"You're doing so good," she'd say.
Perhaps there is hope for my mother and father. They could have been in the horde that came to me yesterday. Perhaps I touched them fleetingly as I walked amongst their ranks. I wouldn't know, but I think they would remember. That makes me feel good.
The JCB engine winds down as I turn the key, and I reach behind me for a shotgun from the rack in the cab, then stop and chuckle. I don't need that now.
I climb down from the cab without it and look around. There are none of the ocean here; I haven't seen any all day. There are just trees circling the parking lot, and cars parked in it, already fading in the sun. Their windows have the white hoar of sun-warp in the glass. Weeds have grown up in the dust accumulated against their tire rims.
There's a pink Cadillac, maybe Hank's. I think he used to work a night shift. And that has to be Blucy's little VW Bug over there. I laugh. When I went to her house to play Deepcraft for the first time, we drove in that.
I walk over and rub at the rain-dust on the side window, holding my eyes to my cupped hands to look in. The glass is hot to the touch on my nose. In the back bucket seat are two plastic cartons filled with books.
Vampires of the Amish Plain
I laugh out loud. "No way."
It's one of the covers I did for her. There must be two hundred books branded with my image stacked in the crates. That is crazy. They've been sitting here for months, slow-roasting.
I peel back and look up at the fulfillment center. There is only the smallest of signs to let me know it is Yangtze. This is not a customer-facing location. It is an immense cairn, filled with all the stuff we humans ever needed to survive, and the staff who used to man it.
It is a supply depot for me, now. It holds resources I can mine and craft into something better, if I can just get through the zombies alive.
I start across the parking lot. The staff door is metal and red, and the knob is hot in the mid-day heat. Summer has come, and it's a scorcher.
It opens. Of course, these places never close. They serviced our needs 24/7.
Inside is the corridor through the admin offices; a kind of smaller intestine, snaking with a little canteen, toilets, changing room, staff room, meeting room, supervisor's room, and center manager's office. All of us passed through this system the same way, before passing beyond into the greater intestine that is the darkness itself.
It's dim and hot in the corridor. I fire up my head-mounted flashlight. It feels strange to not have a shotgun and bandoliers of ammo across my chest, or the familiar weight of my handgun at my hip, but I couldn't bring any of them. I'm too afraid that, in the rush of a zombie charge, I'll use them.
In my pack I have my laptop and my USBs. That's the only heat I'm packing.
The air smells of linoleum and plastic-wrap. The center was only built a few years back, another of the changes sweeping our country. The supervisor told me all about it in the induction, but I was too busy staving off the twinges.
I advance. I peer in to the staff room, centered round a circular table where we used to sit, and the others would laugh and tease each other. I'd always try to get in and out fast. There's a soda machine in the corner, I never noticed that before, and a good-sized window onto a square plot of parched yellow grass.
I go by the offices and the changing rooms.
"Anybody here?" I call softly as I go. "Blucy, Hank?"
They don't answer, and nobody comes out to meet me. Perhaps they all found their way out. I hope that, but I expect it's not true. They couldn't open that metal door, and I've seen no broken windows yet.
They're still inside.
I advance to the entrance to the darkness; a single swing-door watched overhead by a very obvious CCTV camera. I give the non-functioning lens a thumbs-up, then push the door open.
Inside the heat dissipates at once, swallowed up in the cavern that is the warehouse, and a cool breeze meets me that smells of dust and packing material. My headlamp illuminates the nearest shelves, flanking the central aisle, but does nothing for the depths. Beyond the faint halo of light lies pitch black.
Something is moving out there, a rustle that becomes a slapping footfall. I flinch as months of defensive habits kick in. My heart begins to race and a cold sweat breaks on my forehead. I'm still clutching the door, and I want nothing more right now than to put myself back through it and run for the convoy.
Instead I close it behind me. I step out into the center aisle, 'Main Street' we used to call it, and wait.
