18. THE DEAD
Out of darkness hands were dragging her back and there was a-
BANG
of gunfire echoing madly in the contained space, and-
BANG
with shouting as the plain gray ceiling slid by like the cool surface of the becalmed Atlantic, but she wasn't at sea now, she was in the thick of the ocean, kicking at the corrugated gantry grating as it rasped along her back while somebody pulled her away.
"Keep them there," somebody shouted. "I'll try and get this door closed!"
Her vision was foggy, it was so dark in here, and there was a steady-
CRUNCH
CRACK
THUMP
of bodies tumbling down the shaft, interspersed with BANGs and shouting and the stink of cordite in the air.
"I'm all right," she shouted, and the words echoed back to her as if underwater. Somebody let go of her wrist and fired a shotgun from the hip, just above her head, driving the blast deep into her ears and making her head ring.
"Not the door!" she shouted and tried to get up, but there was something wrong with her back and she almost blacked out with a grunt. She flattened back on the metal flooring and instead twisted her head to the side, where two sets of Feargals, or was that Feargal and Cerulean, were prying at the recessed blast door. Peters stood over her with his shotgun smoking, fumbling two new cartridges into the open breach, and here came the ocean.
CRUNCH
CRACK
THUMP
They fell down the elevator shaft like dirty gray snowballs, limbs windmilling wildly and snapping on impact, dry brains dashing out like drought-dust, then rising, always rising. They were a tide and the flood had come.
"Feargal," she shouted, dizzy. "Give up, it won't open. We have to-"
The Feargal that was Feargal turned to look at her just as the nausea doubled her over and she vomited to the side. The Feargal that was Cerulean kept working.
"What's she talking about?" Feargal shouted, as Peters went-
BANG
BOOM
and three zombies toppled with their heads blown clear away, like seed pods split by the wind. Their bodies crumpled onto a heap already several skinny corpses deep, but not nearly deep enough as they kept coming faster.
Anna spat and slurred. She tried to spin the map of the bunker in her head, figuring out where best they should go, but all she'd seen were the dormitories and one radar room, and even now her head was spinning already.
"It's a trap," she managed. "Peters tell him. It's a set up. We can't stay here."
"What?"
She sagged back.
"She's right," Peters said. "You will not move that door. We have to go inside. To the radar room."
A body leaped over the growing pile of its fellows, eyes burning a bright, traitorous white, then Feargal shouldered into it and it hurtled over the walkway railing, crunching off two railings on the way down.
"The radar room's no better than here," Feargal said as he bent to scoop up Anna. Peters fired again but still the ocean lapped closer.
"Not the-" Anna managed, then almost blacked out again as Feargal's grip shifted under her lower back as he lifted her. Something was seriously wrong. "There's a-" she vomited to the side.
"Go!" Peters cried, and Feargal ran, but every jolt of his footfalls made the nausea in her back worse. Something essential was broken back there. How far had she fallen? Clang clang clang went his boots off the stairs, then they were on the square gantry and running for the corridor.
"Wait," Anna gasped, pushing up briefly from the pain. "Use the-"
"We don't have time, Anna," Peters replied as he booted open the door. Feargal turned to edge her sidewise through and she got a clear view back of the ocean pouring in through the open door, their white bodies surging like froth, their bald heads glinting in the dying lights.
This was the end. The ocean would rise up and drown them all, and this would be her epitaph.
HERE ANNA FAILED
SHE LOST HER FATHERS
SHE LOST HER LOVE
SHE LOST HER ARMY
SHE NEVER STOOD A CHANCE
She saw the words scroll across her vision written in leaping gray bodies and glowing white eyes that she'd once gazed into so happily. There was no escape this way; open doorways and bunk beds, it wouldn't be enough. It would never be enough.
The door closed behind her and she croaked again.
"Feargal, stop!"
"I can't, Anna, I-"
With a lurch that almost blacked her out again, she flung herself out of his arms, bouncing off his knees and striking the hard metal flooring with a crack that made her yelp.
