The Last Mayor Box Set 3

by Michael John Grist

  Alan and Lin, big Samuel, Akela, Georgina and Harris, Yugyong, Jack and Phillipa; all the people from the Willamette Valley as well as a few others. It seemed so unlikely that watching Drake parade on his stage had actually converted some of them, but the facts were undeniable. Those people had been swayed and were gone. Tapper was missing. Alicia.

  "Where's Amo?" came a cry at last, and Lara turned to meet it. It was Tomas, speaking for fourteen souls in the Sacramento group. Of course, he was angry and confused; he'd arrived back in New LA only to be corralled at once by an occupying army of children. Nobody would have explained anything to him. Then there was Lara and Amo on the stage, and the vision, and things falling apart.

  "Gone for Europe," she answered. "To kill the bunkers who sent that bomb to destroy us. That's his war." She paused, looking out at the black smoke rising over the horizon. "This is our war, and if we don't win it, it won't matter if Amo wins or loses his, because the thriving civilization on this continent will not be ours. It will be Witzgenstein's; driven by religion, thriving on humiliation, and I will not let that be our history."

  She fell silent briefly, but no more cries came.

  "You can see that smoke," she said, pointing again. They were all around her now, curling closer like yellowed pages in a book. "Maybe you can guess what it means. Things like that don't happen naturally; that's Witzgenstein's work. She's raced ahead of us, and now she's burning supplies. There's only one reason she'd do that; to crush our new group before we can begin. I know that's hard to hear, but it's what we're facing. This is our war, now."

  Repeating the word war had a visible effect on them. Some of them shrank back, getting ready to roll over and quit. A few set their jaws and leaned in. Lara watched and made mental notes.

  "I propose we take the fight to Janine. There are more of us; we're better armed, better prepared. Whatever she throws at us, we can fight it off. And we need to resupply. But I need everyone here to be on guard, as we advance on that."

  A third time she pointed. A man at the edge of the crowd cried out.

  "Are you mad? It's on fire. We can't go there."

  Lara turned on him. It was Derek, an accountant from Missouri. He had a daughter, Clarissa, who played the oboe.

  "There are no other known supply caches for several hundred miles," Lara said, using the most reasonable tone she could manage. "Half the vehicles in this convoy will run out of fuel before we cover that distance. And there's a very good chance Janine will have beaten us to it."

  "What are you talking about?" Derek persisted, "I'm not going into that. It's crazy."

  Lara could understand that, the stubborn refusal to see reality. He was afraid; for his daughter, for the dream. At the moment perhaps all this still seemed like a kind of inconvenience, one more indignity heaped atop them after the travails of Drake. It was possible he thought Lara was at fault; that there was some other way to go forward if they just had a different leader. But that was just trying to live in a past that no longer existed.

  She had to crush that wrong way of thinking right now.

  "So leave," she said. He blinked back at her. "If you think you can make it to another cache, I won't stop you. You'll be vulnerable to Witzgenstein, and you're not likely to safely reach supplies, but if that's what you want, I can't hold you back."

  Derek didn't move, though he muttered to the people nearby.

  Lara didn't like it. It wasn't how Amo would do things. But right now, at this point with her leadership in question, with the convoy on the edge of fracturing into bits and Drake's people plainly accustomed to a harsher style of governance, she had no choice.

  The idea had to be thoroughly crushed, and along with it, Derek.

  "What was that?" she asked. Crow put a hand on her arm but she shook it off and advanced.

  "I didn't say anything," Derek said, like a kid in the back row caught out talking trash to his peers.

  "Yes you did. You don't believe me, maybe. You're angry that we're in this situation, and you want to express that anger to make yourself feel better. But Derek, we don't have time for bullshitters." He flinched. "If you want to call a flash election, you can do that. Stand yourself, and if you can offer a better idea, I'll follow you. Otherwise I need you to pull yourself together, so we're all pulling in the same direction. Breaking our union is what Janine wants. That's why she's burning our supplies, to put us under pressure and make us crack. We can't give her what she wants."

