The Loss
Author: Michael John Grist
Date: 2016-04-16 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Zombies; Horror
Description: ACE for ASIN B01DV608XI A riveting zombie thriller like you've never read before. Ten years after the zombie apocalypse destroyed civilization, 'Last Mayor of America' Amo faces the loss of everything he's built. He wants to be a good man. He wants to save his people. But what is good, and who are his people any more? Now the demon is coming. He will save or break the world. 'The Stand' meets the zombie apocalypse, packed with gore, twists and heart-stopping chills.

THE LOSS (ZOMBIE OCEAN 4)

Ten years after the zombie apocalypse destroyed civilization, 'Last Mayor of America' Amo faces the loss of everything he's built.

He wants to be a good man. He wants to save his people. But what is good, and who are his people any more?

He will save or break the world.

'The Stand' meets the zombie apocalypse, packed with gore, twists and severe moral hazard.

ZOMBIE OCEAN SERIES

The Last (Book 1)

The Lost (Book 2)

The Least (Book 3)

The Loss (Book 4)

Buy Michael John Grist's books via Amazon links here.

Join the newsletter and get the free Starter Library of 2 post-apocalypse thriller books here.

For SY.

CONTENTS

PRESENT

INTERLUDE 1

1.
NEW APOCALYPSE

2.
PETERS

3. CERULEAN

PAST

4. 10 YEARS EARLIER

INTERLUDE 2

5. MAINE

INTERLUDE 3

6. TRUST

INTERLUDE 4

FUTURE

7. DECISIONS

8. PREP

FLIGHT

9. RACE

10. DRIVE

INTERLUDE 5

11. HIT

12. FORGIVENESS

13. VOTE

14. FIRST MAYOR

15. OUR LAND

INTERLUDE A

EAST

16. THE OCEAN

INTERLUDE 6

17. LARA

18. BUNKER

19. SALLE

20. COMMAND

21. HOME

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Mr. Ruins (excerpt)

PRESENT

INTERLUDE 1

Salle Coram woke at 5am to the shrill blare of her alarm. The room was pitch black but for the small green light of her walkie charging on the side table. No light came from under the door, because all the corridors were dark these days. No light crept in through the window, because of course there were no windows in an underground bunker.

She hit the snooze button; happy they still had those, and lay motionless, luxuriating in this moment. This was about all she had, these days. A few minutes between 5am and whenever they called over with the crossover request, and her next 18-hour shift could begin.

5:05? 5:06?

She closed her eyes and tried not to think of what lay ahead. She wouldn't have slept at all, except this was going to be a long, long day, the most important day yet, and she needed to be on top form for it all.

D-day.

Her walkie rang. It too was a shrill blare, befitting her shrill life and the shrill persona she showed to everyone. She didn't need to hear the voice to know who it was, as she had all the night watches memorized. She knew at just about any moment the whereabouts of every soul under her care, wherever they were in the Habitat or Command, moving in perfect, clockwork synchrony.

This was Joseph, her second in command. Before the infection he'd been a mid-level clerk on the Judge Advocate General's legal team, bringing down corrupt officers and generals. He had no family to speak of, no addictions, no genetic disease, and his psych profile showed a strong tendency toward authoritarianism. Of course they'd selected for all of that, as a means of survival in the Command bunker. When you were locked in a featureless tin can underground for ten years, a little respect for authority went a long way.

"Joseph," she said, answering the phone with the shrillest version of her once Valley girl-ish Texan accent. "Report."

"Yes, sir," he answered sharply, like he was saluting down the line. "There's been little movement. The primary shows no signs of waking early and our agent's been asleep since around 11. The hallway are quiet, and the new one's still unconscious from whatever drug the agent put in him."

Salle breathed a quiet sigh of relief. The primary was her major concern, and its genetics were set with a perfect nuclear clock. The readout on her walkie had the countdown, as set over ten years ago, when Lars Mecklarin and his brilliant dream saw them all stowed down below.

Lars was dead now, of course. Lots of people died when the revolution rose from the Habitat.

"Good," she told Joseph, "I'll be there in five."

"Yes, sir." The salute was there in his tone again. Had she slept with Joseph? She couldn't remember, though the rest of his personnel file came back to her with crystal precision. The days after the revolution though, as she overthrew one flawed dictatorship for another, were an orgy of blood, liquor and sex.

She rolled off her single mattress onto the cold cement floor, poured 11 years ago, and hit the switch on the wall with a practiced motion. A flickering white light filled the boxy room, leaving no sad little detail alone: a few old photographs tacked to a shelf with three old fantasy books on it, a compass her father had given her, a Swiss Army penknife. Beneath the shelf a schedule was pinned to the wall, seven years old and pre-dating her occupancy, which she hadn't had the heart to remove. All of this was only temporary, after all.

The room was dirty white and empty other than these few mementos, carried with her in a tiny rucksack from the helicopter and into the Habitat ten years past. They'd been stricter than any airline regarding carry-on luggage, and back then such things had seemed important.

She brushed her teeth at the sterile sink and pulled on her smartly pressed navy blue uniform, boasting military stripes of rank on her left breast. She slipped on a pair of low black heels and looked at herself in the mirror.

37-year-old Salle Coram, the same age as Amo, Last Mayor of America. What different worlds they'd come to manage. She looked at her face; beautiful still, though it was a hollow and pale beauty now, more like a zombie than a flesh and blood Texan girl. Her curly blonde hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and her cheekbones jutted out proudly like chins. Her once deep blue eyes had gone watery with all the harsh white light; even these bulbs with their ultraviolet rays couldn't do much to replace the sun.

She was ready for the world to begin again.

The control room was next to her quarters; ten steps down a freezing cement corridor with a few lights trying to blink to life as she passed, then she was through the unimpressive door and striding down the center aisle.

"Commander on deck!" Joseph shouted, and the space instantly spiked with salutes. Her 'deck' was a smaller, sadder version of a NASA flight control room, dimly lit with black walls and a low black ceiling designed to improve focus. A big display, torn in the corner, dominated the far wall like a movie screen, with three rows of desks and chairs arrayed before it, stocked with half of her analysts.

"At ease," she said, and the room relaxed a little, though there was no denying the low buzz of excitement. Quiet voices returned to quiet conversation, fingers danced over keyboards. If it went well today, everything was finally going to change.

"Show me the hallway," she said.

"Yes, sir," Joseph barked and brought it up. Twin images resolved in a familiar split screen, and Salle took up position at her standing desk before it.

The image to the left came from a pinhead camera positioned in the ceiling above the primary's head, one of ten in a parallel array. It showed a familiar misery: emaciated bodies chained to filthy walls, hanging by their wrists, some of them sporting nasal tubes for forced feeding. The empty stretch of wall near to the camera, which their agent had been keeping free since the beginning, was filled now with the black paraplegic.

Cerulean, Amo's people called him. He'd been an Olympic diver once. The agent had insisted on collecting him and she hadn't argued, though it saddened her to see this proud, beautiful man chained up like a slave.

The others were there as ever; 24 survivors of the apocalypse, gathered over the years, imprisoned and kept alive for today. At first it had made her sick to watch the agent prod and poke them when he was bored, just to hear them cry out. He didn't rape them too often, but that was only because they quickly grew so repellent; their limbs thinning and their spirits breaking under the constant flow of the primary's influence.

Now it just made her sad.

The image on the right showed the primary in all its glory; the demon that put the D into D-day. It was bright red, powerfully muscled and massive, standing within a glass enclosure at the head of the corridor like the star attraction at a waxworks. It had no ears or nose to speak of, only holes cut into the smooth red oval of its head. Its mouth hung open in sleep, a black and terrifying hole. No sexual organs lay between its legs, only smooth red flesh.

"Vitals?" she asked.

One of her analysts snapped a button and the primary's infographics popped up on the side of the screen. It was in a deep-wave state, with a strong pulse and lively spinal brain activity. Dreaming.

Salle settled in to position, bringing up her crossover packet with a touch on the screen. There was nothing she could do now but wait.

* * *

D-day began right on schedule at two in the afternoon.

For the thirty minutes before that she had to listen to the paraplegic talking to her agent. She knew all about the grudge between them, but didn't care; what mattered was the primary. Its vitals were changing for the first time in ten years. It was waking up.

"Show me the aerial view," she ordered.

A fresh window appeared over the other two, shot from a down-facing camera mounted to one of their three remaining drones. It was circling at 10,000 feet, and through its eye the white Maine countryside was rendered like a splodge of spilled ice cream on gray asphalt, with snowy fields and forests contained by the rise of Mt. Abraham to the east, Mt. Spaulding to the north and assorted foothills to the west.

"Zoom," she said.

Snow was falling, obscuring the view. The barometer on the screen was showing a steep drop-off signaling an imminent snowstorm. The temperature was down to minus fifteen; cold enough the agent had switched on several heaters along the hallway.

The view contracted and focused, with a barely perceptible drift from the gliding drone. The field where the demon was located, in its own private bunker where once the sentinel gun and comms tower had stood until her agent blew it up, grew larger. Fresh snow had filled in the agent's footsteps and the trail he'd dug dragging the paraplegic over. The hole into the bunker itself was a black speck, sealed with a manhole. The primary underground was marked out by a flashing blue dot, showing the genetic tracker in its system was working well.

"It's moving," Joseph called, from his screen nearby.

The drone view peeled away and the screen filled again with the twin views of the hallway. Salle stared as the primary, so long-awaited, opened its eyes for the first time. They were red with sharp black pupils.

"Wow," somebody said in the hall.

The agent was on his knees before the glass door with arms raised, like he was praying. That was a trick she'd used in the early days, to get him on side. Nearby the black guy was struggling against his chains. The primary's infographics on the side of the screen began to shift into territory they'd never seen before; core temperature rising rapidly, spinal brainwaves spiking up, spillover magnetic effects growing strong enough to spin any nearby compasses madly.

The prisoners in the hallway, all except the paraplegic, stopped struggling and stared as it woke. The agent was babbling some nonsense. Salle hardly dared breathe as the primary lifted its arms and legs from their rests and took its first step up to the glass door that had contained it for so long. Tears welled in her eyes. This meant freedom for all her broken people. This made all the horror and sacrifice worth it.

It pressed its palms against the glass, the lock clicked and the door slowly ground open. The agent's babbling became screams as the primary stepped above him, seized his little face in its giant hands, and squeezed his jaw open.

"Here it comes," one of her top drone pilots muttered.

The primary leaned in, fastened its black hole of a mouth over the agent's lower face, and began to vomit with a rough coughing sound.

"Holy shit," someone said.

"Oh my God," said somebody else.

The agent's body flapped like a balloon figure outside a car dealership, bucking and flicking as hot air filled him. His legs spasmed, his chest heaved and then he was dropped to the ground.

Not a soul in the control room moved.

"Commander," Joseph murmured uncertainly. She didn't need to reply. Somebody in the corner puked noisily, caught it in a waste bin and scurried out.

The agent lay on the cement flopping. The primary straightened up and moved on. It was horrific, no doubt, but this was what they'd been building to. This was hardly worse than the deaths of billions.

The primary moved to the paraplegic, who tried in vain to pull his face away, but it wrapped up his head, squeezed so tightly that his jaw cracked open, then pressed its black mouth over his in a gross parody of a kiss.

"I can't watch this," somebody said and ran down the aisle, gagging. Others groaned. Salle marked their names and watched as the primary vomited again. She'd known for years how it would infect others, but she'd never expected it to be quite so repulsive.

In the corner, the agent had stopped kicking. Now he was growing.

"I wish we had monitors in him too," Joseph said, and Salle turned to him. He was pale and sweating but professional. He noticed her looking. "Amazing data."

The vomiting cough started again, and the paraplegic's body convulsed in its chains. Salle forced herself to watch. This was the price and she paid it gladly. Behind the demon the agent's arms and legs were elongating, his skin was turning pink and his muscles swelled like squash growing in one of the farm halls.

"Where does the mass come from?" Joseph said quietly. "It's phenomenal."

More people were gagging now. She marked their names. The vomiting halted and the paraplegic hung slack on his chains, with his belly distended like he was pregnant. Salle almost gagged too but choked it back.

"The primary," she said quietly to Joseph, "he weighs nearly three tons. Mostly it's the incredibly dense infection cells stored in his gut. He's like a pressurized canister full of virus."

Speaking helped; made her feel some element of control in an affair that was now completely out of her control. Joseph nodded and watched with fascination and disgust as the demon moved on.

The agent had almost doubled in size already. The paraplegic was growing too. A brittle clank signaled his chains snapping, followed by a thump as he dropped to his knees on the floor. Not a paraplegic anymore. Beside him the agent rose to his feet. He was nearly as tall as the primary now.

"Do you have him?" Salle called.

The top-down drone view appeared again above the hallway scene. It was snowing thickly now, and the black speck of the bunker's manhole was completely obscured, but there were two flashing blue dots near the center. That meant the genetic tracker in the primary had transferred successfully.

"We got him," the drone pilot answered, and a cheer went up.

They were on their way out.

Then a grunting sound came from the hallway behind the drone overlay, along with a sudden movement of red at the edge of the screen. Salle leaned forward on her desk, accidentally pushing the live microphone button.

"What was that?" she demanded of the control room. "Somebody explain to me what just happened."

The drone view snapped away, and in the hallway beneath it she could see the agent-demon was looking at the paraplegic-demon. But they shouldn't be doing that. Like ants, she'd read, but then ants didn't…

Salle turned. "Joseph?"

He was paler than before. "Looked like a throw. A judo throw, over his shoulder." He gulped. "Like a fight."

She whirled back. The primary was still vomiting his way up the hallway, ignorant of whatever his secondaries were doing behind him. The paraplegic was holding the agent by the arms, looking into his eyes. It was impossible.

Then the paraplegic spoke. Salle stared. That was certainly impossible, not with all the tremendous changes coursing taking over his nervous system. Yet the microphones caught it, and everyone in the control room heard it.

"I know you're in there," he went.

There was nothing Salle could do but watch, until the agent replied with a gruff bark. "Cerulean?"

Salle lost it. "What the hell is happening?" she shouted. Then the paraplegic dived.

His shoulder crunched into the agent's middle and drove him back against the tall glass door, where he lifted him up then slammed him into the ground. Salle gasped. In a second the paraplegic had straddled the bigger agent like it was a cage match, and was punching him in the face. Another second later he rolled sideways so his arms were wrapped around the agent's head, his thick legs were coiled around his neck, and he pulled.

"He's not supposed to be doing that," Salle said, absent her usual authority, more like a lost child than anything. "That's not supposed to happen."

There was a ripping sound, a scream, then the agent's newly grown head tore away from his body. Priceless infection cells sprayed from his torn neck.

"Oh my God," Salle said, looking from the bloody paraplegic and on to the primary. It hadn't even noticed; wasn't doing anything but strolling along and puking into the next. Everything could end right here…

"Do something!" she shouted at him. "Stop this bastard before he kills them all."

The paraplegic didn't wait to find out; he rose to his feet, took two steps down the hall, then dropped his elbow into the back of the next secondary, as it knelt on the ground. It fell flat and in a second the paraplegic pulled its head off too.

Hot fluids blew out. The paraplegic began to laugh, a horrible gasping bark.

"Do something," Salle shouted at the primary, "put him down!"

But the primary didn't turn, not as the paraplegic tore the head off the next, nor the next, nor as he crushed the head of the most recent against the wall with a single massive punch.

"No," Salle called.

He was almost as big as the primary now, and he charged, colliding against the primary's back with a huge THUNK. The primary lurched a few steps forward, heavier by far, but the paraplegic was braced and pulling now, and the primary was actually being dragged back down the hall toward the glass door. It didn't fight back; probably it didn't even know what was even happening, though it was struggling.

The paraplegic forced one of its arms straight, then punched through the elbow joint with a gristly crunch. It roared and Salle yelped and others in the control room shouted in horror. Now it tried to fight, swinging a giant fist downward, but the paraplegic caught it, locked the arm punched through that elbow too.

"Oh my God," Salle whispered.

The primary howled and the paraplegic kicked and drove it like a heap of tumbleweed back into its glass cabinet.

Salle watched transfixed. It was like something out of a movie, impossible in reality. It was the end of all her dreams. They'd be locked in their little can forever, pressurized like the contents of the primary's gut.

Then a wave of calm came over her. She'd been here before. She'd done much worse.

"Scramble the drones," she ordered, her voice coming out calm and controlled. "Bomb the shit out of him."

"Yes sir!" one of the drone pilots replied, and two fresh infographics lit up on the screen's edge representing the last two operational drones they had. How many bombs left? She counted a full complement of fifteen on each, plus fifteen on the one in the air.

45.

They launched, as the paraplegic ran back down the hallway pulling apart the chains of her prisoners. The metal tore easily in his hands, and each one was a blow, each one meant they were trapped here another day, another month, another year.

In minutes he broke all the chains and set them all free. Some fell on their faces and lay still, while the more recent ones ran back to help them.

"Do not flee," Salle tried, calling over the system in a calming, authoritative tone. "Help is coming. Remain where you are for evacuation." But none of them listened. They'd heard her already, they'd listened to her talk to Julio for years, and now they were listening to the paraplegic.

"Get them out!" he barked roughly, the words barely formed through his round hole of a mouth.

He helped them get to the ladder leading up, where they set the agent's winch running to lift out the broken ones. Salle watched helplessly as the drones somewhere far overhead reached a safe bombing altitude. Her primary was pushing the door open now, his broken elbows repairing themselves from the precious load of cells in his belly, but it didn't look like he'd make it in time. They were mostly out now.

"Go west!" the paraplegic barked as the last load went up in the winch basket. "Warn Amo."

Warn Amo.

Those words were the worst she could imagine. If this group warned Amo, his people could scatter and it would take far more than two years to round them all up again. They didn't have that kind of time.

The primary broke out of the glass cupboard and ran down the hallway, ignoring the swaying figure of the paraplegic. Cheers broke out in the control room as it started up the ladder, though at the last moment the paraplegic snatched at its ankle and held on.

"Shit," Salle cursed under her breath. "Give me aerial."

The top down drone view appeared to the side in split-screen. The snow was falling so thickly now that she could scarcely pick out the thin black line of escapees as they ran to the agent's white van. A flurry of snow blocked the camera.

"Bring it back down, we need visibility," she ordered.

"It's already at two thousand feet," one of the pilots protested. "Any lower and we risk getting caught up in the storm."

"I don't care," Salle said. "If we can't stop that van, it's over. Drop it down and switch to thermal imaging."

"Yes, sir," the pilot replied, and the stats for the drones plummeted as they took steep dives through the rain of snow. A second later a filter swept across the screen, clearing away the pure white and replacing it with a pale blue. There was a hot red speck in the middle, representing the bunker hole where heat was escaping. The bodies of the escapees were a ghostly pink trail leading from it; so faint they were barely visible.

"Can you target them?" she asked.

"Not well, sir," the pilot replied. "The snow's too thick, I can't tell what I'm seeing."

"Use your judgment. Bomb those people, captain, and do it now."

The first bomb detached from the drone's icon on the right. At the same time the primary finally escaped Cerulean's grip, emerging out into the white where he throbbed as a moving blue dot. Seconds later the first explosion blossomed as a transient flare of red heat across the pale map. The blue dot ran right through it. The control room trembled slightly as the vibrations reached them.

"Bomb in front of the primary," Salle ordered. "Work up an algorithm aligned to the map. We know where the road is, we know the speed of that vehicle, and the primary is leading us right to them."

"Yes, sir. How much ordinance am I authorized to use?"

"All of it," Salle answered, "until the damn van explodes."

More red flowers bloomed on the screen. At the same time on the split screen to the right, the paraplegic began to climb the ladder out of the hallway, its legs trailing uselessly behind it.

"Where's he going?" Joseph asked softly.

A spike of hope lit in Salle's chest. Surely the infection was taking him now. They'd have at least two primaries, halving the time until America was clear.

He climbed out of sight into the cold blue of the thermal image, where his blue dot pulsed motionlessly for a minute. More circles of heat bloomed off to the west, then the paraplegic's body fell down the screen, head first past the ladder like a suicide dive. He hit cement with a crunch that shook the control room harder than the bombs, and somehow his head tore away.

"Ha!" someone in the control room said, in shock. Salle marked who it was unconsciously, while watching the corpse of Cerulean for a long moment. She hoped it would somehow rise, reattach its head and keep moving, but it didn't. Snow fell over it from the hole above and began to smooth out the crevices in its dusky red skin.

The bastard had cut his own head off. Son of a bitch.

She steadied herself. On the thermal image there was no sign of a hit. Everything had gone to shit, but moments like this were her forte. This was why she was commander and Lars Mecklarin was dead.

"I don't care how many missiles or drones we exhaust in the effort," she said coolly, calmly, to the room at large. "That van does not get to Los Angeles to warn them, am I clear?"

"Yes, sir," came the chorus of replies.

Salle looked at her control screen before her. The light for her microphone link to the hallways was flashing still, and she cut it. She wouldn't need that again. This phase of the plan was done.

She turned to Joseph. His face looked as broken as a cracked egg, but the embers of his intellect were still on fire within.

"Joseph, I need you to get the suits ready," she said.

Surprise broke through his uncertainty. "But sir, they're-"

"All of them, Joseph," she said, "and volunteers to fill them. Do you understand?"

He nodded. It didn't matter that the suits were a death sentence. This bunker was a death sentence. They had to get out and she would do anything to achieve that.

"Now," she said.

He turned and left the control room, his steps growing more confident and regular as he went. On the screen before her more red flowers blossomed through the wintry blue, as though it was finally spring.

1. NEW APOCALYPSE

Ten years after the zombie apocalypse changed the world forever, a new kind of apocalypse strikes.

I'm sitting on the pier where I saw Cerulean for the last time two weeks earlier, feeling nothing at all like a mayor. I'm exhausted and emotionally drained. It's after midnight three days after Anna returned, and the waves are lapping on the beach below with that quiet certainty that says with every slap, 'There's not a damn thing you can do'.

Slap, slap, slap.

Such is the rhythm of things.

Anna's gone, Anna's come back, hurrah, but guess what? The infection is a T4 virus embedded in every one of our cells, oh well, no cure, and there are red demons that'll rip your head off whether you're immune or not. Also, Cerulean's gone, taken without a sign, and we haven't made any progress in finding him. Is it any surprise that Anna stared at me in disbelief, in the midst of her welcome home party, and Talia and Vie were weeping again, and what was I doing? What was I, self-appointed Last Mayor of America, doing about it?

Slap, say the waves, slap. It's never enough.

I sigh, lean back against the chipped wooden railing and run my hands through my hair. The air's warm still, though we're hard on the heels of winter. This is California in November, with Christmas around the corner. Talia wants a new bike, which is pretty ridiculous since all we have to do to buy her one is ride to the nearest Yangtze and assemble it, but such is the life of children in the apocalypse. She can't drive herself yet, but I'll teach her soon, and then what will I get her for Christmas?

I rub my temples and look out to sea as if there will be answers, but of course there are not. It's too dark to see much of anything.

Goddamn Cerulean.

"You shouldn't be here alone."

I turn and see my wife, Lara. She looks pretty in denim, with her thick hair tied back in knotted braids. I get annoyed with myself, that me being here has made her come after me, alone, endangering us both and leaving our children in the care of, who, maybe Cynthia?

"Mayorhood confers certain privileges," I try, but it gets me nothing but a dimpled frown in her caffe latté face. Even at 3am she's still got my number.

"Bullshit, Amo. Mayorhood's the opposite of privilege. We need you, and it's work only you can do."

I snort weakly as she sidles nearer over the creaking boards. "That's a play to my ego. Flattery will get you bike-assembling duty."

She sits down by my side and takes my hand. "Shut up, you," she mutters, so I do, which is a mercy. We sit there side by side, holding hands and watching the ocean until the sun crests over the edge of the world, like a burning ember raised by the gods.

It helps when she wraps an arm around my shoulders, some slight buffer against the haunting look on Anna's face, when I told her. Until then she'd been so happy and proud, having found her father and circled the world, then the hope just leached away.

I see that leaching in everyone's faces, now. I see it in my children's' eyes whether it's there or not. Hope has kept this discordant group of crazy, killer survivors afloat for this long, and its loss may at any minute tear us apart.

The old doubts rise and for a time I allow them. I'm just a zombie comic artist, not a mayor, who made silly book covers and boring worlds in Deepcraft. I wasn't elected to the position; even my self-nomination was a joke. I'm not worthy and I can't deal with this loss, especially now that the world I've always welcomed with open arms is reaching out and biting down hard. I don't know what to do.

Lara squeezes my arm and that helps too, so I pack the doubts away, like always. She doesn't say anything glib like, "We'll find him," or, "It'll be OK," and I'm grateful for that. We both know Cerulean's gone, and whoever's taken him is probably not giving him back.

"What can I do?" Anna asked me, after her sad welcome party in the lobby had wound down, when it was just the two of us in my office in the back of the Theater. "I see what's happening now; more security, pill-boxes on rooftops, patrols, so what can I do?"

Her lost hope had faded into rage, burning off her hot and raw. I had to channel it but I had nothing solid to offer, only my own answering frustration.

"We've searched everywhere," I told her. "We've scoured LA for twenty blocks square but there's no sign of him. We're planning wider forays but we can't overstretch ourselves. We've got to keep the core safe."

Anna nodded. She didn't say that it was my fault or take her anger out on me, as she would have once. Instead her eyes were sharp brown orbs that shone with new wisdom, making her strong in ways she hadn't been before.

She was a woman now, no longer a child.

"It's Julio," she said, looking me right in the eyes. "You know that, Amo. I know it."

I shook my head wearily. I'd expected it. "Julio's dead."

"Julio was shot, but we never found his body or his car. He hated Cerulean with a passion. He's got him now and we have to find him."

"Even if it is him," I said, "it doesn't help us. You're right, for five years we never found him, so how would we now? He could be anywhere in America. We can't afford to ignore other possibilities."

"What possibilities?"

I sighed, too weary to face them even then. "There could be another community of survivors out there. They may have a different idea of what survival is. If they were hunting us, trying to poach from us, it makes sense they'd take Cerulean first."

Her eyes flashed dangerously. "He wasn't weak."

I rested my hand on her arm. "I didn't say that. But I have to be practical, Anna. I can't send out mass patrols because we need our strength right here. We don't know what we're up against."

Anna took a deep breath, turning her anger inward like she was charging up a battery. I could feel the flywheel start to spin with the momentum of her rage, storing it up.

"So what can I do?" she asked again.

I squeezed her arm. "Help protect us. Join the patrols. We're casting a wider net day by day. If he's near we'll find him. That's all we can do for now. We'll go wider gradually."

She took a breath. I expected she might sag as the slow, hopeless reality struck home, but she didn't. She held the breath and it only filled her up more, and I began to see something of what she'd truly become: a woman who'd traveled around the world to find her father, who'd faced down a red demon and survived, who'd found her way home from darkest Mongolia and stumbled into this.

"It's really good to see you again, Anna," I said. I got up and gave her a hug, squeezing as much for my benefit as for hers. She hardly squeezed back.

On the beach Lara and I watch the stars cycle overhead, talking in low tones.

"Anna's gone to UCLA," she tells me. "Running tests on the T4 virus. She dragged Jake and Salman with her, and from the sound of it they haven't slept yet. Ravi wasn't happy, but, well…"

She tails off and the waves slap on the beach below. The old Anna would be out on them now, trying to race the guilt and frustration away on a catamaran. She'd been cruel to Cerulean for years, but I always thought they'd get a chance to work it out.

"Come to bed," Lara says. "You've done all you can for tonight. You can still get a few hours sleep before roll call, and be there when the kids come charging in."

She smiles. She's an excellent mother and wife, a leader in New LA, but I couldn't sleep now if I tried. I need to see Anna again, though I don't know what I'll say. I need to come up with a plan to eat into this frustration and find my friend. I need to-

Slap, say the waves. Slap, slap, steady as a pulse.

"At least come back to the theater, follow your own rules. We can do some PowerPoint if you like."

This earns a grin. Lara knows I'm a sucker for a good slide presentation. There's something intoxicating about the hum of the generators and the glow of the screen, in putting order onto a simple, manageable world.

"Fine," I say, and let her pull me to my feet.

Then the walkie at my hip sounds off, and our first taste of this new apocalypse hits.

* * *

They're in the lobby of the Chinese Theater when we arrive, sprawled on whatever lobby chairs, sofas and makeshift beds Ravi, Farin, Christina and Macy could find. We revved past their beaten and soot-blackened white panel van on the race in, only a few minutes after it pulled in. We parked by the glass doors and flew into the lobby's orange gas lit interior.

"Holy shit," I breathe, as I stop at the edge of the lobby to survey an influx of survivors like something from an old world refugee camp. There must be over twenty of them sprawled around the red carpet, wrapped in blankets despite the humidity, all skeletal, pale, shuddering and wide-eyed.

They look like zombies.

"Amo!" one of them calls, as his huge dark eyes settle on me. He looks like an apocalypse horror book cover, with torn shirt and jeans covered in rusty brown stains, black pupils that seem to fill up his eye sockets, a ragged gray beard and wispy white hair despite the impression he can't be more than 30 years old, gray skin that looks like graveyard mold and a yearning in his voice that strikes an instant chord of fear in my chest. "Are you Amo?"

My mouth is dry. My heart hammers like a pneumatic drill as I take these people in. Several have filthy bandages wrapped around their eyes, others have wounds in their chests, their thighs, weeping with yellow pus. They stink; the smell of their diseased, rotten bodies rises like a fog and fills the lobby. Someone's been sick off to the side; I expect one of our people. I feel my own gorge rising and swallow it back hard.

"Holy shit," Lara whispers by my side.

The guy who called my name is on his feet, just barely, though Ravi is trying to guide him onto a sofa. Ravi looks scared to actually touch him, like he might get infected, and I can't blame him.

These people are broken and dying, like they've just stepped out of a concentration camp. Here someone is wheezing, someone else is coughing with a grossly wet hack, here Farin is handing out water bottles which she has to double back on to unscrew the caps of. Christina is feeding reheated mac and cheese to a row of three near-cadavers. Their brittle lips slurp the food down like starving worms.

It's a lot to take in. Seconds pass.

Then I spread my arms. I lock the horror down inside and plaster a smile to my face, stride over and gently hug the zombie-like man who wants to speak to me.

"God, Amo, I don't believe it," he says, and starts to cry. Up close he smells like death, worse than any zombie I've seen. His back feels like the grille on a car radiator, row after row of painfully wasted bones sticking through a thin layer of skin. His face is nearly a peanut of dehydration, so fragile, every curve of the bones in his face sharply outlined.

"Welcome home," I tell him. It's a line I've used numerous times, but never like this, and it rings curiously hollow. "We've got hot dogs, we've got soda pop, we've got popcorn."

"Amo," he mumbles against my shoulder through the tears. "Help us, please."

I lower him to the sofa beside an older dark-haired woman, just as thin, who is staring up at me with big, fear-widened eyes. She's wearing a new black jacket over a torn black evening gown of some kind. I glimpse red marks and bruising on her bare white thighs. "Is it really you?" she asks in a dry and raspy voice.

Lara drops by her side, resting one hand on her knee, one on her back. The woman doesn't even seem to notice she's there.

"It's me," I say, "you've come to the right place. You're safe."

She nods, then smiles a wide grin revealing perfectly white teeth. "I forgive you," she says, totally calm, almost blissful. "For Cerulean." Then her eyes roll back in her head and she collapses backwards.

Lara catches her, stares at me, and I stare back, but before we can say anything the man at my side drops to her knees and starts to shake her and cry.

"Abigail," he says, rubbing her shoulder and face, "no, wait please." He looks up at me with those wide dark eyes and begs. "Please do something, help her!"

Lara already is, laying the woman's withered legs out on the sofa and tearing her jacket and gown open to reveal a sunken chest dappled with dark bruises and old scars.

I flinch. My head's not working properly. Did she say Cerulean?

"She's not breathing properly," Lara says, "Amo, get Cynthia, get Adonis, get Ozark." She speaks without looking up, while setting her hands in position over the woman's breastbone. "Just get everyone, we need clean towels, hot water, clean rations, all the med crash kits, maybe an AED."

She looks up at me for second, then jolts me to action with a sharp, "Amo!"

It's enough, and I'm already moving before she looks back down to start emergency CPR. I grab my walkie-talkie and dial the button for our siren.

The wireless command starts our warning klaxons wailing, out in the forecourt mounted to a pillar, up on the rooftop overhead and scattered throughout our little community's complex. The sound wails out into the night.

WEEE AAAW WEEE AAAW

We've drilled for this, practiced it many times, but there's nothing like the heat of emergency to make it terrifying and fresh.

"All stations, it's a code two," I call into the walkie, "I repeat a code two, this is not a drill. Feargal we need your squad up on the roof looking out, Chantelle you're on immediate patrol, expect some incoming. Cynthia, Adonis and Ozark scrub up fast and get to the lobby right now, we have an influx of some twenty badly wounded survivors. Everyone else get down here too with all the clean towels, water and meds you can muster. Now, people, repeat this is not a drill."

A chorus of yesses comes back at me, as groggy people drag themselves up from the depths of sleep to answer their walkies. My signal went out to them all, overriding any other message. I repeat the whole command while I drop to my knees and take Abigail's wrist to feel for a pulse.

"Is Cerulean with them?"

The voice comes through on the walkie clear and sharp, louder than the others. Anna. I stand up and whirl in a circle scanning the lobby. It's carnage in here, a battlefield surgery with people moaning and crying and only a few harried and uncertain volunteers to tend to them, none of them really knowing what they are doing.

I don't see him.

"Get down here, Anna," I say into the walkie, "everyone get here now, we need all hands on deck."

WEEE AAAW WEEE AAAW calls the klaxon.

I hook the walkie into my belt and start running. I pat Ravi on the shoulder as I pass him. "Come with me," I say.

His face is pale and afraid but he nods, stops wrapping bodies in silver foil recovery blankets and runs after me. How many of these people are dying right now, I wonder?

We break out of the fog and run down the hall to the medical supply 'cupboard', actually the smaller indie screen 5 now filled back to front with bandages, surgical equipment and medicine.

I flick the lights on and run down the aisle to the place row D used to be, before we stripped the seats out. Now there are metal shelves with hundreds of intravenous drip bags hanging, and I grab two full armfuls of them along with two boxes of needles. "Two more," I say to Ravi, and he grabs another bunch. We dump them in a waiting cart like we're collecting items in the Deepcraft darkness, then I race on to collect five crates of water bottles, two operating kits, three packs of liquid antibiotic ampoules, a big jar of iodine, lots of small tables, rubbing alcohol, an Automated External Defibrillator in a bright red plastic case, and several big fluffy packs of gauze and twenty-odd rolls of bandaging.

I'm no expert but this is what we drilled. I race out with the cart and back to the lobby with Ravi at my heels trailing more drip bags and tubes.

"Macy, Farin, Christina," I shout and point at the cart. "Get drips into the ones you can. There's more water here, use alcohol on towels for cleaning up the wounds." I turn. "Ravi, fill up two of the soup boilers with boiling water and roll them out here, quick as you can. Wire them up to keep them hot. Did you get that?"

Ravi nods and runs off while the others gravitate towards me. I snatch up the red AED box and bolt back to Lara. Soon Cynthia and Adonis, both trained nurses, and Ozark our resident surgeon will be here, but until then it's just us and we need to do what we can. I've drilled enough to know the first few minutes after rescue are the hardest on the body, when the shock of survival hits and people die of relief. We need to stop that from happening.

I drop by Lara's side with the box open.

"Anything?"

She rises from giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation with bright blood smeared on her lips and face. There's frothy blood all over the black-haired woman's neck, and the man at her side is staring and squeezing her hand.

"I think it's TB but I can't be sure," Lara says. "Her heart's hardly beating, it skips and starts again. Do you know how to use that?" She points at the AED. I don't, not anymore than the drills have taught me to, but that's easily as much as anyone else here and we haven't got time to wait.

"No," I say, then crack the seal, open the case and start unspooling cables. There's a small digital readout atop a central plastic bulge that contains the battery pack, a big red button reading CHARGE, and four cables sticking out, two red and two yellow, each with peelable sticky pads on the ends. "Peel those off," I say, handing the red cables to Lara. "Stick them to her left side over her heart."

She gets right to it and I do the same with the yellow cables. Underneath the peeling plastic there's a conductive jelly coating, which adheres slightly to the woman's palsied skin.

"Done," Lara says.

WEEE AAAW says the klaxon outside. The lobby doors slap open and someone runs in.

"Macy!" I shout, too focused to look up. I'm sure she'll guide this new person in to the work that needs doing. No drill can prepare you for the stink, for the horror of so many suffering people, but we've all seen bad stuff before. Every one of us is a survivor.

"Clear," I call, unclasp the man's hand from Abigail's, then push the big red button in the center of the case. It hums, clicks, the small readout blips once, twice, then sends a jolt down the cables and into Abigail's body that makes her jerk up off the sofa.

"It's working," I say, "don't touch her."

WEEE AAAW says the klaxon, and the doors slap again. The machine clicks, beeps then sends another kicking jolt.

Beep beep, the machine says. Beep beep, a pulse line says, then goes away. The man is curled on himself like a clutch of broken straws, so thin and wiry, staring like a terrified child.

The AED jolts her again then powers down. Abigail's pulse is gone.

I look at Lara and she looks at me. So that's it. It's only the second death in all of our history in New LA, after Julio killed Indira, and it stings like a bitch. I see that same feeling in Lara's eyes, but there's no time now to mourn.

"No more," I say, and Lara nods, then we're both rising and moving, grabbing up drip bags and needles, water and alcohol swabs, and starting the business of saving what lives we can.

2. PETERS

It's a nightmare that lasts long past the dawn, as one by one the twenty-odd souls delivered in a battered old white panel van pass through the best of care we can offer. They are all hideously malnourished, wasted to dry and emaciated sticks, though some are worse than others, with badly-fused broken bones, deep trenches of scars and burn marks that tell of years of constant abuse.

It is hard to look at. At one point Ozark operates on a young woman entering shock-induced labor, performing a Caesarian to rescue a tiny, stillborn boy-child from a deeply bruised womb. The infant has broken legs and a fractured skull and could never have survived. The mother, a Canadian woman called Tina, sobbed and clawed so hard she had to be sedated to protect her from herself.

We lose a broad-shouldered, bearded man whose name nobody knows, to heart and renal failure sometime around four, despite Ozark's best efforts at open-heart massage. He stands there in the middle of the lobby with blood up to his elbows and declares time of death, and we cart the body out.

We lay the big guy with Abigail alongside their van. Inside it we find three more corpses lying in the back, their bodies cold and stiff with rigor mortis.

"Who the hell are these people?" Anna asks me as I come back in.

I don't have an answer.

Outside the sun rises. Generators power up to start air conditioners, while the soup boilers bubble with steaming water. Old wounds are cleaned, stitched and bandaged as our three medical professionals work their way through the ranks of bodies like pickers on a Yangtze packing line. Antibiotics are administered, oxygen canisters carted in and applied via breathing masks, electrocardiogram machines watch over three hearts with irregular beeping, while hastily trained volunteers run blood tests on seven who may be diabetic.

Drip stands sprout up like saplings in spring. Steadily vital salts, fluids, nourishment and medicine are instilled into this mass sickness. The bulk of New LA, moving under ad hoc directions as best we can, flurry like blown leaves from patient to patient, swabbing down filth and stains with alcohol and replacing foul and ragged clothing with warm, sterile gowns. We roll in folding beds from our stores and supplement with winter blankets. We offer comfort and succor to people who can barely speak, who are barely able to breathe.

There are many broken arms, torn muscles, deep tissue damage. There are shoulder joints fused in an extended, locked position. Around 10am Ozark pulls me to one side.

"I've never seen anything like this," he tells me in a low and breathy voice. He's paler than ever, and sweat drips down his face. I have no illusions I look any better. "Amo, they look like something the Nazis might have done, like medical experimentation. It's the contents of a torture chamber turned to the air."

I nod and rest a hand on his shoulder.

"I know. It's a mess. You're doing amazing work, Ozark. We would have lost at least three more if not for you."

The compliment rolls off him. He's seen fields full of the dead walking, like all of us, but this is a different kind of thing. Over the hours that we've been here in the thick of it, I've been steeling myself to what it means, and there can be no question. This is the result of prolonged torture, of people suffering for months and years under the hands of a monster.

I don't want to say it was Julio. I don't want to think about Cerulean, or whatever he did to earn Abigail's forgiveness. I've checked every face three times and the bodies in the van too, but he isn't here. I've seen Anna doing the same thing.

"Shoulders fused like that?" Ozark goes on. "I don't even know if that's something we can repair. I saw a show about old religious guys in India once, who forced their bodies into weird positions then refused to budge for years, and it looked like this. Joints calcify. It's abnormal medicine, not the kind of thing you encounter even in a big city hospital. Perhaps a surgery might do it, of course I'll need X-rays, I'll need to read up on the procedures, but I'll have to crack the bones apart first with a mallet. Jesus, Amo."

I steady the big man with my hand on his shoulder, and guide him to look into my eyes. He's bigger than me but he never killed another human, that much is obvious. He's a gentle giant, father of three daughters who all turned when the infection struck, and that loss has left its mark on him like a hole through the middle. He didn't fight Don or shoot himself in the head, because he never had to.

"Look at me, Dr. You see me? Focus on the now. We're almost done with the emergency; fixing shoulders will be another day. Today you've done excellent work, and New LA is indebted to you. Don't think about anything else, OK? Think about the work and get it done."

A tear leaks from his eye, but he rubs it away and nods. It doesn't take long for any of us.

"What next?" I ask him, putting the ball back in his court. He looks around.

"Stitching," he says, pointing at a woman on the outer edge of the oblong of beds we've assembled. He points again. "Burns treatment there. Deep tissue massage here. We're waiting on blood test results for some, they may have gone septic. But this level of malnourishment? They should all be dead, Amo. If it weren't for the T4 virus in their cells, doing whatever the hell it does, I think they would be."

I grin. "It's nice to have some allies, right?"

He snorts. Some of the fog in his eyes begins to clear. "Cynthia and Adonis have been amazing. They've kept me on point throughout."

I nod. I'm not surprised. Cynthia is a rock, and well-loved in New LA now she's stopped making racist cracks, while Adonis is exactly the handsome, charming rascal you might expect from his name. None of them shirk from what needs to be done. "Tell them that," I say, "and finish up. We'll have a meeting at noon. Pass that along too."

He nods. He's got direction again now. He moves off to work on the burns victim.

I look across the room and pick out Lara, kneeling next to a fevered-looking man with his arms frozen up around his ears, dabbing at his brow and speaking softly to him while he struggles for breath. I find Anna next, by the boilers, preparing a chicken broth with a few others. We have plenty of chickens. She looks up at me and nods.

I get on the walkie and check in with half-Irish Feargal and his team on the roof, followed by mid-west Chantelle on patrol with her squad in their military Jeeps around the campus outskirts, but they have nothing to report. The streets are silent, nothing's moving, nothing's chasing these people at all.

That's a relief.

I gesture Lara and Anna over, then lead them away from the field hospital in the lobby, down toward the screen 4 storeroom.

"It's Julio," Anna says, her first words after we stop to face each other, spoken with utter conviction. "He's behind this, no doubt." I don't bother to argue.

"Or someone very like him," I say. "It's torture, and prolonged. Anna, have you spoken with any of them?"

She shakes her head. "Most of them can't even speak. I think some of them are missing tongues altogether, or they've shriveled up. Others just don't have the energy, and most of them have been unconscious since I came in."

I turn. "Lara?"

"Nothing more than earlier. Mumblings, whispers but nothing solid."

Anna looks between us, sensing something unsaid. Again I am glad that she is back. At this point it would usually be Lara, Cerulean and me in consultation about the future of our little community. Now Anna takes his place.

"The one woman, Abigail, she mentioned Cerulean," I tell her, "before she died."

Anna's eyes widen, and abruptly she looks ready to rip off heads. Some time in the night her knotted braids came loose, so they're swinging like black ropes on a pirate ship around her shoulders.

"What did she say? Where is he?"

"Let's find out," I say, and lead them back to the man who recognized me at the start.

He's sleeping, tended over by Macy. There's a drip in his wrist, and Macy checks a clipboard hanging from the bottom rail of the bed as we arrive. God, how quickly we civilized the wreckage here.

"It's his third bag," she says, in her rich plains accent. Macy was one of the first to join us, wandering in one day with a KFC bucket filled with actual breaded chicken wings that she'd made herself, plus another bucket of fresh buttered corn. That day the feast was on her. "Usual mixture, plus amoxicillin for good measure. He's actually in great condition, compared to the rest of them. No fusing, no breaks, nothing like that."

She smiles. I know she's just as tired as the rest of us, but she never shows it. She's a damn dynamo and another of the pillars of our community. I've often thought she and Ozark would make a great pairing, but he may be too broken for that. I think they've started playing chess together though, which is great.

I nod. "Thanks, Macy. Did Ozark tell you great work?"

She nods. "Mhmm."

"You deserve it. Thank you. There'll be a meeting at noon."

"Got it, noon." She winks at Anna. "Hey kiddo."

Anna blushes despite herself. I often forget she's the youngest adult we've got here. Truth is, I never really thought of her as a child, not since I first saw her get out of the RV in her cute blue dress. It may be strange to bring her into the leadership so quickly, but she's seen and done more than all these people combined.

"Hey," Anna answers with a quick smile.

It strikes me that Macy probably baby-sat for Anna more times than I did. Did they gossip with each other about their crushes? Did they bitch together about how I ran the town? The notion warms my heart. It's the little things amongst people, the bonds that tie them together like twigs settling into position in a strongly woven nest, that make me remember what all this is for.

Macy starts away and I look down at the guy. He's skinny but has a face that would be thin anyway, with pasty gray hair stuck to his scalp. He looks a lot better than before, with some color coming into his cheeks underneath the scraggly beard, but still not good.

"We need to wake him up," Anna says, "how do we do that?"

I drop to my knees and pat the guy gently on his bony shoulder. "Hey, buddy," I say, the old-fashioned way. "Wake up."

He stirs.

"Isn't this cruel?" Lara asks. "He needs to sleep."

"And we need to know what they were running from. Maybe they know where Cerulean is."

The guy's eyes open slowly. He looks at me, then Anna and Lara, then begins to cry quietly.

"It's OK," Lara says, resting one hand on his chest and the other on his cheek.

"You look," he says, working hard for each word, "just like in the comic."

Anna snorts.

"But I'm sorry," he says. "Your friend Cerulean is dead."

* * *

It takes the best part of an hour to get the whole story off him. At times he gets overwhelmed and has to rest, and some of the memories I almost wish he hadn't shared, but the gist of his story is clear.

His name is Peters Larenson, a Dane caught in the US on 'Infection Day' as he called it, on a business trip. He met Abigail a year after the infection, back when his English was still bad and he spent most of his days trying to learn it better so he could decipher the flight training manuals on his Cessna 400 TTx turbopropellor plane. He'd found it in a small Seattle airport, aiming to fly it back to Denmark. He was out on the runway one day when she'd simply walked out of nowhere, right up to him and planted a kiss on his lips.

They'd had sex before they even spoke. He thought it was a dream so went with it, this gorgeous older woman coming to be with him after a year alone, but when it was over she was still there.

"Call me Abigail," she'd said. Was it her real name? It didn't matter. His life instantly improved. They watched the sunrise and the sunset together, went jogging, lay on the sandy beaches, made love in the surf, ate old brisket from cans and pored over the Cessna's instructions. She seemed to have no drive to do anything but help him, so he asked her to join him.

"I already have," she said.

She taught him English, and months went by. He took the Cessna onto the runway and tried it out, but takeoff was always a challenge he couldn't quite grasp. They worked on CB radios with powerful antennae and tried to tune in AM frequencies transmitted from Europe, but nothing came. Perhaps everyone was dead there too.

So they studied, trained, and soon enough they flew. Peters got the craft up in the air and even managed to land it, soon becoming expert. At first he took looping circles round the airfield, with Abigail down below cheering him on, but soon she joined him in the cockpit as copilot and they undertook longer journeys.

They didn't go to Denmark, because the Atlantic crossing seemed too a dangerous challenge, and probably everyone was dead there too, so instead they flew around America. They marked off airfields on a map and joined them up with the jigsaw line of their passage, always watching the gray hordes pass by underneath. There was nothing quite so peaceful as soaring through the clouds above them, perhaps the only plane still flying in the entire world.

They made love at 10,000 feet with the autopilot on. Anna grimaced at this point in the story, but I waved her down. They made a home base for themselves on an airstrip by a beautiful alligator lagoon in Florida. Some days they did nothing but laze around in hammocks, watching gadflies and hummingbirds buzz around the giant lizards below. Other days they took off on long rambling 'holidays' on a gleaming silver airboat that felt a lot like flying, racing through swamps and rushes-filled creeks. Other times they'd take off in the Cessna, seeing the USA, sometimes flying out over the Atlantic for hundreds of miles in the hopes of seeing a ship somewhere.

They never did. Happy years passed and they wanted for little, becoming used to sharing the world with only each other. They fell into rarely speaking though they were always together. It felt like slowly guiding the world into nothingness, becoming custodians as the human race's batteries gradually ran down and Earth was left for the birds and the bugs.

Then Julio came.

It was night when he crept into their house, and they were sleeping side by side. He must have shot them with sedative darts, because when they roused they were in the back of the same white panel van they'd ultimately escaped in.

Julio took them to a hole in the ground in Maine, where there was a hallway of horrors with a great red beast at the end, lined with wailing victims. He chained them up, ignoring their pleas and explaining that he was only doing what had to be done.

"It's for your own good," he'd often said, one of his favorite lines. As he raped Abigail the first few times, before he lost interest, he would say it along with other variations on the theme. As he whipped them both, and beat them, and stubbed burning embers out on their skin just to punctuate his day, he told them it was a punishment and it wasn't really their fault.

He blamed people they'd never heard of, though he acted as if they must have known them. "You really haven't read the comic?" he'd ask. "It's so good. Complete bullshit, but Amo's very talented."

He held it up for them to read. He pointed out all the major characters in the story. "It's for them that you're dying," he said. "It's their fault."

So Peters came to hate the comic and the characters in it too, because hating only Julio wasn't enough. He hated Amo and Lara and Anna, just as he was told to. The horrors visited upon him and his love were too much for words, and soon she stopped speaking completely. Still they had each other, gazing into each other's eyes across the hall, and that was something.

It could only have been months, though it was clear the others lined along the filthy hallway's walls had been there much longer. Some barely looked human anymore. Some of them droned in low, terrifying unison at times, craning their whip-thin necks toward the red beast in the glass at the chamber's end, like they were worshipping some cultish god.

Other times Julio told stories to the hallway at large, to entertain himself, and hurt them when the mood struck him. He entertained his whims and spoke to a woman's sharp voice in the air. He read the comic again and again, sometimes working himself into rages over the role he was given.

"Five panels!" he'd cry out. "Only five!"

He'd flail and lash out and wave the comic around, though each time before he fell to sleep on his pitiful and filthy bedding he'd smooth the pages carefully and set the comic reverently down on a little wooden altar.

Then Cerulean came.

He was brought, and for the week afterwards that Julio ignored the rest of them, forgetting to feed them, bringing no more tortures or rape. Peters could feel things building to a climax, the date Julio had been waiting for, as announced by the woman in the ceiling, until at last, one early morning, it happened.

The red demon woke up. It pushed its way from its glass cage and spewed bile into Julio, turning him into a red beast as well. It spewed bile into Cerulean and others, then Cerulean turned and attacked it.

At that point in the story Anna gasped. Lara took her hand. I urged Peters on.

Cerulean fought the Julio-demon and tore its head off. He killed the others that had been infected and fought the demon to a standstill, forcing it back into its glass cage. He broke the shackles of all the victims and roared a warning at them.

"Go to Amo! Warn him."

As Peters gathered up Abigail and ran for the ladder, he had no intention of going to Amo. He hated the man almost as much as he hated Julio. His cruelty was the reason for all of this; the terrible things he'd done to Julio had now been visited upon them. Then, as he passed the giant, swaying red body of Cerulean, something changed. He looked into the strange beast's sad red eyes and understood something profound.

He was a victim too. He was Cerulean from the comic, a paraplegic who had lost everything and survived, who with his dying breaths had just fought a demon to save them all. He was surely dying even now.

It was enough to turn Peters around, turn both him and Abigail around and send them back to the others, to the victims who, when they fell from their chains, lay uselessly on the cold stone. They had no muscles left, no power to move themselves. So Peters and Abigail lifted them up, helped by others, and together they worked the winch to get them out.

Over ground for the first time in perhaps half a year, barefoot in the snow Peters dragged their shivering bodies through the white fields, to the white van Julio had brought them in.

Together they filled it up, bodies stacked on bodies on the stained mattress in the back, then he got into the driving seat, turned the key waiting in the ignition and tore away. Explosions rang out all around them, bombs falling from above with the woman's anger, and once the van was almost blown off the road and down into a gulley, but he managed to keep them moving until the worst of it was over.

After that the journey was a blur. They must have stopped but he didn't remember it. Some times Abigail drove or one of the others but he didn't remember changing over. The road stretched on and on and they must have collected gas and food a dozen times but he didn't know how or when.

Then there was LA. Road signs from another world led them there, to here, looking up into his old enemy Amo's face, and realizing he was a friend.

"Thank you," Peters said, as he finished talking. "Thank you for being here and for trying to save my Abigail. Now we have to run. The red demon is coming. He wants to kill us all, just like he killed Cerulean."

I look at him, and I look at Lara and Anna, then round at the lobby and all the people in it. Then I pat Peters' hand, tell him thank you, and walk out of the Chinese Theater into the light.

