The Down Home Zombie Blues

by Linnea Sinclair

  “Because you left him.”

  “That makes no sense! Lorik is a professional. Why can’t he act like one?”

  “Because you left him,” Theo repeated, and realized he was damned glad she had. “You made the decision to leave. You took that control away from him.”

  Jorie looked at him for a long moment, and he was aware—very aware—of the bed they sat on and the softness of her mouth, and of a shared pain. It would be so very easy to kiss her again, to touch her, to numb that pain—his and hers—for a little while.

  But the space commandos were in his spare bedroom, and the zombies were theoretically just outside his door.

  And Jorie Mikkalah was not the type for a quickie.

  Neither, he noted with a self-effacing mental nod, was he. Maritana County had no lack of badge bunnies. Not one had made it to his bed.

  “So how do we prove that Lorik’s wrong?” he asked.

  “We don’t know he’s wrong. I only know that we cannot afford to ignore the possibility of the Tresh being here. My only option”—she drew a deep breath—“is to establish a second mission. Very covert. One only you and I know about.”

  A second mission? He was flattered, but: “I know Rordan’s a pain and Jack’s not sure who’s in charge, but I thought Tammy was your friend.”

  “She is. But I won’t risk her career on an illegal mission.”

  He understood that. “What do you want me to do?”

  “I have to set these up first.” She motioned to the crates. “Then, Sergeant Petrakos, we should go to your security department.”

  “We go where?”

  “Where you are a sergeant.”

  “It’s restricted. I can’t—” Walk in there with an alien one-woman war machine. She had no ID. There was no way he could get her a visitor’s badge. Though if he walked in with her by his side, she might not need one. But Jorie would definitely be noticed in her shorts and long sweater. At the very least, he had to find her something else to wear. Unless…“You want me to show you the building where I work?” Maybe she only wanted to gauge the size of the department, in case they needed backup.

  She was shaking her head. “It would help to see all incidents of zombie attacks that happened before I arrived. Information my ship doesn’t know because we couldn’t recover everything from our agent’s tech.”

  As far as Theo knew, there had been no other zombie attacks. At least, not in Bahia Vista. And since neighboring police departments didn’t routinely send lists of their homicides—or any other crimes—to his, the only way to get that kind of information was through a search of the data on VICAP and FCIC. Zeke had probably already put in requests for all cases of spontaneous mummification both locally and statewide. But a positive hit wasn’t the same as having a case file. Answers could take days, even weeks, especially during the holidays. Granted, Theo as a sergeant might be able to escalate a request. But he was on vacation. Poking his nose into Martinez’s and Holloway’s case was bound to raise questions.

  Questions that could easily result in an implant and a trip to Paroo for Zeke or Amy. Yet by protecting his friends, he could well be risking the lives of everyone in Bahia Vista. Everyone in Maritana County.

  Theo leaned his elbows on his knees and dropped his head into his hands for a moment, wishing he could suddenly wake up from this nightmare. Then he straightened.

  Everything had changed and he hadn’t even seen it happen. What did he have to do, walk around with his gun clipped to his belt, his damned badge on a damned chain around his neck, just to remind him to think like a cop?

  His sole reason for not getting someone like Zeke Martinez or David Gray involved had just disappeared. This was an illegal mission, Jorie had said. One outside the boundaries of the Guardians’ knowledge. Therefore, revealing Jorie’s presence—and purpose—here to Zeke or, hell, to the entire BVPD wouldn’t result in a trip to her ship or ultimately to Paroo for anyone involved. Because her captain would be the one to order that, and there was no way Jorie could afford to let her captain know about this second mission—or those participating in it.

  But would Commander Mikkalah be willing to break a regulation, an oath, that he suspected she held inviolable?

  There was only one way to find out.

  13

  “It is the oldest of Guardian regulations. It was in force for centuries before I was even born. Petrakos, you have no idea what you’re asking of me.” Jorie pinned him with a hard stare, then turned back to the futuristic gizmos she was assembling in the middle of his bedroom floor.

