* * *
In six months they found nobody.
In Spain they hit Madrid and Bilbao, sprawling, beautiful red sandstone conurbations in the midst of a bare, sparse country that was more brown than green. It was easy to imagine matadors dancing about, dressed in bright red raiment, as they drove through valleys and fields of dry dirt and olive trees, waiting for the irrigation that would bring life.
Myra lay on the back seat with her feet up flat on the roof, talking along with her English study tapes. She was always repeating sentences, but her English never seemed to get any better. He tried to learn some Portuguese the same way, but she just laughed and turned the English tapes back on.
From Spain they went into France, from Toulouse to Nantes to Paris, where they took grinning pictures of each other with a Polaroid camera in front of the Eiffel Tower, though already some sense of hopelessness was starting to set in. They found nobody, and each further leg of the journey became less silly, less joyful and more focused.
Drake leant hard over the steering wheel, always scanning the road and streets. He grew curt with Myra, who didn't seem to care, though his deepening severity clearly annoyed her. She would sulk, or conduct blazing rows with him in Portuguese, with snippets of English hurled in, usually swear words he'd taught her as a joke, distorted by her pronunciation.
Sheet was shit. Idiota was idiot. He drove on.
They still made love at night, but it became rougher, like a fight they were both trying to win; though she never forgot to hand him a foil square. They did it even if they didn't enjoy it, and they slept. This was how hungry they'd become. This was where the world had left them.
He stood at Calais and looked out over the water to England, to where the white cliffs of Dover should be, but couldn't see them through the autumn fog on the cold gray sea. In Dunkirk they stood on the beach and he told her the stories he'd heard from his grandfather, who'd survived the Allied retreat through that town in World War 2, with all the horses dying and the Merry-Go-Round turning and the band playing and the mortars getting wrecked so the Germans couldn't use them when they came.
Myra was angry about something though, and spat and kicked stones while he talked, so he stopped with the end of the story untold. It wasn't really his to tell anyway, and who cared now about a war that changed the world so long ago? The world had changed again, rubbing all that out.
He didn't try for a boat. He didn't want to go home and see how little was left.
In Belgium they went to Brussels, in The Netherlands to The Hague and Amsterdam, and throughout, while driving with Myra singing along tunelessly beside him, or playing one of her Pokémon games, or speaking to him in a ridiculous English accent that could still make them both laugh sometimes, he felt the world shifting again.
Because there were no people.
He glared until his eyes went dry, driving at 20mph through traffic and wrecks, glaring so hard it felt he went for hours without blinking, but still there was nobody. Six months went by with no people, no sign of people, and surely that was enough to break anyone. What did a man do in that situation? A man whose job it was to build, and grow, and make order out of chaos; how could he build with no materials? Without people there could be no community. No mothers and fathers, no families, no children, and no future. And if there was no future, what was the point?
In a hotel in Dortmund, Germany, another gorgeous castle on another gorgeous hill, overlooking a gorgeous deep and twisted forest as winter came on and snow fell to make it look like something from a Disney movie, he stopped driving and they set up to ride out the cold. The days grew short and dark. They took walks through the misty morning village, but didn't talk. There was nothing to say. They made love but didn't look in each other's eyes. It all rang so hollow, until it felt like one day was a blur into the next, with booze mixed in, and every step was a step back to the bedroom, and her handing the familiar blue square into his hand, and him doing his job with it, and repeat.
Until it stopped.
It was late afternoon, barely dark out, but they'd started sleeping earlier, like hibernating bears. Myra was there, looking paler and thinner than when he'd first met her. It was strange how a person could rot like a fruit, but from the inside. She'd been so buoyant before, so full of playful mystery and hidden depths, and now she was barely a comfort blanket, because there was no comfort in the folding grip of her embrace.
She was another human, but just one, and one was not enough. He realized what that meant, as she handed him a blue foil package for the thousandth time.
He looked at it, and the world turned. The chill came hard into the room, pushing through the fog of alcohol and showing him a glimpse of another world. This was the problem right here, sitting in his palm.
