Apocalypso

CHAPTER TEN
SANDOVAL

Having literally been run over by a truck, James Sandoval was half-frozen and already half-dead when Fred Cowper’s headless body strangled him. Cowper wasn’t doing so well either, having been mangled by a monkey and beheaded by Lulu Pangloss. They froze solid like that, a pair of vandalized statues from a forgotten war memorial. The dead monkey lay frozen a short distance away.

Over the following weeks, the sagging Mogul dome overhead was ripped away by storms, and the weird tableau of Sandoval and Cowper became drifted with snow and collected wind-driven icicles on its leeward side-just another strange formation on the frozen sea. But then the sea began to thaw. Spring was coming earlier and earlier every year; seas that had once been frozen in May were now navigable. The sun beat down, and soon the thick white mantle on the Davis Straight cracked loose and started to move. More storms came, bringing rain and waves that fractured the ice into huge floes, herding them into sun-warmed waters farther south.

On one of these floes, an iceberg the size of six city blocks, Sandoval and Cowper came back to life.

“Oh my God,” Sandoval said, or rather tried to say-his throat was still crushed in Cowper’s grip. The choking was not what bothered him; it was the feel of Cowper’s alien flesh. “Get… off… me!”

Voice or no voice, Cowper’s headless corpse seemed to understand him. Having no more business to transact, it willingly pulled free, though their blue skin had bonded and required some nasty-looking tearing to separate.

Where am I? Sandoval wondered, staring with black eyes over the vast expanse of ice-strewn ocean. There was no land in sight. What am I? But he already knew the answer to the latter question-it was no mystery. Good thing, because he could hardly expect any answers from Fred Cowper. Looking at that ridiculous headless figure in its bloodstained hospital gown, then down at his own blue hands, Sandoval thought, I’m a Xombie-great.

As he came to this unbelievable conclusion, he suddenly realized he wasn’t the only one waking to a strange new destiny: The baboon that had kept him company in his last moments of life was apparently going to keep him company in the afterlife as well.

It lived.

They drifted for days, weeks, partially refreezing every night and thawing again in the sun. Cowper barely moved, facing south like a gnarled tree. The broken-necked baboon paced around the floe’s rim, occasionally staring at Sandoval with its head cocked quizzically to one side, as if to ask, “Am I dreaming?” I know the feeling, buddy, Sandoval thought. His crushed legs caused him no pain, but they prevented him from walking, so he took great interest in their healing process: the splintered bones softening like putty, and his newly prehensile muscle tissues kneading them back into shape-a shape he could actually control if he wanted to. Long and fast, or short and strong-or something else altogether? He was afraid to mess with the original design too much, lest he screw it up and never get it back the way it was. But the possibilities of this newly plastic body fascinated him.

All around him, he sensed life, an awesome profusion of microscopic organisms that made the sea look like a living nebula, an animated horoscope of swimming, drifting, dancing celestial bodies, all eating or being eaten. The life was thickest on the bottom, illuminating the topography, so that at night Sandoval felt as though he were flying high above a radiant red desert. He would have gladly walked across that desert to the distant shore of Canada, except he knew there were a lot of crabs down there, and crabs ate Xombies. Miska had designed them to.

By day there were seals, birds, whales, an occasional polar bear. But even the hungriest bear could make nothing of Sandoval, Cowper, or the baboon-they had no smell, no warmth, no presence. They weren’t living flesh, and they weren’t carrion. They were about as palatable as clay.

Then Sandoval remembered his pen. It was a special pen, a laser pointer with a GPS beacon, designed to direct aerial fire on ground targets. A powerful tool for playing God. But Sandoval no longer had any desire to play God; he just wanted to reach dry land. So he turned on the beacon and waited. And while he waited he remembered.

The chairman of the board, James Sandoval, was not surprised by sounds of gunfire filtering into the briefing room. He was already despondent over the shooting of a civilian employee at the company picnic though it had been far from unexpected: Bob Martino was a union organizer and chronic loudmouth from way back. Still, a terrible threshold had been crossed. Things could only get worse from here on out.

Sandoval and the NavSea leadership were sitting around the big conference table, watching a live video feed from the security cameras at the fence line, less than a mile away, where things were going downhill fast.

“Everyone off the fence!” the guards shouted, sounding like harried gym teachers. “Pull back, pull back!”

They were leaderless, rudderless, shocked by the sudden death of Security Chief Beau Reynolds, who had gotten blown up in a freak explosion while standing on his observation platform like a half-assed Douglas MacArthur.

