“What makes you think I can help you… or you me?”
“You’re a scientist! You’re famous! You invented Agent X!”
“I had nothing to do with those ‘suits’-that’s somebody else’s workmanship. Check the deli. I hope you got a money-back guarantee.”
“They’re not ours! We only stole them so we could get away!”
“Hoist by your own petard, eh?”
“You have to help us, please.”
“Well, let me think about it. Sit down, and I’ll tell you a story. Did you know we’re standing on the site of a battle? Before the ants, I mean. This was the War between the Black and the Blue.”
“Come on, man!” In desperation, Todd said, “Help us or we’ll kill you.”
“That would be a neat trick,” Miska said. “Come now-sit, sit.”
The boys suddenly jerked into motion like meat puppets, their bodies wrenched against their will as the flesh armor moved them. Insanely strong and none too gentle, it forced them to plop down cross-legged across from Miska.
“What the fuck, man!” Todd cried, in pain. He felt like he had been wrung out like a wet sponge.
Weeping, Ray groaned, “Awesome.”
“Sorry,” Miska said, sitting down himself. “I’m still getting the hang of it.”
“What is this, man? What the hell are you doing to us?”
“That flesh you’re wearing answers to me. Isn’t that something? I originally developed the technology to control prosthetic implants. Every Maenad morphocyte is an independent nanotransceiver, tuned to an electrode array in my cerebral cortex. It triggers a cellular rather than a neuromuscular response, which allows a rather extraordinary degree of control. It’s just a matter of mastering the complexity-learning to ride a bike. Or a million bikes. The cells themselves amplify and relay the signal, promulgating in iron-rich hemoglobin and even the Earth itself to form a vast, wireless data array-a true cellular network. What I call my Billion-Fingered Fist.”
Mind reeling, Todd asked, “Are you saying you can control the Xombies?”
“Yes.”
“You fuck! You made them kill our friends and families, you motherfucker! You killed everybody!”
“I know, it sounds pretty bad when you put it that way. I suppose that explains why folks are so mad at me.”
“Fuck you! You might as well kill us, too, you asshole!”
“Who said anything about killing anyone? I never killed anyone. How do these things get started? No one has been killed. Do you understand? Literally, no one who has been inoculated with Agent X has died.”
“No, they’ve just become Xombies, which is worse!”
“Worse than death? I think you would have to consult them about that. They are quite content, believe me.”
“But they’re not even human! They’re monsters!”
“Monsters? Human beings are monsters. Did you ever watch MTV? Unlike Will Rogers, I never met a man I liked very much, which is why it is so ironic that I should be the one to save the human race from annihilation when the end comes.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Oh yes-haven’t you heard? The end is coming. From up there. The end of life on Earth: every bird and bee and monarch butterfly blown to smithereens, not with a whimper but with a bang. The only survivors will be deep-sea tube worms and some hardy bacteria… and perhaps my Xombies.”
Ray said, “You mean that Big Enchilada thing the Reapers talked about?”
The blue man looked at him, then burst into laughter. “Big Enchilada? Really? That’s what they’re calling it? No ‘Hammer of God’ or ‘Shiva the Destroyer.’ Big Enchilada, wow.” Sobering up, he said, “The word is ‘Enceladus.’ Let’s call it a Trojan horse, which will unleash an enemy of unknown proportions or intentions. All I know is that they aimed for us. They are coming, and we must be prepared to stop them.”
“Them who? Aliens or something?”
“Or something.”
“Stop them how?”
“With my fist. Quiet now, boys, and let me tell you the story of the Sadie Hawkins Day Massacre.”
Uri Miska closed his eyes as if summoning unseen forces, then began to speak:
“Imagine a line of Humvees with roof-mounted fifty-caliber machine guns, armored personnel carriers with swiveling weapons turrets, actual tanks, all driving down the streets of Providence. Some of the vehicles were flying American flags or were painted with crosses and Bible quotes. The weather was so warm and sunny it was like summer in January, a regular Fourth of July parade. And like any parade, there were cheering spectators… only in this case the spectators were naked and blue.
“Not too many at first. It was hardly worth the soldiers’ ammunition to shoot them, for they splattered like rotten melons and were squashed to pulp beneath the treads. But from every corner of the city more Xombies were flying in, Xombies by the thousands, their bare feet hardly touching the ground and their blue hands outstretched as if magnetically drawn to all that clanking steel.
“Many of the creatures had been migrating out of the city along the interstate and were now drawn back by this sudden bonanza of red-blooded fighting men, this traveling carnival of destruction. And as the unstoppable naked horde descended upon the immovable mechanized force, the female Xombies-Furies, Harpies, Maenads-winnowed themselves from the main group, holding back in the shadows as the less-circumspect males charged forward.
“These males closed in from all directions, rounding corners and converging ever tighter, the narrow canyons of downtown funneling the crowd into an undifferentiated flowing mass, a tsunami of blue bodies that filled the urban grid like a caustic fluid, scouring everything in its path. Then they were there, pouring onto Westminster from all sides, surrounding the mobile column and falling upon it.
“The turkey shoot commenced. Harrowing spikes of ammunition blazed straight into the densest centers of the mob, rendering them instantly into bursting globes of jelly, with limbs and heads and other large fragments raining down like chaff. Ground-floor windows disintegrated all along the street, stores and restaurants gutted by blizzards of steel. In a matter of minutes, and ten million rounds of ammo, the entire mass of creatures was cut down. The vehicles continued on, having barely paused to engage the enemy. Random burps of gunfire continued as more Xombies were sighted, but the battle was over.”
Miska held up his finger, then slowly wagged it. “Or maybe not. As the column’s wheels drove over its semi-liquefied adversary, movement could be seen in the remains: All those sundered body parts were still very much in the fight.
“Mangled sinew stuck to heavy treads; tendons wound around drive shafts like taffy, gummed up brakes and springs and mounted guns; animated gristle wiggled up under chassis, fouling engine rods and clogging exhaust pipes; bony hands scuttled spiderlike over fuse boxes, pulling wires willy-nilly; veiny cauls of flesh covered windshields and viewports.
“The war machine seized up. Not every vehicle was equally vulnerable, but those that were blocked the rest, so that very soon the whole enterprise ground to a halt.
“Masked men with long-necked acetylene torches got out and played their superhot jets over the carpet of crawling meat, fanning it off vehicles and creating a clean zone for the mechanics to work. The stench of burnt flesh filled the air. At first, the technique seemed to be working: The disarticulated foe pushed back to form a seething dam around the cleared area, but every time the firemen let up for only a second, the line broke down, invaded by slithering masses of viscera. As the gruesome dam grew higher, it became more impossible to police all the sneaking incursions… and the psychological effect of that wall of talking heads and slurping entrails must have been terrible.
“Very soon, the defenses started to break down. Men were beset by slippery fragments worming under their pants and into their orifices. The vehicles were also infested, so that their crews had to turn their attention from the threat outside to more immediate pestilence in the cockpits. It became a farce, every man battling an invisible enemy, ripping at his own clothes like an alcoholic with delirium tremens.