Sal shook the others awake, and they all followed Chiquita down the corridors and up on deck, now morning-bright under a dome of blue sky. Looking at a passing wisp of cloud, Sal woozily remembered something his mother used to say to him: that the Earth was a big spaceship, and when you looked at the sky, you were really just looking out a window.
Walking around the barge, shielding his eyes from the sun, Sal was struck again by the ingenuity of using something like this as a floating fortress. First, the whole thing was compartmentalized, so that a Xombie outbreak in any one area could be contained quickly without spreading through the whole complex. Second, all the living modules were on the upper tiers, reachable by a series of rope ladders that were only lowered on request. Furthermore, the whole place was locked down tight at night, offering only an impregnable metal wall. Windows were little more than saw-toothed gun ports, all high up and meshed over; mooring lines had manhole-sized discs on them to discourage rats as well as larger pests; and the barge's gunwales were alarmed and thickly barb-wired. None of this could totally prevent Xombies from coming on board, but once they were there, they didn't leave again… or at least not in one piece. The men joked that it was like a Roach Motel, Xombies get in, but they don't get out.
Ushered aboard a small motor launch, the five boys were taken the short distance across the water to the casino barge, its upper tiers beaming white in the sun, the lower part sunk in deep blue shade. Climbing the gangplank, they passed through a utility tunnel and entered the main room of the vessel: the gambling floor. It was clean, elegant, and empty-everything the other barge was not. Here all was mirrored and Greek-columned splendor, with trickling water fountains, crystal chandeliers, a glass elevator, and gold fixtures reflected into infinity. Most of the gaming tables and slots had been thrown overboard, leaving a vast expanse of plush blue carpeting surrounding a raised island in the middle, on which stood a lonely-looking unmade bed. That was a little peculiar.
El Dopa was waiting at the bar, wearing silk pajamas. Several Kalis were there, too, black hair pinned back and their leering masks weirdly inconsistent with their posture as they slumped over cigarettes and coffee. They had to drink through straws-did they have to eat that way, too? A silver tea service was set up separately on a rolling cart, and El Dopa sipped from a dainty cup. The bar's entire length was loaded with cheese and bacon and smoked salmon and canned and dry fruit and cereal and reconstituted dry milk and butter and jam and chocolate nougat and ten different kinds of bread and crackers to spread them on.
As the boys queasily approached, El Dopa pressed the button on an intercom. "Mr. Bendis!" he said. "You have a visitor."
There was a hiss of static, then a whispery voice: "Send him up."
"Chiquita, will you send up Mr. Eagle Scout here so that he may consult the oracle?"
"You go ahead on up," said the hideous mask to Sal. "The rest of you stay here."
"If one of us goes, we all go," said Kyle.
"It's okay, Kyle," Sal said. "I'm cool with it."
Kyle replied, "Oh, he cool with it. Well, fuck you, man, I'm not cool with it. You been acting like King Shit around here ever since we started out, and it ain't like you done such a fucking great job that you deserve to be spokesman for the few of us that's left." To El Dopa, he said, "He don't call the shots for us, and he sure as shit don't speak for me."
"Kyle, come on," said Sal.
"No, man, it's about fucking time somebody else took the lead. If anybody's going, I'm going. I'm going."
"Joo don't do shit unless I say so."
"It's okay, Chiquita," El Dopa said. "Boy wants to go, let him go."
"Up where?" Kyle asked.
"The elevator," Chiquita said sharply, pissed off at having been overruled. "Are you blind? Move, bitch! Ain't no fucking request!"
"Fuck you," Kyle said, too tired for this bullshit-he was trying to be reasonable here. Suddenly his head was yanked back by its braids and a sharp steel point pressed to his throat. A whole arsenal of scary metal syringes had appeared from under the dancers' robes as if by magic, weird weapons resembling chrome-plated caulk guns, their injector tips resting on the boys' ripe jugulars and eager to stab. The boys stood frozen at needle point, afraid to breathe.
"Say something now, punk," snarled Chiquita behind his leering plastic face.
"Sorry! I'm sorry!"
"Joo wan' me to shove this needle up in your skull? You want I should cook your stinkin' brain in your head so it sizzles out your nose like hot lava?"