Sandoval panned the closed-circuit cameras as guards were snatched off the scaffolds and abandoned the fence, retreating before the horror that they had dreaded and drilled for, but for which no one could ever be truly prepared. Perhaps some were even relieved that the waiting was over.

The main gate was on fire, its bright glow in the evening mist silhouetting a scene of desperate flight. Shots sputtered like strings of firecrackers all along the perimeter, and men could be heard shouting hysterically for ammo, for reinforcements, for God Almighty.

Whatever was outside the fence was mostly hidden by plastic slats threaded through the wires, but the crashing chain link gave clear indication of multiple climbers, a sound like a stirred-up monkey cage. White phosphorous and burning magnesium fluoresced brightly in the fog, strobing, and it was possible to see scores of flaming shadow puppets scrambling up the barrier.

Two figures stood apart from the confusion, looking weirdly out of place: a skinny old man in golf slacks and a dark-haired little girl in a green velvet party dress.

“Holy hell,” said Commander Harvey Coombs, staring at the monitor. “Is that Fred Cowper?”

“It is indeed,” said Sandoval. “I don’t know what he thinks he’s doing bringing that girl in here. Figures he’d pick a time like this to show up.”

“We could use his experience. He served on the original 726, didn’t he?”

“Yeah. Put in his twenty in the Navy, then did a full term here. He’s one of the real old-timers. Looks like he’s taking us up on our offer.”

“A little late. Can we get him, you think?”

“Well… it’s pretty hairy down there. I’d have to say no, and the girl is completely out of the question. It’s just too late-he had his chance a month ago and blew it. In a matter of minutes, that post will be completely overrun, and after that the compound is wide open. It’s critical that you men get to the boat right now… or you never will.”

Sandoval had a pang of regret saying this. At one time he had really hoped to get Cowper for this run. The man was a maverick, a hard case who knew subs inside and out and could be counted on to get the job done, red tape be damned. Rough around the edges, sure. A bit of a crank. Some people couldn’t stand him, especially those in the upper echelons of military/industrial middle management, but to Sandoval, that was the highest recommendation of all.

At least most of the executive committee was safely aboard the rescue ship to Diego Garcia-that was a load off his mind. His adopted nephew, Ray, had made it to the compound in one piece, though Ray’s sister had not-another good woman lost to the plague. And his ex-wife, Alice, had landed in Thule weeks ago to head up the science team. Sandoval had hoped to be away by now himself, but endless last-minute delays kept piling up until he was a whole day behind schedule.

From the sound of it, things would have to be accelerated a bit.

“Gentlemen,” he said, gathering up his things and breaking the hush in the room. “The corporation wishes to thank you for your efforts in securing the enormous volume of classified material stored at this facility. By your efforts over the past weeks, you have safeguarded the cream of naval war-fighting technology, as well as the very building blocks of American civilization, assuring that they will neither fall into the wrong hands nor be lost to future generations. Without your work, it would be impossible to do what I now propose we all do: get the hell out of here.”

There were hasty handshakes and good-byes all around. A sense of imminent death was in the air, but no one wanted to be the first to run, to show fear, and Jim found himself repeating, “We’ve done all we can, we’ve done all we can,” until finally it was just him and Harvey Coombs.

“Come on, Mr. Sandoval, time to close up shop.”

“You go ahead and make ready to cast off. I’ll be right behind you.”

“You know I can’t do that, sir. We don’t sail without you.”

“I have one more small errand to run, and it’s my eyes only. Don’t worry, Harvey, I’m not going to blow my brains out or anything. But I do need a few more minutes before I can get down to the dock.”

“Then I’ll accompany you.”

“You will not. Your business is running that boat, getting it safely out of here, and nothing can jeopardize that-not even me. So you worry about your job and let me worry about mine. That’s an executive order, Commander.”

“You’re out of your mind if you think I’m leaving you out here all alone.”

“I appreciate your concern, but you’re interfering with both our duties. Until I’m aboard that boat, I am not your responsibility.”

“I could take you under armed guard.”

“But you won’t.” Sandoval opened his coat, revealing a nickel-plated. 357 Magnum in a shoulder holster.

Coombs shook his head. “Jesus Christ. I hope you know what the hell you’re doing.” He turned on his heel and left.

Sandoval called after him, “Thanks, Harv.”

There was a lull in the shooting, then an explosion that rattled the blinds.

Huh. Better hurry.

Instead, Jim dawdled, picking up a heavy pewter model of the proposed Hawaii-class boat and turning it over in his hands. It would’ve been a beautiful thing, a marvel for the ages, but it was a dream never to be realized. In spite of all they’d done to preserve its essence for posterity, Sandoval was poignantly aware that it would never be more than this shiny little paperweight-a trillion-dollar toy.

