Anyway, it was midnight. They unlocked the doors and let the throngs of people rush inside.
“BUTCH CASSIDY DIDN’T DIE,” Cade said to Zach. “And neither will you. Get out of here.”
At that moment, his shotgun clicked empty.
Zach felt a tap on the shoulder. He turned. Bell had her gun up and aimed at his head.
“Get down,” she screamed.
She fired a round the instant he ducked. It caught a Snakehead in the eye, sending him to the floor.
“What are you doing?” Zach started to ask.
She cracked him across the skull with the pistol. His eyes rolled up into his head. “Son of a—”
He was down. Bell shoved him into the elevator.
Cade used the shotgun like a club; the Snakeheads had gotten bold. They were close to escaping. They could feel it.
Bell put her gun right against the temple of the first creature in line. She pulled the trigger. A crater appeared in its head.
Cade used the Snakehead’s body to shove the others back.
It was all the time Bell needed.
She shouldered her way by Cade, close enough to kiss his cheek. As her mouth passed his ear, she whispered a name. She told him what she’d learned, the small fact that she’d always saved, just in case. It was useless to her now. But Cade would be able to do something with it.
Then she shot Cade point-blank in the chest.
It didn’t kill him; she only had standard ammunition, and he was still close to bulletproof.
But combined with the broken ribs Book had inflicted, it was enough to knock him off balance. She pushed with her whole body, and he fell into the elevator with Zach.
Her hand hit the scanner and she ducked out again.
Cade’s icy calm was lost in an expression of pure bewilderment.
He mouthed the word “Why?”
The doors closed.
THE SNAKEHEADS OVERWHELMED her only a few moments later. Her gun was empty, and she had no spare clips. And she couldn’t make enough head shots to stop them from getting to her.
She tried to remain calm even as they grabbed her. She thought about what she wanted to say to Cade in response to his last question.
In truth, she hadn’t done it for him. Or even for Zach. She’d done it to prove something to herself.
“The world needs people like you in it,” she would have said. “Because it has too many people like me in it.”
Just as the Snakeheads slammed her to the floor, as they lowered their heads to feed, an appetizer before the main course they knew was waiting up above, Bell opened her hand.
The grenade she’d taken from Zach fell and rolled to touch the clawed toe of one of the Snakeheads.
The pin was still around Bell’s finger.
Everything went white and hot, like the birth of a new star.
BELL, AND EVERY LIVING thing within a hundred yards of her, was vaporized.
The explosion ignited the air. The flames surged through the confined spaces of the Site, washing against walls and flowing down tunnels like a wave. The temperatures inside topped out at 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit—roughly the melting point of steel.
It was like sticking a blowtorch in an anthill.
Marsh felt something like the sun on his back. It was pleasant at first. Then it hurt. It hurt a lot. He wanted to run, but there was nowhere to go, and it just kept getting hotter—
Marsh and the rest of the Snakeheads were burned down into charcoal.
CADE FELT THE WAVE of fire chase them up the elevator shaft.
The elevator was too slow and too close. He and Zach would have to escape, or burn.
He grabbed Zach and slammed the emergency exit in the roof open. He slung Zach over his shoulder and skittered up the wall of the shaft like a roach.
The fire and superheated air hit the elevator car like a bomb. It ground to a halt, the hydraulics bursting and shattering as the fluid went from room temperature to boiling in under a second. The car broke free and skidded down the shaft, collapsing to slag at the bottom.
Cade was hit with only a fraction of the backdraft, but it nearly took him off the wall. He almost lost Zach. With his free hand, he wedged his feet against the walls and levered the ground-floor doors open with one hand.
He fell forward and spilled Zach onto the ground.
The elevator doors closed behind him, allowing only a small puff of smoke to escape.
People rushed by, buzzing happily as they headed for the stores, paying no attention to him at all.
He picked Zach up again. The latest blow to the head, his exhaustion and the concussion had all combined to send him deeply unconscious. Cade needed to get him medical attention—and fast.
There was no trace of Tania anywhere.
THE “MONSTER SALE” at Liberty Mall was considered a massive success.
Shoppers went home with armloads of merchandise, and the retailers cleared out their stale inventory. It was discussed at marketing conferences as a textbook example of shifting perceptions during an economic slump.
Only two things marred the otherwise-perfect event. One elevator, by the ugly mural in the east section of the Mall, was out of order, forcing a long detour for those in wheelchairs or assisted-mobility scooters.
And many of the shoppers reported a peculiar smell. Some said it was like burning BBQ, while others blamed the Porta-Johns outside.
It dissipated after a few days, and no one thought much about it again.
FORTY-FIVE
1957—“Pod People” Incident—The California town of Mira Loma is nearly entirely wiped out by a cryptobotanical fungal outbreak that creates plant-based duplicates of human beings. The fungus, which appears to be some kind of sentient, mass intelligence distributed through its network of spores, was destroyed when the town’s lone survivor alerted proper authorities. However, a number of spores were known to have been transported outside the city limits via truck, and have never been accounted for.
