Xombies: Apocalypse Blues (20 page)

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Authors: Walter Greatshell

BOOK: Xombies: Apocalypse Blues
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We ate in silence for a few minutes. Even with canned green chiles and reconstituted milk and eggs, the food tasted good: fluffy, cheesy, and spicy. My nervous stomach wasn’t handling it well, though. Changing tack, I asked, “How much longer are the provisions going to last?”
“You’ve seen what we got. Ya must have some idea.”
I knew that the boat was normally provisioned with seventy-five thousand pounds of food for a three-month voyage, and that we had started with about five thousand. There was a lot less now. “Well, there are fewer people, even if they’re eating twice as much. I don’t know,” I said. “Two more weeks?”
Intently mopping his oily plate with a slice of bread, he said, “One. Maybe less.”
“What is a goat locker, anyway?”
“It’s the lounge where the chiefs hang out, if there were any chiefs.” He put his dishes in the sink, and said, “That about does it.
Adios, muchacha
.”
I finished my meal and cleaned up, drying and stowing the dishes the way Mr. Monte had shown me. The sub was like a stainless-steel Shaker house—everything fit together with elegant precision and economy of space. Sometimes this was carried too far, as with the cramped shower/toilets, but in general it was one aspect of submarine living that appealed to me.
I loitered a bit before heading back to the galley, examining the plaques, portraits, and trophy cases in the wardroom. It was all dull Navy bric-a-brac. The only interesting thing was a small framed drawing of Homer Simpson in a flooded room, dreamily saying, “Mmmm—chicken switch.” I knew the “chicken switches” were emergency levers for surfacing the boat.
Pausing at the forward door, I peeked down the narrow passageway, lined like a train’s with sleeper compartments. I had been through this area just once—when I and the boys had hunted corpses in the company of Mr. Noteiro. After that it had been one of the many places declared off-limits to civilians. I knew there was a sitting room with comfy couches and chairs at the far end, and I supposed that had to be the “goat locker.” The aluminum door was always closed and had been posted with a Day-Glo orange notice.
Nervously stepping past the dormitories, I listened for snoring, but all the berths were deserted. Monte said there were no chiefs, meaning no chief petty officers (everyone in the tiny crew had a battlefield commission), but it seemed incredible to me that they would let these bunks sit empty because of an obsolete regulation.
Approaching the closed door, I read the sign. Under a skull and crossbones, it said: WARNING—RESTRICTED AREA—IT IS UNLAWFUL TO ENTER THIS AREA WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE COMMANDER (SEC. 21, INTERNAL SECURITY ACT OF 1950, 50 USC 797)—USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED—CMDR HARVEY A. COOMBS, USN. His bouncy signature was at the bottom.
Heart thumping, I delicately tried the knob, but it was locked. I pressed my ear to the brushed aluminum—not a whisper. I didn’t want to give myself away by knocking or calling out. Making extra sure the coast was clear, I got down on my hands and knees until my face was level with the air vent at the bottom of the door. There was no way of seeing through it, but maybe . . .
“Mr. Cowper,” I hissed. “Psst! Mr. Cowper, are you there?”
There was a muffled clunk, then heavy, limping footsteps. They sounded sinister to me. Losing my nerve, I scrambled away as silently as possible, cursing my stupidity. Now I’d done it! As I fled for the wardroom, I realized there was no pursuit. No one was yelling after me, no alarm being raised. As far as I could tell, nothing at all was happening, and the door remained shut.
I hesitated, every nerve in my body tensed for flight.
What am I afraid of?
I thought.
I haven’t done anything
. . .
yet
. The sign didn’t say it was illegal to stand in front of the door. With extreme care, I began creeping back, freon pulsing in my veins.
As I leaned up against the metal once more, I was startled by a voice just on the other side. It snapped, “Someone playing games?” It was not Cowper, but it was vaguely familiar: a supercilious, annoyed rumble. Where had I heard that before? The man made no attempt to come out.
