Captives (34 page)

"As far as being somebody's thing goes," Walt said afterward, toweling off, "this really isn't so bad."

Harry smiled to himself. "Who says it's supposed to be?"

"Man, hammers work harder than we do."

"It's not about the work. I told you, it's about quarantining us from the others. The work is just bonus."

"What are we going to do to the others that's so bad? Inspire them to demand to sleep in Saturdays?"

"Something like that," Harry said. "You're missing the scheme. This place is set up to be aspirational. The people down there, they aren't even
allowed
to swear fealty to Anson. That's only for the special few. The Sworn. And here's what a joke that is—what do the Sworn get? The privilege of being able to die in military service. To bear a gun like that puts them above everyone else out there in the wild. Or, if they're not cut out for the military, to pretend they can advise. They don't have to do much else. Not when the people in the zones are busting their asses to be sent up here."

"Why separate the zones? To keep them in competition with each other?"

"Reeds doesn't consult with me, but my guess is it's to prevent them from organizing." Harry spat in the lake, the sputum bobbing to the surface in a cohesive white blob. "Whatever the reason, you can be sure it's a crock of shit. That's all this place is. Empty promises and worshiping a hollow statue."

"Jesus, you've got a bad attitude," Walt laughed. "Surprised they haven't shipped you off to Zone Zero."

Harry's head snapped around. "Have they said something? What have you heard?"

"Nothing. I'm just saying—"

"Quit talking when you don't understand." He rubbed the side of his head with his towel. "That's not how it works. Zone Zero isn't where they send us when we're bad. That's where they send those of us who might be worth a damn."

"That's what
we're
supposed to aspire to? The place where you
do
have to work?"

"Your place is decided in the entrance interviews. I've been here eighteen months, and I've never seen anyone leave in anything besides a coffin."

Walt turned his shirt right-side out and tugged it on. "So what do we have?"

"The knowledge it can always get worse."

"That seems to be the ongoing lesson of life." Now that he was clean, his shirt felt unbearably dirty. "Why'd you get sent here, anyway?"

The corner of Harry's mouth twitched. "Spent too many nights with a girl who wasn't in my zone. When Reeds brought me in to prod me about it, I called her a pervert."

"Sounds like that would do it. Do you know if she's still down there? The girl?"

"Could be. Sure." He threw his towel aside and snagged his shirt. "But they'll never give me the chance to find out."

Walt sat on the grass by the lake and watched the buildings on the other side. There was a virtual village over there. If Carrie was being used as a maid or a chimney sweep or something, he might not see her for weeks. Months. Worse, if she wasn't there, he might not be able to confirm
that
for… well, it was impossible to know how long. He was probably going to have to do something stupid, like figure out where Anson slept, then break in and torture the answers out of him.

As if the gods had been listening, the next day, he caught a break: he and Harry were assigned housecleaning duty at a block of houses on the north end of the lake.

The homes were roughhewn like his shack, but furnished and styled, pantries and closets stuffed with looted goods. As he swept, scrubbed, and washed, he kept his eyes open not just for Carrie, but for Anson. As they went to work on the third house, it occurred to him that this would be the perfect chance to steal a knife and see if that had any better luck against his leg cord.

As he descended the stairs, two children squealed from below. Walt waited for them to dash past the downstairs landing, then he padded into the kitchen, which was built in high Post-A style: wood stove, a space for a few logs, a walk-in pantry the size of your less-favorite kid's bedroom. The kitchen had a sink with a faucet; cold water only, most likely. A knife block beside it. He moved across the wood floor.

Small feet stampeded in behind him. He turned to see a blond boy googling at him with oversized blue eyes.

"Who are you?" the boy said.

"Housekeeping," Walt said. He smiled, willing the boy to vamoose.

A girl ran into the room, a couple years older, also blond. She glared at Walt, walked up to the boy, and took his hand. "Ethan, come on."

"Wait," Walt said. "Ethan?
Serah?
"

The girl's eyes went wide. She grabbed Ethan's collar and hauled him bodily from the kitchen.

