“You mean her.”
Nixon glowered at the docent, who slapped hands over her mouth to keep herself from speaking again.
Dick was a bit flummoxed. Things had changed more than he’d realized in his absence. “Yeah, well…whatever. The President. Her.”
“You’re not going anywhere.” The guard still brandished his gun, but the brass had gone out of his words. “Stop or I’ll shoot!”
“Watch it, young man. Can’t you see who you’re talking to?” Nixon’s ill-fitting jacket bunched around his shoulders as he raised both arms to indicate the plethora of pictures that plastered the walls around them, photos from every phase of his storied career.
The guard’s eyes flicked from Dick’s face to the pictures and back again. Same widow’s peak, same scowling brows, same bulldog jowls. Yet he refused to lower his weapon.
“I’m warning you! I’m not afraid to use this.” His hand trembled as he said it, however, and Dick suspected that the gun subsequently went off by accident.
The shot slammed into Nixon’s chest right above the heart, rocking him backward and nearly toppling him. That’s gonna leave a mark, he thought.
The bullet did make a small hole in his dress shirt, but no blood came out. Fortunately, the guard hadn’t had the presence of mind to shoot Dick in the head. He yelped as Nixon shrugged off the wound and kept coming.
“That’s no way to treat a former Chief Executive!” Nixon closed the gap between them. The guard screeched and dropped the pistol as Dick grabbed his shirt.
“Now, listen to me, you little [expletive deleted]. You’re going to take me to the [expletive deleted] President or I’m gonna kick your [expletive deleted] ass out of my Library!” Dick released the whimpering guard with a shove and looked down at his feet, which were shod only in a pair of bedraggled black dress socks. “And, for Christ’s sake,” he roared at the dumbstruck docent, “get me some [expletive deleted] shoes!”
* * * *
Dick ultimately had to submit to a DNA test before anyone in Washington would entertain the idea that he was anything more than a hoax. The delay cost him precious hours, but at least it gave him time to procure a new navy-blue suit and a decent pair of Florsheims. He also washed his face and hands, although removing the grime only brought out the ghastly lividity of his complexion. There was still dirt under his fingernails, but that felt good to him, as if he’d done honest work.
A private jet flew him from Orange County to D.C., John Wayne to Ronald Reagan. A West Coast C.I.A. operative briefed him during the flight. There was, indeed, a war going on. As in the Yom Kippur War during Nixon’s own administration, the Middle East had erupted into violence and ethnic hatred. As he had done, the present Commander-in-Chief had thrown U.S. support behind Israel, funneling American arms into the hands of Israeli troops to help repel Islamic forces from outside the country while purging Palestinian terrorists within. Tens of thousands of people—Muslims and Jews, military and civilians—had perished over the course of the three-year conflict. As Israel appeared to falter, the President had committed U.S. troops to the country’s defense, leading to even heavier casualties.
And then, within the past five hours, an unknown party had detonated an atomic bomb in New York City, killing an estimated seven million American citizens.
The last trump had sounded.
Washington was in a state of siege, with Army and National Guard checkpoints hastily erected throughout the city and traffic into the Mall restricted to approved vehicles. As perversity would have it, they’d closed off the Arlington Memorial Bridge, so the black Lincoln limousine that conveyed Nixon to the White House had to detour via I-66 and the E Street Expressway, past the Kennedy Center.
The chauffeur glanced back at Nixon through the open window of the privacy partition. “Well, there it is!” he said with a big, dopey grin, as if Dick needed to be told.
“Yep. There it is.” Nixon found his gaze drawn irresistibly toward the tiered, U-shaped building that glowed in the evening twilight outside the car’s left-hand windows: the southern structure of the Watergate complex.
In the years since his resignation, he’d avoided coming anywhere near the place and had vainly hoped it might be demolished in the name of urban renewal. But it remained, decade upon decade, a monument to his failure, as damnably eternal as the Pyramids or nuclear waste.
