The Last (Zombie Ocean 1)

  Over several days she packed her father's car; the latest model was a Hyundai. She put her guns and her Gameboy and some food in. Could Amo be alive? If anybody was alive, it would surely be in the city. Maybe he was. Maybe somebody was.

  She thought of his comic, the last few panels he'd shown her. Sitting at the wheel in her parent's driveway, decked out in her clammy magazine armor, she wondered if his tower of straining zombies was what she'd find in Times Square, reaching for the sky

  At least that would be something. Anything would be better than this.

  ROAD TRIP

  16. FAREWELL

  Lincoln Tunnel is empty of the ocean, and the road out of New York is a peaceful affair, bar the rumbling of the JCB's treads thrown back at me by the dark tunnel walls. I flip the hinged window out and enjoy watching the dot of light up ahead getting closer, like a distant vision of the world at the end of an impossibly long birth canal.

  It has been a nightmare. I have done things I never thought possible. I have been so evil I had to kill myself, and I've been so good I'm still on a high.

  I burst up into the light. A toll bay tells me to stop but screw it, I go straight through. Some rules, like road tolls and parking violations, just exist to be broken. The metal barrier rail bends backward then snaps off its hinge, clattering to the side. The JCB is so wide it strikes sparks off either side of the gate.

  Booya!

  We rumble on. There are more cars here, where the tunnel bleeds into Weehawken and up to the 495. I circle the on-ramp loop, keeping an eye on the convoy behind, but they're well tethered and none as wide as the JCB.

  I put on my music. I've set it up remotely from my phone, wireless with a Bluetooth signal booster taped to the battle-tank's roof. I click for the art mix I used to paint to, shuffle, and the first song kicks in from speakers strapped to the back window of the delivery truck: Katy Perry's Roar from 2014. Fitting.

  A few floaters bob by and I wave at them. This is a big day for them, to see living prey. They'll probably follow me until their socks come off. Most of them have lost their shoes, at least the soles of them, a long time ago. They trudge around on raw skin.

  We loop up round a Port Authority loading yard, then we're on top, on the highway as it begins. A few other vehicles lie scattered around, beginning to sag on their tires and rust round their light fittings.

  I pull the JCB to a stop on the corner, open the slot in the roof, and climb up to stand on the cab top. I walk along the tail fin I welded to the back, which bridges me neatly over to the top of the battle-tank, and from there I take in the panoramic view of New York back across the Hudson river.

  Ah. This is New York as I remember it, from movies and the imagination, sparkling like the fabulous city on a hill. From this far away the rot and decay already setting in at street level is invisible. The buildings glisten and shine like crystal shards. The Chrysler building galumphs like layers on a frosted pudding. Above a block of red and white modern apartments to the right rears the spike of the Freedom Tower. Right in the middle, iconic and towering, stands the Empire State Building.

  It is nearly ninety years old and cost millions to build, equal to almost a billion dollars now. It is the pyramids of its age, dream and nightmare both, and now it has been rebranded.

  f

  This work brings a tear to my eye. The lines are crisp and sharp. For all the world it looks like I'm wearing my immersion goggles and seeing an overlay placed atop reality. The Facebook website was never a place or a real thing, it was never something you could reach out and touch.

  Now it is. I'm making the digital spaces that connected us, across thousands of miles of oceans and deserts and forests and tundra, real.

  Community of the people, by the people, for the people. Now I'm making myself emotional. I take out my phone and snap photos. I've already got ones from Madison Park and hundreds of the painting process. They're in my blog, actually a log now because there is no web, saved in the USBs I left behind in the cairn.

  I also left entertainment for the journey: a copy of Zombies of New York in pdf format. It's the one Cerulean put together, right there in the root directory, along with a note explaining the contents and the cairn and everything, kind of a mission statement.

  I smile. I wanted it to be a treasure trove and it is. It is a geocache and a cairn, perhaps the biggest ever devised, and a way forward for me and maybe others. Entertainment is a huge part of that. To overcome, we have to show that we're capable of overcoming. To laugh at our losses and our failings is the best way I know of doing that.

