The Last Mayor Box Set 3

by Michael John Grist

  But she wasn't the first. There were three vehicles flipped on their roofs and sides lying in a convoy near the Mall of Istanbul, blown there by rocket fire. The sandy asphalt was marked with fresh pockmarks from explosions. One of the Humvees had exploded and was burning still. Peering in she saw two bodies in the front seat, reduced to deeply seamed charcoal.

  Further on there lay a body in the road, wearing a black suit and helmet. A rifle lay nearby, and Anna picked it up.

  Down an alley she saw several bodies clustered around a pile of masonry rubble. Closer, she saw Feargal lying dead in the dust, bloody marks on his forehead. There were three other bodies; one a giant who'd been shot in the chest; one a military-looking older man with a black helmet by his side, his face and chest battered; and one a black and white zombie like she'd never seen before.

  All dead. No Amo.

  She rolled a little further and found one of their vehicles, an AM General troop carrier truck. The keys were in the ignition. She dumped the bicycle and drove off.

  Amo's signal resolved on the empty line. She knew where he was, already. At the bunker. She revved the truck up and sped through the city center. Lucas was there. Three thousand people were there. She couldn't let him kill them all.

  The rifle sat on the seat next to her. The truck roared on.

  NORTH

  20. BLACK EYE

  Istanbul bunker is waiting for me.

  In Sabiha Gokcen International Airport, encircled by a chain-link fence, there are people spread wide across the runways, aiming weapons my way.

  RATAT AT AT come the first volleys.

  I don't blame them. They have seen the line is gone and they've run out to take their chance, for the first time in twelve years. I pull off the road and climb the embankment to meet them, crunching through the metal fence and onto the flat plain of the grass-covered runway. They flow towards me firing rifles, launching artillery; some in military gear but many who are just regular citizens.

  Bullets prang off the hood of my stolen Engerek Utility Vehicle, and I respect this effort. It is what I would do, if I were in their position; throw myself on the grenade to keep my people safe, except the grenade I'm left with now doesn't make me look like a hero. It makes me a butcher.

  It can't be remembered.

  They shoot at me and I shoot the great black eye back, and it flattens them. Their bodies crumple across the weed-choked runways like large-scale domino art, and I drive over their bodies. They crunch under the Engerek, real deaths and real costs, until I reach the hangar and step out.

  I may have the black eye, but my body is still broken. My nose doesn't work and every breath is a bloody sniffle. My hand with the broken finger is swollen and useless. My ribs tweak at my lungs with each step. I'm falling to bits, but I can do this.

  The hangar door is open. I enter the shadows and more of them fall; they keep coming and they keep dropping. Perhaps they think they can exhaust me, but there's enough anger in the eye to burn through ten thousand of them. There'll always be more. I'll never run out, because each death only makes it worse. I hate myself. I hate this. I spew it out.

  FLUMP FLUMP their bodies go down, paralyzed.

  FLUMP FLUMP FLUMP

  I step on and over them. It's like the New York slaughters again, where I killed so many and still called myself a good man, but I'm not a good man and I never was.

  The bunker hatch is thickly clogged with their bodies, so I send the black eye ahead of me, down the ladder shaft and punching through the shield, dropping everyone it touches. I send it deeper, like string threading a long needle, down into Command where they hunch with fingers on remote triggers for bombs in the walls that'll blow as soon as I get in.

  I paralyze them all.

  FLUMP FLUMP FLUMP

  I climb down.

  The shaft is empty now, bodies piled at the bottom. I pluck magnetic bombs off the walls as I go, stowing them in my open jacket, jostling like hockey pucks. I take their elevator into Command, and walk down the corridor toward the shield, so familiar now. Shark-eyes lived here too. All his people are here, everything he was willing to die for, everything he fought for twelve long years to save.

  I pluck grenades off the belts of fallen soldiers, stilled by the black eye. It surrounds me like a shield, feeding on itself and pumping outward like a heart, twisting me and the things I do.

