The Down Home Zombie Blues (8 page)

Except his friends wouldn’t have his corpse to stare at. They’d look and look and never know what had happened to him. It had to be a horrible feeling, that not knowing. He’d seen it destroy families in missing-persons cases.

Thank God his parents weren’t alive. This would kill them. And he wouldn’t even be dead with them so he could explain he was really on Paroo, eating brains with some zombies named—

“Petrakos.”

Light shafted over his eyelids. Noise reached his ears. He blinked, realized he was flat on his back on a soft bed. He didn’t recognize the matte-gray ceiling. He didn’t recognize the sounds in the room, an intermittent muted clicking, a hushed rush of air. Where…?

“Petrakos.” A woman’s voice.
That
woman’s voice.
That
he recognized.

Skata
. Shit. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, ran through more curses in Greek that would have impressed even crusty Uncle Stavros, then levered himself up on his elbows. He must have passed out. His gorgeous alien commander stood poised in the open doorway. He could see two of the three guards behind her.

Her face was scrubbed clean, her hair brushed to a shine. The shorts and odd one-sleeved shirt had been replaced with a green-and-black jumpsuit. And only one gun now, hanging from a duty belt ringing her hips. She stepped in, but the door stayed open. He noted with some small satisfaction that she kept a hand on the gun. If she didn’t fear him, she was at least cautious.
Good,
he decided as twinges of anger surfaced again.
Be cautious.

“You didn’t eat.” She motioned to his untouched tray.

He let his gaze move around the room, touch on the overturned chairs at the small dining table, the sofa cushions in disarray, the storage doors hanging open. “I was busy.”

“Foolish. You will stress yourself.”

He snorted and sat up. “Being kidnapped isn’t stress?”

She picked up a slice of the apple thing, bit into it. He heard the crunch. “Good. Try?”

“No.” He glanced at his watch. Five-thirty. He’d been out cold for about two hours. He felt as if he could sleep two hundred more, but at least the headache was gone. Sleep deprivation had always been part of his job.

So were certain routines. He knew that around three in the afternoon, someone from the cyber squad would check the BVPD evidence room and find no laptop. People would start looking for him, a cop last seen at the site of a homicide. Now missing. He knew exactly what emergency measures would be taken to find him, and it pained him. Because unless they launched the space shuttle, they wouldn’t work.

Unless he took measures of his own.

“I brought a thing for you to see.” She took two steps toward him.

Adrenaline flashed through his body. Guards be damned, he could take her down. Right now. The hand on the gun had moved to a pouch on her belt. She was only a few feet in front of him, pushing the last of that apple thing into that beautiful mouth of hers.

One swift move would do it. Knock her to the floor, restrain her hands, grab her gun while the weight of his body pinned her underneath him. She’d fight, squirm, press up against him, her hips grinding against his…

“You want?” She tilted her head.

Panagia mou!
Oh, Mother of God! Heat flooded him. His breath shuddered out. Yeah, he wanted, all right. But they were talking about two different things.

She had a square disk—about the size of his Palm Pilot—in her hand. He watched her squeeze its corners, and suddenly the flat disk became a cube. Colors, images, swirled on all four surfaces.

He should stand up, take it, but then she’d know what he wanted, and it wasn’t whatever the damned cube was.

He braced one hand against his thigh, wiped his face with the other.
Christ, I’m losing my mind.
He had to keep emotions out of this. He had to think like a cop.

He blanked his expression, forced himself to look at the cube. “What is it?” Better to focus on that than on the delusional fantasies that sprang into his mind every time she came near him.

“Holographs. You know this word?”

“Photos. Images.”

She nodded. “I thought perhaps if you see, you’ll understand it isn’t…” and then a word he didn’t know.

“Isn’t what?” How could two languages be so alike and so different? One more thing to tax his sanity.

“Not without a choice for you. Not all bad.” She paused. “Believe me.”

“What’s not bad? Being a prisoner? That sucks.” He knew she probably couldn’t follow his speech. He wasn’t sure he cared.

She turned abruptly and put the cube on the tabletop. “Paroo.” Her voice carried over her shoulder. “This will show you Paroo. A beautiful locale.”

