“It’ll take all day for the sub to get out of the bay. Maybe we can find a boat and catch up with it.”
“How? Those Reaper dudes scooped up every boat in the harbor when they abandoned their barge. They all got trashed. Face it, we missed our chance.”
“Then we can take a car and beat the submarine down to Newport. There must be tons of boats there.”
“And then what? You saw what happened to those guys who attacked the sub.”
“Yeah.” Todd wished he could forget it. He and Ray had witnessed the horrible spectacle from shore: those bulging masses of flesh that rose from the boat’s missile bays and exploded into a thousand frenzied tentacles, yanking El Dopa’s assault force down to oblivion. “What the hell was that?”
“I don’t know, but something’s seriously wrong in there. Whatever it is, I don’t want a closer look.”
“Well, where would you like to go?”
“I just want to get out of this suit. I’m thirsty, man.”
“Me, too. Let’s just start by finding a drink.”
“How the hell are we gonna be able to drink anything wearing these helmets?”
“It’s called a straw, doofus.”
They left the waterfront area of India Point and headed inland on Gano Street. There were several small businesses along the way, including a donut shop and a convenience store. It was the same street that had been swarming with Xombies a few days earlier, when the boys had first come ashore seeking supplies. Bad idea. They didn’t have the Reaper suits then and were completely defenseless against the blue onslaught that wiped out over thirty boys in under thirty minutes. It was the meat-armored Reapers who saved their lives.
This time there were neither Reapers nor Xombies, and no reason to fear them even if there were. The boys were covered.
Todd and Ray checked the donut shop first. They were unsurprised to find the four-month-old pastries inedible, but were disappointed to find the drink coolers cleaned out and the sink taps dry.
“Look out—zombie donuts!” Todd yelled, pitching Munchkins at Ray’s flesh helmet. The stale balls exploded into crumbs.
“Hey, cut it out, man,” Ray said lethargically.
Todd threw a few more, but Ray could not be incited to a donut war, so Todd gave up. They went next door to the convenience store, heartened by the big Pepsi sign out front. Nothing—it was even worse than the donut shop.
“What the hell, man.”
There were not even any remains of food—rats, mice, and maggots had erased all organic matter. Anything canned or bottled had been efficiently looted; the shelves were empty. And the pillaging had happened recently, a few days ago at most; the mud tracks were fresh. This wasn’t the act of random looters in the heat of panic. It was Reapers.
“Shit, man, that’s right,” Todd said. “We’re not gonna find anything around here—the Reapers reaped it all. They stripped this whole area, remember?”
“Awesome.”
“But they couldn’t have gone through every house. Come on, we just have to go door-to-door.”
“You mean break into people’s homes, Holmes?”
“Yeah, why not? It’s not like they’re coming back.”
“I don’t know … it’s like desecrating the dead or something.”
“Not really. It’s just putting stuff to good use that would otherwise go to waste.”
“Hey, Todd?”
“Yeah?”
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
“I know; I’ve been holding my piss for the last hour.”
“It’s not just piss.”
“Well, just try to hold it.”
“Too late.”
They were prisoners of the flesh, golems of raw meat, doomed to wander the wasteland until they drowned in their own filth. Ray expected to die a little sooner, having been shot through the side, but this was only speculation since there was no way of examining or treating the wound. At least it didn’t hurt, and the bleeding had stopped, so there was that.
Out of forty boys who had come ashore, just these two survived. Did they survive out of superior skill or intelligence? Was it their unusual grit that enabled them to outlast their fellows? Were the others just weak?
No—much as they might have wished it were so, both Todd and Ray knew they were nothing special. This was what haunted them: the thought that stronger, smarter, and more deserving boys had died in their stead. Brave dudes like Sal DeLuca and Kyle Hancock had sacrificed themselves so that lazy nubs like Todd and Ray could escape. It wasn’t fair. But as Todd shuffled along the barren streets of his hometown, staring out through misshapen eyeholes at the living nightmare that was his only companion, and knew that he, too, was a horror, both of them damned to this ridiculous, incomprehensible fate, he realized there was perhaps some justice to it after all.
