The Last City

by Michael J. Totten

  “Take it real slow,” Annie said. “One mile an hour.”

  Parker put the car in gear and crept forward as slowly as the vehicle would go without stalling. Annie could have crawled faster. The CDC was still a mile away, so at this speed it would take them a full hour to get there.

  But the wall, she assumed, would be closer than that. Surely the engineers who had constructed it would have added a buffer zone, some patch of ground between the medical complex and the barrier itself. For all she knew, there were actually two walls, two concentric rings around the campus in case the outer one was breached with enough room between them for military trucks, guard towers, supply lines, and so forth.

  She studied the map. If she were tasked with surrounded this CDC with a wall, where would she put it?

  South Fork Peachtree Creek formed a natural east-to-west barrier a quarter mile or so north of there. A creek wouldn’t stop a horde unless it roared through a slot canyon, but it would be an engineering obstacle. There were only a handful of bridges over that creek. It must have created traffic bottlenecks during normal times. The wall builders would have wanted to keep it outside their enclave. They didn’t need it as a water source because another creek ran right alongside the CDC and Emory University immediately to the south. Candler Lake was most likely inside the wall, so South Fork Peachtree Creek would be on the outside. The longer Annie looked at the map, the more she was sure of it. That creek—and therefore most likely the wall—was less than three-quarters of a mile from their current location.

  Parker kept the armored car moving at an excruciatingly slow speed. Annie was tempted to tell Parker to hurry it up, to move things along, but she knew better.

  “This feels too easy,” Parker said.

  “Don’t get cocky,” Annie said.

  “How close are we?” Roy said from the back.

  “A little more than a half mile,” Annie said.

  “How fast are we moving?” Roy said.

  “A mile an hour, maybe,” Parker said. “We’ll get there.”

  “Like the lady said,” Roy said. “Don’t get cocky.”

  Annie squinted through the slit on the glass and saw movement around the next s-curve. The car was moving so slowly that what lay ahead came into view just a sliver at at time: diseased post-humans, matted with gore, shifting about and pressing themselves against even more infected in front of them, trying and failing to move forward.

  Annie saw only the bleeding edge of what she knew was a much larger mass that would come into a full view as soon as Parker finished making the turn. Instead, Parker stopped the car.

  “What’s happening?” Roy said from the back.

  “Whole city of them dead ahead,” Parker said.

  Annie had to force herself to breathe even though she knew nothing outside the car would be able to hear her.

  “They haven’t spotted us yet,” Parker said.

  “How many?” Roy said.

  “Hundreds,” Annie said. “Thousands. Probably hundreds of thousands.” The wall—or at least where she assumed the wall would be—was still a half mile away.

  “Keep going,” Roy said. “Drive through them. Do it slowly. They’ll move out of our way.”

  Annie felt like her organs were turning to liquid. Roy was right—she knew he was—but there would be no turning back once they were surrounded.

  “Annie,” Parker said. “You need to get down. If one of them presses their face to the glass, they might see you.”

  “And they might see you,” Roy said.

  “I can’t drive if I can’t see out.”

  “Hang on,” Roy said. Annie heard him rummaging around in a supply box. “Here,” he finally said and handed Annie a black fleece hat and a plaid scarf. “Put these on. Cover your face. Everything but your eyes.”

  Annie handed the gear to Parker. He put the hat over his head, wrapped the scarf around his neck and over his face, and tucked the ends into his jacket collar. It ought to work. Annie couldn’t see anything but his eyes.

  “Do we have any sunglasses back there?” Annie said.

  “I had a pair,” Roy said, “but I left them in the RV.”

  “This will have to do then,” Annie said. “Parker, you’re going to have to sit perfectly straight. Don’t move in your seat. Don’t even breathe any more than you have to.”

  Parker nodded and pressed his foot to the gas pedal.

  20

  Leap, and a net will appear. That’s what Parker’s father once told him when he was nervous about starting a cabinetry business instead of going to college. A successful merchant and businessman, his father insisted that Parker should trust that things would work out, that the universe would meet him halfway, that if he ignored the butterflies in his belly and hurled himself into the void, the very fact that he’d acted would transform the world—and the transformed world would include a net that would catch him. It wasn’t a leap of faith. It wasn’t about trusting the universe. Parker couldn’t control the universe. Nobody could. It was about trusting himself—the only person in the world he could control or direct.

  That’s what he told himself as he pressed his foot to the gas pedal and moved the armored car toward the horde. Leap, and a net will appear.

  He had to trust himself and his friends. Trust that their plan was a good one. Trust that they truly were invisible inside the car. Trust that those things could not get inside. And trust that if anyone still lived on the other side of that wall, they’d do everything in their power to help if they knew that he and Annie were immune to the virus.

  The edge of the horde was three hundred yards away. At first, the infected didn’t notice or hear the car coming. As Parker inched along, though, and narrowed the gap to two hundred yards, some of them turned around, cocked their heads to the side, peeled themselves away from the others, and slowly made their way forward.

  “They see us now,” Parker said. “Two blocks away. They’re coming toward us.”

  “Our diversion in Buckhead failed,” Annie said, slumping in the passenger seat with her head down. “Didn’t it.”

