The Last Mayor Box Set

by Michael John Grist

  And he had to know, because Jenny had made him who he was; ever since college she'd help make him. When he'd dislocated his shoulder playing rugby 11s for the Worcester university team, she'd been there by his side to soothe him. She'd skipped her best friend Tracy's hen night, a big party out in Liverpool, to sit by his bedside and laugh at how weak he was now at thumb-war.

  He had a temper but she corralled him. Hadn't he almost beaten that guy to death, who groped her in the club then slapped her for calling him out? On the nightclub floor, on foul wood scummed with tiny bits of broken glass and chewing gum and tacky with spilt beer, he'd punched that guy's face until it was lumpy and shredded.

  It was easy. Drake was a big guy after all. Hadn't he broken another boy's leg in rugby when he was just fourteen, and did his team ever let him forget it? The Beast, they'd called him. So he'd let the Beast loose, and it had been easy.

  THUMP THUMP THUMP

  He'd felt nothing but the reverberations jolting up his arms, like he was a little man inside a wrecking machine, swinging the ball and feeling the thump, but no more personal than that. Punching was just another job to be done.

  It wasn't the bouncers that dragged him off, not in the end, it was Jenny. It was when she'd tried to put her face in the way of his fists, and he'd actually hit her once, a glancing blow off her cheek, before he realized what was going on and stopped.

  Whenever he thought back on beating the guy into the hospital, he never felt any guilt. It was a good thing. But that one accidental strike against Jenny haunted him to this day.

  "You did it for me," she'd said, over and over again as she rushed him out of the club, away from the main roads where the police might check, kicking through rushes of litter in Alexandra Park on the edge of Worcester town center. When they'd got to her student digs, a crappy back room with a rotten window frame and a too-short single bed, the sex had been amazing. His and her bruises the next day, his knuckles and her cheek, had felt like a kind of shared badge of honor.

  He'd done the right thing to beat the guy. She'd done the right thing to stop him.

  He butted the door again, to get them going. They hit the door back.

  Man or boy? It was hard to say. He'd been killing them for three days now. That was the right thing, all the movies said so, and in a way it was easy too. Now there was this, and it wasn't easy at all.

  It all began with corn soup.

  * * *

  They'd been two days out of Southampton, bound for the Mediterranean. A cruise for two weeks, the Mediterranean Explorer package it was called, something Jenny had been dreaming of since she was a little girl.

  Drake's health insurance had paid out well enough. Work in the City, London's financial center, had left them with no shortage of cash and a hell of a termination package, offered in lieu of long-term sick pay. Their troubles were not about the money. Their troubles were him, and the migraines, and the fact he could barely even open his eyes after the coma first hit.

  So he'd worked at it. At first sleeping all day in the downstairs bedroom in their St. Alban's cottage, with the blackout blinds drawn and the house around him on a quiet lockdown, had been torture. The tiniest things had set him off. He'd cried, Jenny had cried, their daughter Lucy had cried, and it had been pure misery.

  But he was the Beast. The boys from back then and the boys from work came by, but he couldn't admit them. But knowing they'd come? He kept on.

  He got out of bed when he could. He walked around the dark room. See, he had something to live for. That made him strong. In time he opened the blinds a crack. Sometimes he could let Jenny sleep alongside him. He was able to talk to Lucy for brief conversations, then sit her on his lap, then he could even sit out in the living room, as long as the TV was off and the curtains closed and nobody shouted.

  He shouted, at times. He shouted at Lucy once when she got up and started dancing, 'moved by the spirit', his mother would have said, but it almost ruined everything. He yelled himself into a migraine, and Jenny was mad at him for days. So he fixed his behavior. Every Beast needed chains of some sort, and he welcomed his. She was his Beauty, and she never ran away. Like she'd bathed his knuckles after the nightclub, now she helped clean up his mind.

  They took walks, in the early morning and late at night, around their little village. He hadn't noticed when he'd been at work just how beautiful St. Albans was. The medieval church and priory, all ancient stone and crenellated spire-top, like a battlement. The graveyard filled with tilting gravestones, lumpy with ancient bodies underneath. The woods, the air, the brook that bubbled down through their garden.

