Xombies: Apocalypso

by Greatshell, Walter

  Ray said, “They say there’s some kind of refugee base down around Washington, DC. Supposedly it’s pretty nice. They’re calling it Xanadu.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Just rumors. But that Dixon character is prepared to go to war against it, so he obviously believes it’s true.”

  Ashleigh erupted. “Well, he is the Living Saint, so he must have a good reason.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Ray said.

  “How dare you! He’s doing God’s work, and if you could see how he suffers to obey our Savior’s will, you would keep your stupid mouth shut!”

  “I saw his men killing women, Ashleigh.”

  “You saw them saving women! You saw women being sent to Paradise rather than eternal torment. It’s a blessing! Women bear the burden of God’s anger, and it is our duty and our privilege to sacrifice ourselves for the good of Man! It is the only way to expunge ourselves of Eve’s sin.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I will not stand here and have godless witches like you tell me what—”

  Fran stepped in. “Okay, that’s enough, Ashleigh. This kind of thing gets us nowhere, so let’s just all agree to disagree and move on.

  They finished eating in silence.

  Ray was awakened by someone banging on the door of the trailer. When he tried to get up, he almost fainted from a rush of dizziness and nausea. His left arm hurt, and when he rubbed it he found a bandage in the crook of his elbow. The whole thing felt bruised. Dragging himself into the hall, he heard Fran answering the front door.

  “What is it, Elaine?” Fran asked, yawning.

  “There’s someone outside the fence asking to talk to a Raven Despineau.”

  “Outside? Who?”

  “I don’t know; I’ve never seen him before. A new guard. He says he’s a friend of hers.”

  “What’s going on?” Ray asked.

  “Someone wants you outside. A man.”

  Deena and Ashleigh now appeared. “What the hell’s going on?” Deena asked.

  “Some man outside is asking for her.”

  The girls were very intrigued.

  Shivering with cold and fright, Ray put on his vest and shoes and wrapped a comforter around his shoulders, then he and the others trooped along the frosty path to the main gate. The girls whispered among themselves. The moon was bright, silvering the State House dome on their right and downtown on their left. Straight ahead, the shopping mall was a high, dark cliff. As they entered its shadow, no one spoke, their breaths puffing from their hoods like empty thought balloons. There was someone at the fence, just a hooded black shape.

  Goaded ahead by the others, Ray walked the last fifty feet alone. “I’m Raven Despineau,” he said warily. “What do you want?”

  “Ray? It’s me, Todd!”

  “Todd! Thank God. What’s going on?”

  “I can’t talk long. Did you find Sandoval?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he tell you what’s going on?”

  “He said there was going to be a rebellion against Dixon.”

  “That’s right. There’s going to be a surprise attack on Chace Central, and Barnstable want us to run our diversion to draw Chace’s disciples into a trap.”

  “When is it all happening?”

  “Sometime before dawn. All the Prophet’s forces are involved, so just be ready to pitch in as soon as the gate goes down. Everybody’s pretty high on this plan, but I just want to let you know that if the whole thing falls apart, and it looks like we’re about to eat major dirt, I’m busting you out of here, and we’re running for it.”

  “Running where?”

  “I thought we’d head south, see if we can give a heads-up to those people at Xanadu.”

  “How are you planning on us getting there? The roads are impassable.”

  “Same way we got here—by bike.”

  “Oh, Jesus. All right, is that it?”

  “That’s it. Just go inside and wait for my signal.”

  “What’s the signal?”

  “You’ll know it, trust me.” Then Todd was gone.

  Ray went back to the others and explained the situation.

  Fran and Deena were excited, but Ashleigh was silent. The one named Elaine, an older, heavyset woman with the title of Night Matron, said, “Even if this guy’s telling you the truth, which I doubt, we would be fools to do what he says. We have a good thing going here, everything we need, and I’m not about to just abandon it for some wild-goose chase. We wouldn’t last five minutes out there on our own. This isn’t a prison; these fences were put up to protect us! You Munies might not care about that, but the rest of us do.”

  “Oh, I agree,” Ray said. “It’s a stupid idea.”