Walt stood slowly, forgetting all about stealing a knife. Carrie wasn't here. Liss had said as much, that she was being kept in a different place than Serah and Ethan. He only knew of two locations for captives and it didn't sound as if there was any back and forth between the two.

Well, like Harry had said. If Walt stuck around, he had no one to blame but himself. And there wasn't much chance of getting out of his tethers, let alone bypassing the motion detectors those SOBs had installed along the wall.

He finished his work, cleaned himself up, ate dinner with the others, then headed to their room. As they settled into their bunks, he swore. "After all this, I can't believe I'm scrubbing floors."

Harry's voice floated up from the darkness. "Too good to get on your knees?"

"This just isn't how I saw it turning out." He pretended to give the matter a long moment of thought. "I mean, I'm Walt Lawson."

"Congratulations."

"Not to blow my own horn, but that mothership out there in the bay? I'm the one who brought it down."

Harry was quiet for several beats. "Bullshit."

"For real. Used a hot air balloon to get up. Explosives on the engines."

The other man fired questions at him, poking for holes in his story. Walt answered them, initially with pride and enthusiasm, then with increasing modesty and reserve.

"So why don't you tell them?" Harry said once the Q&A spooled down. "Try to get promoted to Chief Alien Killer or something?"

"Do you think they'd care? What can you do with that? If anything, Reeds would slice up my brain to feed to the others."

"Yeah," the other man said. "Could be. It's a world of ingrates."

Walt smiled into the blackness. Harry was trapped, too, hooked by the memory of a woman he hadn't seen in a year and a half. He'd do his part.

The next day, back in the fields, his confidence dwindled. The day after that, he was hauled back to the plain room with the desk and the chair. Reeds arrived and stood behind the desk.

"Do you think you're special?" she said.

"Don't we all?"

"Do you believe your current station is beneath you?"

"Let's not act like that's a real question.
No one
would think my 'current station' is where they belong."

"You'd be surprised what people will come to believe if you keep telling them it's true." She stared evenly through her round lenses. "Have you been to Los Angeles before?"

"Why?"

"What were the dates of your previous visits to Los Angeles?"

Walt glanced at the guard in the corner, as if for support. "What's this about? This is the first time I've had dealings with any of you people. If I'm being charged with something, it would be cool to know what."

She picked up her pad and flicked through the pages. "What is your full name?"

"I told you that when I got here. Dalton."

"Dalton what?"

He blinked. Three seconds dragged on. "Patrick. Dalton Patrick."

She made her notes, then turned and walked out. Two voices murmured from outside, one male, one female. They reached agreement; a moment of silence. The door opened, revealing Anson withdrawing his face from Reeds', his admiration mirrored in her eyes and smile, the first time Walt had seen her display emotion.

Anson entered, making no attempt to disguise his feelings for the woman. These faded as he considered Walt, his features shifting to some unclear expression that called to mind a hole in the ground of unknown depth.

"You're Dalton," the man said. "We met after my little speech. What did you want to talk to me about?"

"Your stance on the Thirteenth Amendment."

Anson laughed, undisturbed. "I bet when you floated the balloon idea—no pun intended—they must have thought you were pretty stupid."

"Balloon idea," Walt said.

"All works of creativity are criticized, aren't they? That's one of the signs you're on to something. Something big enough to finally make a difference."

Walt clenched his jaw. "Don't you compare the two. Mine was about freeing people. Yours is about locking them up. Seems to me that's one of the oldest, laziest ideas there is."

The man gazed at the chair. For a split second, Walt was certain he was about to flip it around and straddle it for a rap session. Anson smiled. "There isn't an argument here. If you were able to prevent a ten-mile asteroid from striking the Earth by shooting a child in the head, would you pull the trigger?"

"He'd be dead either way, wouldn't he?"

"So you're a pragmatist, too. If the stakes are high enough, you'll commit war crimes. Crimes of the soul. It's only a matter of when."

"Could be," Walt said. "But I think the when is pretty important."

