The Last Mayor

Part 5

CHAPTER 29 FULFILMENT

The layout comes back to me quickly, and I prowl the aisles of the Darkness following the invisible diviner in my head. I find the generators in no time, a whole section devoted to them, and my group follows on behind, touching my arms and back when they can. I pick up the first generator, a C-540 model, at least 80 pounds, and think 'Damn that is heavy'. I offer it to Hank.

"You want to help?"

Did he shake his head? I can't tell. He doesn't take it though. It's too heavy to carry. I go find a flatbed trolley and collect five generators. I drop them at the book machines then take the trolley out to the convoy and gather a drum of gas from the battle-tank.

The staff of the center look strange in the outdoor light, trickling along behind me like a line of baby ducks. I suppose this is the first time they've been outside in nearly four months. Their skin is still a light gray, but their clothes are oddly bright, like new. They wait patiently while I roll the gas drum out and get it on the trolley, then they walk alongside me like little kids gone shopping with their mom, holding on to the drum's sides.

I patrol the Darkness looking for gear. I get cables and transformers and lamps and socket extenders. I get paper and card and glue and ink and toner, mustn't forget toner, and everything else I think I might need. I start the first generator burning beside the book machines and plug in the lamps.

Let there be light. It warms the place right up, and the generator's thrum gives the Darkness a pulse. I pull up the old sofa Blucy installed back here, take a comfortable seat with my peeps lying down around me, and dig into the book machine operating manual.

Hours later, I'm ready to try a sample run. I have everything in the right position, probably; ink in the trays, paper in the loading bay, glue topped up, toner roll inserted, and power running into the machine through a tripledecker transformer tangle of cables and plug combinations.

The machine operates off pdf files, and there are several in the RAM already, one of them being Blucy's latest masterwork, 'Werewolves in the Pliocene'. The cover is shockingly bad, not one of mine.

I press print. The machine starts to kick and flash like it's bottling a storm, rocking itself back and forth. Ah, the book machines. I settle back on the sofa like we used to, almost a year ago now. It's so strange to have Blucy right here beside me, in withered body if not in spirit. Hank too, and some other new ones I don't know. It makes me sad that they're probably dead, but happy that they're here still, to keep me company for this.

"Sit down," I tell them. I pat the seat by my side. None of them sit. They either stand nearby or lie on the floor watching me, while I watch the machine.

After five minutes the bucking and fizzing stops, and out spits a book onto the conveyor belt. I pick it up and study it. It is fine work. It is digital bits, words and numbers and a little bit of art which until now were floating in electromagnetic storage cells in a steadily decaying hard drive; now converted to a real, tangible thing. Excellent.

I shut the machine down. I flick off the lamps and power, then cart another generator with me back to the outer offices, to the canteen, where there's a window and a desk, and a fridge I can maybe get to work. It's hot as hell, so I open all the doors and set them with stops. I even open up one of the loading bay doors in the warehouse, by jumping the circuit from one of my generators.

Light floods in, and a delicious cool breeze blows by, clearing out the dry and stale air. I smell grass seeds and undergrowth, and they are sublime. Now I just need a corn dog and some Bud to watch the big game.

Back in my new office I feed coins pilfered into the vending machine until it spits out 7UP cans, which I then put in the little fridge, plugged in to the generator. It tastes great going down cold. Sophia had the right idea with her little luxuries.

The heat clears out and the breeze keeps on coming. The staff wander around their transformed world, seeing portions of the Darkness in light for the first time. At times they come to stand by me while I get to work.

I rig my workspace with a top of the line iMac, stylus and graphical pad, hooked up through Photoshop. They watch and listen with interest as the machine boots up. I feel like a conductor with them as the orchestra, so I tap the pad with the stylus like I'm signaling for attention, and start music playing through my phone. I open a new pane, the right size for the maximum pdf the machines take, and put my pen to the tablet.

I begin.

It takes five days. I take breaks but they are light, because I'm that focused.

I love it, throwing myself into the work again with renewed vigor. Every panel I complete feels like a new kind of victory, more than the big 'f' in New York, more than I can really describe.

I tell my story. I tell it from my coma all the way to now, about brave Carl and Talia, about my massacres and attempts at atonement, about Sophia on the way and my empty family home, all with as much honesty as I can. I put myself into the comic book art; lying down in the road to die and waking up alive.

It is a hell of a story. I draw over a hundred panels, full color, high resolution. I outline and colorize, I add in text and narration. I try to resist the urge to give myself cooler reaction lines, and only partway succeed. I am the mayor, after all.

Of course I sleep, and eat and drink soda, and take breaks when my back or my wrist hurt. Somewhere along the way, on one of my walks to and from the convoy or around the silent, peaceful center, my audience leaves. They don't say goodbye, they just melt away into the world, gone wherever the others have gone, with their quota of Simon-time filled.

I salute them, standing at the door, as they traipse off into the woods. We're all moving on.

I sleep on the roof of the battle-tank, except when it rains and I sleep inside surrounded by my cairn supplies, listening to the steady thump of raindrops on the metal roof. I dream of Talia bounding through fields to meet me, like Hank, though she's properly alive. I wake feeling good, that I'm doing something worthwhile and maybe even saving lives.

After five days all the work is done, with my hand aching and blistered from working with the stylus, but not an art-allergic twinge in sight. I format the pages into a single pdf, I trim the edges and manage the bleed on the front and back covers. The front is an image of me borne aloft by the zombie ocean, one living man Simonngst a sea of thousands of the dead.

I run it through the machines, all of them hammering and clattering at once, like a barnyard of oinking pigs. I run it and run it, printing copy after copy. When the machines jam I unjam them. When they need paper or ink I feed them. When the generators start to fade I fill them to their gurgling lips.

I stand on the top of the center in the middle of the print run, so high up I can't even hear the machines thumping, and look out at the sky. It's silent and unblemished. The air smells ripe and dusty, like a storm is coming. This is a full-throated Iowa summer. It's so silent, and as the sun goes down it gets beautiful; the sky lights up in burned sienna and ochre shades, like firing clay.

I can hear the sound of jackdaws in the forest. The traffic on nearby I-80, my road, is absent. There are no co-workers below, bustling in and out of the office, gossiping while smoking at the loading bays. There are no semis coming to unload goods or pick up goods for delivery.

It's just me, mayor of everything I survey in this empty and barren land, but it doesn't feel barren. There's life growing everywhere I look; green overtaking the parking lot, trees rustling in the wind, the birds, the drone of bees going by, the buzz of cicadas in the bushes living out their short lifespans.

I'm not alone, and this truly is a beautiful land.

I cart the stacks of my comics, let's call them graphic novels, to the battletank. There are several thousand, filling six plastic cartons. I throw out my weaponry to make room, leaving it in a bonfire-like pile in the middle of the parking lot. There it can rust away to nothing, and that's OK by me.

I get back into the cab, and look one final time at the Yangtze center. It's empty now, but I imagine Carl's digital ghost rolling through its halls, though he never once went there in life. It was his favorite place, still, and where for a time we both belonged.

I rev the JCB and pull away. In a few hours I reach the spot on the road where the revelation first happened. Flanked on both sides by corn, it is a nondescript locale but for the geo-tag I placed in my phone. There I build my second cairn out of Blucy's bug and Hank's Cadillac, dragged along at the back of the convoy. I array them either side of the road and draw a thick checkered bar between them in white and black on the road, like the start and finish line of a race. I tag it LMA and draw arrows pointing to the two vehicles.

In the bug I put graphic novels, some two hundred of them. It's ambitious, but I've always been that way. I set up a nice bit of custom shelving inside, so they're handsomely arrayed. There's even a sign that says:

The ocean (zombies) won't hurt you. Pass it on please.

In the Cadillac I leave a digital cache: dozens of laptops, batteries, and USBs all with the same stuff I put in the Empire State, but with my video of the friendly floaters foremost in the filing system. It's a short highlight reel showing me walking in their midst in this very spot, lying beside them, laughing with them, moving freely and unhurt while surrounded by an ocean of the dead.

"Don't you want an entourage like this?" I've titled it. I've drawn a picture of a floater modeled on the fSimonus Banksy image of a guy throwing a bunch of flowers, and used that as the cover image. I even draw that onto the hood of the car itself. The floater isn't throwing flowers though, he's throwing a nice pink brain.

You have to laugh.

I stand back and look at my work. It's the starting point of a new journey, one that I believe will catapult me and any who follow to the West, and what we might find there. The destination takes on mystical power in my mind. It's a brave new world with such dreams in it.

I get in my convoy and I rumble over the start line. It's only as I'm falling back into the monotony of the drive, watching the yellow fields slough by on either side, that I realize something vast and unavoidable.

Carl must be alive. It hits me like a gut punch. He had the coma like me. He remained uninfected like me. His mother was hammering at the basement door to get down, but I don't think she wanted to kill him, not if she was anything like these others. She would have knelt at his side until she was ready to go on, leaving him there in his basement to wake up from his methadone dose.

Oh my God. Carl is alive. The epiphany dizzies me and I have to pull to a stop. If Carl is alive then perhaps Talia is too. The ocean will lap against them both, but it will not kill them. I feel that for certain. God damn.

CHAPTER 30 UTAH, ARIZONA, NEVADA

I press on, feeling time biting at my heels, like blazing this trail is the most important thing I'll ever do. Day chases night and I chase after them both, always following the sun and the moon over my head and off to the west, always west.

At night I dream of Carl and Talia, out there somewhere, perhaps together and united by the New York cairn, rolling and walking hand in hand with the ocean. Gray bodies lurch around them like emperor penguins in the Arctic, too damn docile to fight back, because they've never seen humans before and don't know that they should fear us.

I drive and I sleep and time burns away behind me in dropped cairns. I place them in all the bigger towns, getting the process down to a fine art. In Nebraska I hit up Omaha and North Platte; in Colorado I drop them in Brighton and Frisco. I leave my books and my digital footprint, I add large blackboards sourced from nearby coffee shops for a guestbook.

I drive on through the endless waves of corn, alternating at times with the leafy green of soy. On stretches there are hay bales lining the road that have been there for months, steadily mulching down. The high sweet smell of their fermentation carries in the air, along with the cloying scent of sugar-beet plantations in the distance. Water towers mark my progress, and by the names written across their bulbous flanks I chart a path from tiny town to tiny town.

I walk with the ocean and I ride with them. We're all heading west. When I sleep I sleep Simonngst them and we breathe together. Come the morning they are always gone, and I follow.

In Denver I ricochet through streets clogged with emergency vehicles and milling floaters. I guess that out here they had longer to react to the infection as it spread. People had time to call for help.

It didn't help. I don't see a single living soul, or any sign that anyone survived. I bulldoze my path gently.

I smash my way into the Wells Fargo Center, fifty floors tall, and rig a pulley in the stairwell to haul my painting gear up: drums of thick yellow street paint, rollers, rope, generators, gas, food. Hiking fifty floors is an insane workout.

I wander through bank offices around the fortieth floor. The view is epic, of course. Nothing here has changed since the world flipped on its axis, bar the people and the power. At one point a worn-looking security guard comes pelting for me.

