Another man said, “They come off’n that submarine, Marcus, I told you.”
“Shut up and let them tell it. We know you boys come off that sub; the question is why?”
Sal hesitated. He thought it might be dangerous to mention that they were refugees from MoCo—the Mogul Cooperative. The place up north from which they had all barely escaped and which had left them all with grim souvenirs of their brush with corporate governance: permanent scars on their foreheads . . . and deeper scars on their psyches. It was more than likely that these men worked for the Moguls. He stumbled for words, but before he could speak, Kyle answered, “Hunger, dude. Provisions.”
“Provisions?” The man spoke the word as if it was a foreign language. “What do you think we been doin’ here for the past week but gathering trade goods? You don’t but have to load ’em on board.”
I knew it! Sal thought. He had no idea who this man thought they were, but he nodded, and said, “Oh, okay. Cool.”
“But they just set you ashore, anyway? To play tag with them blue monkeys?”
“We needed food.”
“Son, food’s about ninety percent of what we do. They’s already near on two hunnerd tons of it sitting on the Mobile Bay just waitin’ to be picked up. I don’t get it. Somebody’s confused here, and it ain’t me. Now, let’s try this again real slow: Did they really send you out in your shirtsleeves on a little shopping trip, or is it that you was lookin’ for something else? Down that tunnel back yonder, maybe?”
“I’m really not sure, sir. We have a new commander, and things have been a little . . . confused lately, so I guess maybe they forgot to tell us something.”
The men shook their heads and made sounds of contempt. “So you’re just out here rustlin’ up some grub? Some bacon and eggs, maybe? Some Malt-O-Meal? Shit, son, I guess they don’t like you much. What’d you think them signal fires was for? I suppose you don’t know nothing about that tunnel back there.”
“We don’t.”
“That look like a Piggly Wiggly to you?”
“No, sir. We—”
The man jerked his chin up at a Xombie jutting from the vehicle’s saw-toothed bowsprit. Sal was shocked to realize that it was Lulu. “Or this little cutie right here—ain’t she about the tamest Harpy you ever seen? Now why is that? See, that tunnel was booby-trapped eight ways to Sunday—anybody goin’ in the front door would get flushed right out the back. We done had it staked out for three days now, just in case some person or nonperson of interest might happen along and trip the switch. Like this ’un here.”
Sal now had a pretty good suspicion of who these men were, upon whose mercy they were depending, and it didn’t look good. These had to be the foragers, the worker ants at the bottom of the Mogul pyramid, the ground troops in the war for groceries. Slaves to the machine just as he and the other boys had briefly been slaves.
“Don’t tail me you don’t know what I’m talkin’ about, boy.”
Before Sal could stop him, Freddy Fisk piped in. “We know her. That’s Lulu Pangloss. We had a bunch of Xombies like her on board. They’re different because they all get shots of Lulu’s blood, and it acts on them sort of like, like Ritalin or something.”
“Her blood?” the awful face asked, leaning in. “Run that by me again, son.”
“Dr. Langhorne gave her something—I don’t know much about it, but they call it the Tonic. Ow!—lay off! She and the other Xombies were sent ashore separate from us because nobody knew what they would do on their own. If they came back, I think Dr. Langhorne was hoping to use them as a foraging squad.”
The men’s eyebrows rose at this; they looked at each other. One of them mouthed the word Tonic, and another, Langhorne. Freddy sensed the heightened interest and suddenly wondered if he should have spoken so freely, rubbing his arm where Kyle had pinched it.
Trying to limit the damage, Sal cut in. “But we don’t know anything about that tunnel—we were just on the run from Xombies.” He became choked up. “Most of our party’s been wiped out.”
The circle of gruesome helmets stared silently at them for a long minute, eerie as witch-doctor masks, then one of the men asked, “Why you boys on that submarine in the first place? Since when does the Navy give out free kid-die rides?”
Sal replied, “We helped fix it up for a refugee ship. Our dads worked for the submarine company.”
“You the leader?”
Sal hesitated, but when none of the other boys spoke up, he said, “I guess.”
