As we commandeered a fleet of abandoned vehicles and headed inland along the road, I began to have a strange sensation. This was the first time I had been ashore in months, and the sight of all these quaint houses and shops caused weird flutters of emotion that I recognized as goose bumps. Goose bumps!
I wasn’t alone: My fellow travelers were experiencing similar jitters of anticipation. If anything at all remained of the America we once knew, this might be where we’d find it.
The buildings and cars ahead showed minor traces of damage: wires down, tilted utility poles, scattered debris. Unlike some other cities we had seen, there were few signs of panicked fight or flight-it all happened too fast. No backed-up traffic or buildings burned to the ground. Except for drifts of sand blown in from the dunes, it all looked pretty normal.
The wind kicked up, raising a cloud of dust that momentarily blotted out the sun. In that orange gloom, the signs disappeared, the cars disappeared, the road disappeared. This wasn’t sand; it was ash. Ash from afar, carried on the wind from the heartland, residue of a thousand burnt cities all over America.
We came to the outskirts of a town called Exmore, along the main highway that ran the length of the peninsula to Cape Charles. There were no barricades, no security of any kind. No life.
Through the settling haze, we began to make out a line of human figures along the highway, still and silent as statues, ankle deep in ash. Not humans-Xombies. They were inert as lampposts, completely dormant, staring at nothing.
“Pepperland,” said one of the Blackpudlians.
“Trucks a-comin’!” shouted Robles.
Then we could all sense it: a convoy of heavy vehicles roaring toward us down US 13. They were bright with headlights and the life auras of their passengers-several dozen human beings.
We automatically went into action, Blues and Clears racing for the chance to add new members to our respective teams. Hurriedly blocking the road, we took positions on either side and hunkered flat in the ditches. As the trucks neared, I could see that they were completely unprotected, no armaments of any kind. It was too good to be true. When the first one shifted down, we were all over that thing like ants on a half-melted Popsicle.
Or we would have been, had the people in that truck not suddenly glowed with a strange poison that robbed us of our strength. The closer we got to them, the weaker we became, so that the fastest and strongest of us fell the hardest, tumbling off the truck like frost-killed spiders.
Adding to our trouble, the dormant Xombies suddenly sprang to life and attacked us. One came at me, and when Lemuel smashed it with a sledgehammer, I realized it was only part Xombie. The other part was machinery, a mass of wires and gadgets stuffed into a gutted Xombie body. A remote-controlled meat puppet! The flesh had been crudely stapled back together, leaving small apertures for cameras, radio antennae… and weapons.
Those weapons opened fire, taking out targets with precise bursts of metal pellets, electrically propelled at a zillion rounds per second. Each blast sounded like a single shot but was actually a patterned stream of ammo that cut through flesh and bone like a superfast jigsaw. Anything it hit came apart as though run through a sieve. When the ammo ran out, they had false limbs that ejected bladed weapons that slashed us to the bone. Worst of all, they tagged us with lasers, opening us to fire from the sky-an orbiting attack drone. All around me, my Xomboys started exploding like popcorn.
Too late, I realized what it was: Immunes. We had heard rumors of Immunes from the Reapers, and I had refused to believe they really existed, thinking immunity was just more mortal wishfulness. But there could be no doubt about it: There were Immunes in those trucks… or people tainted with immune blood. Either way, we couldn’t touch them; our own bodies wouldn’t allow it.
The poor miserable humans had come up with a perfect defense. They had made it impossible for us to save them, as if suffering and death were the most beautiful prizes they could imagine. They had won. It was so tragic, I almost wished I could die with them.
But I couldn’t.
As shrapnel riddled my torso, I remembered what Alice Langhorne had told me about Xombies when we first met: “… a bag of obsolete parts governed by a solid-state master.” My body was not the fragile human form it had once been, but a completely arbitrary assemblage of cells. This was a disturbing thought as it threatened my very identity: Who was Lulu Pangloss if not this girl, this body, this face? How could she exist if she was a stranger to herself, some random, amorphous blob? It was too troubling to contemplate. So I had refused to face it, clinging to my mortal conception of myself, using my Maenad abilities as if they were party tricks, busying myself with plans and hopes and dreams.
Well, perhaps it was time to wake up.
That was it-I ordered a general retreat, and we ran for the vehicles. What was left of us.
CHAPTER FIVE
LOVEVILLE
Half the tires were flat, but we kept driving on them until the dragging treads started to catch fire. Then we had to get off and stand around while the buses burned. Looking at the map, I noticed there was a place called Hollywood not too far away-Hollywood, Maryland. My mother used to take me to Hollywood. The real one. The memory was enough to start me moving again, and my evident purpose compelled the others to follow.
Hiking cross-country, we found a gasoline terminal and commandeered a fuel barge. Maneuvering the barge was tricky in places; the river was full of carbonized ruin that had washed down from Baltimore, its banks and shoals festooned with trash. But as we navigated downstream, the river widened, and the junk dispersed.
After a few miles, we put ashore in a cove and started walking toward Hollywood. It was a semirural area, checkered with farms that were now meadows, encroached upon by suburban developments that would croach no more.
Breasting the tall grass, surrounded by the hiss of locusts, we came to a town called Loveville, and that was it. We had all had enough. It wasn’t that we were tired-just tired of seeking something we knew didn’t exist. Tired of being disappointed. Screw Hollywood. This was a pleasant little town, with schools and churches and grocery stores. The sign said, WELCOME TO LOVEVILLE-what more could one want?
“What are we doing, Lulu?” asked Bobby. “What are we looking for?”
I had no good answer. Listening to the birds and the bees, I said, “I think this may be it.”
“What?”
“We’re home.”
For the first few weeks, very little happened. We existed in a dream state, some of us wandering around like sleepwalkers, others barely moving, all mesmerized by patterns of energy underlying the material world. With a little concentration, it was possible to make out the quantum-mechanical webwork that connected everything to everything else-the literal fabric of time and space. Actually, it was more like a vast harp, warping and rippling and swirling as the planet moved, vibrating a deep B minor chord from the depths of the galaxy. It called to us, promising gorgeous oblivion, but most were not ready to go… yet. We were torn between two worlds, unwilling or unable to commit to either and thus trapped in between. In limbo.
But perhaps we were underestimating ourselves. What if we didn’t have to wait for the answers we craved but could invent whatever life we wanted and simply start living it? What if we could create the best of all possible worlds? Customize a reality that suited our peculiar needs?
Alice Langhorne called a meeting:
“Lulu has brought something to my attention,” she announced. “Something that must be addressed if we are to continue as a group. We believe the present situation is becoming untenable. It’s too difficult trying to graft our previous lives onto this new set of circumstances. We failed at it on the sub, we failed at it in Providence, and we’re failing at it here. We aren’t the people we used to be, and it’s no use pretending we are. The incongruities are too… awkward. We need a less-fraught model to follow; otherwise, we’ll all crack up.”