by Michael Todd
It was a month away. Should I go? Should I not go because a) I knew nothing about it and b) I was JUST getting back from a long trip and would be dog-tired.
Eventually (meaning by the next day) I had decided to go for one (1) practical reason.
Relationships.
I would get a chance to meet (and in some cases, see again) others in our industry of Indie Authors, so I felt it would be a good idea to go.
Unfortunately, I didn’t pay any attention to just what being in Colorado Springs meant for weather in early February.
The answer?
Freaking freezing.
I’m praying to the local fire god that it heats the Antler in enough to allow me to wade through temperatures not meant for humankind to inhabit between the hotel and the closest restaurants.
Worse than that (almost)? It is another Pepsi location.
DAMN YOU, PEPSI!
Fortunately, one of the staff for the conference found out about my Coke fetish and is making sure I’ll have some.
Want to know just how much I appreciate a hotel serving Coke? They had it in pitchers at Adelaide, Australia for the 20Books event down there, and I’m going back. At least ten percent of my decision was because they had Coke in pitchers. I have no idea why Coke hasn’t sponsored me yet.
I clean up well.
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Ad Aeternitatem,
Michael Anderle
Ghost Adaptation
Soldiers of Fame and Fortune Book Ten
Chapter One
Holly sighed as she fumbled her keys into the lock of her apartment, shoved it open, and dropped her bag on the floor. The laceration on her thigh throbbed and she winced as she hobbled inside and shut the door behind her. She leaned against it and looked at the ceiling for a moment. The memories seemed to whirlwind around her. The trip into the Zoo, the battle, the deaths…everything seemed so unreal. Her brain struggled to process it. She wanted to cry, scream, and move on all at the same time.
With a prolonged groan, she limped into the bathroom and examined herself in the mirror. Her hair was a mess and sweat and dirt were smeared where the hospital had wiped some of it away when they stitched her cheek. Blood had already seeped through to stain the white gauze bandage. She retrieved her case of medical supplies and placed it on the counter before she pried the gauze off carefully and wrinkled her nose at the sight of the wound across her face. It was deep but the doctor had given her special treatment. She was fairly sure the rest of her team had let them know she was the boss—which she didn’t feel like in that moment.
Carefully, Holly wiped the wound clean and applied a layer of ointment the doctor had given her. It stung her skin and the inflamed flesh protested as she gritted her teeth. She leaned against the counter to give the reaction a moment to ease before she placed a fresh gauze dressing over it. The last thing she wanted was for grains of sand to get in. That would definitely make for an even more painful repeat of the procedure later.
She wet a cloth with hot, soapy water and cleaned her face and body. All she really wanted was a hot shower, but she could almost feel the earth-shattering pain that would come when the water ran over both her leg and face wounds. Her mind was simply too tired at that point, and her body resisted the idea of any more agony. Besides, even without the injuries, her muscles had been stretched to the max and she felt like she had run ten miles after a binger at the bar. Everything hurt.
When her ablutions were complete, she tossed her sweaty clothes to the side and shuffled into the apartment with her hands over her breasts. She found a clean pair of panties, a loose T-shirt, and a pair of workout spandex shorts—short enough to end far above the cut on her leg. While she dressed, she tried not to look at herself in the mirror, too afraid it would break her spirit. She feared that the thought of her still standing while Aki and Trigger were dead would steal the last strength she managed to cling to right out of her hands. Plunging into the deep abyss of self-loathing and pity was not something she wanted to even consider at that moment. She still had a goal, she still had a future company she was planning, and she hoped that lives could be saved, even if it had been paid for by the blood of two of her friends. Two very strong soldiers had fallen to the horrors of the Zoo and the human greed it had spawned.
With a heavy sigh, she walked to the counter to make coffee but paused when she saw a coded message flash across her computer screen. She narrowed her eyes, sat in the office chair, and allowed the message to filter through her brain and detangle inside. As the code unraveled, a smile moved across her lips. She replied immediately in the same strange language and sent it through. Her mood lifted instantly and the sense of constant pressure on her heart lessened momentarily.
Holly stood, grabbed a sweatshirt, and eased it over her head. She shoved her feet into her sneakers and grabbed her keys before she headed out of the apartment. Thankfully, she wouldn’t have to go far, only downstairs to talk to Amanda, who hadn’t noticed her when she had come in. Or, if she had, she hadn’t called out to her.
When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she leaned against the doorway and watched while Amanda completed a small job. The armorer moved her welding torch aside and clicked the flame off, then raised the front of her heavy metallic mask. She glanced at her visitor and tilted her head with a welcoming smile.
Holly smiled in response, stepped inside, and closed the door behind her. “You looked like a robot in that thing.”
Amanda chuckled as she removed the mask and gloves. “A sexy as fuck robot. How are you doing? I heard about the trip. Are you okay?”
She shrugged and drew in a rasped breath. “You know how it is. You’re never really okay when you lose a teammate or two. But I have to keep moving. Trigger would kick my ass six ways from Sunday if I didn’t. He knew I had big plans. And Aki? Well, he would consider his death honorable. Anyway, I came to talk to you about something else.”