Did she know how vulnerable she was with her back to him? Or was that part of the plan? Two guards hovered near the doorway. He’d be dead before he ever made it halfway across the floor. He shot a glance in their direction, sizing them up. Two males, watching him watch her. Watching him notice how her uniform fit her rear end only too well. It occurred to him one of them might be her lover. Hell, for all he knew she was servicing the whole damned ship.

Camille would have.

Stop it, Petrakos!

He dropped his gaze to his hands clasped tightly between his knees. Counted to ten in Greek. When he looked back up, she’d turned.

“Paroo,” he said. “You just don’t get it, do you?”

“I don’t acquire—”

“You don’t understand.” He stopped, feeling anger rise again. He waited until he had himself under better control. He wasn’t usually like this. He was a cop, for God’s sake. His personnel record lauded his calm demeanor under pressure, his ability to defuse potentially hostile situations. A hair-trigger temper wasn’t remotely in his repertoire.

And he’d never lusted after a woman like some teenager whose hormones were raging out of control.

But he’d never been kidnapped by space aliens before either. That was no doubt a big part of the problem.

“It doesn’t matter how beautiful the prison,” he said finally. “It’s still a prison.”

When she didn’t respond, he continued: “You understand that word? Prison?”

Her mouth thinned. It took a moment before she nodded. “Yes. Involuntary confinement. But you’re still free to—”

“I’m not free.”

“You are. Structure, friends, career. Anything you want—”

“I want my life on my terms.”

“You make a new life on Paroo.”

“Why should I?” He didn’t care that he was pushing her. Even if it accomplished nothing, it felt better to vent his frustration.

She started to speak, stopped. He was definitely pushing her. “It’s necessary—”

“Why?”

Golden eyes blazed. “You don’t hear my words.”

“I hear your words. I just don’t like them.”

“You will like Paroo!”

“A beautiful prison is still a prison,” he repeated calmly, because he could tell by the rising tone of her voice that she wasn’t calm.

She flung her hands out in a gesture of exasperation as a torrent of unintelligible words poured from her lips. None sounded like English or Vekran. All sounded angry. One of the guards cast an alarmed look in her direction. He realized she was probably swearing a blue streak at him in Alarsh. Then she stopped, her mouth a tight line. She was breathing hard.

He arched one eyebrow. “Now you know how I feel.”

A chair lay on its side at her feet. With a rough movement, she reached down and righted it. She set one knee on its seat and leaned against its back, her arms crossed.

Classic defensive posture, he noted. Something he’d said rankled her. God, it felt good to analyze, to think like a cop again.

She glared at him. “I understand your situation, Petrakos. Much more than you can know.
You
don’t understand mine.”

“Sure I do. Beam down, shoot pistol, kill zombies. End of story.”

“Nils.” She almost spat out the unflattering term. “This is the prime reason we no longer involve nils. You have no…” and an unfamiliar word, maybe three, “planning and complexity. In a covert mission where we have no dirtside base of operations to facilitate…” More garbled words. But he began to catch some of them. It wasn’t always the word. Sometimes it was her accent, her pronunciation.

He still couldn’t figure out why it was so important to her that he accept being sent to Paroo, but he clearly heard her frustration in dealing with the zombies. No, not just with the zombies. With his world, low-tech by her standards. It was almost amusing, except he knew that he’d be at a similar disadvantage in Artistotle’s day or, hell, even during the American Revolution. He could probably fire a musket, but riding a horse with any degree of competency was beyond him. People would peg him for a stranger, if not a total idiot, within ten minutes of talking to him.

He knew from friends who worked undercover how important it was to be able to blend into the setting. Officers lived under false identities for months—
years
—to become part of the drug culture or a terrorist’s cadre.

And her people’s sole operative on his world was a shrink-wrapped corpse with wet, bulging eyes.

An idea—small but maybe workable—formed in his mind. A bargaining chip. Why hadn’t he seen this before?

“Wayne, your agent.” He recalled what she told him in the ready room earlier. “He was key to stopping this zombie herd, wasn’t he?”

She stopped mid-rant, studied him as if surprised he had the intelligence to ask the question. “I explained. The data in his T-MOD. This is of critical importance.”

