Walter Greatshell - Apocalypticon

There was an eruption of activity in the great compartment. Some of it was cursing and complaining, some was cheering, but most of it was eager chatter of the wait-and-see variety. None of the boys had much love for Harvey Coombs-they had pretty consistently starved under his watch. The only time they had eaten well, in fact, was for the few weeks they had been in the service of the Moguls… and that had had its own drawbacks.

Sal DeLuca looked up from his chessboard and felt a twinge of anxiety: Not again. No wonder Tran was too busy to come aft, with another mutiny going on. How many captains were they going to run through on this boat? This made three so far. He looked across at his younger opponent, the new kid, and said, "Don't worry about it. It's probably not going to make much difference to us."

"Check," said Bobby, intent on the game. Sal's plan to distract the boy from his trauma was proving almost too successful-the kid had moves.

"No you don't," Sal said. He skated his queen to the king's defense, and instantly realized she would have to be sacrificed. Damn. He might as well resign right now-you couldn't do anything without a queen. Trying to stall, he asked, "So, how'd you make it out there?"

Bobby grunted, "Huh?"

"How'd you survive so long?"

The boy pointedly ignored him. It was clear he wasn't ready to talk about it; the force of his attention had been honed to a thin wedge, a fragile tool unsuited to other uses. Push too hard, and it would break.

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to," said Sal. "You want to know how I made it through? I rode my bike."

Bobby grunted again.

"Seriously. You want to hear about it?" Sal didn't wait for a reply. "I don't know how they knew something was gonna happen, but on the day before New Year's, all of us were supposed to get picked up by buses and taken under escort to the submarine plant where our dads worked. Or uncles or brothers or whatever-only immediate family. Just get on a bus with no explanation and no girls allowed. But I missed the bus! My dad and I were kind of living our separate lives, and I wasn't home a lot. We had different schedules and really didn't meet up much, especially over vacation. I never even got his message. I was heavy into BMX, and used to ride my bike a lot between East Greenwich and Wickford to visit my girlfriend. The terrain there is excellent-there's a lot of rugged country. I was training for the freestyle event at this year's X Games. Anyway, we went to a New Year's Eve party down around Narragansett, but then Wendy got a headache and wanted to go home, so we left early, even before the countdown. I was kind of pissed, but it was her car, you know? She didn't even want to stay over at my place, even though we would have had the whole house to ourselves.

"Wendy hardly said anything all the way home. That's what sucks-I didn't know it was the last time I'd ever see her, so I didn't even kiss her good night, just got my bike out of her car and that was it. Last thing I saw was her taillights going down the hill, with the sound of people yelling and horns honking and fireworks all over the place. I remember thinking, 'Happy New Year-yeah right.'

"I went in the house, nuked a frozen burrito, and turned on the TV. It was only a few minutes after midnight, so I figured I could still catch some of the celebrations-New Year's Rockin' Eve or whatever. But that was the first sign that something was messed up: Most channels were either dead air or 'experiencing technical difficulties.' The rest were showing old reruns. I could not believe it. Dude, it was like, 'Is this the worst New Year's Eve ever?' I thought about calling Wendy on her cell but just went to bed instead. I was pretty wasted.

"The next morning I woke up with a pillow over my head and a wicked headache. I don't know if it was more from the hangover or from the noise-there were car horns and sirens and car alarms going off all night. It was still going on. And we live in a pretty quiet area usually, a lot of officer housing. I got cleaned up and took some ibuprofin, then I noticed there were about ten messages on the answering machine, so I hit the button. It was my dad."

All at once, Sal couldn't speak. It was maddening. He wanted so bad to be over this, but he knew that if he said one more word, he would start crying again. Come on, he thought, pinching the back of his hand hard enough to leave a welt. You can't keep doing this, it's ridiculous. He's better off dead-handle it!

But Sal couldn't help it. It was the memory of his father's scared voice on that answering machine, saying, Sal, are you there? If you're there, pick up-it's an emergency. Did you get my note about the bus? There's going to be a company bus coming to pick you up tomorrow to bring you to the plant. It is very important that you be on it, all right? Very, very important. You'll find out why when you get here. Do not miss this bus, son, whatever you do.

Before Sal could begin to wrap his mind around that, the next message started: Sal, pick up. Pick up! Shit. Shit, shit, shit. You're still not there. Okay, listen, this is important: You missed the bus, but you still have to get to the plant. I don't care how you do it, but come here as quick as you can. This is no joke! Whatever you do, avoid other people-there's some kind of murder epidemic going on, and a lot of crazy psychos are running around killing people. I know what you're thinking, but it's true. Watch out for women especially-they're all contagious. I'm not allowed to leave, or I'd come get you. I'm serious, Sal, take your bike and get out, now. Stay off the roads. Go as fast as you can, and don't stop for anything. My God, I hope you get this message.

All the other messages were pretty much the same, though increasingly desperate. His father was crying by the end. Sal had never heard his father cry before.

Standing amid the familiar clutter of his kitchen, holding a box of cornflakes, Sal couldn't process the information-it was like he was still dreaming, or stoned. Sal's father Gus DeLuca was probably the most infuriatingly hardheaded person he had ever met, a man who had zero tolerance for anything he deemed "fantasyland," so something was seriously wrong. Worrying that his dad had snapped, he went to his father's room. The drawers were pulled out and the old man's Samsonite suitcase was missing. Returning to the kitchen, Sal found the note about the bus taped to the fridge calendar. It had been there a couple of days. He picked up the phone to call the plant, but the line was dead. In a daze, he turned on the TV. Snow-all snow. Pondering, searching for anything that would make sense, Sal opened the window and leaned out.

Wow.

The air was full of smoke. He could see cars backed up along the road, and there were alarms going off far into the distance, an insane multitude of alarms-the most he'd ever heard at once. But he couldn't see any people. That was the weird thing. With all the noise and disturbance, neighbors should have been standing in the road checking it out, but Sal couldn't see a single person.

And then he did. Just as he was about to shut the window, he caught sight of a group of people charging up the street. Three women leading five or six men. They were half-naked and running like maniacs, but the main thing was, they were blue. Really blue blue, like zombies in a cheesy horror movie. It was sick. Their mouths were wide open, and their eyes were black and bugging out of their heads.

At first Sal couldn't move, frozen in shock, but as they crossed his driveway he snapped out of it and shut the window. They saw him then, and he would never forget the sensation of being spotted, like prey-it was as if they locked on to him. Holy shit! Everything his dad had said was still spinning in his head, so he didn't have to think long about what to do. He just did it.