He thought of a book he had read as a child, about a carved toy canoe set afloat in a stream that made its way to the Great Lakes and finally out to sea. There was something terribly sad about it: The boy who made the canoe would never know how its journey ended, if it went a mile or a thousand miles-he just gave it the first push.

There was a radio telephone on the conference table, and Jim picked up the receiver. “I’m on my way, Mr. Velocek,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

Sandoval pushed the model over with a bump and went to the door, turning off the lights as he left the room.

Walking downstairs and out the rear exit, he took a golf cart through deserted machine shops full of massive lathes, drills, and other steel-milling equipment. He found his Caddy in the east loading dock and gratefully sank into its deep upholstery one last time, reveling in its lush, amniotic suspension.

Jim could live in that car; he loved his things and hated to leave them. Having been born poor and come to wealth in his late teens, he never lost his deep need for material validation. In that way, both MoCo and the SPAM program reflected his packrat mentality: you can take it with you. Having known both abject poverty and absolute luxury, Sandoval liked to say, I prefer luxury.

He started the engine and pulled onto the service road.

Outside, the shooting had stopped, and a muffled calm descended with the fog.

Isolated pockets, isolated pockets, isolated pockets…

Sandoval caught himself muttering and put a stop to it. Those words had been cropping up in his thoughts too often, like an insipid tune he couldn’t stop humming. He supposed it was some kind of post-traumatic stress thing, and wondered if worse was to come. Bitter-cold pragmatist though he was, he knew he hadn’t yet really faced THE END OF THE WORLD, any more than he had faced his daughter’s suicide, and he wondered if it was even possible to come to terms with such a thing. Short of dropping dead from grief, what could be an appropriate reaction? And he had to put up a brave front, lest his own horror demoralize his subordinates.

Most of the people at the plant had been rather sheltered from the terrible events of the past month. The remote point of land occupied by the submarine compound was not on any map and was screened from prying eyes by miles of restricted Navy property. It was a rare “isolated pocket”-a place the Maenad plague had not penetrated. Its convenient desolation was the sole reason for their survival, but it also created a false sense of security. Most of them had never even seen a so-called “Xombie.”

Well, now they would. Oh yes.

As he passed through the deserted inner checkpoint and turned away from the direction of the submarine pen, Sandoval was a bit surprised to see that Coombs had really taken him at his word-they had gone ahead to the boat and left him alone. That was easier than expected; maybe they were glad to get rid of him. But why should that be surprising? They had military duties to perform, a ship to make ready, a crucial mission to undertake. Jim Sandoval was ballast, deadweight. He was a civilian and, from their point of view, the worst kind of civilian: a civilian you had to kiss up to. By bailing out, he was probably doing them a favor.

How many other residual pockets of humanity were out there? Jim wondered. Hundreds? Thousands? The corporation had obviously benefited from isolation and dumb luck, and he knew of a few other such organized hideaways from the epidemic, but that was no indication of how many survivors there might be among the general population. The independents, the rogue elements. Because, ultimately, they would be the backbone of any new civilization.

Sandoval’s own experience had not been hopeful. He’d been in touch with Washington for the better part of January, discussing contingencies and implementing the Family-to-Work Plan, just so the illusion could be sustained that the company was keeping up its contractual commitments to the Navy, but after martial law was announced, it became harder and harder to get anyone on the horn. When he did, they urged him to “sit tight” and “hold the fort,” as if all he needed was a little bucking up.

The NavSea team on the factory premises, led by Commander Harvey Coombs, became a paranoid clique that transferred its base of operations to the boat and didn’t want to share whatever information was coming over the submarine’s communications array. But, apparently, they hadn’t had any better luck than Sandoval at calling in the cavalry because Coombs soon turned up, hat in hand, stressing the need for cooperation… especially in regard to the Plan. As keeper of the Plan, Jim Sandoval held all the cards and held them close to his vest. One thing that was clear to both of them was that their deadlines and employee morale issues were small potatoes in the larger scheme of things.

Jim counted as victories his ability to persuade the rank and file that a gutted nuclear submarine could be a godsend to them and their male offspring-a big steel safety net-as well as to finagle extra security and a sea convoy for routine supplies.

