ATATATATATATAT
Whatever it was it was big, more like a jet engine than a gun, bigger than Amo in Times Square.
ATATATATATATAT.
Bodies peeled away like banana skins and he clawed at them to be free, emerging up to waving his hands like flags.
"I'm here!' he croaked, "I'm alive!"
Blood washed down his face, down his back and made his grip slick. Overhead the concrete block had transformed; from its top a black pillar had risen, over a meter thick and stretching as tall as the floodlights in a football stadium, though instead of lights at the top there were four cannons angled outward, swiveling now and shooting.
Bullets raked out of them in four directions at once, in a widening circumference of fire. Robert craned his neck to see the infected scythed down row after row. He raised his feeble arms again and waved. "Hey!" he shouted. "Hey, I'm here!"
The guns kept firing in a methodical, organized sweep, until the number of infected was fewer and the firing rate dropped to-
AT AT AT
Every bullet dropped one of them, going on for minutes more until finally every last one on the field was dead. Robert kept calling until finally one of the cannons turned on him like a spotlight.
"I'm alive," he croaked up at it, staring into the black barrel because there had to be a camera up there, there had to be people on the other hand. "I'm not like them. I'm alive."
The barrel stared for a long moment, making its judgment, then abruptly it folded back on itself and slotted neatly into the long metal cylinder, which slid with a long smooth hiss back down into the concrete block.
"I'm alive," Robert said gratefully, lying back on the bodies and breathing easy for the first time in weeks. They'd seen him. They'd saved him. Any minute now they'd come to rescue him.
They didn't.
* * *
All night he lay there, drifting in and out of a chilly sleep, shivering atop the dead. He had hardly any fat or clothes left on him now, and up on the mountain's slope the air was far colder than in the forests below.
But he couldn't leave. There were people here, he knew it. They'd seen him and they had to be coming.
He burrowed amongst the dead for warmth. The coating of blood and dirt felt like a second skin now. In time a pale sun rose and he dreamed fitfully of warm sheets and a hot shower, of smiling faces asking how he'd managed to survive for so long, of hot soup, welcoming eyes and comfort.
"They're not coming," Amo said flatly.
He looked and saw Amo standing over him. The demon was there too, so large it eclipsed the sun.
"Face it," Amo went on, "they don't want you. I didn't want you either."
Robert turned back to the concrete block but Amo's voice followed him.
"You think I'm the weak one for what I did, but do you see yourself now? This is pathetic. This is the most pathetic thing I've ever seen, you lying in your zombie bed with zombies for covers, waiting to be saved."
It was true. Robert sobbed into his hand, but even his hand was freezing, like touching the wheelchair rims after a frozen night's sleep in the car. His body was turning to stone. Each sob hurt worse than the last, tearing at his crushed ribs, but he couldn't stop them. The hope was too much.
"At least I had the balls to do something," Amo said. "I was on top of Times Square while you were rummaging in the guts. What does that say about us, Cerulean? What does that say about you?"
"I didn't," he tried to answer, "I wasn't-"
"You were weak and you quit. Why not quit all the way now? Have the balls to finish what you started a year ago in your hospital bed; bite your tongue clean off. It's never going to get any better than this. Don't you think I would know?"
The demon stared down at him with its red eyes, and the sun rose higher.
The air grew warmer and the chill faded. A dewy vapor rose up off the fields and all the dead bodies. It looked like their spirits departing. Soon enough, more gray bodies came. They went past him toward the concrete block, where they started hammering again like nothing had happened.
Robert laughed. Maybe Amo was right; what he needed was to finish the job.
He crawled to the outer ring of the dead, through damp grass that chilled and cleaned him. Already there were several dozen of the infected circled around the box, hammering. He would stay here and wait for the guns to come back, he decided. This time he'd make them shoot him.
At some point there was a different noise. At first he wasn't sure if it was imagination or not; a droning sound attributable perhaps to a big bee or an avalanche or some hidden workings in the earth, but then he saw it.
