Along with Big Ed Albemarle and the boys who died with me at Thule, there were some thousand or so other Dark Blues on board, all new arrivals. Most of them were in bad shape—either missing major pieces or barely pieced together. They were leftovers from the recent Reaper madness. My mother was among them.
The Bright Blues were those like yours truly, who had either been passively infiltrated from within by Agent X spores (and this would apply to all the billions of first-generation female Maenads), or been deliberately inoculated with Uri Miska’s “Tonic” before brain damage could occur. I met both criteria, and knew that intelligence alone was no buffer against X-mania, since in the seconds before the Tonic kicked in, I had strangled the first man I saw. Horrible. I didn’t like to think of that even though I realized there was a higher purpose to it all.
Uri Miska had developed Agent X as humanity’s only defense against the coming cataclysm—the Big Enchilada—which would kill all life on Earth. Since we weren’t alive, we might survive. Xombies, that is. Black gold. Texas tea. This vague knowledge had been communicated to all of us through increasingly intense, dreamlike visions, and most on board believed it even if they did not fully comprehend it.
There were only two Bright Blues on board: I and Fred Cowper—or rather, Fred Cowper’s decapitated head. In our perfect blueness, Fred and I were not grotesque so much as beautifully strange—living Hindu deities. Or so I chose to think about it.
But the Clears … the Clears were something different, something nobody understood yet—not even themselves.
They had the same regenerative capacity as the rest of us, the same apparent immortality, but without any of the negative side effects. They weren’t blue. They never needed daily doses of my blood to function. They looked and felt completely human … until they suddenly turned their bodies inside out, changed colors like chameleons, or split in two and joined seamlessly back together.
As they learned to control it, their flesh answered their will to a degree that we Blues could only marvel at. Since Clears had only just begun to grasp their potential, it was an alarming process of discovery—a few mirrors were broken out of sheer fright.
Socially, there was a peculiar division between Blues and Clears. Unable to convert each other, we were in a race for the last dregs of humankind. Having taken an early lead, Blues were far ahead, but Clears were clearly faster, having taken over our original Navy crew and all the civilian refugees in a matter of hours.
Dr. Alice Langhorne (a Clear herself) had traced their mutant strain back to a single carrier, a young refugee boy named Bobby Rubio, who had been picked up in Providence.
Bobby seemed to have no idea why he was different and still refused to talk about where or how he might have been “infected.” Langhorne didn’t think it was possible he could have been born that way, but a lot of people liked the idea that little Bobby was the next stage of human evolution, that the world might save itself.
As we commandeered a fleet of abandoned vehicles and headed inland along the road, I began to have a strange sensation. This was the first time I had been ashore in months, and the sight of all these quaint houses and shops caused weird flutters of emotion that I recognized as goose bumps. Goose bumps!
I wasn’t alone: My fellow travelers were experiencing similar jitters of anticipation. If anything at all remained of the America we once knew, this might be where we’d find it.
The buildings and cars ahead showed minor traces of damage: wires down, tilted utility poles, scattered debris. Unlike some other cities we had seen, there were few signs of panicked fight or flight—it all happened too fast. No backed-up traffic or buildings burned to the ground. Except for drifts of sand blown in from the dunes, it all looked pretty normal.
The wind kicked up, raising a cloud of dust that momentarily blotted out the sun. In that orange gloom, the signs disappeared, the cars disappeared, the road disappeared. This wasn’t sand; it was ash. Ash from afar, carried on the wind from the heartland, residue of a thousand burnt cities all over America.
We came to the outskirts of a town called Exmore, along the main highway that ran the length of the peninsula to Cape Charles. There were no barricades, no security of any kind. No life.
Through the settling haze, we began to make out a line of human figures along the highway, still and silent as statues, ankle deep in ash. Not humans—Xombies. They were inert as lampposts, completely dormant, staring at nothing.
“Pepperland,” said one of the Blackpudlians.
“Trucks a-comin’!” shouted Robles.
