The Chase Tower drifts into visibility through the steady fall of snow, like a ghost on the banks of a misty lake. Nine years ago I rappelled down its flank with Lara at my side, with Cerulean watching from below, and painted a huge hot pink and orange Keith Haring-style UFO across floors 36 to 42. Now the outline looks like a higher power, judging us from on high.
"Almost there," Lara says.
The convoy's gone silent. The RVs ahead steam in the cold air.
"Make it a quick changeover," I say over the universal channel as we draw up to the nominated interchange, right in the city's heart. "Refuel for this last push and everyone get where they need to be. No long goodbyes, we don't have time. We either make it or we die."
"No need to be so damn cheery," Feargal comes back.
I ignore it. "We've still got a lead of maybe eleven hours. The horde can't be far away. We'll make this."
Nobody cheers. We've done that already. Now it's time to focus.
The convoy slows to a stop. For a moment, as I kill the engine to refuel, the skittering sound of snow falling on the roof fills the cabin.
"Here we go," I say to Lara, and we both pull on heavy winter jackets, hats and gloves, then pile out of the RV along with Alia and Sulman.
It's freezing outside, the air bitter and sharp, and the snow is falling so thickly I could wander fifty feet away and never find my way back. I don't know how we'll even see the horde, unless we come right upon them. We could wander in this snow for days.
The cap comes off the gas tank and Lara passes me the first canister. The fuel sloshes in to the thirsty machine. Three more of those and we're ready. I look up and see people dashing between RVs. I'd go hug my kids but there isn't time. We need every second we've got, and I already said a really good goodbye.
"I'm going," Lara says. "I want to be with them."
I nod. There's no time to argue. I want to tell her thank you but there isn't time for all the thanks I have to give, so I settle for, "I love you."
"Te Amo," she says. "Me too."
A kiss, then she's dashing two RVs up to the kids' car. Already Feargal is pulling his two RVs off to the left. A moment later Ravi pulls off to the right.
I get back in mine, give a lame thumbs up to the two staring survivors in the booths, and drop into the driving seat, with Sulman alongside, a bulky guy who really knows how to fill a seat; your classic couch potato nerd.
"Here we are," he says, in his cliché Indian accent. He even gives a little head bobble.
"Here we are," I agree, and switch the radio to universal. "I'm coming up to the front."
I pull the RV out from its place in the convoy line. It feels colder already with Lara gone.
"… arckle… Amo is … derangles…" says the radio in return, some kind of glitch.
Pushing the RV sideways into the foot-deep wall of snow makes the engine whine even in first gear. The snow chains bite and we hobble up out of the existing tire tracks and start making our own. Past the kids' RV there are little indistinct smudges for faces in the back window, obscured by frost, waving as I go by.
I wave back.
"Come again," I say into the radio, "I didn't catch that."
"… reading you … blurger … so I'm going …."
I frown, trying to place the voice.
"Masako?" I try.
"This is Masako," Masako responds tartly, probably around the time I'm overtaking her and Witzgenstein in the lead RV. "That wasn't me."
I pull in at the front. Everything ahead is blank and white and untouched. It's good to be back at the head of things, I don't deny it. "Identify, someone's radio is malfunctioning. Feargal, is it you?"
"I'm reading you loud and clear," Feargal says.
"Can you hear me?" Ravi asks.
"I have you both. Repeat, whose radio is failing?"
"… sho! … hoving … harfer iller." The voice sounds urgent now, a little clearer than before. I wrack my brain for who it might be.
"Cynthia?"
"Here, it's not me."
I ponder for a second. "Identify please."
Only static comes back. "All RVs check in before we go anywhere."
They check in one by one. They're all clear. We haven't got time for any more delay. Maybe it was an echo or a briefly scrambled channel. The snow plays havoc with everything.
"We're rolling out," I call over the radio, and put the RV into gear.
* * *
We crawl due east across Indiana, plowing into the snow, while the demons gain with every mile. Some of the comatose survivors start to freak out in their sleep, and I order them zip-tied and swaddled for their own safety. Even Crow and the others start acting differently, talking crazy and fast like they're high.
I feel it too, creeping up from my belly and over my thoughts like a crawly, jittery bug. It's an anxiety I can't dispel with any rational thought, it's just there.
We cross over into Ohio, reaching Dayton about the same time Feargal turns right in Fort Wayne and Ravi hits Cincinnati.
"Anything?"
"Nothing fresh," they both say, with reception crackly through the storm outside. "East and northeast still. We're close."
The snow fall clears up a little around Columbus, leaving the landscape pristine and the roads slowly solidifying to slippery, treacherous ice under a cold sun. We slow down to forty miles per hour. The survivors in my RV are jabbering fairly constantly now, enough to set my nerves on their outermost edge.
Seven hours, Crow estimates, when he can get words out of his tight throat. We're almost at Pittsburgh but the readings don't get any clearer. I call through the convoy but none of the survivors' inbuilt radars are operating as well as I'd hoped.
