by ST Branton
I turned back to Steph and Frank. “Tell me about the capital,” I said. “On a scale of ‘not at all’ to ‘totally,’ how fucked is it?”
She considered my rating system. “It’s seriously fucked,” she said finally. “But not hopeless. The city’s overrun, for sure, with a bunch of gods and other stuff. None of them have a solid presence like they did in New York, though.” She looked at Frank. “What do you think?”
The former mobster pulled a face. “It ain’t a pretty sight,” he admitted. “I can’t say one way or the other if there’s much left worth fighting over. It looked like it wasn’t anything more than a free for all from where we stood.” He paused. “Except that one place.”
Steph nodded. “True. There’s one area between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial that appeared to have been secured against the Forgotten. We didn’t get close enough to infiltrate, but we could see human troops patrolling a fairly wide perimeter, particularly around Lincoln. They were trying to clear out more so they could expand.”
“And weren’t doing a half-bad job, neither,” Frank added. “By the time we left, they gained some ground.”
She folded her arms. “Of course, we almost didn’t get to leave at all, what with this clumsy lunk picking fights over territory.” Although she glared daggers at Frank, her mouth held the hint of a smile.
“Hey!” he retorted, instantly on the defensive. “Did you want a closer look or not, woman? I can tell you from experience, these guys are beasts. The only rules they know are pack rules, and that means you fight for dominance.”
“You nearly had your ass kicked for dominance,” she said. “Just saying.”
Frank puffed up indignantly. “I had to make it believable,” he said. “I coulda beat the living daylights out of all of them, but do you think we would’ve gone undercover after that? No, sir.”
She glanced meaningfully at me. “He almost had his rear end handed to him on a silver platter. Don’t ask me how he pulled it off in the end.” She rolled her eyes. “Oh, wait, I saved his knuckleheaded ass.” She flashed Frank a real smile as she said that.
He grinned back. “Only a little. I had it covered for the most part.”
Steph patted his back. “Whatever helps you sleep at night, champ.”
I observed the exchange in stunned silence, barely comprehending what I saw. What the hell was going on there? How much weird subtext had I missed? I shook my head slightly. At least Deacon and I somewhat made sense together.
Frank cleared his throat. “Don’t listen to the lady, Vic. I got in far enough to see something interesting, which is that someone’s set up shop in the memorial. They cut Lincoln’s head off and everything. Ballsy move, if you ask me.”
“You’ll never guess who it was,” Steph interjected. She looked at Deacon. “Our old friend.”
Deacon blinked. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope. We found him there, doing what he does best.” She mimed the act of smoking a cigarette, and I realized she was talking about the man from Central Park who’d shown up at the tunnel out of New York City.
“He cut Lincoln’s head off?” I asked, dumbfounded.
She shrugged. “It might not have been him who did that. But I wouldn’t be too surprised if it was, honestly.” She stopped fake smoking. “He said he wants to see you, by the way. As soon as possible. He said it was urgent.”
I ran my hand through my hair. “Of course.” A feeling I couldn’t quite explain wormed its way down into my stomach—like doubt mixed with resignation. Ordinarily, my gut might have advised me not to trust a person who possibly committed acts of vandalism on a national monument. But at the same time, it was impossible to pretend that the mysterious man hadn’t come through for me on multiple occasions.
Besides that, as usual, what choice did we have? One way or another, Delano had to be stopped. I already knew we’d need all the allies we could get.
“Well,” I said. “I know what we’re doing tomorrow. Next stop, DC.”
Chapter Three
I had slowly adjusted to being up at the crack of dawn and now trudged toward the trucks in the early, pale grey light. This time, I had everyone but Dan, Veronica, Jules, and Luis. The kid had begged me, practically on his knees, to ship out with the rest of us, but I’d played the bad cop and told him he had to stay. “Dan needs a righthand man,” was what I told him. Luis was plainly less than convinced, but his admirable sense of duty finally won out and he returned to the fort without a continued fight.
