I slump in the seat. I'll become a snowman. There's a certain radioactive heat coming off the lepers, so I send them away. They line the road like black and white ghosts, at the extent of what I can see through the falling snow. I set the demons on the other side, red wardens of the North standing proud, watching like my honor guard as I sink toward death.
It's cold. I welcome it. I'm so tired.
This is a war I can't fight. I can't win. I can't fathom the depths Olan Harrison has been willing to go to. I think of my parents, my family, my friends, my brother, all lost. When he wiped the line, they were erased. I never knew they were even there, but now I know that they aren't, and it cuts through the old rage like it never existed. I can't get angry, because I've already lost.
Nausea swirls in my throat. If not rage, then what do I have? A steady hand and a little creativity, but those things can't get me through this. I think of Lara, but it doesn't move the needle. I think of my children, but that well has been pumped dry. I can't mine anything from their memory any more, can't summon a scrap of feeling through the numbness of this monumental loss.
The engine stops ticking. Frost tries to settle on the hot hood, freezing and melting and refreezing, and I watch the tracery patterns it makes while the cold works its way into my extremities. The radio hisses static, and I think about that. At least I will be on the line. I will be up there, but alone. My family won't be there. My friends won't be there.
It's what I deserve. I slump lower still, half my body in the foot well. Through the open doors I can see my honor guard watching silently. Like a pharaoh's slaves, they should all die with me. Bury me deep in a cairn, I tell them. Throw yourselves on top.
And that's it. I think I'm done.
I can't fight. I can't win. I can't beat a man who cannot die.
2. OPEN THE DOORS
I see Cerulean and my brother, sitting at a table looking at my art.
It makes me want to cry. My brother died thirty years ago. Cerulean died two years ago. They can't possibly be together anywhere, but here they are.
I roll forward in my Jeep to look at them. Cerulean is strong, like he always was, with those warm eyes that make me think of Christmas. My brother is a stranger; a man who never had the chance to grow up, but still I recognize him, handsome with a strong chin and short sandy-brown hair.
They're looking at my art. It's not a piece I remember making, though the setting is familiar. It shows Times Square in New York, like the painting I made and showed to Lara the night the world ended, but there are differences. Where the tower of the dead stood before, there is now something different.
Zombies fill the streets; white eyes glowing, gray skin naked, muscles withered to the bone, but they are not shambling, or chasing, or even climbing. They are instead looking up at the painter, and every one of them has an arm raised in the air, ending in a clenched fist.
It makes the tears spring from my eyes. I look over them, like a Where's Waldo of the New York dead, and see that every one of them is looking up at me; men, women, children, all.
What does it mean?
"What does it mean?" asks my brother.
Cerulean turns a jigsaw piece thoughtfully in his fingers. "I don't know," he says, then slots the last piece into place. Only then do I realize that this painting is actually a jigsaw they've assembled together. The last piece in the very middle shows a figure standing amidst the dead, and as Cerulean slots it into place I see…
Not me. Not Lara.
Anna.
Her arms are up. Her fists are clenched. But her eyes are white and her skin is gray, just like the ocean.
"Your daughter," says my brother.
"Your niece," says Cerulean. My brother chuckles.
"What would Amo say?" he asks.
I try to say something to them. I never think of my brother these days, but there's nothing I'd like more than to talk to him now. I want him to see me, to tell me everything is going to be all right. But he can't see me, and I can't get any sound out to be heard.
"She's one of them, now," he says.
"She's their leader," Cerulean answers. "Amo would be proud of that."
I gasp at the air. I want to scramble the jigsaw into pieces. I don't want this to be real, even if Anna is the leader. I don't want Anna to die, too.
"I didn't paint this," I finally manage to say, but they don't hear me. "It's not mine."
"Why do you think he painted this?" my brother asks. He's not the same as I remember him, weathered, but strong; the man he would have grown up to be, a bulwark against the hardness of the world.
"I don't know," Cerulean says. "But he's just a man. Art is art."