North, I get. East, but no more specific than that. It's not enough to triangulate, not what we'd hoped for. "They're getting jammed up by the demons' signal," Sulman says. I look at his big, round, placid face, and I can't argue. Even Crow is getting more vague as the demons draw in, not more specific.
This whole trident thing was a mistake, and I make the decision.
"Converge on Pittsburgh," I tell the radio. "Ravi turn left at Wheeling. Feargal turn right at Akron. It's doing us no good."
We cross over into Pennsylvania as the sun creeps down into the cold, gray clouds, and around 5pm we enter Pittsburgh in darkness. In the center of the city, on a stretch of elevated road at a crossing where the others will join us, I stop the RV and wait.
There are no zombies here. I can't get a coherent reading from a single survivor; the proximity of the demons is ruining it. We could pick a direction randomly, go south or east or north, but we're more likely to race by the zombies in the dark than hit them. They'll hardly be using the roads.
The council debates, but there's no choice to make here. Stay or go, and stay is always the best chance in a rescue situation. The zombies are somewhere near and they know where the demons are better than we do. We have to hope they can reach us in time.
It looks like Masako's plan, then.
"We'll stop here," I say over the universal channel. "We'll wait."
I don't know what else we can do. There are only four hours left.
* * *
I check the bullets in my gun, and nod to Sulman. His chubby brown face looks disturbed.
"It's going to be OK," I tell him.
"What is that for then?" he asks, nodding at the gun. I don't normally wear a gun. But he knows why.
I give him a smile. "It's going to be OK," I say again and pat his arm. "Come on out."
I don't feel the cold so much this time. The city's beautiful, in a way, so quiet and still, with the drifting flakes of snow coming down all around. I open my mouth and catch a few on my tongue; brisk and sweet, like manna from heaven.
Lara's waiting for me in the kid's RV.
"Daddy," Vie says when I come in, but it's not the happy sound it was the last time. He's scared now, and that's a challenge. My hand trembles as I hug his little body tight. Lara's eyes s
parkle with tears that don't fall, and she looks to the gun at my waist.
"Is it enough?" she mouths.
"It's enough," I answer.
It's hard to believe we've come to this, so quickly. But only two days ago I blew up Ozark and the others in his RV. It's all the same thing, all one long descent.
We go out together, hand-in-hand into the thick, squeaky snow. Pittsburgh is so silent; an empty winter city. Tall buildings stand on all sides, offices and cafés, museums and shops, churches and government halls. The road rises to a peak behind the last RV, with a clear view back to the west. Everywhere are metal spires and ice. It's not such a bad place to die.
We start a party.
We make snowmen by bright moonlight. We set up generators and flood lamps a mile distant west down the road, so we'll see the demons when they come. We throw snowballs. I think of all the ways I can do this so it won't be too horrible. Most of all I don't want Vie or Talia to see it. I don't want them to have any warning, I don't want that terrifying moment of horror and fear to be their last moment in this world.
I just want it done.
When we get tired of snow games we walk around the nearby night streets, scouting for zombies that don't come. Julio's survivors are wailing again now, and it's good to keep the kids away from that. I keep an eye on the time, 8pm, though the last estimate came hours ago when we were still in motion, so I don't think it can be accurate. We had seven hours, and we've already eaten into two of those.
There's no longer any hope in running. In this dense snow they'll run us down. Better to do it here, like this, where we at least have some control.
Ravi and Feargal report in. I could tell them to flee, north or east all the way to the coast, but it's the same story for them. They won't get away, not in these conditions, and then what would they do?
Go round and round in tighter circles, circling desperately in the snow until some point twelve or twenty-four hours later, when they run out of fuel and hope and the demons finally catch them.
Better like this, and to do it together.
We pass Masako, Alan, Lin and Witzgenstein huddled round a burning brazier. Masako is crying madly.
I go over.
"I'm sorry," I tell them. "I'm sorry things came to this."
They're all wearing guns, because they understand. Witzgenstein even shakes my hand. Alan pats my shoulder. Masako though won't look at me.
"I loved Cerulean," I tell her, unable to keep all the anger out of my voice. "I loved Anna. You know that, Masako."
She stares doggedly into the flames. My tears freeze on my cheeks. I walk back to my family and we make our own campsite at the peak in the road, with a ring of three fuel can braziers. Lara and I clear the snow with shovels, lay down plastic matting with a makeshift heated rug powered by a generator atop it, and start telling stories in the snow.
I read excerpts from Alice in Wonderland. It's Anna's old copy, annotated with her childish scrawls. This once meant so much to her, and here we are, in a winter wonderland of our own.
Feargal arrives, and his people come over to join us. We clear more snow and make more braziers and spread more tarps and heating blankets. It's past 10pm now and the kids go to sleep, warm in their sleeping bags and under the open sky, which is better than dying terrified in a racing RV.
Ravi comes at midnight and sits beside us, holding Lara's hand and watching over the kids protectively. "Uncle Ravi, councilman," I tell him. He smiles and strokes Vie's cheek.
"We did good," he says.
We sit quietly, each reflecting on our mortality. The zombies will come for us or they won't.
