The Last Mayor Box Set

by Michael John Grist

  All around her angels scrabbled in the same way, desperately trying to cling to their earthly bodies, not realizing they were already dead. One by one they sucked up into the sky, where Olan Harrison would have them all after Lazarus; his marionettes to control in death as in life. He would bring them down as his slaves, imprisoned in boxes according to his whims, and it was all her fault.

  She saw Anna rising on the line, her body already lost, the thread severed by the massive blast, and she poured her fear into the crystal vibration of words.

  "Please. Please, do something. He'll hurt us forever."

  The girl still shone with power. Even with her army dead and her body gone her fury blazed on the line, perhaps even brighter than before, as if death had only set her free.

  "It's all right," she said as the line drew her up, drew them all up like a rain played in reverse. "He doesn't know what he's done."

  She took Rachel Heron's hand and they rose together.

  INTERLUDE 7

  Olan Harrison stood on the Redoubt's third floor, at the screens of Rachel Heron's Strategic Governance department with her deputy Arter Rain at his side, still glowing from the success of his destruction of the girl Anna, the eradication of the disloyal angels, and the final disciplining of Rachel Heron.

  At the same time, he watched the Last Mayor attempt his pathetic insurgence.

  It was laughable. He'd drilled a tunnel beneath the wall, using up half his type threes in the process, and now was sending a steady stream of type ones and twos inside the wall, where they lined up for the five-mile charge to the Redoubt.

  Few things made Olan Harrison smile now, but this was one. The futility of it. It was going to take the Last Mayor hours to get his whole army through, and even then it wouldn't be nearly enough. Olan had seven hundred angels left in the Redoubt, all of them devout and devoted, all of them boxed and trained, as well as an old world military base's worth of conventional weapons.

  There were dozens of missiles left in the bays. There were twenty autocannon situated on all the access points to the Redoubt. There were drones carrying explosives, and bombs to bleach the line, and rings of hidden landmines, and of course at the center there was Olan himself.

  It was almost disappointing.

  Rachel Heron had been his masterwork. She'd always been idealistic, though a long time ago she'd let those ideals be swallowed up in ambition. He'd known since she'd raised him via Lazarus that her heart was not with his cause. He'd let her keep her scoop with his pattern on it, waiting for a day like this. Of the hundreds of voices in his mind, all of them had agreed that this course was ordained.

  One day she would betray him.

  He'd had more than a decade to turn that betrayal to his own ends. Allowing her influence over him to grow was nothing to him; her efforts always so tremulous, only seeking briefer periods in the box for some, more freedom for others. In some ways he'd been disappointed at her meager overtures, surely influenced by her fear. He'd tried to let her see him weaker than he was, and even then she had barely taken the bait.

  The mission to James While was his final stroke of genius. Sending her to collect that sad frayed end, as if he still mattered at all, was beautiful. She'd done it, and he'd felt her heart finally crack. After that it was instinctive to let her see him weakened by his sparring bout with the Last Mayor; enough to spur on her great betrayal.

  It was the only way to destroy the girl. He'd been watching her for some time; monitoring the growth of her phenomenal power on the line. For over a year she'd been the greatest threat to him, far more than the Last Mayor, and as such he'd prepared. Decency was her weakness. He'd seen her try to forge treaties with the SEAL many times, despite the cruelties they'd done to her. She wanted always for the least suffering for the most people.

  He couldn't defeat her in all-out war. Or, perhaps, he could, but the cost would be immense, and he hadn't become a billionaire by paying costs like everyone else. There was always another way, and the voices gave it to him.

  She would listen to a heartfelt surrender. It would allow him to manoeuver terrible weapons into her proximity, but they had to do it unwittingly, or she would see. It was a natural fit for Rachel Heron's tainted heart. Only she could offer a genuine surrender, dropping the shields of her three hundred angels in the girl's presence, and only with the shields down could he trigger the bombs he'd built into them.

  His plan had worked like clockwork.

  Now the girl was gone, blasted into the line. He would pull her down and make her part of his empire, using her power to fuel his own, reflecting back his victory.

