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

  “Hey, at least he is helping where he can.” Holly shrugged.

  Billie sighed. “I guess. So do they have any suspects?”

  Holly rubbed her hands together. “As of right now, no. From what I overheard, the company thinks that maybe it was some research and development spies from Russia or China.”

  Her companion scoffed. “Please, those Russian spies couldn’t sneak in somewhere like that. Did they get any video of me…uh, the person?”

  She snickered. “No, they called you the ghost. They said the only way they knew you were there was because of the download. Of course, they didn’t think for a second it could be an American.”

  Billie furrowed her brow in displeasure. “Why do you say that?”

  “A comment one of them made and the others laughed at. He said they should check the American side. Another one laughed and said, ‘No way they were American. They aren’t that good.’”

  Hickok gripped the back of the chair hard. “Fucking assholes. Pretentious fucking assholes. I’ll give them Americans aren’t that good.”

  Holly laughed. “Calm down, Rambo. You know how other countries can be about Americans.”

  Her companion regarded her with a deadpan look. “Did they say anything else?”

  “Actually, yeah. They said that there were no fingerprints and it was strange because the circuits were messed with.”

  Billie tilted her head to the side. “The circuits?”

  “Yeah. They said the cameras went out in succession. But then, when it came to the top-security hallway, there wasn’t even a whisper of anyone entering or exiting the room. They said there were no windows in that room either so there was no way they could have come from the outside. They are starting a search of the duct systems to see if they can pull any evidence.”

  The other woman snickered quietly. “Circuit problems…ha! Idiots. I knew that tech was genius.”

  Holly looked at her inquisitively. “What tech? So you weren’t messing with circuits?”

  “Of course I wasn’t. I didn’t have access or time for that. But I have my ways.” Billie chuckled.

  She shook her head. “Ahh, top secret James Bond tools, right?”

  Billie pointed her finger at her. “Precisely. I only wish I had one of those fucking cars he has. They are never that cool in real life. Most of the time, I end up in the back of a bread truck or some shit like that.”

  Holly smiled. “So you think you’re in the clear?”

  Hickok waved her hands in disdain and turned away. “Hell yeah, I do. They have no idea what they are looking for and they won’t find anything anyway. I am a professional. We should be in the clear.”

  “What ya studying?” She stretched her arms in the air.

  Billie closed her notes and rubbed her face wearily. “Just shit that will help me get what I need. I am going out, though.”

  Holly yawned as she stood and walked toward the bathroom. “I’ll probably collapse into a coma so I can recover in time for my shift tomorrow.”

  She closed the bathroom door but kept talking. “As soon as I have a moment of non-zombielike reflexes, I’ll continue my research and notes. It all kind of jumbles together for me at this point. My eyes get tired and the next thing I know, I’m passed out on the desk, drooling. It’s not a pretty sight.”

  Holly flushed the toilet and washed her hands as she studied her exhausted face in the mirror. This trip to the Zoo had turned into something way different than what she’d expected. Hell, she thought she would only be there a couple of days and now, she had an apartment and a job…kind of. She liked bartending but remembered why she had been so happy to get out of it when she finished college. Long hours, assholes, and the stench of old beer seeping from her pores every day. It was not at all glamorous, no matter what people thought.

  She opened the bathroom door. “Where are you going?” she asked as she paused and looked around the room.

  All of Billie’s stuff was cleaned up and stowed in the corner and she was gone. The door had all the latches locked from the inside and a calming silence had settled in the place. A long, brown-haired wig lay draped over the top of the chair in the corner. Holly furrowed her brow and walked toward it, picked it up warily, and held it in front of her, completely shocked.

  “She wears a fucking wig…what the fuck?”

  Carefully, she replaced the wig over the chair, stepped back, and stared at it as she realized she had no clue what Billie actually looked like. Suddenly, wild images skimmed through her head, most generated from what she’d seen in Mission Impossible movies with fake skin and voice changers. Then she shook her head. Use your brain. JB wouldn’t have recognized her if that were the case.

  Holly turned and shook her head, then noticed that in the other corner, almost completely hidden from sight, was Hickok’s backup helmet. She raised an eyebrow and wondered for a moment if she could maybe slip it on and see exactly who Billie was. On impulse, she took a step toward the helmet but stopped.

  Wringing her hands, she climbed into bed and groped for the light on the nightstand. “Get it together, Holly. You put that thing on and you will have accidentally started a game of Global Thermonuclear War. Go to bed before you hurt yourself, or someone else…like an entire country.”

  The air grew cooler and cooler as the night descended rapidly on the town. The wind had died down, so the air was breathable for the first time in days. Piles of sand pushed up against the hastily built buildings, blown in during the days before from the wide-open desert that led to the looming canopy of the Zoo. Streetlights glowed along the blocks but Hickok liked to stick to the shadows. She weaved in and out of the alleys, moving quickly and without notice. No matter how different she looked, she didn’t want to be remembered. It was a hazard of the lifestyle that she lived.