“But so was he, right? He lived in the apartment, what—three, four months? He spoke Engl—Vekran?”

“As well as he did Alarsh.”

The idea grew. If it worked, he’d be back home restringing his guitar very shortly. But he needed more information first. “Why did he choose my city, my locale?”

“The zombies chose your locale. They like warm water, electromagnetic storm activity. Other reasons.” She shrugged. “But those are two prime factors.”

And the Tampa Bay region was famous for its warm beaches and violent thunderstorms. “So the Guardians send Wayne, he learns the lay of the land and then provides you, the trackers, with a base of operations.” He thought of the dead man’s bungalow, heavily ringed by shrubbery. Very private. “Your people can beam in, work from there.”

“Necessary. We can’t utilize an air attack. Our craft aren’t like yours. Your government would—”

“I understand. I know what covert is. I’m a cop. Security,” he amended, remembering that was the term she’d used.

“A sergeant.”

He nodded, only half-hearing her acknowledgment. He had his bargaining chip. And, if he played his cards exactly right, he’d also have his freedom. A shiver of excitement raced through him.
Don’t get anxious. Set it up right so that she thinks it’s her idea. Then she goes back to her mission commander and makes the offer.
“What happens now that Wayne’s dead?”

She smiled grimly. “A big headache. For me.”

“You?”

She nodded. “My mission.”

“In charge of everything?” He made a circle with one hand. And if her answer was yes, he wasn’t sure if that was good or bad news.

“I’m very good at my job, Petrakos.”

He took that for a yes. “I know. I saw.” He had to get her on his side. More than that, he had to convince her he was on hers. “But you don’t have Wayne’s apartment to use. You have his data but not his field expertise. You don’t know shit from Shinola about daily life.” He caught her frown. Good. He used the expression deliberately to remind her she didn’t fully speak his language. “My squad, my security force, was investigating Wayne’s death. You don’t even know what we may already know about the Guardians.”

That frown deepened. “Thank you for adding to my headache.”

“Regrets.” He used her expression of apology, inclining his head slightly as if he meant it. “We’re in the same business. I understand what you face now. I guess maybe life on Paroo won’t be that bad. New structure, new friends. No problems. Not like your situation.” He prayed she didn’t have some built-in alien telepathic lie detector.

Relief softened the tense line between her brows. “You understand.”

“I know you have more-serious problems to deal with than whether or not I want to live on Paroo.”

“Very serious. But it’s also important to me—to us—that you know we’re not without regrets. We wish you bliss.”

“You’re trying to save people’s lives. I’m sor—regrets for causing you trouble.” He forced his mouth into what he hoped was a sincere smile.

“It’s normal. Change is difficult for many to accept.”

Good, you’re buying it. Hook, line, and here comes the sinker.
“That’s because people from my world haven’t seen what you have. We don’t have your experiences, your tech.”
Now let’s start to reel you in, slowly.
“You’re very good at being a tracker. It’s a shame you’re starting with three strikes against you.” The frown was back. An admission, again, that he knew the language and she didn’t. “You have a disadvantage,” he reiterated. Ah, she got that. “Of course, you could always delay the mission a few months. Live there yourself. Then start—”

“We don’t have that kind of time. Unless you want to see more of your people dead?”

“I swore on my life to protect my people. But that’s your job now. Too bad we can’t switch places,” he added in an offhand manner as he concentrated on keeping his words simple, understandable. It was critical she followed what he had to say next. “Just imagine: you could relax in Paroo, a place you know. I’d fight the zombies in a city that I know as well as you know this ship. It’d be very easy for me to have people come and go in my house. Big backyard. Thick bushes. Very private.” He held his breath.
C’mon, c’mon, pretty lady. Connect the dots. Don’t make me do it for you.

She was very still, her face blank. Then slowly she eased down onto the seat of the chair. Her arms relaxed. She was thinking, hard. He could see it in the movement of those golden eyes, in the pursing of that lovely mouth.

Okay, one more thing. This would seal the deal or nothing would. He stood, casually strode the few steps to the table, picked up the cube. Images of white beaches ringed by lush green mountains flowed in his hand. It could have been Hawaii. Or Tahiti. “Looks nice.”