Gnash

GNASH

Washington, Dead City

Book One

Brian Parker

A PERMUTED PRESS BOOK

Published at Smashwords

ISBN: 978-1-68261-068-8

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-68261-069-5

GNASH

Washington, Dead City Book 1

© 2015 by Brian Parker

All Rights Reserved

Cover art by Christian Bentulan

This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Permuted Press

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Franklin, TN 37067

http://permutedpress.com

Works available by Brian Parker

GNASH, Book One of the Washington, Dead City Series

A Path of Ashes, book 1

Fireside, book 2 of The Path of Ashes

Enduring Armageddon

Origins of the Outbreak

The Collective Protocol

Battle Damage Assessment

Zombie in the Basement

Self-Publishing the Hard Way

"The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity;

And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth."

~The Book of Matthew 13:41-42 (KJV)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

FIRST INTERLUDE

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

SECOND INTERLUDE

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

EPILOGUE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PROLOGUE

19 March, 2319 hrs local

Karakoram Mountain Range

Afghanistan-Pakistan Border

The ancient lantern sitting beside the computer cast a dull glow that flickered off the wall, distorting the craggy features even further. Malik al-Nusurim sat at his World War II-era field table typing on one of the few laptops that the Brotherhood allowed. The air reeked of diesel fumes from the generator that ran constantly in the interior of the cave to power the computer and communications equipment.

For more than fifteen years the Brotherhood of Niyyat had been orchestrating the Jihad against the Westerners from the safety of the caves in the Karakoram. Those dogs had believed the disinformation campaign that the Brotherhood had delivered to the world about the fabricated terrorist organization called al-Qaeda. Even today the infidels still celebrated the death of the farmer named Usama that the Brotherhood had put in front of the camera to deliver their messages to the world for almost thirty years.

If they only knew the truth! The Brotherhood of Niyyat, the secretive organization of the faithful that predated even the religion of Islam, was founded to fight against the Greek invaders of Alexander. Later, after the Brotherhood was firmly on the proper path following the teachings of the Prophet, they fought against the crusaders from Europe and eventually transformed into what the Brotherhood was today: the most powerful organization in the world, bent on inflicting as much harm to the non-Muslim population as possible.

Very few knew of the existence of the Brotherhood and even fewer knew how deeply involved the organization was in almost every aspect of the Muslim fundamentalist movement. The group was well-financed and had operated virtually unrestrained until the Americans made a bold, unexpected move and invaded Afghanistan. Even the Russians feared to enter the ancient valleys of these mountains, but the Americans charged headlong into them.

From his time in the United States, al-Nusurim knew that the American response would target al-Qaeda camps and sympathizers when the Brotherhood ordered the attacks on New York and Washington, DC. Those four planes were meant to plunge the Americans into helplessness for months as their financial institutions, military and government were struck a serious blow all in one day.

Unfortunately the plane meant to destroy the United States Capitol building crash-landed in a field and the plane meant to cripple the military might of the nation hit too low along the building’s foundation instead of punching through and destroying more of the infrastructure and collapsing it as planned. The Americans were able to rebound quickly from the attack and lashed out against the Taliban in Afghanistan for no other reason than they were a government that tolerated terrorism. Their agents at the CIA would be shocked to learn how close they’d been to reaching the Brotherhood when they blindly struck out against every available target.

The Brotherhood went to ground after the infiltration of the American Special Forces into the Northern Alliance and had been calling the shots from the safety of the caves in the Karakoram ever since. The range ran from Afghanistan, through Pakistan and into India and China. K2, the world’s second tallest mountain peak, was within these mountains. From here the Brotherhood directed the most recent war in Afghanistan, supported numerous regional conflicts and planned terrorist attacks across the world.

