Washington Deceased

by Stephen Jones

  The way Jones’ face fell was a memory Ty would cherish for the rest of his days.

  Chapter Forty-One

  STEELE WAS BEGINNING to think that they really might come out of this.

  They had an antiserum for HRV. They had the opposition of NWP locked down – Ty had returned to Washington with Landen Jones, who was in detention. Delancy’s attempted treason had failed. US troops and independent resistance fighters all over the country were starting to win, even against the intelligent zombies.

  All that really was left was Moreby.

  Steele decided to interrogate Dawson further. The President had managed to calm down much of the uproar over Delancy’s death by issuing a statement regarding “a complete investigation and pursuant trial”, but Steele knew that had just been spin control. If Dawson could help them defeat Moreby, the President would release him regardless of who screamed.

  She met Dawson in his cell. She’d had a hog brought to him earlier in the day; the zombies could survive eating animals, although Dawson said it was unpleasant. Still, Steele preferred knowing that he might be less likely to view her as a next meal.

  Marcus admitted her into the cell, locking the door behind her, but she felt no need to draw her Glock. She’d already decided she trusted Dawson.

  “Director Steele,” he said, greeting her simply.

  “General Dawson.”

  “Thanks to you and the President for protecting me after the incident with Delancy.”

  “How did you know we’ve been protecting you?”

  Dawson’s grey lips formed a wan smile. “It doesn’t take psychic connections to figure out that must have caused a hell of an uproar.”

  “You’re right.” Steele leaned against a wall. “We truthfully don’t quite know what to do with you, General.”

  “Well, to start with, you can stop calling me ‘General’. Harland will do just fine.”

  “Okay.” Steele paced a few steps, and turned to face him. “We need to know how to get to Moreby and how to kill him, Harland.”

  “I have to tell you the truth, Director: I’m not sure he can be killed.”

  It was what Steele had dreaded, but still refused to believe completely. “You can’t just destroy the brain like you can with all the rest?”

  “Well, let me put it this way: sure, you can destroy Moreby’s brain, and sure, that might stop him . . . for a few days, or even a few weeks maybe. But remember that Moreby’s not just a zombie – he’s also some kind of sorcerer or whatever you call it, who seems to have mastered a form of reincarnation. We know that he somehow placed his consciousness into this current body, and that he did something similar for the group he calls The Well of Seven. If we destroy his current body’s brain, what’s to stop him from simply manifesting into another individual?”

  Steele stopped, not seeing the barren cell, not seeing Dawson or herself, only seeing a future that grew ever bleaker. “So . . . do we just give up?”

  “No, I think there might be another way. Do we have much on Moreby’s history?”

  Thinking back over what she’d read, Steele half-remembered police reports and British intelligence reports about Moreby being buried in some crypt. “Some, yes. As I recall, the speculation was that crews excavating an old church for a festival or something broke into a crypt and accidentally released him.”

  “Yes. A crypt . . .”

  Steele looked at Dawson with sudden realization. “He may have been in that crypt for centuries.”

  “He was. In 1803, a ritual went badly and a mob threw Moreby into that crypt. He was sealed there until that construction crew accidentally freed him. So what happened during those two hundred years?”

  Steele thought back – she’d seen newspaper clippings reporting rumours of sounds, hauntings, unexplained visions . . . but they’d been little more than the usual urban legends. “Nothing happened.”

  “That’s right. So, even if he can’t be killed, we know that he can be rendered powerless by imprisonment.”

  “But surely we can’t just lock him into a prison cell and believe that’s going to work.”

  Dawson shook his head. “It won’t. No, it has to be a particular kind of chamber, one with occult powers . . .”

  “Didn’t you say the original architect of our underground system followed certain occult practices?”

  “Benjamin Henry Latrobe – yes.” Dawson thought for a few seconds before asking, “Do you know if you have any of the original plans for the complex?”

  “I’ve never seen any, but we have a storage room that houses old records. I assumed it was mainly old food inventories, that kind of thing . . .”

  Dawson stepped up closer to Steele, and an unpleasant odour of dead flesh made her stomach turn over once. “Find those plans, Steele. There may be something there you can use.”

