The Last Mayor Box Set

by Michael John Grist

  I'll need hundreds of desks. But this building has about a dozen floors. All of those will have heavy office furniture. I can tip them all out, my raw materials, then go down, clear, and build up my wall.

  It's just Deepcraft.

  I get to work. I shift desk after desk. At some point I hear frantic barking from below, and watch as a pack of running floaters chase a dog down the street. The dog is lathered with scummy brown sweat, and the floaters run like Neanderthal man, like they were born to this, their feet slapping the asphalt.

  Poor dog. There's nothing I can do for it. Its barks echo away down 23rd headed for a messy death somewhere.

  I don't stop shifting desks until it's well into the evening. They pile up like messy dominos outside, with bodies crushed amongst them. They almost reach all the way across the street already. Some of them crack on impact and the metal frame pulls away from the wood. Each one crushes one or two floaters into the mix.

  I look back on the office, empty now but for the two dead security guards and plenty of bits of trailing cable. A company just got downsized. The smell of decay and cooling road-tar blows through the window.

  I go over to the guards. I don't look at their pulped heads and necks, I just grab the first one and drag him away by the feet. He's harder to move even than the desks.

  Out the window he goes. I don't stop to watch his body smack and roll. I tell myself it's just another desk. The next one goes. I stand at the window and look west along 23rd. The stink of them is rising up now, a kind of butcher-shop blend of blood and guts. The sun descends below the canyons of the city, and the sky over the buildings is leering toward a blast furnace orange.

  I have to do this whether there's enough light or not.

  I pick up the two guns and belts and strap both around my waist. I have to buckle them to the tightest notch, never before used by the two fat security guards. I realize I'm thirsty.

  The stairwell to Sir Clowdesley is cool and dark. It doesn't know any of the bad things I've just done. I come down and back through the coffee shop, where I pick up a bottle of water from the unrefrigerated fridge section of the bar. It's cool and I drain it.

  At the window I'm happy to note my blackboards are still there. I peel away the sofa covering the broken window, my muscles throbbing warmly, and see the redheaded lady still there. Somehow she survived the rain of desks. I point the gun at her head and pull the trigger.

  Bang.

  Her head blows open and she is flung off her feet. I peer through the window to see her getting up. I aim one more time and shoot her in the throat. She goes down permanently, gurgling.

  More of them come over at a steady lope, drawn by the sound. I climb through the window to meet them: a guy in a black nightclub shirt with bloody stains all down his thighs, a homeless-looking kid without any shoes and filthy blackened feet. They've gotten even grayer already. There's dried blood on their teeth and around their lips, where they've been eating; cats, dogs, at one point I thought I heard a horse whinnying before it fell silent. It must have run across the bridge from Queens. Probably people too. I haven't seen any other real people, though. I guess they got them all.

  I shoot the guy in the brown suit in the neck. After three shots, only two of which hit, he goes down. I get the kid in two.

  I start dragging desks. I get a good rhythm going, starting at the left side of Sir Clowdesley and laying them out. The first time that I get blood or some other cold slick liquid on my hands I freak out and rub it away on the desk, leaving bloody finger trails. The second and third times I ignore it.

  I press on, running backward at a fast clip pulling each desk behind me, scraping loudly along the road. I tip them over on their sides, so the smooth surface of the desk faces outward. I get four lined up, the first quarter of a semi-circle, and more floaters come. One of them is a cop. When they're all down, I drop rescue the gun from the cop's holster. Now I have three. At some point I'll have to figure out how to reload.

  I get twelve desks done, and it's properly getting dark. It gets harder to pick out the ocean as they wash near, with no streetlights. Still I can hear them clacking and slapping their drunken feet nearer.

  Bang bang bang, my guns report. I get sixteen desks out from the pile's periphery, then I have to start salvaging ones buried in the midst of people I crushed. Here there's an arm half-cloven through, emerging through a crack between two desks, the fingers still twitching toward me. I reach in and shoot the owner in the throat. I do that four or five times.

