"Lucas, do you read? Tell me what the hell just happened on the hydrogen line?"
There was static for a long moment, then a signal cut in.
"Anna!" came Lucas' voice, though it sounded far away, interspersed with crackles of static. "I don't know what … blew up the hydrogen line! … Lara's signature's all over it, but … Amo and Drake too, with evidence of … amazing, I don't know what we're looking at but it may be proof of …"
The static stretched on.
"Proof of what?" Anna demanded. "What have Amo and Drake got to do with it?"
No response came but the hiss of static.
Anna turned to Jake. "What's going on?"
"I don't," he began, lapsed into stuttering, then got a hold of himself. "I mean, I don't know, but perhaps the l-line is affecting our signal strength? I don't think so. But maybe it's possible…"
He trailed off.
"Let's get above ground," Anna said, and clipped herself in to the top rope in the two-rope commando bridge they'd set up to ferry them back to the elevator shaft.
"They're not all in yet," Ravi protested, taking hold of her arm. She flashed him a dangerous glance but he didn't let go. "Anna, think about it. We don't know how long this will last, and there's plenty of demons up there still. Floaters too. We can't go up until we're sure."
Anna pulled her arm free. "I'm sure. They're not moving. Peters?"
"I…, perhaps." He put one hand to his head. "It's powerful. It doesn't stop."
"Neither do I," said Anna, and shuffled off the balcony. The rope underfoot, knotted between the lower railing on the gantry and a tangle of twisted metal up at the elevator shaft, wobbled wildly. She clung to the upper rope, fastened at chest-height above it, and carefully pulled herself up the taut line.
"Anna!" Ravi called after her uselessly.
She raced up and within a minute had her feet on the stub of the central stairway gantry, where once she'd fallen and nearly broken her back. She unclipped from the rope and looked at the zombie bodies lying nearby. Just ahead there was a demon.
It lay in the base of the elevator shaft, sprawled over a low heap of the ocean. It didn't move, and there wasn't even any cold signal rising off it. Every bit of sense in her head told her to go back, but she couldn't now.
She looked back at them, three men at the railing looking nervously up. "You wait here if you want," she said, then moved on without waiting for an answer. She trod around the demon as carefully as she could, then bolted up the rungs in the shaft wall. It took only moments, and throughout she listened to the empty sound of static raining through the walkie.
At the top in the small oval white space she looked up at the circle of sky. There were no ocean tumbling down. The ones at her feet, sprawled out in a frozen crawl, were as still as statues.
She raced up the final set of rungs, into the chilly blue light of dawn. How long had they been down there, watching bodies tumble by one after the other? Long hours, all of the night. It had been midday when they'd gone down.
Now she stood in the dewy loam of the Bordeaux vineyard, fertile after the flame throwing she'd ordered a year back. The skies were steadily lightening and the sun was due to pop over the dark horizon of grapevines any moment. Around her lay more emaciated, pale ocean bodies, mixed in with a few huge, blood red demons, all drawn like silt in bathwater spiraling down the drain.
"Lucas," she called into the walkie, but got only static back.
She ran for the stairs truck, undamaged by the ocean, and swung in to snatch up the radio. The signal on it would be much stronger and might be able to cut through any interference this latest aberration on the hydrogen line had thrown up. She spun the gain up, clicked the battery on, and held down the transmit button.
"Lucas, talk to me, what have you found?"
Brittle noises came back, snapping and crackling unnaturally, and she worked the dial to tune in more tightly. There was a brief sound that might have been a human cry, the sounds of a scuffle in a contained space, then back to the odd barking static.
She shifted the gain to the max, upped the volume, and tried again.
"Lucas, Sulman, do you read me?"
"Anna!" came a reply, from Lucas panting wildly. "Jesus, Anna … under attack! … came in out of nowhere, black suits, they've already got … ."
Anna's eyes flared wide. Attack? His desperate voice clashed with the quiet and still vineyards of Bordeaux, where the pre-dawn lull was broken only by the shush of a low wind rustling through the heavily laden grapevines.
