Captives (31 page)

Walt continued to climb toward the ridges. Abruptly, the houses stopped. Past a grove of young orange trees, a wooden wall sprung from the dirt, ten feet high, enclosing acres and acres of land. Evergreens sprouted beyond it, intermingled with the roofs of buildings. He wandered through the orange trees for a better look. At the edge of the grove, a waist-high post poked from the dirt. Pebbled. Blue. He'd seen ones just like it holding up the wooden barrier on the way into the city.

He moved along the fringe of the grove, scanning the wall for gaps or sentries. Three steps later, he stopped mid-stride. Something twisted in his gut. He'd never seen the posts before coming here, yet he knew where they'd come from.

From the wall, a spotlight snapped on. A metal whistle shrilled across the night. Walt swore and raised his hands above his head.

20

"A fucking dam," Mauser muttered. "Can you believe that?"

"Cool," Henna said. "So we get to blow it up."

"Hang on. What we're looking at is construction. Unless that's the Army Corps down there, that means civilians. We're not going to massacre them."

"That's what they mean to do to us, isn't it?"

"Shut up and pretend like you can follow orders." He rubbed his mouth, then began gesturing toward the overpasses spanning the concrete-walled river and the men working to block it. "Kendall, cover us from that onramp there. Henna, take Jake downstream until you're out of sight, cross to the other side, then box them in from the east. You've got five minutes. Use them wisely. Like to do exactly as I say."

They withdrew to the stairwell. Outside the mall, Kendall jogged onto the highway while Henna and Jake ran south along the river. Mauser gave them a minute to curve out of sight, then took the remaining four warriors into the shrubs and trees that had managed to find a hold in the shadows beneath the freeways. These were an absurd tangle: the northbound lanes were set into the ground, then crossed by an elevated east-west highway, connected by lattices of steeply banked onramps that arced high over the jumble before feeding into their new course. It looked like a joke about Los Angeles, an infernal mousetrap for cars. Two hundred yards away, the workers hammered boards into place across the river.

Fifty feet above them, Kendall poked her arm through the guard rail and gave the okay sign. Mauser got out binoculars and stared at the bushes beneath the highway on the other side of the river. A shadow moved in the shrubs. He lowered the binoculars, raised his carbine, and wove through the brush to the edge of the culvert overlooking the five men and women at work on the dam.

"You might want to freeze," he said, voice carrying across the open space. "Unless you prefer to be shot."

The workers looked up as one. Two had guns visible, but neither were drawn. A moment of genuine uncertainty passed between the two sides. The river trickled through the unfinished dam. At one of their work stations, a chunk of scrap wood slid from a poorly stacked file and clattered to the cement.

The man furthest from them broke and ran. Mia drew a bead with her bow and let fly. The man was running virtually straight away, providing her with the steadiest moving target you could ask for. The arrow struck him in the left shoulder. He stumbled and cried out, pitching onto the concrete. A woman on the other side of the narrow river took off up the bank. A gun went off from the brush ahead of her and she fell in her tracks, landing on her back and sliding headfirst toward the river, leaving a bright red streak behind her. Henna and Jake appeared from the weeds, aiming down at the others.

"Don't shoot!" a man said, hands held above his head. "For God's sake!"

Mauser cursed and slung his rifle over his shoulder. "I thought I said no massacres."

"Since when was two people a massacre?" Mia said.

"Since it was two of five." He waved across the canal and raised his voice. "Jake, hold position. Henna, see to our twelve."

The young man continued to cover the three surviving workers while the young woman loped north along the eastern bank. Mauser left one of their people up top and led Mia and two others down the side. The dam was incomplete, yet enough of it had been erected to impede the flow, backing the waters behind it into a series of sluggish eddies. The dead woman's blood reached the edge of the river and spooled into the current.

Mauser stopped several feet from the man who'd pleaded for their lives. "Who are you working for?"

The man shook his head. "Well, nobody."

"I see. So you and your four friends spontaneously decided to plug up the Los Angeles River. What's the angle? Back up a reservoir, then charge us beaucoup to go jet skiing?"

