He wasn't Farsan. He wasn't like Farsan, except for his kindness and the obvious loyalty he showed to those he cared for, like Anna. He wasn't Farsan, and despite the guilt Lucas felt from looking at him, and enjoying his voice, he couldn't help himself from starting to feel something new.
He looked up from his work more. They began to eat together, usually sandwiches Jake brought down from above, and together talked about the old world and all the things they missed. Lucas was older by a few years, more highly educated and from a different, academic world, but that didn't matter. The pangs in Lucas' chest grew stronger, until he couldn't work through them anymore.
They kissed first on a long walk through the vineyards, the night after finding a third Maine subject. It was evening and a lush fog from sweet, fermenting grapes rose up around them like a drunken haze. The sky was purple with the North Star just peeking above the horizon, and Jake kissed him.
Lucas pulled away at first, startled, then when he saw the look of hope and yearning on Jake's face he understood.
They were the same; the same kind of men, the same kind of outcasts, the same kind of brave. Jake was not Farsan but that was all right, he was Jake, and that made Lucas happy. Perhaps they too would have a white picket fence some day, and a garden and a dog, and maybe they would care for children or even have their own. He was a geneticist, after all, and finding a surrogate would not be hard.
They kissed and the world turned and a new page in Lucas' life turned over.
* * *
Anna led them to the next bunker over, south of a sweet little town named Gap on the edge of the Alps in south-east France. The air was crisp and biting and all the streets were lined with flint cobbles laid perhaps two hundred years ago.
There was a quaint little post office in town, and a boulangerie, and a tailor's and a cozy bank, each painted bright doll's house colors, now faded. They rolled through quietly, on their way to elsewhere, leaving the ghosts of that silent place still asleep, as though at any moment the church bell would ring for service and all the windows and doors would open and a flood of little people would come streaming out, like clockwork figures in a child's wind-up toy.
They climbed into the mountains, winding up narrow roads cracked with neglect, until they came across the gun turret. It stood on its block at the head of a steep and rocky valley, shouldered to either side by bluish-gray mountains ascending to snowy-capped peaks. A carpet of the dead lay before it like a meltwater flow; most likely the silent citizens of Gap.
They approached in three triple-reinforced Humvees, and took out the autocannons at a long distance using small rotor drones that delivered explosive packages from above. No missiles or bombs were launched against them, as Feargal had been busy too, analyzing and scouting the hangars where the bunker's drones were housed and deactivating their mechanisms.
They didn't attempt to dig or blow open the chute. Rather they salvaged the cameras from the drones to transmit a new message to those down below, opening with the simplest message they had to offer.
We almost have the cure.
"Open sourcing," Lucas had told Anna, when he'd realized the simple elegance of such a path. "I can do this alone, though it will take me years. But with a community of thousands working through the permutations, all of them geniuses stowed against a later day when the Earth would need them? The Earth needs them now. We can reach that point sooner together. We can reach the cure in months, perhaps."
So they put together a new cairn for a new age, composed of hundreds of images and tens of thousands of words of research; from highly complex genetic strings and their hydrogen line 'handshakes' to full research data on the five subjects from the Maine bunker they'd managed to recover, along with complete medical histories from the MARS3000 files, full experimental data on every variation they'd attempted on the fifteen versions of the serum, and anything else they could think of.
Everything they had, they shared. They ran through the data multiple times using multiple cameras, to be certain the people below saw it all. They listed detailed suggestions for how the research might be further pursued as part of a strategic plan across all the other bunkers, and how together they might achieve a full cure within a year.
They gave it all, then they waited for a response, camped out around the motionless gun turret. They built a campfire with dead wood from nearby rugged cypress trees, and sat around it as it grew cool and evening phased into night. They lay on deckchairs around the crackling flames and talked about the future and the past, reminiscing about New LA, and Ollie, and all the people they missed back home.
Lucas listened, mostly. There wasn't much he missed back there, though Anna plainly longed for Ravi. She was pulling away from their research together a little more every day, spending more time working on her Pilatus, preparing it for a return flight. Wanda longed for her boyfriend Jonathon, a baker, and said as much every time she voiced a desire for fresh croissants. They had video contact, of course, but it wasn't the same. They wanted to be there, back home.
Amo and Lucas had started to speak, soon making it a daily habit. Lucas updated him on his progress along new research paths, while Amo talked about how the Council were sharing out the expanding governmental functions of New LA. They often talked about Lars Mecklarin and Salle Coram, and always Amo ended up asking questions about the people of the MARS3000 Habitat. He knew them all now, from Lars Mecklarin's files, but he wanted more, and Lucas filled out his knowledge with real life anecdotes.
Martine the third-level engineer had often made a pig's grunting sound while she stood in line at the canteen. Lucas had never really spoken to her, but he'd heard her grunting from afar, making her friends laugh and groan by turns. It was a splash of color on a dry resumé. Saeed was a medical doctor from corridor Ohio, and his bedside manner included humming snatches of Bruce Springsteen songs. Lucas had heard him once at karaoke in a three-minus bar crooning a haunting take on 'Streets of Philadelphia'. Farsan was an immigrant, come from Iran as a child, and Lucas' best friend. They had played chess together in their heads, but often lost track of the virtual board and ended up in long discussions where they argued about who might have won, trying to retro-engineer the positions of the pieces.
