Five minutes passed that felt like forever, with the windows all down and roaring with the wind, and the lights getting closer, then at last the RV pulled up and stopped. Jake got out first, then Masako and Julio helped Cynthia out, while Robert got in his chair and came round to the ramp at the back.
Standing in the middle of the broad forecourt, surrounded by lights that twinkled like Christmas, stood Amo and Lara. He was just as she'd imagined, with some of the same crazy twinkle in his eyes her Daddy had had. Lara was beautiful and warm, just like she'd always dreamed her Mommy must have been.
"Welcome," Amo called, and chills went through her. He strode over and he got on one knee before her and he hugged her first. He whispered in her ear, "Welcome home, little sister."
She hugged him as tightly as she could.
Then Lara was next and she hugged her too and Lara said, "Welcome home honey," then Robert came out of the RV and Amo's eyes went wide and he ran over and they hugged crazily and then everyone was hugging and crying and laughing and in the midst of it, for a moment, Anna felt certain that maybe this was enough. The emptiness was gone and she was filled up to the brim just as much as could be.
After all the craziness and excitement and snacking and whooping, all the excited sharing of stories and fast talk of big dreams and misery left behind, Anna fell asleep in the big cinema and dreamed of her Daddy on his island again.
He was huge and sad.
"Lint and cobbles, Anna," he said, "lint and cobbles, I'll see you soon."
He climbed down off his podium and walked again into the sea.
Anna shouted for him to come back but he just kept going. The lightning bolt on his back went into the water, then his shoulders went into the water, his neck, then his head up to his ears, then the top of his head and then he was gone.
She woke up screaming, hot and afraid, not knowing where she was.
"Shut the fuck up," someone called from the darkness.
She panted while the fear drained away. Nobody came to comfort her. They were all sleeping still. Instead she comforted herself, as she'd done a thousand times before, on countless nights since her Daddy left, since her Mommy left, since the coma hit.
"Tell me an impossible thing, Daddy," she whispered to herself.
There were cucumber men and birdwomen. There were deep-digging dogs and snail-people who carried the whole world on their backs. There were caterpillars and card-men and Hatters, and all of them helped calm her, though none of them took away the sick feeling in her belly.
Her Daddy was out there still, out in the cold water and swimming towards his Jabberwock, and there was nothing she could do to help.
The next day was crazy.
The RV group came together with Amo and Lara in an office room inside the theater and talked and talked for hours. They set up a table and laid out papers and computers and sat around like they were managing the whole world.
Mayor of America, Jake had said, when he read her Amo's comic. It seemed to fit. Anna sat through most of the boring meeting looking at her phone, or doodling impossible things on a piece of paper. They talked about a lot of things that were hard for her to follow. Once they argued very loudly, until at one point Julio stormed out, though he came back later and apologized and they started talking again.
After that Robert came over. He winked and took her hand and they rolled out together, leaving the others arguing behind. It seemed strange that she'd only known him for a few days.
Outside it was very hot, with the sun beating like the hurt out of a pure blue sky. The sea was off to their right, like a mirror image of the sky.
"You must be so bored in there, Anna," Robert said. "I'm sorry about it."
She shrugged.
Robert wheeled round and they went down the ramp. It was a good thing the theater had so many ramps, she thought, so Robert could go anywhere they wanted. She snipped up little bits of twigs as they went by a crackly bush, picking them apart in her hands.
"What are they doing in there?" she asked.
"Lots of things," Robert said. He pulled out of the ramp and turned left. The sidewalk here had metal stars stuck into it. That was unexpected. Each of them had a name, plus hand and foot marks in the cement. Anna imagined adding her own name to the list.
"…and who's going to get the fuel," Robert was saying. The heat made her dozy. "And water and food, and where we should stay, and what we're going to do about you."
Her ears pricked up at that. "About me?"
Robert nodded. "That's right. There are no schools now, and there's only eight of us in total. Who's going to teach you? Who's going to act as your parent?"
Anna frowned. "I don't need any teaching. Well, except I want to read. But I don't need another parent. I've been fine on my own for months."
Robert stopped and looked at her. "Were you fine, Anna? Honestly?"
She looked right back at him. She knew what he wanted to say, because she'd been mostly eating red strings, and because of the teeth marks in her head, and because she couldn't even charge her Daddy's phone without their help. They were small things on their own, but they added up to be quite a lot.
"So who's it going to be?" she asked.
"I volunteered. I hope you don't mind."
She considered. Robert as a replacement Daddy. He was a lot younger than her father. "Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why do you want to? We hardly know each other."
He smiled. "That's true. Maybe I don't know why. Why did you help the people walk into the ocean? It just feels like the right thing to do."
There wasn't much she could say to that.
Robert pushed on his wheels and started moving forward again. Anna followed. "It's all things like that," he said. "Mostly though, Amo's trying to get everyone behind his vision. Julio doesn't like it."
"What's Amo's vision?"
"He wants to keep on with the cairns. He wants us to make the Chinese Theater, that's this one, the new capital of the United States. We all go out, we leave cairns in every major city, and we work to bring more people here. He thinks there must be more people who survived the apocalypse."
