The Last Mayor Box Set

by Michael John Grist

  Its skin burned a bright and bloody red, but it was just as hard and cold as the rest of the ocean.

  "What are you doing here?" she asked.

  It didn't say anything, possibly because its head was still stuck in the ceiling. Anna looked up. It would take another few hours to clear it, and right now she was exhausted. Her hands were blistered raw. She sat down on a shelf of shoulder.

  This wasn't exactly what she'd hoped for. There was something faintly ridiculous about ti all. Had all these millions of people come here to, what, worship at this thing's altar? Hug it to death?

  She looked back out of the cavern. It widened like a funnel, giving her an excellent view of desert sand, her RV and at least three other mounds.

  "Are they all like this?" she asked the red giant. "What's the point? Father, I'm here!"

  She rubbed her eyes with her palms then laughed. She felt giddy. That was what working through the night did to you. A cool breeze lapped at her feet. Perhaps she would make something up when she reported back to Cerulean, something a little more meaningful than this. It felt like an anticlimax.

  Was the ultimate goal of the T4 virus? Perhaps. Viruses did all kinds of strange things to further their own goals, and sometimes for no reason at all, if their code ran amok. Ebola could make your eyes change color. Syphilis made peoples' brains eat themselves. Sufferers of rabies became morbidly afraid of water.

  She started out of the cavern. She would sleep for a while, then return to clear the head. Her father might be on the other side. She'd take the whole thing apart to find him, and maybe ven after she took it all apart, she wouldn't be able to find him, then-

  What?

  Was that a sound? There was a chill on her ankles, which didn't seem to fit with the hot scouring wind on her face. She stopped at the edge of the mound, momentarily confused. She didn't know what she was doing or what she'd been thinking. She was standing still at the outer wall of the mound facing outward, but had she been coming out or going in? she couldn't remember.

  She turned herself to look back into the dark, and something in the dark moved.

  It was dim to make out. The cold around her ankles began to sting, and a distant kind of panic welled in her. It was so cold, like being sucked into the bottom of the ocean.

  She gulped. She tried to lick her lips but couldn't move.

  Something was moving ahead of her. The satellite phone hissed but couldn't help. The heat of the sun faded, and there was only the tunnel now, and at the end of the tunnel there was the red giant, and it was moving.

  CRUNCH

  Its arm jerked. In the dimness she watched with wide and watering eyes as that long serrated limb punched upward at the rock bodies clumped around its head.

  CRUNCH

  Dust and bits of stone fell down. Its other arm punched upward too. More dust and stone fell. Its legs sucked out of the nestled bed of bodies like it was emerging from carbonite. It punched again and again in the dark until its head finally came clear, then dropped to its knees in a fog of dust and stone debris.

  Anna's legs trembled. She felt naked before. It was huge. It reached up and pulled a shroud of gray off its head, another body, then turned its gaze to her.

  Jabberwock.

  Its eyes burned a bright red in the darkness. Its mouth was a deep black hole, round and repellent. She tried to back away, but the cold held her fast, and instead compelled her to…

  Take a step forward. She wanted to scream but she couldn't. The red giant knelt there and she took another step toward it, then another. Her whole body began to shake. She was unable to even turn her neck, and she kept advancing until the creature opened its huge hand, and she stepped in to meet it.

  Its grip closed around her middle. Her arms reached up and helped it guide the black hole of its mouth close to her face, as if coming in for a kiss. Her nerves screamed as her mouth opened wide, and its mouth covered her own.

  She breathed in its iron stink of blood. She felt the heaving in its chest as a tremble through her own limbs. Her tongue tasted an acid tang, and blood beaded hot down her face where its sharp lips touched.

  She tried to scream but couldn't. Its chest convulsed harder and its grip quickened, and she knew that something was coming, and this was how she would die. This was what her death would mean. This was the end of her long odyssey around the world.

