Zombie Ocean (Book 3): The Least

by Michael John Grist

  The walls of corridors passed by fast, then BANG-

  He spilled into the golden lobby, now flooded with the undead; Amo's tables were lost within their bulk, the Nespresso machines buried along with their shiny egg-pods, but there before the high name board, teetering on the top rung of a ladder like a terrified child about to make her first dive, stood a beautiful Asian woman holding a gun.

  Robert stared up at her as the tide of bodies carried him on.

  She wore jeans and a white vest with a silver pendant round her neck. The gun was black and snub like the ones atop Amo's RV, and she was waving it desperately around the flooded hall. She had black hair in a ponytail and her eyes were wild and frenzied, but in that wildness there was a bright and shining life.

  The sight of her punched him hard in the heart. She was his first human in months to not die or turn into a zombie within seconds. He stared and stared.

  BANG

  She shot a zombie at point blank range as it crawled up the ladder rungs, but others followed and she aimed the gun again.

  Robert shook himself out of his daze.

  "Stop shooting them!" he shouted. "It's making them angry."

  He was somewhere above the laptop desks now, paddling toward her with all his strength. She heard and spun to see him. Her eyes went wider, she raised the gun, and he almost laughed ay her puzzled expression. It must have been quite a sight to see, some guy crawling across the top the dead.

  "I'm alive!" he shouted, holding up his arms. This caused his face to drop hard against a shoulder, bloodying his nose, so he hunkered up onto his elbows. "I'm alive," he went on, "just stop shooting them, noise riles them up. Hang still and I'm coming over."

  She looked like she was about to faint, almost as pale as the zombies. The gun had gone slack in her hand and she stared as he swam over.

  "It's all right," he cooed up at her, "just keep calm."

  When he reached the ladder he gently pushed the climbing zombies away, and they let him. The wonder on her face was priceless.

  "They don't want to hurt us," he explained, and pulled himself onto one of the rungs, settling himself in position to ward off any more climbing zombies. "Not normally, anyway. I promise you, you don't need that gun."

  She made a sound that might have been a word but came out like gargling. Robert pushed another zealous zombie gently on the forehead, guiding it away. It let itself be tipped back into the throng. He pushed a few more, then they stopped trying to climb past him.

  The militant sound in their breathing shifted, becoming softer again. The storm of their footsteps dissipated back into the trudging patter of rain on the roof.

  "You see?" Robert said, waving an arm soothingly. "Move along folks, nothing to see here."

  They moved along. The lobby settled as they went back to flowing by and out onto the street. Robert looked up at the Asian lady. The expression on her pretty, sharp face shifted between confusion and terror. She probably thought he was magic. The zombie whisperer. He reached a hand up toward her.

  "Hi, I'm Cerulean."

  He hadn't even meant to say that. He hadn't thought of himself as Cerulean for months, but now it came out easily. Cerulean was a strong man, he was brave and he saved people, and that's what this woman needed now.

  It was like slipping into his Deepcraft avatar, and he found himself grinning.

  "I'm Masako," the woman said, and shook his hand.

  * * *

  The zombies moved on, while Cerulean explained. He even caught one by the arm and held it out for her to stroke.

  "I don't believe it," Masako said, as she gingerly touched its papery skin.

  "Believe it. They haven't hurt me yet."

  Her eyes were still a little glazed over, but the shock was fading now.

  "So you thought they were killers all this time?" he asked.

  "I saw them kill," she said, her voice tight but controlled with a light Brooklyn accent, her eyes not on him but still watching them nervously, tracking any that came too close.. "They killed a man in Queens on the first night, right out on the street. He was running and shooting and they ripped him to rags."

  Cerulean nodded. "I guess that's a defensive reaction. If you don't attack them they're calm. Friendly even, like dogs."

  Now her eyes focused on him. It seemed like she was seeing him for the first time.

  "Did you swim in?" She pointed in a zigzag line from the corridor entrance to where they were sitting under the name board. "Did you crawl on their heads?"

