The List (Zombie Ocean Book 5)

by Michael John Grist

  "Feargal is unconscious. Peters can't feel it either, perhaps he was desensitized by so much exposure. It has to be you."

  He was looking at her with what could only be yearning in his eyes. Lucas. He was a good man too, she saw that now. He was a thin man. He was worthy of her trust. She gave a small nod and closed her eyes.

  The shield. She thought the words, trying to focus in on that sensation of buzzing she'd felt when climbing down, but it was so elusive. It was everywhere, in the air, and there was no place stronger than another, but then...

  "Command," she muttered.

  "What?"

  Words came fuzzily and she let them out, uncertain if they even made sense. "How many, bunker designs? If this was the first… They had it in Command, in Maine. For a reason. At the top, to reach above ground. Secure."

  "At the top," Lucas repeated, "all right, yes, of course."

  "Near the," she flagged as a wave of dark rose up, "shaft. Chute. Going up. Shield from there. Makes sense."

  "Do you feel it there?"

  She blinked and looked up at him. Now she was on the floor. "Coming in. Felt it coming in."

  "There was a blast door leading away. This one's a maze. Do you think…?"

  She nodded. "Go."

  He pulled back, then hesitated. She realized she was slumped on the floor, legs outstretched, back to the wall. Where was Peters? She turned to the side. He was flat on his back now, next to Feargal, both of them panting short, shallow breaths and covered with blood.

  They were all dying.

  "I can't-" Lucas said, clearly torn. Anna reached for her gun but it was gone.

  "Give me," she said, nodding at the assault rifle still strapped to Feargal's chest. "I can, it's OK."

  Lucas stared at her, at the rifle, then moved. He un-looped it and put it in Anna's hands, then guided her trembling finger to the trigger and rested the barrel grip on her hip, pointing back down the corridor. All corridors now, all contained. She'd die underground, like Julio, like Cerulean, like all the people in Maine.

  That was OK.

  She tried for a smile. She had no idea what he was going to do, but then he was Lucas, and he'd done so much already. A cure. He was like a superhero, the invisible man, moving amongst the zombies with freedom.

  "Go," she whispered. Her head felt too heavy to hold up. The rifle barrel was already slipping down to point at the corrugated metal floor. "S'OK."

  He stood up straight. "In the necks," he said, pointed, then turned and ran.

  Anna watched him go, down a dark corridor and round a dark corner. His footfalls echoed and rang, then the bunker was silent but for the distant thrum of thunder, which could be fans in her RV running, while she nestled up close to Ravi for warmth, spooning her knees into the gap left behind by his, like two curling cats hugging.

  "Let's have a baby," she whispered in his ear, and she felt him smile.

  "Now, Anna?"

  She chuckled, a dirty little laugh that she saved just for him. It meant she hadn't always been cruel, not in everything she did. With Ravi, when they were alone, she had always been different. He brought out the best in her, and she could forget for a time that she'd sent Witzgenstein away and forget about all the dead people she'd killed.

  "A boy or a girl?" he murmured over his shoulder.

  "Both," she answered sleepily, enjoying this moment of cozy drift, floating on the gentle waters. "A boy and a girl, or a girl and a boy. Twins, perhaps. I have big hips."

  He laughed and turned to kiss her. "Perfect hips. Such a face. Wow."

  She nuzzled at the back of his head. He hated it and she loved to do it all the more. He said it made him feel like a cat, which somehow really freaked him out. Excellent. It was these things that mattered, these little things that made them worth saving. All the killing and cruelty was a shell just to protect this soft syrupy center.

  "You need to wake up now, Anna."

  "Hmm," she said, floating happily on his warmth. In their RV, in New LA, it didn't matter as long as Ravi was there. "We'll have so many kids. Enough to repopulate the world. How many do you think we can do, with my big hips and your big-" she cut off and giggled.

  "Anna, really," he chided, in that soft voice that meant he was really loving it. "You can't do that while you're asleep."

  "I'm not asleep, I'm resting my eyes."

  "Sweetheart, wake up."

  "Mmm."

  "Anna!"

