Xombies: Apocalypso

by Greatshell, Walter

  Uncertain about what it meant, but feeling vindicated by his own evident power, Dixon fired consecutive shocks from his staff, yelling, “Look! Look! He’s a phony! A fake! He’s possessed by demons—a wolf in sheep’s clothing! Stop groveling like dogs and get him!”

  With a loud snap, the power went out. Someone had pulled the plug. Before anyone could react, an ugly mutt ran out from under the stage and disappeared around the Memorial.

  The crowd murmured in confusion. Even with his rod disconnected, Chace kept on jabbing until the stranger seized the weapon, and said, “Quit it.” The holy visage reasserted itself, wounds and all, smiling sadly upon the congregation. “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

  “Shut up! I don’t know who you are, but you’re not going to get away with it!”

  Dixon charged to tackle the stranger, confident in his immunity. He wanted to humiliate him and prove him false. The thought of kowtowing to this soft-voiced hippie was unbearable; it was impossible, absolutely ridiculous, to think that this queer could be his Lord and Savior. Jesus—if He really existed—was a man. A man’s man, who could bench-press three hundred pounds and pin Chace Dixon to the floor with His massively muscled thighs. That was a Jesus worth surrendering to.

  The stranger did not flinch from the attack but met his attacker head-on, ducking beneath Chace’s outstretched arms and flipping the bigger man over his back. Dixon was shocked—no Xombie should be able to touch him! But after the initial alarm, he realized he was pissed off. Dixon had been a championship wrestler in college and a dabbler in mixed martial arts, so he was not about to let himself go down without a fight. Lunging upward, he managed to lock arms around his prancing opponent’s legs so that both men became halves of a human cartwheel, a rolling yin and yang that tumbled off the platform.

  Landing hard, they came up fighting, each one gripping the other’s shirt with one hand and furiously punching with the other. Locked together in a brutal tango, they grappled for advantage as the assembly watched in awe.

  Shouts rang out: “Bust his face! Kick him in the balls! Hit him with a left, a left! Whup his ass!”

  To break the stalemate, the fighters commenced kicking, trying to trip one another, but in spite of their size difference, they seemed evenly matched. Bendis hesitated to intervene without a direct command.

  The stranger grunted, “Karma’s a bitch, ain’t it?”

  “Who the hell are you?” Chace demanded.

  “A man … a plan … a canal—Panama.”

  “Phony!” Dixon snarled.

  “Hypocrite!”

  “You’re not the Savior!”

  “Neither are you!”

  “But I’ve been anointed by God!”

  “Oh really? Then how come I can do this?” The stranger kneed Dixon in the groin. “Or this?” He head-butted him in the mouth, splitting Dixon’s lower lip. The crowd went wild. “You know what I think?” the bearded stranger said. “I think you got a bad batch. I think you got some blood from a boy—a boy in drag.”

  “You shut up, shut up! Shut your filthy mouth!”

  Crazed with anger, Dixon delivered a knockout punch, a hard uppercut that coldcocked his opponent. The newcomer went down like a ton of bricks.

  Gasping for breath, bloodied but unbowed, Chace climbed back onstage and turned to his audience, awaiting their cheers. He became aware that no one was looking at him. All eyes were focused on the top of the Washington Monument. Dixon followed their gaze, and he, too, saw the source of the disturbance.

  It was the obelisk’s winged colossus—it was moving. Someone was crouching atop the tower, using a blowtorch to cut through the suspension cables. Showers of sparks rained down, and wires twanged, causing the wings of corrugated steel to wobble. Suddenly, the cable let go, and the whole thing toppled down the side of the building and crashed to the ground.

  The crowd gasped. Appalled, Dixon shrieked, “Find whoever did that and catch them! Scourge them! Don’t let them escape!” Bendis ran to comply.

  Chace was still looking up, afraid to blink lest he lose sight of this phantom. “Get some lights on him!” In a feverish voice, he muttered, “There you are, there you are …”

  At the very apex of the obelisk, an Olympian figure with a golden spear gleamed heroically in the floodlights. It was the statue of the Independent Man—the very statue Dixon had removed from the Rhode Island State House!