“I figured, ’cuz you seem to be doin’ most of the talkin’. What about the rest of y’all? Why you got them scabs on your foreheads? Look like a bunch of damn Hare Krishnas. And I still don’t understand how come they sent you out like this, pedaling damn bicycles! Just don’t make no damn sense. Something ain’t right, and I mean to find out what.”
Kyle replied, “It’s the first time we’ve gone ashore, sir. The city looked empty. I guess we just weren’t expecting so many Xombies.”
Ray Despineau spoke for the first time all day. He was a quiet, shy boy, made quieter and more introverted by the loss of his family. On the boat he rarely spoke to anyone but Sal, and only in the gloomiest tones. This had become something of a running joke among the other boys, which had caused Ray to retreat even further inward. In monotone, he said, “You bump your head a lot on a submarine.”
The men burst into gales of laughter.
Helmet bobbing, the Texarkanan said, “Shit, son, you made my day. Well, all right, then. Don’t you worry none about it. Don’t make a lick a sense, but I suppose it’ll all come out in the wash. In the meantime we-all gone be buckaroos. Shee-it, boys! Where the hail are my manners? We ain’t even been properly introduced. Name’s Marcus Amos Washington, but they call me Voodooman. You’ll have to excuse us if we don’t shake your hands, but it might be a little hard to turn loose again. My second-in-command here is Mr. Righteous Weeks.”
“Greetings, boys,” said Weeks. “Marcus won’t tell you how he got his name, but I will: It’s from the prize bull he rode to win his first championship belt—one mean mo’fuckin’ steer name of Voodoo. Nobody else ever went the full eight seconds on that devil, not even in the professional circuit. That was goin’ on twenty years ago, when Marcus warn’t much older’n you boys and green as grass, so you can take that as proof that anything’s possible in this here world—hell, look at us now. Lemme hear you shout: Yee-haa!”
Looking at each other, the boys feebly replied, “Yee-haa.”
“Come on now,” Weeks prompted. “YEE-HAA!”
“Yee-haa!”
“That’s just pitiful. Let’s show ’em how to do it: YEEEE-HAAA!”
“YEEEE-HAAA!” all the men whooped, shooting pistols in the air and outwhooping each other.
While this was going on, Sal happened to notice that the tide was running at its peak. If Mr. Kranuski’s plan still held, the sub would likely be on the move. But since it couldn’t submerge until it reached the open sea, they could probably still catch it if they tried. He had to yell to be heard above the din: “Sir? Could you just tell me, are we going back to the boat now?”
“The boat?”
“The submarine.”
“What’s your hurry, son?”
“Well, they told us they were going to sail with the tide, and we’re running pretty late.”
As though reassuring a small child, Voodooman said, “Now, don’t you worry none, we gone get you to your boat . . . all in good time. Meantime, you just set a spell.”
Sal didn’t like the way he said it.
“Here are your new quarters,” Kranuski said, opening the door to the executive-officer suite. “Don’t ever say I never did anything for you.”
Alton Webb went inside, nodding appreciatively. It was nothing he hadn’t seen before, but it was finally his. Quite a leap for a guy who never expected to be promoted above senior chief, much less become a commissioned officer, lieutenant grade—and now the ship’s XO, no less. It would
have been a dream come true if it all wasn’t just more proof that everything had gone to shit. That devalued the achievement somewhat.
Webb looked around the little cabin, cozy as a first-class train compartment with its fake wood paneling, personal desk, bunk, and cleverly stowable sink. His whole body was tense with anticipation.
“Ah, my old room.” Kranuski sighed jokingly. He had been in there less than three months. “So many memories . . .” He tapped the bulkhead as though petting a loyal old horse, then ran his hand down to the handle of an adjoining door. It opened onto a tiny shower compartment that connected the XO quarters with his new command stateroom on the opposite side.
Looking at the floor, Kranuski jerked back with a start.
“That head’s been in here.”
“What head?” asked Webb.
“What head? The head! That fucking head! Fred Cowper’s head!”
“I thought it went down the TDU.”
