Oblivion Read online

  THE TENTH

  PLANET

  OBLIVION

  Dean Wesley Smith

  and

  Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Story by Rand Marlis

  and Christopher Weaver

  A Del Rey® Book

  THE BALLANTINE PUBLISHING GROUP • NEW YORK

  CASTROVILLE, MARINA, THEN-

  A SHADOW ACROSS THE LAND

  The peninsula that was home to Monterey was still there, but instead of one of the most beautiful cities in California, there was blackness and rubble. Nothing else. No pier, no ships.

  No people.

  Cross gripped his seat. He wasn't sure what sound he made as the helicopter approached the destruction, but he knew it wasn't good. Perhaps he moaned. Perhaps he swore. Perhaps he simply gasped ...

  Cross had seen the dust, studied it, even held bits of it in various labs back in D.C. He had watched the battle on television, seen satellite images, still photographs, infrared images, and spectral analyses. Nothing had prepared him for being here in person.

  Nothing had prepared him for the blackness that covered the coastline for as far as his eye could see.

  By Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Published by Ballantine Books:

  THE TENTH PLANET

  THE TENTH PLANET: OBLIVION

  THE TENTH PLANET: FINAL ASSAULT*

  *forthcoming

  Books published by The Ballantine Publishing Group are available at quantity discounts on bulk purchases for premium, educational, fund-raising, and special sales use.

  For details, please call 1-800-733-3000.

  Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as “unsold or destroyed” and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.

  A Del Rey® Book

  Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group

  Copyright © 2000 by Creative Licensing Corporation and Media Technologies Ltd.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  www.randomhouse.com/delrey/

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-91744

  ISBN 0-345-42141-8

  Manufactured in the United States of America First Edition: February 2000

  For Amy.

  Thanks.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Also by the Authors

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Section One: REBUILD Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  Section Two: WAR 6

  7

  8

  Section Three: FINAL COUNTDOWN 9

  10

  11

  Epilogue

  Section One

  REBUILD

  Prologue

  April 23, 2018

  3:10 p.m. Pacific Time

  174 Days Until Second Harvest

  Danny Elliot was shaking as he ran, half crouched, to the white house at the very edge of the destruction. The morning was sunny and the air smelled faintly of roses and the sea. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine this neighborhood as it had been ten days ago, as if it had never changed.

  But he didn’t close his eyes. He didn’t dare. He had to remain alert, in case he saw a soldier or heard a truck. This entire area was cordoned off—a quarantine zone—and if he and his best friend Nikara Jones got caught, they’d get into a lot of trouble.

  Nikara was right beside him. Nikara didn’t look nervous at all. His thin mouth was set in a line, and his brown eyes were intent on that house. Danny was more concerned with the National Guard patrols and the other military vehicles that constantly roared along this deserted street.

  That, and with what his mother would say if she knew what he was doing.

  He stopped beside a hedge. It had been neatly clipped— probably a week ago, even though it felt like eighteen years ago—and was just high enough to give him protection from any approaching patrol on his left side. He put a hand on Nikara’s arm, stopping him.

  “What?” Nikara whispered.

  “I don’t think we should do this,” Danny said.

  “We’re here already,” Nikara said. That wasn’t entirely accurate. They were heading for the white ranch house that stood out against the blackness beyond like a beacon. They still had some distance to go.

  “What if we get caught?”

  “We talked about this,” Nikara said. He ran a hand through his tight dark curls, then shook his head.

  “Yeah,” Danny said. “At my house. I’m not so sure now.”

  Nikara sighed, and rocked back on his heels. He had been Danny’s best friend for the last ten years—since they were both five years old—and they had done everything together. Since the aliens attacked, they had spent most of their time with each other. Everyone else was watching television or working disaster relief. Danny’s mother would come home at night, sit on their new sofa—a family Christmas present she had bought on credit—and cry. He had seen his mother cry when his dad left five years ago, but she hadn’t cried since. Not once. He’d thought his mother was the strongest woman in the world. Maybe she was. Maybe even the strongest woman in the world couldn’t handle what the aliens did.

  Now there were people starting to say it really hadn’t been aliens, but the government that destroyed everything. But that didn’t matter to Danny.

  What mattered to Danny was that it had all been so unexpected.

  Ten days ago, he’d gotten up at six like usual, taken a shower, and had a bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats. Then he’d gotten his bag lunch from his mother and begged for lunch money like he always did, and when she’d refused like she always did, he’d gotten on his bike and ridden the mile to school. Another year and he’d be old enough to drive, but for now he was still stuck on his bike. He’d had algebra, English, and social studies before everything he knew disappeared.

