Walter Greatshell - Apocalypticon

"That's antisweat." Mr. Albemarle was making his way down to them. "It keeps condensation from forming inside the hull. Keeps this from happening." He indicated the rust on the cylinder. "And if you intend this thing to last at sea for twenty years, that's pretty important."

"But this one's never going to sea."

"No, this one isn't. Get up, all of you."

They stood, brushing grit off their papery suits. Ed Albemarle reached the sandy floor and planted himself in front of them, eyes shaded by his gray hard hat. "I guess there's something that hasn't been made clear to you, so let me try to hammer it in: Everything matters. The knowledge that's in your heads might be the only knowledge there is, and all our lives might depend on it. Welding, grinding, fore and aft, above main axis, below main axis, centerline, frame lines, buttock lines"-at buttock, the boys smirked for the hundredth time-"everything. So that you don't cause a fire and suffocate with your thumb up your butt because you were splicing a cable and cut a boot off one of the penetrations and didn't know how to seal it up again!"

Derrick said, "Come on-you guys and the Navy crew will do all that. Like they'd even let us touch it, give me a break."

"Everybody thinks that when they're sitting on the bench-you guys are reserve players. Any one of you could be the difference between life and death for all of us. Believe me, if and when that boat sails, you are going to carry your weight. For all you know, you boys may be the damn crew."

They all laughed. Tyrell said, "Cabin boy is more like it."

Albemarle frowned. "It's time to grow up, ladies. This is not Bring Your Children to Work Day. You are not here to play. Your fathers, your uncles, your grandfathers, maybe your older brothers are all working round the clock to earn you a safe cruise out of here. There's no other way out, trust me. Maybe you don't know what that means, maybe you think you don't care, but whether you like it or not, you are going to earn that ticket. Now come on."

Albemarle walked between the massive timbers supporting the hull section and opened the exit door, waiting at the eyewash fountain as the boys filed out.

"Are we finished for today?" groaned Freddy Fisk, a short, stocky boy with stamina issues. Freddie was the son of Arlo Fisk, one of the nuclear experts.

"We're never finished at Finishing."

"But Mr. Albemarle, we clear our cots at five thirty and go to class till noon, then we get a half hour for lunch and work for you guys till six. All we get is a half hour for dinner, then we have to study until lights out. We're missing dinner!"

Ed Albemarle rubbed his temple as if in pain. "Didn't you hear anything I just-? Fine, if you want to go, go!"

A little cheer went up, and the boys started to leave.

Ed raised his voice above the bustling escape: "I just thought you might want to head down to the pier with me and take a quick look at tomorrow's assignment. Your last assignment, really. All the classes are assembling down there right now, but if you'd rather go to the cafeteria…"

The boys stopped dead.

Sal DeLuca asked, "Are you serious, Mr. A?"

Ed nodded. "We don't have forever. The noose is tightening. It's time you boys got some familiarity with your new home before she puts to sea. So you want to check it out?"

Twenty-six eager heads bobbed like wake-churned buoys.

"Then let's go."

Sal woke up. At first he thought he was still dreaming: He was high up in a cavernous space, a steel chamber echoing with the avid chatter of boys. We're home, he heard them saying. We're back!

Home! Sal thought woozily. Then he came to himself and realized where he was: the Big Room-the huge midsection of the submarine, which had formerly housed twenty-four Trident missile tubes and now served as a makeshift dormitory for close to a hundred refugees, most of them teenage boys like himself. Oh, he thought, Providence.

Like everyone else in the Big Room, Sal DeLuca had made a nest for himself, a pallet of cardboard and foam rubber to cushion the steel-grated deck. Turning stiffly on his side, he peered down off his balcony to the more populated lower levels, half-expecting to see all the faces from his dream down there. He longed to hear the comforting boom of Mr. Albemarle's voice, or Tyrell's wisecracks.

But Ed Albemarle was dead. No, worse than dead. He was a mindless Xombie and Dr. Langhorne's test subject, as so many of the Xombies were. Either that, or they were simply gone, like Tyrell. The lucky ones were gone.

Sal's father was gone.

You can't go home again, he thought.

"Sir, you should come up and take a look at this."

"What is it?"

"Fire. We're seeing fires up here. From downtown."

The boat had spent the whole day traversing Narragansett Bay, painstakingly threading the narrow shipping channel to the exact spot where it had started out months before, then penetrating even deeper inland. Past the bridges and the islands. Past the barren submarine compound that jutted out into the bay like a hunk of Texas panhandle. Right up to the gates of Providence itself.

The coast looked clear. There were no signs of shipping, no boatloads of refugees, no obstructions of any kind. The industrial shorefront was deserted and peaceful, the buildings quiet as tombstones. On the low hills beyond, the first leaves of spring could be seen. The boat anchored in sight of downtown, near where the tugs docked, just outside the highway bridge and the great steel hurricane barrier.

It was no place for an Ohio-class submarine. At almost seventeen thousand tons, she was too big, too broad, and too deep for this harbor. A total breach of regulations, Kranuski reminded the captain. The slightest glitch and they could run aground, get stuck in the mud. Die like a mastodon in a tar pit. Without regular dredging, the channel was already changing, shifting, filling in. A vessel their size plowing through could collapse it completely in their wake-they might be digging their own grave. Kranuski's exact words.

Commander Coombs didn't like being bottled up either, in shallow water where the boat couldn't submerge, surrounded on all sides by hostile land. It made him very claustrophobic. Sitting ducks, he thought. But there was no choice. They couldn't risk a bad connection; the ship-to-shore data link had to work. And the target had to be within walking distance. Xombies didn't drive, though Langhorne would probably have them doing that next.

He climbed the ladder to the bridge cockpit and accepted a pair of binoculars from Dan Robles.

"Can you still see it?"

"Yes, sir, it's still there all right." Lieutenant Robles sighed, nursing untold grievances, the lids of his eyes heavy with the weight of injustice. "Dead ahead."

Coombs wasn't bothered by his quartermaster's attitude, it was nothing personal. He knew that Dan Robles was not affronted by him but by the world at large. Dan had once been a funny guy with a droll Latin sensibility, who could make you laugh with the slightest flex of his pencil-thin mustache, but the Xombie apocalypse had deeply offended him, and now he simply had no more patience for such nonsense. Not that Robles would ever complain or fail to follow the strictest definition of duty-that was a matter of honor. Coombs couldn't imagine what kind of crisis it would take to crack the man's haughty composure (he was the only officer willing to act as liaison to Dr. Langhorne, undeterred by her ghouls), but thus far nothing had, and that was saying something. That was saying a lot. Dan was one of the loyal ones, the steady few, and the captain trusted him completely.

The sun had set. The water was glassy-still, reflecting the acrylic pinks and blues of dusk, and the dark city skyline. The three huge smokestacks of Narragansett Electric loomed to port. At once Coombs could see what Robles was talking about-even without the binoculars.