The List (Zombie Ocean Book 5)

by Michael John Grist

  Work continued in the Command bunker, where Feargal, Anna and Ollie worked to glean every scrap of information they could from the computer systems and records left behind; on the other bunkers, on their military capacities, on their crews and their plans. Feargal led them to the hangar in the mountainside and they learned all about drones.

  Work continued with the ocean. Almost a week had passed since they were freed, and Anna was still making forays out to meet them. Many of them had already passed into the Atlantic, but the slower ones were still straggling through the eastern edge of Nova Scotia. They caught them one by one and implanted GPS transponders taken from the bunker. They had everything down there, from transponders and satellite phones to in-vitro fertilization kits, for the day it came time to start the repopulation. In the end they implanted around two hundred, which read out on the tracker screen as a dense cloud of dots steadily heading east.

  Work continued with the survivors from Julio's pit. Four were still in comas. They had them in the Habitat, rigged to brain scanners and heart rate monitors, following along as best as they could. Macy took responsibility for them herself, while at the same time she worked constantly to improve her medical knowledge.

  "I'll be a doctor in a year," she told Anna, and meant it. Perhaps it was her way of remembering Dr. Ozark.

  Work continued with hunting and supplies. Feargal led daily hunts in search of fresh meat, the one staple they couldn't find in the Habitat. Deep-frozen meat and meat from a can were not the same, and nobody wanted to take on the regimen of vitamin and mineral injections the MARS300 colonists had undergone.

  Work continued with the children, as they strove to make this radical change in their lifestyle as normal and painless as possible. Parents told and retold the story of what had happened in the exodus, seeking a way to make it feel less terrifying.

  Work continued everywhere, except around Janine Witzgenstein's RV. She remained locked inside for the whole of the three days, with her eleven compatriots locked in with her. Rarely did any of them enter or leave; for food and water only.

  Anna watched them, and set a watch on them when she couldn't watch them herself. She began to feel that three days was too long. She began to worry about what Janine was planning. She wasn't a fool. She wasn't weak. She wasn't going to accept her banishment without a fight.

  So the work continued, but the settlement of New LA, temporarily based in Maine, held its breath, and watched the door to an RV, and waited.

  And waited.

  And when the three days came, that door opened, and Janine Witzgenstein emerged.

  INTERLUDE 4

  Farsan was gone.

  His room was empty. Every door in the bunker stood empty, on the day they were leaving. Two days earlier there'd been a trial and he'd listened through the ducts, hidden in a crawlspace beside the entrance hall, as this community of New LA severed itself in pieces.

  He knew so much more about them now; about who they were and what plans they had. Perhaps it was true that Salle Coram had killed all her own people, herself. He could believe it of her, but still he couldn't shake the image of the bodies transforming before him, moments only before Anna and Amo came into view down corridor Blue three.

  It didn't have to mean anything. Perhaps it meant everything. It would be the best reason for seeking revenge he could imagine.

  The panic was over for him now, and the new reality had settled in. So he prepared. He kept records. He gathered samples. He charted the flow of the 'ocean', as they called it, the flood of infected bodies they'd released, as best he could from overheard snatches on the radio.

  He put together a pack. He laid out a plan. And when the time came, he executed.

  Walking back through their court was strange; like he was a stranger in his own land. The chairs of their jury still lay in long, even rows. The judge's desk stood imperiously at the head atop a low stage.

  Anna was brutal, he knew that now. Merciless. She reminded him of Salle Coram in many ways. Amo was a different beast. He didn't understand him, though he'd since read his comic, left lying in their 'cairn' of USB sticks, propaganda and candy beside the judge's desk. It told of a different world up above, of suffering and killing, but also hope.

  So much hung on the question he couldn't know the answer to. Was it Salle or was it Amo who had killed Farsan?

  The elevator was there at the end of the hall, waiting. For ten years he'd dreamed of this moment. The button punched and the carriage came. The doors opened.

