The List (Zombie Ocean Book 5) (10 page)

The map clicked into place, and he saw his route to deck one; there was an access hatch leading into a wiring sub-panel along corridor Utah, near the habitation rigs for low-tier farmers. It led up into the ceiling crawlspace, where once there'd been a system of flues; but most of those were stripped after the revolution to refurbish breakages on the upper decks.

He could crawl through. He'd used the route once before, to smuggle his contraband equipment down. It had been a tight fit, and he'd burned his thighs badly on an overworked exhaust filter, but that was nothing compared to what he was facing now.

He ran. Nevada broke into two and he took Oregon to the right, circling back around the toe-end of the Habitat, past Farm Hall 4 where he caught glimpses of soy and wheat rising in the bright grow-lights through a cracked-open door, then he was on Utah and closing on the sub-panel.

The steady tramp of feet falling in time seemed to come from all around. He couldn't tell if it was left or right or just the whole Habitat trembling. He fumbled in his duffel bag hoping there was a screwdriver or at least a bit of metal, and came up with a long brass key. He'd kept that as a memento of a different time, brought with him from before he went underground.

It would do. He jammed it into the crack around the panel, then yanked down. The panel warped and clicked out of its groove in that spot, so he worked the key smoothly around popping it out until the panel dropped clear to the floor with a clatter.

He didn't care. The space beyond was narrow but he was a narrow man and he took to it with grace. In the wall he climbed, finding footholds in the hidden machinery of sewage and water ducts, until he rose into the dark, boxy space where the vents had been. Now they were a series of hanging, rusty brackets. Yes, that had hurt too.

He pulled himself up and slotted himself in through the brackets, resting his knees on one narrow bracket rim, his belly on the next, his elbows on the last. The metal dug in, it was dark and he didn't have a flashlight, but he remembered the way. He began to crawl. A hundred yards on he passed a deep thrumming in the wall, sounding like hundreds of bodies moving in tandem. At two hundred yards the skin on his left knee broke, followed by the right. Rust would be in his system now. Oh well. At three hundred the vent loops began to angle up, and he went with them as they became a widely-spaced ladder of sharp rungs leading up.

Next the skin on his palms broke, dribbling blood down his forearms, but he climbed on. It grew hotter as he neared the filter exhaust on deck 0, and sweat beaded down his face and into his eyes. He leaned back too far on one step up and scraped a furrow down his back off some old screw mount in the vent loops. It hurt but not as bad as any one of the whippings he'd received from Salle Coram, and keeping his mouth shut and teeth gritted was just a matter of focus.

Farsan lay ahead. It might not be too late.

He felt the steam rising off the exhaust, where the vent hatches rose over it and leveled out behind the wall on deck one off corridor Willow one. A hiss of steam gushed down to meet him, scalding his fingertips. That shouldn't be happening.

Shit.

But the Habitat had gone haywire. Somewhere another heat exchange must have stopped functioning as it was supposed to, and it was all getting vented here. It was pitch black, but the heat was stifling already, like a sauna. It would get worse. 

He squeezed the bracket-rungs and pressed on. He'd been through worse, possibly. Losing Farsan would undoubtedly be worse. If this vent steamed him alive, then so what? Going back would take hours, and he'd still have to face the clogged Habitat corridors, full of zombies and magnetic Goths and who knew what else.

It was this or nothing. He steeled his nerves and climbed.

The heat became all-consuming in seconds. Barely cooled steam blasted off his hands and face and still he kept climbing. His lungs burned and he squeezed his eyes tightly shut so they wouldn't melt. Already he could feel he was suffering burns that would need treatment, and he hadn't even rounded the exhaust yet.

He screamed. He climbed into the heat. His right hand gave out, slick with blood or sweat or oil and he barely caught himself against the back bracket loops, bracing against another screw mount that gouged and burned into his lower back.

He screamed again and forced himself up. It was too dark and too hot but he wasn't even thinking anymore. Farsan had stood by him while he retched and roiled and burned inside with all the serums he'd tried; some bacterial, some chemical, some hormonal, some viral. Farsan had cooled his brow and held his hand and dripped cold water onto his lips throughout, all because they shared a dream.

