Blood Soaked and Contagious (39 page)

“I can smile with fried anything. Unless my lips are fried, too, and all you’d get then is a toothy grimace.”

Wow. I think I’d skipped right over Love and plopped into the Tar Pits of Adoration!

“I’d kiss you but I have horrible morning breath, and no one deserves that.” Of all the compromising positions she’d seen me in, the only ones I really itched to keep to myself were morning breath and farting.

“Does that mean you don’t want to cut the cheese around me either?” DAMN! Foiled again!

“I have no idea what you mean.” I turned my head away so she wouldn’t see me squish up my face in mortal frustration. Hopefully, Baj hadn’t built in some sort of Bluetooth networking with the nano-buddies. That would make life quite touchy.

“So, you’re fart-shy?”

“How in the world do we get on conversation topics like this when we could be attacked by zombies at any moment?!”

She giggled. I hadn’t heard her giggle before, and it was infectious. She sat all the way up, showing me curves that would need a high-powered Italian sports car to explore properly, and I believe I started to salivate.

“Look at it this way. Sure, we could be ripped limb from limb at any moment, though it is more likely that we’ll be blowing bodies to bits today, too... and that makes every moment of normal that much more precious. More reason to laugh, touch, and be silly every chance we get. At least that’s how I feel.”

I sighed. “Yet again, your brain is every bit as fantastic as you are beautiful. I am in awe.”

Charlie giggled, stood up, stretched, and gave me even more reason to be happy to have an extra normal moment. I was grateful that I was lying on my side; otherwise, there would have been a “tent” apparent in the covers. She probably would have laughed, but I would have felt awkward about it.

“Frank, you’re super!” She reached down, tore the covers off me, and said, “You should get up with me and shower... Well! Is that for me, or is it just morning wood?”

Chagrin. Blushing. Quixote Fiesta. Utter inability to speak. Doom!

“Mumble.” I had my mouth mostly shut and was fighting this bizarre compulsion I had to answer her question.

“What was that?”

“Yumble.” I was starting to lose control.

“Come on, Frank, louder! Don’t make me squeeze the grapes before it’s time.”

“You.”

She actually danced around a little and clapped her hands. “That’s so great! I win! Yay! His penis likes me! His penis likes me!”

Oyé, Jefe... Ese dama, ah... ¿Piensa que soy muy guapo? Yes, I think the lady feels you’re handsome. My Quixote was smug and retired from the field of combat filled with confidence that his return would be greeted with warmth. Ahem.

Charlie frowned a little, but I assured her he’d be back and that cheered her up immensely. She grabbed me by the hand and pulled me downstairs so we could brush our teeth.

Hooray for normal moments! They wouldn’t last for long.

The daily ablutions didn’t take all that long and were filled with the sort of cheerful, madcap goofiness that only new lovers can keep up for more than an hour at a time. We made a quick breakfast of various things we scrounged off of my supply shelves, put on some clothes, armed ourselves, and sallied forth.

It really was a nice, cool, sunny morning. Of course, there was still the matter of the Miss Teen Zombie Bomber corpse on the asphalt in front of my store door. I offered to drag it out to the big pile from the night before, and Charlie gratefully accepted my assistance in the matter. We walked, side by side, corpse feet in my hands, over to the garage.

“I’m wearing yesterday’s clothes, and the only other stuff I have is with Shawn. I’ll get changed while you drag off the beauty queen, and then we can hunt and kill some coffee. How’s that?” She was actually perky. I was dragging a body, but she was perky, and I managed to cope with it, seduced as I was by the promise of coffee.

“All right. I’ll be back in a few. Tease your brother for me, okay?”

“Like I breathe air!” She kissed me, thoroughly, and bopped off toward Shawn’s front door.

I still had a few blocks of dragging to do, so I set off to do it in reasonable time, without a huge rush. As I rounded the corner, I saw Channing hooking up one of the Hot-Hot-Ow-Ow Destructo Projectors, and I called out to him.

