Xombies: Apocalypso by Walter Greatshell Read Free Book Online Page B

right,” I said. “Hang on.” I stepped into my shoes. “I’m ready; let’s go.”
    “No you are not, young lady.”
    “What now?”
    “You can’t go to school like that. You march right upstairs and put on a clean dress and brush your hair. The boys will wait. Won’t you?”
    “Yes, Miz Langhorne.”
    Knowing it was pointless to argue, I climbed the stairs while Alice invited the boys in and offered them milk and cookies. Little Bobby Rubio was at the top of the stairs, staring down.
    “Are you going to play school?” he asked me, as I brushed past.
    “I guess so.”
    “Can I play, too?”
    “Go ask Alice.”
    I went into my designated room and examined the clothes in the closet. They had belonged to a girl exactly my size though much younger. Taking off my filthy velvet dress, I put on a clean cotton one—a sunny yellow number with black polka dots. Then I brushed my hair into some semblance of order and tied it with a bow. Flying back downstairs, I was intercepted by Langhorne, who spit-shined my face and handed me a sack lunch before letting me out the door.
    “Have a nice day at school!” she called after us.
    Getting into the car, I was struck anew by the boys’ weirdly preppy appearance. Jake’s copper-colored hair was parted into two lobes in front and buzzed short at the sides, the stubble shaved in a peculiar grid pattern. He wore a V-neck sweater over a dress shirt, baggy golf pants, and brown-and-white gaiters.
    “Hi, Jake,” I said.
    “Hi, Lulu. What do you think of Bess?”
    “Bess?” My first thought was Basic Enlisted Submarine School.
    “Bessie, my new car—well, maybe not new … ”
    “Oh. Nice.”
    “Nice? You wouldn’t believe what we went through to find this thing and get it running. It’s a Model T Roadster—is that awesome or what? We looked up antique car dealers in three different counties before we found it.”
    “Why?”
    “Why? Why do you think?” He waved a comic book in my face. “Mood! Atmosphere! The power of suggestion! It’s an experiment in Xombie psychology, and we’re the subjects. Haven’t the officers drilled you about this?”
    “No. Just Langhorne.”
    “Oh.” Abashed, Jake said, “Well, we all got the full spiel during the night—you’re lucky you missed it.”
    Lucky. Right. Well, I supposed I had no one but myself to blame. They drove me through deserted neighborhoods to the local high school. Arriving, I was surprised to see hundreds of students milling around the entrance. I was not used to seeing Xombies wearing clothes, much less carrying books and backpacks. From a distance, they did not resemble Xombies at all. Only about fifty of them were from the boat, the rest were freshly groomed strangers.
    Crowd noise was muted; there was little talking and less laughter. Harvey Coombs, Dan Robles, Ed Albemarle, and several other officers from the boat were patrolling the crowd like ominous shepherds, preventing anyone from straying too far.
    “Hi, Ed,” I said, as Albemarle passed me.
    Lemuel hissed, “We’re supposed to call him Principal Albemarle.”
    “Oh, really?” As Fred Cowper’s proxy on the sub, I was accustomed to giving the orders, not taking them. “What happens if I don’t?”
    “Then you get sent to Detention.”
    “Ah … ”
    Clearly, most of these “students” were random Xombies rustled up during the night and given a crash course in campus life. With no humans around, they were quite docile—in fact, hard to distinguish from the treated Blues. It really brought home the fact that in a totally human-free world, my blood was no longer needed to keep the peace. I was obsolete. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that or what it would mean for me.
    The bell rang, and everyone started filing inside. Waiting my turn at the back of the line, I noticed a car racing toward the school. It was a silver Jaguar with the top down. As it screeched into a handicapped parking slot, the driver vaulted out of his seat and