More than a few zombie novels have hit the shelves lately,
but Walter Greatshell still has the most original take in
my humble opinion. XOMBIES: APOCALYPTICON takes up where
Xombies: Apocalypse Blues, the first in the series,
leaves off. Well, sort of. In the first book, a number of
military personnel and their kids escaped and stayed safe
from Agent X, the xombie virus, on a submarine. Many are
still on the submarine, but they're running out of food.
There's a lot of strife on the boat as well with squabbles
over who should lead and who shouldn't. A group of kids
and a group of "tame" xombies are sent out to find food
and explore, but there are still a lot of xombies loose
out there and a "new world order" has formed that doesn't
want intruders.
Members of the "new world order" have found some
interesting ways to stay alive as well, but these I will
leave to those who read the book as I don't want to give
any of the wonderful details away. Greatshell also takes
the story back, giving the viewpoint of a prison and its
reaction as the virus first takes effect on the women. And
why women first? And how did it start? These questions are
also addressed.
Greatshell continues a terrific series with XOMBIES:
APOCALYPTICON, a combination of science fiction and horror
that will appeal to fans of both genres. While it has
action and adventure aplenty, the author delves into
broader issues as well such as what men do when no women
are around, what to do when you have too many people and
not enough food, and is everyone out for him or herself or
does the greater good still exist.
Greatshell gives depth to his characters, especially the
ones who appeared in the first book, but with such a large
cast of characters, it's hard for all of them to be fully
developed. this book has a conclusion of sorts, there's
definitely room for a lot more story. Greatshell has
created another thoroughly engaging tale, and while it can
stand on its own, I recommend reading this series in order
for best enjoyment. I'm looking forward to reading book 3,
Xombies Apocalypso soon.
XOMBIES: APOCALYPTICON is the continuing saga of the USS
No-Name, an Ohio-Class submarine converted to a refugee
vessel during the worldwide plague of "Agent X"--a disease
that changes women into raving, homicidal Typhoid Marys.
Leading the fight to survive are Dr. Alice Langhorne, whose
research helped spawn the plague; Commander Harvey Coombs,
Navy captain minus a navy; Sal DeLuca, BMX champ facing the
ultimate Xtreme sport; and troubled teenager Lulu Pangloss,
who died and was born again.
Facing off against them are mutinous shipmates, yoga-crazed
prison convicts, hostile mercenaries...and the
all-encompassing threat of the Xombies themselves.
Excerpt
“Aim for that dock there,” Sal said, consulting his printed-
out
map.
“What
do you think we’re doing?” Kyle Hancock said. “It’s the
current; it’s wicked.”
“Well
paddle harder--it’s going to take us underneath the
hurricane barrier.”
“No
shit.”
“Paddle!
Paddle!”
The
paddlers paddled, putting their shoulders into it, trying
to find a
rhythm. Sal watched the great, gray barrier loom above
them, its
open gates like massive steel jaws and the river beyond a
yawning gullet,
eager to swallow them whole. It was so shallow in there at
low
tide that Xombies could wade right up and grab them at
will. “All
together!” he shouted. “Stroke, stroke, stroke…”
Then
they were clearing the worst of the current, moving into
calmer eddies
near shore. “Okay, we’re good, we’re gonna make it,” Sal
said, heart still racing. “Don’t stop, we’re almost
there.”
“Shut
up,” Kyle said. “God damn.”
“Yeah,
man,” agreed Derrick. “We don’t need you to tell us what
to do. We know you’re Officer Tran’s little bitch, but
just
try to chill, a’ight? We on it.”
Derrick
and Kyle Hancock were brothers, the only surviving pair of
siblings
on the ship, and their mutual strength made them de facto
rulers of
the Big Room. Derrick was one year older than Kyle, with a
corrected
cleft lip and a resulting lisp that made him sound like
Mike Tyson--kids
had learned not to rag him about it. His brother Kyle was
lighter-built,
less touchy, with the easy confidence of a born player--as
they liked
to say, if Derrick was the muscle, Kyle was the style.
They were
not overt troublemakers, they simply used their power to do
as little
as possible, making needier kids like the Freddies--Freddy
Fisk and
Freddy Gonzales, or just Freddy F and Freddy G, tweedledum
and tweedledee--do
their work for them. Why shouldn’t they? There were no
extra rations in doing it yourself--the privilege of not
starving was
reserved for “essential personnel” only. As far as Kyle
and
Derrick were concerned, Sal DeLuca and all the other
overworked ship’s
apprentices were suckers.
“Dude,
don’t even start,” Sal said. “I’m just trying to help
us stay alive, okay?”
“We
don’t need your help--dude.”
“Yeah,
give it a rest. You ain’t no ship’s officer.”
“No,
but I’m responsible for your ass.”
“Leave
my ass be. You best watch your own, bike boy.” They all
snickered.
Sal
shook his head, grinning in spite of himself. This had
been going
on for months, part of the friction between the ship’s
apprentices
and the “nubs”--non-useful bodies. Nubs were often the
guys
who were having the worst time of it, the true orphans,
whose adult
sponsors--their dads--had been killed, and who could barely
hold it
together enough to function, their shock and despair
manifesting as
attitude: keepin’ it real. He knew Derrick’s jibes were a
response to the helplessness of the situation, a survival
mechanism.
