She paused. "And that's if we're lucky. If we're unlucky, and it turns out each one of those demons has managed to infect and convert six other survivors in the three months since they were released, then we might die on the very first wave. We might not even get to the first bunker. And there's nothing we can do about that."
She paused again, waiting for the immensity of the odds against them to really take hold.
"There are so many ways we can die. We need to all be one hundred percent clear that this mission is first and foremost about our immediate survival; as a group, as a community, as a race. A cure is an excellent second target, but a serum in a syringe is no good to us if we're dead; and the schedule is already impossibly tight. We don't know what conventional weapons they will have. We don't know how long it will take to blow them out of their holes. We can't expect them to open up and let us in like Salle Coram did."
She let that hang. She'd been planning the logistics of this blitzkrieg assault for months; constantly honing the weight load they could carry with them on their two planes, researching supply dumps across Europe where they could gather the extra fuel, vehicles, explosives and munitions they would need, trying to make the schedule fit within the bounds of what was humanly possibly.
"If we make just one slip up, or just one bunker is not in the place we think it is, or the defenses are stronger than we expect, or the earth is too hard to blast into, or the demons have stumbled upon a large survivor settlement, it will fail. There's barely any slack at all. A cure would change all our lives, but it won't do a damn thing in the face of a demon stampede."
She strode over to the whiteboard, then painstakingly rubbed out all their notations. It looked like a lot of biological terminology and cell maps sketched out by Lucas. It didn't matter. Amo started to object but fell silent as Anna kept on until the whole board was clean. Then onto the white she sketched a rough map of Europe and Asia. She'd been studying this map until her eyes watered since Salle handed it over three months ago, trying to calculate the odds.
"I estimate that once we make landfall here," she tapped a spot in south-western France, near to bunker #1, "all the nearby demons will come for us. How many is that? The bunkers are spread out pretty evenly, about one every thousand miles from west to east, so at first it'll be one, then another and another after that, if they can sense us that far away. Peters, you stopped sensing the ocean when they crossed the Atlantic mid-point, correct?"
Peters nodded.
"That's about a thousand miles. I'm assuming they sense better than we do, so I'm expecting a steady stream of incoming demons. We know they run fast; that means one hitting us every few days. The schedule will be punishing, as we keep moving on to the next and they keep coming for us. It's a systematic extermination, and we have to sweep across the world like a wave."
She took the eraser and ran it from France eastward, erasing the bunkers one by one in a long unbroken line. "Like so, finishing in the far east." She slammed the eraser on the board for effect. Ravi jumped. "But you all know this. I've told you. And you want me to add Lucas into that."
She turned to him.
"He talks about a cure, but he doesn't have one yet. It's in his cells, but he can't get it out. He needs us, but he wants to pretend it's the other way around. He wants me to pick out sixteen people, his experimental samples, in an ocean of over a hundred thousand, just so he can try to understand the cure he's made. It's a pipe dream on top of an already impossible task. So let me be perfectly clear."
She looked around again. You could never have too much looking around and weighty glaring. She'd learned that from Witzgenstein's trial. "If I take Lucas with me, on my expedition, it will be with the understanding that his cure is a secondary, expendable target. Mine is the primary, and if any sacrifice must be made, it will be his." She turned on Lucas. "To that end, you will do exactly as I say, when I say it. I don't care if you think I'm incompetent. If I think for one second your experiments are putting us at risk, I will end them. If you get in the way of that, I will end you. Is everybody clear on this? Can everyone accept these conditions?"
More glaring.
"It's clear, Anna," Amo said. "I agree with everything you've said. You're right. Survival first and the cure second. Take the demons out. If there's room to save the bunkers, do it. I trust your judgment completely."
Anna extracted a nod or a similar acceptance from every other person in the room. Last she returned to Lucas. She'd almost killed him twice now. He had to know she was serious. He started to type.
I survived for this reason alone.
I mean to save the human race from itself. To do that I need to be alive. I accept reality. I accept your conditions, Anna, as long as you accept mine.
More glaring. It did the soul wonders. "What terms?" Anna asked.
That you try. Honestly, earnestly and as if you want it for yourself, you try to make room to save these people. You try to see the cure as the ultimate best path to survival, because even with the demons all dead, without the bunkers, what are we?
He took his turn to glare around. He made it softer, though, and welcoming. To Anna it was a punch in the eye.
Nothing. Nobody. With 41 people, with Witzgenstein gone, with so few left to join you yet from the wider world, this community will wither out in two generations. It's not enough people, not enough genetic diversity, and you can trust me on that as I've studied this exact field extensively. It's the reason Lars Mecklarin wanted me in his bunker at the beginning. Even if you do try a cross-breeding program, mixing the least-related chromosome sets against each other multiple times, in a baby-a-year drive where every woman is pregnant on a loop, you'll wither out in genetic malformation. You just don't have the genetic range.
His clacking on the keys faded briefly as he met Anna's eyes.
Your work is necessary, I accept that, for the immediate survival of this group. But immediate is nothing, Anna. For the survival of the group in the long-term, you need more. Are there enough others out there in settlements waiting to come join you? You'd need at least a hundred genetically viable male-female pairs to achieve that, and I doubt they're out there, not now with the demons on the loose. Any remaining survivors won't know what hit them.
