The Last Mayor Box Set

by Michael John Grist

  The revolution had been a mistake. The Severing was always an obvious outcome.

  But this? Thoughts of Amo were making her crazy. In that state of craziness, she'd activated the scoop in the meeting with Olan. Normally he would have sensed it at once, scooping up a record of his signal, but he'd been distracted by Amo too. Into that crack in his defenses she'd jammed a lever and was now working it back and forth.

  She held the signal scoop up to the scanner. Only going to the missiles, she thought. If Olan cast his mind backward, that was all he would feel.

  The door opened. Her eyes were closed.

  Silo bays, she told herself. She focused on it using the skills he'd taught her, so that when she opened her eyes, that was all she saw. She started in, thoughts buzzing recklessly round her constantly shifting mind. Was she really doing this now? But then if she'd done something sooner, more of this could have been undone. The Severing might never have happened.

  Clack clack went her heels on the cement floor. It didn't match the sound of the metal walkway grilles in the missile silos. She thought of something else.

  She'd been lured deeper, that was the reason she was here now. The Logchain had become her life's work, and human advancement was a natural inclination for her. There'd always been so much potential in RNA. Elongating telomeres in a bid for eternal life was only scratching the surface of what was possible.

  Not only powers. Not only wisdom. Also answers.

  In the early days Olan Harrison had stoked that drive in her. In gratitude, she'd enabled him every step of the way. If she was honest with herself, which was a sequence of thoughts she'd avoided for as long as she'd been under his thumb, she knew that she'd always wanted more than this.

  In her mind, missile bay one passed her by on the left. She tried not to see that it was a glass cage containing a type one retrograde infected, one of the very first, salvaged from Joran Helkegarde's Alpha Array. Olan liked his mementos. Crudely stitched scars radiated out from its gray skull and down its spine, where countless tests had been conducted. She blinked and willed herself to see not a fallen human, but a missile.

  This was the silo. These were the weapons of their salvation. She would get her own continent, under Olan Harrison's auspices. That was the drive, that was what he had to see.

  In the second bay was a type two. This one came from the foothills outside their base, the first charted natural outbreak of type twos in the world. It was on its knees in shackles, eyes glowing and furious, and again she blinked, and forced herself to see the cool, calm steel of a missile.

  The corridor extended. She couldn't help but think back to the tour she'd given James While fourteen years ago, beneath the Donut where she'd hidden their earliest expressions of the thirty-two types. Here they all were again.

  A shudder ran down her spine. Now there was a thirty-third.

  Bays passed; the blue ones, the wraith ones, each a missile in her mind, soon to burst around the world. When she finally came to the end, it took all her considerable concentration to only see the sheer flank of a cold weapon. This was the emotional reaction she had to guard against most of all. Still, she couldn't help but let a little of the truth slide through. For a moment she looked through the glass, and saw the true occupant of the cell, staring back at her with pain and disbelief in his glowing eyes.

  It was James While.

  11. SKULL MOUNTAIN

  I'm a different person, now.

  It's not much of a revelation, but it changes how I see things. Every day I learn a little more about myself, and it casts all my prior actions in an inconsequential light. How could I ever have thought I was in control of anything? That's pretty funny, to be honest.

  Rachel Heron's gone and I'm sitting on a peak of the frozen ocean, these foothills of the dead mounded up against the edge of Olan Harrison's realm, wondering what's going to happen next.

  I absently drum on the skull top before me. Inside this hard gray skull there's a brain, maybe turned to stone, at the least shriveled back to the spine. Olan Harrison did that; what a sad story.

  I wonder if I'm going to kill him today.

  I'm not so sure, this close to his warping signal on the line. Right and wrong seem different out here, like they're scorekeepers for lesser mortals only. Maybe you only get this kind of ambivalence after killing your first ten thousand, I reflect. That's a helluva XP bonus. Ravi would love that notion; he was a real gamer. I wonder what Olan Harrison's experience bar would say, with a body count of seven billion to his name. You can't really get any higher than that. Top score, Olan, forever!

