He drove back south in silence, through Connecticut back to New York, circling in like a moth around a flame, bound for the place it all went wrong.
Amo.
* * *
New York was there.
He rolled up on Times Square with no plan in his mind. On 43rd the worst of the mess was gone. Sun, rain and the swarms of flies had melted the dead down to bones already. The stink had faded and the streets were dry and clear where bodies had shriveled and receded like melting snow in the spring.
He parked Matthew's yellow van at the intersection of 43rd and 7th Street, then rolled out in the wheelchair. It was a sunny day, with the wind blowing little zephyrs of dust along the curbs, fluttering against chip packets trapped in fleshless ribcages.
He sat before Amo's RV and looked at the dark matter streaking its sides, all dry now, like the scar over an old wound. All of Times Square felt that way.
"I'm back," Robert said. His voice was clearer now; weeks of rolling in his chair, of eating and drinking, had brought his strength back.
"I guess you didn't expect me again. Though you never even knew I was here."
Amo atop the RV said nothing, surrounded by his tall ammo crates. He'd be a skeleton now too, a scar instead of an open wound.
"That hurt," Robert said. The catch in his voice surprised him. He thought he'd been through all the emotion he could take. "I wish you'd seen me. I wish you'd just looked."
Amo said nothing.
"You were my only friend, you know. I wish you'd waited."
He didn't have any more to say after that, so he rolled up to the ladder at the back. On the lower rungs there were bloody handprints from when he'd tried to climb it before. Now he pulled himself up the rungs with ease, rising hand over hand, until he looked down on the RV roof.
Amo wasn't there.
* * *
He sat on the RV's roof and watched the sun scroll overhead, trying to decide if Amo being alive was better or worse than Amo being dead.
It just made him feel tired.
He peered over the ammo crate edge, considering a dive from here. It seemed poetic justice, but from this height he'd almost certainly fail again. Fall, crunch, perhaps he'd lose the use of his left arm, his right, or better yet he'd be blinded.
No. He could do better than that.
* * *
The Empire State Building was only a few blocks away, so he rolled toward it down streets lined with broken vehicles. Thoughts of the dive to come inflamed him; the most amazing arm-stand the world had ever seen, 60-odd stories of flight all the way to the street. He'd punch right through the asphalt, all the judges in the world would flash up 10s, and the burning emptiness inside would finally be wiped away.
He turned on 34th Street, weaving through rusting cars and starting to feel excited. The entrance was just ahead, and he entered through the tall narrow doors.
The lobby was stunning even in the half-light cast from the street, with rich marble floors and gilt golden walls in a vaulted hallway. At the end a glinting image of the Empire State Building hung in gold relief, though atop it somebody had strung up a chalkboard there, with gridlines and two entries at the top.
Amo – Last Mayor of America 06/08/2019
Lara – Last Barista in America 06/30/2019
Robert laughed.
Amo and Lara. Lara and Amo.
There was a map painted onto the floor, outlining a path to the West Coast and Los Angeles, and he imagined Amo and Lara chasing each other along it like Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle. Their paths had crossed at the Empire State and now they were forever linked.
Put up a flag, he'd told Amo. Make a lighthouse for other people to find. This was it, and it was beautiful, in a way. It made him happy for them, that they could survive and go on to thrive. He wished them all the best wishes in the world.
But it wasn't for him. He needed to dive.
He'd crawled through too much blood to go back now. The thought of diving shone like a star before him, offering the chance to return to the Robert he'd once been, so full of potential and hope, before it all went wrong. He dreamed of flight all the way to the ground, where having no legs wouldn't matter at all.
He rolled forward.
At the head of the lobby lay desks laden with laptop computers and USB sticks, car keys and maps, wires and generators and red gas canisters, chrome Nespresso machines and coffee pods in pyramid piles. He smiled. Amo was funny, even after what he'd done, and this was his world now. Good for him.