Maybe the dead were the lucky ones.
As they turned a corner, they encountered a blue Elvis. Elvis was dressed in a blue-and-white polyester suit covered with sequins, a gold-lined cape, and boots of blue suede.
Blue Elvis asked, “You boys lookin’ for someone?”
“Who the hell are you?” Ray asked.
Todd said, “Don’t talk to that Xombie, man, are you crazy?”
“He asked me a question.”
“Ignore it and keep walking.”
Elvis stayed with them like a persistent panhandler. “You fellas look lost,” he said. “Maybe I can help you find what you’re looking for.”
Todd spun on him. “What the hell kind of Xombie are you? Get the fuck away from us, man.”
“Now what kind of way is that to talk to a fellow traveler on the road of life?” The blue man suddenly became very animated, running ahead and calling their attention to a seething mass of ants around a crack in the asphalt. “Take a look here, right here. You know what this is? This is a war we’ve got going here, with two races killin’ each other: the Black and the Red. I been watching ’em all day.” He shook his slick-coiffed head. “Look at ’em go, man!”
“I hate bugs,” said Ray.
“Hate? They’re just doing what comes natural. Hate is in their DNA, just like it’s in ours. Only way to stop ’em from fighting is to change their fundamental genetic structure. They won’t do it voluntarily, I can tell you! But hate, gee whiz. How can you hate anything in this beautiful world?” He took off his sunglasses, wiping an imaginary tear. “Especially knowing it’s all gonna be gone soon.”
“Oh shit,” Ray hissed. “It’s him. Todd, I think it’s him.”
“Who?”
“Miska!”
“No way.” Todd turned to the blue man. “You’re Uri Miska?”
“I’m partial to folks callin’ me the King.”
“See, it’s not him.”
“Just kidding!” The man shook his head affably. In a British accent, he declaimed, “The king is dead! Long live the king!”
Todd said, “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
The man blocked their way, bowing stiffly. “Uraeus Miska, at your service!”
“What? Seriously?”
“Surprised? Yes, it’s me. To paraphrase another great emancipator: I had a dream.” He raised his arms to the sky. “A dream to which all men expired!”
Todd hissed, “This is bullshit. Dude is crazy.”
“Congratulations!” Miska cried.
“What for?”
“Finding me. They say a good man is hard to find. Considering how many people keep finding me, I must not be very good … or perhaps it’s that I make myself too conspicuous. What do you think?” He struck a heroic pose.
Ray couldn’t hold back anymore. “Oh my God,” he said. “Can you help us? We need to get out of these suits.”
“Why? Clothes make the man.”
“Seriously, sir, we’re in trouble. If you help us, we’ll do whatever we can to help you.”
“What makes you think I can help you … or you me?”
“You’re a scientis
t! You’re famous! You invented Agent X!”
“I had nothing to do with those ‘suits’—that’s somebody else’s workmanship. Check the deli. I hope you got a money-back guarantee.”
“They’re not ours! We only stole them so we could get away!”
“Hoist by your own petard, eh?”
“You have to help us, please.”
“Well, let me think about it. Sit down, and I’ll tell you a story. Did you know we’re standing on the site of a battle? Before the ants, I mean. This was the War between the Black and the Blue.”
“Come on, man!” In desperation, Todd said, “Help us or we’ll kill you.”
“That would be a neat trick,” Miska said. “Come now—sit, sit.”
The boys suddenly jerked into motion like meat puppets, their bodies wrenched against their will as the flesh armor moved them. Insanely strong and none too gentle, it forced them to plop down cross-legged across from Miska.
“What the fuck, man!” Todd cried, in pain. He felt like he had been wrung out like a wet sponge.
Weeping, Ray groaned, “Awesome.”
“Sorry,” Miska said, sitting down himself. “I’m still getting the hang of it.”
“What is this, man? What the hell are you doing to us?”