“Sorry,” I said squeakily, holding my ground. “Who is this?”
“Who is
this
?”
“I’m, uh . . . I’m looking for the goat locker?”
Silence, then: “What are you doing here? Is someone with you?”
“No, I’m alone,” I said. “Are you?”
The man puffed with impatience. “This is ridiculous. Why don’t you just open the door?”
“I don’t have a key. Can’t you open it?”
“Don’t be an idiot. What the hell’s going on out there? Who’s with you?”
“Nobody. I’m here by myself.” Voice cracking, I said, “I’m, um . . . looking for someone?”
Intensely wary, the voice asked, “Who?”
“Fred Cowper . . . my father.”
The man limped away from the door, making angry-sounding grunts of discomfort. It wasn’t a friendly exit—I expected to be arrested any second. Fidgeting, looking down the corridor for signs of approaching doom, I reminded myself how little anything mattered at this point. They couldn’t do anything to me.
Someone wearing slippers shuffled up to the door, heels slapping. It made me think of a hospital. Then a warbling, phlegmy voice said, “That you, Lulu?”
It was Cowper.
 
 
“Yes, it’s me,” I said. I was breathless. “Are you all right?”
“I’m doing fine. Don’t let ’em catch you out there, hear me? You run right along.” He sounded a little woozy, as if he had been dragged out of bed.
“What’s wrong? Are you sick?”
“Ah, it’s just the usual crap—my heart acting up. It’ll pass.”
“What have they done to you?”
“Nothing. Coombs seems to think I have something he’s looking for, but I keep telling him it must’ve gone over the side. He just won’t let up—it’s all I can do to catch forty winks around here. Have they asked you about it?”
“No. Why would they?”
“I got the impression they think we’re in cahoots. Maybe that was just something they said to rattle me—don’t worry about it. They been treating you okay?”
“Fine,” I said, embarrassed to admit the coddling I was receiving. “I’m good. Who else is in there with you?”
“Just the two of us: Jim Sandoval and me.”
Sandoval
—the man who had hurt his leg jumping onto the sub. The unpopular company boss. Cowper perked up with irritation, saying, “Why? Is that some kind of secret?”
“It hasn’t exactly been announced. I only figured out just now where you were—stupid of me, since Mr. Monte’s been dropping hints for days.”
“Yeah, Emilio’s a good man. Too good. That’s why he got drummed outta the service.”
From deeper in the room, I heard Sandoval’s muffled voice say, “Ask her where we are, for Christ’s sake. How much longer?”
“How’s Mr. Sandoval’s leg?” I asked.
“She wants to know how your leg is.”
“Tell her swell. Jim-dandy.”
“He’ll be laid up awhile. Phil Tran has him high as a kite on Percodan, but he needs decent medical attention. There’s a couple of prescriptions I could stand to have filled, too. That’s why anything you can tell us about our future would be appreciated.”
“I’m probably the least knowledgeable person you could ask.”
“Try me. We ain’t exactly networking down here—Kranuski and that bastid Webb have made sure that nobody tells us a damn thing. Of course there’s some things they can’t hide, like when the boat dives or surfaces. What was all that noise when we came up? Ice?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“St. John’s, Newfoundland.” Shame welled up out of me in the form of burning tears. “A bunch of people got off there—over three hundred.”
“What’s the matter? Were they forced?”
“No, they wanted to go. Coombs gave us the choice.” I could hardly speak.
“Lulu, what happened?”
Taking a shuddering breath, I said stonily, “There was shooting . . . so we left them there. We just left them there to die.”
In the background I could hear Sandoval saying, “I told you! Deadwood, I said! All that son of a bitch can think of is how he’s going to prune the deadwood. I’ll be damned.”
“That’s fine, coming from you,” Cowper told him. “He just finished what you started.”
Sandoval acted stung: “That’s not fair. That’s an unfair assessment. I may have been guilty of overoptimism and misled those people into thinking the Navy would follow through, but that’s the extent of it. My hand was forced.”