  One of the mall cops' guns clicks emptily as a blood-smeared Goth guy in ripped leather jeans comes charging for me. I panic, drop the gun and snatch up one of my others. It takes four shots to put him down.

  I pile up more desks atop the sixteen. They've heavy but I slide them on top one end at a time. The wall stands high enough that I can't see over it now, only through cracks. It's dark, but I hear them slapping against the impromptu barricade outside. They can't get at me except through the narrow slot I use to drag in the desks.

  The last few desks drag wetly, tearing over crushed bodies. Many of these people are still alive, but unable to get up due to broken bones. They grope for me like a nest of octopus tentacles.

  I get the last desk out and up. I turn and see one more floater creep through the corral. It's a lady in a low-cut white dress that has slipped to reveal one ample gray breast. She jogs unevenly toward me, one of the heels on her shoes broken away, making an uneven clopping sound. I shoot her in the throat from point blank range, and she lies down like she just got tired, flat on her back, and gurgles wetly to a second death.

  I pull her dress back up to cover her chest. I haven't got the energy to pick her up and push her over the wall.

  In the darkness I amble the wall's half-circle courtyard with my phone flashlight on, stumbling on bits of broken computers and monitors. I toss them under the desks to weigh them down. Palms slap the desk wall like hail. I'm done though.

  I go for Sir Clowdesley, past my moped, and crawl in through the window. I shut it up with the couch.

  In the library I hunker down on one of the sofas with lots of pilfered cushions spread around me, in the dark. It's even cozy like this. I eat a packaged BLT sandwich, drink one of the lukewarm banana milkshakes, and drain another bottle of water.

  Outside their thumping is a low cacophony. Exhaustion creeps up over me and I put my head down and sleep.

  13. NOT A GAME

  I wake cold and unrested to silty gray morning light. It takes a moment to realize I'm in Sir Clowdesley, and why. I look around the library; there's no sign of Lara. At least the twinges are still at bay, though my arms and shoulders ache. I lie still for a moment, straining to hear the chop of helicopter blades or the friendly loudspeaker hail of a soldier calling for survivors outside, but there's nothing.

  I'm alone in this.

  I get up and go groggily down the stairs, with one of the guns and belt wadded in my hand. I pull back the couch and peer out of the drive-thru window.

  The redhead is still lying there in a mess, the weak light making her wounds look ghastly. The others I killed are there as well, spotted like strange gray mold risen through the paving slabs. Blood has set in dark puddles like blackcurrant jelly. Looking at them makes me ill.

  Overhead the sky is miserable. I bring up my phone and look at the screen blearily. 11:16. I slept right through the alarm. It's fine. I feel sick. I push the sofa to the side, grab a sandwich and a bottle of water, and sit to a desultory breakfast. I keep eating though I don't even feel hungry.

  What now?

  I hawk and spit out of the window. I think I'm getting sick. I can hear them mumbling away at the desk wall, but it's holding.

  I bring up the gun. I try to un-attach it from the cable, but it seems to be part of the haft's molding, rubbery black plastic encasing the metal. I turn it over, careful to point the muzzle away from my face. I click the safety back and forth, trying to remember if it's on when it shows red or off
.

  I look for the button to eject the ammo. Ten minutes later the magazine slides out smoothly. I never owned a handgun, but I've fired my friend's, when I was back in Iowa. I pull the slide forward, revealing one coppery dark-nosed bullet in the breach. I tip it out awkwardly, then let the slide roll back.

  Now the gun should be empty. I click safety over, aim out the window, and fire.

  Click.

  I eject bullets from the magazine and count them; seven shells remain. I feed them in and slot the magazine back, work the slide to feed one into the breach, then put on the safety.

  I fasten the holster-belt around my waist. I put the sofa back.

  There's more work to do.