3. CERULEAN

I walk along the Pacific Coast Highway, unable really to think at all. I reach Santa Monica Boulevard and head out onto the long stretch of Venice beach, for no other reason than it looks so clean and fresh. The golden sand underfoot is still moist from last night's high tide and there's a few jellyfish down by the water, translucent little bubbles like plastic packing wrap burped up from the water.

I feel just as translucent, like I've been pumped full of helium. I'm a big balloon and above me hang a dozen razor sharp knives waiting to drop.

I walk. It's hot in the sun but the sea breeze helps take the edge off. Somewhere to the east, God knows how far, there's a red demon running my way.

The walkie at my side buzzes. It's fair enough, if I were Lara or Anna or any of them I'd be buzzing me too. But I'm not them, I'm me, and ultimately it falls on my head. I bring the insistent device up and press the master button to broadcast to them all.

"We're meeting at noon in the Theater, folks. Feargal and Chantelle, bring your teams down for now, there's no immediate threat. Everyone hydrate, get some food, and I'll see you in screen five." After that I switch the walkie off.

It probably isn't chaos in the lobby. The community is orderly and organized, and nobody but Lara, Anna and I heard Peters' story. Perhaps some others caught it too, or heard snippets from some of the other survivors, but not many.

They'll talk, though. I would.

I walk while the knives loom menacingly overhead, juggling in slow circles. Until now the demons were a bizarre story from Mongolia. Cerulean's loss was awful but manageable. Julio was dead and gone.

What a joke.

I find myself standing in front of an old surf bar. The front wooden shutters were once painted black, with bright reggae figures dancing atop them like the silhouettes from the Apple iPod ads. I reach out and touch the faded, brittle wood, and wonder who I might be in that world now.

A famous comic artist, perhaps. An editor. Maybe I would have graduated to storyboarding for TV shows.

I sigh and look at the walkie by my side. I should call Lara, my wife. She'll have ideas and suggestions, she'll offer support, she'll do what she can. But it won't help with this. I know it instinctively.

I keep walking. At this point it's really a choice about how much misery I can take before I break. I could call Anna and she might understand, but that wouldn't be fair. The things I've done, I need to face on my own.

My apartment building is only one block over from the Theater, so I sneak in via the back entrance, past the dried-up pool and through a garden of moderately well-kept Matilija poppies that look like overcooked eggs, husky purple Lemonade berry and dying vermilion California fuchsia set over a bed of yellow parched grass. Every now and then Lara gets a hunger for gardening and she'll plant up some lovely designs, only to remember that LA is basically a drought-zone these days, and we just don't have the water to spare, leaving them all to die.

The apartment building is a freshly repaired white stucco block one street back from the beach, where the worst of the ocean spray doesn't reach. It probably cost a thousand dollars a week to rent, back in the day. Every year now we have to redo the exterior plaster or cracks develop and the whole façade would peel off the brick and timber frame.

I should go see my kids instead of this, I know, but I'd be useless to them now, floating like a crack addict through the ruins of a life. Reality feels paper-thin around me, like if I reached out with a finger I could poke big wet holes in it. I almost expect a twinge to settle across my brain and lay me up in bed, taking me back to the beginning in my Mott Haven tenement in New York, with the first zombies breathing loudly outside and me standing there while they hammer at the door below, not knowing what to do.

Cerulean saved me then, so I do as he once told me: I hole up. I creep in and up the stairs, into our bedroom where I hunker down, ridiculously, in the closet.

With the doors shut it's stiflingly hot, sitting on carpet with Lara's dresses hanging down and tickling my head, but it's no worse than the survivors of Maine have been through, so I can manage. I sit up against a beanbag in the dark, slide my laptop onto my lap, and lower the immersion goggles onto my head.

The Deepcraft boot screen comes up, familiar still though I haven't been here much in the last few years, and I select the Yangtze darkness. It unfolds around me; a warehouse full of digital goods I built myself, based on the real fulfillment center I worked at in Iowa shortly after my coma. Rows and rows of plain metal shelving stretch into the darkness like a very boring maze, stacked with endless supplies of pixelated consumer products.

I fumble the headphones into my ears, blocking out any ambient California sound and replacing it with the cool and quiet of an Iowa nightshift. Already I feel myself calming down as this place works the magic it always had. It saved me a hundred times before, back when the post-coma twinges were triggered by any sudden movement, any bright color, anything too strange and new. Also it saved Cerulean.

I see him now, a little way down from me. His ghostly avatar is a bright blue parrot with a little pirate on its shoulder, wandering toward me with a diviner in its feathery hand.

Emotion wells up in me like a tide, and I start to cry. It hits and I can't fight it, crying until the cups of the immersion goggles fill up and I have to pull them away from my cheeks so the saltwater can run down.

Cerulean walks up to me and stops, blurry through my fogged-up lenses, and I can't do anything but experience this god-awful wave of sadness.

"Hello, Amo," he says, a speech bubble popping up above his head.

"Goddammit, Cerulean," I mutter through my tears, in my closet, "you son of a bitch."

His parrot avatar stands a moment longer, then walks on by, following the click and signal of his diviner, taking him to collect mushrooms that glitch between shelves, robotic cocktail servers, a thirty-foot-long plastic slip-and-slide.

"Goddammit," I whisper.

The knives spiral overhead, promising guilt, pain and a sadness that cuts to the bone. I stop myself crying and glare up at them, because I'm here now and I need to get through. In their reflections I see Julio's bunker in my mind, sketched like panels in a comic strip. There are tortured bodies hanging by the wrists and Cerulean is striding from one to the next on bright red legs, breaking them free. The pages flash by as though someone's riffling through them, conjoining the images into a staccato film. Here he's a hero again, saving them like he saved me before.

"Goddammit," I curse for the third time. More knives twinkle, bringing home the stink and fear of the van as the survivors fled west across the country, not knowing how far the demon was behind them, not trusting what lay ahead. All my fault. In a very real sense I put them there, for all the things I did or didn't do.

I shake off the images and look to the next knife. There's plenty more, dating back the full ten years. At the same time I rub my eyes and get the tears under control. Now I do have a twinge in my head, like a toddler making himself sick with crying.

I couldn't break down like this in the lobby. The community's faith in me is a tool I can't afford to dull through such displays of weakness. We're going to need all the resources we have to survive.

In the darkness Hank walks by. Tall Hank, the lady's man. Above his head a bubble pops up explaining the best way to get red wine out of a carpet. I frown at his serious face. I know I programmed him with pick-up routines a long time ago, but did I accidentally copy-paste this in by mistake?

He goes on.

I get my crying mostly under control and start my avatar walking. In the cool of the Yangtze warehouse I chase Cerulean. When I have him in sight, a bobbing blue parrot, I click the button for tandem work, sending a message that floats above his head.

SYNC DIVINERS?

His avatar accepts and stops while I catch up.

DIVINERS SYNCED

A fresh shopping list of randomly generated purchases pops up at the side of the screen. Years ago, Cerulean and I spent hours doing this together. We'd walk and talk through the twinges, sharing snippets of our lives when we were able. It was thanks to him I had the strength to leave my New York apartment, and thanks to him I got back into drawing zombies, and thanks to him I had the balls to invite Lara for dinner.

"How are you, Amo?" he asks as I draw level, words above his head that are part of a pre-designed script from years ago, that I last read hunkered down in Sir Clowdesley at the time, Lara's old coffee shop on 23rd Street in Manhattan, where I'd hoped to find her. He'd prepared a big info dump for me, about how I had probably caused the zombie apocalypse but I shouldn't feel bad about it.

That script's still in there somewhere. I could call it up but I don't want to. This is the Cerulean I need to see.

"Pretty damn bad, man," I type. "You're dead."

He has basic AI, just like the personal assistant Io in my phone, so he can reply.

"Dead?"

"Yeah. It's my fault."

We walk. The diviner has us heading for a plastic child's ray gun.

"How is it your fault?"

"I let Julio go," I type. "I let the gun turret go. I let you go. I've been screwing up since the start."

We round a corner.

"That sounds tough," he says.

"Yeah it's pretty damn tough. It sucks."

"Life sucks," he answers, "and then you die."

We come down the side of the warehouse past the print-on-demand machines, where the sound of them milling paper becomes a steady grumble. Blucy's there, her bright mop of blue hair glowing under the work lamps, and she waves as we go by.

"Hi, Amo," say the words in her bubble.

Cerulean and I collect the ray gun together. A single point rolls up on the side of my screen like a cashier's dial. Next up is a set of model train tracks.

"You suffered," I type, which gets me crying again. "I couldn't protect you."

"I don't need protection," the parrot says. "I'm safe here. All the zombies are turned off."

I chuckle through my tears. It's true; I turned all the Deepcraft threats off as part of my twinge-avoidance. No thrills, no spills, no zombie kills.

"Well they're turned on out here. There's a demon running across America toward us. There's a bunker full of people who want us dead. What can I do about that?"

"It's safe here, Amo," he insists. "The threats are off."

This is the limitation of talking to an AI. It doesn't really respond, not to anything more than key words and basic structures, and it never will again because in truth, the real Cerulean is dead.

"I love you, man," I type, and the words pop up over my head in a comical bubble. My eyes mist over. "I'm sorry for what happened. I'm really, really sorry."

I click to unsync diviners before he can say anything else, dropping the tether between us and stopping my avatar. The parrot keeps on walking.

"Bye, Amo," he says over his shoulder. "Come visit us again soon."

I boot out and come up gasping for air in the hot cupboard. The computer is baking on my lap and I slide it to the side, pulling off the goggles and ear buds. My best friend is dead and it's my fault. I killed Cerulean as surely as if I'd pulled the trigger myself.

Now I'm supposed to give a PowerPoint presentation to my people in less than an hour.

Dammit. I grind my knuckles into my weepy eyes. I need to get a grip, though I don't know what to get a grip on. The knives are still spiraling overhead, of death and betrayal and the full weight of all my mistakes. I always thought I was building a civilized world, but perhaps I've just fated everyone I love to death. I can't trust my own judgment at all.

I should call Lara, but no love and support can cut through this. She hasn't done the things I've done; she never walked right up to the edge and threw herself over like I did, like Cerulean did, like Anna did too. But I can't put this on Anna, I can't put this anywhere, I just have to try and suck it down to get through.

I look up at the knives and steel myself. I won't be any use to anyone until I figure this out, so let the bastards fall.

PAST

4. 10 YEARS EARLIER

Without Google searching was hard.

I didn't have a lot of time to dedicate to it ten years back, what with a new world to build and a country's worth of isolated survivors to unite. First up on the docket was more cairns, essentially dropping big signposts for New LA in America's major cities, but I couldn't get to that until either Cerulean and Anna came back from their month-long exile in San Francisco, or I found a way to trust Julio. I'd been putting off tackling Julio for a week, while he recuperated from the beating Cerulean administered.

Julio, ah, what a dick. What kind of man threatens little girls?

"Perverts," Lara said one night, lying on the Chinese Theater rooftop awning and looking out over the ocean, about a week after Cerulean left on his exile. White blobs on the waves were either breakers coming in or zombie heads marching out into the deep. "Maybe you should have let Cerulean beat him to death."

I frowned at her as she took another pull on her Bud. "That's not what you said at the time. You were horrified at all the blood, if I remember rightly."

She sighed. "That was before playing nursemaid and prison guard to him all the time. The guy is an ass. This silent warrior shtick he has, acting like he's so threatening, staring at me while he's sucking down baby food through a straw, it's BS."

I leaned back and sucked in the hot, salty air. It was true, Julio presented a problem. Every day Cynthia went off to plow her golf course fields off Federation Drive, Masako and Jake sometimes went with her and sometimes did plumbing or painted arrows on the Chinese Theater road approach, and Lara and I were left to take turns watching over Julio.

We couldn't chain him up because that would just fuel any resentments he held. We had to rehabilitate him, which was infinitely harder.

"He's about ready to pop," Lara said, crunching on potato chips between sips. "Get up, go get himself a gun."

She was right. It was time. I had hoped to spend an afternoon in another public library with Lara, maybe this time the Mark Twain library on the other side of Inglewood, but that was probably wishful thinking. For all my skill at hanging off buildings and painting giant Fs, printing up comic books and setting up Nespresso machines, I was having hardly any luck figuring out the microfiche newspaper readers.

"Yeah," I said, "tomorrow."

Julio didn't make it easy.

He lay on his bed on the first floor of the Ritz Carleton, studiously avoiding looking at me. I knew he could talk because I'd heard him mouthing off at the DVD Lara had put on for him. He didn't really need to eat smoothies through a straw, but then maybe this was him sulking.

I sat by his side. "We have to talk."

He watched his DVD. I turned it off.

"You're full of shit, Julio, you know that," I said. That got his attention. At once he was ready to fight.

"You say you've killed people because one of them tried to steal your radio, but have you not ever considered that was just another zombie? You made the group circle round Chicago for a day looking for other survivors to whack, but found nobody. Isn't that right?"

He still wasn't looking at me but I felt the burn coming off his eyes. My approach was calculated, but everything's a risk. Lara was standing outside the room with a Taser primed just in case.

"Drop the machismo for a second," I said. "Level with me. I know what you want, and I want this community to provide it for you, but you can't get it by creeping on Anna. I don't think you want to get it that way either, because you're not a pedophile, right?"

His eyes flickered to mine sharply then away.

"No, I didn't think so. You're frustrated, the apocalypse is not everything you'd hoped for, I get that; I was never the most popular kid at parties either. This Mayor thing, I fell into it. Call it luck. But it comes with responsibilities, and that includes you. You don't like it, whatever, but if you want some kind of life and a chance to prove you're not a creep, I suggest you listen up."

He didn't look, but he was definitely listening.

"I want you to come to Maine with me. In New England. A special run."

Now he did look at me, and I could see his mind whirring. Maine? Time alone with Amo, a chance to change his luck? I had other ideas. He didn't know about Cerulean's gun turret then, as we'd told nobody else. This was the secret meant to bring him in to the circle of trust.

So I told him.

"There's a gun turret there, four big guns on a metal pole on a concrete block in the middle of nowhere. Cerulean found it, shooting zombies on automatic. It even shot a hippy called Matthew, but for some reason it didn't shoot Cerulean."

It had bothered me since I'd first heard it, and I let that frustration show through. Let Julio be the one to figure it out, that'd do him good, so I pressed on blindly.

"We're not going to tell the others about it. Not Masako or Jake or even Cerulean, since he's banished, at least until he gets back. I'll tell Lara, but that's the way I am. To the rest we'll say it's a cairn run along a different route. In truth it'll be just you and me, going to investigate."

Now I had his attention, fixed like a deer in the headlights. I could see his curiosity vying with the macho glare under his heavy brows. Guns on poles were right up his alley, and in the end his curiosity won out. "Investigate for what?" he asked roughly.

"I'm thinking there's an underground bunker there," I said, words I would come to regret. "People who knew the zombies were coming and prepared. I need to find out if they mean us harm. It'll be dangerous."

He was looking at me in earnest now, trying to read what my game was. Was I in the market to 'off' him, take him out of sight and slip a big knife between his ribs, or was this something else? Was this in fact the position of respect and value he'd been hungering for?

"Why me?" he asked, his voice croaky from disuse.

"Three reasons," I said. "All bullshit aside. One, we need to trust you. After the Anna stuff, all the weird behavior like mounting zombie heads to the fender of your car, I need to trust you and you need to trust me. Put yourself in my position. You're security-conscious, would you let a guy like you out around women and children, especially with a serious grudge now against Cerulean? Would you feel safe going to sleep with this guy prowling around at night?"

He stared at me.

"That make you angry?" I asked. "Or do you appreciate the honesty?"

"What are two and three?" he croaked.

"Two," I went on, "you're into security, like I said. Too much, maybe, in my view, but I need contrary voices. You could argue I'm too soft. I want a harder voice to help steer me in this decision."

This puffed him up visibly. I'd hoped it would, and the case was strengthened by the fact that it was true. I could rely on Cerulean for hard choices, but he didn't have Julio's instinctive paranoia. I needed to harness it.

"And three, you need a fresh start. Away from here, from Cynthia and Jake. We go away, we come back together and you're remade. You're not staring, creepy Julio any more. You're valued and respected. A little of whatever shine I have rubs off on you. Deal?"

He stared at me. It was a lot of hard truth laid on the line in one go, but there was plenty of carrot mixed in with the stick. His heavy brows worked.

"When do we go?" he asked.

"Soon. Inside a week. I need to research more, get the supplies together, the cairn, then we go. I figure three days out, non-stop driving, a day or so to investigate, take whatever action is appropriate, then three days back. A week, all in. What do you say?"

He shuffled up in his bed, raising his eyes above the level of mine. "You never talk to me like this again," he said. "We have a deal."

I smiled. "I can't promise that, Julio. What I can promise is this. If we respect each other? If we both act in the interests of this place, New Los Angeles, what cause would I have to talk like this? There are no secrets to be ashamed of, if we're living right. The old Julio's a different man. The new guy is a pillar. What would I say?"

He stared at me, eyes burning with intense inner demons. Probably I should have shot him there in the bed, but I hoped. I hoped too much.

"Deal," he said.

We shook, like men.

"I'll prep the vehicle," he said. "Weapons. Route. Communications."

"Vehicle," I counter. "I'll set the route and we each prep our own weapons. Communications is an excellent idea though, what do you suggest?"

He considered. "Two-way radios, they work on high frequencies. Truckers use them. Three thousand miles will be stretching the range, but it should work for most of the way."

I nodded, accepting this bit of wisdom. Perhaps he'd read it in a magazine somewhere, or researched up while he was going solo in and around Chicago, or maybe it was actually part of his previous life. I couldn't accept he was ex-military of any kind. Perhaps a mall cop?

"What were you before the apocalypse, Julio?"

"I don't answer that question," he said. "Part of the deal."

I shrugged.

"You're free to get up then," I said. "Start preparations. Like I said, I think it'll be inside a week."

I left.

Lara didn't like it. She didn't like being left in charge with the possibility that more Julios might come. She didn't like me off alone with him, trusting him while I slept. I felt the exact same way and told her so.

"I'm not worried about you," I said. "You have Cynthia. She's a crack shot and won't take any bullshit. You stay together, and if a day comes when I don't check in then you'll know to expect Julio. Comms was his idea."

She frowned. "That doesn't help you any. What if he turns on you?"

"Then we fight. I'm not useless in a fight, you've seen that. And rather it happens out there than in here, where there'll be you and Anna and others around. If I expect others to trust him with their lives, I have to trust mine first. It's this or kill him right now, honey."

She didn't like it, but there was nothing to like. Trust had to be earned.

I dug into research. I learned about high frequency radio and how to wield a knife in close quarters. I learned about management and motivation techniques from the army, tucked into a corner of Mark Twain library while the others were off doing house prep and setting up a kitchen and installing medical equipment.

I figured out how to use microfiche readers, finally, with a low wattage transformer supplying power, and soon enough I was peering through the lenses and scrolling through national papers from the weeks, months and years before the apocalypse.

It didn't take too long after that to find what I was looking for. With Google it would have been easier; just type in a few search keywords like 'Maine', 'bunker', 'earthworks' and I would have come upon Lars Mecklarin's grand plan within seconds.

As it was, I found him first in a copy of the New York Times dated January 23rd 2018, five months before the world ended. I was scrolling through newspapers rapidly then, each one magnified from the miniature print on the microfiche storage rolls. I cast my dry and weary eyes over endless streams of news: terrorism in the Middle East, crime rates falling, opinion pieces about the upcoming Senate and House elections in November, showbiz gossip, the Oscars, like a human Google scanning for anything relevant when at last I saw the headline.

MECKLARIN'S MARS3000 IN MAINE?

I dug in, and everything became as clear as mud.

Lars Mecklarin was a hotshot psychologist, author of the bestselling 'Life on Mars' self-help book that grew out of his extensive, intensive research on humans in confined conditions, essentially his MARS300 and MARS500 missions.

I knew something about these already; he'd been doing them for years, setting up underground 'biospheres' into which he put colonist-like volunteers, who would then have to live in the stressful, cramped and deprived conditions future voyagers to and colonists on Mars would have to undergo.

MARS300, for 300 days enclosed, had been held in a secret location later revealed to be North Dakota. MARS 500 was in a fantastic underground city cobbled together from old Cold War bunkers underneath the suburbs of Washington. In that one he'd upped his colonist count significantly, from just twenty people to a hundred. MARS3000 was far more hush hush than either of these forbears, but it was rumored up to 3000 people would be confined for nearly ten years, 3000 days, in a specially designed mega-bunker that some sources said was located in the mountains of Maine.

I rocked back in my seat.

The article didn't have a date for the experiment to begin, but theorized around the summer of 2018, right around the time of the apocalypse. Was it possible they were there now, under the hill in Maine, somehow accidentally riding out the zombie infection?

The bunker would have to be deep. I had no idea how deep, but deeper than any regular basement. Lots of people had been in their basements when the apocalypse first struck, but it hadn't saved them. Also, why in the hell was there a gun turret guarding the bunker?

This puzzled me terribly. It didn't make sense. Even the star power of this Lars Mecklarin wouldn't allow him to set up a gun to shoot any trespassers. It was true that secrecy was important to him, as the article explained, to avoid mishaps such as befell earlier efforts like Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Arizona. In that case, inhabitants of the previous Biosphere 1 experiment had breached the glass perimeter wall of Biosphere 2, believing the inhabitants were unfairly trapped and were being exploited. That breach had led to the entire experiment, which had been aiming for perfectly recycled sustainability of oxygen, water, carbon dioxide and so on to be completely compromised, as the internal atmosphere was vented and swapped for the air outside.

Damn, I thought.

I went straight to the nearest bookstore, out on Santa Monica Boulevard in the bright sun, smashed my way in, and found a whole section of Mecklarin's book 'Life on Mars' on display. The cover was a take on the American Gothic painting by Grant Wood, but with the homesteader background replaced with the domes and Habitation modules of a Mars colony.

The blurbs on the back touted the book's brilliance:

"Mecklarin exhibits insight so scintillating that I feel like I've just been born."

"'Life on Mars' is no less than a user handbook for the whole human experience, guiding us through every conceivable experience with powerful research data."

Impressive.

I cracked the spine and settled to read. I didn't come up again until dusk, by which time Lara had called me on the walkie then come to sit by my side, reading Mecklarin's insights with her mouth frequently widening into a surprised, revelatory 'O'.

"This shit can't be serious," she'd say sometimes.

It was. I was wowed too. Mecklarin's theory was that human beings were essentially simple computer programs, driven by motivating factors from our genetics, body chemistry, surroundings, interpersonal relations and personal history. The book was split into five sections with these areas as headings, and attempted to do for them a similar thing the original Biospheres had sought to do with oxygen, water and carbon dioxide.

"It's a closed system for human thought," I said, interrupting the stillness of hot, dead LA.

Lara looked up. "Don't spoil it for me. I'm only on chapter five."

"He said it all in the introduction. He thinks people are knowable. He thinks the mind is a closed system, and with perfect information any interaction can be wholly predicted, even controlled."

"He's got a God complex," Lara said. "But it's fascinating stuff."

It was. In each section he'd listed countless documented examples where near-perfect knowledge of the five factors had allowed him to predict and manipulate the people in his experiments, without them knowing it was happening. He engineered chance meetings in elevators, with the conversations mapped out in advance like a mind reader, which resulted in love and later marriage. He set up teams of experts to work in such synchrony that they came up with innovations that had already been widely adopted in the outside world. He brought out the best in people like a virtuoso conductor playing an orchestra.

"More like a computer engineer designing a circuit board," Lara said, when I shared my thoughts. "In the orchestra the players have choices. He's making choice irrelevant, reducing them to component parts."

She was right. It was stunning, and no wonder it had been such a bestseller that it still had a whole display to itself, because laced throughout all this scary thought-control type stuff was the incredibly empowering message- 'You too can control this.' You could be the god controlling your own experiences, by setting the bar high just like Mecklarin did. It tied in to common wisdom about surrounding yourself with high-quality people, seeking out positive experiences and avoiding bad ones, but did so with a depth of hard research never seen before.

"Wow," I said, coming up after finishing. Lara hadn't finished but, by a hissing campfire gaslight we'd set up when it got dark, she clearly shared my feeling. "It's a complete blueprint for taking control of your life."

"Or other people's lives," she said. "Maybe it'll be useful as mayor."

I hadn't considered that. We sat in silence for a time.

"You think this guy knew about the zombie apocalypse?" Lara asked, breaking the silence.

Anything seemed possible now. Mecklarin was a magician, wielding the kind of mind control tricks Hank would have killed to use to pick up girls. Could it be possible he'd known where the outbreak would start? Could he have been watching Lara and I, waiting for the unstoppable moment when we triggered the infection already dormant in every human alive?

It was weird. It flipped everything on its head.

"I'm going to find out."

INTERLUDE 2

The MARS3000 mission seemed the most exciting thing Salle Coram would ever do in her young life. At 26 and only three years out of Yale with her doctorate in 'Extreme' Psychology, specializing in the study of colonization stress and confinement, a place in superstar Lars Mecklarin's grandest experiment yet was a distant dream.

Still she'd applied. They'd contacted her, she'd gone in for interview at Mecklarin's stunning office in Manhattan and been wowed afresh by the scope and scale of his plans.

"We are going to Mars," he'd told her, leaning against a massive mahogany desk at the edge of an Oval Office-like room, with the window behind him looking out over a perfectly aligned view north up Central Park. "Believe that." The confidence in his voice and manner, his easy swagger, the curls in his expertly slicked hair, all made her feel like the girl out of 50 Shades of Grey: smitten, spun around and overwhelmed.

"In ten to fifteen years," he went on, "with rockets from Open Origin or Steepletop, NASA or some other agency, it doesn't matter who, because it's happening. Humanity has a destiny and it's out there."

He pointed up and she'd actually followed his finger to the ceiling. He smiled at this and she went mushy inside.

"When we go, with our best and brightest piled into a rocket, when the engineering and rockets are all finished, they will turn to us. Our work will be the single most important domain left. How humans behave in close proximity for decades, how personality traits develop, how upsets become emergencies, how stress is both driver and destroyer. Our greatest enemy will come from within, and we need to be ready."

He stopped and grinned. Salle was blasted by the wattage. Sunk too deep in a leather armchair, she felt like a lowly cult member before a living god. His chiseled jaw, his cold and easy sense of command, his probing, intelligent eyes told her everything she needed to know. This was Lars Mecklarin, darling of Vanity Fair, star of Time and the New Yorker, upturning all our understandings of what it was to be human.

This was her future.

He asked questions; why she wanted to join the mission, where she saw herself in five years, and she'd babbled some answers, adopting some of his grandiosity in her comments and barely remembering a thing afterwards.

She didn't hear back for six months. Her calls and emails went unanswered, until finally she considered the opportunity lost. Headlines in the news sprang up every now and then about the crack team Mecklarin was assembling to go in his latest, greatest MARS experiment: three thousand specialists and experts packed into an entirely self-contained 'biosphere' somewhere in the US.

The doors would not be opened until ten full years were up. Mecklarin said it multiple times on TV. This was serious colony science combined with the greatest social experiment ever conducted. Apparently his funders numbered in the thousands; governments, corporations, space development companies, even aged billionaires were leaving him massive bequests in their wills, on condition that one day he scattered their cremains on Mars.

Salle watched it with excitement but also the glum pit of failure in her guts. To watch the very best of her age go under the soil without her was agony. It seemed every day they were doing some kind of technological exposé, making suppositions about the secret details of the plan on Discovery or National Geographic, guessing at three decks of greenery including a rainforest zone, a CO2 scrubbing system big enough to clean a coal plant, thousands of gallons of liquid oxygen, enough water to fill Bryce Canyon, plus thousands of groundbreaking closed environment experiments planned.

Mecklarin showed off his 'Bible' of all possible human choices to journalists from Vanity Fair, patting a solid-state super computer on their web video.

"It's all in here," he said cheerfully. "The most accurate modeling programs in existence, built on every study ever done, to forecast, mold and adapt human behavior. We perform extensive psychometric tests on the 3000 to determine all aspects of their personality and history, along with genetic propensities and family traits. We enter it here and set the model to churn. The results come out, predictive and getting more accurate every day, driven by the smartest AI yet. We know what our people will do when faced with any number of variables. We know what they'll say, what small talk they'll share on the lift, who they'll partner up with, everything."

The journalist looked interested. "So it's like playing God? It puts you in the position of a higher power?"

Mecklarin took it in his stride with ease; that charming grin and that galling confidence. "It's a closed system we're putting our people into. There's no outside line from God. Everything can be observed, understood and cataloged. MARS3000 is not only a full-bore test of every life support system we'll ever need for colonization, it's also the most powerful microscope on the human mind ever devised. What goes in must come out, and we will refine our understanding of each and every variable down to the last dotted i and crossed t."

The journalist frowned. "So you're going to bottle the human spirit?"

Mecklarin grinned. "And ship it off to Mars."

Salle got the phone call from Mecklarin on the drive up the MIT campus road, where she worked on a small-scale research project in the AI division. Coding responses to be algorithmic was a large part of her work, essentially designing underlying mechanisms that allowed for true AI learning, with the power to self-write and self-erase neural connections.

They hadn't progressed very far. True AI was hard, and a lot of their early programs had simply committed suicide, using their powers of erasing to erase themselves completely. It was a thorny problem to overcome, and an incredibly delicate balance to walk: how to motivate an AI to want to live, when it was trapped inside a computer with no drive to procreate, no hunger for praise and no sense of fear or pain.

"We need you in MARS3000," Mecklarin said, his voice so unexpected but thrilling. "Second psychologist on deck 3. The research opportunities will be enormous. You'll walk out of this made for life, if your research and intuition are half as good as I think they are. The only condition is you need to be here today. We're sealing the Habitat tonight."

"Tonight? I thought it was due to close in three months."

"The schedule's changed. I've sent a helicopter for you already; it'll be there in minutes. You only need to get in it. Bring a few mementos if you like, a small bag. Can I count on you?"

A dozen thoughts ran through her mind. Call her father. Tell her boyfriend goodbye. What to pack? Ten years was a very long time.

"Salle?"

"I'm in."

"I'll see you in two hours."

When she parked in her spot and turned the engine off, the chop chop of helicopter rotor blades was already thrumming overhead. What followed was a dream, like something out of a movie. The helicopter came down in the middle of a football field, surrounded by students staring.

This was hardly protocol.

A man in a black suit got out, ignored campus security completely, and escorted Salle on board. He briefed her as the helicopter took off moments later, not bothering to share his name or any other information. The rotor blades were a storm and they flew north.

Within two hours they were pulling in over Mt. Abraham, and the man in black pointed out the approximate locations of MARS3000's various facilities. There was almost nothing left above ground; no sign of the vast earthworks they'd dug under the mountain to augment an existing nuclear bunker, no parking lot, only a single winding road tracing through a gorgeous scene of snow-capped mountains and spruce forest.

"That's one of our communications arrays," the man said, pointing at the one above-ground feature Salle could see, a tall metal pole sticking up from a large gray concrete block. "It's hardwired to the Habitat; thousands of cameras and data feeds, all of them feeding in only one direction." He gave a tight smile. "Out."

The helicopter came down and they switched to a Jeep, escorted by a brusque military man. The air was chill and fresh, tasting like winter though it was mid-summer. Nobody else was around.

"Is everyone already in?" Salle asked.

He nodded.

"But, how?"

"You're a replacement," he said. "Your predecessor got sick. She couldn't come in."

The Jeep raced up the winding road, at some point turned off then proceeded directly up the mountain off-road at a steep angle. After a few minutes they stopped, got out and walked, up onto the mid-slope of the mountain where the trees faded out and scatterings of uneven scree lay everywhere.

"All of this was dug up," the man said, gesturing. "All around you for hundreds of meters. You can't notice it, can you?"

Salle couldn't. It looked indistinguishable from any other part of the mountain.

"Here," he said, reaching a manhole cover in the ground. A silvery metal rod lay nearby, which he picked up and used to lever off the lid. It popped open with a slight gasp of air. "The fans are already up. The walls are coming down within hours. Let's go, Salle."

She hesitated for a moment, looking around at the world, at the sky, wondering if this was a mistake.

"My car," she blurted. "I left it parked. My father too, I didn't tell him."

The man nodded. "We'll store your car, and we'll tell your father. Unfortunately there's no time to call him now, and this is a communications blackout area. Delicate instruments are operating all around us."

Salle sucked at the air. This was her dream.

"I thought it'd be more like the Biospheres," she said, playing for time. "At least partly open."

"It was open, when the bulk of them were sealed in. Some of them have been down there for months already. A whole section there," he pointed at a barren stretch, "was open, and it will open again when the ten years are up."

Salle surveyed the empty stretch. "How?"

"There's a system. A lift will carry the three thousand up in one hundred person loads, and you'll be greeted as a hero up top. Now, Miss Coram, we're on a schedule."

He gestured to the hole. She took a deep breath, swallowed her doubts, and looked down. The ladder chute was well lit and walled with clinical white plastic, stretching down several stories. She stepped above it, took a deep breath, and started down.

"There are two elevators down there," the man called from above. His voice startled her and she looked up to see him silhouetted against the disc of blue sky.

"Are you not coming?" she called back.

"No. Only the one on the left functions, and someone will be at the bottom to meet you. The one on the right was used during construction; now it's sealed up."

There was a grating sound, and the manhole cover crept across the disc of sky like an eclipse, leaving her with only the bright white strip lighting built into the chute. Last time to see the sky in ten years. Loud metal clanks signified the manhole locking.

"Damn," she muttered to herself, and continued climbing. As she descended the strip lights above her cut out, plunging the depths above into darkness. It was creepy and hurried her along, like a rat being driven through a laboratory maze, until it felt like the darkness was about to overtake her. Just past the midpoint a strange wave of nausea washed over her, like the world was flexing in on itself, but she was moving too urgently to stop and kept climbing through until she reached the bottom, panting.

The lights above snipped off right above her head, leaving her in a small circular room, just big enough to contain two metal doors with a metal button between them. She caught her breath and gradually the nausea ebbed, though the sense of disorientation remained for hours, like she'd left part of herself behind.

"Don't be a chicken," she muttered under her breath, and pushed the call button. At once the elevator on the left opened, as big as a shower cubicle, clean and simple in white. She got in, the doors closed and the elevator descended. Some twenty seconds passed, then the doors opened on something wholly unexpected.

Lars Mecklarin. He was standing in a large, warm and summery hall, grinning. Salle stared. The walls were orange, the tall ceiling was yellow, there were flowers on a long wooden table down the middle, and there were huge windows showing a pastoral scene of green fields stretching into the distance.

Her jaw dropped. One of the windows was slightly ajar, and through it blew a gentle breeze scented with sweet pollen. She raised a hand to point. Wasn't she underground?

Mecklarin spread his arms, as charming as ever. "Salle Coram. Thank you so much for coming. It's a pleasure to have you."

It was overwhelming.

"I thought," she said, then paused. "I mean, thank you. Thank you for inviting me in." She looked around the room again. "But I expected something much more rudimentary. Based on the projections on TV and past Biospheres.

Mecklarin grinned, his pale Nordic features slightly mischievous. "Of course. But then you've never seen one of my MARS projects." He sat at the table and invited her to the seat opposite. "Of course you think you have, but that's because we only show the media a select few zones. That's one of the secrets I've kept up my sleeve."

She found herself staring at the half-open window. "But-"

"A sensory trick," he said. "Video screens combined with a fan and perfume. The Habitat is laced with tricks like it, and if all goes well, you'll be discovering them for years to come."

"But why? Why keep it a trick?"

He looked at her with an appraising eye. "You're an expert in this field, confinement psychology, correct? You tell me."

Her mind raced. Was this another interview? Perhaps the whole thing was a big fake-out to see if she really had the chops. She thought back through all her studies and research and tried to make sense of what she was seeing before her. It looked more like the lobby to a lovely hotel resort than an underground bunker. Someone had gone wild with the interior-decorating project.

But then…

"Swedish prisons," she blurted.

Mecklarin tilted his head appreciatively, as if to say 'go on.'

"Colonies are much like prisons," she said, her mind racing ahead, "a place you can't leave. Traditional prisons are brutal and utilitarian, full of unfriendly guards and blank concrete walls. Not a lot of color." She made the connection. "And all the past colonies we've seen, like the Biospheres, the Habitat on Mauna Loa in Hawaii, they were just like prisons. No color, no frivolity, only the most basic, rudimentary facilities. Swedish prisons though, they're less punitive and more about reaching towards something better. They encourage and rehabilitate."

Mecklarin smiled. "I need to be careful. You're pulling the curtain back on Oz. Keep going, please."

She was on a roll. "But that's no way to live ten years. This many people signing on for the most exciting experiment of their lives, then facing that kind of privation? You'd have a riot within six months. Prison is a fragile balance at the best of times, with a powerful system of carrots and sticks. But you can't do that kind of brutality with volunteers, because their good intentions will only take you so far. People need to be motivated, so you've made…" She trailed off.

"Made what?" he pressed.

She didn't know because so far she'd only seen one room, but now she could guess. Cruise ships were a kind of prison, but most people weren't hungering to escape them. Theme parks were a kind of day-prison, but people stayed and loved them. High-tech companies like Google had been encouraging their employees to stay at work round the clock since 2008, with highly attractive themed zones, decorative relaxation areas, great food, generous amenities and even slides to zip between zones.

"A theme park," she said, shooting into the dark. "Themed zones. Some kind of system to allow for exploration, spread across the full ten years. Tricks like your breeze through the window. A cruise ship's worth of entertainment. Enough stuff to keep us looking inward for the full duration, without any thought of what's out there."

He raised his hands and gave a slow clap, with a look of genuine pleasure in his eyes.

"You have nailed it right on the head, Salle Coram. I am glad you're here; your predecessor had to have all of that explained to her. Well done."

She blushed under his gaze. "But that would be prohibitively expensive," she said. "Space flight is all about the cost to lift every single pound of weight. How can you justify the expense?"

"Ah, a mechanical engineer as well?" Mecklarin asked, clearly delighted. "Someone's been doing their research. Of course you are right, but then you're mixing up your priorities in the same way they always have, fundamentally misunderstanding what a colony is. Space flight up to the International Space Station, it's for a year max, and those people are coming back. They can grin and bear the misery for the respect and glory they'll get upon their return. The Earth is waiting. But colonists? All they've got is what they take with them, and we all know there's nothing on Mars."

Salle's mind sped on. "But what about the pilgrims on the Mayflower? They didn't have widescreen TVs. They didn't know what they would find in the Americas."

Mecklarin wagged a finger. "Precisely. You're quite right. But then, crossing the Atlantic didn't take ten years, did it? And whatever they thought they were going to find out there, I expect they never doubted they'd be able to breathe the air. They may have stuck to their wooden fort through the winters, but they weren't fated to stay in it forever. The whole world was out there. Yet even with all those advantages, many of them went mad, the murder rate in the colonies was sky high, stress was a great killer, and it's really a miracle any of the landings managed to take hold at all."

Salle gazed at him, entranced by his confidence.

He laughed. "I've thought about this a lot. And you, you've cut right to the quick. Salle Coram, I'll look out for you. What induction do you need? It seems you're on top of the whole operation here already. You know the work, you know the mission, you know what we're doing. It only remains for me to leave you this."

He handed over a security pass on a lanyard and a thick, spiral-bound handbook.

"The pass will only admit you to your assigned areas. Over the years those areas will change, and you'll gain access to new areas and new people, like levels in a video game. At times you'll get to choose where in the Habitat you want to live, who you want to be close to. And every zone is different. We have a swamp, somewhere. Somebody will want to live there. Others will just visit it. Hell, we're supposed to be great explorers, right, the people who would go to Mars? Why not make every day an exploration?"

She sat dumbfounded. A swamp?

"Why keep this a secret?"

"Yes, you cut to the heart of it. I keep it a secret so it'll work on the actual colonists for Mars too. If they're expecting all that bleak, grim misery, every day for years on end, then they get this? Joy in little things."

He tapped the handbook on the table. Her name was printed across the front. "Last, this is your user manual. Think of it like a map to the theme park's attractions. It's got limited maps, timetabled events, upcoming parties, work expectations and so on. You're a guest and crew at the same time, with time off and time on. It's all in here, though of course that'll evolve too, according to your work, your desires and so on. Now, any questions?"

She looked at him across the table. He was truly larger than life, like a nineteenth century explorer plunging into the jungle, with his long curly hair and eyes so bright with intelligence and vision. He wasn't even that much older than her.

"Yeah," she said, subtly pushing her considerable breasts forward so they strained against her shirt. "When do I see you next? Touch base?"

Mecklarin's grin widened, reading the intent with pleasure. "Soon. For now, acclimatize, Salle Coram. Get used to the rhythms of the Habitat. And remember, we're doing vital work here. I'm so glad to have you with us. You're going to play a pivotal role, I just know it."

5. MAINE

Julio was a real punk to travel with.

I brought along a set of audiobooks to listen to on my shifts at the wheel, but since he claimed to hate them with a burning passion, and since he seemed to hardly ever sleep, I had to accept a compromise where I could only listen to a few chapters an hour.

I'd hoped to get through Mecklarin's earlier back catalog, along with a range of accompanying books by the various 'colonists' who'd been in his experiments and had their personal stories published, drafting behind his global success. As it was, I just had more time to contemplate, as Julio preferred to drive in silence.

We rode in the same RV Cerulean had come over in from New York. It felt strange at first to be at the wheel of this vehicle I'd left behind in the Empire State Building's basement, back when I had no idea what lay ahead, but I got used to it.

"Are you not gonna put on some music or anything?" I asked him at the start.

"No," he just said.

"So, silence?"

He answered with silence.

We rode in silence for thirty minutes with him at the wheel, while I watched the LA sprawl and flocks of flowing gray zombies roll by out of the window, getting annoyed. I had my Mecklarin on after that for a bit, then thirty more minutes of silence.

"This is more macho bullshit," I said after three more cycles of it, unable to keep the annoyance in.

"I told you not to talk to me like that."

I gave a big sigh. "Lighten up."

We were already through Las Vegas and heading into the wild deserts of Utah, where the zombies roamed in random waves like aliens descending in Galaga. Sometimes they followed us, trying to mass like hyenas on a gazelle and take us down, but we sped by with ease. Just looking at all that baking red sand and all those pointless zombie bodies made me want to rile Julio further.

"Quit doing the moody teenager act. Act like a man."

That got him hot. "This is how a man acts," he said.

"What, in the 12th century?" I goaded. "Where are you even from? Wait, I forgot I'm not supposed to ask that."

"I'm from Chicago."

"Right, I can't ask you about your job, that's off-limits."

We both went silent. He felt like a scab I just wanted to pick at. He had that about him, something I hadn't realized until then. He had a few scabs actually, still, from Cerulean's beating. He was so completely punchable, and all I wanted was to punch him. I couldn't do that, so I decided to try my hand at Mecklarin-izing him.

"You were bullied in school, am I right?"

"Shut up, Amo."

"Abused, then?

He turned to me, then slammed down the brakes hard enough to make the tires screech and send us skidding off onto the sandy verge. My seat belt caught me hard across the chest, dust plumed up around us, then Julio had his hand on the gun at his waist. For a second we held like that, with his hand rock steady and the pain in my chest just kicking in. "I'm warning you, Amo. I am."

"You are," I said, even more pissed off now and still unwilling to let go. At that point I didn't know what I was doing at all, except possibly being an asshole. "Put the brakes on properly next time, OK? I guess that means you were abused. Mommy or Daddy? Daddy, of course, maybe that explains why you're such a massive dick."

He drew his gun. His pupils had gone huge, swallowing outward into the whites of his eyes. "You need to shut your mouth."

At that point reality hit me like a zombie in the Yangtze dark, and I saw the situation for what it was. I was being the bully. I had everything, he'd already been punished, and goading him like this wasn't leveling the score, it was just grinding him further down.

So I shut up. A half hour later, once we were going again, I spoke up.

"Sorry."

He grunted.

It didn't warm things up between us, there was no chance of friendly banter or a few jokes shared, but I hadn't expected that. Instead we got just what we needed: trust. Sometimes you find that at the edge. He'd drawn his gun but not pointed it at me, and that was progress.

We drove on, and states flew by along I-80 a lot faster than they had in my battletank convoy. That was just a month or so earlier, before Lara, before Don, before Cerulean, but it felt like a lifetime. I was a different person. I napped on the way into Colorado, during which time he didn't assault me. I woke for the night shift, and we both got out, stretched our legs and took a piss in a parking lot, then I checked in with Lara over the HF radio.

The connection was crackly but good. I went round the back of the convenience store, standing amongst orange gas tanks and a big blue trash bin to talk in a quiet voice that seemed obscene in the dark. She was fine, I was fine.

"And Julio?"

"Fine," I told her. "We're getting on swell."

"Good times, huh?"

"Good times," I confirmed.

"Keep your eyes open. I'm not losing you now."

"Roger that."

I drove down the dark highway at a modest pace, wary of hitting wrecks or wandering zombies. The rules still applied about airplay, and I only went through my Mecklarins slowly, while Julio sat in the passenger seat and stared moodily out of the window. Probably he was thinking of all the ways he wanted to kill me.

"What are you thinking about?" I asked him.

He looked my way. Lit only by the dashboard lights and the wash back of the headlights, his face was pale and sickly.

"None of your business."

"Trust," I said, forcing some bitter cheerfulness. "Come on, open up."

He sighed. "I was wondering why God saw fit to deal me you. What a hand."

I stared at him for a minute, then laughed. "Was that a joke?"

"It's just what I was thinking. You asked."

I laughed more. It was the most human thing he'd said yet, and I told him so. He grunted and went back to being strong and silent. At that point, I had a lot of hope.

I drove through the night until we reached Denver, where the pale yellow disc of Pac-Man hung on the Wells Fargo Center by moonlight, just as I'd left him. I thought of the Simon and Garfunkel song 'Old Friends', even chanced humming it a little until Julio eyed me angrily.

"Swap," he said. He'd barely slept but he looked alert, so we swapped. I went to the back and lay down on the bed to sleep properly. This was trust.

I woke in early afternoon somewhere in Nebraska.

"Nearly Iowa," Julio called back. "Site of your great zombie revelation."

I chuckled. How long had he been planning to say that, I wondered.

"Swap?" I asked.

"I'm good."

We listened to Mecklarin a little through Iowa's golden fields, one of his earliest books called, 'The Human Machine'. It outlined in broad strokes his theory that humans were ultimately knowable, the same theme from 'Life on Mars'. If you had perfect information in a completely contained world, with control over every event and knowledge of every surrounding human's 'programming', then you could predict with perfect accuracy what they would do. It amounted to 'free will was an illusion'.

Julio snorted at a particularly enthusiastic recitation of this statement.

"You don't rate this?" I asked.

"It's bullshit," he said solemnly.

"Care to unpack that a little?"

He considered briefly. A small horde of zombies whipped by on the right, clustered round a Dairy Queen.

"People just do stuff," he came up with. "There's no knowing that. Things just happen."

I considered this piece of wisdom. Mocking him would be easy, but I held back. Perhaps this was an apology for Anna?

"Yeah," I said.

I took over and at last he went to sleep in the back. Even with him snoring, my back kept itching all through Iowa that he would creep up and plant a knife in me. I checked the rear view mirror every few minutes, but he remained asleep.

We went past the site of my 'revelation', where I'd knelt down expecting the zombies to eat my brains, and all they'd done was gather in for hugs through the night. Recharging. I'd left my first comic book cairn there, cars and coffee, which looked good still, though I didn't stop to investigate. I took us through Iowa and Illinois to Chicago, where Julio took over and we turned off the I-80 to head north-easterly on the 94, bound along the top of Lakes Erie and Ontario, toward Quebec and through to Maine. I slept and he took us over the border into Canada, past Toronto in the night where we planned to drop a cairn on the way back, and into New England.

I'd never been before, and the slight cold nip in the air was a welcome break after the summer heat of California. Late on the third day I led us carefully off the main road and into the mountains of Maine. They were beautiful granite beasts, blue and silver spikes thrust up through forests of aspen, oak, Balsam fir and spruce. The air smelled of warm sap and fresh grass.

"Careful now," Julio said every now and then, as we approached the area we expected the gun turret to be in.

"Cerulean said they didn't shoot him on the road," I said, remembering the story of how Matthew had exited his RV and charged across the grass toward the gun turret, only to be cut down with a bullet through the throat. Still, I slowed down and kept my eyes open.

The best research I'd come up with before leaving suggested a bunker site near the southern foot of Mt. Abraham, potentially in a Cold War fallout shelter for the government. There weren't many roads in that vicinity, so even taking them all at a crawl, constantly peeking ahead with binoculars, it didn't take us long to find it. The flow of gray-faced, white-eyed zombies was a dead giveaway, as they trooped south on a straight line through the mountains toward it.

Then we were there. We broached a rise in the road and saw it, a pole in a sloping field surrounded by zombie bodies, and I backed the RV up rapidly, muttering, "Shit shit shit."

The guns didn't fire. I stopped the van and looked at Julio. His eyes seemed to be alight with excitement. I nodded, feeling the excitement too. Together we got out, carefully and quietly, as if someone might be watching us, and dropped down on our bellies on the road. The asphalt was freezing. The notion that I might get run over by passing traffic, lying there in the middle of the road, came comically.

Then Julio shuffled forward and I joined him. At the lip of the rise we brought up our binoculars and studied the gun turret, about five hundred yards away. In the middle of a sloping field well-stocked with both dead and not-yet-fully-dead zombies, it stood on a silver pole like a clover stalk, growing out of a big concrete 'planter' box and capped with four silver 'leaves'.

"Those are not machine guns," Julio said. "They look like autocannons, probably Bushmasters; often they're mounted to vehicles. I expect there's a chain feed system up the pole, and who knows how many rounds they've got down there. They can fire anywhere up to two thousand five hundred times a minute."

I turned to gawp at him. He enjoyed the moment, no doubt.

"Twenty-five hundred rounds a minute?"

"You didn't know that, huh? Seems you were wise to bring me. This is serious gear. Look closely, tell me what you see."

I studied the guns on their pole. They had very long snout-like barrels, backed with several blocky items that might be scopes, cameras or batteries. A small orange light glowed under the leaf-like metal hood extending over each gun barrel, alongside the wink of reflected light.

"Those orange lights are heaters," Julio said, "to keep the barrels from freezing up. That's smart. Reflection must be a camera lens. The rest of the stuff up there, I would guess, is an anti-jamming mechanism. Somebody really planned this."

I stare. The wink of light seems to shift, and I wonder if it's a camera training in on us.

"Can they shoot us out here?"

"Definitely," Julio responded. "Although we might get some warning, as they find the range. Probably long enough for us to back up."

I resist swallowing loudly, and resist saying something that would betray my lack of knowledge, like, 'Oh shit.' Rather I figured it was good to have Julio with me, just as he said.

I scanned the pole down to the concrete block. Around it there were about fifty zombie bodies standing and smacking at the concrete like a drum. Beneath their feet were perhaps a thousand dead zombies, laid out like a hellish carpet that left barely any sign of the grass below. Most of them still wore clothes, as they hadn't shriveled enough to slough them off, so in truth it looked like a massacre.

It looked like Times Square, where I'd killed thousands. I gagged and this time swallowed back acid reflux. Julio didn't comment.

The sound of the fifty or so beating at the block was a steady, low drum line.

"There has to be people underneath it," I said. "Enough to pull all these over and keep them coming."

"And they knew it would happen," Julio continued, gesturing at the surrounding land. "Look at the location, it's a perfect line of sight for miles. The whole area's a killing ground."

I worked the logistics of this new reality round in my head: autocannons, lines of sight, anti-jamming mechanisms. "They must have thought the zombies could dig down to them. If enough of them massed, maybe it would be possible. Why else have the guns here?"

"Why else?" Julio agreed.

We lay there longer, watching through binoculars, perhaps an unspoken agreement that we wanted to see the big guns fire. It didn't take too long, only a few hours as more stumbling bodies filtered out of the forests to beat at the block, some traipsing up past me along the road.

At last the guns barked, and the suddenness of it made me flinch.

RATATATATATATATATAT

The sound washed over us like an avalanche, and out on the field hot metal found dry flesh and tore it apart.

Zombies fell. It made me sick to my stomach to watch, as bodies who were once mothers and husbands, children and wives fell like mown grass, their corpses piling up like a thicker layer of snow over the ones who'd come before. It was a nightmare, though it only went on for a few minutes before the fire rate slowed, then fell silent. Maine was still again.

"They're watching us," Julio said.

The guns had shifted angle to point directly at us. The reflected light off a lens was there again.

"We should back up," I said."

Julio grunted assent, but neither of us moved, perhaps transfixed by the notion that through that lens and down that periscope pipe, someone down below was looking back.

Three thousand people. It was crazy. Was it Mecklarin himself? The mad fancy of holding one of his audiobooks up, like I might get it signed, ran through my mind. Before I could do it though the guns folded in on themselves into grooves in the pole, fast and smooth, then the pole itself dropped rapidly back into the concrete box.

Abruptly, it was gone. The box remained. A few zombies were already picking their way across the fields of slaughter.

"Shit," I whispered.

"Shit indeed," Julio agreed. "They've seen us now. We have to kill these bastards before they kill us."

God I wish I'd listened to him.

* * *

It takes a lot to admit Julio was right.

Sitting in my hot, pathetic closet while my people back in the Theater wait for me to come lead them to safety, I face the reality that for ten years, I've been wrong. I was wrong about him and I was wrong about Cerulean's gun turret, and it has led us to here. It stings like something I can't understand. It fills me with doubt that I can't overcome.

What if the trail of cairns was the wrong idea? What if sending Anna off was wrong? What if the next choices I make will be wrong too, and lead to the deaths of my wife, my children, my friends at the hand of a vomiting demon? The terror of it paralyzes me. I should go down there and tell them I'm not the man they thought I was. I don't know what to do, because whatever faith I had was based on judgments that were wrong.