  Except that it was no statue. It was alive. And the stranger was gone, vanished from the stage.

  “Hallelujah!” someone cried. “Praise the Lord!” A furious murmuring swept through the crowd, many people babbling, “It’s Him! It’s our Lord and Savior!” Others crossed themselves, and yelled, “It’s Satan, it’s Satan!”

  “It’s not God or Satan,” yelled Dixon. “It’s just a freak in gold paint! Someone shoot him, and you’ll see!”

  Gunfire crackled, peppering the Monument. The range was too far, having no effect on the golden man, who stared down like a disappointed Oscar as spent ammo pelted the crowd, causing mass casualties. Then he hefted his spear, raised it high, and cast it like a thunderbolt.

  Kasim Bendis was halfway to the tower with a squad of sharpshooters. He saw the spear coming but did not try to run or dodge because it was simply too absurd to think a thrown spear could single him out amid so many others, not from such a height and distance, even if it was aimed at him, which it surely was not.

  Girded by the confidence of his disbelief, Bendis stood fast as his soldiers scattered. “Stand fast, dogs!” he barked, shooting a fleeing man in the back half a second before he was stuck fast, diagonally pinned to the ground by a twelve-foot-long, gold-plated pole through his chest.

  At first he didn’t understand, trying to walk and getting nowhere, but then his hands found the icy-cold shaft like a tree trunk through his ribs, and he thought, Damn. Oddly enough, there was no blood and little pain, just a bit of difficulty breathing, like a stitch in his side, so that his discomfiture was mainly related to the practical challenge of getting loose. The men around him gaped in horror, afraid to touch him. Wriggling like a hooked worm, he wanted to say, I’ve been dead before; it’s nothing.

  From up on the stage, Chace Dixon heard distant sounds of shooting and hoarse screams of grown men. The screams became a chorus, and in an instant he could see most of his security cordon in flight, scattering like poultry. In another second, he saw exactly what they were fleeing:

  There! From the direction of Constitution Avenue, a host of women appeared, moving strangely fast, strangely strange. They were not women but Hellions—horrific blue Maenads. It quickly became apparent that even the more-human-looking ones were not human, running so erratically that the snipers couldn’t get a bead on them. The blizzard of ammo cut zigzagging holes in the crowd, people toppling like dominoes as they ran for cover or leaped into the Reflecting Pool. Tracer gunfire poured down like fireworks, chewing a few Xombies to bits as others swept in right over them, stabbing right and left with the bayonets of their rifles.

  Rifles? Chace thought. Since when had Xombies ever carried guns?

  They were so damn fast, it was already too late; most of the sentries never saw what hit them. As Chace started to give the order to fall back, he spotted more inhuman creatures rushing in from behind the Memorial, cutting off his escape route—it looked like hundreds of them. They whipped across the stage like a high wind, snatching his men off their feet and spiriting them into the dark. Seemingly no one was immune.

  Chace ordered someone to hand him the microphone. As he started to speak, the marching band struck up a slow number, “Greensleeves,” and he realized the musicians had all been replaced by a band of naked Maenads.

  “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. We’ve been wimps, and God is justly punishing us for our weakness. Women pretend to be weak in order to gain sympathy, but there is a difference between being weak and being willing. They desire to be seduced; it’s their nature. Co
me on now, this is no surprise. Their unclean loins are instruments of Satan’s will—always have been. Women are too easily possessed … and they too easily possess us, leading us into sympathy and temptation, using our charity against us, making us their minions. And Satan laughs to collect our souls. Look around you! How many millions of men have joined the Enemy because they hesitated in the face of a mother, a daughter, a sister, a wife? That is why Satan loves the ladies! They are his public-relations dream team, his spokesmodels. As men of purity, we must be immune to their witchcraft. Because that’s what it is, people; let’s be real. Faith is no longer required for belief. We are in the time of Revelation, it’s no fairy tale, and we can no longer hide from the inconvenient truth: The only Global Warming we need worry about is the fire down below. Witches and demons roam the Earth. The Antichrist himself is afoot, raising his army for the last battle. As soldiers of God, we have inherited a mission, to purify this land and make of it a kingdom worthy of the Savior’s return, so that He may lead us in the final battle between Heaven and Hell. The greatest mission ever known. The second-greatest story ever told, but the greatest mission ever known … and the soul you save may be your own. As much as we would all like to practice compassion on these miserable creatures, we simply don’t have that right. Such days are past. There have been holy women, yes, but they most of all would tell you it is Woman’s affinity for sin that brought Man’s fall from grace, and Woman’s appetite that has again destroyed us. From now on, their appetite for our dutiful souls must be matched by our appetite for their blood!”

