* * *
Otto squinted from behind the BMW whose trunk he'd keyed with "BUY AMERICAN" while Walt was scattering tracking devices across the parking garage. The old man's glasses glinted with a stray glimmer. It was nearly pitch black down there, musty with old rain. Silent shells of cars waited in the darkness for drivers who'd died months ago. Horror movie stuff. Walt shivered, then rolled his eyes. Real monsters were on their way, and he was still spooked by the make-believe ones.
They'd spent two days preparing. While Otto put together explosives of all different size and shape, Walt had planned and scouted. Lure in a flier, kill the crew, try to figure out how to fly the thing before anyone noticed it was missing. Meanwhile, if Raymond had risked pulling a car off the side of the road, his crew could already be balls-deep in a nuclear bunker, smoking cigars and running the final check before sending their missiles winging to LA. Walt should be treating every moment as if it were his last. He should be thinking poignant thoughts and writing them down to enlighten and shame alien scholars sifting through the ashes of the civilization they'd destroyed. He should at least be praying for forgiveness from Vanessa for not being more of a man, from his parents for not calling more often, from Nate in 3rd grade whom Walt had jump-kicked in the stomach after Nate intentionally booted a kickball over the fence.
But they were all dead. They couldn't hear him. These were apologies he should have made in the moment they happened, not after months of the distanced hindsight and soothing regrets that make every man's intentions as pure and bright as a glacier. In this world, the world of scared truths, Walt's last words might be no more than a tacit agreement with Otto's somewhat obsolete message about supporting the local economy.
Out in the mist, an engine wailed, faded, wailed, faded.
"Circling," Otto said. "Ideally not so as to find the best angle to open the bomb bays."
"They'll come down."
"Says who?"
"When one goes missing, others come. They care about each other. That's how we're going to kill them."
"You should have worked for Nixon, boy."
The engine keened closer until grit and scrap paper blustered against the narrow windows near the garage ceiling. The ship touched down. Its engine spooled to silence. Walt could hear his own blood in his veins. Feet and claws stomped the street, became muffled, then returned twice as loud at the top of the ramp to the basement garage.
Two of the creatures slapped down the slope. Pale light fanned from metal handhelds. The looted tracking devices continued their noiseless broadcast. The soldiers raised their rubbery sensor-arms, turning them slowly through the gloom. They glanced at each other, flashed hand signals. One gestured up the ramp. The second plodded forward. Walt grinned and brace himself.
Orange light flared from the front columns. A nauseating bang shook dust from the ceiling. Twisted metal shotgunned the parked cars. Walt's guts splashed inside his ribs. He rushed through the dust, laser and sword in hand. Yellow remains smeared the ramp, bubbling, slipping down the concrete in the stink of burnt powder and vaporized flesh. Otto ran beside him, chuckling, holding up his pants with his free hand. In the street, swirling lights painted the apartment complexes around the landed flier. A blue beam flicked above Walt's head.
He dove behind a Porsche. Otto flopped in beside him, popping up to exchange lasers with the soldiers around the plane. Walt dropped flat and sent beams slicing beneath the undercarriage of the Porsche. An alien fell, tentacles flailing. Another volley and the tentacles relaxed across the pavement.
"Got to kill that crew before they start blabbing," Otto panted.
"Give me one of those pipe bombs."
"You aren't gonna hit them from here, Johnny Unitas."
"Light one up and hand it over before your fat heart gives out."
Otto's salt-and-pepper mustache twitched with laughter. Walt poked around the car to pepper the squid moving from the flier's wheels to the cover of an SUV. In the whirling lights, their octopoid, deepwater bodies looked like something from a dream that can't be wholly forgotten nor remembered. A laser appeared between the aliens and the Porsche's headlight cowl, sizzling the orange paint. Walt ducked.
Otto passed him a shockingly heavy metal rod with an honest-to-god fuse hissing from its end. Feeling like a cartoon, Walt said, "Cover me."
