The Down Home Zombie Blues

by Linnea Sinclair

  “The dart?” Theo asked.

  She nodded and noticed Rordan looking at her now. He knew about the dart. She’d brought him up to date over firstmeal—breakfast—but without too many specifics. And without letting him look at her tech.

  Rordan’s gaze was neutral, as if he sensed she’d come to a decision but didn’t want to let any emotions play on his face.

  She knew how that went. She’d worn the same expression herself many times with Captain Pietr.

  She raised her chin slightly as she spoke to Rordan. “I am going to check everything you do. But I need your help. Or we’re going to lose an effective time frame in which to confront the C-Prime.”

  “We’d be closer to a resolution if you’d let me work on it since yesterday,” he told her in Alarsh. Rordan waved one hand before she could berate him for using their language and glanced at Theo: “I tell Jorie she wasted much time to come late to this decision.”

  “You’d be just as cautious if the situation were reversed,” she shot back. They both knew damned well he was the one always spouting gen-pro regulations at every turn.

  Rordan arched one eyebrow. “But also I would place traps,” he said in Vekran. “So have you. Good.” He stood. “I only hope, once you believe again that I’m with you, we still have enough time to stop the C-Prime.”

  So did Jorie, desperately.

  She hunkered down in front of her main unit, with Rordan on her right, and showed him what she’d done. He nodded, asking very Rordan-like questions, then scrolled back through her work, making notations on his scanner. She watched him and listened to Theo pacing in his main room, talking on his cell phone to either Martinez or Gray. She wasn’t sure which.

  “Ah,” Rordan said softly. “Here’s your first problem. We’re using a Hazer, yes?”

  She nodded.

  He pointed to a line of data. “This range parameter is too low.”

  “No, that’s correct.”

  “No, it’s not.” He glanced at her, mouth pursed. “Where are you, Jorie?”

  Hell and damn. She was on a planet aptly named after dirt. And she was working with regional atmospheric and environmental settings for Port Lraknal.

  That corrected, he kept scrolling, now and then muttering, “Good, good.” And on two occasions a short laugh and, “Excellent!”

  After a while it ceased to register in her mind that neither she nor Rordan was in uniform, that the tech they worked on was cobbled together and limping at best, and that he’d been missing after last being seen confronting Tresh agents. It was as if this was just another Guardian field mission. She fell into an easy patter of exchanges with Rordan and so was surprised when Theo knelt down by her side.

  “Will it work?” he asked in Vekran.

  Vekran. She’d been speaking in Alarsh, and the words jarred her momentarily.

  Not Vekran. English.

  “Yes,” she told him, feeling more confident than she had hours before. “If we get a clear shot at the C-Prime, yes.”

  He nodded and she saw his gaze flick toward Rordan, then back to her again, his expression unreadable. “David Gray has the reports on what might be zombie attacks in Pasco County, but I’d need to go to his office to view them.” He hesitated. “He’s in Tampa. That’s at least thirty, forty minutes travel time each way.”

  He’d mentioned that information yesterday, showed her this Pasco County, north of their current location. Any expansion of zombie activity concerned her.

  “I need that data,” she told him.

  “It would be risky to get you into his office. It’s a secure facility and you don’t have workable ID.”

  Yes, there was that. Jorie understood security requirements.

  “And I definitely couldn’t get you both in,” Theo continued.

  Jorie thought she saw what he was really asking: could he leave her alone with Rordan?

  It was now late afternoon. If Rordan was allied with the Tresh, they’d had more than enough time to take some kind of action. Things at Theo’s residence had been blissfully quiet.

  “I need Gray’s information,” she repeated. “Commander Rordan still has work to do here. Bring back copies of whatever you can.”

  She could sense his indecision, his discomfort. He didn’t want to leave her alone. Finally, he nodded. “I’m turning the answering machine off,” he said, motioning to the small square object on his bedside table. “Phone rings, you answer. Every time. Got that?”

