Xombies: Apocalypse Blues Read online

  Much as I trusted Fred, I wasn’t sure I liked leaving the realm of the living so quickly. With crisp volleys of gunfire ringing behind us, I asked, “Is it safe to be out in the open like this?”

  “Long as that fence holds,” he said, short of breath. “You can’t see it from here, but this whole compound sticks out in the bay. That gate is the only way onto the premises—that’s why they’ve held out so long. Plus it’s set way back behind a bunch of posted government property—not many people know it’s here. It ain’t even on the map.”

  “It’s a Navy base?”

  “During the war it used to be a training field for the Naval Air Station, but now it belongs to a big defense contractor. They’ve been keeping it running on an emergency basis as a matter of national security, offering safe shelter to families of employees if they stay on the job. I guess they were pretty hard up, because they came and tried to talk me outta retirement. Fat chance. I couldn’t see sleeping on no concrete floor at my age. I said to them, ‘I hope you fellas ain’t trying to turn that place into some kind of refugee center, because there’s no potable water and nowhere to run if things get hot. Oughta be a toxic-waste dump from all the lead and cadmium that’s leached into the soil over the years.’

  “They say to me, ‘Fred, that’s just it—we got all the water and power we could ever use, plus we got the whole Atlantic Ocean to escape to. We’re authorized to use any and all facilities at our disposal to safeguard sensitive technology. That includes moving it offshore. You can even bring a friend.’

  “‘What are you saying?’ I asked. ‘You gotta be kidding me.’

  “They get all spooky, and say, ‘Just consider it, Fred. You think things are bad out there now? This ain’t even a wet fart compared to the shit that’s coming down the pipe. Sandoval knows—that’s why he thought of you. The company needs you, Fred. You’re part of the family.’

  “I thought they were crazier than bedbugs and sent ’em packing, but I remember Beau looking me in the eye as he left, and saying, ‘This is privileged information, Fred, but Sandoval gives you his personal guarantee that if you come now, you’re a shoo-in for a seat on the board. How can you turn that down?’ I said, ‘Just watch me.’”

  We left the main road, turning right alongside a second fence and a row of low, shuttered buildings. Behind them was a storage yard strewn with heavy machinery and steel scrap, enormous items, but all dwarfed beneath the vast white hangar that towered like an iceberg over all. Many cars and trucks were parked before a second checkpoint, this one manned by only a few guards. Apparently they had been notified about us, because they let us through without any interrogation, keeping well clear of me.

  “How you doing, Sam?” Cowper called to one.

  “What did you do?” Sam demanded. “I can’t raise Reynolds.”

  “Reynolds is gone—you must’ve seen the explosion. If I were you, I’d get over there.”

  “You led them to us,” Sam said coldly, clicking his gun’s safety on and off. “We were doing okay until you led them here, Fred. You and that . . .” He couldn’t bring himself to say it. Keeping his eyes averted from mine, the man said, “You should’ve stayed away. You’re not going to get what you came for.”

  “All I’m after right now is Ed Albemarle. He in there?”

  “He’s in there, but he’s not going to be able to help you. Nobody is.”

  “Thanks, Sam. It’s good to see you, too.”

  To our backs, the man said, “I could shoot you for being out after lockdown! I’d be within my rights!”

  As we crossed the tarmac toward the hangar, Cowper noticed my upset, and whispered to me, “He doesn’t know what he’s saying. Don’t worry, he won’t shoot. And it’s not true, you know, what he said about us leading them in. Those things were already on their way—we just happened to come along at the same time they did. It’s that ‘critical mass’ the TV predicted: They saturate the urban areas, then fan out across the countryside when they run out of prey. Providence is spilling over—we just hit the wave front is all.” He was sweating.

  “What does he mean, we’re not going to get what we came for, nobody’s going to help us?”

  “Aw, nothin’—it’s nothing for you to worry about.”

