Zombie Ocean (Book 2): The Lost (19 page)

Somebody was laughing. The camera was turning and jolting with flashes of gray bodies and old clothes, until it slipped free and for a second pointed up at the blue sky, then down and across at a road filled with gray bodies, surrounded by golden and green fields of corn.

Anna gasped. She'd seen this before, a long time ago: footage from Amo's original cairns. There were thousands of the ocean spread around him, all facing toward the camera, somewhere in Iowa. They didn't look angry or sad, they weren't lost or found, they were simply there and looking right back.

Then the camera tipped and angled down, so she was looking into Amo's face. He was younger and thinner and there was a wild joy dancing in his eyes. He laughed and he talked at the camera in a confused garble so fast that she could barely make out, but the words didn't seem important. The moment resonated with her.

This was the moment Amo realized the ocean didn't want to kill him. This was the moment after he'd let them take him and been forgiven. She'd seen it when she was a little girl but hadn't understood. Now tears rolled down her cheeks.

For five minutes Amo circled amongst the ocean and they moved with him, like a drop of oil flowing over water. It was beautiful and so hopeful.

The image faded and was replaced. Now Amo stood by a large warehouse which had to be his Yangtze fulfillment center. The camera must have been on a tripod, and Amo was pushing a crate of something on a wheeled pallet. He brought it over to the camera, grinning madly, and held up a first edition of his comic for the camera to see.

Zombies of America 

The same wild exuberance was in his eyes. He was bright and fresh and ready for anything. His eyes were as happy as she'd ever seen, like he was glimpsing something bigger and brighter beyond the camera, perhaps even all the way out to Anna herself, sitting on her yacht at sea ten years later. She shuddered. At this point he hadn't even known there was anyone else alive, but he'd believed. He didn't know about Lara or Cerulean or anything, but he'd had faith.

He set the comic down and picked up the camera, then walked it over to show a pile of weapons sitting in the middle of the Yangtze parking lot. He set it down with a clunk and moved to squat beside the pile, in shot.

"I don't need these," he said. "Not any of them. You don't need them either. What we need is each other, now more than ever. Come find me at the Chinese Theater and I'll welcome you like my own lost family. Please."

He got up again and left the frame. "Here's my ride," he said, and turned the camera to his convoy: a bright yellow JCB at the fore with an armored school bus behind it and an RV equipped with huge speakers at the back. "It looks scary but there are no weapons aboard any more." A moment later the speakers began to vibrate, and a stomping Kanye West track blared into the air. The camera swung up back to his face.

"Let's roll out!" he cheered. The image went to black.

Anna rubbed her eyes. She couldn't believe any of this. It was so brazen.

More shots of zombies on the road followed, panning by. Amo had to be filming out of the window as his convoy rolled across America. There were cities and deserts, forests and rivers, each clip a few seconds long. In some of them Amo spoke from behind, in some he sang, in others the camera watched from a tripod as he erected one of his cairns with two vehicles either side of a highway. In sped-up motion he painted the checkered line across the asphalt then stuffed the cars with his comics, USBs, laptops and a large blackboard signed with his name, LMA, and the date.

Next came the giant Pac-Man, and Anna laughed again. This was what had drawn her in. Now she watched as Amo made it. He'd filmed it from start to finish, from sourcing the materials to hoisting them up to the top of the Wells Fargo building, to rappelling down the side and more fast-forward medleys of painting the giant yellow critter into place.

Because of this she'd picked up his trail. Because of this she'd met Cerulean and the others, she'd come out of Wonderland and gone Through the Looking Glass.

Next up was a shot of Lara. The camera lingered on her back, standing in front of a floor-to-ceiling window through which the outlandish Strip hotels of Las Vegas were just discernible. It had to be the hospital where she saved Amo's life.

After a moment she turned and laughed. "Are you filming me now?" Her voice was delighted.

"No," Amo said.

"Well you should be," she said, and tossed her curly hair. "I look magnificent."

He laughed and she came over. "But I'm not the star of this narcissistic endeavor," she said. "You are."

