Zombie Ocean (Book 3): The Least

by Michael John Grist

  Cerulean smiled at her. His hands were both bandaged heavily, limiting what he could do. He'd broken one knuckle and slit the skin badly in three places, requiring stitches. They ached, now that the last of the anesthetic's effects were wearing off. He hadn't got them sewn up until past midnight, after Cynthia had finished work on Julio's face.

  She'd talked little throughout the operation, in one of the back rooms which they'd rigged with running hot water. Julio's blood was splattered on the seat.

  "You want this?" she'd asked at the start, holding up a syringe. "I'd like to do it without, so you feel every stitch, but Amo told me to offer."

  He gave a wan smile. "I'll take it, thanks."

  She injected him then got to sewing, not making any effort to be gentle.

  "You wish I'd killed him?" Cerulean asked. "Is that why you're angry?"

  She grunted. "You still will. Or him you. One of you's going to die."

  The certainty in her voice had haunted his dreams that night. He'd woken up with water in the back of his throat, terrified he was drowning. He felt pale and shaky, like the world was coming apart again.

  Anna was looking at him now, standing by the RV. The air was hot and close, the armrests of his chair slick with sweat. Perhaps it was truly this simple. He smiled. If there was no Anna, would he stay?

  The answer came easily. No.

  But she didn't owe him a thing. His life shouldn't be balanced on her presence. She was wearing her Alice uniform. That's how he'd remember her.

  "Robert, why is it just you and me?" she repeated.

  He cleared his throat. He owed her the truth, even if it drove her away.

  "It's a punishment, honey," he said. "For me, not for you. You remember the things Julio said to you?"

  She frowned. Cerulean went on. "He shouldn't have said them- it wasn't fair. Amo told me, and I got angry. I hurt Julio a lot." He held up his bandaged hands. "I hurt myself too. But now I have to go, because we can't do that kind of thing here. It's not all right. So I'm getting punished, and I have to go away. You can come with me, but you don't have to. You can stay here, if you like."

  She stared at him, unreadable for a long moment. He felt a wave of emotion rise up in him. "It won't be for long," he lied. "If you want to stay, it's OK. I'll be back soon."

  She stared a moment longer, then her face seemed to collapse in on itself in misery. Her eyes screwed up began to cry, deep rolling sobs that wrenched her from within.

  "I'm sorry," she said, barely audible over her gasping. She hugged her hands around her middle. "I told Amo not to tell you. I didn't mean it, Robert. I'm sorry, please don't leave me."

  Tears welled in his eyes as soon as she started. He hadn't expected this, and it punched a sickening hollow into his gut. He'd done this, and now he was now hurting this damaged little girl even more.

  He rolled over and wrapped his arms tightly around her little convulsing body, trying to smooth away the pain with his touch. He pressed her sobbing face against his shoulder, stroked her tangled hair as she wept and gulped for air, and whispered furiously in her ear.

  "I'm sorry, Anna. I'll never leave you again, I promise. I promise."

  He kept his promise.

  Ten years later, Anna left him.

  TAKEN

  19. TEN YEARS LATER

  Ten years after the zombie apocalypse destroyed humanity, Cerulean sat at the edge of the pier off Muscle Beach in his stripped-back Murderball wheelchair, looking out over the lapping Pacific Ocean as the winter sun set, thinking about Anna.

  She'd been gone for four months now, headed off alone in a catamaran to the west, punching a massive hole in his life. For so long he'd done everything for her; she'd been his adopted daughter for ten long, hard and wonderful years as they rebuilt the world together. His every decision had been dictated by her needs and what it would take to keep her safe.

  Now she was out there somewhere, alone, and with her gone nothing was clear.

  He picked at a fleck of dried paint on the pier railing with his thumb. The sun was already halfway sunk over the waves, smearing the horizon with pink and orange like a sticky, melting candy, and he wondered if she was looking up at this sky too, perhaps waiting for this receding sun to dawn over her.

  He sighed.

