Apocalypso

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
SESAME STREET

“Lulu. Yes, of course.” Stunned, Captain Despineau said, “Mon Dieu, it is so wonderful to finally meet you, you have no idea. I have wished for this a long time.”

“You and me both, bub,” I croaked, sitting up and propping myself against the forward bulkhead. “I’d love to catch up on old times-oh, right, there weren’t any.”

My body felt carbonated, every cell fizzing painfully. I hadn’t felt pain in a long time. It kind of sucked. But there was also something amazing about it-I was physically present in a way I had forgotten possible. I truly existed.

Fred Cowper’s head was discovered in my backpack, and I freaked out a bit because it was just a lifeless head-Fred was dead!-but I didn’t have the strength to really get upset… or perhaps there was still too much Agent X in me. Before I could start screaming, Despineau gently took the pack from my hands and ordered someone to stick it in a freezer.

He sat with us as we faded in and out of consciousness, the pressurized oxygen suffusing our tissues, neutralizing the artificial Maenad organism. It would only stay dormant as long as the oxygen was applied, but in the meantime, we were mortal again… meaning weak as kittens.

Over the next few hours, the submarine traveled back to the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, the southern shipping channel. It was easy to find because of the huge abandoned oil platform jutting from the sea. That was our destination, Despineau explained.

“We’re going on an oil rig?” I asked.

“Not on. Under.”

“Under?”

“Petropolis was designed with certain unusual features, such as an undersea docking port and a large decompression chamber. So was the Bridge Tunnel. All we had to do was connect them.”

“That seems awfully… convenient,” Alice Langhorne said.

“Not at all. They’re both emergency depots for the storage of sensitive personnel and materials.”

“SPAM,” I said.

“Yes, SPAM.”

“In other words, you planned for all this?”

“Lulu, I know your mother taught you about the Five P’s. Come on, what are the Five P’s?”

“Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance.”

“Voila!”

There was bumping and grinding as the sub docked, then the forward hatch popped open. Despineau led us up into a horizontal steel tunnel about ten feet in diameter. It echoed. I knew the boat had not surfaced; this tunnel was still deep underwater. At the end of the tunnel was a door like a bank vault, opening into a vertical chamber perhaps twenty feet in diameter and forty feet high, with a spiral stair and six decks of seats, enough for over a hundred people.

On the wall were three lit buttons. The top button was labeled PETROPOLIS, the middle button read APOCALYPSO, and the down button read SESAME STREET. Despineau pushed the bottom button, and, with a pneumatic hiss, we descended.

Sitting between Langhorne and me, he said, “Now you know.”

“What?” I asked.

“How to get to Sesame Street.”

The elevator stopped with a hiss, and the heavy door opened. We filed through into another short tunnel, then a watertight hatch protected by a giant ball valve. There was noise coming from the other side-the sound of many people.

“The Bridge Tunnel,” Despineau said delightedly. “I call it the Metro: ten miles of tunnel sheltering twenty thousand people, separated from land by ten miles of fortified bridges that double as airstrips. It is an ideal arrangement. Or it was, until somebody I know torpedoed the south causeway.”

“Sorry.”

It looked like a campground on the Fourth of July. The cavernous highway tunnel seemed to stretch to infinity, one of its two lanes occupied by a line of RVs and the other open to walkers, skaters, and bicycle traffic. Patches of plastic grass had been laid down as little parks for games of Frisbee and touch football. Hundreds of people were out in the road or just sitting in lawn chairs enjoying the view. I could understand why-it was a beautiful sight: men and women of all ages and all colors living together in harmony, staring at us not in fear but in simple curiosity. We who had so recently been Xombies wept to see them… and to be them.

“Whoa,” said Sal DeLuca, eyeing the bikes and skateboards with envy. “Blast from the past.”

A squadron of golf carts zipped toward us and squealed to a stop. The lead driver, a wiry-haired older woman in a brightly colored ski suit, jumped out to greet Captain Despineau, then started at the sight of Alice Langhorne.

“Dr. Stevens, I presume?”

“Alice?” the woman said. “Is that really you?”

“I’m not quite sure yet. Give me a few more minutes.”