  Farewell, zombies of New York.

  I get back in the cab and I rumble out, heading west.

  * * *

  The city steadily recedes out the window, and the convoy maxes out at about 20 miles per hour. A warm summer wind blows stickily through the open window, and since the JCB has no air conditioner I strip down to my boxer shorts. Out the window I see urban gray resolve into bright green foliage, old forests that would have stood back when the Indians hunted the land.

  I smell cedar and apple wood on the air, mixing with fresh grass pollen and the comfortable tang of baking asphalt. There are weeds beginning to shoot up in the cracks at the highway's verge, amongst the off-cast strips of tire rubber and desiccated chip packets. Moss grows on a low surface coating of windblown dust.

  I rumble on. Forest gives way to farms interspersed between little towns, bound northwest on I-80 that will carry me clear across the country, through Pennsylvania and Ohio, Indiana and Illinois into Iowa, right near to my parents' house. I think I'll stop in, though I'm not sure what I'll do if I find them there.

  Maybe I'll open the door, if they're trapped inside their house, and let them wander free like gazelle. They shouldn't be cooped up, like the girl I left in the box. They should be able to feel the sun and go naturally to the earth when their time comes.

  Through a little settlement swallowed up in woods, Allamuchy Township, I rumble by. My music draws the ocean on like a tide, following behind. It'll also send out a flare to anyone surviving here. If they come in numbers, if they're cannibals or murderous Satanists, I'll deal with that. The battle-tank is well-equipped.

  But I don't think that's what I'll find. As I roll through this little town, bypassing only a few Jeeps and Chevy Impalas pulled over to the roadside, past cute New England townhouses and a sagging banner above Main Street declaiming it is the second most beautiful town in New Jersey, I can't imagine that'll happen.

  Resources are not scarce, so there's nothing pushing good people to fight. In all of New York city I didn't see a single other person, so I don't expect to see any more than one or two out here. They would pose little threat to me.

  There are a few crowds of ragged floaters at the edge of Allamuchy, gathering in the parking lot of a Walgreens. It looks like they're picking over the remnants of a shopping trolley. I turn off my music, pull up past the mall, and idle the JCB. It winds down and I'm left in silence but for the lapping of the ocean up against the back of my convoy.

  I climb up and stand on the top of the battle-tank. I do a rough count, some five hundred maybe? I lie down on the orange beanbag and look up at the blue sky. Hopefully they'll all trail away, when the sound and the heat from my engines fades. There's food out there, probably wildlife in these woods, and maybe they'll go for that.

  The air tastes good, fresh and clean. The ocean don't have a scent anymore, they're not rotting like we think of in the movies. Now they're kind of dry and sterile, like old lichen creeping over a grave. I've theorized about it plenty. Their skin has taken on the texture of smooth bark, withered but tough. Whatever food they had in their bellies has passed out of them, and they're left like desiccated little corpuscles, creaking around on leathery legs.

  I look at the ones on the parking lot. A few peeled away to come check me out when I rolled past, but most of them are still picking through heaps of trash. I wonder if there were survivors here o
nce, to get all those trolleys out and fill them with food. Anything exposed and organic will have turned to dust a long time ago, in the sun and the rain. The ocean will be left with packaged Lays and Twinkies. Can they open them?

  Nearly three months have passed now since Cerulean died. I pick idly at a cuticle. I wonder about Lara.

  Some of my crowd drift away but not all. It's fine, I'll outstrip them on the highway anyway. It's nice to give them a chance to be with their own kind.

  I roll on. Hours go by, and I hum my way into them. The road twists contentedly, unfolding the vistas and trees of New Jersey. I have a bite of a Hershey bar, swilling the chocolate round in my mouth before swallowing. I chase it with fresh spring water from a bottle, purportedly from the French Alps. I could never really taste the difference.

  I exit New Jersey through a clutch of red maples in Worthington State Forest, where a sign tells me:

  You are now entering Pennsylvania.

