Soldiers of Fame and Fortune Full Series Omnibus: Nobody’s Fool, Nobody Lives Forever, Nobody Drinks That Much, Nobody Remembers But Us, Ghost Walking, 12 Book series...

by Michael Todd

  “I’ve got to get the suits fixed for the general and our men,” the captain said, walking down the block toward the Armorer.

  His assistant hurried along beside him. “Did we really need to come all the way over here from the American side?”

  The captain stopped out front of the shop and glanced at the assistant. “She is the best in the Zoo area. Probably the best anywhere, and I heard we can trust her with secrets of our armor, so here I am.”

  The assistant pointed at a note on the door. “And there she isn’t.”

  The note on the door read, “Temporarily closed. Gone to the American Enclave for a job. Be back soon.”

  To be continued…

  Author Notes - Michael (Todd) Anderle

  January 8, 2019

  THANK YOU for not only reading this story but these Author Notes as well.

  (I think I’ve been good with always opening with “thank you.” If not, I need to edit the other Author Notes!)

  RANDOM (sometimes) THOUGHTS?

  Working in paradise.

  It isn’t often I get to work in a location that is…well, if it was a few degrees cooler, paradise.

  I’m at the Hyatt Regency Phuket Resort (Kamala Beach) Executive Lounge sitting on a lounge chair that is in about 5” of water. I have on jeans (yes, I’m stupid that way) and a t-shirt (no surprise there.)

  I’m about to work on the beats for SoFF10 after these Author Notes. Why am I working when paradise is all around me?

  Because Paradise is possible because of writing and publishing.

  I know not everyone is as successful writing as I have been. BUT—if you like the ZOO and fancy you have a story or two in you, then I am working on offering a chance for you to write a few books in this series.

  The details are being worked out with D2D (Draft2Digital) and I don’t have all of them, but I WANT to make writing in the ZOO a possibility.

  However, I’m just building the tools; what you DO with the tools is up to you. If you write crap, then it won’t go anywhere, I promise you.

  I have nothing (yet) to share except, “It Is Coming.”

  As the boss told Michael J Fox in the movie Secret of my Success…

  What you accomplish when you are in will be up to you.

  HOW TO MARKET FOR BOOKS YOU LOVE

  We are able to support our efforts by you reading our books, and we appreciate you doing this!

  If you enjoyed this or ANY book by any author, especially Indie-published, we always appreciate if you make the time to review a book, since it lets other readers who might be on the fence to take a chance on it as well.

  AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS

  One of the interesting (at least to me) aspects of my life is the ability to work from anywhere and at any time. In the future, I hope to re-read my own Author Notes and remember my life as a diary entry.

  Hyatt Regency Resort, Phuket.

  Here are my thousand words. Have fun describing them Hillary (our audio narrator):

  [Edit from Zen Master Steve - Hillary Huber is a multi-time award winning narrator with hundreds of audiobooks to her credit. She’s an immensely talented and creative woman. It’s time for her to lean into the mic and describe Michael’s “thousand words.”

  Check out the audiobook versions of Soldier’s of Fame and Fortune if you want to hear how this goes.]

  (Click here to see a larger version)

  FAN PRICING

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  Ad Aeternitatem,

  Michael Anderle

  Ghost Talking

  Soldiers of Fame and Fortune Book Six

  Chapter One

  Holly pulled herself up onto the edge of the desk in JB’s and swung her feet back and forth. She looked around the room and realized that he had actually cleaned and organized it a little since he was banished to the background. The books were lined up, the papers on the desk were neatly stacked, and a new stand-up lamp filled the space in the corner.

  She watched him as he lowered himself into his office chair which was still positioned in the middle of the room. He grimaced as he pulled his leg forward manually. Holly shook her head. “That bad?”

  JB glanced at her as he situated himself. “It sure isn’t getting any easier, that’s a definite. I don’t know if it’s worse or if it’s simply because I’ve run out of things to focus on beyond this leg. At least before, I was up and around, moving it and getting some exercise in.”

  Holly lifted her eyebrow. “Don’t worry. I’m sure there will be plenty of people to kick the hell out of Dodge by the time you’re back.”

  JB chuckled and rubbed the top of his leg. “If I ever get back.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t say that. We are working hard. We will figure this all out and it’ll be good. I promise. You’ll come back as spry as ever.”

  He smiled, but it was forced. “I am coming to terms with my life, Holly. Sure, I hope to raise hell here for a lot longer, but I also know the reality of what is going on here. Something is taking me over, trying to cut me short, and we have no idea what it is.”

  Holly sighed and looked at her dusty boots. “Try to keep your spirits up. It’s imperative.”

  JB went to say something else but there was a knock on the door and it creaked open before either of them could respond. Paula looked in hesitantly and then huffed as she swung it wide. “Damn, I was looking for free porn. You two are as boring as trying to explain sex using Legos.”

  Holly rolled her eyes. “How many times do we need to remind you, Paula? There is no sex going on back here.”