  I tire of my own giddiness, as is the new pattern, and look around at the progress of the dead. My army are done dancing and are off clambering over the body hills, looking for the edges of this strange invisible wall, where I sent them. I don't feel the wall distinctly, it's more a kind of numbing confusion that hits when I get near it. If I try to walk the way Rachel Heron went, it weighs heavy on my head and turns me around, so I always end up back here.

  Now I'm charting its reach. My ocean each carry a fragment of the black eye, and with it they bounce off the wall to mark the curving boundary line. The furthest are a few miles away already, circling steadily, like dark lines of coffee spilled down a cup to form a ring mark on the tabletop.

  Olan Harrison's shield.

  Of course, I've blown shields before, in Gap and Brezno and Istanbul. I'll blow this one too, if I want. The question that fascinates me most is; what will I do once inside? Will I rescue James While? Will I kill Olan Harrison? He did wipe out the world. I can get angry about that still, though it's a distant kind of anger, from very long ago. I'm not sure what use revenge will be to me now.

  It's a mystery.

  My mind's like a roulette wheel, and I can't predict where it'll land. The only thing I know for sure is that this place will be the end of the road for me. I'm all out of whack over sin and forgiveness, and I need to either be put back into alignment or put out of my misery for good.

  Maybe Olan Harrison will have the answer.

  He's drawing near now. I've been watching him for a while, walking toward me with his signal shining like a sun on the line. He's tall, young, powerful, dressed in navy slacks and a crisp cream shirt, like he's just stepped out of a fashion catalog. He's not the decrepit, dead Olan Harrison from the records, with his chest cracked open and gore everywhere. This is a turbo-charged Olan with a freshened genetic design, augmented with a disconcerting pair of glowing white eyes. Still, I can feel that it's him inside this new body, carrying a sour old man stink.

  I stop drumming and rest my hands on the skull top like it's a fortune-teller's crystal ball, seeking truths, but no answers come. I'm just going to have to wait and find out.

  He arrives at the bottom of my hill, and I look down at him for a long moment. There's a brief impasse as we look at each other, and the awkwardness of decorum settles. Should I go down to meet him, or will he come up to me? After a few moments I descend, because I did invite him here. On the ground of layered ocean bodies I stand before him, just at the edge of his invisible wall.

  "So you're Olan Harrison," I say. "Nice duds. Very trendy."

  "And you're the Last Mayor," he answers, studying me. I'm certainly not much to behold; ragged and scarred, with my humpish shoulder and partial limp. "I could say the same."

  I smile. There's a lot held in those few words. Worlds of meaning flitter back and forth. Even through the fog of his wall I can read his phenomenal power, full of bright trails reaching backward like a thousand leashes. They form a mantle around him like a halo, not a shield exactly but a layer of sedimented power like compressed carbon, crushing into diamond.

  He's no ordinary man, I suppose. He died then lived again. How many of us can say that?

  "You're an asshole," I say.

  He just looks at me. I'm a little surprised too, because I hadn't planned to say that. I know I must look crazy to him, out here on my own except for an army of the ocean.
But that's my gig now, I suppose. Kind of a jester. Circus ringleader. Multiple massacre artist.

  "I said you're an asshole," I repeat, in case he mistook it. "And a real motherfucker."

  He persists in being silent.

  "But maybe that's the kind of thing you're into," I press on. "Crazy, cultish, Oedipal sex with your acolytes? Really, I can't imagine what other kind of bullshit you're up to in this massive, screwed up graveyard." I gesture around. "You killed the whole world just to have a Bond-villain lair on Skull Mountain. What kind of man does that?"

  He looks at me, making his own silent judgments. "It's good to finally meet you," he says at last.

  That sets me off cackling. Good to meet me? Good to meet me?!

  "Don't bullshit a bullshitter," I say. "This is the best goddamn day of your life."

  He almost cracks a smile at that.

