The List (Zombie Ocean Book 5)

by Michael John Grist

  She slumped back down.

  It took a moment for the muttering of the crowd to silence again, then Witzgenstein turned their attention back to Alan.

  "I know it's hard, Alan, but please go on."

  He rubbed his eyes and his voice cracked, but he carried on. "He just shot her in the back. Then he grabbed Lin and he took my arm and he pulled us back to the RVs. I was too terrified to fight back. I thought he might shoot me too. I didn't know what to do."

  Witzgenstein nodded heavily. She gave him a moment to recover himself, as he wiped the tears away and tried to get the sobs under control. "And why did you keep this from us, Alan? It's OK. Tell the court just what you told me."

  Alan nodded. He pulled himself together. "Because he threatened me. He said I'd get what she got if I ever told anyone. He said he'd kill Lin." A sob escaped. "And I was afraid. I've been afraid ever since. But I thought, with the trial now, I can't live like this. I won't. If he wants to kill me, at least now everyone will know. They'll see who he really is."

  The courtroom went silent. Amo hung his head, as if he was guilty. Anna just stared, as the pit opened inside her. The charges were immense and damning. Amo was a murderer? Amo had threatened a child? Amo was the not the man they all thought he was, and worst of all, her own testimony couldn't disprove any of it.

  Witzgenstein had played her and the crowd perfectly. She began to feel sick at her role in it, right down to her outbursts. It was masterful, and while the hall was in shock, and Anna was in shock, the true reason behind it became clear.

  This was Witzgenstein's coups d'état.

  Witzgenstein banged the gavel. "I call for a recess. The Council needs to meet. We must discuss what happens next, and how the trial ought proceed."

  She rose. She took Alan protectively by the elbow and led him off the pulpit and past Amo before anyone else could object, to the congregation where they collected Lin and walked toward the elevator together.

  The hall erupted seconds later.

  * * *

  The Council met in Witzgenstein's RV, comprised of Witzgenstein, Alan in place of Masako, Anna in place of Ravi, Lara and Feargal. Five members in all.

  Anna was quiet, still trying to figure out this new landscape. She listened while Lara tried to lead the fight, though Lara was too weak to be effective. Every word came to her slowly, pushed out through a fog of exhaustion to form short, flimsy arguments about due process and false testimony and bias. She'd only come out of the coma five days ago and was struggling to follow a coherent line of thought.

  Get it over and done with, Witzgenstein had suggested in the Council meeting a week ago, while Lara was still in her coma. No need for lawyers, the hearings were a formality only. It had seemed a good idea at the time. Anna had had some dim understanding there were dark rumors spreading round the camp, but Witzgenstein promised the trial would forestall them.

  This was the result.

  Now she listened and kept trying to grasp her arms around the size of it. She watched Witzgenstein and tried to read her intent, and the more she thought, the more she kicked herself, because she should have seen it coming.

  It had been obvious, really, but she'd been so focused on the slaughter of eleven bunkers to come, and dealing with her confused feelings about Cerulean and the dead Maine three thousand, and Lara in her coma and the GPS tags to inject into the ocean, that she hadn't realized what was happening. She'd let the rumors swirl around her, thinking they'd simply pass by like they always had before.

  But things weren't like before. Cerulean was gone, Amo was crippled with guilt, and Lara was barely present. They weren't even in New LA, surrounded by all the familiar signs of Amo's long, peaceful rule. This was an in between place, this frozen hellhole where everyone and everything was in flux, and Witzgenstein was taking her opportunity. Masako's death was the perfect trigger, Alan was a perfect, weak-willed foil, and Witzgenstein wasn't shy to exploit them both.

  Anna studied her, trying to spot a crack in the façade, but she was so aloof, so impartial. She'd set it all up so she was far removed from any of the dirty work of making accusations and spreading rumors. Rather, she used her supporters for that. She used Alan. Anna watched and dug her nails into her palms instead of shouting out loud. All of this was a set-up, and already it seemed unstoppable. At best Amo would come out of it discredited and limping along until the next election. At worst he'd be impeached and his legacy in New LA destroyed.

