He snorted. “So that’s why your team was in full retreat. You must be one of those rare, wily commanders who, gaining advantage, prefers to withdraw instead of advance. Admit it. Without reinforcements you guys would’ve been meat.”
“I love armchair generals. You didn’t happen to notice we used
paintball
guns on squeaking hairballs that move a helluva lot
faster
than zombies. Don’t tell me it’s a one-to-one simulation. Rafe couldn’t cut loose, and I didn’t even use any fire.”
“True—”
“Of course, it’s true.” I straightened a little and forced my fists to unclench. I could see most of the house now, beyond the backyard and the obstacle course. Why the hell had I ever agreed to walk with this nimrod in the first place?
“It’s true as far as it goes,” he continued. “But this was a useful exercise even if we’re just simulating zombies. That’s their strength, the unending push. You can slaughter a hundred of them and they’ll keep coming, even as your machine gun barrels overheat, the action jams and you run short on ammo. It’s both their greatest strength and their weakness. Up close, we’re at a disadvantage.” He frowned and looked off eastward toward the city. “That’s why this assault will be tricky. We get bunched up in his factory and it’s going to be wall-to-wall undead in three seconds. We have to keep nimble, keep moving, keep escape routes clear at all times. And we can’t dilute our firepower.”
“Thanks for the lecture, General Sherman,” I said through gritted teeth. “But you might remember this isn’t the first zombie kill job we’ve ever done.”
“I know you did some work against RCTs outside Nogales. But you were part of a larger merc group, and the area was scrub desert, with clear lines of sight. This’ll be in-your-face, whites-of-their-rotting-eyes, urban combat, and I want you and your people prepared for it.”
“Point taken.” I tried not to sound grudging and again failed. “We’ll focus on similar training scenarios from inside. Good enough?”
He seemed thrown off by my concession. “Yeah, Captain Walker. Good enough.”
The silence spreading between us seemed to bother him more than me, and he broke it first. “I want us to work together smoothly. I’m here to make the Zero Dogs more effective, not less.”
“Yeah? What is it those Navy squids say? A ship can’t have two captains. I clawed my way up to this rank, busting my ass twice as hard as anyone else. And I have to work three times as hard to maintain it. So excuse me if I ain’t thrilled to have some John Wayne and his snot-colored beret horning in on my command.”
We walked another dozen steps in silence. The sun shone through a thin layer in the overcast sky for a moment, a disk of muted smoky yellow, before the slate-gray clouds thickened again and it vanished. I was wet and tired and wishing more than ever I’d taken a ride back on the Bradley when I’d had the chance.
We’d come up to the tier at the lower yard before he spoke again. “It’s clear your people trust you. In fact, I’m far more impressed right now than after the first briefing. I may have been wrong to call you on it before I recognized how things go here.”
I opened my mouth. Shut it again. That must have taken some spine to say, even if he
had
tagged on a qualifying “may”.
He continued. “Nothing’s more important than the mission, Captain Walker. It’s my job to help you achieve our objectives, no matter what. I’ll do everything in my power to make it happen, and if you’re able to get it done and get it done right, then I’ll back you up all the way to the black gates of Hell.”
“Fair enough.”
Just keep out of my way, then
, I thought but didn’t say. The time had come to be diplomatic. Not my default setting by any means. “Go ahead and call me Andrea. In private.”
His smile warmed his eyes. God, you’d have thought I’d just promised him a free lap dance and a cold beer.
“I’m Jake, then.” He held out his hand again.
I looked at it and arched an eyebrow. “Haven’t we already done this once?”
“Yeah, but afterward you tried to kick my ass.”
“You provoked me. Over and over again.”
“I know,” he said. “Pulling the tiger’s tail. But admit it—since you thought I was a no-talent scrub, I had something to prove.”
I didn’t know how I felt about him being right, or even half-right. Admitting it seemed like the first step down a long road where I might come to like him, even after our little confrontations. Not to mention the phone conversation I’d half overheard.
I reached out and shook his hand. Again, the warmth of his skin made my heart rev faster. Either he was some kind of cyborg with an industrial-sized space heater hidden inside, or my sensitivity to him buried the needle. Of the two choices I preferred to believe he was an evil cyborg who’d betray us at some crucial moment. It made life easier.
