The List (Zombie Ocean Book 5)

by Michael John Grist

  "It's one of his, Anna," Amo said. "He showed me three samples, prepared while I was watching. Blood, hair, saliva. There's no T4 in his system at all. He's not immune like us, with cells, tissue and a brainstem adapted to the presence of the T4. He just doesn't have it. He's completely cured."

  10. TESTS

  She ran tests.

  Lucas offered up fresh samples willingly; blood, saliva, skin, hair, nail clippings. She took them in a tense silence, finding a vein and tapping it; running a swab round the inside of his cheek; clipping a flake of skin; trimming some hair and a nail.

  He didn't speak and neither did she. Sweat dripped down her nose despite the draft of the cooling air filters.

  She found her equipment ready and prepared; laid out where Lucas had just used it. The electron microscope was warmed up. She cooled the glass knife on the piezoelectric plate to sharpen the edge, then using a separate microscope as a guide shaved nanometer-thick slivers from each of the samples, which she decanted carefully onto the Plexiglas slides.

  "What kind of stain is this?" she asked, handling the small bottle at the edge of the cleared workspace.

  Lucas was watching her closely and typed his response.

  Uranyl acetate. It's a negative stain, good for contrast, which is all we can see without an ultramicrotome. Apply just a drip from the mini pipette.

  "I know how to apply a stain," she said, and picked up the pipette. She'd never heard of a negative stain before and never used uranyl acetate, but his results had been good so, better than anything she'd achieved with a glass knife, so…

  Behind her Lucas started typing hurriedly. She turned back to the screen.

  You're holding it wrong.

  She glared at him. This was too much. "I'm holding it. There's no wrong way."

  Lucas started typing again but Amo stepped in. "Anna," he cautioned gently, "if nothing else, let's believe he's an expert in his field. He's got a doctorate, and what do we have? We can stand to learn something from him, don't you agree?"

  So it began. It didn't help that Amo was right. Her skills as a chemist/biologist were entirely self-taught. She forced any hint of petulance out of her voice, producing a neutral, empty tone.

  "So how should I hold it?"

  With the clamp. You guide the clamp with your fingertips. Even the tiniest motion of your fingers as you drop the stain can damage the samples.

  She took a deep breath. She found the clamp, yes there it was, attached to the electron microscope. She'd always wondered what that was for.

  "And I should mount it first?"

  Mount it, stain it, then read it, yes. I could give you tips on slicing samples too.

  Anna stared at him. The man had gall. "Will I get a reading from my slices?"

  Yes. Not a very clear one. But yes.

  "Yes is enough. I'm not trying for my doctorate right now.

  Did he smile a little? Screw him.

  She mounted the slide. She attached the pipette to the clamp and dripped the stain on. She turned the electron microscope on and the image came up on the screen.

  The results were fuzzy, nowhere near as clear as the slices Lucas had cut and light years away from the clarity of her ultramicrotome-cut samples in New LA, but she could read this well enough to be certain. It helped that she now knew what to look for, and Lucas' negative stain highlighted the contours of each cell with high contrast.

  "Negative."

  There was no sign of the T4.

  She ran the rest of his samples and found them all empty, just like the cells in the textbooks she'd studied, though his retained the small difference in telomerase strand length. After that she ran her own samples; blood, saliva, skin, hair, nail clippings, and found the T4 squatting there as ever, blurry but unavoidable, swimming in the red stain.

  "Positive."

  She ran them all, falling numbly into the highly ordered, clockwork process of slicing, staining and studying. The concentration it required allowed her not to think for a time, and she welcomed it. Dry, simple procedures were safe.

  Amo and Lucas waited until she'd run them all, and she stood between them, uncertain of what to do next. She should be happy, she recognized that dimly, because this meant there really might be a cure, but she couldn't just let her guard down. A cure was a fine thing, if it really existed. Perhaps Amo was right to hope, but guardedly.

  "So you have the cure?" she asked him. "The formula, serum, whatever?"