  He shrugged. "It was the only way."

  Her delicate lips quirked into a slight smile. "I felt sure I was dreaming it. I almost shot you."

  "I'm glad you didn't."

  "I've never seen anything like that. It was amazing. How did you know they wouldn't hurt you?"

  He smiled. It was a good question. "I woke with them around me," he said, then went on to tell the rest of it, though he left out the worst bits, like Amo's suicide and the gun tower in Maine. Without those it seemed like just a lot of crawling.

  "Then you came back to New York," Masako prompted.

  "For Amo. I wanted to bury him." He didn't want to mention his dive.

  Masako scratched her face. A few lines of dark hair had pulled out of the knot high on the back of her head and stuck to her narrow tanned face. She was pretty.

  "Then you saw the big F and came here."

  Cerulean frowned. "What big F?"

  She frowned back. "You're kidding, right? The big F painted on the top of this building? That your friend Amo put there?"

  It didn't make sense and he looked at her blankly. "F?"

  "F for Facebook, you know? He did the symbol on all sides, blue and white. You really didn't see it?"

  He smiled as he grasped it. Now all the paint cans in the stairwell made sense. It meant Amo really had gone big, choosing a symbol that anyone would understand, that couldn't possibly have been there before the world ended. He'd put up a flag for the whole world to see.

  A blush of pride ran through him.

  "I just came for the view," he said. "I didn't see it."

  Masako narrowed her eyes at him. "Climb fifty-odd floors for the view?"

  He shrugged and looked around. The zombies were starting to dissipate, and he didn't want to pursue this conversation any further.

  "I'm going for my wheelchair," he said, "I'll be back in a minute."

  He slid down the rungs, slid onto his side on the cool lobby floor, then began to crawl. The marble was cool and it was easy enough to weave between the moving bodies, like dodgem cars.

  "You don't have to-" Masako said, then stopped. He turned to look up at her.

  "Don't have to what?"

  "I mean," she paused awkwardly. "I didn't realize. Your legs, you know. You don't have to crawl."

  He looked down at himself. Yes, he was crawling, that was true. He hadn't thought about it really, not since waking up in his basement. It was true though, paraplegics weren't often crawling around in the old world, were they? That was a kind of taboo.

  "How would I get my wheelchair then?" he asked.

  She came down the rungs of the ladder tentatively, still skittish as the dead went by. "I could get it."

  Ah. He hadn't considered that. "You could, but why shouldn't I get it myself?"

  She didn't have an answer for that. Obviously she wanted to say it was embarrassing to crawl on your belly like a slug or something similar, but what did that even mean now?

  "Walk with me, if you like," he said, and smiled.

  She did.

  * * *

  They ate a meal of warmed-up hotdogs and beans over Masako's gas camping stove; his first hot meal since it began, served on an actual plate. They lay down in the lobby on bedding she found in a storage closet, gradually growing bolder as zombies failed to attack. They lay there and talked about the big F and Amo's California plan and each other.

  Masako was from Brooklyn, a teaching assistant at the University there.
For the last two months she'd hidden in her apartment, reading books and watching out of her window. She'd only gone out after she ran out of food, then saw the big F and planned her trip over for three days.

  Cerulean put his arm around her as it got dark outside, and she nestled in to his side; just two survivors together. She fell asleep easily, but Robert lay in the still dark of the lobby, looking up at the ceiling. By now he would've reached the top and dived.

  Nothing had changed.

  Masako was sweet, but she didn't scratch the surface of the emptiness inside him. At the same time he couldn't just leave her. That wasn't something he could live with, or die with.

  So he would deliver her to Amo. Then he would dive.

  14. SURVIVORS

  The next day all the zombies were gone.

  Together they tidied up Amo's goodies, scattered across the floor by the zombie flood.

  "Why the coffee?" Masako asked.

  Cerulean looked up. She was handling one of the shiny Nespresso pods.

