Part One

Gordon lurched out of bed and gasped for air while he glanced around to find something familiar in the dark room. Nothing was, and nothing had been for many days. As the grip of the nightmare eased, he recovered his senses and remembered he was in a hotel room in Washington.

Leaning over to flip on the switch for the light mounted on the headboard of the bed, he picked up his watch. It was four minutes past nine PM. His sleep patterns had been completely shot by being passed from one helicopter to a plane, and then to another helicopter for a ride to the White House.

Despite the frantic pace with which they were shuttled to the capitol, the actual meeting was quite anticlimactic. The president had never spoken or acknowledged anything Gordon and Janice said. Instead he gave an occasional nod and exchanged glances with his advisors, who also nodded in turn. When the president left, it was an advisor who thanked them, and it was that advisor’s aide who drove them away from the White House. They had been taken to a hotel and told to wait.

The meeting was two days past, and Gordon still could not get more than an hour of sleep at a time. His whole body ached with the need for real rest, yet the constant nightmares kept pulling him into the waking world, and his short naps provided little relief for his fatigue.

Gordon grabbed the remote for the TV to watch a few minutes of the news, where he found several of the same advisors who had been in the briefing. Every advisor spun the same story, and flipping between the national stations, he got the feeling that they were all reading from the same script.

According to the advisors, a terrorist organization of unknown origins had infected the water supply of the city with a highly contagious virus. The administration had no choice but to eradicate the city, and a nuclear warhead was detonated over Dallas five days after the outbreak occurred.

Gordon shut off the TV and got dressed before he left his room. He took the elevator down to the main floor to see if the bar was still open. He was wandering to a table when he noticed Janice sitting at the bar. Tapping her shoulder, he pulled out a stool to sit down beside her. “Nightmares?” he asked quietly.

Janice shook her head. “No, just troubled thoughts.” She looked up from her drink at her reflection and grimaced at the black circles under her eyes. “I think I’ve slept ten minutes in the last three days. I couldn’t shut my brain off, so now I’m trying to numb it enough to get a few hours of sleep.”

Gordon waved for the bartender. “Yeah, that was my plan too, but I’m hoping to drink enough to cover up my nightmares.” He paused as the bartender walked over. “I’ll have a margarita, and she’ll be having…”

“Another Tom Collins, please,” Janice said and emptied her glass. “I don’t see your tail.”

“My what?”

“Look up in the reflection. Just over my left shoulder you’ll find two men in the corner. They would be my tail. I noticed them earlier tonight while we were having dinner, and they’ve followed me everywhere.”

“I didn’t notice anyone behind me,” Gordon remarked. Yet even as he said it, he saw a pair of men in the hotel lobby who seemed more interested in him than they did in their own conversation.

Janice leaned closer. “Try at nine o’clock.”

Gordon sighed and nodded. “Yes, I saw them. We should expect it though, shouldn’t we? We’re big time celebrities now.” Gordon signed the bill for the bartender, sipping his drink and waiting until the bartender had moved away before continuing. “If we look around, I’m sure we’ll find other survivors from the city.”

“No, we won’t. I have been looking, and we’re the only ones who are coming to see the president,” Janice frowned at him. “They don’t need us here at all. They could have brought statements to the president, but we were invited here for a reason.”

“Look boss-”

“Stop that,” Janice cut him off. “I’m not your boss any more. Both of us are unemployed.”

“We’re still cops,” Gordon insisted.

“We may be, but we worked for the city of Dallas, and the city no longer exists. Thus, you and I are unemployed.” Janice sighed and took a sip from her drink. “Or you can ignore me. What were you saying?”

“I was just going to say maybe the things that happened in Dallas have made you a bit too paranoid. Maybe the survivors from Dallas were taken to other hotels. Even if we are the only survivors in Washington, we did have the most direct experience with…” Gordon looked down at the bar, quieted by a sudden thought. “But the people in the national guard had pretty much the same experience with the zombies, and after the soldiers debriefed us, we wouldn’t be needed here.”

