The Last City (Book 1): Last City

by Partner, Kevin

  Then he kissed her fingers gently, tears filling the corners of his eyes, and went to head off the doctor so Abigail would have time to make her choice.

  It was dark when they left and for an hour they drove in silence. Rusty had seen enough as he'd taken the pickup truck around Ezra, first merely to keep it safe and then as he took the mayor from one scene of tragedy to the next.

  Devon was inhabiting his own nightmare, but, as they left smoldering Ezra behind and hit the clearer section of the highway, his mind turned back to Hope.

  "What are we going to tell Gil Summers?"

  Rusty grunted. "That Ezra's dead and maybe it's the same story everywhere. I tell you, Devon, I saw some sights I ain't gonna be able to unsee however hard I try. There was a bit of me wanted to stay and help out, but I could have worked my butt off for a year and those folks would still be just as dead."

  Devon gazed out at the dim slopes of the mountains. Every now and again he'd glimpse a flicker of amber and he imagined small groups of people huddled around a fire. Just the previous night, they'd have been sharing a beer in front of the game, on comfortable couches in their warm houses. Ten thousand years of progress lost in twenty-four hours.

  "I know what you mean," he said. "I've never felt so helpless." This wasn't entirely true, but his mind was so busy dealing with the present, he wasn't about to inhabit the dark corridors of his regrettable past. "I guess the million-dollar question is whether it's Ezra or Hope that's most representative of the country now."

  Another amber glow in his peripheral vision, but this time it was the tip of the cigarette in Rusty's mouth. "Gave it up years ago, but I figure the way things look right now I ain't got a lot to lose. Might as well take a little pleasure when I can."

  So, they drove on, a single point of moving light in the darkness.

  4: Chief

  Devon waited as the council gathered. He'd been relieved to find that Hope was much as he'd left it, having dreaded pulling back his bedroom drapes. He lived on the top floor of an L-shaped, four-story building that had once housed the headquarters of the Danvers Mining Corporation and Main Street ran along the front of it. Nothing was moving. It had been close to midnight when he and Rusty had arrived back in Hope. It had been like waking from a dream or, perhaps, falling asleep again as the clogged roads of the city had given way eventually to a clear highway as they returned north.

  He couldn’t remember dreaming in the few hours of exhausted sleep he’d managed, but he somehow knew that he’d seen Abigail again, as she was before the fire. Yet another death to weigh down the scales of justice against him.

  Devon moved away from the window and felt his way to the bathroom door, making a mental note to pick up some candles from the store on his way to report to Gil Summers. Leaving the door ajar, he filled the sink with water—fed from a tank in the roof that would, no doubt, run dry soon enough—and splashed his face, his hands running down stubbly cheeks, his fingers tracing the bags under his eyes. He wasn’t exactly presentable for duty, but he would have to do. He felt lucky to have escaped the devastation of Ezra with his body and mind both intact.

  He stepped into a fresh breeze as he emerged into the parking lot outside the apartment block. What was the time? He glanced down at the Doxa watch on his wrist—a parting gift when his father had returned to the US twenty years ago. His grandfather had brought it back from Korea. That was the story, anyway. When it came to his father, Devon wasn’t sure what to believe. Except that he was dead. Devon had seen the paperwork.

  8.30. The meeting was due to begin at 9 sharp.

  He walked through the rusty gates with their flaky black paint, and onto the sidewalk, turning left past the library and toward the intersection with Avenue K. Bowie’s Grocery Store stood silent and still in the early morning sun, though he was certain that Martha would have someone on guard. Probably her "good for nothin’" husband Joe. The place wasn't open yet—unusual in itself—but he'd call in on the way home.

  Gil Summers was at his desk when Devon reached the top of the stairs. The older man was leaning over so that it looked as though he was inhaling the steam from a mug of coffee. The council leader had taken the news of Ezra's condition with apparent stoicism, but he couldn't quite hide his bitter disappointment. The cavalry would not be riding into Hope. Not from that direction in any case.