I sidestep at the last moment and he goes by, then I step up close so he can't charge me again. I pat him on the burly shoulder. "There we go."

He puts his wrinkly hand on my shoulder too. No problem. We conga that way back to the stairs.

The roof of Wells Fargo is wavy glass, so I can't go down in a windowcleaner's basket. Instead I hook into the rappel points and hack my generator to power the in-coil system. It all works fine, and after working on the Empire State for so long I have no problem with heights.

From the slippery glass top I look out over the Colorado countryside. There are skyscrapers and suburbs then an endless flat plain of scrubby Carl and green fields. This is Middle America, the plains, and it goes on forever. This new cairn will be visible for miles, so I better make it a good one.

I rappel down the building's side and work fast, running myself left to right along the windows like a dot-matrix printer, slapping the paint in place with deft familiarity. I don't work from sketches painted in the interior this time, because I'm not too worried about accuracy. A splash that looks jagged up close will look like a razor-straight line from a mile away. Distance forgives a lot.

I get high on the sway of it, spending the first day on the east-facing side swaying around between floors 48 and 40, covering most of the building's façade in yellow. That night I hunker down in the dizzy heights of a top floor executive suite, where I watch Ragnarok I on the 100-inch TV. In it our mythological superheroes are climbing all over buildings in Shanghai, fighting off aliens.

I'm not a huge fan but it is good fun. It feels good to watch a movie and not twinge at all. The noise and light fills the room for a little while, and I can forget where I've been and what I've done.

In three days I finish all four sides of the building. In the ground floor lobby I set up a cairn, with my books and my route, then I drive away. On the outskirts of Denver I look back along I-76 at my handiwork.

It's a giant yellow Pac-Man. I tried to do it like a stop-motion animation, though who will notice that I don't know. Starting at the east his mouth is mostly open, then clockwise he clamps it closer to shut, until at the north it's just a slim wedge of pie.

His eye is a black dot the size of a jacuzzi. It looks good. It's a bit of fun. I rumble on.

I tell jokes to Io and she tells them back to me. I try to think of puns about zombies. Most of them revolve around the similarity of 'brains' to other words, like drains, grains, flames. I theorize aloud about why zombies have always been so interested in brains, and figure out it's probably because they haven't got any of their own.

A hankering takes me for coconut ice cream.

We pull off the highway and into a Wal-Mart in the scrubby forests near Grand Junction, where the ice cream is rotten sludge in tubs, though I expected that. I've come instead for the astronaut ice cream. I find it in dehydrated wafer-form, sealed in brick-like silver packages. There's no coconut but there are vanilla, strawberry, and Rocky Road. I grab a handful and on the way out pick up some cans of bolognese and a box of green tea.

It's a feast that night on the border between Colorado and Utah, camped out in my battle-tank with the bitter tang of the green tea's tannins in the air. Nostalgia overcomes me, and while chewing down bolognese I fire up the Darkness in Deepcraft, slipping my goggles over my eyes.

Carl is there waiting for me. I turn on my diviner and go with him down the aisles, toddling along through the bicycles and the exercise equipment, circling around past the book machines and down narrow passages filled with boxes of Barbie dolls. Hank passes me but he's mute now, with his Internet feeds cut off. The real Hank is out there somewhere, wandering with his Darkness herd. The real Carl is out there too.

In the morning I drive into Utah, replenishing my gas barrels at a Shell station because there's a tanker sitting on the forecourt, and that's a lot easier to siphon than the underground tanks. I get a pack of Big Red and some lukewarm grape soda and snack my way into the desert.

The land turns Carl and burned red, in this our long approach through Mormon country to Las Vegas. To either side great sandstone buttes rise like the Mittens in Monument Valley. It is a gorgeous, wasted land, as pure as driven sand, dotted with hardy green cacti and mountainous termite mounds. Scrappy shoots of dune grass crop up everywhere, and sand has begun to reclaim the road.

I pass through various National Forests, fed on water stopped up behind Bryce canyon to the north, and am enveloped in verdant Douglas fir and Bristlecone pine. I spot squirrels and turkey in the branches and the undergrowth, startled as I rumble by. I drink water from a fresh tributary stream, so cold and fresh. I get on my knees and smell the sweet resin of the pine needle carpet.

I drop cairns in Richmond and Beaver, in Cedar City and St. George. Of course I'm saving something special for Vegas itself. It's got to be grand for a place like that. I ask myself, what would Banksy do with all the world as his canvas? What would JR do? How do you fight back against 'the man', when there is no 'man' left to fight?

I'm not them, though, and I'm not fighting their battles. I'm me, Simon, and I'll do what I have in my head.

After Zion National Park I hang a left off the main track, and drive a few hours east for the first time since backtracking to the Darkness. I've always wanted to see 'The Wave', a part of Coyote Buttes that has gorgeous sandstone escarpments, like the eye of Jupiter made flesh on planet Earth.

The terrain gets redder and harsher around me, Arapaho land, and I get misty-eyed and awed with it. Of course I've seen the Grand Canyon before, but there's something more intimate about this. Soon I pass through the parking lot and by the visitor's center. There I get out, load a pack with a gas burner and gear, then head up the ranger trail.

It's already straining toward dusk as I ascend into the wave. It is a perfect half-pipe of red and cream sandstone, like freshly scooped raspberry ripple, so smooth and perfect I want to bite it. That all this was formed by water and wind just blows my mind. It feels as alien as Mars, and I am the last man alive to see it.

The sandstone is slippery and a fine rain of sand shivers off at my touch. There are stairs cut into the rock and a rail bolted in, and I climb to a viewing platform atop a twisty crag. Atop it I set up my burner and toast marshmallows. They crackle and catch blacken, melting the lovely inner layer to sugary goodness. I sandwich them with chocolate and Graham crackers, watch the white distend and bulge through cracks in the black outer skin, and take that first luscious bite.

Oh my Lord above, that is sweet. It's good.

I look up at the sky. Of course it's the same sky it always was. Shooting stars flash like claws raked across the dome of heaven.

"They're not really stars," my dad told me and Aaron once, after a nighttime hike. "They're just little bites of interstellar dust, or the screws and nuts that come off falling satellites, burning up as they enter the Earth's atmosphere."

This awed us even more. That there was a layer of sky up there so hot that it burned, that interstellar dust was reaching out to our little planet across the gulf of space, then falling down upon us all like a fine rain, like fairy dust.

In the morning I head out wordlessly. It's time to finish this thing. I roll the convoy back to I-15, bound for Las Vegas and the coast. It's the final leg now, and I'm excited about what I'll find.

Will anybody be there already? Will I find a copy of Ragnarok III tucked away in a producer's office, ready for distribution nationwide? Will it be all that I hoped, or am I going to end up swinging like dear Sophia within a week?

Whatever. I'm not worried. I feel good regardless of the outcome. I'll have done what I set out to do, and if it just leads to me dying there alone, then that's fine too.

I pull through the desert corner of Arizona and then into Nevada at the fastest clip yet, down largely empty roads. Soon Las Vegas dawns like an abandoned theme park from the wastes, and I blow down the Strip hard, roaring between outsized casino-hotels with my music pounding, bound for the UFO hotel, a massive silver saucer sticking edge-into the ground, surrounded by faux-rubble, like it crashed there.

They only finished building it a few months before the ocean came on; one of the largest casinos yet, surrounded by giant green alien sculptures. I saw it on the news, distantly, back when I could barely handle TV. It's where my next-to-last major cairn will go.

Everything is still and silent but for me, and sand blows down the streets in cute twisty zephyrs. I see the UFO dawn like a dark sun over the faux-city. Before that though, I see a man in the road.

Two floaters trail behind him, on leashes tied about their necks. For a second I think I must be dreaming. I blink but that doesn't change the reality. He's there. He's real, and he turns and waves as I roll near. I pull the JCB to a stop and race out to meet him

CHAPTER 31 DON

I run over and he runs to me with his pet floaters tethered behind, and we stop an awkward distance apart, sizing each other up.

"Jesus," he says. His eyes are wide and watery. His face is thin and he's tall, he's got almost a foot on me. Across his thick chest he wears bandoliers of bullets just like I used to. There's a sword in a sheath at his waist and a handgun, and a shotgun in a sleeve down his back like Ash in the Evil Dead. "I thought everyone was dead."

I laugh. "Me too. Damn, it is good to see another living person." He holds out his hand. I spread my arms. We pull into a braced, manly hug. He stinks of old sweat and the sour saltpeter tang of expended gunpowder, but then I probably do too.

We pull away and we laugh in the awkward gap between us. "Don," he says, holding out his hand again. He has a Southern drawl. We're both grinning like idiots. "I'm from Texas, I've been roaming all the highways for months, looking."

I take his hand and give it a firm pump. "Simon, from Iowa, though I've just come from New York."

He raises his eyebrows. "New York, in that rig? It must've taken a month." I shrug. "Yeah. I was looking out too, for others." His eyes narrow eagerly. "Did you find any? Are there others?" I consider telling him about Talia and Carl, but despite the natural ebullience of meeting a survivor, I hold back. I don't know this guy at all. "No. Well, yes, but she was dead. A girl. She committed suicide before I reached her."

This casts a pall over our jubilant meeting. He runs a hand through his thick blonde hair. He looks to come from Scandinavian stock. "And you?" He shakes his head. "You're the first, man. Damn, it is good to see someone." I nod. It is. "And you said your name was ammo? Like, bullets?"

I hold in a laugh. Shall I tell this huge man that my name actually means love, and my parents were hippies? Maybe later. "Sure," I say.

"That's cool. I guess I should've come up with something better than Don."

He laughs sheepishly. Then he draws his sword. It looks like a medieval replica, maybe from a fantasy movie or something, with an ornate pommel and what look like runes carved into the shaft.

"Sword, maybe? It could be a good name. Here, you want to have a go?" He swivels the blade smoothly, doubtless a practiced motion, and holds it out to me.

"I got the idea from that zombie TV show, you know, that black girl?" He jerks his thumb to the two floaters milling aimlessly where he left them, their leashes trailing. "Them too."

I notice they're both female. They're dressed as cheerleaders, in bright miniskirts and tight sweater tops that haven't faded with exposure to the sun. I think-

"Here," he says, pressing the sword closer. "The balance is perfect. Most of these things are made of zinc, and the tang, that's the bit of the blade that goes down into the handle here, is nothing more than a thin pin, so when you hit something, snap, the whole thing comes apart." He hawks and spits to the side. "This baby is real though, cold-rolled steel sharp as a straight-razor." I take the sword by the handle. There are spots of dried blood on the blade, but the balance is fantastic. I give it a few experimental swishes.

He laughs sheepishly. Then he draws his sword. It looks like a medieval replica, maybe from a fantasy movie or something, with an ornate pommel and what look like runes carved into the shaft. "Sword, maybe? It could be a good name. Here, you want to have a go?" He swivels the blade smoothly, doubtless a practiced motion, and holds it out to me.

"I got the idea from that zombie TV show, you know, that black girl?" He jerks his thumb to the two floaters milling aimlessly where he left them, their leashes trailing. "Them too."

