Infinite Vampire (Book 3): Maelstrom

by M. Lorrox

  “Why didn’t you say so… Here you are. Hold on...”

  Eddy picks up the ring and studies the secret, ancient markings one last time.

  “Done.”

  Eddy pulls out his phone and checks that his Wi-Fi is turned on. He launches his Infinite Vampire app, makes sure the messages from Enrique arrived, and checks that the pictures are attached. He opens the email with the faked images, and he checks them against his dad’s drawing, verifying they’re fake. “Okay man, I’m good to go. Do you need me to grab you a knife or something to scrape the ring with?”

  “No, I’ve got my EDC knife.” He reaches into his shirt and pulls out a chain that hangs around his neck. On its end is a small sheath with a piece of metal sticking out from it, his every-day-carry knife.

  Eddy smiles. “Neck knife! Cool, is it heavy or annoying at all?”

  Enrique pulls the blade from the sheath. “It’s titanium, and it only weighs an ounce. I hardly notice it. Want to check it out?” He extends his hand to Eddy.

  “Later, I sure do, but right now, let’s execute this plan.” He stands and gets ready to leave.

  Enrique holds the knife’s titanium edge to the ancient, reddish colored gold. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

  Eddy smiles. “Believe it.” He calls up his best Elrond impersonation, but he still speaks quietly, “Destroy it!”

  Master Sergeant Vega jogs over to the small command tent set up on the roof of the FAA. “General Riley, I have an update, sir.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Both strike forces are on their way back, sir.”

  “Then we have regained control of L’Enfant at the ground. Excellent... You know these men; are they ready to go home? Or do they want more?”

  Vega smiles, and his stubble darkens the creases in his face. “They want a hell of a lot more, sir, and so do I.”

  General Riley nods. Damn right. “Okay. First make sure everyone is fully resupplied with what we have here. We still must focus on containment. I’m deploying you boys to the metro stations just outside the quarantine zone. You’ll be on your own and out of comms with no way to call for evac or backup. Make sure the men are up for it.”

  “I’m sure they will be.”

  “Good, and choose one man who wouldn’t mind staying behind, because I need someone here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  General Riley turns to one of the engineers at the microwave relay station. “Get me Captain Rickman at the Pentagon Field Command Center.”

  Specialist Klein hits a few buttons. “Should be all set sir, go ahead.”

  He picks up the handset. “Rickman? This is General Riley at Downtown Command Post.”

  “Rickman here, General. Go ahead.”

  “I need a platoon resupply of M4 and SAW ammo, grenades, and claymores. Also, give me two more SAWs and four cases of demolition C4. Split the supplies evenly between the two Gold Tops, send them to my position, and let the pilots know they’re going to be making drops. You got that?”

  “Yes, sir. Hold on, sir... Expect the birds in twenty minutes.”

  “Do your best to make it in ten. Riley out.”

  Eleven minutes later, the two Gold Tops loaded with equipment cross the Potomac River, and General Riley is briefing the marines. “That was a nice job, boys, but it was just a warmup. Now that we’ve regained control of the ground at L’Enfant, we need to prevent any zombies from escaping quarantine by means of the metros. We’ve already got forces in the tunnels to the south and to the west of the quarantine, so I’m sending you boys to the north and east. These areas are heavily populated with civilians, and we must prevent the zombies from escaping at ALL costs.

  “There’s four metro stations just outside that quarantine that I’m sending you to seize and hold. At each station, you will get to the tunnels, and you will stop any zombie from crossing your path. No Z get past you. None see the light of day.

  “The Gold Tops will drop you at the sites; each will carry two squads. The first Gold Top will drop a squad at Noma Gallaudet, and then at Eastern Market. The other Gold Top will drop a squad at Shaw/Howard, and then at Dupont Circle. Any questions?”

  No one even flinches.

  “I don’t expect to be retrieving you boys back up here, but I’ll send reinforcements when they’re available. You are to hold those tunnels at all costs. Collapse them if you have to, but you must hold them. Marines, are up for this?”

  “OOHRAH!”