  We approached a door and were buzzed through from the guard shack. At first all I saw was a cavernous room full of machinery—rows of giant rusty drums covered with scaffolding; multistory steel frameworks like half-finished buildings; antlike workers toiling under bleak factory lights—but then the sound began to register: thrash-metal music and the familiar rasp and clatter of practicing skate-punks, punctuated by echoing cheers and catcalls. I could see lots of hardhats, but no one was working. The door locked shut behind us.

  This was no longer a factory. It was a playground. An industrial-chic skate park. Curved steel plates weighing tons, and cylinders wide as subway tunnels, had been commandeered for aerial stunts by bike and skateboard fiends. People swung like Tarzan from dizzying catwalks in the rafters or, more alarmingly, bungee-jumped the hundred or so feet to the concrete floor, springing back just in time. A deejay standing on a huge, multiwheeled platform—the mother of all flatbed trucks—plied his stylings before a scattering of headbangers and homeboys and someone wearing a big-headed chipmunk costume. The aisles between machines were Turkish bazaars full of tents and sleeping bags, with clotheslines slung like cobwebs overhead.

  Everyone seemed completely unaware of the nightmare outside. What’s more, they were kids, teenagers—boys. Hundreds of boys. A tough-looking bunch in their work boots, hooded sweatshirts, baggy pants, and stocking caps. They were filthy as chimney sweeps from life in the factory. Staring in wonder, all I could do was silently mouth, “Oh my gosh.”

  Our appearance on the floor began to have a ripple effect. As people saw us, saw me, they reacted in surprise, pointing us out to others nearby and gradually bringing a halt to all the activities. Some fell back, others began to come forward to meet us. Among the latter were many older men I hadn’t noticed at first. They didn’t look particularly friendly.

  One exception was a burly, chinless guy in dirty denim coveralls who came running up, eyes wide, and clasped hands with Cowper. “Fred, you bastard,” he said. “Where in hell did you come from?”

  “Hell is right,” said Cowper. He leaned toward the other man, and said, “What’s the bad news, Ed?”

  The bigger man pursed his lips, bobbing his head. “It’s like you said, Fred. They screwed us.”

  “When?”

  “Last week. Had a big recommissioning ceremony, gave us a steak dinner, then dropped the bomb while we were all loosening our belts.”

  “Who did? Sandoval?”

  The heavyset man nodded bitterly, saying, “Those bastards never had any intention of taking us along.”

  “Has she put to sea?”

  “Not yet, but they’re not telling us anything. Should be anytime now.”

  “I could’ve told ya.”

  “You did.”

  “Did they give any reason?”

  “Yeah, we got a boatload of sensitive materials the day before from Norfolk—you know about SPAM?”

  “What do you mean, Spam?”

  The other man waved the question away. “Sensitive Personnel and Materials—crap! All the stuff the government can’t leave behind when it shuts down. Basically SPAM got our seat. I don’t care about me, but those kids busted ass for a month, and now they get bumped by a shipment of top secret nonsense? The future is riding with these kids, and they’re fit for duty.”

  “Oh yeah?” Cowper said, eyeing the gritty playland. “Where at? Ringling Brothers?”

  The other man perked up defensively. “Hey,” he said, “don’t knock ’em for blowing off steam. After last week, we’re all on strike around here.”

  “Now, Albemarle, that sounds like union talk.”

  Ed Albemarle laughed grimly, “Yeah, it’s a union shop now. We’re gonna start picketing. Give the
X-jobs signs to carry.” Throughout the conversation he had pointedly avoided looking my way, though everyone else in the place was. Now he turned toward me, and I could see the nervous whites of his eyes. “And who’s the little lady?” he asked.

  Before Cowper could speak, I said, “Lulu. Lulu Pangloss,” offering my hand. It almost killed him to shake it. Hoping to put him at ease, I added, “How do you do, Mr. Albemarle?”

  He regarded me with the awe of a man seeing a talking dog. “God damn,” he said, taking back his hand. “You know . . . girls are bad medicine these days. I’m surprised you got in.”

  And none too pleased, I thought.

  “She’s okay,” said Cowper. “She has a condition—female trouble. She ain’t gonna turn.”

  Though I understood the necessity, it was mortifying to hear him announce this to everyone. To those boys.