  INTERLUDE

  Over the years, the others slept and steadily their bodies turned to stone. He felt them stiffen and sharpen, lodging him ever more firmly into place. In time the enemy in his middle stopped biting and slept too, wrapped in the embrace of his flesh. Its cold grew so faint he could barely feel it, diminishing day by day, just like the warmth of his fellows. But the heat inside him was stronger, and took far longer to die.

  The long walk through the ocean hadn't erased it. The long trek over mountains, deserts and plains hadn't tamed it. The final tumultuous battle with the Jabberwocks, as the army of him and all his fellows had piled their bodies up to form prisons of flesh and bone atop them, couldn't rub it away. The long years of nothing were nothing next to that.

  He'd spent too long with her pressed close to his chest, huddled in her sling, gazing into eyes he hadn't been able to control.

  Anna.

  Her name was a word he couldn't really think, but it had a contour and a shape that was so familiar it ached. His thoughts were slow and long, but she moved through them with a wonderful, phantom-like grace. She had written herself into him, into the very way that he was, and he couldn't forget it.

  Now he dreamed of her, and sometimes of his wife, both lost so long ago. He dreamed while in the world outside months and years went by. The tug to sleep forever pulled at him but the shape of this 'Anna' in his mind held some part of him forever awake.

  In slow, aching dreams he walked with his wife along a warm beach and they kissed by moonlight. They carried their new baby girl home for the first time. She played with dolls and asked for pointy blue hair. She crawled like a bee along the parched grass in the park, sampling the flowers and buzzing contentedly. She sat warm and heavy in his lap as he read her bedtime stories, and when she slept the cuddling hot weight of her filled him with joy.

  When her coma came, everything changed. It blanched her and made her eyes strange, made her walk and murmur and hurt herself in her sleep until they pinned her down. He thought he and his wife were enduring it together, but soon it became clear he was the only one enduring, while for her the pain of it was too much.

  "I can't do this," she told him that one night, after a fight and tears that had become their standard pattern. "I can't live like this."

  "We have to," was all he could say, "we have no choice."

  She gripped her knees and rocked.

  The next day she left and never came back.

  After that the memories were simpler, bounded within the walls of a single room but spiked by Anna's every painful push toward creativity and freedom. Their adventures together had illuminated his life, and they still did now, lighting the hollows of his fading mind. She was stronger than anyone, and he rose to the challenge by staying strong for her. When he missed his wife he just looked down at her sleeping face and saw the reason why he kept on living.

  Was that why he kept on living now? They were words without answers, dreamed over hours and days. He was nothing, a passenger in a vehicle only. Their mass assault on the red creature had been the last time he'd moved; hurled amongst his brothers and sisters, ripped open, and coming to land with his ribs like a crown about the monster's fearsome head.

  Slowly, as the tide of thousands coe across the world broke above him, the gnashing of its toothless mouth stopped. The cold it projected faded. And all was replaced by the long, slow silence.

  Until now.

  He roused from his long, slow dreams to feel the cold rising again. The mound was a silent, solid mass around him; the enlivening warmth of his brothers and sisters was long gone, leaving only him with a spark in h
is chest.

  And the cold was rising. There came a crashing and crunching beneath him, as his enemy moved for the first time in years, and broke free of their chains.

  It tore out of the embrace of his fellows, pulling him out with it. It plucked him away like a rag and threw him to the floor, where lying on a bed of stone bodies, he saw the source of the warmth clearly, standing at the edge of the mound framed by blue skies beyond.

  His Anna.

  Pride washed through him. She was courageous and beautiful, grown into a woman. She'd come so far to see him, and never given up believing, just as he had never given up on her.

  The cold of the beast swelled out to meet her, to take her, as it had taken thousands before. She turned, and the fear in her eyes made him sick. His head slumped on the uneven floor as she started toward them.