They shook hands and fake-kissed. I remembered Dr. Chandra Stevens well… too well. She was the cheerful scientist who had supervised my torture at Thule. And she remembered me.

“Lulu! Hello! Alice, you should have warned me! Just kidding. Welcome! So nice to see you all, come on in. Would you like something to drink? Some nice iced tea, maybe? Oh, a tall glass of iced tea sounds good, doesn’t it? With a little sprig of mint-I always like that. And maybe some finger sandwiches and deviled eggs, what do you think? The eggs are super fresh; you should try them.”

My father, Captain Despineau, said, “Everyone, this is a good friend of mine, Dr. Chandra Stevens. Chandra, I believe you know many of these folks. You’ll have to excuse their long faces; they’ve just been through quite an ordeal.”

“Of course, I understand! I know there are some people here who have been very worried about you.”

From one of the carts at the rear, a tall, bald man approached. “Alice!” he called.

“Jim…?” Langhorne said doubtfully.

“Alice!” cried the man.

It was Mogul Chairman James Sandoval.

Sandoval, I thought. Jim Sandoval was a handsome older man whom I had originally found charming in a Daddy Warbucks kind of way. That was before he tried to sell me to the other Moguls as a human Fountain of Youth.

But Jim Sandoval was dead.

The last I had seen of the man, he was freezing to death in the Arctic with two crushed legs and a headless Xombie going for his throat. Now he seemed fully recovered, not a wrinkle on his brow or his elegant gray suit. His steely eyes beamed with amusement.

Alice Langhorne tottered toward him. She knew Sandoval even better than I did, having married and divorced him. They had a troubled daughter who had died prior to the Maenad Pandemic, a daughter about my age, but in a real sense their only child was Agent X, for it was Jim and Alice’s partnership that financed Uri Miska’s longevity experiments.

Her voice ragged, Langhorne said, “Jim. I thought you were dead.” She swayed forward as if to hug him, then swung a weak punch at his face.

He caught and held her, stroking her silver-blond hair. “Don’t you mean you left me for dead?” He grinned ruefully. “That’s all right, I probably deserved it.”

“What do you think you’re doing down here?” Langhorne asked.

“What’s it look like I’m doing?” Sandoval replied. “Same thing I’ve always done: Trying to make my daddy proud.”

“You mean being a Mogul.”

This made Sandoval laugh until he was blue in the face. “Honey, you have got me so wrong.”

“How in God’s name did you manage to survive?”

“After my submarine was hijacked and I was left on an ice floe to die, a fellow Mogul very kindly arranged for new transportation, courtesy of our French connections. You may know her, Lulu. I know Alice does.”

“Who?” Langhorne asked.

“Chandra Stevens, of course.”

“Of course” Alice groaned. “Another MoCo alum.”

Twinkling, Sandoval said, “Oh yeah. It’s a regular Old Home Day. But look at the bright side, honey.”

“And what would that be?”

“I did it all for you.”

Langhorne trembled and averted her face, fighting some inner turmoil. Without warning, she grabbed his head in both hands and pressed her face to his, snarling viciously. Alarmed, Sandoval tried to pull away, but she gripped him tight as a Xombie, her nails digging into his flesh, and in that frenzy she kissed him. He flinched in terror… then surrendered. And as he surrendered, so did she, so did we all. They melted together, tearfully, blissfully kissing like they were in a Hollywood movie.

When the kiss finally ended, Sandoval came over to me, and said, “Well, if it isn’t the unsinkable Lulu Pangloss.”

“Mr. Sandoval,” I said, “why did you never tell me you knew my father?”

He did an exaggerated double take. To Captain Despineau, he said, “No. You’re not the father of Lulu Pangloss?”

“Yes, I am… her father. Or at least I hope she will allow me to earn that fortunate appellation.”

Before I could respond, two other familiar faces arrived, one sunny with blond dreadlocks and the other darker and straight-haired. They both looked like they had been through a lot… as I suppose I did myself. We stared at each other for a second, trying to place the familiar faces. Then it clicked for me: Todd Holmes and Ray Despineau.

“Todd! Ray! Oh my God!”

“Lulu, you’re alive!”