Dick had only been playing politics the way he’d been taught: gloves off, bare-knuckled and brutal. If you couldn’t take it, you had no business in the ring. Had he demanded impeachment hearings when Daley’s goddamn Chicago machine threw the ’60 election to that bastard Kennedy? No, he’d conceded defeat rather than put the country through a contested election—but he wasn’t going to let it happen again.
In retrospect, Dick realized that he needn’t have bothered with dirty tricks in the ’72 campaign. George McGovern was an idiot lib who’d have hung himself if Nixon had simply uncoiled enough rope for him. Instead, Dick had entrusted his career to morons like Hunt and Liddy, who hired even bigger imbeciles to bug the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate. He then compounded his error by covering up their incompetence instead of sending them all to the wall as he should have.
Yet was that mistake so horrible that it outweighed everything else he’d ever done—the opening of China, détente with the Soviets, the Clean Air Act, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency—all of it? Nixon couldn’t bear the thought that, to most people, he was nothing more than an easy punch line for stand-up comedians.
There was still time to change that, he told himself. Someone—some thing—knew that he was capable of more than that. A higher power had chosen him, made him whole again, for a reason. He dared not disappoint its faith in him.
When the limo arrived at the White House, Nixon let the sight of that glorious pediment with its Greco-Roman columns blot out all thoughts of the Watergate complex. As the chauffeur let him out of the car, the years since he’d flown away in that last helicopter ride following the resignation seemed to evaporate.
He was home.
The Oval Office had changed, of course. For one thing, a huge plasma-screen teleconferencing monitor curved along one wall, upon which a dozen displays broadcast news reports from around the world about the tense international situation in the wake of the nuclear attack. For another, a woman with iron-grey hair sat in the leather chair behind the desk, conferring with the cluster of dour-faced advisors that surrounded her. As soon as the Secret Service bodyguards led Nixon into the room, the muttered conversation ceased, and the woman got to her feet.
“My God…it really is you,” she said.
He made a stiff bow. “Madame President.”
Attired in a grey tweed suit, she seemed to be in her early seventies, which would have made her a teenager back in his administration. Dick prayed that he could reason with a hippie.
“How did you come back?” she asked.
He lifted an accusing finger. “You brought me back. If you retaliate to this terrorist act, it’ll be the beginning of Armageddon.” He quoted Revelation 20:13. “‘And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them.’ I’m only the first, but there will be billions more—more than all the people now alive. You must hold off the attack.”
One of the advisors, an impudent whelp with slick black hair, shook his head. “I can’t believe you’re even listening to this guy. He’s obviously a fraud sent here by the enemy. If we allow the New York atrocity to go unpunished, there’s no telling which of our cities they’ll obliterate next.”
The President’s expression hardened. “He’s right. The people are screaming for blood. You of all people should know how that works: ‘Death before dishonor,’ and so on. They want me to nuke something, and right now, it’s not a matter of if, it’s a choice of which target.”
“But you don’t even know who was responsible!” Nixon protested.
“
And we may never know. Hezbollah, Hamas, al Qaeda-does it really matter? A full investigation could take months, but the U.S. must demonstrate its force now.”
“Even if it means doom for the whole human race?” Dick tried to stride across the floor’s plush Presidential seal to confront her face-to-face, but the Secret Service agents caught hold of him. Although he could have flung them across the room like a couple of rag dolls, he relented.
“Look at me!” he beseeched the President. “You know who I am. Don’t make the same mistake I did and let pride lead you into carrying on a war you can’t win.”
She stared at him, and Dick could tell that she needed no DNA test to prove his identity.
Then, with soul-deep weariness, she lowered herself back into her chair.
“Back in ’71, I put flowers in my hair and marched in the streets of D.C. chanting ‘Make Love, Not War’ because you wouldn’t get out of ’Nam. Now the kids are protesting me.” She pleaded to Nixon with her eyes, the bags beneath them heavier than his own. “What should I do?”
“Negotiate.”
The mousse-haired advisor exhaled disgust. “We don’t negotiate with terrorists.”
