SIXTY-EIGHT
There are times when the defense of liberty
requires the unleashing of monsters.
—President Andrew Johnson, private
journal
It had been quiet in the Oval Office for
several minutes now. They heard the explosion, muffled by the heavy
steel panels. Then nothing.
Griff stood at the door, listening, gun drawn. He
wasn’t sure what was going on. It could be the fight was over
already. Could be that Cade had lost. He didn’t know.
Wyman, on the other hand, appeared to have reached
a decision.
He stood, trying to straighten his blazer and
pajama shirt as well as he could. He walked over to Griff.
“Agent Griffin,” he said. “Open the door. I’m
leaving.”
Griff didn’t think anything could make him laugh at
this point. As usual, he underestimated Wyman.
“You’re not serious,” Griff said.
Wyman nodded. Of course he was. Griff could see now
his chin was trembling. Wyman was barely holding it together.
Somehow, he’d decided this was the plan. He’d just walk out.
“Mr. Vice President—”
Wyman cut him off. “I’m giving you an order, Agent
Griffin. You will follow it. You will follow my order and open that
door.”
The president looked over, puzzled. “Les,” he said.
“Sit down.”
Wyman ignored him. “Agent Griffin, I am not
supposed to be here. I am not supposed to be here and you will open
that door.”
His voice pitched toward screeching at the
end.
“None of us should be here, Les,” the president
said, his voice calm. “Just sit down.”
“You don’t understand, I am not supposed to be
here! Now, open the fucking door!”
He rushed Griff. Griff stopped him easily, even as
weak as he felt. He stiff-armed the vice president, holding him
away.
Wyman struggled as hard as he could. Griff kept him
back.
“Open the door!” he shouted.
Griff was sick to death of him. He pushed him back
into his chair. Hard.
“Sit down, Lester,” he ordered.
Wyman’s eyes shone with tears, but he stayed
put.
That’s when they felt the impact of the first blows
against the door.
DOWN THE STAIRS, into the P-OCK and through the
tunnel. Underground, Cade’s full speed returned. The wound on his
cheek healed as he made the mile back to the Smithsonian in record
time.
Cade opened the locker where Griff had secured the
metal case from Kosovo. He flipped it open, wincing slightly.
In the gloom of the Reliquary, the object glowed
softly with a gentle white light.
This was not an object from the Other Side. The
Vukodlak had grabbed it from the U.S. Embassy, where it had resided
since being saved from an Eastern Orthodox monastery bombed during
the Kosovo conflict.
It was a human hand, perfectly preserved, encased
in a metal gauntlet. The gauntlet dated from at least the
fourteenth century. The hand was much older.
It was the hand of John the Baptist. Supposedly.
The hand that had been touched by an angel and then touched the
head of Christ. The relic was believed to have the magical ability
to heal, even to return the dead to life.
Supposedly.
All Cade knew for sure was that it hurt him, more
than the cross on his neck. It had power.
He just hoped it had enough.
He slammed the case shut and ran back into the
tunnel that led to the White House.
ZACH FELT THE WALLS SHAKING. He rounded the
corner, and saw the last Unmenschsoldat pounding at the door
of the Oval Office.
He stopped.
The door began to crack, to tear free of its
frame.
The thing kept pounding.
Zach aimed the gun and fired.
Stupid. Without a convenient open wound, the
bullets didn’t have any more effect than on the other
creatures.
He emptied the whole clip, and nothing
happened.
Zach screamed in frustration. He flung the empty
gun at the creature’s head.
It bounced off, again with no effect.
Actually, there was some effect.
The creature’s head spun 180 degrees and stared at
Zach.
It stopped pounding on the door. Its body swiveled
to face the same way as its head.
It began walking toward Zach.
Oh, good, Zach thought. I’ve managed to piss it
off.
