Queen's Gambit

by M. Lorrox

  Eddy finishes his loop around the block and expects to find June waiting with Skip. When he doesn’t see either of them, he’s confused. He kicks the skateboard up and catches its end as he pulls out his phone. He had it on silent, and he notices he has a series of texts and missed calls. What?

  He clicks over to his texts. He has some from his dad and some from June. On the screen where it shows his conversations, he can read just a bit of both.

  June: Eddy, what should I do?!?

  Dad: Get in the car with Schermer!

  What happened? He looks around for a car but doesn’t see any stopped. He walks toward the street to be ready when one comes, and he calls June.

  She sends it to voice mail.

  Okay... He checks her text messages:

  They were going to lose him on a bus, so I got on it with him...

  He’s sitting right in front of me!

  Eddy, what should I do?!?

  As he finishes reading them, another comes in.

  I can’t answer the phone you dummy, text me what to do!

  Schermer pulls up and slams on the brakes near Eddy. Eddy jumps in the front and barely gets the door closed when Schermer peels out, cuts off a taxi, and gets a colorful response and gesture from the other driver.

  Eddy buckles himself in.

  “Okay, so he’s on a bus, and we know the route. We should be able to catch up, as long as he doesn’t get off before we can get to him.”

  “He hasn’t gotten off yet.”

  Schermer shoots Eddy a confused glance. “How do you know that?”

  Eddy bites his lip while he considers what he should say, then he sighs and holds up his phone. “I’ve got a tail on the bus. What should I tell them to do?”

  “Tell them NOT to be seen.”

  Eddy texts June. “Done. What else though?”

  “Ask where they are?”

  Eddy texts June and waits for her response.

  We just got on a highway.

  Eddy tells Schermer, who gets stuck at a light. “Shit!” She shakes her head, then jolts and lifts her wrist to her mouth. “The bus just got on the highway. Over.”

  The bus is quieter now that they’re underway, and June winces when she hears the update through her earpiece. Yikes! That’s loud. Andrew glances over his shoulder. Oh no! June closes her eyes and starts singing to herself quietly, pretending to be listening to music. He turns back and faces forward. June peeks her eyes open and breathes a silent sigh of relief. She texts Eddy:

  No radio! I think he can hear my ear piece, he’s RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME.

  Eddy reads it and clears his throat. “Uh, Ma’am? The tail thinks the target can hear the earpiece.”

  “Tell them to turn it off. Just call me Major right now. Ask if they’re still on the highway.”

  Eddy relays the message and waits until he gets June’s reply.

  Getting off now and passing by a cemetery.

  “They’re off and passing a cemetery. Earpiece is off.”

  Schermer gets on the highway and merges abruptly in front of a van. She lifts her wrist and speaks into the microphone. “The bus is passing Arlington National Cemetery. What exit do I take? Over.”

  The car’s radio plays the response over the speakers. “Rosslyn, Major. This is pursuit vehicle one, we’re a couple miles in front of you. Bus not in sight. Over.”

  Eddy brushes his hair out of his face and turns to Schermer. “Major, what if he gets off and no one has caught up yet?”

  Schermer speaks into her radio. “Is he headed toward his home? Over.”

  “Negative. Swat pulled and headed to Arlington. Over.”

  Schermer looks at Eddy. “If your tail can keep on him and not be caught, they should.”

  Eddy looks out the window and thinks about June following a man who apparently hates vampires and wants to kill hundreds of people. A quiver shakes through him when he imagines the man snarling at June the way the man snarled at him. Who knows what he’d do. Eddy picks up his phone and texts his dad.

  Dad, I’m texting with June. If Blackjack gets off the bus before FBI arrive, what should June do?

  Eddy glances out the window at some other cars on the highway. There’s a dog with his head hanging out of the car next to him. The dog looks happy.

  Eddy gets a response from his dad:

  SHE STAYS ON THE BUS.

  He switches conversations over to the one with June.

  If he gets off the bus, YOU WILL NOT FOLLOW HIM. Stay on that bus!

  Schermer glances over at Eddy and notices how tense he looks. “It’ll all be okay in the end. If we lose him, we’ll evacuate the hotel, and the FBI can track him down. He doesn’t know we’re on to him, remember? And if he blows up an empty hotel, so what? It can be rebuilt.”

  Eddy nods. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  Schermer exits the highway and drives toward the more metropolitan area. “I think I know where to go now, but hopefully the car has caught up to them.”

  June is relieved when she reads Eddy’s text... At first. Then she feels sad. If it was Eddy on the bus instead of me, they’d have him follow the target. I just know it. She sighs and looks at Andrew. I bet I’m strong enough now to take him, I bet I’m way stronger than he is. I bet—WHOA! June shakes her head and looks at him again. There’s a color now. Yellow. What’s that mean...? He’s going to get off.

  June looks out the windows and sees a bus stop coming up on the side. She stands and walks over to the door to get off. Others line up behind her. She waits patiently for the bus to stop and the doors to open. She steps off the bus, then walks in the direction the bus was headed—to a corner, to cross the street. When she turns and waits for the cross signal, she peeks out of the side of her shades and sees Andrew walking toward the same corner. He checks his watch and smiles.

