The Last: A Zombie Novel (7 page)

I find I'm gulping at the air.

"Get yourself solid. Research the stuff I sent. Find a safer place than your apartment, a bank or something downtown, something this girl Lara can find, and start clearing the streets around. Make a base and she'll be drawn to you, Amo, if you're offering safety and something worth having. That way you'll find the others too, the ones like us who are lost somewhere across the country and don't have each other like we've had each other. I know you will. You'll make good things out of this."

I gulp back tears. I can hear the thumping through the phone getting louder.

"She's almost through the door isn't she?"

"She is. It's all right. I've got the syringe loaded with my methadone, enough of a dose to knock me right out. I won't feel a thing. It's better this way Amo. I wouldn't stand a chance on the road. I was never good in a wheelchair."

I sob into the phone. "How long?"

"I don't know. A minute, maybe five? I've already injected it. Damn it is hard to find a vein. I got one." His voice starts to go woozy. "You'll stay on the line won't you? You'll wait with me."

"Of course I will. Robert I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry. You're here with me. We're in the fulfillment center, running it together. I've got legs again, Amo. We're keeping up with the orders. We're one step ahead."

The tears are coming freely. I hate this. I want to reach through the phone and save him. I want to save my friend, but I can't.

"Goodbye, Amo," he says fuzzily. There is a crash through the line, and his mother must have breached the basement.

"Robert," I say urgently. "Robert."

"She's coming. I won't feel a thing. The darkness is so close. I'm going to turn the phone off now Amo. I don't want you to hear this. Goodbye."

The phone clicks dead. The sound from his distant basement fades at once. My last link to Cerulean is severed.

I lean back against the bed and cry, curled around the phone like it's a dagger thrust though my belly. I have just lost everything and everyone I love.

6 – ESCAPE

I come back to myself and it's bright still, with early spring light glowing in through the skylight right onto my face. I don't hear the zombies, they're not banging on the downstairs door. I look up at the sky and wonder if it could all truly be a dream.

I don't have a headache, no twinge at all. That is a wonder I can't help but be glad for. At least Cerulean had that too, in his final hours. At least we got to speak.

I look at my phone. It's not even mid-day, I guess I slept for only an hour or two. In the corner there are no signal bars, but the Wi-Fi symbol is still there. I click through to the Internet but the pipeline is empty and I get missing server messages. I click through each of my tabs on the phone methodically, social media, email, news, and they all erase themselves away.

Perhaps I'll never see them again. Pushing the back button in the browser doesn't recapture them. The Internet is gone.

I double click the button and the phone pings.

"Hi Io," I tell the screen. Io is the name I've given my phone's generic AI assistant. Io and Amo, it was a kind of lame joke, I suppose.

"Hello Amo," she says.

"My friend just died. His name was Cerulean."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Me too. Now the whole world's gone to shit."

"That sounds difficult."

I laugh. "Yeah. But Lara might be alive. I don't know where she's gone though."

"I hope you find her, Amo."

I put the phone down. I need to think clearly.

I get to my feet and go to the window.

The street is filled with zombies. Seeing this is like an ice water shower. There are hundreds of them, all pale-faced with bright white eyes looking up at me. It chills my blood. They don't groan or rasp, they just stare. I open the window and I can hear them breathing, like a lapping tide. They jostle and sway like bits of wreckage caught on a wave.

I hold my hand out like the Pope giving benediction. Their ice-white eyes track me. It makes me feel dizzy and I step back. I drop to the bed and the springs crunch comfortingly. Lara's note is still there.

Good luck with the zombies.

It's a good joke.

I sit there slackly for a while, adjusting. My art doesn't matter now. Nothing really matters, now that everyone is dead. There's no sound from the city; no rescue helicopters are coming, because they're all gone. Cerulean saw it, and it's really over, the zombie apocalypse.

Lara though may be alive. I have to find her. That thought gets me up and moving.

First I need to prepare. My shoulder throbs where the indicator lever hit me, so I'll deal with that. I pull back my shirt to study the wound. It's capped by a stud of dried blood, which I nudge away. The hole beneath is puckered and sealed already, with only a slight red ring of inflammation. I rub it gently; it feels OK. I rotate my arm and it works well enough. I put two sticky bandages on top and call it a day.

