“I’d still like you both to come with me. I even have snazzy transportation.”
“Like hell.”
“Not
that
bad, I don’t think.” He smiled. “It’s just a bite…and then no worries.”
“Fuck you. They always sound hungry and they reek. You’re a shitty salesman.”
Jake laughed. The zombies shifted and the Samoan moaned as if he tried to protest. The mime, however, stayed silent.
“You’re hurting the feelings of certain undead people,” Jeremiah warned.
“Let’s make a deal,” Jake offered. “You let her go. I’ll come along with you.”
My heart took a nasty lurch. “Jake—no, dammit!”
“I want her,” Jeremiah said, sounding unimpressed by his offer. “A zombie who can shoot fire would be very useful.”
“I’m a barrier mage. I’d be your own personal invisible bulletproof vest.”
Jeremiah paused. “Hmm. Yeah. Sounds great.” He tapped a finger against his chin. “I’ll take both, then.”
Jake looked at me, turning the intensity of his gaze up to redline. “Andrea, did I tell you I think I love you?”
My breath caught in my throat. “I love you t—wait…
think
? What? You have some kind of sliding scale? You have to run it by committee or something?”
He shrugged and flashed me that troublemaker grin. If I lived through this, I’d make him pay.
“That’s sweet,” Jeremiah said. “Touching, like the Lifetime channel or baby seals. Now you can rot together as the undead, working for me. Goodbye.”
I readied myself for one last play, even if it meant I had to blow apart the entire balcony in one final defiant supernova.
Ed the zombie mechanic shuffled toward me. Mime zombie and Samoan zombie leaned toward Jake’s throat, moaning happily. I drew in breath to shout, to scream, to set loose an inferno.
Jake stared right at me with that same intensity I’d seen that day on the street, the first time I’d noticed him beyond the police barricades. His voice sounded low and perfectly calm. “Light me on fire, Andrea.”
For an instant I was sure I’d heard him wrong, so insane was his request. I readied myself to light up the two zombies, hoping to free him, even as Dead Ed put his hand on my shoulder and tightened his cold fingers in my shirt. I couldn’t kill all these targets at once without burning us all up. One of us would get bitten, no matter what I did. I couldn’t breathe. Despair choked me. I wanted to scream, wanted to cry, wanted to sear the world for its cruelty—giving me Jake and then taking him from me just when we finally realized what we meant to each other.
Jake never blinked. “Trust me.”
And I did.
My stream of fire flared so hot it burned blue-white. It shot out toward him, three feet at its core, tongues of flame spitting off its sides. It streaked right for his chest…and hit his barrier and deflected directly into the mime and the Samoan, throwing them backward with searing force. The burning Samoan toppled over the railing. The mime whirled around in circles, slapping at his flaming beret, his greasepaint bubbling as his face melted. Jake dropped down, so fast I barely saw it, snatched up his Beretta and fired.
Ed the zombie, whose stinking carrion breath had been wafting in my face with his crooked teeth just inches from my flesh, fell with part of his skull missing. The slide on the Beretta came back, the pistol now empty.
I spun back toward Necromancer Jeremiah, determined to end this forever. His face twisted with shock and outrage. He lifted his pistol, and before I could loose my spell, he pulled the trigger. The muzzle flashed like a picture bulb.
The bullet ricocheted off the barrier that shimmered in front of me just in time, and the last zombie bodyguard dropped to its knees, a neat hole in its forehead. The necromancer’s eyes widened. I couldn’t send fire at him because Jake’s barrier blocked my line of attack. The pistol muzzle moved toward Jake, but Jake swung his arm, whipping the barrier around and into the necromancer first, knocking him off the edge.
I heard a scream and crashing branches and a thud. Jake and I ran to the edge of the balcony and looked down, but I couldn’t see anything in the thick foliage of shrubs and trees and hedges.
The gunfire had grown louder and almost constant, punctuated with thunderclap explosions. It sounded like the Battle of Moscow raged out in the hall. Jake dragged me back from the railing. Before I could speak he folded me in his arms and kissed me. Kissed my lips, then my face, and my lips again, holding me in a fierce, strong grip as if he never wanted to let me go again.
I finally broke the kiss, breathless. “Come on, we have to find my people.”
