Walter Greatshell - Apocalypticon

One of the men came running up. "Hey, Righteous, take a look at this."

"What is it?"

"Somebody left the front door open."

It was a hatch at the far bow, just forward the conning tower. Weeks hustled over and pushed through his gathered men. "Well, damn."

It was open, all right. A round well in the deck, exactly like a manhole in the street, with rungs leading down to darkness. Taking a megaphone, Weeks leaned over the hole, and said, "ATTENTION SUBMARINE: YOU HAVE THIRTY SECONDS TO SURRENDER."

He didn't know if anyone was listening, and he didn't much care. Fuck a siege-if nobody answered, he was fully prepared to start bombing this motherfucker until somebody cried uncle. He called up El Dopa and briefed him on the situation.

"So the hatch was just sitting there open?"

"That's affirmative, out."

"A little convenient, wouldn't you say?"

"You got that right, El D. Personally, I think we ought to pump a few gallons of fuel oil down there and drop a match."

"I don't think so, at least not yet. Let's try smoking them out first. Over and out."

Righteous gave the order, and a case of olive drab tear-gas canisters was brought up. Taking one and pulling its key, he said, "Stand back," and dropped it down the hole. Immediately, a thick white smoke began roiling in the depths. He dropped another.

Nothing. They waited five minutes, listening intently, but the sub remained utterly silent. The sun disappeared behind the horizon, leaving a reef of vermilion clouds.

El Dopa came over the radio: "Think they could have flown the coop?"

"Well, the sentries had their hands full today-I wouldn't expect they was completely on their game. Wasn't as if we expected these jaybirds to abandon ship. And what for?"

"The whole world's been abandoned, why not this boat?"

"True enough. Your call, hoss."

Considering the situation, El Dopa said, "I know you guys lost your Bluecoats, and I'm short of Thuggees, but somebody's gotta go down there, check it out. If it's possible at all, we need that submarine. Having that thing in our pocket would go a long way toward making up for our losses today."

"It's cool, man. Bendis done drilled us on this commando shit; I got that motherfucker down. Trick is to get as many our folks inside as quickly as possible-pile in and overwhelm them with force, so that the fight is over before it can even begin. Won't be no booby traps in here, not unless they want to blow themselves up in the bargain."

"Good. And try not to kill everybody-a submarine without a crew is no good to us."

"Affirmative. Righteous out."

The Reapers on deck looked at him challengingly. "After you, brother."

Weeks didn't hesitate. To lead this army, you couldn't show fear. Donning a hooded gas mask over his steel face guard, he led them below, descending into the undulating layer of smoke as into a milky pool.

To his second, Grover Stix, he said, "If this is an ambush, be ready to haul ass out of here." He lightly tapped the barrel of his sawed-off combat shotgun against his head. The gun had a flashlight, a laser sight, and a drum full of special expanding rounds for use at extraclose range. It could stop a rhino.

At the bottom, Weeks paused, peering around, then waved the others down. They descended into a room full of pipes and ductwork, with a narrow corridor running through it, and other rooms branching off in the thick haze. Every wall was covered with control panels and softly humming banks of electronics-a lot of buttons and colored lights that were meaningless to them. Except for the beige tile floor, which was reminiscent of banal institutional settings the convicts were all too familiar with, it all looked very high-tech and complicated.

Dense white vapor filled the ship, flowing downward in lazy freshets and swirling across the floor, gliding from one compartment to the next, deck after deck, with the insidious flowing grace of a centipede. But the Reapers were unfazed by the smoke, in fact could not see it-their gas masks were equipped with ultrasonic goggles that generated a black-and-white digitized image of their surroundings and rendered the gas invisible. There was a sort of acoustic haze, however, a blurring effect caused by sound-damping tiles on the sub's walls and ceiling-it took them a few minutes to figure out the distortion.

At one end was a stairwell leading down, at the other a hatchway opening into a much larger space. Everything appeared to be deserted.

"Shoulda signed up for the guided tour," Grover said. "Where is everybody?"

"Just keep your eyes open."

The line of men filing belowdecks grew longer and longer, a parasitic worm pulsing downward, oozing segment by segment into the ship's belly.

"Goddammit," said Weeks. "What the hell do they think they're up to? Hide-and-go-seek?"

The place was a regular catacomb, riddled with holes and hidden passages. The men kept bumping their heads. Heading downward, they peered into a deserted mess hall, its vacant leatherette booths weirdly cozy, then continued forward through a smaller dining room and a sleeping area. At the end was a locked door marked DO NOT ENTER.

"Open sesame," Weeks said, blasting the lock. There was a scream, and the door swung open on two people wearing oxygen masks.

One of them was a woman.

"Good God a'mighty," said Grover Stix.

"Don't move!" barked Weeks, training his gun on them and making room for the men behind. "Who the fuck are you?"

The man stepped forward. "I'm Captain Harvey Coombs, United States Navy."

"You're the captain of this thing?"

"Uh, no-actually I was relieved of command. That's why I'm locked in here. We're both under arrest."

"Under arrest? You better not be fucking with me! Who's in charge? Where they at?"

"The one you want is Mr. Webb. I'm afraid we don't know where he is-or anyone else for that matter. We've been in here for the last two days."

To Langhorne, Grover said, "You a real woman?"

"How flattering."

"Goddamn. What's your name, then?"

"I'm Dr. Alice Langhorne. Pleased to meet you."

"Langhorne? Goddamn. You the one's friends with Uri Miska?"

"That's right."

"Holy shit. You been up at Valhalla, ain't you? What's it like up there? Is the streets really made of gold?"

"Shut up, Grover," said Righteous Weeks. "This ain't no social call-we got business to attend to." To Coombs, he said, "You gonna take us to whoever's in charge of this pig boat, and you gonna tell 'em we demand their immediate surrender. I don't want no killing if I can avoid it. We just want to partner up with y'all."

"Well, if you came this far, I assume you must have already been through the control center. That's where the commander usually is."

"Ain't nobody up there now."

"Wait-nobody at all?"

"We ain't seen one damn soul since we come in."

"That's… unusual. I don't know what to tell you. All we can do is keep going down."

"Lead on, chief. And don't you fuckin' try anything, I swear to God."

The next deck down looked gutted, all its furniture and electronics pulled out and only capped ends of wire remaining. "Look like somebody done stripped this place good," said Grover. "Reminds me of what I did to my house after the bank foreclosed on it." Coombs and Langhorne could barely see anything through the smoke and had to be helped along. There was a series of bumps from somewhere below, then a loud whooshing sound.

"What's that noise?" Weeks demanded.

Coombs said, "Sounds like the muzzle doors closing and the tubes being drained. The forward torpedo tubes."

"You didn't have to say that-I know what tubes means."

"Then that is the sound of the tubes being blown dry."

"So somebody's down there?"

"Would have to be."

Following the noise, they arrived at the bottom, emerging in a roomful of machinery that led into another space that was obviously the torpedo room.