The Last (Zombie Ocean 1)

  Will tomorrow be the same? I don't know how I'm going to expand the semi-circle wider. Probably I need more signs, more widely spread. Lara, if she's alive and she even thinks to come to Sir Clowdesley, would barely get onto 23rd street for the horde that's gathering now.

  There must be millions of them in Manhattan alone. That thought takes me to fitful sleep.

  * * *

  I wake to footfalls like thunder. It's pitch black and the darkness is churning. I roll up and snatch at my phone, scrolling for the flashlight. It blinks alight and I hold it out; the weak beam picks out chairs, tables, the balcony down to the bar below, and in the midst of it, zombies.

  Sir Clowdesley is flooded with them. Their dead white eyes reflect the light and their gray faces look like ghouls reanimated to life. They shamble about the space knocking over furniture and sprawling awkwardly against the steps.

  I dart to my feet, instantly flushed with adrenaline. At the top of the stairs I see they're crawling for me. Some are almost at the top.

  I haven't got my guns, they're at the sofa and there's no time. I set the phone on a bookshelf, taking a second to aim the beam where it illuminates, then snatch up a wooden chair. I hold it ahead like a lion tamer, stride three steps down, and slam its feet into the shoulders and face of the nearest two zombies. A cheek buckles percussively, the impact jolts up my arms, and they both slither a step or two back.

  Others crawl over them though, enlivened by the light, by the motion, by the sound.

  "Shit," I curse, and throw the chair. It doesn't do a damn thing. One of them seems to have the stairs figured out and comes bounding up for me, bloody lips champing. There is no damn time.

  I turn and run, grabbing my phone and pulling the rough wood bookshelf down behind me. I hit the emergency fire door, yank it open, and get through into the dark quiet of the stairwell a second before they hit. The catch clicks, I can't lock it from here, but I don't think they can turn a knob-handle.

  I lean panting against the metal door while they thump on it, like an uncanny pulse, matching my erratic heartbeat. My breaths are ragged and I feel sick.

  I just almost died. Not even Sir Clowdesley is safe. I don't know how they got through my desk wall, how they climbed through my window, but they did, and it's no safe place for Lara or me.

  Shit.

  It's cold in this drafty vertical corridor. My phone lights my feet in sterile white, picking out the spots and blots of blood and oil. Then that too is gone. I lift it up and thumb the button and screen, but the battery is dead. It's pitch black in here.

  Something cold touches my back.

  I freak the hell out, whirling and lashing out. My elbow hits something frail and sends it careening into the darkness. I run and grab for the railing and almost go over it. A body is shuffling behind me, and I take the railing with both hands and run as fast and hard as I can along it and up to the fourth floor.

  I feel my way to the fire door and lurch through it terrified and gasping with a deep burn in my legs. I slam it behind me and turn the lock.

  The office is lit by pale bluish moonlight. It is utterly barren but for the snaky coils of cables, the snail drag-marks of the mall cops I killed, the water cooler, the gray partitions, and me. I trail out into the cold pale light, and it hits me like a dumbbell bar in the eye, perhaps for the first time.

  This isn't a game.

  This isn't for fun, or a dream, or a chance to prove what a hero I can be. I'm cold and I'm scared and I'm tired. I'm alone. I don't have a blanket, bedding, or a gun. I don't have a damn thing. From below I can hear them, their bodies pushing, pattering and packing in to the coffee shop I named as my own. Now it's theirs.

  I go to the window edge and look down. In the gray scale starlight the concrete below writhes with thousands of bodies pressed tightly together, more than in Mott Haven, more people than I've ever seen before except in stadiums or parades. They have flowed over and through my wall of desks like an incoming tide. They have poured in to Sir Clowdesley up a ramp of their own crushed bodies. Now they're looking up at me, so many white eyes like freakish stars in the sky.

  I can't save Lara like this. I couldn't save Cerulean. I probably can't even save myself.

  I retreat to the receptionist's desk. It is cold and barren, looking out on a bay of elevators from which a cold draft blows. The company name is Medisco. It's meaningless. I lay down the receptionist's chair on the gray carpet, use the padded backrest as a pillow, and try to convince my aching, freezing body that sleep is going to come.