A van. It was a bright yellow van coming along the winding dirt track out of the woods, its engine rumbling, heading his way.
They were coming! After all, they were coming for him.
Tears rolled down his cheeks. He pushed himself as high up on his elbows as he could and waved.
"I'm here!" he croaked. "I'm over here, I'm alive!"
The van slowed then stopped at the edge of the field, and a young man burst out of the front. He looked like a football player, tall with short sandy hair, wearing jeans and a varsity letterman jacket. He stared across the gulf of a football field's distance toward Robert, and Robert stared back.
"Did you say something?" the guy shouted hesitantly. "I mean, are you alive?"
Robert nodded frantically. "I'm here. I'm alive."
The guy grinned and spread his arms. "I'm alive too! Hell yes, I knew these bastards were leading me somewhere!" He started over the grass at a run. "I'm Matthew. Damn am I glad to see-"
His throat tore open. A resounding single AT rang out over the still landscape, and the hope in Robert's heart turned to ice, cracked, and shattered.
The young man, Matthew, was blown backward, irretrievably dead, spurting a brief geyser of blood.
ATATATATATATAT
The guns kicked in again. Robert looked up to see them dealing out death to the infected at the base. They must have periscoped up in silence behind him.
ATATATATATATAT
"No!" he shouted.
He stared at the fallen figure by the yellow van while the cannons droned on above. He crawled toward him desperately, hungrily, as if the most important thing in the world was to reach this 'Matthew' and see if he had ever really been alive. His elbows thumped the ground and his waist dragged in the dirt and the guns fired overhead and then he was there.
Matthew. Apart from the hole torn through his neck from front to back, still pumping dark blood, he looked peaceful. Unthinking, numb and dizzy, Robert took Matthew's hand and squeezed it. Tears poured from his eyes.
"Wake up," he urged. He squeezed the young man's fingers so hard one of them cracked. "Wake up, please!"
ATATATATATATAT
Matthew had blue eyes and freckly skin. He was thick in the shoulder; he could be a butterfly swimmer, perhaps. Robert could have taught him to dive, like Coach Willings; they might have gone to the Olympics together but now he was dead. Robert reached out with trembling hands to touch his face. It was warm.
Something broke inside him and tears bubbled up like a geyser. The waste was too much, like the coma that had broken his Olympic hopes, spiraling down to the concrete and into the smothering arms of the demon. It was his grandmother's cancer and his sister going to jail all over again, his mom getting laid off, Amo committing suicide, and for what?
A whole life snuffed out for a mistake, like seven billion people lost for nothing at all, and now with Amo gone and Matthew gone he couldn't bear it anymore.
He screamed so hard it hurt, but he couldn't stop now if he tried. The guns screamed back, implacable and unstoppable, spitting out bullet after bullet that tore gray flesh to shreds.
ATATATATATATAT
He bared his chest to it, raised himself up on his arms and wrenched control of the scream to hurl words into the barrage.
"Kill me too! Kill me, you bastards!"
ATATATATATATAT roared the guns,
felling bodies on all sides, though not a single bullet came for him.
FLIGHT
C. INFECTED
The panel van drove all that day, and Cerulean lay in the semi-dark, bouncing on the mattress as the van powered along. With his arms shackled he couldn't do anything. He pried at the pole but it wouldn't budge. He inspected his handcuffs but they were cinched tight around his wrists.
He could only lie and wait. He tried to guess what Julio had in store, and thought about how Amo would react when he didn't come back, but there was nothing they could do now. America was vast, and Cerulean hadn't swallowed a tracking chip like Anna's father. No one was going to find him now.
That realization settled slow and heavy on his thoughts, like a thick fall of snow. This was probably it for him. Certainly torture lay ahead. Julio would take his revenge, in long, slow and painful days. It was a miserable prospect, chased by nothingness. He'd be dead. He wouldn't see Anna again, come back from her round-the-world trip as a new woman. He wouldn't see her married, wouldn't be grandfather to her kids.
