"Just a little further," she says.
"To the viewing platform," I answer. I keep my eyes closed, feeling part excitement and part annoyance, though I'm trying to repress the latter. This was my thing, and now I'm a spectator. This whole thing was my idea, and though I know better, and I want to share it with Lara more than anything, I also want it just for myself.
It's ridiculous. A week back I'd have done anything to see her face. Now I just want a little more time for myself. I snort.
"What's funny?" she asks.
I think I'll keep this one to myself. "Nothing. I was thinking about being mayor of Sir Clowdesley. Digital cairns and all that."
It's a white lie, as cairns are something I've been thinking about plenty recently. We used to let everyone know where we were, just by clicking a geo-location button on our social media app. This cross-country slog has been pretty much the same thing, an analog trail across a once-digital world.
More people is what I wanted. That takes adjustment. I grit my teeth and adjust.
"There," she says. "Open them."
I open my eyes. For a few seconds I get used to the light, then I pick out the shapes of giant green and purple aliens, like stalky octopuses frozen out of water, holding ray guns, and beyond them I see her work, spread across the UFO façade.
It's better than I ever imagined. It is awesome, and it stands out starkly on the UFO's sheer silver saucer. It is a message from a modern-day hero that cannot be denied. Everybody who sees this will know what it means.
It is the silhouette of Michael Jordan, as seen on millions of shoes around the world, flying. His arm is up and touching the peak of the saucer, his legs spread across the widest point at the middle, and under his legs lies the famous strapline, adapted, stenciled in letters a story high.
JUST LIVE ON
It staggers me. He's an outline only, drawn in thick yellow paint, but the work is exemplary, on the largest scale yet. It reminds me of white chalk figures carved out in English hillsides that survive for millennia. It is a new Mt. Rushmore for a brand new world.
"Shit," I murmur, feeling truly humbled.
All selfish thought of getting away from Lara for a minute, all peevishness about her taking this role away from me, fades in the face of how perfect this image is. It is inspiring, and across his middle she's emblazoned my tag, a touch I never would have been arrogant enough to ask her to.
LMA
"You don't think it's shit do you?" she asks.
I look at her, thinking she must be joking, but she isn't. The nerves are plain on her face. I understand then, that this is about acceptance for her as much as it is for me. We both need to play a role in this thing, and I need to move over to make room. I can't complain. She has done her bit beautifully.
"God no, it's not shit," I say. "It's fantastic. It's inspiring. I really mean it. I never thought a corporate logo would move me so much. Well done, Lara."
She smiles shyly. She pops down to kneel beside me, placing her arm awkwardly around my back. The added weight presses down on my legs and hurts like a bitch, but I am so high on awe that I don't even grimace. I suck it up and kiss her.
"I'm so glad," she says softly, whispering against my cheek. "I was worried."
"Steady hand," I say. "Draw that in your latte and smoke it."
She laughs.
"You should add your tag too," I say. "LBA. Last Barista in America."
She grins and points. "I did. You can just see maybe, across his shoe."
I peer. I see it.
"Well-deserved."
* * *
We dredge and sieve a nearby pool for sand and pond scum, until it's relatively clean, then fill it up with jugs of mineral water. We take two days to relax, spreading out the work of filling up the UFO cairn with material. We drink cold piña coladas with freshly crushed ice, after hacking power to one of the icemakers, then think to add those same ingredients to the cairn. They can have coffee and cocktails, all those who follow on behind.
We lounge and sunbathe and recuperate. We drop in the warm pool water and walk up and down. It is rehabilitation for me. We take it in turns to carry each other around, held like rescued damsels bobbing on the surface. We skinny-dip without shame.
At times we get drunk, giggling and trying on expensive designer sunglasses naked in the lobby. We pose and lounge around like bohemians. We end up putting racks of sunglasses into the cairn too. We print out my new pages on A4 and fold and staple them into the comics in fat stacks. We make love lazily on the pool loungers, listening to soulful crooning from the Rat Pack.