But in doing these things, he had the inescapable feeling that he was engaged in something shady, that the resources he was diverting to one neutered SSBN (or an SSGN, as the Navy had permitted him to call it, though the bellyful of guided cruise missiles it was supposed to carry would never be delivered) might be more desperately needed elsewhere. Who was he to decide who lived and who died? Even using the submarine’s S8G reactor to supply power to the local grid could be interpreted as a wasteful extravagance, lighting a few suburbs while the rest of human civilization went dark.

By mid-January, everything had really shut down. Sandoval received a last official instruction: to compile all the available records of the Agent X epidemic into one report, a sort of doomsday scrapbook, and preserve it for posterity as an essential part of the boat’s cargo. A message in a bottle. Everything had happened so fast, there was no other official record, no history. Anyone still alive was to participate in this final archive and add their own perspective on the disaster. Officially, it was called The Maenad Project. Jim dubbed it The Apocalypticon.

At first, Sandoval looked upon this ridiculous assignment as truly the last nail in the coffin-who exactly did they think was going to take time out from the struggle for survival to participate in this scavenger hunt? And who would be around to read it?

But during the long nights in limbo, he began to find the idea strangely compelling: that he was at the center of extraordinary events that deserved to be memorialized. It had never occurred to him that all this sad, ugly scrabble for crumbs could be shaped into something coherent… and even majestic. That it only required a historian who could do it justice, a writer who could really milk the situation for all the poetry and pathos it was worth. A writer who could immortalize him, James Sandoval, as a keeper of the flame of civilization. A prophet for a new age.

He thought of the Emma Lazarus poem on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free… ” Yes! That was exactly the kind of writing this situation called for. Unfortunately, Sandoval knew, he wasn’t that writer. And unless by some extraordinary accident he found another Emma Lazarus with the requisite skills to enshrine in poetry or prose such an eternal testament to the unquenchable power of the human spirit, the project would have to languish. Sandoval had other things to worry about.

That was the beginning of the true “isolated pockets” phase of the plague, when all commerce, all movement, seemed to grind to a halt like film jamming in an old movie projector. Telephone, radio, satellite, and computer networks folded simultaneously, leaving an ominous silence that was all too easy to fill in with raging paranoia. Sandoval’s people were reduced to using shortwave radio over the submarine’s transmitter, but without functioning relays or a direct line to SOSUS, this was a feeble candle in the darkness.

Delegations of volunteer fact finders were sent out and never heard from again. They lost half the men this way, and nearly all the company vehicles. The tidbits of news they did hear were all bad:

Population centers worldwide were saturated with Maenad Cytosis and Xombie psychosis, cities rupturing outward like virus-infected cells to spread waves of raving maniacs across the remnants of civilization. Canada was being bombed. Long lists of expired “safe zones” were broadcast, but even while still operational, these were nothing but tracts of remote countryside where truckloads of uninfected females were dumped-huge, open-air refugee farms that resembled POW camps, surrounded by watchtowers and silver briars of razor ribbon. No warm school gymnasiums, cozy church basements, dry armories and civil defense shelters loaded with blankets and hot coffee and donuts. It was all mass hysteria and sudden death. Death at best.

Especially in those early days, Sandoval received all kinds of conflicting instructions from an assortment of increasingly incoherent provisional leaders-those who would talk to him at all-raving about EMP detonations, satellite warfare, alien invaders over Kansas, and the ever-popular Rapture. He knew one man in particular who was making great hay with the religious angle, a former media Mogul named Chace Dixon, who begged him for help he had no power to send. It had been days now since he last bothered tuning in.

In the end, the last acting NATO commander-some third-tier lieutenant in the French Navy-decided that humanity’s last, best chance was to set up a nautical sanctuary in Chesapeake Bay. This cockeyed optimist ordered every survivor to report to Norfolk, where he and his staff were supposedly following orders from the president of the United States-the dead president-to guard some kind of secret project called Xanadu.

It was all nuts. Yet even Sandoval wasn’t immune to these fantasies. He often pictured a simple, nautical existence for the dregs of mankind, coming ashore only when necessary to forage, the way old-time mariners approached uncharted coasts, maybe finding a tropical island somewhere to settle down. Live out your years on fish and coconuts. Swim every day and get a really deep tan. No bills to pay-in fact, forget all about the pain in the ass that was Western Civilization. It was more trouble than it was worth, anyway.

All very delightful, except that Sandoval knew there were precious few island havens. Islands were the first things to go because there was nowhere to run when your women came after you. Most of the islands he knew of were either embattled fortresses or Xombie-infested charnel houses. That such daydreams had taken the place of serious planning was perhaps the clearest possible indication of the end of the world.

