Captives (32 page)

* * *

For three days, they traipsed up and down the shore, interspersed by mile-long trips inland to check the roads. Four times, they spotted travelers, three solo and one group of two, but under questioning, they claimed to be unaffiliated with the People of the Stars, and Mia thought their stories rang true. There had been no sign of incursion by the people from the north. Already, Mia had grown as restless as she'd been at the market.

During the early afternoon, when the sun was at its worst, they took to the lifeguard stations, using them as blinds. Mia gazed out the window, binoculars in her hand, ready for movement. After a while, she glanced over her shoulder and caught Jenny staring at her.

The girl folded her arms. "So, you with anyone?"

"I used to know some other survivors," she said. "I came here alone."

Jenny quirked her mouth. "But you're not
with
anyone."

Mia laughed lowly. "Aren't I a little old for you?"

"Are you saying I'm too young for you?"

In the olden days, this girl would have been worrying about her graduation ceremony, her upcoming first semester at college. The youth here had a forwardness and confidence she found unnerving. It was, no doubt, the result of arming them and entrusting them to keep the land's fringes safe, but it was still rattling. At that age, Mia had barely been able to talk to boys her own age, let alone to taunt one who—as Thom appeared to be—was nearly fifteen years older, and a warrior to boot.

"Probably not," Mia said. "But I don't think I'm what you're looking for."

"Suit yourself. Gets pretty boring out here, though."

"Flattering."

"You're the one turning it down."

Mia laughed again, a little more warmly. "Trust me, it's nothing personal."

"Course it is." Jenny looked angry a moment, then a grin spread across her face. "Man, if I'd known you were like that, I would have brought a book."

The day stretched on. Once the sun dropped and the wind picked up, they walked down the station's ramp and onto the sand. A quarter mile up the beach, metal flashed in the sun. Mia lifted her binoculars. A rifle banged from ahead.

"
Fuck
." Jenny took off sprinting, sand spraying from her heels.

They were a hundred feet from the lifeguard station and there was no nearby cover more substantial than the pitted volleyball poles projecting from the sand. Ahead, a decrepit set of bathrooms sat along the bike path at the base of the cliffs. Jenny maneuvered to put it between them and the shooter. The gun went off again, its source concealed by the light dazzling from the windows and the sound of the wind and surf.

A third shot spat sand a foot from Mia's left. She grunted and swerved toward the path. The fourth buzzed over Jenny's head. The girl hit the concrete patio surrounding the bathrooms and ran to the corner of the building. Mia joined her, electricity shooting down her limbs.

Jenny edged her nose around the corner. "Did you see where they're coming from?"

"North. One of the buildings above the cliffs. Didn't see which one."

"Not the answer I was looking for."

"What's our next move?"

Jenny withdrew from the corner and squinted at the sun. "Tempted to stay right here until it gets dark."

Mia waited for more. "They're
shooting
at us."

"And we don't know where from, do we? Except that it's high ground with an angle on the entire fuckin' beach. Do you want to bet you can make it up the ramp without taking one in the forehead?"

"Probably not. But I'm not going to hide in a bathroom while the guys we're here to stop roam free."

Jenny laughed, the noise harsh and loud in the absence of the gunfire. "Okay, Death Wish. How do
you
want to handle this?"

Mia moved to the southwest corner of the building. The view to the north was largely blocked by the bathrooms. She stuck her shoulder around the side, gave it a moment, then scurried out along the wall. Near the northwest corner, a scabbed metal door interrupted the grungy cement wall. She pulled on the handle. The latch stuck, then came free with a tired, rusty squeal.

The inside was dark and musty, lit by narrow horizontal windows set near the ceiling. Stalls, urinals. A door hung open at the side of the room, opening to a cave-dark hall that fed into a storage/maintenance room. Metal racks held cleaning supplies and jugs. Sunlight peeped around the edges of a door on the east wall. She climbed up one of the metal shelves and pressed her eye to the window. Not thirty feet up the bike path, a ramp led up to the condos, sheltered by a metal railing and boisterous, mist-fed succulents.

