The Down Home Zombie Blues (6 page)

Her eyes widened and then suddenly she laughed. Not cruelly, not like Camille, but a full, throaty, honest laugh. And he didn’t think it was at all aimed at him but at herself.

“Bliss, bliss.” She wiped at her eyes. “I should have known. Sergeant. You’re very good.”

“Good?”

She closed her fingers into the shape of a gun, extended her arm, pressed her thumb twice. “Zombie. Good aim. You know weapons.”

Of course. She’d had no way of knowing he was trained as a police officer. He thought she had and that she’d followed him or sought him out because he had the laptop. Maybe that wasn’t it at all. Maybe she was following the zombie.

“You speak English.” He’d heard her speak it before, but then other times she didn’t seem able to.

“Vekran. I speak Vekran. Like your…” and she said something he couldn’t catch. “Words,” she added. “Like your words, but different. Some things don’t…” and another word he didn’t understand.

“Translate?” he guessed.

“Trans-late?”

“Have the same meaning. Have the same correlation in my language and yours.”

“Translate. Some things don’t translate.” She nodded.

He pointed to one of her holstered weapons. “Gun.”

“Pistol.”

“Okay. Pistol. We say that. But also gun.”

She shook her head. “Never this gum.”

“Gun.”

“Gun.”

He glanced around the room, spotted a wall sign with its ASCII letters. “Vekran?” he asked, pointing.

“Alarsh. My words. Words of everyone on this ship. Alarsh.”

He finally understood. Vekran—English—wasn’t her native language. He didn’t know why that surprised him. He was bilingual, fluent in English and Greek. Tough to grow up in Maritana County’s Greek community of Mangrove Springs and not be.

“Jorie Mikkalah,” he said. “Home?”

“Home?”

He pointed to himself and then made a small circle with his hands. “Bahia Vista. Florida.” He widened the circle. “United States of America.” He put his hands together, forming a ball. “Earth.”

She paused, then: “Pahn-Taris Station.”

“Space station?”

“Like this ship. In space. No dirt.”

“I know.”

“Good. Pahn-Taris Station.” She moved her hands in an elongated circle. “K’Dri Sector Seventeen.” Widened again. “Chalvash System.”

“How far away from here?”

She made that slight tilt of her head that infused him with a totally illogical desire to kiss her, smudgy face and all. “Four years’ travel.”

“You’re on this ship four years?”

“Eight.”

“Eight years? Why?”

She smiled, her gold eyes narrowing. But it wasn’t a pleasant smile. “Hunting zombies.”

With the language differences, Jorie still wasn’t sure Theo Petrakos fully understood the gravity of the situation. His demeanor went from suspicion to curiosity, hovered almost to camaraderie, then firmly returned to suspicion again. She tried to make it very clear that the Guardians had no interest in his world other than to eradicate the zombies before the zombies eradicated them. He seemed, finally, to understand the threat the zombies posed but not the breadth or depth of it. He also didn’t like the fact that the Guardians had no intention of contacting his governmental authorities.

He liked it less when she explained that the zombies were under the jurisdiction of the Guardians. Zombies were—and she admitted shame to that fact—a mech-organic entity produced by her own government to monitor commercial space traffic for contaminates, and to defend and repair the Hatches: portals that utilized the space–time curvature to link the spacelanes. They were designed to operate in small herds, all under the control of the largest zombie, designated the C-Prime.

Commands issued by her people to the C-Prime were then transmitted to the herd for action. If a herd member was destroyed, the C-Prime could replicate another. If a herd member malfunctioned, the C-Prime could repair it or terminate it.

Then something went radically wrong. The C-Primes stopped accepting commands from the Guardians and began making decisions on their own. It was a flaw, the result of a program upgrade intended to make the C-Primes more intuitive, more responsive. It ended up making them into monsters.

Her government, Jorie patiently explained, had created this problem two hundred years ago. They would fix it, even if it took them another two hundred years.

“We made a mistake,” she said.

“That’s one goddamned big mistake!” He leaned back in his chair, away from her, as he did every time he responded in anger.

“Agreed. Our mistake. Our solution.”

“But it’s killing my people!”

“Mine too.”

“You can fight back. We can’t.”

