Peters nodded seriously. "We have crashed together before."
Anna laughed again, then made herself stop. It was dangerous, that, getting so wild. "Not Ravi."
"He will pick it up fast, I am certain."
Anna laughed again, then swung the stick, veering the little Pilatus sharply left. "Fine, Arcahon. I need you working on the descent glide. I want to hit thermals at a thousand feet for maximum updraft."
"It will be close, but I will," said Peters, and fished a pencil out of his pocket and began making calculations. Anna set the new course and focused her attention back to Jake and Ravi, on their call with a staticky Sulman.
"What do they say?" she asked.
"New reports on the hydrogen line," Jake answered. "It doesn't make sense, but then none of it does. Apparently the fluctuations are settling down."
"Settling down to what?"
"Something new," said Jake, "but with a complexity we hadn't even realized before."
"What?"
"Lucas thought it was a simple combination of these two signals, Lara and Matthew Drake, correct?" Anna grunted assent. "But it's more than that. There are delicate harmonics we're only piecing out now, that link in a large block of new input feeds. Something like seventy in total."
Anna risked a look back. Jake looked pale and hot. "Seventy what?"
"Seventy survivors. Some with signals sourced from Bordeaux, some new, all with their own signatures, all influencing the hydrogen line."
Anna frowned. "What are you talking about?"
Jake gulped audibly. "I mean they all influence the line, colored by Lara's signal. I mean…" He trailed off.
Anna watched the rushing vineyards below, scattered here and there with zombies and demons, all raising their arms as she passed by like the keenest students in the school. "What?"
"The theory is that this Matthew Drake is in New LA right now, along with some forty new survivors."
Anna tried to take this in. Forty survivors was almost as many as they had in New LA themselves. "Who are they?"
"We don't know, and they're still not answering our calls. The real question though is what happened to Amo."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean his signal's been vastly diminished in the hydrogen line. It was a seesaw before, but now it's like this Drake has replaced him completely, and we can't understand why. Amo always had the stronger signal, but he's been replaced."
Anna's mind whirred. One thousand nine hundred feet below an ancient, rain-battered windmill raced by. Flying this low was not so different to cruising on a catamaran, balanced out over the water as it sped by inches below.
"Would him dying account for the signal drop?"
"We can't tell that, Anna, it's far too complex a-"
"Best guess, then."
"I-" Jake took a breath, "I, yes, it could. Or perhaps he's just moved further away from the signal booster, which is Lara," he added quickly. "Proximity counts. It's a new science."
Anna tried to process all of this. "So Amo could be dead, or unconscious, or just taking a walk?" No answer came. "This why they're not replying. This is the reason. They're in trouble."
"That's our conclusion, yes."
The new reality washed over Anna. Trouble was such a vague word. What if Amo really was dead? It felt abruptly like an anchor being lost, the compass tossed away, a guiderail pulled out of her grip. Without Amo, there was, what?
No plan. No clear route. He'd been offering a straight line forward all her life, and if he was gone…
"We have to go back."
"We were just getting to that," Jake said.
"Getting to what?"
"Drop harder here," Peters interrupted, "a hundred feet, to reach the benefit of the thermals."
She dropped. "Jake, getting to what?"
"Lucas got in touch with Bunker 3 in Munich. Sulman wanted to get their take on the hydrogen line discrepancy, and-"
"There's not supposed to be any contact with bunkers without me there," Anna interrupted.
"We were in the air," Jake said. "They didn't want to wait."
Anna let it pass. "So?"
"So they ignored the question for forty-five minutes. That's unprecedented, normally they reply at once. They've been eager to stay on our good side after we took out their drones and turret. When they finally did reply it was with a blank denial."
Anna frowned. "That doesn't make any sense. They know more about the hydrogen line than us."
"They said they were registering no change, and perhaps we should look into our equipment. They'd be happy to guide us."
"I don't…" she paused. "But Sulman confirmed it with pings off Maine and Bordeaux."
"They don't know we've been doing that. They think we have just the one reader."
