Authors: Edward W Robertson
Breakers (41 page)
The bodies of captains and admirals dropped no different from the others, mucosal blood slopping together. Monitors flashed soundlessly. Walt panted, wide-eyed, the world literally tipping beneath him.
He found Otto seated halfway up the wide steps, one bloody hand held to his glistening belly. The old man grinned, eyes pinched. "What are you staring at? You ain't finished yet."
Walt nodded. Like a Luddite god, an avenging aspect of the billions of dead, he circled the bridge, shooting every monitor, black box, and control pad he could see. Plastic smoke curdled in the air. Sparks spritzed from shattered circuits. Otto hadn't moved from his seat on the steps.
"What the hell are you waiting for? Get out of here!"
Walt gestured for the window, now half filled with the black waves below. "The ship's going to crash!"
"I can't think of a better reason to abandon it."
"What about you?"
"Don't give me shit about how you can't leave me behind. I'm an old man with a gut wound. I've got less chance than the Cleveland Browns."
"Save your breath," Walt said. "I just reached the same conclusion."
"You son of a bitch," Otto laughed. Blood seeped from his side. "Get somebody to write me a song or something. You're gonna be hurting for things to do another few weeks."
"It was fun, Otto."
"You have yourself a boy and you name him after me. Which won't be any possible unless you quit this sewing circle right now."
Walt grinned. He turned and ran up the terraces, swerving around toppled desks and smoking hardware. Yellow blood oozed down the tilted floors. The elevator door closed automatically behind him. He could hardly feel its angled ascent. The silence inside pressed on his ears like swimming to the bottom of the pool. Three aliens waited at the far end. One managed to squeeze off a shot before he cut it down.
He sprinted through the huge warehouse, shoes banging, and down the curving tunnels past dark windows. Many of the doors now hung ajar; aliens scrambled down intersections clutching strange, spiky tools. He shot anyone who gave him a second look. Most failed to see him at all, or deliberately ignored him, rushing instead for whatever repairs or escape pods they expected would save their lives. Walt was back on the catwalk above the landing bay in five scant minutes. Below, jets taxied from storage, cramming the runways in the rush to launch. Engines blared, painting long shadows from the harsh white light of their boiling engines. His feet clanked on the metal walkway. And then he was through the last door, the last tunnel, standing in the cold wind on a thin platform overlooking the calm waters of Santa Monica Bay.
He laughed all the way down.
EPILOGUE
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, the afternoon sun warming the sand, Walt wobbled to his feet and climbed uphill, soon crawling on hands and knees, 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.
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.
MORE BY EDWARD W. ROBERTSON
NOVELS
NOVELLAS
The Zombies of Hobbiton: A Martian Love Story
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
The Battle for Moscow, Idaho & Other Stories
When We Were Mutants & Other Stories
The Kemetian Husesen Craze & Other Stories
About the author
Cover art by
Foldout Creative
(http://foldoutcreative.com)
Ed lives in LA's South Bay, where he works as a movie critic for
The Tri-City Herald
and has sold a number of sci-fi stories to a dozen different magazines online and in print. Though he studied literary fiction at NYU, he found most of it had far too few explosions and turbocharged death machines.
The author may be contacted at [email protected]. He blogs at http://edwardwrobertson.blogspot.com
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