He held the condom out, and he looked at her, and he said one word he'd learned well in Portuguese.
"Não."
She was in a boozy, sleepy fog herself, looking at him through eyes lidded with anger and defeat. "Não o quê, Ma-hew? O quê?"
There was an argument right there, waiting to happen. 'For what, Matthew? For what?' She was ready to fight even though she didn't know what for. So he'd give her something to think about.
"I'm not wearing this." He dropped the blue wrapper onto the floor.
She watched it, sighed, then fished out another and placed it in his hand.
He threw it to the side. She snorted, gave him another, but he threw it as well.
Now some of the fog was out of her eyes, and she was looking at him with curiosity. That would change soon enough, some part of him said. It wasn't going to be a good thing, but what did a man do, did he do the nice thing or the necessary thing? That was the question to ask. On the cruise liner had he left Jenny and Lucy to THUMP away at their door, or had he done the thing that was necessary?
Perhaps she saw that in his eyes now.
He looked at her. "We've been looking for months, Myra. Nearly a year! We're not finding anyone, and we're wasting time. This is not what I want."
"Assim você acha que é o que eu quero?" she babbled back at him, and he understood a little. It wasn't what she wanted either. "Você acha que eu estou me divertindo com isso?" She wasn't enjoying it.
"So we make it real," he said. He pointed at the blue foil on the floor. "No more of these. We do it for real."
She stared at him, then laughed, then pointed at his face and let rip with her own shock and mockery.
"Contigo?" He knew that; 'With you?' "Você acha que eu quero trazer um bebê ao presente, com você? Você deve estar louco! Idiota!" Something about a baby, something about him being crazy.
He felt his own jaw set, and he saw the future play out. Who liked the bitter pill that lay ahead? No one did. Medicine tasted bad, but you took it anyway; at least you did if you wanted to get better.
But did Myra? From the start all she'd done was lead him down this drunken, bohemian path. Sex all the time. Booze all the time, souring into this damn misery. Jenny hadn't done that, and it was Jenny that had really made him a man, because together they'd made Lucy, and wasn't that a real thing? Wasn't a child the whole purpose of a man, to make her and raise her and grow her up to be something real, something beautiful that could look you in the eye and bring some damn meaning to this godforsaken emptiness?
Wasn't that what a man did, more than just empty screwing, more than this meaningless, teenaged obsession with sex?
It made the decision, and with that it became simple. Easy.
"No condoms," he said. "No more."
She laughed and babbled, but now it was decided. He'd try to persuade her. He'd try to win her round, and if she still wasn't interested? That was a hard question.
"We'll have kids," he said, with a smile, calm. Not selling, not pushing, just trying to make it a reality. "Lots of little kids running around. Little girls, little boys. To fill up this place."
She frowned. "Você é sério?" You're serious? "Ma-hew, cheeldren?"
He nodded. His own eyes were getting a little misty now as he imagined them, sparkling through the room. They'd be the perfect thing to turn this emptiness around. It would bring some meaning to the death of his family. It would make his own survival something important, more than this sick, endless holiday.
It would make him a man again.
He nodded. "Eu é sério. I am very serious. I need you for that, Myra. I hope you'll want it too."
She just stared at him, and the moment drew out, until the booze got the best of her and she threw her head back and laughed. It was such a riot. She guffawed away.
"Oh, Ma-hew, funnee! Você é funnee! Crianças aqui, para isso?" Children here, in this place? "Não é possível." It's not possible.
The laughter might have hurt him, another time in another life, but not now. It was so clear that this was what he was meant to do. The fact that she didn't understand it, that she didn't feel it yet, didn't mean anything.
He'd show her. He'd teach her, and when she saw she'd realize he was right. But for now he just smiled. "I know. It's a lot to take in." He held up his hands and took a step backward. This was the right thing to do, too. For so long they'd been having sex out of what, loneliness? Frustration? Some base inner compulsion, like animals. And that wasn't right. You had dates first. You courted. In his head he was already planning the first. A dinner, and he'd cook something. They'd both dress up. A walk on the beach. Maybe a movie? Portuguese for her, subtitles for him. A way of communicating.
