Queen's Gambit

by M. Lorrox

  Sadie glances over to the other elders. Enrique and Katherine are giving Philip first aid, while Bruce and Eliza address Vincent’s wounds. Sadie sighs, then helps Raúl sit back down in the shade. She sees Korina, takes a few steps out of the shade—away from the elders—and walks to the edge of the roof by the courtyard. “Korina, Jambavan, Eddy, come over here.”

  Looking down at the courtyard below, Sadie sees dozens of dead zombies strewn along the ground. Most have a single bullet hole in their head.

  “Mom?”

  Sadie turns to face the group she called over. “The elders must be brought to safety; many are injured and they need assistance. Korina, you and Flying Eagle need to do this. Eddy and I have to get to Dr. Melgaard’s lab.”

  Korina stares for a moment. “That’s crazy, you—”

  “There’s information you don’t have—information that no one else has. You must do your duty; you must protect them.” Sadie points out from her shoulder to the other elders, her gaze never shifting away from Korina.

  I do have that duty… Korina glances at her squire beside her, then back to Sadie. “Very well.”

  “Jambavan, can you set us up to repel down?”

  He nods. “Is that all? I mean, can I help more?”

  Sadie smiles. “Help the elders to safety.”

  Korina’s voice creaks. “How do you think you can succeed? There are tens of thousands of zombies down there?”

  Eddy clears his throat. “Because we have to.”

  Still leaning over Philip, Flying Eagle glances up at Enrique and nods. “Good luck.”

  “Thank you. I’ll see you after.” Enrique runs over to where Sadie and the others are talking. “I volunteer to help.”

  Eddy smiles at him and claps him on the shoulder, once again. “Awesome! We can use it. Have any weapons with you?”

  Sadie takes a step toward Korina while Jambavan prepares gear and Eddy and Enrique talk. “I have something more to ask of you, after the elders are safe.”

  Korina stands up as straight as she can muster with her painfully mis-healing ribs. “Ask it, and it will be done.”

  Sadie swallows and steels her emotion. “See to my daughter—see to the vampire kids that are touring in DC. I can imagine that with news of the zombies here, that things could get out of hand downtown.”

  Korina nods. “Jambavan and I will head to them immediately after securing the elders, and we will escort them back to the safety of the hotel.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re very welcome, Elder Costanza.”

  Sadie steps back and turns toward the others. She shouts to get everyone’s attention, “Who knows where Dr. Melgaard’s lab is inside the Pentagon?”

  The elders that are still conscious stare back at her, then they all watch as Gerard Dziedzic struggles to stand. Enrique runs over to him, grabs his arm, and helps him up.

  “Thank you.”

  “No problem, sir.” Enrique supports him while Sadie and Eddy jog over.

  Gerard smiles when he recognizes the woman in the Red Company uniform as Raúl’s friend. “High Councilor Flaxman took me there on a tour once; it’s in the sub-basement, Wing D.”

  Enrique is confused. “Sir, do you mean Basement, Ring D?”

  Gerard looks at him, then shakes his head. “No. There’s a top-secret sub-basement, and past the usual rings are Wings A-through-D, and the lab is in… I suppose I should say, the lab is under Wing D.”

  Sadie clears her throat. “Gerard, how do we get there?”

  He exhales and blows his lips outward. “It’s complicated.”

  While Jack makes some calls and Sky climbs all over the Armadillo she’s named Lucy, Charlie uses the radio in the vehicle belonging to the specialists that are taking samples inside the C-130. For the last few minutes, he’s been arguing with the radio operator. “Are you kidding me? Where’s Winters? Put her on. Over.”

  “She can’t help you right now. Sir, all our birds are in the air. Over.”

  “I need to get to the Pentagon, and you’re telling me this air force base has no chopters?”

  “Sir, we have no aircraft available right now. Over.”

  “Where’s Campbell? Put him on.”

  “General Campbell is no longer on site. Please follow standard radio procedures and say OVER when you’re finished. Over.”