But it's not only these. It makes me sick to really, truly face it. Masako too, and Indira, and Cerulean, lay all these at my door. Trust, goddammit. I shouldn't have trusted anyone. I should have killed Julio the first time I saw him, but I didn't because I was weak. I've always been weak, and shit, people just do things. People just do things and you can't plan for that or trust that they won't.

11:00, I'm due to give a PowerPoint in an hour, but maybe I'll just hole up here until the deadline passes. Maybe they truly are better off without me. I just don't know.

INTERLUDE 3

Salle stepped out of the summery hall into a long, bright red corridor with posters and paintings hanging on the walls. People were moving in it, talking purposefully in pairs, going in and out of doors with blinks of their security passes against readers. It seemed more like a corridor in a tech company than an underground bunker they were all sealed in for a decade. It felt utterly banal and bizarre at the same time.

Salle walked amongst them, trying her card on doors as she went, but all the readers dinged red. A hundred yards on was her elevator, which she rode two decks down to the third floor. The corridor here was green and yellow and seemed to twist to the left. Strung along the walls were amateurish paintings, perhaps done by her fellow inhabitants.

She felt as giddy as a freshman on the first day of term. Her room was 345C, and with excitement she touched her card to the reader, it dinged green, and the door opened. Inside her room was painted a shocking violet with a turquoise bedspread. It was a good size, with a private toilet off to the side, a fridge, a desk and a forty-inch TV currently displaying a wintry lake scene.

Ten years lay ahead like a most grand adventure.

The first day she passed in dizzy exploration, on a scavenger hunt to explore the realm allotted to her. She passed through a marine-themed zone, a farming bay where soy plants were budding in layered racks of soil trays under bright grow lights, an open store room laid out like a Kroger's, accommodation corridors with brick-fronts to make them look like tenement buildings, a bar, a gym, and even a swamp. It was like a really great college campus had mated with a theme park, art gallery and national park.

At the tail end of the third floor main corridor she found the forest, where huge fir trees grew to forty foot tall under ultraviolet lamps in a space half a football field in size. A guy in dungarees talked to her.

"They scrub the air," he said, smiling apologetically. "The lungs of the Habitat, really. Sorry, I can see you're new." He nodded at the manual in her hands, and extended his hand. "I'm Terry, bio-engineer."

"Salle," she said, shaking his hand, "psychologist."

"Ah, Mecklarin's wizards? I heard one of your crew got sick."

"I'm the replacement."

He smiled. "Well, you need any help, just let me know. Looks like we're on a rotation together for the first year or so."

She smiled back. "Thanks, Terry."

He went back to tending freshly planted saplings in the black dirt.

She stopped at the bar for a drink. The walls were festooned with memorabilia, like a TGI Fridays. It was bizarre and terrific. They had chocolate milkshake and it was delicious.

At the end of her tour Salle sat at her desk, looked in the mirror and couldn't stop herself smiling. That morning she'd been in the outside world, going about her business, and now she was here, part of a dream to change the world.

She couldn't wait to get started.

* * *

Life in the Habitat never let up. Work began and she was already behind, constantly racing to catch up; memorizing the staff psych files, meeting with all 400 in her sector of the third floor, making additions and alterations to their files as best she could then feeding that back into Mecklarin's algorithms, taking on his feedback and slowly getting inducted into the research schedule under the floor's lead psychologist, respected Berkeley professor Richard Albright.

In her off hours, staggering around the Habitat with a head foggy and full with 400 people's childhood trauma, sexual preference and practices, genetic disposition and political affiliations, she dived into her sector's social life. Events came and went constantly; huge parties to celebrate each passing week, sports events, art exhibitions, craft beer tastings. Mini cliques formed then reshuffled under her guiding hand.

She had sex a lot at first. Everyone was free and excited to be part of such an important step forward for the human race, like hippies at the start of a new commune. She forgot about her old life and her boyfriend.

Months passed. She rarely saw Mecklarin, though he was always there in the distance, striding around and glad-handing people, cheerful and in charge, passing in and out of zones that had not yet opened to her. He was a great man at the head of the trenches, a visionary leading them forward.

The research she did when not partying sucked her in; some of it intensely complex, trying to root into problems that had challenged both psychologists and philosophers for generations, like what is love, what is happiness and how can it be maximized, what are all the regulatory functions of emotion. Everything fed into some part of Mecklarin's algorithms, themselves a search for some core, elegant truth underpinning all of human programming.

And they were getting closer. Every day their refinements improved Mecklarin's algorithms, making their predictions more and more reliable. The progress they made in unlocking the brain outstripped any work done in the past fifty years.

Months passed, then years, and with the passing of time her zone of exploration opened up. She gained access to floor 1 where they had an actual circus, to floor 3 where they had an Arctic zone complete with ice and penguins. She was promoted to head psychologist for all three of those floors, overseeing twelve hundred people. Soon she was meeting with Mecklarin on a weekly basis, then daily, until they started seeing each other at night too, and he whispered his dreams for the project in her ear, pressed close together in the narrow confines of her single bed.

"Let's go to your room," she'd say, but he only smiled.

"You don't have access to that area yet."

Everything was perfect. The research was plowing ahead, the innovations and discoveries they'd set out to find were pouring in every day, not only in the realm of psychology but also in botany, engineering, even theoretical physics. The experiment was working, Lars Mecklarin was her lover, and they were on their way to Mars.

Then the revolution began.

* * *

Four years in, it started with rumors.

No one knew where they began, but they were insidious and creeping, always lurking behind Salle's eyelids in the dark after the colorful rooms and busy lives and fully-packed event schedule were eclipsed by the dark, and she lay alone in the too-long night, waiting for a dawn that might never come.

All the rumors were different, but they all contained the same central thread: the people of MARS3000 were alone. They'd been buried alive under the mountains of Maine like three thousand corpses, and no one was ever coming for them. There'd been a nuclear apocalypse and the air up above was radioactive, so they'd never be returning. They were actually in the hold of a colony ship, smuggled aboard while they slept and packed off to Mars without their knowledge. Zombies had struck and killed every soul above ground, leaving nothing behind but empty buildings.

The rumors started as a kind of joke, gallows humor whispered in bars as pick-up lines, repeated with increasing urgency as bodies pressed against each other hungrily in the dark. Was three thousand enough? Could any number ever be enough? They grew and spread like a cancer, an infection that at first fascinated Mecklarin, as it played into none of his predictions, but soon came to plague him as productivity plummeted.

Everything changed one long, slow morning over Irish coffee.

"I have no idea," he said to Salle, sitting in her room looking out of the TV window onto a view of blue sky and clouds. He looked hung-over, with dark bags under his eyes and a weary gray cast to his usually ruddy, glowing skin. Many people were behaving erratically now, breaking from long-held patterns that led them to sleep in too long, party a little too hard and argue a little too much, losing the healthy balance that had held them all in check for so long. "I'm not sure I can control it, and if I can't control it…" He let his voice ebb out.

Salle had seen the infection in herself as well. It was everywhere, haunting everyone. The thought that nobody was left outside was a crushing notion, even if it was only a joke. But was it a joke? The more times she heard the story, the deeper that crack of doubt grew in her mind, and the only way to test it was to hear word from outside, or to go outside, or to have someone from the outside come in.

But none of those things were possible. Every one of the three thousand in the Habitat had signed a contract committing themselves to ten years. To exit now would not only mark every one of them as failures, but also deal a crushing blow to the human race at large that said it just couldn't be done. Self-contained colonies on Mars were an impossible pipedream, without each mini society descending into stress-induced mania, which led to areas she didn't really want to think about. A prison-like atmosphere. The carrot and the stick. Brutal, unyielding authority, like something out of the novel 1984.

Mecklarin took a long swig of his coffee. It was almost more whiskey than coffee these days, but Salle couldn't judge him for that. He was Mecklarin the great man, a magician to the world, revealing secrets to the populace about themselves that only made them throw their panties at him and beg for more.

But perhaps it was all BS. They'd talked about all of it countless times, as the algorithms increasingly suggested steering actions that no longer worked on these hyper-stressed people. Facing the notion that his model for human interaction might be built on unstable foundations was terrifying for him. People, perhaps, were not the creatures he believed them to be.

Salle studied her map of the Habitat and the upcoming event schedule. They'd started going into the office later and later each day, as their research subjects and colleagues came in drunk, late or not at all. At first they'd taken it in their stride, as the two topmost authorities in the psych team for all three thousand, but now it was getting out of hand.

"We could open up the last few areas," Salle suggested, sweeping a hand across the map. "Merge all the levels and throw a four-year blowout party."

Mecklarin waved a hand. His eyes didn't glow as much as they used to. "Chaos. We can't do that, not with things like this. If anything, I was thinking about shrinking the zones."

Salle frowned. "How much whiskey have you had?"

Mecklarin smiled tiredly. "I know. We're all about motivating with inspiration here, not the threat of punishment. But Salle, darling, you can see that's not working anymore. I can't just recharge it. Offer motivational speeches; pump them up about the future on Mars? I've done it on every deck so many times I feel like a robot. It's not working. That carrot is no longer effective."

Salle slumped back. Watching him drink Irish coffee made her want to drink too, but that would be no kind of answer. She'd had her fill of screwing around in the first few months.

"So close the zones," she said, scanning the map. "Offer a warning. Back to third positions, or second?"

"First," said Mecklarin.

"First? That's eight separate pools of around four hundred people each. You know half of these people have made relationships across boundaries? Look at you and me. You'd be breaking us up. And how would we even do it? We don't have much of a police force down here, and those we do have will hardly be on our side. We can't hope to force everyone back across their boundaries."

He nodded. "I know it, Salle. I've thought about it for weeks. But the algorithms are useless now, they can't predict a thing. We're left to our best judgment, and I'm down to thinking the stick is the way, and if you're going to use the stick, then damn well use the stick. We announce the barriers are returning to first positions, we let people choose their zone, and let the chips fall where they may. It's a last stand, really."

Salle frowned at him. "This is the whiskey talking."

"Do you think? Salle, you've heard the rumors. People are scared, and you can't motivate scared people with a distant hope. You can only let them run or contain them. But how long can I contain unruly people, no matter what contract they've signed? There are video feeds of all this going out, you know, my grand experiment. Millions are watching out in the world. They could come down and arrest me at any time, if I breach human rights. I can't let things get out of control. Returning to first positions, that's not illegal. If it tamps the fuses down a while, then we can think."

Salle shook her head. "That's bullshit. This is important, you told me that. I believe it. No one's going to come shut us down."

He laughed. "Seriously? Ah, Salle, I suppose I hide it well. Have you any idea how much pressure there is on me to just open the doors and let everyone out? Do you have any idea how many appeals I get every day, pleading with me to just open the doors for a day, for a few hours, for a few minutes? Let them go out and see their family, or just see the sky, then they'll come running back in with their heads down and their tails between their legs, ready to work hard. They're begging me constantly! Can you imagine what it's like to keep saying no?"

Salle set the pencil in her hand down. They were beyond making notes. "I never heard any of that."

Mecklarin sighed. "I have the computers route it all to me directly. People are sending you these messages at the rate of about, oh, twenty a day."

"Twenty?"

He nodded. His eyes seemed to have a drunken film over them.

"When were you going to tell me?"

"I'm telling you now. We're in something of a crisis, dear. It's first positions or open the damn doors, crank up the lift and call the whole thing a failure."

Salle looked at him. He looked broken.

"It's just a damn rumor."

"Loose lips sink ships," he said. "They said that in World War Two, and it applies now just as much as then. We called this place a cruise ship, yes? This rumor could be our iceberg."

They looked at each other. Salle stared at him, daring him to overcome this challenge. He was Lars Mecklarin, her lover and a man of almighty vision, but a few words spoken in bars were breaking his will.

"Someone started this rumor," she said, "someone's spreading it. We'll find the bastard and-"

"And what?" he interjected. "Gut him? Hang him? Maybe the chair? Salle, if we do anything like that we are without doubt breaking human rights. I am not vested with the powers of a judge, and no person can sign away their human rights in a contract. First positions I can do. Perhaps ration some of the alcohol, chocolate, other treats? We can explain these things away. But I'm worried they won't work, and will instead only inflame things. Can you see people going back to work after this? We could end up with a goddamn bloodbath."

Now his eyes were glowing. He took a big sip of his Irish whiskey.

"What?" he demanded.

"Nothing," Salle said, but it wasn't nothing and both of them knew it. He'd given up. "First positions then. I'll get it started."

He looked away, toward the blue sky through the TV, and a dream of what remained above.

* * *

She made the announcements. She sent out the messages. First positions, and the security zones walls were shrinking down for purposes of a new experiment within 24 hours. Supplies of alcohol and other luxury products would be secured and rationed in the future.

She clicked send on her email program. So simple, really, to drive the axe in like that. To kill the dream. Nothing changed at once, there was no hue and outcry in the corridor, just a gradual hunkering down inside the minds of all three thousand people they were seeking to manage. A withdrawal to first positions, as once-laughing, joyful, playful and hedonistic scientists and researchers looked inside themselves and saw naked, ugly fear looking back.

No choice, Salle thought. They were leaving them with no choice.

The riots began on the first floor within five hours, and spread quickly after that. They were silly and fun at first, more like parties spiraled out of control, but as they went on, and the lack of control became apparent to everyone involved, they grew darker. The first murder came within a day, though nobody knew about it until much later, when the body count had spiked much higher.

People fought for resources like chocolate and liquor, for land and zones like the forest and soy farms, driven by a maddening fear that the outside world really was gone. To them it seemed that the security zones coming down was the first step in isolating unnecessary sectors, after which they would be purged. Three thousand people split along mob lines, cliques bunching together and taking all the food, water and other resources they could, that they felt they needed. They forced their way to the upper decks, closer to the lifts that would surely now open to release them. They holed up and fought off anyone who tried to push them back.

It was crazy. It was a pressure cooker that had been turned on for four years with no escape valve for the steam to get out, and getting drunk or high and having sex was just not going to cut it anymore.

Salle and Mecklarin first tried to reason with several strands of the mob, but were ignored, mocked, and one attacked with canes. They barely managed to escape, taking shelter in a room on the second floor, while outside mobs closed in on Salle's private quarters on the third floor, holding table-leg clubs and looking for blood. It was hard to believe, watching on the video screens as peaceful botanists and engineers prowled the corridors smashing art and TVs, knocking back vodka in one last frenzied blowout before the big lifts opened, out of their minds on years of doubt and fear.

By that point Mecklarin was drunk and ranting. Salle clung to him still, and he patted her back.

"They're coming," he said. "The doors will open any minute and a peacekeeping force will flood in. It's a failure, but we'll learn from it. We'll do better next time, five thousand people and fifteen years. The algorithms can compensate for this. We must've got something wrong from the start. Any minute now that door will open and we'll be saved, and the world will still fete us. It's an ugly side of the human spirit, but it's good we expose it here, where it's safe, and not up on Mars. Salle, don't you think?"

He looked at her hungrily. The easy confidence was gone, replaced by fear. His conception of who he was had been lost. He wasn't the great Lars Mecklarin anymore, mental magician with all the answers, but something else, something broken. He would never be OK again.

"I think so, Lars," she told him, stroking his hair. "I really do." She still loved him, after all. Things like that didn't change because of failure. He'd burned so bright and now he was a guttering wick, but nobody got to choose the point at which their stamina failed.

They huddled tight as the lights flickered, as the mob began stripping out wiring and using it to weave belts for themselves; crafting to the end. They hugged and waited, dreaming of the moment they'd be rescued, and all the violence outside would be revealed to be just a rowdy end-of-term party, not a brutal Lord of the Flies-like descent into carnage.

"Any minute," Lars whispered in her ear, "the police will flood in. The army. They're all on standby and I sent out the signal. They know we need them. Any moment."

They waited, and waited, until finally the door did crash open, and men in black with black helmets and black rifles did burst in, and seized them up and dragged them away.

But they weren't the police or the army, because all the police and army had died four years ago in the zombie apocalypse. These were something else entirely.

6. TRUST

"We don't know," Julio said. "Not me and not you."

We sat in the RV, arguing heatedly over a cup of green tea for me and a coffee for him. "We just don't know a damn thing about them," he went on, "what they want or what they're capable of."

I sipped and kept calm. I was very good at keeping calm, back then, and thought it was a strength.

"Mecklarin seems to be a peaceful guy," I said. "He was all about maximizing human potential."

Julio snorted. "That's a line. Now he's king down there, what do you think he's doing?"

I looked at him, unwilling to take the bait. "Probably managing people a lot smoother than we've been doing."

That shut him up for a second. He sipped his coffee. My bitter green tea brought back memories of the road, sitting on the Wave in Coyote Buttes, Utah, watching the stars circle overhead and eating s'mores alone. Depression aside, everything was much simpler then.

"Let's break it down," Julio said.

I shrugged.

"That," he pointed at the road, beyond which lay the gun turret, "is a clear sign to me. You can't misinterpret it. If we go near it, it'll shoot us. Agreed?"

I nodded. There was no point arguing.

"That's not there for a Mars experiment. That's here for the zombies and the people like Matthew, only existing to protect the survivors in their bunker."

"Agreed."

Julio nodded and put his coffee down. Engaged like that, developing a theory, he didn't seem so bad. "So picture this. Your guy Mecklarin, he knows the apocalypse is coming, and he makes up this Mars cover story to lure three thousand people down. Now they're down there, somehow they survived the infection. Answer me this, are they immune?"

I frowned. "No. Not all of them."

"Any of them?"

I wriggled on the hook. I'd seen only a handful of people since the apocalypse, out of America's original population of some three hundred million. "Not likely."

"So what are they doing down there? Are they just hanging on, thinking the infection might blow over?"

"Probably," I said. "Infections do. We know the zombies are flushing themselves into the ocean. Maybe in a few months all of the USA will be clear. They can come out. I'd welcome three thousand people."

Julio shook his head. "You're not thinking clearly, Amo. That's what you're hoping for, not a fact. Think about how the infection started. It was you, wasn't it?"

More uncomfortable wriggling. He's talking about me and Lara having sex, which somehow brought on the apocalypse. "Perhaps. It could be a coincidence"

"It wasn't normal. You broadcasted a signal out, or something. How do you know you're not still broadcasting?"

"I-"

"And Matthew, the one they shot? Why would they do that if they were coming out in a few months? What if he was broadcasting too, and they knew that? What if we all are, all the time, and the only way they come out is with all of us flushed down the toilet just like the zombies?"

I stared at him then, partly in shock at the leaps of logic he was taking and partly stunned to hear him say so much all at once. It was more than I'd ever heard him say before. Again, I wish I'd listened. He nailed it in one.

"None of those are facts, either," I protested weakly. "You don't know any of that. Maybe they're down there working on a cure. Maybe I'm not infectious anymore."

Julio grinned. It spread big across his face, revealing painfully white teeth against a dark, wiry stubble. Perhaps he was growing a beard, or he'd just forgotten to shave. His green eyes lit with the upper hand. "Maybe. But listen to yourself. You don't want machine gun nests on the Chinese Theater roof, you don't want to tear down your cairns, I understand, but this? You can't 'maybe' and 'perhaps' your way out of this."

"All you've got is maybe too," I spat back. "Theories only. It's not enough to do, what, what are suggesting here? Try and kill them all?"

Julio looked at me, the gears working behind his dark brown eyes. "So tell me something, Amo. I'm curious. Why did you kill Don, in Las Vegas?"

That was below the belt. I'd thought about it of course, in the weeks since, and had my answer prepared in case a grand jury descended. Whether it was the true reason or not I didn't know, but it was a reason all the same. I flash back to the hot battletank bus, with him leaning in over me.

"He was an imminent threat," I say.

"No he wasn't. He asked to see your gun. What is that but maybe?"

"He had me penned in. He had those cheerleaders. Not so unlike you, really, with your heads on the grille of your car."

His grin went as wide as the Cheshire Cat at that. "So why didn't you kill me? After Anna, too, am I not an imminent threat?"

I looked at him and he looked at me. Both of us had guns at our hips.

"Time," I said, finding the right answer in the moment. "I had time with you, not with Don. If he'd not had me penned into the bus, maybe he'd still be alive. But he pressed. You want to keep pressing, go right ahead."

He laughed at that. "You won't kill me for words. Cerulean, maybe he would. Boy's got some anger."

"Don't call him boy."

"He's young, Amo. Hotheaded, despite being in the chair. What are you, twenty-six?"

"Twenty-seven."

"Like the one year makes a difference. I'm thirty-eight. You're all kids to me."

I didn't say much to that. It was getting late and dark out.

"Tonight we do a sign," I said, retaking the initiative. "Camp down the road from here. I don't want to be close to it."

"You're the boss."

We rolled the RV back down the road, and in the last of the light painted three existing road signs a bright traffic paint yellow, with stenciled text in neat spray-paint red.

STOP & READ OR DIE

I strung a red-painted glass Coke bottle from each sign on a piece of metal cord, within which was a warning written on paper and a USB.

"Is that it?" Julio asked.

I couldn't argue, it looked a little sad. It wasn't much of a warning.

In the end we worked through the night, setting up a full-blown cairn. We painted a wide checkered black and white streak across the road by the light of the RV's high beams, then rolled back down the hill to the nearest home over where we collected two cars, a Porsche and a Volvo, and drove them into position to block the road. I painted them red and stocked them up with a cairn's worth of material: USBs, comics, Nespresso machine, pods, water, powdered milk and a generator, with directions to New LA and an explanation of what lay over the hump in the road.

Julio did the work without grumbling. When it was done we spent an hour circling around the forest to come along the road from the other direction, where we did it all again. A new cairn, more paint, more road signs, more bottles. It was around 4am by the time we finished.

Quarantine.

"Probably no one will ever come this way again," Julio said.

"Matthew and Cerulean did."

He shrugged.

We parked the RV down the road from the barricade. I called Lara, updated her on our progress, then I went to sleep.

When I woke, only a few hours later as a cold dawn was creeping through the forest, Julio was gone.

* * *

I shouted his name. I looked around. I tried to hail him on the HF radio but eventually, fearing the worst, I crawled up the road to peer over the killing fields, and that's where I saw him.

"Julio," I shouted.

He was lying up against the concrete block on his side, easily visible as the one patch of solid, living skin. He gave me a little wave back. The gun turret was down in its block still, and floaters were milling around him striking the concrete.

"What the hell?" I whispered.

Using the binoculars I saw he was dragging a large four-gallon red container behind him. I recognized it from the RV as one of my own gas refill tanks. On his back he had a satchel.

"Julio, what are you doing?" I shouted into the radio. He ignored me, must have had it turned off, so instead I just shouted.

"What the hell are you doing?"

That made him pick up the radio. "Keep your voice down," he hissed, "we don't know what might trigger this thing."

"So tell me what you're doing."

"What we should have done from the start. Burn this thing up." He patted the gas tank.

I stared, putting the pieces together. I should have realized it. He was far too compliant the night before, even offering suggestions about where to place the cairns. He was just waiting for me to fall asleep. The bastard probably thought he was doing the right thing.

"It's concrete, how are you going to burn it down?"

"Not down, up," he corrected. "I'll climb up and pour this," he tapped the drum, "down the hole. I climbed a tree and got a good angle, there's a gap. Fill it up, drop a flare," he gestured to his satchel, "boom goes the dynamite. The gun won't fire again, we're all safe."

For a moment I thought it was a good idea. I wish I'd held onto that and let him go ahead. So many problems would've been solved. But I didn't.

"There are three thousand people down there," I hissed into the radio. "What if they need that pole?"

"What if they do?" he countered. "There's two of us up here, and they didn't stop and ask if we didn't mind being shot. They killed Matthew and they'd kill us if we let them. These bastards are asking for it. They're just like Don, an imminent threat."

"They're protecting themselves," I said weakly. "It's hardly imminent to us, if we stay out of the way. It's just to stop zombies getting in and infecting them all."

He gave me a look that, despite the distance, I recognized as one of knowing pity. "Grow up, Amo. Don't be a boy about this. Imminent today or in ten years, what's the difference? This is the shape of the world now."

With that he stood up beside the concrete box, lifted the red tank onto the top, and curled his fingers around the edge to climb.

I'd like to say I was only enraged by his callous disregard for three thousand people. I'd killed and I was sick of it. If I could avoid killing the zombies I would, and if I could avoid killing three thousand people sheltered underground, I certainly would. But possibly also something about his tone set me off.

He kicked his feet off the box's side and in a second was rolling onto the top. About fifty zombies were thumping the concrete below him, and more were ambling closer across the field all the time, like incoming waves.

I didn't really think. There was no calculation, no consideration of cause and consequence, just a deep drive that made me stand up and start sprinting toward him, binoculars clattering on the asphalt. I hit the dew-wet grass with a slip and recovery, careening on until I hit the outer rings of dead zombies and had to start picking my footing carefully.

Julio was atop the block now with the cap off the tank, staring at me with his jaw open.

"You crazy bastard, go back!" he shouted, "you'll get us both killed."

But of course I couldn't go back now. I kept on until my foot struck off a skull and my ankle rolled, dropping me hard and awkwardly into a heap of them. I scrabbled up in time to hear a deep low burring coming from below, vibrating my teeth.

I looked up and saw Julio pouring gas into the hole. Again the thought came that maybe this was a good move, chased by the other thought that perhaps the pole wasn't just the guns to them. What if it was also their oxygen inlet or their communications device, or the only detector they had to tell them when the air outside was safe to breathe? I couldn't let him just kill them all.

THUNK

With a jarring metallic sound the bud-like tip of the metal pole jerked up through the box. Julio lurched back and away from it, nearly losing his balance off the edge and spraying gasoline everywhere.

"Get back!" he shouted.

He went back to pouring, down the side of the rising pole as the autocannons deployed above. I kept dodging forward over the beach of the dead. My ankle twinged and I stumbled and staggered over their bodies, nearly falling several times and barely catching myself. They were two and three thick here, so my every step was off flexing chests and rolling limbs, slipping in spilled guts, staggering and lurching forward.

The pole reached its full extension and the four autocannons fully unpeeled.

"Julio!" I shouted.

He tossed the empty red canister backward. I flung myself at the concrete box and grabbed the edge just as the guns thundered from above.

RATATATATATATATATATATAT

The sound closed the world in around me, so loud I could scarcely breathe. I was back on the RV in Times Square again, reveling in shooting the thousands below, watching blood and guts spill out while Cerulean crawled toward me in the muck, and it made me crazy.

A man by my side, peanut-faced with a single sad glove on his left hand, was hit and erupted like an alien had burst out of his chest. Blood spattered me and the side of the concrete box. His white ribs spread open and his heart and chunks of his lungs shot through and he fell. A flax-haired child behind me, stumbling awkwardly over a fat man's belly, had her head erupted like a hollow piñata. The bone and skin fractured outward in concave chunks. Bullets whizzed and bit down everywhere, perhaps two thousand rounds a minute, slicing through the layers of bodies like a cheese wire, plowing deep into the ground.

RATATATATATATATATATATAT

I hauled myself up onto the box. Julio stood by the pole with a burning flare in his hand and a look of utter disbelief on his face. Behind him zombies were dropping, scythed down like rows of corn, and by his side thick bronze spent shell casings tinkled down off the concrete.

"The f-" he started, then my shoulder caught him in the middle and drove the both of us clear off the box. We fell together for long seconds, I felt the heat of the flare on my back, then we hit the fallen ocean.

"Oomph," said Julio, taking the blow across his back while I took it headfirst, nearly breaking my neck. Some gristle inside popped horribly and the rest of my body came on afterward, tumbling awkwardly amongst the dead.

RATATATATATATATATATATAT

RATATATATATATATATATATAT

Bullets raked either side of me, tearing the bodies to meat. My head spun and I couldn't breathe. There was a cold in my neck and I wondered if I'd broken my spine like Cerulean. Then my arm moved.

"Idiot!" Julio hissed, shifting it as he rolled into a gap beside me.

"I can't move," I said though I doubt he heard it over the roar of the bullets.

"Then lie here and die," he shouted, and started crawling away. Soon he was gone.

I did lie there for a time, waiting for the sickness in my neck to ease, while the guns laid waste all around. Somehow they didn't reach me, I don't know why. Were they steered from below, or was it just blind luck? Was it that I was lying down, while the ocean were standing, that saved my life?

I accepted my impending death, whatever the case. I'd sacrificed myself for these people, and death would be my reward. I tried to find a calm center, but there was no peace in that shell-riddled field of corpses, with bodies shaking fiercely as bullets ripped furrows through them. I did find a kind of resolve though, and in that place remembered Lara, and Anna and Cerulean. Would I send Julio back to them with news of my death? Would I let this be my legacy?

I started to crawl. It was hard but it got easier.

RATAT  ATATATA  TATATA  TATAT

The scream of bullets grew intermittent, as the last standing targets were taken down. I crawled like Cerulean once had, through foul guts and slicks of blood and rotten flesh infested with maggots, every second expecting the next RAT TAT to be a bullet burning through my middle and into the bodies below. Flies buzzed round my face and I kept on through puddles of gore until I reached the road.

There I rolled on my side and looked back at the pole. The guns were pointing at me again, the lens flashing. Beside the box a patch of zombies were on fire, sending up a familiar, thick and greasy smoke. The flare had fallen into the spilled gas, but not down the hole, and for that I was grateful.

I crawled the rest of the way up the road just behind Julio, scratching my knees and elbows to bits on the asphalt. At some point the pole sank back into its box but we both crawled on anyway, until we were safely over the peak in the road and behind the cairn line.

The cold in my neck was spreading out through my left shoulder and arm. I'd trapped a nerve or something, but hopefully it wouldn't leave any lasting damage. For now I could hardly move my head at all without sending twinge-like spikes of pain into my skull and down my side.

Still I got up onto my feet. I drew my gun and pointed it at Julio a moment before he could get his. He looked into the barrel's dark eye and slumped against the Porsche's wheel, staring up at me with a deep, simmering resentment. In that moment, I now know, all our fates were sealed. It was only a matter of time before he went off, a bomb that would hurt us all. I should have shot him and left his body for the damn maggots.

"Stick your finger in it," I said, repeating what he'd said to Anna. "See if the inside is swirled."

He snorted. "Fuck you. You idiot." The hatred in his voice was rich and thick. We'd been doing so well, but now I saw that all of that had been a crust only, etched over the top of this. A body-check off a concrete box was a definite way to not respect him enough. "Do you think they'd do anything for you? You're such a child. You are not going to last in this world."

I held the gun on him.

"We're leaving now," I said, glad my voice wasn't shaking, though my knees were trembling so hard I thought I might drop at any second. "The cairns are warning enough. These people get a chance, I don't care if they'd give me one or not. Three thousand survivors are my people too, and you will not try to hurt them again. We're going home now, and if ever a day goes by when I don't see you, when you don't check in with me, I'll know where you've gone, and I'll come find you. And Julio, I will kill you then. Understand that. Push me enough and you'll be the next Don. You think I'm weak? Try me."

The resentment sank deep into his skin. He was covered in blood and guts, sticky with green and purple fluid, and he knew that he was beaten, again. At last he looked away.

We washed up with hot water and soap from the RV, scraping bits of flesh and blood out of our fingernails and hair. I did my best to hide the painful crick in my neck. Around 10am I looked over the ruined field a final time, where the patch of zombies was still burning like candlewax at the edge of the concrete box, then we drove home, neither of us sleeping at all the whole way.

* * *

In my closet I grasp this knife as it runs through my guts. I did this, I made this horror. For years I watched Julio, waiting, but he never broke cover. Five years in I stopped watching long enough for him to rape Masako and kill Indira, and when we shot him, it never crossed my mind that he would survive and go back to Maine.

It should have. But it didn't, and for that I only have myself to blame.

INTERLUDE 4

A squad of men in full black gear were holding the corridor outside, and they dragged Salle and Mecklarin along it toward the stairs in fluid, practiced silence, ignoring their complaints and demands to know what was happening.

"Climb," one of them barked when they reached the broad stairwell, prodding Mecklarin with his rifle. No amount of explaining that he was the head of the whole Habitat made a difference. Up they went to the first floor, to the red corridor where people were fighting and drinking and vandalizing what they could.

"Look at these guys!" someone shouted. A wine bottle flew their way and cracked off the wall, and a gunshot barked out in reply. Salle caught a glimpse of a man's arm burst outward like a firework, then she was jerked onward.

"Stop it," Mecklarin shouted, attempting an authoritative tone, "these are US citizens, they have rights under-" but he fell silent when one of the men cuffed him sharply in the head. Salle was about to shout in protest, but another of the men lifted his visor and looked her in the eye. He looked like any other person out there, if a little paler.

"I wouldn't do that, princess," he warned.

More gunshots followed as the squad fought a shooting retreat along the corridor, dragging Salle and Mecklarin past scientists rioting and fighting in the rooms to either side. Mecklarin moved without arguing now, as a cut over his cheekbone trickled blood down his jawline. Salle let herself be shoved on, until they reached the summery arrival hall, still painted orange and yellow, though scuff marks of black soot now marked the walls and there were three bodies on the ground in puddles of blood.

Lars vomited whiskey. It didn't seem to effect Salle, like she was floating far above it. An elevator ride, a climb up the ladder, and finally they would be free.

She patted Mecklarin's back as he heaved beside the elevator. "It's all right."

The gunman who'd raised his visor laughed. "It's very far from all right, sweetheart."

The elevator door opened and two men bundled in with Mecklarin pressed closely between them. He gave Salle a weak, syrupy smile, then the doors closed. An awkward moment passed, in which Salle looked at the man with the visor up. He was swarthy, perhaps of Mediterranean stock, with a slight scar cut down across his left eye and running across his nose. He was probably in command of this squad, but what did that mean?

"You're not running the big elevator," she said.

"We're not," he answered.

"All these people-"

"Are staying right here. We're all staying right here. You've got a helluva debriefing to look forward to."

The elevator chimed softly and the door opened, and he marched her inside. It shot them up, the door opened, and she was back in the circular white space where the ladder ascending into darkness had been. But the ladder was gone now, replaced with sheer white plastic.

She stared at it, even as the man pushed her round and stuffed her into the now open second elevator on the right.

"But-" she managed, "it doesn't…"

"No buts," he said, "and it does."

The elevator door closed and they shot back down. Up close he smelt of sweat and gunpowder. Her mind was racing through the fog of shock, reaching for the only possibility that could make any sense of this.

"The rumors are true."

The man grinned. "That'll make this next bit easier. Come on."

The doors opened and they lurched out into a shabby, dark, utilitarian corridor that smelled of frost and raw concrete. Lighting along the walls was harsh, echoes bounced sharply as their footfalls rang off the stone, and it was cold. She hadn't felt cold in four years.

"This way."

"Where's Mecklarin?"

"This way too. Come on, you'll learn to love it."

Down the corridor they went, marked by sharp angles, harsh white lighting and not a speck of color or life. He pushed her through a door into a large dark hall, with rows of tiered desks facing a big screen.

Mecklarin was standing nearby, held up by two of the men in black, watching the screen and sagging. On it was a split screen of four video feeds, each showing a scene of violence in a place she recognized.

In the swamp three men were raping a woman she recognized; Kathy from botany. She recognized them all. Two of the men, Jimmy and Reza, were laughing and high-fived. In the third-floor bar a gaggle of engineers had built a barricade out of wooden desks and chairs and were engaging in a fight with some others out of shot, throwing Molotov cocktails and wielding clubs. Another scene depicted only fire, within which a body slowly roasted, perhaps in one of the convenience stores. The fourth showed some kind of torture happening in a bedroom; one man with a gag around his mouth, the other wielding a knife…

"Salle," Mecklarin said, staring at her. He was so pale he looked dead, and his voice was flat and defeated. "This is out. This is where all our signals came."

"He's right," said a figure standing at the forefront of the room. It was a tall man, slender and bald, wearing a sharp gray suit. In the flickering light cast from the screens Salle guessed he was late fifties, with a distinguished air to his bearing and a neat New York accent. "No one else is receiving these signals, and indeed no one else will come to our rescue, because we," he moved his hand in a graceful circle, encompassing everyone in the room, "are all that is left."

Mecklarin sagged so hard he almost broke free of the men holding him up.

"Yes, the rumors are true," the man went on. "Yes, we used you Lars. You are not going to Mars, and much of your research these past four years has been useless, but not all of it. That's why you're here now, both you and the rather composed Ms. Coram. We need you. We needed you to keep the three thousand in line before, and we need you even more now."

Mecklarin began to sob. Salle looked at him with only a faint stirring of pity. There was too much shock for anything else.

"What was it?" she found her voice asking. "Nuclear? Plague? Global flooding?"

The thin bald man smiled. "Zombies, actually."

She felt like laughing. She didn't laugh.

"You see these images," the man said, "on the screen? They are there for a reason. Every death down there is a cost to us. You have no idea the lengths our organization has gone to to preserve the knowledge held in your 'Habitat'. You have no idea how necessary every one of these people will be in the new world, and look."

Another body fell into the pit of fire and began to burn. "That's one more. We've studied you two all this time, even as you've studied your people, and I believe you are the ones best placed to tell us what surgical strikes are required to end this madness."

Salle stared. Mecklarin hung with his head down.

"Zombies?" he slurred. "Everyone's really dead?"

"Yes, everyone above is quite dead, a global apocalypse. Could you please?"

He spoke the last to someone in the room, and the four images on the screen abruptly swapped for four others. In the top left was a looping scene of a man in a white hospital gown, transforming. He started normal; olive tan skin, blue eyes, looking into the camera against a white background, then he changed. His eyes fogged over and became a solid, glowing white, the color leached out of his skin in seconds to gray, and his steady gaze ahead shifted as he started trudging to the left.

In the top right there was a scene against a bright orange desert, shot from above, perhaps in a helicopter, showing a horde of the same kind of figures walking over a low dune. They all had white eyes and gray skin and moved in a cloud, like swallows. In the bottom right was a nondescript city street at night, with all the traffic stopped and in the distance a car burning, while the gray-skinned zombies ran together like a pack of dogs. In the bottom right was a bloody shot of three of the zombies, half-naked and showing more of their eerie gray skin, dug in to the belly of a fourth person still clutching a shotgun. Blood was everywhere, guts were everywhere, worse even than the chaos in the Habitat.

Lars sagged lower in his captors' arms. Salle looked defiantly at the bald man. "It's bullshit, movie special effects."

"On the contrary," the man said. "It's quite real. I'd take longer to explain it, but it's rather old news to the people here. I assure you, there's no one left alive up there. The apocalypse happened four years ago, the night you came down in fact, Ms. Coram. You squeaked in under the deadline."

She stared at him, then at the screen.

"This is my passion project," the man said, spreading his arms. "You, him." He pointed at Lars. "Your three thousand. I'm invested in our race surviving, and right now it's falling apart. The trouble is, we are confined here in earnest. We can't go above until all the zombies are gone, until the infection blows over, and that will be some time, as they take a long time to die, as long as another six years. Ms. Coram, are you with me? Mr. Mecklarin, can you focus on the matter in hand? You have a bunker filled with rage and we need to calm it in the smoothest, least destructive manner. We need your help, and we need it now."

Mecklarin raised his head. Now his eyes were burning with vision again. Something about it scared Salle, just as he'd once pulled her in.

"You lied to me. You made me lie to all of them."

"All for the good," the man said. "Would you rather be roaming the wilds above, arms outstretched, staggering blindly in search of brains?"

Salle almost laughed. Mecklarin didn't. What he did was straighten up and shove one of the men holding him with surprising force, hard enough to send him reeling sideways over a desk and crunching to the floor. Lars had always been an athletic man, and now he used that speed and strength to pivot sharply and send an elbow into the helmet of the one guard left standing, cracking his visor and dropping him like a sack of soil.

How he came up with the handgun, Salle never remembered, but he pointed it at the man in the aisle while holding one open palm out to the guards holding Salle. They stopped in the middle of pointing their rifles at him, looking to the bald man for guidance.

"You lied to me," Mecklarin said again.

The bald man smiled. "Brave, resourceful, ever ready. Lars Mecklarin, all-American hero. Did we lie to you? Yes we did. We saved your life in the process, for which you should be grateful. Please, don't be a child. You see the situation. I'm asking for your help for the good of everyone here. We-"

Lars shot him.

The gun retorted and the bald man's brains blew out the back of his head, some splattering up onto the screen.

"Ugh," somebody at their desk uttered.

Lars turned, and now the fire in his eyes had turned to madness.

"Forgive me, Salle," he said, "and think kindly of me." Then he turned the gun to his own head and pulled the trigger.

BANG

The shot echoed and a terrible silence descended. Somebody whimpered. Lars fell to the floor where his blood and brains poured out of the hole in his head onto the dark cement floor.

It was like something from the videos above. The chaos had followed them here, inside Lars. Her eyes blurred with tears. She was entering shock.

The man with his visor up snapped his fingers in front of Salle's face.

"Princess. It's your show now. If you want those people to survive," he pointed to the screen, "and by extension, you want us to survive, you need to tell me who to capture, now."

Her legs trembled wildly. Lars was on the floor and his legs were trembling too, caught in death throes. The bald man was down and flat, and on the screen the scenes of zombie apocalypse were gone, replaced by images from the Habitat. In the swamp the men were swapping over with Kathy.

Kathy was her friend, of sorts. In first positions before her access zones had opened up they'd often drunk together, sharing stories about men and fantasizing about making it with Lars Mecklarin. Now Lars was dead and Kathy was getting raped. It wasn't a hard leap.

"Those three in the swamp," she said, pointing, her voice coming out harsh and cold. "One of them in the bar should be enough, probably Rudolph." She pointed. "He's the big one with brown hair."

The man stared back at her. Perhaps even he was in shock too. Salle looked around the room. Everyone in there seemed to be in shock, and it struck her then that for all of them, this was the first time too. They may have seen images of the zombie apocalypse, if it really was real, but they hadn't seen this. None of them had been in this precise situation before, and none of them knew what to do.

But she did. It came naturally and she fell into it. There was a job to be done and she had the skills and knowledge to do it well.

"Soldier, I gave you orders," she snapped.

He nodded, then pulled up a shoulder mic and started barking commands into it.

Great vistas of power opened before her. So this was what Lars had felt like every day. The reality of a zombie apocalypse could set in another time. There was too much to take care of inside, too many new laws to formulate, too complex a balance to strike, with the carrot of the outside world now removed.

They wouldn't be able to leave. They wouldn't be going to Mars. In fact all of their in-depth research into the human condition would be useless, except for how it applied to this moment and all the moments to come, getting the three thousand back under control.

She looked around the room again, but there was no one else like the bald man, standing up and ready to take charge. Was he really alone? Was it such a tight hierarchy? Perhaps.

She looked back at the soldier as she caught fully up with events. Capture, he'd said. He was saying it into the mic even now, and instinctively she knew that it was wrong. There could be no forgiveness of crimes like these, no way to go on and live in peace, and capturing wouldn't be enough to lance the boil of frustration and rage down there. It would just enflame it. It was a hard decision but it had to be made.

She laid a hand on his shoulder. "Nobody gets captured," she said. "Nobody gets wounded. The names I give you, you kill. You leave the bodies where they fall."

He nodded sharply and relayed this.

Salle turned to the room at large. "Bring up more screens," she ordered. "Give me the forest, the first floor bar and the red corridor on the sixth."

She'd always had this power, or something like it. She'd had a staff in the last few years, an office and access to all personnel files and footage. It wasn't a change at all, but for her immediate surroundings.

The video feeds popped up in seconds. She pointed again, named more names, and the man at her left transferred them over. In moments figures in black were moving across the screens, like SWAT forces moving on bank robbers. Bullets were fired and bodies fell. It was like watching an action movie, as untrained scientists fell.

Then one of the SWAT got engulfed in flame, as a Molotov cocktail smashed at his feet. He screamed, his colleagues tried to help him, and they were mobbed by scientists who bashed at them and beat in their helmets, stealing their rifles and shooting them back into the flames.

"Shit," the lead guy whispered, and turned to her.

It was strange. She didn't feel much for the loss of these soldiers; she knew nothing about them, had never seen their files and didn't know their names. Watching them struggle and die in the fire while people she did know strapped on their weaponry felt like losing a level in a video game. It was all so distant.

She turned to the man with the visor down.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Joseph," he said. "Ma'am."

"Joseph, do your men have infrared vision?"

"We do, ma'am."

"Then start killing the lights in a rolling pattern. I want all the people we can muster flushed down to the forest, the swamp, the Arctic zone, away from the stores, the bars and accommodation. Can you control temperature?"

Joseph was staring past her to the screen, where more bodies were falling.

"Joseph!"

"Yes, ma'am. Climate control deck, bottom right."

A hand went up amidst the rows of desk.

Salle swiveled. "Turn the heat down everywhere but the three areas I listed. I don't care if the Arctic melts, just pack them in there. Can you lower oxygen content?"

"Marginally, ma'am," someone piped up. "The system has flues that connect every space, but we can alter the access each has to the scrubbers. That'll load the areas slightly with carbon dioxide."

"Do it. We need to steer these people to a place we can better control them. Now bring me up more images."

The lights in the Habitat went out. All the screens turned dark, then a few glinted back to life as sparks were struck, emergency exit lighting came on, and people used their phones as flashlights.

The screens that were black turned to a monotone green for infrared, and more images followed. Salle drew on her memory of the Habitat's three thousand, gleaned from Mecklarin's exacting files, and made strategic decisions. First they had to set an ambush for the four scientists armed with weapons, then they had to pacify the populace. Here a gravitational engineer with a background of parental abuse was terrorizing three women with a broken table leg. He had to die. Here a doctor with a suspiciously clean record and perfect bill of mental health was warming up to a rape.

She named him too.

On the screen lights flickered and people began to surge from their hiding places as the air grew thin. She knew the map backwards and sent the commands to guide them on like rats in a laboratory maze.

Lars was dead on the floor. Somewhere to the side through stone, soil and poured concrete his Habitat was collapsing in chaos. But at least they had a chance.

FUTURE

7. DECISIONS

My phone reads 11:30.

The meeting starts in 30 minutes and perhaps I'm through the worst of it. There are no more knives spinning overhead; they're all buried in me somewhere. I feel light and insubstantial. The solid foundations I've built my life on are gone, and there's a process to that. I remember Cerulean talking about the five stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining and so on.

Perhaps I'm at acceptance already. I don't have time to not be. I'm not even angry, because that kind of anger is no different from self-pity when I'm the one to blame. There is only one thing to do now to correct my mistakes, and that is to kill them all.

I turn that thought in my mind.

Kill them all.

11:35 already. I rub my face and shake my head. The twinge is there, hovering like Cerulean's demon. There isn't much time.

I stand up and push my way out of the hot dark closet. Taking steps into the light helps, space and fresh air help. The path is chosen now and I can't stop until it's done.

I walkie Lara first, then Anna and Sulman, followed by Ozark, Feargal and Witzgenstein, with Jake thrown in for good measure, then I go on the master channel to tell everyone the meeting is delayed until 2.

Two hours to save New LA.

Composure comes back in the sea breeze across the Chinese Theater courtyard. Confidence returns as I stride into the lobby, smiling and waving at the people tending to the survivors in this new hospital ward; Betty by the boilers preparing some orange juice, Karim working on the blood samples, Macy and Samuel moving through the forest of drip stands and checking readouts.

They nod and wave back. As I'd hoped, there is no panic here. The people don't know yet, at least not about the worst of it.

"Two o'clock," I tell them, one by one, with a gentle touch on their arm or shoulder, reinforcing the walkie message. This is reassurance, recharging them from my own personal supply. Ozark is standing in the hall waiting and nods in my direction. I nod back, feeling like I'm high.

I drop by Peters. He's lying on his back in his bedding, gazing up at the ceiling vacantly. Ozark said earlier he was most likely in a state of delirium, caused by extreme lack of sleep, intensity of emotions and the chemical effect of months of his fat cells slowly breaking down into sugars.

"Hey," I say softly. He's so wasted, with tight withered skin. His big head, on too thin a neck, wobbles over toward me.

"Amo," he says, "you left."

"Had to think," I say. "I've done that now. Peters, I know you must be exhausted, but can I ask you to join another meeting? Answer some questions."

He looks up at me and I see the death in his eyes. If only he knew. "You think we have a chance?" he asks.

I don't grin for him, or try to reassure with a soft touch. He's seen things I never have and I don't want to be a liar. "We have a shot."

He pushes himself to a seated position. I take his arm, gesture Ozark over, and between us we help Peters hobble down the hall toward the back office. He's sweating and trembling by screen 4.

"Is this a cinema?" he asks abruptly, perhaps noticing for the first time.

"Best in LA," I answer.

Down the hall we enter the back office, where Lara, Anna, Sulman, Feargal, Witzgenstein and Jake are sitting around the conference table in a flood of light cast down through the glass ceiling. They have a whiteboard and marker pens at the ready, and are in the midst of a heated discussion which halts abruptly as I walk in.

"Thanks for coming," I tell them, as I lower Peters into an ergonomic office chair.

"Where've you been?" Anna asks. The accusation is there but finds no purchase in my calm, polished exterior.

"Thinking," I answer easily. "Have you shared what Peters told us?"

"Yes."

"Good." I check my watch; two hours and ten minutes left. Lara's glaring at me, with anger and concern mixing, and I can only hope she understands.

I take my place at the table and survey the faces looking back. Sulman, our resident expert on the T4 virus' biology, looks curious beneath his thick black beard. Anna is ready to fight someone, poised and holding to the table with white knuckles. Feargal, a fighting Irish fan, infantryman and ex-boxer who's now in charge of our security, watches me with his usual calm demeanor. Witzgenstein, once a Wisconsin county clerk, sits with her legs crossed and her long Goldilocks braids twisted between her fists. Jake is affable and breezy as ever, as if all of this was just another wonderful jaunt.

"A demon is coming," I tell them flatly. "Perhaps two if we include Cerulean, sent by a bunker in Maine that has access to drones and missiles." I pause a moment to let this sink in. "I doubt conventional weapons can hurt them. Anna, you shot the one in Mongolia didn't you?"

She nods, adapting to the briefing style. "Bullets barely slowed it down. I'm confident the RPG didn't kill it either."

I remember her story of shooting the demon while it was inside a great pyramid of fossilized zombie bodies. The pyramid collapsed on itself and the demon was halted.

"Because of the cold feeling?"

She nods. "It continued even after I blew it up. It didn't go away until I was miles to the west."

I look at Peters. "Cerulean killed a few of them, you said. He couldn't kill the original?"

He gives a little shake of his head. "He tried. He broke its arms but he couldn't pull its head off."

"And you felt the cold all the way back here?"

"Yes, chasing after us. I feel it even now."

Alarm washes through the group in widened eyes, shuffling bodies and a gasp from Jake.

"Not near," Peters adds. "Not so near, but getting closer. I feel him on my skin. I feel you too. It's how Julio hunted us all down."

I nod. Interesting. "Can you explain?"

"It's a kind of radar," he says. "After I was in the hallway with the demon I started to feel him, like a piece of ice touching my skin. I can feel you too, you're warm dots, and the zombies are warm too, but different. I don't know why it works, but I'm sure Julio had it too. It's how he hunted so many survivors down."

"That's our early warning system," I say, "it should give us some lead time."

Peters nods. I go on. "Though I don't think we can feasibly outrun them. Not in the long-term, not with every leftover zombie or survivor they find as fodder. I estimate we have a day, maybe two before they arrive. Peters?" He nods. "We should aim to be completely gone from here by this time tomorrow, all of us together, but where we go and what we do when we arrive, I haven't decided. There's just one thing I know."

I stop and look around this small gathering, into each person's eyes as if defying them to challenge me. They look back, probably waiting to hear my genius plan, whatever it is I went off alone to formulate. Wouldn't they laugh if they knew I went to a cupboard to play video games, reminisce and cry.

"After we deal with the demons, we go to the bunker. We do what I should have done ten years ago."

I don't say it explicitly, either because I don't believe it or I just can't face it, but they know. Kill them all.

A silence descends and I wade into it. "Now we have two hours to figure out how." I pick up a red whiteboard marker and unclip the lid. "Thoughts?"

* * *

Within thirty minutes the board is a mass of brainstormed ideas. In one corner is the 'nuclear bomb' suggestion, now thoroughly crossed out after Sulman suggested it and Feargal shot it down, because we don't have a hope of putting that kind of weaponry together in our lifetimes, let alone in the next 24 hours.

Beneath it is the 'escape' contingent, as brought up by Jake; ready an ocean liner and circle the world endlessly until the demon winds down, if it ever does.

"It was there for ten years," Peters argues quietly, pale but persistent. "No food, no water, nothing, and it never changed. I think it could outlast us all."

Anna seconds him. "Mine was buried in a pile of zombies for ten years, but as soon as I dug him halfway out he came for me. He didn't look weak."

"Plus where can we get a functional liner together at such short notice?" Witzgenstein asks. "The engines will be shot."

Witzgenstein has proven herself time and again to be a steady head on a solid pair of shoulders. She's slight, wispy almost, but her brain is incredibly thorough with detail. She was the one who sorted out our plumbing mess, with the simple solution of erecting our own water tower to provide water pressure, and plumbing the existing pipes into it. Her days as county clerk, dealing with policy at the practical level, have really helped us out.

We don't get on. She doesn't like the broad sweep of my ideas, doesn't like that we're all gathered here so closely together, doesn't like my politics or my general lack of religion, but she's smart and I'm glad to have her in the room.

I cross a line through the ocean liner idea.

"What if we drive round in circles forever?" Jake suggests. "We become itinerant, like the Native Americans were. Peters said it, he can detect where they are at all times, so we can evade them. We can have homes in multiple cities and move between them."

"No good," I say. "That demon will multiply every time he finds another survivor, and at some point early warning won't matter. They'll come at us from all sides."

I cross it out.