"What if someone comes now?" Lara asks, "and they see us like this?"
"We'll have a toga party," I answer. "Set up some disco balls. Party at the end of the world."
She presses her hot chest against my chest. My legs hurt less now, even with her weight. Getting them in the sun seems to help. They tan irregularly, the newly forming scar lines remain a tight white, but the inflammation is fading.
"Do you really think there are others?" she asks.
"There have to be. I've seen two already. There must be more, hiding out there somewhere. Looking for us. They might be on the trail already."
She 'hmms' softly, starting to doze. I stroke her ringlet hair. It smells like coconuts, after we raided one of the expensive body-cream shops, and she had a crazy field day picking out a trolley full of beauty and cleansing products.
"It's not just for me," she'd protested when I rolled my eyes. "It's for the cairn."
It was a nice touch, I had to admit it. She made everything a lot prettier than I did. More welcoming and feminine I suppose. Mother and father to the apocalypse, I think she said that once.
"Cerulean's out there too," I say softly, into her hair. She 'hmms' again.
Cerulean's out there.
37. LA
After two days we pack up the convoy. I stand at Don's sword-marker grave, leaning on a fancy silver cane Lara found, and think about what I'd do if I found another person like him.
I don't know.
Perhaps if I'd just handed him the gun on the battle-tank, he would have looked it over and handed it back. We could have drunk whiskey or tea. I could have raised the issue of the cheerleaders later, or maybe never. Maybe it really was none of my business.
But there was no way to know that. He might have turned the gun on me, and spent the next three days torturing me to death. He'd already let go of civilization the minute he started to have sex with the ocean. When he tied them up, when he dressed them for his own pleasure, when he raped them, he crossed a line. It didn't matter if anyone saw it or not.
I know better than any. There is a line out there in the wilderness, and once you cross it, the only way back is long, hard and lonely.
I turn and walk away. The ocean rendered judgment in the end, and for that I'm grateful.
The JCB only has one seat, so I sit on the battle tank roof on my beanbag, strapped to the ceiling, as we roll out of Vegas. I don't feel jealous or possessive of this grand work anymore, I don't need to be in the driving seat or the one making the cairns. It's open-source for the masses now, and I don't own it. I wave goodbye to the hero on the UFO, and wonder what he'd think, if he saw what we'd done.
A corporation raised him up for profit, it's true, but I don't care about that. He was a hero to millions for his skill and his dedication, a symbol of perseverance as potent as any other, and he's a hero and a symbol still. Him and Pac-Man both.
"Goodbye Vegas!" Lara cries out from the cab.
"Yeehao!" I shout out. We're on the final cattle-drive home.
* * *
The ocean follow us down to the sea. It takes a few days, and we stop and take shelter in mansions set back from the road along the way. Some of them have grounds that stretch for acres in dead brown grass, withered for lack of water. I know California is notoriously dry.
I walk more smoothly every day, in and out of dark kitchens as big as my whole apartment used to be. I brew us gree
n tea.
"No art," I say, shrugging apologetically as I hand her a cup. "No foam."
Lara punches me in the shoulder.
"Argh, indicator hole," I wince.
She laughs.
I make 'fresh' bolognese with dried pasta, vine-ripe tomatoes from a sheltered part of the yard, using salt, pepper and wild-growing basil, with chips of dehydrated soy in place of meat. It tastes better than anything I've ever tasted.
"We can have whole fields of tomatoes," Lara muses, while we lie back on a massive balcony and watch the sun come up over the country. "Grapes too, there's plenty in California. Wine. We'll start up agriculture again."
"Fields of bolognese plants," I say. "I hear the soil is perfect for them."
She snorts. "That would be cows."
I lean back and savor the moment. "Fields of cow plants then. They'll be so cute when they bud."
She doesn't even snort. "There must be some we can round up. Fence them in again."
"Yeah. If the ocean haven't eaten them all."
"True. They ate their way through all my neighborhood's dogs."
"I'd like a dog," I say. "I'll call it Buddy."