  Too weak. His arms were broken and his feet were gone, lost in the war, so all he could do was shuffle. He inched his cold thighs to drive him on, pressing against the red enemy's left foot. He could feel Anna's fragile warmth as she drew closer, walking herself into the enemy's grasp, pressing her face to its mouth. It would take her and remake her, he knew that, changing everything about her that was beautiful into a beast like itself. The regurgitation began.

  He reared up on his stumps of legs and bit into the back of the enemy's knee.

  It grunted and looked down, breaking the spell of cold for a moment. In a second it punched its huge left hand through his back, crunching through his thin ribs and pinning him to the ground. His vision blurred, but he could just make out that Anna was running.

  Good girl.

  The enemy whipped its left hand forward, scooping him and flinging him violently down the corridor, bouncing and tearing off the sharp walls. His last feeble bones broke, his skin tore away, then his ragged body hit Anna as she leapt out of the mound, knocking her head over heels. He came to rest on his back looking up at the blue sky. That was all. His spine was severed and he wasn't long for the world.

  His head sagged and there beside him lay his gorgeous Anna, all grown up. Her eyes were closed and already the cold was rising again. It couldn't be for nothing, but there was nothing now he could do.

  32. IMPOSSIBLE THINGS

  Birdmen and birdwomen flew through the rainbow sky. Her father was sitting beside her reading stories in his cozy brown voice; always there, always and forever.

  "Still she haunts me, phantomwise," he read, "Alice moving under skies never seen by waking eyes. Children yet the tale to hear, eager eye and willing ear, lovingly shall nestle near.

  "In a Wonderland they lie, dreaming as the days go by, dreaming as the summers die: ever drifting down the stream- lingering in the golden gleam- life, what is it but a dream?"

  It was lovely.

  "Daddy," she whispered, tucked deeply within the covers. "It's beautiful. Read it again."

  "Not now, honey," he said, as he so often had. "It's time to wake up. There's painting to do, and the Hatter's waiting."

  "I'm so sleepy," she said. "Can't you see I'm like a little kitten, like Dinah, and what kitties really need is to purr and sleep and dream."

  "Honey," her father said, "look at me."

  She opened her eyes. Her father lay before her, but he wasn't the handsome and scraggly-faced man he'd once been, but a withered gray peanut with fading white eyes lying on orange dust.

  "You look so different, Daddy," she whispered.

  His lips moved wordlessly.

  "Hold me," she said, "please, I want you back. I wish you'd never gone."

  His body twitched. Numbly she looked down and saw his legs were gone at the knees. His arms were twisted with broken bones. His stomach had been cut open and lay hollow.

  Tears welled in her eyes. "What have they done to you, Daddy?"

  The white in his eyes faltered. He was crying too.

  "Daddy, please."

  She closed her eyes and he was there again, leaning over her in bed. He was always there and would always keep her safe.

  "You have to wake up now, honey," he said. "I can't do this for you, Anna. Wake up."

  Her eyes opened and she remembered. The cold was already upon her. She looked over the body of her father to the mound, where the scratching sound of the red giant lurching itself near was growing louder. Every second it came closer and the cold grew harder, binding around her thoughts like the hurt, and with that new kind of hurt came a new understanding.

  Impossible things would protect her.

  She drew them about her like a wall, envisaging birdmen and women flapping back the cold with their bright wings, caterpillar people smoking out warmth like a foggy moat, dog-people and cat-people and the Hatter and all the little puppies rising up and building themselves into a barrier to keep her safe.

  It was enough, just enough to win back control of her body for a few seconds, allowing her to bolt upright. Her body moved stiffly but it moved, and she moved amongst the pile of equipment unloaded from the RV until she came upon the assault rifle. With numb fingers she clicked the safety, bolted a round into the chamber, and turned on the gray mound.

  The Jabberwock was at the entrance now, its eyes burning red and its mouth gaping blackly. The cold stole at her legs and held her tight, becalmed her thoughts and almost stopped her flat, but she'd spent her childhood fighting against the hurt and she wouldn't give in now, not with her father right there and watching.

  "Eat this," she whispered, and pulled the trigger.