My brother laughs. "Or it's a wireless link to the hydrogen line. Who's to say he didn't tune in and see this in the static? Who's to say, really? What's a dream, Cerulean, and where does it come from?"
Cerulean considers this.
"It isn't real," I yell at them. "Stop saying it is."
"I don't see him much anymore," Cerulean says. "I used to."
"You're fading," my brother says. "Mulching into the line, like ripe compost. There's not a lot that's uniquely left of you."
Cerulean smiles, and taps the table. There's a metallic clink. In his hand he holds two silver necklaces; the ones he picked for both him and Anna.
"Some would say I'm growing stronger. Spreading out my roots."
My brother chuckles. "Then what am I?"
"You're gone," Cerulean says. "Wiped out by Olan Harrison."
My brother nods. Then slowly, he disappears. Cerulean sits alone at the table.
"Cerulean," I shout. "Robert!"
He turns. He looks in my vague direction and my heart thumps in my chest, though his eyes don't settle.
"Is that you, Amo?" he asks. There's a wry grin on his lips. "Looking for another prepper Bible, is that it?"
Now I'm in floods of tears. "Don't be dead," I tell him. "I need you for this. I can't do it on my own."
Cerulean inclines his head, as if he's heard me, but he isn't sure. Maybe it was just a drifting breeze on the wind. "But you're not alone. You've got Anna." He points at the jigsaw. "She's going to break open the doors."
"What doors?"
"What doors?" he repeats, amused. "What other doors, Amo? Heaven. Hell. Perception. The whole of it. She'll march her army right through." He taps the jigsaw. "You'll see. But she can't do it alone, either."
"What army?"
Now Cerulean too begins to fade.
"Seven billion souls," he says. "You'll see, my friend. Keep the faith. Look after our little girl. She's going to need you."
Then his body glimmers away.
I'm left for a moment in the darkness, looking at the jigsaw with Anna punching her gray fists into the air, wondering if any of this is real or just a piece of make-believe my mind is telling me as I die…
* * *
There's a fizzle in the light, and I open my eyes to see a new cairn.
Black and white bodies fill my vision. I twist my neck. The heat is sweltering. The Jeep is full of lepers crammed in around me. Demons loom in a circle like standing stones outside.
I force a dry, ambivalent laugh. Probably I did this, with all my thoughts of pharaohs dying with their slaves.
"I'm not dead yet," I tell them. "Too soon."
My lepers don't reply. My demons don't move. I see that their backs are to me, facing outward.
Are they guarding me?
"Get off," I whisper to the bodies pressed around me, but nobody moves. The lepers fritz and blink but they don't shift.
I wake up the black eye and use it like a lever to work at them, but I can't pry them loose. I ramp up the power, but it isn't enough. They're locked into each other in a way I don't recognize at first, until I think of Anna's tales of great mounds of the ocean in Mongolia, locked into position above demons at their centers.
Is that this?
"Let me out," I insist, but they don't. The black eye tow
ers overhead, but there's something seamless about the way they've joined together, and I can't get the black eye into any crevices to pull them apart.
"Get off!" I yell, but nothing happens. I kick and punch them to no avail.
Then I realize something important; they're not killing me. I'm not controlling them, but still they're here, clustered close for warmth, keeping me still in a moment when all I wanted was to die, protecting me from the cold, and from the despair, and most of all from…
I gulp.
Myself?
"All right," I say. My voice catches with emotion. I don't understand this. All I've done to these poor bastards is torture them. I've been rolling over them. I've been making them sing. That made Arnst mad. Are they mad? "That's enough, you can let me up now."
They don't budge. I heave again, but it's pointless. I let the black eye drop limp, useless against this kind of unity. It reminds me of another time, another world, when the ocean saved me in Las Vegas. I never understood that. I've carried the scars of that fight ever since. But I didn't die. They killed Don and left me alone, and is that what this is?
I ask them, and they don't answer. None of them budge.
