The List (Zombie Ocean Book 5) (31 page)

Amo had learnt this lesson for himself and tried so hard to pass it on, and perhaps now it was her turn to see the truth; because sometimes it just wasn't worth surviving. Sometimes the things you had to do, the lines you had to cross, the innocent people you had to hurt made survival the worst option, because the soul that lived on would be irreparably broken.

Better was this. As the zombie's teeth closed on her neck a second time, she understood that instead of fighting the bunkers, she should have been championing them, because they were all human, all victims, and they all deserved a chance.

She should have found a way.

The zombie bit down and she strained up into it, because this was a right and fitting punishment.

Then it was gone, pulled off and tossed to the side like a bale of dry straw, replaced by-

It wasn't possible.

A man covered head to foot in muddy black ash, with blood running down from wounds on his forehead and chin and down from his ear, panting and wild-eyed with a shock of mud-spiked hair; a man she knew but barely recognized.

Lucas.

He looked down at her, and in his eyes was something she'd been longing to see for so long, and never known until now what it really was.

Was it forgiveness? Was it belonging? Was it sympathy for a fellow victim, and a helping hand outstretched?

He stretched out his hand to her.

"Come on, Anna," he said.

* * *

He pulled her up and for him, for this, she walked. Her back twinged and every step saw her faint a little, the pain in her back dropping her toward unconsciousness, but he drove her on. His arm around her waist held like a steel band, far stronger than he looked.

Zombies came and he simply shoved them away. They didn't fight back, didn't try to bite or scratch him, just tumbled down off-balance. They didn't seem to see him at all, and as they fell he hobbled on, leading a much-bloodied Peters staggering along with Feargal.

"The demon is coming," Lucas said to her as they drew near to the sputtering end of the corridor. There were zombie bodies everywhere on the floor here, their throats blown open or clubbed-in by Peters. "The ocean will fill this place to the brim and I can't protect you from that. We have to find the shield."

The words bounced round Anna's head like a pulse, in time with the pulsing of unconsciousness at the edge of her thoughts, like a tide. The shield. Have to find the shield. They turned a corner. In the corridor beyond there were dozens more bodies on the floor, like heaps of white-coated trash. All the people, dead and left behind, all victims too. There was a low rumbling from back the way they'd come; the ocean still leaping down through the decks to the base below.

"Which way?"

They were standing under a flashing white light with a quarantine sign posted up in yellow and black beside it. Ha, that was funny. Someone was talking to her and she tried to focus.

"Anna!" Lucas said. "Which way to the shield?"

She tried to focus on his face; trailed with blood and mud. Shield room? How could she know that?

"I can't feel it," he went on. "I can't feel anything here, I don't have the T4, it's why they don't come to me. But you do."

She blinked, doing her best to surge up from the dark depths at the bottom of the ocean. "I can't… Ask Peters. Feargal."

"Feargal is unconscious. Peters can't feel it either, perhaps he was desensitized by so much exposure. It has to be you."

He was looking at her with what could only be yearning in his eyes. Lucas. He was a good man too, she saw that now. He was a thin man. He was worthy of her trust. She gave a small nod and closed her eyes.

The shield. She thought the words, trying to focus in on that sensation of buzzing she'd felt when climbing down, but it was so elusive. It was everywhere, in the air, and there was no place stronger than another, but then...

"Command," she muttered.

"What?"

Words came fuzzily and she let them out, uncertain if they even made sense. "How many, bunker designs? If this was the first… They had it in Command, in Maine. For a reason. At the top, to reach above ground. Secure."

"At the top," Lucas repeated, "all right, yes, of course."

"Near the," she flagged as a wave of dark rose up, "shaft. Chute. Going up. Shield from there. Makes sense."

"Do you feel it there?"

She blinked and looked up at him. Now she was on the floor. "Coming in. Felt it coming in."

"There was a blast door leading away. This one's a maze. Do you think…?"

She nodded. "Go."

He pulled back, then hesitated. She realized she was slumped on the floor, legs outstretched, back to the wall. Where was Peters? She turned to the side. He was flat on his back now, next to Feargal, both of them panting short, shallow breaths and covered with blood.