  In the shield room are the triggers; simple cell phones rigged to detonators. Their last redoubt. I clamp a magnetic mine to the sealed hatch cover for the shield, find the trigger in one of their hands, and step out of the room for the moment it takes to blow it.

  BLAMMM

  The metal ruptures inward while the mine casing sprays off to pepper the walls. Black smoke puffs out through the door hinges. In the corridor there's a man at my feet, more a boy really, looking up with terror in his flashing eyes. Black, blue, black, blue. I'd like to say something kind to him, but there is nothing kind I can say, so I settle on the truth.

  "It'll be over soon."

  I stalk into the smoke-filled room. The mouth to the shield is blackened like a Goth's lips and I laugh. Here at the heart I feel the power of it more than ever. It pushes back at the black eye, keeping it contained.

  I crawl in through the hot, scorched hatch. I toss mines and grenades indiscriminately. I riddle it with explosives, then I exit, pick up a handful of remote detonators, and walk a length down the corridor. It triggers on the first, initiating another chain reaction that starts with a muffled-

  PFFFT

  And crescendos through all the bombs I planted.

  PFPFFCRKKKBOOMPFFFCRKKK

  The bunker itself shakes. The corridor sways. The shield comes down.

  The young man looks at me from the thickness of dust. Black, blue, black, blue. In another life this would be freedom for him now. The line is completely gone around Istanbul, and at least for a time he can go above ground and see the sun. Does he even remember what the world is really like? What it smells like?

  But he won't be free. I'm here, and that's the threat. The leprous thing has shown me the way, and I have the eye. The shield isn't there to control it anymore, and the eye's great weight presses down like water behind the Hoover Dam, waiting to surge.

  I let it surge.

  Black light pours out as I funnel the eye to everyone near; a signal that overwhelms their minds like lightning through a circuit. The ones nearest to me die in seconds. The boy overheats and passes away. I guide the surge outward, growing stronger with each death. There are so many levels to this place and so many people on the runways above. I pour the black light into their minds.

  POP POP POP

  They die like soap bubbles.

  Down through the decks, up through the earth, and it's not even me anymore; I'm just a lens. This was coming anyway. I squeeze and their minds blow. POP POP POP. Dozens, hundreds, and every drop of blood shed by the lash shall be repaid with the-

  Something hits my head and I fly. My head hits the wall and my shoulder follows, then I crumple with black light spraying wildly out of my mouth and eyes. I blink and roll and take another hit, this time in my right arm, thrown up instinctively as protection.

  It breaks at the wrist. Black light pours out along with blood. The pain comes.

  Above me stands a figure in a blood-crusted black helmet, and for a moment I think that Shark-eyes has come back again, or Arnst, but then I see the face through the dark visor and realize the truth.

  It's Anna.

  I gawp up at her. I don't know whether to rejoice or scream. She just broke my arm with a rifle butt. She's alive. I try to frame some words that will fit the moment, but my head isn't working and there's so much light rushing through me that I can't say a thing.

  The rifle comes down again, this time cracking into my shoulder, and I buckle under it. Perhaps my clavicle breaks, and I scream. They've got to her. They've polluted her, and now she works for them.

  "Anna, stop," I gasp, fumbling with
my left arm up. "Stop."

  "You stop!" she shouts back, and brings the butt down again, this time cracking off my shin as I kick my legs up in a protective huddle. "You stop doing this!" Another blow cracks sharply off my knee.

  I gasp and roll, on to my belly so I can crawl. The black light's abandoning me now, spraying out in haphazard spurts from my eyes and my broken wrist. I crawl on my good arm with my cracked collarbone sagging, my shattered knee-cap letting me down, and she hits me in the back, beating the light out of me. She beats the ribs in my back and several break at once, pushing in like daggers to meet the ones broken through from the front.

  I scream and crawl. "Stop," I moan, rolling pathetically onto my back. "Anna." I wave my feeble arms above me, right hand wagging sickly like a dog's tail. She raises the rifle but doesn't bring it down.