  He couldn't stop the tears from coming as he rode up. He'd promised Farsan they'd do this together, so many times, but Farsan had been hoisted to the surface on the mass elevators in Farm Hall A two weeks earlier. Farsan was far away already.

  He emerged into the small junction space where a second door marked the Command module, and looked up. They'd left the manhole cover unsealed at the top of the chute, a strange mercy, so he could see the disc of white sky up above. It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

  He climbed the ladder almost blinded by tears, and at the top stumbled into the world like a newborn, into the snow and bright light, into a biting cold he hadn't felt for ten years. A sharp wind cut through his clothes and he staggered to the side, dizzied by the massive size of the sky and the land. Harsh winter sunlight hurt his eyes, the keen smell of snow and churned mud overpowered him, and there he dropped to his knees and wept.

  He was free. He was alone in a lonely, empty landscape. There were no people, no RVs, no burning campfires, nothing but a few tendrils of smoke rising from a dying brazier.

  He was free and alone.

  The cold enveloped him, seeping deep into his skin through his wet knees, through his boots and burning into his soft skin, and he welcomed it. He raised his hands to the wide-open, pure white sky and shouted out his promise for any gods to hear.

  Free.

  * * *

  He walked.

  Little things from the world stunned him, designed in such brilliant, awesome detail, in ways Lars Mecklarin's copied world could never rival. Here a jackdaw was cawing from the thorny skeleton of an apple tree. Here the glint of light rose off puddles of perfectly clear ice, making them shine like polished steel. Here came the crunch of fresh frost in the tire treads their vehicles had left behind.

  He walked to the place where Salle had kept her victims. It was marked by a single granite headstone atop a sheer concrete foundation, with just one name listed.

  CERULEAN

  Five more indentations had been carved for names to go in, but had been left blank. Nobody knew who they were. Another body lay down there; Julio, by all accounts a madman. His name was nowhere to be found.

  And this was Salle's legacy. He touched the headstone. Cerulean.

  If he had a jackhammer, perhaps he would drill down to find Cerulean's body. A sample from a demon could help him, because the demons and the zombies had to be related; a different mutation from a common shift in the human genome, but without a sample he couldn't guess. He stroked the cold stone.

  He didn't have a jackhammer. He didn't know where to find one. He didn't have the time.

  He walked away, over the field and away from the bunker that had been his home for so long, carrying his heavy pack on his back. At a rise in the forested road he looked back, but couldn't even pick out the hole he'd emerged from. Such a small home, he thought, and a wave of guilt washed over him. He wasn't leaving Farsan behind, but it felt like it. It felt like he was abandoning them all, but it wasn't that, because they weren't there anymore. If anything he was moving toward them.

  The burn wounds on his thighs were getting better. He pulled the pack's shoulder straps tighter and dried his eyes. Soon enough snow would fall that all sign of that place would be covered; not only the hole into the ground and the headstone, but all the marks in the earth the RVs had made, the scorch marks of their fires, gone along with the scent and sound and warmth of human bodies in the air.

  That would be good
. It was all better off buried.

  He walked down the road, past another shattered cairn where two cars had been rolled into the wiry brown bushes. His head ached from the cold already. He walked until he reached a home, half-buried in snow and choked with dry brown strangleweed, but as he'd expected all the vehicles were gone. He wouldn't know how to operate them anyway. He wasn't an engineer and hadn't spent ten years learning how to jumpstart a decayed engine. He didn't know how to siphon old fuel and make it usable, or how to generate electricity to charge the battery, and he didn't have the time right now to learn.

  But he found a bicycle. A little WD-40 from a spray can in the garage had it working in no time. It would be slow and treacherous going over icy roads, but he had time enough for that. The ocean would take three to four months to cross the Atlantic, by Anna's own estimate, overheard on the hacked radio. He could cover the distance to her camp at the Portland Jetport in perhaps a week.

