They’re badass, they’re blue, they’re back–Xombies, ya gotta love ‘em! Zombie stories and novels are cool, but Xombies, to me, kick it up to a whole ‘nother level. And, True Believers (to borrow a Stan Lee-ism), Xombies are what you get, in spades, with Walter Greatshell’s second book in his series about them, Xombies: Apocalypticon.
What are Xombies?, you may ask, if you have not yet had the great fortune to encounter Walter Greatshell’s first book about them, Xombies: Apocalypse Blues (originally titled just Xombies). Well, they are the result of a scientific project to extend life indefinitely that has gone terribly wrong.
The Maenid Project was successful, in that its result, Agent X, was capable of extending life indefinitely, but as a blue-skinned, brain-damaged Xombie whose main goal is to be like an evangelist and spread its form of the Gospel to others, to make everyone like itself. Xombies do this by wrapping themselves around their unwilling converts, and giving them a perverse sort of kiss on the mouth, collapsing the lungs of their victims, and spreading the virus. The virus is blood-borne, and infected the women of the Earth first, who rapidly spread it to everyone else they could–though there are some pockets of human survivors here and there, such as some of the world’s richest people, who originally funded the project, and some of the world’s poorest (at the time the outbreak first occurred), like prisoners.
Back as a major character–though I had my doubts as to how she could be, if Walter Greatshell decided to resurrect her–is Lulu Pangloss, the heroine from the first novel. I doubted if she would be back, because the immunity she thought she had to becoming a Xombie was due to malnutrition, and she succumbs to the Agent X virus later in the book. The last we read about her, she’d entwined herself on the submarine’s periscope she, her father (Fred Cowper), and most of the other main characters had traveled in to reach Thule, Iceland (where the Moguls, the world’s richest people who’d funded the project, had set up a base to ride out the apocalypse they were responsible for creating). Far from being brain-damaged, Lulu has the “cure” for the virus in her bloodstream. She has retained her mental faculties, and can talk, though she generally doesn’t feel like talking, preferring to contemplate her inner thoughts and how she’s been changed, all of her cells mutated by the virus, which has taken over her body to a large extent. The virus constantly maintains and repairs one’s cells and body, making it possible for horrors to exist like mutilated or limbless Xombies.
Besides my thinking that Lulu Pangloss couldn’t be a major character in this novel, as she was in Xombies: Apocalypse Blues, I also thought that there was no way any sequel could be better than the first book in the series. I have to admit that I was very wrong in this assessment, as Xombies: Apocalypticon is more exciting, more action-packed, more gory, and more darkly humorous than its predecessor.
The novel opens at the point of the outbreak of Agent X. The scene is at a prison in Providence, Rhode Island (where much of the novel, like many of the tales of H.P. Lovecraft, whom the author refers to later, are set), where the stands are packed with people watching the annual prison rodeo. There’s a disruption in the stands, and blue-skinned women start attacking the other people. The civilians try to fight against the stronger and faster Xombies, some try to make a break for it and run out into the arena, where the prisoners who are participating in the rodeo are watching in confusion and growing fear. One man, carrying a young boy on his back, cries out for help to one of the prisoners, known as Voodooman:
“Please! They’re coming–” He was suddenly blindsided by a running leap, taken down by a feral-looking teenage girl. She was all over him like a snake swallowing a rat–it was as if she thought she could burrow down into his body through his mouth. Her teeth broke against his teeth. The little boy was knocked to the ground and lay there screaming.
They could hear the man’s chest collapse, like the dregs of a milshake being drained through a straw.
When Xombies: Apocalyticon started off like this, I knew that the author, Walter Greatshell, was determined right from the beginning to outdo himself. The book only gets better as it goes on. There are alternating plotlines involving the prisoners; the naval officers and teenage boys who had been aboard the submarine from Xombies: Apocalypse Blues, but who now have been sent out to forage for food and other supplies in Providence by Rich Kranuski, who commands the sub; and Lulu and other Xombies under her control, whom Dr. Alice Langhorne, also aboard the sub, sends forth to locate a possible antidote to the virus that the scientist Uri Miska was working on.
The three plotlines join together with the arrival of the sub off the coast of Rhode Island, when the boys who don’t get “converted” by the Xombies they encounter while foraging are rescued by the prisoners. The ex-prisoners have been employed by the Moguls and are now working gathering supplies for them. In return, they can keep whatever supplies they would like to live on, and have been given the right to divide up the land however they want and become the new Founding Fathers of America. They’ve also been given shares in the corporation, and told ways to fight against the Xombies. One method that reminded me of the movie Texas Chainsaw Massacre is to disguise themselves in segments of the skin from the Xombies they kill that are sewn together, because then other Xombies won’t bother them, believing that the people inside have been taken and converted already.
Of the boys sent ashore, only a handful survive and are found by the prisoners, who use the amphibious vehicles called ducks to patrol for Xombies and to gather supplies. The boys want to get back to the sub before their deadline to return passes. And when one of the ducks skewers a band of Xombies, who should it be but Lulu and some of her patrol?
I will repeat that one thing I really liked about Xombies: Apocalypse Blues, and that I liked in this book, too, are the chapter titles and Beatles references. For instance, there’s one chapter called “Octopus’s Garden,” and one called “I Am The Walrus.” There are other cultural references made, also, like one chapter that’s called “Blue Suede.” Both books cry out to be made into movies. Hopefully, one day, that will happen. In the meantime, Xombies: Apocalypticon can be read and enjoyed as a stand-alone novel, but I would suggest that you read Xombies: Apocalypse Blues first, both to get background information and because it’s a darn good read, as well.