“Not with the terrorists, you jackass,” Nixon said. “With the Israelis and the Muslims. Use this crisis to fashion a lasting peace.”
The President raised her hands in exasperation. “But if Armageddon has already begun, what’s the point?”
“It’s not Armageddon until you make it Armageddon.” Nixon shook off the grip of the bodyguards, who seemed inclined to let him go, and approached her desk. “Don’t you see? The human race chooses the hour of its own destruction. Pull back from the brink before it’s too late.”
“Maybe it’s already too late.” The announcement came from a Hispanic female who would later introduce herself as the White House Press Secretary. During the debate, her attention had been drawn to the video monitors. “Madame President, I think you should see this.”
Even before he looked, Nixon knew what he would find on the screen. There was only one story that could possibly distract the world’s news media from coverage of the recent nuclear holocaust.
In footage from CNN, thousands of charred corpses from the ruin of New York—those that had not been vaporized by the initial blast—staggered out of the rubble to rip the limbs off relief workers in white radiation suits. On Fox News, a shaky cell-phone camera showed somnambulating bodies from a hospital morgue overwhelming a nurse, gouging strips of flesh from the victim with their hands and teeth. Similar scenes played out on channels from around the world as text crawls in Japanese, Arabic, and Russian scrolled superfluous explanations across the screens.
Dick saw his worst-case scenario confirmed. Unlike himself, these dead seemed to have lost all trace of humanity as they tore into the living with a blind wrath propelled by envy and vengeance. They had risen to scourge the world that had sent them to their graves.
Nixon imagined Pat reduced to a ravening, rotting animal, pictured her ravaging Tricia and Julie, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren. No…no, she would never—there had to be some way of reaching her, of reaching all of them…
“That’s it, isn’t it?” The President sounded more lifeless than the walking cadavers on the monitor. “We’re finished.”
“No.” Nixon leaned toward her, clenched his fist in sudden resolve. “This is precisely the motivating force you need to bring the Arabs and Israelis to the bargaining table. Nothing unites foes like a common enemy.”
He flailed a hand toward one of the displays on the monitor, in which an Al Jazeera anchorman babbled beside shots of a burned-out Lebanese suburb where bombing victims walked side-by-side with dead G.I.s to mob the survivors of a recent battle.
“The Middle East will be overrun with corpses from the recent war. Offer both Israel and the Muslim countries U.S. military aid against the dead in exchange for concessions on a Palestinian homeland and official recognition of the Jewish state.”
“Spoken like a true Machiavellian.” The President’s mouth twisted, as if she were washing the proposal over her tongue to see how it tasted. “But tell me, Dick…may I call you Dick?”
Nixon grimaced. “Everyone does.”
“How am I supposed to offer military aid when I’m going to need every available soldier and weapon to defend us?”
“Let me talk to them.”
“Who? The Arabs?”
“No. The dead.”
The President darted a glance toward the mute malevolence of the massed corpses onscreen. “Can you do that?”
Nixon chuckled, a deep baritone gurgle. “Can’t be any worse than dealing with Mao or Brezhnev.”
The slick-haired advisor shook his head. “Madame President, you can’t be serious—”
“Shut up.” She didn’t take her eyes off Nixon. “Tell me what you need,” she said.
* * * *
In truth, flying to China for the first time was easy compared to the task Nixon faced now. To make a rapprochement with any adversary, one had to meet him on his own turf. Therefore, as a gesture of good faith, Dick would have to go to the only place in the world he dreaded more the Watergate complex.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was situated on the Mall between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, less than a mile from the White House, but the walk there seemed as long to Nixon as the road to Damascus. Although Dick had lived for more than a decade after the monument’s completion in 1982, he had never dared to visit it. When he finally stood at the crux of that broad V of polished black stone, he could feel the weight of accusation that he’d avoided all those years. More than two hundred feet long and over ten feet high at its tallest point, the sheer wall of ebony granite appeared almost white with the density of text etched upon it.
