by Paul Taylor
“What death device have you devised now, Dr. Franklin?” said Wiederholdt. “Tell me now or lose your throat!”
I knew the containers used to hide intelligence were formerly made of lead, which caused lead poisoning, but the new ones were much safer, being made of … I hesitated before stating the obvious.
“The containers used to transport intelligence are made of pure silver,” I said.
General Washington acted immediately. He pulled down his sleeves, faced his wolf captors, and slashed each of their throats with his silver cufflinks, leaving their necks flapping as they fell.
The remaining wolves attacked instinctively, without awaiting orders.
Catching their cue from General Washington, Continentals searched their pockets. The Hessian beasts dove onto them, dropping soldiers on their backs with their sinewy frames.
And then, one by one, the wolves arched their backs as if to howl. But their canine snouts drew tight instead, quivering uncontrollably until their heads spattered apart like grapeshot.
One after another, in rapid succession, the wolves were decapitated by the silver sixpence they had been force-fed by the troops, who had fortuitously been recently paid.
Wiederholdt leapt to a horse and fled north, followed by the few remaining wolves who had kept both their heads and their wits.
The troops chanted a hearty “Huzzah!” to General Washington before hurriedly scavaging the ground, now littered with werewolf offal, to retrieve their salaries. Washington then had the wolf carcasses prepared for transport to my lab in Philadelphia for examination.
I was awoken from my recollection by Burr, who pounded the table.
“Let us spend no more time on Hamilton’s fantastic werewolf imaginings when we have material problems that stare us in the eye!”
“Such as the mounting federal debt?” asked Hamilton. “A debt driven by the national government’s foolish investment in one Bokor Samedi’s zonbi factory?”
“I must agree with Secretary Hamilton,” I said. “While the federal government has extended millions in grants and millions more in loans to Samedi’s reanimation enterprise, his project has suffered setbacks driven in substantial part by the sloth encouraged by federal largess. Indeed, the most recent reports from his facility indicate Samedi’s workforce has taken to drink. And the latest zonbi production lot to stagger from the assembly line was so poorly engineered the zonbis turned on their drunken makers and consumed their beer-addled brains!”
Burr leapt to his feet.
“Dr. Franklin may be proficient in the physical sciences, but he knows little of Bokor Samedi’s Haitian ways! In any case, the federal government’s financial involvement in Samedi’s enterprise has grown too large to abandon!”
“But what of its contribution to the looming federal debt?” asked Hamilton. “It must be addressed at once, lest we risk America’s future credit.”
Burr regained his seat.
“There is a way to regain our fiscal footing,” he said, “without forsaking the government’s investment in Bokor Samedi’s enterprise.”
Hamilton cast Burr a suspiciously glance.
“Congress should convert the currency of the United States to a precious metals standard,” said Burr. “Doing so would back the value of the dollar to the fixed price of precious metals held by the United States.”
Hamilton seemed to part with his suspicion reluctantly.
“I concede that fixing the value of the dollar to the price of gold and silver would have a salutary effect,” said Hamilton. “It would prevent the federal government from endlessly printing money and foisting its debts on future generations.”
Jefferson nodded.
“We are agreed, then,” he said.
Jefferson directed Burr to rally the Congress to a policy of backing United States currency with gold and silver, and to gather as much of such metals as feasible to support a more stable fiscal policy.
There was a gentle tap at the door. It was Dolley.
“A letter, Mr. Jefferson!” she said, breathlessly. “It was just delivered by a female slave! She stumbled onto the grounds before expiring!”
Dolley extended her trembling hand and passed the letter to the President. It was signed by Meriwether Lewis. Jefferson proceeded to read it to the assembled company.
Dear Mr. President:
We encamped just inside the Kentucky border, at the estate of a Welsh corn whisky producer, Eamann Marcus, a relative of my father’s descended from some of the earliest Scottish settlers from Wales who came to settle in the Celtic Appalachian region. As we approached the compound, I was struck by its decrepitude. No one greeted us at the gate, and we sauntered in unescorted, laying most of our weapons in the entry hall.
The mansion had been looted of everything of value.
I had promised my fellow explorers a store of whisky once we arrived, and so we proceeded down to the cellars in the hopes that at least a few barrels remained.
We lit several torches and indeed, the barrels were there.
But they no longer contained whiskey. Instead, the barrels encased row upon row of sedate gentlemen whose bodies had been grotesquely contorted to fit inside. Their heads extended from holes cut in the barrel heads and their necks sported thick wooden spigots. I immediately recognized Marcus, his barren eyes fixed upward. I took him to be drugged in some way.
Just then a dank wind dimmed our torches and we felt the brooding presence of several dark figures surrounding us. They seized our men in their oversized grips and shuffled them to the back of the cask cellar, where I fear their necks, too, would soon be tapped. Mr. Clark and I were left alone with their leader, whose anvil-sized jaw shadowed his face from the torchlight. The creature’s distorted mandible creaked open.
“We were told you would return to your family, Mr. Lewis.”
“Who told you of our mission?” I asked.
“The future President of the Eastern Territories,” gurgled the fiend through a salivating jaw.
