Apocalypticon x-2

by Walter Greatshell

  Righteous Weeks stood on the deck of the submarine and wondered what to do next. So far it had been much too easy-not a single shot had been fired. Could it be a trap of some kind? Every inch of the sub's five-hundred-foot deck was occupied by his men now, right up to the top of the sail, so he didn't think there was any hiding place from which they could be ambushed. He knew that the harbor was too shallow for the monster to submerge. But he was no expert on submarines, nor were any of his men. He had certainly never seen one this big before, much less set foot on it, so he was very tense. Not for the first time, he regretted the loss of his friend Marcus. Voodooman knew about shit like this.

  The leader of the few remaining Kalis came over, the one called Betty Boom, and asked him, "Where do you want us to set the charges?" They had a boatload of plastic explosives and radio detonators, courtesy of Uncle Spam.

  "Anywhere-I can't see as it matters much."

  "It does, though. I've done a lot of welding, and this HY80 steel is a bitch. Blowing any kind of meaningful hole in this mother is going to take everything we've got."

  "Then use everything you've got."

  It helped to see that someone had defied and defiled the sub already, laying claim like dogs marking their territory, undermining its awesome power with some choice graffiti. The rubberized black deck and conning tower had been tagged like the sides of a subway train: XOMBOYZ, NUBZ, LULU, the classic skull and crossbones.

  "Looks like pirates already been to work on this thing," Weeks said.

  His second-in-command, Grover Stix, laughed, "Yeah, somebody done beat us to it."

  One of the men came running up. "Hey, Righteous, take a look at this."

  "What is it?"

  "Somebody left the front door open."

  It was a hatch at the far bow, just forward the conning tower. Weeks hustled over and pushed through his gathered men. "Well, damn."

  It was open, all right. A round well in the deck, exactly like a manhole in the street, with rungs leading down to darkness. Taking a megaphone, Weeks leaned over the hole, and said, "ATTENTION SUBMARINE: YOU HAVE THIRTY SECONDS TO SURRENDER."

  He didn't know if anyone was listening, and he didn't much care. Fuck a siege-if nobody answered, he was fully prepared to start bombing this motherfucker until somebody cried uncle. He called up El Dopa and briefed him on the situation.

  "So the hatch was just sitting there open?"

  "That's affirmative, out."

  "A little convenient, wouldn't you say?"

  "You got that right, El D. Personally, I think we ought to pump a few gallons of fuel oil down there and drop a match."

  "I don't think so, at least not yet. Let's try smoking them out first. Over and out."

  Righteous gave the order, and a case of olive drab tear-gas canisters was brought up. Taking one and pulling its key, he said, "Stand back," and dropped it down the hole. Immediately, a thick white smoke began roiling in the depths. He dropped another.

  Nothing. They waited five minutes, listening intently, but the sub remained utterly silent. The sun disappeared behind the horizon, leaving a reef of vermilion clouds.

  El Dopa came over the radio: "Think they could have flown the coop?"

  "Well, the sentries had their hands full today-I wouldn't expect they was completely on their game. Wasn't as if we expected these jaybirds to abandon ship. And what for?"

  "The whole world's been abandoned, why not this boat?"

  "True enough. Your call, hoss."

  Considering the situation, El Dopa said, "I know you guys lost your Bluecoats, and I'm short of Thuggees, but somebody's gotta go down there, check it out. If it's possible at all, we need that submarine. Having that thing in our pocket would go a long way toward making up for our losses today."

  "It's cool, man. Bendis done drilled us on this commando shit; I got that motherfucker down. Trick is to get as many our folks inside as quickly as possible-pile in and overwhelm them with force, so that the fight is over before it can even begin. Won't be no booby traps in here, not unless they want to blow themselves up in the bargain."

  "Good. And try not to kill everybody-a submarine without a crew is no good to us."

  "Affirmative. Righteous out."

  The Reapers on deck looked at him challengingly. "After you, brother."

  Weeks didn't hesitate. To lead this army, you couldn't show fear. Donning a hooded gas mask over his steel face guard, he led them below, descending into the undulating layer of smoke as into a milky pool.

  To his second, Grover Stix, he said, "If this is an ambush, be ready to haul ass out of here." He lightly tapped the barrel of his sawed-off combat shotgun against his head. The gun had a flashlight, a laser sight, and a drum full of special expanding rounds for use at extraclose range. It could stop a rhino.

