Walter Greatshell - Apocalypse blues

"Oh yeah?" Cowper said, eyeing the gritty playland. "Where at? Ringling Brothers?"

The other man perked up defensively. "Hey," he said, "don't knock 'em for blowing off steam. After last week, we're all on strike around here."

"Now, Albemarle, that sounds like union talk."

Ed Albemarle laughed grimly, "Yeah, it's a union shop now. We're gonna start picketing. Give the X-jobs signs to carry." Throughout the conversation he had pointedly avoided looking my way, though everyone else in the place was. Now he turned toward me, and I could see the nervous whites of his eyes. "And who's the little lady?" he asked.

Before Cowper could speak, I said, "Lulu. Lulu Pangloss," offering my hand. It almost killed him to shake it. Hoping to put him at ease, I added, "How do you do, Mr. Albemarle?"

He regarded me with the awe of a man seeing a talking dog. "God damn," he said, taking back his hand. "You know… girls are bad medicine these days. I'm surprised you got in."

And none too pleased, I thought.

"She's okay," said Cowper. "She has a condition-female trouble. She ain't gonna turn."

Though I understood the necessity, it was mortifying to hear him announce this to everyone. To those boys.

"Why?" Albemarle said suspiciously. "How old is she?"

"Seventeen," I replied, at which they all caught their breaths and seemed to backpedal, or at least lean backward. My age bounced around the group like heresy, triggering furious whispering and a few cries of "Uh-uh!" and "Hell no!"

Albemarle looked apologetically at Cowper. "Fred, how can we have her in here?" he asked. "I'm in charge of these people's safety."

"Then you better forget about her and get these kids moving. All hell's breaking loose outside."

"What are you talking about?"

"You'd know if you'd turn off that racket." He meant the music. Albemarle complied, barking an order that was relayed back to the deejay. The boy, having come down for the commotion, mounted the crawler and killed the sound. At once it was possible to hear the faint sputtering of gunfire outside. Everyone in the room became transfixed.

"I'm telling you," said Cowper, "we have to get 'em out of here, Ed. Beau Reynolds is dead, and Security ain't gonna hold that fence for long. It's up to us now. We gotta move, and fast."

A few people reacted strongly to the news of Reynolds's death, but Albemarle spoke over them. "Move where?" he said. "There's a lockdown in effect-no unsupervised activity. Set foot out of here, and we'll be shot on sight."

"We're the least of their worries, Ed. This is our chance, while they're putting every available man on that fence."

"Our chance to do what?"

"Get down to the pen."

"Down to the-Oh no. Are you serious? You gotta be shit-ting me."

"Why not? Take 'em by surprise, you never know."

"Jesus, you are serious!"

"You got any better suggestions? The only other alternative is to wait for what's coming over the fence. I guarantee nobody else gives a damn about you, certainly not Sandoval."

Albemarle replied wearily, "You know, Fred, they shot Bob Martino for that kind of talk. Shot him in front of everybody after the big dinner, then trussed him up and burned him, right there-you can see the spot. I'll never eat another steak. So if you think we have any illusions about our chances with the company, think again. But we've lost so much already… we're tired. I'm tired. All I want to do at this point is let these kids be kids for however much time they-" He was interrupted by a dull boom that rattled the walls. Dust sifted down.

Over the stunned murmuring, Cowper said, "Time's up, Ed."

"What do we got to lose?" This was shouted by a tall elderly fellow with white hair and a bushy mustache.

"He's right," said a stocky character like an old-time circus strong man. "We're fish in a barrel sitting here."

Albemarle became angry. "And what? We just march our kids out into the line of fire?"

A number of boys cheered the idea.

Cowper interceded, holding up his arms to yell, "Nobody's gonna get shot!" The crowd hesitated, listening. "They're not stupid enough to shoot us, all right? They're busy enough without making a whole mess of creepos inside the fence. That's all they'd accomplish by killing us, and they know it." To Albemarle he explained, "You said yourself they burned Bob Martino. That means they knew he would have come back. We're more of a threat to them than they are to us, and that's the God's honest truth. Best they can do is keep us locked up in here, alive. Now who wants to go and who wants to stay?"

It was a landslide. Even Ed Albemarle grudgingly nodded, causing a cheer.

In the midst of the excitement, I bit my lip and tapped Cowper on the shoulder. Trying to speak privately, I said, "Um, Fred? How can we get out if we're locked in here?"

He smiled thinly and patted my head. "Don't you worry about a thing."

Getting out of the building was a piece of cake. Albemarle dispatched a handful of the bigger boys to a supply room, the "tool crib," and they returned with armloads of welding and cutting implements that they obviously knew how to use.

"Hey, Mr. Albemarle," one of the boys said, looking like a blacksmith as he donned protective leathers. "Is there an SSP for this?" The joking question raised a laugh.

"Yeah," Albemarle shot back, "Shipyard Standard Procedure says kiss my ass. In case you hadn't noticed, we're not doing things by the book anymore. So stop screwing around and get that door open."

The door he meant was not the door we'd come in through, but the sixty-foot-high hangar doors. They'd been secured by a mammoth chain strung through holes in the metal like something out of King Kong. Trundled up to it on a rolling scaffold, the boys applied their blinding blue flare to one of the bagel-thick links, making a tremendous zapping sound and showers of sparks. "Don't look at it," Cowper said, a little late. Steel dripped like burning tallow, then, just like that, the chain clanked apart.

"All right, roll 'er open!" Albemarle bellowed. "Everybody behind the Sallie, heads down! We're going on parade!"

The "Sallie" was the deejay's platform. It was a freight-carrying goliath, all wheels and deck (the word SALLIE cast in steel above its low front cockpit), which started up with a ground-shaking rumble and rolled forward on nine rows of tires. It reminded me of the vehicle NASA used to transport spacecraft to the launch pad, though somewhat smaller. Men and boys fell in behind its twin rear cab as it approached the parting doors. When it passed us, Cowper and I joined the crowd.

"Stay close," he said, pinching my bicep.

People gave me plenty of room, so that for once I didn't feel claustrophobic, as I often did in groups. In fact, I was able to take comfort from the sheer size of the crowd. We were an army.

"You're not coming," someone said to me from behind, but I ignored him and kept moving.

We streamed out of the hangar at a fast walk, the crawler bearing right to make for the inner guardpost. It was deserted. The main gate was behind us, mostly hidden by buildings, but we could hear the commotion there-sounds like rioting hooligans with firecrackers-and see the dim orange glow of flames illuminating the draped fence like a paper screen, on which life-size shadow puppets danced. Men could be glimpsed running along a catwalk at the top, dodging mangled hands that lunged spastically at them through the razor wire.

After seeing a guard yanked into the lacerating coils by those obscene blue things, I didn't dare look back anymore, covering my ears to muffle the screams. A wave of gibbering fear swept the crowd, causing some boys to fall and almost be trampled, but Cowper and Albemarle kept yelling, "Eyes forward! Keep moving! Eyes forward-look where you're going!" and it seemed to help even though we could barely see where we were going.