Loop Day - Chapter Four
Bentcan
LOOP DAY — A SERIALIZED NOVEL
Two low-level Oval Office aides relive the day of their deaths over and over again, in a doomsday time loop that will end only if they foil the plan to assassinate the President and save the world.
Previously: In the Oval Office, President Tyrump fixates on news coverage of his insane plan to attack both Texas and Mexico. Showing off with his ancestral Bavarian sword, Tyrump stabs Navajo presidential aide Leif Oak in the back. Leif dies but is reborn into the same day by way of a mysterious time loop of which he is newly aware. An extinct giant teratorn haunts Leif in the Rose Garden. White House kitchen aide Dhyna Durango, Leif’s lover and Leif both want to quit covert work for the socialist Resistance in the White House to go live a new life together as growers in Leif’s high desert home. The time loop thwarts that dream, trapping them in the day — the day the world ends. The loop must be broken to survive the day, to save the world, and to escape the Oval Office — unless another cataclysm and time loop forces the lovers to save the world over and over again without end.
Leif and Dhyna clasp hands. They sit at the corner table in the kitchenette by the Oval Office where they both ponder their most recent deaths — pulverized by the handheld killing machines of President Tyrump’s armed officials. Dhyna’s abduction plan — binding and stashing Tyrump in the supply closest — did not go quite as planned.
“Now what?” says Leif.
“Brilliant,” says Dhyna. “That went so well. Fucking genius. Jean Blue killed us both. Ratted us out to the Cabinet.”
“It had a chance,” says Leif. “This time, I stay with Jean and keep a hidden knife to her back.”
Dhyna shakes her head. “Jean Blue is the weak link. Let’s go another way.”
Dhyna thinks back to how many times she tried to stop President Tyrump — how many ways she failed to stop nuclear missiles from hitting Washington DC. Who knows — maybe one in a million days she and Leif could succeed — or a million years. Do they have a million days, a million years left in this crazy time loop? Or even a hundred more days? Or ten? Or one? Maybe the world is already history. Maybe she and Leif are doomed to watch the end of their lives, the end of all life, play out forever. The final movie — Terminal — forced to live it over and over and over again. Maybe there is a Hell after all, and they’ve arrived. The White House is Hell. The Oval Office is the inner sanctum of Hell. And Leif and Dhyna doomed to work there. Forever.
If the White House is Hell, then President Tyrump is Satan. The Great Satan.
And Leif and Dhyna are spies in Hell.
So then what is the teratorn?
An angry bird.
Dhyna takes her smartphone from her pocket and stares into its sheen and void. Why power on the thing ever again? It’s completely useless now, beyond all history. Who you gonna call to arrest the President? Who you gonna call to thwart an imminent nuclear attack? Who you gonna call to stop climate collapse? Who you gonna call to bring human rights to all? Who you gonna call to save the world? To win the day?
Dhyna looks to Leif. She squeezes Leif’s hand within her own. “Come with me,” she says.
Dhyna leads Leif to the President’s Secretary’s office. They stop by the desk of Jean Blue.
“Jean, the President requested that Leif and I move boxes of paper from the supply room to the Oval Office. Something about making paper airplanes.”
“Sounds like fun! Need help?”
“We’re good, thanks,” says Dhyna.
Leif follows Dhyna to the supply room. Inside, Dhyna shuts and locks door. She puts her arms around Leif and kisses him.
Dhyna and Leif make love.
They are passionate. Absorbed in one another, they fall out of time and the universe — or seem to. They disappear from the world in singular clasp.
Fuck the time loop.
They don’t mean to be loud. They don’t try to be quiet.
Afterwards Dhyna and Leif gather their bodies and their gear and their minds, and they hunt for pieces of clothing strewn here and there throughout the supply closet. And then they realize how still it is in the office outside the door. Oh well, the good workers of the Incorporated Estates of America can deal.
Leif and Dhyna exit the supply room. They are emptyhanded. They don’t bother with any boxes of paper for airplanes, or whatever Dhyna told Jean. Everyone in the office stares at them.