"What are you doing?" Feargal said, panicked now and desperate as he knelt to scoop her back up. "Anna, please."
"RPG," she managed to say, patting his back. "Rocket, stairs. Just do it."
His eyes stared blankly, then Peters was hauling him up.
"Come on!"
They left her there and pushed back through the swing doors. Anna saw the ocean already streaming round the gantry, arms out and mouths wide, and Peters threw himself into the thick of them wielding the shotgun like a club, then the door closed.
Seconds passed. There were thumps and two trembling shotgun BOOMs, somebody screaming, then-
BOOM
a huge blast wave blew open the doors and washed over her face as a fireball erupted in the middle of the stairwell. Time seemed to pause and she picked out everything: Feargal kneeling with Ollie's RPG tube on his shoulder, silhouetted against the flames; Peters near the edge of the blast with his shotgun raised high: in the midst of the explosion bodies curling and flying, with metal twisting and orange blooms unfolding like petals in the air.
Then time sped up and bodies smashed off walls and the fireball blinked out like an eye, replaced by a burning white afterimage that hung in the air, superimposed over two halves of the mangled stairwell, now glowing red-hot.
"Help!" came a cry from Peters, on his knees now and wrestling with three gray monsters. Feargal charged over wielding the RPG tube like a pile driver, then the doors swung closed again.
Anna lay back and panted. Sweat drenched her chest and she tried to stand again but the darkness knocked her flat. Through the doors came thumping sounds, and footfalls and unclear shouts. She drew her gun and aimed it at the door, arm quivering.
One.
Two.
Three.
It burst open and Peters raced through, supporting a bloody Feargal around the chest. Behind them Anna saw the flood of zombies pouring off the edge of the ruptured stairwell, through the hole they'd blown and diving to concrete far down below like a furious white waterfall. Some made the leap though, getting tangled in the twisted metal of the stairwell, their skin hissing on the hot outer shreds of metal, but some of them freed themselves and came on.
"Come on," Peters barked and grabbed her wrist, dragging her after him. With Feargal leaning on his one side, bleeding from what had to be bite marks in his arm and chest, and Anna on the other, trying to help by kicking herself along as he pulled, they staggered down the corridor.
Seconds later the swing doors burst open and the first zombie raced through. Its chest steamed from fresh burns, its eyes seared, and Anna sighted down her pistol and fired. Three shots missed. The fourth struck its chest and slowed it for a second, while the fifth punched through its dry throat.
It dropped to the floor, but another followed.
"Get us in!" Anna shouted, unloading six more bullets before finding the throat.
Peters pushed Feargal through the nearest open doorway, dragged Anna too, then dumped them both and seized one of the bunk beds, trying to pull it away, but it didn't budge.
"Shit!"
Anna lay on the floor by the base and couldn't help but laugh. Even in the shadows it was clear.
"They're welded down," she said.
Peters moved to a locker and tried it too, but it was just the same. An
na laughed harder. They'd prepared all right. Their radar bunker was a death trap, and in it she was going to die. Peters glared at her then at Feargal, lying on his back and mumbling something while blood poured from a wound in his chest.
"Do something for him or he'll die," he snapped, then kicked a zombie in the chest.
Anna hadn't even seen it coming, though it was right above her. She tried to raise her gun but Peters was already in the way, hammering the barrel of his shotgun into the zombie's face as it staggered back, cutting double-ringed grooves in its dry peanut head. It fell through the open door and Peters jumped after it into the corridor, stamping on its neck twice before a second zombie collided with him bodily and drove him off to the side.
This was it. Anna raised her gun but there was nothing to aim at and probably no bullets left anyway. She tried to get up but each time the rising dark of unconsciousness drove her back down. She tried to crawl but she was facing the wrong way, legs toward the door, and trying to turn dropped her into blackness just the same.
Peters grunted and thumped and rolled somewhere in the corridor, and Feargal grunted and bled near her, and that was it.