Three zombies had wandered back inside the room from the hall. They staggered toward us. I stepped forward and gathered my power—but again, before I could cut loose, gunfire roared and one zombie head exploded like a cantaloupe filled with plastic explosives. When the zombie collapsed, I saw Sarge standing behind it, dark blood all over his combat gear and armor, the M249 SAW braced up against his shoulder, its barrel smoking. One of the zombies turned toward him. A golf club hissed down and crushed its skull, and Rafe stood there with his wolfish leer. Stefan grabbed the last zombie and bashed its head against the wall, leaving a huge dent in the wallpaper and a bigger dent in the zombie’s forehead. He dusted his hands off and shoved them into the pockets of his tuxedo slacks, rocked on his heels and managed to look inordinately pleased with himself.
A moment later Mai and Hanzo rushed in. Gavin followed them, dragging an empty rocket-propelled grenade launcher on the ground behind him, looking tired and disheveled. Squeegee came next, fur still all fluffed out, hair standing up Halloween-cat style. Last came Tiffany, a TEC-9 in each hand, her wings spread like a hawk, streaked with soot and blood, looking like some video-gamer geek’s secret fantasy.
I ran to them, unable to stop grinning. They rushed toward me and surrounded me. Everybody talked at once, and Mai was crying, and I think Gavin cried too. I swiped at my cheeks and found them wet, crying and I didn’t care. Jake’s arms slipped around me, and everybody was close, smelling of war and violence, but we were still here.
Still here. Together. We’d all pulled through, and with Jake, that was the only thing in the world that mattered to me.
Chapter Twenty-Six: A Long Road Home
Defeated Undead Army of the Unrighteous Order of the Falling Dark
Passenger Seat Audi S6 Sedan
NW Pittock Drive
, Portland, Oregon
8:48 p.m. PST April 19th
The world came back slowly for Jeremiah Hansen, transitioning from a black morass of nothingness to a gray one. His head thudded with pain. He opened his eyes and realized he sat in a car. A really nice car. Blake’s car.
“What happened?” His words came out as a groan.
“You were knocked off the balcony during the final battle and lost consciousness upon impact,” Blake answered. “I took the initiative of removing you from the shrubs and leaving the area.”
He raised his hand to his forehead, rubbing his temple. Dozens of scrapes and cuts lashed his forearms. He stank of smoke and evergreen shrubs worse than a hanging air freshener pine tree that had dangled in a barroom its entire life. “Did we win?”
“Unfortunately not.”
Well, that sucked. “Where are we now?”
“I took the precaution of decamping to our staging area when momentum turned against us.” Blake pointed up the hill at the mercenary compound, though trees blocked much of the view. Part of the house and grounds had caught on fire. Single gunshots rang out from time to time. The red and blue strobe of emergency lights bathed the front of the house. He could see tiny figures running around in some of the spotlights.
“Shit,” he said. “That didn’t exactly turn out like I wanted.”
“Indeed. Do you retain control over any of our undead assets?”
Jeremiah closed his eyes and checked his silver web. All the cords had been severed and lay in a nasty ethereal tangle in his mind. Hundreds of zombies. Gone.
Again.
“No,” Jeremiah said.
“Unfortunate.”
“At least we got away.”
Blake turned and looked at him. The man’s eyes were colder than a dead mackerel. “I believe the time has come for some significant…readjustments…to the operating hierarchy.”
Jeremiah froze as fear iced through his veins. That was the shit bad guys said right before they killed somebody off. He had no weapons and no zombies to defend him. He glanced at Blake’s hands. Thank God they were empty. But did that mean Blake had something else up his sleeve? Was the passenger seat Jeremiah sat in secretly constructed to channel 50,000 volts and eject his electrocuted corpse into the night? And if he got hit with 50,000 volts, would his hair catch on fire? That seemed particularly distasteful, especially after his run-in with the lady fire slinger from the warmest pits of Hell.
Blake seemed to read his thoughts and a smile quirked the corner of his lips. The smile did nothing to quell Jeremiah’s fears. He started to reach for the door handle and realized he was buckled in.
“No need for dismay, Mr. Hansen. I intend you no harm. You have certain talents hard to come by in this world. I do not waste resources with impunity.”
“So you’re not going to kill me?”
“On the contrary. Rest assured you have nothing to fear from me.” He smiled again—a sharkish grin showing off very white teeth. “Yet, things have indeed changed. Your corporation is being…absorbed into mine. A takeover, if you will. Though I would hope it isn’t altogether hostile.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You will work for me now. Oh, you’ll be paid very well for your services. But I think the time has come to embrace a wider, more dynamic vision for our, or should I say,
my
company. You followed the time-honored, but pedestrian philosophy of first attaining wealth, and then using it to attain power. I know a few…shortcuts, and I have larger dreams than a gelatin-manufacturing industry, I must admit. I believe my hour has come at last.”