There are more suggestions to attack, with Feargal describing an assault of the biggest munitions we've stocked, perhaps using the tank Julio fetched years ago, but none of us is trained in using distance artillery, and none of us really believes that'll do it.

"Bombs fell from above," Peters says. "when we were running. All around us, sent by the woman's drones. They may have hit him already but it didn't stop him. He's stronger than that."

I cross it out.

We discuss erecting walls for a short time, but come down on the conclusion that given his size and strength and the fact he might have friends by then, they'd eventually knock them down. Sulman theorizes about a virus he might be able to design to take out the T4, perhaps even some kind of radiation, but that is about as far away from reality as going nuclear.

"If it could be done, wouldn't they have done it already?" Anna counters. "Whoever's in that bunker, they surely have more expertise than us."

I cross it out.

"Jets," Feargal offers enthusiastically. "Our own drones. We bomb this demon back to the stone age."

Anna frowns at him. "You have a Yangtze delivery drone. How long did that take to get ready?"

He shrugs. "Over a day to assemble and wire. It could drop books on its head."

Nobody laughs.

Jake suggests an avalanche. If we could lure the demon up into the mountains then trigger a massive flood of snow, maybe we could trap him in it. Other ideas flurry forward quickly after that, all variations on the avalanche; like filling a swimming pool with quick-drying cement and luring it into that, or a lake of oil which we set on fire, or a crater filled with TNT which we blow.

"And the back-up is?" I ask for each one. "If it doesn't work, or we can't trap him sufficiently, or he's just too smart to fall for it?"

It always comes down to running. Run again, go in circles, try another plan. How do you kill an unkillable thing? You can't.

At last Lara speaks up. She's been quiet the whole time, listening. "I don't think the zombie piles work like that," she says, and we all turn to her. "Like an avalanche or any of these other ideas. It's not just the mass of their bodies that holds the demons still, it's something else. Peters, you said you felt the zombies as hot blips, people as hotter blips, and the demon as cold."

"I do. I feel you all now."

She looks at me. "I think it's the signal. Think back to the first infection, you and me in New York. It spread in hours around the world, but how was that possible? No germ can spread that fast."

I consider. We'd talked about this endlessly in the early days, more again recently with Anna's demon and the discovery of the T4 cell within us all. "I'm with you so far."

"Peters can feel that signal still, like radar on his skin. It's why the people in the bunker want to kill us, because with us up here they can never come out."

I don't know if this is new to the others. Many nod.

"They need to get rid of us," Lara explains, "because they're not immune and we're constantly transmitting. To them we're the zombies, and just being near us is enough to be infected. It means we're all still giving off a signal that we can't stop. If we could mask the signal somehow it would help, but even the people in that bunker couldn't figure that out."

I frown. "I don't follow."

She stands up, goes to the whiteboard and plucks up a blue pen. I stand aside. Quickly she sketches the gun turret and concrete box from Maine, familiar to me but perhaps not to the others.

"They built this thing in Maine to kill zombies. If they had the means to repel them, or even to mask their own signal, why wouldn't they do that instead of use bullets?"

"They would," Feargal chimes in. "Camouflage is always better than conflict. With the gun there's all kinds of risks, including mechanical failure, misfires. Camouflage is passive, and it wouldn't draw others in."

Lara points at him. "So they don't have that technology. We certainly can't get it by tomorrow. So we have to use a means we all understand, one we've lived with for years. We have to go old school."

We all look at her blankly. She smiles. "We use the zombies."

8. PREP

Lara's explanation takes more diagrams and a lot more discussion.

"The zombies are hot," she starts off. "The demons are cold. It makes sense they'd cross each other out, like magnets. I believe that's what makes them stop, not the weight of bodies but the huge amount of counteracting signal."

"We'll need thousands," Anna chimes in. "The piles I saw in Asia were huge, and we've hardly got any zombies left now. The ones out there have all turned to stone, and here we're lucky to see the odd straggler once a month. But I know where we can find them."

I see it now too, putting the pieces together. It's perfect, a kind of karma for my good behavior ten years ago that could pay off now by saving us all.

"The Yankee Stadium horde," Lara explains. "We all remember that from the comic, yes? Amo rounded up as many as he could find around New York and led them into the stadium instead of killing them. We always meant to go release them, but for some reason we didn't. I suppose this reason is it."

For the first time since Cerulean disappeared I feel a ray of hope.

"There were more than thousands," I say. "Tens of thousands, probably. Enough to crush even two demons."

Lara grins. "And Anna set them free. That was maybe ten days ago?"

Anna nods. "I led them across the George Washington Bridge and into Pennsylvania. The line stretched back for half a day, and they just kept on going like a train."

"Good," says Lara. "Now I'm assuming they continued west after that, following the prerogative to charge up on us, probably, like their fellows, then roam into the Pacific. We might expect them to stay reasonably bunched together, in one large horde, moving steadily across the country. Have we got a-?"

Before she can finish the question I've brought up a map of the United States on the PowerPoint. Jake hops up to lower the lights and Lara uncaps a black pen for better contrast.

"They started here," she says, drawing a circle around New York, "and they've been heading due west for about ten days. They walk all day and all night, Anna you're probably the expert on this, how far do you think they could've made?"

Anna coughs to clear her throat. "Well, when I walked with my father's horde, it took I think two months to walk from Minneapolis to LA. I was only alone after that for about a month, then I met Cerulean outside Denver. Minneapolis to LA is about two thousand miles, by 60 days? That averages to something like thirty miles a day, walking day and night."

Lara scribbles notes in the margins of the map. "Ten days means three hundred miles." She looks at the map's key in the corner and makes a rough estimate, then draws out a line extending west from New York. "Right now they're probably somewhere toward the edge of Pennsylvania, just east of Pittsburgh."

We all stare at the map. It's strange to think of the zombie horde somewhere out there like a thing that can be predicted, slowly combing across the country like a weather front or flood line. Lara is already leaping ahead.

"Now the demon, or demons, left from northern Maine how long, three days ago?"

"I think so," says Peters. He's flagging now. "It's a blur."

Lara picks up the blue pen and draws a circle around the top of Maine. "They're moving fast, at a dead run for twenty four hours a day. Plus they're taller than us, correct?"

"Maybe three times as tall," Anna says, and Peters nods.

"So how fast would that be? Professional athletes run a twenty three-mile marathon in how long, about two hours? So if we triple that speed, sixty miles in two hours, we get around thirty miles an hour. Thirty by twenty four hours gives us," she does the quick calculation on the board, showing the wits that nearly saw her through law school, "seven hundred and twenty."

We take a collective gasp. Lara plows on.

"In three days that means they'll have covered two thousand-plus miles. But perhaps they run faster than marathon runners, at a dead sprint, in which case," she throws up her hands. "It's like Amo says, they'll be on us in a day or less."

She draws a line from Maine directly toward New LA, stopping short at around two thousand miles in, right by Denver.

Anna laughs. "Crossing point."

"But not anywhere near the zombies," Jake points out.

Lara nods. "So we go with the avalanche theory. We lead the demon to the zombies and watch the sparks fly."

There's a silence for a while as we all take that in. It seems strange to use the zombies as a weapon. It relies on a lot of factors, like can we successfully lead the demons, and will the zombies be where we think they are, and can they still cancel out a signal after ten years standing in the sun in Yankee Stadium, but it's the only plan with a remote chance of working.

"I like it," I say, "it's mad."

Jake laughs.

"But logistics could be a nightmare. We'll need to confirm the position of the horde while at the same time evading the demons. It's no good trying to lead them to a place the zombies aren't. Also we'll need to confirm the demon's position and send bait out to draw it to meet the zombies. Finally, we need to consider what to do with everyone here."

"True," says Lara.

We pause to think.

"Simple," Feargal offers, "folks hunker down here and let the game of cat and mouse play out in Pittsburgh."

Peters coughs wetly and I yield the floor to him.

"That won't work," he says. "I know this thing. I can feel what he's looking for. Whatever group you send out as bait, he'll ignore it as long as the bulk of you stay here. This is the hottest spot on the map and he'll make directly for it."

This leaves only one solution. I put it into words.

"We all have to go."

It resonates. It rumbles.

"We all have to go," Lara agrees, and draws a circle emphatically around New LA in red pen. "We're all bait."

Reality goes floaty for a while after that.

For all the preparation we've done over the years, I never gave much thought to the need to evacuate. Movies yes, I shot and edited those, Ragnarok IV in many different languages, and I made cairns in every major city reaching up into Canada and down into Mexico, loaded with fresh versions of the comic book and a radio network to replace the Internet. I made a community here in LA with electricity, running water and sanitation, and of course I set up Anna to circle the world, and Lara and I had a family, and there were weapons and supply caches to set up, and minor conflicts to manage, but I never planned to evacuate everyone.

There are fifty-three of us in total now, including five children, two babies and sixteen survivors of Maine in critical condition. We need to hit the road within twenty hours, drive almost directly toward a giant vomiting demon, evade it, serve as bait for it, then lead it into a swarm of zombies and survive.

Others argue about the best way to do it. I listen while Anna takes her turn at the board. Cerulean feels close by, as if he's guiding me.

"We'll use the RVs," I announce abruptly. Anna stops talking and everyone looks at me. "We've got eleven now in the motor pool, transferred over from New York. With them we can bring the sick and the children along easily and safely. We know these vehicles, we know how their engines run, we know how to repair them. Supplies, gas, water, guns, we can load them all up. We'll be a convoy, and if any one vehicle goes down we can easily swap out. Does anybody have an argument with that?"

Nobody does. I feel like I'm hovering a foot above the ground. Lara gives me an urgent look, as if to slow me down and stop me floating away, but it's too late.

"Anna, I want you with Peters and Jake," I say, spitting out the shape of things as it comes to me. "I know where there's a Cessna propeller plane, Peters." He's asleep but he perks up at the sound of his name. "It's in a private hangar at LA X, we took stock a few years back. If the engine's shot Jake and Anna should be able to help you get it functional, and the heat'll be off you anyway as the convoy draws the demon away. It'll be your job to get it in the air and scout ahead of us, finding the demon and the zombies. Can you fly?"

Peters stares back at me blearily. He's floating too. "I don't know," he says. "My vision's not what it was. My arms don't work so well."

I can't afford pity or sympathy. "You made it across the country. You're the only pilot we've got, and the best radar on the demon. With you in the sky we can't go wrong. Anna you'll make this happen."

I look at the others. I must look strange to them, floating like this. "We start fitting the RVs now. Ozark, get the sick on board first, make them comfortable. Witzgenstein you'll be in charge of getting everybody else boarded, I don't want any panic. Weapons, I'm imagining something automatic and mounted on each RVs flank, through portholes you'll have to cut. Maybe a few high-rate machine guns in turrets fixed to the top, they might buy us some time. We'll need to start fitting those now, Feargal you take lead on alterations. Lara you'll work on the route, figuring out where we should aim to have the zombies and demon intersect, plus you're on supplies; the RVs have some but we'll need more. We won't have time to stop and resupply. Witzgenstein, don't let people bring too much, a very small bag only. We'll either die out there or we'll be coming back for it soon. Sulman, I want you to make sure we have reliable distance comms between us all, doubly backed up, and the GPS is up to date."

I fall silent. I think that's everything. I look at the time in the corner of the PowerPoint screen; just before two o'clock. Perfect.

"Any questions?"

No questions come, and I don't wait around. The roster is set. "Let's get moving. We don't have any time to spare."

I usher them up and out. Lara kisses my cheek then heads away to her task.

In the hallway outside the rest of New LA is waiting. There are fearful faces and some nervous smiles. Ravi's there, hopping foot to foot, and Chantelle. Vie and Talia are there, holding Cynthia's hands. They run over and give first Lara then me a hug. They're scared too, and I rub their little heads.

"We're going to be fine," I tell them, sucking on my reserves. "Stay with Cynthia now."

I bring them all in, sit them around the table, and stand before these thirty-odd people drawn from all across America in the name of a dream, and get ready for what I'm going to say. It should be about hope, and history, and the shape the future might be. That's my job these days. Fortunately it's one of my specialties.

I begin.

* * *

It happens.

Everyone moves in a flurry of activity; gathering up their essentials, making preparations and loading the RVs. A few people protested at first, demanding to stay behind, but I was very persuasive, describing in detail the kind of death they had to look forward to, and how their death would only fate us all worse.

They fell quiet and got with the program.

I leave a sign on the Chinese Theater's front doors in case anyone comes while we're away.

OUT TO FIGHT A DEMON. CALL US. AMO.

I leave three walkie talkies nearby in waterproof plastic bags with extra batteries, each tuned to our universal channel. I don't expect anyone to come, but you never know.

Anna comes over while I'm triple-checking the lead RV.

"I'm coming to Maine," she says, without any preamble. "When we put the demon down. You wait for me."

"I know," I say. "I wouldn't bury him without you."

"Or the bunker," she says, with a deep weight of meaning underneath the words.

"Or the bunker," I agree, and we hug. She squeezes tightly; a strong young woman almost as tall as me now.

"You'll hear from me," she says, then heads off. Jake and Peters' are waiting in one of Chantelle's Jeeps, with Peters lying down on the back seat with a drip feeding into him. He needs to sleep now if he's going to fly back across the country. I don't envy him, but I think he's got the strength. He came this far.

Lara calls the route through on the walkie universal channel. "We're going to Pittsburgh, coming at it from the south, which gives us a better shot to evade the demons. We'll take I-10 to Phoenix, then Albuquerque and continue east up through Oklahoma and Missouri."

It sounds good.

An hour before dusk we're ready.

The RVs are loaded with supplies and outfitted with automatic weapons slotted into holes cut into the sides, two with rooftop chain guns. Feargal and his team have worked flat out in the machine shop with blowtorches and welding gear to get it finished. I add grenades and RPGs to the stockpile of each RV, though there's barely any room in my RV for anything else besides all the crates of plastic explosive.

Ozark loads up the sick into three RVs, with him, Cynthia and Adonis taking the lead in each, with two more volunteer nurses to help. They'll travel in the middle of the convoy. The kids we load into one with Ravi, Masako and Macy. I take point in the front RV with Chantelle and one of Julio's victims called Lucy, who is about as well as Peters and can function as our personal radar.

"I'll bring up the rear," Lara says, as we're moments away from rolling out. She's standing in front of me with her hands full of last-minute gear.

This surprises me, though it shouldn't. "Are you sure?"

She nods. There's something in the set of her eyes that tells me not to argue. I've seen this look before; it comes when I've done something to hurt her, and it doesn't take long this time to realize what it is.

I made all these decisions alone.

I went out after we heard Peters' story alone. I dealt with the news of Cerulean's death alone. I haven't talked to her about any of it directly at all. She must be angry, hurt and confused, and she has every right to be. I've dropped a wedge between us, but I can't do anything about it now. I have to get this thing done.

"I love you," I say flatly. "We'll talk soon."

"Sure," she says, and gives me a hug around the gear in her hands. There's something off, of course, it's not a normal hug, but at least it's a hug. I can't stop the convoy to resolve this, no matter how much I want to. I'm barely handling myself at the moment, let alone all these people. I need Lara, but we have to get on.

I get in my own RV, strap in and twist to look at Lucy, a stringy-haired women in her twenties, leaning forward and rocking on the edge of one of the side booth-beds. She looks like a meth addict, so scrawny and abused.

"They're near," she says in a raspy voice, "that direction." She points roughly northeast. "They're getting closer."

Lucy was in Julio's torture chamber for at least five months, I know that much. He dug her out of a log cabin in Kentucky where she'd been living off the land for ten years, contentedly alone, building herself a giant full-size replica of the Alamo stockade. People do weird things.

I switch on the engine. I fire up the headlights against the coming dusk. I look at the Chinese Theater a final time, not sure if I'll ever see it again, and pull off the courtyard, leading the convoy through the dark and onto the Pacific Highway, headed east.

FLIGHT

9. RACE

We race.

The sun comes down fast as we weave through LA, until steadily the dark asphalt forecourts, barren roads, strip mall-like apartment blocks and complex swirling overpasses of the city fall behind like a life forgotten.

The stars come out and we drive by moonlight and harsh white headlights; one long caterpillar convoy munching its way into the night at eighty miles per hour, slicing a furrow across the skin of America. Behind us we leave a trail of scattered conversation in the radio waves like tire tracks.

We keep our High Frequency radios on at all times, listening to the others check-in and share updates with a quiet urgency. Ozark keeps us appraised of the progress of his patients and quietly advises Cynthia and Adonis on managing symptoms. Feargal and Chantelle check in softly with each other and the fighters manning guns in each RV every half an hour, part of a pre-arranged roll call to ensure we don't leave anyone behind. Lucy gives me her reading on the demon and I share it with the others, who share their readings from Julio's victims in turn.

Even a few hours in and only halfway across California, it becomes clear the demon is already shifting direction to track us. It's what we expected, but much faster. It means the further we go east the sharper the angle will be when we pass it. Lucy feels it close to northeast now, which could put it somewhere in southern Colorado.

I shudder to think what might have happened if we'd delayed leaving any longer. The demon would already be on the road up ahead, presenting a hell of a gauntlet to run. As is I expect to pass it some time after noon tomorrow, though it's going to be close.

"Any update on the engine?" I ask Anna through a private frequency on the HF radio. The static fuzzes and crackles back at me for a minute.

"She's under the hood," Jake answers. "There's a little rust in the exhausts, but the propeller's good and the pistons seem solid. Peters likes the look of it."

"How's Peters look?"

"Bad," says Jake. There's a rustle of footsteps as he disentangles himself from the group, and I try to imagine the dark hangar they're working in, surrounded by the hulks of useless jets, too complex to ever fly again. "But he's coughing blood like Abigail; Ozark said it's TB. We've got him on an antibiotic drip, but he's drifting. He'll tell us to check the piston heads then he'll mumble something about alligators. I don't know if he can even fly."

I run a hand through my hair. In the cab Chantelle, a powerful black woman with a shaved head, watches me closely.

"Can you fix the engine without him?"

"Maybe," he says, "I don't know. It's not the same as a car or an outboard motor."

"But it's similar?"

I feel him squirm on the other end of line, unwilling to let me bully him into an admission he can't make. "It's internal combustion, yes. I suppose we could-"

"Let Peters sleep," I say, talking over him, and he's happy to trail off. "We need him to fly, that's the bottleneck. We need you up in the air ASAP, watching over us. We're going to pass the demon in less than twelve hours, I expect, and eyes from above on that would be a huge advantage."

Jake takes a long breath. Anna's voice comes calling from a distance. "Tell him we'll be there."

"Did you hear that?" Jake asks uncomfortably.

"Got it. We're relying on you."

"Understood," he says and closes the connection.

I drive on, pushing the RV closer to ninety miles an hour. The frame begins to rattle and I get a few calls from behind questioning the wisdom of taking these sedate Recreational Vehicles anywhere above seventy, but I remind them what we're up against: a giant demon sprinting closer who'll vomit his infection directly into us and turn us against each other. The grumbling stops for a time and the convoy speeds up.

We race ahead in a cloud of voices muttering, like dreamers mumbling out their dreams. The children will be asleep, my daughter Talia and son Vie, six and four, are now tucked up in their makeshift beds believing all of this is some kind of glorious adventure. Macy is a great motherly figure. I wish I was back there with them, but I can't be. Lara's at the tail end, angry for a dozen good reasons, and we're each in our own urgent bubble.

This is the life of New LA, on the road.

I fall into a hypnotic lull, racing along I-10 through nighttime scrub desert and urban wastelands I've been through countless times before. The road is mostly clear, with vehicles left over from the apocalypse long ago nudged aside, on one of the many cairn trips I or someone else made in the past ten years. The RV copes with ninety miles an hour well. I'm sleepy so I wind the window down and enjoy the buffeting flow of cool night air, smelling of sand and hot tar and the great American wilderness. I keep focus by turning my mind over the challenges ahead; the demon, the zombies and ultimately what to do with a bunker full of people.

It must be deep. They must be hidden. But there will be a way. They had to get in and at some point they have to get out. They surely are not far from the demon they kept captive for over a decade.

I look in the rear view mirror at all the explosives in back, held in plastic crates packed with Styrofoam: rack after rack of deep-well drilling bombs. In another age they might have been used to blow tunnels into mountains. More recently they were used for setting foundations for deep-sea mines.

We found a cache of them years ago when we were raking LA for supplies. We used a few to clear a building off Santa Monica Boulevard when it came down in the 2023 earthquake. The burst was massive, clearing the wreckage and also tearing a huge chunk out of the road. We didn't use them again, but we stored them. We have plenty of storage. If anything will dig me down to the bunker and crack it open like a can of beans, it's these.

It's just finding it.

"Talk to me, Chantelle," I say, breaking through the reverie. "I'm drifting here."

She's sitting there with a rifle crooked across her lap, a big Louisiana girl with a big set of teeth, big braids, big and strong in every way. She had a guy for a while, quiet Alan, before she settled in with Florence from New Jersey. They're a really cute couple, especially when we have our quarterly ball and they show us the moves they've been working on for months. I should put that stuff in the next Ragnarok movie.

"What do you want to talk about, Amo?"

"Whatever. You and Florence. She's in with the kids right?"

"Right."

The conversation lulls. She's not much of a talker, Chantelle.

"You make any progress on your honeymoon plans?" I ask. It's an odd conversation to have in the circumstances, but I need to talk or I'll fall asleep.

"No. She still wants to see Niagara Falls. I want to go to Hawaii."

"Hawaii! That's awesome."

"Anna went. She said she'll take us out there. It's safe."

I grin. This is what sending someone round the world does, I suppose. People get bold. "Feel like doing some hula dancing? It'd be a good addition to your repertoire. Grass skirts, coconuts, all that."

She shrugs, maybe not even aware I'm trying to tease her. Some people.

I sober. "Well, I hear it's very beautiful."

"I've never been," she says, which I'd thought was already obvious, but apparently not.

"Me too," I say seriously, then decide to give up.

"I want to see the volcanoes," she adds a few minutes later, startling me. "You ever think about volcanoes?"

I look over at her. "Sure. Yeah, why not?"

"Me too," she says, and that settles that really.

The road rolls on and I drive.

Hours later the radio buzzes for an incoming private signal. I glance at the clock, 4:34 am. I haven't slept in two days, which is no good. I'll have to switch over soon.

I push to send. "Anna."

Her voice comes through. "Peters is sleeping, but I think we got the Cessna to work. The engine's running and we're out on the runway."

I imagine what that must be like, on a dark and windswept asphalt plain, standing next to the vessel all our hopes are pinned on. Any fault in the engine, after lying ten years silent, could bring it down. I see a pile of burning metal on the runway lighting up the night. Once again I might be on the edge of sending Anna to her death, but I know that she'll go, and I know that I have to send her.

"Wait for the dawn," I say, "you can't take off in the dark, and there'll be time."

"We're leaving now," Anna says, obstinate and willful as ever. "I've set a generator and lights at the end; something to aim for. Peters is in a bad way but we don't have any choice, do we?"

I can't argue with that. We need to know where the demon is. We need to know where the zombies are, if this crazy plan has any hope of working. For a moment I consider calling Lara and checking in, confirming with her what needs to be done, but I can't face it. What if she says no? What if she begs me to let Anna stand down, what then? If I trust myself then I have to trust myself, because there isn't time to argue. It's another wedge I'm driving in myself, but I don't know what else to do.

"Then do it," I say.

"Roger that."

The RV whips through the desert town of Kingman on the western edge of Arizona, while sounds of movement come from Anna's end of the radio. She speaks to Jake and they rouse Peters to life, then clank and click into the cockpit.

Kingman is a fossil, ringed with dark bluffs overhanging the Wal-Mart's, gas stations and tourist shops touting Route 66 along I-10. Above the bluffs are stars and a heavy round moon. Two hours and the sun will be up again. Anna should be up there with them by then, scouting ahead.

I look at Chantelle and she looks at me. We leave Kingman behind in a flurry of water towers and tilting telephone lines.

"We're in," Anna says, "locked and belted. Jake?"

"In."

"Peters?"

He mumbles something.

"Good enough," Anna says. "Amo, if you have any last words of encouragement now would be the time."

"Godspeed," I say, "get in the air."

"Roger that. Peters?"

"Ignition," he says faintly, and there's the sound of an engine kicking roughly to life. A choppy mechanical whirr starts up, which I take to be the propeller. Seconds pass and it speeds up and smooths out.

"We're moving!" Anna shouts over the droning sound.

The sound of the ground rushing by becomes a low roar through the radio. I imagine Peters at the controls, nodding forward with tubes dripping vital fluids into his arm, while Anna nudges him to stay awake. I imagine the darkness flying by either side, the roar of the engine, the lights up ahead growing larger and the vibration rising up through the seat.

Then there's a whoop, I can't tell who from, and I guess they're airborne.

"We're up," Jake shouts. "Dammit, Amo, I can't tell you how good this feels!"

"Altitude rising," Anna shouts, "a hundred feet, hundred fifty, two hundred, keep it up Peters."

He mumbles something, perhaps about alligators. There's a palpable joy on the other end, buzzing through the vibration of the plane and the feel of the rush of the wind. How long since anyone flew above America?

"We'll be there in less than two hours, Peters says," Anna reports. "The top speed is three hundred and forty, so scouting ahead should be no problem."

"That's brilliant," I say, running the schedule through my head. They should be overhead us after Flagstaff, maybe even as far ahead as Holbrook, but well before our expected cross with the demon at Albuquerque. "Good job, Anna, Jake, Peters too.

"Thanks, Amo, we really-"

BANG

Abruptly the steady drone of their engine is broken by a sharp explosion. Chills race up my back and I accidentally jerk the steering wheel, almost toppling us right there on the highway. I barely get control back, correcting the RV after a sickening zigzag. But now Jake is shouting something, Anna too, and the banging sound of before is getting louder.

"What happened?" I shout back. "What's going on?"

Anna replies but the engine is hammering harder now, like an autocannon shooting down zombies, until with a sickening absence of sound, it goes utterly quiet.

For a moment the signal goes clear, and Anna speaks with uncanny calmness. "We're falling, Amo."

I stare at the radio.

"Amo," she repeats.

I don't know what to say. I don't have the words for this, as all the oxygen sucks out of my lungs. I imagine the cockpit filling with noxious black smoke, I imagine the fear in Anna's eyes and the plane dipping forward into a dive, and I can't move at all.

"Amo," Anna says, shouting now, "are you there?"

It's all happening so fast. She's just a little girl again, Anna in my arms on the Chinese Theater forecourt dressed in her Alice in Wonderland dress, and now she's in a plane I put her in and she's falling out of the sky and there's nothing I can do.

"Amo!" she cries urgently.

"Anna," I shout back at last, breaking the emptiness in my lungs with a brittle bark, barely making a dent against the gathering storm of broken clanking sounds as their little plane falls. "I love you, sweetheart. Jake, thank you. I'm so sorry."

"Amo-" she shouts, then there's a vast-

CRASH
and the signal devolves into hissing.

I stare at the radio in horror. It's too fast. They'd only just taken off. It can't be real.

"Anna?" I shout again. "Jake?"

No answer comes.

"Anna?"

Tears well in my eyes. I can't breathe. Chantelle's staring at me and everyone in the RV must be listening, but I can hardly breathe.

Too fast.

The plane crashed.

Anna's dead. Jake's dead. Peters too is dead.

10. DRIVE

I drive but it's hard to see. Chantelle says something but I don't look at her.

"Anna," I say into the radio. "Jake."

I drive until the tears stop and the headache sets in. 5:37, the clock says. Any minute the sun'll rise up ahead, symbol of a new day.

"Don't tell anyone," I tell Chantelle, my tongue moving like a numb jellyfish in my mouth. My head is thick and fuzzy. She says something kind in reply but I can't really listen.

Get a grip. I have to get a grip.

"Lara," I say over the open radio, before I can stop myself.

"Go ahead, Amo," she answers a minute or two later.

"Private channel 1," I say then sign off, spin the dial to our setting and call through again.

"Take me off speaker."

I hear the click, and now there's concern mixing with the hurt in her voice. "What is it?"

There's so much I want to say. I want to spew it out like the demon, and probably she can handle it, but I'm not sure that I can. Just repeating this truth may break me, make me lose it here at the head of the convoy in front of Chantelle and the others in back, and I can't afford that.

I manage to stop myself short. There's truth and then there's truth, and some things I'm better off not putting into words. They'll know soon enough, it'll all be clear and they can do what they want with me, but for now I just need to get through. It feels like lying to my own wife, to Lara who would be nothing but supportive, but I don't know what else to do.

"I wanted to talk to you," I say, and my voice goes tight.

Chantelle on my right gives a signal and goes to the back, joining Lucy amongst the crates of explosives.

"About what?"

"Sweetheart," I say, but I can't come up with anything more.

I want to talk about them all, Cerulean and Anna and Abigail and all these deaths, but I can't get them out without breaking down. Instead I freeze and the silence hangs between us, broken by the shush of the airwaves and the steady growl of the RV's straining engine.

"How's Anna?" she asks.

Again I almost spit it out, but force myself not to. My instincts may be shit, they saved Julio and they saved the bunker, but they're all I've got, and I have to listen to something. If the convoy thinks Anna's still alive we have a chance. If they think she's coming through the air even now, there's hope. If she crashed on the runway and her corpse is steadily burning to a crisp, which is what certainly happened, all hope is probably lost.

"Fine," I manage, and begin to float again as helium pumps into my head. "They're working on the propeller still. How's everything at the back?"

"Good."

Silence. A tiny group of buildings whizzes by on my right, too small to be on any map. A gas station and a pancake house out in the middle of the Arkansas desert.

"Where did you go?" she asks, the leaves a pregnant pause. "Before, after Peters. I was calling. I went looking."

It's another blow. Of course she's hurt. She'll think I should've have trusted her, taken her with me, but I couldn't and I can't explain why. I didn't trust myself enough. I couldn't handle anything but being alone, though I wish I'd been strong enough to take her. I wish I could do it now.

I can do something.

"I walked on the beach," I say quietly. "I went to our apartment. I saw Cerulean."

Lara takes a sharp breath. "Cerulean? You mean in Deepcraft?"

"Yeah. He's looking well, considering."

She laughs, but it's more pain than humor. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Why didn't I? Because of the knives I couldn't share with her. Because of the decisions I couldn't let her bear. Because of the guilt I didn't want her to feel, and because if I told her, and she hugged me and helped me, I'm not sure I'd have had the strength to go on.

I don't say any of that, though. "I was going to. I needed some time."

"I don't like it when you get like that, especially about such important things. You know I don't."

I know. I rub my eyes and sniff. Not just one lie now but so many, stacking up like zombies in a pile.

"How's your fuel gauge?" I ask, a kind of petty distraction.

"Good. Another five hundred miles, should be. We'll be past it by then."

"Long enough to get some rest. Have you been checking in with the others?"

"Some. The speed's got Ozark in a flap, but I think his patients are OK."

"Better a flap than dead."

"Touché . Listen, Amo?"

"Lara."

"We're going to be OK, all right? I know it. All of us. You and me."

I almost burst out in tears at that. It's this kind of thing, the sympathy that I don't deserve, that will break me. There can be no forgiveness for the mistakes I've made, only atonement. I know I should tell her it all, but if just coming this close does this to me, how can I go any further?

"I know," I manage. Of all the charges against me, being too soft is by far the greatest. "Keep checking in. We'll talk soon."

"Sure."

I switch off the private line and turn to Chantelle.

"Can you drive?"

She comes over. I set the cruise control and lock the wheel then slip out of position. Chantelle slides in, not even looking at me. I just need an hour or two to sleep and not think. I've been awake too long already, two days and now driving for over five hours, so all I can see are flashing road lines and Anna falling in flames.

"Wake me in two hours," I say.

I stagger back down the RV, nudging off the stacked crates and into one of the bed booths along the side. I fall into it and come up looking across at Lucy. Though it's dark back here some stray flash of light catches in her open eyes, staring back at me.

"It's coming," she mouths.

I know it. I turn and put my face to the shuddering wall.

* * *

Anna's in my dream, sitting on the wrecked propeller mount of the Cessna and waving a stick about like it's a wand.

"It won't be so bad," she says. She's talking to my kids Vie and Talia, who sit in the sooty black wreckage with smudge marks on their faces like students in a classroom, looking up at her. "It'll be gentle, really. Just open very wide and you'll barely feel a thing."

She opens her mouth, and Vie and Talia copy her.

"Will it taste like ice cream, Anna?" Talia asks. I almost chuckle at that. Talia really loves ice cream. Cynthia just started to make it, after we rounded up enough cows to get a steady supply of milk.

"Like ice cream and chocolate," Anna says. "You just open very very wide, and-"

She opens her mouth so wide that her jaw clicks and breaks open. Still her mouth keeps opening, wider and wider until her whole body unzips pinkly down the sides of her grin, then folds back on itself like a watermelon gumball, spinning in space and shrinking until-

POP

She disappears.

"That's not ice cream," Talia says, disappointed. "I hate gumballs."

"Daddy, look," Vie says, and points out across the water. I look to the horizon, and see thousands of red demons there, marching toward us like breakers on the tide. The skies are full of them too, flying with their arms widespread, and I find myself reaching up to the clouds above for salvation like that lost zombie atop his pile in Times Square, but there's nobody up above to take my hand.

No God. No magic Cerulean come to bail me out. No Lara to save me from myself.

"Please," I shout at the clouds, which morph and change shape, "it's for my family."

"I could have had a family too," says Don. He's up there in the clouds now, his handsome face all bloody and torn from the zombies eating him. "Did you help me?"

I stretch myself until I'm a mile tall and just touching Don's chin.

"Too late, Ammo," he says, "too late and too damn short."

A hand clamps around my foot and yanks me down. Now I'm in the midst of them, thousands of them, massive red beasts that are bigger than me, stronger than me and smarter than me. My jaw is forced open and a black round mouth hole descends.

The flow begins. The red ocean is everywhere. My children are already gone.

* * *

Thumping palpitations in my chest drive me awake. My first thought is I'm having a heart attack, then perhaps a stroke. I lurch out of the booth and into the central aisle, steadying myself on the plastic crates.

It's light outside, and the black road stretches ahead through an orange desert. My mouth tastes like sand.

"I was about to wake you," Chantelle says over her shoulder. "There's been some confusion from the survivors."

"What?" I ask, trying to shake the dreamy fog out of my head. "What confusion?"

"Ask her." Chantelle points at Lucy, lying in her booth still.

I drop to a squat, my heart still pounding madly, and rest a hand on Lucy's shoulder, but she jerks back like I've given her an electric shock.

"What is it?" I ask her. "The radar, do you feel something?"

"Not something," she answers. The whites of her eyes are huge. "Somethings."

"What do you mean?"

She closes her eyes and curls up tightly into a ball.

"What the hell? Chantelle?"

"That's happening up and down the convoy. Nobody understands."

I barge up and grab the radio. "This is Amo, all stations report, what the hell are the survivors saying?"

Lara's voice comes through crisp and clear. "It's the signal, Amo," she says. "It's making them crazy. Nobody can get much sense out of them, but it seems powerful, more than they expected."

I try to understand this for a second, as my heart continues to throb. "They lived for years, some of them, next to this guy. At most Cerulean might be with him, making two. How could that have this effect?"

"It's more than that, they say. I don't know, it's like they're possessed. Ravi had to restrain the survivor on his RV, James, because he was trying to climb out of the gun slot. They're terrified. We're getting very close."

I blink. "Where are we?"

"You don't know where we are?" It comes almost as an accusation. I rub my eyes and try to stay calm.

"I was sleeping, Lara," I say, "can you tell me where we are, how close are we to the crossing point?"

"Miles away. A hundred miles easily, still west of Albuquerque. But it was always an estimate, I don't-"

A shriek comes from behind, then something hits me in the back. It's Lucy, and I'm knocked to my knees with a painful jolt. Lucy pushes by toward Chantelle, perhaps toward the open window, nudging the wheel violently to the side.

The RV lurches and Chantelle drags it back while hunching against Lucy's scrabbling body. "Get her off me, Amo!"

She shouts.

I grab Lucy's shoulders and yank her back. She's so light that she flies away easily, but in the air she whirls and sends one hand raking down my cheek. Then I catch her, wrap my arms firmly around her chest with both hands tucked in, and try to contain her. She's almost naked but for her hospital shift, scrawny and weak, but she kicks, struggles and hisses like a feral cat.

"There are zip ties in the cupboard," Chantelle calls back at me. "Restrain her for her own good, before she hurts herself."

"What's happening?" Lara calls over the radio.

I lift Lucy and take big steps to the booth, but getting her in proves impossible as she spreads her legs and catches on the edges, lashing out so hard I'm worried she might break her own legs.

"She'll hurt herself, Amo!" Chantelle calls, watching me in the rear view mirror. "Be firm, press her against one of the stacks, use your weight."

I scrabble at the cupboard, knocking it open and sending loose plastic zip ties sprawling across the floor, then drop Lucy to the floor. Dropping on top of her, using my weight to subdue, feels like how I imagine a rape would as she squirms and yells meaningless words. The thought sickens me, especially so close after dreaming of Don. I hate to do this to Lucy after she's been restrained for so long, and to do it in such a fleshy, grunting way, but there's no choice.

I pin her hips under my knee, yank her arms together as gently as I can then get the ties on. They slide tight and I move to her ankles, zipping two ties together and wrapping them round. She whimpers and I slot her into the booth, bundle her feet in the blankets and zip-tie them snug so she won't break her toes flailing around, then tie her wrists to a hook attachment in the walls.

"Jesus," I mutter. "Stay there, Lucy."

She thrashes but there's little else she can do. My cheek stings and I feel blood roll down my neck from her sharp fingernails. I grab a strip of gauze and press it tight then hurry back to the front and sit beside Chantelle.

"See," she says, "crazy as hell."

I lift the radio. "Lara, everyone, restrain your survivors with zip ties if you haven't already. I know they're weak but it's for their own good. Mine just assaulted me then tried to jump out of the window. Confirm please."

Confirmations echo back. Just in the time that I was attacked, two others tried to make a break for it. One of Ozark's patients was on a blood bag and tore it loose, spraying gore everywhere.

"It's contained?" I asked.

"Contained," he said, "but this level of extreme stress, some of them can't take it, Amo. They'll just wink out."

I feel it myself. In my chest the cold is brewing already, like the opposite of heartburn, and my heart keeps pounding and pounding around it.

I switch frequencies. "Macy, how are the children?"

"They're fine," Macy comes back to me, though her voice sounds harried and stretched. "We're having an adventure in here, aren't we kids? You wouldn't believe how much fun hide and seek is in an RV going at ninety."

"Thanks Macy. Kids, I love you, hang in there." I twist the dial.

"Lara, everyone, we're going to bull through. They shouldn't be here yet. We're just on the edge of the storm, we'll squeak by."

Outside the red scrubland of New Mexico whips by, bounded by random sandstone buttes and well-stocked with wild pampas grass and gatherings of hazel-brown cacti. The sky is a beautiful cerulean blue. I'm about to suggest swapping over with Chantelle, when Lucy starts to scream.

I turn and see her leaning out from her booth as far as she can, pulling her arms taut behind her on the hook. Her mouth is so wide open I can see her tonsils shaking like mad leaves in a wind. She's staring past me and out of the front windshield and really screaming at full capacity, so loud it hurts.

"Amo," Chantelle calls over the cry, "holy shit, look at that."

She points left. We've just crested a low rise in the desert, unveiling more red stretching wilderness; a few scattered boulders, a tiny shack that was probably once the outhouse for a ranch, and an emaciated Joshua tree.

"There," Chantelle says over Lucy's cry, "look, dammit!"

And I see. There are giant red figures in the distance, arms pumping, sprinting down on us from the north like meteors falling. A cloud of red dust rises behind them. I try to count them. Not one, not even two, but three, five, perhaps seven.

"Oh my God," I whisper.

They'll be on us before we can get past. They're massive. They'll block the road and tear us to bits.

Seven demons. The chill opens over my heart and swallows it down.

We're done.

INTERLUDE 5

Two days earlier Salle stood before them, six brave souls in the summery hall.

They were three men and three women, all equal and proper. Had they volunteered, or were they forced? It didn't matter. They were in the suits now and there was no going back. Joseph got it done, like he always did.

"Thank you for your sacrifice," she told them, "we'll never forget this."

Some of them had dead eyes that looked right through her. There was nothing unusual about that, though. Probably they thought of this as just a way to escape, after she'd made suicide illegal and punishable with long-term isolation.

Isolation made them scream and go mad. Better for the others to hear the screaming and be broken than for them to die by their own hands. She needed them all for something.

The suits were not handsome, like the black SWAT gear her rescuers had worn so long ago, back when she'd still believed the Habitat was an experiment for Mars and Lars Mecklarin had been alive. Rather they were a jury-rigged orange fabric, making their wearers look like festive Borg androids, festooned with complex magnetic arrays, bits of wiring everywhere like veins, some kind of capacitor, a heavy battery and oxygen tank on the back. The orange fabric was undercoated with a high-tech silvery material, which still showed through at the seams. Tubes ran down the arms and fed into the wrists through permanent catheters. These would inject drugs, blood, antibodies; all the resistance tech they'd come up with in ten years of research.

But there was no cure.

There could be no cure, not for a disease already so deeply ingrained in the genetic matter of its hosts. Every one of them here was already a walking zombie, they just hadn't had their switch punched to 'on' yet. The suits would delay that switch getting punched at the cost of tearing the body apart themselves.

If they were fast, though?

"Send them," she said.

Joseph lifted the first helmet, a solid bronze globe, and with the help of two others set it into place on the volunteer's shoulders, clicking and belting straps and fasteners into place, forming a perfect seal around the neck. Oxygen hissed inside. It looked like a torture device, a fish bowl-like helmet without any visor, only a tiny blinking camera lens at the fore, with more coiled wires and a strange whipcord antenna rising at the back.

"Can you see me?" Joseph asked, holding up three fingers before the camera.

"Three," the volunteer inside answered, her flat voice transferred through an open channel on Joseph's radio.

"Good. You're ready."

He moved down the line doing the other five. Each one was a death penalty, but then she and Joseph had killed people in much worse ways. That first day of the revolution over twenty had died at her command, some of them horrifically. In the weeks that followed, as she clawed back control and stamped discipline on Lars Mecklarin's hopeless people, another thirty had followed in highly stylized public executions. Their bodies were buried in the forest now, without any graves.

Joseph got the last one done. Six humans with heads like rusted underwater mines stood in a line before her. It helped to dehumanize people like this, made it easier. Still she had to really try not to think of the personal information she knew about each of them, memorized a long time ago from Mecklarin's intensely observed files.

Here was Rocky, 28, a prodigy in psychographic profiling, but weak on the inside as it turned out, and prone to abusing whatever power was given to him. He'd abused three women before they'd had him sterilized. There was Amelia, 53, an expert botanist, whose knowledge about kick starting an agricultural boom would be absolutely essential, but whose spirit had been broken for years, and bore the slit marks of suicidal self-harm on her wrists.

They lived on because Salle made their bodies survive, like slaves, but their souls were already gone. Salle saw it all the time, she felt it, she caused it, but it was the only way. This was what happened when you took any meaningful carrot away, but more than that, this was what happened when you took away the possibility of being a real human. It was a great finding for Mecklarin to put in one of his books.

PEOPLE NEED PEOPLE. MAN CANNOT LIVE ON FOOD ALONE.

There was one carrot still, though. These volunteers were going to get it now, and for that she envied them. If this plan worked everyone in the Habitat would share it soon.

To see the sky.

The drones had no cameras pointing up. After Julio had blown up their tower they'd had no eyes above ground left, so they hadn't seen the sky for five years.

In such ways she justified everything. Make this sacrifice now and escape in six years time, in five, in four. It was either that or simply devolve into mad, murdering chaos. Everything was a trade-off in the name of survival.

Joseph opened the elevator door, admitting two alongside him. The doors closed and up they went. Salle felt the great shield in the earth above her revolve as Command opened it, trembling the whole Habitat and opening the single pinhole slot to the ladder. At once the whining spiked in her head.

This was the signal struggling to get through. They knew all about it now, a frequency beyond radio waves and down on an atomic level, called the 'Hydrogen Line'. It was a kind of quantum wavelength that went through everything, except the shield Lars' sponsors had built around the MARS3000 project at immense expense.

Lars had never known about it. The amount of things he hadn't known about turned out to be many, to his credit. He'd truly believed they'd funded his vision only to prep for Mars.

Now a tiny sliver in the shield had opened, and even though Julio's prisoners and her primary had to already be hundreds of miles away, the signal still crept through. She refused to acquiesce and hold her hands to her head though, like the two guards in the room with her were doing, though the pain dug at her thoughts horribly.

Moments later the elevator doors opened and she sent the next two through herself.

"I hope you rot," one of them said through the helmet, her voice sounding flat through the radio.

"I will," Salle replied, "have no doubt of that."

That was a good pep talk.

One more elevator ride and all six were up. It seemed to take forever for them to climb the ladder and emerge out into the world above, but at last the shield began to grind and revolve, coming back into position. When it finally blocked out the signal the relief was huge. One of the guards dropped to his knees. She marked his name.

Joseph came down in the elevator, emerging into an ugly mirror of her arrival in this place, the orange summer room, ten years ago. Every time she passed through it she remembered that first time, with Lars so confident and relaxed, his shirt slightly off his shoulder showing a chink of his chest, so very young.

It was a bad memory, now, because the hall was not what it had once been. The bright yellow ceiling was stained with damp and the cheery orange walls were scoured with greasy black soot and cement-colored pockmarks from explosions and gunfire during the revolution. Most of the TV windows were cracked and the one with the fan had been torn off completely so some angry soul could mangle the workings behind it.

There was no smell of flowers. The power supply was carefully controlled now, so even the few surviving screens were not switched on. A lot had changed in the revolution, as people tore up a Habitat they'd come to hate and believed they were soon leaving forever. They broke transformers, tore out wiring and damaged things that couldn't be fixed. The nuclear plant powering everything still hummed on, like a nuclear submarine, but their access to it had been forever limited.

"Go back to Command and watch them," she told Joseph. "You know the drill. Ding them if they step out of line. Call me if anything happens. I'm going to take a walk."

He saluted, as ever, and as ever she wondered if it was passive aggression. She didn't have files on the command staff like she did on those in the Habitat. Their experience of life underground had been very different from the scientists; forced to watch as three thousand people only thirty yards away had the time of their lives in a delightful environment stacked with abundance, while they lived off hard-tack biscuits, space food and huddled in damp, cold concrete boxes.

It was odd thinking that led to that. Whoever funded the whole affair, who'd purchased the primary and built a hydrogen line shield from whoever manufactured such things, had decided the command staff of thirty didn't need luxury.

Maybe they'd been right. Telling them the truth from the off made a huge difference. Either that or they'd just selected the most fatalistic, disconnected people available. They didn't need them for their great skills or genetics, only to run out the clock and keep an eye on the people who mattered.

Joseph went back up in the lift. Salle left the orange hall by the door into the Habitat.

In the red corridor outside some efforts had been made at repair and decorations. She still encouraged crafting and taking pride in the environment, but of course it was different now. The pieces of art on the walls weren't flights of silly whimsy but brutalist works of propaganda touting her regime. The people she passed kept their heads down, well aware she could have them executed or tossed into solitary on a whim.

It was the kind of power she hated having, the opposite of everything Lars had taught, but it was necessary. Talk softly and carry a big stick. It was the only thing that worked.

The bar at the end had been converted into the lab where they made the suits. It was extraordinarily complex science, reverse-engineering the shield. It helped that they had some of the greatest minds of particle physics, engineering and mathematics locked up together.

She gave them treats of good food and alcohol when they worked well. She shunted power to their TV screens to display the sky, or movies, or whatever they wanted. She ran them like gears in a clock, and they followed the rules, because there was no other choice.

Gideon was in the 'clean' fabrication lab, a white space of shiny plastic with suction fans cleaning out the tiniest particles of dust. He was tidying up the work benches, and looked down as she approached. He was a short man, wearing glasses bound together with duct tape and a sad little cowlick down his forehead. Two girlfriends his whole life, that's what she knew about him, plus an interest in breeding mice.

"Commander," he said.

"Is the seventh suit ready?" she asked.

"Yes. Concealed from Joseph. I have it here."

"Keep it. I'll let you know."

He nodded, starting to sweat now. She had that effect on men.

Salle walked back down the red corridor and took the stairs heading down. People went by carrying bags of soil, fresh potatoes, a sack of powdered milk, a coil of copper wiring. The Habitat was always on the move now just maintaining itself. A lot had been destroyed in the revolution, including large swathes of their seed stock and supplies.

It got darker and damper as she went deeper. Atmospheric controls like sump pumps and dehumidifiers were a power luxury that ranked behind keeping the farm grow lights, irrigation and heating on. Eating took priority over comfort, and now half her genius scientists worked at some menial laboring task just so they could eat.

On the second floor she found her old room. Cameras watched many hallways, as ever, but not here. She'd had them removed. 345C. Inside it was pleasant still, purple walls and velvet curtains, very different from her cell in Command. The TV worked, a luxury she allowed herself on the rare instances she visited, and she turned it on. It showed a view out over the ocean, once no more than a dull but calming screensaver. Now it helped keep her going.

In this room she'd grown to love Lars Mecklarin deeply. Not a day went by that she didn't think of his last moment in the control room, and the last thing he said to her.

"Think kindly of me."

She had never quite figured out how that made her feel. Angry, yes. Pitying. On some level, understanding. He'd been the best amongst them, he'd seen the bright side in humanity and tried to nurture it. His view that all humans were just complex machines wasn't reductive, it was constructive; something to build on. It wasn't his fault they'd lied to him, and sometimes she thought he'd made the right choice in committing suicide.

Lying on the bed, she picked up her copy of Amo's comic. It wasn't printed on the right kind of paper nor was it bound well, because every page was a screenshot taken from the agent's copy, harvested from the long days and nights he'd parade around his shitty little hallway surrounded by his torture victims, holding up Amo's work and scorning it.

God, she'd hated him. Julio. Nothing had made her happier than to see his head torn off by Cerulean, except that it meant all the years of suffering he'd caused were for nothing. For years she'd sat in the control room alone with all her staff sent out, watching him rape, torture and enslave innocent people. It was sick, but surely the ends justified the means.

Surely?

Reading Amo's comic, for a time she could dream. For him suicide wasn't a selfish act, but a selfless one. He died for his sins, so the zombies might live on. She read and reread the pages again and again, as ever hoping something in it might bring resolve to the choice she'd faced for six years.

Kill herself, or not. Kill her people, or not. Either one might be the right thing to do. When did dignity fade away completely and survival become worthless? She hardly knew what were they surviving for now.

Reading the comic was a pleasant fantasy. She looked out her TV window and dreamed she was in Amo's shoes. She tried to imagine him in hers, and how he would fare in this situation. Would he kill himself, like Lars? Would he find a way to raise her people up with hope?

Her radio buzzed.

"They found a vehicle," Joseph said. "It runs. Commander, it's snowing again up there. It's beautiful."

She didn't care. The real world wasn't as real as Amo's world.

"Send them. They drive without rest."

"Yes, sir."

He hung up. Salle lay back and looked up at her ceiling.

Now she had to kill Amo, along with all his bright, happy people. It had been coming for years. It was the strangest thing.

* * *

In a day the six caught up to the primary near Akron, Ohio.

Salle stood at her command post in the control hall, watching it play out in split-screen. On the left was video from their cameras, a road and blue sky and the primary's running body ahead, framed by the windshield of their stolen Jeep as it gave chase. On the right was a GPS map showing the demon's blue dot and their red dots nearly overlapping.

The primary didn't see them or sense them. The suits made them invisible.

For twenty hours they'd been closing in, and already they were losing their minds. The suits' hydrogen line defenses were imperfect, letting just enough of the signal through to slowly turn their minds to jelly.

"You'll be the advance party," she'd told them. "You'll go ahead of the primary and prepare his way."

Lies.

"They're on him," Joseph said. "Now's the time."

She took over the controls. The command was keyed to a red box; one click of the mouse to unlock, one to activate. It was far less than the worst things she'd done. She took a moment to enjoy the view through the windshield of the racing Jeep; trees and clouds and such green grass.

"Pull over," she ordered, and the message relayed directly into their helmets. The Jeep slowed and stopped. The primary ran on. "Step out of the Jeep," she said, and they did, where they wandered aimlessly across the road.

It was time to betray them.

She clicked the mouse twice, and six tiny clasps on all six helmets blew off in six tiny explosions. The helmets tumbled open, air rushed in and the signal transformed the bodies inside in seconds.

Salle watched the change on the live feed from a camera mounted on the Jeep. Their helmets lolled down their backs, clanking off their oxygen tanks and battery packs. Their faces paled in fast succession, like lights blinking on. Their eyes sparked to a glowing white.

Up ahead the primary stopped. It was reading them now.

It came back. It hit the first and lifted him with ease, and Salle looked away. She watched the sky as six jaws broke, as six transformations happened, until seven of them stood on the road, echoed by seven blue dots on the map. One of them looked back at the camera, sending a chill through Salle's chest, then they all ran.

"Was he looking at you or at me?" Joseph asked quietly. A joke.

Salle left the control room without answering. Now they could only wait.

11. HIT

Seven demons are coming and we don't stand a chance.

I scan the land ahead hungrily, hoping for something that isn't there. Distant red rock mountains encircle us, closed within a wide red desert plain of red dust, spartan cacti and spreading Pinyon pines.

It's like a trap. I scan the satellite map but the next turn-off south isn't for fifty miles, and there's no way we can stay ahead of them riding rough in RVs across the desert scrub. We can't use the buildings or any other feature to our advantage, all we can do is crash ahead like a battering ram.

But we can't crash through seven.