  Steele nodded. “We’ll start looking. If there is . . . then we’d just need to figure out how to lure Moreby down there.”

  “Well, that part may be easier than you think.”

  That thought sent a small chill down Steele’s spine.

  [Coded message from Ralph Jenkins, MI5, to Sandra Steele.

  Subject: All Hallows Church.]

  DIRECTOR STEELE: IN REGARDS TO YOUR QUERY RE: THE CRYPT BENEATH ALL HALLOWS CHURCH, LONDON, WHEREIN WE BELIEVE THOMAS MOREBY WAS INTERRED BEFORE THE OUTBREAK OF HRV, WE CAN TELL YOU THAT HE DESIGNED THE CHURCH AND CRYPT HIMSELF IN THE STYLE OF ARCHITECT NICHOLAS HAWKSMOOR.

  HAWKSMOOR WAS WIDELY ADMIRED IN THE EARLY 18TH CENTURY, PRINCIPALLY FOR HIS LONDON CHURCHES, ALTHOUGH THERE HAVE SINCE BEEN SUGGESTIONS THAT HAWKSMOOR HIMSELF DABBLED IN MAGIC AND SATANISM, AND THAT HIS CHURCHES TAKEN TOGETHER FORM AN OCCULT PENTAGRAM THAT SPANS THE PARAMETERS OF THE OLD CITY.

  MOREBY WAS A GREAT ADMIRER OF HAWKSMOOR’S WORK, AND EVEN STUDIED UNDER HAWKSMOOR FOR SOME TIME. HOWEVER, AS TO WHETHER THE CRYPT BENEATH ALL HALLOWS HUES TO ANY SPECIFIC OCCULT THEORY OR PRACTICE, I’M AFRAID WE CANNOT CONFIRM.

  WE WISH YOU THE BEST OF LUCK IN WHATEVER PLANS YOU MAY HAVE FOR SECURING MOREBY. AS YOU KNOW, BRITAIN IS IN A SHAMBLES AND HUMANITY THROUGHOUT EUROPE IS CONFINED TO POCKETS. RUSSIA IS BASICALLY GONE, AS IS MUCH OF THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE, AND NOBODY HAS HEARD ANYTHING OUT OF CHINA SINCE THE INITIAL OUTBREAK. AT THE RISK OF SOUNDING VERY CLICHÉD, IT’S PROBABLY QUITE TRUTHFUL TO SAY THAT THE FATE OF THE WORLD RESTS ON YOU AT THIS POINT.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  STEELE AND TY had been rummaging for two hours, with no success.

  The storage room for the OC’s documents was located at one far end of the facility; beyond its concrete walls was nothing but raw stone and soil. It was a medium-sized space stocked with a dozen file cabinets – old metal monstrosities that rattled as their dented drawers were yanked open – and stacks of white cardboard boxes. Ty had taken the file cabinets while Steele sat on the floor going through the contents of the boxes. They’d seen thousands of invoices and packing slips for supplies, work orders for construction, signed confidentiality agreements, and modern maps, but nothing pertaining to Latrobe’s original design or construction.

  They were running out of drawers and crates.

  Ty pulled open a final drawer, saw one hanging file inside full of useless receipts, and exclaimed, “Damn. There’s just nothing here.” Angry, he slammed the drawer home hard enough to shake the entire cabinet.

  Something rattled behind it.

  Ty walked around to the edge of the row of filing cabinets and tried to look behind. He grabbed the end cabinet and, huffing with the exertion, managed to move it away from the wall slightly.

  There was a large frame back there.

  He tried to reach it, but could only wedge his arm into the space up to the wrist.

  “What is it?” Steele asked, looking up from the floor.

  “There’s something back here, but I can’t reach it.” He struggled again with the cabinet, but couldn’t get it to move any further.

  “Maybe I can,” Steele said, rising and joinin
g him.

  “Be my guest.”

  Steele’s arm was thinner than Ty’s, and she was able to reach hold of the large framed piece. She got a good grip on an edge and slid it out from behind the cabinets.

  It was a framed blueprint. Large (about four feet by three feet), and obviously old, in an ornamental wooden frame, protected behind glass.