  “Didn’t fail, ma’am,” Roy said, still on the floor in the back next to Hughes. “It just wasn’t enough to clear all of them out.”

  “They can’t see the fire in Buckhead from here,” Parker said. “We’re too far away now, and there are trees everywhere blocking the view.”

  “At least we got rid of half of them,” Roy said. “Just take it real slow. Take it real easy.”

  The horde was enormous. Parker saw hundreds of infected occupying the road ahead and spilling off to the side and into the trees. If they were this thick on the ground all the way to the wall, he’d be driving through them for almost a half mile.

  Parker took it as slowly as he could, so slowly that he had a hard time keeping the car in gear. If he couldn’t balance the clutch and the brake precisely, the engine would stall. For the first time since he was a teenager, he wished he was driving with an automatic transmission instead of a manual.

  A dozen infected shambled toward the car, more out of curiosity than anything else. They didn’t attack cars. Cars weren’t food. Cars were objects, moving along for mysterious reasons. Interesting enough to approach, but nothing to get too excited about.

  Parker found it amazing that they couldn’t remember that people drove cars. The infected seemed to regard them the way squirrels and birds did—big metal objects with no intent, will, or purpose of their own.

  More saw him coming when he narrowed the gap to less than a hundred yards. Whole batches of them were turning around now. By the time Parker closed the distance, more than a hundred faced him directly.

  Parker held his breath and pressed forward. Driving into the edge of the horde was like launching a boat from the beach into the sea. The infected stepped aside, half of them to the left and half of them to the right, like water parting at the prow of a ship.

  Parker gagged on the smell: spoiled meat, rotten eggs, and unclean toi
lets tinged with vomit. The sound was panoramic now: grunts, moans, wheezes, and even something that sounded like mooing. He distinctly heard screams farther ahead.

  The car was surrounded within seconds and yet—astonishingly—Parker hadn’t hit or even touched one of them. The infected had plenty of time to move out of the way. He imagined that the scene from above must look like creek water swirling around a boulder.

  The infected eyeballed the truck intently, so Parker held his body perfectly still. It didn’t seem to occur to them that they might try to peer inside through the unpainted slit on the windshield, but every couple of seconds Parker could swear he made fleeting eye contact with one of them.

  They couldn’t see him, though. There would be glare on the glass now that the sun was up. Still, he didn’t dare move. Even a hint of perceived motion inside the car might make them curious. They might attempt to get closer for a better look. If they got close enough to the glass to block sunlight, there wouldn’t be any glare. If even one of them sensed prey was inside and screamed, it would be over.

  “What’s going on?” Annie said. “What do you see?”

  “They’re getting out of the way,” Parker said. “They don’t seem to think the car’s dangerous. It’s more like an annoyance.”

  Then he hit one of them. Not hard. Just a tap, really. But then he ran over its foot. It yelped in pain and slapped the hood.

  Parker panicked and hit the brake, and he was too slow on the clutch. The engine stalled out and died.

  The infected he’d injured freed itself but not before agitating the crowd.

  The armored car was high off the ground. It wasn’t really even a car. It was more of a truck. The infected couldn’t easily hop onto the hood like they could on a sedan. But they could climb onto it, and two of them did. There weren’t curious anymore either, nor did they see the vehicle as an annoyance. They were angry. They just weren’t sure why or what they should do about it. So they stomped on the hood. Several on the street kicked the grill. A few of them slapped the doors.

  Annie cowered and moaned. Neither Hughes nor Roy made a sound in the back.

  One of the infected on the hood noticed the slit on the windshield. It crouched down and peered in as its comrades assaulted the vehicle.

  Parker froze, still as a mountain during a storm. He did not breathe. He did not even blink.

  “What’s happening?” Annie said.

  Parker shushed her without moving.

  The infected was staring right at him. It had long purple hair and a suppurating wound on its cheek. Parker was pretty sure it was a teenage girl. It stared right into his eyes, squinting, tilting its head, and pressing its nose to the glass.

  Don’t blink, Parker thought. You blink, you die.

  His eyes burned. He desperately wanted to close them, but he didn’t dare. The diseased girl would scream, and that would be that.

  “Turn the engine back on,” Roy said.

  Parker shushed him too. “One of them is looking at me through the glass.”

  Thank God he’d covered his face with a scarf, or that thing would have seen his lips move. It was still looking right at him.

  He wouldn’t be able to keep his eyes open much longer. It was not a question of willpower. Blinking was a reflex. He could override it for a short time but not forever.

  Several infected were still pawing the vehicle, but a little less enthusiastically than before. They apparently weren’t sure what to make of it. But that thing on the hood wouldn’t stop staring at him. He willed it to go away or at least turn away, but it kept staring at him.

  “Kick the floorboards,” he said to Annie.

  “What?” Annie said.

  “Kick the floorboards. Do it now. It’s looking right at my face.”

  Annie kicked the floorboards. The teenage thing with the hair gasped and looked away.