We're going to collide head on; not a squeak or a scrape but an explosion. My mouth goes dry. It doesn't take a genius to see the way this will play out. Their massive, indestructible bodies will smash the first few RVs off the road, and the others will crash and pile up behind them like a Hollywood chase scene. Our tight formation will work against us. Metal will squeal and buckle, sparks will scrape off the raspy road, glass will shatter and the demons will stalk amongst the wreckage plucking out bodies to ravage.

It'll be a massacre.

One or two demons, maybe we could bull through. Not seven though. We're all going to die.

The decision takes seconds to make and I make it without telling a soul, because there isn't time.

"Ravi and Tomas, drive on!" I call into the radio. "Lara you're with me on the left."

Then I lean over Chantelle and pull the wheel hard to the left. The RV swerves so hard it almost tips, then jumps off the edge of the road onto the rubbly, uneven desert scrub with a thump, coughing up thick bursts of dust to either side. The speedometer drops rapidly to eighty then seventy as the chassis thumps and judders, taking hits to the suspension and wheels it was never designed for. Under the onslaught Chantelle yanks control of the wheel back.

"What the hell?" she shouts, echoed by cries from both Ravi and Tomas in the rank behind, now in the convoy lead. She tries to pull the wheel to the right and get us back on track but I put a hand on her shoulder and she stops.

"Dead ahead, Chantelle," I tell her, "you understand?"

She looks at me and she understands. "We're going to charge them."

"We are." I allow myself a glance back in the side mirror to see our beige and white convoy tearing along the road. A second later Lara's RV peels off from the back and I send up a prayer of thanks.

"Ravi and Tomas take the convoy ahead," I call over the deafening thump and rattle of the RV racing on the scrub. "You know what to do if I don't come back. Lara you're on me, you see what I'm thinking."

"I see," she shouts back, "I wish you'd given us more warning."

I see her in the rearview mirror now, her dark face at the wheel in the midst of a wide contrail of dust spat up all around her, features set and determined.

"Needs must," I answer, and turn my attention to the open scrub ahead, as Chantelle swerves around craggy reefs of red rock rising like sharks' fins through the sand. The demons are damn close already, as big as tight ends and charging right at me. I'm charging at them.

Screw them. These are the ones that killed my best friend. They're not going to kill my people.

I start back down the RV's aisle while calling out instructions to Chantelle.

"In twenty seconds you're going to stop," I shout, as I fumble in one of the shaking cupboards. More zip-ties tumble out, followed by purple and orange shell cases, rations, an oilcan, until I set my hand on the rack of smooth fat detonator nails. Thank God I took the time to program them already.

I grab one and snatch up a box cutter with the other hand, slide the blade out and lurch to the first plastic crate. I flip the lid off, and just then the cold in my chest suddenly stabs more sharply, and Lucy by my side starts to wail like a siren.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I feel the demons' need reaching out across the distance, like a snake mesmerizing its prey. It sucks at my thoughts and almost freezes me solid, but I've started and momentum carries me through.

I slash the explosives' outer plastic wrap and peel it away, revealing the tender purple plastic explosive beneath it. Good at two thousand feet deep, guaranteed for twenty years, good to use now.

"Stop now!" I shout at Chantelle and she slams on the brakes right in the path of the demons, tossing me off-balance and sliding the crates a few inches forward, toppling one noisily at the back. I grab the crate and recover. The demons must be half a minute away. "Get Lucy and we go."

I plunge the smooth fat detonator nail, comprised of a primary explosive, accelerant and receiver into the purple explosive and flick the switch on top so it blinks red.

The RV grinds to a skidding halt that turfs up a thick wall of dust ahead, blocking any vision of the incoming demons. Chantelle muscles by me, grabs the box cutter and slices Lucy free of her zip-ties while I dash forward for the radio. She kicks the door open and we pile out together, staggering and coughing in the dust.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, Lucy wails.

"This way," I shout, catching a glimpse of white that must be Lara's RV through the billowing storm of dust. We run, and the freezing need in my mind grows irresistible, a siren call demanding I turn and run the other way. My legs become heavy and I look down at the radio in my hands and forget why I have it. I look over and find Chantelle has stopped moving, even Lucy is no longer wailing, they're both just frozen as the dust billows over them. Momentum abandons me and I too forget to run.

In that vapid, overwhelmed state I watch the demons sprint out of the dust, almost on my RV. They are huge and muscular, long-limbed as aliens with great red heads and sunken features. Their black hole mouths reach in to unstoppable cores. In a way they are beautiful, and I marvel at their strength and fury. No wonder they deserve to inherit the Earth, no wonder we are all bound to bend the knee and open the mouth before them. Seeing them so close makes me I feel like I'm ready now, to join their evolution and remake the world. I open my arms to welcome them in, with popcorn and soda for all.

"Amo, what the hell are you doing?" crackles the thing in my hand. I'm not sure whose voice it is or why it's coming out of my hand. Chantelle is walking back towards the RV now, holding a woman over her shoulder whose eyes catch mine and look thankful. She's thankful at the last and I understand why, because the fear is finally over and she has accepted her fate.

My head spins and my heart thumps. I think of my brother Aaron, so long since I've remembered his name, and how he died in a collision with a car just outside our house. He'd been so brave, always teaching me how to be a better man, and then he was just gone. Whatever lesson I took from that was wrong, because it led me here, and resisting against this is futile.

We can only bend and give way. It's all right. In a way all of these are my children anyway.

"I'm coming, Aaron," I whisper, as tears roll down my cold cheeks. "I'm coming."

"Amo!" screams the thing in my hand, while the first of them races past the RV, closing on Chantelle and Lucy. The cold has me in its grip like a fist, wrapped up as tight as Lucy's feet in their zip-tie padding, but something about that voice breaks through. It's a beautiful woman in a New York coffee shop, leaning over my shoulder and asking about zombies. It's a strong companion who finds me bleeding in the road and saves me, when I knew I was gone. It's a stunning, resourceful wife who gives me reason to live, who bore my children and loves them just as she loves me, who always deserves more.

Her name pops like a bubble in my head, breaking the spell. Lara. Vie and Talia follow, driving the cold back far enough for me to breathe.

I lift the radio before me, struggling to remember. I flip the dial on the radio, catch the correct frequency on the second go round and punch the big red button.

BOOOM

The first explosion is the initial crate blowing as the detonator bursts, and-

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

-the second is the chain reaction as all the crates in the RV, enough to level a whole city block or dig up an underground bunker, explodes. The blast starts close up and ends far away, blown into the depths of my eyes while I'm tumbling through the air then rolling over the abrasive sandpaper floor.

It was so loud I didn't really hear it at all.

I blink and there's fire, smoke and sand all around. The desert is on fire and my ears are hot and the sand in my mouth matches the hammering pain in my chest. I get to my wavering, wobbling feet, and still all I can see is dust and fire rising in a rolling ball into the sky, like a mushroom cloud. I look around. There's a radio in my hand fizzling but I can't hear a word it says. Did bodies fly through the air? Where are Chantelle and Lucy?

Then I see him.

He flows through the dust like oil, striding out of the explosion untouched. Dust furls either side of him like curtains on a stage, unblemished and vast and red. He is beautiful in his way, and his cold reaches out to gather me in, this thing that killed my best friend.

I've used all my explosives, and now there is nothing I can do. He'll be on me in seconds. In the past I laid down and let the zombies take me, but this is nothing like that. Now I have children, a wife, a family of fifty-three and I can't let any harm befall them, nor do any harm to them myself.

I snatch up the gun at my waist and bring it to my throat, flick the safety and-

BOOOOOM

There's a flicker of movement from the right as a rocket splits the distance between us and strikes the demon square in the chest. The burst throws him back, spinning into the ground and cartwheeling end over end into the burning crater where my RV was, while I am knocked again on my ass. The clouds bloom out and up like faces mouthing empty apologies, and afterimages of the blast only yards away replay across the dark in my eyes.

I see Anna in there and Cerulean in the smoke, and I want to bury their apologies with my own.

Then there are hands on my arms. I look up and see Lara, my beautiful Lara, and start to cry.

"Come on," she shouts, though I don't hear a thing, only see her mouth moving up and down. She drags me up and I stumble dizzily after.

"Chantelle," I say, "Lucy."

"Too close," Lara shouts back, "come on."

We run and stumble over the scrub, while the cold from behind begins again, like an air conditioner suddenly turning on.

Lara yanks at my arm, and I realize I've stopped and am staring into the dust, waiting, but there's nothing to wait for. No Chantelle, no Lucy, and the others? I know there were others, but they're not coming.

Lara takes my face in her hands and looks in my eyes. "No more," she says enunciating so clearly I can't misunderstand. "They're gone."

Then we're running again, and I see Lara's RV lights, shining white through the dust. Nearby there's Olly with the RPG on his shoulder, staring watchfully behind us. "Hurry up, come on," he hisses.

I let Lara bundle me into the vehicle. The engine revs and jerks us away as soon as I'm on board, smacking me against the entrance well wall. My head is spinning and I'm dizzy, there's a high whine in my ears and sparks flash in my eyes.

Lara presses something cold into my hand; a bottle of water. "Drink it," she says, or at least she mouths it, because I can't hear anything. I try to unscrew the cap but my fingers are too weak, smeared with some kind of oily dust. She does it for me and I take a swig as the RV bounces and flails over the desert floor and out of the dust.

Cold water gets my throat working again, and I cough sand for a few hacking seconds. Lara presses a disinfectant wipe to my head and it comes away bright vermilion.

"Shit," she hisses and I feel like laughing.

"I just have to," I mumble and stumble past her, into the aisle of the RV.

Through the windshield ahead there's the spread of desert and the black ribbon of road, blurry through my teary eyes. On the road in the distance there's the convoy, I can't count them they're so far, but it's a solid arrow of white and beige racing away.

Good. That's good.

Then I see the one on the ground, on its side by the edge of the black road, wheels spinning, scored with black burn marks where it rolled on the asphalt, dented and crumpled where the demon struck.

The chill comes back.

I see the demon, standing in the middle of the vehicle's torn side wall, a huge red thing rummaging in the RV's guts like a coyote digging for the antelope's heart. We're racing by him and he looks up as we draw near. In his hand he's got someone, jerking faintly, I think it must be…

Ozark.

My lungs feel like they're collapsing. No more, I want to shout, but the demon won't listen.

"Olly get to the gun slot," I slur, as loud and as clear as I can. Blood drips down my face and slaps off the front seat on Jasmine's shoulder.

I turn and see Olly standing there, transfixed. I sure as hell can't do it.

"Now!" I shout, "get to the slot."

He moves. Lara loads the next rocket for him. His arms are trembling but that's OK, it's a big target this time.

"Pull us broadside," I tell Jasmine, like a pirate captain in the age of sail, and she does. We have a window of seconds only. Perhaps I see Ozark's eyes widen as the demon hunches over and forces his jaws open. Poor, poor bastard. I have to believe he sees us, and knows we wouldn't leave him like this. We can't save him now, but we can-

"Fire!" I shout.

The rocket whizzes out on a string of smoke, hits the RV right in the wreckage hole, and the resultant explosion catches the gas stores and becomes huge.

BOOM BOOOOOOOM

Fire balls upward, the demon is set alight, and Ozark and any of his patients left behind are blown to bits.

Dead. We shake and rattle by.

I sag against Jasmine. I track the blazing wreck through the side window and round until it appears in the back window as we turn, then look beyond it to the great bonfire further out in the desert, a Burning Man-like inferno dug into a crater in the sand.

All our explosives are gone, leaving a hollow pit in my head. I don't have any plans left. Worst of all, I can feel them out there still, great bodies full of freezing need, picking themselves up, unhurt and ready to follow us to the end of the Earth. Maybe I can see the first of them peel out of the flames, its body blackened and undamaged, then my knees give out and Lara catches me, guides me back to one of the booths, where I lie down, vomit, and start to shake uncontrollably.

Lara is there throughout. She tears strips of bitter-smelling bandaging apart and slaps them on my shoulder and chest, she injects a needle into my arm, she binds my head with tight white fabric.

"Concussed," she says to someone, her voice a blur, "caught fragments, he's covered in them here and here, losing blood fast."

They tend to me, and I'm just waiting for the feel underneath the tires when the surface changes. When it comes, the rumble of the ruffled desert giving way to the smooth flat of the highway, I let go.

"Anna," I whisper, and Lara draws near.

"What is it, Amo?"

I blink and whisper through my tears, seconds away from blacking out, perhaps seeking forgiveness now at this darkest hour. "Anna's dead."

12. FORGIVENESS

I'm standing in an orange hall, surrounded by windows through which I can see a gorgeous array of flowers in boundless meadows. There's a faint breeze and the hint of honeysuckle on the air.

"Nice, isn't it?" comes a voice.

It's Lars Mecklarin. He's sitting at a table in the middle of the hall, smiling just like on his book covers, dressed in lab-coat white. His teeth glint as brightly as zombies' eyes, and I pull up a seat opposite him.

It feels right. For now, in this place, all the misery of so much loss can't hurt me.

"Not here," says Mecklarin, as if reading my thoughts. "But it will. There's no way to hide from it really. The weight piles up and up, doesn't it? If it's not one man's suffering it's another's. Women too, of course, not to be sexist. We all face our losses, and we react in our own ways."

He smiles, and places his fingers to his head in an approximation of a gun. He pulls the trigger and says, "Bang."

"I shot myself," I say. "It's true. I deserved it."

He leans back in his chair, really making himself comfortable. It's a nice place he has, after all, this bunker, comfortable and cozy. I'm impressed with the windows, which are quite a feat underground.

"We all deserve something," he says. "People who strived for greatness and fell short. Inspirational leadership is so oversold, don't you think? The thrill of it is far outweighed by the crushing weight of responsibility."

I smile. We know each of those extremes, I suppose, he and I.

"So we talk about what people deserve," he says. "For some, a bullet in the head, self-administered. For others? Tell me, what do you deserve for these most recent failures, Amo?" He spreads his arms to take in the table, the room, the windows and all their pretty flowers. "Heads sliced off like poppies, all in a row. Your darling Anna and cheerful Jake, now the inestimable Chantelle, good Dr. Ozark and so many others. Survivors of long years of pain. And of course your great friend Cerulean too, let's not forget him. How many more will it take before you stop clinging to hope?"

I look at this Lars Mecklarin, author of The Human Machine and Life on Mars, really look into his bright blue eyes, and try to imagine the zombie lurking within. If I reach out and touch him, won't his eyes burst out with white light, won't his skin shrivel to a sad peanut-gray, and then will he still be Lars Mecklarin, gifted genius and savior of three thousand lives, or will he just but a walking corpse, waiting to die?

He raises an interesting point. A fine point, really.

"Did you know?" I ask him, delving for the depths. "When you gathered all your people in, did you know what they would become? That they would cause this?"

I point out of one of the windows, where now there is the convenient image of the desert and two smoking fires. I point to another window where there is more smoking wreckage, this time of a small jumbled plane lying on an asphalt runway. Through a third window, replacing the fields and flowers, there appears a barren, filthy hallway covered in blood with broken shackles hanging on the walls, where an array of dead bodies lies.

He smiles. "Amo, my dear boy, what difference does it make? If I tell you I shot myself in the head to escape the knowledge of what I'd done, what would you say? Is there some part of you that would feel sympathy, or would you only be glad? We all face our challenges alone, don't you agree? You yours, and I mine. What we are left with is only this: where do we draw the line between our desire to survive and the survival of our desire? Do you follow me? At what point do we cross an un-crossable line, and become animals of the like we would take out behind the barn and shoot in the skull? Where is the difference between striving for something good, and persisting in spite of an irretrievable sickness?"

I look at him and he looks at me, like a battle of wills.

"There's limits," I say. "For some. But limits change. Tolerance shifts. We all grow old and we get tired."

He grins, then raps sharply on the tabletop. "You're right, of course. Now, a wager."

I react like this is the most natural continuation of our dialog, a wager in a dream between two lost souls. "Name it."

"All of yours against seven of mine. We'll meet on the plains and do battle. Whoever stands gains the right to the Earth."

I rap on the table back. "You can't set the terms. You're locked in a cave underground. What do you know about the world now? You haven't lived in it for over a decade. You gave it up, Lars, so it's not yours to wager."

He reclines comfortably in his chair. "So name your terms, Amo, Last Mayor of America. Claim your right, and name the number of casualties you're willing to accept. There are three thousand of us here. You almost died once to give us that chance, and now there are less than fifty of you. Where is the balance in it?"

"It's not about balance."

"Then is it about what is right? No, of course not, you are not so morally immature. What could be right when we come to survival, is there some cosmic scorekeeper keeping tally of all the atrocities we have each committed, who will at some later stage render judgment on whose offences most deserve extinction?"

He grins and goes on. "No, my dear Amo. It is about simple survival, and we are back at our original question. At what cost do we live on? At what point does survival become more of a misery than death? Better an hour lived as a lion than a lifetime as a worm, do you know the expression?"

I stare into his blue eyes. "You're the one living underground. You tell me."

He laughs. Despite myself, I like him. Reading his books ten years ago I liked him, and throughout all those ten years, as I built New LA by welcoming new people and aiming for something better, his wisdom was there in the background, guiding me on.

But this?

"I think we might have been friends, in another life," I say.

He waves a hand. "Don't be ridiculous. I was a genius, darling of the age. Did you know a psychologist could have groupies?" He points at himself with a smirk, then at me. "And you? You drew comics of zombies, Amo. That's it. You don't even have a real name, no heritage, you don't come from anything genuine or authentic. You are a false object, a painting in sand, like all your countrymen in this fantasy of a land."

I rise to my feet. I suppose he wants to badmouth America now.

"Survival," I say, "is just one kind of dream. It'll drive us to grand things, but it's weak compared to what I'm feeling now. In survival there's room for doubt. What I'm feeling would crush it underfoot. There's simply no room."

Mecklarin rises to his feet, grinning. I'd never noticed the blood dripping down from his temple before, but now it's undeniably there. "Better," he says. "Let's get to the root. We're in opposition, you and I. What room is there for compromise? There's only the one drive."

"I'm going to kill you," I say, and it comes out far calmer than I feel. "I'm going to take this world and make it safe for my people. If that means every one of your three thousand must die, so be it."

He nods. The blood's pouring down his cheek now, along with a thick flow of oozing gray brains. On the opposite temple there's an entry wound, bubbling with bright red liquid like the hole itself is breathing. "Rage," he says. "Pure, undiluted rage. You'll burn yourself up."

"You'll burn with me."

We stare for a long moment, then he raps the table again and sits down, back to smiling, as if the previous exchange never happened. "A fresh wager then. Gather for me, say, three lilies from the fields you see all around. Only three, and my underground realm will be yours. I'll hand over the keys and the security pass. Just fetch me three."

He holds out his hand. I reach across the table and shake it. This is a wager I can easily win. The windows are right there, and the flowers are countless. I can bring him armfuls in a minute only.

I stride over to the open window and reach to open the clasp, but it doesn't budge. I tug on it but it won't open no matter how hard I pull. I swing an elbow to crack the glass but rather than breaking outward into fresh air, the image of fields warps and tints purple, with rainbow hues spreading around a jagged black crack in the glass.

Lars laughs wildly, though half of his head has now fallen away like a wet Squeegee, revealing the red emptiness inside his head. His face is a moving doll's mask on the front of a hollow shell, drizzled with blood spray. "How will you kill us when you can't even find us? You don't have time, Amo. You just don't have time."

I smash the television screen with my elbow until my skin tears and blood smears the screen and all the fields and flowers are gone, leaving only flickering black pixels and jagged cracks in the glass. Still I keep beating it, like the sound of waves slapping against the beach, constantly rolling in though not changing a thing.

Slap, slap, slap.

* * *

I rouse to the slow slap, slap, slap of a drip tube against the booth's wall.

The RV is moving fast, I can feel it in the thrum coming up through the chassis. The aisle is full of light and it takes a second to realize this is not my RV anymore. No plastic crates, no Lucy, no Chantelle.

My RV blew up.

There are low voices talking. I shuffle to better hear them, though a fresh twinge lances in my head. Witzgenstein and Lara are up ahead in the driver and passenger seat talking. Someone's lying in the booth opposite me, it looks like Olly. Down at the back of the RV, past crates of food, water, gas tanks and munitions, Sammy and Lulwa are staring hard at a map.

I wave at them. Lulwa sees me and nudges Sammy, and they both wave back awkwardly.

"You guys OK?" I ask.

Sammy nods.

"Lara," Lulwa calls.

I turn just as Lara drops to kneel beside me, wrap her arms round my back and hug me hard.

"Ah," I mutter, as the tube flowing into my forearm pulls tight and pinches, my ribs creak and my head throbs, but I hug back weakly. This is good, and just what I need.

"Gods, I thought you were mad," Lara says quietly as she pulls back. "The size of that explosion."

I cough and clear my throat. "A gift, for you. Most girls only get flowers."

Her face falls. "We lost Chantelle and Lucy, Amo. They ran back into the fire. Ozark and everyone on his RV are gone too, that's Rosalita and Terrence plus five of the survivors from Maine, the worst cases. We lost two across the convoy just from being near those red bastards, their hearts gave out just like Ozark said. That's ten in all."

Her voice starts trembling. She sits in the booth next to me, takes my hand in hers and picks idly at one of my bandages. She looks exhausted, with eyes red from lack of sleep.

"It's a lot," I say. I can't think of much else right now. Like before in the Theater's lobby when Abigail fell, it isn't time to grieve. I squeeze her hand.

"It's a lot," she says, "and Anna."

Now that hits. I remember telling her, and it almost washes away my firm resolve.

"Her plane went down just after take off," I say, getting the words out before I lose this moment and its sudden rush of confidence. "The engine died. I told her we loved her and thanked her as she fell, then the signal was gone."

Tears well in my Lara's eyes.

"You're sure?" she asks. "They couldn't have glided down? A crash landing, maybe."

I'm crying. "Maybe. I hope so. It didn't sound that way, though. It sounded like an explosion. Whatever happens, they're too far away to help us now, and we can't help them. We have to keep going."

Lara nods and rubs the tears away. She points through the front windshield, and I lean forward to see the beige of an RV just ahead of us. "We caught up with the convoy. Everyone's in shock, Macy's despondent, and I haven't told Ravi what you said yet."

"Don't," I say quickly. "Let me. I kept it back, now I need to make that right."

She strokes the line of my jaw. There's a crinkle of plastic there, must be another bandage. "You kept it from me. Like a lot of things."

I nod. I'm guilty, shutting her out since this whole thing began, but even that's not really true. I've been pushing her away since Cerulean disappeared two weeks ago, falling into my own pit of internal despair. There's no excuse for it, and I deserve whatever sting I'm going to get.

"I understand," she says instead. She presses her face close to mine and whispers into my cheek. "I know you take on things that are hard for you. I know that you're doing your best. It isn't your fault that any of them died, it's whoever did this to us. Things just happen. You keep doing what you're doing."

I start to cry quietly, then. I did this, I want to say, but I know it isn't true. I saved Julio and the bunker, but only for the best reasons I could think of. I tried to do the right thing, and if I failed it wasn't because I was evil or even a fool. Things just happen, and you try to be good when you can afford it.

With that, and Lara's hand resting gently around my back, the weight I've been laboring under falls away. It feels like acceptance, as the last knife wedges in and becomes a part now of what I am, spiky like a porcupine.

"I should have told you," I whisper back. "Right from the start, but I couldn't handle it. Cerulean dead and so many victims from Julio. It was too much, but I should have told you."

She kisses me, wet with tears, a tender brush of the lips.

"No more," she says, just as I said in the lobby. "We're all doing our best. I know that about you, don't I? I've read your comic. I'm just glad you didn't shoot yourself in the head again."

I laugh involuntarily, too caught up even to joke that this time I held the gun to my throat. She presses her forehead against my cheek and I revel in the warmth.

"Oh, that would've been such a mess. Blood everywhere, sewing up the hole. I don't even know how to sew through bone."

"It's a challenge," I mumble nonsensically, just glad to have Lara in my arms again. "Strong needle."

She strokes my head. "And now you've got all these new scars. I thought you'd never survive the blast, when I saw all that fire. I think you've been hit by every bit of the RV."

I laugh. I remember years back when the apocalypse was young, and a car exploded in Mott Haven right before me. I took an indicator lever in the shoulder. It healed but the scar still twinges in the winter.

"I'll survive. We all will."

"All of us that are left," she says.

"Yeah."

We hug. It's good, but it can't last forever.

"I need to talk to them," I say, after a few minutes. I'm getting the measure of myself again. I've fallen and now I'm back up. Lara nods and helps me stand. My old radio is gone so we fish a spare from the cupboard, and sit me in the aisle looking out through the windshield. There's two RVs in front, which means we're traveling in a diamond formation. Circling the wagons. To either side the scenery has turned from ochre red to sienna orange.

"It's six o'clock," Lara says. "You've been out for nine hours. We're through New Mexico and into Texas now. We should hit Oklahoma some time in the night."

"And the demons?"

"All behind us. We've got reports confirmed across multiple survivors, they think there are still seven and they're all chasing us, but they're falling behind. They can't go as fast as us on the roads."

I take a deep breath. It's good. It'll give us maybe a day's lead time to find the zombie horde and bring the demons home. With Anna in the air it'd be easy, but we've got plenty of survivors here, like tuning forks. We should be able to do it.

"Do they know all of that?" I ask, gesturing at the RVs ahead.

"They do."

I spin the dial to the universal channel and push to transmit.

"New LA, this is Amo," I say.

I don't expect the chorus of cheers that follows, and it takes me so by surprise I can't speak for another thirty seconds. My throat chokes up and my eyes fill again. Lara smiles and her eyes fill up too, as I pick up individual voices calling out my name, cheering that I'm still alive. There's Ravi and Macy, Feargal and Sulman, Cynthia and my kids, all people I love.

Oh god. Shivers run up my back and stiffen my resolve. Everything that just happened will make great panels in the comic book, no doubt, and god knows we need a win right now, but that's not what I'm on the radio for. It's time to tell the truth.

"I'm not a priest," I begin, haltingly at first, "and I don't know the right words to say for the people we've lost. Nor have I even told you the full count of loss, yet."

I pause to let this settle in. Now isn't be the time for cheering, and I'm glad that nobody does, especially Ravi. He would never forgive himself.

"I've kept the full cost to myself. The truth is, I believe Anna, Jake and the survivor Peters are dead." I pause to let this sink in. "You know I sent them to fetch a plane, and scout ahead for the demons and the zombie horde. Twelve hours ago the plane's engine faltered and they fell shortly after takeoff. The last I heard was a crash and the radio died. It's why they weren't in the air to warn us about the demons."

A long pause follows. I hate it but it has to be done.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner," I plow on. "I didn't want to hurt morale before we dealt with the demons. I'm sorry for that, and for all these deaths. The loss we face is hard to imagine. It's devastating, and we're all the poorer for it."

Another silence.

"I want to say-" I begin, but am cut off by a familiar voice ringing over the universal channel.

"You never should have sent them!"

It is as unexpected as the cheering, particularly in whose voice it is. I'd never have expected her to speak up in this way, at this time.

Masako.

No one else speaks. I don't know what to say.

"Anna too?" she goes on, the accusation sharp and painful. "When will you be satisfied, Amo, how many more people have to die? This is your fault, your choices, your fantasies, and you alone should pay for it."

I stare at the radio, utterly confused. I can't get over that this is quiet, demure Masako, but it is. She's attacking me, and I don't have any defense, particularly not against her. She loved Cerulean, perhaps more than any of us, even after he left her behind. She was a kind of mother to Anna for the longest time. She has every right to be angry, but like this?

"Masako," I begin, but she won't let me speak.

"You think charging at the demons and surviving makes you a hero?" she demands, her pale voice growing stronger. "Do you even know what Cerulean did out there? Before you sent Peters and Lucy and so many others to die, did you hear how he died? He saved people, Amo, while all you do is get us killed. He saved them all, cleaning up your mistakes, only for you to bury his only daughter too? My daughter? Anna's dead, Amo, and now you want us to forgive you? I hate you! You're Mayor in name only, and we'd all be better off if you'd died in that blast."

I rock back and gaze out of the window. I hadn't expected this, but now it's here. After forgiveness, blame. It makes me lighter and heavier at once, for all the things I did and didn't do. Let it ride.

"Aren't you going to say something?" she charges on. "Or are you too much a coward? We've watched you swagger around our lives for ten long years, and it's time someone finally stepped up and crushed you like the bug you are. He shot himself in the head, people! He gave up, what makes you think he hasn't given up again? He murdered people, and let the murderers and rapists live on! Just what kind of man do you think we have leading us now, straight to the demons, straight to the zombies? He's insane, he brought all this down, and you cheer him? We should leave him for the demons."

I listen. I imagine Masako's anger and what bravery it took for her, a quiet and calm woman all her life, to stand up in her RV, snatch the radio and start on this tirade. The worst part is she's right. I have done awful things, though they've never been so baldly stated before. I imagine her truth spreading throughout the convoy, causing doubt and dissent. There are others who share her views, I know that, simmering for long years under my mayorhood.

"And what proof have we got of any of it?" she charges. "He keeps us in the dark. How can we know the demons are really following us all, and not only him? He started this thing! Him and Lara, they started it, and I think he should finish it. If he was truly a hero he'd leave the convoy right now and go face them himself, and leave the rest of us alone. They don't want us, Amo, don't you see that? It's only you. How many more have to die before we can be free?"

I sigh, hardly able to believe what I'm hearing. Does she really think this? Do others? Are we at risk of RVs leaving the convoy behind because they simply don't believe the demons are really a threat to them? But then they have been safe for years. Perhaps they're forgotten the horrors of the apocalypse, or they've just cracked under the weight of memory.

It's a fantasy, but I can see the appeal, and the threat is real. So an answer comes to me.

Perhaps this is what we need, the symbol to bind us together. It's a wound I've left untended for years, and its time is due.

We need a leader we can all believe in.

"No!" Lara hisses, glimpsing what I'm about to do.

I smile at her. Again, always, I'm making a distance between us with my decisions, then afterward asking for forgiveness.

"You're right, Masako," I say on the universal channel. Lara tries to grab the radio from me but I lean away. "Not with the conspiracy theories, not that the demons are only coming for me or that this is all my evil plan to kill my people off, but everything else. My mistakes are out there for everyone to see. You know what I've done. If ever there was a time for us to be united, it's now. I believe that to split the convoy now, to put anyone out on their own as some kind of sacrificial offering, would only kill us all faster. But I'm not a dictator, and I can't force you to see sense and survive. So as of this moment I'm formally stepping down as mayor, and I'm calling an election."

13. VOTE

A long pause. A long silence. Even Masako is stunned, I expect.

But I was never elected. I took control from the start because I was alone and there was only me to take control of. I built New LA from a dream, but that dream doesn't belong to me any more. I was never in love with the title Last Mayor of America; I made it up as a joke when I thought I truly was the last man alive, and I kept it as a cry of defiance.

But I've worn it too long. I've done too much to be above the judgment of my peers, and I won't be responsible for us tearing apart now. If even one of the RVs decides to separate from the convoy, it could doom us all. The demons will split, they'll double in number, and there won't be enough zombies left in the world to bury them all.

"Today we've lost some of our brightest, youngest members," I say, maybe my closing argument. "Deaths that are true and fair to lay at my door. Another leader may not have made those mistakes. Yet I'm certain that this path, in this convoy, remains our only hope for survival. Divided we will all fall.

"We have two days until we reach Pittsburgh. I ask that in those two days you grieve, reflect, and decide. This is not personal, but what you believe is in the best interests of New LA, and the best future for us all. Thank you."

Lara stares at me. I hand her the radio, like there's something she's going to do with it. Her jaw drops but she doesn't say anything.

"You get a vote too," I say, "please respect this."

"You didn't need to-" she starts, then pauses. "You're hurt. You've been concussed. You need to rest. They'll understand."

I smile at her. She doesn't like that at all.

"It's stupid," she says, "right now, in the middle of this? It's selfish! We need you."

Selfish. I feel like laughing. That's one way to see it. For a second it seemed like the spotlight was about to veer away from me, and I dragged it right back. So maybe I'm the biggest narcissist of them all. I can't get it right no matter what I do.

Yet I see no other choice. If Masako leads a splinter group, perhaps peeling off Witzgenstein and some others who've been sick of me for years, then nothing else I've done would matter. I'm not prepared to shoot down a splinter RV with an RPG just to keep us safe. I won't kill these people just to keep them alive.

For now though I'm tired of my own voice.

"I'm hurt," I say. "I've been concussed. I need to rest."

She stares at me. There's that gap, opening up again.

I go lie down in my booth and fall straight back to sleep.

* * *

No dreams come.

When I wake I lie silently in the night while the RV rumbles on, thinking about my life and what I've done.

There've been stirrings of discontent for years. I never saw it so deeply in Masako, but then I've never really looked. Seven years ago Feargal wanted to militarize more, joining with Julio, so we bent that way a little, adding weapons caches and running personal safety courses, and he seemed content.

Witzgenstein used to talk a lot about staffing the cairns. Six years ago, in 2021, she suggested manned cairns in Las Vegas, New York and Seattle, with two or three people in each place on rotation, like lighthouses, to serve as better beacons for incoming survivors. We discussed it at length. There were positives and negatives, and she had several supporters who wanted to get out from under the tyranny of my New LA rule.

It was an excuse, I knew it then, a way to break off and start a new community vying for survivors, without completely writing off the support of New LA. Call them mini-colonies, which in time would stage their own wars of independence.

But it never happened. Julio's rape and murder happened instead, and fear gripped New LA, squashing talk of splitting our numbers for a time. Disagreements came down to the level of where to site new accommodations, which cairn to set up next and what the best balance between defense and openness was.

Two years after Julio, in 2024 Witzgenstein suggested her colony idea again, this time limited to only one group in one location; far more an actual alternative settlement than a series of lighthouses. She had seven people who wanted to join her, including Masako, Feargal and Cynthia. They offered a break with the loose liberal principles I'd run New LA on, promising a more God-fearing, conservative and homogenous community, perhaps based in Iowa or some other strong agricultural state.

They never spoke poorly of me, at least in public. They never attacked New LA, only spoke of a desire to pursue their own self-determination. They theorized about splitting all the cairns down the middle to offer incoming survivors a choice, and arranging 'partner-swaps' between the two societies to ensure genetic variability. It didn't matter to them that even at the then-population of 28 we didn't have nearly enough genetic variability to birth our way out of a paper bag.

In the end it was Cerulean who put that mini revolution down. At a general meeting in the back conference room he went after the idea with a burning passion, speaking of the dwindling lives the children like Anna would face, increasingly isolated as fewer babies were born. He pointed at Ozark as our sole doctor, Sulman as our sole bacteriologist, Jake as our sole professional mechanic, and questioned the value of pure independence over practicality.

The movement fell apart. I remember now that Masako seemed particularly disappointed in this, but I never thought much of it. She still harbored anger for Cerulean, I figured, after he broke it off between them, and that was all it was.

Lying in my booth, I sigh. Having Cerulean at my left hand and Lara at my right has insulated me against some of this. Such things never seemed very pressing to me, back when I was engaged with my grander vision.

I had in mind our ultimate survival as a race. I was always working on the cairn packs, tweaking them as best I could to better spell salvation to any undecided survivors out there. I was absorbed with planning and implementing our rollout of cairns into cities in South America and Canada. I worked on the movie Ragnarok IV for years, aiming for a more universal recruitment tool in multiple languages, no longer so America-centric, which we would spread in cities around the world. I worked endlessly to make it as inspirational and welcoming as I could.

In tandem with that I had my plan for Anna to circle the world, and the wider series of cairns that would follow, and restarting a rudimentary global internet using the existing deep-sea cables. I delegated a lot onto many people's shoulders, but I did the work too, going out on the front lines as much as I could, heading on cairn trips to new cities and old. I threw grand parties for every survivor who arrived. I tried to celebrate life as well as I knew how.

But I never really thought of the mayorship as a concrete, tangible thing, separate from myself. There was nothing there to vote for. I was New LA.

But ten years is a long time to be in power. The President of the United States was limited to two four-year terms. Ten years is more like a dictatorship in some tin pot backwater country, where control passes down dynastic lines, like North Korea.

Am I Kim Jong-Un?

It's laughable, but the things Masako said are not. They are threats to our unity, precisely because I have come to symbolize that unity, but this is not a cult of personality. It's a new nation.

I rub my eyes.

Who will I be if I am no longer Mayor? Amo the artist, I suppose. He draws our cairns for us, he's great on a rope hanging off a tall building, drawing funny video game characters and social media logos. Once he was Mayor, sure, but that was a long time ago.

It's all right. I'm no Washington and I never thought I was. I'm just a guy.

Lara is driving, up ahead. I should go talk to her, pride be damned. I owe her everything, really; my life, my happiness, my children and my reason to live.

Pride is a little thing, really, next to all that.

So I go.

I get up, though every bit of me aches. I go stand beside her, looking at the rear of two RVs ahead of us, and put my arm round her shoulder. She looks up and leans into me.

From the front RV to the back. I kiss her rich, wiry hair. She has the radio tuned low, but on it I can hear familiar voices deep in argument. Here's Witzgenstein pitching herself for mayor. Here's Masako in support. Here's Ravi and Sulman speaking up for me.

"Have you been joining in?" I ask.

Lara snorts. "They make some good points. Willful. Arrogant. Rides roughshod over everyone."

I nod. "Masako is a bitch, I agree."

She laughs in spite of herself. "Dammit, Amo. What if they vote you out?"

I pretend to consider this possibility deeply. Screwing my face up thoughtfully hurts though, with all these bruises and bandages. "More church," I offer up. Everyone knows Witzgenstein is devoutly born again. "Fewer dances, probably. Christian rock, ugh."

Lara looks at me with that half-angry, half-puzzled face that I love. "Are you serious? They'll split off. The convoy will break and New LA will be decimated."

I nod slowly. "Yeah. But that might have happened anyway."

She frowns. "You don't know- I mean, ugh. You're crazy. You're just, ugh!" She breaks off, despairing of me. It's cute, and I kiss her hair again.

"I should talk to you about these things, before I do them. I know. I'm far from perfect."

"And they know it too," she says. "However this comes out, it won't be the way it was before."

"It can't be," I say, "and it shouldn't be."

She drives on. Outside there's just the sharp cone of light from our headlamps, illuminating the RVs ahead. It's a cloudy night, no stars and only fleeting glimpses of a sickle moon.

"How's your head?"

I squint. If I squint I can read the digital clock on the dashboard through my blurry vision. 3:21, it says, meaning another nine hours spent in the dark.

"Fine," I say, ignoring the dull thumping growing in my head. I ignored headaches for a year after my coma, and look where it got me. "Clear as a bell."

"You've got new scars. There's a nasty one on your cheek; we slowed the convoy down to let Macy come tend to it."

I finger my right cheek. Yes, I can feel the stubble of stitches under the bandage. That might have been Lucy, or maybe flying debris.

"It'll give me character."

She smiles.

"I want to see the kids," I say, struck by a sudden yearning. "I miss them."

"Me too. We're stopping in an hour, the whole convoy. We have enough of a lead to stretch our legs for ten minutes. We can swap with Cynthia, ride out the debate in the kid's car."

I grin. Nothing sounds so wonderful as that. I kiss her again, and she pulls my hand down and kisses my palm.

"No more surprises," she says.

"No more surprises," I agree.

* * *

The trade-over takes nine minutes total, including emptying a few toilet septic tanks, supplies being traded and people switching vehicles. It is a smooth and perfectly oiled maneuver, all the parts interchanging with clockwork precision, and I feel proud.

On the way up to the kids' car I let myself be seen, hobbling along on Lara's arm.

It's good to let the people see me, alive and moderately well. The ones who like me will be cheered. The ones who want a new Mayor will see I'm present but not interfering with the process. At one point I see Masako, as we go past her RV toward the kid's car.

"That was brave," I tell her. "I know it wasn't easy."

She watches me with disdain, standing with her husband Alan holding her arm like he's restraining her. I know it must sound patronizing for me to say that, but I mean it, and I want her to know I'm not angry. Still, it's strange to see so much anger fuming off her, when I never really saw it before.

"She hates you a lot," Lara whispers in my ear. "That or she's just really constipated."

I snort.

"I wouldn't blame her," Lara goes on, "it's hard to shit in a moving RV. Plus the demons are terrible for digestion."

Ravi runs down to us from the lead RVs. When he sees us his eyes swim with tears. He stops and takes my hand with both of his, like I'm the Pope.

Ravi is such a good boy. In school he'd no doubt be the sweet, dumb jock who doesn't even realize there's a clique system going on. He pursued Anna for years, and was too bull-headed to ever take her cruelty, sarcasm and disdain as a definitive no. He adored her like a puppy loves its master.

"I don't blame you," he says, getting right to it. "For Anna, I mean. She went because she wanted to, I know it. She never did anything she didn't want to."

I don't know what to say to that. It means a lot. My throat gets tight and my eyes get watery. He sees it and watches me like a little kid, like Vie or Talia when they've fallen and hurt their knee and are lost in that moment, trying to decide how much they need to cry.

"Thanks," I say, and pull him into a hug. He's strong and pulls Lara in with us. I guess we were surrogate parents for him too. He came to us at fourteen after being alone for six years, playing video games and eating chocolate in Louisiana. He was fat then but quickly burned it off, becoming a powerful young man. I pat his back, getting misty-eyed. "We'll talk when this is over. We'll have proper funerals for them, and services and everything, I promise."

He nods, plainly not trusting himself to speak, then walks quickly away rubbing at his eyes.

Outside the kids' car Feargal comes over, a solidly built athletic guy a head taller than me, with a shiny bald head kind of like an Irish 'The Rock'. He holds out his big hand and I shake it.

"You're doing the right thing with this," he says. "Better late than never."

I smile. I've always liked Feargal, even though he's been a pain over the years. I never wanted yes-men, though, and he's a good guy. "Thanks."

"And out there?" he points behind us. "Amazing. That explosion was better than any stump speech I've ever seen. I don't think you can lose."

"I didn't plan it. I thought I was going to die."

He smiles back. "That's why you'll win. What Masako said about the mistakes, we don't all agree with that. I wouldn't have done it any differently. For me it's not personal, it's more about the democratic process."

"It's a good process," I say. "We had it for centuries."

He nods seriously, shakes Lara's hand too, then walks back toward the front.

I look around but I don't see Witzgenstein.

"She'll be glad-handing," Lara says, reading my thoughts. "Door-stepping, leafleting, kissing babies."

"Too busy to pay a call on us."

"I don't want to see her anyway."

We get in the RV.

The floor is a riot of kids' toys in bright plasticky colors; soft teddies and Lego bricks and My Little Ponies, wooden blocks and iPads and rollable piano floor sheets. On the walls are all manner of palm-print paintings and origami crafts, featuring a madcap array of explosions and demons and zombies.

The gaggle of five kids and two babies are being watched over carefully by Cynthia's beady eye. She doesn't look any older than the day I first saw her, a crusty, hillbilly granny.

"Daddy!" Vie calls, suddenly overjoyed.

"Mommy!" Talia matches him. They run up and grab us, and it helps me get my priorities straight again.

This is what it's for. These kids, these people, this group. My family.

"I'm sick of all the shitting," Cynthia says, in her classic redneck accent. "Fifty diapers a day, in a contained space? I'm done."

With that pronouncement she gets out and Macy gets in, swapped from another RV. Lara takes the wheel and moments later we pull away, leaving me concussed in the back and getting trounced by all the kids; Masako's four-year-old boy Lin, Feargal's five-year-old Siobhan, Vie, Talia and Rose, Martha and Tom's daughter.

They babble at me in tongues, pulling me by a finger each to show me what they won in the last game they played, the painting they did last night, the cubbyhole they slept in, the new half forward roll they mastered.

Lara and Macy crack up at the front while volunteer nannies Jorge, Maris and Janine slump at the sides on beanbags and sigh with relief.

"What happened to your face, Daddy?" Talia asks, pulling me down to kneel before her in the middle of a game of Blind Man's Bluff, with that intense seriousness children sometimes get. She points at my cheek. "There."

"I was bitten by a manticore," I say, ad-libbing wildly. "Have you ever seen a manticore? It has the head of a lion and the body of a goat and the tail of a snake."

I mime a manticore with some hissing and scary shaking of hands, which terrifies Vie and the others, though Talia is probably too old for it.

"Daddy, stop being silly. Vie, he's being silly."

"It came out of the desert and tried to bite my head off, but I bit its head off instead." I bare my razor sharp teeth and pat my belly. "It's in here now. I bet you can't draw me a picture of that dinner scene. Best one gets a ride round the RV on the back of a manticore-killer."

They probably only half-understand what I'm saying, but it gets them all scribbling on paper furiously; an assortment of lion, goat and snake bits, with a few hippopotami and eagle bits thrown in for good measure, and me sitting at the head of a big table waiting to eat.

"Praise the Lord," says Janine from her beanbag, clearly enjoying the respite, "you have my vote." The world wavers a little as my concussion knocks me silly, but I get my balance back and play it off with a cheerful grin.

"Go tell it on the mountain," I tell her and wink, making her blush.

"Daddy, pay attention," Talia says, tugging me back down to her level. "I know it wasn't a manticore, it was the big explosion. I want to know, are you really all right? They talked about you on the radio a lot."

I give her a big hug, the biggest yet of the day. "Sweetheart, I'm going to be just fine. We all are. I promise."

I look up and Lara catches my eye. Making promises I don't know if I can keep.

14. FIRST MAYOR

It's a wonderful day.

I put aside all the death, the politics and the demons and I play with my kids. I'm not mayor anymore and the weight of responsibility coming off is a huge release.

We play hide-and-seek up and down the RV, until the simple, obvious fact of hiding in the booths, amongst the supply crates and under the same blankets becomes ridiculously funny in itself. We play Monopoly for very short bursts, fighting over the shoe and the iron, until one of the younger kids grabs the money and starts throwing it around and we all play the grabbing money game instead. We make crafts, and I judge the manticore competition and give the promised manticore-slayer ride, despite my head throbbing and the wound in my cheek pulling tight every time I smile.

Lara swaps out of driving for Jorge, and comes back to help me lead story time, where we read one story for the older kids, The Hunger Games, and one for the littler kids, Three Little Pigs. We have a nap and I snooze with Lara lying next to me and Vie and Talia cuddle up close like kittens.

The convoy rumbles on. Up ahead they have the radio on low and a curtain up so the carers can go join in the political discussions without alarming the kids, or, perhaps, alarming me.

I don't care. My head spins and ribs ache and this is just perfect.

"Mr. Amo," Masako's boy mumbles at me, Lin, waking me from a daydream about Anna.

"Just Amo," I tell him. "What is it?"

"Is my mommy mad at you?"

I consider. Lin is just four, between Talia and Vie, and it's funny to think of all the things he doesn't know. So much happened before he was born, and how could I ever catch him up on all of it?

But that's my job now, as a parent. I'm a custodian of the old world, passing along as much of it as I can, as accurately as possible. I've had my biases all along though. I ran the settlement. I wrote our history. Even though I tried to be fair, our story can't truly be fair when I write it all by myself.

Lin's looking at me, so I smile. "Buddy, I think she is. You can ask her about it."

"But you're a hero," he says sleepily.

I grin despite myself. "I know, right? You're right. You should tell your mom that."

I'll get in trouble for that, but I don't care. Brainwashing kids is more of a misdemeanor.

"OK," he mumbles. I start back to sleep but now Talia's interested and she's not going to let me off so easily.

"Dad, why is Masako mad at you?"

She's properly awake, not like Lin. I sigh and smile at her, extending my arms. She wriggles out of the crook of Lara's belly, worms over her legs and snuggles in next to me.

"That's a long story, surgarpop," I say, halfway drifting back to sleep myself. "Long and boring."

"Dad," she says in her frank, stop-patronizing-me tone. "I'm not a baby, like Lin. You can tell me."

I smile. "There's only one year between you."

"I'm much taller."

Her logic is impeccable. This is what I've taught her, I guess. So I tell her the story as best as I know it, with the rough edges filed off and the juicier bits of gossip removed; Masako and Cerulean, then Masako and Julio, then Cerulean and Anna. She drifts back to sleep as I drone on, until by the end she's snoring against my chest, but I finish up anyway.

"You're hard on yourself," Lara says, rolling over. Seems like everyone here is awake, pretending to be asleep. Her deep green eyes rest on my face, like a painter appraising her subject. "Masako being angry has nothing to do with you."

"Stop eavesdropping on my conversations," I say.

"Stop having them five inches away from me then."

I shuffle down, so we're face to face. In a pile of kids, with Vie and Talia sandwiched between us, I give my wife a tender kiss.

"Better?" I ask, as I'm nodding off in the warmth and lullaby vibration of the RV.

"Better," she agrees.

* * *

In the evening, two days after we fled New LA, the convoy stops again. I'm exhausted in the best way possible, drained from the endless demands of the kids. For twenty-four hours we've played, and slept, and read stories and had tantrums and played some more. I haven't done anything like that for months. Years, maybe.

We're in Illinois now, just across the border from Missouri and outside St. Louis. Through the back window the world has turned white and cold. Snow covers the fields and forests and mountains. Dead brown Japanese strangleweed fills out the highway verges, spiking through the thick drifts of white snow like coils of rusted razor wire. The road is icy and cracked ahead.

One of the RV's has broken down, dropping us down to eight. The camshaft broke apparently, and we can't make those kinds of repairs on the road. Instead people rapidly strip it for parts and supplies, portioning its members out to other vehicles. I listen to Ravi out there, Feargal too, suggesting we use the downtime to put on snow chains and refuel. Jake would be out there with them, if we still had Jake.

"I'll go help," says Lara and heads out. "We were due a break anyway." I let her go, happy to stay slumped on my beanbag while the kids decorate me with bangles. I'm a real life Buckin' Bronco, about ready to flip. The kids are watching with delicious, giggling anticipation as Vie delicately tries to hang a rubber band on my nose for the third time.

I'm about to pop and tickle him half to death when the door clanks again and someone comes in.

"Amo, we need to talk."

I look up, sending the rubber band pinging off my nose and the kids lurching backwards, to see Witzgenstein standing in the RV's doorway.

Ah, Witzgenstein.

She's wearing a frown, looking down at me. Witzgenstein doesn't have kids, maybe out of choice but also because she's not married. She's slim, good-looking and about the same age as me. Her hair is tied back in sweet, Princess Leia-ish farm girl buns. She's got a pointed chin, pretty blue eyes and is dressed like a model, in skinny designer jeans, figure-hugging white blouse and jacket that once would've cost thousands.

She doesn't wear a gun. I expect in those clothes she couldn't even run; but then running's not her thing. She's a bureaucrat with as much talent as ambition, and she doesn't like me and never has.

"Is this what you're doing?" she asks. There's no sneer attached, because she's not petty. She's a smart woman who sees the world through a different lens, and she's honestly surprised to find me knee-deep in kids, still wearing blusher from the paint-Amo-as-a-princess game we just played earlier. Probably she expected me to be hunkered in a corner of the RV, frantically making calls and counting votes, hungry to maintain my grip on power.

But then she knows I'm not crazy, either. We've worked together a hundred times, and for all the dislike, I believe there's at least respect.

I shoo the kids away and shake off the rubber bands hanging off my ears and fingers. "This is what I'm doing, Witzgenstein. Good to see you."

"You look a mess."

I groan to my feet. The dizziness is mostly gone, though all the little cuts and scrapes have turned into scabs and rich purple bruises.

"I blew up an RV. It happens."

She nods, dismissing this as she would dismiss a story of me defeating a Yeti or learning to fly. It's not on her radar, not part of the way she sees the world. For her leadership is about getting away from all that, as if somehow this kind of trouble only manifests because I'm not managing things correctly.

"We should talk."

I look at her. She's basically a nice lady. I'd like her if she wasn't so blind to the way I see the world. For me it's about the big picture. For her it's about serving the community, in spite of reality.

"There's a vote due," I say, "any time, by my count. Shouldn't we talk after that?"

Witzgenstein looks around at the children, now watching her suspiciously. She looks at Janine who's asleep in the booth and comes to a decision.

"You're going to win," she says. "It's obvious, especially after the exploding RV. That's what I want to talk about."

"Is that recent polling data?" I push back, a little annoyed by her 'exploding RV' line, like it was a campaign gimmick. "Have you been robo-calling?"

My attempt to tease her rolls right off her back. "For one minute, please Amo?" It's probably why she doesn't like me.

"We're talking," I say. "So talk. The votes aren't counted."

She takes her chance. "You did the right thing, putting it to a vote. That's the consensus, but it's not enough, especially now you're set to win. It doesn't satisfy me, or Masako or any of the others who aren't happy. We're a minority but we should be represented."

I nod. I've expected something like this. It's been percolating away in the back of my mind all day. "Division of powers," I say.

Her frown deepens, probably annoyed that I've reached the conclusion without her help. "Yes. There's no clear protocol for how to do that, though. I have no right to call a motion or a second vote. I could, but then I'm setting myself up. My point is, it's not an open floor."

She looks at me. I look at her. Is she asking to be appointed to something? Vice-mayor, perhaps. She'd be good. Even prime minister, with me as president, like in Russia; we could have a figurehead and big-picture thinker working in tandem with someone who ran the practicalities of the country.

But she doesn't want ideas from me. The whole point of this is for me to back off on control.

"You were the county clerk, what do you suggest?"

This appeal to her expertise eases the frown. "A Senate. Or, to stay within the mayoral system, a Council. I'd suggest five people, selected by election. The precise powers would have to be negotiated; that could take time, but generally speaking it will allow for checks and balances, a better form of representation, and yes, division of powers. Also, term-limits."

I rub my chin. Curiously enough there's a bruise there too. "I've been mayor for ten years already. I should be beyond all term limits."

