The List (Zombie Ocean Book 5)

by Michael John Grist

  Not kind, tea-drinking Jake or stoic, strong Feargal, not Peters who carried the weight of so much loss without any sign of hate, and not even Anna with that stony look in her eyes, doing what she felt she had to do to keep her people safe.

  The demon was so close, and Lucas made a decision.

  He'd hidden who he was his whole life, so successfully that even Lars Mecklarin hadn't known he was gay; perhaps he hadn't even known it himself. He'd lied to everyone for fear of what that would make him in their eyes, in his own eyes too, but he couldn't do it anymore. He was a man, and he loved a man who was dead, and what did it matter to anyone? Why should anyone care or think any less of him?

  He looked up at the demon, so massive, so terrifying, and made the decision. If it was what was in your heart that mattered, then let this matter. Fuck the demon.

  He stood up. He raised his arms in the air and he shouted out Farsan's name, and he charged. Three steps and he would be there, and it would snap his jaw and puke into him, and so it would be.

  His face hit the demon's thigh and his chest hit its knee mid-stride and it was like running into a bulldozer. He recoiled back and slid in the mud, and it continued striding toward him, raising one foot up to-

  He rolled wildly out of the way and its great foot fell in the mud where he'd been with a fat squelch. Mud splashed over his face and chest, and he wondered was this a valiant way to die? He tried to stand again and face it, but as he slithered to stand, the demon continued past him.

  What?

  On his knees he stared as it walked by and kept walking, its massive red back receding until the whirlpool of the ocean opened up and a channel through their masses led it in.

  Lucas knelt in the mud gawping after it. Not possible, but still…

  Still…

  His mind flashed back to those first moments in the Habitat, with the buzzing in his head and Anna and Amo advancing and his people dropping their facades and becoming zombies before his very eyes, and running towards them, and…

  Towards them.

  In a second the pieces fell into position. In the charging time, they hadn't come to him. Not then and not with Farsan in Farsan's room and not now, because for them he didn't exist. He watched the flow of zombies spiraling away like the radial arms of a newly-formed galaxy, and felt it as much as he understood it.

  Any one of them could come for him, but they didn't. Not one, because they couldn't see him. He had no T4 in his cells, making him perhaps the only person in the world they couldn't see. He laughed. Of all the things? It gave him a ridiculous, immense advantage. It gave him power over them, and with powers came responsibility.

  Anna rose in his mind.

  Just then came an explosion. It was muffled and distant but the earth shook under his knees, and he understood at once it was from below. Anna, Feargal and Peters were down there, trapped. Perhaps all of this had been the plan. They were fighting back, but they didn't stand a chance.

  The zombies were on all sides of him now, everywhere a dense wall of grinding gray flesh with no way through, and closing in now the demon was gone. He scanned them desperately, seeking a way out, and found it.

  The way the demon had gone. The creature itself was visible still, looming head and shoulders above the rest like a bloody god, and it left a narrow gap in its wake that the ocean hesitated to fill in. Lucas pushed himself to his feet and ran.

  He hit the gap just as it was closing like the Red Sea, catching an elbow in the head that nearly knocked him to the side, but somehow he managed to stagger on, bouncing off the tramping tunnel wall of bodies. Here he bounced off an outstretched knee, there he slipped in a thick pit of black mud and barely caught himself on someone's clavicle, not neat at all but still gaining on the demon until in moments he was walking directly behind it, in its shadow.

  It was so huge, with thighs as thick around as the Humvee's tires, feet that left huge imprints like coffins, and a back that curved up and up. For a few seconds he tottered along behind, uncertain what he could possibly do next, until it came to him.

  It was utterly mad. It would probably get him torn to shreds even if he was invisible, but so what?

  He took three hefty strides, tried to time it at the moment of crossover, and dived. His shoulder hit the demon's right Achilles heel like it was a cement lamp post, with no give at all. His body slapped noisily into the sucking muck, he stretched out both his arms and encircled the left ankle as best he could, managed to catch his hands to each other, then nearly had both his arms ripped from his body as the demon tried to walk.

