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Authors: Walter Greatshell

BOOK: Xombies: Apocalypse Blues
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I hardly saw what happened next as I quailed beneath the monstrous thing, trying to shrink into the deck. Boxed in on three sides by walls of recoiling onlookers, the Ex-Adam took a leisurely survey of the situation, then seized Hairnet Boy’s living body by the collarbone as if it was a handle—Mitch awoke in agony—and lunged with him over the windscreen I had erected. It was just cardboard fastened to the safety cable. What appeared to be open space beyond was actually the port side of the boat. There was a skidding sound, then a splash as they both fell into the sea.
We shined flashlights down after them, but there was no movement in the milky green water.
“Boy had the devil in him,” said Mr. Banks.
 
 
When the day of departure finally came, and everyone had to break camp, I was deeply depressed. I didn’t have the energy to deal with whatever plan they had for us or look ahead to the future, and I dreaded being cooped up with people who loathed me. On a purely aesthetic level, it was like moving from an airy patio to a windowless cellar. The lights and warmth would be nice, but if it weren’t for the weather turning bad, I could have stayed up there forever.
In the aftermath of the incident, most people avoided my eyes as if I were Medusa. Even the ones who took an interest in my welfare wouldn’t look at me, but were suddenly fanatical about guarding me at night. There were a lot of fake-earnest expressions of sympathy, a stream of invitations to “just talk.” All this got on my nerves because I didn’t want them putting my trauma in a special category above their own—we were in this together. Others pretended nothing had happened, and I actually preferred this . . . except in the case of Cowper. It would have helped to talk to him.
The line to go below was forming, a lot of hustle and bustle. I lagged back to have a last long look over the water. It was choppy, and wind-torn pennants of red, green, and gold colored the dawn sky. The boat glistened with frost. Above her silolike sail, the last stars were also taking their sweet time to go. How many people in the world were still around to see those stars? To feel what I felt?
“Red sky at morning, sailor take warning,” someone said up front, and “Who’s got Dramamine?” I wiped my eyes and headed down.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
W
e raised anchor and sailed for the open ocean the morning of Sunday, February 5. The rolling below decks told us a storm was brewing—a submarine’s famed ability to ride out gales is all about its ability to submerge. Since we were running on the surface, we had no such immunity. In fact, we were less stable than a surface ship would have been.
The effect of this irony was a plague of seasickness in the missile room. There was no adequate provision for this, no way to hurl over the side, and only one available restroom for over four hundred people. It was like a painting by Brueghel in there. Five-gallon buckets were lashed down all over the compartment, and whenever they were full, someone had to pour them into the three toilets, a terrible job in a rocking ship. Everyone took turns doing it, but not everyone was as sure-footed as they might have been—I know I had a few spills of my own. Even with the air being constantly refreshed, it was impossible to escape the smell of vomit.
Knock wood, I was one of the few who never got sick.
Nobody knew where we were going, and the conscripted adults passing through the missile room did not stop to answer questions, so there was a certain envy when word came over the loudspeaker that I was to report to the command center.
“Lucky you, getting a pass out of steerage,” Hector said, half mocking. He and the other guys could barely drag themselves from their cardboard igloo on the fourth level. “Make sure to tell them we appreciate the accommodations.”
“And make ’em tell you what’s up with this secrecy shit,” Tyrell said. “Brotha got a right to know what kinda plans they makin’ for us. I ain’t
doin’
no more tired-ass refugee-camp bullshit. Give me an island. We livin’ in a democracy—I say we vote on where we goin’, be kickin’ back in the Bahamas.”
Doing a Jamaican-sounding falsetto, Jake sang,
“Sail away to Block Island . . . leave all your troubles behind . . .”
Then he retched.
Pausing dramatically at the forward bulkhead, I intoned, “I shall return.”
