Anna found herself on the edge of her seat. It had been a theory for years that the ocean could be programmed, but there'd been no way of testing it, with no understanding of the underlying 'language', no Rosetta stone to provide a translation. Perhaps Lara was that key.
"It could change everything," Anna said quietly. "It could propel the cure forward."
"It could," Lucas replied. "We can see the hydrogen line pre-divergence was a kind of combination of her weak signal and Amo's strong one. They're interwoven in ways I'm only just beginning to grasp, but Anna, the key here is what happened after divergence. If we take Lara's quiet signal and combine it with one other from the experimental set, we get the wild fluctuations in the hydrogen line we're seeing now. If anything it's a seesaw between the two signals, her and Amo and her and this new one; a man called Drake. You may even recognize the name; he was the second-strongest signal in Bordeaux.
Anna slumped back in the seat, stunned. She did know who Lucas was talking about. She'd made him part of her studies, the man whose signal was second only to Amo's, who she'd studied at length seeking some deeper meaning to the variations in the hydrogen line. Absent an unlocking key, though, she'd found none, and if anything, she'd assumed the man was dead, swallowed up by the demons when they were roaming abroad in Europe.
Evidently not.
"Why?" she asked. "Why now, why Drake?"
"I don't know why," Lucas said, "but I think proximity must be a factor."
That was another punch. Matthew Drake was in New LA?
"New LA are still not answering," she said into the radio, a question phrased as a statement, and now Sulman replied.
"No Anna," he said, "I've been trying every ten minutes."
No reply. She checked the clock; Istanbul time three in the afternoon. That would make it one in the morning in New LA. Possibly they were still out in the fields, having opted to stay overnight, but she didn't think so. Not with all this going on, not if proximity was a factor.
Proximity meant Matthew Drake was there, in New LA. Perhaps he'd found the cairn trail. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It could be good.
But it didn't feel good, and she'd learned to trust her instincts.
"Keep working on it," she said. "Dig into the data, Lucas. Find out what it means. And Sulman, get me through to Amo."
"Roger that," he said and clicked off.
There was nothing more she could do.
* * *
The Pilatus flew on.
In two hours they were cruising over the wild and rambling vineyards of western France. Cities and towns buzzed by far below like landed alien craft, gray and insect-like in their blocky sprawl. A lost world washed by like the meaningless, ever-changing waves of the ocean, and she fell into a slow, silent fugue.
Soon these cities would be their stars, the only means of navigation across a world slowly turning to blank spaces on the map. The GPS guidance that had brought her here so easily would one day be gone, as the satellites that fuelled it failed and fell, and she'd be left with her compass and her maps. For a time she would navigate by cities and old roads, perhaps using a high-power telescope to read the highway numbers and town names written on signs.
But at some point even those signs would blister and peel, and the roads would crack and vanish beneath the spreading tides of green. Already it was happening, as windblown dirt gathered in cracked asphalt, piled over with leaves that fell season after season, mulching down to soil. Seeds landed and sprang up into saplings which one day would become forests.
Eventually the cities would be swallowed, colonized at their outer reaches and cannibalized from within as nature burst out from inner city parks. Swamps would blossom on rooftops and fields of wildflowers would flutter across intersections. Creepers would crawl onto skyscrapers like skin, steadily prying into their joints and cracking them apart like a slow motion echo of the infection that stilled their makers. The buildings would fall and be consumed.
In time all of it would be gone, sunk beneath a verdant green ocean. It was a world she'd never really known, had never missed, but the thought of this now brought her to the edge of the immense loss they'd all suffered. It was a wound, deeper and crueler than any that came before. The knitting frontlines of green were a healing balm, but the depth and beauty that had been lost were irreplaceable.
Unless there was a cure. Unless Lara was the key.
It felt like new possibilities were suddenly within reach. They'd been getting closer to the cure for months, but closer was still light years away. It was all stabbing blindly in the dark. That Lucas had cured himself was a confluence of millions of unknowable data points, of which they'd tested experimentally far less than one percent.
But now…
"Anna, look," Ravi said abruptly, and she jolted alert, aware he'd said her name several times already.
She blinked back from the reverie and looked out. Ahead on the horizon lay the cement island of Bordeaux, haloed by the blue mist of the sea. She'd flown these skies many times and knew the contours of the land below well. Almost there.
"Got it," she answered, and the little craft responded to her touch, arcing gracefully north.
The fuel gauge read below half. That was an issue she hadn't considered in the rush out. If the demons had escaped and spread throughout the countryside, it might be difficult to land safely.
She turned to Peters, as she had numerous times in the last hour, as they drew near. "Anything?"
"Nothing clearly," he said. "I feel them, their cold, but we are so high."
"Then let's go lower."
She pushed the stick forward, sending them into a sharp dive. Jake grunted in surprise, but everyone was buckled in. Through a wispy litter of cirrus clouds they plunged, and below the great spread of brown and green vegetation drew up to meet them.