I notice they're both female. They're dressed as cheerleaders, in bright miniskirts and tight sweater tops that haven't faded with exposure to the sun. I think-

"Here," he says, pressing the sword closer. "The balance is perfect. Most of these things are made of zinc, and the tang, that's the bit of the blade that goes down into the handle here, is nothing more than a thin pin, so when you hit something, snap, the whole thing comes apart." He hawks and spits to the side. "This baby is real though, cold-rolled steel sharp as a straight-razor." I take the sword by the handle. There are spots of dried blood on the blade, but the balance is fantastic. I give it a few experimental swishes.

"It does feel good," I say. "Where did you get it?" His grin widens with pride. "I found it in some rich asshole's pad in LA. He had a whole wall full of them, like he was some kind of crusader knight." "You've been to LA?"

"Sure. I go back and forth, you know, patrolling the desert. Scouting." I swing the sword a few more times, then hold it out to him pommel first. For an instant I feel vulnerable, with the handle toward him and the blade toward me. All he'd have to do is push and I'd be impaled.

The moment passes though and he takes the sword. "Just hot s**t," he says abruptly, while sheathing it again. "Just color me damn surprised to meet you. Ammo, what a name, and what a rig." "And you walk?" I ask. "You just, kind of roam?" He laughs. "Yeah, sometimes. Me and the girls."

We look at his floaters. They toe the ground and strain at the edge of their taut leashes, tethered to a nearby car. "So, you know they don't want to kill us, right," I say. "Sure, of course. I woke up when the plague hit and some nurse was leaning over me all attentively, you know? I was in a hospital, then. For a minute I thought she wanted to screw me, but then I figured it out. TV down, lights down, the white eyes?" He points to his eyes to help me get the point. "I figured it. I gave her what she wanted, anyway."

He grins. I smile back. What did he just say?

"So, Ammo. You say you're going to LA?" I nod, then wish I could take it back. I'm not ready to tell him about the others yet, about my cairns and my plan. I ad-lib. "Yeah, I have family there." I cast around for a part of LA I know. "Down near Muscle Beach. You know it?"

He laughs. "It's full of posers still! I guess they were having a full-moon party or something; there's a stage set up, the band's gear's all up there, and all these idiots wandering around with only their bikinis and s**t on like there's no better place to be than the beach." I nod, absorbing this. I look back at his cheerleader zombies on their leashes. It's clear they're straining to head west, to go wherever the rest of them go.

"So what's with them?" I point. "It's not like the TV show, you don't need them to fend off the others."

He shrugs. "Company. I like to have them around." "Where did you get them? They must've come out of some midnight show in a casino, perhaps, with clothes still bright like that?" His eyes narrow slightly. "Yeah maybe. I found them wandering in the desert nearby, and they came up with all the hugging that they do. Maybe they're sisters, I'm not sure, you can't really tell with the raisin faces. I figured I'd keep them. There's nothing where they want to go but other drifters, you know?"

I process this for a second. I put it to one side, that their clothes would not be so bright if they'd truly been wandering in the Nevada sun for three months, because it leaves a pretty distasteful taste in my mouth. Did he dress them like that?

I focus on the most interesting thing. "You're saying you've followed them, the floaters? You know where they go?"

He laughs. "Sure I have. I guess you wouldn't have though, would you, not when you're making for your family?" His brow wrinkles. "But let me ask, why the convoy Ammo, pulled by that thing? You could've made it across the country in a few days if you took, like, a Lamborghini or something."

He's catching me in a lie. "Supplies," I blurt. "I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know they weren't dangerous until a week ago." He stares at me. "Seriously? So you've been fighting the zombie apocalypse, like, all this time?" He gives a low whistle. "That sucks. I feel that. Of course they're not dangerous, not in that way at least. And you've not got any yourself, chained up inside? It's really all ammo in there?" He looks concerned. I try to puzzle out the reason. "Why would I have them chained up inside?" He laughs again. "I don't know, man. Who can say what people do? Can I take a look inside, anyway?

"What?" He points. "Inside the school bus, see what kind of gear you're packing. Call it professional curiosity, one survivor to another. I showed you my blade, show me yours. Plus, I have some whiskey in my pack, we can toast." I let my answer wait a second too long, maybe. I recover quickly, but still. "Sure, yeah. I have tea." He laughs. "Tea! Ain't that peachy. Yes, let's have some tea. After you." "OK."

I lead us toward the battle-tank. He catches up and slaps me on the back. The sour stink of him is actually overpowering. "Don't be nervous," he says. "We're all good. I've been waiting for this moment for so long." I laugh. "Who's nervous? I've been hogging my M320 launcher since the start, I don't want to go sharing it around now." "You have an M320? Damn, I knew you didn't play about, Ammo. Walking around with no weapon on you, music blaring like you were the ice cream man come to town or something, I knew either you'd gone soft or you had to be packing some major heat. You sure there's no one in there right now, drawing a bead on me?"

"What? No, there's no one in there." "Good." We reach the bus door, reinforced with cut strips of sheet metal. I open a square cover in the tank's side, like the flap on a gas tank, and pull the lever. The door cranks noisily open. "Love it," Don says. "After you, boss."

I climb in. It's the same as it always is, though my crates of comics are lying right there. For some reason I feel I ought to hide them away. This starts to feel like a mistake. There's hardly even any ammo or weapons in here at all, and I forgot I tossed the bulky M320 and all the grenades away weeks ago.

"What the hell is all this?" Don asks, climbing in behind me. His head almost strokes the roof of the tank. In the confined space, the disparity between the size of us becomes far more apparent. He's huge, and his animal stench comes at me in waves like an assault. "Where are the guns? And what are these, comics?"

He thumbs the copies lying topmost on the crate. "Jesus, they're all the same. 'Zombies of America'? What are you doing with these?" He picks one up and leafs through. "New York," he murmurs, "the road West. Damn, is this you Ammo? Did you, somehow, make these?"

He holds the comic out by the cover, causing its own weight to pull at the binding.

"Yeah," I say. "I printed them out." He looks at me. "Why? Just for your own pleasure?" He twirls his finger around next to his head. "Gone a bit crazy? That's fine, I understand. I've gone plenty crazy myself. It can be hard, you know, to keep a handle on things." "I know." He eyes me hard. "Do you know? From the look of this, and the lack of guns, it seems like you've had it pretty easy." "I've had plenty."

He puts the comic down. "So where are the guns then? The ammo? I don't see anything. You promised me an M320." "I guess I threw them mostly away, after I realized the ocean weren't dangerous. Let me see." I back up to the end of the bus and rummage in the storage boxes there. I come up with a handgun. I turn back and find he's followed me halfway up the bus, closing in tighter.

"I've got this." He nods, licks his lip. "Let me see that." I look at him. "Why?" "Just let me have a look. Is it a police g*n? Man I love those. Smooth recoil." He advances a step closer.

"Hang on a second Don," I tell him. "Hold up. You're crowding me." He stops and raises his hands. "Sorry. I don't mean it, I'm just, you know, so excited? Let's relax, you're right." He doesn't take a step back. "Where did you say your family live, down near Muscle Beach? A lot of apartments that way, are there?"

I massage the g*n's handle into my palm. "I've never been, to be honest." He nods. He looks around the battle-tank interior. "Yeah, OK. It's kind of drab in here, you know? I'd cheer it up a bit, some color or something. You're an artist, why don't you paint it?"

an artist, why don't you paint it?" "Let's drink a whiskey," I say. "Why don't you pour us a whiskey? There's glasses at the front. We can celebrate." He grins. "You know, now I have a taste for tea? You put the idea there, and now it's stuck. Can you make me some tea, Ammo?" It's wonderfully awkward. It would make a great moment in a movie, because I just can't read him. Am I truly penned in, about to hand over my only g*n to some psycho, or is this just friendly chitchat? Social nicety or bait on a trap? My finger slips silently through the trigger guard. "What's with the cheerleaders, Don?" I ask. "You have them on leashes. What are they for?"

an artist, why don't you paint it?" "Let's drink a whiskey," I say. "Why don't you pour us a whiskey? There's glasses at the front. We can celebrate." He grins. "You know, now I have a taste for tea? You put the idea there, and now it's stuck. Can you make me some tea, Ammo?" It's wonderfully awkward. It would make a great moment in a movie, because I just can't read him. Am I truly penned in, about to hand over my only g*n to some psycho, or is this just friendly chitchat? Social nicety or bait on a trap? My finger slips silently through the trigger guard. "What's with the cheerleaders, Don?" I ask. "You have them on leashes. What are they for?"

He laughs. "Seriously? Don't look so offended, Jesus. Do you really need me to explain this? And you're telling me you haven't? It's OK, buddy. We all get lonely, we've all got natural drives, there's nothing wrong with that. They come to us and we give them what they want, and who doesn't feel used when they leave the next morning? Like a one night stand." He winks. "So I keep them around, my favorites anyway. It's no big thing." I stare at him as the wave of understanding crests. It repulses me.

"They're in comas," I say. "You were in a coma too, right?" He frowns. "A coma? Sure, like a year ago, but what's that got to do with this? And how did you know?" "I was in one too." I gesture around me with my free hand. "That's what this is. You had terrible migraines afterward, but then it went away when the floaters came, am I right? You said you were in hospital, it was probably for the migraines, yes? Now these 'drifters', the ones you have roped up outside and dressed like damn Barbie dolls, are people in comas. It is rape." He frowns. "I don't think so. It can't be. They just lie there." "And you've been killing them too," I say. I can't stop myself now, though I feel that I should. "When does that happen, if they disappoint you in the sack? I saw the blood on your blade." He shrugs. "I put them out of their misery, sometimes, so what? Don't tell me you haven't killed any." "I've killed thousands! But that was before I knew what they were. You knew, but still you did this?" His expression hardens slightly. His footing sets. I realize we're only a few steps apart.

"Stop being so damn sanctimonious," he says. "You don't know s**t about them, 'Ammo'. You don't even know where they go, do you? You haven't got a clue, your precious 'people' in 'comas'. You want to know where they're headed? They walk into the goddamn ocean! They walk right in if you let them, after they've had their fill, after they've used you. How is that fair, I ask you? Poof, they're gone, and you're alone again. It's not r**e or imprisonment, it's saving them! So I take a little pleasure in their company, where's the harm in that? I'm saving their lives, and they don't complain. You don't get to dictate to me." My eyes blur with excitement and my body hums into a fight or flight tension. I try to calm myself but I can't. I imagine Blucy in his hands, straining to get away while he heaves his bulk onto her back. I imagine Talia, alive or dead, with him mounting her and leashing her and dressing her up in cheerleader clothes. "They're dead," I say. My legs are shaking. "And you dressed them up. Those two girls, you put them in those uniforms. They didn't volunteer for that."

"So stop doing it. Go cut them free. That's it. If you can't do that, get the hell off this bus." He stares at me. "You're serious." I nod.

