Then it came a second time, and this time Lara stopped. With her disciplined rhythm broken, the world filtered rudely back in; the tick-tock lap of the tide, the smell of driftwood and plastic flotsam tangled with rotting seaweed, the rub of humidity in the air. It was like taking off headphones and surfacing into traffic, as the sound called out a third time.
"Lara."
It was faint, barely recognizable as a voice, but it was there and Lara spun, scanning the darkness of the road and the deep inky blots between low apartment buildings, uncertain if she'd really heard anything or if she was imagining it. Nothing there was moving. Cars and SUVs squatted on the sidewalk as silent and dark as felled ogres.
"Lara."
It came again and a chill washed through her, as for a moment she thought she recognized the man's voice. She turned this time out to sea, surveying the endless march of waves, and thought perhaps she picked out the slightest blip against the dark, perhaps even the sound of frantic splashing.
Was that a person?
The tide lapped by her feet, and she realized she'd approached up to the tide's edge. The shudder came over her again, but she took another step forward into the warm and foamy water before stopping herself. This was crazy. There couldn't be anyone in the water now, it wasn't possible. This had to be another imagining.
"Hello," she called. "Is anybody out there?"
No answer came. A faint wind rustled over her skin, dragging like soft claws over the goose bumps on her arms.
"Hello?" she called again, squinting and craning to hear any reply, while the water washed up over her feet. She took another step into the water, so the dirty foam rose to her ankles.
"If you can hear me, say something!"
She waited, but still no answer came. The splashing sound faded, if it had ever been there at all, and she was left feeling cold and uncertain, though the dragging breeze was still warm. Suddenly the sea seemed very large, a vast and inhospitable expanse, no place to stand by at night, no place to swim out into seeking lost souls.
"Get a grip," she muttered to herself, though her voice carried little conviction. It was silly to feel afraid of nothing, a noise going bump in the night, just a trick of the senses. Still she peered out over the water. Was there a buoy out there? She couldn't remember. Once perhaps there'd been a sea wall, and that little blot could be a sole standing pillar, yet to rot away. That was all it was, surely; the tides splashing unevenly against a chunk of old, obstinate wood.
The wind breathed and she took two steps back, out of the water. Her heart was racing sharply in her ribs, so she took slow, deep breaths to counter it. She let her gaze wander away from the ocean, back to encompass the beach, the dark silhouettes of buildings and sunken vehicles. But all the time while she was looking away, she felt a prickling on the back of her neck, like she was being watched.
Yet the ocean was just the same when she turned, just lapping on the sand. She let out a shaky half-laugh and started walking back the way she'd come. This was not what she'd come out for. Amo would laugh at her if she told him any of this, starting to jump at her own shadow.
She made it seven steps before the voice came back.
"Lara!"
She froze. This time it was louder and she couldn't deny it was familiar, though she couldn't name it. What felt like ice water ran down her spine, making her shudder so hard her arms jerked. She had to turn but didn't want to.
The splashing sounds started up again, unmistakable now, loud and clear. That couldn't be the tide off a piece of rotten wood, it had to be a person. Her heart thumped painfully hard, reminding her of those awful seconds outside Pittsburgh as the demon squeezed and her chest popped inward one bone at a time and…
She spun.
Far out in the water was a speck of a flailing figure, beyond even the point she'd thought it had been before. A person in the water. Perhaps they hadn't heard her calls; perhaps they'd been under the surface and hadn't been able to reply. They were there now though, undeniably, and she was the only person on the beach who could help.
She kicked off her sandals and ran out into the tide.
The warm water splashed up her thighs and made the loose cotton yoga pants she used as pajamas cling to her skin. Three more steps and she dived, plunging herself bodily into the frothy ocean with an icy slap.
She began to swim in a powerful front crawl. Stroke, stroke, stroke, stroke; four arm rotations followed by a breath, occasionally looking up from the dark water to check her bearings. The moon cleaved through the clouds above, lighting a narrow channel over the low wave crests toward the spot the figure had been. She couldn't see it anymore, but the sound of its familiar voice reverberated round her head like the dreams; a man's voice, someone she trusted, someone she needed to see.
For what felt like minutes she drove on, until her shoulders burned and she was struggling to gasp in a good breath every four strokes, and stopped. She dog paddled in place, catching her breath as waves rolled on, splashing off her cheek. How far had she come out?
"Hello!" she called. She kicked and spun and shouted more, seeking the figure, but she couldn't see it, and even if it was crying out now, there was little chance she would hear it over her own splashing to stay afloat.
"Is anybody-" she called, but received a mouthful of bitter brine as a taller wave hit. She kicked up through it and swam breaststroke in a tight circle, peering over and between the fuzzy silver wave tips, but there was nobody; not even a buoy or a scrap of sea wall.
She was alone in the ocean.
Another memory came back to her, of banning Vie and Talia from ever coming out this far, because the beach fell away quickly and caused a powerful undertow. She'd tried to enforce the same ban on Anna when she was younger, but of course Anna had ignored it. Every time she'd toppled from a catamaran or yacht, Lara had feared she would sink without a trace.