Next I go to my computer on the floor, and swizz the mouse. The soft chime as it wakes up comforts me, telling me the power grid isn't down, though it probably will be soon.

I open the shared drive with Cerulean and survey the contents he downloaded. It was less than a gigabyte of stuff before, mostly texture maps and crafting patterns, but now it's packed to the gills and close to its hundred-gigabyte limit.

I scroll through the contents and find a mish-mash of html webpages, pdfs, videos and books about the 'prepper' lifestyle; people who spent their free time preparing for a coming cataclysm.

Judging from the titles they are mostly about basic survival; securing sources of food and water, finding and reinforcing shelter, sourcing weapons and using them in combat against 'hostiles', sourcing power and fuel and using these to employ vehicles, computers, walkie-talkies and so on. I notice that preppers like the word 'source' a lot.

I go to the desk and pluck out five thumb-drives, which I use all the time to back up my art. I slot them in to the computer and set the contents downloading. The prepper Bible needs to be portable.

The computer says it'll take at least an hour. I slump back against the bed, and a sound comes from beyond the door as if in response.

I freeze. I look. The door is sealed but the sound is still coming, a wheezing right outside my room. Is that…?

My blood goes cold. I listen to the low susurrus of breath rise and fall like one giant lung. I get up quietly and go to the door, then lean over the bed and put my eye to the spyglass.

Holy shit. They are in the corridor, packed five wide all the way back to the stairs, so tightly they can't move, like wieners in a vacuum-packed casing.

I jerk away. I back-pedal across the room until I hit the wall.

I'm trapped.

I make green tea.

It's gratifying that the kettle still works. I spoon green dust that smells like freshly mown grass into the cup, and pour boiling water atop it. The smell of bitter tannins wafts into the room, and I hold the cup in my shaking hand. There is solace in such routines, even though my brain may no longer need them to survive. They've saved me before, and they can save me now.

I'm barely even thirsty, but I sip anyway. I try to think about practicalities objectively, one at a time. I look at my phone; it's 11:33. Plenty of daylight left. Wherever Lara is it can't be that far.

I need to plan. I bring up my phone and click the app for Jeo. My geo-location still works, though the map it's built upon doesn't refresh. I am a blue dot in the midst of the gray blur of New York, pointing southeast. Good to know.

I'm not hungry, but I make up a bowl of cornflakes with crisp cold milk. I'll need fuel. I sit on the bed and eat it, trying not to think of Cerulean's voice on the phone. I try not to think of what remains of him now, in his basement.

I start making up a pack, adding my laptop, a kitchen knife, a water bottle, some clothes. What else do I really need? I add my comic, Zombies of New York, to the USB download tray, plus the latest build of the fulfillment center. I add my phone and laptop chargers like I'm packing for a trip.

The computer chimes, signaling the transfer is finished. I put the USBs in my pocket. I look at my bag and think about where I'm going to go. I think about Lara, and where she would go. I don't know anything about her, not really. Her folks live in upstate New York somewhere, but that could be anywhere. She lives in Brooklyn, but that could be anywhere too.

The computer blanks out abruptly. My phone chimes to say it's been disconnected.

The power's gone out. I toss the keyboard and mouse away, useless now. There's only one place I can go where she might conceivably be.

Sir Clowdesley. It helps that I'm still the mayor.

First I experiment. I smash the glass out of my window and toss mugs and plates down at the zombies' heads, but that doesn't do a damn thing. Mugs bounce off their heads in shards, and plates, no matter how hard I Frisbee them down, just buckle whichever one they hit for a few seconds.

Next I try my computer, contained within a 33" monitor. It's heavy, edged, and I won't need it anymore.

"Goodbye old friend," I tell it. I take aim and hurl it out the window. It hits a male zombie on the head corner-first, staving in his skull. There's a nasty crunch and he goes down bleeding. Then he comes right back up.

