The Down Home Zombie Blues (32 page)

Still, Theo could tell she was nervous. The small macramé tote bag with her scanner and G-1 was never out of her reach, and several times he saw her touch it, as if for reassurance. And he suspected her trips to the bathroom were more to check her scanner than to powder her nose.

At the end of the meal, Theo helped Tootie and Jorie clear the table and put back the traditional wooden bowl of water with the basil-wrapped cross—a Greek tradition to keep the evil
Kalikantzri
at bay. He hadn’t seen a zombie since this morning. Must be working.

Then he left the two women discussing Sophie Goldstein’s honey puffs and headed for the living room. He was a bit concerned leaving Jorie with his aunt, but not overmuch. Jorie’s mastery of English was—except for her accent, which was something of a cross between French and British—damned near perfect now.

Besides, if she blew it, it didn’t matter. He hadn’t been so insistent on seeing his aunt and uncle only because it was Christmas. He was going to tell Stavros the truth.

In case he was killed. He hadn’t ruled out the possibility, because he knew Jorie was bound to try some wild scheme. And he knew he’d be there, right beside her.

Theo settled on the blue-and-yellow tropical-print couch in front of the television—a nice wide-screen plasma. Couple years old but still had a good picture. A basketball game was on. He watched disinterestedly for a few minutes while Uncle Stavros brought back his second plate of syrup-covered
melomakarana
.

Stavros Petrakos—a bear of a man with a full head of thick gray-streaked dark hair and eyebrows to match—sat down with a grunt. “Want one?”

“No room.” Theo waved one hand. “Well, okay. One more.”

Stavros snorted. “Cops and doughnuts.”

“Pot calling the kettle…”

“How’s things on the job?”

“Job’s good.” It was. Theo couldn’t think of anything he wanted to do more than being a cop. “Got some budgetary wranglings coming up, but they’ve already approved the new MDTs.”

“How did we ever do the job without computers in the cars? Ha!” Stavros licked his fingers. “Pretty gal you got there. How old is she?”

Theo knew the answer to that one now. “Thirty-nine.”

“Doesn’t look a day over thirty—
Skata!
You see that foul?” His uncle pointed to the television. “Illegal elbow if I ever saw one.” He paused. “She divorced?”

Theo was ready with the recitation. “Never been married, though she was engaged once. Broke it off because the guy cheated on her. No kids. Has a lot of responsibility in her job—she’s fairly high up the food chain. Well liked, well respected. Real team leader, you know? And, oh, she was in the marines.”

A
melomakarana
stopped in midair. “Marines?”

“Flew combat.”

“For Canada?”

“Multinational force, actually.”

“You’re pulling your old uncle’s leg, right?”

“Nope.”
And it’s going to get worse.
“Remember that UFO sighting out over the Gulf when I was a kid? I was out with you and Dad night-fishing on the Tsavaris’s boat?”

Stavros shot him a narrow-eyed glance, but nodded.

“You told me later you’d seen others but said the stories would have to wait until I was older. Well, I’m older.” Like thirty years older. He wondered now—given his longtime dedication to sci-fi and things
Star Trek
–ish—why he’d never asked his uncle for the rest of the stories before.

Stavros was silent for a moment, chewing his
melomakarana
and darting glances between Theo and the game on television. Then: “This is because your gal’s a pilot, right? They see those things all the time. She saw one of those UFOs and no one believed her.”

“No.” Theo waited until Stavros swallowed the piece of cookie. “She
is
one of those UFOs.”

“Theophilus, you’re talking nonsense.”

Theo rubbed one hand through his hair. “This is not going to make sense. But I want you to know what’s going on, because I want you to understand if something…happens.”

“Something—look, the job’s stressful. No one knows that more than me. I did thirty years on the streets. But they have people who can help you.” Stavros laid his hand on Theo’s arm. “Counselors and such.”

Theo ignored him. “Jorie’s part of a group called the Guardian Force. They wouldn’t have bothered with our planet except that these monster guard-dog things they created—they call them zombies—ended up here. Looks like another nasty outer-space group, the Tresh, are messing with these zombies’ programming. But, unfortunately, these Tresh attacked Jorie’s ship, and now it’s just her and me and Zeke and maybe a few others to stop the bad guys.”

He glanced at Stavros. His uncle was wiping one hand over his broad face. “I’ll get you all the help you need,” his uncle said. “If it takes every dime I have. It doesn’t matter. You know Tootie and I love you.”