  She was calling him Petrakos again. “But—”

  “No.”

  “Jorie, there’s no other way.” He squatted next to her. “Lorik and your captain have you backed up against a wall, don’t you see that? You need our help.”

  “No.”

  “You said it yourself: this is an unofficial mission. No one will know—”

  “That I betrayed the Guardians’ existence to a nil world? That I violated the most sacred of my oaths? Even assuming your people were capable of being trusted with that information, I would know.” She shot him another hard glance. “I would know.”

  “And this funny stuff you do with your computers,” he waved his hand at the assortment of parts in front of her, “this violates nothing?”

  “That’s not the same.”

  “It is. It’s for a greater purpose, a greater good.” A phrase echoed suddenly in his mind, and he spoke before he realized what he was saying: “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.” Christ, he was quoting Star Trek to her now, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember if it was Spock or Kirk who said the line.

  Surprise flickered across her features, her lips parting slightly. Then her eyes narrowed. “It’s the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. If you insist on citing Vekran sacred text, at least cite it correctly.” She inserted a thin metal card into a small box she’d been working on for the past few minutes, then snapped the cap on.

  This time he stared at her. Sacred—No. Don’t ask. You don’t want to know.

  She shoved herself to her feet. “I have to speak with Lieutenant Herryck. She’s due to return to the ship shortly. Ensign Trenat will transport down.”

  Which meant, as Jorie had explained to him earlier, that she couldn’t spend so much uninterrupted time working on her secret project in Theo’s bedroom. Tammy, a longtime friend and colleague, accepted Jorie’s occasional absences during a mission.

  Jack was another matter.

  Theo watched the bedroom door close behind her, then got to his feet, retrieved his worn pair of Top-Siders from his closet, and slipped them on. He stuck his head in the spare bedroom just long enough to see her talking quietly to Tammy. It was almost ten o’clock and he hadn’t had a cup of coffee yet. No wonder he wasn’t thinking clearly. Given the lack of caffeine in his system, he was surprised he was still alive.

  He tried not to think about how tenuous an existence he might have—coffee or no coffee—and instead concentrated on spooning in enough grounds for six cups. He poked the switch, and his coffeemaker responded with its familiar gurgle and hiss.

  Now that he’d found a way to circumvent the usual Paroo trip for any newcomers, he still had to convince her to let him tell Zeke what was going on. Zeke, Amy Holloway, maybe David from FDLE. Barrington over at the sheriff’s office. Other names, faces, ran through his mind.

  She’d managed to secure his laser pistol without Rordan catching on. She’d managed to beam down boxes of tech. Getting a few more weapons shouldn’t be a problem.

  They’d need them. He’d already seen one zombie feeding frenzy, and those were juveniles. There was no way, if he and Jorie had to handle an adult frenzy, they could do so with only the two of them. He could still hear the foosh! foosh! foosh! of the green circles in the air. It made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

  No, they’d need help.

  He was leaning against his kitch
en counter, halfway through his first cup of coffee, when she walked in.

  “I don’t like the data I’m seeing,” she said. She was frowning and, even though she was speaking to him, Theo had the feeling that the majority of her brain was focused miles away.

  “The zombies are moving?”

  “They should be. They’re not.” She walked past him, stopping at his kitchen window. She rested one hand on the marble sill, her fingers tapping lightly in some silent refrain. “Lorik calls it bliss luck. He feels the C-Prime’s weakening.”

  “And you don’t.”

  She stared out the window, her face in profile. Her fingers stopped tapping. “I need your land vehicle. Something is happening. Bring that G-One I gave you. We’re going to find out just what it is.”

  Jorie so very much missed a decent four-seater gravripper with a locator system. Left, right, left, right in this large land vehicle was incredibly inaccurate. And a waste of time when they had no time to waste. Something was wrong with the way the zombies were acting. Or not acting, in this case.