She knew where he was going with this. Back to his “I have to warn my government” diatribe. But getting nil-techs involved not only wasted time, it cost lives. The Guardians had learned that two hundred years ago as well.

“Our solution,” she repeated. “No choice.”

He turned away from her, his hand fisted over his mouth as if he were trying to stop his words from escaping.

Through all this, Tam Herryck bustled in and out, bringing more data from Danjay’s T-MOD, once again shielded and cooperating nicely. But Jorie didn’t need more data. She needed a chunk of quiet time in order to compose a transmit to Galin about his friend’s untimely but heroic death. Then she needed food and she needed sleep, and not necessarily in that order. She also needed a cleanser. Every time she wiped her hand over her face, it came back with more dirt on it. Petrakos looked rumpled and tired too, though probably not half as filthy as she did. He hadn’t been crawling through the foliage then lying facedown in the dirt for the better part of several time-sweeps.

He wasn’t dealing with the loss of an agent and a friend.

She sighed, rested her elbows on the tabletop and her forehead against her hands for a moment.

“You’re tired.” His voice softened.

She peeked up at him from over her hands. “Observant.”

“That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”

“Hmm?”

“Nothing. I’m tired too. But people—
my
people—are dying. Being killed by
your
zombies. It’s my job to…It doesn’t seem right to go take a nap.”

It took a moment for her to put his sentence together. She straightened. “Zombies nap.”

“You mean they’ve stopped killing?”

“Temporarily. Their impetus,” she wasn’t sure he understood the word, but he nodded, and she continued, “their impetus was heightened by the frequencies of the unshielded T-MOD. We removed that unit to here. This ship.” She tapped the table with her finger. “We have time before they start again. I know—
we
know—how. We know when. We study the data, the craving. Movement of the herd.” She was losing him. She could tell by the slanting of dark brows over even darker eyes. “We have time for cleanser,” she scrubbed at her face, “food,” she touched her fingers to her mouth, “nap.” She closed her eyes and tilted her head.

She heard him suck in a short breath. “Don’t do that.” His voice was low.

She opened her eyes. “What?”

“Nothing. So we have time to clean up, eat, sleep. Then what?”

“Then we go back down and we kill.”

Herryck breezed through the sliding doorway again. “The captain says he’s ready for you now, Commander.”

Finally! She needed the old man’s input on this, though she knew there was a good chance she’d catch hell’s wrath over Petrakos. With that, however, she’d already formed some answers. “On my way,” she told Herryck. The door closed behind the lieutenant. She rose. Petrakos’s hand on her arm stopped her.

“Where are you going?”

Her conversation with Herryck had been in Alarsh. She summarized. “I must report to my captain.”

He was silent for a moment, then he lifted his chin slightly. “Send me back down.”

“Back…?”

“Home. Bahia Vista. My house. Structure,” he added.

“No.”

“I have a job. Duty.”

Don’t we all?
She understood a little more about his job. It wasn’t dissimilar to hers, though on a smaller scale. She very definitely understood duty. She was doing hers now. “No.”

“If I don’t show up at the department,” he glanced at the metal band on his wrist, “by eleven-thirty, noon, people will be looking for me.”

“Then they won’t find you.” She shook off his hand, stepped away.

He rose quickly, but she saw him coming, because she’d spent her life training for moves like that. She spun, bracing, pistol aimed at his chest. He stopped short, evidently not expecting that she’d see him. He was breathing hard.

He was a big man. She had to remember that, had to stop equating nil-tech with nil-abilities. His wide shoulders and muscular arms strained the fabric of his collarless gray shirt. But his wasn’t stupid brawn. He had training; he held the rank of sergeant in a dirtside security force. He’d taken out two orbitals on a zombie the first time he ever used a G-1. That kind of ability damned near matched her own.

She respected that, but there was simply no way she could oblige him.

“My sincere regrets to you,” she told him. “But no.”

“But when we go back down—”

“I go back down. My team. Not you.”

“Why?”

She shook her head. Questions, questions. She’d already explained. “Our problem. Our solution.”

“My planet!”

She nodded knowingly. “Regrets.”

“Okay, okay.” He held up both hands, backed up a step. “Your problem, your solution. I get it now. So put the gu—the pistol away.”