I feel nauseous. He's looking right up at me. He still looks like a person despite the gray skin and white eyes. He's dressed like a salesman with his tie neatly knotted at the throat. Now black blood discolors his white shirt.

I turn to the side abruptly dizzy. I just tried to kill someone. It doesn't seem to matter that he's already dead, I still feel sick. Is he even dead? Could be they'll all recover in a day or two, and I just tried to kill one of them.

I bend over and breathe heavily for a while. Shit. Perhaps I'm not cut out for murder with a monitor. The sweet scent of orange blossoms on the air only makes it worse. I pant until I'm feeling better. 

At the least, I learned something. Caving in their skulls doesn't kill them. Good to know.

It's past two. I've got my bag and my USBs. It'll never be any easier or better a time than now. I survey my room a final time, then I move the chair beneath the skylight, push it wide open, and climb out onto the roof.

It's chilly here but sunny. The roof is red slate and thankfully dry, so I'm not slipping on moss. The zombies start to breathe harder down below. From higher up they look like an ocean of grayish heads. To the south the skyline of Manhattan rises over the blocks of tenements. Still there are no jets or helicopters in the air.

I have a loose plan, and for it this bit needs to be quiet, and fast. I slide awkwardly up to the roof's sloping crest, with my bag on my back. At the crest a line of stacked ceramic tiles runs like a monorail, which I hold onto as I pad along the roof, looking down into the square back yards behind each tenement house.

Three houses over I see the first parked motorbike, a black and chrome beast which is surely more than I can handle on a first outing. I've never ridden a bike before, plus there's no skylight into the garret for easy access, so I slide on. Two buildings further on there's a pastel green moped on a kickstand, much more my style, and a skylight in the roof.

I try to pry it open, and to my joy it's already unlocked. I peer in checking for zombies, but there are none. It's a rec room with a drum set in one corner and some workout weights in the other. I dangle in from the skylight frame, then drop to the carpeted floor with a soft thump.

Breaking and entering.

Remembering something from a movie I saw, I go to the weights. The dumbbell bars are just about right, and after I slide the weights off one, it fits in my hand perfectly as a club. I creep to the door and creak it open.

The corridor beyond is mercifully empty. The house smells like toasted bagels, and there's a large poster of Bob Marley's face on the wall. I tread lightly to the stairs and start down. The inhabitants like pictures of Bob Marley, and flowery wallpaper. I pass by four bedrooms, two for kids with the names of the inhabitants written on hanging signs.

Jemima

Janiqua

It's not a tenement then, but a single family. They must be rich. I hope they're all out. I pad down with my senses on high alert, straining for any sound. By the ground floor my heart is going crazy.

I pad over the tiled corridor toward the back yard. I open it up, onto a classy kitchen with a polished granite breakfast bar, bright plastic stools, and a full-length glass door through which I can see the moped in the yard. I start toward it, then see someone standing off to the left by the sinks, with his back to me.

"Uh," I say, involuntarily.

It's a guy in a bathrobe, with long dreads. He turns, and I see he's wearing blue pajamas beneath the open robe. His skin is a gray tan and his eyes are ice-white.

An awkward moment passes.

"I'll just," I start, perhaps intending to finish with 'let myself out,' but he doesn't give me the chance. With his robe fluttering behind him he charges.

"Shit," I mutter and try to get my dumbbell club up in the air. He hits me before I can bring it down and slams me back against the half-open door, which crashes shut with a juddery slam.

I try to bounce away but his weight pins me and his outstretched fingers claw off my hoodie, his mouth is open and for a second his cheek hits my cheek and I freak out completely, spinning a frantic elbow into the side of his head.

The force knocks him down to his knees, and I leap away and kick him in the head, the same way I'd kick out at a rat, not really wanting to touch it. I connect and his head whacks to the side but it does nothing but slow him briefly, and he keeps coming.

"Goddamn shit," I curse, because now my foot hurts and I'm penned in and all I've got is this damn metal club.

I bring it down on his shoulder, too squeamish to go for the head, and with a horrible crack his collarbone crumples in. He doesn't give a shit though, and rises to his feet smoothly, leaning in.