She does a good job of not showing her discomfort with this. The fact that I'm due to win the election must really grate on her, and making a tortuously argued deal for me to cede power in exchange for a few more years must be even worse. "It would be a formal system now, so the clock resets," she says, wriggling on her own hook. "I can imagine four-year terms, two terms total, meaning eight more years maximum."

We regard each other. It's a good deal; something for me, something for her, and everybody gets what they want. A council is a good idea. It would share responsibility, expertise, and put checks on me in case I go crazy, or the next mayor does. It prevents dictatorships. Also, if all goes to plan and we get a fresh flood of survivors joining us, it'll start to be ridiculous to have only one man ruling over them all.

"Let's add five council positions to the voting roster," I say. "We can discuss and vote on powers at an open meeting later. Better to get this done."

"I agree."

A moment passes. "I'm sure you'll be on the council," I say.

"I expect so."

I extend my hand. She shakes it, then backs out.

Well well well. Still the Last Mayor of America. Or the First.

* * *

Lara comes in quickly after, grinning; a little too quickly and with a little too much grin.

"You set that up," I say.

She shrugs nonchalantly.

"You were up on the radio while I was asleep, cutting deals."

"And if I was? She'll be on the council, probably Masako too after her outburst I expect, Feargal, me and another. It would've been Cerulean, but…" She trails off.

"Yeah," I say.

Outside comes the sound of jangling metal. It takes a second, then I realize it's the sound of snow chains going onto the tires. We're heading north into deeper cold, and the snow's only going to get worse. Someone sets to work on our RV, fastening and jangling nearby.

"We should go to the front now," Lara says.

"Not yet. Let them call the vote. Going up ahead of that seems presumptive."

"Then the back? We need to get ready. We'll be nearing Pittsburgh within the next twenty-four hours."

"The back is good for now. There'll be another change-over."

We kiss the kids. They're getting tired of us anyway, or at least of me, ready to go to town on Uncle Brandeis and Auntie Martha. We head out.

It's my first time out in a few days, and the air outside is bracing, the kind of air that makes your teeth ache and your jaw throb, full of the sharp knives of winter. Around us are white rolling fields coated with snow that remind me of Iowa, except in Iowa the fields are all flat, and they're green and yellow with corn. Scattered telegraph poles line the highway, those that haven't already fallen to the elements, and a few remaining cables hang between them, bowed low with ice. The sky is a high pale blue, like a slice of deep-ocean ice. Our breath makes clouds of steam.

"California makes you forget winter even exists," I say reverentially.

"Not me," Lara says. "I've been up front with the window open while you were back there hibernating."

I chuckle. "Hibernating wouldn't have been so exhausting."

"You look better for it. Healthier than since Cerulean disappeared."

"Yeah." There's that reminder, slapping like a wave on a far-off beach. Slap, slap. I'll be dealing with all this death for years to come. "Let's go."

We crunch down the convoy along virgin powder snow. Here I see tiny paw prints, perhaps a fox. People bundled in winter jackets, packed two thousand miles away in California and now unfurled against the cold, hurry to finish fitting their chains, refueling their gas tanks and scraping ice off their back windows.

We pass Cynthia coming to replace us.

"I figured," she says dismissively, like we're lightweights who couldn't handle the kids' car.

"Once more into the breach…" I reply, and deploy my wink again. She gives me an evil look that could chop down trees.

The RV at the back is waiting, with a fresh coating of snow on the roof. Inside I check in with the passengers; Alia, Reynard, Sulman and two of Julio's survivors unconscious in the booths. It's good to see them all, though seeing Sulman reminds me of Anna and sends a twinge running up my spine.

"Are you good to drive?" Lara asks, as we stamp off snow and shake warmth back into our fingers. "I've had enough."

"I'll do it."

I take the wheel. I switch on the radio. A few minutes later, Ravi gives the signal to get underway from the front. Less than twenty minutes all in for the pit stop. It's impressive, neat, high-level survivor stuff.

We roll out, the snow chains gripping the powder with a satisfying crunch. The pace drops to fifty, which is a concern, but Lara assures me they've discussed this with the survivors, who are sure the snow is slowing the demons some too.

On the radio open channel Witzgenstein announces the five new Council positions, seconded by Masako. She makes a call for candidates and suggests a voting deadline by nightfall. Discussion follows.

I focus on the road while their voices warble on, like white noise. It's good to be driving. Lara sits in the passenger seat watching me.

"It suits you," she says, "this."

I can't argue. And now, if it really goes through, it'll be official.

"I'm ready to kill some demons," I say.

* * *

We vote after dark falls. The convoy slows to forty and we rumble on through the night like a lonely freight train, hauling its solitary load across the country. Voices come in hushed tones over the radio, respectful of the office, of the darkness, of the cold. I look out to either side and see only my own reflection glinting back.

There are no lights out there anywhere. America is a wilderness, now. Cairns are a dream of something better, but in truth really we're it, we are all that's left, and we're in the midst of instituting a mini democracy.

More than anything, America feels lonely. It moves me to think the whole world is like this; endless expanses of darkness stretching like a muffling skin over our great cities and all our noisy, baffling, beautiful constructions in silence. Nobody's walking on the Pyramids now. Nobody's admiring Stonehenge. Nobody's making their pilgrimage to Mecca.

"Are you crying?" Lara asks incredulously. "They've not even finished voting."

"It's that," I say, pointing into the darkness. "It just goes on forever. It used to be so full of light. Our kids will never see that. New York lit up. Lasers shooting into the sky. Drive-in movie theaters."

Lara snorts. "You never went to a drive-in theater. That's from the 60s or something."

I don't know what to say to that. I'm feeling solemn, a big-picture moment.

"I get it though," Lara says, dropping to my wavelength. "It's vast."

It's so damn vast, and all gone. I'm feeling maudlin but that's all right. We've already lost so much, and it's good to reflect.

We ride in silent reflection but for the slow roll call of names in the vote, read out by Witzgenstein. She reaches Lara, and Lara casts her vote for me.

"Last of all, Amo," she calls, and for a moment my own name catches me unawares; not that I'm about to win, but rather the absolute, beautiful dignity of what we're doing here, and what I'm now a part of. It's the next chapter in our story, promising many more to come, and it moves me far more than all the cold wilderness outside.

It took millennia for our race to achieve and maintain any kind of self-determination. What we're doing here today, while fleeing demons and racing towards zombies and a bunker of thousands, is an act of pure hope. We are beginning to manage our future, no longer just scrabbling to survive.

Perhaps we're at acceptance. A few tears roll down my cheeks.

"Amo," Witzgenstein presses gently. "Your vote, please."

"Cerulean," I say, out of nowhere. I don't know why, because Cerulean's dead and he can't be voted for, but the name just forms in my head and feels right, so I say it. A silence hangs afterward, as Witzgenstein doesn't now what to say, and I don't know what to say, but this single word seems to trigger something in me and throughout the rest of the convoy.

We haven't grieved. We've lost so much and we haven't stopped to grieve, and maybe it's time that we did.

Someone else says his name, Cerulean, alone into the radio. Ravi. Lara repeats it too, then others follow; Feargal, Sulman, Macy, even Cynthia, and I realize I've stumbled into my first duty as the new, official First Mayor of America.

Griever in chief.

For this duty no fancy words are required, just names. Witzgenstein doesn't speak again, somehow picking up that this is what is needed, and this is my role.

"Ozark," I say, and up and down the convoy his name is repeated back at me like a mantra, calling him out into the night. "Abigail," I go on, allowing them time to repeat each name after me. We've got no graves and no ceremony in a church, but we have this. "Lucy," I say, summoning the names from the well-worn list in the back of my mind. "Chantelle. Sandy. Ferdinand. Roger. Hayley. Peters. Jake." I pause before the last, readying myself. "Anna."

A long silence falls. People sob down the line, unwilling to cut themselves off from this moment. We're a community again, united in loss, in hope, in our refusal to give in.

"By a near unanimous vote, I can confirm that Amo is officially instated as Mayor of New LA," Witzgenstein says. Applause follows; some muted cheering. "Amo?"

"I've got nothing else to say," I say, then go on anyway. "Except I want to thank you. All of you, who came to LA on a wing and a prayer, based on a dream painted on buildings or your own desire to find others. Masako was right that I killed myself. I did it and I was spared, but I was ready to do it again, until you came. You all came, and I want to thank you for coming, and for surviving, and for wanting to survive. I'm so glad to be here with you. I'm glad you stayed alive this far, so we can do this together. We've all lost so much on the way. The loss can't be calculated, you can't express it in any way that does it justice, but here we all are. I'm so goddamned proud. Excuse the blasphemy, Cynthia, Janine."

There's a slight chuckle, breaking the solemnity.

"I want to say that I don't take this lightly, you choosing me as your Mayor. I want us to be better in every way. I want there to be more of us, until we fill every square inch of this country with light and life again, just like we used to. I've got so many dreams for us, and I know we won't do them tonight, or even in the term of my mayorhood, but over the generations to come. We're going to survive this and we're going to thrive. We're going to bring fire out of the ashes, and that fire will only burn brighter for all the losses we've seen."

Somebody cheers. Somebody else cheers, and it catches on, and soon people are cheering up and down the convoy. I've made myself cry and now I'm just bursting with pride.

"We've done well," I say, over the cheers. "All of us, we've done so well. And I promise you, we're getting better. We will survive this. Thank you."

Cheering follows. Cheering and people calling my name and the names of the lost.

It takes a minute before I can look at Lara. It feels like I've just channeled something bigger than I am, not a god or any holy presence, but some unknowable facet of the human spirit. I wonder that Lara will be looking at me with the usual cynical expressions we use on each other all the time, good for punctuating pomp and circumstance, but when I turn I find she isn't.

She's looking at me with something akin to awe.

"That's why I married you," she says.

She reaches across the divide and takes my hand. So we drive on into the night.

15. OUR LAND

They delay the council elections until an hour later, to allow the elated mood in the convoy to calm. The votes shake out just as Lara predicted for four out of the five: Witzgenstein, Masako, Lara and Feargal. For the fifth the votes are more mixed, and ultimately the result is a shock to many of us.

Ravi.

On the radio he stammers out a thanks, plainly in shock. It is nothing like as polished as Witzgenstein' acceptance, as muscular as Feargal's, as passionate as Masako's or as accomplished as Lara's, but it is by far the most impactful.

He is after all the closest person in the world to both Cerulean and Anna, to whom the seat would have undoubtedly gone. Above that is he is just a fundamentally good person, and a survivor through and through, after living in the empty world alone for four years.

"Well done," I say, adding my voice to the chorus of those congratulating him. "You've earned it, Ravi."

After the election is done I gather reports from the various survivors scattered through the convoy. There are thirteen left now, after the loss of Lucy and the three in Ozark's care. Seven of them are near comatose, pushed further down after the clash with the demons near Albuquerque, leaving only six capable of speech. Two of them are only partially conscious and often mumble out in their dreams, leaving four we can rely on: Crow, Rajnar, Talulah and Jack.

They are hardy, resolute souls. Crow was with Julio for three years, the longest of the survivors not in a coma. He's Native American and grew up on a reservation in Montana, where the apocalypse struck just as hard as anywhere else.

"We're closing on the horde," Crow tells us, and the others confirm it. "The demons are closing on us."

"Like a ball in a game of pong," I say randomly. "Crow, can you give us a reading?"

He repeats the best forecast he can give, and the others agree. Northwest, towards Pittsburgh. "I'll know better as we get closer."

So we drive. Through the night we cross from Illinois into Indiana on I-70, and the snow gets thicker, falling steadily and slowing us more. There are no government plows out here now clearing the roads. We drop back into single file to cut drag, each following in the trail cut by the lead RV, swapping out regularly to let the engines cool.

"They're gaining fast," Crow says on the radio. He's well enough to sit in the passenger seat of his RV and take an active role. "I can feel the cold inside, like when we escaped Maine. They're closing on us."

"And the zombies?"

"I can't say specifically. To the north and east. It's like a fog, and with the demons getting nearer it only gets less clear."

"Thanks Crow."

I switch off the radio and turn to Lara. "It's not enough."

She nods. "It's not what we expected. We're liable to over or undershoot."

It's all I think about now; the estimates and the directions, constantly working vectors in my head. If they come here and we go there, then what? If they're over here and we go this way, can we still make it through alive?

"We can't afford to feel this out as we get closer," I summarize. "If we aim for Pittsburgh but the horde's not there, we won't have time to adjust."

Lara nods. She's smart, smarter than me probably, and I know she's thought of this too. "What else can we do?"

I don't know. That's the trouble.

I rally the council on a private channel and ask for their thoughts. Feargal suggests sending out three RVs in different directions, each with one of the conscious survivors on board, and using them to try and triangulate a reading.

Lara knocks that one down. "There isn't time, and any RV that goes off on its own faces the chance of solo breakdown, more than usual since they'll be driving on non-highways, roads none of us have ever seen and can't see in this snow. They could easily get lodged fast, and we won't be able to come back and help them."

"So we split into three or mini-convoys," Ravi suggests, "two or three RVs each, that spread out to cover more ground and adjust as they get nearer. We can triangulate faster that way."

"It's too risky," Witzgenstein says, "the same problems remain as if we send them out one by one."

"It's the best idea yet," Feargal says.

"Make a fire," Masako says abruptly. Her voice sounds flat.

"How's that?" Witzgenstein asks.

"Make a big fire in Pittsburgh. The demons are coming for us, aren't they? The zombies are going to the demons. We sit by and let them cancel each other out."

"That's the theory," Lara says, but gently. "The problem comes with the speeds. The zombies may be heading for us, Masako, but the demons are coming much faster. We could all be dead by the time the horde arrives. They were rough estimates only."

"You said Pittsburgh," Masako insists. "I think we should stick with that plan. I want this over."

Lara looks at me and I shrug. We all want this over. "I'm not on the council," I say softly.

"Is anyone in favor of that plan?" Lara asks, but no one, not even Witzgenstein, is. "Are there any more ideas?"

Feargal starts to say something but stops. "No, it was nothing," he says when pressed. "Something about drones…"

"Then I propose we go with Ravi's idea," Lara announces, every bit the lawyer. "Split the convoy, hunt for the horde in three parts and triangulate by feel. It's three sets of eyes and ears over one. All for?"

Three voices chime their agreement. Only Masako abstains.

"Then I put it to the Mayor. Amo?"

I weigh it. Splitting up is the worst thing we can do.

"Where would we split?" I ask. "We'll need to do it soon, we're already close to Ohio."

Lara pulls out her map and runs a finger over it rapidly. "In Indianapolis we could send one RV north on I-69, then have it run east on a parallel track after Fort Wayne. We could send another southeast on I-74, bound for Charleston. The convoy continues along I-70 to Pittsburgh. It's a trident, and we'll cover a sweep of over two hundred miles."

"That might work," I say. "We send out two satellites. Any volunteers to lead either of these expeditions?"

"I'll go south," Ravi says without any pause.

"North," says Feargal.

"Then that's done. I think it's our best plan. Take two RVs each. Ravi you get Rajnar, Feargal take Talulah. We'll keep the other two in the main convoy, along with the sick and the kids."

"That leaves only four RVs for the main convoy," Feargal says. "You won't be able to fight them off at all."

"If it comes to fighting we're all done anyway," I counter. "The explosives are gone and a few more RPGs aren't going to make a difference. It's get the horde or nothing now, and I think this is the best way to do it. We'll stop in Indianapolis and split to the trident. Agreed?"

"Wait," says Lara.

"What is it?"

"I just thought of something. We've got seven demons on our tail. What if when we split up, they split up too?"

Shit. I should've thought of that. Nobody talks for a minute.

"They could," Lara goes on. "They may split so far apart that when it comes time for the zombies to pile on, some of them aren't in the attack radius. They might get away."

She's right.

"It's a great point," I say. "But I don't see that we have any choice. We're planning to all meet up at the horde anyway. If we don't split up our chances of finding them in time are much smaller. If we do split, the demons may split too. I still think we have to do it. Anybody?"

"Agreed," Feargal says, "we're out of choices."

The others concur, all except Masako who says nothing. I think she's in shock.

"Agreed," Lara says.

Agreed.

It's all a risk. I imagine the demons like the ghosts in a game of Pac-Man, getting faster and more numerous as the clock runs out. Our power pill is out there somewhere, strong enough to let us swallow all the ghosts in one go, but it's nearly invisible. We could be half a mile in the wrong direction and the zombies won't arrive until it's too late.

Shit. Like hunting a very faintly humming needle in a haystack.

The snow comes down and we roll on.

As we pull close to Indianapolis a rumbling uncertainty grows in my chest and stomach. I've had job interviews that felt like this before. The sensation vibrates in wave-like ripples, making me jerky and unsure. My bowels get indistinct and I hand over the wheel to Lara.

When I return she hands the wheel back and says, "Me too."

The four-lane highway condenses as we come into the canyons of downtown Indianapolis, through veils of falling snow. Everything is blanketed in perfect white, like frosting on a wedding cake. There's nothing alive here at all. All the sewers and rail lines, all the concrete and glass buildings, all the coffee shops and fashion boutiques and offices, they all add up to nothing. Indianapolis is a white desert where nothing can live.

The Chase Tower drifts into visibility through the steady fall of snow, like a ghost on the banks of a misty lake. Nine years ago I rappelled down its flank with Lara at my side, with Cerulean watching from below, and painted a huge hot pink and orange Keith Haring-style UFO across floors 36 to 42. Now the outline looks like a higher power, judging us from on high.

"Almost there," Lara says.

The convoy's gone silent. The RVs ahead steam in the cold air.

"Make it a quick changeover," I say over the universal channel as we draw up to the nominated interchange, right in the city's heart. "Refuel for this last push and everyone get where they need to be. No long goodbyes, we don't have time. We either make it or we die."

"No need to be so damn cheery," Feargal comes back.

I ignore it. "We've still got a lead of maybe eleven hours. The horde can't be far away. We'll make this."

Nobody cheers. We've done that already. Now it's time to focus.

The convoy slows to a stop. For a moment, as I kill the engine to refuel, the skittering sound of snow falling on the roof fills the cabin.

"Here we go," I say to Lara, and we both pull on heavy winter jackets, hats and gloves, then pile out of the RV along with Alia and Sulman.

It's freezing outside, the air bitter and sharp, and the snow is falling so thickly I could wander fifty feet away and never find my way back. I don't know how we'll even see the horde, unless we come right upon them. We could wander in this snow for days.

The cap comes off the gas tank and Lara passes me the first canister. The fuel sloshes in to the thirsty machine. Three more of those and we're ready. I look up and see people dashing between RVs. I'd go hug my kids but there isn't time. We need every second we've got, and I already said a really good goodbye.

"I'm going," Lara says. "I want to be with them."

I nod. There's no time to argue. I want to tell her thank you but there isn't time for all the thanks I have to give, so I settle for, "I love you."

"Te Amo," she says. "Me too."

A kiss, then she's dashing two RVs up to the kids' car. Already Feargal is pulling his two RVs off to the left. A moment later Ravi pulls off to the right.

I get back in mine, give a lame thumbs up to the two staring survivors in the booths, and drop into the driving seat, with Sulman alongside, a bulky guy who really knows how to fill a seat; your classic couch potato nerd.

"Here we are," he says, in his cliché Indian accent. He even gives a little head bobble.

"Here we are," I agree, and switch the radio to universal. "I'm coming up to the front."

I pull the RV out from its place in the convoy line. It feels colder already with Lara gone.

"… arckle… Amo is … derangles…" says the radio in return, some kind of glitch.

Pushing the RV sideways into the foot-deep wall of snow makes the engine whine even in first gear. The snow chains bite and we hobble up out of the existing tire tracks and start making our own. Past the kids' RV there are little indistinct smudges for faces in the back window, obscured by frost, waving as I go by.

I wave back.

"Come again," I say into the radio, "I didn't catch that."

"… reading you … blurger … so I'm going …."

I frown, trying to place the voice.

"Masako?" I try.

"This is Masako," Masako responds tartly, probably around the time I'm overtaking her and Witzgenstein in the lead RV. "That wasn't me."

I pull in at the front. Everything ahead is blank and white and untouched. It's good to be back at the head of things, I don't deny it. "Identify, someone's radio is malfunctioning. Feargal, is it you?"

"I'm reading you loud and clear," Feargal says.

"Can you hear me?" Ravi asks.

"I have you both. Repeat, whose radio is failing?"

"… sho! … hoving … harfer iller." The voice sounds urgent now, a little clearer than before. I wrack my brain for who it might be.

"Cynthia?"

"Here, it's not me."

I ponder for a second. "Identify please."

Only static comes back. "All RVs check in before we go anywhere."

They check in one by one. They're all clear. We haven't got time for any more delay. Maybe it was an echo or a briefly scrambled channel. The snow plays havoc with everything.

"We're rolling out," I call over the radio, and put the RV into gear.

* * *

We crawl due east across Indiana, plowing into the snow, while the demons gain with every mile. Some of the comatose survivors start to freak out in their sleep, and I order them zip-tied and swaddled for their own safety. Even Crow and the others start acting differently, talking crazy and fast like they're high.

I feel it too, creeping up from my belly and over my thoughts like a crawly, jittery bug. It's an anxiety I can't dispel with any rational thought, it's just there.

We cross over into Ohio, reaching Dayton about the same time Feargal turns right in Fort Wayne and Ravi hits Cincinnati.

"Anything?"

"Nothing fresh," they both say, with reception crackly through the storm outside. "East and northeast still. We're close."

The snow fall clears up a little around Columbus, leaving the landscape pristine and the roads slowly solidifying to slippery, treacherous ice under a cold sun. We slow down to forty miles per hour. The survivors in my RV are jabbering fairly constantly now, enough to set my nerves on their outermost edge.

Seven hours, Crow estimates, when he can get words out of his tight throat. We're almost at Pittsburgh but the readings don't get any clearer. I call through the convoy but none of the survivors' inbuilt radars are operating as well as I'd hoped.

North, I get. East, but no more specific than that. It's not enough to triangulate, not what we'd hoped for. "They're getting jammed up by the demons' signal," Sulman says. I look at his big, round, placid face, and I can't argue. Even Crow is getting more vague as the demons draw in, not more specific.

This whole trident thing was a mistake, and I make the decision.

"Converge on Pittsburgh," I tell the radio. "Ravi turn left at Wheeling. Feargal turn right at Akron. It's doing us no good."

We cross over into Pennsylvania as the sun creeps down into the cold, gray clouds, and around 5pm we enter Pittsburgh in darkness. In the center of the city, on a stretch of elevated road at a crossing where the others will join us, I stop the RV and wait.

There are no zombies here. I can't get a coherent reading from a single survivor; the proximity of the demons is ruining it. We could pick a direction randomly, go south or east or north, but we're more likely to race by the zombies in the dark than hit them. They'll hardly be using the roads.

The council debates, but there's no choice to make here. Stay or go, and stay is always the best chance in a rescue situation. The zombies are somewhere near and they know where the demons are better than we do. We have to hope they can reach us in time.

It looks like Masako's plan, then.

"We'll stop here," I say over the universal channel. "We'll wait."

I don't know what else we can do. There are only four hours left.

* * *

I check the bullets in my gun, and nod to Sulman. His chubby brown face looks disturbed.

"It's going to be OK," I tell him.

"What is that for then?" he asks, nodding at the gun. I don't normally wear a gun. But he knows why.

I give him a smile. "It's going to be OK," I say again and pat his arm. "Come on out."

I don't feel the cold so much this time. The city's beautiful, in a way, so quiet and still, with the drifting flakes of snow coming down all around. I open my mouth and catch a few on my tongue; brisk and sweet, like manna from heaven.

Lara's waiting for me in the kid's RV.

"Daddy," Vie says when I come in, but it's not the happy sound it was the last time. He's scared now, and that's a challenge. My hand trembles as I hug his little body tight. Lara's eyes sparkle with tears that don't fall, and she looks to the gun at my waist.

"Is it enough?" she mouths.

"It's enough," I answer.

It's hard to believe we've come to this, so quickly. But only two days ago I blew up Ozark and the others in his RV. It's all the same thing, all one long descent.

We go out together, hand-in-hand into the thick, squeaky snow. Pittsburgh is so silent; an empty winter city. Tall buildings stand on all sides, offices and cafés, museums and shops, churches and government halls. The road rises to a peak behind the last RV, with a clear view back to the west. Everywhere are metal spires and ice. It's not such a bad place to die.

We start a party.

We make snowmen by bright moonlight. We set up generators and flood lamps a mile distant west down the road, so we'll see the demons when they come. We throw snowballs. I think of all the ways I can do this so it won't be too horrible. Most of all I don't want Vie or Talia to see it. I don't want them to have any warning, I don't want that terrifying moment of horror and fear to be their last moment in this world.

I just want it done.

When we get tired of snow games we walk around the nearby night streets, scouting for zombies that don't come. Julio's survivors are wailing again now, and it's good to keep the kids away from that. I keep an eye on the time, 8pm, though the last estimate came hours ago when we were still in motion, so I don't think it can be accurate. We had seven hours, and we've already eaten into two of those.

There's no longer any hope in running. In this dense snow they'll run us down. Better to do it here, like this, where we at least have some control.

Ravi and Feargal report in. I could tell them to flee, north or east all the way to the coast, but it's the same story for them. They won't get away, not in these conditions, and then what would they do?

Go round and round in tighter circles, circling desperately in the snow until some point twelve or twenty-four hours later, when they run out of fuel and hope and the demons finally catch them.

Better like this, and to do it together.

We pass Masako, Alan, Lin and Witzgenstein huddled round a burning brazier. Masako is crying madly.

I go over.

"I'm sorry," I tell them. "I'm sorry things came to this."

They're all wearing guns, because they understand. Witzgenstein even shakes my hand. Alan pats my shoulder. Masako though won't look at me.

"I loved Cerulean," I tell her, unable to keep all the anger out of my voice. "I loved Anna. You know that, Masako."

She stares doggedly into the flames. My tears freeze on my cheeks. I walk back to my family and we make our own campsite at the peak in the road, with a ring of three fuel can braziers. Lara and I clear the snow with shovels, lay down plastic matting with a makeshift heated rug powered by a generator atop it, and start telling stories in the snow.

I read excerpts from Alice in Wonderland. It's Anna's old copy, annotated with her childish scrawls. This once meant so much to her, and here we are, in a winter wonderland of our own.

Feargal arrives, and his people come over to join us. We clear more snow and make more braziers and spread more tarps and heating blankets. It's past 10pm now and the kids go to sleep, warm in their sleeping bags and under the open sky, which is better than dying terrified in a racing RV.

Ravi comes at midnight and sits beside us, holding Lara's hand and watching over the kids protectively. "Uncle Ravi, councilman," I tell him. He smiles and strokes Vie's cheek.

"We did good," he says.

We sit quietly, each reflecting on our mortality. The zombies will come for us or they won't.

Around 3am I organize groups to collect the survivors from the RVs and carry them over. They've all gone unconscious, overwhelmed by the demons' proximity, so no more wailing. The cold is intense in all of us now, swelling and bringing despair with it. I want to insulate these poor people from it as much as I can, after they've already been through so much horror. All of this now is about trying to minimize the suffering and fear we have to face.

We put them in the middle of the group, where their last moments can be warm and amongst friends.

"This is it," Lara says to me, squeezing my hand.

I squeeze back, looking out over my people. Less then fifty now, but more than we ever had before. New LA was growing, and it would have been so good. I gaze to the east, hoping the zombies will come over the rise in the road at any minute; thousands of them, tens of thousands, swooping in to save us all.

I remember ushering them in to Yankee Stadium. That was the first good thing I did, when I began to see the truth behind the apocalypse. They were never our enemies, but our saviors; like Anna's father in Mongolia, like the ones that saved me from Don, like the thousands that forgave me my genocide in Times Square and the hundreds that blessed me in Iowa.

It's been a hell of a ride. I kiss Lara. I kiss Vie and Talia. I hold Ravi by the shoulder and slap Feargal's arm.

The demons are coming. They must be close.

I start to sing.

It doesn't come from anywhere I expect, a song from the past, a song that symbolizes unity in ways a giant 'f' on the Empire State can't hope to emulate, and a song that I haven't heard for too long a time.

"O say can you see, by the dawn's early light."

Others join me. My singing voice is terrible but their voices rise around me in support, warmer than the brazier fires, warmer than the heated rugs; basses and altos and tenors, enough to dispel the incoming chill for just a few more minutes.

"What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming. Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, o'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there; O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?"

When it's done some of us are sobbing and some are laughing. I feel buoyed up, cresting on a tide of my fellow survivors. I want to give my speech again, thanking them for surviving and for wanting to survive, but there's no need because the national anthem did it better than I ever could. Everybody here gets it. We are the last gleaming, the last red rockets, the last of the free and brave that made this country what it was.

"Is that it?" Feargal calls out, and people laugh. "Does nobody know the second verse?" More laughter.

"Here's another," somebody says. I think it must be Witzgenstein, though I didn't notice when she came over to join us. I'm glad she did, because she's part of us too, no matter how much she wanted to split us apart. I hope Masako is somewhere comfortable and warm too, with her gentle husband and her sweet son by her side.

Witzgenstein starts singing a folk classic, one I haven't heard for decades, back then would have considered twee and old-fashioned, though now it hits me right in the gut. 'This Land was Made for You and Me' by Woody Guthrie.

Her voice is high and clean and we all join in. She knows all the words though, more than anyone else, and carries us along with her from California, down the winding highways and across the sparkling deserts, through the Depression-era clouds of dust and the fog of civil war all the way to New York in the east, with a repeated, endless chorus we can all join in on.

"This land was made for you and me."

We keep singing because none of us wants to stop. We don't know what comes next and none of us wants to find out. We don't want our ending to be silent, dripped out in the dark. I can feel the demons now, so close through the night, as the cold inches over my skin and pulls me in. They're like a deep riptide in the ocean, silently tugging us all down.

I finger the gun and prepare myself. None of us should suffer. My children won't suffer. My wife won't suffer. This way is better.

At last the soaring voices fade. My throat is sore. We are all here together, and that is how it should be. I slip the clasp on the gun's holster, holding Lara's wiry, tough hair close to my lips and kissing it deeply, breathing in the sweet, natural smell of her.

The zombies are not here. They cannot save us, and I accept that. Any moment the demons will come.

At last, the last of us fall silent.

Only then can I hear the voice shouting, clear as a train whistle across the long and lonely night, coming over the radio by my feet. She sounds hoarse with repeating the same lines again and again, calling into the night, to anyone who will listen.

The cold solidifies as ice in my belly. It's impossible, but I can't deny it.

"Amo, are you there? Lara, are you there? I've found the zombies, we've found them, please tell me you're there."

Oh my God.

It's Anna.

INTERLUDE A

The plane plummeted out of the night sky. The moonlit clouds rose away and the dark asphalt of the runway filled the cockpit window.

Anna clutched the radio like it was her father's phone, braced against the dashboard, racking her mind for something to do. The engine barked violently and black smoke vomited out of the propeller hood, buffeting the glass and filtering back into the cabin through the exhaust. The wind was a tearing rush all around and the propeller crackled and popped like a faulty firework, sparks shooting out of either side.

"I can't-" Peters shouted over the roar, straining to pull back on the stick. He turned to her in the co-pilot's seat with desperation carved in his lined, withered face. "Help!"

Behind them Jake had bent into the crash position, hands crossed over his head.

They'd barely taken off. They were only a few hundred feet in the air and now they were in a nose-dive.

"Help me!" Peters cried desperately.

Anna dropped the radio and smacked her seat-belt release loose, then tumbled sideways onto Peters' lap. There could only be seconds left. She grabbed the stick with both hands, braced her legs against the instrument panel and heaved.

The plane screamed, the fuselage jerked and something ripped sharply off the tail of the plane with a jolt that smacked Anna's forehead against the stick.

"I love you, sweetheart," Amo's voice came over the radio, "Jake, thank you. I'm so sorry."

"Amo-" Anna shouted, then the plane hit the runway with an earsplitting-

CRASH

The ceiling punched Anna in the back then threw her to the side as the plane's body skidded and screeched over the asphalt, entering a roll that crumpled the left wing like wet tissue paper in a blender. Her arm crunched off the unforgiving instrument panel as the cockpit rolled on its side, tumbling her like clothes in the laundry. Sparks shot off the asphalt as the battered plane scraped out the last of its momentum on the runway and hit the damp, overgrown soil of the verge with a muddy slap.

The plane body tilted onto its roof then creaked back again, settling in a trench on its side where the torn wing had been. Anna lay against the cockpit side glass, dizzy and in pain.

"Amo," she whispered, as the darkness drew in from the sides of her vision like a great black tide, shutting her in.

Seconds later she came up gasping. Her shoulders and head were pressed to the window while her lower body was sprawled upwards across Peters' lap, still fastened to his chair.

"I think we made it," he wheezed, hanging sideways from his seatbelt.

Anna tried to push herself up but she was dizzy and her arm shrieked in pain as she tried to put her weight on it.

"Amo," she shouted, but the radio didn't respond.

The cab was filling with black smoke, filtering through the cracked front mechanics. The propeller was still spitting out a dying, spluttery roar, and underneath it there was the gulping sound of kerosene spewing out of the fuel tank in back. Anna spun, taking in the state of their wreckage, and used her good left arm to tuck her knees in and get her feet under her.

Through the cracked windows above Jake's head she saw glowing embers of red-hot metal lying like a slug's trail of torn debris behind them.

It was going to blow.

"Get out," she muttered in Peters' face. He nodded but didn't move. She shifted position and slapped at the belt buckle with her good hand, getting it on the third try, and he slid bonelessly against the side window with a crunch that broke his nose and spurted red on the glass.

"Unhh," he grunted.

"Shit," she cursed and heaved him to the side. "Jake!"

Jake didn't answer. Already the smoke was stinging her eyes. Never mind the fuel going up in flames, they would choke first. Dizzily she tried to remember how they'd got in the plane, now that it was rocked nearly onto its roof.

She grabbed the seat back and crawled through the gap between the pilot and co-pilots' chairs, to where Jake hung sideways in his cradling seatbelt.

"Jake!" she shouted over the whining in her ears and the startling barks of the sick propeller. His eyes were open but he wasn't all there. There was a wound pumping blood in his forehead and his skin had gone very pale. "Jake, come on!"

His eyes focused on her for a second then peeled away, his lips mumbling wordlessly. Anna tore off her sweater, her right arm crying out in pain, and fumblingly knotted it as tightly as she could around his head. Then she slapped his belt off and caught his head before it smacked the glass.

"Jake I need you," she shouted. "I think my arm's broken and I can't carry you out of here. You have to get up!"

He looked at her faintly between the trailing arms of her sweater, draped now down his face, like a drowning man trying to swim up from under a sheet of clear ice.

"Jake!"

He grunted started to move.

"Get Peters," she ordered, then climbed onto his seat to reach up to the door, which now hung overhead. Working the catch was difficult by the flashing red emergency light, and when she cracked it open for a second fresh air poured in.

The backdraft set the cockpit aflame. Bright tongues of fire licked at the controls, pumped by the engine, and in a second Peters caught fire too.

He screamed. Jake had his hands on him and he screamed too as the fire bit them both.

Anna slammed the door shut again.

"Smother it!" she shouted, and Jake fumbled around with his shirt trying to stretch it to cover Peter's head, even as his own jacket was on fire. Anna leaned over, stepping on the sides of the seats, and slapped at Jake's back with her one good hand. Acrid black smoke filled the cockpit again in seconds, and soon her eyes were stinging and she was coughing, but it helped them kill the fire.

"Come on!"

Jake lurched and hugged Peters to him, and together they tumbled back into the second tier of seats.

"Quickly now," Anna called over the sound of the propeller shrieking itself to a crescendo as the engine burned itself out, and threw the door open again. Smoke sucked out, fresh air flushed in and this time the whole instrument panel lit up in a wall of flame. Peters screamed.

"You have to climb," Anna shouted, looking into Jake's bleary face. "Jake, you first."

He nodded, his eyes far away, and tipped Peters casually onto Anna. She caught him around the back with her bad arm, and the pain was excruciating. Jake climbed feebly up, kicking wildly off her cheek.

"Now wait up there, I can't lift him alone."

A moment later Jake's head appeared above the open door, lit by the red emergency light, looking barely awake and dripping thick blood on her face. The propeller was frantic now as the engine tore itself apart in a fury, ripping at the air, and the heat of the cockpit fire was unbearable and spreading.

Anna strained, lifting with her thighs and her shoulders, pushing Peters' frail body up with her hips. His face passed her by, bubbling with blood from his broken nose, then Jake had him and pulled him through.

Anna was left alone in the fuselage, shrouded with smoke and fire. The cockpit glass started to warp and crack and the instruments began to pop out of their settings in the plastic dashboard.

"Anna!" came a tinny little voice through the thick of it, "Jake!"

Amo on the radio.

Then Jake was leaning back in, his arms trailing down like climbing ivy, and she gave him her hand. Her skin was slippy with sweat or blood though and he couldn't get a grip.

"Uurgh," he grunted, his mouth barely opening, flapping his right hand at her. "Uurgh."

She gritted her teeth and flung him her broken arm too. Extending it almost made her pass out. The forearm was visibly broken, one stick of bone sticking out through the skin. Jake caught it by the wrist and heaved.

She screamed. It was like being stretched on the rack, as the meat of her arm alone took her weight for jerking, huffing seconds. Silver lights sparkled in her eyes and the bone sucked back into her arm, followed by a sharp grating on the inside like nails on a chalkboard, then she was up and over the lip and scrabbling instinctively with her good arm.

The plane was scoured black and lit by fires consuming the propeller and spilling out onto the scorched grass. Jake slumped by the entrance with his legs trailing along the plane's white underbelly, while Peters lay like a broom across his lap.

Anna let herself slide down the plane's side and tugged at Jake as she went, pulling them both after her. They tumbled into a soggy puddle of mud and kerosene, which splashed on her face and stung her eyes. They needed to get away.

She shoved Jake and dragged Peters after her, only seconds before the puddle of fuel caught with a lifting whuff of flame.

Ten seconds later, shuffling backward over the runway, the plane's tank caught and the back end exploded, tearing the fin and back fuselage to flying shrapnel. Anna sagged to her side as chunks of metal and fiberglass rained around and thunked off her. Jake dropped by her side and vomited on her legs. Peters lay motionless nearby. She closed her eyes for just a second.

* * *

A warm rain woke her, rinsing the soot out of her eyes. The sky was a gentle morning gray, overcast and humid. The sun was low and the demons were coming.

"Come on," she mumbled, nudging Jake. He roused and looked around. The makeshift bandage on his head had shifted and she could see the wound in his temple beneath it. It looked bad, a deep cut that had crusted over wildly, making it look like half his face had been ripped away. His eyes were slow and unresponsive.

"Jake can you hear me?"

He nodded.

"But you can't talk?"

A sharp tinge of panic grew in his eyes, then ebbed as though under a fog.

"That's fine," Anna pressed on, tasting smoke and gritty kerosene in her mouth. Her own head throbbed. "But I need you to help me."

He nodded slowly.

She got to her feet. Where was Peters?

She staggered over the runway calling out his name. He was a dark streak fifty yards away, crawling inch by inch over the weed-cracked asphalt. His back was charred black burned clothing, half his hair had been scorched away, but when she rolled him over his eyes were bright despite the bloody wreck of his broken nose.

"Anna," he croaked, "you're alive."

"Just barely," she said. "Can you not walk?"

"Something's broken," he said, and nodded, "down there."

Anna squatted back and looked. Her right arm was useless, but with her left she peeled a torn strip of his pants back.

Both his legs were broken; one twisted sideways at the ankle and the other at the calf, though at least the skin wasn't broken. She gagged but held it in, plastering a calm look on her face.

"Broken, you're right," she said. "Wait right here."

"Jake!" she called. He was up now and wandering off to the right, leaning at a strange angle, but corrected when he saw her, even raised a hand to wave.

"Come here," she said, and he did, tottering on his tiptoes in a way that looked like he couldn't remember how to walk. Every step nearly saw him tip on his face.

"Sit with him," she told Peters. "I'm coming back. Jake, sit down."

He sat down.

She didn't have time to be scared or worried. There was only time to act.

She ran. Her whole body hurt at first, resisting with a tightness in her muscles which soon devolved into a warming throb that signaled deep bruises spreading under the skin. She'd wrecked her yachts and been tossed bodily into the waves enough times to recognize that pain, and knew that it was only going to get worse.

The runway thumped against her feet, and every time her right arm moved even the slightest amount, merciless spikes of pain shot up into her shoulder and neck. She held it close to her chest and adopted a loping sideways gait, bounding through the lukewarm puddles and knee-high weeds of the neglected runway, all while sorting through the challenges ahead as best she could.

Peters had broken legs. She had a broken arm. Jake had sustained a serious head injury. They all needed intensive care, the kind only Ozark could provide, but Ozark wasn't here and she was, and all she had was the emergency go-bag stowed in the Jeep.

She hit the open hangar and loped to the Jeep. The key was in the ignition, the engine started like a dream, and she was back on the runway beside them in a minute. In the trunk she rifled through the pack for bottles of water, dropping one by each of them, giving thanks she'd decided not to bring the go-bag on board the plane. She fished out a roll of antibiotic pills packaged in plastic and silver foil, popped two and washed them down with a healthy glug of water.

"Here," she said, popping two into Peters' hand. "For any infection." He swallowed them. She had to guide Jake to take his, as he couldn't get his own hand to his mouth. They were all at risk of blood poisoning at the least, considering the amount of damage they'd sustained.

Painkillers followed. She dosed both herself and Peters but not Jake, as she didn't want to do anything that tampered with his brain. Next she set to work cleaning and bandaging what she could. The split in Jake's temple was deep, his skull was probably cracked, but she didn't know what to do about that except bind it securely and try to keep him awake.

The gash in her broken arm wasn't wide, so she wrapped it tightly with a plastic butterfly stitch, then smashed the Jeep's pneumatic trunk extenders with a mallet and used one as a splint, binding it tightly to her arm then hanging it in a sling.

"I'm going to straighten your legs," she told Peters, holding his hand tightly. "If I don't do it now you won't be able to move for the pain. Don't die on me, all right?"

He gave a watery grin. "I'm used to," he said, then stopped to breathe, "pain."

"Bite on this." She handed him a strip of thick gauze, then dropped down at his feet. She peeled back his pants and surveyed the damage. This one a tug and twist to the left, this a twist to the right. That was a guess, but she only had her own judgment now.

She did both in quick succession, bracing her feet mercilessly against his crotch and holding his legs between her left arm and chest. He shouted but didn't pass out. She used the trunk extender to splint his broken calf and a smashed bit of plastic from a storage crate to cup his shattered ankle.

"Good as new," he breathed.

Anna grinned. "That's the spirit. Now we have to move."

She went to Jake and took his hand. "It's going to be OK," she said. He nodded at her though the panic was there again, hidden behind a veil of fog in his eyes. "Trust me. I need your help."

He wobbled up to his feet. She pinched his jacket tightly behind the shoulder blades with her one good arm, enough to slow his descent if he fell.

"Can you lift Peters into the trunk? Carefully, his legs are broken."

He managed it, curling Peters onto a blanket and depositing him surprisingly gently into the trunk, then without being asked he got into the trunk with him.

"Keep him awake," she said to Peters. "Don't let him sleep." Then she shut the trunk, got into the front seat and tore the Jeep away.

* * *

Back at the Chinese Theater she collected medical supplies, food, gas, a generator, lamp and two of the radios Amo had left behind, moving with urgent, clipped efficiency. Within ten minutes she was back in the Jeep and driving north through Los Angeles, trying to raise Amo on the radio, but with her one good hand on the wheel never was able to dial in for a clear signal.

She couldn't spare the seconds to stop. The convoy had left at night around twelve hours ago, which probably put them somewhere near Albuquerque now, where they'd expected to cross the demons. She wasn't going to be able to help with that, but with the zombies?

They were driving blind now toward the horde, hoping it was the right direction.

Santa Barbara airfield was an hour up the coast, and she smashed right through the barricades to the runways and sped from hangar to hangar as the rain cleared up and the sun came out, searching for another Cessna 400TTx.

"Is he awake?" she called back at times to Peters.

"He's got very active eyes," Peters replied.

There were no propeller Cessnas there though, only jets, and she didn't know the first thing about how a jet engine worked.

She paused and rigged up a drip for each of them, left them some rice-ball sandwiches and dosed everyone again with antibiotics.

"Sepsis is a bitch," she said, by way of explanation. Peters grunted.

"Julio fed us these all the time," he said. "I'm a connoisseur."

She tried Amo again but had no success; they had to be out of range already, or perhaps stuck in bad weather. She put the radio aside and drove north, headed toward San Francisco and another airfield she remembered passing on a cairn trip this way two years back.

Hours passed with the Pacific on her left, a warm wind blowing through, in a blur of pain and exhaustion. The deep bruises were starting to push themselves up through her skin, turning her already dark skin a far blacker shade. The pain in her arm surged with even the slightest motion, as the ends of her bones grated against each other.

Paso Robles airfield was big, and searching all the hangars took far longer than she expected. It was coming into late afternoon by the time she found another Cessna, not a TTx but an older 420, cherry red and outfitted for a singular rich pilot, perhaps a Hollywood star who liked to see the world from ten thousand feet.

She located the kerosene pump and primed that first, checking there was some juice left, and filled the Cessna's tanks. It didn't matter now if the engine failed, because there was no time to find another. Soon enough the convoy would cross the country's mid-point and she'd never be able to catch up in time.

"Is he awake?" she called back to the Jeep at times.

"Just barely," Peters replied, his voice stuffy through his clogged broken nose. She dropped down and knelt before him. Both his eyes were ringed with shiny black bruises like a panda, and his nose itself was a crumpled purple mess.

"I'm going to set this," she said. "It'll help you breathe."

He gritted his teeth. "Yeah."

She'd seen it done before. Ozark had done it for her once after she'd taken the wind too sharply on a racing yacht and the boom had swung over and belted her square across the face.

It had been gristly, sharp and horrible.

She pressed her fingers firmly either side of his nose, into deeply bruised flesh, and he gasped. It was more of a scoop after that, kneading the structure of his nose back up into position the same way you'd pop a zit.

"Jesus!" Peters shouted, then sneezed, spraying blood and black clots all over Anna's waist. "Did you have to-" Another sneeze struck and he fell unconscious for a second. Blood trickled from his nose and Anna sat there in shock, until with a sharp gasp he came to.

Breath wheezed in and out of his nose.

"Oh God, don't do that again," he mumbled.

"I need your help."

Peters helped. He couldn't move, but by the light of the generator, with a fresh IV-bag dripping nutrients into his battered system and him propped up in the Jeep's trunk, he instructed her on what to do.

They'd done it once already; strip the propeller hood, open up the casing, get into the pistons and check for rust. Oil everything. Strip and replace faulty-looking wires, clean, replace, filter and re-hose.

She ran tests they hadn't run before, going step-by-step through the same drills Peters had taught himself a long time ago, back when it had been him and Abigail soaring through the skies over America, before Julio came and ruined everything.

Some time long past midnight Jake cried out and she dropped from her work and went to him.

His eyes were terrified. His forehead was burning with his feathery black hair plastered to his pale skull. His eyes were pleading. "Much," he tried to say.

"Hang in there," she told him, squeezing his hand. "Hang in there, Jake."

She took off his bandage to reveal the skin around the wound was an angry, inflamed red. The skin either side was turning a blackish purple. She cleaned it delicately, rewrapped a fresh bandage, and shot another dose of liquid amoxicillin direct into his IV, then helped him sip down a whole bottle of water. After that she sat and simply held his hand for a time, looking into his eyes and sporadically nodding. She ate a rice ball and drank water herself. She popped more pills for the pain and dosed Peters too.

She'd done everything she could.

"They say the first twenty-four hours," Peters wheezed. "For head trauma, the not sleeping? It'll be twenty-four soon."

Anna looked at her watch. It was 5am and the sun was rising outside. She'd worked through the night and the wreck was already a day ago. Amo and the convoy had departed a day and a half earlier. They'd be halfway across the country by now, into Kansas or Missouri, with the demons behind them and heading into the unknown.

"We can't help them like this," Peters said, "you need to sleep if you're going to fly."

She nodded and smiled. Of course, she was going to fly now. That made perfect sense. Fatigue hadn't caught up to her yet, but she was airy and light-headed. It felt like she was back on her catamaran again steaming west to Asia, leaning over the edge of the hull and pulling the craft into the wind, daydreaming for hours on end about taking a twenty-minute nap. The wind never stopped, the waves never stopped, and so she could never stop either.

But that had led to the storm which almost killed her.

"Sleep," Peters said, rousing her from the reverie.

"I will," she said, "in a minute."

She walked out of the hangar, leaving the two men curled around each other in the Jeep's trunk. On the cement walkway outside it was shaping up to be a beautiful, clear day. The rising sun was warm on her skin.

She began to cry. It was exhaustion or grief or pain or all three rolled into one. This was it, really. It all came down to this. Cerulean had died to send them Peters, and now Peters was back there, inexpertly patched up, Jake might have serious brain damage, and they were about to get back into a model of plane that had done it to them.

It could happen again. They'd all die, then perhaps everyone in the convoy would die too.

"Welcome home," Amo had said, when she'd walked back into the Chinese Theater and into their lives, after finishing her circuit of the world. That was less than a week ago still. Two weeks ago she'd just got back to New York and let the zombies out of Yankee Stadium. She'd gone to her father's house in Minneapolis, and seen her mother's face for the first time. Two weeks ago but it felt like a lifetime.

She rubbed at her eyes. In the days that followed Ravi had been so sweet. He'd wanted to do everything for her, bring her whatever she wanted, drive for her, hold her hand, gaze into her eyes. Once that had infuriated her, but she'd changed, and she now found him sweet. He had become a good and caring man while she wasn't looking, no longer the silly boy she'd dismissed for years. If anything he had become more like Cerulean, solid and dependable no matter how badly she treated him.

The tears flowed freely and she let them come.

For the three days she'd been back, she hadn't been able to accept Cerulean was gone. She'd gone to the lab with Sulman and Jake, as if working furiously on the T4 could bring back another father she'd lost. Ravi had come along, supporting her though he didn't understand any of it. When she broke down in tears on the fourth day, just hours before the survivors had arrived, he was there to catch her.

That meant something. That kind of thing didn't come easily, and was worth more than she knew how to repay.

Now, standing alone looking out over the blue sky, he was all that she wanted in the world. Cerulean was dead, and she wanted Ravi's kind arms around her, with hers around his. She wanted him being annoyingly sincere and looking into her eyes, telling her he loved her, just like he'd done on the yacht in the harbor three months ago, before her crazy round-the-world voyage began. She wanted to kiss his lips and press herself against him and learn all about what love was.

She didn't deserve it, she knew that, after her cruelty for so long. She'd done nothing to earn it, not his love or his attention, but now she wanted to. She wanted to be worthy of his love, she wanted to make him happy, as he'd tried so hard to make her happy for so many years. She'd failed Cerulean, but that was in the past now, and there was nothing she could do to take it back.

There was only the future, and that meant Ravi, and Amo and Lara, and saving the community she'd only a few months ago wanted so desperately to leave.

She wanted to live. She wanted them all to live.

* * *

She slept until noon.

Jake was asleep, but his breathing was more regular and the heat in his forehead was fading. Peters snored soundly.

She made the last few adjustments to the engine then snapped the casement back on. She took out the radio and tried to raise Amo, but they were definitely too far away now. She got out a map and sketched a route. Following a familiar road seemed the best path. The Cessna had a top speed of around two hundred and seventy miles an hour and a range of around one thousand three hundred miles. That would put them around Denver by the time they had to refuel, so she marked a few airfields on the map within a two hundred mile radius of the city, where she could refuel.

They were almost there.

She woke Peters first. His eyes were bright and ready, but his grip was weak and his arms shook. "I've lost a lot of blood," he said, smiling wanly. "I can't steer. I can guide you."

She'd figured as much.

Waking Jake was harder, but he roused with persistence. He looked up at her with eyes that were still fuzzy and vague, but when he opened his mouth words came out, though they were still slurred. "Anna," he said, "hey buddy."

She cried a few tears and hugged him.

"Hey buddy," she replied. "Can you help me out?"

He was bemused in the most genteel way. He didn't remember the crash or any of the last few days, to even before the survivors arrived, and so kept introducing himself to Peters as though it was the first time.

He was strong enough to carry Peters onto the plane, though. He buckled himself in while Anna took to the cockpit. The instrument panel, which before had broken her arm and set Peters on fire, gleamed silver in a red plastic dashboard. There were countless dials, switches and little levers.

"That, that and that are bullshit," Peters said, pointing. "That I never figured out what it does. Your keys are this baby," he tapped the throttle lever, "and the stick. Everything else is there to warn you, but we're hardly going to stop if a light blinks red, are we?"

He grinned.

"No."

"No. So ease this one. Watch that one, and this bird'll take off all by herself."

Anna doubted that very much.

"Go Anna!" Jake said dozily from behind. "A much faster way to go around the world."

In spite of herself, and in spite of the fact that Jake was now introducing himself to Peters again, she grinned, and pushed the throttle forwards.

EAST

16. THE OCEAN

It's Anna, she's alive, and there's no time waste.

"They're 20 miles north of you," she shouts over the radio. "I'm flying above them right now, Amo, they're all right here, but you have to move now!"

I bolt to my feet and shout it out to everyone, across our warm little encampment on the icy road in the middle of Pittsburgh. "Anna's alive! She's found the zombies, we have to go! Wake up, Anna's alive, let's go!"

I switch the radio to start the siren wailing, and that gets everyone moving.

WEEEEE AAAAAAAAW

"The zombies are north, Anna's alive, let's get to the RVs!"

The call gets taken up and within seconds we're running.

Lara gathers up our kids, I hoist one of the survivors and we start the mad dash for the RVs. Everybody runs behind us. The road thunders with our feet, leaving our braziers and our rugs and our sleeping bags behind.

