by Tim Curran
It all depended on Charlie Goade now.
And the clock was ticking.
THE WHITE HOUSE
PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, 6:06 A.M.
As the sun came up, Maddie saw the bodies stretched across the avenue, hundreds of them, a veritable sea of corpses tangled together, heaped, piled, pressed into a great common whole.
She had never seen anything so beautiful in her life.
Although something buried deep in the back of her mind told her that it was an atrocity, she quickly shrugged that away because there was a greater significance to this endless charnel sculpture.
They’re here… they’re here for me.
The idea was exciting. Her drug-laced, super-charged ego told her that there was no doubt of it: she was, after all, the DHS Secretary, so was it really any wonder that they had taken their lives for her? Offered them up to she who walked in the shadows and breathed in the dark, the ultimate ghost of vengeance that hunted down the enemies of the nation and made sacrificial offerings of them, bathing in their blood to keep her youth?
The very idea made Maddie giggle like a little girl. I sharpen my teeth on their bones and suck the blood from their throats. In the final analysis, I am Kali, I am the goddess of death and destruction, I seed doom unto the wind. I slay demons and devour the evil children of Islam. I am made eternal.
She stood there for some time, swaying to unheard music, out of her mind, drooling and delusional. These were the bodies of spec ops soldiers and Blackpool terrorists, private militia extremists and protesters, government workers and journalists… a great seething pool of the dead. She watched crows and ravens and gulls picking at them. Stray dogs and rats gnawing upon throats and soft bellies.
Stark naked, she stepped into the sea of the burned, the shot, the dismembered, the slit and gutted and decomposing. Their blood was scarlet waters washing her feet, their flesh fine rare steak, tender and juicy. She delighted in what she saw and, more so, in what she felt—the glorious seeping, leaking, pulverized, oozing and slushy carpet of the dead. She was the DHS Goddess of Death and it was only fitting that she walk upon something like this, a soup of bloody discharge squirting up between her toes and coiled entrails petal-soft beneath her feet.
As she stepped lightly over the spongy, putrefying remains, she smiled down at reaching disarticulated limbs and decapitated heads. An eyeball with a length of veal-pink optic nerve pushed up between her toes, watching her. This was her moment. Her nipples erect, a lascivious grin on her blood-spattered features, she dropped to her knees, fingering her labia with pure, shuddering orgasmic joy.
When she came, she fell down amongst them, feeling countless bluing faces appraising her, bodies pressing hungrily against her own, countless hands embracing her. It was how a goddess should be adored. The head of a lovely blonde woman watched her and Maddie squealed with delight—it was News Team 4 anchor Erika McCauley. Maddie secretly crushed on Erika, even though Erika continually rode herd on her and the DHS, calling them on more than one occasion the American Gestapo. Now here she was.
In the end, you worship at my feet, darling.
Maddie, still tripping her brains out, clutched Erika’s head in her hands, petting her lovely golden locks and pressing her bee-stung lips first to one breast and then to another. Glistening claret dripped from Erika’s ears and one nostril.
There was something sexually exciting about this. Erika’s hair knotted in her hand, Maddie began to kiss her exquisite face. The perfect jawline, the perky nose, the high cheekbones and crystal blue eyes. Shuddering, she forced her tongue into Erika’s mouth, bucking with orgasm as she did so, her tongue penetrating deeper and deeper into the moist, velvety confines. Erika’s tongue was cool and rubbery, but that only made it all that much more exciting.
Together they rolled through the mushy, sloshing depths of the corpse sea, Maddie’s blood-greased weight forcing tongues from mouths and viscera from gashed-open bellies. She particularly liked being licked by the tongues and she was certain that Erika moaned, too. They swam through the carrion depths, twisting and turning, sliding free and surfacing from the human jelly, gasping for air.
All that meat, all that blood.
Erika whispered something to her and Maddie grinned ghoulishly. She was hungry. In fact, she didn’t think she’d ever been hungrier.
They had all sacrificed themselves to her so that she might feast and fill herself with them. Like a shark in an ocean of bloody human chum, Maddie began to feed. The flesh of her worshippers was butter-soft, it was sweet and delicate in flavor. Her face splashed with blood red as burgundy, she began to greedily gnaw upon the corpses she was nearly buried in. She sought ruptured heads so that she could dip her fingers into the shattered fondue pots of their skulls, licking wet brain pulp from her fingertips that had the consistency of over-ripened fruit.
Now that the sun was rising, its warm rays were making the corpses bloat and fizz and steam with flies. Maddie continued to eat—licking, sucking, chewing, and swallowing. It did not seem like she could ever be full.
Unbeknownst to her, she had picked up a significant other that now resided in her belly and it could never, ever be satisfied. As she stuffed herself, Erika grinned down upon her from her perch atop a litter pile of the dead.
Maddie was the Goddess of Death and she had trained for it her entire life.
CHICAGO, W. MONTROSE AVE:
RAVENSWOOD
6:40 A.M.
Harry had called Gabe’s number again and again throughout the night, trying to reach Shawna. She was out there somewhere and she was free. He knew that much now and it made his heart practically tap-dance with delight in his chest. She was hiding at Gabe’s. Somehow, she had made her way back there. If it hadn’t been for damn martial law, he would have went over there and found her.
