The Last Mayor Box Set

by Michael John Grist

  Finally she spoke. "How many of my people are dead? Are my children alive?"

  The joy tamped down in his eyes. This at least he took seriously. "Five of your people are dead. Your children are safe, they weren't on the RV."

  She couldn't stop the relief showing on her face. She was too weary still. Of all the fears she'd ever felt, that was the worst. But the relief was followed instantly by guilt, which he must have read on her face too.

  "A great shame for so many to die," he said. "But then Amo didn't listen. I warned him."

  She would have argued but she didn't have the strength. Whatever Amo did or said, whatever had been going on before she woke to the blast, it was clear this was the reality Drake intended to propagate. Amo was to blame.

  "What do you need from me?"

  He smiled. "You're direct. I like that."

  Lara imagined the mess his intestines would make, blown across the shiny silver cupboards.

  He squatted down, bringing his face close to hers. "I'll be direct too. I mean to apologize to you, for how I behaved yesterday. Of course for the blast and your dead people, I was sorry long before I ordered it. The First Law can be a cruel master. I'm also sorry for how I treated your husband. I'm not a violent man, though I can't imagine you'll believe that. He had just shot me, if that provides any consideration. Here." He peeled his jacket back a little, revealing bandages. "But the doctor says I'll be fine, and your Amo too. He's alive and just as angry as you."

  Lara couldn't keep her eyes from flashing dangerously. He read it easily.

  "There. Yes. I'm not blind. I've done this before, and it always starts with anger. It's fascinating. Let me ask you a question that's been on my mind for a month. Was Lars Mecklarin really in that bunker, in Maine?"

  That surprised her. Lars Mecklarin?

  "Why?"

  He shrugged, then winced at the obvious pain it caused. "Mecklarin was something of a guru to me, when I started the Laws. So strange to imagine he survived the infection. Well..." He paused, then mimed shooting himself in the head with a whispered 'boom'. "For a while, anyway. We can talk about it, when you're ready. I know you think you won't, that you'll resist to the hilt, but trust me, you'll come around. Every sensible person does, in the end. So let me ask another question. Do you know what the worst part of solitary confinement is, Lara?"

  She gritted her teeth. One grab and she'd have his gun. One squeeze and he'd be dead.

  "It's not the loneliness, not really. You can get used to being alone. We all survived the apocalypse, and we didn't all kill ourselves. I knew just one who did. Myra." He paused for a respectful silence. "Your Sophia was another. Some of that was loneliness, of course. We're hardwired to want socialization." He grinned. "I buy my coffee in the shop. I talk to the barista. I feel good."

  Her eyes flashed again, and he let his smile fade. "But what are social needs? Are they like oxygen or food? Not exactly. Have you heard of the artist Ai Wei Wei? A Chinese man, he made art that challenged the government's authority. As one punishment they put him in a cell with two guards whose only job was to stare at him at all times. They stared when he slept and when he showered, when he ate and when he sat on the toilet. He wasn't alone, but still he said it was the worst experience of his life. Why?"

  He waited. She gave nothing.

  "They took away his ability to meaningfully impact the world," he said, "and in so doing, they denied him a sense of self. Think about it. When we take an action or speak to another person, when we build something or destroy something, birth someone or kill someone, the ripples go out in the real world, and it's in those ripples that we see who we are. We see that we are real, we have an impact, we matter. The Chinese government denied much of that to Ai Wei Wei, and it nearly broke him. It's a kind of mental torture, to know the world is going on without you. It doesn't miss you. It doesn't even know you exist."

  He paused. "We all felt it to some degree, after the zombies came. We lost many of the ripples we'd grown used to making; our jobs, our friends, our coffee." He smiled. "Some of us adapted, found other ways to get our meaningful interaction. For me there was the First Law. For Amo, he painted on buildings and made a comic. What did you do, Lara, to keep yourself alive?"

  He waited. She stared. He pulled up a chair and sat.

