Relapse (Breakers Book 7) Read online

  "You may speak," Raina said.

  "My name is Preston." The man's voice was hoarse and ragged. "I represent the Sworn."

  "Do you speak for Anson?"

  The man laughed hollowly. "Anson is gone. Abandoned us to you like the hero he is. So I'm here to test what you said before the battle. Are you here for blood? Or can I deliver my people to you knowing they'll be spared?"

  "Lay down your arms and we will know peace."

  "Do you swear?"

  "On the spirit of my dead father, I swear that not a single one of your people will be harmed." She leaned out the window. "Where is Anson?"

  "He took off. Ran north. Guess you woke him from that dream of his."

  "Disarm your people and bring them here. Let's put an end to this."

  Preston stared up at the barn, then bowed. As he turned away, Raina ran across the loft and flew down the ladder. "Mauser. Accept their surrender."

  He rolled his eyes. "Let me guess. You're after Anson. At least take some backup."

  She started to call Henna's name, then blinked, remembering she had lost the best of her warriors. Instead, she chose Bryson and Carl, then asked Georgia to dispatch knights across the grounds, both to scout for Anson and to ensure the Sworn weren't up to any trickery.

  She stepped from the barn. The night felt colder, sharper. By habit, she glanced up to check the mood of the moon, but it was hidden by clouds.

  No matter. She could feel its hunger. She had to find him. It was about far more than vengeance. All the people he had killed, he still carried them with him, shards of souls trapped inside the prison of his heart. Raina would find him—and release his hostages.

  She and the two men jogged through the grass toward the wall. After the last hour and a half of gunfire, explosions, and screams, the silence was shocking. She moved quickly, hugging the shadows of the wall. The cuffs of her pants were wet with dew. The Heart was oval in shape, and as they moved north, the wall curved gently.

  A cluster of shacks appeared to the right. Bryson and Carl moved to clear them while Raina watched the grounds. As she waited, she felt wind buffeting through the wall behind her. Four of the boards had been punched out. Raina peeked outside. The fog had all but cleared, but the grass outside was sodden. A trampled trail led straight to the trees.

  She called back to the others, but heard no response. Her prudent voice told her she should go back for help. The hunter in her told her Anson had left minutes ago and that every second counted. She exited the hole and loped after the footprints. As soon as she got to the trees, where fallen leaves replaced the thick grass, the trail grew spotty. But if Anson was running, it would not be back into the city. He would be burning with shame. Being seen in his defeat by anyone who knew him would fill him with fury.

  No. He would be headed over the hills. Making way to the desolation of the Valley.

  She picked up her pace, running lightly through the leaves. Ahead, the ground rose, headed to a clearing. She would scale it, see if she could spot him, then go back for Bryson and Carl.

  A branch snapped under her foot. Leaves crackled ahead; two figures stood silhouetted against the lesser darkness of the clearing. Raina inhaled sharply. As the shot went off, she flung herself toward the trunk of the nearest tree. Something kicked into her extended right leg. She landed on her elbows. Her leg was numb from the thigh down, sticky and dark. She drew her swords. Footsteps crackled toward her.

  Back at the wall, Carl emerged from the hole, running toward the woods with a pistol in his hand. Bryson was right behind him. The footsteps toward her stopped, then reversed course.

  Raina braced her leg and managed to stand. Carl sprinted up to her, skidding in the leaves. "What happened?"

  "It's Anson! You have to kill him!"

  "You're shot. The only thing I have to do is get your crazy ass out of here."

  She bared her teeth and headed for the clearing, in pursuit of the coward, but on the first step, her leg buckled. She shouted and fell to the leaves. Carl kneeled, slid his arms around her, and lifted her from the ground. Bryson walked along beside them, torso twisted to keep his rifle aimed back into the trees. Raina strained to spot the fleeing figures, but they had made their escape.

  29

  He woke up feeling drugged. After a few moments of woozy reflection, he decided that was because he had been drugged. He sat up. There was something wrong with his legs. Didn't want to move right. His heart burst into action—Anson hadn't amputated them, had he? Made sure Lowell wouldn't be going anywhere? In the darkness of the box, he reached for them. Felt his knees, his shins, his bare feet.