Now she was here. She hadn't thought. Another tall wave hit and briefly buried her, splashing salt water into her mouth again. She surfaced and spat it out, though it was getting harder to suck in a clear breath, and her legs and arms were tiring.
She turned to sight in on land, looking for the streak of moonlight she'd followed out, but it was gone. The clouds had sealed over and there was no light on the shore to guide her back in. There was no clear sign of land at all; the horizon was a dark line in all directions. Panic kicked in as the waves filled her vision, and she realized she didn't know which way was home.
2. HELP
This had been her nightmare for Anna.
All those months Anna had been alone out on the ocean, on her flimsy catamaran racing across the Pacific or the Atlantic, going to see her father in Mongolia or coming home from Europe, Lara had lain awake at night terrified of what might happen.
What kind of stand-in parent was she? Cerulean had taken responsibility with Masako by his side, but it had been obvious from the start that Anna looked to Lara first for guidance. Perhaps it was because they both looked the same; dark skin with dark hair, or perhaps there was something too needy about Masako's wheedling, hungry mothering that turned the independent Anna off, but the end result was she'd always come to Lara.
Night after night she'd found the little girl at her side when she woke, having curled up between her and Amo in their makeshift bed in the Chinese Theater's screen three.
"I've got a red string," she'd sometimes whisper up to Lara, and pass her one in her little dark hand, as if red string was somehow the cost of entry. Lara had hugged her close and tried to smother the obvious pain out of her, but there was no erasing the mark her father had left behind.
Then Anna grew up.
That mark from her father never healed; instead it became a deep, disfiguring scar, only answered by daredevil stunts on the water that left Lara's heart in her mouth.
"Don't go so fast," she'd tell Anna. "Don't lean so wide. If you wreck that far out you'll never be able to swim back in."
At first Anna had just smiled her co
nfident, know-it-all grin. Sticking it to Lara had become as much a sport for her as sticking it to Amo or Cerulean. At first that kind of behavior had been an almost sweet rebellion, something cute to comment on, but it never stopped. It got worse, until at last she left them all behind. She went to the Pacific, and they all stood back and allowed her to go. Amo had held Lara back physically in the doorway of their apartment, while Vie and Talia played in the next room, with tears pouring from her eyes.
"She has to go," Amo had said repeatedly, firmly. "She needs this and we can't stop her. You know I'm right."
Lara knew it, though she hadn't wanted it to be true. Even if it wasn't for her father, at this point Anna would go just to spite them all, because Lara had accepted those red strings. Because Anna had once been small and vulnerable and had needed those hugs. She hated them all for the debt she owed, even though none of them thought of it that way. So Anna went, and Lara let her go, though every night that followed she had feared as if it was her own child out on the waves, alone, because after all Anna was her child. Masako and Cerulean were both dead. Lara was her mother now and…
Now Lara was going to die too.
There was no use crying for help. No use panicking or splashing wildly. She'd swum herself out. She would have to swim herself back.
The moon appeared again, offering another slash of light across the clashing waves, but it wasn't clear if it led to the beach or deeper out to sea. She kicked to gain height but even as she glimpsed over the waves, there was only the same dark horizon line out there on all sides.
The cold realization sank in that dying was possible. It could happen. She'd only swum out for a few minutes, but it was dark, there was the undertow, and that was enough. It was a grave mistake. She saw flashes of Amo sitting in his chair and trying not to weep, Vie and Talia growing up without a mother, and worst of all never knowing. Her body would not be found, dragged down by the rip tide. They might imagine her just another victim, imprisoned in a pit by another Julio, suffering without end while they tried to go on with their lives. They would never be sure.
It was a fleeting portrait of misery, but it put fire in her belly.
She swam. She was weary already and she didn't know which direction was right, but there was no choice. Swim a few minutes one way, and if land wasn't close, swim a few the other way.
The waves crested over her head and she abandoned her clean front crawl in favor of bobbing her head up after each stroke, to suck in froth and air. Now she felt the undertow tugging her back, as if she was a tiny figure on the end of a giant elastic band, and every stroke forward stretched the rubber a little tighter, threatening to catapult her back the way she'd come.
Stroke, breath, stroke, breath.
Then the voice came again.
"Lara!"
It was abruptly loud and insistent, matched by a fury of splashing that could only be coming from right behind her. She froze in the water, sinking briefly under the surface before surging back up. The splashing was still there, insistent, and now someone was breathing too, ragged gasps that she fancied she could feel on her shoulder.
"Lara!"
Her heart chilled and her arms and legs were like lead, but she couldn't turn away, even if it was impossible, even if it meant the panic could strike hard at any time.
She turned.
Immediately behind her, within feet only, there hung a bloody head on the water. She gasped and sucked in seawater. The lips in its red face were moving though its throat had been cut, sawed through to the bone leaving a bloody second mouth yawing wide open. Breath hissed out, along with the irregular pulse of blood.
Cerulean.
She gagged, sank again, and kicked back up facing away. Her breathing was out of control and the dead lips kept calling out her noiseless name, and she swam. It was a vision, just a dream and she had to get away.
