Zombie Ocean (Book 3): The Least

by Michael John Grist

  Everyone except Julio. Cerulean caught glimpses of him, in between taking snippets of coffee lessons from Lara and guiding Anna in arranging the plates and napkins. He was standing at the doors with his back to them, looking out of the glass as if at any moment he thought an attack was coming.

  Cerulean looked away. Screw him, if he couldn't enjoy the best moment any of them had had in the new world.

  * * *

  They set up makeshift camp beds for everyone in one of the theaters, laid out along the rows of seats like bunks in a dorm room. Anna was on the same row as Cerulean and Masako, then Jake and Cynthia below, Amo and Lara above, and Julio off at the back on his own.

  Cerulean, Masako and Anna retired first, followed by Jake and Cynthia hours later, long after Masako and Anna were deep asleep. They wobbled down the aisle arm in arm, lit by yellow glow-in-the-dark nightlights left lying near the exits, shushing each other, abundantly drunk and giggling at every misstep.

  Cerulean waited, lying in his clothes with his wheelchair nearby. Soon enough Jake and Cynthia had shushed each other so much they fell asleep, mercifully in separate beds. Amo and Lara followed, whispering and laughing too. They set what was probably a wine bottle on the floor unevenly and it tipped and spilled across the floor with a clank and shush.

  Soon enough they too fell asleep. Still Cerulean waited, until there was a sound at the top of the theater and Julio stalked in. By his footsteps Cerulean could tell he was drunk as well. He fumbled his way to his cot and flumped into it.

  When finally he was asleep, and the theater was filled with the soft, ocean-like hiss of breathing, Cerulean slipped carefully from his bed and into his chair. He rolled along the row, using a small flashlight to identify Amo, then reached over and tapped him. His groggy face stirred.

  "Come on," Cerulean whispered.

  "Oh?" Amo said. "OK."

  He creaked out of bed and Cerulean led him out.

  They sat in the lobby, watching the door to the bedroom theater, drinking water out of bottles.

  "It really is good to see you," Amo said.

  Cerulean smiled back at him, genuinely happy. This was the same Amo who'd built the Yangtze darkness, who'd most likely initiated the zombie apocalypse, who'd committed awesome crimes then tried to atone with a trail of hope across the country.

  His grin was goofy and wolfish. He was clearly drunk and happy. He was a comic boo artist done very good.

  "We have to talk," Cerulean said.

  "I figured. Shoot."

  Cerulean wondered where to start. First things first. "What do you make of Julio?" he asked.

  Amo sobered a little. "The quiet one? Julio, watching the doors, nice Mustang." He rubbed his chin. "He's in there now?"

  Cerulean nodded. Amo was tough, after what he'd been through there was no doubt of that, but he was trusting. He'd done terrible things, he'd killed a man, but he hadn't been in Maine when the guns turned on their own.

  "He is. He came last. He's sleeping at the back."

  Amo frowned. "And you're worried."

  "He doesn't fit in. I don't know if it's anything, but he pulled a gun on us when we first met. I knocked him down. We haven't seen eye to eye since."

  Amo raised an eyebrow. "Knocked him down? From the wheelchair?"

  Cerulean shrugged. "I'm strong."

  Amo nodded. "Olympic diver, OK. So we'll watch him. Enough?"

  Cerulean shook his head. "There's more."

  "Go ahead. I want to hear it. I've been thinking about you and what you must have been doing ever since Iowa, when I realized you had to be alive. Where did you go, what did you do?"

  So Cerulean told him. Not all of it, not about finding him in New York, because that seemed too much, but about Maine, the gun tower, and Matthew.

  Amo's face was pale when he finished. "They just shot him. Did they think he was one of the ocean? Why else would they do that?"

  Cerulean smiled at that: 'one of the ocean' was so much nicer than 'zombie'. "No chance," he said. "They didn't shoot me, and I looked more like one of the ocean than the zombies did. Matthew drove up in a yellow RV, he ran out calling out, and whoever was controlling that gun tower shot him."

  Amo considered. "But not you?"

  "Not me. I don't know why."

