The Last Mayor Box Set

by Michael John Grist

  The blood drains from my head and I go dizzy. I'm still looking around my room urgently, like there might be an answer here when there cannot be.

  "What do you mean, you have a syringe?"

  "It's all right," he says. "Sit down. Are you somewhere safe, Amo? Are you in your room, are you barricaded in?"

  "I don't-" I begin, then look at the door. I can hear them thumping faintly from downstairs. "I'm in my building. I locked the front door, but there's probably hundreds of them out there now. I don't-"

  "Block up your room," he says. "Do it now. Wedge the bed against the door, wedge something against that if you can. They're not smart but they're persistent, and you're in no state to take to the streets again. You need to lie low and get your head straight, Amo, if you're going to get through this. Do you hear me?"

  "I-"

  "Deadbolt the door and wedge it in. Use everything you have. Do it right now. I'll still be here. Put the phone on speaker and do it now. I want to hear it happening."

  I take the phone from my head and stare at it blankly for a moment. I don't know what I'm supposed to do.

  "Amo!"

  I remember and click the button for speaker. I hear the distant sound of Cerulean's home somewhere in the South filter into my New York apartment. There is his breathing and the sound of a dehumidifier, sucking damp out of the cement basement that's been his prison cell since he fell.

  I shake myself and look to the bed, then the door, and start moving to bring them together. The bed drags noisily out of the recessed wall. I push its headboard flush against the door. The headboard has metal slats that reach three quarters up the height of the door, so even if one of the zombies get in the house and successfully punch a hole through the door, they'll still have to get over the slats.

  "I've done the bed," I call to Cerulean. "I'm getting the desk."

  "Good. Don't damage your computer, you're going to need that."

  I lift my monitor carefully off, then drag the desk to the tail of the bed. Laid end on, it fits almost perfectly between the bed and the wall, wedged into place. It's going nowhere. They'd have to bend the bed's metal frame or push it through the wall to get in, and I don't see either of those happening. That's more force than human bodies can muster.

  I drop to the floor by the side of the bed and start to shake.

  "I've done it," I say to the phone, turning it off speaker mode and holding it back to my ear.

  "Good, good. Now you need to relax. We can talk about something that really matters. How did your date with the Tomb Raider girl go?"

  I laugh beside myself. I scratch at the wooden floor with a fingernail.

  "It went fine. It went great. She liked the final panel in my comic book. You remember?"

  Of course he remembers. I showed it to him first, two days earlier, and it sent him into a monumental twinge, but still he stayed on the line to tell me how beautiful he thought it was.

  That's the kind of friend he is. When all my other friends left, or just drifted away, because staying in touch with someone in 'my condition' was just too damn hard, or too slow, Cerulean showed what true friendship is.

  He was there last night, texting me when I collapsed in the restroom, overcome by all the stimulation on my date with Lara. I'd thought for sure I was going to die at the table, face-first in my grey poupon soup. Then he sent me a text that made it all seem different, that gave me the strength to get back in there and survive my date.

  "She came back here afterward," I say, shy now. "I didn't expect that, but…" I trail off. "She's gone now. The note she left, Cerulean, it's mad."

  "Call me Robert," he says. "That's my name."

  More tears pour down my cheeks. I try to gulp them back. "I know. OK, Robert."

  "Are you crying? Come on old buddy. Pull yourself together. It's not the end of the world. Just the end of most of it. You said she's gone?"

  I laugh. I rub my eyes. "I don't know. I think so, yes, she's gone. She left a note, it said 'Good luck with the zombies'. She was talking about the comic, but Christ, look at this shit, Cerulean. I mean Robert. Where the hell is she now?"

  "Probably running halfway down Manhattan, if she's not already infected. Calm your ass down, Amo. What are you going to do for her now? She'll either get safe or she won't, on her own. You're lucky you're alive. You know how many people out there who're immune? Do you have any idea?"

  "No idea. I didn't see any. Maybe her?"

