Blood Soaked and Contagious (33 page)

I nodded. Whether or not I liked the idea of not being here to defend my home and my extended family, the thought of bringing Baj back and busting infrastructure at the same time certainly caught my interest. Not being a tactician, I couldn’t say if having five fewer people on defense would make a huge difference. We needed every person, surely, but we also needed substantially more firepower.

“All right, let’s say for the moment that I’m in. How are we going to compensate for five people
not
being here to watch the home fires?”

The Asian fellow who had prayed spoke up. “I’m Shoei Omura. No fancy nicknames. We have significant firepower available to us onsite, not to mention using the orbital resources that you’ve been told about. Assuming we have a few days to act in, that will give us six shots from orbit to destroy, distract, or delay the opposing force.”

No nonsense. I could like this guy. “Okay, what sort of firepower are we talking about? I’m assuming you had to have brought it with you, because I don’t know about it.”

Flower chuckled quietly. “Frank, you don’t know everything that goes on in the neighborhood. You do spend a lot of time whacking zombies, and sometimes you miss... ahem... the occasional delivery from interested parties.”

“Ah. Would you be so kind as to speak clearly about this issue?” I wasn’t annoyed, per se, but I was intensely curious about whatever it was that I wasn’t, and had not been made, aware of.

“Haven’t you ever wondered where Gina gets her chemicals? Or the frangible material she packs the anti-personnel IEDs with?” If he hadn’t been twiddling his thumbs, I think he’d have patted me on my blind little skull. “We also have several crates of automatic weapons, ammunition, grenades, and other goodies in my basement. Buttons, Omura, and Channing have a few other interesting toys besides the orbital ones. Want to fill him in?”

The third mouse, I assume he was Channing, smiled and told me about the fun they had in boxes, waiting to be assembled. “It’s a compact, multi-node, automated Active Area Denial System. We set it up, and nobody wants to be within 200 feet of the emitters.”

“Dilithium crystal drain cleaner, what?” I had no clue what he was telling me, other than he looked really pleased with it.

“Did you never watch the news or read
Wired
?” He was a younger fellow than either Omura or Buttons, and had he not been wearing black fatigues, I’d have been willing to bet there would have been a pocket protector in his daily wardrobe.

“Not if I could help it in either case. Why?”

“The Active Area Denial System,” his tone showed he was clearly offended I knew nothing about his Precious, “is the closest thing we have to an anti-personnel force field. They call it the Pain Ray. Anyone within range of the device is bombarded with non-lethal, but incredibly painful microwaves. No one, and I mean NO ONE, can bear to be anywhere near it.”

“Gosh. Thank you, Mister Worf.” Oh, the dirty look I got! If it had been like the thing he was describing, I would have been boiled alive. “So, if we set it up, it will keep zombies from physically entering an area?”

“Yes. This is a scaled-down version of the original. If we were to, say, put a node at every clear entry into this neighborhood, nothing with functioning nerve endings would be able to come through that point. They’d have to shoot into the area, disable the units, or spend time coming through booby-trapped buildings.”

“Shiny, Mister Worf! Shiny! Doesn’t do much for rockets or a Bradley armored vehicle, but it helps with being overrun by the Mostly Dead.” This little prick really wanted to tear my head off, and if I’d been him, I would feel much the same. There was something about him that made me want to take pot shots at his ego. If I managed to live through all this, I would devote a whole half an hour to discovering why, or so I promised myself.

I’m such a liar.

Channing looked around as though he was expecting some sort of sympathy from the group. He didn’t get any. Sad, in a way.

I looked around at everyone and they appeared to be looking back at me as though they were waiting for something, or I’d developed a goiter and was completely oblivious to the swelling.

“And the Peanut Gallery says?” I waved my hands for emphasis.

“All right Frank, the main issue is whether or not you’ll be in on our rescue mission or not.” Flower was not afraid of being blunt about anything, at least not in my experience. “Buttons tells me that your mere presence on a mission of this kind is vital, so it hinges on you. You in?”

“In. Charlie comes with me.” I pointed behind me to where she was engaged in vigorous conversation.

Omura looked her over and asked, “Why her in particular?”

“Good question, Sir, and politely phrased as well. The answer, Watson, is simple.” I refrained from patting him on the head. “Jayashri is needed here for medical issues, and that is not open to debate. Charlie and Jayashri are the only other people with as much experience with their nano-upgrades as I am with mine. That, Watson, is why Charlotte Cooper is coming with me.”

“Fair. Combat experience?” Omura was asking questions like he expected to be on the team, and they were reasonable things to ask one way or another.

“Yes. Based on today’s adventures, she took down two in less than twenty seconds, after taking two bullets to the chest.” I didn’t mention the vest, not that it would have mattered a whole lot, but I wanted her with me. I suspect it was my way of attempting to control as much of the situation as I could.

“Okay. We’ve got Frank, Charlie, looks like you’re volunteering, Omura,” Flower nodded at him and got an answering nod in return, “and me. We should have at least one more who could bring up the rear without getting it shot off.” He turned around and gestured at the knot of soldiers hanging around Nate, and said, “Nate’s friend Jackson is a reasonable person to ask. Nate gave me the skinny on him not long after they showed up. Good record, stable, and can take an order. Anyone object before I sign him up?”

We didn’t. My friendly neighborhood sniper got up and made his way over to that group of people. I turned back to Buttons and his little cadre of bookends, and brought up the issue.

“Well,” I said, addressing Buttons, “have you handed anyone my life story since we spoke last?”

