Captives (48 page)

Before heading into the mountains, they scared up a hand-drawn wagon the kids could ride in when they got too tired. They put the cities behind them and began the long, yellow trek up I-5. Ethan soon warmed to them, asking questions and helping them explore as if nothing had happened. Serah, though—she withdrew into herself like a poked mollusk. At least Walt never had to yell at her to be quiet.

After the mountains, the road passed along an endless stretch of dead orchards, the trees' bare brown branches uplifted in a silent curse to the dry, hot skies. Three days in, with their supplies running low, Carrie spied a green patch in the hills. They climbed up to the plateau and found a stream supporting a grove of apple trees. Walt and Carrie scouted it for inhabitants, then the four of them dispersed into the shade to gather the red and green fruit.

When they reconvened, Serah was missing. After calling for her for a minute, Walt jogged into the trees, ankle twinging with each step. He was afraid they'd missed something—that she'd been snatched up by crazed survivors who'd dug burrows to escape the sun—but he found her further up the stream, crouched beside it, poking at bugs with a stick.

"Hey," he said. "Time to go."

She didn't look up. "Why?"

"Because we've got a long ways to go and I don't like this road."

"But why go anywhere?"

The question was too good to answer, so he sat down beside her. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." Her face folded in on itself like a burning sheet of newspaper. She blurted, "Why did he do it?"

"Anson?" Walt said. "Why did he take you from your mom? Or why did he take her from you?"

"All of it! Why would someone hurt other people like that? What does he get from it?"

"Reincarnated as toilet paper, one would hope." He rested his elbows on his knees and his chin on his arms. "When you're afraid, it twists you up inside. Some people control their fear by taking control of other people. That's why you see all this violence, all this slave-taking horseshit. It's hard to escape it because they're always coming for you." He glanced over. "It's good that it doesn't make any sense to you, though. Know why? Because that means you're not like them."

Tears slid down her nose into the water. "But she's
gone
. What do we do now?"

"That's the question, isn't it?" A few feet from shore, a young trout surfaced with a bloop. He gave some thought to catching it, but lasers didn't work worth a damn in the water. Anyway, now wasn't the time. He bumped the girl on the shoulder. "You try to find a place like this, I think. Someplace quiet where it's not so hard to survive. And then you fight like hell to keep it." He stood, knees popping. "Until then, you keep walking."

Serah let out a shaky breath and stood. Without looking at him, she reached for his hand. He took it and led her from the grove and back into the light.

30

Engines droned across the dead city: the familiar bass of the trucks and the deeper yet whining call of the tank. Ensconced in the buildings lining PCH, the People of the Stars added their voices to the ruckus. It began wordless, a rising, unified cry. From the right side of the street, one man began to yell a single word. The anthem spread like a fire to the soldiers around him, who repeated the two syllables over and over. At first Mia thought they were literally saying "anthem," but she soon understood the truth: they were cheering for Anson.

She swept her gaze up the street past the vehicles, searching for him. Below and to the right, gunfire erupted from the windows of a liquor store. The tank stopped and swiveled its two-barreled turret. One of the barrels recoiled; a thunderclap drowned out all other noise. The front of the liquor store exploded in a storm of fire, glass, and dust.

The tank rolled forward. Raina's defenders opened up, concentrating fire on its hemispherical body. Atop the roof, Mia braced her rifle over the edge, sighting in on the man behind one of the truck-mounted machine guns. The tank boomed a second time, jarring Mia's aim. Her shot passed wide. The machine gunner opened up on the defenders firing from the cars parked along Western. With the spang of rending metal, high-caliber bullets shredded into the vehicles.

Mia breathed out and steadied her aim. The crosshairs bounced up and down between the gunner's chest and the plated shield protecting him from return fire. She waited for her sight to fall to its low point on the shield. Just as it began to swing back up, she fired.

The gun jerked back. Through the scope, she watched the man slump to the side of the .50 cal, blood spurting from his chest.

The second truck swung its gun and raked the roof with fire. Mia threw herself flat. Whirlwinds of stucco swirled across the rooftop.