Harvey Coombs himself had recommended going to Norfolk in search of whatever seaborne military forces still existed. Sandoval didn’t have the heart to tell him that their real mission was in the opposite direction.

The helicopter landing pad was at the extreme northern tip of the compound, a barren patch of dirt overlooking the upper reaches of Narragansett Bay. As Sandoval pulled up, the fog was so thick he could barely see the black Bell JetRanger. But the pilot saw his headlights and came running to meet the car.

“Can we fly in this?” Sandoval asked.

“Oh yeah, no prob. With GPS, it’s no sweat, and we’ll be flying above the muck anyway-it’s just ground fog. Hang tight for a second while I finish my preflight.”

“You’re the boss.” Sandoval locked himself in the car and plugged in some music. He already owed his life to Stan Velocek several times over, and was accustomed to doing whatever the retired aviator told him to do. As both his personal pilot and bodyguard, Stan went everywhere with him, and the first thing Jim had done when he arrived at the plant was to make sure the man would be well taken care of.

Good thing, too. If it wasn’t for Stan, he would never have survived the expedition to Brown University. None of the other two hundred men who went out there ever made it back to the plant. Jim could still picture that line of company vans and trucks leaving the gate like a military convoy, full of heroic working stiffs-solemn-faced shipfitters and tank rats who had been stirring up revolution and were placated with an offer to seek out lost loved ones outside the gates: all the mothers, sisters, and daughters who hadn’t even been infected when they abandoned them and took shelter in the submarine compound.

They didn’t find anyone… but at least Jim found what he was looking for: Miska’s Tonic.

Well, maybe not the Tonic, the fabled magic bullet-Uri Miska had either been lying about that or destroyed all traces of his work. But Sandoval did get a preliminary version of CORE: Miska’s Cognition-Retention Enzyme.

Though CORE was neither a cure nor a true vaccine, it was a reasonable stopgap, a suitable substitute that Sandoval could sell to his Mogul partners. Snake oil. It was certainly the closest he ever intended to let those bastards come to being gods. There wasn’t much, just a residue on a test sample, but with this they could theoretically make more… as much more as they needed.

His ex-wife, Alice Langhorne, PhD, had told him where to find it. Alice could be a pain in the ass, but she usually came through when it counted. She had hidden the sample in her office high atop the monolithic Brown Science Laboratory, and when they got there, it was just where she said, in the back of the fridge. A copy of Miska’s hard drive was there, too-good girl!

While he was at it, Sandoval would have liked to take another slight detour and visit his father at the Xibalba annex-Miska’s underground hideaway-but it was just too dangerous. He knew where it was, but he had never been inside, and this was not the time to figure it out. Good old Piers Alaric was certainly not going anywhere.

As it was, the lab building almost killed him. It was fortunate that Alice’s directions were so good-there was not a second to spare. One would think the Xombies had been expecting them.

The infernal creatures stayed out of sight until everyone was inside the tower, just hid there until the very last man filed up that dark stairwell, passing floor after empty floor. Then, pow!-they sprang the trap. It was a damned massacre. Grabbing the precious serum sample, Sandoval ran to the roof like a cornered rat… and there was Stan Velocek with the helicopter, hand outstretched like some angel from heaven.

Jim watched now as the man darted around the helicopter, a picture of cool competence, scanning every direction for signs of danger, combat shotgun at the ready. Removing the anchor lines, he did a quick visual inspection of the engine and tail rotor before starting it up.

Sandoval was glad he wouldn’t have to ride with Coombs and the other Navy men in that broken-down hulk of a submarine. What a nightmare that would have been. Considering the working conditions at the plant, it would be a miracle if that thing ever made it out of Narragansett Bay.

From the very beginning, he had intended to take the chopper to the desolate island airstrip where his private 757 was waiting, but he wasn’t about to leave anything up to chance. It was vitally important to have a backup escape plan, just in case Velocek realized there was nothing stopping him from taking the whirlybird for himself. But the pilot didn’t disappoint; Jim should have known he was as good as gold.

Thumbs-up-the helicopter was ready. As Sandoval stepped out of the car, something flickered at the edge of his peripheral vision: a pale shape rushing through the fog. It was so silent and quick that at first he thought it was something in his eye, a bit of fuzz or his mind playing tricks, and even when he looked at it full on, he could scarcely believe it was happening-because that’s how these things got you. Then it jumped on the copter.

It was a grotesque salamander of a woman, naked, muddy, and mottled blue-black from the sea. As Sandoval watched, the slippery creature clawed at the copter’s bubble canopy, trying to get at the man inside. Velocek tried shooting at it through the small side port and almost lost his gun; he just couldn’t get a good angle. In a second, it was going to rip the door right off the cockpit.

