Queen's Gambit

by M. Lorrox

  He exhales loudly and stands, then turns to her. He towers over her. “Yes, Miss Riggs?”

  She gulps as she looks up at him and extends a microphone. “Would you like to make a statement about the explosion, sir?”

  He huffs. Tricky little bitch. He summons a smile. “There’s nothing to be concerned with at this...” He trails off when he notices one of the Pentagon Force Protection Agency officers running his way.

  “General!” Captain Rojas jumps over some equipment cases and gear that lie on the ground. “General! Got a situation!”

  Riley brushes Wren aside and nearly knocks her over. “What is it?”

  Rojas dodges past a soldier and steers around the edge of a table to get to Riley. When he is close enough to speak without yelling, he slows and talks between breaths. “The explosion...blew open the doors to the metro...zombies rushing out underground.”

  Riley turns around in a flash to grab his radio, and he slams into Wren. “Out of my way!”

  She is launched to the side, but she catches hold of a chair and regains her footing.

  Riley picks up his radio and begins shouting commands.

  -Honk!- “I can’t believe some people.” Korina rolls down her window and is careful to stay out of the sun. She yells at a minivan that refuses to let her merge over. “This is an emergency! I’m law enforcement!”

  The driver of the minivan cranks their stereo and ignores her.

  “Hello, Captain Sarkis? Come in. Over.”

  “Finally.” She picks up the radio. “Have you left yet? Over.”

  “Negative, somebody tripped and banged their head and got cut, and Katlyn went back with a med kit. Over.”

  Korina closes her eyes and takes a slow breath to calm her nerves. “Frank, as soon as you can, you have to get moving! Over.”

  “I know! We’re trying! Over.”

  She sets the handset down, slowly without slamming it, then she shakes her head. She laughs and motions to Jambavan. “You know—”

  “Shhh! Listen.”

  They listen to a news bulletin coming through the minivan’s loud radio.

  “…entagon metro station. Arlington National Cemetery, Pentagon City, and L’Enfant Plaza stations are being evacuated and locked down by the military. I repeat, zombies have been sighted at the Pentagon metro station. Please remain calm…”

  Korina groans. “I think the situation just changed.”

  Jambavan’s heartrate quickens. “I have a feeling you’re about to do something dramatic.”

  She nods. “You know me well.”

  She steps on the gas and rams the minivan out of the way, then gets onto the shoulder of the bridge and starts speeding toward DC.

  Jambavan points to a car that is also on the shoulder, in front of them, and not moving.

  “Put your hand down; it’s not safe.”

  She swerves into the gap between the guardrail and the stopped car and wedges between them. The two vampires bounce around in the SUV, but Korina’s foot never leaves the pedal. She pushes the stopped car into a car beside it, squeezes her SUV past, and continues down the shoulder. “They were in a Mercedes, tons of safety features in them.”

  Jambavan’s heart threatens to explode from his chest while his eyes lock on what lies ahead. “Please tell me you aren’t going to try and bust past that semi!”

  She scans for options as she speeds toward the tractor trailer blocking the shoulder. On the one side—cars and lots of them, bumper to bumper. On the other—a metal guardrail and concrete, and in front, a stopped semi. She slams on the brakes and skids to a stop a foot from the back of the trailer.

  Jambavan looks out his window and over the edge of the bridge toward DC. “What now?”

  She unbuckles her seat belt. “You grabbed medical supplies?”

  He unbelts and leans into the back seat. “Yeah, two emergency kits, four pints of blood, and a bunch of bandages and wraps.”

  “How long since you drank?”

  He checks his watch. “Too long if we’re going outside.”

  “We are.”

  He reaches into the back and grabs a pint of blood and tears a corner off with his mouth. He sucks half down and passes the rest to Korina.

  She shakes her head. “You’ll need more than that.”

  “You need some too.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  He looks at her, and she glares back. He drinks the rest. “Should I open another?”

  She shakes her head and picks up the radio. “Frank, come in. Over.”

  “Yeah, still waiting. Over.”

  “Have you been listening to the news? Over.”

  “Uh, negative. Over.”

