by Ryder Stacy
They raced over the mighty Potomac on the Arlington Memorial Bridge and drove past the Lincoln Memorial. It was still there—unscathed. But that was more than Zhabnov could say about the rest of the mall. It looked as if a titanic tornado had passed through. Zhabnov gasped. Instead of the fall foliage he had expected to see, the cherry trees were almost bare. Some were twisted as if by a giant hand, uprooted and then tossed on the mall. Other trees were leaning precariously over the gray choppy Tidal Basin. The remaining ones were split open showing their open wounds—broken, dead limbs were everywhere. The Washington Monument appeared cracked and crooked, as if it were about to topple. There was only twisted rubble where the Octagon prison had stood.
They raced past the ellipse, where Zhabnov got his first good look at the White House. Even from the car, Zhabnov could see that his weatherproof plastic dome above the Capitol and grounds had been shattered. His foot-thick, transparent, three-hundred-foot high, impenetrable, plastisynth weather dome that he had built for security around the Presidential mansion had been smashed into shards. The entire East Wing was a shambles; and the West Wing had been utterly destroyed. KGB choppers had ground his roses to a pulpy red paste as they’d landed by the South Portico. His children. His creations. His precious genetically spliced hybrid stock of roses had been wiped out. He might never be able to recreate them. He, who had won top prize every year in the Taskent Rose Competition for his Rosa familiaris cruxae and American Beauty Roses among others, wouldn’t even be able to enter this year. Might never be able to show his face at the Taskent Horticultural Show again.
The Zil limo sped down the driveway from Pennsylvania Avenue through the White House gate which hung open askew on one hinge. The White House lawn was nothing but torn-up earth, as if an earthquake had hit. The Zil limo screeched to a halt outside the White House steps. Zhabnov got out of the limo in a daze. No one was on the sidewalk to greet him. He walked up to the rubble-strewn steps. The blackened wood door to the entrance was locked. He rang the bell but there was no response. How humiliating that the President of the U.S.S.A. was actually banging on his own door to be let in, he thought, enraged. Heads would roll.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the door was opened by a frail woman carrying a bucket of sudsy water and a mop. “Who are you?” she asked in a weak voice.
"I’m me, the President of the U.S.S.A.,” Zhabnov responded.
“President Zhabnov isn’t here. He’s in Russia.”
“I’m not asking for him, I am him,” Zhabnov screamed.
“Him who?”
“Him! I am President Zhabnov.”
“I told you already, he isn’t here.”
"I’m President Zhabnov,” he shouted, growing red from neck to forehead.
Suddenly a pale, bespeckled face appeared wearing a perplexed blank expression, which widened into a look of astonishment. “President Zhabnov!” the pale man exclaimed in the thin shrill voice that usually set Zhabnov’s teeth on edge.
Zhabnov shouted, “Gudonov!” and greeted his male secretary with a bear hug. Never had he dreamed he would be so thankful to see a familiar and hated face.
Gudonov didn’t know what to make of this hearty, emotional bearhug. He felt as if his bones were being crushed, and Zhabnov’s breath was steaming up his glasses.
Zhabnov recovered his poise. He abruptly stepped away from Gudonov, his shoulders back, and raising himself to his full height, he bellowed, “What is the meaning of all this? Where is everyone?”
“You weren’t expected until tomorrow morning,” Gudonov gasped, trying to get back his wind. “Things are damaged. I hoped—”
Zhabnov gazed about him. Paint hung from the ceiling in strips. Plaster had fallen from the walls and ceiling. The burned ragged curtains hung in frayed tatters. Buckets had been placed everywhere. He raised his eyebrows.
“The roof has been badly damaged by the KGB attack and the buckets are there to catch the leaks,” Gudonov explained to the unasked question. “As you can see, there is only a skeleton crew on duty since so much of the White House has been destroyed . . .”
“Show me, Gudonov,” the fat, jowly man ordered.
