H2O (18 page)

Eventually,
she went through the numbers with Sanders and he listened to her and agreed to
talk to some truckers. A week later, Laura awoke at six, took a shower, dressed,
and had her coffee. Her usual routine. Then she headed to her office, but she
never got there.

At noon,
Sanders learned that his daughter hadn’t shown up for work. That was a first.
So he went home to check on her, but she wasn’t there. Then he walked her route
to the office, but didn’t spot her. So he walked it again, stopping along the
way, checking buildings, yards, woods, and clearings, and he also knocked on
people’s doors. But no luck.

He kept
looking and finally found her the next day. She’d been shot five times and her
body dumped in the woods. He was crushed.

The local
police investigated and the Fibs were called in. The Fibs concluded that Laura
had discovered where the marauders hid their fuel supply and before she could
report it, the marauders had killed her.

Sanders didn’t
believe that for a second. He knew what Laura had told him. She’d never
mentioned the marauders. So Sanders headed north to investigate and discovered
that Laura had been right. Diesel was being stored in Yachats. And he saw that
trucks were fueling up on it and heading east. Trucks loaded with water. He was
sure that Laura, his smart daughter, had been murdered because whoever ran this
operation wanted it kept secret. But who?

Sanders took a
trucker hostage and got his answer. It was the Fibs. And now that he knew who’d
killed his daughter, he sought out the enemy of the Fibs. The marauders. And
when he found them, they told him who the real enemy was. Of course, he had to
see it to believe it and when he saw the golden ship at Black Rock, he
understood that his daughter had been murdered to keep the mining operation
hidden.

Sanders had
been one of the new guard, one of the men that Jonah wouldn’t allow on the
Black Rock raid. Jonah thought Sanders was too smart to lose. But Sanders was
also the man who’d redesigned the incendiary bombs for the raid, so he was
burdened with the guilt that the bombs had failed and all those marauders had
been massacred. For him, this new assault was a second chance.

Lily, Benny, and I spent the
afternoon learning how to fire machine guns and throw hand grenades. We weren’t
expected to use them, but Sanders wanted us to be prepared. Afterwards, Sanders
told Lily she was going to be part of my father’s team, the team that would
attack Crow’s headquarters.

I didn’t like
that we’d be separated and worried that there was a nefarious reason behind it.
Maybe Lily, the traitor, was put on my father’s team so he could keep the enemy
close at hand, or worse. Maybe he and the marauders planned to kill her and
they’d do it as part of the assault so I wouldn’t know. I tried to convince
myself that this was paranoia and focused instead on something else that was
bothering me. Something I knew was real. My dad wasn’t part of the team
attacking the Line. Shouldn’t he lead the charge? Wasn’t he the leader of the
marauders? Maybe the marauders had decided that they didn’t want to lose
another leader. Regardless, I lost some respect for him.

All the marauders had dinner
together that night and, afterwards, I spend more time alone with my father, in
his cabin, surrounded by his collection of books. We focused on what might
happen after the assault. He thought that if we destroyed the Line, the aliens
would either abandon Earth or attack it. He had no doubt that they had some
kind of economic formula which determined whether a mining operation was worth
fighting for or not. And if they attacked, he was sure they still wouldn’t
reveal themselves. For some reason, that was paramount in all their tactics and
my father hoped to find out why. Was there some Achilles’ heel there? They’d
use Fibs as they always did to hunt us down and kill us.

“And what if
they abandon Earth?” I said. “Won’t the Fibs still hunt us down? Crow’s not
going to believe that we blew up the Line to free the Earth from aliens.”

“At first,
he’ll go after us,” my dad said. “But then he’ll see the difference in the
Territory. He’s smart. Without all that false information flooding the Line,
every pattern in the Territory is going to change. And he’ll definitely see
that no one’s paying him to ship that water anymore. He’ll probably never
accept
why
everything changed, but it won’t take him long to realize
that it
has
changed.”

