Walter Greatshell - Apocalypse blues

"Dude, don't even start," Sal said. "I'm just trying to help us stay alive, okay?"

"We don't need your help-dude."

"Yeah, give it a rest. You ain't a ship's officer."

"No, but I'm responsible for your ass."

"Leave my ass be. And you best watch your own, bike boy."

They all snickered.

Sal shook his head, grinning in spite of himself. This had been going on for months, part of the friction between the ship's apprentices and the "nubs"-nonuseful bodies. Nubs were often the guys who were having the worst time of it, the true orphans, whose adult sponsors-their dads-had been killed and who could barely hold it together enough to function, their shock and despair manifesting as attitude. He knew Russell's gibes were a response to the helplessness of the situation, a survival mechanism. A thin wedge against panic, which Sal could totally relate to, having lost his own father at Thule. Hey, to laugh was better than to cry… or to scream. Once you started screaming, you might never stop.

The screams came at night, in their sleep.

They were below the high dock, fending off its barnacled pilings with their paddles. "Okay, everybody be quiet," Sal said. If there were Xombies up there, they could just jump right into the boats. He tied up to a rusted ladder, and whispered, "I'm just gonna take a look, okay? Nobody move unless I give the all clear."

"What is this Squad Leader bullshit?" Kyle hissed, getting up. "This ain't no video game, dumb-ass."

"Fine, you go first." Sal made room for him to pass.

Kyle hesitated, sudden doubt flashing across his face, so that Russell said, "Sit your ass down. Let a real man go up."

"Fuck you."

Russell belligerently mounted the ladder. They watched in nervous silence as he paused at the top, peeking over the edge at first with trembling caution, then visibly relaxing and raising his whole head above. "Come on, chicken shits," he called down. "Ain't nothing' to-"

A blue hand seized him by the throat.

Fighting the thing, Russell lost his grip and plummeted backward onto the raft. The disembodied hand was still on him-not just a hand but an entire arm, ripped off at the shoulder socket, its round bone nakedly visible, hideously flailing and jerking at the elbow joint as it strangled him. The other boys quailed back, screaming, but Sal lunged for the thing, trying to pry its fingers loose. It was a young girl's hand, its dainty nails painted pink, but it was cold and rubbery, impossibly strong.

"Help me!" he shouted.

Kyle jumped forward to pitch in, then two other boys, his poker buddies, Ray and Rick. As they grappled with it, the naked stump punched Sal in the cheek so hard it cracked a filling. Tasting blood, he braced his knee on Russell's chest, and with a supreme effort, they managed to wrench the thing loose. It immediately went wild, flexing and bucking in their hands, trying to get at them. "All together now," Sal said. "One, two…" On three, they hurled it far out into the water.

"Holy craaap," Russell wheezed, retching over the side.

"Let's get outta here!" Kyle shouted.

"Wait!" Sal said. "We can't just go back."

"Why not? I'm not waitin' for the rest of that chick to show up!"

"We have to expect shit like this to happen. We handled it! We can't just give up now."

"We sure as hell can!" Others chimed in: "Hell yeah, we're gone! This shit is suicide."

"Hold up," said a ragged voice. It was Russell. He shakily sat up, and croaked, "Don't nobody do a goddamned thing. I ain't-hem-goin' back to that submarine empty-handed. Just so they can lock us in jail again? How many days we already been sitting there dreaming we had some place else to go, some kinda free choice? Screw that shit. I'm hungry." He got up and climbed the ladder again, wobbly but without hesitation. In seconds, he was over the top and out of sight.

For a long moment there was silence, then Russell's face reappeared. "Come on!" he called down impatiently. "Let's do this. You wanna eat or don't you?"

Sal started to follow, but Kyle and the other boys shoved past, nearly knocking him into the water. Whether empowered by Russell's confidence, the prospect of food, or the thought of that arm lurking in the water below; suddenly they couldn't get up fast enough. "One at a time," Sal said. But they weren't listening to him at all-the old ladder was almost coming to pieces from their combined weight. Stupid jerks. "Everybody stay together," he called after them as he tested the rungs.

Sal emerged to find the boys standing at the edge of a weedy lot, reveling in the glorious, slightly queasy sensation of dry land. It looked like no-man's-land-the vacant area beneath a highway bridge. On one side was the flood-control berm-a high rock dam separating them from the city-and on the other a fenced tugboat landing and some condemned-looking buildings. Huge concrete pylons rose above them to Interstate 195. It was all reassuringly deserted.

As Sal joined them, Russell asked him, "Where to now?"

"Well, we gotta cross under the highway and follow the road here through the floodgate. There should be businesses and things on the other side."

"Let's do it."

Following Russell, who was following Sal, the boys trooped quickly and quietly down the road, picking up any likely-looking weapons they happened to find-mostly rocks and chunks of brick. Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me. Sal wished he could find a good stick. He looked up at the highway bridge, imagining that the little girl's arm must have fallen from there, picturing the awful scene: the girl in the backseat of her parents' car, the Xombie lunging in and grabbing her arm, dad hitting the gas-nasty.

They found the tremendous open doors of the flood barrier and cautiously followed the road through. On the far side was a waterfront area of chic clubs and condos, and across the river an immense Gothic cathedral that was the electric company, webbed to the rest of the city by flowing skeins of wire. It was all dead, all out of commission, yet almost perfectly preserved, as if loyally awaiting the future return of humankind. Everything had gone down so fast, there was no time for looting and destruction.

Dodging from one shadow to the next, the boys did what they could to keep a low profile. "I don't get it," Kyle said, eyes wide with tension. "Why aren't there any Xombies?"

"Be glad there ain't," said Russell, gingerly touching his bruised neck.

"It's gotta be that viral thing they talked about-viral progression," Sal said. "The cities got so full of Xombies, they reached, like, critical mass. Once there was nobody left to infect, there was no reason to stay, so they scattered outward across the country. Maybe there aren't any left here."

The boys' chests swelled with hope. "Is that true?"

"I don't know. It's just what I heard."

"God, I hope you right, man."

Staying off the exposed waterfront, they followed a shaded inner street with fewer doorways. This led them to a second highway underpass, one older and darker than the first, a sunken hollow, its corroded iron girders busy with roosting pigeons. There were peeling psychedelic murals on the walls, ads for funky-sounding businesses: CAFE ZOG, OLGA'S CUP AND SAUCER, ACME VIDEO, Z-BAR. Cars sat dead in the road, their windows broken and doors wide open to the elements. Pigeons were roosting in them, too. This was not a good place to be; it didn't feel safe. The boys could be cornered there in the dripping wetness, trapped amid the rust and rank birdshit. "We shouldn't have gone this way, man," said Kyle. They walked faster and faster, trying not to panic, not to run…

… and emerged in the light of spring. Before them was a tiny hillside park with a veteran's memorial, benches, and maple trees. Dew glistened on the grass. But the boys hardly noticed any of that. They were more interested in what lay just beyond: a bright red-and-yellow gas station-a Shell station-with a sign reading FOOD MART.