The Down Home Zombie Blues

by Linnea Sinclair

  Herryck let out a short sigh. “I can’t believe this happened to him.” There was a slight tremor in her voice, then she ducked her head in embarrassment. “Regrets, sir. I—”

  “It’s okay, Tam.” Jorie gave Herryck’s shoulder a quick squeeze. After all Jorie had been through, death of a teammate should be easier. Or at least less painful.

  But it wasn’t, and she knew that Herryck—who hadn’t been a marine, who hadn’t seen what the Tresh could do—was feeling worse. “He was my friend too.”

  Trenat peered around Jorie at Herryck’s screen. “You still reading his T-MOD?”

  “Only partially. And our PMaT is still out of range,” Herryck said, and Jorie could see that, see the spikes in the T-MOD’s pattern, see the null icon for the transporter. What in hell’s wrath was happening here?

  Recovery of the T-MOD was critical. It would have recorded the attacking zombie’s movement, its stats. And—if Danjay had been toying with the unit to lure the zombie, as she suspected he was—it would also provide important data about the herd.

  “Commander Mikkalah.” Trenat shifted his weight slightly. Branches rustled. “I volunteer to infiltrate the structure and—”

  “Down!” Jorie yanked on Trenat’s sleeve as she threw herself onto the dirt, feeling Tam bump her leg as she did the same. Footsteps suddenly moved toward them, beams of lights crisscrossing the ground.

  Her hand crept along her side, her fingers curling around the grip of her pistol. She peered over the leaves and twigs at the approaching figures clad in the green-and-white uniforms, recognizing utility belts on their waists and what most likely were armaments hanging from their sides. Her heart pounded. Every muscle in her body was taut.

  No escape. She couldn’t engage an emergency PMaT transport. The signal was dead.

  And if those nils took one step closer, she and her team were too.

  2

  Theo followed the body snatchers to the front door, where he caught up with Zeke. His former partner had spent the past ten minutes talking to Monsieur Lafleur, while Theo was briefed by the ME. “Mummification, cause unknown until the autopsy,” Theo told Zeke, summarizing in six words the ME’s five-minute lecture. “Was the landlord able to give you anything more?”

  “Not a thing.” Zeke stepped inside. “Neighbors on the east are snowbirds. Don’t show up until January. The house behind is vacant. Amy and a couple uniforms woke up every neighbor across the street. Nothing.” Zeke turned his wrist. “Damn. It’s after midnight. I haven’t even started the paperwork—”

  The trill of Theo’s cell phone cut off Zeke’s complaint. He flipped it open. “Petrakos.” The nasal voice of a cyber-squad technician filled Theo’s ear as he walked back into the living room, Zeke trailing behind. Some crazy driver on Fourth Street sideswiped the guy they’d sent to the scene. No, no injuries, but his car had two flat tires and a possible bent axle. The only other technician available lived in Tampa and was off duty.

  “We’ll wait here until one,” Theo offered. “If you can’t reach her by then, someone can pick up the laptop from evidence tomorrow.”

  “One?” Zeke asked as Theo closed the phone. “Oh, man. That’s forty minutes wasted. I have to start the report on Ol’ Crunchy here.”

  Liza stepped up behind Zeke. “Thought you guys were finished.”

  “I am,” Zeke said. “Sergeant Kind and Generous isn’t.”

  Theo motioned toward the bedroom. “We have to wait for the cyber-squad tech from Tampa. Unless you want—”

  “To take custody of that thing?” Liza snorted softly. “The good state of Florida wants their techs to unscramble hard drives and such. Not us little local CSIs.”

  “So we wait until the good state of Florida decides to arrive,” Zeke put in. “It could be hours, if bridge traffic’s backed up because of holiday parties and all.”

  “Both of you don’t have to wait,” Liza said. “Where’s Amy? You rode in with her, didn’t you, Zeke?”

  “She went back to run ID on the deceased. I told her I’d catch a ride with Theo.”

  Liza looked up at Theo. “Want me to drop Zeke back at the station so he can start the paperwork?”

  “Fine by me,” Theo said.