“Sexy dweeb! How’s the boy today?”

He turned around, saw it was me, and just shook his head. Our rapport, clearly, had yet to fall into place. “I take it that means you don’t feel the same connection for me that I feel for you?”

“I’m here because I was ordered to be here, not to become buddies with all of you. Especially people full of nano-machines that attack and cannibalize... ” He shuddered with revulsion, and I didn’t blame him at all.

“Channing, if I had a free hand at the moment, I would swear to God that I’m about as thrilled with that development as you are. Much like everything else in this fucked up world, all I’ve got is what I’ve got, and some of it can’t be changed.”

He looked at the body trailing behind me.

“Did you eat her brains, too?”

“Actually, no. She was wearing a vest rigged with C-4 and Charlie blew her brains out. Then we went to bed.” Come to think of it, saying those things in such a matter-of-fact way felt really strange.

“I don’t understand you.”

I nodded as I walked under where he was perched, looked both ways at the alley mouth, and deposited my erstwhile night visitor on the pile of her compatriots.

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t understand myself most of the time. At least you and I can share the mystery together.” I looked up at the gray square, mounted on the side of the wall, and allowed myself a bit of curiosity.

“So, does this pain ray work?”

“Once I connect this USB cable and turn on the generator, yes.”

“What does it feel like?” I was curious because it sounded completely unreal to me.

“It feels like the whole surface of your skin is being fried. I was part of the group trial for this model, so you can trust me on the description.”

“Damn. Could I feel it?”

“Are you categorically insane, or do you just pretend to be crazy for fun? This is not friendly pain. It really, really hurts.”

“Yes, I get that. I’m just curious. Could you turn it on and then turn it right back off? Just a little taste?” I suppose, somewhere in my hidden heart lies the twitching form of an adrenaline junkie-masochist with attention deficit disorder. Don’t tell anyone—they probably spray for people like me.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah!” I actually bounced up and down a little, excited that I was going to get to try out a figment of Science’s Imagination.

Channing didn’t bother to give me a count of three, or even tell me that he’d agreed to do it. He just turned it on. I shrieked, turned around, and ran across the street. I vaulted a parked car and hid behind it until he turned the damned thing off.

The feeling made the Tasers of the night before pale in comparison.

“Didn’t I tell you?” He hollered at me from across the four-lane road.

“Yes! You did! I believe you!”

“You don’t want to try it again, do you? I can just plug it back in.”

“NO!”

From the way his shoulders were moving, I could tell he was laughing at me and I wasn’t really bothered by it. Considering the sensations that Active Denial thing was capable of dishing out, I was incredibly grateful to have that technology on our side, as well as someone capable of installing the things. Anything that would keep busloads of zombies from overrunning us was A-OK in my book.

We were one day closer to the window Mister Yan told us to be expecting the big attack. Whether or not we would see any small ones before then was not anything I could predict, but being ready for that sort of thing wouldn’t be a bad idea at all. These pain ray units would come in very handy.

What I wouldn’t give for something that would stop rocket-propelled grenades and shoulder-mounted missile attacks!

I looked both ways and crossed the street. I didn’t vault the car on the way back.

“So, Channing, how many more of these are left to install?”

“This is the last one. I got started right after the busload last night and haven’t been to sleep yet.”

For someone who was just taking orders about being here, I was grateful for his dedication.

“Why don’t you come down from that ladder, and we’ll go find coffee?” I waved him down to ground level. He nodded, climbed down, and we folded up the ladder together.

I slung it over my shoulder, and we walked back to the garage. If anyone was likely to have coffee brewing, it would be Shawn. If they were still with us, I would have taken Channing over to see Siddig, who was the man who had changed my outlook on the beverage. Maybe, if we all didn’t die in the next few days, I could boil up some Siddig-style mud in a cup for people.

It was a nice idea. Sad, but nice.