  Charlie grits his teeth. I will rip your damn head off if you don’t start helping me. He squeezes the radio transmitter so hard that it nearly breaks apart in his hand. “I need to talk to the highest-ranking officer there, immediately. OVER!”

  “Colonel, you are speaking to a Brigadier General... I’m in charge of mission control right now, and I’m the highest-ranking official currently able to speak to you. Most of our resources have been placed on alert or have been deployed. The best I can do is re-task a bird when it completes its current assignment. Over.”

  Charlie sighs. “How soon can you get me there? Over.”

  “Stand by… We’ll have a UH-1Y returning in about fifty, five-zero minutes. Over.”

  “I can’t wait that long.” Charlie shakes his head. “Over.” He looks out the open door to the black sedan that JD—AKA FBI Agent Jack Diamond—drove Sky to the base with. He drops the radio handset and jogs over to Jack, who is still on the phone.

  Jack nods when he sees Charlie coming. “Trust me Dave, this is important. …Thanks.” He hangs up the phone. “Hey Charlie. Any luck?”

  He shakes his head. “You?”

  Jack nods. “The bureau doesn’t quite understand why I’m going on a rescue mission, but they can’t figure out a better person to take my place. It looks like we’re in business.”

  Charlie claps him on the shoulder. “I appreciate you doing this. I have no idea why you are, but I’m really glad you’re able to help.”

  “You said that he’s one of your men?”

  Charlie nods.

  “My assignment was to assess any potential threats coming from the vampire knights, specifically the ones with political importance.” He nods his head and gestures toward Charlie. “And as far as I can tell, you and your men are the kind of threats we can use.” He smiles oddly at Charlie. “I hope that helping you now, puts me on your good side.”

  Charlie laughs. “You’re doing a great job of that.” He glances over Jack’s shoulder and sees Sky doing a walking handstand on the hood of the Armadillo. He rolls his eyes and motions to her with his chin. “I can count on you to take care of her?”

  Jack doesn’t flinch. “Yes, you can.”

  Charlie steps closer to him, looking him in the eyes. He wants to intimidate him—or threaten him—to make sure Sky stays safe, but he doesn’t. Instead he chuckles and gives him a hug.

  “Aw, it’s not goodbye, big guy, it’s see you later.”

  “Shut up.” Charlie releases him. “Listen, I need to get to the Pentagon, but they can’t fly me. Can I take your car?”

  Jack sucks some air in through his teeth and grimaces. “You can, but it won’t do much good—video of zombies inside the Pentagon is all over the news, and I hear the beltway is a disaster.

  Charlie grinds his boot into the tarmac. “Are you fucking kidding me? I have to get there!”

  “Excuse me, umm, sir?” A young airman in fatigues, still catching his breath from running, is standing behind Charlie, saluting him.

  Charlie turns. “At ease. What?”

  “I have this for you, sir.” He hands forward a small black pouch. “Senior Airman Winters just got it to me and made me get it to you as soon as possible.”

  She came through, excellent. He smiles and takes the pouch. “She’s a friend of yours?”

  “Uh, yes, something like that, sir.”

  Charlie smiles. “Send her my thanks.”

  The young man nods. “I will. S
ir? I overheard that you need to get to the Pentagon?”

  Charlie takes a step toward the man. “That’s right. Can you get me there?”

  He swallows. “Well, not me, but you could grab a ride with somebody on a motorcycle.”

  Charlie smiles. “You have motorcycles?”

  The airman relaxes and smiles back. “We certainly do.”

  He brings Charlie to the side of a small hanger. Together, they lift a large tarp off a row of parked bikes.

  Charlie holds the tarp up and looks underneath. The smile on his face crumbles away. “Do you have any, uh, Harleys?”

  “Harleys? No. These are better—”

  “EXCUSE ME?” Charlie shoots mental lightning bolts into the kid’s eye-holes, through his skeleton, then out through his balls.

  The airman shakes. “Sir, umm, I’m sorry sir, I was saying that these are better suited for off-road use.”

  Charlie tosses his end of the huge tarp into the air. The wind picks it up, and the airman on the other side tries to maintain control. Charlie points and glares at him. “These are dirt-bikes. They are NOT motorcycles.”

