"It's clear right now, but who knows what'll happen. We're getting lots of looting reports, and some folks near The White House are still protesting. They've got a shitload of Capitol Police over there holding down the fort but if they decide to riot, it'll be bad news."
Lancaster knew that too. "Well thank you Officer. I'm gonna head that way. My car is parked over there. I appreciate your time. Be safe."
"Good luck," the officer said. He was genuine about it.
*****
The sound of gunfire can travel quite a distance, so when Lancaster heard the first few shots coming from near The White House, he knew the protestors at the residence had stepped somehow out of line, and the police or Secret Service had done what they felt they needed to do. It might've been necessary, or overreaction. No one would wind up writing it in the history books. A shootout at the President's residence wouldn't even warrant a footnote in the end.
The first noise he heard wasn't a shot per se. It was the whoomph and hissing noise of a tear gas canister being discharged. After that, as he walked calmly down the empty streets of D.C., he heard people starting to scream in pain, and then in anger. Then he heard the crack of a gun being fired. It was a high velocity round from a rifle. An M4. He knew that for a reason too.
Then a second shot came, then a third. Somewhere after the tenth round fired he could differentiate the sounds of added pistol fire. .40 caliber Glock 22's, the sidearm of choice for the Capitol Police. Lancaster reached inside his suit coat to the small of his back and thumbed the button off his holster that held his sidearm secure. There was a good chance he'd need it shortly.
Less than thirty seconds later the first person fleeing whatever violence was ahead ran past him. It was a young man, no older than twenty five. He had a beard, and wore a white tee shirt that had "TELL US THE TRUTH" written on the front with a marker, or black shoe polish. The man's eyes were focused, and he ran like his life depended on it. From the ongoing sounds of gunfire, his life did depend on it. Lancaster noted that the man's white shirt had several spatters of dark red blood on it. More than could attributed to poor laundry habits.
The old man stopped and sat his briefcase down. He reached into the small of his back where his handgun was and pulled it out from his concealed carry holster. He carried a small gun by comparison, but he rarely needed it, and when he did, it was plenty large enough. Most of the wet work Lancaster did relied on accuracy, and not power. His gun was a Beretta 92F compact, the same basic pistol carried by those in the military, but a little smaller. A smaller grip, shorter barrel, and profiled lower, the weapon hid under his jacket, and packed enough power for him to deal with uncomfortable situations.
His specific pistol was prepared to take a suppressor, which he removed from his briefcase, and threaded onto the pistol's barrel, all the while never taking his eyes off the end of the street where people were streaming now. No one gave him a second glance as they ran for their lives the same as the bearded man who came first. A fifty plus year old man taking a knee on the sidewalk was infinitely less interesting or important than the nightmare they were leaving behind. Lancaster was grateful on a level for the panic. It allowed him to operate in the open. He'd used panic like this before to achieve objectives.
The last man and woman came running past him as he switched hands to keep his handgun inside on his thigh. He was a lefty thankfully, and that allowed him some measure of increased anonymity in the moment. He considered the extremely unlikely chance that anyone would care what he did that day, and shrugged. Old spy habits die hard.
The couple was overweight, and was huffing and puffing to put ground between them and whatever was behind them. The man's face was alarmingly red, and they were both covered in sweat. They made their way past Lancaster and started to slow, somehow feeling safer now that someone was between them and the aftermath in their wake. Lancaster chuckled and wished the best for them.
Rounding the corner a hundred yards distant was an injured man. He was staggering, limping severely on a damaged leg. It looked to Lancaster like the man's knees or thighs were shot. A foot dragged behind, clearly offering poor support and strength. He was moving along, but his progress was abysmal. Lancaster watched him carefully studying his movements, and after he and the injured man ate up twenty yards, he could tell the man wasn't actually injured.
He was dead.
It was true that the man's legs were damaged. He had several streams of blood on the upper legs of the shorts he wore that led down to his naked knee and shins. From the amount of blood one of the shots had to have been to the femoral artery. Lancaster was always surprised at how many people succumbed to arterial injuries to the leg. So many folks lost their lives to simply losing blood to minor wounds it was astounding. Applying a proper tourniquet was a life saving skill.
This dead man had suffered just that fate. Lancaster stopped when he got to a stretch of sidewalk that had no doors or windows along it. Just safe, strong bricks at his back. He squinted a bit (old age was robbing him of his eyesight, much to his chagrin) and watched the dead man's movements again.
He was slow. He staggered off balance with each step. Staying upright was a challenge to him. His arms swung back and forth out of inertia, not to maintain balance. This fact could prove to be crucial later, especially if they tried to run, or corner quickly. The dead man's eyes were wide, allowing the whole world to stream in for him to see, and they were white, entirely devoid of any color sans the black pip in the middle. His skin color was off as well. He was Caucasian, but jaundiced, yellow to the extreme but riddled with gray and drained, like a battlefield casualty left behind in a ditch that had lost all its blood.
At least that's normal about him.