  "Lots of people sank into their own pasts. They read old diaries and books. They watched old movies. They mined the past for all the ripples they could squeeze out of it, until after a time it was all gone. Were you one of those? Perhaps. I never went home; the memories would only hurt. I wanted the future right from the beginning. But you people here?" He gestured to the walls around them. "You've been living off old stories for a decade. You've become expert at sucking out the marrow. Look at this obsession with the bunkers, with trying to make a cure. I pity it, really. It's a childish kind of denial. Even the ridiculous belief in demons, that the zombies won't hurt you, that they are actually trying to protect you. It's laughable. How is that any different from a child hugging its teddy bear close, and asking Daddy to leave the night light on?"

  He leaned in closer. "It's time to grow up, Lara. We're in the night now, and it's going to be long. It's going to be dark and cruel. We need to accept that, and accept the only way out is through what we do for ourselves. We have to open our eyes, not keep ourselves blind."

  He leaned back again, taking some of the heat and cold with him. Lara felt her eyes sting and willed the tears not to come. "Dark and cold," Drake mused. "But it can always get worse. Think of your Julio in his pit, with his victims. Think of yourself, if you were to stay here, locked in this RV without any meaningful interaction for years." He gestured again at the four walls. "It's a special kind of madness, the loss of self. The longest I had anyone go was Duraine, a Frenchman. He took it for a year. We made him a special soundproof RV so he wouldn't get any taste of outside through the walls, nothing to keep him going. In that year, you can bet he stripped his own mind down again and again looking for something to sustain him. He must have negotiated with himself a thousand times, wondering how much his pride was worth."

  Now Drake smiled, a sad but menacing thing through his thick black beard. "We took samples from him, of course. His seed is frozen in our banks, that was a simple enough procedure, if heartless. In the end I had to let him go. He was totally mad. I could have kept him, used him as an example to others, but I'm not that cruel. I don't enjoy causing pain. He made his choice when I showed him the truth, and you will too. Our race will die if we don't procreate. It's simple mathematics. Even if your bunkers are real and you somehow cure a disease they never could, they'll never come to help you. They have all the diversity they need, they're geniuses, why would they want to mix with a bunch of mongrels? Baristas. Comic book artists. I think I met a Yangtze deliveryman? Nobodies. They wouldn't. They won't."

  He leaned in. "But I would. Give me the dregs and I'll make them into an empire. The planet is ours by right of survival, and we're going to take it and light up the dark. The only way is to go forth and multiply, like in the Bible. Better still, our community is a loving one. There's no rape, no crime, no hate. Just the First Law; go forth, multiply, and rule. Once you see that, you'll join us. Perhaps one day you'll even forgive me for the deaths I've caused, to put you and your people in this cage. Because all cages have a door, Lara."

  He stood.

  Lara watched him. It was a screed, random jots of philosophy blended with Mecklarin's behaviorist psychobabble, and listening to it wore her out. Where was the love, and where were human rights, and where were all the good things of the past that deserved to be maintained? They'd come so far, and he was willing to throw away two thousand years of progress just so they could survive.

  It wasn't enough. But there was truth embedded in what he said too, like a sliver of silver in a steaming dog shit, which only made it harder to hear. If there never was a cure, his way would be the only way. If the bunkers didn't rise up from below ground, and the zombies were not
restored, then they'd have to do it for themselves. Just a day earlier she'd asked Amo for more children.

  Now this. This man, this demon was facing her down.

  "At least, that's my usual speech," he said abruptly.

  His casual smile fell away, and now his tone was different, no longer impassioned but hard. "For you, Lara, I have something else in mind. You're going to help me build a cage for New LA. And you're not going to like it."

  He leaned in and wormed his huge arms underneath her back and legs. The cold sparked up into her heart, and he shuddered in turn, but lifted her easily.

  "I want to talk about this too," he said, nodding down at the point her side touched his chest. "This cold, hot thing? But there'll be plenty of time later. First I have something you need to see."

