"It's a gondola," Langhorne said. "Wow."
"A gondola? Like in Venice?"
"Yeah. It's because of-"
"It is a gondola," said Coombs queasily. "What the hell is a gondola doing here? Don't tell me: It's because of Firewater."
"WaterFire."
"Dan, can you see anybody in it?"
"No. It's too dark."
"We better throw some light on that, then."
"Or blow it out of the water."
"Either way, it'll make us conspicuous."
Kranuski snapped, "Are you kidding? Nothing's gonna make us more conspicuous than we already are. We can't let it near the hull-it could have a bomb in it… or worse."
Coombs thought about it, then said, "Rig the spotlight, quick. And pass up that carbine."
As Kranuski and Robles handled this, Coombs asked Langhorne, "In your opinion, could Xombies be tending those fires?"
"I don't know. Not ordinary ones, I would say."
"That's what I thought."
"But there's always the possibility…"
"What?"
"That Miska's out there."
Robles turned on the spotlight and swept its beam across the water. The eerie, drifting gondola suddenly stood out starkly from the surrounding darkness, as if pinned under a microscope. With its lacquered black hull and red velvet seats, it looked to Coombs like some kind of funeral barge, a weird, medieval specter lost in time and place. Discordant as those torches.
"There's somebody in there," Robles said urgently.
"Shit." They all raised their weapons and took aim, ready to pour fire down.
"Wait!" Robles said. "It looks like a little kid. He's not moving."
"Who gives a crap?" said Kranuski, wielding the rifle. "Let's sink the bastard before he does move."
"Hold up," Coombs said. "Can you tell if he's blue?"
"I don't think so, sir."
"You don't think you can tell, or you don't think he's blue?"
"He's not blue. He's definitely not blue. I can see him breathing."
"Try hailing him," Langhorne said.
To Kranuski's disgust, Coombs switched on the microphone, and said, "HEY, KID. CAN YOU HEAR ME?" His amplified voice echoed across the water. "LET US KNOW YOU'RE ALIVE, SO WE CAN HELP YOU."
For a moment, nothing happened. Then a small, shivering hand rose into the light, and everyone on the bridge heard a deeply reassuring sound, a noise more welcome in its pure humanity than any words could be. A sound no Xombie would utter:
It was the high, thin whimper of a child.
Exercising extreme caution and a long hook, they wrangled the gondola alongside and took the boy aboard. Alice Langhorne gave him a sedative to calm him down. He was in shock, practically catatonic, and instantly fell into a deep sleep. All she had gotten out of him was that his name was Bobby. He looked about ten years old, filthy, and half-starved. You think this is our firebug? Coombs had asked her. Alice could only shrug-the poor kid didn't look capable of striking a match. It would be interesting to find out how he could have survived all these months, but in the meantime she thought it best to let him sleep.
After cleaning Bobby off, then treating all his minor cuts and contusions, Langhorne hooked the unconscious kid up to an IV drip and relegated his care to the other minors on board, the older boys in the Big Room. One of Phil Tran's medical trainees got the duty, a scraggly kid named Sal DeLuca-teenage son of the late Gus DeLuca. Tran assured her he was smart. Anyway, they had more than enough space back there, a regular Boys Town. And Alice had other things to think about.
"All hands prepare for exiting shore party, logistics hatch two."
Coombs's terse command rang through the ship, and everyone knew exactly what to do-Kranuski had drilled them on it, and Alton Webb made damn sure there were no mistakes. All doorways in the control section were sealed off and tightly dogged, leaving only a single passage leading from the quarantined third level to the open topside hatch. In that way, the crew would be insulated from any threat, and the unleashed Xombies had nowhere to go but up… and out.
Alice Langhorne was posted forward in the communications suite, the "radio shack," a tiny compartment in the far bow. Though she regretted not being able personally to escort her fellows topside, she knew it was more important that they begin to function alone-she wouldn't be there to hold their hands when they went ashore. She was seated at a computer console, wearing a radio headset and intently watching live video from the third deck. It was a split-screen image broadcast from two tiny digital cameras bolted to the late Ed Albemarle's blue skull-what Langhorne dubbed her "Xombiecams"-one facing forward and the other back.
