Xombies: Apocalypse Blues

by Greatshell, Walter

  Running in that deep snow was exactly the same as trying to run in a dream. You lunge forward as hard as you can, but your feet have no purchase and a maddening, dull force holds you back. It seems as if you are actually going slower than you would by walking. Our short sprint back to the road was such a Sisyphean ordeal, and just as we were reaching its hard-frozen shoulder, we realized it was no use anyway. The fence flew open and a blue school bus rolled out, wheezing to a stop before our frozen noses. They had us.

  “Everyone get behind me,” Albemarle said, out of breath.

  The door opened on a jolly Inuit waving us in. He was wearing a top hat. There was no one else on board.

  “What the fuck, man?” wailed Shawn. “Why’d you assholes have to kill him? You didn’t have to kill him!” The driver’s big bronze face was cheerily befuddled, uncomprehending. He seemed to have no idea what was going on.

  Albemarle raggedly told us to get on the bus, and what else was there to do? We trooped in like a work gang fresh from the gulag, collapsing into the front rows. I think we were more resigned than horrified. Personally I was grateful for the ride, even if we were just going to be returned to our doomed ghetto. And as the bus began to move, it did take us back the way we had come . . . for a moment. Then the driver found a wide enough spot in the road to turn around. Shortly, we returned to the gate and passed through with impunity, not that we cared.

  In a low, cracked voice, Jake sang, “Eighty-eight bottles of beer on the wall . . .” Then trailed off.

  Out the windows we could see what Gus DeLuca had seen.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  It was an airplane city, a City of the Planes, so crowded it was more rookery than airport, with hundreds of jumbo and lesser jets making up a dense belt—a great thorny briar of silver fins and fuselages—surrounding a many-lobed dome complex of such incredible size that at first glance I thought it was a glacier.

  “Mr. Albemarle,” I said as we hurtled toward it, “have you ever seen anything like this?”

  He spoke as if roused from a trance. “No. No . . . I don’t know what this is. Whatever it is, it’s not what’s supposed to be here. It’s not like any kind of air base I’ve ever seen. I don’t know what the hell it is.”

  “Mr. Cowper said it would be a ghost town.”

  “Well . . . it’s a boomtown now.”

  “Looks like an aviation junkyard,” said Julian. “You know, a graveyard, like where elephants go to die.”

  “Graveyard my ass,” said Cole. “These motherfuckers are livin’ large.”

  He was right—as tangled up as they appeared, all the jets were draped like racehorses, warm and well cared for. We rolled down a boulevard surrounded by pristine aircraft of every type, from hulking 747s to sleek baby Gulfstreams, each one a giant aluminum flower in a precise arrangement. Far from being abandoned to the elements, these aircraft were occupied . Like RVs in a trailer park, they were hooked up to utilities, their bright oval windows aglow with toasty domesticity. Watching us pass from those windows were carefree men in bathrobes!

  “Goddamn Happy Acres,” snarled Albemarle.

  Amid the cozy fleet was a network of tent workshops and support equipment that was a village unto itself, populated by the breed of men who still had to labor in the cold. This was the essence of civilization, the haves and the have-nots, and it made me realize I’d been such a fool. Such a stupid little girl—what had I been thinking? That we had inherited the world? That we could demand some kind of justice? It was funny, really, my pathetic disappointment at having to accept a smaller role in the scheme of things. I had never seen it coming. Stupid me.

  Alongside the trucks and tractors I could see a number of dogsleds, and for some reason this was comforting to me. The dogs didn’t care. I looked at those contented huskies curled up in the snow and thought, It’s just the way it is.

  The bus pulled into a covered area full of other vehicles. Hot-air blowers were running, and it was slightly less freezing than outside. Our bearlike driver got out and waved us after him, sauntering down an aisle between repair bays. There weren’t any other people around, and I had the feeling they had scattered like mice at our approach. We came to the edge of the motor pool and paused. This was the inner circle of the compound. Only a bare strip of no-man’s-land separated us from the gigantic domes in the middle, which rose from the permafrost like an archipelago made up of thousand-foot-wide fungi, with smaller polyps branching off. But if its outward structure was organic, its skeleton was geometric: visible through the milky surface membrane was a hexagonal web of supporting members, fine as capillaries in the human eye—at least from a distance.