“Frank, whether you like me or not is immaterial, but you do need to trust me. Omura and Channing know nothing more than they need to know and are completely capable of
not
asking questions. You’re on the rescue mission for reasons you and I know very well, and that is all that needs to be said, unless you feel the need to be forthcoming on the topics we have discussed.” For someone that I’d assaulted and my future girlfriend had nutted, he was being immensely civilized. In the interest of furthering detente, I gave him half a Brownie point.

I grunted and might have said more if Flower hadn’t returned with our Number Five and Charlie in tow. From that point, we got into substantial planning for our little stroll into town on the day of the big offensive. In a lot of ways it was quite a typical plan for an atypical situation.

During the heat of the fighting, our team would exit the neighborhood, commandeer a vehicle from the enemy, and drive it right back to the building where Warren Hightower set up shop. Depending on resistance, we would either make our entrance via the parking garage or one of the service doors on the ground floor.

Stealth was preferred, unless it was impractical to the situation. If we were discovered, or encountered large armed resistance, the general thought was to create as much bloody mayhem as possible, so that at least one or two of the team could proceed toward the goal.

Omura and Flower agreed the secondary goal should be to destroy WH’s ability to continue his little zombie union and associated technological pursuits. I interjected that a goal of opportunity would be to assassinate WH, himself. No one disagreed. We had a general plan of action, and, for the moment, that was enough.

“Charlie, could you give us a rundown on what you learned regarding local defenses?” Flower asked her with an uncharacteristic smile. He wasn’t one to smile, so the appearance of his teeth came as a bit of a surprise.

“Sure, Matt.” Charlie filled us in on the revamped IED plans, proposed sniper positions, and defensive fallbacks. They had proposed two separate escape routes through the backside of the neighborhood, through other residential areas, with Yolanda’s dairy supplier’s farm in Winchester, Virginia, as the rendezvous point.

Buttons and Channing nodded and headed over to talk with the Defense Team about burning microwaves and useful things that orbital railguns could do for making our opponents’ lives difficult. We hashed out a few other details and separated back into the other groups to share information and learn more about what other decisions were being made.

A certain pressure was building in my head, centered around the reality that I would most likely need to come clean on an issue or two before we headed out to rescue our friend. I’m sure they’d want to understand why the goal of opportunity was as important to me as getting Bajali back safe... perhaps more vital than I wanted to admit.

The meeting dissolved about three hours later. Shawn felt there was a halfway decent chance some of us might live through it, and I accused him of being insufficiently positive about our chances.

“The problem,” he told me, “is that we’ve got no idea at all about the sort of tactics he’s likely to use when they go all out on us.”

“Honestly, they’ve only got so many guns to go around. This guy is likely to just overwhelm us with numbers if he can manage it.”

“You think?” He didn’t seem convinced.

“Look at it this way, unless things have changed a lot since I squeezed Jerry the Zombie, there are far fewer trained military people than there are Joe and Jane Average Zombie. Those trained soldiers have to operate weapons systems and order around the untrained flunkies.” I stuck my hands out in mid-air and mimed the classic shambling walk of Frankenstein’s monster. “Left. Right. Yell, ‘BRAINS!’ Beat nice people with sticks.”

Shawn smiled and conceded I might have a reasonable point, since there was only so much recruiting that can be done in less than a week.

“If Hightower managed to get reinforcements from some other organized group, we might be screwed.”

“You have a point there. We’re lacking fundamental intelligence on what is going on over there. Did you see which way Buttons and his gang went? I’m going to ask him about any useful data he might be able to get for us.”

“Flower said they’re going back to his place to uncrate some weapons and check over the Pain Ray units.”

“Stellar. I’m going to wander over to his place and ask some questions. Will you be around your house later?”

“Yep!”

I had a sudden urge to tell Charlie where I was going, marveled at the sensation for a few moments, and gently interrupted her conversation with Barbara about the disposition of the children. She told me I was sweet to think of mentioning it to her, pulled me down for a kiss on my cheek, and turned back to her conversation. Barbara, on the other hand, was still looking at me with wide eyes and a little pinched smile quirking her mouth. Not being an overly dense male, I took my leave.

After all, I wasn’t absolutely sure I wanted to be there if they decided to dish about me. I mean, it isn’t an issue of pride so much as abject... ahem... knowing when to not butt into the affairs of the females of our species.

Night had fallen while we made our plans, but I never needed the sporadically functioning streetlamps to tell me where I was going. Electricity was more common here than in much of the country, largely due to the government nationalizing most of the local utilities in order to keep itself functioning. Now, if you decided to travel a bit and went over 50 miles in any direction, you wouldn’t have the luxury of utilities quite the way we do.

Large swaths of the United States were doing their best to keep things running, because people, as a collective entity, don’t like having their schedules and expectations of civilized life thrown into the hopper. Certainly, during the six months of enforced martial law, things got a tad hairy. There were riots, strikes, and all sorts of unrest, as one might expect.

Certain groups, who were more prepared for the economy of the globe to tank, switched over to local trade and barter. Using our community as an example, it worked quite well. Another segment of the population, with the government’s assistance and approval, actually went back to their jobs. The theory was that small areas could have much of the civilized life they wanted, if they were actually willing to go back to work and not panic. Especially if they worked in manufacturing, utilities, services and transportation.

The medical professions never took a break. They couldn’t.

Slowly, the economic ball began to roll again, albeit at a very reduced level. You could still get your manufactured products, as long as you ordered them and were willing to wait for the next truck that would deliver them to someplace nearby. More and more people, even around DC, were learning that becoming producers of products they needed or wanted was a much more effective way of going about things.

After decades of the world becoming more global, the whip cracked, and we had all started becoming much more local, even tribal. There were very few large gatherings anymore, and what few there were looked like medical safety accessory conventions. Masks and gloves everywhere!