  At the bottom, Weeks paused, peering around, then waved the others down. They descended into a room full of pipes and ductwork, with a narrow corridor running through it, and other rooms branching off in the thick haze. Every wall was covered with control panels and softly humming banks of electronics-a lot of buttons and colored lights that were meaningless to them. Except for the beige tile floor, which was reminiscent of banal institutional settings the convicts were all too familiar with, it all looked very high-tech and complicated.

  Dense white vapor filled the ship, flowing downward in lazy freshets and swirling across the floor, gliding from one compartment to the next, deck after deck, with the insidious flowing grace of a centipede. But the Reapers were unfazed by the smoke, in fact could not see it-their gas masks were equipped with ultrasonic goggles that generated a black-and-white digitized image of their surroundings and rendered the gas invisible. There was a sort of acoustic haze, however, a blurring effect caused by sound-damping tiles on the sub's walls and ceiling-it took them a few minutes to figure out the distortion.

  At one end was a stairwell leading down, at the other a hatchway opening into a much larger space. Everything appeared to be deserted.

  "Shoulda signed up for the guided tour," Grover said. "Where is everybody?"

  "Just keep your eyes open."

  The line of men filing belowdecks grew longer and longer, a parasitic worm pulsing downward, oozing segment by segment into the ship's belly.

  "Goddammit," said Weeks. "What the hell do they think they're up to? Hide-and-go-seek?"

  The place was a regular catacomb, riddled with holes and hidden passages. The men kept bumping their heads. Heading downward, they peered into a deserted mess hall, its vacant leatherette booths weirdly cozy, then continued forward through a smaller dining room and a sleeping area. At the end was a locked door marked DO NOT ENTER.

  "Open sesame," Weeks said, blasting the lock. There was a scream, and the door swung open on two people wearing oxygen masks.

  One of them was a woman.

  "Good God a'mighty," said Grover Stix.

  "Don't move!" barked Weeks, training his gun on them and making room for the men behind. "Who the fuck are you?"

  The man stepped forward. "I'm Captain Harvey Coombs, United States Navy."

  "You're the captain of this thing?"

  "Uh, no-actually I was relieved of command. That's why I'm locked in here. We're both under arrest."

  "Under arrest? You better not be fucking with me! Who's in charge? Where they at?"

  "The one you want is Mr. Webb. I'm afraid we don't know where he is-or anyone else for that matter. We've been in here for the last two days."

  To Langhorne, Grover said, "You a real woman?"

  "How flattering."

  "Goddamn. What's your name, then?"

  "I'm Dr. Alice Langhorne. Pleased to meet you."

  "Langhorne? Goddamn. You the one's friends with Uri Miska?"

  "That's right."

  "Holy shit. You been up at Valhalla, ain't you? What's it like up there? Is the streets really made of gold?"

  "Shut up, Grover," said Righteous Weeks. "This ain't no social call-we got business to attend
to." To Coombs, he said, "You gonna take us to whoever's in charge of this pig boat, and you gonna tell 'em we demand their immediate surrender. I don't want no killing if I can avoid it. We just want to partner up with y'all."

  "Well, if you came this far, I assume you must have already been through the control center. That's where the commander usually is."

  "Ain't nobody up there now."

  "Wait-nobody at all?"

  "We ain't seen one damn soul since we come in."

  "That's… unusual. I don't know what to tell you. All we can do is keep going down."

  "Lead on, chief. And don't you fuckin' try anything, I swear to God."

  The next deck down looked gutted, all its furniture and electronics pulled out and only capped ends of wire remaining. "Look like somebody done stripped this place good," said Grover. "Reminds me of what I did to my house after the bank foreclosed on it." Coombs and Langhorne could barely see anything through the smoke and had to be helped along. There was a series of bumps from somewhere below, then a loud whooshing sound.

  "What's that noise?" Weeks demanded.

  Coombs said, "Sounds like the muzzle doors closing and the tubes being drained. The forward torpedo tubes."

  "You didn't have to say that-I know what tubes means."

  "Then that is the sound of the tubes being blown dry."

  "So somebody's down there?"

  "Would have to be."

  Following the noise, they arrived at the bottom, emerging in a roomful of machinery that led into another space that was obviously the torpedo room.

