Zombie Ocean (Book 6): The Laws

by Michael John Grist

  There was a lovely fluidity to her babbling; lots of rolled r's and trilling sounds, like the rolling English countryside. Strangely it reminded him of home, though it didn't make him homesick. Of course back home, a gypsy was still considered a kind of vagrant. He didn't trust them, didn't like it when they parked up on the common fields in St. Albans, but Myra wasn't like them.

  Perhaps back in England she would be, but not here. Against this land, he was the vagrant. Myra belonged. Living from place to place, endlessly wandering, wasn't that his whole lot now? He could see the appeal. He could see the joy in it. To settle down in one place, to raise a family like Jenny and Lucy, wasn't that just the way to get hurt?

  They found another castle, converted to a hotel, after a pleasant half-day of walking and gesturing. It stood on a low hill and looked just like one of the ruins in the wilds of Worcestershire that he'd explored as a boy. Lots of arrow slits and narrow arches and long stone colonnades. She tucked her dainty hand through the crook of his elbow and they advanced up it together, like a newly minted man and wife. It was so easy and glorious.

  They lit a fire in a metal pit out on the balcony, that first awkward, giddy night. Sitting across from each other, they shared nervous smiles and a bottle of whiskey, back and forth, as if they both knew what was coming. His whole middle, from his thighs to his belly, throbbed with a pressure as intense as any migraine.

  The sun melted into orangey napalm and poured into the ocean. Myra twittered and giggled at him, and he looked into her secret, gypsy eyes and saw history restarting. The world had been over and now it was not. This was a beginning, and it was a surprising thrill to feel there was a future again.

  They drank and talked, sharing aimless scraps of conversation that the other didn't understand, though they felt as meaningful as anything he'd thumped into the cabin door on the Summer Wind. They talked just for the sound of it, for the memory of conversation. He told her about growing up in Worcester, then family life in St. Albans, and how he'd always felt destined to be a dad.

  "I, Itália," she told him, making a swirling gesture with her hand. "Itállia." Was that where she'd been traveling? Was that where she wanted to go, or where she came from? The mystery was delicious. She went on longer in Portuguese, and he listened happily. In the flickering light of the fire she seemed like some kind of portal, a way back into reality.

  Two months of madness. Three days on the water, four days on the dead ship. A year in bed before that. He'd been alone for so long.

  But in her eyes there was a promise. She nodded and smiled and kept drinking the whiskey. Her lips made a slight sucking sound as she pulled the bottle away, then held it out to him. He took it, touching her fingers with his own, and it felt like an electric current jolting them both.

  "You're beautiful," he told her, making his voice soft. She only smiled. There were things he wanted to ask, perhaps he could mime them out, but now was not the time.

  They huddled closer, as the fire waned. Neither of them rose to add more wood. The whiskey was a hot, sweet burn down his throat, feeding the throb in his groin. She licked her lips, and the world shrank inward as the darkness crept up round their shoulders like a deep and cozy well. She shivered and he took her hand, and she shivered again.

  "Drake," she said, saying his name with a sweet lilt.

  "Myra," he answered, and she pulled him toward her. He rolled easily out of his chair and onto his knees, his hands coming to rest on her thighs, and there they kissed.

  Her lips were yielding and hot, sweet with whiskey, and they folded him in. Her tongue probed his in slow languorous motions, and the fire in his groin almost burst, but he pulled away gasping at the last moment, and she regarded him with lazy, lidded eyes. She knew what she'd done. She knew the power she had.

  She stood up and took his wrist. From her pocket she slid a square scrap of blue plastic and palmed it into his hand, like she was tipping a bellboy, then led him into the darkness of the hotel lobby.

  He followed as though in a dream. Only the sharply cut edge of the packet in his hand, a familiar shape, bought a hundred times from pharmacists, vending machines in public toilets and even supermarkets, broke the mood.

  She wanted to be safe, and that was fine. Who wanted to risk AIDS, now? Getting treatment would be impossible.

