The Rot's War

by Michael John Grist

  "She came back here afterward," I say, shy now. "I didn't expect that, but…" I trail off. "But she's gone now. The note she left Cerulean, it's mad."

  "Call me Robert," he says. "That's my name."

  More tears pour down my cheeks. I try to gulp them back. "I know. OK, Robert."

  "Are you crying? Come on old buddy. Pull yourself together. It's not the end of the world. Just the end of most of it. You said she's gone?"

  I laugh. I rub my eyes. "I don't know. I think so, yes, she's gone. She left a note, it said 'Good luck with the zombies'. She was talking about the comic, but Christ, look at this shit Cerulean. I mean Robert. Where the hell is she now?"

  "Probably running halfway down Manhattan, if she's not already infected. Calm your ass down, Amo. What are you going to do for her now? She'll either get safe or she won't, on her own. You're lucky you're alive. You know how many people out there who're immune? Do you have any idea?"

  "No idea. I didn't see any. Maybe her?"

  "Maybe her. On top of that there's me and there's you. I've not seen any others, Amo, not any at all. Every live video feed I saw got corrupted in seconds, because the people filming it were infected. It's the most virulent thing ever. It's like that cat in the box, the second you open the box to see if it's alive or not, it drags you in so you're inside the box too. There's no time to report out."

  I laugh through my tears. "Schrodinger's cat. I don't think that's how it works."

  "Whatever. Listen Amo, it can't be a coincidence that it's me and you, and maybe her. Did she have the same condition as us, did she have a coma then recover like us?"

  I wince as I try to recall. "She said she burned out. I don't think she was twingeing though. I don't think so."

  "Well maybe you'll find out. Perhaps proximity to you conferred immunity. I'm pretty sure we're immune, Amo, because whatever is hitting them now hit us a year ago. Do you follow? Some lesser strain hit us, but it acted like a vaccine, so now we're safe. We went blank, we died multiple times, but they brought us back. Maybe if we hadn't been brought back, we'd be like these others out on the streets now. We got saved."

  I shudder. I'm grasping at straws now.

  "You're alive," is all I can say.

  He laughs. "I am."

  We sit in silence for a while. My room comes back to me. I look up at my Banksy print on the wall, the guy throwing the flowers. I wonder, is Banksy a zombie now too? Is Space Invader?

  "I can come for you," I say. "I'll get a nice car and make it there in a day. I'll drive all night."

  "That's a lyric from a song isn't it?"

  "Stop it! Tell me your address and I'll come."

  "No, you won't. Why in hell would you come here Amo, to see my bitten-out corpse laid up in a bloody cradle stinking of methadone and shit? I'll not have that. I won't be alive by then, Amo. Understand that. Accept that, and we can move on. I've downloaded everything I can think of to your computer, plus a few extras I've had the time to come up with. The fulfillment center will be a bit different. I think it's going to be pretty important to you, going forward, or for a while at least. There are some new routines. You'll figure it out. Until then we can talk."

  I sag. "I want to come."

  "I want you to come too. Don't you think I'd love that, if you could come charging in now and rescue me from this mess? But you can't. It's not going to happen, so let's move on. We've never even spoken before, have we? Hi, Amo, I'm Robert. I'm a freak just like you. We might be the last two people alive in the world."

  I laugh. "Hi Robert, I'm Amo. It's good to meet you. I don't want you to die."

  "So tell me about the date," he says. "Tell me everything."

  I do. It starts off jerky and unclear, but soon I'm rolling. I tell him about how we'd talked about my art, and our families, and my coma. She'd burned out herself a few years earlier, suffering panic attacks right after passing the New York bar exam to become a lawyer. It had been a dream for so long, and when she lost that dream it shattered her. Working as a barista at Sir Clowdesley did the same thing for her as it did for me: boredom as a kind of bandage.

  I tell him about the pick-up line I tried on her, improvised on the moment and only partly inspired by Hank, when the twinge was bearing down hard and I had to do something to stop my eyes from popping out.

  "I took her hand, and I talked about the colors of her palm," I tell him. "Ecru. Faun. They're both shades of brown. You know, because I'm an artist."

  He chuckles.

  "I said there's meanings behind each one. Honestly, I made it up, and she knew that too, but somehow she went with it. I don't know. After that, maybe the twinges started to stop? I don't know what was happening."

  He sighs contentedly. "I'm happy for you, Amo. It sounds great."

  I smile through tears, because yes, it was. I fill the empty air with the rest of my story from the morning, about the street and the horde and pulling the guy apart on Willis Avenue.

  "It's still a good memory, on the whole," he says, at the end. "You'll need to hang on to that, Amo. You will, won't you? Lara might be alive out there. You might be able to find her. Hold on to that. You'll put out some flags and let her now where you are. You'll figure this thing out and make it right. I know you will. You've always been resourceful, and smart, and so damn charming."

  I laugh.

  "It's good you can laugh. Don't forget that Amo. Don't you dare feel guilty. I want it to be you, not me. You're a good man. You're the best friend I've ever had. I want you to get good things out of this and become better for it. There's always room to grow. When I lost my legs and I knew I could never dive anymore, I just about gave up. Then I found this weird guy who'd built a weird world on Deepcraft, and he welcomed me in. He loaned me a diviner and we fulfilled stupid orders together. I saw the world through him, and I'm still seeing the world through him now. Amo, you're going to be OK."

  I find I'm gulping at the air.

  "Get yourself solid. Research the stuff I sent. Find a safer place than your apartment, a bank or something downtown, somewhere this girl Lara can find, and start clearing the streets around. Make a base and she'll be drawn to you, Amo, if you're offering safety and something worth having. That way you'll find the others too, the ones like us who are lost somewhere across the country and don't have each other like we've had each other. I know you will. You'll make good things out of this."

  I gulp back tears. I can hear the thumping through the phone getting louder.

  "She's almost through the door isn't she?"

  "She is. It's all right. I've got the syringe loaded with my methadone, enough of a dose to knock me right out. I won't feel a thing. It's better this way Amo. I wouldn't stand a chance on the road. I was never good in a wheelchair."

  I sob into the phone. "How long?"

  "I don't know. A minute, maybe five? I've already injected it." His voice starts to go woozy. "You'll stay on the line won't you? You'll wait with me."

  "Of course I will. Robert I'm sorry."

  "Don't be sorry. You're here with me. We're in the fulfillment center, running it together. I've got legs again, Amo. We're keeping up with the orders. We're one step ahead."

  The tears are coming freely. I hate this. I want to reach through the phone and save him. I want to save my friend, but I can't.

  "Goodbye, Amo," he says fuzzily. There is a crash through the line, and his mother must have breached the basement.

  "Robert," I say urgently. "Robert."

  "She's coming. I won't feel a thing. The Darkness is so close. I'm going to turn the phone off now Amo. I don't want you to hear this. Goodbye."

  The phone clicks dead. The sound from his distant basement fades at once. My last link to Cerulean is severed.

  I lean back against the bed and cry, curled around the phone like it's a dagger thrust though my belly.

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  Copyright © 2018 by Michael Jo
hn Grist

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  Cover art by Clarissa Yeo.

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