After that, the goodbyes were brief. We loaded into the trucks and drove out to the road in less than ten minutes. The way to the interstate was cold and dusty and the big wheels kicked up dirt and frost as we tracked our way to the highway. “You just got back and I’ve made you retrace your steps,” I said apologetically to Frank. “Sorry about that.”
He sat in the passenger seat with his elbow on the window sill and stared directly ahead out the windshield. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It’s all in a day’s work. And it beats sitting around on my ass doing nothing.”
On that much, we agreed. “Tell me about it,” I said. I glanced constantly in the rearview mirror, even though the road was eerily empty, and marveled at the changes that had taken place in Frank. “You know, you look awesome,” I told him. “You’re, like, glowing.”
“I ain’t knocked up if that’s what you’re getting at,” he said gruffly.
We both laughed. “Getting out on the road has been good for you,” I told him. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this happy.”
The vampire mumbled something unintelligible and turned his face away. I thought I caught a glimpse of a blush creeping into his cheeks. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he managed awkwardly and stared fixedly out the window. A few moments of silence passed. “I guess I never thought the apocalypse would be the thing to change my life for the better.”
“Oh?” I kept my voice carefully neutral. “I thought this had something to do with a certain blonde FBI bombshell.”
The blush intensified to the point where it became impossible to hide. Frank hemmed and hawed for a while, clearly uncomfortable with the line of questioning, but I could also tell he wanted to talk about it, at least a little. “It’s nothing,” he said after a protracted pause. “We just…” He trailed off and shrugged his broad shoulders.
“Just what?” I prodded like an annoying sibling or a nosy friend. “Just really like each other? Just want to get married and have a picket fence, two and a half kids, and a family dog?”
The ex-mobster gave me a warning look. “I don’t know about any of that half a kid bullshit, but…” He exhaled a big breath. “I don’t know, all right? We mighta hooked up once or twice. Or a few times.”
I smiled triumphantly. “There it is.”
“What can I say?” He threw his hands up. “It’s been a helluva long time since I had anyone to care about. Longer than that since anyone cared about me. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel real nice.”
I do not support this union, Marcus complained. Such fraternizing between a human and a Forgotten is no less than an abomination. It is surely an ill omen.
I shushed him hard with my mind, unwilling to dampen Frank’s newfound serenity in any way. He might have been a lowlife thug when we first met, but the guy was on the up and up, and I liked him. The least he deserved was a chance.
“Did she make you sleep on the couch after she had to rescue you from that fight?” I asked, mostly joking.
He chuckled. “She threatened, but nah. She’s not that scary when you get down to it. I mean, not it.” The blush returned with a vengeance. He struggled to find more appropriate phrasing. “She’s a good cop. Found out a lot of stuff. She wanted to go farther in instead of me when we reached the Memorial, but I told her a human approaching would be too suspicious. They coulda shot her on sight.” He scratched his chin. “I pretended to be a regular vamp and bellied up to the perimeter. I l
et ʼem fight me off, but not before I had a good look at the place.”
I opened my mouth to ask for more details. Instead, a curse emerged. “Shit!” I grabbed the wheel with both hands and stomped the brake. The truck went into a sideways skid and sprayed dust and gravel up against the body. As the cloud cleared, Frank and I stared at a watery chasm framed by two ragged segments of what had once been a bridge.
“What the fuck?” Frank muttered.
“It looks like it’s out,” I said.
The vamp shook his head. “This can’t be right. It wasn’t out yesterday.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”
“It couldn’t have been out,” he insisted. “We crossed it on our way to the fort.”
A car door slammed behind us. Moments later, Deacon walked past my window. He inspected the stub of the bridge in front of the truck before he returned and tapped on the glass. I rolled it down.
“I’m not an expert, but I think this was done on purpose,” he said. We looked at each other and obviously shared the same thought.