  In the road ahead a semi-truck with a long white trailer rests diagonally, punched through the central concrete dividers to block most of the four lanes. It lies peacefully in an opening in the evergreen forest, on a low bridge running over a shallow creek, the Delaware Water Gap a sign tells me. At first I think it must be an accident caused by the infection, but then I notice the letters graffitied across its side in thick red letters, and my heart stops.

  SORRY

  I stop the JCB short of it and read the letters again. They are slightly faded, dim as though they've been there for a few weeks, drizzled by rain, but they can't be something from before. They must be fresh.

  I scan the road. A smattering of cars have pulled neatly to the sides, up to the low concrete barriers running either side of the bridge. I peek in through their dust-frosted windows, and there I see some markings, not entirely clear, but they look man-made, nothing the ocean would have done.

  I climb out of the cab, still in my boxers with the hot sun tanging at my skin, and run back along the battle-tank to get a better look. The marks are written in the dust of the BMW's passenger side window, faint and already covered over with more dust, but undeniably there.

  :)

  Oh my god. My heart is racing. A smiley? In the cab I struggle into pants and a T-shirt. I strap on my boots, two handguns, and un-slot my shotgun from the rack behind the cab seat, pumping a shell into the breach.

  I climb up through the roof and run back along the top of my convoy to the truck, where I take out the floaters below, listening to the music. It's only a few. Of course the sound will draw more, but I don't care, they're already coming for the music and at least here on this bridge there's something of a bottleneck. I slide down the ladder bolted to the tank's side and hit the hot asphalt running.

  "Hey!" I shout. Desperation comes off me in waves and I don't care. "Hey, anybody!"

  I run round the front of the semi, squeezing between the engine grill and the highway fender. There's nothing on the other side though, just the same landscape of snaking road populated by a few cars and a few floaters, pinging back and forth on the fenders either side of the road like ball bearings in a pinball machine.

  "Hello!" I shout.

  A floater, maybe once a buff young guy, wearing a Harvard sweater so faded I can barely make out the lettering, draws near and I blow out his throat and head with the shotgun. He makes a cracking sound, like I've felled a tree, and powder spumes out of him. It's not mist anymore, its dust like a seedpod bursting.

  I run down the semi's far side, yelling. The back doors are open, hanging wide out from the flank like wings. My heart thuds. Could this be a trap? It's a roadblock in an exposed spot, overlooking a lovely view of deep green forest, the brook down below, cackling away with floaters wandering up it like salmon. There's a small industrial-looking station down on the water, maybe refuse or recycling, and I scan it hurriedly. Are snipers waiting inside, or hiding in the trees around me, waiting to pick me off? Are they under the bridge like trolls?

  I don't care, and keep running and shooting.

  Almost at the back doors and swinging wide, another floater comes bobbing out from behind the open door. I shoot it in the throat at a run. Another peels out and another, and I stop. They were obscured before by the angle of the truck, hidden at the open back end like they were helping to unload it. I open the shotgun and pump shells into the breech from my vest while backpedalling.

  There are five six, seven, and they're all running.

  Shit. I shoot one, then my lead-time is too low to risk anymore. I back up more and jump over the verge, vaulting the fender to balance on the edge of the bridge. From here the drop is directly into the shallow water below, a fall of maybe twenty feet. Shit.

  A second later the ocean hit the low fender and reach across for me, and it's all I can do to bat them away and keep my balance, leaning back at a perilous angle. I certainly can't shoot this close without the recoil sending me over.

  "Shit," I say to the seven of them, up close and personal. Their faces have really degraded. They look more like gray nuts or withered old flowers than anything that used to be human. "Shit, Jesus, give me a break."

  They give me no break. I start running along the narrow lip between the fender and the fall below, hoping I can outrun them, hop back over, and take them out at my leisure. But they run damn fast now, and pace me every step of the way. They've got a clearer go of it than me.

