The Down Home Zombie Blues (16 page)

And was rewarded with a huge ball of green gas mushrooming outward, then imploding back in on itself. The zombie was gone.

“Bliss!” Jorie’s voice and undisguised glee sounded off to his right.

He shot to his feet, turning toward her, his heart pounding, his mouth dry. She grinned at him. That started his heart pounding even harder. Another green oval, no—two. Twins. Just to Jorie’s left.

Shit.

“There!” He fired off two short bursts, hitting the larger oval’s right side. It surprised him by
fooshing
into nothingness. The other one, farther away, did the same under Jorie’s barrage.

Foosh!

Foosh!

The air around him was filled with
fooshes.
Then a flash of lightning split the sky, followed immediately by a double crack of thunder. The skies opened up. Rain came down in thick sheets, blinding him.

Theo spun, pistol out, searching for green ovals, but he could see nothing. Nothing but the rain and white flashes of lightning stabbing toward the ground.

“Jorie?”

His heart constricted, but he pushed the emotion away and focused. He turned again, water stinging his face and eyes. But there was no Jorie. No zombies either. And no Rordan, Jack, or Tammy.

“Jorie!”

Nothing. He paced off the area in the driving rain, calling her name, looking for her. She was gone. They were gone. Through the downpour he could barely make out the outlines of his white SUV. A flash of lightning arced toward a palm tree, and the hair on the back of his neck tingled ominously. He bolted for his vehicle, the loud clap of thunder drowning out his litany of curses in Greek.

Once her stomach stopped heaving and her brain ceased trying to flow out of her ears, Jorie shoved one hand through her wet hair, pushing her dripping bangs out of her eyes with undisguised ire. “Which one of you damned fools initiated an emergency transport?” She glared at the occupants of the
Sakanah
’s PMaT transport platform.

Trenat, on her left, was kneeling on the platform, retching. She discounted him, as she did Herryck, who looked no less green but was, at least, standing. And would never authorize an emergency transport without first alerting Commander Mikkalah.

Jorie turned to Rordan, on her right, and took no little satisfaction in the sallow color of his still-handsome face or the way he leaned against the platform’s curved wall.

As if he could feel her gaze on him, he straightened, or evidently thought he did. One hand clutched his stomach as he wavered, a little left, a little right. But his eyes, when he raised his chin, glinted. “General procedures—”

“
Don’t
quote gen pro to me, Commander.” She wanted to take the four steps to put him within reach of her fist but knew if she moved her feet right now she’d fall flat on her face. “And we left Th—Petrakos back there.”

“The nil can take care of himself.”

Theo Petrakos—a nil—had actually hit a zombie’s white heart. So, yes, he could. But that wasn’t the issue.

“Ronna,” she called to the PMaT chief. “Get a med-tech up here to help him.” She pointed to Jacare Trenat.

“Aye, sir.”

“Trenat, hang in there. It’ll be better shortly. Herryck, you okay?”

“Almost, sir.” The rain had turned Herryck’s red curls into dark streaks, and water dripped from the bottom of the shirt Theo had loaned her.

A second wave of disorientation hit Jorie. She’d tried to do too much too soon. She bent over at the waist, her palms on her thighs, and sucked in a few long breaths. The spinning in her head slowed and her stomach crawled back to its rightful place in her body. She straightened and looked over at Rordan again.

He’d straightened as well and stopped wavering. “You and I need to talk, Commander.”

Yes, they damned well did. “My office, now,” she snapped, and strode off the platform, her soaked sweater as uncomfortable and heavy as her heart.

11

What did he expect?
Thank you? Nice shooting? Glad you were there to help?

Theo charged out into the rain to shove the park’s traffic gate closed, then sloshed back to the SUV. He pulled himself into the driver’s seat. The seat was soaked; he was soaked.

He slammed the door shut.

How about
good-bye
? At least something to let him know Jorie was going back to her ship, so he wouldn’t be left standing in the rain, heart pounding, breath coming in short gasps as he wondered if she was lying on the ground somewhere, injured. Or dead.

He threw the vehicle in gear and headed toward Twenty-second Avenue, windshield wipers barely able to keep up with the pummeling rain. Drains were backing up, streets flooding. Cars exiting the mall slowed as they edged cautiously around larger puddles. Sheets of water sprayed out from tires in arcing fans. Another typical Florida deluge.

For a moment he superimposed the green portals, the razor-clawed zombies, onto the parking lot on his left. It wouldn’t yet be raining, and people—families—would be strolling leisurely, arms full of packages, small children in tow. The portals would have confused them, maybe even drawing one or two of the curious dangerously close.

The zombies would have terrified them.

Innocents would have died, caught in the invisible laser crossfire, if a zombie didn’t get them first.

