Oyé, Jefe... Ese dama, ah... ¿Piensa que soy muy guapo? Yes, I think the lady feels you’re handsome. My Quixote was smug and retired from the field of combat filled with confidence that his return would be greeted with warmth. Ahem.
Charlie frowned a little, but I assured her he’d be back and that cheered her up immensely. She grabbed me by the hand and pulled me downstairs so we could brush our teeth.
Hooray for normal moments! They wouldn’t last for long.
The daily ablutions didn’t take all that long and were filled with the sort of cheerful, madcap goofiness that only new lovers can keep up for more than an hour at a time. We made a quick breakfast of various things we scrounged off of my supply shelves, put on some clothes, armed ourselves, and sallied forth.
It really was a nice, cool, sunny morning. Of course, there was still the matter of the Miss Teen Zombie Bomber corpse on the asphalt in front of my store door. I offered to drag it out to the big pile from the night before, and Charlie gratefully accepted my assistance in the matter. We walked, side by side, corpse feet in my hands, over to the garage.
“I’m wearing yesterday’s clothes, and the only other stuff I have is with Shawn. I’ll get changed while you drag off the beauty queen, and then we can hunt and kill some coffee. How’s that?” She was actually perky. I was dragging a body, but she was perky, and I managed to cope with it, seduced as I was by the promise of coffee.
“All right. I’ll be back in a few. Tease your brother for me, okay?”
“Like I breathe air!” She kissed me, thoroughly, and bopped off toward Shawn’s front door.
I still had a few blocks of dragging to do, so I set off to do it in reasonable time, without a huge rush. As I rounded the corner, I saw Channing hooking up one of the Hot-Hot-Ow-Ow Destructo Projectors, and I called out to him.
“Sexy dweeb! How’s the boy today?”
He turned around, saw it was me, and just shook his head. Our rapport, clearly, had yet to fall into place. “I take it that means you don’t feel the same connection for me that I feel for you?”
“I’m here because I was ordered to be here, not to become buddies with all of you. Especially people full of nano-machines that attack and cannibalize... ” He shuddered with revulsion, and I didn’t blame him at all.
“Channing, if I had a free hand at the moment, I would swear to God that I’m about as thrilled with that development as you are. Much like everything else in this fucked up world, all I’ve got is what I’ve got, and some of it can’t be changed.”
He looked at the body trailing behind me.
“Did you eat her brains, too?”
“Actually, no. She was wearing a vest rigged with C-4 and Charlie blew her brains out. Then we went to bed.” Come to think of it, saying those things in such a matter-of-fact way felt really strange.
“I don’t understand you.”
I nodded as I walked under where he was perched, looked both ways at the alley mouth, and deposited my erstwhile night visitor on the pile of her compatriots.
“Frankly, my dear, I don’t understand myself most of the time. At least you and I can share the mystery together.” I looked up at the gray square, mounted on the side of the wall, and allowed myself a bit of curiosity.
“So, does this pain ray work?”
“Once I connect this USB cable and turn on the generator, yes.”
“What does it feel like?” I was curious because it sounded completely unreal to me.
“It feels like the whole surface of your skin is being fried. I was part of the group trial for this model, so you can trust me on the description.”
“Damn. Could I feel it?”
“Are you categorically insane, or do you just pretend to be crazy for fun? This is not friendly pain. It really, really hurts.”
“Yes, I get that. I’m just curious. Could you turn it on and then turn it right back off? Just a little taste?” I suppose, somewhere in my hidden heart lies the twitching form of an adrenaline junkie-masochist with attention deficit disorder. Don’t tell anyone—they probably spray for people like me.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah!” I actually bounced up and down a little, excited that I was going to get to try out a figment of Science’s Imagination.
Channing didn’t bother to give me a count of three, or even tell me that he’d agreed to do it. He just turned it on. I shrieked, turned around, and ran across the street. I vaulted a parked car and hid behind it until he turned the damned thing off.