CORPORAL GARCIA DIDN’T KNOW why he was trying to
get inside the locked door. It seemed pretty urgent, but it wasn’t
up to him. It was the body, moving on its own. And the body hated
whatever was on the other side of that door. It was like there was
a high-pitched dog whistle in there, and the body under him would
do anything to shut it off.
There was a slight feeling at the back of his head.
Garcia turned, the first thing he’d done for himself in this
nightmare.
He saw a young guy in a suit. The kind of wiener he
never liked in high school, actually. Student-government,
college-bound, stuck-up, rich prick.
He didn’t decide to move. The body spun around and
started for the little jerk. Garcia could feel it now, the
high-pitched whistle. It was coming from the guy in the suit.
It was annoying as hell. And he understood,
suddenly, the impulse to snuff it out completely.
INSIDE THE OVAL OFFICE, the sudden silence was
more unnerving than the steady pounding, or the splintering of the
door.
President Curtis stood. Agent Terrill moved between
him and the door, but the president edged the young man out of the
way. He wanted to see for himself.
Griff didn’t know what it meant. He’d heard
gunshots, but there was no way bullets had brought the creature
down.
Wyman was a great deal more optimistic.
“It’s gone,” he said, a grin breaking out on his
face. “We can get out of here.”
“Not a good idea,” Griff said.
Wyman turned to the president, a petulant look on
his face. “Sam, we have to go now. We have to get out. This could
be our only chance.”
The president looked at Griff.
“Agent Griffin. Is there any way to tell what’s
happened?”
Wyman rushed toward the president, blocked at the
last moment by Terrill. “Damn it, listen to me,” he pleaded. “Don’t
waste any more time. Open the door.”
The president looked at him, then back at
Griff.
“Don’t do it,” Griff said. “We have to stay here,
sit tight until—”
Wyman lunged past Griff and yanked at the lock.
Steel bolts slid back.
Griff wasted a precious second on pure shock.
Wyman had opened the door.
ZACH STOOD THERE, trying to figure out something
to do. Maybe if the thing chased him, it wouldn’t go into the Oval
Office. Maybe he could sacrifice himself to save the
president.
There had to be a better plan than that.
But he couldn’t think of one, and the
Unmenschsoldat kept walking right toward him.
He heard a thudding noise. The door to the Oval
Office popped open. The creature’s blows had mangled a steel bolt,
so it stuck in the frame, but there was a good foot or so of
clearance.
Wyman came struggling out.
Zach almost couldn’t believe his eyes. Wyman was
squirming hard, pressing his body as flat as possible to get out of
the jammed door. He was so frantic he didn’t even see the
creature.
But it saw him. It rotated its head again, locked
onto the furious movement of the vice president.
It hesitated. Zach knew it could get inside the
Oval Office now. The door would fly open with one good blow from
that thing.
He didn’t relish the thought of dying to save
Wyman, but he supposed it had to be done.
He picked up a piece of broken wood from the floor,
ran at the creature and swung with all his might.
CADE ENTERED the West Wing hallway in time to see
the whole thing, frozen in perspective. First Zach, with his
makeshift weapon. Then the Unmenschsoldat, already turning
back to the Oval Office. Then Wyman, stuck in the door, wriggling,
his eyes wide with fear.
Cade didn’t have time to open the case. He dropped
it, grabbed Zach by the collar and yanked him out of harm’s
way.
Then he leaped on the creature himself.
GRIFF GOT HOLD OF Wyman’s jacket and began hauling
him into the room. Wyman kicked and braced himself against the
toppled furniture on the barricade. It would have been funny, pure
slapstick comedy, if only Wyman hadn’t effectively just killed them
all. Griff pulled harder.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Terrill move
to help him.
“Stay with the president,” he ordered, and the kid
stood fast. Finally, Griff thought, someone who does what he’s
told.
Suddenly, Wyman stopped pulling and began pushing
back. He was stuck. And he was trying to get back inside the
office.
Griff took a look through the space in the door. He
saw Cade grappling with the creature. And both of them stumbling
and smashing their way down the hallway, right toward the
door.