“Won’t happen again. Sorry,” Leif says to Jean.
“Not in your lifetime,” Dhyna says to Karen, brushing past.
Karen shoves Dhyna, who catches herself. “Back to the kitchen, where you belong,” says Karen.
Dhyna pivots and confronts her. “Fuck off, Karen. I’ve chopped off people’s heads for less.”
Karen picks up the phone from her desk. Dhyna grabs Karen’s hand and slams her hand and phone back down.
“Bitch,” says Karen. “I already called Security. They’ll be here any second.”
Dhyna grabs the stringy mane of Karen’s blonde hair and rips her head back. “I am Security,” says Dhyna. Karen’s eyes and throat bulge as Dhyna brings her face close to Karen’s. “Bitch.” Dhyna yanks Karen down to her seat behind her desk. “Get back to work for your Master,” says Dhyna. She releases the grip of her hands on Karen, though not the vice of her eyes.
Then Dhyna looks to Leif and offers him her arm. Leif takes Dhyna’s arm and escorts her from the office.
In the hallway, Dhyna and Leif surprise two Secret Service agents by grabbing their holstered guns. They level the guns at the agents. “Back up!” says Dhyna. Instead, Leif and Dhyna edge away from the agents.
“Fucking now!” says Leif. “Or crutches!” He aims at the agents’ legs. The officers begin to move back.
Then Dhyna and Leif race down the hall like it’s high school and they’re in the 100 meter dash, but with lethal weapons. Other agents come into the hall. Leif and Dhyna hear bullets. They turn a corner. They turn another corner.
And then they run straight at the guns raised against them without raising their own guns. And they are killed by a brutal wall of the most merciless metal in the world.
“I am become Teratorn.” Leif spreads his arms wide in face of the giant teratorn in the Rose Garden. The teratorn flaps its wings, cries out. “Gonna get you,” says Leif, a mock threat.
The teratorn flexes and flaps both wings, then points a wingtip at Leif, and stares past him into the Oval Office.
Leif considers that the teratorn might eat the bald eagle in the Official Seal on the ceiling of the Oval Office like a pigeon for breakfast.
“Is the Cabinet ready, Leif, goddamn it!” says Tyrump.
The teratorn hisses.
“Fuck the Cabinet,” says Leif.
“Yes, fuck the Cabinet, Leif! But get their billionaire asses in here first — okay, Leif! Is that too much to ask of my personal bottle aide! I want to see my Cabinet’s goddamn miserable criminal billionaire faces up close and festive when I tell them how hard to fuck off before we invade Texas and Mexico! Do I care how many of their pretty portfolios I torch for the greater glory of my own?! No!”
“Right away, Sir. Your Cabinet is gathering as you speak.”
The teratorn hisses and beats its wings. Stray feathers fly off.
“Leif, my Chief of Staff—”
“Is no longer with us, Sir.”
“Pushy fucker. He won’t be missed.”
“Not by you, Sir.”
“It's good to be King, Leif. The people love me because they hate my enemies even worse.”
“Who can be King and not be despised, Sir?”
“You’re goddamn right.” President Tyrump pats his golden comb-over and gawks at himself in an interview on the television hung on the opposite wall. He grimaces like a vampire after too many snacks of blood — more human blood than can be easily digested.
Soon President Tyrump watches Dhyna Durango approach with his diet cola, napkin, and straw. Right on time, as usual. He fixates on her shape.
“Mr. President, your diet cola,” says Dhyna.
Dhyna sets the cola on the desk. Tyrump raises the cola, toasts Dhyna. He manages to look her in the eye for a moment.
“To my great and glorious day,” says Tyrump.
The President drinks and continues to watch himself on TV.
On her way out, Dhyna circles over to Leif.
“What’s it gonna to be this time, Loverboy?”
“Meet you in the kitchenette.”
“Only if you’re lucky.” Dhyna moves to the exit.
President Tyrump watches her go. “Today is my big day, Leif. First I take Texas, then Mexico.”