  “The situation has changed; we’re coming on foot. We’ll be away from the radio. Wait for us at the museum. Over.”

  “Copy that… See you soon. Over.”

  “Out.”

  Jambavan stuffs some of the additional supplies into the emergency kits, and hands one to Korina. “Ready when you are.”

  She grabs it from him. “Try and keep up.” She hops out of the SUV and jumps straight onto the hood of the car stopped alongside her. Then she jumps onto the trunk of the car in front. Jambavan scales the back of the semi’s trailer, runs along the top, then hops down onto the cab and then onto the big hood. He leaps off just as the driver nearly deafens him with the big rig’s air horn.

  While General Riley scrambles resources to deal with the new zombie threat spreading underground in the metro, sodiers continue to throw bullets at the zombies piling out of the hole they breached in the Pentagon’s outer wall. Two hundred yards from that site, in the huge parking lot, Flying Eagle helps Vincent walk out of the medical tent. The guardsman leads the councilor to the plain white commuter bus that will bring the non-critically injured vampire elders to the hospital. At the doors to the bus, he helps his friend and mentor up the steps.

  With both hands gripping the railing inside the bus, Vincent needs all his energy just to ascend three steps. At the top, he rests. “Thanks Eagle. I wish you were with us earlier.”

  Eliza limps forward to help Vincent.

  Flying Eagle pats Vincent on the back. “Me too.” He turns to step off the bus.

  “Aren’t you coming with us?”

  He looks up from the bottom of the steps to his exhausted friend. “I’ll meet up with you later. I’ve got my bike here.” He runs a hand through his hair and sighs. “And I need to take care of something else before I go.”

  Vincent nods. “See you soon, then.”

  Flying Eagle checks in at the medical tent, and he verifies with a nurse holding a clipboard that all the patients have been accounted for. Then, he finds Deina, a junior guardsman like himself, who arrived a few minutes too late to help with the rescue. She’s assisting the medics clean up and prepare for any additional casualties. “Deina, I need a couple minutes, then we can head to the hospital. Alright?”

  She nods. “Take your time.” She looks away and frowns. Stuck on cleanup detail... If I had gotten here sooner, I could have helped them more, like Eagle did. Damn... She sighs. When Mary wakes up without an arm, she’s gonna be pissed.

  Flying Eagle steps back outside the tent. He waves at the elders in the bus as it drives off and takes them out of harm’s way. Then he jogs over to his motorcycle and sits in the shade it casts. He closes his eyes, and he prays for Enrique—his son and squire.

  Michael Turner and Dr. Melgaard hid explosive charges in the mainframe and data center room, in every room that stored research samples, and near critical and expensive equipment they used to synthesize the “vaccine.” In addition, charges were placed all throughout the ventilation system of the lab, regardless of the room’s contents or strategic value. The goal was straightforward: cover their tracks, destroy their research, halt the progress
of finding an actual vaccine, and essentially just fuck things up enough to make the facilities unusable.

  They didn’t set up enough explosives to collapse the lab or kill everyone inside, because that wasn’t the point. The lab was supposed to be empty. Michael was bluffing, and he thought his ruse might actually save his skin. He definitely didn’t know that Lars also linked the Pentagon’s metro security door explosives to that detonator.

  At about the same instant that Michael hit the detonator’s button, Rusty bit off Michael’s face. Rusty wasn’t the size of a Wire Fox Terrier then, he was the size of a Border Collie, and his bat-like wings had a nine-foot wingspan. His jaws snapped around Michael’s lower jaw, nose, and sinus cavities. He crunched through many of the non-brain-encasing bones of Michael’s skull, including the mandible, or lower jaw; maxilla, or upper jaw; and zygomatic bones, AKA the cheek bones.

  For a split second, Michael still had eyes that worked. Then, the explosion from the ventilation ducts along the hallway side of the incinerator room sent a concussive force of shrapnel and debris into his eyes, blinding him.

  Also, in that split second, Sadie grabbed Eddy and started to pull him toward her body, to shield at least one side of him. Lucky for him, the explosion came from behind him—from behind Sadie.