A thin wedge against panic, which Sal could totally relate
to, having
lost his own father at Thule. Hey, to laugh was better
than to
cry…or to scream. Once you started screaming, you might
never
stop.
The
screams came at night, in their sleep.
Then
they were below the high dock, fending off its barnacled
pilings with
their paddles. “Okay, everybody be quiet,” Sal said.
If there were Xombies up there, they could just jump right
into the
boats. He tied up to a rusted ladder and whispered, “I’m
just
gonna take a look, okay? Nobody move unless I give the all-
clear.”
“What
is this Squad Leader bullshit?” Kyle hissed, getting
up. “This
ain’t no videogame, dumb ass.”
“Fine,
you go first.” Sal made room for him to pass.
Kyle
hesitated, sudden doubt flashing across his face, so that
Derrick said,
“Sit your ass down, nigga. Let a real man go up.”
“Fuck
you.”
Derrick
belligerently mounted the ladder. They watched in nervous
silence
as he paused at the top, peeking over the edge at first
with trembling
caution, then visibly relaxing and raising his whole head
above.
“Come on, chickenshits,” he called down. “Ain’t nothing’
to--”
A
blue hand seized him by the throat.
Fighting
the thing, Derrick lost his grip and plummeted backwards
into the raft.
The disembodied hand was still on him--not just a hand but
an entire
arm, ripped off at the shoulder socket, its round bone
nakedly visible,
hideously flailing and jerking at the elbow joint as it
strangled him.
The other boys quailed back, screaming, but Sal lunged for
the thing,
trying to pry its fingers loose. It was a young girl’s
hand,
its dainty nails painted pink, but it was cold and rubbery,
impossibly
strong.
“Help
me!” he shouted.
Kyle
jumped forward to pitch in, then two other boys, his poker
buddies Ray
and Rick. As they grappled with it, the naked stump kicked
Sal
in the cheek so hard it cracked a filling. Tasting blood,
he braced
his knee on Derrick’s chest, and with a supreme effort they
all managed
to wrench the thing loose. It immediately went wild,
flexing and
bucking in their hands, trying to get at them. “All
together
now,” Sal said. “One, two…” On three they hurled
it far out into the water.
“Holy
craaap,” Derrick wheezed, retching over the side.
“Let’s
get outta here!” Kyle shouted.
“Wait!”
Sal said. “We can’t just go back.”
“Why
not? I’m not waitin’ for the rest of that chick to show
up!”
“We
got to expect shit like this to happen. We handled it! We
can’t just give up now.”
“We
sure as hell can!” Others chimed in: “Hell yeah,”
“We’re gone!” “This shit is suicide!” “Go, dog, go!”
“Hold
up,” said a ragged voice. It was Derrick. He shakily sat
up and croaked, “Don’t nobody do a God-damned thing. I
ain’t--hem--goin’
back to that submarine empty-handed. Just so they can lock
us
in jail again? How many days we already been sitting there
dreaming
we had someplace else to go, some kinda free choice? Screw
that
shit. I’m hungry.” He got up and climbed the
ladder again, wobbly but without hesitation. In seconds he
was
over the top and out of sight.
For
a long moment there was silence, then Derrick’s face
reappeared.
“Come on!” he called down impatiently. “Let’s do
this shit. You wanna eat or don’t you?”
Sal
started to follow, but Kyle and the other boys shoved past,
nearly knocking
him into the water. Whether empowered by Derrick’s
confidence,
the prospect of food, or the thought of that arm lurking in
the water
below, suddenly they couldn’t get up fast enough. “One at
a time,” Sal said. But they weren’t listening to
him
at all--the old ladder was almost coming to pieces from
their combined
weight. Stupidjerks. “Everybody stay
together,”
he called after them as he tested the rungs.
Sal
emerged to find the boys all standing at the edge of a
weedy lot, reveling
in the glorious, slightly queasy sensation of dry land. It
looked
like no-man’s land--the vacant area beneath a highway
bridge.
On one side was the flood-control berm--a high rock dam
separating them
from the city--and on the other a fenced tugboat landing
and some condemned-looking
buildings. Huge concrete pylons rose above them to
Interstate
195. It was all reassuringly deserted.
As
Sal joined them, Derrick asked him, “Where at now?”
“Well,
we gotta cross under the highway and follow the road here
through the
flood gate. There should be businesses and things on the
other
side.”
“Let’s
do it.”
Following
Derrick, who was following Sal, the boys trooped quickly
and quietly
down the road, picking up any likely-looking weapons they
happened to
find--mostly rocks and chunks of brick. Sticks and
stones can
break my bones, but names can never hurt me. Sal
wished he
could find a good stick. He looked up at the highway
bridge, imagining
that the little girl’s arm must have fallen from there,
picturing
the awful scene: the girl in the backseat of her parents’
car, the
Xombie lunging in and grabbing her arm, dad hitting the gas-
-nasty.
