The Down Home Zombie Blues (12 page)

Theo moved right as she sidled left. “Just some tree-limb damage. I’ll call Aunt Tootie—”

“Known that young gal long?” Mrs. Goldstein edged right, forcing Theo to take another step back as he countered. “I described her to Tootie, but she said you’ve never dated a redhead. Though her hair’s really more of a gold and chestnut, isn’t it?”

They were almost to the kitchen doorway. Theo heard a soft
clank
and
thunk
behind him. His back porch door closing. Someone else arriving or Jorie exiting? He prayed it was the latter, because there was no polite way he was going to keep Mrs. Goldstein out of his kitchen—or from getting a closer look at Jorie so she could report back to his aunt. That, he surmised, was her current mission.

When no voices hailed him from behind, he half-turned and leaned back against the doorjamb. Out of the corner of his eye he saw movement in his yard: Jorie, head bowed over her scanner, marching around in widening circles.

“My car was totaled,” he told Mrs. Goldstein as she squeezed by him. “Jorie’s out there recording the damage now. She’s a big help.”

“Jorie?”

“She’s a computer programmer. We have to get back to work shortly.” Theo spoke to the back of Mrs. Goldstein’s head. She’d glued her face to his kitchen window and was intently watching Jorie pace the length of his oleander hedge. “One of my detectives is coming by to give me a ride in so I can pick up a new car.”

“Jorie.”

“Known her for a couple weeks. We’re, uh, friends.”

That earned him a glance from Mrs. Goldstein, over her shoulder.

Friends,
he’d said. Friends, because that would keep Aunt Tootie from jumping to conclusions. But, damn, part of his cover story with Zeke was that Jorie was living with him. Sophie Goldstein was far more likely to witness any comings or goings from his house than Zeke was.
Friends
was not going to cut it with sharp-eyed Sophie.

Theo shoved his hands into his pockets and tried to re-create the sheepish look he’d bestowed earlier on Zeke. “Actually, she’s become very important to me. But I didn’t want to get Aunt Tootie all excited…. Well, you know how it is.” He shrugged and gave her an embarrassed smile.

Mrs. Goldstein turned completely around. “So, you’ve been seeing her for a couple weeks?”

“Two, three months. We met working on a case,” he said, and the last part wasn’t a lie. “She does some consulting work.”

“She ever been married? Any kids?”

Spoused.
He could hear Jorie saying her term. He wondered if she was or ever had been. “No. But,” he added, thinking of her teammates who would be using his house, “she comes from a large family. They’re from Canada.
Northern
Canada. Lots of cousins. Very friendly family.” He smiled.

Mrs. Goldstein smiled back. “Oh, how nice.”

He could almost hear her and his aunt already planning the wedding with its large guest list. “Once we get this all cleaned up, get settled, we’ll, uh, ask you over for coffee sometime. Next week or so. Okay?”

“Tonight—”

“My vacation starts today. We already have plans.” He ushered her out of his kitchen and back toward the front door. “Some of Jorie’s cousins are coming by.”

Mrs. Goldstein patted his cheek as he held the screen door open for her. “Make sure she knows how lucky she is to have you, Theophilus. Not like that Cam—”

“Yes, ma’am,” he cut in quickly. He didn’t want to talk about Camille. He shoved thoughts of his ex-wife away, along with his unease at sharing his personal space with a woman again. But Jorie wasn’t just a woman. She was an alien one-woman war machine, and her presence was part of her job. That was all. It wasn’t like he had to carry on conversations with her, care about what she did or where she went.

He shut the screen door and jiggled the lock into place as Sophie Goldstein hurried across the street. Probably couldn’t wait to tell Tootie all she’d seen and heard. The cell-phone towers would melt from the heat of the two women’s rapid exchanges.

Which meant his aunt would be calling him shortly thereafter. He hoped she’d call on his cell phone. He’d warn Jorie not to answer his house phone if it rang. And he had to remember—maybe he should really write down—just what he was telling Zeke and Sophie about Jorie.

With a frustrated shrug, he returned to the kitchen, yanked open his porch door, then trotted down his back steps to catch up with Jorie. The breeze had picked up slightly but it was getting hotter, Florida’s humidity lying against his skin like a damp cotton cloak.