  Then she was pushing him back and down, onto a sofa in the lobby, and then rolling sinuously to straddle his waist, shifting and unpeeling the first of her many layers, while he fumbled at his jeans fly. They kissed. He tore the blue packet and slid it on. She bit his lip and muttered raspy, mellifluous syllables in his ear, then she was descending and …

  This was what the men did, not the boys. It all became wonderfully, completely clear. He'd done the right thing on the ship and the right things ever since, because this was how you made the world anew. Boys dithered and cried while men built log cabins out of standing trees. Boys moped while men brought order, felling and chopping and making reality their own, one aching, groaning, fevered stroke at a time.

  6. COMMAND

  Lara climbed down into the bunker.

  She'd argued with Anna for an hour about who was best placed to break the news to Amo that they were leaving. Anna had kept on pushing to go herself, though she'd had a hard time offering solid reasons why.

  "He'll listen to me," was about all she could say, "and if he ends up hating me for it, so what?"

  "Hating you?" Lara had countered. "Why would he?"

  And there was the look again. The bad look, the sense of guilt. Lara weighed and measured it and still came up short.

  "You don't know what it was like down there, Lara. When we first went in. To see all those people turned into the ocean like that?"

  "I remember the apocalypse," Lara had said. "The first hours of it. We all do."

  Anna shook her head. "This one was different. We were responsible for it. If we'd not killed their demons, if their plans had worked, then Salle Coram's people would all still be alive right now. Maybe it was indirect, but we did kill them."

  Lara had let that hang. Salle Coram had killed her own people, by her own choices, but it was possible Amo saw it a different way.

  They were still sitting around the conference table in the snow, though everyone else had hurried off by then to pack. Even though they were only living in tents and RVs, it still seemed there was a lot to get ready. Plus no one wanted to stay and be party to an argument about Amo's mental state.

  "And if their plans had worked, we'd all be dead," Lara said. "They'd be up here instead of us."

  Anna shrugged. She picked up a hard cookie from its paper plate on the table and took a crunchy bite. Plastic cups half-full of old flat Coke and Fanta lay around, intermixed with plates, two cold tea kettles, lots of coffee dregs, a paper bowl of creamer capsules and a fresh spattering of crystal snow.

  "Still," Anna said. "He feels responsible."

  Lara eyed her. This was the question, wasn't it? This was where the strange feeling came from, even though it didn't really make sense. Amo had hurt others indirectly before, but it had never had this effect. Don's death had slowed him down, of course, but not by much. When Indira died it was hard, and Cerulean too, but Amo hadn't taken it so completely to heart.

  But this he did.

  "But not you," Lara said. "You're fine."

  Anna made a face as she chewed, then put the cookie down. "Stale."

  "Answer the question, Anna."

  "What question? You didn't ask one."

  Lara held in a sigh. "Why Amo but not you? He's broken and you're not. It's days he's been down there, poring over records like it'll make a difference. Why not you?"

  Anna shrugged. "He's sensitive and I'm not? We all know that. It was three thousand people, Lara. And look, maybe he felt a personal connection with Salle Coram, or even Lars Mecklarin. You told me he was reading Mecklarin's books, but Mecklarin was dead, right, and why was Mecklarin dead? He killed himself years ago. That's pretty depressing. H
is whole vision of the world, all his theories were proved wrong. So maybe Amo's not so depressed about the three thousand people exactly, maybe it's something bigger, like the loss of Mecklarin's vision. Maybe Amo models himself on the guy, what do I know? It's a pretty big thing to lose an ideal, an idea of what we humans really are. Then chase that with Witzgenstein? What ideals has he got left to believe in, when Mecklarin's system failed and his own is cracking apart? Did you think of that?"

  Lara sighed and rubbed her arms. Two of the generators had died and their connected heaters had faded, but it seemed pointless to get up and refill them just to continue this discussion in comfort. It had to end, they needed a decision hours ago, and going round and round with Anna was not doing it.

  "Of course I thought of that. I was there for Witzgenstein, I know what it's done to him and to us."

  "One more nail in the coffin," Anna said, almost cheerfully, and Lara frowned at her.