He stares at me. I can tell he's making calculations. He's bigger than me by far. He only needs to cover a few steps and he'll be on me, then I'll be screwed. Seconds pass, and he decides. His expression twists into a snarl. "Bleeding heart," he says, with disgust in his voice. "I knew it when I saw you. An artist. A sensitive soul. You're really saying you'll choose them over me?" He takes a step closer. There's only a few rows of chairs between us now. I raise the g*n and point it square at his chest. "I'm sorry. Get off the bus, Don." He laughs. "What are you doing, Ammo? Ammo from New York, headed for Muscle Beach, where there ain't s**t but sand and shopping? We're just two guys having a conversation. You owe me some f*****g tea." "Get off the bus now." He shakes his head. "No. I don't think so, we've come too far now. Tell me this, Mr. Judgment who's never seen another living soul, who's Talia?" Hearing her name come from his lips shocks me. He must have read it in the comic. He uses the moment to take another step closer. Dammit, we're almost within reaching distance. One lunge, and… "You've lied plenty, sinned plenty too, haven't you? I get it, man, you think there are others out there, so you're trying to keep them from me? You want to send me off on some crazy back trail, because what, I'm not good enough? Because I got a bit lonely, because I took advances to mean what they obviously meant? It's not my fault they always leave, is it? It means something to me. I'm not that guy."

I start to think I've made a mistake. This whole thing is a terrible mistake. "So back up," I say. "We can talk about this, Don. Maybe you're right. You just have to back up and we can be OK."

"OK? What the f**k's OK about this, Ammo?" He's getting red under his thick blonde hair now, and his voice is getting louder. "That's a goddamn joke. What do you think we're going to talk about now, after you've screwed everything up? You're going to judge me some more, then figure out how to humiliate me in front of your Talia? Dammit, if I want my girls, if I want your girls, I'll goddamn well have them, because there's not another thing in this world for me now. Do you understand that? This is all I've had, Ammo, for months, dry goddamn p***y! Then I meet you, I let you hold my sword, and you give me this, a g*n in my face?" I let the g*n drop a little. Just a little. "I'm penned in here, Don. Listen, I'm sorry, I over-reacted. Let me breathe here. We can talk." "Screw talking! You made the decision about me the second you saw me. You lured me up here so you could do this, and what are you going to do afterward, Ammo, write me into your comic as the psycho loser you met, tell all the world about my f****d-up s****l depravity? No way, my friend." He licks his lip. I feel it coming. "I won't do that." "Damn right you won't. You think that g*n is going to stop me? You know how many times I've tried to kill myself, son? It doesn't work! I've shot myself full of holes, and always I just wake up. I'm strong and you're weak, and that's what the record will show. I'll burn your shitty comics in a heap, and I'll burn you, and I'll tell your precious Talia you died in a stampede because you were the one f*****g the dead. How do you like that? You can either put that g*n down now, or we can tango and find out who the real man is."

I angle the g*n to point at his throat. He notices and smiles. "Not that weak, then," he says, and lunges. His right hand shoots up and covers the barrel just as I pull the trigger. Blood spurts out, the bullet sprays through his palm and out the other side, ricocheting off his temple and sparking from the bus roof. Then his bulk hits me and slams me back against the reinforced metal back wall. The supply chests dig sharply into my thighs and knock me off balance, tipping me to the side. He falls with me and there's blood dropping on my face. I fall into the narrow space behind the back seat, hemmed in, and he clumsily reaches after me, his ruined hand pawing me with blood. I've still got the g*n and I hold it up but this time he manages to bat it away, pressed up against the seatback. I pull the trigger and the bullet takes off the top of his thumb, more blood spurts out across my chest, and he howls.

His cheek cracks off the metal rail, and if the gap between the seat and wall were wider he'd fall right on top of me, but it's too narrow for his thick chest. Instead for a second he's left lying suspended above me, blood dripping down from his head and a new gash in his cheek, gazing at me numbly. His left hand pats at my chest weakly. "Why?" he mumbles. I grab for the pistol at his waist and slide it out. He stares in horror and snatches down at it. "Back off," I rasp, pointing it at his belly. "No," he mumbles, and tries to grab the g*n. I put a slug through his side. He jerks and more hot blood splashes out, then his hand closes on the barrel and pulls it easily from my grip. He slides backward to slump in the tight aisle on his knees before me, turning the g*n in his blood-slick hands, searching for the trigger. I kick him in the face, there's a stiff c***k and he jerks back, then I scrabble desperately behind me for the emergency exit lever. My hand finds it, yanks down, and the door opens outward, spilling me into the bright sunlight. I hit the sandy asphalt with a crunch on my shoulder and neck, then tip awkwardly backward across my face. I come to rest flat on my belly with a great view of Don in the bus getting the g*n in position. I roll to the side as he shoots, one, two, three shots, a fourth, and one of them catches me in the foot like a whipping snakebite. I look down to see blood spreading across the toe of my left boot.

"Come on, Ammo," he calls from inside. "Let's talk. You wanted to talk." I lurch to my feet and start hobbling back along the side of the bus. From the delivery truck the sound of Counting Crows singing Mr. Jones peels out, the soundtrack of this ragged escape. I reach the JCB just as there's a crunch and he hits the road behind me, holding the pistol and pulling the trigger, but all it does is click. He gets to his feet as I climb up to the JCB's cab, my left foot b****y and my right twingeing with every step. I can barely even hold my own weight going up. I make two rungs on the ladder then my leg gives out and I fall back, barely stopping myself from a full fall with my hand on the railing. There's no time. Don pulls the shotgun from its sheath on his back. I roll around the front of the cab just as the first blast roars out. It tears shreds of metal out of the JCB's side and draws fracture patterns on the glass. I hobble ahead, keeping the large yellow machine between me and him, cornering and working my way back down the battle-tank.

"I just wanted to be friends," he shouts, his voice a pained gurgle. "Why did you have to be such a d**k?" I don't say anything. Another blast tears across the air beside me and I feel the breath of the shrapnel passing inches over my shoulder. I risk a glance back and see him coming around the cab. He looks like s**t, pale-faced as a floater, with blood leaking out of his blasted side. If I can just keep ahead of him I'll be all right. He'll slow down before I do. "We could have shared them," he shouts. "One cheerleader for me, one for you. It didn't have to be like this." "You don't get it," I shoot hoarsely back. "How could I trust you with anyone else? You knew they weren't dangerous!" I hobble on, one foot sprained and one shot through. I pass the end of the battle-tank and am closing on the ocean at the back of the delivery truck when he shoots again. This time I feel it more than I hear it. My legs go out from under me, peppered by spray, and I hit the road hard with my face, cracking my nose and my lips sharply, too abruptly to get my hands up in front of me. "I'm a good person," he slurs. "I am. You think those bitches are what I wanted you to see first?"

wanted you to see first?" Ah God. I roll over and feel the acid sting of buckshot burn hotly in the meat of my legs. I'm twingeing again, it's rising to cloud my vision with gray, and I can't think clearly. Talia, I think, Carl, I'm sorry. I twist back to see my thighs and calves lying limply like torn fins behind me, and beyond them there's Don, humping wheezily closer, slotting fresh shells into the shotgun's breech. "Should have listened to me," he says. He's moving by sheer will too. He's going pale from blood loss already. "We could have been pals." I look forward and start to crawl. The asphalt burns hot against my palms and cheek, and I know I'm not going to make it. Like Sophia I'll be found broken and beaten, and this will be my legacy, our two bodies left entwined with no explanation or reason why. I don't want to die. I'm sorry Talia. I'm sorry Carl. I'm sorry Sophia too, I've let you all down. My vision clouds and I look up to see the ocean lapping near. They come over from the back of the truck, all withered faces and gangly limbs, halfdressed and gray, as eager as over-friendly dogs. I think of Hank in the Darkness, barreling out to be close to me, and how happy he seemed to have me near. I think of all the horrible crimes I did against them. "Please," I whisper to them. "Help me." I roll onto my back. Don's over me now, leveling the shotgun. "Please," I say again. He pushes the barrel hard against my chest, and I know this is the end. "Bleeding heart," he says, "bleed for me."

Then gray flesh flies over me in a blur. Don pulls up the shotgun and blows it to powder, but another floater follows in an instant, leaping over my ruined legs and taking another spray of buckshot that blows it to pieces. My head falls back and I watch as more of them come, leaping over me like sheep over a fence, and I'm drifting. Four, five, six. I hear Don begin to scream, I hear the sound of rending and tearing, and when I look up briefly, I see the ocean for the first time as they feed on a fellow human. They're eating Don. His arm lifts up from the midst of them, covered in his own blood, and one of the ocean bites into it, tearing a chunk of quivering meat free. He screams throughout. They rear back with his intestines dangling like strands of spaghetti from their mouths, his bright red blood everywhere, splashing like a geyser. They're eating him. They're really eating him alive. It could be me next. I lie back and look up at the sky, where wisps of cloud twist and turn. One of them looks a little like Talia, or it may, because I can hardly even remember what she looks like. I never took a photo and it's already been so long. In my mind she merges with Sophia, another soul lost to the vast emptiness of this great country. Don's screams fade, replaced by the gristly snap and crunch of the feast.

My vision goes dark. If this is the end then so be it. Let my bones be a warning to those that come after me, a cairn itself, helping them forward and making them strong. I'm not sad, I'm not happy. If anything there's just regret, for what might have been. If I'd said this. If he'd done that. What matters is the ocean are now free, and safe from his predation. He says they walk west into the water, and that's OK by me. Let the ocean join the ocean in freedom, and there swim for as long as they like.

CHAPTER 32 ANGEL

I look up at Talia's face in the clouds, hovering over me like the shadow of the alien mother ship. "Hi," I whisper weakly. I reach up and pat at her face, like creamy coffee. So beautiful. It's a good last thing to see, as the blood drains out of my ravaged legs. "Jesus, Simon, what happened?" she asks. I smile, high on dying, blessed with this final angelic vision. I try to frame an answer but my lips don't work well. "Waiting for you," I whisper. "LA. Ragnarok." Her sweet, limpid eyes cloud with confusion. I'll explain later, I want to say. Upstairs. In the sky. We'll all climb up the tower together. Then she's moving me. She's doing something with my legs, and the pain is so bad I start to laugh. It's another twinge in my legs! "Look at your legs, Simon, what the hell happened?" Her face shifts, like ripples on the surface of a lake after a stone's been thrown. I try to say something more but I can't really make a sound. It is good to see Talia after so long, even like this. I take a dry breath, then another. "There was an indicator," I manage to whisper. She leans in close to hear. "It hit my shoulder."

She frowns, the movement of her brows barely visible, then does more to my legs. I am dragged and shifted and turned. So this is what passing over to the other side feels like? "Simon, I'm going to have to move you," she sayd. "I need to do something about this mess. There's so much blood, I can't even find all the wounds." "They bit Don," I croak. "He's right there. We need to help him." "Don's dead," Talia says, without even looking. I can just about see the b****y skeleton on the asphalt, all that's left of him now. "I think he's a bit past helping." She reaches in her pack and produces a bottle of water. She unscrews the cap and holds it to my lips, and I drink. I suck it in and it fills me like a river. I look up and she's gone again. I laugh, feebly. Of course. The clouds are fickle. I try to sing a song, a tune in my head but I don't even know the name. The ocean bumble nearby, filling the space she'd taken. I read the label on the water bottle absently.

Fresh Spring Water Direct from the Alps!

