Walter Greatshell - Apocalypticon

"It could be that viral thing they talked about-viral progression," Sal said. "The cities got so full of Xombies, they reached critical mass. Once there was nobody left to infect, there was no reason to stay, so they scattered outward across the country. Maybe there aren't any left here."

The boys' chests swelled with hope. "Is that true?"

"I don't know. It's just what I heard."

"God, I hope you right, man."

Staying off the exposed waterfront, they followed a shaded inner street with fewer doorways. This led them to a second highway underpass, one older and darker than the first, a sunken hollow, its corroded iron girders busy with roosting pigeons. There were peeling psychedelic murals on the walls, ads for funky-sounding businesses: Cafe Zog, Olga's Cup and Saucer, Acme Video, Z-Bar. Cars sat dead in the road, their windows broken and doors wide open to the elements. Pigeons were roosting in them, too. This was not a good place to be, it didn't feel safe. The boys could be cornered here in the dripping wetness, trapped amid the rust and rank birdshit. "We shouldn't a gone this way, man," said Kyle. They walked faster and faster, trying not to panic, not to run…

… and emerged in the light of spring. Before them was a tiny hillside park with a veterans' memorial, benches, and maple trees. Dew glistened on the grass. But the boys hardly noticed any of that. They were more interested in what lay just beyond: a bright red-and-yellow gas station with a sign reading FOOD MART.

Now they ran.

The coolers were dead, the ice cream melted, the milk curdled, but nearly everything else in the place was edible, and the forty boys made a valiant attempt to eat it all. It was a treasure trove more welcome to them than King Tut's tomb, and as perfectly preserved, not in natron but sodium benzoate.

Snack cakes and pies, puddings, nuts, cookies, crackers, canned meats and cheeses, beef sticks, jerky, pickles, salsa, pretzels and potato chips galore. Candy! Whole cases of chocolate bars, chews, sours, mints, gum. And drinks: bottled beverages of every kind-energy drinks, soda pop, fancy sweetened teas and cappuccino, Yoo-hoo, or just plain water-all free for the taking. It was a teenage dream come true, an all-you-can-eat paradise of junk food. All the cigarettes they could smoke, too, if they wanted them, and a few other vices besides.

"Can this stuff make us sick?" Freddy Fisk asked through a mouthful of minidonuts. "It must be pretty old by now."

"I doubt it," Sal said, munching Fritos. "There's enough chemicals in this stuff to last until doomsday."

"Then it's definitely expired."

What they didn't eat, they stuffed into ditty bags they had brought from the sub. They sacked the store until all that was left was money and auto accessories. Sated, idly scratching lottery tickets, some of them were already starting to feel that perhaps it had been a mistake to eat so much, so fast. Of that junk. Damn.

"I don't feel so good, man."

Sal was consulting the selection of maps. "Well, don't croak yet-we still have a ways to go to get back."

"You guys go ahead, I'm staying here-urp."

"I think we all staying here," Russell said. Something in his voice made them turn around to see what he was looking at. The front windows of the minimart overlooked the little memorial park and the elevated highway just beyond. Until now, the boys had not been in a position to really see Interstate 195-it had been an abstract concept, no more alarming than the underside of a bridge. Now they had a good view of it. Freddy G vomited-whulp!

The highway was a river of death, a glacier of stalled metal, curving away as far as the eye could see. Thousands upon thousands of cars and trucks jammed bumper to bumper, all dead silent, the diamond bits of their smashed windows glittering in the morning sun. The interstate had become a colossal junkyard, a graveyard for humanity's mobile aspirations… when graveyards no longer stayed filled.

Silent, dead, but not entirely still. There was darting movement there. Not the movement of cars, but of bodies-naked blue bodies. Caught in glimpses: the wink of shadows scurrying between the lanes, a flash of scary Zuni-doll faces. And darker shapes looming beneath the overpass-jumpy silhouettes blocking the light, flushing out the pigeons. Rushing down the on-ramp. They were everywhere.

Feeling his insides turn to water, Sal's thoughts raced. No way, no way, dude. Nuh-uh, no way, oh, no, no, no, please, no…

What he said was, "Guys? Can we, uh, get moving?"

As usual, first responders charged into the fire. In the early moments of the outbreak, most EMTs and other rescue personnel simply vanished off the face of the Earth. Radio transcripts and dashboard cameras from police sources provide some of the earliest glimpses into the tragedy. A good example is the video log of 1A86, a patrol car with the LAPD, driven by Officer Mike McGuinness. Responding at 9:04 P.M. PST to reported "rioting" at Torrance General Hospital, the car's camera shows several police cruisers converging on the hospital's emergency entrance. Frantic medics run up to the cars yelling for help, as in the background a number of people can be seen on the ground being straddled and assaulted by crazed-looking women, some dressed in hospital scrubs. In the headlights, their faces appear bright blue. Using loudspeakers, the arriving officers command the aggressors to stop, then jump from their cars to intervene. They first attempt to break the grip of the attackers, then Mace and stun them repeatedly, then finally club them with nightsticks, all to little effect. They seem to have trouble getting handcuffs to stay on. First one and then another officer is attacked as more crazed rioters begin to appear. Shots ring out as officers realize they are overwhelmed-they can be heard screaming for backup. Officer McGuinness retreats to his vehicle and grabs his riot shotgun. At the same time, a K-9 unit pulls up, and the officers try to coax their cowering dog out of the car. As they are doing this, female rioters drag them down. McGuinness tries using the butt of his shotgun to knock one of the aggressors off, but others seize him around the neck, seemingly trying to kiss him as he goes down. As he struggles, his shotgun discharges at point-blank range into the open mouth of one female attacker, blasting most of her head off, but in an instant her body springs right back to join the others now piling onto him. At this point there is no one visible except squirming clusters of blue-skinned people. For a few moments they are all we see. Then they begin to get up, to move on, blowing away like leaves. But where are the bodies of their victims? It isn't until we notice that the dead cops have risen to join their killers, eyes glittering black in the headlights, that the full horror is revealed. -The Maenad Project "Uri Miska worked in a hole in the ground,"said Lang-horne's disembodied voice, echoing in the vault. "So that's where Agent X came from."

The wrought-iron spiral staircase descended into perfect darkness, as if down a well. Certainly there was water somewhere down there-water dripping into water. The air was rank with the stench of mildew.

"Now watch out. He may still be down there."

Lulu went first, then Albemarle and the rest. They hardly needed light to see-the newly independent cells of their bodies were not only photosensitive, but receptive to every other stimulus as well. They moved through a kaleidoscopic world of visible, liquid sensation: sound as strobing colors, temperature viscid as oil. It was only Langhorne who was blind-despite the boat's powerful mast array, reception at her end was sketchy. Broadband was a thing of the past. At her command, the light-boys clicked on, flooding the stone passage with xenon-bright glare.