By Order of the President

by Kilian, Michael;

  “Where, Charley? Where do we go?”

  Their pursuers had made a mistake. Not knowing which way Dresden and Maddy were going to turn, the two from the parked car had crossed to join the third man, and they were lunging after them in a pack. If one of them had stayed on the opposite side of the boulevard, he would have been in a position to cut them off.

  “Turn right at the boardwalk!” Charley said. “We’ll try to get to the house!”

  They might never make it. There might be more men waiting for them there. But it was a chance, and Charley could think of no other. It would give them an opportunity to lock a door behind them, to make a quick, frantic call to police, to shoot whoever came in after them. If they could make it.

  Hastening on, his injured leg paining him now, Charley pulled Maddy along with him. She ran with head high, her hair streaming wet. Rounding the corner, the three men came relentlessly after, gaining ground, till one of them slipped and fell. The other two paused only an instant.

  “Keep up, Maddy! Run as hard as you can! I swear they mean to kill us, Maddy!”

  “I’m running. Oh God, I’m running.”

  There were more storefronts, dark and locked, lightless signs in the windows. One of the men was pulling ahead of the others. In a quick glance, Charley saw a dark object in his right hand.

  Hearts thumping, they pounded over the wooden planks, passing the opening of the end of a street, the large green enclosure of a public toilet at the curb. Just ahead was an enormous two- or three-story structure, the sides of its ground floor all open to the street, but enclosed with chicken-wire netting.

  Maddy now pulled ahead. In the shadows within, Charley saw odd objects. Video game machines, the stilled, circular procession of painted horses—a carousel. There was an opening in the wire netting, a sort of gate, standing ajar.

  “In here, Charley! I know this place! It’s an amusement arcade. Quick!”

  Ducking, they slipped into the darkness. With Maddy leading him by the hand, they darted and scurried around and among the rides and devices. There were dozens of places to hide, but she kept on, pulling him past the carousel and the bumper car track toward the rear. There the roof gave way to sky again in a vast open space that allowed room for the Ferris wheel and the major thrill rides. The rain was heavy now, falling in thuds.

  “Damn!” she said. “I thought there’d be a way out back here. That wire’s everywhere!”

  They looked desperately around them. Over by a high wall he saw a spinning teacup ride, now motionless. He pulled her over to it, pushing her into one of the cups and clambering in after her, pulling out his pistol. Two of their pursuers had found the same gate they had, and had entered. They were soon joined by the third. The men fanned out, but it could take them an hour to search the entire arcade. Dresden allowed himself the luxurious thought that, with care, moving quietly in the shadows, he and Maddy might still have a chance to break free.

  But one of the men now embarked on another, more pragmatic search, apparently with a fair idea of where to look. He disappeared behind some machinery for a moment, and then at once all the shadows, all the darkness harbored by that cavernous enclosure utterly vanished in the glare of hundreds of lights. The three moved forward now with deliberation, methodically, as hunters, seeking paths through the rides and amusements as they might work their way through heavy brush. All three had drawn weapons.

  The one who’d been bright enough to seek out the main power switch moved to the center. He stopped, calling out: “We mean no harm! We just want to talk to you! That’s all! Just talk to you! Come out!”

  Maddy was almost panting in fear. His own breathing was so heavy he could scarcely hear hers. He held his revolver aimed loosely at the man coming nearest them, but to little point. The distance was too great for even as good a pistol shot as Dresden. And if he hit his mark, what then? The Magnum held only six rounds. They were cornered. His first shot would give their location away.

  But then the men made another mistake. To aid in their search, like beaters flushing game in a medieval hunt, they began throwing the switches, pushing the buttons, and pulling the levers that turned on the rides. At once children’s rocketships began their mindless, orbital flights; shooting gallery devices began to buzz and beep; the carousel started to revolve, the brightly painted horses whirling into their lifting, falling dance. Music played amidst a dozen grinds and rattles and roars. The noise grew to a din, eerily so in the vast emptiness of the place.

