by M. Lorrox
“Just now, my phone started ringing. I haven’t been able to place or receive calls for hours, but it just started ringing in my pocket. I feel it’s safe to assume that at least some telecommunications networks in the area are back online. This will be crucial to help survivors inside the quarantine zone in DC, and I urge people watching at home to wait for calls from loved ones in DC, and to not place any.” She raises a hand and motions emphatically. “Let those that are in dangerous situations call out for help, and let emergency personnel respond.”
The sound of the Chinook helicopter’s rotors builds behind Wren, and she turns and presses her body against the statue to open the frame. “I’m not sure if we’ll be able to catch a glimpse of the helicopter, but it is now flying out of DC and to the west.
The Chinook flies overhead, and Jackson tilts and pans the camera as much as he can from his awkward position under the horse-statue’s tail. Light pollution and some clouds grant a silhouette of the craft, and when it leaves the frame, Jackson returns the camera to Wren, masterfully adjusting the lens’s focus during the movement.
“We can speculate about the mission the brave souls on that helicopter just performed, but one thing is certain. With communication opening back up, rescue missions will be able to begin. This is an important step forward in this ongoing crisis.”
She pauses as she swipes some hair out of her face that was blown by smoke-laden wind. “If you are just joining us...”
Corporal Daniels runs to the command tent on top of the FAA building with his rifle at the ready. “Are we taking fire? From the helo? Is everyone alright?” Then he sees what’s left of General Riley’s body. “What the fuck happened?”
Specialist Smith, the “egghead” that helped the marine block access to the roof earlier, steps out of the tent. “Corporal, take it easy. We’re not under threat.”
Specialist Klein walks out to join them. Upon catching a glimpse of the general’s corpse, he gags then turns away. “Jesus H. Christ… Smith, you already got my twenty bucks, now you get to inform command.”
“…FUCK.”
Daniels and Klein listen in while Smith calls the Pentagon Field Command Center on the microwave relay.
“This is General Campbell. What’s the emergency?”
Smith swallows. “Sir, General Riley’s dead.”
“WHAT? …But you’re not? Last I heard, there was a helicopter landing nearby. What exactly happened there, soldier?”
“Sir, I’m not really sure where to start with an explanation, but we could use an evac… And eventually, someone is going to have to clean the roof. Pieces of the general are all over the place.”
After splitting up from Naga and Ricochet at the L’Enfant Plaza Metro station, Qilin and her team have been moving east along a tunnel that is shared between the Orange, Blue, and Silver Lines. The first two stations her small squad clears are inside the quarantine zone, and neither station has joining or crossing tunnels, so the group continues on. As they approach the Eastern Market station, they hear gunfire echoing through the tunnels—some of the marines General Riley deployed are positioned on that station’s platform.
Qilin swings her axes in a haphazard way, slicing or crushing through zombies, depending on her aim. The blood splatters wildly from some of her strikes, and the Green Berets with her give her plenty of room. She’s dressed as a pedestrian, with tight jeans, high-top sneakers, a tank-top, and a thin denim jacket. All her clothes are covered in blood, bits of flesh, bone fragments, and brain matter.
The last zombie near her dives toward her, and she swings down one axe as she steps backward and to one side. She misses the zombie’s head as it flies past her, and instead buries the blade of the axe into its shoulder and chest. The zombie still falls, but it requires another strike from her other axe to quit its movement. Qilin puts a foot on the zombie and pushes while she pulls the axes from the corpse. She sighs and raises the weapons up in her hands. “These are so crude. They’ve made quite the mess of me.”
One of the Green Berets in her squad, Sergeant P. Lewis, clears her throat. “Can I ask why you use them?”
Qilin tilts her head toward the Green Beret. “Oh, I don’t. Coach—that massive Polish guy—he had these and said I could borrow them.” She shrugs. “I didn’t have my rapier with me.”
The other soldier, Sergeant Williams, just stares.
