Assuming Room Temperature (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 3) (8 page)

“We’ve been doing alright so far.” Kat saw Rae shake her head. “What?”

“Oh, yeah! We’re fuckin’ great!” George leaned back in his driver’s seat, and pointed at her in amusement with his cigar. “Let’s look at our track record, shall we? We’ll start with the Purifiers attacking Rae’s cache, and burning it to the ground. You know, when they kidnapped Allen, Maggie, Karen, and Heather? Then, after those assholes shot Heather for trying to escape, they beat the shit out of Maggie and Allen and—”

Kat sat up in her seat. “To be fair? We
did
get them back, safe and sound.”

Foster went on, “—and took Karen back to amuse that bitch Nichole. After playing her sick little games for a while, Nichole convinced the Purifiers to let one of the infected chew on the poor girl’s leg, then shot her point blank to insure Karen would turn into one of those things. When we went after them, thanks to Jake’s fool-ass attempt—”

“George. Let’s not go there.” Rae watched as Cho’s face went flat. The young woman displayed no emotion and she could tell how much that worried the normally unshakable Rae. Much worried her, but the lack of emotion currently displayed by the blue-haired, young woman was one of the warning signs that Kat was getting dangerously angry.

“Don’t get me wrong, girl. Jake givin’ himself over like that took guts, no doubt about it.
Maybe
it would’a worked if we’d been dealing with an enemy that had any kind of scruples, but Pool and the Purifiers were just scum. Christ, I’d be pretty amazed if a single one of them could’a even
spelled
conscience, let alone knew what it meant. Then, to make matters worse, Donna gets killed during the fight inside the power plant and poor Laurel...” The gray-haired man sighed heavily and seemed to shrink into himself for a moment. “Damn. I miss that girl. She had a yard a’ guts, blowin’ up the roof the way she did.”

“Yeah,” Kat murmured.

Foster shook his head to bring his thoughts in order again. “I’m just sayin’ if we don’t start pulling it together, I got some serious misgivings about any of us actually making it to Pecos. Let
alone
the West Coast.”

“I’m sure Kat and the others are careful when they’re out and about.” Rae actually giving her a compliment was so rare, it surprised the Asian woman. “If they weren’t, the maggot-heads would’ve already gotten them on one of their scouting runs.”

Kat felt genuine relief at Rae’s confidence in her. She’d been worrying about every decision she made while they continued their trek southwest, and it was nice to know.

Rae shrugged, causing her breasts to rise and fall under her grime-smeared tank top. “Besides, Henry’s there. He can usually keep our scatter-brained friend here from taking
really
crazy risks, or doing anything just plain suicidally stupid, for that matter.”

“Why doesn’t she listen to me then?” Foster asked. “I’ve been doin’ shit like this fer’ the last forty
years
, for fuck’s sake! Not on this large of a scale, mind, but I don’t think anybody was ready fer’ zombies!”

So much for confidence,
Kat thought wryly. “Guys?”

“Maybe
because
you’ve been doing this for forty years?” Rae took a seat in the navi-guesser position Beatrix had vacated previously. “I mean, let’s face it, George. While you do have a lot of experience, you can’t really understand her.”

Foster shot her a narrow look as he puffed his stogie. “What are you talkin’ about?”

Rae gave him a sympathetic smile. “It’s just hard for older members of the armed forces to connect with those of the younger generation. They find it difficult to relate, and even more of a trial to change any procedures that might be, you know, outdated?”

“Um, guys?” Kat waved a hand in the pair’s direction.

“Well. That’s the pot’s callin’ the kettle black,” he snorted.

“And just what is
that
supposed to mean?” Rae demanded.

“Hello-o-o? Guys?”

“That you ain’t doin’ such a great job at that yerself there, honey.” Foster chuckled and continued puffing away on his Cuban.

“Are you implying that I’m
old
?” Rae’s voice went up a couple octaves.

“Naw. Nothin’ you got’s saggin’ yet. But, while you ain’t reached middle age yet like I did a few years back, you ain’t no spring chicken anymore either,” George replied without a hint of embarrassment. That was because while the grizzled chief looked to be in his late fifties, George Foster was nearly two decades older than his appearance belied. He’d actually begun to creak when he rolled out of bed in the morning, which he’d taken as a personal insult from the gods.

