Blood Soaked and Contagious (28 page)

That’s all right. I enjoy doing laundry. It is much more peaceful and smells better than ZPD. Zombie-Processing Duty. The acronym just sounds more professional.

The washer pinged, and I slapped the BDUs back in for a second run. From the look of them, they didn’t really need it, but it seemed like a reasonable idea to wash them a second time, even if it was slightly “woo-woo” of me. At least I wasn’t hunting for sage or incense to burn; that would be far too spiritually committed for me to indulge in.

I turned around, looked at my splendid soaking tub and all the brains and goo on the floor, and was filled with a need to put things back into some sort of order. I had just started to mop the floor when my critters gave me a heads-up about someone approaching the delivery door, which was still open to the world. The incoming individual was human, and that was a bit of a relief. In all likelihood, it was Shawn or someone wandering over to ask about something.

“Afternoon, Mister Stewart.”

I looked up to see Buttons standing in the doorway and managed to keep my overwhelming joy at bay long enough to acknowledge him with a surly grunt. He waved me over, and that was curious enough to make me stroll in his direction.

“You’re familiar with the fact that there are thousands of objects orbiting the planet, aren’t you Frank?” Buttons had a particularly inscrutable expression plastered across his face.

“Yes. Why?”

He put his hands on my shoulders, turned me so I was facing the area where our enemies had set up shop. You can easily see the high-rise buildings from here, and he pointed to one in particular. “There’s a sniper in the offices on the top floor of that building. The distance is a bit of a stretch, but he could nail almost anyone in this neighborhood if he wanted.”

“Yes. That’s probably true.”

“Would you also say he’s got a decent vantage point to observe anything you do here?”

I didn’t quite see what he was getting at, but I agreed with him on that point as well.

He looked at his watch, a matte-black tactical number that sported more dials and widgets than I’d ever seen. “Watch the top of the building for the next 11 seconds. You might be pleased if you did. Perhaps a bit more at ease, at the very least.”

I started to think about demanding he spill his beans, when the top four floors of the building in question became an expanding cloud of dust. A heartbeat later, there was a noise that sounded like the bastard child of a thunderclap and a tin whistle. The clouds in the sky above the building looked like they’d been shredded.

“What. The. Fuck?” No amount of eloquence could have covered the shock I was feeling at the time.

“That, Mister Frank Stewart, was an example of the buttons I have at my disposal and my commitment to helping you all get out of this in one piece.”

“That was... what?”

“A shot from a satellite that does not exist and cannot be detected. That satellite does not have an electromagnetic railgun, nor can it be moved into a different orbit as necessary. Did you know that it won’t be in the exact same position in 23 hours, 58 minutes, and some odd seconds?”

“I am, well…” I tried to find something to say, but all I could do was turn back toward the building and watch the cloud of dust dissipate. There were bent girders where those four floors used to be and no windows left for six floors underneath. I wasn’t able to process what I’d seen, even with the explanation. “I don’t want to know what the other buttons are. Do I?”

“No, you very much do not want to know what the other buttons are.” He gave me a cold but wry smile before he continued, “That is the button I have been granted use of in order to see my mission through to completion. I have access to other resources if that non-existent orbital weapon does not prove to be sufficient to the task. Those other resources are not as precise and will negatively impact your community if they are used.”

“Why haven’t these resources been put to use before now?”

“The intel we had on Warren Hightower and his plans did not merit this sort of action. We had no idea that Bajali Sharma was in country and accessible to the enemy. When it became clear that not only was he in the country but had been abducted, action was authorized.”

“How come you haven’t used those non-existent things to blow all of Hightower’s little operation into dust?”

“We want Sharma alive. That’s the first reason. The second reason is that we believe our opponent has at least one nuclear weapon. A similar strike to the one you just saw has a 99 percent chance of setting off that nuke. We are far too close to the government’s interests and infrastructure to allow that.”

“Thank you for coming clean on this stuff. How much of it can we explain to our people?”

“Friends in high places, but not details. Feel free to make up something,” he waved his hands around, “about a missile, UAV, or something to explain the explosion. Nothing about who I am or why I’m here. They don’t need to know anything more than they can guess.”

I don’t know if it was his dismissive tone of voice or the fact that I didn’t like him, but rage flooded through me when he said that. I shoved my fingers into his armpits and slammed him up against the wall of my store. Not one to be treated in such a way, he brought his forearms down into the crook of my elbows on each side, causing me to bend forward to meet the solid blow of his forehead against the bridge of my nose. I felt it crunch.

I staggered backward, not even bothering to bring my hands up to my face, and it was a good thing that I didn’t. I blocked the roundhouse kick that had been speeding toward the side of my head, which I would not have even seen if I’d been concerned about my nose. I used the force of the kick to spin me into a strike to the back of his thigh and tap the back of his other knee to collapse the leg. He went to the ground with a numb kicking leg, which he used to try and sweep my feet out from under me.

Nice move. Too bad it missed. He altered the momentum and took it into a roll, which brought him up a few feet away, facing in my direction.

I watched him lock eyes with me and freeze in place, and I knew precisely what he was looking at. My nose was reassembling right in front of him. I couldn’t wait to tell him that he had my blood all over his face and then explain why my nose was doing fun things.

“Before I need to find food, there are a few things that I need to explain to you, Mister Buttons.”

“Sharma did it. That bastard actually did it.”

“If what you mean by ‘it’ is upgrade my hardware, then you’re right on the money. You just might, in my blood that is drying on your face, have the next best thing to the salvation of mankind. Then again, you might not.”

For once, there was actually some life in this tool’s eyes. I couldn’t tell, and didn’t care to know, whether it was straight avarice or some cracked version of fear.

