Zombie Ocean (Book 3): The Least

by Michael John Grist

  "Potatoes," she said afterwards, covered in smeary dirt and sweat, staggering with Masako's help back into the Theater lobby as dusk fell. "Two hundred of the little bastards, root and eye, best calorie source there is in nature."

  Cerulean had just got back from an arduous day re-fuelling and driving cars and trucks and semis off the roads they planned to use, lining them up in barricades to steer the ocean away.

  "We're not short of calories," he said, weary himself. "All of Los Angeles' bounty is at our fingertips."

  "Fresh food," Cynthia sneered, though there was no vitriol in it. Probably she was too tired. "Vitamins and minerals. Tomorrow I'm planting salads."

  One day later they moved into apartments in the Wellville hotel, his choice, with nice wide corridors for his chair, ramps everywhere, and a great central courtyard with pool. He took a duplex with a granny flat built in, for Anna. It was only noon and everyone was out somewhere, but he was exhausted. He had kept up the same pace as everyone else, shifting bricks for reinforcements, gathering paints and other equipment on Amo's shopping list for future cairns, but it was wearing on him hard.

  The chair gave him limits. He used his arms for everything, to move and to lift and to drive and now they were shooting with sharp pains.

  "This is yours," he told Anna, showing her into her room. It was all pink, scrubbed for the personal effects of the previous little girl who'd lived there.

  She looked it over, gave no reaction, then looked up at him. "You should rest," she told him. "You look like a floater."

  He couldn't argue.

  "Don't go anywhere, OK," he said. Seconds later his head hit the pillow and he was out.

  * * *

  When he woke Anna was gone.

  He was hot, bleary and sticky, and the ache in his arms and shoulders had become a painful crick in his neck. To boot, it felt like he was getting sick. He went to check on Anna, but she wasn't in her room. He opened the outer door and called her name, but no answer came. She wasn't by the pool or out on the Walk or anywhere.

  He tamped down the rising panic and brought up his walkie-talkie, one of which they all carried now, scavenged from the Long Beach Police Department, and opened a frequency.

  "Amo, have you seen Anna?"

  It took a few seconds for Amo to reply, seconds in which worry plummeted into Cerulean's belly like a bag of cold milk.

  "She's here with Lara. It's all right, she's fine, but you better come over. We're in the conference room."

  He was there in minutes, sweating from the exertion of rolling at full speed down the street and over the courtyard. Amo met him at the conference room door.

  "Where's Anna?"

  Amo pointed. At the conference table Lara and Anna were playing fruit-chopping games on a tablet computer.

  "She's OK?"

  Amo nodded. "I think so. But you won't like what I'm going to tell you. Promise you won't do anything rash."

  Cerulean stared. "I promise. Just tell me."

  Amo lowered his voice. "Julio threatened Anna." He raised his hands, palms out and soothing. "But calm down Cerulean, it's not like that. It was a joke, or possibly a joke, you know he's got no sense of humor. We need to talk to him."

  He was seeing red already. "Talk to him?"

  "Things are too delicate for anything else. Yes, he may have said some possibly sexual things, but he didn't actually do anything, and how certain can we be of any of it?"

  "Possibly sexual?"

  Amo winced. "Apparently he told her there was only one rule now, you do what you want? The weak and the strong, all that. And he told her to put her finger inside the rifle barrel… I know, yes, it doesn't sound good. And it's true he made her cry, and yes, he did scare her, but-"

  Cerulean's jaw was tight. Rage bubbled up inside. "I warned him," he said through gritted teeth. "That shit. I warned him plenty."

  Amo touched Cerulean's shoulder tentatively. "You promised, Cerulean, remember? Nothing rash. I'm handling it."

  He broke the promise at once.

  * * *

  He charged into theater 3 like a stampeding bull.

  Theater 3 was Julio's workshop, where he'd set up drills, files, a lathe, a table saw and other tools on a few scavenged desks at the front of the theater, in the open space between the seats and the screen. All manner of shotguns, rifles, pistols and rocket launchers lay around him, resting on ammo crates and held up on sawhorse frames. Here he was attaching a scope, here he was sawing off a shotgun barrel. The air smelled of sawdust, grease and gunpowder.

