Apocalypticon x-2

by Walter Greatshell

  Weird-it was alive. Sal's real skin crawled as those hanging meat skirts retracted, tightening and hugging the contours of his legs and lower torso, while the flesh cape and hood embraced his chest, arms, and head. The graying undead skin expanded and webbed outward to cover every inch of him, probing for chinks in his armor with the rippling delicacy of a predatory mollusk enveloping a clam. It was disturbingly like being caressed sexually, squeezed in alarming places, uncomfortably snug at the groin. He could feel the blood being forced from his thighs into his head as though his body were a toothpaste tube.

  For a minute he thought he was suffocating, and he had to force himself to breathe against the pressure. Oh shit…

  Then it let up: The weight on his chest met a counterforce from his back, and the two sides canceled each other out in twisting knots of repulsion, clinging to Sal's mesh panels like limpets sealed fast to a rock, both refusing to give way. The odd patches of hair on it-someone else's hair-bristled menacingly.

  I can't do this, I can't do this…

  Worst of all, the flap of flesh on his head oozed like melting wax down the screened dome of his helmet, threatening to completely block off his vision as well as his air. Panicking, Sal tried pushing it back and stapling it fast, but the skin was muscular and quick, rebellious as a live octopus. He couldn't get a grip-the flesh sheathing his gloves rebelled at handling it, so that Sal's hands kept slipping off, making him feel frustratingly clumsy.

  He could hear the other guys going crazy as well, rocking the tent as they spun in circles or thrashed around on the floor trying to rip the weird membranes off their faces. Sal was about ready to start doing that himself, the sound of his trapped breaths booming loud in his mask.

  In desperation, he found a machete and slashed at the thing, poking eyeholes and scraping their bleeding edges back. The holes tried to close immediately, grotesque eyelids weeping dark juice, but he kept digging, and suddenly Todd was there with a butane torch, shooting a jet of blue flame at the questing lips until they blistered and charred, searing open. He had done the same thing for himself, his perforated flesh helmet resembling a deformed jack-o'lantern. Resembling a Reaper.

  "Whoa, watch my eyes," Sal said, gagging on the stink of burning flesh. As soon as he could see properly, Todd handed him another minitorch from a box on the floor, and they both set to work helping the others. It went quickly, and in a couple of minutes everyone was out of danger, if slightly hysterical. Voices muffled inside their helmets, they all thanked Todd profusely.

  "That was quick thinking, man."

  "Yeah. Good call."

  Todd shook his head apologetically. "Sorry, guys. I would have done it sooner, but I had to be sure the oxygen count was back to normal before I lit a flame. Otherwise, we'd have been crispy critters in here."

  They looked at Todd with dawning respect.

  Sal was feeling better. Not just better but strangely euphoric, as though his whole body had become lighter and more compact. The more he moved around, the more the stiffness of the suit seemed to vanish, all its mismatched pieces joined under a pulsating web of Xombie flesh to form a snug body glove that supported him in all the right places. Though it had to weigh at least fifty pounds, the animated skin had a springiness that somehow helped distribute and carry the weight. It even had some kind of heat-exchange property that was keeping him cool. This was better, he thought, than his protective BMX gear.

  The others were beginning to notice the effect as well.

  "Damn, dude, we ugly," said Freddy, rolling his spiky scarecrow head as though snapping out kinks in his neck. "But this shit really works."

  "Just so long as we can get it off again," grumbled Ray.

  "Don't say that, man. Don't even say that."

  "Okay, Sal, what now?" The boy didn't answer, and Todd repeated, "Sal?"

  "Quiet," Sal said. He was frozen in place, facing the clear wall of the tent. Suddenly, everyone realized what he was looking at: Dozens of frightful human shapes were standing outside, their black manes and machetes blearily visible through the plastic. There was no mistaking those exaggerated female silhouettes.

  It was the K-Thugs-the terrible Kalis.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  PHOSPHORYLATION

  Rich Kranuski was in the belly of the ship, the "snake pit," looking for the source of a particular glitch that kept cropping up in one of the pressurized hydraulic manifolds, an area classified as a "hazardous system" because its failure could jeopardize the boat. No one else had been able to trace the problem, and he had finally taken it upon himself to have a look. Without being able to dismantle the system, there was not much point to looking except perhaps as an act of self-abasement, a final wallow in the mud before reinstating Coombs and placing himself under arrest.