When all was in readiness, Coombs called down to her from the bridge. "This is it, Alice. Proceed to move them out."
"Gotcha." Switching on her audio feed, she said, "Guys? Guys, listen to me. It's time to go up. Ed, open the aft door and move them out." She had tested this and was confident it would work, but it was still a relief to see the picture on the screen lurch into motion. "They're moving."
The gondola had been salvaged-there was no point in risking a raft if they didn't have to-and was secured to a cleat at the far stern, where the deck sloped underwater toward the boat's great rudder fin. Now Commander Coombs watched from his perch atop the sail as Xombies began to emerge from the logistics hatch and move aft down that long, long stretch of deck.
Though he was thirty feet above them, the sight of those things still made him uneasy. Surely it was utter madness to imagine they could be set loose like this and come back of their own volition. That they could be made to go on some kind of complicated scavenger hunt and even obediently return to the ship laden with groceries. Langhorne made it all sound so feasible… but she was crazy. And if she was crazy, that meant he was crazy, too, for listening to her-a zombie himself.
Coombs could never get over how they moved. There was something bizarre about it, a jerky precision like a windup toy. Buglike, that's what it was, like ants or flies, flickering so you couldn't quite take them in except in blinks. Yet at the same time they could be boneless as an octopus, fluid as wisps of smoke
It was fully dark now; Coombs couldn't see as well as he would have liked, but things seemed to be going as planned-far better than he'd expected, actually. So far so good. There were forty of them, all strung together on a cable, and he tried to keep count as they emerged:… twelve, thirteen, fourteen…
There was Albemarle, unmistakable from his size, an alarming, naked behemoth still clutching his big hammer from the factory. With his hammer and his video headgear, he looked almost human. Coombs watched as he loped to the gondola and swept aboard with barely a ripple. Several other Xombies also boarded the boat. They were the ones strapped with spare batteries, lights, and other devices that had to stay dry. As the gondola cast off, those left behind began slipping into the water, ducking under its forbidding black surface as easily as crocodiles from a riverbank.
Then, as if by magic, the gondola began to move. It glided away without any visible means of propulsion, and Coombs knew the creatures down there were pulling it, towing it as they walked along the murky bottom like some perverse Nantucket sleigh ride. He shook his head in sickly wonder.
He was interrupted in his reverie by a yelling from his headset. It was Alice Langhorne.
"What was that, Alice? I didn't copy."
"I said Lulu's gone!"
"She's what?" Coombs felt an icy rush down his spine.
"Lulu broke out of her case and escaped! Do you understand? She's going with them!"
CHAPTER FIVE
BLUE MAN GROUP
In attempting to chronicle the Maenad epidemic, we are like archaeologists trying to re-create an ancient civilization from a few potsherds. The available record seems to be nothing but a catalogue of loose ends, the timeline of human history having been clipped like a cheap length of twine. But the unraveling was not so total. Throughout America and the world, there were refuges, ha
vens, isolated pockets of relative security that continued to survive long after the initial outbreak. Most of these were militaristic in nature-bases and other fortified compounds-but others were due to geographical or cultural factors: islands, prisons, work camps, heavy industries such as oil drilling or mining, religious retreats. What they all had in common was a lack of women. For wherever women went, there followed doom. -The Maenad Project New Year's Day, 6:29 A.M.
Downtown Providence is deserted, all the office buildings and banks, the immense Providence Place Mall, the arena and the convention center, closed for the holiday, closed forever, and the boy skitters antlike through its brick canyons, heedless of either the harsh, wind-driven sleet or his own harsh tears mingling with it.
"No, no, no…" he whimpers as he runs.
Occasional cars shoosh past, taillights gleaming fire-alarm red off the wet pavement. Church bells are ringing, and not far away he can hear sirens and the blaring drone of car horns from I-95-it sounds like the world's biggest traffic jam. But Bobby Rubio barely takes notice of the din, or of any of his surroundings. All his thoughts whirlpool around one frantic goal: to find his father.