Then we could all sense it: a convoy of heavy vehicles roaring toward us down US 13. They were bright with headlights and the life auras of their passengers—several dozen human beings.
We automatically went into action, Blues and Clears racing for the chance to add new members to our respective teams. Hurriedly blocking the road, we took positions on either side and hunkered flat in the ditches. As the trucks neared, I could see that they were completely unprotected, no armaments of any kind. It was too good to be true. When the first one shifted down, we were all over that thing like ants on a half-melted Popsicle.
Or we would have been, had the people in that truck not suddenly glowed with a strange poison that robbed us of our strength. The closer we got to them, the weaker we became, so that the fastest and strongest of us fell the hardest, tumbling off the truck like frost-killed spiders.
Adding to our trouble, the dormant Xombies suddenly sprang to life and attacked us. One came at me, and when Lemuel smashed it with a sledgehammer, I realized it was only part Xombie. The other part was machinery, a mass of wires and gadgets stuffed into a gutted Xombie body. A remote-controlled meat puppet! The flesh had been crudely stapled back together, leaving small apertures for cameras, radio antennae … and weapons.
Those weapons opened fire, taking out targets with precise bursts of metal pellets, electrically propelled at a zillion rounds per second. Each blast sounded like a single shot but was actually a patterned stream of ammo that cut through flesh and bone like a superfast jigsaw. Anything it hit came apart as though run through a sieve. When the ammo ran out, they had false limbs that ejected bladed weapons that slashed us to the bone. Worst of all, they tagged us with lasers, opening us to fire from the sky—an orbiting attack drone. All around me, my Xomboys started exploding like popcorn.
Too late, I realized what it was: Immunes. We had heard rumors of Immunes from the Reapers, and I had refused to believe they really existed, thinking immunity was just more mortal wishfulness. But there could be no doubt about it: There were Immunes in those trucks … or people tainted with immune blood. Either way, we couldn’t touch them; our own bodies wouldn’t allow it.
The poor miserable humans had come up with a perfect defense. They had made it impossible for us to save them, as if suffering and death were the most beautiful prizes they could imagine. They had won. It was so tragic, I almost wished I could die with them.
But I couldn’t.
As shrapnel riddled my torso, I remembered what Alice Langhorne had told me about Xombies when we first met: “… a bag of obsolete parts governed by a solid-state master.” My body was not the fragile human form it had once been, but a completely arbitrary assemblage of cells. This was a disturbing thought as it threatened my very identity: Who was Lulu Pangloss if not this girl, this body, this face? How could she exist if she was a stranger to herself, some random, amorphous blob? It was too troubling to contemplate. So I had refused to face it, clinging to my mortal conception of myself, using my Maenad abilities as if they were party tricks, busying myself with plans and hopes and dreams.
Well, perhaps it was time to wake up.
That was it—I ordered a general retreat, and we ran for the vehicles. What was left of us.
CHAPTER FIVE
LOVEVILLE
Half the tires were flat, but we kept driving on them until the dragging treads started to catch fire. Then we had to get off and stand around w
hile the buses burned. Looking at the map, I noticed there was a place called Hollywood not too far away—Hollywood, Maryland. My mother used to take me to Hollywood. The real one. The memory was enough to start me moving again, and my evident purpose compelled the others to follow.
Hiking cross-country, we found a gasoline terminal and commandeered a fuel barge. Maneuvering the barge was tricky in places; the river was full of carbonized ruin that had washed down from Baltimore, its banks and shoals festooned with trash. But as we navigated downstream, the river widened, and the junk dispersed.
After a few miles, we put ashore in a cove and started walking toward Hollywood. It was a semirural area, checkered with farms that were now meadows, encroached upon by suburban developments that would croach no more.
Breasting the tall grass, surrounded by the hiss of locusts, we came to a town called Loveville, and that was it. We had all had enough. It wasn’t that we were tired—just tired of seeking something we knew didn’t exist. Tired of being disappointed. Screw Hollywood. This was a pleasant little town, with schools and churches and grocery stores. The sign said, WELCOME TO LOVEVILLE—what more could one want?