  It was truly a heady day, and now the world lay open before him. Only the Last Mayor at the wall was left to kill, and there was no rush to that. His wife would be there in a day, and Olan would welcome her. With the Last Mayor's help, he would make her and her people love him. He'd learnt much from their conversations, and there was so much more to learn. With the Mayor's help, boxed into Olan's mind like a second Little Olan, he would repair all his old mistakes and perfect his mastery of the line. In time he would teach these people to clamor for their own severing.

  He envisaged a society where his touch was everything; a cooling balm on their forehead, a safeguarding hand guiding their dreams, a rite of passage for their ascension into his new civilization. Homo Deus.

  Godhood was within reach. With the Last Mayor shackled as another voice in his mind, he would not be stopped.

  He turned to Arter Rain, one of the earliest immunes pulled down from the line. If Olan remembered correctly, he'd been gored to death by a rhinoceros escaped from Bengal zoo, after the signal went out. A terrible stroke of luck, in the early days after the fall. Now, of course, his mind was a clamor of voices from above, only held together by Olan Harrison's will, boxing the parts of him that would drive him mad.

  "He doesn't realize we can simply move the wall," Olan said.

  Arter Rain didn't respond. Of course. Olan smiled. It was easy to forget, sometimes. He'd boxed every angel in the Redoubt as soon as Rachel Heron left, in preparation for the war. He trusted them all, but you never knew, and he'd need their strength in the battle to come. Mano a mano against the Last Mayor would be a joyous experience. The man had power, there was no doubt of that, but he was packed full of fault lines to be exploited.

  Olan had broken and rebuilt himself along such lines a hundred times. He knew how to engineer the mind of man. The Last Mayor would be no different, when his black eye was plucked out.

  He sent the order and Arter Rain moved to the nearest terminal, where he typed a set of codes that moved the wall. Olan watched with mounting pleasure, felt as a steady silencing of the stunted chorus in his mind, while the wall briefly fell. He watched the Last Mayor's expression change as he sensed it.

  The static would be gone. The air would be clear. His little figure turned on the screen, and as one his ocean charged across the expanse where it had stood. Perhaps he thought he'd broken it, somehow. Perhaps he believed the girl had achieved something with her death; a vital blow struck.

  How much more pleasurable was it when Arter Rain hit a button and the wall re-formed, scarcely a hundred yards inward from where the Last Mayor had gathered his troops. Just far enough to render his tunnel ineffective. Just far enough that they'd have to dig a new one, using up the rest of his type threes, beating down his type twos, and most importantly of all, breaking his resolve a little bit more.

  Olan's smile grew, becoming a leer that reflected back in the dark sheen of the monitor, as he imagined the black eye blooming and filling it. That was beautiful. He could go and cut the Last Mayor down right now, but this would be better. Sever him one step at a time. Crack his spirit like a rat in a maze, with the exit always shifting.

  By then the Last Barista would be there to see it. Rachel Heron would be back too, walking in a new body with all the pain of heaven screaming in her head, to witness the wages of her betrayal. Only then would he be fulfilled. It took such ef
forts, such scheming, to achieve true satisfaction. If there was anything the Last Mayor was right about, it was the effort it took to achieve meaning.

  His world would have meaning, that he was now certain of. Every person living within it would make it so. Their love was all the meaning he'd need; a mirror to his own greatness, taught to him by the Last Mayor himself. After all was said and done, what else mattered other than the martyr's selfless devotion?

  They would all be martyrs for him.

  He patted Arter Rain on the shoulder. On the screen the Last Mayor was raging pathetically. If he wanted to, Olan could split the wall into two, breaking the fallen army into halves, or into three, four, a dozen sections. Built of ten type threes since the fall and reinforced with sixty more in the weeks following, it was the most powerful shield in the world.

