He pounded on her shoulder each time a new star popped against the backdrop of the universe. Within five minutes, her shoulder was so sore she caught his hand mid-punch.

"So the student has become the master," Alden said. His grin softened. "This is cool, isn't it? Do you like it here?"

"Yeah," she said. "Do you?"

"Yeah."

"But?"

"But I wonder what else is out there."

"Some good, some bad." She rubbed her sore shoulder. "Did you have somewhere in mind?"

"Somewhere warm," Alden said. "Sunny."

"It's warm and sunny here."

He peered at her over his red plastic cup. He smelled of juice and liquor. "Somewhere so warm and sunny the girls have to wear bikinis."

Tristan rolled her eyes. "Lesson one of drinking: you're not half as cool as you think you are."

"Half of my cool is still all the cool."

"We'll talk later. You're missing the fireworks."

Colors streaked the sky. Smoke streamed on the wind. She smelled spent gunpowder. Five minutes later, they sent up the finale, a blistering set that crackled like a machine gun and glowed like lava. The crowd clapped and hugged and cheered.

Tristan stood on the banks a long time after the others had left. The old stars shimmered in the sky. She wanted to believe it was over. She glanced around to make sure she was alone, then spoke her parents' names. The words tasted foreign, the language of a place long lost to the careless jungle of time.

She turned from the river to find Alden before he made a fool of himself with the girls.

EPILOGUE

He rarely knew where they were going. The submarine ran largely on water; when he pressed how that was possible, Sebastian explained it needed combustible fuel, too—oil worked well enough—but it could roam for weeks between fill-ups. They only stopped at night, when it was too dark to make out the skyscrapers or the coast. Sometimes it was warm. Sometimes it was cold. Sometimes they let him come with them as they scuttled over the docks. The shore felt funny beneath his feet. Too still. Too silent. If he focused hard enough, he thought he could hear it asking to live.

Sebastian thumped his tentacle on the spongy wall. Ness glanced up.

"Landing tomorrow," Sebastian signed with two tentacles. For simpler subjects, they no longer had to use writing at all. "Come with?"

"Yes," Ness signed back. He grinned. "Fresh air. You smell."

"You worse," Sebastian gestured back. He turned and disappeared through the oval door.

The engines whispered through the moist floor. Ness let them lull him to sleep.

* * *

The ship was all loaded up. Food. Water. Guns. Clothes. Fishing rods. Plenty of homemade fuel. She untied from the dock and turned over the engine. Alden grinned against the sunlight bouncing from the bay.

A crew of freebooters had taken over Alcatraz and claimed possession of all waters in sight, but she'd bribed them weeks ago with equal quantities of gas and liquor. As she motored toward the red spires of the Golden Gate Bridge, the pirates shot rifles straight up in the air in salute. Alden stripped off his shirt, letting it flutter behind him in the wind. He'd put on some muscle.

"Trying to catch a tan for the girls?" she shouted over the wind and the engine.

He turned, blushing. "You should try it. It feels great."

"I am not taking off my shirt."

Alden blushed harder. "I mean, taste the wind."

Tristan laughed. "Is that what you call that?"

"It tastes different wherever you go. At Hanford, it's dusty. At Redding, it's gummy. Here, it's salty."

She stood from her chair, wind catching her hair. She glanced at the sails to ensure they remained firmly furled—she wasn't going to let them out until they were clear of the coast—then took a deep breath. It tasted salty and cool, ancient yet ceaseless. She breathed again and the sun was warm on her face.

"Enough fun," she grinned. She dropped back into her seat. "This is your captain speaking."

Alden straightened. "Sir."

The shadow of the bridge swallowed them up. The motor purred through the hull. "Prepare to engage sails. We've got a long trip ahead of us. Estimated travel time: who the hell knows."

She throttled forward. The boat smashed through the waves. Gulls circled, cawed, dipped their slender white wings. The ocean spread to the curves of the world.

* * *

The engines went on whispering, but he could feel the sub slowing. Had it already been a day? He had no watch. Time was as fluid and unseen as the ocean beyond the windowless hull.

Sebastian appeared in the oval doorway. The ship lurched, beginning its ascent, and the alien braced three tentacles in the frameless portal.

"Still coming?" it signed.

Ness nodded. "Oil?"

Sebastian shook its bulbous head. "Friends taken. We take back."

"From humans?" Ness gestured.

"Yes. Problem?"

"No problem." Ness rolled from his alcove and stood on the rubbery floor.

Sebastian handed him one of the blunt black pistols. "J-A-P-A-N," it signed, letter by letter. "Been?"

"No."

"New things good." Sebastian's two sense-tentacles bobbed back and forth, a gesture of pleased anticipation. "Come."

Ness followed it through the humid tunnel. Another alien emerged behind them. Ness climbed behind Sebastian up the steep ramp. He could smell the brackish sea. Sebastian unzipped the wall and stepped out from the tower onto the sub's top deck. A beautiful mountain waited on the horizon, perfectly proportioned, crowned by heavy layers of snow painted pink by the last gasps of sunlight.

Sebastian still hadn't called him by the five-part tip-twitch that signed for "gutbrother." Ness knew it would come in time.

He checked his gun and jogged after Sebastian to the pier.

* * *

"Tristan!"

She stirred with a gasp. Her sweat stuck her to the sheet. The cabin was humid and hot, but she'd been dreaming about the man at the Walmart again, too. Each time she struck him, her fist had sunk into his skin as harmlessly as if he were made of dense feathers. However hard she punched him, he kept coming, walking nearer and nearer, lifting and lifting and lifting his gun.

"Tristan!"

"I'm coming." She pulled on her shirt and tromped upstairs. The sails snapped lightly, nicely trimmed. Waves beat against the hull. Alden stood at the front and pointed ahead, his grin as bright as the tropic sun.

A hazy green lump swelled on the horizon.

They'd been on the water so long the sand felt wrong. They'd weathered two storms. Lost one jib sail (she'd brought two spares). Seen sharks. Whales. Once, they thought they'd seen another boat, its sail a bright spot miles to the south, but it had disappeared before they could be sure.

Hawaii hadn't escaped the Panhandler either. She hadn't expected otherwise. She hadn't expected to step off the boat into a ready-made paradise, to be handed a drink with an umbrella by a handsome yet shy poolboy, who would then lead them to their upstairs suite. She knew they'd have to work for it. That it might take years of labor to attain a life of comfort. But it would be best here. Away from the jackals of Redding, free from the slavery of the tick-king of Better San Diego, separate even from the well-meaning anthill at Hanford—here was where they could raise their own home.

She stood in the sun, shorts dripping seawater. Waves tumbled up the beaches. Palms hissed in the constant wind.

"Well?" Tristan said. "Where do you want to set up camp?"

"The beach." Alden glanced over his tanned, freckled shoulder. "Can we?"

"Man, we can do whatever we want." Someone cried inland. Tristan hunched down, reaching for her pistol, then laughed at herself. It was just a bird, uncannily human. "Just keep your eyes open."

The breakers rolled in one after another.

* * *

The man sat atop Chichen Itza and surveyed his jungle. Very green. Very jungly. Hot as all hell. That, too, was normal. He sometimes wondered why he'd stopped here. His reason had not been particularly wise or tactical; the monument had simply been too cool to pass by without stopping. He'd climbed up its outside, then found it had a staircase inside it, too, a stifling, steamy, terrifyingly steep rise that led to a blank wall. After he got out, he climbed back to the top to consider the jungle and shake off his claustrophobia.

Then he'd just sort of stayed. Even after the small people emerged to drive him away. (It had taken weeks to reach a detente with them.) Even after he discovered there were no rivers or proper streams in the peninsula, and that when it wasn't raining, he had to hoist buckets of water from foul-smelling and horrifyingly enormous sinkholes. He hadn't traveled on even after it turned out that it was never really not hot in this place.

Because seriously, the monument was just that cool.

He sat on the top step, shaded by the overhang, running his palms over the rough stone. He should think about going to the shore for a few days. Cool off. Catch and dry some fish. Grab some citrus. Ward off the ol' scurvy. The roads were clear; he could bike the twenty miles by sunset, easy. But it was so hot. He could wait till dusk, at least.

He napped a while. As he woke to scan the jungle and ensure the trees were in the right places, motion caught his eye. A woman strode across the grassy field. Straight for the pyramid he was enthroned upon. Too tall to be one of the locals. Not quite brown enough, either, though she had his rich tan beat. He got his laser out from under the stone bench and rested it on his knee.

The steps were comically steep. There were 91 of them on each of its four sides and every one felt like the one that would send you tumbling to a snapped neck. She steadied herself with her hands, breathing hard, sweat beading her lineless face. She was pretty. He doubted he was. As she climbed, she looked up several times, as if to check if he were still there.

Four steps below the flat top, she stopped, knelt, and shielded her eyes with the blade of her hand. "Are you the man who drove the enemy's ship into the sea?"

"Nope," he said.

"That is funny," she said. "Because yes, you are."

Walt swore and scowled down at the languid ball court. He'd thrown a tennis ball around there once before almost passing out from heat exhaustion. Impossible to get it through the stone hoops.

"Who told you?" he said. "The Maya?"

"Yes."

That information—conveyed largely through gestures, partly by bastardized Spanish—was what had convinced them to let him stay in the first place. He regretted it with sudden intensity.

"What do you want?"

"They're not gone, you know," said the woman. "The invaders."

"So what? They're grounded, aren't they? Sent to their room without dinner."

Her gaze didn't falter. "I don't know what you're talking about."

He gestured at the sky. "Their ship's gone. Most all the little ones, too. A few more years, all we'll have left is their big weird skulls."

She shook her head. Sweat pattered to the hot stone. "They're breeding. I need your help."

"You don't need my help," he snorted. "Anyone can shoot them. Anyway, I'm retired."

She climbed higher, reaching for his hand. "Please, sir."

"Come on. This isn't Indiana Jones. I'm not traipsing off into the jungle to save a village from the evil—"

"No village. Unless Los Angeles has shrunk considerably since I last saw it."

"You're American? You came all this way?"

She nodded. "And I need help."

"Oh." He scuffed his shoe, suddenly embarrassed by his delusions of being approached as a mysterious foreign king atop his lofty ziggurat. "Well, I'm a nice guy, once you get to know me. I'm not going to send you back without listening to what you came all this way to say."

She smiled. The jungle moved as it should. The sun beat down from the sky. She began her story.

Walt swore.

I:

FERAL

1

They found her under the pier wearing a pair of boots and the blood of the cat she'd just eaten raw. She had been watching a gecko sun itself on a rock—it was a pretty one, with a blue head and tail, and black spots down its whole body—and she was so absorbed in it that she didn't hear the people coming until the gecko looked up and ran away.

She grabbed her knife and sprinted through the pilings, weaving between clusters of barnacles that would scrape her skin down to the muscle, but the man caught her before she got to the safety of the open pipe sloping to the sea. She lunged with her knife, flaying his arm. White bone peeped beneath a sudden tide of blood.

It was her fondest memory of the first two years after the plague.

* * *

They asked her about it in a gentle, persistent way, the woman's mouth pursed, as if she just knew it would help.

Raina always said the same thing. "I don't remember."

"What about yesterday?" the woman said in a voice that was eager and somehow sad. It was the day after they found her and they'd had to tie her to the bed to keep her from running away. "Do you remember yesterday?"

"I was at the docks," she said. "I don't know."

"What about your family? Before the plague? Do you remember your mom? Her face? Her hair?"

Raina frowned at the white wall, pretending to try. "I don't know."

"Did you have a dad?"

The man leaned in and touched the woman's arm. "Kate. She's tired."

She breathed out in a rush, like a dog lying down for a nap. "Okay. It's okay, Raina. But can you try for me? Try to remember?"

Raina nodded, glancing up beneath her ragged bangs. "I'll try."

She didn't. After a while, the woman stopped asking. A while after that, Raina stopped trying to run away. She liked the new people. The man was kind and strong and smiled whenever he saw her. The woman was jittery like one of the little fish Raina had never been able to catch at the marina, and when she got confused she looked to the man instead of herself. But she was also patient and taught Raina lots of new things like how to properly patch her clothes and gut fish. Even when Raina got frustrated and threw the needle in the grass beside the house, the woman kept trying. Raina believed she always would.

Her dad taught her to sail with him and catch fish in great big nets. They ate every piece of meat except the heads. At first, Raina collected these and arranged them in careful ziggurats beside the dock. She liked the fish's little teeth, the looming stare of their empty sockets. And when you killed something, you took possession of it. She wanted to show the other fish they shouldn't be afraid of her nets. They would join lots of other fish that had already fed her. They would be happy together. She would look out for them.

And they looked out for her, too. Most of the time, their spirits were simply there with her, silent in the way the bricks that form a building are silent, but once in a while, they spoke up. Offered her suggestions. Wisdom. Strength. She would never kill just to gain this power from them, but surviving meant killing. And she was very good at surviving.

The man came to her and told her that it wasn't healthy or respectful to pile up the skulls in this way. Raina tried to explain how it let the fish stay in a school after they'd died, but the man—her new father—told her that it would attract predators. Parasites. She had to stop.

She stopped putting her skulls by the dock and brought them into the trees up the hill instead. Her new parents never noticed.

* * *

Her father leaned into the winch, grunting in that way of his; a rising tone of respectful effort she would always associate with wind and salt and swells. Water sluiced from the rope and dimpled the sea. At the western edge of the bay, sunlight played on the peaks of ten thousand tiny waves, shimmering closely, a school of light. A pelican wobbled on the breeze and banked from the boat.

Turn by turn, he hauled up the net, a drooping teardrop weighted down with wriggling silver bodies. He swung it over the deck, water spattering the time-worn wood. He released the pawl with a metallic clink. The net thumped wetly. Fish struggled inside the ropes. The man planted his hands on his hips and arched his back, grimacing, sun-lines crinkling his mouth and eyes.

Raina crabbed forward, club in hand, and took up the net, shaking fish across the deck in a slobbery, gasping spread. She kept her eyes sharp for rockfish. The other fish respected her as their master, but the rockfish were spiny and defiant.

It was an okay catch, a single crescent-tailed bonito flapping among a mess of croakers and surfperch. They'd snagged a plastic bag and a small squid, too. She stalked among the fish, clubbing them on the head with a sharp and bony crack. Slime and blood burst from her baton.

Finished, she sat back to catch her breath. Her father grinned and wiped his brow. A thin white scar ran the length of his forearm; the skin of his exposed armpit was as pale as the bellies of the brained fish. For a moment, she was reminded that he wasn't the father she'd been born to. He was a stranger. She had a club in her hand.

She grinned back and got out her knife and started cleaning, thumbing out the guts and chumming them over the rail. She layered the bodies in the cooler. They would probably eat most of the perch tonight. Her mom would curry the croakers to be eaten over the next day or two, the spices keeping the meat pure, disguising the taste if it went foul; she'd smoke or dry the rest, including the bass, which she'd probably barter to Wendell up the hill in exchange for more bread and eggplant. If she took them to the Dunemarket instead, these little fish could wind up carted across all corners of the valley, to the islands, to Disneyland. These little fish she'd just killed, eaten by distant strangers.

But released by her, their spirits would remain hers.

Her dad clunked to the side of the boat to bring in the lines, then came back to lend her a hand. They finished up and Raina scraped the gunk from beneath her nails with a rust-spotted file. He pulled up the anchor and she trimmed the sails while he steered back toward the dock. She helped tie off, then hauled the coolers over the side. Her mother sat in the front yard watching, resting up before it was her turn to work the catch. She waved her tan, lean arm. Raina nodded, arms full, staggered toward her with the first cooler, then went back for the second.

Her mom went around back to start up the fire. At the base of the dock, Raina's dad handed her a damp towel to swab off the salt.

"I'm going to the ruins," she said.

He smiled. "The ruins."

"I'll be back by dusk."

"It's not the dark I'm worried about."

She bladed her hand against the stunning sun. "Dad. I'll be fine."

He grinned and waved inland. "Don't max out my credit card."

She switched her gutting knife for something that smelled less like fish, grabbed her pack, and headed up the hill. The afternoon had burned away the June Gloom fog and she sweated freely. Hummingbirds skipped between the thorny flowers lining the road. A crow scorned her from the roof of a skull-like mansion. At the top of the hill, she stopped and turned, both to take in the sunshine gleaming from the bay, and to make sure the alien ship hadn't moved.

Twenty miles away, it jutted at an angle from the waves off Venice Beach, a discus of impossible size, black-hulled and broken. Silent. But it was a false silence. It wasn't the silence of the dead in the ground. It wasn't the silence of the houses with their empty windows and cobwebbed halls. It wasn't the silence of the thousands of cars rusting out beneath the gentle breath of the Southern California sea.

People tried to go to that ship sometimes, their little sloops so small in the shadow of its busted shell. They went to take from it. Maybe some went to it for the same reason she went to the ruins, to claim ownership by their presence. Maybe some went just to tell their friends they had. Whatever their reasons for going, none of them came back.

Because its silence was the silence of the predator.

She muttered under her breath. A steady speck of white caught her eye between the mainland and Catalina Island far to the south. She watched the sail for a minute, then turned and went on her way. It was hotter past the hill, but she didn't slow down until she reached the wide black mall parking lot.

Most of the car windows were smashed in, their fuel doors popped open. Raina walked between the rows with the same feeling she used to get when her first parents took her to the church. The mall's windows were broken, too. The old people had been crazy to build so much from something as flimsy as glass. The few that weren't smashed were blank with the dust that appeared every time there was a mist. Raina stepped into a stripped-out department store, walked through picked-over racks of light jackets and sweaters meant for a spring that never came, and paused to let her eyes and ears adjust to the quiet gloom of indoors.

It smelled musty and dusty. A mouse rustled in the shoeboxes along the wall. Knife in hand, Raina wandered further into the dimness of the old store. She wasn't looking for anything special; her parents more or less had everything they needed to run their home, and this was far from the first time Raina had come here. She felt compelled to visit, though, picking up caked-solid canisters of makeup and setting them back down, flipping through racks of dresses so gauzy they'd tear to pieces during a single day of work.

Part of it was about remembering, about trying to reach back to the days before the sickness. Her parents—her new parents—answered her questions the best they could, but their words were sterile, distant. The only way to understand the old people was to walk with them: their houses, their churches, their stores. To stand where they'd lived and soak in their essence and learn how they'd failed.

But she wouldn't deny that it was also fun, in a very simple and deep-down way, to pick through their things and occasional take some of them home.

She walked past a rack of what her mom called sweatpants—she didn't know why you would wear clothes designed to make you sweat—and exited into the high-roofed space connecting the stores. She skipped the neighboring shoe store (the last useful pair had disappeared a year ago and there was nothing left but foolish straps and heels) and the pretzel store with its nasty little piles of rock-hard mold. Meager sunlight slid through the skylights, illuminating square pillars of tumbling dust motes. Religiously, she skirted the light and, on the off chance something there would look better than last time, headed for the sporting goods store at the other end of the mall.

On her way there, plastic rattled on tile inside the discount store. Raina dropped to a crouch. The thing rattled again. She slunk inside, walking on the balls of her feet, breathing evenly through her mouth. Shelves of pastel eggs and plastic green baskets reached into the gloom. At the back of the store, a candle flickered, all but concealed by the metal rows.

She got out her knife and edged forward. Metal scraped softly. Something tinkled to the ground. Raina approached from the left of the candlelight. A teen boy crouched in a wavering circle of light, back turned, contemplating small pieces of metal and black plastic arranged on a blanket. Raina advanced with slow, smooth steps until she could have reached out and stabbed him.

"What's that?" she said. "More magic?"

Martin shrieked and leaped forward, stumbling into the metal racks, but careful not to trample his goods. He glared at her, sucking a scrape on his finger. "It's not magic at all."

"Then what is it?"

"I'm going to wire these solar panels to the radio." He lifted a flat-topped black stake from the blanket. She'd seen others like it lining paths of front yards and flowerbeds gone to seed. "Maybe they'll provide enough of a charge to make it run."

"Yeah," she said. "Magic."

"No, it's not. Didn't you have TV when you were a little kid?"

"I don't have it now."

He gave her a look and sat down next to his project. "What are you doing here?"

"Hunting."

"What for?"

She put her knife away. "I don't know."

"You smell like fish," he said, then blushed, as if he were the one who stunk.

"So what?" She sat down across from him, candlelight wavering over her hands. "What are you going to do with a radio, anyway? Prop open a door? Does anyone else even use them?"

He pried open one of the stakes with a flathead screwdriver. "That's what I want to find out."

She nodded to herself. Martin and his mom lived down the shore; she had been a nurse or something, and when Raina's new parents had brought her in from the wild, Martin's mom volunteered to move in and help. Martin wanted to be Raina's friend from the very start. Even after she attacked him. Twice. There were virtually no children left their age, so it's not like he had much in the way of options, but she got the idea he would have wanted to be her friend even if he had a wider choice. She was different, and different was interesting. Sometimes she thought he wanted to be different himself.

"I'm sorry I said you smell," he said.

"But I do," she said.

"I didn't mean it like that."

"Well, you smell like grease."

Laughter bubbled from his throat. "Do you even know that's rude?"

"Oops." She reached for a green board studded with little pins. Martin looked pained, but didn't protest. She turned it over in her hand. "Want to go exploring or something?"

"I want to see if this works. If it does, maybe I can make us some walkie talkies." He glanced up from under his scruffy hair. "Wouldn't that be cool?"

"Walkie talkies?"

"Personal two-way radios. Anyway, I don't think it's a good idea to be outside right now."

"Why? Do you think you saw another tiger?"

"I did see a tiger." He scowled. "But no. Because of the men on the boat."

"What men on the boat?"

"The ones who killed Mr. Horowitz." He quit fiddling with his screwdriver. "Didn't you hear?"

"No."

"They came from the island. A whole bunch of them. They asked for some of Mr. Horowitz's corn. When he said no, they killed him and took it. Then they gathered up all his neighbors and asked them for stuff, too."

The sailboat coming from Catalina. Her blood iced over. "When?"

"Two days ago?"

She stood and touched her knife and ran for the front of the store.

"Hey!" Martin called, voice echoing in the empty space. His footfalls chased her into the middle of the mall. "Raina! Where are you going?"

She skidded and turned. "That boat's coming to my house."

He ran through a square of sunshine, lighting up the fear on his face. "I'm going with you."

"Then keep up."

She sprinted through the department store to the front doors, pack bouncing on her back. The afternoon had cooled and a sea breeze shuffled the palms. The trees were so overgrown that a falling frond could knock her down or split her skull. She swerved from the sidewalk and ran down the middle of the empty street. Martin pounded along behind her. He was short and didn't look like much, but he spent a lot of time with his hands, including rougher work with wood and stone, and after several blocks, he'd only fallen back a few feet.

She took a shortcut through one of the burnouts, temporarily immune to the unease she felt whenever she wandered into one of the blackened neighborhoods. Grass and shrubs sprouted from the charred skeletons of houses. She thought she could still smell the scorched fat absorbed by the burnt wood. The young trees were shorter than she was and she ran in the open sunlight, sweat moistening her back. Before cresting the hill, she detoured two blocks over to a neighborhood mostly untouched by the years of fires where she would have more cover.

The street ran straight down from the hills to the shore a half mile away. A long white sailboat sat at their dock. Martin ran up beside her, breathing hard.

"What's going on?"

"I saw them on my way to the mall," Raina pulled off her pack and rooted around for her binoculars. "I didn't know who they were. I didn't know they were coming."

"Are your parents okay?"

She fit the binoculars to her nose. Even at their highest power, it was impossible to make out the details of the men swarming across the dock. A man stood alone in the yard. A couple dozen others approached through the patchy grass, spread into an enveloping semicircle. Two men rushed the solitary figure, metal flashing in their hands; he fell quickly.

Another person rushed from the house. Her mom. A woman's scream floated on the damp air, carried by the wind.

Raina rose and ran as fast as she could.

2

Walt took one last look at the pyramid that had been his base of operations, if not really his home, for the last—well, he wasn't quite sure how long. He believed he was close to turning thirty, which meant he'd spent the last two-plus years in the surrounding jungle and the nearby beach, but he'd quit keeping track of days a long time ago. What did a few weeks here or there matter? He'd start paying attention again once they announced the next World Series.

He'd figured he'd be fine as long as he knew what season it was, and any dummy could tell the difference between sweating and snowing. Then he promptly moved to a jungle not far off the equator, a place where the seasons consisted of "rainy" and "not quite so rainy." Things had gotten a little hazy. By the time he thought about resuming a strict count of the days, if only to make sure someone on the planet was still doing so, the whole idea felt daft: not only would it be inaccurate, but the end of civilization really felt like the sort of thing that should prompt you to start a new calendar.

In short, it was something like 5 After Plague, and besides getting lots of exercise, killing a bunch of animals, mostly for food, and masturbating—though much less than in his teens and early twenties, and to be fair, his daily average was below one, which he felt was pretty good, considering how much spare time he had on his hands—he hadn't been up to much worth keeping track of anyway.

Which went a long way toward explaining why he was following this woman on a three-thousand mile journey to help deal with her alien problem.

The ziggurat of Chichen Itza squatted inert under the searing jungle sun, its terraced limestone oblivious to the sapping heat and humidity beating down from the sky. In a way, it was inspirational. A lesson to us all: unless you're made of stone, stay the hell out of the jungle.

He hiked his pack up his shoulder. "I hope your car has air conditioning."

"What car?" Lorna said.

"The one you really should have brought with you."

"Will that be a problem?"

Walt shrugged. "Only if you've got something against jaguar attacks, grubs for dinner, and horrendous diarrhea."

She unfurled her long black hair, combed her fingers through the sweaty tangles, and expertly swept and pinned it back atop her head. "Our boat's on the south coast of Mexico. We made it from there on foot just fine."

He tugged up his collar and wiped his forehead. "Be right back."

He turned around, waved at the pyramid, and trudged back to its base. He opened the door to the staircase leading up its guts and got out his orange plastic bucket and a length of lightweight rope. He already had his machete and his pack. That about covered it.

"What's that?" she said when he got back.

"It's known as a bucket."

"What makes you think you'll need a bucket?"

"I don't know if you've noticed, but there aren't a lot of rivers around here. Water collects in these great big pits that aren't a lot of fun to fall into."

She tilted her head. "We have water."

"All I'm saying is it would suck if we didn't." He slung the rope over his shoulders and clipped the bucket to his pack. "Ready when you are."

She started across the knee-high grass. Back in the day, the clearing around the pyramid and the ball court and all the little temples surrounding the area had been kept clear by the Mexican government. The jungle had already begun to reclaim it, saplings and shrubs creeping in from the crush of the forest. Walt didn't expect to come back—not that he meant to stay in L.A., either—but if life's strange tide carried him back to the Yucatan at age forty, he doubted he'd be able to find the site again, its ancient stone swept under by the advancing glacier of green.

Five men waited inside the treeline. Four were white; he hadn't seen such light-skinned people in years. Lorna introduced Walt to her cousin Hannigan, a ruddy-faced dude with small brown eyes, and to Ken, a quiet and compact man with a very long and very black rifle. There were three others whose names Walt didn't catch because he'd stopped paying attention. He'd never been good with names, and Lorna seemed like a much better use of his attention.

"Okay," he said, clapping his hands. "Who's got the map?"

Hannigan eyed him. "Thought you knew your way around."

"That's why I want to see what route you're taking."

The man reached into his pocket and unfolded a road map of the Yucatan/Central America region. He traced his finger along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, then slanted down to Mexico's southern coast.

"Look good?"

"For the first couple days," Walt said. "Then we're going to have problems with the locals."

"Local who? Tribes?"

"Not like tribes tribes. They aren't running around with poison blow darts. They're people who went into the jungle when the virus hit and never came out."

The man leaned forward. His sweat smelled less than a day old, as if they'd freshened up to make a good first impression. "We made it here all right."

"Then you got lucky," Walt said.

He touched the pistol on his hip. "Or the locals knew better than to mess with us."

"The locals are a lot more scared of outsiders infecting them with the Panhandler virus than they are of a few guns. Which they have too, by the way. Mostly AKs."

"The Panhandler's gone."

"They don't know that." Walt batted at a fly on his neck. "Do we know that? Survivors are immune, but what if we're carriers?"

The man tilted his brow forward. "This isn't a discussion. We detour, we slow down. Spend more time exposed to whatever you're afraid is out here."

"Cool. Then when the locals show up, I'll head into the jungle and meet you at the boat. If you don't show up in two weeks, I'll say a prayer for your souls and go home."

Hannigan smiled with the left half of his mouth. "We'll see about that."

They started down the road. The jungle canopy shaded them from the battering sun, but the air was damp and hot, like they were trudging through a giant sauna. Or, given that there might not be any saunas left, what it was most like was a goddamn jungle.

Walt sipped warm water. Birds and monkeys yelped from the trees. Insects buzzed constantly, seeking each other in the jumble of green, flitting into the open road to bite the humans' exposed necks, hands, and faces. Hannigan walked with an assault rifle draped over his chest, gaze ticking between the monotonous lines of trees.

"How many aliens are we talking about?" Walt said.

"We don't know," Hannigan said.

"A hundred? A million?"

"More than the first, less than the second."

"Why don't you just bomb them? It's been a while since I tangled with them, but they really didn't care for being bombed."

"They're sheltering in the ship," Lorna said.

Walt swabbed his forehead. "So bomb the ship."

"We can't get to it by boat. We've tried a few airfields, but all the jets were destroyed in the war. Not that we even have a pilot. Or a nuke. Or the desire to nuke something thirty miles from our home. We have to get inside. We need you to get us there."

"Just seeing if you'd done your homework."

The road through the green went on and on. The walk was unpleasant—in the swarming, itchy heat, moving was unpleasant—but the road made for easy going, and with plenty of water in their canteens, they made good time. Four miles per hour, maybe better. He could see the argument against scaring up a car. Cars were loud. Conspicuous. Prone to breaking down at bad times. After years sitting idle, none would turn over without a lot of work. Dead batteries. Flat tires. Corroded wires. Finding gasoline was no sure thing, either, and it would probably have gone bad anyway. The roads could be clogged, or busted up by the jungle's searching roots. The trip appeared to be five, maybe six hundred miles; substantial, but not grueling. Doable.

What he couldn't understand is why they didn't bother to try to find bicycles. Those didn't guzzle any fuel. You could walk them around fallen trees or crashed cars. Minimal risk of a breakdown. Silent. Back when he and that couple—Mia, the pretty girl, and do-gooder whats-his-name—Raymond, that was it—when the three of them were trying to get away from the invaders in L.A., they'd used bikes, and it had worked like a charm. Couldn't very well drag them into the jungle, but they could always find new ones when they reemerged from the woods.

Then again, he didn't care. He was just happy to be doing something again.

At sunset, they went inside an abandoned gas station, swept up broken glass and leaves from the aisle in front of the rotted-out freezers, and unrolled their sleeping bags. Ken went for a walk around the grounds. Hannigan lit some candles and laid out their dinner, twists of dried meat and handfuls of dried blueberries. Walt ate some of the wild bananas and bell peppers and cassava and nuts he'd brought with him from the pyramid. After, Hannigan cleaned his teeth with a metal toothpick.

"What kind of military background you got, anyway?"

"Who, me?" Walt said.

"I ain't talking to the monkeys."

"None."

"None like none? No Marines? No Army? No weekend National Guard?"

"I always thought the military was for fucking jerks."

Hannigan's smile tightened. He folded his arms, exposing a tattoo on his left biceps of an eagle crouched over the globe accompanied by the initials USMC. "And you took down the mothership."

"I had help," Walt said.

"What, the USS Nimitz?"

"A Vietnam vet named Otto. We landed a hot air balloon on the top, cracked the engines with C4, infiltrated the bridge with lasers, and shot everything that—"

"Bullshit," Hannigan said. Three others laughed. Ken and Lorna just watched. In the candlelight, Hannigan grinned in disbelief. "Can you believe it? We came for a warrior, but could only find ourselves a liar."

Walt ate a nut he didn't have a name for. Not a proper one, anyway. He thought of them as "those little round guys that are disappointingly bland considering how hard it is to crack their shells," but he was sure the locals had a snappier term.

"If you don't believe it, why did you come down here?" he said.

"Somebody took down that ship," Hannigan said. "If we found him, we could wipe out the threat once and for all. Instead, we picked up a boasting little runt."

"Dave," Lorna said sharply. "You heard the villagers. It's him."

The man prodded his teeth with the steel pick. "That's what he told them, anyway."

Walt laughed and stood, brushing his lap free of the dry, flaky bits of nutshells. "Well, good luck to you."

"Where do you think you're going?"

"Back to my friends the trees. They don't judge me."

"Please sit down," Lorna said.

Walt scratched his beard. He hadn't shaved in weeks, but if they had a proper trip ahead of them, he was going to have to do something about that. "Then make up your minds."

"We have," she said. "We need your help."

He nodded and turned to Hannigan, who removed the toothpick from his mouth and gazed at its tip.

"Well, you're already here," the man said. "May as well come back with us."

"Great," Walt said. "I'm going to sleep."

He did. He was woken a couple times by those horrid night birds, then got up for good a little before dawn, going outside to pee and have a look around. When he got back, Hannigan was sitting up in bed, a pistol in his lap, watching the jungle.

The others got up soon after. They got on their way and followed the road through the trees. Minutes after sunrise, the air was sweltering. A couple of the men grumbled and joked. They made good time again, stopping for the night in a shabby motel with a serious rat problem. In the middle of the third day, Walt stepped onto the shoulder of the road, unscrewed his canteen, and had a drink.

"Can't use the road for a while," Walt said.

"Says who?" Hannigan said.

Walt pointed to the words carved into a trunk beside the road. "Says that."

"Looks like gibberish."

"It's Mayan. Roughly translated, it says 'Stay the fuck out.'"

"You think they'll prefer us tramping through their jungle?"

"So long as we go that way," Walt pointed south, "and stay out of everything up there," he finished, pointing first to the road, then the trees beyond.

Hannigan spat. "It'll slow us down. A lot."

"True. But you know what will slow us down even more?"

"What's that?"

He pointed to a leathery tarp suspended from the upper branches of the tree. "Getting shot and skinned."

The man rubbed his stubble. "Lead on."

Walt unsheathed his machete and stepped off the gravel. The jungle was a bitch. Three bitches and a half. Especially all the way out here, which he'd only visited a few times, and knew in only the most scant way, like when he'd left lower Manhattan to go see a Mets game in Flushing—it was still the city, yeah, but not his city.

Even so, vines were vines. Trees were trees. Six-inch centipedes with venomous bites were six-inch centipedes with venomous bites. He stuck to the trails as best he could, consulting the compass in the handle of his knife every few minutes, but even when the way was relatively clear, it was a hard, muddy, grubby slog, as exhausting as it was frustrating. After just three hours, he sat to rest.

Beside the trail, a small, leafy plant sprung from the moss in the roots of a tree. Walt pulled two sprigs, plucked the leaves, and preserved the flattish stems. He passed one to Hannigan.

The man stuck it in his mouth and chewed the end like a piece of hay. "Tastes like poison."

"Oh no." Walt paused with a fluted stem halfway to his mouth. "Oh no."

Hannigan spat out a mouthful of green pulp. "Is it poison? What the fuck?"

"No, it's just funny," Walt said. He stuffed his stem into his mouth and chewed the bitter, fibrous plant, then held up another for Hannigan. "Eat up. You'll feel better in a minute."

The man fixed the plant with his round little eyes. "What's it called?"

"Hell if I know. But it will make your muscles a lot less tired."

Hannigan chewed suspiciously, gazing into the forest. Birds whooped from all sides. "We're good on food for a while yet. Water's another story."

"Still, keep your eye out for bananas, cassava shrubs, obvious stuff. Or these little fleshy red flowers. We'll try to find a cenote tomorrow. A sinkhole."

The man nodded distantly. Walt picked the rest of the plant, handed a stem to each of the others, and pocketed the rest. At least it was shady beneath the canopy. His shoes grew damp with sweat and water. Would have to build a fire within the next couple days, get dried out. He did not want foot problems.

Parrots screeched. Smaller birds peeped. Bugs chirred. He didn't see any fruit, but late afternoon he found a patch of bamboo-like caña agria, which he deleafed, peeled, and passed around. The pulp tasted refreshing and sweet. Not very filling, but it was enough to wash the taste of travel out of his mouth.

"Well," he said. "Suppose we should call it a day."

"Can't stop already," Hannigan said. "It's an hour till the light's gone."

"More," Walt said. "And I'd like to use that light to build a shelter."

"From what? Jaguar? We got guns."

He shook his head. "Ants."

"Ants?"

"Ants, man. They're the worst. I don't know why we're waging war on some dumb aliens when the whole goddamn planet is overrun by ants."

Hannigan set his hands on his hips. "Unless that pack of yours is full of Raid, I don't see what we're supposed to do about it."

Walt lifted his shirt and fanned his belly. Not that it helped. "Hammocks. I'm guessing you left yours at home."

"We got a couple tents. Some netting. We aren't gonna get eaten alive, are we?"

"No. Probably not. Look, a few nights on the ground won't kill you. Unless the wrong kind of snake crawls up your pants. You guys live in Los Angeles, right?"

Hannigan tipped back his head. "What's left of it."

"And that place was fucked up even before the plague. But this is the jungle. The whole thing blows. And it blows even worse when ants are chewing you up in your sleep, and all you've had to eat is grass, and your feet haven't been dry for three days. Little things matter."

"I got it, man. Let's string up some hammocks."

Walt picked out a few small, bendable trees, roping them together and suspending his hammock. Hannigan had enough netting for a couple more; they fashioned a fourth out of one of the tents. That left three men on the ground. Walt thought about offering one of them his hammock, then concluded they could go fuck themselves.

He woke sore. Hadn't done much trailblazing lately. Ken took up the machete in the early morning and was spelled within an hour. Despite the protests of Hannigan and another man whose goatee was getting rather overgrown, Lorna took her turn, too, whacking at the brush with loose-armed professionalism. Walt ranged to either side of their southwesterly trail, letting the jungle's pathways take him where they would. In places the canopy choked out the sun so completely that nothing more than grass grew in the shadows, allowing them to walk at something near a normal rate.

With the sun hours past apex, Walt found a cenote. He whistled the others over to the circular hole straight down the limestone into a pool of creamy blue water. It wasn't an especially large one, forty feet across, but that was good, it meant he had plenty of rope. He lowered the bucket over the rim, let it fill halfway, and hauled it back up to the surface, the tough plastic banging thinly against the stone, water dripping back to the pool below.

"Probably want to boil this," he said. "The Ancient Maya used to throw people into these things."

Lorna frowned. "Surely they haven't reverted so quickly."

"Probably not. But animals could have fallen in. Anyway, I'm not a fan of taking hour-long shits even if I've got a Stephen King book handy, so I say we boil it. Can dry our socks, too."

It hadn't rained in the last few days. He sent the others to scoop up the driest grass and fallen branches they could find while he peeled bark from the trees and shredded it into a wooly mass. He set the kindling beside the trunk of a tall, broad-leafed tree. He still had 23 Bic lighters. He used his lucky pink one to light the fire. Ken strung up a line for their socks. Walt set his pan on a rack over the fire and filled it with water, then sat on a rock, barefoot, shoes steaming.

"This," Ken said from the stump beside him. "This isn't so bad."

"I don't think I'll miss it," Walt said.

"You didn't grow up down here, did you?"

"New York. By way of Long Island."

"Crazy," Ken said. "And you wind up here and you make it."

Walt shrugged. "People have made it here for thousands of years."

One of the troops came back with two freshly killed iguanas, which they spitted and roasted. Hannigan had salt. Walt salivated at the sight of it. It had nearly disappeared from the ruins, looted long ago by other survivors. He'd tried evaporating seawater to make his own, but it was a tedious process, taking days to create enough to season a single meal of meat or roots.

It was the best day and the best meal they'd have for some time.

They walked on through the implacable jungle, feet aching, blisters popping, socks drenched. Their food dwindled. Walt sighed, considered the others, then smashed open what appeared to be a giant heap of dung. The termite grubs inside were better than nothing. They caught a bird with a broken wing and shared a quart of berries Walt was fairly sure weren't poisonous. He angled further and further west, certain he'd find the road soon, but either they were traveling slower than he thought or the map was wrong.

People got touchy. Hannigan especially. Walt handed out orders in gruff clips. He wasn't any happier than they were. He refused to admit they were lost. Not in a meaningful way. The road was to the west. Even if the jungle had already consumed the asphalt, the ocean would only be a few miles beyond it. They'd be able to fish at least. Find their way to a highway and follow it up to the boat.

For the first time on the trip, Walt went to bed with an empty stomach. Starlight sifted through the canopy. If he'd been on his own, he could keep himself fed easily enough. The problem was all these other mouths. Killing resurgent aliens no longer sounded all that fun. He ought to abandon these guys to the wilds and head back to his pyramid-throne. He resolved to give it two more days.

At noon, they stopped to eat their remaining berries and a few of the knuckle-sized flowers Walt knew were safe. They were reddish and sweet, but didn't do much to fill the stomach.

Hannigan plunked down beside him on a log. "Let me ask you something."

"Shoot."

"You know where in Christ we are?"

He gestured to the trees. "The jungle."

"How close to the road?"

"Close."

The man's ruddy face broke into a rueful grin. "Specifics, man. My belly's grumbling. I got the runs. My feet are no good. Right now, 'close' doesn't cut it."

Walt poked a stick at an ant, crushing it into the dirt. "In case you haven't noticed, this place is fucking huge. I've only been down here a couple years. We left my back yard a long time ago."

"Your brilliant plan was to cut brush through a jungle you've never set foot in?"

"I know enough to get by on my own. I've never led an expedition."

"Great. Fucking great." Hannigan stood, pacing through the weeds. "You're the one who took us offroad. I think it's time you stepped up."

He stretched out his legs. "What exactly would you like me to do?"

"Prove you're worth it! Prove to me there's a reason we sailed all the way down here and crossed six hundred miles of miserable shit just to pick up one more piece of it."

"Why?"

"Why? Because we thought we needed you." Hannigan laughed. His smile broke; he flung his canteen at a trunk. It connected with a hollow clunk. "So you killed a few aliens. That was years ago. What can you do for us now? Why don't you give me one good reason why I shouldn't punch your smirking mouth?"

"Well," Walt said, gazing into the trees. "I've got one reason after all."

"Come on. Love to hear it."

"For one thing, I know better than to go hollering on in hostile land," he said. "For another, if I try really, really hard, I may be able to talk them into not killing us."

He pointed across the jungle. In the shadow of the trees, four men stood in perfect stillness, so short you could almost mistake them for children. Their unblinking eyes looked down the barrels of AK-47s.

3

The falling sun splintered on the waves. She thundered down the hill, running so fast she knew she'd trip, skin her elbows and face across the asphalt. She kept her balance. Between the docks and the house, men shouted, waved guns. Martin called after her. She didn't slow.

Her dad struggled to his feet, staggering away from the attackers, hands raised. He gestured behind him. Her mom disappeared into the house. The men who had struck him edged forward. One held out a pistol, the other cocked a club.

Raina screamed.

They all turned. Her dad, the men closing on him, the others watching from the dock and the deck of the boat tied to the cleats. She gripped her knife, running for the man with the pistol, zigzagging in, because you can't allow them a straight shot. The man hopped back a step and leveled his gun. Her dad shouted and ran forward, shielding his head with one hand. The man with the gun planted his feet. Raina showed her teeth. Her dad bowled into her ribs, scooping her up, pinning her knife to her side.

The man with the gun glanced toward the sailboat. Raina wriggled against her dad's grip, but his hands and arms were hardened by daily fights with wind and ropes and sails.

The man with the club squinted at Raina, then nodded. "She'll do."

"You won't touch her," her dad stated.

"Are you under the illusion we're bargaining?"

Her dad groaned, a sickly sound she could feel in her ribs. He crushed Raina's head to his chest, blocking her view. She felt him jerk his head toward the house.

"Why not both?" said the man with the club.

"We don't have all day," said the other man. "Choose."

"Shit. That fruit ain't ripe yet."

Feet slooshed through the grass toward the house. Raina squirmed. Her dad crushed her harder yet, turning his body so she faced the docks. The screen door squeaked and slammed. Her mom screamed but was cut off while the note was still rising.

"Dad!" Raina choked.

He squeezed her so tight she could barely breathe. The men in the yard shouldered their rifles, sheathed their knives. Some elbowed each other. Some stared at the sky. Her father's arms quivered. His chest shook. She fought to free her arms but he clamped down. She wriggled her face into his neck and bit his skin. He yelped, drew back, then nudged his head into hers.

"What are you trying to do, Raina?" he whispered. "Fight?"

"We have to stop them!"

"And then what? Do you want them to shoot us? Do you want to die and leave your mother alone?" He hugged her to him. "This is the only way we stay together."

She bit his neck harder, tasting blood. He didn't move. She screamed and squeezed her eyes shut, mashing her face into the sweat and blood trickling from his skin. His shoulders shook. He relaxed his hold and she fell away and shuddered. Gulls cawed on the breeze. The breakers curled in one after another, hissing into the sand.

A man rose from the deck of the sailboat and leapt to the dock with a rattle of wood. He was tall, burly, bearded, and bald. He spat into the sea and strolled onto dry land.

"What the hell are we standing around for?" He gazed across his men. "Is the day that nice?"

"Trig and Holsen," one of the men said. "They're inside."

A pained look crossed the bearded man's face. He crossed the grass. The screen door banged behind him. Raina wriggled in her dad's grip to face the house. The bearded man emerged a minute later, trailed by the man with the pistol, whose face was flushed, scratched, and grinning, and the man with the club, who walked stiffly, expression as dark as the water beneath the docks.

The bearded man stopped beside her dad and gestured at the sea. "One week. You understand?"

Her dad nodded. "One week."

The men thumped down the dock, joking, pointing north along the shore. Sailors hollered out, bringing in lines, poling the boat away from the pier. Her dad set her down. She turned to the house. In the trees at the edge of the yard, a pale face—Martin—pulled back into the leaves.

Her dad set his hand on her shoulder and looked her in the eye. "Stay here. If they come back, shout as loud as you can. Do you understand me?"

She nodded. Her knuckles were stiff around her knife. Its edge was red. So was a line on the side of her dad's gray t-shirt. He smiled. Guiltily, she put the blade away. He stood and regarded the house for a long moment. The surf seethed up the shore.

"Dad," she said.

He started, smiled again, and walked to their home, closing the screen door silently.

Raina sat in the grass and whispered the men's names. Holsen. Trig. Holsen. Trig. She closed her eyes and pictured their faces until she'd never forget them.

Flies buzzed on the kelp stranded along the tideline. She got her knife out and cleaned it. She turned to the house, then stepped closer, telling herself she just wanted to hear them speaking, to know her mother was okay. She paused after each step, but all she heard was gulls and the wind.

Twenty feet from the house, her mother's face appeared in the kitchen window. It was blank and white and drawn. Her eyes found Raina but stared right through her, glassy, without focus, the eyes of the fish on the deck of a ship.

* * *

Her father grunted and wound in the winch. Fish slid across the deck. She clubbed them and gutted them and set them in the cooler. Her dad watched her shuck the guts into the water. She reached for another croaker. He turned away and stared out to sea.

He brought the boat around and tied off at the docks. The yard was empty. Raina brought the coolers to the fire pit and rinsed off her hands. She went into the dark house. Her mom's door was closed. She changed her shirt and got her pack and walked back into the blinding sunlight and headed for the road.

"Going to the ruins?" her dad called.

She didn't turn around. She hiked up the middle of the asphalt, pushing herself, breathing hard. She didn't look back until the top of the hill. Back at the house, smoke rose from the fire pit, a small gray rope climbing up the sky. The alien ship waited in the bay. She looked at it and said the words that kept it from moving, then walked over the hill, keeping to the shade of the trees. She got to the mall, faltered, and kept walking, heading to Western, which didn't make sense, because it ran to the north. After a long, long climb, she looked down on the towers rising from the valley, high brown mountains strung out behind them. She walked until the sun set and then kept walking more.

She came home three days later. Her dad whirled from the kitchen counter, knife in hand. His eyes were baggy and wild.

"What happened to your face?"

"I had to fight a dog," she said.

He nodded as if he understood. "Well, are you ready to fish?"

"Ten minutes."

Her parents' door was still closed. Raina went to her room to change her socks and underwear and eat one of the overripe, half-sweet lemons sitting on her desk. She threw the peel in the pit outside her window and walked down to the pier.

The men came back a week later. Her dad made her stay inside while he walked down to the dock carrying two bags, one large and one small. He handed them to a sun-wizened woman and came back inside. Raina watched the crew shove off and continue up the coast.

"They'll be back every month," her dad said. "The first Sunday. I don't want you to talk to them."

"We should kill them."

He blinked at her, eyes wide in his deeply tanned face. "We can't."

"Why not? Don't they bleed?"

"Of course they do."

"Then we should make them."

His face hardened. For a moment, she thought he might agree. He shook his head. "All they want is a few fish. Some salt. Small price for peace."

Past the docks, a pelican folded its wings and plunged into the waves. Sunlight flashed from the ever-changing water. It was a beautiful day in Los Angeles.

* * *

Her mom's door opened three weeks later. Wordless, she came into the kitchen and sat at the table. Raina brought her tea from the kettle boiling on the wood stove. Finally, her mom smiled.

Days turned into weeks, weeks to months. The sailboat came every month and her dad brought the crew their bags of fish and salt. Raina watched from the window. Once, one of the sailors said something and her dad laughed. Raina went to her room and closed the door and put her face into her pillow and screamed.

She saw Martin every week or two. Just like everyone, he acted like nothing had happened. He didn't talk about it and neither did she. He had collected more of the light-stakes and tiled a board with their solar panels, but most of the time the radio didn't work, and even when it did, he heard nothing but static.

Five months after the men first landed at their dock, Raina finished scraping salt from one of the drying-tarps and went into the house for a drink. The dim kitchen smelled herbal and brackish. Her mother stood in front of the stove. Steam spouted from the kettle.

"What are you making?" Raina said.

Her mom's shoulders jumped. "Tea."

"Can I have some?"

She went still. "This is medicine. It would make you sick."

Raina frowned and made herself some Earl Gray from one of the dried old packets. They were almost out; she would have to scavenge soon. They should start growing their own. This dependence on the old homes was bad. The sailors were due to arrive that Sunday. Raina asked her dad if he wanted anything from the Home Depot, then took his list and her pack and hiked into the ruins. She found his screws and a spare ratchet set and went into the outdoor garden. Except for the cacti and some small yellow flowers, all the plants had died long ago, brown twigs sticking from the dried-out potter's soil. She searched every single rack of seed packets, but she didn't find any tea.

In case the men in the boat were still at the dock, she made her way home through the trees. A broken stick stuck from the roots of the magnolia. Raina shuffled through the crunchy carpet of broad, mustard-brown leaves. The soil around the stick was loose. She scraped it away with her knife. The flat of her blade snagged on something yielding. Too-small fingers curled in the shadow of the tree.

She pushed back the dirt and tamped it down with her shoe.

A new family moved into the house down the shore, a man and two women. At night, their voices drifted on the wind, giggling, shrieking in the surf. Raina scratched her symbol into the trunks of the trees between their house and her parents'; if they came this way at night and they meant bad things, Raina would wake up and be ready. It was the same symbol she'd carved into the pilings beneath the pier in the city, a circle bisected by a vertical line. It had kept her safe from scavengers and dogs. It hadn't warned her when her new parents came for her, but they were there to help, so it had stayed silent.

The year turned over to rain and fog and cold nights. After a few weeks, it got warm again, though she still needed a coat when she went out at night. A group of a dozen people came to the coast and settled up the hill in the big yellow house with the pillars and the reddish tile roof. Raina's dad went to see them and make sure they were good. Except for one shriveled old woman, they were all young and lean and pretty.

"They don't know what the hell they're doing," her dad chuckled, shaking his head.

He went to see them again anyway, especially on the days when her mom closed herself in her room. He said they needed help, especially with the raiders on the boat, who had begun to ask for firewood and grain as well as their big bag of dried fish and their small bag of salt.

Her dad must not have given the young people good advice. The sailors tied at her father's dock, collected their tribute, then headed up the hill to the sprawling Spanish house. Gunshots crackled from the heights. Screams. Through the kitchen window, Raina watched the men come back to the dock. Trig and Holsen were smiling. The bald man with the beard toweled blood from his hands, a brooding look weighing down his eyebrows and mouth.

After they left, her father climbed up the hill and stayed with the young people for two hours. He came back with eyes so distant they looked like they could see past the end of the ocean. He sat on the dock and watched the birds, then came inside and went into his room without knocking on the closed door. Raina went into the trees to fetch the skull of the little blue shark they'd caught last summer. He didn't smell anymore, but she still called him Reek. She climbed up on the roof and set the skull against the chimney to watch over the house.

She went fishing with her father the next afternoon. When they finished, Raina walked past him on the dock and he hooked a finger into her collar and gave her a smile.

"I'm going to start making some trips soon," he said. "I'm going to need you to watch over your mother."

"Did the pirates kill all those people?"

"A couple." He shook his head. "If anyone comes, I want you to take her into the trees and hide. You're better at that than any of us."

"What if they still come for us?"

"Then you do whatever it takes."

She went to make sure her knife was sharp, but it always was. Her dad left three days later. An hour after the screen door banged, her parents' door squeaked.

"Do you want some tea?" her mom said.

"Sure."

Her mom crumbled brittle yellow newspapers and lit the stove and went to the old laundry room for one of the jugs of fresh water. She sat at the table and waited for the water to boil.

"You never told us how you did it," the woman said.

Raina looked up from her comic book. "Did what?"

"Survived."

She turned the page. "I don't remember."

"Really? But you were out there for over a year."

"All I remember is when you came to find me."

"That's incredible." Her mom gazed at the kettle. "You don't remember how you did it? How you made it day to day? Weren't you scared?"

"At first."

"Then what?"

Raina thought. "I changed."

Her mom leaned forward. "How?"

"I watched the things that scared me. The dogs and the night and the ocean. Then I watched how the cats jumped up where the dogs couldn't get them, and how the possums used the night to hunt in safety, and how the pelicans didn't fight the tide no matter how big the waves."

She gave Raina a funny look. "I thought you didn't remember."

"Only a little," Raina said. "When it was quiet and I was alone."

"You didn't let it get to you. You watched and you learned."

The kettle whistled. After a moment, her mom got up and took it from the stove.

After she finished her tea, she told her mom she was going for a walk, then got her snares from her room and headed to the hills. Once she got high enough and inland from the coast, the houses stopped dead, replaced by wild swaths of trees. She walked in the cool shade. At the first sign of tracks, she knelt and set a snare. She didn't go home until she'd prepped each one.

She washed the clothes, scrubbing out the sea salt and the dirt in the big orange bucket they kept out back, then hung them on the lines to dry in the wind. She busied the rest of the day sweeping the garage and the porches and scraping the boat and mopping its fish-grimy decks. Night came at last. Her mom kissed her goodnight and went to bed early. Raina waited half an hour, then pulled the screen from her window and dropped outside.

With her dad gone, she needed more than her symbols scratched in the trees to keep them safe. It wasn't the best time to ask the moon—it would be the evil eye tonight, the slanted half-moon glowering down from the clouds—but she had no other choice. And if the evil eye appreciated her courage, perhaps it would be the best time of all.

She ran up the hill toward the woods. The moon watched her every step, bathing her in silver suspicion. She ignored it for now. The trees swallowed her up, hiding her from the moon's disapproval. She stopped now and then to listen and make sure she wasn't being followed. Once, she heard the slow, quiet shuffle of a possum, but that was all.

Her first three snares were empty. The fourth held a rabbit. She was afraid it was already dead, but it had just struggled itself into exhaustion; when she reached for it, it jerked limply. She untied the snare from the shrub she'd anchored it to, grabbed the rabbit around the neck, and carried it to the clearing. Offering it in this way meant the moon would get the rabbit's spirit instead of her. She didn't like that. Not because she wanted it for herself; although rabbits could teach you to be swift and alert, she already had many. But she didn't trust what that thing in the sky would do with it.

Yet she had no choice. Under the judgment of the sky's angled eye, she cut the bunny's throat and showed its blood to the moon. In the dim light, the fluid was black. The rabbit gurgled but went still very soon. Raina watched the heavens. Thin clouds streamed in from the south, blinding the moon, but quickly dispersed. When the silvery eye reopened, it was watching Raina's enemies instead.

Its protection proved true; the men from the boat made no unexpected visits. Her dad came home safe, too, gifting her with a small bag of golden raisins. He left again a couple days later. It became routine. Once he left for a week straight. Raina climbed up on the roof and sat down next to Reek.

"Where do you think he's going?" she said. "Do you think he's trying to get away from us?"

Reek's bones grinned up at her, teeth as sharp as the day they had caught him. She wanted to throw him off the roof and jump on him, but he belonged to her. That wasn't how you treated your people. Your family. You had to look out for them even when they laughed at you. They were a part of you; when you hurt them, you hurt yourself.

Besides, Reek was the only shark she had. She might need him some day.

That afternoon, her mom asked her if she knew where to find wine. She did. She brought it back and the bottles disappeared one or two per day. Her mom asked about vodka and she brought it back in big plastic bottles with red labels. These took as long as a week to empty. Raina brought as many as she could find. When you needed something, you had to take all you could get before it went away.

She tried it herself one night, but it burnt her throat and left her gasping. Then she felt warm and had another drink. It was the end of winter, but the wind blew from the south, carrying warmth with it. Only the water was cold. She swam out past the shoreline where the waves were calm and felt the moonlight on her skin. The moon had grown fat, gorging itself on clouds until it was nearly full. It would be too bloated to care for her offerings right now. That's why it was most dangerous to hunt under its full light. But when it shrank away to nothing, that's when it was hungriest, too, and would guide you to your prey in exchange for a sip of the blood.

In the morning she felt awful. She drank more tea and left the house while her mom's door was still closed. A breeze followed her up the hill. Up top, she spied down on the house of the man with the two wives, but they weren't awake yet. Bottles glinted from their back yard. Way up north, the crashed ship still hadn't moved from its place off Venice Beach. She nodded to herself and continued to the mall.

She tried every store around it—the Ralph's, the Smart & Final, the Trader Joe's, the gas stations, the Pollo Loco—but couldn't find any tea seeds. It didn't make any sense. How had they expected to get more tea when no one had any seeds? She knew there weren't any in the mall, because she knew everything there was to know in the mall, but she went to its plazas anyway, palms flapping overhead. She climbed the metal staircase to the walkway connecting the second-floor shops, scanned the parking garage for movement, then went inside the Macy's. Inside the airy hallway beyond it, she strolled between the squares of light, careful not to let it touch her, remembering how her father held her back while the men in the boat went inside the house.

She didn't hear Martin this time. He was learning. Even so, she saw his movement reflected in a store window, a thin boy who would never be tall. She crept behind the escalator, drew her knife, and waited. He turned the corner.

"Where does tea come from?" she said.

"Man!" Martin leapt back, flailing his arms in front of his face. "I thought I had you."

"Some day."

"Tea comes from China." He straightened, as if delivering a book report. "And India. Japan. All those places."

"Does it grow here?"

"This area is a Sunset Zone 23," he said. "Or 24? Whichever it is, everything grows here."

The air smelled dusty and warm. It would be hot today. "What zone is Catalina?"

"The island?" he said. "Well, all of it's coastal, and it's pretty hilly, so I'd bet it's just like here. Why?"

She stared at him until he looked away. She touched the lucky shell in her pocket. "Who are they?"

"The people from the boat?"

"Yeah."

"I'm not sure," he said slowly. "People started taking boats to Catalina as soon as the Panhandler hit. I think they thought it would be isolated. Within a couple weeks, my mom and I started to see fires." He gazed into the hollowed-out shoe store. "One time, a boat washed up down the shore. They'd tried to burn it but it had gone out. It was full of bodies."

She touched the handle of her knife. "No wonder they're so quick to hurt others. Their people were built by it."

"Well, you'd better get used to them. They annexed us."

"An necks?"

"They took us over. We're part of their land."

"No we're not," she laughed.

Martin's face went as sober as an angel's. "Raina, you can't let them hear you say that. They own us now."

"They only own the people who let them."

She wasn't about to hear more of his nonsense. She left the mall and headed west. A church stood on the next hill, a pretty thing the Spanish must have built hundreds of years ago. Most churches gave her the creeps—if she knew anything, it was that God didn't much like humans anymore—but the steeple of this church was a spike, and if God reached down to get her, He would impale His hand and leave to swat someone else instead. She jogged up the steps to the big wood front doors, then climbed the twisty staircase to the top of the tower, where she could see the whole city at once.

She had thought her new parents were strong for surviving the plague, but they were as weak as everyone else. When the water went dry, you found a new stream. When the food ran out, you walked away. That's what her year in the ruins had taught her.

But in that year, they had been the only ones who'd tried to help instead of hurt her.

She frowned at a loud crow. She didn't have to make a decision yet. That was one more thing the ruins had taught her. You don't move just because you're scared. Movement for the sake of movement exposes you to things you didn't know were there. No. You move when you know what to do.

She walked home. She let the screen slam behind her. In the shadows of the kitchen, her parents detached. Her dad was home. Her mother grinned and adjusted her shirt.

"Hi Raina," she said. "Find anything nice?"

"Yes," Raina said, "but then it broke."

While she thought about whether to run out on her parents, she filled her days with fishing, searching for tea seeds, and talking with Martin about the men from Catalina. The boat came again and she watched from the window while her dad handed over their things. She didn't like this. A stray dog will be wary at first, but if you don't chase him off, he'll get bolder. Especially when he has friends.

She was on her way back from the church a few days later when she passed a man on the road. He smiled and tipped his hat; the bill was streaked with dried white sweat. His sneakers were pasted with duct tape. A bedroll and a bulging bag projected from his back. He winked at her, comfortable on the road with the locals.

Her mom sat under the umbrella in the front yard. "Your father and I are going on a trip this afternoon."

"Where are you going?"

"We'll be gone two or three days. We've already spoken to Wendell. If you need anything, go see him."

Raina got a cup and the jug of clean water on the counter. "You're just telling me now?"

"Well, we only just decided," her mom said. "We're going to see a friend. Will you be okay?"

"I'll be fine."

Her dad emerged from their room and grinned. "Tell her?"

Her mother winked at her. "Yep."

"Then I suppose we'd better pack."

Raina went out back to scrape salt from the tarps and bring the evaporated and recondensed water inside. Her parents didn't take long to pack. They all had emergency bags waiting for them in the front closet. Besides that, all they needed to put together was more bedding, a few clothes, and whatever luxuries they thought they'd like along the way.

Her father hugged her tight. "You'll be fine."

"You've never left me alone before," Raina said.

"All things considered, I think you're plenty old enough." He laughed. "Don't you?"

"You don't have to work," her mom said. "Just stay safe. Go see Wendell if you run into any trouble."

She watched them climb up the hill. As they reached the top, panic shuddered through her, but it was replaced at once by a calm coldness. They would be back. And if they weren't, it wouldn't matter.

She hadn't had any for a while, so before it got dark, she went to the docks to cut mussels from the piling. She shucked them from their shells and boiled them with lemongrass from the garden and pepper from the cabinet. She had a bite of chocolate for dessert, then poured a small amount of vodka into her thermos, cut it with water, and sipped it as she prowled the shore toward the home of the man with two wives. The moon was fat and full again. Too drunk and logy to do anything but watch what was beneath it. The man and his two wives sometimes swam naked in the waves and the moon that night was perfect.

There were no blankets or bottles on the tideline. The house was dark. She crept through the tall grass, listened, and then, emboldened by the warmth in her veins, knocked on the door. No one answered.

That was weird enough that she tried knocking again in the morning to check on them, but they were still gone. She went up the hill to the house full of young people and asked for Chris, the woman who came to her parents' house on occasion to borrow a tool or a spice, but the blond woman who answered the door said she was out. Raina headed west across the dead lawns overlooking the ocean from their heights. Wendell stooped over his yard, hacking at weeds with a short-handled hoe.

He blinked at her, mouth half-open, then recognized her and smiled. "Fall into trouble already?"

"I got bored," Raina said.

The old man spread his hands at the hills and the sea. "With all this to explore?"

"I got bored of not finding what I'm looking for."

"What's that? A comb?"

She gave him a look. "Tea seeds."

"Why do you want tea seeds?"

"To make tea trees."

"I think they grow on bushes." Wendell wiped his hands on his overalls. "And I don't think they grew a whole lot of tea in Southern California. If they did, you might find some at the nurseries."

She considered the rich brown soil. "I saw a stranger on the road the other day. He had a hat and tape on his shoes. I didn't like how he looked."

"Everyone looks funny after they've been on the road long enough," Wendell said. "Though he had some funny questions, too."

"Like what?"

"Like what I thought of Catalina."

The little farm was just high enough up the hill to make out the black edge of the crashed ship. Raina watched it a moment. "What did you tell him?"

Wendell chuckled. "That I think whatever they tell me to think. He smiled and thanked me and went on his way."

She talked with the old man a while longer, but her mind had already moved on. Her parents' energy. The suddenness of their departure and how it had come right on the heels of the stranger's visit. The stranger's single question for Wendell. It was all connected, and Raina had a pretty good idea what it meant.

Her parents were rebels. Her parents were rebels, and she wanted to join them.

4

The men from the jungle waited in poised silence. They were short and deeply tanned and wore jeans and t-shirts for Joust and Pac-Man and celebrating the San Francisco Giants' 1989 World Series victory, which Walt was 90% certain had never taken place.

"Only four of them," Hannigan said. "We've faced worse."

"Four of them they want you to see." Walt set his hands on his knees. "The rest are behind us."

Hannigan craned around. One of his men took a step forward, speaking in Spanish. Machine guns tracked him.

"Tell your dudes to stay still," Walt said. "These people observe the Twenty Paces Rule."

"Twenty Paces Rule?" Hannigan said.

"Come within twenty paces, and they shoot."

"Seems harsh."

"It's how they kept the disease away." Walt rose slowly, hands up, and called across the tree-shadowed grass. "Hola. Somos amigos. Hooray!"

One of the men lowered his AK by an inch. He spoke in Mayan at a clip Walt could barely comprehend. "Who are you and what are you doing here?"

Walt replied in halting, poorly-accented Mayan. "Walt, and leaving."

"Why are you here?"

Hannigan leaned closer. "What's he saying?"

"He's saying the Irishman should shut up." Walt turned back toward the gunmen. "We go through."

The other man stalked forward, returning his gun to his shoulder. "Go through us?"

"Passing through!" Walt tried in Spanish, then moved back to the Mayan he'd picked up from the people around the pyramid. "We go." He gestured at Hannigan's crew. "We go away. Please."

"You bring sickness."

"No," he said. There was one word he knew well: "Survivors."

The man with the gun said a word he didn't understand. Walt shook his head dumbly. The man tried again, then hissed through his teeth and said, "You can't be here."

Leaves stirred in the shrubs behind Walt. Hannigan grabbed his arm. "What's going on?"

"We're about to be turned into fertilizer."

"We have salt. Coffee beans. It's as good as money ever was."

"Great," Walt said. "While I attempt to buy passage, you figure out how to convince them not to just kill us and take it."

He knew the Mayan word for salt, but not coffee beans, especially the green, unroasted, pea-like beans Hannigan scrabbled from his pack, an action that drew shouts from the gunmen. Walt spoke in a mix of Mayan, Spanish, and English, first calming them, then indicating he would like to offer their goods as a toll.

"Put the something on the something," said the man with the machine gun, using several words that meant nothing to Walt.

"The what on the what?"

"The gifts," the man tried. "Put the gifts on the something. On the tree."

"The log?" Walt said in English, pointing to a downed trunk covered with moss and fungus and ants.

"Yes."

"Okay, we're doing an Arab barter thing here," Walt told Hannigan. "Set the salt and the coffee on that log, then back off and let them inspect it."

"And then?" Hannigan said.

"Make your peace with Jesus, because they're going to shoot us anyway."

Hannigan glanced between his men, then at Lorna. "Things might be about to get shooty. If they do, Ken hits their leader, the rest of us drop in a scatter-and-fold."

"Not likely," Ken said.

"You got a better plan? It'll work if you let it." Carefully, maintaining eye contact with the Maya, Hannigan set both bags on the log and backed away through the thick brush. The others followed. The men with the gun stalked forward.

"It's the lack of gratitude that really gets me," Walt said. "I killed the aliens. They should be giving coffee to me." He muttered the Mayan word for the creatures, then mimed an explosion. Leaves crackled beneath his retreating feet.

The youngest of the strangers frowned, eyes flicking between Walt's. He babbled something to his leader, who scowled and stopped to argue with the young man. It was too fast for Walt to follow, but every now and then he caught a word: alien, ship, doubt.

"What's going on?" Hannigan murmured.

Walt shrugged. "The young guy thinks you'd taste better boiled, but their leader says boiled meat loses its flavor."

The leader asked Walt a question. When Walt shrugged and shook his head, the man repeated one word, pointing at the sky.

"I don't get it," Walt said.

The young man who'd recognized him rolled his eyes. "He wants to know if you're the Starbreaker."

"You speak English?"

The man waggled his hand. "Some."

"Yeah," Walt said. "That was me."

The man spoke to his captain, who said something about Chichen Itza. The man turned to Walt and translated. "He asks if you're the Starbreaker, the man from Chichen Itza, then how many steps does it have?"

"Counting the top?" Walt said.

"Counting all."

"365," he said. "Just like the year. 91 on each side, plus the one at the top."

The man grinned and spoke to his leader, who gestured in a swooping, skeptical motion. The young man turned back to Walt. "Is that all of them?"

Walt flapped his hands. "I never counted how many were on the inside. That staircase is scary as shit. Always felt like the whole pyramid was going to close on me like a fist."

The two Maya spoke at length, interrupted by a third member who shouldered his gun and gestured as if stroking an invisible beard. After a minute, the young man looked to Walt.

"Where you going?"

"Puerto Aristo," Walt said. "Far southwest."

"They're taking your gifts. I'll show you the road. If they see you in the woods again, they'll shoot you."

Hannigan pounded Walt on the back. "Nicely done."

"What's this Starbreaker business, anyway?" Walt said to the young man. "You guys think I'm a demigod or something?"

"What are we, retards?" the man laughed. "It just sounds cool."

The other Maya took the coffee and salt and said goodbye to the young man, who led Walt and the others to a winding trail. As they stepped onto the relatively dry, uncluttered path, Hannigan's men grinned at Walt. Lorna gave him a look that might or might not have been significant. Walt winked.

Birds called from the branches. The young man swore and whacked his machete into a bright green snake curling across the trail. Hannigan picked up the corpse and coiled it into a grocery bag for dinner.

"Some of my friends say you flew to the ship," the young man said to Walt.

Walt snorted and yanked a thumb at his back. "See any wings?"

The man rolled his eyes. "With a plane."

"Sorry. No, it was a balloon."

