The Last City

by Michael J. Totten

  The infected behaved differently now. Most of them were busy inspecting the front of the vehicle rather than punching and kicking the windshield and the doors. The sounds some of them made were different now, too, as if they were curious, almost investigatory, rather than angry. They had something to think about other than the fact that prey was inside the car.

  But that didn’t last. It was but a momentary lapse of aggression. The infected, having satisfied their need for new stimuli by checking out the grill and the tires, resumed their assault on the vehicle. They slapped the windows, hurled themselves feet- and shoulders-first at the doors, and screamed like they were boiling alive in pitch.

  Parker tried the gas pedal again and got nowhere. He shifted into reverse again and got nowhere. He cranked the wheel as far as he could to the left and the right and got nowhere.

  Annie picked up the bullhorn, rolled down the window a couple of inches, and shouted her heart out. “Help us! We are immune! We can save everyone!”

  But nobody answered. Nobody seemed to even hear her.

  “You bastards!” she shouted through the bullhorn. And then she rolled up the window.

  They were dead in the water. They couldn’t escape. And no one was coming to rescue them.

  22

  Parker tried his best to be optimistic. Just wait, he told himself. Something was bound to happen eventually. But nothing kept happening, and when the sun went down again, he knew they were going to die there next to the wall. If anyone was going to come to their rescue, it would have happened by now. If anyone had heard Annie’s pleas, they would have come. If anyone on earth would take the trouble to rescue their fellow human beings from a horde of infected, it would be whoever protected the CDC when potential saviors came knocking.

  Nobody came.

  So, Parker leaned back in his seat and turned off the engine. He realized as he did it that it was his way of telling the others that he’d given up without having to say it out loud.

  Nobody else said anything either, but Annie covered her face with her hands.

  Parker felt better now that he had accepted what was going to happen. It would be okay. He didn’t have to struggle anymore, and he and his friends did not have to die violently. They had an entire pharmacy back there in the first-aid box. Each of them could swallow a bottle of pain pills and wash them down with some water. They could ease themselves out of the world and deny those things the grotesque satisfaction of ripping them to pieces alive.

  At least they’d tried. Hell, they even made it. There was nothing left, though—not even here—but the vestigial remains of a dead civilization. Atlanta was the last city. It had held on longer than anywhere else on the continent. Good job, Atlanta. The human spirit, defiant to the end. But it wasn’t enough. No city could stand alone with this kind of storm encircling the world.

  Parker could die peacefully, and he could die at peace. He remembered how he had felt in Lander, Wyoming. How he had yearned to be on his deathbed so that he’d finally be able to relax knowing he’d made it to the end of his life without killing someone.

  He had just one regret: Holly. His wife. Whom he’d punched in the face, so long ago now, in a moment of anger. He only hit her once, and he knew he’d never do it again as long as he lived, but she left him anyway, and he couldn’t blame her. She had done the right thing even though it was the wrong thing. He never would have hit her again, but she couldn’t know that. He had no right to expect her to know that or to believe it. If she were the kind of women who could believe something like that, he wouldn’t have married her in the first place. He was not, after all, the type of man who hit women.

  Except that he was. For a brief and terrible moment, he was. And now he was that man forever. And if he could hit Holly, and if he could try to kick Kyle over a cliff, what on earth could stop him from killing someone after his mind had been poisoned by that unspeakable virus?

  There was only one thing that could stop him: himself. And he’d done it. He made it all the way to the end of his life without committing an atrocity.

  He was finally proud of himself. He only wished he could have come this far while he was still with Holly. He could have died with her in Seattle or brought her to Atlanta to die here with him instead.

  Was she looking down on him from the afterlife? Did she know where he was? What he had done? That he’d traveled with Annie Starling, the most precious person alive, on a journey across the wasteland to save everyone? He hoped so. Because then she could finally be proud of him.