  He gets the tarp on the ground, then sighs. “Sir, these bikes are electric, weigh less than three hundred pounds, can go up to ninety-five miles per hour, have over forty horsepower, and have over seventy foot-pounds of instantaneous torque.” He walks over to one and kneels near the rear-wheel. “They get about two hours of heavy use per charge, then you can either plug them in or run their little gas generators to recharge.” He stands up and places his hand on the seat. “What do you think?”

  Charlie shrugs. “Sounds fancy. I’ll try not to blow it up.”

  Jambavan sets Eddy and Enrique up with climbing harnesses again, while Sadie runs to where Korina left the one she had been using. When Jambavan finishes, he extends his hand out to shake. “Good luck, you can do this.”

  Eddy and Enrique take turns shaking his hand. Then, they wave to the others. Flying Eagle gives Enrique a thumbs-up and smiles.

  Eddy sighs as he scans the faces of the elders. I helped save them, but the job’s not done. He turns to Enrique. “Let’s go.” They start running toward Sadie.

  Enrique sprints up beside Eddy. “Hey man, you ready for this?”

  Eddy jumps over a vent in the roof. “Yeah. You’ve got our directions memorized?”

  “Yeah, man.”

  Eddy focuses on his footing. “Good, just in case we get split up.”

  “We won’t get split up.”

  They meet Sadie where Gerard specified—at the most eastern corner of the outer ring of the Pentagon. They help her with the rigging, and then they tie off their lines. The three of them approach the edge of the roof that overlooks the open area between Ring D and Ring E, and they drop their ropes.

  Eddy remembers the zombies he saw farther down in that same open area—who then started fighting with one another—and he scans for any zombies in the area below him.

  Sadie looks, too, and listens. “I think we’re good to go. Step one is get to the elevator. Everyone ready?”

  Eddy and Enrique both nod.

  “Let’s go get June.” Sadie leaps off the side of the roof, spins and lands with her feet against the wall, then repels down. Eddy and Enrique follow. At the bottom, they quietly unhook their gear and approach a door on the inside edge of Ring E.

  Enrique holds his hand up while he peeks through the door’s window in the direction they will go. While still watching, he holds up two fingers, then a fist.

  Eddy raises one eyebrow to his mom, who mouths TWENTY. He nods, puts his hand on the door’s handle, and pulls it open. They rush in as air rushes past them; there’s a pressure difference between the building and the outside. Every zombie nearby—the twenty Enrique could see in the direction they need to head, the other twenty-ish zombies in the opposite direction, and scores more that weren’t visible from the window—all turn to face them.

  Shit.

  Eddy and Enrique split off to either side of Sadie as they run down the hall. Unlike the elders earlier, they can move fast and have real weapons. Eddy draws the wakizashi from its saya, Sadie frees Patton’s cavalry sword from its scabbard, and Enrique pulls two pair of nunchaku from his shoulder bag.

  Sadie reminds them, “Stay together!” Then they encounter the first group of zombies.

  Eddy slices clean through a zombie’s neck and decapitates it, Sadie stabs through the eye of another and quickly withdraws her blade, and Enrique swings his chucks into a whirlwind of oak, smashing skulls, removing teeth, and splattering blood along the walls of the hall.

  Eddy gets a splatter of zombie blood across the side of his face. “Ugh, gross!” He turns to see another zombie drop away, killed by a flick of Sadie’s wrist and falling like a felled tree. Behind them, Eddy notices zombies charging. “Keep moving forward! Lots behind!”

  He turns and slices the chest and shoulder of another zombie, stunning it and sending it stumbling backward, but not killing it. “Hurry up, just get past them!” A different zombie grabs his shoulder, and Sadie cuts the arm off with a swift pass of her sword. She spins back forward as a zombie launches into her, tackling her to the ground.

  Eddy grabs onto the bun of the zombie’s long hair, and with a scream, he tears the zombie backward. He launches it into a crowd of other zombies, knocking a few over.

