The Loss (Zombie Ocean Book 4) (30 page)

"Got them," Feargal shouts, "strike, right in the middle, sent them all which ways."

"More like spare," Ravi answers, "two got through and they're tracking us on the side, I think Olly…"

There's another BOOM.

"Report," I call as we're closing on the end of the bridge. "Slow for the turn, we can't afford to lose anyone here."

"Two down, but the five are already back up and running," Feargal says. "Shit, these bastards are fast."

BOOM

We drop below forty as the tires clack over the edge of the bridge, and I spin us in a wide curve across all four lanes to the left, getting traction off the snow's depth.

BOOM

We skid and our flank bounces off a parked SUV at the side of the road, scraping the bodywork, then we're level and rolling. "Straight on," Lara says, and we race on an elevated road over a small patch of park sandwiched between the fork in the rivers, then onto another bridge.

BOOM

The open space yawns wide again either side, and dawn light flickers in my eyes through the side window.

"Did everybody make it?" I call as we gain speed along the bridge.

"We're barely putting a dent in them," Ravi shouts, "but yeah, everybody's with the convoy."

"Ravi," Anna calls through, "tell Ravi I'm alright."

"I love you, Anna," Ravi shouts back fearlessly over the universal channel. "I'm coming."

"I love you too," Anna replies, "drive as fast as you want."

I laugh at that, the reverse of her first words to him when she got back from Mongolia.

"Right," Lara barks, and as the bridge ends I take another wide swerve that almost tips the RV, leaning all our weight on the left side for a teetering few moments, then we slump back down and one of the kids shrieks in back.

BOOM

BOOM

"Report!" I shout.

"We're getting them," Feargal comes back, "but they get up fast. Motherf-"

BOOM

In the rearview mirror I see the explosions dotting back along the bridge.

We race on for thirty seconds interspersed by more explosions, then I haul a sharp left turn and lead the convoy up an on-ramp onto I-279, accelerating out of Pittsburgh. Screw the snow, I think, and rev the speed up to sixty.

"We're pulling away," Ravi calls, "I think we'll make it."

The BOOMs grow fewer and farther between as we race north on a two-lane highway above the city, surrounded by snow-frosted buildings and swerving around cars and trucks that have lain idle for over a decade. Lara laughs with a kind of relief, entering the eye of the storm, and I laugh with her.

"Anna's alive," she says.

"Anna's alive," I answer. "Masako's dead."

She stops laughing and looks at me. "You didn't have a choice."

"The council can decide that," I answer grimly.

"I see four of them, they're dropping out of sight," Feargal reports. "Too far to hit."

"That's great."

I focus on the road, weaving in and out of standing traffic like the hero in Frogger. We've never been on this road before, never driven a JCB along it barging cars out of the way like we've done for all the major highways between cairns. This road is virgin territory, and up ahead it looks like…

"Shit," Lara curses.

The two lanes are blocked by three cars, piled up at diagonals. The median on the left is an unbroken waist-high concrete divider; we'll never get through it at such a tight angle. The concrete will shred the engine block to bits.

We have to go through the cars.

"Witzgenstein, you behind us?" I call.

"Right here, Amo."

"The road's blocked, I need you to drive right up my ass and we'll batter through."

Thank God she doesn't delay or ask questions. "Roger," is all she says, and a second later the RV jolts forward as her vehicle rams up against us. Already we're almost on the knot of vehicles.

"Speed up," I tell her, but she already is, and without doing anything I watch the odometer crank up to sixty-five.

"Duck and cover," I tell Lara, then shield my eyes and lower my head as we drive right into-

CRAAASH

The front of the RV crunches into the slight break between the cars, the front windshield blows in and sprays over our bowed heads, the jolt sends my chest slamming into the wheel and I barely keep control as it jerks to the side.

Then we're through, with freezing air blowing a gale into the cab and the RV swerving from side to side, but through. My chest throbs, a dozen pinprick cuts bead up with blood on my scalp, but we're through.

Lara's laughing.

"God damn!" I curse. "Witzgenstein?"

"We're through, the gap's open."

