The Last Mayor Box Set 3

by Michael John Grist

  Who hated Olan Harrison this much?

  I click on.

  James While's filing system is beautifully clear, once I've started following along. It displays a bright and highly structured mind, but clarity doesn't help with the unknown. It is a flashlight shone into an impenetrable darkness. In the master timeline of his investigation, with many of the more important documents in the whole file hyperlinked in, I track his lack of progress after the Alps, up to the apocalypse and beyond.

  There is no sign of Olan's killers again, the shadow SEAL, not anywhere in the records, not anywhere in the world.

  Days and nights go by as I search. I hunt down threads that lead to nothing. James While has already done it all. I'm left with nothing, again and again.

  I lean back and my spine grates loudly. It's light outside today, maybe three days since I started and cold with the fire died down, but I've long forgotten about the dead chill in my toes and fingers. Now's the time to stand up and stamp some life into my extremities.

  I pace like James While. There are videos of him in the Oval Office, in the UN, with various world leaders where he went under cover in the last days, to ask and to command. The President shook his hand. The EU President shook his hand. James While was a broad-shouldered but wiry man with a hidden energy beneath the surface, like a quietly burning fuse. Just watching him I can feel the spark inching ever closer to explosion.

  Where now, I want to ask him? Where do I go now?

  I pace and think of him in the videos, a young man in his prime, with short dark hair like me. He is taller but thinner, perhaps better looking, and no doubt he is smarter, though his mannerisms and the way he walks make it clear he is on the Autistic spectrum. I know little about that, but in the way he staggers his pacing, so he always lands carefully on his right foot at this point in a circuit, his left foot at this point, or the way he turns at a precise ninety degrees at corners, I see the unusual workings of his mind.

  It is plain enough that he is a genius.

  I pace and let my mind spin, randomly revisiting standout pieces of While's records. My name is mentioned many times, as are my people. His Bordeaux facility tracked me through the Event, even in the moment that my readings spiked in a restaurant in New York with Lara, and the hours after when the final stage of their apocalypse came about.

  I think about him out there in the world, trying to bring order and justice while I was out there alone; both of us building, surviving, trying to make something for the future. But we were building different things. As I pace, I see that while I was building for a new world, for coming generations I would never even know, he was building for just one person, one successor, to come and continue his work.

  For me.

  His cairns mirror my own. His path through our world's twisted history touches on mine constantly. He watched me, it seems. It feels like every step of the way he was preparing for me, waiting for me, and now he's out there somewhere, just waiting for me to put the final piece into the puzzle.

  And there is something there. I feel something fluttering in the back of my mind, but I can't put words to it. It's a feeling only, slipping in and out of my sight like a butterfly I dare not trap, for fear of forever smudging its wings. I have to wait for it to come to me.

  In the meantime, I prepare to go.

  The trail is here. He has left it for me to find. Perhaps at the end, when I look into his eyes and know the man behind the mission, the butterfly will become clear. The missing piece will appear, and I'll know the real way forward. I'll know who it is I'm supposed to kill.

  I move faster once the intention is there, gathering what few things I need. I prepare a vehicle, and food, and fuel. The fuel is shit, thick and foul, but it will take me far enough to a place where I can collect another vehicle, then another, leapfrogging across Russia until I find this man who survived the apocalypse alongside me, like a distant unknown twin.

  Maybe then I'll know why billions had to die. I'll know why thousands had to die at my own hands. I'll finally know the truth, and I need to know. I need something to explain this pain, I need to make sense of it, or I'll never be myself again.

  I set out into the howling winds of a Siberian storm, but it is nothing. I don't feel the cold. With every mile I'm closer, so close I can taste it. Not redemption, or salvation, but revelation.

  My stolen truck's tires bite the ice and propel me into the blizzard.

  * * *

  I drive on roads invisible beneath the snow. I see signs for the city of Arkhangelsk, heavily corroded and bitten by frost, one of the few written in English. There are tiny settlements and towns in between; clusters of white buildings with red and blue fronts, golden onion domes on tiny provincial palaces, lakes of ice, brutalist concrete communist monuments, forests of wiry spruce and fir, ice in the sky and in the air and all around.

  I've done this kind of thing so many times before, I'm an expert at it. In the end it's just driving through people; the ruins they leave, the diggings they dug, the dwellings they raised up atop the earth.

  I drive and make mental notes so I don't need to think. The mayor lived there. The priest here. That's a church though it doesn't look like it. In this house there lived a woman having an affair. In that house was the man she was having the affair with. Here they had five children. There they were barren. This woman dreamed of international journalism. This man wanted to be a masked vigilante.

  More signs pass in Russian, more towns.

  Холмогоры

  Брин-Наволок

  Заболотье

  I cross a frozen river, then another. The bridge is out on the first, so I cross it on foot. The ice creaks. The second reminds me of Pittsburgh; it's hard to say what, the bend in the river, the two bridges at right angles crossing, the city on either side then the sudden open sweep that takes my breath away.

  I think of Lara, like a sucker punch in the gut.

