No. He spun and took in the scene all around; a stormy, throbbing ocean that tramped and pulsed and breathed as one, with the giant red beast wading ever closer. He could run, sure, but to where and for what? If Anna wasn't already dead, she would be soon. If Jake wasn't already dead, he would be soon.
There was only way, and that was an outrageous, highly unlikely hope, but he'd already run at the demon once today. Why not chance fate again? Ridiculously, he held his breath as if really making a dive, and jumped.
His feet struck the whirlpool's soft and bubbly center, following immediately after a head slipped down. He sank through up to his knees then was caught as the bodies on either side pressed in, crumpling his feet and forcing a barking scream out of his throat. Ribs cracked nearby like fireworks going off and it felt like his legs were getting crushed in a car jack.
"Back up!" he shouted and lashed out wildly, punching at heads and faces. Features smashed pointlessly in dusty puffs under his blows, though his wriggling earned enough space to slip in up to his waist.
At once his pelvis strained under the renewed pressure, bringing a gut-wrenching pain that he could only reduce by screaming at he top of his lungs and twisting with all his strength, until-
He fell through. The bodies slipped aside and the mud on his jacket and arms oiled the way and he dropped past their feet into near total darkness, and fell. A cold wind hit as the chute raced by and he stretched out for something, anything to halt his fall, and caught a metal rung at such speed that it sent him spinning in the air, reeling down until-
CRACK
He hit a mound of withered bodies like a bowling ball on a deck of springs, sending out a gust of ancient dust. He couldn't breathe but that didn't matter, because he knew what was following, and he heaved and tugged to roll himself out of the line of fire.
CRNNNK
The next body hit in the hollow he'd left behind, spanking his lower back with a bare palm so hard that it propelled him into the wall. He bounced off, nearly tipping through an open doorway that led into a deep shaft lit from below by a dim red glow.
CRASH
He steadied himself at the edge as another body hit behind and one shoved by him to dive headfirst down the open shaft. He watched it fall a long way before CRUMPing distantly at the bottom. It took him a long, terrifying moment to pick out the rope ladder hanging down the side. He was able to swing down onto it as the next zombie shoved by him, then was almost kneed in the face as a third followed, though he managed to duck before it toppled, struck the far wall, and somersaulted down to the bottom.
"Jesus," he muttered, and descended as quickly as he could, hugging to the ladder and flattening himself to the wall every time one fell. When at last he reached the bottom, he waited for a CRUMP as a body impacted on the heap before him, then flung himself through a large open doorway.
Beyond there was a warped metal gantry walkway that led into a smoky industrial space of metal staircases, many-stacked decks and cement walls. The smoke stung his eyes and there was a cacophony of shouting and shooting blending with the tramp of the ocean somewhere far below.
Lucas gawped for a moment; it was nothing like his Habitat. It was a whole different world. He stood at the top of an open stairwell with a cement ceiling that almost brushed his head, while the decks fell away below to a pit of seething darkness, where the ocean were surely seeking a way up. Ahead of him the walkway ran out above that abyss, toward an encircling metal deck some ten feet lower, but the stairs leading down to it were gone. The spot where they should have joined the square walkway was molten and warped, like a tattered chunk had been bitten out, with a dozen twisted sharp spikes of metal speared outward, upon which dozens of bodies were already impaled.
He gagged as they wriggled and shifted.
Shit. This had been the explosion from before, tearing the walkway apart.
A zombie shoved by him from behind and ran along the walkway, teetering as it reached the edge, then leapt. He craned to watch it fall short and sail down into the darkness, followed by a muted thump far below.
He clutched the shaky railing, feeling ill.
Another body shoved by him, took an impressive running leap, and this time successfully reached the lower deck, but took one of the metal spikes through its lower belly. Slowly, as its waving arms shifted its balance, it rotated like a minute hand telling the time until its head and arms were pointing down.
Lucas gagged and almost vomited.
Another one ran by and attempted the leap, this time both clearing the distance and narrowly avoiding the spikes. It ran around the heaps of scattered, burnt bodies and through a swing door into a corridor. Lucas became aware of shouting from down that way, and the pell-mell popping of gunfire.
Anna.
It was what he'd come for. There was no choice really. He shoved the next zombie back, took five big strides along the shaking gantry and leapt.
19. SHIELD
The teeth dug in and it felt like coming home. Anna laughed and gulped as blood welled out and it didn't even hurt, not really. This was how it had begun ten years ago, with her father chewing up the Hatter, and somehow this was the same, a fitting end to a life spent looking for something she never could find.
Her army. Her soldiers. That was the biggest lie of all, one she'd told herself from the very beginning, and now here was the cold, unvarnished truth, chewing on her neck.
The ocean weren't her friends. They weren't her army or her family, they didn't care for her or look out for her. Instead they were victims too, driven by the sickness at their core; the T4.
Just like her.
Her father had been a victim. Cerulean had been a victim. They all were, everyone in New LA, everybody in the ocean, even the demons, and once she saw that she saw it all. Everyone in the Maine bunker had been her victim. None of them had had any choice. None of them were any different from her; all helpless souls caught up in a terrible world, fighting just to survive.