The other woman all but skipped over and pulled herself onto one of the tables to sit and swing her legs. “All right, hit me with it, girl.”
Holly smirked the right corner of her lips and leaned against the table. “Do you think that Salinger would like to own a piece of my new merc company? I know it’s way different than Heavy Metal—at least our goals are—but I figured that was a good thing. There’s no reason to redesign the wheel.”
Her companion frowned in thought. “Why would you want to sell a piece of the company already?”
She looked at the tabletop and swirled her finger around a dot of dried blue paint. “Because I need an older brother who knows the troubles that I’m about to go through. I know this won’t be a walk in the sunshine on a warm day. I know there will be things that I have to face that I don’t expect at all.”
Amanda chuckled. “That’s with everything in life, but yeah, I’m sure you will.”
Holly lifted her chin and pursed her lips. “I won’t ask for much and won’t give much either. But at least I’ll know Heavy Metal will have a vested interest in seeing me succeed and be willing to take a phone call or two along the way. I’m sure I will reach for the phone on a regular basis.”
The other woman grinned. “I have to admit because I would be a shitty friend if I didn’t, that Salinger wouldn’t mind doing phone calls for free. You don’t have to give away your life’s work simply for some advice. He may run a for-profit mercenary company, but he wants to see something positive come out of all of this.”
Holly wrinkled her nose and turned her gaze to her friend. “Call it
a gut feeling.”
Amanda nodded. “You can’t really ignore those, can you? Okay, I’ll get ahold of him and throw it out there. See how he feels about the whole thing.”
Holly leaned to the side and kissed her on the cheek. “Thank you, lady. You are the best.”
“I know. This bitch can do no wrong.”
They shared a laugh. When the joy in their voices faded and left a silence in the room, the armorer kicked her feet and gave her a side glance. “How is the rest of the team doing?”
Holly stood and folded her arms. “Okay. I’m actually about to head over there. I want to make sure everything is taken care of. They kind of pushed me out after my stitches and insisted that I go home and take a breather. I think thirty minutes is good.”
Amanda laughed. “You are a good leader, Holly.”
She walked toward the door and glanced up at the top of the stairs. “Do you think these shorts are good to go out in?”
The other woman scanned her quickly. “I wouldn’t mind seeing you hobble my way in them.”
Holly chuckled. “Good enough. I’ll see you in a while. I need to make sure my team has everything they need.”
Amanda hopped down from the table and waved. “Send them my thoughts. Tell them to get their culos back in shape.”
Holly thought for a moment. “I’m sure they will wait to get their asses back in gear. They will probably soak up the relaxation for a while.”
She giggled as she waved goodbye and headed out the front door to the street where she paused for a moment to put her sunglasses on. Several guys gave her a second look as they walked past but she ignored them. She was used to the attention but never really gave two shits about it. As she limped down the block toward the hospital, a Jeep pulled up next to her.
One of the regulars from FUBAR sat behind the wheel and she looked curiously at him. She almost didn’t recognize the man sober. “Hey, Ralph.”
He smiled, his salt-and-pepper hair unkempt and his shirt unbuttoned. “Hey, kiddo. Do you need a lift? You look a little less chipper today.”
Holly glanced at the bloodstained bandage on her leg and walked across to haul herself into the passenger seat. “Thanks. I’m going to the hospital to check on some people.”
Ralph put the Jeep in drive and accelerated down the street. “Not a problem. I live close to there.”
She could see his interest in her wounds but he kept the questions to himself. Like so many long-timers there, he knew that not every situation warranted a barrage of questions. After a few moments, he pulled up in front of the main entrance of the hospital.
Holly looked at him with a smile. “Thanks. Next time I’m in FUBAR, I’ll get you a drink.”
Ralph chuckled. “No need. I’m simply helping out a local badass.”
She wasn’t sure she deserved that title, at least not yet, but she didn’t argue. Instead, she simply nodded her thanks, slid out, and waved as Ralph pulled off. Once inside, she walked up to the nurse’s station and found one of the same nurses she’d seen before.
The woman—middle-aged with gray wisps in her blonde, pulled-back hair—looked up. “I thought we told you to go home and rest.”
Holly put her hands out. “I did. See, new clothes.”
The nurse gave her a deadpan look. “What do you need?”
She tapped her fingers on the desk. “I don’t need to see them. I only want to make sure that all their bills so far are taken care of.”
The nurse searched in the system and wrote down a figure for each of the patients. She totaled it up and slid it across to Holly. The final amount wasn’t that high, which surprised her. She handed the woman her card and entered her pin into the small pad on the desk. The nurse printed a receipt out and handed it over. “They gave you the hero discount.”
Holly’s lip twitched slightly. “That was really generous but I’m no hero. I’ll be back later to check on the team. Thanks for taking care of them.”
