by M. Lorrox
Frank engages the levers to open the bus’s door, and Jambavan dives out. Underneath the bus, there is plenty of room for zombies to crawl, but he’s not rushing out to secure the area. He scoots under Korina’s arm and holds her up. “You made it!”
She tries to speak and coughs. “Barely. Busted up good though; Z grabbed me when I was jumping for the building and brought me down—”
Skip sticks his head out the door. “Ready for the kids?”
Korina nods and leans off from her squire. “Jamby, lead them to the cafeteria...on the right. You’ll have to break down the door.”
Skip withdraws to the bus and helps the kids and chaperones past the staged gear. Jambavan leads them down the hall to the cafeteria. When he gets there, he scopes out the inside through the window, and it’s empty. The door is locked, and when he kicks it, it blasts open, wrecking the latch.
Frank and Skip trudge through the hallway carrying loads of gear, and Jambavan runs back to the bus.
Korina still leans against the stone walls of the alcove. “There’s a zombie crawling underneath. It’s down there somewhere. Get the rest of the gear, and I’ll keep watch.”
Jambavan collects the last of the piled emergency equipment and glances down the aisle of the bus. He yells, “Anybody left here?”
No response.
He hops back off the bus, and Korina motions for him to go to the cafeteria. “I’ll be right behind you.” After he passes, Korina pulls her hand back—the one that was holding her side—and she looks at it. It’s covered with blood. She hears a scratching noise coming from under the bus, and she turns toward it. Where are you? I will fucking destroy you!
A hand reaches out and claws the asphalt. A nail rips off the pointer finger, and the zombie keeps clawing. Korina grits her teeth and shifts her weight. A zombie that used to be a woman sticks its head out and looks up at her. It hisses and snarls, then reaches for Korina’s foot.
She doesn’t withdraw it.
The zombie grabs the foot and pulls it toward its snarling, open mouth.
Korina snarls back and kicks straight into the zombie’s mouth—the toe of her leather boot smashing through the zombie’s teeth and breaking open its jaw. Korina isn’t done kicking though, and she kicks the head straight against the stone wall of the alcove. Her boot rips through the back of the zombie’s mouth and smashes the vertebrae at the base of the skull. The zombie collapses into a bleeding pile of flesh, and Korina nearly does as well.
She recently added some additional broken ribs to her list of injuries, and these hadn’t started to heal yet. When she kicked the zombie’s head in half, one of the jagged pieces of bone pierced into her spleen and into the upper tip of her pancreas.
Korina stumbles, but she holds herself up. She let go of the museum’s door, and it’s now about to close and lock her outside.
Just before the door closes, Skip opens it. He notices her wounds and the way she breathes. “Here, let me help you.” He reaches under her arm and helps her to stand, then he brings her inside. He pauses as the door leading outside closes, and he checks that it’s locked.
Some other people inside the museum hear the commotion and run to the cafeteria. The first to arrive is an older-looking man in a dark-blue jumpsuit with a brass, red-rope divider stand that he holds upside down like an awkward club. When he sees the room filled with kids, he lowers it.
Skip sets Korina on the ground, and Jambavan rushes to her side. Skip grabs the large, emergency surgery medical kit and pulls on the squire’s shoulder, whispering, “Get her some blood, I’ll try and stop the bleeding.”
“Excuse me?” Korina looks up at Skip—the man she has just met—who just implied he’d perform surgery on her. “What exactly do you think you’re doing?”
Skip sniffs, smiles, and waves a hand in front of him. “Don’t worry; I’m a veterinarian.”
Korina blinks. Could be worse.
Katlyn approaches the man who came down with the brass rope stand. “We were on a field trip. My name’s Katlyn.”
He wipes the sweat off his forehead onto his sleeve. “I’m John… How’d you all get in? I mean, all the doors were sealed… We checked.”
“I came in through a third-floor window and opened the door at the end of this hall.” Korina looks up at them. She lays on one side while Skip pulls a needle through the skin on her other side to stitch a big gash closed.