“Yep, so that means I’m probably not being paranoid. I do have a theory for why our meeting with the president was so brief, and for why we’re being followed. The feds wanted to talk to someone, but it wasn’t really us.”

Gordon took a long drink from his glass. “That makes sense. He did make the comment that we would have freaked out if we did a full background check on him, and so maybe the feds already have.”

“Right, and we made that little pact, which means we may have brought this scrutiny on ourselves. So now we’re stuck here while they wait for us to crack.”

“Maybe we should give them the rest of what we know and see what happens.”

“We could just be making more problems for ourselves. For now, I think we should wait them out.”

“We don’t have time to wait.”

Janice shook her head. “No, we have nothing but time to wait. Our tails will make sure of that.”

***

Frank jogged behind the group of six zombies, trying to keep to the shadows in case one of the undead sentries glanced back. He crouched down behind a car as the group stopped in front of a house.  They stood motionless for several minutes, and Frank began to feel uneasy. Crossing the street, he rolled under a truck parked in the driveway. The zombies still had not moved, but if they had a reason for waiting, he couldn’t see it.

It seemed an eternity passed before more zombies began showing up in teams of six to take places in front of the door of each house. Frank saw the legs of the six zombies standing at the front door of the house to his left, while the house to his right was one of the few not being covered. Across the street, he saw one of the zombies move around to the side of the house. The sound of breaking glass filled the air, but the zombie at the side of the house in front of Frank hadn’t needed to make such an effort. The window was already open.

At some of the houses, the zombies were greeted at the front doors by their comrades, while other doors were opened by panicked humans trying to flee.

The sound of engines drew his attention toward the street, and two large service vans passed him to park in the center of the block. Frank rolled out to the right side of the car and got to his feet slowly. He went to draw a grenade from his harness when he heard a girl make an angry shriek.

Through the jumble of zombies crowding the door of the house across the street, Frank saw little more than a bare heel which connected with a zombie’s chin and spun its head so rapidly that its neck snapped.

Frank cast a sideways glance at the vans, noting how the other zombies stayed focused on collecting the humans from the houses they were assigned to. The four zombies standing guard by the vans remained in place. Frank expected the undead sentries to come running at him or the girl, but the motionless zombies never even looked in their direction.

Crossing the street, Frank drew a wide bladed bowie knife and crept across the small front lawn. Another zombie fell back with its head turned completely around, and by then his curiosity was piqued.

A zombie slipped into the house past a girl who tried to follow after it. Frank saw enough of her to know that she was unarmed and dressed in only a light blue nightshirt before one of the zombies stepped through the doorway to close its arms around her. Thinking to help her, he took a half step before the zombie jolted and stumbled back. An upturned palm broke the zombie’s jaw, and a quarter of a second later, another blurring kick toppled its head back over to land between its shoulder blades.

Frank stepped up behind a zombie and plunged his knife through the back of its neck, dropping it and looking up at the last zombie standing outside the door. It turned to look at him before the girl’s slender arm wrapped over its neck. Bending the zombie over to arch its back, the girl jerked her arm up and cracked its neck.

Before Frank could open his mouth to speak, she dropped the body and turned to run back into the house. Following after her, he spotted the first zombie to enter the house laying in the middle of the living room floor with a fire poker buried in the back of its neck. He had no sooner registered it when the girl dashed past him.

Frank spun and took off after her, catching up within a few step as she made a straight line for the vans. He saw a cluster of zombies packed in together with elderly people and children in the back of the vans before the guards shut the doors and the vans sped off.

The zombies dragged away their victims, but many still were left empty handed. Those which were had finally decided to focus their attention on Frank and the girl. Reaching back to draw a much longer sword off the back of his harness, Frank passed the knife to the girl and pointed up the street. “My car is parked that way.”

