by M. Lorrox
“Wait.”
“Why?”
Sadie buckles herself in. “Eddy’s going to follow us in the Jeep.”
Korina shows her frustration. “Why?”
Sadie just smiles. “I might need it.” Out of the corner of her eye, she sees her Jeep emerge from the parking garage below the hotel—it roars up the hill like a great dragon clawing out of its cave. She points to it. “There he is. Let’s go.”
Korina checks her mirror and pulls out. “Alright, what exactly is the situation?”
“The High Council is still in the Pentagon, right?”
Korina nods. “Yes.”
“Charlie is on the way back; the mission failed. It seems the vaccine doesn’t work, but instead turns them into zombies.”
Jambavan shakes his head. “What are you saying? I don’t understand.”
Sadie swallows. “The High Council is trapped in a building, that might also have twenty-five thousand zombies trapped with them.”
“Fuck.” Korina takes a deep breath.
“Yeah. The doors are sealed, and we need to get to the High Council and get them out of there.”
“Who else knows about the vaccine not working?”
Sadie tosses a hand in the air. “Right now, just the military, but if the same thing happens here that happened on the plane—if people inside the Pentagon are infected—a zombie spotted from a window will be all it’ll take.”
Jambavan groans. “The press, they’ll go crazy, and so will the people.”
Korina floors it. “Let’s hope we can at least get there before hell breaks loose.”
Sadie glances in the side mirror back at Eddy. He’s falling behind. “Slow it down just a little, jacked up Jeeps don’t like going over sixty.”
Korina takes her foot off the gas and scowls over at Sadie.
Sadie shrugs. “Death Wobble. It’s a thing.” She folds her hands in her lap. “We’re almost there anyway.” She glances in the mirror again and sees Eddy catching up to them. She turns around to the back seat. “Eddy said you had an idea about how to get in?”
Jambavan smiles and motions to a large duffel bag beside him. “We climb.”
Sky arrives at the hotel and hurries to the conference room the Council Guard uses as an office. The senior officers and their squires have lockers there, and she collects her tactical gear. Once she has most everything on and strapped in, she stares into her nearly emptied locker. The steel curves of the bat’leth shine back at her.
“Naa.” She turns and starts to walk out the door, then checks the cryptic message from Eddy again.
My dad says he has a special mission for you. Wait for a car to pick you up by the hotel’s lobby.
His dad is the Guard Commander. A special mission from him and not from Tiger?
She turns back and grabs her bat’leth. If I don’t need it, I can leave it in the car. Better to be lookin’ at it, than be lookin’ for it. Right, Daddio?
She imagines his voice respond to her. Righto Sky, righto.
She stands in the shadow of the awning outside the hotel’s front doors, whistling a Scottish folk tune while she waits. She decides to sing the chorus. “Ring-ding diddle iddle I dee-oh, ring dye didley I oh—”
“You alright, kid?” A bellman looks at her from a distance. “Jeez. That’s quite the get-up.”
She turns to him and smiles. “Thanks!”
He shakes his head as a black car with tinted windows rolls up. The passenger window opens an inch. “Sky?”
She bounces to the car. “Aye, that’s me, but what’s the secret password?”
“I think it’s: GET IN THE CAR. We’re going to go meet Charlie.”
“Close enough.” He called the Guard Commander Charlie... She slides the bat’leth off her back and takes a step to the rear seats. The car’s electronic locks click open, and she gets in. “Where we headed?”
“He’ll be landing in a little while at Joint Base Andrews. He wants us to meet him there.”
“Us? Does he know you?” Sky can’t see the man’s eyes through his dark sunglasses. This guy a spook?
“Want to listen to some music?” He reaches for the car stereo and turns it on.
“Classical? Really?”
He laughs then hits the button to scan to the next station. “Let me know if you hear some—”
“Ohhh! THIS ONE! I love this whole album.”
“The Beatles? Seriously?”
Inside the 9/11 Memorial Room, Mary wakes up and coughs. She sits up. Alright, what’s the situation here? She looks around; her eyes burn. “Damn it.” She wipes them and opens them again, surveying the room. Everyone is laying on the ground or slumped against walls.