Kat knew Foster was trying to push the brown-haired woman’s buttons, and it seemed to be working. Rae was by no means unattractive. When the survivors first met the lovely fixer at her junkyard cache, Laurel had even felt it necessary to keep an arm around Jake’s waist to stake her claim on him as the three of them had been introduced. Rae was beautiful, no question. And that was after three months without salon-level maintenance.

“I’ll have you know I just turned thirty-two this April! How does that compare to your... How old are you again? Seventy-five? Seventy-six? Who can relate to the younger generation more successfully now?” Rae fumed.

“Believe that if it gets ya’ sleep at night,” George said, looking at his cigar as he rolled it absently between his fingers.

Rae’s face went red. “Why, you son of a bi—”

“Guys!” Kat called more forcefully.

The two angry fixers swiveled their chairs back to face her.
“What?”
They yelled in unison.

“If you two are so worried I’m gonna screw things up, why don’t we make someone else our group leader?”

Rae’s mouth quirked in a joyless smile. “Yeah,
that’s
a great idea. I think we’ll pass.”

“But you said—”

“Forget it.” George folded his arms and gave her a hard look. “We’ve been over all this before. You’re in charge, an’ fer’ good reason.”

Cho felt like pulling her hair out. She was determined to get out of leading their group of survivors any longer. She was tired of being worried all the time, she was sick of trying to second guess every choice she had to make every single day, and she
hated
how they treated her. Everyone kept looking to her like she had all the answers. The young woman had never experienced that before, and she was finding it to be thoroughly nerve-wracking. She could only imagine what military commanders went through every time their units went into action. Those men had the lives of their teams resting on their shoulders; they’d been
trained
to handle the stress and continue on, no matter what. Kat was just a pharmacy tech from Ohio. Granted, she was an ex-pharmacy tech who had an aptitude for firearms—and some serious ninja skills—but that in no way prepared her to make decisions that could mean life or death for one of her companions.

It could very well come to that,
she thought. They’d been lucky so far and hadn’t encountered any super-huge packs of the infected, but George, Rae, and even Elle, were positive the larger groups were out there, somewhere. Even with the near-impervious Mimi, they needed to avoid those enormous crowds of rotting things. While the survivors would remain safe thanks to the Pepto-colored transport’s SEP skin hull, some of the creatures seemed a bit more together than others. They realized prey was inside the massive vehicle’s belly and would follow it. This is not to say they were mental giants. All the zombies appeared to be as sharp as a bag full of turnips. A few
did
have a bit more brainpower than your average, everyday drooler, though. Some of them could even
run,
which was why Kat
still
worried privately about “smart-ghouls.”

“I’m sure you believe that,” she began, attempting yet again to remain calm, cool, and sound completely reasonable, “but the thing is—”

“Kat. No matter what kind of argument you make, it’s not going to change anything.” Rae said blandly, crossing one long, fatigue-covered leg over her other.

“Damn right.” George growled in a voice that sounded like a bulldog gargling gravel. “Who else is supposed to take the position? Gwen? Don’t make me laugh. Yeah, she’s good people—and a good fighter now that we’ve trained her up—but she doesn’t know the first thing about leadership. Elle? She’s a shock-trooper. That woman’s idea of ‘strategy’ is to kick the door down and go in, guns blazing. After she throws in a couple a’ grenades.”

Kat couldn’t refute that statement. The blonde-haired sergeant was one to shoot first and then let God sort out the innocent from the guilty.

“My niece, Bee? I love the girl, but come
on. She’s a ditz. An’ stop givin’ her all that damn bubble-gum, would ya? It’s bad fer her teeth, and the both of you leave it everywhere. Found a piece stuck to the dash in here yesterday... Henry? Sure he has charisma, but he doesn’t possess even as much training with weaponry as say Gwen does, and he’s already admitted he doesn’t have a clue when it comes to a firefight. He’s all ‘beat the problem to death with a hammer, and if that doesn’t work, smash it with a dump truck’. Penny? She couldn’t even tell that Rebecca chick to get bent. You know, the one who tried to pair her off with Jake, to further her little sex-cult? Then there’s Hot Rod over here.” He motioned at his appealing counterpart, referring to her by her internet ‘code name.’