  There wasn’t anyone out on the streets as everyone would already be at the bars or home sleeping. When she turned the corner out of the alley, she pulled her hood up over her head. Strands of wild, red, wavy hair escaped from the sides and hovered just below her shoulders. She shoved her hands in her pockets, put her head down, and paid little attention to her surroundings. There was no need to risk drawing attention as she knew what was around her and exactly where she was going. She knew how the men in that town thought, and she would be fresh meat. Without a doubt, she would be noticeable to them and to the French army, who liked to patrol the streets at random as if they had any control over the lawlessness of the town.

  Suddenly, her senses flared. She could hear the faint shuffling of two sets of boots over the sand-strewn cement sidewalk. The stench of heat and sweat was vaguely covered by a sharp-smelling cologne. She slowed her steps and raised her head as she approached a shadowed area ahead. As she stepped into it, she disappeared from sight.

  The two guys walked forward, looked right and left, and stopped inside the dark corner. They both wore older clothes covered in dirt from the Zoo. Their teeth had obviously not seen a toothbrush in years, and their hair was shaggy and greasy.

  “Where the fuck did she go?” one of them asked and continued to peer around him.

  The other shrugged his shoulders. “Fuck if I know, but she headed this direction. I seen her come right through here. She couldn’t have gone far. None of these shops are open.”

  The first guy slapped his hand to his leg. “Damn, she’s hot. I’ve never seen her around here before.”

  “Which means she ain’t never seen us.” His comrade put his finger to his nose and smiled.

  Suddenly, the street light to their left went out and left them in complete darkness. “What the—oomph.”

  The other guy put his hands out and squinted to see better. “Rod— Ugh.”

  Nothing but rustling and grunts issued from the darkness. A small shriek and the crunch of a bone was followed by absolute silence.

  Billie pulled her hood up and shoved her hands back in her pockets. She stepped over the two bodies and continued down the block, humming softly.<
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  Chapter Four

  Hickok used her skills and moved silently through Holly’s door. The room was dimly lit and the bed covers were all tangled. Leaving her boots by the door, she grabbed her wig, flipped her head over, and put it on before she pulled on her coat. She looked around the room and her gaze settled on the desk. It was apparent Holly couldn’t sleep like she’d thought she would and had gotten up to do some research. It couldn’t have been very exciting, though, since she had passed out with her head on the desk.

  Billie chuckled, walked quietly across the room, and looked at the laptop. Carefully, she undid the cord, picked it up, and carried it to the bed. She sat on the edge and set the laptop in her lap, then scrolled to the top of the screen. Holly had done a hell of a lot of research, and she’d taken notes thoroughly and even simply enough for Billie to understand most of it.

  She pulled her legs up and read some of the notes out loud. “Initial reports of G5009, better known as goop, revealed a similar base concentration of water, hormones, minerals, and nutrients like xylem sap. It was shown through the study of one intact Pita plant that the goop also directs plant process much like photosynthesis and respiration, releasing both oxygen and carbon dioxide, very similar to the plants we know on earth.”

  Hickok was surprised by this analysis. She had never thought that anything in the Zoo would be close to anything on earth. She continued reading. “Further microscopic studies of G5009 have revealed a much deeper basis of life. The cellular structure of the substance is unlike anything on earth. The strands of DNA do not create a helix but instead, wind through, ever changing and moving. The roots of the Pita plant also expel this goop, moving it through the soil to the edges of the containment. This led scientists to believe that the goop is distributed throughout the entire Zoo. The reconstruction of injured or dead Zoo animals may be connected to the amount of goop in the soil below them. This study was not included in documents.”

  Billie sighed and closed the laptop. “So the goop may have the ability to repair injuries or even bring Zoo animals back from the dead through concentrations in the soil. So what would pure goop do to a human?”

  She looked at the sleeping Holly and stood to set the laptop carefully on the desk. Softly, she ran her hand over the woman’s back and pulled her arm up and over her shoulder. “Come on, let’s get you into bed.”

  Holly barely opened her eyes and simply nodded and stumbled forward until she reached the bed. She wrestled the blanket back and fell into it, absolutely exhausted. Billie pulled the covers up over her. “Get some sleep, kid. We need that brain working at full speed.”

  Holly rolled over in the bed and looked at her phone. Paula hadn’t called so she’d either saved her the trouble or JB came down and took over so she could get some rest. Holly hoped it was the latter. Paula was wearing herself out with both work and worry. She was a good friend to JB, but Holly didn’t want to see her run herself into the ground.

  She sat up and shifted to dangle her legs over the edge of the bed. Absently, she looked around and scratched her head when she couldn’t recall going back to bed after she’d woken in the middle of the night. She had thought sleep would find her instantly, but as soon as she laid down, her mind was all over the place. The last thing she remembered was trying to stay awake as she read the research.

  A quick glance at the desk assured her that her laptop was present and closed. Billie’s things were still in the corner, but she didn’t see her anywhere. Holly shrugged and pushed off the bed, dragged her feet over to the coffee maker, and set it up for pure life. She wasn’t sure how she’d gotten out of bed without it automatically being made. When she pressed the button on the front, nothing happened. Furrowing her brow, she followed the cord back and found it unplugged for a charger instead.