"No!"
"Then do like you been tol' to do!" He contemptuously shoved Kyle up the steps to the elevator platform. "Next time I flick you like a fuckin' Bic, except there ain't gonna be no next time, unnerstan'?"
"Okay, okay, I'm going," he said. Hemmed in by another ominous Kali, he said, "Can I go, please?"
They stood aside. Kyle traded a grim look with the other guys, hating to be separated from them. Sal shook his head no, ready to lay it all on the line right then and there, but Kyle's expression was fierce-it said, Don't.
He went into the elevator. Something somewhere was making a loud, repetitive grinding noise, a noise like a hundred squeaky shopping carts, which to Kyle sounded like the rusty clockwork of El Dopa's brain.
"Top button," called the shriveled leader. "Go all the way up to the roof." Then, as the door closed: "And say hello to Satan's little helpers for me-I mean, Santa's. Damn, I always do that."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE INFERNAL MACHINE
"Rich, we have a problem." kranuski didn't need Alton Webb to tell him they had a problem. For the last two days, he had been trying to get an all clear to raise anchor, and every time they were on the verge of doing so, some critical system went haywire: more red lights on the Christmas tree. Now, once again, the tide was too low to do anything; they had missed their chance. Worse than that, someone was tampering with the guts of the ship, no question. It was brazen sabotage.
"Al, did you know that a wooden clog used to be called a sabot?" he said wearily, studying the crew manifest. "People used to wear wooden shoes to work, and when they were unhappy with management, they'd throw their clogs into the machinery, 'clogging' it up-hence, sabotage."
"That's fascinating, Rich." Lieutenant Webb was holding a piece of wiring that looked as though it had been chewed through. "Well, I didn't find any wooden shoes," he said, "but this came from the turbine generator fuse box. Looks like somebody doesn't want us to leave."
"Really? Thank you for that brilliant observation. Who's responsible for that department now?"
"Fletcher. He's one of ours."
"Who else could have had access to it?"
Webb shook his head. "It's a loose ship. Robles, maybe. Emilio Monte. Or Fisk-his son was one of the ones we sent out. But Fisk is essential."
"They're all essential. Coombs has too many friends on board; I can't confine them all."
"No, but you can make an example of one or two."
"What would you suggest? Flogging? That's only gonna piss off our gremlins even more. And I'm not even sure it's any of the men we're dealing with."
His eyes flicked to all the dark crevices in the ceiling.
Okay now, keep your shit together, Kyle thought, going up. As he stepped off the glass elevator, the rhythmic churning sound he had heard from below was much louder. It was clearly not the elevator mechanism. The third and top floor of the casino had a balustrade overlooking the gaming pit, running alongside suites of administrative offices, private gambling rooms, and signs pointing the way to a rooftop restaurant and cocktail lounge, all dark and deserted. Looking down over the railing, he could see the brightly lit bar area where El Dopa and the boys were, and also into the curtained stage just above them where bands had once played. The sight caught him up short.
That raised platform was definitely where the sound was emanating from, but what the hell was going on there? Kyle's first thought was a gym: He could see a lot of movement-what appeared to
be people exercising-sweaty bodies spinning and pistoning up and down, with a sound like the sawings of a weird, tuneless orchestra.
It took him a moment to make sense of it. For his eyes… and his mind… to adjust.
Filling the whole stage deck of the casino was something that Kyle could only liken to a grotesque modern art installation. But it wasn't art; it was a functioning machine-a machine comprised of wheels and hinges and moving Xombie parts.
What the fuck?
Hundreds of headless, limbless, or otherwise partial Xombies dangled from greasy axles like so many rows of foosball players, skewered through the ribs and joined side by side, their remaining arms or legs bolted to rotating cam shafts and pumping away as fleshy pistons in a giant engine. Rubber IV tubes, or rather hoses, ran from the Xombies to plastic jugs full of cloudy yellow liquid. The combined effort of all those bodies caused the whole mechanism to vibrate, risen flesh and car parts rocking on rusty springs, creating a weirdly musical rhythm-it was an orchestra, or a hideous calliope.
