At that same exact moment, Washington, DC, froze in the glare of a newborn sun.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
MONS POPULI
It was slow going. All routes to DC were choked with dead vehicles, and pileups cluttered every intersection, blackened wrecks reeking of burnt rubber. Big Ed Albemarle used the truck like a bulldozer, pushing cars aside and clearing a path for the buses. I rode shotgun, wielding a road map and scanning for openings. We drove freely on the sidewalk, across parks or backyards, or plowed through fences-the fastest route was usually off-road-but then urban congestion increased to the point where driving was simply impossible.
At a place called Indian Head, we cut through a fenced Navy installation and traded the battered vehicles for a fleet of shallow-draft police skiffs, gunning them up the wide Potomac. The sinking sun turned deeper and deeper red, staining the whole sky and landscape the same color. Layers of mist hung over the river, swirling as the boat cut through.
There was a lot of trash in the water, but the first real sign of damage was the collapsed span of the I-95 highway bridge-the southernmost link of the Beltway-which lay toppled on its side as if pushed over by a giant hand. Cars and trucks were scattered like bathtub toys in the shallows or lurked just below the surface to gut our boats. Then there were massive chunks of the bridge itself, bristling with exposed rebar-it was one of these that gashed a couple of our aluminum hulls and struck off one propeller-but some of the men jumped in the water, heedless of crabs (of which there appeared to be none), and after several hours of makeshift repairs and careful maneuvering in the dark, we cleared the wreckage and continued upriver.
The channel narrowed, the air grew stagnant and humid, and the ground fog thickened. A dusky orange dawn started to come up. Through the haze, we had occasional glimpses of swampy shoreline and piles of overgrown debris-the view was not of a city but of a jungle, vast piles of rubble swallowed up in Amazonian greenery. The profusion of life made it hard to tell if there were any human auras. There certainly didn’t appear to be a building left standing.
“Where is it?” I asked Coombs.
“Where is what?”
“The city. Washington.”
“You’re looking at it. We just passed the Anacostia and are approaching the Tidal Basin and the Thomas Jefferson Memorial.”
“Washington, DC, doesn’t look anything like this.”
“It does now.”
“But there’s nothing here.”
“That’s because it’s been bombed flat. Nuked.”
“That’s impossible. It would be wasteland, not a rain forest. This looks more like some ancient Mayan ruin or something.”
“I’ve read it was similar after Hiroshima: The radiation stimulated plant growth, so you had beautiful flowers blooming amid the destruction. This kudzu and knotweed has had all spring and summer to grow unchecked over the lawns. Doesn’t take long.”
“But why bomb it, for heaven’s sake?”
“Who knows? People are capable of anything, which is why they need to be saved from themselves.”
Easing the boat into a dense wall of foliage, we got out and pushed through the marsh until we came to sparser thickets. The pulverized remains of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing blocked our way east, but after a few hundred yards the fishbone rebar and hills of fractured marble gave way to open ground. Just beyond, the thickest stone walls of the Department of Agriculture were still standing, but for the most part buildings were razed to their foundations, just mangled trunks of pipe sticking up.
Using the directional antenna as if it were a dowsing rod, I increased my pace, watching the indicator gauge. It was close. The fog thickened as we made our way among muddy pools that once were basements. Grand stone steps led to tumbled ruins, a vision out of Ephesus or Pergamum. For a little way, there was almost a path, but a bit farther on, the way was blocked with an epic tangle of wreckage, a rusty steel thicket of buildings, cars, human bones-all scorched, shattered, and rolled up together like a colossal tumbleweed.
“Wait here,” I said.
Taking the radio receiver, I made my way to the mountainous deadfall. The air was warm and thick with decay. Refraining from breathing, I entered the junk pile and started climbing. It was not easy to avoid injury; I got a number of cuts and splinters, and was partially impaled when a loose foothold gave way.
Little Bobby Rubio caught me, having discreetly followed. I couldn’t very well tell him to get lost. My dress was ruined. Freeing myself, I finally came to the top, where Bobby and I were able to stand upright on a canted slab of steel-reinforced concrete, straining to see through the fog.
This was it.
Beyond that muffling caul of vapor, I could see activity-a lot of activity. None of it human.
It was Xanadu.
Xombies were at work here; Xombies were busy. They seethed dimly in the haze, parades of blue ants spiraling in and around a bizarre anthill-a huge mound of rubble rising from the center of a flooded crater, partially divided into two lobes and split open at the fat end like an overripe fruit. The dome was at least a hundred feet high, with a column of blurred heat issuing from a recessed pit at its summit. The sides were bushy with twisted rebar, giving the artificial hill even more resemblance to an exotic fruit or seedpod, something spiny and subtropical.
A causeway of packed gravel exuded from its woundlike opening, crossing the water and branching into several feeder roads that splayed in all directions like rhizomes. The whole thing gave the impression of organic function-the fractal architecture of nature.
Above it all hung a strange, living balloon, a thousand-foot-long Xeppelin that rippled and pulsated like a gigantic grub. Attached by a fat umbilicus to the dome, it slowly rose to the end of its tether as it filled with heat, then settled back down as it cooled-over and over again.
The inflated flesh bag was translucent as a fetus, shot through with purplish blue veins and connective tissue. A beardlike mass of filaments hung from its bottom rim like stinging tentacles. In its cycles of rising and falling, expanding and contracting, the Xeppelin was weirdly lifelike, appearing to feed on the dome’s exhaust.
Everything else was still under construction, expanding outward and upward. Xombies were building their temple brick by brick, stone by stone, bone by bone, from the surrounding rubble. Only workers who didn’t sleep or need rest could have built so much, so fast. They used no concrete, simply fitting the pieces together by hand and pounding hot tar into the cracks. Somehow, it held together.
The overhanging walls of the V-shaped entrance portal all but defied gravity, its builders not being overly concerned with the laws of physics or even basic geometry. For a busy construction site, it was surprisingly quiet-there were no engines of any kind, and the naked Xombies labored silently, ceaselessly.
I was paralyzed by a strange feeling I didn’t understand, but Bobby didn’t wait-without a word, he was off and running. I watched him go down, curiously following his progress as he leaped to the muddy field. The outside edge of the work zone was only a few hundred yards away, a plain of mudflats surrounding a moat of stagnant water. Raised highways of packed debris crossed the moat, and long lines of Xombie-drawn wagons were traveling to and from the site. Morphing his skin blue, Bobby joined an inbound convoy, his alien presence unnoticed by the laboring multitude.
I followed him down, not knowing what to do, certain only that I had to do something. Cautiously approaching a raised road, I immediately realized the workers passing above had no interest in me at all-or in anything other than their plodding task. Their job was Egyptian, biblical, endless slave trains pulling wobbly carts full of raw materials, mostly charred bones and resin-encased mummies, hard as rock.