  “What?” Fran exploded. “Are you serious? You’re the one who said we were going to get the hell away from here, and now you’re just going to wimp out like that?”

  “I’m sorry, Fran. I was just daydreaming; I didn’t think anyone would take it seriously. Of course we can’t leave.”

  “That’s fucked up, dude,” said Deena.

  Elaine said, “Girls, you should listen to the advice of your new roommate. It’s a nice fantasy, but the truth is, a man will say anything to get into your pants.”

  “Men,” Ray said, shaking his head.

  “Men,” Elaine agreed.

  “Elaine, do you by any chance happen to know my uncle Jim?”

  “Of course I know the Prophet. He’s the one who asked me to come get you.”

  “Oh … cool. Well, say hello to him for me, would you? And please tell him that Barnstable says hello.”

  “I certainly will.”

  Elaine returned them to their trailer. As soon as she was gone, Ray jumped into action.

  “All right, ladies,” he said, rifling through the kitchen drawers, “we have to arm ourselves and be ready to fight our way out of here. I need your help—move!”

  “What are you talking about?” Ashleigh asked.

  “Obviously, nobody’s going to help us, so we have to help ourselves.”

  Disconcerted by the abrupt mood swing, the three were wary of believing anything Ray said, but Fran and Deena reluctantly went along with it. Ashleigh sulked, praying for their souls.

  The trailer held very little in the way of weapons, so Ray hoped no one would dare interfere with them as long as they were wearing their vests. And since Xombies couldn’t touch them either, they should be able to simply walk out of the compound once the electrified outer fence was down. As the hours passed, exhaustion set in, and they dozed.

  They were awakened by a burst of gunfire, then a series of explosions.

  “Shit, it’s time,” Ray cried. “Everybody up, it’s time!”

  Throwing a mattress over the inner fence, they boosted each other over and hurried to the main gate. All the other women were out and about, chattering anxiously, but there was no sign of Sandoval. Along the street, generators chugged into action; electric wires fizzed; sirens blared. Spotlights swept the field and beamed across the dome of the State House. From inside the building there were muffled alarms and gunfire. For a moment, the shooting increased … then just as quickly it petered out. Skate-troopers zipped purposefully up and down the street, then simultaneously changed direction as their radios crackled instructions to report for an emergency security inspection. As they skated away, they killed the generators, leaving silence and dark in their wake.

  Ray and the girls waited by the fence, shivering. It seemed to get colder as the sun came up.

  “Is that it?” Fran asked.

  “I think that’s it,” Ray said miserably.

  “Damn.”

  Deena said, “Well, let’s go inside, I’m freezing.”

  “You go ahead,” Ray said. “I’m going to wait a few more minutes.”

  Fran and Deena left, leaving Ray alone with Ashleigh.

  “There’s no need to wait for me,” Ray told her, trying to control his voice.
If Barnstable’s coup had failed, then Todd was probably dead … and Sandoval would be next. “Go back inside. I just have to give it a little while longer.”

  “There’s no point,” said Ashleigh.

  “You never know.”

  “No, I do know. Your scheme didn’t work because I warned them about it.”

  “What?” Ray’s brain fumbled for purchase. “What are you talking about?”

  Ashleigh held up a small walkie-talkie. “I told them—with this! I told them, and I’m glad I told them! Yes! That’s right! Because those men are trying to do the Lord’s work, and it’s our job to help them, not sell them out to Miska!”

  “Oh my God … ”

  “You might well pray for Eve’s mercy, because you’ll have none from me!”

  “Oh my God, you crazy bitch … ”

  Ray felt boiling-hot tears running down his frozen face, and before he knew what he was doing he slapped the girl. The instant he did it, he regretted it. Ray had never hit a girl in his life, and hitting a misguided teenager was just wrong. But there was no taking it back.

  Ashleigh immediately returned the blow, clawing Ray’s cheek with her long, painted nails and attacking like a wildcat. Stunned by the furious assault, he fell back, ducking and dodging the girl’s clawed hands. Ashleigh was clearly experienced at catfighting, a natural street brawler. Ray hadn’t been in a fight since grade school, and he didn’t want to be in one now, but the girl was all over him, punching and scratching and kicking as hard as she could—which was very hard.