It sounds delicious, so cool and clean. I close my eyes for a time, and when I come back she's come back too. That's good. "This is going to hurt," she says. There's some kind of low trolley beside her, a long shiny metal thing with a cream-cake coating of white sheets atop it, low to the ground, grumbling on wheels. A stretcher? I look past it and see the blurry white flank of an ambulance, with a striking red cross on the side. What? Something of logic creeps in past the dying daze in my mind, and I look again at Talia. "Talia?" I whisper. She nods grimly, then does something to my legs which just about kills me, and just as I realize that Talia is really here, Talia has come out of nothing and is really, actually here, a black wave of pain reaches up like a dark ocean and gobbles me down.

CHAPTER 33 INTERLUDE

Getting him on the stretcher was the first of the hardest things Talia had ever done. He was so damn heavy, even lifting his torso half on to the edge exhausted her. Getting his hips on nearly busted out her back. She tipped his legs as gently as she could after, though she was afraid of touching them too much. He cried out then went unconscious. That was a blessing, but not if he died. Already fresh trickles of blood were seeping from the deep and crusted wounds in the backs of his legs. They looked like spray from a shotgun blast; similar to patterns she'd etched into the dead to date. Had she come all this distance, killed her own parents, hidden, fled, fought, and raced across the country following his trail of cairns just to lose him now? "Hang in there, Simon," she said, then belted him in and lifted the stretcher to waist-height. The spring inside helped, and she rumbled him over to the waiting ambulance in seconds.

She'd found it after fifteen minutes of mad driving in circles, hunting beyond the Strip for a hospital. The first ambulance she tried wouldn't even start, but the second did. The doors opened and pulling out the stretcher was easy, as the legs kicked down to the ground. Now she pushed the feet end of the stretcher into the back of the ambulance, onto the sliding rails, and it accepted them. The front legs bent back flush and Simon slid inward like a smoothly oiled drawer. She followed him in, cursing, crouching in the tight space. She'd done basic first aid for Sir Clowdesley, but that hadn't covered shotgun blasts. First she had to see what she was dealing with. She raided the many little shelves in the ambulance's back, coming up with rolls of bandaging, surgical tape and a pair of needle-nose scissors. With great care she slit his b****y and tattered jeans down both sides, then peeled them away. Coming free from the b****y scabs, they tore and started fresh flows.

She could wash them later. She tossed the ruined pants out of the back and started wrapping the bleeding crevices with thick bandage rolls, softly at first then tighter as dark red continued to show through. She worked on the left leg then the right, lifting them and slipping the roll underneath, taping it with cotton and gauze, doing it again until his lower half looked a mummy, stained with blotches of red. She applied pressure. For a moment he woke and barked out something, then passed out again. "What now?" she muttered, looking at her handiwork. She tore through the cupboards again. There was a mini-fridge with bags of dark red blood in, but those would have perished months back, and she had no idea what his blood type was. She kept looking until in one cupboard she found a rack of yellow-ish clear bags, complete with long tubes. Drip bags? She grabbed one and pulled it near. It was written with all kinds of chemicals, but it had to be right, didn't it? They wouldn't keep weird, extremely specific stuff in ambulances would they? She checked it against the other bags there, three in total. They were all the same. It had to be the good stuff. She hung one from the hook on a swing-out hanger, then started hunting for a needle. She'd never injected a person before. Of course she'd seen it on TV, and had her own blood taken at health checks. It looked simple enough. She rustled through more drawers until she came up with a needle that looked like a fit.

She attached it to the drip end with a twist and click. Fluid began to drip through. She caught some and licked it, yeah, it tasted salty and sweet, probably that was all right? She twisted the little plastic tappet to halt the flow then took hold of his right forearm. It was splashed with road-dust and blood. With an alcohol-swab she wiped it clean, then wiped her hands too, and the needle. She searched for something to bring up his veins, and settled on his belt. It slid free from his legless jeans and she wrapped it tightly around his bicep, patted the underside of his forearm, and waited. Veins popped up. Taking her heart in her mouth, she fed the needle into his skin. It seemed good, so she opened the tappet, then a bulge started to form. Nope. She pulled it out and picked a different spot, trying again. Again it bulged. Third time, near the crook of his elbow, she got it. No bulge formed. The drip fed down. He was getting fluids and basic nutrition. She taped the line in place, belted him again into position, then climbed out, closed the back doors and got into the driving seat. Where the hell was the hospital again?

She stood over him, lying on the stretcher by the window of a clean and white first floor hospital room. Getting him out of the ambulance and into a room had been horrible with blood and stress. One thing she was grateful for was that he'd remained unconscious throughout. Flipping him onto his belly had been easy though. Keeping the drip going, setting up a fan and a light with a generator in the corner, all that was easy. Far harder was contemplating his legs. She just didn't know. Was it better to leave him as he was, bandaged neatly, or should she dig the shrapnel bits out and try to sew him up, or sew him up with them inside, or what? He'd lost so much blood, could he stand to lose more? She stood by and watched two more drip bags go into him, dithering. She raided supply rooms for the tools she thought she might need: a gallon of swabbing alcohol and a fat pipette to drop it into place, antibacterial soap to scrub up with, surgical gloves, scalpels, towels, bandaging, surgical thread and curved needles, clean blue scrubs and a face mask, a helmet with a large magnifying visor, a surgical light hung over the bed, pounds of cotton wooltype blotting stuff, gauze, a shiny kidney bowl for slugs she extracted, a range of tweezer-like utensils for extracting, powerful and pungent disinfectant in serious Carl jars, bottles of antibiotics in pill and liquid form, and a dozen more drip bags with tubes and needles to match.

She laid them all out on silver trays on clean white strips of gauze and tried to decide. "What do you think?" she'd asked the few of the ocean gathered nearby, like an audience. They looked like doctors. They held to her elbows. She didn't have time to be afraid that they might eat her, like they'd plainly eaten the body on the Strip. Using portable battery-powered machines she took his pulse and his blood pressure. They both seemed low, but then she took her own and saw they were low too. She strung up a third drip bag, injected a syringe full of liquid antibiotics into it, and watched it flow into him. It began to grow dark outside, but the desert heat was unremitting. He showed no signs of waking up. At last she made the decision, and rolled up her sleeves, drew her mask into place, and cut the bottom part of her makeshift bandaging away from his left leg. It was a torn and meaty mess. There were scour marks where buckshot had grazed through the sides, long furrows where they'd burrowed in, and dark red wounds where they'd gone deep. It looked like a muddy battlefield, crusted with trenches and bomb-divots sprinkled with fragments of denim.

She didn't know where to begin. Sweat dripped down her nose and caught in the surgical mask. It was hot under the lights and the fan did little to relieve the dry heat. She stripped off her shirt and bent to work, wearing just a sports b*a and her scrubs. She began with something easy, cleansing a shallow furrow around his ankle. If she did it piece-meal, allowing the existing sealed scabs to hold, then perhaps he'd keep most of his blood in him. She began to think of his body as a precious bag, one she had to keep intact so the liquid inside wouldn't leak. Cleansing the interior of the shallow line, like a seed-line plowed into a field, turned her stomach. She'd never done anything like this before. It was a very far cry from practicing law, or making coffee. She kept working, but there didn't seem to be enough skin left to seal it over again. Scraping away the crust of blood gently with alcohol and a cloth, she saw the raw pink and red of inflamed skin and muscle beneath. Was it infected already? She couldn't tell. Fresh blood began to seep up like water bubbling through porous cloth. She splashed alcohol and disinfectant liberally, which mixed with the blood and ran pink down the sides of his leg, darkening the white stretcher sheets.

There didn't seem to be any bits of shrapnel in this gouge. She swallowed back her gorge and took up one of the threaded needles. It couldn't have been further from the needlework she'd done as a kid, but surely the principle was the same. Grabbing the edge of the skin was hard, and piercing it with the needle was tougher than she expected. She pushed it through with a little pop. The thread ran through his skin like a shoelace through an eyelet, stopping at the crude knot. She scooped into the other edge of the wound, blotting furiously now with gauze to clear her view, and pulled the thread taut. The wound zippered closed, but in doing so cracked the scabs on other wounds on his leg, which began to leak blood through their caked platelets. "s**t," she cursed. She hadn't thought of that. It became an awful, b****y race. She needled the rest of that gouge in one long thread, then tightened it up like a corset before tying it off. Half a dozen other wounds, each deeper and more severe, were bleeding now too. She leaned back and saw that his face was white.

"What the hell," she muttered. It was too hard. She was going to spend all night on this, and lose him still. But what else could she do? She already felt exhausted from driving through the night, hoping to finally catch him up. Then when she'd rolled up and seen this? She was emotionally drained. She'd been alone for so long. But this had to be done. "Stop pussyfooting around," she whispered to herself. She bent back to his leg, cut a little more bandaging away, and dived into one of the biggest, darkest wounds, trying a new theory. If she could seal those up first, then perhaps there'd be less blood leaking out when she pulled the smaller ones tight. It was a deep hole dug into his calf. There was only a shallow crust of blood over the top, and when she broke through it began to well up profusely. She felt sick. She dug into the hole with one of her pliers. She rooted around, grateful the only sound was his smooth breathing, until she hit something hard. Bone or metal? No way to know. She dug deeper until she got a grip then pulled. It shifted, but caught on something. To pull harder would do more damage, potentially tearing ligament or a muscle.

She pulled out and went at it on a different angle. She clamped it again, and this time it came free with a sucking breath. She held it up, feeling dizzy. It was a bead of metal as big as a nail head. She dropped it with a clank into the kidney bowl, had another root in the well to check it was alone, then sewed up the hole. It took only a few stitches to pout it closed, sealing off the blood flow. Already his calf was looking better. Still there were a dozen gouges to deal with on that leg alone, and she didn't like to think about the other, but some order was beginning to come to the chaos. She got on. By dawn of the next day, it was done. Both his legs were a forest of blue thread, drawing strange patterns across his disinfectant-tangy skin, painted a dark Carl. The sheets were a mess of pale blood and dark clots. The air stank of iron and iodine. The kidney bowl was heavy with the weight of lead she'd pulled out of him, like extracted teeth. She bandaged him up in a daze, seeing colors and shapes in the air. A dead man tugged at her sleeve. She rolled Simon carefully onto his side, stabilizing him with pillows. She refreshed his drip. His breathing was shallow and his face was drawn and pale.

There was nothing more she could do. She fed the generator to keep the fan going, then fell blood-smeared and sweaty onto a sofa, and fell asleep at once I f h e s u r v i v e d o r n o t w a s u p t o h i m n o w.

