The Last Mayor Box Set

by Michael John Grist

  Drake rolled his fingers in the air, watching them, then looked at her. "What is this feeling, Lara?"

  She stared at him. She didn't know. She couldn't think.

  "I know you're struggling," he said. "I can see that. But I think I deserve an answer. What was that?"

  "I-" she began, but her voice betrayed her. Her tongue felt like a foreign body in her mouth, unwilling to comply, but the power in his touch filled her still. It was harder to think, harder to refuse. "I don't know."

  He studied her. He nodded. "No. What do you guess?"

  She tried to take control. Her legs trembled still. Large parts of her mind were fogged and hazy with the waves, with the lies and the truth melding into one, but she tried. He was asking for her help, and she didn't want to help him, but she didn't know. She couldn't see if there was even a choice. She'd heard them cheering, as he decried Amo. The tide was turning already, and he'd killed five people already. Her children had been in the front row, and what was the benefit to defy him now.

  "It's how I felt," she began, forcing control over her voice, "when the demon grabbed me." It hurt to speak but she kept on. "It's the feeling they bring."

  "Demons?"

  She made herself look at him. Into his eyes. She'd felt him then, she'd seen him, a demon in the body of a man. Nothing made sense.

  "You pointed at me," he said, and smiled. "Yesterday, you pointed at me, and you screamed 'demon'. What does that mean?"

  She shuddered. She couldn't control her body or her mind. "Wh-what do you care? You d-don't believe."

  He smiled. "Don't I? Come, Lara, because of what I said out there? I've already told you that was for them. The evidence of demons is plain. Plus, we saw one."

  Lara blinked. "What?"

  Drake's smile became a grin. "You're surprised. Yes. In Bulgaria, on the move. We were always on the move, unlike you. We never settled, though now I see the benefits. It came at us while we were in motion, took one of our RVs off the road like a charging bull, and nothing we fired at it slowed it. I lost a breeding pair and four children to it."

  Lara watched him, wrong-footed again. Everything he said seemed designed to keep her reeling, off-balance, unable to respond. The weight of it was piling up around her like a multiple car-crash. A breeding pair? A demon?

  "But I found replacements. I've got you now, don't I?"

  He put his hand on her stomach again, palm flat to the smooth muscle, and the shock coursed through her again. This time he didn't let go. Her breath rattled and she kicked feebly in the chair. In the darkness behind her eyes she saw the great white eye open over New LA. She saw Cerulean on his knees with his arms spread to the sky, his head teetering from his neck by a shred of skin. She saw Drake's lips curl and heard him grunt, and long moments passed with them locked together and trembling as one.

  Then the charge ebbed, slow at first but growing faster, until at last it was gone. Still he held his hand on her stomach a moment longer, proving some kind of point, before pulling it away.

  He let out a breath. "Quite a ride."

  Stray convulsions made her muscles fire like aftershocks. "Don't t-touch me," she whispered.

  "Don't touch you," Drake repeated slowly. He rolled the words round his mouth like a fine wine. He rocked back on his heels. "All right."

  He rose and moved round to the wheelchair's handles, then began pushing her again, over the carpet. They passed by the old ticket kiosks and on down the broad corridor leading to screens 5-10. At the door to screen 6 he stopped.

  Once they'd used it as an emergency medical bay. He pushed her through the swing door and in. It was dark and mostly empty beyond, the walls lined with barren metal shelving units, all emptied now in advance of the move, though a single ceiling spotlight had been switched on at the front, illuminating an area cleared of seats and shelves. There was a blocky black radio receiver on a desk, and sitting beside it on a bare wooden chair, was Amo.

  She gasped. He was naked. His arms were pinioned behind his back and a strip of gray duct tape covered his mouth. His eyes were blackened and red. His nose looked crumpled and crusted. His body was dark with angry black bruises and old blood.

  Beside him stood a large man wearing bloodied white gloves.

  Amo saw her and his eyes widened. Fear, perhaps, or anger, or some kind of hope. The force of that gaze hit Lara like a physical blow, worse than the fire, worse even than the RV explosion. This was her Amo, hurting and humiliated. This was the man she'd loved and doubted and been willing to die for. His skin looked hammered and raw. In the chair he looked so fragile.