The giant teratorn leaps up and thunders away from the Rose Garden. Leif watches the ancient bird shrink in the day with distance. The teratorn loops around the Washington Monument spiking the sky — a pale spike in a gray sky.
“Everyday is your big day, Sir.”
In the American Empire. How much longer will it last? This day? This Empire? Leif knows that the beginning of the end will come no quicker for the wondering, for the failing to act. He vows that today will be a bigger day for President Tyrump than the President can possibly know.
By the time Leif gets to the kitchenette, Dhyna is standing in front of the sink puking.
She turns up the water as high as it will go to drown out the sounds of her vomit.
She pukes repeatedly. A baritone puke, full-chested.
“You throw up like a champ,” says Leif. He is truly impressed. He stands back, wondering how he can possibly help.
Eventually, Leif pulls Dhyna’s hair back from her face. Puke dribbles from her lips. She looks lovely to Leif.
Dhyna uses paper towels and soap to clean her skin. She rinses her mouth.
Then she turns to Leif.
“I’m pregnant.”
“What?”
“It doesn’t change anything.”
“How?”
“You know how.”
Leif wonders if he should hug her. His lover. Dhyna.
“That’s wonderful,” says Leif.
“It’s terrible,” says Dhyna. “The world is ending and I am with child. To what point?”
Oh, shit. Priorities. And the world. What to think — what to do? To save the day or to tend to the pregnancy?
Is there a morning after pill in the White House? Does Dhyna want a baby? And now? And how? How did the pregnancy not get time looped out of existence?
“We need to save the day,” says Dhyna.
“Okay. First things first,” says Leif.
“Easy for you to say,” says Dhyna.
Leif sits down. “Maybe we can handle two things at once.”
“Well, we need too, don’t we? I do.”
“Right. So — let’s think — the day reset. And the loop should have, uh, terminated things. I thought we used the most fool-proof pregnancy protection possible — curtesy of the time loop, the teratorn, this whole crazy situation. Or maybe things are changed now. Is the loop over? If we die, this time, are we dead? Finally?”
Dhyna shrugs. “We need to survive the day.”
“What if getting pregnant killed the loop?”
“We don’t know that,” says Dhyna. “We can’t know that.”
“I thought we died each day, as did everything with us.”
“My pregnancy is me,” says Dhyna. “My pregnancy is me. Part of me. And no other.”
“Tell that to the Fundamentalists.”
“Believers are unteachable. By definition. Don’t learn, can’t learn, because they refuse to learn. Reality goes one way, and they go another.”
“And you don’t die.”
“We don’t die, Leif. Not yet. Not that we know of.”
“But you didn’t conceive today.”
“And I didn’t get sick yesterday, but a co-worker in the kitchen has a pregnancy test, and I took it this morning, and I’m pregnant. Like it or not. Teratorn or no. Time loop or bust.”
Leif is suddenly terrified. “Nine months from now you could be giving birth on the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.”
Dhyna turns away. She walks in circles around the kitchenette. “In the kitchen downstairs more likely. But that will never happen.” Then she stops and stares at all the Presidents in the framed poster on the wall. “Leif, one top official is not in the Cabinet meeting when the nukes hit: Navy Chief, Rear Admiral Bunkie Bilgie Bentcan.”
“Okay.” Leif shifts gears and tries to keep up with Dhyna’s persistent thoughts. “Admiral Bentcan is not a Cabinet official, Dhyna. He’s not expected to be in the meeting.”
“Except all the other military leaders are in this meeting to discuss the President’s plan to invade Texas and Mexico. As are the several top leaders of Congress. And Bentcan is here too in the White House. At first. He leaves early. Gets safe outside DC. Then missiles from his submarine destroy the city. Bentcan confirms the President’s location, and gets the Hell out of Dodge. He wants to be President. He teased a run for office earlier this year.”
“He can’t be. The Navy Chief is not in the Order of Succession for President.”
“Think, Leif. The entire Cabinet gone, plus the Senate and House leaders and all other top military commanders, dead. Admiral Bentcan would be the highest ranking surviving official in the entire country. Assuming someone assassinates the Designated Survivor. And they do. A spy. One of a million. I never could figure out who, never got the name, only the means. Poison.”
