CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Was this you?”

Matt looked up at Monica's words, then shifted his eyes from her to the TV. The devastated buildings of Cleveland's downtown stood in stark contrast to the beauty of the lake beyond. Streams of civilians overwhelmed hospitals and mobbed both Red Cross and FEMA tents, and a flood of first responders poured through the wreckage in search of survivors. Matt knew that a more focused team searched through the epicenter, not for the living or even the dead, but for information.

She had some notion that she couldn't leave the building without an escort, and had revealed that FADE was spying on their family, going so far as to collect hair and skin without their knowledge and permission, but had consented to the continued arrangement on reassurances from Matt that he only half-believed.

He snatched up the remote and unmuted the TV when President Kellett came on, a day after what was supposed to have been a triumphant inauguration but had instead been a private-but-televised affair inside the Oval Office. He looked healthy despite his age, with no sign of tremor or illness, and his voice carried the calm assurance of a skilled orator.

"My fellow Americans." He swept the speech from the podium and looked straight at the camera. "It pains me to come before you on what should be a day of celebration. This act of terror on our shores is unprecedented in American history, a catastrophe of terrible magnitude that extinguished the lives of half a million of our fellow citizens.

But it is not a man-made catastrophe, oh no. This Office has learned that mere minutes before five hundred thousand souls were stuffed from existence, the diabolical creature in human form known as Matt Rowley descended into the depths below the epicenter with his pagan cohort, the fiend Sakura Isuji. These creatures, these demons, conspire to rob us of our liberty, of our lives, of our souls. And in that they are not alone.

"Deep in the bowels of your government – your government – lurks a cult. A cult! This secret society amasses to it all knowledge of the profane and unholy, and with that knowledge seeks to steal from the Almighty the keys to the divine. And God, God our Savior, he will not stop them if we do not. We must gird ourselves with the Shield of Faith, the Helmet of Salvation, and the Sword of Truth, which is the Word of God.

"And with that Sword we must purge the wicked, root out the spiritual cancer in our midst, cleanse our nation of the perverse, the vile, the satanic, so that God may again make our country great!" He pounded on the podium – the pulpit – and continued in a much softer tone.

"My fellow Americans. It pains me to do this, but I have instructed the military to root out those elements of society that bring us harm, that have opened the gates to Tartarus and let bleed through the black creatures that plague our world. We know now that that scourge, that darkness, that evil that was the drug Jade is not just harmful, oh, no, it is demonic! And those who have used it, though recovered, are irrevocably tainted. Fellow citizens, you must bring them to us, all of them, so that we might shine God's light upon them and purge them of the wickedness that has taken root in their hearts."

He spoke for twenty minutes, declaring war – literal war – against all 'demonic' and 'unholy' forces, referencing Matt and Adam Rowley not once or twice but on four separate occasions. He called for proactive self-defense, and encouraged all "true Americans" to take up arms against their spiritual oppressors, to capture or kill any and all who sought to bring the world to ruin. And in the end he declared martial law, with the Joint Chiefs standing behind him to give the unconstitutional, immoral action the semblance of legitimacy.

"Fuck, baby," Monica said, mouth still open. "We got to get our folks the hell out of White Spruce."

He rubbed her shoulder. "They've got nothing to worry about, Mon. Marcia's manning all our security now – she'll send some people to make sure they stay safe."

* * *

Kellett stepped off the stage and shuffled over to Janet LaLonde. The bauble between her breasts tugged at him, strangled his will, encased his mind in a fog of terrible truth: that by virtue of his actions he had fallen beneath God's notice, to wallow in the devil's playground of rank, fetid humanity. To know that the Almighty exists and to persist eternally outside of His grace… he didn't know of any greater punishment, and only after LaLonde had entered his office that summer day did he truly understand the meaning of hell.

"Great speech." Her smile would have driven the old him to fury, but outside of God's love he held no passion, not even for the creature that had enslaved him. Her voice lowered and she leaned in to whisper. His heart caught in his throat at a glimpse of the orb that contained his wretched soul, a swirling cascade of brilliant colors more beautiful than anything on the cursed Earth. "Beg off for the evening as soon as is expedient. We have a date."

He smiled, shook her hand, a cold worm that scraped across his flesh with a million microscopic barbs. "Thank you, Janet. Could you please cancel my meetings for this evening? I have some pressing business to attend to."

"Of course."

She slid away, yet the fog remained. The useless, sinful meat of his body went through the motions of an after-speech analysis, pointless wonkism for people interested in being anything other than a true sword of truth, prevaricators and triangulators who sought to maintain power through deceit and pander.