When the Americans foolishly invaded Iraq in 2003, it had been a Brotherhood of Niyyat agent that put the ideas of weapons of mass destruction into the lexicon of the American society. Of course, the Americans believed the misinformation and attacked Iraq as expected. Iraq had long been a thorn in the side of the Brotherhood. Saddam Hussein ruled with an iron fist and would not take part in the terror campaign against the infidels. Instead, he preferred to attack his neighbors and fellow Muslims within his own country. When the Americans toppled his regime it opened the way for Islamic unity among the true believers and presented them with easily accessible Western targets as nation after nation provided soldiers to take part in the rebuilding of Iraq.

al-Nusurim halted his recollection and returned to typing the message his superiors had directed him to send. He had been creating this website for two months, building pages on the history of Islam, how the religion had spread across the entire world, even as far as the tiny islands in the Pacific Ocean, and what the future held for the proud Muslims of the world. It took considerable time to convert items into HTML code in each of the three languages for the site, Arabic, Farsi and English. He developed the multiple pages for his fake site and created the different links to legitimate websites that would not arouse suspicion when viewed by the world’s intelligence personnel. Hidden within one of the most remote sections of the site was a one-line message: Today is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and honor Him on the Night of Power. The Night of Power, Laylat-ul-Qadr, is the anniversary of the night that the first verses of the Holy Qur’an were revealed to the Prophet. It is celebrated annually during the month of Ramadan, which would begin five weeks from today.

A shiver of excitement went through al-Nusurim as he tapped the execute key that would publish his website to the World Wide Web. Cells that have been hidden for years, some maybe even for decades, would now be required to carry out the missions that the Brotherhood had given them so long ago. He knew there were several separate organizations in each of the major countries worldwide. If all of them carried out their acts of mayhem at the appointed time it could plunge the world into chaos and the rock-solid stability of the Islamic faith would carry the believers through to paradise.

He stood up and stretched his back. He’d been sitting for more than four hours finalizing everything after he’d received the order to carry out the plan. He walked stiffly to the opening of the cave. His sandals were made from old truck tires and scraped heavily on the traffic-worn floor. After relieving himself beside the cave, he squatted down and looked at the moon illuminating the valley below. Appropriate that the crescent moon shines tonight, he thought as his mind went over the potential for the future. Although he didn’t know what missions the cells had been given, he knew what the Brotherhood was capable of. Years of planning and training in secret across the globe could create several exciting possibilities. Bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, chemical or biological warfare, infrastructure disruption and a whole host of other events were possible. The imagination was the only limitation when it came to the actions of a martyr.

His imaginings were interrupted by a loud beep from the laptop behind him. He stood up and walked back to the table. The visitor counter he had placed on the website just registered the first hit. The Brotherhood’s message would be spread to everyone soon! The counter began to rapidly change and beep as the indicator advanced. He pressed the mute button on the keyboard as it quickly rolled past one hundred.

ONE

13 April, 0804 hrs local

Red Line – Washington Metro

Washington, DC

The Washington Metro was exceptionally crowded this morning, and as luck would have it, her rail car was extremely loud and jerked at various points along the track. That happened sometimes. Emory Perry wondered whether it was from the brakes not being fully disengaged, if it was time to lubricate the fittings on the train wheels, or if her car was only seconds away from de-railing and they were all about to die. The dirty railcars were packed with rude people and at least once a week there was some type of issue with the Metro where the trains would have to vie for position on a single track while they repaired the other. On those days, her normal twenty-minute subway ride was bloated into forty-five minutes or longer. She hated her commute, but was unwilling to deal with the hassle of having a car in the city.

She lived in Alexandria with her longtime fiancé and worked as a Congressional staffer for Senator Ann Marie Fergusson. Senator Fergusson was a good boss to have, especially given that she was a powerful third-term Democrat from Georgia and a staunch conservationist, with which Emory identified. The senator’s attitude toward the environment had earned her a seat on several environmental committees, including being the Chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The senator was also a ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, had an easygoing personality, a disarming smile and a quick temper, which she made up for by being even quicker to forgive people.