  They took small trips, and he did OK. He was getting better. Then came the cruise.

  "This is graduation," Jenny had said. "If you make this, you can make anything."

  He'd signed up. She knew best, after all. He read brochures about what to expect and where the cruise's path would take them until his temples throbbed. He had to be ready. He had all the facts, knew the route, knew it all.

  Now they had no corn soup.

  It was a waiter, and that waiter's manner, that made it so bad. They were in the Seven Seas exclusive lounge, earned by their Commodore-level tickets. It was quieter than the main lounge, with a soothing view out to sea, but he was on edge.

  "Just corn soup," he'd mumbled when the waiter, a tall and young Greek-looking guy, came round.

  "Pardon, sir?" he'd asked.

  "Corn soup," he'd repeated.

  The waiter had looked at him then at Jenny and Lucy and back again.

  "Sir, please could you speak up, I didn't hear that."

  "Corn soup," Jenny spoke up. Probably that was the first humiliation. The second came fast.

  "Corn soup? I'm afraid we do not have that on the menu."

  "Yes," Drake mumbled. "Yesterday."

  "We had it yesterday," Jenny said. "If you just check."

  The waiter gave an annoying laugh. "Heh he, madam, I can assure you I know the menu. Corn soup is not on it. Perhaps sir would like something else. Sir?" He was needling now. Enjoying his position.

  Drake looked up. The guy's face would look good under his wrecking ball.

  "We had it yesterday, corn soup, it was on the menu yesterday. I can show you the receipt, I've got it here somewhere." Jenny started rustling in her purse. Never find anything in there.

  "Heh he, perhaps madam is thinking of room service? I believe corn soup is provided there. If the gentleman so wishes to have corn soup, may I suggest you return yourselves to your room, and order it from there."

  Jenny stared.

  "Return ourselves?"

  "Apologies, English is my third language," said the waiter, though there was not a hint of apology about him. "I mean only to get your corn soup, the best way is in the room."

  "We had it here," Jenny said.

  "No, madam," he said, and chuckled again. "You did not. We do not serve it."

  Now she stood up. Perhaps this she had learned from Drake. "Are you calling me a liar?"

  He didn't buckle. He didn't start apologizing. Probably they dealt with this all the time on the cruise. Drunken Brits starting trouble. Probably they'd been trained to be polite but firm. The joy he took in it was his own, though.

  "No, madam, but I can only show you the menu." He did so, pointing. "Do you see corn soup?"

  She fumed. "Get me your manager! Right now!"

  "There is no manager," the waiter said. "I am on duty now. If you wish to complain, she will be here in five hours. I shan't, but she will."

  "Shan't? You say your English is poor, but you say shan't?"

  Drake put his hand on her arm. It was already too much.

  "Honey," he croaked.

  She deflated. She took his hand and glared at the waiter and left. Drake heard him mutter something about corn soup as they left, making their humiliation complete. There was nothing for it but to leave, now. They didn't speak on the way down, as Jenny and Lucy both knew he couldn't handle it. They had to get
him into his bed and corn soup be damned.

  They got him in. Under the covers, in his clothes, and he passed right out. Later on he figured it had to only have been for an hour or less. But still, in that short time while he slept, the zombie apocalypse reached out across the Atlantic and hit the Summer Wind, where it changed everyone aboard but him into a white-eyed, brains-hungry beast. And at the same time, it cured him completely.

  * * *

  He thumped the door with his head. How many had he killed by now? An official passenger list he'd found in the captain's office, up in the cruise liner's castle, listed 1,257 on board. Crew numbers were a little harder to gather, with no single manifest for them all. There were entertainment crew, cleaners, engineering, command, hospitality, chefs, babysitters, and many others, all with their separate manifests. He didn't care that much, but with them included it was getting close to two thousand.

