The Down Home Zombie Blues (25 page)

“Quarter to eight is great. And thanks, Zeke. I really mean this. I didn’t want to get you two involved, but our backs are against the wall here.”

“Our? Wait. This operative. Is that the gal I met? Jorie?”

Theo hesitated. “She’s one of them,” he admitted as he pulled down his driveway. “But not the one who’s injured.”

“There are more?”

“I’ll explain when I see you.” He flipped the cell phone closed, climbed out of the SUV, and locked it. Jorie nudged open the back door—she must have turned off those sizzle shields. When he pulled the door shut behind him, she was busy making peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches. She stopped just long enough to tap at her scanner. Shields back on, he assumed, as he grabbed a can of orange soda from the fridge. Jorie had her usual glass of water. Helluva Christmas Eve dinner. No
vasilopita,
no lucky coin. But they had to eat something. He couldn’t remember the last time he had a real meal. He didn’t know when they’d get the next chance to eat one.

“We leave in fifteen minutes,” he told her, snagging half a sandwich from the plate as they stood together at the kitchen counter near the sink. That gave them plenty of time. It would take, max, twenty minutes to get to Suzanne’s veterinary clinic. Less if he ran Code 3.

“You remember what you thought when you were on the
Sakanah
? When you understood exactly who the Guardians were, why we were here?”

He bit into the sandwich, nodded, swallowed. “Yeah, I know—”

“Revealing our existence never goes well with nils. I accept this is necessary to save Tam’s life. I’m grateful. But you need to be prepared. This will not be a blissful experience, Theo.”

That, he mused, finishing off the rest of the PB&J, was probably the understatement of the century. But at least she was calling him Theo again. He took another swig of soda, then reached for his second sandwich half. “Zeke and I go back a long time. He trusts me. I trust him.” He wondered for a moment how Jorie would react when she found out Suzanne was primarily an animal doctor, not a people one, her years as an EMT notwithstanding. He shrugged it off as the least of his worries.

Right now it was more important that he and Jorie start working as a true team. “Tell me what guesses you’ve been able to come up with about the Tresh’s presence here.”

She stared past him for a moment, and he was aware of the shadows under her eyes. And he was aware, once again, of what Commander Jorie Mikkalah had to be feeling, facing. When that Tresh agent, Prow, had pointed out how alone she was, she’d said—with a chin-raised confidence Theo tagged as pure Jorie—that someone would be back for her.

But pure Jorie, Theo had learned, didn’t always tell the truth. And he doubted she’d tell a Tresh how frightened she was.

He didn’t know if the Guardians would come back for Jorie. He didn’t think Jorie knew that answer either.

She turned to him. “Once I factored in the Tresh presence here and factored in what I know they’re capable of, it all became clear. Or more clear.” She shook her head slightly. “One never completely knows with the Tresh. But my best guess, and I think you can take that as almost a certainty, is that they’ve been using your world as a breeding ground for an altered zombie. A more perfect one.”

“Like the Tresh themselves,” he put in. And then, because he’d been a cop too long and making light of a serious situation was second nature to him, he added, “Are they at least going to make them prettier?”

She shot him a narrow-eyed look, mouth pursed.

He held up both hands, one of which contained his half-eaten sandwich. “Guilty as charged. Go on.”

“I originally thought they might have acquired the code. Now I think they’ve programmed
around
it. Bypassed it somehow. My tech”—she waved one hand toward his bedroom, where Tammy lay asleep—“picked up duplicates of everything Lorik transmitted while we were out. It didn’t appear he knew what he was looking at but sent it for my input because he recognized—finally!—that he might have been wrong in his primary assessment. His report didn’t state the Tresh were involved. But he did agree that someone was tampering with the zombies. He delineated some tests to run on the next zombie we encountered. Lorik always has to be more than one hundred percent sure on everything,” she added, almost as much to herself as to him.

Theo pushed away his unease at the fact that Lorik no longer appeared to be on Jorie’s shit list. “Why do the Tresh need a more perfect zombie?”

“Not perfect so much as obedient only to them. And this
is
a guess. But it’s one I’m fairly certain of, one I’ve told you before: to control the Hatches—our ships’ gateways through space.”