“Where have you guys been?” I asked.

“Don’t ask.”

“I thought you were dead!”

“We thought you were dead.”

We laughed and cried, and then Captain Despineau came up behind us, and said, “Lulu, I want you to meet someone you should have met a long time ago. This is my son, Raymond.”

“Of course I know Ray.” My eyes went wide. “Oh shit. Your son? I knew that name sounded familiar! Ray, you are not my brother?”

He nodded sheepishly.

“That means Brenda is your sister? Our sister?”

His face crashed. “Yeah… well, there’s something you should know about that. Brenda died, Lulu.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“How do you know?”

“I saw her. While I was… one of them. You know no one ever really dies, right? Xombie or not.”

Ray and I hugged awkwardly. Then something broke loose, and suddenly we were both crying, gripping each other as if for dear life. Captain Despineau was weeping, too.

“I can’t believe I really have a brother,” I sobbed.

“And I have a sister,” Ray said.

“And I now have a son as well as a daughter,” the captain added, warmly clutching us both. “Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner.”

Someone behind us said, “Bullshit!”

It was my ex-Ex-mother, Grace Pangloss. Here we go, I thought. As a Xombie, my mom had never spoken much, but even though she had only been human a few hours, Mummy was already back to being her former self.

“Grace,” said Captain Despineau stiffly. “I hope you are well.”

“Hello, Al,” my mother said. “Oh, I’m great. It’s nice to see you having this little family reunion with the children you abandoned.”

“I didn’t abandon them! You waited until I was at sea, and then you kidnapped them and moved to the States!”

“I had postpartum depression! I was suicidal! I was alone in a foreign country with no one to turn to, and we weren’t even married. You were my only support, and I couldn’t so much as call you on the phone for months at a time! I couldn’t take it anymore!”

“Yes, but then you also drive Brenda away, so the whole family is tant pis.”

“Don’t start about Brenda! Don’t you dare. Brenda was another one who needed you while you were out joyriding around the seven seas, so don’t even start with me about Brenda, mister.”

“I had my duties; I had no choice! Maybe if you had tried telling me this-”

“I did try! I tried till I was blue in the face, but you refused to listen. You’re like every man I’ve ever known: selfish, irresponsible, egotistical, obnoxious-”

“Somebody talkin’ about me?”

We all turned at the impossible gruff voice.

No. No. Come on.

But it was. Standing behind me was Fred Cowper. Head and body reunited.

At first I couldn’t believe what I was seeing… then I almost jumped out of my new pink skin. Fred was whole. More than whole-he looked twenty years younger, as if losing and regaining his head was the best thing that ever happened to him. I was too stunned to speak; all I could do was gape.

As if realizing it was her cue, Dr. Stevens leaped in. “Wonderful! Wonderful! So nice to meet you all. Come on, let’s go!”

Reeling from the shock, we allowed ourselves to be nudged aboard the carts.

As we took our seats, Dr. Stevens said, “I can’t wait to show you around.”

There were more reunions along the way. Moving on, we came to a neighborhood of Immunes, including the two girls who had traveled with Todd, Ray, Sandoval, and Chandra Stevens all the way from Providence: Fran and Deena.

As a Xombie, I had taken great interest in Immunes. In fact, they were the major reason I was here at all. Would I have continued so long with this absurd voyage if not for the dream of somehow liberating these doomed, forbidden beings? Unfortunately, they were not nearly as fascinating to my human consciousness-just regular people, after all.

Sandoval gestured at the door with a flourish. “Step right up,” he said.

We went inside. The room was empty except for a couch facing a bank of television screens. Each screen showed a strange mound like the one I had seen in Washington, with thousands of Xombies filing in, and the same black blimps suspended overhead.

A man in a space suit was sitting on the couch between Fran and Deena, his body wired to a fuse box. The two women were very happy to have company. There were hugs and introductions all around.

“Uri,” Sandoval said, “you have visitors.”

Miska shifted his helmet slightly to see us, which allowed us to see his blue face through the visor. “Hello, Bobby,” he said. “Hey, man, turn that frown upside down. Deena, could you be a sweetheart and get my friend Bobby a Yoo-hoo?”

