Greg Krojac - The Schrödinger Enigma

“This place has been compromised so we know we can’t stay here. But we can’t just leave and run around like headless chickens. Anybody got any suggestions of where we should go?”

He looked at each of the faces before him in turn.

“Anyone?”

Silence. Jason didn’t know if they were still in shock or just felt that they had nothing to offer.

“OK. I think we should find a high vantage point. Is there a very tall building in this city?”

One of the Marines found his voice.

“Skyscrapers aren’t allowed in the city, but there are some tall buildings in Arlington. It’s about four miles away. The tallest is at 1812 North Moore Street. Not many companies have offices there. Don’t know why – it’s a nice building.”

Jason was interested.

“Is it a good vantage point?”

“Well. As I said, it’s tall. Thirty-five stories, five low-rise elevators, five hi-rise elevators, three jump elevators, and two freight elevators. Floor to ceiling windows, 360 degree vision, typical floor size…”

Jason stopped him before he could reel off any more of the building’s specifications.”

“How do you know all that?”

One of the Marine’s colleagues laughed.

“He’s a nerd. Obsessed with architecture.”

Jason turned back to the nerd-Marine.

“So you think it’ll be a good vantage point? I don’t want us to be surprised again.”

That was the most important thing. Jason had felt a little uneasy about being underground, but he had taken solace in the fact that the hideout was an official government shelter and should have provided top quality protection. He much preferred to be up high, where he could see if anyone approached.

“Anyone else got any suggestions?”

The group murmured amongst themselves, but the consensus was that they had nothing else to suggest.

“Right. We’ll head over to this building in Arlington then. Get your stuff together. Pack only what you can carry, and we’ll head out under the cover of darkness.”

With the Argons having superior night vision, Jason wasn’t sure that moving after dark would make much difference, but at least it should make the rest of the group feel a little more secure – even if it was only an illusion.

The Potomac River was going to cause a problem. Whichever route the group of survivors chose would entail crossing the river, and that brought with it additional risks. If they took the southernmost route, they would have to negotiate the Arlington Memorial Bridge. The northernmost route meant crossing the Francis Scott Key Bridge. The third alternative was to cross via the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge which meant crossing Theodore Roosevelt Island. Crossing a bridge meant there would be no cover once the group were on it. All three possible routes were more or less the same length – about four miles long, so it didn’t really make a difference which bridge they used, in terms of time, but the amount of time that they’d be on the bridge would be the deciding factor. Jason turned to the Marine who had suggested moving to 1812 North Moore.

“What’s your name, Marine?”

“US Marine Private Tyler Roberts, Sir. But you can call me Geek. Everybody else does. It’s kinda a friendly nickname. I like facts and figures.”

“Well, Geek. Which route do you think we should take?”

“I reckon we should cross the river by the Francis Scott Key Bridge, the northernmost. It’s the shortest at 1,701 feet. Theodore Roosevelt is nearly twice as long at 3,143 feet, and Arlington Memorial is 2,162 feet. Plus when we get to the other side, we’ll be close to 1812 North Moore. Psychologically, that’ll be good. I guess.”

Fifteen minutes later the group cautiously left their sanctuary, a graveyard of bad memories and broken bodies, and headed along 7 thStreet SW towards Jefferson Drive SW. Once the area would have been a hive of activity, the museums drawing people in from far and wide, but now it was as deserted as the rest of the city. None of the routes provided much cover, this particular part of DC being a remarkably green and open area, so they were forced to dart between the large buildings in groups of three or four, so as not to compromise the whole group if they were spotted. Once a quartet was safely huddled against the walls of one building, the next small group would make the dash for safety. Each time a group made the sprint from one building to another; twelve other hearts would leap into the mouths of the rest, aware that they could all die at any second.

It was a relief when the group made it to the bridge without incident. There had been so many times when they had been out in the open, when they could have been attacked, but they arrived at the Francis Scott Key Bridge unscathed. They could see their objective quite clearly, 1812 North Moore Street, but they were now faced with the most dangerous part of their journey. Once they started crossing the bridge they would be particularly vulnerable, especially once they were away from the riverbank.

The bridge itself looked harmless enough, a four-lane highway with modern streetlights and guardrails belying the fact that it was Washington DC’s oldest existing bridge across the Potomac River. Before the plague, it would have seen about 62,000 cars per day crossing it, but now it was almost empty, except for a handful of abandoned cars straddling the highway. There was no logical reason for those cars to have been there – death by plague wasn’t so sudden that a victim would be caught by surprise while driving across the bridge. Perhaps these cars belonged to people who had no family and their drivers had gone to the bridge to drown themselves in the river. It would explain the large number of bloated and disfigured corpses floating underneath the bridge.

The group scanned the bridge, looking for anything that might be suspicious, although they had no choice but to cross the bridge if they wanted to get to 1812 North Moore. The bridge was too long for them to adopt the same strategy as they had past the Smithsonian, the Washington Monument, and along Virginia Avenue. Now they wouldn’t be even remotely safe until they were ensconced as high up as possible in 1812 North Moore.

Jason looked at the faces of the small band of survivors. They looked tired from the effort of having survived for so long, exhausted both physically and mentally. They looked scared – it would be foolish not to be scared. They had all witnessed the carnage at the Metro Station. They wanted this all to be over, they wanted their old lives back. But that would never happen.

Jason gathered the group around him.

“Ok everybody. I’m not going to lie to you. This is going to be dangerous. But we have no choice. Keep together, in single file, but close to each other. It’s a wide bridge but we need to keep to the middle of the road, away from the sides. I think it’ll be safer. Are you all up for it?”

The group nodded and Jason gave the order to move out. The bridge looked a lot longer, now that they were about to cross it. Enak went first, followed by the rest, taking an invisible line down the middle of the bridge. The Marines were interspersed with the civilians, as were Eled and Siroll, with Jason bringing up the rear of the column just as he had done in the Metro tunnel.

It was a peaceful day, clear blue skies broken only by the occasional small white cloud breaking the palette. Ahead five cars were bunched together in such a way that the group had to take a small diversion away from the centre of the road. Jason signalled to the group to wait while he and one of the Marines checked that it was safe to continue. Carefully, they approached the vehicles and looked through the car windows to ensure that there were no hidden surprises inside. The passenger areas of the cars were empty. Jason moved to the front of the line and gestured to the nearest Marine. [38] I’m pretty sure Marine should be capitalized. Don’t think I caught all instances