“All right.” Jeremiah sighed out the breath he’d been holding. So he wouldn’t be top dog any longer. So what? It had been nothing but a constant pain in the ass anyway. His operation had been all teeth and no tail and he’d been forced to focus too much on the day-to-day minutiae. He had a sneaking and grudging suspicion that Blake might be able to do things better. “I have a few conditions though.”
Blake chuckled. It was a dry, whispery sound, like wind rattling rotting reeds. “Name them.”
“A good health-care plan. Full coverage, and I don’t want my premiums going up every other month. With dental and prescription coverage, mind you. Six week’s vacation. Performance bonuses, including a healthy severance package. And…sex ninjas.”
“Most of those can be met easily enough. However, the last condition…we shall see.”
“Great.” Better than he’d hoped for actually. “What now?”
“Now we prepare,” Blake said. “We make some acquisitions. Network. Seed the public consciousness and test the market of the zeitgeist. World domination is attained with great care, one day at a time, minute upon minute, a mountain built of countless grains of sand.”
Blake shifted the Audi into reverse, gracefully backed out, and they drove down the road into the night.
Chapter Twenty-Seven: All Quiet on the Urban Front
Mercenary Wing Rv6-4 “Zero Dogs”
Mandalay
Bay
, Poolside
Las Vegas Boulevard
, Las Vegas, Nevada
1118 Hours PST April 28th
I was pretty happy.
Check that. I was
really
happy. At this exact moment I sprawled on a lounge chair near the pool and baked in the sun. Jake and I had escaped the Portland rain and fled to the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas for the rest of his leave. The ice in my glass clinked and rattled as it melted. Palm fronds rustled in the breeze. I squinted up at the vibrant blue sky through my sunglasses and thought about nothing at all.
“I knew I was pressing my luck,” Jake said from the lounge chair beside me. “Up six hundred, all my chips bet the hard way, and the dice come up seven. That shooter stank of bad luck, and I knew it from the beginning.”
I lifted my head and glared at him over the top of my sunglasses. “Excuse me?
I
was throwing the dice, if you’ll remember. And I do
not
stink of bad luck.”
He grinned and sniffed the air. “Yep. Suntan lotion and bad luck.”
I leaned back and closed my eyes again. “Well, I didn’t have any problem winning. Besides, your whining has disturbed my sun-inspired meditation.”
“Evil of me.”
“Yep.”
The rest of Merc Wing Rv6-4 Zero Dogs were scattered across Las Vegas and staying in various hotel-casinos until the repairs to our house were finished. Well, not that long. I’d splurge for a week in Sin City using a chunk of our government funds, and then we’d be back to staying at some cheap national chain motel in Portland until the contractors fixed all the fire, bullet and explosives damage. Most of the repair costs had to come out of our bank account since our homeowner’s insurance policy didn’t cover banzai zombie attacks. An egregious oversight, I now realized. The loss of our Bradley Fighting Vehicle hurt. Hurt bad.
Special Forces Captain Jake Sanders had pulled some strings with the big dogs and we’d ended up getting two-thirds of the contract payment on Necromancer Jeremiah Hansen, although none of the charred bodies had been identified as his. It was entirely possible to survive that fall with a bit of luck, and there’d been no dead body below that balcony. I knew because I’d checked.
That’s pretty much how the story ended. Zero Dogs victorious again, story at eleven.
Oh, and I never wanted to see another zombie for as long as I lived, maybe even longer.
Speaking of stories, before we’d left for Vegas, Gavin had told me he wanted to write a new book based on our adventures. In it, he planned to change me into a horny, yet depressed, female centaur and Jake into a demon with three penises—a tri-cock monstrosity, if you will—with magical sperm that cured mental illness. I told him if he wrote that book he’d discover, to his vast grief,
exactly
how it felt to be set on fire from the inside out. So he’d decided to stay across town at the Circus Circus, as far from me as possible. Wise choice.
Very
wise choice, indeed.
“I wonder what everyone else’s up to,” Jake said.
“I don’t. Most of them have probably been arrested by now. Not my problem because I’m on vacation. And so are you.” I exaggerated a little on the
not my problem
part, but I’d brought along some bail money. Just in case.