“What are we doing, Lulu?” asked Bobby. “What are we looking for?”
I had no good answer. Listening to the birds and the bees, I said, “I think this may be it.”
“What?”
“We’re home.”
For the first few weeks, very little happened. We existed in a dream state, some of us wandering around like sleepwalkers, others barely moving, all mesmerized by patterns of energy underlying the material world. With a little concentration, it was possible to make out the quantum-mechanical webwork that connected everything to everything else—the literal fabric of time and space. Actually, it was more like a vast harp, warping and rippling and swirling as the planet moved, vibrating a deep B minor chord from the depths of the galaxy. It called to us, promising gorgeous oblivion, but most were not ready to go … yet. We were torn between two worlds, unwilling or unable to commit to either and thus trapped in between. In limbo.
But perhaps we were underestimating ourselves. What if we didn’t have to wait for the answers we craved but could invent whatever life we wanted and simply start living it? What if we could create the best of all possible worlds? Customize a reality that suited our peculiar needs?
Alice Langhorne called a meeting:
“Lulu has brought something to my attention,” she announced. “Something that must be addressed if we are to continue as a group. We believe the present situation is becoming untenable. It’s too difficult trying to graft our previous lives onto this new set of circumstances. We failed at it on the sub, we failed at it in Providence, and we’re failing at it here. We aren’t the people we used to be, and it’s no use pretending we are. The incongruities are too … awkward. We need a less-fraught model to follow; otherwise, we’ll all crack up.”
There was silence—the truth of it was plain to all.
Langhorne continued, “Obviously, this is uncharted territory. We’re not only reinventing ourselves, we’re inventing an entirely new mode of existence—one that goes far beyond anything our human psyches can comprehend. It’s not a damn makeover. The only frame of reference we have is mythical: zombies, vampires, angels—that kind of Hollywood baloney. We all know the reality is not quite so … glamorous. We think something profound is going to happen, some kind of Armageddon, and we were altered to survive it. So we’re just hanging around, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Cosmic loitering. And if we’re not careful, we’ll all disappear right up our own black holes.”
Julian Noteiro stepped forward. “So what did Lulu suggest?”
“That we need a new script to follow—something that touches upon all the basic aspects of human society without all the oppressive limitations of that society. A stylebook that we can live by, day to day, to keep our humanity intact. So we don’t lose it.”
“You mean like the Bible?”
“Not exactly.” Langhorne picked up a stack of magazines out of a carton and slapped them down on the table. They were old comic books with titles like LOVE and PEP and PALS ’N’ GALS. “Lulu was thinking of something a little easier—something more along these lines.”
The crowd came forward, inspecting the comics as though they were peculiar alien artifacts. Inside the box were many more comics, as well as vintage paperback books and DVDs of old television shows. On top were discs of The Andy Griffith Show and I Love Lucy.
Langhorne said, “Let’s get started, shall we?”
I sat alone in the dark, reminiscing as I watched dawn creep over the horizon.
Xombies didn’t sleep. Nor could it be said that we were ever truly awake—not in the human sense. Xombies did not live in the present. Our minds wandered freely in time and space; they drifted in and out. I knew the human conception of reality was a façade erected by mortal minds to block contact with the inconceivable vastness of genuine reality. Living creatures needed this mechanism in order to forget they were doomed. Xombies did not. So in that sense it could be said that Xombies were deeply awake and that human consciousness was a mode of dreaming. A delusion.