“And what alliance have you forged with our government?” I insisted.
The Habsburg monster issued a slow, throaty laugh.
“One of your own believes vampirism is a pathway to egalitarianism,” he growled. “Vampires take by force, just as government must. But once they have taken, their subjects are liberated. They are free from fear of death or illness. Free to enjoy anything they want. That is the utopia sought by the future President of these territories.”
“But what of the wealthy gentlemen you store in casks to be drained?”
“The future President says these gentlemen and those like them have already drained their share from society, and now it is time they be drained in return. The masses will be sustained by their blood and treasure.”
“Wealth does not perpetuate on its own!” I said. “Where will your vampire hordes draw their resources when society’s producers have been squeezed dry as wine grapes?”
“Our plans extend further than those of earthly politicians,” hissed the monster impatiently before turning abruptly to his fellow Habsburgs. “Take them to the slave quarters!” he ordered. “They may be of use in the event we face a more substantial force.”
Mr. Clark and I were dragged to the back of the estate and thrown into a barn that was bolted shut behind us. When we pulled ourselves off the hay-strewn floor, we saw dozens of black slaves chained to the horse stalls.
Several of them, all young women, screeched at our presence.
“Incubus! Incubus!” they cried, lurching as far from us as their chains would allow.
I motioned calmly. “We mean you no harm,” I assured.
It was then that one of the older slaves told us the women had mistaken us for vampires.
I knew through family correspondence that Marcus had constructed a secret network of tunnels designed to ferret escaping slaves across the border and to freedom in the North. The tunnel entrance was under a hay bail in the back corner of the barn. We helped the slaves wrest their chains f
rom the posts and sent them on their way through the tunnel. I pray this missive has reached you through one of them. For ourselves, we have pressed on with our exploration, heading west.
Time is of the essence, Mr. President.
Yours in service,
Meriwether Lewis
As Jefferson read the letter, Dolley recoiled, as if she saw her missing husband amidst each of the horrors Lewis described.
“I should lead a military engagement against the Habsburg forces,” I volunteered immediately. “I could command a single airship, in hopes of neutralizing them in a targeted attack that would avoid the mass panic of a ground invasion.”
Jefferson nodded solemnly. I looked to Dolley.
“I have studied the weaknesses of Mr. Madison’s Habsburg captors,” I said, “and can soon design the means to counter their genetic advantages.”
Within weeks my crew and I were descending over the western side of the Appalachians. There appeared below us an undulating throng of Habsburg warriors, masked in cloaks and shaded goggles to protect them from the sun.
As for the left and right flanks of advancing vampires, I had equipped the airship with two large pine cylinders that spanned the length of the port and starboard sides. On my command, the crew dropped thousands of wooden stakes into the hoppers connected to the revolving drums, which were fueled by a giant boiler. The cylinders spun at a centrifugal speed high enough to propel thousands of shards onto the vampires below. The hail of wood laced the air, reducing hundreds of Habsburg spawn to balls of quivering flesh that smoldered like cannonball craters on the Appalachian mountainside.
Still, many a vampire evaded the volleys and leapt through the air, flooding our stern with ravenous jackhammer jaws. They lunged toward the pilot’s deck.
I ordered the water produced by the boilers redirected aft. The crew expelled the scalding discharge at the advancing Habsburgs, dousing their cloaks with enough scorching liquid to slow their hungry pace. We won just enough time to direct the many magnifying lenses fixed to the topmasts onto any skin left exposed by the disoriented monsters.
But just as we had singed the last of the beasts that had boarded us, an ominous cloud masked the sun above, rendering our solar glasses useless.
The remaining stalwarts in the Habsburg army seemed to gain encouragement from this development, and they collected themselves into a giant phalanx to make their final stand.
They charged straight for our bow, out of range of the centrifugal weapons fixed to our port and starboard sides. And there was no time to reposition the airship.
My top aides gathered at the front of the ship to be near the angelic figurehead decorating the prow as they hurriedly said their prayers.
“Loose the figurehead!” I cried to them.
They demurred at first, aghast at what they understood to be a sacrilegious gesture so proximate to their demise.
“Pull the lever at your feet!” I implored.
As the officers hesitated, a cabin boy ran to the prow and threw all his slight weight on the golden tipped lever to which I was pointing. With the lever pulled, the figurehead fell to earth, exposing our last hope.
At the prow of the ship, where the figurehead once was, there were revealed two parallel metal rails connected by conducting chain to a half dozen steam-filled balloons released aloft. I dashed to the prow and placed a series of large metal slugs, each spiked with a wooden stake, between the rails.
“Trust in science, and pray for lightning!”
A thunderclap rocked the ship and a crack of light linked the sky to the balloons. Lightning skipped across the chains, again and again. With each strike through the chain conductors, a circuit was completed that stretched across the projectiles, from one rail to the other, perpendicular to the current of the magnetic field. The circuit produced an upward force, accelerating the slugs to great speeds until they left the rail and broke the circuit.
A relentless volley of wood-infused metal cut through the oncoming Habsburgs, slicing their innards and shattering their bones before they burst into a thin mist of translucent ectoplasm, which left the slight taste of acidity in our mouths.
