“It blew through the roof. You hear what I’m saying? The beer blew a hole through the roof.” Muse chuckled. “Sounds funny now, but let me tell you, it wasn’t so funny at the time. It was like a bomb went off. Before I could even take cover, a second vat went off, same thing, whoosh, right through the roof, and the whole place starts coming down now, you know? Wood, shingles, metal, glass, and then the brick walls start sliding in. You know how they call Kansas City the City of Fountains? It’s the truth. Except this time it was fountains of beer, man, fire hoses of it, spraying everywhere. It was the beerpocalypse. I mean, I’m soaked to bone in beer. It’s why I smell so good.”
“You’re also drunk.”
“Yeah, but that’s because I put a few more bourbon bottles in my guitar case before I ran off. This supply might need to last me a while.”
“Not at this rate, it won’t.”
Muse laughed. “True, true. Maybe I push the bike, you carry the case.”
“Shit,” Greer said. “Then I’ll start drinking it.”
She smiled, self-conscious at first, then let it blaze, and he grinned back, a crocodilian thrill, and she felt shaken again, not only by misplaced desire but by a feeling of stumbling upon a great fortune. If she carried his case, like he said, and he pushed her bike, like he said, they’d be a team. Two people together, Freddy Morgan used to say before Vienna’s incarceration, weren’t two times as strong as one, they were two hundred times as strong. Muse King, or King Kong, or KK, whatever his name was, might be drunk, but the hair on her neck and arms wasn’t spiking from danger.
There was a vulnerability to feeling grateful. She looked away, at the bike. After deliberation, she unhooked the duffel bag, sat down, and unzipped it.
Muse shook the guitar to make the final note quiver, “You old enough to drink, Miss Greer?”
She withdrew the machete.
Muse raised his hands. “My bad. Drink what you want.”
She rolled her eyes and set the machete on the grass, “Relax. Just being prepared.”
He gave her a clear-eyed look, then placed his guitar on the dirt, mirroring her, laying down arms. He rubbed his cold hands and blew into them.
“Truth is, neither of us should drink a drop,” he said. “When times get bleak, the right beverage is more valuable than gold.”
“Tull tell you that?”
Muse’s grin looked more like a courtesy, “Tull’s jam was brewskis and nothing but. Mine’s American history. Might have written a record or two about it. Coffee and alcohol, man. People will sell their soul for it. Some people say coffee won the Civil War. The Rebs were drinking cold brown swill made of acorns and bark while the North was gulping down big, hot cups of Good Morning, America. We play our cards right with this bourbon, you and me could be Lord and Lady Obama.”
“Who gets to sit at the big desk, though?”
Greer was flirting. She couldn’t believe it. Her family had been lost to self-destructive revenge, a death-ending pandemic, and prison, and she had no plans for surviving the impending winter. Yet from her throat came the same tough, teasing voice she’d used in school, at bonfire parties, with Qasim. That any such spirit lived on inside her felt miraculous.
“The Oval Office is all yours.” Muse rubbed his face, looked around, and sighed. “Missouri. World just had to end when I had a gig in dang Missouri. Talk about the Civil War.”
“Could be worse. Missouri was North, wasn’t it?”
“Is that what your teachers told you?”
“Don’t blame me if my school was shitty.”
“Your fine home state of Missouri had its Union soldiers, sure did, but it also had a whole mess of Confederate bushwhackers. It was a slave state, all right? Missouri was the microcosm of the whole American nightmare, Still is. In KC, man, I saw Blacks killing Blacks, whites killing whites. Brother on brother, sister on sister. If that ain’t the Second Civil War, I don’t know what is. What’d you see in Sack?”
“Sack?”
“Your town. Sack?”
“Bulk.” She snorted. “Same shit. No one was even dealing with the white-eyes. Too busy blaming each other.”
“White-eyes. That’s what they’re calling Them in Bulk?”
“They got a better name?”
“Folks on the news were calling Them ghouls.”
