Walter Greatshell - Apocalypticon

Climbing down through the dank chambers in the monolithic black sail, Coombs thought as he often did lately about the choices, the sheer chance, that had led him into the Navy, and by extension to this strange, infernal place. It might so easily have never happened at all. He might be out there even now, lost beyond that dark shore, amid the blue multitude. The same as everyone else.

He could feel the anxious eyes of the crew on him now as he passed through the control center, searching him for confirmation of what they all felt and what they wanted him to feel. So that they could be reassured he was doing something about it, being the cool, competent leader they needed him to be. But he couldn't-Harvey couldn't give them that assurance. He had no such hope to offer.

"Keep to our present heading," he said. "Rich, take the conn for a minute."

"Yes, sir," said his executive officer darkly. "Robles, you and Phil go down with him."

Lt. Dan Robles stood up from his console.

"Stand down, Dan. I don't need an escort this time."

"It's just a precaution."

"I know, but it's been a week, and I think we might let up a little bit-the good doctor seems to be handling things down there. She's the expert."

"Respectfully disagree, Captain," said Kranuski. "We can't afford to relax our guard, not with them aboard. Whatever Dr. Quinn down there may think, it's too dangerous."

Richard Kranuski had many disagreements with Coombs about how the ship should be run, and increasingly strong support among the weary, makeshift crew, but Coombs did not think the XO would mutiny-bad as things were, it hadn't yet come to that. Terror was a great bonding agent. "If Langhorne feels safe enough to bunk down there all alone," he said, "I should be able to manage a quick look-see." He patted his sidearm. "I still got the old peashooter."

"Like that'll do you any good if-"

"Nothing will do us any good, Rich, if it comes to that. At some point, we just have to trust to fate."

"It wasn't fate brought those things aboard," remarked Alton Webb from the plotting table.

"Stow it, Lieutenant," Kranuski said sharply, reining in his man. To Coombs he said, "Well… it's your call, Captain."

"Thanks for reminding me." Coombs ducked away through the hatch.

Descending the companionway, he deliberately quickened his pace, not giving himself time to think. Alice Langhorne's work area was in the old mission control room, the deck that had once housed the submarine's nuclear launch systems. It was stripped now, an empty shell on the third deck of the command-and-control module-the boat's forward section. The hatch was sealed off and plastered with red caution tape. Someone, probably a teenager, had scrawled, Abandon hope all ye who enter here, beneath a large skull and crossbones. Using his command access key, Coombs opened the door.

Half the lights were out in there; it was dim and clammy as a dank basement. In the center of the room was a small glass coffin bathed in lamplight, with a dead girl inside. She was blue, blue of flesh as well as of dress, with glossy black hair fanned out around her head. The scene was funereal, eerily dreamlike.

Coombs stepped over the raised threshold. The girl was Louise Pangloss-Lulu-Fred Cowper's daughter. Commander Fred Cowper, retired, who had hijacked the sub as a refugee ship, filling it with a bunch of discontented shipyard workers and their teenage sons. Fred Cowper, whom Coombs had arrested for treason and later seen hauled ashore at Thule Air Base to be interrogated about the missing "Tonic"-the stolen antidote to Agent X. Harvey didn't know what had happened to Cowper after that, not until their escape from Thule, when Lulu's lifeless body had been found wedged atop the sail after two days submerged… holding Cowper's severed head in her lap.

She looked peaceful now, waxy and unreal. Her casket was a converted trophy case from the wardroom. It had been moved here after the men began to complain about "the dead girl stinking up the mess." Now it looked as though the doctor was using it as a desk: There was a chair beside it, and a box of documents on the floor. Atop the other materials, he could make out a spiral notebook labeled, Xombies-A True Account, by Louise Alaric Pangloss, and several computer disks labeled, Maenad Project-Mogul Archives, Vol. I-VII. Flipping through the notebook, scanning its dense blocks of minute handwriting, Coombs felt a twinge of pity. Lulu had been a smart girl, "a smaht cookie," as Cowper once said.

There was a rustling sound behind him. "Doctor?" Coombs called, trying to sound officious. "Dr. Langhorne?"

The walls began to move.

Don't panic… oh hell…

There they were-blue and cold as part of the machinery, as if they had sprouted from the guts of the boat itself. Forty of them, wedged wherever they could fit amid ducts and pipes and empty electronics bays, like toads under a rotting log.

Sensing him, they had begun to stir, swaying into motion like… like…

Like zombies, he thought. When they looked at him with those bright spider eyes, Coombs had to suppress a whole-body shudder. He had seen things like these take his men, witnessed close-up that nightmarish Xombie kiss: a man struggling helplessly, pinned face to face with one of these blue monstrosities like a rat in the coils of a snake, as the demon's gaping mouth covered his and instantly sucked all the breath from his body. The inconceivable horror in the man's dying eyes. Most of all, Coombs wished he could forget the sound-that hideous crunch of collapsing lungs, of crumpled ribs and vertebrae. A human being drained like a kid's juice box.

And then, seconds later, springing back to life as one of them.

The Xombies shuffled toward him, crawling, slithering, their unblinking black eyes staring as if fascinated. Closing in. Some of them were men and boys he knew-big Ed Albemarle was there, and Vic Noteiro's grandson, Julian-the naked and the dead. Coombs unsnapped the holster of his gun, flicking off the safety. He began to think that this hadn't been such a hot idea, that maybe this was it, the last mistake he would ever make.

Serves me right. Oh shit…

"Commander," said Alice Langhorne, appearing at his shoulder and nearly causing him to discharge his weapon. She waved the Xombies back, saying, "Shoo, you guys." As they moved away, she said, "Sorry. They're just being friendly."

"Doctor," said Coombs, his mouth paper-dry. Clearing his throat, he asked, "How's our little Snow White?"

"She's still inert. Still dormant."

"How can you tell she's even alive?"

"Well, she's not, strictly speaking. But as you can see, there's no evidence of physical deterioration, no decomposition. Even in that hyperbaric chamber, the cells of her body are continuing their metastasis. And it's a good thing they are: Without her ability to synthesize the Miska enzyme in her blood, we wouldn't have the means to pacify the others. They'd revert overnight."

"Won't she run dry?"

"She can regenerate indefinitely; all she needs is a little replacement hemoglobin to make up lost volume."

"Hemoglobin? Phil Tran told me you had her on glucose."

"We're out of glucose. Besides, saline and glucose are no substitute for whole blood-we can't take any chances with her. She's our golden goose."

"Where are you getting the hemoglobin?"

"I'm donating my own, for now."

Coombs had noticed that the doctor's face seemed a little wan but dismissed it as nothing unusual. Everybody gets pale on a submarine, it's an occupational hazard. But now… "You can't be doing that," he said firmly.

"It's a minimal amount, a couple of CCs a day. There isn't any alternative, unless you want to solicit contributions from the crew. I think we both know how that'll go over."

Coombs could think of nothing to say to that. "What did you want to speak to me about?" he asked.