"Well, it was good thinking. Although…yeah, I don't think Banks will ever forgive me for letting you out of my sight."
"She's the one who called you away," she pointed out and scowled at her captor, who still nursed a very, very painful chest.
"That’s true, but I’m sure she won’t see it that way." He looked up as Banks jogged over. She had reached them surprisingly quickly, given that she’d set up about two hundred and fifty yards away from where they now stood and carried her rifle.
"How are you?" the agent asked, a little out of breath. "Are you hurt? Fucking hell, I knew I shouldn’t have let you out of my sight."
"I'm fine too, by the way," Bobby interjected.
"I don't really care about you," the woman said bluntly and he laughed.
"It’s nice to see you again too, Special Agent," he said.
"I'm fine," Vickie said. "And if you take me out of the shop, I swear I'll run away and stick it out with them anyway."
"We'll talk about that later," Banks said. She turned her attention to the two men they’d overpowered.
Taylor moved over to where the first man sprawled a short distance away, grasped him by the collar, and hauled him roughly to shove him beside his partner.
"What will we do about these two?" he asked.
Banks shrugged, her expression hard. "They can choose between having their skulls crushed or heading out on the next flight to the Zoo. I'm feeling reasonable."
"How about you go fuck yourself instead?" the first man asked from behind his broken nose.
Taylor scowled at him and raised his hand to give him a smack across the face but stopped after a couple of inept whirs of motion from his suit. Without an HUD, he'd needed to calibrate the damn thing by touch and there were some issues to deal with still.
The man laughed, which prompted him to pick up the pistol the kidnapper had dropped and shoot him in the knee.
His scream of pain carried into the dry air of the desert, not that there was anyone within ten miles to hear him.
"Now that'll cost you your life in the Zoo," he told the man with a chuckle. "That's assuming you don't have seriously mad hopping skills."
"Well, I think we need to get clear of the area," Banks said. "I don't know if anyone might have heard the gunfire or not. Taylor, do you want to take these two in your four-by-four and I'll drive their SUV with Vickie and Bobby?"
"Fuck no," he said vehemently. "That's a new car and if they bleed on the leather, you might have to deal with them being shot. You take Vickie in my car and I'll take Tweedledee and Tweedledum-ass in their SUV. Let me know where you need them to be dropped off. Bungees, do you mind helping me?"
"No problem," his friend said with a small grin and cracked his knuckles.
"I'll text you the details," Banks said. "Come on, Vickie."
Chapter Twenty-Nine
"So, you'll keep working with us?" Taylor asked as they exited Jackson's.
It wasn’t that late but still the kind of hour that prompted Taylor to contemplate a late day tomorrow or maybe even simply giving the two the morning off.
They had earned it, having finished off the five mech suits they had to repair with a day to spare before their next shipment came in. They could have the morning off and perhaps some of the afternoon too.
"I eventually got Niki to agree that your property was basically the safest place in the city for me," Vickie said. She seemed to stagger a little, and he placed a hand on her shoulder to steady her. "You built a damn fortress in there, so even though there were mistakes made, I'll stick it out with you two losers. She will keep a much closer eye on what we're doing, but other than that, things should be about the same."
"So, what—will she move into the strip mall with us?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You do know she's practically lived in Vegas since you started working with us, right?"
"No, but that doesn't surprise me," the woman said with a shrug. "Even though we're only cousins, she's always been more like the big sister I never had and kind of wanted, but not really."
"Well, she cares about you a ton, and that's something, I guess," Taylor said. "Not like there are too many people in the world who care for folks enough to help them like Banks did you."
"I guess you're right." She pulled the door open and stepped out into the parking lot. "Still, having her looking over my shoulder can be a pain, honestly."
"I know how you feel. I’m fairly sure she wants to keep an eye on me too. She said something about me being an investment when it came to her task force and wanting to make sure it paid off or something."
"Sure, that's what she says. But it sounds more like she wants to keep an eye on you for other possibly nefarious reasons."
"And I’m sure you're not using nefarious right," Taylor said with a shrug. "I don't really care, though. She's a good enough agent, partner, and even sometimes drinking partner, but there's nothing else going on there."
"What are you talking about?" Bobby asked.
"There is no chemistry at all," he explained. "Only some light chit-chat here and there but there’s nothing more to make of that."
"Sure, keep saying that," Vickie said. "You might actually believe it one day."
"Yeah, so what kind of trouble did you get into that might have had you shipped out to the Zoo?" he asked.
"None of your business, that's what," she replied quickly.
"Oh, well, I’ve heard that one thrown at me fairly often before." He chuckled. "But there's no reason for you to be fussy about it. I'm only saying that since she pulled you out of a tight situation, you might be wholly biased in your views."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing. Ignore me. I'm a little wasted."
