“Here!” Derrick said, handing him a bike chain.
Are you kidding? As Sal whipped the thrashing thing, feeling like a circus lion-tamer, some of the other boys found the nerve to join in. Immediately it became a hyper-caffeinated, junk-food-fueled frenzy, all of them fighting each other to get a lick in. Tools were located and put to use—crowbars and tin snips and hacksaws. A bunch of old golf clubs turned up. In less than a minute, the Xombie was chopped and pounded to quivering purple hamburger, its severed joints kicked around the room.
While this was going on, Sal had a moment to step back and wipe his brow. He knew they didn’t have long—more of those things could show up any second. It was a miracle they hadn’t already. He looked up at the row of used BMX bikes hanging from a rack. There were some okay ones there. Nothing as cherry as his custom Diamondback stumpjumper, but not bad. Choosing a metallic blue Trek, he took it down and checked the feel. It would have to do.
Wheeling the bike to the door, he said, “Guys. I’m going.”
The others were shaky from their bloodlust, some puking, the rest shocked and not quite in their right minds. “What . . . ?”
“Listen to me. You see that cross street out there—Transit? I’m gonna ride up that and make as much noise as I can. Give me a minute to draw them off, then you go the opposite way. Go fast, but stick together and don’t stop for anything. I’ll loop back around and meet you on the other side, where Transit meets Gano. On the map there’s another highway underpass down there that we can use to get back to the docks.”
“Say what?” They were sobering quickly, realizing what he was saying. “You gotta be—”
“I’m gone. Don’t wait too long!”
Then he was out the door and riding hard. As he turned the corner, they heard him singing at the top of his lungs: “Riders of the storm!—Riders of the storm!—Into this world we’re born!—Out of this world we’re torn!—ner, na-nyer ner ner . . .”
“Damn,” said Russell.
Kyle scoffed, astonished, “Boy be trippin’.”
“Trippin’ or not, he’s clearing the way for us to get out this shithole. I ain’t about to waste it.” He grabbed a silver Peugeot mountain bike. “Move ass, all of you! Grab a bike and follow me!”
“Dog, where you think you goin’?”
“You heard what the man said: Gano Street! That’s all I need to know—I been here before. Hurry up! Once I go, everybody else gotta be ready to follow, one after another like clockwork! We ain’t slowin’ down for nobody.”
There was no shortage of bikes; in a few minutes all twenty-nine boys were poised to go, crushing into the doorway. Though the coast looked clear, no one wanted to be first. The Xombie was fresh in their minds.
“Fine. Everybody back the fuck up,” Russell said. “If I’m taking point, I gotta have room for a running start, least be a movin’ target.”
As the others jockeyed for position behind him, a fight broke out: “No way, man!” “I ain’t bringin’ up the rear!” “Yeah, why don’t you go last?”
“Hell, I’ll go last.” The squawk of Russell’s strained throat shut them up. “Get in front, whichever one of you wants to be first. You, Freddy? Derrick? Come on up, dog—I’m savin’ the best place for you. I already had one of them things on my neck, I’ll let you have the next one. I’ll gladly kick back at the end of the line, watch everybody else take the heat.” Nobody moved. “We straight, then? A’ight, back up, motherfucker.”
Kyle, who had been wavering between standing by his brother or defecting to the naysayers, now said, “Get back, fools!” As they cleared away, he gestured for silence, then cautiously opened the door and peeked both ways. Satisfied, he whispered, “Go.”
Russell nodded and kicked off into the sunlight. As he raced across the street, he could still hear the receding echo of Sal’s singing . . . and something else: a deep, rushing sound as of the wind through autumn leaves, comprised of rapid footsteps and ghastly massed voices. He shuddered, nerves wilting with horror. Don’t let ’em catch you, man.