The tips of Jorie’s multicolored hair were stuck to her face. Her eyes narrowed as he approached, but she wasn’t looking at him. Green lines slithered across the screen in her hand. He wondered if one of those represented the deadly tracking device in his shoulder.

“Mrs. Goldstein’s gone,” he said when she didn’t look up. “But we may have to deal with her—talk to her,” he corrected, not sure if she understood the expression, “at a later date. Unfortunately, she’s friends with my—what’s the problem?”

Red and blue lines suddenly crisscrossed the screen.

“Zombies start to wake. Again.” Jorie tapped at the screen with quick, deft motions. Colors shifted, changed. She frowned.

Shit. Monster naptime was over. “Coming here?”

“Insufficient data at this juncture. But this, see?” She pointed to a pulsing red line. “Energy surge. An awareness coupling floats in its wake. This,” she said, shifting her finger to a blue triangular pulse, “is their C-Prime. He is past marginal elevation on his output. He should not even be able to output! Yet clearly—”

“Marginal elevation?” This wasn’t clear at all, but he guessed it was some kind of overload situation. Like when his computer told him
insufficient available memory to perform the requested operation.

Jorie looked up at him, lips tightening, then she murmured a few soft foreign words that sounded like some kind of plea. “My Vekran is insufficient for detailed explanations, Petrakos. And there is no time—”

“Okay, just tell me, how long before a zombie shows up in my backyard again?” He had a sudden visual of a battle between the tow truck—due to arrive shortly—and the razor-clawed zombie. He wasn’t sure who would win.

“Four to five sweeps.”

“Sweeps?”

She was shaking her head again. “Increment of time. How do you measure it?”

Theo thought of the minute hand sweeping a clock face, then remembered she had used
minutes
before. “Seconds. Minutes. Hours. Sixty minutes in each hour.”

“And your standard day? Sunwake to sunset?”

Sunwake. She must mean sunrise. “Twelve hours, sunrise—
sunwake
—to sunset. Twelve hours, sunset to sunrise. Twenty-four hours total. That makes one day.”

“Hours,” she repeated, though with her accent it sounded like
ow-wears.
“Vekran, sweeps. Four to five sweeps, your hours, zombies come back.”

Four to five hours?
Cristos!
It would be mid-afternoon. Normally not a busy time, but this was Christmas week. Kids were home from school. Families were running to the mall, buying presents. Dozens of people might not only see those things but get hurt. Or killed. “Can you get a bigger team here?” Theo’s mind shifted into plan-and-attack mode as he envisioned some kind of galactic SWAT team moving into place. “We could kill the zombies when they show up.”

“This is the problem, Petrakos. It is not only time. I know the zombies will arrive, I cannot yet tell where their location will be.”

“You mean they might not show up here in Bahia Vista?” That could be good news. Maybe they’d ooze out of their glowing green hole in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Or on an iceberg somewhere. “They could go to another part of this planet?”

Jorie was shaking her head. “Unlikely. Your locale, this Florida state. It has electromagnetic storms, precipitation rate, humidity. I have explained this.”

There were other hot and humid tropical locations, and he said so.

“Their C-Prime established…No. That is not the word. Their C-Prime claimed—
marked
—this hot and humid locale with its scent trail. So this is now their primary region. Not just Florida state. But this,” and she swept her hand and the scanner out toward his yard. “Your city-region.”

“So they
are
coming back here?”

“To your residence? Unlikely. But here,” and her hand moved out again, “yes. Somewhere in your city-region, they will come.” She pinned him with a hard stare as her words chilled him. Unknown killers were about to strike in his city, and no one knew where. “I have called my team,” she continued. “In one sweep, two, we will have more data. We need that so we can arrive at the portal site before the zombies.”

We. He heard the
we
and knew it included himself. He was their cover, their transportation. Their only hope of getting to the zombies without causing more terror.

Except he had no car. Zeke was due here in forty-five minutes—and he’d find a house full of outer-space aliens girding for war. Still, Theo knew that if he tried to explain what had happened—the Guardians, the zombies—Zeke wouldn’t take him back to the department for a replacement vehicle. He’d take Theo to Bayfront Medical to lock him in the psych ward.

