Z-Volution (17 page)

28.

Washington, D.C.

Major Remington, along with a force of six—all that remained from the defenders of Pennsylvania Avenue—including the shell-shocked radar technician with barely any combat experience—left the tank and ascended the steps to the East Wing of the White House Complex with a cautious expectation of dread.

They looked to the left, to the main building, half in ruins, with flames licking out from the upper balcony windows. The second leftmost pillar was shattered by a stray 120mm round, and all the windows to the East Room were broken. Fire raged from the drapes inside, where screams punctuated the crackling fire.

The president would have been escorted to the PEOC—the President’s Emergency Operations Center—a bunker designed by FDR, below the attached East Wing and behind ten feet of reinforced concrete, designed to withstand all but a direct nuclear hit.

Remington paused at the top of the stairs, right hand raised in a fist to stop the others. He took a moment and looked up at the smoke-filled sky, where no more air support was in sight, and a lone ptero circled aimlessly as if awaiting orders, perhaps to see how they fared inside. At their backs, the barricades had broken, and a swarm of zombies pushed through, most continuing on the avenue, a few sniffing the air, hearing the screams, and heading this way.

“About to have company,” Remington said, turning back to the front door, which was broken on its hinges, leaning open. “This may be a one-way trip, but we have our orders. Get down to the bunker, clear the path and secure the POTUS. Marcus and Harrison: get up to level two and man the turrets, buy us some time.”

White House defenses were up there, but whoever operated them was likely dead or transformed, and Remington didn’t have a lot of confidence that those two brave men rushing in ahead of him, firing a few rounds on their way to the stairs, had any chance of survival.

Do any of us?

He brushed off the thought, but then had a passing moment’s reflection of his daughter, back home in Kansas. He wouldn’t let himself wonder at her fate, only hoping that the contagion hadn’t spread anywhere near there, and if possible, a miracle would save her before then. If not…

He clamped down on the line of thought. They were coming, and fast. Shrieking, hissing, starving, racing up the stairs toward them.

The undead.

He rushed in, leading his men, with just a fading image of his daughter’s smiling eyes in his mind before visions of true Hell took her place.

#

The next minutes were a blur of mind-numbing violence, of shocking visuals and utter fear as Remington’s team went from the lobby to the hall to the East Room, clearing the way of former aides and hapless tourists who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was a moment of heart-wrenching grief as they discovered a group of school kids and their teacher holed up in a pantry beside the kitchen, cowering for their lives until they saw Remington as a savior.

He was anything but that now, though, and insisted they stay put, stay hidden and quiet. His was another mission, and in all likelihood, this poor group would never make it out alive. If he secured the president and somehow reinforcements arrived to retake the capitol, there might be a chance for them, but for now he had to press on.

Into the East Wing lobby, where three zombies—former secret service by the look of their suits and the dark glasses one of them still wore—feasted on the body of what might have been the press secretary. They looked up from their meal, snarling with bloody lips, and leapt onto the dining room table. Remington aimed, but never fired, as the radar tech let loose with a hail of bullets from his procured M5, raking the fiends wildly from neck to torso, a few shots in the barrage hitting home, splitting their heads and puncturing brains.

All three zombies went down, and as Remington, with newfound respect for the radar tech, led the men around the table to the far hall, he fired a mercy shot into the brain of the still-twitching secretary.

Wordlessly, grouped in a tight circle, heads on a swivel and covering every angle, they moved into the hallway, through a door and to the elevator leading down to the bunker.

#

When the doors opened and he and his soldiers filed into the hallway, Remington’s worst suspicions were confirmed. The door to the command center, the massive entrance to the unbreakable bunker, was open. Ajar like someone had just left the back door open.

First, he locked and held the elevator at this level so it wouldn’t rise again for anybody or anything else, then he led his men down the darkened corridor, stepping over bodies as they went. The marines and secret service had certainly put up a fight, he thought, admiring a multitude of headshot kills, the zombie bodies piling up as they approached the open door and the flickering light within.

Something sparked inside, and a wet shuffling sound filtered out. Remington held up a fist, then scanned the faces of his men. He saw their desperation, their fear, as he heard that sound again from inside, chilling like a throaty rattle, like an animal having difficulty swallowing a still-twitching meal.

Remington turned sideways and eased inside the command center bunker. A light above the main oblong table flickered as another one sparked in a regular rhythm. Bodies were everywhere, draped over tables and chairs, but not as many as Remington would have expected. Did they not have time to evacuate enough of the senior staff and officers? Did the president even make it down here?

Someone bumped him from behind, then pointed behind a section of shattered monitors and a hanging screen with dangling wires. A hunched form on the ground, someone in a dark blue suit, slicked back grey hair. Face… face down in the neck of a female form. A white blouse stained crimson. Narrow legs, one foot still in a black high heel, the other bare—and partially chewed, the white bones sticking out.

“Is that…?” The radar tech stepped forward, craning his neck.

Remington reached out to hold him back.

“Sir?”

“Quiet,” Remington hissed. He tried to pull him back, but he was already moving.

“Mr. President?”

Remington leveled his gun, trying to get a shot. He didn’t know if it was the Commander-in-Chief or not, but there was no way anybody here was still human.

“This was a mistake,” someone said at his back.