Waving at Sandoval to stay put, the pilot strapped himself in and throttled up for liftoff-obviously he was going to try to shake the thing loose. Knowing what a daredevil Stan was, Sandoval had no doubt the man could do it… it just made him a little uncomfortable to be left sitting here in the dark watching his ride take off without him. Knowing more of those things could appear any second. He clutched his pistol with both hands and half cocked the hammer. Hurry up, Stan…

The helicopter rose into the air, wobbling as it strained against the unequal weight. It was a light, wasplike craft, a four-seater converted to two for the sake of a reserve fuel tank, fast and highly maneuverable, whose expert pilot knew how to handle unusual loads.

With the creature beating on his window, Velocek gunned forward and broke hard to the right. He was using centrifugal force to dislodge the thing, and it nearly worked, but instead of being shaken loose, the Maenad merely lost its footing, both legs swinging up into the rotor blades. With a sound like a weed whacker hitting a clump, its feet went spinning free into the sky.

Still holding on, the thing shoved the ragged ends of its shins into the warped edge of the cockpit door, using the exposed bones as wedges to pry open the flimsy latch. It burrowed in like a parasite, a giant tick, its every heinous fiber digging at that weak spot. The Perspex window cracked, then shattered as the Xombie lunged through.

Straight into both barrels of Velocek’s shotgun.

The blast sheared off most of the Xombie’s head, slinging bone and brain matter far out over the bay. Cropped to its nostrils, the creature toppled backward, scrambling for a handhold as it spilled the last of its brains out the open goblet of its skull… then recovered as if from a bad step. Spurting black goo out the exposed pits of its sinuses, it came at the pilot with renewed vigor.

Velocek fired again, into its chest. At the same time, he pulled hard out of his dive and yawed right, creating intense g-forces that caused both the creature and the canopy door to be ripped loose, vanishing into thin air like a magic trick.

Grinning with relief-Gotcha!-Stan Velocek leveled his aircraft and barely had time to blink as a huge white cylinder loomed out of the fog. Then he and the helicopter ceased to exist.

Jim Sandoval had lost sight of the chopper, but he tried to stay calm, knowing the pilot would put down and collect him at the first opportunity. Stan was reliable if anyone was. Then, from somewhere back in the factory complex, came an eruption of yellow light, followed by a sickening thud that jarred the car. It was an exploding chemical silo.

What the hell’s that? Sandoval thought. And then: Oh shit.

Time for plan B.

Racing back to the wharf at top speed, cursing and pounding the steering wheel as he drove, Sandoval came upon something blocking the road and barely had time to hit his brakes.

What the-?

A mass of ghostly people materialized out of the thick gloom; he nearly plowed right into them. Xombies! No, not Xombies-kids! Hundreds of teenage boys crossing the compound on foot, with adults from the factory herding them like a flock of sheep.

Trundling amid the crowd like a parade float was a large construction vehicle, the Sallie, a specialized flat-top crawler used to move hundred-ton sections of the submarine. Now its dance-hall-sized freight bed was loaded with teenagers dangling their legs off, like a truck hauling migrant workers to the fields. The rolling behemoth was heading slowly but implacably toward the Fitting Bay and, just beyond, the gates to the wharf.

That wasn’t good… not good at all.

Working up the nerve to toot his horn, Sandoval watched in agonized frustration as the mob closed ranks on him. A sneering overweight boy pounded the car’s hood while the rest scowled at him with the dull effrontery of a bunch of hooligans, shielding their faces from the Cadillac’s headlights.

They were after the boat. The rebellious idiots were storming the submarine-his submarine. It was unbelievable… or maybe not so unbelievable. This was exactly the kind of thing he had been hoping to avoid all these weeks, and now here he was, caught up in a revolt, prevented from getting to the boat himself.

They were armed, too, not with guns but with the even more alarming weapons of angry villagers: hammers, clubs, makeshift blades, and bludgeons of all sorts. Sandoval had a gun, but it would be worse than useless against a mob like this. If he wasn’t careful, this could turn into a bloodbath-his blood.

These were the folks he had dropped the bomb on only yesterday, serving up the bad news with barbecued chicken and a side of coleslaw. Apparently, they weren’t taking it well. According to plan, they should’ve all been under lock-down until force withdrawal was complete. Until the boat was gone.

So much for the plan.

