The Last City

by Michael J. Totten

  “Roy didn’t verify anything,” Annie said. “Lucas died.”

  “From blood loss and shock,” Hughes said. “Not from the virus.”

  “He still doesn’t know I’m immune,” Annie said. “He never got his proof.”

  “So what?” Hughes said.

  “What do you mean, so what?” Annie said.

  “Who cares what he thinks as long as he takes us to Atlanta?” Hughes said.

  “Okay,” Annie said, “so let’s say he takes us. Then what do we do with him?”

  “We figure it out when we get there,” Hughes said.

  “The fuck’s that supposed to mean?” Parker said.

  “If Atlanta’s still standing, they’ll have security,” Hughes said. “We turn him in.”

  “Lander, Wyoming, had security,” Parker said, “and look how that turned out.”

  “We don’t know what we’ll find until we get there.”

  “What if there’s no security?” Annie said. “What if there’s nothing?”

  “Then we handle it ourselves,” Hughes said.

  “We take him out?” Parker said.

  “We take him out,” Hughes said.

  “And until then?” Annie said.

  “We pretend like everything’s peachy,” Hughes said.

  “Fuck,” Annie said.

  They stood around for another couple of moments saying nothing. Annie didn’t even know what to think anymore.

  “We sleep in shifts,” Parker said.

  “We’re already sleeping in shifts,” Hughes said.

  Annie wanted to kick something. “Can we go back to the truck now?”

  “Will you go to sleep?” Hughes said.

  Annie snorted.

  “Will you lay there and be quiet and not do anything stupid? At least until we’ve thought about this some more?”

  Annie held up her hands in surrender. She was beyond exhausted and could hardly even stand, let alone think straight.

  “Parker?” Hughes said.

  “We’re not done talking about this,” Parker said.

  “Of course not,” Hughes said.

  “Fine then,” Parker said. “Let’s go.”

  They headed back toward camp.

  God, Annie thought as she made her way through the trees. She’d drawn her own blood and transferred her immunity to a monster.

  Part III

  The Last City

  13

  Menacing clouds threatened the Kentucky countryside with rain. At least one winter storm had already chewed up the area; snapped branches the size and shape of human limbs littered the highway. The Suburban’s wheels crunched so many dead leaves that the pavement sounded wet, though the asphalt was as gray as the sky. Annie saw a few ditched cars here and there on the side of the road. A corpse sat behind the wheel of an old gray Peugeot with Arkansas plates parked half on and half off the shoulder.

  The truck smelled of old food and unwashed bodies, and Annie’s mouth tasted sour. She hadn’t bothered brushing her teeth that morning and had refused reconstituted oatmeal when Hughes had offered her some. She would have turned down even coffee had it been an option.

  Hughes swerved around a downed branch in the road. “How much farther is Bowling Green?”

  Parker checked the map. “Fifty miles or so.” They both spoke in a low voice, as if neither man cared whether or not Annie could hear them from the back seat.

  “Should be just about there then,” Hughes said.

  Annie crossed her arms over her chest. She didn’t like Parker taking over map-reading duties from Kyle. And neither of her friends wanted to talk about what they’d discovered about Roy and Lucas the night before.

  “Here we go,” Hughes said and followed the RV off the main highway past a sign that read Maddox Munitions and toward a security checkpoint with a drive-up hut. The steel arm that blocked unauthorized vehicles from proceeding was already raised. Beyond the hut rose a gray windowless building surrounded by an empty lake of parking.

  According to Roy, Maddox Munitions was better than an ammunition store. Better, even, than an armory. Maddox Munitions was an ammunition factory.

  “Hell of a thing,” Hughes said.

  “Man’s earning his money,” Parker said.

  “So to speak,” Hughes said.

  Roy’s RV came to a stop near the front door, a metal slab with a rectangular window at head level. Hughes pulled into a space more than a hundred feet away, with Annie’s side of the Suburban facing the other direction.

