The Last: A Zombie Novel (3 page)

We went in together at her place, viewing one of her post-apocalyptic worlds through split-screen. It was funny to see the broken elevated roadways and tattered skyscrapers she'd envisaged built in chunky 3D blocks. Her ruins were fun and bright, like her writing. The game itself was intuitive and repetitive, involving grinding out ores by digging, then crafting them into tools and materials to create buildings.

It was fun. At home I built a miniature version of the fulfillment center; lovingly stacking up the long clean corridors, fitting it with low lights, stocking the shelves with whatever weird products I could craft, even hand-coding the mod for a diviner.

At the same time I started making covers for all Blucy's books. She never paid me, but she put me onto her writer friends who wanted covers, and they did pay. The work ran me down, but then I'd go in Deepcraft and grind out ores for hours, add to my fulfillment center, and wander it in a trance. In god mode I added non-player characters modeled on my co-workers in real life, who wandered its corridors endlessly online, forever doomed to think of little nuggets of information they wanted to pass on.

It was wonderfully soothing, and it sped up my recovery so much that I was able to make more covers. I had enough cash and energy after eight months to quit the picking job and go full time with the covers.

"Don't go," my mother said, when I told her I was heading back to New York. "That place broke you. I couldn't bear for it to happen again."

My dad patted me on the shoulder and stood by.

I came back to New York on a Greyhound, quietly defiant. I worked on art that would've bored me to tears before. I went to Sir Clowdesley's as mental therapy to build up my tolerance. I crafted goods to sit on my Deepcraft warehouse shelves, even opening it up for others to run online and critique.

On one of those runs I met Cerulean.

"This is bullshit," Cerulean says calmly, as we stand side by side in the darkness, our name for the fulfillment center. His character is a red and green parrot with a little pirate on its shoulder, which is his idea of a joke.

His words pop up as a speech bubble over his head. He's pointing at one of the shelves, on which there's a rack of colorful videogame-style mushrooms that are glitching through the shelf base.

"I spent hours making these, and now this. What kind of damn mushrooms are these?"

I chuckle. Cerulean can get very upset about the smallest things. It's not funny really, more a part of his condition, but still I have to laugh.

"It's just bits," I type.

"Shit bits," he returns. "Shitty little bits."

We walk. We have our diviners synced. We do this for hours, most nights, ever since I opened the darkness on a public board and Cerulean found it. After a few weeks of glimpsing him hovering constantly just at the edge of my vision, we talked, haltingly at first, but in time the story came out, and we realized we had more in common than just about anyone in the world: we'd both died multiple times. 

"I met a girl," I tell him.

He stops his parrot in the act of reaching for some generic Ken doll-alikes. "What?"

I explain.

For Cerulean this is great and juicy gossip, because Cerulean spends all day in the darkness. He died in a coma too, just like me, but his coma hit while he was about to do a high-level dive at competition, on track to become an Olympic competitor. Unconsciousness hit at the edge of the thirty-foot dive platform and he fell, cracking his skull and half-drowning in the pool before anyone could get him out.

He's much worse off than me, essentially a paraplegic, and far more sensitive to stimulation. Now we are each other's support systems.

Cerulean's pirate is stomping excitedly round his feathery shoulder as I finish explaining.

"That is crazy," he types. "Mayor and a date?"

"A lot happened today."

"Are you coping OK?"

I shrug in the real world. "I'm OK now. I twinged pretty hard after I invited her, and I'm worried about what might happen on the date, but yeah."

"Damn. You're a brave man Amo, I couldn't do that. But maybe it's just what you need."

I laugh. "If I don't die."

We walk again. Our diviners click in synchrony. Up ahead Hank is coming for us. He'll probably tell us about a new pick-up trick he's learned, replete with a link. I actually programmed him to do that, so his character doesn't get completely dull; he's really just the outer skin on a few blog feeds about picking up girls.

I need less of that topic right now, thank you. I steer me and Cerulean left.

"In other news, I've decided what to do with my comic."

"The last panel?"

"I'm going to use it," I say. "I've finished it. And I promised to show it to you first. Can you handle it now?"

