She went around the hospital opening doors.
There were dozens of the dead, or 'floaters', trapped in their rooms; old people whose hearts had flaked out while riding a roll in the casino, young guys and girls with caved-in noses from too much heroin, all now part of the ocean. They thumped sluggishly against their windows and doors.
One by one 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, suffering 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 around 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 buildings either side of the Strip, all cheap motels with dark blue swimming pools.
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 his comic where he described shooting himself in the head and surviving. She hadn't thought that was real, had guessed it was a metaphor, but now she could see the scars in his head.
It was a whole new world.
It was the evening of the third day when he mumbled and stirred in his sleep. She stroked his hot forehead with a cool damp cloth, and 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 the restaurant, when he'd 'read' her hand 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. Cute 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."
His smile faded, and his eyes closed again.
"I'm glad. It's good. I'm sorry about Don."
Then he was under. She watched him for a time, sleeping peacefully now. The color was coming back into 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 school bus' 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 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 bus. 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.
35. SURVIVORS
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 wind down my thighs and calves to my feet. 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. My legs 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 somehow I sent the ocean to kill him. Do I regret that?
I'm not sure. I don't regret surviving.
How did I do it? I have no idea.
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 say
s.
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.
OK, I wonder, so this is happening.
"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 to bits if we don't hold on tight. 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. The bus. He got worked up. I worked him up, to be honest. I shouldn't have done, I think. I could have done it better, but I didn't." I chew my lip for a moment. I'll be living with this for a long time. "But I didn't know, not for sure. He'd seen the comics. He knew about you, about Cerulean. And he wouldn't back off. If he'd just backed off…"
"You fought him. You shot first."
I talk through it. I tell her about how the ocean responded to my unspoken call for help, and tore 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." I think, flashing back on old memories. "Did you see Sophia's trailer? On the road into Pennsylvania?"
Lara nods. "So sad."
"Then you read her journal. She had theories about our brains, about the ocean brains. Transmitting, signals back and forth. Maybe I sent them a signal, and they responded." I think about my Bluetooth trick in Sophia's trailer, drawing the ocean away.
Was it like that?
Lara frowns. "Like telepathy?"
I shrug. "Maybe. I don't know. It might make sense. Especially if I'm the one who started all this."
She laughs. "Cerulean's theory, right. Sex started the apocalypse." She flicks a finger off my nose. "You and me."
I laugh. I don't feel light about this, though. I remember Don too vividly, his easy grin, him calling me a 'dick' saying he just wanted to be friends. That guilt's on me, and always will be.
"Maybe they were just protecting you," she says. "Because you were speaking up for them. For the cheerleaders."
"Maybe," I say. "Right."
We lie quietly after that. She can see I don't want to talk about this, at least not now. I appreciate it. I stroke her bare arm. I don't deserve this. I'm glad I have it.
* * *
I recover steadily. Lara 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.
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 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 around here, so I don't know if we can print them out professionally, but I expect we can print them on the hospital machines and add the new pages as addenda to the back of the ones I've already got.
I want to tell the story about Don. But not his cheerleaders. I don't want to say that the ocean killed him, or that I told them to. I don't know what I want to say.
While I figure that out, Lara goes out to work, developing our plan for the UFO casino.
"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 draw 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.
36. UFO
In another week I finish the updates to my comic. Lara finishes her large-scale 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.
"It helps you've gotten so wiry," she says. "Like a floater."
I grunt. With one hand gripping the drip bag stand like a walking stick, I slide a hesitant step forward. I make it.
"Hoorah," Lara says.
"Hoorah," I repeat. "Ok. Let's go see it."
"The UFO, now? Are you sure?"
"Yeah. We may need a wheelchair."
At the doorframe she rolls around with a wheelchair, heavily padded. Getting into it is hard, and twice it slides away while we're trying to drop my poor buttocks into it.
"Backstop it," I suggest, sweating and shaking hard no
w. "Stand there. Use your feet as chocks."
"I found the brake," she says, clicking it on.
I grab the elbow-rests and lower myself as slowly as possible onto the deeply piled pillows. I ride so high I feel like the princess and the pea. I need a seatbelt to keep myself in. My legs hurt, but the cushioning helps a lot.
She leans around and kisses me on the cheek. "It'll get better."
I focus on breathing. It's decent of her.
"Can you push? I can hardly move."
She pushes. We wend down the ward, and I peer through various rooms to the windows and the view of the city beyond. Las Vegas passes like images on a slowly spinning zoetrope.
We descend by a gradual slope at the end of the building. I try not to suck on my teeth at each little irregularity of the wheelchair's movement. This was Cerulean's life for so long, and I know she's doing her besty.
"I've kitted out one of the wheelchair minibuses," Lara says. "The elevator works."
I nod thanks. I want to give a little more, but it's all I can do to keep from cursing her out every time the wheelchair's momentum changes. Of course it's not her fault. I'm the one who wants to see this, now. I bite down my frustration.
We pull through bright sunshine, and I relinquish my iron grip on the rests to shield my eyes. We pull over to the minibus, and she revs it up. The side door opens automatically, and an elevator platform unfolds and descends.
"Like the Delorean," I manage.
She chuckles. "Those doors opened upwards."
I laugh breathily. "Yeah."
She rolls me on, keys it to raise, and the minibus lifts me in. The drive is not far, and I cling to the minibus handles throughout. We pull around a currency transfer stall near to the Strip, and Lara leans back over the seat.
"Close your eyes."
I close them. I feel the turn. We'll be passing the spot where the ocean swallowed Don about now. I try not to think about how that makes me feel. The minibus stops.
"Keep them closed," she says.
The door opens, the elevator drops me to the ground, then we're rolling forward.
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