The Down Home Zombie Blues (34 page)

“He’ll consider the facts and come to the only conclusion he can. He’s a logical kind of guy—he worked SWAT at my department. Special Weapons and Tactics,” he explained.

“Sniper?” She thought she understood the acronym.

“Damned good one. Like I said, very logical, very calm.”

Sniper training was good. How Theo’s friend would react when confronted with a problem from another star system remained to be seen.

And she was still the only experienced tracker.

“I want to see Tamlynne before we meet up with him,” she told Theo. She needed to hear a sentence in Alarsh. And she needed not to feel so alone.

Theo never thought he’d see the day he’d willingly say,
Hey, babe, let’s go shopping for clothes.
But Jorie had to have something to wear besides her Guardian shorts and a Hawaiian print beach dress, and his T-shirts didn’t cut it. They may yet have to face his lieutenant or Chief Brantley. They may yet have to do any number of other things to solve this zombie problem, which would require her fitting in visually in Bahia Vista, and she didn’t.

Even the Tresh woman had worn white jeans and a touristy T-shirt.

Jorie, he knew, would look terrific in a pair of white jeans.

Plus, he sensed a growing unhappiness in her and had no trouble listing the reasons. Top of the list had to be the fact she was stuck on his world. He was acutely aware he could have exercised more control and not slept with her so soon. Okay, they were both adults. But in spite of her training and all that Guardian crap she did, she was a woman and she’d been abandoned. He’d played on that, shamelessly, because he couldn’t stop wanting to touch her.

It had been a long time since he’d seduced a woman—Camille had been a practiced tease. No seduction necessary. But with Jorie, for all that he’d rushed it once he sensed there might be a mutual attraction, he’d taken his time with small caresses, light kisses. He wore her down in inches. And added to her problems.

So, hey, babe. Let’s go clothes shopping, pick up something for Tammy, then we’ll meet up with David Gray and talk about zombies covered by energyworms and Tresh Devastators with iridescent eyes.

Just your average couple out for an afternoon. And all women loved to shop for clothes, didn’t they? Of course, going to T. J. Maxx the day after Christmas probably wasn’t the brightest idea.

They managed to get her two pairs of jeans, a pair of black khakis, and some sweater and shirt combos that looked casual and covered her G-1. Tammy’s size was more of a guess, so they went with an unstructured tracksuit, workout pants, and a sweatshirt.

“I didn’t realize,” she said, back in the SUV and buckling her seat belt, “that acquiring clothing was a body-contact sport here.”

“We were amateurs up against professionals,” he told her, and backed out of the space.

Her scanner was out. Anytime she was sure it wouldn’t be seen, she had it out. Looking for another Tresh safe house. There had to be more than the one in Gulfview. But she’d found none.

He didn’t know if that was good or bad news. He only knew it worried her.

Suzanne was home—her veterinary clinic operating on holiday hours this week—but Zeke was at the department. Theo would be too, in a couple of days. That worried him. If the zombie problem wasn’t solved, he didn’t discount that Jorie might go out on her own, find an abandoned house, work out of there. Not put him at risk.

All the more reason they had to solve the problem now. Meeting with David was one more positive step.

He left Jorie and Tammy alone in Suzanne’s guest bedroom and found Zeke’s wife in her home office at the other end of the house.

“Telecommuting,” she said when he wandered in.

He immediately felt bad. “I’m keeping you from what you should be doing.”

“Not at all. Robin handled the routine cases this morning.” Robin was a bright, young veterinary intern that Suzanne hoped to groom as her partner. “No emergencies. No cats eating tinsel. Robin has off tomorrow and I’m handling the morning. We close at two all week.”

Which was why he’d told David to meet him there at three.

“How’s Tammy?”

“Tammy is quite a remarkable young woman. I have to pinch myself over the fact she’s from another galaxy. She’s regained a lot of spunk in the past twenty-four hours. But there’s still amnesia over what happened at your house. Although Jorie says it could be artificially induced.”