  "Sorry, no, I know. I just think I should go. He'll listen to me."

  Now Lara stood up, bringing this thing to a close. For the whole meeting Anna had deferred to her on everything, except this. All the rest of it, their plan to go home, the schedule, what would come next, she let it all slide.

  But Amo was her husband. If he was going to hate anyone for telling him the truth, then let it be her.

  "He's my husband," she said flatly. "I know you think you've got some secret insight into his mental state, but the fact is I do know him better, Anna. I nursed him to health right at the beginning. I don't just mean physically, after Las Vegas, I mean mentally too. You weren't even with us then. I picked up the pieces after Julio killed Indira, when you were just becoming awful at that point, really starting your long rebellion. And I was there for him when you left, too."

  This last one shut Anna's mouth. It had been open, ready to interrupt, but now she went quiet.

  Lara gave an unhappy laugh. "You think that was an easy time, perhaps? Or maybe you never thought of us at all, left behind in your wake. But it was hard, Anna, most of all on Amo. He let you go, after all, and felt responsible. For all we knew you were going to your death. Of course New LA needed it, that swift kick in the pants your leaving brought, along with fresh hope and new horizons, and I understand you needed it too, but that didn't make it any easier. Amo tried not to show it, but it was obvious to me. We helped each other through it. That's who we are, we pick up the pieces for each other. That's why I'm the one who's going."

  Anna gave a long, slow sigh. She stood up, the air knocked out of her once again, and nodded.

  "All right. If you think you can handle it."

  Lara just watched her frostily as she pushed the chair aside and started away. What to say to that?

  * * *

  Now she was here, climbing down the ladder. She hated this place; hated that Amo had any sympathy for the people inside, for Salle and Lars and their mad plans. These people would have killed her children without losing a wink of sleep, would have killed everyone she knew, but here she was, and here Amo was, wracked with guilt for deaths they'd brought on themselves.

  It made her angry, and down the ladder she found herself slapping the rungs hard with her palms, so hard that it hurt. It didn't make things any better that Witzgenstein had held her kangaroo court down here, during which time Lara had been out of commission, unable to step up and stop it.

  "Keep your heart open, Lara."

  The suddenness of the voice startled her, coming just over her left shoulder, so that her right hand missed a rung and she almost fell backward, barely catching herself with the slack grip of her left hand. Her heart leapt as she hung for a second before pulling herself back in to the rungs.

  "But not your hand," said the voice. "Hold on with that."

  She had just enough presence of mind to find that ridiculous, before she pulled herself back to the ladder and spun around, toward where the voice had come from. For a moment she thought she saw him in the bright chute wall, the ghost of Cerulean's face pressed up within the white plastic, but then he was gone, leaving nothing behind.

  She clung to the ladder and pressed her head against the cool metal ladder rails, trying to calm her wild heart and gasping breaths.

  Cerulean. Goddamn. It wasn't right that she was still seeing him now, with the coma over three weeks earlier. Wasn't it enough that every night they soared over New LA together, watching their people and their buildings burn below?

  Keep your heart open, he'd said. She snorted. So he'd died to save everyone. He'd cut his own head off to give them all a chance. Did that give him the right to lecture her?

  "Dammit, Robert," she hissed, and continued down. "Give me some warning at least, when you're going to do that."

  He didn't reply. He was gone again. Perhaps he'd never come back, and now she'd regret that she didn't get some benefit from these brief moments spent together. Still, he was an unwelcome ghost, haunting her.

  A hangover, her mind corrected. Hangover from the demons.

  Whatever. He was preachy as hell.

  She reached the bottom, then pushed the button and rode the elevator on the right down, feeling like a pill gulping down a smooth throat. It was a short trip, delivering her into the small, harshly lit and stark Command bunker. She'd only been here once before, on a tour conducted by Peters. By that point, when she'd been recovered enough from her coma to take it in, everyone else had already seen it all. The bunker was old hat.

  Still, Peters had been a sensitive guide. She liked him, especially considering he'd lost the love of his life barely a month earlier.