  Adrenaline swept through his head, clearing it. Nope. Intact. His feet weren't moving right because they were chained together. On inspection, "chains" was hardly the right word: rather, a stiff rubbery tether was clamped around his ankles with tight, seamless loops. He scratched at it with his nails. Nada. He sat, pressed his upper back against a wall, and pulled his heels toward his head, trying to get the cord between his teeth. After several seconds of this, his hamstrings felt like they were about to pop, and the image of him apparently straining to blow himself seemed undignified. He let his legs plop to the tough, spongy floor.

  Normally, a situation like this, the first thing he would do is take stock of his resources. He was currently dressed in a loose gown inside a bare, sealed room, so the obvious conclusion was that he was lacking in them. But that would be overlooking the most vital resource of them all: time.

  The thought came with a pang. He'd conditioned himself to treat this pang for what it was: a sign that it was time to get off that path, get his head on straight, and start looking forward again. A man could get drunk on the past just as easy as booze.

  Now, though, he wanted to remember. He had the feeling he might be trapped in the alien ship for a good long while. Spend too much time in the darkness and you start to belong there. You need a light. You need a light or you get so deep you forget there ever was anything else.

  There were lots of places where he could point to his life and say, Here, it started here, but if he was being honest, it had started with the divorce. He'd been with Mikaela eight years, and at the time, the split felt huge, boggling, like when you're in a dream and you try to lift a book or a gun and discover it weighs a hundred thousand pounds. Of course she'd taken Garrett. Not because Lowell was bad at fathering. But because she was hurting, and she wanted to hurt him back.

  She did her best. Lawyers. Courts. Cried at the hearing. Lowell wound up with two weekends with Garrett per month and court-mandated counseling with a man who couldn't wait to hear every detail of his and Mikaela's business. Lowell went back to drinking for two weeks, then woke up, made himself look in the mirror, and said, out loud, "You want him? Then act like it."

  He cleaned up. Quit baiting her and allowing himself to be baited. He told himself: you have time. Use it. She'll find someone else. She'll quit hating you. You'll jump through the court's hoops. You'll build your case. You'll get more time.

  He did, but not how he'd planned. Nobody had planned for the plague. Nobody sane, at least. He liked to think he had an eye for the shape of the creature causing the ripples, but the Panhandler moved so fast he'd already been exposed to it dozens of times before he understood what was happening.

  Once it was clear that it was a pandemic, he got together a bag and called Mikaela, rehearsing what he'd say to her. She didn't pick up. He called Garrett—these days, even kids had cell phones—but the call went straight to voicemail. He called Garrett's school. Reception told him he hadn't attended in three days. In a strained voice, the woman recommended continuing to keep him home until the flu had burnt itself out.

  He went by their house. Nada. He called Mikaela's mom's house, then drove to it. Shari was dead in bed. He went into a kind of fugue, then, checking her work, her friends, the restaurants she liked. Things were already starting to shut down; people were beginning to disappear. Cruising around Torrance, some fuckhole blew
a red light and plowed into Lowell's passenger side. When Lowell got out to make sure everyone was okay and maybe to punch the guy, the guy drew down on him. His eyes weren't kidding. Someone honked, drawing the man's attention. Lowell shot him down in the street.

  That put a close to his search. She was gone. He could keep hunting, if that's what his ego insisted, but if he wanted to be of use when the time came, he needed to get safe.

  He had a cabin in the hills he rented when he needed out of the city. He went there. Geared up. Sitting in the woods while the world went to hell and Garrett was lost in it about drove him insane, but he told himself the moment would come. When it did, if he was too whacked-out to recognize it, he'd never forgive himself.

  His fifth day at the cabin, his phone rang for the first time since leaving the city.

  "Dad?" Garrett said. "It's mom. She's sick."