Kyle caught his breath-Lulu Pangloss was there. They had wasted no time. Her body was too short to reach the cams, so they had left her intact and rammed the axle bar through her skull, ear to ear, instead of her chest. But she was not madly pedaling like the others. Her body just flopped in place, going with the motions like a corpse.
Suddenly her dark eyes flicked upward, meeting his and dilating like two bubbles of black tar. Kyle was struck by a powerful sense of connection, strong as raw electric current-his whole body stiffened, and he jerked his eyes away, heart pounding. She recognized him.
He was ashamed, sickened-what was the point of this sadistic bullshit? Just to torture them? Then he saw the insulated cables connecting the gearboxes to banks of truck batteries, and he realized there was a purpose.
Generators, he thought. Are you serious? They're using them to generate power!
As disgusted as he was, he had to admit the awful genius of it. Not everybody had his own nuclear submarine. It had never occurred to him to wonder what was keeping the drinks cold and the lights on around here. Now he knew: Pedal power-store it up all day, tap the free electricity all night. Diesel generators would be noisy and smelly and attract attention, not to mention wasteful to fuel. Between the duck boats and the demands of the Moguls, there was probably not much gas to spare.
He remembered something Voodooman had said to them the night before-something Kyle had failed to fully comprehend at the time, but which rose in his thoughts now like a wave of nausea: 'Stead a horsepower, we got Harpy power-you're looking at five hunnerd Xp right here. It's a Xombie-based economy, son. Your tax dollars at work.
The whole infernal machine was arranged so that it faced the group of guys blithely munching toast at the bar. Clearly they were the objects that galvanized the Xombies' manic activity, like a carrot dangled before a mule, or the electric bunny at the dog track. They were bait. There was something incredibly dangerous and perverse about it: that sweatshop of captive demons flailing away while El Dopa's people yawned and sipped coffee.
Kyle could see Sal and the other boys staring anxiously up at him from the lit floor of the hall, completely oblivious to the hideous Xombie contraption churning away just above them-two irreconcilable realities separated by nothing more than a heavy stage curtain. Yin and yang. He wanted to warn them, to shout, Look out-Xombies! But when they waved tentatively up at him, faces questioning, he just nodded back.
That bed-the unmade bed on the platform below. Kyle suddenly realized that El Dopa was a lot smarter than he looked and also why the man was probably crazy:
It was El Dopa's job to sit here all day as a magnet for the Xombies, using his own living presence to encourage them-that was his bed down there. For doing so he had a drone's privilege of being waited on hand and foot and being excused from all other duties. He was both goat and pharaoh-the living deity not of the men on this barge but of its Xombie slaves. Sure, maybe he was allowed brief respites, a few hours here and there to socialize, but when the party was over and everybody else was safe asleep on the other barge, he was the one who came back here to his gilded cage, the canary in the coal mine. For this they made him king. Kyle wondered: Was El Dopa the highest man in the Reaper hierarchy… or the lowest?
Kyle tore himself away from the balcony. Get a grip, he thought. Peering into the dim cocktail lounge, he saw a spiral staircase. Go all the way up to the roof, they had told him. Fine. Climbing the narrow stairs, he entered a dark, leather-padded corridor. Tiny cubicles with massage tables branched off to either side. Squeezing along the passage, he headed for a circle of reddish lamplight at the end. It was coming through a smeary porthole in a swinging door, and as he pushed through, he could hear a gruff murmur of conversation on the other side. The talking ceased as he poked his head in.
An arsenal of weapons was pointed at his face. Kyle held very still, feeling sweat pop across his forehead.
"I'm supposed to talk to somebody," he said, the words hanging awkwardly, as if tangled in the haze of cigar smoke. "Somebody named Bendis?"
Four heavily armed men just stared dully at him, their shaved heads gleaming like planets orbiting a Sterno-powered sun. Kyle knew these must be the dreaded mercenaries sent by MoCo, the much-whispered-about "B Team." To him they looked more like punk rockers or carnival geeks than soldiers: tribal pain fetishists covered with scars, tattoos, and extreme piercings, skinny and scruffy-bearded, with steel teeth and spiked dog collars. There was something wrong with them; their eyes were not so much cold as blank, not quite focused. They looked drugged… or insane.
