'Our chance to do what?'
'Get down to the pen.'
'Down to the-Oh no. Are you serious? You gotta be shit-ting me.'
'Why not? Take 'em by surprise, you never know.'
'Jesus, you are serious!'
'You got any better suggestions? The only other alternative is to wait for what's coming over the fence. I guarantee nobody else gives a damn about you, certainly not Sandoval.'
Albemarle replied wearily, 'You know, Fred, they shot Bob Martino for that kind of talk. Shot him in front of everybody after the big dinner, then trussed him up and burned him, right there-you can see the spot. I'll never eat another steak. So if you think we have any illusions about our chances with the company, think again. But we've lost so much already… we're tired. I'm tired. All I want to do at this point is let these kids be kids for however much time they-' He was interrupted by a dull boom that rattled the walls. Dust sifted down.
Over the stunned murmuring, Cowper said, 'Time's up, Ed.'
'What do we got to lose?' This was shouted by a tall elderly fellow with white hair and a bushy mustache.
'He's right,' said a stocky character like an old-time circus strong man. 'We're fish in a barrel sitting here.'
Albemarle became angry. 'And what? We just march our kids out into the line of fire?'
A number of boys cheered the idea.
Cowper interceded, holding up his arms to yell, 'Nobody's gonna get shot!' The crowd hesitated, listening. 'They're not stupid enough to shoot us, all right? They're busy enough without making a whole mess of creepos inside the fence. That's all they'd accomplish by killing us, and they know it.' To Albemarle he explained, 'You said yourself they burned Bob Martino. That means they knew he would have come back. We're more of a threat to them than they are to us, and that's the God's honest truth. Best they can do is keep us locked up in here, alive. Now who wants to go and who wants to stay?'
It was a landslide. Even Ed Albemarle grudgingly nodded, causing a cheer.
In the midst of the excitement, I bit my lip and tapped Cowper on the shoulder. Trying to speak privately, I said, 'Um, Fred? How can we get out if we're locked in here?'
He smiled thinly and patted my head. 'Don't you worry about a thing.'
Getting out of the building was a piece of cake. Albemarle dispatched a handful of the bigger boys to a supply room, the 'tool crib,' and they returned with armloads of welding and cutting implements that they obviously knew how to use.
'Hey, Mr. Albemarle,' one of the boys said, looking like a blacksmith as he donned protective leathers. 'Is there an SSP for this?' The joking question raised a laugh.
'Yeah,' Albemarle shot back, 'Shipyard Standard Procedure says kiss my ass. In case you hadn't noticed, we're not doing things by the book anymore. So stop screwing around and get that door open.'
The door he meant was not the door we'd come in through, but the sixty-foot-high hangar doors. They'd been secured by a mammoth chain strung through holes in the metal like something out of King Kong. Trundled up to it on a rolling scaffold, the boys applied their blinding blue flare to one of the bagel-thick links, making a tremendous zapping sound and showers of sparks. 'Don't look at it,' Cowper said, a little late. Steel dripped like burning tallow, then, just like that, the chain clanked apart.
'All right, roll 'er open!' Albemarle bellowed. 'Everybody behind the Sallie, heads down! We're going on parade!'
The 'Sallie' was the deejay's platform. It was a freight-carrying goliath, all wheels and deck (the word SALLIE cast in steel above its low front cockpit), which started up with a ground-shaking rumble and rolled forward on nine rows of tires. It reminded me of the vehicle NASA used to transport spacecraft to the launch pad, though somewhat smaller. Men and boys fell in behind its twin rear cab as it approached the parting doors. When it passed us, Cowper and I joined the crowd.
'Stay close,' he said, pinching my bicep.
People gave me plenty of room, so that for once I didn't feel claustrophobic, as I often did in groups. In fact, I was able to take comfort from the sheer size of the crowd. We were an army.
'You're not coming,' someone said to me from behind, but I ignored him and kept moving.
We streamed out of the hangar at a fast walk, the crawler bearing right to make for the inner guardpost. It was deserted. The main gate was behind us, mostly hidden by buildings, but we could hear the commotion there- sounds like rioting hooligans with firecrackers-and see the dim orange glow of flames illuminating the draped fence like a paper screen, on which life-size shadow puppets danced. Men could be glimpsed running along a catwalk at the top, dodging mangled hands that lunged spastically at them through the razor wire.
After seeing a guard yanked into the lacerating coils by those obscene blue things, I didn't dare look back anymore, covering my ears to muffle the screams. A wave of gibbering fear swept the crowd, causing some boys to fall and almost be trampled, but Cowper and Albemarle kept yelling, 'Eyes forward! Keep moving! Eyes forward-look where you're going!' and it seemed to help even though we could barely see where we were going.
Heading down a grassy slope, we descended into gloom, with pale, unlit buildings rising like sunken ships out of the fog and our only illumination the haloed caution lights of the Sallie. Smells of seaweed, tar, and diesel exhaust mingled in the air. It was a strange, ghostly parade all right, with the Sallie its unadorned float.
'What's it like out there?' asked a boy to my left. He was the one in the chipmunk costume, and was carrying its head under his arm. It was a blue-collar chipmunk, I noticed, with work boots, protective goggles, and a plush hard hat. From the boy's intensity, I realized he meant the outside world.
The question set me off again, and I found it very hard to reply. Eyes dribbling tears, it was all I could do to shrug, turning away to wipe my face on my puffy sleeve.
'That's pretty much what I figured,' he said bitterly. 'How did you get through?'
I wasn't going to get into it. 'Ask him. Where are we going?'
Before he could answer, another boy said, 'You'd know if you belonged here.'
'Don't talk to her-she's a freak,' said someone else.
'You see any other women with us? That's 'cause they were quarantined. We had to leave 'em behind-'
'Sisters, mothers… all of them.'
'-all gone, and you think you comin'? Uh-uh.'
'Wait a minute,' I said, trying to stem the hostility, 'I didn't ask to come here. I'm just along for the ride.'
This was the wrong thing to say. The reaction was so vehement that some of the adults cast puzzled and annoyed looks our way. Frankly, I would have appreciated any adult intervention, but the grown-ups were deeply engrossed in heated business of their own. I resented Cowper for letting himself be monopolized this way.
We passed through an open gate and entered a field of massive rusty cylinders, large as redwood trunks. Above them, disappearing into the fog, loomed a huge inert crane, a skeletal Godzilla guarding her eggs. The Sallie stopped, and with it the abuse directed at me. Everyone's attention was suddenly focused on something down the road, some kind of winged black monolith with giraffe-speckled antennae sprouting from its crest.
'Is that what I think it is?' I asked. No one replied.
It was a very, very big submarine.
CHAPTER SIX
As if dismissed from school, the boys broke formation and surged toward the sub. I was swept along in the rush, taking comfort in being momentarily ignored, lost in the crowd. Albemarle was yelling, 'Hey! Hey! Wait!' but it wasn't until the shooting started that we all stopped short.
There was a bright spike of automatic-weapons fire from the vicinity of the submarine. I couldn't see much, caught in the sudden pileup, but I could hear an amplified voice bellow, 'HALT. YOU ARE IN A RESTRICTED AREA.