I agreed with
that, but I saw a lot of unknowns. Too many. Still, I didn’t challenge him. My
bet was that he and the marauders had weighed dozens of plans, each with its
own problems, and had decided that this one was best.

We left Iron Horse before dawn,
traveling in a caravan of seven cars. The trip to Palo Alto would take six
hours. We’d stop in Sunol, just outside of Palo Alto, and wait there until
nightfall. We’d launch our attack at two a.m.

There wasn’t
much conversation in my car. The sun rose during our trip, throwing rosy light
over the changing terrain. When we entered this part of the Territory, unlike
up north, the wilderness ended and we began to travel through an endless
landscape of sprawling, dead towns. Miles and miles of suburban towns that ran
all the way to the dead city of San Francisco.

The marauders
had scouted this route as safe from the Virus, but some roads were still
littered with skeletal remains and dried-out, leathery corpses. The morning sun
painted long stark shadows around the gruesome remains and I felt revulsion when
I should’ve felt anger. This was more evidence that the aliens had committed
mass murder to establish their mining colony.

We arrived at Sunol, twenty miles
from Palo Alto. Sunol had once been home to a National Park so we were once
again protected by the wilderness. We’d be here for twelve hours and then we’d
drive around the San Francisco Bay, past the salt marshes of the Bayland, and
up into Palo Alto.

We ate a meal,
and then broke up into small groups.

Lily and I
hiked away from the others. We hadn’t been alone since Crater had rescued us,
and I thought she’d want to talk about how her life had changed in the blink of
an eye. But she talked about my father.

She said I’d
received a great gift. A miracle. My father had returned from the dead. So why
was I angry?

I told her
that my father had abandoned me. How could I ever forgive him?

She kissed me
and said that I’d have to find a way. Otherwise, I was squandering a miracle.
She kissed me again and we watched the orange sun slide under the tree line. A
ray of sunlight shone through the branches and caught Lily’s hair, sparkling it
lemon yellow.

Night fell, and darkness engulfed
Sunol. We all rested, but no one slept. At two a.m., we headed to Palo Alto.
With our headlights off, we drove around the Bay, through more dead towns. The
marauders had scouted this route for months and knew every inch. In the
moonlight, I saw silhouettes of decay. Deteriorating buildings, abandoned cars,
crumbling street lights and storefronts. These once densely populated towns
were considered extremely dangerous, but the marauders knew that was a lie.
These towns, like Palo Alto, were free of the Virus.

We arrived at
the outskirts of Palo Alto and split up. One team headed to the power lines,
one to the water reservoir, one to the food warehouse. The two remaining teams,
including ours, headed toward the campus of what used to be Stanford
University. There, my father’s team would head to Crow’s headquarters, located
in an old administration building, and the rest of us would head to the
Stanford Linear Particle Accelerator.

The Line was
housed in the central building on the Accelerator grounds. In that concrete
structure, electron beams used to blast atoms into tiny particles. My father
found it ironic that a place which had once been home to advanced scientific
research was now being used to keep the population of the Territory ignorant.

We wound
through Palo Alto following the route mapped out by the scouts. We didn’t see
any Fibs. We drove into Stanford Hills, northwest of the campus, and parked our
cars in a deserted neighborhood. Then we continued on foot.

My father,
Lily and their team headed toward Crow’s headquarters. Benny, Miloff, Sanders,
Platt, Uli and I headed toward the Linear Accelerator grounds. We carried machine
guns, grenades, and explosive charges.

We crossed
Branner Drive, which separated Stanford Hills from the Accelerator grounds,
then entered the grounds, a series of unkempt lawns and empty buildings. Only
three of the twenty Accelerator buildings were in use. Miloff, who’d played
this night over and over again in his head, led the way and we stuck close to
the empty buildings, using them as cover. Up ahead, I saw moonlight glinting
off the ground. That meant asphalt and that meant Pep Ring Road, which the Fibs
used to drive through the Accelerator grounds.