CHAPTER 34 WHOLE NEW WORLD

There's an ache in my whole body. I'm lying on my side. I recognize a hospital room. Hot light streams in through the floor-to-ceiling windows, overlooking low suburbs and orange desert. There's a red sofa by the window and lying upon it is Talia. She looks shattered, asleep, rumpled in a thin white sheet. My mouth is dry, my eyes hurt. I try to roll onto my back but I can't, there's some kind of frame holding me in position. I crane my neck to look at it, but even that much movement starts something screaming in my legs. A gray figure with a cratered gray face shuffles into view. A janitor, maybe? "Hey," I say. My voice sounds like rustling sand. He says nothing. A few others shuffle with him, two doctors, a nurse, and some girl in dungarees. It's weird but I can't complain. "Thanks for coming." They say nothing. I remember Don, and wonder if these ones may turn too. "Not feeling hungry, are you?" I rasp. My throat hurts. My forearm hurts. I look down and see a drip line feeding in to my wrist. The bag it connects to is half-empty, hanging over my head. So Talia saved me? Talia's alive? I guess so. I feel dizzy still. "Hey, Talia," I try to shout. Am I laughing, it's hard to tell. I sound more like Muttley in Wacky Races, a canine barking laugh. She turns in her sleep. She must've had a hard time, saving me. I should let her rest. I got shot with a shotgun. I should let me rest. I close my eyes and sweet, nourishing sleep finds me again in seconds.

Talia watched him for three days and three nights, as he lay in a coma-like torpor in the hospital's eastern wing, by a window overlooking a therapeutic Las Vegas garden. "Only old people and junkies," she murmured to herself, standing at the window. She'd had the thought many times, based on the types of dead people she'd released from their wardroom 'cells'. It was a wonderful kind of emancipation. 'Floaters', Simon called them. 'The ocean'. Maybe that was better than 'the dead'. It implied there might be hope for them yet. None of this felt real to her. Ever since she'd come out of hiding in her parent's home, hunkered down for months waiting for the authorities to come, the world had felt unreal, especially after she'd seen Simon's first cairn in New York.

The Empire State. It had started her on a pilgrimage that only grew faster as she realized how much she was gaining on him. The dates grew closer together. She sailed through Denver laughing aloud at his cocky ridiculousness. Pac-Man? There was something bright and beautiful and defiant about it. LMA. Now she was here, and he was in his bed, maybe in a coma. She went around the hospital opening doors. There were dozens of the dead, or 'floaters', trapped in their rooms; old people whose hearts had flaked out while riding a roll in the casino, young guys and girls with caved-in noses from too much h****n, all now part of the ocean. They thumped sluggishly against their windows and doors. One by one she let them out, and let them follow her. In their rooms she studied their charts while they crowded around her. This one was Anne Gideon, suffering from gout. She looked like she was well over that now. Here was Toby McTavish, broken leg in three places. It didn't show. She wandered around the hospital, from the canteen on the second floor to the lobby and through the staff rooms up to the roof, where she looked over the tawdry conglomeration of buildings either side of the Strip, all cheap motels with dark blue swimming pools.

She checked in on Simon frequently. She rarely went farther than the hospital forecourt, for fear he might wake while she was gone. She kept the drips going into him, and his body sucked them down. She dressed and salved his wounds twice a day, once in the morning and once at night. They seemed to be healing extremely quickly, more than normal, but what was normal now? She'd read his comic where he described shooting himself in the head and surviving. She hadn't thought that was real, had guessed it was a metaphor, but now she could see the scars in his head. It was a whole new world. It was the evening of the third day when he mumbled and stirred in his sleep. She stroked his hot forehead with a cool damp cloth, and he opened his eyes. He looked right up at her, and her heart leapt in her chest.

"Hey," he said. Her jaw dropped. Tears at once raced down her cheeks. "S'OK," he mumbled. He patted at her hand with his own. "Don't cry." "I'm not," she said, though her eyes were streaming. "God, it's good to see you." "You too." He was smiling, that same mischievous grin he'd given her at the restaurant, when he'd 'read' her hand and 'blessed' her with happiness. Now he was lying all torn up in a Las Vegas hospital. "You followed me." She blinked away tears and laughed. "You made it easy. Cairns, Simon? The 'f'?" His smiled widened. "A symbol for our modern age." "And Pac-Man?" He laughed, but it obviously hurt and he stopped. "A bit of fun. His mouth opened and closed." "I saw that. Cute touch." He closed his eyes then, and she thought perhaps he'd drifted back to unconsciousness, but then they opened again, a gentle, amused hazel. "Good luck with the zombies," he said. She frowned. "What?" He laughed again, stopped again. "Good luck. You wrote it on a note in my room. You left it behind." The memory of that came flooding back; such a strange, throwaway message, ultimately so prophetic. She laughed too.

"I guess we both had good luck." His smile faded, and his eyes closed again. "I'm glad. It's good. I'm sorry about Don." Then he was under. She watched him for a time, sleeping peacefully now. The color was coming back into his face. His breath came in deep, clear flows. He was alive, because of her. She took photos. She went out onto the Strip and photographed the skeleton that had to be 'Don'. She took pictures of the cheerleaders tethered to the car, trying to piece together what must have happened. She tracked the blood trail and gouge-marks in the school bus' side to the back corner, where the emergency back door hung open. The area behind the back seat was stained with blood. She rooted inside and found two guns scattered on the floor, one fully discharged, one two bullets short. There had been a struggle. She took photos and video.

She cut the cheerleaders free. Part of her expected them to come at her like the others must have gone for Don, but they didn't. They walked right past, heading west. They'd clearly had their fill of people. They faded into the heathaze. She gathered Don's bones up in a bucket. It was strange they all fit so well. She opened his pack, left inside the battle-tank, and looked through the contents. A bottle of whiskey, a Bible with half the pages torn out, a journal that documented mostly only the blandest of observations; the weather, the zombie count, how many roads he'd covered and where he might strike for next. There was an occasional entry on his loneliness. It seemed to bite into him more sharply than it ever had into her. There were two passages of nothing more than harshly scribbled expletives written in capital letters, followed by passages of regret the next day. She didn't understand fully what he kept the cheerleaders for, but she suspected. There were no lurid mementoes in his pack, no evidence, but she tried to imagine the exchange he'd had with Simon, who saw the ocean now as good, living, willful beings.

It went badly between them. Perhaps it hadn't had to, but then how could she know? She didn't even know him, or Simon either, not really. She buried Don's bones in the sand, and left his sword sticking into the ground like a headstone. He had been a survivor, like her. He'd been alone for too long. Perhaps they could have been friends. They all deserved better. She closed up the bus. The floaters were all gone now. Las Vegas was a ghost town. Standing on the hot asphalt she looked up and down the broad Strip, dotted with emergency vehicles and stretch limos pulled to the sides. So much life, lost. Evolved. Back in the hospital, she found Simon awake.

CHAPTER 34 SURVIVORS

My legs burn and all my efforts to sit up fail. Instead I lie on my belly and lean back, painstakingly unpeeling the bandaging. The skin down my legs is tarnished yellow with disinfectant, and a loop-de-loop train-yard of blue stitch tracks wind down my thighs and calves to my feet. My skin looks alien, body parts wrinkled and preserved in formaldehyde, and the sight throws me into shock. I look away and breathe into my pillow for twenty minutes, willing the body-horror away. Soon enough the flop-sweat and nausea fade, and I look again. My legs are repulsive, but I can begin to admire the work Talia has done. It's pretty amazing, considering. I suppose baristas have very deft fingers. I slump back, thinking hard. Don did this. I shot him in the guts and somehow I sent the ocean to kill him. Do I regret that? I'm not sure. I don't regret surviving. How did I do it? I have no idea. I swivel slowly on the hard stretcher-bed on my belly, and reach for a bottle of mineral water on the side-table. The movement causes the drip line to pull tight, jerking me to a stop, and I watch as a flow of my own blood begins to feed back up into the line. What the hell? I watch for a second in fascination, as this life-giving tube sucks my own blood up into it, then I pinch the tube and the flow stops.

I pull the needle out of my forearm, and a little blood flows from the needle-hole but it peters out when I press my thumb on it. I toss the line away and it spits my blood onto the floor. It's OK, I'm making more. I tape up the hole then rotate slowly, so my head is at the tail of the stretcher, watching the door for Talia's return. My back aches like a son of a g*n, probably from lying sideways or on my belly for so long. I wiggle my feet. The movement of tendons in my thighs and calves feels like complex clockwork grating, but my feet move. I flex my knees, just the tiniest Simonunt as the tightness in my stitches gets unbearable quickly, but they bend. I lie there and wait. It's not long until Talia returns. Hell, she is beautiful, maybe more so now. Her curly hair is tied back loosely, her eyes are as bright white as ever, and she smiles wide as she comes in, like she's really pleased to see me.

"He was mad," she says. "You didn't want to kill him." I know what she's asking. I don't have a good answer. "He came into the battle-tank. The bus. He got worked up. I worked him up, to be honest. I shouldn't have done, I think. I could have done it better, but I didn't." I chew my lip for a moment. I'll be living with this for a long time. "But I didn't know, not for sure. He'd seen the comics. He knew about you, about Carl. And he wouldn't back off. If he'd just backed off…" "You fought him. You shot first." I talk through it. I tell her about how the ocean responded to my unspoken call for help, and tore him apart. It leaves us both in silence. "Do you think they were defending you?" she asks eventually. "I don't know. I honestly don't." I think, flashing back on old memories. "Did you see Sophia's trailer? On the road into Pennsylvania?" Talia nods. "So sad." "Then you read her journal. She had theories about our brains, about the ocean brains. Transmitting, signals back and forth. Maybe I sent them a signal, and they responded." I think about my Bluetooth trick in Sophia's trailer, drawing the ocean away. Was it like that? Talia frowns. "Like telepathy?"

one who started all this." She laughs. "Carl's theory, right. s*x started the apocalypse." She flicks a finger off my nose. "You and me." I laugh. I don't feel light about this, though. I remember Don too vividly, his easy grin, him calling me a 'd**k' saying he just wanted to be friends. That guilt's on me, and always will be. "Maybe they were just protecting you," she says. "Because you were speaking up for them. For the cheerleaders." "Maybe," I say. "Right." We lie quietly after that. She can see I don't want to talk about this, at least not now. I appreciate it. I stroke her bare arm. I don't deserve this. I'm glad I have it.

I recover steadily. Talia brings me freshly un-canned fruit and bolognese. I still don't need to eat much, but I eat more than before. I drink more. We make love several times a day, lying on the stretcher. We graduate to a double stretcher, lashing the two together with drip-bag tubing, so we can sleep comfortably side by side. The first of my stitches come out, and the wound holds. I rub the newly sealed skin repeatedly, fascinated and repelled by the bumpy ridges the stitches have left, like castle battlements. "You won't be Miss California," Talia teases. She kisses me. "Don't wear tights." "I had such plans," I answer. "The apocalypse has freed up my inner woman." She chuckles. "Priscilla, queen of the desert." I rub the healing wound until it feels like my skin again, no longer so horribly foreign. Welcome back, I tell it. The nausea fades. More stitches come out. Talia's hand is steady and skillful. "We learn this, for pouring milk," she says. "Carrying coffee requires a steady hand. It was a hard boot camp." "I'm sure it was very rigorous. Coffee training has prepared you well as a surgeon."

She pinches my knee. Spent stitches slip out of my skin with a little suck each time. Bright beads of blood prick up in the tiny gaps they leave. Talia dabs these down with iodine swabs, which sting. We leave the deepest wounds a little longer. Already I can flex my feet almost fully, rolling at the ankle. I can bend my knees halfway to forty-five degrees. I ask Talia to bring my laptop and drawing tablet, and she does. I start to work on the latest pages of my comic. There's no fulfillment center I know of around here, so I don't know if we can print them out professionally, but I expect we can print them on the hospital machines and add the new pages as addenda to the back of the ones I've already got. I want to tell the story about Don. But not his cheerleaders. I don't want to say that the ocean killed him, or that I told them to. I don't know what I want to say. While I figure that out, Talia goes out to work, developing our plan for the UFO casino. "The walls will be slick," I tell her. "The heights will be terrifying at first. Double-check all your ropes, your cradle, your in-coil."

