by M. Lorrox
Robertson looks past the dead man turned dead zombie and thinks about the LAZoR units below. He yells over his shoulder. “Yeah! If we blow them up ahead, the turret’s will do the rest!”
Vega turns to Jenkins. “Bring him the kit. Stay low. I’ll cover you.”
Eddy bothers a nurse who has no time for being bothered, and he’s pointed toward the hospital staff’s breakroom. Inside, he finds it empty. Eddy logs into his email, prints out the faked images, then logs out and leaves. He returns to his and Enrique’s room with a stack of printouts in his hand.
Enrique is laying in the bed. He sits up and turns the TV’s volume back up as Eddy walks over. He speaks quietly, “How do they look?”
Eddy extends the papers toward him. For each set of engravings on the ring, there’s a pair of printouts. On one set, the images are printed to fit on the page, and on the other, the images are printed at full size, cropped just around the faked markings.
“Awesome, these look good.”
Eddy nods. “The ring?”
Enrique turns and lifts the ring from a fold in the bed’s sheets.
Eddy raises an eyebrow.
“What would you rather me do with it? I can’t walk around, remember? Here.” He holds open the two pieces of the ring and shows Eddy that all traces of the inscriptions are completely scraped off.
“Looks good to me. So now we just need to leave these where someone would find them if they come.”
Enrique squints. “Why not just leave them in your bag, where you’d actually keep it all anyway?”
Eddy sighs as he looks at the bag, remembering Sophia. “Well, this bag is…really important to me. I’d really rather that they not take it.”
Enrique’s eyes light up, and he motions to the table against the wall. “What if we set up a little workstation there and leave everything out like we were still working on translating it?”
Eddy nods. “Yeah, that sounds good.”
“Cool. That’s step one. What’s step two? Wait?”
Eddy shrugs. “I guess so. How long until you can walk?”
Enrique lifts the bandages on his leg. The hole that Charlie’s flare burned into his flesh has been replaced by a larger hole that a doctor cut so that his body could heal properly. “It’s still real gooey looking. I’d rather not need them to redo this, so if you don’t mind, I’ll stay in bed until they tell me otherwise.”
“No worries, man. Did they say what’s up with your arm?”
“Hairline fracture in the ulna. They said just to leave it alone for a week or so, and it’ll heal up, good as new.”
“Oh, sweet.” Eddy moves over to the table across the room and begins cleaning it off. “Have you had other injuries as a squire?”
Enrique finishes covering the wound on his thigh with the bandage. “A few, but nothing that required surgery. I probably should have had stitches like a dozen times, but my dad, eh, my knight, Flying Eagle, always said that they didn’t need stitches.” He chuckles. “He’d say, ‘You’ll know it if you need them.’”
Eddy arranges the papers on the desk. “Do you like being a squire?”
“There’s nothing to like or not like; I am one, and someday I’ll be a knight.”
“Yeah, but...without sounding weird, does doing it make you happy? I’m a squire to my dad, but I’m not officially a squire in the Order. He’s against me joining.”
“Happy? No. But proud. I can be helpful to the community, I can be a badass doing it, and I’m respected. It’s a pretty good gig.”
Unless a bastard orders vampire knights to fight on both sides of a battle, just for fun... “Those are kind of the reasons I want to join too. I want to help protect the people I care about.”
“You’re fifteen, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
Enrique repositions himself on the bed and winces when a section of the healing gash across his back is reopened with his movement. “You’ve got plenty of time, then.”
Eddy puts the two pieces of the ring down next to all the paper. He speaks just loud enough for Enrique to hear over the television, “I think we should have the knife here too, to make it really look like we were working and got interrupted.”
Enrique reaches up and feels the sheathed blade that hangs around his neck. “I kind of like having it on me at all times. Can we find something else?”
“Sure, but until we do, I think we should put it here. Oh, and the shavings, did you keep those?”
He sighs. “I thought maybe I could keep them. They’re folded up in this paper.” He shifts and winces again, then pulls a paper-packet from another fold in the sheets.
Eddy takes it and smiles at him. “What else you got in there?”
“Very funny.”
Eddy returns to the table and piles the filings near the ring and knife. “There, I think this looks realistic.”
Enrique drops his already quiet voice to a whisper, “I can’t help but ask: you’re sure you’re leaving only the faked printouts? You’re not leaving the sheet your dad made for me to use to make the fake or anything, right?”
Eddy whispers back, “We’re good, buddy. I totally destroyed everything else, and the original pictures of the markings are safe.”
“Good. Can never be too careful.” He leans his head back and closes his eyes. He clears his throat and adopts a normal volume. “Can you do me a favor?”
“Sure, what?”
Without opening his eyes, he points up to his empty IV. “More blood. In the IV or in my mouth, I don’t care.”
“I’ll see what I can do, your highness.”
“Thanks. Your loyalty will not be forgotten.”
The president takes off in Marine One from the south lawn of the White House, and from the safety of the air, tours the quarantined area of DC. First, the helicopter travels west to the Potomac River, then it heads south along the quarantine’s western border.
