The Last: A Zombie Novel

by Grist, Michael John

  Already his leg was looking better. Still there were a dozen gouges to deal with on that leg alone, and she could barely dare to look at the other, but order was beginning to come to the chaos. It wasn't so bad.

  She got on.

  By dawn of the next day, it was done. Both his legs were a forest of blue thread, drawing strange patterns across his disinfectant-tangy skin, painted a dark brown. The sheets were a mess of pale blood and dark clots. The air stank of iron and iodine. The kidney bowl was heavy with the weight of lead she’d pulled out of him, like extracted teeth.

  She bandaged him up in a daze, seeing colors and shapes in the air. A zombie tugged at her sleeve. She rolled Amo carefully onto his side, stabilizing him with pillows. She refreshed his drip. His breathing was shallow and his face was drawn and pale.

  There was nothing more she could do. She fed the generator to keep the fan going, then fell blood-smeared and sweaty onto a sofa, and passed out at once. If he survived or not was up to him now.

  25 – SURVIVORS

  There's an ache in my whole body. I'm lying on my side. I recognize a hospital room. Hot light streams in through the floor-to-ceiling windows, overlooking low suburbs and orange desert. There's a red sofa by the window and lying upon it is Lara. She looks shattered, asleep, rumpled in a thin white sheet.

  My mouth is dry, my eyes hurt. I try to roll onto my back but I can't, there's some kind of frame holding me in position. I crane my neck to look at it, but even that much movement starts something screaming in my legs.

  A gray figure with a cratered gray face shuffles into view. A janitor, maybe?

  "Hey," I say. My voice sounds like rustling sand.

  He says nothing. A few others shuffle with him, two doctors, a nurse, and some girl in dungarees. It's weird but I can't complain.

  "Thanks for coming."

  They say nothing. I remember Don, and wonder if these ones may turn too.

  "Not feeling hungry, are you?" I rasp. My throat hurts. My forearm hurts. I look down and see a drip line feeding in. The bag it connects to is half-empty, hanging over my head.

  So Lara saved me?

  I guess so. I feel dizzy still.

  "Hey Lara," I try to shout. Am I laughing, it's hard to tell. I sound more like Muttley, a canine barking laugh. She turns in her sleep. She must've had a hard time, saving me. I should let her rest.

  I got shot with a shotgun. I should let me rest. I close my eyes and sweet, nourishing sleep finds me again in seconds.

  She watched him for three days and three nights, as he lay in a coma-like torpor in the hospital’s eastern wing, by a window overlooking a therapeutic Las Vegas garden.

  “Only old people and junkies,” she murmured to herself, standing at the window. She’d had the thought many times, based on the types of floaters she’d released from their wardroom ‘cells’. It was a wonderful kind of emancipation.

  There were dozens of them trapped in rooms, old people whose hearts had given out while riding a roll in their casinos, young guys and girls with caved-in noses from too much heroin, and the wrinkled faces of zombies to boot, thumping sluggishly against their windows and doors.

  She let them out, and let them follow her. In their rooms she studied their charts while they crowded around her. This one was Anne Gideon, she suffered from gout. She looked like she was well over that now. Here was Toby McTavish, broken leg in three places. It didn’t show.

  She wandered round the hospital, from the canteen on the second floor to the lobby and through the staff rooms, up to the roof, where she looked over the tawdry conglomeration of Strip buildings, a few blocks of cheap motels with their dark blue swimming pools away.

  She checked in on Amo frequently. She rarely went farther than the hospital forecourt, for fear he might wake while she was gone.

  She kept the drips going into him, and his body sucked them down. She dressed and salved his wounds twice a day, once in the morning and once at night. They seemed to be healing extremely quickly, more than normal, but what was normal now? She’d read about him shooting himself in the head and surviving. It was a new world.

  The skin was tight and inflamed, but puckering in places around the stitches. Towards the end pulling the wounds closed had taken all her strength, with the constant worry she’d rip open some of the other stitches to make them all fit. There just wasn’t enough skin left to cover all his muscle. She’d gotten most of it though.

