His eyes turn wild, and he bucks and throws me off. He's far the bigger man, much stronger, but I roll and turn as he's rising, whipping my body and lashing my chains across the side of his head with a resounding CRUNK. The eyelet whirls and wraps round his head twice, growing faster with each revolution to finally peg in with a meaty THUNK right between his eyes.
He pushes the chains off and comes for me, bleeding now from a tear in his forehead, bleeding from his ruined mouth, lumbering unevenly. I stumble to the side, lurching slowly for all the acid in my legs, but not fast enough to escape his grasp. He catches me by the chain and yanks, snapping my arms up and tugging me sideways into the air.
I roll and hit the stage hard, crunching down on my shoulder with a gristly pop that could be a dislocation or worse. The boards thump and I catch a glimpse of his huge legs stamping in, one leg arching back, and I just manage to get my face out of the way.
Still his kick catches me a glancing blow on the top of the head, followed by another great thump as he overbalances and falls. I scamper away on hands and knees, dizzy and desperate, until another yank comes on the chain.
He's on his knees behind me and grinning a bloody, bone-spiked grin, with my chains in his hands.
"Come on then, mate," he says, or something very like that; it's hard to make out the words through his mashed-in mouth. He tugs the chains again tauntingly. "Come on."
I need the element of surprise, but it's gone. He's bigger than me, stronger than me, and I don't stand a chance. I can't win in a bare-knuckle fight, I can't out-wrestle him, can't even use my chains anymore. He pulls on the chains and I jerk a step forward, my eyes racing desperately over the stage, but the gun is gone and there's nothing else. Lara is still out and this is it.
Then I see it, something that he doesn't see but I can use. I've been awake long enough, I haven't taken the disorienting hits that he has, and I know that he's kneeling right at the edge of the stage.
So I come on. I speed up and I charge. My legs wobble but there's enough energy left for three good strides, enough power left to propel me into a jump headfirst at him. My arms spread wide, his arms spread to meet me, my shoulder aimed right at his huge chest and-
We hit and he rocks and we tumble back and down into empty air. The edge of the stage passes as if in slow motion, and his arms pinwheel but find no railing to grip, and we fall and there's no time to flip in mid-air and-
CRUMP
He hits the forecourt's paving stones like a pile driver, head pulled to the side so he strikes with his neck and shoulder first, then crumples horribly sideways with the weight of his own body.
I follow, and I hit, but better. I glance off his chest and manage to catch myself in an ugly forward roll, spraining my wrist as I go and certainly bruising a few vertebrae, but not so bad that I'm not moving again in a few seconds.
God knows where the gun is anymore, and there's no time to look. I drop onto his back bodily, cracking more ribs under my weight, and take hold of the back of his head by the hair. His great meaty hands try to shove me away, but he's lying facedown on the stone, probably half-paralyzed by the stunning dive he just took, and he can't get any traction.
I pull his head back then drive it down with all my strength, and the sound his skull makes cracking on the stone is everything, filling up my world; like an egg being broken, like a piñata opening, like a coconut being split in two. His body shudders and he tries to roll but he's weak now and I'm straddling him, holding his huge body in place. He starts to moan even as blood pools out from beneath his crumpled face.
I lift his head high, catching a glimpse of the staved-in corner of his forehead, like a dented red fender, then I drive it down again into the stone. I grunt and he cries out and his body starts to shudder madly. I do it again and again with a wet SMASH
SMASH
SMASH
SMASH
SMASH
-until the moaning and gasping stops and I'm just pummeling meat, cracking his skull into shards, until I'm wrist-deep in slippery brain matter and gore, until I finally stop, gasping and steaming in the hot night air.
And I look up. And I see that they're watching me.
In the front row, kneeling where they'd fallen, their eyes terrified and wide, are my children. I reach out and Vie screams. Talia wraps his head with her arm and pulls him away from the horror I must be.
I sway on my knees, breathing hard and blood dripping, shuddering with adrenaline. Drake's leg twitches.
