only for filling their cups. Maybe they thought Hector was being facetious. Not that I expected thanks, even if the rest were feted like conquerors. A little help would have been good-since I was the only one not swamped with admirers, I succumbed to the insatiable demands of the crowd, doling out seconds and thirds. There was never a break until the spigot trickled its final sludgy dregs. 'That's it! All gone!' I announced, sorry I hadn't set aside a cup for myself.
'Dude!' exclaimed a stringy-haired character with many tattoos. 'You're bringing up more, right?'
'Not that I know of.' I knew I wasn't-I could barely stand up.
He jabbed his bony finger into my chest. 'Well, you better! What are you doing here, anyway? Who is this bitch? I thought women were supposed to be off-limits-disease-ridden fucking vampires-and here you are in charge of the cocoa.'
Then others were pressing in on me, among them the boy in the hairnet who had harassed me before. 'Little bitch thinks she's all that,' he said. 'She thinks we gonna forget how she come bustin' in here like she own the place, takin' up room that shoulda gone to our families. Now she's gonna ration out the supplies for us? It ain't happenin', uh-uh.' He shoved the empty barrel into my arms, nearly knocking me into the sea.
The last frayed thread of my composure broke with a loud mental twang, and I launched myself at the lead cretin.
'Hey!' A frail-looking man in a suit and a porkpie hat caught me from behind, gently taking the barrel from my arms and putting it down like a stool for me to sit on. His eyes were large and intense, glowing in a face like dark-stained wood. Completely ignoring the boys all around, he said, 'Your name is Lulu?' His voice had a mild Caribbean lilt.
I nodded.
'I wanted to thank you.'
'Thank me?' My brain was spinning.
'For what you did below. I'm Hercule Banks, Tyrell's father. He told me what happened.' Solemnly, he said, 'You saved my son's life. I believe you saved all our lives.'
I wavered stupidly, mumbling, 'No, I mean… um… thanks… you're welcome.'
He kissed his fingertips and pressed them to my icy cheek, then cast a baleful look at the boys. They shrank back, parting to make a path for him. As he ambled through, he tipped his hat at me, saying, 'Praise Jesus.'
None of the boys would look at me after that, and soon they all melted away like wraiths into the dark. The feeling of that warm touch stayed with me much longer.
Schlepping the empty drum down to the galley, I ran into Mr. Robles and was told to report to the command center. I just wanted to collapse somewhere and sleep, so having to climb two decks back up was a really dreary prospect. Who would have expected stairs to be such an issue on a submarine?
The boat looked stripped. Everywhere I went there were raw-looking spaces where banks of computers and other equipment had been pulled out, leaving haphazardly bundled wires and bare struts. The second level was especially naked. I was to learn that most of the controls related to the vessel's function as a nuclear-missile platform had been there, removed many months before as part of some plan to keep the Cold War-era titan strategically relevant. When that all fell apart after Agent X, the sub was up for grabs.
I still couldn't get over the size of it. The submarine was divided into three segments, each nearly two hundred feet long and forty feet high. Farthest aft was the propulsion unit-the massive steam turbines that drove the screw, and the sixty-thousand-horsepower General Electric S8G nuclear reactor that created the steam; then the hollowed-out missile room; and, finally, the CCSM deck-the five-story command-and-control module beneath the fairwater that extended to the sonar dome in the bow. It was a large underwater building.
Cowper met me at the top of the companionway. Staving off my embrace, he handed over a big leather pouch, and said, 'Take good care of this ditty bag-I've put a few things in there might come in handy. Don't let that Kranuski see it, whatever you do. Come on.' Before I could reply, he began leading me aft, saying, 'The natives are getting restless. I need you to communicate to them what I plan to do. Here.'
We were standing before one of the watertight doors to the missile room. He leaned his arm on the gleaming valve wheel and said in the nasal voice of an old-time elevator operator, 'First floor: missile compartment. Ladies lingerie, sporting goods, household appliances, and other picture postcards.' He pulled the door open, revealing that cavernous tunnel of cargo. 'Be it ever so jumbled, there's no place like home. What do you think? Can we fit everybody in there?'
I didn't see how. 'It's going to be hard with all that stuff in the way.'
'Yeah, they turned her into a vault. A giant safe for all their crap. Anything they couldn't stand to leave unguarded when they closed up shop, and anything they thought they might need in the future. It's like a do-it- yourself kit for restarting America from scratch. They probably have the formula for Coke down there somewhere.'
'So what do we do?'
Cowper either grinned or gritted his teeth, I couldn't tell. He looked incredibly old.
'Heard of the Boston Tea Party?' he asked.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The sun rising over the bay was like hot lemon and honey to the sickly cold multitudes laboring on deck. From a distance we would have looked like termites at work on a floating log, vanishing into holes and emerging with bits of stuff, then dropping it into the water. Or perhaps slaves of the pharaoh, dismantling a tomb rather than building one.
In spite of Mr. Kranuski's and Mr. Sandoval's strenuous objections, a bearer brigade had been organized to clear the missile room. It happened before the crew could stop it-we were ten times their number and simply piled in, There was no fighting, and they didn't dare shoot anyone for fear of making lots of Exes.
All the next week we remained anchored off the north shore of Conanicut Island, painstakingly passing things up the three logistics hatches one at a time. There was great incentive to work fast, because as soon as floor space was cleared, it became living space, which in turn reduced topside crowding. The only problem was that much of the stuff was too big to fit through the hatches and could only be rearranged below.
'How did they ever get all this in here?' I asked Julian on the second day. I couldn't believe how much had been done while I was sleeping.
'In port you can use a crane to lift out the entire escape trunk. Makes a much bigger opening.'
'There's no way to do it now?'
'Well, we might be able to rig a scaffold and winch, but it's not something I'd want to try at sea.'
'Why not?'
'Just feel. This thing rocks like a bastard. Swell kicks up, you could lose the escape trunk over the side. Then you're left with a seven-foot-wide hole in the deck, which isn't too good on a submarine.'
'I guess not.'
The boat itself was a breathtaking sight by day, a black peninsula almost six hundred feet long-longer, I was told, than the Washington Monument was tall. We were conspicuous in the channel, and a number of smaller vessels examined us from a discreet distance. We weren't alone out there on the water, and as the days went by, we saw more and more refugee vessels, trickling in from all over to gather like seagulls around a dying whale.
A lot of boys were thrilled at the sight and desperate to join forces with other survivors, but word came down that we were to make no attempt to signal or in any way communicate with outsiders. If a boat tried coming to hailing range, it was warned off with a volley of gunfire. Many of us were unhappy with this, and we didn't even get an explanation because the command center was off-limits to all but 'essential personnel.'
After that first night, a division had sprung up between the working adults and the 'nubs'-nonuseful bodies. In practical terms it meant that everything forward or aft of the missile bay was off-limits. We had free run of that huge chamber and free topside access, but I felt vulnerable without Cowper and hoped he would make contact soon.