The feeling made the Tasers of the night before pale in comparison.
“Didn’t I tell you?” He hollered at me from across the four-lane road.
“Yes! You did! I believe you!”
“You don’t want to try it again, do you? I can just plug it back in.”
“NO!”
From the way his shoulders were moving, I could tell he was laughing at me and I wasn’t really bothered by it. Considering the sensations that Active Denial thing was capable of dishing out, I was incredibly grateful to have that technology on our side, as well as someone capable of installing the things. Anything that would keep busloads of zombies from overrunning us was A-OK in my book.
Chapter 32
We were one day closer to the window Mister Yan told us to be expecting the big attack. Whether or not we would see any small ones before then was not anything I could predict, but being ready for that sort of thing wouldn’t be a bad idea at all. These pain ray units would come in very handy.
What I wouldn’t give for something that would stop rocket-propelled grenades and shoulder-mounted missile attacks!
I looked both ways and crossed the street. I didn’t vault the car on the way back.
“So, Channing, how many more of these are left to install?”
“This is the last one. I got started right after the busload last night and haven’t been to sleep yet.”
For someone who was just taking orders about being here, I was grateful for his dedication.
“Why don’t you come down from that ladder, and we’ll go find coffee?” I waved him down to ground level. He nodded, climbed down, and we folded up the ladder together.
I slung it over my shoulder, and we walked back to the garage. If anyone was likely to have coffee brewing, it would be Shawn. If they were still with us, I would have taken Channing over to see Siddig, who was the man who had changed my outlook on the beverage. Maybe, if we all didn’t die in the next few days, I could boil up some Siddig-style mud in a cup for people.
It was a nice idea. Sad, but nice.
When we got to the garage, we discovered quite a coffee klatch was already underway. Nate and all of his people were there, as were Flower, Buttons, and Omura. There appeared to be a spirited discussion of favorite combat and survival knives going on. A surprising amount of name dropping and showing off of toys was happening as well.
Nate’s pal Franklin was extolling the virtues of his favorite knife, a handmade, evil-looking thing from American Kami that looked as though it could disembowel a pack of Yetis. Shoei Omura sung the praises of his preferred blade, saying that Chris Reeves was the one and only master of the hard-use knife. I grinned like a fool and pulled the Man Scythe out of the rig with that trademark snap of Kydex plastic. As usual, it stopped conversation dead.
I handed it to Franklin, who gently opened the blade out about halfway. He smiled, and it was the blissed-out smile of a true edged-weapon fanatic. My baby was garnering the attention she deserved.
“Who made this?” Franklin asked, closed the blade, and handed it to Charlie. She was making little “gimme” noises.
“The blade steel was smelted by Mack Lee, forged out by Scott Lewis, and the frame was milled by a couple of auto mechanics out in Fairfax, Virginia. They also did the final assembly.”
“That is way beyond hot.” He admired it, coveting my Darling while Charlie caressed her gently. I just sighed.
“Y’all are some sick monkeys!” Shawn appe
ared with coffee cups for Channing and me. “I don’t see how you can make sharp things sound like they’re your favorite topless dancer.”
The assembled group chuckled at us for our perverse ways. I sipped my coffee for a moment, then retorted.
“Shawn? M-50 machine gun, refitted with a water-cooled barrel, plum-brown finish, and a full magazine of 3/1 armor-piercing tracer rounds.”
“Oh man... yeah. That would be one smokin’ piece of steel!”
“I rest my case.” Everyone got what I was saying, even Shawn. Vindication was mine, sayeth the zombie killer.
Flower got a strange look on his face and yelled, “INCOMING!” We all hit the floor as something exploded near the side of the road. Guns came out, and the professional soldiers fell into instant formations.
Nate headed forward on point, trailed by his group. They skirted the IEDs at the end of Shawn’s driveway that connected to Glebe Road and peered out around that dumpster. I saw him hold up four fingers, indicating two left and two straight ahead. Flower grunted and leapt to the top of the garage.