  While he was talking, his bodyguards started to slip away. Attempting to stop them, Dixon felt a cold hand on his shoulder.

  “Don’t leave now, man,” said the spitting image of Elvis Presley. “The show’s just gettin’ started.”

  Unhinged with rage, Chace said, “Go back to Grace-land,” and stuck a commando knife into Elvis’s heart. He stabbed him again and again, venting all of his frustration and terror on this charlatan, following the King to the floor until absolutely sure he was dead.

  It felt good to lie there for a moment and catch his breath. There was pain now, a deep sorrow for all that was gone, but also relief. Chace sobbed a little for his long-lost mother. She had been such a decent, hardworking soul, salt of the Earth, and as a child he had always hoped to make her proud. But she learned of the sickness in his soul when she caught him with another man, and it was not something she could either forgive or forget. She never spoke to him again.

  “Come on, sir! This way!”

  It was one of Kasim Bendis’s tin soldiers, a handsome young man, half out of his mind with fear. Dixon allowed himself to be hustled into the cover of the Lincoln Memorial, where a number of green troops were making a last stand against the encroaching blue enemy.

  As the snipers fired and reloaded, fired and reloaded, they were astonished to find themselves under fire. Some of these men were accustomed to fighting Xombies, even crafty Maenads … but not armed ones. For the first time ever, the Hellions were shooting back! It was a very discouraging development since everyone knew Exes could not be killed, only damaged enough to temporarily slow them down. Then, hopefully, one could dismember them at leisure; crush them, freeze them, burn them to a puddle of black tar. But if they had guns … well, a guy simply stood no chance.

  “This can’t be happening!” men cried, and, “We’re immune, we’re immune!”

  On every side, surprised men were shot, clubbed, or stabbed by Xombies. Some shot themselves, witnessing that hopeless scene of Xombies firing guns, Xombies riding motorcycles, Xombies driving trucks. One was even wearing a flamethrower.

  As Chace watched the last of his forces go down and the Maenads overrun their positions, he was approached by the last person on Earth he needed to see just then. It was Jim Sandoval. Sandoval’s guards had disappeared, and the man looked calm and utterly cheerful amid the wholesale panic. “Isn’t this something?” he said brightly. “Look at ’em go!”

  Chace grabbed a gun off the ground. “Jim, you don’t believe in anything, do you? Never did.”

  “Dix, you’ve got me all wrong.” Sandoval’s flesh suddenly rippled, a wave that started at his scalp and passed down the length of his body, seeming to strip off his outer layer of skin and clothing to reveal an entirely different person—a woman. Not a grotesque blue Maenad, but seemingly a living woman. And in an ordinary woman’s voice, she said, “I’m not Jim.” She leaned down and shouldered a flamethrower abandoned by his men. “My name’s Brenda.”

  Dixon tried to shoot, but the gun was out of bullets. Throwing the gun at her, he pulled a cheap two-way radio from his pocket and hit the emergency signal. He had one last thing to do before they got him.

  “This is Chace Dixon,” he croaked. “Just do it!”

  “Just do it?” the radio squawked. “Is that a go?”

  “Yes, go! Now!”

  The woman paused over Dixon. The light of her weapon’s pilot flame guttered in her eyes, barely illuminating her expression of inscrutable fascination. Chace realized it wasn’t her looking at him, but someone else looking through her eyes. She was just a window … but who was on the other side? Then she pulled the trigger and everything flared bright as day, the heat blowing her hair back.