  “Liza, mi amor. You’re a lifesaver.” Zeke grabbed her hand, brought it to his lips.

  She tugged it back, laughing. “You really don’t want to kiss that. You don’t know where it’s been. Or rather, I think you do.”

  He dropped her hand, his eyes wide in an expression of horror.

  She wriggled her fingers in his face. “C’mon, big boy. Let’s get you back safe and sound before the bogeymen come out.”

  The front door closed behind them. A moment later a patrol officer pushed it open. “Sergeant Petrakos? Detective Martinez said you’re waiting for the cyber squad. Want me to run over to the 7-Eleven, get you a cup before I leave?”

  Theo appreciated the offer and said so. He fished in his pocket for two singles and handed them to the officer. “Black, one sugar.”

  The front door creaked closed again. A few seconds after that, a car door slammed, followed by the grating noise of tires over gravel. Then silence descended upon the small bungalow. Theo went back into the bedroom, peeled off his tan cotton blazer, and tossed it over the footboard of the neatly made bed. He stared down at the greenish-yellow screen.

  Coded symbols continued to dance across it. He hadn’t found a power source or wi-fi router. His initial tapping on what he thought to be the keypad didn’t stop the flow of symbols, so it was more than likely not a screen-saver program. But the computer was obviously doing something.

  With a start he realized he had no idea how to turn it off. He really wished the tech from the cyber squad would get here, because if his attempt to shut down the laptop resulted in data loss, it’d be his ass—as squad sergeant—on the line, even though Zeke was primary on the case.

  He glanced at his watch. Twelve-forty. Technically, he was now on vacation—seven days of sleeping late, playing his guitar, and, if he got up the energy, trimming the oleander bushes that threatened to overtake his backyard.

  Zeke and Amy knew where to find him if something broke in this case. At the moment, there was no good news: no witnesses, nothing taken—as far as the landlord could tell. No motive for homicide, if that’s what this was. The landlord said Wayne had been a quiet but likable guy. Right now, they had little to go on. It could be days, even weeks, before the ME’s lab analysis, along with information from the usual feelers Zeke and Amy put out, would come back.

  He wandered back to the living room, straining his ears for the sound of the tech’s car. The clock on the wall said quarter to one. He shoved his hands in the front pockets of his pants, rocking back on his heels. He hated blank time like this, with nothing to do but listen to his own thoughts. He wished he had his guitar. It was an old 1962 Martin OM, beat up after almost fifty years of being carted around and played by its previous owners, but he loved it, loved its sound. Messing around with some of Traveling Ed Teja’s blues tunes would keep him occupied so he didn’t start thinking about Camille again, didn’t start thinking about what he’d thought was a wonderful relationship that was, in reality, a sham….

  He shut his eyes. It all made sense now. Her encouraging him to work overtime. Her erratic schedule at the restaurant. Their constantly depleted checking account. And her moods: wild and intense one moment, deep and despairing the next.

  He was a cop. He of all people should’ve known his wife was a cokehead.

  But he hadn’t. He hadn’t even caught on that she wasn’t really Camille Starlton. Out of jail after convictions on drug charges in Alabama, she stole another woman’s identity and lived under that name until she met him. Marrying him gave her a new last name, a new identity. The fact that she was also marrying a cop was evidently her idea of a private joke.

  Ripping his heart out had been one hell of a punch line.

  Damn it, Petrakos, stop it!

&
nbsp; He ran one hand over his face. He should never have agreed to wait, but he thought he’d have Zeke to talk to. Zeke with his amateur comedy routines and leering grin. A walking encyclopedia of herbs and vitamins. Madly in love with his wife, who also was madly in love with him.

  Lucky bastard.

  The sound of a car engine caught his attention. He opened the front door, stepped out onto the porch, and watched the white headlights swing his way. The green-and-white patrol car returning. The officer, cell phone to his ear, nodded to him through the open window, then held out a capped paper container as Theo approached.

  Theo accepted the coffee with a smile, then retreated inside.

  He should have brought his guitar.