  “You two stay here,” Hughes said as he killed the engine, “and guard the vehicles. I’ll go inside with Roy.”

  Annie stewed. Hughes didn’t want her “guarding” the vehicles. He wanted her the hell away from Roy. Not for her protection either. For Roy’s. To stop her from bashing in his skull with the hammer.

  Roy approached the Suburban and stopped a respectful distance away.

  Hughes rolled down his window. “Be there in a sec.” He reached under the driver’s side seat. “Got something for you, Annie.”

  He produced Kyle’s cell phone. Annie frowned.

  “I looked through it last night when you two were sleeping,” Hughes said. “Still has a thirty percent charge. There are some photos on there that you might like to have. Mostly nature shots but also a few selfies that turned out real good.”

  Annie took the phone from him and nodded in thanks.

  “Back soon,” Hughes said. He stepped out of the SUV with the hammer Annie wanted to brain Roy with and shut the door and headed into the factory with Roy. The door wasn’t locked. Someone had already busted in.

  “You okay?” Parker said.

  “What do you think?” Annie said.

  “I think,” Parker said, “that I’m going to enjoy ridding the world of that sonofabitch when all this is over.”

  Annie felt some of the tension ease out of her body. She hesitated a moment before powering up Kyle’s phone, though. Would looking at the photos make her feel better or worse? Both, probably, at the same time in different ways. She went ahead and pressed the home button. The device didn’t require a passcode.

  She found the camera app easily enough and scrolled through it. Like Hughes had already said, most of the pictures were nature shots from the Pacific Northwest: Oregon’s Mount Hood, Washington’s Mount Rainier, the Columbia River Gorge on the border between the two states, and a place on the Oregon Coast that she thought might be Cannon Beach. She also found a few photos of Kyle with a pretty young girlfriend on a boat in Puget Sound with a sweet-looking Labrador Retriever, a panoramic shot of glass apartment towers in Vancouver, Canada, and another shot with the same girlfriend on a beach with palm trees in a place Annie assumed was Hawaii. Annie had no idea what this girlfriend’s name was. Kyle had never mentioned her.

  She felt an ache in her throat. Kyle looked so innocent in these pictures, an optimistic all-American boy just out of college with a whole adventurous life in front of him. Thank God people couldn’t see the future, that Kyle hadn’t even a flickering notion of the hell that awaited him, that the most grueling journey of his life would end in a bloody warehouse in Arkansas.

  Annie let herself cry. Parker couldn’t see her in the back seat from his perch in the front, but he must have heard her sniffle.

  “We’re going to be okay,” Parker said.

  “Why would you even think that?”

  “We’re almost there. This will be over soon.”

  Annie wiped her face with the back of her hand. “Then what?”

  “They might let us stay.”

  “We don’t even know if they’ll let us in. We don’t even know if they’re still there.”

  “They’ll let us in.” Parker turned around and faced her. “The minute they know who you are, they’ll let us in.”

  Annie wasn’t so sure. She couldn’t prove that she was immune before going inside. For all she knew, plenty of people had already shown up at the gate, said they were immune, and were
later found out to be lying. A common story, perhaps. And what did it say about the people who lived inside the walled part of Atlanta that they wouldn’t take refugees? Even Joseph Steele, the sonofabitch who ran Lander, Wyoming, had taken refugees.

  Even so, Parker was probably right. If they were protecting the Centers for Disease Control, leaving her and her friends outside to die wouldn’t make any sense.

  Hughes emerged grinning from the building and carrying what looked like two heavy shoeboxes. “Enough ammunition in there to outfit the Romanian army,” he said.

  Roy followed close behind with a third box. He and Hughes placed all three boxes into the back of the Suburban.

  “Nothing for him?” Parker said.

  “We’re going back,” Hughes said, “for another load.”

  Annie sighed and slumped in her seat.

  Hughes and Roy finally returned a few minutes later with three more boxes, again with Hughes carrying two and Roy carrying one. Two went into the RV and one into the Suburban.