  “I have acquired knowledge,” she replied with a small smile. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone—other than her brother—had worried about her. Jorie Mikkalah, ex-marine and Guardian Force commander, was well known for being able to take care of herself.

  Yet Theo tried to take care of her, anyway. That amused her but warmed her at the same time.

  “You don’t answer, there’s going to be a shitload of trouble on your doorstep, quickly,” he said, but he was looking at Rordan. “I can do that, no matter where I am.”

  “I have same interest in staying alive as you do,” Rordan said with a quick glance away from his scanner.

  “It’s not your life I’m worried about.”

  “And same interest,” Rordan continued as if Theo hadn’t spoken, “in Jorie’s life.”

  Theo pushed himself to his feet, grabbing Jorie’s arm as he did so. She rose with him.

  “Answer the phone every time,” he said, his dark eyes serious. Then, taking her by surprise, he pulled her against him, his mouth on hers, one hand threading up into the back of her hair.

  Her “Oof!” turned into a hard but quick kiss of passion and desperation that set her heart hammering. Theo pulled back slightly with a whispered, “No regrets,” as he brushed his mouth over her ear. Then, in his normal tone: “I should be back no later than six-thirty or seven.”

  She waited until Theo disappeared into the main room before turning to look down at Rordan, expecting disapproval, and finding on his face what she expected. She knew she should be annoyed at Theo for staking his claim, as her brother would call it. Part of her recognized the childishness—or the very maleness—of his actions. But she also knew he cared, very much. And the kiss was not so much a message to Rordan as it was a message shared between themselves.

  For if something were to happen, she knew that, yes, she would regret not having kissed him again.

  She settled back down on the floor, aware of Rordan’s gaze on her. She turned and awaited one of his usual remarks.

  “Why?” was all he said, and that surprised her. Bothered her. She didn’t understand and so gave him a perfunctory answer.

  “What’s between Theo Petrakos and myself is my personal business.”

  Rordan stared at his scanner. She could see his mouth thinning, she could see the tension in his fingers wrapping around the scanner’s edge. Finally, he looked back at her. “You question my allegiance because I’ve been gone for four days. Now I’m wondering, should I question yours? This is not the Jorie Mikkalah I’ve worked with on the Sakanah. If Lorik were here, I’d understand. A revenge game. Stupid, but it might work. But he’s not.” Rordan shook his head, closing his eyes for a moment.

  “This has nothing to do with Lorik.”

  “Then what does it have to do with?” His voice rose. “We call you the Ice Princess on board, you know that, don’t you? We had bets years ago, when Lorik wanted you, how long it would take—”

  Jorie shot to her feet and spun away from him, knowing if she didn’t she’d smash her fist into his pretty face.

  She was aware of the nickname a few of the men had bestowed on her. She’d heard the whispers, the snickers. She hadn’t cared—it was almost a badge of honor on the Sakanah. Shipboard affairs fueled the long times between missions and filled the need for excitement.

  When she was bored, she’d grab her Hazer and pull up a zombie-attack sim in the ship’s weapon’s range. She’d never bed-hopped.

  And then there was Lorik.

  Sh
e didn’t care to know if he’d won or lost the bet on how quickly he’d bed her.

  “Jorie.” The hard tone was gone from Rordan’s voice. “Regrets. I spoke without thinking. It’s just that I value you—”

  “You value me?” She spun back to him. “So much that when Lorik was cheating on me, you said nothing? You even helped him in his duplicity! Tell me again how much you value me, Kip Rordan.”

  “Jorie—”

  “Pietr offered you a captaincy too, didn’t he?”

  He studied her before answering. “I was aware of the offer, but that’s not the only reason I took the assignment.”

  She bristled at his admission, but part of her anger, she knew, should be directed at Pietr. He’d deliberately made a difficult mission more difficult by pitting two teammates against each other—a method he’d been known to use before. And now look where they were.

  She almost said as much, but it was useless. Pietr was gone, and the offered captaincy was a moot point.