"Answer me!" I shout at them. I make demands. I kick and punch more, and heave, and yell, but they don't move.
Then I lie still. I remember my dream. I remember Anna in the middle, with both fists raised. What is this, I wonder. What is happening? For a time I sob, though I don't really know why. I'm beyond tears, now. I don't feel anything anymore. I can't afford to feel anything. Still I sob.
* * *
Drake sits at the same table, turning the jigsaw pieces in his hands, across from Julio. Drake is huge, as ever, with the cruel gleam of wit in his eyes. Julio is meager and twisted, angry even here.
"He's gone soft," Drake says.
Julio just snorts.
"Weak. He had the edge. Now he's lost it."
Julio glares.
"He was becoming something better, with the softness hammered out. When you give yourself permission, wonderful things can happen."
Julio scoffs, and speaks. "Like your fifty children, and your seven sister-wives? Was that permission?"
Drake grins big and spreads his muscular arms. "He speaks."
"You're a liar," Julio says. "Not even a very good one."
"And what about you?" Drake says, eyeing him. "Didn't you lie, to stock that underground pit as thoroughly as you did? At least I did it with vision. You were just bleak, bleak, bleak, all the way down into the shit. Did you plan on ending up as a demon? That's a real paucity of ambition, brother."
Julio just gives his twisted grin. "You wouldn't understand the depths we plumbed together. In the bottom of all that shit, we found beauty."
Drake laughs. "Beauty? Now who's lying to himself? I knew my people hated me, but screw them! We made babies, and in the middle of the deed they loved it despite the hate, because they knew they didn't have any bigger vision than me. Without me they would have died of despair, one by one, alone. They needed me to stay alive."
"It was the same with me."
At this Drake hoots with laughter. "Because you had them locked up, son! They would have starved if you'd left. Give them the choice to run though, and they would have. My 'sister-wives' and 'husbands' never ran, though I never stopped them."
Julio smiles glibly. "All except the very first. The Portuguese girl. What was her name?"
"Don't worry about her name," Drake says quickly. "That was a mistake."
"Mistake," Julio muses. "What wasn't a mistake? I should never have joined Amo's group. I should have known from the start. I could have made my own community. I could have had respect."
Drake shakes his head slowly. "No, little brother. Wasn't going to happen. You didn't have the vision. I'm sorry, but it's true. Look what you did when you went mad. It's nihilistic. A torture pit. A glorious death, killing off your own people for some petty revenge." He frowned. "Then look at what I did. Look at what he did." He tosses a glance over his shoulder, in my general direction. "We both built things. You had nothing on that."
Julio grimaces.
Drake waves a hand generously. "But don't feel bad. It's not how everyone's wired. Look one table over." He gestures. I see nothing, but Julio appears to. He smiles.
"Can you believe that guy was actually screwing the zombies?" Drake asks. "Dressed them up in cheerleader gear. What a good time, right? I'm glad Amo took him out."
"Amo didn't take him out."
"No," Drake agrees wistfully. "He was anointed, wasn't he? Prime mover. I've heard them say, if it hadn't been him, it was going to be me. I was second in line for signal strength. I would've been untouchable. Imagine that, with all the dead to flow at my command?"
"You've got an overbite," Julio says. "I wouldn't want your genes spread across the world, like a master race."
Drake touches his chin, briefly self-conscious.
"Besides, he's listening to us now," Julio says. "He probably wants to hear something about his precious Anna."
"I never met Anna," Drake says. "But she's fierce, I can see that. There's no compromise in her, no doubt."
"True. I was an idiot. I didn't want much. Just a little respect."
Drake leans in. "It all starts there, brother. Poison in the soul. Sweat it out."
"I'm sweating it out. But what shall we tell him?"
"I think we've said enough," Drake says, but all the same, he turns to face me. His eyes don't fix on me fully, slumped here in my Jeep, but he gets my general direction. "Idiot, isn't that right?"