  There was a pause.

  "No," said Amo, uncomfortably. "Not yet. But I believe he can find it. He's close. There are samples he needs, and he can't get them without your help."

  Amo looked at her plaintively. So did Lucas, and then she saw it all. It didn't matter if both of them thought the cure was real. The fact was, it wasn't real. Not yet. And to make it real meant shifting their priorities, when all they should focus on were the bunkers, and the demons, and survival. They would be coming even now. They had months, not years.

  And this? She tightened her hand into a fist again.

  "The ocean," Amo said flatly. "He wants to go with you after the ocean. To Europe. There are samples within the horde, his people who took different stages of the cure as he developed it, that should hold the key."

  Anna snorted. "And you've agreed?"

  "I've said that you'll escort him. You'll do everything in your power to bring the cure to fruition. It's what we all want."

  It's what we all want. She looked into Lucas' eyes. How could he know what she really wanted? What if his cure was a poison to them? What if all he wanted was revenge? What if his plan was to lead them right into a trap?

  "Anna, can I count on you for this?" Amo asked. Perhaps it was the second time, she wasn't sure. Too much was changing.

  She looked down. Lucas was holding out his hand again. Did they really think she was so easy? Amo always gravitated toward hope; it was his greatest strength, but also perhaps his addiction. He needed it to survive. He didn't want to go on with out it. But hope was a distraction and Anna couldn't afford it.

  She looked at him. She looked at Amo.

  She swiveled and rolled away.

  * * *

  Outside it was a gray day with an almost warm wind. The runway stretched as far as she could see in both directions, gray asphalt of too fine a grade to have cracked yet, scattered with the gritty salt they'd been spreading to melt the last of the snow. There were no weeds here, though the verges were overgrown with crusty brown elderflowers and cranberry bushes, just starting to come back to life.

  These runways too, she wondered, they were another thing they owed to the old world. It was strange to imagine giant jumbo jets roaring in to land, carrying hundreds of people for thousands of miles as a matter of course.

  The world was so different now. In another ten years this runway would crack and they'd have to repair or replace it. Maybe by then they'd have mastered jet engines. She tried to imagine a world that was healed, but it eluded her.

  Millions of people. Billions. It was too big a dream; Amo's longest reach yet. Hope was important, but false hope? She'd grown up with the ocean. She'd marched with them as a child and helped them find their way, and in return they had comforted her and saved the people she loved. They'd saved Amo in Las Vegas and they'd saved all of New LA in Pittsburgh. With her father at their head, they'd saved her from the demon in Mongolia.

  That was real. In a way she loved them. She relied upon them in ways she'd never really thought of before. They were a solid presence, utterly reliable in their calm, placid intent. They'd always been her allies when there was no one else around.

  Now this man promised to cure them.

  She sped faster along the runway, trying to outrun the new reality. She cursed herself as a coward for not killing him, then cursed herself the other way for even thinking that. If he truly had a cure then killing him would be the worst thing she could do.

  She rubbed tears from her cheeks.

  How many more Julios would the
re be, if all the ocean turned back to people? How many more Salle Corams?

  She drove the wheelchair on hard, pummeling her palms and trying to outrun the fear. She'd grown up in their ruins, watching their films and enjoying their achievements, but the thought of having them back terrified her. Beyond the danger that kind of hope represented, there was the fear that she wouldn't belong in their world. She'd be abandoned again, as Ravi moved on to someone else who deserved him better, and Amo moved away with his real family; his daughter and son, and all of them would find a better way to fit in, all except her. The future spilled out before her like a ruined landscape.

  She would be alone. She would become the mad woman in the yacht; roaming the ocean because it would be the only place left where their reach hadn't spread. She'd lie awake at night dreaming of their many hands trying to pull her down, and no matter how fast she raced her catamaran, she would never outrun it.

  She raced on in the wheelchair until she hit the end of the runway at full speed, and it tossed her out onto thick grass, where she lay face down and wept into the earth.