Kyle went next, flubbing his pedals as he jumped the curb, followed in quick succession by all the others. Getting their rhythm, they formed a ragged line, zipping unobstructed along the narrow side street. There were no dead cars here, only parked ones, and they made good speed. All that prevented them from going even faster was the incline—they were pedaling uphill. None of the boys had had any cardiovascular exercise in months, trapped on that submarine, and as they forced their bikes up the rise—emaciated bodies already starting to crash from the sugar binge—it became abundantly clear that they were in truly terrible shape. Their lungs were on fire, their wasted legs flimsy as rubber bands. Many of the boys had been athletes; it shocked and dismayed them to be so weak.
“Damn, man, I got no game,” Kyle said, struggling to keep pace.
“Me either,” Freddy Gonzales said. “Slow down, I am dying.”
“Shut up, you guys!” Russell hissed back.
Turning to face forward again, Russell found himself staring into the face of an onrushing Xombie. It was a big woman with flaming red hair, her open mouth a black grotto that seemed big enough to swallow him and his bike whole. Heart exploding, he instinctively ducked, trying to swerve, but the thing hooked him around the neck, and they spun together in a horrible pas de deux before crashing to the ground.
Seeing Russell in trouble, Kyle made a flying leap from his bike, trying to knock the creature off his brother with a large crescent wrench. Freddy came next, with a claw hammer, followed one after another by the rest of the boys. Having so quickly dispatched the Xombie in the bike shop, they were now much more willing to jump in.
But no matter what they did, they couldn’t seem to pry the hideous thing off Russell. Its body was practically fused to him, arms and legs wrapped whipcord tight around his limbs, mouth mashed against his face as it sucked the breath from his lungs. Worse, their mouths were joined together from within by a rootlike mass of flesh. The boys could hear the sickening, hopeless sound of Russell’s rib cage crumpling.
“Cut it off him!” Kyle cried tearfully, but some of them were already doing that, dismembering it and hacking at the tough, slippery umbilical as best they could. They just weren’t doing it fast enough—Russell’s popping eyes were already glazed over, staring blankly through them. He had stopped struggling.
A sudden eruption sent the ring of boys scattering: “Look out!” someone screamed. “Heads up!” There was another Xombie in their midst. It was a boy about their own age, a feral thing still wearing a tattered Patriots shirt. Flying after them, it plucked Nate off his feet, taking the boy in a headlock and capering away with his thrashing body slung over its back. Several boys gave chase, but almost immediately two more Xombies appeared, striking like spiders at them as they left the main group. In an instant, Rick and Carlos were down.
Now things dissolved into panicky confusion, people tripping over bikes trying to escape. How could they fight these things and watch their own backs at the same time? Russell was beyond saving; Kyle miserably knew that unless they did something fast, his own brother would bounce back as a demonic Xombie. So would the other three boys, meaning the number of unstoppable monsters they had to deal with would effectively double. Meanwhile, more Exes were popping out of the woodwork like cockroaches. Roy Almeida was hit as he watched, limbs flailing. Kyle was stunned to be so suddenly helpless and alone—there was no one in charge! Without Russell or even that goody-goody Sal, he felt completely lost.
“We gotta get indoors!” Freddy shouted.
“We gotta make a run for it!” yelled someone else.
Kyle roused himself. Abandoning the mess of body parts that were still inextricably clutching his older brother—his soul brother, his best friend and last living family member—he cried, “Everybody on your bikes, let’s go!”
That’s it, isn’t it, Dad? We’re all going to die?
Everybody dies sometime, Sal. And if they’re lucky, they
stay dead.
Once again, Sal DeLuca was riding for his life. It was literally an uphill battle. When he’d rashly conceived this plan, he had no idea how soon his legs would start giving out, but he took strength in knowing that every inch he climbed would at least be rewarded with an effortless downhill glide on the return journey. He was sweating and dizzy from carb and caffeine overload—he never ate that kind of stuff.
