“At last the order was given to retreat. Crazed men piled back into overcrowded truck cabs with their crazed fellows, pursued by waves of squirming chum. Guns blasted indiscriminately at the enveloping mass as the column surged forward and crashed together, panicked gunners shooting each other, and the heavier vehicles pushing lighter ones out of the way or just driving over them. Acetylene tanks exploded, setting off boxes of shells, which ignited leaking fuel-a chain of fiery explosions ripped through the column. Two tracked vehicles-an Abrams tank and a Bradley Fighting Vehicle-broke through and hurtled up the street, wreathed in mantles of flame and frying meat.
“Several blocks up, Westminster ended at a T-intersection on Empire Street, where there was an Irish pub and a National Guard recruiting office. The Abrams was there first, but did not stop, did not turn, did not even slow down, but just blindly rammed the brick face of the federal building, smashing through the support columns, and the Bradley followed it right in, causing the whole structure to avalanche down on them both. The last sound was the popping of ammo in the fires… with perhaps a few conclusive pistol shots mixed in.
“That was a turning point in human history-the first battle of meat versus machines, where the point went to the meat.
“The next battle was very different. The men had learned their lesson. It began two weeks later, and was initiated by a single unarmed truck: an ice-cream truck. Like any ice-cream truck, it had a loudspeaker on top, blasting the familiar tinkly version of ‘When the Saints Go Marching In.’ Unlike an ordinary Mister Softee wagon, this one was pulling a flatbed trailer with a large chain-link cage on it, a portable dog kennel. The cage did not contain dogs, however, but human beings-specifically, women. Innocent women incarcerated for the threat posed by their sex. They appeared to be praying.
“The reason for their prayers soon became apparent. Following close behind the truck was an enormous mass of running Xombies. It looked like a naked, blue Boston Marathon.
“Approaching the site of the previous battle, the truck turned off the music and slowed down, allowing a man in back to release the trailer hitch. The cage came free, rolling to a stop as the truck peeled away.
“Now the trapped women could only wait as the following horde caught up with them: Xombies tall and short, fat and thin, young and old. Xombies of all kinds except for one specific group: the initial women carriers of Agent X, the Maenads, who had gone rogue spontaneously, then spread the disease to everyone they could catch… and kiss. Once again, these less-impulsive multitudes were holding back, watching from the shadows.
“Unlike them, I could not stand to watch as the cage was surrounded. The worst weren’t even the running dead but the crawling ones-the blasted remnants left over from the earlier fight, whose bodies had half frozen and healed together in strange, awful configurations and now came scuttling out of burnt storefronts like a freak invasion.
“In seconds, the kennel was an ovum buried under a thousand competing sperm. The victims could be heard screaming as the cage crumpled… and then all vanished in a blinding flash.
“It was fire. White-hot fire as bright as the sun. Brilliant sparks rained down like a shower of stars, burning through anything they touched, incinerating skin and hair and turning Xombies into roamin’ candles, great balls of fire, their bodies consumed even from within by tumors of malignant flame. Inhuman torches fled the bonfire, shedding layers of flesh like dead leaves until there was nothing left to combust, and they toppled into paper-doll silhouettes of molten slag.
“Down at the river, there were more fireworks. Floating braziers which had once been piled with firewood for the pleasure of strolling tourists were now loaded with living, praying females, attracting an audience of avid blue spectators down the riverbanks and into the knee-deep scum, where there was no escape from the incendiary barrage that was loosed upon them, a glowing hailstorm that obliterated anything and everything in that blazing, boiling trench.
“On the opposite end of town, hung above the street, a pair of giant masks forged out of steel grating-playhouse faces of comedy and tragedy-were likewise packed with live girls and allowed to gather a tremendous cult before a tanker truck on the rooftop was detonated, showering jellied fire on the whole congregation.
“Such fire traps had been set in cities all over America, all over the world, and in one day they immolated millions of Xombies, perhaps tens of millions… plus thousands of uninfected women.
“Providence burned, or parts of it. It’s an old city, built in the days of brick and stone, and its walls are resistant to fire. Many newer buildings disappeared, in some areas whole blocks, but after a few days of heavy sleet and snow, the inferno sputtered out. And then it was over. Whatever tarlike deposits remained soon froze solid and were covered with a thick crust of ice. Providence was purified.
“That was when the men emerged, the instigators of the holocaust. They were a peculiar confederacy of men, whose chief point in common was that they had all survived the plague because of their isolation from women and who now believed that this was nothing less than divine providence: Agent X was God’s punishment for original sin. Women were the enemy, instruments of Satan, and it was only right and proper to burn them in order to save their immortal souls. This was a very timely gospel, and many desperate people joined the church, including not a few women.”
Todd asked, “Why are you telling us all this?”
“Because these people are still around, even after all these months. I drove them out of Providence, sent them fleeing into the wilderness, but they are coming back. In fact, they are experiencing a bit of a renaissance these days, spreading their gospel far and wide like some kind of traveling revival show. Revival in the literal sense-they are restoring Xombies to mortal life.”
“Restoring Xombies! You mean curing them?”
“Yes, but not just any Xombies. They are mainly baptizing Xombie Moguls-elderly tycoons who had the foresight to embalm themselves in Agent X prior to the plague. Restored to life, these men still have tremendous resources at their command, and they no longer need guns, they don’t need fences, and they don’t need to wrap themselves in dead meat to stay alive. But they do need women-immune women-in order to retain their humanity… and to procreate. Do you understand what that means?”
“They’re shit out of luck?”
“It means they are a threat to the survival of our species. They survived the plague, but they can’t survive Enceladus. They may be immune to Agent X, but they are perfectly vulnerable to ordinary injury and death, and every day the number of new Immunes increases. Xombies will not touch them, nor can I.”
Todd said, “Maybe you should try explaining all this to them.”
“Oh, I have. But after how I terrorized them and chased them out of town, they are not conducive to helpful hints. In fact, they think I’m the Devil and have come back to slay me. No, I cannot help them. But maybe someone else can.”
Suddenly Todd and Ray felt their suits stiffen, seams popping, and abruptly the flesh capsules of their helmets burst open like giant milkweed pods, revealing their startled, sweaty faces, then split downward and peeled off their bodies as though sheared away by invisible blades. The liberated meat jerked violently loose from under their seated butts and scuttled away in a blur of peculiar, flapping locomotion.
Freed from the restraining flesh, the two boys cried out in relief and immediately tore the wire cages off their heads so they could rub their filth-encrusted faces. Ray checked his gunshot wound and found that it was almost healed, a healthy pink dimple in his side. Then he froze.