The Zero Dog War

The first bullet is always free. After that, you gotta pay.

Zero Dog Missions, Book 1

After accidentally blowing up both a client facility and a cushy city contract in the same day, pyromancer and mercenary captain Andrea Walker is scrambling to save her Zero Dogs. A team including (but not limited to) a sexually repressed succubus, a werewolf with a thing for health food, a sarcastic tank driver/aspiring romance novelist, a three-hundred-pound calico cat, and a massive demon who really loves to blow stuff up.

With the bankruptcy vultures circling, Homeland Security throws her a high-paying, short-term contract even the Zero Dogs can’t screw up: destroy a capitalist necromancer bent on dominating the gelatin industry with an all-zombie workforce. The catch? She has to take on Special Forces Captain Jake Sanders, a man who threatens both the existence of the team and Andrea’s deliberate avoidance of romantic entanglements.

As Andrea strains to hold her dysfunctional team together long enough to derail the corporate zombie apocalypse, the prospect of getting her heart run over by a tank tread is the least of her worries. The government never does anything without an ulterior motive. Jake could be the key to success…or just another bad day at the office for the Zeroes.

Warning: Contains explicit language, intense action and violence, rampaging zombie hordes, a heroine with an attitude and flamethrower, Special Forces commandos, ninjas, apocalyptic necromancer capitalist machinations, absurd parody and mayhem, self-deluded humor, irreverence, geek humor, mutant cats, low-brow comedy, and banana-kiwi-flavored gelatin.

“I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.”
Oscar Wilde

“Humor is the sense of the Absurd which is despair refusing to take itself seriously.”
Arland Ussher

“L33t haxxor pwnage of lame weaksauce n00bs!!11! DIAF kkthx!”
Gavin Carter, Epic Mob Raid Leader

“…Mercenaries do nothing but damage.”
Machiavelli,
The Prince

Absurd
: adj. So clearly untrue or unreasonable as to be laughable or ridiculous.

Pretentious
: adj. Defining common terms for the audience as if they didn’t already know.

Warnings:

Do Not Operate Heavy Machinery While Reading This Book

This Product is Not Food

Product Does Not Give User Superpowers

This book has been clearly marked Parody and Satire. Read at your own risk. Humor quotient is not guaranteed. This book is not FDA approved.

This book does not contain sparkly vampires.

Chapter Zero: Napalm after Noon

Mercenary Wing Rv6-4 “Zero Dogs”

TastyTech Foods Corp

NE 181st Avenue
, Portland, Oregon

1417 Hours PST April 7th

The first bullet is always free.

That’s the motto of the Zero Dog mercenaries. After the first bullet, the charges come fast and steep because, while we aren’t the best, we’re certainly in the top ten, and you had to pay for quality. I should know. I run this chickenshit outfit and my name’s on all the invoices: Captain Andrea Walker, Pyromancer. My job description included burning everything from bad guys to bunkers into charred toast and getting my people home with all their pieces in the proper order.

Oh, and getting paid.

The Zero Dogs had deployed near a Portland-area industrial park just off I-84, close enough to the Columbia River to smell the water, but not see it. We’d been contracted to deal with a radical fringe element deemed a clear and present danger to the private-label packaging industry. Negotiating with food-industry terrorists could be tricky, so here I stood in the turret of our M2A3 Warhammer Bradley Fighting Vehicle, peering along the barrel of the chain gun and wishing I had some more coffee.

It was gonna be one of those days.

I keyed my mike. “Tiffany, you’re clear. Get in the air and give me a good lookdown.”

“Roger wilco, Captain.” Behind the cover of the Bradley, my scout, Tiffany Sparx, spread her black wings and took to the air. She swung overhead, and I turned to watch her fly, a curvy shape against the low cloud ceiling. Tiffany was a succubus. Even decked out in flak jacket, sky camo fatigues and wearing a helmet with a side-mounted camera, she drew whistles and cheers from the SWAT team guys stationed behind the perimeter barricades.

Tiffany’s voice, sultry and silken, came over my headset. “Captain, they’re
whistling
at me, over.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll singe their jockstraps later.” I kept my own voice reassuring and very open to interpretation on whether or not I was kidding. “Focus on the mission. You’re my eyes in the sky, girl. Out.”

I watched as she swung back in a slow arc, her wings massive, bat-like, pounding the air with hard strokes as she picked up speed and altitude. My insides felt as if they were frozen solid, and my heart beat hard enough to shatter them. I hated sending Tiffany over hot zones. That damn flak jacket wouldn’t stop much more than shrapnel, but heavier armor would mean too much weight to fly. Still, she had a job to do, and I wanted a lookdown view on the plant before I decided which side to assault. I pulled down our modified Helmet Mounted Display System visor that fed me real-time information and images from the camera on Tiffany’s helmet.