Gudonov took Zhabnov on a quick tour of his “palace.” The presidential office was a mess. Its shiny white paint was water-spotted, and the charcoal gray smudges gave evidence of a fire. Zhabnov’s floor-to-ceiling purple velvet drapes had been torn and they sagged to the floor. The veneer of his immense cherry-topped desk inlaid with the presidential seal was charred. The figure of a skull and the initial K was carved into its surface. Killov! The vandal! His suite of Empire salon furniture, recently upholstered in an eagle design of blue and gold, was faded, threadbare, and frazzled. The balcony hung precariously, as if by a prayer. The ten-foot-high mirror that hung between the portraits of Washington and Lincoln had been smashed.
“Where are the portraits?” Zhabnov asked, staring at the dark squares along the wall where the pictures should have been.
“In the basement,” replied Gudonov. “The portraits were removed during the KGB occupation for safekeeping.”
As they went on their way to the basement, a thin wisp of hope rose in Zhabnov’s mind. Maybe the Stuart portrait of Washington had been destroyed? He certainly hoped so. Vassily would never let him dispose of the damned thing! The basement smelled musty, dusty, and stale. They toured the basement and found that the presidential pictures were in good order. Stuart’s painting had survived, intact. Zhabnov was let down. He hated that portrait. It reminded him of a cadaver come back from the grave, and its eyes always seemed accusing or at least disapproving. He was worried about the priceless paintings—his own collection of twentieth-century masterpieces. They came at last to his precious Keane painting, “Big Eyed Tears.” It had been gored through. Slashed. It was as if someone had tried to kill the portrait of the young girl-child with immense eyes and innocent mouth, holding a single rose. The tear that hung from her right eye seemed to express her agony. This was too much. Zhabnov broke down into tears.
Zhabnov sobbed as he blew his nose. An anger arose in his breast unlike any he’d known before. Those who had defiled his Keane painting, crushed his precious roses into red paste, would be made to pay. They would be made to feel the thorn of the rose.
Yes, what a good idea. He would find them and have them wrapped in thorn bushes—their entire bodies punctured ten thousand times by the inch-long spikes. It would take them so very long to die.
Seven
The next five days of the Freefighters’ expedition were uneventful. Rockson, fearing a trap, had the team ride to a spot fifty miles north of the Idaho-5 base, to intersect the only road north, old Interstate 15, outside Pocatello, Idaho. They’d try to pick up Killov’s trail there.
Scheransky and Rock already had one argument—Scheransky saying the whole party could be helped along by Sov regular troops, and Rock saying no dice, they were going on their own.
Then, at the crossing of the Snake River—it was fordable just outside of Blackfoot—Scheransky put up a fuss about the necessity of keeping Vassily informed by radio of their progress.
“Forget it,” Rock said. The team had a shortwave radio that they could reach Century City with in case of emergency—in case the missiles were found—but he sure as hell didn’t want to use it. “We’ll contact Vassily after we achieve our objective. He’ll get no goddamned progress reports.”
At last they reached the grass and cracks of Route I-15, just fifty miles from the base from which the missiles had been stolen.
Scheransky, grumbling, set up the tracking device and in a matter of minutes it began beeping. “If we just follow the road . . . he’s probably taken it straight into Canada,” Scheransky said. “See? The tracker turned once, then points down the road.”
“How old is the trace?” Rock asked. “Can you tell?”
“Sure—he was here, oh, a week ago—seven or eight days . . .”
They found deep tracks in the mud-splattered
highway—huge convoy trucks with twenty-four-inch tires carrying their loads of death north. “No need for further readings for a while, Major.”
“Let’s follow the footprints,” Rock said, staying his ’brid. “They always lead to the beast that made them.”
The moon swept up into the deep purple sky after sundown. Its gibbous elegance lit the rolling road before them with waves of white. On this night it looked so cold, so untouchable against the radioactive glowing atmosphere of the earth, striated with endlessly orbiting webs of pink and green strontium clouds.
High atop his ’brid, Ted Rockson surveyed the scene with his piercing mismatched eyes. Behind, the rest of the expeditionary attack force rode in silence. Magnificent, Rock thought to himself, gazing up at the perfect symmetry of the moon and stars, the violet clouds that floated over it all. For a moment it created a vision of ultimate beauty, a Japanese print spread out across the cold heavens. Beautiful, but . . . Those heavens, those clouds, were filled with radioactive elements, atoms whose superhot nuclei would produce death rays for thousands of years.