My mother came back to me again and again. This time we were driving to McDonald’s in a borrowed Cadillac. I remembered: My mother got a job working as a housekeeper for a family in Lake Tahoe. It was a large house on a remote mountain road, and I shared a cozy room over the garage with the children of the family who owned the place. The three girls welcomed me like a sister, and their unexpected generosity filled my parched heart. Even the local elementary school was incredible, a woodsy, progressive place where the kids were friendly and the teachers funny and sane. One day, while the family was away, I made the mistake of trying to climb a steep gravel bluff, lost my footing, and slid to the bottom, badly skinning both knees. My mother found me bleeding on the doorstep and rushed me to the bathtub, where she washed the wounds and dabbed them with Mercurochrome. Once I was patched up, stiff with pain, my mother said, You know what this means, don’t you?
What? I sniffled.
You get a wish. A freebie.
I was propped on the couch in front of the TV, watching pornographic close-ups of golden fries. I want a Filet-O-Fish, I said.
Honey, the nearest McDonald’s is fifty miles away.
What about the Caddy? I meant the family Cadillac, a pristine black limo that never left the garage except on the most special occasions—the Baxters used their two other cars for getting around. The Caddy was strictly for show.
Lulu, you know I’m not allowed to use that car. Mr. Baxter specifically said so.
My tone turned tragic; waifish tears welled up. Why not? It’s just a quick ride into town and back. They’ll never even know.
You must be kidding. You know what’ll happen if they find out?
How could they find out? They’re in Sacramento. Sensing my mother waver, I crooned, Mummy, you promised—pleeeeze?
It was a thrillingly short drive: Halfway down the mountain, the Caddy ran out of gas.
We were forced to abandon the car, flagging down a passing motorist for a ride to town and paying a service station to deliver fuel. By the time we got back to the car, it had been towed. The police thought it was a stolen vehicle because the Baxters had left word they would be out of town, and the car had been vandalized. Then there was the hefty impound fee. My mother tried first to charm, then to bluster her way out, and I cranked up the waterworks, but it was no use. We had no money; we were stuck. The only way to get the car back was to call the Baxters and explain the whole situation. It was not fun. The look on Mummy’s face as she hung up the phone made it utterly clear that our life in Lake Tahoe was soon to be over. So much for the joyride. But already I was adjusting to the new reality, walling off the humiliating dismissal—fuckit, I thought. My attention shifted to the golden arches across the street—Mummy still had a few bucks left.
My blue lips parted, mouthing the words of that long-ago c
hild: Mummy? I’m still hungry.
I heard a noise. Somewhere down the block, an unmuffled two-stroke engine sputtered to life. Then another, and another, all working their way up the street. It was an unpleasant and deeply familiar sound—one I had not heard since I was alive.
Lawn mowers.
Opening the kitchen window, I leaned out to see all the crew from the boat pushing lawn mowers across their new lawns. It was still quite dark out, and the landscape was shaded deep blue under a paler sky pricked with stars. I could smell exhaust and cut grass. The stars were the only lights—there was no electricity yet.
As the mowers completed their work, and the sun cleared the rooftops, I heard a different sound, like gunshots in the distance—it was the backfiring of an old car. A moment later, the vehicle chugged into view, turning up my street.
It was an antique car, a red jalopy with the top down, squeaking and rattling as if its engine were shaking it to pieces. The spoked wheels were visibly out of alignment, and the exhaust pipe spewed a contrail of noxious fumes.
The car stopped in front of my house. I could see Jake Bartholomew in the driver’s seat; he set the brake and gave the horn a toot. Jake’s passengers jumped out and came up the walk—they were Sal DeLuca and Lemuel Sanchez.
Sal was wearing a peculiar hat, its felt brim turned up and cut to resemble a king’s crown, with colorful buttons pinned around it like jewels. Lemuel’s hair had been cropped short and bleached blond, and he was dressed in a football jersey that said QUARTERBACK. They knocked on the door.
This was unusual. The door was unlocked; nobody announced themselves anymore. Human courtesies such as respect for privacy were meaningless, especially after the forced intimacies of living together on the sub. I turned to see Alice Langhorne gliding down the stairs like a ghost. The usually austere woman was wearing a pleated pink dress and a frilly apron, but the most alarming change was her head of curlers.
Xombies: Apocalypso Page 4