Emory grew up as a privileged child in La Jolla, afforded the types of opportunities that most girls only fantasized. She’d never had to worry about anything as a kid, what with her parent’s money, their huge beachfront house and the family yacht. Sure, she’d had to endure some of the tedium of California high society like etiquette and style classes, Friday afternoon cocktail parties and Sunday brunches, but Emory had also been blessed with both an older and a younger brother. From them, she had learned how to defend herself, tell dirty jokes, handle her alcohol, play sports and feel comfortable around a variety of personalities. Those skills that she’d picked up from her brothers had served her well in the world of Washington politics.

Her childhood etiquette education had helped her immensely in her current profession as a staffer for a senator with two major military installations and several smaller ones within her district. Several times, she’d gone to the Pentagon to seek out answers for the senator. The military-types appreciated her respectfulness and knew her by name and reputation. The smart ones also knew that they couldn’t bullshit her or intimidate her with big egos and acronyms.

It was on one of those trips to the Puzzle Palace, as the people who worked there called it, that she met her fiancé, Grayson. He was ex-military and served in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. When he got out of the service, he took a Department of the Army civilian job and moved to the District. Thinking about how their relationship began brought a smile to her face.

The first time she met him was outside in the courtyard at the Pentagon where people ate their lunch and could shortcut from one side of the building to the other. He was sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs eating an apple and reading a book. She only noticed him amongst the hundreds of other people in the courtyard because he was sitting in the sun whereas most people were crowded together in chairs that were shaded by the trees.

She’d had a few moments to spare between a meeting with the Army’s equipment procurement organization and another meeting on the subject of Fort Benning, Georgia. The Army wanted to reduce their overall personnel, so Emory had been there to determine how many jobs the senator could inform her constituents to expect to lose in that community. She sat next to Grayson in the sun and the chemistry was almost instantaneous. They talked for thirty minutes about nothing and everything all at once. He loved everything to do with the outdoors, from going to the beach to hiking the Appalachian Trail to snowboarding in Wyoming. She loved water and snow skiing, riding horses and running.

After she introduced herself there had been hardly any moments of silence and they complemented each other well as a pair. Emory had taken too long to disengage from the conversation and give him her number. As a result she was late to the Georgia briefing, but one of her contacts in the Pentagon gave her a copy of the slides and she was able to glean all the information that the senator needed from those pages.

The train jerked to a halt at Union Station. Dodged a bullet one more time, she thought as she exited the car. She swiped her fare card at the turnstile and glanced at the trio of older black men singing near the escalator. They performed every day either here or at Gallery Place where she had to switch trains from the Yellow Line to the Red Line for a few more stops. They harmonized well and she occasionally gave them whatever cash she had in her pockets for their efforts to brighten up the dreary subway.

She waved to them but hadn’t been to the ATM in a couple of days so she didn’t have anything to give them today. The escalator carried her out of the subway to the plaza at the top. She turned south on Delaware Avenue and again on C Street until she made it to the Hart Senate Office Building on the corner where she worked. April weather is unpredictable in DC and thankfully, it wasn’t raining. She smiled at the guard checking IDs and went through the metal detector.

Emory glanced up at the gigantic sculpture sitting in the atrium of the office building. The piece, called Mountains and Clouds, was a large metal sculpture consisting of angular steel plates in the shape of five mountain peaks with two arch-like legs, one branching from the other, and several clouds suspended eighty-five feet in the air from the ceiling of the ninety-foot tall atrium. The clouds were made up of four individual sculptures made of aluminum and painted black. They were originally mechanized and turned by varying degrees over the course of the day, but the system had broken down years ago. There was a renovation project to repair the sculpture before the Sequestration and subsequent government shutdown debacle a few years ago, but the project seemed to have been abandoned, so she didn’t know if they ever expected to complete the job and get it moving again.

The shadows around the sculpture seemed darker and more sinister when she worked here late at night. A few times, when the lighting was dimmed for the evening, she’d been startled by the janitors cleaning around the base. There would have been plenty of space for someone to hide in the shadows and it didn’t help any that she was scared of the dark when she was by herself. Her therapist called it nyctophobia and she’d tried several treatments to overcome her fears, but none of them had worked, so it seemed that she was stuck with a racing heartbeat and a mild constriction of her throat when she wasn’t in a well-lit area.