  Anna didn't know how to stop it. It wasn't a demon or a madwoman on a raft; it couldn't be shot to kill it, because Witzgenstein had laid the ground well. The rumors had been swirling for weeks now; injected into the community in the aftermath of Pittsburgh, while Amo and Anna were up in Maine and Lara was in her coma.

  Amo had murdered Masako to remove a political rival, was one, but not one she'd done more than laugh at to date. He'd murdered others along the way, had spread the load and the burden of proof wider, expanding the rumors into the realm of conspiracy theory. Every death from the exodus was on his conscience, because the demons only ever wanted him and Lara- the mother and father of the apocalypse. That was a good one, and impossible to disprove, because it was built on conjecture already. But once it got into peoples' heads?

  Of course it was bullshit and lies, but the rumors had a power and they'd kept spreading, long and loud enough to bring the question to a trial. 'Just to clear the air,' Witzgenstein had said when she first tabled the motion in the Council, 'to clear the rumors and clear Amo's name.' Now the true purpose was clear, buoyed on a river of Alan's heartfelt tears.

  There was no counter-testimony Anna could offer. They'd already incorporated hers into their story. She had no doubt Witzgenstein had 'witnesses' lined up to go next, people whose consciences were pricked by Alan's story and who took that moment to come forward with their manufactured dirt on Amo.

  Stories of threats and coercion. Stories of murder and blackmail. None of it provable, but a heavy enough load to bring Amo crashing down, and change the course of New LA forever. Perhaps they'd even call Lin to the stand and make him lie too.

  Her mind churned. Amo had hung his head in the court, as if accepting the guilt. Ever since the bunker he'd been broken and morose. It would be in perfect character for him to take this guilt and wear it as his own like some kind of atonement. She wanted to be clean from the stain of Maine too, but like this?

  "I move the trial continues," Feargal said at last, surely exactly as Witzgenstein had hoped. The suggestion hadn't come from her or from Alan, but from a third party. "But not as before. We make it real, now. Real charges, real costs. A criminal court."

  "I second that, I'm afraid," Witzgenstein said. "We have to know the truth."

  Lara snorted. "I'm against. Completely against. You can't just co-opt this court, Janine."

  Lara looked at Anna. Her fractured, miserable eyes were imploring. There was so much depth in them, such a desperate hunger, but Anna couldn't help. Not like that. They'd never sway Feargal, not with witness testimony on the table, and his was the third vote. Lara was too overwrought to see that, but Anna couldn't afford emotion now. She'd let grief and guilt cloud her thinking for too long, and it was time to get serious again or lose everything they'd built, and it had to be done right, in front of all the people. This infection had to be cut out root and branch, once and for all.

  Anna looked into Witzgenstein's eyes. "I third the motion."

  Lara gasped.

  "I'm sorry, Lara," Feargal followed on. "I have to agree."

  The motion passed four to one. The new court date was set for the very next day.

  INTERLUDE 2

  By the hidden lab entrance in corridor Blue two Lucas stopped and breathed hard. He'd seen two of them but there had to be more. His heart raced wildly.

  How many?

  He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to focus, spinning a map of the Habitat in his mind's eye. Five decks, with him here in a remote corner of two-minus. Farsan's room was on d
eck one off Willow one, which meant three flights of stairs up.

  Perhaps he'd slept through it all? He had to be tired after watching over Lucas as he came down. Perhaps he was still sleeping peacefully. If Lucas ran fast enough…

  He snatched open the hatchway door, kicked the heavy metal weight back through the inner door hard enough to break the hidden clasp, then scampered in like a wild dog. In the complete darkness beyond he ran by memory; through the maze and down the stairs, round the pallets, past the broken vending machines. A sliver of hissing light marked the bar/lab and he burst through into the wet, stinking space.

  It smelled of body odor, acrid chemicals and vomit. It was dark and miserable, like the lair of a junkie. Farsan had been a good friend to weather it.

