The Last: A Zombie Novel (18 page)

From the dust-marked roof of the Subaru I look over the heads of the nearest floaters to one of the wandering herds, up on 5
^th
Avenue somewhere near Bryant Park. Some of them do this too, endlessly wandering like the ghosts in a game of Pac-Man. I suppose whatever adaptive behavior has evolved into their funky brainstems, it rewards a hunting approach of both nesters and roaming hunters.

At first I watched these developing packs carefully, but they rarely massed at a barricade. The most I've had to contend with for a month is the odd one or two somehow finding their way onto my parade route, like lost sheep.

None of them have died yet. I look down at their sun-bleached gray faces and ice-white eyes, and they look back up at me like groupies to a rock star, as ever. A few feet closer and I'd be torn apart, like the cat or the dog, but standing here all they can do is strain, like blind Venus fly traps. Their hair is coming out now and they're very thin, many of them are sporting old wounds that don't heal; bites and broken bones. They're draped in ragged clothes crusty with old blood and bleached gray by the sun, but still, they're looking remarkably well. Not one of them can have eaten in months.

I wonder, as I often do, if they will eventually die, or if this is some kind of holding position they're capable of maintaining forever, perhaps metabolizing carbon directly from the air like plants. For all I know they could be cannibalizing each other at night, or eating moss, or anything. I know I eat far less now too. We're linked in that, at least, perhaps having a brain in the spine is a more efficient way to run things.

I climb down from the wall and get into the JCB cab, firing up the engine. I make a pointed effort to not look up at my work on the Empire State Building. I've got a spot all picked out for that.

The JCB rumbles over the asphalt on its caterpillar tracks, and I lean my hand against the lever taking us south toward Madison Park. This has been my daily commute for a month now. As the streets amble by, accompanied by the grind of my vehicle's heavy metal treads, I go over my checklist another time. There are two vehicles in the convoy pulled by this earth-mover, one a battle-tank filled with weapons, water and supplies plus my living space, and one a delivery truck full of gas and all the painting supplies and other stuff I'll need to stock up my cairns. 

I'm not worried. I've cleared my route out of the city already, a few days work pushing cars to either side on 34th street and through the Lincoln Tunnel. It was like grinding out experience points in World of Warcraft, a game I used to play when I was a kid; little reward but a sense of hard work done. I'm certain there are plenty of supplies out there across the country though; enough to feed me for a thousand years, but it's better to be prepared.

I haven't spoken to another living soul since Cerulean died. It's just been me and Io and the ocean. 

The streets ramble by, each of them blocked off by cars I cleared ages ago. Shuffling zombies track me as I go by. I pull up to Madison Square and take the JCB right over the curb and down the walkway of the Park, toward the Admiral David Farragut monument in the middle.

My convoy is waiting beside him, already linked up and bristling with weapons. I climb to the battle-tank's roof, actually a yellow school bus I fitted with howitzers and multiple mounted AK47s pointing out the windows, plus a Bluetooth relay hub. I settle myself on a bright orange beanbag I liberated from a Tommy Hilfiger window display. The sun is starting to set over the city and country, leading the way to the west.

I pop a beer and lie back with snacks at my side. I hardly need to eat or drink anything these days, just like the zombies, but these things still taste good. I've already chainsawed down the trees that might block my view. At last I look up at the Empire State building's south face, and see my art.

f

LMA

This is my work, a gigantic white 'f' on a blue field, blazoned across each face of New York's most iconic tower, covering the windows and the outer walls. It is ten stories high and nearly as wide as the building itself: a symbol for our modern times more potent than a cross or flag or sickle moon.

We are all one, it says. We are all friends under Zuckerburg. I chuckle, because while it's ridiculous it is also patently real. No one will see that symbol and be scared, because no one thinks evil cannibal-survivors have that kind of sense of humor.

It's given me a purpose, and perhaps, if there's anyone else alive out there, it will give them a purpose too. It's my lighthouse to guide the others safely in, to the ground floors of the Empire State building where they'll find my social media supply cairn: a mayor giving out free coffee, transposed to the real world.

