Walter Greatshell - Apocalypticon

Kyle decided to lay his cards on the table: "Mister, we're just trying to survive, same as you. All I know is, we had to get away, or they would have killed us. What happened after that, I don't know."

"Well, I do. Because I listen. I hear. I hear when the gods speak… and sometimes when they croak." He set a small digital recorder on the table and pressed PLAY. A thin, halting voice, captured off fuzzy radio airwaves, spoke as if reading a prepared statement:

"To all American service members, MoCo affiliates, and interested parties. This is Colonel Brad Lowenthal speaking. I and my fellow Air Force officers hereby declare our independence from the tyranny of the Mogul Cooperative. We have been used, abused, and lied to: MoCo is not America, and we are not sworn to support or defend it. The Moguls developed Agent X for the express purpose of creating a permanent ruling class, a master race, and as loyal Americans, we can no longer stand by and allow this to happen. Thus we reject Mogul authority and advocate open rebellion against its agents, both at home and abroad. This is a call for immediate action. If the ideal of democracy still means anything to you, join us in freeing ourselves and our nation from Mogul tyranny. It is time to take back what is ours. God bless America. Lowenthal out."

Kyle shrugged, uncomprehending. "Sorry, I don't really get it. What's it mean?"

"It means I'm out of a job. Without a mouth, there can be no mouthpiece. My days here are numbered. As soon as they learn the truth, I will be fired-quite literally."

Kyle lowered his voice. "What? Them Reaper dudes don't know about this?"

"Oh no. Only you… so far."

"Why tell me?"

"Because you and I both share the same secret: We are obsolete. Both existing here under false pretenses. Straw men, destined to burn."

Sensing an opportunity, Kyle said, "We don't have to. Not if you help us get back to the boat. You can come with us."

"Where is there to go?"

"Anywhere!"

That grin again. "And nowhere. I once had hope, too. Believe me, when I received the information that Uri Miska was still alive here in Providence, I wanted nothing more than to find him. You may not be surprised to know that my men and I are experts at interrogation-if Miska was hiding a cure, I was confident we could pry it out of him."

Kyle felt they were getting off topic. "Miska again. What is it about that dude?"

"Are you joking?"

"I'm not! Who the fuck is he?"

"Uraeus Miska is the most wanted man on Earth… what's left of it."

"Okay. That still don't tell me why I should give a shit."

"You don't know about Uri Miska… and yet you were looking for him as well."

"We weren't, though. It was all a mistake."

"Some mistakes can be deliberate. Dr. Miska is the man behind Agent X-author of both the disease and the cure, and one of the founders of the Mogul Cooperative… as well as its betrayer. He gave the disease but kept the cure. I was a mercenary soldier and military advisor for MoCo; it was my job to train and equip nineteen thousand prison convicts held in MoCo-owned penitentiaries. We were to conduct salvage operations for the Moguls, and had rigged up seven river barges for that purpose. We burned through ten thousand convicts the first month out, five thousand the second. By the third month after the Agent X epidemic, with experience and technical support from MoCo, we started to become more adept at our work, plundering the Gulf Coast and the cities up along the Inland Waterway. We were sacking Baltimore when I got the assignment to catch Miska. The Moguls had already failed to catch him during the initial outbreak and assumed he was dead. Now there were reports that he was active in Providence again, and they wanted me and my forces to find him. What I found instead was an errant grenade. Fortunately, we were near Miska's research facilities, and I was able to be saved."

"What happened to you?"

"Oh, I had a bit of a turn. But after the initial shock, I was saved, just as all may be saved-hallelujah. Saved by Him. I was born again."

"You're a Baptist? Me too!"

This seemed to amuse him deeply. "No. Not quite. There's only one who could save me, who can save any of us: Uri Miska himself. Yes, Miska saved me. He gave me his message of salvation and undying love, that I should carry it to my people here. Save them, too, before it's too late-before the ball drops and this great opportunity is lost forever. But I am not the man I used to be, Kyle. I know that if I attempt to pass on Miska's gift, they will in their ignorance try to stop me, and I am far from confident that I can overcome their resistance. Even my own men will prevent me. There's too much at stake for us to let that happen. I need your help."

With a feeling like soft mallets beating a minor chord on the xylophone of his spine, Kyle asked, "What do you mean? My help in what way?"

"Come here and I'll show you. I told you before that all organic life must evaporate, but there is life that is not organic. There is a form of life that is as stable and as unyielding as stone-permanent as death. Let me show you."

Kyle began backpedaling. "Cool-listen, I really have to go to the bathroom-"

"You are lying to preserve your life, but didn't your mother ever tell you that lies, like death, will eventually catch up with you?"

"Screw you. My mother's dead."

"Exactly. Fortunately for us, there is an alternative…"

Uncle Spam pushed back his deck chair, its metal legs screaming against the metal floor, and tipped his head up to reveal his face in the lamplight. It was the face of a skull-eyeless, noseless, denuded of most of its flesh. What meat there was clung to the bones like lichen on a rock, grayish and rubbery, tenaciously spreading new shoots. He stood up, though he had no legs to stand on-only a cleaved mass of bone and tissue from the chest down, splaying open like a nest of snakes as he rested his weight on it, all the separate strands and slabs of gristle, the exposed blue innards and rickety splintered bones, acting in concert with his arms to hoist him up and carry him along on his back, groin first, crablike, an uncanny death's-head and torso gliding on a forest of fleshy roots. He looked like a grotesque mollusk-a human gastropod with a second mouth at his crotch, a gaping vertical maw lined with sharp ridges of splintered pelvic bone, wide enough to reveal the writhing, vestigial heart deep within, straining in that damp nest of ribs like a baby chick eager to be gorged.

Oh shit! Kyle thought frantically, spinning for the door. Oh shit oh shit oh shit-

He didn't make it.

Rich Kranuski lay awkwardly in his new stateroom-the captain's quarters-and tried to steal a few minutes' sleep. He was bone-tired from being on station for the last forty-eight hours, coping with the crisis of traffic in their near vicinity-a ghost fleet of small engines puttering in and out of a ghostly marina, with all the sounds of routine human activity that went with it, even music. XO Webb had finally been able to confirm visually that the sounds came from no phantom but from a veritable floating city: Two enormous barges with attending tugboats and a host of lighter vessels, like mother ships with a litter of pups, all tucked into the mouth of the Seekonk River. Scum, sea gypsies, human trash from the squalid look of them, but whether pirates, refugees, or MoCo, it didn't much matter: Whoever they were, they were bound to be frightened, sick, and hungry. If they were anything like the crew of the sub, they would also be dangerous… and there were a lot more of them.

The only question was: Why hadn't they attacked yet?

The presence of potential hostiles in such close proximity lent great urgency to his efforts at trying to chase down the source of all the recent vandalism-or at least put a scare into whoever was behind the snafus. No doubt it had something to do with the failure of those kids to return from shore-Dan Robles and Phil Tran had certainly made their feelings known, but the unspoken resentment was even worse: It was as if the entire crew had suddenly turned against him. He could sense the angry whispering, the ill-concealed loathing everywhere he went: You sent those boys to their deaths. Even Webb had started subtly to distance himself as though from a bad smell, when the whole thing had been his idea in the first place! Kranuski silently railed, Why can't they understand that I'm as frustrated as anyone, but that someone had to start making the hard calls. And hard calls were all that was left now-no matter who commanded the ship. Let them try to lead under these conditions.