Because unless Jorie beamed down that Wookiee-looking one, none of the outer-space aliens looked outer-spacey enough to raise an alarm.

For a moment he considered asking Jorie to beam Zeke up to her ship. Let the detective experience what Theo had. But then Zeke Martinez would be another nil with too much knowledge about the secretive Guardians. Jorie’s captain would order an implant inserted in Zeke’s shoulder. And Theo might be the cause of Suzanne becoming a widow.

Because there was no way in hell Zeke would go to Paroo and leave his wife behind. Suzanne was as much a part of Zeke as his Glock and his badge. His friend would fight to stay here on Earth, and the Guardians would either kidnap him or kill him.

Theo couldn’t live with that. He couldn’t risk his closest friend’s life.

Nor could he risk the citizens of Bahia Vista having their brains sucked out by worm-covered intergalactic zombies.

He was, he realized grimly, his planet’s lone soldier.

And this was turning out to be one helluva start to his long-overdue vacation.

8

Theo leaned one hip on the edge of his kitchen table and tried to look nonchalant as Zeke strode up his back porch steps. It wasn’t easy. He was far too aware that Jorie and three of her outer-space commandos were hunkered down in his spare bedroom, with all sorts of blinking and glowing computer-type equipment nestled in between his weight rack and sofa bed. He recognized the curly-haired redhead from the ship. The other two—both guys he caught only a glimpse of—he didn’t remember seeing. One looked to be mid-twenties, Caucasian, fair hair shaved close. The other was older—mid-thirties—and could have been the heartthrob hero in a pirate movie, right down to his long black ponytail, tanned complexion, and silver hoop earring. All that was missing was a parrot.

Fortunately, his power had come back on ten minutes ago, so he’d tuned his kitchen CD-radio to a Tampa sports-talk station to drown out the sounds of their voices. He also had the shower running in his second bath—something that caused his alien one-woman war machine to launch into a half-Alarsh, half-English tirade about wastefulness. He gave Jorie permission to turn it off once he and Zeke left.

Cover story.

“Wrecker’s not here yet?” Zeke asked, pulling open the screen door.

The devastation that had been Theo’s car still sat at the end of the driveway.

“It’s Christmas week. Nothing runs on time,” Theo answered.

“True, very true. Where’s your little friend?” Zeke’s grin had a distinctive devilish curve.

“Getting cleaned up.” Theo pushed away the brief fantasy that sprung into his mind of a wet and naked Jorie in his shower. “I told her I’d take her out for a bite to eat when I come back.” He knew Zeke wanted to see Jorie again. There was no way Theo was going to allow that. And he didn’t want Zeke wandering through his house and stumbling over the space commandos, even if they looked not the least bit spacey clad in T-shirts and sweatpants plucked from his closet.

Zeke would hate being on Paroo, away from Suzanne.

Theo pulled a slender digital camera from his pants pocket and waved it in the direction of his battered car. “I have photos of the damage for the lieutenant. But the trunk’s jammed. The laptop we found at the scene is still in there.” As was his sound system—or what was left of it. That was really going to put a damper on the lieutenant’s holiday party.

“Ouch.” Zeke winced as he shot a glance over his shoulder. “So much for preserving the evidence.”

Theo shoved himself away from the table. “Yeah, I’m going to catch some shit from Stevens on that.” The lieutenant didn’t like to hear excuses. Colton Stevens kept a miniature skateboard on his desk that he used as a bullshit gauge. A detective knew he was in trouble when Stevens would pick up the toy and start spinning the wheels—a not-so-subtle hint the lieutenant felt
you
were spinning your wheels, and wasting his time. “Help me with that trunk, will you? The wrecker should be here any minute.”

“Sure, boss.” Grinning, Zeke followed Theo out the door.

Theo propped the lid of the trunk up enough so that Zeke could snake his arm inside and grab the laptop.

“Not good,” Zeke said, passing the dented unit to Theo as the sound of a rumbling engine—the tow truck, probably—grew louder.

“The geek squad might be able to do something with it. I’ve heard of worse cases.” But Theo doubted any of them had originated in another galaxy.