“Any nightmares last night?”

“Not that Zeke or I heard. But I have caught her just staring sometimes, and then she shivers. When I touch her, she snaps out of it.”

He’d seen Jorie do that too and told Suzanne.

“Can you stop these people, Theo?” Suzanne’s eyes darkened. “I mean, here I am carrying on with my cats, dogs, parrots, and ducks as if nothing’s changed in the world. But everything has. If you can’t stop these Tresh and the zombies, what can we do?”

He squeezed her shoulder. “We’ll stop them.” But could they? With every passing hour, things looked bleaker; Jorie, less confident. And with every passing hour, he was more and more reminded—as with his talk with Suzanne—of all the reasons, the people he had to fight for.

He collected Jorie, accepted a surprise hug from Tammy, and, with Suzanne’s spare keys in his pocket, headed off to meet the man whom he hoped would be his planet’s newest recruit in the war.

“Shee-it.” The former BVPD SWAT sniper and FDLE agent was from Texas and could draw that word out the way only a proper Texan could. Of medium height with dark-blond hair and blue-gray eyes, David Gray also looked like everyone’s idea of the nice guy next door.

Theo had seen him in action during a few SWAT missions. Nice, unassuming David Gray was not a guy you’d want to piss off.

David pointed to the dead zombie in Suzanne’s cold-storage locker. “You sure George Lucas didn’t build that thing?”

“Yep. It was in my living room,” Theo told him. “Alive. It’s no special-effects puppet.”

David’s gaze moved to Jorie. “It’s a baby zombie,” she told him. “The adult drones can get,” she closed her eyes briefly, “fifteen of your feet tall.”

“Fifteen.” David nodded, looked down at the zombie, and rocked back on his heels.

Theo tried to read his friend and failed.

“And you say these are from another galaxy?”

“Technically, no,” Jorie put in before Theo could answer. “This was probably bred here. But the original zombie, yes, that’s from the Chalvash System.”

David wiped one hand over his face and turned to Theo. “If it was anyone but you, bud.”

How often had he heard that in the past few days? “I wish it was anyone but me. This is not how I anticipated spending my vacation.”

“And you shouldn’t be. This is a bigger problem than a few of us can handle. You know that.”

“How well is anyone going to handle it when the news trucks and the crew from
The Oprah Winfrey Show
arrive? And then the subsequent wild rumors? Stock market will crash, people will start shooting their neighbors and looting the grocery stores. Perfect opportunity for some of those nutcase terrorists to make a move. We can prevent all that with a small but effective operation here.”

“What’s to prevent these things from breeding more?”

“They’d need a C-Prime, a controller zombie,” Jorie said. “If I can take that out with a reprogramming dart, the herd dies.”

“I repeat. What’s to prevent someone from bringing another C-Prime here?”

Theo looked at Jorie. He’d assumed their problems would be over with the death of this C-Prime. It never occurred to him that someone—the Tresh—might import others and that this was not a one-time thing.

Jorie knotted her fingers together. “It would take at least a year by your calendar, given the location of the closest herd off-planet.”

“A year.” David didn’t look happy. “And how do we stop them a year from now?”

Jorie sucked in a deep breath. “If the
Sakanah
wasn’t destroyed, or if she managed to send a distress report, it’s possible the Guardians already have another ship on the way.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then there’s nothing you can do to stop the Tresh or the zombies except what I’m doing now: lure the C-Prime and terminate it.”

“And who besides you knows how to do this?” David asked Jorie.

Theo knew where he was going with this. He knew, moreover, how valid it was. He just didn’t like it. Damn David for being so damned logical!

“At the moment, only me,” Jorie said. “The problem isn’t that I can’t teach you what a tracker does; I can. The problem is the MOD-tech that’s a necessary part of my job in tracking the zombies, in warning us about the Tresh, communicates only in Alarsh.
My
language. I can convert some to accept voice commands and basic displays in Vekran—English. But much of it I can’t.”

