Still, he didn’t look pleased to be up at this hour.

Wyman was there, too, a pajama top stuffed in his blue jeans under a blazer. On his feet, those damn moccasins again. He’d come running from his residence at the Naval Observatory when he got the summons from the president. He actually looked happy because Griff was in trouble.

Griff’s ID and reputation were enough to get him inside the White House, despite the cloud over him. They were not, however, enough to get anyone to hurry. Close to an hour was wasted while Griff told his story to the Secret Service, who roused the president, then again to the man himself.

Even now, however, the agents in the room—two from Wyman’s detail and three from the president’s—looked at him with suspicion.

“Sir,” Griff said to the president, “you have to get out. Now. We’re wasting time—”

“Agent Griffin,” the president said, his tone clipped, “you have to do better than that. I need facts, I need information. If there’s a threat, I can’t just run—”

“Yes, you can, damn it, if you want to live,” Griff shouted, knocking over his chair as he stood up.

Two of the Secret Service men, Patterson and Haney, were veterans. They knew Griff from three administrations. But they still moved between him and the president, hands on their guns.

Griff drew in a deep breath, struggling for control. Then he blew it out.

Patterson’s nose wrinkled. “Griff,” he said, “have you been drinking?”

Terrific, Griff thought.

Wyman smiled as if the only thing he was missing was a big tub of popcorn.

“Sir,” Griff said again.

The president held up a hand, and Patterson and Haney backed off. He seemed to call up his last reserve of patience.

“Griff,” he said, “I have trusted you and Cade on a lot of things. Things I never would have believed. But this threat—whatever it is—is not just aimed at me. If something is coming toward D.C., I can’t leave unless I know I’ve done everything possible to—”

“Never mind,” Griff interrupted.

Everyone in the room looked taken aback. They thought Griff was committing career suicide right in front of them.

“It’s too late now,” Griff said. He pointed.

Everyone turned and looked out the windows toward the Rose Garden.

In retrospect, Griff couldn’t blame them for freezing.

No one is prepared for their first contact with the Other Side when it breaks through. No matter how many zombie movies you’ve seen, somewhere deep inside you know that it’s just actors and makeup. But out in the real world, your mind rebels. It says, this cannot possibly exist. And yet, there it is. Walking toward you.

Dead men, some still wearing the wounds that killed them. Absolutely, irrevocably dead.

And yet, still moving. Still walking toward the Oval Office, through the Rose Garden, one easy step at a time.

Four of them. Cloudy eyes staring, fixed right through the windows at the men in the office. One of them put a decaying foot down on a rosebush and left a scrap of flesh behind.

Even the president was awestruck. Horrified.

That’s the thing about horror. It freezes you up. Makes you stupid. Makes you prey.

Fortunately, Griff had a lot more experience with it.

He shoved past the agents and found the button on the console on the president’s desk. The one hooked up after 9/11. He pressed it.

Hardened security screens composed of rolled homogeneous armor slammed into place over the windows. They would take anything up to a direct hit by a Hellfire missile.

Griff hoped they’d be enough.

Outside the Oval Office, an alarm began to wail. The White House was never left undefended. A Counter-Assault Team was on duty at all times. They carried enough weaponry to repel a full-scale terrorist assault.

Griff knew they didn’t stand a chance. The dead men would keep coming. It was built into them. They would find an entrance and seek out the life inside the building and snuff it out. It was all they knew.

Gunfire echoed through the building. The Oval Office’s walls shook as someone fired what sounded like a grenade launcher.

On the other side of the room, Haney was speaking into the mike at his cuff. He was trying to be quiet, but Griff could hear him well enough. Sheer panic.

Then something came over Haney’s earpiece, loud enough that the agent had to tear it out of his head. The other agents, all tuned to the same channel, did the same.

A very tiny scream wailed from the earpiece as it hung from Haney’s collar. Then it died away completely.

Haney picked up the phone, trying to reach someone outside to get a report.

He shook his head. No answer.

The sound of splintering wood and tortured metal reached them from downstairs.

They were inside.

Both Haney and Griff looked at the Oval Office door. It did not have the steel shutters. The thinking was, if someone got that far, the president would already be long gone. It had heavy bolts to keep it shut. But they wouldn’t last against the creatures.

Haney turned to Griff. “What’s the plan?”