"That's what I told them. I told them the aliens shot any planes that came near. They told me a balloon is too stupid."

Walt laughed. "They're probably right."

The young man looked ready to say more, then pointed ahead. "There it is."

Abruptly, it was there, a swath of asphalt bordered by encroaching grass and saplings. The young man pointed them southwest—Walt had already known that much, at least—then handed Walt a pen and a folded piece of paper that turned out to be blank.

"What's this?" Walt said.

The man's eyebrows crunched together. "Can I have your autograph?"

"What?"

"I'm sorry." He reached for the paper.

"No, of course," Walt said. "But if I see this on eBay, I'll hunt you down like a dog."

The young man blinked. Walt scrawled his name on the crumpled paper. Back when he used to see himself as the next Bukowski—a vision that had no evidence whatsoever besides a mutual affinity for beer—he used to dream about this moment, the signing of an autograph for a grateful fan. Those dreams usually involved chesty women and not short, watchful jungle-dwellers, but even so, it felt pretty damn good.

"Here you go."

The young man grinned and pocketed it. Hannigan rolled his eyes. Lorna gave Walt a small and unreadable smile.

"Told you I'd find the road," Walt said. "Now let's get a move on."

They managed a couple hours along the highway before Ken returned from scouting to let them know he'd found a tour lodge with a working well. Walt and Lorna stoked a fire while the others hauled up buckets of water to scrub off the jungle and refill their canteens. Once the smoke was boiling up the chimney, Walt filled his plastic bucket, headed a short distance into the twilight jungle, spread his tarp beneath him to keep away the worst of the crawlies, and rinsed off himself and his clothes. He dressed in his spare pants and brought the rest to the fire to dry off.

Gunshots pealed from the trees a quarter mile off, but the rhythm was all wrong for fighting, with as much as three seconds passing between shots. None of the men seemed alarmed. A few minutes later, Ken and one of the troops returned with a clutch of rats, already gutted. They placed them over the fire. Hannigan got the green snake out of his grocery bag and peeled the skin in one long tube. He laid the meat alongside the rats.

Walt didn't blink. He'd eaten far worse. At least it was cooked, and didn't have an exoskeleton—the hard little feet of crickets always stuck in his throat. Hannigan brought in oranges from the garden out back, long gone wild. He sliced them into wedges and passed them around while the greasy, gamey smell of the meat permeated the too-warm lodge.

"You really did it, didn't you?" he said to Walt.

Walt spat a seed toward the corner. "I'm starting to wish I hadn't."

"Yeah? So they could finish the job? Wipe us out completely?"

"At least then I wouldn't have to hear anyone else accuse me of being full of shit."

Hannigan scratched his growing beard with his toothpick. "Did you have any idea what you were doing?"

"Not really, no," Walt laughed. "Still want me?"

"It's more need than want. It's complicated."

"You shoot them, they die. What's so complicated about that?"

"It's more than just us and the aliens," the man said. "There's another group, too. Gang-bangers. For all I know they've taken Long Beach by now. We need every edge we can get."

Walt wiped orange juice from his face. "Listen, that's tragic and all, but I'm not coming with you to shoot people."

"Our first concern is the aliens. You want to bow out after we get them under wraps, I'm sure the boss-man will send you on your way with a smile."

Fat sizzled from the other room. Walt nibbled the peel of his orange. It was bitter, but bitter was better than most flavors. "What's it like up there? Do you guys have government?"

Hannigan tugged his beard. "We got a president of sorts."

"How about electricity? Running water?"

"We built a wind turbine and a little solar. But without a proper grid, it's all messed up. You know what we use to grind flour?"

"What?"

The other man leaned in, smiling. "A watermill."

Walt spat out a piece of peel. "Really? Do you make the workers wear clogs? Those little square hats?"

"Square hats?"

"Wait, I'm thinking about windmills. The Dutch. Who I guess are just as dead as everyone else. Man, the next generation won't know what the hell we're talking about, will they? They'll be as alien as the aliens."

Hannigan shook his head. "We got a few young ones, but we don't got time to teach them the old ways. We got fields to farm."

"At least you're not starving. How's the rest of the country doing?"

"Not great. We get a few wanderers every now and then, but from what I hear, the whole nation's a ghost town."

"At least American went out on top," Walt said. "Am I right?"

Hannigan gave him a look, then twitched his nostrils. "The rat's ready."

"I can't believe I consider that good news."

They ate. Split seven ways, there wasn't much meat to go around, the greasy little spears flavored with salt and pepper and a pinch of dried greens. Oregano? Thyme? It had been too long since Walt had either to remember. Whatever it was, after the slog through the jungle, it was good.

In the morning, they bottled all the water they could and set on down the road. Hannigan let one man range ahead and another trail behind. They were few enough and fit enough to do some jogging, padding along for ten or twenty minutes before one of them called for a slowdown. They made remarkable time—four to six miles per hour, sometimes more than fifty miles per day. It left Walt's feet in constant soreness, but his calluses prevented any major blisters.

He kept a sharp eye out for more tree-sign. Twice more, he had to detour into the jungle to circle around claimed territory. Once, they found an abandoned village, but all the dried food had long ago been eaten by rats and birds, and even the canned goods were useless, swollen with bacteria and botulism. Some of the gardens thrived and they spent a day harvesting bell peppers and potatoes and avocados and limes.

They passed a handful of real towns and cities, and three of the men made a desultory effort to get a car going, but they were rusted through by the tropical humidity, batteries dead for years. Probably all kinds of other shit wrong with them, too. Walt didn't know. Before the plague, he'd been a New Yorker.

It didn't matter. They emerged from the cover of the canopy four days later and followed the road through farmland gone to seed. The air was rich with pollen and salt. The horizon softened. A red crescent of sun sank into the sea.

"We left the boat a ways up north." Hannigan pointed past a pale cliff ten miles up the shore. "We'll camp here tonight, get to the ship and gear it up tomorrow, and shove off the day after that."

"How long's it been out here, a month?" Walt said. "I hope you hung onto your parking slip."

"We left a couple men with it."

"Hmm."

Hannigan eyed him. "Hmm what?"

"I wonder if we should be looking for more leather tarps."

They made camp in a farmhouse with a missing front door. Skeletons rested in three of the beds. A dog had gotten in at some point; sharded bone littered the floor, marrow cleaned out. The sun went down and they lit candles and ate potatoes baked the night before, which reminded Walt to check the kitchen for tinfoil. Tinfoil would be one of mankind's great losses. There might never be more of it, but it made a world of difference in keeping the grit and ash off your dinner. He lucked out and found a roll. Not that he expected to do a whole lot of cooking on the boat. Well, maybe they'd brought down a converted yacht or something. He added it to his pack.

He was plenty tired, but that made little difference to his body, which didn't seem to like the idea of closing its eyes on the desolate beach. After an hour of tossing, he got up, found his shoes, and wandered into the warm night. Insects buzzed from the boundary of the advancing jungle. Walt walked down the road until it dead-ended, then continued across the grassy dunes to the water's edge. A silhouette waited above the tideline. The moon and stars showed the man's gun.

"That you?" Walt called.

"Yep." Hannigan put the gun away. "Though if I'd known it was you, I wouldn't have bothered drawing down."

"Are you saying you could beat me down barehanded? I wouldn't argue. You look like shaved Donkey Kong."

"I used to play that game." The man grinned and spat into the surf. "What're you doing out here?"

"I think," Walt said, "that I'm scared."

"Scared?" Hannigan gestured to the starry night. "What's there to be scared of? Besides the panthers, pythons, and poisonous frogs?"

"Of Los Angeles. The aliens."

"After you damn near eradicated them?"

"Obviously I missed a few."

"Yeah, and they ought to be shitting their alien pants about you."

Walt snorted. "I was terrified the whole time I was on the ship. Anyway, the months of my life leading up to that point were pretty intense. I was in the right place for it. I haven't tangled with anything scarier than a barracuda in years."

"Barracuda are pretty nasty."

"I had a spear. And I think it was sick."

Hannigan scrunched his brow. "How do you know what a sick barracuda looks like?"

"Because when I cut it open it was more worms than meat."

"That's a thing I would rather not have heard." He tipped back his head and gazed at the shameless spread of stars. "Hard to believe something so pretty brought us something so nasty."

"Ah, those things don't care about us," Walt said, and instantly felt better about his place in the cosmos. "What brings you here?"

Hannigan shook his head at the sky. "Nothing."

"Then why don't you combine that nothing with another nothing and go to sleep?"

"It's my wife."

Walt glanced down the beach. "Married to the sea, are you?"

"She's out there on a mission of her own." Hannigan gestured vaguely. "I shouldn't complain. The world's still so far from safe. We ever want peace, we all have to absorb some risk."

"Be that as it may, how much would you pay for a cell phone right now?"

"You got one?" The man laughed. "Trade you for all the coffee beans you can carry."

Walt grinned, then walked down the beach until he got tired enough to sleep. The others got up early, clumping around on the hardwood floors. Walt woke groggy and angry. He supposed he could sleep on the boat.

They pan-fried bananas and boiled a few bivalves and small crabs someone had collected from the rocks. There was no proper walkway along the sea—turned out rural Mexican waterfronts were slightly less developed than Brooklyn boardwalks or the strands of Los Angeles—so they hiked along the grassy, hard-packed sand. Before the sun climbed to noon, they made their way around the northern cliffs where Hannigan had left the boat.

The sun beat down on an empty shore. Small gulls floated on the wind. Round gray birds waited for each wave to come to a stop, then darted into the foam and pecked at the water-softened sand. Walt shielded his eyes against the glare and got out his binoculars.

"Dude, where's your boat?"

"Must be further up," Hannigan said. "Around the next bend."

It wasn't. It lay in pieces across the shore, white foam lapping charred fiberglass and tangled rigging. A foot tumbled in the surf, bone sticking from a soggy calf, neatly sliced below the knee.

5

"Where did you go on your trip?" Raina said.

She stood at the railing, watching the fins of the dolphins arc through the waves. They weren't very playful today. No leaping or chasing. All business.

She had waited until they went out fishing together to ask her dad these things. She wanted to see what he said when her mom wasn't there. Parents were much better at lying to you when they were together.

"To stay with friends," he said.

"Did you have a good time?"

"Very."

A dolphin swam alongside the boat, turned on its side, and stared up at Raina. "Where do they live?"

"Up north," he gestured. "Along the bay."

"Close to the ship?"

"The mothership? Sure. You can see it from their front yard."

"They must be weird," she said.

Her dad laughed. "It's just a bunch of old metal."

He was wrong. And she thought he was lying. He reached for the crank to the winch. She picked up her club. When they finished and sailed home, she brought the coolers to her mom and lingered at the fire in the smell of woodsmoke and fresh fish.

"Where did you go the other day?" she said.

"Friends." Her mom glanced up from the grill's lattice and smiled. "They want to see you. Maybe another time."

"Where do they live?"

She waved north. "Marina Del Rey, I think? I'm not really sure where the old borders are."

"How did you meet them?"

"At the Dunemarket. Couple months ago. I swear I see new faces every time we go there."

Raina went around front to wash up, suddenly doubtful of herself. But two days later, she came back from the ruins and didn't let the screen door slam. She caught her parents by surprise in the kitchen; her dad saw her and stopped mid-sentence. He grinned at her, eyes lined with lies.

Raina went to the mall to talk to Martin, but he wasn't there. She walked downhill past the park where the skeletons sprawled from vast concrete pipes. She didn't know what the pipes had been for—they were big enough to funnel torrents of stormwater, but they didn't lead anywhere—but they had wound up as mass graves.

A flock of parrots flew past, red heads vivid atop their green bodies, cackling madly. She hid behind a tree and waited for them to go away. You couldn't trust a thing that laughed at the dead. Once it was safe, she trotted through the silent houses. Most were fenced, but their pickets and chain-link hadn't been able to keep out the only thing that mattered.

Martin and his mother lived on the south coast in a house that looked like a shrunk-down fairy-castle. Statues of angelic babies grew mossy in the yard. A high, peaked roof cast plenty of shade. There was no one out front, so she peeked through the porthole cut into the door to the side yard. Martin was down on the beach with a weathervane flapping in the wind.

"Hey," Raina said, padding through the sand. "Did your mom leave on a trip last week?"

Martin glanced up from a little black box connected to the vane by a string. "How'd you know that? Are you always stalking me?"

"Because I think they're planning to stand against the men from Catalina." She explained how her neighbors left at the same time as her parents, about the stranger on the road, and the single question he'd asked Wendell. "They're lying. They're lying but I can't prove it."

"Wait, they want to fight? What should we do?"

She gazed at him steadily. "Help them."

"That's crazy. We'll get killed."

"My parents are already involved. Already in danger. I won't sit by while they risk their lives."

Martin wiped his nose on his sleeve and twiddled a knob on the little black box. "I might have something for you. Watch my stuff while I go get it."

He set the box on the weathervane and ran through the yard to his house. She stared at the weathervane's churning wind-cups. Did he expect a shark to wallow up on the sand and eat it whole? Martin was strange. He worried too much about the wrong things. He came back a minute later and handed her a black device riddled with buttons.

"What's this?" she said.

"A tape recorder." He grinned. "So you can hear what they talk about when you're not around."

"It still works?"

"A lot of the purely mechanical stuff does. This one was probably ten years old before the plague hit. All you do is push these buttons." He clicked down two of them at once, then showed her how to shut it off. "The tape only records for an hour. You'll have to set it when you know they'll be alone together."

She tried the buttons for herself. "What about the batteries?"

"I put in good ones."

"What if they run out before I catch them?"

His face crumpled. "I don't have many good ones, Raina."

"What are you going to use them for? Is it more important than my parents' lives?" She held out her hand. "I'll bring them back if I don't use them up."

"You have to look for more for me, too."

"Fine."

He nodded unhappily and ran back to the house, reemerging with a clear plastic sleeve of four. She put them in her pack and wrapped her spare shirt around the tape recorder.

"I'll try not to drop it."

"Don't!" he said, reaching out.

She laughed and walked home. Out of sight beyond the trees, she got out the recorder and clicked it on and off, murmuring into it, testing it. Hearing her own tinny voice was uncanny, as if she were long dead and listening to her own captured spirit.

Her parents made a ritual of brushing and flossing their teeth before bed; except in the winter, they did this out back, where they could spit into the yard. Raina used the time to hide the recorder in their room. The first night she got nothing but the noise of the tape itself, a faint hiss like a wave forever sweeping up the shore. She had started taping too early. The second night she heard low murmurs and then laughter and fleshy smacks and moans. She listened for two minutes, then fast-forwarded; when she started it up again, they were speaking. She rewinded to the beginning of the conversation, which was dreamy and largely inaudible, clusters of words fighting to be heard from beneath the chair cushion Raina had zipped the tape recorder inside.

"...worried..." her mom said. "...so wild..."

"Not wild," her dad said. "Independent...fine."

"That's what worries...even need us?"

"These days? ...hope not." He coughed. "...showed her she doesn't have to live like some..."

Her mother laughed. "...had to cut the dirt off with an axe. Oh well. She'll be..."

The rest was indistinguishable. The recorder shut off with a click.

The third night Raina heard goodnights and the thunk of a glass set on a table. The fourth night she set the recorder wrong and taped nothing at all. On the recording of the fifth night, she could hear them crisply—she had snuck the tape recorder into the bookshelf, and learned to turn the volume all the way up. Aside from the constant low hiss and occasional warble of the tape, she could hear them as easily as if she'd been crouched in the room herself.

"When do you leave?" her mom said.

Her dad grunted. "Three days."

"Same as before?"

"Yeah. Bryson's."

"What this time?"

He chuckled. "What do you think?"

"Is that even plausible?"

"If we can make it look like an accident."

Her mom was quiet for a while. "It sounds dangerous."

He laughed. "You think it sounds dangerous to sabotage a gang of heavily armed killers?"

"My question is why it can't be someone else."

"It is someone else," he said. "It's half the shore. Listen. It's this or we leave."

"I know."

"After the tribute, we're barely making ends meet. We don't have enough left to trade. That means old clothes. No shot at gasoline. No medicine—"

"I know," her mom said.

Her dad gentled his voice. "I don't want Raina growing up in this. We either leave or get rid of them. I don't think starting over in this world is any less dangerous than fighting for what we've already built."

Her mom got very quiet. "I know."

"I love you."

"Yeah, yeah."

The wet noises followed. Raina clicked off the tape. The screen door banged closed. She pocketed the tape recorder and went to the kitchen, where her dad took hard flatbread from the counter and dusted it with salt.

"I want to go with you to see Bryson," she said.

He set down the salt shaker. "Bryson who?"

"Bryson who's going to attack the Catalinans."

"God damn it. Did your mom tell you that?"

She shook her head. "I listened."

He tipped back his head and stared at the ceiling, hands on his hips. "You are the sneakiest little rat. What did you do, hide outside the window?"

She smiled. Rats didn't reveal their secrets. "I want to help fight them."

"Then you're going to be a disappointed little girl."

"I'll follow you to Bryson's."

"So I won't go." He raised his eyebrows. "You don't like them, do you? The islanders?"

She stared right back at him. "I hate them."

"Then stay out of this. Don't try to follow me. Don't try to help. If you do anything to put yourself in danger, I'll cut my involvement on the spot."

Anger shook up from her bones. "That's not fair."

"Fair." He turned to the window. "I should ground you."

"What's ground me?"

"It's what parents used to do to kids who were having too much fun." He laughed, then covered his mouth.

She glared at him, fists clenched. "If it's that important, we should all help."

"What's important is that you have a future. The kind of future we imagined when we took you in." He raised his tanned and rope-roughened hands, silencing her. "This isn't a discussion. Bring it up again, and I'll never see Bryson again."

Raina glared more, but it did about as much good as she expected. She got to hear about their talk again when her mom got home from Wendell's. Her dad left three days later and her mom hung by her shoulder, watching, refusing to let her stray from the yard. Raina thought about going anyway—her mother couldn't stop her physically, and unless the woman nailed the windows shut and stood over her all night, she had no way to keep Raina in bed. But unless she made an offering to the moon, it would be hard to track her dad's cold trail, and if she tried, it would mean her mom would wake to the knowledge she had a husband who couldn't protect her and a daughter who didn't respect her.

Instead, Raina decided to work harder, to fill the cellar with canned perch and mussels, to mend the nets and scrape the hull, to prove she was no longer the child she'd been when they found her. He had decided to fight after all. If he wouldn't let her help directly, she could still pitch in by freeing up his time to prepare with the other rebels.

She brought the tape recorder and the two batteries she hadn't used back to Martin. The men came with their boats twice more. The nights grew less cold while the spring days turned blustery and rainy. Green sprouted from the garden. Her dad left once or twice per week, spending as much time away from the house as he did in it. Her mother went with him every second or third trip and they warned Raina to stay near the house and out of sight of strangers.

The men came again, extracting their portion of food and fuel from her father. By now it was a routine. Neither side needed to speak, though sometimes Trig—the man who'd carried the club—tried to needle her father. He never gave any sign he'd heard.

The raiders shoved off from the pier. Just a week later, they returned.

"Run," her dad told her. She pounded down the planks of their dock. A gunshot cracked the sky above her head and she skidded to a stop on the salt-worn wood. In the boat's prow, Trig pointed a rifle at her middle. He bobbed with the swells as the other men trimmed sails and guided the boat in to rest.

The tall bald man was the first off the boat. He smiled at her dad, deep folds warping the sun-worn skin around his eyes and mouth.

"We're here for your guns," said the man. "Don't make me take more than things."

Trig smiled at Raina. Her dad swabbed sweat from his brow. "We don't have any guns around here."

The bearded man barked. "And I have no lice. Give me your guns and don't make me do evil."

Her dad bulged his cheek. "Seems to me I'm not in much position to make you do anything."

"That's because you chose to have children instead of soldiers." He flipped his hand toward the yard. "Search the house until it feels used."

Trig laughed and jumped to the dock. Ten more men joined him, jarring the planks, bumping past Raina with the smell of sweat and sea. Their boot heels yanked grass from the yard. Her father grabbed her by the upper arm. The men filed inside their house. Wood thumped; glass smashed. The home went silent. Her mother emerged, wide-eyed, teeth bared. Raina's dad glanced at the man with the beard, who ignored him, then pulled Raina across the dock. In the sandy grass, he put his other arm around his wife, holding her in place while the soldiers tore their home to the floor.

The islanders came out with two shotguns, two pistols, and the rifle with the scope, along with a duffel bag sagging with ammunition. They set it all at the bearded man's feet.

He squinted. "Is that it?"

Her father's sad smile confirmed it. "Is there anything else you'd like? My shoes? My teeth?"

The big man stooped, arms spread as if he would rip the dock up by the roots, then picked up the rifle and fitted it to his shoulder. He aimed at a pelican wafting on the thermals, tracking its slow drift.

"Just the one rifle? What if it broke?"

"I don't suppose I'd notice," her dad said. "We never used it."

The man shook his head and rose. "My God, man, you've got to think of your future." He gestured at the boat and the men picked up the guns and took them onboard. "Although it's moot now. Firearms are henceforth banned from the mainland without express writ by King Me. The penalty for unlicensed ownership of firearms shall be death by firing squad."

"What if raiders come?" her mother said, voice shaky and hot. "What should we do, reason with them?"

The man snorted. "We'll protect you."

"While you're safe on your island?"

"Then we'll avenge you." He raised his thick brown eyebrows and leaned down until his gaze was level with hers. "I see what happens on my land."

He turned and hauled himself up the rope ladder to the boat. The house was a mess of shattered glass and scattered papers and upturned drawers. Raina helped sweep the broken water jugs from the garage into a pile and then buried it in the pit in the back where they put the things that couldn't be mulched or burned. They folded away the last of the clothes by candlelight.

Raina left in the night. In the morning, she was the first one up, and went out to scrape salt from the tarps while her parents boiled and drank their tea. Her mom walked uphill to speak to Wendell. Her dad went to the shack by the dock and sat down to mend the net. Raina brought him a small walnut box. He frowned and took it, hands dropping under its unexpected weight. Metal skittered across wood. He slid his fingernails under the lid and removed it. A revolver sat beside red boxes of bullets.

He gaped. "Where did you get this?"

"From a dead man," she said.

He touched the grip. "We shouldn't have this."

"I can get more. Everyone can have one."

Her dad looked up sharply. "No more. You can't be found with these."

"How are you going to fight back without any guns?"

"That's for us to worry about. If I catch you with one of these again, your only worry will be what it's like to spend the rest of your life locked in the trunk of a car." He winced and lowered his gaze to the box, which he refused to set down. "We'll bury it. In case there's trouble. Do not bring back another. You hear?"

She nodded, but he'd taken this one. He yielded. It was what he did. Raina had seen him yield to her mom for a long time and assumed that was what husbands did—bow to the wind, then straighten once it calmed—but he yielded to the Catalinans, too. Even when they hurt her mom. Each time they pressed, he bent. Each time he bent, they came back and pressed harder. Someday he would break.

Unless she pressed back and straightened him out.

She went to bed. She knew from the tapes her parents never stayed up longer than an hour after lights-out. She waited just longer than that, then got up and got her two biggest bags and her travel kit. She crept across the wooden floors in her socks, then put on her shoes outside, where the air smelled like old seaweed and fresh crabs. She cut north up the hill past the ruins of the manors. The signs along the winding road warned her to watch out for horses. The first time she'd seen these, she'd been excited, but there were no horses left.

Often the woods were so deep she saw nothing but trees. A tall wooden fence rose from the wilderness. She climbed through the hole she'd dug underneath it. Behind a screen of grass and weeds, a brick house sat beneath an umbrella of strong-smelling pines. Raina clicked on her flashlight and went to the shed around back and pulled the carpet away from the trapdoor. Before descending, she drew her symbol between her collarbones, tracing a circle, then bisecting it down the middle. She needed its help. The bunker was a bad place.

It was a liar. It had promised the man who built it safety, but caught in the beam of her flashlight, he was as dead as the TV in the wall across from his bed. Half-mummified in the dry, cool air. Jaw hanging open. Lips shrunken from his teeth, which were parted as if in the middle of a silent, stupid groan. Crusty brown spots stained his sheets and the thin carpet, but when Raina had first sniffed them—she hadn't wanted to, but something made her, the same way it used to make her poke dead dogs with sticks—they hadn't smelled like scat. They were bloodspots. He'd set up his fortress and died like all the others.

Which meant this place was hers for the taking.

Some of the cans on the pantry shelves bulged with mold, and most of the cereal and chips tasted stale despite never being opened, but no mice or bugs had gotten inside, and the bags of rice were clean and white. The goods in the adjoining room hadn't been used, either: great racks of paper towels, toilet paper, disinfectant, batteries, soap, shampoo, medicine in nicotine-brown plastic bottles. All of it right there. The armory was lightly dusty but just as untouched.

Rifles stood in wooden racks. Pistols hung on pegs. She knew very little about guns. Except the three times her dad had made her practice with the rifle, she had never fired one, even during the year she'd been alone, because guns made noise, and when you made noise, bad things came for you. Men appeared in windows. The shrieking ships creased the sky and let loose monsters that never tired.

The true way was to become a shadow. To disappear with the daylight. To walk behind without being seen. That was why she liked knives. They were cold and metal and silent and they reminded her to hide in the cracks and strike when the back was turned.

She'd left the bunker virtually untouched, but not from fear or respect of the dead. The dead were there to feed the living. This was the lesson of mushrooms and maggots. She had left it be because of the lesson of squirrels, which she had often stolen fruits and nuts from: when there is plenty, leave it buried. With her new mom and dad, she'd had no need for food or weapons. The man with the beard had changed that.

She picked bullets from the red and green boxes and fit them to the guns to know they were right. On its own, a bullet was light, but in boxes of fifty they weighed her down like little anchors. She took four rifles and two pistols and two boxes of bullets for each, got packages of unworn white t-shirts from the room next to the pantry, and wrapped them around the guns so they wouldn't clank or break. She hiked the long pack up her back and swept the flashlight around the corners of the room to make sure the shadows fled from her, then turned her back and climbed the metal steps. She locked the door behind her.

It didn't feel good to be traveling with something so heavy, but the night was still late, and she walked home in thick darkness. She took the road to the top of the hill and then slipped off the shoulder to cut through the trees and tall grass. She paused once at a clearing to gaze down at her house.

Its windows were as dark as the bay. She hoisted the bag and continued down the hill. Her father had taken the revolver. He would take these, too, because of what the men from Catalina had done to Raina's mother and to him, and he would pass them to his friends and ask for more. Soon, the bay would be free.

She should have known better than to think about the future. The future was a shadow, too. If you were arrogant enough to think you could see its shape, it smiled and slipped the knife between your ribs.

A flashlight snapped on from the pines a few yards to her left. "Stop right there!"

She raised a hand to shield her eyes from the glare.

"I said stop! Hands in the air and freeze!"

Raina lifted her hands. The man turned and shouted to someone uphill, illuminating himself with the flashlight. He had a burn scar on his left cheek, which he'd failed to conceal with a haphazard beard. He was one of the soldiers, one of the men who'd taken the guns from her father.

Raina tensed. The guns pulled on her shoulders with drowning weight.

6

The severed foot surged up the shore on a white tide of foam. The wave pulled away, beaching it on the yellow sand. The bone was cut cleanly, ringed with black on its severed tip.

Walt looked up and gazed across the windswept water. "We have to go."

Hannigan knelt and touched the sea-slick hair on the bodyless calf. "We aren't doing a damn thing until we search for survivors. Find out who attacked us."

"Do you see that bone?"

"No. No, I don't."

"What?" Walt said. "It's right there. The white thing sticking out of the gross thing."

"I see the man it was a part of." Hannigan rose and drew his pistol. "And I aim to avenge him."

"The only thing you're aiming to do is confuse the next local when he stumbles over your foot." Walt jerked his thumb uphill at the shrubs screening the beach. "The boat's gone. We have to get out of here."

"I want two on the beach keeping watch. Everyone else searches."

Two of Hannigan's men waded into the surf, shoulders swaying, and reached for the flotsam swirling in the ceaseless waves. Ken knelt and wrapped the strap of his rifle around his forearm and peered far out to sea.

"Shit," Walt said. "I'm going to head up the hill and get a better view."

Hannigan nodded absently and strode into the water, jerking his knees high to avoid the worst of the waves. Walt turned his back and jogged up the dune to where the grass sprouted from the sand. Three trees deep into the burgeoning jungle, he crouched down and watched. Soldiers staggered through the surf and pulled the wreckage up to shore. He felt suddenly foolish and ashamed in a way he hadn't encountered in a long time. Brush snapped to his left. He gasped and ran deeper into the jungle, swatting at broad leaves and low branches.

A man screamed in fear. Walt whirled. Through the thicket of green, the shoreline boiled. A blue bolt lanced across the water and cut the scream short. Walt lurched forward, ankle turning on the muddy ground. He limped through the pain. Rifles banged and roared. Men wailed. The surf sighed. Very soon, it went dead quiet. He heard nothing but his own ragged breathing.

His ankle creaked and he dropped like a rock. He balled up in the wet grass and slick dirt, grasping at his foot. Leaves shuffled. Walt got out his gun and went still.

Lorna crept from behind a curtain of fronds, face frozen in panic. She passed within eight feet. The green swallowed her up.

Walt gritted his teeth. "Lorna!"

She made a quavering noise. "Who's there?"

"Walt. I'm back here."

She swung into view, breathing in quick jerks. "What's happening?"

"Aliens. You need to run. If you hear one coming, drop and freeze until it goes away."

"What are you doing there?"

"Leg's hurt," he said. "I'm kind of stuck here."

"I don't know the way." Lorna gestured to the wall of trees. "I'm staying with you."

Walt pressed his knuckles to his forehead. He should have let her go without a word. "That's not a great—"

Something heavy sloughed through the grass. An irregular patter of steps followed. Walt bugged his eyes and gestured her down. Lorna glanced back, mouth agape, then crushed herself beside him beneath the bushes. He hovered his mouth over her ear.

"Don't. Move."

The thing sloughed nearer. A gray shape clarified from the ferns and trunks, seven feet tall, a scramble of wavering, snaky limbs and hard, spidery legs. Two fist-sized eyes bulged from an oval head. Silver tools winked from its pincers. It slid past, tentacles whispering in the muck.

Lorna shuddered. Walt clamped an arm around her, pinning her still. A second creature followed, two thick tentacles bobbing above its head, oscillating side to side like long, lumpy radar dishes. Walt knew he could bellow the National Anthem in perfect safety—the things were as deaf as a stump—but he couldn't make himself speak until the rasp of their passage faded into the trees.

"We're just going to stay here a while," he murmured.

"What if they come back?"

"Then that's how we know they truly love us."

"What?"

"Keep playing possum. That's our best chance."

She gave him a look like he'd just swallowed a live and very warty toad, but she stayed put. His ankle throbbed. Something crawled across his neck and he stiffened against the instinct to slap it. Lorna's breathing slowed against him. A long time later, distant appendages trudged overlappingly toward the beach.

Lorna lifted her head once they were gone. "Are they gone?"

Walt stared at the horrendous orange caterpillar undulating along the underside of the leaf above his face. "While longer."

After another couple minutes, he glanced toward the beach, saw plenty of jungle, and got the duct tape from his bag to wrap a long strip around his ankle. He was no doctor—although if he decided he was, there weren't exactly any boards around to challenge his qualifications—but he was pretty sure the tape would help. He glanced around for a straight and sturdy branch.

Lorna gestured beachward. "We have to help them."

Walt looked up from his work. "If you think that's a good idea, it's no wonder you need my help."

"And you think it's a good idea to just leave them there?"

"Hang on a minute." Walt trimmed the twigs from a thick stick and used a pair of shoelaces to lash a short, fat crossbar to one end, forming a crooked T. "This is weird. Like, highly coincidental. Any chance they followed you from L.A.?"

"Why would they do that?"

"Maybe you weren't the only ones looking for me."

She tore her gaze away from the direction of the beach and met his eyes. "How would they know to find you here?"

"They're aliens. For all I know, they know my Social Security number and that the first CD I bought was Kris Kross." He thumped his improvised stick against the ground, testing its handle. It could function as a short crutch, a long cane, or, if things got truly desperate, as a pretty good club. "Okay, let's get out of here."

Lorna gestured at his crutch. "I thought you were getting ready to help them."

"Help who, the dead people? Do you think they need us to tell them how to lie there?"

Her mouth swung open. "We have to do something!"

Walt laughed "You just spent two hours lying in the dirt. By now they'd have bled out from a paper cut. You didn't go down sooner because you knew there was nothing to be done."

She lurched forward, hand hardening into a fist. "What a hero. Sitting there in your own filth."

She hunkered down and crept toward the beach, vanishing behind the crush of stems and leaves. Her feet swished through the undergrowth. After a minute, he heard nothing but the whir of insects. A minute longer, a long, pained scream ripped through the moist air. Walt flinched. The bugs droned on.

Leaves stirred on the ground. Walt went still, pistol held on his knee. Lorna wandered to a stop in front of him, her face as frozen as the caterpillar's still eating the leaf above his head.

"I thought you'd been shot," Walt said.

"They're gone."

"Back into the water, probably. They look like they could survive there fine."

"Hannigan. Ken. Reynolds. My people. There's nothing left but sand and blood."

Walt moved his blunt black pistol to his pocket. "I'm sorry."

Her eyes brightened. "How did you know they were coming?"

"The leg on the beach was cut off with a laser. In my experience, that's a general hallmark of a non-human presence."

There wasn't much more to say. He used the crutch to lever himself to his feet, then started back into the jungle. His ankle hurt, but supported by the stick, he could walk well enough to get by.

Lorna followed. "Where are you going?"

"Away from the monsters who may have been trying to kill me. Ideally to someplace with a roof. If I'm very lucky, there will be a bed."

"Nothing's changed."

"Except the transportive qualities of the boat that was supposed to get us there. And the lifelike properties of everyone who was supposed to go with us. Alone on foot from here to California?"

He walked on. Wordless, she followed. When he looked back, her face was wild and tear-damp, infinitely more wretched than her silence would indicate. He paused a few times to rest his ankle and listen to the jungle. Sometimes the birds shut up when big mean things were moving around, but he didn't hear any eerie silences. Either the birds were too stupid to recognize an alien when they saw it, or he wasn't being followed.

Except by Lorna, of course. But if she wanted to follow him all the way to Chichen Itza, that was her business.

After a few miles through the humid, deeply shadowed jungle floor, he followed a path to a road to a house with broken windows and peeling paint. He went to the bathroom around back, then plunked down on the back porch to rest and think. Afternoon sunlight sliced through the trees in coin-sized beams. It had been a long time since he'd run into anything like what had happened on the beach. He was surprised by his reaction to it. Troubled, even. He knew he wouldn't always have hidden in the jungle while the others died.

His vague guilt didn't last. The idea of "bravery" was a social construction meant to save people who couldn't save themselves by sacrificing those who could. Anyway, there were fights you could win and those you couldn't. The latter certainly included being ambushed on a strange shore by laser-wielding tentacle-horrors.

Mostly, he was annoyed that it had happened at all. It would have been fun to sail up to Los Angeles and smash up the last remaining alien bastion. Now that the boat was gone, along with the team of well-armed and trained men to lead the way...well, it just seemed like an awful lot of effort. Too much risk, too little reward.

"I'm going home tomorrow." He repositioned his muddy shoes on the scuffed wooden porch. "If I were you, I wouldn't go back to the beach."

Lorna glanced up. Her face was still locked in that awful, soundless grief. With perverse effort—like a shattered glass pulling itself back together—she smoothed out her face.

"I told you," she said flatly. "Nothing's changed."

"How much talent does it really take to shoot up a bunch of alien eggs? Hell, Ripley was just a crewman on an unarmed ship."

Lorna laughed. "Let me replay what just happened. We were attacked by the same things we're fighting up north. We had trained soldiers. A couple ex-Marines. And you're the only one who survived."

"Am I? Then I'd kindly ask you to quit haunting me."

"I lived because I followed you." She stood and shuddered, clamping her arms across her chest. "You think this is proof we don't need you?"

He gestured at the jungle. "Even if that were true, our ride got blown to smithereens. Unless you know some friendly dolphins, we're out of luck."

"They say you walked all the way across America."

"They do?"

"It's no further from here to L.A."

"Walking across a continent is the sort of thing you really only need to experience once." He glared across the red dirt and unkempt weeds of the back yard. "I'm out. I'm sorry. You'll find a way without me."

Her eyes flashed. She hugged herself hard enough to snap ribs, but something else in her broke first. She sank to her knees on the porch, face disintegrating into anguish.

"We're the last generation of the old world. My people are trying to preserve it. To hang onto what little is left so our children don't grow into animals. What if we're the only ones? What if the aliens snuff out our last candle?"

He shrugged. "Who cares? We'll be dead."

Her cheeks twitched. Grimacing, she fought off the emotions attempting to overwhelm her. "Then do it for me."

"Don't take this the wrong way, because it's also true of literally everyone else on the planet, but I don't know who the hell you are."

She lowered her head, dark hair spilling over her face, and climbed into his lap. Her hand was warm on her neck. Her thighs pressed against his.

"What are you doing?" he said.

"You're the man who saved the world." Her breath was as warm as her skin, buffeting his ear, sending a chill down his spine. The most intense human contact he'd felt in three years had been a handshake. She ran her fingers through the hair above his ear, avoiding his eyes. "I can't get home by myself. I need you."

While his brain attempted to make sense of what was unfolding on top of him, his body took action. He reached up and kissed her.

7

The man with the scarred cheek aimed his pistol and ordered her to drop the bag. She did. He told her to turn around. She did. He tied her hands with a thin cord and yanked it tight.

Finally, she understood how her dad must have felt.

The man made her sit down, then unzipped her bag. Gunmetal gleamed beneath his flashlight. He chuckled, a strange mix of mirth and regret.

"Got us a situation," he hollered into the darkness. A twig snapped. A silhouette approached through the trees. The scarred man waved. "Caught me a young one. Careful, she's armed."

Another Catalinan drew up and raised his brows at the guns. "No kidding. Shit. Well, Karslaw's still in with the family."

"Might ask them outside," her captor said. "Try to keep the why quiet."

The second man tapped his nose and headed toward the house. The burned man nudged Raina with his toe.

"Get up."

"Where are we going?" she said.

He jerked his head toward the back porch. "Where we'll be able to see a little better."

As she decided to run, the man grabbed her bonds and twisted, cutting into her wrists. His strength was bullish, irresistible; he marched her to the well-swept concrete. Candles now flickered through the kitchen window. A pair of soldiers walked out, followed by the tall bearded man—Karslaw—her parents, and one more soldier.

Karslaw eyed the man with the burned cheek. "What's up?"

"Found this," the man said, jerking her by the cord. "And this." He flopped the bag at Karslaw's feet. Rifles clunked.

Karslaw sniffed hard, mouth bunching. "Those look like guns."

"Yep."

"I'm confused. We made it very clear that guns are illegal."

The man nodded. "Yup."

"This poses a problem." Karslaw palmed his beard and turned to Raina's father. "Is this your daughter?"

"I told her to leave them alone," her dad said. "She doesn't know any better."

The bearded man sighed and turned to Raina. "Sweetie, why did you get these guns?"

She shrugged awkwardly, hands tied behind her. "So you could get rid of them."

"Let me provide you an incentive to tell the truth." He bent down, touched her cheek, and pushed his thumb into the corner of her eye. She squealed and squirmed, but the burned man held fast with his implacable strength. Karslaw's nail gouged into the wetness of her eye. "Why did you—?"

Rage reddened her sight. "Because you hurt people!"

"I judge her competent to stand trial and cognizant of her crime," Karslaw said. He drew a gun, put it to her father's head, and pulled the trigger.

Her mom screamed. So did she. So did one of the soldiers. Her dad staggered forward, looked Raina in the eyes, gasped one garbled word, and fell on his face.

Her mom fell too, wailing over the roar of the surf. Raina wrenched her wrists free of the burned man and head-butted Karslaw in the gut. He dropped back a step, cocked his fist, and slugged her in the side of the head. She collapsed, star-sighted. He leveled his gun at her mother's temple. Raina called out. Her mom looked up.

Karslaw's expression shifted. He clucked his tongue and pointed his pistol at the sky. "I've changed my mind."

"They got guns," said the burned man. "The law's the law."

"And I'm the man who made it." The quarter moon lit the cunning on his face. "Execution has its place, but it's very wasteful. Do you think we're in position to be throwing things away?"

The man looked uncertain. "Generally speaking, there's another use for just about everything. Like in the Scaveteria."

"Exactly my thinking. So let's recycle them instead." He holstered his gun and gestured at the ship. "Throw them on the boat."

Hands hoisted Raina. Cords cut into her arms. She kicked out, striking an unseen jaw. A man peeped in pain and socked her in the ribs. Raina curdled in on herself, fighting for breath. Grass whooshed below her face, smelling dewy and sweet. It switched to sand and then the damp boards of the dock. She swayed, breath jolting again as a man slung her onto his shoulders and clambered up the ladder to the boat.

Her mother screamed her husband's name, hoarse and broken. "Will! Will!"

The man carrying Raina dropped her on the deck. She sobbed, choking for air, cheek pressed against the cold, textured fiberglass. Shoes tromped up and down. Men called instructions back and forth. Her mom cried in whinnying jags. An engine burbled—much too weakly for a boat this size; they must only use it for marina maneuvering—and the ship drifted from the dock.

Raina rolled on her back, chest heaving, finally able to fill her lungs. It was the dead of night and the wind was dim and they left the little engine on, pushing the boat out to sea.

It was another minute before she felt well enough to sit up. A candle flickered from the front window of the house, untended. Karslaw's words about wasting things was just empty air. He didn't care if the house burned down.

Nearly half a mile of black water sloshed between Raina and that last light. On the side of the main cabin, a couple of men wrestled with the rigging. Another raider sat up front, binoculars clenched to his eyes. She wriggled around for a better look at the back of the boat and fell on one elbow. The man with the burn on his cheek loomed from around the cabin and gave her the eye.

"You hang right there," he said. He swung from sight.

Raina's mom sobbed somewhere below decks. The boat pitched beneath her. As it dropped down a gentle wave, she bounced to her feet, reeling three steps as she found her balance. The man in the bow turned at her footsteps, binoculars still held to his face. Raina dashed toward the chrome railing and leapt headfirst off the ship.

"Man overboard!" a man yelled.

She hunched her shoulders tight to her neck. Her head hit the black. The water was very cold and swallowed her up like a giant lamprey. She tumbled through the darkness, her momentum turning her belly-up somewhere beneath the surface of the waves. She hung under the water for a moment, telling her nerves to calm and her lungs to wait, then kicked up toward the moon's stingy light. Her nose bobbed into the brisk and open air.

Flashlights swung across the water, dazzling the crests of the waves. Saltwater ran down her sinuses, rough on the back of her throat. She spat and breathed and kicked. Men yelled at each other, voices muffled whenever the water closed over her ears. She kicked hard, knifing up high enough to see the weak yellow flicker painting the far-off kitchen window, then rolled on her back and kicked toward the light.

At times it felt like she wasn't moving at all. Her hands remained tied and she didn't try to use them except when she threatened to slip below the waves. Then, she flapped madly, straining her neck. Her legs threshed the water. The men's voices carried through the darkness with startling clarity, whole sentences preserved above the background hum of the departing engine.

She kicked and kicked and kicked. When her legs burned too hard to go on, she rolled onto her stomach. Before their first time fishing from the boat, her dad had taught her the dead man's float for if she ever fell overboard. It was scary, but if you hung there facedown, you could stay right on the surface, popping up for regular breaths until you weren't tired anymore. The burn in her thighs receded. She reoriented herself to the stars, turned on her back, and continued.

Her face and ribs ached where she'd been struck. Her strokes grew looser, inefficient. Waves rolled and hushed over the sand. She had to float facedown again and the noise of the breakers receded as the current tugged her away from land.

Numbly, she resumed swimming. Waves swelled, surging her closer to shore. One curled over her head, spinning her under the scouring saltwater. Something rubbery tangled her legs. She let the water calm and kicked until her nose hit the air. Another wave slapped her against the hard-packed sand. She groaned out a huff of air, wind knocked from her lungs. Her legs were too noodly to stand. Using her elbows, she rolled up the beach until her face mashed into dry sand.

Her chest hitched without end. She spat repeatedly, but the taste of salt wouldn't leave her mouth. Cold water dribbled down her nose and the back of her throat. She had to get off the shore. She couldn't see the boat, but if the men turned back and found her, she wouldn't escape again.

She couldn't see the candle or the kitchen, but the framework of the dock projected a couple hundred feet to her left. She crawled there, stopping twice to cry and breathe, then at last wormed beneath its comforting shadows, the homey smell of clams and seaweed and stagnant, brackish water. Her breath echoed hollowly beneath the close wood. She slept.

A shriek woke her. She hurt everywhere. Soft yellow light poured from the sky. She crawled to the edge of the dock and peered inland. A small figure trundled around the side of the house, fell to one knee, and barfed enthusiastically. She wiped sand from her brow and gummy eyes. It was Martin.

She straightened and shambled across the burning sand. Martin unbent and wiped his mouth. He saw her, froze, then turned and ran.

"Martin!"

He stopped and shaded his eyes with the blade of his hand. He took an unsteady step toward her, then sprinted up beside her. He held his arms a short ways from his body, unsure what to do next. Her knee went out. He embraced her, propping her up.

"What happened?" he said.

"They killed him."

"Who was it?"

"The men from Catalina. I brought him guns so they shot him."

"Where's your mom?"

"They took her. They took her back to the island." She pushed away from him. "We have to go, Martin. We have to go get her."

He laughed in disbelief. "Right now?"

"Before they do more to her. Last time she killed it and buried it in the woods."

"What?" He glanced to the sea. She followed his gaze, terrified at what she might see, but the sun glared too brightly from the waves to see if there was a sail. He reached for her shoulder. "Come on. Let's go to my house."

"No!" Her mouth was so dry it was barely a word. She coughed, throat tearing.

He passed her his water flask. It tasted so sweet she drank it all. He looked to the ocean again, then took her upper arm and guided her through the grass to the road. She shuffled on the asphalt until they reached his fairy-story house with its tall peaked roof.

His mother was out. He took a long time cutting the ties from Raina's wrists, careful not to slice her, then got her more water and crackers and hazelnuts they grew in the back. She drank and ate it all.

"Tell me everything," he said.

She shook her head, but found a way, starting when they came for the guns—Martin said the islanders had taken them away from his mom, too—and ending when she woke up under the docks.

"I'm so sorry," he said.

"I'll go back tonight," she said. "I'll get my mom and kill the man who killed my dad."

"You can't."

"I'll find a boat. I'll take my knife."

He leaned forward and almost but didn't quite touch her shoulder. "Raina! There's like five hundred people over there. They'll kill you so much they'd still be killing you next week."

"There aren't that many," she said. "There's only like thirty of them."

"That they bring over on the boat," he said. "There's much more on the island."

She frowned. "How do you know that?"

He shrugged and glanced across his kitchen, which was bigger and better-lit than hers had been, with full windows that climbed above her head and bathed the gold-flecked brown tile with sunshine.

"I've been learning about them."

"Then you can tell me how to kill them."

Martin mashed his lips together and hopped down from his bar stool. He walked across the tile to the windows and stared out at the palms lining the back yard. Heavy fronds drooped from their crowns.

"I don't want to be a jerk. But if they wanted to kill your mom, they would have."

"So I should just leave her there? Let her enjoy her new life?"

"That's not what I mean. But, like..."

She balled her fist. "What?"

He blushed at the wind-rippled palms. "Well, you're just a girl."

"I can kill him if I want," she said with exaggerated calm. "I can cut apart his legs and stand on his chest until his lungs squirt from his ribs."

Martin turned and made a face. "I don't think this is a good idea."

"Everyone's been sitting around for months planning to fight back while the islanders took more and more. That's what my dad did and now my dad is dead."

After everything she'd been through in the last twelve hours, saying the words was what finally broke her. Her face crumbled. Tears ran in cataracts down her cheeks. Karslaw had shot him. Taken his life. That meant her father's spirit belonged to the bearded warlord. He had a new family now. A bad one. He would forget her. Worse, the bearded man would use her father's power to hurt more people.

And the only way to free him was to kill the one who'd taken him.

"They killed him, Martin," she continued. "They shot him in the head and left him in the dirt."

"I know."

"So I'm going to kill the man who did it. And you can't stop me."

"I won't," he said.

She swiped at her clumpy lashes with the back of her wrist. "But you said I was just a girl."

"A girl who'd stick a knife in my back," he laughed. "But what are you planning to do? Row across the whole ocean, land at night in a place you've never seen, and slit his throat in bed?"

"Yes."

"Can I tell you about another idea?"

She crossed her arms. "What's that?"

"Well." He pinched a lock of his hair and dragged it through his fingernails, as if preening himself for lice. "If you go over there yourself, you can kill him, but you can't get back your mom. They'll find you before you get back to shore."

"You don't know that. I could find a boat with a fast engine. Or we'll hide on the island and wait to cross until they give up searching."

"Do you really believe that?"

She slapped the window, rattling it. Martin winced. She hit it again, harder, certain she could break it. "I have to try!"

He reached out to grab her hand, stopping halfway. "But not by yourself. Your parents were part of a rebellion, weren't they? If we can find who they were working with, we can help strike back. Wipe out the whole island. Be free again."

Her head thrummed. As real as a memory, she could smell the smoke of their homes as she burnt them to the ground, feel the heat of the islanders' blood as she cut them to the bone. She shook her head, dislodging the vision.

"I can't. I don't know who they were meeting with."

"Oh, well. That's too bad." Martin smiled the way he smiled when he was about to show her a new gizmo he'd dug out of the ruins. "But I do. Want to go talk to them?"

8

They walked east along the road away from the beach until it forked north, and then they walked north instead. Walt wasn't positive it was the right way—his only map of the region was a broad-level thing you might find at a diner, far too crude to show the two-lane road spooling from the jungle—and when he asked Lorna if she knew any better, she murmured something he couldn't make out and kept on walking.

Neither their course nor her silence was a big deal. If the road dead-ended, or turned the wrong way, they'd get back on track eventually. As for Lorna, he didn't much feel like talking, either. Not that anything had gone wrong the night before. She'd more or less attacked him, riding him angrily, refusing to make eye contact. She'd even come. Yet he couldn't shake the feeling the circumstances of their liaison—woman lost in the jungle two thousand miles from home, reliant on a near-stranger to get her back in one piece—were the sort that would once have landed him on a campus list somewhere. Or a Penthouse Forum, which might be even more disgraceful.

He gave her a furtive look. She walked untiringly, face blank, hair a bit greasy, but the line of her clenched jaw and the sharky draw to her eyes made her look even prettier. She hadn't been snappy or insulting to him, just distant; if she were angry, it wasn't with him. He did mean to help her. Pretty generous, he thought, considering it meant putting his own well-being on the line. And if he was the type of person who wouldn't agree to such a thing until she'd fucked him, well, he'd long since made his peace with himself.

Aside from those concerns, he felt relaxed, but otherwise little different from how he'd felt the day before, when his Ripken-like dry streak was still going strong. Sex was a lot like air or water, he figured. You only get worked up about it when you find yourself without it.

So they walked north for days, slowed by his ankle until it healed up, sticking to the road except once when Walt thought he heard the keen of an alien ship and twice when they saw smoke curling from homes along the way. Then they returned to the world of leaves and muggy air and whining bugs. Two days into their revised travel plans, the jungle opened on a small town. Walt knelt and watched through his binoculars. Pigeons fluttered around in the cobbled square, but he saw no humans.

Lorna had lost her bag back when she'd followed him away from the beach. Walt looted a nice map from the glove box of a Volvo, then explored the pastel yellow and off-red houses for several hours, helping Lorna pick out clothes and hiking shoes and her own binoculars and machete and drinking jugs.

Inside a sprawling stucco villa, Walt tossed a pan down on the patterned rug. The piece was durable iron and reasonably small, but he already had a good one—a little too small, maybe, but at least he knew how it cooked, and it had high enough rims that it could double as a bowl.

"You know, we'd save ourselves a lot of trouble if we just stripped down to knives and strings of varying thickness." He leaned against the plaster wall. "That's all you need to get by, isn't it? Stuff to cut things, and other stuff to tie it back together."

Lorna picked up the pan and added it to her pack. Wordless, she entered the shadows of the hallway and lost herself in the bedrooms, footfalls echoing on the stone floors.

They found some canned goods, which Walt didn't entirely trust, and a half-full swimming pool, which convinced him to camp at that house for the night, strain the pool water through a fine-woven sheet—the water was unchlorinated, old rainwater—then boil it over the fireplace, where Walt cooked corn and tomatoes and peppers from a neighbor's garden gone to seed. He let the tomatoes char on one side and didn't toss in the peppers until the last couple minutes. He thought it was pretty good, but waited the whole dinner without a compliment.

"We could probably find some bicycles," he said. "The only problem is trying to balance with five gallons of water and full packs. Maybe we can find bike trailers."

"So we can throw them away next time we have to cut through the jungle?" Lorna said.

"What we really need are sled dogs. And a couple thousand miles of snow. Or we could just put little wheels on the sled and have a dog-drawn carriage." He spooned corn from his all-purpose metal bowl/cup. "Then again, feeding the dogs would be problematic. Unless we also rigged up a few teams of sled chickens. In fact, forget the dogs. With chickens, we could make the food carry itself."

She set her metal thermos on the red tile so carefully it didn't make a click. "What are you talking about?"

"Forget it."

In the morning, he tried to start a few cars, just for fun, but none even attempted to turn over. One had grass growing from the dirt that had blown into the seams of the hood. He didn't bother trying to rig up something involving bikes. He didn't have a good solution for that yet. They were carrying too much weight. There was no way around it. The less food and water they carried, the more they would have to forage. The more they foraged, the less time they'd have for travel. On an unfamiliar road, it was best to grab up all the goods in front of you than to rely on more to materialize further down the path. They could get around this if they could find some good bike trailers, but like Lorna said, they'd have to abandon them the second they went off-road. The jungle was far too thick.

So they walked on. Lorna cut a quick pace down the blacktop, one that left her sweating freely and ready to collapse into sleep each night. He thought she was punishing herself. Survivor's guilt. He'd probably had some of that himself after the plague. Two days out from the village where they'd restocked, they heard a car grumbling down the road and ran into the bushes to watch, but its engine faded the other way.

Along the road, they made good time. Their feet and legs had been hardened by the passage through the jungle and they sometimes managed forty miles per day. With no major delays, they might make L.A. in two months. Walt had the impression the timing wasn't completely critical. Even crazy alien hive-babies needed some time to grow up. As long as they finished the trip in less than, say, five or ten years, he imagined they'd arrive with plenty of time to make a difference.

The jungle was regularly interrupted by wide patches of tall grass and short trees, the corpses of former farms being devoured by the forest. Lorna wasn't proving much of a travel companion. It wasn't that she was unwilling to help. She pitched in on all the essentials: scouting towns, kindling fires, traipsing around for water, setting snares in the jungle at night and checking them at dawn. With her around—more specifically, the second pair of eyes and extra set of shoulders she provided—he bet they were covering more ground than if he were alone.

He was lucky if he could get her to say more than four sentences a day. That had its upside, of course. It meant she never complained, and that he didn't have to worry about her yakking on and exposing them to anyone who might be lurking behind the tree line or the doors of old homes.

But the flipside to that coin was she never admitted when she needed to rest. For all he knew her toes might have fallen off inside her tennis shoes. If she wound up with an infection, a broken bone, or even a bad case of blisters, they might be stopped for weeks on end.

For that matter, there was just something vexing about running around with somebody who wouldn't speak to you. It ran contrary to the idea they were in this together. It meant he had to make all the decisions for himself. Not a huge deal, considering the bulk of their decisions boiled down to "Should we keep going? Y/N?" But even so. Annoying.

Nine days into their trip, they camped out in the ruins of a foundation a few hundred yards into the jungle. Walt put together a fire while Lorna added water to the cornmeal she'd been grinding up from old kernels over the last couple days. After a dinner of fried bananas and somewhat undercooked cornbread, he hung up his socks to dry. Leaves rustled in the darkness. Walt whirled. Two round yellow eyes stared from the shadows.

"That is totally a jaguar," he said.

"Good for it," Lorna said.

Walt backed up and got his .45 from his bedding, keeping his eyes on the disembodied pair all the while.

"That's crazy. That thing's like right there." He waved his arms. "Hey, cat! Go be-feline someone else!" The eyes blinked slowly and disappeared. Somehow, that made it worse. Walt stood and turned in a slow circle. "Holy shit!"

Lorna had stayed seated all the while. "All you've been through and you're afraid of a cat?"

"Well, I was crazy back then. It helped."

"You went crazy? Why?"

"Oh, the usual." He seated himself, staring into the black trees. "Girlfriend cheated on me, then everyone in the world coughed up their lungs and died."

"Including her?"

He set down his gun. "Yeah."

"How'd you take it?"

"I told you. Went crazy. Genuinely sick. I hated her, so I was happy she'd died—I found her in our bed; this was in the early days, before we knew what was happening—but I loved her, and that made me want to die too. Killed a lot of people instead."

He stopped to think for a moment, then laughed and shook his head. "It was surreal. My world ended right along with this one. Sometimes I thought the two were linked. That Vanessa dying had caused the plague. That I was walking across my own brain, and there was nothing outside it, and when I reached California, instead of reaching the Pacific, I would find myself in front of a smooth bone wall curving from the sea to the sky."

The fire popped. He took a sharp breath of woodsmoke, then smiled at Lorna. "But I got better."

"I can tell," she said. "Squatting on ruins. Running back to war the first chance you get."

"I said better, not well." He'd kept his crutch/cane around as a walking stick/bludgeon. He poked its scarred foot at the fire. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Who'd you lose?"

The light undulated over the hard planes of her cheeks. "Husband."

"What did you do?"

She stared into the fire for a long time. "Went on."

He woke several times in the night to screeches that were far too close, but there wasn't much he could do about them. After a while, the creature quieted down, but started shrieking again at dawn. Unusual. Walt swore, rinsed out his mouth, shook out his boots, then went to check it out. One of their snares had caught a small brown monkey with limbs as long and spindly as pipe cleaners. The snare noosed around its neck and right arm flapped weakly against the dead leaves. Walt rubbed his mouth and got up to go.

"What are you doing?" Lorna said behind him.

He jumped. "Checking the other snares."

She hoisted a lolling rat. "Already got it. Why don't you take care of that one?"

"It's a monkey."

"So? You've killed humans before, haven't you?"

"Well, for one thing, they tried to kill me first," he said. "For another thing, it's a monkey."

She cocked her club, arched her back, and whacked the monkey's skull. The beast howled, voice penetrating the canopy. She struck it again and it went silent. She hit it a third time, mashing the side of its head.

"Doesn't look like a monkey to me." She hunkered down and slipped it from the tangle of thin rope. "Looks like meat."

"There's something wrong with you."

"Why are you coming to Los Angeles?"

"I'm generally opposed to the hostile takeover of Earth by outside forces."

"Are you in love with me?"

"We've only known each other a few weeks. If I fell in love with every woman I just met, we'd be having this conversation in southern Utah, not southern Mexico."

She smiled a hard smile. "Answer the question."

"I'm going because I gave my word!" He stepped up to her, then considered the treetops instead. "Wait, that's not right. I don't care about my word."

"Then why, Walt?"

"Because I'm still mad."

She smiled broadly, slung the monkey over her shoulder, and walked away. They ate it for dinner that night. It was on the greasy side, but it was meat.

He feared what her increasingly bizarre behavior foretold for the rest of the trip, but after the bludgeoning of the monkey, Lorna seemed to normalize, as if she'd at last plucked out whatever pieces of shrapnel had been worming their way into her guts. She replied to his questions. Made suggestions. Two days later, while he was cleaning up the camp, she returned from up the road to let him know there was a town ahead.

"Good," he said. "I'm down to my last good pair of socks."

She shook her head. "Chimneys are smoking."

"Oh. Back to the jungle with us, then."

"I found a trail through the woods. Looks like it circles around town."

"Nice work." He zipped up his pack and beckoned forward. "Lead on."

She walked for a quarter mile, sticking to the shoulder of the road so she could jump into the brush at a moment's notice, then swerved onto a muddy little path weaving through the undergrowth. It was too short for humans—an animal trail, wild pigs or something—forcing them to duck and dodge and slash with their machetes. Slow going and too loud. Between hacks of his blade, Walt froze and put a hand on Lorna's arm, stilling her. He cocked his head.

"That is a guitar," he whispered.

Notes trickled through the leaves, acoustic and melodic. It had been months since Walt had heard music. Maybe a year. Not since the Maya had invited him to one of their harvest festivals. To Walt's ears, the song sounded very Mexican in style, but the feelings expressed through it were universal: a bittersweet yet gentle regret, the sort of song you'd play six months after your lover has left you, when it's been long enough for the ache to soothe, but still recent enough to sting.

In the middle of the jungle in the middle of a broken world, the music was like magic, a slice of order coaxed out of the chaos. A portal to another place. One where you had the luxury of spending thoughts and calories on love instead of finding the next meal or staying out of the jaguar's claws.

"Let's sheathe the machetes for a minute," Walt murmured.

"Don't want to interrupt?"

"Did you just make a joke?" he said. "I'm more concerned about being noticed and killed."

He put on his leather gloves to push aside the branches and thorns by hand. The going got even slower. Half the trail was cleared by the passage of animals, but over the last few days the jungle had clearly gotten younger, trees bursting out of reclaimed farmland, and with a less-developed canopy blocking out the sun, the undergrowth sprouted all the more fiercely. After three miles and two hours negotiating the trail, they cut brush back toward the road and walked on.

They spent another night camped off the road in the young jungle. No fire this time. They still had the other night's monkey meat, along with flat slabs of cornbread just beginning to go stale.

"What were you doing out here, anyway?" Lorna said as dinner wound down. "All you've done for the planet and you wind up sitting on a crumbling pyramid like a forgotten king."

"So?"

"So there's much more work to be done."

"For who?" Walt said. "I'm not part of society. I'm just an animal. Eat, shit, sleep. I don't see lobsters and armadillos building houses and getting the power lines hooked up again. They seem pretty happy anyway."

"You don't have to do things for others. You could do them for yourself. But you came to rest like a fallen fruit."

"Like I'd be the first to lead a meaningless life."

She gave him a flinty stare. "That's what you expect from yourself?"

"Come on." He washed out the taste of monkey with a swig of water. At least the monkey was something new. He was getting so tired of water. Jugs were almost empty, too. Would have to find more tomorrow. "I would say I've already accomplished more in my life than some civilizations. What should I do for an encore, enslave the sun? Invent a time machine that runs on grass clippings?"

Lorna shrugged and smiled, mocking, but with the first warmth he'd seen out of her since the night after the beach. "You peaked young. You don't always have to top yourself, Walt. Sitting out on your own life is the best way to make sure the rest of it's disappointing."

"But it might be a very long disappointment," he said. "I think I could live with that."

"How long had it been since you'd been with a woman?"

"A while. Several whiles."

"You're right. It's quite a life you had going."

"There's more to life than that, you know. Sex and romance was just a cynical invention of the greeting card-industrial complex."

She laughed. "You don't believe any of this. You're here with me. You're on your way to L.A. You can't wait to kill them again."

"Here's what happened: I got someplace comfortable, and I let myself stay there." He knew better than to reach out to her. "Isn't that what we're all trying to do?"

He got up with the daylight to wander around and try to scare up some water. His empty bucket banged against his back, rope coiled around his shoulders. Birds whooped. Like always, it was hot, but maybe a little less hot than the heat he'd grown used to in the Yucatan.

Within a few hundred yards of the camp, he spotted a gap in the trees. It might have been a house, or your everyday, run-of-the-mill clearing, but he could smell the fresh water, and he wasn't surprised to find a cenote sunk into the forest, easily a hundred yards wide and god knew how deep. The water forty feet below the rocky rim was a bright, frosty blue, opaque with minerals. It looked like the sort of thing that would get an elf drunk.

He nudged a hefty rock with his foot, sat down on it, braced his soles, and lowered the bucket hand over hand. It donked against the limestone facing, spinning awkwardly. Back at the cenote at Chichen Itza, he'd rigged up a whole pulley system—one of the many projects he'd spent a few days cooking up, although in this case, it had been one of the rare bits of labor that had saved him more time and energy than it cost—and ever since traipsing off with Hannigan and Co., reverting to hauling in a bucket with his own two hands felt like an incredible pain. From this high up, most of it would slosh out anyway. What he ought to do was try to dip just the lip of the bucket into the stagnant rainwater, get himself a good gallon or so, bring that back to the camp, then come back here with Lorna to—

With the sickening give of a loose tooth uprooting from its gums, the rock slid from beneath him. He cried out and fell toward the bright blue water.

9

"Who is it?" Raina said. "Who were they working with?"

"I'm not telling," Martin said, index finger and thumb pinched together, other fingers splayed. "Not unless you promise not to run after the islanders with a knife in your teeth."

"Do these people mean to fight back?"

"Yeah."

"Then I'll see them."

"Great," Martin said. "Okay, then you have to get cleaned up first. I promise not to look."

"Do you normally?"

"No," he blushed. "But you need it, Raina. No offense, but you look like something coughed up by a dolphin. We'll only have one chance to make a first impression with her."

"Her?" Raina said. "My parents were seeing a man named Bryson."

"I'm talking about Jill at the Dunemarket. She organized the whole thing. Bryson must be working with her."

"How do you know Jill will see you? You're just a boy."

He shrugged, smiling. "I fixed her walkie talkies. She'll do anything for me. Come on, I'll set up the tub and get your clothes. Which ones do you want?"

"What do you think Jill will like?"

He shrugged again, not meeting her eyes, and went to the garage and pulled out the big plastic tub they used for a bath. She grabbed sun-warmed jugs of water from the back porch; he brought her green bar soap and a big black bottle of shampoo and a towel that didn't smell too bad, then headed up the shore toward her house. She stripped while he was still within eyeshot, but he didn't turn around. Out in the breakers, black dolphin fins scythed the water and disappeared. She poured the water into her salt-locked hair, scrubbing the sand from her scalp with her nails. The water was nicely warm, offsetting the cool morning, but she knew better than to waste water or time. Her hair hung down her back like beached kelp. She dried off and went inside, rattling around the kitchen for scissors. Martin got back a few minutes later with a bundle of her clothes, including white tufts of underwear.

She held out the scissors. "Cut my hair."

Martin tucked his chin, staring at the scissors as if they might leap for his tendons. "What?"

"My hair. Cut it."

"I don't know how to cut hair."

"You open the scissors, then close them. Do that until my hair is shorter."

He looked up in horror. "Seriously, Raina, I don't know how. I'd make you look crazy, like one of those little dolls with the—"

"Fine. I'll do it." She twisted a clump of her hair, snugged the scissors against her scalp, and closed them with a crisp clasp. A long black chunk of wet hair tumbled to the tile floor.

He reached for her hand. "That's way too short! You'll look like a boy."

"Then do it how you want."

He mashed up his face, cheeks red, then accepted the scissors. "Let's go outside. The light's awful in here."

He brought a chair to the back porch. She dressed, then sat outside while he trimmed her hair in careful snips. He didn't understand. Now that her wrath had gelled and cooled, she wasn't sure she could kill them all. There were so many. They had guns. Boats. Lived isolated on an island across the waters. She had to become a different Raina, but she knew too firmly what Raina looked like to do that.

But if she looked in the mirror and saw a stranger, that stranger could become anything.

Birds peeped from the trees. Martin snipped and mumbled to himself. Hair coiled around her bare feet. He took a long time. With the sun close to noon, he stepped back, returned for one last cut, then brought her a mirror.

Raina's hair had hung down her back like a cape. The girl in the mirror had visible ears, her shiny black hair stopping short at her chin. She turned her head, examining.

"Well?" Martin said.

"I don't know who I am."

"Did I cut it too short? Didn't you see the stuff on the ground? Why didn't you say something?"

She handed him the mirror. "It's perfect."

She stood. He brushed stray hair from her shoulders, confused. Finished, he put together food for the long walk to the Dunemarket.

"I'm going home," Raina told him. "I'll be right back."

"What for?"

"My knives."

"Why didn't you tell me to grab them when I got your clothes?"

She gave him a look. "Because you don't tell someone where your knives are."

She headed to the house, jogging to work out the stiffness in her legs, but didn't press herself too hard—the trip to the market would take a few hours and she was already bruised and sore. Crows cawed from around back. She approached from the front. The house looked the same as always—the wind-chapped paint, the windows greasy from the constant seaborne mist—but it no longer felt like home.

She kept her three best knives under the particleboard on top of her bookshelf. One of the blades was longer than her hand. The others were finger-length, one double-edged, the other serrated. She put them on and returned to Martin, who had two packs ready and a walkie talkie on his belt.

Raina had gone to the Dunemarket a couple times a year with her parents, but she let him lead. Once they got past the first hill, the sunny day got hot. They drank warm water as they walked. Blind windows watched them, doorsteps sheltered by tall tangles of grass. She knew of a few families who lived in the neighborhoods west of here, but the homes along the main road were all abandoned. Even in the peaceful years before the Catalinans arrived, no one wanted to be obvious to travelers.

They detoured around the makeshift graveyard at the bottom of the long hill. There, sun-mummied bodies and gnawed bones showed the scorches and shatters of a gunfight that had erupted in the middle of the jammed-up cars. Martin hiked up a residential street nestled between two clusters of supermarkets and coffee shops and veterinary offices.

The long, shallow valley between the next two hills had been burnt to the ground. Black timbers leaned from foundations. A crater rested on the far slope, its hundred-yard hole finally healed with vigorous green grass. Houses stood half-collapsed, paint blackened, windows broken. The homes and shops on the other side of Gaffey St. had mostly survived, but half the city had been erased, reduced to rubble, much of it already reclaimed by hungry grass, coastal scrub, and young trees.

But the straight road through it was the best route between the ruins of Long Beach and the whole Palos Verdes Peninsula. A market had been inevitable.

That's what Raina figured, anyway. It already existed in a smaller version of its present form by the time her second parents had brought her to the hills. The market itself had sprung up on the road, where it shifted daily, a fluxing quilt of tents, tarps, and stalls bracketed by a canyon park of tall palms and a shuffle of perpetually brown undergrowth. The permanent merchants lived in these small, undulating hills, but Raina didn't know why people called them dunes. They weren't sandy at all.

They walked in from the south, the road sloping down into the canyon. Travelers and locals mingled among the spreads of lemons and oranges, the fresh fish and bread, the scavenged jeans and seeds and cans of coffee. Martin put his walkie talkie to his mouth, repeated his name and "Over" a few times, but got no response.

"They must not have theirs turned on," he offered.

A man with sunglasses and a crossbow watched from a platform shaded by an umbrella. Martin waved. The man nodded. A couple of the marketeers glanced Martin's way; they must have recognized him, because they didn't bug him to buy or barter. He turned off the paved road to a dirt trail leading up the serpentine hills.

