by E. R. Mason
Within the limited safety of the SUV, Rogers turned onto Connecticut Avenue and headed south. The road was passable between stalled lines of traffic and wrecked cars. Periodically members of the undead took notice of their passing but were never in a position to interfere.
“Where are we going?” Cassiopia finally asked.
“I know the best place.”
“Where?”
“I’ll give you a hint. There’s a color in the name.”
“The White House? We’re going to the White House to hide?”
“It’s one of the most fortified buildings anywhere. If we can get in, we should be safe until your father’s door comes back on.”
“How can we get in?”
“We’ll need to use the North Portico. That will be the easiest unless security is still all over the place which I doubt under the circumstances.”
“How do you know about the White House?”
“I’m on the COG response team. We’re trained in some key government facilities. We need to make it to 17th Street and then Pennsylvania Avenue. From there, with a little fence bashing and off-road work, we can drive right up to the front door.”
“What if it’s locked up?”
“There are some secret entrances. I can’t tell you about them or I’d have to kill you.”
Cassiopia cast a somber look.
“That was a joke.”
“So watching your zombie movie last night brought us here, but I wonder why you subconsciously chose Washington.”
“I thought about that too. It’s because of the case I was working on when you called me. It was a very bad situation, something going on here in Washington. It’s been bothering me. That’s why.”
“What is it about?”
“That’s the real world. I can’t talk about it.”
Rogers slowed the SUV. Ahead, a city bus had come to rest across the road with its back end lodged on the cement island, blocking access to the opposing lanes. Rogers stopped, jammed the car into reverse and twisted around to look out the back window. Two staggering zombies had emerged on the road behind her. She jammed down on the gas pedal and zigzagged toward them. They appeared unconcerned and as she approached, paused long enough to bounced off the back of the SUV. At the end of the center island, Rogers jerked the wheel over and continued down the opposite side. Passing by the broken-down bus, she made a sharp right hand turn onto an adjacent street, and then another quick left-hand turn onto 17th Ave.
“We’re almost there.” Rogers maneuvered onto the sidewalk to avoid a truck in the street. She jerked the car back onto the road and turned left onto Lafayette Ave.
“Oh my god! That’s Lafayette Park. There must be hundreds of them.” As the White House and the park came into view, she slowed and stopped. They stared at the zombie infestation, stunned.
Lafayette Park had become a gathering place for monsters. Some stood within the flowerbeds; others were draped upon the statues, monuments, and canon display. They waded in the fountain and leaned against trees. In the grassy open areas, there were even more, too many to count. They seemed to have no purpose other than to have gathered in force. They appeared docile, with no victims available to spur them on.
Rogers could see the nearest gate. It was half-open. The black, wrought-iron frame was intact, but the upper hinges had torn loose so that the gate hung down to the black asphalt. There was no one in the guardhouse, of course. Only a few zombies patronized the horseshoe-shaped road that led to the front entrance.
“We can make it, but we’ll have to be quick.”
“How?”
“We’ll crash through that gate, speed up to the front door, and knock down any of them that get in our way. We’ll have our doors open before we stop, then jump out and make a run for it. I’ll follow and take any of them down that I need to.”
“But what if the doors are locked?”
“Then we’ll shoot our way to a secret entrance on the west side. Are you ready?”
“Maybe this is not such a good idea. Maybe we should just keep driving until we find a safe spot.”
“I know how you feel Cass, but I’m thinking we were barely able to drive this far. Driving around is like waving a flag. Chances are we’re going to reach a point where we’re stuck. Then we’d be on foot in the middle of them. On the other hand, if we can get in here, we can hold them off for a long time. What do you think?”
“I guess so.”
“Okay. Grab my guns and clips in the back and hand them to me as we run. I’ll take it from there.”
Cassiopia collected the machine guns and satchel and held them in her lap. Rogers laughed at the sight.
“Ready?”
“Better get going. Here comes three more.”
Rogers hit the gas and made for the broken gate. She held to the middle and smashed through it, swinging both sides wide open so that they ricocheted off the cement barriers. She swung left, around the meandering, disheveled people hanging out in the road, and plowed through several before finally reaching the front entrance. To her surprise, the doors opened, and a man in black military fatigues stepped out holding a very large machine gun. He waved furiously at them to enter. Rogers slammed on the brakes. They leaped from the vehicle and raced for the door. Halfway there, Rogers caught up to Cassiopia and without stopping grabbed the straps on her guns and pulled them on. The White House guard held his weapon ready, providing cover as they climbed the steps to the entrance. Fallen flagstaffs on either side interrupted their path. They reached the doors and entered without a shot fired. The guard quickly slammed the inner doors and bolted them high, low, and center. He turned and inspected the two visitors carefully.
“Neither of you is sick?”
Rogers answered, “No. I’m federal agent Ann Rogers. This is Dr. Cassell. She’s working the biology end of it. You can check us out if you call up the files.”
