The Last Mayor Box Set 2 by Michael John Grist

Author:Michael John Grist [Grist, Michael John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-03-30T06:00:00+00:00

15. RUN

Anna was at the ocean again.

She stood on the cold, stony beach looking out over the motionless expanse of zombie heads, their bald skull-tops shiny like froth. The sky was a tarnished gray and the beach was a dull pebbled slate, as ever, though there was no Cerulean-demon at the tide's edge this time, and no giant father on an island in the distance.

She was alone.

She walked down to the tideline over crunchy dry pebbles. Where the water lapped at the beach zombie fingers crept out, like the victims of a massacre. Up close she saw that the top layer of bodies was resting on another layer, just like the onionskin heaps in Asia. Perhaps they reached all the way down to the seabed; bodies wrapped up in bodies like lovers at an orgy.

But there was no joy in this. It wasn't peaceful or calm, it offered no faith or friendship. It was disquieting and wrong.

She walked along the high tide line, nudging bits of flotsam to either side as she went. There should be driftwood here, snarls of netting, plastic bottles and the six-ring tabs of beer packs; even ten years after the world ended these things were still washing up on the beaches of California. But not here, instead there were mementos. Photographs of people she'd never met. A hand-woven leather bracelet. A lacquered wooden box inlaid with glass jewels. A small copper owl.

So the ocean washed in and out, and so they left their treasures behind. It had been the same when she walked west with her father. The ocean dug a deep, broad furrow of churned mud across the country, across fields and through forests, and often, as little Anna looked out from her sling around her father's chest, she'd seen little pieces of humanity left behind in the mud.

Earrings and wallets, rings and buttons. Every day she'd tightened her father's backpack as his chest slimmed down, so he didn't lose it too. She made her sling tighter and hugged his bony back close, counting the knobs of his spine like the comforting verses of a nursery rhyme.

But this wasn't comforting. Seeing these items took her back to a time when she was small and alone, when despite her best efforts, everything she tried to help had died or left her alone.

"Anna!"

Her name called out like a whip crack, and her head jolted up to find it. It came from out in the depths of the ocean somewhere, in a fuzzy patch obscured by frozen sea spray, where something was moving.

She squinted to try and pick it out. In amongst the gray there was a wriggle of movement, like some tiny creature trying to bore its way out of an egg, like a T4 in a cell, taking control. Her heart began to race.

"Anna," the voice came again, and now the distant thing was pushing its head up into the light, jerky but organic. "Join us."

She jerked back. It was Robert, her father, but not Robert.

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