I boot up my laptop from my pack. I get the spare batteries on standby. I get out the USBs and boot up the Darkness. I plug in my goggles, my noise-canceling earphones, and escape.
If they come for me now, I don't care. I can't do this anymore. What I've done today is already unforgivable, a kind of genocide. The fulfillment center peels open before me. Here everything is simple, there are shelves to walk like city blocks and there are goods I need to collect like guns and buses.
I laugh. It's all the same. I get a mouthful of the stench of what I've done. I run on through the Darkness while tears run down my eyes and hang in the goggle-cups, obscuring the screen, while the diviner gives me my instructions. I do what I'm told. I drink some whiskey and I do what I'm told.
16. THE DARKNESS
The fulfillment center is dark and calm. I go round and round in circles for hours, picking up junk and delivering junk, bringing some measure of reality and routine back to my existence. I could even imagine I'll bump into Cerulean soon. We'll run together. I'll go to bed in my Mott Haven flat, and the next day I'll wake up looking forward to my trip to Sir Clowdesley, because the barista called Lara's on shift.
It's a dream that makes me sound like a stalker. I'm in Sir Clowdesley now, waiting for her. It doesn't smell of lovely roasted coffee anymore.
I go to Blucy at the print-on-demand machines. She runs through her set script, talking about her books, selling me on Deepcraft, things like that. I watch as Hank and the others go by, endlessly grinding for loot in the Darkness' monster-less dungeon.
Hours pass into the night. At some point I sleep with the goggles still on. When I wake up the laptop battery is dead. The goggles have dug sharp creases into the skin around my eyes. I don't want to take them off, but just for a few moments I must.
Sir Clowdesley's walls, ceiling and floor are streaked with black grime. Light creeps in around the tumbled blackboards and through cracked windows. Chairs and tables have been scattered everywhere. One of the floaters is actually lying dead near my feet. I didn't notice that.
I get up and drag it by the feet to the stairs, where I tip it down. There are four other bodies there, each lying in a dark bloodstain in a pool of hot spring light, smeared with the ashy grease of their fellows.
I go to the toilet in the toilets off the stairwell. The water flushes for what I expect will be the last time. There'll be no water pressure any more to fill the cisterns. I open the door into the inner donut and look out. There's a deep blue sky, and the air here is so fresh it burns my lungs. I feel like a subterranean thing peering for the first time into the light.
It isn't for me.
I go back to my sofa. I unbox one of the batteries and slot it into place. I fish out my USB pack, wrapped in plastic, and unfold them. I plug the first in and peruse the files. It's all the familiar prepper stuff, but for the file labeled 'Cerulean'.
I take a long fortifying slug of whiskey, then I open the file. Hit me with it all. I find the code for a new non-player character in the Deepcraft file, and preview it. It's Cerulean, his image and a coded text file. I find myself blinking back boozy tears. I boot up the center, slip my goggles back into their grooves in my face, and install him into the fulfillment center.
There he is, just as always, a green and blue parrot with a pirate on his shoulder. Immediately he starts walking away, down the long halls, and I follow him. I try to raise him with a text interaction, but he's not interested. He's got a program. He's not even looking at his diviner.
Just to see him brings home the reality. I'll never talk to my friend again.
He turns left at Blucy, walks straight by the supervisor who's making marks on his notepad, then stops at an aisle in the shelving. I see some new items there, they look like comics.
"Hey Amo," Cerulean says. The text bubble floats above his head. My hearts turns over in my chest.
"Hey Cerulean," I type back.
"I made this for you," he says. His parrot picks up one of the comics and holds it out. "It's good work. It means something."
I take the comic and bring it up across my screen, then laugh aloud, in the real world. It is a digital version of my own comic, Zombies of New York. It is completely fitting. I leaf through the pages, every single panel and cell I made in the last six months present and correct.
"I hope you don't mind," he says. "I just want you to know I'm proud. If anyone deserves to survive a real zombie apocalypse, it's you. You have the right kind of empathy."
