SIXTY-SIX
The things were strong, and fast, and
seemingly impossible to hurt, Zach thought.
But, thank God, they weren’t very bright.
The two corpse-soldiers stood facing each other
across the bodies of the CAT team. They seemed confused.
Zach pulled Haney into the China Room, just off the
Reception Room, while they stood there, confused by each
other.
“Jesus Christ,” Haney hissed.
“Stay quiet,” Zach hissed back. He didn’t know how
the Unmenschsoldaten found their victims—he suspected they
stumbled across whatever moved and then killed it—but he didn’t
want to take any chances.
Zach looked at the other door to the China Room.
They could get through there into the Center Hall, and from there
head up the stairs to the president’s rooms. Maybe get to his
family, get them out.
Haney was looking in the same direction. He
nodded.
Carefully, they crept out into the hall.
Then Patterson and the other two agents showed
up.
“Hey!” Patterson shouted as he spotted them.
The agents ran toward Haney and Zach. Zach waved
his arms frantically, but it was not a lot of ground to cover. They
were at the door of the reception area in no time.
They were loud. Leather shoes slapping on the
floor. Guns and ammo rattling.
The first creature stepped out just as the first
agent passed. With one hand, it plucked him from the floor like a
flower.
The man didn’t have time to scream. One second, and
there was just blood and broken bone where his skull used to
be.
Patterson and the other agent skidded to a
halt.
Haney ran toward them, firing his sidearm into the
back of the creature’s head. It didn’t even turn around.
The dead agent dropped to the floor. His heart
still pumped blood.
The second agent skidded in the blood. He went down
on one knee.
With a backhand slap, the creature cracked the
man’s neck like dry kindling.
Patterson aimed his M16 and fired.
Haney kept shooting, replacing clips one after the
next.
The creature slowed, the bullets pinging off its
skull.
Patterson dropped his rifle and slung his AT4 from
his shoulder. He extended the tube and lined up the sights.
He waited one second too long. The other creature
emerged from the Reception Room and grabbed him by the chest.
He struggled. It should have been easy to pull
away, but he couldn’t. The creature’s fingers dug in. Patterson
cried out, but the breath left him immediately.
The creature squeezed, pulled more and more of the
man’s chest into its hand, like it was wadding up a sheet of paper.
The agent’s white shirt leaked blood. The creature’s hand crunched
through the rib cage, through the meat of his organs and into the
spine.
The agent stopped struggling. His upper body was
now just a mess in the creature’s fist.
Someone was still screaming. Zach realized it was
Haney, firing his bullets at both creatures, screaming with
impotence and rage.
The first creature turned and tore the great oak
doors leading into the Reception Room off their hinges.
It swung them about like flyswatters.
Haney managed to duck, almost in time to do any
good. The door only clipped him.
It sent him skidding down the hall, all the way
back to Zach.
Zach grabbed Haney and dragged him into the China
Room. The man’s bones seemed to be gone; it was as if his insides
had been turned to jelly.
The agent gritted his teeth when Zach leaned him
against the wall. “It’s okay,” Zach said stupidly. “We’ll get you
out of here.”
Haney laughed at that. Fresh blood bubbled from his
lips.
“Sure,” was all he said.
Zach felt like slapping the man. “What the hell do
you want me to do?”
“Here,” he said, voice rasping, pushing the tube at
Zach. “Army made these things idiot-friendly. Line up along the
sights. Disengage the safeties. Cock the pin. Press the
button.”
Zach had held a gun precisely once in his life. A
bunch of guys from the NRA took him out for drinks, and they ended
up at an all-night shooting range. Now Haney wanted him to fire a
grenade launcher.
He blurted out the first thing that came to mind:
“You have got to be kidding.”
Another cough. “You see anyone else here,
Barrows?”
He must have not liked the answer he saw on Zach’s
face. He grabbed Zach’s hand. “Do it, Barrows. Kill those fucking
things.”
Zach finally nodded, and picked up the tube. Haney
seemed to relax against the wall. The fight left his eyes.
Zach headed back out the door that led to the
Center Hall. He took a deep breath.
“Barrows,” Haney said. He sounded like he was
gargling, his throat filling up with whatever was crushed and
broken inside him.
Zach stopped.
“Don’t fuck this up.”
Yeah, Zach thought. No pressure.
CADE KEPT HITTING the creature long after it
stopped moving. Long after the body was reduced to slag and ground
meat.
If it wasn’t dead, at least it wasn’t going
anywhere.
He looked over at the stairwell. No way to the Oval
from there.
He heard something from the Residence. The grinding
noise of dead flesh as it moved.
Two more of them.
His club was done; it flopped uselessly, as
shattered as the mess on the floor.