  "I know," said Drake, speaking in the air above her right shoulder. "He's in bad shape. But I promised you no lies, so this is a truth; I will beat him to death to get your compliance, Lara."

  * * *

  A shiver ran down her spine. He was talking about killing her husband. She tried to lift her arm to claw at his throat, but she could barely lift a finger. She tried to throw herself out of the chair but she did nothing more than quiver it slightly.

  He rolled her down the aisle. Amo's eyes were bursting with some inexpressible emotion. Drake pulled her in to face him, their knees almost touching, and just at that moment the radio barked to life.

  "New LA, this is Sacramento, we're nearing Denver for the rendezvous, repeat, nearing Denver for the rendezvous. Where are you? Repeat, where are you?"

  She recognized it as Tomas. There was fear in his voice. Lara didn't know what was going on, everything had been a blur since she woke to the blast by Disneyland, but she had pieced together the possibilities. She'd entered a fit, and at some point during it Amo had called for a mass evacuation. Sacramento had gone as ordered, and were now alone, cut off from New LA.

  Amo strained against the tethers holding him to the chair. He wheezed noisily through his broken nose. His eyes urged a desperate message.

  "You can see what we've been doing," Drake said casually, gesturing to the man with the bloody gloves. "You can see we've got the radio here, and now you hear who we're listening to. I think you can guess what I want you to do."

  She could. It was one more horror on the pile.

  "I won't," she whispered.

  Drake pulled up a chair and sat beside her. His breath touched her cheek. He waited. She trembled. Amo's eyes shone defiantly. Perhaps all the time she'd been sleeping, he'd been fighting the war on his own in here, while outside the walls fell.

  "We've been beating him for some time now," Drake said quietly, privately, as though Amo wasn't there. "And he stays defiant. But that's easy, to be frank. Really I didn't expect him to break, a good man like this." He slapped Amo's shoulder. "The work we've done here, it's more about appearances. For you." He paused. Her fast, panting breaths filled the air with rising panic. "He looks bad, and that's the point. He defied us so far, and you see the spirit in his eyes. But Lara," he leaned in closer, "what if I take one of those eyes?" He stopped, and waited while Amo huffed impotently. "I can't say I'll enjoy it, but if it helps, I will. I can take anything I like, piece by piece. The other eye, an arm, a leg, and do you think he'll be so defiant then? Do you think you will be?" He waited. He breathed on her neck. "And I'll just keep going. You know I will. I'll go until you give the answer I need, until I'm certain that the moment I give you control of that radio, you'll do the right thing."

  Amo's breath rasped noisily and his eyes raged, but this wasn't a conversation he was a part of. He was the evidence, now. In court the witness didn't get to speak freely, they were only exhibited.

  Drake leaned away again. "If that fails, I think you can imagine what comes next. I don't need to say it. I sincerely hope I won't have to do it. But since women are more valuable to us, it will be Vie first, Talia second."

  Amo shook so violently it made the chair legs beat on the carpet. His cheeks went red, his biceps and thighs popped into tight relief as he tried to break free, then the man behind him stepped in with a stunning right hook. It struck the back of Amo's head and
bowled him forward. It would have knocked him right onto Lara's lap if Drake hadn't caught him by the shoulder.

  Still Amo's blood and spit flecked Lara's cheeks, and the cold pit in her stomach flared sharply. Then Drake pushed Amo back upright, his head sagging unconscious against his chest. A fresh rivulet of blood trickled from the split in his scalp.

  "Stop it," Lara said. "Don't hit him again."

  Drake watched her. "That's your decision now, Lara. I've given you a day to think this over, and here's the choice. You help me corral these lost sheep," he pointed to the radio, "and his pain stops."

  She reached for Drake's throat, but her arms barely fumbled in her lap.

  Drake nodded, and the man stepped in and thumped Amo again in the side of the head. His body billowed like a ragdoll, carrying him and the chair forward once more, spraying Lara with more sweat and freckles of blood.