  He mumbled and stirred in his sleep. She stroked his hot forehead with a cool damp cloth.

  He opened his eyes. He looked right up at her, and her heart leapt in her chest.

  "Hey," he said.

  Her jaw dropped. Tears at once raced down her cheeks.

  "S’OK," he mumbled. He patted at her hand with his own. “Don’t cry.”

  "I’m not," she said, though her eyes were streaming. "God, it's good to see you."

  "You too." He was smiling, that same mischievous grin he'd given her at Rien, when he'd pulled her hand over and 'blessed' her with happiness. Now he was lying all torn up in a Las Vegas hospital. "You followed me."

  She blinked away tears and laughed. "You made it easy. Cairns, Amo? The 'f'?"

  His smiled widened. "A symbol for our modern age."

  "And Pac-Man?"

  He laughed, but it obviously hurt and he stopped. "A bit of fun. His mouth opened and closed."

  "I saw that. Brilliant touch."

  He closed his eyes then, and she thought perhaps he'd drifted back to unconsciousness, but then they opened again, a gentle, amused hazel.

  "Good luck with the zombies," he said.

  She frowned. "What?"

  He laughed again, stopped again. "Good luck. You wrote it on a note in my room. You left it behind."

  The memory of that came flooding back; such a strange, throwaway message, ultimately so prophetic. She laughed too.

  "I guess we both had good luck."

  He smiled and his eyes closed again.

  "I'm glad. It's good. Poor old Don."

  Then he was under. She watched him for a time, sleeping peacefully now. The color was back in his face. His breath came in deep, clear flows. He was alive, because of her.

  She took photos. She went out onto the Strip and photographed the skeleton that had to be 'Don'. She took pictures of the cheerleaders tethered to the car, trying to piece together what must have happened. She tracked the blood trail and gouge-marks in the battle-tank's side to the back corner, where the emergency back door hung open.

  The area behind the back seat was stained with blood. She rooted inside and found two guns scattered on the floor, one fully discharged, one two bullets short. There had been a struggle. She took photos and video.

  She cut the cheerleaders free. Part of her expected them to come at her like the others must have gone for Don, but they didn't. They walked right past, heading west. They'd clearly had their fill of people. They faded into the heat-haze.

  She gathered Don's bones up in a bucket. It was strange they all fit so well. She opened his pack, left inside the battle-tank, and looked through the contents. A bottle of whiskey, a Bible with half the pages torn out, a journal that documented mostly only the blandest of observations; the weather, the zombie count, how many roads he'd covered and where he might strike for next.

  There was an occasional entry on his loneliness. It seemed to bite into him more sharply than it ever had into her. There were two passages of nothing more than harshly scribbled expletives written in capital letters, followed by passages of regret the next day.

  She didn't understand fully what he kept the cheerleaders for, but she suspected. There were no lurid mementoes in his pack, no evidence, but she tried to imagine the exchange he'd have had with Amo, who saw the ocean now as good, living, willful beings.

  It went badly between them. Perhaps it hadn't had to, but then how could she know? She didn't even know him, or Amo either, not really.

  She buried Don's bones in the sand, and left his
sword sticking into the ground like a headstone. He had been a survivor, like her. He'd been alone for too long. Perhaps they could have been friends. They all deserved better.

  She closed up the tank. The floaters were all gone now. Las Vegas was a ghost town. Standing on the hot asphalt, she looked up and down the broad Strip, dotted with emergency vehicles and stretch limos pulled to the sides. So much life, lost. Evolved.

  Back in the hospital, she found Amo awake.

  My legs burn and all my efforts to sit up fail. Instead I lie on my belly and lean back, painstakingly unpeeling the bandaging. The skin down my legs is tarnished yellow with disinfectant, and a loop-de-loop train-yard of blue stitch tracks, following wounds that spray across like the beams of a lighthouse. My skin looks alien, body parts wrinkled and preserved in formaldehyde, and the sight throws me into shock.