They were all dying.

"I can't-" Lucas said, clearly torn. Anna reached for her gun but it was gone.

"Give me," she said, nodding at the assault rifle still strapped to Feargal's chest. "I can, it's OK."

Lucas stared at her, at the rifle, then moved. He un-looped it and put it in Anna's hands, then guided her trembling finger to the trigger and rested the barrel grip on her hip, pointing back down the corridor. All corridors now, all contained. She'd die underground, like Julio, like Cerulean, like all the people in Maine.

That was OK.

She tried for a smile. She had no idea what he was going to do, but then he was Lucas, and he'd done so much already. A cure. He was like a superhero, the invisible man, moving amongst the zombies with freedom.

"Go," she whispered. Her head felt too heavy to hold up. The rifle barrel was already slipping down to point at the corrugated metal floor. "S'OK."

He stood up straight. "In the necks," he said, pointed, then turned and ran.

Anna watched him go, down a dark corridor and round a dark corner. His footfalls echoed and rang, then the bunker was silent but for the distant thrum of thunder, which could be fans in her RV running, while she nestled up close to Ravi for warmth, spooning her knees into the gap left behind by his, like two curling cats hugging.

"Let's have a baby," she whispered in his ear, and she felt him smile.

"Now, Anna?"

She chuckled, a dirty little laugh that she saved just for him. It meant she hadn't always been cruel, not in everything she did. With Ravi, when they were alone, she had always been different. He brought out the best in her, and she could forget for a time that she'd sent Witzgenstein away and forget about all the dead people she'd killed.

"A boy or a girl?" he murmured over his shoulder.

"Both," she answered sleepily, enjoying this moment of cozy drift, floating on the gentle waters. "A boy and a girl, or a girl and a boy. Twins, perhaps. I have big hips."

He laughed and turned to kiss her. "Perfect hips. Such a face. Wow."

She nuzzled at the back of his head. He hated it and she loved to do it all the more. He said it made him feel like a cat, which somehow really freaked him out. Excellent. It was these things that mattered, these little things that made them worth saving. All the killing and cruelty was a shell just to protect this soft syrupy center.

"You need to wake up now, Anna."

"Hmm," she said, floating happily on his warmth. In their RV, in New LA, it didn't matter as long as Ravi was there. "We'll have so many kids. Enough to repopulate the world. How many do you think we can do, with my big hips and your big-" she cut off and giggled.

"Anna, really," he chided, in that soft voice that meant he was really loving it. "You can't do that while you're asleep."

"I'm not asleep, I'm resting my eyes."

"Sweetheart, wake up."

"Mmm."

"Anna!"

The shout bolted her awake, her eyes flickering open onto the corridor again, and the light, and the figure lurching closer.

RATATATATAT

Her assault rifle fire strafed the corridor and the ceiling, pinging off with sparks and further clattering ricochets.

RATATATATAT

A second volley drew a stripe across the zombie's chest, cutting holes into the pale flesh that burst out its back in puffs of dust, but not enough to stop it.

"Anna, the neck," someone grunted beside her. Peters, lying on his back with his hands pressed to his chest, looking so pale, so pale. "Neck."

The zombie reached down, fumbling at her hair, and she pushed the hot rifle barrel gently into the fold of its throat and pulled the trigger.

RATAT

Dust sprayed down and the body collapsed atop her. Beyond it there was another, and she fired. Its neck burst and it fell, and all she could think about now was Ravi, and how much she wanted to get back to him, and all the things she wanted to say. If she closed her eyes again she'd be there, and it was so tempting, but she knew it wasn't real.

Ravi was real, and he was five thousand miles away. The only way back to him was through this.

RATAT

She shot out another throat, and another.

"Good," Peters gasped and sagged back.

Another came, then another. The warmth fuzzed at Anna's thoughts but she pushed it away each time, like fighting the tide. More zombies came and she shot them each, so they puddled like rock pools at the corner in a rinse of yellow light.