  "They all say they're glad to meet me," I throw out, letting the memories buoy me on. There's just something about staring into his pearly white eyes that gets my engine hot. "Salle Coram in Maine said it, right before I blew her head off. She even read my comics, so go figure! General Marshall said it before I punched him to death. He'd followed my career with interest, though he wasn't a fan. Then there was James While, but you beat me to him, didn't you? He was waiting for a successor, and…" I spread my arms half-heartedly to take in the body piles around us, the general ridiculousness of our present situation. "Here we are."

  Olan Harrison gazes at me. It's hard to read his plasticine face. I see now that he's not really handsome. He looks more like someone melted a Hollywood star in the microwave then tried to push the various features back into position. It's an idea of handsome built by human hands, like the too-tight lips of a facelift patient. The white eyes just set it off and scream 'fake'.

  "Here we are," he agrees. I find I like his voice; there's something calm about it, its depths working in concert with the sheen of diamond rippling above his skin. "And you're right, I have been watching you, like the others. Your descent has been a thing to behold. It's brought you to me."

  I grin.

  "I'm here to kill you," I say casually, like I'm ordering a Big Mac through the drive-thru intercom. "Or maybe, to settle a peace accord."

  He narrows his white eyes slightly. I feel him probing toward me on the line. We're both tentative in this, sounding each other out. I firm up my own defenses; the black eye cocooned around me in a thick invisible fog.

  "A peace accord," he says, as his tendrils tap at the edge of the eye. "To what end?"

  That seems like an odd question to me. I suppose you never can tell, with someone who died then came back.

  "Peace," I say. "Between my peoples and yours." He still doesn't seem to get it, so I go on. "A guarantee we'll avoid hostilities. A treaty to divide the world up on equitable lines."

  He doesn't like that. He barely shows it, but I catch it; a slight crinkling of the lip, a distaste in the corners of the eyes. Interesting.

  "Peace," he repeats. "In the midst of war. You come fresh from battle with the bunkers of the SEAL."

  I wag a finger. "Not directly. I was cracking shields, that's true, then I got distracted." I don't need to go into all that, about Anna and all my shame. Best to let sleeping dogs lie. Instead I point my finger at him, which gives me a little thrill, because he plainly doesn't like that either. "I caught the whiff of your trail. Interference, we could say. I hear you're dropping bombs on the bunkers now."

  I haven't heard that, exactly. I've felt something like it, on the line, along with Anna's efforts to stand up fresh shields. The war certainly has taken a different tack since I left it.

  He smoothes out his displeasure and looks past my extended finger. "The SEAL signed their fate when they went against me fourteen years ago. Be careful not to do the same, Last Mayor."

  I chuckle at that. Yes, he's not enjoying this part at all. I quite like that. He may be on top of the leaderboard, but it's obvious he can't handle any kind of criticism. I suppose that's why he put himself at the top. I wonder, on a whim, what it'll be like to get him hot?

  "I wasn't doing much, fourteen years ago," I muse. "Drawing zombie comic books, trying to get laid more. The gulf between us couldn't have been wider." I pause, reading his face. Probably he thinks I'm talking about his money, his success, something like that. I'm not. "But you weren't getting laid at all, were you? What were you, ninety years old?"

  That tweaks him nicely.

  "Billionaire," I go on, "running the world, but no women." I make a tutting sound. "Pretty sad, Olan. Do you mind if I call you Olan?" I don't wait for an answer. "Everyone knows about that. Honestly, I've been wondering these past weeks why you even wanted to come back from the dead." I do the sucking up, swooping down motion again, with whistling sound effects. "For most old bastards having an end-of-life crisis, it's about younger women, but what was that to you?" I take a step closer, flashing back to the long days and nights of reading James While's meticulous research on Olan Harrison's early life. "As far as I can see you weren't living for anything. There were no women in your life, no kids, no connections at all. You were a mentor to some, like James While, but you betrayed him most of all. What was the point in killing everyone just to prolong a life you didn't even enjoy?" I pause, looking into his white eyes. "Tell me it was for more than just fear of death, because that would be a real disappointment."