  “The assignment has changed,” she said tersely. “I doubt it’s one you would have signed up for originally. But it’s what we have to do now: finish the dart, infect the C-Prime, and keep this world from being overrun by the Tresh.”

  “And Petrakos?”

  She almost asked, “What about him?” but didn’t want to let the conversation get personal again. “Gen-pro regs no longer apply. It would be different if the Tresh weren’t involved, if the zombies were dormant. We could stay covert, wait and see if a ship comes looking for us in a year. But that’s not the case here. We need the locals’ help if we’re to have any chance of success.”

  “That’s not what—”

  The phone rang, interrupting Rordan’s remark. She grabbed the handset and hit the button as Theo had showed her. Only as she opened her mouth did she remember to switch from Alarsh to English. “This is Jorie.”

  “Everything okay, babe?”

  Theo’s deep voice was like balm to her frayed soul. “As usual,” she said, a small sigh accompanying her words.

  “Rordan behaving?”

  “That is as usual too.”

  “Being a pompous asshole, is he? If you zap him with your stunner, I won’t complain.”

  She could almost see his feral, delicious grin. “Sadly, there’s too much work to do yet.”

  “Well, keep it in mind. I’ll check in with you later.”

  “Got it,” she said, using his phrase.

  “Very good!” He chuckled. “Later, babe.” A click in her ear signaled the disconnect. She tapped the button again and replaced the handset in the holder.

  Rordan had turned back to his calculations on the main unit. Jorie stared out the bedroom window for a moment, at the street bathed in late-afternoon sunlight, at the tall, thin trees with their long fronds, at the stouter trees with thick foliage draped in dangling gray mosses, and at the residences, neatly kept, that lined the street.

  Two laughing children glided by on their wheeled shoes—Rollerblades. They spied Mrs. Goldstein arranging flowers in pots on her front porch and they waved. She waved back, calling out something that Jorie couldn’t hear.

  The children answered and continued on. A small blue land vehicle came into view from the opposite direction, moving slowly, aware of the children, no doubt. It went out of sight.

  Mrs. Goldstein’s front door slammed and her porch was empty.

  But they were there, they were all there. In every street surrounding Theo’s residence, the same scene was being enacted in a variety of ways. Bahia Vista. Florida. Earth. People living their lives. None of them knowing what lurked only a breath away.

  Yet all depended on Jorie to stop it.

  She stepped away from the window and resumed her place, cross-legged, in front of the MOD-tech. She concentrated on Rordan’s work and tried very hard to keep all her worries at bay.

  Theo telephoned three more times before Jorie was surprised by a rumbling sound outside the residence. Trotting quickly into the main room, her flip-flops slapping against her feet, she caught a glimpse of him in his large land vehicle moving past the window, heading around to the back.

  Unexpectedly, her heart fluttered, and she felt silly and stupid and girlish but couldn’t keep the smile off her face. He was back early. Or else—knowing Theo as she was coming to know him—he’d always intended to return at this time but didn’t want Rordan to know that.

  And Rordan wouldn’t know. Exhaustion after his four-day trek—or perhaps just from staring at the configurations on the screens since his return—had caught up with him. He was lying on the small couch in Theo’s spare room, one arm slung over his eyes.

  Still, taking no chances, Jorie had managed to adjust the security fields just enough that if Rordan left the room, she’d know. It wouldn’t stop him, but he couldn’t sneak up on her or out of the residence.

  She waited for Theo in the kitchen, then stepped into the circle of his embrace as he held one arm out to her.

  “Everything okay, babe?”

  It was now. She nodded against his chest, then raised her face. “Program is complete. And it’s a good one, I think. What did you find?”

  “Something that will probably mean more to you than to me. Where’s our friend Rordan?”

  “Sleeping.”

  “Do we still need to keep him under guard?” He drew her away from his chest and nudged her toward the table, tossing a large tan envelope on its top. She pulled out a chair and sat, as he did.