They spoke of Russia and China leaving the UN, of that traitor Smith declaring himself Eternal Emperor of the Bahamas and Florida Keys, of riots throughout the South and West in reaction to his speech. And they stank of cologne and lust for domination, though his stomach would not roil. After a time he excused himself without explanation, and met Janet on the White House helipad.

He didn't ask where they were going, because he didn't care, couldn't care. Curiosity, creativity, faith, devotion – all the positives of existence, all the blessings of the Almighty hung trapped in her cleavage, leaving him nothing, worse than nothing.

They raced across the landscape at hundreds of miles an hour, exchanging pleasantries with the Secret Service details sharing the cabin of Marine One, a sixteen-passenger stealth helicopter with a million bells and whistles he could neither name nor care about. Below them towns burned, gunshots popped, people died and babies were born, sinners sinned and God damned them for it. After some hours they landed, and the Secret Service fanned out, one of them interrogating the grizzled old man driving the tracked mining vehicle that awaited their arrival.

At Janet's suggested Kellett ordered the man left alone, so they boarded the monster with one agent and descended into a hole in the ground. Treads kicked up rock dust as they delved ever lower into the mountain, but he couldn't summon the wherewithal to cough or cover his nose. She directed their driver with small whispers, directing him through the winding network with quiet confidence.

At last they arrived at a pair of blast doors, massive steel things big enough to let in a tank, emblazoned with the Seal of the President of the United States. A camera and computer screen lurked next to them, mounted in the rock wall as if the most normal thing in the world. Janet looked at him and then at it.

He got out and approached. It blipped awake, formed a pair of eyes, and a soft female voice said, "Retinal Scan Required."

Leaning in, he let it scan his eyes, and the doors rumbled open. The driver hopped out, then dragged a steel pick from the trunk. Janet, Kellett, the driver, and the guard walked inside a network of rooms reminiscent of a submarine, though much larger. Janet led them through the warren with confident steps until at last they reached a rock wall with a black cable snaking through it. She put her hand on the wall, closed her eyes, and sighed.

"So close."

"Pardon?" the agent asked. He hadn't said much throughout their journey, but eyed the president and his chief advisor with a burning curiosity.

"Nothing," she said. "Break it down."

The miner stepped up and swung the pick, putting a small chip in the wall.

"Begging your pardon, Mr President, but what's all this about?" The secret serviceman scowled at the brawny, bearded man hammering his way through a solid stone wall.

Janet whispered in the President's ear, and he spoke. "That's enough, son. Now give me your gun."

"Excuse me?" The guard stepped back and put his hand on his holster.

"You heard me, son. You won't be needing it, and we don't need an accident when you see what's on the other side of that wall."

"Do it," Janet snapped. Rock crumbled behind them.

The agent looked from her to the president, scowling, but produced his weapon and handed it over. The grip felt rough and too cold in his hands. Kellett had never liked weapons, and resented living in a world where a holy man needed armed guards. He flicked the safety with his thumb on the way up and shot the agent in the face.

The driver whirled, wall forgotten, and met the same fate. His brains sprayed through the opening he'd wrought, and his body tumbled out of the way.

Janet smiled and patted Kellett's cheek, her lizard touch bringing a shiver of anticipation. "Well done, Mr President."

She lifted his soul from her breasts by the chain, slipped it over her head, and put it around his neck. The light in the orb died, and Kellett cried out as emotion flooded back into to his heart. Hundreds of thousands dead and a looming civil war that would take countless more, innocents driven to acts of inhuman barbarity by the words that had spilled from his lips. Already damned, he had nothing left to lose.

He raised the gun, put it to his temple, and pulled the trigger.

* * *

Janet triggered the warming protocols on the cryogenic unit and waited forty minutes for the light to go from red to green. The door hissed open and she stepped inside, smiling down at the twisted, tube-punctured, grinning blob of meat with Conor Flynn's face.

"Sore eyes and nice thighs, LaLonde. Been a minute."

She held up the orb, watched his eyes flash from curiosity to fear. "This doesn't have to be unpleasant. Just tell me everything you know of bridges."

* * *

Six hours later, Marcia Stein opened her door with a surprised grunt. Janet LaLonde barreled into her apartment and set a briefcase on the coffee table, then tore off her coat, exposing a bright pink halter top and olive miniskirt more suited to a Disney star turned slut than an advisor to presidents. Marcia's mouth went dry at the enormous emerald cross that stretched from shoulder to shoulder and all the way down her spine, an intricate piece of delicate swirls and spirals that managed to distract even from her incredible curves.

She turned around, a predatory smile on her face, and Marcia's eyes drifted down her long neck to the dull gray orb hanging from a chain between her breasts.

"I've seen you look at me," Janet said. "Let's do something about that."