"Hang on a second." There's a pause before he goes on. "Just taking some aspirin. OK, hit me."

I hold out a piece of paper in game. He takes it in his wing.

"Feast your eyes," I type. "Slowly."

He raises the paper. I wait. Right now the image will be spooling before his face. His brain will probably twinge quite hard. I hope it's worth a headache.

"Oh man," Cerulean types.

I bring the panel up too. It's another image of the tower of zombies in Times Square, but seen from a different perspective. This one's not from thirty stories high, floating clean above the fray, but right down in the dirt of rotten bodies.

The angle is tilted sharply, looking up through a frame of zombie flesh to the tower, all the way to the empty sky, where there is a hint of a shape written in the clouds, what might be the face of the hero's wife. It's a purposely faint resemblance, written in cottony wisps.

She was lost to the infection near the beginning of the book. Even the hero himself succumbed pages earlier, beaten down and chased through the streets of New York, dying in an ignominious alleyway behind the theater showing Cats.

In this final panel we see through his zombie eyes, and what he thinks is his wife.

Cerulean speaks.

"Jesus, Amo, this is beautiful. I can almost not handle it."

I get a twinge of emotion. This image means a lot to me too. I think it came out of my coma. After I woke I felt like I understood the hunger of the zombies, these creatures I'd been sketching and painting for so long. I realized that no matter how much they consumed, it could never be enough. There weren't enough brains in the whole world to fill the holes carved out of them.

"I feel just like this," Cerulean says. "I'm like this sucker at the bottom, reaching for clouds, but it's all an illusion."

I clear my throat. I pull away the goggles for a minute and rub my eyes. I've been keeping this to myself for months. My brain starts to twinge. I put them back on.

"I need to walk the darkness," I type.

"Me too."

We walk side by side. Occasionally our synchronized diviners click left or right, and we follow to collect. It helps.

"It felt like this for me too," Cerulean says eventually. "The coma. I was diving, but it was a dive that never ended. I knew if only I could hit the water clean then everything would be all right, but I couldn't, and I never did get clear."

"You did, Cerulean. We both came out of it."

His parrot avatar laughs. "Not me. I'm a cripple Amo; I'm just like this guy. I can't even get out of bed. My mom has to clean it up when I piss in my pants."

There's nothing to say to that. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you feel sad."

"Screw sad, this is better. I'm in awe, Amo. This is beautiful. Now let's just shut up and work."

We work. We walk. I think about Lara. Despite Cerulean, or maybe because of him, I start to feel something different from my usual mixture of fear, guilt and self-pity.  

Fulfillment. Finishing my comic is a big thing for me. Cerulean's reaction inspires me. My brain twinges with mixed emotions so hard I think I might pass out, but I don't care. This is what life is for.

Only after we've completed the full circuit do I notice Cerulean has logged off already. I don't blame him. I log off myself, and roll from my chair into bed. I am exhausted. I am excited. Things are changing for me, and tomorrow is going to be a wonderful, terrifying day. I can't wait.

3 – LARA

I wake up at 7am and get to work. I don't eat breakfast and haven't since the incident, but a brew of detoxing decaf green tea gets my brain gently firing. Slotted into my chair I start the next round of book cover bids, like a farmer out sowing seeds on fallow ground.

Around mid-morning Cerulean messages me.

Sorry to bail on you last night. Amazing. My head is splitting now, but at least I'm not bored. I promote you to supervisor.

I smile and reply.

First order of business, fix those mushrooms. I'll catch you in the darkness after the date.

He answers in seconds.

She'll love you. Good luck. 

He logs off. I do some more work, some light exercise, then think about some lunch, but I'm still not hungry. My doctor thought it was strange, an outgrowth of my broken brain, but after plenty of tests they found I wasn't starving, I wasn't even losing muscle mass, so there was no real problem.

"Like I said, you'll be a case study for years to come," he said as he discharged me, with his red glasses off. "Maybe in your brain lies the key to solving third world hunger. Or even the next diet fad."

I need to plan for the date.