  "Maybe her. On top of that there's me and there's you. I've not seen any others, Amo, not any at all. Every live video feed I saw got corrupted in seconds, because the people filming it were infected. It's the most virulent thing ever. It's like that cat in the box, the second you open the box to see if it's alive or not, it drags you in so you're inside the box too. There's no time to report out."

  I laugh through my tears. "Schrodinger's cat. I don't think that's how it works."

  "Whatever. Listen, Amo, it can't be a coincidence that it's me and you, and maybe her. Did she have the same condition as us, did she have a coma then recover like us?"

  I wince as I try to recall. "She said she burned out. I don't think she was twingeing though. I don't think so."

  "Well maybe you'll find out. Perhaps proximity to you conferred immunity. I'm pretty sure we're immune, Amo, because whatever is hitting them now hit us a year ago. Do you follow? Some lesser strain hit us, but it acted like a vaccine, so now we're safe. We went blank, we died multiple times, but they brought us back. Maybe if we hadn't been brought back, we'd be like these others out on the streets now. We got saved."

  I shudder. I'm grasping at straws now.

  "You're alive," is all I can say.

  He laughs. "I am."

  We sit in silence for a while. My room comes back to me. I look up at my Banksy print on the wall, the guy throwing the flowers. I wonder, is Banksy a zombie now too? Is Space Invader?

  "I can come for you," I say. "I'll get a nice car and make it there in a day. I'll drive all night."

  "That's a lyric from a song isn't it?"

  "Stop it! Tell me your address and I'll come."

  "No, you won't. Why in hell would you come here Amo, to see my bitten-out corpse laid up in a bloody cradle stinking of methadone and shit? I'll not have that. I won't be alive by then, Amo. Understand that. Accept that, and we can move on. I've downloaded everything I can think of to your computer, plus a few extras I've had the time to come up with. The fulfillment center will be a bit different. I think it's going to be pretty important to you, going forward, or for a while at least. There are some new routines. You'll figure it out. Until then we can talk."

  I sag. "I want to come."

  "I want you to come too. Don't you think I'd love that, if you could come charging in now and rescue me from this mess? But you can't. It's not going to happen, so let's move on. We've never even spoken before, have we? Hi, Amo, I'm Robert. I'm a freak just like you. We might be the last two people alive in the world."

  I laugh. "Hi, Robert, I'm Amo. It's good to meet you. I don't want you to die."

  "So tell me about the date," he says. "Tell me everything."

  I do, about the twinges and the conversation, about the wild rush back to my apartment and the pain coming free, and at the end he sighs contentedly. "I'm happy for you, Amo. It sounds great."

  I smile through tears, because yes, it was.

  "You'll need to hang on to that memory, Amo. You will, won't you? Lara might be alive out there. You might be able to find her. Hold on to that. You'll put out some flags and let her now where you are. You'll figure this thing out and make it right. I know you will. You've always been resourceful, and smart, and so damn charming."

  I laugh.

  "It's good you can laugh. Don't forget that. Don't you dare feel guilty. I want it to be you, not me. You're a good man. You're the best friend I've ever had. I want you to get good things out of this and become better for it. There's always room to grow. When I lost my legs and I knew I
could never dive anymore, I just about gave up. Then I found this weird guy who'd built a weird world on Deepcraft, and he welcomed me in. He loaned me a diviner and we fulfilled stupid orders together. I saw the world through him, and I'm still seeing the world through him now. Amo, you're going to be OK."

  I find I'm gulping at the air.

  "Get yourself solid. Research the stuff I sent. Find a safer place than your apartment, a bank or something downtown, somewhere this girl Lara can find, and start clearing the streets around. Make a base and she'll be drawn to you, Amo, if you're offering safety and something worth having. That way you'll find the others too, the ones like us who are lost somewhere across the country and don't have each other like we've had each other. I know you will. You'll make good things out of this."

  I gulp back tears. I can hear the thumping through the phone getting louder.

  "She's almost through the door isn't she?"

