This was it. Jorie raised her gaze from the line of weaponry on Theo’s galley table that had been their sole focus for the past ten minutes, aware of time pushing them inexorably toward the most powerful zombie in the herd.
Do or die.
“Theo.” She swallowed her fear and wrapped her fingers around his wrist.
He looked up from the projectile weapon he was working on, a slight frown on his very good face. He was so focused on the mission now. So was she. But there was something else she had to do first, and it frightened her almost as much as the C-Prime.
“Theo,” she said again, because the frown had turned into a questioning arched eyebrow. “You need to know. Before this happens tonight.” She was fumbling, her Vekran failing her.
“Babe, what’s the matter?”
She sucked in a breath. “Theo, I love you.”
Both eyebrows arched. Then he released his hold on his weapon and dragged her into his arms.
Bliss.
28
“David? It’s a go. Forty-five minutes. You in?” Theo sat on the edge of his bed and kicked off his Top-Siders, pinning the cell phone between his shoulder and his ear. He pulled on his socks as he listened to David Gray’s exclamation of excitement. His own heart pounded, but it wasn’t solely due to the zombies.
“Shit, yeah. This is the big one?”
“The big one.” He snagged his left boot and shoved his foot inside. “Meet us at the 7-Eleven?” Theo didn’t have to say which one. There was only one on the chain of finger islands leading to the state park beach area. It was a notorious cop-stop-for-coffee hangout.
“I’ll be there in thirty.”
Theo went over weapons and gear with David one more time, feeling slightly foolish considering David’s expertise but not wanting his friend to forget this was an unusual, high-risk circumstance.
Very high-risk. He hadn’t contacted Chief Brantley. He didn’t intend to.
He hoped he wasn’t making the biggest mistake of his life. Because the best thing in his life had just happened five minutes before.
Jorie loved him. So he’d told her what agapi mou meant and answered her in Greek with s’agapo. I love you.
The love of his life walked in when he was sealing his tactical vest over his T-shirt. She wore the same funky shorts and half-sleeved outfit she had the first time he saw her. He knew what all the gizmos were now, even knew how she could power her weapons through the small ports in what she called her technosleeve. And how those same ports could transmit data to her ship.
If her ship was there. It wasn’t, but he suspected she used the devices now to segue with Rordan.
Theo checked his Glock. “You give Rordan back his pistol?”
“He said to tell you thank you for your trust.”
Theo doubted that. He glanced toward the corridor and lowered his voice. “You have a plan if he turns out not to be on our side?”
He saw the brief flash of pain in her eyes. It was never a pleasant course to contemplate—having to take down a partner, a colleague. A longtime friend. She’d admitted Rordan was one. That still made Theo pause and still made Theo hear Rordan’s insistent challenge: Jorie has dream to be captain. You can give her this?
No, but he could love her. And she could love him.
She’d been tinkering with something on her technosleeve. She looked up. “If he’s working with the Tresh, we should know that very quickly.”
“They’ll react to the C-Prime?”
“They will probably note the onset of the craving. It seems to be a regular feed cycle, if somewhat early. But it wouldn’t normally be something the Devastators would be concerned about, except they know I’m here.”
That worried him. “Any chance they’re using this C-Prime to draw you out?”
She shook her head. “I thought about that. If they didn’t know where I was, yes. But they know. Prow was here.”
Theo didn’t miss the thinning of her mouth when she said the Devastator’s name. He wondered if the man was dead or alive.
Evidently so did Jorie. “And if he still lives,” she continued, “I cannot see him relinquishing to a zombie the chance to kill me. He likes, how do you say it here, the personal touch?”
She glanced at him again, head titled, eyes narrowed, looking defiant and confident and determined and saucy, all in one.
He knew that look well and brushed that saucy mouth with a kiss because he could. She was his. And he would do everything he could to keep that fact a fact.
He was rewarded with a small smile.
He draped one arm across her shoulders and pulled her tightly against him. “Let’s go kick some zombie ass.”
