Vito considered this.
“So we don’t kill people on our way out?”
Brock glanced at Peter. “Him, maybe. Nobody would be too pissed off if he died, and with Marshal in our possession, it would show that we’re serious.”
“Smart,” Vito said, nodding. “Kill the banker. Might even make us heroes.”
“I am so happy I tagged along,” Peter grumbled.
“Gentlemen,” Marshal said in a warning voice.
“Right, right,” Brock said, looking over at Vito and pointing a thumb in Marshal’s direction. “Marshal’d be pissed. So no killing the banker. But even then, with a set of wheels, we head to the perimeter and-”
“We become pirates!” Vito exclaimed.
“Oh! Fuck yeah!” Brock said. “We chase down other shitmobiles and take their booty ‘n shit! Then we go back to our hideout and live like kings.”
“Yeah,” Vito chuckled. “Except…”
“Yeah,” Brock said, putting an arm around Peter and looking down at him. “Except. We owe our lives to the Son of Winter here, Hanson, and there is such a thing as loyalty among thieves. He might be a skinny little shit, but the way I see it, Marshal’s got the soul of a biker. He’s fair, stone cold deadly with a gun, and I’d be proud to ride with him. I am proud to ride with him.”
“And the fact is,” Vito added, “in case you hadn’t noticed, the world kind of sucks out there. Leave? Why in the fuck would we want to do that?”
“Look at what we got here,” Brock said. “There’s food and water and television and movies and shows. We got warm beds, doctors, safe walls, and a future. Sure, the Captain can be a bit of a prick sometimes, but at least he’s treating us like men ‘steada animals, which is probably better than we deserve. I do my bit for King and country, and I’ll see the day when I’m a free man with back pay. And there’s this little blonde girl from the university that thinks I’m a hero for when I risked my ass to save her.”
“And have you met Luca?” Vito asked. “He’s the fucking second-in-command here, and he-”
“Valerie,” Marshal interjected. “Valerie is second-in-command. Luca is… well, he’s Luca. He’s my brother.”
Brock and Vito exchanged glances.
“Whatever,” Vito said. “The point is that there ain’t nobody judging Luca ‘cause he’s an ex-criminal. He’s, like, a hero to these people. And that’s what I want to be.”
“Like I said,” Brock said, releasing Peter as the doors slid open. “Can’t see the upside. This is home. You know how the Angels first started out? They were World War Two pilots that came home and wanted to stay free. Well, the war is back on, and these are my people now. I’ll do whatever I gotta do to protect them.”
“Fucking A,” Vito said, as they stepped out of the elevator.
“Very enlightening,” Peter said, following them.
Outside the elevator, he paused, his gaze flickering left and right.
There were well over two hundred people milling about, waiting for their arrival, and Peter wondered if the entire population was here. It was a little breathtaking, considering the state of the world beyond these walls. He saw many faces that he recognized, and many more that he did not. Torstein stood with his work crew near the center of it all, just in front of a long, barren hallway that was stained and ugly. Luca stood with Jerome and Cesar, talking and making wide, animated gestures with his hands. God was surrounded by a crowd of listeners, all of whom seemed raptly engaged in listening to some story he was telling. Not far off, Scratchard stood watching God’s popularity with a sour expression.
Peter felt uncomfortable. All his former followers coldly avoided his gaze, as if they did not know him. Others glared at him openly, the hostility plain on their faces, and for the first time he was grateful to have Brock and Vito hovering near.
Peter clenched his jaw and pushed emotion aside, regaining his composure. Straightening up, he kept his expression neutral and refused to look weak. He was Peter Hanson, by god, and he would not be intimidated.
He was not surprised when Valerie, sharply dressed and looking fantastic, extricated herself from a conversation and moved to stand close to Marshal’s right elbow. She whispered something into Marshal’s ear, and he nodded.
“Hello, Peter,” she said, turning to him with a sweet smile. “You’re looking well.”
“Thank you, Ms. Hunter,” he answered stiffly. “As always, you look beautiful beyond words, outmatched only by the sparkling quality of your facile mind.”
“Why, Peter,” Valerie said with a hint of a disapproval. “You appear to be suffering from a case of being absolutely correct. I hope it’s not serious.”
“Only if truth is a disease, my dear lady,” Peter answered. “I was soundly defeated by you the last time we met. I’ll not fail to acknowledge your gifts again.”
“You are eloquent, I’ll give you that,” she laughed. “But as much as it pains me to tell you stop-”
“EVERYBODY SHUT UP!!” Luca bellowed suddenly.
“...we’re about to get started.”
“Really?” Peter whispered back to her. “How can you tell?”
Her eyes sparkled back at him as the room quieted, and Marshal stepped forward into the center of the room.
“Hello everyone,” he called out, turning slowly so that his eyes could sweep them all, one by one. “For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Marshal Einarsson, and I…”
He paused. A light applause had started up, gaining volume at the mention of his name. Somewhere, a male voice shouted out ‘Marshal!’, and then the cheering and applause drowned him out.
He let it go for a full fifteen seconds, looking amused by the adulation and glancing back at Valerie for support, only to see she was applauding too.
