Walter Greatshell - Apocalypse blues

"I'M NOT BIG ON EXTORTION, YOU SENILE SON OF A BITCH," said Coombs.

"WHAT EXTORTION? IT'S A HUMANITARIAN GESTURE. NOT TO MENTION KEEPING FAITH WITH THESE PEOPLE… AND ME, FOR THAT MATTER. SANDOVAL PROMISED US-TAKE IT UP WITH HIM IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT. THE BASTID IS THERE, ISN'T HE?"

"AS A MATTER OF FACT HE'S OVERDUE. IT WOULDN'T SURPRISE ME TO HEAR THAT YOU AND YOUR MOB HAVE KILLED HIM."

"I'M TRYIN' TO SAVE LIVES, YOU ARROGANT PRICK, BUT IF YOU DON'T START LETTING US BOARD RIGHT NOW, I'M GONNA BACK THE SALLIE OVER YA AND SCUTTLE THE WHOLE SHEBANG. WE GOT NOTHING TO LOSE." Cowper ducked back into the low glass cab and started the engine. To us he announced, "ALL ABOARD! NO RUNNING! BOARD THE BOAT IN AN ORDERLY WAY-THE CREW WILL DIRECT YOU BELOW… OR ELSE."

We were already moving. After the first tentative steps, boys stampeded past, too rushed to give me a hard time. I could see that the collapsed gangway didn't slow anyone down-apparently it was just as easy to hop down from the concrete ledge to the guano-caked timbers alongside the sub and from there to the stern, where a plank had been laid across. I just let myself be dragged along. Everyone else was on fire with the instinct to survive, but I felt listless and totally out of it.

Fighting the malaise, I tried to blend in with the rest as I waited for Cowper, staying close to Albemarle and the other men who were shepherding the stragglers. Below, I could see the two fallen Marine guards being fished from the water by the submarine's crew-the guards both looked shaken but alive. Other sailors were helping boys across that finger of dark water. They didn't look particularly resentful of us, which I found reassuring.

It was a surprise when some of them suddenly pointed weapons up at the landing and began to shoot. We were sitting ducks.

The gunfire caused shrieks of terror, and everyone dropped to the ground. No, I noticed, some of us didn't duck, didn't stop, but simply charged ahead with manic fury. They didn't look right. These were the ones the sailors were shooting at. There were blue people among us, and many more coming down the hill.

Exes. Xombies.

Not everyone was as slow on the uptake as I-Albemarle and the other men had already created a defensive line at the rear of the crowd and were brandishing large hammers like those used for chiseling. I would learn that these were standard equipment at the plant. "Don't panic," they shouted. "Just keep moving!" When a skinless creature in burnt security clothes rushed up through the fog, they all raised hammers like Thor and clouted it down. The problem was, it wouldn't stay down, but rebounded off the pavement like a dented gingerbread man.

"It's Reynolds!" someone screamed.

"Just like you're marking studs, boys," shouted Albemarle, pelting the thing again.

More monsters came tearing in, nimble as stage-painted acrobats. Keeping them off required a kind of assembly-line operation, a constant gauntlet of flying hammers, but our hundred-to-one advantage was quickly eroding. In places the line started breaking up into fractal eddies of hand-to-hand fighting. To the boys up front, who were taking their sweet time boarding the sub, these must have seemed more like fringe disturbances at a rock concert than a desperate losing battle, but for us at the rear it was doom breathing down our necks: medieval combat and middle-school fire drill rolled into one.

Then Cowper was at my side, splendid in his dress whites. "Don't get trampled!" he shouted over my head, "We'll make it!"

"When did you manage to change your clothes?" I asked.

"I always come prepared."

"We can't all fit in that submarine."

"Sure we can," he said. "You see those big cylinders by the road? Those used to hold ballistic missiles, but they were taken out to make room for cruise missiles and SEAL teams. That refit's been postponed indefinitely, which leaves a big empty space inside the missile compartment-you'll see. Don't worry."

I wished he looked more confident himself.

As the last of us were helped down from the platform by furiously yelling submariners-"Get out of the way! Down, down! Move your asses!"-the amount of shooting redoubled, and I was shocked to see how many Xombies were massed on the landing above. We were becoming outnumbered. Spent shells tinkled down the sides of the sub like slot-machine tokens, and icy water splashed me as bullet-riddled demons stage-dived off the edge to fall into the depths beneath the pier. The water was soon packed with thrashing bodies.

Passed bucket-brigade fashion along a line of jumpy crew-men, I finally made it up onto the sub's runwaylike deck, its entire length crowded with milling refugees. Above us soared the mammoth black cross that was the vessel's conning tower, a steel Golgotha beckoning the pilgrims with salvation.

Waiting my turn to go below, I prayed.

They weren't letting us below.

"The hatches must be kept clear," shouted someone at the head of the crowd. "Ship's personnel must have free access or we cannot cast off! Make room!"

A squall of protest and pleading met this development, but we were packed too tightly to riot, and in any case, it was only those boys near enough actually to see the hatches who really objected-the rest of us knew we weren't getting below anytime soon. The sub was hundreds of feet long and the Xombies all but upon us.

We watched helplessly as they spilled over the landing, scrambling for the best crossing and leaping like grotesque pirates for the stern. Albemarle's thinning rear guard did its best to hold them off, but the footing down there was terrible: a slippery ramp to the sea. Men fell by the dozens, locked in death grips with twistedly grinning monstrosities as they slid out of sight. Every loss set off a new a chorus of grief. Cowper was there, and I dreaded the moment I would see him grappling for his life or being dragged into the water.

At some point the shooting stopped, and I heard people say, "They're out of ammo." No sooner had this idea been relayed through the crowd than there was a commotion up front.

"What's going on?" I asked, as boys around me frantically craned their necks to see.

An obese, Buddha-faced kid nearby replied, "The crew have all gone below."

"Maybe they're getting more bullets," I said.

"They've closed the hatches."

A sickening weight seemed to press the air out of us.

"Well, that's it," someone said calmly. "We're dead."

"We've been played," another boy agreed.

"They let us on the boat, wait until we good and trapped, then lock us out. All they gotta do now is wait-frickin' Exoids'll do the rest."

"Shit, man."

I didn't know what to believe and wasn't sure they did either. "Let's not jump to conclusions," I said shrilly. "We don't know what they're doing down there."

"Shut up. They got food, they got water, they got air, they got power. They're sittin' pretty."

Not everyone was taking it as stoically as these few boys. Elsewhere on the deck, the babble of panic could be heard: a hundred variations on the theme of, "They can't just leave us out here!"

Turning on me, a wild-eyed boy with a hairnet said, "This is all your fault."

"God, shut up," I groaned.

"If you hadn't come along, none of this would've happened."

"You are so stupid."

They all closed in around me like hostile savages, grimy hands reaching for my arms, my hair, my throat.

Completely exhausted, I could think of nothing to say or do. Time stopped, and everything froze into a weird tableau, jittering like film snarled in an old projector. Wait. Vibration-the deck was vibrating. Whitewater boiled up around the rudder. From one end of the submarine to the other, a desperate, bedraggled cheer broke out.

We were moving.