Walter Greatshell - Apocalypticon

He was interrupted in his reverie by a yelling from his headset. It was Alice Langhorne.

"What was that, Alice? I didn't copy."

"I said Lulu's gone!"

"She's what?" Coombs felt an icy rush down his spine.

"Lulu broke out of her case and escaped! Do you understand? She's going with them!"

In attempting to chronicle the Maenad epidemic, we are like archaeologists trying to re-create an ancient civilization from a few potsherds. The available record seems to be nothing but a catalogue of loose ends, the timeline of human history having been clipped like a cheap length of twine. But the unraveling was not so total. Throughout America and the world, there were refuges, havens, isolated pockets of relative security that continued to survive long after the initial outbreak. Most of these were militaristic in nature-bases and other fortified compounds-but others were due to geographical or cultural factors: islands, prisons, work camps, heavy industries such as oil drilling or mining, religious retreats. What they all had in common was a lack of women. For wherever women went, there followed doom. -The Maenad Project New Year's Day, 6:29 A.M.

Downtown Providence is deserted, all the office buildings and banks, the immense Providence Place Mall, the arena and the convention center, closed for the holiday, closed forever, and the boy skitters antlike through its brick canyons, heedless of either the harsh, wind-driven sleet or his own harsh tears mingling with it.

"No, no, no…" he whimpers as he runs.

Occasional cars shoosh past, taillights gleaming fire-alarm red off the wet pavement. Church bells are ringing, and not far away he can hear sirens and the blaring drone of car horns from I-95-it sounds like the world's biggest traffic jam. But Bobby Rubio barely takes notice of the din, or of any of his surroundings. All his thoughts whirlpool around one frantic goal: to find his father.

A big car pulls up alongside Bobby, dousing his sneakers with slush, and its driver leans across the passenger seat, yelling, "Get in, son!"

Bobby's heart leaps with the impossible hope that it is his dad, but realizes at once it's just a stranger, a red-faced old man with a cockatoo crest of white hair and the leering urgency of a drive-by pervert. Disgusted, Bobby peels away with a snarl.

The car matches his pace, the man calling out, "Listen! It's an emergency! Do you hear me? I'm trying to help you! You have to get off the street!"

Ignoring the voice, Bobby cuts sharply up a narrow one-way alley so the man can't follow. Why did everything bad have to happen at once?

"Good!" the man's voice shouts at his back. "I hope they get you!" The car spurts away.

Bobby emerges on Washington Street and breaks left, making for the massive brick edifice of the Biltmore Hotel at the end. It's not the hotel he wants, but the multistory parking garage behind the hotel, the Parkade, where his dad works. Beyond the hotel, the buildings open up in front of City Hall, and he can see others running. There's some kind of ugly riot in Kennedy Plaza: people breaking the windows of blocked cars to drag out screaming passengers, and other people fleeing their vehicles and being chased across the park. He can't see much of what's going on, but even from a distance he can tell that the ones causing all the trouble look crazy, weird-they look like his mom looked. They look… blue.

No-don't look at it! Bobby shudders in fear and turns away, gratefully ducking out of sight into a corner entrance of the garage.

Sheltered from the freezing wind and rain, he is suddenly aware of the frantic speed of his body, its manic clockwork spinning out of control to some kind of explosion or collapse. He yearns to start shrieking and never stop, or just curl up in a corner of the piss-smelling concrete stairwell and vomit up deep wracking sobs until he is empty inside. Oh God, to be empty, to be blank. He's shaking so hard he can barely think or stand. But he can't stop now; he's almost there.

At the far back of the garage, at the base of the steeply twining exit ramp, he can make out the familiar, bearlike figure of his father behind the fogged glass of the lighted cashier's booth.

Bobby whimpers, "Dad, Dad," as he shambles forward, nearly swooning in anticipation of laying down his horrific burden, of relinquishing it to his father's easygoing strength. His dad will know what to do. His dad will have to know…

Pain woke him up-something piercing the back of his hand. Bobby opened his eyes to an amazing, inexplicable vision. He was in an enormous tunnel of some sort, a windowless atrium four stories high, with rope ladders scaling the balconies and a strange ceiling of numbered white domes. Laundry was strung from one side to the other, giving it the look of a tenement courtyard, and makeshift structures of wood, fabric, plastic sheeting, and cardboard cluttered the steel-grated tiers. But the most amazing thing was that there were people-not blue-skinned monsters, but real human beings. Boys, all boys. The place smelled like a locker room and sounded like one, too, the scores of teenagers roosting in that metal cavern like so many pigeons, clambering up and down the scaffolds, sprawling in hammocks, chattering and calling to one another across the echoing subterranean galleries.

Ow-there was that pain again. It was from a big fat IV needle-a bag of clear fluid was dripping into his hand from above. Bobby had nearly yanked it out trying to sit up.

"Hey, you're awake," said a hoarse teenage voice, speaking from behind the glare of a hanging lamp. "Whoa, just chill, lie back, you're safe here." The voice spoke into a microphone: "Uh, Mr. Tran? He's awake."

"How's he look?" squawked an intercom. "Is he lucid?"

"I don't know." To Bobby: "Are you lucid?"

"What?"

"He seems okay to me."

"Keep an eye on him. Talk to him. I'm tied up here at the moment. Can you handle it a while longer?"

"Yes, sir, I guess."

"Good man. I'll be down as quick as I can. Just make sure he's comfortable. Remember what I've shown you, Sal. This is just like our first-aid drills, no different."

"I'm on it, sir. Over."

"Who are you?" Bobby asked, squinting into the light.

"I'm Sal DeLuca." He moved the lamp so that Bobby could see him. Sal Deluca was tall and thin, almost gaunt, with large, intense eyes that studied Bobby through long hanks of unwashed brown hair. "What's your name?" he asked.

"Bobby. Bobby Rubio."

"Bobby Rubio," Sal repeated, writing it down. "Age?"

"I'm ten… I think."

"You think? You don't know your own age?"

"I don't know… How long has it been? What month is it?" Bobby was suddenly seized with panic.

"April."

Slumping with relief, he said, "I'm ten, I'm still ten. My birthday isn't until July."

"And how are you feeling, Bobby? Any pain or discomfort?"

"My hand hurts."

"Sorry, we had to do that; you were very dehydrated when you came in. Any other problems?"

"Uh-uh. I don't think."

"Good. Well, pleased to meet you, Bobby." Sal shook the smaller boy's limp hand. "Welcome to the Big Room. You want some bug juice? It's like Hawaiian Punch." He handed over a straw cup full of red liquid.

Bobby accepted it eagerly, draining the sweet drink in one gulp. Catching his breath, he asked, "Where is this place?"

"What, the Big Room? It's the middle section of the hull, where all the Trident missile silos used to be-my dad helped pull 'em out. Now it's Crib City, one big slumber party. It's minorly out of control right now. Nobody wants to be in charge since the last Youth Liaison Officer, Lulu, got Exed. She thought she had something wrong with her that kept her from going Smurf, but it still got her in the end, and all her friends. I heard she got my dad killed, too." A shadow passed over Sal's face, cleared.