  The explosion creates a supersonic blast wave, which is a wall of compressed and accelerated air. It knocks Charlie, Sadie, and Eddy down, knocks the gurney June is on over—tumbling her out and onto the floor—and pushes Michael’s hips back against the side of the incinerator.

  Rusty—with Michael’s face in his mouth—was flapping his large, thin wings when the explosives detonated. He was right in front of Michael, who was right in front of the incinerator. The blast wave throws Rusty forward, rips through the skin of his wings, and throws him past the little remnants of Michael’s head. He slams against the incinerator’s opened hatch and falls in.

  After the explosion’s blast wave passes, its blast wind immediately follows. In this, air/debris/people/whatever are pulled back toward the initial site of the explosion to fill in the atmospheric void created by the compressed air of the blast wave. In the incinerator room, the blast wind is directed toward the wall beside the hallway. Charlie, Sadie, Eddy, June, and the gurney are all on the ground, and even with their weight against the tile, they’re sucked back toward the hallway a few feet. Michael is sucked forward off his feet, and his momentum sends him forehead-first into the wall.

  Unfortunately, he loses consciousness and dies before truly realizing that he no longer has a face.

  The blast wind is also strong enough to shut the incinerator’s hatch, with Rusty inside. It isn’t quite 1,000 degrees inside the controlled-air industrial incinerator—because the hatch has been open—but once the hatch is closed, it attains the designated temperature in seconds.

  Metal shrapnel from the ductwork is buried into Charlie’s and Sadie’s backs and legs, and as they open their eyes to the heat and smoke, their hundreds of wounds start to bleed. Eddy pushes his way out from under Sadie. “Mom! Dad! Are you okay?”

  Charlie groans. “No, I feel like I just got blowed-up.” He looks at Sadie, who squeezes her eyes hard. “Sarra?”

  “I’m okay. Landed hard. My ass is killing me.”

  Eddy checks himself for wounds; other than being knocked down and slid around on the floor, he’s fine. He assesses his parents’ wounds; inch long pieces of tin jut out of their backs and legs—making them look almost like porcupines. “You guys are bleeding, not too bad though.”

  Sadie groans. “No, there’s something really wrong with my butt. It really hurts.”

  Eddy carefully brushes some pieces of broken ceiling tile off his mom’s butt and sees the larger injury. “Sprinkler head… It looks like it’s between your butt and your hamstring, left side, about an inch in.”

  “Great.” She blows some debris away from her mouth and looks at Charlie. “Will you do the honors and spare our son years of therapy?”

  Charlie takes a deep breath but ends up sucking in a crumb of ceiling tile and starts coughing.

  “It’s fine mom, hold still.” Eddy applies some pressure around the site of the wound, then slowly pries the metal out.

  She grits her teeth, then groans through them. “UGH! DAMN IT THAT HURTS!”

  With a -pop- Eddy frees the sprinkler head and tosses it to the side, then he applies pressure to the wound with his hand.

  Charlie makes his way onto his hands and knees, then he straightens up into a kneeling position and grimaces as the tiny pieces of metal shift in his muscles. “Hoo-eee that stings…” He turns around, slowly, to inspect Sadie’s wound. He takes one of the pieces of shirt he used as gloves from his pocket and forms it into a pad. “I’ll take over, Eddy. Ready? Now.”

  Eddy lifts his hand and Charlie presses the cloth into the wound. With his other hand, he fetches the rest of his old shirt to use as a wrap. He pauses, looks at Eddy, and loses all color in his face. “Enrique was in the hall! Go check him!”

  “You check June!” Eddy gets up in a flash and bursts through the still-hanging double doors.

  As Charlie stands, he notices Michael’s remains. He sneers at him then turns to find June. Maybe she’s behind the gurney with Rusty? He sees her and freezes.

  In the hallway, Eddy finds some small fires and lots of rubble. Under a larger pile about ten feet from the door, he sees a pair of boots. “Enrique!” Eddy rushes over and clears ceiling tiles and drywall off him.

  “Ugh.” Enrique shifts, and a pool of blood creeps out from underneath him.