  Julio stood behind his workbench, scattered over with bits of tubing, trigger guards, emptied clips and many gauges of bullet. He smiled at Cerulean, showing gleaming white teeth.

  "I wondered when you'd pay me a visit," he said.

  Cerulean didn't reply, too furious for words, and raced down the sloping theater floor. Julio put a large Beretta on the desk in front of him, with a heavy clank and a warning look, but Cerulean didn't care. He rounded the banks of seats and propelled himself at the work desk, to Julio's amusement.

  That shit-eating smile would soon be gone. A yard ahead of the desk Cerulean clicked the chair's brakes on, punched his hands off the armrests like he was doing the arm-stand dive of his life, and took off.

  The air caught him and pulled him on: one second, two seconds of flight passed as he soared up and over the desk. A thunk and a slight change in his angle told him his trailing legs had smacked off the desk edge, but it didn't slow him enough. Julio's face changed as he flew right at him, downshifting from arrogance to fear, and Cerulean wanted to shout at him, "You idiot, we've been through this before!"

  But still Julio wasn't ready and Cerulean hit him like a 200lb linebacker wiping out the quarterback. He was bigger, he was stronger, and now Julio would know it.

  Time sped up and his fists rose and fell, hammering Julio in his face, with one hand on the floor to support himself and the other to punch. The meaty crunch of knuckles on bone and flesh rang out, the crunch of Julio's nose breaking, his teeth coming dislodged, while he struggled and yelped.

  Then Cerulean's supporting hand slipped in blood on the slick vinyl floor and he missed, punching Julio's shoulder and flopping onto his side beside him, gasping too. There was blood everywhere and Julio's features were torn and swollen. How many times had he hit him now?

  "You remember this, you bastard," Cerulean snarled at him, grabbing him by the scruff of his shirt. "You don't forget it."

  Then there were stamping feet nearby, and Amo and Jake were on him. They gasped as they pulled him away, seeing what he'd done. He let it happen and the fight went out of him, as Julio's bloody face receded.

  "Shit, oh shit," Jake muttered.

  "Robert, get the hell out of here," Amo said.

  He helped as they lifted him back into his wheelchair, then sat mutely as Jake rolled him away.

  * * *

  They sat on a pier, far away from the others. Jake was gone now, it was just him and Amo watching the sea, with the sun only a few finger widths away from falling into the water.

  What he'd done back in the Theater seemed very far away. His hands hurt a lot. He turned them over in his lap, crusted with blood and spit, some of it his own, no doubt about that. He'd need stitches too.

  Amo stood at the railing looking out over the water. Thinking, probably, what to say to his best friend. How to make this play. Cerulean just sat and waited, like a kid outside the principal's office, looking down at his bloody arms. Evidence everywhere.

  It was a warm and humid California evening, three days after their arrival.

  Eventually Amo spoke. "I wouldn't have told you if I'd known you'd react like that," he said.

  Cerulean grunted. He didn't feel like himself. "You should've done it yourself."

  Amo shuffled, plainly uncomfortable. "Beaten him half to death? You can't do that kind of thing, Robert. You'd go to jail for that. It sends a shitty signal."

  Cerulean looked up, defiant no
w. "It sends a signal. I don't know that it's bad. And he'd go to jail for what he said, or be put on some kind of register."

  Amo sighed and threw up his hands.

  "He threatened Anna, Amo!" Cerulean went on. "What did he say? 'This is how the world is now, you do what you have to to survive?' What's that supposed to mean, when you say it to a little girl? Then getting her to come over and put her finger in a gun tube? It's perverted. Do you honestly think, if it was just him and her without any of us around, he'd have any qualms about doing whatever he wanted to her?"

  "All right," Amo said. "I see that, of course I do, but let's keep some perspective shall we? They were all just words. And we are all here, aren't we? He's not going to get the chance to do anything."

  Cerulean shook his head, holding eye contact. "Not good enough. He's shown his character, and that's it for me. He's a shit and we can't watch him all the time. I should never have let him come."

