The samples would be alive or not.
He gave himself five minutes, then got to his feet. His legs trembled but he could work with that. He put the radio back in its charging dock and set the frequency dial to auto-scan for a signal. If they were talking up above he wanted to hear it.
Nausea drove him back down. The work would have to wait. He slumped on the old, stained mattress and sleep stole him away in the dark, where he dreamed of incense and Farsan and a droplet of serum powerful enough to burn out the T4 for good.
* * *
But he didn't find it.
Three days had passed, or was it four? After the sweaty, burning passage back through the vents, and after running every test and trial he could think of on Farsan's samples, trying to isolate the cure, he still hadn't found it. Perhaps, he had to conclude now, it wasn't even there.
His hands were a mess of stains, nicks and alkali-burns. The workbench was covered in his notepapers, scrawled over with spidery representations of protein chains, bacterial lifecycle charts, long lists of genetic pair bond patterns and pages covered in the T4 genome map; more than 38 colored arrows all linking together to form the T4's programming.
He'd never fully decoded it; not with the equipment he had here, not in all the time he'd been working on it. For six years he'd been like an amateur hacker, blindly guessing at the function of huge sections of DNA and RNA, attempting to interrupt the promoters and terminators on faith that one of them might have an impact.
Sixteen trials he'd run, starting with fourteen people in the pool and gradually whittling that down to nine, then five, then two, himself and Farsan, until finally it was just him. The pain of the dosages and the risk, the fading sense of hope that a cure was likely, all contributed to them leaving him behind.
He'd tried to persuade them to keep on, that he was getting close, but in truth he'd never been close. He didn't understand the T4 bacteriophage any better now than he had before. Studying his own cured cells was a revelation, but it was only one map to an endlessly complex maze. Studying Farsan's triggered T4 was like a light in the darkness, but the darkness was still so vast.
He lay on his filthy mattress and wept. He was exhausted, his legs throbbed and the burnt skin on his thighs was probably permanently damaged. He'd barely slept, had barely paused for a moment to eat or drink, and now his fingers trembled so badly when he held a slide that he couldn't continue.
Maybe with a full-spec lab, and with a team of ten trained geneticists, with a grant and leisure and peers to bounce his ideas off of, he might be able to crack the T4. It was so dense, its genetic information seemingly doubly encoded, as every strand linked to another strand in a unique way, changing the internal chemistry and integration depending on any of a thousand potential variables, none of which he could control for. Every single strand of DNA in the T4's 38 genomes had ten thousand on-off switches, computing out to millions of potential states.
He had his electron microscope. He had old data and old equipment, with one set of samples from one triggered subject; Farsan. It was like trying to crack the Enigma code with a chalk slate, or see the whole of the Grand Canyon with a high-powered telescope. It couldn't be done.
But somehow, some time in the past six years, through some combination of the serums he'd taken or any other environmental factors, he had done it. That was the one thought pulling him through, preventing him from collapsing completely or handing himself over to the outsiders who even now were repurposing his home. Somehow, blind as he'd been, something he'd done had cured him. It promised a path that might lead him to a cure for them all.
But he needed the others.
The lab data was out there, in their bodies. They'd all taken different combinations of his serums. Farsan alone was riddled with rich information, but alone he was just a single data point. He needed the fourteen others. He needed samples from them all, compared against his notes on which serums they took at which times, when they stopped taking them, what they ate, their blood type, and maybe, just maybe, he might be able to retro-engineer a cure.
But there was no hope of that now either, because the outsiders were opening the Habitat and releasing his people. He heard them on the radio now; congratulating themselves, giving orders, talking with such sickening emotionality of their horror and sadness at Salle Coram's legacy. They went on and on about their feelings of guilt until he was physically sick.
Worst of all were Amo and Anna, the two he'd seen on that first, fateful day. He hated them but whenever they spoke on the radio, he listened. He understood why they were driving his people out now, risking the vital experimental data trapped in their bodies.
It was madness on a global scale. They intended to steer their 'ocean' as they called them across the Atlantic to Europe, where they would find and slaughter eleven more bunkers, just like his, of thousands of people each.