Raina watched his plodding back. It was weird to see evidence he knew people. He usually spent his time alone in the ruins. Even around Raina, he could be shrinkingly shy. Then it came to her: it was the road that brought him here. The information. Wires and outside news were his two great loves.

Palms fluttered overhead. This part of the interior could get blazingly hot in late summer and the merchants had dug new homes into the sides of the hills, for protection from sun, fire, and hostile travelers. Martin passed by three wooden shacks that served as foyers to the underground homes, then knocked on the door of a fourth.

It was opened by a heavyset man with a drooping black mustache and arms as tan as Raina's. "What's up?"

"It's Martin Grundheitz," Martin said. "Can I speak to Jill?"

"She's out."

"When will she be back?"

"How should I know? She doesn't tell me nothin'." The man scratched his bristly cheek. "You want, you can wait down at the tent." He gestured to a blue tarp strung between the scraggly trees lining one of the canyon folds. "I'll let her know you're there."

"Thank you," Martin said. The man closed the door, stirring the smell of dust. Martin brought Raina down to the tent. The shade was cool and the trees smelled like pollen and sage. At the very bottom of the fold, dried white mud promised a creek would return when it rained.

"Do you think she'll see us?" Raina said. "You might do work for her. That doesn't mean she'll tell you about the rebellion."

"She thinks I get so wrapped up tinkering with an engine or a solar panel that I can't hear her talking to her people. I know what they're planning. She can't just brush me off."

Raina had her doubts, but after an hour in the shade, feet crunched across the layers of fallen brown palm fronds. A middle-aged woman with a sun-blond ponytail stepped into the shade and offered them a bottle of water, which they accepted, as was polite.

"Hey, Martin," Jill said. "What brings you up from the sea? Got another machine part you want me to watch out for?"

"Not this time." He glanced at Raina, fiddling with his hair. "Can I ask you something?"

"Is that what you walked all this way to do?"

"Yeah."

She grinned. "Then I think you'd better."

"Well, it's just kind of secret. Like, it isn't something where I want you to get mad, or think I've been prying, and maybe I'm not even right, but—"

"We want to join the rebellion," Raina said.

The woman's mouth twitched. "The rebellion?"

"The one against the Catalinans. The islanders. The ones who want to take us over."

"I think they've gone from 'want' to 'did,'" Jill grinned wryly. "Now, Martin."

"What?"

"You're too smart for this," she said, earning a blush from him. "You're our little technowizard. Rebellion? Even if one of those existed, you wouldn't want to get dragged into something like that. What if something happens to you? What do we do next time the radio breaks?"

"They're not that hard to fix," he muttered.

She turned to Raina. "As for you. I don't know you."

"You knew my parents," Raina said. "Kate and Will Ambers. They were working with Bryson and Bryson works with you."

"Were?" The woman shook her head. "Say a fight's brewing. Say people don't want to become the subjects of a bunch of savages. Such a resistance might be considered noble. But what kind of people would they be if they used children to fight rapists and killers?"

"But Jill—" Martin said.

She cut him off. "Keep your heads down. Move inland if you need. Whatever it takes to stay out of trouble. Good seeing you, Martin."

The woman strode uphill. Martin watched her leave, dumb with disbelief.

"You said she'd listen," Raina said.

"It's not fair. I help her all the time."

"Are you going to just let her go?"

"What's the point?" He flapped his hands. "We should go home. She'll never listen."

"Not to words," Raina said. She exited the tarp into the post-noon heat.

Martin hurried after her. "Where are we going?"

She almost didn't tell him—the storage was her place, her secret—but Jill hadn't even let her speak. Martin was her way into the rebel ranks. She needed to trust him, and more importantly, for him to trust her.

"To prove we're useful."

She took him to the dead man's bunker, detouring along the way for trash bags from a hollowed-out grocery store. The walk took most of the afternoon. At the metal steps leading down from the trap door, Martin clicked on the pen light he never left home without. He swept the beam over shelves of food and soap and coats.

"Dude," he breathed, "this place has everything."

"This is where we go if we ever have to hide," Raina said. "It's my most secret place. You have to promise not to tell."

"Promise," Martin said. "Are those vacuum tubes?"

She yanked him away from the glassware. "Stop it. Jill doesn't care about vacuum-tunes. She cares about guns."

Dozens still stood in the rich wooden racks. She took six. Enough to command Jill's interest without quenching it or exhausting her own supply. She took no bullets. Jill would have to earn those. Martin looked longingly at the room with the tubes, then followed her upstairs for the trek back to the Dunemarket.

The late afternoon wind was cool and steady. They had a long way to go, so Raina avoided the winding side roads in favor of the PCH. Blocks on end were jammed with cars, but the sidewalks were clear enough.

The sun dropped and went away. A dark blue dome of light rolled into the ocean, dragging a blanket of star-speckled black behind it. But when they reached the Dunemarket, there were still torches flapping in the wind, like she knew there would be, along with a line of solar-powered garden lights embedded along the road, their pale light just bright enough to place your feet by. Jill was there in the road, arguing casually about the cost of a spear gun with a grouchy old man. Similar dickering played out at a half dozen stalls and blankets.

Raina flung the bag at Jill's feet with a clank. A rifle barrel tore through the black plastic, exposed by the torchlight.

"Got a use for us now?" Raina said.

"Sweet Christ!" the old grouch spouted. "Is that a .30-30?"

Traders and travelers turned, wafting old sweat. Jill stared at the pile of metal.

"What you got there, Jill?" said a man who was less old than her, his grin a V of delight. "A bag of suicide?"

"Contraband," Jill said, snapping out of her shock. "From two kids. Who don't know any better." She grabbed up the bag with a grunt, then took hold of Raina's wrist. "Come on."

The woman dragged her up the hill straight for her underground home. A candle wavered in the foyer-shack. Jill used the candle to light two more, handed one to Martin, and went down a short earthen tunnel propped up by wooden beams. It smelled like moist dirt. Jill brought them through a doorless entry into a semicircular room just tall enough for the woman to stand upright.

She hoisted the bag in front of Raina. "You idiot."

Raina crossed her arms. "You need guns to fight them, don't you?"

"I also need them not to hear that I have them. There were a score of travelers out there. You too short to see they had eyes? If one of them tells the islanders what they saw, how long do you suppose I'll get to keep these guns?"

"That depends on how well you hide them," Raina said. "They only took the others because no one knew they were coming."

The fire in Jill's eyes dampened. "Could be. Or it could be they come here and put out my eye to make me tell them the truth."

"So let them take these ones. I can get you twenty more tomorrow morning."

"From where?"

Raina tipped back her face. "That information is reserved for my superior officer."

"For God's sake," Jill muttered. "Stay right here."

She left the room, footsteps crunching down the gritty floor. Martin cleared his throat. "Was that smart?"

"It got us inside her house," Raina said.

"A dirt house. That's like the best place to bury people in."

Minutes dragged on. Her confidence flagged. A flat black beetle wiggled along the wall. Footsteps scuffed down the hall.

"I have talked," Jill said. "And I have decided to make an exception."

Raina grinned at Martin, who grinned back. She stepped forward. "So we're in."

"As long as you can keep scrounging up guns? Hell yes you're in. I want you combing the city 24/7."

Raina didn't understand that last part, but she got the rest of it. "I don't want to scavenge. I want to fight."

Jill's smile bent. "We've got trained people for that. It's not all about warriors. What are we going to fight with if we don't have any guns?"

"I don't want to find guns! I want to kill Catalinans!"

The woman gaped, then extended her hand to the south. "Then go and kill them. Nothing's stopping you. But you want to join my group? Then you follow my orders."

Raina clenched her teeth. Martin edged beside her. "I think we should do it. We can help. That's more than we can do on our own."

"This is a waste of what I can do," she said.

"You're what, fourteen?" Jill said. "This won't happen overnight. We've got a lot of work ahead of us. Recruiting. Supplying. Training. They've got a huge head start on us and it could take years to close the gap. If you're ready then, I'll let you on the front lines."

"I can't wait that long. They've got my mom!"

"Come on," Martin said. The pleading in his voice made Raina want to punch him. He moved close enough to feel the heat of his skin. "They're not going to kill her. We'll only have one shot, remember? We need to take our time and do it right."

Raina hated it. She hated the islanders, this woman, Martin's insipid compromises. The Catalinans were wrong. That should be enough. She screamed and struck the wall, dirtying her fist. Jill flinched.

"I'll bring you more tomorrow," Raina said. "Then see what else I can find."

Jill reached out, but she drew away. "Don't be so eager to get hurt. This won't be pretty."

It was too stupid to respond to. Jill offered them a tent in the canyon to sleep in. Raina let Martin lead her into the starlight and the crisp, dew-dust smell of the night.

"Come on," he said. "I'll buy you some tea."

"I don't want it."

"It's good. They make it with real milk."

She sighed; he thought he could make her feel better, but she no longer cared about tea at all. Martin walked up the hill and took the road down to its base, where candles flickered in the windows of the inn. A horse whickered. A torch crackled at the door to the McDonald's on the corner. Martin held the door for her. Inside, men and women stood around the counter holding foaming glasses and small tumblers of clear liquid. Martin settled Raina in a booth, went to the bar, and came back with two black mugs of opaque reddish-brown tea. It tasted like hot candy.

"See?" he said. "Good, right?"

"It's okay."

He stirred the little specks in his tea. "It'll be all right, you know. They're just scared of the raiders because nobody's stood up to them. Once we get enough guns, Jill won't hold back."

Raina doubted that—no one was ever willing to fight, not when their enemy was bigger or meaner or willing to hit first—but she was too tired and frustrated to argue. Resentfully, she drank her tea, which was very good.

At the candlelit bar, two men separated, glaring at each other. One of them was the man with the V-shaped grin, the man who'd made fun of Jill when Raina brought her the guns. He faced a bearded man who was half fat, half muscle, and half a foot taller.

"I said," said the man with the grin, "that you took my drink." He motioned at a glass on the bar. "This one is yours. You might identify it from the fact it is empty."

"So quit bitching and buy another," said the man with the beard.

"My thinking, which I feel is quite reasonable, is that you should buy me another."

"How about I give you yours back?" The bearded man snatched the empty glass, unzipped his pants, and hauled out his penis. The bartender gaped as the man urinated into the glass and, penis still dangling, sloshed it at the thin man, whose V-shaped grin had long since inverted. "Drink up, motherfucker."

The man squinted at the glass. "As long as we're getting to know each other, I've been fucking your wife. She's not very good."

The bearded man's face darkened. He stepped forward. The thin man slapped the glass from his hand, dousing the man in a rain of urine, and followed it up with a straight punch to his nose.

The other man bent halfway, roared, and straightened, blood flowing from his nostrils. He looped his fist at the smaller man, who had just enough time to look sad before the big man's fist slammed him to the ground. He tried to squirm away, but the other man punched him again, rattling his head against the sodden linoleum. The big man smiled, lifted his boot, and stomped the unmoving man's ribs.

Raina screamed loud enough that the whole room winced. She flung herself onto the big man's back, her longest knife flashing in her fist.

10

Walt threw himself flat as the earth slid beneath him. He hardened his fingers into claws and stabbed them into the dirt, but the dirt kept going away. His feet kicked into empty air. He went off the ledge.

He slid close to the rocky wall, shoes stubbing along its outcrops. A jutting rock bashed his chin. He groaned, pain exploding across his body. Something slid beneath his fingers. He grabbed on hard. His feet banged against the sinkhole wall.

"Help!" he shouted. "Lorna!"

Below, the tail of the rope splooshed into the vivid blue water. Walt shouted again, his voice hilariously faint in the chasm of the cenote. Well, this was terrible. If he slipped and fell to the water waiting forty feet below, there was no guarantee he'd be smashed to bits—most of these pools were dozens if not hundreds of feet deep—but there existed the chance he'd land wrong, knock the wind from himself, and quickly drown. Or sprain his shoulder, be unable to haul himself onto the rocks, and slowly drown. Or land fine, get halfway up the limestone face, find there were no handholds left, and finally, in his exhaustion, plunge back into the waters to tread water and drown slowest of all.

Generally speaking, it was not good to fall forty feet onto anything. So he shouted again, as loud as he could, groped for a higher hold, and pulled himself a foot up the wall. That put him about six feet from the rim, he figured. Five or six more holds until he flopped over the lip onto good, old-fashioned, not-moving flat land.

He only found two more.

Tantalizingly close to the top, the rock wall angled toward him, its surface forbiddingly flat. His fingertips scraped over stone, but he couldn't find a grip. Carefully, he edged laterally, toes probing, dislodging pebbles and snot-slick moss, but the climbing was no better over there. His biceps quivered. He tensed, preparing to leap up as high as he could and scramble for a new hold, but sanity prevailed. He held there, relaxing as well as he could to give his muscles a break.

"Son of a bitch," he panted.

Lorna's face appeared above the rim. "You've fallen."

"By one definition. By another, I've still got a long way to go."

"Can you get back up?"

"No. Tried. Give me a hand?"

She regarded him coolly, the way he might regard an unidentified beetle trundling up to him on the steps of Chichen Itza. "Do you think you'd die if you fell?"

"I think I fucking might!"

She nodded to herself, watching for another unbelievably long couple of seconds, then retreated behind the ledge.

"Hey!" he yelled. "I have a phobia about things that could kill me!"

His foot slid from the ledge. He swore and gasped, hanging tight as he tapped around, searching for a new foothold. A pair of jeans flapped over the edge, one pant leg hitting him in the face.

"Grab on," Lorna said.

He grabbed tight to the jeans, twisted his forearm to wrap the leg around his elbow, and tested his weight against it. He drew himself up by the jeans, found a grip for his left hand, lifted his right foot, searched for and found a new ledge. Lorna pulled the jeans tight. He hauled himself up to another set of holds. His chest scraped the upper edge. He wriggled up onto the wet grass and rolled on his back, gasping for air.

"Thank God," Lorna said.

"What do you mean, 'Thank God'? You acted like you wanted me to drop!"

She shook her head sharply. "I was thinking."

"Of me bashing my head into raspberry yogurt?"

"I panicked, Walt. Like you did at the beach."

"That was a perfectly level-headed tactical retreat." He searched her face. Her bare legs were folded beneath her. He tossed her the jeans. "What happened?"

"I don't know!" Her eyes went bright. She twisted her hands in her lap. "It should have been me, you know? How did I make it out when Hannigan was so much stronger? Or Ken, for that matter? They were real soldiers. But I'm the one who made it out. There you are on the ledge, and if you fall, all I have to do is follow you over. Make everything right."

"Shit." Walt stood up, staggered, and found his balance. "Nobody's dying today. Let's get back to camp and on the road."

He'd torn up his hands pretty bad on the rocks. Lorna poured some clean water onto a cloth and wiped away the dirt. He spread Neosporin, applying Band-Aids to the cuts and scrapes that looked likely to reopen.

Back on the road, she didn't speak. Except to suggest rests, neither did he. It was hot again. Big fucking surprise. Yet it wasn't the heat that was so bad. Sit around in the shade all day and you'd hardly notice. But get up and walk around, and you'd be miserable all day.

Meanwhile, they still hadn't found fresh water, they were rationing what they had left, and he'd lost his bucket. This wasn't a complete disaster—they were well out of the Yucatan, and he believed this part of the country had things like "rivers" and "streams"—but he wasn't exactly the master of Mexican geography. He'd only come this way once. Years ago. When there had been a lot more farms. The jungle had regrown massively since then.

But not all the way. Rainy as the area might be, proper agriculture couldn't rely on something as fickle as the weather (and if the rain were that reliable, they'd want to exploit that, too). As he walked along the road, he kept one eye on the jungle, searching for rows among the trees, gaps in the canopy. After four false alarms and five hours of walking, he found what he was looking for: a concrete ditch half-hidden by a bank of shrubs. Its water was low and its sides silted, but it had a bit of current to it, and wasn't the green sludge he'd been expecting. He called a stop and asked Lorna to put together a fire.

"What, now?"

He considered the jungle. "You're right, we should probably unwind first. Think Seinfeld's on?"

"It's afternoon," she said. "Light illuminates things. Like smoke."

"So what? If we don't get the water boiled, next week we'll be shitting parasites so gnarly they'll make the aliens look like Elmo."

She snorted. "You're the one who's paranoid about being seen. If you're not concerned with being kabobbed by cannibals, neither am I."

"Look, I just don't want to go stumbling around a ditch at night," he said. "I've had enough of falling into water for one day."

Lorna tightened her mouth, ready to say more, then shook her head and smiled. "Just saying. I'll get the kindling."

He raised his eyebrows in exasperation, then got out his machete and started whacking at the wall of foliage blocking off the ditch. It was much too wet to burn and he flung the choppings in a messy pile. While he worked, Lorna set bark and grass at the base of a tree to flume the smoke away from unwanted eyes.

In addition to their canteens and jugs, they each carried a waterproof canvas water bag, with a third held empty in reserve in case they expected dry spells or damaged one of the others. Walt had found this one in the deserts of Northern Mexico. It was old and beaten and featured an illustration of an old-timey, Model T-ish car, and he was fairly certain it was a good seventy-plus years old, something 1930s motorists used to sling over the hood of their car on trips through Death Valley or Chihuahua. He'd seen cleaner, stronger bags since picking it up, but had hung onto it anyway. It was well-traveled. Good juju. Not the sort of thing you threw away.

He filled it and lugged it to Lorna, who had managed a small and smoky fire, which she stoked as he set up the pan to boil. The smoke tasted verdant and sharp.

"I'm going to wash up," Walt said. "I look like I stumbled in from 1970s Times Square."

He grabbed his soap and shampoo. At the mouth of the tunnel he'd carved through the brush to the canal, he stripped down to his hole-riddled jockeys, glanced over his shoulder, then ditched those, too. Insects thrummed from the trees. He climbed down the canal and stepped in to his ankles. It was mucky and slick but the water was warm. It was too murky to see the bottom, however, which was very troubling. He didn't like the idea of things swimming past him unseen. Especially the parts of him that would soon enter the water.

Well, whatever. It wasn't like he was getting so much use out of them anyway. He waded in ribs-deep, careful not to stub his toes. The canal leveled out. He ducked underwater and listened to the bubbles, then burst up and slicked water from his face.

Something darted between his legs. He yelped and dashed forward, falling awkwardly into the water, thrashing in panic. Behind him, Lorna laughed lowly. He started to yell at her, then took much greater interest in her bare hips and teardrop-shaped breasts; she had an athlete's body, any excess fat sweated away in the jungle. She strode forward, water closing over her navel.

"Do you always thrash around this much when you shower?" she said. "I hope your tub is made out of steel."

"Lately it's been made mostly out of ocean." He was already hard by the time she reached him. She pulled tight, legs brushing his under the sluggish, silty water. He rested his hand at the top of her ass. She moved in and kissed him, lowering her hand below the water.

After a minute, he pulled back. "Can we move it up to the shore?"

"Why?"

"Because I'd rather not have a piranha bite off my balls."

"We're a thousand miles from the Andes."

"Then how about the fact water makes terrible lube?"

She smiled darkly and ran her hand down his back. "Now that's a legitimate concern."

She turned and led him up the algae-slick curve of the canal, water dripping wonderfully down her back. As if she could feel his gaze on her skin, she turned and grinned.

* * *

That was the night they became a team. The panic she'd shown as he dangled over the cenote didn't return. Often, she was up before him, cleaning whatever they'd caught in the snares or packing fruit plucked from roadside trees. She smiled. She laughed. She talked. Not excessively—he got the feeling she wasn't much of a talker under any circumstances—but after the laconic, grief-stricken stranger he'd been traveling with the last couple weeks, it felt like living with the Micro Machines man.

She erased the physical distance, too. Sometimes the day's travel left them too tired to move, but most nights they made love or fucked or both, her cries competing with the nocturnal birds. He had missed it. Lots. She was more than just a warm body; she was a part of a team there, too, as dedicated to getting him off as he was to her. At times, she took it like a sporting challenge, and if he took too long she rolled him onto his back and straddled him with a look of renewed dedication and amused but friendly contempt.

The road began a gentle rise. After a few days, the jungle gave way at last, opening to low green hills under a too-warm sun. When they had to go off-road for water or to avoid strange towns, the thinner vegetation made for easier travel but tougher foraging. If anything, their progress slowed.

But they still made good time, crossing a hundred miles every three or four days. Bladelike ridges knifed from the horizon. They skirted villages, a few abandoned cities. There was no pattern to which places showed the smoke or noise of human life, but it was rare, and never organized. The census on his map was dated 2005 and claimed Mexico was populated by 106 million people. Something like half a million must have survived the Panhandler, but either the last five years had not been kind or the survivors had melted into the wilds, fleeing the attacks of aliens and their fellow former countrymen.

And then the road reached Mexico City.

It filled the whole valley between two mountain ranges, sprawling, endless, incredible, a gridded mass of labor and matter, some sections scorched to ruins, others pockmarked and cratered but largely intact. Sporadic towers spurted from the blanket of pastel houses and grim apartments. Snow lay on the mountains. Trees grew in the parks. It would have been smarter to go around, but Walt didn't have a choice. They were running low on food, and the more time they spent gathering it from the wilderness, the less time they had to travel. He entered the city, Lorna at his side.

Most neighborhoods could have been from any other big city on earth, gray-brown housing blocks fronted by shops with yellow signs. Walt's Spanish was good enough to recognize most of them and they were able to find weighty bags of long-term, durable food, the dry corn and wheat and beans that took extra prep time to mash, grind, or soak, but would stay edible as long as they kept them clean and dry. They supplemented this with cucumbers and peppers and avocados and strawberries from the parks and weedy backyard gardens.

Abruptly, even the most dour neighborhoods transitioned to bright, airy, gleaming places. A glass-fronted tower with a permanent scaffold of blue and red rectangles. A bizarre restaurant wrapped inside what looked like a wavy blue net, its interior paneled with solid bamboo, as if they'd stepped inside the forest's oldest trees. Yawning plazas with baroque churches capped with gold domes. Stone saints in dried-out fountains. Walt walked through one square blinking sudden tears. He hadn't thought much of Mexico, back in the day, disregarding it as cartel-racked and grossly impoverished, but despite the miles-wide slums, its capital was a jewel, an achingly beautiful tombstone to a people now departed.

Somewhere past its center, they took shelter in a tile-lined subway entrance to eat a toasted mash of avocados, corn paste, chilies, and wild Mexican oregano that Walt called waltcakes.

"I'm glad we came here," Lorna said.

Walt nodded, gazing across the way at a fountain headed by a faux-Aztec ziggurat complete with intricate pictographs of serpents and birds. "Are you Mexican? Were you? Wait, how do we talk about this now? Is Mexico still Mexico now that the Mexican government's gone? It's not like there's a patrolled border anymore. Mexicans and Americans can switch countries whenever they want. It's one big Amexada."

"My father was of Mexican descent. My mom was white."

"Oh. Ever been here before?"

"Why would I come to Mexico?"

He screwed up his face. "Friends? Family? A quest for the perfect cilantro?"

"My great-grandpa was the last born-in-Mexico Mexican in the family," she said. "This place wasn't any more special to me than Ireland would have been to you."

"I'm Scots-Norwegian," Walt said.

She shrugged. "Think either of those places exist anymore?"

"Just in myth," he said. "Same as here. Same as America. If we have kids, let's not tell them there were different countries."

"We're not having kids."

"Good. I never wanted them. Even in the halcyon paradise when you could summon a pizza to your front door. Parents couldn't get their kids to mow the lawn once a week. How would we motivate them to grind flour every day?"

"Violence?" Lorna smiled.

Walt crammed down the last of his avocado-cake. "How do you do it in L.A.? Some of you must have kids, right?"

"A few. They've adapted. Parents are less lenient now that not picking up your trash means being eaten by bears."

"I wonder what sucks more: being born into the wonderland and having it torn away from you as an adult, or growing up not knowing anything else?"

Something scraped softly in the darkness of the tunnel. Walt turned. It shuffled again. He clicked on his light. Tucked in the corner where the floor met the wall, the black eyes of a rat glared back at him. Behind it, a spongy orange layer of matter globbed the mosaic wall.

"Oh," Walt said. "Oh shit. Oh, grand, sloppy piles of shit."

"What?"

He pointed at the orange and dropped his voice to a murmur. "I've seen that stuff before."

Lorna leaned forward, lips parting. "It looks like fungus."

"Could be. I don't know if it's food or bio-insulation or carpet or what. But it's alien. It's all over their homes."

She drew her pistol. "Are they here?"

"I don't know. But we shouldn't be."

They hurried quietly down the street, guns out, the magic draining from Mexico City. His wonder had probably never been genuine in the first place. Just a projection of a mind overwhelmed by weeks in the blooming chaos of the jungle. Walt jogged at a casual pace that, even loaded down as he was, he could sustain for several miles. They weren't out of the city before he ran out of breath. Or before darkness fell. They walked on anyway. Crickets and beetles chirped from the bones of the churches. He smelled no smoke, heard no cars. The city was a graveyard. Like everywhere else. Humanity could never grow large enough to reclaim it before the wind and rain took it for themselves.

Long after midnight, they stopped at a gas station at the very fringe of the city. For the first time in weeks, they took watch. Walt saw nothing during his term. He didn't catch up on his sleep for a couple more days. He kept one eye on the skies and the other on the hills. It had been shortsighted to assume every single alien who'd survived the destruction of the mothership had stayed cooped up in L.A. So much of the world had been forfeited by humans. The invaders could claim any of it.

The land rose. The air dried out but stayed hot. Within the span of a couple days, the green hills became a yellow plateau. The canvas water bags grew lighter and lighter. Outside another sprawling city—Zacatecas, claimed the signs on the highway—Walt stopped and dug out his binoculars.

"Water's running out," he said.

Lorna shrugged. "There's always some in the city."

"Yeah, but I'm concerned about what we find in the desert on the other side."

"Or what we won't."

"Right." He lowered the binoculars and wiped his bare arm across his gummy mouth. "I like walking. I think it's safer. But the equation inverts when you walk across a wasteland."

She unscrewed her canteen and swigged. "So why don't we get down there and steal us a car?”

11

If Martin had asked later, which he didn't, she wouldn't be able to say why she did it. Maybe she had too much rage and pain to keep to herself. Maybe she simply needed, in a deep-down, thirst-level way, to hurt someone. Or maybe she could no longer stand to watch a strong man hurt someone weaker.

She jumped on a table, vaulted onto the bearded man's back, and stabbed him deep in the shoulder.

The man hollered like he'd been set on fire and slapped at his shoulder. She pulled out the knife and stabbed between his shoulder blades. His holler became a scream. He turned his hips and slung her off. Raina landed in a controlled but painful fall, rolling to her feet, knife out and dripping blood. The man yelled and charged. She held her ground and crouched down, flicking the knife at his knee. He hopped back.

"You set down that knife, girl."

"So you can stomp in my face?" she said. "Come and get it."

He feinted. She flinched but didn't fall back. He straightened, glancing around him to see how the crowd was taking his fight with a teen girl. They gazed back, drinks momentarily forgotten.

He smiled and made a fist. "You got a knife. Good for you." He raised his left forearm. "How many times you think you'll have to cut this before the other one strangles you dead?"

He lumbered forward. Raina edged back. Behind the bearded man, the small man swayed to his feet, produced an icepick, and inserted it into the base of the bearded man's skull. The man stopped and waved an unsteady hand. He opened his mouth and vomited a puddle of blood. He thudded to the streaked white tile of the McDonald's floor.

Across the bar, a man shouted and stood. The thin man with the icepick grabbed Raina's wrist. She raised the knife.

"Hey now," he said. "Time to run."

She did. Martin followed them into the cool night. Back inside, a man yelled. The thin man darted across the street between two strip malls. The McDonald's door banged open, spilling firelight into the street. The thin man laughed in exasperation. Raina fought to keep up. He vaulted a low chain-link fence, ran up the back porch, and yanked open the door. Raina put her knife in front of her and followed him into the darkness.

Martin pressed in behind her. The man was silhouetted in a room of couches and speakers and a big black TV. He gestured them over and popped down behind the couch. Raina crawled around its arm and hopped to the floor.

"Probably ought to just sit here a spell," the man whispered. "Think I might have hurt that guy."

"You stabbed him in the brain!" Martin hissed. He grabbed Raina's sleeve. "What are we doing with him?"

"Not getting hanged," she said.

The thin man chuckled, then leaned forward. "Hey, it's you. Little Annie Oakley."

"What?"

"The girl with the guns. Threw them at Jill's feet. Yeah, everyone was talking about you. Aren't you getting ahead of yourself? Teenagers are supposed to rebel against their parents, not murderous pirates."

Feet pounded the asphalt outside. Men jabbered back and forth. A flashlight beam whisked over the window, lighting up the ceiling. Raina pressed her back against the couch. The men continued down the alley, footsteps fading.

"I don't have parents," Raina said. "The pirates took them."

"Ah. Revenge. My favorite form of venge." The man stuck out his hand. "I'm Mauser."

She shook it. "Raina. That's Martin."

"Funny, he looks like a Martin," Mauser said. Raina snickered. The man straightened his light leather jacket. "So what did Jill say? Are you in or out?"

"Out," Raina said.

"In," Martin said.

"She wants us to get stuff for her," Raina said.

The man gave her an owlish look. "And you'd prefer to kill."

"That's what they did to my dad."

He held up his hands in mock innocence. "Did I say there was something wrong with that? I'm just clarifying."

"We won't be scavengers forever," Martin said. "Jill made it sound like you could be a soldier later."

"She was lying," Raina said. "I'm not too young to shoot a gun. She just doesn't want me to get hurt before I get her guns."

Mauser drummed his fingers against the back of the couch. "I'm trying to decide if this would make me a bad man, and if so, whether I would care."

Raina raised her knife to her knee. "What are you talking about?"

"Helping you," he said. "Possibly by hurting you."

"You're talking like a fool."

He burst out laughing, then glanced toward the window and made a face like he'd been bad. "Here's the thing. If you show Jill you know how to get guns, she's going to use you to get more guns. If you show her you know how to fight, she'll use you to fight."

"I don't like this," Martin said.

"You think we should attack the islanders," Raina said.

"That would be insane," Mauser scoffed. "I think you should attack some total strangers."

"Like kill the first stranger who walks into town?" Martin said. "You're crazy!"

"Keep your voice down. Anyway, they might not be strangers. You kids heard about the O.C.'s?"

"The Osseys?" Raina said.

"The O.C.'s. As in, from..." Mauser paused, then shook his head. "From one of the many places that no longer exists. Anyway. They're from down south, and they've been giving trade on the eastern roads a hell of a time. Jill and her dude are right mad about it."

"Robbers?" Martin said. "Bandits?"

"When they're feeling nice."

Raina wiped her bloody knife on her pant leg and put away the blade. "So we should get rid of them. Clear the road. Prove to Jill that we can fight."

Mauser scrunched up his face. "Well, I'm not sure I'd go that far. There are kind of a lot of them, although they aren't super well-put-together. What I think is that if you can get them to stop attacking Jill's messengers and merchants, she'd be inclined to upgrade you from delivery boys to special agents."

"Then let's go."

"What, me?" Mauser said. "I'm not messing with the Osseys."

Raina leaned in close. "I saved your life."

He laughed, barking with it, abruptly stopping. "Oh hell. You're serious."

"That makes you mine. I want your help."

"I feel like I'm on the verge of being forced to swear a blood oath." The man pinched the bridge of his nose. "Okay. All right. On one condition: I get half."

"Of what?"

"The cash. The loot. The wonga, in whatever form or avenue that wonga may take: anything we steal, beg, or bargain. Point is, I'm not going to tangle with a violent tribe-gang unless it's going to make me rich."

"Take their ears for all I care," Raina said. "I just want to prove myself to the rebels. I can't fight the islanders by myself."

"Which I convinced you of," Martin said. "So you should listen when I tell you running off to fight a bunch of bandits is just as crazy as running off to fight a bunch of pirates."

"Sure, but at least the bandits will negotiate," Mauser said. "They just want money. Stuff. Things. Far more reasonable than those idiots with the boat. They want power. Not a lot of bargaining to be done there."

Martin folded his arms. "What if we go to them and they rob us?"

"Won't happen. Not if we handle them right."

"Like you handled the man at the bar?"

"That man stole my drink! That's not the sort of thing you just let slide."

"When can we leave?" Raina said.

Mauser shrugged. "As long as we steer clear of pursuit, we can head out now. Won't make it there tonight, but we'll have a good start on tomorrow."

"Do you need to get your stuff from the inn?"

"Inn?" He gave her a blank look. "No, I wasn't staying at the motel. I was going to sleep in a ditch somewhere."

He got up, padded to the front door, slipped outside, and looked both ways down the street. He beckoned the two of them out. Raina didn't hesitate. Martin sighed theatrically and followed her out.

They walked swiftly down the starlit streets. Voices drifted down from the Dunemarket, from the inn across the boulevard. Mauser headed north, taking them away from the men who'd followed them out of the bar, glancing back and forth between the dirty little houses sitting on the scruffy hillside. After a few blocks, he angled back toward the main road and followed it past a park on one side and a bunch of huge stores on the other. Raina had been into those stores a few times—the Home Depot still had a few useful things, and the Wal-mart had so much stuff on the shelves you could still find good food until late last year—but another few blocks marked the furthest she'd been toward Long Beach since the plague.

She kept one eye on Mauser, hand near her knife. She needed his help, but if this was a trap, she'd be ready to cut him instead.

"Is it safe to talk?" Martin said.

"What kind of a question is that?" Mauser peeled off the road and jogged up a freeway onramp. "Well, what did you want to talk about?"

"Are the Osseys really bandits?"

"You keep using this word 'bandits.' They're not Robin Hood's Merry Men. They won't rob you at sword-point and send you on your way with a swat on the butt. They'll take whatever you've got—food, weapons, virginity. They prefer to let people go, because you can always fleece a sheep again next year, but they don't mind killing. It gives them street cred."

"Street cred?"

"Respectability." Mauser gestured outward, puffed his chest. "Badness. The reputation of a crew you don't want to fuck with." He glanced at them. "Pardon my French."

"French?" Raina said.

"Where are you from?"

"Why doesn't anyone stop them?"

"Who's going to do that? Jill?" He laughed. "She doesn't have the manpower for that."

"But she's going to fight the Catalinans."

"With the help of every fisherman, farmer, and scavenger in the South Bay. Even then, it's dicey. If you didn't have the personal revenge angle going, I'd tell you to steer clear of the whole damn thing."

Martin jogged to keep up with the man's quick strides. "If Jill can't fight the Osseys with the whole Dunemarket behind her, how are we supposed to fight them with three of us?"

"I've been thinking about that," Mauser said. They reached the top of the freeway, which swung east over a canal dug between the star-gleaming ocean and the fractal piers of Long Beach. "Seems to me we should offer them a bargain. Take half the guns you were going to give to Jill and offer them to the Osseys instead in exchange for free trade-related passage. Don't give them everything at once—just one or two at a time. Like slinging drugs. You got to keep them coming back for more. Don't want to blow the whole stash on them just to see them PCP-Hulk out on you and eat your liver."

Raina didn't understand half the things he said, but she picked up the gist. "What do you get out of it?"

"Some of the guns and bullets, duh. Unless you have something even more interesting." He gazed out to sea. From atop the bridge, the dark blot of Catalina was clear on the horizon, many miles away. "Sound good?"

"Do the Osseys always travel together?"

"No. They do this thing where a few of them split off, go their own way for a while, then gather back up into one big pack. Why?"

"Then we don't have to fight all of them," she said. "We can find them by themselves and kill them and take their heads back to Jill. That will prove who we are. And the more of them we kill, the more powerful we grow."

Mauser frowned at her. "Let's call that Plan B, Hannibal. I think they'll listen to greed."

The road ran straight across the waterfront, overlooking a thicket of masts, many sunk, some still bobbing on the sheltered swells. Cranes jutted from the docks, climbing a hundred feet into the night. It felt like the graveyard of great and horrible beasts. A place where the ancient things had come to die. Raina drew her circle between her brow and chest and hoped they'd be away from it soon. Music played across the black waters, spiked by bursts of men laughing. A lantern shined between the buildings. Once it was behind them, Mauser led them four blocks off the freeway to a uniform store where the stairs to the second story had collapsed.

He took them to the upper floor, climbing a metal shelf and a series of spikes someone had driven into the walls. "You see? Untouchable as a nun's twa—heart. Because she's married to Jesus, you see."

Raina made bedding out of mildewed nurse's uniforms. They smelled like dust but were soft enough. Mauser snored like her dad. She didn't like that she was sleeping in the same room with him—she'd only known him a few hours—but the best offerings she could find for the quarter-moon moon were a spider and a cricket. She tore off their legs one by one, then smashed them into goop. The moon gave her no sign of its acceptance, but it was still feasting. It would take whatever it could get.

Even so, she found a yellowed newspaper, quietly crumpled the pages, and set them in a ring around her bed so they'd crinkle if Mauser tried to creep up on her while she slept. He went on snoring all the while.

She got up at dawn and looked out the grimy window. She didn't recognize the empty streets. She felt very far from home.

They left before the sun had climbed over the mountains ringing the basin. The road was snarled with cars but the sidewalks were clear. Mauser's gaze darted among the buildings.

"Should be an hour before we see them, but look sharp," he said. "There's this big long canal, but only one surviving bridge. Aliens probably bombed the others. Dirty sons of bitches. Anyway, that's how they get you—you get on the bridge like 'Hey, no problem, a bridge,' then suddenly there's Osseys on both sides."

"This still sounds really dumb," Martin said.

"What do you know? You're just a kid."

Martin looked mad. Raina smiled. The road forked down a long passage of busted-out bars and cafes. They crossed a short bridge, both shores lined with rusting boats, and soon reached another, six lanes wide and hardly a hundred yards long.

Mauser stopped at its foot and cleared his throat. "Hel—"

Two men and a woman emerged from a copse of trees beside the road. All three had guns and wore blousy black shirts with a picture of a silver pirate with a helmet and two curved swords. The woman pointed her pistol at Mauser.

"Jewelry. Weapons. Drugs. Now."

"It's okay, we're not here for that," Mauser said. "We're here to make a deal."

She centered her pistol at his heart. "Here's my deal: give me your shit, and I don't give you this bullet."

"I doubt Preston will approve of you shooting people when they're trying to make him rich."

She exchanged looks with the two men. Raina touched the knife inside her jacket. The woman tossed her head.

"This way."

Mauser turned to Martin. "See, you big baby?"

The woman took them to a church a couple blocks away. They waited in the foyer, guarded by the two men while the woman went through the great wooden doors at the other end. She came back a minute later. Wordless, she gestured them inside.

Pews ran from the back all the way to a dais up front. Melted candles coated the alcoves. Raina walked lightly to make no echoes. On the dais, a man no older than Mauser sat up in bed, shirtless, and held up a palm to stop them. A portable television played at the foot of his bed. Someone on the screen made a joke. The man on the bed laughed and turned it off.

"You act like you know me," he said, voice booming down the pews. "What do you want?"

"I know of you," Mauser said. "And I'd like to make you a deal. One that will mean you can put a stop to all this exhausting robbing."

"Yeah. Listening."

"We have access to guns. Lots of them. I offer them to you if you'll quit stealing from everyone."

The man laughed through his nose. "No."

"Listen, you don't have to stop robbing everyone. Just the people heading to Dunemarket. We can set up badges for them or something."

"We've got guns. What do you think my people used to capture you?"

"Yeah, but you can have more." Mauser wandered closer to the dais. "Dozens. A couple hundred. With ammo. You can then sell those for whatever you want."

Preston swung his legs off the bed. They were bare. A sheet covered his pelvis and upper thighs. "And you want me to stop holding up those Dunemarket peddlers."

"That's all."

Preston sniffed, scratched his chest, and pointed at Raina. "I want her instead."

"No you don't," Mauser said stiffly. "She's the type to cut off your balls in your sleep."

"Sleep? That's why God invented meth."

Raina went very still. So did Mauser. Martin ran in front of her and barred his arms.

"No!"

Preston smiled slowly and stood. The sheet fell away. He wore nothing underneath. "Are you defying me in my own house?"

Raina whicked out her knife. "Get away from me. I'll split your dick in half."

"I like that mouth." He raised his hand and made a come-here gesture. The woman and the two men advanced down the pews, boots clomping.

"Why are you listening to that shitty little TV?" Martin said, voice quavering.

Preston cocked his head. "Huh?"

"You're listening to the built-in speakers. The bass on those couldn't spook my little sister. Meanwhile, you're letting those go to waste." Martin pointed to the wood-paneled speakers at the back of the dais. They were as tall as Preston. He pointed up at the smaller speakers set into the corners of the ceiling. "I can patch all those in for you. All I need is a couple of tools and a couple of hours."

The interest faded from the man's face. He bent over the bed at a regrettable angle, retrieved the little TV, and lobbed it at Martin. "I can wire up some speakers, man. But this thing is battery-powered. Cabs back there run on juice."

"So what? You've got solar panels up on the roof. Might even be a battery for them in the attic."

"You know solar?"

"Sure. Let me take a look."

"Hold up," Mauser said. "In exchange for stopping the attacks on the travelers."

"Nope," Preston said. "Here's how it is. You rig up my speakers, I let everyone walk out of here with their hymens intact."

"That's not much of a deal. That's the same state we walked in here. Figuratively speaking."

The naked man stepped down the dais and leaned his forehead closer to Mauser's. "Sounds like a pretty fucking good deal to me, man."

"It's a deal," Martin said. "Just don't touch her."

"Want her for yourself, huh?" Preston flipped his hand at the woman. "Come upstairs with us. Dave, Hector, you keep these two right here."

He yanked the sheet off the bed and wrapped it around himself toga-style, then brought Martin and the gunwoman through the back door. Dave and Hector stared at Raina and Mauser.

"Your commander," Mauser said. "He's a bit demanding, isn't he?"

The men went on staring. Mauser glanced at Raina, who said nothing.

"Can we at least sit down?" he went on. "I'm not sure my heart can handle the strain of waiting around for someone to finish an electrical job."

Hector tipped back his head, then nodded at the pews. They sat. The gunmen took up a pew behind them. Time stretched on and on. Raina wasn't bored. She was thinking. They were going to leave emptyhanded. To get results for Jill, they would have to find other Osseys and kill them. She didn't like that plan. It was a bad plan. It was dangerous, especially now that they'd already come to speak to Preston; if some of his men turned up dead two days later, he might connect it to them. Come hunting for them. Even if he were too stupid to tie the events together, she would have to attack armed men. She could be hurt.

Mauser made occasional jabs at conversation. Dave didn't reply. Hector mumbled with him sometimes. Raina went on thinking.

There had been a lot of dogs after the plague. Hungry. Scared. Unused to hunting on their own. She had been much smaller then, and she must have looked like easy meat, because sometimes the meaner ones harried her, especially when they were in a pack. But they could be useful, too. They had good noses that led them to food. When she heard claws clicking down the street, she got her knife and followed. If the dog were small enough, she could scare it away from its meal—a dead gull, a garden she hadn't known about—but sometimes she shared, too, so the dog would like her, and let her follow it again. There had been one little black dog with big pointy ears that she'd run with for months. She'd called it Dog. Then it disappeared.

The others weren't as nice. One day she had heard claws and gone from beneath the dogs to find a muscly pup with a broad, flat snout trotting down the pier. It gave her a look and growled and jogged on. Its ribs poked from its skin like the masts and hulls of the boats sunk at the marina. She followed at a distance. It sniffed the doors of the French-Japanese restaurant, then the walls of the old seafood eatery where the empty shells of five hundred dead crabs lay piled in tanks long evaporated.

The dog stopped and lowered its head and flattened its ears. In the doorway of an arcade with clowns and stars painted on the wall, a large brown and black dog with a long, pointed tail bared its teeth. Between its paws, a half-chewed fish sprawled across the gum-spotted concrete, huge and silver, limp enough to still be fresh.

The snub-nosed dog circled the dog with the fish, growling, a stripe of fur raising along its spine. The dog with the fish lunged and snapped. The snub-nosed dog juked away, then nipped at the other dog's side. They exploded into snarls, fangs flashing, butting heads and necks, the scrum carrying them both down the pier.

Raina ran in and grabbed the fish. She climbed the stairs to the roof of the arcade, where she ate it. After the dogs finished fighting, one too wounded to stand, she ate the loser, too.

This was the lesson of the lesser dog: all violence is risk. Even the smallest dog can win if it encourages the strong dogs to take all the risk for themselves.

Outside, the sun rose to noon, rays deflecting weakly through the church's narrow windows. Footsteps banged down a staircase. Preston kicked open the rear doors. He was dressed in one of the black shirts with the silver pirate. Martin was behind him, dusty and sweaty, hair poking up in tufts.

Preston grinned a victorious grin. "Let's kick this shit up."

He strode to the back corner of the dais and twiddled a black box of dials and switches. He straightened and gazed dumbly at the ceiling's ribbed beams. Noise thundered from all sides. Raina balled up on her pew. Guitars thrashed. A man gurgled demonically. On the dais, Preston laughed, drowned out by the music, and banged his head.

He clicked off the speakers and punched Martin on the shoulder. "Right on, man. You're a wizard."

Martin smiled, blushing. "It was just patching a few wires into the battery array."

"And knowing how to do that shit in the first place." Preston rubbed his nose and narrowed his eyes. "Maybe I should keep you around."

"For Pete's sake," Mauser said. He rose, drawing glances from Hector and Dave. "You got a boss set of speakers out of the deal. Probably have lights, too, yes? Air conditioning? We can all walk away happy. Don't get greedy."

Preston jutted his jaw and thumbed his upper lip. Martin looked to Raina for help. She didn't know whether she'd run or fight.

Preston nodded, sparing her the decision. "Yeah. Okay. Get out of my joint. If I see you back here, I take whatever I want."

"As ever, your graciousness is without equal." Mauser took hold of Raina and Martin and shepherded them from the church, followed by Preston's soldiers. The sunlight was hard and sharp. Raina glanced back. From the top steps, Preston grabbed his crotch and made a kissy-face.

"Sorry about that," Mauser said. "Dude's gotten more full of himself since I last saw him. The price of success is arrogance, isn't it?"

"That guy was a jerk," Martin said.

"I know. Why do I always think they'll be willing to talk? No one talks these days. All they do is push you around." He kicked a rock down the sidewalk. "If Jill really does wipe out the islanders, promise me you'll make her come for these assholes next."

"So what now?" Martin glanced back and lowered his voice. "We kill a couple of them and bring them back to Jill? Isn't that murder?"

Mauser shrugged. "I don't think they'll put you on trial for murdering snakes."

"No," Raina said slowly. The idea had come to her so clearly it must have been a suggestion from the spirits. Almost certainly a cat. Only cats could conceive such sadistic plans as this. "We'll take care of them all at once."

"Huh?" Mauser scowled at her. "Raina, the ones you saw in the church were just a fraction of the gang. There's no way we can fight them."

"We won't," she said. "We'll make the Catalinans do it for us.”

12

Getting a car wasn't as easy as that, though. If it were, they might have done it long ago—that is, if the roads in the jungle weren't snarled with branches, trees, and other cars, or if Walt weren't still suspicious that an engine-hunting alien flier could pop over the horizon at any time to vaporize them, or if he weren't at least a little concerned that human jungle-dwellers might roll out a trap as soon as they heard a car rumbling down the road.

In other words, there were lots of safety-related reasons why they'd come all this way on foot. But there were practical and logistical ones, too. Like the fact there might not be a single working vehicle in the entire metropolis of Zacatecas, and if there were, it would almost certainly have an owner.

"First things first," Walt said. "Where are we going to get a working battery? Can we find a brand-new one? Will it still have a charge?"

"Generator."

"Eh?"

She stared. "Don't you know anything about cars?"

"I'm a New Yorker," he shrugged.

"Then it's a good thing you're shacked up with a born-and-raised Angelino. You can use a generator to jump-start a car. Same way you'd use another battery."

He swabbed sweat from his forehead. "Where do we get a generator? When the Panhandler hit, generators were probably the number one cause of Home Depot-related murder."

"And almost everyone who took one died in the plague."

"Leaving their generators to be taken years ago by anyone who did survive."

She glared at him, as if it were his fault humanity had been reduced to a pack of rag-donning bone-pickers. "Then we check hospitals. Police stations. Power plants. Any place that couldn't afford to lose power."

"This sounds like a lot of work," Walt said. "Then again, a lot less work than tramping across the entire Mexican desert."

He checked to make sure his .45 was still buckled to his hip and that his backup pistol was inside the pocketed vest he wore to keep vital supplies close at hand. They hoisted their bags and headed toward the city.

A dog barked in the distance. Pigeons shuffled on the eaves of red tile roofs. From outside, the plan had sounded very simple, but down in the maze of streets, it took on a more Herculean tone. They didn't know where any hospitals were. If they tried going door to door, they might run into survivors. Survivors who would be understandably upset to be busted in on by a couple of gun-toting strangers.

Skeletons lolled in gutters. Unfamiliar, Euro-looking cars rotted along the curb. Why couldn't all cities post a map at the entrance? How had anyone found any strange place before GPS? Before they had cell phones to call for directions the instant they got lost? It was a wonder the entire human race hadn't taken the wrong left one day and wound up dead in a ditch.

A brick-colored church with two spires and a dome huddled in the distance. Hundreds of feet above the city, a red cable car hung dead on the lines. They passed through a neighborhood of posh houses colored white and pink and yellow and robin's egg blue. After another couple blocks, Walt spotted the first sign for a hospital. The word was the same in English and it was strange to see the cognate after so many names and signs in Spanish.

They found it soon after, a white building trimmed in blue. Bones and shriveled scalps were scattered everywhere, black hair stirred by the breeze. The lights were off, which meant nothing. Clear pools of sunlight flooded white floors stained with old brown blood. Walt got out his flashlight.

"Basement, right? They always keep this sort of thing in the basement."

Lorna nodded. "Check the pharmacy while we're here, too. See if they've got any antibiotics."

The sides of the halls were lined with blue tarps wrapping long-decayed bodies. Some were piled two or three deep. During the plague, he'd been in the hospital for an unrelated stabbing. It had been chaos. They'd had no clue. The treatment of the corpses here looked undignified, but he expected everything had gone to hell in the last 24 hours before the place had shut down for good, when thousands of the sick were stretched out in the parking lot and the staff had to clear the dead from the beds while they were still coughing their last.

They took the stairs down. Their feet echoed in the stairwell. Every closing door boomed like the command of an angry god. After much wandering down halls that were much less dirty than the dusty, bloody floors upstairs, they found the generator room. It was mostly intact, but there was a distinct vacancy where the machine had once been.

Walt shined the light over disconnected wires and a dust-print where the generator once sat. "Well shit."

Lorna waved a hand in dismissal. "Not the end of the world. We'll check the records in reception. Learn where the other hospitals are."

"How's your Spanish?"

"Adequate."

"You do that while I check the pharmacy. What's the Spanish for 'antibiotic'? 'Antibiotico'?"

"Yep."

They returned upstairs. Lorna swung around the front counter and started rooting through the racks of paper records in the room behind. Walt wandered to the pharmacy and found it thoroughly looted. Bottles and pills speckled the ground. Many of the shelves had been completely emptied. A lot of what was left was gibberish, Spanish medical terms and corporate Mexican brands that meant less than nothing to him. Lacking anything better to do, and dubious that he'd be in another hospital today, he rifled through them anyway, turning up two bottles of fat pills he suspected were antibiotics. On the back of a dusty shelf, he spotted a bottle of what was definitely hydrocodone.

He glanced at the dark door, sat down, and removed two Ziploc bags from one of his vest pockets. He shook the maybe-antibiotics into one bag and the painkillers into another so they wouldn't rattle when he walked, placing the baggies in a vest pocket. Back at reception, Lorna examined a spread of records, taking down addresses on the back of a piece of paper.

He passed her one of the empty bottles. "That an antibiotic?"

She gave it a glance. "Looks like. Got a whole pile of addresses here. One's old folks care. Right down the street."

She finished transferring addresses and they walked back into the painfully bright sunlight. They got the number off the building next door, confirmed they were headed the right way, went down the block, and crossed the street to a much shabbier and homey building. Lorna held the door for him.

The generator was there in the basement. Giant and white and slotted with vents. Walt prodded it. It didn't even pretend to budge.

"Okay, that thing weighs hundreds of pounds," he said. "Guess we're bringing the battery to it."

"No shit, it's industrial-grade." Lorna leaned in to examine its outlets and to thumb the dust from its display. "The best way to do this without blowing ourselves up or burning down the hospital is to find a jump box. It'll be dead, but we plug it into this thing, then hook up the battery, charge it up, and we're golden."

"Where do we find a jump box?"

"Automotive supply. They're loot-worthy, but not number one on most people's list. We're going to need methanol, too."

"Methanol?"

"Wood alcohol," she said. "Gasoline goes stale a year or two after it's processed, but methanol should hold up fine."

"Will it hurt the car?"

"Who cares?"

He rubbed his temples. "Where do we get wood alcohol?"

Lorna shrugged. "Auto shops sometimes carry it. If not, hardware stores are a good bet. We'll probably need it for the generator, too."

"I hate errands," Walt said.

"More than you hate being eaten by coyotes?"

"Depends on the errand."

It felt good to have the generator checked off, at least. Before they left the care facility, Walt checked the kitchen and storage, turning up a few silvery packets of freeze-dried potatoes and beans and unopened water jugs. Heavy, but they could toss them in the car.

He hated errands even more after they'd burned two hours wandering cluelessly through Zacatecas' streets and the boxy, pretty little houses and shops. Lorna found a jump box at the first auto shop they stumbled on. It was a heavy black box floppy with cables. No methanol, but there was a big box home improvement store just down the street. Inside, they struck gold. Translucent, liquid gold.

They loaded up a green wheelbarrow with jugs of wood alcohol and rolled back to the care facility, which involved several wrong turns and two arguments, the second quite heated and ending in Lorna marching down the block, pointing her finger, and waiting for Walt to roll his eyes, catch up, and discover that she was in fact pointing right at the building with the generator.

There was a late-model Suburban stalled at the intersection; it had clearly been working until its driver had unfortunately died. Walt opened the door, reached past the sun-mummy in the driver's seat, and tried the ignition for laughs. When that failed, he popped the hood and watched Lorna detach the battery.

She lifted it with a grunt, then set it down and brushed away a leaf, a spider web, and a generous coating of dust. He followed her inside carrying a flashlight and the jump box and lighted the way down the stairs.

Lorna hooked it all up with no problem. He reached for the on switch and she knocked away his hand.

"I put this thing together," she said. "I get the honors."

She fired it up. It wasn't as rackety as he expected, but it had been years since he'd been inside a room with a functional machine of any kind, and the chug of the generator was disturbing, a deep vibration that felt capable of shaking his guts free from their tethers. The air smelled so sharply of alcohol he thought his nose hairs might burn.

Lorna pointed to a light on the jump box. "We're in business."

"The business of standing around while a box does all the work? This is just how I always imagined the future."

She smacked the counter. "Going to be a while. Want to screw? Or get the car ready?"

"What are you, a fantasy woman?" Walt ran his hand over his stubble. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I'd like to get out of the city. Also, I am incredibly filthy, in the unsexy physical sense. It would be like fucking a dustbunny."

"Then you owe me one."

"I'll owe you as many as you like."

She smiled and headed upstairs. He followed, the thump of the generator receding. Once they were outside, he could no longer hear it at all.

"What do you think?" he said. "Find a car outside of town? Past all the snarls?"

She shook her head. "Just take that Suburban. Can bull our way through all the snarls."

"It's got such bad gas mileage. One of these days we have to start thinking about the environment."

She snorted. "Can swap the battery into something smaller down the road. We'll need to siphon out the old gas."

Walt nodded and went back inside the hospital for a length of plastic tube. He fed it into the Suburban's gas tank and sucked. It tasted like chemical poison death. He spat into the street while the stale gas spattered into the gutter.

Something incredibly fast whirred over Walt's head. A bang echoed down the street. Lorna gaped. Walt grabbed her and leapt behind the car. Another shot whumped into its side.

He reached for the blunt alien pistol inside his vest.

13

"Say, that's a pretty good idea," Mauser said. "I'm sure they'll be happy to oblige this little suicide pact of yours."

"It's not hard," Raina said. "All we have to do is kill some of the Catalinans."

"Now we're killing islanders?" Martin said.

"And making it look like it was the Osseys."

Mauser slitted his eyes, slowly smiling. "You are a devil. I am not yet certain whether you're the Devil, but all signs point to yes."

Raina shrugged. "It's something the dogs taught me."

His smile sagged. "Wait, now I think you're crazy again."

"The Osseys all wear the same thing on their shirts. We kill two of the Catalinans and carve that stupid pirate into their faces."

"That's a Raiders jersey."

"Not all raiders wear it. The Catalinans don't."

Mauser rubbed his eyes. "It seems the generation gap has come early."

"The islanders always come to coast on the same day," Raina finished. "We'll dump the bodies on their route the night before."

"Moses on the cross," Mauser said. "So where do we get the Catalinans?"

"I don't know."

"Oh. Well, good try."

She stopped on the sunlit sidewalk and blocked his path. "You're the one who's been everywhere. Who knows everything. You figure out how we get them."

He screwed up his face and sighed at the sky. "Listen, messing with the Osseys, angling for a little loot, that was all a good laugh. But this is starting to get convoluted."

"You owe me."

"In a certain Conan the Barbarian sense, sure, you saved my life, I owe you mine, blah blah blah." He leaned in close, narrowing one eye in a half-wink. "But what would happen to me if I just walked away? What thunderbolt would strike me dead? What pox would fall upon my house?"

"I could find you," she said.

"You're certainly poxy."

Martin scuffed his feet. "Guys."

"If that's how you feel, you should leave right now," she said. "Because the Catalinans won't stop until we're all slaves or dead."

"There is that," Mauser muttered. He glanced back at the church, then shooed them on. He contemplated the dusty sidewalk for half a block, then looked up sharply. "Oh God. Oh, fuck me with a circus tent."

Martin whirled toward the church steeple, tensing to run. "What's wrong?"

Mauser dropped his hands to his sides, helpless. "I've got an idea."

"What is it?" Raina said.

Mauser gestured toward the sprawling waterfront with its bars and hair salons and bistros. "The Catalinans don't always come here in big battle-groups. Sometimes just two or three of them make it over. I know where they go and I can get us in. On one condition."

"You get all the stuff," Raina said.

"Smart kid."

"Why do you even want it?" Martin said.

"Because they're raiders, man. They get all the best stuff. These days, if you've got something good, you can't stash it in a bank. There's no cops to come arrest a thief and give back your things. If you want to keep something, you have to carry it with you. They'll be carrying your weight in treasure."

"But what are you going to do with it?"

"Retire," Mauser laughed. "Some day I'm going to be too old for this shit. When that day comes, I want a hoard built up to see me through my twilight years."

"So what's this place you know about?" Raina said.

He waved his hand. "It's run by some women. Professionals."

"Professional whats?" Martin said.

"Does it matter? Professional women. In fact, it's a law firm."

"Prostitutes," Raina said. "He sleeps with them."

Mauser scowled at her. "It's a business transaction. Mutually beneficial barter. Better for them to earn a living at it than to run around getting raped."

"That's what you'd do if they weren't here for you?" she said. "Rape them?"

"Well, probably not. No. No, I wouldn't rape anybody. I'd probably just be sad, and make my hand cry itself to sleep each night." He shook his head vigorously, as if shaking off insidious temptation. "Anyway, who are you to judge, Killer McGee? You're the one leading us on the South Bay Death March."

"Against bad people."

"And I'm using my legitimate business contacts to help you. Do you want that help or not?"

"Yes," she said. "Take us to your prostitutes."

"Well, it sounds weird when you say it like that." He crossed the second bridge back to Long Beach. Water sloshed in the canal below, light blue in the hazy sun. "Gonna need to gear up first. Get those guns of yours. Food, water. Could be weeks until their next visit. I don't want to interrupt our stakeout over a little thing like starvation."

Raina walked beside him. Part of her didn't want to tell him about the bunker. If she told, it would no longer be safe. But she knew of other hideouts like it, though they weren't as good, and she could survive with nothing if it came to that. She'd done it before. And if Mauser tried to take it from her, she'd deal with him. Right now, his help was worth the risk.

"I know a place," she said. "It has everything."

"I'd like to see that," Mauser said. "How big are the unicorn stables?"

The walk from Long Beach to the bunker took the rest of the day, a sunny slog down broad boulevards between Walgreens and Jack in the Boxes and the Trader Joe's, all of them hollowed out, picked clean, shelled of necessities, the junk left behind for whoever wanted to try to make use if it. She wondered sometimes where it had all gone. Most of the food had been eaten, and she often found caches that had spoiled or been ruined by rats and bugs. Many of the durable items like guns must have been taken away by people fleeing the city, or hoarded in foolish numbers by those who'd outlasted the plague. Many of those had since died, their treasures forgotten. Hunting the troves down wasn't safe. Unless you knew a place well enough to notice a fixed fence or a shifted curtain, it wasn't easy to tell which homes were truly abandoned and which were still guarded by their residents.

The passage was tiring enough that even Mauser shut up. She wasn't sure that Martin could make it in one trip—he was so frail, a walking vase—but he kept up without complaint. At dusk, she led them into the woods, climbed under the hole in the fence, and opened the trap door to the bunker. Downstairs, Mauser scanned his flashlight over the dry, tidy shelves and whistled.

"Place really does have everything."

"Except an owner," Martin said. He lost himself in the room of radios and wires. Raina showed Mauser the basin in the wall where magic new water appeared and they filled their jugs. She opened the great beige tubs and got out crinkly silver packets of freeze dried apples and potatoes and chicken and beef. Mauser's gaze roved between the bins.

"You know," he said, "we could stay down here. Say to hell with the Catalinans and the Osseys and everyone else who's not us."

"They have my mom," Raina said. "I have to get her back."

"Yes, but here's the thing: do you?"

"You're a devil. Stop trying to trick me."

"It's not a trick," he said, annoyed. "The only trick is the one the world played on us when they made us believe we have to be good people. You know what's more important than being good? Being alive. Good little girls try to rescue their kidnapped mothers. Smart little girls understand there are times you have to walk away."

Raina stuck out her chin. "You think I don't know that? I know what you can fight and what you can't. You can't fight a plague. You can't fight the things in that ship in the bay. The Catalinans are just people. I can fight them. I can win."

"Well, I tried." He zipped up a backpack of silver pouches and ran his flashlight over the whitewashed stone walls. "We'll stay here tonight. My feet are killing me. One more mile and I'm pretty sure they'll finish the job."

That was fine with her. Insulated underground, the bunker never got cold, and there were whole shelves of blankets and sleeping bags. They ate oranges and spinach they'd picked along the way, saving the lightweight freeze dried food for travel. When they blew out their candle, the bunker swallowed them in a perfect darkness that always made Raina feel safe.

That meant the moon wasn't there to watch over her, though. She'd have to look out for herself. If Mauser was playing some kind of con, it was a long one—and he could have sacrificed her to save his skin at Preston's—but you could never be too careful with strangers, especially men who were larger than you. Their strength made them weak to the temptations that crawled up from the dark places of their heart.

She had her room to herself. There was no door, so she rolled up a blanket and laid it across the threshold to trip anyone who tried to sneak inside.

Without windows, they slept later than they meant to. The sun was well above the western mountains before they loaded up and headed south. After a few hours, they were back on the highway they'd taken the night before.

"Where is this place?" Raina said.

"Where else?" Mauser said. "The docks."

"The place we passed that was playing the music?"

"That's the one. Nothing helps you feel less silly to have your pants down than a little music."

After the highway, he split off from the piers and set up camp in the upper floor of a house on a hill a couple blocks away from the waterfront. Upstairs, he ditched his two big packs in favor of his small bag with a pistol, medicine, fresh socks, a day's food and water, and toiletries and sundries. Raina did the same and waited for him at the top of the stairwell.

"Where do you think you're going?" he said.

"To the prostitute store with you."

"Oh no you're not. Way too dangerous for that."

She cocked her head. "We're planning to attack experienced killers and you're worried about danger?"

He gestured at her body. "I don't want anyone getting ideas."

She couldn't stop herself from looking down. She was fit from walking and hauling nets and lines on the boat, but she saw nothing exaggerated or to her eyes exceptional.

She met his gaze. "Like what?"

"Like your lack of a Y chromosome. If I brought you inside that place, some dude would try to buy you from me."

"How much would it cost?"

"I am insulted you think I know the answer to that." Mauser moved to the stair landing and barred the way with his arm. "You'd only invite unwarranted attention. Some of these people aren't very good at hearing 'no.'"

Raina bumped into his arm. "This is my fight."

"Yes, and you can rest easy knowing that when it comes time to do actual fighting, you'll be front and center. Right now it's about business, and nobody wants to do business with a fifteen-year-old girl." He scrunched his mouth. "Well, nobody you want to do business with."

"Who cares, Raina?" Martin said. "This is just to set things up, isn't it?"

She backed away from the staircase. "I don't like being left out."

"Trust me," Mauser laughed, "there are times when it's for the best."

He went downstairs. The front door closed. Raina went to the bedroom on the south side of the house and watched him walk down the street toward the sea. He disappeared behind a row of stores, reemerging a minute later on the endless docks. He approached the front of a four-story condo, knocked, and was allowed inside by an unseen doorman.

"Do you think they really buy girls?" Martin said.

"Yes."

"That's so...gross."

"You wouldn't go to a place like that?" she said.

"No. Especially not if the women don't want to be there."

"I don't think any of them do."

"Well, it's wrong. People shouldn't have to do that. I wouldn't want to be with a girl like that."

She frowned. She didn't see how they could like it either but maybe they thought they had no other choice. Maybe they liked it better than fishing. She didn't like Martin's prudish judgment, but she didn't like Mauser's casual acceptance of it, either. She hoped they owned themselves. Otherwise, they were certainly being used.

Mauser emerged from the condos a few minutes later, hands pocketed in his leather jacket. It was a straight walk between the docks and their house, but he turned left, vanishing into the cluster of waterfront shops. What would she do if he left them? Go see the women herself? She'd have to. It was that or go back to Jill and be a delivery boy while the woman's so-called rebellion puttered along.

Mauser showed up a half hour later. Martin wandered to the upstairs landing while Raina intercepted the man in the foyer.

"Here's the deal." Mauser blew into his hands. "They don't know when the boys from the island will be around next. They don't exactly schedule appointments. But they usually come by once a month, sometimes more."

"Do you know what their boat looks like?" Raina said.

Mauser smiled and shook his head. "Give me some credit. I'm not going to spend the next month sitting around on some oyster-smelling dock playing boat spotter. I've got friends there. One of them has agreed to hang a red lantern from her window when the islanders show up." He pointed to a window in the upper floor of the pierside condo. "That one right there."

"And then we kill them."

"You have a one-track mind, you know that? Once we see the lantern, we wait until they conduct their business, get sleepy, maybe a little stoned. Easy prey. Once that happens, my friend will turn the lantern white."

"Then we go in," Martin said from upstairs.

"Exactly." Mauser tapped the side of his nose. "I'm like the Sun Tzu of convoluted whorehouse assassinations."

As usual, she had no idea what he meant. "It has to be close to when the big boat's supposed to come again. We can't hang onto the bodies for days and days. We could get sick. Animals could smell them."

"And when does the big boat grace us again?"

Raina rolled up her eyes, thinking. "Twelve days."

"But they'll be back again next month," Martin said. "Even if we miss them this time, we can try again then."

This was true. But that would mean one more month for her mom to spend in the Catalinans' hands. One more month for their leader Karslaw to go on living. One more month for her father's spirit to be trapped in the bearded man's spell. Raina didn't want to wait. She would have to make the moon another offering. A proper one. The most potent one she'd made yet.

That night, they stayed up late, but she waited yet again for the others to sleep. As soon as they were out, she crept outside and walked up the dark street. The moon liked water. It shined and played on it. She went house to house until she found a swimming pool with a foot of rainwater in its bottom. She kicked off her shoes, climbed down the steps to the empty shallow end, and scooted on her butt down the slope to the collected water. It was slimy and foul, but she had to prove herself. If she couldn't handle a little green sludge and a couple mosquitoes, the moon would never believe her.

She got out her knife and cut the back of her hand. Not deep—she'd need her hands—but enough to draw blood. It dripped down her brown skin in a black line and fell to the stagnant water with tiny ripples.

She tipped back her head. The moon watched her from high in the sky. It was more than half past full and growing more bloated each night. It might not be hungry. But she'd never offered it anything nearly so fat.

"Help me take their lives," she whispered to it. "Help me take their lives, and I pledge them to you."

Had it widened just then? Had its silver eye bulged in anticipation? She grinned and blinked back three times to show she understood. She climbed out of the pool and cleaned off her feet and ran back to the house.

They didn't have much to do besides watch the windows of the condo and keep out of sight. Mauser showed them how to play hearts and gin rummy and bullshit. They gambled with pennies and he cheated constantly. On clear days, she could see Catalina to the south, a high blue bulge of land at the edge of the horizon. Twenty miles away. She could sail her dad's boat there in half a day or less, depending on winds, but she'd probably need help.

A yellow lantern burned off and on in the window Mauser had pointed out. Never red. Days counted down: eleven left until the big boat came to collect its taxes, then nine, then five. The moon reached its fattest and began once more to starve itself to nothing. They had plenty of food, but not as much water, and Raina didn't like not knowing anything about the neighborhood they lived in. She wanted to know where to run. Where to hide. Where to lay in wait if chased. At night, she roamed the blocks around their home in an ever-widening circle, sneaking deeper and deeper into the dead streets of Long Beach. She felt better.

People came and went from the condo every day. Almost exclusively men. She rarely saw the girls except when they went outside to smoke things or wash in the basin screened off in the parking lot. A few of the men were there every day, stocky hulks with tattoos and darting eyes. Bodyguards. Or maybe just captors.

Four nights before the islanders were scheduled to come in force and extract their tribute from the peninsula, Martin ran in from the other room.

"The red light," he said. "It's up."

Raina ran to the window. Down the street, the condo window glowed an unwinking red. She ran to her room to dress in all black and get on her knives. Martin got out his pistol and stared at it dully.

Mauser tossed his icepick into the air. It spun end over end. He snatched it by its handle. "Stick to the plan and we'll all be fine."

He led them out the back door of the house and they circled around the humid streets to the shoe store across from the condo. Amid the smell of leather and rubber, Raina watched the window from the darkness.

A silhouette exited the side of the condo and peered into the streets. A fire flicked at face-height, illuminating the face of a woman a few years older than Raina. A cigarette bobbed in the night.

"That's my girl," Mauser said. "Be right back."

He crossed the street and exchanged a few words with the girl. In no hurry, he walked back to the shoe store.

"Two of them," he murmured to Raina. "If we're fast, we can use the blades." He glanced at Martin. "Anything goes bad, you shoot them. Don't worry about the noise. Worry about us being strangled."

