"I've always wondered how your hair felt," Witzgenstein said. "It's coarser than I thought. Rough, like you. But I know what you're thinking. You still think you're superior. You think this hunger strike has any meaning. But Lara, it doesn't. You really are alone in here, while the world's going on outside. Maybe you think Anna's going to zip down out of the sky and save you, but she won't, and when she does finally come, we'll be ready. Someone will guide her in by the nose, just like you've done for Sacramento. We'll have a track ready for her to plow, and if she can't handle it, then she'll end up just like you, broken, in one of these cells until she buckles. It's like a jigsaw, where all the pieces fit together." Witzgenstein prodded Lara's head. "You don't even know the decisions of the new Council. I'm Head Councilwoman, for starters."
Lara couldn't stop herself flinching at that.
"Ah," Witzgenstein said, satisfied. "Not so immune. You feel that. Drake's been elected mayor, a landslide majority. You may also be surprised to hear that Feargal, your loyal dog, is on the Council too. It's a unity thing. He's the closest we can get to you and Amo, and he's doing it clear-eyed. He hasn't given up yet, he still sees a way to make this work. He thinks he'll wield some influence, change the system from the inside, perhaps. Not like you."
Lara blinked back tears. The betrayals kept on coming, but what else did she deserve? This was her stations of the cross. She was Judas and there would be no respite from the guilt ever again. She'd planted the kiss that brought Sacramento in.
"It stings. Good. You don't know what it was like to be exiled. It's a thing you can't ever really swallow. We made a life in the Willamette Valley, a good life, but I never forgot. How could I? My people think I banned talking about New LA out of some desire to drive us forward, but really it's because every time I heard it, or your name, or his, I felt sick with defeat. Defeat, Lara, like you're feeling right now. When Anna came to visit, can you imagine how horrible that was?" she laughed, an ugly sound.
"Ah, I only wish that little bitch were here right now. She'd get crushed just like you, and I'd wipe away the last stain you put on my name. Because you did this to me," she poked Lara hard in the cheek, "so you deserve every inch of this. I was only trying to do the right thing, and what you did to me? It was cruel and unusual. It was un-American. Whatever happened to free speech? People like you, you love to hide behind that constitutional doggerel, until suddenly it doesn't go your way any more. Then you curl up in self-pity and wait to die."
Lara let the tears flow. Let them all be hammered out of her, so she could go to her end dry and steely-eyed.
"Now you're crying? It's pathetic, but I always knew it. I'm a fighter. You're a quitter. Drake told me he didn't even have to do anything to get you to flip. Hit Amo once or twice, a few words, and you turned on your own. That's the worst thing, really. The cowardice." She poked Lara in the soft side of her breast, sharp enough to hurt. "It galls to think I was bested by people like you. But the truth will out. I don't like everything about Drake, it's true, but he's an ordered man who functions on Biblical precepts. I respect that. When he came to us a week ago, I suppose I felt honored that we were first. Of course, what he really wanted was intelligence on New LA. On you. Your movements, your governing structure, the kind of thing that might break your resolve." She took a breath. "I was very happy to help."
She fell silent for a time. Lara lay still, leaning against the glass.
"Not going to say anything?"
Lara said nothing.
"All right. I've been in here long enough; he'll think I've made an effort. So let me give you the best news. I'm not even supposed to know, though I'm Head Councilwoman. Still, what harm is there?" Lara could hear the grin in her voice. "They're building up a new stage. Everyone can see that; I'm sure you can hear it. It should be ready by tonight, for when Tomas arrives. We'll all be together then, for the first time ever, including Drake and his people. All the survivors in the world, except of course for Anna and her little squad. United as one. And do you know what the main event will be, to bring so many people together, E Pluribus Unum?"
Lara had no idea. A parade of children wearing bombs? Another listing of all Amo's crimes, twisted to paint Drake as the hero? Presumably he'd want Lara there to see it. Maybe not at his side, probably her cachet had worn thin already, but definitely in the audience. He'd want that. He'd want her to see, and to know. He loved the stage.
