Zombie Ocean (Book 3): The Least (19 page)

For a long moment after that he felt like he couldn't even breathe. Just her existence was putting a seed in his heart, and the roots growing out changed who he was. He felt it like he felt the ice shatter when Matthew died. This was the opposite.

"I missed you too, honey," he told her, and kissed her hot forehead and tucked her into the covers. Everybody was inside now, drowsy and warm together except for Julio, who was still out in his Mustang. Cerulean rolled back down the center of the RV, past Jake siting hunched in his booth.

"She really likes you," he said.

Cerulean smiled. "I remind her of her father."

"I'm envious," Jake said. "I wanted a supermodel."

"You'll get that next."

Jake pointed at him. "I'll hold you to that."

Cynthia muttered something cutting from her upper deck bunk, but it was easy to ignore. It was even easy, when he rolled over to his booth opposite Masako's, to take her hand in his own, and look into her eyes and actually feel that, perhaps, he loved her, because really she was beautiful and strong, and she'd survived this long, and that made it all right.

She didn't wait for him, pressing herself close and folding into his lap: hot and sweet, as the soft side of her belly pressed against his chest, sending shivers up and down his back. 

Like that, they kissed. It felt right, or as right as anything. Her lips were soft but searching, hungry but tender, and her tears were warm on his cheeks.

"That was beautiful," she said. "All of it, every bit, the whole day."

"All right," Jake chimed in. "Beautiful, good, but kissing is in one of the tents, OK. Out there with Julio."

Cynthia cackled. Cynthia and Jake seemed to actually be getting along. She could dish out the insults all day long, and he could soak them up like they were nothing, which might've explained it, or also she was racist and he was white, so it could be that.

Masako kissed him again. "Come on," she whispered in his ear. "I picked a good place."

"I can't," he stumbled, "I don't have the…"

She stopped him with a look. "We'll make do."

For the first time he felt a stirring from down below. To his wonderment, something was beginning to move. It felt like a miracle.

"Oh, what's this?" Masako asked huskily, feeling it move through her thigh. "Why sir."

"I didn't," he said, "I mean I don't-."

"I read a book, while we were traipsing around Chicago," she whispered in his ear. "Just because you're paraplegic doesn't mean this doesn't work." She reached down and stroked his groin, holding his eyes with her own. It felt like a poker stoking a furnace to life. It wasn't how it used to be, because now he felt nothing from below the waist, but he felt something still. "There are nerves that bypass the spine, its autonomic, it runs without your conscious control and you feel it as dopamine in your brain."

He tried to say something but the words and intentions got lost in his throat. She was so warm and so close and he hadn't felt anything like this for years.

She plunged into another kiss.

"Seriously," Jake hissed. "I am not going to listen to this. Should Cynthia and I go outside? Would you prefer we leave you to your privacy?"

Cynthia cackled madly.

"Come on," Masako said, taking his hand. Together they rolled back down the RV to the rear exit, and Jake gave a thumbs up on their way past.

In the darkness outside Masako led him to a tent she'd already prepared. She laid him down on the bedroll and they kissed by the hissing orange light of a camp stove. She peeled off her clothes first, sticky and warm in the summer's heat. Her skin was tan all over, with perfect half-moon breasts hanging like sweet fruit just above his reach.

She kissed him. She peeled off his clothes. She moved atop him, in the darkness, in the night, and he felt every second of it; perfectly capping the best day of his life.  

16. WEST

They drove.

Anna slept a lot, spoke with Jake a little, and spent some of her time in the back of the RV looking out of the rear window, or clutching a battered old smart phone to her chest, studying the display.

The rest of the time she was with Cerulean. She crawled up into his lap whether he was driving, not driving, eating or sleeping. Once he woke from a drowsy nap to find her tucked tightly within the arms of his wheelchair, her arms wrapped round his back, fast asleep.

"She just climbed there," Masako said, looking back from the wheel with a smile. "Her eyes were hardly even open."

"She clings tight," Cerulean said. "Like a koala."

Masako reached for his hand and he gave it.

Jake piped up from his booth, behind. "We finished Alice in Wonderland. She wants you to read it to her now, I think."