It was the most reassuring thing she’d heard yet. Somewhere, news was still playing. Somewhere, smart people were still naming disasters, Greer stretched her arms over her head, enjoying the flex of muscles tight from forest-floor sleep. When her hoodie rode up her stomach, she knew Muse would see it, and she enjoyed that too. When she brought her arms down, she lay back on the grass. Her right hand settled on one of the bicycle’s supply bags, and she realized she was hungry.
He came to her like she’d thought he would. The light, pale yellow now, reverted to gray inside his shadow. He looked as comfortable sinking to the ground with a girl as he did playing that ivory-colored guitar. He was lying down next to her, the crook of his elbow under her neck, before his forehead creased.
“I’m sobering up quick,” he said, “but for real, I’m probably still drunk.”
“I want to be drunk too,” Greer said, taking hold of his jacket zipper and pulling him, black leather, black boots, black jeans, black shirt, black beard, all the way on top of her, blocking out everything.
Oh, Jubilee
Five days after the dead began to feast, Karl Nishimura believed everyone on the ship’s island had taken on Their appetites. The food left was deplorable. The peanuts kept coming, fewer each so-called meal, handfuls of dust Nishimura lapped from his palm only to watch it fall from a tongue no longer producing saliva. Water rations had been reduced to sparse splashes from a salt-encrusted ladle. He and the men on the meteorological level might die first, but the men above them would follow.
So it did not surprise Nishimura when Tommy Henstrom and a bodyguard hoisted him from his chalk-outline bed and dragged him onto the catwalk and to the ladder. The sun was the point of a galaxy-sized knife, but his body craved vitamin D like it did water, and he opened his eyes and palms to it. Renewed, those palms had enough strength to grip the ladder rails, and with Henstrom gesturing from above and a pistol barrel nudging him from below, Nishimura made it up the next four levels. It felt like paddling into the cotton-white clouds.
Pri-Fly had been scrubbed clean of the blood of Clay Szulczewski, Willis Clyde-Martell, and Jacobo Leatherdale. Nishimura was led into the cabin and held upright. Father Bill sat in Szulczewski’s padded chair, noticeably gaunt but possessed of the smooth movements of the fully watered. His injured ear had been tidily bandaged and his CVN-68X CHAPLAIN turtleneck replaced by a crisp Hawaiian shirt decorated with parrots and palm fronds. Henstrom wore one too, pink flamingos on a beach. The shirts must have belonged to Szulczewski and Clyde-Martell, cheap Oahu mementos now the regalia of the ruling class.
Father Bill gestured for Nishimura to sit in Clyde-Martell’s chair, though he looked bewildered, as if wondering why this grubby Japanese American was in front of him.
“This is Helmsman Nishimura.” Henstrom said it as if speaking to a hard-of-hearing senior, “He’s going to help with the missions.”
Father Bill smiled.
“How wonderful. Missionary work is the Catholic Church’s best tradition.”
“I don’t…” Nishimura’s throat was a pinhole, “Water. Please.”
“Water is one of the problems,” Father Bill agreed. “I am inclined to let the Lord’s will be done. If we are meant to drink, I said, the heavens will open up. But Tommy is an advocate for men like you, a true apostle. He has feet you may feel moved to wash one day.”
Henstrom’s teeth appeared, one by one, as a grin slit his face. Nishimura wanted to rip his lips off, slake his thirst with the jetting blood.
“Tommy reminded me that a church will fall apart if built on faith alone,” the priest said. “What did you say, Tommy? Something about rust.”
/> “Corrosion, Father,” Henstrom said, “From salt water.”
“Let us not forget corrosion of the soul,” the priest added. “If it sits still too long, it too is subject to nature’s abrading aspects. This is why the missions are important. It is the duty of those chosen by God, as we in this tower have been chosen, to leave our safe places and carry the good news across all borders, regardless of danger. And our missions will be especially dangerous, Do you know why, Helmsman?”
“Water,” Nishimura said, “Please.”
Henstrom frowned as if taxed to his limit by a doddery grandpa and a bitchy child. He swiped a metal thermos from a counter. It made a glunk: there was enough liquid inside to slosh, Beads of condensation squiggled down the metal: like Jesus multiplying fish and bread, this water begat water. Nishimura gasped, Perhaps Pri-Fly was heaven, for this was a heavenly object. He was ready to lick it, if only his tongue could reach.
