THEY COULD HEAR the unholy din from the floor under their feet. The sounds of gunfire, then noises like Griff imagined dinosaurs must have made while fighting.
Through it all, the men in the Oval Office remained quiet.
The young agent—Terrill, Griff reminded himself, the kid’s name was Terrill—stood, panicked, by the president. As if he could shield Curtis with his body alone.
Curtis sat in his chair, lost in thought. Ostensibly the most powerful man in the world, he could do nothing to save himself or his family.
Wyman sat in one of the couches, muttering to himself, shaking violently. Griff wondered if he was having a seizure. He walked over to the vice president.
A few steps closer, he could hear what Wyman was saying, over and over.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen yet ... This wasn’t supposed to happen yet ... I was supposed to know ... It wasn’t supposed to start ...”
Wyman looked up and stopped babbling. A new kind of fear came into his face when he saw Griff.
“What was that?” Griff said quietly.
Wyman gulped. An expression crossed his face that Griff had previously only seen in cartoons.
“I—I just—things like this can’t happen,” he said. “That’s what I meant. It’s not possible.”
There was the sound of more gunfire from somewhere else in the White House. They all looked up in response. Closer to the Residence. Curtis looked at the window, as if he could see through the metal shields by force of will.
Griff looked back at Wyman, who had, by some great physical effort, gotten himself under control. Griff knew this wasn’t the time.
He put a finger in Wyman’s face. “Later,” he said, “you and I are going to talk.”
A little of Wyman’s old arrogance seeped back. “That’s presuming there is a later, Agent Griffin.”
Griff walked back to the door. Man had a point.
SIXTY-SIX
T
he 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 safe-ties. 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.
SIXTY-SEVEN
T
he
roach-Soldat
turned out to be much faster on three legs than it was on two, Cade observed.
It was hop-stepping its way up the far stairwell to the family residence, leaping the stairs two and three at a time.
It passed the first floor and kept going, with Cade right behind.
Cade headed it off. He jumped, clearing the upper railing, and met it at the second-floor landing.
It stopped, suddenly cautious. Cade had no idea how it was still navigating without eyes. But it must have known he was blocking its path.
They stood there, facing each other. Waiting for the other to move.
Zach made the second-floor landing a moment later, gasping.
The
roach-Soldat
angled itself toward Zach, as if looking for an easier opponent.
Cade turned to him. “Get out of here.”
The creature tensed, prepared to spring.
Zach scrambled into the entrance hall of the second floor, away from both of them.
The creature hopped like a spider, rising into the air, trying to go over Cade and get Zach.
Cade jumped and tackled it in mid-flight. They hit the floor hard enough to crack the boards under the carpet, Cade on the bottom. He was stunned for a moment.