Cerulean looked down at the curled-up little girl. They'd made her wash and changed her clothes, though she hadn't let them leave her blue and white dress behind. Her tightly knapped hair was wiry against his chin. He kissed her head and she murmured in her sleep.

"I can't imagine what it's like for her," Jake went on. "You remember she said she killed her puppies?"

Cerulean mulled that over. It was an accident, she hadn't known how to feed them milk, but still it had to hurt. She'd ridden her undead father to the West coast, and he couldn't begin to imagine what that would have felt like. He'd never known his father, but his mother had supported him enough for both. If she'd left him as well?

He shuddered at the thought. He'd had diving when Zane died, otherwise he'd have certainly fallen into the gangs like Green-O, seeking some kind of meaning and a way to fill the hole Zane left. Anna had her stories of Alice, and her phone, and those were things to hang onto.

Now she had him too.

She didn't talk much, that was true. She was a little girl with world-weary eyes. None of them talked much now though, as they crossed out of Colorado and into Utah, and the world outside shifted from dirty, dusty scrublands to vivid orange desert with great red buttes rising up like burning glaciers. The sky was blue all the way to the horizon, and any time they stopped at a highway services to pee, the dry heat baked them like eggs frying on the asphalt.

Julio stood by his Mustang and watched everything on these stops, like he was keeping count of how many times everyone used the toilet, a tally he would present to Amo in Los Angeles. He never seemed to go himself. Jake had a theory that he peed into a bottle.

One time, perhaps it was a Thursday, he was standing and watching as usual, as Anna followed Cerulean to the services entrance. She pouted when he went into the men's rooms alone, and when he came back she took his hand again and pulled him back to the RV.

"She's afraid you'll leave her behind," Julio said, as they passed by.

Cerulean frowned at him. Everyone knew that, but why say it. "She's right here," he said. "Her name's Anna."

"That's what you're afraid of, isn't it, Anna?" Julio said. Anna ignored him completely. He shrugged.

They drove through that day, stopping for the night near the border with Nevada in a Big Eastern motel lodged at the edge of the Red Cliffs National Conservation area. Bald red hills rose either side of the dusty road, broken by the jutting crags of pitted sandstone, like blocks of the earth's striped muscle rising through the skin. All around were scrubby stands of sagebrush, creosote bush, and the odd towering yucca, flowered with thick white blossoms. 

Cerulean read Alice in Wonderland to Anna in the dark of the motel restaurant, lit by a camp light hung from the rafters and buzzing with moths, while the others bedded down in private rooms.

"Luxury," Jake said, popping his head into the restaurant with a towel round his neck and rumpled wet hair. "They even have running water."

"That's the water towers," Julio answered flatly, from somewhere out in the lobby. "It's not hot though."

"Warm, at least," Jake said. "Heated by the sun."

"Luxury," mumbled Cerulean, then Jake was gone. Anna had drifted off some time in his lap, in the midst of the Garden of Live Flowers while the Red Queen was spouting off about how she owned all the ways about here. He looked up at the moths buzzing round the camp light, like zombies endlessly heading west.

They went into the ocean, Anna had said, in their hundreds and thousands. It didn't explain the ones in Maine though, piled up around the gun tower, nor Matthew, nor all the ones that walked to Amo to be slaughtered.

"We need to talk."

He looked down from the light and saw Julio standing there, off to the side, staring down at Cerulean with his brows working like boiling puddings. Cerulean sighed inside, then nodded and wheeled himself to face him.

"Sure. What's up?"

"You don't respect me enough."

Julio said it and let it hang, following up with his dark stare. Cerulean wished he would just go away, but like it or not he'd made himself leader of this little troupe, and Julio wore a pistol at his hip all the time. 

"Can you explain that a little?"

"I can," said Julio, ticking off one finger on his hand, like he'd prepared it all in advance. "The first time we met, the racist hag insulted me and you attacked me. You're lucky I didn't shoot both of you then."

Cerulean sighed. "I apologized for that. I explained we'd just met her. And she was racist to me too."