  Charlie loses heart when he sees June’s dehydrated body crumpled on the ground. Oh June... He bends down and checks for a pulse, but he feels nothing but sorrow. He breaks into tears and wipes his face, then realizes Rusty isn’t beside her. “Rusty. Where are you?” He looks around and can’t find him, then he realizes the incinerator hatch is closed. “FUCK!”

  He lunges toward it and opens the hatch. A blast of hot air escapes, singing Charlie’s eyebrows and eyelashes, and scalding his squinted eyes.

  Sadie rolls onto her side. “What is it?”

  “He’s hurt!” Eddy looks for visual clues to Enrique’s injuries and can’t see any, so he holds onto Enrique’s neck to stabilize it while he rolls him over. A large gash runs down his shoulder and back. A deep section near his shoulder blade spills blood. Eddy applies pressure to the wound and cranks his neck to shout into the incinerator room. “We need a med kit! He’s got a deep cut on his back!”

  Charlie understands that the temperatures his arms will experience will be beyond painful, but it doesn’t make him hesitate. He reaches in to pull out the blackened and charred mass that used to be Rusty. All hair on Charlie’s arms singes into tight spirals then ignites. The top layers of his skin—from his fingertips to his elbows—are burned raw before he even touches Rusty, but Charlie is gentle and picks the mass up carefully.

  He lifts his arms out and turns away from the heat. He just stares at what he holds in his hands.

  Sadie realizes what it is. “Dear god... Wait, he can’t be dead. Can he?”

  Charlie’s upper body is still smoking, and Rusty’s remains are smoldering. Charlie sets him in a blanket that once warmed a shivering June, and then he wraps it around the remains. “I don’t know. I didn’t think...” He glances at June again, sees the horror of her desecration, and then looks away and smells the smoldering mass wrapped in the blanket. “I can’t take this, Sarra. I...I...” He starts to cry.

  Eddy blasts back through the doors. “Need a med kit!” He sees his dad sobbing into his hands. “Dad, Enrique needs help.”

  Sadie shifts and winces. “Eddy, cut off some cloth and stuff the wound, then bandage it. Go.”

  Without argument, Eddy returns to Enrique. He doesn’t have the wakizashi anymore, but he still has Sophia’s knife strapped to the leather bag. He unsheathes
it and cuts off a pant leg. “I gotcha, bud.”

  Enrique groans. “What happened?”

  Eddy cuts a thin section from the fabric and stuffs it into the deepest part of the gash. “Really bad things.”

  “Feels like it.”

  Eddy spiral-cuts the rest of the fabric into a long, thin strip, and he wraps it around Enrique’s chest and ties it off. “Stay here.”

  “’Kay.”

  Eddy runs back into the room. Charlie is still crying, but now he’s sitting beside June and her blankets. Eddy looks at his mom, who is still on the ground. “June?”

  She swallows. “Go to her. Go to her and give her blood.”

  Eddy moves to her side, and Charlie speaks between his gasps for air. “Give her all you can. Otherwise you’ll regret...not trying harder.” He swallows, and tears drop from his eyes and chin. “Trust me on that.”

  Eddy kneels next to June. She’s still on her side and contorted, and Eddy straightens her body out and sets her on her back. He grabs his knife again, and he pulls it across his palm, opening a deep cut. He watches the dark blood seep out, and then he squeezes his hand over her opened mouth. He looks at her closed eyes and begins to cry.

  Charlie pushes through the doors to the hallway.

  Sadie crawls over to June’s side and unclamps the girl’s abdominal muscles from her belly. She picks out some pieces of ceiling tile from June’s insides, then pushes herself up onto an arm. Sadie bites into her own palm and trickles the blood into the open wound and onto the dehydrated, exposed flesh. When the small puncture wounds in her hand heal and the blood stops flowing, she pulls June’s skin and muscle back into place.

  Eddy is whispering in June’s ear with his hand trickling blood into her mouth. He pulls away and looks at her again. A tear falls onto her hollowed cheek, and he wipes it away. He takes her hand and feels the blood-bead bracelet on her wrist.

  Sadie takes off her sash and pulls any pieces of embedded metal from it. June’s tissue that was clamped up had stiffened, and it now resists returning to flat. Sadie holds the tissue down and wraps the girl’s waist with the sash, and she ties it tight.