I painted the walls of the grand central lobby into a bulletin board that anyone can post their name and date of arrival on. I wrote my map and directions of where I will go across the floor; a plan of the entire journey and every step that I will take, with coordinates of all the cairns I plan to leave behind like giant geocaches along the way, so they can follow along. I left a big tray full of USBs with every point of the map marked out inside too. There's no shortage of laptops now, so I left plenty of them to read the USBs by, laid out like display units in an Apple store. I left GPS units too, and solar panel chargers, and in the basement below are a dozen RVs with enough gas and supplies stacked in their backs to take anyone clear across the country. 

Of course there's coffee too. Down one wall there are ten Nespresso machines, in case there's a crowd, each stacked with its own brightly colored pile of refills, packaged in neat little boxes like shotgun shells.

If there's anyone left behind they will see this trail I've left for them. Perhaps they'll follow, and find me, and then I won't be alone anymore and neither will they.

I sip my beer, a craft brew I rescued straight off its microbrewery production line in Yonkers, and admire the giant 'f'. My work looks crisp and neat hanging in the sky above this abandoned and overgrown city, visible for miles, the graffiti tag to eclipse all other tags. I can relax, the first step is done.

It feels especially meaningful seen from this viewing point beside the Admiral David Farragut. I read about him in an encyclopedia in a book store; a lot less convenient than Wikipedia, but just as useful. Like Clowdesley he was a naval officer, the first full admiral in the US fleet. He distinguished himself in the civil war amongst numerous other naval campaigns, though he was most famous for his quote: "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!"

I have adopted that catchphrase now, in light of modern events, and adapted it. It's the sweltering summer of 2018 and no one uses torpedoes anymore.

Damn the zombies, full speed to the West! 

I wrote it on the floor of the Empire State Building foyer in the same thick paint I used for the 'f'. I wrote it here at this ancient hero's feet and signed it with my new tag in full, Last Mayor of America, LMA for short. These words will last for decades, maybe centuries, long after I'm gone. All these marks I'm leaving will be a symbol for others until the Empire State Building comes crumbling down and New York is left as rubble and dust for the zombies to frolic in.

That makes me feel better, and helps still the gnawing loneliness that bites at me every day. I lie back and wait for dark, listening to the comforting sound of the ocean lapping against the barricade. Tomorrow my odyssey begins. It might take a week, it might take a year, but at the end I'll settle down to watch our last great movies in LA's Chinese Theater, beside the Wall of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard, and wait for the others to come, because I can't truly be the last in all of America, in all of the world, left alive.

INTERLUDE 1

The street was quiet when Lara slipped out of the redbrick tenement in Mott Haven, two months earlier. It was just past dawn, a fresh spring morning in New York, and the wet dew-smell from the scrubby park across the road filled her nostrils.

She smiled at the memory of the night before. It had felt like falling into a movie, a cushiony velvet script that carried them along quickly, full of wit and promise. The sex that followed was like a bomb going off. Her whole body tingled in ways it never had before.

She shivered, walking down the street. Willis Street, she saw. She knew roughly where that was, though she'd rarely ventured into the Bronx. Her parents would disapprove. She chuckled and ran her tongue around her fuzzy teeth.

Wine-mouth. She was probably still a little drunk. She felt like simultaneously shouting out and giggling.

"It was so weird!" she expected to tell Alejandro in their shared apartment in Queens later on. "He rolled out this ancient pick-up move, reading my palm for color, and I was ready to get up and walk out, but I don't know. There was something magnetic about him."

"So you screwed him," Alejandro would say, poking her in the belly with a banana. "All the best magnets screw each other."

She'd laugh and he'd tease and they'd relive the whole delicious, bizarre thing together.

She chewed on a bit of her dark hair pensively. It was a good note she left. Good to keep the mystery. 

At the bodega she turned the corner and started south. There had to be a Metro line somewhere along here, or a bus stop, probably the 25 would take her at least to the bridge to Queens.

