* * *
"I believe our first order of business should be to restore power." David snuggled his blanket over his shoulders, cheeks gaunt in the blue-gray dawn. "That in hand, all our subsequent actions require all the less labor."
Anna poked a handful of almonds into her mouth. "Yeah, if that includes one damn big electric fence. Once those things are out of here, it's the people who'll come back."
"Well, security will have to be accounted for, of course. I suspect we won't be lacking for bravos to fill out that niche."
"I say that's our numero-uno. Find some guys we can trust, set them up with some lasers, and we're gold."
"We won't be dealing with peasants used to cleaning themselves with their own hand. I think the best way to forestall internal dissent is to reinstall the basic comforts—light, plumbing, refrigeration."
"Which we just hand right over to the first pack of assholes with AKs."
"I suppose we'll have to divide our labor. Know anything about windmills, Raymond?"
He glanced up. He'd barely heard their conversation. After the beach, they'd marched miles up the road, finally stopping at the first threat of dawn to hunker down behind a stand of trees. He'd tried to focus on his feet, counting steps, playing games where he pushed off with the balls of his feet rather than letting them roll forward into the next step, but his mind kept coming back to Mia and the beach. Seeing those things die had been marvelous and hollowing, like the invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11: justified, even righteous, but also sickening, because any way you sliced it death was death, and some of those who were about to suffer deserved it far less than others.
He didn't know for a fact the young ones were innocent. Maybe they tore their way out of their dying mother at birth, or survived the first few weeks through cannibalism. Maybe they were already being trained to enslave and slaughter the human survivors. In any event, they'd grow up, in all likelihood, to finish the genocide or at least accept the fruits of its happening. Part of him was filled with a vicious joy to see their goopy blood boiling away from the holes lasered in their hides and faces.
But the beach hadn't been a battlefield between uniformed soldiers. It had been something they would have done. Now those kids could never grow up under human rule, a benign captivity where they lived among Earth's natives, but with the back-bending shame of knowing what their parents had done before being defeated. That would have been the best punishment of all.
"What?" he said.
"Do you know anything about windmills?" David repeated patiently.
"Why would I know anything about windmills?"
"Life teaches a person all sorts of interesting things. If I had the proper clay, kiln, and plants, I could craft you a set of dishes right here. Complete with glaze."
"I don't know anything about windmills."
"Ah. We may need windmills to power our initial infrastructure before we get the old gear up and running."
He stared at David, those sharp cheeks, the quick intelligence in his brown eyes. Was he insane? Already they were talking as if the aliens were incinerated on the wind and not occupying the ruins of the world's greatest cities. As if another week from now, two at the utmost, they'd all be back to playing Xbox and ordering General Tso's chicken for delivery, thinking back on the last ten months as a hiccup, an eye-rolling yet adventurous detour when we all had to shit in the woods and eat out of cans. Without warning, Raymond found himself crying, heaving sobs that bobbed his shoulders.
David glanced from him to Anna, alarmed, then patted his shoulder.
"I don't think we should have elections," Anna said. "Those never really worked."
He was woken more than once by the rumble of ships hunting for those who'd killed their babies. By afternoon it was silent, and Raymond agreed when Anna stated it was probably safe enough to continue north. Privately, he didn't think this was true—he thought the aliens would keep searching for a long time—but a part of him longed to be spotted, to be vaporized and blown out to sea before he knew what had happened.
He walked. When the others rested, he did too, his mind throbbing with his leg and his feet. They slept sparingly. Pelicans drifted on the constant seaside wind, the great big Vs of their wings throwing fast shadows over the sand and sidewalks. He stared out to the west, pinpointing the precise place the sky merged with the sea.
The road curved west. Mountains sprung up to the north, folded brown ridges and green foothills dense with brushy chaparral and open grass. Past the sickle of yellow sand, the ocean was so blue he could almost forgive the invaders for wanting it. Midafternoon, he shed his jacket and walked in shirtsleeves, the sun and sea air drawing a light sweat from his skin. Palms swayed above the clean glass and red roofs of a college that was all the prettier because there was no one left to use it. The dumb chug of a lawnmower wafted from the city center.
Their water was low, so when they set camp in a beach gazebo, Raymond offered to go forage. Night settled on Santa Barbara like the evening's first drink. His breath hung in the salty air. He walked fast to stay warm. The ARCO off the highway was dead empty, rats rustling in the wrappers, napkins, and smashed glass. The Rite-Aid was bereft of water, candy bars, toilet paper, soap, contact lens solution, even makeup. He wasn't surprised. Gas stations, grocery stores, pharmacies, those were the obvious survival caches, the first place looters would look. Raymond clicked off his flashlight and headed for the Spanish-style church on the corner: it would have snacks and water and canned goods in the basement, the stuff of picnics, socials, and charity.
The bell tower projected from stark white stucco walls. The doors groaned, huge old oak lined with iron. He held his flashlight up and away from his body. The light splashed over a dried-up fountain, dusty benches, and a foyer with a coat room to one side and an office to the other. The main chapel held row on row of cobwebbed pews. It smelled like dust and dried-up water. His footsteps echoed through the arched whale-belly space. Something scraped in the darkness. He flicked his light over candle-packed cupolas, the stage and its dusty podium.
Another scrape behind him. He whirled. The flashlight beam glared from a machete and two hard eyes. He was too frozen to scream.
"Who are you?" Her blade was cocked back, ready to strike his bare neck.
"I'm looking for water."
"Mine is mine."
His laser hung from his hip. "I didn't know anyone was here."
Her fingers curled around the handle. "No one does."
"Wait," he said. She was no more than 14, and under the dirt and darkness on her face may have been younger yet. Her blonde hair was hacked short, sprouting in greasy twists. "We're going to destroy them."
"The angels?"
"The aliens. The ones who gave us the disease."
The girl slipped forward half a foot, keeping her soles close to the floorboards. "You'll die. That's all."
"Then let me die trying."
"My dad showed me how to salt meat. To smoke it over a fire and dry it."
A wave of hot prickles tingled over Raymond's face. "Let me go. I won't hurt you."
She raised the thick blade. "I know."
"The thing on my belt is a gun," he blurted. "It looks like a Nintendo controller, but it's killed people. Humans. I don't want it to kill any more."
Her nostrils flared. She shifted her grip on the tape-wrapped handle. She slid back, feet rasping, disappearing inch by inch into the blackness beyond the flashlight. He shifted the beam but she was gone. He sidled for the door, reaching for the laser pistol. At the door, there was a moment he had to glance down to reach for its handle, and he was certain it would end, then, the cold bite of the jungle-knife's steel smashing through his throat. Then he was in the street, where palm fronds whispered and bugs piped from rotting wood.
He found bottled water in the back of a garage and returned to the gazebo. Anna and David were asleep in the blankets, his arm slung over her chest. Raymond stared into the night.
The road carrie
d westward, a warm corridor between the mountains and the sea. Days later, at Lompoc, a sign pointed them toward the base, and they followed that road over low hills and the shrubs and the grass, smelling pollen, salt, and a cold that never quite came no matter how late the hour.
He expected bunkers, silos, flat pavements, barb wire on concrete ramparts. Instead, Vandenberg's main presence was a big white building block, one face painted with a giant American flag, which stood across from a factory-like jumble of curved pipes and liquid reservoirs, all massive. A huge scaffold rose from the flattened top of a hill. Narrow roads ringed the site, turning off for scattered outbuildings. Waves washed the shore a hundred yards away.
Amidst the scaffolding, naked missiles waited in the sun.
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