Zombie Ocean (Book 2): The Lost

by Michael John Grist

  Jake scooped one out of a liquid nitrogen flask with a pair of tongs, sliding it into the dark electron hub. Salman focused in on the telomere strands and Lara gasped again.

  "It's a loop," she whispered. "It should be a fuse."

  "A loop," Jake echoed. "What does that even mean?"

  Anna snorted. "That we'll live forever? That we hardly need to eat or drink either, but we know that already don't we? Our cells regenerate less than ever before, we get by on less sleep and we do more with our days. The only way that can work is if the T4 is bringing efficiency and immunity in ways unheard of."

  "It's true we never get sick now," said Jake. "Not even colds. Could the T4 be doing that?"

  "The T4 is us," Anna said flatly. "Whatever or whoever did this to us, it's changed us forever. This is what we are now."

  The crisp image on the screen faded as the electrons burned through the ice. The T4 twitched as it defrosted and burned away.

  Anna gagged.

  This thing was in them all, living and dead alike. It had taken them over completely, fundamentally changing their biology. It was in her now and in whatever dry husk remained of her father, driving him on.

  "Maybe I can decode it," Jake said hurriedly. "Or Salman, together. We can unspool the center, look at the DNA strings and understand it. There's so much to learn. Maybe it can be reversed."

  Anna shook her head. It was too much. It was the opposite of all her hopes, that maybe something of her father might still remain, that his memories and his kind self and his cozy voice could still linger on beneath the gray, that she might one day bring him back if she could just find the right key to turn.

  That belief was gone now. Whatever her father had been died a long time ago, consumed from the inside. She couldn't free him from the T4 without tearing his cells apart.

  She gagged again.

  "Anna," said Lara. Her face was pale and her eyes were watery. She was in shock too.

  "It's OK," Anna said. "I'm OK."

  She turned and walked away, unable to shake the memories that kept replaying in her head. They were from when she was a little girl, during the dark and lonely nights on her long trek across the country with her father. From her sling she'd gazed into his glowing white eyes and found some small measure of comfort.

  It had never been her father, though. It had always been this alien virus looking back.

  "Anna wait," Lara called.

  Anna ignored her, tearing off the white hat and pushing through the airlock alone.

  She walked through the campus at random, barely noticing where she went. There was sand here too, blown by ten years of wind and nestling amongst overgrown verges of parched yellow grass. Bright purple wisteria climbed over everything, in places strangling ground-lights aimed up at the impressive buildings, in others coating the road like the red weed from War of the Worlds. The air stank of summer dust and pollen.

  She passed by the library. Here she and Jake had spent hours studying up on viruses and bacteria and whatever might have caused the ocean. They'd rigged up a handle and pulley to open the electronic doors smoothly.

  She threw an ornamental rock through the glass. It smashed but it wasn't satisfying.

  At the edge of the campus she climbed over the low wall through a screen of fig bushes, out onto a leafy road facing three-story tall townhouses. She'd put rocks through all these windows if she had the energy, but she didn't. A gun would do it.

  She smashed into a black SUV sitting on deflated tires under the shade of a kumquat. A decade of dropped and rotten fruit covered the roof, hood and windshield, baked to a tough crust. She smashed open the driver-side window and sat on the glass strewn seat in the hot dark and began to cry.

  It came in swollen waves. It came and came. In the midst of it she shimmied a screwdriver loose from her yacht-belt. A piece of glass cut into her thigh and she swept the pieces away with her bare hand. Blood smeared against the sun-cracked leather seat.

  With the screwdriver she levered the steering wheel mount casing off and pried out the wires. With snub-nose pliers she cut two wires and sparked them together. It was a futile gesture as the battery was long dead and any fuel would have long since evaporated, but somehow it made her feel better.

  The tears kept coming. She flipped the seat back and lay still looking up at the discolored roof. With her eyes closed she thought back to a similar moment so long ago, trapped by the ocean in a taxi in the city of her birth, when she first went after her father.