  Maddy pulled Dresden close. “Charley. The fun house. If we can make it, there’s a way out through the fun house.”

  Its garish facade was nearby, fifty feet from the edge of the teacup ride. A narrow track emerged from one set of black-painted double doors, ran along the facade, and then disappeared into another set. Hanging suspended above the track were a number of black-painted, two-seat chairs, looking like something miners might ride into their shafts.

  The noise was increasing. The man nearest them came nearer still, reaching the place where the teacup ride’s attendant would stand, the place with the “on” button.

  “Now,” said Charley.

  They hurled themselves forward, out of the teacup, sprawling onto the platform, just as the machinery began its movement. Hurrying on hands and knees, slipping and sliding, they avoided an oncoming teacup beginning to spin in its track. The man saw them and shouted. Gun in hand, he leaped up on the platform, just as they rolled off its edge, and just as one of the wildly spinning teacups came round and knocked him sprawling, his weapon flying from his hand.

  Running at a crouch, Dresden and Maddy fled for the fun house doors, breaking one of them off its hinges as they smashed their way into the blackness. Here there would be no glaring lights.

  Maddy took the lead again, holding tightly to his hand, groping forward. There was enough pale glow of light in the chamber to see by as their eyes became adjusted to it, some of it reddish in hue, other corners a ghoulish gray-green. Spooks and skeletons, fiends and horrid heads, odd lights and disorienting devices, all hung loose and lifeless, staring, looking more frightening than they likely did in their customary motion.

  Through the thin walls behind them they could hear shouting again, running footsteps, and a crash. Maddy kept on, finding her way, pausing as she lost it, then remembering, moving slowly forward. Suddenly there was the sound of a lurching grind. Another switch had been thrown. The empty chairs were beginning their swinging procession through the house of horrors. With the slam of doors, one banged its way into the chamber where they stood. Another followed.

  “Get in the next one!” Maddy shouted. “It will take us where we need to go!”

  “But they’ll only be waiting for us when we come out!”

  “No! There’s another way! Do as I say!”

  At the next slam and bang they both leaped at the approaching car from either side, almost in unison, causing it to sway violently as they fell back against the seat. The monster creatures were in full function now, jangling and hooting and screeching, leaping out and back. Charley, gun poised, kept looking beyond them for a face that wasn’t painted, for a figure of menace that only stood still. The seat cranked and jerked, banging through another set of doors, and then abruptly rising.

  “Get ready!” Maddy said. “Jump when I say!”

  “But where?”

  “Just jump! When I say!”

  They rattled up the incline in pitch blackness, reached its summit, then slammed through more doors. Instantly, Charley glimpsed sea, dark sand, the moist wood of the boardwalk below.

  “Now!” shouted Maddy. She disappeared to his left. He flung himself to the right, smashing into a wooden wall, his knee hurting.

  The little car, swaying and empty, proceeded on without them, disappearing into the cavernous fun house again with a snap of metal hinge and wood. Maddy was back against the railing. They were on a small open place on the structure’s second floor.

  “A little added attraction,”
she said, trying to catch her breath. “A little look at the real world again before you’re plunged back into hell.”

  He waited for the next chair to emerge and rattle past, then leaped to her side.

  “We have to climb down,” she said, peering down at the wooden framework supporting the structure. “We’ll have to jump to the boardwalk. It’s the only way.”

  “Okay.”

  He helped her over the rail, then lifted himself onto it as she began to lower herself with careful grip on the slippery uprights. He was crouched when the fun house doors banged open yet once more, this time revealing a chair that was not empty.

  Charley had only an instant’s look at the man’s startled, angry face. The recognition that would come later would be that of a vague figure in the background at the press conference he had just seen on the network newscast. But Dresden had time only for impulse. His first was to shoot the man, point blank. His next, coming just a millisecond later, coming just as the chair rumbled directly past him, was kinder, but not much. He brought the sharp, heavy butt of his pistol grip down on the man’s head. His victim cried out and sprawled forward, hanging over the safety bar.