Omura looked at me, “Shawn, you, Frank, Charlie and Channing, stay put and stay down. That was a mortar, and they’re trying to range in. That means we’re dealing with a less experienced crew than before. Flower may take them out before they can land something in here.”
We nodded, and I looked over at Buttons. He was crouched down, cradling his cup of coffee, and I asked, “About when will your next orbital gift arrive, and what did you target it on?”
“Six minutes, and the target area is the section of Glebe Road that directly connects to the side street where the parking garage is. I estimate a soccer field-size crater that may be as much as 20 feet deep.”
“Fuck! That’s bigger than the last shot, isn’t it?”
“Yes, by about 50 percent. There will also be a decent amount of collateral damage from the debris exploding outward from the point of impact. Low likelihood of civilian casualties, and it probably won’t detonate any nuclear devices.”
“You mean there’s a possibility that it might?”
“Of course.”
Before I could reply to that, there was a hail of gunfire near where Nate and his friends were observing our latest annoyance. Looking that way I could see that none of them were in the line of fire.
A single shot rang out from the roof of the garage. Almost immediately afterward a muffled explosion and screams could be heard from beyond the dumpster. Nate held up two fingers, gestured to the left, and Flower squeezed off four more shots. Nate gave the thumbs-up sign and then stood up.
“What did we miss?” I called out to him from the garage floor.
“Matt put a bullet into the pipe of the mortar launcher, into the nose cone of the mortar. It exploded real pretty. The other four shots were double taps for the other two who weren’t using good cover.” Nate gave Flower two thumbs up and then got out of the way when he jumped down from the roof.
“I have to say, I was real skeptical about these nanotech add-ons, but,” he gestured up to the roof, “I really like being able to jump around like that.” There was something strangely unsettling about seeing a sniper smile like that.
“Based on the fun we just had, does anyone else feel we need to alter our set of plans?” I was beginning to wonder if we didn’t need to just go over there and kick some heads before they could really put something into motion for tomorrow or the next day. While it is certainly an advantage to know your enemy is going to attack you in X number of days, it is also nerve-wracking. The little piddly annoyance attacks were also starting to seriously piss me off.
“I think,” Buttons responded, “we should hold out for a few minutes before deciding anything. Then we get a look at the results of the bombardment and make a decision based on that data.”
Nate gave me a comradely punch on the shoulder. “Waiting for anything like an attack is hard. Your patience wears thin really fast, so just chill as much as possible. They’re still going to try to whittle us down before tomorrow or the next day.”
I nodded. What I needed, besides the rest of my cup of coffee, was something active to do. Preferably something that would somehow add to the effort in some way or another. “Who do we have on lookout duty?” That seemed like a completely reasonable thing to volunteer for if people were needed.
“Omér and Jack for the next hour or so. Jim and Gina on the next shift.” Nate pulled out his ever-present notepad. “And I’ve got Barry and Shawn down for the shift after that. The guys and I are going to walk the perimeter a little bit and see if there are any holes that need to be addressed.”
“Ah.” No dice. I didn’t want to leave for the day and not be here if something happened. I needed, flat-out needed, to go do something.
“I’m going to go scout the area a little.”
No sooner than the words were out of my mouth than a certain whistling thunderclap arrived to punctuate my sentence. What we didn’t expect was how loud the impact would be. It actually rattled our windows, over a mile away. I can only imagine what it must have done to the windows in the buildings next to that stretch of highway, including the one that my father occupied.
It didn’t matter very much if the glass imploded into the buildings or were pulled out of their panes by the air pressure behind the slug; there would be a huge amount of it everywhere. I couldn’t help but hope that some of the troop numbers had been reduced by the impact and debris. We wouldn’t know a thing until the dust cloud cleared, unless someone was insane enough to go look.
My mad idea for keeping myself occupied had arrived.
