The Loss (Zombie Ocean Book 4) (34 page)

So I laugh. There's nothing else to say.

When I'm done we walk back to the ladder and Anna climbs first. I look at Cerulean's forlorn head and make him a promise. Never again.

In the sunlight and fresh breeze above I feel like I've climbed quivering out of hell, like one of those battle-fatigued marines who entered the first Nazi death camps in Poland and was never the same. To see such things changes a person.

I'm ready for the change.

I look at my crew: six in total. It probably isn't going to be enough. We'll get another RV sent up, more explosives, more gear. Perhaps we can overfly the Cessna with some infrared cameras and trace out the outline of their bunker, their power supply, their living quarters by the heat signature through the snow. Maybe we'll just need to mine in this area for half a year to dig them all out, like a rich seam of coal.

Whatever. We'll do it.

Everybody's looking at me now with a kind of shock. Maybe they think I've finally cracked. I know my laughter sounded crazy, but I'm very far from crazy. I'm really just sane for the first time.

I look at Peters. The bravery of the man, to come back to this twisted place, astounds me. "You saved us," I tell him. "If you hadn't warned us, then this would have happened to all of us." I gesture at the hole. "Thank you."

He nods solemnly. I'll never know just what he's been through, but I've caught a glimpse of it now and I'm glad he's with us.

Next I look at the others, Feargal, Ravi and Jake. I trust them all with my life.

"There are bodies down there," I say. "We're going to get them out, all except Julio, then we're going to flood the hall with gasoline and burn it up. Tomorrow we'll get a cement mixer up here and we'll keep mixing until the whole thing is stuffed full. Then we'll bury the remaining bodies as heroes."

Feargal nods, taking this in his stride. "No flashes overhead. We're clear."

"I spoke to her," I say. "The woman who runs the bunker." This startles them. "She says she's coming to us, but I'm not going to wait. We start hunting for their main bunker now. We crack its shell like an oyster and deal with them. Understood?"

It's understood.

"So let's move and get these bodies up. Julio's winch probably still works."

"There," Peters says abruptly, and points. "We don't need to wait."

We all turn, and there, standing out like a pimple on the mountain's smooth white lower slope, is a distant figure in a bright orange suit, walking towards us.

"Holy shit," says Ravi.

It's a mess of a suit, half like a space suit and half haz-mat, with a big bronze fish-tank for a helmet. In its hand it holds what looks to be a black briefcase.

"It's not a zombie," Anna says. "It's a person. Look at the way it walks. Look what it's holding. It's her."

We watch in silence as the little figure draws closer, growing bigger. The helmet is obviously heavy. It feels like seeing a ghost. This woman should have died ten years ago, but here she is, wandering down the mountain.

"Anna, you're with me," I say, dropping smoothly into command. "Feargal, get to shelter somewhere and set up a sniper rifle. Ravi and Jake, get Peters to safety."

"No," says Peters. We all turn to him. "I want her to see me. I want her to see who I am now."

I nod. Fair enough. "Ravi and Jake, bring Peters. Feargal have you got a clip?"

He hands two over, one to me and one to Anna. We slot them into our pistols.

"All right."

We start up the mountain.

19. SALLE

Fifty yards away I halt and raise my gun.

"Stop there," I tell the figure, "put the briefcase down."

It stops. It drops the briefcase, which could be a bomb or another infection. There's no way to trust any of these people.

The suit looks haphazard, rustled together out of orange and red patches with seams that reveal a silvery inner lining. There are thick cables running up the front and down each of the limbs, with fine coppery wires wrapping around like the coils on an electromagnet. On its back it's wearing a Ghostbusters-like pack. On its head is the visor-less bronze globe.

It looks like a spacesuit from hell. Perhaps it's blocking our infection signal. I grit my teeth and click the safety off.

"You've got something to say, so say it," I call.

The figure points to the briefcase and does an awkward mime of unclasping the locks.

"Go ahead."