Because one of the things he’d learned as he worked with Jorie’s team to stop the zombies: they could appear without warning. Guardian scanners didn’t always work. That could be the only answer for his getting nailed from behind. And for the few portals that popped into existence while the scanners were silent.

Which meant that there was no way Jorie’s team could counter them all—even if they were willing to expose themselves to the local populace.

Thank you, Petrakos. You helped save a hundred or so lives today.

You’re welcome.

His portable police radio chattered with the usual fender benders and advisories on flooded intersections—and nothing, thank God, about any unusual noises in the park just past the mall. It was still raining when he pulled down his driveway and around to the back of his house. Theo’s sole thoughts now were on stripping out of his gear, then a hot shower, a hot meal, and his recliner, in exactly that order. Then bed and sleep. He didn’t even have enough energy to drag out his guitar.

Commander Jorie Mikkalah—he was sure—was probably already snug and dry and dining on apple mush that tasted like watermelons.

At least he hoped like hell she was.

Damn her.

Commander Jorie Mikkalah stopped in front of her desk, yanked the wet sweater over her head, and threw it on the small couch that ran the length of her even smaller office. The sweater landed on top of her Hazer micro-rifle and MOD-tech gear, leaving room for little else. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t about to ask Kip Rordan to sit.

Rivulets of water ran down her back as she turned and faced him. He was as wet and disheveled as she was, only—she hazarded—he probably looked one hell of a lot better. Kip Rordan at his worst was still passably gorgeous.

Unbidden, an image of Theo Petrakos slipped into her mind. His strong, angular face, his spiky hair. Not at all smooth like Rordan. But a female would be lucky to—

She pushed the thought away. “The feeding frenzy had ceased,” she said without any preliminaries. “Your emergency was…?”

“Possible MOD-tech leakage.”

His reply came so quickly, it was as if he couldn’t wait one minsecond longer to hurl the accusation at her.

“I heard no warning from my scanner. Or yours. Or Herryck’s or Trenat’s.”

He stared at her a long moment before answering. “Scanners don’t register leakages on the zurad frequencies.”

“Because a zurad-frequency leakage has a seventy-two percent error rate.”

“Which is why you use them.”

Jorie kept herself very still. “Are you accusing me of tampering with tech, Commander?”

He shifted position, slightly widening his stance as if he expected that fist she’d so wanted to smash into his jaw earlier to come flying now. That thought would have amused her but for the seriousness of his accusation. If Rordan could prove that, Pietr could strip her of her rank.

If Pietr found out what she’d done to Theo’s restrainer implant, he’d probably space her out the air lock.

But she knew damned well Rordan couldn’t prove she’d tampered with the MOD-tech. His suspicions, though, could hamper her mission and play against her bid for a captaincy. The same captaincy she was sure Rordan was after.

His eyes narrowed, then he shook his head slightly. “You’re very good at what you do, Commander.” He hesitated. “Lorik didn’t deserve you.”

His added comment and the sudden softening in his tone took her by surprise. He’d already turned and stepped for the door by the time she found her voice.

“Lorik has nothing to do—”

“Lorik’s a fermarl’s ass, Jorie,” he said, turning back to her after he punched the door’s sensor panel. “I’m just trying to keep you alive long enough for you to realize that.”

Kip Rordan stepped swiftly into the corridor, the door closing behind him before Jorie could even think of a reply.

The captured juvenile zombie, however, was not so silent. A harsh, keening cry rose and fell from between its serrated jaws as it lay immobilized on the stasis table in the ship’s xeno-mech-biology lab on Deck 19. It was blinded, thanks to Petrako’s excellent aim. It was also separate from its herd for the first time in its existence.

No one knew if zombies felt fear. But if they did, this one probably felt it now.

Jorie shifted her attention between the zombie and the data scrolling down several of the lab’s analytical screens. She didn’t look at the lanky form of Dr. Lorik Alclar, his chin-length white hair tucked neatly behind his ears. She didn’t look at Commander Kip Rordan in his clean, dry uniform. Quite frankly, she didn’t want to see either of them right now.

She liked what she saw on the analytics even less.

Lorik walked to her side while she studied the data. He twisted his lightpen in his long fingers, then used it to point at a box on the right corner of the screen. “It appears, if this youngster is not an aberration, that their command centers have expanded.”

Their command centers. Their brains. Zombies were increasing their capabilities to learn. Exactly what Captain Pietr feared.

“Natural mutation?” She couldn’t imagine who could get close enough to a rogue C-Prime to tinker with its mech-biotronics and live. No, she could, though she almost didn’t want to think about it.

The Tresh.

“Let’s hope it’s natural,” Lorik answered. “I don’t even want to consider that we could be up against someone who found the code.”

Not just someone. More likely several someones in the Tresh’s Devastator ranks. They were the only ones who’d have the knowledge and the cunning to use it. Like Commander Davin Prow.

