“Hold that thought,” Sandoval said, hurrying out the door.
We followed him down the tunnel to a row of humming tractor-trailers. The people there were too busy to pay any attention to us. They were frantically manning banks of computer workstations and cockpit simulators, from which scores of aerial and surface drones were being remote-controlled. These were the same lethal gadgets that had so recently attacked us… but, of course, we were Xombies then.
There was some kind of major operation going on, all the drones swarming a strange shimmering mass-on the monitors it looked like an iridescent bluish black sea slug, an immense nudibranch covered with glassy tendrils. It was mountainous.
“What is that?” Langhorne asked.
“That’s what I was hoping Lulu could tell us,” said Dr. Stevens. “It came out of the Mons right after she did.”
All I could do was shake my head. As I watched, the thing reared up and projectile-vomited a rope of pale, wormy innards hundreds of feet into the air. The seething mass flew in a high arc, unraveling as it avalanched to the ground, its lashing tendrils seizing any living thing in its path. But it didn’t pull the prey back to its body. Instead, the rear end poured into the front, pulsing forward like a giant maggot. In its wake it left nothing but a trail of scorched earth.
With a grimace, Captain Despineau muttered, “Ecrasez l’infame.”
Stevens said, “It’s been moving in fits and starts, averaging about fifteen miles an hour, and that speed has remained relatively stable even as the thing has grown in bulk. We hoped it would eventually stop moving, but it just keeps crawling along, growing bigger and bigger.”
“How big is it?” I asked.
“We estimate it has grown over ten thousand times its original mass, so it’s gotta be in the millions of tons by now. It’s vacuuming up every bit of organic matter in its path. It keeps collapsing under its own weight, then pulling itself together again-sort of like a volcanic lava dome. We’re expecting it to melt down completely at any time, but if it reaches the open ocean, all bets are off.”
Sandoval asked, “Where is it now?”
“It came south down the Maryland peninsula and crossed the Potomac River at Blossom Point. It then entered Virginia and began veering eastward south of the Rappahannock. It is now approaching the York River at Gloucester Point. That’s right on the lower Chesapeake, and less than forty miles away from us here. Which is why we’re throwing everything we’ve got at it. So far, no good.”
“And you have no idea what it is?” I asked.
Sandoval said, “Oh, we have some idea.” He gestured back in the direction of Miska’s trailer. “This is Miska’s Big Enchilada-the end of the world he was predicting. Except that because it didn’t exist outside of his head, he needed an opportunity to create it… which Lulu generously provided.”
“It’s not like I meant to,” I said.
“No, it was our fault for putting all our eggs in one basket. Miska’s crazy as a damn doodlebug, and this is his ultimate madness unleashed-the finale to Agent X. I don’t know if he’s even consciously controlling it, but I guarantee he is linked to that thing.”
“Then you should be able to kill it by killing him,” I said.
“No, then we’ll lose control of the Xombies. Like it or not, we need him.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
LEVIATHAN
With nothing to do but wait, I found cots for Bobby and myself and slept the sleep of the living. The dead never sleep.
We were awakened some twenty hours later by an alarm in the tunnel. Sitting up on our cots, we rubbed sand from our eyes and tried to figure out what was happening. It was like the scene of a fire: All the tunnel residents were out of their trailers, chattering in anxious groups.
Bobby took my hand. “What’s going on, Lulu?”
“I don’t know.”
In the distance, we could hear beeping as vehicles forced their way through the crowds. As they got nearer, the lane was cleared to make room for them, and in a minute we could see a convoy of electric buses. They were full of people, but as they came abreast of us, they stopped. The doors wheezed open and a man leaned out-Sandoval. I could see Miska sitting in the front seat like a derelict spaceman.
Over a loudspeaker, Sandoval shouted, “All those who depend on Agent X inhibitors are asked to board the buses at once. Thank you.”
“Why?” someone asked.
“It’s a precautionary evacuation, just in the event that we lose power. You’re temporarily being moved to Petropolis. A little vacation in the fresh air.”
Without the least quibble, I jumped up and got on a bus. So did everyone else from the boat, as well as a number of tunnel residents. It just seemed like a good idea; we didn’t question it. If someone had said to me, You are being controlled like a hand puppet, I would have said, No I’m not.
Sandoval escorted us back to the bathyscaphe elevator and loaded us in like cattle. Next thing we knew, we were stepping out into the bright sky of Petropolis. There was something dreamlike about it, going from that tunnel to high above the blue of Chesapeake Bay.
Shading my eyes, I asked Sandoval, “Why exactly are we up here? What’s going on?”
“Ask him,” he said, nodding at Uri Miska. “It was his idea.”
He went to Miska and unclamped the man’s helmet. No one thought to stop him-perhaps we were all dreaming. Or sharing Miska’s dream. In a minute, the blue man was out of his pressure suit and standing completely free, wearing only space boots and long johns.
“That’s better,” Miska said. “Thank you, Jim.”
Pointing at me, Sandoval said, “She wants to know why we’re up here.”
Miska grinned amiably. “Tell her she’s got a ticket to ride.”
I nodded as if that made all the sense in the world.
Miska led us to the west side of the platform, facing the far Virginia shore. There was something going on out there, a disturbance on the horizon like a dark waterspout. Tiny flashes crackled around it, darts of lightning in a bruised sky, and the whole bay was unsettled with heavy surf. Petropolis shook from the blows.
I knew what this was. Wormwood. The World-Devourer; the Big Enchilada. It was coming. It was growing. Soon it would arrive at the mouth of the bay and break through to the open Atlantic. Just an embryo in an amniotic sea, the Earth one big womb. Unchecked, it would take over the surface of the planet-here, there, and everywhere.
A shadow passed over, and I suddenly noticed all the strange black clouds. They were not clouds, I realized, but Xombie airships-Xeppelins.
“Where are they going?” Bobby asked me.
“They’re leaving,” I said.
Bobby started to weep.
Maybe they heard him. One of the weirdly shaped bubbles was closer than the others-clearer, as if I could reach up and touch it. Closer and closer by the minute, swelling to enormous size, it scudded toward us over the bay, trailing black ribbons and casting its shadow on the water.
It hove to Petropolis as though the massive oil rig was its hitching post, then hung its billowing muzzle over us. Sighing hugely, it unfurled veinous blue curtains and carpets of tender flesh. Through that entrance we could see a cathedral of dark glass, and the honeycombed bedchamber that would be our eternal resting place, safe from Earth’s impending ruin.
We just had to be Xombies again.
Miska entered. “All aboard,” he said, waving us in.
Bobby went first-Bobby went gladly. Slightly less eagerly, the rest started to follow… though I held back, and my Dreadnauts with me. The florid walls trembled with the desire to receive us.
And then we heard something. Music. A familiar tune from somewhere far away and below the sea:
All you need is love…
Across the bay, the World-Devourer listened, too, Wormwood spreading its long pale tubers in search of those human vibrations. It swept the Virginia shore, plumbing the entrance to Hampton Roads and sending tsunami waves through the deserted streets of Norfolk until it found the source.