“In human history, it has always been we Christians who brought forth the story of the resurrection and the everlasting life,” Father Bill said. “The demons, however, are telling the same story, only from the other side! They have been missioning to us the only way They know how. Through Their hands and Their teeth.”
Nishimura watched individual water droplets, fat as sweet syrup, slip off the bottom of the thermos and vanish onto the floor. He sobbed once, picturing fine white cracks breaking across his red throat. He turned a pleading face to Father Bill, who was lost in reverie.
“The difficulty of the task is irrelevant, Missionaries die. They always have. That’s glory. Tommy tells me you, Helmsman, are the right person to lead my Missionaries. You will leave the safety of our tower and trade news of our brotherhood and love for the food and water we require. You are, as I’ve been told, a willing messenger of Christ?”
Nishimura dragged his arid eyeballs back to the thermos, Henstrom’s look was as sharp as Father Bill’s was hazy, Nishimura tried to think it through. Henstrom did not believe in the priest’s drivel. What he believed in was power, and he had it, right there, cool and perspiring in his hand. The prize for agreeing to Father Bill’s deranged proposal was not the priest’s blessed approval. It was water, pure and simple.
“Yes,” Nishimura said. “Yes, yes.”
Henstrom held out the thermos, Nishimura went for it with digits that had lost all dexterity. His stupid left hand punched it, bashing it from Henstrom’s grip, and for a second, it was airborne, a frond of water extending from the spout, about to be lost. But his right hand caught it, and then he was drinking, not a tepid lick from a ladle but a whole mouthful, then another, soaking his tongue, sponging his throat. It was as sweet and effervescent as iced cola, and he felt, with each gulp, the waning of his worst symptoms. The headache that drubbed like ocean waves. The purple fingernails. The inability to pee. The exhaustion, the confusion. Life returned.
Father Bill clapped softly. In his parrot shirt, he looked as if he were applauding his grandchildren’s cavorting.
“Oh, jubilee. One personal favor, if I may. There are no women on our tower, as you know. That is most unfortunate; they should share in our ascendance. If you find women down below, you will tell me, won’t you? You will bring them up here, even if it takes a little bit of force? There is one woman in particular I would appreciate seeing again.”
Nishimura nodded once. Father Bill beamed.
“Jubilee, jubilee, Now, Tommy, did you turn down my bed? I’m afraid my ear is bothering me.”
Henstrom gritted his teeth and helped Father Bill from the air boss chair into the rear chamber, where presumably a cot had been arranged. The bodyguard remained, but Nishimura didn’t care. He had the thermos turned over his mouth and did not plan to stop shaking it until he’d released every drop. Henstrom returned, gestured the guard to give them privacy, and leaned against the window, his arms crossed over his pink-and-purple shirt. Nishimura gasped for air, his stomach bloated with water, and stared back.
“He’s crazy,” Nishimura said.
“Don’t say that,” Henstrom said, “Don’t you ever say that.”
“One crazy priest isn’t the problem, It’s the rest of you letting it happen. Koppenborg walks unharmed across the flattop, by luck. By luck. That’s all you need to lose your minds? You are navy men.”
“The Long Walk was a holy event. I’m sad for you if you can’t see it.”
“You’re only standing behind him because otherwise no one will listen to you. No one ever listened to you.”
“You never listened to me.”
“I listen to sailors who deserve it.”
“Well, who deserves it now, huh? Who made all the right choices this time? That’s what this is about, We’ve got to get fresh water production going again. I know that. We have to make sure engines are being cooled.”
“So you admit it. These missions have nothing to do with God or demons. They’re for repairs. They’re for food and water.”
“What I said about corrosion is true, you know. You never gave me any credit.”
“Henstrom. You’re talking about rust. Men are dying.”
“And we’re addressing that. That’s why you’re going on the mission.”
“We don’t need a mission. All that stupid padre has to do is go full speed ahead to California!”
“You’re the one who didn’t want to go to San Diego.”
“I thought it was our boat that was infectious! I thought we’d be spreading it!”
“We’re better off out here,” Henstrom said.
