Wyman looked at Cade for a moment, then back at Zach. “He’s had other partners. Believe it or not, you were the only one who managed to survive as long as you did. I figure maybe you’re his lucky rabbit’s foot, or maybe he just works better with you around.”

  Zach looked at Cade. “How many other partners have you been through?”

  Wyman snapped before Cade could respond. “It doesn’t matter. So. You going to answer the call of duty now? Or do you want to see how fast you can dig a bomb shelter?”

  Zach shook his head. Like he would turn this down. If there were anything he could possibly do to help, of course he’d do it. Those were the stakes on the line.

  But he was still curious about one thing.

  “Why us, though?” Zach asked. “Why not send more soldiers?”

  “Because we are looking at some unknown enemy that is near a secret installation of vital interest to national security, and can dispose of an entire squad of heavily armed, highly trained soldiers without leaving a trace. So, naturally, Cade, I thought of you.”

  Cade looked at Wyman blankly. Waiting for a direct order or question.

  Wyman sighed. “Is there anything out there that we should know about in the Parker area? Anything that operates on” — he struggled for the right phrase — “your side of the line, so to speak?”

  “Parker is not a known site of unusual events,” Cade said. “This is most likely a human agency at work. Sir.”

  “Then you don’t need either of us,” Zach said. “Come on, Lester. This is stupid, even for you.”

  Wyman turned red under his layer of self-tanner. “Cade, I want you to slap Barrows every time he does not address me by my proper title.”

  Zach sighed and rolled his eyes. He had no desire to be slapped by Cade again — it really did sting — so he said, “Fine. Mr. President. This is stupid, even for you.”

  Wyman’s eyes narrowed and he hunched in his chair like a toddler being told to eat his vegetables. “Oh, because you’re so smart,” he said. “As if you had any idea of the pressure I’m under every day.”

  God, Zach thought. He sits in the Oval Office. Commands the most powerful military in human history. Has the attention of the entire world. And it’s not enough to prop up that fragile ego.

  “So tell me, Barrows, what would you do?” Wyman demanded.

  “I would get the Joint Chiefs involved! I would send a full battalion of soldiers! I’d get everyone in the NSA figuring out a way to hack the silo remotely! I’d start talking to the Russians right now, so they know we’re not actually planning a sneak attack!”

  Wyman frowned as if all of this had genuinely never occurred to him. He thought for a moment. Then he said, “No.”

  “What?”

  “I’m having enough troubles with the Russians on another thing. And if this got out in public, I could forget winning in November. No. We keep this in-house. Small. Surgical strike. You and Cade. You handle it. That’s my decision.”

  He smiled, as if proud of himself.

  Zach wanted to choke Wyman, but knew that would mean a swift and fatal response from Cade.

  “Are you kidding me? You’d seriously risk nuclear war just to protect your chances in the next election?”

  Wyman looked at him blankly, as if not comprehending the language Zach was speaking.

  Zach rubbed his eyes. “Fine. We’ll go. But don’t blame me if it really is the end of the world.”

  7

  PARKER, WYOMING.

  Despite everything, Zach thought, they had plenty of time.

  The silo was due to arm and launch its missile — a Minuteman III carrying a 475-kiloton W87 warhead, enough to punch the heart out of a good-sized city — promptly at 0600 hours, or six in the morning, if the proper fail-safe codes were not entered on schedule. Wyman was fuzzy on the details — of course — but he was pretty sure this missile was aimed directly at the Kremlin in Moscow.

  If it launched, the Russian’s air defenses would detect it almost immediately. There was a chance the missile could be intercepted or shot down, but it would already be too late. The Russians would launch their own counterstrike, and then everyone in the world would get to see if all those movies about living in a post-Apocalyptic landscape were accurate.

  If there was anyone left to find out.

  It was already past midnight in Wyoming by the time they got to Andrews, and Cade and Zach still had to travel 1,500 miles to get to the silo. So they were both loaded into the rear seats of a couple of F-15s and flown across the country at just over Mach 1.

  Even at that speed, the van they’d borrowed from the air force base did not pull up outside the town limits of Parker until almost 4:30 a.m. MST.

  Zach still wasn’t too worried. If it was true that this was only a human threat, then he had nothing to worry about. They had almost two-and-a-half hours until the deadline, and the sun wouldn’t rise until an hour after that. He’d seen Cade tear through an entire squad of heavily armed soldiers in a little under thirty seconds. Maybe there were people hiding in Parker capable of putting down a SEAL team, but they’d be worse than helpless against Cade.

  So yeah. They had plenty of time.

  Unless.

  Unless Wyman was wrong, or lying.

  Knowing Wyman as he did, Zach figured it was probably both.

  In which case, they would need every second.

  Cade put the van in park in the middle of the highway where it rose on a slight hill over the small town. He and Zach got out and looked down. Parker sat on a flat plain just below them, the streets and buildings laid out in a random sprawl.

  It was completely dark. Not a single building had a light on. Not a single window glowed in the night.

  “Well, that’s not ominous at all.”