  Alien ships appeared over San Luis Obispo and Monterey. And everywhere in between. Huge black alien ships that blocked the sky. Then they dropped a black cloud on everything, a cloud that ate through wood and skin and bone.

  Monterey was gone.

  San Luis Obispo was gone.

  Only the outlying areas remained. The outlying areas, where the housing was cheap. The poor section or, as his mother used to say, the wrong side of town. Their side of town.

  He’d never felt lucky living there before, and he wasn’t sure he felt lucky now. But he was glad to be alive.

  “Come on,” Nikara said. “We only got twenty minutes before the patrol is due.”

  Danny rubbed his hands on his jeans. His palms were sweating—his whole body was sweating. He’d never done anything like this in his life. He was breaking all the rules.

  “From here to the white house,” Nikara said. “We can hide near the rhodies. There’s a trellis behind them. From there we can climb to the roof.”

  That had been the plan all along. They wanted to go to the very edge of the Black Zone, as people were calling it, and see the destruction for themselves. Danny wasn’t entirely sure if he could tell anyone why he wanted to see the Zone. He just knew it hadn’t looked real on television, and from a distance, it seemed as if someone had dropped a lot of gray paint on the horizon. The sea was still there, and the sky, but all the buildings were gone. Some r
ubble remained— nonorganic stuff, the news reports said—but the trees, the buildings, the people were gone.

  “Aren’t you a little creeped out?” Danny asked.

  Nikara looked at him, his dark eyes flat. “No.”

  Danny felt a flush building. This had been his idea. For days he had pushed Nikara to come. Nikara had finally agreed, on the condition that he’d plan their route and time the patrols before they left. Nikara had put two days of work into this little trek, making sure they had time enough to view the destruction. No matter how creeped out Nikara was, he’d never admit it, not after all that.

  Danny should have known better—or he never should have suggested it in the first place.

  “Let’s go,” Nikara said, and started across the street at full run.

  Danny followed. So far, Nikara had been right about the patrols. They ran every hour, like clockwork. Otherwise, there was no one here.

  Every house was empty.

  This neighborhood with its trimmed lawns, and flower gardens, and newly painted small and old houses had always teemed with life. A lot of the people were elderly and spent most of their time outside. Most had owned their houses forever and took a lot of pride in them.

  Now everyone was gone and the houses looked abandoned, even though the flowers still bloomed. The yards were getting ragged, and the driveways were empty. Danny wanted to have someone—anyone—open a door and yell, “Hey, kid! Don’t you know you’re not supposed to be here?”

  But no one did.

  The doors remained closed and the blinds pulled down. He ran up the curb and onto the lawn of the white house, feeling as if he were trespassing.

  Nikara had already made it to the rhododendrons on the side of the house. Their pink flowers shook as he pushed past them toward the trellis.

  Danny took one more glance at the street.

  Empty.

  The cracked pavement seemed almost naked. From this direction, though, everything seemed normal. Behind the ranch houses, he saw the thirty-year-old manufactured homes that marked the beginnings of his neighborhood, and behind that the somewhat larger homes of the next development.

  Only if he looked forward, toward the white house, was he reminded of everything lost.

  He slipped into the rhododendrons—large plants that had probably been there since the houses were built—and felt the jutting branches scratch his arms. The pink flowers had no real smell, but the leaves gave off a slightly unpleasant odor. He had to push through the sturdy lower branches to get to the trellis.

  As he put his hand on the wood, Nikara said, “Careful. It’s wobbly.”

  Danny glanced up. Nikara was already on the roof. He was hanging his head over the side, watching.

  Danny took a deep breath and started to climb. The trellis wasn’t just wobbly—the wood was rotten and weak. He could feel it bending beneath his weight. A few years ago this wouldn’t have been a problem, but this last year he’d really grown.

  He shimmied up it as quickly as he could, hearing one of the boards snap just before he reached the top.

  Nikara put a hand on Danny’s back to help him up, then moved up to the peak.

  Danny lay on the roof for a moment, his heart pounding. The shingles felt gritty against his cheek.

  “God,” Nikara said. “You should see this.”

  Danny pushed himself up. The pitch of the roof was shallow—which was why they’d chosen this house—and it took very little effort to climb to the peak, where Nikara was now sitting.

  Danny climbed, still slightly crouched so that his hands could brush the shingles. That way, he didn’t have to look at the devastation until he was ready.

  “God,” Nikara said again. The word was coming out of him like an involuntary prayer.

  Danny sat down next to him, his feet resting on the other side of the roof, the peak against his butt. His hands gripped the rough surface. He waited until he was braced before he looked up.