Sandoval saw the shop foreman Larry Holmes coming over at a fast trot, dangerously clutching a big hammer. Jim didn’t want to find out what these people would do if they got their hands on him. Gun or no gun, he put the car in reverse and backed away as fast as he could until the fog shielded him once more, then stopped and turned off his headlights. Sitting in the dark, he could still make out the shadowy crowd limned by the orange caution lights of the Sallie.

Shit. There was just no way past them.

Directly ahead, so close and yet so unattainable, were the big cranes of the yard, which had recently been used to pull all the ballistic missile tubes out of the boat and line them up in neat rows on the ground. And before that, the missiles themselves, yanked like so many bad teeth by the watchful representatives of the Strategic Air Command. That had been a new experience for Sandoval-he had always secretly regretted not joining the Air Force, thinking his vertigo had condemned him to an alliance with the less sophisticated, less lordly of the two services. And those pompous SAC bastards had proved him right, hoisting their precious missiles like somber priests removing idols from a defiled temple. God, he had envied them. The civilian sector could never hold a candle to that kind of self-importance: the fate of the world in your hands.

As the crowd started to thin, Jim cautiously nudged his car forward. All the people passing him now were adults, his formerly dutiful employees, everybody hustling the slowpokes along. The fearful way they were glancing backward toward the main gate made Jim nervous about sitting still for too long.

Someone rapped hard on the driver’s side window, causing Sandoval to jump. He turned to find himself staring at Gus DeLuca from the machine shop. The man’s jowly mug was sweaty and flushed, but not hostile. DeLuca appeared taken aback to find himself face-to-face with the company CEO.

Smiling apologetically, DeLuca shouted a muffled, “Uh, sir? Mr. Sandoval, sir?”

Damn. Jim rolled down his window a crack, saying with false cordiality, “Well, howdy there, Gus. What’s this all about? You know, these people are heading into a restricted-”

He was interrupted by a length of steel pipe smashing his passenger window. Peppered with glass, Sandoval cringed, then felt himself yanked bodily out of the car.

“Sorry, Jim, we need the ride,” said Gus as he wrestled him to the ground. “I’ll explain later.”

Lying there on the damp pavement, Sandoval looked around at his attackers: DeLuca, Holmes, Big Ed Albemarle. “Take me with you,” he said. “Let me talk to Coombs-you’ll never get through without me. I can help you.”

Ignoring him, DeLuca shouted, “Holmes, you’re up! Take the car and deliver our terms. Honk if they’re amenable to discussion.”

More urgently, Sandoval said, “I’m telling you, let me talk to them. You can’t negotiate. They have orders to shoot to kill.”

Gus looked at the others as if to ask, What do you think?

“Take him along,” someone said-Sandoval realized it was Fred Cowper. So Cowper had made it after all! Hell, this was all probably his idea. The old man had aged a lot since his retirement party, but he was clearly as cantankerous as ever.

Cowper said, “Gus, you and Ed ride shotgun.”

They shoved Sandoval into the passenger seat and piled in behind him. “Say the wrong thing, and none of us gets out alive,” Albemarle said.

As the car skirted the crowd and caught up to the rolling platform, Sandoval’s attention was suddenly drawn to a blurry figure running alongside. At first he assumed it was someone else from the crowd trying to catch their attention, but then he heard shouting and noticed that the adults were banding together and throwing the smaller kids up onto the crawler’s deck. Everyone was pointing at the Cadillac with terrified expressions on their faces.

A hand grabbed hold of Sandoval’s window frame, making him jump. He whipped around to see a vision so awful that his mind couldn’t absorb it. The sight hit him like a physical blow, a rabbit punch that knocked all the air out of him.

The thing was an obscene caricature of a beautiful young woman, her perfect teeth gleaming Pepsodent white in a tautly grinning purple face, with a gaping crater in her skull through which the remaining brain matter was visible, undulating like a wrinkled scrotum. The living matter seemed to be reaching out of her head for him.

Before Sandoval had time to react to the shock, the woman seized the car with both hands and vaulted up like a circus rider mounting a galloping horse. He drew breath to shout, Look out! But before he could get the words out, two long legs slithered in through the broken window, and her whole naked body landed on his lap. He could see right through her heart.

Pandemonium broke out in the car.

Gus DeLuca spun the wheel, and suddenly there was a utility pole in the headlights. They were only moving at about 15 mph, but the car slammed hard, deploying its air bags, and everyone dove, screaming, out the doors. Sandoval tumbled to the ground with the woman wrapped around him, her nimble and ridiculously strong arms crushing his windpipe while her neck strained to force that crazed sucker-fish mouth over his. Her exposed brain licked his forehead like a sticky tongue.