  Cade didn’t reply. He’d been unusually silent — even for him — for the entire drive from the airfield since they’d landed.

  Zach figured that had something to do with the fact that he was no longer wearing his cross. But he also figured that Cade would say something about it when he was ready.

  Cade spoke.

  “Stay here,” he said.

  Not exactly the confession Zach was expecting.

  “What?”

  “We have less than two hours before a global thermonuclear war,” Cade said. “I don’t have time to look after you and breach the silo. Stay here.”

  “You think I came all this way to sit in the van?”

  “You do not need to come any further. Wyman didn’t order that. There’s clearly nothing for you to do here. Stay with the van. I can take care of this myself. I will come back when it’s over.”

  “Hey. You don’t know what’s down there. And neither do I. You might need some help.”

  Cade turned and looked at him. “Do you imagine you could help me?”

  “I’ve done it before.”

  “When?” Cade asked. There wasn’t a trace of sarcasm in his voice.

  “When? Are you serious? When we went up against Konrad, when we tracked down that guy in Mexico, when we stopped the guys who exploded, when we fought the lizard-things — ”

  “I recall you being taken hostage. Captured. Threatened. Almost killed. I recall having to deviate from my mission each time to rescue you. I am fairly sure I can do without that kind of help.”

  Zach looked at Cade, stunned into silence for a moment.

  Cade was not human. He knew that. He knew that.

  Even so, they had found a way to talk to one another. They’d made jokes, as well as Cade was able.

  This was different. Then, Zach heard some echoes of humanity in Cade’s voice. They’d treated one another as — well, not exactly equals. But as if they were on the same side.

  As if they were friends.

  Now Cade regarded Zach with the same detachment as he did everyone else. Like he was looking at a cut of meat in a butcher’s case.

  “Are you serious?” Zach said.

  Cade just tilted his head. Right. Stupid question.

  “Cade, has Wyman done something to you? Is there something wrong with you now? You’re just passively following his orders.”

  “He’s the president, Zach. That is my duty.”

  “You know who Wyman is — you know what he is. You know he doesn’t belong in the White House. He’s ruining this country.”

  “My opinion of the president is irrelevant,” Cade said. “We have had a productive working relationship.”

  “Are you shitting me right now?”

  Cade finally looked annoyed. It was only there for a moment, but Zach knew the expression well. He’d finally managed to piss the vampire off. Just like old times.

  “No. I am not,” Cade snapped. “I have spent almost four years tracking and breaking the operations of the Shadow Company, Zach — something I was not able to do under President Curtis. I have crippled the Company and killed a large number of their operatives. That is an objective good, no matter what else President Wyman has done.”

  The Shadow Company: The dark twin of the United States’ intelligence-gathering agencies — an above-top-secret organization that operated out of the glare of public oversight, funded by black budgets and secret accounts, answering only to its own agenda. Like one of those strange fish at the bottom of the ocean, it had mutated and changed in the dark, under hidden pressures. It made deals with the devil — sometimes literally. Cade and Zach had fought its operatives before, and each time it cost too many innocent lives. Zach had no idea what the Shadow Company’s ultimate goal was, but he had no doubt that it was evil.

  “Well, that’s super,” Zach said. “But who gave you all that information on the Shadow Company? It was Wyman, right? Because he was working with them before. He was their inside man!”

  “If that were true, that would be treason.”

  “Jesus Christ, will you stop talking like a robot! Of course it would be treason! You and I both know that! This is what we both talked about!”

  “I had no proof then, and I have no proof now. Do you?”

  Zach crossed his arms and looked away. He’d been in an office in Nebraska for four years. And even if he hadn’t been, he would have had no idea where to start looking for evidence that Wyman was allied with the Shadow Company. “No,” he admitted.

  “Then he is still the president,” Cade said, “and I follow his orders. Unless you have anything else to say, this is a waste of time. I need to reach the silo.”

  Zach realized something. He’d taken the name of the Lord in vain. And Cade had not scolded him. At least a couple of times in Cade’s presence, and Cade hadn’t said a word. That used to be the one thing you couldn’t do around him.

  And Cade was no longer wearing his cross.

  “Cade,” Zach said. “What happened to you?”

  Cade hesitated. For a fraction of a second, an unusual flicker of emotion crossed his face. Something like… regret.

  But then it was gone.

  “I am able to do my job,” he said. “That’s all that matters.”

  He turned to leave.

  “Stay here,” he warned Zach. “Whatever is down there killed six highly trained soldiers. I’m sure you would not last as long as they did.”

  Then he was gone, faster than Zach’s eyes could follow. All he felt was the breeze kicked up by Cade’s passing.

  Zach stood there, alone in the dark.

  Just like old times.

  8

  Cade moved.

  His ears and eyes and nose all opened to the night around him as he ran.

  Cade’s senses were inhumanly sharp, capable of detecting a single drop of blood from a kilometer away, capable of marking the scent of a person in a room an hour or a month after they’d walked through it, capable of detecting an errant heartbeat from thirty feet. Cade could hear the telltale skip in a person’s pulse that signaled they were anxious, or frightened, or lying.