“That flesh you’re wearing answers to me. Isn’t that something? I originally developed the technology to control prosthetic implants. Every Maenad morphocyte is an independent nanotransceiver, tuned to an electrode array in my cerebral cortex. It triggers a cellular rather than a neuromuscular response, which allows a rather extraordinary degree of control. It’s just a matter of mastering the complexity—learning to ride a bike. Or a million bikes. The cells themselves amplify and relay the signal, promulgating in iron-rich hemoglobin and even the Earth itself to form a vast, wireless data array—a true cellular network. What I call my Billion-Fingered Fist.”
Mind reeling, Todd asked, “Are you saying you can control the Xombies?”
“Yes.”
“You fuck! You made them kill our friends and families, you motherfucker! You killed everybody!”
“I know, it sounds pretty bad when you put it that way. I suppose that explains why folks are so mad at me.”
“Fuck you! You might as well kill us, too, you asshole!”
“Who said anything about killing anyone? I never killed anyone. How do these things get started? No one has been killed. Do you understand? Literally, no one who has been inoculated with Agent X has died.”
“No, they’ve just become Xombies, which is worse!”
“Worse than death? I think you would have to consult them about that. They are quite content, believe me.”
“But they’re not even human! They’re monsters!”
“Monsters? Human beings are monsters. Did you ever watch MTV? Unlike Will Rogers, I never met a man I liked very much, which is why it is so ironic that I should be the one to save the human race from annihilation when the end comes.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Oh yes—haven’t you heard? The end is coming. From up there. The end of life on Earth: every bird and bee and monarch butterfly blown to smithereens, not with a whimper but with a bang. The only survivors will be deep-sea tube worms and some hardy bacteria … and perhaps my Xombies.”
Ray said, “You mean that Big Enchilada thing the Reapers talked about?”
The blue man looked at him, then burst into laughter. “Big Enchilada? Really? That’s what they’re calling it? No ‘Hammer of God’ or ‘Shiva the Destroyer.’ Big Enchilada, wow.” Sobering up, he said, “The word is ‘Enceladus.’ Let’s call it a Trojan horse, which will unleash an enemy of unknown proportions or intentions. All I know is that they aimed for us. They are coming, and we must be prepared to stop them.”
“Them who? Aliens or something?”
“Or something.”
“Stop them how?”
“With my fist. Quiet now, boys, and let me tell you the story of the Sadie Hawkins Day Massacre.”
Uri Miska closed his eyes as if summoning unseen forces, then began to speak:
“Imagine a line of Humvees with roof-mounted fifty-caliber machine guns, armored personnel carriers with swiveling weapons turrets, actual tanks, all driving down the streets of Providence. Some of the vehicles were flying American flags or were painted with crosses and Bible quotes. The weather was so warm and sunny it was like summer in January, a regular Fourth of July parade. And like any parade, there were cheering spectators … only in this case the spectators were naked and blue.
“Not too many at first. It was hardly worth the soldiers’ ammunition to shoot them, for they splattered like rotten melons and were squashed to pulp beneath the treads. But from every corner of the city more Xombies were flying in, Xombies by the thousands, their bare feet hardly touching the ground and their blue hands outstretched as if magnetically drawn to all that clanking steel.
“Many of the creatures had been migrating out of the city along the interstate and were now drawn back by this sudden bonanza of red-blooded fighting men, this traveling carnival of destruction. And as the unstoppable naked horde descended upon the immovable mechanized force, the female Xombies—Furies, Harpies, Maenads—winnowed themselves from the main group, holding back in the shadows as the less-circumspect males charged forward.
“These males closed in from all directions, rounding corners and converging ever tighter, the narrow canyons of downtown funneling the crowd into an undifferentiated flowing mass, a tsunami of blue bodies that filled the urban grid like a caustic fluid, scouring everything in its path. Then they were there, pouring onto Westminster from all sides, surrounding the mobile column and falling upon it.