Help me! he tried to shout, head twisting wildly to avoid her questing mouth. Somebody help! He couldn’t reach the gun; his arms were clamped tight by her cold, naked thighs. Sandoval could feel himself blacking out.

Then by some miracle he was free, doubled over on his side and retching in pain. It was Gus DeLuca and Big Ed Albemarle: They had brained the thing with the heavy hammers they used in the factory-they were still braining it. It had no brains left to brain.

“X marks the spot,” DeLuca crowed.

“Die… die… die… ” muttered Albemarle, his denim coveralls speckling with inky blood as they pounded the writhing thing into the ground.

Stepping back to rest his arm, Gus DeLuca said, “Ed, we gotta go.” The parade had moved on, and they were alone in the fog. The Cadillac was steaming from its crumpled hood, totaled.

“What about him?” He pointed to Sandoval.

An eruption of gunfire and screams rattled the gloom, then a rockslide of trampling feet that was the sound of mass panic. An amplified voice said, “Halt. You are in a restricted area.”

“Fuck him and the car he rode in on,” said DeLuca. “We gotta get down there.”

They left him.

In the distance, Sandoval could hear a chorus of voices begging to be let on the boat. He knew there wasn’t much chance of them ever getting past the Marines posted there. It was the end of the line for all of them, himself included.

He could picture the scene: the dockyard full of empty missile tubes, the dead hulk of the Sallie blocking the road, its driver shot dead in the front cab and terrified boys pouring off the crawler’s deck like panicked wildebeests entering a crocodile-infested river.

They were pinned down on the broad tarmac between the submarine’s gangway-the “brow”-and the terraced lawn that was the site of yesterday’s dockside picnic. Bob Martino’s blood would still be there in the grass for anyone who cared to look. The boat would still be there, too, though not for long, its speckled mast array looming in the dark as if suspended in midair. Beneath that, the railed gantry would fade into black nothingness, a bridge to nowhere.

How did those poor saps think they were going to escape when the man who owned the submarine factory could not? Did they imagine they could appeal to pity? Lay claim to human dignity, decency, or justice? At this late hour, when the coin of mercy was a debased slug not even fit to steal a gumball? When the sleep of death itself had become a luxury? How dare they be so stupid-Jim Sandoval damned them for their pride.

Resigned, lying there in the dirt, he could only shake his head as the shooting resumed. It would all be over soon.

Something slippery touched his hand.

He jumped up to see the ruined Maenad coming toward him. She was just a quivering pulp on the ground, roadkill, but she was still alive, still moving. Not fast, but faster by the second. Most incredibly, he still sensed that same wild eagerness as before, emanating from these smashed remains-pure, frenzied lust at the sight of him. As he watched, the mincemeat of her mangled flesh was knitting back together, not quite healing but gathering itself into sturdier form. The sound it made was awful.

There was an explosive crash down at the wharf. Still staring in horror, Sandoval thought, What the hell are they doing now? The shooting abruptly stopped. and the thinly officious voice of Harvey Coombs came over a loudspeaker:

“FRED, THIS IS COMMANDER COOMBS. I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING, BUT IN MY BOOK IT’S TREASON. YOU ARE INTERFERING WITH CRITICAL NAVAL OPERATIONS.”

Jim listened, snorting incredulously as the amplified voice of Fred Cowper, USN (Ret.), replied, “LET ME AND ALL THESE PEOPLE ON BOARD, THEN PUT US ASHORE SOMEPLACE HALFWAY SECURE!”

Was this a joke? Fred talked as if he was calling the shots. As if he and a ragtag bunch of hardhats and teenage boys were the ones holding the aces.

Which, Sandoval suddenly realized, they just might be.

With dawning wonder, he understood why they had brought the Sallie vehicle on their little crusade: The massive freight hauler wasn’t just to give the kids a lift. In its sheer bulk, it was the only weapon they had capable of sinking a nuclear submarine. What he was hearing down there was the ultimate game of chicken.

Demolition derby, Sandoval thought, not without admiration. Fred, you old bastard!

As he stood there shaking his head, the raveled Maenad rose to its feet and lurched toward him. At the same time, he could see movement in the fog: several odd-looking people running for the wharf. Not people-Xombies. Lots more Xombies, attracted by the light and commotion.

It was going to be a hell of a fight. Feeling reanimated himself, Jim knew he had to get down there, too… but obviously he’d never make it on foot. Dodging the gropes of that mangled Hellion, he sprinted toward the nearest available vehicle, an electric cart by the tool shed.

He wouldn’t miss this for the world.