"I'm here," I say, more loudly than I meant to. "It's Amo." I pause while the slapping of footsteps gets louder, then add slackly. "I'm back."
I catch a glimpse of the figure running, briefly visible as he goes by a slit of reflected light cast off a silvery edge halfway down the warehouse, then he's in the dark again. It was Hank, tall and skinnier than ever, his footfalls slapping more loudly each second. Others join him, a stampede of bodies running in the darkness, maybe Blucy, North Korean Bobby, travelling Linda. I stand there waiting for them, with plenty of time to question everything I've seen and think I've learned.
Are they really friendly?
Hank pops into view again, no more than twenty yards off and charging like an emaciated hipster bull. I take an involuntary step back, because he'll be on me in seconds flat. My fists are itching to fight or run or hold a gun, my nerves are firing like an M4 Carbine, and it takes everything I have to take a step forward.
His eyes glow like halogen lamps, his feet slap the floor, and I manage a hasty, "Easy big guy," before he hits. His body crashes wholly into mine and we go down hard, rolling and slapping, until his face is against my head, and his hands claw at my back and his shoulder punches my chest, and I think that at any minute the first bite will come that will finally make me part of the in-crowd.
It doesn't come. We roll and tussle and I manage to push him off me, though he clings close, and he doesn't bite.
I look at him and he looks at me. We're lying there on the cold floor like he's just done a really good football tackle, and we're about to start laughing. My butt and side hurt where he took me down, but that is all the pain I feel. He didn't attack. More than anything he reminds of a really over-eager dog. I half expect him to start panting and wagging his tail.
"Good to see you Hank," I manage. "You're looking well, considering."
He stares at me. I nod to inspire confidence.
"I know, yeah, this is weird. Hang in there. Where are the others?"
A second later one of them hits us, connecting like a ground tackle in the small of my back.
"Shit!" I cry out, and turn, recognizing the cannonball behind me by her eponymous blue hair.
"Jesus Blucy, you could have killed me!"
She cozies up. Hank cozies up on the other side, so I'm like a human sandwich. The next three or four that come pelting out of the darkness hit into them and not me directly, so that's better because I don't think broken ribs will bother them the way they would me.
"It's good to see you guys," I say, as we all lie there in an orgiastic heap. I feel warm and ridiculous though their bodies are cold. "I never thought we'd all be lying like this in the middle of Main Street. But yeah, it's good."
My wit is lost on them. I pat at them, trying my best not to be condescending. I stop short of saying, 'Good Blucy, there's a good girl.' Instead we just lie silently for a while, breathing together. It's amazing, and despite myself I start to cry. These are the first people I've seen that I actually know since the world ended.
They look bad.
"You look good," I say to Hank's wrinkled peanut head. "It's a good look on you."
Somehow he's managed to get his scarf, an affectation he used to use to 'attract the ladies', since it has little silly kittens on it and was a good talking point, caught in his hair like a turban. I untangle it. He watches me with unblinking eyes.
"OK, cool."
After a while of that I get
up. They get up with me. They follow me down the aisles, as I head for the place I've really come for. I explain to them a little what my plans are, and what I've been through. I tell Hank the play I used to 'reel' Lara in, color reading her palm. I tell Blucy how my book cover career was going, and about the big 'f' on the Empire State Building.
She is suitably impressed. I take her hand as we walk. It is a wrinkled bony thing, like a witch's, but it reacts, curling around my fingers like a baby's grip. We walk hand in hand toward the print-on-demand book machines.
This is my plan. Listen closely children, because I'm going to drop some art. It's called-
Zombies of America
And I'm uniquely placed to make it. First though I need power, and light, and paper and ink, and to understand the book machines, and to make the art and the words, but all that will come. This is a fulfillment center after all, where all your dreams come true.
* * *
The layout comes back to me quickly, and I prowl the aisles of the darkness following the invisible diviner in my head. I find the generators in no time, a whole section devoted to them, and my group follows on behind, touching my arms and back when they can. I pick up the first generator, a C-540 model, at least 80 pounds, and think 'Damn that is heavy'. I offer it to Hank.