The scope of it horrified him, making him feel even more helpless, sitting on his mattress with no clear path to the cure ahead. It was there, it existed, but he didn't have it. Perhaps he would have done, given a few more months, or better equipment, or more volunteers. If Salle Coram had not tried so hard to crush his dream, perhaps it could have come true.
Perhaps it still could.
He had nothing else to do. Farsan would be gone with the rest of them. He heard they cleared all of deck 0 a day ago. They had the mass exit elevators working to ferry them all out. His only hope was to follow. It meant taking samples that no one would allow. It meant chasing his people across the Earth to get the lab data he so badly needed.
It meant being a ghost in the system again, but this time truly alone. There would be no Farsan to stand by his side, nobody to share this terrible loss with at all. But for Farsan, and the hope of Farsan ahead, he would do it.
He had no other choice.
7. THREE DAYS
Amo came.
He followed her up into the Maine forest, along a hunting trail beaten out through the gorse and mulberry by Cynthia and Feargal. She'd stopped an hour along the trail, sitting atop a boulder on a raised hillock that placed her just above the tree line. From here the forests around Mt. Abraham were an ocean of white, spattered with the underlying green of spruce, like breakers on frozen waves. It was peaceful, and sitting there in the cold, damp air, with white overcast skies above, her breath fogging out in thick white plumes and the clean smell of raw sap in the air, she was able to gain perspective for a time on all the things they'd done.
Murders. Genocide. Sacrifices. Witzgenstein.
It had all seemed so promising at first; in the days immediately after the Habitat fell. The convoy had come up to join them and Lara had come out of her coma, along with some of Julio's victims. Cynthia hunted down a stag and one night they ate venison for dinner, in a feast of circled RVs outside the bunker entrance. They'd sung songs, had a fire, toasted s'mores stolen from the Habitat's supplies, and things felt good. They had a mayor and a Council and a path moving forwards. Anna had even stood with Witzgenstein and shared a beer.
Her outward demeanor had been happy then, seemingly content with a role on the Council. But Anna knew demeanor was no clue to the heart. For four years Julio had fooled them all with his demeanor, then committed murder. Even on that happy night, Anna later learned from Ravi, the rumors had started to fly. Even as Janine was smiling at her by the fire and sharing a few words of congratulations, she'd been spreading her infection.
Deeds made character, Anna knew, not demeanor, and Janine had tried to secede before. She'd backed Masako in the middle of their escape from California. Five years ago she'd tried to split New LA into two, and take her part away with Amo's blessing.
Now this. Janine was ambitious and she'd taken her chance. She ruled the Council already with the soft stick of bureaucracy. If Anna couldn't make the exile charge stick, she'd doubtless rule all New LA within a week.
Anna scraped at a bit of crumbly stone by her thigh. Faded green lichen decorated the old boulder's dead ski
n like a Celtic tattoo, frosted bright white in places. It was a question of timing, really.
Amo came huffing up the trail.
His breathing and footfalls in the crunchy snow were the only sounds in the surrounding ocean of quiet. Anna watched him and thought of her father. She'd been seeing him in dreams for ten years now, warning her of the Jabberwock. It came in many guises, it would seem.
"Anna," Amo said, cresting the stubbly top of the hillock. He was wearing jeans, a big red jacket, and that tired look on his face. He wore it all the time now.
"Amo."
She shuffled over and he sat down on the boulder beside her.
"Cold," he said.
She grunted and they sat quietly for a while. His breath puffed out whitely.
"Lara's in bed," he said. "She's exhausted, she's so angry. She needs to sleep."
"She was up with me all night," Anna said. "She's sick."
Amo grunted. It was noncommittal, not like the usual Amo, not even the usual Amo of the past week.
"You're upset with me," Anna said.
Amo didn't answer for a time. He looked out over the white ocean and breathed, in and out, like a floater in the ocean.
"Yes," he said at last. "Maybe. But I don't feel too real, if you know what I mean. Ever since the Habitat, I feel like I'm floating, like there's a crippling headache about to descend, but it never does."