It was a hard thing to face. Shivers of fear ran up and down him, and regret. He should have killed Julio a long time ago. He'd always known, really. He only had himself to blame. But regret wasn't helpful either. What he needed was cold, emotionless, calculating numbness. The way he'd felt after Matthew; ready to die on a moment's notice. Perhaps with his life, he could finally finish the job he should have done so long ago.
Kill Julio. Save New LA. Save Anna.
The demon called to him like an old friend.
By dusk he was there.
The van stopped and Julio opened the back doors. The air that flowed in was cool, and the sky was dark and flecked with stars, like sea foam. There were a few trees, a parking lot, part of a McDonalds.
Julio looked in and Cerulean looked out, two different angles on a strange mirror.
"We're just outside Denver," Julio said. "Eighteen hours driving. Two days more and we'll be on the East Coast."
"East," Cerulean echoed. His voice sounded dead, like the Robert of old.
Julio climbed up to sit on the tailgate, frowning, his body leaning awkwardly to the right. "That's disappointing. Are you beaten already?"
Cerulean only gazed at him.
"Or are you faking it?" Julio narrowed his eyes. "Trying to lull me? Remember who you're dealing with, Robert. I faked it for years. For five years I pretended, because of what you did to me."
Cerulean snorted. There was too much there to unpack. "So you're not pretending now?"
Julio smiled. "No. This is who I am. And do you know what separates me from that other Julio?"
"This new one's a bigger asshole."
Julio smiled, then pointed at Cerulean's wrists. "Chains. From the moment we met, I wearing the chains you cast for me. Now I see my fate, and I embrace it. You're part of that fate too, Robert." He leaned in, whispering now. "Together we'll wipe New LA off the map."
Cerulean just watched him. Julio sat still, an angled silhouette against the moonlit asphalt and field of stars. Any moment the gun might come out and the torture would begin. He had to be ready.
"You're insane if you think I'll help you."
Julio shrugged. "I know you will. People change, Robert. I'm hardly the first to reinvent myself. You were Robert, then you became Cerulean. You've made your share of mistakes too."
"I didn't kill anyone."
Julio sighed wistfully. "You killed Matthew, didn't you? Poor soul. You lured him to his death. But death isn't so bad, not really. It's just another change, like all the others. Anna will join us soon enough. Amo and all the rest."
Cerulean just watched him. Matthew was a ghost from the past; it didn't affect him now.
"You've changed too, in the last five years," Julio went on. "I thought at this point you'd be like a barking dog, raving at me, telling me what to do. You've matured. Chains become you."
"They'd become you even more."
Julio smiled. "They already do. But my chains set me free, old friend."
"We're not friends. We never were."
"No," said Julio, "but it really is good to see you. I'm going to enjoy this time together, and perhaps you will too, when you see where we're going. Old mysteries, laid to rest. Now sleep well. We've got a long day's drive tomorrow."
He climbed down from the tailgate and slammed the doors.
* * *
When Cerulean woke from a fitful sleep, they were driving again. Julio called out the states as they passed through; Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio. They stopped for the night in Cincinnati.
"One more day and we'll be there," he said, sitting again on his chair in the back of the van, looking down at Cerulean. "The true apocalypse. The world will end not with a bang, but a whimper."
"Shut up," Cerulean answered, letting anger shine through the numbness like bait on a hook. "Just shut up with your crazy bullshit, Julio. You want to have a conversation, unlock this chain. I'll have something to say after that. Until then, why don't you just shut your mouth?"
Julio looked at him. In the harsh lights of the van the left side of his face looked leprous. "I should warn you, I hear a lot worse than that every day. Perhaps you think that you're my first?"
Cerulean listened.