Senator Fergusson’s office was on the second floor so Emory took a quick trip up the stairs and down the hall to the office suite. The door was unlocked and the lights were on, which meant Bradley, one of the senator’s other staffers, was already at work and getting things ready for the day. He was an alright kid, twenty-four years old with a wide-open future after the two or three years he planned to work for the senator. There were two types of people that worked full-time in a Congressional office: the long-term, committed staffer that would stick through thick and thin with their legislator; and the ones who were hired right out of college, interested in gaining valuable resume enhancements and then they’d be off working at Fortune 500 companies making triple what the professional staffers made.

She sat down at her desk and put her ID card into the card reader that allowed her to access the computer system. There was an email from the US Office of Personnel Management regarding heightened security alerts in the Washington area. The OPM is the management organization for all government civilians and is responsible for contacting everyone with pertinent information and announcements. While technically, the staffers weren’t managed by the OPM, they still received the emails from their system.

She deleted the email after a cursory glance at the reading pane on her screen. The heightened security alerts had been coming out periodically since the September 11th attacks more than a decade ago, so no one really paid any attention to them anymore since nothing ever happened in DC. Working for the senator, she did know of a few foiled plots overseas that the media didn’t get wind of, but nothing even close to threatening anyone on American soil. Even Grayson didn’t take those Homeland Security alerts seriously and he was a big-time believer that the US was being watched and terrorists were planning another big attack.

The next email was from Grayson, it said to call him at work. He’d probably been there for two hours already. He left for work early, before she woke up, and his day ended relatively late, so he did most of his personal business in little moments of time captured throughout the day.

Emory saw that he’d sent the email twenty minutes ago so she picked up the phone and dialed his number, Force Management operations desk, Grayson Donnelly.

Hey, Baby. It’s me. What’s up?

I just got word that I have to fly out to Oklahoma tomorrow, Grayson replied bluntly, as usual. There’s a live-fire test of the new howitzer and my office wants someone there.

Tomorrow? Really? That’s our anniversary. Did you tell your work it was our anniversary? she asked.

"Yeah, but you know how things are and how she is. This is another Number One Priority to the Army and good ol’ dependable me has to handle it, he said with a slight southern Texas accent. Colonel Reeds said there was absolutely no discussion; I was going and that was final.

They have me flying out of BWI at ten tomorrow morning with a connecting flight in Dallas to Fort Sill, he continued.

How long will you be gone?

Eight days, so I’ll be back next Thursday afternoon.

I am so pissed right now. You are going to have to make this up to me. Our plans for a nice evening are ruined. She knew she shouldn’t take it out on him. It wasn’t his fault that his job required him to make sacrifices, but somebody had to catch hell over this and she had him on the phone.

Hey, babe, play your cards right and we’ll have tons of anniversaries; you’ll laugh that we missed this one, he said playfully. But I promise you I’ll make it up to you and then you’ll want me to miss more big events in the future because of how good I’m going to treat you.

Ugh, you’re such a guy! she said as she rolled her eyes. Well, when you do make it up to me, it better have at least three key components: copious amounts of wine, a very expensive gift that sparkles and mind-blowing make-up sex. Bradley looked over at her from where he stood making coffee with a stupid high school grin on his face. Oh grow up, Bradley, she chastised her office-mate.

Grayson laughed on the other end of the line. Alright, I’ve gotta go and get a little prep work done for tomorrow. We’ll talk when we get home tonight, okay? And while I’m gone, don’t be too hard on Millie, he said. She’s a good dog, a little hyper, but she really likes you and wants you to like her back. He’d had the Weimaraner for a little more than six years. She was a great dog but apartment life didn’t suit her so well. When he bought her he’d been stationed at Fort Bragg and had land for her to run on. She needed constant attention to keep from going crazy in the apartment so the dog got on Emory’s nerves.