She grappled for the camera and pointed it at Amo. He lay on a rumpled hospital bed looking sweaty, pale and weak.

"Shoot me from this angle," he said, turning his chin to the side, "I look much better."

Lara laughed and the camera jiggled.

"Or this angle, it's good too." He turned his chin the other way.

"That's just your whole face," Lara said, laughing still.

"Well shoot it then woman!"

She laughed and dropped the camera to the covers, then leaned in to kiss him. Their lips met just at the edge of frame.

The screen went black, then opened again on the coast. There was the Pacific Ocean, and Lara and Amo were whooping at it, taking turns to point the camera at each other with the ocean behind them and whoop. Next they sped along in a series of fast cuts taking in the highlights of Los Angeles: zombies walking into the water off Muscle Beach, zombies trawling along through traffic-strewn streets, zombies walking along stars on the Walk of Fame, until they arrived at the Chinese Theater.

There they interviewed each other briefly about how good it felt to have finally arrived. Amo limped a little but he looked stronger.

"This is everything I ever dreamed of," Lara said. "I've wanted to see this movie all my life. Ragnarok III, thank you so much for bringing me here Amo."

Amo laughed. "Early reviewers said it really delves into the motivations of the superheroes this time."

A clip of the movie followed, which made Anna laugh too. There were no copyright infringement lawsuits now. Two of the brightly-costumed heroes tumbled through the air, punching each other into skyscraper walls, while alien-looking slug things hit into the White House. A geyser of light shot up into the sky and Washington exploded.

Then it was night, and the camera was pointing down at an awkward angle from the front of the Chinese theater, aiming over the forecourt, road, and out to sea. It was crooked as though it had been set on its tripod hastily. Nearby off-camera Amo and Lara talked with a feverish low excitement. The waves lapped against the beach. Off to the left a tiny light hovered in the distance, winding its way closer.

"No way," Anna breathed.

The light drew up, becoming an RV she recognized, driven by a man she knew well. Amo and Lara approached as the RV pulled up and stopped. The front door opened and Jake got out. He said something, too far away for the camera to pick up, and Amo spread his arms and said something back, then the side of the RV opened up and a little black girl in a dirty Alice in Wonderland blue dress climbed out.

Anna gasped.

Amo ran over to her and hugged her. Lara followed. Everybody hugged and cried, then Cerulean came round the back in his wheelchair and everybody hugged and cried again.

In her chair on the catamaran Anna was crying too. She hit pause and climbed out of the lounge to the bridge-top in the open sea air. Tears streamed down her face.

"Bastard," she muttered, "Amo, you crafty bastard."

She'd never seen this footage before. She hadn't even known it existed, and now the sight of herself so small, bright and proud hurt her deeply. It made her angry even though it made no sense to be angry at Amo, because this was clearly what he truly believed. He took all this mess and still made it into a hopeful narrative. He was an idiot who didn't know when to give up.

She turned and looked back east. He would be there still, waiting for word to come back. He'd tricked her into carrying cairns for the world. He was an ass.

She wiped her face. Back in the lounge she settled to watch. Forty minutes had passed already, with an hour left. She pressed play.

The remainder was a medley of their group's history. People came and were welcomed. Some were ejected, Julio amongst them. Defenses were erected then forgotten, homes set up, working pipes and sewage systems and electric lines installed, solar panels and wind turbines and batteries rigged into each other. There were a few new couples formed, seen through held hands and stolen kisses.

There were nights where they danced together on the beach, circling like cavemen around a great fire, roasting pork they'd raised in back yards, drinking beer they'd brewed in plastic vats. There were brief interviews with people who'd come on years-long journeys from the interior after seeing one of Amo's cairns. There were forays out to set up new cairns.

Lara's babies were born: twins. Anna was there in the corridor outside when Amo brought them out. Other babies came, not many but enough for great celebrations every times. There were weddings and birthday parties, several for her. She saw herself at ten years old wearing her party hat in the middle of a throng of cheering people. She looked happy as she blew out the candles on her cake.