I broke contact first and glanced at the house. “Now, let’s get the hell out of the rain.”
“By all means,” he said, smiling and sweeping a hand toward the house, “after you.”
And as long as it stayed that way, I told myself, I might let him stick around. A few things still worried me though. He had far too much practice being charming. Also, he smiled too much—and even if I liked his smile, it was the mark of a man used to getting what he wanted, one way or another.
Chapter Eight: The Jungle
Undead Army of the Unrighteous Order of the Falling Dark
Bokor Gelzonbi Foods Manufacturing Plant
SE Holgate Boulevard
, Portland, Oregon
3:49 p.m. PST April 13th
Overlord Ctephakrillu, formerly known as Jeremiah Hansen, walked along the metal catwalk running above the manufacturing floor with his hands folded behind his back. Beside him walked Blake Delaney, his new second-in-command. Blake carried a PDA and noted information in it as the overlord took him on a tour of the lair—no, the
facility
. He kept trying to sneak looks at what Blake was writing, or emailing, or clicking and dragging or whatever, but Blake favored him with such an intense frown that he gave it up.
They both wore white lab coats, plastic hairnets, beard covers, safety glasses and slip-resistant shoes as per OSHA safety regulations 1910.133 and 1910.136 and FDA 21 CFR 110.10(b)(1) and (6). Beneath them, the zombie workforce went about its business, some of them entirely without shoes or even pants. In fact, all the zombies gathered from various morgues worked without the benefit of clothing—a fact he planned to strive mightily on keeping from the general public. The facility hummed and clanked and whirred with the business of making gelatin for the world.
They both paused on the section of catwalk spanning a huge vat of lime-flavored powder. Overlord Ctephakrillu looked down into its unnaturally green depths.
“I don’t think my name’s working out,” he said. “It’s too…I don’t know, Lovecraftian. I never could pronounce those goddamn names without breaking my tongue.”
Blake frowned. “I see.” He searched through screens on his PDA. “We focus tested a few more which earned positive results in the evil world-ruler category. Last names with descriptions are big right now. How about Sven Dreadmouth?”
“Er…”
“Norz Frostbane?”
“Hmm.”
“Two that scored very well with the twelve-to-eighteen male demographic—Knobz Ironstones and Bludkurl Wang.”
“No.” He thought about it some more. “Really,
no
. I thought I’d go back to Overlord Hansen. You know, original gangsta, old-school stuff.”
Blake managed to appear appalled and amused at the same time, like a man who’d found a dead clown floating in his soup. “I suppose I still can’t convince you to add a Dark Lord in there somewhere?”
“I’d rather not. It’s been done to death.” Strange. For a man who insisted on calling the lair a facility, banned the word
minions
, and sometimes referred to zombies as re-purposed life-challenged resources, Blake had some hang up on Jeremiah’s name. The stupider, the better, it seemed.
“Overlord Hansen certainly has…originality going for it.” Blake touched his stylus to his chin. “I do understand your reluctance at adopting one of these titles. However, there are certain tropes, certain
expectations,
in the field that must be addressed.”
“If I can’t refer to my manufacturing plant as a lair, then I don’t need a stupid name.” He crossed his arms.
Blake frowned. “There’s always a bit of disconnect between operational language and PR speak. However, I suppose Overlord Hansen will have to do for now, until poll results start coming back in. We’ll have to remain nimble though. In light of potential negative reaction, we’ll hold a press conference and announce a new title and corporate logo.”
Score one for the boss. Time for round two. Jeremiah started to walk along the catwalk again. Somehow, moving made it easier to bring the next bit up. Maybe because he wouldn’t have to look right into Blake’s eyes when he said it. “So, I was thinking.”
“Ah,” Blake said.
Jeremiah glanced at him and hurried on. He felt like a grammar-school kid asking a sadistic teacher for permission to use the restroom.
“I have some more ideas for the lair—I mean for the
facility
.” If the smile on his face felt any more sheepish, he’d be choking on wool. He hated it, but for all Blake’s talents, he seemed to suck Jeremiah’s Iron Fist Ruler Mojo right out of the room. “Um. I think we could really do with some bodyguards for me. Some living ones, anyway. Preferably females. In fact, I thought maybe sex ninjas.”