Around 3am I organize groups to collect the survivors from the RVs and carry them over. They've all gone unconscious, overwhelmed by the demons' proximity, so no more wailing. The cold is intense in all of us now, swelling and bringing despair with it. I want to insulate these poor people from it as much as I can, after they've already been through so much horror. All of this now is about trying to minimize the suffering and fear we have to face.
We put them in the middle of the group, where their last moments can be warm and amongst friends.
"This is it," Lara says to me, squeezing my hand.
I squeeze back, looking out over my people. Less then fifty now, but more than we ever had before. New LA was growing, and it would have been so good. I gaze to the east, hoping the zombies will come over the rise in the road at any minute; thousands of them, tens of thousands, swooping in to save us all.
I remember ushering them in to Yankee Stadium. That was the first good thing I did, when I began to see the truth behind the apocalypse. They were never our enemies, but our saviors; like Anna's father in Mongolia, like the ones that saved me from Don, like the thousands that forgave me my genocide in Times Square and the hundreds that blessed me in Iowa.
It's been a hell of a ride. I kiss Lara. I kiss Vie and Talia. I hold Ravi by the shoulder and slap Feargal's arm.
The demons are coming. They must be close.
I start to sing.
It doesn't come from anywhere I expect, a song from the past, a song that symbolizes unity in ways a giant 'f' on the Empire State can't hope to emulate, and a song that I haven't heard for too long a time.
"O say can you see, by the dawn's early light."
Others join me. My singing voice is terrible but their voices rise around me in support, warmer than the brazier fires, warmer than the heated rugs; basses and altos and tenors, enough to dispel the incoming chill for just a few more minutes.
"What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming. Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, o'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there; O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?"
When it's done some of us are sobbing and some are laughing. I feel buoyed up, cresting on a tide of my fellow survivors. I want to give my speech again, thanking them for surviving and for wanting to survive, but there's no need because the national anthem did it better than I ever could. Everybody here gets it. We are the last gleaming, the last red rockets, the last of the free and brave that made this country what it was.
"Is that it?" Feargal calls out, and people laugh. "Does nobody know the second verse?" More laughter.
"Here's another," somebody says. I think it must be Witzgenstein, though I didn't notice when she came over to join us. I'm glad she did, because she's part of us too, no matter how much she wanted to split us apart. I hope Masako is somewhere comfortable and warm too, with her gentle husband and her sweet son by her side.
Witzgenstein starts singing a folk classic, one I haven't heard for decades, back then would have considered twee and old-fashioned, though now it hits me right in the gut. 'This Land was Made for You and Me' by Woody Guthrie.
Her voice is high and clean and we all join in. She knows all the words though, more than anyone else, and carries us along with her from California, down the winding highways and across the sparkling deserts, through the Depression-era clouds of dust and the fog of civil war all the way to New York in the east, with a repeated, endless chorus we can all join in on.
"This land was made for you and me."
We keep singing because none of us wants to stop. We don't know what comes next and none of us wants to find out. We don't want our ending to be silent, dripped out in the dark. I can feel the demons now, so close through the night, as the cold inches over my skin and pulls me in. They're like a deep riptide in the ocean, silently tugging us all down.
I finger the gun and prepare myself. None of us should suffer. My children won't suffer. My wife won't suffer. This way is better.
At last the soaring voices fade. My throat is sore. We are all here together, and that is how it should be. I slip the clasp on the gun's holster, holding Lara's wiry, tough hair close to my lips and ki
ssing it deeply, breathing in the sweet, natural smell of her.
The zombies are not here. They cannot save us, and I accept that. Any moment the demons will come.
At last, the last of us fall silent.
Only then can I hear the voice shouting, clear as a train whistle across the long and lonely night, coming over the radio by my feet. She sounds hoarse with repeating the same lines again and again, calling into the night, to anyone who will listen.
The cold solidifies as ice in my belly. It's impossible, but I can't deny it.
"Amo, are you there? Lara, are you there? I've found the zombies, we've found them, please tell me you're there."
Oh my God.
It's Anna.
INTERLUDE A
The plane plummeted out of the night sky. The moonlit clouds rose away and the dark asphalt of the runway filled the cockpit window.
Anna clutched the radio like it was her father's phone, braced against the dashboard, racking her mind for something to do. The engine barked violently and black smoke vomited out of the propeller hood, buffeting the glass and filtering back into the cabin through the exhaust. The wind was a tearing rush all around and the propeller crackled and popped like a faulty firework, sparks shooting out of either side.
"I can't-" Peters shouted over the roar, straining to pull back on the stick. He turned to her in the co-pilot's seat with desperation carved in his lined, withered face. "Help!"
Behind them Jake had bent into the crash position, hands crossed over his head.
They'd barely taken off. They were only a few hundred feet in the air and now they were in a nose-dive.
"Help me!" Peters cried desperately.
Anna dropped the radio and smacked her seat-belt release loose, then tumbled sideways onto Peters' lap. There could only be seconds left. She grabbed the stick with both hands, braced her legs against the instrument panel and heaved.
Zombie Ocean (Book 4): The Loss Page 20