Anna didn't know that word but she let it slide. "What do you think?"
"I'm all for it. Maybe we can find you some other kids to play with, or some teachers, doctors, engineers, people with real skills."
"Real parents," she said, then regretted it instantly.
He laughed. "If you like, Anna. It's all right. We're all doing this for the first time."
They walked on.
"Julio doesn't like that plan," she repeated. "I don't think I like Julio."
"No? Well, you wouldn't be alone. He thinks we should be more afraid of other people coming, that we shouldn't be advertising where we are. He wants us to stock up on weapons and make this place into a fort."
"Why? What's he afraid of?"
"Bad people. He thinks we've been lucky so far."
Anna thought about this. She didn't feel so lucky; her Daddy was gone, lots of dogs had died, and she'd had a lot of reasons to cry.
They walked and rolled a time longer, then turned around and headed back, mostly in silence. Soon enough they reached the theater, where things were happening. People were moving back and forth; collecting things, counting things, making notes on bits of paper and looking at maps.
There wasn't much for Anna to do.
It went like that for the next two days and nights. Anna found herself passed from person to person throughout; from Robert to Cynthia to Jake back to Robert, while Amo and Lara were always at the center of doing something. Anna and her babysitters played games and took walks and talked while the others got on with work.
They brought a huge white gas tanker and parked it next to the theater with hoses trailing out of it like zombie guts (those were new words she'd learned from Jake). They went scouring all the nearby shops and restaurants for bottles of water, dried food, cans, tanks of gas, pasta and beans, then they stacked it all up in a sma
ller theater which they called the 'larder', where a whole bunch of fridges were humming alongside generators, all of which they'd brought and put there too.
They printed out large maps that filled the whole office wall and debated the best routes to lay cairns along, linking places where survivors were likely to have already gathered. They set up weapons nests atop the Theater at Julio's request, though it seemed nobody wanted to man them but him. They talked about watch rotas and drew up complicated, color-coded schedules. They scouted nearby buildings and assigned rooms.
She went with Robert to see hers. It was on the ground floor of a pink block with a lovely view out to the sea.
"I'm just next door," Robert said. He looked exhausted, pale and slack-eyed. "We'll connect existing electric lines to some more generators tomorrow, I expect. For now, settle in. There's a battery-powered lamp on the side-table."
He left her alone. Anna looked around the room.
It had obviously been some other little girl's. It was bland and mostly empty, cleared out by Cerulean or the others already, but there were still telltale hints of another life: a photo of a mother and daughter slipped down a crack in the desk, a set of tiny little puppet piggies in the under-bed drawer, a diary with a lock hidden behind the curtain, filled with little girl secrets.
Anna stood at the window looking out.
It wasn't her room, not really. The other girl was a ghost in the air around her. Anna once had a home of her own, but it was gone now. She'd had a father but he was gone too, and with every second that passed he moved further away.
10. FAMILY
She had to do something.
She left the room and went looking for Amo. Outside on the street of stars, it felt good to be walking by herself. For days she'd been with Robert or the others constantly, watching and wasting time, waiting for something to happen. It was pretty clear now that this was the shape of things to come.
It was better to walk on her own.
The Chinese theater was funny and massive from the outside, with a crazy tiled roof and fronted with all kinds of bright flags and pennants. Many of them said:
Ragnarok 3
This was a movie, she knew. Amo had crossed America to watch it. It had some men and women with big muscles underneath the words, dressed in fancy costumes. Once shapes and colors like these would have kept her in bed for a week; now they were just more strange things on her journey.
She crossed the open forecourt and went in. The spacious lobby was empty but for bits of lost popcorn lying on the floor, so she delved deeper into the darkness, ducking her head into different rooms and cinemas.
They were huge and very dark, so she did little more than peek in. This one smelled like popcorn. This one smelled like old feet, probably it was where Jake was sleeping. She laughed a little at her own joke. In the next she found Julio.
He was doing something with bits of metal on a desk, lit by a lamp nearby. A generator whirred noisily by his side.
"Hello, have you seen Amo?" she asked him.
He looked up and smiled.
"Well, hello to you too little lady. I thought they put you in your room."
"They don't need to put me anywhere. I'm looking for Amo."
He chuckled and put his bits of metal down. "Amo, right. Why don't you tell me whatever it is, and I'll pass the message on to Amo?"
She frowned.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"This?" he picked up one of the pieces of metal. It looked like a kind of wide black straw. "It's the barrel for a P-90 express. Come here and I'll let you put your finger in the tube, it's swirled so the bullet spins. It feels strange."
She looked at the tube. Maybe it would feel good, but she'd already delayed enough.
"I'm looking for Amo."
"Amo's not here. Come on, come over here. We all have to know about these weapons, it's for our own good. Even you."
"Amo said no weapons. Robert told me."
Julio laughed. "What would Robert know? He's a swimmer, honey. But look, I know he's acting as your Daddy now, so don't get upset."
"I'm not upset. And I don't know what you mean. He drove the RV. He found you. He knows a lot."