  * * *

  The box opened with a noise like wet Velcro. He'd fallen asleep. A bald-headed woman in a light gown crooked her finger, beckoning him out.

  "Yes?" he said.

  "Time to put you to use."

  She led him through the tunnels. The smell was as dank as ever, but after his time in the box, the air tasted as fresh as rain. The woman got to the hangar full of machinery and scrap and stopped. On a table by the door lay a brush, pan, mop, bucket, and various bottles.

  Lowell laughed. "I'm a janitor?"

  "Do you think you're above this, traitor? I thought cleaning up messes was your job."

  "I'm not above shit. I'm just surprised the bugs can't think of a better use for us than scrubbing the floors."

  "They're fixing what was broken," she said. "That means cleaning the materials. And removing the dirt from the places where it could get onto the materials."

  He had a few questions about whose side she was on, but he let them go. She told him to sweep and scrub down the room. Once he was done with that, he was to get to work cleaning the scrap; this was shelved in an area designated by a purple cord.

  He got to it. He minded that she was staying in the room, overseeing him, but he didn't mind the work. Left him time to think. Way he saw it, he had three objectives. Get the fetters off his ankles. Get in contact with Randy. And find a way to get the two of them off the ship. It was as simple and as difficult as that.

  At the end of the day, the woman brought him to another large room, if much smaller than the hangar. Like everything in the ship, the furnishings were all wrong, but there was no mistaking a mess hall when you saw it. Adults mingled with kids as young as five or six. All were shaved to the scalp, giving them a uniform anonymity. The woman, whose name was Ashley, told him to get in line. As he shuffled toward the man spooning up their meal, he examined the faces of the other captives. And spotted Randy sitting alone.

  He shuffled to the table and sat. The table was about six inches too high and the chair was long and narrow.

  Randy broke into a surprised grin. "You're okay."

  "Survived a whole day swabbing floors. You all right?"

  "Why would they hurt me? I wasn't the guy who busted in and killed somebody."

  Lowell chuckled. "He was right. He should have killed me. We're going to get out of here, okay? Be ready."

  One goal, down like that. Two to go.

  Ashley quit watching him on the next day. As soon as she left the room, Lowell got a piece of scrap metal from the shelves and went to work on his fetters. It didn't leave a scratch. Dumbfounded, he found the sharpest piece he could—a hunk of steel so twisted and knife-like he had to be careful picking it up—but this too couldn't mar the rubbery strand connecting his ankles.

  He got back to work, thinking, but there was nothing to think on. He tried again near his other ankle, then in the middle of the cord. Nothing.

  Day after that, Ashley sent someone in to shave his head and scrub him with scratchy, chemical-smelling grit. She reassigned him from swabbing the hangar to swabbing hallways. That was the upside to custodial work: you moved around. Time to quit worrying about his fetters and take advantage of the new scenery. Throughout the day, he worked closer and closer to the foyer housing the tunnel to shore.

  Humans came and went through the hallways. They were all like him, shaved to the scalp, dressed in robes. A couple times, he heard aliens skittering away on their business. He waited until it was silent, then tried the door. It opened.

  On the other side, a giant cap had been placed over the entrance to the tunnel. Lowell wandered toward it. There were no visible handles, fixtures, or controls. This wasn't a door. Anson hadn't just restricted access to the tunnel—he'd had it detached from the ship.

  * * *

  He wasn't sure whether there were police anymore. From his cabin-perch in the hills, he'd seen fires burning for days on end; at night, gunshots reverberated through the heights. Even so, as he drove back to the city, he observed every speed limit and traffic signal.

  Traffic was freakishly light for the mid-afternoon. Mikaela had holed up in a hotel in Whittier. Lowell had no idea why she'd chosen Whittier; as far as he knew, she didn't know anybody there. Maybe that had been the idea: to take Garrett somewhere Lowell would never look.

  He parked in the nearly empty lot and strolled through the sunshine to the lobby. The door opened automatically, washing him in air conditioning. He wondered how much longer they would have such things. There didn't appear to be anyone at reception. He took the elevator upstairs, found the room, and knocked in the way he'd arranged on the phone.