Qilin motions with her head down the tunnel and toward the gunfire. “Sounds like you’ve got friends ahead. Instead of catching one of their bullets in my face—I’m sure I look like I probably should with all this blood on me—I’m going to turn back. You two got this, right?”
Both soldiers smile: they did a good job, and they feel like they might live to see tomorrow. Williams nods. “Totally. Thanks for your help.”
“No prob. Later!” Qilin pretends she’s a robot and spins on her heels without moving her hands. When she’s facing back the way they came, she turns on the heat, and she’s gone.
P. Lewis blinks, and she misses it. “Whoa... Anyway, Jack, I like her idea of not getting shot. Let’s sing real loud so they know we’re not Z. Do you like the Beastie Boys?”
“Duh, of course. Know Paul Revere?”
-Psssh- She starts to walk while bobbing to the rhythm in her head. “Nowwwww, here’s a little story I got to tell about three bad soulja’s you know so well. It started way back, in history with Qilin—”
“Jack Williams—”
“And me, P. Lewie!”...
Two metro stations north of L’Enfant Plaza, Naga and his two soldiers enter the Gallery Place/Chinatown station. They’ve had a much harder fight to this point; it’s one of the busiest stations and the hundreds of people caught inside when the zombies arrived have joined their ranks. The station is another hub where multiple lines meet—here the Yellow and Green Lines offer transfers with the Red Line—and when the squad clears out the last zombie along the tunnel they came in on, Naga stops and turns to his soldiers.
He tilts his bald and tattooed head down to look at the shorter, but still taller-than-average, Green Berets. “I cannot ask you to go on alone, but there are three tunnels and three of us. What are your feelings?”
The soldier that flanks Naga’s left tosses a spent magazine to the side, and he clicks in his last one. “I’m almost out of ammo—I’ll happily go on, but I’ll have to use my rifle like a club.”
The soldier on Naga’s other side steps forward. “Me too, I’ve got maybe twenty rounds, tops.”
Naga nods. “Do you want to stay together?”
The Special Forces soldiers look at each other, then they shake their heads. The one with more bullets removes a few from his last spare magazine. “I’ll fight till I die. If we split up, we’ll cover more ground.” He hands the bullets to his brother in arms.
“Thanks, and I agree. We split up.”
Naga nods. “Very well. But your rifles will make ineffective clubs.” He grabs the staff of his guandao in the middle with both hands, and he unscrews the two halves. The piece that has the large curved and flat blade at its tip has a hollow section inside the staff, and Naga hands this top half to one soldier. The bottom half has a long, pointed blade that was hiding inside the other piece. He hands that section to the other soldier. “Use these well.”
“Sir, what about you?”
Naga winds his hands behind his back and slides two objects from his belt. As he brings his hands forward, each now holds a long, curved karambit knife with a file-worked spine and bone-scales on the handle. This style of weapon has a ring large enough to place a finger through in place of a pommel on the opposite end of the blade. Most humans on earth who are trained to fight with these knives would place their pointer finger, or maybe their middle finger through the ring, and they would position the blade so it extends out the pinky side of their hand with the tip sweeping forward.
Naga, however, is one of a kind. He wears these knives on his ring fingers. With the strength of his pinky alone, he
holds the knives in their fighting positions. The claw-shaped steel blade, and much of the handle, extends in a sweeping arc away from his hands. This extends his reach and grants him Velociraptor-like slashing capabilities. “Do not be concerned with me. Good luck, my brothers.”
The soldiers motion to salute, but Naga bows, and they bow back.
After leaving the L’Enfant Plaza Metro station, Ricochet and his small squad headed west and then north, toward the Smithsonian station and Metro Center on the Orange, Blue, and Silver Lines. Their fight has also been heavy due to the massive population that was caught inside these stations.
The Green Berets with Ricochet have grown quite appreciative of the vampire knight’s odd choice in weaponry. He fires the small caliber bullets with incredible accuracy—most zombies fall with one shot. Occasionally, one of his small bullets—ironically—ricochets off a zombie’s skull, but the zombie is never happy about it, and then it usually presents a moment of angry pause for a follow-up shot.
