"The primary," she said quietly to Joseph, "he weighs nearly three tons. Mostly it's the incredibly dense infection cells stored in his gut. He's like a pressurized canister full of virus."
Speaking helped; made her feel some element of control in an affair that was now completely out of her control. Joseph nodded and watched with fascination and disgust as the demon moved on.
The agent had almost doubled in size already. The paraplegic was growing too. A brittle clank signaled his chains snapping, followed by a thump as he dropped to his knees on the floor. Not a paraplegic anymore. Beside him the agent rose to his feet. He was nearly as tall as the primary now.
"Do you have him?" Salle called.
The top-down drone view appeared again above the hallway scene. It was snowing thickly now, and the black speck of the bunker's manhole was completely obscured, but there were two flashing blue dots near the center. That meant the genetic tracker in the primary had transferred successfully.
"We got him," the drone pilot answered, and a cheer went up.
They were on their way out.
Then a grunting sound came from the hallway behind the drone overlay, along with a sudden movement of red at the edge of the screen. Salle leaned forward on her desk, accidentally pushing the live microphone button.
"What was that?" she demanded of the control room. "Somebody explain to me what just happened."
The drone view snapped away, and in the hallway beneath it she could see the agent-demon was looking at the paraplegic-demon. But they shouldn't be doing that. Like ants, she'd read, but then ants didn't…
Salle turned. "Joseph?"
He was paler than before. "Looked like a throw. A judo throw, over his shoulder." He gulped. "Like a fight."
She whirled back. The primary was still vomiting his way up the hallway, ignorant of whatever his secondaries were doing behind him. The paraplegic was holding the agent by the arms, looking into his eyes. It was impossible.
Then the paraplegic spoke. Salle stared. That was certainly impossible, not with all the tremendous changes taking over his nervous system. Yet the microphones caught it, and everyone in the control room heard it.
"I know you're in there," he went.
There was nothing Salle could do but watch, until the agent replied with a gruff bark. "Cerulean?"
Salle lost it. "What the hell is happening?" she shouted. Then the paraplegic dived.
His shoulder crunched into the agent's middle and drove him back against the tall glass door, where he lifted him up then slammed him into the ground. Salle gasped. In a second the paraplegic had straddled the bigger agent like it was a cage match, and was punching him in the face. Another second later he rolled sideways so his arms were wrapped around the agent's head, his thick legs were coiled around his neck, and he pulled.
"He's not supposed to be doing that," Salle said, absent her usual authority, more like a lost child than anything. "That's not supposed to happen."
There was a ripping sound, a scream, then the agent's newly grown head tore away from his body. Priceless infection cells sprayed from his torn neck.
"Oh my God," Salle said, looking from the bloody paraplegic and on to the primary. It hadn't even noticed; wasn't doing anything but strolling along and puking into the next. Everything could end right here…
"Do something!" she shouted at him. "Stop this bastard before he kills them all."
The paraplegic didn't delay; he rose to his feet, took two steps down the hall, then dropped his elbow into the back of the next secondary, as it knelt on the ground. It fell flat and in a second the paraplegic pulled its head off too.
Hot fluids blew out. The paraplegic began to laugh, a horrible gasping bark.
"Do something," Salle shouted at the primary, "put him down!"
But the primary didn't turn, not as the paraplegic tore the head off the next, nor the next, nor as he crushed the head of the most recent against the wall with a single massive punch.
"No," Salle called.
He was almost as big as the primary now, and he charged, colliding against the primary's back with a huge THUNK. The primary lurched a few steps forward, heavier by far, but the paraplegic was braced and pulling now, and the primary was actually being dragged back down the hall toward the glass door. It didn't fight back; probably it didn't even know what was even happening, though it was struggling.
The paraplegic forced one of its arms straight, then punched through the elbow joint with a gristly crunch. It roared and Salle yelped and others in the control room shouted in horror. Now it tried to fight, swinging a giant fist downward, but the paraplegic caught it, locked the arm and punched through that elbow too.