  Lucas screamed and held on as the demon began to tip. It flailed and jerked its left foot, pulling clear and dropping Lucas face first into the mud, but it was enough. Lucas reared back and scraped mud from his eyes as the giant started to topple.

  It felt awesome.

  It tried to get its left leg up and in front of it to halt the descent, but in the flowing press of ocean bodies ahead it rolled and twisted, and in a beautiful, behemothic motion, the great beast fell. Its arms went out to stay its fall, but they too were sucked into the flurry of gray waves, carried away like items on an escalator so the demon was pulled wide like a spread-eagle to crash face-down into bodies and mud.

  The ocean flattened beneath it but continued on all around. Lucas laughed though he was still catching his breath, then ran and leaped. He hit the demon's cement-hard calf and ran up its thigh, over its back then down one of its arms feeling like a cartoon character from a Saturday morning kids' show. Already it was trying to get up, and it raised its arm as Lucas leapt up from its wrist, sending him sprawling forward and off-balance into a tight scrum of the ocean.

  He hit heads on his back and rolled, trying to get his arms and legs under him, desperate not to sink under again and be trampled. He pushed off a shoulder, his foot kicked off a head, then he was on his knees and swaying like a raft atop a wave as the ocean lapped forward.

  The bodies underneath him were pressed so close together there wasn't any gap for him to slip down. He spun, seeking his bearings. The demon was struggling to rise, only visible by the swell in the ocean where they stepped on it and it threw up the odd arm.

  There was nothing else to tell him direction, nothing except...

  The flow of the zombies themselves. He raised himself up as tall as he could and tried to take in the motion of the whole mass. The majority of them were swirling, that was clear now, like water down the plughole, while off to his right a second contingent were charging on a straight line.

  Jake and the others, it had to be. That meant the temporary encampment had to be about there. He scanned the flow of gray and spotted the center of the spiral, where the entrance to the bunker had to be. He had to- no, that wouldn't work, rather, he could...

  It came to him and he moved. The last position they'd left the scanner was near the hole, obviously. It had to be there still, and he prayed it hadn't been pushed too far or damaged too badly by the ocean's tramping feet. He started forward at a crawl along the surface of mismatched shoulders, all at different heights, using the heads as hand grips, but after only a minute or so of laboring, the uprooting sound of the demon rising finally came from behind. He spun back to see it stamping forward again, cutting its path to the exact same center as him.

  He got to his feet and tried to run.

  He made three steps and fell, crushing his ear against a head as solid as a polished stone. Blood warmed his cheek and his hearing went fuzzy but there was no time. He lurched back to his feet and ran a few more steps before falling again, this time catching himself on a head which snapped at the neck under his weight.

  "Arrgh!" he cried, as dust plumed up and the head rocked onto a nearby shoulder. He scrabbled up and for a moment stood on the swell, trying to gauge its movement, before started forward again more carefully. The demon was gaining, but sprinting wouldn't help him. He walked at first, speeding to a low jog as his confidence grew, then before he knew it he was at the center of the scrum
.

  One by one the bodies squeezed down into the hole in the ground, always replaced by more. He realized his original plan was hopeless; the machine might be there somewhere below the surface but finding it would be impossible. If it was even possible to break through the bone-popping crush of bodies down to the ground, he'd be trampled underfoot in seconds. He'd never reach the hydrogen-line scanner, never have the moments he'd need to undo their jerry-rigged apparatus, never be able to reverse the flow and see if that counteracted whatever signal was currently in the air.

  No. He spun and took in the scene all around; a stormy, throbbing ocean that tramped and pulsed and breathed as one, with the giant red beast wading ever closer. He could run, sure, but to where and for what? If Anna wasn't already dead, she would be soon. If Jake wasn't already dead, he would be soon.