"You want to help?"
Did he shake his head? I can't tell. He doesn't take it though. It's too heavy to be carrying. I go find a trolley and collect five generators. I drop them at the book machines then take the trolley out to the convoy and gather a drum of gas from the battle-tank.
The staff of the center look strange in the outdoor light, trickling along behind me like a line of baby ducks. I suppose this is the first time they've been outside in nearly four months. Their skin is still a light gray, but their clothes are oddly bright, like new. They wait patiently while I roll the gas drum out and get it on the trolley, then they walk alongside me like little kids gone shopping with their mom, holding on to the drum's sides.
I patrol the darkness looking for gear. I get cables and transformers and lamps and socket extenders. I get paper and card and glue and ink and toner, mustn't forget toner, and everything else I think I might need. I start the first generator burning beside the book machines and plug in the lamps.
Let there be light. It warms the place right up, and the generator's thrum gives the darkness a pulse. I pull up the old sofa Blucy installed back here, take a comfortable seat with my peeps lying down around me, and dig into the book machine operating manual.
Hours later, I'm ready to try a sample run. I've got everything in the right position, probably; ink in the trays, paper in the loading bay, glue topped up, toner roll inserted, and power running into the machine through a triple-decker transformer tangle of cables and plug combinations.
The machine operates off pdf files, and there are several in the RAM already, one of them being Blucy's latest masterwork, 'Werewolves in the Pliocene'. The cover is shockingly bad, not one of mine.
I press print. The machine starts to kick and flash like it's bottling a storm, rocking itself back and forth. Ah, the book machines. I settle back on the sofa like we used to all those months ago, almost a year now. It's so strange to have Blucy right here beside me, in withered body if not in spirit. Hank too, and some other new ones I don't know. It makes me sad that they're probably dead, but happy that they're here still, to keep me company for this.
"Sit down," I tell them. I pat the seat by my side. None of them sit though. They either stand nearby or lie on the floor watching me, while I watch the machine.
After five minutes the bucking and fizzing stops, and out spits a book onto the conveyor belt. I pick it up and study it. It is fine work. It is digital bits, words and numbers and a little bit of art which until now were floating in electromagnetic storage cells in a steadily decaying hard drive, now converted to a real, tangible thing.
Brilliant.
I shut the machine down. I flick off the lamps and power, then cart another generator with me back to the outer offices, to the canteen, where there's a window and a desk, and a fridge I can maybe get to work. It's hot as hell though, so I open all the doors and set them with jams, from the outside through to the darkness. I even open up one of the loading bay doors in the warehouse, by jumping the circuit from one of my generators.
Light floods in, and a delicious cool breeze blows by, clearing out the dry and stale air. I smell grass seeds and undergrowth, and they are sublime. Now I just need a corn dog and some Bud to watch the big game.
Back in my new office I feed coins pilfered from petty cash in the supervisor's room into the vending machine until it spits out 7UP cans, which I then put in the little fridge, plugged in to the generator. It tastes great going down cold. Sophia had the right idea with her little luxuries.
The heat clears out and the breeze keeps on coming. The staff wander around their transformed world, seeing portions of the darkness in light for the first time. At times they come to stand by me while I get to work.
I rig my workspace with a top of the line iMac, stylus and graphical pad, hooked up through Photoshop. They watch and listen with interest as the machine boots up. I feel like a conductor with them as the orchestra, so I tap the pad with the stylus like I'm signaling for attention. I start music playing through my phone. I open a new pane, the right size for the maximum pdf the machines take, and put my pen to the tablet.
I begin.
* * *
It takes five days. I take breaks but they are light, because I'm that focused. I love it, throwing myself into the work again with renewed vigor. Every panel I complete feels like a new kind of victory, more than the big 'f' in New York, more than I can really describe.
