Walter Greatshell - Apocalypticon

Then they were clearing the worst of the current, moving into calmer eddies near shore. "Okay, we're good, we're gonna make it," Sal said, heart still racing. "Don't stop, we're almost there."

"Shut up," Kyle said. "Damn."

"Yeah, man," agreed Russell. "We don't need you to tell us what to do. We know you're Officer Tran's little bitch, but just try to chill, a'ight? We on it."

Russell and Kyle Hancock were brothers, the only surviving pair of siblings on the ship, and their mutual strength made them de facto rulers of the Big Room. Russell was one year older than Kyle, with a corrected cleft lip and a resulting lisp that made him sound like Mike Tyson. Kids had learned not to rag him about it. His brother Kyle was lighter built, less touchy, with the easy confidence of a born player. As they liked to say, Russell was the muscle, and Kyle was the style. The brothers were not overt troublemakers, they simply used their power to do as little as possible, making needier kids like the Freddies-Freddy Fisk and Freddy Gonzales, or just Freddy F and G, Tweedledum and Tweedledee-do their work for them. Why shouldn't they? There were no extra rations in doing it yourself-the privilege of not starving was reserved for "essential personnel" only. As far as Kyle and Russell were concerned, Sal DeLuca and all the other overworked ship's apprentices were suckers.

"Dude, don't even start," Sal said. "I'm just trying to help us stay alive, okay?"

"We don't need your help-dude."

"Yeah, give it a rest. You ain't no ship's officer."

"No, but I'm responsible for your ass."

"Leave my ass be. And you best watch your own, bike boy."

They all snickered.

Sal shook his head, grinning in spite of himself. This had been going on for months, part of the friction between the ship's apprentices and the "nubs"-nonuseful bodies. Nubs were often the guys who were having the worst time of it, the true orphans, whose adult sponsors-their dads-had been killed, and who could barely hold it together enough to function, their shock and despair manifesting as attitude. He knew Russell's gibes were a response to the helplessness of the situation, a survival mechanism. A thin wedge against panic, which Sal could totally relate to, having lost his own father at Thule. Hey, to laugh was better than to cry… or to scream. Once you started screaming, you might never stop.

The screams came at night, in their sleep.

Now they were below the high dock, fending off its barnacled pilings with their paddles. "Okay, everybody be quiet," Sal said. If there were Xombies up there, they could just jump right into the boats. He tied up to a rusted ladder, and whispered, "I'm just gonna take a look, okay? Nobody move unless I give the all clear."

"What is this squad leader bullshit?" Kyle hissed, getting up. "This ain't no video game, dumb-ass."

"Fine, you go first." Sal made room for him to pass.

Kyle hesitated, sudden doubt flashing across his face, so that Russell said, "Sit your ass down. Let a real man go up."

"Fuck you."

Russell belligerently mounted the ladder. They watched in nervous silence as he paused at the top, peeking over the edge at first with trembling caution, then visibly relaxing and raising his whole head above. "Come on, chicken shits," he called down. "Ain't nothin' to-"

A blue hand seized him by the throat.

Fighting the thing, Russell lost his grip and plummeted backward onto the raft. The disembodied hand was still on him-not just a hand but an entire arm, ripped off at the shoulder socket, its round bone nakedly visible, hideously flailing and jerking at the elbow joint as it strangled him. The other boys quailed back, screaming, but Sal lunged for the thing, trying to pry its fingers loose. It was a young girl's hand, its dainty nails painted pink, but it was cold and rubbery, impossibly strong.

"Help me!" he shouted.

Kyle jumped forward to pitch in, then two other boys, his poker buddies, Ray and Rick. As they grappled with it, the naked stump punched Sal in the cheek so hard it cracked a filling. Tasting blood, he braced his knee on Russell's chest, and, with a supreme effort, they managed to wrench the thing loose. It immediately went wild, flexing and bucking in their hands, trying to get at them. "All together now," Sal said. "One, two…" On three, they hurled it far out into the water.

"Holy craaap," Russell wheezed, retching over the side.

"Let's get outta here!" Kyle shouted.

"Wait!" Sal said. "We can't just go back."

"Why not? I'm not waitin' for the rest of that chick to show up!"

"We got to expect shit like this to happen. We handled it! We can't just give up now."

"We sure as hell can!" Others chimed in: "Hell yeah," "We're gone!" "This shit is suicide!"

"Hold up," said a ragged voice. It was Russell. He shakily sat up, and croaked, "Don't nobody do a goddamned thing. I ain't-hem-goin' back to that submarine empty-handed. Just so they can lock us in jail again? How many days we already been sitting there dreaming we had someplace else to go, some kinda free choice? Screw that shit. I'm hungry." He got up and climbed the ladder again, wobbly but without hesitation. In seconds, he was over the top and out of sight.

For a long moment there was silence, then Russell's face reappeared. "Come on!" he called down impatiently. "Let's do this shit. You wanna eat or don't you?"

Sal started to follow, but Kyle and the other boys shoved past, nearly knocking him into the water. Whether empowered by Russell's confidence, the prospect of food, or the thought of that arm lurking in the water below, suddenly they couldn't get up fast enough. "One at a time," Sal said. But they weren't listening to him at all-the old ladder was almost coming to pieces from their combined weight. Stupid jerks. "Everybody stay together," he called after them as he tested the rungs.

Sal emerged to find the boys standing at the edge of a weedy lot, reveling in the glorious, slightly queasy sensation of dry land. It looked like no-man's-land-the vacant area beneath a highway bridge. On one side was the flood-control berm-a high rock dam separating them from the city-and on the other a fenced tugboat landing and some condemned-looking buildings. Huge concrete pylons rose above them to Interstate 195. It was all reassuringly deserted.

As Sal joined them, Russell asked him, "Where to now?"

"Well, we gotta cross under the highway and follow the road here through the floodgate. There should be businesses and things on the other side."

"Let's do it."

Following Russell, who was following Sal, the boys trooped quickly and quietly down the road, picking up any likely-looking weapons they happened to find-mostly rocks and chunks of brick. Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me. Sal wished he could find a good stick. He looked up at the highway bridge, imagining that the little girl's arm must have fallen from there, picturing the awful scene: the girl in the backseat of her parents' car, the Xombie lunging in and grabbing her arm, Dad hitting the gas-nasty.

They found the tremendous open doors of the flood barrier and cautiously followed the road through. On the far side was a waterfront area of chic clubs and condos, and across the river an immense Gothic cathedral that was the electric company, webbed to the rest of the city by flowing skeins of wire. It was all dead, all out of commission, yet almost perfectly preserved, as if loyally awaiting the future return of humankind. Everything had gone down so fast, there was no time for looting and destruction.

Dodging from one shadow to the next, the boys did what they could to keep a low profile. "I don't get it," Kyle said, eyes wide with tension. "Why aren't there any Xombies?"

"Be glad there ain't," said Russell, gingerly touching his bruised neck.