  Two months earlier she'd set sail in search of her father, following clues a decade old: an ID chip in her father's belly, swallowed when he ate their pet puppy, linked to a tracking app in his phone. She'd kept that phone ever since, clutching it like a talisman at times, dreaming of the day she would go hunt him down.

  Now she'd found him. She'd crossed the Pacific, circled Hawaii and Japan, driven up through China and ultimately found him in Mongolia.

  "They were piled up like cairns," she'd said over the long-wave radio connection three days ago, the last communication they'd received. Despite the many thousands of miles separating them, the sense of excitement in her shaky voice had been palpable.

  "Tens of thousands of zombies in these great pyramids," she'd gone on, her voice coming through scratchy, "and at the heart of every pile there's a giant red one, like a demon. They're the real killers. The zombies piled up their bodies then turned to stone, locking them in."

  Here she'd paused, perhaps because she was crying. They'd tried talking back to her but the signal was too weak and she didn't seem to hear. He'd been crying too, just to hear her voice. He'd hardly left the radio room for months since she'd left, just waiting to hear she was OK.

  "The zombies sacrificed themselves to save us," she'd said. "And Cerulean, I found my father! He was alive still, not frozen like the others. He was waiting for me, I think. And he saved me from the red demon. He sacrificed himself all over again."

  On the pier, Cerulean turned a fleck of paint over in his fingers, like a poker chip. Finally she'd found her father, who was a gray-skinned, white-eyed zombie, and that brought up a welter of emotions. He was glad that her months-long solo voyage around the world had not been in vain. He rejoiced that she was alive and had finally found some of the closure she so badly needed.

  At the same it was a knife in his heart. She was nearly sixteen and every day for the last four years she'd spent pulling away, drawn toward the memory of her father, the zombie. It had hurt more with every snub and snide comment, piling up inside, as she answered all his kindnesses with growing cruelty.

  That was the apocalypse, perhaps. That was people. That was a great gaping wound trying to seal itself over, using other people as bandages and stitches and tossing them away when they were done.

  He sighed again. Regret was infectious, like self-pity.

  Still, it was hard. He missed her, and sometimes now he dreamed of the demon from his past, pouring fluid down his throat. He'd wake terrified he'd lost everything, and there was nothing left but an endless crawl through the rotting ruins of the dead.

  It was hard, at those times, to remember why he was still alive. Only Anna's voice on the radio, come at random, broken moments over the last few months, reminded him of the man he'd become as her father.

  He sighed a third, self-indulgent time.

  "Reminiscing about Krispy Kreme donuts?" came a voice from behind him. "Or maybe a fresh can of Bud Lite?"

  Cerulean turned to see Amo standing there, the Last Mayor of America, looking the same as always; a hipster without a cause. He wore light brown sandals, baggy khaki cargo shorts and a loose white shirt, despite being 37 now. His dark hair was pulled back in a loose knot, and his warm brown eyes were light and free as ever, dancing in the sunset.

  "You walk too quietly, Amo," Cerulean said. "I could have shot you."

  Amo laughed. "You're not even holding a gun. When's the last time you carried one?"

  Cerulean shrugged. The answer was simple enough; the day they shot and killed Julio, but what point was there in bringing up that?

  Amo sat on the weathered bench nearby. They were the oldest friends left alive in the world, pre-dating the apocalypse by six m
onths, and Amo could read him like an open book.

  "You're moping," Amo said.

  Cerulean couldn't stop the smile from inching across his face.

  "I know what this is," Amo went on. "The usual survivor's guilt, beating yourself up for outliving the world, feelings of unworthiness, not feeling real, and now you've got that empty nest syndrome too."

  Amo could be a real pain sometimes. "I shouldn't have told you any of that stuff."

  Amo frowned. "Come on, Robert. It's a real thing, and I'm forever glad you told me. I'm just thankful I don't have it too."

  "Show-off."

  Amo shrugged. "You've got a broken back and a broken mind, but you're the best thing that ever happened to that girl. Have I told you that before?"

  "You have."

  "Good. You did a good job with her. She's on her voyage pushing out our boundaries, like we'd always hoped. We need that hope, Robert. I know you see that, even if you don't feel it."