Amo had learnt this lesson for himself and tried so hard to pass it on, and perhaps now it was her turn to see the truth; because sometimes it just wasn't worth surviving. Sometimes the things you had to do, the lines you had to cross, the innocent people you had to hurt made survival the worst option, because the soul that lived on would be irreparably broken.
Better was this. As the zombie's teeth closed on her neck a second time, she understood that instead of fighting the bunkers, she should have been championing them, because they were all human, all victims, and they all deserved a chance.
She should have found a way.
The zombie bit down and she strained up into it, because this was a right and fitting punishment.
Then it was gone, pulled off and tossed to the side like a bale of dry straw, replaced by-
It wasn't possible.
A man covered head to foot in muddy black ash, with blood running down from wounds on his forehead and chin and down from his ear, panting and wild-eyed with a shock of mud-spiked hair; a man she knew but barely recognized.
Lucas.
He looked down at her, and in his eyes was something she'd been longing to see for so long, and never known until now what it really was.
Was it forgiveness? Was it belonging? Was it sympathy for a fellow victim, and a helping hand outstretched?
He stretched out his hand to her.
"Come on, Anna," he said.
* * *
He pulled her up and for him, for this, she walked. Her back twinged and every step saw her faint a little, the pain in her back dropping her toward unconsciousness, but he drove her on. His arm around her waist held like a steel band, far stronger than he looked.
Zombies came and he simply shoved them away. They didn't fight back, didn't try to bite or scratch him, just tumbled down off-balance. They didn't seem to see him at all, and as they fell he hobbled on, leading a much-bloodied Peters staggering along with Feargal.
"The demon is coming," Lucas said to her as they drew near to
the sputtering end of the corridor. There were zombie bodies everywhere on the floor here, their throats blown open or clubbed-in by Peters. "The ocean will fill this place to the brim and I can't protect you from that. We have to find the shield."
The words bounced round Anna's head like a pulse, in time with the pulsing of unconsciousness at the edge of her thoughts, like a tide. The shield. Have to find the shield. They turned a corner. In the corridor beyond there were dozens more bodies on the floor, like heaps of white-coated trash. All the people, dead and left behind, all victims too. There was a low rumbling from back the way they'd come; the ocean still leaping down through the decks to the base below.
"Which way?"
They were standing under a flashing white light with a quarantine sign posted up in yellow and black beside it. Ha, that was funny. Someone was talking to her and she tried to focus.
"Anna!" Lucas said. "Which way to the shield?"
She tried to focus on his face; trailed with blood and mud. Shield room? How could she know that?
"I can't feel it," he went on. "I can't feel anything here, I don't have the T4, it's why they don't come to me. But you do."
She blinked, doing her best to surge up from the dark depths at the bottom of the ocean. "I can't… Ask Peters. Feargal."
"Feargal is unconscious. Peters can't feel it either, perhaps he was desensitized by so much exposure. It has to be you."
He was looking at her with what could only be yearning in his eyes. Lucas. He was a good man too, she saw that now. He was a thin man. He was worthy of her trust. She gave a small nod and closed her eyes.
The shield. She thought the words, trying to focus in on that sensation of buzzing she'd felt when climbing down, but it was so elusive. It was everywhere, in the air, and there was no place stronger than another, but then...
"Command," she muttered.
"What?"
Words came fuzzily and she let them out, uncertain if they even made sense. "How many, bunker designs? If this was the first… They had it in Command, in Maine. For a reason. At the top, to reach above ground. Secure."
"At the top," Lucas repeated, "all right, yes, of course."
"Near the," she flagged as a wave of dark rose up, "shaft. Chute. Going up. Shield from there. Makes sense."
"Do you feel it there?"
She blinked and looked up at him. Now she was on the floor. "Coming in. Felt it coming in."
"There was a blast door leading away. This one's a maze. Do you think…?"
She nodded. "Go."
He pulled back, then hesitated. She realized she was slumped on the floor, legs outstretched, back to the wall. Where was Peters? She turned to the side. He was flat on his back now, next to Feargal, both of them panting short, shallow breaths and covered with blood.
They were all dying.
"I can't-" Lucas said, clearly torn. Anna reached for her gun but it was gone.
"Give me," she said, nodding at the assault rifle still strapped to Feargal's chest. "I can, it's OK."
Lucas stared at her, at the rifle, then moved. He un-looped it and put it in Anna's hands, then guided her trembling finger to the trigger and rested the barrel grip on her hip, pointing back down the corridor. All corridors now, all contained. She'd die underground, like Julio, like Cerulean, like all the people in Maine.
That was OK.
She tried for a smile. She had no idea what he was going to do, but then he was Lucas, and he'd done so much already. A cure. He was like a superhero, the invisible man, moving amongst the zombies with freedom.
"Go," she whispered. Her head felt too heavy to hold up. The rifle barrel was already slipping down to point at the corrugated metal floor. "S'OK."
He stood up straight. "In the necks," he said, pointed, then turned and ran.