Witzgenstein leaned in closer, and whispered. "I overheard him talking with his people. He thinks the bombed RV wasn't enough. Loyalties run deep, apparently, amongst some of you. They need something bigger. Do you know the story of Guy Fawkes?"
Lara stared out the glass. It felt worse. It was getting worse.
"Drake explained it. It's a British tradition. Every year on the fifth of November they have huge community bonfires, and on the top of those fires they burn the effigy of a man called Guy Fawkes. It's a joyful occasion, they have fireworks, hard toffee, great fun. But who was Guy Fawkes, I hear you ask? He was an idealist by his own description, a man who wanted to better the world by literally blowing up the whole corrupt, lying, manipulative British government. We'd call him a domestic terrorist now, but a man many of the common people would have supported. He was ready, had bombs everywhere under the Parliament buildings, but by chance they caught him, and they hung, drew and quartered him. That means they hung him until he was partly dead, then stretched him until all his joints popped, then they cut him open and took out his insides, all before burning him on a fire. Like they did to Mel Gibson in Braveheart. The Brits do know how to torture. But get this, Lara, because this is the best part. Now people celebrate it. That was five hundred years ago, Lara! For five hundred years they've been celebrating the torture of this poor bastard up and down the country, making effigies and burning him again and again. Just imagine all that joy, all those budding communities built on one man's utter destruction."
She was too happy. Lara felt sick. The numbness couldn't protect her from this. It was horror mounded upon indignity. It was worse than loss of a legacy. It was loss of an entire world.
Witzgenstein took hold of Lara's head and pulled her around, forcing her to look squarely into her eyes for the first time. Her sweet pale face was alive with vicious joy.
"Oh, Lara," she said with mock concern. "What have they done to you? What are they going to do?"
Lara couldn't look away. She could guess what was coming.
Witzgenstein leaned in closer, and pressed her soft red lips to Lara's lips, a crushing, cruel kiss, as if tasting the defeat. Then she rubbed her cheek past Lara's, and touched Lara's ear with her tongue, nestled in amongst her coarse, rough hair, and whispered feverishly.
"They're going to execute Amo, Lara. Tonight."
* * *
She was ready.
The sick panic was a furious ball in her gut, ready to swamp her at any moment, but she held it in position.
Ready to die.
Ready for all of this to end, ready for her punishment, whatever it took to erase this thing called Lara. She didn't want the name anymore. She didn't want the burden of what she'd done.
She just needed it to end.
Panic mixed with fresh waves of heat and cold, churning hotter and colder together, impossibly blending but remaining distinct, like the two shades in a yin-yang symbol, black and white in perfect counterbalance.
She felt like chaos ready to blow. There was so much bile within her, so much fear, hate, misery and pity. She had become a deplorable creature, and Witzgenstein was right, it had only taken a few days. So there was shame too, rolling in the mix, at how weak she was. Guilt. Despair.
Perhaps nothing would change. Perhaps it was a hopeless, cowardly gesture, only words spoken in a dream by a man long dead. Perhaps her defiance was only a dream, and dying could only ever be a defeat, because who got to die and dictate the terms of what came next?
Still there was a feeling that churned and turned like the demon's own hand, rumma
ging inside her soul. It felt like righteous anger, and gave her the strength to hold the churning ball in place as she built up the fire. She stoked it well. So let her be a martyr or a fool.
Outside it grew dark and she focused on the burning ball, born from a childhood of hate; growing up with the lynching in her heart and in her mind, poisoning everything she did. It was those boys who stole her dreams of law school away, though they never knew it. It was those boys that sent her reeling into the fountain at her first interview in New York, and it was those boys that saw her take a job as a barista in a downtown coffee shop, where she met…
Amo. Here the cold met the hot and the two danced, because what was Amo to her but a joy? From start to finish she'd known he was just as damaged as her, if not more so. He had the pick-up lines of a playboy but the eyes of an old, fragile soul, and something in him had spoken to her. In those early moments of weakness she'd come to trust him more than perhaps anyone she'd ever known, and that had led to a beautiful life together, and the end of the world.