I don't tell her she shouldn't do it, or that she should wait until I'm fit and we can at least do it together. I can see that she needs to do this, and I need to be willing to share it. We started this thing, and now we have to see it through together. A week passes. I work on my art and I recover. She comes back each evening splattered with paint but jubilant. "You should see it," she says. "It looks amazing." I draw her in and pull up her shirt to kiss her belly. "I will see it." "I think it's your best work yet. Steady hand." I rope her in tighter. My legs are sturdy enough that I can lie on my back now, with her straddling me. It's a whole different experience.

CHAPTER 35 UFO

In another week I finish the updates to my comic. Talia finishes her largescale art. The last of the stitches come out, and I inch over to the edge of the bed, where I've been lying for nearly as long as I lay for my coma. "Take it easy," Talia says. Sweat beads down my back and my legs are already shaking, as I lower them carefully to the floor. I do my best to not let my thighs take my weight against the edge of the stretcher, but they take some and feel like they're being pinched sharply. I wince and she helps a little more. We get me onto my feet. Without her I'd fall for sure, but with her I can just about hold myself up. "It helps you've gotten so wiry," she says. "Like a floater." I grunt. With one hand gripping the drip bag stand like a walking stick, I slide a hesitant step forward. I make it. "Hoorah," Talia says. "Hoorah," I repeat. "Ok. Let's go see it." "The UFO, now? Are you sure?" "Yeah. We may need a wheelchair." At the doorframe she rolls around with a wheelchair, heavily padded. Getting into it is hard, and twice it slides away while we're trying to drop my poor buttocks into it.

"Backstop it," I suggest, sweating and shaking hard now. "Stand there. Use your feet as chocks." "I found the brake," she says, clicking it on. I grab the elbow-rests and lower myself as slowly as possible onto the deeply piled pillows. I ride so high I feel like the princess and the pea. I need a seatbelt to keep myself in. My legs hurt, but the cushioning helps a lot. She leans around and kisses me on the cheek. "It'll get better." I focus on breathing. It's decent of her. "Can you push? I can hardly move." She pushes. We wend down the ward, and I peer through various rooms to the windows and the view of the city beyond. Las Vegas passes like images on a slowly spinning zoetrope.

We descend by a gradual slope at the end of the building. I try not to suck on my teeth at each little irregularity of the wheelchair's movement. This was Carl's life for so long, and I know she's doing her besty.

"I've kitted out one of the wheelchair minibuses," Talia says. "The elevator works." I nod thanks. I want to give a little more, but it's all I can do to keep from cursing her out every time the wheelchair's momentum changes. Of course it's not her fault. I'm the one who wants to see this, now. I bite down my frustration. We pull through bright sunshine, and I relinquish my iron grip on the rests to shield my eyes. We pull over to the minibus, and she revs it up. The side door opens automatically, and an elevator platform unfolds and descends. "Like the Delorean," I manage. She chuckles. "Those doors opened upwards." I laugh breathily. "Yeah." She rolls me on, keys it to raise, and the minibus lifts me in. The drive is not far, and I cling to the minibus handles throughout. We pull around a currency transfer stall near to the Strip, and Talia leans back over the seat. "Close your eyes."

I close them. I feel the turn. We'll be passing the spot where the ocean swallowed Don about now. I try not to think about how that makes me feel. The minibus stops. "Keep them closed," she says. The door opens, the elevator drops me to the ground, then we're rolling forward. "Just a little further," she says. "To the viewing platform," I answer. I keep my eyes closed, feeling part excitement and part annoyance, though I'm trying to repress the latter. This was my thing, and now I'm a spectator. This whole thing was my idea, and though I know better, and I want to share it with Talia more than anything, I also want it just for myself. It's ridiculous. A week back I'd have done anything to see her face. Now I just want a little more time for myself. I snort. "What's funny?" she asks.

I think I'll keep this one to myself. "Nothing. I was thinking about being mayor of Sir Clowdesley. Digital cairns and all that." It's a white lie, as cairns are something I've been thinking about plenty recently. We used to let everyone know where we were, just by clicking a geo-location button on our social media app. This cross-country slog has been pretty much the same thing, an analog trail across a once-digital world.

More people is what I wanted. That takes adjustment. I grit my teeth and adjust. "There," she says. "Open them." I open my eyes. For a few seconds I get used to the light, then I pick out the shapes of giant green and purple aliens, like stalky octopuses frozen out of water, holding ray guns, and beyond them I see her work, spread across the UFO façade. It's better than I ever imagined. It is awesome, and it stands out starkly on the UFO's sheer silver saucer. It is a message from a modern-day hero that cannot be denied. Everybody who sees this will know what it means. It is the silhouette of Michael Jordan, as seen on millions of shoes around the world, flying. His arm is up and touching the peak of the saucer, his legs spread across the widest point at the middle, and under his legs lies the fSimonus strapline, adapted, stenciled in letters a story high.

JUST LIVE ON

It staggers me. He's an outline only, drawn in thick yellow paint, but the work is exemplary, on the largest scale yet. It reminds me of white chalk figures carved out in English hillsides that survive for millennia. It is a new Mt. Rushmore for a brand new world. "s**t," I murmur, feeling truly humbled. All selfish thought of getting away from Talia for a minute, all peevishness about her taking this role away from me, fades in the face of how perfect this image is. It is inspiring, and across his middle she's emblazoned my tag, a touch I never would have been arrogant enough to ask her to.

LMA

"You don't think it's s**t do you?" she asks. I look at her, thinking she must be joking, but she isn't. The nerves are plain on her face. I understand then, that this is about acceptance for her as much as it is for me. We both need to play a role in this thing, and I need to move over to make room. I can't complain. She has done her bit beautifully. "I'm so glad," she says softly, whispering against my cheek. "I was worried." "Steady hand," I say. "Draw that in your latte and smoke it." She laughs. "You should add your tag too," I say. "LBA. Last Barista in America." She grins and points. "I did. You can just see maybe, across his shoe." I peer. I see it. "Well-deserved."

We dredge and sieve a nearby pool for sand and pond scum, until it's relatively clean, then fill it up with jugs of mineral water. We take two days to relax, spreading out the work of filling up the UFO cairn with material. We drink cold piña coladas with freshly crushed ice, after hacking power to one of the icemakers, then think to add those same ingredients to the cairn. They can have coffee and cocktails, all those who follow on behind. We lounge and sunbathe and recuperate. We drop in the warm pool water and walk up and down. It is rehabilitation for me. We take it in turns to carry each other around, held like rescued damsels bobbing on the surface. We skinny-dip without shame. At times we get drunk, giggling and trying on expensive designer sunglasses n***d in the lobby. We pose and lounge around like bohemians. We end up putting racks of sunglasses into the cairn too. We print out my new pages on A4 and fold and staple them into the comics in fat stacks. We make love lazily on the pool loungers, listening to soulful crooning from the Rat Pack.

"What if someone comes now?" Talia asks, "and they see us like this?" "We'll have a toga party," I answer. "Set up some disco balls. Party at the end of the world." She presses her hot chest against my chest. My legs hurt less now, even with her weight. Getting them in the sun seems to help. They tan irregularly, the newly forming scar lines remain a tight white, but the inflammation is fading. "Do you really think there are others?" she asks. "There have to be. I've seen two already. There must be more, hiding out there somewhere. Looking for us. They might be on the trail already." She 'hmms' softly, starting to doze. I stroke her ringlet hair. It smells like coconuts, after we raided one of the expensive body-cream shops, and she had a crazy field day picking out a trolley full of beauty and cleansing products.

"It's not just for me," she'd protested when I rolled my eyes. "It's for the cairn." It was a nice touch, I had to admit it. She made everything a lot prettier than I did. More welcoming and feminine I suppose. Mother and father to the apocalypse, I think she said that once. "Carl's out there too," I say softly, into her hair. She 'hmms' again. Carl's out there.

CHAPTER 36 LA

After two days we pack up the convoy. I stand at Don's sword-marker grave, leaning on a fancy silver cane Talia found, and think about what I'd do if I found another person like him. I don't know. Perhaps if I'd just handed him the g*n on the battle-tank, he would have looked it over and handed it back. We could have drunk whiskey or tea. I could have raised the issue of the cheerleaders later, or maybe never. Maybe it really was none of my business. But there was no way to know that. He might have turned the g*n on me, and spent the next three days torturing me to death. He'd already let go of civilization the minute he started to have s*x with the ocean. When he tied them up, when he dressed them for his own pleasure, when he r***d them, he crossed a line. It didn't matter if anyone saw it or not. I know better than any. There is a line out there in the wilderness, and once you cross it, the only way back is long, hard and lonely. I turn and walk away. The ocean rendered judgment in the end, and for that I'm grateful.

The JCB only has one seat, so I sit on the battle tank roof on my beanbag, strapped to the ceiling, as we roll out of Vegas. I don't feel jealous or possessive of this grand work anymore, I don't need to be in the driving seat or the one making the cairns. It's open-source for the masses now, and I don't own it. I wave goodbye to the hero on the UFO, and wonder what he'd think, if he saw what we'd done. A corporation raised him up for profit, it's true, but I don't care about that. He was a hero to millions for his skill and his dedication, a symbol of perseverance as potent as any other, and he's a hero and a symbol still. Him and Pac-Man both. "Goodbye Vegas!" Talia cries out from the cab. "Yeehao!" I shout out. We're on the final cattle-drive home.

The ocean follow us down to the sea. It takes a few days, and we stop and take shelter in mansions set back from the road along the way. Some of them have grounds that stretch for acres in dead Carl grass, withered for lack of water. I know California is notoriously dry.

I walk more smoothly every day, in and out of dark kitchens as big as my whole apartment used to be. I brew us green tea. "No art," I say, shrugging apologetically as I hand her a cup. "No foam." Talia punches me in the shoulder. "Argh, indicator hole," I wince. She laughs. I make 'fresh' bolognese with dried pasta, vine-ripe tomatoes from a sheltered part of the yard, using salt, pepper and wild-growing basil, with chips of dehydrated soy in place of meat. It tastes better than anything I've ever tasted. "We can have whole fields of tomatoes," Talia muses, while we lie back on a massive balcony and watch the sun come up over the country. "Grapes too, there's plenty in California. Wine. We'll start up agriculture again." "Fields of bolognese plants," I say. "I hear the soil is perfect for them." She snorts. "That would be cows." I lean back and savor the moment. "Fields of cow plants then. They'll be so cute when they bud." She doesn't even snort. "There must be some we can round up. Fence them in again."

