Walter Greatshell - Apocalypticon

The old man sat back, nodding. "Do you see now? They send a ship. Not a ship of metal but a ship of ice. Ice! Forging it, smelting it like metal, building it up layer by layer like a beehive. An artificial comet. Maybe their whole race inside, a billion of 'em, who knows? We saw it being launched, we tracked it… and then we forgot about it. But not everybody forgot, oh no. Some have been keeping an eye on that thing. We saw when it used Jupiter as a sling-shot to accelerate, and when it altered its course. That's when we lost it, but the projections don't lie. Oh yes, it was always aiming for more temperate regions, and one hot spot in particular, the Florida of the solar system, with an ocean that could practically swallow up their whole planet.

"How do you fight something like that?" Joe said. "Even if it is only a regular comet, how do you survive against it-even if nothing else on the surface of the Earth will?"

The man was crazy, but he was all Bobby had. "I don't know," the boy said, uncomprehending.

"You make lemonade."

That night, as Bobby dreamed of running and running, his host sat upright a few feet away, comfortably ensconced in the reclining seat from a Lincoln Town Car. The old man was completely still, unblinking, stolidly inert as a wooden Indian.

Imperceptibly at first, something began to happen.

It was as if Joe was having a seizure of some kind, his back arching and his mouth opening so wide it stretched his jaw past its limits, so that the joints could be heard popping from their sockets.

Now a thing like a weird flowering plant began erupting from his upturned throat, a branching, ribbed stalk, followed by a glossy pink orchid uncurling its petals-no, two orchids: a matched pair of unspeakable bromeliads that were the old man's inverted lungs. They swayed in midair at the ends of their bronchial tubes like twin cobras from a snake charmer's basket, seeming to have a life and mind of their own, billowing up with every appearance of unutterable bliss. Not just lungs, but the whole glistening contents of the man's body cavity were flowering up and spreading forth like a blooming bouquet. His carcass turned inside out, bones and musculature rolling back like a thick foreskin. Bobby didn't awaken even as the grisly mass arched over him, its nodules and clusters and veiny membranes trembling with excitement.

Grotesquely slow as it would have seemed to the perception of an appalled onlooker, the ghastly efflorescence was over in a matter of seconds. Before Bobby could awaken or react, the thing was upon him, enfolding his face in its violent moistness, prying him open with velvet pliers, gently gulping the boy's life breath in one heaving spasm, a miraculous convulsion that transformed the boy and restored the old man to his seat. An instant later, there was no sign that anything unusual had occurred.

Todd and Sal crossed back under the bridge, using the grandiose floating casino to screen themselves from the cargo barge. They could still hear gunfire and shouts of battle over there.

"Doesn't look like anybody's coming after us at least," Sal called across the water.

"Not yet, anyway."

Gliding under the shadow of the casino's superstructure, the boys felt slightly safer, less visible. The problem was getting on board: The gangplank was raised, and there was no other obvious means of entry. Todd took that as reason to quit right there, but Sal thought the big red paddle wheel looked climbable and persuaded the other boy to hold his Jet Ski steady while he stood on its seat and reached as high as he could-there! Once he had a handhold, the Xombie glove gripped tight, and he was able to swing his legs up. What he had not anticipated was how to get Todd up without also losing both Jet Skis. They had no rope to tie them with.

Making a snap decision, Sal hissed down, "Just wait for me here."

"No way, man. I came this far, I'm not letting you go in there alone."

"You have to. It's better this way-if anything happens to me, you can get back to Ray." He didn't wait for argument, climbing over the rail and hurrying across the deck. The main-entrance door was open, black as a cave.

There was no chance to scope out the situation properly, so Sal steeled himself and ducked into the open hatch, hugging the wall. All the lights were out. Remembering the layout from before, he knew he was in an antechamber before the main gambling room-a lobby and coat-check area with benches, potted trees, and a service counter. Hiding behind the plants, he peered deeper inside.

The place was deserted, dim and shuttered as an empty convention hall. El Dopa was nowhere to be seen, nor were any of those Kali goons. Muted sounds of shooting and other commotion filtered down through the open skylights, but otherwise there was no noise of any kind.

Keeping a low profile, Sal slowly made his way to the center of the room. The bed was still there, still unmade. It was actually an entire bedroom set, with a night table, a lamp, and a comfortable sitting chair. There was a thick book on the table: The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Once again, he thought the furniture looked like some kind of weird museum exhibit, set up on its pedestal in the middle of the room.

The deeper he went, the more convinced he was that the entire casino was abandoned, and this conviction was only reinforced when he tried the elevator and found its buttons dead. The power was out. There was a stairwell in the back corner, and he climbed up to the next level, a curtained platform that had once served as a lounge area and cabaret stage. Now it was half in shadow, and Sal could make out row upon row of silent machines-frozen gears and wheels and springs, power cables and truck batteries, all with no readily discernible purpose. It reminded him of the old textile mills he had seen during a school field trip to Lowell, Massachusetts-monuments to unsafe labor. The floor beneath was wet and stained black, and there was an odd smell that the boy associated with the submarine's forbidden third deck-Dr. Langhorne's section. It made his hair stand on end.

Continuing up, he found himself on the highest balcony, the last place they had seen Kyle. Feeling an intense need to pee, Sal scanned the offices and restaurant, the restrooms and kitchen, then cautiously made his way up the spiral staircase in the back. Had that face been a figment of his imagination? He was trembling uncontrollably-this was the only place left to look.

Emerging in a pitch-dark corridor with padded leather walls, he worked his way toward a cracked circle of dim red light. It was a broken window, a round porthole in a heavily padded door. No sounds from within, but something smelled really bad. Okay now, okay…

Working up his nerve, taking a deep breath, Sal pushed through and was struck with the full putrid stench, like burnt hair, burnt flesh. It was worse than when his mother used oven cleaner on the ancient crusts under the broiler, a foul, musky animal stench-the funk of pure, concentrated death. The walls and ceiling were full of bullet holes, like stars, and these bright constellations were the only source of light. In the red gloom, Sal could make out piles of blackened bones, human skulls, and possibly worse-he didn't stay long enough to find out. There was no need to: That charnel pit was all he needed to understand that everyone on this barge was gone. Surely and most importantly, the boy he was looking for was gone.

Gagging, weeping for Kyle, for himself, for all of them, Sal covered his mouth and rushed to the next door-the last door-

– and broke through into blinding daylight.

Sobbing, dashing across the breezy sunlight of the top deck under a canopy of paper lanterns, Sal vomited over the rail, hacking up his guts into the sea far below, then stood back and stopped in amazement. Shielding his eyes from the sun, he squinted across the water at a sight so astonishing and terrible that it shocked him out of his own grief.