  They'd all been infected then. They hadn't liked her or loved her, they'd just been agents of this tripod-virus, nestled deep in their every cell, driven by some unknowable need to be near her.

  It made her want to puke, so she got out of the car and puked. When it was done she walked. She threw stones at windows when she found them. A plan began to form in her mind. She walked toward the sea, toward the theater, toward her 'home'.

  It was time.

  Her room was hot and still, the air-conditioner on furlough while Masako's team of power plant engineers made upgrades to the generator block transformers. She hadn't made a single change in this place since moving in. The pink wallpaper still adorned the walls, though it was peeling and yellowed with years of unchecked humidity. The dresser still had stickers of boy bands and Johnny Depp.

  From the bottom drawer she pulled her father's phone. She kept it charged, replenishing the battery once a week, and stored it in a plastic wallet in a cool dry place the rest of the time.

  She tipped it out now and slipped it in her pocket. Her leg was still bleeding a little. That was OK. It had run all down her thigh and calf and into her sandals, gumming up around her heel.

  "Anna," came the soft voice of Cerulean at the door.

  "Robert," she answered, "come in."

  He pushed the door open and sat there in the entrance. He was really a good man. He deserved better than this. It was strange to think the T4 was in him too.

  "I know you're upset," he said. "They're looking for you all over. Let's talk."

  "Talk about what?"

  "The microscope. I'm no expert but I know what it means."

  She looked at him. His nice warm face made her happy and angry at the same time. She loved him, and wished she could make him understand without all the pain it would cause. "I rode with a virus for two months, Cerulean. I pressed up to its chest like it was my Daddy. You tell me what that means."

  "You didn't know it was only a virus," he said calmly. "You still don't."

  She shook her head. "I knew. I just didn't want it to be real. For ten years I've pretended, making-believe like he always taught me, but make-believe won't save us from the truth."

  "What truth?"

  She strode up to his wheelchair and looked down into his sweet dark face. This was the age her father must have been when he left. There were already bits of gray in Cerulean's beard. She couldn't even remember what her father looked like, there wasn't a single photo of him in the phone.

  "That this little community is a fantasy, Robert. It's Amo's fantasy and we all joined in happily, but there's just not enough of us to keep it going. You know it too. Thirty-six is not enough for healthy genetic diversity. We'll get one or two more generations then we'll be gone, or so interbred we may as well be. That's the truth."

  He looked up at her. His eyes were so beautiful and strong. "I don't believe that. More people come in all the time. We're still building cairns."

  She touched his cheek. "Cairns that nobody sees. There's nobody left out there, Cerulean. Ravi came four years ago and there's been nobody since. We're alone, and if we can't bring the ocean back to life we're finished. It's over, turn out the lights."

  He shook his head. "Maybe something will change. They're still going through samples in the lab, studying the connections. You don't know-"

  She shook her head. "I do know. I've always known, and now I've had enough of Amo's fantasy. Julio was right in that at least. The rules are different now."
/>   "Julio? He was insane."

  She shrugged. "Maybe I am too. We're all mad here, you know?" The words from Wonderland slipped out easily. "My father is a virus and I was his Alice, but I'm tired of the fairytale. I want to live in the real world, and none of this is real, Robert, not even you and me. I'm sorry, but I can't be a part of it anymore."

  She reached up and tugged the silver necklace from around her neck. The chain snapped with a sharp little pop. He'd given it to her ten years ago as a symbol of their mutual adoption. He wore one too.

  She dropped it in his lap. "Keep it. I'm sorry I can't be a better daughter. I do love you though, and I appreciate everything you've done for me."

  Tears came to Cerulean's eyes. He looked down at the necklace. "Where are you going?"

  "You know," she said. Now she was crying again too. "Where I've always belonged, where my father's waiting for me. It's been a true pleasure."

  "It was my pleasure," Cerulean said, and scooped up the silver necklace. It twinkled like a fragile telomere strand against his dark hands. "It may be a fantasy, but I'm proud of it still."