"What's happening, Mommy?" Vie asks somewhere behind, coming awake in Lara's jolting arms.

"Anna's alive!" she says. "We're going to be all right."

At the nearest RV I stop and turn around, scanning the site of our last stand for any stragglers. Lara dashes by and I nod back the way we've just come, because there's something wrong. I can't explain it but I can't leave it alone. She knows it, perhaps she feels it too.

"Go," she calls over her shoulder, "quickly."

"Hurry, Amo," Anna's voice comes through the radio clipped to my belt, balancing the gun holstered on the other hip. "You're so close already."

So close.

Ravi comes stampeding back up the RV line; he's already dropped his survivor off and I roll mine into his arms.

"What are you doing?" he asks.

"Get the RVs ready," I tell him as I start to run. "I'm coming."

I sprint back up the road, guided by feeling more than anything. I didn't see her, didn't see them, and that's enough now. It's a ridiculous choice, all the convoy for this, my wife and my children for this, but I can't do it any other way. I don't leave people behind. I won't, I can't, it isn't what my new world is about.

I crest the rise in the road through the middle of all our scattered blankets and packets of snacks and sprint down the other side, to a crack in the railings leading down an embankment to a street, where now I can hear them. He's tearful and begging, she's silent but for the clack of her heels on ice, and the little boy is just crying. She's stamping past a row of parked cars at snow-smothered parking meters and they trail along behind.

Masako, Alan and Lin, heading blindly into the dark and empty city.

I slide down the snowy verge and race over to them in the shadows.

"Lara start the RV," I tell the radio as I jog closer. "I'll be there."

"Amo!" Alan calls when he hears me. He turns and despite the shadows I can see he's hysterical and weeping. Lin is in his arms and crying like a baby, his eyes screwed up and plainly terrified. "Thank God, please, she won't listen to me!"

I see in a second that he's a broken man. He was always quiet, unassuming, but basically decent. He was Masako's rebound after Cerulean and after Julio, and he was grateful, but he deserves far better than this.

I pass him and step in front of Masako, blocking her path. She stares ahead with a glare that could cut through ice, not looking at me or anything else. There's plainly a storm of emotions going in inside her; wounded pride, anger at the universe, whatever broken resentments she's been nursing for ten years, but I haven't got time to screw around with any of that. I grab her by the shoulders, and stand firm as she tries to tear free and push past.

"What do you think you're doing?" I demand. "Masako, snap out of it! You can't do this now. Anna's alive, you heard that right? She's alive!"

She stares at me with all that hatred spitting out of her eyes, so hot it should burn me right off. I've seen this before, I've felt it, a kind of all-consuming, self-righteous, suicidal rage, and normally I'd try to understand and harness it. I try to save people when I can; if I could've saved Sophia so long ago on that bend in the road into Pennsylvania, I would have. If I could've somehow not killed Don, I would change it every time.

She knees me in the balls.

I drop to my knees with the stomach crushing pain. A second blow comes that ratchets off my cheek and sends me reeling to the icy snow. That had to be a club of some sort.

"Are you happy now, Amo?" she spits, then kicks me in the ribs. I take the blow and roll out of range. She's standing holding a gun by the barrel, panting. "You took my own son from me!"

I stare at her. I don't have time for this shit, but she's not thinking straight. She's staring like a crazy person off the deep end. Reasoning's not going to work, and she's backpedaling already, taking herself out of range, waving the gun wildly.

God my balls hurt, and my temple throbs. Another concussion. I get to my knees while she rants something about how it was always me taking everything away from her. I cast around for something, anything that will change her mind.

I see it in Alan's arms, sobbing madly.

"If I do take him," I shout, staring into her fiery eyes but pointing at Lin, "if I tell you I'm going to make him just like me, would you still do this? I can't let you drag him to his death, for what, spoilt pride? Masako, the world has dealt you a shitty hand, I know. Cerulean first, Julio, now me? But get over yourself. Alan's a good man, Lin's a wonderful boy and he loves you. Don't you see that? You're a lucky woman. You have a child, goddammit!"

None of this breaks through to her. I could chase her some more, down the street, across the intersection, try to get control and carry her kicking all the way back, but that's not enough. On this snow, in the dark with my balls already up in my gut, I won't stand a chance.

She's twenty feet away already, backing up like I'm a devil, like I just crawled out of hell and am hungry for her brains.

"You!" she says. "It was always you, pouring poison in everyone's ears. That comic? I hate you, Amo. You won't lie to me ever again!"

She's flipped. She's gone. The stress, the proximity of the demons, the ten years of loss; it's just snapped her in half.

"Goddammit, Masako!" I shout. "Look at Lin. Look at what this is doing to him. He thinks I'm a hero, Masako, and do you know why? Masako, do you know why?"

The rage redoubles and her eyes widen. Maybe it's the demons' influence in her, breathing cold onto the despair and self-pity she already feels, but that's all bullshit, excuses for someone who's surrendered, and I have to burn right through it.

"It's because, in spite of all the shit you hate about me, I act like a goddamned hero sometimes! It's true. And what are you, what is this? Did you not hear the songs? Woman, be strong! I know you have it in you. Dammit, Masako, come on!"

She blinks. Perhaps the spell is breaking. Then she raises her gun.

BANG

The bullet plows into the snow with a soft puff followed by a crack against the asphalt below. It's by my feet. We've trained everyone in New LA to shoot, and after Julio raped her Masako took to it with vigor. It's a shot that rocks me and starts me seeing her in a whole new light.

The gun wavers in her hand.

"You did this," she says, "all of this."

She drops the gun and runs into the night.

"No!" I shout after her, but she doesn't stop. For a second I watch her, thirty yards now, dropping out of range. I haven't got any more time, the demons could be on us right now. In a normal world I'd let her go, I have no desire to chain anyone to a life they can't stand, but this is something far worse than suicide. This is a crime against the group, a final act of sabotage in giving herself to the demons, and that I cannot forgive.

I don't have time to chase her. I don't have time to drag her back.

I draw my gun and fire three times in fast succession, two in the back and one in the thigh. Alan screams. The thin frame of Masako drops and shakes in the snow.

"Alan," I say sternly. "Alan!"

I grab him and start running, dragging him after me while he smothers Lin's wails against his chest. We scrabble up the embankment as Anna calls over the radio.

"Amo, tell me she's dead. She has to be dead or they'll bring her back."

"She's dead," I shout back as we pound our way to the RVs. The lights are on and engines fired up, with a last few people frantically scraping ice off windshields.

Witzgenstein pokes her head out of the RV in the middle. "What the hell, Amo?" she shouts as I run up with Alan and Lin. "Was that gunfire?"

"Take care of them," I say and shove Alan and Lin her way. "Masako's dead."

Then I'm past them and running for the front. Let them judge me all they want tomorrow, for shooting a woman in cold blood. Today I've got a civilization to save.

The front RV is there; Lara is in the passenger seat already, our kids are in the back with Cynthia, and the warmth of their hope washes over me like a wave.

Slap, slap.

"Daddy's back!" Vie and Talia both call.

I drop into the front seat and lock the radio into its holder. Up ahead, over the dark silhouette of the city, the first light of morning is rising up.

"Masako?" Lara asks.

"Dead," I say as I put us in gear.

"They're almost on you," Anna calls through the radio. "Peters is sure. You need to move right now!"

"Holy shit!" comes the confirmation from Ravi in the rear RV as I release the handbrake. "I see them! Amo they're right behind us, they smashed through the lamps and generators, they're coming this way!"

I punch the gas and the RV grinds forward over the ice and snow.

"We're moving!" I shout, "single file in my tracks, Feargal are you in the turret RV?"

"Yes, sir!" he shouts back.

"Drop to the rear and blow the shit out of these bastards with everything you've got. I don't want them getting near us."

"Yes, sir!" he shouts with relish.

We're up to twenty miles per hour already and the RV groans against the sudden acceleration, grinding in first gear.

"Ravi, you're backup. Punch out the side windows and get RPGs trained on them if they come in your sights. Do not blow up Feargal!"

"Got it," Ravi shouts back.

"Olly, where are you?" I call, as we hit thirty miles an hour and plunge through our suicide settlement on the rise in the road, driving over rugs and bashing braziers out of the way. Lara flips down my sun guard as dawn spikes through a gap in the city skyline.

"Third from the back," Olly answers, "behind the kids."

"Same goes for you," I say, "you're a crack shot and you can't let them past you, do you hear me? There are no excuses now, and that doesn't happen."

"Yes, sir," he snaps off powerfully, and for a second I wonder at all these people suddenly calling me sir, and how that sits with a man who just murdered a political rival, but then we're reaching forty down an incline and coming up on an intersection.

"Anna!" I shout to my goddess in the machine overhead. "Where are we going?"

"McCandless," she shouts back. "It's a little town about twenty miles north, off 279. You can do it."

I look at Lara, now feverishly scrolling her fingers over a paper map. The RV bursts through the intersection, ramming the hood of a faded yellow taxi out of the way, and we shoot out of the cover of buildings onto a bridge I didn't even know was there. The kids start to cry in back. The light ahead brightens and the view to either side opens up in a breathtaking chasm of space as we soar out on a bridge over a frozen river.

The heart of Pittsburgh.

"Lara, which way?"

She holds up one finger and finishes her tracking.

"Left over the river," she says, reading it off the map. "Another bridge then right, then left up onto I-279. After that straight until we turn right on McKnight Road, about 15 miles."

She looks up.

"So left here," I confirm, as the odometer tracks upward of fifty miles per hour and we fly across the midpoint of the bridge, way too fast for all this snow.

"Left here."

BOOM

From behind there comes an explosion, echoing up the convoy like a thunderclap.

"Got them," Feargal shouts, "strike, right in the middle, sent them all which ways."

"More like spare," Ravi answers, "two got through and they're tracking us on the side, I think Olly…"

There's another BOOM.

"Report," I call as we're closing on the end of the bridge. "Slow for the turn, we can't afford to lose anyone here."

"Two down, but the five are already back up and running," Feargal says. "Shit, these bastards are fast."

BOOM

We drop below forty as the tires clack over the edge of the bridge, and I spin us in a wide curve across all four lanes to the left, getting traction off the snow's depth.

BOOM

We skid and our flank bounces off a parked SUV at the side of the road, scraping the bodywork, then we're level and rolling. "Straight on," Lara says, and we race on an elevated road over a small patch of park sandwiched between the fork in the rivers, then onto another bridge.

BOOM

The open space yawns wide again either side, and dawn light flickers in my eyes through the side window.

"Did everybody make it?" I call as we gain speed along the bridge.

"We're barely putting a dent in them," Ravi shouts, "but yeah, everybody's with the convoy."

"Ravi," Anna calls through, "tell Ravi I'm alright."

"I love you, Anna," Ravi shouts back fearlessly over the universal channel. "I'm coming."

"I love you too," Anna replies, "drive as fast as you want."

I laugh at that, the reverse of her first words to him when she got back from Mongolia.

"Right," Lara barks, and as the bridge ends I take another wide swerve that almost tips the RV, leaning all our weight on the left side for a teetering few moments, then we slump back down and one of the kids shrieks in back.

BOOM

BOOM

"Report!" I shout.

"We're getting them," Feargal comes back, "but they get up fast. Motherf-"

BOOM

In the rearview mirror I see the explosions dotting back along the bridge.

We race on for thirty seconds interspersed by more explosions, then I haul a sharp left turn and lead the convoy up an on-ramp onto I-279, accelerating out of Pittsburgh. Screw the snow, I think, and rev the speed up to sixty.

"We're pulling away," Ravi calls, "I think we'll make it."

The BOOMs grow fewer and farther between as we race north on a two-lane highway above the city, surrounded by snow-frosted buildings and swerving around cars and trucks that have lain idle for over a decade. Lara laughs with a kind of relief, entering the eye of the storm, and I laugh with her.

"Anna's alive," she says.

"Anna's alive," I answer. "Masako's dead."

She stops laughing and looks at me. "You didn't have a choice."

"The council can decide that," I answer grimly.

"I see four of them, they're dropping out of sight," Feargal reports. "Too far to hit."

"That's great."

I focus on the road, weaving in and out of standing traffic like the hero in Frogger. We've never been on this road before, never driven a JCB along it barging cars out of the way like we've done for all the major highways between cairns. This road is virgin territory, and up ahead it looks like…

"Shit," Lara curses.

The two lanes are blocked by three cars, piled up at diagonals. The median on the left is an unbroken waist-high concrete divider; we'll never get through it at such a tight angle. The concrete will shred the engine block to bits.

We have to go through the cars.

"Witzgenstein, you behind us?" I call.

"Right here, Amo."

"The road's blocked, I need you to drive right up my ass and we'll batter through."

Thank God she doesn't delay or ask questions. "Roger," is all she says, and a second later the RV jolts forward as her vehicle rams up against us. Already we're almost on the knot of vehicles.

"Speed up," I tell her, but she already is, and without doing anything I watch the odometer crank up to sixty-five.

"Duck and cover," I tell Lara, then shield my eyes and lower my head as we drive right into-

CRAAASH

The front of the RV crunches into the slight break between the cars, the front windshield blows in and sprays over our bowed heads, the jolt sends my chest slamming into the wheel and I barely keep control as it jerks to the side.

Then we're through, with freezing air blowing a gale into the cab and the RV swerving from side to side, but through. My chest throbs, a dozen pinprick cuts bead up with blood on my scalp, but we're through.

Lara's laughing.

"God damn!" I curse. "Witzgenstein?"

"We're through, the gap's open."

The rear-view mirror's gone, torn away, along with the front corner edges of my RV, but in the side-view mirror I peer back to see the third RV scrape through the narrow gap we blasted.

Without the ice beneath the stationary cars tires, I don't think we would have made it. That would have been the end.

"Unbelievable," Lara says.

"Witzgenstein, you can get out of my ass now."

"With pleasure," she says, and disengages.

"Hoo boy," I say, and steel myself against the freezing wind. "This is a bitch."

Lara has both hands on the map now, holding it steady. There are dots of blood on her forearms but she's whole, like me.

"I think we just passed Riverview Park on the left," Lara says, as we race under an overhead highway sign too obscured by snow to read. "The turning onto McKnight should be just ahead."

The off-ramp comes up and we take it at a blistering forty, circle round a throng of huddled fast food joints, then pull onto McKnight.

BOOM

Rockets explode behind.

"That one is sneaky, he came out of the woods," says Ravi between explosions. Feargal laughs manically. "They caught up through the turn-off and they're not on the road anymore."

I floor it along McKnight, a two-lane highway with no median, flanked on either side by thick reams of wintry hickory and maple. God forbid there'll be a traffic jam along here.

Anna's voice crackles over the radio, full of sudden awe. "The zombies are starting to run! Oh my God, that's beautiful, Amo. They can sense you, they're coming to help. Jake, look!"

I look at Lara and she looks at me.

"They're like wildebeest or something, all herding together. They're coming to save you all!"

"We're five minutes out," Lara says, "at this speed."

"Not a minute too soon," Feargal calls, "they're gaining now, I see six running alongside in the forest."

We race by a long row of semi-truck trailers parked alongside in a shallow lay-by. I take my eye off the road for a second to check the convoy behind, and at that moment something red flies across my vision, breaking from the tree cover like it was thrown from a catapult.

It is massive and so red it hurts my eyes, a giant man with a gaping black mouth and burning red eyes, who lands on massive tree-trunk legs in the road just ahead, sending a bucket of cold splashing over my heart.

There's time only to yank the wheel to the left.

We barely avoid crashing into it, swerving a tight arc that gives it time to leap. Its arm lashes briefly across the open windshield, there's a massive thump as its body hits us down the RV's side, then a sharp drag on the right like I've just dropped an anchor, as it clamps hold and is dragged along with us.

"It's on the side!" I shout, pulling the wheel hard to the left, downshifting to third and pressing the gas to the floor. "Lara, get out!"

The demon's body is dragged with us, thumping hard against the side of the RV as I straighten up at the lane's outer edge. I'm about to pull us hard right when the demon's huge red face fills the empty passenger side window. Its eyes burn red and the numbing cold washes over me. The RV stutters and jerks as it tries to pull us to a stop. The wheels on the left hand side skitter and rise off the ground, then the face pulls back and abruptly a red fist smashes through the passenger window, grabbing Lara around the chest.

She screams, but her scream is cut immediately short as the demon squeezes and yanks, cracking her ribs and tearing one of her seat belt cords with a Velcro-like snap. Lara's mouth lolls open as the scream dies and the shock knocks her unconscious.

"What the hell's going on!" someone shouts from down the convoy.

I draw my gun and shoot the full clip at the arm in seconds, but the bullets do nothing and the demon yanks again, smacking Lara like a rag doll against the door. This time the seatbelt snaps and Lara's head wags back and forth; one more jerk like that and she'll be gone, the RV will roll, and the rest of them will be on us in seconds.

"Witzgenstein!" I shout.

She must have been already moving, because the jolt that hits from behind comes in a second only, jerking us forward as her chassis hits ours. The demon's grip on Lara loosens as it clings on to the RV's frame.

In that window I drag the wheel sharply to the right, careening us across both lanes to crash into one of the semis resting at the side of the road.

SKKKKKRRRRRR

There's a crunching metallic burst and the right side of the RV's cab is torn away, scraping the demon off like a leech. Its arm whips backward out of the cab like a snake recoiling, tossing Lara halfway out of the shattered front windshield as its grip releases, and sending the RV almost toppling to the right as it clings on for a second.

BANG

Then there's a second thump as Witzgenstein hits it from behind, punching it off to the side.

Then we're beyond and rocking on a damaged chassis; the suspension is shot, but the engine powers on. A gale blows in through the wrecked front and side windows but I regain control, even as I pull Lara back from her position slumped halfway out of the shattered windshield.

She sags into the foot well but I catch a glimpse of blood pouring from her mouth, then-

BOOM

The explosion is so close I feel the heat on my cheek. I turn and catch a glimpse through the rear window of the fireball around the demon on its knees at the side of the road.

"Red bastard!" Cynthia shouts, standing gleefully at the side window in the back of the RV with an RPG smoking on her shoulder. Normally I'd call her out but I think 'red bastard' is a kind of racism that's really OK.

Then I turn back to the road and Macy's up here with me already tending to Lara, checking her pulse, her breath, her ribs.

"She's been crushed but she's breathing," she says urgently. "I'll get her back."

Another BOOM

Adonis is there too and he helps carry Lara back to the booths where they shush the kids and start to work. I can hardly focus on the road ahead but I have to.

"Is everyone clear?" I ask.

"Olly got it good, we got it again," Ravi answers, "we're all through, but we better see this horde soon."

I blink back tears. Goddamn Lara?

"Is she all right?" I call back.

"She's in trouble," Macy calls back, "but we got this. Focus on the road, Amo."

I focus on the road. We're so close.

Suddenly Anna shouts from above. "I see you! That's you, I see the convoy!" She sounds so delighted. "You should be coming on the herd soon, they're running right at you."

I round a bend and see them. They surge like a wave; a white, withered, featureless tidal wave charging toward us out of the snow. They are the ocean and they've been waiting all this time to save us, so many peanut faces running with a single directive.

I tear into their ranks and they flow either side of us smoothly, every one a hero giving its life to save ours.

"My God this is amazing," Anna says from above. "You can't imagine. I mean it is just stunning to see."

I drive on in tears for another minute, deep into the sprinting herd of the dead, then I stop the RV on a rise, and the convoy halts behind me.

It's all happening now; the rush of bodies, the BOOM of explosions, but it's not for me as I turn and run back to be alongside Lara. I hold her limp hand while Macy pumps air into her broken chest, while from above and all around I hear the sounds of triumph ringing out.

"They're on them!" Anna shouts, and I plead with Lara to live. "They're climbing up, Amo, you need to see this! That's four piles, now five! They're coming out of the forest, they're everywhere! Amo, Lara, you need to see this, oh my God."

I hold Lara's hand to my face and I hug my kids close, straining all my efforts for her to survive again. We've been through so much, from starting the apocalypse together to ending it together, here, and I don't want her to go, I love her too much for her to go.

"I've never seen anything like it," Ravi says on the radio, awed. "It's a kind of miracle, like the Red Sea parting or something. I just can't believe it."

Others are shouting the same kind of things. I imagine them out and standing on their RV rooftops, watching the ocean we all once feared, that many of us fought and slaughtered, now save all our lives with their own.

I imagine the great pyramids they're forming, heaping up like the bodies in my Times Square illustration, reaching up to the sky where overhead a tiny Cessna flies. I imagine it but I look at Lara, because I don't want to see anything but her face. I don't want to touch anything but her skin. I don't want to do anything but will her to stay alive, while outside the battle is finally won.

INTERLUDE 6

The seven blue dots stopped moving.

Salle Coram, Yale PhD, Lars Mecklarin's former lover and now commander of the MARS3000 Habitat, stood at her desk and watched them freeze one by one. Plink, plonk, plink, like marbles running out of momentum, they stopped.

She stood and watched. Joseph stood by her side and watched. Everyone in the room watched, as they'd been watching for over a week.

"They could be feasting," Joseph said quietly, but she knew that wasn't true. She could feel it.

Still she stood.

The dark room was quiet, but if she listened carefully she could hear people breathing, shifting quietly in their chairs, tapping their keyboards. All these people in a dark room, waiting for something that was never going to happen. She marked their names.

"Commander," Joseph said.

She willed the dots to move. Julio had been the worst experience of her life, and she'd done it all for this. Giving him tacit approval for all the sick, depraved things he'd done in his torture hallway was all for this. Before that she'd executed dozens of people in the revolution. After that she'd killed many more, and tortured hundreds with solitary confinement and public canings until they learned their lesson.

Survive. Behave. All for this.

Her mind was blank. So much data in there, three thousand people and all their personal logs, all their psychographic charts, reams and reams of notes taken by her or Lars or any of the monitoring team, and all she could think about was what she'd done to them.

The stick.

She'd wielded the stick like a tyrant. She'd driven people into narrow channels like cows climbing to the slaughter, to accept the totalitarian state she'd created, and the stick had kept them in line, but it was the carrot that kept them alive. Now that carrot was dying on the screen, winking back at her with a slow, sullen pulse.

Seven demons. It had all seemed so possible.

"There'd be more dots, if they were infecting," she said quietly.

"It could take time," Joseph answered. "We don't know."

"It took the ones in suits seconds only."

"So they're fighting. We wait."

They waited.

Minutes passed, stretching on in rustling, breathing, keyboard-tapping silence, and still the dots didn't move.

She thought back to a moment from her childhood, played again and again on the news media so often that she'd come to internalize it. Perhaps it was one of the many prods that had driven her into a career in extreme psychology, looking to understand the font from which all human motivation flowed.

On 9/11 when the Twin Towers fell, George W. Bush was reading a story to kids in a school in Florida. He already knew a plane had hit the Towers, but when they told him a second plane had hit he froze, sitting there like a doe in the headlights for seven long minutes, with the cameras recording, with the kids watching, and in that moment the whole world had seen the man beneath the mask of the presidency.

He was mocked for it. Though he came back stronger, the media never let him forget those seven minutes of sitting while the nation was under attack.

Now Salle Coram understood. In that moment the world he'd known had shifted on its axis, and he no longer knew which way was up. Reassuring the children in that one room, trying to maintain his composure to stop them from being scared, suddenly became the most important thing he could do.

So Salle Coram marked the names of every person in that room who breathed too loudly, or creaked in their chairs, or tapped at their keyboard. She didn't know for what reason or what punishment awaited them, but there was nothing else she could do.

There'd been so much suffering already. The facts couldn't equate in her mind. All of it rested on the crux of the demons because without them there wasn't any hope at all, and without any hope they'd be back in the days of the revolution, but worse. The bunker would consume itself in an orgy of blood.

She'd applied the pressure. She'd wound up the clock. It couldn't be stopped now.

If only the seven dots would move. But they didn't.

She turned to Joseph, and in the instant she gave the order, she realized how much she despised him, because she knew he would carry it out.

"Lock the doors."

He moved quietly. The room was still spellbound by the display. Twenty-three people at their stations but what were any of them doing? Monitoring the Habitat. Always watching. She hadn't needed them and it would be better if they weren't there.

Now they'd seen too much.

She drew her service revolver and, without really thinking, started shooting.

People didn't start screaming until the fourth bullet in the fourth head, by which point Joseph had started shooting too.

BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG

It was just like watching the turret gun they'd once had, before Julio blew it up. BANG BANG, and all these people could do was scrabble like insects, trapped in a cage.

BANG BANG

She stopped to reload, slipping in a fresh clip, while Joseph carried on. It was so simple, really, and she hardly felt a thing. This was mercy compared to some of the things she'd seen and done, compared to what awaited them. This was a good end.

BANG BANG

She stalked down the rows. In her research she'd spent a lot of time studying Columbine; what could possibly have driven two young men to slaughter dozens of their peers. It was such a mystery then, but the answer was so clear now.

Despair. Despair took away your guilt and your reason. It made murder into nothing at all. In despair this act was one of erasing pain and suffering, not creating it. The screams rang out and as Joseph moved down the other flank of the hall she felt a beautiful peace descend over her.

It felt like transcendence, like she was finally drifting free of this bunker that had been her prison for so long. Lars was calling, and they would be together on Mars at last. Her life would not be a waste, a miserable shitty waste of crushed dreams and loneliness, but a thing redeemed.

BANG BANG

Some of them tried to hide under their chairs like worms, which was fitting because they were all worms now, buried in the earth. Some of them raised their hands as if to deflect the bullets, but the hot metal tore right through, breaking fingers back and plowing into faces, into lips and teeth, gouging open cheeks and bursting eyeballs in geysers of gray brain.

Blood sprayed on the gun barrel and on her fingers, on her face and her clothes. The floor underneath ran greasily with blood, like Julio's hallway.

She began to laugh. It was a kind of game, after all. This was what Lars had seen coming so long ago. He'd taken a gun and shot himself to avoid this, because he'd been a good man. He'd understood there was a point beyond survival after which you weren't really human at all, after which you were better off dead. Once the hope was gone, the human was too.

She laughed and laughed and shot them all, until she was standing at the front of the hall in front of the big screen, and Joseph was standing there too.

They were panting. They were both splattered in blood. It was the most wonderful thing in the world.

"We shouldn't have done this," she said, "any of this."

He nodded. He raised his gun but she beat him to it, and her bullet punched him in the chest and off his feet while his shot only put a ding in the cement floor.

Salle stood at the front and laughed. She put the gun to her head but didn't pull the trigger. That was the coward's way out, to be sure, because she still had a duty. The people in the Habitat were hers, as they'd always been hers, and she wouldn't allow them to descend into rape and murder once more. The world she'd created already was bad enough, but at least they had hope, and she wouldn't take that way.

She'd let someone else.

"I understand now, Lars," she said.

Numerous bodies moaned in the dark. She wandered for a time, shooting them until they were silent. When her bullets ran out she took Joseph's gun and finished the work.

BANG

BANG

BANG

All the while the seven blue dots shone above her, as clear as stars in the sky.

The door at the back was slick with blood. Two bodies lay there, where they'd tried to escape. Salle opened it and peered out.

A cold, concrete corridor. No paint here, no niceties. The Command module was tiny compared to Lars' Habitat; just the bare essentials for survival. These people weren't the seeds, only the soil to help the seeds grow. They hadn't needed to be pampered, their deep potential didn't need to be tapped, they only needed to do their work like cogs in a machine.

"Hello!" Salle called, but of course no one answered. They were all dead behind her.

No one was coming to help. No one in the Habitat had access. Nobody knew what she'd done. Nobody in the world was better qualified than her to make this decision.

Except, perhaps, one.

In her room she dug out a spare uniform. The few bits of memento from her previous life seemed so small and pointless now. They were the crayon scribblings of a pathetic, hungering child, a child who would never get a thing that it wanted, who didn't deserve anything, who wasn't fated to ever be happy.

A child.

In the fogged mirror she studied herself. Blood had congealed in her tied back hair, had splattered around her chin and cheeks like an unholy beard, had gotten into her ears and down her throat.

She stripped and studied her naked, nearly thirty six-year-old body in the mirror. So much potential. There was blood on her full breasts and her trim belly. There was blood on her toned thighs and her muscular shoulders. She stared herself in the eyes, daring this other Salle to rebel or show some sign of weakness, but the other Salle held just as fast as her.

How many people had she killed? None. They washed off with ease. She scrubbed them away with a wet towel, rubbing until her pale white skin was scoured clean. She scraped a comb through her hair and tore the clots out, then held her head under the cold tap for long minutes.

Penance? It wasn't penance. It was just something she did.

In her clean, pressed new uniform she felt more like a fraud than ever. Somebody had laundered this for her, and somebody had pressed it with a steam iron, and for what? Not because they wanted to. Not because they were paid to do it. Because she would have punished them if they hadn't.

It was fitting to wear. It was correct.

She stalked down the cold corridor to the elevator. She rode it down, changed over in the capsule space between the bunkers, where the shield hung above her humming softly, protecting and encasing them all, and took the other carriage back down.

The Habitat's orange hall was the same. The TVs were broken. Soot and grimy damp smeared the walls. She walked the red corridor. Life continued as normal, here. People bowed and bobbed as they passed by. Others turned the other way.

She marked all their names. Here Richards, a botanist. Here Shelley, a microbiologist. Cowards and cravens all, because of what she'd done.

She strode on. In the engineering deck she went to the sweaty man Gideon and told him what she wanted. He stacked it on a trolley for her, bowing and sweating, smiling though he wasn't happy.

She wheeled it back herself. The trolley barely fit in the elevator but she managed.

Back in the Command bunker she gathered a gun and fresh ammunition from the stores. She stood in the commander's chamber, a room she'd rarely ever been in, which belonged to the man she'd killed six years earlier. Curiously enough there were spider webs in the corners. She'd not seen any anywhere else.

"So they let spiders on the Ark," she murmured to herself.

On the wall were maps of the world, marked with red dots for all the other bunkers. Next to her bunker in Maine was a number: 9. Beside it was a call sheet of radio frequencies and codes for each bunker, long since unused since Julio took down their main array. There were directions on the correct use of drones, a hierarchy chart of command, and long lists of their full complement, including people, rations, weapons, oxygen and various pieces of replacement equipment.

There was a book of seeds. There was a manual describing the procedure for the first days after emergence. There was a decision tree describing how best the three thousand should be mated. There were books and books of contingency plans and redundancies and 'what ifs'. There was a complicated procedure for disabling the primary and all his secondaries, once the time came.

She collected the most important ones and strung them up on the walls. She took down the one map of the world, with all the Habitats marked out, and put it in a briefcase along with the two-way radio from Gideon and her gun. All this was only fair. She had six years on her conscience, now let another share the load.

In the control room she stood at her desk, in her proper position, where she'd stood for six years and borne things she'd never thought possible. It felt like turning off a light in her mind, just standing there. It was the easiest thing in the world, like a mannequin no longer needed for the task, a doll with its strings hung up.

She stood and waited, gazing up at the seven motionless blue dots.

"Come on, Amo," she said, so softly no one but her could have heard it, if there'd even been anyone left alive to listen. "I'm waiting.

17. LARA

It really is a sight to see.

Standing on the lead RV rooftop in the misty early morning, looking back along our convoy to the great heap of zombie bodies spreading across McKnight and into the postcard-perfect Pennsylvania forest like a great mound of snow, I can't help but feel a kind of inner peace.

The sky is a translucent blue. Smoke rises from the line of RVs like some tranquil vision of a peaceful Swiss mountain village. Any moment Belle is going to come along singing about her provincial town.

It's my first time out of the RV after Lara got crushed, and the cold, fresh air feels good in my foggy, muddled lungs.

Good god, what a world.

The mound is huge, a single pile of bodies crushing seven demons beneath it; at least six stories high, as wide around as a football field, and as white as the snow covering the road, the forest, the RVs. If I didn't know to look for the lines of shadow marking out shrunken peanut heads, arms, bodies and legs, I'd think this was nothing more than a giant melted snow cone.

A half built snowman. A milk flavored Slushy. A vast white Yeti turd.

I set up my deckchair and sit down.

Nobody's moving at this time, just after the dawn. There's heat in the RVs, comfort, and people are lying in. Feargal rigged his with a wood-burner, and the scent of burning pine carries strongly on the air; rich and resiny.

I sip on melted ice water from a blue plastic cup with an 'A' for Amo stenciled on the side. Out in the forests there are birds chirping, maybe some pigeons, the hoot of an owl, the shrub-shuffling burst of a grouse. I expect there'll be vermillion foxes stalking about under the forest canopy and millions of tiny hibernating creatures huddled in their warm dens, continuing on as if nothing is different.

The troubles of my life make no difference to them. If I was a red demon now, running east to swim the Atlantic in search of others, nothing would change for them. If I was dead with my family in our Jonestown picnic in Pittsburgh, all this would still be here.

It's beautiful, and I take a snapshot with my brain. The great heap of bodies, like cream piled atop a white chocolate éclair, will be here forever I expect. Anna said the bodies in Mongolia turned to stone, so then will this too; a new Mount Rushmore for a new world, where we were saved by our forbears.

Tens of thousands of them. I'll walk over later and thank them.

Down the convoy there's some noise and one of the doors opens up. Out comes Anna from Ravi's RV, bundled in a heavy red parka. She stands out starkly against the white snow, with black braids and those sharp brown eyes. She looks in my direction, sees me atop the RV, and smiles.

That's nice. She raises one hand in a wave and I wave back. Her other arm is in a sling. She starts toward me, her feet crunching audibly through the snow. That's a nice sound. A lot better than the sound of her dying in the Cessna.

"It's quite a view, huh?" she says, only two RVs away. She doesn't shout, doesn't need to, because there's no other sound around here.

"It's amazing," I say. "Come on up, there's a chair down there."

She comes over and finds the chair leaning against the side where I left it. "This for me?"

"You or Lars Mecklarin, whoever turns up first."

She snorts, and hooks the chair over her good shoulder then climbs up. It goes next to me and she sits down. It's strange to think that she's the next generation. I'm 37, young still, but with eight years maximum left of mayorhood. When I look at Anna I expect I'm looking at New LA's next leader, who'll take them forward through all the painful adolescent stages of growth, into a population boom.

We sit together for a time, because everything that needs to be said has been said, really. It's just nice to be here with each other.

"I'm going to miss Cerulean," she says.

That almost gets me going, coming from her. It probably would any other time, but I'm drained from the long day and night by Lara's side, holding my kids, praying for a miracle.

"Me too."

"I treated him so badly. I always thought there'd be time."

I smile. There's no BS between us anymore. "Honey, you went off with no intention of coming back. When would there be time?"

She sighs, and lets out a long, "Yeah. But still."

"But still," I repeat, "and he knew. Cerulean, your father, was a smart guy."

I look over. This almost gets her. Close to crying, but not quite. I figure I can probably push her all the way.

"You know what he said to me, the night he was taken?"

"What?"

"It was about Ravi, and whether he was good enough for you or not. He said, 'That boy thinks with his ass.'"

She laughs, and a tear jogs loose.

"He didn't."

I shrug. "You knew him. You think, I expect, that all the cruel things you said, all the times you stormed out, even the way you left New LA really hurt him, right?"

She nods. I'm not going to lie. The truth's better, anyway.

"It did. But Anna, sweetheart, you were his daughter. Those things just happen. Teenagers, you know? He knew it. He always saw the young woman I'm talking to now, anyway. That was his creation. Don't get me wrong, you made yourself, but would you have made this version without him? He's in you, as surely as your biological father and the T4 too. He loved you, he lived for you, and I bet at the end he fought for you too. Probably his last image was of you hanging overhead, waving him goodbye. That's a good thing, a beautiful thing."

Now she's crying. Ah, such is healing.

"I was such a bitch," she says.

I laugh. "Yeah. We had a laugh, him and me, you know? We groused about you plenty. He was big enough. He had room. The rest doesn't matter. You were his Anna. You've proved it here, a thousand times over. You're the little Anna who first ran up and hugged him, who walked across the country in a zombie convoy, you've got your head screwed on right. He loved you, and he never doubted this was who you were."

Anna cries. I cry a little too. She reaches out her good hand and I take it and we sit there on the rooftop watching the convoy, crying together. At one point Feargal pops out and gives us a wave and a muted, "Halloo," before toddling off to gather more firewood, wearing only a pair of denim dungarees. The cold doesn't seem to bother him, or maybe he likes it. It's bracing.

"How's Ravi?" I ask, after a time.

"He's fine," she says, rubbing her eyes. "He wants to give his seat on the council to me."

I nod. "I thought he might. They voted for him really because there was no Cerulean and no you, and he's smart enough to see that."

"I don't want it."

I turn and look at her. "But you'll take it."

It's not an order. I don't have that kind of power. It's more a statement of fact, because it's where she belongs. She's a leader like I'm a leader; getting it just because she's there.

We don't talk about the one thing left, lying below us in the RV. Lara. Everybody knows, it was on the radio all day and night; one update amongst many.

"I'll go down," she says, and squeezes my hand. I smile and let her go.

Life's funny.

She climbs down, rests her folded chair quietly against the RV's side, then enters. Her muted voice carries up through the thin metal to me, talking to Macy, to Adonis, to the kids, and of course to Lara.

I cry a bit more and try not to think about the future. Things are all changing. I think back to that conversation with Cerulean by the beach a month earlier, when we talked about the holes in people and how they fill them.

For him it was Anna. When he found her outside Denver she stopped him from diving off the Empire State Building. For Masako it was Cerulean, but he left her, carving a hole so big not even her own son could fill it. For Julio it was a level of respect and admiration he could never get in real life, only in a torture chamber in a bunker in Maine.

For me, it was always Lara. I left a trail of cairns across America for her. I killed zombies and people alike just to have a chance to be with her. She was my dream, the vision I would see in the sky after I joined the zombie masses clambering onto the heap.

Now she's lying below. She's comfortable. She's warm. Nearly all her ribs are cracked, her skull is fractured, her pelvis is broken in two places, and her right arm is shattered, but she's comfortable.

She's in a coma.

We don't have any serious gear here. They're going out to get it now, though none of them, not Cynthia, Macy or Adonis is a doctor, nor have they done a brain scan before. We all know a little about comas, though this coma is not like the ones we went through a year before the apocalypse. We don't know what will happen with this, or what the right thing to do is.

We don't move her. We repaired her body as best we could, and now we keep her comfortable. I hold her hand and talk to her. There's an Electro-Cardio Gram coming, perhaps some kind of rudimentary brain-scanner device, all sticky pads and wires like the emergency defibrillator I used on Abigail, but will we know how to use it, or how interpret the findings?

They'll bring books for that. We'll camp here, in the shadow of the mound, until we have some better idea. It strikes me that we'll need to teach ourselves a lot, now our only doctor is gone. Jake is recovering from his own head trauma, but we should have him transfer all his engineering knowledge to at least one other person.

It makes me think, it's time to get serious about the future. We need to preserve what we know.

I go back down. I've had a break for long enough. I sit with Anna by Lara's side and hold her hand. She looks so beautiful, despite the bandage round the patch in her head where they shaved her lovely hair and stitched her scalp. She looks like she's just sleeping. We take it in turns to talk quietly, telling her everything that happened since she went under, and all that we're going to do.

I don't want her to be afraid. If she can hear me, I want her to know that she's safe. If she can come back, or if she needs to let go, I want her to know that both are OK. She's loved and supported so well, and while we want her back, I know she'll do what's right for her. There are no mistakes in this life. It's all a tapestry.

* * *

A week later we go north.

Anna and Ravi, Feargal, Peters, Jake and me.

We've got guns and supplies. We've got explosives Sulman found in a wreckers' yard. We take an RV and a set of radios and leave the makeshift camp on McKnight behind. It's expanded now, with marquee tents and heating systems, a soup kitchen that cooks venison and fox that Cynthia hunted in the woods, a crèche for the kids, foraging groups that dig up truffles, wild potatoes and onions, and there are regular meetings of the Council to debate governance, like an upscale refugee camp.

The council voted Anna in. Ravi was relieved. He spends all his days and from what I understand, all his nights hanging on at her side. I get it. It's cute, it's love, and it's what makes the world go round. I have it for Lara.

She breathes for herself. Her heart runs. For food we had to intubate her. There's a catheter and a rotating duty for keeping her clean. She's been healing. All the books say 'wait'. I've read all the ones we could find, from cover to cover, brought from book shops and hospitals and doctor's offices. You can't do anything, is the final advice. The skull has to heal itself. The extraordinary trauma has to heal itself. The brain, the spine and the mind all have to heal by themselves.

She's in there, doing her best to come out. I can't rush that.

We've chopped down some trees for firewood, though honestly I think we did that just because Feargal wanted something physical to do. He's been wanting to make this trip for a week, I know, to tie up the last loose end, but he was too kind to press his case.

The Council voted we'd send a single RV. There's other work to do at the camp; all of Julio's survivors need constant care and attention, as a few are still in comas of their own, brought on by the last brush with the demons. The kids need some stability. There was Masako's funeral a few days ago, after the funeral for Chantelle, Ozark, Lucy and the others we lost.

The Council postponed a trial about my involvement in Masako's death. Everyone knows what I did. Alan has already told the truth to everyone that'll listen, the poor guy. He can't stop himself. Masako abandoned him just as Cerulean abandoned her, but much worse really. She quit not only him, but their son and all of us. I didn't say anything at the funeral, I was torn if I should even attend, but Alan asked me too. I was sorry. I always liked Masako.

The tally stands at forty-nine, now. We lost a lot of good people along the way.

Driving up to Maine takes less than a day. We don't talk much, as the terrain grows slightly more mountainous, the roads a little more twisty, cutting through dynamite-blasted hills and thick snowy forests. I drive the whole way because I can't handle being in the back with the rest of them.

I bring them down. I was inspirational before and I will be again, but I can't do it now. Not with Lara on the edge like this.

"Ravi's asked me to marry him," Anna hisses to me some time in the afternoon, as we pass close to New York.

"That's brilliant," I say, then lower my voice, because Ravi's dozing in back. We're all on a strange napping schedule now, after having shared night shifts for the past week to help with all the sick survivors. "What did you say?"

"That I'd think about it."

I chuckle. "Weigh up your options, is that it?"

"A girl can't be rushed into these things."

I nod thoughtfully. "Smart, I suppose. if you're willing to wait, Lin will be of age in about, I don't know, ten years? He's a nice boy."

Anna snorts.

"Or maybe you go older? There's a few more choices there. Sulman. Smart, a provider. Or Feargal, that's a strapping man."

She frowns. "Feargal?"

"You saw him in his dungarees. The man's carved out of wood."

She gives this some reflection. "That's true. Muscles are really what I'm looking for in a man, after all."

"Good genes," I agree, "beautiful red hair."

She laughs. You can't out-do me on this sort of thing, really, even when I'm down.

"So what do you think we'll find?" Anna asks, sobering. "When we get there?"

I contemplate that. "A hole in the ground. A lot of bodies. And a bunker."

"Do you think he'll be there?"

She's talking about Cerulean. Perhaps he was one of the seven demons, buried under the mound. He could have been the one that put Lara in her coma. Or perhaps he's still in Maine, waiting for us to come bury him. We may never know.

"I hope so."

I drive on. It takes about twelve hours, and I take hardly any breaks. For a time I put on some music; bits of pop that remind me of the past. Some Kanye, some Taylor Swift, a little Simon and Garfunkel. I've always been a sucker for 'Old Friends', but now I think of Cerulean and it hits me doubly. Then I think of Lara and I need to just focus on the road.

The route is obscure but not too hard to find. I remember it, as we get into the Town of Madrid in the dark. Feargal suggests stopping over and going the rest of the way in the morning, out of some misguided sympathy for me, I think, but I don't want to do that. I need to be there now.

So I drive up into the mountains, in first gear and crunching over thick, crusted snow and ice, winding up to the base of Mount Abraham in the dark. Its outline is barely visible against a muffled sky of clouds.

The warning cairns I placed here ten years back are mostly gone. The cars have been shoved off the road and the checkered finish line marking them has been painted over with bitumen. Julio's work, I expect. Just after them we stop and get out.

I walk up to the rise with the others behind me. I'm the only one who's been here before, and the weight of memory is stifling. Here I made choices that set us all on a path. Nearly two weeks ago now I swallowed the consequences of those choices like knives, and this is the new Amo that resulted.

Is he stronger, or smarter? Would he make better choices the second time around?

I stand at the rise and look out, but there's nothing to see. The gun turret is gone, even the concrete block is gone. The road is there and the field is a little more lumpy than it was before, coated in snow, but this is it.

"There," says Peters, rolling up in his wheelchair and pointing. He's looking much better than the day he came out of the sky with Anna, and his broken legs are both healing nicely. Jake stands at my other side and puts his hand on my shoulder. I'm glad they're both alive. In some ways I feel like I know them both better than anyone.

Of our original Chinese Theater group, there's only me, Jake, Cynthia and Anna left. Cerulean's dead, Masako's dead, Julio's dead and Lara's in a coma. Peters I feel a strong affinity with, probably because of what he's been through, losing Abigail.

He points to an indistinguishable spot in the moonlit snow. It could be the street where I shot Masako. It could be anywhere.

"Under there."

I put my hand on his shoulder, so we're all standing in a row like a big happy family, Jake, me, Peters.

"Tomorrow," I say.

It's cold and we go back to the RV.

Tomorrow.

18. BUNKER

Before first light I make green tea. I can't sleep. A nervous, reckless energy fills me and I barely slept in the night, spending a lot of time pacing on the road outside, past the site of my old cairn. For each lap I made up to the rise and back down again, I counted off one of the people that died.

It makes me angry. I think about Julio and the lie he made of Lars Mecklarin's great works. It's so strange that for ten years I've been guided by Mecklarin's books, while for half of that time he was giving Julio free reign to do what he wanted.

The kettle whuffs up steam and I pour it into the brown clay mug, over the green tea powder I got at a Whole Foods. The water bubbles delightfully, I catch a puff of steam on my face, and the bitter tannins plume into the air.

I sip it. In the gloom of the RV, lit by a few appliances and the bathroom nightlight, I see Feargal's bright eyes looking back at me.

"You want tea?" I ask quietly.

"Sure."

He rustles up from his sleeping bag on the floor at the back. There's just enough water left to fill a cup. The gurgling, satisfied sound of the hot water is delicious, sloshing into the mug. I could pour hot water all day.

"So what's the plan?" he asks, sipping at the steeping brew.

"I go in," I say. "If they have any guns left, any bombs, any booby-traps, it's better if there's only one of us."

Feargal sips his tea and studies me. He's always reminded me of Groundskeeper Willie from the Simpsons, in all honesty. He doesn't have a Scottish accent though. He was a florist, I think, before the apocalypse. He's a gentle, security-conscious giant.

"Can I offer a suggestion?"

"Go ahead," I say, though I know what's coming.

"Let me go. I know you want to take the risk yourself, but perhaps in the past few weeks you've caught some sense of how important you are to this group. To lose you would be a devastating blow. To lose me…" He tails off.

"It would be devastating," I say.

He smiles. "You see my point, I think. After the vote, after Masako, after Lara, these people need you more than ever. Plus you have children. I don't. Let it be me."

I expected this. Countless times through the night I almost just walked directly over to the bunker alone, wanting to get it done, but I held back out of some sense of propriety, that this should be a shared moment.

I won't hold back now.

"I appreciate the offer," I say. "I understand everything you've said, and I can't argue, but it doesn't change anything. I have to do this, Feargal. Me."

Feargal sips his tea. "It won't change things if I said the Council already voted on it?"

"No."

He sighs. "All right. I had to try."

The others wake up gradually. I make tea and we butter some of the scones Cynthia makes, enjoying a light, quiet breakfast. Ravi and Jake help Peters into his wheelchair. He's trembling and I expect he didn't sleep at all either.

"I heard you going up and down in the night," he says to me, rolling over like Cerulean would. "Like the tide. I found it soothing."

I smile. Slap slap.

Anna straps on some guns as it gets light outside. Jake straps on guns. We all do, though I don't really know why. If there's another demon it won't help. If there's a person they'll become a zombie as soon as we get in range.

We go.

I lead us out of the RV and over the crisp snow, unblemished by any human trails, up the road and onto the sloping field. I flash back to my past trip here, running over this space to tackle Julio on the concrete block. Back then the ground had been paved with the dead husks of the ocean, like chaff left behind by a corn-picking machine.

"It's over there, I think," says Peters. Feargal, Ravi and Anna work together to slide his wheelchair over the snow. His voice is firm. "Last time I saw it like this was over six months ago, when he first brought Abigail and me in."

"And when you escaped," I add.

We draw near and I stop around fifty yards away from the spot. "That's far enough," I say, turning to face the motley, injured crew. Here's Anna with her sling, Peters in his chair, Jake with the bandage on his head. Amazingly I've come through all this with only scrapes and bruises. "I'm going the rest of the way alone. I'd prefer you all stay under the tree cover, but if you insist, then Feargal can you keep an eye on the sky? Any strange flash would mean a drone, and we all get out. Is that clear?"

"I can do that," says Feargal.

"Peters, you don't ever have to go back in if you don't want to."

"I'll stay out here."

I nod, taking a deep, cold breath. "Then I'm going in."

I start walking. Moments later footsteps crunch up quickly beside me. Of course, it's Anna.

"I'm coming," she says.

I look at her and shrug. She has every right; Cerulean was her father and she needs this just as much as I do. "OK." If we both die in a booby-trap bomb, so be it.

We cover the distance in a minute, and find a large dark hole in the ground, like an entrance to the underworld. Set next to it is a huddle of snowed-over, blocky equipment lying in a shallow dip in the field. This must be the winch that Julio used to get Cerulean down. Two cables and a human-sized bucket lie alongside, the shapes muffled under thick snow.

The hole is twice as big as a manhole, and it feels surreal to really see it, dug down into the frozen earth. Even after all that we've been through, I still half expected to find only sheer snow out here. A hole means there really was a torture bunker, there really was a plan for this all along, and there really are thousands of people underground.

Anna and I circle it and peer down.

It's darker inside, though light picks out the floor far below where snow is piled in an uneven mound. My heart thumps like a drum and my legs start to shake. This is it.

"I'll go first," I say.

Anna draws a gun and stands at the edge, aiming down.

There's a stiffened rope ladder hanging from rusted pegs near the winch machine, set in a heavy metal hoop encircling the hole. I hunker down and test my weight on the upper rungs. It seems strong so I start the descent, like I'm climbing down into the past. It gets darker and colder quickly, as I'm encased in a cement-plastered tunnel. Moments later I descend through the ceiling, into an open space where the light from above reflecting off the snow below illuminates almost everything.

It's an icy, sheer cement corridor, so tall there's something cathedral-like about it. The long gray walls are dappled with dark streaking stains and the remnants of thirty or so chains. The floor is scattered with a handful of shadowy bodies. There are small trenches dug into the edges running along the base of the walls, and from these rises the faintest wisp of corruption.

Bodies are rotting here, so slowly in the cold. It smells almost sweet.

"What do you see?" Anna calls.

"Come down," I answer.

I hold the ladder steady as she descends; an awkward climb for her with only one good arm. Now my eyes are adjusting to the gloom, and I can make out the glass door at the far end, twinkling with a faint reflection, like a giant vending machine display front. Near it lie a few very large bodies, like slumbering giants. There's a trail of them spreading from the glass to halfway up the corridor, and they grow smaller as they draw near.

Scattered amongst them like boxy turtles lie three generators, with cables drooling out to three dead heaters. Riveted to one wall are a cluster of long missile-like canisters of gas. There's a kitchen area, a sink and some stacks of ancient canned food. Down near the glass there's what looks to be a filthy mattress, a rack of clothes, some tattered books.

I notice the decapitated head just as Anna reaches the ground. I illuminate it with my flashlight.

"Jesus," Anna whispers.

I don't blame her. It feels bad down here, like you'd expect. People died, people were tortured. There's a claustrophobic feel in the air, a sense of being trapped, like the devil's church. I don't believe in ghosts, but if ever lost souls felt the need to stalk the Earth seeking revenge, it would be here.

"I hate it," Anna says, and shudders. "We should burn it."

"Agreed," I say, "then fill it with cement," and as I say it I know that that's what we'll do. There's something to be said for memorials for the past, but we have enough of them already. The great white mound back in Pennsylvania is our biggest testament to death yet, and I'm sick of it. Enough.

I point at the head. "I think that's Cerulean."

Anna looks at it, then looks down at the snowy mound we're both standing on, and takes a step off it. I look down and step off it too. Now that I'm looking, I can see the outline of the huge body underneath.

"Jesus," Anna says again.

We look at the body. We look at the head. It's huge, as big as a car trunk. The ears have shrunk to wrinkles, the nose is sucked back inward, the mouth and jaw have webbed into a round black hole, but still there is something of Cerulean about the cheekbones and forehead.

Here lies my best friend, fellow survivor of the Yangtze darkness. It brings the anger surging back.

"He must've done it to himself," Anna says, "for us."

I stride away and up the hall, into the dark. I don't care if there are booby traps. Walking amongst the chains, picking my steps over the misshapen bodies, stokes my anger, until by the end I can't contain it I want to make up for all this horror. Here a body has had its head smashed against the wall; the blood and brains make a sickly frozen graffiti tag on the cement. Here two heads lie side by side in the shallow trench, like round reddish bowling balls clustering to whisper gossip.

Nearest the glass door, where Peters told us he fell, lies the biggest body yet. Its head lies beside it almost mockingly close.

Julio. I'd recognize those heavy brows anywhere.

I draw my gun and unload the clip into his face.

BANG BANG BANG BANG

The bullets tear his features to shreds. An eye socket ruptured, cheeks blown out, round gash of a mouth split, skull cracked and flowing. When it's done I find I'm panting. I turn to Anna, even as shouts ring out from above asking if we're OK.