"They got you," Anna said to Feargal, such stupid, pointless last words.
"Ungh," he replied, clutching at his chest.
Another zombie sped by in the corridor. So Peters was first. Anna would be next. Then Feargal. Such was the order of things. She closed her eyes and imagined a different world. The diamond wouldn't help her now, being cold and cruel wouldn't mean a thing, not to an enemy that couldn't know your name, couldn't look you in the eye, couldn't dance on your grave.
That wasn't even her enemy.
It meant nothing, and she laughed. Outside Peters rolled and tumbled and there was a BOOM as his shotgun fired, but already another zombie was rushing by to join the fray. How long would it take for them to reach her? How long for them to fill this bunker to the brim with their thrashing gray bodies?
Nothing meant anything, really, in the face of it. All that effort over Witzgenstein was for nothing. Failure here would fate them all back there, in a few months, in a year. There would be nowhere to hide without the zombie ocean to protect them. She laughed as another one charged down the corridor. The banging and thumping seemed to be moving further down the corridor. Peters was showing them a big time.
The zombie ocean. Her friends. Her army. What a foolish notion that was.
So Witzgenstein would die, just like New LA. Amo would die just like Anna, lying in the dirt while the people he loved and trusted died around him, killed by waves of people they'd both trusted to save them. That was just how it was, and how it had been for Ozark, for Chantelle, for all the people lost along the way. There were no second chances, no time to say- 'Wait, I think I got it wrong, let me try again!'
No. Having diamond clarity meant nothing now. Being the stone-coldest bastard in the world meant nothing if you were dead.
At least she'd be with Cerulean soon. She'd see her father soon.
"Are you going to die first, or me?" she asked Feargal. Another zombie raced by. One of these would come for them soon. BOOM, another shell fired in the corridor. Peters had to be on his knees by now, torn to bits. He was tough but how long could he go on?
"Ngh," Feargal said.
"I thought so too," Anna said, and had a laugh. That was all you had left, in the end, to laugh at the pain. Better to laugh than cry and quake and scream in frustration.
Another zombie rushed by, and another, then finally one turned in through the doorway. It was decrepit and bone-thin, with ragged trails of dark hair hanging like seaweed from a torn-off patch of scalp, revealing yellow bone beneath. Its body was shriveled and sunken like a ghoul, arms out ahead, with several broken ribs and fresh dark burn marks on its hip from the blown staircase.
She watched as it came on. Perhaps she could shoot it, but to what end? There would be more, thousands more, and none of them deserved to die. There was no purpose served by slaughtering one more. It would be vain and cruel, because what were the ocean, but victims just like her?
What point was there in punishing them?
It leapt onto her, with its eyes burning and its mouth wide open, and she didn't move. This was better. It bit into her chest, spurting up dark blood in the sputtering light, then dug into her upper arm, coming out with a chunk of skin, until finally its grinding jaws settled on her throat and there was nothing she could do but laugh.
* * *
San Francisco in the summer was beautiful.
She was five years old again and sitting in the driver's seat beside Cerulean, Robert, her new hero. Her new father. Their RV clattered and rattled and from the tape deck came the sounds of music little Anna had never heard before, something soulful, about a fast car and leaving the old world behind.
"Tracey Chapman," Robert had said, and winked. "I grew up listening to this. She inspired me to dive, you know? When my trainer came and I was on the edge of going into a gang? She told me not to."
Anna smiled back and tried to listen to the lyrics. There was something ethereal and haunting in them. It didn't sound motivational, if anything it was sad, but still she could feel the inspiration in there. This was what it meant to guide the ocean into the water again and again, doing it because it was the right thing to do. There was a kind of love trapped in the song, which amazed her because she'd only ever thought love could be trapped in stories.
She'd heard so little music. Once there'd been a show about some puppets, she remembered that dimly from a time long before, but then the song had gotten into her head after the coma and she hadn't been able to get it out. A week had passed as she sweated and screamed, clutching to her Daddy's arms and begging him to make it stop.