“We’re screwed,” another spoke, echoing the voice in Remington’s head. This was indeed quite probably a one-way trip, but Remington had hoped at least they could hold out in the bunker, support the president and perhaps mount a counter-offensive from this command center. Now…

Now the former president raised his head, and a mass of stringy flesh—that had just been part of his wife’s throat—hung from his teeth before he wildly sucked the grizzled strips into his mouth and down his throat.

A meaty snarl as those yellow eyes scanned the company.

“Mr. President!” shouted the radar tech, and Remington had the sense that despite everything he’d just been through, the tech was somehow in awe of meeting his ultimate commander, and it was clouding all reason.

Remington aimed. “Get down, son.”

He turned, then stepped in the path of the president, like a secret service agent having spotted an assassin.

“No, I can’t let you take that shot. He’s—”

“Not your president, idiot! Get down.”

For an instant, he had a shot, just as President Zombie stood, and his neck lolled to one side so Remington got a clear look down his sights, right between those yellow eyes—eyes that only hours earlier had been privy to the nation’s deepest secrets…

But just then the rubble to their left exploded with two forms that scrambled out from the debris and launched themselves across the room. One slammed into the man behind Remington, catching him completely off-guard, while the other, a little slower, running on a stump that had been blown off in a grenade blast—stumbled right into a barrage of bullets from the others.

Remington spun and fired into the shadows, seeing more movement near the back, toward the adjoining room and the connecting facilities, the kitchen and restrooms that they hadn’t had a chance yet to clear out.

How many back there?

A scream and the radar tech went down, toppled and nearly bent in half. Remington heard a crack as loud as another gunshot, the man’s spine snapping as the president leapt on him, broke him backwards and fastened his jaws on the soft tissue of his neck.

“Damn it!” Remington spun back around and aimed, trying to get a clear shot through the mayhem of the other men running and firing and trying to stay away from the zombies, the former president’s staff. A man just barely recognizable as the vice president lurched across his field of vision, and this time Remington didn’t hesitate.

One shot to the temple, and that annoying prick who'd killed the last defense spending bill went down in a bloody heap. Remington stepped over the body, just as one of his commandos shot down a zombie attacking from his back. He sighted at the blurry crimson mess of the president and the radar tech, trying to get a clear head shot, but then—as the president looked up at him through a haze of insatiable hunger—Remington realized it didn’t matter. They were both gone.

Lost, just like everyone upstairs and in the Capitol. Like everyone out there on the avenue. Like all his friends and mates he trained with, flew with and ate and drank with. Like everyone he had ever known and…God help them all… everyone he had ever loved.

He shut his eyes.

And held down the trigger, steeling against the recoil, feeling every cartridge loosed by his weapon firing out, finding its mark or not, he didn’t care. Enough of the rounds would, and that’s all that mattered.

Because really, nothing mattered. It didn’t matter that he was killing a man who had only moments earlier been fighting not just for his life, but for a very way of life, holding on to an existence grounded in logic and safety and the pursuit of peace. It didn’t matter that he was destroying another man who had earlier been the leader of the free world, the sole person who could rally a nation in defense, order a wholesale retaliation and lead other world powers into some sort of counter-offensive.

It didn’t matter because now everything was lost.

Remington opened his eyes to gaze with no satisfaction whatsoever upon the results of his work.

The two bodies cut to ribbons, holes torn through skulls and chests, brains and gore streaked across the tiled floor to the concrete wall.

Breathing calmly (because nothing mattered anymore, no need to get upset), Remington stepped over the remnants of the president. He walked through the remaining three commandos, all either still firing or locked in hand-to-hand combat with zombies. He made his way to the far edge of the room, where a TV screen hung more or less still intact, if a bit spattered with blood.

He approached the screen, dimly hearing two final gunshots behind him and the sound of bodies falling in a squishy heap. Approached the visual of a gray-haired man sitting calmly at a table, with several other distinguished men and women, who appeared to be calm and in control, if not a bit shell-shocked. The gray-haired man, a little-wild eyed, had a contented smile on his face that Remington thought more than out of place, given the general tone of the unfolding apocalypse.

“Hello there, major,” said the man in a calm, assured voice as his eyes glanced around the bunker behind Remington. “Did I just witness you shooting the president in the head?”

“Former president,” Remington said hollowly. “Who are you?”

The man grinned, licked his lips and Remington saw behind him the seal of the United States, along with a pair of U.S. flags at the back of the room, a room which seemed to have experienced its own share of mayhem.

“Quite right you are about that being the former president. You’ll find I’ve been transferred all necessary codes, authority and security clearances, and as of…” He glanced at his watch. “…oh, about ten minutes ago, I’m your new Commander-in-Chief. I’m sending you verification of the transfer of power now.”

Remington’s eyes opened wide in surprise. Things were even more severe than he’d thought if the succession of government plan had already been enacted. He glanced over at his communication specialist and saw that he was already on his hand-held device, busy tapping the screen to verify that the incoming stream of encrypted codes matched what they had been given. Remington would not let his guard down and would have asked for the authentication string had DeKirk not offered it, but he was glad he did.

He heard a series of tones out of the technician’s device and then the specialist gave him the thumbs up. “Authentication verified, sir. It’s legit.”

Remington nodded to the new commander.
“Verification codes received and authenticated. I wish it were under better circumstances but I look forward to serving under your command all the same, President?…”

Remington swallowed hard and followed his three surviving men a moment later in standing to attention and saluting.

“President William DeKirk,” the man said, standing and straightening his suit coat. “Now, kindly debrief me on the situation there at the White House. Because from where I’m standing…”