"Huh?" Sal came half-awake, head throbbing miserably. "Hello?"
"Get up, punk!" It was the crabby Kali impersonator, Chiquita. He banged on the door again, then kicked it open, knocking aside their makeshift barricade. His neck was unshaven under his black mask, and his shaggy headdress was up in curlers. "What the fuck is this shit? Joo been summon to have breakfast with El Dopa. Hurry!"
Sal shook the others awake, and they all followed Chiquita down the corridors and up on deck, now morning-bright under a dome of blue sky. Looking at a passing wisp of cloud, Sal woozily remembered something his mother used to say to him: that the Earth was a big spaceship, and when you looked at the sky, you were really just looking out a window.
Walking around the barge, shielding his eyes from the sun, Sal was struck again by the ingenuity of using something like this as a floating fortress. First, the whole thing was compartmentalized, so that a Xombie outbreak in any one area could be contained quickly without spreading through the whole complex. Second, all the living modules were on the upper tiers, reachable by a series of rope ladders that were only lowered on request. Furthermore, the whole place was locked down tight at night, offering only an impregnable metal wall. Windows were little more than saw-toothed gun ports, all high up and meshed over; mooring lines had manhole-sized discs on them to discourage rats as well as larger pests; and the barge's gunwales were alarmed and thickly barb-wired. None of this could totally prevent Xombies from coming on board, but once they were there, they didn't leave again… or at least not in one piece. The men joked that it was like a Roach Motel, Xombies get in, but they don't get out.
Ushered aboard a small motor launch, the five boys were taken the short distance across the water to the casino barge, its upper tiers beaming white in the sun, the lower part sunk in deep blue shade. Climbing the gangplank, they passed through a utility tunnel and entered the main room of the vessel: the gambling floor. It was clean, elegant, and empty-everything the other barge was not. Here all was mirrored and Greek-columned splendor, with trickling water fountains, crystal chandeliers, a glass elevator, and gold fixtures reflected into infinity. Most of the gaming tables and slots had been thrown overboard, leaving a vast expanse of plush blue carpeting surrounding a raised island in the middle, on which stood a lonely-looking unmade bed. That was a little peculiar.
El Dopa was waiting at the bar, wearing silk pajamas. Several Kalis were there, too, black hair pinned back and their leering masks weirdly inconsistent with their posture as they slumped over cigarettes and coffee. They had to drink through straws-did they have to eat that way, too? A silver tea service was set up separately on a rolling cart, and El Dopa sipped from a dainty cup. The bar's entire length was loaded with cheese and bacon and smoked salmon and canned and dry fruit and cereal and reconstituted dry milk and butter and jam and chocolate nougat and ten different kinds of bread and crackers to spread them on.
As the boys queasily approached, El Dopa pressed the button on an intercom. "Mr. Bendis!" he said. "You have a visitor."
There was a hiss of static, then a whispery voice: "Send him up."
"Chiquita, will you send up Mr. Eagle Scout here so that he may consult the oracle?"
"You go ahead on up," said the hideous mask to Sal. "The rest of you stay here."
"If one of us goes, we all go," said Kyle.
"It's okay, Kyle," Sal said. "I'm cool with it."
Kyle replied, "Oh, he cool with it. Well, fuck you, man, I'm not cool with it. You been acting like King Shit around here ever since we started out, and it ain't like you done such a fucking great job that you deserve to be spokesman for the few of us that's left." To El Dopa, he said, "He don't call the shots for us, and he sure as shit don't speak for me."
"Kyle, come on," said Sal.
"No, man, it's about fucking time somebody else took the lead. If anybody's going, I'm going. I'm going."
"Joo don't do shit unless I say so."
"It's okay, Chiquita," El Dopa said. "Boy wants to go, let him go."
"Up where?" Kyle asked.
"The elevator," Chiquita said sharply, pissed off at having been overruled. "Are you blind? Move, bitch! Ain't no fucking request!"
"Fuck you," Kyle said, too tired for this bullshit-he was trying to be reasonable here. Suddenly his head was yanked back by its braids and a sharp steel point pressed to his throat. A whole arsenal of scary metal syringes had appeared from under the dancers' robes as if by magic, weird weapons resembling chrome-plated caulk guns, their injector tips resting on the boys' ripe jugulars and eager to stab. The boys stood frozen at needle point, afraid to breathe.
"Say something now, punk," snarled Chiquita behind his leering plastic face.
"Sorry! I'm sorry!"
"Joo wan' me to shove this needle up in your skull? You want I should cook your stinkin' brain in your head so it sizzles out your nose like hot lava?"
"No!"
"Then do like you been tol' to do!" He contemptuously shoved Kyle up the steps to the elevator platform. "Next time I flick you like a fuckin' Bic, except there ain't gonna be no next time, unnerstan'?"
"Okay, okay, I'm going," he said. Hemmed in by another ominous Kali, he said, "Can I go, please?"
They stood aside. Kyle traded a grim look with the other guys, hating to be separated from them. Sal shook his head no, ready to lay it all on the line right then and there, but Kyle's expression was fierce-it said, Don't.
He went into the elevator. Something somewhere was making a loud, repetitive grinding noise, a noise like a hundred squeaky shopping carts, which to Kyle sounded like the rusty clockwork of El Dopa's brain.
"Top button," called the shriveled leader. "Go all the way up to the roof." Then, as the door closed: "And say hello to Satan's little helpers for me-I mean, Santa's. Damn, I always do that."