The President's Vampire (39 page)
Read The President's Vampire Online
Authors: Farnsworth| Christopher
Everything inside would be cremated almost instantly.
“I’m not sticking around for that,” Tania said. “Sacrifice is Cade’s problem, not mine.”
“You’re just going to leave him here? I thought you were—I don’t know, what do vampires call it?”
Tania gave her a cold smile. “We don’t call it anything. We don’t fool ourselves like you.”
Then Tania laughed. At her, Bell realized.
“What?”
“I said ‘like you.’ I know what you did to Zach. I don’t have to explain a thing about survival to you, do I?”
Bell didn’t say anything.
“I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I’ve had a good girl talk,” Tania said. “I might even give you a head start when we get to the surface.”
“I’m touched,” Bell said.
“My pleasure.”
Bell thought about what it meant that she was being judged by a creature whose only purpose was to kill.
She thought about a lot of things in the next few minutes.
TANIA HAD MARKED the way to the top levels by painting arrows in the phosphorescent goo from a broken glow stick.
Cade stayed a few steps ahead of Zach. He tried to keep him talking. He never imagined that would ever be a problem.
“So. Tania?”
“Yeah, you figured that out, did you?”
“She asked me not to tell you.”
“I thought you’d freak out if you knew. How did you think she’d been showing up on your assignments lately?”
“I assumed she was stalking me.”
“Get over yourself,” Zach said. He was panting. Cade didn’t let him stop.
“Then what does she get out of it?”
“Mainly the chance to stalk you,” Zach admitted. “Although I think she’s also interested in our pension plan.”
“Do you really think you can manage her? Make her an employee? There’s no one who can administer the Oath to her. Even if there were, she’d never agree to it.”
“Maybe she’ll come over to our side.”
“You didn’t learn anything from your experience with Bell, did you?”
Silence. Then: “Thanks, Cade. That’s a big help.”
CADE EMERGED into a narrow passage, less than five feet across, made for one person at a time. Tania and Bell were there.
It was Zach who couldn’t meet Bell’s eyes, as if embarrassed.
The elevator was right where Bell said it would be. Its door was as narrow as the tight passage. They moved fast.
Bell put her hand on a biometric scanner. It beeped, and the elevator doors opened.
Cade reached for the fire alarm on the wall. He prepared to yank the handle down. In minutes, the air would be saturated with methane.
The Snakeheads would all burn.
Someone grabbed Cade from behind and slammed him into the wall. Cade, drained from his fight with the Shadowmen, didn’t even hear it coming. He lashed out wildly, throwing the attacker off him and back down the tunnel.
Bell looked back from the elevator and screamed.
Book stood there, but he was no longer human in every way it counted.
He was naked before them, covered with plated armor, a row of spikes running from the crest on his head down his back.
He’d been fully transformed. Snakehead 4.0. More like a dragon than any reptile living today.
Book’s staring yellow eyes retained a cruel intelligence, and Cade was not at all surprised when he opened his mouth, revealing a human-shaped tongue, and spoke.
“Did you think you were the only one who knew about this exit?” Book asked.
His voice was the only thing that remained unchanged. He didn’t even hiss on the s in “this.”
Cade hit him. Book’s head bounced back as if attached with bungee cord.
Book smiled.
Cade noticed the others behind Book for the first time.
Snakeheads, lined up behind him. Watching him, crowding forward, eager to help.
They’d found a leader.
“You can’t stop us,” Book said.
His arm snapped out, whip-quick, and he slapped Cade. Cade felt bones break. He went skidding into the floor, stopped only by Tania’s body behind him.
He shook himself and regained his feet.
Book just stood there. He waved Cade on. Inviting him to try again.
“See? You can’t even slow us down.”
FORTY-FOUR
Of course, it’s entirely possible the reason Cade is so formidable might simply be due to individual temperament: Cade is unusually stubborn and willful, dedicated and tough; what some people call—and I mean this with all due respect—a total bastard.—Dr. William Kavanaugh, Sanction V research group
W
hat’s the matter, Cade? Nothing to say now that you’re in a fair fight?”
hat’s the matter, Cade? Nothing to say now that you’re in a fair fight?”
Cade looked up at Tania. She nodded. She understood.
Whatever improvements Book had undergone, the vampires still thought faster than he did.
She swung the pack of weapons off her shoulder, into Cade’s hands, and turned for the elevator.
Zach realized what was happening, a moment behind.
“Cade, no,” he said. “I order you to—”
Cade shoved him hard enough to send him flying into the elevator.
Bell and Tania were already inside. The doors closed.
In one smooth motion, Cade reached into the pack and pulled out the last thing he’d taken from the mercenaries.
Book found himself staring down the barrel of the AA-12 automatic shotgun.
“I have no interest in a fair fight,” Cade said.