  At twelve fifty-five, his cell phone trilled again. No, they hadn’t reached the off-duty technician. It was Christmas week and she must be out of town. But, yes, someone would pick it up from the evidence room late tomorrow afternoon—three o’clock, maybe. That was the earliest they’d have a tech available.

  “Just for the record, I have no idea how to shut this thing down. There’s no keyboard, no mouse.”

  “You sure it’s a computer?”

  “Looks like a laptop, yeah. Has a screen.”

  “Hold down the power button until it shuts off.”

  “There isn’t one.” Not one he could find, anyway.

  “There’s always a power button. If you don’t see it next to the keyboard—”

  “There’s no keyboard.”

  “—check the sides.”

  Theo turned the unit around and upside down. “Nope.”

  “It’s running on batteries. Look for a panel on the bottom.”

  “The bottom and the sides are solid. No panels, no buttons. No keyboard,” Theo repeated. “Just a screen and a touch pad that does nothing. It’s like the screen saver is stuck. I can’t even get a cursor.”

  He envisioned the tech raising his gaze heavenward in exasperation. “Fine. Close the top. It’ll go into hibernate mode. Don’t worry.”

  Easy for you to say, Theo thought as he tabbed the phone off. He grabbed his jacket and pulled it on. You’re not dealing with a dead man who looks like a thousand-year-old mummy and a computer that looks like it’s from a couple hundred years in the future.

  He pushed the screen down until it was flat with the unit, then gave it one more gentle shove. He waited a few seconds. No grinding noises like when his hard drive was unhappy. No warning beeps. Nothing.

  With a shrug, Theo tucked the laptop under his arm and, juggling his half-empty cup of coffee, locked the apartment’s door with the one of the keys the landlord had provided and headed for his car.

  The armed nils had walked right by them, lights casting left and right, but Jorie couldn’t take a chance bliss luck would surface twice. She moved her team deeper into the shrubbery.

  So she didn’t know someone had appropriated a key piece of Guardian equipment until Tam Herryck poked her and pointed to the data—still annoyingly erratic—on her scanner screen.

  “Hell’s wrath, he’s taking the T-MOD!” Jorie’s voice was a harsh whisper. She pushed the leafy branch shielding her face down another minmeter or two as a tall male in a tan jacket and dark pants loped across the lawn. Now she could see him clearly through the enhanced view of her ocular. He had Danjay’s unit firmly tucked in the crook of his left arm.

  “But not Agent Wain’s scanner or transcomm.” The glow from Herryck’s scanner reflected eerily on her face. “I’m still getting readings from them inside the structure.”

  Double hell’s wrath! She had to recover the unit—over and above the fact that it was Guardian tech on a nil world, it was the only clue they had about Danjay’s death. But they needed the scanner and transcomm as well in order to be able to synthesize all the information on the herd and its movements. She didn’t think they had that many more hours of darkness left.

  “Could be worse,” Trenat posited in a hushed tone. “The armed security personnel could have appropriated it. This nil’s not in uniform. I don’t see any obvious armaments. We should be able to recover the unit without a problem.”

  “Good observation, Trenat.” Jorie had come to the same conclusion. A civilian. Probably a delivery person, low on the hierarchy, untrained in defense or combat.

  Herryck shifted her scanner in Jorie’s direction. “Sir, the T-MOD’s definitely leaking.”

  Which meant a zombie would track and kill that defenseless human too, in the same way one had killed Danjay. Jorie studied the nil with her unshielded left eye as he stepped into the wide glow of a streetlight almost directly in front of her team’s position. Male, human, with a medium skin tone and short dark hair. Straight nose, clean jawline. She switched to oc-view on her left, zoomed in on his face. Not young like Trenat, but not old. Younger than her brother, Galin, definitely, though his dark eyes were bracketed by squint wrinkles, his mouth by smile lines. He looked to be within a couple of years of her own age.

  Far too young to die. Especially in the jaws of a zombie.

  She made a quick decision. “We need that unit. Herryck, I’m on the nil male. You and Trenat access the structure, get the transcomm and scanner, and bring them back to the ship. I’ll transit up when I have the unit.”

  Herryck nodded. “Understood, sir.”

  “Trenat?”