Robert wheeled into the darkness down a side corridor, looking for the stairs. It would be a long crawl up, but that was part of the excitement. He found stairs at the center, in a broad vertical chamber lit with faint light from far above, stretching up in a square spiral, and completely thronged with infected.
He hadn't expected that.
"Jesus," he whispered.
A security gate had been latched across the bottom of the wide stairwell, holding them in. On the floor there were blue and white paint cans lying dented atop a white tarpaulin, itself spattered with blue and white paint, along with a heap of used paint-brushes and rollers, a tangle of rope and harnesses, two large metal gas drums and two square generators. Boot marks in blue and white spread all round the square space.
"What the hell were you up to, Amo?" he whispered.
Some crazy plans. Some crazy art. It didn't change anything.
He rolled to the security gate. The key was in the lock and he turned it, pulled the clasp, and the dead poured out. They flooded past him down the dark hallway toward the lobby, and he shuddered as he imagined the dive to come. Soon he would be free.
Then came the scream.
10. MASAKO
It was a woman, high-pitched and terrified, her cry barely carrying over the stampede of many feet.
BANG
A gunshot followed, then another and the mood of the throng shifted. The random pattering of their footfalls became a purposeful, unified drumbeat as they moved toward the sound.
Robert didn't like the shift; it felt primal and violent, turning this peaceful crowd into a stampeding horde.
"Stop shooting!" he shouted. He tried to drive his wheelchair forward but the gray bodies were too tightly packed.
BANG came another shot, then another.
He took a deep breath then shoved off the wheelchair's armrests in a kind of arm-stand, climbing high enough to lift his legs off the stirrups and hit the wall of shoulders on his chest. He grabbed for something to hold onto, latched onto a toothy open jaw, and pulled himself onto the top of the flood.
More rushed in to fill the gap he'd left behind, pressing in beneath him and buoying him atop a knobbly ocean of gray heads, faces and shoulders that stretched out before him, pressed tight to the walls and flowing through the doorway toward the lobby like a conveyor belt in the Deepcraft fulfillment center.
He pulled himself along the top like he was swimming.
BANG
The gun reported again. She was going to get herself killed. Robert swam urgently, each stroke grappling with somebody's nose or chin or hair, pulling himself over the hard waters of collarbones and skulls. The walls of corridors passed by fast, until he spilled into the golden lobby, now flooded with the undead.
Amo's tables were lost within their mass, the Nespresso machines buried along with their shiny egg-pods, but there before the high name board, teetering on the top rung of a ladder like a terrified child about to make her first dive, stood a beautiful Asian woman holding a gun.
Robert stared up at her as the tide of bodies carried him on.
She wore jeans and a white vest with a silver pendant round her neck. The gun was black and snub like the ones atop Amo's RV, and she was waving it desperately around the flooded hall. She had black hair in a ponytail and her eyes were wild and frenzied.
The sight of her punched him hard in the heart. She was his first human in months to not die within seconds of seeing him. He stared
and stared.
BANG
She shot an infected at point blank range as it crawled up the ladder rungs, but others quickly followed and she aimed the gun again.
Robert shook himself out of his daze.
"Stop shooting them!" he shouted. "They don't want to hurt you."
He was almost to the ladder, paddling sideways with all his strength, when she heard him and spun. Her eyes went wider, she raised the gun, and he almost laughed at her puzzled expression. It must have been quite a sight to see, some guy crawling across the top of the dead.
"I'm alive!" he shouted, holding up his arms. This caused his face to drop hard against a shoulder, bloodying his nose, so he hunkered up onto his elbows. "I'm alive," he went on, "just stop shooting them, noise riles them up. Hang still and I'm coming over."
She looked like she was about to faint, almost as pale as the infected. The gun had gone slack in her hand and she gawped as he swam over.
"It's all right," he cooed up at her, "just keep calm."
When he reached the ladder he gently pushed the climbing ones away, and they let themselves be guided. Wonder vied with fear on her face.