"You're not eating," Anna said.
Amo shrugged. "I'm not hungry. Besides, it's all their food, Salle Coram's, and we stole that didn't we?"
"We've been stealing from the dead for years. This is no different."
Amo smiled for a moment, shining a light on the man he used to be. "Really, no different?"
Anna looked away. "It should be. People need to see it that way. You need to eat because you're the mayor. Turning into a ghost like this is not OK."
He gave a big sigh. "I may not be the mayor tomorrow. Who knows?"
Anna frowned. "That's not OK either. You saw the vote in there."
He started on another big sigh but stopped it halfway. "Anna, ah… Maybe. I'm not doing too well. I have a lot of dreams."
"Nightmares," Anna said, "I know, Lara told me."
He shrugged. "Yeah. I see the ocean coming for me, like flashes of the past, back when I thought they were just regular zombies from the movies. There's this moment from Sir Clowdesley I keep seeing, when I thought they had me in the night? Then I'm running through the streets of New York with a horde at my back. Finally I'm watching them burn, and I'm laughing."
"It's just guilt. It's got nothing to do with Janine."
He snorted faintly. "Nothing? Anna, there's no end to the killing in these dreams. Every time I wake up asking, 'How many more? How many more, Amo?'"
"As many as it takes."
He turned and looked at her. She looked right back. They hadn't talked about this since they'd delivered the zombies from the Habitat and sent them to the east.
"You feel it too," he said, "you're not immune."
"I feel it," Anna agreed. "I have nightmares. But they're not real. You've got to keep the difference clear."
Amo rubbed his eyes. "So how do you do that? When Janine was up there and Alan was making his charges, I half-believed them. Maybe I want them to be true, so I can be punished? I'm too tired to think."
"So let me do the thinking. Trust me. I get confused too, about what we've done and what we're going to do, but when I do I make myself think about Cerulean and Julio and all the people that died. I push back with that, and the anger helps."
"I can't even get angry," Amo said. "I just get exhausted. So much anger, so much killing, and for what? So we can do it all again on a much bigger scale."
"You're depressed. It's obvious. Sitting there in that court while Witzgenstein threw murder charges your way? She saw you were weak and that's blood in the water to her. She means to crush you underfoot."
"She's not a bad person."
Anna laughed. "Not bad? She's lying, Amo! She got Masako killed. She's trying to undermine an elected body. She's power mad and you're sitting in her spot. Now I've exiled her, but if that's going to stick, you have to back it. We can't be divided on this."
He took a long moment. "That's why I want to talk to you."
"I know."
A silence grew between them. Somewhere an owl hooted ominously. The days were short and the nights drew in fast in Maine; so different from LA.
"We can't exile her," Amo said.
Anna let that stand. She scratched at the frosty boulder. She looked out to the horizon, where the forests flowed for miles in a snowy flood until they merged with the clouded white sky. There were no electric lights giving away towns or strip malls, no clean black lines of cleared roads where cars whizzed back and forth like blood cells in an artery, only the white and the wild.
"You sent me away once," she said, "with Cerulean. A kind of exile. I know you remember."
His shoulders bowed. "For Julio. Of course I remember."
"For Julio. We went to San Francisco for two weeks as a temporary banishment. I was five years old. Do you know what we did in that time?"
Amo looked at her with heavy-lidded eyes. "Talked? Explored? I don't know, Robert never told me."
"We freed them. The ocean. We went from building to building and let them out; smashing locks, breaking windows, opening up cellars. It was all we did, non-stop, and I was so happy. I loved them and I loved helping them, and with Cerulean by my side it felt almost like I had my father back."
Amo nodded. "It sounds lovely."
"But it made no difference," Anna answered sharply. "It was a waste of time."
Amo shifted. "That's not true. It had value for you."
"Of course, it helped a few zombies, and it made me feel better and it probably made Cerulean feel better too, though nothing was really any better. The fact is, you should never have sent him away for that. You should have sent Julio, and you know it, but it wouldn't have been easy. It would have felt a lot like this; damning someone for a crime of words." She paused. "But words are intent, Amo, and we can't just forgive without punishment. It doesn't work that way. Julio should have been out there alone with the ocean, going slowly mad alone ten years ago. He should have felt what it's like to be pointless and hopeless, not us."