  “Valhalla,” grunted the driver, pointing. “You go.”

  This was apparently the closest he dared approach.

  “I don’t like this,” said Jake, looking skittish.

  “Take it easy. You’re okay,” said Albemarle.

  Shawn, standing apart, turned on him. “Dude, I wish you would stop saying that. Every time you say that, somebody gets wasted.”

  “Cut it out,” said Hector.

  “Oh, like you’re okay?”

  “Come on, man,” said Lemuel.

  “Hey, all I’m saying is we’re all fucked, and I don’t need somebody telling me I’m okay! Unless there’s the rave of the century in there, I’m not okay! Unless there’s a poetry slam going on under there, and they’re calling for entries, I’m not okay! Unless there’s a phone in there and my mom is on the line telling me my spoken-word CD is in heavy rotation on college stations across the country, I’m not okay! None of us is okay! The only person I know who’s probably okay is Tyrell, and that’s because he’s in fucking Canada! Which is where we should all be!”

  “Cut it out,” I said miserably. “This isn’t helping.”

  “I’m okay,” said Jake.

  We left the driver and ventured into the open, heading for a large portal directly across the way. Our perception of distance was off—it took us longer to get there than we expected, and the nearer we got, the more peculiar the whole thing appeared. It was a colossal brood sow with prefabricated structures around its base like feeding piglets.

  “What is this?” I wondered aloud.

  “It’s an inflatable building,” said Albemarle. “I’ve heard of something like this. It’s supported by air pressure, so there’s no limit to how big it can be.”

  The entrance we were approaching was certainly a huge thing, a raised loading dock wide enough for a dozen semitrailers. It had a modular, impermanent look. As we climbed to the platform and pushed through clear insulating flaps, we could hear Muzak coming from inside: the noodlings of a generic saxophone. It was such a perversely ordinary sound that we were rapt, listening. Then a prerecorded voice-over cut in:

  “Welcome to Valhalla. You are now entering a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mogul Cooperative, a transnational partnership dedicated to preserving and restoring the benefits of civilization. But we can’t do it without you. When you give your allegiance to MoCo, you are protected by the largest coherent military power in the world today; you are cared for by a Medical Research Division with all the resources of a major hospital—and which alone pursues a cure for Agent X—and you join an organization with branches in over thirty countries, where a network of export professionals tirelessly combs the Earth in search of the Things You Need. Isn’t this reason enough to say, ‘MoCo Is My Future’?”

  “You’ve gotta be shittin’ me,” Albemarle scoffed.

  Then the tape was turned off, and a testy male voice came on, flat as the order taker at a drive-thru. “We’ve been informed that one of you was killed at the perimeter wall, and I’d like to offer our very sincere condolences. I’m afraid we operate within a very strictly enforced boundary here, and our defense system does not distinguish between friend or foe. Without being forewarned of your arrival we had no way of preventing what happened.”

  “Well, what was the idea of stranding us out there in th
e goddamn boondocks?” Albemarle shouted to the air.

  As if correcting a petulant child, the voice said, “Your people at Thule are being briefed right now, as a matter of fact. If you had only waited at billeting, the tragedy would have been avoided. We were getting to you as quickly as we could. Since you were provided with the basic necessities of survival, we didn’t think a one-day wait was excessive, certainly not by ordinary bureaucratic standards, and particularly in light of the fact that we are dealing here with a worldwide disaster of such extreme proportions that the only previous event it can be compared to is the extinction of the dinosaurs.”

  I have to say this speech made me feel very small, but Albemarle was unfazed. “And what about the remains we found outside?” he said. “Were they impatient, too?”

  There was silence from above.

  “Oh man,” muttered Cole. “What’d you have to say that for, man? That shit was not necessary.”