“That’s what Langhorne originally said she did with it. Now I’m not so sure.” Kranuski fidgeted for a moment, scanning the nooks of his quarters. He could barely look at Webb; suddenly he felt dangerously vulnerable, as though he had made a critical error in chess. Gathering his composure, he asked, “How are the preparations coming along for getting under way?”
Webb was studying him closely. “Everything looks ship-shape. We ran a test on the A induction valve but couldn’t trace the glitch—probably a bad sensor. The tube itself seems to be working all right. Other than that, all critical systems are in the green. The tide’s just hitting peak. If we pull anchor now, we can run right out on the current.”
“Good. No word on those shore parties?”
Alton Webb’s broad face remained blank. “No, sir.”
“All right.” Kranuski sighed. “Prepare the bridge for surface maneuvers. Get everyone on station. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
BOBBY RUBIO
“Dad, Dad . . .” Bobby cries, panting as he approaches the exit booth. He can hear a tinny radio voice saying, “—the public is instructed to wait in their homes for the duration of the emergency, with the exception of essential medical, law-enforcement, and military personnel. To maintain critical lines of communication, phone usage is restricted to—”
Behind the fogged windows, his dad is bent out of sight, only the humped back of his brown garage uniform showing as he fiddles with something on the floor. Bobby opens the metal sliding door with a crash. “Dad—”
A silver-haired, steel blue mummy stares out at him. The ghoulish creature is wearing his dad’s brown coat and stooping over the big man’s lifeless body to remove the key ring from his trousers.
Bobby starts to scream, but the grim specter lunges at him and claps a long, rough hand over his mouth, pinning the boy’s frantic body in a painfully tight bear hug.
“Shhh,” admonishes the monster. In a voice that is slow and deep and oddly gentle, it says, “Don’t worry, I’m not one of them. I didn’t kill him; he killed himself. I just found him this way.”
Now Bobby notices that his dad’s shirtsleeve is rolled up and there is a blood-filled syringe hanging out of his arm. Bobby knows all too well what that means, knows it is the reason his parents had been through counseling and finally gotten divorced, but this final cop-out is not something he is prepared to accept.
Kicking wildly, Bobby tries to bite, to escape, to scream, He didn’t kill himself! He didn’t! He never would!
Out the back of the garage, across the exit driveway and beyond the overflow parking lot, Bobby can see a man riding a sputtering motorcycle down Fountain Street. The man is being pursued by dozens of crazy, half-naked blue people, mostly women—the street is full of them. The motorcycle’s engine keeps coughing and dying, and its rider keeps kick-starting it, barely keeping ahead of the pack. But the running stalemate can’t last. Finally, the man realizes it’s hopeless and ditches the bike, trying to dodge his attackers on foot. In final desperation he pulls a handgun out of his jacket and fires at the nearest one, popping away uselessly as it tackles him. A hurtling police cruiser swerves hard around the trouble and keeps right on going. There will be no help coming.
The terrible blue man releases Bobby and stands back. “We have to go up,” he says, indicating the concrete ramp. “Up top. It’s the only place.”
Shattered by shock and grief, Bobby moans, “Why? Why is this happening?”
“Don’t you know? Ask yourself what the King of Kings has in common with a monarch butterfly, then provide the means of mass production. But wait, you say: Where is our crucifix, our chrysalis? Do we weave a cocoon around our heart . . . or cast it in Portland cement?” He lurches out of the booth and starts up the ramp.
“How come you’re not like the rest of them?”
“Argyria—silver toxicity. Occupational hazard. I was blue before blue became the new black.”
The man is clearly nuts, but Bobby is still alarmed to see him go. “I can’t just leave my dad here!” he cries.
Without a backward glance, the man says, “Then you’ll join the millions of other satisfied customers.”
Bobby falls on top of his dad and weeps: “I’m sorry . . . I’m so sorry, Dad. Why did you do this? How could you leave me here?”
The voice on the radio continues to drone. “—BBC World Service reports that a similar crisis is sweeping Europe and Asia, and that the UN Security Council is convening an emergency session—just a moment . . . just a moment, please. I have just received word that due to technical difficulties we will be going off the air in five minutes—”
Then Bobby kisses his father’s cool, bristly cheek and gets up. “I’ll come back as soon as I can,” he promises tearfully. He goes out and gently shuts the door.