"Yeah. If the ocean haven't eaten them all." "True. They ate their way through all my neighborhood's dogs." "I'd like a dog," I say. "I'll call it Buddy." "I'll have a cat," she muses. "And a horse." We cuddle closer and nap. We drive on. Los Angeles is a low gray sprawl. We come upon its suburbs gathered in the base of a low valley like receding ice at the pole, spreading out into a steady gray plateau of malls, condominiums, office parks, warehouses, and windowless buildings that could be CIA black sites or storage lockers or film studios. We push through, down the same snake of road that has carried us like a river from New York, expanded now to eight lanes. We go under and over numerous other highways, each of them jetting off to other cities, spread across the country.

We hit downtown and stop in a tourist shop for maps, accompanied by the usual herd of floaters; maps to the stars in the Hollywood hills, maps to the various beaches, maps that show the Walk of Fame outside the Chinese theater. We pull off I-15 and turn north along the coast. Everywhere there are dribs and drabs of the ocean, skinny and shriveled and gray, stumbling along the boardwalk and down to the beach. There they walk steadily to the water, and in. "Jesus," Talia says. "They're really doing it." She stops the convoy and we get out. We walk down to stand Simonngst them on the shore. They pass by us like falling snowflakes, oblivious, driven by some strange internal drive. "Do you think they're going to drown?" Talia asks. "Was Don right?" "No," I say. "I don't know, but I don't think so." We watch them pass one by one, like shooting stars across the beach, flaming out in the surf. They don't try to swim, and they don't carry on the waves. They walk until they go under.

"Maybe they fill with water," Talia says. "Then they walk along the ocean floor." "So they don't need to breathe?" "Maybe not. They always have breathed, I know. But maybe they don't need to." I squeeze her hand. "I hope so." I really do. I don't like to think of all these people drowning themselves a few hundred yards away from where we stand. Surely the beach would be scattered with their washed-up bodies, if they were just dying. "They're going somewhere," I say. "Maybe a better place." We drive on. The Hollywood sign appears on the hills. We go past the Chinese theater the first time around without really noticing it. I only notice the stars on the sidewalk, glinting in the sun. We pull back and park. We get out and stand before it. It is massive and red, festooned with pennants heralding the upcoming release of Ragnarok III. "This is it," Talia says. I nod. I root around inside myself, wondering what to feel. There's nothing strong, though. I half-expect to see a line of people already swinging by the necks from the entranceway, but there are none.

We are the first. I feel pride at completing this mission. I have come across the whole country. I have fought, and learned, and survived, and now we stand on the precipice of something wondrous, the end of the yellow brick road. People may come.

It takes one generator to fire up the projector in the largest premier screen, and one to run the sound, and one to run the coordinating computer system in the central office. We perform a rude hack to get it all working, but it works. It's all digital now. In the storage room by flashlight we sift through the solid-state black bricks that contain movies. "Gone with the Wind?" Talia suggests. "Put it on the pile." "Ghostbusters?" "Pile." We heap them up. Already there's an audience of the ocean gathering in the theater, drawn by the sound and light. I guess these ones aren't quite ready to move on yet. I keep hunting for the movie I've been waiting to see for years, one that was never screened, but must surely be ready. We don't find it in the theater, so we go on.

We find the studio that owned it, and dig through its campus. Every door we open releases floaters into the wild. We pass through cavernous dark studios, editing bays and offices, grand lobbies and storage rooms filled with old memorabilia, corridors lined with signed posters, busts of fSimonus, longdead actors, until in a central vault deep in the belly of Studio K, I find it. Ragnarok III. It comes on two bricks, and we carry one each. "I don't even like these superhero movies that much," Talia says. "It's not about liking," I say. "It's an event movie. We watch it like people used to go to church, to be together and listen to a sermon." "That is dour." "I do quite like them too," I add. "There's more spectacle than church." We slot the first half of the movie into place in the Chinese theater's control room with a satisfying clunk, on August 23 rd , 2019, at 1:15pm. It kicks into life with a pre-roll of ads and trailers. We pause it. We make popcorn in a microwave. We decant soda from the machines. We alter the strip line boards at the theater's front, sliding in the letters of our message.

LMA/LBA PRODUCTIONS PROUDLY PRESENTS:

RAGANAROK I, II & III TRIPLE BILL WELCOME TO THE WEST COAST, SURVIVORS!

We settle down amidst the ocean, in the premium loveseats at the back, and watch the movie. It is great fun. The world is nearly destroyed, our heroes battle each other then unite, and all is relatively well in the end, with just enough mystery and threat left to hint at bigger and darker stories to come. Afterward we stand at the entrance at sunset and look out over the actual ocean. It laps on the beach only yards away. Floaters flow out around us, heading down to the orange-dappled water like a tide of gray gazelle. We hold hands. "They'll come," I say. "Carl will come." Talia squeezes my hand. "Of course he will. The Last Mayor of America is handing out free coffee, who can resist that?" I squeeze back.

We stand and watch the burning eye of the sun sink into the Pacific. I wonder if this is what the ocean are following, like devotees of the sun God Ra. Round and round the world they'll go, like a tidal flow, endlessly chasing the great bright light in the sky. It makes me smile. It's no different than wildebeest roaming the plains or salmon swimming upstream. It's just another natural cycle, turning with the world. We stand there a time longer, sipping bottled beer and thinking our own thoughts while the burned sienna sunset fades atop the ocean, when a noise comes from down the coastal road. It is unmistakably an engine, drawing near.

Talia turns to me with wide eyes. I smile. We fire up the front generators that power up fairy lights decked around the Chinese theater's front. We watch the headlights meander up the coast, always growing closer. My heart hammers with hope. One of my RVs from New York pulls up, followed closely by a classic red Mustang. A young man gets out of the RV. He's pale, his hair is dark and feathery, and he stands at the door looking up at us with a broad grin on his face. I spread my arms. "Welcome!" I say. There are tears in his eyes. "We didn't know if you'd be here," he says. He looks at us in turn. "Simon. Talia. Look at this."

The door to the side of the RV opens, and someone else gets out. It's a little girl with frizzy dark hair, wearing a cute blue and white outfit, like Alice in Wonderland. She's followed by an older but hardy-looking woman, and an Asian woman in cSimonuflage gear. From the Mustang comes a somber Hispanic man. A floater washes past them and not a one of them draws a weapon or shows any sign of fear. I feel such pride. Then someone else comes. The RV back doors open and my heart leaps in my chest. A wheelchair edges into view, then comes around the side. It's Carl. Robert. I can't see for tears. I'm grinning and laughing and he's grinning and crying too. We've never even seen each other for real. I run down and hug him, shouting out his name with words of welcome spilling off my lips. "Good job, Simon," he says in my ear, thumping my back. "I couldn't have done it without you," I answer, barely able to breathe. "I'm so glad you're alive."

He introduces us to the others; the little girl is Anna, the older lady is Cynthia, the Asian woman is Masako, the young guy is Jake, the Hispanic guy is Julio. Each of them is a survivor gathered along the way, on the cairn road. We all hug and shake hands. We tell them our names though of course they already know from the comic, and we all cry together and laugh together, and grin like idiots together. "Welcome," I tell them. "We have movies. We have popcorn and soda. Welcome home!"

CHAPTER 37 EPILOGUE

The party stretches on into the night; I don't think I've ever been this happy. I sit with Carl and talk; he tells me everything he's seen, everything he's done, and I'm just overwhelmed he's really alive. I meet the others: Julio, the Mexican with the muscle car, who comes across as serious and wants to talk about the 'security' of our 'compound'; Jake the tousle-haired youth, whose eyes sparkle when he talks about home; Masako, the Japanese woman who tells me about how Carl miraculously rescued her; Cynthia, the blunt and wiry old girl from the mid-West; and Anna, the little girl cuddled in Carl's lap, dressed like a ragged Alice in Wonderland in a blue dress with a white pinafore and stockings. She's five, Jake tells me. She's been through a lot, Carl says, but it's pretty clear none of them really know. We've all been through so much. I smile at Talia across the room, and it's magic. She's there like a buoy bobbing on a tide, always nearby; smiling, calling my name, looking my way, holding my hand. We're all together, and it's the best night of my life. At some point things quieten down. People sit in tiny clusters; Carl with Masako giggling by the doors to screen 1, Cynthia, Jake and Talia at the popcorn talking in low tones, Julio standing on patrol outside, and little Anna at the front glass of the Theater alone, looking out into the darkness. I walk over to her.

"Hello," I say. "What are you looking at?" She looks up at me; a quizzical expression on her round little face, chewing thoughtfully on a red string. "The sea," she says. "It's beautiful," I say, and we stand there together for a little while looking out. Through the glass there are stars and clouds and the moon, and silvery light glinting off low breakers rushing in to shore. I think about all the lost ocean in the ocean, millions of us trudging along at the bottom, or swimming in the middle, or simply lying dead on the seafloor. Hundreds of millions of people in the largest mass migration the world's ever seen, and for what, and to where? "My Daddy's out there," Anna says quietly by my side. I look down at her, and my eyes fill. She doesn't look back at me; she's glued to the glass, as if at any minute he might pop back out and come for her. She can't turn away because she can't take the chance to miss him. Her teeth chew rhythmically at the red string, and I drop to one knee, brushing tears from my eyes as I think of everything she has lost.

"He's safe out there," I say. "He's with his new family, like you're with yours." She turns to me then. There's such feeling in her eyes. "He left me." For a minute I struggle; it feels like I'm drowning as a fresh flood of tears comes to my eyes. What can I say to that? What comfort is there for that? I smile through my tears, but before I can think of something to say, she puts one hand on my cheek and smiles, almost mischievously. "It's all right. He didn't mean to. And I know where he is." I let out the smallest laugh. I don't know why. "Good," I manage. "He's not all the way across yet. He's swimming." "He's swimming," I repeat, because why not? She nods once, then lets go of my cheek and turns back to the glass, resuming her watch. I'm left roiling with emotions. I'm supposed to be the one reassuring her, but it's gone the other way now, and there's something in her certainty that makes me ask a question I never normally would; not to someone who's just clinging on to hope like anybody else. "How do you know?"

She smiles, then, and I see the strength that's kept her alive this long. A five-year-old girl, alone for months in the apocalypse. Carl told me she traveled with her father halfway across the country, before he left her at the water's edge. What would that have been like? What things has she seen? "It's a secret," she says, tracing shapes I can't make out on the glass. "But I'm going to find him. One day." "One day," I repeat, and find myself wondering if there really is a secret; if she really does know something. "Maybe it's a secret you'll share with me." "Maybe," she says, and looks at me again. She's exhausted, but there's an inner light of hope glowing in her eyes. I don't know what it is, but I want to understand where it comes from. "But not tonight," I say, and offer my hand. "It's late, and there's a big day tomorrow. Now, there's camp beds already set up in screen 2, but you can put yours anywhere you want in the whole screening room." She frowns at me. The glass and the ocean beyond it are momentarily forgotten. "We're going to sleep in the theater?" "It's the best sleep you can get." "And I can sleep anywhere I want?"

"Anywhere you want. No rules, tonight." She grins and takes my hand. I look up. Talia is smiling our way. Everyone's moving toward screen 2. Together we head back to where Carl and Masako are waiting and even their were army personal waiting and the president was welcoming everyone who came from out simon was very shock. Then a scientist told him the person he shot was an clone.

The end.