“I wasn’t trying to persuade anyone to go to Sable Heights,” Micah said. It was just strange to turn it over in her mind, the place that they had fallen short of after trying so hard, and how the time in the confinement point erased it.
Since everyone was expecting arguments and criticism from her, she turned on the news. Fighting was here and there and everywhere. Prime was still calling itself the new government. The real government was still begging to differ. Bombs were still bursting and triggers were being pulled and people were weeping for the lost. Most of the bombs were outside the country, the Middle East falling into rubble, but the remainder was within it. Prime had hubs and subhubs around America in which they hid and directed their forces. A subhub in Georgia had been located and blown to pieces, the explosion so great that it destroyed several nearby homes and the families within them.
A man who ranked fairly high in a Louisiana Prime subhub had defected recently and sat in shadow for an interview to reveal the characteristics of the men at the top. Forming a cabinet of ten around their President Drake, they were paranoid and angry and egotistical. Some of them envisioned themselves as the only thing stopping zombies from taking over, and others were after power with Sombra C as an excuse to seize it.
The slow-witted reporter conducting the interview was shocked at that scrap, and asked how it could be that anyone at the head of Shepherd Prime didn’t even care about zombies. Zombies defined Prime. Zombies were the sole reason for its being. The defector explained patiently that it was all politics. Yes, these men were cynical enough to exploit everyone’s fear to drive their organization. If they could do so more effectively with something else, then Prime would do its best to focus its followers on a new target.
The reporter expressed thanks for the cessation of arm sales and the subhub bombing, and the defector shot down both straws of hope. Making arms illegal wasn’t going to affect Prime for a very long time. They had warehouses packed with weapons and more coming in through the black market. Losing the subhub was painful, but no knockout punch to Prime. A hub would have had more consequences, although it still wouldn’t have eliminated the cabinet in total. They were never all in the same place at the same time. Their locations and true identities were kept in code, and they never stayed long at whatever hub they were visiting.
“Do they have any idea of what they’re doing to the country?” asked the reporter in breathless disbelief.
The defector was speaking through a voice changer. It came out high-pitched and nerdy. “They don’t, not really. These guys are rich men or on their way there, so they’re not as affected by what’s going on. Food and gas goes up four times in price, five times, ten times, it doesn’t make a difference to their pocketbooks. They’ve got millions. If they want something that can’t be found in America any longer, then they just get it through the black market. And they feel that what the government is doing to the country is destructive, not their actions. They’re looking forward to the day when they can seat their president in the White House.”
“How can they maintain such optimism in light of Prime’s crushing defeat in Scolie? A cocky and disorganized attack, two thousand of their troops dead and plenty more captured-”
“They look at their wins, not their losses,” the defector said. Micah hadn’t heard of a battle in Scolie, wherever and whatever that was. “As to the captured, what’s going to happen? We both know. The jails don’t have the room to hold hundreds upon hundreds of offenders. They’ll be let out on bail, and they’ll come running back to Prime. They see it as their family. That’s where this organization is genius, in giving people a home when they have none. You never have to feel so alone again.”
“Then what convinced you to leave?”
The dark figure shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Look, I won’t say that I have any love for how the government handled the Sombra C crisis. I don’t. They dropped the ball big time. They’ve been dropping the ball for years on a hundred different issues. But now I see what’s going on, especially in southern California, and this isn’t the time for us to be fighting each other. And once you get to my level in the organization, you see the craziness of those in charge, the spite and arrogance, the greediness . . . they’re lining their pockets with donations from Joe Public. That’s all you’re doing when you give your hard-earned money to the organization, making rich men richer. Rich and crazy men who don’t give a fig about you. They’re ripping up this country and they don’t see it and they wouldn’t care if they did. I can’t be part of an organization like that. America needs our help, and Prime isn’t helping.”