  "I'd avoid doing any shooting in here," Coombs said. "That's the auxiliary machinery room-we call it the Snake Pit. There are a few thousand gallons of reserve diesel in that tank, and those torpedoes up there run on some nasty flammable stuff. Not to mention the explosive warheads themselves."

  The Reapers ventured forward, pointing their weapons down the racks of deadly green cylinders until all their sonar beams converged on something odd at the end of the aisle: several interlocking metal cases the size of coffins, finished matte black and plastered with military inspection certificates. Their lids were open and all the shelves pulled out, as if someone had recently been raiding their contents.

  "Where they at?" Righteous demanded.

  "They're gone," Coombs said, peering myopically through the haze. "You see those cases? Those are for diving gear-SEAL gear. It was part of our SPAM manifest. Stealth rebreathers, assault weapons, night-vision scopes, satellite uplinks, laser range finders, cameras, cadmium battery packs, covert reconnaissance and communication equipment. Also limpet mines and all kinds of ordnance, you name it."

  The Reapers listened like a rapt tribe of Neanderthals to this recitation of state-of-the-art commando stuff: SEAL gear for a SEAL mission that was as cold and dead as every conflict of the old world, relics of an extinct civilization. The very definition of lost treasure in that almost all of it was missing-most frustratingly the guns and ammo.

  Popping a skull-like diving mask out of its foam cradle, Harvey Coombs said, "See? Do-it-yourself SEAL team. Just add water."

  "Where'd they go?"

  "Outside." Coombs indicated the four chrome hatches. "Through these tubes."

  "What the fuck they doing out there?"

  "Any number of things. Repairs, reconnaissance… underwater demolition. We have a few master divers on board who are qualified to work with underwater munitions, so-"

  "Munitions? Shit. Grover, tell Betty Boom to keep an eye out for fuckin' frogmen. Ain't better be no Navy SEALS out there, or they gonna be dead SEALS. You, too."

  "Wait a minute," said Coombs, gesturing for silence. There was a peculiar squeaking sound coming from within the torpedo tubes.

  "What's that?" asked Weeks.

  "They're back."

  "What? Back?"

  "Ssh!" said Coombs. "You hear that? Someone's in there now-that's why the tubes were drained. Probably stuck waiting for whoever is supposed to let them back aboard."

  The Reapers leveled their weapons. Righteous Weeks said, "Go ahead and open them doors."

  "Only if you give me your word not to harm anyone," Coombs said.

  "Open the doors right now, or I'll geld you like a motherfuckin' bull calf! Now do it!"

  After a moment's hesitation, Coombs released the four breech doors, starting with starboard tubes one and three, then moving across to tubes two and four. The tubes were at a sideways angle and pitch-dark inside, making it hard to see down their full length.

  Righteous Weeks shouted, "All right, everybody out! Don't try any-"

  He was cut short by a flesh bomb, an avalanche of briny-cold meat: four twenty-foot tubes of solid-packed offal tumbling into the chamber as if from a grisly cornucopia. Guts! Guts amok! The light strobed with hysterical gunfire as this slippery living bouillabaisse of human parts disgorged onto the floor.

  In the tight space, there was nowhere to go, and the front ranks of Reapers were instantly overwhelmed by the frenzied host. Immune to terror or surprise, the men didn't panic but had no defense against such an amorphous attack-a hellish migration of clawing, grasping morgue refuse that clung on and climbed their bodies to cover their masks and clamp tight around their throats. Guns were no good at all. As the first men were engulfed, those nearer the door recognized that they had a brief opportunity to get the hell out of there, cut their losses. And they didn't hesitate-they knew they wouldn't get another chance. The problem was all the guys in the way.

  Fighting his way through the pileup, Righteous Weeks realized that he had made a serious mistake bringing so many men down here. Dragging the woman, he barely managed to get out the door before it was shut against the heinous enemy, then he joined the fight to seal it up against other poor fools still trying to jam through. There was no choice: Once this shit got loose, there would be no stopping it.

  Grover Stix was buzzing with the thrill of being alive. Though he had been right in the thick of the nightmarish attack, his slight build gave him an advantage over men in luckier spots. With the wave of slurry sweeping toward them, he leaped atop the torpedo racks and shinnied down the tight space right over the others. In a second, he was out the door and helping Righteous close it.

