Apocalypso x-3

by Walter Greatshell

  Elvis called out, “Thank you very much!” then vanished from the roof. The Xombies scattered with him, abandoning their instruments and costumes like a squad of poltergeists. Suddenly, it was very quiet.

  Gathering his wits, Chace said, “Son of a bitch, my rod’s gone out.”

  He turned around to deal with Sandoval, but Sandoval was gone. As Chace’s eyes traced the only path the man could have taken, he was blinded by the sun glaring off the water… a glare that had not been there before. Something else was missing. His mouth dropped open as he realized the cheap magician’s trick that the Devil had just played on him.

  The yacht had disappeared.

  As the EMT vehicle sank, freezing water had galvanized its stunned passengers to action-air bags or not, that crash had hurt. Trading breaths from an oxygen mask, they waited until the ambulance was completely flooded, then Ray led them out the broken windshield. He was a good swimmer, a champion in summer camp, but the water back then was never so cold.

  Surfacing their heads in the narrow space under the dock, they could hear loud music starting above.

  Ray said, “Okay, this is it-wish me luck.”

  “Fuck luck,” Todd said. “Just hurry, dude, I’m freezing.”

  Working his way to the end of the dock, Ray took a last deep breath, then ducked below and swam under the yacht. Its draft was quite shallow for such a large boat, designed for scuba trips on Caribbean reefs. Knowing he was taking a dangerous gamble, he felt his way along the keel to the dive well, praying the external hull panel was still off.

  The panel was to cut drag when under sail, but in port it was left open as a convenient latrine for the carpenters since there was no other working toilet. As beautiful as La Fantasma looked from the outside, the vessel’s interior was still all raw plywood, its planned refurbishing postponed indefinitely by the long work holiday of Agent X.

  The dive well was open, a mirrored square under the hull. Crashing his reflection, Ray came up in the dim green light of the well, gasping for air. He was shivering uncontrollably, his nose dripping blood. It was so cold he could see his breath. The second door was just above his head, a watertight hatch into the main hold. It, too, was open. Barely able to feel his extremities, Ray cautiously climbed the ladder and peered above the raised rim. Immediately, he realized there was trouble.

  To his left, through the doorway of the galley compartment, he could see a woman’s legs-presumably the legs of Sandoval’s associate, Chandra Stevens. Her legs were awkwardly splayed as if she were unconscious or dead. There were signs of a struggle and food ransacked from the storage bins. To Ray’s right rose the aft companionway, at the top of which were two heavily armed men staring out the port-side window. There were many more weapons lying loose all over the cabin: shotguns, pistols, machine guns, rocket launchers, grenades, and multiple cases of ammunition.

  Too cold to wait, Ray grabbed a loaded revolver, and said, “P-p-put down your g-guns or I’ll shoot.”

  One of the men spun with his shotgun, and Ray surprised himself by firing first. It was loud and quick: the bullet struck the man in the chest, and he tumbled down the stairs. The second man froze and set down his gun.

  “Whoa, whoa,” he said. “We’re cool, baby, we’re cool. Damn, did you just swim up in here?”

  “What did you assholes do to her?” Ray demanded.

  “The doctor lady? Nothing, I swear! She hurt herself resisting so hard-hurt us, too. But we weren’t about to kill her; she’s too valuable to lose. We just wanted to throw in with y’all since we could obviously use each other’s help. Chace is gonna make this his personal flagship, and he needs an experienced crew. I’m Brother Lake Snyder, and that poor bastard was Father Frederick Arnott. But it don’t matter now-what matters is obviously you’re somebody who can get shit done. We need people like you for the big march on Washington.”

  Barely listening, Ray knew something had to be done fast, or the people under the dock were going to die of hypothermia. He said, “Okay, take all your weapons off, all of them. You’re going for a swim.”

  “Are you crazy? I can’t swim!”

  “Do it! Do it now!” He stepped aside to give the man room.

  Lake Snyder wavered, then disgustedly shed his arsenal and peered into the green light of the well. “This is ridiculous.”

