The Last Mayor Box Set 3

by Michael John Grist

  But regret for what?

  BREZNO

  Anna approached the bodies jerkily, like a stop-motion figure made out of clay. She passed a woman dressed in frayed jeans and a yellow sweater with the color bleached out of it, lying on the gravel and shivering. Her skin was trapped halfway toward gray, and the light flickered on and off in her eyes, like all the others with her.

  This was Amo's work.

  She stumbled on a man's foot and barely caught herself. She felt bleary and drunk; the weight of so many jumps settling over her like a slow-motion avalanche, numbing her thinking. One thousand jumps was too many. Even now the weight of it deepened like a bruise.

  She looked back at Peters, and the world spun. He was sprawled awkwardly on the gravel, twitching at random intervals, unconscious. The jumps had hurt him more than her. She'd known that, but she'd kept jumping.

  Why?

  The smell hit her.

  It came on like a storm front, punching through the post-jump heaviness, and she doubled over and gagged on ropey spit. The stench of decay was suddenly overpowering, as if a switch had been flipped. Looking up again, she took in new details; a tight scrum of bodies here had been mauled by wild animals. There ribs broke through a torn corduroy jacket, stained a moldering black. Dark stains surrounded another cluster where Amo's tire tracks ran, their blood and other fluids seeped into the gravel.

  The sound of buzzing flies became a raucous drone. Now she saw thick clouds of them hovering like a pestilence. In Istanbul they'd burned the dead bodies before they festered. Nobody had done that here.

  "I'm going in," Anna called to Peters. She remembered that much; some sense of mission. The world slopped side to side as she spun back, making her seasick. Of course Peters didn't respond. Maybe she could help him. Maybe inside…

  She zigzagged ahead, taking steps that were too long, too short, like she'd forgotten how to walk. When she reached the bunker mouth she almost collapsed. The destructive power of this thing she was toying with was immense. The line. It was treacherous, and jumping through it was a risk that weighed heavier on her by the moment. But there was no time to recover now, only time to advance.

  She lurched into the dark mouth of Brezno bunker. She went down stairs, rode in an elevator, walked down corridors glimpsed as if from afar. Where was she going?

  The bunker's air conditioning and fans were still grumbling somewhere deep and distant. The air was clinical, with barely a hint of the burnt-out electrical stink Amo had caused when he'd sabotaged the shield. There were no corpses here either, no rot; only people caught in that half-phased place between life and becoming the ocean, carpeting the floor.

  She walked amongst their shivering bodies as carefully as her stumbling feet could manage, remembering a time long-past, when she'd first worked her way along the landing in her father's house.

  "Excuse me," she murmured as she went, until she found herself kneeling in a large, brightly lit hall, filled with plants and floored with soil. A farm bay? Snippets of nonsense rhyme flitted through her head, pieces of Alice on her adventures in Wonderland.

  "I am not crazy," came the voice of the Cheshire Cat, "my world is just different from yours."

  Now she was peering intently at a patch of dirt, within which a stark footprint was indented, crushing a tiny yellow flower. Was that her footprint? She couldn't remember. The flower's miniscule embryonic roots emerged from the upturned dirt like sad little fingers, beginning to harden in the dry air.

  She found herself crying.

  She wasn't supposed to be in the farm bay, was she? There'd been an idea for her coming here, but she couldn't grasp it anymore. There'd been a sense that maybe she could…

  She was up and bouncing down corridors before the thought was complete. She had to take action now, even if she didn't know what it was. Her limbs felt like projections extending both far ahead and behind, like hundred-league boots spreading into the future and the past at the same time.

  It made her nauseous, like her mind was splitting apart.

  She blinked, and found herself in the blackened control room, beside the access port to the ruined shield. Yes, this. The shield was long-gone after Amo blew it up, but there was an echo of it on the hydrogen line still. Perhaps, this? With her eyes closed she let her mind flow into the line, instinctively pouring herself around the shield's echo like a mold of clay around the hard contours of a key.

  Like this?