  President Wyman’s heart had been pounding when he ordered them here, but it had been difficult to separate that from the man’s usual anxiety, insomnia, and drug use. The president was taking a number of stimulants every day to keep himself awake and functioning, followed by heavy doses of tranquilizers to ward off his regular panic attacks. His heart was under constant strain, and Cade wondered sometimes how much more it could endure.

  But even if Cade couldn’t hear the lie in Wyman’s heartbeat, he picked it up the second they reached the outskirts of Parker.

  He could smell it.

  The entire place smelled wrong.

  There was an odor, of something pungent and earthy and rotten, the scent of something left out too long in the sun, organic processes churning and growing on a deep, unseen level.

  It was not quite like vegetation and not quite like spoiled meat. It was both, and neither.

  And it was coming from all around the little town.

  Wyman knew something about this place. More than he told them. That was nothing unusual. Better men than him had kept secrets from Cade.

  But he’d sent them right into an ambush, as unprepared as the Navy SEALs before. Cade could handle that. Zach could not. Wyman clearly did not intend for Zach to come back from this mission.

  So Cade would do what he could to keep Zach alive while still following orders. He would do this alone.

  Cade would face whatever was growing here on his own. It would have to be enough.

  If it wasn’t, then Zach wouldn’t be the only one to die.

  He veered away from the town center, and headed toward the missile silo’s hidden entrance.

  It was beyond a chain-link fence at the outskirts of town — a flat, featureless cement rectangle, with a corrugated-steel shed at one side. A tall UHF/VF antenna, disguised as a metal windmill, loomed over the shed. It was meant to look like a groundwater pumping station, and it might have fooled anyone who didn’t notice the long seam running down the middle of the cement.

  Cade vaulted the seven-foot fence, practically flying over it, without breaking stride.

  He came to a sudden, dead stop at the pump shed. If anyone had been watching, it would have seemed he just appeared out of thin air.

  The metal sides of the shed were rusted in spots, and its door, closed by a weathered old padlock, looked as if it hadn’t been opened in years.

  But someone else had been here. Recently. Cade could smell that, too. Something had disturbed the air here. It wore the skin of a human being, but underneath, it was something… other. Something Cade had never encountered before.

  That made him pause, but only for a second. The fact that this was something new — something unknown — was troubling. If he’d never faced it before, it was entirely possible that he was about to deal with a creature or entity that was stronger than he was.

  He felt microwaves from a long-range scanner land on his skin like a light rain; the silo’s security system had detected him. If there was anyone — or anything — down in the silo, they would know he was here.

  But it didn’t change anything. He still had to go through the door.

  In his long afterlife, he had come across many inhuman things. Most of them were stronger than he was. So far, he’d managed to kill them all.

  He reached out, snapped the padlock, and entered the shed.

  Cade checked his watch, a high-tech timepiece automatically synched via GPS with sunrise in every time zone he visited. A gift from a sometime friend.

  One hour, nineteen minutes to go before launch.

  9

  Zach sat in the front seat of the van, running the engine to keep the heater going. It was cold in Wyoming. Cade might not feel the weather, but Zach did.

  He’d pulled the van to the side of the road, but he wasn’t too worried about anyone driving up behind him. The highway was deserted. There was nothing in any direction except the dry, empty plains dotted with scrub brush. It was possible to feel like the last man on earth out here.

  Then Zach saw something move.

  Down on the town’s main street, just at the edge of his vision. Something emerged from the shadows at the base of one of the buildings.

  A street light flared back to life at that moment, revealing a man in dark camo fatigues walking across the asphalt.

  It was one of the SEALs, or it was one of the locals who liked wearing hunting gear in the middle of the night.

  Either way, Zach figured he should talk to the guy.

  Cade might think he was helpless, or stupid, but he’d been through worse than this and survived. And he wanted some answers.

  He put the van into drive and tapped on the gas, and slowly made his way down into Parker.

  One hour, fourteen minutes to go.

  10

  Cade descended a metal spiral staircase which went down a concrete shaft behind the facade of the pump shed. It ended on a small landing in front of a circular metal hatch that resembled a bank vault door.

  The hatch had no handle, no outer hinges, and appeared to sit flush with the cement floor. There was only a keypad set into the surface. Cade entered the combination he’d been given. It didn’t work. The keypad didn’t respond at all.

  There was either no power going to the hatch — which was unlikely since the entire silo complex ran on its own generators — or the combination had been changed to keep people out.

  Cade entered another combination. No response. Then another. Still nothing.

  He could keep entering combinations at random. Over time, he might hit upon the right one. By then the missiles would have launched and the sun would likely look down on the charred husk of the planet.

  By now, alarms should have been sounding in the underground complex below. Cade knew he was visible to at least three security cameras. Heavily armed men should have been alerted to his presence.

  But he heard nothing. No one was coming for him, guns blazing. They would have to open the hatch to do that.

  Whoever was inside, they were content to wait Cade out.

  So Cade went for the next option.

 

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