Three metal spears rose sixty feet from the tarmac, sleek and cold and massive. Scaffolding buffered the rockets, one side of the support structure a blocky rectangle taller than the missiles themselves, metal steps like a fire escape running up its side, the second section standing there like a metal power pole, wires dangling between it and the rocket. The weapons looked more than ready to down an alien ship. They looked ready to end the world.
"Amazing," David said.
"I thought they'd be underground," Raymond said. "In Wyoming."
"They must have brought them here during the virus. Ready to strike down the perpetrators."
"It'll just take one," Anna said. "What do you want to do with the other two?"
Wind ruffled the grass. The afternoon warmth had leeched away, lost as the sun dropped into a half-haze of spray and what might soon be clouds. Unseen, a red-tailed hawk shrieked across the hills. It felt unreal, something from a dream, a half-remembered story told to him while he was high.
"Let's move," Anna said. "Split up and secure the grounds."
Raymond straightened. "I think we should stick together. It isn't that big."
"You got lungs, don't you? Something happens, make them shout."
He glanced to David for support, but the man was already fumbling his laser from its improvised holster. Anna worried him. Her assumption of leadership was a disaster in the making: she was impulsive, angry, enthusiastic to the point of being crazy. They could easily have been killed during the beach massacre. Vandenberg looked empty, but right there nuclear missiles sat out in broad daylight. They were power incarnate. The kind of thing that would attract survivors and occupiers alike.
With sudden clarity, he knew he should shoot her. It was what Walt would have done. There would be no arguing her around. But too much of him simply didn't care. Of course she was crazy, a ready murderer, maneuvering to seize power even in situations, like their hypothetical future society, that didn't yet exist. That was just the way things worked. That's what Mia's death had revealed to him. People could be killed at any time, be it on purpose, accidentally, or through cosmic indifference. No dream was guaranteed—most would fail, no matter how hard you worked. Everything decayed, and too often, people were actively helping to make things break down that much faster. All you could do was get away. That's what he should have done. He should have gone to Colorado with Mia. Built his own little corner of the world with the person he'd loved.
He stalked off across the grounds. Jeeps and massively long flatbed trucks sat empty, dirt caking their windows. An assault rifle rusted in the weeds. Birds twirped from the tall white radar stand, nests woven into the crotches of its metal joints. He walked to the curve in the road and stared out to sea. It was just as empty, wasn't it? He turned to brush dust from the window of a metal shack, peering inside at dark computers, radios, and desks. When he finished his sweep, he reconvened with David and Anna at the metal doors of the big white block that seemed to serve as the command station. David strained against a metal bar he'd levered under the handle. Anna stood back, arms folded. The door rattled; David fell away, panting.
"Let Raymond give it a shot," she said.
"There's something at the bottom." Raymond pointed to a flat white strip glued across the door's lower edges. "Let me take a—"
"You just have to lean into it." Anna took the rod from David and bore down. The veins in her forehead squiggled under her skin. The door popped open, juddering, the white strip snapping free. Its broken edges glittered with bright metal. "Told you."
Dust and death wafted from the dark entry. They fetched flashlights from their packs. David tried the lights to no luck. Down a dusty hallway, another set of doors stood closed, sealed by some kind of magnetic lock that now lacked the power to keep them out. The corridor opened to a wide, spacious room that had been emptied of all equipment and furniture. On the floor, bodies lay in two rows. Desiccated skin hung from the bones. Brown stains spread beneath the remains. There was little smell.
Further on, the computers were black, lifeless. Raymond didn't know why he'd expected any different. He was about to sit down there in the middle of the floor when David found the stairwell to the basement. The man nodded, cheeks wrinkling around his small smile.
He had the generator on in minutes. Lights flickered, blinking over the dust griming every chair, keyboard, and monitor. On the top floor, the Pacific sunset streamed through the dirty windows, illuminating two dried-out bodies in uniforms, a fallen pistol, and a pair of keys glinting from the room-wide terminal.
David reached for one with a single finger, withdrawing as soon as he made contact. "Oh my."
Anna stared at the controls. "Is that all we need? Can we do this?"
"I'll have to get into the software. We have no idea where those things are currently aimed—China, I'd expect, perhaps North Korea. The targeting will have to be reconfigured entirely."
"That's not telling me the answer to what I asked."
"This is military software. It may have military-grade encryption. I won't know until I dig in."
"Start digging. I'm going to get on the radio and see if the ship's still there."
Raymond honked with laughter. "We don't even know if it's still in LA?"
"So what? The 'I' in 'ICBM' doesn't stand for 'in-state.'"