RAT

TAT

TAT

The cold crept up on her gradually, so slow she barely noticed it, though she heard the thumps of its footfalls. It didn't mean much over the low rumble of the ocean pouring through. This would ruin Lucas' research, she thought, and laughed. It would ruin her dress and her hair, put into cornrows by Ravi himself. It was just a big syrupy mess.

Then it came round the corner, a red demon on all fours squeezed tightly into the corridor and shuffling closer, driving a small mob of zombies before it. Its eyes sang like crimson flares and its mouth was a gobbling emptiness.

Anna laughed. The fear came with it, but she was too tired and broken to care anymore. It padded nearer, so hungry, always so desperate, and she felt again that even this too was a victim; a creature that would never have chosen such a fate.

Hate was pointless. At some stage all you could do was put the victim out of its misery. She entertained a moment of shoving the barrel in her own mouth and pulling the trigger, but that only made her laugh too. The right choice here was so plain. 

RATATATATATAT

She unloaded the clip into the demon's face. Bullets raked off its cheeks and eyes beautifully, like a symphony. They caused no damage but they slowed it slightly.

"How do you do that?" Anna panted. "So impressive."

The clip ran dry. The demon and the zombies came on.

Anna laughed, and on the waves of cold came a vision of everyone in New LA dead, blasted to smithereens beneath a great white eye, and that made her laugh too. California was a crater and on came the demon, on came the ocean. She opened her arms and shouted.

"Come on, you bitch! I'm right here, come on!"

INTERLUDE 7

Lucas ran back down the corridor, dodging to either side as the ocean streamed by and the pop of gunfire rang out from behind. There was so little time. He kicked through the doors at the end and emerged onto the encircling gantry, where the waterfall of bodies continued and up above, through the entrance to the elevator shaft, the demon was even now emerging.

Massive, red and bent on one thing only.

No time. He skirted round the edge of the RPG wreckage to a second door leading away from the gantry; large and heavy-looking, like a blast door. He rammed it with his shoulder but to no avail, it was far too secure, probably locked with magnetic bolts like the upper hatch cover. He looked around hungrily, and spotted a security card-reader on the wall and another clump of dead scientists nearby.

He ran over, scrabbled through their coats while the demon creaked along the walkway above, and came up with a card. He ran back, scanned the card over the reader, and a red light flashed.

"No," he muttered and tried again.

The red light flashed once more.

"Shit!"

Behind him came a screech of rending metal. Lucas spun and watched the walkway bend as the demon leaped, to fly and hit the warped metal edge of the encircling gantry across its chest. Its legs dangled amongst trailing wires and it scrabbled to get a firm grip on the weakened metal.

Lucas was running before he knew it, scooping up a metal railing bar on the way, which he then used to jab into a crook of the demon's huge fist as it curled into the perforated metal. He strained back on the bar to pry the demon's grip loose, barely loosening a finger before the metal groaned and the demon snatched for another grip. Its giant fingers stabbed at another patch of the twisted grille-like flooring, and Lucas met it with the bar again, prying away while its face held only inches away from his own, staring blindly with those cold red eyes.

It shifted, it grunted, but thanks to Lucas it couldn't find a solid grip, as finger by finger he wedged it loose until finally it slipped, and its own great weight dragged it down.

Lucas stood there panting as it fell into the masses of the ocean below.

Then he followed it.

He climbed down over the burst railing, holding to a drooping length of rebar, to drop his feet on the railing one level down. It was darker there, with cables in places drooping from the gantry ceiling, coating the clusters of the dead like shadowy jungle vines. He scanned the walls, here segmented with hatches and access panels, until he settled on a door that ran roughly underneath the blast door above.

There had to be a way. More than anyone else in his old Habitat, he'd known every pathway through the walls, vents and wiring, and instinct told him there would be some path into the Command module from below, if only he could find it in time.

He risked a glance over his shoulder and down into the stairwell pit; far below the towering shadow of the demon was already surfacing through the barrage of ocean bodies. So little time. He ran to the door, another heavy metal affair, but this time the security card flashed green and the door's locks clicked. He drove it open and ran in to another dim corridor stretching away and leading down at a sharp angle.