  With a perfunctory thank-you, Summers rose, picked up his coffee and led Devon into the meeting room next door. Rusty smiled wearily as they entered, pallid skin and drawn expression betraying a similarly poor night's rest. He was cradling a mug of coffee as if he could draw fresh life in through the palms of his hands.

  Devon sat beside Rusty and glanced across at Jessie Summers as she returned from the coffeemaker with a cup for him. He'd have preferred tea, but, since he didn't want to be wearing the hot liquid, accepted it with a smile as the others filed in. Devon knew some of them, including the first to arrive.

  Paul Hickman ran a computer services firm called HITS. It had begun as a repair shop, but over time had come to deal with anything the inhabitants of Hope needed of a techie nature. If the rumors were to be believed, HITS now had thousands of contacts and customers, and was part of a dark network of similar businesses that knew altogether too much about the people they were supposed to be serving. He'd come across the likes of Paul Hickman before. Trusting him was about as sensible as handing over your infant to a wolf because it promises to protect it from bears.

  Hickman nodded to him as he took his seat and accepted a coffee from Jessie.

  Gil took his place at the head of the table and introduced the others. "I guess most of us know each other, but Mr. Myers hasn't been in Hope for long so he might not be able to put names to faces quite yet."

  Devon didn't pay much heed. Pleasantries like this seemed out of place in the new reality.

  "And now I'd like to invite you to make your report," Summers finished before subsiding.

  All eyes turned to Devon while Rusty sat unregarded beside him.

  So, he told them what they'd seen. Firstly, the lump of metal and plastic that had once been their electrical substation and then about how a small city had been reduced to a blackened shell engulfed by an inferno that seemed to have erupted in many places at once. How electrical devices had been the universal source of the fires and how people who'd tried to escape in their cars had merely become more victims of the disaster.

  He told them of a city that had lost over 95% of its inhabitants in a single night in the most efficient attack since Hiroshima.

  He didn't tell them about Abigail.

  They sat silently and listened. Then the woman sitting next to the mayor, whose nameplate declared her to be Vice Chair Lynda Strickland cleared her throat. "Mr. Myers … "

  "Devon. I'd prefer Devon."

  Her nose scrunched as if that were the most ridiculous suggestion. But she swallowed the fly, nonetheless. "Devon. What you describe is terrible, but you seem to imply that this was a wider attack than just Ezra."

  "I believe it was."

  Again, her face compressed as if she were confronting a friend's child caught in a lie. She was a petite brunette with thin lips and laughter lines around her eyes. "But isn't that jumping to conclusions? So far, we have only your account of this one place. And yet, whatever happened to Ezra, it certainly didn't happen here."

  "A good point, Lynda," another councilor said, waving his pen at her. "We have a sample of two at the moment, and of those only one was affected."

  "We also have the total loss of communication, and most of us were watching the TV two nights ago. How can we doubt that this is widespread, if not close to universal?"

  "Yeah," Hickman said. "The game was in Tampa and something was going on in New York too. I got a message from my daughter before the local network went down."

  Summers nodded. "So, that's New York, Tampa and Ezra we know about for sure. I think it's pretty safe to assume they're not the only three places."

  "S
o, how come it didn't happen here?" Lynda Strickland said. "Are we just too small?"

  Rusty put down his coffee theatrically so that the attention was on him. "Well, it seems pretty obvious to me, unless you all think it's a coincidence that the power lines were cut just before this all happened."

  "I think I see it." Paul Hickman took his yellow legal pad and began drawing something that looked like the schematic of a tree's roots. "I don't know how it's possible, but if they're piggy-backing on the grid system, then there might be a delay, especially to out-of-the-way places like this. If this is New York and the pulse—or whatever it might have been—began here then it would take time to reach the limits of the network."

  Rusty nodded. "Yeah. They could even light the fuse in all the major cities and it wouldn't get here for a few seconds at least. Maybe minutes. Just pure luck, I suppose. Quite the coincidence."