  With that, Charley stuck the revolver back in his belt and hastened over the side, quickly reaching Maddy. She clung to a beam, swaying and looking down, then dropped, legs giving way as she hit, but rising quickly to her feet. She looked up. He dropped as resolutely, but landed not as well. His knee went from pain to agony, but he fought it, rising.

  “I’m okay,” he said. Their faces glistened in the drenching rain. “Let’s go!”

  He wasn’t okay, but he forced his leg to work. They stayed close to the shadows of the empty storefronts, Maddy in front, moving farther into darkness, at last finding the stairs that led down to the soft and silent sand.

  They tottered more than ran, feet sliding and slipping, breaths coming in spasms. Ahead Charley could see the dim flickering of what must be the lights of their house, but he could not gauge its distance. The measurement did not matter. All that counted was to run, run as he had always run, as life had made him run from the very beginning. Run for life. Run for Maddy. Run.

  But it wasn’t fast or far enough. A loud crack sounded in the downpour and a whining, whizzing object burned through the air beside him. Then another. He looked back, faltering as he did so. Two figures were behind them. Silhouetted farther back against the glowing lights of the town, he could see a third.

  Another gunshot. The damned, wet sand was slowing both of them, but especially Charley. If they had stuck to the pavement, found some sidestreet off the boardwalk, they might have escaped. They might have.

  There was another exploding crackle, but instead of a bullet singing past, he heard Maddy shriek. She lurched, spinning around, and fell to her back.

  He had an instant’s examination of his soul to make, an instant’s search of his entire being for some shred of honor and purpose, of decision. They had taken everything from him now. They had taken her. All he had left to him, all that could drive him now, was that urge to run, to flee, to keep alive whatever small particle of himself yet remained, to resist to the very last what his father had found so easy: to die.

  She arched her back, writhing, crying out in pain. He dropped to his knee, his good knee, and reached to hold her shoulder, just to touch her, reassure her. With his other hand he brought up the big Magnum and fired off a bellowing round at their pursuers. In that faint light, in the rain and distance, the bullet missed, rocketing on into nothingness. But it had effect. One of the men darted sideways, toward the houses lining the beach. The other moved closer to the shore, moving forward at a crouch. Charley fired at him, missing again, cursing the rain in his eyes. Maddy was clinging tightly to his arm.

  This was it then. Death in the rain by the sea. His mind had emptied of Poe. He could think only of a snatch of remembered words, the last words of an aged actress. Someone his grandfather had known. Ethel Barrymore. “That’s all there is. There isn’t anymore.”

  That’s all. Two figures, three. Advancing relentlessly, sent by the gods. The Valkyries had made their choice.

  Or had they? The rain was thickening with another sound, a droning, chattering sound. As it increased, a huge cone of light poked through the darkness at the boardwalk, slanting down from the sky. As it came closer the light switched back and forth, sweeping the beach from side to side, searching. The three men halted, standing and looking back, looking up, their weapons lowered.

  The helicopter clattered on until it was directly over them, hovering, its light searingly bright. They kept looking up expectantly, when suddenly the machine slid to the side and two quick rattling bursts of gunfire dropped one of the men into a crumpled mound, then another. The third, the farthest distant, started a limping retreat back toward the boardwalk, but he was cut down in a few seconds.

  Now the machine, seeming to be a living creature itself, came on slowly toward Charley, its light piercing the way ahead. Dresden rose to his full height, waving his arm, his hand still holding his gun, joyful at their rescue.

  The gunner, perhaps impatient, began firing before the helicopter was directly overhead. Though Charley and Maddy were fully bathed in the searchlight, the bullets missed, slashing only into sand.

  Charley flung himself to the side, rolling, drawing the helicopter away from the sobbing Maddy. Rolling again, turning onto his belly, he lifted himself onto his elbows, raising the pistol with both hands. He had only the tiniest fraction of a hope of a chance. A thousand fears and angers pounded through his head, but so did one great, enraging, inescapable truth. He took his particle of chance, firing the big revolver once, and then again.