The increasing noise was the tow truck—a flatbed, actually. Theo greeted the driver with a wave and endured the man’s ribbing about the condition of his car. Fifteen minutes later his car was secured and on its way back to the garage.

Theo jerked his chin at Zeke’s silver four-door department-issue sedan parked on the street. “Let’s get going so I can get back here. I
am
supposed to be on vacation.”

Zeke dug in his pants pocket for his keys. “Your friend in the shower—what did you say her name was?”

“Jorie,” Theo supplied as they headed down his driveway.

“And Jorie’s part of your vacation plans, I take it?”

Theo only grinned and ducked into the passenger seat. The less said, the better. That way he wouldn’t have to remember any more lies.

Though Zeke, being Zeke, wasn’t about to let the matter drop without one more try. On the ten-minute ride to the department’s two-story brick building on Central, Theo stuck to his story, adding only the few additional items he’d mentioned to Sophie Goldstein: he’d met Jorie about three months ago, they’d hit it off, and things were now moving to a more serious stage. She was going to spend the next week or so with him, see how things went.

Then Theo deftly switched to the topic of the Tampa Bay Lightning’s recent winning streak and listened—with relief—as Zeke debated the strengths and weaknesses of the team’s current goalie.

“I think last year’s knee surgery has made him too cautious. Yeah, nothing gets through his five-hole, but if someone roofs one…”

Theo propped his arm against the passenger-side window and—letting Zeke ramble on—glanced casually at his watch. Four to five hours before the zombies returned and began sucking the brains out of Bahia Vista’s citizens, leaving behind only bulging wet eyeballs.

It would probably take him thirty to forty minutes to secure a new ride, another thirty to let Lieutenant Stevens chew him out over the condition of the laptop, and another ten after that—traffic permitting—to get back. It felt like time wasted, even though Jorie had assured him that there was little he could do until they had a definite entry point for the zombies. After that…he had no idea. He had a huge information gap as far as these zombies were concerned. Partly, he knew, it was the language differences between Jorie and himself. But partly he suspected there were things she simply didn’t want him to know.

One more thing to worry about.

He massaged the ache in his shoulder as Zeke turned on to Central Avenue. It would be so good to have an ally in this. The desire to blurt out the truth was almost choking him. Besides Zeke, there was David Gray, a former Maritana County deputy, now a top agent with FDLE’s Tampa office. Damned good man, damned fine shot. The three of them could—

No, they couldn’t. Theo rubbed his shoulder again. He didn’t want Zeke or David to meet Doc White Braids.

Plus he’d left the Paroo cube—purposely—in his nightstand drawer. No temptation to present it as evidence and risk others getting sent to the nil retirement home in another galaxy.

“Sure, I’ll ask Jorie if she wants to go to the Lightning game next week,” Theo said, dropping back into Zeke’s monologue on ice hockey. “But her family has some kind of big party coming up. Not sure when.”

“You pull something?” Zeke pointed to Theo’s hand pressing against his shoulder.

With a slight self-conscious flinch, Theo jerked his fingers back from the small area where his live-or-die locator was embedded. “Must have, when I tried to get the trunk open earlier.”

“There’s this great herbal goo for sprains, has emu oil and other good stuff,” Zeke said as he pulled the car into an empty space in the department’s parking lot. “Stop at the health-food store on Ninth on your way home, pick some up. It’ll work wonders. Then you can…”

Theo pushed open the door as Zeke’s herbal-remedy recommendations droned on. “Drop the laptop off over at evidence, will you? I gotta go see Stevens. Then I have to see what Gretchen has available. I don’t know how long the paperwork for the new wheels is going to take.”

“Sure, boss. Just make sure they don’t give you Ackerson’s old car. He has the big dog that gets carsick all the time. I hear they still can’t get the smell out. I told them to try that holistic citrus-enzyme stuff. I even got Suzy using it at the clinic. But do they listen to me? No.”

Theo glanced again at his watch as Zeke strode away. Three hours thirty-five minutes until the zombies arrived. Stale dog puke and citrus enzymes were the least of his worries.