She climbed down, withdrew to the back of the building, and after a bit of convincing, brought Jenny to the storage room.

"I'm going for the ramp," Mia said. "Cover me from the window. It's a little high, but you couldn't ask for better protection."

"What about you? That ramp is totally exposed. You'll be alone on two hundred feet of pure shooting gallery."

"It's not as bad as it looks. It ascends north; unless the shooter is right above us, he won't have a great angle." She smiled thinly. "And I'll have you to give him something else to worry about, won't I?"

Jenny moved to the metal shelves and gave them a tug. "Shit. If you go down, I'm telling Mauser you swam off with the dolphins."

She found a ladder on the opposite wall and dragged it beneath the high window. Mia unlocked the door and gave it a test tug. Sticky, but it felt like it would yield to a good yank.

Jenny installed herself in the window, resting her gun over a shelf, draping herself over the ladder. "Ready."

Mia counted down from five. At zero, she wrenched open the door. She dashed onto the bike path, blinking against the dazzling light. She hadn't made it halfway to the ramp before the first shot crackled from above and whined off the face of the bathroom. She hunched low, weaving erratically, and hit the ramp. Two quick shots tore into the succulents on the hillside.

The next shot came from behind her.

"Blue apartments!" Jenny called. "Fourth floor, corner!"

The building was less than a hundred yards ahead of her. As she counted floors, glass shattered on a corner window. Jenny followed it with a third shot, a fourth. Mia scurried up the ramp, knees pumping. The sniper fired, but the shot ricocheted from the bathroom wall—he had turned on Jenny.

Mia hit the top of the ramp and cut down the alley dividing two banks of condos. Behind her, a rifle went off every one to three seconds, an irregular, startling tempo. The shots slowed as she reached the street. She risked a quick glance around the brick fence. Condos looked down from both sides. Palms fluttered, their bases crowded with fallen leaves.

She hadn't heard a shot in several seconds. The shooter was on the move, then. She ran around the corner and across the piebald lawns, sticking tight to the faces of the buildings. Pistol in hand, she sprinted up the steps of the blue apartment building. The foyer door was unlocked. At the foot of the staircase, she pressed herself to the wall and listened.

Wind whistled outside. Distant waves smacked against the shore. She crept up the stairs, taking them to the fourth floor. The door to the corner apartment stood open. She paused outside it before rushing in low, gun in hand.

The wind tousled the curtains of the picture windows. Broken glass and spent brass twinkled in the overpowering sun. Once she was certain the apartment was empty, she moved to the edge of the broken window and gestured the okay sign. A moment later, Jenny emerged from the bathroom and headed toward the ramp.

They searched for hours without turning up a trace of the shooter. With the end of the day looming, they retreated to the south edge of the beach. Mia holed up in the lifeguard shack while Jenny ran through the hills to report to the sentry in the lighthouse.

Moonlight skated over the waves. Jenny was back by midnight. "We stay here. Stick to the schedule. If at all possible, take them in live."

By the end of their week-long shift, however, they'd seen nothing else. Back in Pedro, Mauser debriefed them together, then spoke to Jenny alone for a minute before calling Mia into his "office"—the skylit room in his earthen house.

"So," he said, kicking his feet up on a card table that was also supporting a pistol, a sloppy stack of paperwork, and a tall blue bottle. "Any guess as to
who
might have shot at you?"

Mia shrugged. "Like I said, it was probably the Dead Stars. People of the Stars. Whatever they call themselves."

"But you have no proof."

"Depends. Do you have a ballistics lab around here?"

He sighed, picked up the bottle, and held it to the shaft of light slanting from the ceiling. "This is becoming a pattern, isn't it? We're attacked. All signs point to our northern friends. But any
proof
is whisked away before we know what to make of it."

"Have you ever thought about, I don't know, talking to them?"

"We just did that. While you were out."

"And?"

"Our diplomat met with a woman named Reeds. Representative of the People of the Stars. Real sharp one, according to our man. Said she came across like a librarian with a meat cleaver."

