This was it. Anna raised her gun but there was nothing to aim at and probably no bullets left anyway. She tried to get up but each time the rising dark of unconsciousness drove her back down. She tried to crawl but she was facing the wrong way, legs toward the door, and trying to turn dropped her into blackness just the same.
Peters grunted and thumped and rolled somewhere in the corridor, and Feargal grunted and bled near her, and that was it.
"They got you," Anna said to Feargal, such stupid, pointless last words.
"Ungh," he replied, clutching at his chest.
Another zombie sped by in the corridor. So Peters was first. Anna would be next. Then Feargal. Such was the order of things. She closed her eyes and imagined a different world. The diamond wouldn't help her now, being cold and cruel wouldn't mean a thing, not to an enemy that couldn't know your name, couldn't look you in the eye, couldn't dance on your grave.
That wasn't even her enemy.
It meant nothing, and she laughed. Outside Peters rolled and tumbled and there was a BOOM as his shotgun fired, but already another zombie was rushing by to join the fray. How long would it take for them to reach her? How long for them to fill this bunker to the brim with their thrashing gray bodies?
Nothing meant anything, really, in the face of it. All that effort over Witzgenstein was for nothing. Failure here would fate them all back there, in a few months, in a year. There would be nowhere to hide without the zombie ocean to protect them. She laughed as another one charged down the corridor. The banging and thumping seemed to be moving further down the corridor. Peters was showing them a grand time.
The zombie ocean. Her friends. Her army. What a foolish notion that was.
So Witzgenstein would die, just like New LA. Amo would die just like Anna, lying in the dirt while the people he loved and trusted died around him, killed by waves of people they'd both trusted to save them. That was just how it was, and how it had been for Ozark, for Chantelle, for all the people lost along the way. There were no second chances, no time to say- 'Wait, I think I got it wrong, let me try again!'
No. Having diamond clarity meant nothing now. Being the stone-coldest bastard in the world meant nothing if you were dead.
At least she'd be with Cerulean soon. She'd see her father soon.
"Are you going to die first, or me?" she asked Feargal. Another zombie raced by. One of these would come for them soon. BOOM, another shell fired in the corridor. Peters had to be on his knees by now, torn to bits. He was tough but how long could he go on?
"Ngh," Feargal said.
"I thought so too," Anna said, and had a laugh. That was all you had left, in the end, to laugh at the pain. Better to laugh than cry and quake and scream in frustration.
Another zombie rushed by, and another, then finally one turned in through the doorway. It was decrepit and bone-thin, with ragged trails of dark hair hanging like seaweed from a torn-off patch of scalp, revealing yellow bone beneath. Its body was shriveled and sunken like a ghoul, arms out ahead, with several broken ribs and fresh dark burn marks on its hip from the blown staircase.
She watched as it came on. Perhaps she could shoot it, but to what end? There would be more, thousands more, and none of them deserved to die. There was no purpose served by slaughtering one more. It would be vain and cruel, because what were the ocean, but victims just like her?
What point was there in punishing them?
It leapt onto her, with its eyes burning and its mouth wide open, and she didn't move. This was better. It bit into her chest, spurting up dark blood in the sputtering light, then dug into her upper arm, coming out with a chunk of skin, until finally its grinding jaws settled on her throat and there was nothing she could do but laugh.
* * *
San Francisco in the summer was beautiful.
She was five years old again and sitting in the driver's seat beside Cerulean, Robert, her new hero. Her new father. Their RV clattered and rattled and from the tape deck came the sounds of music little Anna had never heard before, something soulful, about a fast car and leaving the old world behind.
"Tracey Chapman," Robert had said, and winked. "I grew up listening to this. She inspired me to dive, you know? When my trainer came and I was on the edge of going into a gang? She told me not to."