"It sounds boring, but it was much more than that," Lucas said gently, as they chatted quietly by the crackling fire beneath the disabled gun turret. Somewhere nearby Anna announced they had s'mores.
"You loved him," Amo said.
Amo's face on the video transmission was sincere and honest, as it always was, and Lucas smiled. Lars Mecklarin hadn't noticed it, even Farsan hadn't seen it, but Amo had.
"Yes," Lucas said.
"But you haven't found him."
Lucas didn't trust himself to speak. Instead he shook his head.
"You will," Amo said. "Your cure will one day open up Bordeaux again, I know it. The world is coming together, Lucas, and it's thanks to you. We all owe you so much."
"I owe it to you, for listening."
Amo shook his head. There'd been a silent understanding between the two of them for weeks now, with the true cause of the Maine bunker's death unspoken. Perhaps now was the time. "Anna told you what we did. You don't owe us a thing."
"I forgave her. I forgive you too. You only did what you felt you had to."
Amo smiled sadly. "You can't forgive me for that. I value the offer and the words, Lucas, more than you know, but I don't deserve it, and you can't speak for the dead. I am so sorry, to you and to Farsan and to them all, but for what I did there can be no forgiveness."
Lucas didn't know what to say.
Jake came over and held out a s'more on a plate. The marshmallow was a delicious, crispy black.
"Hello, Jake," Amo said, shifting the mood.
"Hi, Amo."
Jake sat down and Amo caught him up on general news; the progress of the last few comatose Maine survivors, the handful of new arrivals coming in from Asia. There was a weight of guilt there still, heavy behind
every word, but Lucas began to understand that for Amo, it was necessary. He couldn't just let it go. It made him who he was, now.
They waited beneath the bunker for three days. They were calm, pleasant, idyllic times, with no more threats and no demons coming. The world was at peace and the bunker was silent. The blackened gun turret hung over them like a holy totem pole, around which they were gathered to pay their respects.
To their elders, to the ancients, to the ones left behind.
Then one of the ones left behind came to them.
Feargal called it out first, standing guard near the manhole chute leading down. Someone was coming up the ladder.
Lucas' heart fired hard. They all gathered behind their shelters and shields and waited, watching the figure climb on a down-facing camera mounted to the rungs. It was impossible to tell if the person was a man or woman, wearing a black suit like the ones they'd found in Bordeaux. Every ladder rung up felt like a little victory. Nearby Feargal and Wanda squeezed their rifles tight.
"Steady," Anna called.
The cool mountain wind stopped briefly, as if the world was holding its breath, then a black helmet emerged above the earth. Black-suited shoulders followed, an armored chest, and then one arm rising to hold up a single, simple symbol that everyone could understand.
A white handkerchief, fluttering in the breeze.
21. HOME
It had been almost a year since Anna left New LA.
In that time so much had changed. Now they were in regular communication with three bunkers; Gap in the French Alps, Brezno in a Slovakian national park, and Istanbul. There were seven more out there, and they were pressing steadily eastward to meet them, while work on the cure continued.
Some eight thousand people were with them underground; the tally of those three bunkers. It felt good, like a powerful prevailing wind filling her sails and driving her home, like Odysseus in his final stretch home to Ithaca.
In the last six months Peters had been tutoring her in the ancient classics, and she'd found in both The Iliad and The Odyssey much that was familiar. Odysseus' story was of a war between two peoples at irreparable odds, of a ten-year journey through the wilderness before finding a way home, with giants and great armies, an impregnable citadel and a voyage through the land of the dead.
She smiled to herself and pulled the plane around to the landing trajectory. Things were getting better all the time, and finally, after a long and winding journey, she was returning home, carrying two new survivors with her. They'd been drawn by cairns she'd left behind as they'd crawled across Europe, describing the cure in development and a homeland in New LA. Their names were Magnus and Rilla; survivors who'd escaped from their settlement in Latvia when a demon swept through.
Now they wanted to see New LA. They wanted to meet Amo, and Anna was happy to oblige. It was time for her to see Ravi too.
The Pilatus spiraled into position over New LA through the glorious, hazy winter sun. The Pacific spread away for miles, sparkling like a night sky full of stars. This was the only kind of ocean left in the world now. All the zombies were contained in Bordeaux, along with all the demons, lodged in each other's eternal embrace.
Peters, Jake, Lucas and Wanda remained behind. Feargal and Macy were coming with her, but others would go to replace them. Sulman, she expected; he'd wanted to be at the cutting edge of Lucas' experiments for most of the year. Josiah had been a civil servant in Utah, he'd expressed an interest in joining the bunker team, who moved across the map and initiated first contact. Jonathon wanted to be with Wanda again.
It was a good trajectory.
