The Loss (Zombie Ocean Book 4) (33 page)

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.