"Attack from who?" she barked into the radio receiver. "What's happening?"
There were more sounds of action, bodies moving and panting, then the unmistakable-
BANG
-of gunfire.
"Lucas!"
There was a slam, then Lucas' voice came back.
"I'm in a store room, Anna … don't have long. They shot Sulman … know who they are ... Black suits, Anna, like we found … . Warn New LA!"
Anna stared blankly at the receiver for a second, trying to take it in. Warn New LA of what, men in black suits? The hydrogen line shift?
"I don't-" she started, but Lucas cut her off, coming through clearly for the first time.
"Anna, I've routed through the building's hardline antenna, can you hear me?"
"Yes."
A thumping sound started on the line and he shouted over it. "I don't have long, they're smashing their way in. Listen to me, you need to run, Anna! This is obviously a coordinated attack; they're trying to wipe us out. They've been jamming our comms for the past hour. The bunkers went silent two hours ago, just stopped responding to our attempts, then the hydrogen line went crazy for twenty minutes, then shut down almost completely. There's almost no line left! I don't know what it means. New LA aren't answering still, but they're all in one place, Anna, for the first time ever. Sacramento, New LA, Drake's people, even Witzgenstein is there! One raid could take all of them out."
Anna reeled. An assault on Istanbul was one thing, one terrible, unbelievable thing, but an impending assault on New LA? A single raid… If Lucas was right then there were almost a hundred people gathered in New LA now, all the survivors in the world. One raid would be enough.
The sense of vertigo rushed back and she clamped onto the steering wheel to hold her steady. There was no use denying it.
Istanbul had fallen. New LA would fall. Which left only…
"Can you get out?" she said. "Out a window and into one of the RVs, there are boats down at the bay that might-"
Lucas cut across her. "You don't get it, Anna! These people are organized, there's dozens of them. I don't stand a chance, but listen- I was so close! All this activity on the line, the burst from Lara, the harmonics of Drake and Amo, it informs the cure. I'm finally seeing the coordination between the line and the T4, I'm close to cracking it, if they would just-"
SLAM
The sound of an explosion burst through the radio at full volume. Shots rang out like fireworks on the 4th of July.
"This is it Anna," Lucas shouted. "They're looking at me. Warn-"
BANG
The signal died.
Anna was left standing in the quiet field of still bodies, holding the receiver as it poured out static at full volume.
She tried him again. She tried Sulman. She tried New LA, even though the radio wasn't programmed to reach around the world. She kept trying, unable to process the enormity of what she'd just heard.
Until Peters put his hand on her shoulder.
The radio went SHHHHHHH and Peters reached in and switched it off. Her ears rang with the echo of its white noise. Already the sun was up, a blot of cherry on a dark line of undergrowth.
"We have to go," Peters said.
Anna looked at him, then around at the world again. The bodies of the ocean lay everywhere like heaps of snow, fallen from the sky. The demons lay amongst them. There was Ravi now, and Jake too. They were all pale, like bodies dropped from above. How much had
they heard?
"They have Lucas now," Peters said flatly. "Or he's dead. We cannot warn New LA. Perhaps they know where we are, even now."
Anna gulped. Tears blurred in her eyes and she forced them back. Sulman was dead? Was Lucas dead too, when he was so close to the cure? And perhaps they were being watched even now.
It shouldn't be a surprise. The bunkers had been watching every signal on the line for years, dating back to before the apocalypse even struck. There was no reason they couldn't have continued. They could have tracked Drake and his forty-odd signals across the world, and tracked Witzgenstein and Tomas in Sacramento, waiting and hoping for them all to come together in one place, and then…
Her throat went dry. Do to New LA what they'd just done to Istanbul.
She looked up. She saw Jake standing by the body of a demon and staring down in disbelief.
"Are we producing signals?" she asked. "Jake?"
He looked up at her with blank, uncomprehending eyes.
"Are we producing signals?" she repeated. "Lucas said the line has gone almost flat. Can they read us now?"
He weaved. "Lucas," he said. "Is he-?"