  “Stop it, stop it!” Ray cried, defending his eyes from those sharp nails.

  Ashleigh drove even harder, her baby-doll features twisted into a mask of rage, spittle flying from her mouth. The left side of her face was bright red from his slap. In panic, Ray suddenly realized that no one was going to save him; that if he surrendered or showed weakness, this maniac might kill him, so he started fighting back with all his might. Pinwheeling his arms, he landed a lucky blow to the girl’s jaw—crack!—and just like that, Ashleigh went down.

  She went down hard, looking pitiful and frail, just a kid really. Ray knelt to help her and found she wasn’t breathing. Oh God, he thought. Not this. Please not this.

  “Help!” he cried. “Somebody help! We need medical attention here—it’s an emergency! Anybody, please help!”

  No one seemed to hear, and Ray decided to try CPR. He remembered there was some song you could use to time chest compressions—was it “Stayin’ Alive”? Suddenly, something hit him like a wrecking ball. The force knocked him a good ten feet. Stunned, he looked back to see a strange figure straddling Ashleigh’s helpless body.

  It was the girls’ dog—the ugly pig-dog.

  Only now the animal looked almost human. It had human hands and a childish human face, its skin mottled pink and black, and its eyes two dark marbles. Those bulging, manic eyes fixed on Ray, and he shrank in horror to realize he was alone, unarmed, and trapped in a fence with this grotesque hybrid monstrosity.

  But the thing was not interested in him. As he watched, it cradled Ashleigh’s limp body in its hands and leaned down as if to kiss her. To Ray’s horror, it did kiss her, the dreaded Xombie kiss. Black demon lips cupped pink human ones and proceeded to suck face … but then something unusual happened:

  Instead of collapsing, Ashleigh’s chest swelled with air. At once the girl coughed to life, not as a hellish Maenad but as a normal human female. Her attacker let her go and spit something on the ground: Ashleigh’s bubble gum. The creature had saved her from choking.

  Having done its good deed, the dog-thing now came for Ray. From its maniacal face, he knew there was no such benevolence in store for him, and he scrambled to escape, slip-sliding on the dewy grass. Dead I’m dead I’m so dead.

  Just before the weird thing reached him, a pinpoint of red light skittered across its body, and it started coming apart. Ray hit the ground, thinking, Snipers! Whatever that laser sight touched magically exploded as if spring-loaded. Chunks flew from the dog-boy’s head and torso; its legs snapped like twigs. As the creature went down, incendiaries pelted the grass, flaring white-hot. It writhed in the fire, curling backward and inside out as it tried to flee its own burning flesh.

  Suddenly a voice yelled, “Come on!” and a hand jerked Ray to his feet. It was Todd. He ran for the main gate, pulling Ray with him. There was an EMT vehicle there, a gleaming white ambulance with Sandoval at the wheel. He was holding a laser pointer.

  “Wait!” Ray cried. “I have to get Ashleigh!”

  “You can’t!”

  “Yes!” Ray yanked free and ran to Ashleigh. She was sitting with her head down, hugging her legs. As gently yet urgently as he could, Ray said, “Ashleigh, we’re leaving now. Come on, get up.”

  “No,” she said dully.

  Suddenly, dozens of men began pouring out of the State House as if roused by an alarm. They rounded the building and took shooting positions on the hillside, preparing to unleash a hail of death upon the field. Ray knew he was as good as dead, trapped in plain sight.

  “Ashleigh, please!”

  “No! Stop!”

  The guards were well drilled, adjusting their gun sights for perfect accuracy. They didn’t want to waste any ammunition—that stuff didn’t grow on trees. As they focused all their attention on their targets, they didn’t notice the earth itself rising around them.

  A profusion of weird black spores uncoiled from the mud, spreading and growing, branching outward to form a web of vines that encompassed the entire hill.

  For weeks the black sludge had been migrating underground, creeping through soil and pipes and groundwater as it converged on the capitol. This living tar was the pure Maenad essence—the boiled-down lees from a million cooked Xombies. Impervious to fire, these tough, long-chain fibers formed wormlike tendrils, exaggerated fingers tipped with rudimentary sense organs that spread faster than the most pernicious weed.