  He looks at me with his plastic face impassive. I don't think any of that even touched him, and his steeliness gives me cause to reflect; did I really come all this way to get a peace deal, or did I come all this way just to kill him? There's no doubt I hate him more than anyone else I've ever met.

  People just shouldn't get to come back. They shouldn't get to wipe the line for their convenience. Drake had it right, in that. It's an existential rage, and I can channel that nicely. If I'm a good guy for anyone, then it's for the people who follow the rules.

  "You talk like you know me," he says, interrupting my reflection. "Like you know who I am. But I'm four times your age, Last Mayor; older than your parents, older than your dead grandparents. I was born with the end of World War Two, I grew up in the Cold War, I died with the apocalypse, and then I came back. I've learned things about human nature that you couldn't understand, so when I look at you, know that I see a child, barking loudly because he's afraid. There are so many things that scare you, so you curl up in your madness and you fling insults like a shield. But I see something more too. I see a man hurting for the things that he's done. I see a man looking for permission and absolution."

  I raise one eyebrow quizzically. What the hell is all that?

  "Call me Amo," I say. "Don't stand on ceremony. Only my people call me Last Mayor."

  Now he smiles. It's thin and suitably creepy. "And who are 'your people', Last Mayor? Tell me."

  I give a creepy smile to match. Yes, I really do hate this guy. This is going to be more fun than I thought. "Amo, please. And by my people, I'm talking first about New LA." I check that off on a finger. "But also Matthew Drake's brood." Another finger. "Any of my fighters or researchers left after the SEAL attack on Istanbul. And, of course, any one of the immunes in your compound who want to defect."

  I let my smile widen. I throw that last one in to really sting him. I hadn't thought of it until I met Rachel Heron, but she was giving me such Stockholm syndrome eyes that I can't ignore it now. The deep misery was coming off her in waves. She wanted out, and she's one of their leaders, so what does that say about the rest?

  "That last won't be possible," he says. "I keep them on a very short leash."

  I chuckle. I bet you do, you bastard.

  "Maybe I can spread some comics?" I ask. "Let them take a peek at what they're missing. You're not really an Oedipal cult, are you, so maybe they'll be interested. I can't promise twenty-four hour sex or even much by way of debauchery, but there's plenty of good, normal shit going on." I let that hang for a second. "And let me be clear. Under 'my people' I inc
lude all immunes, whether you snatched them up before the Multicameral switch or after. I know you took hundreds before the super-Array sang its final tune." I look at him, and enjoy the sinking of his amused, polite smile. Sink that shit into the mud, you son of a bitch. "Then you snatched hundreds afterward, too, and maybe more have come down off the line since then? They're all my people. I want them given a choice. A comic in every hand. They come to me, if they want."

  Now his butter-smooth face shows regret. "I'm afraid not. Under no circumstances."

  "Change the circumstances," I say, perfectly reasonable. "Or I'll huff, and I'll puff..."

  I let that one hang too. I expect he knows what comes next. I have no real idea what kind of power he has, but likewise he doesn't know me. Sure, maybe he's watched from afar, but he doesn't really know, and I've got nothing to lose; not a thing. I'm already as wretched and broken-down as can be, long-separated from my family, emotionally depleted, a traitor to so many people that I loved, just shooting for some kind of redemption…

  It's a stark contrast between us; him in his sharp clothes and new body, so clean and fresh, standing here with his lair intact in back. I can feel him thinking about everything he has at stake, and that disparity makes me strong.

  His diamonds sharpen on the line.

  "Tell me," I go on, enjoying this role and acting like the air isn't already thick with violence, "why you bothered to come back to a world where nobody wants you? We all hate you down here. I'm pretty sure they all hate you up top. What are you looking for?"

  His white eyes blaze through the diamond tendrils like a hail of autocannon flak.

  "Do you think you see weakness in me, Last Mayor of America?" he asks. "Is that why you're playing this childish game? Do you see weakness, or do you see something new, something closer to a pure distillation of will and strength in physical form?"