  "What do you mean?" Gil asked.

  "Good grief, you're right," Devon said, as if suddenly seeing it. "Lucky strike one: we're at the limit of the grid network."

  Gil said, "But so is Ezra, surely?"

  "Strike two: we have only one high voltage pipe into town from the substation. Isn't that right?"

  Rusty nodded. "Yeah. Too expensive to run another cable from the south."

  "But Ezra does have power coming in from other substations?"

  "I'm sure it does. It ain't a backwater like Hope. No one cares much if the lights go out here, but Ezra's got a lot more muscle." He shook his head. "Had a lot more muscle. Poor devils."

  "And lucky strike three: that single source of power was taken down seconds before the pulse that would have set fire to Hope reached us."

  Silence in the room as they each plumbed the depths of their thoughts.

  "Sounds like some kind of miracle," Lynda said, finally. "What are the chances?"

  "Well, I'm not sure there's a lot of point in trying to work out what's happened everywhere else until we get more information," Gil said, drawing himself up in his chair. "For now, we've got to focus on the local situation. We've got a couple of thousand people here who are going to run out of food pretty soon. I spent most of yesterday holding them off, but they're going to need to see us take action today. By luck or providence, we survived the first night, but if we don't act quickly, things will fall apart here pretty quickly. So, what's our priority?"

  "Security," Paul Hickman said.

  Lynda Strickland snapped around to face him. "Surely we need to find a way to feed everyone first?"

  Hickman shook his head. "No point having food if folks are fightin' each other to get their hands on it, Lynda. Hope's in a state of shock right now, but soon enough people will realize that Martha's store isn't going to be getting a delivery any time soon and what d'you think's goin' to happen?"

  "Every man for himself," Rusty muttered.

  Hickman nodded. "If we want there to be a community here to feed, then we gotta establish order. Let me set u—"

  "So, we need a police force?" Gil Summers said, and Devon saw the unmistakable anger on Hickman's face as he was interrupted. "Well, I guess there's Ned Birkett …"

  Ned Birkett? Devon conjured up an image of the man in his head. He was the only police officer in Hope, though he'd been based out of Ezra. A decent cop for breaking up a fight in a bar, but Devon couldn't imagine him organizing anything more complicated than a barn dance.

  It seemed everyone else was thinking the same thing, judging by their expressions.

  "Mr. Myers, I believe you were a police officer before moving to Hope."

  Devon did a classic double take before forcing his mouth closed. "In the Met—the Metropolitan Police."

  Several blank faces around the table.

  "London," he added. "I was a detective inspector in the anti-terror squad."

  "You don't sound like you're from England," Strickland said.

  "Well, he certainly ain't from around here," Rusty added with a smirk.

  Devon sighed. "I was born here, but moved out with my dad when he was assigned to the embassy in London. Grew up there and stayed with my mom when Dad came back. And that's as much as you're getting." He realized he sounded petulant, but he could sense he was about to have a whole heap of cow dung dropped on him and he wasn't about to pretend he liked it.

  "You're the most qualified—" Gil Summers began.

  Paul Hickman held his hand up. "Hold on just a minute there, Gil. We've got some veterans in this town who might be a better choice than a former British copper." He said the last word like a poor man's Dick Van Dyke.

  "Veterans like you, Paul?" Jessie stood behind her father, not bothering to hide how she felt about Hickman. "You were a bean counter, weren't you?"

  Gil turned to look up at her. "Now then, Jessie. Paul has served, which is more than can be said for many here."

  He swiveled back to face the smiling Hickman. "But she has a point, Paul. I don't see how—what was it?—information logistics? I don't see how that qualifies you more than a man who's commanded police officers before."

  Hickman's face closed down like a chicken farm in a bird flu outbreak. "I didn't necessarily mean me. And I meant no offence. Just wanted us to consider all the options."

  Devon watched him as he forced his mouth to speak with as much grace as he could manage. He was curious why Hickman was so opposed to his being dumped on, but didn't want to miss the opportunity. "Look, I think Mr. Hickman is correct. I'm not qualified."

