by Paul Taylor
I grabbed the bottle nearest us and went to put it to my lips, hoping to soften my last moments. But when I popped open the cork, I saw it was attached to a lit timer fuse and a small cannonball that rattled against the glass.
I threw the bottle into the midst of the most threatening clump of corpses and they jumped on it like fish to a lure. Then the bottle exploded, covering the zonbis in a flaming jelly and sending them convulsing in confused patterns.
The corpses began to cluster around the bottles, which all began to explode. Chunks of putrid flesh flew like chum.
Then what felt like a heavy rope net fell over our heads. We wrestled it off and looked up. It was not a net, but a rope ladder, and it was attached to the gondola of an airship that peeked through the fog.
“Hold on!” said a voice from above.
I sent Hamilton up the rope ladder and followed behind. We were hoisted skyward.
As the fog parted above me in the sunlight I saw the uniformed figure of President Jefferson waving his troops to haul us into the ship.
“Welcome aboard!” said Jefferson. “I presume you recognize another of your ingenious designs, Dr. Franklin! We’re taking a stand in Louisiana against Napoleon and his supernatural army.”
I looked around. Every gear and pipe on the vessel was just as I had drafted it years earlier. It was a mothership designed to coordinate a sort of doomsday machine I hoped need never be called into service. I saw from the markings on the vessel that it, too, had been funded by the Temple Trust.
“Look there!” said Jefferson. “The wolves approach! Dr. Franklin, take the command!”
I saw in the distance row after row of what looked to be tumbleweeds. But as they surged closer, it was clear they were the pumping shoulders of advancing lycanthropes. Militiamen below charged ahead. Wolf fangs clashed with bayonets that sparkled on contact.
“The bayonets are equipped with your batteries,” said Jefferson, “to stun the beasts long enough to have their heads plugged with silvershot.”
A chorus of shrieks echoed from the Cypress trees to our starboard side.
“The vampires are attacking the snipers in the woods!” I yelled to the troops on the ground. “Erect the mirrored deflectors!”
The men below dug carriages into the peat. They swung open panels that exposed huge convex mirrors to the sun that bounced sunlight into the trees. Through the leaves, we could see vampires perched in the shade burst into flames and fall into the swamp water below.
A small figure on a horse worked his way to the front of the werewolf line.
“Lycanthropes!” yelled Napoleon. “Smash the mirrors!”
The wolves that had escaped the electrified bayonets stormed the mirror carriages, and the militiamen abandoned their posts. The wolves charged toward the mirrors, their claws poised to shatter, but as they approached the mirrors exploded, sending shards all around. The wolves crumpled in pain, stung deep by the mirror’s reflective silver coating.
“The sun is setting!” I yelled to the militiamen. “Signal our airships to cast the telluric piles!”
A large red flare rocketed overhead, splitting into a ring of smaller embers that whistled as they descended.
The airships around us began to swing into position, hovering closer to the ground. Hundreds of tiny slots opening up round the base of each gondola.
“Fire the plates!” I yelled.
A muffled explosion could be heard under each of the airships. But their gondolas remained intact. Instead, thousands of wire tendrils shot from the slots in the gondolas’ hulls and bore into the peat below, tethering each airship to the earth.
I had designed the copper and zinc plates at the end of the wires to collect the Earth’s telluric energy, electric currents that move under the surface layers of the ground, induced by changes to the Earth’s magnetic field caused by shifting solar winds.
“Connect the airships!” I cried.
Each ship fired a cannon at the others, hurling huge iron hooks over their bows. Crews hurried to connect the hooks to a circuit slot at each gondola’s prow.
At the same time, the earth-shattering sound of falling timbers called the attention of those on the battlefield. Trees were curled aside by the treads of a giant metal tower emerging from the forest. At the top of the steam-powered behemoth sat an enormous electrostatic sphere, held in place by two flying buttresses. At the base of the sphere was another sphere of glass connected to a metal barrel.
The militiamen began their retreat from the front lines.
“Finish the connection!” I yelled.
A team of men at the aft of the ship steadied the largest cannon of all and shot another wired hook at the top of the tower, where it was shifted into position by a rubber-gloved crew. They signaled the circuit was complete.
“Fire the beam!” I cried.
The belly of each airship hummed as if with excitement. Sparks flew near the surface where each plate was embedded, producing a vast field of electric buds. The thousand wires crackled and stiffened before shooting their current through the mast of our ship and into the giant tower below.
The electrostatic sphere glowed blue, and soon the glass sphere at its base bloomed with lightning, blasting a column of electricity through the metal tube.
The beam cut through Napoleon’s lines, leaving a charred ditch filled with smoldering werewolves, crushed by the electric battering ram.
“Sixty million volts!” I cried. “Recharge and fire!”
The spectacle began again and the unforgiving tower dug another charred grave stretching the entire length of the battlefield.
“Again!” I cried.
But this time, the hum of the airships lost their synchronized chorus. They began to veer out of position.
“The ships are reconfiguring! Reposition! Reposition!”
The ships did not obey, but instead moved into another pattern the symmetry of which bespoke a rival, indeed Satanic, captain. The wired ships were settling into the formation of a giant pentagram.