The segment changed. The Armed Forces were rapidly setting up barricades in southern California to halt the influx of feral Sombra Cs. An additional problem was that some of the refugees from Mexico were bringing along an infected relative or two, so Sombra C infections were exploding all over California and in neighboring states. Cameras panned over the insanity going on everywhere south of the San Bernardino Mountains, and more panned over a desolate Mexico City. It used to have a population of nine million people, and now it had a lone reporter with a handkerchief over his nose from the smell.
Horrified, someone back at the station said, “Have you seen anyone living?”
“Oh, yes, there are pockets of them,” confirmed the man on the ground, his kerchief fluttering in the breeze. Legs were sticking out from around a building, and huddled lumps were in the road behind him. “But that’s all it is. Pockets. Sombra C has decimated the whole of Mexico. I’ve driven through one ghost town after another, all bustling and vibrant just last spring. Empty homes, empty fields, empty shops and factories . . . we’re looking at the death of a nation, all in the span of less than a year.”
Micah’s mind floated away from the television. Back to the confinement point, the grit and blood and gunshots, all of it orchestrated by guys who didn’t give a shit. They were playing a game that had ended in her stabbing an eight-year-old to death. Why care when it wasn’t their eight-year-olds? Let’s go shopping with this donated money from the morons of the country.
It should be their eight-year-olds, sweet little Benny who loved swinging or Maddie over her sticker book, so that they would experience the pain of losing a child. Just like Micah should experience what it was to feel a blade pierce through her heart in return for visiting that pain upon others. What one gave out should be returned.
She supposed that she should want her mothers. But what were they going to do for her? Talk. They would talk endlessly, process their feelings and dish out advice and hold out their arms for hugs . . . and Micah wanted to stalk through the homes of those ten in the cabinet and their fake president, stab their eight-year-olds and force them to feel the horror they so blithely unloaded on her . . .
She had been made to cross a line. There was no other choice and yet . . . she sat in the armchair by day, the foot of the bed at night, and felt stranded. They had made her into a creature, and never would they feel the weight of their creation in this shitty motel room. These were her neglectful parents, breathing life into her and strolling away, feeling that they bore no responsibility to their monstrous progeny.
She wanted to seek them out, introduce them to a daughter they had not known. At the sink outside the bathroom, she worked with the cosmetics until the skin on her neck was a seamless color. There had to be a way to insinuate herself into their lives. Pretending to be a nanny, a maid, a fellow Shepherd . . . none of this she could actually do, but she had to have the fantasy of striking back.
“No, Austin,” Elania said in the other room. “You can be mad, but I’m not.” After a long pause, she added, “She pulled us through.” Austin grumbled something in response and Elania didn’t answer. He repeated it and still received no reply, so he fell silent.
He was never going to forgive Micah. She stared at her reflection in the mirror. There was someone else standing in her body. Lifting the blue spray can that Zaley had used to dye her hair, Micah streaked her own to see if it mad
e her feel like herself. She did it wrong, dyeing locks from the top and going down to the bottom, not starting halfway down the way she used to do. The strange person had simply become stranger. Nothing would ever make her who she was before.
It was time to leave. She slipped the foundation into her pocket, put on her sneakers, and rolled open the closet for her backpack. Putting it on, she unlocked the door and opened it to the parking lot. Zaley called, “Micah?” as she closed the door behind her.
They didn’t need her now. She had pulled them through the confinement point and Zaley was going to pull them the rest of the way to the Sonoma harbor. So there wasn’t any reason for Micah to stay. Monsters belonged in the wild.
It was hot, blazingly hot for April and ridiculous for San Francisco. She looked around to get her bearings and select a direction. North or south, east or west . . . north was the harbor and east was the confinement point, south was Cloudy Valley and west was the ocean. Her feet went west at a jog, around the dinky motel and through the parking lot to the sidewalk. The ocean was just a handful of blocks away.