  Hughes could hardly believe he was still alive. He should have turned into one of things and been put out of his misery and rage by his friends. Or he should have bled out. Or he should have died from shock or from a festering wound.

  None of those things had happened because he’d been saved by a psychopath.

  And for what? So he could suffer in agony for another forty-eight hours? To hell with this, he thought. Let’s just get on with it.

  Annie couldn’t sleep. Not because she wasn’t tired, but because she did not want to.

  She was going to die soon, most likely tomorrow, and she wanted to think, to remain conscious, to simply continue existing while she still had some time.

  At least she had a couple of options. She could slit her wrists. Shoot herself in the head. Eat a meal’s worth of prescription pain meds. All of the above were better than starving or dehydrating and certainly better than being eaten. She should count herself among the lucky ones, but she still couldn’t believe it and couldn’t accept it.

  She and her friends had made it all the way to Atlanta. For at least the last thousand miles, she wasn’t convinced that the effort was worth it, but now she could see where she had been wrong. Roy wasn’t worth saving, and neither was Lucas. But Hughes was worth saving. Kyle was worth saving. What was left of the human race may have been reduced to little better than a barbarian horde like the infected attacking the car, but Parker had redeemed himself. He was a more admirable person now than he had been before. If he could become a better man after the end of everything, others could as well.

  She was not going to succeed, but she was glad that she’d tried. It had given her life meaning. Her earlier wish to flee to the far north of Canada was as petulant as it was selfish, and a life lived in perpetual survival mode would have brought her no happiness. She wasn’t sure if God existed or if the universe had a plan for its creatures, but in a way it didn’t matter: people infused their own lives with purpose. They pursued careers, raised children, cherished friends and family, and worked to better their communities. Some dedicated their entire lives to helping others. Annie imagined they must have been the happiest people around.

  Had she not been immune, had she not survived Seattle, and had she not accepted this mission, she wouldn’t have bonded with Kyle, Parker, and Hughes. She loved those people more than she had ever loved anybody.

  She checked her watch. Almost three o’clock in the morning.

  The infected outside relentlessly assaulted the car, but they were just background noise now.

  A light came on in the cargo area behind her. Someone, probably Roy, was awake and rummaging around. Hughes, as far as she could tell, still didn’t have enough energy to even sit up, let alone rifle through boxes.

  She turned around to see what was happening and was astonished by what she saw.

  Roy sat on the floor with Hughes’s head in his lap. He tipped a water bottle into Hughes’s mouth and placed two different pills on his tongue—a painkiller and an antibiotic. Roy was almost gentle about it, as if Hughes were a wounded animal.

  She would give just about anything to replace Roy with Kyle. How much better she’d feel dying with her head in Kyle’s lap while he petted her and told her it would be okay. Instead she had to breathe the same rancid air as the man who had effectively killed him.

  When the sun came up, she was not going quietly, and neither was Roy.

  When dawn finally broke after an interminabl
e night, Annie was ready.

  This time her friends wouldn’t stop her. She would happily execute Roy just as she would have happily executed Joseph Steele on the outskirts of Lander, Wyoming. Perhaps that meant there was something wrong with her, but she didn’t think so. Somebody had to administer justice. Did juries feel remorse after condemning the guilty? Why should they? It was their job. And while nobody had appointed Annie an administrator of justice, nobody else was around to do it instead.

  “Hey, Roy,” she said and turned around in her seat.

  Roy was slouching against a backpack on the floor.

  “What’s up?” he said and raised his eyebrows.

  She pointed her Glock at his face.

  Roy’s left eye twitched ever so slightly. That was his entire initial reaction. Then he raised his hands with a shrug.

  Parker was still asleep and leaning his head against the driver’s side window, oblivious to the hysterical infected wailing and pounding on the glass a mere inch from his cheek. Hughes was on his back, either dead out or dead outright, with his mutilated arm resting on his chest.