John looks at the bloodied woman, who doesn’t flinch as Skip sews the skin by her ribs shut. YOWSA. John looks away. His eyes hurt, and he squeezes them shut for an instant while he quickly shakes his head back and forth. Damn it!
Katlyn touches his shoulder. “What’s the situation here? Is the building secure?”
He stretches his eyes open and nods. “We’ve barricaded both sets of main doors. There’s maybe a hundred or a hundred and fifty people upstairs. About twenty have been bitten.” He pulls up his sleeve and reveals an open wound on his forearm. “I figure until the fever hits in an hour or so, we can at least be useful. When that time comes, maybe we’ll find that window your friend opened…and see how well we fly.”
Katlyn can’t resist the urge to recoil her hand and hold it in front of her mouth. “Oh, my, that’s...that’s so very brave of you.”
He shrugs. “I’m going to try and live out my last hour the best I can.” He takes a deep breath. “I used to be in charge of maintenance here—or I guess I still am—so I know where things are. Let me know if I can help.”
The medical helicopter lands on the pad at INOVA Fairfax Hospital, and ER staff rush to receive the patients. They see June on a stretcher with an IV, but to their surprise, Gorgi Pandev, one of the helicopter medics, insists on bringing the patient into the hospital himself.
The emergency staff stand stupefied for a moment, until they see the state of Eddy’s and Enrique’s clothes—they’re torn and covered in blood. They swarm around the boys, help them out of the helicopter, and bring them inside. The one helping Eddy asks what caused their car accident.
Eddy recalls that the pilot had radioed to the hospital once his radio started working again. “Something hit us. I’m not sure what happened.”
“Well, we’ll take care of you, son.”
Inside, the two boys sit in a hallway while an old nurse named Betty checks them over. Eddy stretches his neck to look around the corner of the hallway to see where June is being taken.
He points. “Our friend, where are they taking her?”
Betty doesn’t look. “Intensive Care. Sit still and calm down.” She checks some of the bloodied areas on Eddy, but she doesn’t see anything too severe. “There’s zombies in DC. Did you or anyone in your car encounter any?”
Eddy stares into Betty’s blue eyes. He shakes his head. “No. Just our car encountered something else. It happened so fast—I didn’t really see.”
She moves over to Enrique and touches the bandage on his leg. He winces. She pulls away the gauze and finds a horrific hole burned into his flesh with a ring of bloody, blistered skin around it. “Oh boy.” She glances at his bandaged hand, then his other arm held in a sling, then the gauze around his chest that must hold a bandage in place on his back. She finally finds his face. “It looks like you’ve been through something fierce.”
He nods.
Eddy looks around, trying to find anyone with eyes like his so that he, Enrique, and June, can get the right kind of treatment. He can’t find anyone. “Listen, he and I are alright for now, but we’ve got to stay with our friend.”
She shakes her head. “You’re both going to need to get cleaned up and thoroughly checked out. Are your parents—”
Eddy shakes his head and casts his eyes to the ground, trying to look forlorn.
Betty places her hand on his shoulder. “I’ll send someone over to chat with you. Stay put.” She gets up and walks down the hall.
Eddy turns to Enrique. “We have to find June…and the elders. Who knows what kind of medieval tests they’ll throw
at us in here.”
Someone around the corner answers him. “It can get pretty scary.” The boys look up, and Gorgi walks out. “I found the others. Come with me, quick.”
When Skip finishes stitching closed the biggest of Korina’s wounds, she thanks him and sits up. “Oooh, my guts still hurt though; I must have torn something pretty good.”
Skip has learned it’s not prudent to argue with a vampire about their health, but he can’t help himself. “You should rest, and you probably need to get to a hospital, but I know that’s not in the cards right now.”
“You’re right; it isn’t. Now show me all the equipment you brought from the bus.”
John, the guy in charge of maintenance at the museum, leaves to return to the other survivors upstairs. Frank walks with him. “So, John, how long have you been here at the Smithsonian?”