I laugh again, this one more like a sob. Nothing I've done so far has been empathetic. I've only been brutal and cruel, and making excuses for the reason why doesn't mean shit. It is a weakness in me still.
"You might not believe that now," Cerulean says, as if he can hear me scoffing. "But you will. I've seen it, you know? I saw things in my coma too. If you're even alive, and you ever see this message, you'll understand, or you'll come to. Because these zombies are just like you and me, Amo. Did you know that? Yes/No?"
I recognize this question as the start of a simple decision tree. We programmed them into our non-player characters, to give them some diversity in their scripts. I type, "No."
"You don't? Think about it. Did you see any photos of yourself in your coma? Probably not. Did they tell you any of the weird stuff you did? Probably not. Do you know I went gray for a month, like one of the ocean? My eyes went white, like I had glaucoma. I was up and sleepwalking, following people. They probably didn't tell you any of that, because it's too damn freaky. My mother told me. It sounds like a zombie though, doesn't it?"
"Yes/No," he offers.
"No."
Cerulean flips me the bird. This is one of his jokes, a bird flipping the bird. I can't stop myself laughing again, through my tears.
"Use your head, Amo. Think things through. I'm here lying in my cripple bed, dreaming you're alive. Can you imagine what things will be like if you are? It's beautiful. It means I'm not alone, which means you're not either. I don't feel the twinges anymore. If it wasn't for my mom and her friends banging on the door upstairs, I could go out in the world and I'd be fine. I'm cured! Do you think that's a coincidence, the same day the zombie apocalypse hits the whole world? Yes/No?"
"Shut up, Cerulean," I type.
The parrot waits. His Yes/No dialog clicks up again. He'll have all the patience in the world, now. I wonder how far down the decision tree he planned this interaction, when he was lying in his bed listening to the Skype call to me ring out, with his mother thumping overhead. What did that feel like, to finally be free and know that it could only last for hours?
Now I'm crying again.
"Yes," I type. It's just a coincidence.
"Yes? Pull your shit together, Amo. You're being willfully blind. We started this thing, or it started with us, don't you see that? Whatever hit us a year ago primed us and the world. It's obvious, don't you think? We became the proto-zombies, even the incubators for this infection. We went gray, we got white eyes, we wandered. But we were cared for, because there were only a handful of us, and they brought us back. What if that's what's happening out there, now? We seeded this apocalypse, or it seeded us. I don't have time to offer a Yes/No now, Amo. You've just got to be with me on this, because the next one is a big one."
He goes quiet.
"What?" I type.
Thirty infuriating seconds pass.
"Are you ready?" he asks. "Yes/No?"
"For shit's sake, Cerulean!" I shout in Sir Clowdesley. "Tell me. Yes."
"Then consider this. Your doctor warned you never to have sex. He said it might cause something worse. Do you remember that? I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing that is what happened with you and Lara. You are a charming bastard. You had your date, you took her home, and the earth moved forever. Whatever chemical buttons that act pushed in you, it also triggered the world's zombification. The infection began in New York, Amo, I gathered that much from the first blush of its spread. It went everywhere after that in hours, across the
globe faster than any wind vector could carry it. People were primed to a wavelength, it has to have been something like that, because they were all pre-infected, and you were the trigger. You and Lara got down, and you birthed this new race."
He goes quiet. I lie on my filthy grime-smeared sofa and stare at his image on two goggle-vision screens, while the last cold hard chunk of text bobs above his parrot head.
What the?
"Amo," he types. "Are you listening, Yes/No?"
I stare. I caused this, he's saying? I caused this by having sex? It's true the doctor told me to be clinical, to never involve myself with women, and I did exactly as he asked until Lara, and then…
Then I killed the whole shitting world?
"Amo," he types again. "Are you listening, Yes/No?"
I want to punch his stupid bird face. I want to burn myself to the ground.
"No," I type.
"Are you listening, Yes/No?"
