Walter Greatshell - Apocalypso

They were crabs-millions of crabs. Crabs of all kinds: blue crabs, rock crabs, primitive-looking horseshoe crabs. All of them unusually large and aggressive. Girded with sharp spines and powerful claws, they were hard to get off, hard to kill, and just plain hard. Most disturbing of all, they obviously had a taste for Xombies.

Deja vu, I thought, batting at them. Quickly becoming overwhelmed, I ordered, Retreat!

I wasn’t the only one; all the Dreadnauts were in flight, facing against the tide and dragging bunches of crustaceans from their extremities like bizarre fruit. The frenzied crabs followed, swimming and scuttling over the bottom in a rolling wave.

As the point man, farthest from the ship, Alton Webb had the worst of it, doing what he could to stall the attackers by using his own body as bait, hacking crabs off himself with karate moves. But this was not very effective, and he was quickly enveloped in shrouds of hungry creatures.

My group and I were also covered but not so burdened that we couldn’t climb the lines to the boat, shedding our wet suits and some of our flesh to rid ourselves of the sharp-clinging foe, or even biting crabs off each other with our teeth.

Within the ship, Coombs ordered Reverse Slow, causing the great screws to begin resisting the current. It was risky because any sound we made at this range and depth could be noticed by a reasonably alert enemy, but the only other choice was to drift blindly into the defensive lines.

The crabs followed us up the trailing ropes, linking legs and massing by tons to actually put a drag on the submarine. If they reached it, their sheer numbers could block the intake ducts and destabilize the ballast. But the last men to the lines, Alton Webb and Jack Kraus-both of them buried in vicious crustaceans and eroding like sandcastles-realized the danger and simultaneously decided on the last, best course of action:

As one, they pulled out their knives and cut the nylon cords, dropping away from the sub and taking the threat with them. Adding their own bones to the heap.

Once the surviving Dreadnauts were back aboard, crew members armed with bolt cutters and hammers dealt with any persisting crabs. Some of these had actually burrowed into the bodies of their victims, lodging up inside bellies and chest cavities like ironic cancers-the only cancers a Xombie could get-which necessitated the crudest parody of surgery to remove.

Cutting crabs off me, Alice Langhorne asked, “What just happened out there?”

“What does it look like? Crabs! We were attacked by crabs.”

“I was worried about something like this. I just didn’t expect it to apply so indiscriminately.”

“What?” I asked, yanking a small crab off my left earlobe.

“When we were doing risk assessments for MoCo, we realized that Maenads were not deterred by water obstacles. They could easily ford rivers, lakes, and oceans, meaning any kind of moat was useless, and even islands offered only temporary protection. Extreme cold was the only guaranteed defense, which is why the Moguls all came to Thule. But the problem solved itself: It turns out that the ASR morphocyte-Agent X-is able to colonize the bodies of certain invertebrates.”

“Shit.”

“It does not do this by piggybacking on iron molecules, the way it does in human blood cells. Crabs don’t have hemoglobin. Their environment has to be saturated with microbial ASR-pulverized Maenad tissue-so that they absorb it into their bodies and nervous systems. Once this reaches a critical mass, the morphocytes form a rudimentary nerve center that takes control of the host organism, causing it to suddenly develop an insatiable appetite for richer sources of Agent X-such as ourselves.”

I erupted. “Why the hell didn’t you tell us before we went out there? We just lost three guys!”

“I’m sorry. I’m still getting used to this; my mind is so different than it was when I was alive… like a black hole in space. I find it very hard to narrow my focus. To attend.”

“Well, you have to. We all have to.”

“I’ll try to be more careful.”

“Screw being careful,” I said. “It’s time we played hardball.”

Keeping well clear of the bay entrance, we headed south until we came to the bottom leg of the causeway, which was basically a long pier connected to the Norfolk shore. The water here was too shallow to dive the boat, but we didn’t intend to. Instead, we lined up for an easy shot and fired a spread of four torpedoes at the bridge pylons.

Four plumes of white spray rose to the sky, and a great span of concrete and steel tumbled into the water. Then we just cruised over it.

We were inside Chesapeake Bay.

I looked up along the coast. Not far upriver was the sight of the first landing by early settlers of Jamestown-the Pocahontas thing. The Disney musical. As a kid I had liked that cartoon, but my mother despised its cheap sentimentality, its glossing-over of ugly historic events. Hollywood is bullshit, she would say. American history is not pretty.

Looking at Norfolk, I had to agree. The city was dead, and the Navy base had been a scene of desperate fighting. Waterfront buildings were riddled with bullet holes, windowless from explosions, gutted by fire. A big submarine lay sunk at its moorings, only its radar mast breaking the water. Several vessels had run aground or capsized. Other ships were more or less intact, including an Ohio-class boat suspended on blocks in the vast dry-dock facility. The only one that interested me was the sleek black yacht riding at anchor. I could read its name through the periscope: La Fantasma. The yacht was empty; its passengers had come ashore here.

Assembling a shore party to salvage some critically needed items from the dry-docked boat, I consulted Cowper’s head about the necessary procedures for stabilizing our vessel.

“I just want to make sure everything is secure before we disembark.”

“Sounds like you’re not planning on coming back anytime soon.”

“It may be a while.”

“Good. Because I’ve had enough of this tub to last me an eternity.”

As the engineering team and I entered the dry dock, we could see that we were too late: the other submarine had already been plundered. Hasty scaffolds stood in place, and huge holes had been cut in the vessel’s hull, steel carved like blubber and machinery dangling out like entrails from a beached whale. The Reactor Control Operator, Mr. Fisk, could see at once that there was little point in going aboard.

Climbing the ramp out of the dry dock, I began to hear a rhythmic whirring sound from above. It was a thin electronic noise, like a printing teletype. It got louder, and suddenly we could see a strange creature silhouetted against the sky. It was spindly and four-legged, about the size of a deer or large dog, but with boxy saddlebags strapped to its sides.

It had no head.

Even stranger, it had no presence, no life energy. As Xombies, we were highly attuned to any aura of life, but this thing was a blank.

I asked, “What is that?”

“I’m not sure,” said Julian Noteiro. “I think it’s a machine.”

Without warning, the weird object erupted in gunfire-a fusillade of metal pellets issuing from where its head should have been. In an instant, half our crew was down, their bodies punched through like cored apples.

Perhaps because Bobby Rubio and I were shorter, we escaped the first volley and jumped over the side of the ramp, clinging by our fingertips. Julian, Sal, and a few other boys did the same, dangling beside us. The bigger men all plummeted to the concrete bottom, shattering limbs and skulls.

Seeking targets, the four-legged robot trotted down the ramp after them, its pulsing whine echoing in the chamber. As it passed me, I swung my slight body up over the ramp and tried to kick its rear legs out from under it.