  At first it had been easy. THUMP THUMP THUMP, he'd used his bare fists on the first of them in the corridor outside his room. THUMP THUMP THUMP, he'd pounded until its whole head and neck dissolved against the fuzzy gray carpet in the corridor.

  There'd been no sign of Jenny and Lucy in the room when he woke. Probably gone out for their dinner. Corn soup, he kept thinking.

  The first was a woman, younger than him, and she'd just come at him with blood on her face and hands. He'd thought she had to be sick, had fended her off and even tried to help her at first, talk to her, but then he saw the whites of her eyes and shoved her away.

  She kept coming. He shoved harder and shouted, then harder and louder, until finally he was kneeling astride her and pounding her head until her dry rasping breath stopped.

  No Jenny at his side to stop him. No Lucy whimpering nearby. Just the little man in his wrecking machine, applying the great wrecking ball on autopilot. So easy.

  He'd stood above her and gasped for a time afterwards. Looking at his fists, at the blood, and feeling the knuckles throb. Despite the fog of shock his head was clear for the first time in a year.

  He'd just killed someone, but it didn't feel real.

  "Jenny!" he shouted.

  No answer came. The corridor was quiet.

  He moved on, but the winding corridors of the liner confused him. He hadn't navigated them on his own, not without Jenny at his elbow, guiding him along. Now a small Middle Eastern-looking cleaning woman raced at him, her face all pale, and he pushed her aside. He found her cleaning cart and swept up a mop, which would help things along significantly. She came back, teeth gnashing, and he tried briefly to reason with her, stuffing the mop's wet end in her face to keep her at bay.

  She wasn't interested, so he gave up and put the mop to good use until she stopped.

  BASH BASH BASH.

  Easy.

  Doors banged from within, but he left them alone. He walked by. He didn't think too much about what was happening; it felt more like a dream than anything. His mission was to find Jenny and Lucy, and that was what he would do.

  Along the way a few more people came after him. He crushed them with the mop, no longer trying to reason with them. Soon after he found an axe, behind a glass screen marked-

  FOR EMERGENCY USE ONLY

  This was an emergency. Killing became easier still after that, dispatching the people who came after him in one or two blows. Terrorists, his brain told him. Had to be. Blood made his hands slick on the handle. It was a dream, but what choice did he have when they came rushing at him?

  CHOP CHOP CHOP

  They'd be all right.

  In the Seven Seas exclusive Commodore area, he didn't find his family but he did find the waiter. His face was all pale, his eyes were white and he came charging like now he was desperate to serve corn soup, making up for past failures.

  CHOP CHOP CHOP

  It wasn't on purpose that it took ten blows to kill the waiter completely. He'd ask him a reasonable question, like "Where are my family?", then the waiter would dive in and he'd have to chop him again. His foot came off and he hobbled. His arm cleaved halfway through and dangled with blood spurting out. His chest cracked open and juice gushed everywhere, all over the floor.

  "Where's my wife?" Chop. "Where's my daughter?" Chop. "Where's my corn soup?"

  He was laughing and striking by the end, deep in his machine, working this new and improved destruction. It didn't help, and the waiter didn't speak once, but it helped. It didn't bother him either, because it wasn't really real. It was just like beating that groper in the club, which hadn't bothered him. He wasn't real either, not the way he was acting.

  CHOP CHOP CHOP

  Three days of killing passed in a rampaging flash.

  Somewhere in the midst of that he found Jenny and Lucy. They were as white-eyed and lost as all the others, stuck in a flood of bodies rocking back and forth along the ship, like water sloshing in a glass. At first he almost killed them, like the others, splattered off the walls, but at the last moment he stopped himself. He just managed to get them corralled in a room before the rest of the shorts-wearing guests could over-awe him.

  CHOP CHOP CHOP

  He killed them, then more came and he killed them too, getting pulled away from his family to follow a thick seam of their bodies, like a miner tunneling after coal. He was the father and the husband, and he had to make the world safe for his family. For a year he'd done nothing to help them, and now it was time.

  CHOP CHOP CHOP

  Worse still though, he didn't want to go to them. He didn't want to see them and face the truth that had been settling on him now for days.