  Back then we rode together, she by my side, only moments before the demon crushed her ribs. On this long, slow ride, I think of how much I miss her. Her touch, her look, the strength she brought me just by being there. I think of the John Harrison and our last day, before everything went to shit.

  It could have been so good.

  Tears roll down my cold cheeks as I drive at ten miles an hour through choppy refreezing slush. Sacramento was going to be the making of us. I would step down from a leadership position, ceding it to Anna or Keeshom or whoever wanted to stand in the election. Maybe I'd play the elder statesman for a time, and I might be sad, but I'd be glad it was behind me, that the eyes of these people were no longer on me.

  I remember that Keeshom is dead.

  It's a strange thing to remember. I hadn't ever thought of it, I never even saw it, but I know it's true. I do remember Feargal's sad corpse lying in the rubble, just inches away from the shark-eyed man, and I cry for them both. I led him into that. I did that to him, as surely as anything.

  The things I did to Feargal shame me, but they only make me remember other things, all the other things I did on the road to this point. At some point I have to stop my trundling vehicle, now a creaking old green fire engine, and vomit into the snow. It's bitter and it's more than I deserve.

  I don't remember, but I do. I know who I was, I knew what I was doing, though everything from these past few months feels like a blur. I remember standing over Arnst and holding my belt in my hand while reality went slick around me, lowering the boundaries and making it easy. I remember what I said to them, how I treated them, how I left them all dead in the end.

  I remember Drake.

  He's a fog in my head. I remember Cerulean in a realm full of boxes, trying to guide me through, but what else is there?

  I don't feel Cerulean in my dreams anymore. I don't remember his face. The things I've done can never be forgiven.

  Gap comes back to me, and Brezno. I left thousands of people shivering without their shield, trapped on the broken line. I killed
them like insects. I ground them beneath my tires. In Istanbul I mowed them down while they tried to flee.

  I almost killed Anna.

  I can't see for tears. I drive on, because if I die like this it'll be fitting. I deserve it. The things I did, the cruelties I stretched to, make me sick to the depths of my soul.

  It hurts. For days it hurts. Drake haunts me as a memory, his giddy voice in my head, his brains on my hands. Feargal haunts me as a face in the snow, bloodied from the time I punched him for nothing. I think of him kneeling before me in the rushes of my mad sketches, waiting to be told what to do.

  I humiliated him then, and in that humiliation I also debased myself, but the worst thing, creeping through this noxious self-indulgence, is the fear.

  What if I have to do it again?

  There are no good choices. I know now that I will. Wielding this power, this great black eye, I can crush on a whim whoever strikes at me. I could so easily fall back into that bleak, black place again, and who will dig me out again? Who will forgive me, give me absolution, make me whole?

  I don't deserve it. There can be no atonement, and insanity is no excuse. I am going back into the world with my eyes open, knowing what I've done and what I might do, and that is the most terrifying thing of all.

  I see Lara and my children out there in the snow. I see Anna and Jake and the rest. Shark-eyes was right.

  What wouldn't I do, for them?

  I stop thinking and I drive.

  Верхняя Тойма

  Красноборск

  Визиндор

  There are flickers on the line at times, coming from the south. It feels like Anna, like she has some of the same skill as me. I don't know what she's doing, but it grows stronger with time. One night I dream of Lara, standing at a window and looking out over a huddled crowd of people clustered around a huge heap of wood, waiting for the spark to light it up.

  The butterfly dances around me. James While's enormous weight of research seeps steadily into my brain, like a well-squeezed cheese in muslin cloth, and new ideas mingle with the old. There is something there still, but I can't name it. A tickle in the depths of my past, shadows painted on the pavement by rainfall, never lasting long enough for me to sketch them with chalk.

  There's something.

  Сейва

  Кудымкар

  Кунгур

  I look at myself in the dark, mirror-like glass of a little town's department store, and see a crazed stranger looking back; a man who belongs behind the dumpsters in Times Square, drooling for spare change. My left shoulder rides slightly higher than my right, after the break that Anna gave me. My hair is long and my beard thick and unkempt, scored with clinging lines of frozen snot, tears and vomit. My clothes are bulky and filthy with old blood, my boots are filled with water.

  I strip.

  In the steaming cold I look at my pale, shivering body. At the wounds, the scars. I run my badly healed fingers over them, cataloging the ones I remember, whether they are wounds I can be proud of or ashamed of. A round divot on my left shoulder marks the beginning, when an indicator lever from an exploding car in New York knocked me down.

  There are so many others; the pale, hairless patch on the side of my head, where I blew a bullet through my own skull. The dense, interwoven lacerations on the backs of my thighs and calves, where Don shot me in Las Vegas. An injury taken in Chino Hills, handling one of the pneumatic plows. Flecks from forgotten, ricocheted explosions. A burn where I mis-cooked an egg. My lumpish shoulder. My broken fingers.

  My hand shakes, but I can't stop tracing this unforgiving landscape.

  There are new wounds I didn't know about, sustained perhaps in the chaos of Istanbul, in my fight with Anna; a weal down my back, a chip in the bone on my forearm. Across my chest and thighs I count the marks of Drake's torture: cuts, cigarette burns, little fractures, patches of skin missing. From the plunge into Alpha Array I have two bullet furrows in my thigh, never stitched.