Escape. There was love in that loyalty, no doubt. There was love in that risk and self-sacrifice, and that was why he kept going, because what would it matter if he survived but Farsan didn't? They had their twin houses to find, with adjoining yards and a white picket fence between, and they would see each other every day until the day old age overtook them, and they sat on the patio and reminisced about their days in the revolution.

For that he pressed on, and soon the exhaust passed him by below, touching his left shin and right thigh. He scampered on with the stink of his boiling skin in the air, then he was racing on, stamping his shins painfully hard on the vent loops just to get away. Sweat dripped and steamed off him, but he managed to clamp his mouth shut and stop screaming, until in a few minutes more he was in position.

There was a cool draft sifting through the screw holes in the wall, along with a little light. He turned on his side, freed his right leg off the loops, and kicked at the wall. It had to be the right place. The wall boomed and shook. Yes, here. He shuffled forward a little and kicked again. The panel gave way a little, cracking open into Willow one. He kicked three more times, harder and wilder each time, until the panel burst through into an empty corridor.

He followed, slithering onto the cool metal flooring like a newborn babe, and for a moment he lay there panting, steaming, feeling lightheaded and sick. He turned his head to the side and vomited, but nothing came up. He'd cleared out his system already.

He was so weak. He lolled feebly to his knees, leaving bloody stamps wherever his torn palm and ripped knee touched. His thigh was marred with a dark bar of steamed flesh. Ugh, he gagged, then lurched to his feet.

The thrumming sound of footsteps was coming closer. There was never any time. He moved; wobbling steps that bounced him from wall to wall as limp as a noodle, until he was there, at Farsan's room.

He hammered on the door but no answer came. He tried the handle but it was locked, and an involuntary cry escaped his lips. To come so far and be denied here?

Then he remembered, and backed along the corridor to a vending machine that once would have served all manner of teas; green tea and Indian tea and Earl Gray and cream tea. He ran his finger under the bottom rim until he came across the scratch of masking tape, and secured by the tape to the machine's underside, an illegal key card copy.

He'd stashed them in many places, just in case; it was one crime Salle Coram's people hadn't cracked down on. He slipped it out, staggered back to Farsan's door, and held the card to the lock.

It flashed green and clicked open. He stumbled in just as the first of the stamping bodies closed around the far edge of Birch onto Willow.

* * *

Farsan's room was quiet. The door slid shut behind him and Lucas stood in the doorway for an instant, terrified of what he might find, but fear had never stopped him before.

"Farsan," he called, and hurried down the hall, peering in to the living space as he went by. There were Farsan's wooden sculptures, some beautiful Arabic text design he'd once explained, on a night he'd dreamed of so many times since, when they'd come so close Lucas had thought they might actually kiss.

Sitting on the floor, Farsan had ran Lucas' fingers round the curves and patterns carved into the wood, explaining what they meant in Islam. "These signify holiness," he'd said, "and all the beauty of the world as we find it. Allah teaches acceptance of the real. These curves in this wood, don't they speak to you of peace?"

They'd been so close he could feel Farsan's breath on his cheek. He'd longed more than anything then to turn and kiss his friend, to hold him close and whisper, 'I love you,' in his ear, 'Can you love me?'

But he hadn't; too much fear or too much respect, he'd never known which. It didn't matter now, and he brushed by in a moment because Farsan was not there. Beyond it the kitchen was empty too, the dining room, the bathroom, until last of all lay the bedroom at the end of the hall. He bounced once more off the wall, a spell of dizziness passed over him like a silver cloud, then he had his hand on the door and opened it up.

Farsan was there, lying in bed. He sat up at once, surprise blurring through the sleepy impression of his face.

"Lucas?"

Lucas almost dropped to his knees and converted on the spot.

"God, you look terrible," Farsan said. "What happened?"

