How could it have happened? Agent X, the Xombie horror, Thule and the grim paradise of the Moguls, and now… what? There could be no homecoming, no end of the journey. Somehow he had found himself commanding not an Ohio-class submarine, not a U.S. naval vessel at all, but a nuclear-powered ghost ship, a modern Flying Dutchman, haunted, lost, and forever doomed to sail a dead sea.

In some part of him, Coombs had expected to come back and find America alight and sane like a beacon on the horizon, though continuous monitoring of every broadcast frequency revealed only dead air, the vacant hiss of static. Even the ambient sounds of the Atlantic Ocean were returned to a primeval state, devoid of human echoes. That pervasive churn of marine technology so familiar to submariners was gone. There was nothing to hear out there anymore but the random clicks and rasps of fish. That and the stealthy rhythms of his own boat. But still he had nurtured this irrational spark that some remnant of America would be waiting for him, like a candle in the window.

But no. It was over. It was truly all over. And in that case, what in God's name were they doing? Every one of them was already dead, they just wouldn't lie down.

Like Xombies.

But what else was there?

His headset crackled: "Commander Coombs. Dr. Langhorne requests permission to speak with you."

"Tell her I'm coming down." He spoke the words with the dry mouth of a man descending into a catacomb, a chamber of horrors. That's what the boat was to him now: a 560-foot-long steel tomb. Harvey Coombs was not a man who had ever put much stock in the supernatural. He was not superstitious or particularly religious beyond what was expected of any career-oriented, socially well-adjusted military officer.