  She'd been around shields before. Each one of them had been a low-resolution buzz, from the day she and Amo walked into Maine to the taste of the dead shields all the way up to Istanbul, though that low resolution now burst with a new depth.

  The data was all there, like a T4 virus wriggling beneath the electron microscope, suddenly revealed. Perhaps the jumps had finally removed the scales from her eyes, and now she truly saw.

  Yes.

  Back outside in the hot sun she stood in the midst of the swarming flies and phasing gray bodies. Her lepers milled far away, as if they knew something terrible was going to happen. They were right. There had to be sacrifices; Amo had never shirked from that and she couldn't, either.

  She summoned one of the lepers and it fizzed into existence beside her, lowering its head like a servant. Perhaps once it had been a man. She laid her hands on its crackling black skull and listened to the chaos fuming inside. Its thoughts were a dark looking glass of the line, unpredictable and out of control.

  It was time for a little order.

  "I'm sorry," she whispered, and pushed her mind inside it. The leper jerked and tried to flash away, but she held it still and drove deeper. It tried to scream, and the looking glass of its thoughts warped. From inside its mind she saw reflections of herself as if in a fun house mirror; here she was sixteen, standing in a madwoman's yacht with her finger in a rifle barrel, waiting for the blast that would blow off her hand. Here she was a little girl snuggled close to her father's chest as they made their long trek across the United States. Here she stood with Ravi bleeding in her arms in the cornfield, unable to keep him safe.

  Memories became thread. Thought became fabric to stitch the parts together. She unfurled the mold of the dead shield's key like a spinnaker sail, and twisted the leper's mind to fit. Parts broke and re-aligned. Parts bloated and shrank as she squeezed. Somewhere in the midst her own belly blew up like a balloon, and –

  "You see?" said Ravi, leaning over her as her stomach swelled, "if you drink when it says drink, this is what you get."

  Something snapped like a bowsprit cable under too much pressure, and she reeled away from the leper as the thing in her belly cracked like an egg, spilling warm and smothering yolk across her body. The heat of it was everywhere, weighing her down like a tidal wave of the line, and beneath it she began to drown. She strained up toward the surface, barely crested the waves just long enough to see the first of the Brezno survivors stirring awake.

  Their eyes were not white. Their skin was not gray. They looked around in surprise as a brand new shield rippled out from the transformed leper in their midst.

  Then she sank back into the dark.

  GAP

  Anna woke with the sense of emptiness.

  The weight was mostly gone from her head, but the tingle of that strange warmth spreading over her body was still there. She reached down to touch her belly, and felt the absence. Everything had just changed. Was this somehow Joran Helkegarde's plan?

  She opened her eyes and looked up at low fronds of pine trees. There was blue sky above, and the sound of human bustle nearby. She rolled onto her elbow, and saw the Brezno bunker, with people tumbling in and out of its open mouth like frenzied ants. Each was carrying their personal burden of many-colored backpacks, large chunks of blocky equipment, gas canisters and wooden ration crates, gallon water jugs and bundles of bedding. Children ran along with them, some crying, most deadly intent. Everyone had pale faces, and thinned cheeks, and the same haunted look in their eyes.

  Anna blinked. It
didn't seem real, like waking from a dream to find the dream still continuing; people alive and living, even if they were in the midst of another exodus. These people hadn't been above ground for half a generation, and now here they were. Some of these children had never seen the true light of day.

  It was too much at once to register, and she caught herself simply counting the numbers. There was no time to be happy for these survivors, not with the threat of sudden bombardment hanging over all of their heads. The shadow SEAL had already destroyed Istanbul. As soon as they saw the shield, more bombs would fall.

  Her eyes searched the scene for Peters. He'd fallen there, sprawled at the edge, but he wasn't there now. Her leper was, stood in the scattered midst of bodies like a silent guardian. Its skin seemed to be a deeper black than before, a bottomless ebony that sucked her gaze in, while around it bloomed a curious fuzz in the air that felt like static made solid…

  She broke off the contact and scanned the crowd. People were stopping in their tracks as they fled, entranced by the leper, while others moved amongst them and physically turned their heads away, guiding them on. Even to her it was hypnotic, exuding an effect that swelled on the line and became this new shield, banishing the T4's infectious trigger.