  Roy hardly seemed fazed by the gun in his face. Annie supposed he had prepared himself to die today like the others had, so what real difference did it make if Annie shot him? Better than being eaten alive.

  Annie wouldn’t just cold shoot him dead, though. It wouldn’t feel enough like justice. Roy had to know why.

  “I’m sorry again, ma’am,” Roy said.

  Annie forced herself not to scoff. “Tell me what you’re sorry for,” she said. “Tell me exactly.”

  “I was reckless.”

  “And?”

  “Kyle and Lucas are dead.”

  “And?”

  This time Roy did react. He narrowed his eyes and pushed his head forward. “You angry about Hughes?”

  “This isn’t about Hughes.”

  Bewilderment on his face now.

  “Tell me the rest,” she said.

  Parker stirred in the driver’s seat. Hughes opened his eyes and strained to sit up. He flinched when he saw what Annie was doing, then scootched himself out of the way with a resigned look on his face. He and Parker had to know this was coming if they’d bothered to consider it for even a second.

  Roy seemed to search his mind for what Annie wanted to hear. After a couple of moments, his face changed. She wasn’t sure what she saw there, but it looked something like fear. He must be thinking that she couldn’t possibly know. She wasn’t a mind reader. How could she know?

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s hear it.”

  Roy’s face went ashen. Annie wasn’t a mind reader, but she was a pretty good face reader. Roy realized that she knew. He just couldn’t figure out how.

  “Take it easy, Annie,” Parker said. She ignored him and did not even look at him. He might try to talk her down, but he wouldn’t stop her. That would be dangerous. Roy could reach for his own weapon if Parker disarmed her, and God only knew what he would do with it.

  Roy looked around the floor of the cargo area as if he might find something useful. His sword wasn’t quite within reach, and every gun but hers was in a box all the way in the back. He licked his lips and swallowed.

  Annie wasn’t sure what to make of this. Psychopaths supposedly did not feel any fear or anxiety, but perhaps they just felt less of it than everyone else.

  “You think a lot of yourself,” Roy said. “Don’t you.”

  “Tell me why I’m pointing a gun at you,” she said.

  “You think you’re so special. Little Princess Annie, off to save the world.”

  “You believed it yourself, man,” Parker said. “Or you wouldn’t be here. None of us would be here.”

  “I was right all along,” Roy said, shaking his head and chuckling darkly to himself.

  “About what?” Annie said.

  “About the universe killing itself,” Roy said. “You’re going to eat that gun.”

  “Beats eating a rat.”

  Roy snapped his head back. He looked around the cargo area one more time, then trained his eyes on her again. She could practically see him scrolling through his memory to figure out how on earth she possibly could have said this. There was only one answer, but it took him a couple of moments to find it. “You hacked Lucas’s cell phone.”

  The entire car rocked hard to the right as one of the infected hurled itself against the outside.

  “Didn’t need to hack it,” Hughes said. “I just found it and turned it on.”

  Roy pursed his lips and nodded. “So you all know.”

  “We know,” Parker said.

  “Since when?” Roy said.

  “Since Arkansas,” Annie said. “Since the night Kyle died.”

  Roy didn’t seem to know what to say. Not that it would make any difference. Nothing he said could change what happened next.

  “Tell me something,” Annie said. “Because I’m honestly curious.”

  Roy raised his eyebrows.

  The car heaved to the right again as if it were a boat jostled by waves.

  “What do you get out of it?” she said.

  Roy shook his head and snorted. “You wouldn’t understand.,”

  “You’d be surprised,” Annie said, “how much I’d understand.”

  Roy seemed to have forgotten the most salient fact about Annie: she had spent three full days roaming the countryside as a hungry hungry predator and killing anything living as though it was her job. Compared to what she had once been, Roy was a pacifist Quaker.

  “I was one of those things,” she said.

  The tension in Roy’s shoulders seemed to relax. He was more at ease now, as if he and Annie were just two fucked up people about to die at the end of the world who might as well share a few war stories first. “What was that like?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Annie said.