  Tentatively, the voice said, “If you are speaking of the bodies at the perimeter, I can only reiterate that survival dictates everything we do. Those men chose to be billeted outside this compound because they objected to a legal transfer of authority that was taking place. They were informed of the risk. At some point the contagion must have appeared among them, and they rushed the automatic defenses. It was over before anyone here even knew what was happening. Could you enter the air lock, please?”

  There was a pneumatic hiss, and a big door rumbled aside. Inside was a brightly lit room that reminded me of a racquet-ball court. High in the ceiling was a glass booth, and behind its windows we could make out the man speaking. He was young, clean-shaven, and wore a dark baseball cap. He waved.

  “‘Legal transfer of authority’ my ass,” Albemarle muttered.

  “Come on, Ed,” Hector hissed at his stepfather. “You’re drunk. Save the complaints for later.”

  “Listen, smart-ass, once we go through that door, there may be no later. We don’t know what they’ve got waiting for us in there.”

  “It can’t be any worse than what’s waiting for us out here.”

  Annoyed by our hesitation, the man in the booth said, “There’s no danger if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “What happens if it gets a hole in it?” Mr. Albemarle asked. “Does it all go flat?”

  “No, but it won’t have what we call ‘optimal rigidity.’ There are helium cells and heated air to provide backup suspension. A hole would be unlikely anyway—the envelope is an extremely robust Vectran composite developed by NASA—but if there was one, it would trigger sensors in the fabric, and we’d be right on it. Step inside, please.”

  “Beautiful,” Albemarle grumbled, as we went in. The door thundered shut and rubber valves wheezed tight around the frame.

  The man said, “You may experience a little discomfort as the pressure equalizes.”

  Warm air came rushing in through vents as if blow-drying us. It pressed on our ears and sinuses, some more than others. Hector and Lemuel winced, but for me it was no worse than being stuffed up from a cold. The breeze slackened, then stopped. We waited for the inner door to open, but it remained sealed.

  Albemarle asked, “What now?”

  “Now comes the trickiest part.” Electric motors came on, driving a grappling system that ran on tracks in the ceiling. I realized the glass booth was the crane cockpit. Suspended from cables was a metal box, a freight car, and it began slowly descending to the floor. When it touched down, the man said, “Go inside and leave your clothes in the container to be sterilized.”

  “What are we gonna wear in the meantime?”

  “Nothing, until you go through decon. It’s standard procedure for all newcomers: decontamination, health screening, and civic preparation. Nothing too complicated, I assure you.”

  Albemarle opened the sliding door. Inside was a chamber containing a large empty bin with a biohazard symbol stenciled on it, then a narrow tunnel to a second chamber at the opposite end. There were cartoon instructions all along the way. “Nothing like a little privacy,” he said. “What’s she s’posed to do?”

  “I’m all right,” I said. “It’s no big deal.” I had survived so much already it just seemed absurd to quibble about nudity. This was a first for me because I had always been so paranoid about my body.

  As long as they knew I was all right with it, no one else had any objections. We went in and stripped off all our soaked clothes, everyone doing their best not to look at anything or even say anything. The door had closed on its own, and we discovered that it didn’t open from the inside.

  “Well, we’re locked in,” said Julian, covering his crotch.

  Albemarle stepped into the tunnel. Without warning, a torrent of hot spray blasted him from all sides. “It’s all right!” he shouted back. “Come on!”

  Single file, we all followed, whooping like baboons at the force and heat of the spray, as well as the strong chemical smell. But it wasn’t exactly unpleasant. In fact, once our bodies adjusted to the pain, it became cathartic ecstasy, scouring away our grief along with whatever hapless microbes we carried. Foam and billowing steam made it hard to move forward without bumping into other slippery bodies, but after a few minutes we stopped troubling over it and just gave in to the stinging peace.

  The shower went on for a long time, or maybe just seemed to compared with the half-minute spritzes I’d become accustomed to on the boat. There were several stages in the process, including a final one where we donned dark goggles and were baked with UV light. By that point I was almost serene, though without the noise and lashing spray, it was a little bit awkward to be standing there nude with all the boys and hairy old Mr. Albemarle.