Anna sighed, letting these new facts jostle in the confusion. "So they're lying to us?" Jake gave a noncommittal nod. "Do you think they're connected to this Drake somehow?"
"I don't see how. I don't know what's going on. But yes, I think they were lying."
Anna checked the height readout, hovering now at seventeen hundred feet. A tall enough fall to kill them all a hundred times over.
"So there's something happening with Drake, and with the bunkers, at the same time?"
"Yes. They may be connected, but I don't see how."
Anna sat silently. Below them more of the ocean raised their hands. Me, me, they said, pick me. She imagined engaging a gun turret autocannon and mowing them all down. Perhaps the world really was falling apart.
"I'm going to seal up this breakout here, then I'm going to fuel up for California and deal with that. Any objections?"
"Drop one more hundred feet," Peters said.
Anna did it. No one else objected. They cruised on.
* * *
Within thirty minutes the propeller was juddering on fumes. They were scything low above suburbs interspersed with golf courses and parks, where lots of little blocks and buildings lay encapsulated by old roads like cell walls around the T4, holding the goodies inside.
The virus had broken all those walls. Now the roads were as green as the roofs and gardens, everything wrapped over with vines and tall grass. The runway would be just as degraded, and there'd be no time to assess if it was cracked or buckled. Not now, not with the engine coughing and kicking out.
"Ahead two miles," Peters said. "You're on approach, the angle looks good."
Normally she'd be high enough to see the runway, but flying this low, almost clipping treetops with her undercarriage wheels, it was obscured by the mesh of tiny homes.
"I need the-" she began, then the engine cut out altogether.
An uncanny silence filled the cockpit, broken only by the rush of the wind and the slow whirr as the propeller slowed. The plane began to fall.
"Problem," said Peters.
"Everybody brace," Anna said, and yanked on the stick, pulling the ailerons on the tail sharply down, trying to eke every last inch of forward lift from their steepening descent.
"Are we going to crash?" Jake asked.
"Head down and brace," Anna said, "it'll be rough."
Behind her they tucked up and the plane fell.
"There's a road, it winds, but there," Peters said, pointing at the A660 below. "A straighting patch. We can make it."
Anna didn't turn the stick, only grunted as she pulled on the fins, fighting for height and to keep the course true. "We'll hop one of the side rails, it's too narrow," she said through gritted teeth, every muscle tensed against the stick. "We need the runway."
"It's coming up," Peters called, and the plane shuddered violently.
They were falling too fast. The altimeter dial was racing now, the last digit spinning like a roulette wheel in Las Vegas. Seconds only, and she had to hold on until then, until-
Ahead there was a fence and a broad green verge of grass, and beyond it the meadow expanse of runway. It looked clear enough, and the stick fought her hard and they fell forward, s
econds away until they actually snagged on the barbed wire on the fence top before touching down with a riotous-
SLAM
-that whipped her head down hard enough to impale on the stick, if it had been fully upright. Instead it punched into her chest and the plane veered sharply to the left. Too slow, her brain called, before she had time to respond. Coming down with too slow horizontal speed meant forward momentum was less likely to keep the plane running even on the runway, and running anything less than even on landing, especially on a ruptured runway, could lead to-
The plane twisted to the side, for about two seconds the wheels held out as they veered off the runway and into a grassy lull to the side, where they tore with an audible rip that let one of the metal landing struts catch in the dirt and dig in, forcing the rest of the plane's body to pirouette around it and rip itself apart.
KRRRRRR
The body wrenched under the force of its own momentum, undercarriage tearing from the base, wings pulling with enough centrifugal force to crack the fuselage like an egg, letting air rush in through a giant split in the ceiling and side as the plane spun wildly on an up-down clockwise axis, spiraling across the grass and tearing deep donuts in the soil until finally it-
Stopped.
Anna let out a gasp. A warm breeze drifted in through the gouge in the roof. The engine still ticked, cooling. Otherwise the world was silent.
She looked sideways at Peters, who was rubbing his eyes. She turned and saw Ravi and Jake lifting their heads.
They were alive. Her second crash landing.
"You are getting better at this," Peters said.