  "Lara was a barista?" he offered. "It's a kind of in-joke, I suppose. Other than that, I think he wants us to feel like the old world is still here, only shifted. We can have luxury if we want."

  "I don't even know how to use this thing," Masako said, tapping the coffee machine and giving him a shy smile. He didn't know either, but that was his cue. He went over and figured it out, slotting the pod in and puncturing the seal, running the process with a mug waiting underneath.

  "Good thing it runs on powdered milk," he said. "I don't know when we'll have real milk again."

  The air filled with the smell of brewing coffee as the machine percolated water and milk powder through its innards. It almost eclipsed the smell of gasoline in the air, though it did nothing to counter the loud buzz of the generator, connected by a long orange power line.

  Amo had thought of everything.

  They sipped coffee and studied Amo's maps. He'd laid out a route leading west across the northern states, culminating in Los Angeles. Cerulean could feel the excitement growing in Masako, from her excited tone and the way she skipped around and kept touching his shoulders lightly. These tastes of the old world probably felt more natural to her, like a welcome home. She'd never even left her room, let alone the city. She hadn't dragged herself through blood and guts, through mud and falling bodies. She hadn't seen Amo die, or Matthew.

  He marked Las Vegas in his mind. That's where he'd leave her. She could go the rest of the way on her own; he didn't owe her any more than that.

  Still, he got caught up in the excitement of planning their voyage. You couldn't wear an avatar and be fake the whole time, since Cerulean was him just as much as Robert underneath. Travelling across the country was exciting, that was undeniable.

  Amo had parked ten neat blue and white RVs in the Empire State Building's underground car park. He'd even painted the bays with names, and they chose-

  Lincoln

  The name was also stenciled neatly on the RV's side. That instilled pride. He brushed off the similarity to Matthew's RV. At least this one wasn't bright yellow.

  "How do you drive?" Masako asked, as they finished looking over the vehicle. There was nothing to load, not even gas, since Amo had done it all for them.

  He held up two mop handles from a broom cupboard. They would serve as his whiffle bats. "I push the pedals with these. Then I drive."

  She nodded. "Would you take us out, then? I hate driving in the city."

  They both laughed at that. He appreciated it, even if it was slightly patronizing. She was trying to build him up into the heroic male she needed, and for a time at least he could go along.

  They rolled up and out of the parking lot into a beautiful, hot summer's day. On 5th Avenue there was a big arrow painted on the asphalt, pointing left.

  Cerulean laughed. This was going to be easy.

  Another arrow guided them left onto West 34th Street, which lay ahead completely cleared of vehicles. Cars and trucks lined the route like barricades at a ticker tape parade, with gatherings of white-eyed people behind them, waving them on.

  "This is amazing," Masako said quietly as they rolled by. "Amo did all this?"

  Cerulean pushed the mop-pedal down and New York blurred by. At some point Masako leaned over and turned the stereo on. The sudden blare of music, something by the Beatles, filled up the cab. Here Comes the Sun.

  He hadn't listened to music for a year and three months. He bobbed his head and tapped the steering wheel like a real person, while Masako began to sing.

  Lincoln tunnel was clear. He couldn't believe it, but there it was. The whole tunnel, so clogged with traffic when he'd come by a month or so earlier, was empty.

  Masako was laughing about Amo now.

  "He's like some kind of god," she whispered as they rolled through the dark tunnel. "You said he was a comic book artist?"

  "Zombie comic books," Cerulean said. "His last project was a tower of them in Times Square."

  That delighted her.

  They emerged up from the tunnel and followed the arrows laid down on the road, through a broken tollbooth and up a circling onramp to the 495. At a corner looking back over Manhattan Cerulean pulled the RV to a stop and they surveyed the city they'd left behind.

  "Wow," Masako said.

  The big 'f' was there, painted proud across the top ten floors of the Empire State Building. Robert had to tip his hat to Amo. He'd really remade the world.