And now, that’s exactly what he was going to do.
He picked up his phone. One last try.
The phone was picked up on the second ring. “Harry?”
“Who else were you expecting?”
She giggled with a tinny, high-pitched sound. The sound of jangled nerves.
“I’m so glad you called. Did your landlady tell you I stopped by?”
“Yes. I thought… I thought I’d never see you again.”
“I’m sneaky,” she said. “You learn that when you cat around with married men.”
“I’m coming over. I have to see you. We need to talk. We have to get out of the city. I know a place we can lay low until the country gets back on its feet.”
“No. Don’t come here. I think I’m being watched. Meet me at Ping Tom at 10:30. The Fieldhouse.”
Ping Tom again. He saw a connection, but he refused to consider it.
“Okay.”
She broke the connection. He was overjoyed and yet somehow disturbed. There was something different about her voice that he just couldn’t place.
THE WHITE HOUSE
PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, 7:07 A.M.
The chopper was going down.
There was no doubt of it now. As it approached the White House, making for the helipad on the South Lawn, it was strafed by ground fire from not one but at least three different locations. The FBI Blackhawk pilot was an ex-Marine who had flown his Super Cobra into one shitstorm after another in Afghanistan and he was utterly fearless.
“A little ground flak,” he said over the headset. “Nothing to worry about. We barely even felt it.”
He seemed to be enjoying himself and then something big hit them, swatting the chopper like a fly. There was a tremendous, concussive explosion that tossed both Sleshing and VanderMissen in their seats. The cabin filled with smoke and heat. Fire was gushing outside the fuselage.
“What the hell is going on?” VanderMissen shouted over the headset as the chopper rocked back and forth.
“We’re hit!” the pilot said. “Goddamn missile!’
“Set us down!”
Which the pilot was trying frantically to do, but the Bla
ckhawk was not responding. It was banking to the left, nose dipping down, flying erratically like a wounded insect. The HRT members began to cry out because they knew what was coming next. The chopper skipped on the pavement, jumped up, glanced off a parked car, then came down again, flipping over.
Sleshing came to with a terrible pain in his arm, fighting with his harness. By luck or pluck, it released and he tumbled against a bulkhead. The cabin was filled with smoke and flames. He sought a square of brightness and crawled out of the cockpit, falling to the pavement.
“CHUCK!” he called, cradling his broken arm. “CHUCK!”
VanderMissen did not reply.
And then, even if he was alive but unconscious, it didn’t really matter because the Blackhawk was engulfed in flames. A great whooshing fireball rolled into the sky, sucking the wind out of Sleshing’s lungs and knocking him on his ass.
Like a dying animal he crawled away from the inferno, dragging himself ever forward. After a time, he collapsed. Maybe he blacked out again, because when he opened his eyes the chopper was burning in the distance. The White House was still a block away. But if he could get to his feet, he just might make it.
Using a street post for support, he pulled himself up. He was alone. Goddamn alone in this fucking warzone. His arm was broken, his face burned, his back wrenched out of shape. And his left eye wouldn’t quit filling with tears. He spit blood from his mouth and hobbled forward.
But into what?
What he saw all around him was not a warzone but a hellzone. Here in the capitol of the United States was absolute devastation. Buildings were burning, some having fallen right into the street. The blackened, mangled carcasses of cars, trucks, and military vehicles were scattered about, still smoldering from the night’s combat. There were huge, blasted potholes in the streets. And bodies. God, they were cast in every direction, many cremated right down to skeletons. Others dismembered and sheared in half as if they’d been snipped by a giant pair of scissors. The smell of roasted flesh and spilled blood was positively nauseating.
Sleshing hobbled forward, grimacing with pain, breathing hard. The wreckage of civilization around him reminded him of one of those Goya painting he’d had to study in college, the Black Paintings, as they were known.
The closer he got to the White House, the more bodies were in the streets, hundreds now. In the distance, he saw a mad woman leaping and bounding amongst them, swinging a severed head by the hair.
The entire city was infested.
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA:
CBT CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS
8:12 A.M.
It was the Washington Post that broke the story and within minutes, it seemed, it was all over the newswires and Internet, being disseminated worldwide at lightning speed. The puppet masters of martial law didn’t dare try to censor or suppress the story in any way—it was too hot. They didn’t dare touch it. Elizabeth Toma’s phone began ringing immediately, of course, but she didn’t bother answering it. Let them all crawl in the shit they had produced.
“It appears our Mr. Niles does not fuck around,” she said under her breath. “He plays for keeps.”
Good and good. This was exactly what she wanted. Gordon Parks was probably hiding under his desk. Bob Pershing and his conspirators were pointing fingers at each other. And The Collective…ah yes, The Collective had been exposed and if she had not lost her talent for spookery and subterfuge, then all trails would lead back to the NSA, painting poor, silly, stupid, underhanded Gordy Parks in a very ugly light.
“You see, Astrid? Karma. Everything is cyclical.”
FORT MEADE, MARYLAND:
NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY
8:27 A.M.