  “Good. Master Sergeant Vega, break ’em up and move ’em out when ready. It sounds like your rides are here.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Vega breaks the marines into four squads, joins the squad going to Noma Gallaudet, and tasks Corporal Daniels with staying at the command post with the general.

  The Gold Tops land, and Vega leads the squads to them. While en route to the drop off locations, the squads in each helicopter divvy up the additional ammo, weapons, and explosives. Vega looks at the faces of his men. “The general said to hold the Z back, at ALL costs.” He smirks. “Remember boys, no points for second place.”

  Carrie, the Smithsonian Institution summer intern, points out one of the South Tower’s windows at the large helicopters flying nearby. “I think they landed, then took off from a building over there.”

  Skip jumps onto the bottom ledge of the window to try and see, but he’s still too low compared to the roof of the FAA, and he can’t see anything. “That means there’s people around though. We need that signal fire.”

  While Jambavan rests and his broken bones start to set, Harold stands guard by the entry to the spiral staircase with the blunderbuss aimed down the stairs. When Skip walks over to him carrying a pair of Molotov cocktails, Harold grumbles. “I suppose I should be thankful you brought those. I’m liking the idea of being rescued more and more.”

  “Let’s hope the message comes across.” Skip steps into the stairwell.

  “Wait, don’t you think you should wait for, uh, Korina to come back?”

  Skip tilts his head. “That actually didn’t occur to me. Why should I wait?”

  Harold shrugs. “Oh, I don’t know. I’m not sure who’s even in charge of…us, I guess.”

  Skip laughs. “I think you are. Just do me a favor and don’t shoot me when I come back down.”

  Skip ascends the spiral stairs to the attic, then he walks into the open doorway of the small tower that is attached to the west wall of the South Tower. The small tower is narrow; only wide enough for one person to stand in at a time. In that space, stairs spiral down, while a smokestack’s duct travels alongside a steep iron ladder that leads to a trap door above.

  Much of the ladder is blocked by the old, dirty smokestack. There’s only about five inches of the rungs available to Skip, and for a minute, he considers the best way to safely climb up. He is carrying a pair of improvised incendiary devices, after all.

  Good thing I didn’t light these yet. He transfers them into one hand, holding them both by the necks of the bottles. He has to climb with only his left hand and left foot on the ladder, and his body is wedged against the cold stone wall of the castle and the filthy smokestack. Progress is slow, but he only needs to climb fifteen rungs to reach the top.

  There, he unlatches the trap door and pushes it open, squinting when the light pours in. He sets the Molotov cocktails down on the roof of the small tower, then he climbs up and looks out.

  At first, Skip looks toward where the helicopters were spotted. He doesn’t see anything on the distant roof, at least not from his lower position. He then looks to the ground, and he is so horrified that he takes a step back—almost into the open trap door—but only his heel dips into the black. “Oh. My. Lord.”

  The streets below are a bloody definition of chaos. On a road extending south alongside the building where the helicopters were seen, there are rows and rows of bodies piled. Elsewhere, there are bodies running, chasing, writhing, or bleeding out.

  To the east, people stream a
cross the road at various places; some coming, some going. Those are probably all zombies; people would be panicking way more.

  To the west, there are fewer people, but still some. To the north, his view is mostly blocked by the roof of the massive castle, but he can see just a bit of the grass of the National Mall. Directly across the Mall, he can see the National Museum of Natural History and the abandoned tour bus crashed alongside it.

  Something colorful catches his eye, but when he looks, his heart drops. A group of children, all with similar vibrantly colored shirts, have collected around a tree. They’re throwing things into the branches. What in the world?

  Another object is thrown, and then out falls a larger person. They crash to the ground, and the colored shirts swarm the person. Skip closes his eyes. A zombified tour group. Probably eating their chaperone. I did not need that in my nightmares. He opens his eyes and can imagine the person screaming as a mass of tie-dye-shirt-wearing, zombified preteens eat them alive.

  He shakes the thoughts from his mind. He pulls out a lighter and lights both wicks without really thinking. Then he looks at the ground; besides the trap door and the smokestack’s vent, there’s only about a foot of space to the sides. Crap. How the hell am I supposed to smash these?