"No!"
"Are you listening, Yes/No?"
"Yes, goddammit, yes Cerulean you bastard!"
"Yes, so get over yourself. Get over yourself Amo. You cannot for one second feel guilt over this. You died multiple times in a coma. You spent a miserable year running around in a fake dark cave with a cripple. That it was you who first reached out of your confinement means not a damn thing. If it hadn't been you, it would have been one of the others. There must be others, Amo; it can't only be you and me. The chances of only us finding each other are infinitesimal. There must be hundreds like us, out there somewhere. Perhaps some of them have been in comas this whole time, and now they just woke up. Have you thought about that? Think about that.
"And of those hundreds, any one of them might have recovered sufficiently to do something big enough, emotional enough, to trigger the end. But none of them did, because none of them are as defiant as you. Do you understand that? You were brave, Amo! That's human. You were willing to risk dying just to live a little, you chose man not mouse, and that's nothing to be ashamed of. There is no guilt here; you had no conception of this godforsaken outcome.
"Now, your duty is clear. Your people are out there, all the lost ones who never found each other and have no idea what's going on. They're going to need guidance. They'll need a leader. They'll be lonely and broken, like I was when I found your center. You have to do what you did for me, for all of them. Do you understand? Yes/No?"
I stare at the block of text. The Yes/No tag repeats insistently, refreshing once a minute. Steadily it pushes his speech off the screen. This was Cerulean. He isn't here, but that doesn't change anything. He was my friend, and I won't disrespect that even if I don't believe or agree with him.
"Yes," I type eventually.
"Good. I'm glad. I can die happily, knowing you're out there doing what you can, in the full light of the truth. You're a good man, Amo, you'll be a great man, and if there's any way to save these infected millions, or to alleviate their suffering, I know you'll find it, just like you did for me. I know you'll die trying if you have to, and no one could ask for more than that."
I look at his damn bird. It looks glassily at me.
"Goodbye Amo. Good luck."
The parrot doesn't disappear or fade, it just stops talking. Its diviner blinks, and it starts walking away. I watch it go.
Now it's just a non-player character like the others, a true ghost in the Darkness. It passed along its message, one it carried across the vast distances between this broken world and the world when it was still on the cusp, and now it's for me to carry onward.
It bows me. I crumple beneath it.
I tear off the goggles and drink.
* * *
I rouse in the evening looking out over 4th avenue, sitting atop one of my Greyhound barricades with my legs dangling like a child's over the side. The ocean spreads gray and white before me, its arms reaching up like the fins of fish, its eyes glowing white like the lantern-antennae on those hideous deep-sea fishes that lure other fish in.
Cannibals.
I swig the whiskey, which I hate. I pour a little out for the floaters to enjoy, on their faces and heads.
"I'm not going to burn you," I slur at them. "Don't worry."
They wave and drift like fronds of seaweed in the water, like groupies holding up their lighters at a stage. Their fingers sometimes plink against my shoes, tickling me gently.
I drink and think about Cerulean and Lara. I wonder how my parents died. I think about the cosmic sex that sent a signal out that somehow caused this.
"Did you know?" I ask the bodies below. "Did you feel it? Do you feel it now?"
They grope and waggle like anemone fronds. I pour the rest of the bottle on the head of an obese man wearing a sodden brown velour training top. As the liquor splashes he lifts his face and I get it in his mouth.
This makes me laugh hysterically. He blows bubbles with it.
I get to my feet and throw the bottle as far as I can. It hits the darkening asphalt across the intersection but disappointingly doesn't smash. Rather it chips and skitters away, like a flat rock skimmed over calm waters, receding underneath a resting car.
I laugh. I look out west along 23rd and north and south on 4th. The sun is going down, a nice burned sienna, and it's really just me. There's no sign of Lara, and if she was here, would she even want to come within a mile of this disgusting charnel fiefdom?
I laugh. I have screwed myself, by surviving.