So they were going to have themselves an old-fashioned lynching, were they? Gordon Parks giggled at the very idea. They did not understand that it was simply too late.
He hadn’t come this far to stop now.
The Collective were trying to contact him. A Congressional investigation was in the offing. And all this as D.C. burned and the President lost his mind and the country reeled from insurrection and a parasitic outbreak that got worse by the day. And in the midst of this, the media were having him for lunch.
Guess again, shitheads.
Guess again.
He checked his watch. It was nearly time and nothing, absolutely nothing could stop him now.
Tick, tick, tick.
THE WHITE HOUSE
PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, 8:45 A.M.
Maddie Hughes—former DHS Secretary who swung her big balls with the best of them on the hill, and current death goddess—found that she (and her friend, Erika, the rotting head) was sinking deep into the maggoty carcass of the accumulated dead. Where before she saw them as individuals, she now knew the corpse field had become one seething mass of carrion. A putrescent beast, a graveyard whole made of hundreds of cadavers melting into one another, assimilated by the creature that was in fact a great creeping death entity.
And she was trapped in it.
As she drowned, she listened to the music of the flies, the buzzing, droning storm that covered her face, enveloped the dead around her and under her and became the melody of her personal dirge.
Where before she saw herself as the ruler of them all, now she was simply part of the beast, another wriggling vermicular shape that had communed with it. They were all moving now, and she was moving with them, inching along on her belly, dragging atrophied limbs behind her, joined to the others, welded to them, intertwined with them into a great slimy, sinuous mass. A monstrous writhing horror woven together from hundreds of pulsating, coiling worm people. Their eyes were red translucent bulbs running with pink sap, their mouths ejecting a foam of yellow vomit. Their voices squealed and shrieked. Their bodies slithered. Swollen licking tongues pushed out from puckered mouths along with snaking white flatworms whose pregnant segments palpitated with gray, snot-webbed ova.
Together, they had a purpose.
And a destination: the White House.
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA:
CIA CRISIS CENTER
9:39 A.M.
DCI Pershing scowled.
How dare they, he thought. How dare they conspire above and beyond me.
Now that the chain of command had been decimated right down to the Treasury Secretary (whom he owned), he should have been a happy man. But he was not. And it wasn’t just that the President was still alive—hopelessly goddamned insane—because that had been planned, too. No, according to what he read in the Post, there were accusations that Gordon Parks was involved in a high-scale black budget operation known as MINDWORM, which—if it was true—was the apex conspiracy theory of all time.
It’s no theory, goddammit. It has something to do with that fucking ECHO array up in Alaska. Maybe the article didn’t name it specifically, but that’s what this is about.
And apparently Parks had been scheming with The Collective, if they did in fact exist.
“Shit,” Pershing said. “And all this right under my fucking nose and right on my watch.”
Okay, okay, he would not panic. He could spin this, too. The problem was that he was implicated in the coup. He was named in the article.
And how am I going to fix that?
But, of course, he knew. Gordon Parks. He was the scapegoat, he was the sacrificial lamb. The country in general didn’t really trust the CIA, but they trusted them a hell of a lot more than they trusted the NSA, particularly following the Snowden revelations (politically-motivated or not). Now old Gordy was involved in an insidious mind control plot? Tsk, tsk. Obviously (at least the way Pershing was going to spin it) was that old Gordy was in collusion with not only foreign extremists but with an ultra-powerful shadow group known as The Collective. Together they had hatched a plot with the blessing of certain unscrupulous industrialists, politicos, and high-ranking military personnel to take over the country. They had created a doomsday scenario with the genetically-altered parasites and taken advantage of the chaos by systematically dispat
ching the nation’s chain of command and were poised to activate a national mind control weapon that would make free will a thing of the past. It was all part of Gordy’s insane lust for power and the institution of a New World Order.
Excellent.
He typed it up and sent it to Matt Connelly, his deputy director, for immediate disbursement. Thrust, counter-thrust. With martial law in effect, the Post’s story would be yanked immediately and they might even be charged with treason… that was, if anyone dared.
No matter, it was out on the Internet now. There was no stopping it.
Let the bullshit fly.
Pershing studied the pile of reports on his desk. Chaos and trouble. Nothing but.
According to the latest CDC estimates, over 70% of the country was infected by the worms or would be by the end of the week. Millions were dead and dying. Hospitals were overloaded, most at quarantine stage. It was end times and the religious kooks out there were having a field day.
Enjoy yourself, my friends. Spread your manure far and wide.
Another disturbing little pearl had just come in an hour ago. The military was in a state of emergency due to parasite outbreaks. There were mass desertions across the country. National Guard units were abandoning their posts as their families fell ill, deciding that they were needed more on the home front than patrolling cities that were on their last legs.
Oh yes, it was certainly time for a change in leadership, particularly now that the President was completely mad, tripping his brains out on a military-grade classified psychotropic. It would be days before he came out of it and when he did, it would be a whole new world out there.
First things first.
He got Connelly on his sat phone. “Two things need to be handled immediately,” he said. “First off, our NSA friend needs a long vacation and secondly, we need to find out about that ECHO array.”