  There was only way, and that was an outrageous, highly unlikely hope, but he'd already run at the demon once today. Why not chance fate again? Ridiculously, he held his breath as if really making a dive, and jumped.

  His feet struck the whirlpool's soft and bubbly center, following immediately after a head slipped down. He sank through up to his knees then was caught as the bodies on either side pressed in, crumpling his feet and forcing a barking scream out of his throat. Ribs cracked nearby like fireworks going off and it felt like his legs were getting crushed in a car jack.

  "Back up!" he shouted and lashed out wildly, punching at heads and faces. Features smashed pointlessly in dusty puffs under his blows, though his wriggling earned enough space to slip in up to his waist.

  At once his pelvis strained under the renewed pressure, bringing a gut-wrenching pain that he could only reduce by screaming at he top of his lungs and twisting with all his strength, until-

  He fell through. The bodies slipped aside and the mud on his jacket and arms oiled the way and he dropped past their feet into near total darkness, and fell. A cold wind hit as the chute raced by and he stretched out for something, anything to halt his fall, and caught a metal rung at such speed that it sent him spinning in the air, reeling down until-

  CRACK

  He hit a mound of withered bodies like a bowling ball on a deck of springs, sending out a gust of ancient dust. He couldn't breathe but that didn't matter, because he knew what was following, and he heaved and tugged to roll himself out of the line of fire.

  CRNNNK

  The next body hit in the hollow he'd left behind, spanking his lower back with a bare palm so hard that it propelled him into the wall. He bounced off, nearly tipping through an open doorway that led into a deep shaft lit from below by a dim red glow.

  CRASH

  He steadied himself at the edge as another body hit behind and one shoved by him to dive headfirst down the open shaft. He watched it fall a long way before CRUMPing distantly at the bottom. It took him a long, terrifying moment to pick out the rope ladder hanging down the side. He was able to swing down onto it as the next zombie shoved by him, then was almost kneed in the face as a third followed, though he managed to duck before it toppled, struck the far wall, and somersaulted down to the bottom.

  "Jesus," he muttered, and descended as quickly as he could, hugging to the ladder and flattening himself to the wall every time one fell. When at last he reached the bottom, he waited for a CRUMP as a body impacted on the heap before him, then flung himself through a large open doorway.

  Beyond there was a warped metal gantry walkway that led into a smoky industrial space of metal staircases, many-stacked decks and cement walls. The smoke stung his eyes and there was a cacophony of shouting and shooting blending with the tramp of the ocean somewhere far below.

  Lucas gawped for a moment; it was nothing like his Habitat. It was a whole different world. He stood at the top of an open stairwell with a cement ceiling that almost brushed his head, while the decks fell away below to a pit of seething darkness, where the ocean were surely seeking a way up. Ahead of him the walkway ran out above that abyss, toward an encircling metal deck some ten feet lower, but the stairs leading down to it were gone. The spot where they should have joined the square walkway was molten and warped, like a tattered chunk had been bitten out, with a dozen twisted sharp spikes of metal speared outward, upon which dozens of bodies were already impaled.

  He gagged as they wriggled and shifted.

  Shit. This had been the explosion from before, tearing the walkway apart.

  A zombie shoved by him from behind and ran along the walkway, teetering as it reached the edge, then leapt. He craned to watch it fall short and sail down into the darkness, followed by a muted thump far below.

  He clutched the shaky railing, feeling ill.

  Another body shoved by him, took an impressive running leap, and this time successfully reached the lower deck, but took one of the metal spikes through its lower belly. Slowly, as its waving arms shifted its balance, it rotated like a minute hand telling the time until its head and arms were pointing down.

  Lucas gagged and almost vomited.

  Another one ran by and attempted the leap, this time both clearing the distance and narrowly avoiding the spikes. It ran around the heaps of scattered, burnt bodies and through a swing door into a corridor. Lucas became aware of shouting from down that way, and the pell-mell popping of gunfire.