“Yeah, and if I hadn’t have led them folks down to the slip, you’d have just sailed away without us. Just sailed away, and you and Coombs would be best buddies.”
“Ah, but we’re not, are we? He’s upstairs and I’m down here. That should tell you something. ‘Best buddies.’ Ask her if before he gave those kids the ‘choice’ to go ashore, Coombs informed them that in January we bombarded Canada with EMPs to hobble them until Agent X could spread there. That we crippled their communications infrastructure so no one would know how weak we were. Ask her if they knew
that
before they went.”
“No,” I said, shocked.
“‘Best buddies,’” Sandoval scoffed again, deeply offended. “That’ll be the day.”
“Is that
true
?” I asked.
“Ah, shit.” Furious at Sandoval, Cowper replied, “I’m sorry, honey. He shouldn’t have told you that.”
I flew off the handle: “Why not? To protect me? Is that it? For my own good? Keeping secrets from people doesn’t make them safe—
Daddy
.”
“I guess not.” He sighed. “I haven’t always told you what’s in my heart, Lulu, but you have to know it’s all for you.” With grim intensity, he insisted, “Ask any of the old-timers, and they’ll tell you. Now I’m tired, so you’ll have to excuse me. Go, g’bye! Get the hell outta here before someone catches you.” Even as he said this, he was shuffling away.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
W
e crossed the Arctic Circle on the twentieth of February, in an area of the sea between Baffin Island and Greenland called the Davis Strait, inadvertently following Amundsen’s route of a century before. At some point, the ice closed tight above us, ending surface sightings. There was a high-powered light on the sail, however, which allowed the periscope to function as an underwater camera. The video could be shown on any monitor in the sub, but Coombs had found a way to improve on this: While taking inventory of the remaining artifacts in the Big Room, Robles had turned up a number of eighty-inch high-definition flat plasma displays. These were intended for supercomputer simulations (the computer itself—an experimental Cray—was still in the box), but Coombs didn’t think there would be any harm in setting a few up around the control room and linking them to the periscope. The first time they were turned on, they elicited gasps. These were not just pictures on TV; they were vivid undersea windows, on which we could watch the milky jade icescape passing above, and every glowing mite streaming by. It made some of the guys claustrophobic, but for me in my ignorance it was too abstract to be really scary, just amazing.
As we followed the converging lines of longitude to the top of the world, gossip and speculation ran rampant: What was our objective? The unofficial consensus seemed to be that we were heading for Alaska via the Arctic Ocean, and this quickly became such an accepted matter of common knowledge (or wishful thinking) that people spoke of it openly, as in, “When we get to Alaska—” or “I can’t wait till we get to Alaska so I can—” The minute this reached the ears of Coombs, he took me aside, and said, “You know what the ‘butt’ on a ship is?”
“The stern?”
“No. On old sailing ships they called the drinking-water cask the ‘butt.’ It was kind of like the watercooler—sailors would stand around it and gossip, just like people in offices do today. Used to do, I mean. Understand?”
I nodded sagely.
He said, “Sometimes the talk would be out of order, even mutinous. The kind of thing that could lead to the scuttling of the ship. You know what they called that kind of talk?”
“Scuttlebutt?”
He deflated a little. “Yes, scuttlebutt. Maybe you also know the expression, ‘Loose Lips Sink Ships.’ You let those kids know I won’t have it. Not in my control room, not anywhere. Our destination is classified, and it’ll remain classified until such time as I find it prudent to reveal it. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t want to have to make an example of anyone.”
“No, sir.”
“Dismissed.”
When I told Julian about the directive, he acted as though it confirmed his Alaska hypothesis.
“How can you be so sure?” I asked.
“Come on, it’s obvious. It’s America, it’s frozen solid, it’s geographically isolated, there’s a strong military presence, and we can use the Arctic Ocean as a shortcut. There’s even a huge Trident submarine base just south of there in Bangor, Washington. Do I have to go on?”

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