She held out the tray suggestively. "Naranja?"
He guessed right, striding closer and taking the tray right out of her hands. "I don't need a damn orange."
She leaned in, raised her lips to kiss, and there was only one thing to do.
"Ah, um momento," she said in the midst of it, which was obviously 'One moment', and ducked away to fish something out of her purse on the sofa. Another foil blue square.
Drake laughed. "How long have you been carrying these for, just waiting?"
She pressed the foil wrapper into his hand and gave a knowing smile, followed by some Portuguese that sounded like teasing, which was fine with him. That was all the way fine. He set the tray of gorgeous, fleshy fruit down and tore the wrapper open like it was a life-saving bandage, applying it as fast as he could, then grabbed her up and drew her in. She bit his lip. She shoved him over. They did it all over again.
* * *
It went like that.
For a day they made love and ate fruit and lounged in the sun. In the afternoon they went down a rocky path to the beach, where they splashed around and made love in the tides. At one point a zombie came walking past them, straggling up the beach, and Drake's whole body stiffened.
What the hell? And where the hell had that come from, out of the water?
It was wet. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. It had seaweed on its head.
In all past few weeks he'd forgotten the dead were still out there, since he saw so few of them. But coming out of the sea?
It stumbled toward them over the sand, coming fast. He rolled smoothly to his feet, charged it, and took it high in the chest with a jumping knee. It went down and he followed, crunching its ribs beneath his weight. One punch, two, and its throat was caved in. That was the way to do it, but had he ever done it that fast before, that smoothly, with that little thought? He was a little awed by his own speed and power.
It stopped moving, some powdery blood oozing out from a crack where its leathery throat had split against cartilage, and he knelt there atop it. It smelled of salt and the sea, like a freshly caught fish.
"Oh, meu herói!" came Myra's voice, tripping toward him over the sand. 'My hero', surely. He turned and she threw herself at him, and he enjoyed catching her. It was good he was strong enough to do that.
She produced another blue square. He didn't know where she was getting them from, but so be it.
The night came on fast. They ate fruit and canned spaghetti cooked over the fire pit. It was amazing how quickly he'd adapted to her presence. They drank wine and talked plans, though neither of them really understood the other. With the map of Europe laid out before them, sketched now with dozens of possible routes, he really began to think. He began to wonder about the spread of this thing, this infection, and how it surely had taken out the whole world.
He'd tried radios in the past three months. He'd watched TVs in the cars that had them, but there was nothing on. The world was gray fuzz, empty wavelengths unladen with signals. The world of before was gone.
Which left him and Myra.
Travel Europe was the plan so far, at least it seemed to be. She was lying with her long brown legs across his, the map on one of the glass coffee tables by the fire pit, and he traced his finger up and down her thigh like he was rehearsing their path across the continent. She took his other hand and kept dipping his fingers in wine then licking it off.
She was crazy. Each time he looked at her she started laughing, sometimes unleashing a barrage of drunken Portuguese interspersed with English. This was her teasing him, he figured, and it was hot, but the map was what mattered to him now, and he pored over it.
He'd never really learned the geography of Europe, but it made sense to go for the capitals first, the major population centers in perhaps a clockwise circle, and then spread out in widening circles. It could be the work of years, an ever-widening spiral, but then what else was there?
East through Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, up through Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, back down the border with Russia to Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova then west into the tight scrum of countries north of Greece, polishing off with Austria, Italy, France, Spain and back to Portugal.
"Sim, este é um teimoso," trilled Myra softly, sucking on a pear, "mas saborosa." That was something about being tasty.
He patted her thigh. The UK was out there too, if he could figure out a boat of his own, though he still didn't feel much desire to go. Seeing St. Albans empty and broken might be too much.
His head swam comfortably, sloshing with just the right amount of brandy and wine. Circles and circles. Patience would be key. Just keep going. Round and round, gathering everyone who was left.