  "She is. It's all right. I have the syringe loaded with my methadone, enough of a dose to knock me right out. I won't feel a thing. It's better this way Amo. I wouldn't stand a chance on the road. I was never good in a wheelchair."

  I sob into the phone. "How long?"

  "I don't know. A minute, maybe five? I've already injected it." His voice starts to go woozy. "You'll stay on the line won't you? You'll wait with me."

  "Of course I will. Robert, I'm sorry."

  "Don't be sorry. You're here with me. We're in the fulfillment center, running it together. I have legs again, Amo. We're keeping up with the orders. We're one step ahead."

  The tears are coming freely. I hate this. I want to reach through the phone and save him. I want to save my friend, but I can't.

  "Goodbye, Amo," he says fuzzily. There is a crash through the line, and his mother must have breached the basement.

  "Robert," I say urgently. "Robert."

  "She's coming. I won't feel a thing. The Darkness is so close. I'm going to turn the phone off now Amo. I don't want you to hear this. Goodbye."

  The phone clicks dead. The sound from his distant basement fades at once. My last link to Cerulean is severed.

  I lean back against the bed and cry, curled around the phone like it's a dagger thrust though my belly.

  5. MAYOR

  I come back to myself and it's bright still, with early spring light glowing in through the skylight right onto my face. I don't hear the people downstairs, they're not banging on the door still. I look up at the sky and wonder if it could all truly be a dream.

  I don't have a headache, no twinge at all. That is a wonder I can't help but be glad for. At least Cerulean had that too, in his final hours. At least we got to speak.

  I look at my phone. It's not even mid-day, I guess I slept for only an hour or two. In the corner there are no signal bars, but the Wi-Fi symbol is still there. I click through to the Internet but the pipeline is empty and I get missing server messages. I click through each of my tabs on the phone methodically, social media, email, news, and they all erase themselves away.

  Perhaps I'll never see them again. Pushing the back button in the browser doesn't recapture them. The Internet is gone.

  I double click the button and the phone pings.

  "Hi, Io," I tell the screen. Io is the name I've given my phone's generic AI assistant. Io and Amo, it was a kind of lame joke, I suppose.

  "Hello, Amo," she says.

  "My friend just died. His name was Cerulean."

  "I'm sorry to hear that."

  "Me too. Now the whole world's gone to shit."

  "That sounds difficult."

  I laugh, and put the phone down. I need to think clearly.

  I get to my feet and go to the window.

  The street is filled with people. Seeing them is like an ice water shower. There are hundreds of them, all gray-faced with bright white eyes looking up at me. It chills my blood. They don't groan or rasp, they just stare. I open the window and I can hear them breathing, like a lapping tide. They jostle and sway like bits of wreckage caught on a wave.

  I hold my hand out and their ice-white eyes track me silently. It makes me feel dizzy and I step back. I drop to the bed and the springs crunch comfortingly. Lara's note is still there.

  Good luck with the zombies.

  It's a good joke.

  I try to adjust. My art doesn't matter now. Nothing really matters, now that everyone is dead. There's no sound from the city; no rescue helicopters are coming, because they're all gone. Cerulean saw it, and it's really over, an apocalypse to end us all.

  Lara though may be alive.

  I think about that. Her skin wasn't gray in the morning when I work up. She wrote that note, and left as a normal person. Now I have to find her. That thought gets me up and moving.

  I need to prepare. My shoulder throbs where the indicator lever hit me, so I'll deal with that. I pull back my shirt to study the wound. It's capped by a stud of dried blood, which I nudge away. The hole beneath is puckered and sealed already, with only a slight red ring of inflammation. I rub it gently; it feels OK. I rotate my arm and it works well enough. I put two sticky bandages on top and call it a day.

  Next I go to my computer on the floor, and swizz the mouse. The soft chime as it wakes up comforts me, telling me the power grid isn't down, though it probably will be soon.

  I open the shared drive with Cerulean and survey the contents he downloaded. It was less than a gigabyte of stuff before, mostly texture maps and crafting patterns for the Darkness, but now it's packed to the gills and close to its hundred-gigabyte limit.