  “Holy shit, Steele, I think this is it.” Ty propped the piece up against the cabinets, used his sleeve to wipe dust from it, and knelt to study it.

  It showed a layout similar to the modern maps of the complex, but with rooms named differently. The ink had faded to brown, and in one corner was the legend WASHINGTON DC UNDERGROUND / BENJAMIN HENRY LATROBE, ARCHITECT, in archaic script.

  Ty reached up to the top of one of the cabinets, where he’d set a modern map of the underground complex. “Okay, let’s see what we’ve got.” He unfolded the modern map and held it beside the framed plans.

  Steele joined him to compare the two. The layout matched almost exactly on the two documents, although some rooms had been divided up or repurposed on the modern map.

  “There.” Ty jabbed a finger at the plans, and brought the matching part of the map up close. Squinting, Steele saw that there was indeed a large chamber indicated on the plans that did not appear on the map. “There’s an extra room on the original plans that’s not on the later map.”

  “Meaning . . .?”

  Ty turned to her excitedly. “Meaning this room was walled off and removed from the map.”

  “How do we know it was actually built?”

  “Well, we don’t . . . but Latrobe’s original plans are otherwise exactly the same as the map. Let’s see, this room – if it existed – would be . . .” Ty drew a finger along both the plans and the map, then sat back and looked up, “. . . right on the other side of this wall.”

  Steele followed Ty’s gaze, seeing nothing but bare concrete wall, not even painted or panelled. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah . . .” Ty went over the plans again, and pushed them closer to Steele to show her. “See, we’re at the far western end of the OC. On the new layout, this is the last room . . . but on the old ones, there’s one more room beyond this, and it’s larger. The opening would have been right behind the file cabinets.”

  “Where you found the plans,” Steele added.

  “Right.” Ty leapt to his feet and ran a hand along the smooth concrete surface. “This concrete’s probably eight inches thick. We’ll need somebody with experience and the right equipment to get through it.”

  Rising to join Ty, Steele found herself reluctant to touch the wall. “Ty . . . even if you’re right, and there’s a room behind this one . . . what are you hoping to find there? I mean, is it something we want to break into?”

  Ty turned to her, surprised. “Somebody didn’t want us to find this room; maybe that somebody was even Moreby. This could be the answer we need.”

  “Or it could be something even worse than Moreby.”

  “Steele . . . do we really have a choice at this point?”

  Steele wanted to say, Yes – we can walk away, hide those prints, say we found nothing . . . but she knew Ty was right.

  Whatever was behind the wall might save them . . . or complete their damnation.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  BY THE TIME Private Larsen was done with the cut-off saw, both he and Ty were covered with tiny cuts from flying concrete chips.

  Fortunately they’d both worn safety goggles and heavy gloves. Ty had opted to keep the operation small, partly because they were working in a confined space already, and partly to keep anyone else out of jeopardy. He had two other soldiers working to haul away the concrete as he hammered chunks down, but he’d asked everyone else to stay clear of this section until they were done.

  As soon as they’d created the first large hole, they saw old-fashioned bricks and mortar behind. They removed more concrete, and it soon became clear that the bricks had been used to cover a doorway; the wall on either side was made of massive blocks of stone, and the bricks were set within a granite archway. The ornamentation at the top of the arch consisted of an ornate flying skull.

  Most dreadful, however, was the skull and crossbones crudely painted on the bricks. The paint was centuries old and had faded, but it was still a plain warning that death awaited behind the wall.

  Ty got the last of the concrete they’d broken through removed, thanked Private Larsen for his work, and told him he could return to Bolling. Larsen, a young man with thinning red hair, seemed relieved to go.

  Left alone before the brickwork, Ty studied it and considered his options. Whatever the room held was likely long crumbled to dust. The old plans he’d found were dated 1803, the same year that Benjamin Henry Latrobe had disappeared; had Latrobe placed anything in this room, it would be more than 200 years old.

  Ty placed his hands on the brickwork; it was still solid, and cold to the touch, with a musty smell. Curious, he put one ear up against the construction. He listened for a few seconds, hearing only . . .

  Something thudded on the wall from the other side.

  Ty leapt back, startled. Hands were on him from behind and he gasped. He spun – and saw Steele there.