"I'll have a cat," she muses. "And a horse."
We cuddle closer and nap. We drive on.
* * *
Los Angeles is a low gray sprawl. We come upon its suburbs gathered in the base of a low valley like receding ice at the pole, spreading out into a steady gray plateau of malls, condominiums, office parks, warehouses, and windowless buildings that could be CIA black sites or storage lockers or film studios.
We push through, down the same snake of road that has carried us like a river from New York, expanded now to eight lanes. We go under and over numerous other highways, each of them jetting off to other cities, spread across the country.
We hit downtown and stop in a tourist shop for maps, accompanied by the usual herd of floaters; maps to the stars in the Hollywood hills, maps to the various beaches, maps that show the Walk of Fame outside the Chinese theater.
We pull off I-15 and turn north along the coast. Everywhere there are dribs and drabs of the ocean, skinny and shriveled and gray, stumbling along the boardwalk and down to the beach. There they walk steadily to the water, and in.
"Jesus," Lara says. "They're really doing it."
She stops the convoy and we get out. We walk down to stand amongst them on the shore. They pass by us like falling snowflakes, oblivious, driven by some strange internal drive.
"Do you think they're going to drown?" Lara asks. "Was Don right?"
"No," I say. "I don't know, but I don't think so."
We watch them pass one by one, like shooting stars across the beach, flaming out in the surf. They don't try to swim, and they don't carry on the waves. They walk until they go under.
"Maybe they fill with water," Lara says. "Then they walk along the ocean floor."
"So they don't need to breathe?"
"Maybe not. They always have breathed, I know. But maybe they don't need to."
I squeeze her hand. "I hope so."
I really do. I don't like to think of all these people drowning themselves a few hundred yards away from where we stand. Surely the beach would be scattered with their washed-up bodies, if they were just dying.
"They're going somewhere," I say. "Maybe a better place."
We drive on. The Hollywood sign appears on the hills. We go past the Chinese theater the first time around without really noticing it. I only notice the stars on the sidewalk, glinting in the sun.
We pull back and park. We get out and stand before it. It is massive and red, festooned with pennants heralding the upcoming release of Ragnarok III.
"This is it," Lara says.
I nod. I root around inside myself, wondering what to feel. There's nothing strong, though. I half-expect to see a line of people already swinging by the necks from the entranceway, but there are none.
We are the first. I feel pride at completing this mission. I have come across the whole country. I have fought, and learned, and survived, and now we stand on the precipice of something wondrous, the end of the yellow brick road.
People may come.
* * *
It takes one generator to fire up the projector in the largest premier screen, and one to run the sound, and one to run the coordinating computer system in the central office. We perform a rude hack to get it all working, but it works.
It's all digital now. In the storage room by flashlight we sift through the solid-state black bricks that contain movies.
"Gone with the Wind?" Lara suggests.
"Put it on the pile."
"Ghostbusters?"
"Pile."
We heap them up. Already there's an audience of the ocean gathering in the theater, drawn by the sound and light. I guess these ones aren't quite ready to move on yet.
I keep hunting for the movie I've been waiting to see for years, one that was never screened, but must surely be ready. We don't find it in the theater, so we go on.
We find the studio that owned it, and dig through its campus. Every door we open releases floaters into the wild. We pass through cavernous dark studios, editing bays and offices, grand lobbies and storage rooms filled with old memorabilia, corridors lined with signed posters, busts of famous, long-dead actors, until in a central vault deep in the belly of Studio K, I find it.
Ragnarok III. It comes on two bricks, and we carry one each.
"I don't even like these superhero movies that much," Lara says.
"It's not about liking," I say. "It's an event movie. We watch it like people used to go to church, to be together and listen to a sermon."
"That is dour."
"I do quite like them too," I add. "There's more spectacle than church."
We slot the first half of the movie into place in the Chinese theater's control room with a satisfying clunk, on August 23rd, 2019, at 1:15pm. It kicks into life with a pre-roll of ads and trailers. We pause it.
