Free Xombies: Apocalypso by Walter Greatshell Page B

the brand. Archie is a bumbler, yes, so at first their accidental catastrophes were taken lightly—it was accepted that no vase, sculpture, or windowpane was safe with an Archie nearby, and ladders were acknowledged instruments of havoc. But the harmless blunders soon escalated to unnecessary heights of mayhem: The school science lab exploded, destroying Dr. Langhorne’s research, along with a wing of the building; then a fireworks display went haywire, causing a wildfire that burned down half the village. Both times it was an Archie that caused it.
    That was just the beginning: Soon neighboring towns burned, bridges sagged, dams broke, and power lines went down—all in the wake of well-meaning involvement by Archies.
    The Weatherbees, Flutesnoots, Grundys, and various other authority figures attempted to rein in these extreme manifestations of “character,” to channel them in more positive directions, but this only led to more opportunities for destruction. By the same token, increasing restrictions and curfews on one Archie just made the others act up. There was talk of eliminating the role of Archie altogether, replacing him with a less-destructive persona. But it was too late; the play had developed its own momentum and could not be controlled. It was like a runaway train, careening faster and faster to some unknown end.
    The end came on a Monday night, right after the football game.
    After a bad call, the game degenerated into a brawl, with players fighting and hooligans running onto the field with weapons. A tanker truck was driven onto the field, scattering the combatants and smashing through the goalposts before ramming the stands and exploding.
    Flaming spectators swarmed down and made it a riot, then the whole population joined in and made it a war. The battle migrated from the stadium to the center of town, everyone savaging everyone else and being savaged in turn. All traces of Archie and the gang were erased. All the nice outfits were ripped to shreds (if not burned away entirely), all the neat houses were trashed, and all the tidy townsfolk were reduced to antic horrors, frenzied skeletons jigging to the music of The Monkees.
    Perhaps because of the jukebox, they left the malt shop for last … but finally its time came. As if by some prearranged signal, the mob poured in, breaking down the door and crashing through the windows. The cash register became a weapon; plates and silverware became missiles. The level of crazed destruction was far beyond that of ordinary Xombies—this was violence for the sake of violence, mansized ants attacking each other and spiraling into even more extreme havoc, so that to a human witness, the scene would have been a blur, a chaos-making whirlwind.
    “Stop,” I said.
    The mob came at me, rearing up with everything it had to slice, dice, and make julienne fries.
    “I SAID STOP.” My voice had a power over them; they bumped into it like hitting an invisible wall.
    Then the power went out.
    Just like that, the lights winked off, the music died. Anything running on electricity clunked to a halt. All at once, Loveville was silent but for the crackling of flames. Somewhere in that silence, a telephone rang—it was the malt shop’s pay phone.
    Grumbling, Emilio Monte answered it, saying, “Hello? Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh … uh-huh … uh-huh—no shit. Okay … I’ll tell ’em.”
    He hung up and just stood there, ruminating over whatever he had just heard, while everyone else in the room waited expectantly in the dark, frozen in midfight. It was the first time the phone had ever rung. At last, Emilio picked his way through the wreckage of his shop, footsteps clinking on dishes and broken glass.
    “Attention,” he said. “I got an announcement to make. That was Arlo Fisk on the phone, calling from the nuclear plant. He says he’s under attack.”
    “Under attack! By who?” I asked.
    “Another boomer. It’s a French boat— Triomphante -class. Arlo says they entered