  Holly narrowed her eyes and looked up when she heard Billie’s voice from the bathroom. She plugged in the coffee maker and headed to the door, where she propped herself against the frame. There was Billie, buck naked, on the edge of the tub. Her normal long brown hair cascaded over her tits. Her legs were crossed, and she waved her hands in the air as she flipped through things in her HUD.

  Billie was saying something, but it was all muffled inside her backup helmet. Holly cleared her throat and the woman looked at her with surprise. She chuckled. “I won’t lie. It’s weird as fuck to walk into my bathroom and see someone in nothing but her birthday suit and a metal helmet. It’s like some freaky kind of fucking cos-play or something. Like I’m sure if I took a picture and posted it online you would be a hero in the nerd world.”

  The other woman said something else into the helmet before she pulled it off her head. She looked exactly like she had the other times Holly had seen her, only without her normal five layers of clothing. Holly drew a deep breath and tossed Billie her tank top and panties that were folded on the sink. “Do you think maybe when you need to charge something you could not touch the key to my existence?”

  Her companion looked at her, confused. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Holly thumbed calmly over her shoulder. “The coffee maker. Most days, I can’t even sit up without the automatic timed creation of the perfect elixir of life.”

  Billie chuckled as she shrugged her clothes on. “Yeah, sorry about that. I didn’t want to overload the other socket and your laptop was plugged in there.”

  Holly nodded and left the room, and the other woman followed her. “Did you see my notes?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I read the very beginning part about how they thought goop was like tree sap at first.” Billie yawned, grabbed her hoodie, and dragged it on.

  She chuckled. “Yeah, until they realized that the minerals were nothing that had ever existed on earth before.”

  Hickok wrinkled her nose. “Will that make it hard to come up with the elixir for JB? I mean, how are you supposed to be able to combine things and figure out the dosage if the chemical composition is not known?”

  Holly poured two cups of coffee and handed one to her companion. “Well, it’s not that untouchable. After going through the different minerals and such present in the goop, I was able to compare their composition with things here on earth. There was, of course, nothing exactly the same, but there were some very similar to each other. From that, I can figure out the most likely reactions of those minerals and compounds. Of course, it’s still a guess because we don’t really know, but it should be pretty damn close.”

  Billie blinked at her. “So basically, you match the alien shit with its closest earth twin and that helps you understand how it will work for JB?”

  She swallowed her sip of coffee and already felt more awake. “Yep. Pretty much. I had a tiny bit of goop from a couple of petals I held back from the mixture I gave JB, but it’s hard to really see anything from that. I have a lot of partial compositions.”

  Billie scratched her head in evident confusion. “Why is that?”

  “Because when we pull the petals from the plant, we essentially stop the flow of goop and tear it apart. At a very low level, of course. So I get partial things. I can probably figure out a lot more of the benefits of some of the chemicals present but I need more goop. And by more, I mean a lot.”

  The other woman sighed. “How are we supposed to get that?”

  Holly raised her finger and flipped the laptop open. “One of the large animals—the one with the goop on its spine. Well, the goop there is different, but JB told me it’s pure. I did some research and it turns out he was right on point. The sacs of production in these animals is like pulling a patch of whole Pita plants. Of course, production stops when you pull them, but you get a significant amount of goop.”

  Billie narrowed her eyes. “And which species exactly are we talking about?”

  She drew in a deep breath. “That’s the thing. It’s the sacs behind the skull of the dino, the one with the huge fucking teeth and relentless need to kill any human it encounters.”

  Her companion took a gulp of
her coffee and glanced down at it. “I feel like I’ll need something stronger than coffee by the end of all of this. So I need to get a giant-ass dinosaur creature, kill it, and retrieve sacs of goop from behind its skull?”

  Holly gave her a toothy grin. “Yep. That’s pretty much our best option for this whole thing.”

  Billie pointed at the picture. “So where are the sacs exactly? Are we talking base of skull, sides, underneath?”

  She shook her head. “Oh, God, no. You wouldn’t be able to get them unless the creature is very dead. From the notes in the system, the dino skull is some foreign material that they have not been able to penetrate thus far. It has an open spot in the skull on the top of the head and then unscaled areas of its chest, which is how you kill it. You have to aim for the right place.”

  Hickok cleared her throat and almost sounded nervous. “Okay, show me where the sacs are and how I get to them specifically.”

  Holly retrieved a small disk from her bag, placed it on the table, and connected it to her laptop. As it flashed on, a 3D version of the dino popped up. She turned it with her hand and pointed to the right and left of the back of the skull. “So, one is on the right and one on the left. There are scales there but they are relatively easy to pop off. After that, be careful when you cut in. Its flesh under the scales is about an inch and a half thick. If you go too far, you’ll rupture the sac.”

  Billie nodded and studied the images closely. “And are the sacs open?”

  She shook her head. “From the specimens they have pulled, there is something like a shut-off valve inside the sac. When the dino is injured, it seals closed. That means you can cut it at the top and through the connecting tube and you should be fine. I would take some sort of bottle so that if it leaks out, you can catch it. Otherwise, put them in two cases and in your pouch. That will protect them.”

  “How the hell will I find one of these sonsofbitches?”