Seven thousand feet, six, five. They would burn more fuel at the lower heights, but she'd already determined there was no going back without a stopover anyway, and they had to see. Far below a spray of Spartan roads came into focus, reduced now to dirt tracks run only by deer and wild dogs. The odd farmhouse and barn swept by like road signs in the earth, some with their roofs still glinting tin-silver, others capsized with time and neglect. Here stood a tall silo, there lay a fleet of orange harvesting machines forever trapped in the midst of the work, slowly sinking into the underbrush like dinosaurs in tar.
"There," said Peters, leaning over and pointing. "That is the site."
It was hard to know for sure, with the gun turret blown down and the bunker sealed over, though the ground remained relatively bare after Anna had ordered it razed with flamethrowers.
It wasn't bare now.
"Shit," Anna whispered.
Across the field and spread throughout the tangled vineyards nearby stood hundreds of zombies and demons, arranged like nothing she'd ever seen before. They were not embroiled in a desperate battle, there were no ringed heaps of scrawny gray bodies crawling over each other to pile on the red ones.
There was no movement at all.
The ocean stood frozen, each in their position as if planted there. The demons were the same, standing stock-still and gazing ahead.
The Pilatus soared in, almost skimming the rooftops now at two thousand feet.
"What the hell is this?" Ravi whispered by her ear.
What indeed. She'd never seen them as still as this, except for in their great piles in Mongolia, bonded to each other as if made of stone. There was almost something beautiful in it, a kind of static, natural grace in the way they'd scattered evenly across the fields, like birds nesting across a jungle canopy. It seemed right, somehow. Her lungs burned and she remembered to take a breath.
Then something shifted, as the Pilatus swooped in for the overfly. There was a tickling movement in the bodies as every head moved in unison, and every body spooled up into motion, and every arm lifted up as one.
They reached for the plane. They tracked it across the sky, zombies a
nd demons both. And they began to run.
"Shit," Anna said, louder now. They weren't going to be able to land anywhere near, after all.
8. DEMONS
Lara sagged in the RV's entrance, exhausted beyond nausea. Her body was on fire and so was her world. Amo lay on the asphalt and bled, the lead RV belched acrid smoke from the great bite-sized blast that had woken her up, small children clutching stuffed toy bombs huddled all around, and in the midst of it all stood a demon.
It was huge and red. Its black hole of a mouth was calling out words. At any moment she expected it to scoop up her husband and give him that unholy kiss.
"Come inside," Keeshom whispered behind her.
There were guns inside, she knew. Was that what he meant? But how would you kill a demon? How would you undo the blast he'd just torn into the fabric of their reality?
Nothing was clear to her. She didn't know how she'd reached this point, or how long had passed. One moment she'd been discussing having ten children with Amo, then she'd woken to this, in a place that looked like Fallout 1 near Disneyland, in the grip of a maniac demon that could think and speak, that led some kind of child army and was willing to blow them to pieces.
She couldn't think. Her head spun and the pain in her body made her only want to lie down and shudder, but there was a responsibility now. That much at least was clear. With Amo down, as Head Councilwoman, she was responsible for every soul in New LA.
She couldn't allow them to die. She had children to care for. She had people to save.
"Help me," she whispered, her voice raw and her jaw aching.
"What?" Keeshom whispered.
She gripped the door rail and tried to pull herself back up, but there was no way she was going to be able to.
"What are you doing?" Keeshom hissed.
"Help me," she repeated. "Now. That's an order."
Seconds passed, and then he did. Though he was shaking too, he took her by the elbow and with his help she stood. Her legs were stilts she could barely balance atop, though with Keeshom holding her firmly she stayed upright. The muscles in her thighs were exhausted and quivering, which was a feeling she remembered, though the last fit had been over a decade earlier.
So she'd had a fit.
She leaned forward and he helped, walking her in awkward steps through the shards of RV wreckage.
A child peeled off from their RV to walk alongside them. A little Middle Eastern-looking boy, with a sweet bowl cut on his jet-black hair, carrying a large polar bear toy. He couldn't be more than five years old. He matched her shuffling pace. He kicked a ruptured piece of furniture, perhaps once a sofa back, out of the way.
Five steps on a portly woman carrying a handgun, dressed in jeans and a blue check shirt, stepped in to block their path and barked some kind of order, but Lara couldn't catch it. The demon called something else, and the woman stood aside.
They went. Eight steps on a figure rose up from the floor, from the noxious gray fog drifting from the burning vehicle, and pressed itself to support her right side.
Feargal. His face was a mask of drying blood, drawn from a wound in his temple that cut through his fiery red hair. He had other wounds, bloodied and dusty through his clothes, but his grip around her back was firm enough. There was nothing to say, so they only walked.
The demon stood, waiting. The enemy. Its skin burned and its eyes were a bright milky red. It had no ears, no nose, no clothes, and it stirred a bitter cold in her middle. Her legs grew even weaker, her mind rebelled, but she pressed on. Perhaps this was an evolution. Perhaps this was fate. One more step, then she stopped.
At its feet lay Amo, sprawled unconscious on the floor, bleeding from the face and temple. With the greatest effort Lara lifted her head and looked up at the monster's blank face.
Its eyes were on her. Her eyes were on it.
"We surrender," she said.
If a demon could smile this one did.