Fine, I’ll make sure to take her for walks and play fetch with her. Hell, if I didn’t she’d probably think she’d been abandoned since you spoil her so much. Start planning your next credit card purchase now. Please tell everyone at your office that I hate them.

Love you too, babe.

TWO

14 April, 0738 hrs local

I-495 the Capital Beltway

Washington, DC

Shit, that was close! Grayson thought as he jammed his palm down against the horn on the Wrangler’s steering wheel. His boss gave him the big fat finger when she told him he had to make a last-minute trip to Fort Sill, Okla-fuckin-homa on his anniversary with Emory. He was pissed about this trip in every way and now he had to deal with idiot drivers on the Beltway as he made his way to the airport. Sometimes it felt like being an Army civilian was worse than when he was an active duty soldier.

His boss, Colonel Reeds, was one of those people who had succeeded only by the help of those around her and it showed constantly. This time, she’d waited to make a decision on a task that she’d had for weeks until yesterday morning so he had to rush around to get his flight booked and make hotel arrangements to go to Fort Sill as a representative of the Department of the Army for the field test of the new howitzer that they were interested in producing and fielding to the Army. On top of that, because of the late notice, the only flight available was out of BWI in Baltimore. It would have been so much easier to ride the Metro over to Reagan National, or even to take the bus to Dulles, but those flights were all full.

He knew he should take it in stride and not let it get to him, but that woman was always doing dumb things, often repeating mistakes she should have already learned from, and her people suffered as a result. When he was still in the Army he would have never put up with it. He’d risked insubordination on several occasions in order to take care of his troops and this was really nothing different. Except that in the military, his superiors had looked at his actions with respect for the dedication he had to his guys. Now that he was a civilian, he could get fired for telling his boss that she didn’t know her ass from a hole in the ground.

Sometimes when he thought about his current work situation, he wished he’d either stayed in until retirement or gotten a civilian job not associated with the military. But the economy was in the toilet when he got out and a government job was good, guaranteed income. If he’d went to some company as a newly hired manager-in-training then his position would have been one of the first cuts at a struggling company. Hell, over the course of the recession, that company probably would have gone out of business anyways so maybe he’d made the right choice after all, he mused.

And, there was Emory. Their relationship looked like it was going to continue to flourish. He’d meant it when he told her if she played her cards right she’d have a real anniversary someday. At thirty-seven, he was ready to settle down and possibly even have a couple of kids. He’d always wanted children, but the problem was usually the women that would come with them. He was a perfectionist and never could find someone that he wasn’t sick of after a few months. When he turned thirty his mother told him his opportunities were over and that she wouldn’t get any grandchildren out of him. What did she know? She was old-fashioned. If she’d had her way, he would have been married off two weeks out of high school the way her and Dad were back in the Seventies before he shipped out to Vietnam.

Grayson enlisted in the Army after high school. He knew that he ultimately wanted to be an officer, but his father, a retired noncommissioned officer in the Marine Corps, had told him stories about the merits of officers he’d known who had been enlisted first. Chief among those merits was the ability to understand the viewpoint of the regular Marine and a commonsense approach to leadership.

His first duty station after basic training was Fort Hood, Texas, which was only three hours from his mother and father in Ozona. In order to be an officer, you have to be a college graduate, so he signed up and went to night school at the University of Texas, an hour’s drive from the base.

He didn’t even have time for women or socializing outside of work for those five years that it took him to earn his degree, but he did it, and only finished a little behind schedule. He was able to use a combination of tuition assistance and his Army income to pay for school along the way, which meant that he didn’t have the student loan debts that most college graduates did. After that, he got the approval of his chain of command to attend Officer Candidate School down at Fort Benning, Georgia. He graduated at the top of his class and became an Infantry officer. He suffered through Airborne and Ranger schools with the rest of his classmates and was assigned to Fort Bragg, North Carolina to the storied 82nd Airborne Division.