We make popcorn in a microwave. We decant soda from the machines. We alter the strip line boards at the theater's front, sliding in the letters of our message.
LMA/LBA PRODUCTIONS PROUDLY PRESENTS:
RAGANAROK I, II & III TRIPLE BILL
WELCOME TO THE WEST COAST, SURVIVORS!
We settle down amidst the ocean, in the premium loveseats at the back, and watch the movie. It is great fun. The world is nearly destroyed, our heroes battle each other then unite, and all is relatively well in the end, with just enough mystery and threat left to hint at bigger and darker stories to come.
Afterward we stand at the entrance at sunset and look out over the actual ocean. It laps on the beach only yards away. Floaters flow out around us, heading down to the orange-dappled water like a tide of gray gazelle. We hold hands.
"They'll come," I say. "Cerulean will come."
Lara squeezes my hand. "Of course he will. The Last Mayor of America is handing out free coffee, who can resist that?"
I squeeze back.
We stand and watch the burning eye of the sun sink into the Pacific. I wonder if this is what the ocean are following, like devotees of the sun God Ra. Round and round the world they'll go, like a tidal flow, endlessly chasing the great bright light in the sky.
It makes me smile. It's no different than wildebeest roaming the plains or salmon swimming upstream. It's just another natural cycle, turning with the world.
We stand there a time longer, sipping bottled beer and thinking our own thoughts while the burned sienna sunset fades atop the ocean, when a noise comes from down the coastal road. It is unmistakably an engine, drawing near.
Lara turns to me with wide eyes. I smile.
We fire up the front generators that power up fairy lights decked around the Chinese theater's front. We watch the headlights meander up the coast, always growing closer. My heart hammers with hope.
One of my RVs from New York pulls up, followed closely by a classic red Mustang. A young man gets out of the
RV. He's pale, his hair is dark and feathery, and he stands at the door looking up at us with a broad grin on his face.
I spread my arms. "Welcome!" I say.
There are tears in his eyes. "We didn't know if you'd be here," he says. He looks at us in turn. "Amo. Lara. Look at this."
The door to the side of the RV opens, and someone else gets out. It's a little girl with frizzy dark hair, wearing a cute blue and white outfit, like Alice in Wonderland. She's followed by an older but hardy-looking woman, and an Asian woman in camouflage gear. From the Mustang comes a somber Hispanic man. A floater washes past them and not a one of them draws a weapon or shows any sign of fear. I feel such pride.
Then someone else comes. The RV back doors open and my heart leaps in my chest. A wheelchair edges into view, then comes around the side.
It's Cerulean. Robert.
I can't see for tears. I'm grinning and laughing and he's grinning and crying too. We've never even seen each other for real. I run down and hug him, shouting out his name with words of welcome spilling off my lips.
"Good job, Amo," he says in my ear, thumping my back.
"I couldn't have done it without you," I answer, barely able to breathe. "I'm so glad you're alive."
He introduces us to the others; the little girl is Anna, the older lady is Cynthia, the Asian woman is Masako, the young guy is Jake, the Hispanic guy is Julio. Each of them is a survivor gathered along the way, on the cairn road. We all hug and shake hands. We tell them our names though of course they already know from the comic, and we all cry together and laugh together, and grin like idiots together.
"Welcome," I tell them. "We have movies. We have popcorn and soda. Welcome home!"
38. EPILOGUE
The party stretches on into the night; I don't think I've ever been this happy. I sit with Cerulean and talk; he tells me everything he's seen, everything he's done, and I'm just overwhelmed he's really alive.
I meet the others: Julio, the Mexican with the muscle car, who comes across as serious and wants to talk about the 'security' of our 'compound'; Jake the tousle-haired youth, whose eyes sparkle when he talks about home; Masako, the Japanese woman who tells me about how Cerulean miraculously rescued her; Cynthia, the blunt and wiry old girl from the mid-West; and Anna, the little girl cuddled in Cerulean's lap, dressed like a ragged Alice in Wonderland in a blue dress with a white pinafore and stockings.
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