He dropped it.
He ran in the direction of the White House’s Center
Hall. He was going to have to improvise.
ZACH ENTERED the Center Hall cautiously. He half
expected one of the things to be waiting for him, ready to kill him
as soon as he poked his head out the door.
But they were both moving away from him, toward the
stairwell.
They were going for the president’s family.
Zach wondered what he was supposed to do to stop
the one he couldn’t shoot. Or if he missed completely.
His head bobbled back and forth like he was
watching a tennis match. Which one? Eeny, meeny, miny, moe . .
.
Screw it, he thought, and put the tube on his
shoulder, the cone-shaped grenade pointed at the closer of the
things.
Somehow it knew. It sensed the threat. It turned
toward him, and began walking.
Zach lined up the sights. Just like he was
told.
Then the doors at the other end of the Center Hall
opened, and Zach nearly dropped the AT4.
Cade.
The other Unmenschsoldat stopped mid-stride
and turned toward him.
Cade stood there, taking in the situation as calmly
as if he were waiting at a crosswalk.
Zach brought the AT4 to his shoulder again. Cade
was here. He could handle the other one. Another deep breath.
Sights on the creature. Disengage the first safety. Done. Disengage
the second. Done. Cock the pin. Keep the sights up. Press the
button.
“Wait,” Cade shouted at Zach. “Don’t fire
yet.”
Zach felt an absurd burst of irritation.
“Are you shitting me?” he shouted. The thing was
closing fast on him.
“Do as I say, Mr. Barrows.”
Right. Just let the nice monster turn him into
paste.
But he waited.
Cade danced in front of his Unmenschsoldat.
The creature took a step left to block him. Cade spun about again.
The creature took another step.
In a few moves, Cade had the two
Unmenschsoldaten lined up, single file.
Cade was stuck between them.
“Shoot,” he told Zach.
“But you’re—”
“Aim for the head.”
Zach grit his teeth. Always another thing to
do.
“Do it. Now!”
The Unmenschsoldat was right on top of him
now. The thing’s face sat right in the center of the sights.
Staring horribly, skin gone from the cheeks, dead rictus of a
grin.
Now or never, he decided.
He pressed the button.
CADE HEARD the trigger button click. Dodged the
meaty swing of the creature’s arm and jumped clear. Crawling as
fast as he could, away from both of them.
FOR AN IMPOSSIBLY LONG MOMENT, nothing happened.
Then Zach heard a hissing sound that grew to a roar, the tube
kicked in his hands, and the rocket shot toward the creature.
In a moment of pure amazement, he watched it tear
the thing’s head off. Direct hit.
The rocket exploded an instant after that. Zach
caught a glimpse of both of the Unmenschsoldaten, burned
into his retinas in the glare of the fireball.
He was blown back as the shock wave broke every
mirror and stick of furniture in the hall.
EARS RINGING, Zach got to his feet.
The Center Hall was in ruins, half of the ceiling
down, revealing the steel infrastructure beneath. The walls burned
in places. Smoke everywhere. Fire sprinklers doing their best to
soak it all.
Despite the destruction, he could see the remains
of the Unmenschsoldaten. Blown into large chunks. Heads
gone.
Zach had never been so proud in his life. Even his
damn ribs stopped hurting.
Cade crossed the rubble, covered in plaster dust
from the ceiling, dripping with water. “Well done,” he said.
Zach kept a death grip on the AT4. Still couldn’t
believe he’d managed it.
“The head is like a control panel for them,” Cade
said. “Take it out, they won’t get up again.”
Zach nodded dumbly. He realized Cade was pulling
him along.
“Where are we going?”
“There’s one left. I have to find it.”
“Whoa,” Zach said. “Wait a second.”
Under the rubble, something moved.
A torso and an arm rose from the wreckage,
headless, half burned, like it was doing a push-up. It reached over
with the one arm, snagged a severed limb from the other
creature.
Cade turned, saw it, too.
“I thought you said that would kill it,” Zach
said.
Cade made a noise.
The limb, a ragged leg, went into the creature’s
empty arm socket with a solid thunk. It cast about again with its
arm, came up with an elbow joint. Another hand. Both went into
empty spaces on the torso.
“Cade, you said—
The creature levered itself upward. Blind, fingers
grasping feebly from the hip cavity. It leaned like a tripod on a
stump of an arm, a leg and another arm.
“Upgrades,” was all Cade said.
It began to crawl away from them, like a giant
roach, moving toward the rear stairs.
Then it picked up speed and disappeared around the
corner.
Cade turned to Zach. “Run,” he said.
Zach didn’t have to be told twice. He sprinted up
the staircase, into the family residence.