Anna smiled back and tried to listen to the lyrics. There was something ethereal and haunting in them. It didn't sound motivational, if anything it was sad, but still she could feel the inspiration in there. This was what it meant to guide the ocean into the water again and again, doing it because it was the right thing to do. There was a kind of love trapped in the song, which amazed her because she'd only ever thought love could be trapped in stories.
She'd heard so little music. Once there'd been a show about some puppets, she remembered that dimly from a time long before, but then the song had gotten into her head after the coma and she hadn't been able to get it out. A week had passed as she sweated and screamed, clutching to her Daddy's arms and begging him to make it stop.
He'd dabbed her hot head in the dark, and whispered soft words, and read passages from Alice until finally the repeated jingles faded away. In the aftermath she'd lain there sweating and terrified, while in the hall outside her mother had sobbed and begged for somebody to do something to make it stop.
Her Daddy had promised he would. He asked her again and again to believe him. That had sounded like 'Fast Car' too. Later that night her mother had come in while she was so sleepy and held her hand.
"You understand, sweetie," she whispered. "I know you do, it's for the best."
She hadn't said anything because the pain in her head was still bad. She looked at her mother's face and tried to understand, but she didn't.
Fast Car helped with that, now.
"I want to help them," she said, sitting in the passenger seat as the road flew by.
Robert turned. He was not her father, but so much about him was like her father. That easy smile almost made her cry. The feeling that, when he was looking at her, she was safe and would never be alone again.
"Help who, Anna?"
His fists were still bandaged. There was a spot of blood on his cheek that he probably didn't know was there, from Julio.
"The ocean. Let them out."
"And can we listen to music?" he asked. "While we do it?"
Anna laughed.
"And see the Golden Gate bridge. I've always wanted to see that."
Anna smirked. "It's just a bridge."
"The greatest bridge. You know they did a diving competition off it once?"
"Who did?"
He shrugged and laughed. "I don't know. Someone."
It wasn't funny but she laughed anyway, but it was funny really. She hadn't laughed once with her father after he'd changed, not in the long walk across the ocean, not in the dreams ever since. This new father was good at that.
In time they saw the bridge. They got out at the edge and walked and rolled as far out along it as they could, until the crashed cars were too tightly packed for Robert's wheelchair to go past. The bridge was a deep red metal, like blood. The sky was a big blue, the ocean too, and the city looked white and clean across the bay.
Robert rolled up to the edge and looked out over the water. Anna stood by him and held his hand, rubbing her fingers over his bandages, even though she knew it had to hurt him. It was important to feel that, because he'd done it for her. It was important to remember these things.
"Enough?" he'd asked, eventually.
She hadn't minded. She could have watched the city all day standing there beside him. Nothing moved, and that was beautiful, except the few high drifts of clouds. Looking at the world like that, it was easy to imagine she was Alice and he was the Cheshire Cat or the Mad Hatter, always beside her. There may be a Red Queen or a Jabberwock somewhere out there, burning in the dark of her dreams, but it wasn't here.
Here it was just the two of them.
She nodded.
"Ice cream?"
he asked.
She laughed again. He was silly. There was no ice cream left now, everyone knew that. It had all melted.
They rolled off. For a week they spent their days listening to music, not only Fast Car but happier songs too, some full of nonsense by someone called Bob Dylan and others full of flashing rhymes by all Roberts' favorites, like OutKast and Green Day, while they set the ocean free.
They smashed windows and forced doors with metal rods. They pried cars open like sardine cans and let the ocean go, enjoying the attention they got and all the hugging that followed. In those days she didn't think about her father with any sense of guilt. The ocean being so near kept him close to her, and the ocean seemed to have no end.
Of course, that changed. The ocean faded, over the months and years that followed. That childlike sense of connection bled away, until all she was left with from that heady, wonderful week with Cerulean was Cerulean himself, and the flash of her father's dot in the Hatter-tracking app in his phone; both reminders of the things she'd left behind.
Now even those too were gone, because both her father and Cerulean were dead, killed by the demons of a dying civilization, and now she was going to die too.