  It was better than being on the bridge with all those eyes on him-anything was better than that. Everyone was so strange all of a sudden, watching him as though he was some kind of monster, and the aft section had become so quiet. The boat felt empty. He couldn't stand it.

  Poking around the subflooring, a region called the Yellow Brick Road for its painted blocks of lead ballast, Kranuski shined his flashlight up into the jungle of pipes and braces under the auxiliary machinery room. That was when it would have been really useful to have a crew of experienced chiefs on board. Unfortunately, I don't.

  Somewhere nearby, he heard a splash. Sweeping his flashlight aft across rippling puddles of oily bilgewater, he saw something like a blurry white octopus slip out of sight between two swash plates.

  Shit, he thought. There you are.

  "Cowper?" he called, feeling at once terrified and ridiculous. "Come out and show yourself."

  For a moment there was nothing. Then, from the shadows came a low moaning sound, like a Siamese cat. It almost sounded like words, but Kranuski couldn't decipher them. Another fluttering splash.

  "Hello?" he said. "Come out, or I'll shoot." Feeling his way aft under the low ceiling, he crept toward the source of the noise.

  He was beginning to think the thing had disappeared, that he had lost it or it had never been there at all. Impossible. Then, in a corner, his flashlight beam picked out a white bulge, half-concealed in the nook beneath a rusty gusset plate. It was pulsating, wet, and slimy. It can't be, he thought. It's fucking absurd. He cocked his service pistol.

  Nearing the spot, Rich could feel his gorge rise. The thing-whatever it was-was in a blind hole; he had it cornered. For better or worse, he was about to come face-to-face with the cause of so much fear and despair over the last three days, the thing that had not only brought the ship to its knees but made him question his very sanity. He aimed the gun, point-blank.

  "Fr-Fred?" he croaked softly. His heart was slamming so hard it hurt his chest. "It's all right, I'm not going to hurt you…"

  Cautiously approaching, keeping the object centered in his flashlight beam, he squeezed into the space with it… then stopped. Kranuski's anxious face flushed, collapsing into a frown-What the hell? Letting out his breath, head throbbing, he stepped over the intervening steel frame and picked the thing up.

  It was a ball of dripping wet rags in a white handkerchief, on which eyes and a mouth had been crudely drawn with grease pencil. The bundle was fastened to a length of nylon fishing line that ran up through an access panel in the floor above.

  Incredulous, unable to form a coherent thought, Kranuski followed the line up, sticking his head out the opening in the next deck.

  "Sorry, Captain," said XO Webb, and hit him in the head with four feet of galvanized pipe.

  "Oh shit," Freddy squeaked.

  "It's them."

  Sal nodded, trying to control his drumming heart. His first thought had been Xombies, but Xombies didn't have attitude. These things were posing out there like comic-book characters. Not mindless Harpies then, but the blurred figures of demonic, coal black goddesses… or rather, goddess impersonators: Tarbabies. K-Thugs. Worshippers of the Hindu goddess Kali-the Black One. Piti
less arbiters of their nightmarish New Age religion.

  One of them took a last drag from a cigarette and flicked it overboard. "Come on out, babies," he called. "Joo-hoo! Stop comparing dicks and get out here. That chamber ain't no toy-it's off-limits. You done got us outta bed, so you best come out and explain what you think you doin'."

  "No way," hissed Sal. "Fuck that-fuck it. Everybody take your weapons and get ready to make a run for it."

  "Don't be stupid," Todd said, "they'll blow our brains out."

  "I don't see any guns, do you?" Sal unsheathed his samurai sword. "They don't carry guns." With two great swings, he hacked an X in the tent wall, nicking the inflated support columns so that air started whooshing out. Todd tried to grab him, to hold him back, but their skinsuits bristled at the contact, folds of flesh ruffling wildly and knocking them apart. It was like touching a live wire.

  "Guys!" Ray shouted. "Something's wrong with Freddy!"

  The smaller boy was on the floor having some kind of seizure, his stumpy legs kicking and his hands clawing at his throat. There was a gap between his helmet and the rest of his suit, and Sal realized that he had not fastened the helmet's mesh cowl down properly: the collar of Freddy's flesh cape had tightened on his exposed neck like a noose. The Xombie skin was strangling him.

  "He's choking!" Ray cried. Suddenly Freddy leaped to his feet in panic and dove for the tent flap. "Stop him!"