Martin nodded, pale.

"They killed my dad," Raina reminded him.

"I know."

"And if this goes bad, they'll kill me, too."

Martin's brows rose. He nodded, firmly this time.

Male laughter burst from one of the windows. Some minutes later, a woman groaned, higher and higher. It went quiet. The lantern turned white.

Without a word, Mauser led them across the street.

The woman had left a slip of paper wedged in the lock so it wouldn't latch. Mauser closed the door silently and took them up a flight of carpeted steps. Voices droned from behind the walls. Music played from the lobby. On the third floor landing, Mauser took them down a hall to a nondescript door. Martin pressed himself beside it. Mauser knocked softly.

A naked woman answered. Mauser ushered Raina inside. The white lamp barely lit the room. Two men rested in twin beds. One had his arm around another woman. Smoke curled from a glass pipe in his hands. Raina knew the second man. It was Trig. One of the men who had hurt her mother.

"Hope I'm not interrupting," Mauser smiled. "Manager's special. This one's on the house."

The man with the pipe looked skeptical. Trig grinned. "Looks new. Fresh."

Her ears roared. She stepped toward him, remembering to smile. Mauser drifted between the beds, babbling something affirmative. The man swung his legs off the bed. He was naked and his genitals were wet and wrinkled. He patted his lap. Raina reached for his leg, took out her knife, and jammed it into his throat.

He choked on the blood. The other man yelled. From the other bed, she heard a scuffle, a gurgle. Trig fell onto the floor, kicking at her even as blood gushed from his neck. She dodged his heel and slashed at his warding arm. He yanked it out of harm's way, other hand pressed to his throat. She stabbed him again in the side of the neck, wriggling the blade from side to side.

Her chest heaved. The two women watched with wide white eyes, backs pressed to the wall. Mauser had knocked the other man from bed and pinned him to the floor. The man's hand flopped, went still. Mauser pulled off the top sheet and stood up and wiped himself off.

He held out his hand. "Riches."

One of the girls detached from the wall. Mauser got a rag from his pocket and stuffed it in the dead man's throat wound to stop up the blood. He laid out the sheet and rolled the man up tight, then moved over to do the same to Trig. She cleaned her knife on the sheet, hands shaking. It felt different from animals. Better. She considered granting him to the moon, but she'd never taken a human before. In this case, keeping him was risky. Trig was evil. His presence within her might corrupt her.

But maybe she could learn from him. She had the feeling she might need to do strong, dark things on the path to free her father. Trig's whispers might show her to secret roads she'd be blind to on her own. She'd just have to be careful. Keep him locked up in the deepest places of her heart. Only go to him in times of greatest need.

Metal clinked. She whirled, knife out. One of the girls clutched a backpack to her bare chest.

"Easy there, shortpants," the woman said.

Raina lowered the knife. The woman rolled her eyes and extracted a fistful of shining gold chains from the bag. She quickly sorted them into two purses, handing one to Mauser and shaking it to get his attention.

"Do not wear or sell yours here." He accepted his purse and slung it over his shoulder. "Nothing to tip us off to the bossman."

The woman snorted. "No shit."

"Glad we're all professionals. Now get dressed and help us haul these bodies downstairs."

He went to the door and let Martin inside. The boy gawked at the blood-soaked sheets shrouding the downed men.

"Look," Mauser pointed to the brightly-stained sheets. "We made big soppy candy canes."

Martin swallowed hard. One of the girls laughed. The door banged open and a lanky man spilled inside, smelling of a day at sea.

"Hey assholes," he declared, "save any of that for—?"

His gaze flicked between the sheet-wrapped bodies and Mauser and the girls and Raina. He turned and fled into the hall.

"Shoot him!" Mauser hissed.

Martin held up his hands and shook his head. Raina darted into the hall, Mauser pounding after her. The stairwell door clanged.

"If he gets to his boat," Mauser said, "we should just kill ourselves right now."

"I know!"

She entered the stairs a step ahead of Mauser. Guitar music throbbed from the ground floor, washing out the clap of the fleeing man's feet. The downstairs door shuddered open and the man ran into the night. Mauser passed her, leaping down the steps four at a time. He bowled outside. She followed. The air was moist and just cooler than lukewarm and within a few steps she was sweating.

The man ran past the shops toward the docks. Mauser fell back a step. The man turned onto the main road to the marina, Mauser dogging him from a block behind. Raina cut down the delivery lane she'd discovered a few nights earlier. A brick-paved gutter ran down its center. Undistinguished rears of buildings abutted the lane. She burst into the moonlit boulevard right across from the sprinting man.

He was getting away, but Trig's spirit already had a suggestion for her. One so black she nearly laughed out loud.

"Help!" she screamed. "He's trying to rape me!"

The man turned, slowing in confusion. Raina raced toward him. The man looked over his shoulder, trying to spot Mauser, whose feet rang somewhere down the block.

"You all right?" he said to Raina. "Come on!"

She thought she'd seen him on the islanders' boat. She couldn't reach his throat too well, so she drove one of her finger-length knives into his belly instead. He doubled over, shrieking, still running, pinwheeling one arm for balance. She dodged it and lashed at his throat with her hunting knife.

That brought him down. He was still gasping fitfully when Mauser jogged up beside her.

"Nice work," he said. He frowned. "Although as the only adult present, I'm not sure I should be encouraging this."

"We need to get him to the wagon," Raina said.

"I'm not carrying that bloody mess. We need to get the wagon to him."

He dragged the dead man next to the front of a seafood restaurant and headed back toward the shoe shop where they'd waited for the lantern to change colors. Martin was already there, sheet-wrapped bodies piled on a large green wagon they'd taken from a hardware store.

One of the women from the house was there, too. Her teeth flashed in the darkness. "All yours."

"What a lovely gift," Mauser said. He leaned in and kissed her cheek. The woman didn't move one way or the other. Mauser glanced across the street at the whorehouse, which continued to play its rhythmic music, candles flickering behind the drapes. "Won't be around for a while. Try not to miss me."

"Deal," the woman said.

Mauser grabbed the handle of the wagon, heaved, and grunted. The wheels turned soundlessly; they'd had plenty of time to oil it and check its bolts. Raina and Martin shouldered their bags. They got a block away from the condo, putting a row of buildings between them, then circled around. At the slope to the seafood restaurant where the dead man waited, Mauser flipped the wagon around and leaned against its handle so gravity wouldn't pull it and its cargo of corpses down the hill and into the sea.

At the third body, Raina and Martin each took a leg while Mauser took the shoulders. Martin's hold slipped while it was halfway on the wagon and the body's left leg bounced against the sidewalk. Mauser swore and wrestled it atop the others.

"I'm sorry," Martin said, breathing hard.

"No worries," Mauser said. "We're all loaded up now."

"In the room. I couldn't shoot."

"Happens to every man at some point."

"It would have been too loud anyway," Raina said. "It's for the best."

But she didn't believe this, at least deep down where it counted. The man could have gotten away. She'd had to put her life on the line to stop him. Martin couldn't be trusted.

She took point while Mauser wrangled the wagon, ranging a block or two ahead to make sure the streets were empty. When Mauser ran out of breath, Martin took over, leaning against the wagon tongue as if fighting the worst Santa Ana wind Southern California had ever seen. He lasted less than ten minutes before Mauser took back over.

Its wheels thundered lowly. A dog's nails clicked down the street. The condo faded behind them. Now and then when she entered an intersection she looked back and saw its candles burning in the night.

They got off the highway in San Pedro and Mauser called a stop for the night. It was well after midnight. Raina scouted out a house while the men watched over the bodies. She found one with no signs of recent squatting—no food scraps or fire ashes, no telltale stink of feces from the corners or the yard—and they wheeled the wagon into the garage, hauled down the door, and went to sleep. Martin and Mauser took rooms upstairs. Raina laid out her blanket in front of the door to the garage. They had come too far to risk something coming for the bodies in the night.

Mauser got up late that morning, rotating his arms and grumbling about stiffness.

Raina almost smiled. "You wouldn't complain if you saw the guys in the garage."

He looked pained, then sighed. "You can't toy with my morbid curiosity like that. It's like peanut butter to a dog."

He squared his shoulders and opened the door to the garage. Raina trailed him. The men lay on the cement floor, covered by a crusty, bloody sheet. She swept it away. Their fingers were curled. Trig had his mouth open in a frozen scream. His eyes had been put out (and offered to the eye of the moon, though Raina had no intention of telling Mauser that). The three men were shirtless and a rough icon of a helmeted man with an eyepatch and two swords had been sliced into their chests.

"Well, no one can accuse you of lacking initiative," Mauser glared.

"I thought it would be best before they got stiff."

"Spent a lot of time around dead bodies, have you?"

"I used to eat them."

"Not going to ask." The lines around his mouth deepened. He leaned down. "What did you do to their shoulders?"

Raina reached into her pocket for a bloody handkerchief. She unfolded it, revealing two-inch squares of skin inked with black. "They had tattoos. I cut them off to give Jill proof it was us."

Mauser opened his mouth to say more, then shook his head and walked away. They waited until night to move again, wheeling the wagon down lesser-used streets paralleling the main roads. It wasn't yet dawn when they hit the southern coast at the base of the hills.

It was two days before the islanders were supposed to arrive. As the sun rose, Raina climbed up to the crotch of a tree and watched the sea through her binoculars. Mauser and Martin kept watch on the land, hiding out in a lifeguard shack standing on stilts in the sand.

The bodies went slack and began to smell. Their faces and bellies swelled. The night before the Catalinans were scheduled to arrive and take their tax, she and Mauser wheeled the bodies above the tideline and dumped them face-up in the sand. They took turns standing watch in case of animals or strangers.

The tide sighed, coming and going. In the early morning, Raina spotted a sail on the sun-shattered waves. They retreated to a high house a few blocks from the beach. The Catalinans made landfall at the pier and started down the beach. When they found the bodies, they gazed east toward Long Beach.

They claimed the bodies and returned to the boat. Raina struck out toward the Dunemarket, matching strides with Mauser.

"They looked pissed," he smiled grimly.

"They should be," Raina said.

At the top of the long hill leading down to the merchants' blankets and stalls, Mauser stopped and clucked his tongue. "Know what, we can do better. I'm a man who likes to make an entrance. Right now all we've got for Jill is a story and your three bloody postage stamps. Why don't we wait a couple days and see how the Catalinans respond?"

They had been away from the Dunemarket for a couple weeks and Raina wanted nothing more than to go straight to Jill and demand a place at the table. But Mauser was right. And waiting a few days more wouldn't cost them anything.

They turned off the road and found a new house a few blocks away. Their water was low again and they collected some from a canal and boiled it.

Mauser was right. Righter than Raina would ever have believed. Three days later, the Catalinans declared war on the Osseys.

14

"Stop!" Lorna yelled in Spanish. "We're not here to hurt anyone!"

Another shot cracked from the buildings. A bullet crashed into the sidewalk behind Walt and whined away. Windows stared by the dozens. Walt peeked around the bumper of the Suburban. A rifle roared again, smashing the rear window in a sharp-edged shower.

"We have to get off the street," Walt said.

"They'll steal our car," Lorna said.

"So what? It'll be easier to set up a new one than to try to steer that one using ghost-hands. Count of three, run to the hospital. Zigzags. Don't give them an easy shot."

She gritted her teeth and nodded. He counted down. On three, he dashed from the safety of the car, arm held over his head, reeling in unpredictable vectors. Two shots chased him up the sidewalk. Lorna hollered. He glanced back to make sure she was unhurt, then yanked open the hospital door and held it for her.

He followed her into the deeply shadowed lobby. She vaulted the reception desk and dropped behind it. He did the same, banging his shin in the process.

He clutched his throbbing leg. "Couldn't see where they were shooting from. There's like a thousand windows out there."

"They'll just wait us out," Lorna said. "Shoot us as soon as we step outside."

"Sounds like we should stay in here. Start a new race of hospital-people."

"Sun sets in an hour. If we haven't figured something out by then, we might as well bring ourselves to the morgue."

His pistol hung from his hand. "If I know where they are, I can take them out."

She laughed dryly. "Such confidence."

"More in the weapon than myself."

Lorna's gaze dropped to his gun. "Get to an upstairs window. I'll make them show themselves."

"By dressing up as a target?"

"Any better ideas?"

"Not unless you saw a tank in the basement." He leaned in and kissed her. "Don't get shot."

"Then don't miss."

He winked at her, stomach sinking, then ran to the stairwell. It was pitch dark on the stairs and he flicked on his Zippo to light the way. The echoes of his footsteps chased him to the fourth floor. He ran into a room with two skeletons sharing the single bed, a third in the armchair, and a fourth draggling the sheets on the floor. He went to the window, careful not to disturb the blinds.

The hospital faced banks of dusty offices. The sun had sunk behind the buildings, leaving little glare, but most of the windows were too dark to see through clearly. He let his eyes drift, seeking movement. The window had a crank that allowed it to open just far enough to extrude his pistol.

Lorna screamed from downstairs. Across the street, a gun flashed in a window on the fifth floor of a pastel yellow office. The report sounded an instant behind it and echoed from the buildings.

The nice thing about a laser was that it provided its own sight. Walt depressed the trigger-buttons wrapped around the handle. A blue beam licked across the air, incinerating particles of dust. It sent smoke curling from the edge of the shooter's window frame. Walt moved his wrist fractionally, sending the beam swooping into the silhouette in the office. A man screamed in pain. Walt moved the laser up and down, then let go of the triggers.

A second gun went off three windows over from the first. Glass splintered, hailing into Walt's face and bare arm. He flinched, swearing, bleeding from several small cuts. Across the way, the woman in the other window pulled back the bolt of her rifle. Bright brass caught a beam of light and spun toward the pavement. Walt steadied his elbow on the sill and fired back. The laser struck her somewhere in the upper body. She collapsed from sight.

The street was silent. Walt scanned the office for any more shooters. A door banged in the hallway behind him. Lorna jogged into the room, struggling to keep her expression composed.

"Now that's fucking teamwork," Walt said.

She pointed at the blunt black gun in his hand. "Did you have that at the beach?"

"Never leave home without it."

"You had a laser. And you didn't use it."

He pulled back his head. "Hang on. I had a laser. They had lots. Not to mention whatever crazy alien submarine they must have sailed up in. Under those circumstances, I couldn't have turned a Big Wheel, let alone the tide."

Lorna shook her head, composure cracking into cold fury. "You could have tried!"

He fumed. "Can you walk and chew bubblegum? Pat your head and rub your belly?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Can you?"

She spread her palms. "Sure."

"Great, you can do two things at once. So yell at me while we drive."

He tucked the gun inside his vest and headed down the stairs. After the darkness of the stairwell, the lobby's deflected sunlight felt positively lush. At the front doors, he stopped to stare at the dumbstruck windows across the street. No one fired. Nothing moved.

He jogged toward the Suburban. Lorna followed with the jump box and the battery, which she fitted into the engine while he watched the street. She dropped the hood with a metal clunk and got behind the wheel. Walt loaded up the back. The engine turned over, coughed, revved, and steadied. Walt pumped his fist and leapt into the passenger seat. She lurched forward before he could close the door.

"North," he pointed. She said nothing. He rolled down the window to better watch the street.

The drive was hell. Every few blocks, wrecks clogged the next intersection. At times, Lorna was able to climb the car over the curb and maneuver around the smashed cars. Others, she had to back up and try another route through the unfamiliar streets. Once, after two unsuccessful detours, she clenched her teeth and forced her way forward, bulldozing through a yellow Beetle with a squeal of scraping metal.

"Was driving always this much fun?" Walt said.

She cursed at another blockage, three low sedans crunched bumper-to-bumper by a burnt-out ambulance. "This is moronic. We should have scouted our path. Or taken a car at the edge of the city. We're sitting ducks."

"We feel more like Godzilla on wheels to me. You're doing great. We'll be fine."

She backed up, swung around, and headed away from the wreckage. "You don't know that."

"Yeah, you're right. But no matter how much time you spend worrying about it, there are only two outcomes. Either you'll be fine, or you won't."

"Dr. Phil? When did you get in the car?"

"Lorna, I'm not bullshitting you with mind-magic. If you'd been through what I've been through, you'd know it doesn't matter."

"What makes you think I've been through anything less?" She fiddled with knobs until the headlights came on, bathing the dusty streets in yellow. "Like you don't get worried? You're pissed off all the time."

"Because terrible shit keeps happening," he laughed. Light glinted from the upper floor of an office, drawing his eye, but it was just the last of the setting sun. "But it doesn't get under my skin. Those problems aren't chiggers, they're flies. They land, irritate me for a minute, and then I wave them away."

"That must be wonderful." Lorna hauled the wheel right, diving around a tipped and half-flattened bus. "What heights of self-improvement. And all it took was going Rambo on an alien species."

A veritable horsefly of irritation landed on Walt's neck and bit down hard. "If you don't like what's happening, do something different. Park the car. We'll track our way out on foot, then come back and drive out."

"Right. We'll grab our compasses and draw a little map. This is all so much smarter than planning ahead. I totally get why Karslaw sent me 2500 miles to find you."

"Just drive. Let me concentrate on not getting shot by paranoid locals."

He turned to the window. The truth was that he was stung. She wasn't a fly, she was a hornet. He wasn't sure he liked that. Was he coming all this way, risking his life just so he could be in the presence of a woman who often acted like she couldn't stand him? Because that would be kind of crazy. Not fun-crazy, either. The kind of crazy that manifests after sitting on a pyramid for too long with your hand down your pants.

He glanced across the cab at her. She kept her eyes on the way ahead, cornering down a long hill of square and tidy houses. From above, the neat rows of homes must have looked like Easter-colored teeth.

Like that, the city stopped. The Suburban coasted down the black stripe of the road. To each shoulder, yellow weeds poked from the hardpan. The silhouettes of cactus and desert shrubs lurked in the highland night. It smelled like sweet pollen and dry air. It had been a long, long time since he'd traveled any faster than running speed, and as Lorna accelerated down the highway, he rolled down his window, stuck his face out into the night air, and smiled.

Lorna drove for a couple of hours. Without discussion, she pulled off at a ranger station on the edge of a national park. Dim rocks climbed the horizons. Lorna parked behind the station and opened the back of the SUV. While she unloaded gear, Walt entered the cabin, feet clunking on the wood floor, and checked with a flashlight for any obvious families of rattlesnakes, skunks, or tentacled horrors.

He turned up nothing but dust. He lit a candle and dug the Tupperware of waltcakes out of their bag. The mashed avocados had begun to brown but tasted edible enough. He went outside and passed one to Lorna, who accepted it with a nod and chewed slowly, dribbling crumbs.

"Sorry," she said. "I was stressed."

"Yeah, where did that come from?" he said. "We were only trying to flee a strange city after a running gun battle."

"You were trying to help."

"And by this point in life I should have learned that in times of stress, that only makes people angry."

She laughed, touching his arm. "Think the aliens are any better? Or did the pilot only decide to smash Earth after her husband nagged her the whole trip?"

Walt shrugged. "During my encounters, they looked less like enlightened beings and more like the Ten Thousand Stooges. But they must have emotions. They're made of meat just like we are. Chitin and slooshy stuff, anyway."

"It will be better when we're home." She tipped back her head to the burning bed of stars. "I don't know this place. Its people. You and I are all there is. Spend too much time alone and you become a savage."

Walt laughed. "Are you calling me a savage?"

"Aren't you?"

"Who isn't? Aren't we all pretty much shitting in buckets these days?"

"But you tried to massacre an entire species. That puts you into a special, Attila the Hun category of savage."

"Yeah, well they started it." He slipped his arms around her waist. "We're good?"

"We're fine."

That was comforting, but after all the walking, hauling, running, and shooting at Zacatecas, he was too tired to make use of that fineness. They slept in each other's arms. The cold woke him in the middle of the night; they'd gone to bed under a light blanket, but the desert air had cooled drastically, seeping through the cracks in the unheated cabin. It was the first time he'd been cold in a couple years. It felt good, bracing and exposing. Lorna slept on, untroubled.

She looked as pretty by starlight as daylight. Despite all his free time, he hadn't yet taken a close look at his feelings toward her. Now wasn't a good time, either. Not since they'd gotten the car. With any luck, they could finish their journey in three or four days. That wouldn't be nearly long enough to plumb the depths of whatever was inside him.

That was the other advantage to walking. It gave you time to think. To explore things down to the roots. If a voyage was a transition from one place to another, it made sense for it to take place over a transition in time, too. Cars, planes, they obliterated that transition, making a separation in space less real. Less meaningful. It removed the chance for growth. No wonder everyone had been so damn confused and angry before.

He went back to bed. The morning warmed up fast. They packed up and drove out between dusty fields studded with lumpy cacti. The Suburban burned through their fuel fast; they camped outside the next major city they encountered and spent the next day foraging for wood alcohol and moving the car battery to a hybrid.

By the end of the day after that, they were in spitting distance of the border. The landscape stayed hot and dry and vast. Less than 24 hours later, the air turned gentler. Cooler. Damper. The meaning of this still hadn't dawned on Walt by the time they broke over a ridge and looked down on the peopleless sprawl of Los Angeles Basin.

II:

SCOUR

15

Smoke toiled in thick pillars from the shores of Long Beach, stretched over the downtown in gauzy sheets by the constant offshore breeze. The wind blew parallel to their position on the hill above the Dunemarket, but the rifle shots were loud enough to survive the trip, hard cracks followed by echoes that faded out like the slowing of a dried-out, dying machine. Sometimes there was just one shot. At other times, they crackled like strung fireworks, one after the other, overlapping into a fray of bangs. An orange flame climbed from the wick of a pierside building.

"Dumb as hell," Jill said, camo binoculars clamped to her eyes. "What do they do when those flames spread into the city? Call 911?"

"They had the wisdom to survive a plague," Mauser said. "Providing them with many unburnt yet unoccupied sections of city to relocate to."

"The wind's about to stop," Martin pointed. "It always does this time of day."

Raina thought she could taste the smoke. "The Catalinans started the fire. They don't care what it burns."

Jill wiped her sleeve over her mouth. "And you three are to blame for this mess."

"Well, who says who's to blame, really?" Mauser answered. "We wouldn't have gotten involved at all if the Catalinans weren't squeezing our balls off with taxes while the Osseys rob everyone coming to bring us new goods."

"But you're the ones who set them at each other's throats."

"Again, though, is that our fault? If they weren't so touchy, we never would have been able to light this little fire. Surely they must share the responsibility."

"Did you have a reason for starting this war? Or was it just for the fun of setting things on fire?"

Mauser gaped, affronted. "Do you think we're here to brag? Of course we had a reason."

Jill nodded, wiped dust from the lenses of her binoculars, and set them away in the case on her hip. "Guess we'd better go inside."

She trudged down the hill to the shack opening to her underground home. After the dazzling daylight, the cave was total black, and Raina stood in the entrance waiting for her eyes to adapt. Jill hung a right down the hall. Boards creaked; sunlight flooded into a round room walled and floored with mortared brick. Indirect sunlight lit the room through a square window in the roof, making for a kind of courtyard. Possibly the only natural light the underground home allowed. A sturdy table painted Chinese red sat in its center. Jill sat at its head, grabbed a small black box from it, and fished out a brown cigarette. She lit it and blew a pillar of blue-gray smoke at the hole in the ceiling.

"Well?"

Mauser leaned his elbows onto the table and pressed his palms together. "Well."

"We killed three Catalinans in a whorehouse," Raina said. "We carted the bodies away and made it look like the Osseys did it."

Jill let smoke drift from her nostrils. "To set them up. To spark a war."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because we hate them both?" Mauser said.

The woman tapped ash onto the brick floor. "'We.'"

"You wouldn't let us help you," Raina said. "So we had to do it ourselves."

Jill nodded, tapping her nails on the painted wooden table. "How do I know you three caused this?"

Raina delved into her pocket. She withdrew three pale, yellowing scraps that had already gone hard and scratchy along the edges. She spread the three pieces of skin on the table so Jill could see the tattoos.

"These belonged to the Catalinans."

Silence enveloped the room. Martin glanced at Raina, as if seeking permission to speak. "It's compelling proof, isn't it?"

"That you're reckless?" Jill said. "That you don't listen to orders?"

"That we're more than delivery boys," Raina said.

"Right. You're also liabilities."

"You're messing with us," Mauser said, tone halfway between a declaration and a guess. "Back in the good old days, these two couldn't legally drive a car. Don't tell me you're not impressed with the Game of Thrones shit they just pulled."

"If there's no blowback? Sure. You've got my ear." Smoke curled from her mouth. She squinted against it. "Tell me. I know why these two are involved. What's your angle?"

"Moi? Maybe I'm just a keen evaluator of talent. A manager, if you will. Or maybe I believe that in these trying times, a man of action, cunning, and results is well-positioned to be rewarded for his talents."

"Talent. It's true. We need that." She leaned back in her chair and drew on the cigarette, cherry blooming in the gloom. "So let me bring you up to speed. Best estimate, we've got a thousand people living in the greater area. A good piece of everything they're taking out of the ground or the sea is going to the islanders. A lot of the locals were already struggling. Under the tribute, they're scraping."

"Isn't that why there's a rebellion in the first place?" Mauser said.

"But that thousand people is just a guess. There are a lot of ghosts out there. People who want to live their lives and don't want any part of a fight. Of the people who might help us, the Catalinans' tributes mean they have to spend much more of their time farming and fishing than learning how to fight. Meanwhile, the enemy can strike us at any time and retreat to their island at the first setback. They only have to commit their soldiers. If we fight, we risk entire families."

She sat back and pursed her lips. "What this adds up to is slow growth. We stock up—food, medicine, weapons. We keep recruiting and we train our people to be effective fighters. We're not going to turn this into a guerrilla war. Not when so many are fighting just to put food on the table. We wait until we have the strength to end this with a single blow."

"That sounds...dynastic," Mauser said.

Jill tapped her cigarette with her index finger, dumping ash. "It could take months. If things break wrong, it could take years. But I'll tell you this. The less time our people have to spend working and foraging, the more time they have to train. The sooner we drive the Catalinans back to their island for good."

"You still want us to be delivery boys," Raina said. "After all we've done."

"Wrong. I want you to be hunters." The woman smiled. "Of gear. Of guns. And, when the opportunity presents itself, of the enemy."

The conversation continued, but Jill just rehashed what she'd just said. It stung. Raina had imagined she'd become a warrior. One of Jill's frontline fighters. But it didn't sound like there would be a frontline for a long time.

At least Jill no longer regarded her as a shovel, something you used to turn things up. Instead, Jill wanted her to be a knife. You could dig with a knife if you had to. Knives were versatile. But the main use of a knife was to cut. To harm. To kill.

And Raina could live with being a knife.

She moved with Martin and Mauser into a house south of the Dunemarket. The gunshots in Long Beach continued through the night. By morning, the smoke had cleared. After breakfast, figuring that while she worked to advance the rebellion one wagonload at a time, she might as well work to advance herself, too, Raina asked Mauser to teach her to fight.

He raised a brow. "What makes you think I know how to do that?"

"The way you stabbed the man in the bar."

"Then the first lesson is to always keep a psychopathic teenager around to distract your enemy."

"This isn't a joke. This is my life."

He sighed and gazed across the hills toward Long Beach. "You want to learn? We need some gear. White t-shirts. A bunch of them. And two red markers. Felt. Fat-tipped."

"What for?"

"The markers are your knife. The shirts will show you how easy it is to die."

She drew back her head, then jogged off to the ruins. It was a very simple thing to find the shirts and simpler yet to find the markers. Safe in their bubble packages, they retained their ink. Mauser took her to a park down the hill to the west of the market. Skeletons crowded a concrete culvert but there was no smell.

"Pretend you're about to stab me." He handed her one of the markers. "Not that you need to pretend."

She dropped into her stance and tensed to lunge. He closed his eyes and waved his hands. "Come on, Raina. You're left-handed, aren't you?"

"It's in my left."

"You're leading wrong. You've got your knife out front. You stab at me, maybe I grab your wrist. Bend it into an unwristlike configuration. Take your knife away and stab you with it." He mimicked her knife-first stance, then reversed it, drawing his marker close to his body. He waved his empty hand in her face. "See this? It's my hand. You better not ignore it, because it can punch you in the throat. Poke out your eyes. So I strike with it first."

He did so. Reflexively, she grabbed for it, neutralizing it. He flashed in with the marker, slashing a broad red smear across her gut. "See? That red splotch represents you, quite dead. Because I lead with my free hand."

She reversed her footing. It felt strange, reserving her blade, extending her naked hand first, but after a few minutes of dancing around in the grass, slashing and stabbing, marking each other's arms and guts with red, it felt much safer. More dangerous. Mauser couldn't afford to ignore either threat. If she landed her empty hand, he would be hurt or knocked back, vulnerable to the knife; if he tangled up her free hand with his, that left him open to a swift stab to his belly or ribs.

"You take to this with disturbing ease," he said.

She lowered her marker. "Where did you learn?"

"Jail."

"You were in jail?"

"Nothing that exciting. Some drug charges. My celly claimed this was San Quentin shiv-fighting. I don't know about that, but it's proven effective enough."

They danced back and forth, shuffling across the grass. He showed her four ways to grab the enemy with her free hand: a noncommittal, thumbless hold; a death grip; a grab for the enemy's fingers; a wristlock. He showed her how to jab at the eyes and rake the face. Some was instinctual, but there was a crispness to his technique that she was greedy to learn. To replicate it, she had to slow down to a frustrating crawl.

The sun sank. They went home and slept, picking up where they left off right after breakfast. Martin watched glumly from the shade of a palm. After a couple hours, she suggested they go take more guns from the bunker to bring back to Jill. Martin brightened. He had some ideas about the rainwater-collection system and how to apply it to the underground homes of the market.

At the bunker, Raina left a few guns and dozens of boxes of ammo behind. She wanted a fallback plan. They loaded the wagon with twenty firearms of all shapes and sizes and a thousand rounds of ammo. It was a tough drag and it took most of the night.

"Nice work," Jill said in the doorway of her home, groggy-eyed; it wasn't yet dawn. "Can you get more?"

The gunshots and smoke rent Long Beach for two more days. Jill had scouts who returned with stories that it was mostly sound and fury. A few people had died on both sides, but they were mostly feeling each other out, dancing the same way Raina danced with Mauser in the grass of their yard, markers held close to their bodies, waiting for an opening, a mistake. Raina took Martin and Mauser into the ruins to plumb more arms. When they came back, with just two pistols, a rifle, and a few boxes of bullets, the scouts said the east had been quiet all day.

Men and women came and went from the Dunemarket. Most wandered among the tents and blankets, but a few found Jill, murmured with her, and followed her up the hill to her home. Raina watched each one, memorizing faces.

Raina continued combing the old homes. On their previous trip to the bunker, Martin had drawn sketches of its water collection and filtration system, and while Raina searched for weaponry, he looted tools and materials from garages and piled them in the wagon.

Raina didn't keep any of the guns, but she took her knives everywhere. As she scavenged, she thought about how she would use them—if a man attacked her like so, she would block and stab like so; if he came in from her left, she envisioned slipped past him, slashing and stabbing at his guts as she tried to get around to his back. When she thought no one was looking, she practiced on the trees, attacking low limbs, visualizing them as aggressive arms waiting to be gripped and cut and broken.

But someone had been watching. A couple days into her makeshift, constant practice, she returned to the Dunemarket with a wagonload of mesh screens and bags of charcoal for Martin's water barrels. He intercepted her on the road and grinned.

"Want to see something cool?" he said.

"No," she said. "I hate cool things."

For a moment, he looked devastated, then laughed and blushed. "Then you're going to really hate this. Come on."

"Let me get the wagon to the market."

Martin glanced dismissively at the pile of material. "That stuff made it through the last five years. I'm pretty sure it can handle five more minutes. Come on!"

She glanced up the road to make sure no one was around to take it, then pulled the wagon to the shoulder and let the handle clank to the ground. Martin jogged down Gaffey St., burnt-out foundations to his right, untouched homes to his left. He hung a left down a narrow side street that led to their home, a pink stucco place with two couches on its shaded porch. He hunched down in front of the one-car garage, heaved, and shoved the door up its track with a rickety clatter.

A wooden post jutted from the middle of the floor. A pair of thick sticks poked from the post at knee- and shoulder-height, padded with foam and wrapped in cloth. Sanded wooden knobs capped the limbs' ends.

"It's all yours," he smiled.

She stepped forward. "You got me a scratching post?"

"But it's not for cats. It's for Rainas." He walked around it, striking at the padded limbs. "It's a practice dummy. So you can train when Mauser isn't around."

"Cool."

"It is cool. You should try it."

She got out her knife and, feeling foolish, jabbed at one of its "arms." The blade sank into the foam. The attack took her uncomfortably close to the other arm. The two angled legs threatened to tangle her own. She pulled out the knife, grabbed its arm with her open right hand like Mauser taught her, and swung to the dummy's side, stabbing at the body of the post. She stepped back, considering the sanded wood.

"When did you have time to build this?"

"Mornings," Martin said. "Afternoons, too. Sometimes at night, so long as I didn't have to make any cuts to the wood. I guess I spent pretty much the last three days on it."

"It's cool. It's like a body. It makes you think about how you'd fight a real person."

"Cool," he grinned. "Let me know when you cut the foam up too bad and I'll replace it."

She nodded and attacked it again, rattling its arm. Mauser had shown her a few steps to use, short, shuffling things he claimed would let her react faster and move in or out without commitment—that was a big thing for him, committing. He said it was one thing to commit to a punch, but when the other guy had a knife, too, you didn't want to make any big clumsy moves where he could stab you right back. She found the steps unnatural and had to think about each one, but the dummy gave her the perfect target to slow down and visualize what each step meant.

When she finally looked up, Martin was gone. When she got tired she toweled off with a bit of the unboiled water they kept in the garage and went inside to eat dinner. She returned to the garage and resumed, practicing without end, a slow dance that left her shoes dusty and the floor littered with bits of foam.

"What's that?" Mauser said. She whirled. He coughed into his hand. He smelled like beer and his eyes were puffy. "Find yourself a scratching post?"

"Martin made it," she said. "So I can practice when I'm by myself."

Mauser chuckled and touched the slashed-up foam of one of its arms. "That kid. He'd take a bullet for you. And then take the bullet and build it into a bullet-spitting robot. We're wasting his potential."

She lowered her knife, sweating in the half-cool night. "What do you mean?"

"That he's handy. We should get him to work on a trebuchet. A mangonel, even. Blast the holy hell out of the enemy's stupid yacht."

"About the other thing. Taking a bullet."

Mauser raised his eyebrows, which barely widened his glassy eyes. "You really don't know?"

"Know what?"

"That he pines for you like the taiga. Yearns like young Werther."

It took her a moment to translate. She shook her head. "He's too young."

Mauser scoffed. "Like them older, do you?"

"Maybe I don't like them at all."

His eyebrows shot up, then his face pinched in on itself. "You're messing with me."

She laughed at him. "Why do you care? Are you jealous?"

Mauser's expression clouded. He stepped closer, as close as she came to the dummy as she stabbed at the vitals between its arms and legs. "How old are you, really?"

"Would it matter?"

He smiled, eyes half closed, breath whistling through his nose. He moved toward her. Her pulse leapt.

He halted and bared his teeth at the dummy. "Does it matter to the law? To this little society we've got here? No. Thirteen, seventeen, eight, eighty, it's all the same."

"You talk a lot," she said.

"And I wasn't finished." He patted her face. "It doesn't matter to the law because there isn't one. But call me old fashioned, it still matters to me." He winked at her and lumbered past. "Good night, Raina."

The garage door slammed. Her candles wavered. She flushed with a lowdown shame. She whirled on the dummy and jammed her knife into its neck.

Mauser wasn't around in the morning. Not in the house. Not in the yard. Not in the Dunemarket, either, when she was offloading flares and binoculars onto a trader's blanket and three Catalinan soldiers strolled up and asked for her by name.

16

Lorna drove with purpose through the buttery sunshine and dried-out streets of outer Los Angeles. Or maybe it was still Orange County, Walt didn't know. All he knew was that the ocean glittering far below wasn't as pretty as Mexico's shores. Not the southwest coast they'd reached after their first leg through the jungle. Certainly not the pale blue glow of the Gulf. It wasn't just a loser in the looks department, either. According to Lorna, it was more dangerous here, too. A downgrade in pretty much every way from the life he'd left behind.

Yet Los Angeles still felt like a homecoming. He hadn't spent more than a few months there, but those months had been big ones. Seeing the city again was like revisiting the city where you went to college. Bumping into your first girlfriend and going out for drinks. Returning at midnight, after retirement, to the field where you hit your first home run.

"This is weird," he said.

She braked the car, jolting him forward. "What? Do you see something?"

"Yeah," he said. "The place where I saved the world."

"How nice." She gassed the car downhill. They drove through nondescript strip malls and apartment complexes, then hit stucco Spanish-style houses and palm-lined streets. She only had to detour around two blockages of wrecked and abandoned cars on her way to the shore. The marina lot was half empty and she pulled into a spot, stopped, idled for a moment, then switched off the car and hopped out into the warm air. Walt stepped onto the grassy parking barrier and stared out to sea.

"We should garage this." She traced her hand over the car's hood, drawing finger-lines in the grime, a thousand miles of Mexican dust and a few hundred of the American kind. "It would be wrong to abandon it."

"Don't you have any on the island?"

"It's more than that. It took us this far. We can't just cast it off."

"You're right. It would sulk for months."

"It could be useful. I don't know how many working cars we have on the mainland."

"That's the thing about our brave new world," Walt said. "The old one isn't really gone. If you spend a little time searching for it, and a lot more time restoring it, you can bring a piece of the old ways back to life."

She turned to him, her desert-tanned face an unguessable mixture of emotions, then nodded at the boats still berthed at the docks. "Here's the big question. Do we row to the island? Or do we sail?"

"Do we have something against engines now?"

"You think it's easier to get a boat running than a car?"

"Rowing or sailing it is," he said. "What's less likely to get us killed?"

"Do you know how to sail?"

Walt laughed. "I bet I make a mighty fine passenger."

Lorna smiled wryly. "Is that a no?"

"That's among the no-ingest noes you've ever heard."

She walked over the grass divider to the concrete walkway to the docks. "I know just enough to know that it would be tough to get us across by myself."

Walt swung his arms, limbering up. "Then we row."

She stepped onto the wooden pier. "It's twenty-plus miles from here."

"We just walked a thousand."

"On our legs. Unless you were doing handstands while I wasn't watching, this will exhaust an entirely different set of muscles. You'll wear out a quarter of the way across."

"The Hawaiians did this all the time. On a diet of poi, no less."

"They had canoes. And crews of rowers. We'll have two of us, unfit for duty, in a rowboat." She stopped in front of a mast angling from the placid marina waters. Kelp swayed in the shallows. Finger-length orange fish drifted between the fronds. "If we row, we know our arms will give out. We don't know that's true of the wind. We'll sail."

"Aye-aye, captain. Does this mean I'm your first mate?"

"Eighth."

"Then I'll settle for being best."

"Third."

He snorted. "Then I'll settle for being the one who's still here."

She walked from boat to boat, sizing up rotted sails and green-tinged ropes, kicking hulls, muttering to herself. Walt grew progressively more bored, feeling unusually useless. After an hour of searching, she clambered onto a small sloop whose sails only had a couple small holes and stomped her foot on the deck.

"This'll do."

"Great," Walt said. "I think I could have swam there by now."

They went back for their goods from the car and loaded up. Lorna unfurled sails, yanked on ropes, rubbed her jaw. "This is going to be ugly. Good chance we'll crash before we're out of the marina."

"Good god. We'll have to swim dozens of feet."

Lorna gestured at the cleats and the ropes holding them to the dock. "Mates work the ropes. Untie us and jump aboard."

He saluted, jumped down to the pier, and unknotted the lines. The boat bobbed at an angle from the dock. He stretched for the ladder and climbed back up. She hauled hard on the sails, trimming them tight against the wind. The sloop swung slowly about. With a grating roar, its rear end hit the dock and knocked Walt to the deck.

"Is that standard?" he said.

The boat ground harder, juddering Lorna's voice. "Get out and swim. We'll see who gets there first."

With a lurch, the rear yanked free. She had chosen a ship near the end of the piers and it wafted toward the jetty of black rocks that pincered the entrance of the marina. The sail flapped against itself and Lorna adjusted it, swinging the boat around to face the way out. It overcorrected, nose pointed toward the rocks, drawing closer by the second.

"Lorna," he said.

"Who drove a thousand miles to get us here?" she shouted into the wind and the slap of waves against the hull.

"You did."

"And I can fucking sail us the last twenty to get home."

He strapped himself in to one of the fishing seats and gripped it hard. The boat bobbed closer and closer to the rocks. When it came parallel, the jetty was so near he could have jumped down and landed on it. The wind bore them past into the open ocean.

Walt stood and cheered. "Now there's the girl I married."

She smiled vaguely and went back to work on the ropes. The sun banked from the waves. The shore receded behind them. He thought he saw a darker blue blur on the horizon but couldn't be sure. He offered to help and she brushed him off. He returned to the fisherman's chair, plunked down, and enjoyed the sun on his skin and the scent of the salt.

The blur coalesced into a blob and then into a solid lump. Walt hadn't been on a proper boat since trips off Long Island with his childhood friends, but he thought they were making good time. The sun climbed and peaked. He napped, waking with sweat greasing the folds of his skin. His mouth was dry. He went into the cabin for a drink of water, then approached Lorna near the mast. She gazed at the approaching island.

"I'm concerned," she said.

"Isn't that it?" he pointed. "The big island-shaped island?"

"About us."

Walt blinked, stung. "The part where we have fun together? Or the part where we went through some amazing shit down in the jungle but came out alive because we had each other?"

"My people won't understand."

"Will they understand my middle finger?"

She smiled tightly. "You won't be able to help us if they don't trust you. This thing I brought you here for is bigger than us."

"You're serious?" he said. "What are you suggesting? That we break it off?"

"Maybe just for a while."

He sniffed at the ocean. "Nope."

"What do you mean, nope?"

"I mean," Walt said, "that I'm much more concerned about a resurgent alien menace than the judgment of your friends. If they don't like it, I can always head right back to Mexico."

"Walt."

"Lorna."

She rolled her eyes, wind whipping her hair. "This is a different world than the Yucatan. There are rules."

"No there aren't." He stood, spreading his hands, the breeze drying the sweat from his armpits and the crooks of his elbows. "If you think anything's changed, then you don't understand what the plague was all about. It didn't change the rules. It just proved they never existed."

"Great speech," she said. "That won't change how they feel. They're good people, but they're very wary of outsiders. That's what kept us alive."

He stripped off his shirt and slung it on the deck. "Okay."

"What are you doing?"

He stepped to the railing. "Swimming back to shore."

"Walt."

"Lorna."

"You don't understand what it's like there."

"Do you care about me?" he said.

"Of course I do."

"Then act like it. It's that simple."

"No it isn't!" She grabbed his arm, fingers prying into his biceps. Her eyes burned brighter than the sun on the sea. "But what I care about most is saving my people. I don't want to give them any reason to distrust you."

"It wouldn't matter," he said.

"That's right. I forgot. You're the man who saved the world. How's a little thing like a society going to stand in your way?"

"Here's the thing: I don't give a shit about these people. I give a shit about you."

"Were you always this romantic?"

"It's the reason any of us are alive."

She shook her head, black hair streaming across her face, and glared at the island. "It would have to be a secret."

"Us?"

"We don't have to stop. But we do have to pretend like it never was."

He shook his head. "I don't know what you're so afraid of. But this isn't my home. If that's what it takes, then I'll keep my mouth closed."

"Good."

"Until it's on your body."

She gave him a look. "You ran off by your lonesome. You don't know how things changed. When the plague took our families, we formed new ones. Hundreds of people on that island see me as their sister. Their niece. Their daughter. Six of our men died and I'm coming back holding hands with a stranger. How's that going to look to them? Do you think people judge women less now that everything's gone to shit?"

"You'd think the total collapse of everything we knew would be a pretty good time to reevaluate old prejudices." He leaned forward and set his elbows on his knees. "Know what, I have no problem lying. If that's what it takes, for all I care we can tell them I'm a eunuch."

"Speaking of." She adjusted the ropes and turned to him. "Take off your pants. It could be a while."

He grinned and unlatched his belt. The pitch of the ship made things tricky even after they were lying down, threatening to slam him onto her with far more force than his anatomy could stand, but that just made it better. He barely held off long enough for her to finish. After, he lay on top of her, taking great gasps of salty air, sweat trickling down his sun-baked body. She winked and pushed him off and got a towel from the cabin.

The island congealed from a blue-black lump into a green chunk of land. Lorna adjusted the flapping sails. He dressed and wandered back onto the deck.

"Is the wind always like this?"

She shrugged, clothed again. "Sometimes it blows the other way instead."

He retreated inside the cabin with scissors, knife, rag, water, and his remaining can of Gillette. By the time the island was close enough to make out its ridges, trees, homes, and docks, he'd carpeted the floor with his long hair and middling beard. His chin was reasonably smooth, his hair cut short enough to bristle his palm. He had shaved himself down to the scalp a few times in the jungle—sometimes he got so sick of the heat and humidity he couldn't handle a single hair on his head—and as always, the act was cathartic, redefining. Lorna gave him a long eye as he stepped back on the deck.

"Who's that?" she said. "A stowaway?"

"Have to look tough for the locals. Long hair is for poets."

The island loomed nearer. A quarter mile out, a mirror winked from the shore. Walt shielded his eyes and leaned forward. A rifle boomed across the ocean.

"Jesus!"

"Get down and try not to get shot," Lorna said.

Walt had already crouched down. He dropped to the pitching deck, shielding his eyes against the blinding waves. "I thought these were your friends. What did you do, skip out on the rent?"

"Give me your shirt."

He peeled it off and flung it at her, not bothering to ask any questions. This was her show now. She pounded up the metal ladder on the side of the cabin, braced herself against the rise and fall of the waves, and twirled his shirt above her head.

"What's that, your distress signal?" Walt said. "Or just trying to convince them we're friendly strippers?"

"They don't know it's me," she said. "They were expecting Hannigan's boat. Weeks ago."

Walt rolled on his belly. The island neared, a mass of craggy green hills fronted by rocky beaches. The remnants of a small town waited to the right of their present course. Fingers of smoke climbed from chimneys. The mirror on the shore winked again. Lorna whipped the shirt to her sides—three times right, twice left, once right. The mirror flashed twice and disappeared. A figure waited on the sandy shore.

Lorna drove the boat straight into the beach. Sand scraped the hull, groaning and squeaking under the mass and momentum. Walt sprawled forward, landing on his elbows, pain stinging up his arms.

"Lorna?" a man called.

She grinned, strode to the railing, and vaulted over the side, landing in the surf with a splash. Walt followed her over. It was a warm day but the water was cold. He gasped, sucking in a mouthful of salty water. He coughed and kicked, beginning to panic, but his shoes struck sand beneath him. He lurched up and walked to shore.

Lorna embraced a youngish man with a wormlike, angry scar running front to back down his scalp. He pulled away, laughing in the sunlight.

"We thought you were dead!"

She smiled wryly. "Just about."

The man's smile cracked. He glanced at Walt and the boat beached in the surf, then rubbed his mouth. "Is this it?"

"We were attacked. Aliens."

"Hannigan?"

She shook her head. The man embraced her again. After a couple seconds, she drew back and nodded at Walt. "But we got what we came for."

The man with the scarred scalp smiled and frowned at the same time. "That's him?"

"Tell Karslaw we're here. We're going to my house to clean up. We'll call on him in an hour."

The man nodded, smiled sympathetically, and jogged toward the town down the beach.

"Karslaw," Walt said. "Sounds like a Russian horselord."

Lorna hiked up the beach toward a road. "He was a contractor. Now he's our king."

"Should I wear a tie?"

"Subtract the sweat and the dirt and we'll be fine."

She led him up a grassy hill to a Cape Cod-style home painted bold blue and trimmed with white. L.A.'s houses always threw him. This one could have been right at home on Long Island or New England. As usual, the neighboring houses were a jumble of Spanish, Victorian, Tuscan, and '50s modern, though the island town was decidedly more beach town/tourist than what he'd seen on the mainland. He still couldn't decide whether this schizophrenic diversity was an awesome display of artistic freedom or a pathetic attempt to appropriate the status of older places.

Lorna's front door was unlocked. She strode through it, glancing casually at a kitchen and living room, as if to reassure herself it was still there. She brought him to the back patio, which was dusty and crusted with old leaves. She told him to wait there and brought a plastic kiddie pool, a bar of soap, a towel, and sloshing jugs of clear water. He washed up. She came back with some beat-up but clean men's clothes—jeans, t-shirt, white socks.

He stood up, dripping. "Want to join me?"

"Dry off and get ready. I've been gone for months."

"So what's five minutes more?"

"Walt."

"Two minutes."

"The boat wasn't enough?" she said. "Get dressed. Let's go. Or I'll bring him here instead."

Walt stepped out of the kiddie pool and grabbed his towel. He got on his clothes, his shoes. Once he was ready, Lorna climbed an unpaved trail into the hills. A herringbone marina extended from the bay. Pastel Mediterranean houses crowded the slopes above the beach. Lorna dipped off the ridge into a valley, putting the town a mile behind them. At a lonely hill across the plateau, a vast structure spread against the horizon.

Walt pointed. "What is that?"

"Karslaw's home," Lorna said.

"It looks like a..."

"Fort?"

"I was going to say castle."

"It should. It is one."

"Okay," he said. "What is a castle doing on an island twenty miles from L.A.?"

"Exactly what it's supposed to do," she said. "Protecting us."

"From aliens?"

"Mainlanders. We started building it before we knew the aliens weren't all dead."

High wooden walls thrust from an earthen rampart. Wooden towers flanked the gates and the corners of the outer walls, rising another three floors into the sky. A keep waited behind the outer fortifications. From across the valley, it looked wooden, too, but as they crossed the plowed-up farmland surrounding the dirt road, he saw the keep was brick and stone.

"I feel like I could use some etiquette lessons," Walt said. He glanced back at the shacks spotting the fields on the approach to the castle. "Do I call him 'Sir'? 'Your Majesty'?"

"Karslaw."

The wooden gates were open. A figure moved in one of the towers. Walt wasn't sure what to expect as a way of greeting—trumpets, men with pikes, a hail of arrows—but nothing met or challenged them as they thumped across an actual drawbridge spanning a dry moat. A flagstone path led to the keep.

A tall, burly man exited into the grassy bailey. He was bald and bearded and his shoulders rolled easily as he walked. Lorna laughed. The man ran the last few feet, crushing her to his chest.

"We thought you were dead!" he bellowed.

"Almost." She grinned the same wry grin as at the beach, tugging her shirt smooth.

"So Chad said. I'm sorry to hear—"

"Later," Lorna said. "I'll tell you everything later. Once I've had gin. I miss gin like it were air."

"Whatever the returning hero wants." Karslaw stepped back from her and regarded Walt. "Who's this?"

"Walt," Lorna said.

The big man jerked his thumb toward Santa Monica Bay. "Is he the one—?"

"Yep. That's him."

"Huh. A man never looks like his reputation, does he?" Karslaw extended his thick hand to Walt. Across the blue waters, Los Angeles rested in the haze. "Welcome to Catalina. Care to finish what you started?"

17

She wanted to run. Hide. No one knew the ruins like her. The three soldiers down the street could hunt her for years and never find her. But she didn't feel like running anymore. Not from the Catalinans. She might still fear them, but she hated them more.

The soldiers were at a stall speaking to the woman whose two boys used bikes to deliver messages and packages across the city. Raina walked out from the shadow of the shack she'd been watching from.

"I'm Raina," she said. Heads swung her way.

"Is that her?" a dark-haired man asked another whose windbreaker sagged over his basketball-sized paunch.

"Yup." The paunchy man smiled at her. "You don't forget eyes like that. They look ready to leap right out of her skull and stab you."

"Why aren't you at your house?" said the dark-haired man.

"What house?" Raina said.

He waved his hand west toward her old home. "Down on the shore."

"I moved."

"Why didn't you let anyone know?"

"No one told me I had to let anyone know."

"Made it damn hard to find you."

"I had to move," she said. "I can't run my boat by myself. Was I supposed to starve?"

The paunchy man glanced at the people milling around the blankets and merchants, several of whom watched their conversation. "Maybe we should take this somewhere more private."

"I'm fine here," Raina said.

"We're getting off track," said the dark-haired man. "Where were you last Friday?"

"When was Friday?"

The other man rolled his eyes. "Were you at Pokers?"

"What's Pokers?" she said.

"Whorehouse." He gestured east. "In Long Beach."

"Why would I be at a whorehouse in Long Beach?"

The dark-haired man laughed. "Do you have an answer for anything?"

"I wasn't at a whorehouse in Long Beach. I'm just a girl. Who would ask such a disgusting question?"

He pulled back his head, flustered. The man with the belly smiled, mirth in his eyes and contempt on his mouth. "Because one of the pros said she saw a skinny little Mexican girl hanging around in the parking lot that night."

"I'm not Mexican," Raina said. "My parents were from Costa Rica."

The first man ran his hand through his black hair. "Hold on, did Heather mean Mexican-Mexican, or of the general appearance of a Mexican?"

The other man shrugged. "Hell should I know?"

"What's this about?" Raina said.

The third soldier hadn't spoken the whole time. He had doleful eyes and the build of a utility pole. He leaned down to her level. "Murder."

"Someone died?"

The man straightened, judging her from on high. The fat man wiped his nose on his sleeve. "They didn't drop dead. They were killed. Know anything about it?"

She shook her head. "I was moving here last week. Hauling stuff with my friend Martin. Why would I know anything about a murder?"

"People kill for many reasons," said the tall and quiet man. "Greed. Pleasure. Revenge."

Raina let out a shaky breath. "Well, I don't know anything. Am I under arrest?"

The three soldiers looked between each other. The paunchy man reached out and tapped her chin. "Not yet. But don't go anywhere. We might want to talk to you again."

She wanted to bite off his fingers. "I'll stay right here."

The Catalinans walked up the road, stopping to talk with another vendor, who pointed up the hill toward San Pedro. Raina watched them until they climbed over the rise, then ran to her new house to tell Martin about her alibi.

"Do you think they'll come for me?" he said.

"Don't look so scared. You just have to lie."

"What if they can tell?"

She snorted. "If they knew anything, they wouldn't be asking."

"What if they're trying to trick you? To get you to lie? We'd better tell Mauser."

"Why?"

Martin gaped at her. "Because he could be in trouble, too."

"He can take care of himself," she said. "But you're right. We have to get our stories straight."

They asked around the market and Dana the ironmonger said Mauser was speaking to Jill at her house. They caught him closing the door to the hillside home and, isolated in the dusty, palm-studded field, Raina explained how the three soldiers had come to her about the murders.

After, Mauser grimaced and dabbed sweat from his brow. "They said this woman saw you at Pokers?"

"Yes," Raina said. "Is that really its name?"

"Tragically, yes," Mauser said. "And Heather who works there said she saw a skinny Latino girl on the scene."

"Yes."

"Which describes, oh, ten percent of the surviving populace of Los Angeles County."

"But what if she can identify Raina?" Martin said.

"Should we kill her?" Raina said.

"Should we kill—?" Mauser tipped back his head and spread his arms, beseeching the sky. "Raina. Killing can't solve all your problems. Well, unless you kill everyone, anyway, at which point you probably would be rid of all your worries. Except what to do about the smell."

"But they came straight for me."

"No, they didn't. It's been what, a week since they found the bodies? Since the war began? If they had any real leads, they'd have been here six days ago." He cracked his knuckles. "This is a new golden age for violent criminals. The police don't have any DNA to trip you up with. Of course, there aren't any proper cops either, so those fellows who came to see you could, if so inclined, beat the shit out of you until the truth spilled out with it." He picked at something on his neck, looking thoughtful. "So don't piss them off, I suppose. Did you piss them off?"

Raina shrugged. "I played dumb."

"They were looking for you to slip up. Or for an excuse to smash your skull. If they come back, stick to your story and it will all be cool."

"But they knew my name."

"Yeah, because they came to the market with your description and someone said, 'Oh sure, that's Raina.' Trust me, they don't have shit. Know how I know that? Because you're talking with me instead of drowning in the bilge of their boat."

Raina wandered off, convinced, but in the morning, the hand-cranked siren yowled from the Dunemarket. She jogged from the garage where she'd been practicing on the dummy. Down the hill, twenty of the Catalinans marched into the market. Some carried axes and machetes. All carried guns. She threw herself behind a rusted pickup and waited for them to call her name.

But they weren't there for her. Their leader strode to the middle of the street and cupped his hands to his mouth. Wars were costly, he declared. In order to fund the ongoing battle against the violent gangs to the east, they required—to their own regret—increased tributes. More food. Bullets, if such things could be found, although they would accept raw lead as well. They needed soap, too, which they knew the merchants knew how to make, or at least import. Condoms. Toothpaste. A host of minor things. Raina didn't listen too close. All their soldiers would soon be dead.

There was a lot of grumbling among the merchants. Less so among the travelers who'd been bartering at their stalls. After the soldiers left, Jill announced a meeting for the following afternoon. She wrote a batch of messages and handed them to the bicycle boys.

Sixty-odd people showed up for the meet, sitting under umbrellas and a tarp stretched between two stalls to shield them from the sun. It wasn't the entire population of the Dunemarket; Raina figured there had to be at least a couple hundred more in the hills of the park and the surrounding ruins. Raina had brought Jill enough guns to arm half the people in the street. Assuming they were willing to fight. Seeing how few they were, Raina understood why Jill waited.

But the war with the Catalinans didn't have to be a fight to the death like the dogs she'd stalked on the pier. There were hummingbirds, too. They fought off much larger birds with no more than a sharp bill and raw anger. However small their numbers, if they struck back with enough force, it might be enough to convince the Catalinans to stick to their island.

"So the islanders want more," Jill said from a small platform set up in front of the tarp. Her voice was hoarser than normal. "I don't see much choice. We have to give them what they want."

"How much further do we bend?" called Velasquez, who ran the herb stand. "What if the next thing they want is my left nut?"

"Then be grateful you've got a right one." Some laughter, but Jill didn't have to wait long before it ended. "All they want is a little food. A little stuff. A little of our time. And you know what? All that time is borrowed. They won't be here forever."

"How do you know that?" Velasquez said.

Jill surveyed the crowd. Her face was composed, but Raina could see the calculation. The rebellion wasn't an open thing. Was every face in the crowd of sixty a face Jill could trust? Raina didn't think Jill would think so. She leaned forward.

"Over the last few months, we've been assembling a trade union," Jill said. "We're still working on logistics. A way to ensure that when we speak, they listen. In another couple months, we'll be ready to offer them a proposal. Their island keeps them safe, but it also keeps them poor. If they want what we've got, they'll have to negotiate."

"From the right end of a gun," an old man grumbled.

"We'll see. I think they'll listen. Keep your heads down and we'll see how it shakes out."

"Why not just blow up the damn boat?"

Jill laughed humorlessly. "You think that's the only one they've got? You think that's all their manpower? If you blow up one boat, what do you do about the three that come after it?"

They talked more, but that was the end of it. Raina waited for the crowd to break up and for the last of the hangers-on to leave Jill alone. She approached then, gesturing up the bare hill where they could talk by themselves. Jill sighed but followed up the summer-browned grass.

"What is it, Raina?"

"Is that true? About the union?"

The woman gazed downhill. The market had resumed. Vendors entertained travelers and crafted small wares. "The union's a pipe dream. A cover story. We will make a legitimate proposal. I don't expect the islanders to accept it."

"And when they don't, we fight."

"That's the plan."

"Why don't we ambush them tomorrow? How many more of them are on the island?"

"Lots," Jill said. "Enough to squirt us between their toes even while they're dealing with the gangs over in Long Beach."

Raina gestured vaguely south. "How do you know? Have you ever been to Catalina?"

"I know because a different batch of soldiers steps off that boat every time it comes for taxes. Two months, three, we might have enough people to stand up to them. Is that so long to wait?"

"Not for me," Raina said. "But it might be for my mom."

"This is ridiculous. I used to be a substitute teacher." Jill sighed and shook her head. "You want to make progress? Guns, Raina. Lots and lots of guns."

Raina left her on the hill. She was tired of hearing about guns. It was all these people thought about. Carrying them. Using them. Fighting over them. Such stupid things. Anyone could use them. Anyone could pull a trigger from across a field. They rewarded cowardice. They made people think that violence was a quick and clean and easy thing. If the men on the boat had to kill with their hands, not one in ten would have the stomach for it.

The bunker was nearly out of guns and she was keeping the few that remained in reserve for herself. Reduced to aimless scavenging, she wandered up the coast from her old home, checking houses methodically. There was no telltale sign or pattern for where you might find a gun. Most had been looted, hoarded, or lost. Taken from one place and abandoned in another. Even so, she went first to the rich houses of the Beach Cities. People with wealth would have wanted to protect it.

She climbed the winding roads in the green hills of Palos Verdes, rummaging through lavish homes that looked stolen from Spain or Boston or Italy. She stayed away from houses she wasn't sure were empty. The afternoons were hot but cooled as soon as the wind turned. It took as much as an hour to search each home—you could do it faster, but the true valuables, the guns and jewels and dollars owners once yearned to protect, those were often hidden or locked away in safes and closets, some of which she could find keys for if she looked hard enough. Most times these stashes were empty, but now and then they turned up a pistol or bullets.

Some houses searched much faster. Some had been completely hollowed out, dust resting in the scratches on the bare wood floors. Others had been used for squatting, chairs burned for heat, rooms cleared to eliminate hiding spots for rats and roaches. At such places, she spent five minutes searching for secret compartments, then headed to the next house down the street.

This part of the coastline was miles away from the market and she traveled alone and slept in empty houses. Over the course of seven days, she turned up twice as many guns. She brought them back to Jill and returned to the hunt in the hills. She resented the time lost when she could have been training with her knife—alone and away from her dummy, she could only practice her more rudimentary and abstract skills—yet it was this time away from her training that gave her the opportunity to revolutionize it.

She exited a shed in the back yard of a house on the edge of the sea. The patchy grass sloped into a decline that was almost but not quite steep enough to call a cliff. Black rocks ringed the shore below it, buffered from the ocean by a narrow beach. Light flashed from the sand.

The man was shirtless. Tanned as brown as herself. Two streaks of gray in his dark hair. The skin on his face and arms and belly looked old, but his muscles moved smoothly. He had a knife in both hands and she thought he was dancing.

But that was only because his movements were so fluid. Flowing like the ocean washing up and down the shore. Knives flashing. Slow rolling motions that exploded into blurs of light and steel. She knew as certain as she knew her own name that he had been doing this for longer than she'd been alive.

For a minute, she did nothing but watch, hunched in the wild weeds at the edge of the decline. Something came alive in her. All the while she'd been training, she'd had to keep a persistent doubt at bay. Karslaw was so much bigger than her. So much stronger. Mauser's lessons were practical, effective, but she feared they weren't powerful enough to overcome the bearded man.

But nothing could stand against the man on the beach. His knives could split the wind.

At once, he stopped, bounced down to his haunches, and wiped his palms in the sand. Her heart lurched—was he about to leave?—and then he drank from a blue plastic bottle and started his practice again. Raina backtracked to a trail down the cliff, ran to the beach, and walked up behind him.

"I want you to teach me to do that."

He whirled, knives out. He was at least fifty years old. He lowered one blade. "Why would I want to do that?"

"Because I want to learn," she said. "Because I want to be the best."

He smiled, pulling wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. "No."

"Because someday you will die but your skills can live on."

He sheathed his knives and bent to pick up his bag. "Are you appealing to my ego? I don't care about my ego. Or yours."

She dogged him as he headed up the beach. "Because I can give you anything."

"You've already given me a headache." He gave her an amused look. "Just what do you think you have to offer? All I see is a pair of shoes and a flagrant lack of shame."

"I find things. I know this place. Whatever you want, I can get it for you."

"Do you imagine I'm so busy I can't poke around the rubble for myself?"

"What will take you less time?" she said from beside him. He was only a couple inches taller than her. "Ferreting out the treasures from all this sprawl? Or teaching me to do what you do?"

He glanced over at her for the first time since walking away, squinting against the wave-reflected sunlight. "There's nothing I want."

Her heart beat harder. "Then I'll make you teach me."

"If you could do that, what more could I possibly teach you?"

She jogged around front of him, got out her knife, and lunged, leading with her open hand. His mouth tightened. He slapped her wrist away, stinging it. She flicked her knife under their crossed hands, going for his gut. He pivoted on his heels, pulling his body out of harm's way. She jabbed toward his face. It was just supposed to be a feint, an uncommitted strike to rattle him, but he intercepted her forearm with his palm, guided it away from his body, and, still holding her arm in place, slammed the extended knuckles of his other fist straight into the soft flesh of her inner forearm.

She yelped and dropped the knife into the sand. He hit her with a flurry of blows, dazzling her, knocking her to the beach. She tried to get up and her elbow folded. Her face skidded into the sand.

He set his hands on his hips. "Now you have blood on your nose and sand on your face and I'm still not going to teach you."

Raina pushed herself up to her knees. Too many parts of her hurt to locate them all. "Teach me because I want to kill the man who killed my father."

"Do you think I just stepped out of the 36th Chamber?" He walked on. She jumped up and got her knife and put herself in front of his path.

"Teach me again, sir."

He laughed, pressing his palms to his cheeks and then dragging them down so she could see the wet red lids below his eyes. "Are you that devoted? Then here's my deal. Bring me a Chagall, and I'll teach you."

"What's a shoggle?"

"Who."

"What?" she said.

"It's not a what, it's a who."

"Who is Shoggle?"

"Chagall," the man said. "He's a painter."

"You want me to bring you him? How do you know he's still alive?"

"He's not. He's very dead."

"Do you want me to bring you his body?"

He stepped back and shook his head at the sand. "This is absurd. I retract my offer."

"No! Tell me about Chagall."

"Bring me one of his paintings. Not a print. Not a replica. One of his. If I like it, I'll teach you kali."

"Where can I find you when I do?"

"If you can find a Chagall, you can find me."

"Then I'll find your Chagall," Raina said. "And then I'll find you."

He smiled. "Sure you will."

She ran up the slope. At the top, she crouched in the brush and spied on him. He lived three blocks from the beach in a house half the size of his neighbors. She went back to the basement where she'd concealed the guns she'd scrounged and ran back to the Dunemarket, arriving at sunset. At the house, Mauser pan-fried sausage links while Martin pointed at the pan and babbled about ideal heat levels.

"Why does he want a painting?" Mauser said when she explained. "Who's he hoping to impress, the Empress of The Burnt-Out Ruins That Used To Be Los Angeles?"

"I don't know," Raina said. "But he wants it. I'm going to get it."

Martin nodded and backed off from the fire pit. "When do we leave?"

"Tonight. We're going to Malibu. Crossing the entire city. Best to travel at dark."

"I'll go get packed."

Mauser's mouth hung open. "You can't just run off on some ridiculous quest. We're in the middle of a rebellion here."

"Jill moves as slowly as mold. She won't miss us for a few days."

"In case you forgot about the war we started, the Catalinans and the Osseys are at each other's throats right now. Don't you think we'd better stick around for that?"

"No," Raina said. "See you later."

"At least eat dinner."

She went to her room to add a few long-term items to the travel pack she'd carried while hunting for guns on the coast. Freeze-dried food. A third lighter. Spare safety pins. Martin met her in the hall.

"I've never been to Malibu," he said. "Is it far?"

"It's on the other side of the bay," she said. "Thirty or forty miles."

"Do you know what the paintings look like?"

"Don't all artists sign their work?"

Martin adjusted the strap on his pack. "Probably. But it will probably be faster if we know what we're looking for."

"Brilliant thinking, chief," Mauser said behind them, legs churning to catch up.

"I thought you weren't coming," Raina said.

"And I thought you were bright enough to know about the magic of libraries and museums. We're not going to Malibu. We're going to the Getty. It's time you two got cultured."

"That sounds ominous," Raina said.

Wind shuffled the palms, carrying the scent of the smoke of the Dunemarket campfires. Raina kept one eye on the dark streets, but thought mostly of the man on the beach, and all the ways she would hurt the Catalinans once she learned to make her knives dance.

18

"We've seen them on the shores," Karslaw said. "Little ones. Children of the stars. Offspring of our murderers, raised by the gravekeepers of our world. Monsters with clapping beaks and more limbs than a spider."

"Sure," Walt said. "Aliens. I've seen a few."

"Of course," the man smiled. "After all, that's why you're here."

"Well, in my official capacity as your military advisor, I would advise you to shoot them."

Karslaw laughed, baritone whoops echoing off the stone walls of the keep. A small fire crackled in the hearth, smoke drawn up the flue. The stone was worn, dusty. Naked beams upheld the high ceiling. Outside, the wooden palisades were new and blond. The mortar in the stones of the keep walls was only lightly stained and showed no moss. But this place, the heart of the keep, it felt much older, decades if not centuries, as if Karslaw and his people had built their fort around a venerable mansion. A museum, maybe. For all Walt knew, it was the former main hall of an Ivy League college. Whatever it was, they hadn't built it—they'd found this place, this hilltop estate, and adapted it into a castle. Taken the bones of the old world and made themselves a new home.

It was like this everywhere, he suspected. People were scared, tired, eager for anything to shelter them from the storm of the end. They didn't have time to build from scratch. They'd hole up in the empty shells of anything they could find. And not just in the literal sense of old buildings, but in everything, picking up old beliefs and dreams and judgments. Hermit crabs of the Earth.

Karslaw drank from his stein, a pewter hulk with an attached clapper-lid. The smell of coffee wafted through the breeze-cooled room. "Shoot them. Sure. It sounds so easy."

"Isn't it?" Walt said.

"Gets a lot less easy when they shoot back. Here's the problem, Walt. I'm not running a squad of SEALs over here. I got a whole people to worry about. A nation. A small one—Vatican City with fewer miters and more guns—but I'm responsible for hundreds of lives nonetheless. It isn't just aliens I have to worry about. I got gang problems on the mainland. My people are patrolling the shores and the city every day. That's manpower spent keeping the peace instead of tilling the earth. I got to ask taxes from the settlers on the peninsula just to keep my people in salt and soap."

"'Ask'?" Walt said. "As in, 'Would you prefer to pay my taxes or be shot?'"

Karslaw made a face. "Somewhere in the middle. The citizens like paying them about as well as anyone has ever liked paying taxes, which is to say they'd feel less violated if I knocked on their door and actually fucked them. These people would be wiped out without us, but do they care? All they see is my men leaving with their food. They don't see our tireless work to keep them safe."

"Sounds like a heavy crown," Walt said. "How did you come to bear it? Pander to the Ohio swing voters?"

"Hah. Long story. When the virus hit, I saw the writing on the wall damn quick. I lived in Hermosa. Took my family here. Figured we could quarantine it. Wait out the Panhandler."