She didn’t, but she did lower it.

“After that. After you kill the zombies. Then I go home?”

Hell’s wrath. She hated this part. It rarely went well with nils, who illogically tied their identities to an orbiting ball of dirt or, worse, to one locale on that same ball of dirt. Spacefaring cultures were so much easier to deal with. “Regrets.”

It took a moment, then his face hardened. “Regrets?
Regrets?
What the fuck do you mean by ‘regrets’?”

“Fuck?”

His hand fisted against his mouth again, and he abruptly shifted away from her. He was angry, very angry. But he was comporting himself rather well, considering the circumstances. She gave him credit for that. She’d dealt with far worse from nils.

He lowered his hand, turned back, and spoke with slow, controlled deliberation. “Am I to stay on this ship for the rest of my life?”

“No.”

“No?” Surprise flitted over his features and, damn, there was a hopeful tone in his voice.

“Relocation.” She hoped he understood that word. “New residence. New structure.” It was inevitable that—in the hundreds of Guardian missions over hundreds of years—certain locals would become involved, as he had. In advanced societies that had space travel and an awareness of—if not relations with—other galactic cultures, the locals could return to their residences. That was never the case with nil-techs—a label Petrakos had bristled at when she’d explained it. But nils couldn’t stay on board either. Yet they had to live somewhere. “Nice location. Paroo. Trees smell sweet.”

Not surprisingly, the news didn’t appear to infuse him with bliss.

“Paroo.” He said the word as if it were the vilest of curses.

“Paroo.”

“No. Bahia Vista. Florida. United States of America.” His voice shook.

She sighed. There was something she hadn’t considered or had overlooked because she was so flat-line tired. He might be spoused. Have children. Sometimes…She could ask the captain. Sometimes they’d relocate the entire family unit.

She studied him briefly again. He was in his prime as a male. Tall. Strong. And a good face. A very good face. Someone loved him, surely. And he loved her as well.

Lucky female.

That thought startled her. Sex was bliss, but being spoused didn’t interest her. Especially after Lorik. She must be more tired than she thought. “You’re spoused, aren’t you?”

“Spoused?”

“Male. Female. Same residence. Have children. Have love.”

Something she couldn’t identify flickered across his face. His very good face. “I’m not married, no. No wife. No spouse. No children.”

She almost asked if all the females he knew were blind and unsexed but thought better of it.

“Why would it matter if I were marr—spoused?”

“Because…” She hesitated, choosing simple Vekran words. “We have sincere regrets when we’re required to send nils to Paroo. We try, we
very
much try, Petrakos, to make what is bad into bliss. We understand the family unit. If that was why you’re angry, I would ask the captain to appropriate your family for you, send you all to Paroo. But family unit or not, that doesn’t change what I must do. Or where you must go. You hear my words, Petrakos?”

He stared at her, his expression flat. Dead. His arms were taut by his sides. She watched his eyes, ready to raise her pistol again if she had to.

Finally he spoke, his voice bitter. “Kidnappers with a conscience. How nice. Go to hell, all of you.”

She didn’t fully understand the first part of his remark. But she clearly understood the last. She raised her chin and met his hard stare evenly. “Been there. Twice.”

“Go report to your captain.” His voice was a low soft growl.

She backed up to the door and exited without comment, locking the door behind her. Herryck waited for her in the corridor. “Get a security team to transfer him to secure quarters,” she told the lieutenant as she holstered her pistol. “Stay here until they arrive.”

“Problems, sir?”

“He’s angry. And he’s security-trained and very capable of doing something about it.”

“If he tries, sir?”

She knew standard procedure as well as Herryck did. For all a battle cruiser’s tech and weaponry, it was still a fragile environment. No place for a nil with a grudge who had the skills to fire a G-I or micro-rifle but not the understanding of what that could do to an exterior bulkhead in the vacuum of space. If he managed to obtain a weapon, there’d be no choice but one. She knew that choice. And she wasn’t required to like it. “Hard-terminate, my authorization.”

“Understood, sir.”

Good. She was glad somebody did, because as she’d issued the command, it weighed on her heart. Heavily. She spun on her heels and headed for the captain’s office.