  Sal tried to tackle Freddy around the legs but was unable to get a handhold because of the repulsion effect. He knew that if they let the kid get away, he was going to die, but nailing him was harder than catching a greased pig. Ray and Todd flung themselves at the boy from both sides, trying to knock him down and rip his helmet off, but Freddy had the inertia of pure panic, bowling through them and tumbling to the deck amid the encircling Kalis. Caught off guard, the convicts leaped back in surprise from the convulsing, flesh-suited figure at their feet.

  "Help us!" Sal shouted at them, as he and the other two boys scrambled clear of the collapsing tent. "It's killing him!"

  Ignoring their plight, Chiquita demanded, "Why you little fuckers dressed like this?"

  "We wanted to be Reapers," Sal replied frantically, unable to remove Freddy's helmet. "We thought we could impress you! Hurry, please help him!" The younger boy was already unconscious, possibly dead, which meant that in a few seconds he was going to become a Xombie.

  Chiquita's eyes narrowed to sharpened flints behind the baleful leer of her mask. "Joo lie to me? Oh no, I don't think you wanna lie to me. Peoples that lie to me will never lie again." He removed his massive syringe from its arm clip, squatting down and pressing the tip against Freddy's constricted throat. "It's very inneresting," he said. "If you die inside this suit, what do you think happens?"

  "Help him, or I'll kill you!" Sal cried, rearing up with his sword. Suddenly a loop of rope came out of nowhere, dropping over his upper body and yanking him backward to the deck-it was the actual Reapers, standing above on the container stacks. Roused from their beds, they were out of sorts as well as out of costume, plying their rodeo skills in fanciful silk pajamas. More ropes came down over the other boys, the Reapers jumping down to secure them, careful not to touch the twitching flesh of their suits. There was no sign of Voodooman.

  "Now watch," said Chiquita.

  Hovering over Freddy's lifeless body, the hideous masked figure waited like a vulture for him to suffocate. It wasn't long. Suddenly Freddy's grisly patchwork armor started moving, seething, writhing against its stitches as though trying to rip itself apart. The stitches began to tear, bleeding blue, and all at once the hood flap popped off and skittered away across the planks, revealing Freddy's gaping Xombie face. One of the Tarbabies nailed the escaping skin with the sharp heel of his boot.

  Freddy exploded-that's what it looked like. He erupted to manic life, a half-baked gingerbread man, his living armor attempting to tear itself loose from him… and he from it. But because every part was simultaneously recoiling from every other part, it had no way of breaking free except to rip loose of the staples and leap into space.

  Twisting every which way, Freddy's bones snapped like twigs, his body flailing around the deck in manic convulsions, jerked in fifty directions at once. He rolled into the midst of the K-Thugs, and they went to work on him, trimming Freddy like a side of beef. The tattered remains of the living cloak tried to worm away, dragging pieces of mesh, but the savage Kalis squashed it underfoot like Italian peasants making wine. The other three boys screamed, begged, and finally had to turn away, weeping.

  Righteous Weeks came down. Rappelling by his lariat to where Sal lay defeated, the big ex-con kicked the boy's sword away and leaned over him, peering through the scorched eyeholes of Sal's helmet.

  "If y'all gonna be honorary Skinwalkers," he said gently, "first thing you gotta do is fetch your own skins. Can't be wearing another man's rig-that is a serious violation of Reaper etiquette."

  "Damn straight," said Chiquita. "Every suit gotta be tailor-made; otherwise, it ain't gonna fit right, maybe pinch a little around the neck. Ever heard of pick your own lobster?" He knelt over a hatch in the floor and wrenched a rusty bolt aside. "Here it's pick your own Harpy." He pulled back the heavy lid.

  The three boys were dragged over so they could see down inside. The dark space below was filled with a thick gray substance resembling petroleum jelly. Within those murky depths, countless pale blue human shapes slowly tumbled and thrashed, their actions impeded by the dense grease. One of them rose into the light, glistening under a thick layer of translucent goop.

  It was Voodooman.

  Taking up a long-handled gaff, Righteous said grimly, "We been through a lot, ain't we, Marcus? Sho nuff is a sorry world." To the boys, he said, "Take this as a lesson to you. This is what you get when you cheat your friends. Least I thought we was friends." Planting the pole on Voodooman's forehead, he pushed him deep under the muck. "Consider it an initiation: Every Reaper got to skin and dress they own Harpy. Ain't no ready-to-wear in this outfit, no off-the-rack, not when it comes to a real live ghouly suit. Just like you don't want to trust no fool to pack your parachute, every man gotta take responsibility for dressing his own self. We all strickly custom-tailored. Now, which one of you's gonna be first?"