They were interrupted when another group exited the bar behind them, laughing loudly and generally making a racket while Marcus the bouncer eyed them closely. Taylor wondered how close the man had been to throwing them out before they decided to leave of their own accord.
"Hey, big guy, I wouldn't bother with that one," one of the men shouted and strolled over to where Taylor, Bobby, and Vickie stood. "With that kind of haircut, you have to know you're dealing with a Dina van Dyke situation here."
Vickie scowled at him and tried to take a step away as he approached.
"I told you," Taylor said and shook his head. "Humans are animals, only a little more intelligent but not sharp enough to know when their own lizard brains are playing them. Do you know how to fight?"
"You mean like biting and scratching and then running away?" she asked. "Because I have a black belt in those."
"You might want to work on a more effective form of fighting," he said lightly. "It might give you a leg up if you are ever caught doing your hacking and are sent to the Zoo. You'll have something to help you stay alive for a little while."
"Gee, thanks for your confidence in my abilities," she said and rolled her eyes.
"Hey, man, didn't you hear what I said?" the drunk oaf asked and patted Taylor on the shoulder. "You're digging in infertile soil there, pal, and you don't look like the kind of guy who can turn a no into a yes—although I'm sure if you tried hard enough, you might be able to change that."
Vickie looked at Taylor. "With that said, do you still think I should learn to fight?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. You might benefit from a little demonstration. What do you think? It'd have to be a little quicker than I'd like but hey, you never know when you'll learn something."
"Stop ignoring me," the drunk man shouted. "Stop messing around with your girl and pay attention."
Calmly, he turned to face the man in question. The heckler was big, powerfully built, and had the look of someone who liked to get into fistfights. Still, he offered nothing he hadn't faced before.
"She's not my girl, pal," he said and his deep voice rumbled. "And she’s not my sister either since I can see that's where your brain will go next. She's my employee, and if yo
u think I'll let an inbred pissant talk to her like that, I'll have to teach you a few manners."
The man took a step back instinctively but shook his head as if to convince himself that he was still in the driver's seat of this engagement. "You have to be crazier than I thought if you think she'll put—"
That was about as much as Taylor intended to hear from him. He caught him quickly by his collar and yanked him closer, leaned forward, and drove his forehead into the man's nose. A soft crunch and a gargled scream of pain followed as he sagged, clutching his face.
His friends rushed forward to help but stopped when he stepped closer and stood over their grounded comrade.
Marcus moved tentatively, possibly to intervene, and he shook his head to tell the bouncer he had it under control.
"Now, do you guys want to try me?" he asked and tilted his head to regard them with open amusement tinged with a warning. "Or do you want to go ahead and call an ambulance for your one-pump chump of a friend here?"
The other three already doubted their chances, but a glance at the bouncer who stood poised to join the altercation quelled whatever fight they still had in them and they pulled back. One called an ambulance and Marcus stepped casually into his usual position in the doorway of Jackson's.
"And that's how you deescalate a situation by rapidly escalating it," Taylor said and turned to Vickie. "Now, do you want to share a cab? I kind of want to make it an early night. There's this place Banks introduced me to that serves the best breakfast in the city. Seriously, the food there tastes like what my grandmother used to make."
"It sounds like there's a good dose of nostalgia there," she said.
"Yeah, I'll take you to try it sometime. You'll see what I mean."
Chapter Thirty
"I'm right here, standing in the hills outside of Los Angeles," Carey said into his phone. "There were reports of Zoo monsters sighted in the area but we were unable to enter while the fires raged. Our brave firefighters have now extinguished the blazes with their valiant efforts and have begun to pull out of the area. We’ve monitored the situation closely and are reasonably sure that only the fire teams have been allowed entry. We’ve taken this small window of opportunity to sneak in while odd patches still smolder around us. Since there was no sighting of the monsters reported from the population centers around us, we have to assume the beasts were caught in the fires."
"And if they were here,” Zach interjected on the live ZooTube broadcast, “we'll be able to get verifiable proof that the government has been hiding the fact that there are Zoo monsters on US Soil. Bodies have been found everywhere from New York to Seattle, and no one's done a damn thing. They're blaming Bigfoot, for God's sake."
Corey nodded. It had been five months since he'd agreed to team up with the other Zootuber to boost both their viewer counts, but he could tell that his supposed partner tried to steal the viewers to his own channel by his attempt to present as many conspiracy theories as possible. He didn't even bother to research what he was trying to say. Merely saying everything loudly and calling everything a conspiracy was still popular with the Zootuber audience.
He'd thought it would be a passing fancy, but some of the original films and series on the streaming service emphasized the conspiracy theories, so they had become more and more popular.
"Anyway, we've walked through this area and we can't help but notice how devastating the fires were," Corey continued. "There are many people still working to continue to keep the fires in check, but this is the area where reporters and even a couple of firemen reported seeing animals that definitely weren't the kind you'd see in this part of the country. Not only that, no local zoo has reported any animals missing, so they won't be able to pull the same shit they tried in Florida."