"Get outside!" Henna yelled, sprinting toward the stairwell.

The others peeled away from their positions. Mia got up, specks of white stucco falling from the folds of her clothes, and followed. A second burst slammed into the side of the building. She hit the stairs, the footsteps of the others echoing madly. She reached the third-floor landing as the top of the building vaporized with an ear-smashing bang.

The explosion flung her into the wall. A cloud of dust slashed into the stairwell like a sandstorm, scouring her bare arm. She turned her head and covered her mouth with her shirt. Her whole body rang like a bell, but she appeared intact. Amazingly, so did the stairwell. She ran through the roiling dust, coughing, and into the street. An apron of smoking rubble lay around the building.

The others were already a block up the street, joining a stream of Raina's forces in retreat. Across PCH, the enemy called back and forth, infantry exiting the shops to support the three vehicles rumbling into the intersection.

As Mia watched, a figure sprinted from a Jack in the Box on the southwest corner. He carried a flaming bottle over his head like the Statue of Liberty. She knew him: it was Jack, the boy who'd scouted with Henna on the mission up the river. Rifles opened up, gouging divots from the asphalt around him. Unhurt, he beelined toward the tank. One of the truck guns let loose, the roar of its guns so loud it felt like it would shake Mia's bowels loose, but Jack was too close, the shots passing over his head.

As he neared the tank, it turned its turret. Jack leapt at it, grinning madly, extending his entire body like a wide receiver trying to stretch the ball past the pylon in the corner of the end zone. Just before he was able to deliver the Molotov inside the tank's muzzle, its second barrel went off. A torrent of flame gushed through the air. As it faded, a carbonized black mass tumbled from it and dashed across the street.

Mia turned and ran.

The street curved to the right, then straightened as it began its mile-long ascent to the heights. Scores of warriors fled ahead of her. A few blocks up, they began to congregate, some filtering inside buildings while others dragged the street full of trash cans, shopping carts, and everything else that wasn't bolted down. Downhill, a handful of defenders fired on the attackers, slowing their advance, but they fell silent within seconds.

Mia got behind a dust-caked car on the makeshift line of defense and swabbed the dust from her eyes, blowing thick, pasty snot from her nose.

"Thom!" Henna yelled from a few rows up the parking lot. "Hey,
Thom
!"

It took Mia a second to remember that was her. She left the truck and rejoined her group, who didn't appear to have suffered any losses in the reversal at the intersection.

Henna nodded at Mia's arms, which were coated in pale dust. "Looks like that tank scared you into a white person."

Mia swore, laughing, and tried to brush it off, succeeding in little more than smearing it around. While she was still working at it, the drone of the engines rose from down the hill.

The tank came first, as if daring them to knock it from the battle. It fired, collapsing the side of a Honda dealer in a spume of dust. Molotovs twirled through the air trailing fire, bursting on the sloped sides of the vehicle. Grenades soared from rooftops, bounced on the street, and rolled toward the tank's treads. Shrapnel and fire bloomed like poppies. The round sides of the tank grew scorched but showed no sign of any deeper damage.

It fired another shell, sending a pickup flying tailgate over hood. As the trucks rolled in, the alien vehicle spewed tongues of fire over the front ranks of cars, sending defenders scattering. Footmen jogged in behind it. One of the truck gunners fell to a sniper, but an infantryman replaced him in seconds.

A fusillade went off behind the enemy—MORDOR had swept in from behind the pet grooming facility downhill to fire into their backs. From behind her car-shaped barricade, Mia shot into the People of the Stars until her magazine went dry. The enemy scattered into buildings and side streets, bunkering down.

The trucks reversed, .50 cals turning on Mauser's dragoons. The cyclists fled downhill, pursued by the mounted Sworn. As the trucks swung about to reengage, circling across the boulevard, machine gun fire blatted from a gym on the corner. The truck's windshield opaqued, web-like cracks appearing around the bullet holes. The truck careered away, reeled into the side of the tank, and flipped, skidding on its side to the sound of screaming metal. As soon as it came to a stop, it burst into flame. Cheers erupted from the defenders.