Anna cursed inwardly. Lucas and Jake were as good as married, now. Of course he'd be stunned. Of course shock would follow. But there was no time.
"I don't know. Listen, sweetie," she dropped out of the stairs truck and strode over to him, taking him by the arm. "Jake, listen. If the line's gone flat, like Lucas said, can they still read us? Do you think they can?"
He tried to focus on her. His eyes were already damp but he was struggling to focus. "I, uh, it's…" He shook his head. "No? I'd say no. It's all a carrier system, uh, the strength from the center, which we now know was always A-Amo, it, uh, it carries the rest of us. But if that's gone flat, or nearly flat." He blinked and a tear ran down his cheek. "I guess, no."
"So they can't see us."
"Only this current position," Peters chimed in. "Anna, we must go."
She gulped. He was right. She looked to him, at his solid, wiry frame, then to Ravi, standing strong but uncertain. They had a stairs truck to their name. There was plenty of gear in the bunker, but there was no time.
No time to fetch the shield. No time to gather weapons. No time to do anything other than fly out blind into a dead world, with no connection to Istanbul or New LA. No plane, no plan, and not even any fuel.
"Let's go," she said, and strode back to the truck. Peters followed right after, then Ravi and last of all Jake. She didn't wait even for the doors to close before she revved the engine and they tore away, bouncing and grinding over the bodies of the ocean in the way.
Sulman was gone. Lucas was gone. Macy, Josiah, Wanda and Jonathon were gone. Of New LA she had no idea. The world had fallen apart, and perhaps the four of them were all that remained.
AMO 6
I bolt awake from a burning white nightmare, gasping as if I've just come up from underwater. There's a harsh light overhead that mirrors the blazing white eye I just saw, there are orange glimmers of firelight all around, but otherwise it's dark and I don't-
I saw Lara. I blink and shake my frazzled head. A stage and Drake, my wife reaching out for love or forgiveness or something and-
I roll and come to my knees and this place comes rushing back, though I've already seen it destroyed. I look out from the stage over some hundred people, lying flat on the paving stones of the Chinese Theater's forecourt like the zombies that surrounded me in Times Square, like a battlefield of the dead, like-
I don't understand and I can't make my mind work clearly. I saw all this destroyed in an almighty fireball already; bodies blasted to waxy smears, buildings crumpled as if under an almighty hand, the streets running with molten rivers of tar.
I don't-
I'm not-
I remember the almighty jolt when our fingers touched, like the mind of God fusing us together, and Drake together with us, and flipping us all over together like burgers on some vast electric griddle, and-
I search the crowd lying before me but find no answers. There are children and adults both, people I know and don't know alike lying atop each other where they fell, overlapping like scales on the Earth.
"Help!" I croak, though I don't know who can help me. I'm alone again, and the great terror of that strikes as if I've never been away. I'm twelve years back and in the thick of my first atrocity, burning down thousands of the ocean out of some terrified revenge, fighting for survival when I didn't even know what the ocean were.
I turn my head, and it aches like there's a twinge deep in the middle, pounding inward from my nose, but still I turn my head and there I see-
Drake.
A memory comes clear, and I feel an echo of what I felt through Lara's touch; the sense of an immense electric charge rising to a crescendo between him and me, thrumming like bottled lightning in Lara's body before it hit fever pitch and-
And everything shifted.
I gasp. In that crackling, fearsome blast I saw this moment, with me awake on my knees and Lara and Drake lying nearby, and the crowd all fallen, stunned by the pulse. I saw myself struggling to rise, and then Drake rising, and picking up his gun, and finally finishing what he started. I saw Lara die, and myself die, and soon enough the great white eye blinked open in the sky above and everybody died. New LA burned. I saw it and it didn't only feel real, it was real, like I'd lived through it myself.
Now I'm here, on my knees, in the silence. Flames crackle from braziers burning my comics. A dark wind blows off the lapping Pacific Ocean.