Chapter 33
“I want to go have a look at that. I’ll be back soon.” I got quite a few funny looks, but no one went to the trouble of telling me it was a bad idea or that I shouldn’t do it. That worked just fine for me, really. “Hold down the fort while I’m gone!” I turned on my heel and jogged back to the store.
Charlie followed me. We made it into the store before she caught up with me.
“Are you sure you want to do that? That’s a Hell of a lot of danger, sticking your hand in the beehive.” She sounded rational and not as concerned as I might have expected from her.
We were standing at the checkout counter, and I tried to explain myself in a manner that made sense. That’s one of the challenges you get when you have a brain that processes images better than words.
“I need to get out and do something. The ‘waiting around for the next blow to fall’ is making me a little crazy. I’m pretty sure I can get over there and back in all this chaos.” I shrugged. “Besides, we really could use some on-the-scene visual reporting.”
I could tell she suspected something, but her mouth said, “All right, I imagine this is your way of getting a little time to yourself to process all the stuff that’s been happening. Please, and I really mean this, come back to me.” She followed that up by hugging me so hard I fell backward onto the counter. “I do not want to lose you to zombies, or to something else you haven’t talked to me about.”
Jefe, besa la rubia. Esta un buen tiempo para un momento del amor. (Quixote again. Boss, kiss the blonde. It’s a good time for a moment of love.)
This time I agreed with him, and kissed her with every joule of emotion I felt for her. It was electric enough I think my heart stopped beating for a moment.
“Charlie, I’m coming back. You’re here, and wherever you are is where I need to be. Right now, I have to move... find out what our enemies have arrayed against us. I know there’s no turning my father back from the path that he’s on.” Yes, I speak Hero.
“I’m telling you now, I am not your sister. I don’t like furry midgets either. You watched those movies way too much, didn’t you?”
“Errrr! Yub! Yub! Chabookie ookie!”
“Oh God,” she rolled her eyes and massaged her temples, “I’m falling for a zombie-hunting dweeb! Aren’t I?”
“Wanna see my Sarlacc Pit?” I stuck out my tongue and snaked it around for
extra effect.
“Don’t make me puke, farm boy. Now go upstairs, strap on your blaster and your lightsaber, go do what you need to do, and then come back to your princess. Make it snappy. Princesses don’t like waiting!” She patted me on the cheek and then strolled out the door.
She had a really great stroll. It took me a few minutes to tear my brain away from the memory of watching her walk away, but when I managed it I headed up to my quarters for a little equipment.
I wondered if a couple of clips would do, or if I needed to upgrade to the gun I was using before I went cannibal. At that point I realized the less I thought about losing my shit and eating brains, the better I’d feel about the whole issue. In fact, I wouldn’t mind if that problem went away entirely but that did not seem likely at all.
You’re wounded; you need to heal up. That’s a very binary situation for a tiny machine that is trying to keep you in optimal fighting form or is trying to make sure you survive in the first place. Although there were enough of them floating around inside me that I had to wonder if, as a group, they could think or if they only monitored and reacted through a very limited set of programming.
Could you call a limited set of programming by a different word? Like “instinct”? I wondered if there would ever be a way, other than sticking an Ethernet cable up my nose, to communicate with these little guys and ask them to do specific things. Baj would get some requests from me in that department, I thought, if we managed to save his ass.
For example, I wouldn’t mind a set of retractable claws that didn’t hurt when they popped in and out. I stood in my room, looked around to make sure no one was watching, crouched down, spread my arms, and said, “Snikt!” Yes, I did snarl a little for extra effect, but quietly. It was a nice moment of fantasy before deciding on the machine gun and a katana as my larger weapons of the day.
If you think I left the scythe behind, you would be sadly mistaken. I would rather leave my eyeballs in a bowl on my desk than not take that with me wherever I went outside the neighborhood. It was an extension of me in a way that no other tool or weapon ever surpassed in my experience. That feeling isn’t something you can ignore, and I don’t think it matters whether or not it is a firearm, sword, or a kitchen knife.
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