  Amo blinked and rubbed his eyes. "Things to think about. To manage. We can talk about it tomorrow."

  "Tomorrow?"

  Amo nodded. "There's a schedule planned. Meetings. Discussions. Plans and maps, more cairns, restarting civilization, you know how it is. Of course there's a screening time for Ragnarok III too, mandatory for all survivors. It's full of good prepper tips."

  "You've got it all planned, huh?"

  Amo grinned. "A plan, at least. I've no idea how it'll turn out."

  "Good."

  They looked at each for a moment. Amo smiled, then tapped Cerulean on the knee. "And now you're a father?"

  That surprised him, and he laughed. "I don't, I mean… Yeah. I suppose so."

  "And Masako? That's all you, right?"

  He laughed again. "Yeah, I guess. After the Iowa cairn."

  Amo's eyes widened. "After Iowa? Damn. I never thought that comic was romantic."

  Cerulean shrugged. "What about you and Lara?"

  "Well yes, Lara and I, yes. Father and mother of the apocalypse, I've heard. It weighs heavy, but I think I bear it well."

  "You do. You look good together."

  "Thanks, man. You too."

  Cerulean smiled. There were things unsaid still, about his suicide in New York, but that could wait for another time. Now he needed Amo happy and proud, ready to lead these people forward into hope.

  "We should sleep," he said.

  "Agreed," said Amo. "We've got the rest of our lives to do this."

  * * *

  Hours later he woke to Anna scrambling up by his side. It was just as dark as before.

  "Robert," she whispered, "I think I peed on myself."

  He rolled over to look at her. The nightlights were very faint now, illuminating no more than the outer curve of her face. Of course. All that trauma, held for so long, and now to just let it go at once?

  He pulled her in, embracing her despite the wetness and faint tang of ammonia.

  "Let's get you sorted out, sweetie," he said, and rolled with her into his chair.

  Heading up the aisle, the air smelt of stale wine and popcorn and piss. On the way past the back row he saw Julio lying there lit by the glow of his cell phone, staring back.

  Outside it was morning and hot already, with light flooding in through the floor to ceiling windows in the lobby. The red carpet was a mess, with bottles, cans and greasy paper plates scattered everywhere. In the courtyard the ocean breeze was fresh, and Anna pointed sleepily out to the horizon.

  "My Daddy's out there," she said.

  "I know, sweetie."

  They got spare clothes and washed her up using the shower in the RV. When she came out, after spending five minutes dashing around the RV completely naked, laughing and rebuffing Cerulean's every effort to wrap her in a towel, she got dressed in jean-shorts and a red T-shirt.

  "We're going to be OK, aren't we?" she asked him, very sincerely.

  He nodded sagely back. He was only 23, but now this fell to him. A week ago he'd been ready to die.

  "We're going to be just fine. Like superheroes, all of us."

  She gave him a pitying look. "What superhero sits in a wheelchair?"

  He laughed. She laughed too, then hopped into his lap.

  "A few actually," he said, starting to roll back to the Theater. "Professor X, he's very powerful, and…"

  * * *

  The day went like clockwork, much like Amo predicted. He had plans, agendas and everything. There was a room for the meeting, a duty for clean up, PowerPoint slides, maps, ideas.

  Everyone gathered in the meeting hall in back of the screens, where great natural light through skylight windows floodlit a big conference table, after a b
reakfast of leftovers and some time spent cleaning up the lobby.

  Amo led them through a short PowerPoint presentation he'd put together, outlining his plans for the future. He wanted to build in more ways than Cerulean had even thought about until then. First there were the cairns: he envisioned a network of them spreading across the country, huge images stuck to buildings all pointing toward LA, with maps and RVs, with digital transmission radios and live uplinks to LA, but that was just the beginning.

  He wanted to build up LA into a truly sustainable community, with enough people to rebuild the human race. It was grand talk. To that end they'd need not only every survivor from the USA, but Canada, Mexico, all of South America, Europe, the whole world. New LA would have to become a shining beacon for them all.

  He also wanted to restart the Internet. He wanted to restart power stations and factories, get planes in the sky, start communicating with satellites again, and in short bring all of it back.