"It's always suicide with him," Julio says. "Break a nail, shoot yourself in the head. Feeling down, hang yourself from the eaves. He's obsessed. And so dramatic!"
"More's the pity he always fails," says Drake. "He'd play chess better than you."
Julio laughs.
"Seriously, though," says Drake. "Amo, old friend. Take a look." He spreads his arms and gestures all around, at the darkness. I get the faintest impression that there may be other people out there, ghostly bodies moving, but the impression fades. "You like the line? You want some of this? Keep it up. It's all mulching up here, buddy, all the time. Recriminations. Reparations. A grand coming together. It makes me sick, but whatever. I see the value. But your man Olan, he's set that back without compare. Seven billion is too much to lose. You see how hard I fought for just fifty? Seven billion is a whole lot more. That's a crime in my book. He wiped out my wife and my daughter too, back when I was a pretty good man. You need to sort this out. If I see you up here before you deal with it, there'll be no coming together between you and I. Not ever."
Julio stands up. "That goes for me too. If you leave our people on their own against that bastard, there'll be no coming together with me either."
Drake holds a screening hand to the side of his mouth, so Julio can't see, and mouths "Follower." I almost laugh, except Julio saying 'Our people' hits me hard.
He was one of us too, for the longest time. He betrayed us, our people, but still he was family for years. Yet we're all family, aren't we? Up here in this place, it's easy to feel that even Drake is my brother. We want the same things, just in different ways. We are for humans. We are against those who would wipe humans out.
"Sort it out," Drake says, and points. "Put your existential angst aside. Now you've peeked behind the curtain, and this is it. This is what we're fighting for."
"Jigsaws," says Julio. "Chess."
I open my mouth to say something. I don't get to say it though.
* * *
The Jeep is caught in the full flush of a wintry sun. I blink, and trickles of cold water run down my back, driving me up in the seat.
The lepers are out there, no longer in here. They're clustered together in a black and white clump, like the red clump of the demons beside them. They're not looking at me, but they're organized. They're waiting.
I rub my eyes and roll out of the Jeep. My legs are unsteady beneath me.
&nb
sp; "What the hell was that?" I ask, but neither the demons nor the lepers have any answer for me. I wander a bit, over the snow and frost. It's cold but in the bright of the sun I don't notice it. The snow all around cuts a piercing glare in my eyes.
I take a piss in the frozen bushes. I drink some water. I eat an MRE cold, sitting in the driver's seat with the tray on my lap.
I look peevishly at the lepers and the demons. They don't look at me.
What happened?
I don't feel the same. I remember the dreams. They were all dreams, weren't they?
"Were you in here?" I ask the lepers, pointing at the Jeep. They don't answer. I put the MRE down and walk over to them. I look in their faces. The heat of their radioactivity blares away, but it doesn't hurt.
"Did you?" I ask again, knowing I won't get any answer. Still I point, to help things along. "Did you get in there?"
Nothing. I round on the demons.
"You! What were you guarding against? There's nobody here!"
They studiously avoid my gaze. They're enormous, towering over me. I shove one of them on his tree trunk-like leg, like I'm starting a fight. "What?"
He doesn't even look down.
I sit back in the Jeep. I get up again and pace around it.
Something is different. I feel through my thoughts and memories, trying to find out what it is. Everything is the same as yesterday as far as I can tell, but still I feel different. The weight, maybe. The emptiness, perhaps. It feels like I've been reset. I still know everything, I still am everything, but it's like those things don't drag me down the way they used to.
I don't get it.
There can't be an afterlife. Even if there is a line, it can't be anything like people who once would've hated each other, getting together in a room and playing chess. It can't be so simple, so human as that; it's almost certainly just signals blurring, no more sentient than the fuzz as I tune from one radio station to the next.
But then…
I don't know.
Wouldn't it be nice?
I stroke my head, where the scars are from blowing out my brains. Maybe it's because of this. Hallucinations. Vivid dreams. Maybe that's exactly what I needed, so who cares if it was 'real' or not?
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