"Smart. But it didn't work, did it?"

Karslaw smiled wryly. "I wasn't the only one with smart ideas. We lasted three weeks longer than the mainland before someone brought the virus here. Within another week, it burned through us like a fire."

"I'm sorry."

The man narrowed his eyes, smiling the sharp smile of a man examining a hopeless fight. "My losses were no more special than anyone else's."

Walt shook his head. Impossible as it seemed, he took for granted that the natural state of the world was to be ruined, but there were times when it all came flooding back. "It's all so fucked up."

"So was I. Then, on a trip to the mainland, I found a man half-dead on the beach. Brought him back here. We nursed him back to health. It made me feel like there was hope after all. For months, that's what we did. Found survivors and brought them here where twenty miles of ocean could keep them safe from thugs and gangs. We planted crops. Gathered medicine. Built a life.

"Then the aliens came, and we quit going to the mainland. Even after you brought them down. At that point we had more mouths than food. It was time to consolidate and care for those of us who were already here. We'd become a people."

He drank from his stein, coffee dribbling into his beard. "But I think long-term, Walt. This island won't protect us forever. Not if we let the aliens breed their foul hives. That's why I sent for you. We need to wipe them out now. While we still can."

"Cool," Walt said. "Except we totally can't do that."

Annoyance flickered on Karslaw's brows. "Don't be so fast to doubt my men's resolve."

"What I doubt is their ability to secure the whole planet. The aliens are everywhere. We ran into them in Mexico, too. Unless you're planning one hell of a crusade, you can't get rid of them all."

He shook his head and leaned forward, reaching toward Walt with a scarred hand. "I'm not insane. I know we can't save the world. But we can save Los Angeles."

"Maybe," Walt said. "Here's what I can tell you, anyway."

He dropped all he knew. How they appeared to be deaf but could sense motion instead. The vulnerability of their heads, especially their oversized eyes. How they'd established towns during the invasion but seemed to have abandoned them all after he downed their ship. Their apparent loyalty to each other. When he told Karslaw about the hot air balloon, the man laughed until he cried into his beard.

"Outrageous," Karslaw said when he'd sobered enough to speak. "And obsolete. Here is our challenge: the ship may not be able to fly, but they're still using it for their home."

"Big deal. Sail over there, toss one of those big rubber circus tents over it, and exterminate them."

"We've tried. Something has changed since you dropped it into the sea, Walt. Anything that tries to approach it now is destroyed."

"What? Like how?"

"Like in a great big explosion."

"Well, that's weird. How many times have you tried to come up on it?"

"A dozen times or more." Karslaw sipped his coffee. "The most recent attempt was less than three weeks ago. When our boat got within half a mile, a missile arced from the ship and destroyed it."

Walt glanced up at the naked beams and did some thinking. "What kind of stuff have you sent toward it?"

"Unmanned vessels. I wouldn't send my people on suicide missions."

"Yeah, but like Predator drones? Origami boats? What?"

"Sloops and cutters, primarily. Once we tried a speedboat loaded with explosives. Even at full throttle it couldn't get close. Does it matter?"

"The reason the balloon worked is because it was so stupid," Walt said. "Too stupid to defend against. So here's the question. Is this defense system something new? Did the aliens who survived the crash amend it to hit even the dumbest targets? Or have your approaches just not been stupid enough?"

"You have an idea." Karslaw grinned. "Perhaps sending for you wasn't my worst move after all."

"It's time to drop some science on their ass, man. See what there is to see. And even if it's bad news, it should be pretty fun to find out."

* * *

Wind tousled his hair. The boat pitched on the waves, turning Walt's stomach. A mile away from them and several hundred yards from Santa Monica Beach, the disc of the mothership projected from the ocean, cracked and skewed.

"Can we get any closer?" he said.

Karslaw shook his head. "Not a good idea. God invented binoculars for a reason."

The man called out to the raft floating beside them, tethered by a single rope. On it, Lorna and another man hauled up the sail and trimmed it to the wind. The sail flapped raggedly, then went taut. The raft drifted toward the downed vessel. Lorna untied the lines to the yacht and flung them into the sea. Men on the yacht hauled in the lines.

A wave flooded over the raft's deck, slopping over Lorna's bare feet. The vessel was as simple as they could make it: wooden logs roped together, a square-sailed mast rising from near its center. No metal at all, and aside from its mast, its profile climbed less than a foot above the water.

It separated itself from the anchored yacht, moving so slowly over the water that Walt could have overtaken it at walking speed, assuming he had Jesus-like powers. Lorna adjusted the sail and turned to face the mothership. The raft dawdled another hundred yards nearer the aliens. Lorna and the second sailor dived off the edge and swam for the yacht.

Karslaw lowered a rope ladder and helped bring them in. Walt offered Lorna a towel. She took it with the polite smile of a stranger and closed herself in the cabin to change clothes.

Walt sat and dangled his legs between the rails. "Think they can see us?"

Karslaw shrugged his broad shoulders. "If they do, they don't care enough to shoot us. Their system has limited range or it's completely automated. They don't blast anything unless it comes within a half mile or better. You'll see."

Waves sloshed against the hull. Pelicans and gulls winged on the breeze. The raft pulled further and further away. Lorna's reading of the wind and tide was perfect; the downed ship made for a big enough target that there was plenty of room for error, but the raft headed straight toward its center.

It was a sunny day and the reflected light had Walt sweating and squinting. He took off his shirt and wrapped it around his head. The raft continued its maiden and final voyage. Walt held the binoculars to his face, wiping off the sweat whenever the eyepieces grew too slick. The little boat closed halfway to the other ship.

"Is this going to work?" Walt said.

Karslaw scratched his beard. "Too soon to tell."

"I mean, it must not shoot everything. Unless you've noticed a sudden upswing in dolphin funerals."

The man laughed. He had the sort of easy, booming laughter that felt like a reward. Walt wasn't surprised Karslaw had wound up in charge. He was a natural leader, wholly at ease with his position, inhabiting the mantle of command as casually as most people sat on their own toilet. The kind of man you wanted to please. Walt had only been around him a few days—it had taken two to rig up the raft, and a third to haul it out here—but he already believed in the man's cause. He had a good thing going. A few hundred people who were already self-sustaining and protected from the mainland while having ready access to its abandoned treasures. Karslaw had vision, too, and the will to carry it out. If they could scour the last of the aliens out of the area, Walt had no doubt the man would cultivate Catalina into a walled garden safe from the chaos and entropy of the rest of the world.

The raft bobbed nearer the ship. The breeze tugged at the sea, hazing the horizons. Something flashed from the ship, sped through the air in a line drive arc, and slammed into the raft. White light burst from it in a vast semicircle.

Walt pulled away from the binoculars, grunting. "Was that a missile?"

"Hard to say from here," Karslaw said. A rolling boom crackled over the waters, the noise tinny and distant, like an old movie played over bad speakers. "Would you like to take a closer look?"

"Well shit."

"Lost five men the first time we came too close."

"Guess this rules out an approach through air or on water. Got any submarines parked back in town?"

"We may have one stashed beneath the aircraft carrier."

"Um," Walt said. He blinked against the negative-flash still tingling on his retinas. "Can your men swim?"

"While keeping their rifles dry?" Karslaw laughed his rolling laugh. "I've chewed this problem in my mind's teeth for months, Walt. I hoped you'd know something I didn't."

"Well, either I got lucky or they learned from their mistakes, because they weren't using missiles before." Walt rubbed his eyes. Since destroying the raft, the enemy vessel had been utterly silent. If he'd just stumbled out onto the deck, he'd never know the mothership wasn't the corpse it appeared to be. "There's got to be some way to get at it. Give me some time to think."

"Take as long as you need," Karslaw said. "The only thing riding on it is our future."

He hollered to his men to turn the boat around. Back at the island, Walt spent several days yutzing around with alternative designs to try to slip past the crashed ship's defenses, including a raft with a long, narrow, ribbon-like sail just a couple feet tall and another with an outboard and no vertical profile whatsoever. Both were demolished around a quarter mile from the ship.

In a sign of less than perfect trust, they housed him at Avalon, the port town where Lorna had made landfall. By the standards of the day, it was a hustling metropolis: boats came and went from the piers at the rate of three or four a day. Sometimes when he sat on his porch and gazed downhill, he could see actual pedestrians in the streets. Dogs barked. When the wind blew in the right direction, the bleats of sheep carried from the valleys.

He didn't see Lorna much. Friends dropped by her house every day to catch up and console her about the loss of her friends. When he wasn't too busy tying logs together and doodling sketches on his porch, he missed her. When he missed her, he worked harder. What if they ran it out of resources? Flung raft after raft at it until its missiles dried up? Or just overwhelmed it Zerg rush-style, launching a hundred boats at it at once, with Karslaw's soldiers hidden in motorboats ready to zoom in while the cannon fodder tied up the defenses?

Problem was, if it had the power to launch those missiles, or whatever they were, then maybe it had the power to manufacture new ones, too. And as for oversaturating it with targets, there was no guarantee that would work even if they had the ten thousand men required to pull it off.

"So we bomb the hell out of it," he told Karslaw. "Find a plane and just blast it to smithereens."

"Know any pilots?" Karslaw answered. "Any warplanes that survived the invasion? We've checked the nearby Air Force bases. Aliens laid them to waste. Are there jets left in the interior of the country? Maybe. But here's the problem, stranger. Unless we atomize every square inch of that ship, we have no guarantee we've got them all. I want to go inside. Gut them like a fish. Ensure their threat is ended once and for all. Only then will my people be safe."

Walt frowned and went straight to Lorna's, entering without knocking. She was in her living room with a young woman who shared Hannigan's chin and deep-set eyes. Sister, maybe.

Lorna rose without a smile. "Walt. I have a guest."

"Is she going to be here forever?"

"Not unless something goes terribly wrong," the woman smiled.

"Then I'll wait."

"What do you want?" Lorna said.

"For you to show me around the island," Walt said. "I'm going crazy trying to draw up Karslaw's battle plan against that stupid squid-infested mountain growing out of the bay. I want to see something new. Jog my brain."

"You've already seen Avalon. The palace."

"Come on, Lorna." The other woman nudged her. "Has he seen the Scaveteria? The fort?"

"The Scaveteria?" Walt said. "That sounds horrible. I have to see it."

"I'll show myself out," the woman smiled.

The door clicked behind her. Lorna folded her arms. "Do you really want to see the island? Or are you here to see me?"

"I can't do both? I've got two eyes, don't I?"

"The Scaveteria's not nearly as interesting as she makes it sound." Lorna laughed. "Grab your pack. It's a full day's hike to the fort."

Walt grinned and ran to his house in the hills for his day-pack. When he returned, Lorna led him down the winding roads to the base of town. A longhaired black cat lay across a stoop, tracking them. A few blocks from the piers, in a downtown of boutiques and inns, real live people strolled around, chatting and going in and out of open, operational stores, which were marked by sandwich boards out front. At a corner cafe, a couple shared a table. Grilled pork wafted from the doorway.

"I don't know if you guys know this," Walt said, "but you appear to possess a civilization."

"That's the goal."

She brought him through the tourist waterfront to the esplanade. The shops ended, replaced by open fields of grass and trees. On the other side, a bike path lined a short, rocky beach. A quarter mile ahead, the land curled into a small, short point dominated by a single building: round and orange-roofed, easily a couple hundred feet across. A few small boats were tied up at its piers.

"There's the Scaveteria," Lorna said.

"Isn't it kind of fancy?"

"Formerly a ballroom. Who knows? Maybe it will be again."

The road led all the way to its steps. The front doors opened to a gigantic single room. Walt stopped and gaped. "You guys did this on purpose?"

Shelves lined the walls and divided the floor into a city-like grid of rises and avenues. Two-thirds of the shelves were full, crammed with shoes, jeans, blankets, scrap metal, boxes of screws. A thousand different things. Walt spotted a box of red Christmas ornaments. A handful of people wandered amongst it all. A couple appeared to be browsing, picking up items and turning them over, examining them for cracks or wear, but other people were adding things to the shelves, pulling flatbed carts through the aisles and transferring debris to the racks.

"What is this place?" he whispered.

"Some of our people go into the city on a regular basis." Lorna wandered forward, taking a pair of pliers from a shelf. "Some do it because they need things. Others do it for fun. Whatever the case, Karslaw passed a law requiring them to bring back more than they intend to keep for themselves. It can be anything people might need. When they sail back home, they check in with the dockmaster, who goes over their goods and brings everything they don't want back here. To the Scaveteria."

"And then what?"

"Then, when people here need something, they see if they can find it here."

"And they just take it? Like a library for stuff?"

"Pretty much."

"Huh. That is incredibly cool." Walt picked up a pack of pens still in its bubble packaging. "What do you do with people who take too much? Whippings? I bet public whippings are a major deterrent."

"Nobody ever has."

"How lucky that you've built an entire society of the only honest people on earth."

She pointed to a man at a desk beside the front doors. "The clerks keep track of what leaves and who takes it."

"Is he wearing a visor?"

"Anyone who takes more than a reasonable person might need is sentenced to a month of scavenging. So far, nobody's exceeded reason."

Walt set back the pens. "What does a person do if he can't find what he's looking for here?"

She raised a brow at him. "Same as everyone else. They go without. Or if it's something that can be crafted, maybe they go to the blacksmith."

"You guys have a blacksmith?"

"Where else would we get our black?"

"Really, what does he make?" Walt said. "Horseshoes?"

Lorna shrugged. "Whatever. Karslaw keeps him occupied, but sometimes his apprentices have spare time. When the clerks here aren't busy, they'll haul a wagon of scrap up to the palace."

"And Karslaw just came up with this?"

"Just because he looks like Attila the Hun doesn't mean he burns books and drinks fermented goat spit."

"I bet he'd try it, though." Walt glanced outside to check the sun. "I can't wait to see the fort. Does it have cannons?"

"Not yet."

She took him up the hills past the valley and the palace. A couple of lakes filled the crevices between the rocky green hills. The land got browner, scrubby grass and tough shrubs. The road snaked along the sides of the ridges. Once, Walt looked down on a green plateau studded with shuffling brown lumps as big as boulders.

"What is that?"

"Bison," Lorna said.

"Karslaw brought bison here, too? What's he planning next, a gold rush?"

"They were here before we were," she said. "Don't ask me. People do strange things when they get their hands on an island."

As far as remote, semi-mountainous roads went—and in the last five years, Walt had seen more than a few—Catalina's were good and walkable, and they made good time, sweating in the moderate heat. Even so, the sun dropped below the hills before they'd made it to the fort. Lorna walked on for another hour anyway, traveling down the middle of the road, lit by the stars and a quarter of the moon.

They slept beside the road. At dawn, they got up and continued on. After a slow trek over rolling hills, the road dropped down into a flat shelf of tree-heavy fields. Waves pounded the shore a couple hundred feet to their right. After less than a mile, they entered a clearing. At the beach, a tall wooden fence surrounded a five-story wooden tower.

"That's it?" Walt said.

Lorna laughed. "You were expecting another castle?"

"Sort of."

"Do you have any idea what a pain it is to haul lumber someplace as remote as this? We brought it in by boat. Took six months to erect it. Project like that gives you a whole new appreciation for why homes used to be so expensive."

"You know what would have been a whole lot easier? Building it in Avalon."

"We wanted a view of Santa Monica Bay." She pointed northwest toward the hazy hills of Malibu, then swept her finger to the right along the curve of the city, past the black blot of the mothership, all the way to the high, mounded hills of the peninsula to the northeast. "Including the ship. It's got one of two radios we leave on permanently. Other one's at the palace. Batteries are getting hard to find. Don't know what we'll do when we run out."

They watched the fort for a while longer, then turned around and headed back the way they'd come. Other than the roads, and the occasional crumpled, sun-faded can of Coke along the shoulders, much of the island showed no sign of habitation. There was lots of room here. A bit on the dry side, but plenty of potential. They'd walked through several different climates on the way here—warm coastal, dry upland, hills, light forests. He liked that.

Lorna called it quits a while after sundown. "Thought we could make it back today. Palace is just ahead if you want for try for it."

"Nah. I'm enjoying it out here," Walt said. They unrolled their blankets on the side of the road and ate the last of the dried fish they'd brought with them.

"I don't know what's up with that ship," he said. "If it had been doing that missile shit when I came for it, you'd still be finding bits of me washing up on the shore."

Lorna got out a towel and tipped a water bottle into it and scrubbed off the worst of the day's sweat. "Think you can do it?"

"I don't know. I want to. This place is pretty cool."

"Were you thinking of staying?"

He looked up. "Would you have a problem with that?"

"I haven't had a lot of time to think about the future," she said. "Not when I'm still dealing with past lives and present troubles."

Walt frowned. It was the perfect time to broach the subject of their future together, but he lost his nerve. He knew why he didn't want to push things—because there was the chance he'd push them into a place he didn't want to go to, would uncover truths he'd prefer to leave as imagined fears—but that didn't help. Now wasn't the time to push. Not when things were so unsettled. It would be best to wait until she was ready to talk.

"We'll see," he said. "Maybe I should help stamp out those aliens before I set down roots within sight of their watery fortress."

They laid down together, but he was too tired to do more than sleep. He woke while it was still dark. He'd heard something. Something wrong. He lay under the stars, warm where Lorna's sleeping body touched him, cool where he was exposed to the raw hilltop air.

Another boom crackled over the hills, a long, rumbling explosion. From the east. Toward Avalon. Lorna's breath caught. She jumped up, eyes bright in the darkness. They grabbed their bags and ran.

19

"Did you ever think of this stuff not in terms of ruins," Mauser said, "but as just another form of terrain?"

Raina glanced up from the empty houses. "No."

"People used to call it the concrete jungle, and that's not a bad description. There's all kinds of goodies if you know where to look. There's also horrible things that could kill us at any moment, but at least there are a million places to hole up in, too."

"Did you see something?" Martin said.

"What? No. No, it's totally clear. But the fault in the whole jungle analogy is that there are roads in a city. If you were in a hurry, you could walk across the entire L.A. Basin in a day. How long would it take you to cross thirty miles of the Amazon? Eternity, because the poisonous frogs would get you first."

Martin swirled his canteen and took a drink. They were a few miles inland and it was notably hotter than along the coast, heat simmering off the asphalt. "It's kind of like a prairie. Except you can't see more than a couple blocks ahead of you. And there are lots of places to hide."

"So it combines the attributes of both the jungle and the wasteland," Mauser said. "Does that mean it's unique? Raina, what do you think?"

"That you should shut up and watch the road," she said.

"Oh really?" He gestured to the barren streets. "Think we'll angry up the ghosts?"

She did, in fact, but knew better than to say as much. The old people didn't believe in those things, but the old people had grown up apart from death. She had grown up within it. She was sensitive to it in a way these people never had been. Maybe their senses had been drowned out by being surrounded by living cities rather than the waste-jungle they were currently crossing, but she could feel the places where the dead had dropped their bones. That's why the ship in the bay was no good. Maybe that was why there was so much fighting back on the peninsula. The spirits were angry. You couldn't see them, but you could feel them, and they made you angry too. Maybe it would be best to move to a place where no one else had ever lived.

She just shook her head. "Time spent talking is time not watching."

"That's a weird thing to say," Mauser muttered. "That's one of yours, isn't it? A little Raina-ism."

They reached a stretch of burned-down houses and charred apartments. Raina detoured around it. Too little cover there. Too many spirits. Sun slammed down on parking lots and dusty cars and neighborhoods with scrawny yellow lawns hardly wide enough to separate one house from the next.

Mauser pointed to a green sign at an intersection. "405's a few blocks from here. If I'm remembering my cultural institutions, that should take us all the way to the Getty."

"It's a raised highway." Raina jerked her head at the lanes strung over the road to the east. "You'll be able to see us from a mile away."

"Only for another couple miles. Then it's ground-level. Barrier walls on both sides. If we walk along those, we'll be as stealthy as ninjas."

"What's ninjas?"

"Are you kidding me? You are one." He looked both ways, then jogged across the intersection. "Here, we'll compromise. Once the highway drops, we'll merge and ride it all the way to the Getty."

That sounded fair enough. She was about to exit the lands she knew well anyway. The wide boulevard led them past a stately white mall and hotel towers pinstriped with windows. She doubted many people still lived here. There was too much pavement to have space to grow things and all the canned food would have been eaten or spoiled long ago.

If there were any survivors making a go of it here, they didn't trouble the three travelers. Raina continued north until the angled highway crossed overhead, then followed along in its shadow. When it descended and became one with the ground, they hiked up its curling onramp.

Dead cars clogged the northbound lanes, but the shoulders were largely clear. They walked along the corrugated barriers. Bugs twirped in the grass. The highway unspooled for miles, curving and rising and falling with the contours of the land.

"Airport used to be right over there," Mauser pointed after another hour. "The runways are just on the other side of the highway and planes would come in not three hundred feet from the ground. It's no wonder Hollywood turned out the way it did. Passing under that was like driving through a Michael Bay movie."

"Does anyone ever understand what you're saying?" Raina said.

"Those raised in America and currently between 25 and forty years of age," Mauser said. "Anyone else, and communication is admittedly spotty."

The road ran on and on. They stopped for dinner and Raina did some light scavenging of the nearby cars. Most were locked and abandoned; the few that opened tended to have bodies, sun-dried skin wrapped around untouched bones. She found nothing of interest.

At dark, they slept in the grass beside the concrete walls. She woke to quiet shuffling noises down the road. Mauser was already sitting up, a knife gleaming in his hand, but it was only an animal. Raina didn't fear animals. She had many of them within her and they would tell the live ones that she only killed for food or to sate the demands of the moon.

"Don't worry," she whispered. "Just possums."

He snorted. "Is that right? How polite of them to inform you they'd be passing through."

He continued his vigil, staring into the darkness. A moment later, a fat shadow waddled from the shoulder, the size of a small dog. Mauser's foot jerked, scuffing. The thing turned to face them, its white face standing out in the moonlight.

"Told you."

"How the hell did you know that?"

"Skunks walk faster. Trot-trot-trot, they make. Raccoons coo and fiddle with things. Possums just trudge along. Want to eat it?"

Mauser laughed and shook his head. Martin got up to go to the bathroom. With everyone awake, they rolled up their beds and walked along the lanes, going slow to avoid tripping in the darkness. This was perhaps Raina's favorite feeling, traveling when she couldn't be seen and no one expected her to be awake. It made her feel wise. Mauser and Martin made too much noise—Martin had forgot to put a cloth between his bowl and his pan and they made a low metal scrape with each step—but even if there were strangers ahead on the highway, the others would be sleeping, confused and alarmed even if the shuffles and coughs were enough to wake them. The deepest night before the dawn was her world, and for a few hours every day, she belonged.

The night became pre-morning. It was no lighter but she could tell it from the way the birds woke and cheeped. She could feel it in the air, too. The night had cooled but never truly gone cold. It was going to be a hot day.

Dawn broke. A tattered woman smiled from the billboard of a Spanish TV headquarters. She was used to buildings being two or three stories tall and the rising city made her feel uneasy. Mismatched buckets and tarps littered the roofs. Water collectors. She had no way to tell which ones were recent and which were abandoned.

Around noon, they got off the road to catch up on sleep and wait out the worst of the sun in an apartment above a hamburger stand. Before heading on, she and Mauser drilled with sticks to practice their knifeplay. Near the end, she worked out a new unarmed move with him that involved blocking an incoming high strike with her wrist, then letting her forearm collapse and driving her elbow into his jaw.

"Can you show me that?" Martin said.

She smiled. It was the first time he'd asked to join in. She walked him through it motion by motion and found the act of teaching someone less skilled forced her to visualize dynamics of movement she took for granted. He was clumsy and stiff, but she hoped he would continue training.

They walked on. Towers climbed to their right, impossibly high, fantastic sentinels over the endless city. The highway began a shallow climb between glassy, glossy buildings with elegant curves and then through parks and tidy homes and a golf course gone feral.

"There you go," Mauser said.

Across a spotty, brownish field, a white palace grew from the earth the way coral grows from the sea. Banks of bluish windows tiled its sharp-lined levels. The trees and shrubs had outgrown their careful cultivation, and some had withered to elderly, waterless husks, but their placement still evoked a logic and beauty.

"It looks like Lothlorien," Martin said.

"Huh?" Raina said.

"Elves," Mauser said. "It's going to burn down some day. We should have forced architects to build everything monumental out of rock. Now there's a material with staying power. You ever tried to punch a rock? I wouldn't."

"Why did they make it so pretty?" Raina said.

"It's a museum. Looking pretty is the only thing it does."

They crossed an unkempt lawn. An amphitheater-like park was recessed in the grass. At its bottom, a burst of bushes crouched atop a swampy mire of rainwater. The doors were tall and stood open. As she went inside, Raina said a silent prayer to all the old things.

The place had been looted. Ransacked. Vandalized. Shattered glass flanked the displays in sharp-edged skirts. On the walls, pale rectangles showed the ghosts of departed paintings. Statues lay toppled, marble pebbles strewn over the floor. Sunshine streamed from the skylights and illuminated dust and trash and dried-up feces.

"This is a disgrace." Mauser's voice echoed in the still and empty space. "You can't just rob a museum. These are everyone's treasures!"

"You were about to steal from it," Martin said.

"Just one painting for Raina! And maybe a jade elephant for my trouble. That would leave at least 99.9% of the place unstolen."

Raina moved quickly through the airy rooms, jogging up stairs with steel wire railings. There were no paintings left. In the upper floors, some statues remained, too heavy to lift, although several had been toppled. Some carvings and foreign artifacts remained, too, wooden masks and painted figures. Everyone else had considered them unworthy of the bother, but that didn't stop Mauser from scooping a few into his pack. Past the vast windows, Los Angeles spread out for miles, bowled in by the mountains, smudged by ocean-haze and the coming dusk.

Mauser waited downstairs. "Well, the trip wasn't a total waste. Found this in the gift shop."

He handed her an oversized book. It was a collection of Chagall prints. Vivid explosions of color. Surreal images of a bull with an umbrella and angels climbing a ladder to heaven. She could see why the man with the knives wanted one.

Martin found a door to the basement. Its lock had been bashed in and it had been looted, too, stripped down to statues and carved trinkets. Raina's lantern flashed on a red lacquered stick a foot and a half long. She stooped for it. It had metal caps on both ends and the handle wiggled in her hand. She tugged on it and a single-edged blade slid free from its wooden sheath.

She touched it to the back of her hand and drew blood. She gasped, lantern wavering. Colors rippled on its blade like molten moonlight. It was hundreds of years old she could feel its presence like she felt the beat and rumble of her own organs—the cut on her hand was not the first time it had tasted blood.

She sheathed it with a click and tucked it in her belt. They stayed in one of the upper rooms overnight and slept without incident.

"Well, here's the question," Mauser said in the morning. Yellow daylight flooded through the dusty windows. "What now?"

"We keep looking," Raina said.

"If you're bound and determined, I say we try to find another museum. This is one of the biggest cities in the world. It could take years to dig your needle out of this haystack."

"Not if we go to Malibu."

"Well, a week of fruitless searching should convince you better than I can. In the meantime, can we try Beverly Hills first? It's right here. Much closer than Malibu. And I guarantee you its former owners were just as wealthy."

She hesitated, then agreed. They took the highway back to the city, then hung left onto Santa Monica Boulevard, passing glinting hotels and clothing shops on their way to the homes nestled in the hills and winding roads above the city. The houses were massive, some Spanish-style with orange roofs, others hard-cut modern things of glass and metal. Many had pools, now empty, or green and slimy from past rains. Some had tennis courts, too. Raina walked along in envious shock. Some of these homes, places people once lived, were as pretty as the Getty.

Something scurried from a side yard. Raina glimpsed a shaggy beard and stained clothes. The sound of the man's feet faded in the distance.

"Stay away from any house that looks clean," she said. "Anywhere with a garden or a way to gather water."

"Sounds like you mean to split up," Mauser said.

She nodded. "I don't want to be here any longer than we have to."

"I brought these." Martin knelt and let down his pack. He extracted three plastic rectangles with blunt rubber antennas. "I don't know how great their range is, but we can let each other know if we see anything funny."

"Walkie talkies?" Mauser laughed, taking one up. "I haven't had one of these since I played spy games as a kid. Well, for the record, I think this is very stupid, but let's meet back at that intersection. Dusk. I'm not busting into strange homes after dark."

Raina intended to do just that—she didn't need as much sleep as they were getting—but agreed. She padded down the street.

She had no problem opening doors. Breaking windows. She didn't think of them as homes. Homes were places people lived. These were just caves. Pieces of land closed off from the world. In each one, she paused in the doorway to listen, then walked quickly from room to room in search of the startling colors of Chagall. There were lots of stone and wooden floors and she didn't like the way her feet clapped through the high-ceilinged rooms. After three houses, she took off her shoes.

There were bodies in some. Giant flat-screened TVs in all. Palatial kitchens with islands and multiple faucets. Sometimes there was clothing flung across the bedroom floors. Possibly looters, but in most cases, she thought they'd been left by someone moving as fast as possible to get away from the plague. There were many paintings, but no Chagalls.

She walked up the steps to a yellow stucco manor and opened the door. Behind it, a man pointed a rifle in her face.

"You hold right there," he murmured.

"Wait," she said.

"I seen you coming up the street. A little thief. Wants to slobber her mitts over what I got. Well, what I got is this rifle."

"I don't want your things. I'm looking for a Chagall."

His brows bent. "This is my home. Seems to me that gives me the right to smear you across my front steps."

Raina had raised her hands. As the man spoke, she'd slowly lowered her elbows close to her waist. She pressed her elbow into the walkie talkie, depressing its button. Hurriedly, she spoke the man's address.

He jerked up the gun. "What did you just say?"

"I just told my friends where you live."

"And gave me one more reason to part your skull!"

"Raina?" Mauser asked over the device, voice fuzzy.

She shook her head. "Let me go. I'll leave. That was my friend, and he isn't nice. If you hurt me, he'll put an icepick in your ear."

The man smiled defiantly, then his lip curled into a snarl. "You get away from my house. I see you again, I shoot you. I don't care how many friends you got."

"Agreed."

With her hands still up, she backed down the steps. At the bottom, she turned around and headed straight for the sidewalk, expecting at any second to hear the crack of the gun—or nothing at all, just the abrupt, splinter-like removal of her soul from her body. The man watched her go, a shadow in his doorway, the gun held firm to his shoulder.

Mauser was not happy to hear what had happened. "Communication is always a clumsy thing, but one language is universal: a gun in your face. It's time to go."

"Then go," she said. "I'm finding my Chagall."

"Raina, what's the big deal? You could have been shot. Is this knife-master of yours really that impressive?"

"If you'd seen him, you would know."

"What about that guy we saw?" Martin said. "The guy who ran away?"

"Dude with the beard and the hobo-stink?" Mauser said. "Yeah, he looked like a real art aficionado."

"If he lives here, we can hire him. As a guide. To keep us away from everyone else."

"Martin!" Raina grinned. Martin blushed and smiled back, so pleased with himself she knew he'd do anything for her. She liked that thought. There was one thing all animals agreed on: it was always best to have an escape route.

* * *

Aided by the bearded man—Mauser had convinced him to lend his aid in exchange for a half-empty flask of liquor, two packs of Big Red gum, and a wooden panther nicked from the Getty—they searched the mansions of the hills in relative safety. But after four fruitless days, Mauser had had enough—or, as Raina suspected, had run out of space to carry any more jewelry.

"Okay, this time I'm serious." He jerked his thumb south in the general direction of the Dunemarket. "That's where we belong. We're not doing anyone any good up here."

Raina gathered up her things from the bedroom floor of the boat-like house where they'd centered their camp. "Not until I go to Malibu."

"What is it with you and Malibu? There are no magic fish in its seas. Plenty of antique lamps, I'm sure, but I can guarantee you none of them have wish-granting genies."

"That's where my first mom always wanted us to live." She put her dirty socks in her bag and let her hands hang there, helpless. "She told me that when we made it to Malibu, we'd never want anything again."

"Oh, for the love of criminy, you played the 'my dead birth mother' card. Well, it's bought you one more leg of this idiot's odyssey. Then we're going home."

They took Santa Monica Boulevard all the way to the coast. It felt good to be back on the ocean, away from the July-baked city. It was cooler, refreshed by afternoon breezes you could set a clock by. Ahead, the hills ran down to the sea and the highway curved along their base. It was already close to evening but she thought they could make half the walk to Malibu before bedding down. After an hour, she'd counted three mile markers along the coast-hugging road.

Martin pointed out to sea. "What's that?"

A single strand of houses separated them from the sand. Raina shielded her eyes against the sunlight angling in from the horizon. A hundred yards out from where the waves began to break, a fat black lump sat idle on the surface.

"A whale?" Mauser said.

"It isn't moving."

"A dead whale."

Martin's walkie talkie popped. He started, slapping at his belt. The transmitter clicked rapidly.

"We should go," Raina said.

"I think it's like a boat," Martin said. "Let me get out my radio."

"Martin—"

The brush stirred across the road. Raina whirled and drew her knife from its red lacquer sheath. A man emerged onto the asphalt. He looked sickly—gaunt, ivory-pale, his bare torso tattooed with symbols from a language Raina had never seen—but she knew the look in his eye. A seer. A hunter. A man who's gone to all the worst places and come back alive.

20

Walt ran up the hill, flashlight jarring in his hand, providing him a sporadic glimpse of his footing on the road ahead. "What was that?"

"What do you think?"

"Do you guys have a lot of explosions here?"

"No." Lorna wasn't breathing hard yet. "Maybe it followed you here."

All things considered, his pack was light for a multi-day journey, with maybe twenty pounds of blankets and water and such hanging from his shoulders. But it was enough to force him into an awkward, bouncing stride that battered his back. He pulled up and knelt down.

"What are you doing?" Lorna said.

"Hurrying."

"By sitting down."

He flung away dirty jeans, spare shoes. "Fixing it so I can run without feeling like a duck with gout."

She did the same, putting a pistol and a bottle of water into a small shoulder bag. Walt's laser was with him because he carried it everywhere. He kicked the rest of his stuff off the road, then set a white stone on the asphalt to mark the spot. They ran.

Over the next hill, lights shimmered in the windows of the palace. A man shouted orders. The road ran within a hundred feet of its palisade. Lorna jagged onto the road leading to the drawbridge, which was lowered. A gaggle of men spoke behind it.

Lorna called out her name as she approached. "What's happening?"

"Attack on Avalon," one of them said.

"O.C.'s?"

"Dunno. No radio, just the lanterns." He pointed across the valley. On a hill overlooking the road, two lights burned. "Coming with?"

She shook her head. "We'll see you there."

She raced back to the main road, Walt on her heels. Back when he was an out-of-shape smoker, he couldn't have run to the corner bodega, but that part of his life was six years and many thousands of miles behind him. He ran at just under a dead sprint, spilling over the hill to Avalon minutes later.

A fire burned on the beach. Smoke blew crosswise over the dark shore. People screamed. A blue beam cut across the sands.

"Those aren't humans," Walt said.

Lorna grunted, then started forward. "Come on."

"Did you hear what I just said? About the humans those aren't?"

"I don't care what they are. They're attacking my people. They need to die."

Walt laughed and followed her down. A machine gun opened up, racketing across the beach. Lorna swerved down a back road. Three blocks from the shore, a man slumped on the corner, holding his forehead and dripping blood onto the sidewalk. Lorna hit the esplanade and crouched beside the corner of a Peet's coffee house.

Walt got down beside her. Lasers flashed from the other side of the beach, focused on a makeshift barricade of debris strung across the road. Rifles boomed from behind it, orange flashes answering the blue beams of the attackers. Directly across from Walt and Lorna, a young woman hobbled up the beach, limping heavily. A tangle of limbs rushed behind her. The thing straightened a tentacle, aiming.

Lorna ran from the corner, firing her pistol at the alien as she went. Her first shots showed no effect; the fifth or six staggered it. It continued after the limping woman. Walt charged behind Lorna, but her body did a near-perfect job of blocking his shot.

The limping woman screamed and collapsed. The alien shot her with a short flick of light and turned its tentacle toward Lorna. She shot it somewhere in the body, knocking it back a step. Its blue beam splayed over the roofs behind the esplanade. Dust popped in small white bursts. Lorna closed on the creature, emptying her pistol and flinging it in the enemy's long, ovoid face. It slapped a tentacle at the incoming gun, distracted. Lorna bowled right into its body.

Metal flashed in her hand. A line of light lanced from the alien, searing the sand into glass. Walt swung around it, aimed his laser at its thudding feet, and pushed the trigger-buttons. Lorna screamed. He jerked back his hand and stopped shooting. Her knife winked again and plunged into the thing's chitinous hide. It didn't make a sound. It scrabbled for her neck with a pincer and she ducked her chin and stabbed again, the blade skittering off its side. It backhanded her with a tentacle, bashing her into the sand.

Walt shot it in the head. One of its bulbous eyes ejected in a jet of superheated steam. Its body slapped to the ground, twitching dumbly.

Lorna wasn't moving. Her eyes were half open, showing their whites. Walt checked her wrist and found a pulse. He glanced down the shore. The fighting remained concentrated around the barricade. The other woman moaned, pawing at the sand. Walt got down, rolled Lorna onto his shoulder, stood, steadied himself, and slogged back to the road.

He carried her two blocks down the street, not certain where he was going except away from the danger. Footsteps rang out ahead. Walt leaned against a wall and drew his laser.

A man skidded to a stop, mouth wide. "Is that Lorna?"

"She's hurt," Walt said.

He nodded. "Come with me."

Walt followed him down the street, breathing hard. Just as he was ready to call for help carrying her, his guide held open the door to an unmarked building. A light wavered down the hall.

"Doctor's inside," the man said. "I'll take it from here."

"I'm not leaving her," Walt said.

"If we don't drive those things out, we're all dead. Get your ass to the beach."

Walt wiped his forearm across his face, slicking off some of the humidity-induced sweat. "Right. Well, if I die and she doesn't, tell her I love her."

The man looked up sharply. "You do?"

"Not like that," he said, feelingly incredibly stupid for bothering to keep up her ruse at a time like this. "We bonded on our trip. Look, just tell her. She'll know what I mean."

"Yeah," the man said slowly.

Walt exited into the street. Men hollered over the roar of gunfire. He ran within a block of the esplanade, then turned parallel to it, making for the barricade. Chairs and boards and tables cluttered the street. Fires burned in several places. Twenty-odd men took cover in the less-flaming parts of the rubble, firing out to sea. Walt poked up his head. No aliens. No lights.

Bullets plowed white roostertails from the calm waters of the bay. Bubbles roiled the surface. A naked man as pale as unworked dough dashed across the sand, laughed, and plunged into the waves. Steam rose from a black shape waiting offshore.

"The ship!" a man shouted. "Shoot the ship!"

Bullets pinged against the vessel, ricocheting away with drunken whirrs. The shape vanished into the sea.

Half the men fanned out, jogging down the nearby streets, sweeping the strand along the beach.

Walt tapped the shoulder of a man whose face was half-masked with soot. "What happened?"

The man's mouth hung half open. "They hit the dock. Blasted our flagship before we knew they were here. Boom, firewood. Then the boats next to it—pow. Fleet's crippled. We got our people down here just in time to catch them crawling up the beach. They dived back into the water as soon as they saw us." He grinned, teeth bloody. "Guess we scared 'em."

"Doubt it," Walt said. "They're not human. Their brains are filled with yellow muck and alien ideas."

"You're an expert?" The man tipped back his head, recognition dawning on his face. "Hey. You're the guy Lorna hauled back here. Been flinging rafts at the mothership one after the other."

"You really think that's a coincidence?" said a second man, bearded, his long hair tied behind his head.

The first man gave Walt an angry smile. "You can't seem to stop getting my friends killed, can you? Hannigan. Ramon. Ken. How many more you think you cost us tonight?"

"Like how many did I personally shoot?" Walt said. "Zero. These things have been trying to kill us for five years now. Are you actually blaming me for fighting back?"

"Bullshit. We ain't been attacked once those five years. Not here on the island. You been stirring them up. You're the one who took down their big ship, huh? Maybe they came here for revenge on you. But they didn't see you, so they ran off."

"That's the stupidest thing—"

Knuckles pounded into his eye. White light blinded him, pain spiking his skull. He crashed to the asphalt, scraping his elbow. The longhaired man grinned down at him. Still on his back, Walt slammed his heel into the man's knee. The man howled and dropped. Walt rolled to the side, popped up on his knees, and jabbed the man's chin, bouncing his head against the road.

The first man kicked at Walt's head. He flung himself back, staggering to his feet, and put up his guard. Other soldiers circled him, faces grim in the light of the fires burning from the barricade. Walt's head pounded, nausea pooling in his gut.

"What the fuck!" Karslaw bellowed.

The man across from Walt took on a sober look. The other men and women froze. Walt blinked heavily. His eye was already swelling.

"Is your blood thundering so loud you forget our dead are lying on the beach?" Karslaw bulged his eyes. "Get ours to the clinic basement. Get theirs on a wagon and take it to the capital. Everything they brought, too. I so much as see an alien toothpick in anyone's hands but mine, I dangle you off the pier and see what I can catch."

He seemed to shrink a couple inches, softening his voice. "You fought with pride tonight. They tried to step on our land and you beat them back—but we don't know they're gone. Watch the water until we know Avalon is safe."

He raised his fist. The troops matched his salute and scattered for the beach. The man who'd first spoken to Walt crouched beside the longhaired man and shook his shoulder. The downed man groaned.

Karslaw turned to Walt and crooked a finger. "Walk with me."

"What's up?" Walt said.

Karslaw strode back up the street. "You tell me. I bring you here to stop those things. Not two weeks after you arrive, they're bombarding my shore."

"Are you claiming the two are related?"

"I'm claiming I'm mighty fucking mad that half a dozen of my brothers just died."

"Lorna was hurt, too," Walt said. "I have to see her."

He turned toward the triage center. Karslaw grabbed his shoulder and bent down to his eye level. "Where are we at, Walt?"

"Confused. Worried. And not too happy about earning a black eye when all I've done is try to help."

The big man sighed, straightening. "I'm not being fair to you. I'm angry, Walt. It's my cross to bear. Judging by my shoulders, it's a god damn big one, too." He grinned wryly. "No more rafts. I don't know if they caused this attack, but we can't ignore the timing. Put that big brain of yours toward a new plan, son. Prove I didn't sacrifice good men in vain."

"Nice speech," Walt said.

Karslaw chuckled huskily. "I'm sorry. In leading, I've discovered the higher you elevate your words, the more gravity there is to push your people to action. Sometimes I forget to turn off the rhetoric when I'm speaking face to face.

"But I mean what I say. Figure it out. Our asses are on the line."

He clapped Walt's shoulder and walked away. Walt rubbed his face and went to see Lorna.

She had bruised ribs. A possible concussion. No laser burns. She was awake and aware enough to speak, though she didn't give him more than monosyllables. After five minutes of one-sided conversation about what had happened on the beach, Walt rolled his eyes and walked away.

On his arrival in Avalon, Karslaw had offered him a bottle of clear, home-brewed liquid and the assurance it was vodka. Walt grabbed it from his house and trudged back across the hills to where he and Lorna had ditched their stuff. It was a childish gesture—going back to get her clothes and gear would only make her feel worse about not speaking to him after saving her life—but after several drinks from the bottle, which tasted like vodka inasmuch as it tasted like throat-searing alcohol, it seemed like a pretty swell idea.

The sun rose somewhere along the way. By the time he found their bags, his skull felt like it was sharing two headaches. Home was much too far away. He tied a blanket between the shrubs to form some shade and went to sleep.

He wasted one day nursing his hangover. He wasted a second waiting for her to come to him. On the third, he went to her home and knocked on her door. She answered. She had a bruise on her cheek and moved stiffly but otherwise looked no worse for wear.

"Take me to the mainland," he said.

"You're leaving?" Her eyes went blank. "Is this about the other night? I was so tired. In pain. I just wanted to sleep."

"Did you know the woman on the beach? You attacked that thing with a knife. What were you thinking?"

"You of all people should understand," she said. "I wanted revenge."

He laughed. "There's a lot of that going around, isn't there? It's more virulent than the Panhandler."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I do understand. It's like a fire. The only way to quench it is with death."

"About us." She touched his shoulder. "I know I'm hard to be with. Now more than ever. I used to make jokes. I bet you don't believe me, but I did. It just doesn't feel that funny anymore."

"Really? To me it feels like the biggest joke ever told." He glanced down the street. A woman was walking a fat black dog. You would never know aliens had bombed the docks three days earlier. "You gonna take me to L.A. or not?"

"Please don't go. You just got here. We still need you."

He let out a long sigh. "I'm not leaving. I just want to take a look at the ship. See if I can figure out a new way to stuff a potato up its tailpipe."

"You want to go see the ship." She smiled. "Of course. I'll need a couple days to square things away."

"Whatever you need."

Once she was ready, the trip was completely uneventful. Lorna brought another woman with her to help her sail. She anchored a short ways off the north flank of the peninsula and rowed him to shore in a dinghy. He flung his stuff above the tideline. She hugged him.

"Three days?"

"Should be enough," he said. "See you then."

She rowed back to the boat. He hoisted his bag and walked along the ribbon-like bike path at the base of the cliffs between the beach and the buildings. Fifteen miles away, the broken ship bulged from the sea.

A couple hundred yards away, a man stood on the sand, casting his line into the breakers. He turned to watch Walt pass. Walt raised his hand. The man hesitated, then waved back. Gulls sat on the flat sand above the tide in packs of fifty, beaks pointed toward the sea. Heat baked off the beach. Walt wiggled off his shirt, wrapped his head with it, and had a couple drinks, one of water, one of moonshine.

He wasn't too happy with himself. His thing with Lorna was a mess and his progress vis-a-vis the aliens was underwhelming at best. Each problem felt equally impossible. One was a half-mile-wide vessel with an automated defense system more advanced than any human had ever dealt with, and the other was a woman.

He laughed. Where was a rimshot when you needed one.

The trail took him past rock jetties, kelp-strewn beaches, two more fishermen, a woman surfing, a marina/pier complex, another pier, a small fishing boat, loads of garbage, evidence of three campfires, and several dozen sets of footprints, most of them weathered by the wind. The few people watched warily until he passed down the concrete trail. People used to throng to these beaches every day, completely untroubled by the hundreds of strangers playing volleyball and sunning themselves. Funny how a little thing like the end of the world put everyone on edge.

After a detour around another much larger marina, he found himself in Santa Monica. The beach was hundreds of yards deep. He plunked down just above the upper wash of the waves, got out his bottle, and screwed it into the sand.

Excluding his recent bender, it had been a long time since he'd been drunk. He felt good, relaxed. People had used to say that drinking alone was the true sign you had a problem, but he disagreed. There was no better way to think through an unsolvable problem than to grab a bottle and go get shitfaced in the wilderness by your lonesome. If nothing else, it was a good way to remind yourself that you chose to be wherever you were; that there were always other options; that if things got really, really bad, you could always walk off into the woods, metaphorically or literally. Put it all behind you. Become a whole new person. He'd done it himself.

He pulled the bottle from the sand and had another drink. It was high summer—August, probably, although who gave a damn—and although he'd been traveling all day, first by boat, then by foot, the sun was just now setting behind the wreck of the mothership, yellow beams catching its black edges, painting deep shadows across the valleys of its deadened hull. A tremendous chunk of it had broken off and settled just above the surface; water coursed through the channel between it and the body of the ship. He squinted through his binoculars but couldn't see any movement.

He woke, which meant he was alive, which meant he had stuff to do. He watched the ocean churning along. After a while, a black fin cut through the waves and he got a little thrill, imagining there were big old sharks right out there, but then its back rose from the water, followed by its fluke. A dolphin. He sighed.

Others swam with it, fins breaking the surface at predictable intervals. They swam parallel to the shore, unhurried, then disappeared. A minute later, much further out, closer to the ship than to him, one leapt clean of the water and splashed back down.

He frowned. He took a drink to cut the phlegm and clear his head. Bottle was almost empty. He resolved to do a bit of scavenging in the restaurants back at the strand. Must be a bottle of something somewhere. He went for a swim, toweled off, then poked around the cafes until afternoon.

The next morning, a figure walked up the beach, black hair fluttering behind her. A sailboat sat at anchor a mile further down the shore.

"Can't you count?" Walt said. "You're a day early."

Lorna glanced at the fallen ship, as if afraid it might spring to life then and there. "There's been another attack. They wiped out the fort. You have to come with me."

21

The pale man's hand drifted toward his pocket. Raina drew her knife. Mauser produced a pistol.

"Don't even think about it," he said. "Because the act of thinking about a thing makes you feel like you have tacit permission to do that thing. But what do you think will happen if you reach into your pocket?"

"You'll shoot." The man's voice was hoarse and broke on the last word. His eyes hardened. "Don't you dare threaten me."

"Then don't move," Raina said.

The man blinked against the breeze. Scars laced his arms and chest and face. A gull cawed and Martin flinched.

"Well, what we have here is the typical impasse of two strange parties away from home," Mauser said. "In the interest of both parties, why don't we just smile, back away, and—"

"Are you from the island?" the man said.

"Catalina?" Raina said.

The man went for his pocket.

Raina lunged forward and pushed her knife against his corded neck. "I hate every man there! I want to wade in their blood. Burn down their houses and throw their bones in the ocean."

Ignoring the knife against his neck, the pale man laughed, a croaking, awful sound. "After all that's happened, you're still trying to kick the shit out of each other."

"Right," Mauser said. "Who are you?"

"I don't know."

Martin frowned. "Are you all right? Do you have amnesia?"

"My name is from a language that's never been spoken." He shifted his eyes to Raina. "Get that damn knife off me."

She moved it sideways a fraction of an inch, daring the killing steel to draw blood. "Why should I?"

The man looked to the black shape in the sea. "If you harm me, my brothers will never stop hunting you."

"Your brothers," Mauser said. The man didn't move. "You're talking about the pilots of that submarine over yonder? Did you capture it from the invaders?"

"The aliens?" Martin said. "What's it like? How did you figure out how to get it to go?"

"Because the aliens are still in it," Raina said. The pale man smiled. She relaxed the knife from his throat. "Why did you ask if we were from the island?"

"So I'd know whether to kill you." "Implying you wouldn't otherwise," Mauser said. "Excellent. I propose we shake hands, tip our hats, and toddle our separate ways."

"Are you going to fight them?" Raina said.

"Soon," the man said.

"So are we. We could fight them together. Wipe them out."

The man was silent for a long while. "Can't trust you. When the fear comes, humans break down. Collapse. Betray each other to save their own skins."

"But you were thinking about it?" Mauser said. He had a strange gleam in his eye. One that Raina wasn't sure she liked.

The pale man nodded. "I want them dead, too."

"I don't suppose you've got a cell number in case you change your mind."

"Sure, but I prefer Skype."

"Oh well, neither do we." Mauser smiled brightly and extended his hand. "Are we at least agreed not to murder each other?"

"For now."

They shook. Mauser leaned in and clapped him on the back. The man looked uncomfortable. Not to be touched by another man. To be touched by a human.

Mauser withdrew, rocked on his heels, and jammed his hands in his pockets. With his chin, he gestured across the road to the ocean. "After you."

The pale man walked across the road, crossed a half-dead lawn, reached the sand, and walked straight into the water. The waves swirled over his head. A minute later, steam boiled from the black vessel, snorting in twin gouts like the nose of a dragon in the cartoons Raina watched as a child. It sank into the sea.

"Why did you let him go?" she said. "We could have slaughtered the Catalinans together."

"Are you serious?" Mauser said. "He looked like a cross between a Maori warrior and a dead lamprey."

"That's how I know he'd make a good ally."

"The thing about getting into bed with the devil is that it's the devil. Nothing but spines down there." He shuddered and waved his hand down the road. "Anyway, if you'd gone all Voltron with him, you'd have to end this ultra-important quest for a dead guy's doodles."

Martin's walkie talkie spewed clicks and pops, then went silent. He turned the volume up until the static hissed. Hearing nothing more, he put it away. "I don't think we should stay."

"There you go, two to one, Raina," Mauser said. "Unless you fancy a swim, let's extract ourselves from Dodge."

She gazed over the sea. Far to the south, the black shell of the main ship loomed like an island. She drew a circle between her shoulders, brow, and chest, then traced a line down its middle. The moon wouldn't help her here; she was hunting, but not for blood. She would have to be extra careful.

They reached Malibu the next morning. After the way her first mom had spoken of the place, Raina expected more than the beaches, canyons, manors, cafes, and brush-clogged hills. It was pretty, but no more so than the south shore of the peninsula where she'd lived with her second family.

Virtually all the town hugged the coast, with a few tentacular roads probing into the canyons. That made for an easy search. They split up, each taking a walkie talkie, and went door to door, watchful for any signs of people lurking behind the boldly painted doors. Half of the front doors were unlocked. All the houses were desolate. Plenty of things. No people.

Few of the things were worth caring about. Some cans of food that might be good if they were cooked long enough. Assorted batteries, although most of them were leaking juice, corroded by time and sea air. Plenty of paintings. Just like Beverly Hills, none were what she was searching for. In one marble-floored villa, she found a hanging of an abstract swirl of flower-bright reds and yellows. With the help of a chair, she got it down and radioed Mauser and Martin, but Mauser dismissed it as something called a Kandinsky.

"Which is amazing," he said. "Any right-thinking person would happily settle for a Kandinsky. 'Settle' isn't even the right word. This thing might have cost more than the house it's in."

Raina shook her head. "He wants a Chagall."

"Well, what the grumpy, demanding, would-be kung fu master wants, the grumpy, demanding, would-be kung fu master gets."

Martin and Mauser's luck was no better, although their bags grew lumpier by the day. After two days of steady westward searching, she discovered why none of the homes were inhabited. Just past a college campus, a rampart of rock and mud lay piled across the road, running all the way down to the sea. Above it, the hills were charred, young brush sprouting from the sooty soil.

Raina stopped and glanced back down the highway. Was this a sign? She'd seen mudslides before at Palos Verdes, but this one was right across the road. As if the earth itself were warding people away from what waited beyond. But that could be a trick, too. A ploy to turn back seekers before they found the treasure. If it were a ruse, and she fell for it, the earth would surely frown on her. It might even close the way forever.

Before she could make a decision, Mauser hopped on a rock and climbed up the rubble. She followed him. On the other side, a man and a woman stood on the highway below the mudslide. They had rifles in their hands but hadn't yet aimed them.

"My name is Mauser!" he called. "There, we're not strangers. Now it would be a crime to shoot us."

A white-haired woman tipped her head. "You don't know my name."

"April? You look very much like an April." He glanced down to ensure his footing, then presented the couple with a smile. "You saw us on the other side of town. Busting in doors and such."

"Yep."

"And you're here to tell us to turn around and go back the way we came."

"Yep."

"We're not here to cause trouble. All we want is a painting."

"Looters," the man grunted. Like his wife, he was old, with a salt and pepper goatee. But the woman was as lean as Raina. The man had a doughy gut that would collapse under a punch.

"You have us all wrong," Mauser said. "We're not wanton robbers stuffing our pockets with anything that sparkles. We are the agents of a highly respected man—a master martial artist, once renowned both in America and in his home country—and at his behest, we are here to find one of the works of Marc Chagall." He lifted one shoulder, stirring his heavy pack. "I have a book of his paintings right here. Would you like to see it?"

The woman shook her head, shifting her rifle. "Nope. We got a community to look after."

"You see, our employer—"

"Doesn't draw shit around here," the man laughed. He had a gravelly, musing voice and leonine silver hair. "We all used to be somebody, man. Things changed."

"Sweet strikes and gutterballs," Mauser murmured. "Are you—?"

"What did I just tell you? None of us is anyone."

"Well, Mr. Person I Might Truly Have Once Adored Like Your Own Mother, then understand what I'm about to tell you isn't a threat, but rather a gesture of my deepest appreciation for you or the man you resemble." He jerked a thumb at Raina. "See this girl here?"

"Yeah."

"See that knife on her belt? Big red Japanese one?"

The man raised a shaggy brow. "You're sure this isn't a threat?"

"Those pirates on Catalina killed her father. Kidnapped her mother. She's here to become the pupil of the aforementioned martial artist, who refuses to teach her stab-one unless she brings him a Chagall. If she does, then once her training is complete, she can sail to the island and defeat all who stand between her and her mother. This must sound like a fairy tale, but on Donny's grave, I swear to you it's the truth."

"What it sounds is crazy," said the woman.

"But not half as crazy as this girl is." Mauser shot Raina a worried look. "She's got it in her head we'll find the painting here. If she isn't allowed to search, I don't know what she'll do. That isn't a bluff. I seriously have no fucking idea."

The woman laughed. "Get shot, most likely."

"Well, possibly. These days, that's a likely fate for anyone. But I've got a proposal that will leave all of us unshot and unstabbed. Let us have a look around. We won't take a thing. Not so much as a sip of water. All we want is the painting. The painting that will let this little girl rescue her mother."

"Chagall," the man muttered. He turned to his wife. "Didn't Willis used to have one of those?"

"For Pete's sake, you're not actually considering this."

"Well?"

The woman put her hands on her hips. "No one's coming into town with a gun."

"Agreed," Raina said.

"Wait a minute," Mauser said.

The woman counted off points on her fingers. "Second, you don't touch any homes that got a person in them. There aren't many, but the few there are are sacrosanct. My husband will show you what to avoid. Third, you get three days. When time's up, no sob stories about how you're homeless or you're too sick to travel. You see the sun?" She pointed up. It was nearing noon. "When it reaches that spot three days from now, you march on back to L.A."

"Deal," Raina said.

With a sigh, Mauser turned over all three of his pistols. Martin handed his over without complaint. Raina didn't have one but the woman wanted to take away her blades. When she clung to the one from the Getty, the man allowed that maybe she could hang onto it—there were coyotes around, you know.

The woman showed them to a house where they'd be allowed to stay. It was very nice. Raina didn't care. They dropped off their bags and followed the man around town. He went to the Willis place first, but if it had once held their painting, it wasn't there any longer.

Raina's spirit endured. She went door to door, skipping only the houses the man warned her away from. Martin helped comb the sprawling estates while Mauser spent most of his time chatting about movies with the old man. Raina's annoyance mounted. Movies were part of the old world. They were wasting time.

One day ticked by like nothing at all. The second slipped away just as swiftly. The third night, Raina didn't sleep, escaping the house while the others slept. She ranged into the canyons north of town, remotest from the road. The waves thundered below her. She ran from room to room and house to house. Light peeped over the eastern mountains, bouncing from ten million waves, failing to penetrate the misty haze enshrouding the city halfway across the bay. She ran back to the house and threw herself down in her bed. Not five minutes later, a door creaked open in the hall.

The old man came around. Raina ran back to the canyons. Her steps echoed in tomblike foyers. Her heart thudded in her aching head. She willed the sun not to climb. It denied her.

"Raina!" Mauser's voice rang out from the beaches below. "Raaaina!"

She wandered into the mansion's yard and plopped down beneath a naked cliff. It wasn't fair. She had searched for so long. Traveled so far. Effort was supposed to yield reward. All she had for her work was sore feet, a pounding head, and a belly that was growing more and more angry eating so much freeze dried food.

"Raina!"

She wiped her eyes and stood. Motion stirred on the rocks above her. A gecko sat in the sun. It was yellow with a bit of blue on its tail. Black spots dotted its skin. It jerked its head and stared her in the eye.

She froze, overwhelmed by the power of the omen. Every beast and man in her family of souls held its breath.

The gecko dashed into the rocks. She flung herself at the cliff, clawing for purchase. A stone clattered away from her hand. Mauser yelled from way down below, joined by the gravelly bellow of the old man. Raina gritted her teeth, found a new hold, and spidered up to the ledge where the gecko had been. It startled again, dashing up the scarp.

She followed it, running awkwardly up the pitched slope. It scrambled over a ridge. She reached the top and froze. She could no longer hear its tiny claws ticking on the stones.

Before her, a white palace claimed the plateau, more hills mounded behind it. The sunlight blared from its white marble pillars. Half blind, fingers bleeding, she walked toward it.

* * *

They dragged a wagon back with them to the south. Between it and Raina's insistence that they only travel at night, which hardly lasted nine hours at this time of year, it took three days to return to the peninsula. Mauser and Martin came with her to the cliffs at the southwestern sweep of the point, but she stopped them out of eyeshot of the man's home.

"Thank you for coming with me," she said. "But the next step of my journey I must take alone."

Mauser laughed and rolled his eyes. "At least I can say I knew you when."

Martin hugged her. "Good luck."

She rolled the wagon down the street, parking it on the sidewalk in front of the house. She picked up the painting, staggering under its awkward, doorish size, propped it against the wooden post holding up the roof above the man's porch, and knocked on the front door.

The man from the beach answered. He had a knife in one hand. His jaw dropped.

She began her training.

22

"You realize how little sense that makes," Walt said. "If you're being attacked over there, the safest place to be is anywhere else."

"What are you doing here?" She kicked an empty bottle slanting from the sand. "Getting drunk?"

"It's pretty fun. Ever tried it? You could use it."

"Excuse me if I don't laugh. My people are dying."

He almost walked away. He grabbed his pack instead. "Don't you want to know what I learned?"

She'd been walking toward the faraway boat. She stopped and turned. "Do you have a way to get onto the ship?"

"No."

"Shocking."

He trudged behind her. He couldn't figure out whether the rift between them was her fault or his. The fact of the matter was he'd agreed to come here. Agreed to help. Both he and the islanders had expected him to do just that. Instead, his suggestions backfired. Drew down the assaults Karslaw had feared all along.

He knew this wasn't his fight. So what if they'd pinned their hopes on him? If this had all been a stupid idea, that was Karslaw's blame, not his. He ought to leave before things got worse and the islanders—or their leader—turned their anger on Walt. The only thing he stood to gain from this was Lorna, and she looked like less of a prize every day.

But that was because she resented him for failing. She was scared. They all were. Scared of an enemy that just wouldn't go away.

That was why he followed her to the boat. He still had work to do.

They rowed to the sailboat and cast off. He stood on the deck and watched the gulls circling over the mothership. It must have its own ecosystems by now. Barnacles and mussels on the hull. Crabs scuttling over the anemones stuck in the tidepools of its crevices. Fish taking shelter in the wreckage, nibbling algae while predators lurked in the waters beyond.

Meanwhile, people harbored in the city and the islands, hiding away from the threat growing inside the ship itself.

Avalon's main pier had been damaged during the beach raid and Lorna guided them into the smaller one at the Scaveteria. Karslaw had a runner waiting for Walt. His presence was requested immediately. Walt sighed and followed him over the hills to the palace.

Karslaw saw him in the same room they'd first spoken in. There was no fire in the hearth today. Spiderwebs hung between the naked beams of the ceiling. At their first meeting, Karslaw had been invigorated, swollen with fight and fury, laughing with the life of it all.

Today, he sat in a stuffed chair, his feet tucked under it like a child at school. His eyelids were puffy, sleepless or hungover or both. He directed Walt to a chair and combed his fingers through his beard.

"I'm going to tell you some things. Dangerous things. Things I would never tell an outsider except when I had no other choice."

Walt rubbed the back of his neck. "I'll wait to be honored until I hear what they are."

"My motives for this are many. Foremost, I need to know where we sit so I can decide how to move forward. Second, I need to light a fire under you. And lastly, if things keep on as they've been keeping on, it won't matter who knows what, because none of us will be left to act on that knowledge."

"That's dramatic. If it's that dire, why don't you pile into those boats of yours and sail some place less infested?"

Karslaw shook his head vaguely. "It took five years to build this island. Much as I may look like the king of the castle, not all my people would follow. And I will not leave a single one of them behind to die."

"Really? So a few of your people decide to commit suicide, and your response to that is to condemn everyone else to death with them? If that's leadership, it explains a lot about the former American political process."

Karslaw chuckled, regaining a little of his old light. "I wish I'd had you sooner. As it is, here is where we stand. We are withdrawing from the mainland. I won't waste my troops on Long Beach street gangs when I need them here at home. That means abandoning the mainlanders to the gangs instead. I'd hoped to make them one with our people. But hopes are will-o-wisps leading us away from truths, aren't they?"

"Indeed, my liege," Walt said.

"Watch yourself," he chuckled. "So we withdraw. Regroup. But this island isn't safe from the enemy in the bay. They will continue to hound us. They will continue to breed. As we grow weaker, they grow stronger."

Karslaw leaned back and pressed his palms together, fingers splayed. "That's the logic of it. Hit them while we're still strong enough to throw a punch. And the sooner we act, the better my chances of hanging onto the mainland, too. But you don't use logic to fire up the troops. What do I say to convince their hearts? Better to die as warriors than as our conquerors' cattle? Nobler to stride into the grave than to lie in it?"

"That sounds a lot better than 'Rush in willy-nilly and hope it's alien nap-time.'"

"We may be overthinking this. Getting into the ship is a Gordian knot. If you can't unravel it, I'll cut straight through it."

"By flinging your men face-first into missiles?"

He shook his head. "We don't know that it's capable of destroying more than a single target. If we send in decoys first and follow them in with our fastest boats, we may confound their defenses."

"Or you wind up as shrimp food," Walt said. "I hope they like beard."

Karslaw grimaced, patience deserting him. "Then soothe my stress-itched mind with a better idea."

Walt screwed up his face. "How many pistols you got?"

"Plenty. The mainlanders have been passing along the spares to help deal with this menace." He frowned, bristling his beard. "Pistols are no good. You can hardly hit what's right in front of you. We don't know how many of those things are onboard. We need firepower. Rifles. Automatics."

"Yeah."

"Then why would you want pistols?"

"Tight quarters in there," Walt said. "I'm still thinking. That's the third option besides charging in ASAP or abandoning L.A., you know. Give yourself the time to hammer out a solid plan."

"How many weeks have I already given you? When thought hits a rut, action is what frees you. You have three weeks to give me something better. Any plan that takes longer than that to work out would be too complicated for us to execute in the first place."

Walt left angry, mostly because Karslaw was right. Not necessarily about the timeline or the ludicrous suite of external pressures he appeared to be dealing with. But because it sounded like a lot of people were about to die, and if Walt were just a little smarter, they could be saved.

* * *

He didn't see much of anyone for a while. He spent most of his time in his house doodling or taking notes. At night, he wandered around the shrubs and grass in the hills behind Avalon, turning the same set of questions over in his head. When he did step out during the day—sometimes to get food, sometimes to pull things from the Scaveteria and see what it took to make them float—he saw change. Soldiers standing guard in the streets and on the beach. Boats massing. The rasp of scrapers on hulls. Men tinkered with engines, wiping oily hands on their pants. Karslaw was assembling his fleet. Soon, it would make its first and likely last attack.

Avalon threw a party. Walt wasn't quite sure what it was for. Possibly something war-related, but between the fireworks popping over the bay and all the drunken singing rolling up from downtown, he had the impression it was independence-related, maybe the anniversary of New Catalina's founding. He didn't join them in person, but went back to his house for a bottle to join them in spirit.

More singing. Bonfires on the beach, complete with public displays of dancing. They'd even rigged up an electric guitar to go with the drums, horns, and singer, who had to shout as loud as he could for his unaided voice to be heard over the instruments. The crowd joined in to help him out. All together, their tones sounded better than the lone man's harsh strain. They covered up each other's off notes. Blended together in surprising and pleasing ways. A bit sloppy, falling out of time, having audible difficulty hitting the more extreme notes, but overall far prettier than any but the most talented singers could manage on their own.

How many places like this were left in the world? Where there were enough people—and they were safe enough—to throw a dance party/kegger? A couple of the Maya groups had held festivals and holidays. There must be other groups scattered around the planet, too. But they must have been vanishingly rare, especially on the scale of Avalon, which had done more than survive. It had rebuilt. Hung onto the luxury of culture. Because Karslaw had had a vision of bringing the survivors to a new land.

And now he was about to let that vision and the feelings it kindled be snuffed out.

Walt woke with a hangover. Lorna was out, so he hung around on her porch until she wandered in. She offered him a brief hug.

"Late night?" she said.

"A lot of thinking."

"Turn up anything useful?"

"I swam out to it, Lorna. When I was in Santa Monica, I got good and drunk, swam out to the ship, and climbed aboard. I sat on its hull and I walked around and then I swam back."

She gaped. "You swam to the ship?"

"The dolphins were doing it."

"That's your excuse? The dolphins did it first? While you were out there, did you also eat raw sardines and ram sharks with your nose?"

He waggled his arms. "Look at me. One piece. No missile-wounds. I don't know if it's not programmed to shoot at organic targets because of all the animals or if their gunner fell asleep at the wheel or what. But if I made it there, maybe your whole army can."

The derision faded from her eyes. "That's a long swim."

"Less than a quarter mile. Anyone fit to fight can swim that far."

"Not with all their gear. You can't swim through a quarter mile of waves holding a rifle above your head."

"I know. And if we try to float it over on a raft, the aliens will just blast it to bits. That's what I've been stuck on. My best idea is to stick pistols and ammo in Ziploc bags and send the troops for a swim. I'm going to give all this to Karslaw and see what he can do with it."

Lorna folded her arms. "He won't go for it. He'd rather send his men on an all-or-nothing charge than to knowingly send them in with inferior weapons."

Walt went to see Karslaw at the palace anyway. The man chewed his beard a moment, then shook his head. "I don't like it. Send them in naked with a handgun and thirty rounds apiece? Why not save the ammo and shoot them myself?"

Walt rubbed his eye. "That's exactly what Lorna said you'd say."

"That I'd shoot my own men?"

"That you'd rather stick with the Charge of the Light Brigade."

"Do those close to me find me that predictable?" Karslaw rumbled. "Very well, then I am consistent. As long as you can pull a surprise from your sleeve now and then, consistency is a virtue in a leader."

Walt went for one last walk around the island. It was a warm day and it felt good to sweat. He thought it might be fun to settle on an island for a while. Just really get to know every bend of the beach and fold of the hills. None of that desert island crap, though. A place where stuff grew on its own and you could pick fruit from the trees without spending all day busting your ass. Nothing too jungly, though. He'd had enough of jungles for a while.

He had nearly a week until Karslaw unleashed the Catalinan Armada, a growing collection of sloops and speedboats, and, possibly due to logistical concerns, more of the former than the latter, which hardly infused Walt with optimism. Part of him wanted to stick around for the big battle. There was still the off chance he'd come up with something better than popguns in baggies, and he would love to see if Karslaw could actually pull this shit off.

But Walt knew they couldn't. And he couldn't think of a plan. Sticking around to watch the fireworks would only be depressing, considering that the fireworks would be made of people. It was time to leave. Before his departure could pose a distraction from Karslaw's grand plans to get the entire island killed.

He was unimpressed enough with Lorna that he thought long and hard about leaving without a word. But rowing all that way would be a serious pain in the arms, and anyway, if he smacked her into the concrete wall of an ultimatum, maybe it would finally knock some sense into her.