David looked at Theo. “You try to do this alone, it’s a suicide mission.”

“It is either way,” Theo countered. “There’s no way the state or the feds could move on this in four—max, six—days. You know that. We have to do something now. That means me, Jorie, and Martinez. If you feel you can’t, I understand. But that’s not going to stop the three of us from trying.”

David paced over to the cold-storage locker and stared down at the zombie again. “Four,” he said, turning around. “Four of us. I don’t like it, Theo, but count me in.”

23

It took Jorie two and a half more days to finish constructing the zombie-reprogramming-dart virus. Or at least, as she viewed it, to do all she knew how to do. Her abilities in that area were mostly self-taught, as she told Theo more than once. They had to work with the possibility that the dart would do nothing. Then hard-termination of the C-Prime would be their only option. That meant it would take longer for the herd to fall apart. And that meant—during that time—more zombies could be born.

It also gave the Tresh more time to counter their move. Which was why, when she wasn’t working on the virus dart or nestled in Theo’s arms, she put Theo through tracker training sessions. Gen-pro regs were history, as far as she was concerned. She told him—and trained him for—everything she could think of relative to the zombies and the Tresh.

They’d heard nothing from the Tresh or Prow since the feeder cup appeared on Theo’s back porch. The lack of interruptions was good, certainly, but it only made her more nervous.

“Like waiting for the other shoe to drop,” Theo had said over dinner earlier that evening.

Jorie had never heard the expression before, but it was appropriate.

With the virus as complete as it was going to be, her next project was to modify one of the Hazers to carry the dart. “It’s not a physical object,” she explained to Theo when he sat beside her on the floor a few hours later, the spare Hazer’s stock open to expose its core databoard. “We call it a dart because it’s an encapsulated, self-executing program within the Hazer’s data energy stream.”

“You’ve done this before?” he asked, as she worked on lining up her scanner’s infrared with the larger MOD-tech’s.

“Not exactly.”

“You’ve watched someone do it?”

“Only in a sim.” Damn, damn! She couldn’t get the scanner to synch with the main tech. She swore in Alarsh.

“I’m bothering you.”

“No, I’m—” She wiped one hand over her face. Theo’s presence was actually calming. She truly seemed to worry less when he was around. “I’m tired. I should be doing this in the morning, when my eyes can focus.”

“Good idea.” Theo brushed her bangs back from her face. “It’s after midnight.”

“You talked to Martinez? Tamlynne?” She knew he did at least twice a day, but she needed the reassurance.

“Tammy’s teaching the kitten to fetch balls of paper. Martinez has found two more incidents of what appear to be zombie attacks. No idea of when they occurred until we hear back from the ME’s office.”

If they were recent, her scanners had picked up neither of them.

“We’ll get up early,” Theo said. “We still have a couple days yet.”

She knew they did. But she wanted to leave some time in case things went wrong. No, not
in case. For when
things went wrong.

She put the disassembled spare Hazer carefully on the low table Theo had brought in for her to work on and rechecked the residence shields. “I’m shielding the door. If you need anything from your kitchen, get it now.”

“The only thing I need right now is you.” Theo’s voice was soft, his eyes smoky.

She sighed, set the shields fully around the bedroom, and turned back to him. A few hours’ bliss. She lost herself and her troubles in him nightly now. Lost it all in his gentle yet expert touch, his fingers kneading, stroking. Mouths and tongues searching, touching. A few hours. And then another day of hard reality. And another day closer to hell.

The screech of an intruder alarm jolted Jorie out of a blissfully deep sleep. Theo’s arms were tangled with hers at her waist, and there was some accidental bumping and shoving as she grasped for her Hazer and he—she assumed—for whatever weapon he kept tucked under his pillow.