  "We all have to grow up Robert, sooner or later."

  She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. He took her hand and squeezed it for a second, then let go. She picked her bag up off the bed, and slid past his wheelchair into the hot night without looking back.

  13. RAVI & AMO

  Ravi found her on the beach, wandering north with a bottle of whiskey dangling from her hand. She didn't like the taste, but three good glugs down and the wooziness helped to take off the edge.

  Leaving everything behind.

  He came along on a dirt-bike, calling out her name over the drone of the engine. The bike's single headlamp made him look like a charging cyclops zombie.

  She didn't respond at first, just kept on walking until he saw her. He pulled up the bike and killed the engine with the lamp still on.

  "Anna," he called.

  She smiled and slurred her speech. "Ravi. Come over here."

  He ran over and stopped before her, fidgeting awkwardly. His face was hot and flushed. "Cerulean told me you're leaving. Is it true?"

  She nodded. "I'm leaving. Here." She held out her hand. "Walk with me."

  "You're really going to cross the Pacific?"

  She laughed. It sounded crazy spoken aloud. "I suppose so. Take my hand."

  He looked down at her hand doubtfully. "You're drunk."

  "You can be drunk too. Come on."

  "I don't want you to go."

  "Then come with me."

  He shook his head. "I don't want that either. I don't like the water, Anna. I just want you to stay."

  "And the oysters didn't want to be eaten by the Walrus and the Carpenter," she slurred. "It happened all the same. I'm going, Ravi. I told you that years ago; now it's happening. Maybe I'll even miss you. You'll miss me too, that's good. Now can you help me drink this whiskey? I don't think I can manage it alone."

  He stared at her wide-eyed. "You'll miss me?"

  "Maybe," she allowed.

  "So miss this," he said, and leaned in and kissed her. It was warm and wet and messy. She kissed him back. It wasn't her first kiss, not their first kiss, but it was the first that might mean something, and it warmed her more than the whiskey.

  She pulled away and they both gasped. Ravi looked surprised by what he'd done. Anna wiped her lips and held out the whiskey.

  "Here," she pressed the warm bottle into his hand. "Start with a small sip or it'll choke you up."

  "I know how to drink whiskey," he said raspily. He took it, swigged it, then coughed. She refrained from laughing.

  "Walk with me," she said, "until the dawn."

  "You can't really be going. It's too far. You might die. You don't know who's out there."

  "I'm going." She took his hand. "So I'll find out. You can be my escort."

  She walked on and he followed, leaving the bike behind with the lamp still blazing like a lighthouse beam.

  Up Hermosa Beach they went, dancing at times in and out of the tide. The moon came out from behind the clouds and lit the long stretch of beach in many shades of pale gray.

  "It's like a dream," Anna whispered. "I remember nights like this with my father, riding across the country."

  Ravi sipped the bottle. "I used to lie on the roof of our house and look up at the moon," Ravi said. He was wavering side to side. "I dreamed of other people."

  "You were alone for a long time."

  He shrugged. "It wasn't so bad. I taught myself to drive. I got the TV to work. I figured out DVDs."

  Anna laughed. "I bet you ate a lot of candy."

  He laughed too. "Yeah." He hiccupped. "Yeah I did, raided all the shops in town. Peanut butter cups were one of my favorites. Those chocolate eggs with toys inside; collecting them really kept me going. You don't see them these days."

  "No you don't."

  She drank. They ambled on arm in arm.

  "I don't think I'll die when you're gone," Ravi said after a time, as they crossed a line of rotten wooden stumps demarking Hermosa from Manhattan beach. "I'll help out with the cairns, try and find new people, the same kind of thing I've always done. And I'll wait for you."

  "I don't know if I'm even coming back."

  "Then maybe I'll come after you. You don't own the ocean, or the idea of crossing it. I'll learn yachts better and I'll stop being afraid of water and I'll ride across."

  She laughed. "You can't even swim. And it's three thousand miles. It's taken me years to get ready. In any event, I'm not worth all that effort."