  "We don't have time to debate every appointment," Gil Summers said, with the air of a man who sees a way of shifting some responsibility and isn't about to let the chance slide. "All those in favor of appointing Devon Myers as sheriff with the power to co-opt suitably qualified deputies raise their hands."

  Every hand went up. Even Hickman's, eventually. He was playing a long game, it would seem.

  Devon sank into his chair.

  "Congratulations, Sheriff. Now, I'm sure you have things to do while we consider other matters. I suggest you begin by securing Bowie's Grocery Store."

  "Hold on," Devon said, angered by the short dismissal. "Hope's got no police station. How am I supposed to keep order if I have nowhere to hold people?"

  "That's easy enough. We had a police house here until about fifteen years ago. I reckon you can put it right pretty quickly. Lynda here will get you the keys, and she'll also open up the small armory we've got in the basement. Take what you need."

  And so he was dismissed. But his second career as a police officer was to be a lot shorter than his first.

  #

  "He's dead. They're all dead." Richie Lopez sat on edge of the jetty with his knees drawn up around his ears and rocked back and forth.

  Sam Hickman stood behind, resisting the temptation to push him into the debris-choked black water. What had once been the bustling marina of Wright Island was now a twisted mess of charcoal, rope and metal. Except here where, by some miracle, there was still a few yards of boardwalk connected to the shore.

  Behind them, the metal shell of The Marina Grill let out an occasional ping as the last of the remaining fires burned down. Vehicles littered the parking lot outside the restaurant as if some giant hand had flipped them over and set light to them. Sam had been desperate enough to search the wreckage of the first few, but had quickly learned that they'd been stripped of anything useful and all that remained was … remains.

  And of course Richie was right. Everyone they cared about was dead.

  After Jay had gotten off the boat, Richie had piloted it towards its berth at a cheaper marina a little farther along the coast, but they'd abandoned that plan when they saw that the firestorm extended as far as the eye could see. In the end, and with their gas running low, he'd found an old jetty a few miles out of town. The boat was still there, and the fires had mainly gone out, but he'd returned to his home in Beechmont Woods to find that it had been consumed by the same fire. She'd gone with him to the wreckage of the house he'd grown up in and there they'd found unden
iable evidence that his father and mother were dead. And the last vestiges of Richie's childhood had died with them.

  It had been all she could do to get him to come with her after that. Given the choice, he'd have lain down and died right there. But he'd made a promise to look after her and she reminded him of it, though it seemed a lot more likely that she'd be the one doing the caring for now. But having a companion on the road—even one as broken as Richie—was going to be a lot safer than being alone.

  And she still had a little hope. Jay should have been here by now. He knew where the marina was, or so he'd told her, and he could have walked it in the nearly 48 hours since everything had gone to hell. She knew he wasn't coming, and she knew that only one thing would stop him. For all his faults, he was determined. Look at his pursuit of her, despite all the efforts she'd made to put him off. He'd kept on coming back until she'd given in. And now she knew he'd never come back again. And yet…

  "We'll stay one more day," she said to the rocking boy. "Then we'll head south. Now, come on, we can't stay out here."

  They'd been hiding in a basement beneath a burned-out building near the marina watching evolution in action as groups of people with makeshift weapons—and some not so makeshift—preyed on the unwary and were, in turn, attacked by larger groups. It was dog-eat-dog and there was no sign of the authorities. In fact, she'd witnessed one man in a police jacket beating another with his nightstick and taking the poor devil's food.

  So, they would give Jay 24 hours before she began the long road to her hometown. She had lost hope, but tomorrow she would seek it again.

  5: Martha

  Devon threw down his mop and ran toward the sound of the gunshot, Ned Birkett in his wake.

  "Came from Martha's, I reckon!" Birkett called out. It was an obvious statement, but as it was also just about the first thing he'd said without sounding petulant, Devon would take it.