He'd dabbed her hot head in the dark, and whispered soft words, and read passages from Alice until finally the repeated jingles faded away. In the aftermath she'd lain there sweating and terrified, while in the hall outside her mother had sobbed and begged for somebody to do something to make it stop.
Her Daddy had promised he would. He asked her again and again to believe him. That had sounded like 'Fast Car' too. Later that night her mother had come in while she was so sleepy and held her hand.
"You understand, sweetie," she whispered. "I know you do, it's for the best."
She hadn't said anything because the pain in her head was still bad. She looked at her mother's face and tried to understand, but she didn't.
Fast Car helped with that, now.
"I want to help them," she said, sitting in the passenger seat as the road flew by.
Robert turned. He was not her father, but so much about him was like her father. That easy smile almost made her cry. The feeling that, when he was looking at her, she was safe and would never be alone again.
"Help who, Anna?"
His fists were still bandaged. There was a spot of blood on his cheek that he probably didn't know was there, from Julio.
"The ocean. Let them out."
"And can we listen to music?" he asked. "While we do it?"
Anna laughed.
"And see the Golden Gate bridge. I've always wanted to see that."
Anna smirked. "It's just a bridge."
"The greatest bridge. You know they did a diving competition off it once?"
"Who did?"
He shrugged and laughed. "I don't know. Someone."
It wasn't funny but she laughed anyway, but it was funny really. She hadn't laughed once with her father after he'd changed, not in the long walk across the ocean, not in the dreams ever since. This new father was good at that.
In time they saw the bridge. They got out at the edge and walked and rolled as far out along it as they could, until the crashed cars were too tightly packed for Robert's wheelchair to go past. The bridge was a deep red metal, like blood. The sky was a big blue, the ocean too, and the city looked white and clean across the bay.
Robert rolled up to the edge and looked out over the water. Anna stood by him and
held his hand, rubbing her fingers over his bandages, even though she knew it had to hurt him. It was important to feel that, because he'd done it for her. It was important to remember these things.
"Enough?" he'd asked, eventually.
She hadn't minded. She could have watched the city all day standing there beside him. Nothing moved, and that was beautiful, except the few high drifts of clouds. Looking at the world like that, it was easy to imagine she was Alice and he was the Cheshire Cat or the Mad Hatter, always beside her. There may be a Red Queen or a Jabberwock somewhere out there, burning in the dark of her dreams, but it wasn't here.
Here it was just the two of them.
She nodded.
"Ice cream?" he asked.
She laughed again. He was silly. There was no ice cream left now, everyone knew that. It had all melted.
They rolled off. For a week they spent their days listening to music, not only Fast Car but happier songs too, some full of nonsense by someone called Bob Dylan and others full of flashing rhymes by all Roberts' favorites, like OutKast and Green Day, while they set the ocean free.
They smashed windows and forced doors with metal rods. They pried cars open like sardine cans and let the ocean go, enjoying the attention they got and all the hugging that followed. In those days she didn't think about her father with any sense of guilt. The ocean being so near kept him close to her, and the ocean seemed to have no end.
Of course, that changed. The ocean faded, over the months and years that followed. That childlike sense of connection bled away, until all she was left with from that heady, wonderful week with Cerulean was Cerulean himself, and the flash of her father's dot in the Hatter-tracking app in his phone; both reminders of the things she'd left behind.
Now even those too were gone, because both her father and Cerulean were dead, killed by the demons of a dying civilization, and now she was going to die too.
INTERLUDE 6
Lucas was going to die.
He stared as the demon rose and took a first step toward him. He flinched as it took a second. So this was it. This was his end. Whatever had happened, whatever trigger had been broadcast across the hydrogen line, the path now was clear. He wouldn't save a damn person, not Farsan or any of his friends lost in the Habitat, not any of these new people he'd come to feel some affection for.
The List (Zombie Ocean Book 5) Page 22