The rear-view mirror's gone, torn away, along with the front corner edges of my RV, but in the side-view mirror I peer back to see the third RV scrape through the narrow gap we blasted.

Without the ice beneath the stationary cars tires, I don't think we would have made it. That would have been the end.

"Unbelievable," Lara says.

"Witzgenstein, you can get out of my ass now."

"With pleasure," she says, and disengages.

"Hoo boy," I say, and steel myself against the freezing wind. "This is a bitch."

Lara has both hands on the map now, holding it steady. There are dots of blood on her forearms but she's whole, like me.

"I think we just passed Riverview Park on the left," Lara says, as we race under an overhead highway sign too obscured by snow to read. "The turning onto McKnight should be just ahead."

The off-ramp comes up and we take it at a blistering forty, circle round a throng of huddled fast food joints, then pull onto McKnight.

BOOM

Rockets explode behind.

"That one is sneaky, he came out of the woods," says Ravi between explosions. Feargal laughs manically. "They caught up through the turn-off and they're not on the road anymore."

I floor it along McKnight, a two-lane highway with no median, flanked on either side by thick reams of wintry hickory and maple. God forbid there'll be a traffic jam along here.

Anna's voice crackles over the radio, full of sudden awe. "The zombies are starting to run! Oh my God, that's beautiful, Amo. They can sense you, they're coming to help. Jake, look!"

I look at Lara and she looks at me.

"They're like wildebeest or something, all herding together. They're coming to save you all!"

"We're five minutes out," Lara says, "at this speed."

"Not a minute too soon," Feargal calls, "they're gaining now, I see six running alongside in the forest."

We race by a long row of semi-truck trailers parked alongside in a shallow lay-by. I take my eye off the road for a second to check the convoy behind, and at that moment something red flies across my vision, breaking from the tree cover like it was thrown from a catapult.

It is massive and so red it hurts my eyes, a giant man with a gaping black mouth and burning red eyes, who lands on massive tree-trunk legs in the road just ahead, sending a bucket of cold splashing over my heart.

There's time only to yank the wheel to the left.

We barely avoid crashing into it, swerving a tight arc that gives it time to leap. Its arm lashes briefly across the open windshield, there's a massive thump as its body hits us down the RV's side, then a sharp drag on the right like I've just dropped an anchor, as it clamps hold and is dragged along with us.

"It's on the side!" I shout, pulling the wheel hard to the left, downshifting to third and pressing the gas to the floor. "Lara, get out!"

The demon's body is dragged with us, thumping hard against the side of the RV as I straighten up at the lane's outer edge. I'm about to pull us hard right when the demon's huge red face fills the empty passenger side window. Its eyes burn red and the numbing cold washes over me. The RV stutters and jerks as it tries to pull us to a stop. The wheels on the left hand side skitter and rise off the ground, then the face pulls back and abruptly a red fist smashes through the passenger window, grabbing Lara around the chest.

She screams, but her scream is cut immediately short as the demon squeezes and yanks, cracking her ribs and tearing one of her seat belt cords with a Velcro-like snap. Lara's mouth lolls open as the scream dies and the shock knocks her unconscious.

"What the hell's going on!" someone shouts from down the convoy.

I draw my gun and shoot the full clip at the arm in seconds, but the bullets do nothing and the demon yanks again, smacking Lara like a rag doll against the door. This time the seatbelt snaps and Lara's head wags back and forth; one more jerk like that and she'll be gone, the RV will roll, and the rest of them will be on us in seconds.

"Witzgenstein!" I shout.

She must have been already moving, because the jolt that hits from behind comes in a second only, jerking us forward as her chassis hits ours. The demon's grip on Lara loosens as it clings on to the RV's frame.

In that window I drag the wheel sharply to the right, careening us across both lanes to crash into one of the semis resting at the side of the road.

SKKKKKRRRRRR

There's a crunching metallic burst and the right side of the RV's cab is torn away, scraping the demon off like a leech. Its arm whips backward out of the cab like a snake recoiling, tossing Lara halfway out of the shattered front windshield as its grip releases, and sending the RV almost toppling to the right as it clings on for a second.