I bring up the French restaurant on the Internet, it's called 'Rien', meaning 'Nothing,' which is just fabulously avant-garde. It's a bit out of my price-range but I can afford to splash out. I dig into their About page and find that the singing cat is actually a mechanical automaton that works on similar principals to a Roomba hoover, patrolling the floor and singing for his supper. Guests toss him a few crumbs and he moves on.

The logarithmic light show has a guest video jockey tonight. I click through and book a table for two at seven, then I bring up my phone and open the notes folder. There lies Lara's number. I don't give myself any time to prepare, I just punch it in.

After three rings she answers. "Hello?"

"Hi, it's Amo, we met in Sir Clowdesley yesterday. How's it going?"

I can hear the smile in her voice. "Ah, the zombie mayor! Have you got your art ready to show me?"

Zombie mayor is not a good nickname. "I've got it. I've got a booking at the French place too, Rien, at 7."

"OK great. I can meet you outside, I checked it out. The cat looks fun."

I smile. "Yeah, I think so. I'll see you then."

"See you Amo."

She hangs up. I slump back.

My heart is hammering, there's sweat on my temples, and my head is starting to twinge hard. Crap. I'm going to die.

I flop off the chair to the floor, with my eyes throbbing sharply already. I drape the video screen goggles over them and plug in my earphones. I don't log in to Deepcraft; I'm too close to the precipice even for that, what I need now is nothing.

In the silence and dark I count down from a hundred. I flex each of my fingers in turn, then my toes. This is the worst it's been for months.

An hour passes, two, and gradually the twinges ebb. My breathing eases and my body unclenches. I lie there wondering how on earth I'm going to sit at a table with this woman.

I don't have an answer. I'm just going to do it.

I get back to work making covers. I need my routines. By five I'm hungry, so to satisfy the dinner routine I warm up another batch of bolognese and eat a few mouthfuls only. I'll be eating again in two hours.

I get dressed. Agonizing over what to wear is not a profitable use of my limited mental resources, so I go with my standard smart casual: gray flannel pants, dark cotton shirt, brown loafers and dark gray sports coat.

I pack my bag with my laptop. I head out the door.

It's a gray day outside and getting dark already. I ride the train, see more posters for movies I can't watch, and get off. I arrive early and wander up to Madison Square Park with my jacket hood pulled over my head. I kill time wandering for ten minutes, and then head back.

This is not a baby step. This is an almighty leap, but I'm tired of rehabilitation. I'm ready to live or die.

Lara is standing in front of Rien already. My heart is booming. Excuses for why I might have to suddenly turn and run away pop into my head, but none suffice. I'm on this course now. Orange blossoms flutter down around me in slow motion, like a samurai heading for war.

I walk up to her with flowers in my hand, bought around the corner. She's wearing a smart cream blouse and twill orange skirt, with her mass of curly black hair condensed and twirled atop her head like a modernist sculpture. A strong twinge is setting in.

She smiles to see me.

"You look beautiful," I say, that truest cliché. "These are for you."

She takes the flowers and laughs. "They're gorgeous, thank you, Amo. You clean up good."

I smile. "Thanks. And they're Caribbean Lilies. I've always liked them."

She lifts the flowers to her nose. They are delicate frondy things, with many weaving purple buds tucked within a bed of long petals. I smelled them already, they remind me of coconuts.

"This is a good start."

I smile. "It can only get better. Shall we?"

I present my elbow. She takes it, sending fireworks up into my brain. I stride us into Rien.

Inside it's a classical French restaurant with a modern twist. Most of the walls and floor are polished concrete, dressed with soft down-lights and oddly placed squares of inset industrial metal, giving the impression there are a dozen hidden alcoves tucked into the walls. The techno cat is a gimmick really, hardly better-looking than those walking dogs of ten years earlier, but the lightshow is already rippling across LEDs embedded in the screen-wall. They flow and ebb like the soothing wind in Deepcraft.

It takes all my concentration to address the maître d'. We sit down at our table. The twinge is already a storm between my temples with Lara at the eye, and everything else is a gray swirl. She's talking, and I catch myself thinking how awful it will be for her if I collapse and die now. Will she ever get over it?