  The snipers were oblivious to the wild activity around their feet. As the strands of dark matter proliferated, they also thickened and toughened, pulsing from within with vital juices. Fat globules formed at their junctions, splitting open like fibrous gourds to release vertical shoots that expanded to resemble hideous giant mushrooms, vaguely humanoid blobs that rose amid the oblivious snipers and jostled them for space.

  Some of the men began noticing that they had been infiltrated by a second army, a gray, faceless corps, but before they could speak, the net contracted and engulfed them. Such contractions were happening all over the field, shloop! shloop! shloop! like coral polyps snapping shut, until the siege became evident to all, and wholesale panic broke out.

  Scores of men disappeared, and for a moment the State House lawn was a garden of heaving human pumpkins, fast turning from red to blue. Then the vines relaxed, and all the new Xombies emerged.

  Witnessing this, Ray said, “Ashleigh, come on.” He tried to bodily lift her, but she was like a rag doll, deadweight. Todd joined him, and together they picked her up. As they carried her toward the truck, Ashleigh suddenly looked at Ray with clear eyes. Her expression was so challenging that he searched for some cause … and instantly found it. She had torn the fail-safe tab from her vest. The detonator cord was in her fist; all she had to do was pull.

  The instant she knew he saw, Ashleigh yanked the cord.

  Ray dropped her, and screamed, “TODD! RUN!”

  Taken by surprise, Todd was slow to react, but this time Ray grabbed him, and together they bolted for the gate. They could hear Ashleigh laughing behind them, her voice cut short as the entire face of the mall turned white and a wave of scorching heat blasted their backs. Blinding fireballs rained down on the truck as Todd and Ray dove for cover inside. Fran and Deena were waiting; they hauled the boys up and slapped out their burning clothes as the truck lurched into motion.

  “Woo-hooo!” Sandoval howled. “I loves me some fireworks!”

  PART III

  Chesapeake

  CHAPTER
SIXTEEN

  POWWOW

  Irode in a pickup truck squeezed between Alice Langhorne and Ed Albemarle. Alice was driving. Bobby Rubio sat on my lap. The back of the truck was full of Xombies, crammed together like sharecroppers during the dust bowl. All of us were dirty and torn.

  Leaving Loveville behind, we left with it the last of our humanity. All that remained was a vestigial sense of loss, as if we had awakened from a beautiful dream. A dream America that never existed except in childhood fantasies, now blown threadbare. The human world was gone; all that was left was an incantatory kick.

  As we passed a weathered flag on a car dealer’s pole, a low, gruff voice started singing, “Oh-h say can you see, by the dawn’s early light … ”

  It was Albemarle. Big Ed Albemarle, who had barely begun to speak since his Resurrection as a Xombie, was singing.

  For a moment we just listened, the lines of our faces traced in grime. Then, softly, tentatively, we sang along. After a minute or so, the feeling passed, and we stopped.

  The submarine was just as we had left it. We took her back to blue water and dove deep, licking our wounds. We stayed down there a long time, months perhaps, wrapped in darkness and silence. Then we heard something that woke us up: the throbbing of human hearts. A reservoir of hot blood suspended in the cold sea.

  It was another submarine, passing right over our heads. Not the French boat. This was an American submarine—Virginia-class.

  There was no discussion; we had to get them. As the crew set about surfacing the boat, the senior officers dressed in the most official-looking costumes they could find. Donning his never-worn admiral regalia, Coombs went to the bridge and turned on the ULF secure channel:

  “Attention, Virginia: This is a message for Commander Arnold Parminter, from Admiral Harvey Coombs. We are at the rendezvous point, awaiting contact.”

  There was no reply. Coombs was reluctant to repeat the message, not wanting to raise undue suspicion. It was a risk to broadcast his position at all, which in ordinary circumstances would have been a serious breach of operational security—just as answering his message would be. Submariners were trained to be cautious; they didn’t call it the Silent Service for nothing. But circumstances had changed—times were desperate, human voices scarce. One might reasonably expect a slight relaxation of military formality.