“And woman,” said Sandoval.
“And woman, of course.”
Last stop was the White House.
The White House glowed like a lamp in the settling dark, a civilized beacon of chilled air and electric light. Sandoval’s party was led inside and down a carpeted hallway, past elegant sitting rooms full of busts and portraits of former presidents, then through suites of offices. At last they were shown into a room filled with TV cameras and lights, where a man in a suit and tie sat at a table signing papers. No one failed to recognized both the man and the room in which he sat. It was the Oval Office.
“Oh my God,” Sandoval muttered.
Alarmed, Bendis said, “What?”
“It’s the president!”
“Oh, yes. Quite dignified, isn’t he?”
“I saw him shoot himself in the head. During an emergency bulletin.”
“Now, Mr. Sandoval. None of the best presidents ever needed a brain, just a signing pen.”
Jim Sandoval approached the president’s desk. There were several imposing-looking Secret Service agents standing by, but none attempted to stop him or indeed took any notice at all. A bucket brigade of elderly men was busily grabbing papers from an enormous stack, stamping them with the date, passing them to the president to sign, then crimping them with an official seal before piling them onto an even more enormous stack. Carts full of such documents rolled in and out. TV cameras monitored the proceedings.
Sandoval walked behind the president’s desk and peered over the man’s shoulder as he was handed a document. It was titled, Amendment to Federal Antitrust Act-Mogul Clause 3381C. Without reading it, the president automatically scrawled a large X and handed it off. Immediately, another document hit the desk, something about a Mogul bill to reinstate the Articles of Confederation, essentially abolishing all taxes. The president mimed signing those, too, then the next and the next and the next, just like an assembly line.
So this was it, Sandoval realized. All these resurrected Moguls were rewriting bills for the president to sign. The man was a drone-like all the other drones here. They were converted Xombies, brainless ghouls resurrected and trained like monkeys to sign MoCo’s wish list into law. The White House had become a factory for rewriting history, manipulating the future by deleting the past. A giant propaganda organ. The dead president was just a puppet, making America safe for permanent Mogul domination.
As they left, Sandoval asked, “Mr. Bendis, who’s in charge of all this? You?”
Bendis grinned, suddenly resembling the death’s-head he had so recently been. “Oh no, Mr. Chairman.”
“Then who is?”
“No one. That’s the point.”
The big ceremony took place that evening, in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
There were tens of thousands of spectators, all of them new converts. The packed field of West Potomac Park was solemn as a cathedral, lit by bonfires that resembled votive candles on a crowded altar. Atop the memorial’s promontory, two flatbed trailers were planked over to make a platform for the prisoner.
As Sandoval and his party watched from their places of honor by the stage, a man was led up there, bound, blindfolded, gagged, and chained at the wrists and ankles. It was Chace Dixon. He was remarkably calm, as if expecting nothing other than what he was getting.
The guard pulling Dixon wore a black hood that made him look like a medieval executioner. Once the prisoner was secured to a steel post, the guard removed his blindfolds and gags so Dixon could see the mob staring back at him.
Kasim Bendis climbed the stage to swelling applause. “Good evening, citizens of Xanadu,” he said. “We are here tonight to honor James Bernard Sandoval, whose warning of the imminent threat posed by agents of intolerance and discord allowed us to prevent what surely would have been a catastrophic attack on our fair city. Let us put our hands together for this hero of our people. Thank you, Jim!”
Bowing to the cheers, Sandoval stood up and went to the podium. “All of you know now of the dangers you face. The immediate threat is gone, but the hidden danger remains, and lurks right here among you. It is up to every one of you to stop the Moguls from enslaving the human race just to gratify their lust for power. They have destroyed human civilization in their quest for ultimate control of life and death, and now they want to replace it with a society of mindless, groveling serfs. I know the Moguls because I was a Mogul, and all they are interested in is total dominion. They don’t want to worship God, they want to be worshipped as gods! You must not abet them in this!”
The crowd was silent.
Dixon stood up out of his chains, and asked Kasim Bendis, “May I?”
“Please,” said Bendis.
It was an elaborate trap. Sandoval was suddenly very conscious of gun muzzles pressed into his back. Chace Dixon addressed the assembly:
“Jim Sandoval, everyone,” he quipped, applauding tepidly. “Jim, this little speech has been interesting, but all of us here have worked too hard and sacrificed too much to stop what we’ve begun. Just because it doesn’t meet your high moral standards? This from a man who betrayed his sacred oath and sold out his brethren? I don’t think so. These fine people won’t allow it. God won’t allow it. I won’t allow it.
“No, we are going back to the old ways, the good old days, when men were men and women knew their proper place as child-bearers, guardians of home and hearth. Think of Genesis. Was it an accident that Agent X struck women first, and that they spread it to men? Was it an accident that most of the men who survived were in protected hideaways that traditionally shunned women? Official police and military forces were gone; no coed organization on Earth survived Sadie Hawkins Day, a clear signal that God is done with Political Correctness. What you so disparagingly call the Moguls are merely the protectors of ancient tradition, a tradition which is the very foundation of Western Civilization. Xanadu represents a New Genesis. Though we love and honor women, we must never again allow Satan to convince us that the sexes are equal. Equal Rights are off the table; to quote the immortal James Brown, it’s a man’s world.
“Until recently, we had limited success contacting the South, likely due to the warmer weather conditions-the extreme winter of the Northeast was a big help in suppressing Hellion activity. This ‘chill factor’ was yet another sign of God’s favor. Now, of course, I only wish we had known sooner what you folks had going down here.
“It is a historic day. We stand today on green grass, but it has been no picnic. It was war-the bitterest test of our faith. Let history never forget the battles we fought and lost before we achieved Grace. Clearly, normal rules of combat don’t apply to demons, so we tried other means, faith-based means, such as prayer and exorcism… and burning. The scientists, of course, had other ideas. Early in the outbreak, they discovered that pure oxygen had a limited effect on Agent X, so a great deal of time and energy was wasted on that. But without a constant supply it was worse than useless, inspiring nothing but false hope since there wasn’t enough available to treat the billions of Hellions roaming the Earth. So much for science!
“In the end, the answer came from the unlikeliest of places: Women. The root of all evil turned out to be the source of our salvation. Yes, we must never forget that women not only cursed us but also saved us… and in so doing saved themselves. Pious women admitted their guilt, accepted their responsibility, and for this act of holy contrition, they earned God’s blessing upon us all. He bestowed upon us the Immunes, and thus we were able to again walk fearlessly upon the land. All is finally going as the good Lord intended.”
“Jesus Christ,” Sandoval said.
“Guilty! Blasphemer, I pronounce you guilty as charged.” Pointing his finger at Sandoval, he bellowed, “Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty!”