  Derek glared at her, but didn't say anything more, and Lara pulled herself back, scanning the eyes around her. More of them seemed hostile now than before, but perhaps that was necessary. She was about to tell them to prepare arms and go into a warzone.

  "This is Amo's fault!" another voice called. "She's just like him, and who elected her? We need another leader."

  Lara turned to that, a voice she recognized easily, one she was surprised hadn't left with the others: Greg.

  "So vote," Lara said smoothly, transitioning her laser focus off Derek and onto him. "In the shadow of a burning reserve, with Janine's people possibly lying in wait, creeping up on us even now. You want to blame Amo for this? You want to blame him for Drake, and for the nuclear bomb which blew up our home? Wake the hell up, Greg! This is reality. I accept that I'm not the leader of this group, though I was elected to the Council of New LA, and that counts for something. But do you really want to hold a leadership election now?"

  "I'd vote for Crow," Greg shouted. "He gets along with Janine. He can make peace."

  Lara stared at him. Perhaps there was truth in that? Was it better to surrender to Witzgenstein than face the war she so clearly wanted?

  But then she'd seen who Witzgenstein really was, up close in Drake's trailer, and it was ugly. The pretty face she put on things, the pleasant atmosphere they'd heard about up in the Willamette Valley, was not the woman she was deep down. Deep down she was another Drake, ready to do anything to rule.

  "I'll call a vote right now," Lara shouted back. "Two options; as simple as can be, because you all know we can't stay here debating any longer, not when there are missiles raining down. A vote for me, which means we go into the fire with guns bristling, and we take what supplies we can. Or a vote for Crow." She pointed, and his face remained impassive. "Which means you try to talk to Janine. Maybe you surrender. You try to make a deal. I'm calling it now. So vote. All for me?"

  Hands went up hesitantly. Lara made the count out loud.

  "All for Crow?"

  More hands went up, but far from all. It was what she'd expected. They were shell-shocked still, not thinking clearly, not really able to vote. Uncertainty wasn't what most of them needed; Democracy wouldn't save the day here.

  What they needed was a tyrant, and she turned to Crow.

  "I agree with Lara," he said, thereby crushing the temporary rebellion. "We have to go in. If there's room to talk, we do it. If there's not, we fight. There is no choice other than that. Everything we need lies up ahead in the smoke, and the longer we wait, the more of it will burn. Agreed?"

  Nobody shouted a reply. Nobody argued.

  "Good," said Crow. His deep voice carried easily over the crowd. He looked to Lara and nodded.

  "We go in three minutes, and we go in hard. I want weapons at every window, every angle covered. Let's go."

  People began to move.

  Crow and Lara moved along the convoy, calling out weak spots that had to be protected, naming vehicle leaders, distributing weapons and ammo from the vehicle supplies, preparing as best they could.

  Black smoke drifted their way.

  When the three minutes were up, they drove.

  * * *

  The flames rising off the Reserve were visible from a mile away, towering like a hellish breath shooting up from the underworld. The road weaved and Lara led the convoy, re-ordered now, bristling at the edges with what few weapons they had; rifles, handguns and shotguns, whatever had been stocked in the RVs before they took off.

  "She
must have tipped over a hundred barrels," Crow said in a whisper, gazing transfixed at the gushing fire that raged across the road and through the buildings. "Gasoline burns at nearly two thousand degrees. The air will be near boiling. The roads will be molten tar. Our tires will fall off."

  "So we'll get new tires," Lara said, teeth gritted. Black smoke rose from multiple cracked windows in the squat cement complex like the limbs of a black squid, conjoining into the black cloud that overhung everything.

  "Maybe not from there," Crow said. "She's been thorough."

  It was true.