  There was a jarring vibration, and we all had to steady ourselves as the whole room rose in the air.

  Amid alarmed complaints, Jake said, “Elevator going up.”

  It stopped, then began gliding sideways. After a few seconds it shut down and stayed still. We could hear sounds of a heavy door being unlatched and thrown back, but it wasn’t our door.

  “Is it safe to come out?” Albemarle bellowed. He tried the door and found it unlocked. Instead of a thirty-foot drop to the floor, there was a room on the other side. “Well, whattaya know,” he said.

  It was a dressing room lined with racks of clothing and towels. All the clothes were like hospital scrubs: loose drawstring pants and baggy blouses, with only cloth booties to wear on our feet. Everything was white or off-white. It was very comfortable stuff, and I was especially glad to put it on because I kept catching the guys sneaking tortured looks at me through the mirrors. A couple of them—Lemuel and, of all people, Julian—were having trouble controlling their bodily reactions, and were at great pains to conceal it. I wished I could have told them it was all right but thought that would only make things worse.

  When the eight of us were dressed, Cole said, “We look like a damn karate class.”

  “Or kendo,” Jake said. “What was that about ‘optimal rigidity’?” He smirked at Lemuel and Julian.

  There were four doorways off the changing room: The first opened onto a gleaming-clean institutional bathroom, of which we all availed ourselves; the second was locked; and the third led to a large dormitory with forty or fifty freshly made-up cots, a paradise of crisp cotton sheets and soft pillows. The motherly smell of clean linen actually brought tears to my eyes.

  Albemarle interrupted the bliss. “Don’t anybody get any ideas. Nobody hits the sack until I get some answers.”

  We dragged ourselves away, checking out the fourth door. It opened onto a sight even more welcome than a bedroom: a banquet hall. Dozens of tables stood folded against the walls, leaving the floor empty except for a single table and eight chairs. There were also eight glasses of orange juice, eight huge cheeseburgers with french fries, eight bowls of vegetable soup, eight bars of Swiss chocolate, and eight plastic binders.

  Each binder had a note on it which said, Welcome, new Citizen of Valhalla, Official Headquarters of
MoCo. Our regulations require a 24-hour period of observation and quarantine before you may begin the orientation phase of your citizenship. Enjoy the opportunity to relax and begin familiarizing yourself with the duties and privileges afforded you as a Citizen of Valhalla, MoCo. Thank you! The binders contained handbooks full of propaganda and corporate jargon.

  “Listen to this,” Julian said as we sat down. “‘Company History: Mogul Cooperative was founded over twenty years ago by an international group of visionary business leaders from many different fields, but who shared a single goal: to provide safe haven from worldly cycles of boom and bust. These men’s investment in the future has made possible the comfort and security—perhaps the very existence—that you now enjoy. Since its humble beginnings as a gerontology institute led by Nobel Laureate Dr. Uri Miska, MoCo has become a country unto itself, a borderless nation-state with no single language, culture, or religion, but with an unswerving commitment to long-term prosperity and growth. MoCo employs corporate principles of efficiency to meet the ever-changing demands of today’s world . . . and tomorrow’s.’”

  “What crap,” Albemarle said, mouth full.

  “What’s gerontology?” asked Cole.

  “Aging,” I said. “The science of aging.”

  None of us could be bothered to think about it just then—we were too busy digging in.

  “Mr. Albemarle,” I said, as we drowsily contemplated our full bellies. “One thing is bugging me. I was on the bridge when Captain Coombs and the rest of the shore party met the representatives from the base. There was some Air Force colonel there, or at least that’s what he said he was. Lowenthal. He didn’t say anything about Valhalla or this corporate-sounding deal they’ve got going here.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know,” replied Albemarle. “There’s definitely been a major regime change around here since the commander got his orders. The old bait and switch. They got the boat, and we get hamburgers.”