The scar on her shoulder chose that moment to itch. Autosuggestion, she knew, but fought to keep her fingers from rising to the area under her—nice, dry—uniform.

“Either way,” Lorik said, as if reading her mind, “it’s bad news.”

“If it’s only this herd, this C-Prime, it’s solvable by their full termination.” Maybe the intuitive behavior she thought she’d witnessed by the zombies at Port Lraknal was just an aberration caused by other factors.

Like the Tresh. Her mind kept coming back to that. But if the Tresh had found the code to alter the zombies—
these
zombies on this nil world—then that brought forth an even deeper problem.

What else were the Tresh doing here? She had to be wrong.

“Their full termination is required, regardless,” Lorik answered. Stating the obvious, Jorie felt. But he always said it with such authority that it sounded as if it were some glorious pronouncement that only the magnificent brain of Dr. Lorik Alclar could devise.

“When will you have more-conclusive data?” she asked. Data. Not answers. Asking Lorik for answers elicited a lecture on the structure of scientific theory.

“Twenty, thirty sweeps.” He glanced over his shoulder, then back to the screens. Jorie could almost feel Rordan’s gaze on her and Lorik. Or maybe she was just imagining things. She was tired. She was hungry. Maybe Rordan’s earlier comment about keeping her alive was simply one of teammate to teammate.

It had to be. She was misconstruing. He’d been Lorik’s closest friend for years, the two together so often that Jorie’s friends had teased that she had two lovers for the price of one….

Hell and damn.

Lorik droned on about the delicacy of the work required and how one sample couldn’t be taken as conclusive and one hundred percent accurate.

“Then we’ll bring you another one.”

Rordan’s voice, damned near in her ear, almost made her jump out of her skin.

“A mature one, Kip, not another juvenile.” Lorik spoke to Rordan as if he, not Jorie, were in charge of the mission. “Try not to damage to the opticals this time. The command processor took some overburn.”

“The nil took out the opticals,” Rordan said.

“Well, that explains it. Sloppy. Didn’t think it looked like your handiwork.”

“Or Jorie’s,” Rordan put in easily.

Jorie stepped away from the two men. She did not want to be so close to either of them, and she did not want to be part of this conversation. And she didn’t know Rordan had followed her out into the corridor until he called her name.

“Share last meal with me,” he said when he caught up to her.

“I’m late for a briefing with Herryck,” she lied.

“That shouldn’t take long. I’ll wait.” He gave her a small, charming smile. Herryck would be melting in her boots about now.

Jorie thought of another smile—a delicious, somewhat feral grin. “Thanks, but I have to monitor the nil.”

“Let me do that while you brief Herryck. You’ve been on this nonstop for over twenty sweeps. You need a break.”

“I appreciate that,” she said formally, “but I need your expertise on the herd data. The loss of those juveniles will create changes. Get that thing’s R-Five levels from Lorik. I need to know what I’ll be up against at the next spur.”

“We,” he said. “Whatever it is we’ll be up against, Jorie, we’ll be up against it together.” He held her gaze for a long moment, then, with a curt nod, turned back to the labs.

Jorie headed for the lifts. Rordan was right. She was tired. She was hungry. She’d managed a quick cleanser and change of uniform before going to see Lorik, but that had altered only her outsides. Not her insides.

But she was afraid that if she stayed on board, Kip Rordan would track her down.

She stopped at her cabin just long enough to talk briefly with Tam on intraship, then she grabbed her scanner, weapons, and a dry sweater and headed for Deck 15.

With the MOD-tech her team had left in place in Petrakos’s structure, getting a lock and clear transport was an almost effortless experience. The way things should be, would have been had Danjay Wain lived.

One thing she’d never taught Danjay was how to use zurad frequencies, how to artificially stimulate portal formation. She wondered now, as the blinking equipment she’d left in Petrakos’s structure solidified into view, if someone had. That might explain—

“That wasn’t the problem.” A female’s voice, strident, pleading, reached Jorie’s ears, along with the light tinkling of music. She froze, her hand on the half-open door. Hell’s wrath! Was Petrakos’s neighbor visiting again?

Then a man’s voice, gruff and angry: “No, you married me readily enough.”

“Because I loved you!” The female again, sounding angry as well. Angry, it seemed, because having children meant the loss of her career on the starport….

Love? Children?
Starport?
Jorie didn’t recognize the voices but felt sure this wasn’t Petrakos’s elderly neighbor. Suddenly she remembered his odd evasiveness when she’d agreed to pretend to live with him as his lover in his structure. He’d said he wasn’t spoused. But what if he’d lied?

That would very much be Theo Petrakos, Jorie realized, ignoring an odd tightness in her chest. He would do anything in his power to protect someone he loved.