The Last City

by Michael J. Totten

  He inhaled and let the pain in. He exhaled and let the pain in. He relaxed and let it consume him.

  Pain was more than a sensation. It was an emotion, and Hughes channeled it into hatred. He wished to destroy Roy now more than ever. Roy was the only reason Hughes was lying in the back of an armored car with his arm turned into mincemeat. Roy was the only reason he’d been attacked in that parking lot in the first place. Roy—and Lucas—were the reasons Kyle was gone.

  If Roy hadn’t saved him, Hughes would be dead. Hardly ideal, but he wouldn’t know he was dead. He wouldn’t be suffering. He wouldn’t know the world had ended. The entire human race would have extinguished itself as far as he knew, and he’d finally join his wife and son in the blackness.

  Parker only needed a couple of minutes to get used to the armored car. It was heavy, sure, but it wasn’t a pig to drive. He scanned each side of the road for a gas station.

  “So, Roy,” he said. “What does the world look like to you now?”

  Roy didn’t answer.

  “You’ve changed since we met you,” Parker said.

  “Have I?” Roy said.

  “The universe is committing suicide,” Annie said. “That’s what you told us.”

  “And yet,” Parker said, “here you are.”

  Roy said nothing.

  “Have you changed your mind about that?” Parker said.

  “I’m human,” Roy said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Annie said.

  “Nobody wants to live forever,” Roy said. “Nobody wants to retire to a little house for a thousand years and another thousand years after that. But everybody wants to survive.”

  “There’s something you need to know,” Parker said. “Annie and I haven’t been the same since we turned and recovered.” He shuddered at what that virus would do to a person like Roy even after it had vacated his system.

  “Annie handled it better than I did,” Parker said. “I was a disaster. For a while there, I wasn’t even sure I recovered.”

  Parker didn’t know why he was telling him this. Roy would never turn and recover. Parker and Annie would make sure of that. Roy wouldn’t live long enough to see a vaccine created.

  “Did you run around biting people?” Roy said.

  “Afterward, you mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I thought about it.” Even without peripheral vision, Parker knew Annie turned in the passenger to look at him. “I thought about it all the time. And not just biting people either. I thought about stabbing people, slitting their throats, and bashing their heads into walls. I didn’t actually do it, but I was terrified that I would.”

  Nobody said anything for a long couple of moments.

  “He’s better now,” Annie said.

  Parker knew he shouldn’t push it, but he went ahead anyway. “I barked myself up a tree and couldn’t come down until after I talked to a therapist. You okay with that?”

  “Am I okay with that?” Roy said. “And where in Sam hell did you find a therapist?”

  “Wyoming,” Parker said. “And I mean, it could happen to you if you turned and recovered. A vaccine might not prevent it.”

  For a long time, Roy didn’t answer. Parker wondered if he’d pushed things too far, if Roy suspected now that the others knew his secret. Parker had some plausible deniability—he was talking about himself, after all—but Roy might still be suspicious. It would explain to him why Annie had attacked him in the parking lot. He didn’t need psychic powers to figure it out.

  “I wouldn’t get my panties in a wad over it,” Roy finally said.

  A gas station appeared on the right. Parker pulled in and came to a stop behind a pickup truck parked near the air hose since the pumps wouldn’t work. He questioned now why he looked for a gas station in the first place since they’d have to siphon fuel from another vehicle anyway.

  “I got it,” Roy said and climbed out the back with two empty gas cans in his hands and the siphon hose between his teeth.

  “Let’s talk about something else,” Annie said, “when he comes back.”

  “Roger that,” Parker said.

  “Hughes,” Annie said. “You okay back there?”

  Hughes grunted. Still alive, at least.

  Parker stepped out of the car to provide security as Roy inserted the hose into the pickup truck’s tank. The sky to the east glowed faintly. The sun would be up soon.

  “We should paint the windows too,” Parker said, “while we’re stopped.”

  Roy, hunched over a gas can while fuel poured out of the hose, craned his head to look at the sky. “Won’t be invisible much longer.”

  Parker felt beyond tired. Sleep was a basic human drive. It could not be resisted forever, not even in times of danger and stress. He wanted to suggest everyone grab a quick nap, but that would be folly. He’d sleep for hours, not minutes. He had no choice but to gut it out for a while. Once the sun came up, his metabolism would switch into waking mode and rev up again.

  He wouldn’t have to wait long. The sun would be up in less than an hour, and the infected would see them.

  The infected would see everything.

  19

  They torched the tallest building in Buckhead. Smashed through the windows, sloshed two cans of gasoline onto the floors and walls in the lobby, and set the whole thing ablaze with a match.

  Parker felt like a terrorist. He’d grown accustomed to breaking into and looting stores, raiding cabinets in private homes, and siphoning fuel out of other people’s gas tanks, but destroying a steel and glass condominium tower—shops, restaurants, penthouses, and all—was something else. Parker was no real estate expert, but he was certain that building must have been worth north of a hundred million dollars. He hoped no one was living in it, but there was no way to be sure. He and his friends were not going to climb all the stairs and kick in every door. Not if they wanted to get out alive.

  They drove away in silence as the flames licked the first floor’s ceiling.