That changed, though. Their little community grew a little more, and Anna changed. She put away her Alice uniform, and some of the optimism faded from her face. She remembered that time clearly, and the guilt that came with not being a little kid any more. The guilt that said she ought to be something, because hadn't she made a promise, and wasn't it time now to pay?

There was a shot of her kitesurfing on the waves, performing moves that were far too dangerous. There was a shot of Ravi cheerfully cleaning her racing yacht, with her nowhere to be seen. They were fleeting moments though, hard to spot, and to anyone else the film was uplifting; a story of hope and survival after the end of the world.

Finally there was a shot of the T4 virus wriggling in its cell under the electron microscope, before burning out. The film ended on blackness, and a message.

It unites us all.

Let us know you're out there.

We cannot wait to meet you as the family we all are.

The words remained for a minute before fading, after which the film ended and reverted back to the title screen with its circle of flags.

Anna slumped in her seat. Numbly she counted the flags. There were 24. She clicked one randomly, probably it was Thai, and watched through the first few minutes until the first cameraman spoke again. Subtitles in a foreign script popped up.

She stopped it. She stood and went to the plastic wallet Amo had thrown to her, where she'd left it on the table. How much time had he spent on this? She felt like screaming and laughing. It was manipulation, plain and simple. He was trying to save the world. She opened the wallet, pulled out the satellite phone and tinkered until it hissed with the sound of a live channel.

On the upper deck looking out over blue ocean and blue sky, she spoke her message into the device. Probably they'd hear it straight away, she was that close still.

"Screw you, Amo. Screw you all the way to China."

15. TEACUP STORM

Speed was all that mattered now.

For ten days she sailed at full speed and slept only minutes at a time, tethered to the main mast and leaning off the starboard hull with the tiller cable in her hand. Each time she woke as she slipped toward the water, only caught by the tether she wore around her waist, latched to an eyelet on the hull.

She'd right herself, check the course, and go back to the battle to keep her eyes open. The world was hot and stuffy and the wind was her lullaby. She only had to close her eyes for a second to start hearing her father's cozy brown voice, the memory of a memory coming back to haunt her.

"When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day," he whispered in the Queen of Heart's imperious tones. "Why, sometimes, I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

In those moments she was little Anna again, wrapped up in her tight sheets and looking up at her Daddy's scraggly face, dreaming of all the wonders the world had to offer.

Each jerk to wakefulness tied the two worlds more closely together. Her time in Los Angeles began to seem like the dream, and this the reality; she was little Anna again, always following after her father.

The catamaran reached and held on to top speeds of eighteen knots, dragged forward by the spinnaker ceaselessly and blasted by unseasonably good winds. The threat of pitchpoling, capsizing the yacht under the strength of the wind, was ever-present but Anna kept it under control.

Her father was waiting.

In ten days and nights she covered sixteen hundred miles. Already she was almost to Hawaii, which was a third of the way to China. Then the storm hit.

It hit hard and sudden, rising from a brief squall to tempestuous winds, ten-foot waves, and spray that could choke an elephant in less time than it took Anna to fully rouse.

CRASH

Thunder racked the sky. A hard cold rain slashed down and Anna shook her head awake, poised off the port outrigger. In seconds she was drenched and shivering so hard she could barely unlatch herself from the hull's safety tether. The metal carabiner was slippery with scaled salt and her fingers were numb and shaky, while the whole yacht was wrenching side to side under the shifting pull of the spinnaker and main sail, both of which were whipping madly in the violent winds.

Finally she got the carabiner catch open, but as she was about to slip the cable loose, a wave hit just as the spinnaker pulled the fore down, driving the front hulls into the water and jack-knifing the rear up like a violent seesaw.

Anna was tossed up like shot from a catapult, caught mid-air on the tether which jerked hard at her waist, then dropped down to smack head first off the hollow hull. It rang with a deep bong and she blacked out for an instant, long enough to rouse dangling bodily in the open gap between the hull and the outrigger with her feet trailing in the thrashing water.