They
found the tremendous open doors of the flood barrier and
cautiously
followed the road through. On the far side was a chic
waterfront
area of clubs and condos, and across the river an immense
gothic cathedral
that was the electric company, webbed to the rest of the
city by flowing
skeins of wire. It was all dead, all out of commission,
yet almost
perfectly preserved, as if loyally awaiting the future
return of humankind.
Everything had gone down so fast there was no time for
looting and destruction.
Dodging
from one shadow to the next, the boys did what they could
to keep a
low profile. “I don’t get it,” Kyle said, eyes wide with
tension. “Why aren’t there any Xombies?”
“Be
glad there ain’t,” said Derrick, gingerly touching his
bruised neck.
“It’s
gotta be that viral thing they talked about--viral
progression,” Sal
said. “The cities got so full of Xombies they reached,
like,
critical mass. Once there was nobody left to infect, there
was
no reason to stay, so they scattered outward across the
country.
Maybe there aren’t any left here.”
The
boys’ chests swelled with hope. “Is that true?”
“I
don’t know. It’s just what I heard.”
“God,
I hope you right, man.”
Staying
off the exposed waterfront, they followed a shaded inner
street with
fewer doorways. This led them to a second highway
underpass, one
older and darker than the first, a sunken hollow, its
corroded iron
girders busy with roosting pigeons. There were peeling
psychedelic
murals on the walls, ads for funky-sounding businesses:
Café
Zog, Olga’s Cup and Saucer, Acme Video, Z-Bar. Cars
sat
dead in the road, their windows broken and doors wide open
to the elements.
Pigeons were roosting in them, too. This was not a good
place
to be, it didn’t feel safe; the boys could be cornered here
in the
dripping wetness, trapped amid the rust and rank
birdshit. “We
shouldn’t a gone this way, man,” said Kyle. They walked
faster
and faster, trying not to panic, not to run...
…and
emerged in the light of spring. Before them was tiny
hillside
park with a veteran’s memorial, benches, and maple trees.
Dew
glistened on the grass. But the boys hardly noticed any of
that;
they were more interested in what lay just beyond: a
bright red-and-yellow
gas station--a Shell Station--with a sign reading, FOOD
MART.
Now
they ran.
The
coolers were dead, the ice-cream melted, the milk sour, but
nearly everything
else in the place was edible, and the forty boys made a
valiant attempt
to eat it all. It was a treasure trove more welcome to
them than
King Tut’s tomb, and as perfectly preserved, not in natron
but sodium
benzoate:
Snack
cakes and pies, puddings, nuts, cookies, crackers, canned
meats and
cheeses, beef sticks, jerky, pickles, salsa, pretzels and
potato chips
galore. Candy! Whole cases of chocolate bars, chews,
sours,
mints, gum. And drinks: Bottled beverages of every kind--
energy
drinks, soda pop, fancy sweetened teas and cappuccino, Yoo-
Hoo or just
plain water--all free for the taking. It was a teenage
dream come
true, an all-you-can-eat paradise of junk food. All the
cigarettes
they could smoke too, if they wanted them, and a few other
vices besides.
“Can
this stuff make us sick?” Freddy Fisk asked through a
mouthful of
mini-donuts. “It must be pretty old by now.”
“I
doubt it,” Sal said, munching Fritos. “There’s enough
chemicals
in this stuff to last until doomsday.”
“Then
it’s definitely expired.”
What
they didn’t eat, they stuffed into ditty bags they had
brought from
the sub. They sacked the store; all that was left was
money and
auto accessories. Sated, idly scratching lottery tickets,
some
of them were already starting to feel that perhaps it had
been a mistake
to eat so much, so fast. Of this junk. Damn.
“I
don’t feel so good, man.”
Sal
was consulting the selection of maps. “Well don’t croak
yet--we
still have a ways to go to get back.”
“You
guys go ahead, I’m staying here--urp.”
“I
think we all staying here,” Derrick said. Something hollow
in
his voice made them turn around to see what he was looking
at.
The front windows of the mini-mart overlooked the little
memorial park
and the elevated highway just beyond. Until now, the boys
had
not been in a position to really see Interstate 195--it had
been an
abstract concept, no more alarming than the underside of a
bridge.
Now they had a good view of it. Freddy G vomited--whulp!
It
was a river of death, a glacier of stalled metal, curving
away as far
as the eye could see. Thousands upon thousands of cars and
trucks
jammed bumper to bumper, all dead silent, the diamond bits
of their
smashed windows glittering in the morning sun. The
interstate
had become a colossal junkyard, a graveyard for humanity’s
mobile
aspirations…when graveyards no longer stayed filled.
Silent,
dead, but not entirely still. There was darting movement
there.
Not the movement of cars, but of bodies--naked blue
bodies. Catch
them in glimpses: the wink of shadows scurrying between the
lanes, a
flash of scary Zuni-doll faces. And darker shapes looming
beneath
the overpass--jumpy silhouettes blocking the light,
flushing out the
pigeons. Rushing down the on-ramp. They were
everywhere.
Feeling
his insides turn to water, Sal thought, No way, no way
dude.
Nuh-uh, no way, oh, no, no, no, please, no…
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