In the orange glow of the waning sun, he laughed again. Had the plan really been so threadbare? What if the keys hadn't been here? The generator hadn't worked? What if the mothership had since left for parts unknown? Rolling around on that dingy subway platform, this had been his big bright idea? At the time, lost in the fog of the bombing in the street, it had felt foolproof. Now that he was standing in the control room, hours or mere minutes from a launch, he didn't see how they'd even made it this far.
"Oh." David leaned over his monitor. The text was too far away for Raymond to read. "There's no security at all."
"This is strange," Raymond said.
"What's strange is those nukes weren't launched just for the fuck of it." Anna pointed at the two withered bodies. "That's why they're dead. One of them wanted to."
"You weren't here."
"When you remove all other explanations, the one that remains must be correct."
David clacked keys. "I don't know what I'm doing. With a few hours, I may be able to rectify that."
"Take your hours. I'll be on the radio." She strode from the room. Raymond drifted to the window and stared out as if he were keeping watch. David didn't seem to notice. The window faced west and the sun was on the sea and sinking so fast he could see it moving through the mist. It seemed like it should hurt, staring at it like that, but it didn't. The sun slipped away. He blinked against the greenish afterimage floating across his eyes.
"Can you really do this?" he said.
"Perhaps if I didn't have to answer questions about whether I can do this."
"Oh."
"Sorry, I'm all frizzle-frazzled here." David shook out his fingers, breath whooshing. "I don't tell missiles when and where to explode. I code websites about pre-Elizabethan leather-tanning."
Raymond stared out to sea. "Will we have to shield our eyes?"
David swiveled in his seat. "Does it look like you can see Los Angeles from here?"
"From the launch."
"The launch. I wouldn't think so."
"I'd like to watch it. It should be remembered."
David hunched over his keys. Clouds massed, thick and gray. The light flowed off to the west. Anna returned some time later, yanking him away from memories of trying to find Mia purple shells along the beach.
"They're still there," she said. "If you can trust somebody from Salt Lake City, anyway."
"Mm," David said.
"How's it coming in here?"
"Along."
"Good. Goodness." Her protruding eyes settled on Raymond. "What are you doing for the cause?"
"What am I doing?"
"You look like you're reading over David's sho
ulder. Nobody likes it when you read over their shoulder."
"What else is there to do? Should I sweep up?"
"You could be looking for food and water. There must be some. I bet they have some very nice guns, too. Do you think the batteries in this alien shit will last forever?"
"I'm going to watch the rocket launch," he said. "The Twinkies and M-16s will still be there in the morning."
She cocked her head and stepped forward. "What, does your leg hurt?"
"Get out of my face."
"Did you watch the sunset, too? I bet you did. I bet you sat here and thought poetry to yourself."
"Get out of my face. Step back and stay back."
"Or do you miss your girlfriend? Need some alone time to go wet those cheeks?"
Heat blasted through his nerves. He hooked his fist straight into her jaw. Anna's head snapped back, eyes wide and wild. He swung again, clumsily—the last time he'd been in a fight had been in a snowfield beside the middle school gymnasium—but with all the horrid power of his fury. His third punch knocked her to the linoleum. Her lip dribbled blood. The skin around her left eye was pink and already starting to swell. Raymond forced his foot to stay still and not smash into her teeth. If he started, he wouldn't stop until he saw brains.
"I'm going to walk outside and watch the rocket go." His voice shook. "Then I'm going to walk away. If you come after me, I'll jam my thumbs into your froggy eyes and scoop them into the dirt."
Anna gagged sticky blood into the dust.
"Bye, David," he said. "Good luck."
The man gaped at him, hand pressed to the base of his throat. "Are you sure this is the right idea?"
"Never."
He got his pack. His feet echoed in the stairwell. The night was cold. He put on his coat and walked up a short slope to the parking lot, where he sat down on one of the low concrete spot-markers. The missiles waited on the pad, sixty-foot silhouettes, monuments to a dead people that would soon be used to end another. He zipped his coat up to his neck. The wind ran in the grass. His nerves fluttered like he'd had too much coffee. He watched for the front door to open, fanning light onto the dirt, but Anna stayed inside.
He had no way to know how much time had passed when he heard the rumble; he'd broken his watch sometime in the city and hadn't bothered to replace it. Clouds filled the sky from edge to edge, dark and low. He thought it might be thunder, but thunder faded. He widened his eyes as far as they would go, as if that would wipe away the clouds and splash sun across the sky, and then he saw the lights: a pair of blue dots inbound from the southeast, sweeping in over the hills.
His stomach coiled. He bolted for the command center. At the top floor, Anna scuttled back from him, knocking down her chair.
"They're coming," he said. "They found us."
32