  Nothing could break it. Not the millions that had assaulted it in the heyday of the SEAL's 'immune' response, not the type twos that had clustered to kill him, and not the Last Mayor today. This would be his end. Olan was going to enjoy this. He started down to the Lazarus decks, where even now they were preparing to haul Rachel Heron's thread down from the line. He would put her in a room with James While's corpse and let her scream.

  That was something to look forward to. Of such pleasures was meaning made.

  21. THE LINE

  Anna arced forward as if on another jump, though now she traveled not through space, but memory. She lost track of Rachel Heron in the flight, lost track of herself and the war, until she came down on a black road surrounded by orange desert, holding a small blue backpack in her hands.

  She gave a soft snort. Of course. That she had died was no great surprise. That she would arrive here was only to be expected.

  She looked around the space, familiar despite the blurring effect of time; a pit stop off I-70 out of Denver, Colorado. On the skyline stood the skyscrapers of that glass and steel city, still shiny only a few months after the fall, with Amo's Pac-Man resplendent on the tallest floors of the Wells Fargo Center. Its mouth was half-closed at this angle, and that was only natural.

  She looked down at herself; a five-year-old girl again, dressed in her ragged blue Alice dress, stolen from a mannequin in a costume shop so long ago. Her white leggings were dirty with sweat and asphalt dust, her blue pumps were torn and her right little toe peeked through at the corner.

  She remembered the blisters she'd had. Every night it had been a fun routine; easing off the pumps and popping the little bubbles, waiting for the healing to take. While reading stories of brave Alice, she'd lie on whatever kind of bed she chose; on a school bus roof, in a semi-truck trailer, in the middle of the sunbaked road, and wait for the ocean to come.

  They always came to her.

  But not now, and she understood why. None of the ocean were up here, not since the line was swept clean. They were locked down below.

  She walked a little. The desert was a desolate orange. The sky was a sharp cerulean blue, and she knew what day this was. Everything had changed for her here, a crossroads, and nothing could be the same. This was the day the wound in her middle had begun to heal.

  A hot wind blew, and she waited as the cream RV pulled up, just as it had before, horn honking and full of the echo of old jubilation. Behind it roared Julio's red muscle car, though he pulled up out of sight, revving occasionally. When the RV's driver side door opened, she knew who it would be.

  Jake.

  He sprang out with a gangly, tousle-haired grin, arms spread like he'd just performed a wonderful trick.

  "Anna!" he cried, and ran to her. She ran to meet him. His skin was firm beneath her touch. She squeezed him so hard that he laughed.

  "I'll pop, sweetheart," he said, patting her head. "You'll squeeze all the red strings right out of me."

  She looked up at him without squeezing any less. "I'm so glad to see you. I'm sorry you died."

  He laughed and patted her matted, filthy hair. "Don't be silly, little bit. I'm up here now. You don't know what it's like. I'm so happy."

  She gazed up at him, feeling the same way she'd felt all those years ago when her father had walked into the water and never come back, when she'd been alone and half-mad.

  "How can you be happy?" she asked. "Lucas is below. Your family aren't here, ever since the line was flattened. It's nearly empty."

  He smiled. "Not empty, sweetheart. And Lucas will come here too, in time. I'll be here when he comes, or part of me will. As for my family, I think I'll see them again soon. Don't you?" He winked.

  She looked past him, to the RV where she could see a ghostly figure sitting behind the windshield glass. It was Masako, her face pale, staring back. She didn't get out of the RV. Anna let Jake out of the hug and stood with her hand in his, looking into Masako's haunted eyes.

  "What happened to her?"

  Jake gave a small shrug. "She's slow. There's not much of her left, you know? The anger's mostly faded, and I think it's shame that's keeping her here. Maybe you'll help her get over that, when you have the chance."

  "I'll do it now," said Anna, then released Jake and started toward the RV.

  There was no transition; no walk across the blacktop, no opening of the RV door. With the thought, she was sat in the RV's passenger seat. The sudden jump didn't surprise her, here; instead it felt natural. She looked sideways.

  Masako sat in the driver's seat, hands on the wheel, eyes straight ahead. There was something insubstantial about her, frail and wispy, as if a faint wind could blow her apart, though she had sharp edges still.