“As far as that goes, I really hope you don’t, because I don’t like you. I know you’re hiding more than you’re telling me, and I want us to continue to be clear on one major issue.”

The cramps arrived, but I held it in. I wasn’t ready to let this guy go before I was finished, or succumb to whatever it was that my body and critters were craving.

“And what is that issue, Mister ‘Stewart’?” He used air quotes. Gauche.

“If anything you do or say leads to injury or death for any of these good people, I will hunt you down and kill you wherever I find you. Thanks to Bajali, you can slow me down, but you can’t stop me. I will get you.” I was exaggerating, because I had no idea at all what the nano-buddies were capable of doing. Truth be told, I was more than slightly worried about how much they would be able to do in excess of what I’d already seen. It was clear they were forming tighter relationships with my senses and my body’s ability to heal. They were settling in for the long haul. “Have I made myself perfectly clear?”

“Not very trusting are you?” He sneered, which did nothing to endear him to me. “I shouldn’t be surprised, considering your family tree.”

“That’s the truth. Are we clear, or are you going to try to tell me more things I’m already well aware of?”

“Why do you care what happens to these people? Everything your family has ever done has been antithetical to the sort of life these people want to lead. Power. Privilege. More money than people could use in a dozen lifetimes. Do you really expect me to believe you care, or is it the curvy, country whore that has snagged your dick?”

People talk about “seeing red,” but until that moment, I’d never experienced it. At that moment, I really wanted the full Wolverine Makeover. All I could see in the red that was spread out in front of me was a vision of him in a puddle of his own innards. Strangling him with his own intestines seemed like a fantastic course of action.

I never got the chance to move forward. Charlie had heard what he said when she rounded the side of the building, and she put her hand on my shoulder from behind. I didn’t see her, but I knew it was her hand.

“Buttons, I’m going to tell you this once, and only once. If it doesn’t sink in, and you ever say something like that again, I’ll beat Frank in the race to shove my hand down your throat.” Her voice, the one I was coming to like very much, was an Arctic wind over my shoulder. If I’d found icicles on my earlobe, it wouldn’t have surprised me. “Now then, I have never taken money or anything of material value for fucking anyone. Ever. As far as this good man goes, I intend to screw him until he is a dirty little nub on the floor, and we’re going to exchange our hearts with one another as a durable investment on that interaction. You will never know how good I feel in his arms, or underneath him in the middle of the night.”

The Arctic blast had a certain amount of heat in it, and I found the red receding from my vision.

Charlie continued, “I could not care less if you can make manna fall from Heaven or dry rivers fill with water. We don’t need your fancy toys to win our way out of this mess. More than that, you can’t protect people with all your heart and soul if all you feel for them is some kind of disdain.”

She walked around me slowly, strolled over to Buttons, and got right in his face. “Make your choice. Be with us, protect us, and show us some respect, or keep pushing until one of us puts you through the woodchipper and feeds you to the roses.”

I couldn’t see his face, but I heard him agree to respect and protect. He stunned me by actually offering an apology on top of that.

“See? That wasn’t so hard, Mister Buttons! Was it?” Charlie patted him on the shoulder, but I saw her leg start to move at the same time.

There was a noise, a meaty and almost moist thump, and her foot settled back on the dirt. She followed up the roundhouse kick with a twist of her hips, and a tidy backfist to his nose. Buttons was on the ground making insane, inarticulate noises and holding his groin for dear life with one hand and his bleeding nose with the other.

“So help me God, if you ever call me a whore again, even behind my back, I will cut those off and feed them to you on a bowl full of grits! Have I made myself clear, you greasy little Establishment ass-licker, or do I need to show my whup ass to you again?” I would like to say that she screamed it, but it wasn’t that. Charlie used the up-in-arms, fed-up, and vastly pissed off Yell of the Common Man that drove countless Spartan men into bloody battle.

I was falling head over heels in love.

Charlie turned back to me, walked over, snagged my arm with hers, and led me back into the Spa.

“Close that door on the garbage outside, will you, Frank?” Between the cramps that I was still swallowing and my general feeling of awe toward her, I wasn’t about to balk at the request or sass back in any way. I just closed the door.

My large intestine started to slap the crap out of my liver, and I know it showed on my face. She took one look at me, snagged my arm, and hauled me upstairs to my room and stash of food. With a tiny push I was deposited in my desk chair, and she started hunting through my larder.

After a few minutes of confusion on my part, she brought me a glass of water, a box of dried milk, and a bag of granola. My stomach felt like talking to her in a more direct manner than using my tongue and made a noise that sounded like a walrus farting inside a metal box. I knew if I didn’t grab at least one of her offerings that I’d end up with my saliva rushing off to find precisely what it wanted, and then having it come back with whatever it had scavenged.

Granola.

After about two handfuls I could tell that they wanted the dry milk. Calcium. The little guys had leeched calcium from somewhere in my body in order to rebuild my nose, and now they were keen on putting back what they’d used. Clever.

I popped the box open and started pouring it into the glass of water, slowly, just for the sake of experimentation. I wanted to see if they’d tell me when to stop, or how much of whatever material was enough. Eventually, the glass of water looked like lumpy buttermilk, and I felt no inclination to pour in anything more than that. I did want to drink it, as horrible as it looked, so I did.

I knew Charlie was watching me while I did this, but she wasn’t saying anything. Once I finished with my glass of white mud, I’d see what was up with her... beyond the tongue-lashing and nut massage she’d delivered outside.

“Dried milk mud is not tasty,” I said, trying to gum around the gooey mass in my right cheek.