“You lived long enough to know?”
“Repeatedly. I confirmed every key detail over a span of time that I have long since tried to forget.”
Leif sits down at the table. He begins to wonder what else Dhyna knows that she has yet to reveal.
“Dhyna, how many times did we make love — in the time loop?”
Dhyna paces again. “I hold all kinds of secrets.”
Leif nods. And worries.
Dhyna stops beside Leif. “Mostly good ones,” she says.
“You’ve lived entire lives in the loop.”
Dhyna touches his cheek. “I’m ready to break the loop to live one life and one life only with you,” she says. Dhyna sits on Leif’s lap, even through she looks like she is about to throw up again.
“Dhyna, how many times did you get pregnant in the loop — with or without me.”
Dhyna looks away.
“What would you do, Leif, through endless cycles of death? I’ve been dead for years. And you were nowhere. No one was anywhere except locked in their own stupid heads. They couldn’t see the world to save their lives. They can’t see what total doom-scrolling they do with their lives each and every day. They still can’t. Except for you, finally. Things are different now, Leif. Like — our lives are more the same than ever before. We’re closer now.”
It feels suddenly to Leif as if Dhyna has lived many lives, and he has lived few. But no matter what now, the one true meaning of life points at them both point blank between their eyes.
“Leif, it’s no fun to die every day alone forever.”
“Maybe I’m beginning to understand,” says Leif.
Dhyna draws Leif’s eyes into her own. Leif holds the gaze.
“Admiral Bentcan is Texan,” says Dhyna. “You know that, right? Bentcan jokes about relocating the US capital to Texas, if he runs and wins.”
“Texas, sure,” says Leif. He tries to refocus. “Dallas. Center of banking, business, oil. I remember — Bentcan even said the Governor of Texas would be his Vice President. What’s his name — Gassy Tank Wells.
“Bentcan is not joking, Leif. He will go all the way. And he will impose Martial Law — a full-blown police state top-to-bottom, fascism bold and blatant. Goldun Sichos CEO Pittance Viper and the other big banksters and executives will back him like they already back this bloody police state — to the hilt. You know that. The more captive the nation, the more the profit. So we need to disappear the President, Leif, stop those missiles. Convince everyone that Tyrump went to Camp David. We need to solve a worse problem, to survive, to probably die another way.”
“Why bother?”
“If we try, there’s a chance. If we don’t try — you know this — there’s no chance.”
“Okay.”
“Besides, I’m pregnant.”
“An immaculate conception.”
“Don’t get religious on me now, Leif. Even if it felt immaculate at the time. Not so much anymore.” Dhyna holds her stomach. “We need to nail Bentcan. To the ground.”
“Okay. And disappear the President. We need a magician. For real.”
“We’re all we’ve got, Leif.”
Dhyna stares again at all the white Presidents framed on the wall — with one minority exception, though born of a white mother.
“Leif, if you can take down the President, I can take down the Admiral. The Resolute desk. Does it ever look like a coffin to you?”
“Like — at a funeral?” Leif considers the idea. “I might see where you’re going with this. Gruesome.”
“Certain things need to be done, Leif. To save the world.”
Dhyna explains her new plan. It’s very simple — with few moving parts — and even fewer as it progresses.
“And if our new plan fails today, it might succeed the next,” says Dhyna. “If there is another. One can hope.”
As, possibly, at times, one must.
Leif listens carefully.
“If only we could work with someone like fucking Allspy, the NSA Director. On this alone,” says Leif, considering the idea. “Allspy knows everyone and everything. With endless contacts and communications. There’s so much power in communication.”
“He doesn’t know about us, Leif. Not who we really are. The National Security Agency is not on our side. There’s no fucking community in that form of communication.”
“That’s what needs to change.”
“It won’t — not today. We’re alone. Totally on our own. We need to get it done.” Dhyna clutches her stomach. “Fuck.” She moves to the sink and leans over it.