"Oh my God," Salle whispered.
The primary howled and the paraplegic kicked and drove it like a heap of tumbleweed back into its glass cabinet.
Salle watched transfixed. It was like something out of a movie, impossible in reality. It was the end of all her dreams. They'd be locked in their little can forever, pressurized like the contents of the primary's gut.
Then a wave of calm came over her. She'd been here before. She'd done much worse.
"Scramble the drones," she ordered, her voice coming out calm and controlled. "Bomb the shit out of him."
"Yes sir!" one of the drone pilots replied, and two fresh infographics lit up on the screen's edge representing the last two operational drones they had. How many bombs left? She counted a full complement of fifteen on each, plus fifteen on the one in the air.
45.
They launched, as the paraplegic ran back down the hallway pulling apart the chains of her prisoners. The metal tore easily in his hands, and each one was a blow, each one meant they were trapped here another day, another month, another year.
In minutes he broke all the chains and set them all free. Some fell on their faces and lay still, while the more recent ones ran back to help them.
"Do not flee," Salle tried, calling over the system in a calming, authoritative tone. "Help is coming. Remain where you are for evacuation." But none of them listened. They'd heard her already, they'd listened to her talk to Julio for years, and now they were listening to the paraplegic.
"Get them out!" he barked roughly, the words barely formed through his round hole of a mouth.
He helped them get to the ladder leading up, where they set the agent's winch running to lift out the broken ones. Salle watched helplessly as the drones somewhere far overhead reached a safe bombing altitude. Her primary was pushing the door open now, his broken elbows repairing themselves from the precious load of cells in his belly, but it didn't look like he'd make it in time. They were mostly out now.
"Go west!" the paraplegic barked as the last load went up in the winch basket. "Warn Amo."
Warn Amo.
Those words were the worst she could imagine. If this group warned Amo, his people could scatter and it would take far more than two years to round them all up again. They didn't have that kind of time.
The primary broke out of the glass cupboard and ran down the hallway, ignoring the swaying figure of the paraplegic. Cheers broke out in the control room as it started up the ladder, though at the last moment the paraplegic snatched at its ankle and held on.
"Shit," Salle cursed under her breath. "Give me aerial."
The top down drone view appeared to the side in split-screen. The snow was falling so thickly now that she could scarcely pick out the thin black line of escapees as they ran to the agent's white van. A flurry of snow blocked the camera.
"Bring it back down, we need visibility," she ordered.
"It's already at two thousand feet," one of the pilots protested. "Any lower and we risk getting caught up in the storm."
"I don't care," Salle said. "If we can't stop that van, it's over. Drop it down and switch to thermal imaging."
"Yes, sir," the pilot replied, and the stats for the drones plummeted as they took steep dives through the rain of snow. A second later a filter swept across th
e screen, clearing away the pure white and replacing it with a pale blue. There was a hot red speck in the middle, representing the bunker hole where heat was escaping. The bodies of the escapees were a ghostly pink trail leading from it; so faint they were barely visible.
"Can you target them?" she asked.
"Not well, sir," the pilot replied. "The snow's too thick, I can't tell what I'm seeing."
"Use your judgment. Bomb those people, captain, and do it now."
The first bomb detached from the drone's icon on the right. At the same time the primary finally escaped Cerulean's grip, emerging out into the white where he throbbed as a moving blue dot. Seconds later the first explosion blossomed as a transient flare of red heat across the pale map. The blue dot ran right through it. The control room trembled slightly as the vibrations reached them.
"Bomb in front of the primary," Salle ordered. "Work up an algorithm aligned to the map. We know where the road is, we know the speed of that vehicle, and the primary is leading us right to them."
"Yes, sir. How much ordinance am I authorized to use?"
"All of it," Salle answered, "until the damn van explodes."