  Lara began to weep. She couldn't control it. The panic was there like a physical taste in her mouth.

  Drake watched calmly. "One of these will do permanent damage. If we haven't already. So let me make it easier. Let me give you a door out of this cage." He patted her knee. "Or a door into the cage. I'm never quite sure what Mecklarin meant by that. But still, it's a door, because once you're in The Laws, you're family." He smiled. "We all are. We have excellent care; every member of our team is trained in childbirth. We have a doctor, qualified in the old world. We look after the children together; our most essential investment. Nobody is imprisoned. Everyone is free, and they're happy. They're not evil people."

  Amo rolled groggily in his seat, blinking blearily back to consciousness. Saliva sagged from his jaw in a long, ropey line.

  "This is evil," Lara whispered.

  "I know that," said Drake. "It is. So show me another way. Help me do this better. Bring the Sacramento people in peacefully, help me integrate them without any need for this," he pointed at Amo. "That's what I want most of all."

  She looked at Amo, barely conscious and trying to hold his head up and his eyes open, more out of bare defiance now than any conscious thought. They could hit him again, and again. They could bring Vie in, then Talia, and how much of that could she take? A finger. An eye. Her children's lives against all of Sacramento.

  "Help me make the First Law kinder," Drake said. "You've seen my people. They believe in the work we do, but they don't want to hurt you. They just need you to hold still enough to take the cure. If anything, it's you forcing us to do this. This is what it takes to break old habits."

  Old words haunted back to her, something Amo said to Anna a long time ago, about guarding against different groups of survivors, with very different ideas of what survival was.

  Now Drake was here.

  She looked into his eyes and felt herself reel. The panic rose up high and there was fog in her head, muffling her thoughts like a tissue of lies, but she couldn't do anything about that. She was here now, in this moment, and lives were at stake. The people she cared about could die, and she had to do something. She had to push back, somehow, had to make her case.

  So she did. She cleared her throat, and held up her head, and spoke. "Let me talk to her."

  Drake blinked. Now he was surprised. "To who?"

  Control of her voice took effort, but she marshaled it. She had reserves this man had never seen. "Your first. The first in your cage. Alone."

  Drake considered. He looked at Amo. He looked at Lara, and cocked his big head at an angle. "And if you don't like what she has to say?"

  Lara looked at him. That much was obvious. Would she really hold out, if he brought Vie and Talia in? No. But sometimes you just had to bluff, and this was all the leverage she had.

  Drake stood up. "I'll go get her."

  * * *

  She was a big-bodied woman, pale-skinned with blonde hair pulled tight back in a ponytail under a faded red ball cap. Her hips were wide, her shoulders beefy, but her face had a kind of elfin delicacy, too small to match the rest of her.

  She didn't look kind, as she sat next to Amo. She didn't look cruel. She just was.

  Drake left them alone.

  Lara watched the woman. Lydia, her name was. Lydia watched her right back, not breaking her gaze. Amo sat beside her, more alert now, watching and listening. Worried.

  "Was it one of your children?" Lara asked, after perhaps a minute had passed. "That he blew up."

  Lydia waited. She studied Lara. When she spoke it was with a light mid-Western accent. "No. But we were related."

  Lara frowned. With thirty kids from eleven adults, everyone had to be related somehow. Stepmothers, stepfathers.

  "But you do have kids here. With Drake."

  "I do. Two by Drake. Seven others."

  Lara's jaw sagged a little. "Nine children."

  "Nine children," Lydia replied. "One a year, give or take."

  "And that's…" Lara trailed off. She didn't know what to say. "How do you feel about that?"

  Lydia sighed then, and leaned in a little. "Sweetheart, listen to me. Lara. You're judging us, judging me, and that's fine. You're from the big city, so you wanted to stay in the big city, New LA, I get it. I was out there myself, in Spain, Madrid, when it happened. I'm actually a lesbian, did Drake tell you that?"

  Lara didn't know how to react to that.