  He hiccupped. "You're beautiful, you know that?"

  "So are you," she said.

  He kissed her again. It was better this time. She held her arm around him and they walked on.

  At the harbor they jumped laughing along the bows of yachts bobbing low in the water. Each leap carried them sailing over a narrow slice of water trapped between two hulls. The risk of falling into the gap them made it terrifying and exciting. It reminded her of days running through the sandy ruins with him, breaking things to capture just a small glimpse of that excitement.

  Even then she'd known. She'd been waiting for this moment, and she'd delayed for as long as was possible.

  They dropped laughing onto the deck of a luxury schooner berthed next to her catamaran, in basin C of the Marina Del Rey. In the darkness the hull bobbed like a lullaby under their weight.

  "I'll stow away here somewhere," Ravi mumbled, looking around. "In one of the water drums. Under the hull."

  "We'll run out of water halfway across the world then," Anna slurred. "And you'll wake up terrified and adrift."

  "It'll be fun."

  "It'll be fun," she said, and kissed him, losing herself in his embrace. It was good, and unexpected. This was Ravi who she'd practiced kissing on when Amo banned them from vandalism, Ravi who used all the dumb lines he learned from pick-up books to get her to kiss him again, Ravi who skipped after her along the beach and cleaned up her mess when the yacht got damaged, Ravi who followed wherever she went.

  But this was a different Ravi too, not a boy anymore. His shoulders were as hard as the deck, honed by months of digging and clearing to build fresh homes around the theater, and she ran her hands over them. His lips were soft and the buzz of new growth stubble on his chin tickled her. She ran her hands down his back then gripped hold of his T-shirt and pulled it up over his head.

  They kissed greedily. She ran her fingers over his broad flat chest. He hadn't eaten candy for years and it showed. He fumbled with her shirt and she helped him pull it off. He dropped his head and kissed her breasts. She held him close and led him down into the cabin, where they moved together in the hot dark.

  Afterward she lay beside him as he slept, feeling the buzz of two different sensations rush through her fuzzy body. There was the feeling of being with Ravi, and still the need to leave. Even if she stayed, it would be no kind of life, always knowing their children would have only on
e or two choices of partner, and their grandchildren even fewer. They might yet live to see their great-grandchildren suffer disfiguring mutations from inbreeding.

  Or she could take him with her. If she asked again then perhaps he'd come, but what could she offer him out there, alone on the water? The world was empty and dead, and at the end of the voyage would be the wandering corpse of her father. What was she even going to do when she found him?

  Ravi needed Amo's fantasy more than she did, and she couldn't bear to watch that hope be lost.

  She had to go alone.

  Through a porthole she watched the beach beyond the marina's wall, where the ocean lapped with the sparkle of moonlit surf. It was beautiful and sad. She traced lines down Ravi's chest. She knew he loved her. Perhaps she could love him too, if only that were enough. She tugged lightly on one of the dark curls hanging over his eyes. He shifted and mumbled in his sleep.

  But this was no place for her. She would always be looking out to the ocean, waiting and wondering. The T4 was in her. It was in Ravi and them all, and she had to know why.

  She fumbled for her shorts, strewn on the floor, and pulled them closer, then rifled through the pockets. Her father's phone was still in there, wrapped in its plastic bag. It didn't hold a charge well but that was OK, there was a charger in the catamaran. She brought the phone to life and scrolled through the icons to the one for the Hatter's chip.

  She clicked it, and a gray field emerged with a single blue dot at the bottom. The yellow dot for her father had faded over time. Probably the battery for the chip in his belly was worn out, or the satellites carrying his signal had gone down, but she knew he was out there still, driven by the T4 in his core. Whatever he was, whatever he'd become, he was there, and she had a promise to keep.

  She set the phone down and laid her head beside Ravi's for a time, looking out at the steady lapping gray of the water. Always it came, endlessly. It didn't matter if she was dead or alive, if she was here to see it or not, it would still lap on.