I still hadn’t seen or heard from Cowper since our first night on the water, six days before. I attributed this to the urgent demands put on him, as well as the need to avoid any appearance of favoritism—he couldn’t afford to lavish attention on any one person. The crew had their limited sphere, the passengers our own. Being granted the largest open space on board, we were expected to make the best of it, which meant not bothering anyone forward amidships. It was an unavoidable apartheid; there was simply not enough room to let so many people roam free. But I didn’t like it.
The luckiest among us were the adults who were permitted to use the enlisted berthing on the missile room’s third level: nine bunks to a room, with doors that could be shut against the squalor. Everyone envied them.
Arriving at main control, I was told by Kranuski to report to the commander on the bridge. It reassured me to see that no one here seemed disturbed by the deck’s motion. It didn’t smell.
“Come right fifteen degrees,” Kranuski said, and Robles replied, “Right fifteen, aye.” The men at the steering yokes casually complied. Most of the people in the room were men who had come from the factory, but it was hard to tell them apart from the official crew anymore. A number of them were wearing the same blue “poopie suits” as the one Cowper had given me.
As I went up the hatch that had been such a dreadful source of terror before, I was grateful for this scene of quiet professionalism—only XO Kranuski so much as spared me a glance. “Just grab a harness and go all the way up,” he said.
Climbing up through three dank chambers, I emerged into a tiny, pitching cockpit already full of Mr. Coombs. He had a bulky neck brace, and a big pair of binoculars slung from it. The wind was fierce.
“Coming through, sir!” I shouted, disappointed at not finding Cowper. Coombs made room for me beside him while a burly man scanned the seas to my right—it was Albemarle. We were high above the waves, the sub’s blunt nose plowing them into ridges of whitewater that doused us with spray. It was also sleeting. The toy windshield, on which cryptic figures and notations had been scribbled in grease pencil, offered no protection.
Turning stiffly toward me, Coombs shouted, “Why don’t you have a coat?”
“Sorry, sir. I didn’t know.”
He made me drop back down and put on a hooded rain slicker and a life vest—thank goodness, because I was freezing cold. When I returned to the top, he clipped me to a safety cable, then handed me binoculars, and bellowed, “Tell me if you see anything!”
There was nothing to see but gray. Feeling very nervous, I searched a wide swath of whitecaps but found no horizon or anything else. Spume misted the lenses. Looking astern I thought I saw something: a faint light that blinked and vanished. I waited for it and caught it blinking again.
“There,” I said. “A light. It keeps going on and off.”
“I should hope so,” he said gruffly. “It’s the Beavertail Light. You should be able to see that without the damn binoculars. On a clear day you’d see the cliffs at Newport. If you look about twenty degrees to the left, you can probably find the automated light at Point Judith, too. It’s operational.”
I had been to the Point Judith Light. It was only a couple of miles from Jerusalem. Living there felt like a long, long time ago. That we could still be so close made my stomach muscles clench up. “I see it,” I said.
“Now look forward again a little more carefully. See the compass? We’re heading due east, following the mainland toward the Cape. Track ahead along the coast.”
“But I can’t even see the coast.”
“Doesn’t matter—the SVS-1200 says it’s there, see?”
He showed me a map displayed on a small glowing screen, and I nodded as if I could read it. I returned to scanning, trying to keep my balance in the swinging loft. “Wait—there it is. That one?”
“Sakonnet Point. Congratulations.” He turned robotically and shook my hand.
“Thanks,” I said, sheepishly handing back the binoculars.
“I’m not congratulating you for seeing the lighthouse. I’m congratulating you for being selected as the boat’s official Youth Liaison Officer.”
“Oh . . . The what, sir?”
“You’ll be responsible for making sure all command directives are understood and followed to the letter by the other minors on board. You will also be the spokesperson for said minors, addressing their questions and concerns in whatever way you see fit, so long as it doesn’t interfere with the official duties of the crew or the rules and regulations of this vessel. Finally, you will be my eyes and ears in the missile bay and will be expected to furnish a daily report describing any problems you may be having with civilian order or morale. Anyone gives you trouble, report them to me. Think you can handle the job?”
