The Destruction of Washington, D.C.
El-Tee Charlie Six

I was in Washington, the day the NAN War ended. I had been recalled to the Pentagon, to testify about battlefield conditions in South Dakota.

After spending all morning in conferences, trying to explain to Pentagon bureaucrats what it was like to fight spirits who could swat our planes out of the sky, I'd been dismissed for the rest of the day. They didn't want to hear what I had to say.

I decide to get some lunch and see the sights. I knew I was headed back to the front, and wanted to relax.

There was a protest on the Mall, people thronging the Lincoln Memorial demanding higher food rations or something like that. I was on the other side of the Washington Monument, just across the street from the Lodge. I could see the Capitol building to the east.

It began as a bass rumble, like God's own half-ton backing up over a ton of gravel. Then the ground began to shake. I fell to my knees. People were screaming, trying to run, but falling to the ground. The rumble got louder, and the ground bounced beneath me. I was thrown into the air.

The Washington Monument fell to pieces behind me, like a Lego model dropped on the floor. The granite blocks fell apart, bouncing along the ground. People got crushed. Then the Capitol building fell in on itself, the dome breaking apart, the pillars collapsing. Buildings all around me were crumbling, the rubble sliding into the street. A cloud of dust erupted from the buildings, and hung over the streets.

I bounced on the ground forever, before the rumbling stopped. All around me I heard screaming and sirens.

I staggered to me feet and looked around. Washington had been destroyed.

I tried to help, to pull people loose or bandage crushed limbs. After a while, I just started wandering the streets.

I used to play videogames in my downtime. One, Fallout, was set in DC after a nuclear war. Everywhere you went were ruined buildings, and walls of rubble blocking the streets. DC was like that, only with fewer buildings left standing.

DC was the heart of America. Our monuments, our government, all our history and culture was concentrated in that one city. The White House, the Capitol Building, the Smithsonian, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, the Library of Congress.

All. Just. Gone.

Coyote had stabbed us in our heart. He had destroyed something precious and majestic.

He proved he could destroy anything, as he saw fit. He defeated us.

The new president was sworn in later that day. A week later, he was at Wounded Knee negotiating our surrender.

We were doing okay. VITAS had come and gone, but we were recovering, better than most places. We were rebuilding. And in one day, everything was taken away.

That's what happened at DC.