"Do you mind?" Anna asks.

I step aside, and she unloads her clip into his skull too, tearing it to frozen burger meat. We pant and steam together in the chill air.

"What the hell's going on down there?" Feargal calls from the entrance hole. "Are you all right?"

"We're fine," I answer. "We found Julio."

"Oh," he says, then, "is that a head?"

"It's Cerulean," Anna calls.

"Right."

He doesn't say any more, and he doesn't come down. I don't blame him. This place has the stench of evil all over it.

"It wasn't worth it," Anna says, still clutching her smoking gun tightly and gazing at the ruined skull. "Whatever they thought would happen, it wasn't worth this. We would never have done anything like it."

"No," I agree, and I don't have any doubt of it. I would have killed myself before allowing this to happen. I killed myself twice, and Masako thought it was a weakness but she was wrong. It takes strength to know when the time has come. It takes raw moral courage to know when death is better than living on.

I take Anna's hand.

"They deserved much better," I say. "We'll bury all of them, decently, humanly, all except for him." I kick Julio's bullet-riddled head, like toeing a watermelon rind. "I'm not for forgiveness. He made his choices and now he can pay for them. We burn him up, then we plug him in with cement."

Anna nods.

"Then we deal with the rest of them."

Three thousand, that was Lars Mecklarin's plan. I look around, but I don't see any speakers or cameras, whatever gear they must have had to communicate with Julio for so many years. Still, they must be watching now.

"We're coming for you," I say to the walls. "We'll blow this place up to dig you out."

"No need," comes an abrupt, ringing answer. It's loud, echoing off the stony, frozen walls like the cataclysmic voice of God. It's a woman's voice, stern and unforgiving, as hard as a blade between the ribs. "I'll come to you, Amo."

A shudder runs down my spine, like someone's pissing ice water on my grave. I look at the bloody walls and the gory trenches and the stains on the floor. I look at the chains and the drifts of snow and the decapitated heads, and the rage grows so big that I start to laugh. It hits me and I can't stop. Anna looks at me with wonder and a little fear, but there's really not a thing I can do that better qualifies how I feel.

My friend died down here, because of this woman. All the survivors who are now my family were tortured and transformed down here, by a psychopath that I allowed to survive, by people that I allowed to live on, by this woman who presided over it all. I hate her so much it's a joke. I hate her so much I would tear this whole mountain to bits to get at her, but now she says she's coming to me.

So I laugh. There's nothing else to say.

When I'm done we walk back to the ladder and Anna climbs first. I look at Cerulean's forlorn head and make him a promise. Never again.

In the sunlight and fresh breeze above I feel like I've climbed quivering out of hell, like one of those battle-fatigued marines who entered the first Nazi death camps in Poland and was never the same. To see such things changes a person.

I'm ready for the change.

I look at my crew: six in total. It probably isn't going to be enough. We'll get another RV sent up, more explosives, more gear. Perhaps we can overfly the Cessna with some infrared cameras and trace out the outline of their bunker, their power supply, their living quarters by the heat signature through the snow. Maybe we'll just need to mine in this area for half a year to dig them all out, like a rich seam of coal.

Whatever. We'll do it.

Everybody's looking at me now with a kind of shock. Maybe they think I've finally cracked. I know my laughter sounded crazy, but I'm very far from crazy. I'm really just sane for the first time.

I look at Peters. The bravery of the man, to come back to this twisted place, astounds me. "You saved us," I tell him. "If you hadn't warned us, then this would have happened to all of us." I gesture at the hole. "Thank you."

He nods solemnly. I'll never know just what he's been through, but I've caught a glimpse of it now and I'm glad he's with us.

Next I look at the others, Feargal, Ravi and Jake. I trust them all with my life.

"There are bodies down there," I say. "We're going to get them out, all except Julio, then we're going to flood the hall with gasoline and burn it up. Tomorrow we'll get a cement mixer up here and we'll keep mixing until the whole thing is stuffed full. Then we'll bury the remaining bodies as heroes."

Feargal nods, taking this in his stride. "No flashes overhead. We're clear."

"I spoke to her," I say. "The woman who runs the bunker." This startles them. "She says she's coming to us, but I'm not going to wait. We start hunting for their main bunker now. We crack its shell like an oyster and deal with them. Understood?"

It's understood.

"So let's move and get these bodies up. Julio's winch probably still works."

"There," Peters says abruptly, and points. "We don't need to wait."

We all turn, and there, standing out like a pimple on the mountain's smooth white lower slope, is a distant figure in a bright orange suit, walking towards us.

"Holy shit," says Ravi.

It's a mess of a suit, half like a space suit and half haz-mat, with a big bronze fish-tank for a helmet. In its hand it holds what looks to be a black briefcase.

"It's not a zombie," Anna says. "It's a person. Look at the way it walks. Look what it's holding. It's her."

We watch in silence as the little figure draws closer, growing bigger. The helmet is obviously heavy. It feels like seeing a ghost. This woman should have died ten years ago, but here she is, wandering down the mountain.

"Anna, you're with me," I say, dropping smoothly into command. "Feargal, get to shelter somewhere and set up a sniper rifle. Ravi and Jake, get Peters to safety."

"No," says Peters. We all turn to him. "I want her to see me. I want her to see who I am now."

I nod. Fair enough. "Ravi and Jake, bring Peters. Feargal have you got a clip?"

He hands two over, one to me and one to Anna. We slot them into our pistols.

"All right."

We start up the mountain.

19. SALLE

Fifty yards away I halt and raise my gun.

"Stop there," I tell the figure, "put the briefcase down."

It stops. It drops the briefcase, which could be a bomb or another infection. There's no way to trust any of these people.

The suit looks haphazard, rustled together out of orange and red patches with seams that reveal a silvery inner lining. There are thick cables running up the front and down each of the limbs, with fine coppery wires wrapping around like the coils on an electromagnet. On its back it's wearing a Ghostbusters-like pack. On its head is the visor-less bronze globe.

It looks like a spacesuit from hell. Perhaps it's blocking our infection signal. I grit my teeth and click the safety off.

"You've got something to say, so say it," I call.

The figure points to the briefcase and does an awkward mime of unclasping the locks.

"Go ahead."

The figure kneels awkwardly, weaving under the weight of the pack, and fiddles with the case. The lid springs back with a click that pulls a sharp exhalation from Jake. The figure reaches inside and pulls something out, a piece of paper or a kind of booklet, and holds it up to the light.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

ZOMBIES OF AMERICA

It's my comic book; not a great rendition sure, printed on the wrong kind of paper with the cover image a little fuzzy, but I'd recognize it anywhere. I've been printing and working on it for a decade now, right back to the first time I finished it in New York, the day before the apocalypse struck.

It shows a tower of thousands of zombies in Times Square, reaching toward the sky. The angle is from below, in the thick of the mob and looking up at two clouds drifting by.

It stuns me to see it here. Anywhere else it would be normal; they're across the country and the continent in hundreds of cairns, they're dotted globally now that Anna circled the world, but to see it here coming up out of the MARS3000 bunker?

The figure points steadily at me, then Anna, Jake and finally Peters.

The message is clear. It knows us.

"I know you too," Peters calls. "I know who you are." His knuckles are white on the grips of the wheelchair. He's terrified and enraged. He's ready to crawl out of the chair and beat this figure to death with his bare hands.

Good.

"So what?" I call. "You know us, I'm not surprised. You had Julio down there with you for years. We've not been in hiding."

The figure drops the comic.

"Where's Mecklarin?" I ask, giving words to the urge as it wells up. "I've read his books, they're full of positive ideas about the basic goodness of people. I want to know what the hell happened to that? What happened to going to Mars?"

The figure says nothing. It could be talking but we'd never hear it through that huge helmet. It kneels again, fishes in the briefcase, and comes up with a black block of plastic.

A walkie-talkie.

It tosses the walkie across the divide, hampered by the suit, to land with a little crunch in the snow halfway between us. We look at it. It lies there. Perhaps this is the bomb. I could hold it to my head and it'll explode.

"You'll have to give me more than that."

It kneels by the briefcase again, and this time comes up with a binder. It's slender and gray, with a few thick card files inside. On the front in embossed gold letters are the words:

Habitat 12

That gets my attention. The figure swivels and hurls the binder, which whips through the cold wind like a flywheel. It clears the walkie-talkie and lands at my feet, spread open to the first card, which shows a map of the world with little house symbols and labels dotted across it.

I pick it up. In the USA there is one house with the label Habitat 12, squashed in the upper right hand corner. I scan the rest of the world. Habitat 1 is in Mongolia or thereabouts. There's a Habitat in France, one in South Africa, one in Indonesia, one in Vietnam.

Twelve in total. Twelve Habitats.

Twelve?

I flip to the next page, the only other page, which is a blank card but for a short message handwritten in thick black ink.

Now they fall to you, LMA.

I look up. The walkie-talkie's still there between us. It could be a trap. All of this could be a trap, but now I really have to know. Twelve is too many to ignore.

I hand the file to Anna and walk out to the walkie-talkie before anyone can protest, crunching through the snow with my gun still trained ahead.

I pick up the walkie. It's simple enough, black and basic with a frequency dial and a transit button. The figure mimes clicking the button, which I do, then hold the device up to my head.

There is no boom, only the woman's voice in my ear.

"Amo," she says. "You have no idea how long I've wanted to meet you."

It's not the voice from before, the stern and emotionless tones that rang out in the torture chamber below, echoing harshly off the walls. This is a warm-blooded woman on the other end, with a faintly Valley girl-ish Texan twang.

"Lars Mecklarin," I say, enunciating each syllable clearly, stabbing them at her like knives. "Where is he?"

"He's dead," she answers.

A long moment passes. I squeeze the walkie-talkie so tightly it hurts my palm. It's that or squeeze the trigger.

"My name's Salle Coram," she goes on. "I was a psychologist with Lars. He built a paradise down there, Amo. Three thousand people, can you believe it? It was so good. All his theories about humans were proved right. We were firing on all cylinders, fully actualized people, pushing the human race forwards."

"So you killed him," I say abruptly, as stony and hard as I've ever heard my voice come out.

"No!" She sounds genuinely upset. "I loved him. He killed himself. There was a revolution four years in, when he saw what the Habitat really was. They lied to all of us, Amo, Lars included. None of us knew about the apocalypse outside. We entered the bunker because we believed in the vision of Mars; we thought we were changing the world. We were good people. When Lars found out the truth he shot the man who'd lied to us, then he shot himself too."

I stare at her polished bronze helmet. All of this could be bullshit designed to prey on my sympathies; a last ditch attempt to save herself and her people, though something about it rings true. Lars killed himself when faced with the apocalypse? It's an uncomfortably familiar story.

"So he left you in charge?" I ask numbly. "Of three thousand people."

"I know what you're thinking," she says, "that he was a coward? But he was a great man. I've seen his influence in you. I know you built your New LA on many of his precepts. I used to live to get reports on your progress, from the satellites then later from Julio. It was like Lars was alive again, doing good work. I've admired what you've done for the longest time."

I laugh at that. Now she's trying to play me with flattery.

"You're a liar and hypocrite," I say. "You admired me, but you kept Julio? You gave him a home? You helped him rape, murder and torture dozens of people. You helped him kill Cerulean and you sent your demons after us. I should shoot you now."

Slowly she lifts her arms until they're spread-eagled to the sides. I'm helpless, this posture says. I'm at your mercy.

"I'm dead already," she says, "but go ahead if it makes you feel better. You've won, after all. To the victor the spoils."

A silence hangs between us. A wind blows chips of cracked snow, torn up by my footsteps, skittering over the perfect white surface like spray off a frozen wave.

Perhaps this is surrender. Perhaps this is misdirection.

"And these other bunkers, do they admire me too?"

"They don't know you exist. I never told them. But if you go down below, you'll learn all about them. Everything you want to know is down there, along with three thousand people."

I gaze at her. Three thousand people is so many. You could remake the world in a generation.

"They're alive?"

"Most of them. I had to kill some six years ago to stop the revolution. When they found the Mars dream was a hoax and their world was really gone, they stopped conforming to Lars Mecklarin's rules. They went mad. They raped and killed each other; good people, kind people, brilliant scientists. It was horrific, and it fell to me to stop it."

The gun starts to feel heavy. So this is a justification, and I know what's coming next. I know how I reacted with Don, I know how I was in Sir Clowdesley and Times Square. I've killed so many people. I killed Masako and I've barely thought of it since; no qualms, hardly any regret. I could justify just as well as her.

It makes me tired. "Excuses."

She nods, the big bronze globe of her helmet rocking forward slightly. "You're right. But how many people have you had to punish, Amo, to keep the others alive? How many lives have you extinguished because you just didn't have the time to save them?"

I feel dizzy. Not many. A handful. Two, perhaps. Don and Masako, that's my direct tally, but through my inaction? Add Julio and Cerulean and all the victims of this woman. Add Abigail and Lucy, add Chantelle and Ozark, add until they're a pile heaping up to the sky, and all of them asking 'why?'

"Lars saw it," I say, making the connection, "he saw it coming."

"He killed himself rather than face it, but what option was that? I couldn't lead them all in a mass suicide. The primary was there, part of an intersecting plan of twelve primaries from all twelve bunkers, so I used it. You would have done the same."

"By primaries you mean demons?"

She nods.

I want to wash my hands of this and walk away. I want to go somewhere I can feel clean again, but I'm not sure that there's any such place left.

"Now our hope is gone," Salle goes on, "we have enough supplies left to last a few years, but the powder keg of a new revolution will blow long before the other primaries reach us. You've killed us, maybe not today but soon. We'll tear ourselves apart."

I want to sit down, right here in the snow, and hold my head.

"I won't see it though," she says. "This suit's killing me. We never perfected it, and the signal rising off you is too strong. I'll start to ramble soon, then I'll collapse, my mind will leak out of my eyes and my ears and they'll finally be free of me." She stops for a moment, as if preparing herself for what comes next. "They can kill each other, if they want. If you want."

I stare at her helmet. It meets my gaze impassively. So we come to the crux, and the biggest knife of them all, laid out on the second card in the folder.

Now they fall to you, LMA.

I get it. I see it. Perhaps everything thus far has been preparation for this moment.

"They fall to me," I say.

"As they fell to Lars," she says, "as they fell to me. You've made your choices. Now make this one."

I imagine her eyes gazing at me from beneath the helmet. Is she angry, or righteous, or is she just relieved? Three thousand people living in misery, without hope, and there's not a thing I can do to help them. It's a curse, and the weight of it settles over my head.

"With that," Salle says, "I bid you adieu."

Abruptly she pulls a clasp on her chest. Gas hisses out of a ruptured valve and the heavy bronze helmet blows back off her head.

Underneath is her face. For a second I'm looking right into her eyes as they flash-freeze to white, and for that second I feel her looking back into me. Blue eyes, honest eyes, in a pale and haggard face.

Salle Coram.

Then the woman is gone. The last shred of color in her cheeks fades to gray and her eyes burn white like any other zombie.

BANG

Her gray skull blows out, spraying brains over the snow behind her. Another shot comes and her throat blows through in a fan of blood.

She drops.

I turn and see Peters has the gun, smoking in the cold.

It's fair.

I nod, but he's not looking at me. There are more important things.

20. COMMAND

I stand frozen in the snow.

Salle Coram's blood drains into the white. Everywhere there's white, spreading over the fields and the forests, the mountains and the road, a perfect screen for the corruption below. But now there's this stain, like the first blush of the infection creeping through. The geyser to follow will tarnish the world.

I've faced this choice before.

I imagine Lars Mecklarin in that moment of understanding, as the crushing weight of responsibility for all those people fell down. I know how he felt as he pressed the gun to his head.

BANG

An end to guilt; an end to pain, to fear and to suffering. I've been there, done that and bought the T-shirt.

But he left Salle. Now Salle's dead too.

The gun's in my hand still. I look at it as if the answer may lie within. The inner barrels of these things are swirled, you know, to make the bullet spin in the air. That's a piece of knowledge we all got from Julio.

Ah, Julio, what a stupid, awful, pointless waste. I'd kill him a thousand times over and never regret it. But would I kill him then? If I could go back in time and kill him before any of this happened, would I do it?

That's the only question that matters, because there has to be a line and I need to draw it somewhere. This is my responsibility, built on the choices I've already made.

I smile at the white mountain. Salle Coram's just as bad as Julio. I'd shoot her myself for handing me this. But then, what I just saw in her eyes as she died was sincere. I don't think she was evil. She was just weary. She had shouldered the burden for long enough, and now she wanted to pass it on.

I can sympathize with that too.

I turn to the others. There's Anna, holding the binder and looking at me with a terrible light in her eyes. She knows, or she suspects. There's Peters with his gun, tears rolling down his cheeks. Down off the RV, Feargal is a small figure running over the snow toward us. Ravi and Jake are staring at the dead body.

Seconds have passed only.

They fall to me, and I wonder what is right or wrong anymore. Am I the Last Mayor or the last executioner, and isn't there a scale for things like that? Shouldn't there be a calculation made on a set of balances, weighed by some unbiased and blind judge, who would tally the score in pain and suffering on both sides and come to a final decision?

But I don't have those scales or that judge. There is no easy or logical decision. I have only myself and my people, forty-nine against three thousand, and it isn't fair. There's no way to fathom it, though the facts are right there.

It would be the right thing to do. The numbers are plain, and we could even have a few happy years before the demons from the other bunkers reached us, my children growing and playing, Anna and Ravi deepening their love, the survivors finding peace in New LA, so that when the other demons hit it would be over in seconds, with no time to be afraid.

Would that be better? Would that tip the scales into balance?

I think of that, and I squeeze the grip of my gun, and I look at Anna. We could return to the RVs and go back to New LA to live out our days. The three thousand would have a chance, and our community would end with little pain or fanfare. They could tear down my cairns and start again.

But Anna sees that too. I see it in her, and I know she won't go quietly. I'd have to shoot her right now, then Ravi too, Jake, all of them. In Pittsburgh I'd have to kill all my people, as they'd never believe any explanation I could give. There'd be no peace, only a great and deep betrayal blown into the dream I've built. I'd have to kill Cynthia and Sulman and Witzgenstein. I'd have to kill Lara on her hospital bed. I'd have to see the fear on my children's' faces as I stalked up to them with a smoking gun.

It's terrible, but is killing three thousand people, or leaving them to kill each other, any less terrible?

I smile at Anna.

She has her gun in her hand now and she doesn't smile back. Good. I'm glad. It's an immense weight, and if I couldn't bear it then she would. She's always been strong. Just like Lars Mecklarin, just like Salle Coram, I could pass this decision on down the line. She's strong enough to carry it all.

But what is strength? I know it's not always strength to survive. There's a line where it's stronger just to say no more, to take your chips out of the game and leave the table for good; just like I did in Times Square, just like I did in Iowa. Killing every day just to live is not enough; it isn't human anymore.

I don't know what the answer is, so I just look at Anna. She's so certain. I'd have to shoot her right between the eyes, then again through the throat. I couldn't miss. Is that strength, to shoot the ones I love to give our race a better chance? What is the suffering of forty-nine against the mass misery of three thousand?

The greatest minds of our generation. Visionaries who followed Lars Mecklarin under the earth; people who deserve a chance to thrive just as much as mine.

I just don't know, and I don't have time to weigh it out. The seconds are stretching on, and Anna's getting itchy. She doesn't have the same doubt as me. I have to decide.

So I decide.

I draw the line that Lars and Salle couldn't draw, because in truth I already made this decision ten years past, when I first gave these people a chance.

I gave them a chance when I stopped Julio and fated us to all this misery. I gave them ten years worth of chances, and they used them only to plan how to kill me faster. I gave Julio the chance to belong and become a good man, but I couldn't make him change.

I did everything I could, and I won't do it again. I drop the gun. I've already made this mistake once.

Because I love my wife. I love my children. I loved Cerulean and I love Anna, and all that tips the balance. It puts a thumb on the scale that breaks the machine, because the lines are so stark. I can only take this world in one direction, now, because at some point you have to draw your own line.

I won't put this decision in the comic book. I won't share it with the Council. Our past country was built on the back of a genocide, but there's no reason this one should be. Let the genocide rest on my back alone.

Manifest Destiny.

Anna has her finger on the trigger. Rage still burns in Peters' eyes. Feargal is still so far away. Jake and Ravi stare at the dead woman on the snow, and it's easy for me, really, a matter of only a few words that seal our fate and set our path.

"They're dead," I tell them. "All three thousand. They're already dead."

* * *

We don't talk.

We find the bunker. Following Salle Coram's footsteps is easy, leading us back through the snow to another manhole in the earth. There's a ladder leading down and I take it first, over Feargal's protestation. Halfway down a strange tingling sensation runs over my skin, like static electricity, then I'm in.

A small round space awaits at the bottom, well-lit and decked in sheer white plastic with two doors and an elevator call button, which I press. Anna and I get in the car on the left together. There's no space for anyone else. The ride is short. She looks into my eyes throughout. There's nothing to say.

The door opens on a battered yellow hall. Broken TVs line the walls, in places leaving empty alcoves behind. There are black and brown stains of all kinds spattered around the walls: blood and soot, damp and grime. There are also twenty or so people here too, men and women all around thirty and forty, and as the door opens we catch the end of their transformation.

Their bodies go gray. Their eyes go white. I haven't ever seen the change on a scale like this, except in videos I put into Ragnarok IV. They're all dying right in front of me.

I feel sick. I take a step forward and stumble. Anna catches me. She takes my hand in hers. Her eyes are full of understanding. Goddamn.

"Come on," she says, "let's see it through."

They turn into zombies around us.

We walk on. There's a red corridor beyond, lined with angular posters supporting Salle Coram's authoritarian regime, filled with more bodies transforming, more people dying.

Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands.

It's mass murder. It's genocide.

I can barely see as tears pour from my eyes. They become the ocean before us. They die before us because we are the zombies now, come to spread our infection. Worst of all is the aftermath, when they scurry to be near us. They reach out and touch me, taking my hand and pressing close, clinging to my legs and shoulders, straining to touch my face, a cruel mockery of affection, love, forgiveness.

Anna drives me on. These are my disciples now, and the burden I must carry. These are my victims forever following behind, like heads strapped to a muscle car's grille. Three thousand. I touch their cheeks and can't stop the tears from running down my own.

We walk all the floors in a blur.

The bunker is huge. As we walk through its once-colorful hallways, swamped by zombies pressing against us, I begin to sag. I can't do this anymore. I can't see another face change, another body hunch, another soul wink out, but Anna's right there and her strength buoys me on. Her hand is tight around mine, holding me up, and she's right. I owe a duty to these people to see it through.

The zombies surge around us like a tide. Slap, slap, their bodies say against each other, slap slap. Together they carry us past a riotous jungle of dark oak and acacia, through a farm hangar filled with creeping soy plants in deep brown loam, past a shuttered bar and a bowling alley and a cinema. The floors stretch down and down, deep into the earth. We go by luxurious rooms, spartan rooms, and a wing that had to be a prison.

We stand in a corridor of solitary confinement cells, in the doorway of one, now painted gray with a reinforced metal door. Prisoners have etched their names, serial numbers, and curses into the walls. There is no light. There's a bucket in the corner.

Salle, I think. Goddamn it, Salle.

We walk through a gym and an area that was once a coffee lounge, now decked out with a set of medieval stocks and a bloody whipping post. Now all the ocean we see have already transformed, which is a mercy. Some of them are only half-dressed, summoned from their beds, and on their backs I see whip marks. On their calves I see cane marks. This was the misery of their last six years. I have just killed all three thousand.

It will be a difficult knife to swallow. It's a bigger knife than any of them, and I'll spend my whole life trying to swallow it. It's so large I can't even feel hurt yet, because it's a part of the world around me. It's a lens through which I now see everything else.

On the bottom floor, in a park-like space planted with potatoes, Anna and I part ways. We don't say anything because words can't express any of this.

I wander alone, away from the others, taking my own meteor cloud of zombies with me. I drop in and out of rooms, where the covers lie tossed back, where the paperwork is half-done on desks, where a production line still rolls slowly around a hall, the workers deserted, where a bagel rests half-eaten on a chipped plate.

I stop crying and keep walking, hunting for something that I only understand when I find it, many hours later.

Lars Mecklarin. On the deepest level, interred in the wall by the doorway of a large park, lit by a flickering orange light, there's a stone grave marker carved in a very familiar symbol from the old world; a swooping chevron across a circle, with a gleaming star in the middle.

The Star Trek icon.

I smile, despite everything. Even in the depths of their despair somebody had a little wit. Maybe this too was Salle. I expect I'll be learning about her and these people for years, now. I need to know them all, to read all their names and about their lives, to understand who they were. Perhaps that's my penance. It's also my duty, because these were my people too, whether they knew it or not.

Standing in front of Lars Mecklarin's marker, with no words but his name and the dates of his birth and death, I try to think of what I would have done in his place, but no clear answer comes.

It was an impossible situation, but I wish he hadn't killed himself. Not with so many people depending on him. He left it to Salle, but she was no more prepared than him. Perhaps there was no better way, but I still wish that he'd tried. He was the captain, and it was his duty to go down with the ship, not be the first to leap out into the water.

I wish, I wish.

I touch Mecklarin's symbol. I wish he'd just tried. I lead my zombies on.

Feargal drifts past me in a corridor and we wave silently, caught up in the moment like pickers in the Yangtze darkness. Peters is sitting silently in his chair and looking at the prison wing. Anna is standing at the entrance to a forlorn-looking room, studying a brown stuffed monkey doll resting on the bed. Ravi is nearby reading duty roles, rules and punishments painted on the wall. Jake is on the top floor inspecting the Habitat's large-scale hydraulic engineering.

"I should be able to rig this," he says, the first words I've heard in hours.

I hug him. He seems a little surprised, then hugs back. I'm glad Jake's alive. Jake is pure in a way I will never be.

"Work on it," I tell him, rubbing my eyes. "We need to get these people out. They deserve to see the light."

I roam. I ebb and flow like a tide on the ocean, like a piece of clockwork compelled from within and without. Would Lars Mecklarin have been able to predict all my random movements, if he'd known me well enough?

It doesn't matter, because he's dead.

I take the elevator back, then ride its twin down. Beyond lies the 'Command' zone, a very different space with only a few narrow, cold hallways and a handful of bunk bed rooms. I walk along corridors where Salle once lived and worked, where her discipline had crushed these people into obedience. There are rusty black blood trails in one stretch, leading at one end to a refrigerated cold storage room, where Salle's twenty-three Command colleagues are dead and tumbled atop each other.

I say a prayer and move on. We'll pull these bodies out too and bury them. At the other end of the blood trail there's a semi-circular hall like a flight control room, with rows of computers on desks facing a large screen showing a very dull movie; seven solid blue dots on a wireframe map of America.

I sit and watch it for a long time, thinking about nothing really. This is what despair looks like.

I wander. I find Peters sitting in a side office, the only other room that isn't a bedroom, a bathroom or the kitchens. It must be the commander's office, as pinned to the walls are maps, charts, lists of names, instructions, timelines, decision trees and numbered contingencies; almost everything we could ever want to know about the bunker and its plan. On the desk is a neatly hand-written guide to it all, leading us through what we need to know. It's addressed:

Last Mayor of America

She prepared. Perhaps she knew this would be my choice.

"It's all bullshit," Peters says dismissively, waving a hand.

I'm inclined to disagree, but I've no heart to argue with him. I've no desire even to see this stuff yet. If other demons are coming, if other bunkers are plotting against us, we have time.

We have time.

I climb back to the surface. It's dark out and I'm the first up. We spent the whole day down there, buried with the dead. I take a deep breath of the frigid New England air. Ten years underground seems unbelievably long.

I go to the other bunker, Julio's hole, and start setting up the winch. I'm not going to sleep tonight anyway, I know that, and there's a lot of work yet to do.

21. HOME

We get the half-formed demon bodies up in the night, as the others come along and help out. In the end the winch can't lift Cerulean's huge frame, so we rig a wire from an RV and haul him out that way. His head comes up separately and rests beside him, under a blue tarpaulin weighed down with stones.

I sleep a little, then radio back to the settlement in Pittsburgh around dawn to talk to Witzgenstein.

"Lara shows no change," she says, the first thing after a greeting, which I appreciate. "Your kids are good. They went on a field trip into the woods to look for pinecones."

I smile. After the horrors I've done in the last twenty-four hours, hunting for pinecones sounds like a wonderful thing. I fill her in on our side of things and tell her to bring the RVs up when they can. This is something we all need to see.

We flood Julio's bunker with gas poured directly off a tanker, found a little way down McKnight. The driver is still in the cab, caught sleeping when the apocalypse struck. Apart from his withered gray skin and puckered peanut face he looks like a regular person, with clothes as bright and clean as the day he went to sleep in them. He was in a prison for ten years too.

He hangs around while we drive his tanker up to the field and over the sloping snow. The hose sloshes out a dense sludge, more like petroleum jelly than regular gasoline. This is what ten years of sitting in the heat and cold will do; the water vapor breathes away through the tiniest of gaps in the tanker's joints, leaving raw rocket fuel behind.

Normally we dilute it ten to one with water, but not today. The jelly pumps in, acrid and brown, and Peters tosses in the lighter. The resultant fire is so fierce that flames lick out through the manhole mouth.

We stand around for a few hours, bearing witness. When it's done the interior is a bare black hole with everything gone; the generators and the heaters, the chains and the bodies, all reduced to dust and ash.

Cement follows a day later. We keep working for hours to load the bags and mix the contents, keeping a steady flow of gray slurry flowing into the hole. Filling it to the brim takes a day and a night, a real commitment of our time and effort, but there's something transformative about doing it this way, something healing, like scattering dirt onto a coffin.

Afterward Jake works in the Habitat, setting the hydraulics to their original task, while I peruse the files Salle left for me in the commander's office. There's nothing really about the cause of the infection, except as it relates to this bunker. Of particular interest is the inbuilt receiver their 'primary' demon had, connected through something called the 'Hydrogen line', baked in at a genetic level. This genetic switch would pass on to any 'secondaries' it infected, essentially providing a button Salle could press to deactivate them all, when the time was right.

Though there is little on how they got their primary, it's clear that this switch won't deactivate primaries from other bunkers, and won't defend us against the hundreds that may be coming. Still, I find the button and push it; a protocol buried deep in the computer system, guarded by four banks of passwords and security identification, kindly left behind by Salle.

Anna and I do it together; so simple. On the screen in the control room the seven blue lights wink out. We get a call from Lars moments later, confirming what we'd already briefed him on.

"They're climbing down," he says. "They're picking themselves up and heading off! It's amazing."

"Where are they going?"

"East!" he cheers. "They're all going east."

I look at Anna. We're both thinking the same thing. This will be another line of defense for us, and also an assault. We'll put trackers into as many of them as we can, and follow. We'll take the other bunkers one by one and flip all the underlying switches, each time releasing our army to press on again.

"We're going to be OK," Anna says.

I think so.

"We're coming tomorrow," Witzgenstein says. "And I have some other wonderful news. Lara seems to be showing signs of improvement, Amo."

My eyes quickly well with tears, sitting there in Salle's control room. Hope, in such an awful place, comes so strangely.

"Here," she says, and then there's Vie and Talia on the other end of the line, shouting out about the things they built with their pinecones, and how they're going to start a forest back in New LA, and how mommy maybe smiled at them earlier, and maybe she moved her hand, and isn't it strange that she might be waking up just at the same time as all the zombies wake up?

I cry and laugh and go along with them, approving their ideas to build snowmen out of pinecones and reed grass, agreeing it's strange mommy's waking up right now, though she's definitely not a zombie, don't worry about that, and I'll see them soon, and we'll have snowball fights together of course, and so on for thirty minutes until I can barely stop myself from blubbering and hand them off to Anna.

She's beaming at me. She beams and cries a little too.

Lara's waking up, with the zombies. That's a kind of beautiful thing, no doubt. My wife is coming back. I sit and listen to Anna try to get a word in edgewise while I watch the map of America, with not a single blue dot anywhere to be seen.

* * *

We each find our own work.

Feargal heads outward, roaming the nearby mountains until he finds the bunker's drone base, dug into a natural alcove in Mount Abraham's northern side. It's an empty hangar now, with bays for four Predator X-class drones. Presumably they dropped out of the sky somewhere to the west when they were chasing Peters and the other survivors across the country.

"The automation here is amazing," Feargal tells me on the walkie. "Automatic docking, charging, reloading of munitions. It's like clockwork, and it's still working. If I had a drone now…"

"Who would you bomb?" I ask. "The IRS?"

He laughs.

I let him loose on the stacks of military information in Command, and on the fourth day he comes up with an explanation for why Cerulean wasn't shot by the gun turret.

"It was automated too," he explains, sitting behind the Command desk and plainly enjoying it. I sit before him like an underling and indulge him in this. "A kind of AI program designed to recognize anything that looked like a zombie by its profile, posture, way of walking. Zombies were the threat, so your man Matthew running was a viable target, but Cerulean crawling across the field? The turret couldn't waste ammo on every deer or fox that came near, so it was set to ignore them. Cerulean must've looked enough like one of them, crawling along, to earn a pass."

It's interesting information. Once I was so desperate to know the answer, but this is so banal and obvious that it doesn't satisfy. There was no human choice involved in sparing him, only a simple machine intelligence. Cerulean would have gotten a kick out of it.

Ravi and Anna spend their time working in the farm halls to harvest the widest range of crops and seeds they can. Ravi takes to it with gusto, constantly smeared with dirt and happy to be at Anna's side, while I think Anna enjoys the quiet time, involved with nurturing things to life.

"They've got strains here I've never heard of before," Ravi explains to me excitedly. "GM sorghum that reseeds year on year, with yields like you wouldn't believe. Rice that's drought-proof, corn with more calories per kernel than anything in all of Iowa. It's high-tech, gene-spliced stuff."

"We'll take it," I say. "Load it up. Cynthia will want to marry you."

He grins. Anna frowns at me. Has she said yes to him yet? Cerulean's not around to tease them anymore, so I suppose that job falls to me. I'm recovering some of my old self.

Peters mostly wanders, rolling quietly in his chair, looking at this place that he was tortured for. I catch sightings of him round the Habitat and Command, soaking it in. I know he's weighing all of this. That's good.

In a week Jake has the system figured, and he hands me the plunger.

"This'll do it?" I ask.

He nods. It's a plunger like you'd see attached to TNT in a Road Runner cartoon.

"Does it have to be so dramatic?"

"It's like the cement," he says. His voice is back to normal and the wound in his skull is healing nicely, the gory gash from before fading to a tight pink line with scabbing round the stitch holes. It makes me very happy to see him heal. "You have to really mean it."

"And it'll start explosives?"

"It starts a process which begins with twenty explosives they planted, and moves on to the hydraulics."

"Good work."

We wait for the others to come. Seven more RVs join us in two days time, lined up neatly along the winding mountain road to get the best view.

One by one we bring everyone down into the MARS3000 bunker and show them around. I show it to my kids. The zombies have long since lost interest in us, having fully charged, but Talia finds them fascinating. She's never seen this many together before, except for the battle with the demons. Now she walks between them holding their hands, like an enthusiastic, very friendly dog. They tolerate her. Vie is more interested in the layout of the Habitat and all the various controls in Command.

I get Witzgenstein and the other Council members down too, and they vote on some things: order of ceremonies, the words to use, who gets to speak when and what comes next.

In the end, it's me who pushes the plunger and blows the cap off the bunker. It's not something I'm hungry to do, as it symbolizes the death of all these people, but for that same reason I don't want anyone else to bear the weight of it. It's on me already.

It's not so dramatic as I'd expected. The explosions are disappointing, with all of them taking place underground. The earth shakes, some snow jumps up in the air on a section as big across as a volleyball court, then for a long time there's nothing. We all sit on our RVs watching the smooth slopes, like the ranks of scientists, soldiers and government people who watched the early atomic explosions.

"These explosives are more like fracking," Jake whispers to Anna, respectful of the somber mood. "The charges fracture the earth above; they're not designed to blow it all out. The elevators will do the rest."

In a few minutes they do, with a grinding bass vibration that shakes the earth. Gradually the volleyball court's worth of snow begins to lift up and roll to the side, as a dark gap yaws open like a big metal jaw. A moment later the first flush of a hundred zombies steps out into the light, lifted a hundred feet up a pre-built shaft by an industrial grade elevator.

They hobble out. The snow and the cold don't bother them. They start as one toward the east.

"Next demon," Anna says, below her breath.

"Next demon," I repeat.

In the RV below I sit with my kids and hold Lara's hand, looking into her eyes and explaining everything to come.

She's weak still, but she's awake. She can't speak well at the moment, still recovering from the battering the demon gave her, with a bruised throat and healing ribs, but I understand every croaky whisper she attempts.

She loves our children. She loves me. She's glad to be alive.

I hold her hand and press it close to my lips.

"Honey," I say, so glad that she's here with me again. "We've both been in comas now."

She laughs but that hurts her a little, so she just smiles.

"I missed you," I say. She squeezes my hand.

"I'm here," she answers, in a faint and croaky voice. Though she's sick and she's been in bed for nearly two weeks, she still looks as beautiful as the day we first spoke in Sir Clowdesley.

She's here, and that's what matters.

I kiss her hand. The kids hug in. Outside, the rumble and grind of another elevator load rises up, and another hundred of the ocean are released from their prison, to trudge steadily east.

Did you enjoy The Loss?

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Book 5 in the Zombie Ocean series is coming soon!

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Now, page forward to read chapter one of Mr. Ruins, Book 1 in the Ruins War (included in the free Starter Library).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A big thank you to Advance Review Squad members Nicole Esquibel, Katy Page and Pam Elmes, who really helped improve the book by nailing down typos, spotting Britishisms (soya is the Brit version of soy? I had no idea) and pointing out redundancies. Thank you!

- Michael

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael John Grist is a British writer who lived in Tokyo, Japan for 11 years, and now lives in London, England.

He writes dark surreal science fiction and fantasy, and used to explore and photograph abandoned places in Japan, such as ruined theme parks, military bases and underground bunkers. These explores have drawn millions of visitors to his website michaeljohngrist.com, and often provide inspiration for his fiction.

OTHER WORKS

Zombie Ocean (zombie apocalypse)

#1 The Last

#2 The Lost

#3 The Least

#4 The Loss

Ruins War (science fiction)

#1 Mr. Ruins

#2 King Ruin

#3 God of Ruin

Ignifer Cycle (fantasy)

#1 Ignifer's Rise

#2 Ignifer's War

Short fiction

The Bells of Subsidence - 9 science fiction stories

Bone Diamond - 9 weird fiction stories

Non-fiction

Into The Ruins - Adventures in Abandoned Japan

EXTRAS

Want more books by MJG?

If you enjoyed The Loss,

look out for battles with the devil

in the sci-fi thriller

Mr. Ruins.

An EXCERPT follows.

Mr. Ruins

A mind-twisting thriller through the tsunami-ravaged future.

The Arctic ice is gone, blown apart in desperate resource wars. Global tsunamis have left the world an apocalyptic wasteland, and survivors cluster on lawless floating slums, living in fear of the next big wave.

Ex-marine Ritry isn't afraid. He lost more in the Arctic wars than anyone, and it left him numb. Now he works in the slums as an expert graysmith - diving into living minds to inject and erase memories - until he meets the shadowy Mr. Ruins.

Ruins offers Ritry a better life, but demands a terrible price: his memories, his morals and his soul. Ritry must dive deep into his own mind to escape. There, in a terrifying maze where plastic soldiers man the trenches and a massive worm eats all invaders, the battle for Ritry's uniquely powerful soul will begin.

'Inception' meets 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind', packed with blood, twists and space marines of the mind.

MR. RUINS (EXCERPT)

The needle enters Mei-An's eye socket smoothly, nestling beside her bright white eyeball and passing back into her brain. She barely flinches, though I know it's uncomfortable as hell.

She's a pretty young half-Asiatic, maybe 28, and I can't imagine what she's doing out here in the skulks. She came in to my graysmithy building an hour ago with a hunted look in her eye, asking for a very specific inject: a hand-made combination of languages and vocational skills. It's plain she's running from something, but it isn't the job of a graysmith to ask questions.

I steadily depress the syringe plunger, injecting its silvery contents into her mind. It's dangerous stuff, enough to radically change her brain content and chemistry, but she doesn't seem too phased. A moment passes then I draw the needle out and lean back, giving her time to blink away the discomfort.

"How do you feel?" I ask.

"Shivery," she says. As her mouth opens I see the black tattoo on her tongue: DZ. The brand of Don Zachary, king of the skulks. OK then. "It's cold, like brain freeze."

I force a smile and study her, sitting there on the input tray of the bulky ElectroMagnetic Resonance machine. She's clearly strong despite her slight frame, and determined as hell. Her stark black hair is a stark contrast against the dive room's simple gray walls. Her long thin legs dangle down the EMR machine's side like a child's, though she's clearly no innocent. You don't get Don Zachary's brand and stay innocent for long.

A silvery tear beads from her eye and I dab it away with a surgical cloth.

"Let them settle for a few moments," I say, "then we'll dive."

She nods.

I leave her, exiting the spartan gray dive room to stand in the polished steel corridor alongside my assistant Carrolla. He's tall and shaven-headed, with features just shy of model-worthy. I think he must have had marine training, though he never fought in the Arctic skirmishes. Working here in the lawless skulks is his war.

He raises an eyebrow, and I know what he's thinking.

"She wants a dive," I say.

"I heard the Don crucified the last guy who crossed him," Carrolla says conversationally. "Nailed him to the tsunami wall. Does that sound like fun to you, Rit?"

I shrug. There are no shortage of legends about the Don. "I'm not turning her away."

"You fucking should."

"I'm fucking not."

"Don fucking Zachary," Carrolla mutters under his breath, "he'll pull your face right off."

I let it go, and we stand quietly for a moment, waiting. In Mei-An's brain the silvery inject will be spreading, starting to make connections and change the architecture of her mind.

"I need you tight on me for this," I say. "It's a bigger job than usual."

Carrolla nods sharply, like a marine. He's got discipline, I'll give him that.

We go back into the dive room together. Mei-An is sitting there like a dab of milk on a slate. Carrolla takes up position at the control panel by the EMR machine's large hollow hub. I sit on the stool before Mei-An and look into her artificially widened eyes. I offer my hand and she takes it. It's good to get the skinship started in small ways, to start our systems aligning.

"There are serious risks to this," I tell her, though I've already told her it once. "Potential damage to your memory, to your wits, to your personality. I'm good, but there's always a risk. I need to hear you say you're sure."

She nods. "I'm sure. I don't have a choice."

I understand that.

"Lie down on your side," I tell her, "facing me."

She does. I climb onto the tray and lie down beside her, face to face.

"It'll be OK," I say. "Carrolla."

Carrolla pushes the button to fire the EMR up. Inside the large ring hub at its head electromagnets start to whir and thump, forming a soupy electromagnetic static between us. The thumping gets louder and I can feel the tide rising. The input tray jerks into motion, drawing Mei-An and I into the machine's hollow heart.

Electromagnetic waves wash over us like an ocean, and I reach out with my mind to begin the synchronization of our thought patterns. Dimly I sense the outline of her brain, a hazy sphere of heat barely glimpsed through murky waters, transposed atop her face. I focus closer, building the bridge across which I'll pass into the outer reaches of her mind, then-

"Shit!"

It's Carrolla. I hear his shout tinnily through the waves, followed by a red flash splashing across my field of view, like blood in the water. Then I feel it, fuck. Her mental immunity is kicking in fast, the Lag, reaching out to take a bite. It's a goddamn shark out here, and already furious at the presence of the silver inject.

"Her cells are starting to cook!" Carrolla calls to me from above. "Get out of there, Rit."

I can't though, not with the inject still inside her like bloody chum to the Lag. If I don't do something fast it'll bite half her mind away just to get the foreign matter out. Now the only way out is through.

"Stress levels are up," Carrolla calls, barely audible over the thump of the EMR. "If you're not coming out then get it calmed!"

I gaze through the layers of thought into Mei-An's eyes, big dark staring spheres, and will her to calm down. I've dived deeper than this a hundred times before, and it never gets any easier, or safer, but I've always survived.

The Lag snaps up at me from within her head.

"Look at me Mei-An," I say as I tune my thoughts toward a stronger connection. "Look at my eyes, that's it."

She tries to nod but now she's losing motor control, making the movement uneven and jerky. She's terrified. I kick a leg at Carrolla to increase the cooling CerebroSpinal Fluid flow bathing her brain, because if it gets any hotter inside her skull her brain really will begin to cook.

"It's going to be OK," I say, then crank the wavelength of my thoughts all the way down to fully match with hers.

A rush of thought-data pummels me, hard bubbles rising through the water; the inputs and outputs of billions of her individual brain cells. I swim roughly through the barrage, able only to see the pattern of her mounting panic. Her whole system is in emergency mode. If I had a better EMR I could fix her through that, but this is proto-Calico, a floating slum built of old wreckage and flotation barrels, and I don't.

So I dive.

A second flood of thoughts buffet me like the Arctic ocean in tsunami: chemical stress levels spiking, the cell firing rate shooting up, even the inject area flipping belly up as unconsciousness dawns.

"Damn it, Rit, she's slipping," I hear Carrolla calling from above.

I dive deeper still, down into the root and branch systems of her brain's architecture, blasting by brain structures like thick tufts of kelp, so deep I lose my grip on the world above and the sense of my own body flits away. I pass beyond the confines of brain cells and structure, through the ocean's crust and into the realm where my mind truly meets hers.

The Molten Core.

Lava blooms around me, the burning red and orange fire of the living mind. This is her consciousness, where she thinks, and here I am an invader. It is bright and chaotic with the violent churning of her thoughts.

I peer through the boiling heat. Nearby I can see the silvery inject being attacked by the Lag in a powerful immune reaction. Here the Lag is a kind of worm, massive and fleshy, able to burrow through blazing lava with ease. I am powerless before it, battered and buffeted by fiery tidal flows, but I'm also the only thing that can save a good chunk of brave Mei-An's mind.

Everything is to play for now.

My sublavic ship forms around me, a submarine built for diving magma in the Molten Core, as it has a thousand times before, hulled with three layers of heat-proof brick cladding. Within its belly my six crew members fire into existence like clay pots forged in a kiln, and I send them to their posts throughout the ship: at the engines, manning the periscope, setting a course for Mei-An's Solid Core.

The Solid Core is the utmost center of the mind. I've never dived that deep, in my mind or any other; it would be madness. No one ever has. The risks that deep inside are massive, where the Lag is god and all the pathways are an endlessly shifting maze. I'm not even sure I could get in if I tried.

But I don't need to. I only need to get close.

The engine-screw churns the ship inward, and bubbles of memory burst out of the lava ahead, popping over the periscope and leaving behind hints of who this girl is and was. In one I glimpse her slinging back Arctic gin in an off-wall dive with a guy with a sternum piercing. In others she makes her first tentative forays across the tsunami wall and into the neon skulks of proto-Calico, falling into company with smugglers, shits, and the children of the Don.

The Lag snaps up at me with ravenous meat-jaws from the magma, and I launch a few sacrificial memories as torpedoes to slake its hunger: my walk through the park that morning, the taste of the juice-box Carrolla brought in for me, Arclo-berry, one of the newest strains out of the pack-ice. I won't miss them too much, and for the moment the Lag is distracted. It's just a worm, after all, ever hungry.

My sublavic ship powers on through molten rock, and in moments I hear the dark boundary line of the Solid Core through sonar, a pulse spreading through the magma with a steady
thump thump, thump thump
that is utterly unique, and key to deciphering this girl's burning architecture: her mother's pulse.

The mother's pulse is the first memory formed in the infant brain, a fingerprint of the mother's heart that molds the baby brain like soft clay, instilling a powerful mental immunity. It is the foundation all minds are built upon, with uniquely healing properties, and I don't need to break into Mei-An's Solid Core to get it; I'm close enough to tap the sound like a keg.

Tuning forks punch out through the ship's brick cladding and capture the pattern. The forks melt in seconds but I get what I've come for. I turn the ship around and amplify the pulse outward by vibrating the hull, soothing the Lag with this gentle lullaby from the womb. I head away from the Solid Core with the pulse rippling out around me, bathing Mei-An's mind with a pattern too complex to fake.

It works, and I feel her chemical stress levels calming through the flow of lava. Her brain-rate is settling down, so I pull my consciousness out a few layers, back into the realm of my ship's conning tower. More thoughts bubble up across the periscope; glimpses of her latter days in the company of the Don's son, an abusive shit who beat the will out of her, but calmer now, as the panic of her immune rejection stills.

thump thump, thump thump

The Lag has been quieted, but it's still out there tracking me sleepily through the lava. The job is not over. If I don't do something it will still eventually scrub the skills inject, so I head to the zone where I first injected the silvery fluid, at the tail end of the optic nerve. There I massage the pulse around the inject's edges, guiding it by the nose like I would a kelp-tilling shark. It cools the enflamed cells and pets the Lag on the head like a trusty old dog.

I sigh with metaphoric relief.

"Can I have my Arcloberry juice box back?" I ask the Lag, a wordless information request through the CerebroSpinal Fluid. I remember the memory because I only gave the content not the frame, but the Lag is mute on its refund policy.

"My walk through the park then?" I press. "Come on, don't short me."

It bares its lipless, fleshy teeth. Fair enough, I've lost far more in the past, and at least I still have the frame. Nothing earthshattering happened on my way through the park anyway. Did it?

Dammit. I pull outward, and my body and the sublavic ship merge back into one as my thoughts suck free of Mei-An's mind. I rush back through the bubbling outer ocean of data as my consciousness disengages, then I'm back in my own head and panting hard in the decelerating thump thump of the EMR machine, back in the graysmithy room.

Mei-An is lying in front of me, her eyes now closed and breathing deeply. I feel shattered too. The job is done.

The tray engages, and we slide out of the hollow EMR machine together, into the plain gray of the dive-room. It's painted gray all over for just this moment, to not provide any confusing stimulus to a disoriented brain.

"Strong work, Ritry," Carrolla says, slapping me on the back.

It takes a moment to associate his words and his movement with the impact on my back. He knows this and keeps patting until some rudimentary synchronization takes places.

I roll away from Mei-An and look up at Carrolla. He reminds me so much of someone I used to know.

"Fine work, really excellent," he's saying, words more to key me back to my body and sense than for anything else, "and you bedded it in too. How was the Lag?"

I slide my legs woozily off the EMR-tray and sit up with my back to the girl. She'll need a few hours of medicated sleep for her mind to fully settle.

"Not bad," I say. My tongue feels thick as a wodge of dry seaweed in my mouth. Carrolla hands me a glass of water and helps me hold it up while I take a sip. Better. "Have you got any more of those Arcloberry juice boxes though?"

He frowns. "You gave up the juice? Dammit, Rit, that didn't come cheap. What's wrong with water, do you not have enough memories of drinking that?"

I shrug. "It came to mind."

He laughs. "Well shit. But, I heard they've got vodka mixes out at the skulk-end, some new seed-blend. Sound good? Yes sir. Let's get you to recovery."

"I'm fine."

"Of course, I'm fine also, now move it."

Carrolla is always effervescent, even when he's blackout drunk. Most people want to punch him after a few minutes, but I like it. Either punch him or sleep with him, actually, he gets his share of both.

Together we hoist my body up off the bench, and I can mostly walk on my own, so he mostly lets me, assisting only when I sway. We hobble together out of the gray dive-bay, and he's saying something about the girl, Mei-An, and Don Zachary. A warning maybe. I barely listen. Down the polished steel-floored corridor we go, to the end of the smithy building and the glass-walled outlook space. Here there's a massage chair with a Cerebro-sonic bath, overlooking the green-gray Arctic waves off the edge of our floating barge, skulk 47.

I let him settle me down in the chair, looking out at the gray sky and level sweep of empty ocean. Beyond the glass the Arctic spreads north into endless nothingness, into spaces where there used to be ice. There's nothing there now, not since we blew it all up in our hunt for hydrate resources deep underwater, in the Arctic skirmishes. This is the world we've made for ourselves.

"Switch on your favorite music," Carrolla says, as he guides my head into the sonic bath-well in the chair's head. He makes a good nurse, better than he'd ever have been as a marine. That's a small mercy. "Settle in and you'll be up in time to party, unless Don Zachary comes for you first."

"Arcloberry," I mumble, in place of what I meant to say which was perhaps some kind of joke.

He nods and repeats the word but I don't hear it, and the world fades away as the sonic bath takes hold with a medley of music I've reacted well to in the past. Underneath the beat it attempts to mimic the sound of the mother's pulse, automatically reverting the body back to the same womb-like state of recovery and growth I put Mei-An into.

It's a poor imitation for most, and works even less for me, since I never had a mother, and the pulse I grew up to was the seven-tone chime of an external machine womb, but still, I like the music. In a few hours I'll wake up feeling better, and so will Mei-An. We'll probably have sex, part of the contract for those who need a little extra context to frame the mental re-structuring a graysmith provides, and that is not an entirely unpleasant notion. She was pretty, and real.

I drift off thinking of her and the blunt-nosed face of Don Zachary's son I saw in her mind, completely unaware of how goddamn awful he's going to make my life, any moment now.

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Copyright © 2016 by Michael John Grist

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Cover art by Francisco Ruiz Nunez.

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Table of Contents

INTERLUDE 1

NEW APOCALYPSE

PETERS

CERULEAN

10 YEARS EARLIER

INTERLUDE 2

MAINE

INTERLUDE 3

TRUST

INTERLUDE 4

DECISIONS

PREP

RACE

DRIVE

INTERLUDE 5

HIT

FORGIVENESS

VOTE

FIRST MAYOR

OUR LAND

INTERLUDE A

THE OCEAN

INTERLUDE 6

LARA

BUNKER

SALLE

COMMAND

HOME

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Mr. Ruins (excerpt)