“It’s the mark of the Hellfire Club!” I cried. “They’ve hijacked the airships!”
I ordered the wire connecting our ship to the tower disengaged, but no sooner was that accomplished than another connector was shot from the nearest captured vessel and affixed to the base of the tower. Hellfire agents had commandeered the electrostatic sphere as well. They now pointed its beam above the horizon, away from Napoleon’s army.
The wires charged again. The lightning connecting the airships emblazoned the sky with the symbol of the Beast before its electric ramrod flew again, this time skyward.
I knew the Hellfire rogues had long understood portals to the netherworld could be opened through concentrated bursts of collective energy, which they provided through animal sacrifice, and even human orgies. As I watched the beam of the most concentrated electric energy man had ever produced explode midair, I feared the worst.
When the explosion dissipated, there was a black void left in the night sky through which no starlight passed. Then, slowly, the void began to refill with flickering spots. They moved closer, and grew in size, until we could discern the slimy outstretched wings of hundreds of horned demons flying to earth.
“The Hellfire Club has opened a portal to the Netherworld!” I warned. “They’ve loosed the hellspawn!”
Hundreds of winged banshees ran their talons across American throats. I ordered ropes dropped from the ship to save what militiamen I could. Our forces in disarray, Jefferson ordered the retreat north.
The airship fired its boilers, and we were forced by treasonous circumstance to leave the demons to feast on the souls we left behind.
“Burr’s conspiracies have grown so vast they now span another dimension!” I said, piloting the airship over the clouds and into the moonlight.
Jefferson grabbed my shoulder.
“Napoleon aims for Washington City,” he said. “We will have to prepare our final stand.”
“While he ultimately
aims for Washington City,” I replied, “I fear the weapon he needs to take it lies just south of the capital.”
Jefferson looked puzzled.
“Napoleon tried to give me a sign at the Alamo,” I said. “He put his right hand in his vest, ostentatiously.”
“That gesture is no secret,” said Jefferson. “It is a veritable trademark of Napoleon’s. He poses for portraits as such!”
I hesitated to continue the discussion just then. But the stakes were too high.
“The significance of that gesture,” I said, “is generally known only to Freemasons.”
Jefferson was intrigued.
“You are a Mason yourself, Dr. Franklin,” he said. “So what does it mean?”
“It is the sign of the hidden hand,” I said. “The forces that control out of sight. Napoleon was signaling to me in a way Gyorgy and the wolves would not understand that he knew that I knew there was a means for trumping their supernatural powers, a means far beyond the applications of technology and science. He was seeking my aid in obtaining that means before Hamilton and I escaped the Alamo.”
“And what means would that be?” asked Jefferson.
“I ask you to trust me,” I said. “The secrets of the Masons are not easily unsealed. And so it is best I work through other Masonic brothers.”
Jefferson looked over the clouds, toward Washington City.
“Your knowledge of science in the defense of this country has earned you my respect,” said Jefferson. “And so I respect your knowledge of science’s limits. I therefore grant you the authority to proceed at your discretion.”
Upon our arrival in Washington City, we knew we had only months to build up our defenses. Napoleon and his supernaturals would grind their way through each state, moving north. Mississippi and Alabama had long since been lost, having sunk under the deadweight of the exponentially multiplying zonbi hordes. Georgia and South Carolina were left to the wolves, who converted plantations to Mohawk longhouses and replaced their crops with human herds. North Carolina went to the vampires. It was reported to be quiet by day, but a nightmarish symphony of screams at night.
We would build our last line of defense just south of Washington City, in Alexandria, Virginia.
I gathered what master builders I could from all corners of the country. They would aid in the construction of a three-tiered defense that would begin near Mount Vernon and end at a hilltop called Shuter’s Hill. Our economy was in shambles and the Treasury bankrupt. We turned again to the Temple Trust to fund our vast defensive operations.
The plan of defense was called Solomon’s Temple, after the ancient Jerusalem fortress constructed under the direction of Solomon, king of the Israelites. The temple serves as the Freemason’s allegorical inspiration for constructing both strong buildings and solid character. The outer defense at Mount Vernon was called the Vestibule. Following the Vestibule was the Greater House, a giant airship General Washington and I would command. Finally, embedded under Shuter’s Hill, was the chamber they called the Holy of Holies, containing our defenses of last resort, recently arrived from Spain at the direction of the Temple Trust.
The operations of Solomon’s Temple were supervised by none other than George Washington, past Master of Alexandria Lodge No. 22. He had been called from retirement to serve his country yet again.
The final battle unfolded near midnight, when we first heard the cry of Paul Revere, Grand Master of Saint Andrew’s Lodge in Boston. Although advanced in age, Revere retained a keen eye for threats to the Union.
Upon hearing his call, I rode with General Washington on the airship Greater House, from which we would lead the defense. By the time we were aloft, Revere had achieved some distance between himself and the approaching army.
Napoleon had placed the Mohawk warriors on the front infantry lines.
“Napoleon prefers to fight in open spaces so as to preserve his flexibility in allocating his forces,” I told Washington. “But while Napoleon is a master of human military tactics, he is a poor student of animal instinct.”