  Anna.

  It was what he'd come for. There was no choice really. He shoved the next zombie back, took five big strides along the shaking gantry and leapt.

  19. SHIELD

  The teeth dug in and it felt like coming home. Anna laughed and gulped as blood welled out and it didn't even hurt, not really. This was how it had begun ten years ago, with her father chewing up the Hatter, and somehow this was the same, a fitting end to a life spent looking for something she never could find.

  Her army. Her soldiers. That was the biggest lie of all, one she'd told herself from the very beginning, and now here was the cold, unvarnished truth, chewing on her neck.

  The ocean weren't her friends. They weren't her army or her family, they didn't care for her or look out for her. Instead they were victims too, driven by the sickness at their core; the T4.

  Just like her.

  Her father had been a victim. Cerulean had been a victim. They all were, everyone in New LA, everybody in the ocean, even the demons, and once she saw that she saw it all. Everyone in the Maine bunker had been her victim. None of them had had any choice. None of them were any different from her; all helpless souls caught up in a terrible world, fighting just to survive.

  Amo had learnt this lesson for himself and tried so hard to pass it on, and perhaps now it was her turn to see the truth; because sometimes it just wasn't worth surviving. Sometimes the things you had to do, the lines you had to cross, the innocent people you had to hurt made survival the worst option, because the soul that lived on would be irreparably broken.

  Better was this. As the zombie's teeth closed on her neck a second time, she understood that instead of fighting the bunkers, she should have been championing them, because they were all human, all victims, and they all deserved a chance.

  She should have found a way.

  The zombie bit down and she strained up into it, because this was a right and fitting punishment.

  Then it was gone, pulled off and tossed to the side like a bale of dry straw, replaced by-

  It wasn't possible.

  A man covered head to foot in muddy black ash, with blood running down from wounds on his forehead and chin and down from his ear, panting and wild-eyed with a shock of mud-spiked hair; a man she knew but barely recognized.

  Lucas.

  He looked down at her, and in his eyes was something she'd been longing to see for so long, and never known until now what it really was.

  Was it forgiveness? Was it belonging? Was it sympathy for a fellow victim, and a helping hand outstretched?

  He stretched out his hand to her.

  "Come on, Anna," he said.

  * * *

  He pulled her up and for him, fo
r this, she walked. Her back twinged and every step saw her faint a little, the pain in her back dropping her toward unconsciousness, but he drove her on. His arm around her waist held like a steel band, far stronger than he looked.

  Zombies came and he simply shoved them away. They didn't fight back, didn't try to bite or scratch him, just tumbled down off-balance. They didn't seem to see him at all, and as they fell he hobbled on, leading a much-bloodied Peters staggering along with Feargal.

  "The demon is coming," Lucas said to her as they drew near to the sputtering end of the corridor. There were zombie bodies everywhere on the floor here, their throats blown open or clubbed-in by Peters. "The ocean will fill this place to the brim and I can't protect you from that. We have to find the shield."

  The words bounced round Anna's head like a pulse, in time with the pulsing of unconsciousness at the edge of her thoughts, like a tide. The shield. Have to find the shield. They turned a corner. In the corridor beyond there were dozens more bodies on the floor, like heaps of white-coated trash. All the people, dead and left behind, all victims too. There was a low rumbling from back the way they'd come; the ocean still leaping down through the decks to the base below.

  "Which way?"

  They were standing under a flashing white light with a quarantine sign posted up in yellow and black beside it. Ha, that was funny. Someone was talking to her and she tried to focus.

  "Anna!" Lucas said. "Which way to the shield?"

  She tried to focus on his face; trailed with blood and mud. Shield room? How could she know that?

  "I can't feel it," he went on. "I can't feel anything here, I don't have the T4, it's why they don't come to me. But you do."

  She blinked, doing her best to surge up from the dark depths at the bottom of the ocean. "I can't… Ask Peters. Feargal."