  At that same exact moment, Washington, DC, froze in the glare of a newborn sun.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  MONS POPULI

  It was slow going. All routes to DC were choked with dead vehicles, and pileups cluttered every intersection, blackened wrecks reeking of burnt rubber. Big Ed Albemarle used the truck like a bulldozer, pushing cars aside and clearing a path for the buses. I rode shotgun, wielding a road map and scanning for openings. We drove freely on the sidewalk, across parks or backyards, or plowed through fences—the fastest route was usually off-road—but then urban congestion increased to the point where driving was simply impossible.

  At a place called Indian Head, we cut through a fenced Navy installation and traded the battered vehicles for a fleet of shallow-draft police skiffs, gunning them up the wide Potomac. The sinking sun turned deeper and deeper red, staining the whole sky and landscape the same color. Layers of mist hung over the river, swirling as the boat cut through.

  There was a lot of trash in the water, but the first real sign of damage was the collapsed span of the I-95 highway bridge—the southernmost link of the Beltway—which lay toppled on its side as if pushed over by a giant hand. Cars and trucks were scattered like bathtub toys in the shallows or lurked just below the surface to gut our boats. Then there were massive chunks of the bridge itself, bristling with exposed rebar—it was one of these that gashed a couple of our aluminum hulls and struck off one propeller—but some of the men jumped in the water, heedless of crabs (of which there appeared to be none), and after several hours of makeshift repairs and careful maneuvering in the dark, we cleared the wreckage and continued upriver.

  The channel narrowed, the air grew stagnant and humid, and the ground fog thickened. A dusky orange dawn started to come up. Through the haze, we had occasional glimpses of swampy shoreline and piles of overgrown debris—the view was not of a city but of a jungle, vast piles of rubble swallowed up in Amazonian greenery. The profusion of life made it hard to tell if there were any human auras. There certainly didn’t appear to be a building left standing.

  “Where is it?” I asked Coombs.

  “Where is what?”

  “The city. Washington.”

  “You’re looking at it. We just passed the Anacostia and are approaching the Tidal Basin and the Thomas Jefferson Memorial.”

  “Washington, DC, doesn’t look anything like this.”

  “It does now.”

  “But there’s nothing here.”

  “That’s because it’s been bombed flat. Nuked.”

  “That’s impossible. It would be wasteland, not a rain forest. This looks more like some ancient Mayan ruin or something.”

  “I’ve read it was s
imilar after Hiroshima: The radiation stimulated plant growth, so you had beautiful flowers blooming amid the destruction. This kudzu and knotweed has had all spring and summer to grow unchecked over the lawns. Doesn’t take long.”

  “But why bomb it, for heaven’s sake?”

  “Who knows? People are capable of anything, which is why they need to be saved from themselves.”

  Easing the boat into a dense wall of foliage, we got out and pushed through the marsh until we came to sparser thickets. The pulverized remains of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing blocked our way east, but after a few hundred yards the fishbone rebar and hills of fractured marble gave way to open ground. Just beyond, the thickest stone walls of the Department of Agriculture were still standing, but for the most part buildings were razed to their foundations, just mangled trunks of pipe sticking up.

  Using the directional antenna as if it were a dowsing rod, I increased my pace, watching the indicator gauge. It was close. The fog thickened as we made our way among muddy pools that once were basements. Grand stone steps led to tumbled ruins, a vision out of Ephesus or Pergamum. For a little way, there was almost a path, but a bit farther on, the way was blocked with an epic tangle of wreckage, a rusty steel thicket of buildings, cars, human bones—all scorched, shattered, and rolled up together like a colossal tumbleweed.

  “Wait here,” I said.

  Taking the radio receiver, I made my way to the mountainous deadfall. The air was warm and thick with decay. Refraining from breathing, I entered the junk pile and started climbing. It was not easy to avoid injury; I got a number of cuts and splinters, and was partially impaled when a loose foothold gave way.

  Little Bobby Rubio caught me, having discreetly followed. I couldn’t very well tell him to get lost. My dress was ruined. Freeing myself, I finally came to the top, where Bobby and I were able to stand upright on a canted slab of steel-reinforced concrete, straining to see through the fog.