The Last Mayor Box Set Page 26

  When she was tired she hung from the sling on her Daddy's chest. At night she slept and his walking rocked her through the night. When she was thirsty she reached to the pack on his back and drank. When she was bored she looked at pictures in magazines or daydreamed impossible situations, often imagining what kind of place they were going to. When she was lonely she talked to her father, or sang, or looked at Trevor and Amandeep's photos again. She took to tethering them along with her father with strings, so they could all walk on together, like a family.

  Soon enough they came out of the forests and walked across great baking expanses of low vegetables, laid out in neat rows, some low and some tall. For a time she could lean from the sling and pluck fresh ripe tomatoes from the vine. They were warm and juicy and seeds spurted out as she bit.

  There were orchards of apples and lemons, then fields of low grass, and here was a school with its football field, and in the distance a city with high towers.

  "Who do you think lives there?" she asked her father.

  Days went by. They passed through a vacant small town. Anna looked into hollow windows of the houses lining the street. The ocean of people flowed everywhere, ignoring roads and fences and rivers, always heading straight away from or straight toward the sun, depending on whether it was morning or evening. Anna hung on to her father's shoulders tightly as he waded deeper across one wide river.

  She recorded time with X's for each day, in her magazine. Ten days passed, and she looked at herself in the mirror of a house somewhere on a hot and steamy day. The room was a little girl's, with pink wallpaper and dolls arrayed in cubbyholes all around.

  She was dark and vibrant. Her teeth shone white against her gums. She twirled in her Alice dress. She imagined a photo of herself as she was now, hanging in her home so far behind. This was the little girl she had always wanted to be, not the sickly child from before.

  They went on. They crossed great sandy plains where the air smelled of salt, pushed through a barbed wire fence and passed over an expanse rucked by craters and exploded dirt, on until they reached a bright orange desert that went on and on.

  She found fresh baseball caps for both of them in a roadside motel, to keep off the sun. She pulled her own tightly on her head, and changed her shoes for better-fitting boots. They didn't match her dress, but that was OK. Alice never had to walk this far.

  Two weeks passed, then three then four. She became expert at foraging for milkshake and water in shops and houses that they passed, though by now most of the milkshake was too sour to drink. She had names for two-dozen of the people always walking nearby, those who walked a little more slowly than her Daddy, so they were always overtaking her when she stopped for food, then her Daddy overtook them again later.

  She told them silly jokes she thought of, about their families and where they were going; this whole thing was a recall from the machine-people factory, or a big assembly at the world school, where the principal was going to tell them all off for coming to class looking so shabby.

  After six weeks she smelled the sea. She didn't know what it was, having never seen it before, but the tangy smell in the air felt like a destination. Soon they were stumbling down a rocky cliff-side, with Anna leading her father past the dangerous areas where the others fell down, always keeping him safe.

  It was near to sundown, and the beach spread out like a beautiful golden road to either side. The ocean was vast and went on forever, and now Anna understood; her flood of people wanted the ocean.

  She laughed and ran down to the water, peeling off her shoes. Her father stumbled on behind her. The sand underfoot was soft and hot, cushioning her toes. A warm breeze rubbed across her skin.

  "Isn't this wonderful?" she asked the people around her, as they all slid into the water together. Anna laughed and joined them, splashing and kicking at the water. Perhaps this was what they'd all come for, to have a great big bath together.

  Amandeep bobbed past her.

  "Can you swim?" Anna asked. "It'll hardly be much of a bath if you can't even swim."

  Amandeep answered by dropping beneath the low waves. Anna chewed her lip and waited for the dry brown head to re-emerge, but it didn't. She stopped splashing and watched the water.

  Amandeep didn't pop back up.

  A coldness clamped in her chest, and she stopped laughing. She spun. Here was tall Trevor and he was going under too. She watched the surface where he'd sank, but he didn't come back up either.

  This was bad.

  "Daddy!" Anna shouted. She splashed and turned, hunting for his familiar snail-backed shape, but she couldn't see him. She ran out of the water onto the beach and looked again, shouting and pushing the others out of the way.

  At last she glimpsed him a little along the sand, already treading into the water. She called and ran to him.

  "Wait Daddy, just wait!"

  He kept walking, already waist-deep into the water. It was up to Anna's shoulders and she dived to tackle his legs, but in the cloudy water she couldn't get a good grip and it was hard to see what she was doing.

  She breached the surface panting hard and clutched at her Daddy's shoulders. She shouted but he kept going on, carrying her with him. She kicked at the water to slow him down but her feet only made feeble splashes, far from enough to make him stop.

  "Daddy, please," she cried, "please stop!"

  He kept walking. The water reached over his chest now, covering his shoulders and touching his chin, so Anna was paddling beside his head. She tried to keep it above the surface, pulling feebly on his neck, but she couldn't get any grip on the water. He was too big and too heavy, until just like that his head dropped beneath the water. His eyes extinguished beneath the surface and she plunged with him, holding to the loops of his backpack like the reins on a horse.

  Down there she glimpsed a dark underwater world where hundreds of bodies were walking along the deep sand, into darkness. They looked like an army of ghosts. Her lungs burned but she clung to her Daddy's head as tightly as she could, until at last she could take it no longer and she let go, kicking to the surface.