  The shout bolted her awake, her eyes flickering open onto the corridor again, and the light, and the figure lurching closer.

  RATATATATAT

  Her assault rifle fire strafed the corridor and the ceiling, pinging off with sparks and further clattering ricochets.

  RATATATATAT

  A second volley drew a stripe across the zombie's chest, cutting holes into the pale flesh that burst out its back in puffs of dust, but not enough to stop it.

  "Anna, the neck," someone grunted beside her. Peters, lying on his back with his hands pressed to his chest, looking so pale, so pale. "Neck."

  The zombie reached down, fumbling at her hair, and she pushed the hot rifle barrel gently into the fold of its throat and pulled the trigger.

  RATAT

  Dust sprayed down and the body collapsed atop her. Beyond it there was another, and she fired. Its neck burst and it fell, and all she could think about now was Ravi, and how much she wanted to get back to him, and all the things she wanted to say. If she closed her eyes again she'd be there, and it was so tempting, but she knew it wasn't real.

  Ravi was real, and he was five thousand miles away. The only way back to him was through this.

  RATAT

  She shot out another throat, and another.

  "Good," Peters gasped and sagged back.

  Another came, then another. The warmth fuzzed at Anna's thoughts but she pushed it away each time, like fighting the tide. More zombies came and she shot them each, so they puddled like rock pools at the corner in a rinse of yellow light.

  RAT

  TAT

  TAT

  The cold crept up on her gradually, so slow she barely noticed it, though she heard the thumps of its footfalls. It didn't mean much over the low rumble of the ocean pouring through. This would ruin Lucas' research, she thought, and laughed. It would ruin her dress and her hair, put into cornrows by Ravi himself. It was just a big syrupy mess.

  Then it came round the corner, a red demon on all fours squeezed tightly into the corridor and shuffling closer, driving a small mob of zombies before it. Its eyes sang like crimson flares and its mouth was a gobbling emptiness.

  Anna laughed. The fear came with it, but she was too tired and broken to care anymore. It padded nearer, so hungry, always so desperate, and she felt again that even this too was a victim; a creature that would never have chosen such a fate.

  Hate was pointless. At some stage all you could do was put the victim out of its misery. She entertained a moment of shoving the barrel in her own mouth and pulling the trigger, but that only made her laugh too. The right choice here was so plain.

  RATATATATATAT

  She unloaded the clip into the demon's face. Bullets raked off its cheeks and eyes beautifully, like a symphony. They caused no damage but they slowed it slightly.

  "How do you do that?" Anna panted. "So impressive."

  The clip ran dry. The demon and the zombies came on.

  Anna laughed, and on the waves of cold came a vision of everyone in New LA dead, blasted to smithereens beneath a great white eye, and that made her laugh too. California was a crater and on came the demon, on came the ocean. She opened her arms and shouted.

  "Come on, you bitch! I'm right here, come on!"

  INTERLUDE 7

  Lucas ran back down the corridor, dodging to either side as the ocean streamed by and the pop of gunfire rang out from behind. There was so little time. He kicked through the doors at the end and emerged onto the encircling gantry, where the waterfall of bodies continued and up above,
through the entrance to the elevator shaft, the demon was even now emerging.

  Massive, red and bent on one thing only.

  No time. He skirted round the edge of the RPG wreckage to a second door leading away from the gantry; large and heavy-looking, like a blast door. He rammed it with his shoulder but to no avail, it was far too secure, probably locked with magnetic bolts like the upper hatch cover. He looked around hungrily, and spotted a security card-reader on the wall and another clump of dead scientists nearby.

  He ran over, scrabbled through their coats while the demon creaked along the walkway above, and came up with a card. He ran back, scanned the card over the reader, and a red light flashed.

  "No," he muttered and tried again.

  The red light flashed once more.

  "Shit!"

  Behind him came a screech of rending metal. Lucas spun and watched the walkway bend as the demon leaped, to fly and hit the warped metal edge of the encircling gantry across its chest. Its legs dangled amongst trailing wires and it scrabbled to get a firm grip on the weakened metal.