  He would find a place to live. He would track them, and watch them, and work to determine how best to accomplish his mission.

  In the meantime, he would prepare.

  The bicycle wobbled; he hadn't ridden for a long time. Coasting down the drive he almost toppled into a snow bank, but managed to right himself at the last moment, taking a long, gentle curve out across the road's two lanes, cutting a fresh trail across the swathe cut by Anna's convoy of two RVs, a Jeep and a Porsche.

  Their tires had cleared a path for him, for now marking the trail forwards. He wavered and pedaled and pressed on, toward the people who might have killed his best friend, and who might yet be able to save him.

  Farsan.

  The pedals turned. The hours passed. Gradually, hour by hour, he left his longtime prison behind.

  8. WITZGENSTEIN

  Witzgenstein wore jeans and a heavy brown leather jacket over a red check shirt. She had tall brown leather boots and wore her golden hair tied back tightly under a cozy brown Stetson. At her belt she wore a pistol and a walkie. In her hand she carried a bag that didn't bear any resemblance to the bag she'd brought with her from New LA.

  That had been a bright neon fabric, with many pockets and straps; a practical bag for carrying things. This looked like a crudely sewn carpet-bag, all part of her image offensive. In all she looked like a homesteader just stepped out of the Olde American West.

  Shit, thought Anna.

  She looked good. She'd always been pretty, in an office girl/cowgirl-on-the-weekends kind of way. Here she'd plainly embraced it. If ever she was going to sing Country, it was now. Anna braced herself for another blast of Star Spangled Banner.

  Witzgenstein came out of the RV and surveyed the people of New LA who'd gathered for this moment, three days to the minute Anna walked out of the Habitat court hall. They stood in a semicircle on the snowy, sloping field where once a gun turret had guarded its payload below, gathered like the villagers at an execution.

  Witzgenstein's eleven filed out after her. Samuel, as proud as ever. Alan and Lin, Akela, Georgina and Harris, Cynthia and the others. Anna would miss Cynthia most of all, but then they'd always known where her loyalties lay.

  Witzgenstein stopped a few yards from Anna, facing the crowd, with her eleven followers behind her. Shit. There was nothing to do about it now. Janine and her eleven disciples, sent into the wilderness by the tyrant Herod/Amo. The damn narrative wrote itself.

  Janine's eyes shone with a kind of bright joy. She was happy, there was no doubt. She felt like, perhaps, she'd finally won.

  The wind rustled over the hard pack snow. Anna's little toe itched. Janine looked at her, then at Amo by her side, and Lara in her chair, at Jake then Feargal and on down the line in both directions, meeting everyone's eyes. Cursing them? Blessing them? Perhaps she was waiting for Amo to say something, but that was plainly not going to happen. Anna looked to the side. He had his emotionless mask in place, just the same as when they'd killed the Habitat.

  "You've asked me to leave," Witzgenstein said at last. Her voice was resonant in the cold air, carrying over the killing field and the road. She would have been an excellent politician. Her confidence was unnerving. "You've voted, and I have honored that vote. I'm ready to leave. My people are ready to leave, to a promised land in my home state of Oregon. We'll settle in the Willamette Valley, north of Beaverton. I've prayed on it, and we're ready. But there's one thing I need, before I can go."

  She let that hang. Amo's face was a stone.

  "Say it," Anna said. "You have your moment, Janine."

  Witzgenstein's poise didn't slip an inch. She focused her bright eyes on Amo.

  "Our Mayor," she said, as if presenting him to an audience for applause. "Last Mayor of America, Amo. I want to hear it from you. I want you to tell me why I have to leave, when we were in the middle of a Council-agreed court, hearing testimony on your many crimes. I want you to tell me, and everyone here today, why I'm the criminal. Not your yapping dog," she gestured to Anna, "but you. Then I'll go."