  Cerulean sat in the audience of seven, feeling floored. Anna was fussing with her phone in her lap, tugging at his pant leg, but he couldn't turn away from Amo's ambition.

  When the last slide was done Amo looked over them and smiled.

  "I wanted to tell you this early. I know it's probably not protocol, to welcome survivors in and ask them to start work at once." There was a laugh at that. "And who am I to ask anything? Well, you're all here. You've seen my work." He gestured to Lara. "Our work. Now I'm hoping you'll want to be part of it. Can you imagine how many people are out there still, alone like you were? How many people are still fighting the ocean like an enemy? How many broken people are there, like Don, that we might be able to save?"

  He let that stand for a moment. Julio shuffled uncomfortably in his seat, but didn't interrupt.

  "I'm for people," Amo said, in closing. "Judging by everything I've seen, you are too. I'm overjoyed you're all here, I'm overjoyed to meet you, and to see you safe and happy. But I want more. More people, more joy, more of us, and less people struggling on alone out there. That's it, the whole pitch. Will you help me?"

  A long silence followed. Cerulean would have been stunned, except Anna kept drumming loudly on his knees and whispering, "You don't even feel this? Not this?"

  Then Jake stood up and started to clap. Cynthia followed him up, Lara, Masako too, and Cerulean applauded from his chair. Amo's eyes shone.

  So followed a long discussion of everything that had to be done. Now Amo mostly sat back and let Lara or one of the others manage the debate.

  Cerulean dived in as best he could, with Anna getting increasingly bored on his lap. Of course they needed better places to stay than the Theater, working faucets and running hot water, electricity, supplies.

  Amo started throwing up PowerPoint slides as he made them, listing tasks and timelines and duties, each according to their skills, with a calendar for that day and the next, a week later, a month, a year.

  "Stretch goals," Jake said, "like Kickstarter."

  Amo logged them on the screen.

  - Restart the Internet

  - Make utopia

  - Film Ragnarok IV

  - Wrap the world in loving communications arms

  They chuckled and went on. Everybody was getting into it, except Julio, who sat back and watched with a smug look on his face, like there was some secret only he knew.

  At one point Masako raised the issue of Anna, using code to talk about her as 'Muffet'. She'd have to be schooled, cared for, looked after at all times. Cerulean added that she was tough, she wasn't like normal five-year-olds, and that he would be proud to stand in as her adopted father.

  Amo gave him a thumbs up, and that was that.

  They were about to break for a late lunch, and Jake was leading them in an impromptu second round of applause, when Julio spoke up.

  "What about security?" he called in a loud voice, a moment before the clapping had wound down naturally.

  Everyone turned to look at him.

  "Security's a part of it," Amo said. "We talked about that."

  Julio scoffed. "Do you think? Then who was watching the doors last night, while everyone got drunk and partied? Who stood guard while you all slept?"

  Not you, thought Cerulean, you slept like the rest of us, but he thought better of saying it. The others sat themselves again awkwardly.

  "I did," said Julio. His eyes were burning now, with the same put-upon, neglected rage of before. Already these people were not respecting him enough. "I watched. How many people in here are armed? Just me? We're going to be soft meat when they come."

  Amo cocked his head. Cerulean winced, hoping he'd handle it well.

  "When who comes?"

  "Whoever! Cannibals, rapists, the lot. You said your Don, he was raping the zombies? I know there are men like him out there. I've seen them. I killed one too."

  This caused a silence.

  "You killed a person?" Amo asked.

  Cerulean noticed Lara inching a gun out of her waistband. Julio was too fixed on Amo to notice.

  "Damn right I did. We've all got a history here, but nobody asked me about mine."

  Cerulean knew for a fact that wasn't true. He'd asked several times, as had Jake, Lara, even Amo himself. Perhaps he hadn't asked with enough respect.

  "He came at me in the night, in Cleveland, and tried to steal my radio. I was listening to music, I was asleep, and he came at me. It was only days after the apocalypse, when none of us knew what was happening."