  Parker stepped out of the truck and helped Hughes load ammunition into the weapons as Roy headed back toward his RV. Annie passed the Glock at her feet back to Parker. “Can you fill this one too?”

  Parker nodded and took the weapon from her.

  She stared at Roy as he loaded the Bushmaster. The man was barely a hundred feet away, and he had his back turned. He trusted the others too much. They didn’t need him as much as he thought they did.

  Hughes and Parker, weapons loaded, got back in the truck.

  “How far to Atlanta from here?” Hughes said.

  “Six hours if we were going straight,” Parker said.

  But they weren’t going straight. They planned to spend the night in Tennessee near the Great Smoky Mountains. “Should make the city by noon tomorrow.”

  They were almost there. And they knew the route now.

  Parker handed Annie her Glock. She checked it. Fully loaded.

  She turned her eyes back toward the RV. Roy was inside now but not behind the driver’s seat, fiddling around with something in back and blind to everything else around him.

  “We’ll be in Nantahala National Forest tonight,” Annie said.

  “I’m not sure if that’s—” Parker said.

  “That’s the one,” Annie said. “I’ve been there.” She’d been there a number of times, actually, camping with her family when she was a girl.

  “We’re driving into Atlanta from the north,” Annie said.

  “We are,” Parker said.

  “Into Alpharetta,” Annie said.

  “What’s that?” Hughes said.

  “Northernmost suburb,” Annie said. They were back in the South now, her part of the country, her homeland. She could guide them as well as anyone else.

  “We know the way,” Annie said.

  “I guess so,” Hughes said and racked the slide on this own hand weapon.

  “We’ve restocked on ammo,” Annie said.

  “In spades,” Parker said and chuckled.

  Annie returned her attention to the RV. Roy was still in there, rummaging around in the back.

  “Hey,” Hughes said. “Don’t even think about it.”

  “He’s done enough already,” Annie said.

  “You could probably get us to Atlanta without even needing a map,” Hughes said.

  “I can,” Annie said.

  “I get that,” Hughes said. “But he’s the only one who has been there since the outbreak. If it had been up to you, you would have taken us in from the west. Am I right?”

  Annie said nothing.

  “We were originally going to come in from the south,” Hughes said, “if we’d gotten a boat and sailed to the gulf down the river. Only Roy knew to drop down from the north.”

  “Sure,” Annie said. “But now we know. And I know the way.”

  “You don’t know what you don’t know,” Hughes said.

  “You’re forgetting what we do know!” Annie said. “He got Kyle killed. He got his own friend killed. And he’s killed other people for sport.”

  “He’s been more than useful so far,” Hughes said.

  “Useful,” Annie said.

  “Annie,” Parker said.

  “We wouldn’t be where we are without him,” Hughes said.

  “Kyle wouldn’t be dead if it weren’t for him,” Annie said.

  “We might all be dead if it weren’t for him,” Hughes said.

  Roy stepped out of the RV with a box of gear in his hands and headed toward the Suburban. “Finally found these,” he said and shook the box. “Thought I’d lost ‘em there for a minute.”

  Looked like he had some portable radios.

  “Walkie-talkies?” Parker said.

  “Yes, sir,” Roy said and handed one to Hughes. “You know how to use ‘em?”

  “Sure do,” Hughes said.

  “Battery’s mostly full,” Roy said. He pressed the talk button on his own radio and said “yo.” His voice crackled through the speaker in Hughes’s hands. “We’ll need these when we get where we’re going.”

  Sleep came to Annie unbidden. This was no shallow nap in the back of the truck. It was more like falling into a well. Darkness pulled her into the depths as if it had gripped her ankles with hands. There was no ring of light at the top of the well, not even stars.