He went to her house and had to wait again. She approached from the road leading to the castle. He hugged her, then asked if she wanted to go for a walk.

"Why? I just got done walking."

Walt was too tired to drag it out any longer anyway. "Because I'm leaving."

She cocked her head. "What do you mean?"

"I mean I am departing this island, never to be seen again. Because you're all going to die."

"You can't."

"Sure I can. If you want to give me a ride, that would be wonderful. Want to come with me? Even better. But if neither of those options rings your bell, I'll steal a rowboat and paddle back to L.A. on my own."

"No," she said. "You can't leave me."

"Lorna, it's a bit late for the 'I'll love you forever' crap. You've been ignoring me for weeks. You're going through some shit? I'm sympathetic. Deeply. But we're all going through some shit. If you want to work it out, you've got to work it out with me. Keeping me at arm's length won't solve anything."

Her face worked in several directions at once. She bared her teeth, then touched her stomach. "I'm pregnant."

"What?"

"The situation that results when a man and a woman have unprotected sex."

Walt reeled. That much was true, although he'd made sure to pull out since their first couple nights together. And they hadn't had sex since they hiked out to see the fort. Not that that mattered, though. That was recent enough that she might not even have missed a period. Then it must have happened before the gunfight in Zacatecas. The long walk through the jungle when they'd been at their closest. They'd been pretty busy then.

"You're sure it's mine?"

She punched him in the face. "Very."

He straightened, rubbing his sore cheek. "How do you know? You don't look so pregnant to me."

"All the ways you tell without looking. The fluids that stop. The others that start up, primarily in the morning. You don't have to swell up to a blimp to know what's going on."

"Okay, well, first things first. There are teas, you know. Herbal shit. I mean, are you sure you want to—?"

He stopped dead. His head hadn't yet come back to earth after her announcement, and with the formation of his new idea, it blew away again, spinning off into the dizziest mental clouds.

"Want to what?" She sneered. "Get an abortion?"

"Yeah," Walt said. "But that can wait. First, I'm going to save your people."

23

He didn't want to teach her.

His name was Carl and his father came from the Philippines, a place Raina didn't know about. He told her it was an island chain far, far away. The islands had been conquered and reconquered for centuries. First by natives too old to name. Then by Muslims from Indonesia. Then the Catholics of Spain. Then, not so long ago, by Americans. Most recently of all, by the aliens.

Like all disputed places, its people learned to fight. Like all conquered peoples, their new masters tried to stop them. The people turned to weapons anyone would have. Knives. Sticks. Bare hands. It didn't look like much. Nothing to arouse suspicion.

It was deadly.

Carl's father learned kali in the Philippines. He moved to America. Carl was born, and the father taught his son until he exhausted his own skills, then sent Carl to the academy in Torrance, a place Raina did know—it was one of the cities just north of the peninsula. Its training wasn't like the Philippines, Carl said. Not as traditional. But in some ways better, because its masters were as famous as they were skilled—one had worked with Bruce Lee, who even Raina had heard of—and open to the ideas brought in by the students their reputations drew from around the world.

"And none of this matters," Carl told her, "because you should be learning to use a gun instead."

"I know how to pull a trigger."

"Why do you want to learn this?"

"To learn how to kill."

"You believe a fist or a knife kills better than a gun?" he said.

"I believe a gun is loud," Raina said. "I believe a gun is messy. I believe it jams and misfires and needs ammunition and gunpowder and cleaning. Guns rely on many things. Knives don't. Fists don't. I don't, either."

Carl snorted. "Then carry two guns. Learn to make bullets."

Raina scowled at the spray of color on the canvas Carl had hung on his living room wall. "I brought you your painting. You said you'd teach me."

"Did I say I won't? I said I shouldn't. If you really want to learn an obsolete art so badly, I have nothing better to do."

"Then let's start."

He smiled, amused in a way she would have found intolerably insulting from anyone else. But he had earned it. He knew how to kill in the old ways.

"We start with empty hands," he said.

"Because they're the most basic," she said.

"Who's teaching who? We start with hands because I don't have the right sticks and I'm not giving you a real knife." He smiled in that way again. Soon, she'd see it two dozen times a day. "And yes. Because the hands are most basic. In kali, one thing is everything else. A stick is a knife is a hand."

She stayed until nightfall. He allowed her to return at noon the next day. She did nothing else for a week straight.

The style was aggressive. Flurries of quick, staccato strikes at whatever target presented itself. The body or the head, if you could attack them safely, but the legs or the hands if you couldn't. It felt like it was built for her.

On the walk back to her house, two columns of men and women marched down the middle of the road. Jill was at their head, calling time. She barked a single word and the columns dispersed, scattering into the bushes and houses on the sides of the street. Raina stayed hidden in a hedge until the columns regrouped and carried on down the road.

Carl began with single actions. A punch, a slap, a jab. But from the beginning, he made her work with two hands and often both feet at the same time. She found even the simplest coordinated movements infuriatingly clumsy, her slow-motion gestures appalling.

"Why is this so hard?" she said. "I've been using all four limbs at once since I was born."

"But you're only now learning kali."

"It shouldn't be this hard to learn. A style should be natural."

"Nature doesn't come from within," he said. "Nature is something you put inside yourself."

For no good reason, he laughed.

But after her first week, it seemed to come together. She often moved without thinking, slapping away his fist with one hand and striking his arm with the other. Mauser's original training made it easier. Some of the concepts were similar, and once she understood the purpose and flow of a move, it nestled with the others in her muscles, waiting to be used.

When she wasn't with Carl, she trained on the dummy in her garage. Its limbs made good targets. The rattle of her blows spilled into the street.

"Is it really that much fun?" Martin asked her.

"It isn't about fun."

"Well, you sure seem to enjoy it." He shuffled his feet. "Can I learn, too?"

"No."

"Why not? I helped find the painting."

"You should learn from Mauser first." She struck the dummy's padded head. "Then we'll see."

Martin frowned. She resumed her flurries, advancing to wallop the dummy's arms, then scooting behind it and striking its back. After a while, Martin left.

Carl cut sticks of bamboo from the once-decorative thicket of it overwhelming the neighbor's yard. She took for granted that sticks were for hitting, clubbing, and bashing, but he showed her how to poke, how to rap, how to whip the tips of the springy sticks into thighs and knuckles and eyes.

"The enemy retreats from pain," he said. "So you give him lots of it. You hurt him until he can't hurt you back."

"But hurt animals are most dangerous."

"You have to take what is given," he said. "Do you know what it means to take what's given?"

She nodded.

He smiled, but interest glimmered beneath the mockery. "Do you?"

"After the plague, I lived on my own for two years," she said. "I ate what I could find. I had to fight with dogs and other children and even a few adults. I learned to see when they were hungrier than I was so I could run away. Even if a dog had a bird and I was starving, it was best to let the dog finish and take whatever it left."

"You lived on your own that whole time? You couldn't have been more than ten years old."

She spread her feet, sticks in hand. "I used to pretend I'd forgotten what it was like, but I remember everything."

Carl had skinned a finger showing her how to block with the stick. He stuck his knuckle in his mouth and sucked away the blood. "I want you to learn with me with the same hunger you learned to survive."

She rushed at him. He knocked her to the floor.

A couple days later, Mauser shook her awake. The sunlight cut flat through the window, not yet touching her mattress on the floor.

"What?" she said.

"I want to show you something."

Her ribs and arms were bruised and welted from the lash of bamboo. "I don't want to be shown."

"Yes you do." He nudged her with the hard toe of his shoe. She slapped at his foot and he danced back. "Believe me, Raina, I don't take waking a person up lightly. If it were up to me, people-waker-uppers would be beaten with the bluntest and heaviest item at hand. But you're going to want to see this."

She rolled over and opened one eye. His hair stuck up from his head. His eyes were bleary. She doubted he'd slept. She sighed the sleepy sigh of morning and got up and found her shoes. Mauser led her down the road to the Dunemarket. The sun rose from the hills, painfully bright. Merchants unfolded stalls and rolled out blankets.

"If it's too early for the market," she said, "it's definitely too early for me."

"Wrong as Raina," Mauser said. "Oh, that's good. I'm making that a thing."

He took her through the market to the inn at the base of the hill where they'd first met. She watched the McDonald's warily. He jogged up to the second story of the motel and knocked on one of the doors. A redheaded man answered. He wasn't much older than Raina. He let them inside and locked the door. Heavy drapes muffled the sun.

"Raina," Mauser said, "this is Luke."

"Good for him."

"He's from Catalina."

She reached for her knife—Carl had told her it was called a tanto—and whipped it from the lacquered sheath.

Luke stumbled back against the bed, shielding his face. "Hey!"

"Stop!" Mauser moved between them, scowling at her. "Must you always stab first and ask questions never? He's seen your mother."

The point of her knife shook. "You have?"

The boy glanced at Mauser. "Are you sure? Was her dad—?"

"She's adopted," Mauser said.

Raina took three tries to put away her tanto, its point scraping the mouth of the sheath. "Where did you see her?"

"Is she kind of short?" Luke said. "Dark hair she wears tied back? With the little strands of it hanging past each ear?"

"Yes."

"Kate?"

"Yes!"

"She's on Catalina." Luke slid off the side of the bed, standing several feet away. "In Karslaw's castle."

"He has a castle?" Mauser said.

"With a drawbridge and everything."

"Has he hurt her?" Raina said.

Luke's eyes went guarded. "I don't know."

"She's alive, Raina," Mauser said. "She's still out there. That's all that matters."

Raina's vision smeared with tears. She pressed her elbows to her chest. The room pulled away from her. She ran to Mauser and bowled into his arms.

"Gracious," he said, patting her hair. "The little wasp has feelings after all."

She only let herself cry for a few moments. Mauser dug into his pocket and handed her a cloth that was almost clean. She wiped her face.

"Thank you," she said to Luke.

"For your troubles," Mauser said. With two fingers, he passed the boy a rolled-up baggie of ovoid green buds. "Don't smoke it all in one place."

Luke flushed, pocketed it, and smiled at Raina. "I hope you find her."

Mauser took her outside into the brilliant sunlight. The asphalt glittered. The mountains stood to the north, feet hidden by the haze, crests suspended in the air like a reachable heaven.

"We have to go get her," she said.

"Have you heard what's going on?" Mauser said. "Or have you been too busy twirling your batons to keep up with local events?"

She carried her bamboo sticks at all times now. She pulled one from her belt and menaced him. "Does this look like a baton?"

"Well, the last time tax day rolled around, the Catalinans demanded twice as much as ever. Mostly in food. And they were very insistent on being informed of any contraband guns that may have showed up in the last couple months. There was a beating or two. Most locals had to hand over more than they'd been taking in. A few went—how do you put this—food-rupt? About to starve. Some of the merchants started up a collection to ensure nobody went hungry. Let's just say the Catalinans didn't go home with a lot of fresh admirers."

"So what?"

"I'm not finished. Meanwhile, in the ongoing Period of the Warring Assholes, the Catalinans have pretty much chased the Osseys out of Long Beach. Some guerrilla fighters rolled around now and then to take a couple potshots at the occupying islanders, but by and large the whole gang skedaddled back to Orange County."

"Did they hurt the Catalinans any?" Raina said. "Or did we do all that for nothing?"

Mauser laughed. "Oh, the Catalinans were hurt. Repeatedly. Not a lot of casualties—the Catalinans torched a few buildings, but they weren't exactly eager to fight house to house; lots of sniping back and forth—but, to paraphrase a guy so smart he got streets named after him, every death counts. More importantly, we drew the focus off the Dunemarket. That gave Jill a lot of time and freedom to organize and train her people. Things really came together while we were out gallivanting after that painting."

"Is she finally ready to stand up?"

"I wouldn't go that far. You know Jill. She moves about as fast as a banana peel."

"What does that mean?"

"Have you ever seen a banana peel move?" he said. She shook her head. He splayed his palm. "Precisely."

He went silent as they reached the Dunemarket. He smiled at three or four different women, touching the tip of his finger to an imaginary cap. He didn't resume talking until they were past the vendors and travelers and halfway up the hill.

"Where was I? Nevermind, I know exactly where I was. About to tell you that three days ago, the Catalinans evacuated Long Beach."

Raina smiled. "The Osseys struck back."

"No," Mauser said. "That's the thing. Nothing about the battlefront had changed. They just left. Pulled everyone out and sailed back to Catalina. Which raises the question: if nothing changed in Long Beach, what changed on the island?"

"Did you ask Luke?"

"How do you think I found out he'd seen your mom?" Mauser shook his head. "He didn't know anything. Was visiting the island as an envoy from a kingdom in San Diego."

Raina glanced downhill to ensure they weren't being watched. The sun poured down between the palms. "What does all this mean for the rebellion?"

"That's the thing. Nobody knows. Are they gone for good? Can we stop busting heads and start busting champagne? Or did they catch wind of what we're up to and fell back to regroup? If so, how long do we have before they return to go all Gallagher on the watermelon of our little society?"

"We need to know more."

"That's exactly where I was going with this longwinded bit of exposition. You fancy a trip back to Long Beach? I'd like to see how the prostitute store is doing."

"How long will it take?"

"Just a day. Think you can tear yourself away from the color guard for that long?"

She didn't like it, but she went to Carl and asked if she could skip the next day of training.

He gave her a long and unreadable look. "Do whatever you want."

"Are you mad?" she said.

"Why would I be mad? I never trained as hard as you have."

"I'll only be gone for a day."

"I heard you." He folded his arms behind his back and turned to face the painting hanging from his wall. The Chagall was so vivid it looked like it was stepping right out of the wall. "Anyway, it will finally give me the chance to appreciate my new art.”

* * *

"The Catalinans just took off and left," the woman said. "Sucks, too. Best business we've done since opening our doors. They made sure we didn't get touched by the fires or fighting, either."

"See?" Mauser said to Raina. "You act like this is such a terrible job, but listen to those fringe benefits. Meanwhile, if they'd fought the war in San Pedro, they'd have probably used the Dunemarket for target practice."

The woman's name was Belle and she had agreed to see them in her room at Pokers. The building looked no different from when they had ambushed the men in their beds. The same couldn't be said for the rest of the waterfront. Bullet holes pockmarked the storefronts. Broken glass carpeted the streets. Several buildings were scorched; one had been burnt to the foundation, with two more beside it reduced to gutted shells. If the fire hadn't been isolated by a curve of the waterfront's quirky streets, half of Long Beach might have burned down.

"So you don't know anything?" Raina said.

"Just one thing." Belle lit a rolled cigarette and geysered smoke from her nostrils. "One of the guys who comes to see me said he won't be back for a while."

"Maybe he doesn't like you anymore."

"Raina!" Mauser said.

The woman exhaled smoke. "You skinny little bitch."

"You'll have to excuse her," Mauser said. "It's a miracle she's housebroken."

"I don't care what some john thinks of me. But I'm trying to help you, God knows why, and she's insulting me to my face."

Martin raised his hand for peace. "She just meant that doesn't necessarily mean they're leaving." He avoided Raina's gaze. "She sees things different. It's hard to explain."

The woman tapped ash from her cigarette. "That right?"

Raina still didn't see what all the fuss was about. "That's all I meant."

"Whatever. They all left. Either every trooper they had decided to pack up their cocks and find a better place to spend the night, or they got sent home."

"Right." Mauser clapped his thighs and stood. "Thanks, Belle. If you hear anything else, you'll let me know?"

She laughed. "Anything for a friend."

On their way out, Mauser chatted with a couple girls in the lobby. Outside, he shook his head and started back toward the market. "Well, that was a bust. And what the hell was that, Raina? Belle's a friend of mine. Even if she weren't, did you forget the part where we wanted information from her?"

"She was acting superior," Raina said.

"And knocking her off her high horse is more important than discovering what the hell is going on? So what if she gets a kick out of male attention? Don't be so judgmental. It's bad for your cholesterol."

Raina kicked a pebble down the road. This whole thing was stupid. Mauser's woman didn't know anything. The whole trip had been a waste of time. None of that was her fault.

"Well, what now?" Martin said.

"Now?" Mauser dabbed sweat from his forehead. There was a breeze off the bay but it wasn't doing much good. "I report in to Jill. Barring something very stupid, I think we're out of options except to wait and see how things shake out."

Martin started to speak, faltered, then cleared his throat and started over. "We could ask the Osseys."

"That would fall under the heading of 'stupid.' They just got their asses kicked out of Long Beach by hostile barbarians. You show up to ask them how that went and they're likely to regain their pride by beating you to death."

"What do you think, Raina?" Martin tried. "Can you think of a better way?"

"Mauser's right." But she wasn't sure of that at all. She just didn't want to waste any more time chasing answers when Jill wouldn't act on them anyway. Not when she could use that time learning from Carl. Her faith in the rebellion waned with each day it failed to manifest in battle. Like the moon, the slimmer her hopes became, the hungrier she got. She couldn't look to others. No one wanted this as much as she did. If she wanted to take Karslaw's head and free her father's spirit, she would have to hone herself until she was as sharp as her tanto.

It was dusk by the time they got back. Too late to go to Carl. She got up at dawn. To kill time before noon, she went out foraging in the ruins for avocados and corn and strawberries. Their supply of freeze-dried food was getting low and she didn't want to walk all the way back to the bunker.

She went to Carl's as soon as the sun neared the middle of the sky. They worked with the bamboo for a while, playing through combinations, welting each other's arms.

She broke for water. She didn't want to put it off until the end of the day when he could shrug her off. "I want to learn how you use the knife."

"You are," he said. "A hand is a stick is a knife."

"No. A hand is a hand. A knife is a knife."

"And I am the teacher."

She gestured south toward the island. "But it's all useless if I don't learn before it's time to fight."

Carl laughed and pointed across the room. "There's the door."

She picked up her bamboo. If he thought she wasn't ready, then her only choice was to work until she proved him wrong.

She didn't get the chance. Three days into a schedule that involved nothing but training and sleeping, Mauser flung open Carl's front door, breathing hard. Someone had found Martin in Long Beach. He'd gone there by himself. The Osseys had beaten him half to death.

24

Waves came and went, swelling beneath Walt with tidal and terrifying force, lifting him as effortlessly as a flake of skin on a shaken blanket. The moon moved on the water, but couldn't penetrate the shadows of the island-sized vessel three hundred yards ahead. He wore nothing but jockey shorts and every kick of his legs reminded him how naked he was. A few other swimmers kept pace with him, the foam of their strokes gray-silver in the moonlight, but most of the scores of soldiers were strung out in loose lines behind him.

Finally, the fat drone of an engine drifted down from somewhere in the sky. Walt laughed, glancing up between waves, trying to spot it in the darkness.

It had taken an amazingly long time to get the Goodyear Blimp up and running. Just tracking down the airfield in Gardena where they housed the thing had tied up a dozen scouts for nearly a week. That accomplished, Walt had overseen its revival, but while the blimp was in theory not so different from the hot air balloons he'd grown up with, in practice, it was more difficult by an order of magnitude.

First off, it was giant. And rather inconveniently stored in a hangar. They'd had to get the airfield tractor up and running just to drag the thing out into the open. Second, the blimp floated via helium rather than hot air, and while the airfield still had plenty of canned gas, they'd had to lug in a generator to get the pump going, at which point Walt discovered that one of the cables tying the slowly inflating vessel to the mooring mast had come free, causing the whole thing to angle from the scaffold at a potentially destructive angle.

Even after he sussed out the basics of inflation and deflation, he found himself faced with an entirely new concept: steering. While the maneuvering of a hot air balloon was based on the simplest and most passive systems—make air in balloon hot, causing it to rise; climb until you find the air stream blowing in the direction you want to travel in, then stabilize altitude and enjoy the ride—the blimp's steering was active. It had engines. Scoops. Valves. Little balloons inside the main envelope that could be filled with colder, heavier air to help keep the blimp level and maneuver it up and down.

There had been several points in the whole endeavor when he'd contemplated scrapping it in favor of a balloon instead. But delivering all their materiel would require multiple balloons, each with their own rookie, Walt-trained pilots struggling with the balloons' clumsy, passive steering. Coordinating an attack would be a nightmare.

So he learned to fly the blimp. And he not only had to learn it for himself. He had to teach it to a young woman named Lacey, the intended pilot of this semi-suicide mission. No way in hell was he flying the thing when he figured it was 50/50 odds that it would ever make it to the mothership in the first place.

Because quite frankly, the plan was moronic. Lacey and her team had done three or four dry runs to work out timing and coordination, but there was no telling whether the alien ship would allow the blimp to maneuver into position, let alone how it would react to phase two of the aerial operations. Walt didn't even know for sure the amphibious end of things would make it. Bringing the blimp into the mix had let him convince Karslaw to try swimmers instead of boats, but the only thing Walt knew was that the ship hadn't shot at him when he'd swum up to it alone. He had no idea what would happen when they approached it with a hundred soldiers. He might be a father soon. One of these days, he was going to have to start acting responsible.

Walt paddled down the backside of a wave, grinned, and got a mouthful of seawater for his trouble.

He spat it out and paddled on. Swimming out to open ocean in the middle of the night was nothing short of terrifying—given how his bowels were taking the experience, there was more than one advantage to being stripped to his skivvies—but if he took what the currents gave him, easing his pace when the low but steady waves hit him and then picking up speed when the incoming water stopped pushing back, he made steady progress toward the waiting ship. The summer air was still warm, too. Overhead, the blimp droned on, barely audible over the splash of the tides and the men and women swimming around him.

The ship filled more of his vision with each passing moment. It slanted from the sea at a low angle, its uppermost heights projecting some three hundred feet into the air. Its flat surface was runneled with canyons and studded with short towers. He was having a hard time keeping his breathing steady. Every flicker of the moon or the stars on the waves made him imagine a magnesium-bright missile arcing from the silent enemy and blasting a foamy crater into the ocean. All that was left of the swimmers would be mangled limbs and strung-out guts wheeling down into the deep parts of the sea.

The ship neared. Walt kicked harder. The last moments were the worst. His fingertips brushed an algae-slick surface that felt like the hardest rubber or the softest metal. He pulled himself aboard.

He crouched down to catch his breath and wipe off the worst of the water. He helped a few soldiers clamber up beside him, then jogged up the gently angled ship. In a few minutes, if everything went according to plan, each of the soldiers would receive a map drawn from the best of Walt's memory and copied precisely by Karslaw's personal scribe. But it would do all of them exactly zero good if Walt couldn't find the way inside.

He ran up the inclined hull in a low crouch, feet slapping the hard surface. Sudden chasms delved into the dark surface and he detoured around, keeping one eye on the crevices, as if an alien horde might boil from the shadows at any moment. Bird droppings freckled the matte black ground. Now and then a blunt tower stuck up from the plane like the weary thumb of a hitchhiker a long ways from home.

And then he spotted it, the metal spire that marked the staircase down to the landing bay. He ran to the opening and lay flat. He got his flashlight from the plastic bag dangling from his back and aimed it into the gloom. A couple portions of the spiral stairwell had collapsed. Better hope the supplies made it down from the blimp intact.

He stood and waved his flashlight downslope, passing his hand in front of the beam to make it wink twice, repeating the signal a few seconds later. Down at the base of the ship, a flashlight blinked three times. Walt tipped back his head. Moonlight sliced through the strings of a parachute descending from the unseen blimp. A box dangled beneath the dark fabric of the chute, swinging through a tight circle.

He tracked it all the way down to the deck of the ship. It landed with a clunk a couple hundred yards away; men and women ran to it, prying it open and passing around assault rifles, pistols, ammunition, dry shoes, and maps.

That was where the blimp came in. Most balloons were only good for carrying three or four people. Between the pilot and two men strong enough to chuck boxes of supplies over the side, that only left room for a couple hundred pounds of cargo. Armaments added weight fast. Especially bullets.

The blimp, on the other hand, was good for a dozen passengers—or three soldiers and a literal ton of gear. And instead of battling the winds to achieve position like a balloon—let alone getting four or five of them to occupy the same general airspace at once—it could be counted on to maneuver overhead at the same time the troops swam aboard.

One by one, the boxes floated down from the sky. No missiles lanced up to meet them. Were the targets too small to trigger the defenses? Was the missile system only activated by water-borne threats? What the hell kind of sense did that make on a spaceship? Had he knocked out its radar-equivalent in the crash, and all it had left to track threats with was sonar? Walt hadn't been certain that any of the boxes would land safely. Getting all of them would be a coup. Soldiers swarmed to each package, dim shapes dwarfed by the vast landscape of the ship.

After the last package thumped to the deck, Karslaw's chute deployed against the stars.

A few scouts joined Walt at the spiral staircase. The rest waited to move until Karslaw landed. Bare legs marched over the metal ground. Rifles and machine guns flashed in the moonlight. Walt didn't know what waited for them below. Even before he'd dumped the ship into the sea like an old tire, the thing had been run by a skeleton crew. And the crash had been catastrophic. The kind of thing that converted healthy bones into dog treats. Most of the crew must have died on impact.

But the damn things looked like bugs. Crabs or crickets or ants, with a lot of squiddish space-horror thrown in for good measure. If they bred like bugs, there was no telling how many of their children lurked in the city-sized interior.

Karslaw strode up and clasped his hand. "This has all gone too well. Could we be walking into a trap?"

Walt shrugged. "Or a ghost town."

"The question is not whether the enemy is here. The question is how many."

He turned to face the gathering of troops. Faces of both sexes and all races went sober.

"I don't know what awaits us in the darkness." Karslaw kept his voice low, but his baritone words resonated through the damp, warm air. "Perhaps I'm leading you into folly. It could be that we'll never see the sun again. This ship could become our tomb.

"But if so, we will rest in it together. Just as we fought in it together. Just as we built our community together. We can no longer allow this threat to mount on our doorstep. If we turn our backs to it, we invite the knife. And so we take the plunge. We step through the doorway into darkness. And when we reemerge, it will be to a new world. A world that is finally ours. A world we can leave to our children knowing they will grow up as we did: safe. Secure. Able to pass it to children of their own."

He smiled, teeth standing out in the night. "You are the bravest men and women I've ever know. I would ask you to do me proud, but you already have a hundred times over."

He raised his fist in salute and took the first step down the stairs.

Along with guns and ammo, the blimp-dropped boxes had been packed with basic exploratory gear. A team of knot-versed sailors rigged a rope ladder across the gaps in the staircase. Troops climbed down to the catwalk overlooking the blackness of the former landing bay. Walt wasn't certain it was the same one he and Otto had used to penetrate the ship five years ago, but if not, it was virtually identical. After the stairs, soldiers snuck along a platform into a short tunnel overlooking a chasm of space where smaller spacecraft had once entered and left. It was too dark to see the bottom clearly, but he didn't think there was any water down there.

Walt followed the foremost scouts across the catwalk. He knew there was no sense in trying too hard to be quiet—he was 99% certain the aliens had no sense of hearing—but he found himself creeping around like a cat burglar anyway. A set of circular doors rested in the wall, seamed down the middle. A couple of troopers went for the handles while others knelt and readied their guns.

The doors opened to blackness. Walt shined his flashlight into the tunnel, illuminating high ceilings and rounded walls. Unmarked doors sat in the walls at regular intervals. Karslaw assigned a couple pairs of soldiers to check each door while the main body of troops moved on, scouts jogging ahead.

The tunnel ran on and on, curving gently, pitched downward by the slant of the ship in the ocean outside. A thin layer of dust lay undisturbed on the ground. On his first and only other visit to the ship, motion-sensing lights had flicked on as he passed, illuminating his way down the halls. Dozens of different hums and rumbles had fought for the full spectrum of his hearing. This time, all he could hear was his own breath, the scrape of his feet on the rubbery floor. The only lights were the ones they carried.

The tunnel hit a six-pointed intersection. Walt played his flashlight over the inscrutable glyphs written around its steeply pitched ceiling.

"I don't have the first clue where we went from here," he murmured to Karslaw.

"Not to worry," the big man said. "This is why the good lord invented scouts."

He gathered ten men and women and sent them down the branches of the hall, redirecting the bulk of his forces to retreat a short ways down the tunnel. His soldiers knelt, guns ready, waiting for the scouts to return. Walt crouched beside a doorway in the intersection and watched the hall for lights.

The scouts filtered back. Most hadn't seen a thing, but one reported finding a ramp leading deeper into the ship. It showed tracks in the dust.

Karslaw motioned the troops onward, leaving two behind as a rearguard. The new tunnel led past several open doors to small, sparse rooms of no obvious function, then to a great hall of some kind. Debris lay piled against one wall, thrown there by the crash, but most of the stools and spindly chairs were stuck to the ground and remained in place.

At the end of the tunnel, a wide blue ramp spiraled down into the darkness. Walt thought he recognized the material—he'd seen it inside the alien settlements established during the invasion—but previously, the substance had been slightly yielding and tacky, assisting the climb up and down. This ramp had gone as hard and brittle as old coral.

But the air rising from it smelled briny. A little rotten. Like something the flies would flock to on the tideline. Lines as thick as Walt's wrist traced the dust leading to the ramp.

Karslaw led his people down the long spiral. Another tunnel stretched into the darkness, but the ceiling here was thirty feet high. A scout waited in the gloom.

Karslaw spoke with her, then beckoned Walt over. "Do you know where we are?"

"I don't think I saw this level," Walt said. "If I did, I was running away from it at top speed."

"There is a chamber ahead. A very large one." He glanced at the scout. "Amanda believes it is inhabited."

"That's what we're here for, isn't it?"

Karslaw smiled grimly. He gathered the leaders of his very basic platoon system and sketched out quick orders. The hallway was wide enough for five men to walk abreast. Those at the front clicked off their lights. They advanced down the tunnel.

After fifty yards, a wide, semi-circular door opened in the wall. The troops crept in two by two, dispersing to either side of the door. Walt slunk through. Dim light filtered from irregular patches on the far walls and high ceiling. The space was large enough to have been a hangar or repair bay; mangled machinery was heaped against one wall.

The middle of the room was filled with houses. Round, orange mounds twelve feet high and twice as wide. Some of the doors appeared to be nothing more than sheets or curtains. A few dozen of them filled the space. The house walls were lumpy. Parts were patchwork, plastic and metal plates scavenged from the ruined machinery. Huddled within a ship the size of a town, one that had crossed light-years of space and smashed humanity to splinters, this makeshift village was so pathetic and low-rent it made Walt's heart feel small.

The curtains parted in one of the doorways. A bulbous oval head poked into the dusky room.

A rifle shot echoed through the cavernous room. The head snapped behind the curtain. A body thumped. Tentacles writhed.

"Take no prisoners!" Karslaw bellowed. "Fight for the lives of your families on the island!"

Ten squads rushed ten separate houses. Walt charged alongside his assigned squad. Machine guns rattled through the hangar. A man kicked open the door of the house and two soldiers rushed in before Walt. Their shots knocked two aliens to the ground. Walt lasered a third, severing claws, its yellow, gloppy blood spattering the bare floor. A fourth creature rose from a pocket set into the wall and the men behind Walt riddled it with bullets. It was half the size of the others.

Outside, aliens streamed from the orange mounds, firing blue beams. A man screamed. Others fired back, knocking the monsters from their spidery legs. They fell with unnerving silence. Walt followed his squad to another home. A laser licked from the doorway, spinning a woman to the floor. She grunted and curled into a ball. The air stank of old seawater and burnt meat.

Another woman knelt and fired a long burst into the doorway. Walt moved beside the entry. As soon as she ceased shooting, he swung around the frame, joined by another soldier. Blue light crackled past his shoulder. He dropped prone and returned fire, punching a steaming hole in the alien's head. His partner opened fire, filling the room with noise and smoke and blood.

It was over within another minute. Most of the enemy had been shot unarmed, or caught in the open as they attempted to flee. The few who tried to hole up were shot in their dens. In the shocking quiet that followed, Walt wandered the grounds, turning his flashlight on the bodies. He counted up to fifty, then ballparked the rest. Two hundred, tops, perhaps a tenth of them obviously smaller than the others. He had expected...more. A thrumming hive. Eggs sitting in countless rows, hatching even as he watched.

Instead, it had been like stumbling into a third world village. And then slaughtering it.

Karslaw's side had suffered just four deaths. He'd brought a former nurse and a veterinarian and the pair treated the handful of wounded with limited supplies. Men walked among the dead aliens, stooping to pick up weapons and gather them into backpacks.

Walt headed over to Karslaw, who knelt beside the woman who'd been shot in front of Walt, hand on her shoulder. Her eyes were tightly shut and sweat glistened from her pale face. She'd been hit in the stomach and it smelled like burning garbage.

Karslaw murmured to the woman the whole time the vet and nurse bandaged her up. After, he straightened and waved Walt away with him.

"That went about as well as we could've hoped," Walt said.

"They were unprepared," Karslaw said. "No one has made it inside this place since it went down. It's tough to keep your people vigilant when the threats are so distant."

"Yeah, but look at this place. It's a shit heap. They're attacking Avalon with submarines and their home base is a shantytown?"

"You act like it's already over. How much of this ship have we yet to explore?"

Something was wrong. It didn't add up. Karslaw left two squads among the houses to protect the wounded, provide a base of operations, and take out any aliens who wandered in from elsewhere in the ship. The rest of the troops advanced methodically through the ship, scouts ranging ahead and coming back to report what little they'd seen. They surprised and massacred another twenty aliens, finding most of the creatures scuttling around alone or in pairs. Once, they walked into an ambush—a hastily-arranged mine, followed by a barrage of laser fire. Karslaw lost four men in moments. But there were just two of the things holding them off behind the scorched doorway. They fell quickly.

Down in the darkness, lit only by flashlights and the luminescent mold that seemed to grow wherever the aliens had set up settlements, time lost its meaning. They searched the ship for hours on end. Karslaw rotated out the squads at the base, allowing two to sleep while a third kept watch and the rest continued working their way across the ship.

They encountered little but wreckage and death. Smashed equipment. Desiccated bodies broken against the walls. They found three functional banks of computers and destroyed them all.

Karslaw's scouts did a banner job locating the creatures' tracks and hunting them down, but the warlord knew it was impossible to check the whole ship. The lower sections were slanted below the waterline. Some were flooded. It was possible for some of the aliens to have taken refuge there, alerted by the gunfire. And the vessel was just too enormous. Scouring all of its inner holds would take weeks. They'd only brought enough food and water in the blimp-boxes to last them a few days.

But when at last they emerged into the brilliant sunlight of a gorgeous Southern California late afternoon, they had not seen a single alien without cutting it down where it stood.

25

It took nearly a day for Martin to wake for more than a few minutes at a time. A bandage covered his broken nose. Both eye sockets were swollen and bruised. The doctor Jill had sent them from the Dunemarket thought he had a concussion and a couple cracked ribs. When the woman asked Mauser about the state of their medical supplies, he danced around the issue for a minute, then allowed that he might have some painkillers stashed away after all.

"I don't think he suffered anything internal," she said. "But if you see any neurological symptoms—dizziness, confusion, memory loss, ataxia or impaired motor function—come see me at once."

"That's it?" Raina said.

"There's no pill to cure a beating." The doctor stood up from the bed and picked up her bag. "Make sure he gets plenty of rest. Try to limit his exposure to angry gangsters. He'll be fine."

Raina watched him for a while, then went to meet up with Carl. Martin was still asleep when she returned that night. In the morning, she ate breakfast in his room. With a spoonful of oatmeal halfway to her mouth, he sat up and groaned.

"Am I going to be okay?"

She swallowed. "What were you thinking?"

"Huh?"

"We said not to go to the Osseys. We told you it was too dangerous."

He frowned, tried to pull the blankets down from his chest, and gasped in pain. "Well, we needed to find out what was going on, didn't we?"

"Did you?"

"I tried."

"And almost got killed," Raina said. "One of the couriers found you in a ditch."

He shrugged, ignoring the pain. "So what? If you'd thought it was worth doing, you would have done it no matter what I said."

"But you're not me."

Martin clenched his jaw. "I'm going back to sleep."

"The doctor said you'll be fine," she said.

He rolled over. "I'm tired, Raina."

She stared at his back for a moment, then got up and left. She walked out the door and bumped right into Mauser's chest.

"Such bedside manner," he said. "It's no wonder he's devoted to you."

She walked out of earshot before replying. "Well, he could have been killed."

"Because you treat him like a child. He was trying to prove he's not."

"You thought it was a bad idea, too!"

"Yeah, but I wasn't all grumpy about it." Mauser glanced across the house. "Anyway, I'm not the one he's got a crush on. I don't have to be responsible for his feelings."

She went to the door. "It's not my fault how he feels."

"I suppose that's true. But a good person would act like it was anyway."

Annoyance spiked through her chest. She walked out. Their pantry was getting bare again and she had worn out her best socks. She headed down to the ruins to cast around and clear her head before it was time to see Carl.

Martin recovered well. Raina kept an eye on him for any signs of brain injuries, but he was walking fine, if stiffly, by that night. He didn't talk to her much, but a couple days later, she offered to help re-tape his ribs. It had been months since they'd swam together and his chest didn't look quite as sunken as it had before their last few months of racing around the L.A. Basin.

Everything stayed quiet. After the market closed one night, Jill held a meeting in the shelter of the hills. Raina wasn't invited. Mauser was, but wouldn't go into detail.

"It would only bore you," he claimed. "It was primarily a discussion of the logistics of maintaining communications across a diverse group spread across the greater city. At one point, they actually spent ten minutes discussion the feasibility of capturing and training a team of passenger pigeons."

"That sounds awesome," Martin said.

"What's a passenger pigeon?" Raina said.

"See?" Mauser said.

Jill held another meeting a couple days later, but beyond that, and the reports from a few travelers that the Osseys had returned to trolling the bridges of Long Beach, the entire area seemed to be holding its breath. Waiting to see what the Catalinans would do next. That was fine with Raina. Quiet time meant more time she could spend at Carl's. Preparing for war—whether that war came as a troop in Jill's army, or alone in the fields of Catalina hunting Karslaw by herself.

The day came and went for the Catalinans to come collect their taxes. The ship and its crew never showed up.

The following night, Mauser called a meeting of his own. A household meeting, just the three of them. They sat in the warm night on the back porch, three candles wavering on the glass end table.

"I expect you're wondering why I gathered you all tonight," Mauser said.

"Yes," Raina said.

He gave her a pained look. "Nevermind. Look, something strange is going on. The Catalinans had a sweet system set up and they're letting it decay. It should take a second apocalypse to prevent them from coming to collect their being-alive tax from us. Now, maybe something happened with their boat, but it's not like they just have one. So what's the hold up? Did the alien sub from Malibu get them? Did they lose more people to the Osseys than we realize? Are they vulnerable?"

"Maybe we should just go ask them," Martin said sourly.

"That's exactly what I'm thinking. Except I intend to ask the questions with our eyes. And without alerting them to the fact we're asking questions in the first place."

"You want to go spy," Raina said.

"If they're planning an attack, it would be nice to know about it before they roll in the cannons and cavalry." Mauser yawned and sipped the tea he'd brewed from some of the mint and herbs they'd planted in their paltry garden. Abruptly, Raina remembered it had once been among her chief worries to find a way to grow tea so her parents would never run out. It had been less than a year since those days, but it felt like a lifetime.

"And if they've sailed away for greener pastures," Mauser continued, "it would be awful nice to know that, too. Bet they left all kinds of interesting things behind."

Martin rolled his eyes. "No wonder you want to go there so bad."

"I make it a habit to align my personal interests with my professional ones. That's how I accomplish so many big important things, Martin."

"When?" Raina said. "How long will it take?"

"If we leave tomorrow, we can be back by the following morning," Mauser said. "I don't think it's a great idea to stay on the island past daybreak. Can you take that much time off your busy air-fighting schedule?"

"Can we look for my mom?"

"We can sure keep our eyes open." He turned to Martin and raised his brows. "You feel like holding down the fort while we're gone, chief?"

"No," Martin said. "I'm coming with you."

"Can you even lift your arm without pain?"

"Why? Were you planning to surrender?"

Mauser snorted. Raina cut him off. "If he wants to come, then he can come."

"This is my plan," Mauser said.

"We just took a vote. Two to one. You lose. We'll take my boat."

"You have a boat?"

"And I know how to use it."

Mauser did some grumbling, but the issue was settled. The next day, Raina went to Carl to let him know she might be gone a couple days.

"Where to this time?" he said. She didn't want to lie to him. Instead, she said nothing. He glanced out the southern window, as if he already knew, and folded his arms. "Wherever it is, you're going there for the same reasons you're coming here."

"I'm not going to get in any trouble."

"Really? Then why are you working so hard to learn to fight trouble when you do run into it?" He smiled at her and gestured at her belt. "Let me see your knife."

Her heart skipped. She handed it to him, sheath and all. "Are you finally going to teach me it?"

"Not really." He pulled the knife from the lacquered wood and ran his thumb along the part of the blade that looked like magic: the oily, swirling pattern that ran parallel to the cutting edge. "My father would shit himself if he heard me say this, but Japanese blades are the best. Do you know why?"

Raina shook her head. "They're the oldest?"

"The perfect blade is a contradiction. Hard steel makes the best cuts. It's sharpest. But its hardness makes it brittle. Prone to breaking. So the toughest, most durable swords are made of springy steel. Flexible enough to survive the shock of battle. Yet a springy sword wears down faster, dulling its edge." He thrust the knife at her face. She danced back. He flipped the blade so she could see the swirling pattern. "The Japanese found a way to meld hard steel to spring steel. To make the sharpest blade also the toughest."

He sheathed it with a click. "You're a very hard girl, Raina. Don't think that makes you the strongest."

She took back her knife. "Are we going to fight more or what?"

Carl laughed. "Of course. And if you make it back from wherever you're going, I'll show you how to use a knife."

She spent the rest of the day readying her boat. They shoved off when the sun was a couple hours from the horizon, tacking east past Long Beach, then swinging back to the southwest at dark. The island was a black, steady mass. When they drew close enough, she could see lanterns flickering on the eastern shore. She swung back to the east to keep them out of sight of the settlement, then turned sharply toward the island, anchoring just off the shore of a rocky beach.

They jumped in the cool water and swam to land. Martin had found a waterproof bag for their stuff and they toweled off and dressed in dark clothes and shoes. Mauser checked and pocketed his pistol. Raina had carried her tanto and a bamboo stick while she swam. Martin removed several layers of baggies from a palm-sized black object. He glanced up the silent shore and pressed a button. Its screen lit up blue.

"A camera?" Mauser said. "Now there's a smart idea. Don't suppose you have a printer."

"At my old house," Martin said. "But I don't want to go there unless we have to. I haven't been back to see my mom in like three weeks."

Raina laughed. Mauser scanned inland with his binoculars, then led the trio up the shore toward the town they'd seen from sea. The scent of kelp washed in from the rocks. Around a bend, a toppled crane rusted in the grass. Two sheds sat beside a dirt road, paint peeling from their sides. Raina liked the thought that she was here in the darkness and the Catalinans didn't know it.

They walked for a mile until the island curved enough to see the lanterns again. Mauser knelt and watched the quiet town through his binoculars. A lone dog barked from the hills above the small bay.

"They have cute little houses," Mauser murmured. "I expected them to live in lairs of some kind."

Martin took a few pictures, holding his hand over the camera's screen to block out the light. They moved to a blank hill and gazed down at the bowl-shaped valley. A few hundred houses nestled in the winding streets. Smoke curled from three different chimneys.

"Well, they're still here," Mauser said. "No sign of battleships or saddled-up dragons, though."

"Maybe this isn't their only town," Raina said.

"I've only seen about sixty, eighty different faces come around to collect tribute. I'd be surprised if there were more than a few hundred people here. Could all fit in this town easy."

Martin clicked away with his camera. Raina watched a figure strolling alone by the beach. She pushed a clump of damp grass from her sightline. "Maybe we should talk to someone."

Mauser chuckled. "'Hello, old sport! Planning to launch any major invasions soon? Who am I? I'm just an innocent stranger who happens to think black is slimming.' Something like that?"

"We already learned they're still here. We won't learn anything else by sitting on a hill."

"Oh, you'd be surprised what turns up when you have the patience to let the wicked do their thing."

"It's really quiet," Martin said. "I don't even see their ship at the dock."

Mauser swung around his binoculars. "You're right. Maybe there is another settlement. Or maybe they're off hunting for the fountain of youth. God, why can't the enemy just tell us what they're up to?"

The surf rolled across the beach. Crickets chirped from the grassy hills. A whoop of laughter rose from a well-lit store down on the waterfront. Raina's knees grew stiff and she shifted position. As she did so, she caught a glimpse of white not far off to sea. A sail. She took Mauser's binoculars. It wasn't the Catalinans' flagship they used to collect tribute, but the boat came in and tied up at the dock anyway. A man hopped off the ship and ran through town, following the road past the last of the houses and into the hills.

"Where the hell is he off to?" Mauser said.

Men lowered a ramp from the ship and hauled heavy boxes down to the base of the dock. They finished unloading a quarter hour later. One man lit a cigarette. He finished it and stamped it out just as the clap of hooves pealed from the hills. The team drew a large wagon down to the docks. The men loaded it up with cargo.

Mauser gritted his teeth. "We have to follow it, don't we?"

"I will," Raina said. "Go back to the boat if you want."

He shook his head. They crawled back up the hill, standing once its crown blocked them from view of the town, then circled around to where the road fed into the hills, crossing brushy little canyons and a golf course where the grass had gone a bit yellow but was still being mowed.

The road unspooled toward the interior. Mauser brought them into the brush and got out his binoculars. After a few minutes, hooves click-clocked up the way, wagon wheels rumbling behind them. A lantern swayed from a hook mounted above the driver. The team walked by and headed into the rolling hills. Once it was a few hundred yards ahead, Raina and the others got up and followed, keeping off the road.

The path led through a mile of gentle hills before feeding into a wide valley. At the other end, candles shined from the windows of a big and solid building. They crossed the valley, letting the horse team get further ahead to decrease the chance of being spotted.

"That," Mauser said, "is a fortress. Just like the man said."

The wagon stopped in front of a massive wooden door. The driver hollered up to the towers flanking the gate. Raina got down in the brush. The door lowered, spanning a dark pit ten feet wide. The team crossed into the fortress and the door raised back into place with a series of metal clinks.

"More like a castle," Martin said. "That is so cool."

Raina continued across the open field. A tall, blocky building stood behind the walls. Most of the windows were dark, but candles flickered within a few. She stopped and knelt down and took Mauser's binoculars again. She slowly scanned the outer walls, spotting a single face inside the tower above the gate. She moved her gaze to the inner building. In one room, a shirtless man stared out at the moonlight, touching the hair on his belly. Another room appeared to be empty despite the light. Beyond another window at the top floor of the palace, a woman moved back and forth, dark hair tied in a short ponytail. She came to the window, gazed into the darkness, and closed the curtains.

Raina lowered her binoculars. "My mother's in the castle."

26

They returned to the island as heroes.

The people of Avalon streamed from their houses, rushing down the sloped streets to gather at the dock outside the Scaveteria. Their faces were anxious slates ready to be filled in with the news. Sailors guided the ships in to port; others tied down and roped them to the cleats.

Karslaw strode to the railing and gazed down. "We met the enemy, and the enemy is no more."

The crowd roared. Men and women kissed. A teen boy lit sparklers and handed them to the kids, who ran down the beach trailing light and smoke. The soldiers piled off the boat, mobbed and hugged by family and friends. Other citizens watched in rigid silence, scanning the face of each emerging troop.

Seven men and two women hadn't made it back. Karslaw hugged the families, cupping their cheeks as he murmured condolences. He looked very gubernatorial. Walt didn't much care. The only thing on his mind was finding Lorna.

She wasn't among the crowds. She was in her house, sitting in the living room reading a book. Her other hand held a mug of coffee.

"Well, I killed them all," he said. "Again."

She marked her place with a scrap of paper and set down the book. "How many made it back?"

"Almost everyone. It was pretty weird. I honestly thought there was a pretty good chance we'd all die down there, but there were hardly any of the things left. Not many young ones, either. Either they don't breed any faster than we do, or they don't have the food or resources to crank out a hive. Guess they're no better off than us. Not enough bodies to get things done."

Lorna gazed at the wall. "I wish I could have gone."

"Speaking of, how are things?" He gestured toward her middle. "With stuff?"

"With the piece of you and me growing in my belly?" She touched her stomach. "Fine."

"Well. That's good."

"Is it?"

"That depends on us, doesn't it?" he said.

She met his eyes. "Still thinking of leaving?"

"Do you want me to?"

"Stay," she said. "A few more days. I'll have your answer."

He left, less annoyed at her than at the fact he had emotions in the first place. It was senseless. She'd been acting like a jerk to him for weeks, yet he still wanted nothing more than to forgive her right now and go be happy together forever. He'd walked into the jungle with her feeling pretty good. A little wanderlusty, maybe, but content enough. They'd tromped around the wilderness together and he'd somehow walked out of it carrying a messy bundle of affection, lust, tenderness, and care for her well-being. It was harder to get rid of than any parasite. If he had a parasite, he'd want to get rid of it. This, though, he wanted to hang onto. He just didn't know how.

They were partying downtown. He joined them. After his first jar of moonshine and orange juice, he realized it might not be a great idea to mingle with people who'd wanted to punch his lights out just a couple weeks earlier, but it turned out any resentment for him had died along with the aliens in the ship. He was far from the only hero in town—in fact, he was one of about ninety—but as soon as the others recognized him, he didn't have to get up for a new drink for the rest of the night.

Graciously, Karslaw didn't send a messenger to knock on his door until the following afternoon. Walt chugged water and brushed out the taste of last night's booze, then walked across the hills and valley to the castle.

"My general," Karslaw said in the bare-beamed room that Walt had come to think of as the man's throne room. "You should be the one in this chair."

"Hardly," Walt said. "Those things put up about as much fight as a crash test dummy."

Karslaw shrugged his broad shoulders. "There were fewer than I expected. But that doesn't undo the damage they'd dealt to us or the certainty that, given time to breed undisturbed, they would have destroyed us." He smiled ruefully, shaking his bearded head. "How many did we cleanse from that place? Three hundred? Imagine what would have happened if they'd all attacked Avalon at once. It would have been the death of every man, woman, and child on the island."

"Probably. I don't know, man. Imagine it from their perspective—they arrive as conquerors, come this close to annihilating humanity, then when they're on the brink of victory, some fool dunks them like a donut. Only a couple hundred of them survive the crash, which breaks all their shit, leaving them as primitive as we are. Cut off from the battle groups they had scattered around the globe. I don't know what kind of emotions those things have, but down there in the dark, they must have felt scared and lonely and isolated."

"You sound like you feel sorry for them!"

"I doubt they were much of a threat, that's all. Do you really think they were holding meetings to execute their master plan, then giving each other tentacle-fives and slouching back to their hovels to eat some mold? I bet they just wanted to be left alone." Walt sat on the arm of a lush black couch and gazed at the door set into the wall behind Karslaw. It was painted the same gray as the stonework. He hated when homes were painted that boring, safe beige. If he were in Karslaw's shoes, he'd dictate that all doors be henceforth painted red. "What did you want to see me about, anyway? Or was it just to remind each other how awesome we are?"

Karslaw barked with laughter. "I brought you here to get us in that ship. But the aliens weren't the only threat to my people. I have no doubt the gangs have returned to Long Beach in our absence."

"Why bother with the mainland at all? You realize you've got an island to yourself, right? That's the dream of everyone who's ever wanted to be rich."

"There are things we can't get on this island. The treasures of humanity shouldn't be kept away from us by violent thugs. The whole peninsula could be ours. We could bring peace—and with peace comes prosperity."

Walt waved in a direction that may or may not have been toward Los Angeles. "Have at it."

Karslaw's smile faded from his eyes. "I had hoped you would come to believe in this place like I do. That you would wish to continue to fight for it."

"It's one thing to go after a bunch of fucking monsters from space who tried to extinct us. But a squabble with another group of people? One that's shown no interest in fighting you unless you're stomping around Long Beach? Sounds kind of political."

"It's exactly this cold-eyed analysis that would make you such a fine advisor."

"Can I just be a well-wisher? If Lorna wants me, I'll probably stick around. But I don't want to be part of any more wars."

Karslaw nodded, smiling sadly. "Very well. For all you've done, I thank you."

Walt waved and went home. To keep his mind off Lorna, he thought about what else he might do now that the business with the aliens was done. He'd liked the jungle very well—it was pretty, always warm, had lots of interesting old ruins, and once you knew which things could poison you, it was easy enough to keep yourself fed—but he thought he was done with it for a while. After spending time on Catalina, he liked the idea of an island—you could get to know the entire place, and by the very nature of their islandness, there would be an ocean around, which was always good for food—but he didn't have the skills to sail himself to one. Anyway, all the good ones were probably already taken.

He could rule out any place with a real winter, he knew that much. The jungle had spoiled him. Snow and frost and mittens and galoshes were unnecessary hardships. Humans hadn't evolved from snow-baboons. They were warm-weather animals. Know what proved it? Clothes. So he wanted to live somewhere they were optional.

He went to a sandy beach on the north shore to think all this through. The coast of Los Angeles hung in the haze of the sea. There was a thought. Set up shop in those pretty green hills north of the city. Back in days of yore, they must have been within an hour's drive of the peninsula, making it much too likely he'd have awkward run-ins with Lorna and Karslaw. But things had changed. In these exciting new slowed-down times, the hills up north had to be a two-day walk from the ones on the southern flank of the bay. He could live his whole life up there and never see the two of them again.

Assuming Lorna kicked him out, that was his new plan. Six or twelve months from now, when she'd had time and space, he could send her a letter and see if she'd sorted herself out. And if he didn't like the hills, he could always go somewhere else. That continued to be one of the unseen joys of the apocalypse: these days, no life was permanent if you didn't want it to be.

On a personal level, coming back to L.A. had probably been a mistake. He'd walked all that way, put his life on the line a half dozen times, spent weeks assembling their ridiculous attack, and delved into a ship of horrors to do battle, and all he had to show for it was a broken heart and a baby. He still didn't know what to think of that last part, but it certainly hadn't been part of the plan.

On a less selfish level, he'd been a key part of eliminating or at least vastly reducing the local alien population. That was always cool. He supposed that, should Lorna give him the boot, he'd at least leave his unborn son or daughter with the legacy of an alien-free home.

He just wished he could make things work with Lorna. There had been a time when things were good, but he'd let that slip away. If he'd said or done one little thing different it might never have reached this point. Maybe he should have spent more time talking with her about what happened on the beach, but after he'd fallen into the cenote, she'd been doing so well. He'd figured that after she'd spent a while making decisions and laughing at her mistakes and seeing that life went on, she'd be perfectly all right.

Even now, he knew there must be something he could say to get her to stay with him, but there was something unreachable about her. Something broken. Words couldn't get to that place. Maybe nothing could.

It was marvelous, in its way, that it was easier to fight with the aliens than to try to understand another human.

He killed several days exploring the island, poking around the coves and overturning rocks to see what turned up. It gave him a good view of the ship, too. In the summer haze, it looked as dead as ever.

He returned to Avalon one afternoon to discover armed troops jumping in and out of several boats tied off at the piers. Karslaw stood at the foot of the partially reconstructed main dock, regarding his people with folded arms.

"What's this?" Walt said. "Trying to tire them out before naptime?"

"We sail to the mainland tomorrow," Karslaw said. "I am hoping a clockwork display of discipline will help convince the O.C.'s to accept my terms."

"A treaty? Think they'll go for it?"

"Then and there? Perhaps not. They are prideful. But they are cunning enough to conclude that I mean what I say."

"Well, good luck."

"I would like for you to come with me." He raised a furry brow. "Lorna has already agreed to join me."

Walt laughed. "Then I'll be staying here. I'm trying to give her some space. Don't know what else I can do."

"If that's how you feel. But she told me she'd like to see you there."

"Why?"

The big man shrugged. "She's a good woman, but she doesn't tell me anything more than she tells you."

He said yes. Of course he said yes. They launched the next morning with six boats, more than a hundred armed men between them. A warm wind traveled with them across the deep blue waters. The O.C.'s were already waiting for them at Long Beach, standing in a loose cluster a hundred feet up the road from the docks. Walt counted about seventy of them, all armed.

Karslaw's people ticked out from the ships and arranged themselves in tidy rows along the marina, spaced sparsely enough to make anyone with a machine gun work hard to hit more than a couple of them at once. Karslaw stood on a wooden box at the front of his people. Someone among the O.C.'s started to speak, but Karslaw cut him off.

"You will withdraw from Long Beach," he declared. "You will return to Orange County. That is your home. This land is mine."

Among the gaggle of O.C.'s, a man no younger than Walt jutted his jaw, wandering a couple steps closer to the islanders. "Says who? We were here first."

"Even if that were true, you have forfeited your claim. You are thugs. You prey on travelers seeking safety. You do not deserve this place or its people."

Walt chuckled to himself as Karslaw amped up the rhetoric like an Athenian despot. He was going to miss the big guy.

The O.C. leader laughed. "Considering how you treat the place, you're talking some bold shit, man. You said you had an offer I couldn't refuse."

"I do." Karslaw widened his stance. "You leave Long Beach, and I let you keep your lives."

"I got a counteroffer for you. You go run your little island however you see fit, and I do the same with my city."

"Unacceptable."

"Okay, I'll sweeten the deal: go get fucked." He grinned at the man next to him. Most of his comrades laughed.

Karslaw smiled wearily, stepped down from the box, and drew the edge of his hand across his neck. His troops raised blunt black pistols. Lines of blue heat sizzled into the O.C.'s. Their front lines collapsed, mutilated and burned. Men screamed. A third of the gangsters turned their backs and ran. Others went for their guns.

Walt threw himself flat. A bullet whined past Karslaw's head. His people shouted and charged, cutting their lasers into the enemy, who fell away from severed arms and legs.

"What are you doing?" Walt yelled.

Karslaw looked down at him, puzzled. "Protecting my people."

"By slaughtering these ones?"

A shadow fell over the man's face. "I tried to negotiate, Walt. These people are savages. They struck us first. Murdered three of my men and left them on the beach to be picked at by gulls. Do you suggest I turn the other cheek? Let the bad guys win because I don't have the balls to fight back?"

Behind him, blue light pulsed through the streets. Men in Raiders jerseys screamed, scrambling down the pavement, falling as lasers burned holes through their backs.

Walt stood, stomach churning. "So it's time for another slaughter. Just like the aliens."

"Do you think this is how I want it to happen?" Karslaw said. "If given all possible worlds, do you think this one would be my choice?"

In an intersection, an O.C. tried to vault the hood of a crashed car and sprawled on the pavement. A Catalinan strode up to him. The downed man shielded his face with his hands. Light seared. Fingers scattered across the asphalt.

"This world sure as shit isn't the one I'd choose," Karslaw continued. "That's why I'm reshaping it. You're watching a paradox. This is a necessary step to ensure that nothing like it ever happens here again."

"I've killed people before," Walt said. "Shot them down for no better reason than they were making a bad world worse. But this isn't justice. It's genocide, driven by fear and greed. You're just grabbing hold of everything you can take." His jaw dropped. "We didn't go to the ship to wipe out the aliens. We went there to take their guns."

"We were there for many reasons, all of which converged on the same goal: the security of my brothers and sisters." Karslaw closed his eyes. "I thought you had the vision to see as deeply as myself. But you don't understand that the first gains must always be made at the point of a knife."

"That sounds pretty Hitler-y."

"You're hopeless." Karslaw spread his broad hand. "He's all yours, Lorna."

Someone grabbed Walt from behind. He kicked out, but multiple sets of hands dragged him to the ground. Lorna loomed above him. The pain and rage in her eyes was so bright Walt froze in his captors' arms.

27

"You're sure that's her?" Mauser whispered.

Raina's binoculars shook in her hands. "I know my mother's face."

"We could climb the fence," Martin said.

"Might have to knife a guard or two," Mauser said. "Then again, Raina might see that as a plus."

Raina closed her eyes. "We can't."

"Says who? I don't know if it's a good idea. But it's not impossible."

"Because I have to kill the man who killed my dad first."

"He's probably in there, too. Stab him, grab Mom, skedaddle off and find a boat."

"Their boat's gone," Martin said. "He's always on that thing. We don't even know if this is his house."

"Of course it is," Mauser scoffed. "He's the king. This is a castle."

"Because if I get her out, she won't let me go after Karslaw," Raina said. "She'll take us far away to stop me. And if I die here before I kill Karslaw, my spirit and my father's will always be his slaves."

"What are you talking about? Spirits? You're leaving your mother here because you believe in ghosts?"

Her face burned, but her embarrassment quickly became anger and then resolve. "I'm going to Jill. I'll tell her Karslaw and his troops are away from the island. Catalina is ripe for the smashing."

"But she's right there."

Raina put away the binoculars. "She's safe. Much safer than I was after the plague. I survived. She will, too."

"Whatever," Mauser said. "I just wanted to present you with the option. I'd rather not charge in with only the three of us."

They retreated along the road. Raina forced herself not to look back. A deep part of her wanted to run to the castle, leap over the high wooden wall, and fight her way inside, but one way or another, that would put an end to her quest. Karslaw had taken her father's life. That meant her father belonged to the man. The only way to free his spirit was to take Karslaw's life for herself.

They cut overland to their boat, bypassing the town. There was nothing more to see. This land wasn't a place of goblins and monsters. They were simply men, like everyone else, and most of their warriors were gone. If they could find Karslaw on the mainland, perhaps she could convince Jill to ambush him. Or assassinate him herself. If she brought his head to the woman, Jill would have to attack Catalina. Strike its soldiers before they knew their leader was dead. Force the town and the castle to surrender. If they refused, a slaughter.

The winds weren't cooperating on the way back. She tacked back and forth, making slow headway, wondering if she'd done wrong after all.

She made landfall at her old house shortly after dawn. There was so much to do, but she was tired to the bone, and when Martin suggested they sleep there in the house, she agreed with little fuss.

When they got back to the Dunemarket, Jill was off somewhere in the city. Her heavyset husband expected her back that night. Raina asked around the market for any sightings of Karslaw. Someone thought they'd seen his people at an airfield in Gardena, but the news was days old. Raina visited the city anyway, but saw nothing.

Jill wandered in at twilight. She saw Raina approaching, Martin and Mauser in tow, and sighed. "Whatever kooky scheme you've cooked up this time, I don't want to hear it."

"The Catalinans have pulled their warriors from the island," Raina said.

"Maybe," Mauser revised. "Their yacht's away from home, at least. And the town was quiet enough to suggest some troops went with it."

"We can attack the island while they're gone," Raina said. "Or find them here and ambush them."

Jill shook her head. "You won't leave me in peace until we hash this out, will you?"

"We can put an end to everything. Right now."

The woman motioned at the merchants trying to wheedle last sales from the handful of people left in the market. "We can't discuss this here."

She turned and hiked up the hills bordering the Dunemarket, stopping at the top. A warm seaborne breeze tousled the palm trees.

"It doesn't matter if some of them have left the island," she said. "They leave the island all the time. What matters is that we have the strength to guarantee victory."

"It's been months," Raina said. "How much longer do you need?"

"Two months more." Jill pointed downhill. "You notice any new faces down there?"

"Sure," Mauser said. "Place has doubled in size. Dunemarket's booming since the bridge trolls got run out of town."

"The next time the Catalinans come here, we'll offer terms. No more taxes. No more threats and kidnappings. If they're willing to continue policing the roads to keep travelers safe, we'll compensate them fairly for their service, but the extortion and the violence must stop."

Mauser frowned. "People are rarely inclined to accept a worse deal out of the goodness of their hearts. Not unless your offer is accompanied by the waving of clubs."

"Then the next time they come to take their taxes, all those new faces down there will be up here instead. Positioned behind the scopes of rifles."

"And if we kill them?" Raina said. "Then what?"

Jill laughed. "Are you ever not scheming?"

"Possibly when she sleeps," Mauser said.

"If we defeat them, then we take more aggressive terms to the island. Your mom's there, isn't she?"

Heat touched Raina's cheeks. "Yeah."

Jill nodded glumly. "She's not the only one. If it comes to a fight, we'll take all the prisoners we can. Trade ours for theirs. And if we crush them, well, the people left on Catalina won't have much leverage to argue with us, will they?"

"They missed taxes this month," Martin said. "What if they don't come back?"

Jill raised her eyebrows. "Then we've won, haven't we? All we'd need to do is negotiate the release of anyone they've got captive."

That ended the conversation. The three of them returned to their home. Inside, Mauser lit candles and got a fire going for dinner.

He stood up from the hearth, brushing ash from his shirt. "Still happy you left your mom behind?"

"Why would that make me happy?" Raina said.

Martin gave Mauser a doubting look. "You didn't want to break in, either."

Mauser laughed. "She's not my mother."

Martin rolled his eyes. "You act like you don't care about anything but taking cool stuff. Well, you went with us to the island. You're here with us now. And if the Catalinans don't take Jill's terms, I bet you a thousand dollars that you'll be there to fight next to us, too."

"That's not my fault. You two get into the most interesting trouble."

Raina smiled at Martin. He was normally so quiet. So unwilling to stand up. He was angry now. She liked it.

She slept and dreamed of her mother's face in the window. In the dream, there was another face behind her mom, and it was too dark to see clearly, but Raina knew it was a man. She couldn't tell if it was her father's or Karslaw's. She didn't feel good when she woke up. Was the dream a portent? Of what? She went to the ruins to search for more signs among the ghosts, but they gave her no answers.

As soon as the sun peaked overhead, she headed to Carl's. As she walked up the concrete path to his door, the drapes twitched. The door opened before she knocked.

"You lived," Carl said. "Should I ask where you went?"

"Do you care?"

"Depends. If you went to the moon, or 1996, I might care very much."

She rested her hand on the lacquered handle of her knife. "I went to Catalina."

He narrowed his eyes. "Am I teaching you something that's going to get killed?"

"Do you like what they're doing?"

"Do I like being bullied?"

"Why don't you want to fight? You could kill so many of them. If you wanted, you could kill Karslaw yourself."

Carl laughed, then tipped back his head and watched her. "How long were you in school?"

She tapped her knife. "Three years."

"I went to school for twelve. Then four more years of college. Then twenty years of a full-time job. Paid taxes on every cent I made. Maybe I'm just used to being owned."

"I'm not," she said. "I never will be."

"Part of me wants to admire you."

"What about the other part?"

"It wants to tell you to run far, far away." He smiled his smile. "Want to learn how to use a knife?"

She grinned. He went and got his sticks. For a moment her heart sank, thinking he was toying with her, but the things he showed her with the sticks were new. Savage. Moves meant to stab and to slash. But much of it was the same, too, both in technique—short, hard, quick—and in philosophy—attacking whatever was put in front of you with such a relentless tide of blows that the enemy drowned in your fury. By the time she left, bruises darkened her arms and ribs.

She and the others went their separate ways for a time. While she trained with Carl, Mauser spent most of his nights down at the tavern in the Dunemarket trolling the patrons for news from the road. One man told him he'd seen the Goodyear Blimp soar across the moon, but Mauser admitted his source on that had been very, very drunk.

As for Martin, she didn't know where he was off to, but it was away from the house. He had grease under his nails at all times. He was as quiet as ever, but it was a different kind of silence from his usual timid watchfulness. Moody. Thoughtful. Perhaps even angry. One morning he walked out after breakfast without a word and she thought about following him, but she wanted to put in some more time on the dummy before going to see Carl. Besides, if Martin caught her tracking him, she wouldn't know what to say.

Between training, foraging for food, delivering messages for Jill, and the daily drudgework of keeping herself, her clothes, and the home mended and clean, she didn't have much time to worry about them. Not when she had less than two months until the showdown in the Dunemarket. Two months to hone herself to the point where Karslaw's life would be hers, whether she took it in his sleep or face to face in the street.

As it turned out, she barely got two weeks to prepare.

She was in the Dunemarket bartering salt and a few packets of freeze dried food for a second knife—she had a couple dozen others, but this one had a bone handle she liked very much—when Mauser called out her name. He was running uphill from the tavern waving one hand above his head. She picked up her bag of salt, excused herself from the merchant, and went to meet him.

"I'm in the middle of something," she said.

"So is Long Beach," he said. "Like an invasion."

"The Catalinans?"

"That's what it sounds like, but my sources are the type to be drunk before noon. We'd better see for ourselves."

"Where's Martin?"

Mauser flapped his arms. "Out seducing a calculator, probably. If we don't leave now, it could be over before we get there."

She had her knife with her, along with her basic travel bag, so she was ready to leave on the spot. They ran north past the park and the big empty stores until they reached the highway, then jogged east toward the endless docks of Long Beach. Heat rolled off the blacktop. Sweat stuck Raina's shirt to her sides. Without slowing, she drank lukewarm water from her canteen.

Rusty cranes climbed from the grimy docks of the former cargo platforms. At a break in the warehouses, Mauser stopped and pointed. A half mile away at the marina along the closed-up shops and bars, a small fleet of sailboats sat at rest, sails fluttering in the sun.

"Maybe my source wasn't so wetbrained after all."

"I don't hear any shooting," Raina said.

"Typically a good sign, yet I remain strangely anxious." Mauser glanced at the palm trees on the waterfront. "Wind's blowing east. Could have been a showdown without our hearing it."

"Let's go find out."

They walked toward the docked fleet, eyes sharp for movement among the buildings near the shore. At the next onramp, Mauser led them off the highway to approach from the tangle of shops knotting the waterfront.

Raina stopped cold and grabbed Mauser's arm. He grunted, then froze with her. A few blocks down, bodies littered the intersection, blood soaking through their black and silver uniforms. A few men walked among them, dropping to one knee to go through their pockets, stripping off necklaces and ammo pouches and shoes. Raina knew the victors must be the Catalinans even before the big bearded man strode up and passed among his men, clapping them on the shoulders and offering a wide white grin.

"They wiped out the Osseys," Raina said.

Mauser turned off the main street and holed up in the doorway of a smashed-out jewelry store. "Well, let's not jump to draw conclusions. Maybe Karslaw found them like that."

"They were off preparing. This whole time. If we'd acted, we could have hit them before they were ready."

"Could be. Oh boy, that was a lot of dead people."

"If I were him, I wouldn't stop with the Osseys," Raina said. "Where's he going next?"

"I'll stay here and find out," Mauser said. He ran his hand down his face. "You go back to the Dunemarket and tell Jill to prepare for war."

28

They smacked him around until he quit squirming, then cuffed his hands and feet and carried him like a hog into the cabin of a boat. One of the soldiers chained him to a handhold with a third pair of bracelets, then hugged Lorna, went outside, and closed the door behind him. Lorna gazed down at Walt, untroubled by the gentle sway of the tides.

"What's this about?" Walt said.

She laughed once. "Are you really that stupid?"

"Is it the baby? I wanted to stay here."

She kicked him in the ribs. She bent down, face hovering above his, her eyes on fire with contempt. "Hannigan was my husband."

"What the fuck?"

"You could have stopped them. You knew they were coming. But you let him die on the beach."

"He was your husband?" Walt's hold on the world splintered. "What the hell are you talking about? I told him there were aliens. That we had to run. If he'd listened, he'd be alive and celebrating the massacre of the O.C.'s right now."

