Zombie Ocean (Book 2): The Lost (11 page)

"It's a lot faster than walking, hey?"

It was Jake, sitting at the table by the back sofa. She turned and regarded him seriously. Probably he was about eighteen, she thought. He was definitely younger than the others.

"Why were you laughing at me before?" she asked.

"I didn't-" he said, looking puzzled, then stopped. "Right yeah, I'm sorry. It's just, you're a little girl. But you talk like you're grown up."

"And that was funny?"

He shrugged. "I suppose so. I didn't mean anything by it. You're not upset about that, are you?"

"No."

She looked ahead to the windshield, to the flat orange horizon. "When will we see Amo and Lara?"

"Real soon, I think. Cerulean, that's Robert, sorry, I read the comic too and I can't get his nickname out of my head, he thinks we'll be there this time tomorrow. Not much of a nickname when it takes longer to say than his real name, is it? Anyway, he wants to drive through the night."

Anna disregarded much of this. "What time is it now?"

Jake pulled a phone out of his pocket and it blinked to life. "Three thirty. Are you in a rush?"

"Yes."

"Can I ask why?"

"Yes. I don't know. I don't like sitting still."

He smiled widely. His feathery black hair made him look a little like a crow. "I suppose for someone who's been walking for basically three months, this is a lot of sitting."

She shrugged.

"Do you want to play a game?" he asked. "We've got lots on board. Amo stocked them for us."

"No. Thank you." An idea came to her. "But could you…" she trailed off, looking for her backpack. Panic cut in. Her Daddy's phone was in it. "Where's my pack?"

"It's OK, it's right here." He leaned back on the chair and slid it out of a storage hutch. "Everything in its right place." He held it out.

She took it and dug around inside, coming up with her copy of Alice through the Looking Glass. "Can you read this to me?"

He made his surprised face again. "Well, I, sure."

"I can't read," she said, by way of explanation. "I just look at the pictures. I want to be able to read it, someday. Maybe you could teach me? It means a lot to me."

"Sure." He took the book. "I'd be happy to. Now, where shall I start?"

She laid her head back down on the rumbling leather seat. "Anywhere. I know it all anyway."

They rode.

It was very different from riding in her Daddy's sling. The people were there, and they talked, and a few times they ate something together, but they were always distant. Even Robert.

Listening to Jake read Alice helped. It was like listening to old things after the coma, and keeping off the hurt, though this hurt was very different. It was all inside. Plus it seemed the stories might hold some secrets left behind by her father.

Jake laughed a lot when he read, which was OK too. The stories were supposed to be fun, and his laugh sounded nice now.

On the RV they also had a lot of cables to connect phones, and with Jake's help she plugged hers in. It charged up and she spent a long time looking at it, flicking through the screens. There was the phone screen, and the photos she could hardly look at without crying, and some games, and of course the flashing yellow dot that was her father, lost in an ocean of gray.

She didn't want the others to see that so she huddled up in a corner of the back sofa.

Some time late in the night, with Cynthia driving and Jake in the front seat beside her, she overheard Robert and Julio whispering in their beds.

"We could find out where she's from," Julio whispered. His voice was easy to recognize though he didn't speak much. "It'll only take a minute. There must be addresses in there."

"Why do we need to know where she's from?" Robert answered. "She needs to learn to trust us, Julio, and that won't happen if you take her phone."

"Don't we need to trust her? Her stories about walking across the country can't be true. She's lying, and she could be leading us into a trap."

"She's five years old. Don't take her phone off her, OK? Just leave her be."

She held the phone more tightly. She brought up the gray screen for the Hatter's chip and watched the yellow dot blinking softly, like a pulse, so far away.

She was the blue arrow. At least now she was going in the same direction as him.

They came into Las Vegas in the early morning. The name meant nothing to Anna but the others were all excited. They had the windows open and laughed and joked loudly. Robert had her brought up to the front to see, and they played the game of looking out for Amo's next cairn.

"He said there was going to be one here," Robert said, grinning at her. "A big one, I think. First one to find it gets a red string."

