Zombie Ocean (Book 2): The Lost (17 page)

"It means autonomic survival reactions. A T4 has nothing like empathy, it's entirely self-serving. It saved you and me because it thought it was saving itself."

Amo shrugged. "It's no surprise we don't agree. You may be right, I don't know. But you're wrong about this place being a fantasy, and you're going to see that you're wrong."

She frowned, holding one hand up to block a ray of sun. "What are you talking about?" 

"You're going to see the world, Anna. It's been ten years since we talked to any of them. Do you know how many people lived in China before the apocalypse? One point four billion. Imagine how many survivors they might have. You're going to make first contact."

She frowned. "If they're alive."

"I'm sure they are. They'll be rebuilding and gathering just like us, and you can tell them about this place. Maybe they'll come to us, maybe we'll go to them, but we'll unite. We may all need to learn Chinese."

He smiled.

Was that a joke? "There's no one out there," Anna said dully, more to argue with him than anything else. "If they were there they'd have come already."

He laughed again. "Like we've gone to them? It's taken us this long just to get solid, in a country that already had vast infrastructure, where we all speak the same language. Can you imagine trying to unite China? Leaving cairns across it would keep you busy for a lifetime."

His chirpiness was annoying her.

"What do you want, Amo?"

"I want to tell you LA is not a fantasy. It's a dream, and I never dreamed for only this. You'll be the first to cross the ocean, but you won't be the last. More people will go, Anna, and they'll start to come too. The dream will grow until there's enough of us to be sustainable, and you'll be the one to start it off."

She stared at him hard. This was not the Amo who'd barely spoken to her for years.

"Why are you saying this now? I thought you'd given up on me."

He smiled and shook his head. "Give up on my little sister? How could I?"

A rush of emotion rose up and her eyes went blurry. "You did. You didn't talk to me. You shouted and then we never spoke."

He shrugged. "Because what would I say? I knew then that you had to leave. You had to keep your promise. I wanted to take you there myself, but people kept coming in and there was Julio to watch, then Lara was pregnant and I couldn't leave our children. I couldn't go and I couldn't tell you to go. You had to want it for yourself."

She laughed through her tears. It was ridiculous. "I'm only going because of the T4. You couldn't know we'd find that."

"The T4 doesn't matter. It's a spark only. The rocket-fuel's inside you, put there ten years ago when your father walked into that water. Now the fuel's ignited and nothing's going to stop it. I don't know what you're going to find out there, but I don't think it will be terrible. I believe it will be good, and it'll change everything."

She snorted. "It'll be millions of the dead. Billions."

"And your father amongst them. I know. Here."

He pulled a bulky black chunk of plastic, it looked like a walkie-talkie, from his sagging cargo pocket and tossed it aboard. She caught it smoothly. It was heavy and hard, with buttons and a dial marked with fine white gradations.

"It's a military satellite phone," he said. "Low Earth Orbit, it should work from wherever you are in the world, piggybacking where it can on whatever satellites are still up there. The constellation cover is pretty light now, so it's unlikely we'll be able to talk live after you go over the horizon, but you can send messages and maybe even receive them. You can let us know what you find. Signal on any channel and we'll pick you up in the radio room. It takes double-A batteries, here's a pack and a charger."

He pulled a plastic wallet from his other cargo pocket, filled with small bits of equipment, and tossed that to her too. She barely caught it. There were about fifteen loose batteries and two chargers.

"I checked they'd fit with the catamaran's power-gen system. You're good."

She looked at these items in her hands. They were a bridge to nothing. "I've got no plans to come back," she said.

He shrugged. "So explore for us, Anna. Go to the edge and tell us what it's like out there, like you did before. Find your father and all our lost fathers and tell us what they've become."

The tears spilled down her cheeks. She felt angry and sad at once.

"Why didn't you say any of this before?" she called. "Why didn't you talk to me about this or encourage me?"

He smiled. "You mean be nice, like a father would? When Cerulean tried that you cut him off."