The cold and the hot spiraled round each other like a DNA helix. If there'd been no Walter King there would be no Amo, no Vie and no Talia. There was perfection and beauty in that dance between the two extremes. There was power in the conundrum, like a spark igniting wood to burn Guy Fawkes to the ground.
She knew of another man who'd been tortured to death. His philosophies had touted a similar line in seeming hypocrisy; merging a legacy of domination with love and compassion, his words falling like a balm on peoples tortured by centuries of strife. The two forces circled each other and interwove but never blended, and it was the friction that made them strong.
Now that friction made her strong, because she was no longer afraid. Robert had told her what to do, and now she only needed to do it. She was special, had been special ever since she and Amo had changed the world together, and there was no use hiding her light under a bushel. She wasn't immune to the T4. Like Cerulean before her, she'd never been meant to survive the apocalypse.
Tonight her dream would die, and it was time to face her demons. It was time to stand up for what was right, and have faith her small sacrifice could make a difference.
ANNA 4
The last twenty-four hours had been insane.
Anna had slept perhaps two hours, snatched in illicit gulps while they were spiraling round the Bordeaux bunker in the stairs truck they'd lifted from Arcahon airport. They'd tried the cars in the parking lot first, then cars and trucks left lying on the road like marbles, but not one of them had worked.
Even with a fresh car battery and gas keg brought with them from Istanbul, and new tires pilfered from the airport's motor shop, they could do nothing for fried electrics, warped engine cylinders, ice-cracked radiator housings.
Every vehicle was completely shot. It was the way of things now, what twelve years did to complex machinery left out in the wind and rain and sun and snow, so they'd moved to the hangars, of which there were only two. It was a small airport with only a couple of small private jets. In one they found a luggage-hauling electric cart, but there was no hope its toy battery would carry them even as far as Bordeaux, let alone beyond it. In another they found the stairs truck.
It was blue. It had a set of stairs running over its tight cab. It wasn't designed for anything other than functioning as a mobile set of stairs. And yet, perhaps because it was an old model fitted with a standard six-cylinder engine, it had a maximum speed of eighty mph. Thanks to being sheltered in the hangar, its radiator hadn't cracked and the engine firing pins were in good shape.
Within three hours, working with the smooth fluency of a seasoned pit crew, they swapped out the battery and tires, refueled it from the keg they'd brought with them, and got the engine running. Peters had stood before it with Ravi by his side, while Anna and Jake finished up in the engine hutch.
"It is ridiculous," Peters had said flatly. "It is stairs."
"What will the ocean think?" Ravi asked.
"They will climb us," Peters said, with disgust, as if this was a scenario he'd often considered and found unacceptable. "We must do more."
Anna had been inclined to agree, so they dug out a welding torch, a canister of gas, and set to work strapping iron bars into place across the windshield and side windows in a protective grille.
"You can see?" Peters had asked Anna in the front seat, as sparks flew and he welded the first horizontal bar into position.
"Well enough."
"Do we add spikes?"
Ravi at the side, holding the bar in position, laughed.
"I am serious," Peters said.
But they didn't add spikes. As it turned out, there wasn't time, because the first sense of the ocean drawing near hit as they were finishing the grille. Peters called it out, and the last fifteen minutes were spent with welding and last-minute readiness checks, as Jake loaded spare tires into the tight cab and Ravi sounded the airport's gasoline supplies for anything stored well enough for them to take, until-
"Now," Peters had called abruptly from the door of the hangar. "Anna, we go now."
"One minute," she'd answered.
"No, now. He is here."
Peters ran in and climbed into the cab, while seconds later the first zombie followed. It was almost comical but nobody laughed, and they climbed into the incredibly tightly-packed cab in seconds themselves, Anna fired up the engine, and then the zombie hit and started climbing the stairs.