Instead, she ran back toward her house. Frank turned his attention to a pair of zombies who were almost on top of him. Using a side kick to drop one zombie to the ground, he swung the sword in a low arc to chop the legs out from under the second zombie. It hit the ground on it stomach and made an effort to raise itself up on its arms before Frank dropped the sword down through the back of its neck. Pivoting on his heel, Frank lashed out his leg to catch the other zombie in the side of its head with the point of his steel toe boot as it was starting to get its knees. Though the kick would have been fatal to a normal human, the zombie was merely thrown into a short roll before it began moving to get up again. Turning the sword grip, Frank used an overhand chop to sever its head.

He was kicking the body onto its side when he was slammed from behind. Frank looked back as the massive zombie leapt to land on him, and he rolled left  to get out of the way. It was turning to attack him again, and he got to his knees, using an awkward lunge to push his sword through the neck of the zombie. Gripping the handle with both hands, he yanked the sword to sever the spinal column.

When he stood up, he found eight more zombies had moved to surround him. He tried to force two back with a wide swipe of his sword, but they ignored having their hands removed and closed their bleeding limbs around him. Frank shouldered his way past them and spun to decapitate a zombie.

He was tackled to the ground from behind, and the sword was stripped from his hand. The zombie tossed it away before a before the group dropped down to pin him. Getting desperate, Frank tried to work his arm under his lower back to pull a grenade from his harness. He was ready to settle for catching hold of a pin, but the zombies pulled his arms to his side, piling down on him to keep him from moving.

They began to pick him up when one of the zombies dropped his leg. Frank curled it up to his chest and lashed out a kick to free his other leg. He was getting his feet under him when the head of the zombie to his left fell off. White blood sprayed into his face and he dropped his head to avoid getting any of the spraying cold fluid in his eyes or mouth. His arms were released, and while he wiped his face, he heard several more bodies hitting the ground.

Frank still could not quite suppress a gasp when he opened his eyes. The girl was panting quietly while she stood over a piles of bodies and watched a man run back to his house. Though she was still dressed in the night shirt, she had pulled on a pair of black jeans and a pair of canvas running shoes.

But what caused him to gasp was the number of decapitated bodies around her. In the time it had taken him to recover from being blinded, she had killed fourteen zombies.

She turned to face him and used her forearm to wipe the white blood of the zombies away from her freckled cheek. Her expression fell as she looked down at the ground. “He’s gone.”

“Who?”

“My brother Jody.”

Frank nodded and waved for her to follow him. “We can try to go after the vans in my car, but we need to hurry.” She gave a small nod as she jogged to catch up with him. “I’m Frank Kemp.”

“Robin Thomas,” she said, remaining quiet until they were in the car. She panted quietly and turned to study the weapon studded harness over Frank’s black outfit. “So what are you supposed to be, some kind of super hero?”

“I was just about to ask you the same thing. I’ve been tracking these zombies for a while now, and I’ve never seen anyone tear through them the way you did.”

Robin shrugged, moving her head around to search for the vans. “Everyone has a hobby. Are they really zombies? It doesn’t seem like a fitting term for them.”

“It’s the closest term I know of which fits, so that’s what I call them.” Frank paused and glanced over at the girl. “If you wanted to go after your brother, why did you run back inside the house?”

“I was trying to call the police, but I got a busy signal. I thought that was supposed to be impossible. I called nine-one-one, and they were busy. By then, I noticed that you hadn’t followed me.”

“Right, and then you took your time to get dressed,” Frank said and waved his hand at her. “Never mind, I appreciate the rescue. How did you know to break their necks?”

“They tried to take us last night. I couldn’t make them stay down any other way.”

“You didn’t call the police?”

“Yes, and they removed the bodies. But with the other people missing from the block, I think we got shuffled down to be a lower priority. Where did these things come from? I’ve never seen anything like them.”

“Well a lot of these zombies are coming from Dallas. I know you’ve probably heard there was a virus, but that isn’t true. In reality, there is a single leader who commands all of these zombies. He struck Dallas, and in four days, he wiped most of the city’s population out.” Frank spotted the vans and pointed. “There they are.”