I look out. They're all watching now, rising from one nightmare into another. They see me, kneeling on Drake's corpse as bloody as a newborn babe. Amo the murderer. Amo the liar, the killer, the monster. They see what I am, every inch the animal he branded me, every inch the animal that I am, so let it fucking be.
I clank my chains together loudly and they startle. They gasp. I'm exhausted after two days of being beaten and ignored, of no food and scarcely any water, after fighting Drake to the death, but I will do this now. I choose to do this thing in this way. Let them feel the fear.
I turn my back and haul myself bodily onto the stage. There's Lara now too, watching me. She's got the gun in her hands. I don't know what message passes between us. I don't know what her eyes say, or mine. I just hold out my shackled hands, and she puts the gun into them. I flick the safety off. I swing back to the edge of the stage, and I point the barrel down at Drake.
BANG
BANG
BANG
I shoot him three times; in the back of the neck, in the head, in his massive barrel chest. Little spurts of blood puff up like sad firecrackers.
People suck breaths and pull away. My children will never forget this. They will never forget this, but I haven't got time to protect them from it. I've seen what's coming. From the looks in their eyes they all have too, a giant white eye to bloom over us all, and now I need to make it real.
"We're leaving now," I say. My voice comes out cold and rough. I sound cruel. "You've all seen it."
I don't understand what I saw in the sparking darkness after Lara took my hand, not any more than they do, but the truth of it was undeniable. I saw them all die. I saw the world burn in a terrible holocaust, and I'll never take a chance again. I should have shot Drake from the start. I should have shot his children and his people as soon as they resisted. I should have killed Julio and Maine and every single bunker from the off, I shouldn't take another chance, not a single other risk.
I don't care.
"You just murdered that man!" A voice calls in outrage from the crowd, and I know who it is from the first syllable. They all have guns out there too. Perhaps they have bombs. But what does it matter?
She appears from their midst, Witzgenstein, like an angel coming down from the clouds. She's standing with her gun pointing at me. Feargal stands near, slack-jawed with his pistol in its holster. Alan stands to her right, holding his gun down at his side. It's laughable, such a joke, because she still thinks she can win.
"Say one more word, Janine," I say thickly. I don't raise my voice or my gun. I don't do a thing because at this point I don't need to. It feels as if I can kill her with a thought. I'm standing here covered in Drake's blood and brains and there's nothing she can do. I feel invulnerable. She can't kill me, she won't because she never has before, while for me it'll be easy, like taking off a pair of socks. I'll kill her and all her people until I can't breathe for all the blood. "One more word."
I wait. I weave in place. I watch her, as she raises her left hand to steady the pistol. She can have a shot for free. She can take her chance, but her hands are shaking and she won't hit and she knows it. I stare into those bright blue eyes as they color with fear.
Finally.
We never faced off before like this, but now I see we should have. I never demanded respect. Perhaps I earned it, for a time, but I never had fear, and now I see the power it brings, and so does she. That's another lesson from Drake.
I drop my gun, clattering off the wood.
I don't need it any more. I stop looking at Janine and instead I look to them all. Still my comics are burning in braziers around them, but that's fine, that's so far in the past now that I can't even remember when it was important. My shoulder burns, my fists ache, my chest heaves. I speak.
"We're leaving. Right now. Stay here and I'll let you die. Leave and we have a chance. You've seen the white eye. You know what's coming."
I see the fear increase, and that's good. This is the new apocalypse.
Lara comes up behind me, catching her arm around my chest just in time, before I fall. Together we hold position for ten seconds, twenty, a contest of wills with these people who moments ago were baying for my blood. They've seen more blood than they ever wanted, and it's turned their stomachs.
Good. Together Lara and I start down off the stage, with me leaning on her and my chains rattling along behind. We don't talk to anyone or each other. I don't ask Feargal to gather my children, because I trust that he will. It's all performance now, all about the show; another lesson I learned from Drake. I hold my shackled wrists together over my belly like it's a choice, like this is how I choose to walk.