  Lucas was running before he knew it, scooping up a metal railing bar on the way, which he then used to jab into a crook of the demon's huge fist as it curled into the perforated metal. He strained back on the bar to pry the demon's grip loose, barely loosening a finger before the metal groaned and the demon snatched for another grip. Its giant fingers stabbed at another patch of the twisted grille-like flooring, and Lucas met it with the bar again, prying away while its face held only inches away from his own, staring blindly with those cold red eyes.

  It shifted, it grunted, but thanks to Lucas it couldn't find a solid grip, as finger by finger he wedged it loose until finally it slipped, and its own great weight dragged it down.

  Lucas stood there panting as it fell into the masses of the ocean below.

  Then he followed it.

  He climbed down over the burst railing, holding to a drooping length of rebar, to drop his feet on the railing one level down. It was darker there, with cables in places drooping from the gantry ceiling, coating the clusters of the dead like shadowy jungle vines. He scanned the walls, here segmented with hatches and access panels, until he settled on a door that ran roughly underneath the blast door above.

  There had to be a way. More than anyone else in his old Habitat, he'd known every pathway through the walls, vents and wiring, and instinct told him there would be some path into the Command module from below, if only he could find it in time.

  He risked a glance over his shoulder and down into the stairwell pit; far below the towering shadow of the demon was already surfacing through the barrage of ocean bodies. So little time. He ran to the door, another heavy metal affair, but this time the security card flashed green and the door's locks clicked. He drove it open and ran in to another dim corridor stretching away and leading down at a sharp angle.

  He sprinted on, kicked through the first door on the left, and found himself overlooking a great, dead jungle in a huge, fan-shaped hall. The floor sank away at an angle that matched the corridor outside, allowing for huge rubber and mahogany trees to scrape the metal-paneled ceiling. Black ivy crept up the walls and a low mass of sapling trunks filled the lower zones, along with the deflated bowls of large brown cacti.

  Everything was dead. The air was arid, dry and sweet with old putrefaction. He searched the dim walls, peering amidst the strangling ivy and up across the ceiling until a flicker of movement and sound drew his eye. Barely visible in the thicket of brown foliage, turning slowly at the mouth of a large but obscure ceiling vent, there was a fan.

  He leapt into the undergrowth, crunching and climbing through brittle dead leaves and sapling boughs. He hit a desiccated corkwood tree and started up, pulling on branches and coarse snarls of wrinkled bark like he'd pulled himself through the Habitat walls. Bits of tree came away in places, revealing rotten pulp beneath infested with wriggling black termites, but he managed to hang on, racing up until he hit the vine-slathered ceiling and the fan was right there before him.

  He punched through a rectangular ceiling panel and twisted it, sending the plasterboard sheet toppling down below to reveal a too-narrow crawlspace stocked with cabling backed by raw cement. He took hold of the metal panel grid, braced his back against the hollow cork tree's trunk, and kicked out with both legs at the spinning fan.

  On the first attempt he missed the broad side of the blade and instead pushed his left foot through, almost cutting his shin open on the sharp edge as it spun. On the second he missed and hit the vent itself, pulling it slightly away from its brackets in the ceiling. He cursed and calmed himself, took better aim and this time on the third blow dislodged the fan from its rotor with a metal-tearing groan, opening the vent.

  He pulled the fan blade out, pushed off the tree and scurried in to the closed, dusty vent. It grew dark in moments as he slithered inward, but he had a clear idea of his relative position. Long years of thinking of the Habitat as a three-dimensional, interconnected maze had prepared him well.

  The vent was snug on his shoulders and he advanced at a silkworm-like crawl on his knees and elbows, sneezing on decade-old dust and ensuring to keep his weight as well distributed as possible. He reached ahead with his hands like feeler antennae, seeking a chute leading up.

  He almost missed it in the dark, as it led off at a curious diagonal, though he caught the breath of falling cold air on his heels. He slid back, then carefully, spreading his weight as smoothly as possible so as not to jolt the old brackets and drop the whole section to the forest floor below, wriggled to a standing position, leaning at an angle into the rising vent. He reached up, braced his hands to the upper walls, and delicately, so carefully, rested his weight on the diagonal slope.