He pulled Wyman free just in time.
CADE AND THE MONSTER smashed through the door, the
remaining bolt snapping cleanly.
They shattered the furniture in Griff’s makeshift
barricade, wood breaking like toothpicks, and hit the floor of the
office, right in the middle of the presidential seal woven in the
rug.
Agent Terrill shoved the president out of the way.
To Cade, he looked as if he was frozen there, stuck in time. The
creature’s fist cocked back to throw another punch at Cade, and its
elbow connected with the young man’s head. Terrill’s neck snapped
with a hollow pop. His arms and legs went rag doll as he fell to
the floor.
Another pointless death. For a moment, Cade saw
nothing but rage, even as he dodged the creature’s fist.
He bared his teeth and raised both hands above his
head, jumping, bringing his arms down as he fell, using every bit
of his strength, everything he and gravity could muster, and
slammed his fists into the creature’s skull.
It paused, shrugged, then kept coming at him.
Cade could see the first light of dawn. He had only
minutes left.
One chance.
“Zach,” he shouted over his shoulder. “Throw me the
case.”
ZACH HAD JUST GOTTEN UP from the floor where Cade
tossed him. He could see clearly down the corridor into the Oval
Office.
He heard Cade’s command and saw the case sitting in
the hallway, just a few feet away.
He ran forward, picked it up and hurled it through
the door.
It pinwheeled through the air toward Cade’s
outstretched hand. Griff knew: Cade wasn’t going to make it.
In the moment that the vampire turned and called
for Zach, in that second Cade had his back turned, he had left
himself open.
That was all the creature needed. It was already
reaching for Cade, prepared to rip his head off with one inhumanly
strong hand.
Griff knew the president’s life rested with
Cade.
It wasn’t a very hard decision to make, when you
came right down to it.
He put every last ounce of his strength into his
legs and pushed his way between Cade and the creature.
CADE SNATCHED THE CASE out of the air. He turned
in time to see the creature put its hand through Griff’s
chest.
Griff’s face was lined with pain, his eyes full of
shock.
The creature flicked its wrist, like it was
removing something distasteful from its fingers, and Griff went
flying across the room.
For the first time in decades, Cade hesitated. He
spent the moment Griff bought him in grief.
The creature turned toward the president.
CORPORAL GARCIA WAS SACK. He didn’t know where
he’d gone, but he was tired of this. Tired of this strange
nightmare, tired of the pain. He was standing above a man—a man who
looked familiar, someone he’d seen on TV—and his hands were moving
again, prepared to grab that man and do something awful to
him.
He was tired of doing these things, but it wasn’t
really him. He couldn’t stop it, because he wasn’t the one in
control.
Everything was blurred. Everything hurt even more.
The high-pitched noise was screaming now, and it seemed to be
coming right from that man. He wanted very badly for this to end,
and the only way to do that was to stop that noise.
Then he recognized the man. It was the president.
What was the president doing in his dream?
He stopped. It took some conscious effort, like
waking up from a deep sleep, but he stopped the body from moving,
too.
Garcia just stood there, not knowing what to do
next.
This was wrong. He didn’t know what was happening,
but he knew this was just wrong.
THE CREATURE PAUSED. Cade hissed a small prayer.
He had time.
He moved between the monster and the president,
knocking Curtis back into the wall. As he prepared to unlatch the
case, he noticed something.
He looked into the creature’s eyes. Saw pain, and
confusion, and the dawning awareness of
something—someone—desperately searching for answers.
Cade saw something human in there.
He opened the case.
The glow from the Baptist’s hand bathed the
creature in its light.
The effect was instantaneous. The spark in the eyes
of Cpl. Ryan Garcia went out as his unnatural resurrection abruptly
ended. The limbs went slack next, dropping and falling off. The
body hit the floor.
Dead again. Returned to what they should have been,
what they should have stayed: the empty parts of men long gone from
this life.
The Oval Office was suddenly as quiet as a
grave.