“Careful.” Rae crossed her legs the other way.

George rolled his eyes. “Let’s be honest. There’s a
reason
that—even with a half dozen different degrees—she was manning a cache in the middle of bum-fuck-nowhere Ohio for the CIA at the age of thirty-three—Alright! Alright, woman! Thirty-two! Whatever. Somewhere, sometime, she pissed somebody off, and got sent out to the boonies. Her career was over even before Doomsday rolled around, unless she’d have opted to leave the agency and go into the private sector. That means she doesn’t play well with others when put into a position of authority.”

“Is that true?” Kat asked.

Rae pouted. “There’s a bit more to it than that, but he’s right. Basically.”

“What about you George? Why can’t you take over?”

Foster shook his head and tapped ashes from the tip of his cigar. “I’ve got experience, Cho, but I’m no good when it comes to bein’ in charge. I’m just too rigid, I guess. Too demanding. I expect everyone to match my
standards, and that don’t work when you need to keep a unit functioning. A
leader
finds a way ta’ use everyone’s abilities to compensate for everyone’s weaknesses, an’ that ain’t something I’ve ever been good at. When it comes ta’ trainin’ people, sure, I can do that. I can even back up whoever happens to be Top Dog, if they need a mean-ass, heavy-handed bastard people can hate. Can’t inspire loyalty though. Can’t make anybody want to charge beside me into Hell, laughin’ and yelling that the devil’s nothin’ but a pitchfork-humpin’ sissy. Bein’ able to do that takes somebody special.”

Kat sat thoughtfully and let that sink in for a minute.

“So what you’re saying is; to lead, someone has to be sure of themselves, skilled, somewhat diplomatic, and willing to take the advice of others.” When the pair of fixers began nodding like a couple of bobble-heads on a RV dashboard, Kat knew she was onto something. “They don’t have to be the most experienced, or the smartest
person in a group, they just have to be able to delegate responsibilities, understand their companion’s capabilities as well as they do their own, keep the primary goals firmly in mind, while dealing with everyday problems, and have a strong presence?”

Rae and George were staring at Cho like she’d just grown a second head.

“What?” She demanded. “Hey, I
was a pharmacy tech before the Zombie Apocalypse. I’m not stupid, you know. I
can
learn things. Sometimes you just have to explain them to me.”

“Using words of two syllables or less, and speaking slowly,” Rae said under her breath, proving Foster’s point that she had no business leading anyone. Ever.

“Snide comments notwithstanding,” Kat replied as she debated on whether or not to flip the buxom woman the bird. “Does that about sum it up?”

While Rae tried to find a hole in the ninja-girl’s logic, George sat in the Mimi’s driver’s seat, thoughtfully blowing smoke rings across the cabin.

“Wow. The crickets in here are deafening.” Kat scratched at the side of her hip.

“You pretty much nailed the major points,” Foster said, and glanced at his pretty opposite who was still hip deep in her mental process.

Kat decided she needed to take the leap. “So, you guys tell me. What member of our group displays those qualities?”

Rae broke from her musing over Kat’s explanation, and George went statue-still. For a brief moment, Cho wished she still had her long hair as opposed to the shorter, Keira Knightly style. That way, she could’ve hidden her desperate expression behind it at the fixer’s expressions.

“Kat, I understand why you’d want to give up the responsibilities of leadership.” Rae looked hesitant and toyed with one of the pockets of her pants. “Hell, if I were in your place, I’d suggest it too. I just don’t know if it’s the right time.”

“If we’re going to be at full strength, we need someone competent in charge,” Kat insisted. “I’ve been okay at it, I guess. But half the time I don’t have a clue what the hell it is I’m doing.”

Foster sat forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Girl, you need to be sure about this. Ever since that night with the Purifiers, well...”

Kat understood but remained firm. “I need to give it up, George.”

Rae was staring into space. “What do we tell the others? I’m sure none of them, not even Sampson, will have a problem with it, mind you. It’s just they’ll probably ask why you’re choosing now to step down.”

“We’ll tell them it was because I didn’t stay in radio contact and you guys can’t put up with it. That’s believable, right?” Kat suggested brightly. “You could just say it’s because I’m such a ditz if you want, George.”

“Tempting, but no,” Rae admitted. “That would be a bit too close to the truth.”