A big car pulls up alongside Bobby, dousing his sneakers with slush, and its driver leans across the passenger seat, yelling, "Get in, son!"
Bobby's heart leaps with the impossible hope that it is his dad, but realizes at once it's just a stranger, a red-faced old man with a cockatoo crest of white hair and the leering urgency of a drive-by pervert. Disgusted, Bobby peels away with a snarl.
The car matches his pace, the man calling out, "Listen! It's an emergency! Do you hear me? I'm trying to help you! You have to get off the street!"
Ignoring the voice, Bobby cuts sharply up a narrow one-way alley so the man can't follow. Why did everything bad have to happen at once?
"Good!" the man's voice shouts at his back. "I hope they get you!" The car spurts away.
Bobby emerges on Washington Street and breaks left, making for the massive brick edifice of the Biltmore Hotel at the end. It's not the hotel he wants, but the multistory parking garage behind the hotel, the Parkade, where his dad works. Beyond the hotel, the buildings open up in front of City Hall, and he can see others running. There's some kind of ugly riot in Kennedy Plaza: people breaking the windows of blocked cars to drag out screaming passengers, and other people fleeing their vehicles and being chased across the park. He can't see much of what's going on, but even from a distance he can tell that the ones causing all the trouble look crazy, weird-they look like his mom looked. They look… blue.
No-don't look at it! Bobby shudders in fear and turns away, gratefully ducking out of sight into a corner entrance of the garage.
Sheltered from the freezing wind and rain, he is suddenly aware of the frantic speed of his body, its manic clockwork spinning out of control to some kind of explosion or collapse. He yearns to start shrieking and never stop, or just curl up in a corner of the piss-smelling concrete stairwell and vomit up deep wracking sobs until he is empty inside. Oh God, to be empty, to be blank. He's shaking so hard he can barely think or stand. But he can't stop now; he's almost there.
At the far back of the garage, at the base of the steeply twining exit ramp, he can make out the familiar, bearlike figure of his father behind the fogged glass of the lighted cashier's booth.
Bobby whimpers, "Dad, Dad," as he shambles forward, nearly swooning in anticipation of laying down his horrific burden, of relinquishing it to his father's easygoing strength. His dad will know what to do. His dad will have to know…
Pain woke him up-something piercing the back of his hand. Bobby opened his eyes to an amazing, inexplicable vision. He was in an enormous tunnel of some sort, a windowless atrium four stories high, with rope ladders scaling the balconies and a strange ceiling of numbered white domes. Laundry was strung from one side to the other, giving it the look of a tenement courtyard, and makeshift structures of wood, fabric, plastic sheeting, and cardboard cluttered the steel-grated tiers. But the most amazing thing was that there were people-not blue-skinned monsters, but real human beings. Boys, all boys. The place smelled like a locker room and sounded like one, too, the scores of teenagers roosting in that metal cavern like so many pigeons, clambering up and down the scaffolds, sprawling in hammocks, chattering and calling to one another across the echoing subterranean galleries.
Ow-there was that pain again. It was from a big fat IV needle-a bag of clear fluid was dripping into his hand from above. Bobby had nearly yanked it out trying to sit up.
"Hey, you're awake," said a hoarse teenage voice, speaking from behind the glare of a hanging lamp. "Whoa, just chill, lie back, you're safe here." The voice spoke into a microphone: "Uh, Mr. Tran? He's awake."
"How's he look?" squawked an intercom. "Is he lucid?"
"I don't know." To Bobby: "Are you lucid?"
"What?"
"He seems okay to me."
"Keep an eye on him. Talk to him. I'm tied up here at the moment. Can you handle it a while longer?"
"Yes, sir, I guess."
"Good man. I'll be down as quick as I can. Just make sure he's comfortable. Remember what I've shown you, Sal. This is just like our first-aid drills, no different."
"I'm on it, sir. Over."
"Who are you?" Bobby asked, squinting into the light.
"I'm Sal DeLuca." He moved the lamp so that Bobby could see him. Sal Deluca was tall and thin, almost gaunt, with large, intense eyes that studied Bobby through long hanks of unwashed brown hair. "What's your name?" he asked.