  The fifth, sixth, and seventh floors are all offices, and their doors to the stairwell are open; a cubicle farm for a travel agency, a call center, and the admin hub for an upscale bridal service. In the travel agency I find tourist maps of New York and pocket one. On desks I see personal thingamajigs; here a Jessie doll from Toy Story, there a Totoro, pictures of family in fun stylized frames, faces that are all gone now.

  I smash out the windows and send their desks raining down. Today I'll aim to reinforce and expand the space I have. Across the street there's a 7-11 which will have all kinds of canned food and drink. They'll have a lighter so I can warm the night with a fire. I don't know what I'll use for a brazier, but whatever. Maybe I can shell one of the milk steamers and use that. I'll make a chimney out of rolled plastic picnic tarps. I have lots of ideas.

  Desks rain down all through the gray day. I throw them out in the midst of the crowd around my existing wall, clustered three-deep now. The offices empty out and the furniture piles up outside. I look down on my wall, and at the angry ocean of gray bodies beyond it, thrashing like storm-tossed waves. They stretch back almost to the intersection with 2nd Avenue.

  On the street, standing in my semi-circle courtyard, I think about how to do this. It's tricky. There are too many of the ocean out there now to kill them all; I don't have enough bullets, but if I try to push the desks back without killing them, they'll breach the gaps.

  I delay that problem for later. For now I stack more desks to reinforce what I have.

  Back in the library I take out my USBs and bring up the prepper Bible on my laptop. While it gets dark outside I surf through screen after screen, advising me on guns, traps, pulleys and power. How to hot-wire a car intrigues me. How to filter and boil water. How to siphon gas, how to leech energy off a building's emergency power, how to jump current and voltage up and down to match appliances, where to find weapons and ammo in the city. I mark a few potential targets on my tourist map: the Police Academy a few blocks over, all major banks, certain police cars and vans, police officers themselves, obviously, even most bars and convenience stores.

  My head blurs with it. There's a lot to take in. In woozy moments I remember the family I left behind; the guy with his broken collarbones, the daughter in the box, the mom and daughter tangled up in chairs and tables. I wonder what they're doing right now. Do the ocean sleep?

  I'm alone. I get cold. I bring up my phone and look at the battery, more than halfway down. I'll deal with that soon. I double-click it.

  "Hello Amo," Io says.

  "Do you think I'm the last human alive?" I ask her.

  She thinks for a moment. She's noticing there's no Internet connection, no databank to scour answers from, and then scanning her own limited memory.

  "I don't think I can answer that question, Amo."

  I chuckle, but hearing the sound makes me aware of how foolish I sound. Talking to a phone.

  I turn it off. It's not amusing, not really. Probably it's an early sign of madness. It's weakness and I can't afford to be weak.

  I try to snuggle into the sofa deeper against the cold, pile more cushions on, but they don't do much. It's gone fully black outside, and now I hear the shushing breath of the people out there, like a harbor tide lapping away at my desk breakers. I feel ill and strange. There were a lot of things I meant to do today, but they stopped me. I couldn't even get a lighter, so now I can't have a fire.

  Will tomorrow be the same? I don't know how I'm going to expand the semi-circle wider. Probably I need more signs to tell Lara I'm here, more widely spread. If Lara's alive and she even thinks to come to Sir Clowdesley, she would barely get onto 23rd street for the horde that's gathering now.

  There must be millions of them in Manhattan alone. That thought takes me to fitful sleep.

  * * *

  I wake to footfalls like thunder. It's pitch black and the darkness is churning. I roll up and snatch at my phone, scrolling for the flashlight. It blinks alight and I hold it out; the weak beam picks out chairs, tables, the balcony down to the bar below, and in the midst of it, the ocean.

  Sir Clowdesley is flooded with them. Their flat white eyes reflect the light and their gray faces look like ghouls reanimated to life. They shamble through the space toward me, knocking over furniture and sprawling awkwardly against the steps.

  I dart to my feet, instantly flushed with adrenaline. At the top of the stairs I see some of them have started crawling up, several are almost at the top.