  Here Julio hawked and spat, right on the floor. "Goddamn looters. I fought, of course. I didn't have a gun then, so I had to club in his brains. Do you know what that feels like, to get brains on your fists?"

  He was getting heated. His face was flushed. Cerulean wanted to say, "Do you know what it feels like on your face?" or, "So that's why you had us running round Cleveland for three days?" or even, "What human would want to steal your radio? It sounds like a zombie to me."

  He didn't say any of it though. Instead he listened as the conversation devolved into Julio demanding more attention be given to building a silo of weapons, more effort diverted to building defenses and keeping watch like a military camp, more manpower assigned to running patrols.

  And once he got running the truth came out. By and large, his vision was the opposite of Amo's. He wanted to retrench and tear the cairns down, or at worst send other survivors to some neutral screening area, like a refugee camp. "We shouldn't be giving out our home location," he hissed. "Have you any idea how lucky we are to be here, and not one psycho amongst us?"

  Lara exchanged a meaningful glance with Cerulean.

  That was enough. Anna was frowning in his lap, listening to Julio's anger with a frown.

  "Come on, you," he said, and rolled out of the conference room.

  18. JULIO

  They went along the Walk of Fame, Anna scuffing her feet off each of the shiny gold stars and putting her hands in some of the handprints of long-dead actors. Cerulean tried to explain the conference but she wasn't too interested, so instead they talked about Alice and told each other nonsense riddles.

  On the walk back he told her they'd decided he would be her parent, if that was OK with her. She was curious but accepted it with a smile.

  When they came back to the theater things were moving. Amo and Lara had clipboards, while Jake, Masako, Cynthia and even Julio were setting about various tasks.

  "He's going to gather munitions and set up a war room," Amo said to Cerulean through gritted teeth, pulling him to one side. "And see if he can find a tank."

  Cerulean raised an eyebrow, not sure if he should laugh or be worried. "A tank?"

  Amo nodded. "He's a prize, that one. What are we going to do with a tank?"

  "Stage a coup d'état? Damn. So he'll have all the guns?"

  "Not by a long shot. Lara and I are armed. You are?" Cerulean shook his head. "You should be. Look, take this."

  Amo reached into one of his cargo pockets and palmed a black pistol into Cerulean's l
ap. "Tuck it down the side or something."

  "What am I going to do with this?"

  "Shoot him, if you have to," Amo said. "I've told the others too. But I'm sure it won't come to that."

  Then Amo was away, coordinating an effort to fetch and bring a gas tanker round so they'd save time on the run for fuel. Lara strode over as Cerulean tucked the black gun down beside his withered thigh. Anna was still standing by his side, holding to the armrest.

  "Hey Anna," Lara said. "Are you game for some coloring in?"

  Anna beamed. "Yes Lara I'd love that," she said, like a good little girl, with none of her customary cheekiness. Cerulean snorted. She still had Amo and Lara up on a pedestal.

  "Why don't we do that, so Cerulean can get on with gathering supplies."

  "You should call him Daddy, he's my Daddy now."

  Cerulean winced, but Lara took it in her stride, winking at him and mouthing. "Give you a break."

  "Thanks," he mouthed back. Anna waved as she was led away.

  * * *

  For two days they worked. Cerulean was tasked with finding a good hotel nearby that had ground-floor apartments where they could set up running hot water and power. There were lots to choose from, but he narrowed it down fast, working with Lara.

  The rest of the time he looked after Anna, and they played games, or strolled along the hot beach and talked, or raced along crowded avenues. Whenever they came across members of the ocean Anna ran over and stopped to offer them advice.

  "Right that way," she'd say and point to the water. "My Daddy's out there, waiting for you. You can't go wrong."

  Then she'd skip back and take hold of the armrest and on they'd go.

  They erected a water tower, which didn't work, so they erected another which did, using a crane Amo found to set it in position atop the Chinese Theater's roof. They sourced more air-conditioners and wired them to generators, set up fridges in one of the theaters to serve as a communal mess hall, gathered a wide range of canned food while Cynthia drove up to the nearest green space, a golf course off Federation Drive, and started tilling it with Amo's JCB, rigged with a makeshift tiller.