  “Whoa, it’s just me. You okay?”

  Panting, Ty looked from Steele to the wall. “Yeah, I . . . thought I heard something is all.”

  Steele looked at the bricks and the primitive white icon painted thereon. “Jesus. I can see why you’d be spooked.”

  “Yeah. Pretty weird, huh?”

  Looking from the bricks to Ty, Steele said, “You were right again, Ty.”

  He shrugged. “Right about the room, but . . . I have no idea what we’ll find in there. Whatever it is, somebody went to great pains to make sure it wasn’t found.”

  “Or that something wasn’t getting out.”

  “What could—” Ty broke off as a muffled thud sounded from beyond the brick wall. He knew he’d likely turned as pale as Steele just had.

  “Ty . . .”

  “I know. I heard it, too. Something is in there.”

  “What I was going to say was . . . do you remember the reports from the British, the ones about how when Moreby was freed from the crypt beneath the church, they think he released fleas that may have started the spread of HRV?”

  Ty’s jaw dropped. How had he missed that?

  A crypt . . . He looked again at the macabre flying skull that sat at the apex of the arch, and he knew. This was a crypt, too. And something was in there that was probably long dead, but still alive.

  “You can’t open it, Ty. You might be condemning everyone down here if you do.”

  “We have to open it, Steele.” When she started to protest, he cut her off. “We can do it carefully.”

  “No.”

  “Listen to me: we’ll clear everyone out of this section, then we’ll send in one man and seal everything behind him.”

  Steele shook her head. “You can’t do it, Ty. It’s suicide—”

  Ty grinned. “It’s not suicide for someone who’s already dead. It won’t be me going in – it’ll be Dawson.”

  “Dawson . . .” Steele glanced at the brickwork one last time and made her decision. “You get everything you need – whatever it’ll take to seal this area off. While you do that, I’ll go talk to Dawson.”

  “Good.”

  Steele was nearly out the door when Ty called after her, “It’ll work, Steele. You know it will.”

  She wished she could believe that.

  A NEW WORLD FOR ALL

  For immediate release:

  Yesterday, Dr. Landen Jones, former Director of Research and Development for New World Pharmaceuticals, was arrested by Federal troops and escorted to Washington, D.C.. Dr. Jones is being held on a number of charges, including treason against the United States of America.

  The Board of Directors of New World Pharmaceuticals is hereby going on record as stating that it had no prior knowledge of Dr. Jones�
��s activities and had not authorized his actions. NWP fully acknowledges the vitally important role that Dr. Jones played in the recent development of an antiserum to counteract Human Reanimation Virus (HRV), and we applaud his leadership and ingenuity on that project. However, Dr. Jones then withheld distribution of this crucial drug to the United States Government, and made numerous demands, acting entirely on his own.

  Again, we repeat: Dr. Landen Jones at no time acted on behalf of or with the approval of NWP. We suspect that, due to the stress of recent events, Dr. Jones may be suffering some sort of breakdown or psychotic snap; although such psychological illness obviously doesn’t excuse his alleged crimes, we do nonetheless hope that he can receive the help he clearly needs and find some sort of peace.

  NWP obviously remains dedicated to serving the people and the Government of the United States of America; we are committed to working hand-in-hand with the Government to control the spread of HRV and improve the lives of all humankind. Saving lives and improving health, longevity and happiness have always been NWP’s core mission, and recent events have not changed that.

  To further demonstrate our commitment, NWP will be offering the first 10,000 doses of our antiserum to the United States Government free of charge.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  “LOOKS LIKE THEY’RE throwing you under the bus, Landen,” the President said as she slid a printout of the NWP press release across her desk.

  Jones, seated on the other side with Steele positioned behind him, picked up the release, scanned it, and put it back down. “Can’t say that I blame them. I would’ve done the same thing.”

  “Whatever happened to honour among thieves?”

  “I’d say it went down about the same time that the myth of the United States as a force to be reckoned with did.”

  Steepling her fingers beneath her chin, the President said, “We’re still a force, Landen. Do you understand the severity of what you’ve attempted to do, or of the punishment you face? Treason can carry a death sentence.”