  She didn’t know what bothered her more: the fact that she couldn’t pinpoint the problem or the fact that she almost could.

  It was as if the answer was just out of reach, hovering at the edges of her mind. But she couldn’t come up with it. Even running theories past Tamlynne hadn’t helped. And Theo—Petrakos, she reminded herself. Petrakos was like a one-note symphony: my people can help. My people can help.

  He started again while they were momentarily stopped at the intersection of two streets, waiting for the approval of the dangling colored lights before they could proceed. “But you must have worked with some local police—security agencies—when you’ve tracked these things before.”

  “We no longer do so on nil worlds,” she told him, studying a large expanse of green on her right while the scanner was integrating the next data update. The green space was very much like a park, except for the nils navigating it in small, square, open-air vehicles. Others walked, stopping only to swing long sticks in the air. But she could see nothing there to strike. Very odd.

  “Why?”

  “It caused wars. Cities against cities, nations against nations. They want our tech. Then they want participation and representation in our council. But they’re not yet at the point where they can comprehend what that entails.” She glanced at her scanner, then over at Petrakos, as his vehicle glided forward. “Turn left, next chance, please. Did your security chief simply hand you weapons with no training?”

  He slowed the vehicle as they came to another set of colored lights over the traffic way. “I had to go through the police academy. I was trained to handle weapons. It wouldn’t take all that much for the Guardians to train us.”

  For the Guardians to train nils? Jorie doubted this entire planet was comprised of people who could handle weapons in the way Petrakos could. But that wasn’t the core problem. “It would take a special edict passed by the council. Then it would take an allocation of funds and of personnel. Things that are currently needed in other areas.”

  “A temporary expenditure. Once we’re trained, we’re an asset.”

  “One of limited use. It was a touch of bliss luck one of our scouts picked up zombie emissions in your remote sector. Captain Pietr almost decided against investigating. Do you hear my words? Your world has no purpose for us other than to terminate the zombie herd. Your world has nothing to offer the Guardians, nothing to offer the council.”

  “We have peanut butter,” he said as he made the turn.

  A small smile found its way to her lips in spite of her current apprehension. “So misnamed. They should call it glorious butter.” Jorie sighed and watched the power grid pulse weakly—and illogically—on her scanner. “Continue straight on, as much as possible. I’m not a senior council member. I’m not even a junior council member. I can’t change what has been in force for hundreds of years.”

  “What if we alerted only a few of the people I know we can trust? No city leaders. Just a few more eyes and ears out here. We tell them what to look for—”

  “They’d see nothing without this.” She raised her scanner.

  “But the herd—”

  “Is difficult to detect until they activate a portal. I thought you acquired knowledge on that.”

  “I’ve been trying hard to acquire knowledge, Jorie.” Theo pinned her with a hard stare. “But you have a tendency to keep me in the dark.”

  She didn’t completely understand. He was lapsing into his locale’s phrases again. “There’s insufficient light in this vehicle?”

  “What I mean is, what are we looking for, driving around?”

  “Scent trails. We need to turn left again, when possible. Do you remember what I said last night about scent trails?”

  “That zombies leave behind trails that you track on your scanner? Yeah.”

  “Zombies navigate by scent trails. The data from the scent trails is like a personal letter from them to me. You understand?”

  “These scent trails tell you what they’re going to do next?”

  “What they likely will do, yes. There’s always a chance of error.”

  “Turn left here?”

  She checked the readout again. The power-grid figures were still so weak. Hell and damn. “A bit farther.”

  Data fluctuated, flattened. A slight rise in energy, then an almost simultaneous drop. It made no sense. They should—

  Hell. And. Damn!

  “Right! Now. Turn right!” She barked out the order and was about to give an exact heading, but—damn, damn!—they weren’t in a gravripper.

  “I can’t now,” Petrakos shot back.