  I look away and breathe into my pillow for twenty minutes, willing the body-horror away. Soon enough the flop-sweat and nausea fade, and I look again. They are repulsive, but I can begin to admire the work Lara has done. It's pretty amazing, considering. I suppose baristas have very deft fingers.

  I slump back, thinking hard. Don did this. I shot him in the guts and I sent the zombies to kill him. Do I regret that?

  I'm not sure. I don't regret surviving.

  I swivel slowly on the hard stretcher-bed on my belly, and reach for a bottle of mineral water on the side-table. The movement causes the drip line to pull tight, jerking me to a stop, and I watch as a flow of my own blood begins to feed back up into the line. What the hell? I watch for a second in fascination, as this life-giving tube sucks my own blood up into it, then I pinch the tube and the flow stops.

  I pull the needle out of my forearm, and a little blood flows from the needle-hole but it peters out when I press my thumb on it. I toss the line away and it spits my blood onto the floor. It's OK, I'm making more. I tape up the hole then rotate slowly, so my head is at the tail of the stretcher, watching the door for Lara's return.

  My back aches like a son of a gun, probably from lying sideways or on my belly for so long. I wiggle my feet. The movement of tendons in my thighs and calves feels like complex clockwork grating, but my feet move. I flex my knees, just the tiniest amount as the tightness in my stitches gets unbearable quickly, but they bend.

  I lie there and wait. It's not long until Lara returns.

  Hell, she is beautiful, maybe more so now. Her curly hair is tied back loosely, her eyes are as bright white as ever, and she smiles wide as she comes in, like she's really pleased to see me.

  "Amo!"

  She rushes over and drops to her knees, bringing her face next to mine.

  "Hi," I say.

  She kisses me on the lips. No tongue, but still it fires up an engine I haven't thought about for a while. She strokes my cheek as she pulls away.

  "I'm so proud of you," she says.

  I blush. "I just turned around on the stretcher," I say, displaying my trademark wit. "You could have done it too."

  She laughs. She strokes my face. Then she kisses me again, this time with some tongue. It gets hot, and before I know it she's climbing onto the narrow stretcher and shimmying off her pants and her shirt.

  "On your side," she whispers breathlessly, backing up into me. My paper boxer shorts come down, bristling against my stitches, and the heat of her skin against mine is overwhelming, the smell of her is intoxicating. My hands snake around to cup her breasts, and she arches her back.

  "Condom," I whisper.

  "Screw it, " she says breathily, craning her neck back to kiss me. I kiss her hard. I'm sure my mouth tastes like a shriveled sand pit, but she doesn't complain. She grinds back into me, and I seize her sheer brown hip and press myself into her. She gasps and so do I.

  God, this is worth it. It is the right choice to have survived and be here like this, with a beautiful survivor just as hungry as I am, aching for the touch of another.

  We move together, breathing hard and grasping like we might fall if we don't hold on. Sensation rushes through me like salvation. It means we aren't dead, and there are things to live for still.

  We finish together; she cries out and so do I. It is a release, and the start of something new. Neither of us is alone any more.

  Afterward I lie with her nestled in my arms, breathing warmly. I love it. I love that this beautiful, resourceful woman who has surely saved my life, has chosen me.

  "He was having sex with them," she says eventually. "Don."

  "He was," I say.

  The fan's breeze drifts over us, tingling off bare skin. The generator chutters smoothly in the corner.

  "He was mad," she says. "You didn't want to kill him."

  I know what she's asking. I don't have a good answer. "He came into the battle-tank. He got worked up. Maybe I worked him up, I'm not blameless here. I could have done it better. But I didn't know, not for sure. He had the comics, he could know about you, about Cerulean. I had to be sure. And he wouldn't back off."

  "You fought in the back of the battle-tank."

  I talk through it. I tell her about the floaters, responding and tearing him apart. It leaves us both in silence.