Miloff
motioned that the road was clear and we crossed it, then moved passed the Heavy
Fabrication building, and headed toward the Metal Stores Shelter. We hadn’t
come across any Fibs, but that only made me more fearful. I thought that
somewhere out there in the darkness, they were waiting for us.

We stopped at
the Metal Stores Shelter. The entrance to the Line was less than a hundred feet
away, across a parking lot and a grove of trees. To our right stood the Controls Building which housed Fibs. Once we began our assault, Fib reinforcements would
come from Controls, but the building was dark for now.

We hid in the shadows of the
Metal Stores Shelter and waited for the other teams to launch their attacks. If
everything went according to plan, the Fibs would pour out of the Controls
Building to respond to the strikes across town, and there wouldn’t be any
reinforcements left to protect the Line.

Across the
parking lot, through the grove of trees, I saw the amber light from the
entrance to the Line. Because of the trees, I couldn’t see the entrance itself,
but I knew that four Fibs were standing guard in that dim light, chatting,
joking, and trying to stay awake. This entrance wasn’t originally part of the
building. It was constructed later, specifically for the Line. Double doors led
to an outer room which led to the building’s long inner chamber. The
Communications Center was in that chamber, and the restricted area, the heart
of the Line, was a little farther down.

During our
briefing, Sanders had told us that the marauders had considered using the
original entrance, but decided against it. It’d been barricaded long ago and
was far from the heart of the Line. There were too many barriers and unknowns
over such a long stretch of the Accelerator chamber.

We all began to look to the east
for the signal, a tiny flare. A yellow light, twinkling for a fraction of a
second, indistinguishable from a star in the sky. It was the signal for the
other teams to attack and for us to start a two-minute countdown. Within those
two minutes, we hoped to see Fibs pouring out of the Controls Building, on
their way to defend Palo Alto’s critical sites.

Time, of
course, slowed down as we waited, and just as I was thinking that something had
gone wrong, the yellow flare flickered against the black sky. Miloff smiled at
Sanders, then looked at his watch, and started the countdown. Miloff treasured
that watch. It was a Remnant, a wind-up model, that his wife had restored.

We heard faint
explosions. A good sign. The others had begun their assaults. I glanced at
Benny and he was staring down at his machine gun. I knew exactly what he was
thinking because I was thinking the same thing. We were both hoping we wouldn’t
have to use our guns.

My heart was
thumping fast. I felt it in my throat and tried to will it to slow down. But
the only thing that was slowing down was the time. Miloff looked at his watch
again, then at the Controls Building. It was still dark. The Fibs hadn’t been
alerted. Miloff looked to Sanders and shook his head.

I heard more
faint explosions and saw Benny’s leg start to jitter. If the Fibs in the
Controls Building didn’t leave soon, we’d be outnumbered. My heart shifted into
an even higher gear and I took a deep breath when suddenly, the lights in the
Controls Building flicked on. I glanced at Miloff and saw relief sweep over his
face.

Seconds later,
Fibs poured out of the Controls Building, ran to their SUVs, fired them up, and
screeched out of the parking lot.

They roared
past us and onto Pep Ring Road.

We all pulled
out our hand grenades, and waited for the SUVs to round the far curve. As soon
as their tail lights disappeared, we left the safety of the shadows and
sprinted toward the grove of trees.

We knew that
the four guards at the entrance would now be on high alert because they’d just
heard their colleagues race off. But that couldn’t be helped. Our plan was to
attack immediately while they were still confused about what the hell was going
on.

Benny and I
veered to the left and tossed our grenades over the grove. Before they landed,
we launched another set. On the far right, Platt and Uli did the same. Miloff
and Sanders hadn’t veered off. They were headed straight through the grove. The
grenade blasts rang out, one after another, in a quick symphony of explosions.
Then I heard Miloff and Sanders laying down machine gun fire and I started
through the grove, with Benny at my side.

I cleared the
trees and saw chaos and destruction. Two of the guards were down and two were
stumbling, dazed and bleeding. Small chunks of the building’s walls littered
the ground and chalky dust floated in the air.