Blake stopped. With a slow pivot, he turned toward the railing and stared down at the manufacturing floor. Jeremiah joined him, his heart pounding away and his mouth dry as dust. They both stared at a zombie who pushed a large green button over and over again with a finger missing two joints.
“I’m not certain I heard you correctly,” Blake said. “Did you perhaps say
sex
ninjas?”
“Exactly. I was thinking maybe some beautiful lady ninjas, we put them in distracting outfits, something with G-strings, lots of cleavage, possibly even a nipple slip now and then, for the fans. Maybe mix up the outfits according to rank. One rank could be leather. The next up could have…maybe garters and stuff, or French-maid ninjas even. Another, I think…a nurse style. You know, with ninja swords and martial arts, of course.”
“Oh, of course.”
Silence.
“So what do you say?” Jeremiah pressed. “I’m kind of tired of looking at decaying people.”
“With all due respect, I don’t think nurse sex ninjas fit into our action plan at this point in time. The cost of upkeep alone would strain our operating budget. Furthermore, any attempt to codify the inclusion of sex ninjas would simply remain a distraction and ultimately diminish our collaborative efforts. While I may encourage the use of dramatic names to titillate public discourse, every other element of our operation must be thoroughly professional. So, no. Can’t be done at this time.”
Shit. He’d had his heart set on the sex ninjas. This overlord stuff wasn’t always all it was cracked up to be when you had glorified bean counters running around smacking great ideas with the NO stick. Still, this was why he paid Blake an obscene amount of money. He’d help make Jeremiah’s vision a reality in as cheap a manner as possible, while attracting wheelbarrows of cash once they went publicly traded. Mark his words, though. When he achieved billionaire status he’d damn well score himself some sex ninjas.
Blake seemed to sense his disappointment. “However, I’m relatively pleased with the layout of your facility. I think, with some minor adjustments, we can count on this as a fully optimized plant, operating at peak efficiency, and ready to repel any threats to your industry dominance.”
Jeremiah motioned toward the end of the catwalk and a small air vent above the access door. “I made sure all the air ducts are only a foot square, too small for a person to crawl through…” He allowed himself a smirk. “Except for the main duct…which holds a few little surprises. I can flood it with gelatin at will. I lost a poisonous dart frog in there. I also had a motion-tracking, movement-activated Advanced Artificial Intelligence-controlled Browning .50 caliber heavy machine gun mounted on a reinforced frame with a prototype down-recoil system. And, after all that, the air duct leads to a dead end.”
“A kill box in other words.” Blake gave him a grim nod. “Always a respectable choice.”
Jeremiah puffed his chest out a little bit. He was about to ask what was most impressive, the gelatin trap or the AI machine-gun, when Blake spoke again.
“I also recommend a variety of small-scale but highly effective methods to amplify security. Motion detectors. Overlapping camera positions. Retinal scans. Independent power generators and a redundant power grid. Both may increase overhead but should stop power failure of everything short of an electromagnetic pulse.”
“That’s great. I also thought maybe we could get some more traps. Crushing walls. Floors that fall away onto spikes. Or bottomless pits. Um. Swinging axe blades. A mine-cart level.”
Silence stretched for a long, uncomfortable moment while Blake tapped a finger against his teeth. “While those things may, at first, seem like they would increase overall security, I can assure you maintenance and upkeep would be prohibitive. There are other low-hanging fruit we might pick to better our endeavor. Also, I’ve never read data on a single adversary actually being crushed by crushing walls. Quite frankly, I’m at a loss of what to say regarding the mine-cart suggestion. Life is not a video game.”
Obviously not, if he couldn’t get some good sex ninjas. “Well, just bouncing some ideas around. Trying to think outside the box. To…modify our objective paradigm to incorporate…uh, market-tested methods of best practices free from…um, holistic group-think.”
Blake stared at him with his cold Jack the Ripper Project Manager eyes. Jeremiah felt his cheeks flush. The zombies voiced uneasy moans and shuffled at their workstations. He took a deep breath, calming them again, and they returned to their prosaic thoughts of button pushing and consumption of human flesh.