When we got to the garage, we discovered quite a coffee klatch was already underway. Nate and all of his people were there, as were Flower, Buttons, and Omura. There appeared to be a spirited discussion of favorite combat and survival knives going on. A surprising amount of name dropping and showing off of toys was happening as well.

Nate’s pal Franklin was extolling the virtues of his favorite knife, a handmade, evil-looking thing from American Kami that looked as though it could disembowel a pack of Yetis. Shoei Omura sung the praises of his preferred blade, saying that Chris Reeves was the one and only master of the hard-use knife. I grinned like a fool and pulled the Man Scythe out of the rig with that trademark snap of Kydex plastic. As usual, it stopped conversation dead.

I handed it to Franklin, who gently opened the blade out about halfway. He smiled, and it was the blissed-out smile of a true edged-weapon fanatic. My baby was garnering the attention she deserved.

“Who made this?” Franklin asked, closed the blade, and handed it to Charlie. She was making little “gimme” noises.

“The blade steel was smelted by Mack Lee, forged out by Scott Lewis, and the frame was milled by a couple of auto mechanics out in Fairfax, Virginia. They also did the final assembly.”

“That is way beyond hot.” He admired it, coveting my Darling while Charlie caressed her gently. I just sighed.

“Y’all are some sick monkeys!” Shawn appeared with coffee cups for Channing and me. “I don’t see how you can make sharp things sound like they’re your favorite topless dancer.”

The assembled group chuckled at us for our perverse ways. I sipped my coffee for a moment, then retorted.

“Shawn? M-50 machine gun, refitted with a water-cooled barrel, plum-brown finish, and a full magazine of 3/1 armor-piercing tracer rounds.”

“Oh man... yeah. That would be one smokin’ piece of steel!”

“I rest my case.” Everyone got what I was saying, even Shawn. Vindication was mine, sayeth the zombie killer.

Flower got a strange look on his face and yelled, “INCOMING!” We all hit the floor as something exploded near the side of the road. Guns came out, and the professional soldiers fell into instant formations.

Nate headed forward on point, trailed by his group. They skirted the IEDs at the end of Shawn’s driveway that connected to Glebe Road and peered out around that dumpster. I saw him hold up four fingers, indicating two left and two straight ahead. Flower grunted and leapt to the top of the garage.

Omura looked at me, “Shawn, you, Frank, Charlie and Channing, stay put and stay down. That was a mortar, and they’re trying to range in. That means we’re dealing with a less experienced crew than before. Flower may take them out before they can land something in here.”

We nodded, and I looked over at Buttons. He was crouched down, cradling his cup of coffee, and I asked, “About when will your next orbital gift arrive, and what did you target it on?”

“Six minutes, and the target area is the section of Glebe Road that directly connects to the side street where the parking garage is. I estimate a soccer field-size crater that may be as much as 20 feet deep.”

“Fuck! That’s bigger than the last shot, isn’t it?”

“Yes, by about 50 percent. There will also be a decent amount of collateral damage from the debris exploding outward from the point of impact. Low likelihood of civilian casualties, and it probably won’t detonate any nuclear devices.”

“You mean there’s a possibility that it
might
?”

“Of course.”

Before I could reply to that, there was a hail of gunfire near where Nate and his friends were observing our latest annoyance. Looking that way I could see that none of them were in the line of fire.

A single shot rang out from the roof of the garage. Almost immediately afterward a muffled explosion and screams could be heard from beyond the dumpster. Nate held up two fingers, gestured to the left, and Flower squeezed off four more shots. Nate gave the thumbs-up sign and then stood up.

“What did we miss?” I called out to him from the garage floor.

“Matt put a bullet into the pipe of the mortar launcher, into the nose cone of the mortar. It exploded real pretty. The other four shots were double taps for the other two who weren’t using good cover.” Nate gave Flower two thumbs up and then got out of the way when he jumped down from the roof.