Lancaster watched him for a full minute as the dead body walked straight at him with single-minded purpose. When it got to within ten yards, its mouth began to chew the air, snarling silently all the while as if it didn't know it was too far away to bite properly. Lancaster could hear the teeth snapping shut over the noise of the police sirens, and fire trucks steaming to more emergencies elsewhere. Over the fiend's shoulder Lancaster watched a police cruiser scream by, surely heading to something bad.
Lancaster also saw multiple more dead protestors, as well as two dead Capitol Police officers round the corner, theoretically following the herd of prey that had already run past. Hanging on their chests he could see the cops still had their M4 rifles. Their dead minds couldn’t fathom how to operate the guns, thankfully. Lancaster did a quick count and reached seven before turning his full attention back to the dead man now just six yards away.
Cool as the proverbial cucumber Lancaster used his small 9mm to kneecap the man. His shot hit the bulb of cartilage and bone spot on, ruining the man's leg and collapsing him to the ground with no more than the thump of uncoordinated flesh. No grunt of pain, no moan, and no exasperation or frustration of having just been shot. Lancaster watched as the dead man tried to get up, but the ruined leg wouldn't support his weight. After only a few attempts to get to his feet the dead protestor gave up on standing, and simply started to crawl at Lancaster, clawing along with his fingers and leaving a dried streak of blood on the dark city street.
"Interesting," Lancaster said scientifically. He aimed the small pistol and put a single shot straight into the chest of the dead man where his heart was, and then watched for the anticipated effect. There was none. He didn't even bleed from the wound.
It kept crawling at him, teeth still clicking away over and over. It sounded like someone clinking two coffee mugs together. While staring at him with murder in his eyes of course.
"Okay that's confirmed. Let's see if what they are all saying is true," Lancaster said to himself as he lined up another shot to the eye socket of the crawling corpse. With a 'thwip' the tiny subsonic round launched through the little black pip at the center of the eyeball and scrambled the brain inside before popping out of the back of the skull with a messy gray spray. Instantly the crawling man went f
ace down at the edge of the curb, his clicking teeth cracking one last time against the granite. Lancaster imagined that some bits of the well-brushed white teeth fell to the drain below. A grisly thought.
Seven to go, then the drive out of the city. He calculated how many rounds he had left in the gun, in the magazines on his belt, and in his briefcase. Lancaster moseyed along down the sidewalk, and made a plan for shooting each of the dead people coming his way.
Lancaster already knew what he was going to do.
*****
Lancaster made it to his 2002 Intrepid with the rust spots and dented rear panel with minimal issue. Slow breathing, steady hands, and a plan did that for you. He loved his car. It blended in, and was entirely forgettable. A lot like him. Lancaster always said if he owned a dog he'd get a Labrador Retriever. He did have to use far too much of his personal ammunition stock to get it done, but he was able to salvage the M4 rifles off of the fallen Capitol Police officers. Being plus two military grade weapons was a fair trade off for having to shoot nearly thirty rounds out of his little pistol.
Leaving the metro D.C. area proved to be more problematic than the walk getting to his car. It seemed like every organization involved in law enforcement was attempting to set up roadblocks on every street. Lancaster wanted no trouble, and he certainly didn't want questions that would invite anyone to look in his trunk. He could always flash his credentials and get out nearly any situation, but part of the power in having such credentials was maintained by only using them sparingly. Dilution wasn't helpful.
He was turned away three times by angry, foul mouthed police before he found a roadblock that was willing to let him through. Lancaster held no ill will to the officers who impolitely asked him to turn back. They had been given orders to prevent travel in that space, and they were operating in nightmarish conditions. Their frustration must've been excessive at a bare minimum. It was a bad time for everyone. Lancaster kept the peace with a scratch on the head and an apology and moved on to try elsewhere. He even attempted to call a few DOS associates to let them know which way to head, but the network was failing him. All circuits were busy. He lamented using burners exclusively, but with his job requirements, being easily found with a stable cell phone was a liability.
He needed to get to Winchester Virginia, a destination about fifty miles distant to the west and a bit north if he drove directly. Lancaster would normally take 66 until the 267, then swap on to 7 and ride that straight through to the end. But the roadblocks moved him around in the city until he was pointed entirely in the wrong direction. When he managed to leave the city he had to head northeast on the 1, which was only good for Lancaster because he wasn't trapped in the city any longer.
Lancaster listened to the radio, and watched all around him as the residents of the area surrounding the capital lost their mind. From the view the packed highway afforded him he could see complete and utter mania in the retail world. The number of people flooding into the Home Depots, Lowes' and grocery store chains was astronomical, and the law enforcement personnel tasked with keeping order at the businesses were failing. Mile by mile Lancaster watched as the level of order and safety dipped lower and lower.
The first grocery store he passed was jam packed, but the parking lot looked safe enough. People jogged behind their carts, and everyone seemed under control. A lone black and white police SUV sat near the entrance, the officer standing calmly with a shotgun across his chest watching. With each mile logged and each minute elapsed the situations were more erratic. By the time he turned onto 495 to skirt the city and get back to his intended direction police were hands-on, weapons raised, and even that was only keeping things civil in the barest sense. Lancaster watched as people pushed each other out of the way and took carts from one another. He watched a burly cop wrestle and fight, and then handcuff a man who was trying to take things straight out of another's trunk. As he got to his feet the thief's face was busted open, and his nose twisted. Onlookers watched and cheered, bloodthirsty. It was like watching a match between gladiators.