"Unh," Amo said, not a grunt and not a word but somewhere in between.
"Now compare that to what you did," Anna went on. "You herded thousands of them into Yankee Stadium, and that saved us in the end. That mattered. Everything you've done has mattered. We can't all claim that. Janine, she feels that keenly. She's done nothing and she knows it. She hasn't even freed any of them, because she's afraid of them, did you know that? They're ungodly to her, a sign that she wasn't taken up into the kind of rapture she expected. She's done nothing for the past ten years but survive and feebly resist executing your vision, and it eats her up. She wants to rule New LA because it's the only thing that will satisfy that need in her. Would she be another Salle Coram? I don't know, but she would definitely split this group, or break it to keep it together. She has to go. Send her away and get it right this time."
Amo said nothing, just looked out over the wintry landscape with the world on his shoulders.
"That weight is crushing you, isn't it?" Anna asked, then paused. "So much guilt."
He looked up at her. His eyes were dry but full of hurt. "Three thousand people, Anna. Because they might have hurt us. Not because they would, or even could, but because they might. It's the same as Witzgenstein. Let her have her theories and throw her charges. They would never stick, and even if they did, so what? The people of New LA are not so stupid to believe she's pure. We need every person we have."
"They might have stuck," Anna answered, "they might still, because New LA is not so sturdy as you think it is. I can see them wavering, even if you can't. Ten years they've been under you, and that just breeds contempt. Even though they've seen you be the hero, 'might' is enough
when it comes to survival. We learned that from Julio. Mercy is for the weak and the dead, Amo. We've warned her. Cerulean himself warned her, years ago, but she's still doing it. Still! Think of it like this. If you hadn't opened up the Habitat, I would have, but I'm not made to rule. I'm another Salle Coram waiting to happen, I think we both see that."
Amo snorted. "You're not that bad."
Anna shrugged. "I could be. But you're not. You can do something neither Salle, Witzgenstein or me could ever do, which is inspire people. You embody all our hopes, and this weight on you now is making that hope even stronger and fiercer. I can see it even if you can't, like rays of heat burning out of your middle. You crush coal and you get a diamond, Amo. We're all in the furnace becoming something greater, but if you let the pressure end, if you back off with hands raised and say, 'Nope, this is not for me', you get nothing but burnt. See it through, or New LA itself, the legend of it, will fall apart in her hands. There'll be nowhere for survivors to gather, and where will we be then, our race, our people? Extinct. We'll all be gone. Those are the stakes we're playing for. There is no time for mercy."
Amo ran his hands through his hair and gazed out over the endless forest. Anna leaned back and dangled her legs down the boulder's side. Snow began to fall gently, coating their footsteps leading back down the hillock with a thin layer of fresh, unblemished white. So simple, so beautiful. The snow covered all manner of their sins. The rain and sun would wear them away. Everything could change. There were so many ways to think of the road ahead, and any one of them could lead to extinction. It was a high-wire balancing act all the way, and the wire only got harder to walk the further along it you went.
At last Amo looked up. There wasn't a renewed purpose in his eyes or a new strength, but there was a decision.
"All right," he said. "She leaves. I'll stand by you."
Anna took his hand. He barely had the strength to squeeze.
* * *
Three days passed quietly.
Work continued in the Habitat, as its supplies were counted, gathered and prioritized. Work continued in the surrounding towns, as they found semi-truck trailers that could still run, fuelled and charged them, then prepared them for the return journey. There were more supplies than they could ferry back in one go, whole warehouses underground that they'd barely touched, filled with still-frozen seed packs and vitamin syringes, well-preserved medicine and medical equipment all well within their use-by dates, the latest technology and computers still in pristine condition. Jake took the lead in designing a schedule to fetch and carry it all, requiring multiple trips back and forth from Maine to New LA.
The List (Zombie Ocean Book 5) Page 10