"I know," it said, the sound emanating from deep in its open black mouth.
A long moment passed. She worked some saliva round with her tongue, moistening her parched throat. "What do you want?" she managed.
Though its round black mouth didn't move, Lara felt its smile widen. "I admire your courage. We'll need that. But shouldn't I be the one to speak now?"
There was a faint tone of amusement in its voice, which Lara had no time for. Whatever had just happened, it had happened and now it had stopped. Nobody was a threat. Nobody was even moving. The demon was here, after all, in their midst.
"So tell me," she said, her voice finding some of its lawyerly confidence despite the tremors in her chest and back. Keeshom and Feargal were the only things holding her up, but this demon couldn't know that. "You killed my people. You owe me an answer. What do you want from us?"
The demon regarded her. It made her think of Pittsburgh and the great hand around her chest, squeezing. It made her think of poor Cerulean, dead in the torture chamber of Julio, though this demon was not so large as that. Its hands were large but they couldn't encircle her waist. Its mouth was big but it couldn't cover her face.
Its non-existent smile dampened. Perhaps she was ruining its moment. She could feel the glory it was basking in, the power of what it had just done. How many dead? If anything, she was risking annoying it, but it was better to draw its anger onto her than onto her people.
"You're Lara," it said. "I recognize you from the comics."
She didn't nod or twitch an inch. She stared into those milky red eyes. "I am."
It looked down at Amo, by her feet, then back up. A clear message, but Lara didn't react. She couldn't be afraid, or let herself show fear, not when the people of New LA needed her to be strong.
"Who are you?" she asked. "What do you want?"
Its head bobbed, a kind of nod. "My name is Matthew Drake. My people are the Laws. We've come here to save the human race. That's all I want."
She stared at it. In other circumstances she would have laughed, but there was nothing funny about this. "By killing my people?"
"I'm not glad, for what I was forced to do. But I do what is necessary. Your Amo wanted to flee to Europe, and I couldn't allow that. I can't waste any more time or any more people. The work here begins tonight. It begins now."
She watched it. She was talking to a demon. None of it made any sense.
"What work?"
"The work of the First Law. Repopulation, Lara. Go forth and multiply, until there are so many of us that our voices drown out the rain. Until we have enough to make the world live again."
It stopped speaking. It looked pleased with itself.
"No," Lara said.
"No?"
"No."
It took a step closer, narrowing the gap between them to perhaps a foot. Feargal bristled, but she calmed him with a faint squeeze on his shoulder. There was no fighting to be done here, nothing to be gained.
It leaned in, bringing its big red face within an inch of hers. It studied her closely. Its breath stank of vomit. She did not look away.
"You were sick," it said. "Amo said as much. You look sick, so for that I'll give you one day to recover. One day to rethink that answer. In all that time, I'll have your people paired off and loaded onto RVs fitted with bombs. They may not start the work tonight, but they will start soon enough, I guarantee it. They always do."
She gazed back at it. It looked like a demon, but demons didn't speak, didn't make threats. Demons just killed, so what was this? It spoke like a man. A cruel man, a violent man, but only a man.
"There's always a choice," she said. "Because you don't want to kill us. I can see that clearly. You need us alive."
The demon tilted its head to the side, as if curious. "You're right. I need you. But then, do you think setting off bombs is the only trick I know? I don't need you whole, Lara. I don't need your fingers or your eyes, not your ears or your nose. Only the important parts." It lifted its hand and pressed the palm to her lower belly.
It
s touch came like an explosion, but silent and contained within the confines of her body. She convulsed and would have collapsed if not for Feargal and Keeshom, who barely managed to keep her upright as she jerked backward, caught in the blast of cold and heat pouring out from his touch.
It gasped too and jolted away, as if it had touched a hot stove. Lara sucked in air. Its features blurred, and the sensation in her stomach ebbed, to be replaced by a far greater puzzle.
The demon had changed, and now she saw a man. He was a giant, with black hair and a thick black beard. Uncertainty rippled across his features. Lara disguised her shock as best she could, making her face a mask, though she had no understanding of what had just happened.
The man only stared. He shook his head slightly. Lara saw now that he was bleeding from a wound in his shoulder. Perhaps he'd been a man all along, and she'd seen a demon because her mind was not working properly. It had happened before. Cerulean had never been there, but she'd seen him.
She hushed the uncertainty away and steeled herself. It didn't change anything.
"Did my husband do that?" she asked, nodding toward his shoulder.
For the briefest moment his thick pink lips pursed into a snarl, before he could smooth them out. He turned to the side, where a man and a woman were waiting. They looked blank to Lara, colorless, as if there was no life behind their eyes.
"Put her in my vehicle," the man said. "Send the doctor when she's ready. She's got big decisions ahead of her." He turned back. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to sort your people into breeding pairs."
He gave a slight bow in some mime of gallantry. The man and woman came forward and lifted her off Feargal and Keeshom, who offered no resistance. They were firm and carried her away over the wreckage-strewn asphalt. She tried to think of something to say, some message to leave them with, but what was there?
We surrender.
The Last Mayor Box Set Page 132