  “Get in there, or I’ll shoot you!”

  “No you won’t,” said the dead man from the floor.

  Turning, Ray felt something hard strike him behind the knees, causing a bright flash of agony. Going down, he thought, Dummy. As the men seized and disarmed him, he could see that the man he thought he had killed was wearing a bulletproof vest. Just playing dead-of course.

  “You got him, man!” whooped Brother Snyder.

  Just as he said this, a woman’s face rose out of the dive well behind him. It was one of the Immunes, the one named Fran. Her lips blue with cold, her long hair stringy as wet seaweed, she held the oxygen tank from the ambulance, and before either man could react, she brought it down like a sledgehammer on Lake Snyder’s head.

  “Shit!” cried Father Arnott. He went for his gun, but Ray kicked him in the face and fought him for it. It was a short fight: the older man was much bigger and stronger, an experienced warrior, while Ray was just a skinny kid who liked to dance. As the man broke Ray’s grip and knocked him over, there was a loud bang, and Father Arnott toppled to the deck with a hole in his head.

  “Gotcha,” Sandoval said from the top of the stairs.

  “What’s going on?” Ray asked.

  “I just cast us off. We’re drifting out with the tide, and in a minute I’m going to fire up the engines.”

  “How? Where’s Chace?”

  “Chace decided to stick around for the encore.”

  Deena and Todd emerged from the dive well, both shivering uncontrollably. Ray closed the hatch behind them, dogging it tight, then he went to see about Chandra Stevens. He knew her only slightly as one of Sandoval’s many science connections, along with Alice Langhorne and Uri Miska. In the aftermath of Agent X, they were a very select group.

  Propped in a corner, the gray-haired woman was conscious, her eyes trying to focus. When Ray reached for her face, she twisted away, moaning.

  “Relax, it’s okay, I’m just taking the duct tape off your mouth.”

  She went limp, nodding.

  As gently as possible, he peeled the tape off, and said, “I’m just going to untie you, okay? Hold still.”

  “Who are you?”

  “A friend. I’m here with Jim Sandoval.”

  “Jim’s here?”

  “Yes.”

  She relaxed and closed her eyes as the engine rumbled to life.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  SAILING

  Ray Despineau awoke to the smell of coffee. For a long time he just stayed in his bunk, enjoying the thumping motion of the waves, his bleary eyes scanning the familiar bookshelf.

  Lots of sailing books: knot tying, navigation, and other basic seamanship. A few old-timey sea stories: Treasure Island, Two Years Before the Mast, The Sea-Wolf, Melville’s White-Jacket and Typee. He had read them all.

  He felt pretty good, though his memory of recent events was sketchy. Even not-so-recent events: In the first few minutes of waking, he forgot everything that had happened since New Year’s Eve. He blanked out the entire Xombie Apocalypse and imagined he must be aboard Sandoval’s boat for a pleasure cruise, perhaps to Bermuda. That would be awesome. Flashes of something unspeakably hideous kept poking through the calm, but he refused to think about it.

  He heard snoring from the lower berth and leaned over to see who it was. It was a familiar face, the face of a friend, yet also a face that had no business in that boat. A face that instantly evoked everything they had lived through together for the past six months. Todd Holmes. Todd’s ratty, scorched dreadlocks told the whole tale.

  Ray remembered.

  He got up and boosted himself out the forward hatch.
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  It was a beautiful summer day, breezy and cool, with the sun mounted like a diamond in the satin blue sky. Just a hint of chop-it was a crime not to let the spinnaker out. He did so, and the boat leaped forward, heeling steeply as it bounced over the swells.

  Jim Sandoval hastily appeared from below, looking weary and overcaffeinated. He had rigged up the auto tiller so he didn’t have to man the helm every second. The device was basically a hydraulic piston connected to a GPS, a robot arm that steered the boat in a fixed direction by constantly making small course corrections. But it still required someone to constantly stand watch.

  “You’re awake,” Sandoval said, relieved.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry I slept so long. How long was I out?”