  "It is here we found the bodies," he'd said in his topsy-turvy Swedish accent, pointing down the bare concrete corridor toward a door stained dark with bloody handprints. "Would you wish to see?"

  There was something curiously innocent about the way he'd asked. She'd almost laughed at how ridiculous it was. Who would want to see that?

  "No, thank you."

  "The bodies are not in there now," he'd said, his intonation all unexpected hills and valleys. "We removed them." A pause. "It's empty."

  "Good," she'd managed. "That's good, Peters."

  He'd nodded and led her on, and now she followed that same path he'd led her down, along the trail of dark blood that seemed burnt into the smooth cement floor. Here Salle Coram had dragged the bodies of her co-conspirators, one after another, again and again, while waiting for Amo to come to her. It was a dark and haunted place.

  She peered into the small bunker-master's office, with its desk and filing cabinets, computers and multiple clocks. On her first trip with Peters the walls had been covered in maps and long complex charts and pages of text scribbled with notes. Now it was bare, with all the filing cabinet drawers open and empty, all the walls a blank gray, the desk thoroughly looted, with only a few scraps of torn paper crumpled on the barren floor.

  Amo wasn't in here, but he had been.

  She continued on. She looked in the dark dorm rooms, shining a flashlight over the twenty bunks and twenty tall upright cabinets, like blocks in an abandoned city. Spartan gray uniforms hung off the edges of beds. In the corner there was an ironing board with an iron sat atop it, ready to go. So sad, but he wasn't here. He wasn't in the small kitchen further along either, or the canteen, or the gym with its sad running machines facing blank gray walls, or the cavernous storeroom with all its rows of empty shelves, which left only two places: the body closet and the flight control deck.

  She prayed hard it was the latter.

  "Here she killed them all," Peters had said, on her tour, while pointing at the main Command hall's door. "Anna thinks she sealed the doors from within, then began her slaughter. It is strange what people will do, isn't it? From here also, they say, she saw Julio. She watched him do his terrors to me and my Abigail. You would think it gives me peace to know her people are dead, but it does not. It does not help."

  She'd laid a hand on his arm. "We don't have to go in."

  He'd smiled, like he was th
e one consoling her. "We go in. We know. That is a first step to find peace."

  He'd opened the door, and she did as much now.

  The hall was hot, dark and large, like a fever in an echoing cave. The lights above were dim orange flickers, while on the large central screen an image flickered and moved, like a movie. Lara felt her gorge rise, as her mind worked the angles and realized what movie was showing.

  A scene from Julio's pit.

  The angle was from high through a semi-fisheye lens, bulging the edges outward. The walls of that coarse concrete corridor ran either side, hung with filthy, straggly, emaciated prisoners, each set atop low stirrups mounted to the walls, their bony arms strung on manacles above their heads. Twenty of them perhaps, maybe thirty. At the end was the glass door, made small by distance, behind which the demon's red body hung like a tiny, fiery ant.

  In the middle of the screen was Julio.

  It sent a shiver of fear and hatred through Lara's heart. To see him there, to see what he was doing, cut a chunk out of her viscerally. His eyes were mad and wild. His body was bitten and deformed; his left shoulder swollen up like a hump, his left arm swaying uselessly. It horrified her.

  He was dancing.

  Faint music played, some classical waltz, and on the screen Julio danced while his victims looked on, hung on their perches. Hot bile rushed up in her throat and she barely held it back. In the murky center of the image, hanging nearest the demon with his black skin stark against the pale gray wall, was Robert.

  She wavered and lurched to the side, only catching herself on a desk in the upper tier of three rows, which let out a loud creak. Her legs were dizzy again and she felt herself about to collapse.

  Dancing, and smiling. And Amo was watching this?

  Cold dread crept up in her. She'd imagined him reading files, seeking military intelligence perhaps, maybe looking for the cracks in Lars Mecklarin's vision as his MARS3000 experiment began, but this? It was repellent, and it repelled her to think that this was the food Amo was dining upon, for days and nights without break. What squat, hideous monster would birth from such horror? What kind of man would he become?