  I scroll through the contents and find a mish-mash of html webpages, pdfs, videos and books about the 'prepper' lifestyle; people who spent their free time preparing for a coming cataclysm.

  Judging from the titles they are mostly about basic survival; securing sources of food and water, finding and reinforcing shelter, sourcing weapons and using them in combat against 'hostiles', sourcing power and fuel and using these to employ vehicles, computers, walkie-talkies and so on. I notice that preppers like the word 'source' a lot.

  I go to the desk and pluck out five thumb-drives, which I use all the time to back up my art. I slot them in to the computer and set the contents downloading. The prepper Bible needs to be portable.

  The computer says it'll take at least an hour. I slump back against the bed, and a sound comes from beyond the door as if in response.

  I freeze. I look. The door is sealed but the sound is still coming, a wheezing right outside my room. Is that…?

  My blood goes cold. I listen to the low susurrus of breath rise and fall like one giant lung. I get up quietly and go to the door, then lean over the bed and put my eye to the spyglass.

  Holy shit. They are in the corridor, packed five wide all the way back to the stairs, so tightly they can't move, like wieners in a vacuum-packed casing.

  I jerk away. I back-pedal across the room until I hit the wall.

  I'm trapped.

  * * *

  I make green tea.

  It's gratifying that the kettle still works. I spoon green dust that smells like freshly mown grass into the cup, and pour boiling water atop it. The smell of bitter tannins wafts into the room, and I hold the cup in my shaking hand. There is solace in such routines, even though my brain may no longer need them to survive. They've saved me before, and they can save me now.

  I'm barely even thirsty, but I sip anyway. I try to think about practicalities objectively, one at a time. I look at my phone; it's 10:33. Plenty of daylight left. Wherever Lara is it can't be that far.

  I bring up my phone and click the map app. My geo-location still works, though the map it's built upon doesn't refresh. I am a blue dot in the midst of the gray blur of New York, pointing southeast. Good to know.

  I start making up a pack, adding my laptop, a kitchen knife, a water bottle, some clothes. What else do I really need? I add my just-completed comic, Zombies of New York, to the USB download tray, plus the latest build of the Yangtze fulfillment center. I ad
d my phone and laptop chargers like I'm packing for a trip.

  The computer chimes, signaling the transfer is finished. I wrap the USBs in plastic kitchen wrap then tuck them into my pocket. I look at my bag and think about where I'm going to go, where Lara might be. I don't know anything about her, not really. Her folks live in upstate New York somewhere, but that could be anywhere. She lives in Brooklyn, but that could be anywhere too.

  The computer blanks out abruptly. My phone chimes to say it's been disconnected.

  The power's gone out. I toss the keyboard and mouse away, useless now. There's only one place I can go where she might conceivably be.

  Sir Clowdesley. It helps that I'm still the mayor.

  * * *

  I became mayor of Sir Clowdesley only a few days back; a feature of a geo-location app on my phone, in partnership with the coffee shop's management. I turned up often enough, and regularly enough, as measured by my phone's GPS position, that I beat out anyone else, and was rewarded with my mayorhood and a few free coffees to hand out to my 'constituents'; other users of the same app.

  MAYOR

  The word had revolved on my phone screen, twinkling glossily. It almost brought on a twinge itself. Baby steps, the doctor had said. Becoming mayor felt like a baby victory.

  It feels like another world now, that moment when I'd surveyed the low bustle of hipsters I had come to rule, spread out on mismatching vintage sofas and benches. They wore skinny jeans and neck beards and plaited ponytails, all clutching phones like the sawn-off hilts of swords in a war. I suppose I looked much like them, a 28-year old artist with dreams of becoming relevant, though I'd become their leader.

  I handed out my free coffees to them in a playful way, back when that had seemed such a big step forward. I made one of them hop on his way to pick up a skinny latte. I made another grovel over text message for a chocolate brownie. It was almost too much fun, threatening the onset of another crippling twinge.