"I can't explain," Lucas babbled, striding over and shrugging off his duffel bag. He dropped onto the sheets beside Farsan and rifled inside for the drip bag. "It's chaos outside, the infection's inside, but maybe I can-"

He turned and stopped speaking, because in those seconds Farsan had stopped being Farsan. In the time it had taken for him to walk over, the change had started. Farsan's skin was bleaching to gray. His eyes were an empty, staring white.

"No!" Lucas shouted and reached out to his friend's face, as if he could somehow push the color back into it, but it made no difference. Instead he simply held his friend's face as the infection stole him away, and erased any hint of recognition in Farsan's eyes.

"No," he shouted again. It was too close, too cruel, and now he wanted nothing more than to pull Farsan's infection onto himself, to follow after him and go wherever he went, but he didn't know how. How would they live side by side now? How would they grow old together?

Farsan's eyes shone. He rose from the bed and started down the hall.

Lucas couldn't breathe; it was too much too fast. He looked down at the drip bag in his shaking hands, at the blood and the hot pink steam-burns, and cursed himself and cursed the black girl and the white man and the Goth.

Too late.

"Wait," he called, but Farsan didn't wait. "Please, Farsan!"

Farsan stumbled out of the room and down the hall and Lucas watched him go, helpless to change this now.

Too late. Farsan was gone and it was their fault. They had opened the Habitat and brought the infection with them, right when he was on the cusp of the cure. It was too cruel, too malicious, and in that moment he made a promise, and pledged to keep it with his life.

6. ROOT AND BRANCH

The night was long and painful. Amo was put under a loose guard by common agreement of the Council, isolated in his RV. Anna didn't visit him. Anna didn't do anything but prepare.

They'd agreed on a preliminary hearing, with lay-lawyers present only to ensure all sides were heard. Anna would represent Amo and Feargal would represent Alan. Witzgenstein would be judge and the congregation would be the jury. At stake was New LA as they knew it.

Lara had volunteered to represent Amo, but she'd been gray and flagging even at the start of the Council meeting; the demon attack and her coma had left her sickly and drained. She was the only one amongst them with training as a lawyer, but now she could barely breathe, let alone speak.

Still, in Anna's RV she hunkered around the little RV table and worked, though she could barely focus on anything for more than a few moments. Her eyes were glazed and dripping, her attention wandered and her skin was papery gray. Alternately she wept, dozed then muttered low ideas that didn't make much sense.

Anna laid her in one of the booths, tucked the blankets around her, then worked on into the small hours, refining what little insight she'd gathered from Lara, honing what she wanted to say and how this was going to go. Jake came by, Ravi offered to help, Sulman made suggestions through the door, and she thanked them each and sent them each away.

There was something she had to figure out, and the more time she listened to them the blurrier it got. There was a path through this, she knew it, a way to stop it before the trial gained any more momentum and crushed the old order beneath it, but to find it she had to focus.

Yet there was no time. She looked up from her notes as somebody banged on her door.

"We're beginning in ten minutes," came Macy's voice.

The night was already gone, and it was time. She was half-ready, but that would have to do.

She splashed water on her face, brushed down her flight suit; the only item she'd brought from New LA, then dressed and helped Lara to her feet.

"Where is he?" Lara murmured, looking around distraught. The few hours of sleep she'd received had done nothing to refresh her. "Amo, is he here?"

"We'll see him soon."

Anna patted her hand and helped her wash up, ran a brush quickly through her hair, then together they trudged out into the snow. Between the flanks of the convoy's RVs they went, under a freezing, dark blue dawn. Anna's hand shook on her clutch of papers. Lara didn't seem to know what was going on.

"Where's Amo?" she whispered again.

"This way."

They took their place in line to climb down the ladder into the bunker. People in their heavy jackets watched as they joined the line. Some gave warm but worried smiles. Some stared daggers. So the community would split.

Anna went first and guided Lara's feet down above her. The bunker was warm inside, as always, but it was so different to be entering like this. They rode the elevator together with Lara sagging against the wall. Anna steeled herself for what was coming.

The elevator door opened, revealing an orange courtroom that was already half-full. Amo was at the dock, looking back with vague, hollow eyes. When he saw Lara his face crumpled in a sad, relieved smile. Anna gave him a brisk, business-like nod.