He remembered that. The zombies had been built to maintain and guard the Hatches and check incoming ships for potentially deadly infections. Then something had gone terribly wrong, turning them rogue, wreaking havoc on various planets. It all had meant little to him the first time she’d explained it—was it only yesterday? Now it was all too real. And personal. The Tresh were using his world. And they would, if they could, kill his Jorie in order to keep on doing so.

“How do we stop them?” He put the empty plate in the dishwasher. It was almost time to bundle up Tammy and put her in the SUV’s backseat, along with whatever other gizmos Jorie decided they’d need.

“We can’t stop the Tresh. Even with your friend Zeke Martinez…even with your full security force.” She let out a short breath, then raked one hand through her hair. “Our only choice is to stop the zombies. Destroy any chance the Tresh have of altering them for their use.”

“All of them?” Last he asked her, she said there were over three hundred. Theo didn’t know how many more parks he could close under the guise of a wandering rabid raccoon just so they could turn the zombies into
fooshing
green circles.

“That’s what the Tresh would expect a Guardian to do: terminate the herd, starting with the juveniles. It’s standard Guardian procedure. And that’s exactly why we won’t do that.”

“Then what—”

“We must locate and terminate the C-Prime—who will be heavily guarded by the juveniles and the mature drones.” Jorie shoved herself away from the counter. “If Lorik’s last summations are correct, we only have one replication cycle—roughly six of your days—in order to do so. Or else the mutation the Tresh have programmed will progress to the next generation. Six days after that, the next. Once the hatchlings are out, nothing short of a full Guardian attack force will be able to stop them. And that’s something we no longer have.”

He followed her back to his bedroom in silence, his mind working over the import of her words. Then, while she gently woke Tammy and prepped her for the ride to the clinic, he grabbed his tac vest, heavy-duty boots, sweatshirt, and his ankle-holstered backup gun, and ducked into his bathroom to change.

Theo waited for something to go radically wrong—in keeping with everything else that had happened so far—on the drive to Suzanne Martinez’s veterinary clinic, with Tammy lying on the backseat and Jorie talking softly to her in her own language. But other than his aunt Tootie calling on his cell phone, sounding forlorn that he was working and might not make Christmas dinner tomorrow, the twenty-minute drive was uneventful. No Tresh zoomed by in X-wing fighters, firing starburst lasers at them. No zombies materialized in the intersection, slashing at the overhead traffic lights.

Traffic was sparse. He didn’t have to hit his lights or siren once.

That gave him too much time to think and only made his nerves worse when he pulled around the back of the L-shaped white stucco clinic and saw Zeke’s unmarked Crown Vic in the parking spot marked D
OCTOR
S. M
ARTINEZ
. Lights shining through the low palm trees shading the clinic’s rear windows told him his friends were inside and waiting.

Well, here we go.

He had no idea how Zeke would react to the news that outer-space aliens resided in Bahia Vista. No, he did. Every cop on patrol had had more than his or her share of Signal 20s who claimed to be the galactic emperor from Alpha Centauri or who believed that FBI agents lived in his refrigerator and Martians were camped out in his attic—which was the reason for lining his baseball cap and his underwear with aluminum foil.

And shooting BB pellets at the neighbors.

All Theo had were Jorie, her gizmos, and his Paroo cube. The latter of which, he realized as he put the SUV into park, wasn’t all that much unlike one of those high-tech toys found in a Sharper Image catalog. Or on eBay.

But helping Tammy was his main priority right now. Let Suzanne get that damned thing out of Tammy’s shoulder—he’d talk to her later about the one in his. Let Tammy be, if not overly mobile, at least able to work with Jorie on the zombie problem verbally.

Maybe that would take some of the pinched look out of Jorie’s golden-hued eyes. God knew she had enough to worry about.

So did he. Zeke was going to Baker-Act him for sure.

“How’s she doing?” he asked over his shoulder as he turned off the engine. Jorie had spent the entire trip on the floor wedged between the front and rear seats, her scanner gizmo doing whatever her scanner gizmo did to keep Tammy alive and as pain-free as possible.

“I be…okay.” Tammy’s voice was strained, weak.

He looked at Jorie. She was shaking her head. “No change.”

“Wait until I come around to help you with her.”

The back door of the clinic swung open when Theo’s boots hit the ground, the muffled sounds of dogs barking flowing out. The separate kennel wing—rebuilt to hurricane-proof specifications two years ago—was off to the right but attached to the main clinic a few feet from the back door. Zeke appeared in the doorway, silhouetted by the light behind him, rifle in one hand.