  The shadow SEAL would see that.

  She pushed herself to her feet and hurried toward the bunker mouth, her stride growing even. Her remaining ten lepers were clustered to the side, hemmed in by vehicles. Caged like that they seemed rather forlorn, like tigers with their teeth and claws pulled, no longer fritzing and jumping at random.

  "Hey," Anna said, grabbing a passing figure, a tall man in a blue smock. "What's happening?"

  He looked at her like she was crazy. "Exodus protocol three," he said. "Where have you been?"

  He tried to pull away and she tugged back, forcing him to face her again.

  "Where's Peters? Have you seen Peters?"

  "Get off me," he snapped, and yanked free. This time Anna let him go. The panic in his head was at fever pitch, swelling out onto the line. She could feel how close he'd come to striking her; not out of any real anger, more out of fear.

  She reached out to the others and felt the buffeting tide of terror washing through them. They'd just woken up and been tossed into this. That's all they knew for certain. Exodus protocol three.

  She let the flow of them carry her, past the thinned-out delta of the dead and around the curve of the mountain, to a second rank of doors in the rock where vehicles were rumbling out even now; trucks, passenger vans, RVs.

  People were loading their gear and climbing on board. There were stacks of goods to be carried on, and also heaps of possessions left behind, and in the middle of it was Peters, waving on each vehicle. Coordinator of the evacuation. Anna smiled. He didn't look mad anymore, rather he seemed in total control. Logistics had always been his forte.

  She hurried over to him, and he threw his arms out to meet her.

  "You did it!" he said in a hoarse voice. She stepped in to his arms and gave him a tight squeeze. "Anna, are you alright?"

  She pulled away. "Fine. Different, maybe. How long have I been out?"

  His eyes boggled at her, like her standing there was a miracle, then gave a little shake and looked at his watch. "It has been six hours since I woke. I do not know how much longer than that. I found the people wandering, and started this." He gestured around them. "They think the infection's over, and they are going home!"

  Anna's mind raced ahead. This was just the first step of many. All the pieces had to be put into place.

  "You'll need to take the leper with you," she said, running through a swift mental checklist. "Sealed off well or it'll hurt them. You also need to get comms synced up with Jake and Lucas; set up a mobile lab, they're going to need every hand they can get. Then you have to run."

  It didn't occur to her to say 'we'. There wasn't any 'we' anymore, now their paths were diverging. That reality wasn't lost on Peters, and he nodded.

  "You," he said.

  Anna smiled. They'd both known this moment was coming.

  "I have already used their communications," he added. "I spoke to Helen." His tone became grave. "Istanbul are still ahead of the bombs. Lucas is working. He said you should have warned him about your shield. It has set his research back."

  Anna stifled a harsh comment. Lucas didn't like her these days, everyone knew that; it seemed he blamed her for all of this. Maybe he was right. Perhaps she should have found a way to let him know. She'd avoided jumping through Istanbul for just that reason.

  "Tell him the baby is gone," she said abruptly. There was no use sugar-coating it. "I felt it melt away. Get him to clear out a test run; I'll be there soon."

  Peters frowned. "The baby is gone?"

  Anna stepped closer and put one hand on his cheek. He was a dear man, really, and though there wasn't time for this, she would make time. "It's all right. It wasn't ever real; we both know that. And I understand what I have to do, now. The world's opening up, and maybe that's all the baby ever was; a door for me to walk through. It's part of me now, which means Ravi is, and the ocean is too."

  Peters gulped. His eyes shone. It was obvious there was a lot he wanted to say, but she knew it all already, so instead he gave a short, sharp nod.

  "I will take these people. I'm sorry I cannot come with you, Anna."

  She laughed. "I don't want you to die. I need you here, coordinating with the other bunkers. Lucas will know how to use them. You just need to make them see. There's no more fighting amongst ourselves anymore. This has to stick."