"To prevent flooding."

"To prevent flooding," Mauser repeated. "Interesting. Are you aware this entire channel was
built
to prevent flooding?"

"Well, it must not have been working."

"Is that so? What about the great many people at the end of this river who are rather fond of drinking water?"

The man's mouth moved for two seconds before he found words. "Are you sure about that?"

"Here's an idea," Mauser said. "Tell me something to make me
less
angry with you." He waited three seconds, then sighed and twirled his hand. "Looks like another job for Raina. Tie them up."

"Hang on." The man backed up half a step. "We're of the People."

"Yes, you look like real crowd pleasers."

"The People of the Stars. From up—"

The man's head snapped forward; a pistol shot crackled around the culvert. Blood spouted over Mauser's shoe. He danced back. Mia fit an arrow to her bow. The pistol went off again and one of the two surviving workers dropped like a plank. A rifle went off from above. Not thirty feet from Mia, a woman spun to her side, still clutching her pistol.

"Hold your fire!" Mauser shouted to his people. He advanced on the woman, rifle held to his shoulder. "Put down the gun!"

She rolled to a sitting position and slowly raised her gun hand, the barrel pointed toward the ground. Mauser's elbow twitched. She pressed the hot barrel against the side of her head. "Sworn to silence."

The gun went off a final time. Her brains departed her skull. She fell on her side and stayed there.

Mauser flung out his hands. "What the fuck was
that
?"

Jensen got out a stub of tobacco and lit it. "Someone who didn't want her pal to say another word."

"Well, this has gone from a textbook ambush to a total disaster. We've got nothing. Except a bunch of dead bodies. Unless one of you has a recipe for Soylent Green, that's
worse
than nothing."

"We've got a name," Mia said. "The People of the Stars. And confirmation that they're up to some shit."

"There is that." He turned in a slow circle, taking in the carnage. The air smelled like gunpowder and the invasive tang of aerosolized internal matter. "Search them. Bury them. Then pull this place down."

She helped turn out pockets. One of the warriors gathered up the enemy's guns and spare ammo. Another sorted through their packs. Kendall returned pushing three nested shopping carts, rattling them down the side of the culvert. Without being asked, Mia helped pick up the bodies and dump them into the carts. Warm, tacky blood smeared her hands, working its way into the creases of her fingers and under her nails. A few minutes ago, it had been inside someone, refreshing the oxygen throughout their body. She had to fight the urge to paint it across her face.

After the carts were up top and being wheeled away by others, she went to the river to wash up, lowering herself by habit to one knee so as not to emphasize her hips. She feared the blood would stick to her, but it washed off easily. The C-shaped scar on the back of her hand looked more vivid than ever before.

They dismantled the dam, knocking it down with hammers and prying it apart with other boards. The racket echoed up and down the concrete bed. Once they finished, they continued up the bank, Henna and Jake scouting ahead. After a few miles, the river peeled to the west while the highway continued north. They stuck to the river. The skyscrapers of downtown jutted from the surrounding buildings. Twice, Henna reported seeing people, but there was no sign of hostilities nor further tampering with the river. Jake came back to report a group of people ahead. Civilians—including two children.

"I think we'd better declare victory before we succumb to mission creep," Mauser declared. "Let's turn it around."

Jake scratched the back of his neck. "Want me to say hello while we're here?"

"I believe that would be a tactical misstep, given that our earlier activities included the slaughter of five of their people. Best we get out of here before we're seen and can be linked to the crime."

As the tumbling sun sprayed the city yellow, they took up in the mall where they'd first spied on the dam. Mauser scheduled the watch, posting one person on the roof and another at the top of the main stairwell. The others dragged padded benches and futons in from the showroom. The windows let in just enough moonlight to see by.

"I've been thinking about this all day." Mauser sprawled in a recliner, hands clasped behind his head. "And despite my best efforts, that dam doesn't make a damn bit of sense."

"What's there to figure out?" Henna said. "We've got water. They want to make it theirs."

"They're going to stop up the river with a bunch of
boards
? Even if they were able to make it watertight, then what? Sooner or later it will spill over."