  10. FIRE

  I wake from a Deepcraft dream. Cerulean and I are running the darkness, but we can never find the things we need. Each time the diviner tells us where to go, we arrive a second too late because some other picker has already come and taken it away.

  "Sorry Amo," Cerulean says. "We just didn't make the grade."

  He breaks apart into pieces that become Deepcraft resource blocks. With them I know I can build an excellent weapon, but I don't have the crafting pattern to do it.

  I wake up with this thought in my head, afraid. I can't even use the things Cerulean did for me, moments before he died. I pat my pocket and find the comforting hard wodge of USBs still there. I pat the other pocket and find my phone and keys.

  I take the keys out and walk to the office edge. I look down through the broken window and see the tide has started to bank up. There is a definite incline, bringing the heads of the zombie horde below me up to the second floor.

  I laugh. It's just like my comic. They climb up each other.

  I throw the keys out at them, like I'm dispensing free coffee to my constituents.

  "Free latte," I shout. I get my phone ready to throw and shout, "Free espresso," but I hold back at the last minute. It still has all my music on, my apps, my mayorhood, if I can just get some power. They have battery chargers in any convenience store.

  "No espresso," I shout down instead. "Make do with black coffee."

  Their unblinking ice-white eyes show how intent they are on my every word.

  I pocket my phone and hold out my hand. A few of them reach upward, like man reaching toward god in Michelangelo's painting. Suddenly I get angry.

  "Do you want this?" I shout at them. I pat my head. "Do you want what's in here? You're not getting it! All of you listen up!"

  I look over the throng bustling left and right on 23rd. It's an ocean wave carrying undead jetsam wherever I go. I'm like the moon, drawing them in with my gravitational waves.

  "You're not getting one bite. And you don't get Sir Clowdesley! I am the mayor of this coffee shop, and I'll fight you to the death for it. Is that clear?"

  Their stares tell me it is.

  "Let's establish some ground rules," I go on. I don't know why I'm saying this, the words are just coming out, but the more noise I make the braver and more righteous I feel. "I'm waiting for Lara. You will not mess with Lara! Mess with her and you mess with me. Second, you will not climb up my building. You climb up my building, I'll do something about it. Third, you do not come into Sir Clowdesley again, ever, and certainly not at night. That is right out of line. You can have everything north of 24th street if you want, or south of 22nd, but this bit is mine. Do you understand?"

  They shuffle to indicate that they do.

  "Good! So get lost or suffer the consequences."

  I walk away from the window. My stiff body is loosening up. I go to the water cooler, and like a civilized person I push the little tappet to pour myself a paper cupful. I drink it, then do it again. Three more cups and I'm stuffed. I notice my hands. They look like I'm wearing gloves, covered in old crusted blood and other fluids.

  Ugh. I ate a sandwich with these things.

  I pick up the cooler and carry it to the window, into the warming sunlight. I strip off my sweaty, filthy clothes and hand wash them with cups of 'Pure Spring Water'. I lay them out to dry. I take a shower using cups of cold water. Dirt and crud peels off me, st
aining the carpet. My skin emerges. I tousle my dark hair. I rub my eyes. I stand at the window naked and look down at them.

  No words, now. This is a kind of dominion. This is how I'm going to go out, if I must. They have messed with the wrong hombre.

  I scour the office for a weapon but I don't find anything, except for ballpoint pens, yellow legal pads, and a few old-fashioned telephone handles behind the reception desk. I don't like the idea of using any of them to fight off a zombie. I threw everything else out of the window.

  OK, so I have another idea. I go to the fire door to the stairwell, open it, and lurch back. On the other side is a little old guy, wraith-thin, dressed in an oil-stained blue overall that says 'Janitor' on the lapel. He comes for me, and I jog him back through the office. I go stand at the open window, and at the last minute I spring to the side and push him on.

  He tumbles out to join his fellows.

  The stairwell is empty otherwise. I suppose he crawled up out of some nether zone to reach me. I head down.

