“Don’t you fuckin’ dare go anywhere,” Ray said.
“I have to! I have to get Darryl!”
“Everybody calm down,” Apollo commanded. “Let’s don’t get ahead of ourselves.”
Modulating his voice, Ray said, “Brenda, Darryl would want you to be safe, wouldn’t he? It doesn’t do him any good to have you rush out there and get yourself killed.”
“It’s staying here in this zoo that’s going to get us all killed! We need to get out of here!”
Apollo said, “No, this is the safest place to be until help arrives. This building is like a bank vault, and we have everything we need for now. Whatever’s happening out there will probably take care of itself by morning. We just have to sit tight.”
They sat… and listened.
All night long, they heard sounds of war: glass breaking, shooting, screams, car alarms, explosions. They smelled gun smoke, burnt rubber, burning gasoline, and burning flesh. TV and radio provided only loose scraps of bad news, worse news, and finally no news. All they had to do was look out the window to see the world coming apart at the seams: towers of smoke and raging fires all over the city.
“Oh my God,” Brenda said, shutting the curtains against the horror. “Oh my God, there’s no chance. There’s just no chance. What are we going to do?”
“Whatever we have to,” said Apollo. “For now, all we can do is wait.”
“Wait for what? For those things to crawl in here and get us in our sleep?”
“No. They can’t get in here. This building is hermetically sealed. It’s allergy-proof, hurricane-proof, and crime-proof. It’s designed for paranoid corporate hotshots like your uncle. Trust me, the security is total. I helped set it up.”
By dawn, things went quiet. Except for an occasional spasm of violence, the odd scream or shooting, there was very little that broke the peace for the next few days. But there was no escape either-blue people were everywhere.
“We have to get out of here,” Brenda wearily persisted.
Ray wasn’t ready to quit. After the initial shock had passed, he found a deep reserve of stone-cold determination. He hadn’t survived this long just to give in to the blues.
Apollo said, “There’s food for another week, maybe two if we ration it out. That’s enough time for this whole thing to blow over. There must be people in charge who are working on this problem. We just have to give them time to do it.”
“Don’t count on it,” Brenda said.
They tried contacting other people in the building, buzzing all the units from the lobby, but either there was no one home or no one wanted company. It was a very select membership, Moguls Only: politicians, religious leaders, business magnates, all of them living incognito, privacy being one of the building’s premium selling points. Odd that they would have all left town at once. But it was just as welclass="underline" Ray had nothing to offer them but tea and sympathy-and the tea was running low.
The cavalry finally arrived.
It started with a promising sound: the tinkling of an ice-cream truck. How wonderful it was to hear such familiar, friendly music-it sounded like summer. Looking down from the balcony, they watched as the truck passed directly below, towing a trailer full of caged women.
“What the hell is that?” Apollo asked.
From what Ray could see, the women were clearly not Xombies. If it was true that the plague mainly struck women, as the Emergency Broadcast had implied, then why were these not infected? Perhaps they were being kept in the cage for their own safety… although it certainly didn’t look like that. It looked more like some kind of twisted freak show with Xombies as the prime audience.
As the truck reached the far end of the street, it released the trailer and sped away. Brenda and Apollo argued about what to do, but there was really nothing to be done because the Xombies were there, swarming over the cage like maggots. Screaming, Brenda covered her ears and fled from the window, and Apollo dragged Ray away as well, so they all missed the brilliant explosion that followed.
There was nothing left to console them. It was all too obvious what was going on and what that meant for the future of the human race. No women, no babies, in which case this really was the end of everything.
When the fires died down, the loudspeakers started up:
“THIS IS A MESSAGE TO ALL LOYAL AMERICANS: YOU ARE CALLED UPON TO JOIN IN THE FIGHT AGAINST EVIL. JOIN OUR VICTORIOUS CAMPAIGN, AND HELP BANISH THE SCOURGE OF AGENT X. HAVE NO FEAR-THE HELLIONS ARE ON THE RUN. COME FORTH AND STAND WITH US. WE ARE YOUR FRIENDS, AND WE BRING GOOD NEWS. THE WORST IS OVER. SHARE OUR FOOD, MEDICINE, FELLOWSHIP, AND SAFE REFUGE. COME FORTH, COME FORTH, ALL YE FAITHFUL. THE HOLY AVENGERS OF ADAM WANT YOU.”
“What the hell’s the Avengers of Adam?” asked Brenda.
“Sounds like a comic book,” said Ray.
The crusaders were systematically searching the city and arresting any survivors. What was remarkable was the sudden absence of Xombies; the city was temporarily free of ghouls. And there were surprisingly many human holdouts, quick-thinking folks who had hidden in attics, basements, and bomb shelters-mostly men, but also a few women. With brusque efficiency, the soldiers bagged their captives and drove them away, sealing off each building as it was cleared. There was not much resistance. Brenda had no interest in joining those refugees, and Ray and Apollo were in full agreement with her.
Day after day, hour after hour, they kept waiting for help to arrive, some legitimate entity of the U.S. government, like the National Guard, or perhaps the Red Cross. The Boy Scouts of America-anything. Panic set in as it became clear that nothing was going to happen in time to save them: The Holy Avengers of Adam were starting on their block. Very soon, the lobby’s heavy security doors would be broken down, the building would be invaded, and they would be dragged outside to join the prisoners on those trucks… bound for whatever fate the HAA had in store.
“We have to get you out of here,” Apollo said at last.
“Thank God,” Brenda said. “I’m about ready to join the Xombies at this point.”
“That’s the trouble-there’s no place to go. Even if we got past those whack jobs, we’d just be running right smack into an even bigger problem. I’m sure the countryside is still crawling.”
“Out of the frying pan and into the fire,” commented Ray, dishing out scrambled eggs.
“Maybe not,” Apollo said. “Not if we can get to Sandoval’s defense plant like we were originally supposed to.”
“A little late for that, don’t you think? It’s way down in South County, and the roads will be even more impassable than they were before. Not to mention, the place has probably been overrun.”
“I doubt it. The whole plant can be closed off like a fortress in the event of emergency. These guys have specific security requirements just in case of attacks by terrorist hit squads, chemical attacks, even nuclear war. I’m beginning to think it was no accident that Sandoval wanted you there when he did.”
“What are you saying? That he had advance warning of the plague? If he knew about it, why wouldn’t he tell us? I mean, I sure as hell wouldn’t have been late!”
“Maybe he didn’t know for sure. Maybe he called in all the families just in case.”
Ray and Brenda processed this, being familiar with the eccentricities of their “Uncle Jim.” He was not their real uncle but a very wealthy older man who had taken them in when Brenda was a teenager stuck raising her baby brother because their mother had flown the coop. He gave them a place to live and a generous allowance, but beyond that, they rarely saw him, which was perhaps the biggest gift of all. He expected nothing, he asked for nothing… until the day he asked them to show up at the plant. He even sent a car.
Shit. There was a long pause as minds hardened against hope tried to process this remote possibility. Then Brenda said, “All right. Sure. Yes. Let’s go!”