“I love you too,” Theo said, leaning forward and pulling his cell phone from his back pocket. He flipped it open and hit a number on speed dial. “
Yassou, amigo
. Listen, Uncle Stavros is about to Baker-Act me. Will you talk to him? Thanks.” He handed the cell phone to Stavros. “It’s Zeke.”

His uncle took the cell phone gingerly, as if it might bite him. “Zeke? What kind of
skata
is my boy…Okay.” Silence. Longer silence. “What?” he bellowed.
“Mou espasas ta arheedia!”

Theo knew from experience that when he heard Stavros accuse someone of busting his balls, Stavros was not quite convinced but getting close.

Evidently, so did Tootie. “Stavros! Watch your language, please!” came from the kitchen.

Finally Stavros nodded, wished Zeke and Suzanne a Merry Christmas, and handed the phone back to Theo.
“Tis Panagias ta matia!”

Now it was the Virgin Mary’s eyes being invoked. “Yeah, I know,” Theo said.

“If you’re playing a game on the old man—”

“I’m not. We’re not.” He filled his uncle in on the rest of the details, including the problem with Jorie’s lieutenant and the unknown status of the rest of her team and her ship. He could tell some of it simply didn’t register with the old man. He’d seen too many Signal 20s in his day. But there had been those UFO sightings he’d been tight-lipped about for decades. Theo asked about them again now.

Stavros shook his head. “The one with your father and you wasn’t the first, not by any means. But I’d stopped talking to anyone about them by that point. No one believes you, and you get a reputation—I had Tootie to think about. And you.”

“You ever get taken on board, like I was?”

“
Skata,
it was enough just seeing these things zipping around the sky at night. If one grabbed me, I’d probably start shooting.”

“That was my initial reaction too. But then you start thinking about where you are and who could get hurt, all the while telling yourself this is not really happening.”

“But it did.” His uncle studied him. He wasn’t one hundred percent convinced. But Theo was family. “What do you need me to do?” Stavros asked.

Stavros Petrakos had been one damned fine shot in his day, but he was seventy-eight now. A robust seventy-eight who mowed his own lawn and trimmed his own fruit trees, but seventy-eight. “We’re putting a task force together. But this is strictly under the radar. If anything should…happen, what the news media gets and what actually went down might be two different things. I just wanted you to know the truth.”

Stavros’s gaze didn’t waver. “I still hope this is some kind of a joke.”

“Wish it was too.”

“When?”

“By New Year’s, I’m thinking.”

Stavros nodded. “The chief knows?”

“I’m trying to keep the brass and the news reporters out of it right now. I don’t think they’ll be able to move quickly enough. And I don’t want to make a media spectacle out of Jorie.”

“Poor kid. She’s basically all alone in this.”

Theo patted his uncle on the shoulder, then stood. “She’s not alone. She has me.”

He wandered back into the kitchen, which was empty, then, hearing a familiar tinkling sound, followed that to the spare bedroom in the back of the house, where his aunt kept her music-box collection. A thoroughly enthralled Jorie was holding a miniature palm tree in her hand as it played a tinny rendition of the Beach Boys’ tune “Kokomo.”

Yeah, that’s what he needed to do. Run away with her to the Keys and a little place called Kokomo.

“Bliss!” she said when he stepped into the room.

He smiled. “Time to go.”

“So soon?” Tootie plucked a music box in the shape of two intertwined cats from one of the shelves that ringed the small room. “Jorie’s never seen these before. I guess there’s not a lot of use for them in those Eskimo villages.” She shook her head.

Theo took the palm tree from Jorie and put it back on the shelf where it belonged. He knew where each one belonged. He’d helped his uncle build the shelves as his aunt’s collection grew over the years. “You know I’m working,
Thia.
”

“I know, I know. But if I didn’t make a fuss, I wouldn’t be a good aunt.” She shooed him and Jorie toward the living room, where Stavros was waiting. “Maybe around New Year’s or after, you’ll come for dinner, yes?”

His uncle’s face didn’t betray a thing. Man was a damned good cop.

“Sure.” He hugged his uncle, then his aunt.

“She’s a nice girl,” Tootie whispered in his ear.

He bussed her cheek. “Told you so.”