Julio noticed the silence and nodded approvingly. "The last man I took, he just screamed. I wasn't hurting him but he kept screaming as if I was, like the pain would protect him. I tried cutting out his tongue, but he still honked, like a goose. After that I turned to duct tape."
Cerulean felt himself paling. Numbness didn't help with the fear. He'd expected torture, had always known Julio was capable of such things. Still his throat went dry and he swallowed hard. Julio studied him with renewed interest.
"You understand me. I think the duct tape killed him. Not being able to scream broke him. I stole his control. I'll take yours, too."
Cerulean's legs began to shake involuntarily. That was new. Perhaps, if he wasn't careful, he would piss himself. His stomach became tremulous. He tried not to imagine Julio standing over him in torture gear, plastics splattered with blood.
"You've been killing people?" he asked, his voice sounding strangely conversational.
"Not quite killing," Julio replied, squinting slightly as if the distinction troubled him. "It's not fair to say that."
"Torturing, then?"
"I can't explain. You have to see it to know. The world's been turned upside down for so long, you've come to think this is the rightful shape." He gestured around him. "It took me a lot of people to truly get over that." He paused. "Take Amo as an example. He told a nice story and you all believed it, but what did he really offer, Robert? Hope which he had no right to give. The real world is nothing like you think it is."
Cerulean swallowed back a plume of coldness in his throat. "Then what is it?"
Julio leaned forward, hands on his knees. "We should be dead. All of us. One in ten million survived the infection, through nothing more than genetic luck. It's nothing we did, nothing we earned, and we aren't the best this world has to offer. I think you know this already, don't you? We're just the dregs."
"We're all that's left."
Julio shook his head and chuckled. "No, we're not. We're just in the way, and soon we'll be gone. It's written in stone, chiseled long before the apocalypse."
Cerulean stared at Julio. Julio stared back. There was nothing more to say.
9. EMPIRE STATE
When the autocannons retracted, they left behind an empty world. He was there too, Robert, Cerulean, but he wasn't really real. They hadn't seen him, hadn't cared about him, because he was nothing at all.
The least of these.
The ghost of Amo had been right. He should have killed himself already. He should have died on the first night, going out as a hero instead of becoming a ghost.
He closed Matthew's eyes. Already more infected were coming for the concrete block, drawn like flies to honey, this endlessly repeat
ing Groundhog Day massacre. The cold milk in his middle was gone and he felt utterly hollow inside, like a non-player character in Deepcraft with the Internet down.
He had nothing to say and nothing to do, and no hope left.
He slithered into Matthew's van and drove away. The gun tower let him go. He drove until he reached the coast, then sat overlooking the Atlantic Ocean and waited to die.
Gray waves lapped at a pebbly beach, and he thought about crawling into the water. It wouldn't be hard to drown. He was weak and wouldn't be able to keep himself afloat. He'd be with the red demon again, with Amo and all the others.
But he was a ghost now, and ghosts couldn't die.
He woke in the back of the van, lying on a mattress Matthew must have put there. There were beautifully bound books in neat little wooden shelving units. Robert ran his fingers over the titles.
Robinson Crusoe
Walden
Crime and Punishment
Classics of isolation, survival and guilt. He considered tipping them all out and burning them. He thought about it until he actually crawled out and did it, like willing the thing into being. It was a weak bonfire that didn't take well, burning in a yellow metal can beside a rocky beach on a wintry day, spitting up dark gray smoke.
He drove aimlessly. For days he looked out to sea, driving up the coast a few hours at a time, until the van's fuel gauge ran dry in a tiny New England town. The hospital there was a historic building, and inside he had his pick of wheelchairs. He picked the oldest, heaviest, slowest as a kind of penance.
He re-fueled and drove for days, watching the empty world pass by. That was the role of a ghost, to haunt the ruins. Nothing he saw touched the cold emptiness inside. Near the Canada border he watched Niagara Falls for a few hours, unmoved, before turning back south.
The Last Mayor Box Set Page 48