“Twenty-five years—more than half my life.” He sighs. “I guess it’s fitting I’ll die here.”
Frank clears his throat. “You seem to be taking it relatively well.”
“Dying?” John stops and turns to him; his brow is furrowed, and he frowns. “I just wish I could have seen my kid again. To tell him to be strong without me, but he’s been on a trip all week. He’ll come back on Sunday to an empty house.”
Frank groans. “I’m really sorry.”
“Me too. And my stupid phone isn’t working. I wrote him a note and gave it to a friend to get it to him, and I hope it gets to him.” He shakes his head. “I guess that’s all I can hope for… Well, that and taking as many zombies with me to the grave as I can.” He looks Frank up and down. “You need a weapon.”
Frank shakes his head. “I’ve got to help with the kids; I can’t go rampaging.”
John turns, walks down a little hallway, and wipes more sweat from his forehead. “I bet you can find something in here.” He unlocks a door to a storage closet. Inside are some brooms and mops, some chemicals for cleaning, and rags. “What do you fancy, a broom or a mop?”
Frank can’t help but grin. “Wasn’t there a toxic waste superhero that used a mop? You know, back in the... I don’t know, before special effects and fancy superpowers?”
John grabs the mop. “Beats me, but it sounds like you’re a mop-man.”
Frank sets the head of the mop on the ground and stomps just up from it, cracking the mop-head off and leaving a sharp, splintery point. “Eh, I think I’m more a spear-man.”
When Frank returns to the cafeteria, without John but with his mop-handle spear, he beelines for Korina. She’s still seated on the ground where Skip worked on her. “Captain, there’s a lot of people upstairs, many of them are freaking out, and the front doors to this place…they’re glass.”
Korina doesn’t follow. “What do you suggest I do about that? Tell them to stay calm and look away?”
Jambavan grabs her shoulder. “When we were on the bus, the zombies kept throwing things at the glass. They were trying to break in. This building may not be secure.”
Korina nods with a realization. “When I was out there, they didn’t just all go directly after me like I expected. Some instead tried to block where I was headed, to corner me. They were like a group, or a pack, hunting prey. They worked together.”
Skip finishes consolidating the blood and medical supplies into fewer bags. He stands. “All adults should have a weapon, just in case. This is a cafeteria, right? Maybe we could find knives or something in the kitchen.”
Korina nods. “Good thinking. See what you can find. I’m going to take some doctor’s advice and rest.”
Katlyn steps up to Skip. “I’ll go with you.”
As the couple walks toward the kitchen attached to the cafeteria, Frank and Jambavan follow behind and remove any hope of privacy. Inside the kitchen, they fan out and call out anything they come across. Katlyn spots a bunch of knives near a counter. “Cutlery.”
Skip opens a drawer. “Big metal spoons.”
Jambavan opens a cabinet. “Pots and Pans.”
Frank checks out a walk-in refrigerator. Beer? Damn. “Fancy soft drinks.”
Katlyn opens a pantry. “Flour and Baking soda...”
Skip opens another cupboard. “Votive candles, lighters and matches, and place settings.” He sighs.
“Guys!” Katlyn bounds over to Skip. “I have an idea.”
Jambavan and Frank abandon their search and join Katlyn and Skip.
She can barely contain her excitement. “We have some fuel from the bus, right?”
Frank nods. “Five liters of diesel.”
“And those fancy soft drinks, were they in glass bottles?”
“Yeah.”
“I can totally make some Molotov cocktails!”
Skip raises a single eyebrow at his new girlfriend.
Katlyn hurries to explain. “We invented them in the Winter War, back in Finland. We just need fuel, a thickener like baking soda or detergent, a bottle, and cloth for wicks.”
Frank smiles. “The maintenance guy showed me a storage closet, and there’s a bunch of chemicals and rags in there.”
“Ooh! Was there acetone or rubbing alcohol?”
“Uh, I didn’t look.”
