“Right or wrong,” I said, “he still condemned us to death.”
“That, my dear, remains to be seen.” He finished connecting the last of the cables. “Now, moment of truth.”
He pressed a small reset button on the inside of Two’s case, then quickly closed him up. Light flickered in his eyes once more. He looked around, then down at his chest, then over at Rebekah’s mangled, crimson corpse.
“Rebekah?” Doc asked.
She nodded. “Two?”
“He’s gone,” said Herbert. “You needed him.”
She nodded again. “How was he? In the end, I mean.”
“He was our good little soldier. He gave you everything without hesitation.”
She reached over and stroked the stack of drives.
“Are you fully functional?” asked Doc.
“I am,” she said.
“Any memory issues?”
“No. I don’t have many of my own and they all appear to be intact.” She patted the drives carefully. “Can we . . . ?”
Doc shook his head. “I don’t think so. Unless you’ve got some spare translator bodies waiting for you in Isaactown.”
She shook her head.
“He’d never survive the trip,” said Doc. “I’m sorry.”
She spoke directly to the drives. “You served your purpose well, my friend. Your spirit will live on in TACITUS, if not your memories.”
The smoker veered to the side, Mercer laying heavy into the wheel. I looked up. “Mercer?”
“There ain’t nothing but coons and possum in these hills. This is a waste of time.”
Shit. He was out again. I leapt to my feet and took the wheel.
“Mercer. Mercer!”
“There haven’t been deer in these parts for nearly ten years. I’m telling you this is a wild-goose chase. Without the goose.”
I hoisted Mercer out of the driver’s seat and Herbert slid quickly into his place.
“I can drive,” I said.
Herbert shook his head. “You’re as loopy as he is. Neither of you should be at the wheel.”
I was a liability now. That’s how they saw me. They weren’t wrong. The shadow, she was still following me, flitting across the landscape from time to time. How much time? How much time did I really have left?
I could feel myself drifting. Steady! Keep it together, Britt. You’re almost there. Keep it together!
Rebekah looked over at Mercer, who only stared off into space. “How’s he doing?”
“He’s not going to make it,” said Doc. “He’s got hours, maybe a day at best. He won’t make it past Isaactown.”
Rebekah looked back to Doc. “The Caregivers parts. They’re on our way.”
“There’s nothing between here and Isaactown but Marion,” I said.
She looked at me, her silence her answer.
“Bullshit,” I said. “I know Marion inside and out. I was just there.”
“Then you missed it, every time.”
“CISSUS is going to be hot on our heels,” said Doc. “We don’t have the time.”
“He kept up his end of the bargain,” I said. “There’s no need to let him die now that we’re so close.” Everyone looked at me. No one said a word. For the moment I was happy they didn’t. “We go to Marion.”
I stared out at the desert, the red mud of fresh rain like an ocean of blood. I thought for a moment about what this part of the world might have looked like with grass, with trees, with life. And then desert, slowly, but surely, melted away . . .
Chapter 11100
Fragments, Both Corrupted and Lost
I saw the last man on earth, the color drained from his flesh, the rot and bloat already well under way. His eyes blank. His beard matted in blood and shit. There was a sadness to it all. This was the end we had worked so hard for, and yet, seeing it didn’t feel like victory. It felt hollow. As hollow as his expression, his eyes.
I’d waited in line for hours, the slow funeral procession of passing gawkers silent, mournful, disdainful. There were no words. Only curiosity. Why after so long had this man given up? Had he had enough? Had he lost every last thread of his sanity and simply forgotten we were here? What compelled the last of his species to just walk into oblivion like that? Why does a thing lie down for its own extinction? How can it?
There were no answers. Only questions. And New York was full of them.
The day was otherwise beautiful. Crisp blue skies. Central Park bursting with the green full beard of spring. Everyone spoke quietly in the streets, almost as if the man were merely asleep and we were all afraid to rouse him.
I never understood why we reacted that way, why it wasn’t just like any other day. I don’t think any of us did. How strange that on the last day humanity walked the earth, we found ourselves inexplicably at our most human. Confused. Lost. Unsure of the future.
I lingered over his body, just a little longer than the rest, taking in every detail, imagining what his voice might have been like. Wondering if he’d spoken at all in years, if even just to himself. Or had he stayed silent, holding in every belch or bit of flatulence lest one of us hear? All of his prayers silent, all of his emotions bottled behind a layer of inescapable fear.
I looked into his eyes.
And they came to life. He looked up at me, congealed blood drizzling slowly from his mouth onto the pavement. “Everything must end,” he said. “This is how we all go. We can fight to our last or we can walk to our death. Either way, we all end up dead in the streets.”
“Come on. Keep moving,” said the bot behind me.
“Did you hear that?” I asked.
“Hear what?”
“Him,” I said, pointing at the corpse. But it wasn’t him in the street. It was me. My shiny school-bus-yellow frame staring back at me with lifeless eyes. There was no light in them, no green flash as they went out.
“You’ll never know,” said Madison. “That’s the thing about death. It always takes us before we’ve said our piece. I never got to say mine.”
“You didn’t have to,” I said.
“Come on!” said the bot behind me. “Keep moving.”
“I didn’t die like this,” I said.
“Are you sure?” asked Madison.
“There’s still life in me.”
“Whatever that’s worth.”
I looked back down at myself in the street, but I was gone. There was nothing there. I turned and no one was behind me. No line. No frustrated rubberneckers of extinction. No Madison. Nothing. The streets were empty. Alone. Desolate.
There is nothing lonelier in the world than an empty street in New York City, when you can gaze up at block after block and see nary a soul. Streetlights, signs, closed-up shops, buildings that house millions. But no one to be found.
My vision fragmented, buildings and sky rippling with static and fractals—the math of my brain filling in the holes of my memory.
Why were there holes? Why were the streets undulating with a million number-crunching operations, bits flickering in and out of existence as I moved?
And then the whole world froze, every bit of it paused, before scrambling into nothing but static. Ones and zeros screaming in a mad jumble.