"I told you," Peters said, shuddering.
The truck bolted to a start, coughed twice then accelerated steadily through the hangar doors just as a second floater ran up and flung itself onto the grille, followed by a third and a fourth.
"I can't see now!" Anna shouted. They clung easily to the welded grille and blocked the whole forward view. While Anna drove blindly across the runways, Ravi, Peters and Jake struggled to crack the windshield glass from within, with barely the room available to make a swing. In a minute of meandering they got it done, shattering the glass piece by piece, and then worked to stab the zombie off, and then they saw.
Ahead there was a broad weather front of emaciated bodies running toward them across the open runway expanse. Anna swerved hard and a body flew off from the stairs above, its grip torn away. Off to the right it crunched and rolled on the weed-veined asphalt. Peters looked at Ravi as if to say, 'I told you so,' and even pointed.
Anna veered for the exit road.
"Who's navigating?" she shouted.
"Me," Jake called, and scrabbled for the maps, which were underfoot now and required him to reach down between Ravi's legs. They hit the road and Anna swerved to avoid two floaters who seemed to be tied together by a seatbelt, dragging a worn scrap that might once have been a chair behind them.
"Come on, the intersection's coming up!"
The stairs truck climbed towards seventy and hot afternoon air blasted them full in the face through the open windshield grill.
Anna saw it first. "Oh shit," she said.
"Oh shit!" Ravi repeated.
On the road dead ahead of them, past a left turn coming up fast that led down and around to another elevated route heading off south, there was a demon.
"He's really running," Peters commented.
It was big, it was red, and its arms and legs pumped hard.
"Tell me that's not our route, Jake!" Anna called over the rush of wind and the roar of the old engine.
Jake flustered and crumpled the papers. "I think, I don't-"
"Now!"
"I- yes." He deflated. "It's our route. Take the left turn, we can circle around."
"No time," said Anna, gritting her teeth, and pushed the gas pedal all the way to the floor. The stairs van gave a jump forward and the speedometer climbed over eighty. Another little jolt came and Peters peered back in the rear-view mirror.
"One fell off."
The demon charged. The stairs van charged. Anna cried out until at the last minute she swerved and they-
CRUNKED off each o
ther.
The front fender took an almighty ding, crumpling so hard that the gas keg by Jake's feet was pressed up tight against his shins and drew a cautious shriek. There was a flash of red as the creature was tossed up and to the side, and Anna struggled with the wheel but got it under control.
"Where is it?" she shouted.
Peters and Ravi looked around the cab hungrily, as if they could see the demon through the roof. "I think it's-" Ravi began.
"-on us," Peters finished. "It is on the stairs."
"Shit," Anna cursed, and tried to peer up and out of the grille until the demon's huge palm slapped down across the grille, seizing the welded bars and squeezing hard enough to pull two off their weld mounts.
"Shiiit!" Anna yelled and slammed on the brakes.
The demon flew forward in slow motion. First his elbow advanced into view, then his shoulder, then the rest of his huge red body, heavy and fast-moving enough to rip him off the front along with the two damaged bars and send him hurtling through the air.
The stairs truck squealed and skidded to a halt and the four of them panted while the air filled with the stink of burnt rubber. The demon hit the road hard and smeared, taking a moment to get up.
"Go!" Peters shouted, and she did. The old truck whined up to thirty, then forty, then they hit the demon again, this time flush on the hip with a meaty THUNK as it was getting up, sending it careening off forward and to the side, spinning with its arms outflung like something from a cartoon.
Jake and Ravi laughed. Anna kept the pedal down hard until they were far out of range.
There were no more demons on the road after that, even as they raced through the suburban outskirts of Bordeaux and headed out onto country roads towards the bunker, though they saw them often off to the side, changing course in looping arcs to give chase through the furious green overgrowth of vineyards and olive groves.
Zombie Ocean (Book 6): The Laws Page 27