  "He's lost," Amo countered. "You see that, I know it. He's put himself outside the loop, yes, and he's feeling it now. None of us has made a big effort to bring him in, have we? So he makes threats to a little girl to feel big. It's pathetic, deplorable I agree, but I don't know that it's the same as actually committing the abuse."

  Cerulean looked him in the eye. "Who knows where it might have gone, if she hadn't told you. What if she hadn't?"

  "But she did," Amo snapped, "and I was handling it until you bulled on in. What am I supposed to do with him now? What do I tell the others? Don't make Cerulean lose his temper, he'll almost goddamn kill you?"

  "They know me."

  Amo smacked the railing hard. "Bullshit! I know you better than any of them and I didn't see that coming. Dammit, Julio is pitiable! He wasn't worth this."

  Cerulean laughed, and something shifted inside him, letting him press on and say the first words that came into his mind. "Why not, does child abuse not exist in your brave new world, Amo? Don't you want to put this event in your comics?"

  Amo's eyes narrowed and he leaned away. "What is that supposed to mean?"

  Cerulean let his temper carry him on. "It means you're letting your damn vision get in the way of reality! You need bodies to spread the cairns, I get that, which means you need people like Julio, but at what cost Amo? How many sacrifices for that goal?"

  Amo frowned. "Where is this coming from, suddenly? What are you even talking about?"

  "I'm talking about I saw you!" Cerulean barked, letting the worst of it vomit out of him. "In Times Square. You were on your RV and I was down below, crawling in the shit of all those innocent bodies you'd wasted, shouting up at you, and you were too damn lost in some vision or other that you didn't see me!"

  The anger fell out of Amo at once, and his face went pale. "What?"

  Cerulean laughed. Anger was making him cruel and he was glad; they needed some reality here, cutting through the happy-dappy bullshit. "I saw you, you dumb bastard! I came to New York, after I woke up and my mom didn't kill me. Are you surprised to hear that? Where do you think I went, when I woke up in the basement still alive? I went straight to see my good old pal, Amo."

  Amo took a step back. His eyes were widening as the realizations hit. "You couldn't have been…"

  "I was there. I saw you burn them from across the Harlem River. I came on the trail and found you slaughtering them. I crawled through the blood and guts to shout up at you, but you didn't see me. You didn't even look! Then you blew your brains out and they hit me in the goddamn face."

  Amo's hand went to his mouth and he sagged against the railing. "No."

  "Yes. You couldn't have waited for me? You couldn't have waited one more day for me to arrive? I drove as fast as I could."

  "I thought you were dead," Amo whispered, barely making a sound. "I didn't-"

  "I was as good as dead, after that! I crawled, and I've been crawling ever since, Amo, like a worm in shit, to Matthew and back, to your RV where I finally decided enough was enough." He laughed madly. "Can you believe it, I was going to climb the Empire State Building then dive off the top? Best dive in history, enough to make you all proud, gold medal, everything, that damn crazy."

  Amo just stared at him, pale as a floater.

  "Then there was Anna!" Cerulean stormed on. "Do you see what I'm saying? She's the only reason I'm here, do you get it? If it wasn't for her I'd be jumping right now, so don't give me that shit about being reasonable. If anyone hurt her I'd kill them, that's a fact. You think I give a shit what message it sends? Julio's lucky he's alive."

  Amo slipped down the railing to slump awkwardly on the second bar down.

  "Oh, brother," he said, a sad little wheeze.

  "Damn right," Cerulean said, though the second blush of anger was fading already. He was panting lightly. The two looked at each other in the quiet, broken by the lapping of the waves.

  "You were really there," Amo said quietly. "You saw me do that? God, I thought finding Sophia was bad. But to see that?"

  Now there were tears in Cerulean's eyes. This day was crazy. Plus his nose was stuffed up and he was getting sick, so he could hardly breathe. His face was just leaking everywhere.

  "And my brains, they hit you?" Amo asked, his voice very weak. He looked up, half-sickened, half-curious. "In the face?"