  At the active desk he snatched up the drip bag filled with his yellowish dose of the latest serum. There was plenty left; thank God Farsan hadn't drained it. With shaking fingers he pinched the tappet tightly closed, squeezed off the needle and attached a fresh one from the boil bag.

  If this was it, if it really worked, then they could still be together.

  He ran, paused at the door to snatch the portable receiver for the hacked radio and a small duffel bag, then ran on, back through the dark and empty decks and bursting through the bulkhead into Blue two. Nobody was around.

  He sprinted back the way he'd come, to the intersection where the black girl and white man had been, which was now deserted. Somehow they'd swept his zombified people up like iron filings drawn to a magnet, but he would figure that out later. Ahead of him was the ladder rising up through the ceiling and three corridors spreading away. He dunked the radio and drip bag into the duffel, shouldered it, and started up the ladder, but halfway up he heard the sound of tramping feet, moving in stately synchrony.

  At the top he peeked over the edge, and saw a crowd of bodies filling corridor Kentucky, and pressing up to the entrance to the old bowling alley, now Salle Coram's Hall of Justice. Her rules and edicts hung on heavy fabric tapestries outside; designed to carry the full weight of her authority.

  The tramping of their many feet grew louder, filling Lucas' head with ants, but there was no time to go back or around.

  He pulled himself up through the floor and ran away from the crowd. If there really was some kind of magnetic flocking instinct, that meant he was running away from one of the intruders. He didn't know anything about the T4 once activated though; everything now was guesswork. He'd never seen it, and had never successfully lobbied Salle to bring him a sample.

  He ran away from the throng down Kentucky, past three doors of crime-processing offices and holding bays, until the intersection with Mississippi, where he veered sharply right only to see another crowd of bodies lumbering toward him.

  For a moment he froze, looking right at another intruder; this one was alone, wearing a long black cardigan with a cap of white bandages tied round his feathery black hair. He saw Lucas and Lucas saw him, both of them stunned, but Lucas didn't hang around. A second later he was sprinting left down Nevada, but here there was a flow of bodies running the other way back to the bandaged Goth, clogging up the path and slowing him down.

  Shit shit shit. They were everywhere. He turned the map in his head faster. He'd meant to take the regular stairs but Kentucky was the only real route to them, so he needed another. He probably knew the true map of the Habitat better than anyone, after creating a master version of it in the early days of the revolution, combined from diagrams of electrical wiring, plumbing, ventilation flues, plans of access routes designed to be opened at the five and seven year marks, and charts of architectural stress he'd stolen from Salle's men as they were cleaning up in the aftermath of the revolution's destruction.

  He'd made study of the Habitat his passion right alongside his study of the T4, because both seemed essential for long-term escape and survival; it was how he'd first found the forgotten deck and the bar to serve as his lab, and how he'd first pulled others into his cabal, and it had to help him now.

  The map clicked into place, and he saw his route to deck one; there was an access hatch leading into a wiring sub-panel along corridor Utah, near the habitation rigs for low-tier farmers. It led up into the ceiling crawlspace, where once there'd been a system of flues; but most of those were stripped after the revolution to refurbish breakages on the upper decks.

  He could crawl through. He'd used the route once before, to smuggle his contraband equipment down. It had been a tight fit, and he'd burned his thighs badly on an overworked exhaust filter, but that was nothing compared to what he was facing now.

  He ran. Nevada broke into two and he took Oregon to the right, circling back around the toe-end of the Habitat, past Farm Hall 4 where he caught glimpses of soy and wheat rising in the bright grow-lights through a cracked-open door, then he was on Utah and closing on the sub-panel.

  The steady tramp of feet falling in time seemed to come from all around. He couldn't tell if it was left or right or just the whole Habitat trembling. He fumbled in his duffel bag hoping there was a screwdriver or at least a bit of metal, and came up with a long brass key. He'd kept that as a memento of a different time, brought with him from before he went underground.

  It would do. He jammed it into the crack around the panel, then yanked down. The panel warped and clicked out of its groove in that spot, so he worked the key smoothly around popping it out until the panel dropped clear to the floor with a clatter.