“Does Suzanne have a stretcher, a gurney?” Theo called out.

Zeke ducked back inside and reappeared moments later, pushing a gurney.

Tammy tried to sit up. Jorie moved up on the seat behind her and held her upright until Theo could slip his arms under her legs and around her back. He placed her carefully on the gurney.

“
Ay, madre mia,
so young,” Zeke said as he secured the straps around Tammy’s body. She tried to smile, but then her eyes fluttered closed.

Theo had no idea how old Tammy was. He had no idea how old Jorie was. So he only nodded and stepped back, letting Jorie go ahead of him inside.

The barking became louder, a cat meowed, the sounds filtering through the metal crash-barred door that led to the kennel wing.

“Theo!” Suzanne Martinez, in powder-blue scrubs dotted with frolicking kittens and puppies, hurried to his side and brushed a quick kiss across his cheek. She was a stocky—pleasingly plump, Aunt Tootie often said—brunette with a heart-shaped face and upturned nose. Her long hair was pulled back into a ponytail and tied with a gold bow—incongruous with her outfit and obviously a remnant of their aborted evening plans. Theo again felt a pang of regret for taking them away from their party—and quite possibly risking their lives. But not only had he not known what else to do, he truly felt this was the
best
thing to do.

He heard Zeke lock the door behind them.

Suzanne was already stroking the hair out of Tammy’s face. “Hi. I’m Suzanne Martinez.” She looked back up at Theo. “Zeke said she has something in her shoulder? Shrapnel?”

“A small device. Like a microchip, I think. Jorie can—Jorie.” He touched Jorie’s arm, taking her attention from Tammy. She’d been hovering over her lieutenant like a nervous mother hen ever since they’d arrived. He’d probably be the same way if he was in a hospital with Zeke on the gurney. “You remember Zeke Martinez? This is Suzanne, his wife.
Doctor
Suzanne Martinez.”

Suzanne nodded. “I hope Theo told you—”

Theo held up one hand, halting Suzanne’s words and explanation, he believed, of her status as a veterinarian. “Suzanne, this is Commander Jorie Mikkalah.”

“Commander?” That from Zeke, now standing next to his wife.

“And this young lady?” Suzanne asked, looking back down at Tammy.

“Lieutenant Tamlynne Herryck,” Jorie supplied.

“I be…okay,” Tammy said softly.

Jorie patted her hand, said something Theo couldn’t understand. Tammy closed her eyes again.

“Is she in immediate danger?” Suzanne asked.

“She had a small seizure about an hour ago, but she’s stable right now,” Theo said.

Suzanne looked troubled. “I assume there’s a valid reason you brought her here instead of to a regular hospital. And requested that my kennel staff be kept out of this. After all my years being a cop’s wife, I’m used to not asking. Or rather, not getting answers when I ask. But I want you to very clearly understand the difference in my skills here.” She glanced at Jorie. “He did tell you that I’m a veterinarian?”

“No,” Theo said, before Jorie could answer. “English isn’t her native language.”

“Inuktitut,” Zeke told his wife.

“Eskimo?” Suzanne’s eyes widened.

“No!” Theo said again, forcefully enough that both Zeke and Suzanne turned abruptly to him. “Zeke, I’ll…I’ll explain in a bit. But first let’s get that thing out of her, okay?”

A parrot—at least, Theo assumed it was a parrot—chose that moment to let out a raucous shriek. A cat meowed loudly in answer.

“You have companions here?” Jorie asked.

“Companions?” Theo and Suzanne said at the same time.

Jorie spread her hands, delineating something small, then something larger. “Creatures of feather and fur for emotional comfort and guidance. You use them to heal your patients?”

Suzanne eyed Jorie quizzically. “No—that is, yes. I’m a veterinarian. A…companion doctor.”

Jorie nodded solemnly and Theo saw relief spread over her face, her shoulders relaxing. “That’s the first blissful news I’ve had since—well, thank you.” She turned to Theo and laid her fingers on his hand. “Accept my regrets for doubting you.”

“Doubting me about what?”

“When you said this female was a med-tech. I was afraid the skill level…Regrets.” Jorie nodded to Suzanne again. “I was afraid she’d not have the skills because of the low level of technology on your world. But a med-tech who heals companions is the most skilled of all. Thank you.”