  The early rays of dawn warmed the skies. Parker no longer needed his night vision. And thank goodness for that because he could barely see anything; the entire windshield save for a two-inch wide slit was now covered with porch paint. His rear- and side-view mirrors were useless. He hoped it wouldn’t rain any time soon because the windshield wipers were painted stuck to the glass.

  Parker drove a mile, then two, toward North Druid Hills, marveling at how different the cityscape looked in natural light after he had finally grown accustomed to night-vision green. For the first time Atlanta looked real. It wasn’t a dream. He was really there. He was really doing this.

  And he knew where he was now. The Druid Forest neighborhood was coming up. That’s where they’d stopped earlier and heard the horde from a distance. He pulled the car to the side of the road and stopped.

  “We should wait here,” he said.

  “Agreed,” Annie said.

  The infected were somewhere up ahead, but Parker didn’t know how far up ahead. And he had no idea, really, if the infected would truly be drawn to a burning skyscraper or not.

  Parker still wanted sleep, especially now that he was no longer driving and his mind had nothing to do.

  “Actually,” Annie said. “We should get off this street. Park on one of the side streets. Those things will be coming straight up this road.”

  “They’ll walk right on past us,” Parker said. “We’re just another parked car out of thousands.”

  “You want them surrounding us?” Annie said.

  “Unavoidable,” Parker said. “The damn things will be everywhere, not just on this road.”

  “Lady’s right,” Roy said. “And reckon we ought to cover the windows with blankets or something, even the slits we left, case one of them puts an eyeball up to the glass.”

  “It’ll be dark in here,” Parker said, “even with the sun up. They won’t see shit.”

  “Better hope not,” Roy said.

  Was Roy scared? Par
ker doubted it. He remembered something Annie had told him the first time he had a panic attack, back in the Oregon desert when he still feared that he might snap at any moment and kill somebody. You know who doesn’t feel anxiety, Annie had asked. Psychopaths.

  “You nervous, Roy?” Parker said.

  “No,” Roy said, “but not stupid either. Best park on one of the side streets.”

  “Just do it,” Annie said.

  Parker relented, put the car into gear, drove to the next cross street, and saw that Roy and Annie were right. A sign along the curb read No Outlet. With only one way in and out, the infected wouldn’t come up behind them. They wouldn’t bother wandering down the side street at all.

  So, Parker made a K-turn and parked next to the curb, pointing the front of the vehicle in the direction of Roxboro Road. He almost killed the engine again before remembering, no, he did not have a key. He’d have to sit there with the engine idling just as he had at the home improvement store.

  They sat there for a long time. Parker struggled against his body’s nearly overwhelming drive to sleep and stared intently through the unpainted slit in the windshield for movement ahead.

  “Do you think it would be okay if we napped?” he finally said.

  Nobody said anything. He realized, only after checking, that Annie, Roy, and Hughes were all asleep—assuming Hughes hadn’t finally keeled over.

  Annie didn’t slump against the window to sleep as she usually did. She just tilted her head back. Roy, however, was sprawled across the floor in the cargo area as if he’d been shot.

  Parker couldn’t resist: he scrutinized Roy as if the man was some kind of cross-breed, with one parent a human being, the other an alien from a distant, brutal galaxy. Roy was missing parts that the rest of them had.

  Parker let Roy be and returned his attention to the front of the car and the streetscape before him. Still nothing happening.

  The clouds from the night before cleared. The sun was all the way up now and bathing the urban landscape in warm yellow hues. Parker listened hard but couldn’t hear anything but the idling engine.

  As quietly as he could, he popped open the driver’s side door just a crack and paused before pushing it all the way open. He didn’t see or hear anything moving, so he opened the door all the way, stepped out, and marveled at the feel of the sun on his face. The sunlight was brighter and warmer down south, much warmer than in Seattle this time of year. It felt more like the middle of spring than late winter.

  He could hear the horde in the city center now. The sounds of moaning and yelling and jostling were sharp—and near. To the north, toward Buckhead, a column of black smoke rose in the sky. It looked like a tire factory was on fire.

  “Hey.” Annie’s voice.

  Parker slipped back inside and gently closed the door. Darkness and relative silence returned.

  “They’re coming,” he said. “They’re louder, and closer, and I can see the fire.”

  Hughes groaned from the floor in the back. “Don’t . . .”

  “Hey, man,” Parker said. “You want some water?”

  “Don’t go . . . out there again,” Hughes said.

  Roy was still splayed out on the floor in the exact position he was in before.

  “Roy,” Parker said.

  Roy didn’t move.

  “Roy!”

  Roy bolted upright and turned his head from side to side, unsure where he was or what was happening.

  “Give Hughes some water, will you?” Parker said. “The fire’s lit, the infected are coming, and we’re going to have to be as quiet and still as the dead before long.”

  They came just a few minutes later, surging up the Roxboro Road like a flood after a dam breach, grunting, moaning, sputtering, shifting, spitting and coughing, moving across Parker’s field of vision from right to left barely a hundred feet from the car, oblivious that they were observed through a slit in a painted-on windshield.