“No need. Your timing is good. We need your vehicle. Can I have your keys please?” The man was wearing an earpiece and small boom microphone. He pinched a button on his belt and turned away to speak. “Good news. We have a ride. Get them up here immediately.” He turned back to Rogers. “We have two VIPs that we’ve got to get to the airport ASAP. How about those keys?”
Rogers held them out and the agent took them. Cassiopia raised an eyebrow but remained quiet.
Rogers said, “I wouldn’t go out there. There are too many. You’ll never make it.”
The agent replied, “We’ve been holding them off for three days. They’ve evolved. They attack in mass. We beat them back from the roof, and after a while they retreat. They mill around like they are now, and then all of a sudden join up and hit us again. The place is fortified like Fort Knox, but they’ve managed to crack some of the bulletproof windows already. They will get in here. It’s just a question of time.”
Rogers repeated, “You can’t go out there. They’ll be all over the vehicle.”
The agent nodded. “Our orders are to get our packages to the airport, at all costs.”
As he spoke, two more agents in black carrying weapons showed up guiding two people with jackets draped over their head to hide their identity. They moved passed without stopping and went to the door.
The first agent turned back to Rogers. “Do not take the elevator to the tunnels. They’ve been compromised. You will not find any friendlies down there. The roof and all three levels are still clear, but you’d better keep a close eye out. The bastards seem to be getting smarter. They’ll scale if they can.” He went to the door and looked out the windows, then began unlatching. Rogers moved alongside him and waited. With a last look, he waved the others forward and opened the right-hand door. They hurried out and charged for the SUV, squeezing the remote as they went. The loud bleep alerted the masses.
Rogers quickly latched all the locks and stood looking out the windows with Cassiopia. By the time the vehicle had started, a dozen zombies were banging the car windows and climbing up on the hood. As
the car crept forward, a huge group rushed to the roadway in the direction of travel, so that the driver had to go onto the grass to avoid them. He swerved around and plowed into countless bodies, but the undead cared little. They gathered at the gate in such numbers that no vehicle could have made it through. The driver hit the accelerator fully, carrying two dozen bodies on the hood and roof along with him. At the gate, the carnage became horrific. The driver, blinded by the clinging monsters on his windshield, clipped the side of a gate stanchion, causing the car to veer nose-first into a wall where it smoked and died. The sound of breaking glass rang out, back dropped by a brief volley of automatic weapons fire, and in moments, the SUV contained a crazed mass of zombies and their victims.
Rogers looked at the sick expression on Cassiopia. “It’s not real. They’re not real people, right?”
“It’s a nightmare.”
“We should go to the roof and check around the building.” Rogers pulled out her door control and tried it. Nothing. “How about yours?”
Cassiopia checked hers with the same result. She shook her head and finally looked over her surroundings. The Grand Foyer was a stark contrast to the carnage outside. The tan and white checkerboard tile floor was so polished it was reflective. Huge red curtains with gold trim enclosed each of the windows. Crystal chandeliers hung from the high ceiling in several places. Large, colorful portraits accented the off-white walls everywhere. An elegant stairwell waited within an adjoining alcove on the left, and a small usher’s area was open on the right. Ahead large columns that graced the Cross Hall rose up from the bright red carpet that bounded its limits. Through the open door at the center, below the Presidential seal, there was a hint of the Blue Room that lay beyond. Inside, tall blue curtains draped open surrounded a tall window overlooking the South Portico. An ivory-covered table with flowers sat in front of it.
Cassiopia gasped at the grace of the vision. She marveled at how the detail could be so overwhelming in a dimension made only of subconscious thought. She looked at Rogers with wonder.
“How could you know this place so well?”
Rogers smiled. “They don’t kid around when they train you for this kind of duty. You are required to be able to find your way in near total darkness here. The preparation is extensive.”
Cassiopia remembered the turmoil going on outside, and spun to look out the window.
Rogers said, “Let’s go up and see how secure we are. Any guess why it’s taking your father so long to get the door back up and running.”
Cassiopia looked distracted. She blinked and recovered. “It’s probably not been long at all. It’s the Dreamland time distortion.”
Rogers smirked. “I’d forgotten that, Can you remind me?”
“You know how sometimes you can sleep for many hours and wake up and feel like it’s only been a few minutes, or other times you can take a short nap and feel like you’ve slept for hours? Well, this place is the same. We can be in here all day and when we leave, we might find we’ve only been gone for ten minutes. It works the other way, too. We can stay for thirty minutes and when we go back find out we’ve been gone for six hours.”
“Jeeez…”
“Yes, and so it may be that only ten or fifteen minutes has passed for my father, while we have been here for hours.”
Rogers shook her head and waved Cassiopia to follow. She led the way through several small but lavishly decorated hallways and rooms and stopped at a small aluminum door with no knob. She touched a small image beside the door, and it slid open.
“So the elapsed time thing is a bit scary, wouldn’t you say?” she asked as the elevator carried them upward.