  A quick glance away from the scanner’s damning data to the landscape outside showed Jorie that turn now would put them into the center of a three-story building.

  “What’s going on?” he continued, with a flick of his hand at her scanner.

  What was going on was that she hoped, she prayed she was wrong. But until she got closer, until she could get a definite clear reading…Another ghost of data flickered across her screen. Her heart thumped—hard—in her chest.

  “Theo, it is essential we travel to the right.” She heard the tension in her voice and knew—by his frown—that he did too.

  “I will at the next intersection, just a few more feet. What is going on?”

  “Trouble. Very big trouble.” Hell’s wrath, sometimes she hated when she was right. Or about to be right. But she wouldn’t contact the ship until she had confirmation. Nothing like Commander Mikkalah reporting one of her nightmares to Captain Pietr to hasten her ride into career oblivion—if she was wrong.

  Theo slowed the vehicle, a low clicking sound starting as it always did when the vehicle changed direction. “What kind of trouble?”

  “Preliminary data appears to indicate the possible presence of an additional entity with the capabilities of altering PMaT emissions,” she said, as carefully as if she were sitting in Captain Pietr’s office. But this wasn’t the captain beside her. This was Theo Petrakos. He didn’t know about her nightmares. She dropped the formal edge from her tone. “This could be why nothing seems logical. It’s not the zombies alone causing the problem. It has to be an outside source. The Tresh.”

  “The—Why would they do that?”

  The data on Jorie’s screen came more quickly now that she knew what she was looking for, and she made a few key adjustments to the scanner.

  “Essentially,” she told him, “because we defeated them during the Border Wars. If they can control the zombies, they could control the—Can this vehicle not increase speed?”

  “Not here. Sorry.”

  She glanced at the small residential structures fronted by thick trees, then back to her scanner. She bit back a sigh of frustration as the data scrolled down her screen and she saw energy patterns she hadn’t seen in ten years. Masked Tresh transport trails. Tresh fuel signatures were unlike the Kedrian fleet or Guardian ships. For decades they’d perfecte
d masking them. But flying combat in the Border Wars had taught Jorie how to look for what wasn’t there.

  Which was almost exactly what she was seeing now. Almost. She had to be sure.

  “What’s in the direction we’re heading?” Water, there had to be water.

  “Gulfview. A small town center. A few bars, restaurants, some little shops—”

  “Water?”

  “The bay, yes. Why? Jorie, why would the Tresh be in Gulfview?”

  Ah. A bay. Small body of water. She risked a moment to change screens, bring up the map downloaded from seeker ’droids’ data, and integrate that with the current data. She saw the water and where they were in relation to it. Then she flipped immediately back to her tracker screen. She couldn’t afford to lose this trail, couldn’t afford to make a mistake. Not if the Tresh were here.

  “The water,” she said, her voice taut but professional. She was back in combat mode. “Direct me to the water, and I should be able to answer your question.”

  She threw an extra scrambling filter over her scanner. If the Tresh were dirtside, she didn’t want their tech picking up hers. Though they’d have to have seen the Sakanah, she realized with chilling clarity. But her ship would have seen theirs, and alarms would have immediately been sent to her scanner, her team….

  And she’d received nothing.

  So were the Tresh here, or was the information scrolling down her screen some aberration—hell’s wrath, she hated nil-tech environments—caused by Petrakos’s world?

  A small trickle of apprehension slithered again up her spine. She flipped her mouth mike down, about to open contact with the Sakanah, then stopped, fear of looking like a fool holding her back once more. If she was wrong, the mission would end for her now.

  Equally, if she was right, contacting the Sakanah could lead the Tresh directly to her and Petrakos.

  Wait. Assess. Then act. It was only a little farther.

  “This is as far as I can go.”

  She jerked her head up. A short grassy area and a wooden walkway met her gaze. Then a small sandy beach and, beyond that, a short expanse of dark-blue water. She could see the spiky outlines of buildings on a distant opposite shore.