Jean Blue rushes into the kitchenette. “The President needs his meds!"
Jean sees Dhyna, face in sink.
Dhyna vomits.
“Oh no!” Jean Blue comes to Dhyna and puts her hands on her shoulders.
“So, is it a go, right now, today, Dhyna?” says Leif.
Jean looks at him strangely.
Dhyna speaks into the drain. “Do it, Leif. Do it now.”
“Take care of her, Jean.” Leif moves to the door. “She throws up like a champ.” Dhyna vomits again.
Leif finds President Tyrump with the sword, screaming in a frenzy up against the wall in the Oval Office.
“Mr. President! Time for your meds!” says Leif.
Tyrump clutches the hilt of his ancestral Bavarian sword with the blade stuck in the portrait of several officials, one of whom is his Vice President Rob Loot Thief. “You goddamn traitor!” the President shouts at the plastic smile of Loot Thief.
Tyrump feels better angry — he feels energized and creative. Anger gives him all his best ideas — like invading Texas and Mexico. Anger is his wealth — and wealth is his anger.
Tyrump shifts the ire of his expression to Leif. “Did you have a nice vacation, Leif! You fucker! Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing! Slurping my cola girl! You’ll never get her away from me, Leif. She’s too loyal! Loyal to power. Loyal to me and my money, to money itself, to power above all — not to you and your pathetic nothingness, Leif!”
“Dhyna has a mind of her own, Sir.”
“Her mind is mine, Leif. I’m the real fantasy of her mind and eye. And where the eyes and mind wander, Leif, the body comes.”
“Okay, Sir. Come on over to your desk now. It’s med time. Let go your sword. It will be there for you when you need it most. I’ll get your special mix all ready.” Leif smooths the great map of Texas on the Resolute Desk. The map is woven of fine linen and dotted with mini toy tanks, planes, and submarines that mark the President’s preferred routes of invasion.
Tyrump considers. He licks his lips. “Fuck Rob Loot Thief.” He releases the hilt of the sword, leaving the blade stuck in the photo and wall. He lumbers to the Resolute Desk. “Don’t sweat that kitchen galley girl, Leif. Lot of fish in the sea, cats in the House. I’m a great fisherman myself.” Tyrump drops onto his chair behind his desk from where he watches Leif with great thirst.
Leif taps code on the side of desk, opens the compartment, takes out a small glass bottle and syringe.
“I don’t have all day to sit around while you fumble your donkey ass, Leif!”
Leif extracts fluid from the bottle and injects it into a nasal spray inhaler. Then he hands the inhaler to Tyrump.
“This should do the trick, Sir.”
Tyrump sprays the potion into both nostrils. Almost immediately he relaxes and falls asleep in the chair.
Leif moves fast. He drags Tyrump in the chair backwards away from the desk. He yanks the sword out of the photo and wall. Then climbs under the massive Resolute Desk with the sword and knocks out two interior side panels.
Leif drags Tyrump off the chair and shoves him into the long enclosed interior of the Resolute Desk. Then Leif drapes part of the map of Texas over the desk opening by the chair and pushes in the chair. Tyrump is buried and gone. Entirely disappeared.
Leif hangs the sword on the rack on the wall both for safety and ready access.
Jean Blue helps Dhyna clean vomit off her face in the kitchenette.
Dhyna reassures Jean that it’s just a stomach bug. She walks Jean back the President’s office on the other side of the Oval.
Then Dhyna searches and finds Rear Admiral Bentcan in the hallway, among a cluster of Cabinet members and other high-ranking officials. Bentcan speaks to a subordinate officer. Dhyna moves close. She summons her prettiest smile. She easily catches the Admiral’s eye.
“Admiral Bentcan, excuse me. Can I interrupt and bother you for a minute, Sir? My daughter Maggie is twelve years old and she has fallen in love with ships. She talks about joining the navy to sail around the world.”
“Really! How wonderful! I must say, young lady, you look hardly old enough to have a daughter of age yourself.”