  He didn't care. The space beyond was narrow but he was a narrow man and he took to it with grace. In the wall he climbed, finding footholds in the hidden machinery of sewage and water ducts, until he rose into the dark, boxy space where the vents had been. Now they were a series of hanging, rusty brackets. Yes, that had hurt too.

  He pulled himself up and slotted himself in through the brackets, resting his knees on one narrow bracket rim, his belly on the next, his elbows on the last. The metal dug in, it was dark and he didn't have a flashlight, but he remembered the way. He began to crawl. A hundred yards on he passed a deep thrumming in the wall, sounding like hundreds of bodies moving in tandem. At two hundred yards the skin on his left knee broke, followed by the right. Rust would be in his system now. Oh well. At three hundred the vent loops began to angle up, and he went with them as they became a widely-spaced ladder of sharp rungs leading up.

  Next the skin on his palms broke, dribbling blood down his forearms, but he climbed on. It grew hotter as he neared the filter exhaust on deck 0, and sweat beaded down his face and into his eyes. He leaned back too far on one step up and scraped a furrow down his back off some old screw mount in the vent loops. It hurt but not as bad as any one of the whippings he'd received from Salle Coram, and keeping his mouth shut and teeth gritted was just a matter of focus.

  Farsan lay ahead. It might not be too late.

  He felt the steam rising off the exhaust, where the vent hatches rose over it and leveled out behind the wall on deck one off corridor Willow one. A hiss of steam gushed down to meet him, scalding his fingertips. That shouldn't be happening.

  Shit.

  But the Habitat had gone haywire. Somewhere another heat exchange must have stopped functioning as it was supposed to, and it was all getting vented here. It was pitch black, but the heat was stifling already, like a sauna. It would get worse.

  He squeezed the bracket-rungs and pressed on. He'd been through worse, possibly. Losing Farsan would undoubtedly be worse. If this vent steamed him alive, then so what? Going back would take hours, and he'd still have to face the clogged Habitat corridors, full of zombies and magnetic Goths and who knew what else.

  It was this or nothing. He steeled his nerves and climbed.

  The heat became all-consuming in seconds. Barely cooled steam blasted off his hands and face and still he kept climbing. His lungs burned and he squeezed his eyes tightly shut so they wouldn't melt. Already he could feel he was suffering burns that would need treatment, and he hadn't even rounded the exhaust yet.

  He screamed
. He climbed into the heat. His right hand gave out, slick with blood or sweat or oil and he barely caught himself against the back bracket loops, bracing against another screw mount that gouged and burned into his lower back.

  He screamed again and forced himself up. It was too dark and too hot but he wasn't even thinking anymore. Farsan had stood by him while he retched and roiled and burned inside with all the serums he'd tried; some bacterial, some chemical, some hormonal, some viral. Farsan had cooled his brow and held his hand and dripped cold water onto his lips throughout, all because they shared a dream.

  Escape. There was love in that loyalty, no doubt. There was love in that risk and self-sacrifice, and that was why he kept going, because what would it matter if he survived but Farsan didn't? They had their twin houses to find, with adjoining yards and a white picket fence between, and they would see each other every day until the day old age overtook them, and they sat on the patio and reminisced about their days in the revolution.

  For that he pressed on, and soon the exhaust passed him by below, touching his left shin and right thigh. He scampered on with the stink of his boiling skin in the air, then he was racing on, stamping his shins painfully hard on the vent loops just to get away. Sweat dripped and steamed off him, but he managed to clamp his mouth shut and stop screaming, until in a few minutes more he was in position.

  There was a cool draft sifting through the screw holes in the wall, along with a little light. He turned on his side, freed his right leg off the loops, and kicked at the wall. It had to be the right place. The wall boomed and shook. Yes, here. He shuffled forward a little and kicked again. The panel gave way a little, cracking open into Willow one. He kicked three more times, harder and wilder each time, until the panel burst through into an empty corridor.

  He followed, slithering onto the cool metal flooring like a newborn babe, and for a moment he lay there panting, steaming, feeling lightheaded and sick. He turned his head to the side and vomited, but nothing came up. He'd cleared out his system already.