Walter Greatshell - Apocalypticon

A raucous cheer went up, and a few loud objections: "She's just another damned Harpy, preacher!"

"Yeah, what kind of stunt you trying to pull?"

The preacher replied, "She's more than a Harpy, for one thing. She's one of the Anointed from Miska's own test bed, a vessel into which he poured his elixir. Don't you understand? Fools!-that makes her body a font in which we may anoint ourselves. Look at her! Can anyone here deny she's different from the rest of that cursed society out there-all the people that judged us, and were judged in turn? This may be God's will that delivered her to us, and who are we to question His judgment? We been given dominion over this Earth and all the creatures on it, or did you forget? Her unclean loins have been sanctified, purified, and may be our path to salvation. Manna from heaven!"

Other men tried to argue further, but were booed down. This was a rare amusement.

Businesslike, the preacher said, "Now I got here a box with all your numbers in it. We gonna pick as many as we can fit in a night. If your number ain't picked, don't worry-we'll get to you tomorrow night, or the next. Put some mileage on this filly before the Man wants her back!"

The crowd erupted in thunderous applause.

"Okay, here we go: Number 13886!"

A huge, goateed man who looked like a TV wrestler threw up his fists and roared, "Yes! Yes! Fuck yeah!" He pushed through the cheering crowd, accepting their congratulations, then stood over Lulu and shouted, "This one's for the balcony!"

All eyes turned upward to see an odd figure peering down from a caged window in the topmost tier: a hooded man in dark sunglasses and a ski mask. The crowd fell silent, and the boys could hear people muttering, the Major, the Major.

"Who the hell's that?" Kyle asked.

A bystander replied, "That's Major Bendis-we call him Uncle Spam. He's our military advisor, our company rep: Everything comes through him. Only we ain't seen him since he got quarantined."

"Quarantined for what?"

"He almost got killed a couple days ago when we first got here-I guess it fucked him up pretty bad. Led an assault on a building where he thought Miska was hiding and just about got his ass blowed off. Anybody else, they would have left him ashore-you can't take chances with that shit-but he's our only link to Valhalla, so his men patched him up and brought him back. You don't argue with those boys on the B Team, not if you like your skin. Luckily, we don't see them much. Bendis was the one who sprung us from the joint and trained us to survive like we doin'-a hard motherfucker. Used to be some kind of mercenary commando, ex-Special Forces. We all figured him for a basket case, but maybe he's starting to heal up. Oh shit, look at Joe Earl."

The raffle winner was making a show of stripping off his snakeskin boots, swinging them around his head, and tossing them into the crowd to gales of wolf whistles. Then he got down to business. Snapping the kinks out of his joints, he had started to unbuckle his belt when suddenly there was a loud burst of gunfire. Everyone turned.

"Get the fuck off her," Kyle Hancock said soberly. He was holding a gold-plated Tec-9 machine gun with a banana clip, part of the Xmas display. "Unless you want to lose yo dick."

Kyle stepped forward, the crowd parting before him.

"I'm asserting my prerogative as an official representative of MoCo," the boy said. "That girl's Mogul property, and she's part of our mission, whatever it is. I don't know her purpose for being here; they don't tell us those things. But whatever it is, it's got nothing to do with being molested by you motherfuckers. So put her back in the hold or the brig or wherever the hell you got her from, or I swear to God I will empty this clip on y'all's Dolce and Gabbanas."

Men stood frozen, as if waiting for a signal. They weren't afraid, just fascinated by the turn of events. This was a new one. Suddenly there was a sound of applause from above-Uncle Spam's black-gloved hands were slowly clapping.

El Dopa nodded from the stage, and whoops of jeering amusement rose from the crowd as Joe Earl skulked away. The tension collapsed. Without a word of protest, the preacher's men hustled Lulu out of sight, and the party resumed in full force. All at once, the boys found themselves totally ignored.

Kyle hesitated, unsure of what to do next. The gun was too heavy to keep holding up. "So is that it?" he asked shakily.

"Yeah… I think so," said Sal. "Nice going. You ready to leave now?"

"Hell yes."

They dropped the gun and ran.

By early dawn, the party was over. Except for a lot of snoring, the barge had gone still. Sal and the other boys were sprawled in the bunks with their clothes and shoes still on, dressed for a quick getaway, squinting in their sleep against the painfully bright pinholes of daylight from outside. Freddy's pillow had a damp crust where he had vomited. There was a loud knock at the door.

"Huh?" Sal came half-awake, head throbbing miserably. "Hello?"

"Get up, punk!" It was the crabby Kali impersonator, Chiquita. He banged on the door again, then kicked it open, knocking aside their makeshift barricade. His neck was unshaven under his black mask, and his shaggy headdress was up in curlers. "What the fuck is this shit? Joo been summon to have breakfast with El Dopa. Hurry!"

Sal shook the others awake, and they all followed Chiquita down the corridors and up on deck, now morning-bright under a dome of blue sky. Looking at a passing wisp of cloud, Sal woozily remembered something his mother used to say to him: that the Earth was a big spaceship, and when you looked at the sky, you were really just looking out a window.

Walking around the barge, shielding his eyes from the sun, Sal was struck again by the ingenuity of using something like this as a floating fortress. First, the whole thing was compartmentalized, so that a Xombie outbreak in any one area could be contained quickly without spreading through the whole complex. Second, all the living modules were on the upper tiers, reachable by a series of rope ladders that were only lowered on request. Furthermore, the whole place was locked down tight at night, offering only an impregnable metal wall. Windows were little more than saw-toothed gun ports, all high up and meshed over; mooring lines had manhole-sized discs on them to discourage rats as well as larger pests; and the barge's gunwales were alarmed and thickly barb-wired. None of this could totally prevent Xombies from coming on board, but once they were there, they didn't leave again… or at least not in one piece. The men joked that it was like a Roach Motel, Xombies get in, but they don't get out.

Ushered aboard a small motor launch, the five boys were taken the short distance across the water to the casino barge, its upper tiers beaming white in the sun, the lower part sunk in deep blue shade. Climbing the gangplank, they passed through a utility tunnel and entered the main room of the vessel: the gambling floor. It was clean, elegant, and empty-everything the other barge was not. Here all was mirrored and Greek-columned splendor, with trickling water fountains, crystal chandeliers, a glass elevator, and gold fixtures reflected into infinity. Most of the gaming tables and slots had been thrown overboard, leaving a vast expanse of plush blue carpeting surrounding a raised island in the middle, on which stood a lonely-looking unmade bed. That was a little peculiar.

El Dopa was waiting at the bar, wearing silk pajamas. Several Kalis were there, too, black hair pinned back and their leering masks weirdly inconsistent with their posture as they slumped over cigarettes and coffee. They had to drink through straws-did they have to eat that way, too? A silver tea service was set up separately on a rolling cart, and El Dopa sipped from a dainty cup. The bar's entire length was loaded with cheese and bacon and smoked salmon and canned and dry fruit and cereal and reconstituted dry milk and butter and jam and chocolate nougat and ten different kinds of bread and crackers to spread them on.