  He carried her to the door. He keyed in the code and carried her out. There was not a thing she could do.

  10. NOT THE MEEK

  Together they went into the light. Half-blinded by the sudden brightness, Lara caught only impressions of her surroundings. Two children stood either side of her door, holding handguns at their sides. There was a woman standing with her hands meekly held before her swollen belly.

  Pregnant.

  Then Matthew Drake set her down in a chair, a wheelchair, and started pushing.

  "There's a lot you'll need to take in," he said as they rolled over a plain paved expanse. Blinking, Lara recognized it as the Chinese Theater forecourt. There was a long line of RVs neatly arrayed down the right side, each watched over by one or two children with guns. A few adults patrolled purposefully between them.

  Drake's cages.

  "… they've been waiting for you," he was saying. "They've been very patient. Now things need to move forward."

  He stopped at a low wooden stage in front of the doors, something raided from one of the Theater's back rooms. Atop it stood a wooden lectern with a microphone on a stand, wired up to two lines of large speakers spread out over the forecourt in a V-shape. Between the speakers lay a huge heap of jumbled papers, fabric, plastic and bits of broken wood that rose high above her head. Colors popped out at her from the pile, of furled papers and wrinkled text, the wink of reflective silver, a spray of blue on white.

  She peered closer, and as her eyes gradually adjusted to the harsh daylight, she realized what this was. Comics. Hundreds of copies of Amo's 'Zombies of America', along with dozens of computers, USB drives and videotapes containing parts of the story. A large black block on top looked like the digital brick that stored Ragnarok III, the only copy of that movie they'd found. Spread over the pile like fairy lights on a Christmas tree lay long cords of bunting, festooned with Amo's new flag.

  The air smelled of gasoline.

  The breath caught in Lara's throat, because this was the entire cultural output of New LA. Once so precious, once a hope that had led every New LA survivor in, now it was reduced to trash. It made the dream feel stupid. It spat on Amo's vision, and who was there to stop it? She sagged and wanted to fall from the chair, but Drake held her in position.

  "Watch it there," he said, not unkindly. "I know it's a lot to take in. But better to rip the Band-Aid off in one." He came around the front of the wheelchair and knelt before her, resting his hands on the chair's armrests and looking into her eyes. "Now, Lara. I need you fully present for this. You're not going to faint or scream your way through it. You're going to be here at my side, watching and listening, and you're going to be silent. I know that's hard, but trust me, it's for the best, because things can always get worse. Don't forget that. Five of your people are dead. It can easily be more."

  Something in her face, perhaps it was hate, perhaps it was rage or just defeat, seemed to satisfy him. He bobbed back up and gave a signal.

  "Let's get this started."

  He took to the stage and stood behind the lectern. Moments later the doors to the RV cells opened; Lara counted some twenty vehicles in total. People she knew spilled out, all ragged, wide-eyed, still plainly in shock. They blinked and tried to shield their eyes from the light. They saw the great pile of trash and the other RVs, they saw the children and gray adults with guns, and they saw the stage, and there at the stage's side they saw Lara, silently complicit.

  She thought of that day in Maine when she'd set the conference table out in the snow. She'd wanted them to doubt her then, wanted them to come and fight her, because she'd had plenty of anger stored up; at Amo, at the bunker, at the demons. She'd wanted to crush the stupidity out of them, and teach Amo to dream again, and help lead them forward again.

  But now?

  Now they saw her crushed. She scanned the crowd but there was no sign of Amo. She just sat by this monster's side while he crowed over them, and she couldn't do a thing. She'd surrendered. They were beaten. She only sat and stared back. She looked at their eyes and saw their defeat, and they saw hers, and they all looked away.

  "He's not here," Drake said from the stage, holding his hand over the microphone. "But you'll see him soon. I promise."

  Again, he seemed almost kind. Understanding. She turned before the tears welling in her eyes could spill.