  My body is a map of what I've done. On balance, I'm ashamed of more than I'm proud. It's a sad tally, but at least it isn't a lie. It's good to be honest. It's necessary.

  My chest is turning blue, and the shudders make it hard to stand. I go into the store, where I make a fire and scrub myself down with raw snow. I scour my wounds so hard some of them bleed. I apply what pressure I can to my shoulder, but it will require another break to correct, and I don't have the time or expertise. Maybe, if there's a future.

  I shave my beard. I cut my hair. I look at myself in the mirror, and see a different man. Not the same man as before. Not a man Lara would hold close, and kiss, but a stronger man than I've been of late.

  What else can I be? If I must do what I've done already, perhaps now I can do it better. Perhaps I can be like Joran Helkegarde, strong enough to give sympathy to the ones I have to kill. That would be a dream. I don't think I can kill any more with rage and cruelty in my heart; it will kill me.

  But I can still kill. Even the people who did this, I will kill them when I understand, and when I understand and they're dead, perhaps then I will be able to forgive. Maybe then, if I forgive them, there will be a path toward forgiveness for me.

  I make myself cry again, too full of self-pity.

  I drive, and some of the signs are in English now.

  Yekaterinburg

  Omsk

  Novosibirsk.

  At last I reach it, looming on the line like a mountain: Joran Helkegarde's Prime Array. The feel of his one thousand steers me in from a thousand miles away. I couldn't miss this if I drove deaf and blind. It is a blot on the line as big as Istanbul.

  The exterior stands out on a barren steppe, looking like a half-built sporting arena, with oval, massive metal support struts and a lot of glass. There are signs with enough English on them to show that this was its cover identity. Under construction, I gather. A new ice hockey stadium, judging by the faded picture. What an ice hockey stadium was doing out here, in the middle of nowhere, I don't suppose anyone cared to ask.

  I can't feel him inside, obscured by the churn of the thousand, but I know he's here. James While.

  I'm almost there.

  * * *

  I blow open an ice-glazed window with a small mining charge, picked up along the way. The blast echoes emptily inside, through the soup of signals fired off by the thousand. I can pick through them now, labeling type one, two, three, all the way to thirty-six. I know all about what they are, the tricks they can do.

  Here they're held by a primitive shield. It's weak but it's enough.

  I pass through with the black eye fitted to me like armor, framed to my body. What they did to me at Alpha Array they can't do anymore. I head toward the main office at the back, because that is where he lives. The best views, like Istanbul. I expect it will be completely empty but for him; no desks, no chairs, just a pacing man in a room, although I doubt he can pace any more.

  I've seen the effects of Lyell's. I've seen the pictures Joran kept of them both, that James While cross-filed. I know what to expect; a bloody worm of a man encased in moist white fabric, huddled into a specially-fitted motorized wheelchair, barely able to lift his head, barely able to move. I can look past all that, though, because it's his mind that I need, it's what he knows.

  I climb an elevator shaft. I walk on a gantry round the massive open arena with the thousand in the Prime Array striving below, just like Alpha but ten times the size. My people. They flow with the gravity well of my passage. I climb another shaft, and kick through a door, until the final corridor stretches ahead.

  My heart hammers, as answers lie ahead. I stamp down the gray corridor to the door, every step beating a path to the future, bringing the butterfly's wings thumping into synchrony with my pulse.

  Thump

  Thump

  Thump

  Empty offices pass either side as I walk back in time, back to an era when the apocalypse could be forestalled and the power of the SEAL could so
lve world hunger, end war, and rewrite the carnal cruelty buried in the human genome. Shudders ripple up my back and make my knees weak beneath me.

  Thump

  Thump

  This moment has been coming for so long. This man at least can understand. This man knows what I've done, and why, because he's done far worse. He watched billions die and couldn't stop it, so if there's anyone who can look into my eyes with understanding, it is him.

  Thump

  I need it. My whole body yearns for it as I lay a hand on the handle. He surely knows I'm coming. This will change my world, I know it.

  I open the door, and see the man inside.

  At first I can't be sure of what I'm seeing.

  In his chair, in the middle of his empty office, he is white bandaging and blood and raw purple skin. I pick out his face, his gleaming white eyes, bright teeth, two dark holes for nostrils, and then I realize what is wrong.

  His ribs have been spread-eagled.

  It drops me to my knees.

  I'm looking into his chest cavity. It's hard to tell because everything about him is red, inside and out. His skinless face is a rictus snarl of white tufts and cheek muscle. I feel pain. I see his dead heart, his entrails heaped in his bloody lap. He sits in a puddle of red, head thrown back, frustrated at the last.

  There are no words for this. It's as if my own chest has been spread-eagled, as if someone has reached into my chest and ripped out my heart.

  They got here before me.

  Suddenly it is too hard. This man waited for me, and I'm too late again.

  I drop my thumping head into my hands, and I hurl the black eye after them.

  FAR EAST

  19. A NORMAL LIFE

  After the battle, Anna stood atop the mountain with her new troops arrayed around her. It was like a video game. Ravi would have loved it.