More red flowers bloomed on the screen. At the same time on the split screen to the right, the paraplegic began to climb the ladder out of the hallway, its legs now trailing uselessly behind it. Surely this was the infection setting in.
"Where's he going?" Joseph asked softly.
A spike of hope lit in Salle's chest. If the infection was taking him now, they'd have at least two primaries heading west, halving the time until America was clear.
He climbed out of sight into the cold blue of the thermal image, where his blue dot pulsed motionlessly for a minute. More circles of heat bloomed off to the west, then the paraplegic's body fell down the screen, head first past the ladder like a suicide dive. He hit cement with a crunch that shook the control room harder than the bombs, and bizarrely his head tore off and bounced away.
"Ha!" someone in the control room said, in shock. Salle marked who it was unconsciously, while watching the corpse of Cerulean for a long moment. She hoped it would somehow rise, reattach its head and keep moving, but it didn't. Snow fell over it from the hole above and began to smooth out the crevices in its dusky red skin.
The bastard had cut his own head off. Son of a bitch.
She steadied herself. On the thermal image there was no sign of a hit. Everything had gone to shit, but moments like this were her forte. This was why she was commander and Lars Mecklarin was dead.
"I don't care how many missiles or drones we exhaust in the effort," she said coolly, calmly, to the room at large. "That van does not get to Los Angeles to warn them, am I clear?"
"Yes, sir," came the chorus of replies.
Salle looked at her control screen before her. The light for her microphone link to the hallways was flashing still, and she cut it. She wouldn't need that again. This phase of the plan was done.
She turned to Joseph. His face looked as broken as a cracked egg, but the embers of his intellect were still on fire within.
"Joseph, I need you to get the suits ready," she said.
Surprise broke through his uncertainty. "But sir, they're-"
"All of them, Joseph," she said, "and volunteers to fill them. Do you understand?"
He nodded. It didn't matter that the suits were a death sentence. This bunker was a death sentence. They had to get out and she would do anything to achieve that.
"Now," she said.
He turned and left the control room, his steps growing more confident and regular as he went. On the screen before her more red flowers blossomed through the wintry blue, as though it was finally spring.
1. NEW APOCALYPSE
Ten years after the zombie apocalypse changed the world forever, a new kind of apocalypse strikes.
I'm sitting on the pier where I saw Cerulean for the last time two weeks earlier, feeling nothing at all like a mayor. I'm exhausted and emotionally drained. It's after midnight three days after Anna returned, and the waves are lapping on the beach below with that quiet certainty that says with every slap, 'There's not a damn thing you can do'.
Slap, slap, slap.
Such is the rhythm of things.
Anna's gone, Anna's come back, hurrah, but guess what? The infection is a T4 virus embedded in every one of our cells, oh well, no cure, and there are red demons that'll rip your head off whether you're immune or not. Also, Cerulean's gone, taken without a sign, and we haven't made any progress in finding him. It was no surprise that Anna stared at me in disbelief as I told her, in the midst of her welcome home party, or that Talia and Vie were weeping again, because what was I doing? What was I, self-appointed Last Mayor of America, doing about it?
Slap, say the waves, slap. It's never enough.
I sigh, lean back against the chipped wooden railing and run my hands through my hair. The air's warm still, though we're hard on the heels of winter. This is California in November, with Christmas around the corner. Talia wants a new bike, which is pretty ridiculous since all we have to do to buy her one is ride to the nearest Yangtze and assemble it, but such is the life of children in the apocalypse. She can't drive herself yet, but I'll teach her soon, and then what will I get her for Christmas?
I rub my temples and look out to sea as if there will be answers, but of course there are not. It's too dark to see much of anything.
Goddamn Cerulean.
"You shouldn't be here alone."
I turn and see my wife, Lara. She looks pretty in denim, with her thick hair tied back in knotted braids. I get annoyed with myself, that me being here has made her come after me, alone, endangering us both and leaving our children in the care of, who, maybe Cynthia?