She slides a foot or so to her right, where Vincent sits. She shakes him. “Vincent, wake up.”
He groans but doesn’t rouse.
She sighs. “You’re weak.” She hears a noise, like teeth chattering behind her. She turns around and sees the marine. What was his name? Graham? He’s lying on his face, and is shaking.
Mary stands up, then doubles over. “Whew, slow down, old girl.”
“Mmrrmrr.”
She looks at the marine. “Looks like you’re waking up. You must be strong, too.”
Sergeant Graham’s hands slide beneath him and push up.
“I guess this means the tour’s over.” Mary looks out the windows to her side. Warm, yellowish-green light pours through them, mixing with the purplish lights shining down from specialty bulbs in the room. “It’s a shame.”
She turns to face Sergeant Graham, and she looks into the blank eyes of a zombie.
A flash of energy courses through its body, and it lunges toward her with a gaping mouth and clawing hands. Vomit covers its shirt, and spittle flies from its mouth.
Mary blinks and shakes her head, trying to see straight.
Eddy pulls up behind Korina and presses in on the clutch and the brake. She had driven straight up to the squad car blocking the entrance to the Pentagon and is talking to an officer. News trucks are parked here and there on the grass, and a woman stares out the back of another squad car nearby. Weird.
The officer leans into Korina’s window, and Eddy can see her showing the man something. He nods and speaks into his radio, then he takes a step back. The squad car blocking the entrance pulls backward a few feet and makes a gap for Korina to drive through.
The officer waves her on, then he looks at Eddy.
Eddy smiles back at him.
He scowls at the fifteen-year-old driving the massively jacked up Jeep, and he waves him on as well.
After parking illegally along the inside curb of the Pentagon’s parking lot, Eddy jumps down from the Jeep, and Rusty jumps out after him. OMG I LOVE DRIVING!
Jambavan gets out of the SUV with the large duffel bag he had beside him, and he sets it on the ground as he opens the trunk. He tears through some bags while looking for something.
Eddy bends down and pets Rusty. “Listen bud, things are getting a little crazy. June’s in trouble, and I’m going to go get her.”
-Bark!-
Eddy laughs. “Thanks, I suppose.” He scruffs Rusty’s head between his ears. Better take care of yourself for a little while. Maybe wait for Dad.”
-Bark!-
Rusty trots off toward the building. When he gets to it, he sniffs the ground and squats to poop.
Officially, almost 26,000 people work at the Pentagon every day. In addition, roughly 5,000 more work in the building’s secret levels, which brings the actual workforce to almost 31,000. When the lockdown procedures are initiated, a total of 30,403 non-vampires are inside.
Now, those 30,403 are zombies, and they’re awake. They have started moving around, looking for food or looking for a way out of whatever room they happen to be in. Many are in military dress uniforms that are covered in their own, pre-zombification vomit. In many places, things are calm.
But that’s not the case in the 9/11 Memorial Room.
When Hamid wakes up, he
shakes some clarity into his head, and he looks toward the noise by his side. The tour guide is hunched over Mary, his mouth dripping blood, her severed forearm and wrist hanging from his mouth while the rest of her body lies crumpled on the ground beneath.
“Hey!” He clamors to his feet and lunges toward the zombie. “Get away from her!”
The zombie lifts its head toward him. More than anything, it seems pleased to see another potential meal. It drops the arm from its mouth and starts to lunge toward Hamid, but it is too slow. Instead, Hamid grabs it and launches it backward through the glass that separates the different portions of the room.
It falls with the shattered glass, and when it gets back to its feet, Hamid grabs it again and lifts it up by its armpits. He slams it against a vertical beam along the far wall, breaking both shoulder blades. Hamid holds the zombie up off the ground, and it writhes its arms and legs.
It kicks him in the groin, and Hamid grimaces. In a flash, he moves one hand onto the zombie’s forehead and shoves it backward—hard—crushing the skull completely and splattering blood and brain out of the sides of its split-open head. Then, he lets it drop. He turns around and rubs his burning eyes.