Julio ticked off a second finger. "You left us behind to quibble like we were children. I'm older than you, stronger, faster, and I'm better adapted to survive out here. You should have left her behind and been grateful to find me."

Cerulean nodded. He was starting to get a headache. "OK. Is there anything else?"

Julio ticked off a third finger. "You contradict and correct me in front of the girl." He pointed at Anna. "She doesn't talk to me now. I'm on the outside. I know that little shit Jake is gossiping about me."

"You drive in your Mustang," Cerulean said, exasperated. "I know you like the car, but what do you expect? We're together all day and all night, and you're out there. Have I not invited you in with us lots of times?"

Julio flicked out a fourth finger, nodding. "On that, every time you stop for a break, I stop with you and I come out, but nobody talks to me. Nobody thanks me for scouting the route, for not resting like everybody else does. I should be getting gratitude for all my efforts."

Cerulean shook his head. Jesus, these people. Nobody benefited from Julio not stopping to pee more, and his scouting mostly consisted of driving a few hundred yards ahead of the RV, on roads plainly already scouted by Amo a few weeks ahead. What was he supposed to be grateful for?

But he couldn't say any of that. Julio was a survivor, and he'd laid down the law about that himself: they were all in this together. The headache thickened behind his eyes, like a faint memory of the demon days of old.

"We do appreciate you scouting, Julio. It's an important job."

"And I need my Mustang for it, don't I? I can't scout from inside the RV, can I?"

"No, I suppose not. So we should be more grateful."

"You should. And the girl should talk to me."

Cerulean looked down at sleeping Anna.

"She talks to you," Julio went on, "to Masako, to the old racist, and I know she just loves Jake. It's only me she won't talk to."

Cerulean gave a purposefully feeble shrug. "What do you want me to do? Do you want to be the vegetables on the side of the plate, so we force her to talk to you? She's just a kid, she's scared no matter how tough she acts, and you're scary."

"I'm a serious person," Julio said. "This is work to me, not play. I've got good advice too."

Cerulean tried another track. "You never smile. You're always severe. You just stare. It's creepy. Maybe if you-"

"It's how I am," Julio interrupted.

The two stared at each other. So it was clear, any compromise was going to have to be entirely on Cerulean's side. He'd be damned though before he made Anna dance to his whims.

"I can't make her like you, Julio. I won't. If you make an effort, I'll encourage her to be friendly, but it can't start with her."

Julio stared hard, with his brows rumbling. Then he nodded, and pointed at Cerulean, coming to what seemed a well-rehearsed summary of his grievances. "You stop them gossiping about me. You show me some appreciation for what I do. I'm not going into LA to meet your friend Amo looking like a fool. That's all I'm asking. Do you understand?"

Cerulean nodded, thinking it through. Minus the Anna stuff, was that so unreasonable? No. He had to make allowances. "All right. I promise, no more gossip. And if you could try, you know, to be friendlier?"

Julio sneered. "You should thank your lucky stars every day I didn't shoot you for jumping me in that parking lot. Remember that."

He tapped the gun at his waist then strode out.

Cerulean sighed, looking up at the camp light again, frothing now with bugs.

"Why me?" he whispered to it.

Perhaps Cynthia was right; he'd let the devil in with Julio. He'd need to start wearing a gun, too.

* * *

They drove on with first light, Julio 'scouting' the way ahead as ever, heading into the dark with the sun rising behind them. When they crossed over into Arizona and everyone in the RV gave a whoop. Half an hour later they crossed into Nevada and the whoop was even louder.

All the way southwest toward Las Vegas excitement built, and even Anna gazed out of the front window, rather than burying her face in Cerulean's shoulder or looking at her phone. Everyone knew they were catching up to Amo, and soon they'd be on him. Nobody knew what to expect.

Mesquite, Bunkerville, Riverside; little towns passed by like strange blots on the golden desert. Here there were cacti and scattered palm trees by the roadside. Moapa and Crystal passed by, and then out of the midst of the desert, like an oyster unfolding to reveal a great blighted pearl, was Las Vegas.

"I'm coming home!" Jake shouted, even though he wasn't from Las Vegas. They all cheered. Even Julio up ahead honked his horn. Cerulean answered with an answering honk.