  She looks at the signs of the intersection and sends Eddy a text:

  Off the bus with him, corner of 17th Street and Lynn. Waiting to cross Lynn. Headed uphill.

  Eddy receives the text and groans. “Corner of 17th Street and Lynn. Crossing Lynn. Headed uphill.” June, what are you doing?

  Schermer slaps the steering wheel. “Great!” Then, she relays the message into the radio.

  Sadie and the other select vampires from the House of Elders, the entire War and Defense Cabinet, and most of the High Council sit in a large room in the top level of the Pentagon. One table in the room is completely empty, and Hamid ibn al Zaman tries hard to not look at his watch. They’re late. In their own house. How typical. He looks at his watch, and the door opens.

  A dozen military officials enter the room and sit down. General James Roland Riley remains standing. “Thank you all for coming. I’ll get straight to the point. Now that we have an immunity solution, however brief, it opens the possibility that the abandoned assets in the western states are vulnerable.”

  Hamid studies the man’s face. Vulnerable to whom?

  General Riley picks up a remote and presses a button. A map of the United States shows up on a screen with a red overlay covering the bulk of the country’s land area—the land abandoned due to the zombies. “Believe it or not gentlemen, but before the outbreak, the United States military had a significant presence in the areas shown in red here.”

  The other military personnel chuckle. The vampires do not.

  He clicks a button and an overlay of colored dots appears. “These are the locations of our abandoned assets. Now that we have a way to protect ourselves from the virus, we need to recover the most vital of them.”

  Sadie glances around the room. She catches the eyes of a few other vampires, each of whom shrug back to her. She takes a deep breath and raises her hand.

  General Riley smiles at the polite gesture. “Please, you are all specialists here, feel free to ask any questions.”

  She lowers her han
d. “Thank you, sir. I’m just curious as to why this is such an immediate issue.”

  “Good question. Let me introduce General William Campbell. General, if you please.”

  A slightly overweight and balding man stands up. “Hello.”

  Señor Raúl Lucas smiles at the man. “Hello, sir.”

  The room chuckles.

  General Campbell walks with a slight limp out to the front of the room. “We haven’t had the resources or the need, frankly, to go and reclaim these assets. We can all agree that we’ve had bigger issues as a country to deal with. Enemies of the United States still exist, mind you, all of which, basically, would love to seize these assets. But they haven’t made any attempt to do so, for a few reasons.”

  He coughs and holds up fingers as he speaks. “Number one: it’s dangerous. The region is filled with zombies. Enough said. And number two: any attempt to infiltrate and seize anything of value would require a large force, partly due to issue number one of there being millions of zombies in the area, and partly due to issue number one of there being millions of zombies in the area.”

  Sadie smiles. Is this guy for real?

  “Seriously though, any invading force would have to be substantial. We have geosynchronous satellites monitoring these sites, and the Navy still maintains a small fleet in the Pacific Ocean, so up until this point, a large invasion from a foreign power has been an impractical and, well, a suicidal task... That is, unless this foreign power had a temporary immunity to the infection.”

  He smiles and raises a finger to the air. “Then the task is less dangerous and could be carried out with a small team that could avoid detection. We have let these assets lie fallow, taking a chance by leaving them, I’ll add, because we figured that we would be the first to find a solution to the zombie virus. And we have. And now that we have, we must assume that our enemies will develop the capability on their own. If they do—” He points to the projected image. “—they’ll want those assets.”

  The vampires in the room nod.

  “Any questions?”

  “Yes. Hello, I am Vincent de Villablino, chair of our War and Defense Cabinet. This makes perfect sense, but why are we here?”

  General Campbell looks away from Vincent. “Any other questions?”

  Chuckles and head shakes spread across the room.

  “Just kidding.” He motions back to General Riley. “General Riley will follow up on that one. Thank you, everyone.” He limps back to his chair and takes his seat as General Riley stands.

  Sadie leans over to her newest friend, Dr. Aharon Fugleberg, and whispers, “I had to stop myself from clapping just then. He could do stand-up.”

  Aharon smiles and nods, whispering back, “I know, right?”

  Riley clears his throat. “You’re here because you are all experts or leaders in particular fields relevant to this mission and because we need your help.”

  Mary raises her hand and speaks. “Hello, Mary Wollstone, High Councilor. What exactly do you need our help with? They are your assets, after all.”

  “Ms. Wollstone, I believe our two groups can help each other.”

  She turns to Hamid and raises her brow.

  He looks up at the general. “General Riley, please elucidate.”

  The WALK sign turns on, and June steps off the curb and onto the road with a few other people, including Andrew.

  Think. What do I do next? She looks ahead.

  For two blocks, there’s only one way to go: up the hill. On one side of the street is a large office building, and on the other is a high, stone retention wall. Past those though, it’s not clear where to go. To the right, June can see a busier metropolitan area with retail, office buildings, and restaurants. Straight ahead, office buildings and giant apartment complexes stretch into the sky. To the left, she can see smaller apartment buildings and some row-houses.