—BRIEFING BOOK: CODE NAME: NIGHTMARE PET
Zach checked out of Offutt’s base hospital the next morning. He and Cade were on a military transport an hour after that. It had only taken a couple phone calls for Zach to reinstate Cade’s RED RUM clearance.
He didn’t speak for the longest time on the flight back to D.C., staring out the window instead.
But at one point, he turned to Cade. “Why do you think she did it?”
Bell. Cade had seen no reason to hide the truth about her from Zach.
“I don’t know,” Cade said. “Perhaps she thought it would make up for some of the things she did.”
“Do you think so?”
“No,” Cade said. There were crimes that were beyond forgiveness; something he knew all too well.
Zach winced. “Once again, you’re a huge comfort.”
They sat in silence. Then Zach spoke without looking at him.
“Thank you for going into that room after me.”
“Part of the job,” Cade said.
Zach shook his head. “I was in there. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you left me. That’s not just one of those things people say, you understand? That’s how bad it was, Cade.”
Cade nodded.
“You’ve saved my life dozens of times. This was different. There was a moment—” Zach paused. “This was worse. That’s all I can tell you. So: thank you.”
For a moment, Cade could see, it all came back on Zach—the blackness, the fear, everything he’d learned about himself in that room, everything he’d lost.
This would have to be handled delicately. Cade knew there was only one thing to say.
“Ain’t no thang, homeslice. Who’s got your back?”
Zach looked at him for a second like he was insane, and then his face split into a smile. He couldn’t laugh. Not yet. But he smiled, and something of the old Zach was back.
“Homeslice?”
“I’m trying to update my slang.”
“Please don’t.
”
“Whatever you say, dawg.”
EPILOGUE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Zach blew past the secretary guarding the door of the Oval. She recognized him. He hadn’t been gone that long. So she tried to talk to him instead of giving the panic signal that would tell the Secret Service agent in the foyer to shoot him dead.
“Zach,” she said. “Wait, he’s in conference. Zach!”
There was no conference, no matter what the president’s schedule said. Everyone in Samuel Curtis’s inner circle—a group that once included Zach—knew that 11:15 to 11:25 A.M. every day was sacrosanct. Never bother him for those ten minutes. The one exception was nuclear war, or a terrorist attack. “And it had better be one of the major cities in a swing state,” someone had once joked. It was the one rule that was inviolate, if you wanted to keep working for Curtis: you do not mess with the president’s smoke break.
He’d told the media and his wife that he’d quit, and in truth, he’d made a valiant effort. But it was a stressful job, and he had practically no other vices to blow off steam. He didn’t diddle the interns or pop pills like some of the previous occupants of the office. He’d managed to cut back to one cigarette a day. For his sanity, he needed that quiet space. He just didn’t need a picture on CNN (or, God forbid, Fox) of him lighting up in the White House.
Zach slammed the door open. The president jumped a bit in his chair, startled. Not even the Secret Service was allowed in the room while he smoked. He hastily stubbed out the butt in an old ashtray—a commemorative glass dish from Nixon’s 1960 campaign, a private joke. Technically, the White House, like all government buildings, was a nonsmoking area, but there were some rules the big man was allowed to break.
He realized it wasn’t his wife or a reporter. His face darkened with rage when he saw Zach.
Zach was in no mood. He held up a warning finger. “You don’t get to be pissed. Trust me on this.”
The Secret Service man outside the door heard the tone and poked his head inside the office. The president considered Zach for a moment, then waved him away. “It’s all right, Patrick,” he said. “Close the door, please.”
Zach noticed, for the first time, The Washington Post on the desk: WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF FOUND DEAD IN APPARENT SUICIDE. The inside pages were full of analysis about how this might relate to the midterm elections, now only a day away.
“Did I interrupt your mourning period?” Zach asked.
The president glanced at the paper, then back at Zach. “He decided that pills would be easier than facing Cade.”
“He got off easy.”
The president shrugged. “He wasn’t the first to spare Cade the work. And he won’t be the last. Why are you here, Zach?” Curtis gave Zach his most withering stare, but Zach didn’t flinch.
“A lot of people could have died because you trusted the wrong man. Of more immediate concern to me, I almost died because of the choice you made.”
“Again, it wasn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last. It goes with the job, Zach. I thought you understood that. Some people said I made a mistake when I chose you for the position you currently fill.”
Zach almost smiled. It was a subtle deflection. President Curtis really was untouchable as a politician. But Zach wasn’t about to be distracted.
“I’m not playing those games any longer, Mr. President. I am doing the job. I showed up to work. The question is, have you?”
For the first time Zach could remember, the president looked confused. “I’m not sure I follow you.”
“Prador was able to get away with as much as he did because he controlled access to you. I had to work through channels. You never knew the threat existed because I couldn’t get the information to you. That’s no longer acceptable to me.”
“It’s not?” The president’s voice was flat.