Dhyna’s smile broadens. “Early start, I guess. Plus, I’ve got more time on this planet than you might think. I’ve seen some serious days around here, Sir. It would mean so much to my Maggie if I could bring her your autograph.”
Admiral Bentcan is captivated. “Certainly. Where do I sign?”
“Oh, spectacular! Let me think. I work in the kitchen. We’ve got fancy embroidered napkins in the kitchenette here. Maggie would frame a napkin signed by you, Sir. I’m sure there’s a pen.”
Admiral Bentcan pulls a pen from a pocket of his uniform. “You supply the fancy napkin, young lady, and I’ll supply the pen!”
“Oh, thank you so much, Sir. It means so much. Truly.”
Rear Admiral Bentcan follows Dhyna Durango into the kitchenette. And there is Leif Oak.
“Admiral. What a surprise,” says Leif. “Welcome to the Oval Office kitchenette! But you can do better than this, Admiral. Would you like to see the President in the Oval?”
“Oh, could we?!” says Dhyna. “Could I get a picture with the President and the Admiral, both?! My Maggie would pass out if she could take a photo like that to school.”
Dhyna grabs the sleeve of the Admiral’s uniform and pulls herself to his arm.
Bentcan is plainly disappointed not to be alone with Dhyna in the kitchenette. He checks his watch. “Maybe if we do it quickly,” he says.
“There’s plenty of time, Sir,” says Leif. “President Tyrump is in the best mood I’ve ever seen. Something about invasion seems to agree with him. So then — one quick smiling photo!” Leif appears all smiles himself.
Dhyna clings to the Admiral’s arm and pleads with her eyes.
Bentcan pats Dhyna’s hands. “Works for me.”
”Thank you!” Dhyna hugs Admiral Bentcan. She could not seem more grateful.
The Admiral glows. “Outstanding!” he says.
Leif leads Admiral Bentcan and Dhyna through the side door into the empty Oval Office. “Now where is he?” says Leif. They walk over to the Resolute Desk. “The President must have stepped into his secretary’s office. I’m sure he would want to show you this thing of beauty, Admiral.”
Leif takes Tyrump’s ancestral Bavarian sword from the wall and holds it up before Bentcan as Dhyna drops to her hands and knees sideways on the floor behind the Admiral. Leif winds up and hammers Bentcan with the flat of the sword, slicing the sleeves of his uniform as Bentcan tries to deflect the blade. Bentcan is knocked over Dhyna and falls flat on his back, banging his head on the floor.
Leif presses the tip of the sword painfully into Bentcan’s chest.
“One sound and you’re dead. You’re as good dead to me as alive.”
Dhyna grabs a plastic plum from the bowl of plastic fruit on the coffee table and attempts to shove the plum into Bentcan’s mouth. He resists.
Leif shoves the sword further through Bentcan’s uniform into his flesh.
“You’re ruining my day, Bentcan,” says Leif.
Bentcan winces and writhes, then opens his mouth wide.
Dhyna shoves the plum in between his teeth. She hurries to the desk compartment that Dineh has left unlocked and takes out medical tape. She wraps tape repeatedly around Bentcan’s head to secure the plum in his mouth. Then she tapes Bentcan’s wrists and ankles together. Next, she tapes his arms to his body.
“Wait. Let’s give him the treatment,” says Leif.
He retrieves the nasal inhaler and sprays it into Bentcan’s nose. Soon Bentcan drifts from consciousness.
Leif and Dhyna drag Bentcan’s decorated uniformed body behind the desk. They shove him under the map of Texas and inside the desk next to President Tyrump. Leif wipes blood off the sword and sets the cleaned weapon onto the map of Texas.
At that moment, General Kilman strides into the Oval Office, slamming the door on the Cabinet members in the hall.
“Here come the cops! Dhyna! Hands up!” says Leif.
Dhyna ignores Leif’s stab at humor. She picks up Tyrump’s half-finished diet cola and napkin from the Resolute Desk and goes past General Kilman on her way out. Leif taps the sword on the desk with his fingers.
“Charge! Sir!”