  They smelled like a hog farm, even with the windows rolled up. And they were covered in dirt and muck and blood and gore. What on earth were they eating? Each other, perhaps. No—almost certainly. What else was there? There were no human victims left on this side of the wall.

  They’d die then, eventually, given time. Things that can’t continue forever, won’t. The city would be safe soon enough, even beyond the wall. Parker might have a much easier time getting Annie and Hughes inside if he waited a month or even a couple of weeks.

  Hughes was right, though, that they couldn’t wait. Everyone inside the walls might starve first. They weren’t going to eat each other. If things were that bad on the inside, the CDC would be in no condition to help Annie or make a vaccine.

  Besides, Hughes needed doctors now too. He might survive in the wild without medical attention, but Parker wouldn’t bet on it. He sure as shit didn’t want to hole up with Roy for two months.

  The horde moved lemming-like up Roxboro Road for five minutes, then ten, then twenty.

  “Unbelievable,” Annie finally said.

  “We couldn’t possibly drive through that,” Parker said.

  “No, we couldn’t,” Annie said.

  “Hughes,” Parker said. “How you doing back there?”

  “He’s out,” Roy said.

  Parker exchanged glances with Annie.

  “Don’t worry; he’s breathing,” Roy said.

  The horde didn’t stop. It kept moving, boundless as the ocean, drawn to the burning tower in Buckhead. Finally, after more than half an hour, it began thinning. Gaps appeared and there, with the stragglers bringing up the rear spaced farther and farther apart. After a few more minutes, the way ahead cleared.

  Parker and Annie leaned forward to get a better look through the slit on the glass.

  “I think we’re good,” Parker said and reclined again in his seat.

  “Wait!” Annie said.

  Another one, solitary and limping, ambled up Roxboro as if it didn’t care whether or not it actually got anywhere.

  Parker gave it a couple of minutes. The road seemed to be clear, for real this time. “We go?”

  Annie nodded, okay.

  Parker checked the dashboard. Still half a tank of gas left.

  He rolled his shoulders, cranked his head to each side to release the tension in his neck, took a deep breath, put the car into gear, and stepped on the gas. He gingerly approached the intersection, found the road clear in both directions, and made a right toward the wall.

  His nighttime advantage, where he could see everything and the infected couldn’t see anything, was completely inverted now. It was his turn to be blind. He could hardly see anything ahead of him—and nothing at all to the side or the rear—so he didn’t dare drive faster than five miles an hour.

  Stately row houses lined the right side of the road, and a vast green park sprawled to the left. The way forward headed generally southwest, temporarily changing direction once in a while around gentle s-curves. If Parker hadn’t known better, he’d have no idea a horde had been through here. The infected left nothing in their wake.

  A business district appeared after another s-curve with a donut chain on the left and a corporate pharmacy on the left, both boarded up.

  “North Druid Hills,” Annie said.

  “This is it?” Parker said. “Really?” He’d expected hills overlooking downtown, not a suburban-looking strip packed with big-box stores, fast-food joints, lube shops, and drive-thru banks. In the distance, though, a tall church spire rose into the sky above the commercial detritus.

  “Take the next right,” Annie said. “Do it slowly.”

  Parker was already driving as slowly as he reasonably could, not even bothering to shift into second gear. He made a right at the light onto Lavista Road. “Now what?”

  “Take the next left at Houston Mill Road,” Annie said. “Believe it or not, the CDC is only one more mile, and it’s a nearly straight shot.”

  Annie always knew the last mile was going to be the hardest. Even so, whe
n Parker made a left onto Houston Mill Road, just a single mile north of the Centers for Disease Control, she briefly let herself believe they had made it.

  The road was a two-lane, an almost rural corridor through deciduous and evergreen trees and sporadically punctuated by one-story ranch houses. Another s-curve lay ahead; nothing in Atlanta they’d seen so far was laid out on a typical urban grid.

  What she saw after rounding the first s-curve should not have surprised her, but it did. The entire landscape was covered in gore. Not just the asphalt but front lawns were smeared with blood, guts, bones, tattered clothing, and shit. Not an inch of ground appeared clean. She gagged on the stench.

  Parker stopped the car.

  She and Parker leaned forward to get a better view through the unpainted slit on the glass, the gruesome scene before her as if thousands of people had swallowed live hand grenades after pulling the pins.

  “Mother of pearl!” Roy said from the back, sounding like he was going to retch. “The hell’s going on?” He couldn’t see anything at all from the cargo compartment.

  “Blood and guts everywhere,” Annie said. “Like an organic bomb exploded. They were here less than an hour ago.”

  Parker placed a hand on his stomach.

  “You okay?” Annie said. She felt her own gorge rising.

  “I don’t know,” Parker said.

  “You want me to drive?” Roy said from the back.

  “No,” Parker said. “Just give me a minute.” He leaned back in the driver’s seat and wiped his hands on his pants.

  “They eating each other or what?” Roy said.

  “Seems so,” Annie said.

  “What are they drinking?” Roy said.

  “There’s water all over the place,” Annie said. “Rivers, creeks, lakes, even in this part of the city.”

  Parker exhaled slowly, sat up straight, and put his hand on the gear shift.