  Her head burst through the water and she sucked in air, coughing as sea spray splashed in her throat. She barely remembered how to swim and the low waves were stronger here, so far from the beach. They almost tugged her further out. Still she ducked her head and stared back into the dusty water, but her father was already gone.

  She scarcely made it back to the beach. She pulled herself up and there she knelt and sobbed, while bodies passed by on either side of her. One after the other they walked into the ocean, as the sun set orange and red far ahead.

  Her Daddy was gone. She was alone.

  WONDERLAND

  7. CHEF & WAITRESS

  After a time they stopped coming.

  The flow of bodies ended and she lay alone on the beach, with the sound of surf and seagulls cawing. The breeze that had been warm now bit into her. It was cold and dark on the beach. She listened to the waves fuming on the sand and imagined hundreds of bodies lying in heaps on the ocean floor, her Daddy amongst them, all dead.

  People couldn't breathe underwater. It was perfectly ridiculous.

  She imagined herself finding a boat and sailing out to find him, but she knew the ocean was very large. It went on and on and there was no way she'd know where to go.

  So she made a promise. She held one hand across her heart. It felt very significant.

  "Daddy, one day I'll find you."

  Then she started walking.

  She didn't know where to go now either. With each step forward she thought of Alice talking to the Cheshire Cat. Naturally it came in her Daddy's warm voice.

  "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" she asked as Alice, a little high and curious.

  "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," he replied with the Cat's lilting, singsong tone.

  "I don't much care where — "

  "Then it doesn't matter which way you go."

/>   "- so long as I get somewhere."

  "Oh, you're sure to do that, if you only walk long enough."

  Thinking about that made Anna sad and happy at the same time. This was in Alice's footsteps, after all. But her father was gone.

  She walked.

  She found a gravel path running along the top of the dunes and walked along it. To the right lay scrubby green bushes growing in the dune folds, and beyond that was the thick undergrowth she'd pushed through many hours ago.

  Everything was different.

  "My name is Anna," she said aloud. The sea wind whipped the sound away. It hurt her face and set her hair flailing crazily.

  She climbed down. Back through the lumpy dunes she went, through the undergrowth, to a single-lane blacktop road. She hadn't stayed on any road in weeks, at least not for long. Nearby lay one of the flood's trails, apparent by the downtrodden path over the grass, leading far back to the east. If she walked it for long enough she might return to her house, and find her room with her bed still there and her pictures and the dead yolk of the Hatter's blood, and…

  She couldn't go back.

  She followed the new road beside the dunes. It went on and on in the darkness. A few times she saw gray people wandering near. Their clothes were muddy and ragged, in places their faces were torn showing whitish muscle underneath.

  "That way," she said impassively as they went by. They teetered on toward the ocean.

  She walked in the dark. She found a tall red car and opened the door. A gray person came lurching out then staggered away toward the ocean. She imagined him staying in his car for all those days since it happened, held prisoner so close to the water he so wanted to walk in. He wasn't the first she'd released like this, but he was the first trapped within sight of his goal.

  "You're welcome," she said, as he wandered away.

  She climbed in his car, out of the wind. It didn't smell too bad, and seemed a fair trade. She closed the door and the sound of the waves faded. Curled up on the backseat in her jacket with her little snail-pack still on her back, she could almost believe she was still curled up in the sling at her Daddy's chest.

  * * *

  The next day she wandered, following the coastal road. She didn't know where to go really. It was OK to wander in the middle down the median line, because none of the cars moved, and it wasn't dangerous. At times the road ascended high over the rocks below, giving her a beautiful view out across the ocean, though she barely noticed it.

  She thought about her father, and where he was. She thought about all the things he'd done for her in her life, and how little she'd done for him, and how in the end he'd chosen to leave her behind.

  It hurt. Was he thinking about her now, somewhere deep beneath the waves?

  Probably not.

  She stopped in the shade of a billboard sticking up from an outcrop of red rock. There was a cactus nearby; she recognized it from picture books she'd read as a little kid. Funnily enough the billboard also had a picture of a cactus, with some words and numbers that she couldn't really read.

  That was funny.

  She opened her pack and drank some bottled water. She chewed on a gooey breakfast bar. It was like the shooting stars, but easier to eat, and she didn't need milk. For weeks milk in every shop and refrigerator she'd seen had been bad.

  She took out her Daddy's phone and looked at it. It hadn't worked for so long, and she felt like leaving it here on the rock just like he'd left her. It would be fair and even. She tried to leave it. She put the phone there and looked at it. She got up and started away but that just made her cry. Worse than that though, she felt empty inside.

  She had to be strong, but she didn't know how. Holding on to her Daddy, though he had chosen to leave, was a different kind of strong from walking a long way or holding on really tight. It belonged on the inside, where you couldn't even see it. It was a kind of strong her Mommy had never had.

  She picked up the phone, tucked it in her pocket and started walking again.

  She could walk a long way without getting tired now. She didn't get hungry either, hardly at all. Her legs were sturdy and strong. She could be strong inside too.