He raised his hands, and the noise dwindled.
“Thank you,” he said. “I can only say how glad I am to see all of you as well, here and alive. I’d tell you why, what it was like to go from believing that I was the last man in the world to seeing almost three hundred faces looking back at me. But you all have your own stories, your own tragedies. We are all survivors of the worst holocaust to strike humanity since before the dawn of history.”
He held both hands out and slowly turned in place so as to encompass the room in a gesture.
“Look around. This is your new tribe, your new family. These are the only people left anywhere with an interest in keeping you alive. Focus on this truth. Accept it. We have nothing else! If it was ever true that we - as a species - spent twenty thousand years perched atop the food chain, it certainly isn’t true any more. I’m not talking about the undead. I’m talking about rats, coyotes, reptiles, deer, and every other animal on the planet that will strive to take our place. Our success, our day of dominating this world, is over. If every zombie in the world were to disappear tomorrow, we might still find ourselves pushed into obscurity by a competitive ecosystem. We are broken, and we will only thrive again if we obliterate our internal rivalries and live to empower each other. If your neighbor is strong, you are strong. If they are weak, you will perish, and take the whole of human history along with you.”
The silence was total as he looked around at the crowd.
“We used to know this,” he said. “Our ancestors knew this, but somewhere along the way, humanity forgot. Maybe it was when we rose to prominence and found that there was nothing left to compete with except each other. Our capacity to organize, to work together, built this wonder we call civilization. And in its warm, secure embrace, in this magical, safe environment that we created, we remembered and romanticized our latent savagery. It became the exotic side of ourselves, our heart of darkness, our lord of the flies. And we came to believe, against all the evidence, that it was our natural state. Without civilization, we would say, we would break apart, turn feral, and fall upon each other like the animals we were. That was truth, we’d say. That was all we were. And we would point wisely to examples of human cruelty, as
if this was some kind of proof. When we pictured the arrival of a day like this, when we envisioned an apocalypse, it always contained rape gangs, cannibalism, savage violence, and acts of broken inhumanity.”
He made a fist, and his eyes narrowed.
“But we are not mindless animals,” he hissed. “We are not ruthless monsters. We’re not angels, but we are the only species who invented the idea of angels as a moral reflection of the beings we wished we could be. We invented morality, not so that we would have some intangible concept to discuss while butchering our neighbors, but because it was an expression of the world we wanted to build. We created law as a means of interpreting that dream, justice as a way of defending it, police to enforce it, and prison to separate out the very animals we saw in ourselves.”
He smiled. “Case in point, the Winter Bastards.”
“Are you saying we’re animals, Marshal?” Brock shouted out over the low-level laughter.
“I am, Brock,” Marshal shouted back. “And I’d appreciate it if you’d stop leaving knuckle trails in the floors. We’ve had complaints of children tripping over them.”
Grinning, Brock held up a middle finger even as the laughter grew.
“But seriously,” Marshal continued. “Even the Winter Bastards prefer a world where they don’t have to be animals. Ask yourself: who wouldn’t? They committed terrible crimes against some of you, and a few of them have a long road to walk in order repay their debt. But their redemption is our redemption, something that our society needs very badly, and we all have a stake in it. Whatever way you look at it, we are all on the same side now. Whatever you were before the apocalypse, rich or poor, male or female, black, white, asian, gay, straight, religious, atheist, smart, dumb, imaginative, libertine, pragmatist, cop, criminal, socialite, introvert, or autistic… we are as diverse and enigmatic as the stars in the sky… and we are the only ones left.”
“But… we don’t know that!” Albert suddenly blurted out.
Marshal turned towards him, and the young man looked embarrassed.
“Sorry, Marshal,” he said, feeling hundreds of eyes on him. “It’s just that… well, we survived. Why not somebody else, somewhere else? Like down south, where there won’t be a winter. Look how many people we’ve found. How do we know-”
“It’s a good point, Albert,” Marshal interrupted, “and I’d like to thank you for bringing it up. The answer is… yes! There are undoubtedly people still alive in the world at the moment. As a species, we are versatile and clever, much smarter than the creatures that hunt us. And, yes! There is hope that somewhere, there are other communities like ours hanging on by the skin of their teeth. So why am I talking as if we’re the last people on Earth?”
He looked around to see if anyone had any answers.
“The truth is,” he said, “we got lucky. The odds of winning a lottery are over a million to one, but someone used to win it every week. My apartment, my situation... it was like winning the lottery. It’s not impossible, but I don’t think we can count on anyone having the same arrangement of improbable conditions.
“Think about it. A weird twist of fate gave me a home with no doors and windows, a supply of food, electricity, water, and the means to observe my enemy without being seen. From this I was able to design strategies and tactics that few other people would have had the opportunity to come up with, and even there, I was lucky. I just happened to be an electrical engineer, capable of building automated systems like manned and unmanned junkmobiles, surveillance networks, solar arrays, wi-fi towers, and custom drones. And it just so happened that my apartment doubled as my workspace, so I had all the materials I needed.