  "Yes. I will do it." A heavy pause, loaded with so many things unsaid. "Anna."

  "Peters." She smiled. "Expect these bastards to try and shoot you down."

  Peters nodded. That was plain to them both. If one leper could become a shield, why couldn't they all, for all the bunkers in the world, and how would the shadow SEAL like that? "Good luck go with you, Anna. Save us, if you can."

  "I'll try."

  She turned and strode away before she crumbled into tears. It didn't have to be many steps. After three she felt for her lepers and pulled them in. It was easy now, and they responded with a feather-light touch. She felt Peters' eyes on her back. She reached in, twisted, and jumped out of existence.

  * * *

  It took ten jumps to Gap.

  It was thousands of miles, but there were new ways through the line now; pathways that became clear as she jumped more, patterns that emerged from the storm and let her bypass the distance easily.

  When she landed she was not so broken as before. She breathed the fresh Alps air and looked at the bunker hole and the spray of bodies around it; always walking in Amo's footsteps, always cleaning up his messes.

  She stood another one of her lepers up as a shield within minutes; the process becoming more refined and accustomed. There was guilt attached to it, in sacrificing a leper, but there were thousands of other lives at stake and one more death was a weight she could easily bear.

  In the bunker she dug out the top command officers as they woke. They were disoriented, staggering, walking off the hangover of weeks spent trapped under the line. They asked her questions and made fumbled demands, but their words rang like the garbled cries of babies off Anna's outer shell.

  She was a fire and they all needed heat. When she spoke it was only natural for them to listen. They didn't know her but she radiated authority, so they obeyed.

  "You are under fire by the shadow SEAL," she told them. "They are sending bombs even now. You need to evacuate immediately, and don't stop running. Do you have exodus protocols?"

  The commander nodded woozily.

  She explained about the mobile lab equipment and the comms gear and storing the leper, as the dizzy collection of men and women around her grew. They were dressed in clothes that now sagged on their withered frames, with red-rimmed eyes fatigued by weeks of flashing on and off. Their brains were dry and slow, but Anna caught them each in her gaze and imprinted the words in
to them like a brand.

  "Who are you?" one of them asked.

  Anna looked at her; a younger woman, with buzzed brown hair and piercings in her left eyebrow.

  "I'm Anna," she said, because that was enough.

  It was twenty-three jumps to Istanbul. They passed in what felt like seconds.

  Sabiha Gökçen International Airport had been reduced to a barren, cratered moonscape. There were no listing planes left on their melted rubber wheels, no terminals or flight control tower other than great humps of debris, with barely any hint left of where the runways had been. Instead there were great, rubble-strewn holes bored into the earth, as if the upper layers of skin and muscle had been gouged out to reveal the guts below.

  Bunker busting bombs, she thought. Gritty gray dust rose from the gouges steadily, like final breaths exhaled from a dying beast. Anna stood on a low pile of jagged cement clods, sparkled with fragments of glass and veined with twisted lengths of steel rebar, and looked down into the depths. Far below an electric light was flashing, shooting occasional sparks. That was a corridor. The bright oblong hole of it receded away under the earth in one direction, the other stopped up with the wreckage of a crumpled jet fuselage.

  They'd blown Istanbul bunker off the map.

  They.

  She rubbed acrid dust from her eyes and wondered how long had passed since the shadow SEAL's last strike fell. She turned to the west, where there was a drifting pall of smoke in the sky; evidence of more bombs, tracing the line of her people as they'd fled.

  It was going to get a lot worse. She knew that. The jump-headache was settling into a permanent throb in the back of her head, and soon it would become a hammer. But that was OK. This was her role now.

  The Istanbul convoy needed a shield. Nine more bunkers around the world needed shields. It didn't seem any coincidence that she had ten lepers left. Now they were all vulnerable, and there wasn't any time to rest. She was on the Pacific again, steering her catamaran under the constant drive of the wind, leaning hard out and unable to close her eyes for a single second.