  He has plenty of time to figure something out. Katlyn is a pro-Molotov-cocktail-maker, and although she still hasn’t told Skip how old she is, back in the kitchen, she did tell him all about the Molotov cocktails. Their wicks burn very slowly, and the mixture inside the glass only burns; it doesn’t explode.

  Maybe I pull the wicks, smash the bottles, and then throw the wicks into the fluid as I close the door? Or I could... Well, that’ll probably work. He pulls the wicks out of the bottles, and he drops them onto the ground and stomps the flames out. He picks them up and shoves them in his back pocket. Thickened diesel fuel still clings to the wicks, and it smears onto his jeans.

  Skip smashes the Molotovs behind the hinges of the trap door. He climbs into the tower, lights one wick, drops it over the door, and recoils.

  Nothing happens.

  He lights the other wick, climbs up a rung, and as he’s about to toss it directly into the middle of the fuel and broken glass, the first wick ignites the fuel.

  A hot shockwave hits his face, and he tosses the second wick aimlessly as he retreats down the narrow ladder. He isn’t careful enough, and his foot slips on a rung. He falls, bangs his body against the smokestack and wall, but he catches himself with his left hand.

  He climbs the rest of the way down to the attic, then in the light of the single bare bulb, he checks his hand. He cut his left palm on the rusted metal, and fresh blood rolls from the cut and toward his wrist. He catches his breath, then wipes his bleeding hand against his pants. And that’s why we get tetanus shots.

  Two stories below Skip, Korina had also lit and used a pair of Molotov cocktails. She followed Harold’s wishes and tried to keep the flames away from anything flammable—except for zombies—and so far, it’s mostly the fuel on the floor that burns. She tossed the cocktails well into the hall beyond the few steps leading down to the main building, and then she and Lance dispatched all the zombies caught on their side of the wall of flames.

  If any zombies decide to push their luck and run through the flames, first their asses get caught on fire, and sometimes as they flail in the flames, they drop to the ground. They always seem to get back up though, and once engulfed in flames, they charge toward their sighted meals: Korina and Lance.

  While Lance works on gathering materials for a strong, fireproof barricade, Korina murders the flaming zombies and tosses their corpses back across the firewall. She moves fast, so her hands only get burnt a little bit each time, but the damage is adding up.

  Behind her, Lance is putting the crowbar to use. He’s destroying the rooms built inside that level of the South Tower, and he’s tearing apart the furniture and fixtures within. “I’m loving this old Victorian marble, or whatever this is.” He rips a thick slab of marble—and a few boards attached to it—off an entryway dresser, then he sets the marble aside. “How long do I have?”

  Korina throws a dead zombie that wears a DC Ultimate Frisbee Intramural shirt back to the flames. She doesn’t get the distance she hoped for, and the body now lays in the burning fuel, adding barbequed zombie to the other filthy scents filling her nose. “As little as you need.” She moves to intercept another flaming zombie.

  Stories below and on the other side of the castle, flames initially started by another pair of Molotov cocktails still burn. Jambavan and Korina had each ignited Molotov cocktails in the utility tunnel, and just as in the hallway far above, zombies in the tunnel pushed into the flames.

  They caught fire, then they ignited other zombies, which in turn ignited other zombies. Now, a group of flaming—and flailing—zombies bang against the barricade to no avail. They succumb to the flame and drop there, the fabric of their clothes still burning.

  The portion of the barricade that sits beside the flaming pile of ex-human is a large wooden cabinet. The varnish on the antique wood ignites, and the cabinet burns. The white bricks of the vaulted ceilings are tickled by the orange blaze, and they are soon covered with soot. Electrical wires strung alongside the brick start to melt.

  A zombie falls dead in another underground tunnel, but it falls dead thanks to the gigantic knight, Naga, and his guandao—a sort of halberd with a large blade at the end of a five-foot staff. Naga swivels the weapon around in a sweeping arc, shedding the blood from the blade along the wall and floor. Then, he winds the weapon behind his back. He holds his other hand in a fist beside his bald and tattooed head.