He dangled one just in front of her. She laughed and grabbed for it. Warm sandy air rushed in through the window and through her hair. They'd made her take a wash the day before, and Masako had pulled a comb through her matted hair. Now it was all frizzy again.

They'd examined her tooth-marks too. Masako and Cynthia had done a full check on her whole body for any kinds of sickness or injury, but they found nothing except the holes in her head.

"You're like Amo," Masako said and smiled. "Holy." Cynthia shushed her.

"I know," Anna said, "it's OK. He shot himself. I read the comic."

Masako patted her shoulder.

"You're a strong girl, Anna."

She already knew that.

Now she studied the strange buildings either side of the road with glee. They were like something out of Wonderland, too big or too small, built in the shape of things that shouldn't be buildings. Robert called them 'casinos'. They were places for people to make bets and have fun, apparently. There was a big black pyramid, and a huge white one that looked very fancy, and one that looked like a tall red tower, and finally one that was a big white circle like an egg, with a picture drawn on it.

Robert hit the steering wheel and laughed. "The UFO! Of course. Amo you crazy bastard!"

Anna didn't understand, but soon the others were up at the front pointing and laughing. There was a picture of a giant man jumping on the UFO-egg, which apparently had to be Amo's work.

"Subversive," Jake said, "twisting the man against the man." 

None of it made much sense, so Anna was right at home. Impossible things were her specialty.

They pulled up in front of the UFO, parked, and then all got out and headed in an excited rush to the hotel lobby. Anna hurried along by Robert's side, caught up in the excitement. Another cairn from Amo! Maybe he was still here…

The lobby was vast, and in places giant green monster statues stood, with impossibly long legs and great eyeballs for heads. Amo wasn't there, but it was definitely his cairn and he'd left lots of things gathered neatly for them to find.

There was a new edition of the comic, and more of the shiny colorful cups which Julio turned into a disgusting drink, and best of all there was a billboard with Amo's name on it, and right underneath Amo's name was Lara's, and next to both of their names was the same date.

Amo and Lara at the same date!

They all enjoyed that, because it meant they must have met up in this very place, and left the cairn together. It made Anna feel warm and tingly inside.

For a while she tried on sunglasses from the dozen racks, imagining she was Lara trying them on. She leafed through an updated version of the comic, reading about how Lara saved Amo and how Amo killed Don. When Masako showed her how, she watched videos of Amo and Lara goofing around by the swimming pool.

So this was Amo! This was Lara! They were beautiful and happy, and seeing that happiness went some way toward filling up the emptiness in Anna's middle. Watching them jog and film each other, listening to their voices, made her almost feel at home.

They added their names to the listing on the wall. Robert checked his maps. They all took one last look then got back in the RV and pulled out.

"By dusk!" Robert shouted from the front. "We'll be there soon."

Anna could barely contain herself. She'd only seen Amo's Pac-Man sign a few weeks ago, but already he meant more to her than she could explain. He was like a real life Alice trotting across the world, figuring out all these strange things and helping the rest of them see the way forward.

She sat in the front next to Robert in Masako's lap until she fell asleep.

When she woke they were there. Everyone was hooting and hollering, even Julio. It was so dark outside and the RV was blasting along an empty stretch of road, with the moon off to the left.

"There," Jake said, pointing out of the side window. There was an orange light in the distance, bobbing on an ocean of black. "That's Amo and Lara."

It felt like the opposite of the hurt. She wanted to see them so badly. She wanted to hold them and know that they were real, that hope and dreams could come true no matter how grand or impossible. It mattered much more than anything else.

Five minutes passed that felt like forever, with the windows all down and roaring with the wind, and the lights getting closer, then at last the RV pulled up and stopped. Jake got out first, then Masako and Julio helped Cynthia out, while Robert got in his chair and came round to the ramp at the back.