  "Do you think they were defending you?" she asks eventually.

  "I don't know. I honestly don't. Perhaps if he hadn't shot them, all they would have done was hug him? I don't know. I've never killed them in view of others, then let them come close. Perhaps he triggered a kill instinct they couldn't switch off."

  "Or they were protecting you."

  I frown up at her.

  "You asked them to. You are their father after all."

  I consider that for a time. "That would make you their mother."

  She laughs softly. It sounds partly like a sob, and I pull her close.

  "Maybe. I never had a coma, though. I suppose I was just a catalyst."

  "You weren't 'just' anything."

  "I was a vessel. It's OK, it could easily have been the other way around. Whatever happened that night, it inoculated me. I'm glad."

  I nod. I consider saying something like, 'I saved you with my magic penis', but probably that's not a good idea.

  "Ground zero," I say instead. "Right."

  "Right."

  We lie quietly. I stroke her bare arm. It's good.

  I recover steadily. She brings me freshly un-canned fruit and bolognese. I still don't need to eat much, but I eat more than before. I drink more. We make love several times a day, lying on the stretcher. We graduate to a double stretcher, lashing the two together with drip-bag tubing, so we can sleep comfortably side by side.

  The first of my stitches come out, and the wound holds. I rub the newly sealed skin repeatedly, fascinated and repelled by the bumpy ridges the stitches have left, like castle battlements.

  "You won't be Miss California," Lara teases. She kisses me. "Don't wear tights."

  "I had such plans," I answer. "The apocalypse has freed up my inner woman."

  She chuckles. "Priscilla, queen of the desert."

  I rub the healing wound until it feels like my skin again, no longer so horribly foreign. Welcome back, I tell it. The nausea fades.

  More stitches come out. Lara's hand is steady and skillful.

  "We learn this, for pouring milk," she says. "Carrying coffee requires a steady hand. It was a hard boot camp."

  "I'm sure it was very rigorous. Coffee training has prepared you well as a surgeon."

  She pinches my knee, at the front.

  Spent stitches slip out of my skin with a little suck each time. Bright beads of blood prick up in the tiny gaps they leave. Lara dabs these down with iodine swabs, which sting. We leave the deepest few wounds a little longer.

  Already I can flex my feet almost fully, rolling at the ankle. I can bend my knees halfway to forty-five degrees. I ask Lara to bring my laptop and drawing tablet, and she does. I start to work on the latest pages of my comic. There's no fulfillment center I know of round here, I don't know if we can print them out professiona
lly, so I expect to just print them on the hospital machines and add the new pages as addenda to the back of the ones I've already got.

  At the same time Lara goes out. She's working on my plan for the UFO.

  "The walls will be slick," I tell her. "The heights will be terrifying at first. Double-check all your ropes, your cradle, your in-coil."

  I don't tell her she shouldn't do it, or that she should wait until I'm fit and we can at least do it together. I can see that she needs to do this, and I need to be willing to share it. We started this thing, and now we have to see it through together.

  A week passes. I work on my art and I recover. She comes back each evening splattered with paint but jubilant.

  "You should see it," she says. "It looks amazing."

  I pull her in and pull up her shirt to kiss her belly. "I will see it."

  "I think it's your best work yet. Steady hand."

  I rope her in tighter. My legs are sturdy enough that I can lie on my back now, with her straddling me. It's a whole different experience.

  26 – LA

  In a week I finish the comic. Lara finishes her art. The last of the stitches come out, and I inch over to the edge of the bed, where I've been lying for nearly as long as I lay for my coma.

  "Take it easy," Lara says.

  Sweat beads down my back and my legs are already shaking, as I lower them carefully to the floor. I do my best to not let my thighs take my weight against the edge of the stretcher, but they take some and feel like they're being pinched sharply. I wince and she helps a little more.

  We get me onto my feet. Without her I'd fall for sure, but with her I can just about hold myself up.