Below the helicopter, people struggle against the zombies. Some hide beneath blankets in the back of their cars; some are up in trees and kick the zombies that climb up after them; some are in buildings and hold zombies back at the tops of stairs. Of all the people caught inside the quarantine, those are the lucky ones.
Thousands of others were very unlucky. Many have been bitten, and many of those bitten have turned—much more quickly than they expected. The familiar timeline from infection to zombie isn’t applicable with this strain of the virus, and in less than an hour of being infected, the victim is back on their feet and hunting. With a lower-grade fever from the virus, these zombies awaken with less brain damage, making them an even greater threat to those around them.
The LAZoR System piles the dead in semicircles between its individual units. From the air, the adjoined arcs look like a kid’s drawing of water—the crests of the waves formed from bodies point outward from the quarantine zone, each tip marking the midpoint of a pair of LAZoR units. In the middle of it all is an ocean of hungry zombies and terrified civilians.
The president looks out the helicopter’s side window. “This is worse than I could have ever dreamed. Can we do anything?”
The head of the Secret Service detail in the helicopter shakes his head. “I wish we could, but we really can’t. Shall we continue around, or head to Camp David?”
“I need to see the entire quarantine; every inch of it.”
“Whatever you say.”
The helicopter turns east and traces the southern border of the quarantine’s boundary from the sky. The president doesn’t see General Riley on the FAA building because the building is blocks inside the quarantine. After a few minutes, the helicopter turns north, traveling above 8th Street, on the east side of the Capitol Building.
A man with a bloodied right arm hides among the pillars below the Capitol Building’s rotunda. He recognizes the white top and green body of the helicopter in the distance, and he walks out onto the roof. He salutes as the bite mark on his arm oozes.
A Secret Service agent no
tices the man’s movement and body position and points to him. “I think they’re saluting.”
The president salutes back through the window, toward the man, even though there’s no way the man could see the president from inside the helicopter.
When Marine One is out of sight, the man on the roof jumps headfirst to his death.
The helicopter banks left and traces over Florida Avenue—the northeast corner of the quarantine zone beside Gallaudet University. A Secret Service agent points out the window at a marine running down the tracks of the elevated Red Line.
-BOOM!-
A block behind the marine, just on the inside of the quarantine line, a cloud of dust and debris blankets the area while concrete and steel collapses. The president sighs.
The helicopter banks again and heads west along the north side of the quarantine. It passes over dozens of high-rise office buildings filled with people. Between the buildings, zombies swarm the streets.
“You better have a look at this.” A Secret Service agent points out the window on the right side of the helicopter, to the north.
The president leans over, at first looking down at the quarantine line, then noticing movement up the street outside it. “Are those…giant robots?”
“It looks like it.”
“Do we even have those?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Tell the pilot to bring us back around. I want to take a closer look.”
Felipe, Kevin, and Rosie notice the helicopter while they make their way down North Capitol Street. There have been several flying around recently, and because the three hacker-builders are fully occupied with piloting their homemade zombie-killing machines, they don’t think much of this helicopter.
However, when the helicopter lands in a large parking lot up ahead, they take notice.
Felipe decides that it’s probably wise to stop and speak with whoever landed the helicopter. Besides, he feels like showing off. He can’t radio his friends to tell them his intentions, so he just leads them in the helicopter’s direction.
As Felipe in Tiny Tim approaches, the Secret Service agents pile out of the helicopter and form a perimeter around it. One holds up a hand, up very high, to the fifteen-foot-tall machine in front of him, and Felipe stops.
The president steps out of the helicopter. Even though Felipe isn’t an American citizen—yet—he recognizes the president and feels amazing pride and pleasure.
Rosie and Kevin smile, clap, and swear happy obscenities at this turn of luck.
A couple blocks away, Corporal Jenkins grabs Master Sergeant Vega and points. “Sir, I think I just saw a White Top land about two or three blocks in that direction.”
Vega lowers his rifle and looks at him. “A White Top? Those are the president’s helos... Why would one land there? Are you sure it was a White Top?”
“Yeah, and my gut says the president is on board... I can feel it; it’s Marine One.”
Vega sighs. “Cover Robertson. When he gets back and verifies the tracks are no longer a threat, come and find me. I’m going to find out what’s going on.”
“Yes, sir.”
Vega runs off toward where the helicopter landed, to where three amateur hacker-builders and mech-pilot-warriors are meeting the president of the United States.
Madeline exits the vampire wing of the hospital and stops by the guard station. “Hi, umm, could you tell me where I can find a friend of mine?”
Deina, who was just about to start her break when Tatsu ordered her to stay on guard and take a double shift, nods while sighing. “Who are you looking for?”
“The Costanzas. I’m an—”
“1412. Just knock first; they’re getting a lot of visitors.”
Madeline hides her smile. “Okay, thank you.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
Instead of heading to their room, Madeline leaves the quarantine wing and hunts for the ICU. She finds it, but she isn’t allowed access through the electronically locked security doors. Her plans are dashed, but then she spots a janitor pushing a laundry cart filled with dirty scrubs. Gross. She frowns, then shrugs. Can’t catch anything, but still…gross.