As he shifted in his saddle, Rockson patted his big mutant horse on the neck. It seemed a little skittish tonight. It knew—all the ’brids sensed when they were going out on a mission. Sometimes when his faint ESP powers were particularly keen, Rockson could read the thoughts of the big steeds—their strength, their simple needs, their devotion to man.
The faces of Kim and Rona kept interfering with the stars above him. Their faces covered with blood, their shrieking as the Red missiles dug deep into Century City’s tunnels and exploded, melting flesh, memory, flashed in his mind. The fearsome image kept burning in his head. He gritted his teeth together, gazed past the strontium clouds, beyond the bands of pink and green, writhing like luminescent gargoyles far above, gazed on past the moon, beyond the stars. He searched and probed with all his heart for a God that he wasn’t even sure existed, and pleaded with him to spare Century City.
Keeping a slow, even gait, they rode on through the cool night, letting the ’brids set the pace. They’d have to go slowly—the road was now bumpy, pitted, but Rock didn’t want to be behind schedule when the sun came up.
In the morning, the tired riders saw the big wheel-tracks veer off the road and continue overland. Heading straight north.
At last they hit the Great North Prairie, and the ’brids were able to pick up speed through the frost-tinged fields of sunflowers, dandelions, and clover. Edging his smaller ’brid near Rock, Detroit came up to the lead. He smiled, as if to say, It’s great to be on a mission with you. The bull-necked man had accompanied Rockson on many missions—each more dangerous than the one before. But they had always made it through, usually against the kind of odds a local high-school team would have had against the Chicago Bears.
Detroit was the finest example of an intelligent, skilled soldier of freedom, and was a real gentleman, as well as the most loyal of friends. The mangling of his arm a few months earlier had made Detroit even more ready to fight America’s enemies.
“Maybe we’re starting to get a bit too old for this sort of thing,” the black Freefighter said with a laugh as he looked over at Rockson, seeking a rise. He didn’t mean it.
“C’mon dude. We’re never too old for a battle. May as well die with our boots on,” Rock replied, winking.
“I like my battles in warm weather.” Detroit laughed.
“Say, how’s the arm?” Rock asked. “I know the docs said it would take some months to come into full use, but I was hoping . . .” Detroit’s arm had been operated on in Century City’s hospital, replaced with a bionic counterpart.
“Better than ever,” Detroit said, raising it and twisting it around. “I was having some difficulty with the elbow for a while. Needed oil! Feels great now. I’ve been working on my grenade chucking and I’m already past my old status. Fastballs at 135 mph. Grenades heaved over five hundred feet.”
Detroit, besides being armed with the Liberator automatic rifle that Century City manufactured and shipped out to other free cities, always carried fifteen to twenty grenades in bandoliers strapped across his massive chest. Grenades armed to explode, to send out waves of burning phosphorus or stun gas. The ebony Freefighter was a one-man army toting his own portable arsenal.
The two compatriots rode on quietly for a while, enjoying the early-morning breezes and arias of winter birds singing their happy greetings. The world could be beautiful at times. The tall ice-coated prairie-grass stalks glowed silver in the slanting sun. The manes of their steady steeds caught the same light and reflected it gold or tan.
But Detroit was uneasy. “Will we get Killov, finally?” he asked.
Rock was thoughtful for a moment, then answered, “He’s human. We’ll get him. Never think otherwise, Detroit.”
The easily visible tire tracks through the prairie took them to the 49th parallel—the old dividing line between the U.S. and Canada. The temperature fell, the sun was blotted by clouds of snow swirling in the bitter winds. The Geiger counter was clicking a bit—residue radioactivity from the silos in north Idaho that were hit a hundred years earlier by incoming Red missiles. Rock knew that was why nothing grew here except crabgrass—spiky sharp spines jutting from the thickening snow.
Upon Rockson’s command, the tracker was set up again and it beeped and spun. Scheransky said excitedly, “Killov has come through here five days ago. The reading is quite definite!”