“So speed up.”

“We’d be better served to follow them and see where they go. If they took your little brother, they probably took the other…”

“What’s wrong?”

“I was just thinking about the zombies in Dallas, but I can’t really recall seeing any zombie babies, or even any children or teens.”

“What about the elderly?”

Frank shook his head. “No, and now that I think about it, I’ve only seen healthy adults. But they had both vans loaded up with the young and old.”

“If they only use the adults, what are they doing with everyone else?”

“That’s why we need to follow them, so we can find out what’s going on.”

***

Gordon staggered into the elevator, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand while he leaned against the wall. The elevator stopped, and he looked at the doors opening, nodding to Janice as she and her escort stepped inside. “Still drunk?” he asked.

“Yes.” Janice rested on the wall and closed her eyes. “At least I’ve had something close to four hours of sleep to work with, so it’s not so bad.” She turned her head to stare at her escort. “Where are we headed now?”

“Back to the White House, ma’am.”

“What for?”

“I’m not able to say, ma’am. I just handle the deliveries.”

The ride through the sleeping city was eerily quiet, but neither Janice nor Gordon tried to guess at what was happening. They exchange worried glances as they were led through a series of corridors and into a room where the president and vice president both waited with a group of advisors.

President Richard Crane waved for them to sit on the couch, his frown tightening before he spoke. “First, let me apologize for being so rushed with you during our last meeting. I’ve been running from one meeting to the next for the last two days while we tried to sort out whether the zombies’ leader survived or not.”

“He did,” Gordon said.

“Yes. Our confirmation came yesterday when Houston logged three hundred missing persons reports, all on the west side of town. We’d sent five covert teams to locate the leader and eliminate them. We lost three of those teams yesterday just before sunset.”

“I’m sorry, but why are we here?” Janice asked.

The president nodded to an aide, who handed her a photo. “You recognize this man, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

President Crane nodded. “Your claims that you’d rescued him on the fourth night of the invasion has a major flaw. Detective Reed requested a background check on Frank, which suggested he was in contact with both of you well before the fourth night of the invasion.”

“So it was Frank you wanted to see, and not the two of us.” Gordon  watched the president nod before he started detailing Frank’s confession and his decision to ask for the vigilante’s help in locating the leader. The president seemed as passive as he had on their previous meeting, but instead of leaving when Gordon finished talking, he sat back and looked down in thought. Finally, Gordon’s curiosity over came his common sense. “Sir, if I may ask, who is Frank really?”

“On the surface, he seems like a normal individual. If you track him in a vacuum, you’d assume he was a quiet kind of guy who worked the night shift. However, his random movements also coincide with fluctuations of certain crimes. While violent crimes like rapes and murders went down, the number of missing persons reports climbed slightly.

“By itself, the trend wouldn’t be important, but the bulk of the missing persons reports were made up of people with very long criminal records. It wasn’t an effect which covered all of a city either. The rise in reports was usually contained to city sectors which had been determined as high risk areas before Frank’s arrival.”

“So he only confessed to the criminals he killed in Dallas.”

“Obviously we can’t apply every missing criminal to him, but even at a conservative guess, Frank has killed well over four hundred people in the last six years. He would have been public enemy number one if we’d known he existed.”

“What are you going to do about him now?”

“Nothing.”

Gordon sat up on the couch. “I’m sorry?”

“Frank was spotted in Houston by one of our teams three hours ago. He’s following a group of zombies, and if our men follow him, they have a good chance of finding the leader.”

“Then what will happen?”

“We will eliminate the leader. As for Frank, we’ll need to persuade him to look into a different line of work with us.” President Crane stood up. “Now, if you’ll excuse-”

“Sir, with all due respect, I do have one last question,” Janice said “Are we free to leave yet, or will we still be needing escorts everywhere we go?”

“You do understand, nothing we’ve discussed is to be made public?”

Janice nodded quickly. “Yes, of course.”

“Then you’re free to go.”