"It would've been different if it was you."

"Maybe. But here we are. This is what you need, and it's what we need too. Hope, Anna. It's the most precious thing we have. You'll find it out there and bring it home, because we're a family and we need it."

She rubbed her eyes. She put the satellite phone and battery pack down on the deck.

"Forget all that family stuff. You played me for years. It's hardly better than Ravi with his pick-up lines."

Amo grinned boyishly, splitting the severity of his dark gaze like a well-chopped cord of wood. "I knew a great pick-up artist once. His name was Hank. He's out there somewhere too, with your father. Go find him for me, will you? Say hello."

Anna laughed. She'd met Hank of course, after Amo opened up his Deepcraft mod in the Yangtze fulfillment center for everyone to play. She rubbed her eyes.

"You're crazy, Amo. You really are."

"Maybe. But you're about to cross the Pacific and hunt down a single man in an ocean of zombies, alone. I'd say that's crazier than anything I ever did."

Anna sighed. She took a deep breath and composed herself. She scanned the marina. "No Lara."

"No Lara or Cerulean. I made them stay behind. They understand, but they can't watch you go, you know? And I can't spare them to go with you. We look strong but we're still precarious here. One stiff wind could blow us all apart. I need them to keep this place together. You're the only one we can afford, our seed on the wind."

She looked to the yacht where she'd left Ravi. He was probably still sleeping. "Look after him please."

Amo nodded. "I always have."

More tears came. She wanted to hide her face but resisted the urge. Amo already knew. He already knew so much, had looked after them all since the moment he drew his first 'f' on the Empire State Building, and he hadn't stopped looking after them yet.

"I'll see you again, Anna," he said. "Stay in touch."

She looked down at the satellite phone.

"When you have a minute, check the rear cabins," Amo added. "I've left something in there for you."

He walked away.

She wiped her cheeks and started moving. She peered in the rear cabins but there was only stacked water. In five minutes she cast off from the dock and fired up the twin motors. The catamaran chugged gently out of the docking basin then out of the marina, like a slow motion bullet. Soon she was out on clear water with a westerly wind blowing across her face. She unfurled the sail and it caught. The speedometer read three knots and gaining. Waves thumped under the hulls.

The marina receded.

At one point she thought she saw a tiny figure emerge from the deck of a yacht and wave with both arms. It could be a trick of the light, but she waved back. Soon after that the marina faded into a sprawl of gray buildings, which faded into the gray sweep of Los Angeles, which was eclipsed by the blue horizon.

Already this was further than she'd gone before. All she could see was water. The wind was strong and still smelled of the desert sand, though the scent was growing faint.

She turned her face to the west.

INTERLUDE 1

He left the land behind and walked into the water.

The cold and the current didn't affect him. There were others of his kind swarming on all sides, each pulsing as a source of heat on his skin and mapping out the flow of thousands.

The little girl clung to his neck as the waterline closed over his head and his lungs filled up. Waves pushed him back but the water in his chest held him down. The girl cried out then went silent as the water covered her too.

He walked on, ignoring her thrashing and pulling, until soon she released him. Every step carried him deeper down a declining sandy bed, away from her. Dust floated in the water before him, lit by his glowing white eyes. Tiny fish flitted back and forth, and he bit at them when they came close to his gray lips. He chewed and swallowed those he caught, fuelling him, and trudged ahead.

She was gone.

He felt her still as a warmth in his chest. Her presence pressed to his chest had made him stronger every day. She had made them all strong, the others like him, but none so much as him. Her heat had passed into him, so even now they all clustered close, following him, gaining strength to face the growing cold together.

Already he could feel it. It was so far off but it only grew stronger and colder every day.

He walked toward it, deeper down the sloping sand through the water. The sense of her behind him faded and all that remained was the warmth driving him on. There was a kind of sadness for this, of something lost, though his simple mind could not articulate what it meant. It was simply the end of one phase and the beginning of another in his existence, like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. The cold drew him forward and the heat drove him on.