They continued to move through the ravaged aftermath of the fire’s destruction. It had been a huge pain in the ass—and a costly exercise—to get clearance from the fire department via someone who needed hot cash in a hurry. He wasn’t even sure the expense was necessary as they didn’t really expect to find anything. All things considered, they wanted to drum up their new series based on a game that would be released in a couple of months.
Still, you never knew. They might be the first channel of their type to actually find something.
He pressed pause on the recording when they reached a charred log and he took a deep breath. "Goddammit, I can't remember the last time I breathed regular fresh air."
"Stop complaining, man." Zach looked a little out of breath. "And get back on the stream. We have over thirty thousand viewers on this, and if we play it up more, they'll spread the word for us. Won't need to get that marketing gig."
"Fine, but if I wanted to do this much walking, I would have stuck to my job as a bartender." He restarted the live stream. "Sorry about that, guys. We needed a second to get our bearings. Right now, we're headed roughly north-northwest to where the fire was the most intense and—what's that?"
His partner turned quickly and squinted at a burnt shape on the ground. "It looks like a bobcat. They have those around here, right?"
"I don't think so," Corey said as he moved closer, picked up a nearby stick that was mostly intact, and poked the corpse gently. Not many other channels would go that far.
"Nope, not a bobcat," the other man said. "They have short tails, don't they?"
"And no…uh, spike at the end," he responded softly. "What is it—oh, God. I think I'm going to puke!”
After the third jab, the brittle skin broke and a dark-blue sludgy liquid began to ooze from the break to spread over the ashes.
"That's no bobcat," Zach said excitedly. "That's…that's a monster. Something that bleeds blue and has a stinger on its tail? That's totally a Zoo monster."
He was right, Corey realized. He leaned in and let the camera on his phone get a better shot of the creature. "Holy shit… You saw it here first folks. Tell your friends that Corey and Zach have found proof that there are alien monsters on US soil."
The chances were that people would simply say it was a fake, but he didn't care. They'd found it and no one would be able to take that away from them.
Silent Death
The story continues with Sacrificial Weapon, coming soon to Amazon.com.
Author Notes
January 18, 2019
Thank you for reading this story and joining me in the back for a little weekly update. I hope you enjoyed Taylor, Bungees, Niki and Vickie. I have finished reviewing book 03 and waiting to get into book 04 super soon!
I don’t want to get too Behind the Scenes (check out our podcast here!) but Taylor’s story is a reaction to something I’ve been feeling for a while promulgated by the media.
WEEKLY UPDATE
Last year, I had set a goal for our company to accomplish publishing 400 books.
We didn’t make it
(We were between 300 and 400 books released somewhere) but more than that, the goal I set wasn’t the end goal.
The end goal was ‘Test Ourselves.’
Meaning, I wanted to push our company so hard, we knew what we could accomplish and to grow our backlist, providing us a large group of stories for our fans to read. It was a “BAHG” which is short for Big Hairy Audacious Goal.
Otherwise known in the company as ‘Are you fu##ing kidding me?’
In 2018, were the theme was “Let’s prepare for 2019 where we do 400 books” we built an infrastructure towards the goal of making 400 happen. We put on our thinking hats and sharpened our pencils to figure out how to ‘get’ to 400. What stories were we going to do? Who (exactly) were going to be doing it? How would we get 400 covers done? How many words of editing would we need to be able to accomplish.
(The answer is a metric sh##load.)
We went through 2019 running like a bunch of teenagers trying to catch free cash raining from the heavens… It was a lot of fun, but man o man was it dangerous.
We broke (more) than a few things but in the end, we survived. We are stronger, more ca
pable and more than that we are wise beyond our years.
How can I say that? Because wisdom comes with doing, and the more you do, the more wisdom you earn.
On average (a very odd word, but best I can use) a publishing company will put out up to 24 books a year.
Some, like Baen Books do about 72 a year.
We published 4-5 times Baen Books and twelve times an average publishing company.
So, we earned a LOT of wisdom pushing the company and our creativity. Some of the wounds we suffered I’m sure will heal in 2020. Some won’t.
So as we enter into 2020 we have a new theme – the theme is…
The Year of Unf##ing ourselves.
How’s THAT for a theme?
;-)
Ad Aeternitatem,
Michael Anderle
Connect with The Authors
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Other Zoo Books
BIRTH OF HEAVY METAL
He Was Not Prepared (1)
She Is His Witness (2)
Backstabbing Little Assets (3)
Blood Of My Enemies (4)
Get Out Of Our Way (5)
APOCALYPSE PAUSED
Fight for Life and Death (1)
Get Rich or Die Trying (2)
Silent Death (Cryptid Assassin Book 2) Page 22