INTERLUDE 6
Lucas was going to die.
He stared as the demon rose and took a first step toward him. He flinched as it took a second. So this was it. This was his end. Whatever had happened, whatever trigger had been broadcast across the hydrogen line, the path now was clear. He wouldn't save a damn person, not Farsan or any of his friends lost in the Habitat, not any of these new people he'd come to feel some affection for.
Not kind, tea-drinking Jake or stoic, strong Feargal, not Peters who carried the weight of so much loss without any sign of hate, and not even Anna with that stony look in her eyes, doing what she felt she had to do to keep her people safe.
The demon was so close, and Lucas made a decision.
He'd hidden who he was his whole life, so successfully that even Lars Mecklarin hadn't known he was gay; perhaps he hadn't even known it himself. He'd lied to everyone for fear of what that would make him in their eyes, in his own eyes too, but he couldn't do it anymore. He was a man, and he loved a man who was dead, and what did it matter to anyone? Why should anyone care or think any less of him?
He looked up at the demon, so massive, so terrifying, and made the decision. If it was what was in your heart that mattered, then let this matter. Fuck the demon.
He stood up. He raised his arms in the air and he shouted out Farsan's name, and he charged. Three steps and he would be there, and it would snap his jaw and puke into him, and so it would be.
His face hit the demon's thigh and his chest hit its knee mid-stride and it was like running into a bulldozer. He recoiled back and slid in the mud, and it continued striding toward him, raising one foot up to-
He rolled wildly out of the way and its great foot fell in the mud where he'd been with a fat squelch. Mud splashed over his face and chest, and he wondered was this a valiant way to die? He tried to stand again and face it, but as he slithered to stand, the demon continued past him.
What?
On his knees he stared as it walked by and kept walking, its massive red back receding until the whirlpool of the ocean opened up and a channel through their masses led it in.
Lucas knelt in the mud gawping after it. Not possible, but still…
Still…
His mind flashed back to those first moments in the Habitat, with the buzzing in his head and Anna and Amo advancing and his people dropping their facades and becoming zombies before his very eyes, and running towards them, and…
Towards them.
In a second the pieces fell into position. In the charging time, they hadn't come to him. Not then and not with Farsan in Farsan's room and not now, because for them he didn't exist. He watched the flow of zombies spiraling away like the radial arms of a newly-formed galaxy, and felt it as much as he understood it.
Any one of them could come for him, but they didn't. Not one, because they couldn't see him. He had no T4 in his cells, making him perhaps the only person in the world they couldn't see. He laughed. Of all the things? It gave him a ridiculous, immense advantage. It gave him power over them, and with powers came responsibility.
Anna rose in his mind.
Just then came an explosion. It was muffled and distant but the earth shook under his knees, and he understood at once it was from below. Anna, Feargal and Peters were down there, trapped. Perhaps all of this had been the plan. They were fighting back, but they didn't stand a chance.
The zombies were on all sides of him now, everywhere a dense wall of grinding gray flesh with no way through, and closing in now the demon was gone. He scanned them desperately, seeking a way out, and found it.
The way the demon had gone. The creature itself was visible still, looming head and shoulders above the rest like a bloody god, and it left a narrow gap in its wake that the ocean hesitated to fill in. Lucas pushed himself to his feet and ran.
He hit the gap just as it was closing like the Red Sea, catching an elbow in the head that nearly knocked him to the side, but somehow he managed to stagger on, bouncing off the tramping tunnel wall of bodies. Here he bounced off an outstretched knee, there he slipped in a thick pit of black mud and barely caught himself on someone's clavicle, not neat at all but still gaining on the demon until in moments he was walking directly behind it, in its shadow.
It was so huge, with thighs as thick around as the Humvee's tires, feet that left huge imprints like coffins, and a back that curved up and up. For a few seconds he tottered along behind, uncertain what he could possibly do next, until it came to him.