The first bright spot in an otherwise baffling, nerve-racking day,
Theo thought, flipping the keys to his replacement vehicle around in his hand. Well, maybe two days. He’d somewhat lost track of time since outer-space aliens had kidnapped him. No, it was only one day. It had been about one in the morning when that glowing green hole erupted in his backyard. It was now almost two in the afternoon of the same day.

Are we having fun yet?
echoed sarcastically in his mind as he approached the five-year-old white Ford Expedition parked along the chain-link fence. Theo’s ears were still ringing from his lieutenant’s terse reprimand over the condition of the laptop. His day’s bright spot now centered on his acquisition of a decent vehicle. He would have been satisfied with a clean four-door sedan. But when Gretchen offered him the option of the SUV—high mileage, dents, and all—he’d jumped on it.

For one thing, cramming three space commandos into the backseat of a Crown Vic wouldn’t be the best idea. Second, the extra height and interior room of the SUV would work to their advantage. He hoped.

Theo wasn’t really sure what would give them an advantage over towering zombies that had arms like razor-sharp wrecking balls. But a four-wheel-drive SUV had to be a better deal than a four-door sedan.

He turned the ignition and the engine churned, rattling the SUV with a shudder that probably approached 6.5 on the Richter scale. Great. But it, like most pool cars, was a high-mileage vehicle. He had to expect some wear and tear.

He tapped the gas pedal, hoping a little more juice would settle the engine down, aware that what he’d thought was his day’s bright spot was considerably dimmer. He cranked the AC to the highest setting. Hot air rushed against the side of his face. The driver’s side vent was missing completely. He scanned the dashboard. Two more vents were broken, and the passenger one was gone as well.

Oh, joy.

Everything else appeared roughly the same as in his now-totaled Crown Vic. A blue light was tucked behind the rearview mirror. Connections for a city-issued computer protruded from an obtrusive, swivel-arm stand that hovered over the trunk-mount radio, conveniently blocking access to the most essential piece of equipment: the dual cup holder. Theo bowed his head briefly, wondered,
What next,
then flicked the strobes on, faintly catching the blue light’s reflection on the dash due to the sun’s glare. At least
that
worked. He tested the PA and siren, shutting the blaring high-low pitches off once satisfied they functioned.

His cell phone trilled while he adjusted the rearview mirror. He quickly checked the caller ID.
Right on time.

“
Yassou, Thia
Tootie,” he greeted her in Greek. “How are you?” He put the SUV in reverse—praying the back bumper wouldn’t fall off when he did so—and swung out of the space.

The AC chose that moment to kick on and—miracle of miracles—stayed on even after he took the vehicle out of reverse.

He was heading north on Eighth Street, past the old oak-shaded rooming houses mixed in with those converted to office buildings, by the time Aunt Tootie finished grilling him about the “storm” and started her inquisition on the subject of Jorie. The young woman was from Canada, Sophie had told her.

“Northern Canada. She’s thirty…uh, thirty-two,” he said, figuring that sounded about right. “Works for TECO, doing technical stuff.” The more vague, the better. Plus his aunt had more than a passing knowledge of that “technical stuff”—at seventy-three, she blogged, Web-surfed, had her own page on MyWeb, and belonged to at least a half-dozen Poggle groups where she and hundreds of her closest cyber-friends chatted about the latest romance, sci-fi, and mystery novels.

His uncle Stavros controlled the TV remote.

It was a very happy marriage.

“And you’ll bring her over to meet us after Christmas?” his aunt was asking. “You
are
having Christmas dinner with your uncle and me, aren’t you, Theophilus?”

Skata.
He’d forgotten all about that. Christmas dinner had always been at Uncle Stavros’s house, even before his father’s job with Southwest Sea Freight kept him away from home more and more, even before his mother decided her heart belonged to Las Vegas, even before his parents divorced. It was, plain and simple, Aunt Tootie’s cooking. No one made
souflima,
that wonderful pork dish, like Aunt Tootie did. Then there was always the
avgolemono,
a savory chicken and lemon soup. And plenty of
Christopsomo
—sweet Greek bread—feta cheese, olives. After that would come the
kourabiethes
and syrup-soaked
melomakarana,
and, of course,
baklava
in all its glorious feather-light layers. And the coffee. Thick, sweet, pungent…