Transit Street was shady and tree-lined, narrow as an old cart path, with quaint, pastel-colored historical houses arrayed on either side. The road was not particularly steep, but Sal might as well have been pedaling up Mount Washington—this was the first time he realized how much of a wreck he’d become. Had he been able to weigh himself, or look in a mirror, he would have been shocked at the sunken-eyed wraith staring back at him. Since the end of the world, he had lost nearly a third of his body mass.
Sal didn’t know the College Hill district very well, having grown up miles away in South County, but he had been to Providence enough times to have some sense of its geography. This was the hilly part—he knew that much. Beyond that, he had to rely on the map and his own sense of direction. East, west, north, south—those he could handle. Up and down he was learning as he went along.
His intuition (and the map) told him that heading west up Transit was a smart move: Xombies were drawn to population centers, so it made sense to get off the main drag and into quieter neighborhoods. He could lure the creatures in after him and use the cobblestone maze of Colonial-era city planning to confuse them, slow them down—they didn’t have maps to find their way out.
Sal knew he didn’t dare head too far in that direction, though, because Phil Tran had told him that Lulu and the rest of Dr. Langhorne’s “subjects” were foraging somewhere around here. Benefit Street was highlighted in red on his map, with the scrawled warning, TO AVOID. Sal was in full agreement with Phil on this point. The last thing he needed was to run into those things, however harmless they were said to be.
His plan was simply to pull a Pied Piper routine, clear the road for Russell and the other guys to get a head start in the opposite direction, then ditch the deadheads and loop back around to rendezvous with his team at India Point. From there they could follow bike paths along the waterfront all the way back to the rafts.
Easy as pie . . . in theory. What his map didn’t show was that Brook Street was in a trough, a former creek bottom from which it had derived its name, and that by turning up Transit he would be hill-climbing at the same time as he was acting as live bait for hordes of the undead. Nice going, Scout, Sal thought ruefully. So much for that merit badge. He could only hope the other guys were having an easier time of it.
At least one part of Sal’s plan was an unqualified success: The Xombies were coming. They had heard his singing and were swarming out after him like hornets from a disturbed nest, following hard on his wheels. He didn’t dare look back, but he could hear them behind him, a gathering roar like the tide.
The Xombies are coming!—that was the crazed thought that ran through his mind like the ravings of a demented Paul Revere. The Xombies are coming, the Xombies are coming!
Then the sight that he had been expecting and dreading: more Xombies in front of him, trying to cut him off—half a dozen jittering blue monstrosities coming over the crest of the hill.
But Sal had prepared an exit strategy. Riding straight at them, he cut right up a cobblestone alleyway—and found himself on an even steeper hill. Oh, man! It had looked so good on paper! As he gunned forward, standing on his pedals, he barely had time to react as a small Xombie with only half a head lunged out of a driveway at him. Oh no you don’t! Swerving hard to avoid its grasp, boosted by a screaming rush of adrenaline, Sal darted willy-nilly between houses and yards, jumping his bike up and down curbs and porch steps as the grotesque thing skittered close behind.
Suddenly he was cornered. It was going to get him; he had no choice. A veteran trespasser, Sal had been in similar circumstances before, chased not by Xombies but by vicious dogs or irate homeowners, and in his everyday life had taken to carrying a can of pepper spray when he went riding on private property. He didn’t have his trusty spray can now, but Phil Tran had smuggled him something even better.
Don’t use it unless you absolutely have to, Phil had whispered, slipping the cloth-wrapped package into Sal’s coat pocket. The sound will give you away, so it’s only to be used as a last resort. It might buy you a couple of extra seconds.
It was Lieutenant Tran’s personal sidearm: a Navy-issue .45-caliber automatic pistol, loaded for bear with explosive dumdum bullets. Don’t forget to release the safety, Tran had added. And don’t shoot your own foot off.
I won’t, Sal had said. Thanks, man.
As the creature’s flailing blue hand caught the back of Sal’s jacket, yanking him up short, he twisted around and rammed the gun into the center of its chest. The revolting, half-faced thing pushed right back against the muzzle, heedless, headless, its cratered skull healed over and smoothly misshapen as some abstract Modernist sculpture, with a dirty blond pigtail on one side. A weird tentacle of raw flesh lashed out of its open gullet at him.