  "Right in the face," Cerulean said. He mimed the splash with his hand. "Sploosh. It was disgusting."

  Amo shook his head. "God damn. Brains in the face. That's a new one."

  At that the tone changed.

  "Don't laugh," Cerulean said.

  Unbelievably, Amo had started laughing. "Ah, I'm sorry Robert, really. Oh God, brains in the face, it's so horrible. Right on you? I can hardly believe it."

  "Stop saying it!"

  "I don't think I can." His color was coming back now, and his slump was growing less feeble. He was definitely laughing harder.

  "It's not funny."

  "Then why are you laughing too?"

  He wasn't laughing, but perhaps he was smiling? He tried to straighten his lips but couldn't.

  "It's funny," Amo sighed, "oh, it's sick. That's black humor. What a shot! But how could I know? Ah, I'm sorry. Sploosh."

  Now they were both laughing. Probably it was more relief than humor, some ridiculous reaction to shock and violence and horrible truths, but it took hold of him and wouldn't let go.

  "Oh God, to see that," Amo said between gasps. "What a mess, you lying there with brains on your face in the middle of all that carnage, you poor bastard!"

  "I couldn't even climb up the ladder to see you. I wanted to bury you."

  "Bury me!" Amo hooted, gasping for breath. "Ah, Robert, I'm sorry, that's so awful. I had no idea."

  They laughed a while longer, until they stopped and a slow silence fell between them. The sun was closing its long descent to the sea, leading the zombies into the water.

  It was good to laugh.

  It was good but it didn't change the fact that he'd beaten Julio to a pulp, or that his blood-smeared arms were shuddering in his lap now despite the summer heat. The more he looked at them the stranger they seemed, as foreign as his legs when he'd first seen them under the covers, wearing their cartoon character socks.

  What did that make him now?

  "You'll have to punish me," he said, looking up. His head felt cleared out and free.

  Amo watched him.

  "You're right that it's the wrong signal, and even worse because it's from me. You can't be seen to play favorites. There have to be rules, and they have to bind all of us equally."

  Amo nodded. "Julio too. Unless we go back and kill him now, we have to deal with him. We can't crush him, you know, not completely. Obviously we keep him away from Anna; you just can't talk to a child like that. But in other ways, he is useful. We should be more cautious, he's got a point. Don was real. Your gun tower was real, and we'll have to deal with those things at some point. Not everyone out there is friendly."

  Cerulean sighed. He couldn't believe he was walking himsel
f into this, but it did have to be done, and he'd never shied from doing hard work.

  "So what punishment? It has to bite."

  Moments passed as they considered. To the left a group of gray floaters ambled down the sand, their dull footfalls crunching on brittle shells. Cerulean watched them walk together into the water.

  "Banishment," he suggested, at last.

  Amo met his eyes.

  "It's the only thing. We can't start corporal punishment, and imprisonment is just a waste. You send me away and I go, something public for everyone to see. I don't know how long. I can't leave Anna behind, though, not with him here."

  "You could take her."

  "If she'll come. We'll go make a cairn together."

  Amo nodded. "Somewhere nearby," he mused. "San Francisco? It had a high population, so there may be people. Those are risks too."

  "It's all risks."

  Amo sighed. "True. You could go and be back in a week."

  Cerulean shook his head. "Better make it a month. We need systems for things like this. You can work on them, and you can work on bringing Julio into the group while I'm away, if you think it's possible."

  "It's not ideal," said Amo, "and I hate to lose you so soon, but you're right. It's all we've got."

  * * *

  They left the next day. The other five were standing nearby, watching as he packed the RV. Julio was in hospital, unconscious still. Masako had asked to come, but he'd said no.

  "Why can't I come?" she'd demanded.

  He'd held her hands gently and looked into her eyes. "Because it's supposed to be a punishment. If you come, then…" He trailed off, letting her fill in the gaps. He knew he didn't feel what she felt, but he had no desire to hurt her.

  It worked. She smiled. She kissed him. "I'll be waiting," she said.

  "Why is it just you and me?" Anna asked as he packed a few final bits: a charger for her phone, some candies, stock for the next cairn.