This was obviously their room, a dim red bachelor pad full of beds, booze, a bench press, dirty laundry, dirtier pictures, and about a hundred guns. There were blackout curtains on the windows, and a girl-shaped target full of tomahawks against one wall. Beneath all the cigar smoke, the place reeked of death, and Kyle could see why: Weird altars of charred skulls and other human bones filled every corner like grotesque floral arrangements. Dried scalps on wig stands. Hunks of dark-cured meat dangling from hooks, marbled purple and white where pieces had been sliced off-Kyle shied from looking too closely.
Not saying a word, barely moving at all, one of the men inclined his head toward the rear door, the fire exit.
"Thank you," Kyle said, trying not to hurry, fearing to turn his back on them.
The door opened onto a rooftop patio-a pleasant place to dance or have a luau under a canopy of Japanese lanterns. It was deserted, just a few empty chairs and tables, two barbecue grills made from fifty-five-gallon oil drums, and a hanging bird feeder that creaked slightly in the breeze. Kyle stood at the rail and breathed deep, taking in the view of green shoreline. What the fuck am I doing here? Next time keep your damn mouth shut, fool! Seeing those men had cleared his hangover like magic.
There didn't seem to be anyplace else to go. He thought he was expected to wait, but after a moment, he noticed a higher structure-the highest point on the barge:
It was a portable radio shack: a weatherproof canopy stretched over an aluminum frame, resembling an igloo. A steel cable ran from there to the top of the other barge, with a basket seat that could be pulled across the water by ropes.
Oscillations of white noise emanated from the tent. A shortwave aerial sprouted from its top, and greenish light shone from its low doorway. Kyle glimpsed a man in a wide-brimmed hat, just a brief silhouette, then it was gone.
There didn't seem to be any way up there, no ladder or stairs. "Hello?" he called up. "El Dopa sent me?"
The paper lanterns bounced, and Kyle felt a breeze on the back of his neck, balls shriveling with the sudden itchy sense that someone was behind him.
He turned to see a man curled up on one of the patio chairs. The man was perfectly still, sitting hunched under a tattered black poncho as if hugging his knees to his chest, face hidden by the brim of a floppy bush hat. The sight reminded Kyle of Clint Eastwood in one of those old spaghetti Westerns: The Man with No Name.
A voice seeped out from under the hat, a voice both slippery and bone-dry-and not unlike Clint Eastwood's: "Do you see it?"
"Excuse me?"
"Up there." The man raised a long, knobby finger to the sky.
"No, what?"
"Wormwood. The Big Enchilada. It's right there, plain as day. You don't see it?"
"Um… maybe. What does it look like?"
"Don't humor me. You don't know me well enough. Nor I you."
"No… uh, my name's Kyle Hancock." He started to offer his hand and immediately stopped himself. "I'm with the shore party from the submarine? Sir, we need to get back, or they're gonna leave without us-if they haven't already. We're way, way overdue."
"Leave? They have nowhere to go… any more than we do."
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean. The temple of the Moguls is gone, as are the Moguls themselves. They evaporated, like all organic life must evaporate."
"What do you mean, evaporate?"
"Gone. Burned. Scattered upon the waters, same as dousing the coals of a campfire. Such is life. Only a few embers remain, but they, too, will soon go cold."
"How do you know that?"
"From the quiet. No more transmissions, no more signals. The last ones made it clear enough: There was a struggle, and while the doctors were fighting, the patient died."
"The Mogul doctors, you mean?"
"It's a figure of speech. What I mean is, you are lying. You know exactly what happened because you helped bring it about."
"I didn't do anything, I swear."
"You did it trying to preserve your own feeble lives."
"Hey, we didn't do shit. Doesn't everybody have a right to live?"
Quick glimpse of black teeth in an odd, leathery grin. The voice said, "How did you get that scar?"
"I bumped my head."
"That was the site of a Mogul implant-the badge of Thule. You removed it. There are very few places on Earth where such technology is still employed. You've been to the forbidden city. You know where it is… and why it's gone silent."
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