Myra leaned over to kiss him deeply and he kissed her back.
"All right," he said, like it was some burden. "If you insist."
* * *
In six months they found nobody.
In Spain they hit Madrid and Bilbao, sprawling, beautiful red sandstone conurbations in the midst of a bare, sparse country that was more brown than green. It was easy to imagine matadors dancing about, dressed in bright red raiment, as they drove through valleys and fields of dry dirt and olive trees, waiting for the irrigation that would bring life.
Myra lay on the back seat with her feet up flat on the roof, talking along with her English study tapes. She was always repeating sentences, but her English never seemed to get any better. He tried to learn some Portuguese the same way, but she just laughed and turned the English tapes back on.
From Spain they went into France, from Toulouse to Nantes to Paris, where they took grinning pictures of each other with a Polaroid camera in front of the Eiffel Tower, though already some sense of hopelessness was starting to set in. They found nobody, and each further leg of the journey became less silly, less joyful and more focused.
Drake leant hard over the steering wheel, always scanning the road and streets. He grew curt with Myra, who didn't seem to care, though his deepening severity clearly annoyed her. She would sulk, or conduct blazing rows with him in Portuguese, with snippets of English hurled in, usually swear words he'd taught her as a joke, distorted by her pronunciation.
Sheet was shit. Idiota was idiot. He drove on.
They still made love at night, but it became rougher, like a fight they were both trying to win; though she never forgot to hand him a foil square. They did it even if they didn't enjoy it, and they slept. This was how hungry they'd become. This was where the world had left them.
He stood at Calais and looked out over the water to England, to where the white cliffs of Dover should be, but couldn't see them through the autumn fog on the cold gray sea. In Dunkirk they stood on the beach and he told her the stories he'd heard from his grandfather, who'd survived the Allied retreat through that town in World War 2, with all the horses dying and the Merry-Go-Round turning and the band playing and the mortars getting wrecked so the Germans couldn't use them when they came.
Myra was angry about something though, and spat and kicked stones while he talked, so he stopped with the end of the story untold. It wasn't really his to tell anyway, and who cared now about a war that changed the world so long ago? The world had changed again, rubbing all that out.
He didn't try for a boat. He didn't want to go home and see how little was left.
In Belgium they went to Brussels, in The Netherlands to The Hague and Amsterdam, and throughout, while driving with Myra singing along tunelessly beside him, or playing one of her Pokémon games, or speaking to him in a ridiculous English accent that could still make them both laugh sometimes, he felt the world shifting again.
Because there were no people.
He glared until his eyes went dry, driving at 20mph through traffic and wrecks, glaring so hard it felt he went for hours without blinking, but still there was nobody. Six months went by with no people, no sign of people, and surely that was enough to break anyone. What did a man do in that situation? A man whose job it was to bui
ld, and grow, and make order out of chaos; how could he build with no materials? Without people there could be no community. No mothers and fathers, no families, no children, and no future. And if there was no future, what was the point?
In a hotel in Dortmund, Germany, another gorgeous castle on another gorgeous hill, overlooking a gorgeous deep and twisted forest as winter came on and snow fell to make it look like something from a Disney movie, he stopped driving and they set up to ride out the cold. The days grew short and dark. They took walks through the misty morning village, but didn't talk. There was nothing to say. They made love but didn't look in each other's eyes. It all rang so hollow, until it felt like one day was a blur into the next, with booze mixed in, and every step was a step back to the bedroom, and her handing the familiar blue square into his hand, and him doing his job with it, and repeat.
Until it stopped.
It was late afternoon, barely dark out, but they'd started sleeping earlier, like hibernating bears. Myra was there, looking paler and thinner than when he'd first met her. It was strange how a person could rot like a fruit, but from the inside. She'd been so buoyant before, so full of playful mystery and hidden depths, and now she was barely a comfort blanket, because there was no comfort in the folding grip of her embrace.
