Oblivion

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.

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 rubble 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.