  The air grew thick. All eyes turned to Amo. Here was where the fulcrum could crack under the pressure. Was the reason strong enough? Had Janine really done enough to deserve it?

  Amo gazed back at Witzgenstein with his dead eyes, using his dead, stony face. He would pay a cost later, Anna knew. He would never forget this.

  "I don't want you to go, Janine," he said eventually, in a warm and mournful voice that sounded strange coming out of that impassive mask of a face. "Believe this or not, despite everything, I like you. I respect you. I was moved when you sang with us in Pittsburgh. You were as brave as anyone in the face of that. Throughout your nine years with New LA you've fought for what you believe countless times, and I respect that too. Yet you've also done things you should not be proud of. You've campaigned to split New LA, Anna was right about that. You've spread stories about me that can most charitably be called half-truths. Anna called them lies, intended to discredit me and allow you to assume the leadership of our group. She may be right. You may have some valid points. I am the duly elected mayor, but I am not under the illusion that I am perfect, or that every choice I've ever made was right. I've made mistakes, but I am not a murderer, and you cannot expect me to stand by while you and your people brand me one falsely."

  He took a deep, measured breath.

  "I don't want you to go, Janine. But ten years ago I faced a similar choice with a man named Julio, and I made the wrong decision. I let him stay. He was punished, but not enough. The seeds of a deep cruelty were in him then, and we didn't stamp them out, and I've regretted it ever since. There's a line here. I don't say that you are like Julio, Janine, but I see some of that same cruelty in you. You are ambitious. You do want to rule, and you were willing to cut me down to do so. You were willing to break New LA to do so. Now, here, New LA is broken regardless. I am sorry for that, but I can't stop it. I wouldn't try to force you or your people to stay. But I wish you well. I hope that in leadership you will become just and kind, and that you and your people will thrive. I hope that someday lines of communication and perhaps trade will open again between our peoples. I hope we can both find success and happiness in our own worlds, though for now, that must be apart."

  Janine looked at him. He'd taken the sting out a little, as Amo always did. He'd even left the door open a crack, hinting she may be able to return at some point. Anna didn't like that, but then that was why he was Amo and she was Anna. His judgment was good, and she trusted him, because this was a message not only to Witzgenstein, but also to his own people.

  Still, it was a wound. Anna felt it already. There'd been strength in unity, but to lose twelve people in this way? It was a wound that would take a long time to heal.

  Witzgenstein nodded.

  "You speak well," she said at last, projecting her voice so everyone could hear. "You always did, Amo, for a comic book artist. You say you like me? You say you don't want me to leave. So know this. I deplore you. I deplore the sloppy, faithless, morally abject way you have run this community for too l
ong. You have brokered for power with the best of them. If I learnt manipulation, misrepresentation and the power of half-truths, then I learnt them from you. You are a murderer. You are a genocide. How many living people have I killed? None. How many of the ocean have I slaughtered? None. You cannot say the same. Your hands are bright with their blood. How many false idols have I created, marked with my own name so that my legend might be crowed back and forth across the rooftops of the world? None. You call me power-hungry, you claim I have some deep-seated drive to rule over others, but who here forced an election in the middle of our escape? Who else here toyed with our very survival so cravenly, just to satisfy his urge to be the constant center of all our lives?"

  She looked around at the people of New LA. There was compassion in her eyes now, a well-acted warmth Anna had rarely seen before.

  "You call me a liar. But is it a lie if I believe with all my heart that what I've said is true? If I fear that it is true? Masako is dead. Julio is dead." She pointed at Amo. "His rivals die, and here he is still, last mayor of America, still. That is the brand of a dictator. And now he sees Julio's cruelty in me? Julio was a rapist, a murderer, a torturer of women and children; do you see those things in me? Of the two leaders standing before you now, in whom do you see those things the most? Who has killed and who hasn't? Who has murdered to eliminate a rival? Who has sacrificed others to stay alive? Who is responsible for the deaths of three thousand people in the bunker below us?"