The Loss (Zombie Ocean Book 4) (16 page)

"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.