The figure kneels awkwardly, weaving under the weight of the pack, and fiddles with the case. The lid springs back with a click that pulls a sharp exhalation from Jake. The figure reaches inside and pulls something out, a piece of paper or a kind of booklet, and holds it up to the light.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

ZOMBIES OF AMERICA

It's my comic book; not a great rendition sure, printed on the wrong kind of paper with the cover image a little fuzzy, but I'd recognize it anywhere. I've been printing and working on it for a decade now, right back to the first time I finished it in New York, the day before the apocalypse struck.

It shows a tower of thousands of zombies in Times Square, reaching toward the sky. The angle is from below, in the thick of the mob and looking up at two clouds drifting by.

It stuns me to see it here. Anywhere else it would be normal; they're across the country and the continent in hundreds of cairns, they're dotted globally now that Anna circled the world, but to see it here coming up out of the MARS3000 bunker?

The figure points steadily at me, then Anna, Jake and finally Peters.

The message is clear. It knows us.

"I know you too," Peters calls. "I know who you are." His knuckles are white on the grips of the wheelchair. He's terrified and enraged. He's ready to crawl out of the chair and beat this figure to death with his bare hands.

Good.

"So what?" I call. "You know us, I'm not surprised. You had Julio down there with you for years. We've not been in hiding."

The figure drops the comic.

"Where's Mecklarin?" I ask, giving words to the urge as it wells up. "I've read his books, they're full of positive ideas about the basic goodness of people. I want to know what the hell happened to that? What happened to going to Mars?"

The figure says nothing. It could be talking but we'd never hear it through that huge helmet. It kneels again, fishes in the briefcase, and comes up with a black block of plastic.

A walkie-talkie.

It tosses the walkie across the divide, hampered by the suit, to land with a little crunch in the snow halfway between us. We look at it. It lies there. Perhaps this is the bomb. I could hold it to my head and it'll explode.

"You'll have to give me more than that."

It kneels by the briefcase again, and this time comes up with a binder. It's slender and gray, with a few thick card files inside. On the front in embossed gold letters are the words:

Habitat 12

That gets my attention. The figure swivels and hurls the binder, which whips through the cold wind like a flywheel. It clears the walkie-talkie and lands at my feet, spread open to the first card, which shows a map of the world with little house symbols and labels dotted across it.

I pick it up. In the USA there is one house with the label Habitat 12, squashed in the upper right hand corner. I scan the rest of the world. Habitat 1 is in Mongolia or thereabouts. There's a Habitat in France, one in South Africa, one in Indonesia, one in Vietnam.

Twelve in total. Twelve Habitats.

Twelve?

I flip to the next page, the only other page, which is a blank card but for a short message handwritten in thick black ink.

Now they fall to you, LMA.

I look up. The walkie-talkie's still there between us. It could be a trap. All of this could be a trap, but now I really have to know. Twelve is too many to ignore.

I hand the file to Anna and walk out to the walkie-talkie before anyone can protest, crunching through the snow with my gun still trained ahead.

I pick up the walkie. It's simple enough, black and basic with a frequency dial and a transit button. The figure mimes clicking the button, which I do, then hold the device up to my head.

There is no boom, only the woman's voice in my ear.

"Amo," she says. "You have no idea how long I've wanted to meet you."

It's not the voice from before, the stern and emotionless tones that rang out in the torture chamber below, echoing harshly off the walls. This is a warm-blooded woman on the other end, with a faintly Valley girl-ish Texan twang.

"Lars Mecklarin," I say, enunciating each syllable clearly, stabbing them at her like knives. "Where is he?"

"He's dead," she answers.

A long moment passes. I squeeze the walkie-talkie so tightly it hurts my palm. It's that or squeeze the trigger.

"My name's Salle Coram," she goes on. "I was a psychologist with Lars. He built a paradise down there, Amo. Three thousand people, can you believe it? It was so good. All his theories about humans were proved right. We were firing on all cylinders, fully actualized people, pushing the human race forwards."

"So you killed him," I say abruptly, as stony and hard as I've ever heard my voice come out.