Her jog turned into a run, and then a sprint. Soon the pavement would turn to sand and to water, and still she would run until . . . until the sea swallowed her down. The thought came smoothly, and she accepted it. She’d run until she drowned, and then she’d be in the darkness with those she had delivered there. Her body would be dismantled by sea life and she’d go on only in millions of gullets.
She darted over sidewalks and roads, jumped curbs and felt the breath of the confinement point on the back of her neck. Her thigh was throbbing where those teeth had severed her skin; there was a stitch in her side and a hitch to her breath. She’d lost some of the muscle in her legs to weeks of crappy food, and not enough crappy food at that. Her sprint faded but she ran on.
Her thoughts broke apart into the bucket swinging back and forth to blasts of guns, her attack on the kings, Tarley’s hooting laugh and the still forms at Micah’s feet. She wiped ruby red blood from the blade into the grass. Much of what she darted past was closed: a dentistry office and a fencing club, a locksmith service and a landscaping company. Shards of glass broke further under her beating feet. CLOSED. CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. CLOSED.
Micah was going to close her life. There wouldn’t be any further notice.
The businesses became homes, two stories and painted in beach colors of white and peach, yellow and light green. They had bars or boards over the windows. More glass broke and skittered under her feet, hailing from cars with their side windows smashed. On the right side of the road, the homes petered away to an unnamed nature preserve. It was filled with tents. A sign at the entrance of the path warned about zombies.
The ocean was just beyond the highway and coming up fast. No. She shouldn’t give herself the end she wanted, sinking into an airless blue. That didn’t show how sorry she was for what she had been forced to become. She’d have to find another way to do that.
The highway was free of cars, the beach below nude of people. In San Francisco of all places, she was nearly alone. That was how this part of the world had broken, so that people stayed home on a hot day, conserving their strength with whatever food they could afford from the couple of stores that were open.
There wasn’t a brace out here. Too bad. She could have infected the Shepherds working it and made them shoot her. Then they would have had to go to the confinement point as her body bled on the ground and her spirit moved in the wind. Yet, like drowning, that was a good way to die. It wasn’t an apology. It was how she wanted to go. A true apology was hiding a load of Zyllevir upon her person and climbing back into the confinement point to live forever. She was too weak for that.
She was weak.
Trailing north up the highway, she scanned the preserve. Not as many tents were on the western side. There couldn’t possibly have been zombies roving around in those trees with Shepherds having such a heavy presence in the area. The sign was out-of-date, or else put up to dissuade people from camping. It had failed. She doubted that she could take one of those trails into the shade and run into a feral, let herself be ripped apart without striking a blow in return.
The beach narrowed on the other side of the highway. There was one long strip of parking spaces, most of which held cars. They were uniformly filthy and some had flat tires. The windows were broken. These weren’t cars that were moved, and some were so junked that they couldn’t be moved. One was black and gutted from a fire, and the minivan beside it was scorched. People had abandoned their cars. No work to pay for gas, barely any gas to be had for the tank, the insurance bills still coming . . . cars were money-guzzling liabilities now, not a mode of transportation. The city hadn’t towed them away.
The strip of parking spaces ended with a sharp curve in the road. A sports car raced around that curve in the southbound lane of the highway. She took that as a sign of what she was supposed to do. Crossing the northbound lanes and divider, she stood at the point of the curve where the next driver would be unable to see her and stop in time.
Attacking a brace was a triumph. Drowning in the ocean, apart from the world, was a reward. This was not.
Wind raced off the ocean and threw her hair around furiously. Those to clean up her body, should anyone come to do so, wouldn’t see her stamp. Her infection would live on in the tread of tires and shoes, splashed against the rock and concrete, seeking another bloodstream but a Shepherd’s unavailable . . . This was going to be a messy, gruesome way to die, her body snapped into pieces. She extended her arms to embrace the thousands of pounds of metal that were coming her way.
A semi whirled around the curve and she closed her eyes. I’m sorry, Clarissa.
The wind roared. Brakes screeched, but it slammed into Micah from the side.