  * * *

  Peters came.

  She sat in the grass and watched him come. He didn't speed up when he saw her. He didn't slow down. He just kept coming, leaning on his cane, clacking smartly over.

  It was raining a little; tiny spots that cooled her skin wherever they touched. The earth was damp under her.

  Peters stopped by the tipped-over wheelchair and gestured to it. "Do you mind?" he asked. His Swedish accent was warm and lilting.

  "Go ahead." Her voice sounded sullen and thick.

  "Thank you." He picked up the chair and lowered himself in, then studied her. "You've been crying. Perhaps you could tell me why."

  She watched him. Tears didn't mean that much, she figured now. There were plenty of reasons, plenty of grief, plenty of anger with nowhere to put it.

  "It's nothing."

  Peters smiled. He pointed at her with his cane. "You're sitting in the grass like a Cabbage Patch child. If it's nothing, what are you doing there?"

  She looked at the grass. It was strange, no doubt, for New LA's self-appointed sheriff to be here, like this. "Cabbage Patch kid," she corrected half-heartedly.

  Peters nodded wisely and leaned back in the chair. "Kid, of course. Anna, do you know, I'm only 44? It probably sounds a lot to you. I once thought I'd have children, before all of this." He waved his hands casually at the world, as if the apocalypse were nothing but a minor inconvenience. "Then I asked Abigail two months into our time together. She almost left me that night. No, I never told you that before. It's painful for me still. She was barren, you see. That's the word, isn't it?"

  Anna nodded. Peters sometimes did this; taking off on a memory or digression. She'd grown to like it about him.

  "Barren," he repeated, as if tasting the word. "Or so she said. We never did a test, and I believed her, though of course I had my doubts. Perhaps she was taking the birth control pill? Could she have lied about that for so long, I suppose so. I did not pry. Perhaps she truly was barren, or perhaps she feared more than anything, the thought of raising a child in this empty world."

  Anna felt the old sadness welling up again. The sadness for her long dead father. For Cerulean. For the little girl she'd once been.

  "It is sad," Peters said, seeing her brimming eyes. "But imagine how long we'd been alone for, and then to find each other? It was a miracle. Perhaps she feared that miracle would never come for our child. What life lay ahead for it, given that one day we would grow old and die? Who would our child love, Anna? Who would hold our child when it was alone, when it was grown? What were we fating our child too, if we persisted?"

  He shrugged. His eyes sparkled too.

  "I chased her down. I killed my dream of that child, Anna, to make Abigail stay, because I couldn't be alone another day. To her it was worse to bring a child into this world than to be alone herself, and I had to accept that. I loved her so much, but I could never forget that. You know why. She saw her love for me as the end of the world. She wanted my face to be the last thing she ever saw, and nobody else."

  A tear trickled down his lined cheek.

  "She got her wish in the end. In Julio's corridor we hung opposite each other. For all the reasons I've hated him, for all the horrors he did to my dear Abigail, I was always thankful for that. I stayed strong for her. Every day, all day, I tried to send my love to her. She felt it at times. At times it was too much. You know how this is, when the smallest piece of kindness makes the cruelty unbearable? Perhaps I was a torment to her. But I never let her forget that I was there for her. I never looked away. I loved her fiercely, and in the end I was there when she died."

  He sighed and rubbed his cheek.

  "I heard you were there for your father. That was a good thing. You had a father who loved you, and you had the chance to find him and show him that you loved him too. That is such a rare thing, it ties you to this world in ways others dream of. It gives you a deep, abiding hope. But Masako didn't have that. Julio didn't. You are lucky, because you do."

  Fresh tears ran down Anna's cheeks, though she didn't know why. Something about Peters; the way he carried himself, after so many horrors, moved her deeply. Perhaps it was simply that he was still alive. Survival every day was a choice, and every day he continued to make it.

