Walter Greatshell - Apocalypso

I entered the room, followed by little Bobby Rubio and a few other boys.

“What do you think you’re doing?” cried Parminter.

“Saving you, sir,” I said.

“What kind of damn freak show is this? Why are you doing this to us?”

“Because we must,” I said. “Because we’re the only ones who can.”

“What the hell are you?”

“Friends.”

“Friends my ass. You’re using people as fucking live bait!” To Coombs he said, “I see how it is, Harvey: They let you live so you can help them hunt down every last straggler. You rotten bastard, you’re a traitor to the human race. And what happens when we’re all gone? Have you thought of that? Are they going to just let you sail around the world like this forever? No-then it’ll be your turn.”

Coombs said, “I’ve already been converted.”

“You’re not a Xombie! You’re still human!”

“Things are not as black and white as you think. Some of us have found it’s better to be… flexible.”

I nudged Bobby forward, since he looked the least threatening of any of us. A perfectly ordinary little kid.

“Show ’em,” I whispered.

Bobby held up his right hand to make a fist. With a crackling sound, the fingers merged together, forming a smooth ball.

“Holy shit!” Parminter said.

The ball now began to expand, swelling larger and larger, pulsating like bubbling porridge. While this was happening, Bobby’s face suddenly crumpled inward, withering like a prune, as if his entire head was being sucked into his neck. A moment later, the swollen ball of his hand unfurled into a thing very much like a face. It quickly became Bobby’s face-Bobby’s whole head. The shrunken bulb that had been his head now divided into five lobes and blossomed into a perfect human hand atop his neck. It waggled its fingers.

I said, “You see?”

Parminter threw up. Eyes full of horror and rage, he turned to Coombs. “How can you let them do this to you? To the human race? They’re monsters! You’re the captain of a U.S. Navy vessel, for Christ’s sake!”

“I’m not the captain,” Coombs said.

“What? Then who is?”

“Fred Cowper.”

I gave a silent command to the man sitting beside Parminter, Lieutenant Dan Robles. Robles reached across the table to the covered dish in its center, the piece de resistance. With a reproachful look at me, he lifted its bell.

There was a severed head underneath-a bald blue head that was no longer remotely human but which had once belonged to Captain Fred Cowper, retired. Parminter knew Cowper well; he had trained under him and had the highest regard for the man. Cowper had been an old-school submariner from the early days of the nuclear Navy. The technocrats hated him, but to Parminter he was the real thing, a no-bullshit maverick-the kind of guy you could bet your life on in a tight spot, whatever the cost to the Navy. Or to himself.

Well, it had cost Fred everything this time-everything but his head. But that head was alive, an independent entity with multiple little legs, its huge black eyeballs fixed on Parminter.

“Hiya, Arnie,” it croaked.

“That’s not Cowper!” Parminter objected. “You’re not Fred Cowper, you fucking ghoul!”

“I yam what I yam,” said Cowper’s head.

“You think you’re going to get away with this? If my men don’t hear from me in the next ten minutes, they will blow you out of the water.”

I said, “In ten minutes, you’ll understand.”

“Understand what? What the fuck am I going to understand? That a bunch of twisted monstrosities have taken over a submarine? That they’ve learned to play human?”

Cowper’s head opened its jagged-toothed mouth and guffawed.

A bit miffed, I said, “No… that we are the last hope of Mankind.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Life on Earth is going to be wiped out. The only thing that may survive is our kind.”

“Malarkey!” Cowper shouted.

Parminter asked me, “How do you know that?”

“We can see it.”

“See what?”

“The future. Every person we save is a thread of our human destiny-an irreplaceable piece of genetic memory going back a billion years. A clue to the ultimate puzzle, which we may one day be called upon to solve. There’s not going to be any more evolution, no future generations-we’re it. The restoration of our species depends upon how many lives we save. Lose one person, and we lose all their stored equity-and that is forever. Eternity is a long time to be cooped up together; we’ll want all the company we can get.”

“So we’re supposed to be grateful, is that it? You think you’re actually saving our lives.”

“Not exactly. It’s more like you’re being preserved for future reference. We all are.”

“Ah. Sounds pleasant.”

“Barrel o’ monkeys!” Cowper’s head cackled.

“I know it’s hard to understand right now, but in a minute you’ll see everything.”

“I’ll see you in Hell, bitch. My boat will nuke us all before it will let you get away with this… ”

Parminter’s voice trailed off as Bobby’s upper torso split apart, unfolding like a great, trembling orchid. A glossy blue protuberance shot forward like a chameleon’s tongue, flaring wide and engulfing the man’s face. He had no time to scream.

The guests left by the first light of dawn, climbing aboard their ship and issuing orders to cast off. The Virginia’s XO had already been busy; the work there was done.

Bobby came to me after we parted from the other sub. I could tell he wanted to say something, but it made him deeply uncomfortable.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I don’t like doing it this way. Why do we have to talk to them so much?”

“To let them know we are not thieves or killers.”

“They don’t care. It just makes them hate us even more.”

“They just don’t know. They can’t imagine. Could you imagine before you were changed?”

“I don’t ’member being changed. I just was.”

Bobby was our Mystery Boy. He had still never explained to any of us exactly how or when he acquired his unusual abilities. He was brought aboard the boat as a helpless refugee, and forty-eight hours later every human being on board was converted to his peculiar species of ultraplastic, nonspastic, completely human-looking Xombie. If they were even Xombies. As a Maenad myself, one of the ship’s original Blue Meanies, I had my doubts.

“Okay,” I said. “But you remember before that. Being human.”

“Yeah.”

“Would you have wanted to be changed?”

Bobby didn’t have to think twice. “Yes.”

“Well, not everybody feels that way. That’s why we try to prepare them.”

“But even after we tell them, they’re still upset.”

“Sure, but they know. Knowing is important. You heard the man-they want to know.”

“They still fight, though.”

“Not after the change.”

“No, not after the change. But why do we have to tell them beforehand? Why can’t we just do it and get it over with?”

This was something I had wrestled with myself. I had never been completely convinced that our so-called mission was anything more than wishful thinking. The visions were powerful, yet they could easily be some mass hallucination. It was very possible we were all insane. Just as with the wild Xombies ashore, we had a deep need to convert people, but our more-lucid brains required elaborate justifications for doing so. Or at least mine did.

I said, “I think it’s necessary and right to reveal our purpose to those we are about to change. I don’t like hiding it as if we’re ashamed. If what we’re doing is the most important work on the planet, then we should say so.”