Sandoval said, “Uri’s working for us now. He’s been very useful in maneuvering the Xombies wherever we need them to be, and as whoever we need them to be. For instance, I’ve been able to operate in several places at once. So has Miska. We’ve also been able to find all the X-infected Moguls in their hidden vaults and move them to one secure facility. Not so secure anymore, unfortunately, thanks to your visit, Lulu.”

“Sorry,” I said. “What the hell were you doing to them there?”

“Since Agent X cannot be ‘killed,’ and we have yet to find a means of treating five billion Xombies worldwide, it is necessary to isolate the threat. In this colony we have a certain number of Immunes who donate the blood factor we require to remain human. It goes into the drinking water here, so we all live together under the illusion of normalcy. Eventually, we expect to have fully immune children-a number of women are pregnant right now. But in order for human civilization to continue in the meantime, we have to deal with the existing Xombies. And we’ve decided that the best way to do that is by reducing them to a concentrated, crystalline form and converting that to organic biomass.”

“How do you manage that?” Langhorne asked.

“We pour it into the bay. The shellfish population is thriving.”

“Mr. Sandoval?” There was a woman in camouflage fatigues at the door. “Major Hammersmith requests you come to the Command Center right away. It’s urgent.”

“Hold that thought,” Sandoval said, hurrying out the door.

We followed him down the tunnel to a row of humming tractor-trailers. The people there were too busy to pay any attention to us. They were frantically manning banks of computer workstations and cockpit simulators, from which scores of aerial and surface drones were being remote-controlled. These were the same lethal gadgets that had so recently attacked us… but, of course, we were Xombies then.

There was some kind of major operation going on, all the drones swarming a strange shimmering mass-on the monitors it looked like an iridescent bluish black sea slug, an immense nudibranch covered with glassy tendrils. It was mountainous.

“What is that?” Langhorne asked.

“That’s what I was hoping Lulu could tell us,” said Dr. Stevens. “It came out of the Mons right after she did.”

All I could do was shake my head. As I watched, the thing reared up and projectile-vomited a rope of pale, wormy innards hundreds of feet into the air. The seething mass flew in a high arc, unraveling as it avalanched to the ground, its lashing tendrils seizing any living thing in its path. But it didn’t pull the prey back to its body. Instead, the rear end poured into the front, pulsing forward like a giant maggot. In its wake it left nothing but a trail of scorched earth.

With a grimace, Captain Despineau muttered, “Ecrasez l’infame.”

Stevens said, “It’s been moving in fits and starts, averaging about fifteen miles an hour, and that speed has remained relatively stable even as the thing has grown in bulk. We hoped it would eventually stop moving, but it just keeps crawling along, growing bigger and bigger.”

“How big is it?” I asked.

“We estimate it has grown over ten thousand times its original mass, so it’s gotta be in the millions of tons by now. It’s vacuuming up every bit of organic matter in its path. It keeps collapsing under its own weight, then pulling itself together again-sort of like a volcanic lava dome. We’re expecting it to melt down completely at any time, but if it reaches the open ocean, all bets are off.”

Sandoval asked, “Where is it now?”

“It came south down the Maryland peninsula and crossed the Potomac River at Blossom Point. It then entered Virginia and began veering eastward south of the Rappahannock. It is now approaching the York River at Gloucester Point. That’s right on the lower Chesapeake, and less than forty miles away from us here. Which is why we’re throwing everything we’ve got at it. So far, no good.”

“And you have no idea what it is?” I asked.

Sandoval said, “Oh, we have some idea.” He gestured back in the direction of Miska’s trailer. “This is Miska’s Big Enchilada-the end of the world he was predicting. Except that because it didn’t exist outside of his head, he needed an opportunity to create it… which Lulu generously provided.”

“It’s not like I meant to,” I said.

“No, it was our fault for putting all our eggs in one basket. Miska’s crazy as a damn doodlebug, and this is his ultimate madness unleashed-the finale to Agent X. I don’t know if he’s even consciously controlling it, but I guarantee he is linked to that thing.”

“Then you should be able to kill it by killing him,” I said.

“No, then we’ll lose control of the Xombies. Like it or not, we need him.”