H2O (15 page)

Jonah made a
wise decision not to send those men into battle.

On the night of the attack, the
sky was clear and the stars were crisp.

Jonah and the
marauders drove their cars to the edge of the flats and waited. They knew
exactly what time the tanker came down from the stars. So forty minutes before
the ship bolted down, the cars set out across the mud flats. It would take
thirty-five minutes to drive into position and five minutes to set up the
bombs. They’d be exposed during that time, but there was no way around that.
Jonah had timed it for minimum exposure.

Each car
carried four marauders and each car towed another car. These other cars had
their tops shorn off, their seats removed, and they carried massive bombs in
the open cavities where the seats once were. Under each bomb was a launching
device, and most of these launchers would target the belly of the ship, the
part from where the fiery bronze cylinders emerged. Jonah thought this was the
most vulnerable part of the ship. A few launchers had more power. They’d launch
the bombs above the space tanker, and the marauders hoped that these bombs
would rain down on top of the ship.

At T-minus forty minutes, the
marauders began their drive across the silent flats. Thirty-five minutes later,
they stopped at the edge of the spot where the mud flats opened up for the
space tanker. They unhitched the bomb-laden cars and drove the other cars back
a hundred yards. Then they returned to the bombs and readied the launchers.

The mud flats
opened up and the marauders looked to the sky and within minutes they saw the
shooting star that didn’t fade. They watched its bright yellow tail turn to
orange fire and then burning blue and, like an all-powerful God, the golden
craft was suddenly right there above them.

The marauders
launched their bombs and sprinted back toward their cars. The bombs exploded on
impact and the bottom of the ship was suddenly awash in flames. The orange fire
clung to the space tanker, then spread in blazing waves across its underside.
Seconds later, flames shot off of the top of the ship.

The ship was
drenched in fire, flames falling to the ground.

Jonah and his
men arrived at their cars and this was their moment of triumph.

Crater told us that he saw joy in
his colleagues’ eyes, but then suddenly everything turned. A blinding blue
light engulfed everyone. The blue was sharp and clean and it covered the flats
in every direction and, in less than two seconds, it vanished, like it’d never
been there.

Jonah and the
other marauders were gone. So were the cars.

Crater looked
up to the ship. The flames were gone. The ship’s sleek, golden body was perfect
and the seven fiery bronze cylinders descended from its belly and into the
opening.

The space
tanker loaded up on water.

We hiked in silence. There wasn’t
much else to say after hearing the story of Jonah Wolfe. It was the story of
the marauders’ founding and it was a powerful story.

Lily broke the
silence when she asked Crater why he thought he’d been spared that night. He
had two theories, neither of which could be proved. It was possible that there
was something about his physical make-up that had made him resistant to the
blue weapon. Or there was a glitch with the weapon and that glitch had saved
him. He’d never know why he was spared, but I could tell that there was
something that weighed on him more than the question of why. You could hear in
his voice that he felt terribly guilty for being the only survivor.

We arrived at a cabin and Crater
told us that this would be a temporary stop. Considering how deep we’d gone
into the wilderness, I kind of figured that. He said we’d spend the night and
in the morning I could decide if I wanted to help the marauders. I’d hoped he’d
ask Lily to join, too, since that would make my decision easier, but so far he
hadn’t even hinted at that.

We stepped
into the cabin, and the life I thought I’d never see again came rushing back.
Benny was sitting at a table, his leg jittering and I’d never been happier to
see it jitter.

“So you
finally did a little exploring,” he said, and headed over to me. We hugged,
then all of us sat down and he filled me in on how he’d ended up here.

On the same night that Crater had
approached me in the Swan Peninsula, Miloff had approached Benny in Clearview.

Benny had been
exploring Colfax Junction, Clearview’s abandoned train station. He’d pried open
a rusted locker and discovered an old Internet Protocol manual inside. He
couldn’t believe his luck and as he headed back out, through the station, he
started to flip through the manual, looking forward to reading it in its
entirety that night. Every once in while, he’d learn something new about the
Line from one of these old manuals.

He looked up
from the manual and that’s when he saw Miloff standing in front of the exit
doors.

Benny started
to run toward the back of the station and the abandoned tracks and Miloff
shouted out, “Read this,” then put a note down on a nearby bench and took off.

Benny,
curious, stopped running and headed over to the bench. He scooped up the note
and read it. By the time he finished reading it, he knew that whoever wrote
that note understood more about the Line than anyone else in the Territory. The
note explained how to decipher one of those mysterious data packets floating
through the Line. Now he was much more excited about this than the Internet
Protocol manual, and he didn’t want to wait until the next day to decipher one
of the data packets.

So he bicycled
to the Town Hall, fired up the Line, and waited for a packet to come across it.
The first few packets didn’t fit the bill. It had to be the right kind. After
two hours, he spotted one, went to work, and unlocked it. It revealed a code
that promised to access a part of the Line that he didn’t even know existed. He
didn’t believe that it
did
exist, but when he tried the code, it opened
up a secret part of the Line and there he found another message waiting for
him. It was an invitation to learn more about the Line. More than he could
imagine. But he’d have to travel south and he’d have to leave tonight. Miloff
would be waiting for him at the end of the Mory Aqueduct.

Benny didn’t
decide to go south right then, but he did decide to meet Miloff.

At the Mory Aqueduct, Miloff told
Benny that there was a small group of people who knew more about the Line than
anyone in the Territory and they wanted Benny to join them. But Benny was still
undecided. Then Miloff told him that I wouldn’t be coming back to Clearview,
and it was because I was right about the water. That sealed the deal. At least,
enough for him to go with Miloff and find out if I wasn’t coming back.

Benny said, “So is it true?”

“I can’t go
back,” I said, and told him why. I told him about Black Rock. But I didn’t tell
him there was another reason. Lily.