  Before Eddy can change his momentum and look back down at his mom, Enrique is already helping her up.

  When they reach the elevator to access the underground levels, they’re winded. Sadie hits the button to call it with a bloodied finger, while Eddy and Enrique hold off the zombies. Come on…

  “There’s tons of them!” Eddy screams while removing a zombie’s head.

  “You said a million, right?” Enrique spins in a circle, extending his arms and ripping the wooden nunchaku through the air in a great swath, connecting with the jaw of one rather tall zombie and the temple of another. “Let’s hope they’re mostly on other floors.”

  The doors open with a little bell. “Get inside!” Sadie steps halfway into the door to hold it open, and she readies her sword. Eddy and Enrique scoot in, then Sadie follows. Eddy presses the button to close the doors, then he presses the button for the basement.

  The doors close painfully slow.

  “Come on!”

  Three zombies are rushing toward them, and another ten are behind them. The closest zombie extends out its hand toward the door.

  With a flick of Sadie’s wrist, the zombie loses its hand a few inches below the elbow. She withdraws the blade in a flash and has it back inside the elevator before the doors close.

  As the elevator descends, soft instrumental music plays, but none of them notice. Blood drips from their weapons, forming individual pools on the marble tiles. They look at their reflections in the polished steel door.

  Eddy wipes the spattered blood from off the side of his face and notices it replenish; he has a cut that’s still open. They all have scrapes and scratches, and Enrique bleeds from a bite wound on his ankle.

  Sadie clears her throat as the elevator slows. “We’re just getting started… Did Gerard say the next elevator is to the right or the left?”

  Eddy shakes his head. “He didn’t.”

  A bell dings, and the doors open, painfully slow. Zombies are rushing toward them—one has an arm inside already—grabbing and tearing at the occupants.

  “Great.” Sadie grabs the zombie’s arm, then its neck, and when the doors are opened enough to fit through, she shoves it backward, making a small clearing in front of the doors. Eddy and Enrique slip out and widen the hole. Sadie glances down the halls in either direction, but she doesn’t see any signs of another elevator. She does see more zombies to the left side though. “Go right! Move!”

  When they can see to the next vertex of the hallway, but not an elevator as Gerar
d described, they turn around and fight their way back. Back to the elevator, then farther past it.

  When they finally reach the next elevator, they’re more tired and bloodied. Eddy’s and Enrique’s clothes are tattered and tearing, while only Sadie’s leather bodysuit seems to be in one piece. Inside the elevator, as they descend to the sub-basement and they see themselves in the polished doors once again, they look away.

  When the doors open, they’re relieved to not have a horde of zombies trying to eat them alive. They only encounter about a dozen in the immediate area outside the elevator.

  Enrique notices a hallway extending outward toward the additional underground wings. “This way!”

  They fight through fewer zombies, but they fight with greater difficulty as they tire. Sadie and Enrique are limping from bites and wounds on their legs, and Eddy slows his pace so they can stay together.

  They finally get to the security station guarding the lab. A sign above a small passageway between sheets of floor-to-ceiling dark glass reads TS(RD) BADGE HOLDERS ONLY.

  As they emerge on the other side of the mysterious passage, they are confronted by two gigantic zombies, each easily 6’5” and 300 pounds. Amazingly, Eddy doesn’t notice one of them at his side when he exits the passageway, and its massive arms grab him and lift him up.

  “Whoa!” Eddy flicks the wakizashi in front of his body, cuts the zombie’s arms off at the elbows, and is dropped back onto his feet. Then he spins and carves the zombie up. It takes a few passes of his sword to finally drop the monster, and it falls on its equally massive ex-coworker, who Sadie had killed instantly by slicing off its head.

  They look around. The room is empty except for a desk with monitors and buttons to their right, and an unmarked elevator on the wall to their left.

  Eddy flicks his wrist and whips the blood from his dad’s wakizashi, then he returns it to the saya. Sadie pushes the single button beside the elevator doors to call it, and the doors open to a large, empty elevator.

  Inside, a screen flashes a thirty-second countdown and the following words: