After several minutes of idyllic nature, a craggy old woman's face appeared large across the screen. She had winkle-like eyes which sparkling in the light, full of casual disregard for her fellow man, and Lara barely stifled a laugh as she recognized Cynthia. Her hair was pulled back in a loose gray ponytail and she looked tired, but in a good way, like it was fulfilling labor that had exhausted her. Behind her stood the tall maroon barn with a vivid shock of Douglas firs at its side.
"Anna wants for me to say something, so here it is," she began in her classic mid-Western drawl. "Hello Amo and New LA. I'm sure Anna's told you something on our success. Yes, it's true, we do well up here. The soil's good, the weather's mighty fine, and we've water at our door. The work's hard, but we reap the reward." She hocked and spat something brown off to the side. "On the gifts Anna brought, they're appreciated." She lifted a brown bottle and swigged on it, one of the homebrew beers they'd sent, and several in the audience laughed. Cynthia gave a little smile, as if she somehow knew the reaction this would receive.
"It means trade, and Janine's instructed me to say we'll trade in honey, as we've no shortage of that, plus what other items we have an excess of, like grapes and jam."
She took a breath, as if chewing on what she had to say next, then spat another brown gloop. "That aside, there's still plenty of hard feeling about how you did us, sent us off on our own like naughty school children. It was a hard winter without a crop base here. But folks know enough not to grumble on New LA too much. Janine don't allow it. New start, that's what she's always keen on. And she's good, just like Amo said she would be. Things was poisonous back then, I see that, and probably Janine played her role, everyone knows I've been saying that, it's no secret and I ain't ashamed to admit it, but it's better now, out here in the open, under God's watchful eye. Janine's better too, and it's good Anna's come. I always liked her, yes you, child, one of the good ones. So." She paused and leaned in. "We can trade. Send your goods up when you're ready, and we'll start putting a few things aside. You'll be amazed at how easy it is to raise crops on proper soil, outside of Chino Hills. And that's it. Now, there's cows need milking."
She wheezed up, absently scratched her crotch, then was gone.
Anna spoke as the lights came back on and a few laughs bounced round the room.
"All of them were like that," she said. "They're happy they left, and not just because they wanted to get away from us. Half of them seemed embarrassed, like they wanted to apologize for the choice they'd made." She looked round at the audience. "I think many of them regret what happened, and though they stuck with Janine, they did it with mixed feelings. I think that mirrors what we've felt here, too."
Anna caught Lara's eye before continuing on. "Now I'll hand off to Amo."
She moved to her seat, and Amo stepped up. He held his silence for a moment as he looked out at them.
"I haven't addressed the Council for some time," he began, taking it slowly. "I haven't known what to say." He gave them that same shy, uncertain smile, which just about made Lara's heart melt. The confidence wasn't there, not like it used to be, but the heart was. "We've been through a lot together. We've survived. Now we need to think about the future."
He clicked on the PowerPoint remote and a new slide lit up on the screen, showing a satellite map of California in greens and browns. New LA was marked with a red patch, while toward the top lay the small blue dot of the Willamette Valley settlement.
He tapped the red patch. "For twelve years we've made LA our home. I'm proud of what we've achieved here; on energy, water, food the community. But it's enough anymore." He paused. "We've been living off the past. Every day we take the round trip to the Aqueduct for water, then on to Chino Hills to tend our crops. Our lab is at the University. Our port is down here," he tapped the map, "our airport up here. We live in a world of concrete, using roads and buildings we have taken from the dead, but which won't last forever. Every day we waste time and effort, as well as our dwindling supply of gas, because we choose to remain in Los Angeles, at the head of the cairn trail."
He paused and the audience waited.
"The cairn trail used to be our only hope, but now we know it's not. Anna has brought three bunkers into our peace treaty, and Lucas tells me he is closer than ever to a cure. One day soon those thousands will walk free, and when that day comes, I hope we'll be ready to receive them as hosts. I hope we'll have something to show them that we can be proud of, something we've built for ourselves."
He clicked the remote, and his new blue and white starry flag popped up in the middle of the map, just east of San Francisco.
"Sacramento," he said. Voices raised at once in uncertain, excited muttering. Lara smiled at him. She liked the idea; had liked it since she'd seen some of his sketches of what their new rural township would look like.
"I know many of you may prefer to stay here. New LA is our home, and of course I understand that. But Sacramento offers possibilities New La cannot match." He clicked the slides onward, and the map zoomed in on Sacramento. "On Folsom Lake there's a hydroelectric dam that could power all our everyday needs. I'm certain we can bring it back online." He zoomed the map tighter in, to a stretch of farmland sandwiched between suburban areas. "Here's the Sacramento Airport. I propose we found a settlement nearby. The existing highways would take us back and forth to Witzgenstein in a few hours, much faster than from here. The San Francisco port is here," he clicked to the next slide. "An easy enough trip in an electric car." He signaled for the lights to be put on.
He looked over the audience. "These are all good reasons, but they're not the main thing, which is that Sacramento would be a wonderful place to raise children." His smile widened. "That's what it's all about, right? There we can be the community we've been striving to become. We can make that place our own, and take it forward into the future for generations."
He stepped down, and the conversations sprang up.
They talked for hours, and as soon as the Council broke in the late afternoon the topic spread throughout the settlement like wildfire. Soon all anyone could talk about was the possibility of the move, with some advocating to join Witzgenstein, some speaking up for Bakersfield, or New York, or Seattle or the Mid-West farm belt.
The Council put in place a date for a vote. Trips were hastily put together, taking people out to the proposed locations. There they pottered around and took the air, tasted the water, walked on the roads and surveyed croplands, then returned to make their own PowerPoint presentations, and go back and forth over coffee in the John Harrison, until finally the day of the vote came.
It was a landslide for Sacramento.
Amo looked to Lara, in the crowd as cheers broke out. His eyes were bright and happy.
"I do a mean Sacramento accent," he said. "Do you want to hear it?"
She laughed. This was her Amo. Things were going to be OK.
INTERLUDE 4
Myra was gone.
It didn't take long to realize, and the realization was ashes in Matthew Drake's mouth. Not in her room, not in the lobby, not anywhere. He called her name out over the hotel's unkempt, snowy gardens, down its empty corridors, but already he knew and the knowledge bit into him.
He was a fool.
In the lobby he smashed three coffee tables to kindling, raising them above his head and bringing them down with all his strength on the marble tiles. They didn't break easily, and the violent jolt of wood on stone rising up through his arms was the perfect tonic.
"Bitch!" he took to yelling between every thud and crack, until he was streaming with sweat and his palms were sore and speckled with splinters.
She'd seen right through him, and that was what made him a fool. He'd offered her everything, opened himself up, and this was his reward.
He slumped on a chair and cried for a while, for Jenny and Lucy left so far behind and for himself too, because now he was alone again. It was a cruel, forbidding fall from his hopes of the night before, and she'd caused it.
<
br /> Then he stopped crying and stood up.
It wasn't like on the Summer Wind; it wouldn't take him days to figure this one out. Jenny and Lucy had become the undead, and knowing what to do about them had been near impossible, but Myra wasn't undead and the choice was simple. She was out there still, not too far surely, and the only clear path lay in her wake.
In moments he was out of the lobby.
His sleek black BMW was gone, which meant she was driving it, yet in all the time they'd been together she hadn't driven it once. She'd never siphoned gas to fill the tank, never replaced a battery, never changed a tire, never jump-started the engine from the little generator in the trunk. What did she know about driving in the apocalypse?
He ran out over the castle's white forecourt, tracking the BMW's wheel marks in the snow. They were clear and frosted hard; many hours old. Down the long drive through a tangled grove of dark cherry trees he tracked them, to the road which ran through the forest.
Back at the castle he scoured the parking lot for another vehicle, but every one of them had deep puncture gouges in the tires. As he moved from one car to the next he began to panic. She'd put them all out of commission. They might run, but on flats in the snow he'd be stuck going about ten miles an hour, while she could already be a hundred miles away or more.
But there hadn't been a hundred miles of gas left in the tank.
He checked the lot again and found no signs she'd siphoned a single tank; no telltale oil drips in the snow, no caps left open. The hotel probably had a store somewhere filled with old gas canisters, but would she have taken the time to find them, knowing he was only a few floors away? In her rush to get away, stabbing tires in the dark and cold, still half-drunk from the evening before and fumbling with the keys while the fear of him ate into her, had she even noticed the car was almost out of gas?
He bet no.
She wouldn't have looked at the fuel gauge when she started the engine. The noise would have sounded much louder in the stillness of the small hours, and she would have simply raced away, through the grove and back the way they'd come, afraid he'd wake and come chasing.
He straightened slightly, feeling a warm glow building inside. She had to be afraid, or why else run? And if she was afraid she would make mistakes. In thirty of forty miles the BMW would sputter its last, and then what would she do? Find another? She would be in no mental state to figure out all the steps required. For six months she'd relied upon him to do it all. She'd watched and strutted around lusciously while he sucked on foul-tasting siphon tubes, and shocked himself rigging jumpstarts, and cleaned out gunked-up radiators.
She'd watched but she'd never done it, and would she learn it now, terrified, with one eye always over her shoulder, counting her lead falling away as the sun rose up?
The warmth inside stoked a little higher. He was Matthew Drake, after all, and who the hell was she?
He walked leisurely into the hotel staff areas, opening closets in the garage bay until he found the supply of gas cans and an emergency generator. He fished out the key to a silver Porsche from the valet's cupboard behind the reception desk, proceeded down to the car, and popped the hood. He fuelled the generator, attached jump leads to the car's battery, and revved the starter cord. Fifteen minutes passed, and he smoked a cigarette while the generator thrummed and the battery warmed up and above the castle a flock of starlings flowed like a liquid dream.
This was a good lesson, he realized. Jenny had taught it to him so long ago, but he'd been ignoring it ever since the Summer Wind. A man did what was necessary. When she'd gotten pregnant while they were in their second year at university, he'd panicked. He'd tried to say the baby couldn't be his, got angry, almost got physical, but she'd stayed there with him and made him see it.
She didn't only hit him with the responsibility, though. She also tried to help him see how beautiful their future together could be, and thanks to her persistence and her love, at last he'd come to believe her. He had to take on an extra job so it took an extra year for him to get through university, and she'd had to quit completely, but it was worth it. That was what a man did. He didn't run from his responsibility; he embraced it.
The driver's seat whuffed cold air as he lowered himself in; still pliant and smelling of rich leather despite the chill. The engine started on the second attempt. He turned the wheel and the flat tires responded, angling out of the parking bay. The rubber flop-flopped outside, the car wobbled as the metal rims caught on the deflated tires, and he gave thanks for the snow. It would act as a cushion and keep the rims from cutting through the tires too soon.
He pointed the Porsche at her tracks, riding so low it was comical, and started away.
* * *
Eleven miles per hour was the best he could manage. The dark forests sugared with snow went by slowly, but he found himself enchanted with their mysterious, misty beauty. The day they arrived he'd barely even seen them, so intent had he been on scanning always for people.
Now there was only him and Myra, and he felt more alive than he had in years. The air was sweet and he rolled the windows all the way down to better enjoy it. A brilliant red fox watched him roll steadily by. A deer stood in the road, cantering away as he trundled by.
Around mid-day the odometer showed thirty-seven miles, and that's where he found the BMW; stopped in the middle of the road, the driver's side door hanging open and the battery still beeping its warning chime.
He smiled and got out. Her footprints were a cluster around the hood and the trunk, like confused hop-marks made by a bird, clucking around an egg fallen from its nest, pecking ineffectually, unable to do a damn thing.
He could almost smell her upon the air. Yes, this was better. It embarrassed him to think how long it had taken him to reach this point. Six months of chasing dreams like a boy.
Her footprints led into the forest. There was no hope for her that way. She almost certainly hadn't packed a flint and steel for striking a fire with her. He'd always been the one geared towards survival, carrying those things with him everywhere. About the only thing she always carried with her came in sealed blue foil, and what good would that do her now?
He started out on foot.
Sometime in the afternoon it began to snow, but it didn't worry him. She was a strong woman, fierce and independent, but for the past several hours she'd been walking in circles. Without a compass she had no way to tell direction in this dense, disheveled forest. There were no trails, no open vistas revealing horizon landmarks, only a furrowed land of steep sided ravines, raw basalt rock deposits probably left behind in the last ice age, and a dizzying mishmash of Italian cedar, dark cherry wood and various old-growth oaks.
Here and there she'd discarded things; an empty red water bottle in the snow, a thin pink blanket, left like crumbs for him to follow. The snow fell on his shoulders and through the trees, cloaking everything in a deep, rustling silence.
He heard the stream before he heard her, babbling away to his left. Her footprints, nearly all the way faded now, led down to the water's side, where at last he saw her, knelt by the edge and dipping a bottle through a crack in the leaf-clogged ice at the edge. He smiled. He couldn't resist.
"Myra," he called out.
Her head whipped up and her eyes flared wide, terrified, then she was running and slipping away down the bank.
He walked after her carefully. Where she slipped and bounced off trees, he proceeded smoothly and evenly. She didn't have the right shoes for this. She didn't have the right clothes. Her gossamer gypsy layers, even laid over with a heavy parka from one of the malls they'd passed a month ago, didn't wick moisture the way his Gore-Tex gear did. Her black pumps had next to no grip on the undersides, not like his bulky hiking boots.
She wasn't prepared and she didn't stand a chance.
He next sighted her bent double over a lichen-coated boulder, gasping and hitching up one of her layers to her waist. He waited until he was closer this time, only ten or so yards away with h
is approach disguised by the steady fall of snow.
"Myra."
She let out a shriek, more like a mouse than a human, then was off again. He followed, inexorably, as she stumbled more now, driven mad with panic and fear. She slipped and her face came up bloody off a hard root, leaving a red patch in the snow. Her panting became a constant in the air as he slid along after her, cutting a smooth, perfect path through the treacherous undergrowth, like a shark.
Until his hands fell upon her back.
He didn't grab or seize her, just touched her, and she barked and lashed away. Her feet kicked on the snow and went out from under her, until she was scrabbling backward through the forest. For a moment he watched her, trying to enjoy the moment but suddenly struck by a pang of sympathy. For a time he'd thought he'd loved her, so to see her reduced to this?
"Myra," he said, trying to put some sympathy into his voice. "It's going to be all right. I promise. It's not what you think."
Her eyes bulged and she snarled back at him in gasping Portuguese, such a flurry he could barely make out even the insults. "Idiota-" this and "loco-" that and "vá se foder!" which was about as strong as she got, but it couldn't stop him now, not after they'd both come so far.
Zombie Ocean (Book 6): The Laws Page 13