Anna watched him go, down a dark corridor and round a dark corner. His footfalls echoed and rang, then the bunker was silent but for the distant thrum of thunder, which could be fans in her RV running, while she nestled up close to Ravi for warmth, spooning her knees into the gap left behind by his, like two curling cats hugging.
"Let's have a baby," she whispered in his ear, and she felt him smile.
"Now, Anna?"
She chuckled, a dirty little laugh that she saved just for him. It meant she hadn't always been cruel, not in everything she did. With Ravi, when they were alone, she had always been different. He brought out the best in her, and she could forget for a time that she'd sent Witzgenstein away and forget about all the dead people she'd killed.
"A boy or a girl?" he murmured over his shoulder.
"Both," she answered sleepily, enjoying this moment of cozy drift, floating on the gentle waters. "A boy and a girl, or a girl and a boy. Twins, perhaps. I have big hips."
He laughed and turned to kiss her. "Perfect hips. Such a face. Wow."
She nuzzled at the back of his head. He hated it and she loved to do it all the more. He said it made him feel like a cat, which somehow really freaked him out. Excellent. It was these things that mattered, these little things that made them worth saving. All the killing and cruelty was a shell just to protect this soft syrupy center.
"You need to wake up now, Anna."
"Hmm," she said, floating happily on his warmth. In their RV, in New LA, it didn't matter as long as Ravi was there. "We'll have so many kids. Enough to repopulate the world. How many do you think we can do, with my big hips and your big-" she cut off and giggled.
"Anna, really," he chided, in that soft voice that meant he was really loving it. "You can't do that while you're asleep."
"I'm not asleep, I'm resting my eyes."
"Sweetheart, wake up."
"Mmm."
"Anna!"
The shout bolted her awake, her eyes flickering open onto the corridor again, and the light, and the figure lurching closer.
RATATATATAT
Her assault rifle fire strafed the corridor and the ceiling, pinging off with sparks and further clattering ricochets.
RATATATATAT
A second volley drew a stripe across the zombie's chest, cutting holes into the pale flesh that burst out its back in puffs of dust, but not enough to stop it.
"Anna, the neck," someone grunted beside her. Peters, lying on his back with his hands pressed to his chest, looking so pale, so pale. "Neck."
The zombie reached down, fumbling at her hair, and she pushed the hot rifle barrel gently into the fold of its throat and pulled the trigger.
RATAT
Dust sprayed down and the body collapsed atop her. Beyond it there was another, and she fired. Its neck burst and it fell, and all she could think about now was Ravi, and how much she wanted to get back to him, and all the things she wanted to say. If she closed her eyes again she'd be there, and it was so tempting, but she knew it wasn't real.
Ravi was real, and he was five thousand miles away. The only way back to him was through this.
RATAT
She shot out another throat, and another.
"Good," Peters gasped and sagged back.
Another came, then another. The warmth fuzzed at Anna's thoughts but she pushed it away each time, like fighting the tide. More zombies came and she shot them each, so they puddled like rock pools at the corner in a rinse of yellow light.
RAT
TAT
TAT
The cold crept up on her gradually, so slow she barely noticed it, though she heard the thumps of its footfalls. It didn't mean much over the low rumble of the ocean pouring through. This would ruin Lucas' research, she thought, and laughed. It would ruin her dress and her hair, put into cornrows by Ravi himself. It was just a big syrupy mess.
Then it came round the corner, a red demon on all fours squeezed tightly into the corridor and shuffling closer, driving a small mob of zombies before it. Its eyes sang like crimson flares and its mouth was a gobbling emptiness.
Anna laughed. The fear came with it, but she was too tired and broken to care anymore. It padded nearer,
so hungry, always so desperate, and she felt again that even this too was a victim; a creature that would never have chosen such a fate.
Hate was pointless. At some stage all you could do was put the victim out of its misery. She entertained a moment of shoving the barrel in her own mouth and pulling the trigger, but that only made her laugh too. The right choice here was so plain.
RATATATATATAT
She unloaded the clip into the demon's face. Bullets raked off its cheeks and eyes beautifully, like a symphony. They caused no damage but they slowed it slightly.
"How do you do that?" Anna panted. "So impressive."
The clip ran dry. The demon and the zombies came on.
Anna laughed, and on the waves of cold came a vision of everyone in New LA dead, blasted to smithereens beneath a great white eye, and that made her laugh too. California was a crater and on came the demon, on came the ocean. She opened her arms and shouted.
"Come on, you bitch! I'm right here, come on!"
INTERLUDE 7
Lucas ran back down the corridor, dodging to either side as the ocean streamed by and the pop of gunfire rang out from behind. There was so little time. He kicked through the doors at the end and emerged onto the encircling gantry, where the waterfall of bodies continued and up above, through the entrance to the elevator shaft, the demon was even now emerging.
Massive, red and bent on one thing only.
No time. He skirted round the edge of the RPG wreckage to a second door leading away from the gantry; large and heavy-looking, like a blast door. He rammed it with his shoulder but to no avail, it was far too secure, probably locked with magnetic bolts like the upper hatch cover. He looked around hungrily, and spotted a security card-reader on the wall and another clump of dead scientists nearby.
The Last Mayor Box Set Page 108