  Lara remembered this place distantly; one of many Reserves just like it, each a copy of a copy on some federal planner's board. Blockish low gray warehouse buildings peeked above the ground like submerged icebergs, situated within a broad, grassy circumference of tall razor wire. Below the surface they extended much further, sinking into the depths of storage like a Yangtze fulfillment center. She'd last come by some three years ago, coming in and going out swiftly, breaking or blowing locks where they had to, taking what supplies they'd needed, figuring out the stirring spindles to keep the gasoline from sedimenting.

  Probably it had been Amo at her side, or Cerulean, with hope still plentiful ahead. Now she could feel the inferno through the windshield. Even with the air conditioning roaring, the heat from those immense fires had her skin streaming with sweat.

  "We do it fast," Crow said, pointing, "maybe there, that building is still untouched."

  Lara scanned the grounds as they pulled closer. Witzgenstein could be here, lying in wait, or she could be many hours ahead, heading for the next reserve to burn. It didn't make any difference, though, because the convoy needed to resupply now. They had to keep moving, and without gas they'd be stranded, loaded down with children, no food, no nothing.

  It was all or nothing.

  "Any sign of movement?" she called on the radio.

  Negatives came back from the convoy, with the final voice being a boy called Andon, one of Drake's kids with serious black eyes. He had his own rifle in the final carriage, along with four of his own hand-picked troops. Tomas had objected to her arming the children, but she wouldn't be stopped now.

  The burning buildings drew closer. The very fields here were smoking, a noxious white mist rising like wraiths out of the earth. The asphalt was tacky and she sped up. The Reserve structures were largely engulfed in flames, in places already reduced to blackened cement frames, burst open by the warping heat. Here a stairwell peered out through a ruptured section of wall like an exposed spine. There orange and red flames poured out through the windows.

  RATATAT

  Gunfire rang out down the convoy, and Lara barked roughly into the radio, scanning up and down even as she tried to pick out a target from the flames.

  "Are we under fire, where are they?"

  It was hard to see anything through the smoke.

  "False alarm," came the answer. "Sorry."

  They rolled through, leaving a sticky trail of tire rubber behind. Both Lara and Crow coughed with the smoke, until they reached the outskirts of the complex, where the building Crow had sighted earlier stood. The flames were near but hadn't yet reached it.

  "She's watching us," Lara said. "The bitch. It could be booby-trapped."

  Crow stopped the RV and bounded out before Lara could stop him. He walked swiftly up to the building; little more than a concrete hut, probably used for storing tools, and peered inside. Lara followed hard behind him, but no blasts rang out.

  Lara darted over the grass, coughing crazily, to stand beside Crow in the entranceway, looking in.

  Witzgenstein was not there, though she had been. In the middle of the small space there was a wooden pallet, atop which were limited supplies; a red barrel of gas, some rations, some water, but not enough. Not nearly enough. She'd left this cairn for Lara to find, along with a message spray-painted onto the wall in large pink letters.

  ON YOUR KNEES

  It was an easy one to remember. It was a simple message that could crush their hope.

  The nearest reserve was a hundred miles away. The gas in the barrel probably wouldn't even get all their vehicles there. The food and water would barely sustain them. They'd crawl into the next place even weaker and more stressed than they were already; climbing on top of each other while hunger ripped them apart from inside.

  "Shit," said Crow.

  "Shit," Lara answered.

  It wasn't enough, but there was no choice but to keep on. Witzgenstein was ahead now, and she'd stay ahead, and there was nothing Lara could do about it. All the anger and weapons in the world wouldn't help if her own people couldn't eat, if they were forced to walk along the roadside like beggars. There wouldn't be a single shot fired.

  It was a kind of rolling siege.

  Her bold vision of a united nation sputtered and died. Witzgenstein was in control. She could spin it out for as long as she wanted, but there was no other way for things to go. Lara had already lost.

  ASSAULT

  9. NEW YORK

  THUMP

  The box hits and I blink awake in the driving seat.

  The cardboard's gone. The foul smell is gone too, and it's peaceful here, and dark. My heart races and I whirl around, but there's nobody here. I'm back in the RV, but the engine's dead and I'm alone. I take my hands off the wheel and breathe.

