Last Mayor (Book 9): The Light

by Grist, Michael John

  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 efforts, 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 with 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.

  She looked back to the RV, to the rear doors where the electric access ramp was. Of course, one person was still missing.

  "Not here," Jake answered. "Too long. Or maybe he's somewhere else, more important." He grinned, but it was sad. "You can probably guess where."

  She could.

  "I love you, Jake."

  He beamed. "I'll see you real soon, kiddo. Protect the line."

  She nodded, then the desert outside Denver dissolved, and she resolved in another place.

  She was standing on a road at night, with the lapping of the Pacific Ocean off to the left. Ahead to the right was the Chinese Theater, with a few makeshift streetlamps buzzing in front. Beside her hung the door to her old apartment, where she'd grown up.

  It was that night. She knew it from the way the sea smelled, from the static charge building in the air, rubbing on her skin with the sighing ocean breeze.

  Another motionless jump came and went, and she was inside, surveying her old pink bedroom. She'd never changed it, not since they'd given it to her; some kind of sad protest. Cerulean and Lara had scrubbed it of the previous owner's possessions, another little girl lost to the flood, though Anna had still found a fragment of her diary and a teddy squashed down the side of the bed.

  She stood there for a time, taking deep breaths that she didn't need to breathe, preparing herself for the moment she'd dreamed of for so long. She knew he was there at the door. She knew what he would say, and all the things she'd wanted to say for so long. Still, it was hard.

  She turned.

  Cerulean sat in his chair in the doorway, where she'd left him on the night she'd left New LA behind. His face seemed younger than she remembered, but then that had been three years ago, back when he'd always been the adult standing in her path, the image of authority preventing her moving on. In truth he was only thirty-three, young still and so full of promise.

  In his hands, in his lap, he held two silver necklaces, each with a half of a heart pendant. The pendants would combine when clicked together, and his gaze lay on them still, as if he'd been here ever since she'd left, waiting for her to come back. This had always been her greatest regret. She'd never seen him again after this, and then he'd died.

  "Daddy," she said, and her voice broke. She wasn't a little girl anymore, and comfort wasn't so simple as hurling herself into his lap, where his strong arms could encircle her and make everything all right. There were costs that even he couldn't help. Still, she dropped to her knees before him, putting her hands on the arms of his wheelchair. "It's me."

  He looked up but his eyes roved, as if they couldn't quite settle on her. "I didn't mean to be here," he said in a faint, mournful voice. "I'm sorry. I try not to come, Anna, but I get pulled back."

  Immediately she began to weep. The pain of it was right there, hot in her chest and flooding up. He looked so lost. To know that she had done this to him was too much to bear.

  "I'd take it back if I could," she whispered. "I'm so sorry."

  His head roved more, like a blind man homing in on her position. "Little Anna," he said, then smiled faintly, as if struck by a pleasant memory. "You're a woman, now. I always hoped I'd make you proud. And I always understood. I knew you needed to see your father. I know what that means."

  She reached up and took his cheeks in her hands, guiding his eyes down to her. He gave a little jolt as their eyes finally met, as if he hadn't really believed she was there.

  "I am so proud of you," she said, "you died a hero, the greatest man I know. I've regretted nothing so much as this moment. I hope one day you could be proud of me too, like you used to be."

  Now he began to weep, quietly and with dignity, like a great silent man on an island sobbing for his lost love.

  "I always have been. I'm proud to bursting." He looked again at the two necklaces in his hands, as if they had their own gravity. "I didn't mean to come here. I know it hurts you, and I don't want to bring you pain. But still, I always come back."

  Anna looked at the necklaces. She remembered how she'd given hers back to him, the night she'd left. 'It's time to grow up, Robert,' she'd told him then. 'To stop pretending. I'm not your real daughter, and we should stop acting as if I am.'

  For so long she'd dreamed of taking that back. On long nig
hts racing across the Atlantic to get home, she'd planned all the ways she could make it up to him. Then when she got back to New LA, he'd been gone. There'd been no chance for absolution.

  Now she looked at the necklaces with a new trickle of hope. Perhaps, in this place, it might be possible.

  "Daddy," she said, moving her hands to his, "please, can I have it back?"

  He looked at her. Tears splashed in his lap.

  "Really?" he asked.

  She kissed his hands. She kissed his forehead. "Yes. Please, I want it back more than anything."

  For a long moment he didn't move. Then gingerly, carefully, as if afraid the precious necklace might slip away, he held it out. Anna tilted her head, sobbing now, and let him loop it over her neck. It fell to rest warm from his hands against her collarbone.

  Salty tears ran over her lips, and she gave a little delighted laugh. Already she felt better. The hole was healing inside. "I've missed you so much," she said.

  He smiled, eyes starry with tears. Now his necklace hung around his neck too, twinkling with some unseen light. "You were the best thing in my life. I'm proud to have known you, Anna. Savior of the line. Goodbye."

  She hugged him. For a second he was warm, he was real and right there, strong arms around her back, making her whole and giving her a home.

  Then he was gone. Anna was left sobbing into his wheelchair, clutching the half-heart pendant tight in her fist.

  * * *

  For a time after that, she drifted.

  There were other places to see, and other people to speak with. For a time she walked with Dr. Ozark in the desert at night, who'd once read her stories and dandled her on his knee. He'd always done the best voice for the Cheshire Cat; going from growly to silly in the flash of an eye. He tried it for her again now.

  "You see a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad."

  She laughed, and they stood side-by-side before the RV he'd been in when the demon took him.