I threw open my door and hollered, “Ambush!”
The other vehicles pulled in tight and we gathered in the center, circled, and faced outward. The thick trees on either side of the road quivered with hellish, unearthly growls.
“You could’ve told us you had planned a family reunion, Maya,” Steph joked.
“Call it a surprise party,” she shot back. “I have to admit, they almost got me.” She hulked out as a wave of mangy fur and glistening fangs exploded through the tree line. The howls were enough to rattle my teeth. I clenched my jaw and drew my sword.
Deacon and Steph opened fire first. On my right, Frank charged the nearest werewolf and instantly tore out a huge chunk of the creature’s throat. The wolf staggered, reverted to human form, and clutched at the wound. Before it even hit the ground, the vampire leapt onto his next victim. He was astonishingly fast now, much like the vamps I’d fought in the slaughterhouse, and he still impacted like a semi.
I dodged the Were with the missing trachea and struck out at the legs of the one right behind it to bring the beast to its knees. On instinct, I planted the Gladius Solis into the hard, half-frozen ground and used my momentum to swing around. The blade came free as I sailed forward and lopped the wolf’s head cleanly off its neck on my way past. The feverish yellow eyes glazed over, and the body slumped heavily. I hit the ground running and thrust the sword into a Were’s chest. The bones stood out in sharp, emaciated relief beneath its shoddy hide.
“I thought these fleabags were on our side!” Frank yelled. He swung from side to side as he clung tenaciously to the unkempt scruff of a large Were’s neck. Before it could shake him off, three bullets perforated its skull in quick succession. The vampire rode the corpse to the ground.
“You’re welcome,” Steph called. “Again.” She turned and delivered a roundhouse kick into the ribcage of a Were poised to leap. It crumpled and she stepped on its neck.
“Hell of a woman,” Frank said. He dusted his hands off. “Like I was saying, I thought they were with us.”
“Some of them are.” I parried a claw strike with my blade, which proceeded to melt the creature’s claws to stubs. “Not all of them. The ones in Washington—” I paused to grapple the Were, threw him backward, and pinned him with the sword. “The ones in Washington didn’t spend that much time with the god who turned them. I had the chance to revise their conditioning, so to speak. There’s no helping these guys. They’re starving and feral.”
They didn’t even appear to have retained the ability to speak in anything but beastly noises. Every last shred of humanity in their eyes was long gone. It was a wonder they could even take the bridge out or plan this ambush. And yet, there we were.
Most of the creatures produced as Forgotten have no sense of humanity at all, Marcus said. They cannot be grouped with the likes of their former brethren, no matter where their origins lie. Individuals such as Maya and Frank must be viewed as the exception, rather than the rule. He said the last part stiffly like he was frowning.
I looked into the sea of frothing Weres and for once, I was tempted to simply agree. “Why do they always have to travel in packs?” I asked out loud.
As if in answer, three bullet holes materialized neatly in the three nearest beasts, directly between their blazing eyes. “They know I need target practice,” Steph said. She dropped three more in the span of a few seconds.
“See, Vic?” Deacon asked. “That could be you, but you keep playing.”
I glowered at him. The Gladius Solis flew from my hand, plunged through an oncoming Were, out his back, and through the neck of the one behind him. I didn’t flinch as it returned smoothly into my hand.
“Does it look like I’m playing?” I demanded.
“Holy shit,” Steph said. She nodded over my shoulder, and I turned in time to see Maya break a Were’s back, toss the limp corpse onto a pile of others, throw her head back, and howl her dominance. She grabbed the last of her challengers by the chest fur, slammed the wolf into the ground, and used her weight and strength to crush its considerably frailer frame. She snapped its neck in one swift movement. The sharp crack of bone resounded in the sudden silence.
“They’re leaving!” Deacon announced. “Looks like they’re not so dumb after all.” The few survivors of the horde had turned tail and loped into the dark recesses of the forest, leaving a trail of their dead. We regrouped at the cars and Maya threw on a spare change of clothes.