"They don't want to hurt us," he called over the thunder of feet, and pulled himself onto one of the rungs, settled in position to ward off any comers. "I promise you, you don't need that gun."
She made a sound that might have been a word but came out like gargling. Robert pushed another infected gently on the forehead, guiding it away, and steadily the militant sound in their breathing shifted, becoming softer again. The storm of their footsteps faded to the trudging patter of rain on the roof.
"You see?" Robert said, waving an arm soothingly as he sat on a middle rung. "It's all right."
The infected moved on, and soon the lobby settled. Robert looked up at this Asian lady; the expression on her pretty, sharp face shifted rapidly between confusion and terror. She probably thought he was magic. The zombie whisperer. He reached a hand up toward her.
"Hi, I'm Cerulean."
He hadn't even meant to say that. He hadn't ever thought of himself as Cerulean in the real world, that was Amo's nickname for him in Deepcraft, but now it came out easily. Cerulean was a strong man, he was brave and he saved people, and that's what this woman needed now.
It was like slipping into his Deepcraft avatar, and he found himself grinning.
"I'm Masako," the woman said, and shook his hand.
* * *
The flood moved on while Cerulean explained. He even caught one gently by the arm and held it out for her to stroke.
"I don't believe it," Masako said, as she gingerly touched its papery skin.
"Believe it. They haven't hurt me yet."
Her eyes were still a little glazed over, but the shock was fading now.
"So you thought they were killers all this time?" he asked.
"I saw them kill," she said, her voice tight but controlled with a light Brooklyn accent, her eyes not on him but still watching them nervously, tracking any that came too close. "They killed a man in Queens on the first night, right out on the street. He was running and shooting and they ripped him to rags."
Cerulean frowned. "I never saw that. Maybe it was because he was shooting them. I've seen them stampede, if you hurt them. All the ones I've dealt with were calm, even friendly."
Her eyes focused on him. It seemed like she was seeing him for the first time.
"Did you actually swim in?" She pointed in a zigzag line from the corridor entrance to where they were sitting under the name board. "Did you crawl on their heads?"
He shrugged. "It was the only way."
Her delicate lips quirked into a slight smile. "I felt sure I was dreaming it. I almost shot you."
"I'm glad you didn't."
"I've never seen anything like that. It was amazing. How did you find out they wouldn't hurt you? How could I have known?"
He smiled and explained his story, beginning with them in his basement apartment when he woke up. He left out the worst parts, like Amo's suicide and the gun tower in Maine.
"Then you came back to New York," Masako prompted.
"For Amo," he said. "I wanted to bury him."
Masako scratched her face. A few lines of dark hair had pulled out of the knot high on the back of her head and stuck to her narrow tanned face.
"Then you came here."
He smiled. He wasn't about to tell her about the dive. That was for him only. Anyway, the flow of infected had slowed to a trickle.
"I'm going for my wheelchair," he said, "I'll be back in a minute."
He slid down the rungs onto his side on the cool lobby floor, then began to crawl. The marble was cool and it was easy enough to weave between the moving bodies.
"You don't have to-" Masako said, then stopped. He turned to look up at her.
"Don't have to what?"
"I mean," she paused awkwardly. "I didn't realize. Your legs. You don't have to crawl."
He registered her discomfort. He hadn't thought much about losing his legs since waking up in his basement; but of course, in the real world, paraplegics didn't often crawl. That was a kind of taboo.
He smiled. She'd have to get used to it. "It's fine. I do this all the time. Walk with me, if you like."
She did.
They ate a meal of warmed-up hotdogs and beans over Masako's gas camping stove; his first hot meal since it began, served on an actual plate. They lay down in the lobby on bedding she found in a storage closet, gradually growing bolder as the infected failed to attack. They talked about Amo's California plan and each other.