Two hours later as Lancaster fought the traffic on 495 he watched a woman shoot a man in a Best Buy parking lot. The man had a shopping cart filled with boxes of small electronics, and the woman tried to take one of his new purchases. A scuffle ensued, and the woman produced a revolver from her purse. Two yanks of a trigger later the man went face down in the parking lot, and the panicked shooter dragged the cart to her vehicle to unload it. She might as well add armed robbery to the attempted murder charge she might be facing. Everyone nearby scattered. Lancaster slowed his vehicle and pulled out of the heavy traffic to the shoulder, stopping to watch.
A minute later the man she shot and killed had his revenge. He stood up, shuffled up behind her as she moved everything into the trunk of her car and bit her on back of the neck. The woman screamed and tried to fight him off, but he kept biting, and eventually they fell down atop the white line of her parking space, and he stopped. He left her dead body and moved towards the other people still moving. Before he reached anyone else, his murderer—also his victim—was twitching and flailing, and starting to sit up.
Interesting. They aren't eating each other like they do in the movies. Bite to kill, then move on. For twenty minutes the man and his victim stumbled around the parking lot of the electronics store as the living eluded them. Finally one of them caught an elderly man as he fumbled with his car keys, and the process repeated itself. The dead would ravage the living, biting, punching, clawing, and tearing, but once their victim was dead, they left the corpse, and moved on. They aren’t doing this to eat. They're doing this to kill. To spread their kind. They're like a virus, but this isn't being caused by a virus. So strange. So interesting.
Lancaster put his car back in drive and merged with the traffic on the highway. In the parking lot of the Best Buy someone with a shotgun let off several blasts at the zombies, but only managed to hit several bystanders. Lancaster knew those people would be dying soon too. If not in minutes then in days, when infection set in. And if Lancaster knew anything…
This whole thing was just a reddened, hot, swelling infection, sinking deeper and deeper to the heart of the world and would likely be fatal.
Lancaster considered himself to be one of the few white blood cells.
*****
The United States government maintained multiple facilities across the world that were off-the-record. They were hidden in budgets and funded by closed door committees. Many of the facilities were operated by the military, but some were CIA controlled or NSA operated. Some of the facilities stored servers with classified information, and some were labs where sensitive research took place.
Other sites were torture chambers.
In Winchester Virginia the Federal Government maintained a fallout shelter that was state of the art. It was intended as a nuclear bunker for the government employees who lived in that area. In the event of a crisis they could make the short drive to the forgettable office park it was built under, park their cars and minutes later be thirty feet underground in a guarded, nuclear, biological and chemically safe environment. It had a full command and control room capable of managing multiple branches of the military simultaneously, and could connect to several foreign nations (allies and otherwise) through direct hardwired lines. The bunker had enough food to feed a hundred men and women for five years, and could recycle air and water for the same time. That would be long enough for the government to react to a decapitation strike, or a crisis that was apocalyptic in scope. You just needed to be okay with drinking recycled urine for a few years.
The bunker had been activated at noon on June 23rd, and by dinnertime it was taking in officials and military personnel to fully staff it. By the 24th it was in full swing, accepting in approved government and civilian souls. There was a list, you see. Some had to survive to ensure the longevity of the nation. Dedicated, designated survivors. The Winchester bunker was Lancaster's destination. He'd selected it as his bunker of choice on the
reasoning that he liked old westerns, loved reading about history and he thought the Winchester Model 1873 lever action rifle was as responsible for America's growth as anything else anyone could think of. Except for maybe concrete. The invention of concrete was very important to America.
The selection of the Winchester bunker was one of the few random things Lancaster allowed himself to indulge in. As a man of intense practice and preparation, for Lancaster to do anything on a whim meant sacrifice on his part, or indulgence. In this case, it was indulgence mixed with a small amount of the joy he found in being needlessly elusive. It helped him sleep on some nights knowing that with no one aware of where he'd head in the event of catastrophe no one could prepare for his arrival. You couldn't set a trap if you didn't know where your prey would be.
It was dark when he got near his destination. An evening summer fog had set in, and put the world in a dreamy, sedated state. As he drove through the fringe of Winchester in the cooling evening the disposable cell phone Lancaster had rang with a warbled bleat. He'd dropped it in the toilet a week prior and it hadn't ringed right since. He flipped the phone open and looked at the number. Kelsie?
He held it to his ear. "Kelsie? You alright?"
Silence greeted his question. Lancaster could hear noise, air moving perhaps, as if the young worker had butt dialed him, but it didn't seem like that. He felt as if she'd dropped her phone, or perhaps dialed it and sat it down to serve as witness to something. He told her to do that if she was ever nervous about a boy. Lancaster felt his blood pressure rise as he focused on any noise he could pluck out to use later.
"Director," she said suddenly. Her voice was dreamy, or drunken. It was hard to tell which.
Lancaster kept driving and kept talking. "Are you okay? Your voice sounds strange."
Adrian's Undead Diary (Book 7): The Trinity Page 6