"No explosion," Jake managed, his voice tight. "I like it."
They were alive. The Pilatus was wrecked. They weren't going to California any time soon, not with both pilots here and the only other workable plane back in Istanbul.
It meant Amo was on his own. It meant she was going to have to sort out Bordeaux from the ground. And the army of the dead was coming for them already.
"Everybody up!" she ordered, slapping off her belt and getting to her feet. The cockpit rocked precariously. "We've done this before. We're on shepherding duty, and we need to do this now."
9. THE FIRST LAW
Lara woke with afterimages glowing across her vision, of Cerulean, Anna, and the great white eye. The events of the day before were like a raw wound, and her head throbbed with a pulse that made her whole body tremble. She felt sick and feverish, her body fatigued and her muscles aching.
She studied the contours of just another RV in the dark. It was no great surprise when she saw Cerulean sitting on a plastic chair by the sleek silver cupboards, lit in faint profile by a dim electric glow coming down through the roof skylight. The sound of voices outside came to her, a steady pattering, muffled as though rising through a layer of water.
She moved to get up but the pain held her flat to the bed.
Cerulean shifted forward, watching as if she were the end stage of a fascinating experiment.
"Robert," she whispered.
"Told you," he said.
"Told me what?" she whispered, barely making a sound. Now she could make out the line of blood circled round his throat, where he'd cut his own head off. In the dark and the yellowish glow it made him look demonic.
"Amo," he said softly, though his voice didn't quite match the movement of his lips. "He's not here."
"He'll come."
Robert shook his head. "No. You won't see him ever again, Lara. Not until you're willing to do what you should have done a long time ago."
She gazed at him, and he leaned closer. In the wan light the blood round his neck glistened. She realized it was pumping still, a low and steady flow on all sides, spreading its darkness down his dark skin and bleeding into his polo shirt.
"What?" she managed. "Do what?"
His eyes glowed white. "Face your demons, sweetheart. Face them down, and take what you get."
She stared at him. He'd died, facing his demons. He'd become one and died. "I don't have any."
He smiled. "No? Then all this leads to nothing."
He held her gaze long enough for his eyes to turn black, pumped full of darkness as though squirted by a squid.
* * *
In the morning Matthew Drake came for her. She felt him approaching in her thin, wispy dreams even before the RV's lock beeped and the bolts clanked open; a demon striding through smoke, bringing a knotted heat and cold to her belly.
She'd never felt so drained, coming to in the hot, narrow bed, but she forced herself to sit up. Her ears still rang and nausea swam with the pain in her head.
The door opened and the RV's frame shook as he boarded. The smell of bitter old smoke came with him, mingling with the salt breeze of the sea. His footsteps brought him over, until Matthew Drake stood over her.
He was a huge man, dressed in blue jeans and a dark jacket with intense blue eyes, but at least he was just a man.
He gazed down at her. He let his gaze linger. He held out a glass of water which she didn't take, though she was parched.
"You're not going to say anything now?" he asked.
She just looked at him. This was different. He looked like he hadn't slept, but he wasn't tired. Worn, perhaps, though buzzing with a feverish energy. Presumably he'd spent the day and night consolidating his control on New LA. Had he come to toy with her? If she had the strength she would snatch the gun from his belt and shoot him through the gut.
"Yesterday you were so talkative. I thought you'd let me have it with both barrels today."
His amusement repelled her. Perhaps it scared her. She tried to speak, but her throat was too dry, so she took the water and drank. There was no point standing on pride, especially after her unconditional surrender. The cool water felt wonderful down her hot throat.
Finally she spoke. "How many of my people are dead? Are my children alive?"
The joy tamped down in his eyes. This at least he took seriously. "Five of your people are dead. Your children are safe, they weren't on the RV."
She couldn't stop the relief showing on her face. She was too weary still. Of all the fears she'd ever felt, that was the worst. But the relief was followed instantly by guilt, which he must have read on her face too.
"A great shame for so many to die," he said. "But then Amo didn't listen. I warned him."