What remaining Habsburgs survived escaped into the nearby forest. With a rousing cheer, I was held aloft by my crew.
My thoughts turned to Dolley again.
Part 3: Benjamin Franklin and the Pufferfish Zonbis
(The British Conspiracy)
Upon my return to Washington City, I placed a visit to Dolley’s residence. She greeted me with welcoming arms and clung to my topcoat like a child. When we sat, I held the base of her back and felt the jut of a firm corset at her waist.
“What plans does the President have for returning Mr. Madison to you, my dear?”
Dolley squeezed my hand.
“None,” she said, holding a tear in her eye. “At least, none at the moment. Jefferson’s chief concern remains the Mohawk Nation, which continues its assault on the western territories. With my husband still missing in Europe, Jefferson will soon direct you to meet with the chief of the tribes to negotiate a peace.”
I tried to assure her that when our domestic threats were quelled, Jefferson would put all his energies into the return of the great Madison, to whom the nation owed its very Constitution. But as much as I wanted to see Dolley’s face glimmer with the positivity she imparted to so many others, she remained unnaturally grim.
“The ship of state veers toward war,” she said. “I was a Quaker once, but I was expelled from the church upon my marriage to Madison, who would not join the Society of Friends. He said that inherent in all religions should be the recognition of evil, which the Quaker’s utopian pacifism failed to countenance.”
She looked to me for confirmation, which I readily gave.
“For many years,” I said, “I was the rare Pennsylvanian who was not a member of the Society of Friends. I was welcomed into the state’s leadership ranks only because my talents for designing war machines served as a necessary insurance against the state’s policy of pacifism. I was in many ways a Quaker renegade without whom Quakerism could not be sustained.”
Dolley pressed my arm, and her touch lost its childlike qualities.
“A great Prussian soldier wrote recently that war is the continuation of politics by other means. My husband was a brilliant engineer of politics,” she said, “but you are a most brilliant engineer of war. And so I confess that whatever political success America may have, it could not be preserved without you and your magnificent machines.”
I grasped Dolley’s waist and cursed its corseted whale bone shell.
“Good night, my dear,” I said, and left to prepare for my visit to the chief of the Mohawk Nation.
The next week I met Chief Thayendanegea at an Iroquois village in northern New York, just after dusk.
I was led to a giant longhouse, shaped like an arched tunnel and covered with tree bark. There were no windows, save a few openings in the roof to let the smoke from the many ceremonial fires escape. The chief sat on a simple bench, resting his arm on a steer skull decorated with hawk feathers. He had a large jug of sweet-smelling wine at his side, which I took to be some sort of mead.
“I bring presents,” I said, waving to a trunk of dried fish and plum loaves. “I also bring American offers of peace, and of mutually agreeable territorial lines.”
The chief was a tall man, with bronze skin and a thick, uniform brow that burrowed into the wrinkles on his forehead when he spoke.
“Our territory spreads as far as our will for revenge,” said the chief.
“What is the source of this vengeance?” I asked. “American settlements have steered clear of Mohawk lands for many years.”
The Chief quaffed voraciously from the jug before resting his elbows on his knees.
“Were your people never to have set foot on our Indian lands,” said the chief, “your wars brought us a scourge like no other.”
“Americans did not invent intoxicating spirits!” I said.
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The chief rose from his bench and howled at the sky, then slowly lowered his gaze to meet mine.
“Our rage is indeed fueled by drink!” he bellowed. “But it is a rage forged across the sea and carried here by the white man!”
“You chose to ally yourselves with the British,” I reminded. “The British brought the war by violating the natural rights of its subjects.”
“Ha!” cried the chief. “You speak of natural rights. I speak of supernatural curses! Your war with the British brought the German Hessians to their cause, and the Hessians brought the curse to us.”
My thoughts returned to that night in Trenton, in 1776.
“At the start of your Revolution,” said the chief, “Hessian soldiers escaped north, following their route at the Battle of Trenton. Desperately hungry, they stumbled upon a Mohawk reservation, upon which they feasted. Hungry as wolves! And so have we become. Always hungry, always hunting. We are no longer sons of the earth spirits. We are the sons of the Germanic Visigoths, whose blood ran through the Hessians that consumed ours!”
The chief lifted the jug above his head and let the wine fill his throat. He wiped his lips, and then his brow, which began to twitch uncontrollably.
“We are berserkers now!”
The chief’s teeth chattered. His body shivered. His face swelled, and his complexion grew a much deeper shade of brown. The chief’s jaw wrenched forward, as if he had been struck in the back of his head with a spade. His temples sprouted pointed ears, a snout pushed forward, and his body became drenched with sweat-matted hair. His Mohawk hairstyle grew in proportion to his newly-grown coat and extended like the crest of a hellish rooster.
The transformation complete, the chief roared in a trance-like fury.
He swatted a rolled parchment bound with twigs to the ground.
“Deliver our demands to your leader,” he said in a barely intelligible growl. “Unless they are met, the Mohawks will feast on a million American scalps!”
At our next cabinet meeting, Jefferson turned to me.