Blood Soaked and Contagious (32 page)

Fun in the sack and make strong baby for me. I tried not to sputter. Then I noticed something: she looked better and was moving more easily than usual.

“Grandmother? How is your arthritis?”

“You know, I feel very good today. Nothing hurts. Feel so good, I want to have,” she made the classic sake, little cup drinking gesture, and grinned in a very evil way, “good wine and handsome old man.” I got another pat on the cheek and she said, “So, you find handsome old man, you send to Grandmother! Now, you go kiss pretty girl and make me happy!”

I got turned around and shooed away.

What else could I do, I walked back over to Charlotte Marie “Fun in Sack, Make Strong Baby” Cooper and gave her a decent kiss. Grandmother clapped and whistled behind me.

“What was that about?” Charlie wondered.

“Well, I think her husband dropped some nano-pixie dust on her windowsill this morning before visiting Jaya and the two of us. Her arthritis has let up, her cheeks are pink, and she’s interested in getting drunk and tripping up a cute old man.”

“Oh my goodness,” she laughed in an endearingly merry way, “I’m almost worried about what a Nanotechnology Grandmother could do!”

“I bet she could kick some ass. She’s scary smart and sly. I’d be worried to find her an old guy to go drinking with. She’d give him a heart attack.”

People began filtering in. Gina and Mark looked a little gray after the day’s events, and I strongly suspected that most everyone would be similarly subdued. Nate and Flower came in together, with sidearms very apparent on their belts. The rest of Nate’s crew tumbled in shortly after.

Buttons, an Asian guy I hadn’t met, and another fellow who at least looked as though I’d seen him at some point or another, showed up with their own folding chairs. I was willing to give them a certain amount of props for that sort of forward thinking, but not much beyond that. I was still seething somewhere underneath my bemused exterior, and the thought of taking Buttons out back and giving him a messy final moment was percolating with increasing vigor.

Shawn and Jayashri arrived at the same time, followed very shortly by Yolanda and her husband. Before too long, the room was as full as it could be, and it was pretty clear that everyone was ready to get things moving forward.

Normally, Bajali would chair the meetings, but his absence made something of a hole. No one looked quite willing to fill it, so I did an unusual thing and stepped up to the plate.

“I’m glad you all could make it,” I began with no small amount of nervousness, “but I’d really like to know that someone is looking after the kids right now.”

Flower stood up and said, “Yes. Barbara is looking after them, as usual, but they’re all here in the store,” and sat back down.

“Okay. I was hoping someone would think to have them closer to hand than the last time we had a meeting.” There were a few muffled affirmative noises in answer to my comment. “We have a few major things to discuss on the heels of today’s events, not the least of which is some major information about what we can expect within the next two days, if not sooner.”

I hated that I had to say all of this, but it looked like no one else was willing to do it. What else could I do but keep going?

“Bajali sent us a message early this morning, in the form of a visitor to our neighborhood who blew himself up on his way out. Warren Hightower will, within the next three days, attempt to wipe us off the map. I suspect today’s attack was one of two things. Firstly, retaliation for our guest, Mister Buttons, who blew up the top of a building where Hightower’s sniper was located. Secondly, today’s tragic attack may well be the first shot in a continuing offensive designed to whittle us down before mopping us up in a few days.”

The room erupted into noise, which I tuned out. Flower had turned around in his seat to face Buttons, and from the look on Mister B’s face, something was about to go down.

“All y’all, shut the Hell up!” Shawn’s voice boomed out into the room, silencing everything but the sound of people breathing heavily. He stood up and walked over to stand beside me. “What you have to say is important, don’t get me wrong, but what we
do
from this moment forward is more important than anything else. They’re coming to kill us all, just like they tried to do today, and we’ve got a serious choice on our hands. Do we stay and fight, or do we all just bug out and head for the hills? That’s what we need to decide first.”

Everyone had their eyes on him, and so did I. I went and sat down with Jayashri and Charlie. It seemed like a sound policy to let the man say what he needed to say.

“If anyone decides to escape this shit we’ve been handed, then I will say to them, ‘God bless you, and I hope you find safety and happiness wherever you end up,’ and that’ll be the end of it. I am not going to ask someone to stand up beside me, and probably die with me, if that is not what they want to do.” Shawn took a deep breath, wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, and kept right on going. “What I will do is tell you this: this is my home and you are my family. I will stay and defend what we have built together, because I choose to do that. Every one of you who stays gives us that much more of a chance that this will not be the last of us, and every one of you who goes will make us fight that much harder because you’re not here to help.”

Shawn ran his fingers through his hair and looked us all over as if he was making sure all the sheep were in the herd. I wasn’t sure I could have done a better job saying what needed to be said than he was doing at the time. There are only so many ways to raise an army from a diverse group of people, even if a common foe has arrived on the scene at the proper time. My friend was working with a classic paradigm: I’m going to fight whether or not you do, and my unspoken challenge to you is for you to stand beside me.

“I’ve said my piece, but there is one small bit left. If you aren’t going to stay, then you have other things you need to do that are more important than sitting here and listening to us plan. Go home, start getting your lives as mobile as you can make them, and please be safe out there when you go.” He took a deep breath, shook out his shoulders, and plowed right in on the rest of it. “Everybody who is going to stay and fight, we’ve got some work to do.”

No one moved. I didn’t hear a chair scrape the floor nor a single ass wriggle where it sat. Shawn, my mountain man, brother in arms, bowed his head. I’m not sure anyone beyond the front row heard him say, “Thank you, God,” under his breath. When his head came back up, he was a different person, more determined than I’d ever seen, and I was proud to have the chance to be with him.

“Looks to me like we’re in this together. Thank you. Before we really get down into it, I’d like us to have a moment of silence for the loved ones we lost today. I would say a blessing for them, but I was raised Christian and don’t know what’s appropriate. If anyone has the right words, I’d appreciate your help.”

Someone in the back of the room started speaking in Arabic, and I turned to see who it was.

The Asian man who had come in with Buttons finished reciting, and then he shared it with us in English. “Allah, forgive our living and our dead, those who are here with us and those who are not, our young and our old, our men and our women. Allah, forgive him and have mercy on him, honor the place where he settles and make his entrance wide; wash him with water and snow and hail, and cleanse him of sin as a white garment is cleansed of dirt. Allah, most merciful, admit him to Paradise and protect him from the torment of the grave and the torment of Hellfire.” He looked up at the rest of us, nodded, and said, “That’s all I remember.”

There were mutters of gratitude, and then the room fell silent. In my head, I knew there were no words spoken for two minutes and eighteen seconds, but it felt like an eternity to my heart. Shawn spoke up and invited Jaya to speak to everyone.

She stood, turned to face all of us, and began, “The messenger who brought us the information this morning also brought a gift from my husband, as well as his love that I should share with all of you. As you know, he was to be working on nanotechnology for our enemy; however, things did not go as planned. What he was able to do before the project ground to a halt was create a series of nanomachines that would optimize the normal human body for the rigors of combat. That was the gift sent to me.” She pointed at Charlie and me. “They were also recipients of the information I was given, as well as the same gift of technology. You are all aware of how close Frank came to dying, and he is here, without a single scar to show for what he endured as a result of saving the children.”

No one said a thing. I couldn’t tell if it was some general state of shock or disbelief, but I would have expected more reaction than none at all.

“My husband designed these machines to propagate within a community of emotionally involved individuals. Human beings who share bonds of affection secrete hormones and chemicals in response to those bonds. The nanotechnology spreads when those chemicals are present in the host, directly to other people within a four-meter range who are also secreting the same chemicals.”

That got a bit of a reaction—everyone in the room gasped and rocked back in their chairs. Jayashri pulled me up and asked me to speak about it.

“All right, everyone, hear me out. There is a better than average chance that everyone in our community has become hosts to these little guys. If you have a bad set of cramps that cause you to crave and consume really odd things, like your silverware, it isn’t a pregnancy. It’s the nano-buddies. You may pass out after you eat whatever they want you to eat. Don’t worry! You’ll wake up!”

My neighbors and friends gave me some very funny looks.

I just kept going, explaining what I’d experienced, and how I’d already coped with being shot five times. That drew quite a few appreciative nods and a few questions I deliberately answered without discussing how the critters would scavenge available tissue in order to make battlefield repairs. Sometimes it is worth glossing over disturbing facts when you’re presenting a group of people with something that was already challenging to absorb.

I told them about the dried milk ball instead. That got a laugh or two and some screwed-up expressions of disgust. Make ‘em laugh and it will be easier to swallow than a wad of dried dairy products.

Shawn patted me on the shoulder and whispered in my ear. “Does that mean I got these damned things running around inside me?”

“I don’t know. What happened after you came downstairs?”

“Well,” he got an odd expression on his face, “I had this really fucked up urge to lick a shovel.”

I had to smile at him. “Did you lick it like a good Knocker should?” Watch me tempt fate.

“Aw, man. Don’t you start! Yeah, I licked the shovel and flopped over for about 10 minutes.”

“In that case, you’re the first giant country nanotechnology-enhanced male descendant of Southern freedom fighters! Congrats!”

There are places in the world where the sort of look he gave me would have been accompanied by everyone in the immediate vicinity holding up mystical gestures meant to ward off the evil eye. I just smiled back at him, because I still owed him for punching me when we argued and then giving my back a poke before all the technological fun began. A little snarky behavior would prime the pump for serious teasing at some later date.

“Although,” I thought to myself, “if I manage to get really involved with Charlie, that might be revenge enough.” My hindbrain chose that moment to mule-kick my frontal lobes. “Okay, yes, I will be getting as deeply involved in her as humanly possible. That will be splendid revenge as well as carnally satisfying. Fine! Just don’t kick me like that again.” The hindbrain snickered and retreated to the warm, dark place that it favored for moist contemplations.

Shawn grunted, turned to everyone, and called the meeting back to order.

“All right, since we’re gonna fight, we need to break things down and start putting together our contingency plans. I need Nate, Barbara, Jim, Darcy, and Omér on the issue of keeping the kids safe. Mark, Gina, Barry, Katherine, and I will get into local defense strategy. I’d also like input from,” he gestured at Nate’s friends, “y’all on this. Flower, you pick whomever you want for offensive planning. Jaya, would you grab Yolanda and whomever else you need to arrange for triage and first aid?”

Everyone broke down into their respective teams, and my whiteboard was commandeered by Gina for planning nasty surprises. Buttons and his people meandered over to Flower and began some rather animated discussion about things exploding. Charlie and I looked over the groups and wondered where we belonged.

“What do we do?” I asked Charlie, as if she knew any better than I did. She shrugged and wandered over to her brother, leaving me standing in the middle of the floor, looking like an idiot.

“Stewart!” Buttons waved me over. Joy.

“Yes, Mister I’ll Nuke Them From Space, Just To Be Sure?”

“You need to be on the offensive team if there’s going to be one,” he told me. Flower nodded emphatically. “Your skills are more than up to par for it, and you’ve got a good relationship with Bajali Sharma.”

“That’s certainly true, but why are we discussing attacking them instead of defending ourselves?”

Flower spoke up, “It’s a little counterintuitive, yes, but it makes a lot of sense. If Hightower commits the bulk of his people here, there will be fewer zombies available there to resist a small team of well-equipped people. At most, we send over five to rescue Baj and destroy as much as possible on the way out.”