It was a vision of another life; one he couldn't really imagine taking on. He felt like an actor playing a role; saying the words she wanted to hear, offering hope where he had none. She nestled in to him as it grew dark outside, pulling his arm across her shoulder. Human touch; just two survivors together. She fell asleep easily, but Robert lay in the still dark of the lobby for a long time, looking up at the ceiling. By now he would've reached the top and dived.
Nothing had changed.
Masako was sweet, but she didn't scratch the surface of the emptiness inside. At the same time he couldn't just leave her. That wasn't something he could live with, or die with. Lying there in the lobby of the Empire State building, in the wreckage of Amo's first cairn, he made the decision.
He would deliver her to LA. Then he would die.
11. SURVIVORS
Amo had left behind RVs in the basement.
"How do you drive?" Masako asked, as they finished looking over the vehicle. There was nothing to load, not even gas, since Amo had done it all for them.
He held up two mop handles from a broom cupboard. They would serve as his whiffle bats. "I push the pedals with these."
She smiled. "Would you take us out, then? I hate driving in the city."
They both laughed at that. She was trying to build him up into the hero she needed, and for a time at least he could go along.
The engine started smoothly. Outside it was a beautiful, hot summer's day, with a big arrow painted on the asphalt of 5th Avenue pointing left. Cerulean smiled. Amo had left nothing to chance.
The arrows continued until they were out of New York. Lincoln tunnel was clear. Cerulean couldn't believe it, but there it was. The whole tunnel had been clogged with traffic when he'd come by two months earlier, now Amo had emptied it.
Masako kept on laughing. Cerulean couldn't imagine mustering that much effort for a world that was so plainly dead.
Emerging up from the tunnel onto the 495, he looked back on Manhattam and saw the big blue and white 'f' painted across the top ten floors of the Empire State Building for the first time.
It was Amo's world now.
* * *
The roads were clear to New Jersey. There were yellow wildflowers everywhere; on the highway verge, in the fields, springing up down the central boundary grass. They passed a large troop of the infected roaming on the right, mute as wildebeest stalking the prairies.
"Where are they going?" Masako asked, watching until they fell out of sight.
Cerulean shrugged. He'd seen them going west, and going north, and heading towards him. It didn't add up to much. "Just walking."
Beatles tracks played on the stereo, stocked by Amo, and little towns flew by; all picket fences and historical old restaurants, windmills painted Shaker white and blue, churches with inspirational messages out front. Here and there lay crunched cars, shoved to the side. At the edge of Pennsylvania there was a semi trailer truck pulled over to the side, with a single word painted on its side in large letters.
SORRY
Cerulean pulled over and they got out to investigate. Painted on the road near the truck's cab was a message from Amo, marking the death of another survivor. Sophia. She'd hung herself, it seemed. So Amo had his own Matthew, too, commemorated in his second cairn.
They drove on.
A day later they saw another survivor by the roadside at the far edge of Pennsylvania, a woman lurking by a small fire in a dense patch of pine forest just out of Grove City. She was old and weathered, dressed in denim stonewash dungarees with wrinkled skin and a shotgun over her shoulder.
They pulled up and she leveled it at them. Cerulean found that he didn't really care if she fired or not. Maybe it would make things easier.
"I can keep driving, if you like," he called out of the open window, giving them all an out. "It's just the two of us. I'm in a wheelchair, my name's Cerulean. This is Masako."
The woman hawked and spat. "Wheelchair? Let's see that."
He lifted it out and climbed in. The woman frowned. Her skin looked like old parchment, lined with ground-in dirt.
"How'd you do that?"
"I fell."
She studied him for a time, then spat again. "You know anything about hunting foxes?"
Masako chuckled politely.
"Not a thing," Cerulean said, "but we're willing to learn."
"Willing's good," said the woman, brushing a sliver of silvery hair out of her face. "God willing and all. I ain't seen folks since the big flood rolled out. Sit down." She gestured to the grass around the fire.
The Last Mayor Box Set Page 49