She took the plane down and landed smoothly on the LAX runway; recently scrubbed of weeds and repaired in places with branch-like lines of tar spreading along old cracks. It was an effortless run, and she pulled up to the main concourse where a small crowd was gathered, cheering and waving. They'd erected bunting and streamers, each adorned with the symbol Amo had taken to using for their new civilization, the new flag of New LA; a large white five-pointed star on a light blue field, ringed by thirteen smaller white stars.
"The blue's for hope," Amo had explained to her once over their video chat, "like a clear sky, full of possibility. The thirteen stars symbolize the twelve known bunkers plus all of us immune; everything that survived the end of the world."
"And the big star?"
"That's what we're going to become, once the cure is finished. One people, one world."
Anna had studied it. It didn't look like any other flags she knew, and that was good. There was something hopeful about it. The bright, light blue seemed like an open horizon. All the stars spoke of union.
"You like it?" he'd asked.
"I love it. What did the Council say?"
"You're the deciding vote. I made another design some of them prefer, but that's only because it looks more like the Stars and Stripes, and I want to get away from that. It needs to be a world flag."
She'd laughed. "I like it. You've got my vote."
That was that. He'd spent eleven years planning it. Now here it was, printed on waving flags and tablecloths.
She shut the engine down and took a breath, releasing the controls. That was the end of one chapter, for the most part; Odysseus come home. She looked out of the cockpit window at the crowd of faces she knew, mixed in with a few new ones she didn't. What must they think of her, she wondered? When last she'd been amongst them it was to banish Witzgenstein from the settlement. That flew in the face of everything the new flag stood for.
"Are you coming, Anna?"
Feargal was up from the co-pilot's seat. He'd recovered well from the bunker raid, though he still had a helluva scar on his chest where the ocean gored him.
"Sure," she said, and followed along behind.
Out through the side door, the hot, clammy air of Los Angeles hit her like a wet towel. A second later Ravi followed; hugging her tight and showering her with kisses. He was bigger than before; filled out with the build of a man, but just as bright-eyed and enthusiastic as ever.
"Goddamn, Anna, it's good to have you home," he whispered, then he was crying too much to talk properly. Over his shoulder she saw Amo and Lara waving. It really was good to be home.
* * *
It only took three days for her to be bored.
She took a tour of new facilities; everything they'd set up since the demons came so long ago. She hadn't seen any of these developments for real, not more than photographs uploaded through their rudimentary satellite uplink. There was a new solar-powered desalination plant and water tower by the beach. Several sections of the Chinese Theater had been given over to hospital wards housing the handful of comatose survivors from Maine, hoping one day they'd wake.
She toured the new farmlands, reworked and freshly irrigated after Cynthia left and her haphazard rotation system collapsed. Antwon from the Ukraine was in charge now, and he ran the planting and harvesting cycles with a sergeant-at-arms' rigid discipline.
There were a few more pigs and cows, a few more sheep and many more chickens in the coop, scavenged from supply runs around the state. There were two more babies, born of couples who hadn't even been together when last she'd been there. Vie and Talia had grown immensely, and were overjoyed their aunt Anna had brought all manner of souvenirs and hard candies from Europe, so far away.
"Tell me a story, auntie!" Talia demanded. She was seven now and very bossy, so Anna told her about running with the zombies, and how amazing it had felt to stand atop the heap and bay at the moon.
Vie's face wrinkled when it was done. "But didn't they try to kill you after that?"
Anna chuckled and tousled her hair. How strange, Vie was only half her age. Soon she'd be sixteen too, and Anna would be, what, twenty-four? It seemed like an impossible number. "One story at a time, kiddo."
Throughout, she and Ravi were barely ever apart. Everything they did, they did together. It was strange to tour the expanded New LA campus with him, as he excitedly pointed out the
ir new coffee shop a block over from the Chinese Theater, essentially Lara's office, where all the coffee makers were kept clean and functioning, and a Nespresso pod of carmelito espresso was completely free. He showed her the bowling alley, returned to working order with a single generator powered by rooftop solar cells. They could only play in the daytime, but who wanted to bowl at night? He held her hand and ran through their advancements and jabbered on incessantly, and when he wasn't jabbering on he was kissing her or hugging her, and to her surprise she loved every bit of it, without any feelings of being smothered.
She'd been worried about that, in the months running up. She'd found reasons to delay her return several times; because Lucas was on the edge of a breakthrough, because they were about to meet with another bunker, because the weather wasn't right for trans-Atlantic flight, but really it was about Ravi.
She'd been afraid he would annoy her. He always had in the past, back when the old Anna was at the driving wheel. His undying enthusiasm used to drive her crazy, as he fixated on things that to her seemed completely pointless. It was good he was so happy waxing down her catamaran hulls, because it was something she'd never had time for. Her thinking was that she could always find another catamaran.
He nurtured, and she never stopped long enough to care. He'd overwhelmed her before, asking for too much, giving too much, but now?
Now she felt at peace around him. He was like a buoyant, frothy wave crashing against her still, solid rock. He made things interesting, and he brought a new kind of life to her that she'd never attracted before. When she was with him, people smiled at her, like he was some kind of good-feeling lightning conductor. She didn't feel grumpy or angry, not urgent or always rushing to get something else done, and people didn't look at her with barely concealed concern.
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