We go into the darkness, away from the halo of white light and the braziers and people, toward Drake's silver Winnebago at the end of the row of RVs. Someone has the keys, someone knows the code, and somehow the door will open. I have faith.
By the time we reach the door, it happens. A heavy woman darts nimbly ahead and keys in the code. Lydia. The door opens and a flood of children rush past me, flowing in before I can get a foot on the step. I don't know. I killed their father, and now they follow me? Dozens. Hundreds maybe, I can't count them all. We follow. I'm too weary to drive, every muscle shaking now, so I leave it to Lara. I sit, she sits, and she keys the ignition.
Someone puts their hand on my shoulder.
"I have them," says a voice I always thought I could trust. Feargal. I nod and a bloody tear leaks down my cheek. I look through the windshield and back toward the stage, letting my eyes run over the rows of scattered seating and braziers, where nobody is now standing. Drake's huge body is barely visible at the base of his stage. I look at the ornate Chinese Theater roofing above, lit up by the red of the brazier fires like a neon demon, and I say my farewells.
We won't be coming back ever again.
The Winnebago kicks into gear and draws away. We are the first and take the lead. I feel the weight of so many children behind me; almost a hundred people in all, in flight. We drive at the head of just another exodus convoy.
Time passes in silence, perhaps thirty minutes, perhaps forty. Lara watches the road, weaving north and east and out of LA, and I watch her. She belongs in this driving seat, like this. She's got the still, quiet strength, now; the same stuff I used to have, while I've become a beast, all raw violence and rage. I'm played out as mayor and I have been for years. I should have seen it after Maine, but I thought I could still do good. I hoped my flag and my work on Sacramento would help us, but I see now what pathetic bullshit that was. New LA has had enough of me, and I've had enough of it too. I should thank Drake for pulling off my mask.
We drive on. When the boom finally comes, the whole convoy halts.
The flash comes first, illuminating the road ahead and all around like sheet lightning that doesn't end, like someone turned on a great electric light in the sky. I see everything ahead and around so drab and lonely, everything in the cab and out on these dead streets, then there's the-
BOOM
It's a boom to beat all booms. It rolls and gathers and rises like a tsunami tide, bringing behind it the whole aching mass of the sea. I feel it in my bones, in the burr rising up through the wheels, in the shivering of the air, until the furious rush of dust and wind rattling off the back of the RV supersedes it. It's like a hurricane landed and we can barely see. The road ahead seems to twist, then that rush is over, and the boom is over, and without a word Lara pulls over. Without a word we get out of the vehicle. It's too big a thing not to pause and observe, too vast a change in our world, and a few seconds more of exposure won't make any difference now.
I get out and stand beside her, stumbling over my chain. In the sky above downtown LA there hangs a vast ball of flame, an unblinking white eye, which lights the whole city as if it were day. The ball roils and expands like a boiling egg in oil, sending devastation out into the sky and down, raining down upon New LA. I watch as the massive mushroom cloud of pulverized city rises up to obscure it. I feel the heat on my skin like the sun on a fifty-degree day. I feel the ionized wind.
Airburst, my mind tells me. Intercontinental ballistic missile. Without a doubt, if we'd lingered just a few moments longer, if I'd stopped to discuss the finer points of leadership with Janine, we would now all be dead.
It's not a coincidence. It was a choice. My mind turns on simple details. All the people gathered in one place. Perhaps all the survivors in the world, collected on one forecourt for the first time ever. Their demons had failed so they waited for this, waited for us to congregate, then they sent a missile when Sacramento finally came in.
Someone gasps. Someone wails. Someone cries. I watch for a time, as the white eye steadily blinks itself out, leaving only a burning afterimage behind, seared into our collective memory. This is what they think of us, the bunkers, because who else could it be? This is their vision of the future, no treaty and no hope of co-existence, and there's no going back now. This is what they want, so this is what they shall have. I'm finally ready.