Names. Thousands upon thousands of names. The monolith was a mammoth tombstone for an entire generation of American soldiers. At its base, the faithful had laid photos, flowers, Purple Hearts, and other offerings to show the dead that they had not been forgotten.
Dick gazed up at the columns of names that rose more than a yard above his head. So many. How much longer and higher had he made this wall by refusing to admit defeat until it became inevitable? He put out one quavering hand toward the reflective surface of the stone but couldn’t bring himself to touch it.
“They’re coming,” the President announced from behind him, as if reading his mind. “Are you ready?”
Nixon nodded and turned to face out toward the moonlit reflecting pool of the Mall. He squinted at the painfully bright floodlights the satellite television crews had set up to illuminate the Memorial for the imminent broadcast. His speech would be transmitted live on all channels, on every radio station, and through every public address system in the nation. Special trucks equipped with loudspeakers would drive through every major city blaring his words.
In front of Nixon stood a single microphone on a stand. The solicitous White House Press Secretary asked him if he wanted a teleprompter or prepared speech, but Nixon refused. Tonight, he would be speaking from his heart, even if it wasn’t beating.
Barely visible beyond the bright lights and cameras was a squad of National Guard soldiers armed with M-16s and grenade launchers—the last line of defense should anything go wrong. Secret Service bodyguards in flak helmets and bulletproof vests flocked around the President herself, who had insisted on remaining at Nixon’s side over the vehement objections of her advisors. Together they stood, shoulder-to-shoulder, and waited for the others to arrive.
* * * *
Across the Potomac, in the Arlington National Cemetery, row upon row of cement slabs, identical but for the names and dates chiseled upon them, shone stark white in the light of the gibbous moon overhead. In the darkness, the lush grass swelled like waves in a black sea. Miniature American flags left over from Memorial Day wobbled and fell over as the turf beneath them blistered, burst open. Even the Tomb of the Unknowns cracked and disgorged its anonymous rema
ins. The creatures who shambled forth from the desecrated ground had become nearly as identical as their headstones, distinguishable only by the tatters of the dress uniforms that still clung to them. Their faces had withered to the bone, reduced to the death’s-head that underlies every human visage. They represented every conflict since the Civil War—both World Wars, Korea, Desert Storm, Iraq, and, of course, Vietnam—but they now ranked themselves into a united force, speechlessly advancing, a legion of the silent yet unquiet dead.
Three hundred thousand strong, they marched in chaotic, stumbling cadence from their scattered graves to cluster at the two-lane entrance of the abandoned Arlington Memorial Bridge. Although security forces across the country had discovered that one could incapacitate the animate corpses with a direct hit to the head, the troops that blockaded the bridge earlier that day had long since withdrawn to defend the White House and the Vietnam Memorial. Unimpeded, the undead flowed en masse across the bridge to spill out onto the Mall, drawn onward by some sense more certain than the sight endowed to their eyeless sockets.
Nixon saw them swarm around the Lincoln Memorial, a black tide of silhouettes that surged forward as sinuously as a plague of rats. A few of the Guardsmen cast a contemptuous glance at the deceased Commander-in-Chief and raised their weapons, aimed into the onslaught.
Nixon raised a hand. “Hold your fire!”
When he failed to begin his speech, even the current President grew nervous.
“Dick?” She gaped at the coming horde. “You’re on.”
He stepped up to the microphone but waited a moment more, until that undifferentiated mass drew close enough for him to pick out individuals in the crowd, however decomposed and unrecognizable, to whom he could address his remarks.
“My fellow Americans.” Nixon spread his arms as if to embrace them all. “For you are still Americans—every last one of you.”
Loudspeakers echoed his words across the Mall; television and radio carried them across the continent. Yet they did nothing to slow the ghoulish army’s advance. The National Guard soldiers fidgeted, fingers restive on triggers, but any resistance now would be token at best.
The Haunts & Horrors Megapack: 31 Modern & Classic Stories Page 13