No.
Our only hope is converting the bunkers, and perfecting the cure so we can bring them out. Without that, we may as well call game over right now. New LA will die on the vine. Your children and your grandchildren will be the last recognizable humans to walk the Earth, before genetic deformation turns us into monsters. It's not enough just to survive the threat, Anna. We have to survive the peace that follows.
He stopped. He glared. Anna's lips pulled back from her teeth in a snarl.
So I accept your conditions, if you accept mine. The demons have to die. We have to survive. But so do the bunkers. We have to do everything in our power to convince them to push their own buttons, and kill their demons themselves. We have to keep them alive, because we need them.
Can you accept my terms?
Anna's face got hot. Everyone was looking at her. Worst of all was that he could be right.
It was possible. For ten years they'd pinned all their hopes to Amo's dream, of cairns and a united world and enough people pouring in to New LA to keep the human race afloat. Informally they'd encouraged people to marry and have children, building a generation to lead the way forward, but in spite of that New LA only had six children. One of them was Lin, and he was gone now.
There had been thirteen couples in the community before Witzgenstein took three of them. Now there were ten. Even if they could somehow arrange a gene-swap arrangement with the Oregon settlement, it still wouldn't be enough. Amo's dream had been his Ragnarok IV video, enough of a draw to bring the rest of the world to California.
But now there were eleven-plus demons on the loose in Europe, vacuuming up any remaining survivors. They wouldn't be coming to New LA now, not as humans anyway.
It was a strong, undeniabl
e argument.
But at the same time, she couldn't just trust Lucas. They didn't know him, didn't know what he wanted. He'd lived through the extermination of his people; who was to say this wasn't going to be his revenge? Who was to say he hadn't already coordinated with another bunker in Europe to lead them into a trap? Who knew if he had even found a cure? Perhaps he was just a different kind of immune. There was no way to say for sure. Even if he had somehow cured himself, there was no guarantee he could do it again, or that his cure wouldn't end up destroying their own immunity.
It was always at these moments, when they were so hungry for the shining dream to be true, that they made a leap that was a leap too far. Julio. Witzgenstein. Now Lucas.
There were too many variables. Too much risk. Trusting him could lead her people reeling into the void.
"No," she said.
Amo twitched on the screen.
"No, I don't accept your conditions. No, I don't trust you. No, I don't need you. No, you can't come with us to Europe, and you won't have a chance to find our cure, or save the world, or whatever other grand dream you have, if you don't accept my terms without conditions of your own. The people of two generations time can look after themselves. It's my job to look after these people now. Accept that or stay behind. Which is it?"
Glaring. Heat. He hated her? That was great. It would make it easier.
I accept.
Anna nodded. Good. Bad. Things would only get harder from here.
ODYSSEY
12. LANDFALL
They overtook the front wave of the ocean around five miles after it made landfall on the southwestern coast of France, marching through endless fields of tangled green vineyards and heading broadly for Bordeaux, and beyond it bunker #1.
The horde's front line looked to be a sprawling mile or so in width, and stretched lengthways back into the Bay of Biscay; scattered and fragmented after the travails of the sea. The bunker zombies, once so plainly plumper and ruddier than the skeletal, bone-white veterans from Yankee Stadium, were now indistinguishable. En masse they looked like an undead army.
Nobody cheered. The cabin of the Pilatus PC-12 was frosty and silent as they flew by overhead, haunted by the one person who wasn't there.
"You're not coming."
Only twelve hours earlier she'd said it to Ravi. His absence now was like a black hole, sucking out any relief she felt at seeing the ocean again. But then this wasn't about relief. It wasn't supposed to be pleasant to kill thousands of people. It wasn't comfortable to come here and stare down the line of eleven bunkers, with each one promising more horror, more loss and more crippling weight on her soul.
Jake in the copilot's seat hadn't met her eye the whole journey. Lucas in back had been silent. Wanda and Macy spoke only in hushed whispers. So the Atlantic had passed.
"I can't lose you," Anna had told him, on the runway just hours before they were due to embark. It had burned within her for days, as they drew closer to the date. Watching Blinky and Sergio drift closer to landfall had become a terrible countdown in her chest, mounting the pressure.
It would change him, and she didn't want him to see those things, to feel responsible for them, to watch her do them and order others to do them. Murder, genocide, cruelty. He'd seen her with Lucas, he'd heard what she'd said about her priority, but he still didn't feel it. He didn't know about Maine.
But if he came with her, he would. He would feel it, and know it, and finally see her for what she truly was, and that she could not allow. He was the warm breath on the back of her neck, the kind soul who wouldn't hurt a fly, the reason she had the strength to do these things. Without him?
"Because I can't lose you," she'd said, and he'd thought she meant him dying. She couldn't tell him the truth, because the truth was so much worse. She was protecting his gentle soul, and so protecting herself, keeping a reason to come home as whole as she could.