Stavros was holding Jorie’s hand and patting it. Tootie pulled her away and gave her a hug, then put a bag of leftovers in Jorie’s hand as they went through the kitchen. “Something to nibble on later,” Tootie said.

Nothing like homemade Greek cooking to fuel a fight against zombies.

The bright moonlight and the glow of the porch light bathed Theo’s back steps in a white glow. But Jorie let Theo handle the physical inspection of a structure he was more familiar with than she was. She studied her scanner. Residence shields were intact, with no attempted instrusions. Still, both she and Theo entered the back door with weapons out—and she kicked off her sandals as she came across the kitchen threshold. There was no way she could run in those things.

Only after they cleared the residence did Theo go back out into the warm night air to retrieve the bag with her clothes and Tootie’s offerings from the vehicle’s rear seat. Theo had a lovely family, Jorie realized as she leaned against the kitchen counter and slipped her sandals back on. It made her miss Galin all the more.

“Somebody left this on the back porch steps.” Theo came though the kitchen door, bags and Tootie’s containers bundled in his arms. And something else.

Jorie automatically reinstated the residence’s rear shields as she stepped toward him. He put the food containers on the small table, the clothing bag on a chair, and turned as she approached, a squat silver cylinder in his hand.

Jorie froze, her throat closing, a tremor shaking her body so severely she almost dropped her scanner.

“This was tucked to the side, I almost missed—Jorie?”

“Where did you get that?” Her voice was a hard rasp.

“This?” He angled the metal cuplike object away from him. “It was on the steps.”

Jorie sucked in a harsh breath and inched back.

“Babe, what’s the matter? It’s just some kind of capped soup mug with a built-in spoon thing—”

“A feeder. It’s a feeder.” She could make out the markings engraved on its side now:
Detention Compound 3 Ovzil.
Her heart pounded and she felt light-headed. She let the scanner slide from her hand to the tabletop, then gripped the back of the closest chair.

“A feeder?”

Vekran, English words fled. She had to close her eyes for a moment and focus, seeking the explanation in Alarsh, then in Vekran.

Theo’s fingers curled around her arm. “Honey?”

The…thing was inches from her body, still in his hand. With a strangled cry she struck out at it, hard. It flew from his grasp and clattered to the floor, rolling back and forth a few times before it wobbled to a halt.

She watched in sick fascination. How many times had she thrown hers against the cell wall?

“Jorie!” Both hands were on her shoulders, and Theo’s breath was warm on her cheek.

“A feeder.” Her voice was rough. She raised her face to his. “It holds a liquid-and-powder protein mix. You slide the spoon down to stir,” she pushed her thumb against nothing, yet she could feel the cold metal feeder in her hand, “then take a scoop and swivel it to eat. It’s the only thing you get to eat when you’re a prisoner of the Tresh.” Foul-tasting. Even now, she wanted to gag.

“Fuck.” Theo’s face blanked, then hardened. “Shields are up?”

She knew they were. But she grabbed the scanner off the table, because her whole world suddenly tilted to one side. She nodded.

“You’re sure that’s what it is?”

Her gaze found the feeder on the floor. “Don’t you see…?” But Theo couldn’t read Supi, the Tresh language. “Those letters. Detention Compound 3 Ovzil.” Ovzil Rok Por. A prison compound run by the Devastators at the base of the Ovzil Neha mountain range. The wind never stopped there. She could still hear its shrill moan through the ventilation system of her cell.

She shook her head, pushing away the memory. Theo released her shoulders and dug his weapon out from under his shirt.

Her own hand shook as she studied the scanner again. “No sign of any shield breach. They—someone left it here, knowing I’d find it.” That someone had to be Prow. And he knew what finding it would do to her.

“Was Compound Three where you were?”

She swallowed. “Yes.”

“With Prow?”

“Yes.”

“They’re playing mind games with you, Jorie. Psychological warfare. Because they can’t get to you directly.” He moved back to her, one large hand on her shoulder once again. Warm, reassuring, steady. “Don’t let them win.”

Jorie slid the scanner back into the small bag and palmed her G-1, forcing down the bile that threatened to surge up her throat. Forcing the memories away. Forcing herself to remember she was a Guardian Force commander.

By the time they’d checked every closet, every corner of the small residence, she was calmer. And Theo had spoken to Zeke Martinez. Nothing unusual there. Tamlynne was fine, the kitten sleeping in her lap. But they were alerted.