  "First to what?" Todd snarled.

  "Why, jump in and fetch one."

  "Fuck you," said Sal.

  "Hey, looks like we got us a volunteer."

  As the Reapers busied themselves maneuvering Sal over the gruesome well, the other two boys' attention was suddenly drawn elsewhere.

  From over the barge's high gunwale, through a gap in the barbed wire, a mass of alarming newcomers appeared. Fluidly as serpents, they started spilling down onto the deck. Human yet inhuman, shapeless yet terribly familiar, mottled blue and fluttery-quick, with black smudges for eyes and gaping pits for mouths, they rose up to loom behind the hooded figures of the oblivious Kalis.

  Sal saw Chiquita turn his head as if sensing something and found himself literally face-to-face with a hulking great Xombie. It was Big Ed Albemarle, dripping from the sea and still clutching his rusty hammer. Beside Albemarle were men and boys with whom Sal had once been acquainted, all deathly blue and slimy with algae: Julian Noteiro, Lemuel Sanchez, Cole Hayes, at least a dozen others who had died at Thule and been resurrected, recruited to serve Dr. Langhorne aboard the sub. But they were not Langhorne's creatures, they were Lulu's-Lulu's guys, her Dreadnauts. They had not come for Sal. They had come, finally, for her.

  "Holy shit," Todd muttered.

  "Damn," Ray said.

  All hell broke loose.

  The Kalis were quick, incredibly fast, and Sal realized why these people had survived for so long. They were the end product of a ruthless process of elimination that had begun months before, weeding out the weak and the reflex-impaired. Anyone who had to think twice was an early casualty. Those remaining were the cream of the crop, the instinctive stone killers, the naturally gifted who could pract
ically kill in their sleep-a veritable Olympiad of murderers.

  But the Xombies were quicker.

  As a spatter of gunfire rained down from the upper decks, Chiquita swung his machete at Albemarle, slashing the bigger man's throat to the bone, but Albemarle indifferently clocked him with the hammer, shattering his mask and the skull beneath, catching Chiquita's limp body in his huge arms. Face revealed, Chiquita was a chinless man with bad teeth, born Roy Ortiz in La Paz, Mexico, who had invented his female alter ego in homage to his beloved mother Chiquita. Roy was one of the few K-Thugs who had been a cross-dresser even before the Agent X plague, even before jail.

  Ed Albemarle opened his mouth wide-a bottomless pit as dark and cold as the vacuum of space-and covered Roy's lower face, sucking the air out of his lungs. The man's bony chest collapsed with a familiar, sickening crunch. Absorbing the Xombie's vitalizing infection, Roy's dead body swelled with manic energy, breaking away and landing on all fours like a human tarantula, bugged-out black eyes darting for prey.

  In the first skirmish, half the Kalis went down, and the others appeared to be equally doomed, waiting only for their brothers-in-drag to pop back to life for the battle to be over. But they were far from resigned to their fate: Not only were they expert hand-to-hand fighters, armed to the teeth. They were also shielded from Xombie assault by their repellent coating of black ichor-this in addition to their molded carbon-fiber masks, steel neck braces, and twelve-gauge shotgun loads embedded in their Kevlar-padded false breasts. To hug one of them was to trip a Claymore mine.

  The short lag time was enough to make it an unexpectedly equal battle: The Xombies were more occupied with subduing their immediate victims than with defending themselves against the remaining K-Thugs, who knew exactly where to strike in order to undo the undead.

  One by one, Xombies fell thrashing to the deck, their major tendons severed at the roots and a compound of white phosphorous injected into their chest cavities with gas-powered morgue syringes that the Kalis kept strapped to their forearms for just such an occasion. A potent weapon under any circumstances, white phosphorous had a particularly lethal affinity for Maenad body chemistry: Any ghoul so injected rolled around spewing incandescent foam from its nose, mouth, ears, and other orifices, its body swelling up and erupting like a grade-school science project until it abruptly collapsed into a puddle of burning grease. The deck quickly became a filthy abattoir awash with Xombie gunk and slithering remains. From above, red specks of laser sights darted amid the action, exploding whatever they touched.