“Yeah.” Jake stretched and grabbed his Corona. “Seven days R&R.”
“And then back to Fort Bragg.”
He stayed quiet for a long moment. “Only for a short while. Then I’ll be back on the West Coast again.”
“I wish you could stay. Closer, I mean.”
“So do I. But there are always airplanes.” He reached out and traced a finger down my cheek. “I’m not going anywhere, Captain Walker. And neither are you.”
We didn’t say anything for a while, both of us content to bask in sunrays, not wanting to think any further into the future than to decide where we wanted to eat dinner.
I finished my drink and rattled the ice at Jake. “I’m empty. How about a refill?”
“What am I? Your cabana boy?”
“Exactly. Why do you think I rented a cabana? I expect you to wait on me. I’m a princess. No, a fire goddess. You’d do well to remember that, soldier boy.”
“And what the hell do I get out of this arrangement?”
I smiled but kept my eyes closed. “I’ll warm you up tonight.”
“Do I have to wait that long? Because that bikini looks as if it’s begging to come off.”
“Ahem.” I rattled my glass again. “Drink first.”
“Yeah. Let me get right on it.” He leaned in and kissed me on the lips, then began to trace kisses along my jaw, down my neck…
Jake’s cell phone rang and shattered the mood, leaving our peace and quiet in jagged shards on the pool decking.
“I thought I advised you to throw that thing in the pool?” I said.
He grumbled something disagreeable while he tossed towels left and right, digging for the phone. I started to hum “Cheeseburger in Paradise” along with the ringtone, just to be obnoxious. I’d changed his ringtone on the plane as a surprise. He didn’t seem to appreciate the joke, though. He finally found the phone and favored me with a raised eyebrow as he brought it to his ear.
“Captain Sanders.” He listened for a moment and then glanced at me. The look on his face made me sit up in alarm. He stared off at the bright blue pool water, and his scowl deepened as he listened. I could hear a deep voice from the cell. It sounded like Sarge…
“No,” Jake after a pause. “No, don’t do anything yet. I’ll let her know. Thanks, Sarge. How’s Shawn? Yeah?” Jake laughed, and I relaxed a little. Laughter meant the world wouldn’t end in the next ten minutes. “Tell him he needs better taste in men.” A pause. “All right, yeah, we’ll sort it out. She’ll call you back. Take care, man.” He snapped his phone shut, put it back on the table and sat back down on the lounge chair. Sunlight flashed off his sunglass lenses.
I waited for him to speak. And waited. The silence grew unbearable.
“You going to tell me what the hell that was about? Or would you rather sleep in the lobby tonight?”
Jake shrugged with an irritating amount of nonchalance. “I didn’t want to bother you with a lot of distractions. That was Sarge.”
“Why’d he call
you
? Why didn’t he just call
me
?”
“Probably because you threw your cell phone into the pool already.”
Oh yeah. “Is there trouble?”
“Calm down, Batgirl. Nothing to get excited about. Let’s see…a bunch of the contractors all quit because they say your house is haunted. It seems a ghost jellyfish has been seen floating around the worksite—”
“A ghost jellyfish? Our house is haunted by a
jellyfish
?”
“And Sarge wanted me to let you know another job’s come up. A gigantic Japanese fire-breathing chicken called a Basan is running around attacking Crispy Chicken to Go franchises in Beaverton and Gresham. Now their corporate representatives want the giant chicken fried.”
“How much are they paying?” I hesitated, and then shook my head. “No.
Nope
. I’m on vacation. With you. Giant chickens can wait. And I don’t even want to know about the ghost jellyfish.”
Jake leaned in close and tried out his terrible French accent. “You say the most romantic things,
mon cheri
. I cannot resist talk of giant fowl and ectoplasm-based invertebrates.”
“Then carry me to my room, cabana boy.” I strove for imperious, but found it a challenge not to laugh. “Your fire goddess is exhausted from fighting zombies.”
He flashed me the grin I’d come to love and scooped me off my lounge chair into his arms. He carried me along the deck, past the sun-dappled water of the pool. I loved the feel of his skin and muscles. I snuggled closer to him as the warm breeze traced along my skin. It didn’t take much effort to ignore the stares of the other hotel guests.
I lifted my head toward his, lips parted, eyes half-closed.
He paused on the deck and kissed me deeply again…
…and then threw me in the pool.
Son. Of. A. Bitch.