  "I'm sorry you died like that," Anna said, thinking back to Pittsburgh and their escape from the demons, when Masako had run off into the snow. "By Amo."

  "You're dead because of him too," Masako said, without looking at her, though the words didn't carry the anger they suggested. Perhaps that was resignation. "You wouldn't be here, otherwise."

  Anna considered that. She also considered how strange it was that her feet didn't touch the floor. The world changed a lot between five and nineteen. And was she really dead, like Masako? She supposed so. Though it didn't feel all the way like death, because she had work yet to do. And was it Amo's fault?

  "I brought myself here, Masako," she said, but Masako didn't appear to hear. "I made my own choices, just like you."

  Masako didn't turn, though her knuckles whitened on the steering wheel.

  "Look at me, Masako."

  Slowly, Masako turned. Her eyes were wide and dark, as if bruised, and her cheeks were hollow.

  "It's guilt," Jake said from behind. She hadn't heard him open the RV door and climb in, but then probably he hadn't. He was just there. "She's carried it a long time, I think, maybe even when she was alive."

  Anna thought about that. It wasn't something she'd spent much time on, even when it had happened. Masako had turned to Julio for comfort when Cerulean separated with her, and she'd been punished for it. Her life after that, as his first victim, had been shattered.

  "Guilt because of Julio? That wasn't her fault."

  Jake shrugged. His easy movements melted Anna's heart. It was so different to the raw corpse he'd been on the slab in Istanbul. This was how he was always meant to be; happy and smiling in the bosom of friends. "Maybe. Maybe Witzgenstein, maybe what happened to Indira."

  What happened to Indira. She'd died.

  Anna reached over and took Masako's cold hand. This was another debt, probably. She thought back to the early days of joining Amo's new world, when Masako had been like a mother to her. Many times she'd curled to sleep in Masako's lap, feeling safe and cared for. How had that been for Masako, what had those moments in the center felt like? What had it cost her, when not only Anna turned away from her, but Cerulean too?

  The lines of cause and effect were apparent to her now, like directions of force in the air, each internal push becoming a pull on others which in turn became a push of its own. So in part she'd driven Masako into Julio's arms. She saw that now. She'd only been a child, consumed w
ith her own guilt and insatiable drives, but she'd certainly played her part, and understood that repercussions would come.

  "I'd do things differently," she said softly, "if I could. I'm sorry for the way I was."

  Masako's dark eyes ran like paint, and for a moment there was a fleeting recognition, a piece of the woman she'd been when she'd had Cerulean's heart in her hands, when the apocalypse was young and possibilities were rife.

  "Anna," she said.

  "Lin is well," Anna went on. "He's becoming a strong young man. He knows who he is, and what he's worth. You can be proud."

  Masako's running eyes became black smudges melting down her face. She shuddered once, then she was gone.

  Jake rested his hand on her shoulder.

  "That was kind. Maybe she won't come back here again. She won't need to. But you've only been here moments, Anna. How did you know?"

  Anna rested her hand atop his. All her life he'd been like an older brother; teasing and loving, but now she felt like his elder. She'd seen so much.

  "I knew I was coming here," she said, and turned. "I knew what I needed to say."

  He looked at her. Tears welled in his eyes, now. "I'm so proud of you."

  She laughed, and punched him gently on the arm.

  "Ow."

  "You big softie."

  He grinned through his tears. Then they were back on the road, standing by Julio's hot red Corvette. Anna peered through the gleaming glass, but Julio wasn't inside.

  "I haven't seen him here yet," Jake said. "It's been a long time. Masako told me he comes sometimes, walking along the road alone. They don't talk. Maybe in a few more years, in some other place..."

  Anna nodded. She didn't need to ask where that would be. After he'd raped Masako, they'd burned the building where he did it to the ground.

  Maybe there wouldn't be time for everything on this pass. She would have liked to see Julio, to see if she could forgive him, now, for the pushes and pulls that had made him what he became. But it didn't have to be now. There would be time.