The other woman shook her head. “That’s our job. See you later and keep a fresh bandage on that wound!”
She headed for the door and waved at the nurse over her shoulder. “Fresh as can be, promise.”
In the parking lot, she hoisted herself into the team Jeep, having left it there when JB gave her a ride to her apartment earlier. For a moment, she cringed when she saw the dried blood on the seats behind her. She turned to face forward and put the key in the ignition but winced as she pushed down on the pedal and the damaged flesh of her leg strained against the nylon stitches.
Holly returned to her apartment when she decided that the shorts weren’t the best outfit in which to walk into the bar. She made her way slowly upstairs and only half-listened as Amanda spoke to someone inside the work area. Her teeth gritted against the pain, she changed the bandage on her leg and pulled a pair of jeans on carefully. Once the initial burn of the new pressure against the wound subsided, she found the tightness provided support and that her leg didn’t strain quite as much when she walked. She knew everyone had heard about what happened by that point, but she didn’t want to draw any more attention to herself if it could be avoided. It was bad enough that she had to walk in with a dressing across her cheek and the weariness of battle in her eyes.
She checked her computer for any response to the coded message but nothing had arrived. Disappointed, she closed it and slid it in the drawer before she shoved her phone into her back pocket. She left the Jeep parked out front as it was only a couple of blocks to FUBAR. After only a single block, however, she stopped to catch her breath and realized that she was more exhausted than she had thought. At the same time, after everything that had happened, there was no way she would be able to sleep at that point. The best thing she could do was be where she knew people and surround herself with familiar faces. There would be less chance that she would focus her attention on the atrocities they had endured.
It was probably not the best idea to avoid it at all costs but she seemed to be the queen of avoidance. If she pushed the bad things far enough back, they would eventually stay there. At least, that was how she had played the last thirty-something years of her life. Then again, she had never seen a friend ripped apart and dragged off by a beast before, especially not one that looked like it had crawled right out of hell.
As she approached FUBAR, her phone vibrated. She pulled it out and hoped it was good news from the hospital. Instead, she exhaled a sharp breath and rolled her eyes as she tilted her head toward the sky. Her company was checking in as she hadn’t made a drop yet—one of the last people she wanted to hear from at that point.
Holly straightened and cleared her throat as she placed the phone to her ear. She raised an eyebrow and put her hand on her hip as if the person on the other end could see the attitude through the call. “Hello?”
Chapter Two
“I hate the fact that I have to call you and push,” Rod said in a monotone voice.
She could tell he was under pressure from the board, but she didn’t give a fuck. All he had to do was sit in his cushy office overlooking the city while he sipped lattes and cringed over his speakerphone when he was bullied by the old, rich men at the top. It wasn’t like he had to immerse himself in the horrors of the Zoo. Or that he had to watch people die simply to collect some stupid plant that he didn’t need anyway. Maybe simply giving them a Pita might have been an easier task than what she had turned it into.
Holly cleared her throat and attempted to keep the sass in her voice to a minimum. “I have the plants but I have to do the chem analysis on them. I needed some time to collect myself after that trip into hell.”
Rod tapped his pen against the desk loud enough for her to be able to hear it. “I know you had a rough trip out there. I was informed of it—”
“By who?”
He sighed. “That’s not important. The thing is, as much as I sympathize, I need these results. The board is a group of people who don’t have the imaginative ability in their rich, bloated heads to think
about what a trip into the Zoo might be like. To them, it’s merely a hot, sticky place that they don’t fully understand. All they care about are the results.”
Holly stepped away from the front door as two people walked out and toward the town. She lowered her voice and clenched her teeth, shocked that he had such an aggressive push in his voice. “Do you know what you need to do?”
Rod groaned. “No, but I have a feeling you won’t hold back from telling me.”
She rolled her eyes again. “Damn straight I won’t fucking hold back. You can tell the board to shove it up their asses—if they can fit anything else up there at this point. They need to be patient. They owe me that and much more. I don’t give a rat’s ass if they need results so they can continue to lie to me about why I’m out here.”
He swallowed hard. The anger in Holly’s voice was something he wasn’t used to. “Does it really matter why? It’s a job.”
Holly laughed maniacally. “Yes, it fucking matters. They want me to put my life and my team’s lives on the line to go in to find plants. The least they can do is tell me the truth about why. I don’t buy this new drink flavor bullshit for even a second. They are wasting our time, lives, and their money by not being upfront. And look what happens. I have two dead men and the rest of my team is laid up in the hospital while their torn flesh is sewn back together and punctured lungs hopefully heal. This isn’t a fucking game.”
Rod began to back away from the conversation. “You know what? You’re right. That was incredibly insensitive of me. Regardless of how hard they push me, I should have thought about that before I called you. I don’t know what it’s like, nor do I know what you are going through. But I do know that if you are as fierce a friend to your team as you are protective, then to lose those men has to be incredibly hard. But do me a favor. Take your time but try to get some of the work done, even if you send it to me piecemeal. I’ll placate the board as long as I can.”