The Last City

by Michael J. Totten

  Hills rose up on each side of the road. The infected were thinner on those hillsides, as if they didn’t want to wander off sideways and would rather surge forward toward the wall. There were corpses on the ground in the trees with living infected hunched over their bodies like demons, gnawing on limbs and consuming entrails.

  “Where on earth are we?” Parker said.

  “We’re there,” Annie said. “This is it.”

  “We’re in a forest!”

  “The CDC is just up ahead,” Annie said. “Just in front of the wall should be South Fork Peachtree Creek.”

  If anyone was watching from above, they’d see the car. Parker was pushing through the horde slowly, no faster than walking speed, but it created an extraordinary disturbance. Any observer would be able to hear it as well as see it. But for all Parker knew, the city had been empty of the living for months, the wall a mere legacy of the dead.

  Two of the infected on the hood stomped the windshield with the heels of their feet. The first wore a black dress shoe on one foot and a bloody sock on the other, but the second wore what looked like steel-toed boots. Parker didn’t know much about armored cars or bulletproof glass, but he knew that if enough bullets struck the same location repeatedly, the armor would eventually fail.

  He wondered if he and his friends would really be safe in this car indefinitely. With the stash of food and water in the cargo area, they might be able to hold out until the horde finally starved to death, but could the armor withstand being relentlessly kicked for days? For a week? Armored cars were designed for something else and had never been subjected to this kind of stress test.

  Parker stopped the car, shifted into neutral, and kept his foot on the brake. “The hell do we do?” he shouted over the din. He couldn’t drive around and look for a gate or a guard tower. He could only turn around and go back. According to Annie’s map, there was a creek up ahead somewhere, and he risked driving right into it if he kept going.

  Even if he could find a gate somewhere along the perimeter, no one on the other side of the wall would dare open it. The infected would pour inside like a flood after a dam breach. And he couldn’t think of a way that anyone inside the wall could come out and rescue him and his friends even if they wanted to.

  “Get us as close as you can to the wall!” Annie shouted. “Then we’ll yell through the bullhorn.”

  “Roy!” Parker shouted. “We’re close enough now that we might be able to get someone on the handheld radios!”

  “On it!” Roy shouted.

  With so much noise outside the car, Parker doubted Roy would be able to hear if anyone answered the radio, but if anyone answered, they’d be able to hear Roy.

  Parker stepped on the gas again and pressed forward against the surging mass in front of him. The concrete bulwark ahead loomed ever higher until Parker sensed he was less than a hundred feet from it. Then he put the gear into neutral, let the engine idle, and set the parking brake.

  Roy shouted into the radio. “We’re immune! Come out and get us! We’re just outside the wall on Houston Mill Road!”

  The car violently rocked from side to side and from forward to back as the infected warred against it.

  Parker blew out his breath and turned around in his seat, relieved to finally be able to look at something—anything at all—other than those things scrambling around in front of the windshield and trying to kick in the glass.

  Roy fished the bullhorn out of a cardboard box in the back and passed it forward to Annie. She was about to lower the passenger window on her side but froze at the last moment. Parker understood why. Nobody wanted that window lowered by even an inch. But she’d have to lower it at least three inches, if not five or six, so that the sound of her voice could carry toward the wall rather than reverberate inside the car.

  Parker swallowed hard. “Don’t lower it more than two inches!” he shouted. “In case we can’t raise it back up!”

  He knew what would happen the moment she lowered that window: the infected outside would place their hands on top of the glass and attempt to pull it all the way down. He doubted they could do it, but he had no idea if Annie would be able to roll the window back up again.

  She lowered it two inches, and the roar of the horde doubled in volume. Several sets of fingers gripped the top of the glass. Parker recoiled against the driver’s side door.

  “Roll it up!” Parker shouted.

  It seemed she couldn’t hear him and instead placed the bullhorn to her lips.

  Parker reached over and shook her shoulder.

  She turned to look at him. Real fear on her face.

  “Roll it up!” Parker shouted again. “See if you can roll the window back up!”

  He glanced down and saw that he could control all the windows in the vehicle from the driver’s seat, so he pressed and held the up button himself. The machinery was stronger than the infected—the window slowly rose and mashed two sets of fingers into the top of the door. Parker lowered the window again a half inch to let the infected retract their hands, then sealed it up.

  Relative silence returned for a moment until Roy shouted into the handheld radio again. “We’re immune! Come out and get us on Houston Mill Road!”

  “Okay!” Parker shouted. “We can open and close the window again. Lower it four inches and yell out the bullhorn.”

  “Six inches!” Annie yelled.

  Parker held up four fingers. Just to be safe.

  Annie nodded and rolled down the window using the button on her side.

  Unspeakable noise rushed in again like water pouring through a sluice gate. Annie raised the bullhorn to the open air and shouted: “We are immune!”

  No one answered back. No gate opened up in the wall. Not even those things outside reacted in any discernable way. They were already attacking the car with maximum ferocity anyway.

  “We are immune!” Annie shouted again.