  “Only time will truly answer that question. I managed to set a motion-sensor field around the spare room, but my basic instinct is he told the truth. The emergency PMaT dumped him somewhere out of danger, either by accident or design. There have been any number of chances for him to contact the Tresh or for the Tresh to make a move on this residence after you left. Neither happened.”

  “Yet.”

  “Yet,” she agreed. “You’re back early.”

  He grinned. “I’m back right on time.”

  Ah! She’d been correct in her estimation of him. “And this?” She tapped the envelope.

  He opened it and pushed a stack of papers her way. “All reports David and I could find that fit the zombie-attack profile. You need to go through them. Ask me anything you don’t understand.”

  She thumbed quickly through the pages, nodding.

  “You might want to turn off the field around Rordan,” he told her. “We need to eat. I’ll see what I can scare up for dinner for the three of us.”

  She frowned at him. “You need to frighten food?”

  He stood and, reaching over, ruffled her hair. “More funny English.”

  “I prefer my food complacent, not frightened.”

  “How about complacent pizza?”

  “Pizza?”

  “You’ll love it.” He headed for the kitchen’s cold-storage unit, then pulled out a can of his favorite beverage. She neutralized the sensor field around the spare room, turned back to the papers he’d brought, and began reading.

  She was aware he left the kitchen after that, aware he was talking on his cell phone again. Aware even of Rordan’s voice in the background, though only briefly.

  The papers he brought her had her full attention. When he returned, she asked for explanations of some terms and odd acronyms. That solved, she went back to the papers again, her heart sinking with each page she turned.

  A chime sounded, startling her. She grabbed her scanner, but it wasn’t that. Theo was at his front door, talking to someone. The door closed with a thump. Then Theo came in with two large flat boxes that emitted a wonderful aroma, and for a moment her stomach overruled her troubled mind.

  “Go tell Rordan dinner’s ready,” he said.

  She stood but held up a handful of the papers. “This isn’t good news.”

  “Eat first,” he told her. “Bad news always goes better on a full stomach.”

  Yes, it did. Especially as it might be the last meal they’d have.

  25


  Pizza was wonderful—not as blissful as peanut butter, but definitely an experience Jorie would like to repeat.

  The news Theo brought was much less so. Yet it was exactly what she needed, what her tech—without its interface with her ship—could no longer provide.

  The northern area that Theo referred to as Pasco County wasn’t the only site of expanded zombie activity. The zombies had struck south, in a region he called Manatee County. The expansion was worrisome but, as even Rordan agreed, predictable given the size of the herd.

  “Big mission,” Rordan noted in his halting Vekran as he perused the data. Theo’s papers had replaced the pizza boxes and the delicious spicy food they’d contained. Jorie had arranged the papers chronologically. Theo was now aligning them to a crudely drawn map of the area.

  Big mission, indeed. Not only what they had to do, but what the Tresh were evidently planning: a rapid zombie-breeding program that could provide them with the means to take control over a large number of the spacelane Hatches in a short period of time. What it had taken the Interplanetary Concord decades to put in place, the Tresh could accomplish in mere months.

  “The key area,” Jorie said, pointing to a small peninsula on the map, “is here.”

  Rordan agreed, nodding, confirming the location on his scanner.

  “Fort Hernando Park,” Theo said.

  The name meant nothing to Jorie, but she vaguely remembered hearing it before and said so.

  “Two bodies were found there a few days ago. Those were the pictures Martinez brought here.”

  She remembered fearing when she first saw them that one might have been Kip Rordan. She remembered also that Fort Hernando was a remote beach area, a T-shaped finger of land with very few residences and not accessible at night.

  “That’s the Skyway Bridge,” Theo was saying, dragging his finger across a long line. “Fort Hernando is just west of that, jutting out into Tampa Bay. It’s a county park and recreation area.”

  It was also—judging from the reports of attacks and unknown disturbances in the area, integrated with what Jorie could pull from her scanner—a hotbed of zombies.