Walter Greatshell - Apocalypse blues

I remembered Utik telling me of ancient Netsilik shamans who fearlessly dove to the bottom of the sea to force favors from the goddess Nuliajuk. Only I didn't think this goddess would cooperate, and the scouring sea would pluck us off, one by one, until we were reduced to our hardy elements: individual Maenad microbes, dispersed by the currents. That was the closest we could come to death. Yes, for all practical purposes, this was death. The fellows had chosen wisely.

I closed my hardening eyelids and bid it come.

Dead? Obviously not, or I couldn't be writing this now. In limbo was more like it. Limbo-I always thought that was a corny word. What about purgatory? Too religious. And terms like "netherworld" and "stasis" smack of cheap science fiction.

No, I was under a spell-I like that. That's what it felt like: an enchanted sleep. My body was a beautifully preserved relic, completely inanimate, yet I hovered around it like a half-awake roving eye, blearily taking stock of the surroundings. I missed a lot; there were big gaps in my awareness, and I wasn't absolutely certain any part of it was real.

For instance, how did I get into the submarine? It took me a while to realize that's where I was, then I couldn't make sense of it. I was in the wardroom, laid out inside the long glass case that usually held an inscribed silver platter with the boat's King-Neptune-themed crest. They had dressed me in a modest nightgown and had put a satin pillow under my blue head. A tube from my neck carried blood the color of Concord grape juice to a spigot outside the case, where Dr. Langhorne appeared regularly to collect a bag, while the stern portrait of Admiral Rickover seemed to stare down disapprovingly from above.

At times I was alone. Other times a procession of men and boys, everyone I knew and some I didn't, filed by the case as if in mourning. I couldn't hear their murmured words, but it was fascinating nonetheless to witness my own funeral. So many sad faces-Coombs, Robles, Monte, Noteiro, Albemarle, Julian, Jake, Lemuel, Cole-some more surprising than others in that they were Xombies. Even Mr. Cowper was there. I felt him, somewhere unseen. The dead mingling with the living in perfect civility, if a little aloof, a little more alone in their blue skins.

How could this be? How was it that I, too, felt nearly at ease among all these mortals? How was it I didn't burst from the case and begin strangling, willy-nilly? No, I had changed; I knew something I hadn't before, knew it in every cell of my being: You can't take it with you. The Xombie compulsion to salvage some rudimentary taste of life was debunked, futile, leaving me to rattle around eternity all by myself. The Xombie walks alone. That was the thought that filled my amorphous consciousness and defined my existence. That was my boogey man, always there, always peeking at me through the cracks. Eternity. Empty eternity. No hope of salvation. That was the difference: I knew this was all there was or would ever be.

The other Xombies also felt this hopelessness, I knew, and I sensed that they blamed me for it, that I was the source from which their existential fear flowed. Yet at the same time they loved me. They came forward with this strange mixture of resentment and reverence, each kneeling before Langhorne twice a day to receive a shot of human anguish deep in the lungs.

Finally, witnessing this communion day after day, I began to realize I was the mother of all these Xombies. That is, I was being milked to provide them with the means of civility. Without my blood, they would revert overnight to their guiltless, marauding state. They would lose themselves but gain oblivion… and peace. This was the conflict, the eternal war that raged inside of us. How long could our fragile undead souls weather such a storm?

The miracle that Dr. Langhorne and Sandoval had peddled to the Moguls out on the grass was far from a cure. It was closer to an addiction, with me the heroin. An addiction that might be driving us mad. At best it was a poor stopgap until we could get back to New England and hunt down Uri Miska.

For that was and had always been Langhorne's plan. And now, at her bidding, they sought the true cure, the one with the potential to restore humankind. The enzyme circulating in our blood was only a preliminary phase of treatment-a short-term means of suppressing symptoms. It was imperfect, but Miska knew more. Miska would know everything.

Come on, sourpuss! It's an adventure!

From time to time I would forget it was Dr. Langhorne talking to me (or talking to herself, as is more likely) and fall under the strange, vivid delusion that it was my mother by my side. For a brief instant the rift between present and past, living and dead, would be healed.

"You ever hear that joke, 'What's long and hard and full of seamen-A submarine'? It's no coincidence this thing is a giant phallus, Lulu. It's all about who's got the biggest dick. It's true. But you know what's funny? You know what I noticed? Look at this submarine straight on, and its outline is an inverted Venus symbol. That means it's our job to shake things up, turn this can upside down. What do you think?"

She wasn't expecting an answer, and I wasn't expecting to give one, but I felt my lips forming the words "Penis Patrol."

"That's okay, kiddo. No need to talk. You rest. You just rest." In her voice I heard the same lonely mantle of deja vu, of communication with spirits. It was all that held back the green vastness of the sea.

Then the moment would pass, and I would grasp after it, clutching at a wisp too fleeting to catch. I would feel the cold.

Here's a fairy tale:

Once upon a time I was alive. The end. TURN THE PAGE FOR A SPECIAL PREVIEW OF WALTER GREATSHELL'S NEXT NOVEL XOMBIES: APOCALYPTICON AVAILABLE IN MARCH 2010 FROM ACE BOOKS! "A im for that dock there," Sal said, consulting his printed-out map.

"What do you think we're doing?" Kyle Hancock said. "It's the current; it's wicked."

"Well, paddle harder-it's going to take us underneath the hurricane barrier."

"No shit."

"Paddle! Paddle!"

The paddlers paddled, putting their shoulders into it, trying to find a rhythm. Sal watched the great, gray barrier loom above them, its open gates like massive steel jaws and the river beyond a yawning gullet, eager to swallow them whole. It was so shallow in there at low tide that Xombies could wade right up and grab them at will. "All together!" he shouted. "Stroke, stroke, stroke…"

Then they were clearing the worst of the current, moving into calmer eddies near shore. "Okay, we're good, we're gonna make it," Sal said, heart still racing. "Don't stop, we're almost there."

"Shut up," Kyle said. "God damn."

"Yeah, man," agreed Russell. "We don't need you to tell us what to do. We know you're Officer Tran's little bitch, but just try to chill, a'ight? We on it."

Russell and Kyle Hancock were brothers, the only surviving pair of siblings on the ship, and their mutual strength made them de facto rulers of the Big Room. Russell was one year older than Kyle, with a corrected cleft lip and a resulting lisp that made him sound like Mike Tyson-kids had learned not to rag him about it. His brother Kyle was lighter built, less touchy, with the easy confidence of a born player-as they liked to say, Russell was the muscle, and Kyle was the style. The brothers were not overt troublemakers, they simply used their power to do as little as possible, making needier kids like the Freddies-Freddy Fisk and Freddy Gonzales, or just Freddy F and G, Tweedledum and Tweedledee-do their work for them. Why shouldn't they? There were no extra rations in doing it yourself-the privilege of not starving was reserved for "essential personnel" only. As far as Kyle and Russell were concerned, Sal DeLuca and all the other overworked ship's apprentices were suckers.