"How about our chance to start over? What might be our
only
chance to start over?" He took a quarter from his pocket—a complete affectation; no one carried money anymore for the same reason they'd quit carrying car keys—and flipped it to himself. "We
have
to get it right. No cost is too high."

"If you were the last man on earth, and I was the last woman, you might convince me to grin and bear it." He gestured toward the windowless walls. "But there are other people out there. Other places. Whatever you're pioneering here, it's not the revolution you think it is."

"I can't blame you. You don't know the whole story and I'm not in position to tell it. If I were you, I'd be saying the exact same thing." The man smiled, eyes crinkling. "But I'm off point again. She's always on me for doing that. What can I do? I like to sit down with people, see what they're about."

"I'd imagine it's easy to be a man of the people when you get to make all their decisions for them."

"Hey, I'm not here to argue. Actually, I'm here to ask a favor. Tell me what it's like?"

The hunger in his eyes nearly made Walt fall back a step. "Want to be a little more specific?"

"Knowing that you saved the world."

"Oh, you know. I still put my pants on one leg at a time. Except when I've got a set of chains around my ankles. You think I could get a kilt or something?"

Anson's smile flickered around the edges. "I wonder if I should let them remember you."

He turned and left. Rather than being taken to the shack, Walt was returned to the cramped cell where he'd been imprisoned his first days inside the Heart. An hour later, they came back for him, binding his hands and blindfolding him. Rough hands guided him into the sunlight. After enduring a minute of his complaints, they gagged him, too.

He was installed into a box of some kind. Smelling horses, he surmised it was the mobile kind rather than the buriable variety, and was vindicated when the carriage rocked forward.

Gravity sloped, pressing him against the back of a padded seat. Someone coughed beside him. The carriage descended for a long time, then took to a smooth surface, following long, gentle bends in the course. A highway. It was hard to feel great about life when you were blinded and bound, but Walt did his best to stay calm.

The trip was interminable, the carriage warming as the sun climbed. At last, a cool breeze skirled through the windows, carrying the smell of salt. Waves tossed themselves ashore with a sigh. He should have guessed.

The carriage came to a halt, rocking on its unsteady springs. He was lifted from it and set on a paved surface, then guided forward by a hand on his shoulder.

"Watch your step."

He hit sand, stumbling. The hand righted him. After a few hundred feet of sand, his feet struck more pavement. The ground pitched down. He felt a shadow cross over his skin. Three steps later, his shoes scuffed against a rubbery surface. The air became brackish, thick, cool, and still. His ears popped. After fifteen minutes of unvarying travel, the way forward climbed. The ground leveled, grew harder. His guide made a series of turns Walt did his best to remember.

A door opened with a soft whoosh. The hand withdrew. The door closed. Another sighed open across the room. Something rubbery brushed Walt's head, withdrawing the blindfold. In the harsh white light, an alien stared down at him.

He did his best to look surprised.

III:
INSIDERS

22

She staggered toward the intersection, hand clutched to her side. Blood leaked between her fingers. Ahead, a park broke the desert of parking lots and six-story offices. A hammer rapped on wood, the report echoing across the tranquility. She thought that if she got within sight of its user, it would be enough.

At the intersection, a skeleton lay beneath the tires of a Prius. The car's driver door hung open like the mouth of a man who hasn't yet understood his wounds are fatal. Mia limped past it, peering into the trees. Two hundred feet ahead, men and women were cutting salvaged boards, trimming the broken ends uniform. An older man looked up. Mia lifted her hand and sank to her knees.

The man took two steps from the others, then pointed, mouth moving. His coworkers turned to look. A younger man moved from the group, but the others brought him back with broad gestures. They spoke animatedly. For a moment, Mia was afraid she was going to have to stand and shuffle closer—collapse at their feet, maybe—then the young man took off running deeper into the park.

The day was warm and the sun was too high to give her any shadows. She was sweating freely. More than she ought to be, she thought. She kept her hand clamped to the worst wound on her side. The spectators continued to converse, glancing back into the park. And then she heard a sound that was charming no matter the context: the rhythm of hoofbeats.