“No. You’ve been handling me—handling all of this—as if it’s just another problem to be managed. You should know better. And frankly, neither I nor the country can afford that anymore.”
“You’re not thinking this through, Zach. There’s the matter of secrecy. Deniability. These protocols are in place for a reason—”
Zach cut him off. “I could give a damn, sir. I’m no longer interested in providing you with deniability. I have risked my life for you, and I’ll keep doing it. But not to preserve your poll numbers. You are in the loop on all of this whether you like it or not.”
For a moment, Curtis simply remained stone-faced. “What do you want?”
“I want the priority line,” Zach said. “The one that’s not supposed to exist. The little phone in your pocket that nobody else is supposed to be able to call. From now on, that’s my line to you. It rings, you pick up. No matter what.”
“That’s it?”
“No, sir,” Zach plunged ahead. “If I ask for anything—from a briefcase full of cash to a nuclear strike—I expect to get it. I cannot keep fighting these things without your full support.”
Zach waited as the president considered the angles. “You know, of course,” he said, finally, “that one reason I picked you was because you understand politics. You and Cade are never supposed to be connected to this office. That the entire point of all our secrecy is to protect not only the White House, but your operations? Not to mention protecting the American public from the knowledge you and I already have? You’re asking a lot, Zach.”
Zach clenched his teeth and chose his next words carefully. “You’ve already given me access to the biggest secrets in American history, sir. Whitewater and Watergate would look like butterfly kisses compared to the shitstorm you’d face if even a few of them got out.”
Curtis smiled. “Yes, but most of those sound like the rantings of a lunatic. Deniability is built in. Who would believe someone who claimed that there was a vampire working for the president?”
“I don’t know about that, sir. Just think how the Post would have played it if they found out Prador was under investigation for treason.”
The president leaned forward. The look in his eyes could have scalded paint off the wall. “Are you suggesting someone might tell them such a thing?”
Zach held his ground. “No, sir. I’m speaking hypothetically, of course.”
The president leaned back in his chair again. “Of course. So this is an ultimatum? You get this, or you quit?”
Zach felt his anger and frustration about to break, like waves on the shore. He was tired. “No. No, sir. I can’t quit. And neither can you. Damn it, you picked me. You honestly think I’d bother you in the middle of the night to order a pizza? Griff might have been happy to say, ‘Ours is not to reason why.’ But I’m not him. For one thing, I’m not fighting this as a holding action anymore. I want to win. Someday, I want to put my feet up and celebrate the day we killed every last one of the damned things on the Other Side. This is where it starts. It’s that simple. I’m saying I’m done screwing around. I need to know you are, too.”
The president kept staring. Zach swallowed. “Sir,” he added.
Finally, he reached for a pen and scribbled a number on a small slip of paper.
“I trust you, Zach,” he said.
Zach took the paper.
“Anything else?” the president asked.
“Just one more thing.”
“I was joking, Zach.”
“I’m not, sir.” He took a folded sheet of paper from his coat pocket and slid it across the desk.
The president read it, then raised his eyebrows at Zach. “You want me to sign this?”
“It’s not a nuclear strike, sir.”
“It’s not exactly a pizza, either.” But with a quick flourish, he signed the document and handed it back.
He reached for another cigarette and his lighter. “Two in one day?” Zach asked.
The president gave him a dangerous look. “Some days are longer than others.”
Zach took the hint and headed for the door. As he left, he heard the president
exhale heavily as he muttered to himself: “How quickly they grow up.”
GRAVES STACKED THE LAST of his papers into his briefcase. He never thought retirement would be so much goddamn work.
When he’d woken up a couple of weeks ago and learned he was still in the old world, he’d felt the inevitable disappointment. He’d failed. The Snakeheads were not tearing through America’s heartland. Everything was pretty much the same as it was the day before. He imagined this must be how a lot of people felt on the morning of January 1, 2000.
The Site itself: total loss. The DNA necessary to create the Snakeheads burned to nothing. The Company was looking for new branches of the Marsh family tree, but no one was optimistic about that.
Despite his failure, the Company had no hard feelings. At least, not enough to send a hit squad after him. As a gold watch, Graves was elevated to CEO of Archer/Andrews. He’d spend the rest of his days in comfort, secure in the respect and admiration of his peers.
He’d earned it. Other men, younger men, would carry on the battle for the new world now. He’d help where he could. Until it arrived, he intended to enjoy himself.
Unfortunately, the executive flights to Dubai and steak dinners were put on hold as every federal agency in town stormed the gates.
Within days of Graves’s return from Iowa, congressional subpoenas hit the offices. The IRS began an audit. FBI agents were talking to A/A clients, and there were rumors of a federal grand jury. Now even the reporters smelled blood and were circling.
He knew where this was coming from, of course: the White House. He never thought that little bastard Barrows could generate so many problems in such a short amount of time.
He’d just spent another long day calming the fears of the board members while overseeing damage control. The lawyers called every twenty minutes. The shredders in the basement were running full-time, and Graves had a tech team wiping hard drives in every office.
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