She was another human, but just one, and one was not enough. He realized what that meant, as she handed him a blue foil package for the thousandth time.
He looked at it, and the world turned. The chill came hard into the room, pushing through the fog of alcohol and showing him a glimpse of another world. This was the problem right here, sitting in his palm.
He held the condom out, and he looked at her, and he said one word he'd learned well in Portuguese.
"Não."
She was in a boozy, sleepy fog herself, looking at him through eyes lidded with anger and defeat. "Não o quê, Ma-hew? O quê?"
There was an argument right there, waiting to happen. 'For what, Matthew? For what?' She was ready to fight even though she didn't know what for. So he'd give her something to think about.
"I'm not wearing this." He dropped the blue wrapper onto the floor.
She watched it, sighed, then fished out another and placed it in his hand.
He threw it to the side. She snorted, gave him another, but he threw it as well.
Now some of the fog was out of her eyes, and she was looking at him with curiosity. That would change soon enough, some part of him said. It wasn't going to be a good thing, but what did a man do, did he do the nice thing or the necessary thing? That was the question to ask. On the cruise liner had he left Jenny and Lucy to THUMP away at their door, or had he done the thing that was necessary?
Perhaps she saw that in his eyes now.
He looked at her. "We've been looking for months, Myra. Nearly a year! We're not finding anyone, and we're wasting time. This is not what I want."
"Assim você acha que é o que eu quero?" she babbled back at him, and he understood a little. It wasn't what she wanted either. "Você acha que eu estou me divertindo com isso?" She wasn't enjoying it.
"So we make it real," he said. He pointed at the blue foil on the floor. "No more of these. We do it for real."
She stared at him, then laughed, then pointed at his face and let rip with her own shock and mockery.
"Contigo?" He knew that; 'With you?' "Você acha que eu quero trazer um bebê ao presente, com você? Você deve estar louco! Idiota!" Something about a baby, something about him being crazy.
He felt his own jaw set, and he saw the future play out. Who liked the bitter pill that lay ahead? No one did. Medicine tasted bad, but you took it anyway; at least you did if you wanted to get better.
But did Myra? From the start all she'd done was lead him down this drunken, bohemian path. Sex all the time. Booze all the time, souring into this damn misery. Jenny hadn't done that, and it was Jenny that had really made him a man, because together they'd made Lucy, and wasn't that a real thing? Wasn't a child the whole purpose of a man, to make her and raise her and grow her up to be something real, something beautiful that could look you in the eye and bring some damn meaning to this godforsaken emptiness?
Wasn't that what a man did, more than just empty screwing, more than this meaningless, teenaged obsession with sex?
It made the decision, and with that it became simple. Easy.
"No condoms," he said. "No more."
She laughed and babbled, but now it was decided. He'd try to persuade her. He'd try to win her round, and if she still wasn't interested? That was a hard question.
"We'll have kids," he said, with a smile, calm. Not selling, not pushing, just trying to make it a reality. "Lots of little kids running around. Little girls, little boys. To fill up this place."
She frowned. "Você é sério?" You're serious? "Ma-hew, cheeldren?"
He nodded. His own eyes were getting a little misty now as he imagined them, sparkling through the room. They'd be the perfect thing to turn this emptiness around. It would bring some meaning to the death of his family. It would make his own survival something important, more than this sick, endless holiday.
It would make him a man again.
He nodded. "Eu é sério. I am very serious. I need you for that, Myra. I hope you'll want it too."
She just stared at him, and the moment drew out, until the booze got the best of her and she threw her head back and laughed. It was such a riot. She guffawed away.
"Oh, Ma-hew, funnee! Você é funnee! Crianças aqui, para isso?" Children here, in this place? "Não é possível." It's not possible.
The laughter might have hurt him, another time in another life, but not now. It was so clear that this was what he was meant to do. The fact that she didn't understand it, that she didn't feel it yet, didn't mean anything.