  The thin walls flexed under his weight. Metal brackets groaned, something clicked, and he had time enough for the tiniest of pushes before the floor gave out beneath him. He slipped like the demon, scrabbling desperately for purchase in the diagonal shaft as his legs dropped through and his body straightened out as the horizontal ceiling vent fell away and tumbled to the crusty canopy below.

  He slid, gripping only with his damp palms against the dusty vent interior, bracing so hard his shoulders burned, as the vents crumpled below and his hips slid out of the edge and the metal there buckled, leaving him dangling with his upper body inside the cement ceiling and his lower body dangling below.

  "Shit, come on, shit," he grunted, trying to get his feet up to grip something but failing, trying to latch onto something in the vent but failing. He slid another inch, then another, so barely his torso was still in the vent and his whole body hung below.

  Then he caught it, a cable in the vent. It was thin and fed in through a roughly-drilled aperture, continued a short while, then fed out again like a worm briefly surfacing above ground. He switched both hands to it, dropping another inch, and pulled. It creaked and dropped an inch in slack, jerking him down, but held.

  "Holy, goddamn…" he grunted. He was exhausted already, but none of that mattered if he couldn't make this one, single pull up.

  He pulled. He sucked at the air and pulled, and bit by excruciating bit he slid up. With a tremendous huff he got his belly back on the crumpled vent, inside the cement ceiling, and that gave him traction. He slid further up, in, until he was at last able to brace his knee on the diagonal and shuffle his shoulders higher, and pull his last remaining leg in.

  He lay braced through the ceiling, in the vent, and panted and gasped. Sweet Jesus, he thought. Sweet mother Mary, that was close. All he wanted was to lie there and rest and alternately curse or pray to the gods, but he couldn't.

  The demon had to be back on the top level by now, heading down the long corridor toward Anna. How long could it take?

  He climbed.

  His shoulders and back were exhausted so he enlisted his legs, shuffling and kicking up the slide for a long minute until finally it leveled out. He slithered along smoothly, through dust and old mouse droppings, made a
turn left at a junction, right at another, navigating in the total dark by feel, until the vent began to lighten and he caught the chopping sound of another fan.

  He rounded a final corner and there it was; blades ahead slitting a bright white light beyond into staccato bursts. He raced over and peered through the fan to a large, brightly lit hall below. There was no time and he punched the fan five times until it dislodged, clattering to a hard floor below. He caught sight of desks, a screen, then he flowed his upper body through, taking hold of the vent's lower edge and rolling the rest of his body lolloping out above it. He hung there for a second, examining his landing spot far below, then dropped.

  He hit the floor and tweaked his ankle, but that was nothing. This room was the pay dirt. It was brightly lit by four electric lights standing on desks, illuminating a space much like the Command hall of the Maine bunker. There was a huge blank screen filling one wall with three rows of semi-circular desks arrayed before it, each with its own workstation. Along one of walls there were dozens of gray doors stacked atop each other, while along the facing wall lay six mattresses from the dormitory. Atop the mattresses lay six bodies, each wearing a heavy black suit with a fully sealed domed helmet on top.

  For a moment he stood there frozen, waiting for one of them to rise and take up the black rifles lying by their sides. He went slowly for a weapon at his hip but of course there was none there; Anna had not allowed him that.

  His mind raced ahead, putting together the possible sequence of events that had led to these six bodies being here, to the hydrogen line shift, to the change in expression of the T4, to him standing here now gasping and surveying the space for some sign of…

  What? He didn't know, not exactly, but some kind of device to override the closed emitter they'd found in Maine, something like the solid state scanner he'd adapted with Jake but not the same.

  He sprang up onto a desk and surveyed the command space, looking for anything changed, anything out of place, any sign of which computer they'd used, how they'd done it, where he should begin. Around the motionless figures were many black bags spilling out equipment; lengths of thick red cable, heavy-duty soldering irons, folders fat with papers covered in illustrations, a long device that looked like a metal detector, and a wide spray of circuit boards.