"Mayorhood confers certain privileges," I try, but it gets me nothing but a dimpled frown in her caffe latté face. Even at 3am she's still got my number.
"Bullshit, Amo. Mayorhood's the opposite of privilege. We need you, and it's work only you can do."
I snort weakly as she sidles nearer over the creaking boards. "That's a play to my ego. Flattery will get you bike-assembling duty."
She sits down by my side and takes my hand. "Shut up, you," she mutters, so I do, which is a mercy. We sit there side by side, holding hands and watching the ocean until the sun crests over the edge of the world, like a burning ember raised by the gods.
It helps when she wraps an arm around my shoulders, some slight buffer against the haunting look on Anna's face. Until the moment I told her about Cerulean, she'd been so happy and proud, having found her father and circled the world. Then the hope just leached away.
I see that leaching in everyone's faces, now. I see it in my childrens' eyes whether it's there or not. Hope has kept this discordant group of crazy, killer survivors afloat for this long, and its loss may at any minute tear us apart.
The old doubts rise and for a time I allow them. I'm not a mayor, I'm just a zombie comic artist who made silly book covers and boring worlds in Deepcraft. I wasn't elected to the position; even my self-nomination was a joke. I'm not worthy and I can't deal with this loss, especially now that the world I've always welcomed with open arms is reaching out and biting down hard. I don't know what to do.
Lara squeezes my arm and that helps too, so I pack the doubts away, like always. She doesn't say anything glib like, "We'll find him," or, "It'll be OK," and I'm grateful for that. We both know Cerulean's gone, and whoever's taken him is probably not giving him back.
"What can I do?" Anna asked me, after her sad welcome party in the lobby had wound down, when it was just the two of us in my office in the back of the Theater. "I see what's happening now; more security, pill-boxes on rooftops, patrols, so what can I do?"
Her lost hope had faded into a focused kind of rage, burning off her like a laser. I had to channel it but I had nothing solid to offer, only my own answering frustration.
"We've searched everywhere," I told her. "We've scoured LA for twenty blocks square but the
re's no sign of him. We're planning wider forays but we can't overstretch ourselves. We've got to keep the core safe."
Anna nodded. She didn't say that it was my fault or take her anger out on me, as she would have once. Instead her eyes were sharp brown orbs that shone with new wisdom, making her strong in ways she hadn't been before.
She was a woman now, no longer a child.
"It's Julio," she said, looking me right in the eyes. "You know that, Amo. I know it."
I shook my head wearily. I'd expected it. "Julio's dead."
"Julio was shot, but we never found his body or his car. He hated Cerulean with a passion. He's got him now and we have to find him."
"Even if it is him," I said, "it doesn't help us. You're right, for five years we never found him, so how would we now? He could be anywhere in America. We can't afford to ignore other possibilities."
"What possibilities?"
I sighed, too weary to face them even then. "There could be another community of survivors out there. They may have a different idea of what survival is. If they were hunting us, trying to poach from us, it makes sense they'd take Cerulean first."
Her eyes flashed dangerously. "He wasn't weak."
I rested my hand on her arm. "I didn't say that. But I have to be practical, Anna. I can't send out mass patrols because we need our strength right here. We don't know what we're up against."
Anna took a deep breath, turning her anger inward like she was charging up a battery. I could feel the flywheel start to spin with the momentum of her rage, storing it up.
"So what can I do?" she asked again.
I squeezed her arm. "Help protect us. Join the patrols. We're casting a wider net day by day. If he's near we'll find him. That's all we can do for now. We'll go wider gradually."
She took a breath. I expected she might sag as the slow, hopeless reality struck home, but she didn't. She held the breath and it only filled her up more, and I began to see something of what she'd truly become: a woman who'd traveled around the world to find her father, who'd faced down a red demon and survived, who'd found her way home from darkest Mongolia and stumbled into this.
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