  Parker closed his eyes. He could sense the diseased girl moving across the hood toward Annie’s side like a shark through water. It didn’t seem to know what to make of the sound, though. Annie was too low in her seat to be seen, and there was no indication that her kick meant prey. Parker waited a couple of moments, then slowly opened his eyes a mere fraction so he could see through the watery slit between his lids.

  The teenage infected wasn’t looking at him anymore. It was standing up on the hood now. Parker went ahead and opened his eyes all the way.

  The infected girl stomped the windshield with the flat of her foot.

  Annie gasped.

  “Shh,” Parker said. “It can’t break the glass.” Not if the glass really was bulletproof.

  It stomped the windshield again.

  “We need to move,” Annie said, crouching even lower now.

  “Wait it out,” Parker said. “Don’t move and they’ll forget anything ever happened.”

  Another infected slapped the passenger side door right next to Annie.

  “Shh,” Parker said.

  The infected girl on the hood bent down to peer into the windshield again, and this time she screamed.

  Part IV

  End of the Road

  21

  Parker thought he had a pretty good idea how the infected behaved after observing them, up close and from a distance, for so many months. They were drawn toward any and all stimuli, whether movement or sound. A gunshot, a passing vehicle, a hopping rabbit, a flashlight at night, a fire—anything that would capture the attention of other living organisms whose senses were functioning properly. The infected would walk, not run, toward the stimulus to investigate . . . unless they saw something they could consume. In that case, the infected screamed, ran, and attacked.

  No one knew for sure exactly why the infected screamed. Almost certainly not to warn. Dogs growled to alert an enemy of potential violence. Cats and snakes hissed for the same reason. This was not that. It would make no logical sense for an infected to deliberately tell its prey that it should run. Nor would it make any logical sense if the infected screamed to alert others that it had found food so that it could share. As far as Parker knew, no predatory animals in the wild willingly shared meals with other predatory animals that were not its kin. Cats large and small dragged their prey to a safe location where they could eat in relative peace without having their meal stolen by scavengers or competitors. Even domesticated house cats instinctively dragged a captured chicken leg under a table.

  Parker thought he might have the answer: the infected screamed to alert others so that they could hunt together in packs. That was what primitive humans did. A solitary human with a spear in his hand had little chance against a saber-toothed tiger and no chance at all against a mammoth. Such animals could only be felled by a pack. Sharing had nothing to do with it. Humans were among the slowest and weakest predators of their size in the world. They had a stark choice: work together or starve.

  Whatever else the infected were now, they were still biologically human. They did not have superhuman strength or superhuman endurance. If they wanted to eat, they’d have to hunt in packs, especially since their prey were armed with far more sophisticated weapons than teeth, claws, or spears.

  That was Parker’s theory anyway, and it had helped him and his friends figure out how to manipulate the infected and escape from them more than once. If, while trapped, they could hunker down out of sight until the infected were distracted by something else, he and his friends could leave.

  It didn’t always work, though. The infected had to forget prey was hiding nearby, and this was all but impossible while any of them were screaming. One scream inevitably triggered another. Besides, waiting for a horde to wander off could only work if the horde had somewhere else to wander off to.

  And once the infected girl on the hood of the car screamed when she thought she saw prey moving inside, it was as if the entire universe were attempting to smash Parker and his friends.

  The infected outside would never stop assaulting the vehicle. There was nothing else around to distract them, and they h
ad nowhere else they could go. They pressed in on all sides as if the armored car were a gravitational sink sucking in teeth, hands, eyeballs, and feet from every direction. The roar was incredible. If Hell had a sound, this was it.

  At least the car’s engine was running again. Roy had to climb into the front and spend a few minutes fiddling with the lockpicks, but he’d gotten things moving.

  Parker kept his foot on the gas pedal. There was no point driving one mile an hour anymore—far better to crush the bastards—but the sheer weight and density of diseased bodies jammed shoulder to shoulder in front of him slowed the car’s advance much more than he had thought it would. Driving into this shrieking throng was much more difficult than running down a handful of stragglers in the street. It was more like driving through twelve-inch-deep mud.

  And Parker could barely even see where he was going. In front of him, through the slit on the glass, he couldn’t see anything but the frenzied mob. He could only see up at a 45-degree angle over their heads. Because they were in another rural-like part of the city, he could only navigate by steering between the tops of the trees since he couldn’t see anything else. If there was something in front of him—an abandoned car, a tank trap, a ditch, a hole, or anything else—he would have no idea until he hit it.

  Parker finally saw it: the wall. It seemed to rear up suddenly in a mixed forest of deciduous and evergreen trees. It appeared distinctly military and vaguely Middle Eastern, with consecutive concrete slabs nearly twenty feet high, creating the kind of hard and impenetrable barrier designed to repel suicide bombers and car bombers.

  Parker saw no one standing on the top of the wall: no guards, no watch towers, no would-be rescuers, not even an electronic surveillance system.

  The scene wasn’t at all what he had expected. He had imagined coming upon the wall in an urban environment—the Centers for Disease Control was a moderate walking distance from downtown Atlanta, after all—and yet, aside from the wall itself, there seemed to be no structures of any kind in any direction. He and his friends had reached a dead end in a forest. There were no side roads. He could not turn left or right. There was nowhere to go but back.