  She came across more cars. In some of them people were trapped: a boy, a girl, a mother and father in a long silvery car. She let them out. They didn't stop to say thank you.

  "Bye then," she called after them, as they stumbled down off the road and into the dunes, together.

  Late in the afternoon she entered a town. There were big empty parking lots, and bright signs sticking up on tall poles, and long mall buildings. The road climbed again, this time bridging over other roads below. Cars were scattered everywhere. In places one of them had gone through the railings and fallen off the edge.

  She kept walking. The sun was low off to the side, warming her comfortingly, and the ocean breeze kept her cool. The road descended and she came to a street lined with tall buildings. Bits of paper fluttered around like secret birds.

  There were two gray people banging against a glass door in the middle of a block, trapped inside. It was some kind of restaurant, but she couldn't read the writing at all. There were red lanterns in the window and pictures of fish painted onto the wall. One of the people was the chef, she knew that from his apron, and one looked like a waitress, but both had their trousers off. They looked funny.

  She tried to let them out but the door wouldn't open. She stood and shrugged at them.

  Thump thump, they said.

  Their faces looked sad.

  She walked around the side of the building, looking for a back door. Perhaps she could lead them out that way, like she'd led her father. Down a shadowy weed-sprung alley she walked, past large blue trash boxes on wheels, until she reached the side door of the battered brick building.

  It was metal painted a cracked blue, with a round and dented handle. She turned it and the door swung open outward easily, leading to a dark and musty corridor walled with pipes. Further on there was a shard of weak evening light coming in through the front windows.

  "It's OK now," Anna called down the hall. Her voice echoed weirdly off the pipes. "You can come this way. Pull your pants up, if you like."

  No sound of footsteps followed. "The ocean's really close," she added. "Just a hop-skip away."

  She was about to step in and lead them out by the hand, when a low growl sounded from behind.

  It sounded familiar. It came again, perhaps coming from between the two big blue trash boxes against the wall. Anna started back down the alley and looked into the shadowy gap between them.

  Something was standing there: a dog. At its feet squirmed a handful of baby dogs, puppies like hungry little oysters, and Anna's heart melted. They looked just like the Hatter. At once she started to cry.

  "I missed you," she said.

  Then the dog jumped at her. It was so fast she couldn't do a thing. Its jaws closed on her head and bit down, jerking her neck savagely. There was a horrible crunch, red sprayed out before her like shooting stars, and everything went black.

  * * *

  And came back. She was crawling on the rough asphalt alley, with weeds between her fingers and blood in her eyes. It hurt to look and it hurt to move. Something was snarling somewhere, something was groaning.

  With immense effort she rolled to her side, and saw. Two gray people were fighting the dog. It was the chef and the waitress with their trousers down. The chef lay on his back with blood all over his white apron, holding to the dog's neck while it tore at his belly. Long stringy bits of gray meat came out of him, like sausages.

  The dog was biting him and he was trying to bite it too. He had his mouth up against its back thigh, chewing. The waitress was on her knees beside them, bleeding darkly from the throat and twitching strangely. Her glowing white eyes stuttered on and off like a broken flashlight. She held the dog's back paws but didn't seem to be doing much more.

  It was ghastly, and Anna only wanted to crawl further away, to find somewhere that her thum
ping head could grow calm, like a nice bed with tight covers to burrow into, but that wasn't fair.

  These two had saved her. But the dog was a mommy dog, and she could understand it wanting to save its babies.

  What about the babies?

  She pushed dizzily to her feet. Blood dripped from her head to the dark asphalt. It ran hot down her cheek and the back of her neck, staining her blue Alice dress. She raised a hand to the wound and it came back sopping red.

  That wasn't good.

  The dog was growling and the waitress was lying down now. The chef was still biting but making much less progress than the dog. It grabbed a good hank of his innards and shook its head violently, sending shreds of gray spraying out like cereal-stars.

  Anna stumbled back toward to trash boxes.

  "Bad dog," she said, thinking maybe the fight would end. It looked up at her with its snout covered in gray, squatting to jump at her.

  The chef took the chance to bite into its shoulder, and it drooped deeper into the chef's clutches, like the pictures in a pop-up book closing. He got his hands around its neck and pulled it in.

  Anna fell to her knees before the trash boxes, looking in at the babies. She couldn't reach them, but they were so beautiful, like wriggling little hot dogs. She tried to push the trash box, but it was too heavy, and the gap was too tight for her to crawl down. She strained through the gap but couldn't quite reach the cardboard box they were lying in.

  Then the whole box shifted, knocking Anna onto her side. It was the chef, banging into the gap and forcing the boxes apart. His knee hit her in the head, then he was reaching down to snatch up one of the puppies.

  "No!" Anna shouted.

  She tackled the chef hard, sending his head smacking off the brick wall. His grip faltered and the little dog fell, falling into the box with a smack.

  "You don't do that!" Anna shouted at him, as he scrabbled to get his feet back beneath him. Her own voice made the dizziness in her head swell, like it was a wave she was riding atop, but she couldn't stop now. She pulled at his leg. "They're just babies, we don't eat babies do we?"