  This was it. There was no cure to whatever terrorist infection had struck his ship. There was no help. The radio in the radio room received no incoming signal, because there was no one left out there. He was alone on a ship of monsters. He was Theseus in a den of Minotaurs.

  He roamed the ship and barely slept, killing them all. He killed and he killed. He found rolls of duct tape in engineering and wrapped his right hand tight around the axe handle to stop it slipping. He chopped and he chopped. At last he stood on the topmost deck, in the Mermaid bar area next to aluminum seats toppled by the wind and splattered with blood, and looked out over the ocean in every direction. The great liner was drifting on an open sea. Where even was this, not the Mediterranean or anywhere near Europe. The Atlantic? Somewhere off Africa, perhaps?

  He'd had to search the whole ship again to find them. There were bloody trails everywhere; where bodies had crawled away after he'd half-hacked them, like Old Boy driving down his prison corridor. There were his own red palm marks in places, like something out of Blair Witch, and wavy clear lines from the head of his axe where he'd let it rasp along the walls in long, bloody rows.

  He killed more still, the stragglers he'd somehow missed on a first pass, opening up their rooms and chopping them up inside, until on the whole silent ship, in the dark, there was just one door left unopened. Two people remained on the other side of it, hammering back at him for help and hunger and whatever else, as their only means of communication.

  THUMP THUMP

  He thumped back. This was their communication now. No more warm fingers in his hair. No more lovely Jenny guiding him home, telling him he'd only done what he'd had to. No more Lucy to feel proud of. He didn't need to open the door to see their white eyes and gray skin.

  Man or boy? He didn't know. This was Jenny, who he needed, who'd made him. This was Lucy his darling girl, who needed him, who he and Jenny were making together.

  THUMP THUMP

  He stroked the door and whispered to them about all the things he'd wanted for them, all their dreams he was going to make come true, all the things he hadn't been able to think of or say for a year. They thumped and he thumped back and sobbed.

  There didn't seem to be a lot of hope.

  He didn't know how to get the liner's engine started. He didn't know where they were. He let himself slide down to his knees, resting his head against the cool door and listening to them thump on the other
side. This choice he understood. He had to decide, and it could only be him. He was the only one here, and he couldn't just stay here, kneeling like this. It stank, for one. The bodies he'd left here days ago were putrefying, and the whole corridor smelt of raw vomit and rank meat. The stink was suffocating, crawling over his skin and worming into his body.

  Flies droned. Maggots writhed. Near his feet a puddle of mushed brain had congealed, where a broken skull had disgorged it. It glistened and shone like rain on a dead jellyfish, while wriggling white maggots gorged themselves fatly.

  The axe was right there, already cleaned and waiting. Ready. His family were behind the door.

  Man or boy? Which was it? Which was it going to be?

  5. COMA

  One week after the demons died in Pittsburgh, Lara woke from her coma in a dark, cold RV, tucked snugly into her narrow bed. There was the low drone of a heater buzzing away somewhere out of sight, though the orange glow it cast rose up the walls of the tight, disheveled space.

  Her head felt like a gong, rung too many times. Her body was a lead weight sucking her down, and every tiny movement ached. Breathing came unnaturally, with every suck in a conscious effort, as if it was possible for her to forget, or give up, and the bellows of her lungs would just stop working.

  She remembered the demon snatching at her in the lead RV, squeezing her chest until it cracked, but the thoughts didn't come cleanly. They were mixed up with other memories, as if she was back in the water fountain in New York, with people grasping at her and some trying to calm her and some trying to tie a noose around her neck so they could tie her to a tree like Walter King.

  A drum was beating somewhere. Her pulse.

  She looked up and saw Cerulean standing in the corner of the room. He was smiling a weak, wan smile, echoed in a bloody gash on his throat a few inches down.

  "It's a quote from the Bible," he said, as if continuing a conversation they'd already begun. Her head resounded, like the gong still reverberating. She tried to speak but the sound came out as a cough. Something foul tasting and slimy spat up her throat and dribbled out onto her cheek.