  “Why?” Albemarle said suspiciously. “How old is she?”

  “Seventeen,” I replied, at which they all caught their breaths and seemed to backpedal, or at least lean backward. My age bounced around the group like heresy, triggering furious whispering and a few cries of “Uh-uh!” and “Hell no!”

  Albemarle looked apologetically at Cowper. “Fred, how can we have her in here?” he asked. “I’m in charge of these people’s safety.”

  “Then you better forget about her and get these kids moving. All hell’s breaking loose outside.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’d know if you’d turn off that racket.” He meant the music. Albemarle complied, barking an order that was relayed back to the deejay. The boy, having come down for the commotion, mounted the crawler and killed the sound. At once it was possible to hear the faint sputtering of gunfire outside. Everyone in the room became transfixed.

  “I’m telling you,” said Cowper, “we have to get ’em out of here, Ed. Beau Reynolds is dead, and Security ain’t gonna hold that fence for long. It’s up to us now. We gotta move, and fast.”

  A few people reacted strongly to the news of Reynolds’s death, but Albemarle spoke over them. “Move where?” he said. “There’s a lockdown in effect—no unsupervised activity. Set foot out of here, and we’ll be shot on sight.”

  “We’re the least of their worries, Ed. This is our chance, while they’re putting every available man on that fence.”

  “Our chance to do what?”

  “Get down to the pen.”

  “Down to the—Oh no. Are you serious? You gotta be shit-ting me.”

  “Why not? Take ’em by surprise, you never know.”

  “Jesus, you are serious!”

  “You got any better suggestions? The only other alternative is to wait for what’s coming over the fence. I guarantee nobody else gives a damn about you, certainly not Sandoval.”

  Albemarle replied wearily, “You know, Fred, they shot Bob Martino for that kind of talk. Shot him in front of everybody after the big dinner, then trussed him up and burned him, right there—you can see the spot. I’ll never eat another steak. So if you think we have any illusions about our chances with the company, think again. But we’ve lost so much already . . .

  we’re tired. I’m tired. All I want to do at this point is let these kids be kids for however much time they—” He was interrupted by a dull boom that rattled the walls. Dust sifted down.

  Over the stunned murmuring, Cowper said, “Time’s up, Ed.”

  “What do we got to lose?” This was shouted by a tall elderly fellow with white hair and a bushy mustache.

  “He’s right,” said a stocky character like an old-time circus strong man. “We’re fish in a barrel sitting here.”

  Albemarle became angry. “And what? We just march our kids out into the line of fire?”

  A number of boys cheered the idea.

  Cowper interceded, holding up his arms to yell, “Nobody’s gonna get shot!” The crowd hesitated, listening. “They’re not stupid enough to shoot us, all right? They’re busy enough without making a whole mess of creepos inside the fence. That’s all they’d accomplish by killing us, and they know it.” To Albemarle he explained, “You said yourself they burned Bob Martino. That means they knew he would have come back. We’re more of a threat to them than they are to us, and that’s the God’s honest truth. Best they can do is keep us locked up in here, alive. Now who wants to go and who wants to stay?”

  It was a landslide. Even Ed Albemarle grudgingly nodded, causing a cheer.

  In the midst of the excitement, I bit my lip and tapped Cowper on the shoulder. Trying to speak privately, I said, “Um, Fred? How can we get out if we’re locked in here?”

  He smiled thinly and patted my head. “Don’t you worry about a thing.”

  Getting out of the building was a piece of cake. Albemarle dispatched a handful of the bigger boys to a supply room, the “tool crib,” and they returned with armloads of welding and cutting implements that they obviously knew how to use.

  “Hey, Mr. Albemarle,” one of the boys said, looking like a blacksmith as he donned protective leathers. “Is there an SSP for this?” The joking question raised a laugh.

  “Yeah,” Albemarle shot back, “Shipyard Standard Procedure says kiss my ass. In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re not doing things by the book anymore. So stop screwing around and get that door open.”