  I have no idea which way. She grabs her phone and texts Eddy.

  He gets the text and looks perplexed. “Sh…shit—they want me to call.”

  Schermer takes a tight turn and cuts off a sportscar. “Then do it.”

  Eddy was studying a map of the area, and he leaves it open. He calls her.

  June’s phone rings when she’s ten feet from the intersection. That was close. She fumbles for a second while she pulls her phone out of her pocket and steps out of the way of the people behind her. She leans her back against the stone wall and answers Eddy’s call. “Katie! How are you?”

  “Uh, fine. Everything okay?”

  She smiles and looks around. Andrew is about to pass her. She makes sure her green glasses cover her eyes. “I just got off the bus actually. ...Uh-huh, yeah.”

  “I know, and then you headed uphill. Agents are on their way, but they need to know which direction he’s headed in. Is he still going up that hill?”

  “Hmm, let me see.” June watches Andrew approach the intersection and turn left. When he’s out of sight past the stone wall, June walks to the intersection. “No, not anymore.” She checks the name of the road he turned to walk along. 16th Street the way he went, Oak Street in the other direction. Hmm... “Well I’ll have to get a ride... Ha-ha, NO—not even close to getting my learners permit, you fool.”

  Eddy switches apps and checks the map. “Major, he turned south onto 16th Street!”

  “Great work, keep it up.” She relays the information.

  “Ha! Good one.” June holds the phone to her ear and glances around. Andrew is a dozen yards down 16th Street, which soon curves to the right and runs nearly parallel with the road she’s on. The block ahead of her, if she were to go straight, has an open area between some buildings on the left side. She walks straight and crosses the road, then picks up her pace to get to the open area.

  “Listen, he’s on 16th Street, and I’m on...Clarendon? Yeah. What now?”

  “Hold on.”

  Eddy covers the mouthpiece. “Have the agents picked him up yet?”

  Schermer talks into the radio. “Do we have him yet? Over.”

  “Negative, target walked against traffic on a one-way, we had to drive around. Turning onto Clarendon Boulevard at the top of the hill.”

  Eddy returns to the call. “They don’t have him yet. Do you still see him?”

  June gets to an opening beside a sandwich shop and tries to spot him through the bushes. There are people moving, but they’re obscured by the foliage and a chain-link fence. “Hold on.” She lifts her shades and tries to focus as much as she can. A blur of a person catches her eye. “Yup, still walking.”

  “On 16th?”

  “Yup.” She looks ahead to see the next intersection. Ode Street. “I’m going to try and follow from a block away.”

  “Be careful.”

  June gets close to the corner and waits a few seconds before stepping out past the building and looking down Ode Street.

  Now. She takes a step out and looks down at her phone, then glances quickly to the right, and to the left. Alright, he’s staying straight. “He didn’t turn on Ode.” June walks straight through the intersection, staying on Clarendon, and checks the name of the next street. Pierce.

  “Hold on a sec... An agent is on foot and making their way to intercept him.”

  She sighs in relief. “About time!” June reaches the intersection of Pierce and Clarendon, and she repeats her casual glance around. Where is he? Oh no. “I lost him, he didn’t get to Pierce.”

  Eddy tells Schermer, and she informs the agents while she makes an abrupt turn and steps on the gas. “If the map in my head is right, he might be headed this way.”

  Eddy looks out the window. And if it’s wrong?

  June turns left and walks briskly down Pierce Street. When she can see past the building that was on the corner of Clarendon and Pierce, she notices a park with a walkway that cuts through it. “He might have cut through a park. Uh, he wou
ld have turned left.”

  She continues down the road and looks for movement on the other side of the park. Her view opens, and she sees a busy highway at the bottom of the hill. “I think he’s walking toward a highway.” She glances behind her to make sure Andrew isn’t sneaking up on her somehow.

  He isn’t.

  She keeps walking. There’s a high-rise apartment building to her left and a construction zone on her right. After a few more steps, she sees the far edge of a walking bridge that crosses the highway.

  She jogs to the edge of the building and peaks around it. Got him! “There’s a bridge across the highway, and he’s climbing some steps to get on it.”

  “Okay.” Eddy sets the phone down and tells Schermer. Schermer parks the car next to a pizza place and points out the windshield. Eddy looks. It’s him!

  Schermer speaks into the radio. “Target crossing Route 50 on the walking bridge. Tell me you’ve got somebody on the other side. Over.”

  “Working on it, but agent has visual on target from behind. Approaching bridge. Good job Major, we’ve got him. Over.”

  Schermer laughs and slaps Eddy on the shoulder. Eddy picks up his phone. “Hey, you there? ...Hello?”

  “Yeah, I’m here. He’s on the bridge, should I follow?”

  “Negative, agents are in pursuit. Well done.” He smiles and imagines her face.

  “Thank god.”

  “Where are you? We’ll come and get you.”

  “Umm, who’s we?”

  Oh, right. Anonymous. “Stay where you are, text me your location, I’ll meet you.” Eddy hangs up and looks at Schermer. “It’s been fun, but I’ve got to go take care of...the tail. I need to go outside. Have any blood?”