It was utterly mad. It would probably get him torn to shreds even if he was invisible, but so what?
He took three hefty strides, tried to time it at the moment of crossover, and dived. His shoulder hit the demon's right Achilles heel like it was a cement lamp post, with no give at all. His body slapped noisily into the sucking muck, he stretched out both his arms and encircled the left ankle as best he could, managed to catch his hands to each other, then nearly had both his arms ripped from his body as the demon tried to walk.
Lucas screamed and held on as the demon began to tip. It flailed and jerked its left foot, pulling clear and dropping Lucas face first into the mud, but it was enough. Lucas reared back and scraped mud from his eyes as the giant started to topple.
It felt awesome.
It tried to get its left leg up and in front of it to halt the descent, but in the flowing press of ocean bodies ahead it rolled and twisted, and in a beautiful, behemothic motion, the great beast fell. Its arms went out to stay its fall, but they too were sucked into the flurry of gray waves, carried away like items on an escalator so the demon was pulled wide like a spread-eagle to crash face-down into bodies and mud.
The ocean flattened beneath it but continued on all around. Lucas laughed though he was still catching his breath, then ran and leaped. He hit the demon's cement-hard calf and ran up its thigh, over its back then down one of its arms feeling like a cartoon character from a Saturday morning kids' show. Already it was trying to get up, and it raised its arm as Lucas leapt up from its wrist, sending him sprawling forward and off-balance into a tight scrum of the ocean.
He hit heads on his back and rolled, trying to get his arms and legs under him, desperate not to sink under again and be trampled. He pushed off a shoulder, his foot kicked off a head, then he was on his knees and swaying like a raft atop a wave as the ocean lapped forward.
The bodies underneath him were pressed so close together there wasn't any gap for him to slip down. He spun, seeking his bearings. The demon was struggling to rise, only visible by the swell in the ocean where they stepped on it and it threw up the odd arm.
There was nothing else to tell him direction, nothing except...
The flow of the zombies themselves. He raised himself up as tall as he could and tried to take in the motion of the whole mass.
The majority of them were swirling, that was clear now, like water down the plughole, while off to his right a second contingent were charging on a straight line.
Jake and the others, it had to be. That meant the temporary encampment had to be about there. He scanned the flow of gray and spotted the center of the spiral, where the entrance to the bunker had to be. He had to- no, that wouldn't work, rather, he could...
It came to him and he moved. The last position they'd left the scanner was near the hole, obviously. It had to be there still, and he prayed it hadn't been pushed too far or damaged too badly by the ocean's tramping feet. He started forward at a crawl along the surface of mismatched shoulders, all at different heights, using the heads as hand grips, but after only a minute or so of laboring, the uprooting sound of the demon rising finally came from behind. He spun back to see it stamping forward again, cutting its path to the exact same center as him.
He got to his feet and tried to run.
He made three steps and fell, crushing his ear against a head as solid as a polished stone. Blood warmed his cheek and his hearing went fuzzy but there was no time. He lurched back to his feet and ran a few more steps before falling again, this time catching himself on a head which snapped at the neck under his weight.
"Arrgh!" he cried, as dust plumed up and the head rocked onto a nearby shoulder. He scrabbled up and for a moment stood on the swell, trying to gauge its movement, before started forward again more carefully. The demon was gaining, but sprinting wouldn't help him. He walked at first, speeding to a low jog as his confidence grew, then before he knew it he was at the center of the scrum.
One by one the bodies squeezed down into the hole in the ground, always replaced by more. He realized his original plan was hopeless; the machine might be there somewhere below the surface but finding it would be impossible. If it was even possible to break through the bone-popping crush of bodies down to the ground, he'd be trampled underfoot in seconds. He'd never reach the hydrogen-line scanner, never have the moments he'd need to undo their jerry-rigged apparatus, never be able to reverse the flow and see if that counteracted whatever signal was currently in the air.
The Last Mayor Box Set Page 107