  The searchlight went out with an explosive, hissing burst of smoke and falling glass. The helicopter, enveloped in darkness, skittered to the side. Above its chattering roar Charley could still hear the surf.

  Lurching, he dragged Maddy up into a sitting position, then lifted her until she was draped across his shoulder, his own leg feeling pain so sharply he feared it would collapse beneath him. But he staggered on, driven to his very last snatch at life, wondering if the gods would even deny him that.

  23

  Maddy staggered and fell as they plunged into the icy sea, bitter waves rising against them. She fell again several times as he pushed on into the deeper water, half swimming, half lunging. Once she slipped from his tired grasp and fell completely beneath the water. But at last they reached the sandbar, nearer to the shore now than it had been that afternoon. Apparently the tide had fallen, for the breaking water once they were atop the sandy mound came only to their knees. Dresden crouched down, pulling Maddy with him and against him, enfolding her protectively with his arms, taking the brunt of the thudding, chilling waves with his back. He had never been so cold, so wet, so furious, helpless and terrified in his life. He had no idea of what the survival time was at this time of year in these waters; there was no measuring of it or of the temperature save by the continuing ticking fact of their being alive. If they slipped blue and frozen and unconscious now into the bone-cold ocean, then their survival time had elapsed. If they still lived, then it had not. All he could do was hold this injured, dying, lovely woman to his chest and wait and hope and pray and hate.

  They had not yet got him. The helicopter had quickly settled to the sand, its rotors still turning as two of its occupants, both armed, one holding a flashlight, leaped out and made a hurried search of the beach. They looked up and down, flashed their light at the darkened houses along the dune, but they failed to turn in the one direction in which it would make no sense to them to turn—toward the sea, where the dark figures of Dresden and Maddy huddled in the flowing heaps of wave.

  They were making haste, these men. There were winter residents in Rehoboth, as well as streetlights and police cars. Despite the deadening effects of the rain, there had been too much shooting, too much noise and light from the helicopter. The intruders each took one last look about them, then went to wo
rk, dragging the fallen bodies of their victims to the aircraft and hefting them within. Three times they performed this struggling chore, then clambered into the machine themselves. It lifted at once, leaving the beach beneath it clean of any sign of their coming, rose high above the rooftops, then climbed further, turning toward the west.

  Dresden’s limbs, his toes and fingers, had no feeling, but he could move them. He rose and pulled Maddy to her feet, heaving her and himself forward despite the drag of the water-laden clothing, helped by the push of waves behind them. Floundering, they reached shallow shore water again, and the scrape of stones and shell and sand against their knees. He pulled her up full upon the beach, leaning down to make certain she was still breathing, then rose, tottering, to bring himself to some sane decision.

  An idiotic notion struck his numbed mind. He would get them both back to her warm, waiting house, pull off her soaked, cold clothing, and tend to her wound, get her in bed and telephone for help. Simple as that.

  He cursed himself for this mindless indulgence, this waste of time. He had no idea who or what might be waiting by those beckoning lights of the Calendiari home, what helicopters might still swoop out of darkness, how many pieces Death still had on the gameboard. What he needed now was haste, frantic haste, the maximum use of time.

  Lifting her, stumbling, he moved down the row of darkened houses till he came to one holding the best promise of usefulness and easy entrance. Dragging Maddy up to its deck, he kicked until he had broken open a window by a door. Once inside, he found a lamp and turned the switch. It came on.

  Maddy was conscious, shivering and trembling, muttering, but her face was the blue of a dead woman. Stretching her out on the floor, Dresden rolled her over and methodically pulled back and lowered her crimson-soaked white duck pants. The bullet had struck at the line where the upper reach of thigh joined buttock. It seemed not to have touched bone, but had burrowed through the skin, breaking out through a tear of muscle a few inches further. The salty sea had cleaned the wound, but there had been much bleeding, and the blood was flowing again.