“You’re better off out here, That’s your delusion, anyway.”
Henstrom crossed his arms. “You know the ship better than anyone. You’ll get extra rations. Extra water, You, and a few others, for two days, until you’re stronger, Then you go down. Father Bill’s got believers in lots of critical areas belowdecks. We need to make sure they have food. We need to station a couple men in the power plant. The reactor officer isn’t responding. I don’t know what happens if the reactors get overrun by demons.”
“Won’t happen,” Nishimura said, “Because demons don’t exist.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It so happens I do know what happens if the reactors get overrun. We’ll stop depleting uranium. The first thing we’ll lose is the turbine generators. The boat won’t move after that, not even if we want it to. Second thing is electrical. We lose the grid, all grids. Third is plain old hot water. Now it’s getting fun. Now we’re on our way to scurvy and starvation. Of course, we won’t make it that far if the cores aren’t cooled. We’ve got two Westinghouse A4W nuclear reactors down there. What do you think could happen?”
Shushing like water along the hull, Father Bill was singing himself to sleep.
“Sinners my gracious Lord receives / Harlots, and publicans, and thieves…”
“You know your stuff, Saint Karl,” Henstrom said. “That’s why you’re leading the mission.”
“Yes, me and ‘a few others.’ I’d need fifty others. If we had marines left, maybe we’d have a chance, if you hadn’t—”
“The marines left on amphibious ships. I wasn’t the only one who saw that!”
“Drunkards, and all the hellish crew, / I have a message now to you…”
“Only after your men shot at them, O-3!”
“I think you’d better call me sir.”
“Come, and partake the gospel-feast, / Be sav’d from sin, in Jesus rest…”
“I told you, O-3, you’ll get my respect—”
Henstrom surged forward, his face red, his hands in fists. “I’m sir now! I’m sir!”
“O taste the goodness of our God, / And eat his flesh, and drink his blood.”
“—when you deserve it, O-3, and not a second—”
Nishimura’s voice, pushed too hard after days of silence and desert dryness, splintered, His throat sizzled with bile and blood. As he gagged and coughed, Father Bill’s clean Pri-Fly floor splotched red, and it all rushed back, Szulczewski�
�s body axed into morsels, Clyde-Martell’s face replaced by a smoking hole. That was the way things were going to go aboard Olympia, no matter how he fought. Blood from the good, the bad, and the ones of indeterminate nature, a flood of it, until the boat was a crimson craft on a deep red sea.
The Shotgun Marriage
Luis wasn’t getting better. A headache he couldn’t shake. A sore throat. A fluctuating fever. Cold, he was always cold. As long as Charlie had known Luis, he’d been a complainer. Now he didn’t complain, he just suffered. When he felt well enough, he’d huddle with her on the sofa and make grim jokes to accompany Chuck Corso’s updates. But every day, he spent more time in the upstairs bedroom, sweating beneath covers, not complaining at all.
Having a guy you’re in love with down with a cold was not the worst thing in the world; any girl could tell you that. You got to ply them with food and drink and watch your simplest efforts bring them great joy. Sick care was love care, even if it felt a little cheap, and she could see her love reflected in Luis’s eyes. Weaker, but then again, his love for her had always been weaker than hers for him. Some truths you had to live with.
It was not a cold, of course. Sarcophage, ghoul, whatever you wanted to call it, some of it had gotten into his blood, and every single day—if not every five minutes—she thought of those crucial seconds during which she’d hesitated to slice off his thumb. Sometimes she cussed herself out so badly she had to slip into the pantry so Luis wouldn’t overhear: Stupid goddamn fucking slow-ass scaredy-cat cunt. She’d spent hundreds of hours trusting her boss about where and when to cut, and the one time it had really mattered, she’d waffled.
She’d have given anything to have the old Luis Acocella back, trigger-witted, spry as a grasshopper, unaware of how sexy he was when he looked at a corpse and knew all its secrets in seconds. A low-power Luis Acocella still wasn’t half-bad, and she found her desire unbearable. She’d wanted him for so long, and not just in an after-hours autopsy suite. She’d wanted him in a home like this.
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