  I run until the bridge hits the steep bank, where the road dips sharply down a grass slope. I stop on a dime and almost go over, tumbling end over end down the thick grass to a line of scrubby bushes on a brown patch of coarse soil by the brook's stony bank. The fender ends in about fifty yards.

  Shit!

  I spin, and see one of them is crawling up the embankment on hands and knees, freshly delivered from the water. I'm cornered, and it's time to stop messing around. I pluck one of my handguns, set my feet as best I can, and start pinging the seven in their throats.

  POP POP POP

  A few go down. A few don't. The bullets don't seem to have the percussive power they used to. Whatever has withered the floater's necks must have toughened them too, making the spinal cord incredibly resilient. I shoot one of them pointblank so many times his head only holds in position with a few wriggly threads, stretching taut as he bobs and moves, but he doesn't go down.

  "Jesus," I breathe. I haven't tried to cap them with a handgun for months, I suppose. I empty another magazine but it does no good, and none of them drop. They're invincible and I'm trapped.

  One of them flumps over the fender and lunges for me with his jaw gaping black. A shotgun blast blows his head to dust, and I get driven back by the recoil, falling down the steep slope and into a breakneck tumble.

  I come to sprawled at the bottom against the bushes, what can only be seconds later. The shotgun is gone and I don't know where my handguns are, torn away in the fall. I look up the steep bank and see the one who was crawling for me is now rolling down, only about ten yards away, joined by two others. One of them is slithering down through the grass like a gray snake, while the other two get to their feet either side of me, pulling clear of the bushes and getting ready to dive.

  Oh shit.

  17. SOPHIA

  I bolt to my feet and hurl myself backward over the scraggy brown bushes, with no time to see where I'm going. My jeans catch on a tough stalk going over and I come down awkwardly, cracking my left shoulder with a sharp knock on a hard root. My body pile-drives after it, pain and a sharp nausea grip me, then the ocean surges over the bushes to land snapping at my side.

  I lash out, punching the nearest one in its knurled gray peanut head, then two more flop over belly first, like damn salmon skipping upstream. I scamper backwards on my butt like they do in horror movies, utterly ineffectual, and cold wet clay shuffles down my belt line and into the seat of my pants. Already the one with most of his neck gone is on his feet, so I get to mine too and break into a desperate run. My left arm whelps in
pain as it swings but I can't do a damn thing about that now.

  It's a rooty, scrubby brown clearance area, and it dashes by underfoot. It looks like they've been digging here, maybe preparing to build another damn fast food outlet, but it's early days and the ground is still lumpy with a creek-bed and twisted gnarls of root, so my legs tire out fast running in and out of dips and craters.

  I chance a look back and cry out, because the no-neck guy is right on me, literally inches away from snagging my hoodie, with revenge burning brightly in his cue ball white eyes.

  On a dime I stop dead and drop to all fours. His calf kicks into my butt hard, his falling knee thumps into my back, and then he's flying past me to roll hard in the dirt.

  The next races on and it's all I can do to kick a leg up to meet him, catching him in the balls. It doesn't do a thing to make him cry out, his balls must be more withered than his peanut of a face, but it holds him off; only now he's holding onto my leg and leering his yellow teeth closer, while the two others lope round the side, pincering me like raptors. What am I supposed to do? Think Amo, you bastard.

  I lurch hopping to one foot as the guy holding my leg pushes closer. No-neck is behind me and I manage to grab him by the mangled few shreds of throat with my right hand. The purple-gray skin of his inner windpipe feels as cold, stiff and dry as sun-cracked leather. His jaws smack and he paws at my hand and we hop backward over the scrub together, a strange kind of lurching train, me sandwiched between them while the third circles toward my belly. I don't have any more limbs left to hold him off so I just hop.

  Three hops, four, five, all the time wriggling my fingers deeper into No-neck's torn throat, striving for something to snap. I close on a springy tendon at the back, surrounded by chunks of shrunken, rock-hard bone. These are spinal discs, then. I give the tendon a sharp twist.

  He spasms, his head lurches to the side and his legs go out from under him.