“Leif, my man!” says Joint Chiefs General Krushin Karvin Kilman.
“You missed him, General. President Tyrump has gone to Camp David.”
“Wait! What! When! He can’t do that! He declared war on Texas!” says Kilman.
“I’m sorry, Sir. The President was furious, swearing. Something about the Cabinet, Sir.”
“Spit it out, Son. Exact words.”
“‘Crazy Clown Fucking Cabinet Motherfuckers.’ Sir.”
“What the fuck is he doing at Camp David? Bear hunt? I hear they shot one of the world’s largest black bears there last fall. Wouldn’t mind getting a rifle up on that mountain myself.”
“Sir, the President said he plans to direct the invasion of Texas from Camp David. A kind of war vacation, Sir. Not a vacation from war — the opposite. He took an advisor. Wouldn’t tell me who. I don’t think he trusts me entirely, General. I don’t know why.”
“Power, Kid. Those in power trust no one. You will never know how lonely it can be at the top.”
“Yes, Sir. I expect not, Sir.”
“Then the Cabinet meeting is canceled! Has this been announced?”
“Not yet, Sir.”
“I’ll do it. Let people think I’m in charge here — why not? I’m no presumptuous fool like that pathetic General Haig. I’m the real deal! It’s a great day to be alive, Leif, is it not?”
“It certainly is, Sir. A day like no other.”
Joint Chiefs Chairman General Kilman strides from the Oval into the hallway by the Cabinet Room. He gathers the Cabinet members and other top officials, and he announces how important he is by informing them that the President is gone to Camp David, and from there he will direct the invasion of Texas and Mexico.
Members of the Cabinet and other high officials roar and scream, “He can’t! We won’t allow it! It’s Unconstitutional!”
“Too late!” shouts General Kilman. “None of you are the President!”
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” The panicked mob of millionaire and billionaire officials punch their phones and rush off to shout at their preferred media hacks and tools.
The White House empties quickly.
Leif meets Dhyna near the West Wing exit. From there they make their way quickly to the Mall.
They get as far as the Museum of Natural History before Dhyna feels sick again. They go inside. Dhyna throws up in the bathroom.
She comes back into the Rotunda by the main entrance and takes Leif’s hand. “Something feels off. I don’t know what,” she says. “Maybe it’s a good thing.”
“You’re puking. That’s what.”
“Something more. I want to show you, Leif. Follow me.”
Dhyna leads Leif across the first floor to the Deep Time Fossil Hall. She takes him directly to the display of the Giant Teratorn.
Leif studies the looming inanimate object. “Close enough. But not the real deal,” says Leif. He watches the sculpture of the teratorn warily — its dark eyes that he fears might burn red at any moment — or its body burst to terrifying life.
Dhyna reads aloud the display sign: “‘Teratorn Argentavis Magnificens or Giant Teratorn. Heaviest flying bird of all time. Extinct for 5 million years.’”
“That’s an old bird,” says Leif.
“‘Skull structure suggests that it ate most of its prey whole rather than tearing off pieces of flesh,’” Dhyna reads.
“Let’s hope this beast is on our side. In the end,” says Leif.
“Can’t be long now till they find the President,” says Dhyna.
She reaches for Leif. They embrace.
“If the city doesn’t blow up on us, Leif, how far to your home in the high desert?”
“A thirty hour drive.”
They kiss.
“If the city doesn’t blow up—”
The world goes white. Navy missiles obliterate Washington DC.
For a moment, though, Leif, Dhyna, and the teratorn are suspended in time, each free of all harm, as if caught in a magical bubble of eternal life.
Leif considers the sculpture in the moment of the explosion. The teratorn appears to be in tears.
“It’s a great day to be alive,” says Leif.
And with that the giant teratorn bursts from stillness and spreads its wings. The ancient beast bares its heavy beak like a weapon and screams.
And then instantly the giant teratorn is vaporized.
As is Dhyna. And Leif.
Each and all — wiped out by the infernal heat and the shock blast of a great hate that obliterates Earth.