Their life together spilled out before him. He'd double down on learning Portuguese and woo her properly. They could have a marriage ceremony to make it right and proper. Then they'd start to have children, all proper and correct. How many? One had always been enough before, but the world was different now. So why stop? Having more wouldn't add to the cost. It would just build them more of a family.
He smiled, and her laughter stopped slowly. Now she was looking at him differently. Perhaps there was a little caution in there, even a little fear, but why shouldn't there be? It was a big undertaking. It scared him too, but that was how he knew it was the right thing.
He nodded. "Myra. It's OK. We're going to be OK. I promise. It's down to you and me, and we'll make this world a beautiful place again."
Her eyes darted to the door. Was that, what, a signal? He took it.
"Of course. No, we should be in different rooms. You're right." His smile broadened. "I'll be next door. Tomorrow we can talk more, OK? I know it's a new idea right now. But I love you. I want to do this with you. I know you'll feel the same."
She just stared at him, struck dumb probably, as he turned and left the room. It was the first time he'd said 'I love you', so that must be a shock. It was the first time in months that he felt a kind of calm inside. The stress that had crept up on him over their long search, interfering with his thinking and making him act like an animal, was now cleared out.
There was a future up ahead. There would be children. He and Myra would make a wonderful family, restarting the race. He entered the room one over and lay down on the four-poster bed amidst a whuff of old dust, and looked out of the window to the moon in the sky. So beautiful. Everything was coming together.
The next morning Myra was gone.
7. LIMBO
They left Maine behind, and returned to New LA.
Amo gave no grand speeches on their return, offered no fresh inspiration. They simply arrived and went back to their lives, but who could go back? Anna was out there still, preparing to take the war to Europe where eleven demons were wandering free, and it was hard to think about anything else. Cerulean popping up regularly in her vision didn't help, nor did the nightmares. It seemed that every night she woke sweating from visions of the great white eye and New LA ablaze, and would turn to where Amo should be, and find him missing.
In his office, studying his folders from Maine. Out walking. Lara tried to convince herself that this was healing, that at least he wasn't in the bunker watching Julio's snuff movies, but it was small consolation.
So time passed, and the wounds in New LA festered.
There was dissatisfaction amongst the survivors; about the choices Amo had made, about what happened to Maine, about Witzgenstein's banishment. There were whispers and dissent, sometimes breaking into rancorous arguments. Rifts between neighbors stewed and deepened, and all the while they remain trapped in a miserable limbo, with no leader to steer them out.
Lara racked her brain to think of a way to heal the divisions, but she wasn't one for speeches, and she didn't have the same easy charm as Amo. There was one thing she could do though, that had helped after her dream of the law was swallowed up in panic.
So she opened her coffee shop.
She chose a street off the main thoroughfare in Montlake, leafy and almost cozy, where if she squinted just so she could imagine she was back in the canyon-streets of New York. She named it 'John Harrison', after the English carpenter who spent half his life designing clocks good enough to keep time at sea, and so solve the problem of divining longitude that had begun decades earlier with Sir Clowdesley's death.
On the menus she printed a short history leading from the death of that infamous British admiral to the humble carpenter who brought certainty to global navigation. It felt fitting, like closing a chapter in their lives. Clowdesley's story struck echoes with so much that had happened to New LA; he had died for a greater truth to be known, just like Robert had died. Now Harrison's resolution to the problem of his day echoed their own, with Anna out there taking the fight to the enemy.
She set the shop up just like she'd set up her conference table in the snow; with a simple leaflet announcement posted through doors. And people came. Greg and Merryn were curious, and she put them to work painting the walls in warm, welcoming tones. Keeshom and Sulman came soon after, and she tasked them with building her sturdy oak bar. Vie and Talia helped out with decorating the blackboard specials.
By the end of the week eleven people were helping put the coffee house together. It was the first major project any of them had undertaken since Maine, and it buoyed people up. It brought them together with the hope of a future.