She brought up her phone and clicked through a few text messages. There was one from Alejandro, time-stamped around midnight, just after she'd sent him a frenzied misspelled message that she wasn't coming home.

Look out, y'all!

was all it said. He was trying it out as his catchphrase. She slid it by and brought up her email, full of the usual garbage; junk mail, notices from the Sir Clowdesley Jeo list, and something from her mother.

We love you dear. Come home if you can.

That was strange. She clicked to bring up the number and called. The phone on the other end rang and rang but no one picked up. They were probably asleep, especially if they'd been up at, what? Lara laughed. The time-stamp on that message was 2am. She imagined her white-haired old French mother fussing up in the middle of the night to go to the toilet, then settling in for some ancient black and white movie on TV, probably with a glass of warm milk and cognac. 

Lara looked up from the phone at the intersection, and saw a bloody torso and head crawling toward her. Beside it lay a smoking upturned car chassis, and between the two lay a trail of bloody organs, linking them together like yoyo string.

Her brain melted for a few seconds. The head stared back at her with bright white eyes. She blinked and tried to fathom what on earth this apparition really was, some weird kind of cat hit by a car, a pig fallen out of a crashed meat van, or a…

BANG

The explosion rocked her awake, a huge blast that she felt through the curb. A cloud of black smoke rose up from further down Willis, and she understood.

New York was under attack. She glanced once more at the grotesque creature in the road. Was this what nuclear fallout looked like? She clamped her hand over her mouth, turned and ran. After five strides she stopped, pulled off her high heels, then ran on barefoot in her stockings. What the hell? She fumbled in her bag and got her phone out again, dialing 911 on the trot.

She got a busy signal. She dialed again as she jogged back past the bodega. Her feet were cold and her heels hurt where they thumped on the paving slabs.

Still a busy signal; 911 was down or inundated. How many people were calling in the same emergency at once? She looked to the sky, expecting to see the contrails of more incoming planes, or, what, missiles, but there were none. The streets were silent.

Where was everybody?

She bolted past 143
^rd
with Amo furthermost from her mind. In the middle of the road lay a car with the engine ticking over and the door open. She plunged into the driver's seat and slamming the door behind her.

The unnatural quiet of the city receded, replaced by the white shush of the air conditioner. The keys were in the ignition and she twisted them a click over to kick the engine in. It coughed to full life. Out of habit she checked the rearview mirror, and saw another one of the victims coming for her.

It was a girl wearing a white dress covered in blood. Half of her face had melted away, replaced by mottled purple underskin. Her eyes shone like radioactive cesium.

Lara punched her bare foot hard on the accelerator, lifted the handbrake, and burnt rubber the hell out of there. For the first twenty or so blocks she could barely think, too busy weaving in and out of a constant stream of stalled traffic.

There were more badly wounded people wandering around the streets, but they didn't hail her for help. They started running after her, and though she knew she ought to stop and help, there seemed something very wrong about them, like they were infected. She kept the windows rolled up and raced on.

Somewhere at the top of the Bronx she saw a heaving tideline up ahead; a mass of people filling out the street, gathered like they were walking in a parade. She stopped half a block down from them and rolled down the window to shout.

"What the hell's going on?"

They started running. Their eyes were white and many were dappled with blood. She didn't hang around to find out what they wanted, sending the car back and racing off to the left. After that she drove manically, not stopping for anything, just weaving her way north.

She flew out of New York along the Sprain Brook Parkway, dodging constantly around the abandoned vehicles, here pulled neatly to the sides. There were people here too, and they came with their eyes blazing and their arms out, some running directly at the car. One boy ran right into the bumper like he wanted to go under the wheels. He did.

Lara drove on, until the frozen traffic thinned out and the detritus of the city fell away and she switched lanes automatically to the 684, the 84, the 87 headed north. Soon she was in amongst the bright spring greenery of lower New England. Red oaks proliferated, and the highway swept in over them on a raised plane, like the rings around Saturn. Every now and then one of the infected people was there in the middle of the road, wandering near a stopped car or truck, like they were lying in waiting for her.