  As the door clamped shut, he had a last glimpse of that Navy man, Coombs, standing silent and seemingly calm amid shuddering webs and fronds of viscera.

  As soon as the valve was dogged tight, Weeks turned and slapped the woman across the face with his shotgun. She fell back against the wall, banging her head.

  "What the fuck was that all about, motherfucker?" Righteous demanded. "What kinda shit you tryin' to pull on us?"

  "I beg your pardon," she said, adjusting her cracked oxygen mask. "I never promised you a rose garden."

  Before Righteous could hit her again, the big pressure door in the amidships bulkhead clanked open, revealing a hazy black void-the impenetrable vastness of the Big Room.

  "What's down there?" Weeks demanded.

  Alice smiled and replied, "The rest of the boat."

  There was no movement within the lightless depths aft. Through the men's sonic goggles the view had that strobing, stilted quality of a convenience-store security camera. Suddenly, out of a side cranny, the blurred shape of a little boy appeared and dashed through the doorway.

  "Hey, stop him!" yelled Weeks, shining his echolocator on the kid's skinny back just as he vanished from view. "Who was that?"

  "Bobby Rubio," Alice said. "Kid we picked up when we first got here. I thought maybe he belonged to you."

  "Not hardly."

  Pondering the situation, the Reapers considered their options:

  Grover Stix offered, "I say we clear outta here and drop a thermite canister down the hole. Fuck this shit."

  "Yeah," said another man. "What do we need with a submarine anyway? It's like a damn dungeon down here. I like to be in the open, or at least somewhere with a window."

  "Damn straight-this thing's worse than being back in the h
ole."

  "Now hold off," said Righteous. "We didn't just risk our necks and sacrifice twenty good men so we could pussy out at the last minute. This is an opportunity we ain't likely to ever get again-a chance to declare our independence. Hell, boys, we already in possession of this shitcan; we own it, lock, stock, and barrel, and now you want to queer the whole deal because of a little fresh meat? Just when we got 'em in a sack? We're holding the strong hand here; it would be a shame to cut and run when we're this close to winning the pot. We got the game, we got the numbers, and we got the grit-now we just got to see their bluff."

  Without waiting for the others, he boldly walked down the short passageway and ducked through the aft hatch. Once inside, Weeks found himself staring up at a room as big and cold as his old cellblock back in Huntsville. He couldn't see much beyond thirty feet-the sonar imager, designed for close-range operation, dissolved into gray murk-but from the hollow sound he could tell it was a very big space. As in the rest of the sub, there was a jungle of pipes and wiring, but here there were no walls or ceiling to contain them, just a steel-grated pier extending into darkness and a dim jumble of machines in the gully below.

  The others followed him in, voices hushed as if entering a church. Trying to demystify the place, Righteous rummaged in his pockets until he found something to throw-the first silver dollar he had ever plucked from between the horns of an angry bull. Fuck it, he thought, and chucked it high up into the air, smiling as it dinged off the roof, bounced down invisible ledges, rolled, and went still. He was about to say, Y'all might as well get comfortable-I don't go nowhere without my lucky dollar, when something small and heavy struck him in the forehead. His lucky coin!

  "Holy shit," he said, skull ringing.

  "What's wrong?" asked Grover.

  "Didn't you see that? Somebody winged my coin back at me. Sucker nailed me good, too; ahmo have a goose egg."

  "Shit, man-an inch lower, and you'd be wearing an eye patch for the rest of your life."

  "It's more a them damned kids, gotta be." Struck with a notion, Weeks shouted, "Come on out, boys, we ain't gonna hurt you none. We're on your side. I heard tell from your friends that you ain't hardly had a square meal since you first set foot on this barge and that the men here don't treat you no better than damn dogs. That ain't right. If you can help us, we'll put a stop to that. Sooner we can talk turkey with you and the rest of the crew, the sooner we'll get your bellies so full of ham and beans and biscuits and bacon and grits and corn bread and applesauce you won't never even have room for the pecan pie. We know what it means to be prisoners, to be shut up in a hole where you can't even reckon the days. Come out, and you'll be part and parcel of every decision we make-it's a democracy. Come be one of us, and we'll sure be glad to have you. It's a big, beautiful world out there, enough for all."