"No!" She sounds genuinely upset. "I loved him. He killed himself. There was a revolution four years in, when he saw what the Habitat really was. They lied to all of us, Amo, Lars included. None of us knew about the apocalypse outside. We entered the bunker because we believed in the vision of Mars; we thought we were changing the world. We were good people. When Lars found out the truth he shot the man who'd lied to us, then he shot himself too."

I stare at her polished bronze helmet. All of this could be bullshit designed to prey on my sympathies; a last ditch attempt to save herself and her people, though something about it rings true. Lars killed himself when faced with the apocalypse? It's an uncomfortably familiar story.

"So he left you in charge?" I ask numbly. "Of three thousand people."

"I know what you're thinking," she says, "that he was a coward? But he was a great man. I've seen his influence in you. I know you built your New LA on many of his precepts. I used to live to get reports on your progress, from the satellites then later from Julio. It was like Lars was alive again, doing good work. I've admired what you've done for the longest time."

I laugh at that. Now she's trying to play me with flattery.

"You're a liar and hypocrite," I say. "You admired me, but you kept Julio? You gave him a home? You helped him rape, murder and torture dozens of people. You helped him kill Cerulean and you sent your demons after us. I should shoot you now."

Slowly she lifts her arms until they're spread-eagled to the sides. I'm helpless, this posture says. I'm at your mercy.

"I'm dead already," she says, "but go ahead if it makes you feel better. You've won, after all. To the victor the spoils."

A silence hangs between us. A wind blows chips of cracked snow, torn up by my footsteps, skittering over the perfect white surface like spray off a frozen wave.

Perhaps this is surrender. Perhaps this is misdirection.

"And these other bunkers, do they admire me too?"

"They don't know you exist. I never told them. But if you go down below, you'll learn all about them. Everything you want to know is down there, along with three thousand people."

I gaze at her. Three thousand people is so many. You could remake the world in a generation.

"They're alive?"

"Most of them. I had to kill some six years ago to stop the revolution. When they found the Mars dream was a hoax and their world was really gone, they stopped conforming to Lars Mecklarin's rules. They went mad. They raped and killed each other; good people, kind people, brilliant scientists. It was horrific, and it fell to me to stop it."

The gun starts to feel heavy. So this is a justification, and I know what's coming next. I know how I reacted with Don, I know how I was in Sir Clowdesley and Times Square. I've killed so many people. I killed Masako and I've barely thought of it since; no qualms, hardly any regret. I could justify just as well as her.

It makes me tired. "Excuses."

She nods, the big bronze globe of her helmet rocking forward slightly. "You're right. But how many people have you had to punish, Amo, to keep the others alive? How many lives have you extinguished because you just didn't have the time to save them?"

I feel dizzy. Not many. A handful. Two, perhaps. Don and Masako, that's my direct tally, but through my inaction? Add Julio and Cerulean and all the victims of this woman. Add Abigail and Lucy, add Chantelle and Ozark, add until they're a pile heaping up to the sky, and all of them asking 'why?'

"Lars saw it," I say, making the connection, "he saw it coming."

"He killed himself rather than face it, but what option was that? I couldn't lead them all in a mass suicide. The primary was there, part of an intersecting plan of twelve primaries from all twelve bunkers, so I used it. You would have done the same."

"By primaries you mean demons?"

She nods.

I want to wash my hands of this and walk away. I want to go somewhere I can feel clean again, but I'm not sure that there's any such place left.

"Now our hope is gone," Salle goes on, "we have enough supplies left to last a few years, but the powder keg of a new revolution will blow long before the other primaries reach us. You've killed us, maybe not today but soon. We'll tear ourselves apart."

I want to sit down, right here in the snow, and hold my head.

"I won't see it though," she says. "This suit's killing me. We never perfected it, and the signal rising off you is too strong. I'll start to ramble soon, then I'll collapse, my mind will leak out of my eyes and my ears and they'll finally be free of me." She stops for a moment, as if preparing herself for what comes next. "They can kill each other, if they want. If you want."

I stare at her helmet. It meets my gaze impassively. So we come to the crux, and the biggest knife of them all, laid out on the second card in the folder.