"Could have intended to dig a new path."

"Or let it sit stagnant," Mia said. "We're using sand and charcoal filters, right? Will those work if they turn this part of the river into a cesspool?"

"Biological warfare. Ain't that some shit. Even if we tart up our protocols, there's nothing to stop them from dumping a sack of cyanide into the stream." He stared up at the drop ceiling, the panels of which were beginning to sag. "If any of you stumbles on the tiniest grain of intelligence, pass it my way, will you? I'm growing rather tired of feeling like I'm wandering through a minefield blindfolded."

The night and the march home were both quiet. They arrived in San Pedro around noon. Mauser brought Henna with him to see Raina and gave the others the day off. Mia spent it practicing with her bow. As she sighted in on the hay bale, she saw the man running, his back a steady target as his legs churned and churned.

She woke the next day with a vague anger she couldn't place until she remembered she was supposed to spend the rest of the day watching the market. She opened the door of her shack to find a young woman reaching out to knock.

"Hey," the girl said. "Mauser sent me. Thom, right? I've seen you around the pub."

"Not so much since I enlisted," Mia said. "What's Mauser want now?"

"To give you your new assignment. You've been promoted."

The girl's name was Jenny. She looked to be in her late teens, her eyes shining from her broad, heavily tanned cheeks like wet pieces of flint. She carried a curved sword and an insect-like rifle, scoped. She was a scout assigned to the beaches up to LAX. Now, so was Mia.

"About time," Mia said. "I'm so sick of that market I'm ready to roll the entire street up like a rug."

"Don't get too excited. You like sand?"

"It's the beach. Who doesn't like the beach?"

"You, after you spend twelve hours a day on it. And the other twelve shaking the sand out of your shoes."

Mia leaned against the door frame. "At least we'll be on the front lines."

"Of what?"

She didn't have an answer to that. Her assignment was to begin that morning. According to Jenny, they would cycle their time, spending a week in the field, then returning to the Place where they would effectively be on call for a week before heading back into the borderlands. Mia didn't have much in the way of possessions. She added some longer-term gear to her travel pack and met Jenny down at the fountain.

They took the long way around, following the coastline past where the impostor had held his false court and curling around the peninsula. Jenny was talkative, sprinkling Mia with questions about the trip up the river, but she kept her eyes on their surroundings, eyeballing the blank-windowed Spanish manors and the rugged slopes of the hills.

More from habit than genuine interest, Mia asked her questions in return. Jenny had grown up in Eugene. Lost her parents in the plague. An older cousin had taken her south in search of warmer weather. They made it to San Diego, lived happily for years. Then her cousin had been killed by a local despot. Jenny fled north, settling in Long Beach, then relocating to the peninsula once gang activity picked up. She'd joined Raina's new order within days of the rebellion against the Catalinans.

It was a hell of a story. Yet rather than being impressed, Mia felt hardened by it. A brief respite of peace surrounded by storms on all sides. Her only remaining family murdered by madmen. Mia hoped they would encounter Doug's friends back on the beaches. They needed to be purged.

They came around the bend and descended the trail to the south end of the beach. As they negotiated the damp, kelp-strewn scree at the base of the cliffs, an older woman and a younger man climbed out of the pale blue lifeguard station up the way. Mia vaguely recognized them from around the market.

"Any sign?" Jenny said.

The woman sniffed and turned to gaze up the vacant miles of sand. "Footprints around the pier. Some clothes thrown around. Looters, most like."

"That's it?"

"Yup." She scratched her stomach. "Enjoy."

She trudged toward the trail, quiet young man in tow. A light breeze blew in from the water. The sand was black, shiny with raw oil that belched from cracks in the seabed. Flies swarmed the greasy brown kelp.

"We'll check the pier, sweep to PCH, then post up in one of those nice condos," Jenny said. "Should be low tide by then. Can do some fishing."

Mia nodded absently, staring down the beach, willing one of the men to step out onto the slanted paths leading from the condos so she could wash their blood off in the foam of the sea.