I tell my story. I tell it from my coma all the way to now, about brave Cerulean and Lara, about my massacres and forgiveness, about Sophia on the way and the big 'f' and my empty family home, all with as much honesty as I can. I put myself into comic book art: lying down in the road to die, and waking up alive.
It is a hell of a story. I draw over a hundred panels, full color, high resolution. I outline and colorize, I add in text and narration. I try to resist the urge to give myself cooler reaction lines, and fail. I am the mayor, after all.
Of course I sleep, and eat and drink soda, and take breaks when my back or my wrist hurt. Somewhere along the way, on one of my walks to and from the convoy or around the silent, peaceful center, my audience leaves. They don't say goodbye, they just melt away into the world, gone wherever the others have gone, with their quota of Amo-time filled.
I salute them, standing at the door, as the last of them traipse off into the woods. We're all moving on.
I sleep on the roof of the battle-tank, except when it rains and I sleep inside surrounded by my cairn supplies, listening to the steady thump of raindrops on the metal roof. I dream of Lara bounding through fields to meet me, like Hank, but she's properly alive. I wake feeling good, that I'm doing something worthwhile and maybe even saving lives.
After five days all the work is done, with my hand aching and blistered from working with the stylus. I format the pages into a single pdf, I trim the edges and manage the bleed on the front and back covers. The front is an image of me borne aloft by the zombie ocean, one living man amongst a sea of thousands of the dead.
I run it through the machines, all of them hammering and clattering at once, like a barnyard of oinking pigs. I run it and run it, printing copy after copy. When the machines jam I unjam them. When they need paper or ink I feed them. When the generators start to fade I fill them to their gurgling lips.
I stand on the top of the center in the middle of the print run, so high up I can't even hear the machines thumping, and look out at the sky. It's silent and unblemished. The air smells ripe and dusty, like a storm is coming. This is a full-throated Iowa summer. It's so silent, and as the sun goes down it gets beautiful; the sky lights up in burnt sienna and ochre shades, like firing clay.
/> I can hear the sound of jackdaws in the forest. The traffic on nearby I-80, my road, is absent. There are no co-workers below, bustling in and out of the office, gossiping while smoking up at the loading bays. There is none of the constant supply of semis coming to unload goods or to pick up goods for delivery.
It's just me, mayor of everything I survey in this empty and barren land, but it doesn't feel barren. There's life growing everywhere I look; green overtaking the parking lot, trees rustling in the wind, the birds, the drone of bees going by, the buzz of cicadas in the bushes living out their short lifespans.
I'm not alone, and this truly is a beautiful land.
I cart the stacks of my comics, let's call them graphic novels, to the battle-tank. There are several thousand, filling six plastic cartons. I throw out most of my weaponry to make room, leaving it in a bonfire-like pile in the middle of the parking lot. There it can rust away to nothing, and that's OK by me.
I get back into the cab, and look one final time at the Yangtze center. It's empty now, but I imagine Cerulean's digital ghost rolling through its halls, though he never once went there in life. It was his favorite place, still, and where for a time we both belonged.
I rev the JCB and pull away. I return to the spot on the road where the revelation first happened, flanked on both sides by corn, a nondescript locale but for the geo-tag I placed in my phone.
There I build my third cairn out of Blucy's bug and Hank's Cadillac, dragged along at the back of the convoy. I array them either side of the road and draw a thick checkered bar between them in white and black, just like the start and finish line of a race. I tag it LMA, and draw arrows pointing to the two vehicles.
In the bug I put my books, some two hundred of them. It's ambitious, but I've always been that way. I set up a nice bit of custom shelving inside, so the books are handsomely arrayed. There's even a sign that says:
The zombies won't hurt you. Pass it on please.
I want to make it completely plain. In the Cadillac I leave a digital cache, dozens of laptops, batteries, and USBs all with the same stuff I put in the Empire State, but with my video of the friendly zombies foremost in the filing system. It's a short highlight reel showing me walking in their midst, lying beside them, laughing with them, moving freely and unhurt while surrounded by an ocean of the dead.