“We’re gaining on the bastard,” McCaughlin said, with some joy. “And just look at the hills ahead—great for animals but hell for a convoy of heavy trucks.” Though the trucks’ thick ruts were now obscured by the deepening snow, the A-M tracker showed the way. A marker sign dangled to the side, barely legible: WELCOME TO CANADA, it offered. Rockson set his face against the wind. His ’brid stepped over a rusty line on some concrete pavement. Rock saw a collapsed booth. A checkpoint—with nothing to check anymore.
The team headed into Canada. The way was more gullied now. Occasionally they could see the snow-muted tracks of the big wheels of Killov’s trucks, like the preserved tracks of some creature from the Pleistocene Era.
Rockson had that old feeling again: the mutant’s sixth sense. It told him that they were being watched.
Eight
That same afternoon, exhausted from his rounds, Zhabnov was propped up on his featherbed in the master bedroom of the White House. “Take this down,” Zhabnov ordered. Gudonov, who was standing by, reached for the gold pen, dangling by a thin chain from his lapel so that he wouldn’t lose it. He grabbed his pad, similarly attached, ready to add to the already lengthy list of repairs Zhabnov had ordered. “I want you to round up a team of art experts to scour the land, search every museum and art collection for undiscovered Keane paintings. Notify me as soon as they’re assembled,” Zhabnov added as he dismissed Gudonov with a wave of his hand.
As soon as Gudonov had left the room and closed the door behind him, Zhabnov’s stomach sagged. The effort of holding himself in was always a strain. The Red President gazed about the room after he changed into his pajamas. Even here in his room, Zhabnov couldn’t escape the ravages of the White House. Buckets were placed strategically on his nightstand, bureau, and floor to catch the constant leaks. His carpet was water stained and his purple velvet curtains drooped. It was not a fit room for a leader such as he.
He stared at the emptiness of his king-size bed. He was alone. No nubile young maiden awaited him to ease the cares and woes of the past horrid hours. He slid between the cold damp sheets and stared vacantly at the darkened square that should have held his greatest portrait. He thought again of Keane’s masterpiece, “Big Eyed Tears,” and began to sob. He reached for his covers.
He clutched the pillow tightly to his chest as if for protection and drifted to sleep . . . Vague thoughts of flying bats filled his mind. He fell into dreams. He was being caressed by a beautiful young girl—naked. He fondled his pillow as he dreamed that she handed him a single perfect rose. He reached t
o take it, but it turned to red paste that dripped down her body. A big tear appeared in her eye and was followed by another and another. The tears turned to blood and soaked the bed, seeping through to the floor.
The bed groaned and creaked as Zhabnov tossed and turned. Deeper and deeper in dream . . . The bed fell through the floor down to the basement. He got out of bed and winced as his bare feet hit the clammy basement floor and shuddered as a damp icy chill spread through his body. A chill he could feel to his bones. An army of skeletons assembled to mop up the blood that oozed through the ceiling, wringing their mops out in pails. He walked over to the nearest skeleton and demanded to know what was happening.
“Who are you?” asked the skeleton, its fleshless jaws hanging agape.
“I am President of the U.S.S.A.,” Zhabnov croaked in fear and anger.
“You’re not the President,” said another, its jawbone dropping until it dangled, held only by a gold chain.
Zhabnov stepped back aghast and watched in horror as the skeleton retrieved its jaw and set it back in its place.
“He is President,” the skull said, pointing to the left. Zhabnov followed the long bony finger to where it was pointing until his eyes came to rest on Stuart’s portrait of Washington.
“But he’s dead!” Zhabnov protested.
“Not in spirit,” said a ghostly voice that echoed through the basement.
“Who said that?” Zhabnov shuddered nervously.
“I did,” the voice replied with an icy tone. Zhabnov noticed the painting’s eyes move.
“I think that Stuart managed to grasp the essence of my spirit, don’t you?” asked the painting. Now Zhabnov saw Washington’s lips move.
“This can’t be,” Zhabnov stammered. “You’re only a portrait. I must be losing my mind to be talking to a painting.”
“Actually, we’ve been expecting you,” said Washington, parting his lips in a hideous, toothless grin of bloody gums.