  “Understood, Commander.”

  “Remember, no direct contact with nils unless absolutely unavoidable.” She added the reminder more for Trenat’s sake than Herryck’s. Tam knew the difference between a tracker—a hunter of zombies—and an agent, whose sole assignment it was to infiltrate and utilize the local cultures so that the trackers could come dirtside and do their jobs quickly and efficiently. But this was Trenat’s first tour. His technical talents notwithstanding, he had a tendency to gawk.

  Two heads nodded at her. She turned, catching the man’s form out of the corner of her eye. “I’m moving now.”

  “Sir.” Herryck’s hushed voice stopped her as she straightened, twigs and branches poking into her neck and back. “The land vehicle, sir. Have a care. They don’t appear to navigate very safely on this world.”

  “Recommendation noted, Lieutenant. You both have a care too. See you back on board.”

  Theo plopped the laptop on the Crown Vic’s threadbare front seat, turned the key in the ignition, then reached for his container of coffee on the dash. The sedan’s back tire clipped the curb as he pulled away, jostling his hand, and he spilled lukewarm coffee down the front of his shirt and on his right pants leg.

  Oh, hell. He gripped the wheel as he pulled up to the stop sign, aware of the damp sensation on his skin and the sickly sweet smell of stale coffee. He wasn’t that far from his house. He could kill two birds with one stone if he took five, ten minutes to stop there, change his clothes, and pick up the portable sound system that Lieutenant Stevens wanted to borrow. He could drop the laptop and the sound system off, sleep late tomorrow.

  Sounded good.

  He tapped his blinker and turned left.

  They definitely didn’t navigate very well on this world, but fortunately ground traffic was sparse as Jorie followed the man in his vehicle. She’d worked enough surveillance to know how to keep her quarry in her sights and yet stay out of his. Her scanner on the seat beside her—functioning properly now that she was out of the dead zone around Danjay’s structure—tracked Danjay’s T-MOD and would alert her to any sudden departures from his current heading.

  At the eight-minute mark, he turned again. Two minutes after that, he slowed considerably. So did she, dropping back under the cover of darkness, her vehicle’s running lights extinguished. This was a locale of small structures, most likely personal residences, many adorned with small colored lights. His wasn’t, she noted as she cruised past. The aft end of his land vehicle was just visible around the back corner of his structure.

  The narrow road curved around a small park intermittently bordered by a low wooden fence. She guided her
land vehicle onto a grassy area, disengaged the power pack, and tucked her scanner into place in her utility belt. Her rifle was on the floor. She looped the strap over her head, flipped her oc-set in place, and, hugging the shadows, trotted back toward his residence.

  The night air tickled her bare arms and legs like a flirtatious lover, alternately warm then cool. The foliage scraping her skin had a strong yet pleasant scent. It reminded her of Paroo, whose tropical islands were renowned for huge blossoming trees and sweet sand beaches. She’d been there with Lorik. An error she didn’t intend to repeat.

  If Lorik had been the one in possession of the T-MOD, she might well have let the zombie get him first, clamping its serrated jaws over Lorik’s fine-featured dark face, chewing on Lorik’s pale hair—which at one time had reminded her of the color of starlight—as it sucked the life essence from Lorik’s damned brilliant mind. Then she’d retrieve the unit. The thought momentarily cheered her. Other than Danjay’s death, things had been going well on this mission until the critical Guardian tracking equipment was separated. Now they were losing precious time. The herd had to be moving, or else Danjay would still be alive. That was his second mistake, after not keeping scrupulous watch on his shields. A herd moved because the craving set in. And the youngest, being on the outside of the hierarchy, moved first, taking individual kills, creating scent trails, drawing the mature herd drones and eventually the powerful C-Prime—the controller of the herd—to them.

  A good tracker could almost instinctually feel when the craving started to build. In her thirty-two active hunts, she’d never failed to spot the first signs of a craving.

  Danjay may have failed, but his data would not. Jorie skirted along a high hedge in a half crouch. She was at the residence and cover was slim. She glanced down again at the scanner secured to her belt. Shields at max. No intruders. And the T-MOD…