The Red Line also connects at Metro Center, and while the group clears the huge station, they hear distant gunfire coming from the Red Line tunnel to the east.
As they finish covering Metro Center’s tile floor with the remaining zombies’ corpses, the soldier that split from Naga’s group at Gallery Place/Chinatown emerges into the station. “Hey! Sure am glad to see you. I only have one shot left.”
Ricochet notices the top half of Naga’s weapon sticking out of the soldier’s pack. He pulls the toothpick from his lips. “What happened to your squad? Your squad leader?”
“We split up, he gave us his weapon, and he went on with some knives.”
Ricochet breathes a sigh of relief. “Oh good, glad to hear it.” He flicks the toothpick away and grabs a fresh one from his pocket.
“Can I have some rounds? I’m taking the Red Line to the west, and it keeps going, so I’ve still got a job to do.”
Ricochet comes back to the moment. “Right.” He turns to his two Green Berets. “Whoever has most ammo, go with him and continue on the Red Line. Whoever has least, come with me.
One of the soldiers in Ricochet’s squad scratches his head. “Wouldn’t it make more sense if you went with him? I mean, you’ve got a ton of ammo still, right? He could clean up behind you on this busier line, and we can take over on the Red Line.”
Ricochet squints at him. “That makes sense. It’s been nice shootin’ with you two. Good luck.”
They salute. “Thank you, sir.” Then, his old squad runs off down the Red Line tunnel, headed west.
Ricochet places some new magazines onto his hip and thigh MOLLE straps. “So, what’s your name?”
“First Lieutenant Murphy, sir.”
“Mind if I call you Murph? Name’s Ricochet. Rick is fine. You ready to move out?”
Murphy looks down at his rifle. “Can I ask a favor, sir?”
“Suuuurree.”
“I’ve only got one shot left. Let me take the next Z, and then I can switch weapons. I’ll give Naga’s pole-arm…thing…a try.”
“Deal.”
Coach and his squad of four Green Berets didn’t find much resistance in their path from the Rosslyn Metro station to the Foggy Bottom station in DC. They only happened upon a half dozen zombies while they crossed under the Potomac River in the tunnel, but once they reach the station, the situation changes. Now inside the quarantine zone, they find, and have to destroy, a lot of zombies.
They’ve cleared the lower platforms beside the rails, but there are zombies on the platform above them where travelers scan their farecards and exit to the street. The squad backtracks to the stairs that lead to the upper platform, and Coach pauses beside an advertisement for George Washington University. A zombie comes crashing down the stairs toward him, growling and flailing its arms.
The Green Berets raise their carbines.
“Hold your fire. I got it.” While still looking at the advertisement, Coach kills the zombie with a single blow from his solid-metal nadziak—a horseman’s pick. The zombie falls with the pick stabbing straight through its head.
The weapon that looks like an oversized war hammer gets its name from its use in ripping horsemen from their mounts. They were designed to be used by cavalry, and indeed, Coach started using his when he was a Winged Hussar in the eighteenth century. Today, he can easily single-hand-wield the weapon with more speed and strength than any human ever could, even if they used both hands while on horseback.
He nods at the advertisement.
The Green Berets in his squad look at each other and shrug. Then, one asks, “Is everything alright, sir?”
“Mmm-hmm. Just thinking it would be nice to finish my degree sometime.”
“Dare I ask what it’s in?”
Coach turns and smiles a broad, toothy grin under his thick wall of mustache. “My second cousin got me into general relativity and quantum mechanics a while back, but the times have changed, and I’m thinking about getting into quantum computing. I think that’d be cool. Maybe something with lasers. Lasers are REALLY cool.”
A group of zombies rush toward the top of the stairs. Coach swings his flanged mace back and heaves the weapon straight toward the front zombie’s chest, and the group crashes and crumples like bowling pins hit by a cannonball.