Standing in the middle of the broad forecourt, surrounded by lights that twinkled like Christmas, stood Amo and Lara. He was just as she'd imagined, with some of the same crazy twinkle in his eyes her Daddy had had. Lara was beautiful and warm, just like she'd always dreamed her Mommy must have been.

"Welcome," Amo called, and chills went through her. He strode over and he got on one knee before her and he hugged her first. He whispered in her ear, "Welcome home, little sister."

She hugged him as tightly as she could.

Then Lara was next and she hugged her too and Lara said, "Welcome home honey," then Robert came out of the RV and Amo's eyes went wide and he ran over and they hugged crazily and then everyone was hugging and crying and laughing and in the midst of it, for a moment, Anna felt certain that maybe this was enough. The emptiness was gone and she was filled up to the brim just as much as could be. 

After all the craziness and excitement and snacking and whooping, all the excited sharing of stories and fast talk of big dreams and misery left behind, Anna fell asleep in the big cinema and dreamed of her Daddy on his island again.

He was huge and sad.

"Lint and cobbles, Anna," he said, "lint and cobbles, I'll see you soon."

He climbed down off his podium and walked again into the sea.

Anna shouted for him to come back but he just kept going. The lightning bolt on his back went into the water, then his shoulders went into the water, his neck, then his head up to his ears, then the top of his head and then he was gone.

She woke up screaming, hot and afraid, not knowing where she was.

"Shut the fuck up," someone called from the darkness.

She panted while the fear drained away. Nobody came to comfort her. They were all sleeping still. Instead she comforted herself, as she'd done a thousand times before, on countless nights since her Daddy left, since her Mommy left, since the coma hit.

"Tell me an impossible thing, Daddy," she whispered to herself.

There were cucumber men and birdwomen. There were deep-digging dogs and snail-people who carried the whole world on their backs. There were caterpillars and card-men and Hatters, and all of them helped calm her, though none of them took away the sick feeling in her belly.

Her Daddy was out there still, out in the cold water and swimming towards his Jabberwock, and there was nothing she could do to help.

The next day was crazy.

The RV group came together with Amo and Lara in an office room inside the theater and talked and talked for hours. They set up a table and laid out papers and computers and sat around like they were managing the whole world.

Mayor of America, Jake had said, when he read her Amo's comic. It seemed to fit. Anna sat through most of the boring meeting looking at her phone, or doodling impossible things on a piece of paper. They talked about a lot of things that were hard for her to follow. Once they argued very loudly, until at one point Julio stormed out, though he came back later and apologized and they started talking again.

After that Robert came over. He winked and took her hand and they rolled out together, leaving the others arguing behind. It seemed strange that she'd only known him for a few days.

Outside it was very hot, with the sun beating like the hurt out of a pure blue sky. The sea was off to their right, like a mirror image of the sky.

"You must be so bored in there, Anna," Robert said. "I'm sorry about it."

She shrugged.

Robert wheeled round and they went down the ramp. It was a good thing the theater had so many ramps, she thought, so Robert could go anywhere they wanted. She snipped up little bits of twigs as they went by a crackly bush, picking them apart in her hands.

"What are they doing in there?" she asked.

"Lots of things," Robert said. He pulled out of the ramp and turned left. The sidewalk here had metal stars stuck into it. That was unexpected. Each of them had a name, plus hand and foot marks in the cement. Anna imagined adding her own name to the list.

"…and who's going to get the fuel," Robert was saying. The heat made her dozy. "And water and food, and where we should stay, and what we're going to do about you."

Her ears pricked up at that. "About me?"

Robert nodded. "That's right. There are no schools now, and there's only eight of us in total. Who's going to teach you? Who's going to act as your parent?"

Anna frowned. "I don't need any teaching. Well, except I want to read. But I don't need another parent. I've been fine on my own for months."

Robert stopped and looked at her. "Were you fine, Anna? Honestly?"

She looked right back at him. She knew what he wanted to say, because she'd been mostly eating red strings, and because of the teeth marks in her head, and because she couldn't even charge her Daddy's phone without their help. They were small things on their own, but they added up to be quite a lot.