Rordan waited for Theo and Jorie in the kitchen, wearing borrowed jeans and sweatshirt but with his Guardian weapons affixed to his belt. Theo noticed he didn’t have the technosleeve that Jorie did. Tammy did—but Tammy was safe with Suzanne. Zeke would meet Theo, Jorie, and Rordan at the 7-Eleven, just like David Gray.
Theo called Zeke on the cell phone when he pulled out of his driveway. “I’m ten–fifty-one,” he told him. En route.
“Ditto,” Zeke said. “Fifteen minutes.”
The chatter in his SUV was a mix of English, Vekran, and Alarsh, with Jorie doing double duty on translations. He was amazed at the calm tone of her voice but didn’t miss her white-knuckled grip on her scanner.
He loosened his own tight grasp on the steering wheel and focused his mind into what he thought of as Code 3 mode: lights, sirens, and unknown trouble.
There were no lights flashing or sirens blaring on his vehicle. But there was unknown trouble. And known trouble. He’d faced a zombie before. He could extrapolate that experience to what it would mean to face a C-Prime.
Jorie checked the altered Hazer again, frowning. Rordan believed he’d corrected the problem, but Theo knew that the weapon and the program were untested. Things might have to be done the hard way, killing off the zombies as they appeared. Theo had no illusions they were going to eradicate the entire herd tonight.
That meant Brantley would be involved eventually. Like tomorrow. Theo ran through a list of possible excuses in his mind as to why he hadn’t alerted the chief: he and Jorie were at Fort Hernando for a moonlight stroll. With Rordan. And an SUV full of weapons. Surprise! David Gray was there. Surprise! Zeke Martinez was there. Surprise! The zombies showed up.
Maybe a picnic. A sunset picnic. A few friends along. David. Zeke without Suzanne. The zombies showed up….
He thought of ten more scenarios, but they all ended the same way: Brantley was pissed. And Theo would be lucky not to lose his job.
But he did not want the media here at this point. And he could see no way to keep the newshounds at bay if BVPD and DHS joined forces. It would leak, just as it always did. And Theo would lose Jorie.
As he crested the bridge leading to Tierra Grande, off to his right were the lighted caged pools and palm-tree-laced landscaping of the high-priced homes the island was known for. It was past seven-thirty; the sun had set more than an hour ago. The backs of the homes were dotted with squares of light: windows, sliding glass doors, and skylights. Other lights flickered from the small commercial buildings at the base of the bridge. The 7-Eleven sign was lit. He spotted David’s red pickup on the southernmost corner of the parking lot.
His cell phone rang.
“Yassou, amigo,” Zeke said. “I got your six.”
Theo glanced in his rearview mirror and saw headlights flash. Zeke in his black Ford Mustang.
Right on time.
The battle for Earth was about to begin.
Theo pulled his SUV next to David’s pickup and motioned for Jorie and Rordan to stay put. Even though David had found a darkened corner of the lot away from the glare of the convenience store’s lights, they were all obviously armed. That could bring unwanted attention. At least Theo’s vest said POLICE in large white letters across the back.
So did Zeke’s. Theo leaned against David’s door
and unfolded the map with Jorie’s notations on it. Zeke and David studied it in the light from the pickup’s interior while Theo went over, again, what they needed to know about zombies: the heart, the eyes, and for God’s sake watch those razor-edged arms!
“Leave the C-Prime to Jorie and Rordan,” Theo said. “We need it alive to contaminate the rest of the herd. Our job is to take out any zombies protecting the C-Prime. Jorie needs a clear shot.”
A loud bang and a staccato series of pops sounded behind him. Theo spun, reaching for his Glock. David jerked around in his seat.
Then out of the corner of his eye Theo saw the colors—red and blue—sparkling, streaking, falling….
Fireworks. His heart slowed to a normal rhythm, then he shook his head. It was New Year’s Eve.
“Concert on the beach in Pass Pointe,” Zeke said. “There’ve been big ads for it in the newspaper all week.”