Benny asked me
dozens of questions about the alien facility and I answered him as best I
could. Then he asked Crater a question that I’d wanted to ask, but hadn’t yet.
Had the marauders ever told the Fibs what was going on at Black Rock? Crater
said that they’d told Victor Crow, twice.

Many years ago, Jonah Wolfe had
sent a marauder to a young Victor Crow. This was before the marauders had
discovered how to monitor the Line, so Jonah had no idea that Crow was being
fed that big lie. Crow listened to the marauder’s outlandish claim and, of
course, he didn’t believe him. But he did worry that this marauder could
jeopardize the Fibs’ high-paid work of supplying water to faraway towns. So he
executed him.

Many years
later, Jonah’s successor, Will Xere, sent another marauder to Victor Crow, but
this time with proof. Photos of the golden ship. But the photos were grainy and
dark and because of the empty vastness of Black Rock, they also lacked
perspective as to size and distance. The hope was that Crow would be intrigued
enough to check it out himself, but he wasn’t. He responded by executing this
marauder, too.

It was after
this that false accusations against the marauders flooded the Line. Accusations
of sabotage and violent crimes. Threats to the stability of the Territory. So
the Fibs started to hunt down the marauders and execute them. But the few who
survived managed to learn something from this relentless persecution. They were
on the right track. The aliens were manipulating Crow to attack because they
feared the marauders could damage their mining operation. To Will Xere this
meant that if he and his men could survive the Fib onslaught, they’d have a
shot at freeing the Territory.

These false
charges also led Xere to devise his first great plan as leader of the
marauders: Tap into the Line to get ahead of the charges. And that success led
to the critical revelation that the aliens were also planting other kinds of
false information on the Line. Information that secured their control of the
Fibs and the Territory. From that time on, Xere and the marauders knew they’d
have to pursue freeing the Territory on their own.

Crater then told us that Will
Xere had been part of that second wave of marauders. A man with knowledge.
Jonah Wolfe had known from the start that Xere was the smartest of that second
wave and that he had the ability to inspire other men. Still, it wasn’t Jonah
who’d picked him as the next leader. He hadn’t picked any successor. He didn’t
know he was going to die that night at Black Rock. It was the surviving
marauders, the ones who didn’t attack the space tanker, who chose him.

Crater told us
that after many, many years of discussing and planning, Xere and the marauders
finally came up with a plan to take another shot at freeing the Territory. And
over the last ten years, they’d put everything in place. If we went with him to
Iron Horse, the marauders’ base camp, we’d learn about the plan and take part
in it. But Crater didn’t tell us much about Will Xere and I figured that was
because the story of Jonah Wolfe was the tale the marauders bonded over. But I
was wrong. There was another reason. A reason I’d learn from Xere himself.

The next morning, I made my
decision. It wasn’t really that hard a decision to make. I was already a
fugitive and I had nowhere to go. It wasn’t a heroic decision, but a practical
one. I’d go to Iron Horse.

Benny said
he’d go, too, and Lily wanted to go, but she hadn’t been asked. So she
volunteered and Crater accepted, but I could see that he wasn’t enthusiastic
about taking her and I wanted to know why. About thirty minutes later, I had a
chance to ask him.

We’d eaten a
small meal and were hiking through the woods back to our car. Crater was up
ahead of us, alone, so I caught up to him.

“You didn’t
want to take Lily,” I said.

“You and Benny
were cleared. She’s an unknown.”

“She must’ve
been on your radar screen. She was on Crow’s radar screen.”

“I don’t mean
that we don’t know about her. I mean we’re not sure whose side she’s on.” I
guess he could see that I took that personally because he backed up his claim.
“The Fibs let her do what she wants, and they don’t do that unless you’re part
of the team.”

“Then why’d
you say ‘yes?’” I couldn’t help sounding defensive.

“You wouldn’t
have come if I’d said ‘no.’ And my job was to get you to join us.”

I couldn’t
argue with that. “But you don’t really believe she’s a threat, do you?”

“Who knows? It
might account for what happened in Yachats.”

“What do you
mean?”

Before he
could answer, Lily and the others had caught up to us. I didn’t want to have
doubts about Lily, but now I did, so to combat that, I told myself that Crow
wouldn’t have ordered Lily executed if she was working with the Fibs. Of
course, that wasn’t as convincing a rebuttal as it would’ve been before I knew
that the Fibs were so brutal that they executed marauders at will. Crow would have
had no problem executing Lily if she no longer served his purpose.

As we approached the end of the
trail, Crater told us that the trip to Iron Horse would be tough. The Fibs
would be mounting an intense search for us. They’d want to kill the marauders
who planted the explosives at the lodge. That was the most daring act of
sabotage they’d seen in years, so aggressive that the aliens wouldn’t need to
manipulate them into hunting us down. From Crater’s attitude about the blasts,
I realized that they weren’t meant to free Lily and me. They were supposed to
be part of something else. Something that didn’t go as planned.

We arrived at
the car and Miloff, Lily and I climbed in. Crater and Benny hiked a little
farther, to where another car was stashed. Then we all headed southeast, away
from Yachats, in the same direction as the trucks headed to Black Rock. But we
used different roads.

Three hours
into the trip, we fell into a contemplative silence, and in that silence, I
heard a low, steady thumping. Not the kind of sound I expected to hear in the
wilderness. Miloff must’ve heard it too, because he glanced up at the sky just
as two helicopter gunships swept over the hills and started shooting.

Bullets spit
off the road and Crater sped up.

The
helicopters swooped down and bullets clanged off the top of our car and
shattered our back windshield.

Crater swerved
wildly back and forth across the road, trying to avoid the gunfire. He couldn’t
plow into the forest for cover. The woods were too dense.