by Brian Parker
He shot a freak in the head that twitched a little bit near his leg and he bent down to look at the thing’s hands. Its fingers were covered in open cuts and the fingernails were cracked and broken with dirt imbedded under them. There were several chair legs laying around that were covered in dirt and grime and a lot of desk drawers that were half filled with dirt, almost like they’d been using the drawers to haul away dirt from somewhere.
Within a few minutes a voice came over his headset and his stomach dropped at the words, “Hey buddy, we’ve got a problem. I just shined my light down that small tunnel that the freaks went into. It goes directly into a parking garage about two or three hundred feet away. They’re out of the Pentagon and into one of the buildings in Crystal City. They musta been using all those attacks outside to buy time for the diggers.”
Hank groaned and said, “Oh fuck, we gotta let higher know that we failed and they’re out into the city.”
EIGHT
24 April, 0716 hrs local
The White House
Washington, D.C.
Alfred Holmes was eating breakfast with his wife, Marie, and his son, Allan, in the East Sitting Room at the White House when several Secret Service agents burst in and told the First Family that they were being evacuated immediately. Initially, he thought it had something to do with the deadly outbreak at the Pentagon but as staffers sprinted from room to room securing documents and a select few works of art, he knew that something exponentially worse was about to occur.
The family was met by White House Chief of Staff John Biagi at the South Portico. He told them that some of their personal clothing items were already being gathered for transport because there was a legitimate threat on Washington. The president took the wireless phone that the Chief of Staff handed him. “This is President Holmes, who is this?”
A heavily accented voice replied in English, “Alfred, this is Jean-Pierre Gutmont. I will not wait for pleasantries, so hear me out. The Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur[15] has informed me that the virus problem at your Pentagon is no longer contained and the undead have escaped. Am I correct?”
“Well, no sense in lying to you Jean-Pierre, I’m sure you’ve seen the news and your agents here in Washington have seen it as well. Yes, there’ve been an undetermined number of infected persons who’ve escaped from the Pentagon. They broke through yesterday morning behind our quarantine zone, but we’ve reestablished a larger containment area and are working to…”
“That is all Mr. President. I have no choice but to inform you that as of six minutes ago, I authorized a nuclear strike on Washington, D.C. If you can’t contain these creatures, then it is my responsibility to protect the people of France, and the world, at all costs. Good bye Alfred,” the French president said as he hung up the phone.
President Holmes handed the cellular back to John and shook his head in answer to the Chief of Staff’s questioning gaze. John gave a nod of acceptance and pointed out to the South Lawn. “Sir,” he said, “Marine One is inbound and will be here in about two minutes.” The phone rang in his hand. “It’s General Thompson, sir.”
He took the phone again, “Pete, tell me this isn’t happening.”
“I wish I could sir. NORAD just picked up a singular launch from a submarine approximately one-hundred miles from the western coast of France in the Atlantic. Trajectory indicates it will arrive in D.C. in approximately thirty-nine minutes.”
“Can we knock it down?”
“Sir, when the previous administration cancelled the missile defense system, our only options became either initiating a retaliatory strike or to absorb the impact and do nothing.”
“Like hell. General, find me option number three. I need a viable option here, we can’t start World War III and I won’t sit back and do nothing as the nation’s capital is destroyed. What are we doing about evacuations?”
“Sir, we’ve prepared a short evacuation order for the Emergency Broadcast System. If you authorize the evacuation of the city, we’ll start the message on every station available but it won’t be enough time to get very many people out of the city.”
“Yes, I authorize the evacuation of Washington.”
On the other end of the line, the president could here General Thompson telling someone in the background to publish the evacuation order. “Sir, I’ve taken the liberty of ordering the evacuation of our troops on quarantine detail. I’ve got multiple helicopters inbound from Belvoir, Quantico, Meade and Annapolis. We’re going to get everyone out by air that we can since they would only be stuck in traffic if we tried to move them by truck. Estimates are that the French sub-launched nukes have a minimum safe distance of 50 miles.
“Alright sir, my transport has just arrived and I’m going to meet you at the rendezvous point in about twenty minutes.”
“Good luck Pete. I’ll see you soon. Think about option three and give me your recommendation when we arrive at our destination.” This time he pocketed the phone and hugged his family. “This is going to be alright, we’re going to get out of here. We’re going to take a short helicopter ride to a safe location.”
“Where are we going dad? What’s happening?” Allan asked his father.
“We’ve got a few secure facilities built just for this scenario around Washington. We’ll be safe. Let’s go, there’s the chopper.”
The large olive drab and white Sea King helicopter code-named Marine One appeared over The Ellipse coming in faster and lower than the president had ever seen it before. The helicopter flared and dropped the remaining several feet to rest on the lawn less than thirty feet from the First Family. They rushed forward with a few agents and staffers and boarded the aircraft. After the few seats were filled, the president waved in the staffers that were standing in the portico. He looked back from his seat near the pilots to where the aisle was filled with evacuees. After he was sure no more passengers could fit, he turned and gave the thumbs up signal to the pilots to let them know they could go. The co-pilot leaned to his left and gave the two Marines on the ground the same signal through the window. One of the young Marines wiped tears from his cheek as they lifted the helicopter’s hatch and turned the lever to lock the door in place. Once the door was secure they saluted the aircraft as it lifted off and headed west towards safety.