He bends down and rips his nadziak from the first zombie that interrupted him. He notices that the soldiers are still standing slack-jawed beside him. “We’ll see though, school’s just so damn expensive.”
When the Foggy Bottom Metro station is clear, Coach doesn’t lead his squad further into DC. He orders two soldiers to stay on the lower platform and guard the station—in case any zombies try and escape DC through the tunnel—while he and the other two Green Berets head toward the surface. Coach asks these soldiers to take up defensive firing positions at the station’s main entrance. “Guard the station, just don’t shoot me when I come back—I’m going to take a look around up there.”
When he emerges from the station at ground level, he sees zombies rushing around in the distance. He also hears plenty of noise—not traffic sounds, but shouts, growls, and groans. After a minute of exploration around the block near the station, he hears some screaming coming from the side of a building. A group of fifteen college kids huddle on a small fire escape, and they kick at zombies that try to climb up.
“HEY!” Coach bellows, and the commotion stops—from the kids and zombies alike. He clangs his metal weapons together once... Twice... Three times, then he blasts toward the zombies.
The smartest of the zombies flee at the sight of the stocky knight running at them. His chainmail shirt jangles under his blood-soaked tunic, his weapons are coated red and shine under the streetlights, and his face beneath his mustache is an angry one.
The zombies that stayed are quickly rewarded with iron smashing into their brains.
When the area is clear, Coach looks up at the kids. “Inside isn’t safe?”
One guy leans over the edge. “No. I don’t know how, but they’re everywhere in the building. They’re breaking down doors and getting into the rooms.”
Coach looks around; there’s no zombies rushing toward him. “Climb on down here. I’ve got soldiers in the metro; they can keep you safe.”
Coach leads the college kids to the metro, and he pulls his squad back to the lower platform. He asks the kids to sit against a wall, far from the steps leading to the upper platform. He calls his squad together. “I need one Green Beret to stay near the kids, one to guard the tunnel from DC, and one to guard the main entrance. I’m going to look for more survivors. The last Green Beret will come with me and bring any new survivors back down here to the group. That soldier best travel light… Any volunteers?”
A lanky Green Beret steps forward, slips off his battle-pack, then balances on one leg while he stretches the other leg’s quad by bending his foot back to his butt. “I’ll go with you.” He switches the leg he stands on and stretches the other side.
“You’re Giles,
right? I take it you run?”
Giles nods. “And jump. And bend. And occasionally, frolic.”
Coach shakes his head. “Running is good. Let’s go.”
“Dude, come on! We gotta get out of here.” Li Chen kneels alongside Steve, and he cranes his head to look back toward the hospital.
Steve sits on the ground with his back leaned against the same tree they hung out at earlier. “She ripped my fucking hair off!”
Li Chen shakes his head. Never saw shit like that before… “One more reason to bolt.”
Steve touches his head and winces. “I can’t ride like this man. My guts are killing me, and my head is still raw. Dude, get me some blood.”
Li Chen shakes his head. “All out, man.”
“We’re next to a fucking hospital. Come on, I’m hurting here.”
“You stabbed that kid, remember? And I stabbed that crazy girl…and Mad too... There’s no way I’m going near that place. Listen, somebody’s gonna come looking for us. We gotta bounce!”
“Think she’s alright? Madeline?”
“She’s a vampire in the vampire wing of a hospital. She’ll be fine.”
“Ugh...” Steve pushes off the ground and stands, leaning against the tree. His other wounds: the hole June bit in his arm, the claw-marks across his face, and the five-finger-puncture holes in his stomach, all ooze blood and throb. “Alright, we’ll hot-foot it. You gotta help me walk though.”
Li Chen stands and folds his arms across his chest. “Sorry bro, but we need to get out-of-town style out of here, not leave our bikes and be stuck in fucking Fairfax with dust chasing us. Just stay here and rest a bit. When you’re healed some, you can catch up with me.” He holds up Enrique’s phone. “I’ll bring this to Lorenzo. We don’t need the ring, just the pictures. We’ll split the cash.”