  The blackness spread before him like a shadow across the land. It made everything look flat, even where Danny knew there were rolling hills, slight inclines, and tiny valleys. Then the blackness ended, and the blue water of the Pacific sparkled in the sun. The ocean looked exactly the same. Only it was as if someone had moved a new landscape in front of it, a landscape without houses or stores or tourist attractions; without restaurants or the Wharf or ships; without birds or dogs or people.

  His breath caught in his throat. He might have said something—he didn’t know for certain. He had gone into those businesses, walked down streets now buried in blackness. He had played at the water’s edge.

  He had had friends in the neighborhoods covered in soot.

  The wind was cooler up here and smelled of the sea. The blackness had no smell at all, at least not one he could detect. A gust hit him, and then another even colder gust, drying his sweat and covering his skin in goose bumps.

  “Can you see where Cort’s house used to be?” Nikara asked in a voice Danny had never heard before.

  Danny made himself look toward the south. Cort had grown up with them, but he lived about five blocks away. He had stayed home sick that day, April 13. And when it became clear what parts of the area were completely destroyed, Danny had asked his mother if she thought Cort got away.

  “No, honey,” she had said. She had tried to pull him into a hug, but he wasn’t a baby anymore. He didn’t need comfort. When Nikara had come over to the house the next day and asked the same question, Danny had said, “What do you think?” and neither of them mentioned Cort again.

  Until now.

  Danny’s grip on the roof grew tighter. The wind was stinging his eyes, filling them with tears. Cort had rounded out their threesome. He had been cautious when Nikara was reckless, the voice of reason when Danny had one of his crazy ideas, and completely willing to tag along, even on the silliest adventure. In fact, Cort would have been sitting beside them if he hadn’t—melted—or whatever those things did to someone.

  If he hadn’t died.

  Danny shivered. He would never see Cort again. Or Cort’s father, the only father who was still at home among the three of them.

  Or Cort’s dog, Buddy.

  Or Cort’s house.

  “Do you see it?” Nikara asked.

  “No,” Danny said. “I can’t tell where it was at all.”

  He was amazed at how calm he sounded. It was as if he were talking about a landmark or a shop or something he had never seen before. Not a place where he had eaten dinner, where he and Nikara and Cort had logged on to his parents’ system and sent phony e-mails to all the good-looking girls in class.

  “You can see some of the foundations, if you look hard enough.” Nikara’s voice was flat. That was why it sounded so weird.

  Danny squinted. He could see the shapes of the houses beneath the black dust, something that wouldn’t have been as visible from the ground. Large squares here, large rectangles there, a tangle of rubble between.

  He rubbed his eye. Damn the wind.

  “I still can’t pick out which house was his ”

  “Why does it matter so much?” Danny asked.

  “I don’t know,” Nikara said. “It just does ”

  They looked at each other. Nikara’s eyes were red, too. Cort was the only friend they’d lost. Their school was east of the destruction and everyone they knew had been in class that day. Except Cort.

  A lot of kids lost homes, though. And pets. And parents.

  “Do you think it hurt?” The question came out as a whisper. He was surprised it even left his lips.

  Nikara swallowed so hard his Adam’s apple bobbed. He hunched his shoulders, then turned the movement into a shrug. “They showed some film on CNN. That lady, in Europe—

  “Africa,” Danny said.

  “—she got caught in the black cloud and it dissolved her skin. There was blood everywhere and she was screaming .. ” Nikara’s voice trailed off. He glanced at the blackness before them as if he were seeing it fo
r the first time. “Yeah. I think it hurt.”

  Danny closed his eyes. He didn’t want to think about Cort like that lady, Cort on his couch, sick with the flu when suddenly the roof disappeared, and this black cloud came at him—

  Danny’s eyes flew open. There was no black cloud. Only black dust. “They don’t want people walking in that stuff,” he said. “You think that’s because it might dissolve their feet?”

  “I don’t know,” Nikara said. He brought his knees up and rested his chin on them, as if he were contemplating a problem.

  The plan had been to look at the destruction and then maybe walk through it. Unspoken in all of it was that maybe they’d find something of Cort’s. Maybe even Cort’s house. Maybe proof that Cort had lived through it all.

  But that wasn’t possible. Danny knew it now. Even though he had seen the destruction from a distance and on television, it wasn’t the same as sitting here, on the edge of it—an edge that was as arbitrary as the teams Mr. Goble chose in gym class. If Cort’s house had been five blocks east, Cort would be sitting up here with them now. Cort would know if the black dust was safe. He’d know how much trouble they’d be in if the patrols caught them. He’d know everything.

  “How much time do we have?” Danny asked.

  Nikara checked his wrist’puter. “Ten minutes ”

  “We have to get down before that,” Danny said. “They could see us for miles up here.”

  “If they’re looking up,” Nikara said.

  “Where else would they look?” Danny asked. “The attack came from above.”