  "Cerulean saved me, Anna," he said. "Your second father. He gave me my hope. Now I owe it to him, and so I owe it to you. These words mean things to me. I don't understand what has upset you here, but I want to remember what both of your fathers did for you, at the end. Love that strong is a seed from which many wonders can grow. Here we have the chance at a bright, grand future. I know you see the risks, perhaps more than any of us, but Anna, we must face them or we will simply be the end of the world for each other. You see this, I know."

  He smiled.

  "My Abigail couldn't bear the thought of having a child. I cannot say how much this hurt me, because I loved her so well. To have the one person you love accept such defeat is a terrible thing. To see the hope drain from their eyes, but the soul live on? There is a failure there I never can quite accept. But you? You who were born from your coma into the apocalypse, who never saw the world as it once was, as it is meant to be, how can I expect more of you?"

  He shrugged. "But I do. You will lead these people one day, Anna, and I will follow you. I don't forget my friends, or my family. You saved me when our plane crashed. You saved all these people. These are things to be proud of, so be proud. Be big enough."

  Anna sniffed loudly. Damn Peters. She wasn't even sure what he was saying, what any of it really meant, but it helped. It always did.

  "Like I said, I don't have much to say," he said, and she laughed. He smiled. "Though I think I said the important things."

  She nodded. She must look terrible. She had something ready to say, thank you or some such, but when she opened her mouth to speak that wasn't what came out.

  "I miss him."

  Peters nodded. He spread his arms, and without thinking, without concern that she was no longer a child, she sprang up and embraced him, like little Anna had embraced Cerulean so long ago, and held on as if they were the last two people left alive on Earth.

  * * *

  She rolled into the quarantine ward ten minutes later, where all the others were gathered. Amo was still on the screen, with Lara sitting next to him now, far away in LA. Jake and Ravi stood on one side of Lucas, Wanda and Macy stood on the other, while Feargal was by his head.

  They had a second screen up with a PowerPoint presentation on it. Anna almost laughed. That was Amo, of course.

  They all went quiet as she came in. Jake smiled broadly at her, full of faith. Ravi smiled nervously, while the others just watched, waiting to see what she would do. She'd left in a harsh way. She'd been on the verge of murdering a wounded man and they all must have felt it.

  Peters squeezed her hand then separated himself, sidling over to stand by Ravi, wh
o seemed slightly comforted. This was her family now. She loved the ocean, but they'd never loved her back, and it was time to let go of that childish bond. They followed the T4's programming, and you couldn't love a virus that had killed so many people.

  You controlled it. You used it. You might even thank it. But you couldn't love it, because it offered no kind of future. But a cure did.

  She coughed to clear her throat, then spoke into the quiet.

  "I have conditions."

  11. CONDITIONS

  "We're going there to kill."

  Anna looked around at everyone present, waiting for someone to raise a protest so she could crush them flat. Ravi. Amo. Wanda. They all looked away except Lucas, who gazed at her intently.

  "I need that to be completely clear. Our primary goal is to kill the demons, because if we don't then they'll kill us first. We'll all die in a horrific way, like Cerulean, like Ozark. We'll convert and join their ranks to come finish off New LA. Does everybody understand that?"

  She stared at Amo on the screen, and he nodded. She stared at Lucas but he didn't budge.

  "This is not a game," she went on. "A cure would be wonderful, but it cannot be the priority. Survival is, and for the last three months I've been preparing for that priority. We know that the only way to kill eleven demons is to do it fast. We have eleven windows once we land in Europe, just a few days each. We strike fast each time, we bury the demon with the horde, and we hit the button inside the bunker to shut them down."

  She stopped. They all knew it, but it had to be said again. It had to be said until it sunk in like the T4 bacteria itself. "If we delay on taking even one single bunker, we lose our lead time, and the more time we lose, the more likely we are to be overrun. Our zombie pile will stay in a pile, while the other demons will keep coming. They won't wait for us. The ocean handled seven demons last time, so maybe it can take seven again, but if more than seven demons hit at once? I have to assume the ocean can't handle that. They'll overrun the horde, and we'll all die."