“It cuts both ways.”
“Life’s a bitch, is that it? All right, stand by; I’m giving the order to surface. Here’s how it’s going to work: Upon visual confirmation of our positions, we will each dispatch a runabout with our executive officers for debriefing. If everything you say checks out, we will then heave to and all have a big powwow together. If not, or you do anything that makes me or my crew nervous, you will be treated as a menace and destroyed. Are these conditions acceptable?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s proceed.”
The formalities were discharged without incident, and the captains arranged to meet over a celebratory meal in the larger submarine-ours.
Captain Parminter’s entourage came with good appetites; they had heard how well their XO was treated during his visit. He had made a full report of the mysterious boat, mentioning that it had undergone extensive modifications at the hands of its largely civilian crew, many of them teenagers, but the Virginia’s people still weren’t prepared for what they saw when they stepped aboard the USS No-Name.
“Oh my God,” said Parminter, shaking his head.
The exterior of the ship, its matte black anechoic skin, was spray painted with colorful graffiti, most conspicuously a garish pirate emblem high up on the fairwater: a grinning skull with two crossed hammers. It looked like a giant tattoo.
Belowdecks, things only got worse. “What is this,” Parminter muttered, “The Fun House?” He wasn’t exaggerating; the boat was dark and cold, its steel corridors rotten with thick formations of an unusual substance, some sort of blue lichen or moss that was causing all the paint to peel.
“Why?” Coombs asked. “Having fun?”
“What is this stuff?”
“Oh, that? That’s… mildew.”
“Mildew?” Parminter would clearly have to have a word with his XO for not including this in his report. He had never seen anything like it in his life. The stuff was velvety to the touch, slightly luminous in the shadows. It smelled strongly of iodine. “My God. Are you serious?” Every metal surface bulged with this organic, fungal padding, turning linear corridors into leviathan guts. The mechanical made flesh.
But his men were starving, and what they saw next shocked them out of their dismay.
The crew’s mess had been cleared except for one table. The room was dim, lit by a single lamp, but the men could see a gorgeous table set with a blue linen tablecloth, cloth napkins, expensive silverware, and fine china decorated with the boat’s crest.
None of that meant anything to them; what they cared about was the food.
It looked like a fancy luau, a regular Thanksgiving feast, with enormous gourds serving as tureens, and a whole roast pig garnished with unusually large, glistening vegetables and fruit. In the center was a silver dome, and next to it a platter holding a spectacular arrangement of glossy red steamed crabs layered on a bed of lacy black seaweed. Smaller side platters were filled with mountains of gooseneck barnacles, mussels, oysters, and other hull-dwelling shellfish. There were peculiar sausages and cheeses and a wicker basket piled high with warm, crusty loaves of bread. To accompany the food was a case of fine French champagne-Bollinger-perhaps the last ever to be drunk.
Once the men had all taken their places and the champagne had been poured, Coombs raised a glass: “To the journey.”
“To the journey,” the guests agreed, eyes fixed on the food. They were dizzy from hunger and lack of oxygen.
“Well, dig in.”
The men reached for the feast… and the feast reached for them. Crabs became grasping, clawed hands; the roast pig reared up and became a headless human torso, innards flailing; veggies turned to writhing gobbets of flesh; loaves to severed limbs. As the visitors recoiled in panic, they realized they were anchored to their seats by vines of sticky living sinew. They shouted, trying to break free, but the undead tissue was immovable, tough as old tree roots. It covered the mouths of all but Parminter, silencing their screams.
I entered the room, followed by little Bobby Rubio and a few other boys.
“What do you think you’re doing?” cried Parminter.
“Saving you, sir,” I said.
“What kind of damn freak show is this? Why are you doing this to us?”
“Because we must,” I said. “Because we’re the only ones who can.”
“What the hell are you?”
“Friends.”
“Friends my ass. You’re using people as fucking live bait!” To Coombs he said, “I see how it is, Harvey: They let you live so you can help them hunt down every last straggler. You rotten bastard, you’re a traitor to the human race. And what happens when we’re all gone? Have you thought of that? Are they going to just let you sail around the world like this forever? No-then it’ll be your turn.”
Coombs said, “I’ve already been converted.”
“You’re not a Xombie! You’re still human!”
“Things are not as black and white as you think. Some of us have found it’s better to be… flexible.”
I nudged Bobby forward, since he looked the least threatening of any of us. A perfectly ordinary little kid.
“Show ’em,” I whispered.
Bobby held up his right hand to make a fist. With a crackling sound, the fingers merged together, forming a smooth ball.
“Holy shit!” Parminter said.
The ball now began to expand, swelling larger and larger, pulsating like bubbling porridge. While this was happening, Bobby’s face suddenly crumpled inward, withering like a prune, as if his entire head was being sucked into his neck. A moment later, the swollen ball of his hand unfurled into a thing very much like a face. It quickly became Bobby’s face-Bobby’s whole head. The shrunken bulb that had been his head now divided into five lobes and blossomed into a perfect human hand atop his neck. It waggled its fingers.
I said, “You see?”
Parminter threw up. Eyes full of horror and rage, he turned to Coombs. “How can you let them do this to you? To the human race? They’re monsters! You’re the captain of a U.S. Navy vessel, for Christ’s sake!”
“I’m not the captain,” Coombs said.
“What? Then who is?”
“Fred Cowper.”
I gave a silent command to the man sitting beside Parminter, Lieutenant Dan Robles. Robles reached across the table to the covered dish in its center, the piece de resistance. With a reproachful look at me, he lifted its bell.
There was a severed head underneath-a bald blue head that was no longer remotely human but which had once belonged to Captain Fred Cowper, retired. Parminter knew Cowper well; he had trained under him and had the highest regard for the man. Cowper had been an old-school submariner from the early days of the nuclear Navy. The technocrats hated him, but to Parminter he was the real thing, a no-bullshit maverick-the kind of guy you could bet your life on in a tight spot, whatever the cost to the Navy. Or to himself.
Well, it had cost Fred everything this time-everything but his head. But that head was alive, an independent entity with multiple little legs, its huge black eyeballs fixed on Parminter.
“Hiya, Arnie,” it croaked.
“That’s not Cowper!” Parminter objected. “You’re not Fred Cowper, you fucking ghoul!”
“I yam what I yam,” said Cowper’s head.
“You think you’re going to get away with this? If my men don’t hear from me in the next ten minutes, they will blow you out of the water.”
I said, “In ten minutes, you’ll understand.”
“Understand what? What the fuck am I going to understand? That a bunch of twisted monstrosities have taken over a submarine? That they’ve learned to play human?”
Cowper’s head opened its jagged-toothed mouth and guffawed.
A bit miffed, I said, “No… that we are the last hope of Mankind.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Life on Earth is going to be wiped out. The only thing that may survive is our kind.”
“Malarkey!” Cowper shouted.
Parminter asked me, “How do you know that?”