***
24 April, 0819 hrs local
Yellow Line - Washington Metro
Washington, D.C.
Emory mulled over the details of her fiancé’s disappearance one more time as she sat on the train waiting for her stop. She’d been given her seat by a teenage girl who took one look at the disheveled Emory and decided that she needed it worse than she did. Emory was truly grateful to the young girl, the thought of standing on the train, being jostled and groped by random strangers in the tight quarters made her want to begin crying again.
It had been eight days since Grayson vanished and all the troubles at the Midwestern military installations had begun. The last conversation she’d had with him was about the strange events the day before, events that were still unfolding and apparently getting worse since they’d quarantined everything for a couple miles around the Pentagon on the west bank of the Potomac and tightly controlled the access across Arlington Memorial Bridge and the five bridges that make up the 14 Street Bridge complex. Grayson told her he was going to get breakfast before the Vice-President held his press conference and that was the last she heard from him. She berated herself for the hundredth time for not being able to remember if she’d told him how much he meant to her and if she’d told him that she loved him. The conversation didn’t seem important at the time, but now that she didn’t know what had happened to him, it felt like one of the most monumental events of her lifetime.
She’d tried to use her clout as a Congressional staffer, but she was told that there was nothing anyone could do until the uprisings had been put down. She hated the fact that there was nothing she could do from Washington so she’d already cleared it with the Senator
and rented a car that she planned on driving to Oklahoma tomorrow morning. Flights to anywhere in the country had been drastically reduced since the attacks a week ago and they cancelled every flight out of the D.C. yesterday when they announced the quarantine, so a rental car was her only viable option.
Mentally she ticked off the things she had to do before she got on road. She had to schedule a secure military flight for Senator Fergusson to Georgia since the Air Force were the only ones flying, then confirm an appearance for the Senator at the Columbus Boys and Girls House, make sure that Bradley knew how to cover for her for the next several days, drop Millie off at the dog kennel and pack a few changes of clothes for the trip.
The train stopped at Archives/Navy Memorial and several people tried to shove their way in. The Metro was so crowded that everyone was packed in like sardines around the doors. From her seat in the middle of the car, Emory watched passengers jostle each other as they tried to shuffle further onto the train in order to make room for those pushing their way in. The doors chimed and attempted to close several times until the Metro operator spoke over intercom reminding passengers that there was another train directly behind this one and there was no reason to attempt to force their way in or block the doors. Yeah, like anyone will listen to you, she thought.
Finally, the doors closed and they pulled from the platform on the way to L’Enfant Plaza. Fourteen seconds after Yellow Line train 628 left the platform at Archives heading east the world exploded. Emory was thrown violently forward and then to the side as the train derailed inside the tunnel. The cars continued to skid down the subway at a 45 degree angle until the weight of the vehicle eventually dragged it to a stop.
Emory shook her head to clear the haze that was over her eyes and stop the ringing of her ears. The train had derailed somehow. They were sitting at an angle with one corner of the train on the rails and the roof on the same side was resting against the walls of the tunnel. The pale rectangular blue lights on the tunnel wall provided the only light source as people screamed and shoved each other in an effort to operate the emergency doors in the near dark of the tunnel.
She did a quick assessment of the situation. No one seemed to be very badly injured other than some bumps and bruises since the train hadn’t gotten up to full speed when it derailed and didn’t really have much room to turn over inside the tunnel. The car had pretty much held together and now the only real problem was that the passengers were likely to trample each other in their efforts to get out. A man in the back of the car began shouting over the crowd and the others slowly began to quiet down. The man, a Metro Transit police officer, pushed his way to the center doors and began working on the opening them.
Emory breathed a sigh of relief. The cop will help us get out of here, she thought, they’re trained to handle these types of situations and... Before she could complete her thought, the tunnel filled with the sound of rushing air. The train was thrown violently forward in the direction it had been traveling in and instantly all the oxygen was sucked from the air. Emory clawed at her throat, the seat, the passenger beside her, anything that came within her reach as her body convulsed from the concussion wave of heat and the sudden lack of oxygen. She was dying. They all were. Her last thoughts were of Grayson and the life they would never live together.
***
24 April, 0838 hrs local
Mount Weather
Fauquier County, Virginia
The protective facility that the president and his family were whisked away to was officially called the Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center and is situated in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains to the west of Washington. In popular fiction, and even in the shadowy government circles that operated the complex, it was called the High Point Special Facility. The mountain, which supplied the facility’s namesake, is made up of extremely hard and dense basalt rock from volcano flows several hundred thousand years ago.
