Walter Greatshell - Apocalypticon

The fourth and last car was shrouded in layers of heavy plastic sheeting. At one time the baffles had obviously been pumped up with air, now they hung limp. Lulu and the others tore carelessly through the seals to enter. It was a "clean room," containing air locks, biohazard suits, vacuum tanks, and all manner of UV lamps and microscopes, as well as more arcane scientific gear. Stainless-steel cabinets and refrigerators lined the walls. Like the compartments before it, the place didn't appear ransacked.

"I knew it," Langhorne said. "They went after our facilities downtown, where the spectrometer and the X-ray diffraction labs are. They didn't even touch this place. Very few people knew about it, and to those who did, it was totally taboo-the secret Mogul burial chamber. Hallowed ground. No one belonged here unless they were dead. But this is where we collated and stored all our information. This is where Miska tied the threads together."

Lulu approached the back of the car. Something was off there; something didn't fit. Amid all the wildly redundant human safety precautions, a door had been left open. It faced down the tunnel, a gaping window of black void. Beside the doorway was a large, stainless-steel vat. It was almost as tall as she was, plastered with bright yellow and orange warning signs: LIQUID NITROGEN-HANDLE WITH CAUTION. HAZARDOUS MATERIALS. BIOHAZARD. MUTAGEN.

"Cellular aging is associated with patterns of phosphorylation-proteins breaking down-so we developed a fast, synthetic delivery agent that could rewire each cell's nucleus to correct these patterns. The ideal was a hardy, self-replicating cell doctor that would never let the cells die-for any reason. And that's exactly what we came up with: a viral mechanism that enabled each cell to function independently and self-sufficiently. This thing… this thing-it was bigger than penicillin, bigger than the invention of fire!"

Lulu unclamped the heavy lid and peered inside. The tank was empty.

"Well?" said Langhorne eagerly, unable to see what was wrong. "Get it and let's go!"

There was a distant splashing. Lulu turned and stared blankly out the back of the carriage, her slight body framed by the doorway. From the echoes in that hollow gulf of air, she could sense the tunnel's length: a mile-long river sealed at both ends. A flooded crypt. Its temperature matched that of Lulu's own inner sea: fifty-five degrees. The light from the doorway cast a brown swath across the blackness, out of which loomed her own elongated shadow. Directly below her feet, she could make out the sepia glimmer of submerged railroad tracks receding into the murk.

Her attention followed the line of the tracks to the vanishing point, fixating on something deep in the darkness, a ghostly, lurking presence she could not quite pin down. The unfamiliar sensation caused a ripple of gooseflesh, bristled her hair. Her own reaction shocked and amused her: How interesting. She hadn't known she was still capable of fear.

But what am I afraid of? she thought. I'm the boogeyman here.

Summoning the awkward instrument of speech, she said, "Big." Her voice sounded alien to her, rusty and shrill. It repulsed her. She cleared her throat and tried again: "There's something big out there."

Listening from the sub, Langhorne wasn't sure who had spoken. She knew it couldn't be one of the boys, and certainly not Ed Albemarle. The raw, high-pitched sound paralyzed her for a second, because she knew from experience it could only be the voice of an articulate Xombie, but none of her Xombies had ever said a word. With dawning excitement, she realized it had to be Lulu-Lulu was talking! While Alice was absorbing this development, she also scrambled to make sense of what the girl was trying to tell her.

"Something big? Out-out where?" she asked.

Just then the ceiling came down.

Above the tunnel there was an explosion-a series of explosions. Demolition charges had been planted in Miska's basement and along the secret stairwell, detonating in sequence to amplify their effect. Xombies trailing at the end of the cable were first shredded by the blasts, then pulverized by the collapsing mass of the structures above, first the stone ceiling, then the iron scrollwork, then centuries-old timbers, bricks, and lead pipes. Above, Miska's house folded in upon itself, three stories compacting into one, then none, as walls and floorboards buckled, windows coughed out glass, and heavy enameled bath fixtures were sucked downward as if swallowed by a leviathan. In an instant, it all vanished in a billow of smoke, leaving a gap in Benefit Street like a yanked tooth.

In the tunnel beneath, the avalanche of rubble crashed to the bottom, burying the concrete platform and hitting the water with enough force to create sea waves that actually lifted the first Pullman car off its tracks. Dust, smoke, and hundreds of tons of debris roared down as if through a chute, perforating the train like volleys of grapeshot, pelting the Xombies within.

Then, all at once, it was done.

As dust and silence settled, all who were not buried or blown to bits climbed indifferently to their feet. They were filthy and dinged, but unperturbed. Lulu, at the far rear of the train, was one of the least damaged. The shock wave had blown her out the doorway, and she now stood up in sloshing, chest-deep water, sensing the silvery spray of glass and shrapnel embedded in her back. There was no blood or pain; all it took was a serpentine ripple to dislodge the shards, the clean wounds pursing shut like dozens of freakish eyelids.

Lulu's senses were clouded, her body still ringing from the physical shock, but she knew that she was not alone in that water. There was someone else out there with her-someone or something that was both alive and dead, both Xombie and human, the pale shine of its life force eclipsed by the shadow of death, yet not any kind of Xombie she had ever encountered. Who's there?

Now a light appeared at the far end of the tunnel, getting brighter and brighter as it came around the bend. As it hove into view, Lulu could see an enormous plunging silhouette wreathed in spray. If she didn't know better, she would have sworn it was a train. She was clear on one point, though: Whatever it was, it had no fear of her and was coming fast.

The memory of her mother-her mummy-rose like a phantom out of Lulu's amorphous mind, that familiar carping voice that in life she so loved and reviled:

What is this, Mummy squawked, Grand Central Station?

"Everybody move!" Russell barked. "You heard the man! Everybody off your ass!"

"Where you think we goin'?" demanded Kyle, frozen in place. He was not only terrified, but angry that his brother Russell was suddenly so eager to throw in with a loser like Sal DeLuca-especially at a time like this. After all they'd been through together, he was gonna start taking orders from that guy? No way, uh-uh. What did that fool have that they didn't? Except maybe the map.

"In here!" Sal shouted. He was standing behind the counter, pointing through the doorway of the minimart's utility room. It stank from the boys all having used the employee toilet even though there was no water pressure for flushing.

The boys looked doubtfully at the dark, stinking little cell. "Can we all fit in there?" Freddy asked.

Kyle yelled, "That's a death trap, man!"

"Not there!" Sal impatiently pointed through the room to a door marked EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY-ALARM WILL SOUND. "There!"

The Xombies were coming fast; if the boys didn't move quickly, they were going to be trapped in that glass box of a convenience store.

They moved. In an explosion of panic, they trampled each other to reach the back door, the lucky ones bursting outside into an alley. Sal had the advantage of a head start, then Russell and Kyle and the rest of the stronger boys.