She would have argued but she didn't have the strength. Whatever Amo did or said, whatever had been going on before she woke to the blast, it was clear this was the reality Drake intended to propagate. Amo was to blame.
"What do you need from me?"
He smiled. "You're direct. I like that."
Lara imagined the mess his intestines would make, blown across the shiny silver cupboards.
He squatted down, bringing his face close to hers. "I'll be direct too. I mean to apologize to you, for how I behaved yesterday. Of course for the blast and your dead people, I was sorry long before I ordered it. The First Law can be a cruel master. I'm also sorry for how I treated your husband. I'm not a violent man, though I can't imagine you'll believe that. He had just shot me, if that provides any consideration. Here." He peeled his jacket back a little, revealing bandages. "But the doctor says I'll be fine, and your Amo too. He's alive and just as angry as you."
Lara couldn't keep her eyes from flashing dangerously. He read it easily.
"There. Yes. I'm not blind. I've done this before, and it always starts with anger. It's fascinating. Let me ask you a question that's been on my mind for a month. Was Lars Mecklarin really in that bunker, in Maine?"
That surprised her. Lars Mecklarin?
"Why?"
He shrugged, then winced at the obvious pain it caused. "Mecklarin was something of a guru to me, when I started the Laws. So strange to imagine he survived the infection. Well..." He paused, then mimed shooting himself in the head with a whispered 'boom'. "For a while, anyway. We can talk about it, when you're ready. I know you think you won't, that you'll resist to the
hilt, but trust me, you'll come around. Every sensible person does, in the end. So let me ask another question. Do you know what the worst part of solitary confinement is, Lara?"
She gritted her teeth. One grab and she'd have his gun. One squeeze and he'd be dead.
"It's not the loneliness, not really. You can get used to being alone. We all survived the apocalypse, and we didn't all kill ourselves. I knew just one who did. Myra." He paused for a respectful silence. "Your Sophia was another. Some of that was loneliness, of course. We're hardwired to want socialization." He grinned. "I buy my coffee in the shop. I talk to the barista. I feel good."
Her eyes flashed again, and he let his smile fade. "But what are social needs? Are they like oxygen or food? Not exactly. Have you heard of the artist Ai Wei Wei? A Chinese man, he made art that challenged the government's authority. As one punishment they put him in a cell with two guards whose only job was to stare at him at all times. They stared when he slept and when he showered, when he ate and when he sat on the toilet. He wasn't alone, but still he said it was the worst experience of his life. Why?"
He waited. She gave nothing.
"They took away his ability to meaningfully impact the world," he said, "and in so doing, they denied him a sense of self. Think about it. When we take an action or speak to another person, when we build something or destroy something, birth someone or kill someone, the ripples go out in the real world, and it's in those ripples that we see who we are. We see that we are real, we have an impact, we matter. The Chinese government denied much of that to Ai Wei Wei, and it nearly broke him. It's a kind of mental torture, to know the world is going on without you. It doesn't miss you. It doesn't even know you exist."
He paused. "We all felt it to some degree, after the zombies came. We lost many of the ripples we'd grown used to making; our jobs, our friends, our coffee." He smiled. "Some of us adapted, found other ways to get our meaningful interaction. For me there was the First Law. For Amo, he painted on buildings and made a comic. What did you do, Lara, to keep yourself alive?"
He waited. She stared. He pulled up a chair and sat.
"Lots of people sank into their own pasts. They read old diaries and books. They watched old movies. They mined the past for all the ripples they could squeeze out of it, until after a time it was all gone. Were you one of those? Perhaps. I never went home; the memories would only hurt. I wanted the future right from the beginning. But you people here?" He gestured to the walls around them. "You've been living off old stories for a decade. You've become expert at sucking out the marrow. Look at this obsession with the bunkers, with trying to make a cure. I pity it, really. It's a childish kind of denial. Even the ridiculous belief in demons, that the zombies won't hurt you, that they are actually trying to protect you. It's laughable. How is that any different from a child hugging its teddy bear close, and asking Daddy to leave the night light on?"
Zombie Ocean (Book 6): The Laws Page 22