He didn’t regret any of the years that he’d dedicated to his Army career. He’d deployed to Iraq once and Afghanistan twice, leading troops in combat over all three deployments. He got a 7.62-millimeter bullet through his forearm in Fallujah during a riot in April 2003 and had skin from his ass and thigh grafted to his arm now. He’d taken shrapnel to his face and neck when an RPG round hit a wall he was taking cover behind in eastern Afghanistan in early 2005. Then his unit went to New Orleans after the president called the 82nd in to provide aid and help rescue the residents after Hurricane Katrina.

It was there, in the Big Easy after his second deployment, that he began to feel dissatisfied with what he was doing. He didn’t join the Army to keep people from fighting over food and umbrellas while he simultaneously saved people who used their situation to act like animals. People were murdered for food, or even worse, for big screen TVs. There was rampant looting and vandalizing. Hell, he’d even seen people waiting in line for buses out of the Superdome pull their pants down and take a shit beside the line because they didn’t want to lose their place. What kind of people did that? Not even the Iraqis or Afghans did that.

He decided to get out after twelve years of serving his country, but the Army halted his separation and sent him on another deployment to Afghanistan where he messed up his shoulder after his Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle was overturned when it was hit by an IED. The truck worked as advertised and he was alive thanks to all those last-minute armor upgrades by the Army.

That sealed it for him. He figured he’d tempted fate too many times, so he got out before he would have been eligible for Major. His father tried to talk some sense into him. He said that Grayson was throwing away thirteen good years of his life and was already more than halfway to retirement, the economy sucked and he would be plenty young enough to get a second career when he was eligible to retire at thirty-eight. But Grayson wouldn’t be swayed about getting out. However, he did take part of his father’s message to heart and signed up as an Army civilian so that his time in service would ultimately count toward his thirty-year retirement. A year or so later he met Emory and they hit it off right away.

Grayson parked in the airport’s long-term parking and pulled his baggage out of the tiny trunk space of his Jeep. He checked everything at the airline counter except his backpack that held a laptop, his MP3 player, a book and a couple magazines. Then he made his way through security and went to Terminal C where his plane would be leaving. Luckily, directly across from his gate was a bar that was open early.

He pulled out a barstool and sat down heavily on the worn wood. Watcha havin’ sweetie? the cute young bartender asked him.

He looked at the menu for a minute and said, I’d like a Bloody Mary, some onion rings and a grilled chicken sandwich, no mayo and a glass of water.

Alright. Be right back with your drinks, she said with a wink. Not traveling in uniform and being able to have a drink any time he wanted was one of the good things about being a civilian.

Here you go, she said as she thumped a highball glass on the varnished wood bar. After a few minutes she came back from helping a few other customers to make small talk. Where ya headed?

Oklahoma. For work.

I went through there on the way here from New Mexico. You know, come to DC and get involved in your country’s politics. Like that worked. Went to a couple rallies and tried to work at a campaign office, but then I realized that one person really doesn’t make much of a difference in America’s political system… she trailed off and looked lost in thought for a moment. Anyways, not much there in Oklahoma you know. She mixed him another drink without being asked for it and passed it over to him.

Tell me about it. Thanks, he said as he gestured toward the new drink. I’ve been there before and I’m not happy that I have to go back to that part of the country.

So, you from around here or just passing through? she asked standing up on her tippy toes and biting her lower lip as she looked him over. Grayson wasn’t what anyone would call gorgeous or any of that, but he did have a rugged, mature handsomeness to him. His scars added a certain amount of intrigue and you could easily tell he spent a lot of time at the gym.

This wasn’t his first rodeo and he knew where the bartender was going, I live down in DC with my fiancée.

So you’re not married to her though, right? She asked with a little lean in over the bar so he could smell her perfume and see the top of her cleavage.

Katie, he said as he read her nametag, you’re a really cute girl and three or four years ago, I’d have been hitting on you like crazy, but things change. Is my food ready?

Oh, she said dejectedly. Let me go check on it. She returned a couple minutes later carrying his plate. He thanked her and she went down to the other end of the bar to wash some glasses.

Her movements got more pronounced and with each successive glass she washed she slammed them down into the water harder. Grayson could tell she was working herself into an angry frenzy. "It’s not like