  I'm panting and bleeding. How many broken bones? I reach up through the light but I can't feel her, cocooned in her helmet. What looked so tight on Arnst's head is a perfect fit for her, though her hair is crammed in there. I laugh through the pain. If Lara wore a helmet, perhaps she would look like this. I think of the gorgeous feel of her hair, the touch of her skin, and how happy it made me.

  I don't want that to end. I can't let that end.

  "I could've shot you, Amo," Anna barks, reversing the rifle so the barrel points at my head. "You have to stop. I will kill you if you don't."

  I wave my arms in little demented motions to show I understand. My thoughts are still firing wrong. The black eye is up there still, but the connection through my addled head is faulty.

  "How can I stop?" I ask through a mouth hot with blood. "They bombed New LA, Anna. They tried to kill us all. We did it together in Maine. How can I stop now?"

  "There's a cure," she shouts, over the cries of people round us in the bunker as they come back to themselves. I didn't finish them all yet, there are still plenty left to come for me. "It's real and I'm going to teach it to them."

  I look up at her, and I think in that moment that she is beautiful. She is truly Cerulean's daughter, and the real hero of this tale. A cure has always been the greatest myth. Bring the zombies back to life. Bring my family back. Bring back all the things that we've lost.

  But Cerulean died for his dream, and it's too much death already.

  "There is no cure," I gasp, and blood rolls from my open mouth. I am so pathetic now. "Shark-eyes said so. No cure for them, or for us. I have to do this, Anna."

  She tightens her sight down the rifle. My blood drips down its length. Every drop shall be repaid. "You're wrong. I have the cure inside me." She looks into my eyes. "I'm pregnant, Amo. Ravi's dead, he died saving me, but I'm carrying his child. There's something in its DNA that can save us, but I need Lucas to do it, and Lucas is here. He's in this bunker, and you're killing him."

  I reel. I roll. I try to shuffle backwards, like a crab with half its limbs chopped off, but Anna prods me hard in the sternum with the barrel and I stop. She is truly brave, and righteous, and I am the villain.

  "It's another lie, Anna," I tell her, disdaining the whining tone in my voice. So let it be. "They've lied and they've lied, they signed our treaties and made their promises, and then they dropped a goddamned nuclear bomb! We keep trusting, Anna, and trusting because we're weak, and when will it end?" I spit blood to the side. "Shark-eyes understood, do you think he'd have pity on us, if he could? There's no room for pity any more. No room for hope built on lies, because where is the cure, Anna? Where is it?!"

  People are rising to their feet nearby, shuffling down the corridor like zombies, all ready to die, and they are the heroes here too, not me.

  "It's in me," Anna says, and touches her belly. "It's here. I can't let you do this. I need Lucas, Amo. I need him."

  I sag. I understand. I let my arms fall to the side, let the defeat show in my eyes, so she sees it. She knows the old me, and knows what this is.

  She lets the rifle barrel drift down to her side.

  It's all I need.

  I open the battered floodgates and channel the full force of the eye at her. It throws her backward, head full of chaos as the helmet interacts with her immunity, and the rifle fires into the metal floor with a bright PLINK PLINK that sends bullets ricocheting madly around, but it's not enough.

  I push up and press on as the torrent drives her back. Bodies drop and burn out around me again, caught in the spreading halo. Anna drops to her knees as I rise; on one shaky knee, with one broken arm and shoulder, but I get up. I'm like Julio, I think, I'll be the deformed villain in his torture pit at the end, though there's one essential difference between Julio and me.

  I'm going to win.

  I stand and Anna falls, and the black eye buoys me up. It gives me strength, letting me ignore the pain. I stand over her and look down, feeling some of the joy I've learnt to take in victory. If Drake were here I know what he'd say; the lesson I've finally learned.

  This is how to win.

  You can't absorb that much pain and stay a good man. You have to learn to turn it outward and direct it at others. You have to learn to love it, and it's with love that I press forward, beating black light against Anna's head through the helmet until she starts shaking out of control. It's for my family and my people that I keep pushing, until she vomits in the helmet and her eyes flash black, until she's gone so far that the only step further is to squeeze a final time and wink her out. I press, and I press, and I know I'm going to do it, to save us all until with a soft touch and warm word there is Cerulean at my side.