I checked the anemometer on the bridge of the ship and confirmed the direction of the prevailing winds.
“The wolves will have picked up the scent of our militiamen by now,” I said. “The beasts will instinctively stay upwind of their prey to keep fixed on the scent and hide their own.”
Washington turned a dial on a console, illuminating a signaling gaslight under the airship’s gondola. Within minutes, several much smaller airships launched silently from below, their oversized propellers blowing the scent of the militiamen down a narrow channel of air.
The wolves began to funnel their formation, gathering together in the path of the scent. We saw the white-clad figure of Napoleon wave and call from his steed, but to no avail. He was forced to follow his atavistic forces down a small valley that led to the Vestibule.
Washington turned another gear and the gaslight signaled anew. The propeller airships then turned this way and that, dissipating the scent of their prey haphazardly and causing the wolves to stop their run, confused.
Through what looked like a dust storm of wolf hair strode Napoleon, addled by the deviation from his plan but still wearing the steady confidence given him by the sheer number of Mohawks at his command.
The end of the valley, the innermost part of the Vestibule, was lined with sandstone leading to a sheer wall that had been cut into the landscape. Revere appeared at the top of the wall and dismounted. He held a single lantern aloft.
Napoleon brought his horse to the edge of the Vestibule’s sandstone steps and halted his troops behind him.
They watched as Revere touched the candle of his lantern to a winding channel of kerosene that was cut through both sides of the valley, illuminating a huge mural of the Great Seal of the United States that was carved into the wall on which Revere stood. He had engraved the Great Seal many times in his career. The wall was engraved in silver, melted down from the renowned silversmith’s entire inventory, his life’s work now dedicated to the defense of his country.
The left side of the mural depicted a bald eagle, its wings outstretched. It bore the American shield and held a bundle of thirteen arrows in its left talon and an olive branch in its right, symbolizing the country’s strong desire for peace but readiness for war. Over the eagle’s head appeared a glory pattern of thirteen stars. The right of the mural depicted the reverse of the seal: an unfinished pyramid of thirteen layers topped by a triangle containing an all-seeing Eye of Providence.
Napoleon steadied his horse, which seemed mesmerized by the sparkling metallic mural.
“I see you have built an impressive monument!” Napoleon yelled to Revere. “Too bad it shall serve as your tombstone!”
Napoleon looked behind him to the hungry throngs of werewolves.
“Forward!” he yelled.
The wolves surged ahead.
Revere dropped his lantern into a small opening at his feet and quickly closed it with an iron cover. He was standing atop a huge excavated chamber dug behind the silver mural. And the chamber was filled with explosive hydrogen gas.
The wolves slowed their approach as they felt the growing warmth. The mural’s silver, having the highest thermal conductivity of any metal, soon radiated the heat of a metallic sun.
The wolves curled backward, feeling their fur singed. But it was too late. The engraved channels of the mural, where the silver was weakest, melted first, just before the growing pressure of the hydrogen gas blew soft bits of silver stars, eagle feathers, and pyramid stones in a thousand directions. The molten metal spread a silver shadow across the sandstone valley, leaving the Mohawk werewolves branded with the liquefied decorative details of Revere’s masterwork.
Seeing his lycanthrope forces contorting in a collective death throe, Napoleon retreated from the valley, through a smoldering mass of burning fur, and onto the open ground. He reared his horse and fired a flare.
“Napoleon has summoned the hellspawn,” I said.
“Bring the ship about, and fire at will!” called General Washington.
The airship turned to face the one part of the sky that contained no stars, which I took to be the void through which the demons would emerge. And soon enough, the demonic contingent flew forth, the flutter of their slime-coated wings delineated by the sharp moonlight.
Our bank of six fore cannons fired.
“The demons are too nimble!” cried our navigator. “They are evading the shot!”
“Calm,” I said to the crew. “We fire only to get their attention.”
“But their talons are phosphorus! They’ll ignite the balloon’s hydrogen fuel!”
No sooner had the helmsman spoken than the demons swarmed around our balloon like moths to a candle, buffeting the ship. I steadied myself, then raised my hands to calm a visibly apprehensive crew.
“The balloon was woven with gossamer spider silk!” I informed. “Its tensile strength is stronger than iron!”
After several minutes of convulsing, the gondola came to subside.
“Observe!” I said. “The demons cannot penetrate!”
I could hear the exhalations of the crew as they came to realize the truth of what I said. I braced them for another.
“The demons have likely filed their claws to the nub on the gossamer, but they are hellsworn to their summoners to continue their mission until we are all killed,” I said. “They will not stop.”
As I spoke, hellspawn flew past the gondola’s windows and toward the flap valves of the balloon.
“They are entering the balloon through its vents!” cried the helmsman. “They’ll down the ship!”
The crew became addled once again. The airship’s balloon shook as if it were filled with giant kernels of popping corn as the hellspawn streamed into the belly of the ship. When we could see no more demons from the gondola windows, General Washington ordered the vents sealed.
The crew uttered prayers in a variety of dialects. The ship’s balloon bent downward under the collective pressure of the demons within.