  4:47 says the dashboard clock. It's night outside, though dawn will be coming soon.

  I don't know how I got here.

  A cold breeze runs over my lap, driving away the nightmare of Distribution, and I shiver. It's gone chilly.

  "Hello?" I call back down the RV. "Anyone?"

  No one replies. I get up and look back down the aisle, searching for the contours of Feargal's silhouette hunched in the dark, but I don't see him. I listen for Arnst's labored breathing, whistling in and out still, but that's gone too. Where are they?

  "Just you and me now," comes a voice. "We're stuck with each other."

  I see him standing at the open side door, split head poked half in and half out, lit by pale moonlight. "Drake."

  He nods solemnly. "You need to come and see this."

  I follow him, and emerge onto the grass-strewn street of a city I know well, enclosed by canyon-like buildings, lit by a sky peppered with stars. Manhattan spreads away in the silvery dark. There are rust-encrusted yellow taxicabs on the road and squat newspaper boxes on the cracked sidewalk. There are dusty department store display windows reflecting the sparkling sky and stop lights dangling low on slackened wires across a nearby intersection.

  "Look at that," Drake says. "Take a look."

  He's standing in the middle of the road and pointing up. I look, and see that there's a great tower of bodies rising from the middle of Times Square.

  I laugh.

  There are thousands of them, and they are beautiful, better than anything I imagined in my comic book art. They shimmer like a nest of hornets slowly stinging a man to death, but these are not insects; they are the ocean, dozens of bodies wide, hundreds high, all gray skin and bony limbs climbing each other to the sky. I look up and see Lara's face in the dark clouds above, and feel the urge to run join them.

  "And you didn't even know we were in New York," Drake chides. "What a homecoming, son. Welcome home!"

  He's laughing. I'm laughing too. It's a celebration here at Times Square, site of my largest atrocity, and there's honesty in that. I'm glad to no longer lie. I drop to my knees before it, spread my arms and bask in the tower's organic, coral-like growth, glimmering with the blink of so many blind white eyes. Perhaps this is where I truly belong. Perhaps I was always meant to stand at their head and lead; for twelve years I've neglected my most loyal constituency, the ones who were with me from the start, who have saved my life so many times.

  "You're right," Drake says. "Go to them."

  I get to my feet and go. Their ranks open to admit me, their bodies spread to make room, and I climb. Arm to head, foot to belly, hip to chest,
forehead to toes, I climb. The heights grow dizzy and the tower sways, and now Cerulean is there too, climbing beside me. In his hand he holds two diviners, one of which he offers to me.

  I take it.

  Eye for an eye

  reads the display, and-

  Tooth for a tooth

  I know what it means, and what I have to fetch. I look up and see my family in the clouds and press on, feeling so good to be alongside my old friend again.

  "Amo."

  Then I'm not climbing anymore.

  I'm standing alone in Times Square, in a cold blue dawn, and there is no tower of the dead. There are only the blank, dead advertisement screens hanging on the towering buildings around me, and the same old soggy billboards advertising Ragnarok III and Gucci and Apple. There are parched yellow plants rising from the gutters, and thick banks of greened silt at the curbs, and coating the road there's a brittle carpet of old yellow bones, matted with flattened gray skin and rain-wadded clothing.

  There is no tower of the dead. I go from laughing to silent.

  "Amo," comes the voice again, and now I see Feargal standing in front of me. His broken nose and blackened eyes make him ugly, and it takes a moment to remember that I did this to him.

  "What are you doing?" he asks.

  I say nothing. I could tell him about the tower, but it's gone now so there's no point. I don't remember coming here. Events drift on a tide of rotten kelp. I look around but Drake is gone, in the sky Lara and the kids are gone too.

  "Amo," Feargal says, and I look back at him.

  "I killed a lot of people here," I say, the first thing that comes into my head.

  "Zombies," he corrects. "Not people."

  Does it make any difference? I feel a dark heat evaporating off me like morning dew. Words jumble in my mouth and head, coming out all wrong.