  Annie found herself in an ornate Victorian mansion, in her house that wasn’t her house, in a time that wasn’t her time, in a city that wasn’t her city, unsure but uncaring how she got there, as if she’d drunk from the River Lethe. She glided through the living room, her feet just off the floor, the furniture antique Gilded Age pieces, heavy curtains pulled tight against the windows to keep the night out. There were people outside the house, gathering on the lawn, milling about on her porch, and wanting in. She could not see them or hear them, but she knew they were there the same way she knew the sky was overhead even though she couldn’t see it. She did not want those outside to come inside. The walls were thick, the doors were locked, and as long as they didn’t see her, as long as they didn’t hear her, they would not come in through the windows.

  Rather than pressing her weight upon creaking hardwood, she glided above the floor in bare feet—quieter that way—and headed through the dining room toward the kitchen.

  She didn’t make it.

  He stood there in the doorway.

  Roy. Big and stone faced, wearing work jeans and an olive drab jacket matted with mud and dried blood. He had a live, squealing rat in his left hand and a carving knife in his right. She knew that knife. It was the longest and most dangerous blade slotted into the block of wood on the counter.

  He stood there, implacable and unmoving, no expression on his face, his eyes locked on hers.

  Annie halted her glide.

  She wasn’t afraid of him. No reason to be. She had him right where she wanted him—a trap laid just for him—so she smiled. She could see herself smile too, as if she were disembodied and observing the room through a camera placed over Roy’s shoulder, like she was watching a scene in a movie. Her smile was devilish, almost Satanic, her dark, wet hair hanging in front of her eyes like that of a nightmare apparition.

  Roy would not jam that squirming rat in her mouth. He would not run the blade through her throat. He was in her house now. She had powers there that he still did not understand, and she had friends outside who would help her.

  “Finally we get to play,” Roy said and smiled.

  She tilted her head to the side.

  He did not know about her shadow self, that she could tap its dark, inner power whenever she wanted. Unlike Parker, she did not fear it. It had always been there, had always been real. The virus merely taught her how to unlock it.

  Now was the time to unlock it.

  Darkness filled Annie’s mind and body like black ink poured into water. She felt energized, powerful, and transcendent. Her mind went to dangerous places. Not dangerous for her. Dangerous for Roy. She smiled again and imagined her
teeth ripping flesh, her hands mauling internal organs, muscle and tissue and entrails engorging her stomach, and nothing but sticky, red bones left on the floor.

  She lost her ability to articulate words, but no matter. She could still communicate all that she had to.

  She dropped out of gliding position, lowered her feet to the floorboards, and felt the full weight of her body pressing down on the wood. She opened her mouth, not to speak but to scream.

  To summon an army.

  She belted it out, high in pitch, urgent and furious, like the shock wave from a bomb detonation, alerting the others on the porch and the lawn who waited for just the right stimulus.

  Prey inside the house.

  A roar engulfed the house like a stadium cheer. The windows blew in as if they’d been hit by a tornado as the others surged inside, a multi-bodied organism with Annie Starling as its queen, as its brain.

  Roy twitched and backed into the kitchen, clenching his hands around the knife in his right and the rat in his left.

  Annie raised herself up on the balls of her feet and surged forward with all her power, a hungry hungry predator with its teeth bared, fury in her heart and her throat.

  Roy jammed the knife into her abdomen as she sank her teeth into his shoulder.

  They toppled onto the floor, Roy on his back and Annie impaled on the blade, squirming on top of him like a fly stuck to a wall as hundreds of millions of viruses swarmed into his bloodstream.

  You’re one of us now, you sonofabitch.

  She woke up screaming in the back of the truck.

  14

  They drove in silence the rest of the day, which suited Hughes fine. He did not want to talk, especially not to Annie. They’d just fight, about Roy, about Atlanta, about everything. He worried about her despondency, about losing her faith in a mission that had been her idea in the first place, about her waking up screaming from a goddamn nap in the middle of the day and refusing even to speak about it, and about her . . . bloodthirstiness toward Roy. Hughes wondered if the same demons that had tortured Parker after he recovered from the virus were having their way with Annie now too, if on some level the postinfected could never fully be cured. That would explain why she was losing her faith in Atlanta.