“Well, why don’t you and Jambavan grab the rags, look for acetone or rubbing alcohol—that would lower the diesel’s flashpoint—and grab some detergent. We’ll set up the bottles and baking soda.”
Frank and Jambavan run out with purpose. Skip grabs a hold of Katlyn with some too. “You never told me how old you were.” He pulls her in and kisses her.
She squeezes him tight against her while they kiss, then she releases him. “And I still haven’t.”
Corporal Clyde Wilson and his team get the last of Group 6’s eight LAZoR units set into place on the ground. Not only have the other seven of their group’s units been fired up and have networked together, but the other nine King Stallions have been deploying their groups of units around the perimeter as well. The wiring harness is remotely disengaged from Group 6’s last LAZoR unit, which starts the bootup procedure.
As the hardware runs code and boots, it beeps and ticks like a personal computer. This device, however, includes a gun and an electric generator, and costs about $100,000.
After its boot sequence completes, relays release four, spring-operated legs that shoot out from the base, extending the footprint of the unit for stability. A battery starts the diesel generator, which then begins to constantly top-off the battery. Protective plates that cover the laser communications arrays near the top open, and the arrays scan for signals from other units. A light flashes green for a few seconds, then turns solid green; it has located the two units to its sides and has networked in.
The gun swings up and into place, locking the barrel out. The aiming motors whir as they test the gun’s range of motion; 175 degrees to the right, then 350 degrees to the left, then 175 degrees back to center. A deeper hum accompanies the motors that tilt the gun, and the system checks its range of motion as well; up 15 degrees, down 30 degrees, up 15 degrees.
Another plate slides open, and the LIDAR range detection and targeting system is activated. A chute moves into place below the gun that will deflect all shell casings away from the LIDAR targeting system and onto the flat portions of the extended legs—again adding stability.
Inside, the ammunition feeding system grabs the first bullet and loads it into the chamber. The next nine bullets are dragged up and out of their position as well, with the other 29,990 cartridges in line after. After thirty seconds, the unit is booted, networked, locked, and loaded.
Finally, a group of red LED lights and a set of defocused laser diodes above the gun turn on and start spinning. A warning message begins playing out a weatherproof speaker. “Warning: automated turret active. Stay back.”
Now the unit is fully active. It’s hunting. Anything inside the predefined kill zone that moves and meets its targeting parameters—humanoid shapes either upright or crawling—will be greeted by a single bullet. It will be precisely ai
med at the target’s head by the most powerful mobile processor available.
The target’s head will then disappear.
Clyde and two specialists working with him are setting up their command post on top of a large apartment complex at the northwest corner of the intersection at M Street NW and North Capitol Street. They set up a laser communications pod and aim it at the receiver on top of the closest LAZoR unit. Clyde logs in, and on the Grid Integrity display, he sees a series of green dots that indicate connected units. When he verifies that all of his group’s units are green on the display, he breathes a sigh of relief. He raises his radio to communicate the all-set to the helicopter, but then he remembers the bands are being swamped by interference. He sets the radio down, stands to face the helicopter, then waves the signal.
A moment later, the huge helicopter with the empty deployment grid hanging underneath banks and flies north, back to the Army Research Laboratory.
On the monitor, Clyde watches as the other teams’ last units connect. They first appear as a gray dot when a neighboring unit spots it, then the dot turns green when it networks in. After the last gray dot turns green, all the icons change into triangles—triangles with one point painted red.
The red tips all point in, perpendicular to the perimeter, and for the moment, the icons are motionless. Clyde swallows. No targets…yet. He turns away from the display and looks out past the LAZoR units on M Street NW and into the quarantined zone. He can’t see any zombies approaching either.
He knows that they will come though, because there’s thousands of them in there, somewhere. At least they’ll be contained. Nothing can get past these babies.
While Jambavan, Korina, Frank, and Katlyn prepare Molotov cocktails in the kitchen, Skip walks into the cafeteria to check on Minnie. She’s with her friend Tommy and Tommy’s mom, Jennifer. “What are you up to over here?”