He'd show her. He'd teach her, and when she saw she'd realize he was right. But for now he just smiled. "I know. It's a lot to take in." He held up his hands and took a step backward. This was the right thing to do, too. For so long they'd been having sex out of what, loneliness? Frustration? Some base inner compulsion, like animals. And that wasn't right. You had dates first. You courted. In his head he was already planning the first. A dinner, and he'd cook something. They'd both dress up. A walk on the beach. Maybe a movie? Portuguese for her, subtitles for him. A way of communicating.
Their life together spilled out before him. He'd double down on learning Portuguese and woo her properly. They could have a marriage ceremony to make it right and proper. Then they'd start to have children, all proper and correct. How many? One had always been enough before, but the world was different now. So why stop? Having more wouldn't add to the cost. It would just build them more of a family.
He smiled, and her laughter stopped slowly. Now she was looking at him differently. Perhaps there was a little caution in there, even a little fear, but why shouldn't there be? It was a big undertaking. It scared him too, but that was how he knew it was the right thing.
He nodded. "Myra. It's OK. We're going to be OK. I promise. It's down to you and me, and we'll make this world a beautiful place again."
Her eyes darted to the door. Was that, what, a signal? He took it.
"Of course. No, we should be in different rooms. You're right." His smile broadened. "I'll be next door. Tomorrow we can talk more, OK? I know it's a new idea right now. But I love you. I want to do this with you. I know you'll feel the same."
She just stared at him, struck dumb probably, as he turned and left the room. It was the first time he'd said 'I love you', so that must be a shock. It was the first time in months that he felt a kind of calm inside. The stress that had crept up on him over their long search, interfering with his thinking and making him act like an animal, was now cleared out.
There was a future up ahead. There would be children. He and Myra would make a wonderful family, restarting the race. He entered the room one over and lay down on the four-poster bed amidst a whuff of old dust, and looked out of the window to
the moon in the sky. So beautiful. Everything was coming together.
The next morning Myra was gone.
7. LIMBO
They left Maine behind, and returned to New LA.
Amo gave no grand speeches on their return, offered no fresh inspiration. They simply arrived and went back to their lives, but who could go back? Anna was out there still, preparing to take the war to Europe where eleven demons were wandering free, and it was hard to think about anything else. Cerulean popping up regularly in her vision didn't help, nor did the nightmares. It seemed that every night she woke sweating from visions of the great white eye and New LA ablaze, and would turn to where Amo should be, and find him missing.
In his office, studying his folders from Maine. Out walking. Lara tried to convince herself that this was healing, that at least he wasn't in the bunker watching Julio's snuff movies, but it was small consolation.
So time passed, and the wounds in New LA festered.
There was dissatisfaction amongst the survivors; about the choices Amo had made, about what happened to Maine, about Witzgenstein's banishment. There were whispers and dissent, sometimes breaking into rancorous arguments. Rifts between neighbors stewed and deepened, and all the while they remain trapped in a miserable limbo, with no leader to steer them out.
Lara racked her brain to think of a way to heal the divisions, but she wasn't one for speeches, and she didn't have the same easy charm as Amo. There was one thing she could do though, that had helped after her dream of the law was swallowed up in panic.
So she opened her coffee shop.
She chose a street off the main thoroughfare in Montlake, leafy and almost cozy, where if she squinted just so she could imagine she was back in the canyon-streets of New York. She named it 'John Harrison', after the English carpenter who spent half his life designing clocks good enough to keep time at sea, and so solve the problem of divining longitude that had begun decades earlier with Sir Clowdesley's death.
On the menus she printed a short history leading from the death of that infamous British admiral to the humble carpenter who brought certainty to global navigation. It felt fitting, like closing a chapter in their lives. Clowdesley's story struck echoes with so much that had happened to New LA; he had died for a greater truth to be known, just like Robert had died. Now Harrison's resolution to the problem of his day echoed their own, with Anna out there taking the fight to the enemy.
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