Down amongst the midst of my crop of floaters there is a cop. His uniform is easy to pick out. I pull one of my guns, strapped like bandoliers now across my chest, and shoot at him.
His shoulder blows out, and a floater behind him takes the slug and his dark blood in the chest. It's quite hilarious. I shoot again and the top of his head comes off, the face behind him explodes, and still no holy retribution rains down.
I get these for free. I shoot until the gun clicks out, but he still hasn't gone down. There's blood all over him, his head is in half, there are pockmarks torn into his chest and flesh, but still he sways his glowing eyes at me like lanterns in the depths.
I throw the gun and it disappears beneath their mumbling feet. I pull all my guns and shoot them blank at him. This is the way to fish. I get about five rounds before all my guns are blank, and I throw them.
He's still standing. He looks like a stick of pulped meat.
I drop back inside my blackened block as the sun goes down. I head for the liquor shop, through the darkness as night comes on, with his one burning eye still foremost in my mind.
17. RV
Lara isn't coming.
I figure that out the next afternoon, looking over the ruin of my domain from the fourth-floor office. She isn't and she won't, because she's surely dead like everybody else.
I just had to have sex and screw everything up. It's like those horror movies where sex damns the heroes, but in this case I've damned the whole world. It's a sick kind of vanity that allows me to feel responsibility for this, to feel guilt for 'what I did', but still I do.
I need to find other survivors.
There have to be some. Cerulean promised.
I go out the embassy back door, still drunk in the clean morning light, with a whiskey bottle in my hand. I hate the taste but it's starting to grow on me. I wander up the street, tapping out silly rhythms on deserted car frames with the bottle and shouting at any floaters that come near. I hit one with the tire iron and fall into an ugly embrace with him.
He grabs for my brains, and I get on top where I can press the tire iron in through his eye. Of course that does nothing. I have to pull it out again, fascinated and grossed out by the black blood welling up from the ruined socket, and press it into his throat. Getting it through the skin is hard, but with enough weight it punctures.
He doesn't die until I sever his spine.
I wander on. Somewhere around 26th and 5th I see a horde gathering in the distance. What are they so interested in? I wander over. There are hundreds grouping near Times S
quare. I go around a corner stacked high with blank digital screens and see.
It's a dog, standing somehow atop a city bus in the middle of the road. I laugh. He's skinny and barking, some kind of brown/white terrier breed, and he's probably a few hours from dying. He keeps on barking like somebody's going to come save him.
Poor little guy. He's meat for the ocean, now.
Some of the horde peel off and come for me. I move like I'm in a dream, climbing into a nearby SUV. The keys are there in the ignition and I rev the engine. More of them flow toward the sound. I put my seatbelt on, press the pedal down and drive right at them.
I hit the first with a thump, the second with a thwack, then it's a barrage of thwack, thump, crack for a hundred yards, running over bodies and sending them flinging to the side like Moses parting the Red Sea, until the windshield is fractured so badly I can barely see and my forward momentum is halted by their sheer mass.
A breaking wave of gray and white faces stares at me through the white-webbed glass less than two yards away. Dryness has pulled their lips back from their bloody teeth in a series of rictus grins, shriveling their cheeks into dark hollows. Death is really changing them.
The dog is still somewhere ahead, barking frantically. He sees me, he knows I'm one of the good guys.
"Just a second," I call, and twist to look through the rear window. I shift the stick to reverse and rev backward.
Thump, bang, crack, smack. Bodies impact and go smearing across the asphalt, bodies crush beneath my wheels. I rev back until my tire marks run dry of blood and I've dinged off a dozen cars, clearing something of a path.
They're charging again. I slam the horn down and charge right back.
It's like ten-pin bowling for people. They go flying in all crazy directions; off to the side, over the top, bouncing back into the crowd. Bits of them start to get tangled up in the windshield's fractured web, here a scrap of tongue, an earlobe, a gobbet of dry gray skin.
The Last Mayor Box Set Page 10