  He sighed. "It isn't safe out there."

  "What's safe anywhere? Sitting still and going crazy with soul-crushing depression isn't safe either."

  "Hmm."

  They sat in silence for a time after that, watching while the melted candy sun was swallowed up into the black of the ocean. There were probably zombies down there still, swimming through kelp forests, crawling along the sandy seabed, deep in the dark but still going on, chasing some internal drive only they could feel.

  They were like him, really. Like them all. Everyone had an engine inside, driving them on in a particular direction. And engines could break.

  "You ever think about Julio?" he asked.

  Amo snorted. "Not if I can help it."

  "No. I do, though."

  "And you want to talk about him now?"

  Cerulean shrugged. "I wonder, sometimes, what he was living for. I think for each of us, we can put a name to the reason. For you, it was Lara. For Anna it was her father. For me it was Anna. But Julio?"

  Amo stretched on his bench. "Who knows? He wanted respect, I remember that. Nobody ever respected him enough. He got it from Indira for a while, but when you and Masako split…"

  Cerulean nodded. "I know."

  It had been a painful time. Cerulean had lived with Masako for four years, until Anna's ninth birthday, because it was easy. At times he'd felt rich, like a true family man, but they never had been. The wounds that had made them were always pulling in different directions, and no matter how they tried to sew themselves together, the stitches wouldn't hold.

  He hadn't loved her enough, probably. He hadn't needed her the way she'd needed him, and then Anna started to change. She spent longer looking out to sea or tracking her father's position on her phone app. Sometimes she'd rail against Cerulean whenever he asked her to do something, saying cruel words that lingered between them long after.

  He hadn't had the energy to keep the lie going after that. Anna's withdrawal sucked the life out of him, like a slowly deflating balloon, and there was never enough left over for Masako. He took to staring out over the water too, not dreaming of a lost family member, but of his own demon.

  He spent hours imagining what the zombies felt like, under the water. Drowning. The dreams haunted him.

  They'd split up amicably, or at least he'd tried to make it amicable. She'd cried a lot at the end. "How can you do this to me?" she'd asked, over and over again, like he was the one who'd brought the apocalypse down on them both. "How can you do it, after everything?"

  He'd had no answer. He didn't know. He just didn't love her enough and was drained from pretending. In the year or so previous she'd seen his withdrawal and grown desperate, clinging to him like a child and only demanding more of his energy. That had only sped up the end.

  "You'll find someone," he'd told her. "I promise."

  She found Julio. One night she went to him, for comfort or succor or to make Cerulean jealous, or something, nobody knew, and he raped her. The evidence was clear-cut. Perhaps it had started in a better way, with her looking for something in him that she couldn't find any other way, but the bruises on her face, the marks around her wrists, the scratches covering Julio's head and chest spoke the truth.

  He hadn't denied it, when they came for him. He'd been waiting, sitting with Indira by his side like she was supportive of what he'd done. It was a bad memory, but one he couldn't help but return to often.

  He'd smiled at Cerulean and Amo as they came in his house with guns drawn. "You were waiting for this," he said. "Any excuse. You should know she was asking for it."

  Then he drew his own gun and shot Indira in the neck. Her blood sprayed out and she lurched into Cerulean's lap.

  One of Amo's shots took Julio in the shoulder as he fled, almost knocking him over. He hit the street where Cynthia was waiting near his Mustang, and she shot him twice through the window as he climbed in and revved the engine, spraying his face and arm with buckshot from her shotgun.

  After that he drove away, leaving no trail, and they never saw him again.

  Masako was never the same. She'd found a new man, Arlo from Kentucky, but he was a simpleton. She seemed happy enough, but who amongst them was really happy, anyway?

  He only had to look at Amo to find the answer to that. Amo either had never suffered enough to truly break him, or he just had an inner wellspring of strength that others didn't.

  "You're only hurting yourself with this," he said, looking at Cerulean. "It pains me to see. You're not still thinking about diving, are you?"