“Luck. It was luck that helped us survive that first dash through the rain that saved Angie’s life, luck that my best friend survived and happened to have the skills at building cars that I didn’t have. It was against astronomical odds that we would find the talented people that we did: an administrator, a soldier, a skilled tradesman, a software programmer, a school teacher, a hydroponics expert, a world-class scientist, a doctor. The schools and institutions that produced these exceptional professions will never graduate another student, yet somehow we unearthed them, like artifacts in the ash. Consider that, when we found each person here, there wasn’t one of you who wasn’t dying of starvation, or running out of food, or hopelessly trapped, or sick and injured. Had this community not found you, with all its lucky breaks, you would have died. If I had not helped to build this community, I would have died. I might have lasted longer than the rest of you, but the end would have been inevitable.”
His eyes searched out Angie, seated in a chair beside Luca.
“And if it hadn’t been for Angie,” he said, his voice softening, “I would never have believed that survival was even possible. If I hadn’t looked out my window and seen her crawling through the rubble and waste, I would have done the smart thing, and stayed inside my walls, living out the days of madness that my lottery ticket gave to me. But there it is. A twelve year old girl with diabetes - though she’d want me to remind you that she’s thirteen now - she may ultimately be responsible for the survival of the whole human race.”
Angie straightened up in her seat, blushing pure red. Luca reached down to ruffle her hair, causing her to duck away.
“How many places in the world will have had all the lucky breaks that we did?” Marshal asked. “In the whole planet, how many people will have figured out how to survive the Swarms? How many will find a way to forage for food, or grow new food when that runs out? There may yet be hundreds of thousands still alive today, but for how long? James Snake’s people - our people now - started out with close to a thousand refugees. One by one, they were found, or people were caught as hunger forced them out to look for food. James worked miracles in that valley, but even he will tell you that they couldn’t have lasted more than another month or two.
“We’ve searched the Internet. Believe it or not, parts of it are still up and running. The satellites still orbit in the sky above us. And of course, there’s an entire dial of radio frequencies to listen to. To this date, however, there has been nothing to indicate that anyone else survived. Everything is dead silent.
“As to that, we have bigger priorities. But if we survive the winter, Professors Scratchard, Brodsky, and I feel that sometime this coming summer we should be able to use the CN tower and its resources to extend our range and truly scour the planet. On the other hand, even if we do find another community, say in Australia or Russia, it’s unlikely that we’ll ever be able to meet them.”
“Water,” Scratchard said, causing several people to look over at him.
“Exactly,” Marshal said. “Whatever planet these creatures come from, they show a tremendous affinity for water. This may, in some way, relate to their odd behavior when it rains, but when the undead enter the water they…”
Marshal paused, searching for the right words.
“Their loyalty to the human form goes out the window,” Scratchard said, raising his voice. “They spread out, which is probably the best way of describing it. Zombies can travel in water faster than sharks, but even more frightening, they disperse the density of their molecular structure, such that the body of a single zombie might cover a distance of several kilometers without losing any of its cohesive function. The filaments that extend their various pseudopodia are incredibly long and strong, which is more evidence of a volatile gas giant origin. Consequently, any proximity to a large body of water risks exposure and discovery by some extraneous portion of the central, collective group intellect and subsequent immolation.”
Utter silence gripped the room.
“Uh…” said Torstein.
“Translation,” Luca growled, glaring at the professor. “Stay outta the water. It’s Monte-fucking-zuma’s revenge, but from outer space.”
Scratchard hesitated. “Not quite. Better to say you should stay away from large bodies of water altogether. You won’t see them, but the zombies will see you, and th
ey can react as quickly as any land-walking zombie.”
“No ships, no fishing, no days at the beach,” Marshal clarified. “Or at least, not until we have some better idea of their limitations. It’s the main reason we’re avoiding waterfront for now.”
He checked his watch.
“Anyway, we’d better move this along. Torstein has finished his first few banks of camouflaged, sleeper cabins. I want everyone to understand that, while we’re taking pains to make these cabins as comfortable as possible, these are not where you’ll be force to live. These are all short-term solutions. As I have said many times, you are, each and every one of you, vital to our survival and will be treated as such. Ultimately, it’s my intention to make certain that every one of you lives in a home at least on par with my own, but for the moment, there are almost three hundred of us. We need a warm, secure place to sleep over the winter that is safe from the undead should they ever slip past our perimeter. These camo-cabinets are the solution, and they’re all we have time to build.
“In the future, they’ll be part of a state-owned hotel, where people can sleep over any time they wish. We will be holding many community events here at First Canadian, starting with our Christmas celebration twenty days from today. For now, however, they’re our salvation, and I’d just like to take a moment to thank Torstein and his crew for all their hard work.”
Marshal started the applause, and by the time everyone had joined in, it was thunderous.
“Thanks, Marshal,” Torstein said when the noise died down. With a grin, he saluted. “All hail the dictator of New Toronto!”
“Just shut the hell up and do the demonstration,” Marshal shouted back, barely audible over the general laughter. “Call me a dictator again, Torstein, and I’ll have you shot.”
“Yes sir, your dictatorship! By your command”
The construction worker turned to address the crowd of people.
From Oblivion's Ashes Page 71