The surface of the mountain contains a 434-acre training facility operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The underground complex was built in the early 1950’s during the Cold War, before the term “Mutually-Assured Destruction” had been coined. Engineers began drilling into the rock and within several years they’d created a labyrinth of underground rooms and tunnels strong enough to withstand a nuclear detonation. The secrecy of the site was broken in 1974 when a Boeing 747, en route to Dulles Airport, crashed into the side of the mountain and forced the government to admit to the legitimacy of the facility. However, Americans quickly forgot about the site until the September 11 attacks when the Vice-President and senior Congressional leaders were safeguarded there in the immediate aftermath of the attacks.
Today, Mount Weather was being called upon again to protect the leadership of the United States. For the past fifteen minutes helicopters had been dropping out of the sky depositing their precious cargo. The government, already at a heightened state of affairs due to the situation at the Pentagon, had responded surprisingly quickly to the missile launch and gotten the equivalent of two aviation squadrons in the air from all the military bases located in the National Capital Region. Several of the helicopters were given grid coordinates to the homes of the most important government officials and the crews had been able to secure many of them and their families. The rest of the helicopters ferried troops to areas outside the expected radiation zones.
President Holmes tried to steady his hand as he took a drink from the bottle of water that he’d asked for on arrival. The last forty-five minutes had been the most frantic, exhilarating and frightening time of his life. His family was safe, for now, secured in the secret bunker complex twenty stories below the mountain.
He looked at the bank of television monitors mounted to the subterranean wall. Live feeds were coming in from the local and national news channels as they attempted to come to grips with the fact that the nation was facing an imminent nuclear attack. He watched in a daze as one network showed a gridlocked Capitol Beltway and hundreds of people running from their cars into whatever shelter they could find. A broadcast from Atlanta had antiquated maps from the 1970’s projected on the screen showing the potential nuclear fallout dispersion from an attack on Washington. A local station was simply broadcasting the Lord’s Prayer superimposed over the empty news desk.
An airman called out the latest tracked path of the missile. The updated estimated time to impact was in fifty-five seconds. The digital clock on the wall reset to reflect the new estimate, they’d lost over ten seconds from the previous estimate. Marie gripped her husband’s hand tighter than he imagined possible and sobbed shamelessly into his shoulder. Blood-red numbers dwindled down to zero and nothing happened. No one dared to breathe. Precious seconds ticked by and still nothing happened. Then, one-by-one the televisions airing the local broadcasts went blank.
All eyes turned to the delayed-feed from the satellite positioned over Washington. A large fireball appeared between the District and Annapolis, Maryland. From the aerial view they could see the super-heated dust cloud radiating at high speed from the point of impact. The cloud sped out for thirty or forty miles in all directions, over-taking the capitol and every living soul within the region. The cloud slowed and suddenly collapsed in on itself. That was the air rushing back in to fill void created when everything at the impact site was vaporized.
Buildings that had withstood the initial blast of heat and radiation collapsed under the pressure of the returning winds. The president breathed a silent prayer for the 5.3 million people in the metro area who were likely dead or going to die from the attack. The environmental damage that occurred during the blast to the local area was substantial, but the damage to the entire region from the fallout would be insurmountable. The United States would likely never recover from the devastation that the new French president had just caused.
He began to shake as he thought about all the loss and the future of the nation, if there would even be a nation after today. “General Thompson, I’ve made my decision, abo
ut option three. Within the hour, I want bombers from Aviano Air Base over Paris. The target is Jean-Pierre Gutmont and the French Parliament. I want them leveled. I don’t want to hear that he survived in a bunker, I want him to disappear. Understand?”
“Got it sir,” Pete Thompson said as he gestured an aide over to his side.
The president looked over at his Chief of Staff and said, “John, set up a room so I can issue a statement. Contact all the usual agencies…I mean, contact the news organizations that are left and let them know we will be broadcasting a statement so they can carry it.”
“Yes Mr. President,” he replied as he picked up the phone and began dialing numbers from memory.
***
24 April, 1000 hrs local
Mount Weather
Fauquier County, Virginia
President Holmes adjusted the worn leather office chair that he sat in and pulled himself up to the metal desk. The broadcast studio was old, but serviceable and the members of his staff that were still alive had done their best to clean everything to a presentable level. The military maintained the facility, but the accommodations left a lot to be desired. Guess we all have to get used to this, we’ll be in here for a few days until it’s safe to be transported to a different location, he thought.
He glanced at the Seal of the President of the United States suspended on the wall behind him. He’d seen the seal hundreds, if not thousands of times over the course of his political life, first as a Senator, then as the Vice-President, and most recently, as the president, but he’d never seen this version before. The seal was almost identical to the one he was used to, but after careful study, he finally caught what was different about it. He chuckled to himself as he realized that this seal had only forty-eight stars surrounding the eagle. The plaque must have been placed here before Eisenhower’s revision in 1960 which added two stars for the states of Alaska and Hawaii when they joined the union.