"Bobby. Bobby Rubio."
"Bobby Rubio," Sal repeated, writing it down. "Age?"
"I'm ten… I think."
"You think? You don't know your own age?"
"I don't know… How long has it been? What month is it?" Bobby was suddenly seized with panic.
"April."
Slumping with relief, he said, "I'm ten, I'm still ten. My birthday isn't until July."
"And how are you feeling, Bobby? Any pain or discomfort?"
"My hand hurts."
"Sorry, we had to do that; you were very dehydrated when you came in. Any other problems?"
"Uh-uh. I don't think."
"Good. Well, pleased to meet you, Bobby." Sal shook the smaller boy's limp hand. "Welcome to the Big Room. You want some bug juice? It's like Hawaiian Punch." He handed over a straw cup full of red liquid.
Bobby accepted it eagerly, draining the sweet drink in one gulp. Catching his breath, he asked, "Where is this place?"
"What, the Big Room? It's the middle section of the hull, where all the Trident missile silos used to be-my dad helped pull 'em out. Now it's Crib City, one big slumber party. It's minorly out of control right now. Nobody wants to be in charge since the last Youth Liaison Officer, Lulu, got Exed. She thought she had something wrong with her that kept her from going Smurf, but it still got her in the end, and all her friends. I heard she got my dad killed, too." A shadow passed over Sal's face, cleared.
"Anyway, this is juvie country all in here-the adults pretty much bunk forward or aft of us. We've got the best deal on the boat, don't you think?"
Bobby could hardly follow any of this, except for one word: "Boat? What boat?"
"What boat do you think, dude? This boat."
"We're on a… boat?"
"Not a boat, dipwad, a submarine."
"A summarine? No way."
"Yes way. This is a submarine, all this. Didn't you know that?"
Bobby recoiled. "You're crazy. There's no summarine." He looked past the older boy at the steel catacomb beyond, his eyes welling with furious tears. "You're lying."
"Dude, I swear to God. Ohio-class FBM-biggest one they make. We're about thirty feet below the waterline."
Eyes overflowing, Bobby cried, "You're lying! You're trying to trick me! We're not underwater! We're not! Let me go! I want my dad! Dad! I have to find my mom and dad! Dad! Mommeee!" The boy began to thrash wildly against his restraints.
Oh man, Sa
l thought. Here we go. Ignoring the stares from above, he hurriedly squirted a precious cc of Demerol solution into the kid's IV line, wishing Lieutenant Tran were there to supervise. "Take it easy. There you go… there you go. Don't worry, everything's gonna be okay. I miss my dad, too, man." Brightening, he said, "Hey, how 'bout some pancakes? I've been saving some for you, for when you woke up."
Bobby stopped struggling. "Pancakes?" he sniffled.
"Yeah, I got 'em right here." Sal held up a covered tray. "But you can't have any unless you promise to be cool."
"I will," Bobby said desperately, starting to cry again. "I will, I swear."
"Hey, it's all good." Sal passed him the tray and helped him sit up. Bobby trembled with eagerness at the sight of the food-not only pancakes, but dabs of applesauce and scrambled eggs. Everything was cold, but he didn't care. Wolfing it down, he scarcely noticed the rapt, hungry eyes following his every mouthful, nor did he realize that all activity in the vast chamber had paused to watch him eat.
Nearly drooling himself, Sal said, "Make it last, kid."
"How could she have gotten off the boat without you seeing her?" Kranuski said accusingly. "That girl was critical; her body is the only existing reservoir of Miska's serum! Without her, we have nothing."
Coombs shook his head. "I realize that, Rich. She's small, it was dark. She must have just slipped out with the others. I wasn't looking for her."
"Are you sure you were looking at all?"
"You're out of order, Lieutenant. Yes, I was looking. I didn't see anything. Apparently no one else on watch did, either. All I can think is that Albemarle must have shielded her with his body."
"Well, what happens now? If she's gone, that means we lose the Xombies, right? I mean, without her blood to control them, we can't take them back on board. So the mission is effectively over." Kranuski sounded eager for this to be so.
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