Madeline follows the cart until it gets pushed into a room—without locks—and when the janitor leaves, she scoots inside. She checks the ceiling for cameras and doesn’t see any. She rifles through the bin with an upturned nose and downturned mouth. A few scrubs are FILTHY, and she drags them aside with her fingertips. Here we go. She pulls out a bundle that look barely used and holds them up to her; they should fit.
She hears a noise in the hall and darts into the corner behind the door, but no one comes in. She glances at the scrubs, then changes into them. They fit her well enough. She puts her hospital gowns in the bag with her other clothes.
Now, dressed like hospital staff, she returns to the bin to collect scrubs for Li Chen and Steve. Theirs don’t have to be quite so clean… A smile crosses her lips. She grabs two pairs of scrub tops and bottoms and is about to shove them in her handy garbage bag filled with clothes when she thinks better of it. She puts the dirty scrubs in another garbage bag first, to keep the rest of her things clean.
She leaves and heads back toward the vampire’s hospital wing.
As she approaches the corner, she hears Deina talking to someone, and Madeline’s eyes flash wide. She backtracks, slips into a bathroom, and changes into her hospital gowns again. She smiles at Deina as she approaches the guard station and is waved on with disinterest.
1412, eh? I should change into the scrubs again though... What was my room number?
The large cabinet that once blocked the door leading out of the utility tunnel crumbles into burning boards, and zombies pass into the basement of the Smithsonian Institution Building. They spread the fire, and the boxes and other flammables in the basement burn. Although sprinkler systems have been installed in different zones throughout the castle, and although much of the castle’s structure itself is flame-resistant, the furniture and artifacts inside are not. They burn before sprinklers subdue the flames, and in that time, zombies catch the fire and spread the blaze to other areas of the castle.
One zombie’s baggy jeans act like a drip torch as it explores the main floor of the castle. It finally succumbs to the flames and dies next to a gigantic wooden table covered with a to-scale model of downtown DC.
The large table catches fire, and as zombies rush through the space, they catch too.
Stories above, the blazes from the Molotov cocktails outside the South Tower are also being spread by zombies. The thickened fuel clings to their feet as they walk, run, stumble, or shamble, and they spread it to the offices on the top floor of the main building. These offices are lined with shelves of old books, are filled with filing cabinets holding papers, and are decorated with furniture made before fire-resistance was trendy.
Lance and Korina can’t see this though; they’ve already blocked the double-door-width opening to the South Tower with as much non-flammable material as they could find. Everything else, including busted up wooden doors and splintered 2x4 wall studs, is leaned against the barricade to brace it against the zombies.
After placing one more piece on the pile, Korina sits down near the spiral steps that lead up to the fifth-floor office.
Lance tosses a section of wall he demolished onto the pile and sees her. “Are you alright, Captain?”
She shakes. “No.”
Didn’t think so. “Let’s wrap this up and get you some blood.” His face goes white, and he listens to the conversations upstairs to see if they heard him. Luckily, the conversations continue, uninterrupted. “I mean, medicine.”
She doesn’t respond.
Lance sighs, takes a look at the barricade, and decides it’s plenty strong. Without asking Korina, he picks her up and carries her upstairs, then he sets her beside her injured squire.
Jambavan holds his head with one hand. His other arm hangs in a sling made from a dress shirt. Korina hunches over, favoring one side,
with her hands tucked up in her armpits.
Skip rushes over to her. “What happened down there? You look awful.”
“Medicine.” She keeps her head bowed.
Skip notices the burnt flesh on her forearms. He starts to reach over—to pull one of her hands from her armpits so he can see her injuries—but he stops. He yells over his shoulder instead, “I need that big med kit!”
A chaperone delivers it to him. Skip reaches in, hoping to find the jug of —or even a bottle of it—but after the group of vampires joined with the Smithsonian Institution employees, all of that got drank first. Now, all that’s left are clear vinyl bags filled with blood. That’ll raise some eyebrows... “Does anyone have a drink bottle? I need to mix some medicine.”
Jambavan turns to his side to pick up the bottle he was drinking from. At the same time, Jennifer leaves Tommy for a moment to bring Skip the drink bottle she was hiding blood in. Tommy’s face has blisters on it, but he’s not crying anymore. He and his stuffed doggy, Herbert, play with Minnie and Valentine.
Both bottles are presented to Skip. He takes the one from Jambavan. “Thanks.” Good, it’s not clear. As he brings it into the bag, he glances at Jennifer. “How’s Tommy?”
“He’ll be alright. How’s… Never mind.” She frowns and returns to her son.
Skip fills the drink bottle with blood and hands it to Korina. “Here.”
She doesn’t lift her hands up, but she opens her mouth. Skip pours in a little blood, letting her swallow it slowly. He doesn’t stop until she reopens her eyes.
When Skip looks into them, he shudders. Her eyes look cold and glassy; their movement delayed and sluggish. This is bad. “Korina, I know you’re hurt. Where?”
She swallows. “I’m fine.”
“Stop pretending.” Jambavan puts his free palm on her shoulder.
She almost smiles at him. I trained you well... Her eyes close, and she reopens them, looking at Skip. “I’m pretty messed up inside…and now my hands are too. The kids shouldn’t see.”