Chapter 11 - The Capitol Hill

Heero POV

May

"Relena," Heero called her by her name. She tilted her head up at him, but her look was absent and tired. "Look," he pointed a point far away on the horizon, right in front of them.

At the far end of a long, wide road wrapped with high threes on both sides emerged a magnificent view of the white dome. Although after 20 years of neglecting its color wasn't so bright anymore and resembled light gray than ivory, it still looked majestic on the background of the blue sky. It had to be a familiar view for his long-haired female companion who now had a big smile painting on her face.

"Wow," Relena gasped, her face bright of joy. "It's nearly undamaged!"

Heero nodded. "We should now head through the old quarantine zone."

"The quarantine zone?" Relena's voice was unexpectedly surprised. "There was a quarantine zone in Washington?"

Heero lifted his eyebrows. "There was. But there isn't anymore. It ceased to exist about two or three years ago."

"What happened?"

"Nothing in particular. All quarantine zones are bound to follow this fate. Unless somebody stops the spreading of disease."

Suddenly, he heard that Relena wasn't following his footsteps anymore. He turned back; she stood in the middle of the street, gazing around her familial city, seeing it for the first time in years.

"So nobody here survived?" she asked with a defeat in her voice.

Heero took out his binoculars and scoped out at the city in front of them, scanning the surroundings and landmarks. "Actually," he muttered after a while, "at least one person should be still alive and keep his guard here. The funny thing is that he happens to owe me a favor, even if he wants to forget about it."

Relena was silent for a moment. "Knowing you, I guess you won't tell me what you exactly did for him, when or why. But maybe you will enlighten me why do we need to meet with him at all?"

Even if he didn't mind to say something more, hearing her harsh words, he considered himself relieved of this duty. So he skipped the first sentence with a silent nod, giving her a hint that she already answered herself. "We need transportation," he continued, still looking through his binoculars. "A car or anything that runs. He will help us arrange something."

"And how are we supposed to find him? It's such a big city full of infected… he could be anywhere."

"That's the easy part, actually," Heero muttered under his breath, then put off his binoculars. "He picked for himself the best place in town."

"Meaning…?"

Heero tilted his head at the white dome. "You're looking at it."

x x x

The former Washington Quarantine Zone was situated at the foot of the Capitol Hill and stretched out far behind the nearby blocks. From a distance, it looked like a vast, abandoned bazaar. Hundreds of partially torn off tents, broken windows in the buildings, a lot of rusted, chaotically parked cars. And a lot of garbage everywhere, carried by the wind. Newspapers, leaflets, containers, letters… The zone was surrounded by a concrete wall of about 20 meters high - much lower than the one in Philadelphia - with wire on the top. Every dozen or so meters, there were watchtowers situated, in which, when the zone still existed, the guards were looking out for hordes of infected approaching the area. The Washington Quarantine Zone consisted of four smaller security zones, every one of them guarded and with restricted rules of access. Every person had to be subjected to test for Cordyceps infection each once in a while, depending on the security zone he lived. Every diagnosis of the disease meant instant execution.

All these precautions could not, however, protect the zone against the danger that existed in its core: the human factor. Somebody, somewhere, somehow, for some reason, broke the rules. Deliberately or inadvertently. Because somebody wanted to protect a loved one or because somebody wanted to gain some tangible benefit. And one accident caused the domino effect. At the speed of light.

The heart of the zone was the building of the United States Capitol. It dominated the landscape, but its size permitted to conduct all kinds of administration needed for the quarantine zone to function correctly on an everyday basis. It was also rather easy to defend it or to hide inside it. That's probably why it was now the residence of its last sovereign.

The moment they walked into the zone through the completely demolished main gate, Heero got his gun out of his pocket and flicked off its safety. He scanned the surroundings with cautious eyes. The wind roared in the narrow, dirty alleys. The fabric of the tents fluttered in the wind, the metal doors of the buildings squeaked, rats were running in every direction. Lots of noises in a seemingly dead zone. He understood that it would be difficult for him to maintain concentration to detect movement in time. They had to get the Capitol Building as quickly as possible.

"You said that finding this guy was an easy part," he heard Relena's voice behind him. "So, what's the hard part?"

He thought for a second on the answer. "Let's say he's problematic when it comes to human relations."

Relena spat out with irony. "You don't say?"

Heero's face remained still. "Keep your voice down," he replied shortly with a flat voice.

She didn't say anything but followed him silently through another perimeter. The zone was enormous. The closer to the center they were getting, the more dried corpses they encountered. The way they were dressed sometimes made it possible to guess who they were during their lives and how they could have died. There were also many infected's corpses. The further they were getting, the more traces of chaos were seen; makeshift barricades, execution rows, minor battlegrounds… The last moments of the Washington Quarantine Zone had to be horrifying for those who were trapped inside, unable to run from the infected that stormed the final perimeter.

Being alert, Heero was cautious about making sure that Relena was still following him. She was, in silence, only occasionally stopping him and pointing to something that alarmed her. But the more gloomy the landscape around them was becoming, the more often he was hearing her making quiet, half-muffled sighs of terror at the view she was witnessing. She'd stopped all once in a while and lament in silence over the tragedy that took place in her city. It worried him; she became more and more distracted.