“You don’t know the half of it. It is possible for you to leave Dreamland before me, and then I follow an hour later, and I get there before you!”
“What?”
“Yes. We somehow pass in the void between worlds. And, even more perplexing than that, when we first discovered the phenomena, my father immediately began working it mathematically, and he kept coming up with formulas that insisted a person could emerge from the doorway and find himself back in time, or ahead in time, but fortunately that has never happened.”
The elevator door slid open. They emerged under blue sky on a walkway that followed a white wooden fence encompassing the perimeter of the White House roof. Cassiopia looked around and found a structure larger than most homes sat atop the White House. Nearby stood a gazebo-like dome, bordered by cedar trees. In the center of it, all stood an unmanned, raised observation platform with a tall flagpole.
“Stay away from the edge and the fence. We don’t want to advertise our presence,” said Rogers. “Maybe they think they got us all.” She led the way, adjusting the straps on her machine guns as she went.
As they crossed the north side, the wrecked SUV by the east gate came into view. A large crowd of zombies were still milling around it. A short distance away, fresh bodies were being dragged away by smaller groups. Across the grassy park in front of the White House, the undead had again spread out and now wandered aimlessly, waiting for the invisible signal to mass and attack the large white palace, the object of their desire. On all sides, Rogers and Cassiopia found the same, though on the south lawn the collection seemed less dense.
Rogers stood looking out over the west side. “We’re okay for the moment. They seem pretty docile. We need to plan our escape route. We both need to learn it like the back of our hand in case we get separated. I can see there’s no way we’re going north or south across those open lawns. We’ll have to figure a way east or west. There’s cover all the way, and adjoining buildings to hide in.”
“Why didn’t the others do that?”
“Probably because they were escorting two people who were not athletic enough. Let’s go take a walk through the West Wing and see what kind of exit it would be.”
Rogers headed down to the first floor Palm Room and through to the Press Corps area, being careful to stay away from windows. The interiors remained untouched and pristine. As they passed by the cabinet room, Rogers paused and smiled at Cassiopia. “Let’s look in here a minute,” she said, and she turned left and then right into an intricately decorated office. At the back of the office, she stood alongside a windowed door and peered carefully into the next room. “Ah, the curtains are drawn. We can go in.” She pushed the double doors open wide and stepped inside with Cassiopia close behind.
The circular room had a large emblem on the floor in the center with rays radiating outward in all directions. On the left, a brown, neatly engraved desk sat in front of three tall windows concealed behind tan curtains. In the center of the room, a small table between beige sofas offered a bowl of apples. Two blue and beige chairs sat at each end. Rogers seemed to have a special affection for the place
She looked at Cassiopia. “You know what this is, don’t you?”
“The Oval Office.”
“Can you imagine the discussions that take place here in the real world? The decisions that are made here?”
Cassiopia tried to absorb the symbolism that was all around her. Colorful pictures on the wall seemed to speak. Books and plaques on shelves meant more than the messages they were intended to carry. Rogers broke the spell.
“We’d better get going. We just need to take a look from the Vice President’s office and see how bad it is out there.”
A long walk down lavish hallways brought them to a building exit, a door filled with safety windows. Staying back out of sight, they could just make out a portion of the west gate. It was open and populated by half a dozen particularly morbid-looking undead. Rogers studied the route intently and spoke in a low tone. “We could make it. We could toss out a few flash bangs, and probably be across the street before they knew what happened. That’s the old Executive Office Building over there. A million rooms, but I’m sure it’s not secure. We’d have to be hit and run, probably all the way. Let’s head back and check out the east side.”
A long, winding trek to the
far point of the East Wing brought comparable results. When they were satisfied, they returned to the front entrance and stood looking out the front door at the growing assemblage on the front lawn.
Rogers tried her controller and quickly gave up. “There were some apples in the Oval Office. Can we eat Dreamland food?” she asked.
Cassiopia replied without looking away from the window. “It’s thought-matter food. You can eat all you want and never gain an ounce. If you don’t know what it’s supposed to taste like, it will either taste weird or have no taste at all. If it’s food you know, it might be okay. It won’t fill you up, but it might make you think you ate something. You can’t live on Dreamland food.”
“There’s a hell of a kitchen on the Family Floor. Let’s go check it out.”
Trusting the elevator once more, they went to the third floor and made their way through the extravagant Center Hall to the President’s dining room. The adjoining kitchen was loaded with all foods imaginable. Rogers sat at a counter eating a huge bowl of strawberries, dipping them in whipped cream. They were delicious.
“How long has it been?”
Cassiopia answered, “Fifteen minutes.”
Rogers dug into her pocket and tried hers again. She lifted the switch guard, took a moment to close her eyes and hope, then hit the button. Immediately her eyes lit up. “Hey! We’re on, and it’s west!”
Cassiopia straightened up and tested her control. “Yes, I’ve got it too.”
They stood and looked at each other, then without speaking headed for the West Wing.
Chapter 18