Breakers

  "We should have killed them."

  Otto glanced at him over top of his glasses. "Unless you had a Stinger in your back pocket, I'd say that jet was a little out of range."

  Walt poured a bottle of rain water over his hands, scrubbing sweat and grime. "Raymond. The others."

  "I don't know who raised you, son, but unless it was a Khan, you don't kill a man because he disagrees with you."

  "If they launch that nuke, they'll kill anyone who's left here."

  The old man spat on the platform. "They won't be launching a nuke any more than they'll call the squids over for a handjob. An ICBM is not a video game. Why d'you think I told them where the damn things are in the first place?"

  "What do you think the army was doing when the bodies were clogging the street?"

  "The hell should I know? I took the president off my speed dial when I discharged."

  "In New York, the military rounded up the survivors for lab rats. The normal protocols got chucked into the East River the moment the dead outnumbered the living."

  Otto eyed him through his thick and scratched-up lenses. "Yeah, well I don't see you hunting Raymond down and slinging him over the hood of your car. What's going through your crooked mind?"

  "We destroy the mothership first."

  "Just blow it right up."

  "To bits."

  "And you've got an idea how?"

  "Yeah."

  "To smash it all to hell."

  "It's not to invite them over to watch the Jets."

  Otto laughed, a honking, hooting laugh that should have been paired with a hat slapping a knee. "Then why the fuck have we been shitting in these tunnels all winter?"

  "Because," Walt said, "it's a terrible plan."

  "Quit making me thrash the bush here."

  He sucked in his cheeks. "We capture one of their jets, load it up with explosives, and fly it to the carrier."

  "You're talking about that movie. With the guy who talks too much."

  "No, Jeff Goldblum uploaded a computer virus to alien software. We're going to upload a plane full of bombs."

  Otto tapped his thick finger into Walt's chest. "And they blew up the White House, those disrespectful sons of bitches. Independence Day. You think the squid blew up the White House, too?"

  "I don't think they gave a shit."

  "Never bought that myself. I think you stick a word like 'psychological' in front of 'warfare,' you're losing sight of the real objective."

  "So you think it'll work?"

  Otto hooted again. "Hell no, you idiot. But what else do we got?"

  Walt hadn't expected any other answer. He didn't know how they'd get a ship. After failing to make more than the scantest progress with the alien computer in the desert, he didn't see how they'd possibly get one of the jets off the ground, let alone handle it well enough to thread it inside the carrier's belly without ruining a bit more than its paint job. It was all stupid, frankly. Cruelly, horrifically stupid. They ought to just leave. Shoot themselves. Worst of all, the idea was inspired by Independence Day, the brainchild of the guy who'd directed the fucking Godzilla remake. All the dozens of sci-fi books and movies he'd absorbed over the years—his favorite hangover treatments had been lemon-lime Gatorade, darkness, and a flick like Omega Man or ID4 or 28 Days Later—and the best he could do was rip off one of the most widely-mocked solutions in the history of the apocalypse.

  He supposed that was the truth of it. Any species advanced enough to reach Earth would be so overwhelming that the only thing to do was hide until you died. Even this lackluster bunch—capable of mustering just a single carrier and a few thousand troops instead of the tens or hundreds of thousands you'd need to occupy (rather than annihilate) a planet, bearing technology which was human-superior but nothing unimaginable or godlike—had easily quashed everything the survivors had thrown at them. The outcome, except possibly the moment before the first nuke had been launched, had never been in doubt. This wasn't Die Hard. It wasn't Star Wars or First Blood or Red Dawn. There was no victory. If there was a point to fighting back, it was for the simple joy of hurting creatures who'd hurt them first.

  He knew of worse ways to pass the time.

  "You know those mines you rigged at the Staples Center?" he said. "You know how to make anything bigger?"

  Otto chuckled. "You kidding? When the Y2K or Peak Oil hits, you want a bomb, you got to know how to build it for yourself."