Only as her skin rapidly chilled did she realize she was naked. She snatched her sweatshirt and shorts from the floor. Then, heart pounding and still naked, she knelt in front of her tech to check shield integrity. Theo had already pulled on a pair of sweatpants and stood at the doorway, flashlight in one hand, weapon in the other.

No breach. But someone or something had tried to. She yanked the sweatshirt over her head as she gave him the news.

“If that’s one of my neighbors,” he said when she looked at him, “we’re going to have some explaining to do.”

She rose quickly and stepped into her shorts. “At four-thirty in the morning?”

“Good point. They’ll have some explaining to do too. What’s out there?”

With half her tech in disarray? “A live entity. Not a zombie. That’s all I know.”

“One?”

“One.”

“Armed?”

“We have to assume, yes.” She knotted her shorts. “Ready?”

“On a count of three. You drop the door shield. I’ll open the door, go out first. You follow, cover me.”

“On three. One, two—” She keyed in the change from the scanner, now dangling from her hip belt. Theo yanked open the door, then, weapon out, moved quickly and quietly into the corridor. Jorie followed, Hazer primed and ready.

They swept into the main room, the glow from his flashlight moving left and right, then stopping at something—
someone
—sprawled awkwardly on the floor near Theo’s couch.

She started to reach for her scanner but stopped. She didn’t need it. Her heart skittered. She recognized him. “Kip!”

“Kip?” Theo asked.

“Kip. Commander Rordan.” She knelt next to the still form, angling her rifle away as she felt for a pulse in his neck. Hope and fear clashed. “Alive, but I think my shield knocked him unconscious.”

“Kip Rordan?” Theo’s voice held a note of amazement.

She fully understood. How and why and
from where
Rordan had returned, she had no idea. She checked her scanner, keying in for the
Sakanah
’s resonance. Hoping, praying—nothing showed on her screen.

But Kip was here. And he was alive. Why? The surge of bliss she’d felt at finding him waned. Distrust raised its ugly head. The last thing left on her doorstep—so to speak—was the Tresh feeder cup. Now Kip. It was possible the two events weren’t remotely connected. It was equally possible they were.

“Help me with him,” she said to Theo.

“Jorie, wait.” Theo hunkered down next to her. “Are you sure he’s Rordan? Are you sure he’s not working with the Tresh? Or the Tresh didn’t send him?”

“I’m not sure of anything other than, yes, he’s Kip Rordan. My scanner confirms his identity through his bioresonance and his palm print.”

Rordan let out a low moan.

“We need to get him back behind the shields in the bedroom,” she told Theo. “Help me lift him.”

Theo was clearly not happy with her command, but whether it was because he’d disliked Rordan from the beginning or because he didn’t trust which side Rordan was on now, Jorie didn’t know. But she wasn’t going to try for answers in an unshielded part of the residence. She might not know if she trusted Kip Rordan, but she knew for sure she didn’t trust the Tresh.

Together they dragged Rordan back to Theo’s bedroom and closed the door. Theo turned on a bedside lamp. She brought up the shields and checked her scanner one more time. “Nothing else; no one else is out there.”

Rordan’s eyelids fluttered open when she turned. “Jorie.” His voice was raspy.

Theo was sitting on the edge of the bed and had his G-1 out, set for stun, Jorie noticed. Rordan was less than a maxmeter away, on the floor in front of the closet doors.

She pushed aside the fact she’d known him for years and grabbed for her professional personality. It was safer until she knew what in hell’s fire was going on.

“Commander Rordan, what happened?” she asked, then, realizing she spoke in English, repeated herself in Alarsh. “What are you doing here?”

She studied him as she waited for him to answer. He was in the green-and-black Guardian uniform—much as when she’d last seen him, several days ago. His dark hair was still pulled back but he was unshaven, his skin reddened and rough-looking. His uniform, she realized, looked rather worn as well.

Definitely not the usual impeccable Kip Rordan.

He was frowning, switching a glance from her to Theo and back to her again.