"He thought there might be survivors in the wreckage. He was a great man. He would never leave one of his own behind."

"Well, it's not my fault he was born without a functional sense of self-preservation."

She spat in his face. He shrugged up his shoulder to wipe it away and she bared her teeth and punched him in the eye. "It's all your fault! You should have killed the aliens when you had the chance. All of them. Instead, you left them to become someone else's problem, and the only man I ever loved is dead."

Walt laughed, eye clenched shut against the pain. "This is probably the single biggest display of ingratitude in the history of humanity. So what was our relationship about? Your revenge? Get me to fall in love, then break me in half?"

"Karslaw was right to give you to me. You don't have any vision."

"Wait. It was all tied into Karslaw's delusions of empire, wasn't it? You were just making sure I'd stick around. Guaranteeing I'd do anything to help your people take down the aliens and get ahold of their weapons."

"Congratulations. You only got smart when it was far too late."

"Damn, that's some cold shit." He blinked. His eye felt swollen. "Know what, I don't believe it. In the jungle, we had something together."

"A fever," she laughed. "A sickness."

"It was real. It was there. Then something broke."

Lorna looked ready to laugh again, then the left side of her face trembled.

"Me," she said, voice cracking. "Because every time I closed my eyes, I saw his. Open. Staring. I didn't even get to bury him."

"We'd been chased into the jungle by pissed-off aliens."

"Just shut up. You make me so sick I can taste my liver rotting from your poison."

For just a moment, Walt had thought he might be able to talk her off the brink. But he'd been letting himself get lost in hope for too long. He leaned against the side of the cabin and lowered his gaze to the floor.

"Are you even pregnant?" he said.

"Why would you care?"

"It might impact my decision to kill you."

She stood, dislodging the tears from her eyes. "Goodbye, Walt. It will all be over soon."

She kicked him in the balls, then went out and closed the door, leaving him alone. He dangled from his shackles, groaning. If he hadn't been handcuffed at the wrists and ankles, he would have hanged himself out of sheer embarrassment.

He wriggled against the cuffs, but had made zero progress by the time the troops returned, unlatched him from the handrail, and dragged him belowdecks to a small room that smelled like stagnant water. They chained him to another rail—the damn things were everywhere—tromped back upstairs, and clapped shut the door, leaving him in darkness.

A bit later, he swayed. The boat was pushing off. The ensuing trip gave him plenty of time to reflect on the enormity of his mistakes. How every time he'd expressed doubts about their quest, Lorna had thrown herself at him, convincing him there was something to go on for, a future to find together. Her act hadn't been some improvisation she threw together after Hannigan's death, either. From the very start, she and her husband had interacted like nothing more than comrades. If that's what it took to lure Walt to Los Angeles, the pair had been prepared to sacrifice Lorna to Walt's love or lust regardless of what it meant to their marriage. Where had they gotten that from? The Maya? Karslaw's "vision"? The simple deduction that a hermit would be particularly vulnerable to sex and affection?

Well, it had worked.

It wasn't all his fault. When a beautiful person strips you down, screws you, tells you they can't make it out without you, you don't generally suspect them of intending to use you as a human lock-pick to break into an alien vault. A tool to be discarded like any other object that's outlived its task.

But he was to blame, too. Lorna hadn't played her part perfectly. Her act had shown plenty of cracks. He just hadn't had to the courage to test them, to push until the whole thing collapsed or proved it had the strength to hold fast no matter what pressure was placed against it. He'd been too afraid to lose her. He didn't know if it was because he'd gotten lonely sitting around on Chichen Itza by himself, but somewhere between when he'd dropped the mothership into Santa Monica Bay and when Lorna and her team had come down to find him in the Yucatan, he'd lost his nerve.

So he'd let her have her space. Her time. And now his had run out.

"This fucking sucks," he said into the darkness.

Waves beat hollowly against the hull. Wasn't that always the way. You mustered up the strength to get off your ass and do a good deed, and the next thing you knew you were party to the slaughter of dozens of strangers at the hands of a crazed warlord deluded by his own success and lofty words. Karslaw's actions still didn't make a whole lot of sense. Walt had the impression the big man had wavered between wanting Walt to become a part of his people and in handing him over for Lorna's revenge. He supposed the surprise attack against the O.C.'s had been the final test. Walt had proven himself incapable of seeing the big picture, so Karslaw ushered him off to the slaughterhouse and washed his hands.

A hell of a thing to get suckered into. And a hell of a way to go out. He figured that bringing down the mothership made him and Otto the undisputed champions of the entire species. But after this, he probably ranked right up there with its all-time fools, too.

The boat slowed. The waves sloshed harder. Feet trampled around upstairs. Things bumped the side of the ship with hollow clunks. Voices spoke back and forth. The trapdoor opened, bathing Walt in hard yellow light. He shielded his eyes. Lorna's face poked into the doorframe, backed by white clouds and a pretty blue sky.

"Come on," she said. "It's time to hand you over to the aliens."

III:

USURPERS

29

She jogged lightly until she was a few blocks away, then ran as hard as she could, footsteps echoing in the valleys of the ruins. Her knife bounced in her belt. After seeing the scores of bodies sprawled in the blood and wreckage of the streets, her blade felt very small.

The Dunemarket was as quiet as when she'd left it. Raina ran to Jill's camping supply booth. Her assistant said she'd just stepped out. Raina scanned the traders and travelers, then ran up the hills toward Jill's underground home, slipping through brown grass and fallen palm fronds. Off to the right, Jill stepped out from behind the tarp strung up around the latrine, still buckling her jeans.

"The Catalinans came back to Long Beach," Raina said. "They brought a whole fleet. The Osseys are dead."

"All of them?" Jill's eyebrows spread apart. "What are the islanders doing now?"

"Mauser thinks they may come here next."

"But they haven't shown any intent to attack."

"You can't sit here when their whole army is right down the highway!"

Annoyance flashed across Jill's face. "I need you to run for me. Visit all the homes east of Gaffey. Let them know to gear up and meet here at once."

Raina nodded and dashed across the hills to the main road. She stopped by their house first, but Martin was out. She left a note on his pillow and rushed down the bungalows packed into the side streets set off from Gaffey, pulling open waist-high gates and knocking on the doors of pink stucco houses. She only knocked at places she knew had residents; often, she skipped whole blocks at a time. Many didn't answer. Maybe they'd moved away from the threat of the gangs and the pirates. She had only found and alerted some fifteen households by the time the horn blew from the Dunemarket.

She ran back. Her water was out and she detoured to the house to refill her canteen, but Martin still hadn't come back. She jogged on. In the road nestled between the hills, merchants rolled up blankets and slung them over their shoulders. Up on the hills flanking the market, men with rifles spoke in urgent tones, pointing down the street toward Long Beach.

"They're on the march," Mauser said from behind her. "Ships are coming this way, too, although most of the troops are coming overland. They'll be here within half an hour."

Raina glanced at a pair of people fleeing downhill from the market. They should stay and fight, not run away. There were maybe eighty people here in the market—enough to fight back, especially if they took cover in the hills—but half of them were packing up to go. A few reinforcements might arrive from the homes she and the other messengers had notified, but they would still be outnumbered. She wanted to leap on the backs of the people running away and pound their faces until they got mad enough to stand up to Karslaw.

"Have you seen Martin?" she said.

"Not since last night."

"He probably ran away."

Mauser nodded. "He's a bright lad. Maybe we should take a cue from him."

She whirled. "We're not leaving."

"Raina, are you even planning to use a gun?"

"Until I get close enough to use my knife."

"I counted about 150 of them. We'll be lucky to have a third as many assembled before they're here. Do you really think the two of us will make any difference?"

"Yes," she said.

"Then I question your analytical process," he said. "There's no shame in walking away from a fight you can't win. And if there is, then I think we need to seriously evaluate whether shame is worth caring about in the first place."

"I don't need to defeat them all. I just need to kill one man."

She turned and crunched through the grass up the hill. Men rested rifles over rocks, squinting down scopes. She found a space near the end of the loose line of rebels and crouched in the dirt beside the trunk of a tall palm. Mauser borrowed a shovel and piled up a mound of dirt to crouch behind. He didn't look happy.

Ever since the day at the house, she'd tried not to think of her father, because she could only remember his death. But she might not have another chance.

She had hated it like poison at the time, but in hindsight, her first days with her new family had been pretty funny. They'd had to tie her legs together so she wouldn't run away. One of them stayed with her at all times. When the chores were done, they both sat with her while she lay in bed, talking to each other, asking her questions about where she'd come from and what happened to her family. In a week of questions, Raina didn't answer a single one.

They gave up on the questions. Instead, her father read to her, a lantern burning on the end table, a paperback folded in his rope-callused hands. Raina nestled under the covers and stared at the ceiling as he told her stories of hobbits and elves and princesses. She let herself get lost in those worlds, feeling the warmth of foreign suns, gaping at the bloom of magic from staves and gestures. For the first time since the plague, she began to sleep through the night.

They took the fetters from her feet. He read to her every night for a month. She stopped thinking about running away. But one night her new dad read her a story about a boy whose parents were killed by soldiers while he was washing their clothes at the stream. When he came back, he found them dead in their home, and with the roads snowed in, he had to make it through the winter on his own—and there were goblins in the night.

"Why do you keep reading those things?" she said in the lantern-light of her new room with its smell of the sea and the flowers on the hill. "There's no such thing as goblins."

Her new dad looked up, book spread on his lap, sudden pain etched in his eyes. "They're just stories."

"They're stupid. None of those things are real. That's the only reason the people in them are safe at the end."

He put away the book and said goodnight and blew out the lantern. She was ashamed then, and wanted to call out for him to come back, but her shame blanketed her more thickly than her comforter, and she rested in it instead; the next night, when her dad tried to read her a story about a boy and his hatchet, she refused that, too.

He never tried to read to her again.

Down in the street, men shouted and pointed. Raina moved in front of the palm. Mauser quit digging and joined her. Below, more than a hundred men marched up the street toward the Dunemarket. Karslaw walked at their front, sun gleaming from his bald head.

Jill stood in the middle of the abandoned market. Her husband stood by her side, arms crossed over his gut, sweat trickling into his thick mustache.

"Just what do you think you're doing?" Jill said.

Karslaw planted his feet. The wind had died and he spoke loudly enough for his words to reach the top of the hills. "I am here to accept your surrender."

"My surrender? Did I sleep through a war?"

The big man smiled, but it was an angry smile, cold and serene. "I know of your rebellion, Jill Benson."

She hunched her shoulders. Raina was too far away to hear what she said next.

"No more lies," Karslaw boomed. "You are traitors, so you can't be surprised that one of your own has betrayed you to me. You planned, with viperish cunning, to kill me and my people. So here are my terms."

He recited a list of names, starting with Jill's. Nine or ten in all. "These are the ones who must die. In exchange for their lives, I will spare everyone else here. The Dunemarket, San Pedro, and the entire peninsula through Long Beach will henceforth be the territory of the Free State of Catalina."

Up in the hills, Jill's people exchanged glances. Jill stood silent in the middle of the road, considering whether to give up her life to snuff out the war. Raina never got the chance to see how she'd respond. Her husband stepped forward. Maybe to shield her. Maybe to threaten Karslaw. That, too, would never be known.

A lance of blue light appeared from behind Karslaw. Jill's husband dropped straight to the street and didn't move. Jill screamed and ran to him. She went for her pistol. A cat's cradle of blue beams knocked her from her feet.

"That's a fucking laser," Mauser said. "No wonder the O.C.'s were all dead."

Rifles opened up along the ridge, ricocheting from the asphalt, striking the front row of Catalinans. Karslaw roared. His troops split into three columns and charged the hill, firing as they went, dispersing to the palms for cover. Mauser knelt behind his mound of dirt and squeezed off a round. Guns crackled from the hills on the opposite side of the road, cutting into the Catalinans' backs, but only a handful staggered or fell.

Raina kept both eyes on Karslaw. He ran up the hill with his people, firing blue burst from the mouth of a fat black handgun. Smoke curled from scorched leaves. The riflemen aimed and fired, picking off a few of the islanders. Most shots plunked into trees or hit nothing at all. It was all happening with terrible speed and she saw no way to get close to Karslaw without coming in easy range of dozens of his men.

From behind a rock, a merchant opened up with the Dunemarket's lone machine gun, shredding the trunks of the palms. Three islanders tumbled into the grass. A searing bolt of heat answered, silencing the automatic fire.

A hundred feet away, Karslaw guided his men to a thicket of trees. They took cover and slashed their lasers across the riflemen's positions in second-long sweeps. Fires sprung up along the hillside. One of the merchants broke cover and sprinted up the hill. Two more followed. Raina could feel it unraveling before her.

She leveled her pistol at Karslaw and pulled the trigger until there were no bullets left. He hunkered behind a tree, shouted angrily, and gestured in her direction. Mauser's shot slammed into the trunk with a spray of splintered bark.

A platoon of men peeled off from Karslaw's lines and charged Raina's position. Mauser shot one down, then swore and ran up the hill. Raina's heart broke. She turned her back and followed.

Heat seared the side of her calf. She crashed into the dry grass. Mauser grabbed her shoulder and hauled her up. Another laser licked past her head. Her wound was just a surface burn; she was still able to run. It wouldn't help. The enemy was too many and too near.

Thirty feet uphill, a figure appeared at the top of the ridge. The man dropped to one knee and leveled a long, fat tube across his skinny shoulder. Fire and smoke blasted from the end of the tube.

"Holy shit, that's Martin!" Mauser screamed.

A rocket sizzled over Raina's head. It exploded a second later, washing her with heat, thundering her ears, kicking her from her feet so hard her organs ached. For a moment, the lasers ceased. A massive crater scarred the hill, bodies flung down around its edges. Dirt pattered to the ground in a gritty rain. She found her feet and ran uphill, ears ringing.

Martin set down the rocket launcher and went for his bag. He withdrew another long missile. A laser flashed between a point downhill and a point on his chest. He looked up, gasped, and fell down.

"Martin!" Raina screamed.

Rifles roared, increasingly sporadic as the rebels retreated over the hill. Raina ran to him. His eyes were open and his chest was still. Fire smoldered around the hole punched through his shirt. Burnt meat wafted on the breeze, overwhelming the smell of smoke. Mauser grabbed Raina's shoulder. She ran with him.

Everything went away for a while. The pain. The noise. The meaning of what was still happening on the hillside. Her feet thudded the dirt, and her knife bounced on her hip, but she only felt these things later, after she and Mauser were a mile away inside an empty house, watching coils of smoke rise from the ashes of the Dunemarket.

The rebellion was over before it had begun.

30

She helped her men haul Walt up into the daylight. The ship was berthed at a dock leading to nothing. Sunlight shimmered on a vast sea. The mainland was a dark blue lump along the horizon, miles and miles away.

"Where are we?" Walt said. "Wait, aliens? I thought we got them all. I thought that was the whole fucking point!"

"We killed the ones we could," Lorna said. "As for the ones we couldn't—well, this will take care of that."

"You're buying them off with my hide!"

She didn't bother to reply. The soldiers dragged him onto a narrow beach. Scraggly grass sprouted along the sand. Behind, sheer cliffs climbed fifty feet high.

"I was wrong," Walt said. "This is history's greatest act of ingratitude."

Lorna reached down and touched his face. "One more thing for you to be proud of. That's what it's always about with you, isn't it? Being admired for all you've done? Now you get to die alone on this beach."

Thirty yards from shore, the water roiled. A dark shape emerged from the sea. Lorna gestured to her men. They ran back onto the dock, untying the boat from the cleats and scrambling aboard.

"Fuck you!" Walt yelled. Not terribly original, but some things were classics for a reason. He rolled to his knees, hampered by the cuffs. He saw no staircases or gaps in the cliffs. No way he could climb with his hands and feet chained together. He tottered up to the grass, found a fist-sized rock, braced the chains on his ankles over another rock, and bashed them as hard as he could. The metal clinked. A small scrape marred the steel.

He laughed sickly. He struck again. Water sloshed from the surf. An alien strode through the breakers. A thin, pale man walked beside it, his chest tattooed with glyphs like the ones Walt had seen inside the ship. Walt stood, stone in hand, and hopped down to meet them.

"Look out!" he said, brandishing his fist and rattling his cuffs. "I've got a rock!"

The pale man laughed but didn't smile. The creature with him clacked its claws rapidly. The man stopped on the sand, waves hissing over his ankles. "Put that thing down."

"No," Walt said. "I'm going to clobber you with it."

"Huh. So you're Walt."

"Walt who? I was kidnapped. Dumped here by a crazy lady. I don't know what's going on."

"Stop that."

"Or what?" Walt said. "You'll kill me twice?"

"Who says we're here to kill you?"

"The woman who brought me here."

"Can you trust her?"

"About this?" Walt laughed. "Doesn't matter. You know damn well who I am."

"To a point," the man said. He stood as still as the alien beside him, making no gestures to accompany his speech or express his emotions. Walt found it very off-putting.

"Then I'm guessing your silent partner there isn't here for my autograph."

The pale man shook his head. "We're here to judge you."

"Like, in court? Who are you to judge me?"

"A man with a gun and an alien brother."

"I guess that beats a degree," Walt laughed. "Which of my crimes am I on trial for? Grand theft mothership? Or the stuff we did a couple weeks ago? Because the former was like six years ago, and there might be a statute of limitations."

"Why would you assume we care what you did to the crash survivors? Or that you brought down the ship?"

"Is this a trick question?"

The man looked like he might shrug, then didn't. "As their killer, there's something you should understand about them. They were convinced to the marrow of their cause. They figured you all were mistreating the world so badly that all they had to do was show up and it would take to them with open arms. But there was more resistance than they expected. And when two assholes literally dropped in and busted their whole operation into the ocean, well, that knocked rifts in the faithful."

At last, the man smiled wryly. "I mean, come on, man. You think just because they're all from the same species, they magically get along? How's that working for humanity?"

"First off, what?" Walt said. "Second, speaking of getting along, how can you do business with Karslaw? He wants you all dead."

"To get the truth from you."

"You're zipping around the world in an atomic submarine, and you can't just snatch me up? I thought snatching was what aliens do best."

"You were elusive. It was decided this would be a good way to put an end to the wild goose chase." The man wiped his nose. "Anyway, who cares what kind of arrangement we made with the barbarian? You think we got to honor that shit?"

"Well, you got me," Walt said. He made a face at the unrelenting sun. "It's a long story. Where should I start?"

"The beginning."

Walt plunked down in the sand, thought for a minute, then started with the plague. How fast it had been. How it killed everyone he knew, leaving him suicidal—

"Slow down, man," the pale man said. "I got to translate."

Walt squinted up. The man was gesturing furiously toward the alien, his fingertips dancing while the alien looked on.

"Like I was saying," Walt said. "Suicide."

And that, of course, transitioned into the story of his long walk, which in turn became a wrathful fight against the invaders. And when even that didn't kill him, he wandered south, traveling with the unhurried interest of a man refurbishing time-worn relics.

After several years in the jungle—uneventful, for the most part, except for a few tangles with the locals and a couple bouts of comically intense diarrhea—Lorna and the others brought him up here to help. Which he'd done, only to be betrayed by lunatics and hauled here to the island.

"So there you have it," he said. Sea lions barked from somewhere down the shore. "The thrilling tale of how loneliness, an almost willful ignorance, a carelessness toward violence, and a lot of shameless deceit resulted in the death of your buddies down in the ship. As for crashing it in the first place, let the record show that they attacked us first."

He had more—a whole sob story ginned up while he spoke, an epic tale of guilt and sorrow for his part in the aliens' death, followed by his resolve to redeem himself, should he somehow be spared—but he stopped cold. He didn't know how the pale man and his alien buddy thought well enough to BS them. Anyway, between Lorna and Karslaw, he'd had enough lies. They were going to kill him no matter what he said. May as well go out on the truth.

"But you know what, I didn't come up here just on a lark, or because of some girl. Or even to try to save the Catalinans. Is it possible for this sort of thing to be a calling? Like instead of a priest being called to serve God, I was called to kill aliens? I mean, not to get all mystical or pretentious. But I was good at it. So when Karslaw sent for me with Lorna and her husband—who seemed like an all right guy, by the way, but who must have had one hell of a cuckold fetish—it felt like something I had to do. Like I didn't have a choice."

He frowned. "I did, though. Everything's a choice. Including the choice to come back here and finish off your maybe-friends in the ship. I did it. I'm guilty."

He sat back, breathed. The sun felt good. The man went on translating for a while. The alien gestured back, tentacles wriggling, claws moving in small, subtle jerks.

When at last they stopped, Walt raised his eyebrows. "So? Have we reached the part where you sentence me to death and I try to choke you with my handcuffs before your tentacled friend rips me limb from limb?"

The man stared at him, expressionless. "My name is Ness. This is Sebastian. We have decided we'd like to talk some more."

"Right," Walt said. "Can I have some water first? I'm about to die of thirst. I'd hate to rob you of the satisfaction of doing it yourself."

Ness gestured to Sebastian, who withdrew a bottle from one of the gray bandoliers strapped to its body. The water tasted strange, like something distilled from a tidepool, or a failed brand of Gatorade. He must have made a face, because Ness laughed.

"Don't worry. Not poison. Took me a while to get used to the taste, too."

"Has anyone ever told you you're a little weird?"

"Since the day I was born. Now. Let's talk."

Walt handed the alien the bottle. It took it back with a prehensile tentacle. The skin glided over Walt's, smooth and dry. He shuddered. "What's up?"

"You spent a heck of a lot of time explaining the why," Ness said. "We believe it's more about the how."

"How did we kill them? With a bunch of guns."

"But you didn't just blow up the ship."

"Turns out none of us had a jet. Or a nuke. Anyway, every boat we brought near it got blasted to splinters."

"The ship thinks it's underwater," Ness said. "Switched its defenses. Its programming isn't doing too well anymore." He gazed toward the mainland, but the ship was too far away to make out from the blur of city and mountains. "I'm not real sure how to put these concepts in human terms, let alone English. But dirt wants to be life. To put it another way, life wants to be. To emerge from matter. If a pool of water lasts long enough, something will crawl from it. Even stars work and dance. We have a saying: the dirt wants to stand up, too.

"But when you make a thing inert, you kill it. You insult the universe's purpose. That's why they came here. To let the Earth live as it should. That, and to take all mankind's shit."

Walt laughed. "So they wiped out civilization because we made too many cars and soda cans? How do they excuse that mile-wide marvel of metal I dunked into the bay?"

"Hypocritically," Ness said. "One of those necessary evils. You seen any of our buildings?"

"Your buildings? The aliens'?"

"Yes."

"Sure. Weird blue things. Sometimes orange. Kind of look like mounds of coral."

"That's because we grow them. Through an accelerated process. Humans, you chip stone out of the living dirt and put the bones in a pile over your heads."

"We got killed because we wanted to get out of the cold," Walt said. "That's bullshit. I recycled!"

"You're thinking wrong," Ness said. Frustration crossed his face, standing starkly from his usual lack of visible emotion. "It's a hell of a lot bigger than environmentalism, but the fact your civic leaders had to enact recycling programs in the first place only proves how detached you all are from the Way. Dude, you think it's a coincidence the invaders killed mankind through a process that allowed billions of trillions of viruses to find life?"

"I assumed it was just a whole lot more efficient than Operation Entire-Planet-Storm."

"Sure, but that ties in, too. Letting a living virus do the work means they don't have to defy the universe with a whole bunch of tanks and shit."

Sebastian gestured beside him. The two exchanged signs for some time. Ness turned back to Walt. "My brother reminds me we're getting off course. Here's the thing. We find what you've achieved offensive, but we admire the ways you achieved those ends."

Walt laughed. "That absolves me of killing thousands of your people?"

Ness' face remained blank. "Here's the deal. The old ways of thinking is what launched that whole stupid invasion. Got all our people—on both sides—killed. Me and Sebastian, you might call us monks. Reformists. Us and a few friends are trying to do things different. Getting back to our roots. Not being so quick to judge. We're still gonna step in when we see something trying to destroy the Way, but we're doing our best to look at things from a more objective perspective."

"You're not going to kill me."

"We'll get to that."

"Then why did you deal with Karslaw for me in the first place?"

"I told you, to get the truth. And to understand him better. He came to us alone. Unarmed. Big old balls."

"Delusions of grandeur," Walt said. "He uses a lot of romantic speech to get his people to do what he wants. I think it's getting to him. It's like he's writing his own heroic myth in his head."

"Well, despite his balls, I don't think real highly of him. He does bad things and he does them badly." Ness stared off to sea, as if remembering long-gone times. "Lying. Conquering. Taking slaves. Not that he's alone in that. Sometimes I wish the virus had killed us to the last man."

"Well, we could go beat him up together."

Ness shot him a look of amused contempt. "Just because I've decided not to shoot you doesn't mean I'd ever work with you. You're kind of terrible."

"Can I at least have a ride back to the city?"

The pale man gave him an unreadable look. "We're not going to judge you. We're going to let the dirt do it instead."

Walt frowned. "The dirt? I'd like to check if it attended an accredited law school first."

"We're going to leave you here on this lump of dirt in the middle of the water. If the Way approves of you, you'll find your way home."

"You're going to desert me on an island?" He beckoned at the cliffs. "There are trees up there. I'll build a raft. All that's going to prove is whether there's a current running to the mainland."

"What are you gonna do, chop down the trees with your hands?" Ness stood, knees popping. "Here's the deal. We're gonna cut off your handcuffs. You're gonna give us everything you got. Including your clothes. Then we wave goodbye, and it's just you and the Way."

"So instead of having Sebastian squeeze my head until it goes pop, you're going to let the dirt kill me instead. That doesn't wash your claws of responsibility, you know."

"Sure it does. Now hold still. Lasers are sadly removed from the Way. They don't know the difference between dead steel and a live hand."

Ness gestured to the alien, who produced a blunt pistol and held Walt down with a slew of claws and tentacles. Heat flared at his left ankle, then his right. He didn't dare to move. With gentle strength, Sebastian straightened his arms from his body and lased through the cuffs on his wrists. Melted steel beaded and fell to the sand. A metallic tang hung in the air.

"Do I really have to strip?" he said. "I mean, if anybody's watching, it's just going to look weird."

"As bare as when you were born," Ness said. "Pardon me if I don't turn my back on you."

Walt sighed and undressed. Sebastian collected his clothes and the cuffs and stuffed them into the pouches in its bandoliers. At least it was a warm day.

"What now?" he said.

"I don't know," Ness said. "I hope I never see you again, but if I do, please tell me the story of your judgment."

"Anything for a friend."

Ness gave him a blank look, then turned and waded into the sea, Sebastian beside him, the waves foaming over his hard, shiny legs. Walt thought about rushing them, but other than the possibility of lashing their bodies into a raft, it wouldn't do him a single bit of good.

Sea lions barked from around the cliffs. The deep blue shape of Catalina rested to the east. The city was a blur to the north, miles and miles further away. Walt closed his eyes and laughed.

31

"They killed Martin."

Mauser pressed his palms into his eyes. "I'm so sorry, Raina."

"Did you see who did it?"

He shook his head. "It all happened so fast."

They had broken into a house on a corner with a turreted top floor and a view of the valley leading to the back slopes of the Dunemarket. Empty houses lay below them like rows of pulled teeth.

"Then we'll have to kill all of them," she said. "That's the only way to make sure Martin's spirit goes free."

Mauser looked up. "You little lunatic. You're not still thinking of fighting."

"Why not?"

"Why not? Because your only friend just got shot down in front of you. Because they killed a third of our people and scattered the rest to the winds. Because we almost died ourselves, and what we saw will haunt me until the day I join Martin. So yes. Splendid idea. Let's rush right out and do it again."

"Then I'll go by myself. I'm better off alone."

"I'm sure you'll do very well. One little girl against an army of laser-wielding madmen."

Raina drew her tanto with a hiss of steel and ran the blade across the back of her knuckles. The pain cut straight to her core. She made a fist. Blood fell in slow drips to the thick white carpet.

"I'm going to kill him. Right now. While I still know where he is." She turned from the window.

Mauser moved in front of her. "Grief can turn a person crazy, Raina. Don't let it drag you into darkness."

She looked up into his eyes. "Get out of my way."

"So you can run off and commit suicide? Why don't you save time and cut your throat right here?"

Raina flicked the knife at his crossed arms. A red line appeared on his forearm. He yelped and danced back. She ran out the door and bounded down the steps. He called after her, but she was already gone.

She ran as hard as she could, crossing the main street and racing into the confused streets of a housing complex, meaning to lose herself from Mauser. Her whole body shook with the purpose of her mission. She held tight to her knife. After a couple of blocks, she stopped to listen for footsteps following her between the small white houses, but the only sound was the argument of crows.

She doubled around to come at the Dunemarket from the south, walking silently beside the walls of houses and shops. She stopped at each intersection to check the roads for scouts, then dashed to whatever cover was on the other side. She approached her house from the alley behind it. It was perfectly quiet. She went to her room to dress in black and get her spare binoculars. Back in the hall, Martin's door was open. She walked through the doorway, half expecting to see him there at his desk hunched over wires and circuits, fingertips black with oil, his hair greasy from not washing it for days.

But it was empty. As empty as everything else. She went to the kitchen for a Ziploc bag, then returned to his room and collected the stray hairs from his pillow. Maybe if she had a piece of his physical body, she could stop his soul from being dragged away.

In case Mauser thought to check the house for her—or in case Karslaw was torturing his captives to track down those who'd fled—she went outside, crept three blocks east, and holed up in an unfamiliar home.

She hid in the closet and waited for night to enfold her before returning to the Dunemarket. Two scouts waited at the head of the road leading down through the hills, rifles in hand. She backtracked to come in through the hills on the east flank, walking as quietly as she could, a snake among the palms. The eastern approach was unburned, but smoke continued to rise from the middle of the market, its cloudy strands turned silver in the moonlight.

"He can be yours," she whispered to the moon. "Help me take his life and I'll give you every drop of his blood. The mightiest warrior in the land. What could be a better gift?"

A gale of laughter swept from the market. Raina hunkered down, spooked. Was the moon laughing at her? Or in anticipation of its feast? But it made no difference to her mission. She advanced step by step until she crossed the final ridge and looked down on the market.

Tents were pitched across the road. Fires crackled on the asphalt. At first she thought they were using the bodies for kindling, but all she could smell was wood smoke. Troops stood around the fires drinking from metal cups. Talking. Laughing. Pointing off into the city. Many of the men were shirtless. She scanned them for Karslaw.

"Where to next?" a woman said, hoisting her cup over her head. Liquid sloshed to the street. "This time can we conquer somewhere with pool boys?"

Troops laughed. A tent flap unzipped. Karslaw strode into the firelight, chest glistening. His teeth glinted. "Our enemies are ruined. Our homeland is safe. Now we consolidate. We know our destiny, but now it's time to prove it to these people—and that our rule is welcome."

"I've had enough with their smoked fish, by the way," the woman said. "I think we should start demanding massages instead."

More laughter. Raina focused on their faces, searing them into her memory. If she got the chance, she'd kill them all.

Footsteps crackled through the leaves. Thirty feet to her right, a man staggered down the hill. A laser bounced on his belt. She waited for him to reach the road and join the others, then crept back up the hill and descended the other side to hide in the brush at its bottom.

Hours later, the last of the smoke cleared from the sky, revealing the stars beyond. She slunk back up the hill and knelt behind a palm trunk. Through her binoculars, the camp was motionless. The fires had burn to low red embers. The tent flaps were zipped. Many of the Catalinans slept in the open, blankets spread beneath them. At the side of the road, a young man was wrapped up in the blanket Jill had been using for her stall earlier that day. There were guards posted at the entrances to the market, but everyone at the tents was asleep.

And she knew which one of them held Karslaw.

She moved down the hill as quietly as she knew how. She loosened her knife in its sheath, but waited to draw it. The steel was so fine it would catch the moonlight like her dad's nets had caught the silvery bonito.

At the shoulder of the road, she paused and looked over the sleeping soldiers. Drunken. Useless. If she'd had a few more people with her, she could have laid waste to them all. She stepped into the gravel. A man rolled over and stared right at her.

"Who the fuck?" he said.

She leapt forward, knife snicking from its scabbard. The man screamed. She plunged the knife into his neck. He gargled blood over the blade. Across the road, men and women stirred, fumbling for guns and eyeglasses, firing questions back and forth. Karslaw's tent was fifty feet down the road.

"Holy shit!" a woman yelled. "Right there!"

She ran back up the hill. Two lasers chased her, scorching the grass. She jagged to her right and another beam blazed through the space she'd just vacated. The weapons cast cold blue light between the palm trees, throwing the world into icy shadows.

Men ran behind her, calling to each other through the darkness. At the bottom of the other side of the hill, she cut sidelong through the brush, emerging into a strip mall parking lot. She sprinted across the street into another block of laundromats and liquor stores and a Brooklyn pizzeria. She didn't stop until she reached the cavern of the Home Depot a mile north of the market.

She hid in the gloom, watching through her binoculars. Far down the street, a lantern bobbed along, carried by three questing soldiers. They never came close enough to spot her.

She burned with shame. She had failed her father. Karslaw's tent had been right there. If she had run to it, she could have reached it before the Catalinans knew what was happening. She could have rushed inside and taken Karslaw's heart, and then her father would be free, and perhaps a better man would take care of her mother, and Raina herself could have died.

Why should she fear so much to die? She was hardly scared of any other thing. She thought she wanted nothing more in the world than to feel Karslaw's blood. Yet the thought of spilling her own scared her even worse. It was a flaw. One she needed to correct.

She circled back to the Dunemarket, approaching through the western hills. Down below, lanterns lined the street. Men stood at arms, gazing into the night, guns on their hips. She waited all night for them to go to sleep, but she never got the chance. With the men still at watch, and the first hint of dawn peeping from the east, Raina withdrew and crossed the couple miles to the house she'd run to with Mauser.

Inside, he sprawled on the lush living room rug. Dawn broke through the window. A pretty blue bottle was tucked in the crook of his arm, spraying blue-tinted sunlight across the ceiling. He sat up, red-eyed and puffy-faced.

"Did you get him?"

Raina stood there, useless. "No."

"Well, that's a hell of a shame." He held out the bottle. "Fancy a drink?"

"No."

"It's pretty good. See?" He tipped it back and drank, then set it down, wincing, working his mouth to get past the taste. "All right, so maybe it doesn't taste good, but it makes you feel pretty great. It's like a magic potion. They used to use it for medicine, you know. Today's modern doctors could learn a thing or two."

"I killed one of them," she said. "Then the others woke up. I had to run."

"Gosh, are you all right?"

"I could have killed him. Karslaw. But I would have died too, so I ran away. Why did I do that? Why couldn't I kill him?"

Mauser rousted himself from the floor and peered in her eyes. "Maybe because it is incredibly hard to bring yourself to kill."

"I've done it before. So have you."

"I don't think that makes it any easier. Anyway, you're not talking about killing a person, you're talking about killing yourself in the process. And you know what you are? A little survivor. The notion of suicide runs against everything you've got inside you. There's nothing wrong with that. If you were the kind of person who could sacrifice yourself to kill him, you would never have made it here in the first place."

She shook her head. She was tired and her head hurt. She took the bottle from him and drank. It burned her throat, but she felt a little better almost right away.

"So what?" she said. "If I can't do what I'm supposed to, then I'm worthless."

"Or human." He laughed to himself, then saw her face. "Hey. You're not worthless. You're the reverse of worthless. Worthful."

"It's been so long. My dad's still dead. My mom's still gone."

"Yet despite your best efforts, you remain stubbornly alive. After the worst life can throw at you. Perhaps there's a lesson here."

"What's that?"

"That life goes on. Even when you don't want it to. That even if the thing you hold dearest is taken from you, you will survive." Mauser's eyes brightened. He paced around the room, gesturing at the dawn beyond the windows. "It's magical, isn't it? No matter what happens to us, we sail on through it. We're invincible. Immune to everything but death. That's why you fear it, Raina. It's the only thing you can't conquer."

She shook her head. "But it still hurts."

"Because you keep bashing your head into its walls." He crossed the beam of sunlight cutting through the window, swaying toward her. "Let's get out of here. Me and you. Run away to some place peaceful. You don't have to die here and you don't have to hurt. All you have to do is leave."

Her resolve shrank until it got so small it felt like she could pick it up and throw it out the window. She stepped toward Mauser. But as her resolve left her, so did her strength. She staggered to the floor, folding like a jackknife, hugging her knees to her chest.

"I can't!"

He touched her shoulder. "Sure you can. Just get up and walk away. You can walk, can't you?"

Tears burst down her face. She shook her head, rocking on the ground, wailing, remembering her dad smiling at the sun on the sea, her mom waving to them from her chair by the shore. She remembered stalking rats among the pillars of the pier and eating them raw out of sight of the gulls and the dogs. She remembered her first family dying one by one in bed, blood oozing from their mouths and eyes, coughs echoing through the house until she came home from the store to a swift and awful silence. Everything she loved had been taken from her. Perhaps the answer was to stop loving.

The thought sliced straight to her heart. Her first family was long dead. So was her second father. Her second mom was captive, as good as dead. Martin was lost, too. All she loved now were memories. Dreams. Spirits. What was left to fear? She had already lost everything—except her life and her purpose.

One could be taken from her. The other could not. Every spirit inside her spoke up at once, a babel of discordant voices. The rabbits told her to be swift. The cats told her to be stealthy. The dogs told her to be persistent. The fish told her to seek strength in numbers. The people told her to trust no one but herself.

Every one of them agreed on one thing: she must be stronger than she ever knew how.

Her shoulders stopped shaking. Her tears dried up. She unfolded her limbs and stood. Mauser smiled and held out his hand.

She slapped it away. "I won't stop until Karslaw is dead."

The light faded from his eyes. His smile shriveled. He looked tired and suddenly sober. He lowered himself to the ground and drank from the big blue bottle.

"Then there's only one thing left to do," he said. "Rally the troops."

"What troops?"

"Everyone who just lost their loved ones at the Slaughter at the Dunemarket." He reached into his pocket and fished out a small metal object. It was round and smooth and a scintillating silver-gray that reminded her of the forge-line running down the length of her tanto. "Oh, and while we're at it, why don't we give that lily-skinned weirdo a ring? I don't think he liked the islanders any more than we did."

32

Like every young boy, Walt had once dreamed about what he'd do if he were ever stuck on a desert island. Like every boy, most of those dreams had involved wearing an eye patch, not being bossed around by his parents, and lots of beachside snoring under a palm frond umbrella.

He wished very keenly he'd been a more practical kid. Because here he was, stuck on a semi-desert island that wasn't exactly in the middle of nowhere but wasn't within swimming range of anywhere else, and he didn't have the first clue how to get off it.

But that in itself helped refine his decision-making. If he didn't have a plan, the first thing was to buy himself time to form one. He needed to find water and he needed to find food. Once he had that in hand, then he could worry about how to cross miles of open ocean when he didn't have so much as a loincloth to his name.

Something to cut things apart, and something to tie them back together. Other than food and water, that was all you needed to get back on the path to civilization. Before he left the small beach, he searched it front to back, eyes sharp for the glint of broken glass or metal. He found only a plastic bag and a chunk of a large, solid shell. He took both. It was a start.

When Lorna dropped him at the beach, it had appeared to be fronted by sheer cliffs, but on its north end he found a natural path leading up to the heights. His feet were bare and he stepped carefully up the trail. He would very much like some shoes. He didn't like the idea of paddling twenty miles with open cuts on his soles.

The path flattened out. He stood on a vista overlooking a spread of brownish grass and brown-black rocks. A ridgeline ran north-south down the middle of the island, which looked no longer than a mile from one end to the other, and less that in width. In summary, small and brown. Not great prospects for finding running water.

Sea lions honked to the southeast. With a big enough rock, he could probably take out a pup. But he had a better idea. Up north, a cacophony of birds called into the wind. The dirt was mostly occupied by grass, most of it half-dead, but a few weeds and flowers poked from it too, as well as occasional succulents, fat-leafed and waxy green. He filed that away and continued toward the birds. An empty can of Coke was half-hidden in the grass, smashed flat and sun-bleached. He shook off the dirt and added it to his bag.

Something poked into his heel. He winced, then sat down and pulled his foot up to his face. A splinter lay embedded in his skin. From a strictly medical perspective, he wasn't certain whether it was best for a barefoot person to leave it be or remove it at once and risk a bigger, nastier cut, but he didn't like the idea of being in pain with every step. Not when he had so much work to do. He tried to tease it loose with his thumbnail. When that didn't work, he got out the shell and used its chipped edge to scrape the splinter free. There was no blood and little abrasion to his skin. With any luck, he would resist infection. All that time in the jungle had to have been good for his immune system.

The sun warmed his skin. There were a few squat trees along the edge of the cliffs. Their main branches looked thinner than his wrists, but if he could find enough, he might be able to conjure up a raft.

Birds cried ahead. The rock climbed in terraced slabs, terminating in cliffs overlooking the shores. Above the terraces, gray and white seabirds called to each other, flapping their wings, pecking at the soil. Walt walked up with his arms spread above his head, hollering senselessly. Birds took to the air, wheeling over their nests. He got down and gathered their speckled eggs. The birds squawked, swooping at him. He filled both hands and walked away, wary for dive-bombers. At a safe distance, he knelt beside a flat shelf of black rock.

The eggs were maybe half the size of a chicken's. The inside of the first looked just like something you'd take home from a supermarket: a round yolk, lots of gloppy clear stuff that was about the same consistency as the aliens' blood. He'd drank raw yolks as a hangover cure before. He swallowed the egg without a second thought. It tasted good. A little richer than chicken eggs. A hint of fish to it, too.

The second egg contained a fetal chick. He groaned. There was no way he could make himself eat that. Its tiny beak. Its blind eyes like little black yolks of their own. He would have to be a hell of a lot hungrier. It squirmed in the ruin of its shell. He glanced over at the birds. They couldn't take care of something this small. Feeling like the worst person in history, he picked up a rock and put it out of its misery.

After that, he didn't want to open the third egg, but it wasn't about what he wanted anymore. He was naked and the sun was too hot and he was losing water from his body with every breath of air and trickle of sweat. If you want to make a staying-alive omelette, sometimes you have to bash a baby bird's brains out.

Among the remaining clutch, he opened six more yolks and two more fetuses. There had to be a way to figure out which were good before you broke them open. Shake them or something. He resolved to give that a try next time. He hoped the negative karma he'd accumulated in the meantime wouldn't manifest in a case of salmonella.

It was barely a meal, but the calories were low-work. There were hundreds more birds here. Probably more colonies elsewhere on the island. Eat enough raw eggs, and his risk of disease and parasites probably approached 100%, but it would beat starving. He circled around the rookery and checked out the coast. More beaches below, a mix of rock and sand. Slabs of kelp-covered basalt dotted the waves. Shallow pools glimmered between stone upcrops and the beach. Probably some squirmy things to eat down there. Plenty of mussels.

Water was going to be a problem. He continued west along the cliffs and ran straight into a field of wild wheat.

He glanced around, half convinced someone was tricking him. He pulled the head off one of the plants and rolled the seeds between his fingers, shucking them. Tasted like wheat. A little earthier; barley, maybe. Someone must have farmed the place way back in the day.

He stepped on a sharp rock and inhaled with a hiss. He sat down to have a think and a look around. Coastal flies buzzed his face, their bodies antlike and gross. He had pretty good calluses from all the walking, but he needed some goddamn shoes. Why had that stupid alien-lover taken his clothes? He didn't mind the nudity. There was no one around to see him. And considering the trouble his dick had gotten into recently, the flies could have it. But if he hurt himself—slashed himself open on a piece of glass or rock or coral—that could set his work back by days. Without water, he really didn't have any of those to spare. If that pasty idiot had just left him with a pair of jeans, he could have cut them in half and tied one leg around each of his feet.

Being angry felt good, but it wasn't getting him anywhere. Well, if there were crops on the island, maybe there were some old boards or something he could strap to his feet. Or see if the trees had bark that would peel up in one piece. He stood up and glanced toward the ocean. One of the thick, tall succulents clung to the edge of the cliff.

The plant was a good three feet tall with a broad base and a whole lot of meaty leaves. It looked a little like an overgrown artichoke. More accurately, an agave. There had been plenty of agave down in Mexico. He had almost never had any use for them—there were enough abandoned towns near Chichen Itza to bike in for supplies when he was low on shoelaces or underwear—but he'd once watched a Maya use one to catch a fish.

Trying to keep his heart from beating too hard with hope, he moved to the plant and tapped his thumb against the point of its largest inner leaf. It was sharp, snagging his skin. Using the shell as a knife, he cut into the tough, fibrous plant, pulling the needle-like point free of the leaf.

A three-foot strand of natural string came with it.

Walt laughed like a child, cut the leaf and the one next to it from the plant, tried to sit down in the dirt, thought better of it, and went back for a third leaf to use as a seat. He used the shell to gouge a hole in each side of one leaf, then, using a long twig for a lead, threaded the agave-needle through it, looping the string over the top.

The result was one of the shittiest sandals of all time. Walt wiggled it on and hobbled in a circle, arching his foot to keep the makeshift strap from slipping off his foot. The plant matter squished under his weight but the skin of the leaf was fibrous and tough. He sat back down and added a second loop to the shoe, adjusting it to be taut against his heel.

The second shoe went much faster. Within an hour, he had a pair of loose and awkward but effective sandals. The sun was on the verge of diving behind the ridge to the west, and for a moment Walt regretted spending the time to put together a half-assed pair of shoes that were probably going to fall apart in less time than it had taken him to put them together. The simple fact of the matter was that every moment mattered. He had about seven days before he died of dehydration.

And practically speaking, he had a lot less time than that. It was hot on the island and there was virtually no shade. His body would get pretty worthless within four or five days. Catalina was much closer than the hazy mainland, but it was still a good twenty miles away; even if he were able to pull a makeshift raft together, the trip looked like it would take a full day—assuming he could find a current that wouldn't grab him up and usher him into the middle of the Pacific.

All told, if he didn't have a seaworthy vessel or a source of fresh water in the next two or three days, he was going to die.

It had been a long day and he was tired but he couldn't afford to waste the light. He decided to walk around the island before getting too deep in his plans. Maybe he'd find a lake. Or a canoe. Or a fully-fueled helicopter with a copy of Flying a Helicopter for Dummies in the glove box. There was no sense hurrying to patch together a third-rate raft that would break apart a mile out to sea when there might be a real boat just around the bend.

He walked along the edge of the cliff, scanning the shore for boats and glancing inland in search of ranger cabins or old homesteads. Pelicans drifted thirty feet above the waves. The beaches were rocky and slathered in seaweed, black clouds of flies feasting on the rotten vegetation. To his surprise, the sandals held up. The leaves flattened out, dampening the soles of his feet with trapped water, but the stringy, meaty plants held together in a coherent mass.

The island wandered north into a thin spit of cliffs. He made it to the tip and turned southwest along the coast. He didn't find anything more interesting than a sharp wedge of basalt that fit nicely in his hand, which he added to his bag of trinkets. As the sun fled west, pulling a blanket of black behind it, he pulled up bunches of grass and gathered them together for bedding.

The air stayed warm. Sea lions barked in the distance. Bugs whirred. It smelled like the sea and freshly-torn grass. He'd never been this pared-down before, and while it amused him to be a modern Stone Age caveman, it also lent a clarity to the night, a sense of unconscious understanding and connection so wordlessly profound that it was almost worth enduring everything that had brought him here. After a while, he nestled into the grass and slept. He woke to darkness, sore and thirsty. He was halfway through urinating before it occurred to his sludgy mind that he might want to drink it.

Well, things weren't that desperate yet. While he waited for the sun to rise, he caught moths and beetles, pulling off legs and heads and wings and chewing down the bodies as fast as he could. The moths weren't bad—they tasted fatty and almost sweet—but the beetles were crunchy, and their little bits stuck in his throat. After the fourth beetle nearly made him lose what little lunch he had, he plucked up grass and ate the tender white shoots. The grass was dewy and he emptied his plastic bag and rubbed it around, then licked the film of water on the inside. It tasted like dirt, and there wasn't enough for a proper swallow, but it got his saliva flowing again.

Dawn turned the world gray. He walked on down the shoreline. After half a mile, the cliffs bent into a straight line leading west. In a sandy bay, sea lions flopped in the first light, honking to each other, rolling in the mats of kelp. Something off-white was tangled in the brown, rubbery plants. Walt backtracked to a trail down to the beach, careful not to shred his shoes on the sharp black basalt. At the beach, he pulled a waterlogged fishing net from the kelp, tossing away the salty, tacky seaweed and gathering up the pencil-thin ropes. He grinned. Now all he had to do was find a half-decent paddle. A hammer would be nice, too. Though he supposed rocks were nature's hammers.

He kept one eye on the sea lions while he used his axe-like wedge of basalt to chip mussels from the rocks and smash them open. The insides were snotty and salty and he could only eat a few before he got thirsty. He made himself eat a handful more. He was going to need the fuel.

He walked for a mile without seeing anything more than dried-out grass, the agave-like succulents, scatters of red flowers, and gnomish, gnarled trees no taller than himself. He stopped to pull the ends from the succulents and reel out the thread attached to the base of the needle-sharp points. Using the broken shell, he carved open one of the tough leaves, exposing a clear, goopy liquid inside. He tested it with the tip of his tongue. It tasted soapy but not downright toxic. He allowed himself a few licks, then cut out the meat of the leaf and chewed. It wasn't bad.

There was a small bed of the things and two sported tall stalks heavy with little purple flowers. If these things were agave—and if they weren't, they were certainly from the same family—Walt knew enough about tequila to bank that their flowers weren't poisonous. Far from it. He stripped off the buds and tasted them. They were sweet, sticky with sap. He ate a good handful and cut down the rest. There were several pounds of them and his bag was suddenly quite heavy, straining the plastic handles.

He was no longer hungry and was just a little thirsty, and maybe it was a toxin-induced delirium talking, but he felt pretty good. He continued on, scratching the bug bites he'd picked up overnight on his shins and shoulders.

A shack sat on the southwest corner of the island. Mist-peeled paint crackled from its walls. Inside, there was nothing but a table, a chair, and a greasy old-style lantern. He checked everywhere for the matches it used, but had no luck.

Around back, he struck it rich. A flathead shovel lay half hidden in the weeds. When he picked it up, rust flaked his palm. He jabbed it at the flank of a rock. It clanged but showed no sign of damage.

It was about noon and the sun was at its worst. He went inside the shack and propped the door open to catch a breeze. He was sweating more than he'd like, but at least he was out of the sun. He napped on the dusty floor, waking a couple hours later. He took the chair with him to the beach where Lorna had dropped him off the day before, leaving it there with everything but the shovel, then went back to the shack and broke off the legs of the table and carried it piece by piece to the eastern shore.

His skin was hot and sunburnt and his mouth was dry and his shoes had been reduced to flapping shreds. He rested a minute, then climbed back up the path to find another agave and eat its juicy meat and fashion another pair of leaf-slippers. The nourishment helped, but he no longer felt so good. He didn't have a choice, though. His prognosis looked much better than the day before, but he had a headache and his skin was baking. The water from the succulents wasn't nearly enough. He used the shell to scrape out the remainder of the leaf he'd eaten, tied a loop through its ends, and slapped it on as a hat, pulling the loop beneath his chin.

He still had a few hours of light left, so he decided to get the dangerous stuff out of the way. Some of the planks on the dock were loose enough to pull up with his bare hands. Others he chipped away at with the shovel, prying them up with a squeak of rusted nails and dragging them to the beach. He had enough experience building rafts to fling at the crashed ship that he knew about how much he'd need to keep his body out of the water. By sundown, he thought his pile of planks looked big enough to start construction.

A three-quarter moon hung above the city, a silvery lantern that gave him enough light to lash together the planks and the table, employing the soggy net and the succulent-threads for cordage. After a few hours, he had a decent-sized platform. He propped one end up with rocks and rolled underneath it to sleep.

In the morning, he went back up the path to gather more succulent leaves for the trip across. Feeling quite pleased with himself, he loaded up his bag, dragged the raft to the shore, and pushed off into the gentle waves.

The raft began to pull apart just a hundred yards from shore. The fishing net was holding up fine, but some of the succulent threads had frayed and snapped and the whole thing was threatening to split down the middle. He swore furiously, paddling back to land with the shovel, awkwardly holding the raft together with his left hand.

It took him the rest of the day to gather up enough new threads to tie the raft back together, reinforced triply from his first effort. He ate more flowers and leaves and thought about walking up for some eggs but it would be so little reward for so much work. Instead, he went back to sleep under the raft.

He got up around dusk. As the sun withdrew, the blue lump of Catalina turned black, discretely visible from the ocean and the sky. Well, what the hell. He'd be able to work harder when there wasn't any sunshine beating him down. He shoved off, battling the waves, careful not to take his eyes off the faraway island for more than a few seconds at a time. The tide seemed to be sucking him south, out to open sea; he paddled steadily, trying to convince himself he was gaining ground.

After an hour, his arms were rubbery. He paddled weakly, but even that proved too much, and he stopped to give his burning muscles a rest. But the raft was no longer drifting south. He was being borne east-southeast. If he let himself drift, he'd be swept a couple miles south of Catalina, but if the current held, he might have a chance.

He scooped out the meat of a leaf and chewed down some sticky flowers. It seemed to help. He paddled again, pacing himself, working just hard enough to make a bit of progress north. The island doubled in size. Dizziness rolled over his head. He lay down on the raft until the feeling passed, then took up the shovel and dipped it back into the sea, bubbles churning away from his strokes.

The eastern sky grew light. His lips were chapped and all he could smell or taste was salt. His hands hurt. So did his head. It was still so far away. It would be so easy to lie down and let the ocean take him wherever it wanted. Let the water be his final judge.

Anger stormed through him. There were no judges in the dirt or the water or the air. There was only himself and this big stupid world. He knew which would win in the end, but he intended to give it a hell of a fight.

By mid-morning, the breakers pushed him toward the southern shore of Catalina. Twenty yards from land, a riptide caught his raft, pulling him away faster than he could paddle. He rolled over the edge. The water felt cold and good against his skin but he was so weak he could barely keep his head above water. The tide dragged him further and further from the black rocks and icy panic gripped his spine.

He stopped fighting it and swam parallel instead. The riptide let him go. He thrashed his noodly arms. His foot struck a rock and a jolt of pain shot up his leg. He laughed and stood and hobbled his way up to the beach.

He'd lost his bag as he swam and he was hungry and thirsty but he was too tired to do anything more than crawl up the rocks to the grass and flop under a bush to sleep. He was out for a long, long time. It was night when he woke. He was shoeless again, completely naked, in fact, and he stepped carefully up into the hills. When he finally reached the reservoir he'd passed weeks ago with Lorna, he drank cool water until he threw up, then rinsed out his mouth and tried again.

It was incredible how much strength he'd lost in just a couple days. He was sore and weak and sunburnt and salt-chapped and he took his time recovering, weaving shoes from leaves, skulking around to steal the islanders' vegetables, and sleeping in the treed-over valleys between hills. All that raw food had thrown a riot in his digestive tract, too. He was surprised the smell alone didn't give him away.

After three days of living wild in the hills, he felt good enough to sneak into Avalon from the northwest and, under cover of night, break into the Scaveteria for clothes and real shoes and a water bottle and fishing line and scissors and a few other things to make life less paleolithically low-rent. There were no guns, but there were plenty of knives. He took three.

He was prepared to bide his time for as long as it took, but it was just a couple more days before the ships sailed in from the mainland. Four of them docked at the piers. Walt hung around on the hill just long enough to ensure most if not all of the troops had returned, then retreated and jogged off into the valleys.

He wasn't so sure about his next step. But he knew Karslaw well enough to believe the man would keep the source of his new power close at hand.

Lorna lay on her side in bed, hands tucked beneath her head and pressed together as if she were praying. She smelled like her skin, sweat that hadn't yet gone entirely sour, and the feral richness of a jungle bloom. It was funny. When a person was asleep, you could almost forgive them for anything.

Walt put his biggest knife to her neck. Her eyes snapped open.

"Talk first," he said. "Then you can scream."

33

The metal piece in Mauser's hand drew the gaze as strongly as a dead body. It was an intrusion from another world and you had to keep one eye on it or it might do something bad. The whorled metal looked unscratchable, permanent, wise.

"Where did you get that?"

Mauser smiled. "Lifted it off him after I saw him trying to signal his friends."

"Do you know how to use it?"

"Oh sure, it's just your run-of-the-mill alien tricorder." He closed his palm. "I've fooled around enough to turn it on. Maybe. Look, I can make it show little blue lights. Lights are always a sign of progress."

She gave it a moment's thought, but there was nothing to decide. "Do it."

"First things first. I am so tired you could use my eyelids for doorstoppers, and considering the pale little guy's general surliness during our first meeting—and the aliens—and the fact I stole this from him—I'd say there's a nonzero chance they respond to our call for aid by shooting us. If I'm going to die, I want a good sleep first."

He went outside to pee. While he was gone, she had another drink from the bottle, but it made her head feel swimmy. She went to her room and slept straight through to the afternoon.

They had fled the battle of the Dunemarket with nothing more than their emergency packs, and before they tried the device, they detoured to the bunker to stock up on food and water. Mauser stumbled beside her, eyes hooded. He swallowed a lot and spoke little.

The bunker was untouched. They replenished their water and filled new packs with silver packages of freeze dried meat and fruit. After, Raina led the way west to the beaches a few miles north of Carl's home.

By then, Mauser looked slightly less exhausted and nauseated. He got out the round piece of metal and tapped a couple small buttons on its side. Blue light winked from the eye in its middle.

"Not much of a Bat Signal," he said. "But at least it's something."

She kept both eyes on the piece, waiting for it to speak. It was early evening and a steady breeze brought cool air in from the sea. After a while, they sat. The sun lowered itself to the sea, reflecting from the waves and the wet sand. Flocks of gulls stood on the beach facing the wind. The gold rim of the sun winked away.

Mauser sighed. "Well, when all else fails, hit more buttons."

He poked and prodded at the metal lump. It made no sound, but after a few seconds, the little blue light blinked erratically. Mauser held the device to his ear, then shook it and brought it to his mouth.

"Hello? Alien marauders? We're about to launch a doomed attack on our mutual foe and, well, if you're not doing anything better, we could really use a hand."

More silence. The light flickered a few times, then went black.

"Why isn't it working?" Raina said.

"Let me check the instruction manual."

"Have you tried all the buttons?"

"Yes, I've tried all the buttons."

She reached for it. "Let me see."

Mauser held it away. She grabbed his wrist and bent it sharply. He winced and scowled and handed over the device. It weighed down her palm, as heavy as bullets. She pressed everything there was to press, then scratched at the light in its center.

"Why isn't it doing anything?"

Mauser shook his head. "Fucked if I know. Maybe it is. Maybe they're ignoring us. Or creeping up on us to kill us and take it back. For all I know they sailed to India and they're ten thousand miles out of range."

Black water rolled up the beach, smacking the sand, its foam frosted white by the moonlight. "They won't help us."

"It's only been a couple of hours."

"If they want to find us, they will." She turned to him, hand on the hilt of her knife. "We won't be the only ones who want revenge."

Mauser stared out to sea. "We couldn't beat them when we had an army of our own. Without the aliens, what kind of chance do you really think we have?"

"Any. That's enough for me."

She walked south across the sand, angling toward the paved path that ran beneath the cliffs between the beach and the street. Ragged volleyball nets flapped limply in the wind. Mauser shuffled along behind her. At the end of the path, she climbed the steps to the street and jogged through the dark houses. The surf boomed below. She went to Carl's and knocked on the door.

"You missed your training," he said, backlit by candles. "By two days. Come back tomorrow."

She moved into the doorway. "Did you hear what happened?"

"I spend all day teaching you to fight. Is that the sign of a man who gets out much?"

"The Catalinans massacred the Osseys, then attacked the Dunemarket. They killed Jill and her husband and my friend Martin and everyone who fought back."

Carl glanced past her shoulder to Mauser, then rubbed his mouth. "Are you okay?"

Raina shook her head. "I need you to help me kill them."

"You mean join a fight that's already been lost?"

She looked him in the eye. "Goodbye, master. I have work to do."

"Wait." He opened the door wide and stood back. "I just made tea. Bad luck to turn down tea."

She couldn't say no to that. He found a third chair for Mauser and brought out three matching red mugs. Mauser introduced himself. The tea was hot and black and even had sugar.

Carl slurped and set down his mug. "Tell me you have more people."

"You were the first stop we made," Mauser said.

"For a suicide mission? Such an honor."

"You're a warrior," Raina said. "What's the point of honing a knife if you're never going to use it?"

Carl raised his eyebrows. "Some find the act of honing relaxing. And a good way to keep the fat from settling on your middle."

"It's a waste. You can fight better than anyone here and all you do is go to the beach and show off."

"Show off? You were spying on me."

"All they do is take and kill. And they get away with it because they move while everyone else stands still." Raina clenched her mug of tea. "I won't sit around any more. I'm going to kill Karslaw or die trying. Either way, it means I don't have to live in a world where he's the winner."

Carl ran his finger around the lip of his cup and glanced at Mauser. "And you?"

Mauser laughed humorlessly. "Generally, this is where I'd tip my cap, congratulate him for a game well played, and flee into the night. But his people killed a friend of mine. A kid. I don't think I'd feel right if I ran out on that."

"Even if it means dying?"

"I don't know anymore."

Carl took a drink, holding the tea in his mouth before swallowing. "That doesn't sound all that rational."

"It isn't. They've pushed things past reason. For smart or for stupid, I'm with Raina until the end."

Raina didn't say anything. It felt good to have Mauser's confidence, but there was something frightening about it, too. It made things more real.

Carl nodded. "Tell me more about your plan."

"The islanders are sitting around the Dunemarket celebrating," Raina said. "We're going to find the other survivors. Hit back. We'll attack just like they do—fast, relentless, without warning."

"You should walk away," Carl said. "A place is just a place."

"Not when it's been stained with the blood of those you love."

The man sighed through his nose. "I need to think. See me again before you strike."

"I would have anyway." Raina finished her tea. Mauser said goodbye and Carl nodded. It was full cover of night, perhaps ten o'clock, but that was the best time to do what came next.

She had lived in the Dunemarket for months. Delivered messages between Jill and her conspirators. She had kept her eyes open the whole time because you couldn't trust people. Between all this, she knew the homes of most merchants and rebels within a two-mile radius of the market. Some had died. Many had left. But others stayed, hiding in their homes while the Catalinans camped in the ruins of their former lives.

The first merchant Raina approached was a young woman who lived in a somber blue house on the hill across from the cemetery. When Raina knocked, she cracked open the door and flashed a pistol.

"We're going to fight back," Raina told her. "Take our revenge and take back what's ours."

"Go away," the woman said. There was a crack in her voice that sounded ready to split into a wail. "You think the answer to killing is more killing?"

"No," Raina said. "I think the answer is killing Karslaw."

"This place is damned. You want to die here, you go right ahead."

The woman closed and locked the door. As Raina walked down the drive, the woman's silhouette appeared in the upper window. It was still there by the time the houses cut off Raina's view.

The second merchant they approached was a middle-aged man named Vince. He was fond of puns and had sold toys from a brightly colored stall, allowing them to be bartered away so cheaply that Raina suspected he did it not for food or goods but for the pleasure of handing one of his well-kept dolls or sets of wooden blocks to a laughing child. He lived in the pastel apartments northwest of the market, and when she knocked on his door that night, it was the first time she'd seen him without a smile.

"I thought the whole thing was just talk," Vince said from his doorway. His face was blank and far away. "Rebellion. War. Hooey, I thought—bunch of bluster from puffed-up men with too much time on their hands." He rubbed his eyes. "Then they shoot Agustin dead. Right in front of Jill. Easy as throwing out the trash."

"It didn't seem real," Mauser said softly.

"It's sick. It's a sickness and I can only see one cure." Vince stuck out his hand. It was twice the size of Raina's but soft like well-worn leather. "Tell me where to go."

"Talk to everyone you can trust," Raina said. "We'll be back in two days. Be ready."

Vince held up his hand in goodbye.

Beth lived in a shack in the park two miles down the same street that ran through the Dunemarket. Before the attack, she had delivered seeds and advised people how to grow crops; when she wasn't away, she ran a table of knickknacks she picked up over the course of her journeys. Trimmed berry vines surrounded the shack like natural barbed wire. As Raina neared the door, she heard the unmistakable double click of a shotgun being pumped.

"Beth?" Raina said. "It's Raina. Jill's dead, but the rebellion isn't."

Beth laughed from somewhere in the tree beside her shack. "No? Then who's next on the chopping block?"

"I'm gathering up everyone I can. Do you still believe?"

"Is this a fucking joke? You're not old enough to buy cigarettes."

"There's no more cigarettes being made," Raina said. "No more money to buy them. No more laws to stop me. I'm here to ask you if you want to finish what Jill started."

"I want it all to go away. For the plague to never have happened." Beth laughed again, a sick croak. "I'm done with this place. I'm not following a fucking sixteen-year-old into combat. That's the sign it's over, isn't it? I'll see you in hell."

They turned and walked away. Mauser hiked his pack up his shoulders. "For the good of the recruitment campaign, perhaps we should pretend like I'm the one in charge."

"She didn't turn us down because I'm too young," Raina said. "She turned us down because she's worthless."

"Is that your professional opinion, doctor?"

"She's sitting in her tree like an old crow. All crows do is shriek."

"What we need is hummingbirds," Mauser said. "The silent assassin."

She shook her head. "We need people who are willing to die."

There weren't as many as she hoped. After two days of trudging around San Pedro, Lomita, and the hilly peninsula, she turned up just a dozen recruits. Most of the rebels had been killed in the fighting or disappeared in its aftermath. Many of the survivors disavowed the whole rebellion or meant to move out of the region. Hopes dwindling, Raina went back around to revisit the few who'd pledged support and lead them to the bunker miles to the west.

Down the metal steps, Vince gazed across the concrete walls and full shelves and whistled. "If we've got a place like this, the islanders can have Pedro."

Not for the first time, Raina counted their numbers, as if doing so would magically double them. Seven men, four women, Mauser, herself.

"It isn't enough," she said.

In the flicker of the lamps, Mauser looked skeptical. "I don't know how many more we're likely to get. If we're sneaky, we may be able to take out Karslaw, but let's not kid ourselves."

"I used to fight with packs of dogs for food. The group learns from the leader. If you scare him enough to run, the rest will follow. But if he always fights back, the rest will too. Even after you kill him."

"And I thought my middle school years were rough." Mauser let out a long breath. "There's nothing to stop us from taking a few more days. Who knows. A few more people, and we may be able to escape after the initial attack. Go all Fidel Castro guerrilla-style on their corrupt island asses."

Raina turned to the others. "Find all the guns and friends you can. Be ready to move in three days."

"I know a guy," Estelle said. She was a young woman and she'd lost her husband in the battle. "Girlfriend took a laser to the gut in the market. He'll fight."

"Bring him in."

"One more thing," Mauser said. "If you've been holding back on the tanks and rocket launchers, now would be the time to make them known."

They spread mats and sleeping bags on the dusty cement, speaking of what had happened in the market and what they'd seen since. In the morning, they dispersed, roving to the homes of their friends. Most of Raina's knocks went unanswered. At Mrs. Miller's place, the woman refused to answer the door, her voice coming muffled from the other side.

"Nobody's fighting anyone," Mrs. Miller said. "It's over. They said they're reopening the market. Life goes on."

"Except for the people they killed," Raina said.

"Don't you do it. Don't you stir up trouble. We finally got a chance for peace."

"That's the upside to being conquered."

"Don't you do it," the woman said. "You won't like what happens."

Raina wanted to batter down the door and stab the woman. It hadn't occurred to her that some of the survivors might side with the attackers. The very thought was alien, an affront, something that needed to be killed before it spread.

"You did it, didn't you?" Raina said.

"Did what?"

"Told Karslaw. Betrayed Jill."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Mrs. Miller huffed from behind her door.

"Peace wouldn't be enough for you," Raina said. "You're a fat-cheeked vole. What did it take to buy you? A servant? A home with electricity?"

"All I wanted was peace! Like we'd had for years. Jill was ready to throw all that away."

Raina smiled and walked away. She continued her rounds of the peninsula but was unable to find a single recruit. The moon crept up the sky, less than a quarter full and shrinking by the day, devoured from within by its own endless hunger.

When it reached its highest, she returned to Mrs. Miller's.

The doors were locked, but Raina had spent too many years harvesting the fruit of the apocalypse to be put off by a closed door. As the crickets urged her on, she crouched at the back door and teased the lock open, then took a bobby pin to the deadbolt. After a few minutes of wriggling, it snicked open.

Moonlight gushed through the kitchen windows, flooding over the marble floor. Raina waited beside the staircase to adjust to the deeper darkness of the house, got out her tanto, and climbed to the second floor. Mrs. Miller was a lump beneath the comforter. Raina parted the sheer curtains so slowly they barely made a scrape. Under the slitted eye of the moon, she eased onto the bed and put Mrs. Miller's throat to the knife. The woman thrashed, trapped beneath the comforter, blood soaking heavily into the down feathers.

At the bunker, Estelle had returned with a woman her age with stringy blond hair and the petrified anger of someone who's resolved to die. Mauser brought back two thugs. Raina had seen them at the inn. Quiet men who weren't afraid to be caught staring.

The next day, she ranged south from the bunker, jogging through the rolling green hills with their horse paths and pretty shops tucked between the trees. The day was hot and she doubted she'd brought enough water.

"Raina."

She whirled. A woman wavered from the trees beside the dirt horse path. Her skin was taut over the bones of her face. Her hair was cut raggedly short, white flecks among the black strands.

"Mrs. Grundheitz?"

The woman reached toward her, tendons straining the back of her hand. "Is it true?"

Raina could see it on the woman's face. She nodded.

Martin's mother jerked, her face twitching. "In the attack?"

"Yes."

"And is the rest true, too?"

Raina cocked her head. "That he saved my life? Yes. He killed many of them. He was brave."

"I heard you mean to fight back."

"I do."

A warm wind blew between them, carrying the smell of sun on leaves. Mrs. Grundheitz tipped back her head and watched the smears of white clouds in the rich blue sky. "I want to join you."

"Mrs. Grundheitz," Raina said.

The woman's gaze snapped to her. "You're just a girl, Raina. Don't tell me I'm too old or too weak."

"But if you die, your blood will end."

Martin's mother laughed with the sound of dark things escaping the deep parts of her chest. "After Martin, I couldn't have more kids. My blood will end no matter what I do. Let me spend it fighting the ones who killed my son."

Crickets chirped and chirped. If Raina said yes, she knew the woman would die. "Do you have a gun?"

Mrs. Grundheitz reached into her waistband and produced a .45. "Will this do?"

"Come with me."