“The turkey shoot commenced. Harrowing spikes of ammunition blazed straight into the densest centers of the mob, rendering them instantly into bursting globes of jelly, with limbs and heads and other large fragments raining down like chaff. Ground-floor windows disintegrated all along the street, stores and restaurants gutted by blizzards of steel. In a matter of minutes, and ten million rounds of ammo, the entire mass of creatures was cut down. The vehicles continued on, having barely paused to engage the enemy. Random burps of gunfire continued as more Xombies were sighted, but the battle was over.”
Miska held up his finger, then slowly wagged it. “Or maybe not. As the column’s wheels drove over its semi-liquefied adversary, movement could be seen in the remains: All those sundered body parts were still very much in the fight.
“Mangled sinew stuck to heavy treads; tendons wound around drive shafts like taffy, gummed up brakes and springs and mounted guns; animated gristle wiggled up under chassis, fouling engine rods and clogging exhaust pipes; bony hands scuttled spiderlike over fuse boxes, pulling wires willy-nilly; veiny cauls of flesh covered windshields and viewports.
“The war machine seized up. Not every vehicle was equally vulnerable, but those that were blocked the rest, so that very soon the whole enterprise ground to a halt.
“Masked men with long-necked acetylene torches got out and played their superhot jets over the carpet of crawling meat, fanning it off vehicles and creating a clean zone for the mechanics to work. The stench of burnt flesh filled the air. At first, the technique seemed to be working: The disarticulated foe pushed back to form a seething dam around the cleared area, but every time the firemen let up for only a second, the line broke down, invaded by slithering masses of viscera. As the gruesome dam grew higher, it became more impossible to police all the sneaking incursions … and the psychological effect of that wall of talking heads and slurping entrails must have been terrible.
“Very soon, the defenses started to break down. Men were beset by slippery fragments worming under their pants and into their orifices. The vehicles were also infested, so that their crews had to turn their attention from the threat outside to more immediate pestilence in the cockpits. It became a farce, every man battling an invisible enemy, ripping at his own clothes like an
alcoholic with delirium tremens.
“At last the order was given to retreat. Crazed men piled back into overcrowded truck cabs with their crazed fellows, pursued by waves of squirming chum. Guns blasted indiscriminately at the enveloping mass as the column surged forward and crashed together, panicked gunners shooting each other, and the heavier vehicles pushing lighter ones out of the way or just driving over them. Acetylene tanks exploded, setting off boxes of shells, which ignited leaking fuel—a chain of fiery explosions ripped through the column. Two tracked vehicles—an Abrams tank and a Bradley Fighting Vehicle—broke through and hurtled up the street, wreathed in mantles of flame and frying meat.
“Several blocks up, Westminster ended at a T-intersection on Empire Street, where there was an Irish pub and a National Guard recruiting office. The Abrams was there first, but did not stop, did not turn, did not even slow down, but just blindly rammed the brick face of the federal building, smashing through the support columns, and the Bradley followed it right in, causing the whole structure to avalanche down on them both. The last sound was the popping of ammo in the fires … with perhaps a few conclusive pistol shots mixed in.
“That was a turning point in human history—the first battle of meat versus machines, where the point went to the meat.
“The next battle was very different. The men had learned their lesson. It began two weeks later, and was initiated by a single unarmed truck: an ice-cream truck. Like any ice-cream truck, it had a loudspeaker on top, blasting the familiar tinkly version of ‘When the Saints Go Marching In.’ Unlike an ordinary Mister Softee wagon, this one was pulling a flatbed trailer with a large chain-link cage on it, a portable dog kennel. The cage did not contain dogs, however, but human beings—specifically, women. Innocent women incarcerated for the threat posed by their sex. They appeared to be praying.
“The reason for their prayers soon became apparent. Following close behind the truck was an enormous mass of running Xombies. It looked like a naked, blue Boston Marathon.
“Approaching the site of the previous battle, the truck turned off the music and slowed down, allowing a man in back to release the trailer hitch. The cage came free, rolling to a stop as the truck peeled away.
Xombies: Apocalypso Page 2
