Suddenly a voice yelled, “Come on!” and a hand jerked Ray to his feet. It was Todd. He ran for the main gate, pulling Ray with him. There was an EMT vehicle there, a gleaming white ambulance with Sandoval at the wheel. He was holding a laser pointer.
“Wait!” Ray cried. “I have to get Ashleigh!”
“You can’t!”
“Yes!” Ray yanked free and ran to Ashleigh. She was sitting with her head down, hugging her legs. As gently yet urgently as he could, Ray said, “Ashleigh, we’re leaving now. Come on, get up.”
“No,” she said dully.
Suddenly, dozens of men began pouring out of the State House as if roused by an alarm. They rounded the building and took shooting positions on the hillside, preparing to unleash a hail of death upon the field. Ray knew he was as good as dead, trapped in plain sight.
“Ashleigh, please!”
“No! Stop!”
The guards were well drilled, adjusting their gun sights for perfect accuracy. They didn’t want to waste any ammunition-that stuff didn’t grow on trees. As they focused all their attention on their targets, they didn’t notice the earth itself rising around them.
A profusion of weird black spores uncoiled from the mud, spreading and growing, branching outward to form a web of vines that encompassed the entire hill.
For weeks the black sludge had been migrating underground, creeping through soil and pipes and groundwater as it converged on the capitol. This living tar was the pure Maenad essence-the boiled-down lees from a million cooked Xombies. Impervious to fire, these tough, long-chain fibers formed wormlike tendrils, exaggerated fingers tipped with rudimentary sense organs that spread faster than the most pernicious weed.
The snipers were oblivious to the wild activity around their feet. As the strands of dark matter proliferated, they also thickened and toughened, pulsing from within with vital juices. Fat globules formed at their junctions, splitting open like fibrous gourds to release vertical shoots that expanded to resemble hideous giant mushrooms, vaguely humanoid blobs that rose amid the oblivious snipers and jostled them for space.
Some of the men began noticing that they had been infiltrated by a second army, a gray, faceless corps, but before they could speak, the net contracted and engulfed them. Such contractions were happening all over the field, shloop! shloop! shloop! like coral polyps snapping shut, until the siege became evident to all, and wholesale panic broke out.
Scores of men disappeared, and for a moment the State House lawn was a garden of heaving human pumpkins, fast turning from red to blue. Then the vines relaxed, and all the new Xombies emerged.
Witnessing this, Ray said, “Ashleigh, come on.” He tried to bodily lift her, but she was like a rag doll, deadweight. Todd joined him, and together they picked her up. As they carried her toward the truck, Ashleigh suddenly looked at Ray with clear eyes. Her expression was so challenging that he searched for some cause… and instantly found it. She had torn the fail-safe tab from her vest. The detonator cord was in her fist; all she had to do was pull.
The instant she knew he saw, Ashleigh yanked the cord.
Ray dropped her, and screamed, “TODD! RUN!”
Taken by surprise, Todd was slow to react, but this time Ray grabbed him, and together they bolted for the gate. They could hear Ashleigh laughing behind them, her voice cut short as the entire face of the mall turned white and a wave of scorching heat blasted their backs. Blinding fireballs rained down on the truck as Todd and Ray dove for cover inside. Fran and Deena were waiting; they hauled the boys up and slapped out their burning clothes as the truck lurched into motion.
“Woo-hooo!” Sandoval howled. “I loves me some fireworks!”
PART III
Chesapeake
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
POWWOW
Irode in a pickup truck squeezed between Alice Langhorne and Ed Albemarle. Alice was driving. Bobby Rubio sat on my lap. The back of the truck was full of Xombies, crammed together like sharecroppers during the dust bowl. All of us were dirty and torn.
Leaving Loveville behind, we left with it the last of our humanity. All that remained was a vestigial sense of loss, as if we had awakened from a beautiful dream. A dream America that never existed except in childhood fantasies, now blown threadbare. The human world was gone; all that was left was an incantatory kick.
As we passed a weathered flag on a car dealer’s pole, a low, gruff voice started singing, “Oh-h say can you see, by the dawn’s early light… ”
It was Albemarle. Big Ed Albemarle, who had barely begun to speak since his Resurrection as a Xombie, was singing.
For a moment we just listened, the lines of our faces traced in grime. Then, softly, tentatively, we sang along. After a minute or so, the feeling passed, and we stopped.
The submarine was just as we had left it. We took her back to blue water and dove deep, licking our wounds. We stayed down there a long time, months perhaps, wrapped in darkness and silence. Then we heard something that woke us up: the throbbing of human hearts. A reservoir of hot blood suspended in the cold sea.
It was another submarine, passing right over our heads. Not the French boat. This was an American submarine-Virginia-class.
There was no discussion; we had to get them. As the crew set about surfacing the boat, the senior officers dressed in the most official-looking costumes they could find. Donning his never-worn admiral regalia, Coombs went to the bridge and turned on the ULF secure channeclass="underline"
“Attention, Virginia: This is a message for Commander Arnold Parminter, from Admiral Harvey Coombs. We are at the rendezvous point, awaiting contact.”
There was no reply. Coombs was reluctant to repeat the message, not wanting to raise undue suspicion. It was a risk to broadcast his position at all, which in ordinary circumstances would have been a serious breach of operational security-just as answering his message would be. Submariners were trained to be cautious; they didn’t call it the Silent Service for nothing. But circumstances had changed-times were desperate, human voices scarce. One might reasonably expect a slight relaxation of military formality.
Finally, a wary voice cut through the static: “Sorry, Admiral, we’re having a bit of a debate here about protocol. Please identify your boat again?”
“My boat has no official identity because it was decommissioned and secretly refitted for a classified operation known as SPAM-Sensitive Personnel and Materials. The SPAM mission no longer exists, but we are still custodians of the cargo, which includes several hundred tons of food and other basic provisions.”
“And why are you sharing this information with us?”
“You’re Americans. You and your vessel are a vital strategic resource. It’s our duty to assist you in any way we can.”
“What is it you want from us?”
“Nothing at all, other than whatever information you can provide us in locating other survivors like yourselves, either military or civilian. Anyone we can help, or who can help us. We are very much in need of a submarine port facility where we can overhaul our vessel.”
“Join the club. From our experience, all shore facilities are… unsafe.”
“Then we need to talk about that.”
There was a pause, and Phil Tran whispered, “They’ve locked torpedoes on our radio signal.”
Coombs said, “Be aware that if you fire on us, we will fire back. We have torpedoes loaded and preset. But we didn’t come here to fight; we would rather join forces with you.”
“Sounds like you may need us more than we need you.”
“What have you got to lose?”
“Our starry-eyed optimism? Cut the shit, man. We heard the Mogul Cooperative was out of business.”
“It is. We are not MoCo.”
“And we just have to take your word on that.”