  The bullhorn worked. It sounded like her voice was being blasted out over a loudspeaker. Parker couldn’t be sure how well her voice carried over the wall, but anybody listening must have heard something.

  “We are immune!” she shouted again. “We can transfer our immunity to other people!”

  Which was not strictly true. Annie was immune, and she had transferred her immunity to Parker and maybe to Lucas. But Parker didn’t know if he could inoculate somebody else.

  He watched the top of the wall . . . and saw nothing at all. No evidence that there was anyone up there listening.

  “Can they even hear us?” Annie said.

  “I don’t know,” Parker said. “Probably?” The real question was, was anyone still alive on the other side of the wall to hear anything?

  Annie rolled up the window, and a relative hush seemed to fall over the world. Now that she had drawn attention to herself, the infected concentrated nearly all their attacks on her side of the vehicle. If there had been any question before whether or not prey was inside the car, there was not anymore. They slapped the glass, jiggered the handle, and kicked and pounded the door. Annie leaned away from it as if it were on fire.

  “What now?” Annie said.

  “Wait until dark,” Roy said, leaning forward and appearing between Parker and Annie like a summoned apparition. Parker had almost forgotten about Roy and Hughes in the back.

  “They’ll settle down at night,” Roy said.

  Parker doubted that. A total absence of light might settle a horde down, but they were parked right next to the wall. The city lights from the other side would be blazing as soon as the sun went down.

  “They must have heard me,” Annie said.

  “They heard you,” Roy said.

  “If there’s anyone listening,” Parker said. “I’m seriously beginning to wonder.”

  “When these things, as you call them, quiet down at night,” Roy said, “we can try again. It’ll stir ‘em up some, but they can’t get in.”

  “What now?” Annie asked again.

  “Nothing,
” Hughes said from the back. Thanks goodness. He was still alive and aware of what was happening. “We wait.”

  “I can keep trying the radio,” Roy said.

  Parker doubted very much that the radio would work. It would be stupid not to at least try, though.

  He closed his eyes and slowed down his breathing so he could slow down his heart rate and his mind. He inhaled, counted slowly to five, exhaled, counted slowly to five, then started again. He tried to think about nothing at all but his breath. Even with the howling mob outside the car, he might be able to get himself into a relaxed state if he kept at it long enough.

  The infected kept pounding and screaming, kept rocking the car back and forth, kept doing their damnedest to get inside and destroy the last person who might be able to save whoever was left in the world.

  Parker eventually managed to calm himself, not by slowing his breathing and his heart rate but by accepting that he didn’t need to do anything. His only option was backing up and driving away from the wall, but what would be the point? They’d driven three thousand miles to get to there, and they’d finally made it. Drive away? To where? He wouldn’t be able to find some peaceful section of wall to park next to instead. Atlanta’s entire enclave was no doubt surrounded. And the longer they stayed in one place, the more likely they’d get the attention of anyone still alive on the inside. Parker realized, now that he thought of it, that they should have painted We Are Immune on the top of the car when they still had a chance. He could, he supposed, drive away to a safe place, paint the top of the car, and come back. But he doubted it would be worth all the trouble, and the last thing he wanted was for anyone watching to think he and his friends had given up and were leaving. Annie could always yell through the bullhorn again if the horde settled down.

  But the horde did not settle down, not even after night fell. A solitary infected or a smaller pack might get distracted by something else and forget there was prey in the car, but the horde remembered. And there was nothing around to distract them. The only stimulus in the middle of a gigantic mass such as this was the other members of the horde. And the other members of the horde kept attacking and screaming. If even one of them kept at it, the others would do so as well. All the infected would have to stop and forget at the same time, and the chances of that happening were effectively nil.

  Annie slept fitfully that night. They all did. The relentless and remorseless things outside the car did not stop, did not even let up, and she knew they never would until they breached the car or starved trying. She and her friends would have to evacuate in the morning.

  She doubted she slept more than thirty consecutive minutes and gave up even trying at first light. Parker stirred in his seat, too, and Annie sensed movement from either Roy or Hughes in the cargo area.

  “We should try the bullhorn again,” she said. “Even though those things aren’t any quieter.”

  “Let’s wait a bit,” Parker said. “Give anyone on the other side a chance to wake up.”

  “That wall,” Roy said, “is being manned twenty-four hours a day. I guarantee it.”

  “If it’s manned at all,” Parker said.

  “Hughes,” Annie said. “You okay back there?”

  Annie heard nothing but the barrage of noise outside the car.

  “He’s fine,” Roy said. “He just waved at y’all from the floor.”

  Annie wasn’t asking for a status update from Roy. She turned around in her seat. Hughes was lying on his back with a jacket under his head for a pillow. He waved at Annie.

  Roy squinted at her when she briefly made eye contact with him.

  She rolled down her window partway and shouted through the bullhorn again. “We are immune! Our immunity can be transferred!” She repeated that message every thirty seconds or so for more than an hour and finally rolled the window back up.

  “I don’t think anyone’s there,” she said.

  “There has to be,” Roy said.