  Garrett opened the door. His eyes were red, teary. Lowell knew. He came in, hugged Garrett tight, then set the boy down in front of the closed door.

  Lowell brushed his eyes. "Is there anything you need?"

  "I have a bag. In the closet. And some stuff in the bathroom. What about Mom?"

  "Wait right here."

  He walked through the kitchenette and living area and into the bedroom. There, the covers were thick with drying blood. She wasn't moving. He'd been bright enough to bring gloves. He put them on and tipped back her chin. Her eyes were half open.

  He stripped off the gloves, got the bag from the closet, and went to the bathroom for Garrett's things. Back at the door, the boy was crying again.

  "I called an ambulance," Lowell said. "They're going to take her to the hospital to get her everything she needs. Right now, we have to get out of here. It isn't safe."

  Garrett's face crumpled. He didn't resist as Lowell took his hand and led him out the door. Back at the cabin, Lowell unpacked Garrett's things in the second room.

  Garrett stood beside him, face downcast. "She's dead. Isn't she?"

  Lowell paused with a stack of kid's underwear in his hand. "Why do you think that?"

  "They kept coming to the hotel for bodies. Everyone's sick."

  He sat on the floor and touched Garrett's shoulder. "Except you and me."

  A few days later, and it felt like that was true. At night, he no longer heard sirens. LAX had already cut off commercial flights, but he no longer saw helicopters or private jets, either.

  Every afternoon, he walked a mile south, taking Garrett with him. Together, they climbed a ridge and gazed down on the city.

  "It's so quiet," Garrett said.

  "Could be like that for a while."

  "What are we going to do?"

  Lowell glanced over. "What do you mean?"

  "Aren't we supposed to go somewhere to be safe? Isn't the government looking for us? What about our house?"

  "The only thing we need to do is stay at the cabin."

  "Why there?"

  "Because it's safe. We've got everything we need. And that gives us the most important resource there is."

  Garrett cocked his head. "Orange juice?"

  Lowell laughed. "Time."

  * * *

  The tunnel was closed, but that didn't mean they were trapped. Parts of the crashed ship were sticking out of the water. If he could find a way up to them, they could swim for it. But that would absolutely
require getting the cord off his ankles. He still hadn't made any progress on that front.

  "You seen any lasers around here?" Lowell asked Randy at dinner that night.

  "Lasers?"

  "You know. They shoot blue things. Very hot."

  Randy frowned. "Not that I've seen. Except sometimes the aliens have them."

  It wasn't a great option. Taking one from an alien meant killing an alien. If they did that, the aliens would swarm the slave quarters; Lowell would have to be ready to proceed immediately with the escape. On the other hand, at least they'd be armed during the attempt. Over the following days, he glanced up whenever an alien picked its way down the tunnels, which wasn't often. Only once did he see one carrying a laser. This was holstered on its body, putting a wall of tentacles and legs between the prize and a would-be attacker. With his legs as limited as they were, Lowell thought it was even odds he'd be killed in the attempt, even if he came at it with a metal shiv.

  He finished his duties, went to the mess, sat down with Randy.

  "How's it going?" the boy said.

  "Great." Lowell jabbed his fork into a bowl of salty algae. "Forget plates. The way I scrubbed the halls today, you could eat off the floor."

  Randy rolled his eyes and leaned forward. "I mean about getting out of here."

  "Working on it."

  He nodded, sinking back into his seat and toying with his food. "Okay."

  "I'm trying."

  "I said okay."

  Lowell reminded himself: You've got time. They'd only been in the ship, what, ten days? Eleven?

  Yet he sure was tired of telling Randy the same thing.

  In the morning, he rolled out to scrub some of the halls he hadn't gotten to the day before. A cart wheeled down the hall, pushed by a girl who might have been twelve. Lowell toed his bucket against the wall. She trudged by without looking back. The cart was full of strips of rubbery orange matter. One edge of each of the thick strips was rough, irregular, but the other was as smooth as if it'd been machined.