“Nice job, team,” I said. “We kicked all kinds of werewolf ass. And now, the million-dollar question is how the hell do we get ourselves across the river?”
Chapter Four
Our quest to ford the river took us miles downstream, where we found a spot we could get across with only mild panic in our chests. The water surged almost to the hoods of our trucks at times, but we made it to the opposite bank, up the incline, and back toward the nearest road.
Frank and I spent a lot of the drive catching up, and when we were through with that, we drove in companionable silence. Occasionally, we scanned for radio stations, and we always kept our eyes peeled for more trouble. Deacon and I exchanged status reports between trucks every hour or so. Outside the windows, the ravaged landscape rolled by.
There wasn’t much to see aside from ruined farmland and old, splintery barns, so the sight of a ramshackle diner on the side of the road caught all our attention. We pulled into the unpaved lot with the intention to search the place for any leftover food. As I killed the engine, I noticed that the diner’s neon sign flickered and that people moved around inside. The long counter was manned, and a few booths were occupied.
“Ain’t this a fine how-do-you-do,” Frank remarked flatly.
“Let’s hope we don’t need a reservation,” I said.
We joined the rest of our team and walked through the door. Nobody looked up from their meals or conversation. A haggard waitress with dark circles like moon craters etched under her eyes nodded at me and gestured toward a large round table at the back.
On my way through the dining area, I examined the other patrons furtively. They all looked bone-tired and like they were covered in a fine layer of dust. The atmosphere inside the run-down establishment was one of thorough exhaustion.
We could all relate.
The crew breathed a communal sigh of relief as we settled into our seats, grateful for a few minutes out of the car to grab a bite to eat. The waitress brought us glasses of water and we skimmed the menu.
“This is weird,” Maya said and broke the relative quiet. “It feels wrong.”
“We saw shit like this all over the place in and around D.C.,” said Frank. “Plenty on the way, too. People are starting to try to build something from their shattered lives. They want things to be normal, even if they know it’s only a damn charade.”
Steph nodded. “We heard that workers had returned to power plants and phone companies to try to get services up and running relia
bly. No one told them to. They’re doing it because that’s all they can do.”
It is a familiar narrative, Marcus agreed. For centuries, we have built civilization from the fires of hell, of war, and of disaster. Misfortune continues to befall us, worse now than ever. And yet, people remain fundamentally resilient.
I studied our surroundings more closely. Now that we’d been seated and had started to talk among ourselves, some of the other tables had finally taken notice. Their eyes settled on me like weights but I chose to ignore them.
“The whole country must be like this,” Deacon said. “We crash-landed in the Midwest for a minute on our way to Washington, and we found more Forgotten without even trying. I think it’s all overrun.”
Maya shuddered. “I can’t even imagine three thousand miles of this,” she said. “I wonder how many humans are alive out there.”
“More than we fear and less than we hope,” I said. “The best way to rescue them at this point is to get to the bottom of this awful mess.”
She nodded. “Agreed. But I hope that doesn’t take too long. Something tells me there isn’t much time.”
The waitress returned. We ordered our food in a somber, contemplative mood. When she left, Frank cleared his throat. “Steph suggested we stick around outside D.C. and open one of those modern bed and breakfasts. All cozy-like. Just shut out the rest of the world going to hell.”
Steph burst out laughing. “That was your idea, you son of a bitch!” she exclaimed. “I think it’s utterly ridiculous.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “I hear property taxes are lower than ever.” He winked and she swatted his arm.
The mood held until our meals arrived, and we dug in and got down to business. “It ought to be easy to get into the city,” Frank reassured us. “We didn’t have no trouble. It took longer to fight our way out on account of them flocking toward the city centers.”
“Now that New York City’s more or less fallen, many of the stray Forgotten appear to be searching for a new home base,” Steph explained. “Things can get fairly hairy.”