“I’m not sure, sir. I’ve never—”
“Am I to understand that you are the young woman who came up with the carbon-monoxide solution to the Xombies?”
“I guess so, yes, but—”
“Well, I’m sure that if you bring as much initiative to your duties as Youth Liaison Officer as you did to the Maenad problem, you’ll have them eating out of your hand. The youths, that is. Now, these duties are not to be taken lightly. All it takes is one bad apple to spoil the whole bunch, girl—our lives and the success of our objective could once again come down to your powers of observation. We’ve already compromised far too much of this mission . . . we have to salvage what we can. May I count on you.”
It was not a question. “Yes, sir,” I said dismally.
“Good. Mr. Monte will get you started on one of the UNIX workstations. He’ll also arrange for you to have a private snack in the wardroom every day—but I advise you to keep that to yourself. Welcome to the team. That’s all.”
“Mr. Coombs, sir?”
“You should call me Commander or Captain. Skipper is all right, too.”
“Yes, sir. Uh, Captain? Where can I find Mr. Cowper, sir?”
He turned heavily away. “You wouldn’t want to do that.”
“Why not?”
“Fred Cowper is under arrest, pending charges of conspiracy, mutiny, sedition, and theft and destruction of classified government property. That’s just the beginning. I don’t know what your relationship to him is, but I do know that his personnel file specifies that he is widowed with no dependents. All the times I’ve worked with him over the years, he never mentioned you. Don’t you think it’s about time you returned the favor?”
I shook my head no, tears blowing away.
“Lulu, Uncle Sam is your daddy now. He won’t let you down.”
Ice-cold, I descended.
 
 
I was used to being shunned—kids had been shunning me all my life, as they will anyone who dares to use reason and four-syllable words—but under these circumstances it was bothersome beyond belief. As Youth Liaison Officer I was given scheduled times when I could roam beyond the missile compartment, and these outings became more and more necessary as my tolerance for being sniped at decreased—the decks were gauntlets of whispered asides, to which I responded in kind: “Bitch.” “Jerk.” “Bitch.” “Creep.” “Skank.” “Pig.” “Bitch.” “Trash.” No one cared that I had neither asked for nor desired my new title; any fledgling public sympathy just evaporated overnight. Word had gotten out about Cowper’s arrest and confinement, and a lot of guys acted like he had been asking for it all along.
“Oh yeah,”
they murmured together.
“What did he expect?”
I couldn’t believe it. He and I were even made the subject of outrageous graffiti—cartoons that portrayed me as a Nazi Kewpie doll putting a noose around the old man’s neck.
All my fears about sharing a cave with these troglodytes seemed to be coming true. I took to carrying my possessions everywhere I went for fear of vandalism. The boys blamed me for everything. When I had to announce that the laptops were being confiscated, they blamed me. When I couldn’t increase the measly ration, or couldn’t answer questions about our destination, they blamed me. For anything they could think up I was blamed, so that I began to feel like a sacrificial effigy: Coombs’s stand-in. Fortunately, there were no more psychos among them, or if there were, they knew better than to act on it. But when animals are crowded together in unhealthy conditions, they eventually start killing one another, and I think Coombs knew exactly what he was doing, letting me take the heat. I was expendable.
Rather than murdering me, however, the boys vented their testosterone on one another, fighting over any slight—I mean real fistfights—and forming belligerent gangs. I tried to channel these passions in a positive direction, enlisting Shawn to help me organize a makeshift poetry slam, and even contributed a short piece in the style of my idol, Emily Dickinson: “Trapped in this armpit omnibus / The river feeds its source / We’ve traded in our Pegasus / And bought a rocking horse.” But in spite of the captive audience, the reading was a bust, at best an unruly class assembly.

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