  "I was. I had a French girlfriend, living the big city life, then the infection took her. That's life. I wandered for a time, more lost than I knew. I didn't know what to do, didn't think I'd ever see home again, then there was Drake. He locked me up, kept me captive for weeks, and you know what? One day he opened the door. Said I could go, said every cage had a door. This was after I'd tried to kill him. After I broke, I suppose. But I'm not doing it justice."

  She sat back, shifting in her seat. "Are you a religious person, Lara?"

  Lara didn't answer.

  "Mmm hmm," said Lydia, as if she had. "I was, then I lost it, but I've seen lots of people get taken by the spirit in my time. They get born again, and if you talk to them, they'll tell you it's like they saw the light. They rant on about accepting Jesus into their life. I know you had one of your own." Her lips curled into a slight smile. "Witzgenstein. In my view, you did the right thing to banish her. She's got that kind of crazy in her eyes. But that's a sidetrack. My point is, sometimes you see the truth. You see it and you get low, maybe so low that you can't take it any more, and that's when you're ready to change. Drake showed me that truth, then he showed me the way back out."

  She shrugged and slouched back in the seat, legs spread. "I hated him for most of a year, carrying his child. Until one day I didn't hate him any more. It just clicked over, and I found I respected him. Valued him. I saw what he was doing, and I saw the selfish way I'd been before. Now we have a dead child. You have five dead people. It's terrible, but it serves the truth." She gestured at Amo. "This beating, the cruelty? He's helping you. Taking you to your low, so you can see the truth."

  "Like a baptism," Lara said, her voice barely audible.

  "That's right. A rite of passage. When the priest dips you under, he's teaching you to trust. You're in his power completely, your life or your death. Then he lifts you out and that's opening the cage door. If you see it then, you join, and if you don't, you don't. He doesn't force people."

  Lydia had been brainwashed, that was plain. She believed just like a cultist. But perhaps, if Lara squinted at it sideways, there was some truth to this way of life. Not the killing, not the bombs or the torture, but the life. Children were essential. Here in New LA they'd been living for so long with the hope of others coming that they'd never taken the need to procreate seriously.

  "He wants me to betray my people," Lara said.

  Lydia shrugged. "Or show them the light. I heard he wants your help. So you help him. You know those people, so you make their 'baptism' better. You pitch it to them. Or you don't. Either way, he'll keep on until you turn or you break. It won't change the truth out there, that we are outnumbered. That we are going to die
. That's the real cage, Lara, and you need to see it. Because if you don't, if you won't, he'll go right on to the next in line, until one of them will. Better it's you. Take the break. Do what you have to. Keep your people safe."

  Lara let her gaze drop. Amo sat there, listening keenly, now with sadness in his eyes. No more pointless rage. He saw the change in her.

  "So, we're done," Lydia said.

  Lara shivered as Drake came back in, though it wasn't cold. She looked down at her dark palms as Drake moved to the radio and tuned the signal. In moments Tomas' voice came again.

  "New LA, repeat, New LA this is Sacramento, do you copy?"

  Isabelline, that was one of the colors Amo had used to describe her hands. She turned them over. Fawn, that was another. The colors sounded so beautiful, exotic names for different shades of brown. But what did they mean? Happiness, he'd said then. Only happiness for you, Lara. Had he seen this future in her palms, then, so long ago on that first date in New York?

  The microphone was pressed into her palms. She didn't want it there, like a tube pushed inside her body, spewing out its message, but there it was. It was all there. She fingered it, and Drake said something.

  It didn't seem possible that she could do this. She couldn't accept the magnitude of this defeat. She wasn't ready, but here the microphone was.

  "Lara," said Drake.

  She looked up at Amo. There he was, looking right back at her, and for the first time she glimpsed some of the meaning Peters had talked about, when he hung across the corridor from Abigail in Julio's pit. The love that they'd shared, and the strength he'd tried to lend. This was the same; twelve long years of love and affection, of nurturing two children and a growing community of survivors, of leading their people to a better ideal.

  But it wasn't the same, because Amo was shaking his head. He was telling her no. His eyes grew wider as she wrapped her fingers round the microphone's shaft. His head snapped side to side so hard she thought she heard the vertebrae grinding in his neck. He wanted her not to. He wanted her to fight.