  On the Clowdesley floor I glance at the door to the library. They're probably packed in completely now, like my apartment, but it's a metal door in a concrete frame and I don't think they can get through.

  I go out the other way, into the sunlight of the inner-block donut. I pick a brown stone building to the north, and smash a window through using a loose paving slab. I climb in and walk the corridor until it releases me into a spacious, empty lobby, decked out in dark mosaic tile and the old opulence of carved wooden arches. It's dim but light spills in from the street.

  I smash through the revolving doors to get out. I stand on 24th street facing a 7-11. A few rags of newspaper scatter noisily before me, chased by a whirling plastic bag caught on a spring zephyr. There are no drifting zombies here, carried by the tide. I can smell them though, a ripe herd just one block south.

  I cross the road, weaving between stalled vehicles: a bright yellow Humvee, a Yamaha motorbike on its kickstand, a silver BMW. The motorbike parked in the road intrigues me, another clue perhaps. Up in Mott Haven the cars were all crashed, as though the turn to zombies was instant. Here though, the traffic is frozen neatly. The people got out and turned off their engines before they turned into zombies.

  I climb up into the hummer's cab and find the key still in the ignition. So thoughtful. I turn it and the engine revs to life. I imagine myself ramming into the mass of drifters with this tank. Not bad, but I can do better. I need to clear my whole street.

  In the glove box there's nothing but papers, but in the trunk I find a tire iron. Good. I use it to smash out the 7-11's glass door and enter. It's empty and stale inside, smelling of wilting danishes and Big Red gum. I lean over the register and pluck up a sheaf of plastic bags, then I go shopping. I get candy bars first, then I add in bread, beef jerky, bottles of water, apples and oranges, a few chunks of cheese. I snatch up a bunch of newspapers and get two whole trays of New York-branded Zippo lighters. Beside the lighters there's a tray of noxious-smelling gas refill cans. I grab those.

  There are New York-branded hats, shirts and towels, and I bag a bunch of them for bedding. On the back wall there's a range of kid's toys, including a Super Soaker water rifle, which I scoop up and bag. I find the phone chargers and batteries and get plenty, plus there are a row of nifty-looking solar-cell battery chargers. I get those, four stout-looking cheap flashlights, a bag of Skittles, and head out.

  There are a few floaters out in the street now, rounding the corner of 24th. I set my new treasure down in front of the revolving door, then head over to the first drifter. It's a big guy dressed in black like a nightclub bouncer. I clothesline him with the tire iron, crunching his neck.

  There are no gas cans in the hummer's trunk, but I keep on looking. I find one full two-gallon canister in the back of the BMW, and a little further down a black four-gallon drum in a Mercedes. It's probably enough. I carry them back along with my shopping through the revolving door to the lobby; it looks like the embassy for a third-world country. In two trips I get everything sealed inside the stairwell of my building, and in two more up to the fourth floor by the window.

  I munch on the Skittles and sip water while looking out at the zombie ocean. Is what I'm about to do evil? Perhaps. I don't care. It's not exactly survival, because I've just proved I'm not trapped, but like I told the ocean out there, this is my coffee shop. I need it to have any chance of contacting Lara.

  It'll be a bitch to clean up. I suppose it's a bit like napalm. I hope it'll reduce them all to slurry, which will drain down into the sewers when a good rain comes.

  I open the four-gallon drum and breathe the heady stink of gas. The liquid sloshes as I heft it. I lean out, bracing myself with one thigh against the window, and tip the contents down into the mass of them. They soak it up like sun-dried kelp. Apart from those who've eaten dog brains, they haven't had a slurp to drink for three days.

  I take the second can and pour it carefully into my Super Soaker, then spray it out over them all, repeating the process many times. I toss the lighter refill cans out amidst them, thinking they might blow like grenades if it gets hot enough.

  That's all my fuel spent. I wash my hands off from the water cooler, spark the first Zippo, and think for a moment more about what I'm going to do. Then I dismiss any protest as irrelevant, and toss the lighter down. It bounces off a gas-drenched zombie shoulder and whuffs into ignition at once. Licks of vapory fire snap up at my eyebrows, singeing them, and then the bonfire catches properly, spreading rapidly to encompass the street. I can barely lean out for the heat.

