H2O (13 page)

On one trip,
where the body had already been buried, she asked the victim’s family if she
could exhume the body and take a tissue sample. They refused. And who could
blame them? She was a stranger who’d snuck into town and for all they knew she
was a marauder looking to spread the Virus. But the second time she rolled into
a town and a family refused to let her exhume the body, she decided to do it
anyway. It seemed wrong and macabre, but she was tired of failure. So she dug
up the victim’s grave, opened his makeshift coffin, and got a tissue sample.
But when she got back to Klamath, she found that the sample had dissolved into
the preserving solution.

So she tried
again with another victim. And this time, she took a bunch of samples from the
exhumed body, and some of those samples didn’t dissolve. She tested them,
focusing on a few biochemical processes based on what she’d learned about healthy
tissue. She didn’t have much to go on, but this was a start. She didn’t expect
a miracle, but she’d hoped to find at least a sign that the Virus had invaded
healthy tissue.

She didn’t.
She worked on the samples for months and found nothing. She ended up more
confused than ever.

Up above us, the daylight dimmed
and the number of trucks dwindled down. On the cavern floor, the checkerboard
of light softened. Night was falling and the temperature was dropping.

Just before
sunset, the last of the trucks roared off and the arms began to retract into
the cavern. They stopped just below the surface of the mud flats, then panels
slid closed over the openings. These panels seemed to grow out of the ceiling
itself and they left no seams when they locked into place, as if the ceiling
had never had any openings at all.

The cavern was
sealed tight, in silence and darkness, and we began our wait for the trucks
from the east.

We talked in the dark and Lily
told me the truth about something else. She said she didn’t really think that
the reason she was allowed to roam almost hassle-free throughout the Territory
was her mom’s influence as a Councilwoman. She was sure it was because someone
with real power approved. Someone who knew she was trying to create a vaccine.
Victor Crow.

I believed
that. I knew the Fibs always enforced the law unless it somehow benefited them.
And what could benefit them more than a vaccine that would make them immune to
the Virus. Crow and the Fibs would have even more control over the Territory
than they did now.

After another couple of hours, we
settled in for the night. We emptied Lily’s backpack and used it as a pillow.

But I didn’t
feel tired. I was fueled by the adrenaline of anticipation. I stared into the
dark and tried not to dwell on the creepy feeling I had, that I was stuck in a
vast crypt, buried in blackness, sealed underground, far from home, forever
trapped in the middle of a vast dead land. I felt like I had no past, present,
or future. I tried to push these morbid thoughts away, but I couldn’t.

After about another thirty
minutes or so, I heard a hum. “Sounds like the place is opening up again,” I
said, and stood up, glad for the change of pace.

I looked to
the ceiling, and the hum got louder but the openings in the ceiling stayed
closed. I realized that the floor had started to vibrate.

“Let’s move,”
Lily said.

She was
thinking what I was thinking. A panel right under us was about to open up and
we’d tumble down into the huge storage tank below.

The hum grew
louder before we’d even gone ten yards. It sounded like a large piece of
machinery was gearing up to do some heavy lifting. Then, past the array of
arms, a section of the ceiling started to slide open and I could see that this
wasn’t going to be a small opening like the others had been. This was a large
section of the ceiling. I watched it open until it was roughly thirty by fifty
yards. Through it, the night sky was visible, inky black and sparkling with
millions of stars.

“I don’t see
any trucks up there,” Lily said.

The humming
had stopped and we were once again engulfed in silence. We moved forward until
we were under the opening. We stared up at the dizzying number of stars above
us, captivated by the canopy of yellow diamonds.

Then I saw a shooting
star, its tail brighter than any I’d ever seen before. And it didn’t fade. It
grew brighter, turning into an orange fire, then a burning royal blue flame.

And then it
was right there above us.

A golden
spacecraft.

Massive.

Lily and I
instinctually ducked away from the opening.

I was stunned
and my mind was grasping for explanations. The golden ship hovered over the
opening. It was much larger than the opening itself so I couldn’t tell how big
it was.

Lily didn’t
say anything. I glanced at her face and saw the same feelings that were
coursing through me.

Awe and
terror.

The spaceship
was silent. The engines that had propelled the golden craft down from the sky
were as quiet as the Black Rock desert.

Seven
cylinders descended from the ship’s sleek belly. They grew directly from the
ship, like metal limbs. Each cylinder was twenty feet in diameter and the color
of fiery bronze.

Lily and I
watched, transfixed.

The cylinders
descended through the opening and into the cavern. I expected the floor to open
up, but the cylinders touched down on the floor, and then I heard a tremendous
rush. The sound of millions of gallons of water getting sucked up through the
cylinders and into the ship. The floor
must’ve
opened up, but the whole
process was seamless.

Lily and I
looked at each other, speechless. We listened to the water. It was over in four
minutes.

The cylinders
retracted into the ship and, in a fraction of a second, the ship bolted up into
the dark night sky. I watched the orange glow turn blue, then disappear into
the canopy of stars.

The humming
started up again, and the panel in the ceiling slid shut. We were in the dark
again. But not about where the water was going.

We didn’t even try to come up
with an alternative explanation about what we’d just witnessed. I told Lily
that Crater must’ve known, too. He’d said, “That’s not a star.” He knew that
some shooting stars were spaceships.
Space tankers
. He knew that aliens
were stealing our water.
Earth’s water
. And if Crater was a marauder,
that meant that other marauders also knew.

We then
considered the possibility that others in the Territory might know, too.

No one had
ever spoken about it in Clearview. Not even a rumor. And if Benny had heard
even just a scrap of such a rumor on the Line, he would’ve said something. Lily
said she’d never heard anyone in Klamath say anything and she’d never
encountered anyone on her travels who’d said anything.