  “Almost twenty-four hours. I guess you had some catching up to do. We passed New York and New Jersey during the night-you would’ve thought it was the coast of Borneo. No, Borneo would have more lights. I figured as long as the weather’s holding up, we might as well blow past the big metroplex, just to avoid any more refugee situations. We should be around Maryland now.”

  “Jeez, you should have woken me up so I could take a turn standing watch.”

  “I know, but you were so zonked out, I didn’t have the heart to wake you. Chandra and Fran have been sharing the duty so you guys could sleep.”

  “Have you seen any other boats?”

  “No. We’ve been staying out of sight of land as much as possible.”

  “Right… definitely.” Ray still vividly remembered the sick feeling of being approached by boatloads of desperate refugees while the submarine had sat at anchor. It was not something he ever wanted to repeat.

  A surprising number of people had initially survived the plague by taking to the water, but a month in they were all dying of hunger and thirst. Many of the boys camped on the sub’s deck wanted to offer what little help they could, but the Navy crewmen were adamant about not letting outsiders anywhere near the boat. Warning shots were fired, leading to a brief gunfight in which the sub crew’s superior firepower and marksmanship quickly knocked out the smaller boat’s wheelhouse. Ray would never forget the terrible sight of Xombies running amok aboard that rudderless refugee ship.

  La Fantasma had quite an arsenal on board, including automatic weapons, long-range sniper rifles, and shoulder-fired missiles. Sandoval had made sure the yacht was well equipped to defend itself. No question the man was a survivor, and an arrogant son of a bitch, but Ray had never been more grateful to have him around.

  Sandoval said, “Speaking of which, I’m not sure that spinnaker’s such a hot idea. It’s a bit… grandiose. We don’t want to give anybody any ideas.”

  “Sorry, I’ll crank it in.”

  “No, you may as well leave it up now. We’re almost there. How are you feeling?”

  “Fine, I think. You look like you could use some sleep. Why don’t you crash for a while and let me stand watch?”

  “Gladly, but first there’s something I need to talk to you about.” Sandoval took a small aerosol can out of his coat pocket. “I need a shot of this stuff about every twelve hours, or I’ll turn back into a Xombie.”

  “What?”

  “It’s no big deal. I’m only telling you so you don’t let me oversleep and miss a dose. I administered the last one about seven hours ago, so you have to wake me at noon.”

  “What is it?”

  “Just a little pick-me-up. Why do you think Xombies won’t touch us? How do you think I came back from the undead? It’s because every day we all have a special cocktail-a little Bloody Mary, made with real blood! Immune plasma, that is. It’s the simplest kind of oral vaccine: in your case, just a matter of mixing a tiny amount with any beverage, about one part plasma per thirty thousand parts juice or water, however you prefer your sangria.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “It’s not as if you can taste it or anything. You’ve been drinking it all along.”

  “Oh my God,” Ray said. “Are you serious? You turned into a Xombie and back? How?”

  “I told you. It’s an experimental treatment they’re working on at Xanadu.”

  “What exactly is this Xanadu?”

  “It’s a private research station in Washington, DC, administered by an industrial consortium that took over the remains of the Mogul Cooperative. They’ve come up with a method of artificially inducing Agent X in very sick patients.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s restorative. The Maenad morphocyte is like a miracle tonic-a real-life Fountain of Youth. The problem is, it starves the body of oxygen, which causes brain damage before the benefits have time to kick in. That’s why Xombies are such maniacs. The trick is to actually speed up the rate of infection, and that’s where this stuff comes in. Don’t touch it! It’s loaded with pure poison: two time-release capsules, one containing a cocktail of potassium cyanide and Agent X, the other a dose of antibodies from immune women. They release about five minutes apart. For faster recovery, pure oxygen can be added to purge the body of Agent X. But it’s a little traumatic the first time, I gotta say.”

  Ray asked, “So how many of these Immunes are there?”

