Xombies: Apocalypso Read Online Free Page A

The Abrams was there first, but did not stop, did not turn, did not even slow down, but just blindly rammed the brick face of the federal building, smashing through the support columns, and the Bradley followed it right in, causing the whole structure to avalanche down on them both. The last sound was the popping of ammo in the fires … with perhaps a few conclusive pistol shots mixed in.
    “That was a turning point in human history—the first battle of meat versus machines, where the point went to the meat.
    “The next battle was very different. The men had learned their lesson. It began two weeks later, and was initiated by a single unarmed truck: an ice-cream truck. Like any ice-cream truck, it had a loudspeaker on top, blasting the familiar tinkly version of ‘When the Saints Go Marching In.’ Unlike an ordinary Mister Softee wagon, this one was pulling a flatbed trailer with a large chain-link cage on it, a portable dog kennel. The cage did not contain dogs, however, but human beings—specifically, women. Innocent women incarcerated for the threat posed by their sex. They appeared to be praying.
    “The reason for their prayers soon became apparent. Following close behind the truck was an enormous mass of running Xombies. It looked like a naked, blue Boston Marathon.
    “Approaching the site of the previous battle, the truck turned off the music and slowed down, allowing a man in back to release the trailer hitch. The cage came free, rolling to a stop as the truck peeled away.
    “Now the trapped women could only wait as the following horde caught up with them: Xombies tall and short, fat and thin, young and old. Xombies of all kinds except for one specific group: the initial women carriers of Agent X, the Maenads, who had gone rogue spontaneously, then spread the disease to everyone they could catch … and kiss. Once again, these less-impulsive multitudes were holding back, watching from the shadows.
    “Unlike them, I could not stand to watch as the cage was surrounded. The worst weren’t even the running dead but the crawling ones—the blasted remnants left over from the earlier fight, whose bodies had half frozen and healed together in strange, awful configurations and now came scuttling out of burnt storefronts like a freak invasion.
    “In seconds, the kennel was an ovum buried under a thousand competing sperm. The victims could be heard screaming as the cage crumpled … and then all vanished in a blinding flash.
    “It was fire. White-hot fire as bright as the sun. Brilliant sparks rained down like a shower of stars, burning through anything they touched, incinerating skin and hair and turning Xombies into roamin’ candles, great balls of fire, their bodies consumed even from within by tumors of malignant flame. Inhuman torches fled the bonfire, shedding layers of flesh like dead leaves until there was nothing left to combust, and they toppled into paper-doll silhouettes of molten slag.
    “Down at the river, there were more fireworks. Floating braziers which had once been piled with firewood for the pleasure of strolling tourists were now loaded with living, praying females, attracting an audience of avid blue spectators down the riverbanks and into the knee-deep scum, where there was no escape from the incendiary barrage that was loosed upon them, a glowing hailstorm that obliterated anything and everything in that blazing, boiling trench.
    “On the opposite end of town, hung above the street, a pair of giant masks forged out of steel grating—playhouse faces of comedy and tragedy—were likewise packed with live girls and allowed to gather a tremendous cult before a tanker truck on the rooftop was detonated, showering jellied fire on the whole congregation.
    “Such fire traps had been set in cities all over America, all over the world, and in one day they immolated millions of Xombies, perhaps tens of millions … plus thousands of uninfected women.
    “Providence burned, or parts of it. It’s an