  Bullets raked across the mound with a deafening clatter. The recoil kicked in her shoulder and roused her. A single impact splashed off the red giant's face and punched it back.

  The cold faded and she advanced, firing all the while.

  Rat at at at

  barked the rifle. She strode over the limp body of her floater father, driving a hail of fire into the giant's face and torso, forcing it back. The bullets ricocheted with bright sparks off the tunnel walls, crunching stony limbs and fogging the air with the powder from their bodies.

  Rat at at at Rat at at at

  Rat at at at

  The rifle clicked on empty and Anna blinked, coming back to herself. Sweat poured down her face and mingled with tears. The Jabberwock was still inside and shifting, the cold was reaching out once more, and in a flash of understanding like a bolt through the very T4 at her core, she understood.

  Bullets and bombs wouldn't kill it. Nothing she could do would kill it, because if there had been some other way then all this need never have happened. The ocean was the only cure. It was for this that she had lost her father, and her mother, and every other soul once alive. It was for this that they had raced west, to come and use the hot weight of their bodies to save those who were still alive.

  To halt the Jabberwock, in all its thousands.

  She flashed back on all the mounds she'd passed, and all the billions of bodies heaped atop seeds of the Jabberwock at their core. Every one of them had died for her. They'd come here and given their lives for her.

  Without thinking, she knew what to do. The rocket launcher lay there and she swept it up. On her shoulder it felt solid and right, primed like a vorpal sword.

  "Daddy," she said, and pulled the trigger.

  The rocket shot out on a string of smoke, hit the tunnel a few feet deep of the entrance, and erupted in flame. Bodies fragmented and powder shot out and the whole mound lifted for a second-

  - then fell. The crunch was almighty. Dust huffed out from all sides like a gasp as thousands of stone bodies settled to a new balance. The cold sank away, fading as the red giant within was once again buried alive.

  The launcher sagged to the dust and Anna dropped to her knees by her father's side. The light was nearly gone from his shriveled eyes.

  "Daddy," she said again, whispering now. She took his slack hand as he'd once held hers, holding tight while the light in his eyes flickered and died.

  33. FREE

  Her father was lighter than the others.

  She
thought about that, as she climbed up the newly settled mound with his stiff corpse across her back, but she only thought about it gently. To question it too deeply now seemed inappropriate. To ignore it altogether seemed less than he deserved.

  "You waited for me," she said to him as she climbed. "You knew I was coming, so you waited."

  Strapping him to her back had not been hard. Now she wore him like a backpack. It probably looked obscene, but it didn't feel that way. It felt like a return to the days when he wore her around his neck like a baby, like a snail, carrying her everywhere he went whether she was awake or asleep. It felt right.

  Now it was her turn to look after him.

  She climbed.

  The bodies under her hands and feet had set firmly against each other again. Still she could feel the whispers of the Jabberwock's chill reaching up through the rocky pile, like anemone feelers tickling at the air. But it wasn't strong enough to compel her anymore. Bullets, a rocket-launcher and a thousand tons of stone bodies on the head would do it.

  The rest she would think about later.

  Solid hands and feet helped her up. She'd thought about burying him; digging a deep hole in the dirt and setting up a grave, but it hadn't seem fitting. Cremation was possible, since he wasn't stone like the others. She even scanned the horizon for trees to provide firewood, so she could tip his ashes into a can and carry him around forever, but he'd had long enough travels already. It was time for him to rest.

  She reached the top, held to a slick shoulder, and slid her father carefully off her back. His broken arms flopped creakily, and he slumped quite comfortably in a slight depression by the apex.

  Anna smiled. So this was his island, and he the giant sat atop it. All these bodies were his throne. It was all right.

  Beyond that, it was too much to really process that her father had just died, finally. It was too big, after believing he'd been dead and gone for so long. This was his broken, battered body, that had held her when she'd gone to sleep, had carried her across America, and had come all this way only to die for her again.