  * * *

  The roads were clear to the I-80, and on it they zoomed through New Jersey. Air rushed in through the open windows hot and sweet and green, as to either side the suburbs faded into forest, fields and creeks. There were yellow wildflowers everywhere; on the highway verge, in the fields, springing up down the central boundary grass.

  They passed a large troop of the dead roaming on the right, mute as wildebeest stalking the prairies.

  "Where are they going?" Masako asked, watching until they fell out of sight.

  Cerulean shrugged. He'd seen them going west, and going north, and heading towards him. It didn't add up to much. "Just walking."

  Beatles tracks played on the stereo and little towns flew by, all picket fences and historical old restaurants, windmills painted Shaker white and blue, churches with inspirational messages out front. Here and there lay crunched cars, shoved off to the side.

  In two hours they were clear across New Jersey and entering Pennsylvania through a forest of red maples, then as they climbed to cross a low bridge over a wide creek, there was a white line painted in a broad stripe across the road. Cerulean slowed down. Off to the side lay a semi trailer and cab with a single word painted on its side in large letters.

  SORRY

  Cerulean pulled the RV over. They both got out, Masako helping him with the wheelchair, and went to investigate.

  Painted near the thick white stripe there was a message.

  Sophia – RIP

  06 / 11 / 2018

  I should have reached you in time

  LMA

  They looked at each other and said nothing.

  In the back of the semi they found a noose hanging ominously from the roof, and a living space with a bed, sofa, TV and generator. Cerulean hauled himself in and Masako followed.

  There was a diary on a coffee table next to three burnt-down spliffs, which detailed the misery of a young trainee doctor called Sophia. Cerulean and Masako sat side-by-side on the sofa like a couple looking at a wedding album, reading about a lonely life that culminated in suicide.

  Her entries were a fluctuating mix of fatalism and optimism, at times detailing her theories about the infection. Her goal was to find an electron microscope and study 'living' infected cells, with the dream of curing the world.

  Her final entry was:

  Sorry,

  I wish I could do this. I feel like I'm letting you down. But I can't do it anymore.

  "She hung herself," Masako said, her voice thick with emotion. "Poor girl."

  Cer
ulean pointed at a second batch of writing underneath Sophia's last entry, penned in red ink in a different hand.

  You're all right now, Sophia. We're taking care of you. You are an important trailhead on the way out West. Your death was not for nothing and you will not be forgotten. I wish I'd known you, you sound like a lovely girl.

  Thank you.

  "Lara wrote that," Cerulean said, pointing at her signature in block capitals. He flicked back through the diary, pointing at numerous other places where Lara had annotated Sophia's most miserable moments with kind words and support, the kind of things that might have saved her life if she'd heard them in time.

  Masako was crying. "It's beautiful," she said. "Don't you think so?"

  He wasn't crying. He could see the beauty in it, and the hope, but it didn't affect him like it did her. Sophia was still dead. Matthew was still dead. It was good to chew down all the pain, chomp it into palatable bits in the past, but that wasn't what was real.

  What was real was the dive. Diving into the truth and letting it wash all over you, down into your lungs. Hanging there in the semi-trailer's mouth was beautiful. Making that choice was the right thing for Sophia, because this wasn't the world for her.

  "It's beautiful," he agreed.

  Masako wanted to write something. They discussed it briefly, then she wrote it neatly and clearly on the next page over, like a log book.

  We're coming, Lara, and Amo, and Sophia. We're right behind you. We'll see you in Los Angeles.

  Masako and Cerulean.

  They drove on.

  * * *

  They saw a woman by the roadside at the edge of Pennsylvania, lurking by a small fire in a dense patch of pine forest just out of Grove City. She was old and weathered, dressed in denim stonewash dungarees with wrinkled skin and a shotgun over her shoulder.

  They pulled up and she leveled it at them.

  "I can keep driving, if you like," Cerulean called out of the open window. "It's just two of us. I'm in a wheelchair, my name's Cerulean. This is Masako."

  The woman hawked and spat. "Wheelchair? Let's see that."