  In moments her people were herded up toward the junk pile, silent and stumbling, children and adults both. Here was Feargal, bandaged and limping, the rage in his eyes still there but tamped down. Here was Crow, massive and comforting, but moving when the child with the gun prodded him. There was Keeshom, looking so pale and weak.

  "I'm sorry," he mouthed to her, though she didn't know why.

  Here was New LA, become refugees in their own home. Become victims.

  Then there was Vie. There was Talia. They came out of one of the middle RVs with their heads down, in a file with the other children, but she could see the bruise on Talia's face. She opened her mouth to scream in outrage, but remembered Drake and her eyes darted to the side. He was watching her with curiosity in his eyes. Waiting.

  She let the scream die. He nodded. A first lesson.

  Vie and Talia were set down in the middle along with the other children, closest to the heap of comics and flags. Still they looked down at the ground. Lara gazed at them urgently, hoping they would look up and see her and with her eyes she might be able to give them a signal, show them she was still there and strong for them. But they didn't look, and perhaps it was a mercy, because she wasn't strong.

  She knew it. She knew she mustn't look it.

  The whole sad procession happened in near silence. Adults were made to kneel on the hard stone. Children were allowed to sit. All of them looked gray and broken, from the strongest men to the boldest women.

  New LA.

  Silence fell, and held, until the man who'd been a demon spoke. His voice came amplified through the speakers, heavy and solemn.

  "Yesterday I gave an order that killed five of your people." He let that ring out and go silent in the hot Californian air. "Their names were William, Torrance, Lacey, Shane and Lucinda. Right now you hate me. You think I'm a monster, and you're right. To give that order was monstrous, and I am sorry." He looked around at them all, thirty-three remaining survivors. "The First Law means even a single death is the greatest waste, and I mourn them deeply. Their names will be enshrined in the story of this place, and one day I will be punished for it. One day I will hang for giving the order that they die."

  He took a long moment to look out over them. Feargal stared with his eyes burning, while many only looked down. "When that day of reckoning comes, and you stand with the noose in your hands, I will welcome it. I will deserve it, for the things I have done."

  Another pause. Another long moment gazing out. "But let him who is without sin cast the first stone. Are you all so clean, so righteous? When I came here on your cairn trail left around the world, I had such hopes of what I might find. I imagined a society bent on bringing humanity back to America. I imagined a shining city on a hill, leading the world into a new and prosperous age. And I have been disappointed." His chin jutted out like a challenge, defying any to d
isagree. "Instead I find a people who believe in myth and legend. I find leaders who lie with every breath and instill hypocrisy in every deed. I find a shattered community whose every step forward leads it deeper into the grave."

  Another pause, another silence, another long moment to survey the crowd. "You have been brilliant in many ways. You have resurrected old technologies, reached out across the world, and made this small village in the ruins of the city thrive. Yet your brilliance is far overtaken by your colossal selfishness and corruption. On the day I and my people arrived, when we waited here on this very court yesterday, to be greeted by our saviors led by the great mayor Amo, who did we meet but Amo himself? Amo who within moments threatened my people, who brought a squad of soldiers here to point their rifles at my children, who promised to kill us all if we did not move, move, move along at once, at his order. Your great leader compelled us on pain of death, and for what?"

  He looked around theatrically, swaying his gaze side to side. "For the mythical threat of demons. Demons!" He barked the word sharply, startling Lara. "Because he said 'demons' were coming, but where are the demons, New LA? Where are they?" He reveled in the silence that followed. "The demons didn't come, and they haven't come yet, and they never will, because they're not real! They never were, and just like them, everything your mayor Amo told you was a lie. You have been told he was just and fair, those words have been forced down your throats for over a decade, but what of Maine? You were all there, but none of you understood what he truly did. I look at you now and I see you still don't know. Such is your self-obsession, your corruption, your capacity to deceive your own selves. I am the needle come to lance that boil. Tell me, who killed the three thousand people of Maine? Who pushed the button to slaughter three thousand fellow survivors, for fear of an unknown he couldn't control? Who?"