She hit the ground and tumbled, the gray of the road and the blue of the sea, the blue of the sky and the dark of a face, then the pale tan of rock . . . she landed on the rock with a painful jounce and rolled down to the sand where she landed on her back. The ocean was screaming. Hands came around her neck and pushed her into the sand, squeezing though not choking. Above her was Austin, who shouted, “What the fuck? What the fuck, Micah?”
He let go only to strike her across the cheek. Her head knocked to the side, she saw a Mr. Foods semi whizzing by above them. The side of the truck was painted with a garish picture of fruits and vegetables spilling out of a basket, and printed over it in thick black letters was DRIVER ARMED. It was a warning for people not to attack a Mr. Foods truck.
Her backpack had come off somewhere. Corbin slid down the rock and shouted. Dashing over the sand, he grabbed Austin’s hand as it swept back for a second blow. In a fury, Austin threw him off and punched his fists into the sand around Micah’s head. He bellowed in her face, “What the fuck were you doing?” Spittle landed on her cheek.
Micah was in a rage at the truck going away. “I was doing what you wanted!” she screamed. “You want me gone so I’ll go! Why the fuck did you stop me?”
“I never said that I wanted you to die!” Austin exclaimed as Elania slid down the rock to stand by Corbin. The car was moving overhead a little ways off, Zaley parking it in one of the open spots.
It wasn’t the right shade to cover the stamp on Austin’s neck, a blend too light and one that stuck out. Micah was livid that he had interfered with her apology. They should have let her go, not followed along and gotten in the way. None of them bore the weight that she did, and they had no vote in this decision.
She should have said no to Grandpa Cloud and Daffodil, to Justin and Clarissa.
She could not have said no.
She could not live in the impossible space between them. And now Austin was trapping her here, his legs bracing hers and his weight on her pelvis. When she curled her fingers into a fist to belt him, he caught her wrists and pinned her to the shifting sand. She wouldn’t be able to escape and didn’t try. Her mind drifted away, her head sliding to the side to return to that numb place (how
long had she been this way?) and he let go of her left wrist to drag her head back. He forced her to look at him and she exploded. “Fuck you! Fuck you, Austin! Let me die!”
“No.”
She jerked her head away and he dragged it back again, withstood the blow of her hand and forced her to look into his angry eyes. Something was breaking inside her and she burst into tears. To be here still was killing her. Tears were what he wanted, and he climbed off her. She lurched up to her feet and screamed, “I hate you!”
“I hate you!” Austin shouted. “You took away everything of mine and for no fucking reason! My mother! My home! School and work and . . . and everything!”
Corbin and Elania stood there as Zaley watched from above. Micah’s stomach hurt so badly that she bent over double and shrieked to the sand. She’d killed the kings and that never troubled her, but it had had so much meaning to the other people within the fence, and implications for herself that she failed to grasp at the time. This wasn’t how she wanted to be special either, any more than for her hippie name or having gay parents. It came with consequences. To be the last person those four saw . . . not rescuing Daffodil from the guards in the watchtower, not watching over Clarissa in the back seat of a car while her parents drank in a bar . . . Micah had been there to serve not as the savior but as Death. She was the strongest of them, and this was what was required of her as the strongest. But she wasn’t strong all the way through, on the deepest level she was as brittle as glass, and Austin should let her go.
Her shoes and the cuffs of her jeans were soaked. She was standing in the water that tickled the shore. Austin spat, “You think you’re just going to die? It’s okay to leave us holding the bag? We’re only here because you’re a lying shit.”
“How the fuck was I supposed to know they were coming?” Micah asked.
“You weren’t! You couldn’t! But we all got dragged down for something stupid you did, and now you have to live with it like we do! You don’t get to die! So you carry shit for Zaley and help us get to the harbor. You tied us to you with that lie, and killing yourself means that you don’t even recognize it.” His eyes were bright with tears. “How can you take everything away from me and then run off to leave me alone?”
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 108