I lead all my children, Drake's children and my own, back into the RV. Lara sits at the wheel and looks at me. She nods, and takes a breath, and we drive away from the nuclear blast.
It's time to say goodbye to New LA.
THE LAWS - ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to my Advance Review Copy team, in particular:
Pam Elmes, indubitably the fastest reader in the West, for finishing The Laws in less than a day, and offering great support on a thorny endgame problem. Rebecca Barnes, for cutting back on sleep to plow through the ocean in just a few days, and sending a flood of Britishism reports. Melissa Dykeman-Abourbih, for nailing several continuity errors (they can't eat French Fries if there's a potato blight). Karen Merendino for catching cupboard where it should be closet, Steve Kenny and Brita Morrow, Katy Page for knocking out two important continuity errors (does Lara know who died in the bombing or not? / is Amo wearing his shackles or not?), Jacqueline Clark, Rebecca Bailey, Jill Scalzo, Sue Davidson for such precise continuity comments and rigorous fact-checking, Amber Reid for comments on a thorough readthrough, and Jacinda Matzer for a few hard-to-spot punctuation errors. Thank you all.
Also thanks to my Dad for pointing up issues of pace in the Past section and issues of clarity in the final chapter, and to my wife Su for her constant support in the face of me warbling on about possible plots on long rambles round our local park.
- Michael
THE LASH CONTENTS
AMO
ANNA
LARA
ASSAULT
NORTH
Acknowledgements
AMO
1. HELLSCAPE
New LA is gone.
I stand and watch by the desert roadside, in the night, at a brief pit stop on our latest, final exodus to the East. Overhead the great white eye still ripples, lighting up the sky while the mushrooming plume of dust rises to meet it like a giant hand caressing a pearl. This dust is the devastation of my world. This dust is everything I have built, pulverized and scattered like salt sown into the land.
People sob nearby. People weep. Children cluster round me and try to hold my hands, which are crusted with Drake's blood and still heavy with the chains hanging from my wrists. Together we watch the dust turn the cool, pure white of the eye to an angry, infected red. The world has shifted underfoot, and the glow on this sad desert road shifts to match, as if someone is painting the air with a bloody brush, reducing us to lumpy figures in some Goya hellscape.
It's hard to breathe. My lungs feel full of dust. My hands curl uselessly at my sides, closing on little fingers and hands. Little eyes look up at me, waiting for me to speak, but there's nothing to say. Everything I had to offer these people has been taken. What Drake didn't strip away, I staved in myself with my fists in his skull, and any fragment left after that was atomized in the blast.
New LA is gone.
I hear Witzgenstein from down the convoy; her once sweet, sure voice rising in something like panic. She's marshaling her people. She's like a frog croaking endlessly. I'm sure she thinks she'll die now, that I'll kill her. I should kill her, all of them, everyone who turned against me. I marked them. Greg, who wouldn't kill children. Drake's man in Screen 2 who beat me for two days straight. Feargal, for turning coat so quickly.
Somebody coughs. Somebody throws back their head and wails.
I look down at his children. So many little faces, little hungry ghouls in the red dark, in the fading light of the white eye. They hold to my hands and my pant legs. They carry giant stuffed toys, bears and kangaroos, elephants and whales. There's enough explosives here to finish us all.
My dream of a better world is gone.
I raise my eyes to the swollen eye and savor the dust blowing over my cheeks like a hot balm, like the ocean's great sigh. The glow is fading, though there's a new light rising up now, reflecting off the lower strata of dust. Los Angeles is on fire, just as Lara's vision showed.
Montlake and Little Korea. Reseda and Venice Beach. Disneyland and Hollywood and the Chinese Theater, from shining sea to golden sand, Los Angeles is ablaze; a crater sunk into our collective unconsciousness, so vast we will never heal.
Witzgenstein is shouting. People answer her with questions. What happens now? Where do we go?
The Last Mayor Box Set Page 142