The roads to D.C. were littered with smashed cars, people dead or dying of disease or wounds. The Mustang cleaved through them all as if they were nothing but phantoms.
I stopped at the gates to the White House. The black fence stood strong, its barrier secure as ever.
Three other Mustangs screeched to a halt beside me. One was black, the horseman known as famine. The scales of justice were emblazoned on its hood as if it had been detailed by one of those shops you saw on cable TV. Next to it was a white Mustang, the conquering horseman, the bringer of disease and pestilence. Even the windows were tinted white, a dense impenetrable fog. On the other side of my car was another Mustang, painted an unnatural pale that trailed a black, vaporous mist behind from its rumbling tailpipe. The pale horseman had frightened me as a child, because it was death, the most fearsome and final of us all. It scared me now, just idling beside it.
I couldn’t see the drivers in any of the cars because of the tinting, but I knew they were men, just like me. Had AO asked them to make the same final sacrifice?
It made me feel better to think he had. To know I wasn’t alone in my sorrow, or my duty.
We had converged on this spot for just a moment, a respite from our work, a break from so much destruction. This would be our last stop here. I wasn’t sure where we’d go next—Canada? Europe? The Middle East? Even great oceanic divides wouldn’t stop us.
The white and black Mustangs peeled away, barreling in opposite directions, headed for their destinies.
I revved the engine, looking over at the pale Mustang. The black cloud undulated. If I stared hard, I could see inhuman shapes shifting within the venomous fog.
The pale horseman and I had work to do.
The sooner we got it done, the sooner I could once again be with my family. I screamed their names and revved the engine.
Together, the pale rider and I mowed the fence down, tearing up the Great Lawn for our meeting with the leader of the free, and damned, world.