THE ELEVATOR STARTED its slow ascent to the Mall.
Zach got his wind back. “Get us back down there,” he ordered Bell.
“Not a chance,” Tania said. “You touch that button and I’ll tear your arm off.”
“Shut up,” Zach said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Bell said. “We have to reach the top first. It’s an elevator. We can’t turn it around.”
“Cade’s doing his job,” Tania said. Bell realized she was speaking to Zach. “He’s probably been dreaming about dying for his country for a hundred and forty years. Let him.”
Zach looked like he wanted to slap her, if that wasn’t suicidal.
He pointed at Bell. “Once we reach the top. You are sending me back down there.”
Tania snorted. “What possible good do you think that will do?”
“He’s not dying alone. That’s good enough for me.”
“Idiot,” Tania said.
“Shut up,” Zach said again.
They rode the rest of the way in silence, except for an instrumental version of “Baby One More Time,” piped through the Mall’s sound system.
FIVE MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT. The crowds were pressed up against the glass of the Mall entrances now. At the east wing of the Mall, some people were pounding their palms, hitting the glass in rhythm, chanting, “Open up! Open up!”
A contingent of mall cops went out to calm them down and keep them from shattering the big panes of the windows.
Almost time. Four more minutes, and then they would stampede inside.
Like cattle on the hoof.
BOOK’S FACE was no longer human enough to register surprise as he looked down the 12-gauge barrel.
Then it was simply gone, along with the rest of his head, as Cade pulled the trigger and fired at point-blank range.
Book didn’t fall right away. He stood there, leaking blood all over the floor—more than it seemed possible for him to contain.
The Snakeheads behind him waited a moment, suddenly lost without their leader.
Cade took the moment. He shattered the fire-alarm glass with his right hand. Sirens and lights began blaring. Nozzles popped from the ceiling. Methane sprayed invisibly into the air. It was lighter than oxygen. It would take a while before it reached the floor of the passage.
The Snakeheads surged toward him. Whether they wanted out, or wanted revenge, or both, they were coming for them.
Cade pointed the shotgun again.
The Snakeheads stopped cold. They couldn’t rush him more than one or two at a time. The advantage of their numbers was removed by the narrow chute. While no longer intelligent, they recognized that something capable of removing their leader’s head was not good.
Cade had enough ammunition, he thought. All he had to do was keep them at bay until the air reached the saturation point. Then the muzzle flash alone would ignite everything around him in a fireball.
THE ELEVATOR FINALLY reached the ground level of the Mall.
Tania stepped out immediately.
“Hey,” Zach said. “Where are you going?”
Tania smirked. “Don’t push your luck, Zachary. Tell Cade goodbye for me.”
She walked quickly away. She could see the crowds outside, pressing against the glass of the Mall’s giant outer windows.
“Hey!” someone yelled from the crowd. “They got in early! No fair!”
“Morons,” she muttered to herself.
Zach paid no attention at all. He turned back to Bell. “Let’s go,” he said.
She got back in the elevator, pressed the scanner again, and they went down.
THE SNAKEHEADS GOT their courage back. One at a time, they came at him, running as fast as possible in the confined space.
One at a time, Cade pulled the trigger and blasted them into pieces.
They fell, and the next Snakeheads scrambled over them.
Cade fired again. They kept walking right into the blasts, gaining an inch for the next one in line.
The only problem was, Cade was going to run out of shells before they ran out of bodies.
Just a few more minutes, Cade thought. That’s all it will take.
THE SONG ON the way down was “I Will Always Love You.” Bell started giggling uncontrollably.
Zach even managed a smile.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know. Some job, huh?”
She felt tears at the corners of her eyes. She was on the verge of losing it completely, she knew.
“You’re going to die,” she said.
“Everyone dies,” Zach said. “Just let me out and close the door as fast as you can.”
“Why would you—?”
He shrugged. “Beats hell out of me,” he said. “Maybe the world needs you in it.”
The elevator chimed. The door opened.
CADE WAS ALMOST out of shells.
The Snakeheads had backed him to the elevator. The pile of bodies now almost blocked the narrow passage. They still came at him, only slower.
Cade picked off another Snakehead, barely three feet from him.
He heard a string quartet murdering Whitney Houston.
He didn’t have to look behind him.
“You Christ-forsaken moron,” he spat.
“Don’t blaspheme,” Zach said. He coughed and gagged on the sulfurous odor. The air was almost filled with methane now. “Get your ass on the elevator.”
“No,” Cade said. “They’ll get up the shaft. And someone has to be here to make sure the gas ignites.”
“I could order—”
The rest of Zach’s words were lost in the blast of Cade’s shotgun shattering the chests of two Snakeheads, one behind the other.
“You know it won’t work,” Cade said. “This is protecting the nation. Above all else.”
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