Walter Greatshell - Apocalypse blues

"Tch-tch-tch! You're safe. Hey." Hands gently pressed my shoulders, trying to be reassuring. Mr. Banks said soothingly, "It's all over now-you're okay."

"Are they dead?" I choked.

"Might be. Don't you worry none about them. They were bad."

Wired, Tyrell said, "You clocked 'em good, Pop. Sorry-ass mothafuckas. We ain't playin', yo!"

Breathless, I moaned, "No, you have to check! Check them fast, because-"

With one swift motion Adam was on his feet in a feral crouch. His face was stained dark as wine, darker than the sky overhead, and eyes still blacker-glass marbles with centers yawning wide as collapsed stars, sucking everything in. His tongue lolled out, a glistening blue-gray slug tasting the air. Rapture-there was nothing else to call it. It was an obscene resurrection; he was born again.

I hardly saw what happened next as I quailed beneath the monstrous thing, trying to shrink into the deck. Boxed in on three sides by walls of recoiling onlookers, the Ex-Adam took a leisurely survey of the situation, then seized Hairnet Boy's living body by the collarbone as if it was a handle-Mitch awoke in agony-and lunged with him over the windscreen I had erected. It was just cardboard fastened to the safety cable. What appeared to be open space beyond was actually the port side of the boat. There was a skidding sound, then a splash as they both fell into the sea.

We shined flashlights down after them, but there was no movement in the milky green water.

"Boy had the devil in him," said Mr. Banks.

When the day of departure finally came, and everyone had to break camp, I was deeply depressed. I didn't have the energy to deal with whatever plan they had for us or look ahead to the future, and I dreaded being cooped up with people who loathed me. On a purely aesthetic level, it was like moving from an airy patio to a windowless cellar. The lights and warmth would be nice, but if it weren't for the weather turning bad, I could have stayed up there forever.

In the aftermath of the incident, most people avoided my eyes as if I were Medusa. Even the ones who took an interest in my welfare wouldn't look at me, but were suddenly fanatical about guarding me at night. There were a lot of fake-earnest expressions of sympathy, a stream of invitations to "just talk." All this got on my nerves because I didn't want them putting my trauma in a special category above their own-we were in this together. Others pretended nothing had happened, and I actually preferred this… except in the case of Cowper. It would have helped to talk to him.

The line to go below was forming, a lot of hustle and bustle. I lagged back to have a last long look over the water. It was choppy, and wind-torn pennants of red, green, and gold colored the dawn sky. The boat glistened with frost. Above her silolike sail, the last stars were also taking their sweet time to go. How many people in the world were still around to see those stars? To feel what I felt?

"Red sky at morning, sailor take warning," someone said up front, and "Who's got Dramamine?" I wiped my eyes and headed down.

We raised anchor and sailed for the open ocean the morning of Sunday, February 5. The rolling below decks told us a storm was brewing-a submarine's famed ability to ride out gales is all about its ability to submerge. Since we were running on the surface, we had no such immunity. In fact, we were less stable than a surface ship would have been.

The effect of this irony was a plague of seasickness in the missile room. There was no adequate provision for this, no way to hurl over the side, and only one available restroom for over four hundred people. It was like a painting by Brueghel in there. Five-gallon buckets were lashed down all over the compartment, and whenever they were full, someone had to pour them into the three toilets, a terrible job in a rocking ship. Everyone took turns doing it, but not everyone was as sure-footed as they might have been-I know I had a few spills of my own. Even with the air being constantly refreshed, it was impossible to escape the smell of vomit.

Knock wood, I was one of the few who never got sick.

Nobody knew where we were going, and the conscripted adults passing through the missile room did not stop to answer questions, so there was a certain envy when word came over the loudspeaker that I was to report to the command center.

"Lucky you, getting a pass out of steerage," Hector said, half mocking. He and the other guys could barely drag themselves from their cardboard igloo on the fourth level. "Make sure to tell them we appreciate the accommodations."

"And make 'em tell you what's up with this secrecy shit," Tyrell said. "Brotha got a right to know what kinda plans they makin' for us. I ain't doin' no more tired-ass refugee-camp bullshit. Give me an island. We livin' in a democracy-I say we vote on where we goin', be kickin' back in the Bahamas."

Doing a Jamaican-sounding falsetto, Jake sang, "Sail away to Block Island… leave all your troubles behind…" Then he retched.

Pausing dramatically at the forward bulkhead, I intoned, "I shall return."

I still hadn't seen or heard from Cowper since our first night on the water, six days before. I attributed this to the urgent demands put on him, as well as the need to avoid any appearance of favoritism-he couldn't afford to lavish attention on any one person. The crew had their limited sphere, the passengers our own. Being granted the largest open space on board, we were expected to make the best of it, which meant not bothering anyone forward amidships. It was an unavoidable apartheid; there was simply not enough room to let so many people roam free. But I didn't like it.

The luckiest among us were the adults who were permitted to use the enlisted berthing on the missile room's third level: nine bunks to a room, with doors that could be shut against the squalor. Everyone envied them.

Arriving at main control, I was told by Kranuski to report to the commander on the bridge. It reassured me to see that no one here seemed disturbed by the deck's motion. It didn't smell.

"Come right fifteen degrees," Kranuski said, and Robles replied, "Right fifteen, aye." The men at the steering yokes casually complied. Most of the people in the room were men who had come from the factory, but it was hard to tell them apart from the official crew anymore. A number of them were wearing the same blue "poopie suits" as the one Cowper had given me.

As I went up the hatch that had been such a dreadful source of terror before, I was grateful for this scene of quiet professionalism-only XO Kranuski so much as spared me a glance. "Just grab a harness and go all the way up," he said.

Climbing up through three dank chambers, I emerged into a tiny, pitching cockpit already full of Mr. Coombs. He had a bulky neck brace, and a big pair of binoculars slung from it. The wind was fierce.

"Coming through, sir!" I shouted, disappointed at not finding Cowper. Coombs made room for me beside him while a burly man scanned the seas to my right-it was Albemarle. We were high above the waves, the sub's blunt nose plowing them into ridges of whitewater that doused us with spray. It was also sleeting. The toy windshield, on which cryptic figures and notations had been scribbled in grease pencil, offered no protection.

Turning stiffly toward me, Coombs shouted, "Why don't you have a coat?"

"Sorry, sir. I didn't know."

He made me drop back down and put on a hooded rain slicker and a life vest-thank goodness, because I was freezing cold. When I returned to the top, he clipped me to a safety cable, then handed me binoculars, and bellowed, "Tell me if you see anything!"

There was nothing to see but gray. Feeling very nervous, I searched a wide swath of whitecaps but found no horizon or anything else. Spume misted the lenses. Looking astern I thought I saw something: a faint light that blinked and vanished. I waited for it and caught it blinking again.