  The door he meant was not the door we’d come in through, but the sixty-foot-high hangar doors. They’d been secured by a mammoth chain strung through holes in the metal like something out of King Kong. Trundled up to it on a rolling scaffold, the boys applied their blinding blue flare to one of the bagel-thick links, making a tremendous zapping sound and showers of sparks. “Don’t look at it,” Cowper said, a little late. Steel dripped like burning tallow, then, just like that, the chain clanked apart.

  “All right, roll ’er open!” Albemarle bellowed. “Everybody behind the Sallie, heads down! We’re going on parade!”

  The “Sallie” was the deejay’s platform. It was a freight-carrying goliath, all wheels and deck (the word SALLIE cast in steel above its low front cockpit), which started up with a ground-shaking rumble and rolled forward on nine rows of tires. It reminded me of the vehicle NASA used to transport spacecraft to the launch pad, though somewhat smaller. Men and boys fell in behind its twin rear cab as it approached the parting doors. When it passed us, Cowper and I joined the crowd.

  “Stay close,” he said, pinching my bicep.

  People gave me plenty of room, so that for once I didn’t feel claustrophobic, as I often did in groups. In fact, I was able to take comfort from the sheer size of the crowd. We were an army.

  “You’re not coming,” someone said to me from behind, but I ignored him and kept moving.

  We streamed out of the hangar at a fast walk, the crawler bearing right to make for the inner guardpost. It was deserted. The main gate was behind us, mostly hidden by buildings, but we could hear the commotion there—sounds like rioting hooligans with firecrackers—and see the dim orange glow of flames illuminating the draped fence like a paper screen, on which life-size shadow puppets danced. Men could be glimpsed running along a catwalk at the top, dodging mangled hands that lunged spastically at them through the razor wire.

  After seeing a guard yanked into the lacerating coils by those obscene blue things, I didn’t dare look back anymore, covering my ears to muffle the screams. A wave of gibbering fear swept the crowd, causing some boys to fall and almost be trampled, but Cowper and Albemarle kept yelling, “Eyes forward! Keep moving! Eyes forward—look where you’re going!” and it seemed to help even though we could barely see where we were going.

  Heading down a grassy slope, we descended into gloom, with pale, unlit buildings rising like sunken ships out of the fog and our only illumination the haloed caution lights of the Sallie. Smells of seaweed, tar, and diesel exhaust mingled in the air. It was a strange, ghostly parade all right, with the Sallie its unadorned float.

  “What’s it like out there?” asked a boy to my
left. He was the one in the chipmunk costume, and was carrying its head under his arm. It was a blue-collar chipmunk, I noticed, with work boots, protective goggles, and a plush hard hat. From the boy’s intensity, I realized he meant the outside world.

  The question set me off again, and I found it very hard to reply. Eyes dribbling tears, it was all I could do to shrug, turning away to wipe my face on my puffy sleeve.

  “That’s pretty much what I figured,” he said bitterly. “How did you get through?”

  I wasn’t going to get into it. “Ask him. Where are we going?”

  Before he could answer, another boy said, “You’d know if you belonged here.”

  “Don’t talk to her—she’s a freak,” said someone else.

  “You see any other women with us? That’s ’cause they were quarantined. We had to leave ’em behind—”

  “Sisters, mothers . . . all of them.”

  “—all gone, and you think you comin’? Uh-uh.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, trying to stem the hostility, “I didn’t ask to come here. I’m just along for the ride.”

  This was the wrong thing to say. The reaction was so vehement that some of the adults cast puzzled and annoyed looks our way. Frankly, I would have appreciated any adult intervention, but the grown-ups were deeply engrossed in heated business of their own. I resented Cowper for letting himself be monopolized this way.

  We passed through an open gate and entered a field of massive rusty cylinders, large as redwood trunks. Above them, disappearing into the fog, loomed a huge inert crane, a skeletal Godzilla guarding her eggs. The Sallie stopped, and with it the abuse directed at me. Everyone’s attention was suddenly focused on something down the road, some kind of winged black monolith with giraffe-speckled antennae sprouting from its crest.

  “Is that what I think it is?” I asked. No one replied.

  It was a very, very big submarine.