  Paula crossed her arms. “Obviously. I see that now, but it doesn’t mean a girl can’t hope and dream. Maybe that’s all you need, old man. Maybe it’s simply a really bad case of blue balls. One good push and you’ll be all better.”

  JB looked over his shoulder and shook his head. “If it were that easy, I could take care of it myself.”

  Paula shivered. “Too much information.”

  He shrugged. “You started it. I was just saying.”

  The woman looked at Holly. “The bar is filling up. I could use some help soon.”

  She nodded. “Okay, I’ll be there in ten minutes. If anything happens before then, yell down the hall at the office.”

  Paula gave her a thumbs-up, stuck her tongue out at JB, and closed the door. He slapped his hands on the chair and groaned. “I got this. It’s time I got moving—might make my leg feel better anyway.”

  Holly gave him the look and pushed his shoulder down. “I don’t think so, boss. I got this. You seriously didn’t listen to a thing I said, did you?”

  JB chuckled. “I tend to be stubborn.”

  She shook her head. “Yeah, well, that’s not okay. I told you. Rest and keep your leg as healthy as possible until I can come up with an answer for all of this. In the meantime…”

  Holly looked in her bag and rummaged around to finally pull out a small amount of blue liquid in a vial. She handed it to JB, who looked at it with his nose wrinkled. “Poison already? I wasn’t ready to go yet.”

  She rolled her eyes. “This is what you need to at least get off your lazy ass for a few more days or weeks. It will hopefully give you a boost and start to fight whatever is trying to take you down. At the least, I hope it will strengthen your resistance and maybe slow the process down. I’m not sure what the dose should be, but this is all I have at the moment, so it will have to do. I’ll need to make more later, but I don’t have the ingredients yet. Drink it, eat it, whatever you need to do to get it in your system. And don’t make me go through all this work only so you can stubbornly pour it down the drain or something. I will find out. Your life is worth saving.”

  JB nodded, palmed the vial, and held it in his
hand as if it were made of gold. He wasn’t even sure what to say in response.

  He looked at Holly for a moment and smiled. “I think now that you know my dark secret, it’s time I revealed something else. Something a little more personal.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “If you start taking your clothes off …well… I don’t know, but let’s keep it PG-Thirteen at the most.”

  JB shook his head and laughed. “Not that. I have to admit that when you first came into the bar, I realized how special you were. I usually don’t tell that many stories, but I hoped to use them to entice you.”

  Holly giggled and closed her bag. “I have to say it’s one way to get me interested in a date. Although I would have thought it was the drinks.”

  He leaned his head back and laughed loudly. “Actually, I hoped that you might want to take the bar over. Your memory…”

  Her straight lips curled up into a smile. “So you wanted me for my mind, not my body. I have to admit that is very creative. There are millions of women out there who would love to hear those words from a man’s mouth.”

  JB put his hand to his cheek and blushed. She smirked and shook her head. “You, sir, are one in a million.”

  He looked at her with shining eyes. “Funny, I thought the same thing about you and Billie. You girls get something in your head and you don’t stop until you get it done. I think I knew that about you from the beginning. It’s nice to actually see it in action.”

  Holly put her bag on her shoulder but remained seated on the desk. “That’s one thing people have always counted on me for. If I am given a task I really care about, they know for sure it will get done. One way or another, I will find this cure. But I would like it to be sooner rather than later so we can heal you.”

  JB rubbed his leg. “I think my preference would be sooner as well. Not only for the pain but for the relief of pending doom. It’s funny how even outside the Zoo, the place still follows me around. It’s like a nagging ex-girlfriend who won’t leave you alone.”

  She cringed. “I never had one of those, but I’ve had friends who have. They send you creepy notes and show up randomly at your house. Well, hopefully, we can kick this ex-girlfriend to the curb before too long.”

  He leaned back in his chair and held the vial up in front of him. “If you had told me that in the future, I would drink the very thing I risked my life to get for companies, I would have laughed in your fucking face. But here I am, hoping for a miracle out of the carnage. I wonder how many people will die before this bullshit is over.”

  Holly shook her head and focused her gaze on her boots. “I don’t know. I hope not many, but from how fast I heard that jungle is growing… Well, we should be doing our own research. We can’t let the companies control our futures. If one of us gets it first—whatever they are trying to find—then maybe it will take the competition away.”

  JB scoffed. “Or increase it. They won’t be secretive about it. They will get a taste of the money and hunger for the goop like it’s crack.”

  She released a deep sigh. “The drug of the future collected from the petals of plants.”

  “And the spines of dinosaurs,” he added.

  Holly smiled. “It would be nice if the spine goop was the same as the petal.”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “The spine might not be, but I heard that the sacs that hold it on the beasts are as pure as pure can be.”

  She tilted her head as she considered that. “It—”

  A loud bang and a roar of laughter interrupted her train of thought. Holly closed her eyes, jumped off the desk, and walked toward the door. “I better get out there before Paula murders someone. And about the bar… I think I’ll simply try to heal you versus being the adoptive owner of FUBAR.”