And there is Drake. He's a huge man, half-crushing Lara's prone body beneath him, and I'm still confused but the decision comes with more ease than it ever has. He has to die. I scan the stage in the halo of white light and find the gun, inches from his outspread fingers. I lurch forward to retrieve it and-
My face smashes against the wood, shaking the whole stage. Something grabbed me and yanked me down, something has hold of my wrists still, digging in and pulling back and-
I see my chains. Seconds pass and I stare, disbelieving. Of course. I'm chained here in this light, tethered to the wooden boards for my execution, and the gun is just out of my reach. I flip over and stretch out with my leg, straining to touch the gun, to hook it with my toes, but my feet paw uselessly at the boards, failing.
Failing again. I've failed so much and this is only the latest. I've failed and I've failed and I've let everyone down, and there's no surprise they all turned against me, no surprise they jeered me and cheered Drake as he tore my life's work down, no surprise as-
He moves.
Drake's hand twitches, and my heart vaults and doesn't land. I stop thrashing at once, stop breathing even, but it doesn't make a difference. His fingers are moving. His bulk is stirring. I stare with horror as his arm curls back toward his face.
No. No no no.
I look around me frantically, hunting for a key or someone to help, but there's no one, they're all unconscious still, all too far lost in the dream to move. I pull my legs violently back and get onto my knees, then try to pry at the heavy metal eyelet screwed into the wood with my bare hands, raking my nails and cutting the skin on my fingers, but I can't stop because-
Drake lifts his head and gets onto one knee.
"Lara!" I shout, and I kick at her arm but she won't wake up, and Drake's hand is inches from the gun. He rubs his eyes. "Lara, please!"
And Drake looks at me. His eyes are bleary, but in them I see the reflection of the white spotlight above, and myself, as well as a growing sense of recognition.
"Lara!" I yell, and tear at the chains and the eyelet uselessly. "Get up, please, I need you!"
She doesn't move, but Drake does, on two knees now and looking around blearily, and I see everything that I've lost be lost again. For a second only I had it in my hands, so precious and fragile, and now it's in his hands and dying as he wakes. His left hand stubs the gun, then numbly takes hold of the haft.
"Lara!" I roar, on my
feet now and yanking with all my strength against the chains, tearing my wrists to shreds as the shackles bite in. I'm just a frantic beast now, an animal about to die, and let my people see this. Let Drake see this, let this be how I go out, not with a whimper but an unintelligible desperate shriek, because goddammit I don't want to die like this, not so close, not so goddamn-
He looks at me again and this time there's understanding in it.
"Lara!!"
I take a deep breath and wrap my hands round the chains, straighten my back and yank upward as hard as I can. Please, I'm thinking, please, as Drake rises to his feet. He looks at the gun in his hands as if only just remembering what it is. He looks down at Lara and out to the people.
I squat and thrust again, jerking my shoulders against the chains, pumping my thighs full of lactic acid that brings on a wave of nausea and adrenaline, pumping again and straining. I feel my face flush a brilliant red and the white light above flares into two then three as I fall short on oxygen, and I gasp and now Drake's looking at me with comprehension and the faint glimmer of a smile.
"Amo," he says, and I have time to pull one more time, and I pull with everything I have, wrenching with my shoulders and heaving with my back, until with a grating rasp the thick eyelet gouges out of the wooden boards with a tiny spurt of sawdust.
I stagger back, watching the eyelet rise and then drop, thunking heavily to the stage before me. Drake watches it too. Both of us are briefly dumbfounded. I'm free.
He raises his gun. I lurch a step toward him and yank on the chain. The muzzle rises up, a black hole into nothing, and there's a tiny click as he pulls the trigger into the safety, and he opens his mouth to curse, and then the heavy eyelet swings round and smashes into his teeth.
CRACK
His head jolts backward, blood fountains out of his mouth, and for a moment he teeters on falling. Then I'm on him. We fall together, his back thudding off the stage, and I hit him three times in the face with my fists entwined like a hammer before I realize how badly I'm lacerating my own fists on his broken teeth.
The Last Mayor Box Set Page 141