BANG! Having never fired a gun in his life, Sal wasn’t quite prepared for the recoil, which sent a painful shock up his whole arm. The force of the concussion knocked him and the Xombie apart, blasting a fist-sized hole through the creature and bowling it backward to the ground. Without waiting to see if it would rise again—he knew it would—Sal shot it again, then unloaded on the next nearest attackers before leaping his bike into motion.
All of a sudden another loud bang rang out—a string of echoing bangs, rattling the house windows and shaking the ground. Not gunshots, but explosions. A fast sequence of blasts, powerful as thunderclaps, coming from over the hill—from the direction of Benefit Street. Whoa, Sal thought, feeling that he had triggered the explosions somehow, that something was answering his shots.
No time to think about it. The pursuing Xombies froze in their tracks to listen, bodies cocked like alert dogs, and Sal didn’t waste the opportunity. In an instant, he was through the alley and over the hump, turning right onto the next street and blazing downhill with the wind cooling his sweat.
CHAPTER TWELVE
GANO STREET
Q: What makes them look so bad?
A: Well, the grisly complexion is because their bodies have been deprived of oxygen. They’re cyanotic. That’s a precondition for Maenad infection—it can’t work in the presence of oxygen, which is why Xombies must strangle or otherwise suffocate their victims. We think that’s part of why they behave as they do, because their brains are damaged from lack of oxygen in the few minutes prior to the disease taking over. After that, nothing can hurt them, but whatever brain function they lose in those first minutes is critical.
Q: Then how did living women become infected in the first place?
A: That’s the big mystery. Tests show that most women’s hemoglobin has a far greater susceptibility to Agent X infiltration than men’s, which means the disease has been spreading longer, perhaps building up in their systems until it reached a kind of critical mass. But why the disease should have become virulent all at once, worldwide, is something we don’t understand. It may be connected to the lunar cycle, or it might suggest that it was deliberate, like a timer going off.
Q: Are you suggesting it was an act of terrorism?
A: Anything’s possible. One of the worst tragedies of this thing is how every female, whether infected or not, was immediately declared a menace—we’ll never know how many millions of them were needlessly quarantined, driven from their homes, or killed outright. In this way, we exacerbated the Xombie crisis far beyond the problem of the plague itself, which could not destroy us as long as there was one immune female somewhere out there—and there may have been many. In condemning them all, we abetted our own extinction.
Q: What do you say to those who think it was God’s judgment?
A: I’d say God acts i
n mysterious ways.
—The Maenad Project
“Mr. Kranuski.”
“Mr. Coombs.”
“To what do we owe the honor of this visit?”
“Cut the bullshit. You know as well as I do. Where are the spare command keys?”
“They’ve been missing since Fred Cowper was in charge.”
“Why don’t you ask him?” Langhorne said brightly.
Kranuski ignored her. “Don’t bullshit me. I know somebody’s been using those keys to gain access to restricted areas of the boat and tamper with the system. That’s mutiny, sabotage. Do you still have any honor left? Is that what you want? To scuttle the boat? Kill us all?”
“Of course not,” said Coombs, offended. “I have no idea who could be doing that. How could I? It’s not like I had time to talk to anyone before you locked us in here.”
Rich Kranuski said, “I knew you were incompetent, but I never thought you’d stoop to something like this out of sheer spite. I am not your enemy, Harvey. I know I fucked up at Thule, but now I’m just trying to preserve what few military regulations still apply, and which we are both duty-bound to observe. This is still a Navy vessel.”
“I understand that.”
“Then don’t you understand that whoever’s fucking around with the safety sensors is fucking with your sworn mission as a Navy officer? False alarms in the coolant valves are not my idea of a joke.”
Langhorne piped in. “Tell it to Cowper.”
Xombies: Apocalypticon Page 11
