Breakers

  * * *

  "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