Mia put on an arch look. "Sounds like I wouldn't mind her taking a whack at me."

Mauser laughed dryly. "Nothing gets the heart pumping like a woman who only wears glasses to protect her eyes from blood spatter. She denies the People of the Stars have any involvement in the recent hostilities. According to her, what we're dealing with are the remnants of the gangs they've forced out of L.A."

"Bullshit," Mia said. "What about the dam? The man I captured worked for them, too."

"You mean the fellow you executed before we had the chance to talk to him?"

"He went for my gun."

"I'm not criticizing you for defending yourself. I am merely dismayed that we lost yet another opportunity to learn something concrete."

"How much proof do you need? You don't have to convince a jury. Why not declare that any further incursions will result in a state of war?"

"Because wars, as it turns out, are about the absolute worst thing there is." He removed his feet from the table and turned the bottle in his hands. "Now get out of here. I have to consult with my sexy blue friend."

She exited and walked down to the fountain to exchange gossip with the other warriors. Mostly, they wanted to hear about her run-in with the mystery sniper. In return, she learned another pair of scouts had seen men prowling around the Hawthorne Airport, but that the outsiders had scattered at first sight of the scouts.

Without the prospect of a skirmish, the hours grew cruel again. When she couldn't stand practicing with her weapons any longer, she took long walks through the ruins. But these only reminded her of things that no longer were.

She was up in the woods in the hills when she saw the girl. Crouched in the dust, knees splayed to the side. As Mia approached, Raina's head twitched, but she didn't look up from the object of her attention: a striped skink moving unhastily across a dusty sheet of plywood.

"If a man approaches with a blade, there is no question how you greet him." Raina stared down at the lizard. "But when he comes at you showing nothing but a grin, it does not look good to stab him."

"Sorry," Mia said. "I'll get out of your hair."

The girl turned, watching Mia from over her shoulder. "I wasn't talking about you. There was another fight this morning. Jake Garza was shot."

"Dead?"

Raina shook her head. "The attackers fled after the first exchange. I think he will live. His testicles want children too badly to let him depart so soon."

"I see." Mia rested her hand against the trunk of a pine. "All this skulking around they're doing. It must be hard to know what to do."

"Why would it be hard?"

"Like you said about the man with the grin and the empty hands. You can't just shoot him."

"Yes I can. If he keeps coming, I will."

"But it would look bad, wouldn't it? Mauser doesn't want to commit to war until he's sure there
is
a war."

Raina smirked. "That is because he is Mauser and he thinks you cannot read what is not spelled out. Their people are attacking our people. What else is there to know?"

Mia tapped her finger on the rough bark. "Then what's stopping you?"

"Is the poison confined to the pit? Or does it taint the entire fruit?"

"You mean, is this coming from one person urging them to war? Or does everyone there want it? How do you figure that out?"

"I don't know," Raina said. "But no matter how much the stranger smiles, when he gets too near, I must draw my sword."

"You'll go to war."

"And I will purge them."

On the plywood, the skink kicked away, flicking leaves behind it. As soon as it quit moving, Mia couldn't separate it from the mess of leaves and dirt. "What if I could find out who's pushing this?"

Raina laughed. "Then you will have surprised me. Do you have a suggestion?"

"I become one of them," Mia said.

"You think it's that easy?"

"To deceive people?" It was Mia's turn to laugh. "Sure. All you do is show them what they want to see. Tell them what they want to hear."

"Your stories," Raina said. "That may work on men of weak minds. Those who would rather turn their backs on the darkness than understand what it is made from. But if this man is worth the steel he carries, he'll cut you down the second he senses your lies. Just as I would."

"You think so?" Mia let a long second pass. "I hope you're not too proud."

She shucked off her overshirt, peeled her t-shirt over her head, then skillfully unwound the bindings around her chest.

Raina's eyes widened, then twitched in recognition, and finally slanted in amusement. "Sometimes, when I've been lost, a gecko has shown me the way. Today, I think I've been shown a chameleon."

Mia glanced downhill, but the trees hid them from anyone but each other. "When do I start?"

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