She brought the woman back to the bunker. They got a few more people that day. On the third day, they added just one, a boy not much older than Raina who cried when he thought no one was looking. In the concrete walls beneath the surface of the earth, the energy of the bunker felt like an electric ghost, crackling and mad and ready to discharge. Raina got a cup of water from the tap built into the wall. There were gallons and gallons collected from somewhere, but she doubted the system could produce it faster than the twenty people now in the bunker could drink it.

She passed out food. Packets crinkled. People chewed in silence, gazing into their past and future. Upstairs, the heavy door handle opened with a clunk. Raina went for her knife. Mauser's two thugs jogged down the stairs.

"Catalinans are gone," Bryson said.

He was a few years younger than Mauser and had greasy brown hair and eyes that were too small and close together. She wanted to not like him, but while she'd canvassed the hills for troops, Mauser had been working with the others, offering basic training and an explanation of the tactics they would use to assault the camp at the Dunemarket. Earlier that day, he'd told her Bryson was the best soldier they had. She knew the name, too. Her parents had worked with him when they joined the rebellion. She wanted to ask Bryson about them, but then he'd want to ask about the death of her father.

Raina gritted her teeth. "Did you see where they went?"

"Sure. Out on the water, a sail stands out like a flag. They're cruising back to Catalina."

"Cowards," Martin's mother whispered. "Why did they come here at all?"

"What say you?" Mauser said. "Are we ready to strike? They think they're safe there. They'll never expect it."

They all looked to her. Young and old. Martin's mom. Vince. Even Bryson and his quiet, angry friend. Lanterns burned from the tables, casting shadows across the bunker. Raina felt a presence. Not the spirit of a person. The spirit of power. The will to accomplish what would be impossible for one of them to do alone. Raina set down her packet of freeze dried apples and stood.

"We'll take my boat. Storm the castle. Karslaw will be there."

"You don't mean tonight," Mauser said. "How will we get inside the palace?"

"I'll scale the walls. Kill the guards in the towers with my knife so no one hears."

"And what about the big metal doors in the keep?"

Bryson smacked his lips. "Ain't a door can keep me out. Cover me, and I can break us in."

Raina smiled. "They've done us a favor. Most of their soldiers will go home to their own beds."

"Sure," Mauser said. "That only leaves us up against Karslaw's personal guards. His best troops. Armed with lasers that never need to be reloaded in a fortress we don't know anything about."

"I didn't say the odds were good. But they may be the best we'll get." She gazed across the waiting faces. Most were stony. Some were eager. A few were scared. "Are you ready to take your vengeance?"

"Hell yeah," Bryson said.

Vince shook his kind old head. "Don't see as how they gave us any other choice."

"For my son," whispered Mrs. Grundheitz.

"My father taught me the ocean brings both life and death," Raina said. "If you know the sea, you can take life from it. Fish and crabs and clams. You can dry it out for salt and make that food last until you're ready to eat it. The sea has all you need.

"But it can hurt you, too. Its currents can suck you under to drown. Its monsters can bite your flesh and poison your guts. Its storms can smash you on the rocks or pull you down to places so deep your spirit can never get out. You have to always watch the ocean, because the moment you turn your back, thinking you've conquered it, that you know all its secrets, it will send a wave to knock you down and drown you dead."

She whipped her tanto from its sheath. Lantern-light played on the watermark running down the length of the blade, a pearlescent rainbow of steel.

"The Catalinans have turned their back. Tonight, the ocean brings them death."

The bunker was so silent she could hear the ringing of her own ears. After three seconds, Bryson clapped and laughed and snarled. The others joined him, their wordless voices bouncing from the walls. They shook rifles and pistols over their heads. Raina's hair stood up from her arms, a tingle crawling down her spine and up her scalp.

They packed their bags, taking little but food and water and weapons. Raina led them up the metal stairs to the twilight world. The sun was in the place that was neither night nor day and a neutral wind blew in from the sea. As Mauser had trained them, they walked quickly down the road in two columns. They reached her old home on the beach an hour after the last of the light had fled. Hot inland air swirled down through the hills, blowing strongly southeast. This was good. Even with the time it took to rig and ready the ship, they could reach the island well before daybreak.

Martin's mom knew a little about rigging. So did Estelle. Raina left them to prep the ship, then raced northeast back into the hills. The night felt good. Like a thing to be taken. The moon had just begun to rise over the northern mountains, a sliver-thin crescent, its prongs pointed up. It was a claw. A fang. A wicked blade.

Carl opened the door with a vaguely curious look on his face and a half-empty green bottle of beer in his hand. "Is it that time already?"

"It's felt like a lifetime."

"How many of you are there?"

Her gaze didn't waver. "Twenty."

"That many?" He pushed his lips together, impressed, and took a swig of beer, liquid sloshing in the bottle. "It's too bad you're so set on dying young. You could have turned this city into an empire of your own."

"The gods didn't ask me whether I wanted to be born in evil times." She bowed at the waist. "Thank you for all you taught me. I will try to die well."

She turned and dropped down the steps. The bottle smashed in the yard. She spun, knife out.

Carl jogged down the steps, shaking out his arms. "It's a nice night, isn't it?"

"Very."

"I don't know why my dad taught me kali. To live vicariously through me, I suspect. And to hang onto his homeland in a foreign country." He gazed up at the stars. There were so many. "Kali was created to set people free. What if the real reason he taught me was so I could free us from the Catalinans?"

Her skin prickled at the thought of such wisdom. "You think he knew?"

"Who knows." He jerked his thumb at the house. "Let me grab my things."

She smiled. He smiled back, but it was a smile for good things now gone, for facing your fate on your feet. The screen door banged behind him. He returned with a holstered pistol and sheathed knives and a small pack. Together, they ran down the dark streets.

The others had the ship all ready. As she climbed the ladder to the deck, Mauser saluted. "Where to, Captain?"

The island was a blank black mass to the south. The wind blew Raina's hair past her face. She tried to hear her father's voice in its song but all she could hear was the beat of her own heart.

"To the island—and to death."

34

"What the fuck!" Lorna said. "How did you get back here?"

Walt smiled. "I'm not going to tell you. Isn't that mean?"

"You have got to be the luckiest man alive. What did you do? Kill them and take their boat? And now you're here for your revenge."

"Wrong," he said. "I'm here for the guns."

"The guns?"

"The lasers. The sci-fi deathrays I delivered to you people. I did the work. They should be mine."

With his knife at her neck, she sneered up from the pillow. "We're the ones who put our lives at risk to get them. You want them? Go get them."

"Yeah, that's my plan." Walt pushed the blade closer, denting her skin. "I need to know how to get to them. So here's the question you need to ask yourself. Are you better off helping me? Or being a stubborn dick?"

"How am I supposed to help? Every soldier on the island's got one. Good luck getting them all."

"Funny, because I know where you keep your guns, and you don't have one. I'm guessing Karslaw confiscated them as soon as you set sail from the mainland. For all his talk about the strength of 'his people,' he's the only one he trusts to lead you."

She rolled her eyes. "What do you even care? You escaped death. Yet again. Why don't you go take advantage of your luck for once?"

"I had plans to do just that. Then a crazy person broke my heart and threw me on a beach to be murdered by aliens. I thought it was time to adjust my priorities. I'm not sure it's the best idea, but right now, it feels pretty good."

"You won't get off the island alive."

"And if you don't talk, I'm going to find which would win in a fight: my knife, or your throat."

She closed her eyes and sighed through her nose. After a moment, her body relaxed beneath him. "You crazy motherfucker. They're in the palace."

He grinned. "How do I get in the door?"

"Tried knocking?"

"Not the front door. The secret passage in Karslaw's chambers. Where's the entrance?"

She shook her head, heedless of the steel hovering above her throat. "Once I tell you that, you have no reason to keep me alive. You can't leave me here. You know I'll go straight to Karslaw."

"If you don't tell me, you can guarantee I'll cut your throat. But if you help me? Well, you never know what the future holds."

Lorna laughed. "I don't care, Walt. Cut my throat. Blow out my brains. You think I want to live any longer?"

He eased back the knife, keeping his knees pinned to her arms. "Wait a minute, what's the point of a knife if you won't listen to my demands?"

"Sit on it and find out."

Walt bore down again, drawing blood. A pleading look entered her eyes. He bit the blade deeper, then pulled back. "Oh, god damn it. Hold still."

She snorted. "Or what?"

"Or I'll cut you everywhere it hurts and nowhere it kills." He pulled out the gun he'd taken from her dresser and held it on her while he rummaged through his bag.

"What are you doing?"

"I should drag you out to an island to be judged, but I don't have time. This will be my down and dirty equivalent." He set down the gun and produced duct tape stolen from the Scaveteria. He wrenched her right wrist behind her back. She swore and wriggled and he poked her between the ribs just hard enough to part the skin. She gasped. He took the opportunity to clamp both her wrists in his right hand, holding the duct tape under his knee as he peeled it off with his left hand and then tore it with his teeth.

"Here's my best offer, Lorna. I'm not going to kill you. I' going to lug you down to the basement and tie you up. Once I'm back in L.A., I'll toss a message in a bottle into the sea. If you've been a good person, I'm sure someone will find it and let you go."

She squirmed again and he dragged the tip of the knife down the tender flesh of her inner forearm. She yelled and he hit her. He instantly felt guilty, then got mad instead. Just a few days ago, she'd tried to sacrifice him to a hostile alien species. Chivalry could go to hell.

Anyway, it calmed her down. He wound the tape around her wrists, elbows, and upper arms, then did the same for her ankles and knees and thighs. He wrapped it around her mouth multiple times, ensuring her nostrils were clear, then finished off the roll of tape and tied her arms and legs again with thin but sturdy rope.

"You look like a caterpillar," he said.

Her eyes bulged, furious. She tried to spit at him but the tape muffled her face.

"You know who you remind me of?" he said. "Me. That's why I fell in love in the first place. I wanted to fix you. To heal you up. To show you that it really does get better. It does, you know. If you hadn't been a fucking psychopath, you would have seen that."

He tried to sling her over his shoulder, but she bucked so hard he dropped her back on the bed, springs bouncing. That marked the end of his sympathy. He grabbed the cords around her ankles and pulled her off the bed. She hit the carpet with a thump. He dragged her down the stairs to the basement. Her head bumped a couple times, then she had the good sense to tuck her chin against her chest. Moonlight peeped through the narrow basement windows. He shoved her against the cinderblock wall and leaned his face close to hers. She bucked again, nearly driving her forehead into his. He jolted back and laughed.

"Don't wiggle around too much," he said. "You pull those ropes too tight and you might wind up losing a hand or a foot. Do you know you can go for a week without food or water? If you've got any friends, one of them will probably come looking for you before then."

He winked at her and went upstairs. There, he got his pack and rummaged through her house for a working flashlight and more ammunition and double checked all her drawers and closets for lasers. There were none. He stole a jug of water and some dried fruit and ran west up the hills toward the palace.

A large part of him regretted not killing her. It was a major risk and she really, really deserved it. But despite all she'd done to him, he still felt sorry for her. He didn't think she was beyond redemption. There had been points in his life when he hadn't been such a great person, either. He liked to think he'd gotten better. Maybe there was hope for her, too.

Anyway, she'd been on to something on the deserted island. There was something extremely enjoyable about sticking someone in an impossible situation without killing them outright. None of the guilt, all of the fun.

The scant light of a fingernail-thin crescent moon speared down from the heavens. He loped up the hills, then descended into the long valley. The dark shape of the palace squatted in the night. Laughter pealed across the humid air. Probably celebrating their successful campaign. Walt moved off the road and slowed to a walk. He had all night to find the secret passage.

He pulled up a few hundred yards from the castle's wooden outer walls. Lantern-light and songs poured from the windows of the keep. It must be very nice inside. He wouldn't know. He began a slow, wide spiral toward the palace, glancing up from the ground now and then to see if there were any lights in the towers.

He had found the tunnel during one of his many meetings with Karslaw. Big as the man was, his bladder wasn't without limit, and when the would-be emperor had left Walt in the room to relieve himself, Walt opened the plain wooden door in the wall behind the throne. It led into an earthen tunnel. Walt turned on his flashlight, illuminating a long tunnel that sloped gently upward. Wooden beams reinforced dirt walls. He walked inside. A good hundred feet further on, and with no end in sight, he got nervous and ran back to the throne room before Karslaw could return, carefully closing the door behind him. He'd returned to his plush chair and crossed his legs, cup of coffee in hand. Karslaw had gotten back less than a minute later. As far as Walt could tell, he didn't suspect a thing.

But Walt had come away with a few suspicions of his own. Even so, he hadn't put the pieces together until his isolation on the island. There was something about utter solitude that clarified your thinking. Alone on the island of agave and raw eggs, it had become very obvious that it would be smarter to sneak in through the side hatch than to mount an offensive against the main gates. He'd hoped Lorna would tell him the exact point of ingress to the tunnel, but he didn't need her. All he needed was a little time.

He moved through the grass, walking slowly to make sure he missed nothing in the full gloom of night. Crickets chirped in a steady haze. Surf crashed to the north. Even up in the hills, it was a warm night, and the constant movement left his Scaveteria clothes damp with sweat. After a bit of walking, he found a stick and used that to prod the ground in front of him, listening for any hollow wooden taps.

One by one, the lights in the windows flicked off. The songs and laughter dried up and died. The palace slept. Walt continued his long spiral toward the building, shuffling his feet to feel for anything unnatural. The moon climbed up the sky. An hour passed, then two. He knew it was a long way till dawn, and that the men inside would be sleeping off the night's celebrations until well after daybreak, but his stomach sank. He was stumbling around in the darkness hunting for a door that might not even be there. Each time he circled the castle, drawing inexorably nearer its wooden palisade, he grew further tempted to sprint headlong toward Avalon, steal a boat, and hustle back to Los Angeles.

Around the back of the castle, a couple hundred yards from the walls, a thin strip of grass lay flattened. He followed it. His stick thumped a hollow, wooden patch of dirt. Dust billowed from a two-foot square. He kicked it aside, revealing a trapdoor. He pulled on its ringed handle. It budged, but something was holding it fast.

He swore. Of course it would be locked. He tried again, just in case luck liked him that night, but the door rattled just a fraction of an inch. Which meant it wasn't locked. It was latched.

Candles burnt in two of the keep's windows. Walt set down his little pack, got out the line he'd taken from the Scaveteria, and tied it to a fishing hook. He dangled the hook through the gap, dragging it until it clicked into something metal. The hook skipped right over it. He tried again, finessing the line, but the hook skittered off again. He couldn't see a damn thing. For all he knew, the hook was too small. The latch was only a few inches below the surface, but his big knife was too fat to fit and his small knife was too short to reach.

He tried again, wishing he still had his laser. The hook snagged, then popped loose. Cold sweat sprung up on the small of his back. He couldn't stay out here all night. Going back to the Scaveteria for a thin strip of metal to slide down there would be suicidal. He didn't even know for sure there was a latch.

The hook caught. Gently, he pulled, praying the fishing line had been intended to stand against true monsters of the ocean. It pulled loose with a sharp yank—but at the last second, he'd felt something give.

He opened the door with a squall of hinges. Moonlight poured into an earthen tunnel. Walt climbed down wooden steps laid over the bare earth. A narrow tunnel swallowed him whole. The moonlight faded behind him. He didn't dare turn on his flashlight, so he shuffled along, tapping with his stick. His breath echoed from the damp walls. After a couple minutes, his stick clunked into a wooden door.

He entered the throne room.

A bit of light sprawled through its meager windows, silhouetting the couches and chairs. Walt paused to listen for talk or snoring or fucking. The room was as quiet as a grave. The earthy smell of old potatoes emanated from the northern door to the pantry. He crept to the eastern door. To the stairwell. The treasures were always kept down deep.

In the close darkness of the staircase, he listened for any sound from the upstairs bedrooms, then felt his way down the steps, aided by his stick. He reached the bottom, stopped to listen again, then tapped around until he found the doorway. It fed into a hallway that was just as black as everything else.

He moved into it, cupped his palm over the end of his flashlight, and flicked it on. Reddish light seeped past his palm. He moved his hand partly off the lens, spilling light into the tunnel. The ceiling was a good ten feet high. Unfinished walls extended past the limits of the flashlight's beam. Doors opened into both sides of the hall. The first led to a room of shelves filled floor to ceiling with paper goods: toilet paper, paper towels, Kleenex. The room opposite held cleaning supplies, soap and shampoo and sprays and white jugs of bleach. Further down the hall, the shelves were heavy with medicine, hundreds of amber pill bottles and green liquid cold medicine and opaque white bottles of aspirin. Next came room after room of canned food and bins of wheat and dried corn.

The end of the tunnel fed onto a concrete landing. A staircase descended to both sides. He took the left. At the bottom, a metal door hung open, leading into another tunnel. Dust coated the floor in a solid sheet. On both walls, iron bars fenced off small cells. A bucket sat in each room. An actual fucking dungeon. Walt walked to the end of the hall, then turned back, climbed the stairs to the landing, and took the right fork.

The metal door at its bottom was open, too. Footprints marred the dust. Most of the tracks led to a room halfway down the hall. Inside, rows of blunt black pistols rested on the shelves.

The weapons were heavy, a couple pounds apiece, most of that concentrated in what he assumed was a battery in the grip. He loaded two dozen into his backpack, climbed back to the supply basement, clicked off the flashlight, and ascended to the throne room. Moonlight touched the empty silence. He took the escape tunnel back into the open air.

He stuffed a laser in both pockets, stashed the bag under a shrub, and went back inside. Pillows and cushions of all sorts adorned the couches and wall seats of the throne room. He yanked off four pillowcases, draped them around his shoulders, and returned to the armory for another load. The second trip was done in five minutes. Outside, he tied off the end of the pillowcase and set it down next to his backpack, lasers rattling inside.

He crept back to the throne room as quietly as he knew how, a pistol in each hand, suddenly convinced that guards would leap from behind the curtains. It was as silent as ever. Everyone was drunk or exhausted after the trip from the mainland. Would be a great time to wipe them all out.

It took five trips in all. He was sure he didn't have every single laser—Karslaw was probably spooning with one right now, and the tower guards and most trusted lieutenants might have been allowed to keep theirs as well—but however many remained, it wouldn't be enough for an army.

But the laser closet hadn't been the only room in the armory. The others held racks and racks of conventional weapons: .30-06 hunting rifles, assault SKSes with banana clips, semiauto handguns and revolvers of all kinds. Ammo stacked in hefty blue-gray tins. One room held nothing but swords and axes and quivers and bows.

He returned to the room with the blue-gray boxes and gave them a good stare. There were literal tons of materiel down here. Far too much to carry to the surface one pillowcase at a time. But if he were to rig up a long enough fuse, and then light that fuse with one of the lighters he'd stolen from Lorna's dresser, he could castrate the Catalinans' ability to make war. Shit, with the amount of bullets stored down there, he might well wind up blowing the entire castle to hell and gone.

Fuses were nothing special. Just a length of anything that would burn slowly enough to allow you to run away before the fire reached the combustibles and kicked off the fireworks. There might even be some among all the weapons here. He'd seen a few wooden boxes. The kind that might be used for carrying dynamite. He stepped back into the hall to give them a look.

A shout rang out upstairs. Boots thudded over the ceiling, loosening dust on Walt's upturned face. He swore. They were heading straight for the stairwell.

35

The boat plowed into the darkness. The wind was strong. There were spirits within it and they were hungry for blood.

All their plans had centered on attacking the Dunemarket and were now obsolete. While Raina trimmed the sails and set the ship straight for Catalina, Mauser went inside the cabin of the crowded boat to sketch out maps of the island, the town at its northeast tip, and the castle a couple miles inland to the west. When he finished, Raina asked Mrs. Grundheitz to watch the ship while she joined the others in the wind-sheltered space behind the cabin.

"Stealth and speed," Raina said. "That's how we get to Karslaw."

Mauser tapped the map. "We land on the shore dead north of the palace. Head straight in. A few of us climb the wall and neutralize the guards. If we make any noise at all, Bryson will have a hell of a time picking the front lock while he's dancing the 'Oh God They're Shooting at Me' jig."

"Karslaw lives on the top floor."

"How do you know that?" Mauser said.

"Because he is the type of man who likes to look down on those he rules. And that's where he keeps his women."

"Take one of the stairwells," Bryson said. "Real quiet. Post two people at each landing to hold off reinforcements. Raina finds Karslaw, then we move door to door from there."

Raina nodded. "No matter how quiet we are to the ears, violence is noisy to the soul. The others won't stay asleep for long. Once Karslaw's dead, there's no shame in running."

"What?" Mauser said. "Don't tell them to run away. Then we'll die for sure."

She continued speaking to the troops. "None of you are my hands or my feet or my heart. You can go your own way."

"While that's literally true, I'd just as soon stick together. If we do get split up, however, I suggest we rally down here." Mauser tapped the southeast corner of the island where they'd landed on their initial scouting mission. "That's the opposite way from our boat, but that's why they won't find us. We can steal one of their boats later."

They settled a few more details, then broke apart, each man and woman watching the island growing in the distance. The plan was so simple Raina began to believe they might come out alive. She stamped that thought out as soon as she had it. She couldn't risk a repeat of her failure to take Karslaw's life at the Dunemarket.

The sails began to flap. She trimmed them to the wind, which poured out of the northwest as if scared for its life. The island loomed larger. By midnight, she turned the ship into a bay north of the castle, struck the sails, and dropped anchor. Four at a time, they rowed the dingy in to the sandy shore.

Raina was in the final group to leave the boat. She had no sooner jumped onto the sand when the water boiled behind them.

Her blood went icy. "It's him."

Mauser glanced out to sea. "Huh?"

"The pale man."

"Shit on a griddle, they followed us?"

"Fan out and get down," she said to the others. "In a minute, a man will walk out of the water."

"The fuck?" Bryson said.

Martin's mom gaped. "Is he friendly?"

"I don't know," Raina said. "And he might not be alone. There could be aliens with him. But if you shoot before I tell you to, I'll water this beach with your blood."

Carl shook his head. "Wherever you learned that, it wasn't from me."

Bryson looked like he might protest, then lay prone in the grass, crooking his rifle against his shoulder. The others joined him, spreading out along the beach and taking cover behind rocks and grass. Mauser touched Raina's shoulder. Together, they returned to the sand and faced the sea.

The water stirred. A head broke the surface. Water sloughed and spattered from the man's body. An alien followed him, its crablike claws and squid-like limbs thrashing at the waves. Someone gasped from back in the grass. Raina turned her head and glared.

"You got something of ours," the pale man said. The alien stood silent beside him.

"We tried to give it back," Mauser said. "Where were you then?"

"Watching. You gonna attack?"

"Do you have a problem with that?" Raina said.

The man gazed at the troops bunkered down on the beach. "Not a whole lot of you."

"Then join us. That's why you came here. Quit playing games and help us."

"Is that an official invitation?"

"Hold on a second," Mauser said. "Is this a trick? You've got a submarine out there. If you want the islanders dead, why not just attack their boats in the open ocean?"

The man gestured to the alien for a moment, who responded with quick jerks of its tentacle tips.

"Ran out of torpedoes ages ago. Only weapons we got left are surface-only. Meanwhile, some goddamn fool let these people get their hands on lasers. If they damage our ship, how we gonna replace it? That's not just a sub. That's our home."

"I don't care," Raina said. "Will you stand with us or not?"

The man stared blankly. "There aren't many of us. We don't like these people, but we aren't gonna die to take them down."

"What an inspiring pledge of support," Mauser said.

"We'll help you get inside. We'll watch your backs. Then you're on your own."

"Agreed," Raina said.

Mauser looked pained. "Are we sure this is a good idea?"

"We don't have lasers. If he wanted us dead, he could have attacked our boat." She gestured inland. South. "It doesn't matter. An hour from now, it will all be over."

He sighed. "It's your show."

The man reached into his pocket and removed a device identical to the one Mauser had stolen. "I'll call in the others. Might want to let your people know the score before their fingers get itchy."

Raina explained quickly. Bryson's quiet friend shook his head. "I'm not fightin' with no fuckin' aliens."

Bryson snorted. "You seen their hardware?"

"Sure. They showed it off pretty well when they mounted an invasion of the whole goddamn planet."

"These ones are different," Raina said.

The man raised one brow. "I'd fuckin' hope so."

"I don't trust them completely. But if they mean to betray us, I don't want them skulking around behind us. I want them close enough to cut."

"Jesus," Bryson's friend laughed. "All right. Consider me convinced."

Four more aliens strode from the black waves. They wore bandoliers along their long ovoid bodies. Tentacles carried snubby black guns. The pale man led them to the grass. Most of Raina's people flinched or grew stiff, but some watched the aliens with the amusement of those for whom all life has become a joke.

Raina turned her back and led the group up the hill. The pale man got out a small black tube and held it to his eye. If he saw anything in the darkness, he kept it to himself. His creatures scuttled along in a loose group, several feet of open grass separating them from the line of humans.

Raina moved over to walk beside the pale man. She briefly explained their strategy. "I want you to cover us when we climb up the towers. If any of the guards makes a word, you silence him."

"You givin' me orders?"

"Does it sound like a good plan or not?"

He smiled a bit. "Sure. A laser's mighty bright, though. Hope you brought your sneaking shoes."

She glanced down at her feet. She was wearing sneakers, in fact. The man spoke strangely. She would have chalked it up to living among aliens, but Mauser spoke even less intelligibly, and as far as she knew he'd been among humans the whole time.

Past the hill, the wind died down to a mild breeze, grass swaying around the troops' thighs. She tried to feel for the spirit of her father, but there were too many people around. Maybe there were too many other ghosts, too. She didn't know how these things worked. Just that when you killed a thing, it became yours.

That was what set her apart from the others. Most of them had been raised by supermarkets. When they grew hungry, they went to the stores with the big red letters and the stores handed down packages of meat tidily wrapped in skin-tight plastic. In her early years, she had been no different—her first parents serving her grilled cheese and rice and beans, as if by magic, as if from a place where the food never stopped.

But then everything changed. She killed her own food. Fish. Possums. Cats and rats and dogs and snails. And maybe the others had done this, too, but they were too old, their eyes long adjusted to the light of the old ways, too dazzled by the past to see the other world that had always been there. When you killed a thing, it lingered beyond the flesh. It became you.

In this way, Karslaw had taken her father. If the bearded man killed her tonight, she would become his as well, and she would have the small consolation of being reunited with her dad. But that idea terrified her, too. She would not be any man's. She would kill him. And if fate denied her, choosing to take her life instead, she would kill herself before Karslaw got the chance.

The castle loomed from the hills.

"No more words," Raina said. "Our blades talk now."

The pale man's hands danced as if he were weaving spells. The thick foretentacles of the aliens climbed, swiveling to face the man's hands. Each creature made a quick gesture with their lash-like tentacles.

The castle's gate faced the east and she circled them around its back side to hide them from the towers standing at either side of the drawbridge. As they neared, she crouched lower and lower until the grass swished past her ears. A single tower rose from the back wall. Its windows were too narrow and dark to see inside. Raina gestured the others to stop. They knelt in the grass, the aliens flattening themselves until nothing but their glaring, unwinking eyes projected from the breeze-stirred blades.

"Give me a boost up the wall," she said to Mauser. "I'll flash my knife from the windows when it's finished."

Faced with the hard reality of the palace, Mauser looked ready to turn tail and run, but it was too late. Too many eyes watched him. He handed his rifle to Vince, checked to see he still had his pistol and knife, then gave her the thumbs-up and a manic grin.

They crawled through the grass on their bellies. Dew soaked her shirt. The breeze stopped and she grabbed Mauser's arm. He went still. She waited until the wind once more tousled the grass, obscuring their movement and noise, then crawled on.

The grass ceased. The wooden wall waited a foot from her face. She tipped back her head. She was almost directly beneath the tower. The walls were vertical with no gaps between the boards. Mauser faced the palisade and squatted. She planted her left foot on his shoulder and he grabbed her ankle. She braced herself against the wood and lifted her other foot, wobbling on his shoulders. He grunted softly and stood.

Even when she raised her arms as high as she could, the serrated top of the palisade remained a foot out of reach. She lowered herself, knees bent, then sprung. She grabbed the top of the wall, splinters gouging her palms. Her heels thumped the boards and she grimaced. Mauser got his hands under her dangling feet and pushed. She wriggled up the wall and swung her leg over the side.

A wooden platform fringed the inner edge of the wall there. She lowered herself to it in silence. Overhead, the tower remained noiseless and dark. She entered its base. A ladder extended into the shadows. She loosened her tanto and climbed.

After thirty feet, the ladder reached a square hole in a platform. Raina waited, listening, then poked her head into the room above. Weak moonlight touched an empty chair. A flashlight hung from a peg by one of the windows. A rifle stood propped in the corner. A shape moved away from another window, silhouetted. The man's hair and skin was so dark he'd blended with the night completely. She felt a pang of envy. The man clumped across the platform, passing the hole and leaning into the window beside the flashlight. Raina eased herself up as slowly as a stalking cat, drew her knife, and closed in.

At the last second, he straightened from the window. She jerked the blade into his neck, grabbing his mouth with her open right hand. Blood gargled from the cut, spraying with each pump of his heart. He struggled, shoes thumping, lifting her off the ground, but she held fast. His strength left him in seconds. He sagged to the platform, blood washing down his front. She fought his body's dead weight, lowering it to the floor, and watched until she was sure it would never move again.

She wiped the knife on the man's shirt, put it out the window, and angled it back and forth in the moonlight.

She couldn't see the others hidden in the grass; the breeze disguised their movements. Feet scuffed in the dirt directly below her. She took the flashlight and the black alien pistol on the man's belt. The grip was heavy. She secured it in the back of her pants and climbed down the ladder to the wall.

Carl, Mauser, and Bryson's friend waited for her. Mauser looked anxious. Bryson's friend looked ready. Carl was composed, unreadable. The platform ran unbroken all the way around the inner walls. There was a tower on both the north and south extremes of the wall and two more on either side of the eastern gate. Raina pointed to each man, then a tower. Her people moved in perfect silence along the wall. She no longer felt fear. Just the gut-down need to plunge her knife into those who had wronged her.

Mauser reached his tower and stopped beneath it. Raina continued on, crawling along in the shadow of the parapet. A handful of candles burned in the windows of the keep. A man coughed. She reached her tower. Across the gates, Carl raised his hand. She answered in kind, then gestured across the wall at Mauser, who did the same. They started up their ladders.

She took the rungs one at a time, hands rasping on the metal. This part would be tricksiest of all. They'd all started up the ladders at the same time, but they had no way to coordinate their attacks. Each would have to be perfect or risk alerting the guards in the other towers.

Just below the entry to the tower platform, Raina's foot slipped. She scrabbled, metal ringing under her feet.

"Dan?" a man called from above. Elsewhere around the walls, soft thumps carried on the breeze. A face appeared in the gap above Raina's head. "Dan?"

The man's eyes went wide. She flung herself up the ladder. He shouted in surprise and pulled away from the hole. A whistle trilled, long and loud, splitting the night in half.

Lasers flashed through the gap overhead. The whistle stopped, replaced by a scream. The man staggered, boots thumping. Fat sizzled down on Raina's face. Smoke gushed through the tower. A body banged into the wood. Shouts echoed through the keep. One by one, its windows lit with lanterns.

"The gate!" Raina yelled.

She slid down the ladder and landed on the platform. A winch held the drawbridge fast. She got out the laser and fumbled with its buttons. Blue light licked the planks at her feet, sending up a curl of smoke. She jolted, then lased straight through the rope. The drawbridge groaned, parted like the mouth of a dying beast, and crashed across the span. Her troops sprinted through the grass.

A hot beam sliced from one of the keep's windows, burning into the wall to Raina's left. She flung herself to the grass. The laser whisked overhead and winked off. The pale man and his aliens flanked the gates, returning fire, gridding the courtyard with strobing blue bolts and navy shadows. Raina got up and ran toward the front doors, hustling up the stone steps. Her people streamed across the courtyard, weapons in hand, taking up position at either side of the doors. They were locked. Raina turned the laser on the lock-plate and reduced it to red-hot slag.

Automatic fire rattled from the windows. Lasers lanced at the stone facing.

"Ready?" Raina said.

"Let's fuck 'em up," Mauser said.

She pulled open the left door, leaping off the steps into the grass to the side. Rifles opened fire, bullets and a couple of lasers pouring from the doorway. Mauser and Bryson took cover behind the side of the stairs, edging for position. A metal egg bonked onto the top step and rolled crookedly to a stop.

"Oh shit," Mauser said.

He dived up on the steps, oblivious to the shots blasting over him, grabbed the metal ball, and flung it back inside. Someone yanked Raina down. The ball exploded an instant later. Mauser rolled off the steps in a storm of shrapnel and hot air.

He landed in the grass, limbs flopping. Raina stared. Inside, men screamed and coughed, the noise strangled by the ringing in her ears. Her troops emerged from their crouches, dazed. The world stood still. Waiting to see who would take it.

Raina launched up the steps and ran inside.

Smoke screened the entry of a grand foyer. A couple bodies lay facedown, bleeding on the rugs. A huge, Y-shaped staircase dominated the back wall; a figure ran along its landing and Raina fired through the smoke, laser crackling on the particles hanging in the air. The others followed her in, breaking left and right of the scorched doorway, firing on anything that moved.

Raina ran through the smoke to the left leg of the steps. There were only three men at its top and as they aimed at Raina, Bryson hammered them with shots. Bullets banged past Raina's head, gouging the floor. Her troops barraged the enemy and all three guards crumpled to the landing.

The invaders swarmed up the staircase. It commanded the foyer as well as the doors along the walls of the second floor. Another door stood open in the back wall of the ground floor. At the center of the landing, a separate staircase climbed to the upper floors, enclosed and much smaller than the one they stood on.

A couple of her people were missing. She pointed to half the remainder and gestured at the landing and its view of the first two floors.

"Cover the area. The rest of you come with me to cover the stairs." She glanced up at the ceiling. "Don't shoot the women. My mother's here."

"Your mother?" Vince said. Several others gave her puzzled looks.

"Go!"

They fanned out, kneeling to take aim at doorways and stairs. Raina ran up the enclosed stairwell. Carl, Bryson, and five others followed. Lanterns hung at each landing, illuminating stone walls and thin carpet. Two of her troops posted up at the door to the third floor. She ran up two more bends of the switchback staircase. At the fourth floor landing, the door banged open and a man bowled right into Raina. She flew to the floor.

She knew the man. Holsen. He was one of the two men who had assaulted her mother while her dad held Raina tight on the dock. He leveled a pistol at her face.

Carl dived forward, gun forgotten, and slammed his knuckles into Holsen's forearm. The pistol flew from the man's hand and banged into the wall. He swung a left backhand at Carl's jaw, but Carl moved like the son of the wind, slapping Holsen's arm with his right hand, his left forearm, then his right hand again. The rain of blows arrested Holsen's movement and staggered him to his right, turning his back to Carl. Carl drove his left palm into the back of Holsen's head. The man staggered, head snapping forward. Carl pistoned his heel into the back of Holsen's knee. While the enemy was still falling, Carl slammed a right hook into his temple. Holsen hit the ground hard.

A gun went off behind Raina, rocking Holsen's body. He writhed and groaned. She planted a foot on each side of his ribs and drove the tanto straight into his back. Its diamond-hard point slipped through his ribs and thunked into the wood below his body. He jerked. His last breath whispered from his lungs.

Raina dislodged the blade and wiped it on Holsen's back. She left one woman to cover the door to the fourth floor, then continued with Carl and Bryson to the fifth and final story.

"Cover the hallway," she told Bryson. He nodded and knelt beside the door, bracing his rifle against his knee.

She jogged onto the rich rug of the uppermost floor. Gunfire exploded downstairs. It had been less than five minutes since the guard had blown his whistle and woken the others. The defenders had had no time to organize and Raina's people had swept in like a scythe. She should have done this long ago—but the others would never have followed. Until the Slaughter of the Dunemarket, they hadn't lost enough to be mad enough to follow a teen girl to war.

She strode down the hall to the elegant double doors set in the middle of the wall. At once, she knew how Karslaw must have felt at every phase of his campaign to take the mainland. The power of it tasted as sweet and thick as nectar. The lesson of people was that they weren't the same as animals. An animal acted because of its fear; people froze from it. If you came at them with all your fury, they would stand in shock while you cut them down. That was what Karslaw had done to the city. And that was what she would do to him.

Silently, she moved to the doors. The handles were locked. She cut through one with the laser. The inner knob clinked to the ground. Carl pressed himself to the other door. She threw hers open and Carl spun inside.

A gun roared. Carl grunted, blood splattering from his shoulder, and collapsed. Raina charged inside.

Her mother stood across the room holding both hands on a pistol. Karslaw emerged from a door to her left, empty-handed. A laser hung from a holster on a padded red chair by the window.

Her mom gaped. "Raina?"

Raina's hand shook on the laser. "Mom!"

"What's going on here? Are you involved in the attack?"

"I'm here to rescue you."

"Oh honey." Her mother's eyes grew bright. "We need to talk. But first, I need you to put down the gun."

Raina's hand trembled. The gun tumbled from her grasp and fell to the floor.

36

He turned around and ran for the medieval wing of the armory. Whatever their problem was upstairs, they weren't going to solve it with axes. They'd want guns. Lasers. He ran into the back room, hid behind two barrels of arrows, clicked off his flashlight, and produced his laser pistols.

Men jogged down the stairs, feet gritting on the cement.

"What the fuck?" a woman said from down the hall, voice carrying down the blank stone walls.

"What?" a man replied.

"What, what? Notice anything missing?"

"Wait, what? Is this the right room?"

"You think we put up all these shelves for fun?"

"Maybe he moved them," the man said, sounding unconvinced.

The woman laughed. "Without telling us? That's a hell of a way to run a fortress."

"Well, I don't see them."

The woman muttered something Walt couldn't catch. "Just go check the other rooms."

"Why me?"

"Because I'm going to go ask Karslaw. Want to switch jobs?"

"I'll check the other rooms."

One set of footsteps went back up the stairs. The other strolled down the hallway toward Walt, entered one of the other rooms, and was quiet for a few seconds. The man returned to the hall and tried another room. After a minute, the beam of a flashlight cut through the doorway of the medieval weaponry. It hit the wall behind Walt, tracked slowly past the barrels of arrows, and reached the other wall where axes hung from hooks.

"What the hell," the man said. Walt tensed his legs. The light withdrew. So did the footsteps. Walt eased back against the barrel.

A minute later, more footsteps hustled down the stairs.

"He says they're right here," the woman said.

"Well, he's wrong," said the man. "I checked."

"Every room?"

"No, I got tired and took a nap instead. Yes, every fucking room."

She sighed loudly. "This is twelve kinds of fucked up. We're under attack out there. We lit the roof-signal, but it'll be half an hour before Avalon sends reinforcements. Karslaw's barely awake. We need guns and we need them now."

"So we get the rifles," the man said, sounding insulted. "They'll still kill people, won't they?"

"Right. Yeah. Come on."

Guns clattered against each other as if they were being dropped in a sack. The pair ran upstairs. The crack of gunshots filtered down to the subbasement. Under attack? Walt was suddenly deeply confused. He had assumed Lorna had somehow gotten out of the duct tape and ran to alert Karslaw about Walt. Could be Ness had decided to punish the wicked after all, although you'd figure an armada of alien barbarians was the sort of thing the two people searching for the lasers might have mentioned.

Whatever the case, an attack was only bad news for Karslaw. For Walt, it was an opportunity.

He'd already dithered too long to move. The troops would need more than a couple sacks of rifles. He didn't have to wait more than a minute before the pair ran back down the steps. They were breathing hard and they weren't talking this time. Bad sign for the home team. Walt moved to the doorway. As soon as pair thundered back up the steps, he jogged into the hall and took the stairs up to the primary basement.

A man carrying a box exited one of the side rooms and blinked at Walt. Walt shot him in the chest. There was nothing he could do about the stink of burnt skin, but he dragged the body into the room the man had emerged from, shoving him rudely between burlap bags of grain.

Shooting him wasn't the smartest thing Walt had ever done. It cut back on his options quite a bit. That was the problem with running around with a gun in your hand. It just made it so easy to shoot people. Someone insults your mother? Blam, dead. A potentially hostile stranger stumbles out of a doorway? Shoot first and hide the body later. In a way, it was too bad the aliens hadn't blown up all the guns along with the jets and tanks and destroyers.

An explosion burst somewhere upstairs. Walt had enough experience with such things to recognize it wasn't an especially large one, but if he needed another sign that it was time to leave, that would be it. He headed for the stairs. Someone had lit the lantern on the landing and the stairwell looked empty. He made his way up to the ground floor. Candles and lamps blazed from the throne room, glinting from the windows and paintings framed on the walls. He looked both ways, then stepped into the lavish room.

"Walt?" A man goggled at him from the front door. Gunfire boomed behind it. Walt knew the man. He was the one he'd fought when the aliens attacked the beach. "I thought you left."

"Is that what Karslaw told you?" Walt said.

"He said you went to fight monsters up north. That you thought we'd moved beyond the need for your help, but we should be forever grateful."

"How good of him to say." He shot the man in the head. "Then you didn't see that coming at all."

He didn't feel too great about that, either—he probably could have waved goodbye and taken the tunnel to the surface without any problems—but he couldn't afford any witnesses. Anyway, the man might have thought to conscript him. That would have been awkward. He thought about sticking around to take advantage of the chaos and kill a few more assholes, but this wasn't his fight. Anyway, he was already working toward a much grander revenge.

One that would do a little good in the world, too. Or undue a wrong. One that, technically speaking, had been his fault in the first place. But by his math, it was all the same in the end.

More shots banged from upstairs. He ran to the door to the tunnel, entered, and closed the door behind him. He flipped on his flashlight. He ran down the tunnel all the way to the short stairs up to the trapdoor to the outside world.

Uphill from the tunnel exit, lasers flashed up to the keep's windows like a silent and monochrome Fourth of July. After all the traveling, scheming, fighting, and betrayal, it felt anticlimactic to walk away from a party like that, but in the end, that's exactly what he did.

With a bag of lasers on his back and another in his arms.

The ocean was nearest on the north side. He headed that way, weighed down by the weapons, heading perpendicular from the road skirting the castle and, when the buildings fell behind him in the hills, reckoning by the North Star. The breeze did nothing to wick the sweat away from his clothes and skin. It was a miserable, humid slog, and when he finally climbed down to the rocky shore, waves thundering against the land's edge, he resolved to carry a single bag next time, even if it meant extra trips. He deposited the bags behind a clump of shrubs, laid an X of stones above the tideline to mark the spot, and headed back.

In the hour since he'd last seen it, the castle had gone quiet. No lasers lashed from the darkness. Candles and lanterns showed in the windows, and he heard murmurs from behind the wooden walls, but there was no sign of sentries. He slung a pillowcase over his shoulder with a grunt and walked back to the north. After a bit of searching, he found the first deposit and left the new bag alongside the other two.

The moon dropped, taking its scant light with it. On his third trip to the coast, he wandered off course, coming to a stop above a crescent-shaped bay. He'd seen it exploring the island with Lorna. He was too far west.

But there was something white against the black water. A sail. On the beach, someone had even left him a rowboat. He ditched the bag under another bush and ran back to the castle for the final load. Torches burned from outside the palace gates. Walt didn't stick around to learn why. He stole up the last bag of lasers and half-walked, half-jogged north yet again, found the bags he'd stored a few hundred yards to the east, loaded them all into the rowboat, and paddled out to sea, keeping one eye on the dark sailboat anchored in the bay.

A quarter mile away from the island, he pulled in the oars, braced himself against the side of the dingy, and emptied the bags into the sea. Each laser splashed and sunk into the darkness. After a moment, the bubbles ceased. The waves slopped on as untroubled as ever.

Finished, he watched Catalina for more fireworks while he caught his breath. But the show was over. He still had no idea who had attacked or who came out of it the victor.

It didn't matter. He was done with the place. He turned his back and paddled slowly for the mainland, tossed on the swells, pulled off-course by the currents, but always moving, one stroke after another, until the miles became nothing at all.

37

Her mother smiled and lowered her pistol. "There. That's good. Let's talk."

Karslaw grinned, teeth bright in the forest of his beard. "I'm not surprised she led this little attack. She's like her mother. Smart. Bold. Willing to take the advantage."

Raina gripped her tanto. "I'm adopted."

Karslaw's grin froze. They stared, reading each other's eyes, the soul within. He lunged for the laser on the chair. Raina sprung forward, knife out. Her mother shouted. Karslaw leapt back.

"Control your daughter, woman!"

"Raina!"

Raina didn't know what black magic Karslaw was using to confuse her mother. But she knew that killing him would end it. She pulled out her second knife and jabbed at Karslaw. He jumped back again, light on his feet for such a big man. With a scowl, he grabbed a candlestick from the shelf beneath the window and brandished it.

"Raina!" To the side, her mother raised the pistol. "Please!"

"He killed my father!" Raina said. "Your husband!"

"Jim's a good man." Her eyes darted between Raina and Karslaw. "That was a mistake. He thought Will was planning to attack him."

"All I've ever wanted is peace." Karslaw lowered the candlestick a fraction of an inch. "Call off your warriors. Let us come to the table together and find a way for mine and yours to live as one people."

Raina's hand shook on the tanto. A tear squeezed from her eye. She hadn't felt so alone since the plague claimed her first family and she hid in the apartment until the world grew silent and the bodies smelled too bad to stand and she walked out into the end of all things.

"Then shoot me," Raina said to her mom. "You've already lost your husband. A daughter isn't so much more to bear."

Her mom cocked her head to the side. "Raina, I don't like what you're saying."

"You'll live, Mom. And you will be stronger for it."

She smiled, because it seemed fit to smile, and stabbed at Karslaw's guts.

He stepped back, clubbing at her blade with the candlestick. Metal clanged. His hairy forearm extended between them. One of the first things Carl had taught her was a concept known as "Defanging the Snake." You take away a snake's teeth, and it can no longer hurt you. A man's limbs were his fangs; if he tries to strike you, then you must take those fangs away.

She slashed the tanto at his forearm. He was every bit as quick as a snake and he yanked back his arm at the first flicker of movement. The tip of the knife caught his skin, parting it like a zipper. He made a face and fell back.

Her mom shook the gun. "Raina, you put down those knives!"

"Shut up."

"You are a disrespectful thing," Karslaw said, expression as dark as the night beyond the windows. "But like all things, you can be broken."

He jabbed the candlestick at her throat. She sidestepped, rolling her hands through a wheel of strikes. The knife in her right hand parried the candlestick off course. The tanto in her left flicked across the back of his hand. She struck again with her right, flaying the back of his forearm. She began a fourth attack, meaning to slash across the tendons and veins inside his elbow. His left fist hooked over her arms and slammed into her jaw.

She flew sideways, skidding into the rug. He reached for the laser. Her mother yelped and he started, glancing at her face. Raina still saw stars, but she had no time to wait for her head to clear. Like Carl taught her, she launched herself at his middle, the least-mobile part of any person's body. Karslaw bashed down her incoming knife, so she plunged it into his foot instead.

He threw back his head and roared. He staggered back, pulling the knife from her right hand. She swung the tanto into his shin. It clicked against bone. He swung the candlestick down at her head. She dodged to the side, catching it on the shoulder. The force made her sit down. Pain blared through her body. He cocked the stick for another blow.

A gun went off behind her. Karslaw glanced at his own middle, as if expecting to see blood, but the bullet had hit the wall behind him.

"Stop this!" her mother yelled.

Raina speared the tanto at Karslaw's groin. He cried out, turning his hips. The knife's point bit into his thigh. He reached for her arm. With her open hand, she chopped the blade of her hand into his wrist. Her tanto followed right behind her hand. It cleaved off three of his fingers at an angle. Blood spurted from the stumps of his knuckles. She slammed her rising palm into his elbow, knocking his arm straight up, and slashed backhand across his stomach.

He folded. A noose of intestines spilled from the cut. He said something—bargaining or begging—but Raina didn't listen. She'd once watched a ferret fight off a big yellow dog. All it had done was strike without end.

He was holding his gut, so she went for his throat. He shrugged his shoulder and the knife bit all the way to the shimmery line where the hard edge had been forged to the springy body. Karslaw kicked at her. She stumbled back, then rushed forward again, undaunted as a wave. He scooted away, warding her with his foot, so she hacked at his toes.

"Kate!" he bellowed. "For the love of God!"

"Stop it, Raina!" her mom said. "You're killing him!"

Raina smiled grimly. "And it's better than I imagined."

He had kicked the smaller knife from his foot. She snatched it up and slashed and stabbed in an unbroken chain of blows. At first he blocked with his feet and arms. She took all that was offered. When his limbs grew too useless to hold up, she cut his face instead. He yanked it to the side with a sob. The movement gave her his neck.

She took that, too.

He slumped. Blood leaked from dozens of cuts. She sat crosslegged to watch it soil the carpet. Karslaw met her eyes and Raina watched until his spirit became hers. Its power roiled over her, dazzling, a rush so potent she would have fainted if she hadn't been sitting down. He had killed so many things. Strode like a colossus across the land. It had been enough to bring him to the brink of empire. And now all of it was hers.

Her mother stood agape, face white, pistol dangling in her hand. Raina felt her father there, too. The three of them gazed upon the body, once more a family, united in the death of the man who had torn them apart.

She went to the doorway and called out. "Bryson! Carl needs help."

His head poked from the stairwell. She went back to sit beside the body. Gunshots happened downstairs. Raina knew she should care, that her friends were there and that she should help them get out, but she had made the world holy and she would not disturb its fragile perfection. She was one with all creatures and things, the center of a universe without ends or borders.

After a while, her mother sank to her knees and cried. That, too, was a piece of the order of things; Raina had cried for her first family, too. It had done her no good. She hadn't had the energy to grieve for long. Survival meant getting up. Drying your eyes. And retaking your part of the world.

* * *

She didn't stir from Karslaw's body until the men from Avalon came to the gates.

The battle had been a rout. With so little notice to organize, and the walls nullified before the fighting began, the Catalinans had offered few pockets of defense throughout the palace. There had been little sign of the lasers they'd used to dominate the Osseys in Long Beach and the rebels at the Dunemarket. After the battle for the staircase, her people had gotten into two brief firefights; following Karslaw's death, they went door to door through the palace. One of the enemy committed suicide. The rest surrendered. Bryson led a team into the basements and found a knot of women clustered in the darkness. All were taken to the main hall and held at gunpoint. One of the women informed Bryson she was a former veterinarian and he allowed her to see to the wounded of both sides, starting with Mauser and Carl, both of whom were bleeding badly.

Then came the call from the gates. Raina went to the window. Torches flapped in the distance, borne by an indistinct mob. She knelt beside Karslaw, set her tanto to his neck, took up her laser, and went downstairs, leaving her silent mother with what was left of the body. The front hall was a mess of blood, scorched carpets, bullet-splintered wood, and frightened islanders. Raina paid them no mind.

Someone bright had thought to pull up the drawbridge and tie its severed ropes back in place. Raina made a note to reward them. She climbed the stairs and stood directly over the gates. A few dozen armed men approached from outside, wary faces lit by torches and lanterns, and drew to a stop fifty yards from the castle walls.

A thin, dark-haired woman detached from the group. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

"I took your palace," Raina said. "And Karslaw's head."

"Bullshit. Who let you inside?"

Raina bent over, picked up Karslaw's severed head by the hair, and slung it over the parapet. It weighed seven or eight pounds and her throw barely cleared the moat. It thunked onto the road and rolled down the ruts.

The woman glanced up at her, then at the head. "What is that?"

"The end of an evil time."

The woman hesitated, then approached the dark round shape. She stopped flat a few feet a way, then sank to her knees, covering her mouth with her hand. "What have you done?"

"Freed my father from the man who murdered him." Raina gazed down from the heights. "I'm done here. Or would you rather die with your chieftain?"

The woman drew a pistol. "Fuck you!"

On the walls, Raina's troops trained their rifles and looted lasers on the woman. Her people were few in number, but they had cover and firepower. From the torch-lit mob, a man ran forward, arms raised above his head, and moved in front of the woman with the gun.

"Stop!"

"Then tell the woman to walk away."

The man turned and hissed something to the woman. Her arm quivered. She lowered the pistol. He looked back up at Raina. "What's going on in there? Did you hurt anyone else?"

"There are prisoners," she answered. "Many of the soldiers are dead."

"What do you want?"

Raina thought about opening fire. They could wipe out much of the islanders' remaining strength here and now. But that would mean the war would go on. The few they had left would become fewer. Karslaw was dead and she had felt his will die with him. If she pressed the fight, the others would come for her. They might have someone like her. The woman with the gun, perhaps.

She didn't want this island anyway. It was a bad place, tainted by the people who had made it what it was.

"To go back to my home," Raina said. "In exchange for peace and our prisoners, you will stop the occupation and end all taxes, tributes, and claims to the mainland. What's yours is yours and what's ours is ours."

"You're rabble," the woman said from below. "You're nothing. We'll wipe you out and burn your little street mall to the ground."

The man wrapped his arms around her. "Knock it off! This war was supposed to bring us peace. Make us safe. But it's been one loss after another, hasn't it? Hannigan's mission to Mexico. Our excursion into the ship. The shelling of Avalon. Now Karslaw's dead because of it, too. We had peace before this started. You think the answer is to fight more?"

"Do you have authority to make decisions?" Raina said.

The man flung up his hands. "You just wiped out the authority. I'm doing my best. Can you give me a minute?"

"Take your time."

He spoke with the woman, who allowed herself to be led back to the group waiting down the road. The man gathered the people and talked back and forth. They were too far away for Raina to hear much.

Bryson stepped up beside her. "What happens if they come back shooting?"

"Then they earn their deaths."

He nodded. "Carl's looking like he might make it. Mauser's pretty chewed up."

"He'll die?"

"Don't know. Ate a lot of shrapnel. If he's got a chance, we need to get him out of here."

She nodded. The Catalinans continued their talk. After a minute, the man walked back to the gates alone.

"Say we accept," he said. "What happens then?"

"You go back to your town," Raina said. "Then we leave. We leave the prisoners here. In an hour, you can come back."

"How do we know you'll keep your word?"

She pointed to the head resting in the dirt. "That was all I came for."

The man bit his lip, teeth flashing in the light of the lanterns above the front gate. "You got a treaty or something to sign?"

"If you want it on paper, come to the Dunemarket in three days. Alone. You won't be harmed."

He saluted with two fingers. "See you there."

He walked back to his people. The mob retreated across the valley, disappearing behind the ridge at the other end of the bowl of grass and crops. There was a stable around back and Raina's people put together a wagon and team and loaded up the dead and the wounded. The prisoners were tied and locked in the basement.

All this had happened without Raina's approval or input. It was time to stop watching and start acting. She climbed the staircase to Karslaw's room where her mother sat vigil over the body. She had blood on her face and her hands and her dress.

"It's time to go," Raina said.

Her mother didn't move. "He was a good man, Raina. He would have made a better world."

The argument was not worth having. Raina held out her hand and her mom took it and let herself be led outside.

They opened the drawbridge and swung the wagon off the road to the north. The pale man and his crew had left sometime after the fighting and Raina didn't know if she'd see them again. It was strange to think, but they must have lives of their own.

There was no sign of pursuit from the mob of Catalinans, but the rowboat was missing from shore. Raina glanced around, spooked, but the only noise was the toss of the waves. She swam to the boat and maneuvered it closer to shore while the others broke up the wagon and lashed together a platform to float the wounded and dead to the ship.

They were halfway to the mainland when the sun rose, its yolk breaking over the hills in a flood of warm pinks and yellows that soon turned blood red. If it was an omen, Raina didn't take it for a bad one. It was a celebration.

* * *

When she told him the news, Carl smiled his private smile and turned to examine the painting on his wall. "Won't leave much time for lessons."

"I'll make time."

"So should I call you President? Generalissimo Raina?"

She shrugged. "I don't have a title. They just want me to keep the market safe."

"Sounds like it will become more than that."

"You could help me."

"I don't think so." He went to the wood stove and removed the kettle and poured them both a mug of tea. "How's your mother?"

Raina sat and touched the wood table. She liked its solidity. "She moved into the old house. She still won't see me."

Carl frowned at the steam rising from his mug. "The old people knew about a condition known as Stockholm Syndrome. In this condition, captives come to consider their kidnappers friends. Some victims even helped their captors escape police or take new victims. It defies logic, but it's real."

"I think he put a spell on her," she said. "But it should have died with him. It doesn't make sense and I don't know what to do."

He reached across the table and tapped the hilt of her blade. "Sometimes the best place for knives is in their sheathes."

"I don't like your riddles."

He rolled his eyes. "I'm just playing my part. I think you should let her be. She spent too much time too close to Karslaw. She must have had to do a lot of things she couldn't stand. Like share the same air as the man who killed your father. The only way to survive a thing like that is to lie to yourself. Convince yourself it's not as bad as you think. If anything, you should be proud of her for having the strength to make it all these months."

Something lurched in her heart. "That's going too far."

Carl shrugged and sipped his tea. "In any event, now she has space again. With time and distance to think, she'll come to see the truth."

"What if she doesn't?"

"What if?"

Raina sat back. Eventually, she nodded. She didn't like Carl's riddles, but she did like his questions. Somehow he found a way to turn them into answers.

Hers was right there. She had done all she could. If that turned out not to be enough, she would survive. She always had.

* * *

The mass of bandages groaned. "I feel like the Incredible Hulk's shirt."

"What?" Raina said.

"Ripped to pieces and tossed aside." Mauser sighed, his visible eye fluttering. The other was behind a thick pad of bandages. Some of it had been left in the grass at the Catalinans' castle, shredded by the blast.

After the vet tech at the Dunemarket had stabilized him, Raina had traveled all the way to Orange County in search of a real doctor. It had taken four days, the promise of wealth and protection, and letting slip that she had been the one who lit the spark that burned the Osseys from the land, but the man had finally agreed to come with her.

Under Raina's supervision, he asked around the Dunemarket, pricking fingers and smearing the blood on white strips of paper, scowling vaguely at the results until he found the blood he liked and propositioned the owner for a hefty donation. He had done the surgery right there in her house south of the market. The vet tech attended and Raina watched, carrying out bloody sheets and gauze. Piece by piece, the man sliced the shrapnel from Mauser's flesh and, with a series of little clinks, dropped it in a fat-mouthed jar. After, Raina took the jar. If Mauser didn't want the pieces, she did. They would be good luck.

"You're hopeless," Mauser said. "I don't know why I even bother gifting you my words."

"Then you should give them to others."

"Raina! Are you breaking up with me?"

"They put me in charge," they said.

"Of what? The market?"

"Everything."

He laughed, then winced and groaned. "Are people that easily swayed by the eagerness to be violent? Well, what's first on your agenda, Genghis?"

"Choosing my advisor," she said. "There's lots of stuff I don't understand. Sometimes when I talk to people I make them angry. You're good at confusing people until they calm down."

"Are you asking me to your cabinet?"

"Will you say yes?"

He smiled, good eye crinkling inside the nest of bandages. "I would be honored."

But it would be a while until he could even walk. She had things to get done. If she stood still, the world would pass her by.

Inspired by the signal lights on Catalina, she established a watch in the lighthouse on the southern tip of the peninsula, placing a green lantern in its turret. If the lighthouse keeper saw any boats approach from the island, he was to light the lantern at once.

Meanwhile, Estelle lived a couple miles inland on a hill high enough to see the lighthouse. Raina gave her a lantern of her own, then found a merchant willing to relocate to the wooded ridge a few miles from Estelle. His new home was close enough to Raina's that she could see it and its signal from her front porch.

She sent a small colony to the bridges of Long Beach that the Osseys had used to ambush travelers. She armed her people with two of the lasers they'd looted from the castle and instructed them to set up a little bazaar of their own. They would send the good strangers on to the market and turn the bad strangers back. It wasn't much, but with so few of them left, even a buffer as small as that felt like a big step toward their future.

Martin's mother had died in the assault on the castle. Raina didn't like digging Martin's body from the mass grave in the Dunemarket—the corpses were so greasy and fat she could only tell which was his by his Godzilla t-shirt—but she had even less love for the idea of the son being forever separate from the mother. She donned gloves and put his body in a red wagon and bore it to the coast. At the house where he and his mother had lived for all the time Raina knew them, she dug a deep, wide grave and laid them both to rest.

After, she set down the shovel and knelt on the damp, brown dirt. Sweat dripped from her face onto the grave.

"I'm sorry," she said. "You were a better friend than I ever let you know."

Wind gusted from the shore. She turned to face it. If there were spirits in it, she couldn't tell them apart. A whip-tailed lizard skittered from the grass, saw her, and went on its way. She crouched and touched the hot sand. She supposed it was hers. Everything from the bridges of Long Beach to the bluffs bordering the path of the Pacific Coast Highway. Once upon a time, other men had ruled it, men with cars and planes and glowing computers. Men so great they sent ships to other planets. But then a plague had come and those men had died. She might have, too, but she had chosen to survive instead. Every day she faced that choice again, and every day she said yes.

She drew her knife and cut her palm and squeezed out the blood. The first drops she put on Martin's grave so some of her would always be with him. The next she shook out on the sand and surf so the ghosts of the past would know this land was hers.

EPILOGUE

He decided not to move to the green hills north of the bay after all. It was just too close. Anyway, he'd spent plenty of time in Los Angeles. It would be a shame to leave so much of the world unseen.

He meant to go further. As he headed north, he took his time to pick his way through the city for all the gear a lone person needs to enter strange lands, then followed the highway up the California coast.

He had no special regrets about the last few months. Other than the endeavor as a whole. And the possibility, however slim, that Lorna really was pregnant. He was fairly confident that was a lie meant to keep him around until Karslaw got his meaty hands on the lasers, but he had no way of knowing for sure. In the end, there was nothing to be done about it. Short of kidnapping the hypothetical little bundle of joy. Anyway, Lorna was safe on her island. She would probably make a better parent than he would. She was certainly loyal to her family.

Depending on how you looked at it, the open road was either very exciting or incredibly dull. But dull was all right. He figured he could handle several years of dull before his next attempt to die of misadventure.

* * *

The Catalinans stayed on their island. Her mom kept to the house on the shore. Raina piked Karslaw's head on the antenna on her roof. Mauser caught an infection, fought it off, and got good enough to walk around. He was missing his left eye and he had a permanent limp and he claimed the fragments the surgeon couldn't slice out of his body picked up radio signals on clear nights, but Raina was pretty sure he was joking.

Jill's house stood empty in the side of the hill. Some of the merchants suggested Raina take it, but she didn't like that it was underground. That had been Jill's problem in the first place. When you lived underground, you thought you were safely out of sight, but that was really just a way to ignore what was happening outside. The man who'd built the bunker had died, too.

Instead, she flattened the ground on the hill directly above the Dunemarket, dragged up a set of chairs, rigged up a tarp, and sat where she could see the business in the street below. She discovered she had a lot of correspondence to answer from families and small groups scattered around the city. Requests for passage and trade and alliance. Many of the merchants came to her, too, wishing to discuss the membership rates, or what projects they should pursue next. One of them had just left her on the afternoon Mauser limped up the hill to see her.

He eased himself into the chair beside her. "How goes your reign?"

"Boring," Raina said. "There's nothing to do."

"You mean you ran out of wars to fight? The horror."

"All I do is write letters and listen to people tell me what I should do."

Mauser chuckled. He shifted in his chair until he found a position acceptable to the metal embedded in his body. "Sounds like you need to relax for a while."

"Like how?"

"Specifically? Or are you unfamiliar with the very concept of taking a day off from smiting your foes?"

"What would we do? Go for a swim?"

"We could. Although I'd probably need water wings." He frowned and drummed his fingers on his thigh. He stood. "I'll get back to you on that."

He hobbled back the way he'd come. Raina watched him pick his way between the palms, then returned to her letter. She knew she was misspelling things. She should ask someone to teach her so she wouldn't embarrass the whole Dunemarket, but she didn't want to. People could understand her words well enough.

Mauser reached the road and limped over to Vince's stall of toys. They spoke for a while, much too far away for Raina to hear. She lowered her eyes to her letter.

She didn't see Mauser for several days. The next time he returned, it was in the seat of a two-horse covered wagon. He stopped in the middle of the market and cupped his hands to his mouth.

"Hey Raina!" His voice echoed through the hills. She lifted her hand to wave. He beckoned broadly. "Get down here!"

"Busy," she called back.

"Too busy to go to Disneyland?"

She sighed and set down her pen and walked down to the street. The others were watching her, grinning. She raised her eyebrows at Mauser. "I have too much stuff to do."

"All taken care of." He swept his hand to the side, indicating a smiling Vince. "Vince will look over the administration. Bryson's agreed to assume the role of chief of security, which he should probably be doing anyway."

"What if something happens while I'm gone?"

Carl poked his head from the flaps of the wagon. "Then you'll deal with it when you get back. Now get in here."

"Go on, Raina," Vince said. "Have a good time."

She could feel the invisible pressure of the crowd willing her into the wagon. She did it anyway. She had no interest in seeing statues of a giant mouse, but the trip might be all right.

The wagon rattled along the coastline, detouring wherever wrecked cars snarled the road. Most of what she saw looked just the same as San Pedro and the peninsula: bungalows, strip malls, fancy homes on hills, sun-drenched parking lots. Two days later, the wagon rolled into a vast and largely empty lot. Mauser clopped the wagon up to the grimy turnstiles, hopped down, and offered her his hand.

"Milady," he said. "Welcome to your Magic Kingdom."

Raina rolled her eyes. She ignored his hand and hopped down on her own. Gum spots and rain-battered paper clung to the pavement. Dirt coated the closed-up shops. Most of the windows had been bashed in. Brightly painted rides climbed the sky. Sooner or later, they would rust and fall.

Mauser took her to a ferris wheel, opened its gate, then held open the door of one of the cars. "All aboard."

She snorted. "What are you doing to do, crank it by hand?"

"Shut up and get in."

She shook her head and climbed up. The car rocked front to back under her weight. Mauser lowered a bar across her waist, hopped down from the platform, and hunkered beside a large metal device at the ride's base. He flipped a switch and the generator roared to life, blatting through the silent air.

"Do you have any idea what you're doing?" Raina said.

"It's perfectly safe," he said. "Isn't it, Carl?"

Carl raised an eyebrow in mock affront. "We wouldn't risk dear leader's life in a machine we hadn't tested for ourselves."

Something fluttered in Raina's chest. She couldn't remember if she had been on a ferris wheel before. Mauser fooled with the controls and the car jolted forward, swinging back and forth as the wheel turned. The ground fell away beneath her. Raina whooped. She climbed higher and higher, soaring above the gift shops and all the rides except the looping rollercoasters. At her peak, she lifted the bar, grabbed hold of the side of the car, and stood. She could see for miles. Countless homes and stores and parks spread out before her.

Someday, it would all be hers.

* * *

He would give coastal central California that much: it was fucking gorgeous. Waves battered themselves silly on the rocks. Foam exploded with each crash of surf, lingering on the soft, luscious air. Trees grew wild from the craggy hills. They were the perfect shade of green. He wondered if the aliens had trees on their homeworld, and if so, whether they were green, too.

He took his time. Did plenty of fishing in the sapphire sea, casting right into the waves while he stood on slender little beaches pushed up against the big black cliffs. He wouldn't have argued if you'd claimed it was more beautiful than coastal Mexico. At the very least, it was close, and as an added bonus, it had several trillion less mosquitoes, ants, and jaguars.

Just outside Carmel, a stream ran down from the cliffs to the ocean. He stopped there for the day—it would be awfully handy to have fresh water so close while he caught and dried all the fish he could carry—but he had the feeling he wouldn't be going anywhere for a while.

He built a little shack on the beach. Nothing crazy. A couple of walls with a slanted roof to keep off the rain. Dug a latrine and a fire pit and set up smoke racks. He had no idea what day it was, and the pleasant weather gave him little hint, but he figured it was fall. One day he wandered into town, rooted around until he found a Tupperware of flour and a bag of bug-free sugar, then strolled back to the beach and baked himself the world's worst birthday cake. It was his 31st.

A few months later, with the winds going cold enough that he was thinking about moving to one of the houses on the cliffs, he woke to find a rifle pointed at his face. It was owned by a woman in her late twenties or early thirties.

"Come here often?" he said.

Her bent elbow stuck straight out from the gun, finger on the trigger. "Do you have any food?"

"Don't you know how to fish?"

She stuck out her left hand and beckoned her fingers. "Hand it over. No sudden moves."

"I'm handing." He turned slowly and reached for the cooler of dried fish he'd embedded in the sand by his wall. On his cake run, he'd found some wax paper which he'd been using to wrap the fish. He raised his brows at her and extended one of the bundles. "There's more. Take as much as you want."

She snatched it away, sniffed it, took a small bite, then devoured the rest, keeping her gaze on him all the while. When she finished, the look in her eyes was slightly less crazed.

"You're awful calm for a man at the wrong end of a gun," she said.

"Experience, that's all."

"Can I have another?"

"No problem." He dug into the cooler and handed her another piece. "That one came from a flounder, believe it or not. Caught it right here on the shore. Storm must have pushed it in."

She ate that, too, then sat on the sand and rested her rifle across her knees. "Sorry about this. A person gets pretty nuts when they're hungry enough."

"Not just for food," he said. Her rifle twitched. He held up his hands. "It's okay. I'm perfectly harmless for the time being."

"Well, if it's all the same, I'll keep my gun right here."

"My name's Walt." He smiled, squinting against the sun on the too-perfect sea. "What's yours?"

She smiled back, but it was a cautious thing. He doubted she'd stay. It was all right. He was in no hurry. Things moved to their own rhythm. If you could find it, move to it, you'd end up okay. All it took was a little time.

* * *

Winter came. The days were cool and the nights were cold. She opened the door one morning to go to the market and found a letter tucked under her front mat. It was as short as letters could be: "Please come."

The writing was her mother's. She ran all the way south to the coast.

FROM THE AUTHOR

Hello everyone! If you're enjoying yourself, the Breakers series isn't over. Next up is REAPERS (UK readers: here). Additional books include CUT OFF (alt: UK) and CAPTIVES (alt: UK). There will be two last books in the series, with the story concluding in early 2015.

If you'd like to hear when I've got a new book out, the best way is to sign up for my mailing list (http://eepurl.com/oTR6j). The only emails I send are for new releases. No spam, and the list will never be shared. Promise. Or may Raina track me down and cut me up.

MORE BY ME

My other books, including space opera, epic fantasy, and the postapocalyptic Breakers series, can be found here.

WANT TO REACH ME?

I've got a Facebook page now! Please visit at facebook.com/edwardwrobertson.

If you'd like to drop me a line, just email edwrobertson@gmail.com

Table of Contents

I: PANHANDLER

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

II: CONTACT

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

III: LIFTOFF

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

EPILOGUE

I: PANHANDLER, REDUX

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

II: LANDFALL

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

III: PREDATORS

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

EPILOGUE

I: FERAL

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

II: SCOUR

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

III: USURPERS

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

EPILOGUE