Their joy was short-lived. They were beginning to lose people, to run short on ammo and explosives. They withdrew to the top of the hill, but fell back again after the briefest skirmish. Block by block, Raina's troops retreated and Anson's followed. The enemy didn't appear to be after any strategic goals—just the eradication of the opposition.

A white line of smoke marked the path of Raina's retreat. As they set up yet another temporary defense, this time in a residential neighborhood not far from the oil refinery they'd taken from the People of the Stars nearly two hours ago, Mia spotted Mauser straddling his bike surveying the proceedings. His face was smudged with ash and sweat, his expression as haggard as if he'd been fighting not for a few hours, but for years.

Mia jogged over to him. "What are we about to accomplish here? Lose a few more people, run another few blocks? How long until our backs are at the sea?"

He swept his hair from his forehead. "That tank, man. What a dirty trick."

"We don't have any tricks of our own?"

"We're not twiddling our thumbs here. All they want to do is chase us, right? So we've been delaying them. Using MORDOR to stop the Sworn from flanking us while we slow the armor with this stutter-step defense. Meanwhile, we're toiling away elsewhere."

She cocked her head. "Doing what?"

"Continue to not get killed and you might find out."

"Come on, Mauser. I'm a lieutenant now. Don't I get to know the score?"

"Your promotion is still pending," he muttered. "But what the hell. We're leading them to the bridge over on Anaheim. Once the tank's on it, we'll dump it."

"That's not much of a bridge."

"We don't have to dump it into the Earth's molten core. You know what this fool's mistake was?" He waved in the direction of the rumbling engines. "Teaming up with the aliens and not the most powerful ally of them all: gravity."

When the People of the Stars appeared, Raina's warriors offered a token defense, then fell back yet again. This time, however, it was to the other side of a dry canal spanned by a flat bridge. On the way to it, the alternate routes had been clogged with debris and cars, leaving it the only path that didn't require a detour.

Many of the warriors were already on site, dug into the shops down the road from the bridge. As the whine of the tank neared, Raina strode forth and stood in the middle of the road.

"Do you think that is the rumble of fate?" she said, katana slanting from her hand. "Then fate is about to be smashed. When it is cast down, we will destroy those who tried to bring it to us. I know this is so because this is our world and that is our moon—and these men make allies with monsters who belong to neither. For their betrayal, the land will expel them."

She walked away from the bridge toward her people. On the other side of the canal, the first infantrymen arrived, positioning themselves behind the corners of buildings. Raina's front lines offered sporadic fire, then broke down the street, as if their morale was on its last legs. The infantry beckoned. The truck turned the corner, accompanied by a few men on foot—and by the tank.

Rifles plinked away at them. Not nearly enough to scare them off, but enough to convince them their quarry lay ahead. The foot soldiers were the first to reach the bridge, ducking along its railings, guns in hand. The truck drove in behind them, the tank next, the remainder of the infantry and the Sworn lagging well to the rear. The truck passed the midpoint. One of the Dunemarket warriors burst from cover and ran down the street in search of better cover. The truck's gun raked him, tearing him in half.

The tank whined to the bridge's middle. Raina popped up, brandishing her sword above her head. "
Now!
"

A hellacious explosion tore from the center of the bridge. A cloud of concrete dust rushed forward. The explosion's shock wave struck the truck's machine gunner, slamming him against his weapon. He fell and didn't get up. The truck jounced, rocking side to side, then peeled east.

Across the bridge, the wind pulled away the blanket of smoke. A ten-foot gap had been blown in the middle of the bridge. The tank remained in place on an intact spread of pavement, motionless. The defenders fell silent. Watching. Waiting.

It raised one of its barrels and blasted a shell into the corner of a Bank of America. As dust filled the avenue, the drone of its engine moved east to rendezvous with the truck.

Across the street, Raina and Mauser met eyes and shook heads. He lowered his face to stare at the ground, wiped moisture from the corners of his eyes, then called for the retreat.

The defenders jogged south en masse. Once they were on their way, Mauser called the squad leaders to him. He looked as if he wanted nothing more than to sit down and stay there until the day was over.