Out in the rain and sleet, those other blue people are approaching, pouring out of doorways and becoming an insane mob, a whirling, insectlike swarm that overwhelms everything in its path. Stragglers at the outer fringes are nearing the garage—any second now, they’ll see him.
Bobby still doesn’t understand why the old man’s skin is blue—blue like them—and yet he obviously doesn’t want to be caught by those things any more than Bobby does. That’s what prompts the boy to follow.
Trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, Bobby ducks low and scuttles up the ramp, relaxing a bit as he rounds the first turn and is out of view of the street. He still can’t see the old man—where does the weirdo think he’s going? The roof? Bobby has been all over this garage from top to bottom, and he knows it’s a dead end. The only refuge up there would be in the stairwells or the elevators—dismal places where drunks piss and women occasionally get raped. Is that it? Is the man luring him up there to kill him . . . or worse? Somehow Bobby doesn’t think so. For one thing, if the strange man had wanted to murder him, he could have done it right in the garage booth, and for another, Bobby hardly cares anymore.
From outside, Bobby hears echoes of the chaos engulfing the city. He hurries up. At the top of the ramp, where it opens to the sky, Bobby can see the man standing atop the huge concrete cylinder that supports the spiral exit ramp. “In here,” he says, offering Bobby a hand up.
In where? Bobby thinks dully, taking the boost and finding himself precariously balanced on the edge of a deep chasm. Whoa. The pillar is hollow inside, a vertical concrete tube thirty feet wide and three stories tall, with rusty rungs protruding from the wall. It shocks him out of his lethargy.
“The Green Heart,” the man says, starting down.
Clinging to the narrow ledge with both hands, Bobby stares at the top of a small tree. He doesn’t like this, but the city outside is hardly more promising: There are fires everywhere and sounds of mass panic. He has already been out there and doesn’t want to go back. Following the old man’s lead, he straddles the curved wall and lowers himself to the first rung. It’s a long drop if he slips. Hanging on for dear life, hugging the concrete, he makes his way down. At one point he almost
screams, thinking sharp claws are digging into his back, but it’s only the bare branches of the tree. There is grass below, and clumps of weeds. The cylinder wall is covered with velvety green moss. Hurrying down the last icy rungs, he drops to the ground. The noise and chaos seem far away, softened by the patter of drizzle.
The place is an overgrown garden, just thirty feet in diameter, with several small trees and a grassy hummock in the center.
“Over here,” the man says.
The hummock is actually a dugout shack, little more than a jumble of construction debris under a turf ceiling. It reminds Bobby of forts he and Felix built: plywood and cinder blocks and waste lumber, all covered with plastic tarp.
“Give me a hand,” the man says, pulling up a heavy slab of plywood to reveal an opening down into the ground. Bobby pitches in, and in a second he’s looking at a roomy bunker at least six feet deep, its walls shored up with dirt-packed stones. Cookware, tools, and personal articles are stuffed into cubbyholes. A stepladder leads down to a dry wooden platform on which there are rugs, a chair, a steamer trunk serving as a table, a gas lamp, a bookshelf, a bedroll, and a rusty filing cabinet. To one side is a small niche containing a camp stove, quantities of canned and dry goods, a washbasin, and a barrel of water. Altogether a regular little den—a Hobbit house with all its cozy bric-a-brac. Dim daylight filters in through plastic water bottles.
The man picks up a garbage bag and offers it to Bobby. “Want a donut?”
Bobby shakes his head.
“Still fresh—they just tossed ’em last night.”
“I’m not really hungry.”
“Suit yourself.”
While the man heats a pot of water for tea, Bobby looks up at that remote circle of sky. From here he can’t hear anything that’s going on in the city—Providence seems very far away. Does that mean he’s safe? Maybe it’s over for now, the running and terror. Maybe the worst of it is done with, and soon everything can go back to normal. Some things never will, of course, not anymore, but maybe some things can.
Xombies: Apocalypticon Page 15