BANG

Then there's a second thump as Witzgenstein hits it from behind, punching it off to the side.

Then we're beyond and rocking on a damaged chassis; the suspension is shot, but the engine powers on. A gale blows in through the wrecked front and side windows but I regain control, even as I pull Lara back from her position slumped halfway out of the shattered windshield.

She sags into the foot well but I catch a glimpse of blood pouring from her mouth, then-

BOOM

The explosion is so close I feel the heat on my cheek. I turn and catch a glimpse through the rear window of the fireball around the demon on its knees at the side of the road.

"Red bastard!" Cynthia shouts, standing gleefully at the side window in the back of the RV with an RPG smoking on her shoulder. Normally I'd call her out but I think 'red bastard' is a kind of racism that's really OK.

Then I turn back to the road and Macy's up here with me already tending to Lara, checking her pulse, her breath, her ribs.

"She's been crushed but she's breathing," she says urgently. "I'll get her back."

Another BOOM

Adonis is there too and he helps carry Lara back to the booths where they shush the kids and start to work. I can hardly focus on the road ahead but I have to.

"Is everyone clear?" I ask.

"Olly got it good, we got it again," Ravi answers, "we're all through, but we better see this horde soon."

I blink back tears. Goddamn Lara?

"Is she all right?" I call back.

"She's in trouble," Macy calls back, "but we got this. Focus on the road, Amo."

I focus on the road. We're so close.

Suddenly Anna shouts from above. "I see you! That's you, I see the convoy!" She sounds so delighted. "You should be coming on the herd soon, they're running right at you."

I round a bend and see them. They surge like a wave; a white, withered, featureless tidal wave charging toward us out of the snow. They are the ocean and they've been waiting all this time to save us, so many peanut faces running with a single directive.

I tear into their ranks and they flow either side of us smoothly, every one a hero giving its life to save ours.

"My God this is amazing," Anna says from above. "You can't imagine. I mean it is just stunning to see."

I drive on in tears for another minute, deep into the sprinting herd of the dead, then I stop the RV on a rise, and the convoy halts behind me.

It's all happening now; the rush of bodies, the BOOM of explosions, but it's not for me as I turn and run back to be alongside Lara. I hold her limp hand while Macy pumps air into her broken chest, while from above and all around I hear the sounds of triumph ringing out.

"They're on them!" Anna shouts, and I plead with Lara to live. "They're climbing up, Amo, you need to see this! That's four piles, now five! They're coming out of the forest, they're everywhere! Amo, Lara, you need to see this, oh my God."

I hold Lara's hand to my face and I hug my kids close, straining all my efforts for her to survive again. We've been through so much, from starting the apocalypse together to ending it together, here, and I don't want her to go, I love her too much for her to go.

"I've never seen anything like it," Ravi says on the radio, awed. "It's a kind of miracle, like the Red Sea parting or something. I just can't believe it."

Others are shouting the same kind of things. I imagine them out and standing on their RV rooftops, watching the ocean we all once feared, that many of us fought and slaughtered, now save all our lives with their own.

I imagine the great pyramids they're forming, heaping up like the bodies in my Times Square illustration, reaching up to the sky where overhead a tiny Cessna flies. I imagine it but I look at Lara, because I don't want to see anything but her face. I don't want to touch anything but her skin. I don't want to do anything but will her to stay alive, while outside the battle is finally won.

INTERLUDE 6

The seven blue dots stopped moving.

Salle Coram, Yale PhD, Lars Mecklarin's former lover and now commander of the MARS3000 Habitat, stood at her desk and watched them freeze one by one. Plink, plonk, plink, like marbles running out of momentum, they stopped.

She stood and watched. Joseph stood by her side and watched. Everyone in the room watched, as they'd been watching for over a week.

"They could be feasting," Joseph said quietly, but she knew that wasn't true. She could feel it.

Still she stood.

The dark room was quiet, but if she listened carefully she could hear people breathing, shifting quietly in their chairs, tapping their keyboards. All these people in a dark room, waiting for something that was never going to happen. She marked their names.