“Commander Rordan. Report.”

Rordan levered himself up on his elbows. Theo stood quickly, pistol out. “Don’t move.”

“Tell that danker-brained nil to put the pistol away,” Rordan snarled in Alarsh.

Well, that was definitely the Rordan Jorie knew and remembered. “Not until you answer my question,” she replied. “The Tresh almost killed Tamlynne Herryck. You disappeared. Now you’re back. I’m waiting to hear how and why.”

“Not just the Tresh, Jorie. Devastators. There’s a full contingent of Devastators here,” Rordan said.

“Go on.” She curled her fingers around the Hazer but didn’t raise it. “What happened after Theo and I left in his land vehicle?”

The narrowing of Rordan’s eyes told her he didn’t miss the movement. “Herryck and I were receiving data from the ship. I told her to go back to the
Sakanah.
She insisted on staying a few sweeps longer. Some project.” He shrugged slightly, as much as his near-prone position would allow. “I went to the galley to get a glass of water when I heard the alarms go off. By the time I got to the main room, the Tresh were everywhere. I fired on two but did little damage. They have some kind of shielding—”

“I know about that,” Jorie said.

“So I backed up into the galley and transmitted a distress call to the ship, alerting them to the situation. I initiated an emergency PMaT for Herryck and myself, the ship acknowledged, then something went wrong.”

“What’s he saying?” Theo asked, when Rordan paused.

Theo couldn’t understand Alarsh. And making Rordan use Vekran would slow them down and open too many chances for misinterpretation. “In a moment,” she told Theo in English. “Continue,” she said to Rordan.

“I felt the PMaT lock on, but I didn’t end up on the ship. I ended up…” He shook his head. “I’m not sure where, exactly. But it’s taken me about four planetary days to walk back here.”

Walk?
Jorie’s gaze raked over Rordan again. Hell’s fire. It did look as if he’d been walking for four days.

“I haven’t been able to contact the ship on my scanner,” he continued. “I haven’t been able to get a reading on you until about two sweeps ago. I saw the resonance of Guardian shields. But I couldn’t make voice contact with you through the scanner. I thought it might have been damaged in the aborted PMaT.”

“The ship’s gone,” Jorie said.

“Gone?” Rordan looked genuinely startled.

Jorie nodded. “Relay ’droids, seeker ’droids, all gone. Plus this planet’s full of dead zones.” Any one of those reasons would hamper scanner-to-scanner voice contact. But if Rordan was behind the destruction of the ship, he’d know that.

“Flashed out?”

“I don’t know.”

“And Herryck?”

“Alive, but they put an implant in her. I had to use a local med-tech to remove it. There’s still residual damage.”

“Ass-faced motherless whores!” Rordan sagged back, his eyes closing briefly.

Jorie agreed with his description of the Tresh.

He sat up again, this time completely but slowly, due to Theo’s pistol following his movement. “Tell the dirt-sucker to—”

“Rordan.” Jorie didn’t keep the anger out of her voice.

He pulled his knees up and turned his beautiful unshaven face toward her.

“I’m going to get you a glass of water,” Jorie said. “Then I’m going to brief Sergeant Petrakos on what you’ve told me. Understand we have no proof that what you’ve said is true—”

“Herryck can—”

“Herryck remembers nothing. So what would you do in my place, Commander? Gen-pro regs, now,” she prodded, but her tone was anything but light. “Teammate returns from unauthorized absence after last being seen with enemy agents.” She fixed him with a narrow-eyed gaze.

He nodded. “Teammate is to be treated with all courtesy but assumed to be working with the enemy until facts show otherwise.”

“Then we understand each other.”

“Completely.”

“Then understand this as well: the people of this planet are not now or ever again to be referred to as nils, dirt-suckers, or any other creative disparaging epithet. They have ranks, they have names. You will refer to them with those ranks and names. Or you will find my courtesy toward you to be seriously lacking.”