Julio raised his hands. "Right, that's right, but he's still living in the old world, isn't he? You can admit that, it's OK. You've been out on the road alone, properly alone, so you know what it's like. We do what we have to to survive."
"Robert was on the road too. We all were."
He shook his head. "Not like you and me. Take an example." He stood up and came around the desk, so now the light was behind him and his face fell into shadow. "You killed those puppies, didn't you?" he shrugged, to show it was no big thing. "I understand that. You tell us they died, but everyone knows it's easy to keep puppies alive, so I think you did it on purpose. You wanted them dead and it made you feel good to choke the life out of them. You're a good liar but I can spot even the best liars. Am I right?"
Anna struggled to keep up with what he was saying. "You think I killed the puppies? Of course not. I didn't kill them."
Julio laughed. "See, right there, I told you. You do what you have to to survive; for me it's these guns, for you it's the lies. You're a survivor; I don't begrudge that. I respect it. We'd make a good team, you know? So imagine this. If I told you the only way to survive was to come over here and put your finger in this tube, would you do it?"
She stared at him. "No."
He laughed and smacked the desk so hard it rung out. "Liar! There you go again, surviving. If it meant your survival, I know you would. These others, they'd let pride get in the way, they'd get upset, but you'd just get it done. It's because you get it and they don't, because what kind of normal person rides with a dead person for months on end? You did it because you had to. Do you follow?"
She shook her head. She didn't follow at all.
"I'll break it down. Here we've got these people who think that just because we're in a famous old theater with lights and popcorn and names on the street outside, we're still in the same old world. We're not. This is a whole new place with all-new rules, and I know you know that. You saw it in your Daddy's dead eyes while he walked off into the water. This whole world is screwed, and the rules have changed."
She watched him. He sounded crazy, talking fast with his eyes wide open. It was scary. "I just want to see Amo."
"Amo's not here now. Robert's not here. None of them are, it's just you and me. Rule number one," he pointed a thick finger at her, "you do what you have to to survive. Number two, you do what you want. That's it."
She turned to leave.
"Where are you going, Anna? Aren't we having a nice conversation?"
She turned back around. "I'm looking for Amo. That's the only reason I came in here."
He laughed again. She didn't like the laugh. He was the one who'd told her to shut up on the first night, she was sure. Now she just wanted to go.
"No reason to be rude. You're not a rude little girl are you?"
"I'm not rude at all," she said, trying to sound adult, though now her voice sounded weak and babyish in her mouth. "I speak just as well as Alice and she isn't rude at all!"
He raised an eyebrow. "Alice in Wonderland again? You need to burn that book, kid. Forget your father too. Get busy surviving, because the way things look now, with your precious Amo in charge," he swirled his hands in the air, "it's not going to last forever. So next time I tell you to come over here and do something for me, you had better hop to it for your own good."
"I will not," she said, and walked sharply out.
"Say hi to the puppies for me," he called, and his laughter chased her out.
In the dark hall outside Anna stood and trembled.
She hadn't felt like this in all the time she'd been traveling. She didn't like it. She didn't like Julio or any of the things he'd said. Amo was good, and Robert was good, and so was her father. Julio was the bad one. Things like this never happened to Alice. People were friendly
, well except for the Queen of Hearts, and…
She made all her muscles go tense so they'd stop trembling. She focused her head like she'd always done when the hurt was rising above her. She'd learned then that the only way forward was to push back or it would crush her, and how was the hurt any different from this feeling, really?
Julio had a face and a voice, but it came to the same thing. The only way with the hurt was to fight. The only way with the ocean was to face them. Even Alice did it too; she went to the Queen of Hearts herself. She challenged her even though she was afraid, even though the Queen of Hearts said she would cut off Alice's head. Maybe it was the same thing. Maybe it was because of that fear that Alice became strong, and was able to go home and see her Daddy again.
She walked back into the theater. Julio looked up.
"You want to talk some more?" he asked. "Maybe you like me now, too."
"You're trying to make me afraid," Anna said.
He shrugged. "You think so? Maybe I'm trying to toughen you up."
"I am tough!" she snapped. Her voice sounded stronger and louder now. "You think I killed the puppies? So think that. You told me to shut up the first night! You shut up. You laugh at me, but I know a man who would eat you to bits, and I wouldn't care a bit."
He laughed again. "You mean your Daddy? He's a zombie, kid, get over it."
"He's still better than you. If he saw this he'd eat you up. I saw him eat a person (here she lied a little), and I know he'd like to eat you too. The others will as well, because they like me! They travel with me and they talk to me. If I want you gone they'll do it for me." She pointed her finger at him. "You remember that."
"They're dumb robots," Julio said. "They just walk. They don't listen."
Now Anna laughed. This was resisting the hurt in whole new ways. It actually made her feel stronger, to string impossible things together like this.
"Did you read Amo's comic? They ate someone to save him. They like Amo. They like me. They'll eat you if I ask them to."
Julio advanced. His eyes were very bright. He came four steps closer, Anna counted each one, then stopped just two rows of seats away. "So call them," he said. "Bring them in and have them eat me right now."
Zombie Ocean (Book 2): The Lost Page 9