The splashing followed her. Her heart thumped so hard she thought she was going to die. She swam and swam while her name rang out on the air, then her feet struck sand.
She gasped and got both feet under her. She stood, and the splashing was gone. The voice was gone. Still she didn't dare look back. Instead she could just make out the dark gray bar of the beach ahead, and above it the blocky black line where the clouds and intermittent stars cut off at the apartment roofs.
Thank god, she'd made it.
She lurched forward out of the water like a zombie, trudging up past the tide line of worn plastic bottles and old snags of rope, to kneel in the floury dry sand and catch her breath, and give thanks, and promise to never do anything like that again.
* * *
There hadn't been a person.
Walking back, stripped down to her underwear with a warm-ish sea breeze drying her skin and the sodden pajamas in her hand, she looked out at the water and wondered at how vivid her imagination had been.
Of course there was no one there; no Robert in the water, calling her name. There never could have been. Only thoughts of Anna, and the strange mood the dreams had cast had left her vulnerable to another waking vision. She hadn't had them for months now, not since the change in Amo, and she hadn't been prepared. Still, she was fine now, no harm done. The chilly moment where death had been a possibility still hung over her, but lightly.
She hadn't gone that far. She'd always been a strong swimmer. The undertow couldn't really have sucked her out to open sea.
She left it like that, just another unpleasant image from the past; one more to be shuffled to the back of her mind where it could mingle with all the others and hopefully lay down and die.
She thought of other things instead, as her stride grew steady and the familiar crunch of damp sand sounded below. They were running the final harvest today, in Chino Hills. Many of the vegetables there, like the golden squash, the weak wheat crop, their corn and their ranks of genetically modified soy from the Maine bunker, were timed down to the day.
She'd already prepared the corn-husking machine, plus ice-baths to speed-freeze the squash and corn for transport and storage, as well as the wheat-sheafer, two tractors, a mini-factory on wheels for them to pre-boil the soy into solid tofu blocks, along with tools, food and water for the day, and two semis to fetch it all north.
Thirty-four survivors of New LA would all be there, minus the seven they'd sent north to prepare the new settlement. They should finish in two solid day's work, plus one shift each squeezing and pressing the soy down to tofu curds through the night. It was damn hard work, but something she was looking forward to really, a real blast from the medieval past when whole villages would turn out to till the land, parents working alongside children in a true community effort to get it done. It was the last thing they'd all do together in New LA, and should provide a clear, positive break. Afterwards they would almost be ready to head north and join the advance contingent, where they too would be harvesting the first trial crops planted six months earlier.
The sand crunched, and she passed by the Chinese Theater on the left, nearly home now. In the dark, so hulking and solemn standing back from its broad, stone-paved courtyard, it seemed more a mausoleum than the figurehead of hope Amo had made it into. It would still be an important step on the cairn trail going forward; within its depths they would leave a mother lode of gear, the final resupply for any weary souls who had traveled thousands of miles to find New LA. Only a hundred miles remained, a last leg to the north, leaving it as just the first welcome mat in a web that now circled the world.
Outside the apartment she hung her wet pajamas to dry on a lamp gable. Inside, the building breathed gently with the wind, and as she scurried down the hall wearing a light bra and panties only, her horrific ordeal in the water seemed very far away.
She checked on Vie and Talia; still asleep, then snuggled into bed beside Amo. He murmured something quietly in his sleep.
"It's OK, honey," she whispered.
He rolled and slept on. Lara spooned close behind and closed her eyes. The dreams didn't sneak up on he
r now. Probably she was far too tired.
3. LEMONGRASS
It was a Thursday, and it came on hot.
Lara woke in bed aching and sticky from the dried wave froth, with Amo kissing her bare shoulder.
"Tastes like salt," he said foggily, and looked up at her with a bleary smile. "When did you strip off?"
She smiled back down at him, though the smile faltered as memories of the night before came back; struggling in the water after some phantom sound, that terrible head on the water. She forced a smile and stroked his hair.
"It was hot last night."
He kissed her shoulder again. "Salty," he mumbled, more to himself than to her.
Lara patted his head, unsure whether to tell him the truth. He would only get upset, which he had every right to be. Being out at night alone was bad enough. Swimming at night was crazy. But, there was no good reason to worry him more. There was nothing he could do about it now.
"I dreamed I was in a popcorn maker," she answered, aiming to distract him with one of his silly, surreal games. "Are you sure you don't taste butter too?"
He grinned sleepily up at her. "I don't know. I haven't tasted everywhere yet." Then he started to slide down under the blankets, but she caught his head.
"All right, lover boy. We've got things to do today."
He smiled and let himself be satisfied with a kiss.
In the bathroom Lara caught herself smiling in the mirror. Yes, things were getting better.
Breakfast was slightly overripe grapefruit with slightly stale buns, home-churned butter and a tall glass of fresh cold milk each. Lara, Amo, Talia and Vie sat around the breakfast bar as the air just got hotter, licking their fingers and chattering about the tasks of the day ahead.
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