  Ricochet flanks him on the left and holds his free hand up in a fist as well. Qilin flanks Naga on the right. She switches both of her axes to one hand, and with the other, she signals for her squad to hold. As she turns to Ricochet, her blood-soaked braid flops over her shoulder with a -splat-. She whispers to Ricochet, “What are we waiting for?”

  He whispers back, “I don’t know.”

  Naga drops his hand. He speaks quietly, and his deep voice rattles through everyone’s chests, “Quiet. Listen.”

  They train their ears. They can hear very little movement nearby, but there’s a sort of rumble ahead of them.

  “I believe we’re coming to the station where the metro lines intersect. I believe there is a tunnel that goes east and west, and this one continues north. We will soon need to split up.”

  A soldier in Naga’s squad coughs.

  Naga, who stands a foot taller and weighs nearly twice as much as anyone else in the tunnel, turns around to face the soldier. “What?”

  “You are right, but there’s one other tunnel, sir, that heads southeast.”

  “Oh… Well, we’ll just have to form a fourth squad. Soldiers, who wants to lead a group to take the southeast tunnel?”

  The same soldier that coughed nods. “I will, sir.”

  “Fine... Pick five soldiers to go with you.”

  He furrows his brow. “That’ll leave only three members per squad for the other tunnels, sir—”

  “I know, and I hope you six will survive this mission.”

  “Uh, okay sir.”

  The soldier picks five others to eventually split off with him, and in another hundred yards, everyone enters the underground L’Enfant Plaza Metro station. It’s a huge station, and it’s filled with zombies. The fifteen-member platoon, together, work their way from one platform to the next, but they hardly make forward progress—hundreds of zombies rush at them.

  Naga stands like a great rock that breaks the waves of zombies to the sides, where the Green Berets and Ricochet send bullets into their brains. Qilin stands behind Naga—and out of reach from the far-sweeping swings of his guandao—and smashes her axes into the skulls of the injured or stunned zombies that survived being tossed like salt over the huge knight’s shoulder.

  In a lull of zombies, Ricochet clicks in a fresh magazine and yells toward Naga, “Yo, g
imme a lift!” He runs at him and jumps, and Naga bends down for Ricochet to land on his shoulders. Now elevated, Ricochet raises his rifle. The notion that semi-automatic weapons fire as fast as one pulls the trigger only applies to humans. Ricochet knows his weapon, and he pulls the trigger just slow enough to allow the next bullet to be loaded into the chamber for the next shot. He fires faster than any of the Green Berets have fired in their dreams, and in seconds, he tosses his empty, thirty-round banana clip to the side and clicks in another one.

  Green Berets look at one another in awe until Ricochet jumps down. He spits out his toothpick and pulls a fresh one from his pocket. “For anyone keeping count, that was four full magazines, or a hundred and twenty rounds. Ten Z required a follow up shot, so in total I just added one-ten to my CK count.”

  Naga shakes his head. “No one was counting. What’s a CK count?”

  “Confirmed Kills.” Ricochet slides more magazines from his battle-pack and straps them to his thighs.

  Qilin finishes a bottle of blood and tosses it away. “Yeah, yeah. You’re soo cool. Let’s get going already.”

  After clearing the rest of the station, Naga and two soldiers continue north along the Yellow and Green Line toward Chinatown. The squad of six Green Berets take the Green Line tunnel southeast, toward Anacostia, Maryland. The others return to the tunnels of the Orange, Blue, and Silver Lines. Ricochet and his remaining two soldiers take the tunnel to the west toward the Smithsonian Metro station and the western part of downtown, while Qilin takes her two soldiers down that same tunnel to the east.

  At the only unsealed exit from the underground station to the ground level—where a glass enclosure once stood—the long-since jammed escalators are littered with corpses. As zombies crawl over the deceased on their way to the surface, bullets rip through their skulls. The soldiers who have taken position on the roof of the U.S. Postal Service Headquarters with the 50-cal. M2 find themselves pulling its trigger a little less, and they relax a little more.