  I haven't got my guns, they're at the sofa and there's no time. I set the phone on a bookshelf, taking a second to aim the beam where it illuminates, then snatch up a wooden chair. I hold it ahead like a lion tamer, stride three steps down, and slam its feet into the shoulders and face of the nearest two crawlers. A cheek buckles percussively, the impact jolts up my arms, and they both slither a step or two back.

  Others crawl over them though, enlivened by the light, by the motion, by the sound.

  "Shit," I curse, and throw the chair. It doesn't do a damn thing. One of them seems to have the stairs figured out and comes bounding up for me, bloody lips champing. There is no damn time.

  I turn and run, grabbing my phone and pulling the rough wood bookshelf down behind me. I hit the emergency fire door, yank it open, and get through into the dark quiet of the stairwell a second before they hit. The catch clicks, I can't lock it from here, but I don't think they can turn a knob-handle.

  I lean panting against the metal door while they thump on it, like an uncanny pulse, matching my erratic heartbeat. My breaths are ragged and I feel sick.

  I just almost died. Not even Sir Clowdesley is safe. I don't know how they got through my desk wall, how they climbed through my window, but they did, and it's no safe place for Lara or me.

  Shit.

  It's cold in this drafty vertical corridor. My phone lights my feet in sterile white, picking out the spots and blots of blood and oil. Then the flashlight dies. I lift it up and thumb the button and screen, but the battery is dead. It's pitch black in here.

  Something cold touches my back.

  I freak the hell out, whirling and lashing out. My elbow hits something frail and sends it careening into the darkness. I run and grab for the railing and almost go over it. A body is shuffling behind me, and I take the railing with both hands and run as fast and hard as I can along it and up to the fourth floor.

  I feel my way to the fire door and lurch through it terrified and gasping with a deep burn in my legs. I slam it behind me and turn the lock.

  The office is lit by pale bluish moonlight. It is utterly barren but for the snaky coils of cables, the snail drag-marks of the security guards I killed, the water cooler, the gray partitions, and me. I trail out into the cold pale light, and it hits me like a dumbbell bar in the eye, perhaps for the first time.

  This isn't a game.

  This isn't for fun, or a dream, or a chance to prove what a hero I can be. I'm cold and I'm scared and I'm tired. I'm alone. I don't have a blanket, bedding, or a gun. I don't have a damn thing. From below I can hear them, their bodies pushing, pattering and packing in to the coffee shop I thought I was mayor of. Now it belongs to them.

  I go to the window edge and look down. In the grayscale starlight the concrete below writhes with thousands of bodies pressed ti
ghtly together, more than in Mott Haven, more people than I've ever seen before except in stadiums or parades. They have flowed over and through my wall of desks like an incoming tide. They have poured in to Sir Clowdesley up a ramp of their own crushed bodies. Now they're looking up at me, so many white eyes like freakish stars in the sky.

  I can't save Lara like this. I couldn't save Cerulean. I probably can't even save myself.

  I retreat to the receptionist's desk. It is cold and barren, looking out on a bay of elevators from which a cold draft blows. The company name is Medisco. It's meaningless. I lay down the receptionist's chair on the gray carpet, use the padded backrest as a pillow, and try to convince my aching, freezing body that sleep is going to come.

  14. ULTIMATUM

  I wake from a Deepcraft dream. Cerulean and I are running the Darkness, but we can never find the things we need. Each time the diviner tells us where to go, we arrive a second too late because some other picker has already come and taken it away.

  "Sorry Amo," Cerulean says. "We just didn't make the grade."

  He breaks apart into pieces that become Deepcraft resource blocks. With them I know I can build an excellent weapon, but I don't have the crafting pattern to do it.

  I wake up with this thought in my head, afraid. I can't even use the things Cerulean did for me, moments before he died. I pat my pocket and find the comforting hard wodge of USBs still there. I pat the other pocket and find my phone and keys.

  I take the keys out and walk to the office edge. I look down through the broken window and see the tide has started to bank up. There is a definite incline, bringing the heads of the ocean horde below me up to the second floor.