He hadn't taken it well. Right up to the plane he'd pleaded with her, but no matter how much it hurt, she couldn't relent. What was the point, if she lost him, or he lost who he was in the war? She'd hugged him, and kissed him, and tried to explain, and at the end he'd stood looking broken on the runway while the cabin door closed.
They took off and left him behind. Probably he was well on his way back to New LA now, driving alone. Perhaps it was a mistake. Maybe he would hate her forever now, for taking away his right to defend New LA, but what else could she have done?
Already she'd thought about him enough; every moment of the flight so far plagued with indecision. Ought she go back and pick him up, bring him along. But she hadn't, and there was a mission ahead now. She blinked and looked down.
Relief aside, it was good to see the ocean. That was something to focus on. They were a solid, anchoring presence below; the movement of their bodies rippling like the glint of sunlight off waves. They were always there, and now they would do this thing together.
She clicked the radio on, reaching back to the P-180 Avanti cruising a mile behind.
"Peters?" she asked. "What can you tell me?"
"No change, Anna," he came back. "The nearest demons are miles away, a cluster of two or three, I'm not sure. Perhaps a day's run to the east."
That was good news, at least.
She turned in the cockpit to face Wanda. Wanda was a big girl, easily one hundred sixty pounds, and most of that was hammer-throwing muscle, though she still bore the signs of Julio's abuse. A scar on her cheek. A tendency to stammer her words. A sensitivity to being touched.
"A day, two or three, to the east," Wanda confirmed. "J-just like Peters says."
Anna nodded. Lucas glared at her with dead eyes from the back, squashed in next to the electron microscope. He had fought long and hard against this plan, arguing they had to give the first bunker the first chance, but Anna hadn't listened.
There wasn't time. There wasn't room for mercy. It was happening this way.
In ten minutes they were above Bordeaux, circling long and low enough to take in the lay of the city. It was a beautiful, classical beige and green metropolis, nothing like the modern urban sprawls of America. She'd flown over so many on the exodus to Maine; all sparkling glass, vast desert parking lots, inert black roads and lead-lined roofs. Bordeaux was a class above that; a vision clothed in sandstone and marble, where even the roofs and roads looked finished to a high polish, despite the ten years they'd lain neglected. Huge green spaces dominated large swathes of downtown, clustered to the banks of the broad Garonne river.
She'd studied it months ago, looking at photographs downloaded from CD encyclopedias until all the city's major arteries and esplanades were burned into her mind, seeking out a reliable supply depot. This huge rectangular square was the Place de Quincunxes. Here was the Bordeaux cathedral. There was the port, once a big contender, until she'd settled on the military base in the north bend of the Garonne. Banking in a tight spiral, Anna could pick out the short airstrip, the squat hangars, the triple layers of razor wire fencing.
Everything they would need.
"It's good to be home," said Peters over the radio.
Anna didn't bother to remind him he was from Sweden. Banter didn't feel right. If he felt good, that was good.
"Can you land there?" she asked. "The runway looks short."
"On a dime."
"Then do it. You know what comes next. I'm going to circle over the bunker mouth."
"Radar," Peters replied, starting down a list they'd been over a dozen times before on practice runs and raids. "Narrow and broad. Stay above ten thousand feet. Get your flares ready and keep your course unpredictable."
"Roger that," Anna said. "Entering radio silence. See you on the ground."
She clicked the hiss of the radio away then pulled back on the stick, starting the ascent. Her stomach lurched as the plane tipped upward, pointing at cloudless blue spring sky. The dial clicked over steadily as they climbed hundreds of feet.
Beside her Jake worked the controls, bringing up th
e broad and narrow-gauge radar arrays he had fitted to the Pilatus' fuselage. The broad range gave a standard rotating radar, good to detect everything of any size on a similar horizontal plane to them, while the narrow-gauge was more precise, didn't rotate, and pointed in one direction only.
Up.
The drones from Salle Coram's bunker cruised at altitudes upwards of 20,000 feet, and typically carried up to a ton of gear, with the capacity for six Hellfire air-to-air and six Griffin air-to-surface missiles. Call that twelve air-to-ground missiles, each capable of killing all of them several times over. That was the reason she'd labeled assault from the sky their number one threat.
If there were drones up there, they had to be taken out first. Her job was to locate them. It was Feargal's job to take them out, using the battery of surface-to-air missiles they'd brought in the back of the Avanti.
Five missiles was all they'd been able to carry. Salle Coram's hangar bay had had space for five drones, and they anticipated the same for the Bordeaux bunker. Such were the calculations they'd had to make. If they'd dumped Lucas and the electron microscope, perhaps they could have squeezed six, but Amo had been adamant that Lucas join them.
So five it was. No room for error. No room for carry-over to the next bunker. Everything from now on was to be done with the strictest economy and speed.
The GPS pinged for five miles out. Approximately fifteen miles northeast of Bordeaux, in the middle of a lush green vineyard with only a few farm buildings spotted through the vines, lay bunker #1. Salle Coram's notes, inherited from the true commander of her bunker, described a four-floored, triple-pour cement construction here, with its own hydrogen line shield, proof against bunker buster bombs, zombies and demons.
Not against her.
The List (Zombie Ocean Book 5) Page 14