  Cerulean smiled. That was a confession from the past; his desire to perform the greatest dive in history off the Empire State Building. Was it still there? It seemed so hotheaded now, something a young man would say. But then he was only 33 now, still young. There were many years left.

  "No," he answered, and surprised himself with the truth of it. "I don't want that. I'm kind of happy, like this."

  "In this misery?"

  He shrugged. "It's comfortable. Surrounded by memories, I suppose. You and me, me and Anna. We've had lots of good times."

  "We have that. And many more to come. Anna's on her way home! You've got all her growing up still to do. I'm sure she'll be a different person when she gets back. She settled her pain. I only wish you could do the same."

  Cerulean snorted. "Settled my pain. Isn't there a pill for that? Drop it in water and it fizzes nicely."

  "I wish. I'd have dosed you years ago."

  "Yeah," Cerulean said slowly, drawing out the sound.

  "Anyway," Amo said. "You shouldn't sit out here alone. You know the rule."

  He did. Everyone did. Nobody was supposed to be out alone, at any time. It was a hangover from Julio's many security procedures, but one they'd kept. With all those cairns out around the world, you never knew who was going to come, or what they'd want.

  "I'm almost done moping, I promise."

  "Good," Amo said, changing his tone to something more upbeat. "Lara's cooking up a hot pot, and they're all asking for you. The girls are waiting and Ravi will want to sit next to you again, of course. Father of his prospective bride. I heard he's working on a ring."

  Cerulean shrugged. Amo and Lara's daughters were lovely, of course, but that just reminded him of how sweet Anna had once been. Ravi was a sweet boy too, two years older than Anna but way too ditzy for her, all looks and no brain. "It's not for me to give him permission."

  "Now that's just wallowing," Amo chided. "She's a new person now, she found what she was looking for. New vistas, Robert, a whole new world of possibility."

  Enough of that. He changed the topic.

  "You think we'll be getting some fresh citizens?"

  Amo raised an eyebrow, clearly wondering if he should accept this topic change. "You want to talk about the future now?"

  "Sure."

  "Sure," Amo echoed doubtfully. "All right then." He leaned back on his bench, considering. "Yes, I think we will. There were billions of people out west; in China, Malaysia, India. They can't all have been
crushed by the infection. There must be some left."

  "And they'll come here."

  "Where else? We've got thirty-seven now. With maybe a hundred more we'll have a sustainable gene pool. The human race starts here, you know? We get to be founding fathers to the whole world."

  "Just like we destroyed it."

  Amo sighed. "There you go again. You can't help yourself, can you? That was me and Lara anyway, not you. I'm the one that killed billions. You just got in on the ground floor."

  "I know," said Cerulean. "Sorry. I just get this way, sometimes."

  "Especially now." Amo looked at the glowing display on his watch. "Look, old buddy, they're expecting me back. They're expecting you too. Come for hot pot. It'll make the kids squeal, and Ravi will be over the moon. He treats you like a father-in-law already."

  "The boy thinks with his ass."

  Amo laughed. "That's more like it. You should tell him that."

  "I'll come," Cerulean relented. "Give me a little longer and I'll come."

  "Great," said Amo and got up, though for a moment he remained, looking down. "Hang in there, brother, OK? You mean a lot to all of us. You know that."

  "I know. Thanks."

  Amo nodded then strode away down the pier, his sandals slapping off the wood. Cerulean listened as the tone changed when he hit the sandy asphalt of Ocean Front Walk. A few moments later came the sound of Amo's Porsche door opening and closing, barely audible over the lapping of the Pacific against the pier's weary wooden struts. The engine was a faint growl which faded into the distance.

  Cerulean was left alone with the ocean, and the hole inside.

  Amo was a bandage too, like Anna. New LA was a bandage he'd wrapped himself up in, all these people with their light and noise and laughter, but none of them really filled the hole with a new engine.

  Anna had shown the way. She had found her father and filled herself up, and now she could be whole and happy. She wouldn't need him any more, not the way she once had, so he couldn't cling to her any more.

  What did that leave?