The old man swore, dropped the laser pistol, and unslung his bolt-action rifle. He triangled his elbows across the Porsche, aimed, and squeezed off a round. He'd fired a second before Walt rolled out from the car, ducking alongside the line of parked Lexuses, Hummers, and Nissans. The rifle bellowed over the crackle of blue bolts. A beam caught Walt on his pack, melting the plastic into the shoulder of his jacket. A rifle round clanged into the hood of the distant SUV. The aliens flinched back. Walt's fuse had nearly disappeared into the bomb's rounded end. He skipped forward, planted, and slung the fizzling pipe end over end toward the cluster of soldiers.
It fell from the whirling light, rattling across the asphalt. Walt crouched behind a van and pressed his palms to his ears. A shot echoed between the apartments, followed by a second. Adrenaline tingled across Walt's gut. Otto must have botched the fuse, the chemistry. This was it.
A metallic bang splintered the night. Shrapnel pinged into car doors, shattering windows. The van rocked against his back. Walt stood. A blinding light burned from the side of the dark oblong flier. At first he thought it was a weapon, but then there was light and noise and force and darkness.
And Otto stood over him and he could smell blood and burning and plastic and smoke and his ears keened and the sidewalk under him swelled and rippled, carrying him nowhere. Otto was saying something. He said it a few times more before Walt understood.
"Sure," Walt said, standing to prove it. His knees buckled. Otto grabbed his arm with tough, knotty knuckles.
"That doesn't look like any fine I've seen."
"Well, see it." He frowned. "Where did the ship go?"
"Davy Jones' of Mars."
"Those aren't words."
"Come on, kid."
"We have to get the ship." A craggy heap of metal smoldered where the ship had rested. It must have taken off, but he couldn't hear it. Just the ringing in his ears. The crackle and whip of flames. And Otto chuckling ruefully.
"Oh, you got it. Now lean on me. We got to be gettin' ourselves."
Walt tried to resist, pawing at the smoke as if waving it away would reveal the flier, but Otto pulled him along like a leashed beagle. By the time the keen of a second ship whined across the skies, Walt understood. They were already a mile or so from the explosion, but he mumbled something about holing up in a nearby boarded-over Thai restaurant to wait out the search. Otto helped him through a gap in the boards, then grabbed a newspaper from the table by the front bench and swabbed dust from a booth.
"Well, shit." The big man eased himself into the padded seat. "It was a good idea, kid."
"It was an awful idea."
"Don't see anyone else doing any better."
"Can't try the tracking devices again. They'll just bomb us. Then bomb our bombed-out craters."
Otto retrieved a red handkerchief and swabbed his sweaty face. "It ain't the end of the world. If Los Angeles is about to get turned into a silicon parking lot, you don't need a Ph.D. to know you might be better off hitting the trail."
Walt leaned back into the squeaking plastic seat, sighing with something a lot like relief. It felt good, in a way, to be done. Not just with this campaign. It had been a long time since he'd wanted to die in LA. If he left—and the fact that, one way or another, the city was about to be destroyed made that "if" something of a nondecision—he couldn't imagine himself rejoining the fight in San Francisco or San Diego or wherever the hell else there were still people trying to do something about the uninvited guests. He could no longer pretend resisting would do anything for the survivors or the ghost of Vanessa or even himself. It would simply be suicide in another form, a helpless admission of a lack o
f imagination. He supposed he'd like to watch the city blow up before moving on. That would probably be pretty spectacular. The hills would probably be far enough away to be safe. Or get up above it all somehow, watch from the skies. If they noticed, there would be worse ways to die.
He went very, very still.
"I changed my mind," he said. "I'm going to die after all."
Otto's brow wrinkled. "Look, I don't see how's there any reason to stay. You're young. You go be a pirate or some such."
"I have a better idea. In that it's much, much worse."
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