  “Not many. Most of them were killed off during the hysteria of the Maenad Epidemic. But the ones that do exist are priceless-Xombies won’t touch them. In fact, Maenads may actually protect them. I found three Immunes by bribing the Coast Guard to screen seaborne refugees for women of that age range. They were glad to hand them over. Chandra and I were trying to transfer them to Xanadu when Chace’s men intercepted them. As far as I was concerned, we had no choice but to try to recover them. So I entered into a partnership arrangement with Chace, assuming the role of the Prophet.

  “The fish story went that I was a decorated military chaplain who specialized in benedictions for right-wing extremist groups. On the day of the Maenad Epidemic, I graduated from lay priest to Archbishop, having been granted special dispensation to receive the pallium-my new insignia of office-from a provisional papal legate rather than from the Pope in Rome. This was easy to arrange through Mogul channels, since the Vatican was in some turmoil, and there were fire sales on high office of every kind, including the Pope. All such titles were up for grabs. Only brute force mattered, and as a charter member of MoCo, I could summon quite a bit.

  “I found my soul mate in Apostle Chace, whose public battles against abortion, same-sex marriage, and naked statues were legend. The postapocalyptic truce we arranged between our separate faiths was a model of cooperation that surely guaranteed us both a place at the Lord’s right hand.

  “It was almost too easy,” Sandoval said. “To these guys, everything’s a sign from God; they’ve been expecting this for years.”

  “Oh, they knew this was coming? Because I wish someone had told me about it.”

  “Maybe they did, and you weren’t listening.”

  “Now you’re scaring me.”

  “What I mean to say is, I tried to warn you and your sister to get to the submarine plant by midnight. Why didn’t you?”

  Ray was so shocked it took him a second to speak. “We got hung up in traffic half the night. Maybe you could have tried sending the car a little earlier. Like about a week.”

  “I depended on you, Ray. And you let me down.”

  “How did I let you down? You let us down, you asshole! It’s because of you my sister’s dead! If you knew that was gonna happen, you could have made absolutely fucking sure we were at that plant. You could have just told us the truth!”

  Sandoval nodded, squinting through tears. He cleared his throat. “I know. I’m sorry, Ray.”

  “Yeah, fuck you! Fuck you, man.”

  As the morning wore on, the wind picked up, sea and sky turning slate gray. Flurries of hail spattered the deck like rice. Everyone else was still asleep, and Ray was basking in the novelty of being alone on the ocean.

  He was not a tremendously experienced solo sailor, having only crewed a few pleasure cruises in his life. His father was the
real seaman, a lifelong Navy officer who had ultimately estranged himself from the Navy just as he estranged himself from Ray.

  Both his parents were products of the postwar era, a fair-weather family who fled from Ray and each other at the time he needed them most. He pitied them their disappointed lives and wondered what had happened to them in the madness of Agent X. Not that he cared much.

  Suddenly, Ray realized he was not alone-the immune girl Deena was peering at him from the companionway. “Hey,” Ray said.

  “Hey,” said Deena.

  “How are you? Feeling okay?” Ray still found it hard to believe that Sandoval had not only freed all of them from the Soul Patrol’s gulag but delivered them safely to this boat. And acted as though it was nothing unusual.

  The girl said, “Your friend Todd is wicked seasick. He’s in there throwing up.”

  “Ech-I’m sorry. You’re okay, though?”

  “I think so. I’m kind of hungry. Is there any food?”

  “Yeah, it’s stowed in the compartment under the main cabin. Actually, I’m starved, too. You think you could make us some lunch?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “And something hot to drink, tea or coffee.”

  “Sure. Can I ask you something?”

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “Oh… ”

  “I’m kidding. What?”

  “In those clothes you look kind of… butch.”

  Ray laughed. “That’s because I’m a dude.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “Hey, I was out of uniform, how were you to know? And Deena?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m really sorry about your friend Ashleigh. I tried to save her.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “I know, but still… ”

  She touched his arm. “Hey, man, Ashleigh had problems. After her sister died, she was never the same, so don’t take it on yourself. There was nothing anyone could have done.”

  Ray broke down, and Deena comforted him. “Sorry,” he said, pulling himself together. “It’s just that I lost my sister, too. Now I really feel like an asshole.”