  She threw her bag down in a small cubby in the hall before walking out into the bar. As she grabbed a couple of glasses and took them to the side, she raised an eyebrow at Paula who was sweeping up the last of a broken glass and didn’t look happy about it. “I told JB for years to put non-slip shit back here but no, he had to be a hard ass. I nearly broke my tits and then wasted a good shot of bourbon.”

  Holly giggled. “It’s all right. Let’s get through this rush.”

  Paula nodded and let out a deep breath, and the two hurried through the backed-up orders she had written down. After Holly had handed over the last of the drinks, she glanced toward the end of the bar. Dan smiled and waved at her. She returned the greeting and grabbed a glass on the way to pour his usual.

  “Look who it is. I thought you had completely bailed on me.” She set the glass in front of him and put her hands on her hips.

  Dan chuckled. “Nope. I’d never do that. I’ve been busy filling orders. There was an onslaught recently due to the corporations putting out special bonuses. What in the world are you doing behind the bar? You look good back there, don’t get me wrong, but I expected to see you in your normal chair.”

  Holly glanced at her chair, which was still empty. She leaned forward and talked quietly. “JB still isn’t fully recovered from being a bit sick.”

  He looked at her with concern. “Oh no. I hadn’t realized he had fallen ill.”

  She shrugged. “He’s on the mend. I’m giving him some relief in the meantime.”

  “I bet it was forced relief.” Dan chuckled.

  “You know JB. He would work with a severed arm.”

  He laughed. “Or head for that matter.”

  “Very true.” Holly wiped her hands off on the towel.

  A group of guys walked in and Holly nodded in greeting. She approached and took their orders, poured the drinks, and processed the payments. Several of the newcomers were talking but her thoughts were stuck inside her own head. She tried to figure out why the chemicals were working the way they were. It didn’t make any sense, which meant she hadn’t seen the whole truth.

  She finished serving the group and began to wash dishes. Without realizing it, she talked to herself out loud. “If you see a result but nothing you can see would give that result, maybe what you see isn’t the full picture.”

  A loud huff caught her attention. “Kind of like when a bartender is too preoccupied with stupid shit to take a patron’s order.”

  Holly raised her head slowly and narrowed her eyes. “Excuse me? I don’t think I deserve to be spoken to in that manner.”

  The man chuckled and slammed a ten down on the bar. “You’re a barmaid. You shouldn’t actually think about anything. Now bring that ass over and get me two fingers of whiskey. If you’re lucky, I’ll forget you were useless for a moment and possibly leave you a tip.”

  She studied him carefully. While she had never seen him before, from the look of his clothes and tanned skin, he wasn’t new to the Zoo. “I think you have missed something. We are not your slaves, and when you come into this fucking bar, you respect the people who work here. Get it?”

  He sighed. “You simply don’t learn, do you? When you do something more than pour drinks and give guys hard-ons, you can bark orders to me. Until then…my drink.”

  Dan clenched his fists. “You need to watch what you say to the lady.”

  The man glanced at him and stood to tower a good foot above Dan. “Are you the new barkeeper’s keep? Why don’t you shut your God damned mouth and enjoy your whiskey before I shove that glass up your ass?”

  Dan pounded his fist on the bar and stood. “Now, wait a minute. I don’t know who the fuck you think you are, but you need to check that bullshit in at the door.”

  The stranger chuckled and opened his mouth to speak. At that moment, he felt a tap on his shoulder. He spun and looked up…and then up some more. “What?”

  The Death Dog from a couple of days before flexed his chest muscles. “I think you need to go. This is FUBAR, and JB doesn’t allow any shit with the ladies.”

  The guy jerked his thumb over his shoulder and scoffed. “Please. She’s a bar slu—”

  Too fast for the man to react, the Death Dog slugged him hard i
n the stomach. “I think you need a lesson in manners.”

  He grabbed his stomach and dropped to his knees as spit dribbled from the edge of his lip. His face was bright red and his eyes bugged out in surprise. Everyone in the bar had stopped their conversations and began to walk forward to show their support for the regular.

  The Death Dog grabbed the man by the back of the neck and picked him up. His feet barely touched the floor as he pulled him along toward the door. Three of the other guys flung the front doors open and stood aside.

  “Heave ho!” the Death Dog yelled as he tossed the man out into the street.

  The stranger, still red in the face from the punch, hit the ground and rolled to a stop at the edge of the sidewalk. A hummer roared by and sprayed sand over him. He coughed and choked as he rolled onto all fours. The group behind the Death Dog now stood in the bar once more and put their hands up and cheered loudly. Holly pushed through them and walked outside to stand beside her protector.

  She chuckled and shook her head as she fixed the stranger with a hard look. “JB would give you three days before he allowed you back. But I’m not nice. You get a week, and if you come back with those manners next time, you get to taste soap.”

  The two headed back inside and slammed the doors behind them. Holly curtsied at the round of applause and moved behind the bar. JB stuck his head around the corner with a frown and she whipped her towel at him. “Get back to your cave, man. Can’t you see the women rule the world out here?”

  JB shook his head. “That ain’t any different than any other day, no matter what these lugheads think.”