  “No, there doesn’t,” Parker said.

  “Somebody’s keeping the lights on,” Roy said.

  “The lights aren’t on a hand crank,” Parker said. “They can stay on for weeks by themselves.”

  “What if,” Annie said, “they can see us but can’t hear us? There might be a CCTV camera somewhere.”

  “Hang on,” Roy said. He fished around for something in back.

  Annie realized she wasn’t hungry. She hadn’t eaten anything at all for twenty-four hours, but still she didn’t want food. Her body was officially in a fasting state now, and yet . . . she wouldn’t be able to swallow anything if she tried. Unlike those things outside the window. God only knew how long it had been since they’d had a meal. She could partake of granola bars, cereal with reconstituted milk, peanut butter, or beef jerky, but the infected would have to feast on each other if they couldn’t break into the car. Which meant she could last longer than they could, or at least longer than most of them.

  Roy was still doing something in the back—she could sense his movement and hear something just below the threshold of identifiable sound. She stared at the top of the wall and wished she could miracle herself over it.

  “What do you think?” she said to Parker.

  “Should we back up and find a better spot?” Parker said. “Might be easier to see us in some places than in other places.”

  “They have to be watching every part of the wall. If they’re watching.”

  “Maybe they don’t care about us.”

  “Even if they know we’re immune?”

  “Even if they know we’re immune.”

  “They’re the CDC. They’d have to care.”

  “This is a bust. There’s no one here and nothing happening.”

  “Maybe they’re telling us to go somewhere else and we just can’t hear them.”

  “They should hold up a damn sign then.”

  “Great minds think alike,” Roy said and appeared over Annie’s shoulder. She smelled his wretched breath even over the stench coming in through the air vents. She wanted to tell him to brush his damn teeth, but she realized she hadn’t brushed her own yet. She had a bottle of water but nowhere to spit. The best she could do was suck on a small bit of toothpaste.

  “Here’s a sign for us to hold up,” Roy said and handed her a large square of cardboard with the words We Are Immune painted on it.

  Annie took it from him gingerly, careful not to brush her hand against his. “What am I supposed to do with this?” She couldn’t hold it up to the windshield—the glass was covered in paint and blocked by the infected. Nor could she stick her arm out the passenger-side window and hoist the sign in the air.

  “Here,” Roy said and handed her a crowbar and a roll of duct tape. “Tape it to the wrecking bar and stick that out the window.”

  Annie nodded and took the items from him, her fingers just grazing his. She set the gear in her lap and wiped her hands on her pants.

  She spent the next two minutes taping the sign to the crowbar, winding the tape around as tightly as she could. Then she rolled down the window a couple of inches, slid the cardboard sign through the gap, and jammed it as high in the air as she could.

  The mob outside howled and ripped the sign to pieces in a matter of seconds.

  She rolled up the window.

  “I think we need to get out of here,” Parker said.

  Annie wasn’t sure, but she was inclined to agree. Nothing was happening here. They’d made it, but they hadn’t made it.

  “And go where?” Roy said.

  “Anywhere but here,” Parker said.

  “Not anywhere,” Annie said. “Somewhere along the wall that’s more open and visible.”

  “Where?” Roy said.

  “Hang on,” Annie said and fished around at her feet for the map. She unfolded it and saw a better option at once, a wide-open space where she and her friends could be seen far more easily than they could in this cramped, remote, and practically rural dead end. “There’s a golf course jus
t south of Emory University. Go back to North Druid Hills, head south on Clairmont Road, then swing through Chelsea Heights.”

  A fat infected’s face leered at her through the passenger window with its teeth bared.

  “And once we get out of here, we can take a break from this shit,” she said.

  “We can paint the word immune on the roof of the car,” Roy said, “when we get to a safe place.”

  Of course, Annie thought. They should have done that already. Damn Roy for making himself useful again.

  “Hughes?” Annie said.

  “Go!” Hughes cried from the back.

  Annie watched as Parker nodded, released the parking brake, slammed the gear stick into reverse, and stepped on the gas. Annie hadn’t realized he’d left the engine running all night. The car began moving backward at once, and Parker cranked the steering wheel hard to the right.

  The infected outside doubled down on their attacks the moment the car began moving, and the vehicle had barely backed up five feet before meeting some kind of resistance and stopping.

  Parker slammed the gear stick into neutral.

  “What?” Annie said. Had they backed up onto a curb? No. Something else. There was no curb here. Nothing but trees on each side of the road.

  “Ran over something,” Parker said. “Or onto something.”

  An infected in the road. Either a dead one or a live one. Probably a dead one if Parker had run over it. He shifted into first gear, pressed the gas pedal with his foot, and . . . nothing happened.

  Annie heard the high-pitched whine of spinning tires.

  Parker revved the engine hard. The tires only spun faster, and the car slid slightly from side to side as if on ice.

  “Turn the wheel the other way,” Roy said, “and back up again.”

  Parker did what Roy told him to do, and the wheels spun out again.

  Annie gulped. They were stuck. Either in mud or in the blood and guts of one of those things.