Griff noticed he’d gone from a lunatic to a prophet in less than five minutes. And Wyman didn’t look at all happy anymore.

“Stay here. Wait for Cade,” Griff said.

Agent Haney looked to the president. “Sir?”

Curtis took a long moment. Griff could see the struggle in his face.

But his family was on the other side of the screens.

He addressed Griff. “There has to be a way to stop them.”

“Not by us, sir. This is way above our pay grade.”

Curtis thought for a moment. He looked at Haney.

“Bob,” he said. “I’m going to ask you something. It’s not an order. It’s a request.”

“You’re not leaving this room, sir,” Haney said.

“I need to make sure my family is all right.”

“No, sir. You’re not going.”

“God damn it, Bob—”

“But I am.”

They heard more glass and wood breaking. Above them, the ceiling shook as if the building was hit by a quake.

Haney pointed at the other agents. “Patterson, Roy, Spencer, you’re with me. We’ll run for the weapons cache, then into the Residence,” Haney said. He looked at Griff. “You’re not fast enough. No offense.”

The ceiling shook again, and plaster dust rained down on them. “None taken,” Griff said.

“You stay here with Terrill.” Haney turned to Terrill, the youngest man in the room, a rookie agent. “Terrill, the president’s life is in your hands.”

Haney took his backup piece from an ankle holster, as well as his spare clips, and gave them all to Griff.

Patterson and the other agents formed up on Haney and prepared to head out the door.

Wyman noticed. “What are you doing? You’re not leaving us?”

“Mr. Vice President, you’re safer here,” Haney said.

“You can’t leave us,” Wyman said. “You have to stay and protect us!”

“You’ve got Agent Griffin and you’ve got Agent Terrill,” Haney told him.

Wyman wasn’t listening. He clutched at Haney’s arm as the agent turned to go. Haney looked down at his hand.

President Curtis peeled him away.

“Bob,” he said again with a quiet force. “I cannot ask you to do this.”

Griff could practically feel the weight of the president’s gaze.

“You don’t have to, sir,” Haney said. He shook the president’s hand. “It’s been a pleasure and a privilege.”

Then he sprinted out into the hallway, along with the rest of the agents.

Griff slammed the door shut and then threw the security bolts.

It wouldn’t be enough. Griff grabbed a heavy chair and laid it down at the doorway. Then a table, then another chair.

“Give me a hand,” he said to the rookie. “My back can’t take what it used to.”

Terrill jumped up and took the other end of a couch that was a favorite of Lady Bird Johnson’s. He and Griff dragged it onto the makeshift barricade.

“You think this will stop them?”

“Hell, no,” Griff said. “I’ll be happy if it slows them down.”

The look on the rookie’s face told Griff that wasn’t the answer he wanted.

He stood in front of Marine One, the presidential chopper, on its pad at Andrews Air Force Base. Fueled up, ready to go at a moment’s notice. Currently not going anywhere, because the guard blocked Cade and Zach from getting inside.

“Look, you know who we are, just get us off the ground and radio ahead for permission,” Zach said. “I am a deputy director at the White House—”

Zach reached for his credentials in his suit jacket—and then remembered they were probably in a Ziploc baggie near the holding cell in California.

“I’ve got orders to keep you here, sir. I’m sorry.”

“Orders? From who?”

“Wyman,” Cade muttered. The marine didn’t hear, or didn’t care if he did.

“I have my orders, sir. Please step back.”

The marine’s face was a blank wall. Zach had no idea how to get around it.

The marine’s radio snapped to life. “We have a call from the White House, something’s going down, prepare the chopper . . .”

Zach was going to say something to the marine when Cade ended the debate. He reached across Zach, grabbed the marine by his belt and flung him backward.

Cade was in the pilot’s seat by the time the marine landed a dozen yards away.

“Get in,” he ordered Zach.

Cade flipped switches, and Marine One’s engines began to spin up. In the distance, the guard struggled to his feet, fumbling for his sidearm.

“Cade, he’s getting up.”

“Marines are tough,” Cade said.

“Cade . . .”

Cade ignored him, still working at the controls.

“Cade, do you know how to fly this thing?”

Zach was answered with a lurching takeoff just as the marine began shooting.

If he hit anything, Zach couldn’t hear it over the engines and the rotor.

The marine was still shooting as they turned away into the night, gaining speed.