Another vampire starts to rouse. Hamid shakes his head and squints, then rushes to Mary’s side. Her head is propped up in the corner of the room. She must have fallen and gone unconscious. He looks at her right arm; it’s been chewed and torn off at the elbow. So much blood.
He pulls out his handkerchief and ties it like a tourniquet around her bicep. Two High Councilors have now awoken—James Cartwright and Vincent de Villablino—and they rush to Hamid’s side. They see him covered in blood.
“Sir, are you alright?”
He nods to Vincent. “Mary’s hurt badly; she’s lost a lot of blood.”
James looks down at her, sees her severed arm, then he rips his sleeve from the cuffs upward and bites into his wrist. Blood spurts from his mouth.
As Hamid stands and takes a step back, Vincent drops to his knees and slides Mary away from the wall so that she lays flat on the ground. “What the hell happened to her?” Vincent forces open her mouth.
“The guide, he was a zombie.”
James pulls his bleeding wrist from his mouth and positions it over her open lips. Blood pours into her mouth and across her face.
Vincent looks at James, then at Hamid. “How the hell did that happen? How long were we out?”
Hamid checks his watch. “Maybe a half hour or forty-five minutes, I’m not sure.”
High Councilor Eliza Leroux wakes up and sees a corpse with a smashed head to her right, broken glass all over the ground, and the three men huddled and standing over Mary on the other end of the room. She sits up and brushes her dyed, maroon-streaked white hair from her face. “What in the world is going on?”
Hamid turns around to face her. “Wake everyone up. Don’t leave the room.”
Vincent stands and cautiously approaches the double doors leading into the chapel. He peeks out and can see a woman. She’s standing, facing away, and looking around slowly. Vincent glances over his shoulder into the Memorial Room. “There’s a woman out there.”
When he looks back through the window, the woman has turned toward him and is hissing. Then, she starts climbing over the pews on her way to the Memorial Room.
“¡Mierda!” Vincent drops his head out of the window. “She’s coming this way.” He braces his body across the doors to block them.
Hamid looks at him for a moment, then he shakes his head. “No. Let her in.”
Vincent tilts his head to the side. “What?”
-Knock, knock-
Wren is startled by the rapping on the window by her side. A different officer—one she hasn’t seen before—is scowling at her. She shifts her body to try and hide her cell phone. “Who’s there?”
“Captain Rojas.”
She smirks. I really shouldn’t, but I must. “Captain Rojas, who?”
“Your new best friend.” He opens the squad car’s door. “Tell them you’ll call them back.”
She frowns. “Wren Riggs, signing off.”
He reaches down and grabs her arm. “Let me help you up.”
She stands, and he holds her by the cuffs out to the side. He leans in, picks up the phone and taps to end the cell. He looks at her, and his scowl disappears. “I need your help. Say yes and I’ll take the cuffs off. Say no and I’ll put you back in the car, but without your phone.” He waves it at her.
She holds her cuffed hands out. “What can I do for you, Captain Rojas?”
“Good choice. We need to make briefings, and I need you to be like a press secretary.”
The cuffs are off, and she rubs her wrists. “That’s not my job; I report for the National Daily News and only the National Daily News.”
He holds up the cuffs. “Consider it a promotion, or I’ll put you back in the car.”
She glances at the cuffs, then back to Captain Rojas’ face. She nods and smiles, then motions to her phone. “I’ll get the players ready in fifteen. Where are you setting up?”
He hands her the phone, then points to the squad car blocking the entrance to the Pentagon lot. “Pick a spot that doesn’t block the road and isn’t past that car.”
“Oookay, anything else?”
He nods. “We’ll have updates for you every twenty minutes. That work?”
She nods and he walks away, then she exhales and straightens her jacket.
“Seriously. We’re gonna climb in?” Eddy’s eyebrows are raised so high that they hide behind his bangs and threaten his hairline.
Jambavan looks up from the ropes and harnesses he’s laying out on the ground by the cars. “Yes.” He returns to his work.