Pass Pointe—a Gulf-front finger of land two blocks wide and thirty-one blocks long—was just across the channel from Tierra Grande and Fort Hernando. Theo briefly wondered if the noise from the fireworks and concert would affect the zombies but then hit on the real benefit: a big party in the Pointe was bound to draw locals and tourists away from Fort Hernando’s beaches tonight.
Satisfied everyone was on the same page, he climbed into the front seat of his SUV. Jorie was staring intently at her scanner.
“Visitors?” he asked, anxious to get his own party started yet very aware and more than a little nervous about what could happen.
She shook her head. “Not yet. But we won’t have to wait long.”
He cranked the engine. “Tresh?”
“No indication. But I discount nothing.”
“So we go in loaded for bear.”
She frowned. “Full, but with no clothes?”
It took Theo a moment—while pulling out of the parking lot and keeping an eye on Zeke’s Mustang—to unscramble her misinterpretation. Bear. Bare. He grinned in spite of the fact that his adrenaline was threatening to race again.
Zombies loomed. A C-Prime. The Tresh. His career. And the foremost thought in his mind—even with Rordan no doubt glaring daggers at the back of his head—was Jorie naked.
Hopeless. He was sincerely, unequivocally hopeless.
“A bear,” he said, then spelled the word, “is a large, fierce animal. It means we go in ready to fight anything.”
Jorie hefted the Hazer. “If this doesn’t work, anything is a good possibility.”
Rordan’s voice was a bearlike growl from the backseat. “It will work.”
Theo had no means to judge that. He only sensed that Jorie was worried. And that worried him.
The road from Tierra Grande to Fort Hernando narrowed from four lanes to two, the palm-tree-dotted center median giving way to a plain tarmac road with rutted, sandy shoulders. Traffic disappeared as if someone had beamed the cars away. The state park didn’t have any residences, and the gates to its overnight campground were locked at nine P.M. That meant another hour where people could yet come and go into the park.
Theo hoped they all went over to the Pointe for the concert. The fewer innocent civilians around to get munched on by a zombie, the better.
Headlights approached. Two boxy campers, a pickup towing a camper, and an old VW convertible with three teens inside bounced by as Theo headed over the small bridge and into the park. A few minutes later, the solitary road dead-ended at park headquarters. The old fort, fishing pier, and the popular north beach were to the right; the east beach to the left. No headlights twinkled from either direction. Theo had been out here dozens of times, but he was never more aware of its isolation than now.
And he had another cop, an FDLE sniper, and two Guardians with him.
“Which way?” he asked Jorie, mentally tallying the pros and cons of the smaller east beach area against the north beach and its picnic tables, shelters, restrooms, and playground. There was more cover on the north beach and it faced directly out into the Gulf of Mexico. The east beach faced the towering Skyway Bridge. He kept telling himself that both were too remote for there to be a concern about being seen, but the north beach had more advantages.
“That way,” Jorie said, pointing out the window.
Theo’s heart sank. East beach. Little cover once they passed the small picnic area. The majority of the beach faced the bridge and the channel. If there was night boat traffic—people fishing, partying, doing what people did on the water under cover of darkness—it might be an issue.
He headed east—the lights on the Skyway Bridge glowing in the distance—and filed the location away as one more thing he could do nothing about.
They parked almost at the end of the beach road, the three vehicles in a half circle. Theo leaned against the front fender, smelling the tang of salt in the air and listening to the wind whistle through the dune grass, while Jorie and Rordan had their heads together over her scanner.
Zeke and David—standing by David’s pickup—were checking their weapons, including the Tresh rifle Jorie had given David. Theo let himself fixate on Jorie, on the tilt of her head, the curve of her shoulders, the soft short curtain of hair brushing her cheek. He saw her in patches of light and shadow from the vehicles’ headlights and the full moon now rising overhead.
Some urge he couldn’t identify forced him to memorize what he could see of her in this chiaroscuro landscape. It was as if he wanted to capture a prebattle picture so, when it was over, he could recall her satisfaction, her joy.
But something else said that wasn’t it at all.