  "Amo," he says.

  He stands in the Darkness as a thing apart. Around us the world crumbles and bodies burst, but he stands proud. My friend. My great friend.

  "Amo," he only says, and there it is, the name they gave that I bore through my brother's death and the apocalypse and all of it. Love, on one side. War, on the other. Which one am I?

  "Amo," he only says, and the black eye coughs out of me. I have to, I tell him. Cerulean, please, you have to understand. You have to see.

  "Amo," is all he says, and it's all there. He's saved me so much, and I can't stop myself from wondering, is he saving me now? A sob breaks through my breathing, because I can't kill his daughter with him here. I can't not do it, but here he is. His eyes swim with understanding, cerulean blue amidst all the black, and I remember running the Darkness together.

  "We're still there," he says. "You and me. We always will be."

  I turn from him and scream, as the force of the black eye rips me apart. This is what I've made myself to be, a cruel man because they have to die, and I didn't go through so much only to step back now. Feargal is dead. Keeshom is dead. So many thousands are dead, and-

  I see Anna's face through the visor, and she's still the little girl who ran to me on the Chinese Theater forecourt so long ago, eyes alight with hope. I see all the years of anguish she went through, and put us through, and Lara's fears that she would drown on the Atlantic, and I see the good woman she has become, and then it's only me and the black light and Anna standing in the corridor, and suddenly I know.

  She is my child.

  Just as much as Vie and Talia, just like Drake's fifty lost child soldiers, like Masako's boy Lin and every child born to Witzgenstein's people, like the boy on the floor here and the red-haired girl in Brezno, they are all my people.

  It means I'm fighting for the wrong things. I'm fighting for half of what they are, and I should have learned this lesson long ago; in Times Square, In Iowa, in Las Vegas, but all I managed to glimpse were the edges of what being a survivor means, that Anna's trying to tell me now.

  That we're all in this together.

  Little Anna lies beneath me, and I love her. She's holding up a red string even now, with that sad, haunted look in her eye, and I can't kill her like this, not when she's pregnant, not with Ravi dead, not after so much loss.

  I look around and see what I've done. How many I've killed already. My vanity, my blindness, my rage. For this I deserve to die. F
or this I deserve…

  I let it go.

  I let the black eye go, and like that it is gone, dissipated into the air. The black light fades and I focus on Anna, unconscious, suffocating in her helmet, and I know what comes next.

  I prize Arnst's helmet off her head and leave her gasping. I toss it on the floor as others start to wake around us. These ones can live, then. Let them do so without me. I need to find a fitting place. Like Sophia, I need to find the right spot to hang my body by the neck until I die.

  I look round at them; all the people I tried to kill, and I don't say I'm sorry, because I'm not. I've only failed again, and that makes me the worst coward of all. There is nothing to say for a moment like this.

  21. ON YOUR KNEES

  Anna roused with Lucas leaning over her, pumping her chest. Her ribcage flexed and lights flared across her eyes.

  "I'm here," she whispered, and he stopped pumping and began to weep. "I'm all right."

  "Oh God, Anna! Thank God!"

  She held his head close while he wept. She stroked his hair, while random people milled around them, still dizzy from whatever Amo did on the line. "It's all right," she said. Her throat hurt, and the air tasted bad, like an explosion. To the side there were bodies lying that did not move.

  Not everyone was all right.

  Lucas pulled himself up and rubbed his eyes. "Where's Ravi? Did he make it? Peters and Jake are here."

  That started her crying. That they were alive. That Ravi wasn't.

  "Ravi's dead," she said, and he cried more at that. He pulled her vomit-sticky head up and held it close to his chest. "But there's something else."

  He sniffed and laughed. "What else?"

  "I'm pregnant."

  It felt strange to say the words, because it wasn't even a living baby. It was just a thing, an experiment maybe, but still, it was Ravi's, and it was right to cry for Ravi, just as it was right to be happy some part of him remained with her.

  His eyes searched hers. "You are?"