"Relena," he turned around and called her name the moment he stopped hearing her footsteps again. Relena knelt on the ground, holding a scrap of paper. It contained some illiterate words scratched with a dark pencil. He noticed that they began with the word Mom.

She slowly tilted her head up at him. Her cerulean eyes were full of tears.

"Just how…" Relena muttered silently, her voice still firm, "how much more frightening death is when you're dying lonely. When you can't even say goodbye to your loved ones. When you don't know where they are if they're all right. And you come to leave this world without any clue about their fate. That's just not right."

She whispered these words quietly, but a loud cry of protest sounded through her. Heero was under the impression that although he was the only living human to hear her words, they weren't directed only to him. It was her personal veto against the world, against people, against death.

For a brief moment, Heero was very close to grab her shoulders and shake her back to the harsh, heartless, and deadly reality that surrounded them. But her words took some of the nonphysical weight off his chest that had been building up in him for some time. Maybe she just gave a name to something he felt for so long.

Relena sighed, smoothing a scrap of paper with a trembling hand on her lap, and a tear flowed down her cheek. Heero felt that killing or even weakening this beautiful sensitivity that this girl managed to protect inside herself was the last thing he wanted to do or let happen.

He knelt on one knee in front of her and wiped a tear on her cheek with the tops of his fingertips. Her skin was pleasantly smooth under his touch. Relena looked into his eyes, seeking comfort, but he, contrary to her, couldn't find the right words to say to her. He stayed by her, in silence, in the heart of the abandoned zone.

Eventually, Relena sighed deeply, and Heero took it as a sign that she was ready to walk again. He got on his feet and held out his hand to her. She accepted it and raised herself on her feet with his help. Then she folded the paper in half and put it in the pocket of her denim jacket. She didn't say anything more but followed him with her eyes downcast.

After another hour of walk through the zone, they reached the wide, imperial stairs conducting to the main entrance of the Capitol building. Even those stairs have seen better days. Its primary role wasn't now a representative one. It was another line of defense for the owner of this stronghold. Another battlefield. It was apparent that somebody still lived here and tried to protect himself. The wire entanglements were all positioned neatly, along with all kinds of traps. It was impossible to go through there unnoticed. Heero walked around the stairs looking for any entrance; he quickly realized that they wouldn't enter through any of the front entries. Heero moved slowly, feeling a disturbing tingling on the back of his neck as if someone was watching his every step. He wouldn't be surprised if that were true; he just hoped that it was the person he expected.

"Heero, I think I found the way in," he suddenly heard Relena's voice. She was only a few steps ahead of him. He didn't notice when she outwalked him. She was inevitably approaching the metal door with the board Security on it, right under the stairs.

A door right here? It was too easy. After a nanosecond, Heero already figured why.

"Relena, stop!" he choked, sprinting towards her, but she had already pressed the door handle.

At the same moment when Heero knocked Relena down, from under the bare ground, right in the spot where she had just stood, a steel rope rose up. It cut the air with the speed of light and made a loud sound as it strained. Anything that stood in its path would have been cut in half. Especially Relena's body.

Once on the ground, Heero quickly disentangled himself from shocked Relena, pulling out his gun and looking around. THIS also seemed too easy. Suddenly, he heard the click of the straining mechanism somewhere at his left side and pushed Relena away from him with all his strength. She rolled away, and at the same second, four loops of cord tightened on the ground around Heero; he was able to dodge three out of four. The fourth one closed tightly around his right wrist and instantly pulled him backward. The strength of the tug almost pulled his arm out of his shoulder joint again. Heero dropped the gun and fell on his back, feeling the rope pulling him along on ground a few meters back, until he braced with his head and shoulders against some hard obstacle.

The force of the impact dazed him for a moment. He could hear Relena's faint, terrified scream as she called him by name. Heero shook his head and tried to free his arm that was unnaturally bent backward. He only felt a blockage in his shoulder, and a sharp pain blinded him again for a moment. He reached far behind his head with his other hand - the rope was thick but not reinforced.

"Heero!" he heard Relena's voice again and felt her hands tugging at the material of his jacket. He opened his eyes, seeing her frightened face in front of him, which softened when he came to his senses. "Are you OK?"

"I'm all right," he replied, then reached into the inside pocket of his jacket for his knife. Before he could take it out of the case, Relena snatched it from him and quickly cut the cord that still restrained it.

"Can you move it?" she asked. Heero checked. He nodded - he could. With pain, but the most important thing was that he could.

"Not bad, Yuy."

They both snapped their heads up towards the stairs to the Capitol at those words, spoken with a Chinese accent.

"I could expect it. Nine out of ten who fall into this trap are torn into four parts. You managed to limit this to just one limb," the last sentence was spoken with a little admiration. A short man with distinct Chinese features stood at the top of the first level of the stairs and aimed at them with a shotgun. "Now explain to me what the fuck you're doing here before I shoot you."

TBC

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