  Roy laughed. It was a genuine laugh, too, from deep in the belly. Annie could not help but smile. Roy seemed supremely unbothered now by the fact that Annie held a gun to his face and would certainly shoot him. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

  Annie nodded. “You first.”

  She sensed a new disturbance outside, some strange new vibration, but she wasn’t sure what it was.

  “Something’s happening out there,” Parker said.

  Nobody said anything. Everybody just listened. Something, somewhere, was pulsing.

  “That’s a helicopter!” Parker said. “Somebody’s coming!”

  Roy dropped his hands to his lap. Annie inched the gun forward. “Hands up!”

  He didn’t comply. “Or what?”

  “Or I’ll shoot you.”

  “You’re going to shoot me anyway.”

  “You want to die now or later?”

  Roy sighed and put his hands up. Then he cocked his head to the side as if he might be able to hear better that way. He looked agitated now, no longer taking his imminent demise in anything remotely like stride.

  In her peripheral vision, Annie saw Parker peer through the slit on the window. “See anything?” She dared not take her eyes off Roy.

  “Nothing,” Parker said. “Wait. There it is. Definitely a helicopter! It’s coming this way and carrying a shipping container.”

  A shipping container? “Like for a boat?” Annie said.

  “Or a railroad car,” Parker said. “I can’t tell. But it’s coming right toward us.”

  “Dropping supplies for us,” Roy said. “Thoughtful.”

  The human subconscious was a peculiar thing. It was faster and smarter in some ways than the conscious mind. Touch a hot stove, and you’ll move your hand away before you even feel any pain. Get a sudden bad feeling about something, pay attention: your subconscious has detected danger even if you aren’t sure yet what it is. Yet our subconscious minds often betrayed us when one instinct overrode another. That’s what happened to Annie.

  She knew she had to keep her eyes locked on Roy, but she couldn’t resist the instincti
ve response to possible rescue: she turned around in her seat, just for the briefest of moments, to steal a quick glance through the unpainted slit on the windshield, hoping to glimpse for herself what was happening outside the car.

  She saw exactly what Parker had described: a military-style helicopter hovering low over the horde between the armored car and the wall, a rust-colored shipping container hanging below from some kind of cable. Then she sensed something behind her. Movement in the back of the car. She turned around and in a hot flash of panic saw Roy holding a hunting knife—black handle, backward hook near the blade tip—to Hughes’s throat.

  Annie didn’t know where the knife came from. From Roy’s jacket pocket, perhaps, or from the floor behind him. She had never even seen it before. But there it was, jammed against Hughes’s trachea as he lay on the floor. Roy slowly scooted himself over so that he was behind Hughes and had better leverage.

  Annie trained her weapon on him. She could shoot him, no problem. She might even kill him before he could stab Hughes in the neck. She wasn’t sure she’d pull it off, but she had other options.

  “Hurt him,” she said, “and I’ll shoot your balls off.”

  Roy didn’t react the way she’d wished he would react. Rather than move the knife away from her friend, Roy lifted Hughes’s head and rested it in his lap. He looked more comfortable that way, and now his groin was protected. He was settling in for a long standoff.

  Outside the car, the helicopter descended. The roar was incredible, drowning out even the screams of the infected, as the car shuddered in the rotary’s downdraft.

  “Don’t do it, man!” Parker shouted to Roy.

  “Don’t worry about him!” Annie said. No matter what happened out there, Annie would not turn away from Roy again as long as he continued to breathe. Parker could tell her what was happening. “What’s going on out there?”

  “It’s dropping the shipping container!” Parker said. “Dropping it right onto the heads of the infected.”

  Annie heard no more screams from outside, but she faintly heard the sounds of hands slapping on metal as the helicopter receded. The infected were attacking the container now instead of the car. The hell was going on out there? Were soldiers going to spring out of it with guns blazing?