The water grew darker. The ground underfoot became harder. The surface was very far above now and he was very alone, but he could feel the heat of his brothers and sisters spreading around him. He made them strong and they made him strong in turn. His chest felt pleasantly full. He walked down into blackness.

Strange memories popped in his slow mind. There was the little girl lying in bed and crying. There were flying birdwomen who swam in the air above a deep green forest canopy. There was a woman he'd once known so well who left for reasons he couldn't remember. 

The water became cold and heavy. It was harder to walk with every step forward. His eyes illuminated only the motes of dust before him. A great creature swam by, lithe and smooth-skinned, with one large gray fin projecting upwards. The backwash from its powerful tail knocked him sideways, but the firmness of the water kept him on his feet.

Somewhere to his right he glimpsed it open its vast mouth and bite down on one of his brothers. He turned and his flock turned with him, adjusting course smoothly and without thought.

He was one of the first to reach the creature, flailing with the gray meat of his brother in a cloud of bodily debris. He clamped his hands to one of the creature's side-fins and bit in. Hot fuelling blood pumped into his throat, cutting the salty water and firing up the urge to kill. The creature bucked and tried to turn its jaws on him but it could not shake his grip. Instead it kicked upward, carrying him far above his flock like a birdwoman over the canopy. He held on and flew with it, chewing through meat to the bone.

For a time they soared and thrashed through the ocean, spiraling in tight circles, dripping blood through the water like smoke. He bit and grasped and gnawed. Up close the creature's skin was a pitted landscape of porous troughs and old battle-scars. Its gills flared like breadfly wings opening and closing. It tasted of life and strength. It snapped at the water and tried to shake him free, but he was too strong.

Soon it slowed and fell. He hugged its bulk with his arms and bit into its rough flank. Chunks plowed out and it fell sharper, down into the flowing mass of his brethren. There were so many of them, a whole world of white lights marching together, an ocean within the ocean.

They descended upon the dying predator, biting through to its core and disassembling it in jets of blood and ropey innards, all sucked in by hungry mouths. In moments the creature was gone and only bones remained.

The chill returned against his skin, and he turned again to face it.

Buoyed forward by the heat churning inside his belly, he walked on and thousands walked with him, slowing to let him take the lead. Soon he strode at their fore, and led them through tangled forests of slippery weeds that went on for miles, over coral beds that tore their hands and feet to shreds, up and down inclines where fish darted and snaked by in the total darkness. At times there were strange flashes of light cast by strange creatures in the depths. He walked through the ruined belly of a sunken battleship and later beside a plane's dark and rusted fuselage. He snatched up snails and sucked them from their shells. He killed a rubbery creature with ten elastic limbs by eating it to death. It squirted cold ink in his face.

Throughout, he went downward. Time passed and he descended and so did his flock, until the water became so cold that parts of his body began to freeze. He closed his eyes to protect them, and around him every one of the flock closed their eyes too, so the train of white lights on the ocean floor now rolled on in darkness.

In the long cold night his thoughts turned slowly. A dim sense of rightness ebbed and flowed within him. This march was important, though he didn't understand why. Memories popped like flashbulbs in a grand stadium. He saw again the long walk with the little girl pressed against his chest, and her eyes looking into his. There was a longing there he'd wanted to respond to, a reassurance he'd wanted to give but didn't know how. Instead he'd only looked into her eyes and met the need in her with the strength she'd given him, like a reflection. He was an ember rising from her fire, driven into the dark and cold to light her way.

At a certain point, when the water above became too heavy to walk any further down, weighing him down and pressing hard into his belly and eyes, he raised his arms and began to swim. As one thousands of his brothers and sisters spread miles out along the sea floor raised their arms and swam with him.

In a great gray cloud they swam, pulsing the ocean with their limbs. There was them strength and beauty in this work they were doing. There was meaning and unity in it. They were a force massing, a tide flowing, an ocean in the ocean driven by memories they didn't understand but drove them on nonetheless.