But I did make
one connection. From long ago. Something my father had said about water.
“That’s what you see when you look down from the stars,” he’d said. Did he know
that others
were
looking down from the stars?

We had to tell others. But we
couldn’t tell just anyone. We had to tell someone in authority. Someone who
could do something about getting word out. I’d never be able to convince the
Clearview Town Council. Because of my water theory, they already thought I was
crazy and this revelation about what was happening to that extra water would
definitely convince them that I’d gone off the deep end.

Lily had a
better chance with the Klamath Town Council. Especially with her mother, the
longest serving member of the Council. Lily had a strained relationship with
her mom, but her mom knew that Lily was grounded in reality. She wouldn’t make
up something like this.

And
if
we couldn’t convince anyone, we’d come back here and shoot video or take
photos, though that’d be tough. We’d have to find a working camera and they
were the rarest of Remnants. There weren’t any in Clearview, and Lily knew of
only one in Klamath, owned by the lone police officer. He kept it hidden and
she wasn’t sure it even worked. Of course, now we understood why cameras were
rare. It wasn’t just a coincidence. It was tied in with the water.
Everything
was tied in with the water. All the missing pieces of the puzzle.

We laid out our immediate plan.
Tomorrow evening, as the number of trucks dwindled, we’d climb up an arm and
hide under a departing truck, then ride it back to Yachats. From there, we’d
make our way south to Klamath.

I didn’t say
it to Lily, but I’d go anywhere with her. Now that I knew that everything about
the Territory was a lie, I’d start my life again. And if I could, I’d start it
with her.

We tried to get some sleep, but
ended up cycling through the dozens of questions running through our heads. The
first set was about the water mining operation itself. Why were the aliens
keeping it a secret? Wasn’t their technology so superior to ours that they
could just take the water? Why set up the Territory as a front? That night, we
spun some complicated answers to these questions and only later would we learn
that the answers were simple and logical and based on straightforward
economics.

We also had
questions about the Fibs and the truckers and what they knew about the whole
operation. A secret like this would’ve had to seep out into the world, even if
it were disguised as a rumor. Somehow the aliens had kept their operation
secret from everyone.
But how?

We came up
with a few answers and then went on to other questions and other theories until
the openings above us slid open and the arms rose into the blinding sunlight.
Truckers maneuvered the arms, coupled them to their tanks, and began unloading
the water.

We waited all
day. Wave after wave of trucks arrived, unloaded water, and left. Then the
daylight dimmed and the last wave of trucks began to leave. Lily and I went
from opening to opening until we found the right truck. A truck with rigging
and enough supplies to camouflage us. We waited until the trucker stepped away
from the truck, then climbed up the arm, and settled into the rigging under the
third tank.

The truck drove across the dry
lakebed, kicking up plumes of dust, but this time we were prepared. We had
fashioned filters from the supplies in Lily’s backpack. The truck made it to
the road and headed west, back toward the Territory. We had no idea whether it
would stop at the diner but, if it did, we’d already decided that we’d keep our
promise and take Sarah back with us.

But the truck
rolled past the diner and into the night. I felt bad about leaving Sarah
behind, but I was glad that she had her father there. I wondered if she’d ever
venture out on her own and leave him behind. And then I wondered what she’d do
when (if) word of our discovery spread. Would she still want to leave?

On the trip
east, Lily had been serene, her eyes closed, and her fierceness in check. But
on the trip west, she was alert, eyes open, on the lookout for any sign of
trouble. That was because we’d come up with an answer to one our questions from
last night. How did the aliens keep their secret? They murdered anyone who
found out.

It was night when the trucker
pulled into the storage facility in Yachats. He parked the truck near the small
building, then climbed out and headed inside. A few seconds later, we scrambled
out from the rigging, ready to disappear into the woods behind us, but we never
had a chance.

The Fibs came at us from both the
front and back of the truck. There was no way of escape. Their weapons were
drawn and they quickly surrounded us, then herded us over to a brown SUV. They
shoved us into the back seat, then two of them climbed into the front. The four
other Fibs loaded into a second SUV.

The SUVs headed out of the
storage facility and up into the hills, away from Yachats. Lily and I didn’t
say a word and neither did the Fibs. I looked over at Lily and she was staring
out the window, not betraying her thoughts. I wondered if we were being held
because of Black Rock or desertion or the destruction we’d left in our wake two
days ago.

The SUVs
pulled into a familiar parking lot. The lodge. The Fibs led us inside and
funneled us through a neglected lobby, then down a gloomy hallway. We entered a
den in the back. It was dominated by an oversized stone fireplace and furnished
with threadbare couches and lumpy easy chairs. One of the Fibs told us to sit
down, then he and three of the others exited. Two Fibs were left guarding the
door, their weapons at the ready.

I weighed
whether to talk to Lily in front of the guards. I wanted us to be on the same
page before we were interrogated. But I didn’t have to make a decision because
Victor Crow entered the room. He looked exactly like he had in Rick’s basement,
as if he hadn’t aged a day. And his plain brown uniform still somehow looked
more regal than any other Fib uniform. He strode over to us, tall and proud,
and once again I noticed the only symbol of his power and rank. That silver
belt buckle, a luminous mark of authority.

“Did I interrupt
an important journey?” he said, standing over us, radiating that same menace
from our first encounter.

We didn’t
answer him.

“You want me
to talk first?” he said, a hint of a grin appearing on his face, “Okay. Seems
fair.”

Crow eyed me.
“Two days ago, you completed repairs at a pumping station in the Swan
Peninsula. Then, without a proper visa, you continued south. To Yachats, where
you ran wild through the water storage facility, damaging a tank, and then
disappeared into the wilderness. Why?”