He had it all. Canned ravioli. Bags of spaghetti. A pot and a bowl and a knife and a fork. Lighters, matches, flint. The alien pistol and a hunting rifle with two boxes of bullets. A blanket. Leather gloves. Extra shoes. Three pairs of socks. Fishing line and hooks. A flashlight with a spare pack of batteries. A bigger knife and a second small one because you can never have enough knives. Needles and thread and a lightweight rope. A change of clothes. A box of Butterfingers he'd found in the back of a liquor store. Some aspirin and generic antibiotics and a bottle of Famous Grouse scotch and a bag of Bali Shag with an extra pack of rolling papers. That was it. It was enough to carry. Anything else he needed, he'd find it along the way.
He'd woken up high on a beach amidst dead fish and great bundles of kelp rotting in the morning fog. He smelled horrible; he'd vomited at some point. He tried to stand up and passed right back out.
His next try, Walt wobbled to his feet and climbed uphill. The afternoon sun warmed the sand. He soon fell to his hands and knees, crawling until he reached a street where the houses hadn't been leveled by the ship-borne wave. Behind him, its ruined engines bulged above the ocean, still smoking, faint white plumes mingling with the sea's own mist. He smashed in the window of a pretty blue Cape Cod house and shuffled over the creaking floorboards until he found bottled water in the moldy fridge.
Two days later, frame-rattling explosions jarred him from bed. Smoke grimed the sky above the airport. He went back to bed. In the morning, the skies were clear.
He got his act together, spent a week gathering up his gear. By then, he felt strong enough to go for runs along the beach, adding weight to his pack every day to rebuild the strength he'd lost recovering from the crash. He took the pistol with him; the smoke of campfires rose from the hills and beaches now. Once, the crack of a rifle had echoed down the streets. He didn't feel forced out by these new neighbors. He'd never been the LA type anyway.
Elsewhere, it was still winter. He headed south, sleeping under stars that no longer looked so far away. He figured he would stop in a place where it was nice to fish. San Diego was on fire. He went around it.
On a dry Baja beach, he caught four fat, green-silver fish with scalloped fins. He roasted them on sticks, skins and all. After he ate the first, a man appeared up the beach, waving his hands over his head. He was young and sunburned and hungry. So was his wife. Walt offered the kid a fish. It turned out they had beer, Negra Modelo in thick-bottomed brown bottles. He was named Vincent, his wife Mickey. College kids in a past life.
They talked for a while about where they were headed (them: Panama; him: somewhere), where they'd come from (Idaho; New York), what they'd seen recently (a pair of aliens hunted down with dogs and rifles; lots of sand).
"Yeah," Mickey said, tugging the strap of her tank top, "but like how did it even come to that? I mean, did you ever think we'd be taking them down with dogs? Did like one of them get drunk at the wheel Exxon Valdez-style?"
"Oh, that?" Walt said. "That was me. Me and this Vietnam vet named Otto. He was probably an asshole in the Bush years, but he was a cool guy when I met him." He sipped his beer. "We landed on the ship with a hot air balloon. Blew stuff up until the thing went down."
"And then what?" Mickey said. "You hang-glidered to safety?"
"I jumped. From what I remember, it was fun."
Mickey laughed, white teeth flashing in the firelight. Vincent smiled and put his arm around her shoulder. For a moment Walt bristled, ready to protest, to insist it had happened, that they weren't laughing at a tall tale, but events which had, for the second time in the last year, cost the lives of everyone he knew. But if he'd heard his story from a stranger, he'd laugh too, wouldn't he? A handful of nobodies couldn't save the world. No doubt a hundred better stories had already cropped up around the globe.
But he wouldn't change his. He owed that much to those who'd been with him.
Walt left before they woke. It was the wind that spoke to him now, in whispers and urgent hisses; the sea that murmured to itself like it had forgotten something from a list. He walked when he was ready and slept when he was tired. When he had nowhere else to be, he sat beside the waterline and watched the sun go down, listening to the wash of the sand. He thought he heard names, sometimes, but then the waves receded, a scrub of foam and salt, snatching them back before he could be sure.
He decided to walk to the end of the southern world, the cold hills of Patagonia, where no people had lived even when people lived everywhere. Maybe the breakers would speak clear names there. Maybe he would find something to make him stop.
He intended to live along the way.
FROM THE AUTHOR
Hello everyone! BREAKERS is the first book in a finished series. Links to the next book, MELT DOWN, can be found on my website. Hope you enjoy.
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