“Usually I would encourage that,” Blake said after a long, painful moment. “Usually.” He started to walk again. “Let us continue our review. I have a few more standard questions to address. There are no super devices on site containing self-destruct mechanisms, are there? Any tiny weak points, any fatal flaws or isolated energy ports that some enterprising young individual hostile to our cause might seek to exploit?”
“Nope. This was a bread factory once. Now it makes gelatin.”
“Ah. Perfect. Do you, perchance, have prison cells for hostages?”
“No. I feed everybody to the zombies right away. That door-to-door guy selling citrus cleaning solution and magazine subscriptions? Yeah, I threw him to the zombies.” The bastard had deserved it too. Interrupting at a crucial moment when Jeremiah had been watching
Dancing with the Stars
. Honest to God, only an industrial grade asshat would willfully ignore a sign that said:
No Soliciting. Violators Will Be Eaten
.
Blake noted something on his PDA. “Excellent. Excellent. Now that security questions have been addressed, perhaps you might give me an overview of your process flow.”
Jeremiah led Blake down the metal stairwell and toward the loading dock. His zombies turned their heads to stare at Blake, and he could feel their hungry speculation through the ethereal silver cords of his necromancy magic. He quickly set them back to their tasks among the hum, roar, slosh and rattle of the stainless-steel machinery.
He pointed toward the loading dock. “Pretty straightforward. I take delivery of pork skins on the dock.”
“Pork skins?”
“Yeah. For collagen. We buy them from slaughterhouses already stripped of hair and fat. People love bacon, and people love gelatin desserts. Who knew they both came from the same animal? It’s like divine providence.”
“I now regret knowing.” Blake gestured. “But please proceed.”
“Next, I have a highly trained zombie crew transfer the pork skins into the cold-wash sprayer.” Jeremiah gestured to a large machine fed by conveyor and connected to so many pipes and cables it reminded him of a shiny upside-down squid. The machine hissed and gurgled as a zombie in a Motörhead T-shirt loaded the thin, evenly cut, whitish-pink skins onto the conveyor.
Jeremiah directed Blake’s gaze to another series of huge stainless vats. All the zombies around the vats stared unblinking at a light display with green and red bulbs. “The cleaned pork skins get soaked in hydrochloric acid for a few hours. After which the light turns red, the team here unloads and moves them into another wash cycle—”
Blake stopped and peered at the zombies watching the wash cycle’s green light. “These undead personnel assets appear significantly degraded.”
The skin of the zombies was a ravaged and mottled red and gray. Their clothes hung in disintegrating tatters on their bodies. A metal sign on a nearby load-bearing pillar dangled askew and had so many small pits in the surface the words couldn’t be read.
“We had a few low-grade acid spills,” Jeremiah said. “And we have some issues with acidic mist. Actually, I wouldn’t get too close if I were you.” He hurried Blake farther down the production line.
Blake noted something else in his PDA. “Then we aren’t ISO 9000 certified, I take it?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Indeed. I suppose we must save a good deal on personal protective equipment.”
“
Exactly
. Now after another wash, the skins are ready for extraction. We use three cycles to maximize production time for each batch. Cycles have different pH and temperatures, et cetera.” He pointed to a thin zombie chewing on a pen, his lips, mouth and chin stained with blue ink. The zombie clutched a clipboard in one hand. “That guy notes down batch numbers when he isn’t busy eating his writing utensils.”
“Seems as if there must be a good deal of process variation,” Blake said. “Do you use any statistical process controls? Control charts? Deming philosophy? Even, God forbid, Six Sigma?”
“I’m lucky I can get my zombies to push buttons and follow simple directions. Fancy stuff like that might work for the Japanese, but in case you haven’t been paying attention, Bokor Gelzonbi Industries relies on cheap, unskilled labor to mitigate the cost of fuckups.”
“Ah.”
Shit, how could the man condense a mountain of disapproval into one simple syllable?
“Anyway, where was I?” Jeremiah continued. “The gelatin in process is filtered, deionized, yadda-yadda, and then extruded.” He brought Blake to the part of the manufacturing floor where six huge stainless-steel pipes pushed out noodle-like strings of yellow gelatin onto a metal-mesh conveyor belt. The belt led through a series of partially enclosed chambers. “The extruded gelatin is dried—I use an hour cycle to increase throughput—and then ground down to fine particulate. Which is the part of the process where most of our accidents—”