Eddy turns around and points to a window. “Why don’t we just break a window?”
“They’re beyond bulletproof.” Korina slings on a black leather shoulder harness. “And the doors have the security shields down; you can’t get through them without heavy machinery.”
“Oh.” Eddy bites his lip, then notices something out of the corner of his eye. Something is flashing and lighting up a barrier wall past the Pentagon’s parking lot. Then he hears a siren lift over the other traffic noise, and he hears a motorcycle. When he sees the motorcycle and a police car chasing it, he points. “Guys…?”
Korina throws a duffel over her shoulder, then turns and squints. She laughs as she walks toward the motorcycle and the squad car chasing it, and she starts waving her arms. The motorcycle pulls up alongside her, and the Pentagon Force Protection Agency officer pulls up behind.
The officer opens their door and draws their gun. “FREEZE! Step away from the vehicle!”
Korina raises her hands in surrender and walks toward the officer. “It’s okay, they’re with me.”
“And who exactly are you?”
“Above your clearance. Radio it in; ask for Rojas.”
Eddy looks at the motorcycle’s riders, twenty yards away. A man in brown leather and jeans swings his leg off, and behind him, a teenager hops off the back.
Jambavan pokes Eddy. “You remember Enrique, the squire that almost arm-barred you into oblivion? That’s his knight, Flying Eagle.”
Eddy tries to see the knight riding the motorcycle, but he is turned toward the officer in the squad car as he takes off his helmet. He shakes some wild black hair from off his face. Eddy watches him stride over to the car and toward Korina. “Flying Eagle, huh? Is he Native American?”
Jambavan leans his head into Eddy’s view. “No...?”
Eddy looks around awkwardly. “Oh, with that name, I figured maybe—”
Jambavan shakes his head. “Oh. No, he just really likes motorcycles.”
Sadie calls out, “Jambavan! Can you make up two more rigs?”
“Yes, ma’am!” He runs to the back of the SUV and collects more gear.
Enrique jogs over to Eddy. “It’s good to see you again, Leo.”
Eddy claps him on the shoulder. “Glad you co
uld make it. The plan is to scale the wall. My mom, uh, Elder Costanza says the High Council will go to the courtyard to be rescued.”
“Rescued from what? We just got a notice from Captain Sarkis and we got here as fast as we could.”
Eddy glances over to his mom, who is walking over to Korina and Flying Eagle. “Well—”
-bonk!-
Eddy and Enrique jump at the sudden sound from beside them, and then they turn to see what made it. Eddy points to the window. “From like, a million of those.”
Vincent stands and opens the door; the zombie that was a woman runs inside. Two freshly awakened High Councilors—Philip Simonsen and Bruce Tittensor—grab the zombie by the arms from the side, and Vincent grabs her face with his hands from behind, holding her mouth shut.
The zombie’s attempts to flail against the strong vampires are in vain. It screams with its eyes while it can only huff through its nose.
Hamid steps in front of it. If it wasn’t for the aggression, she looks just like a regular person, a pleasant woman. She has a rosary looped and dangling from one wrist. He frowns and motions across the room. “Take her over there.”
They walk it to the other side of the room. Eliza watches the door. Vincent removes his hands.
The zombie starts to growl and bark at them, struggling against the vampires with more force.
Hamid stands directly in front of it and presses his fingers to his mouth. “Shhh.”
The zombie breaks one arm free and reaches out toward him, opening its mouth wide.
Hamid catches the hand off to the side while Bruce grabs at her to pull her back. “I’m sorry sir, she’s strong!”
“Shhh.” Hamid looks at her. “Can you speak at all?”
Gnashing, biting, growling, barking.
He sighs. “I’m sorry this has happened to you, my dear.” Hamid releases the arm back into Bruce’s control and places his hand on the crown of the zombie’s head, grabbing it by the hair. He presses his other hand across the top of its chest. He can feel a crucifix beneath the blouse the zombie is wearing. He closes his eyes and mouths a silent prayer. Then, he jerks its head toward him with one hand while the other hand pushes up, into its neck, and against the wall.