He couldn’t let himself think about that. You go home the end of each shift. It was something all rookies learned, a motto that was supposed to keep you alive through whatever came your way on the streets. Don’t focus on what can go wrong. Focus on getting home.
They would. End of this mission, he and Jorie would go home.
“Theo!” Jorie straightened abruptly, swinging the scanner toward him. The screen swirled with colors, with data. Then it screeched.
His heart jolted accordingly and his gaze locked on movement behind her.
A faint greenish glow swirled twenty-five feet down the beach from where they stood. He drew his G-1 pistol as it became less translucent. It was easily three times as large as any he’d seen before.
“C-Prime,” Jorie announced. “Hold fire.”
“Holy shit,” said David as four more green portals, smaller but solidifying quickly, suddenly popped into the air. Theo targeted the closest one and traced its edges with laser fire.
Then all hell broke loose.
Two of the smaller portals erupted, zombies slithering through them like oiled snakes going downhill. Laser fire spit from Rordan’s weapon, slashing at the remaining expanding portal. David leveled his assault rifle and hit an emerging zombie with three quick, clean shots to the eyes.
But that only blinded it. It didn’t stop it.
Zeke fired as a razor-edged arm raked too close to David’s head.
“Get its heart, under the chin!” Theo dropped to one knee for a better angle and punched out three bursts. But the zombie—damn, the thing had to be more than fifteen feet tall!—took that moment to lunge sideways toward Rordan.
Theo fired again at the creature’s jawline. You owe me one, he silently told Rordan as the zombie dissolved into a roiling cloud of green gas.
Rordan darted a narrow-eyed glance at Theo, as if he’d heard.
There was no time for a quick comeback or kudos. Two other zombies moved into the glare of the vehicles’ headlights, lunging toward Theo yet staying close to the C-Prime. The C-Prime was fully through the portal, huge, almost bloated-looking, the wormlike creatures on its surface writhing so frantically that they flung themselves off in spinning clumps.
Theo saw Jorie nimbly sidestep a squirming clump and—Cristos!—suddenly realized how close, how too goddamned close, she was to the C-Prime.
Even though he knew better than to distract her, he couldn’t help
himself. Fear and possessiveness warred with practicality. He shouted her name but she didn’t turn, didn’t even glance his way. Rordan did, but only for a second. Then the Guardian commander was keeping pace with Jorie, covering her back per prearranged plan. Both moved too dangerously close to the biggest zombie he’d even seen.
The sharp, rapid crack of David’s assault rifle brought Theo back to his own problems. Four large zombies—the one he’d killed had been replaced while he was watching Jorie—advanced across the sand toward Zeke. An upper arm lashed out, lengthening as if by magic before Theo’s eyes. He fired at an arm joint as Zeke hit the sand, rolling to safety by a margin of inches.
“Extenders!” he called out to David and Zeke as he jogged toward them, his boots sinking in the soft sand. “The arms grow. Watch it!”
Another slash by a different zombie sent the tops of several medium-size palm trees flying. Theo ducked as fronds sailed past him, then straightened again, firing. He took out the zombie’s topmost eye. The zombie reared back with a keening roar. Theo fired again. The laser’s energy smashed into the creature’s white heart, and in an almost blinding green flash it disappeared.
A larger one stepped up immediately in its place, its extenders filling the gap made by its missing partner. Behind it, Theo saw two more portals form. He swore harshly in Greek. He had to function for Jorie as Tamlynne had—destroying the portals before they could become zombies. David and Zeke would just have to handle the ones that got through.
He bounded for the pavement, trying to keep clear of the zombies as he headed for the forming portals. He heard David shout out a warning, followed immediately by the harsh sound of gunfire. He dropped to his knees behind a palm tree, cursing at the pain as stones cut through his jeans. A whining sound told him a razored claw had passed inches from his head.
“Clear!” Zeke called out. Theo sprang to his feet and ran. Three portals now glowed a sickly green, and, claws or not, he had to take out at least two of them, or Jorie wouldn’t be able to get a clear shot to fire the dart.
The Down Home Zombie Blues Page 38