She worked on her coffee blends. She taught herself to bake a mean carrot cake. Then she opened the doors, and people came. While sipping hot coffee in its warm, welcoming atmosphere, many people wept openly.
Then there was Lucas.
Anna called on the satellite phone to announce they'd captured a spy in their camp. Lara was in the comms room when Lucas explained his offer of a cure to Amo. The impact on him was immediate; he stopped dwelling on the MARS3000 dead, and instead sat by the satellite phone day and night, waiting for further word to come in as Anna closed on Europe. He sat clustered with the Council as spotty reports came back from the assault on Bunker 1 in France. When word finally came back that the bunker was secure, and they had a plan to contain all the demons without killing any more bunkers, Amo took his headset off and walked out of the room.
Lara followed.
He walked along Santa Monica Boulevard through the midday sun, weaving as though drunk. He hadn't slept in days, and it showed. She followed him quietly, not sure why she didn't announce herself, though the gaps between them were well established now, holes where once whole cloth had lain.
He went down to the beach and then north along the sand, walking stiffly like one of the ocean, sighted on a distant target only he could see. At the wooden pier off Muscle Beach, where he'd last spoken to Cerulean, he stopped, and hobbled out over the creaking timbers. When he reached the pier's end, above the low-tide lapping of the Pacific Ocean, he dropped to his knees and quietly began to cry.
Lara approached from behind, as his shoulders trembled, and for a moment just stood there, watching her husband and wondering at the great weight he'd taken on board for so long. It took a chunk out of her. She dropped down at Amo's side and took his hand, and when he saw her his face cratered and his mouth sagged and for a few long moments he didn't br
eathe.
They held hands and sobbed and looked out over the water. Finally it felt right. This was healing. This was what it took.
* * *
He started coming to the coffee shop. He spent more time with family and friends in the community. He kept his folders and files of the dead in his study, but Lara noticed that he was gradually packing them away.
There was still no big speech. No message for New LA, no new vision, because even with Bunker 1 down there were still ten more to go, and no one knew what might happen with them.
But he did start taking on his own projects, small at first. First there was the new flag, the white star on a sky blue field surrounded by a circle of thirteen smaller stars. He was quietly proud of it, and the slightly embarrassed way he offered it up delighted her.
Next he worked on a few updates to his cairn pack, comics and videos and such, protesting throughout that no one would see them, it was just for him really, just so it was all straight in his head. He did a few small print runs, alone in the Yangtze center down by Disneyland, perhaps enjoying the callback to days gone by.
Then he took on a bigger project, one that he kept secret. He smiled shyly when she asked him about it, but kept his plans to himself. He did research in libraries, looking at maps and books on farming, and he took trips, and dropped hints until she was pretty sure she knew what it was, but let him keep on with it in 'secret' anyway.
His project peaked when Anna returned from Witzgenstein in the Willamette Valley, bringing jars of delicious fresh honey and jam that turned her welcoming parade into an all-night joyous party. The next day when they called a Council meeting together, it became clear she'd been working with Amo all along.
They held the meeting on the first floor of the John Harrison, with the Council plus select guests in attendance, eleven in all. Anna stood at the front and grinned, then put on a video she'd taken in the Willamette Valley.
The first image was of Witzgenstein's timber stockade wall. Around it were verdant green woods and off to the right a fast-flowing river. Birdsong cheeped over the hall's speakers. Then the stockade gates opened, and the camera passed through them and on down a dirt track. Either side lay sweet, Shaker-style panel-board homes painted red and white. There was a cow stall, and water troughs and small neat patches of grass and flowers. There were people standing around who they all recognized, some of them waving, some carrying jugs, others pitchforks. The camera rolled on, past a stables and a county hall, past a big maroon barn with two tractors out front being fitted with ploughs. Then there were highlight shots of nature; the river gurgling by, woodland silently passing by, a smoking chimney and a crackling fire, a shot of Anna grinning while eating a sausage that got a laugh, a shot of Ravi jumping across a brook on a series of stepping stones.
Zombie Ocean (Book 6): The Laws Page 12