  The ocean is on fire.

  I toss five more Zippos into the crowd. Some of them catch and others don't. The fire burns hot and smoky. They're tightly packed in like human tallow, and together they burn.

  I gag on the BBQ stench of them. Chewy puffs of human smoke rise up, scalding me. I hear the crackle of their skin popping. At least they don't scream. One of the fuel cans bursts with a massive bang and the nearby bodies blow to the sides. The others burn and melt orange and yellow, though they don't scream at all. They continue to shuffle to the pile they've made against the wall throughout.

  I watch for a few minutes, simultaneously fascinated and repelled by what I have done. On the one hand it seems like I had no choice. On the other it is a truly disgusting thing for a human being to do. I hope Lara isn't watching.

  * * *

  I can't stay, so I get in my Humvee and drive. It's easy to punch other vehicles out of the way. I go east on 24th to 3rd avenue, then south. I know the police academy is this way, and I'm in no big rush. At some points I can see the greasy black smoke rising from Sir Clowdesley over buildings like a bleak cloud, and look away. Probably that was a bad idea. If anything, it'll just draw more of them.

  I go by a police car stuck in traffic, then stop and get out. I have the tire iron and the street is empty. The patrol car driver side door is open, and the keys are in the ignition. I pull them out and go to the trunk. I read in the prepper Bible that some of these cars have weapons lockers in the back, where I might find a shotgun or patrol rifle. The trunk opens, and there's a metal box built into the trunk that might be a locker, but the car key doesn't work to open. I give it a few desultory whacks with the iron, but it just clangs. I try to pick it up but it's built into the trunk. Probably the key is in the pocket of some floater cop roaming the streets.

  Ah well.

  The stink of greasy burning reaches me. It carries on the air. I look up 3rd avenue and see there's a thick fog of black smoke curdling closer. I get in the police car and start it up. I click buttons until I find the one that starts the siren.

  The lights flash overhead, splashing reflections off the hummer, and the siren rings. I drive it back up to the fog, and there I wait.

  The ocean comes, bringing the whole fire with them. They stagger on crisping legs while their bodies burn, their faces running like the Gestapo-guy in Raiders of the Lost Ark. It is horrific, but I'm in t
he middle now and I can't stop.

  I wait until they're almost on me and the cloud of their black smoke is everywhere. Then I lead them away. I drive slowly north, with their burning bodies stumbling behind. None of them run now. I drive until they stop following and the trail of oily smoke gives out because they've all burned out. They lie behind me like a long black scar on the city.

  Oh god, what have I done.

  I find a bus facing west and I drive it back down 4th avenue. I don't want to see the slug trail of their bodies, but on 23rd I pull in and see them everywhere. There are myriad charred corpses on the floor and lying atop the scattered desks. There are deep black scorched carbon marks up all the buildings. The front of Sir Clowdesley has been obliterated with dark grease. You can't see my sign in the window for all the black. It's just a mess, and it reeks of half-cooked meat and gasoline.

  I pull the bus in, and three-point turn it so it's blocking most of the western edge of 23rd where it borders on 4th. I get out and walk through the wreckage to the nearest car. The asphalt is hot underfoot, and my feet come away mired with black sludge, like I'm walking through treacle. A hand with most of the skin peeled away reaches out to me from a bubbly body.

  I get in the car, so dark with tar I can't make out the model, and turn the key. My hands are black just from handling the door. The windscreen wipers work ineffectively to clear the mess from the glass. The engine turns and the wheels slip and skid in the human oil. I pull the car up and slot it lengthwise into the gap between the front of the bus and the nearby building. It's a near perfect fit.

  Can they get past this?

  I study the pattern of blackened desks. They've been pushed apart and backward, like broken levees where the mass was too much.

  I drive the other cars on my road to back sidelong to the bus. They'll add their weight. In large numbers they could climb over, and even a few floaters could probably squeeze through the gaps, but I'll mortar those in with something. Maybe mortar. I flash on the prepper Bible, and where New York's construction equipment may be kept.