“How long, Captain?” Gavin asked over the com. He gunned the Bradley’s engine, underlining his impatience with a diesel roar, and a cloud of black diesel exhaust billowed out on the right side of my turret. “My jockeys are riding up my crack, over.”

“Be patient. Cut the chatter. Out.” I mentally reviewed my mission assets as I scanned through Tiffany’s feed.

Gavin Carter, at the Bradley’s controls, could drive anything and drive it well, including the ill-fated prototype armor-plated Urban Assault Solo Segway design with the rather unfortunate acronym of UASS. He was registered as a Class 2 empath, yet flaunted the social skills of a tree frog, a sarcastic streak as wide as an aircraft carrier, and a heap of artistic pretension to boot.

I had Hanzo Sorenson, our medic, on the weapons systems—a damn sight better than letting him sneak around with his katana and Band-Aids. His real name was Austin, and he was as white as freshly bleached socks, but he’d had his name legally changed to Hanzo in honor of some legendary ninja. The fact that we had our medic on guns was another example of how desperately shorthanded we’d been for the last six months.

I’d claimed the commander’s spot atop the turret. In the back I had my quick deployment team, led by my second-in-command, Sergeant Nathan Genna, ubiquitously known as Sarge, whose issues revolved around being a demon and having lost his key for the elevator to heaven, our werewolf, Rafe Lupo, the horniest bastard I’d ever seen and always on the prowl for his destined mate, and our summoner mage, Mia Tanaka, who—thanks to the fact she surrounded herself with chittering death pets from another dimension—smelled like wet fur most of the time. Only Stefan Dalca, our vampire, wasn’t present because the lazy, delicate-skinned bastard wasn’t available for the day shift.

At first blush it might not seem like a lot of punch, but for destruction, we were pretty damn Sierra Hotel badass. And we needed to be shit-hot badass, because a few hours ago four heavily armed dark elves had broken into TastyTech Foods Corp, a canning plant well northeast of downtown. Due to a union strike, economic recession and a plant slowdown, nobody had been working at the time except for the custodian, who’d called the cops. The first cruiser on the scene had been shot up by assault rifles and then disintegrated by a spell that rusted all the metal down to dust. No casualties, but the cops had pulled back and called in SWAT. Once SWAT learned of the dark magic involved, they doubled back and called in the Zero Dogs. We had an independent contractor agreement with the city for handling thaumaturgical threats. The dark elves had holed themselves up with automatic weapons, defensive spells, and made bomb threats by singing them over the phone in haunting, maudlin and overly complex Elvish verse to the SWAT team negotiator.

A typical, everyday, willy-nilly clusterfuck of righteous proportions in other words.

“I can’t go on this mission, Captain,” Rafe said over the com, interrupting my brooding thoughts.

“Shut up, Rafe,” Mia answered. “You already said that twice. We all know your fun needle went off the scale ten minutes ago.”

I heard his low growl. He hadn’t shifted yet—he’d do it right before the assault—but like mustard stains, wolf traits bled through. Thank God he was housebroken.

“And I
mean
it,” Rafe said. “I happen to agree with what these guys are doing. They’re threatening to destroy processed food that’s been leached of every bit of nutrition, loaded down with high fructose corn syrup and—”

I cut him off. “I don’t care if they make radioactive Twinkies. Keep this goddamn channel clear of chatter.”

Good images of the canning plant started to stream across my HUD display as Tiffany circled. I had building blueprints from the city, of course, but I needed to see how their spell defenses were set. Two massive decay spells glowed with black auras in my display, one near the roof access and one near a group of A/C ducts. That meant no topside assault, because I didn’t have a spell sapper. Note to self: Put a job ad in the paper for one, post haste.

“I’ve got a hostile on the roof, Captain,” Tiffany said.

I zoomed the camera in on the tiny figure that jumped out from behind an A/C unit. A dark elf in urban camo, holding an AK-47 instead of a trusty longbow which never missed, even at three thousand meters in hurricane winds, as he glared up at Tiffany. I zoomed in still closer, cursing the unsteady image. He had those noble elven features, so beautiful you wanted to blacken one of his eyes just for the pleasure of making his face asymmetrical. The dark elf sported long, narrow ears that would shame Spock, and smooth gray skin. He had pure white hair tied back from his head held with golden bangles, creepy pale eyes, and a chin I could only describe as an arrogant, jutting monstrosity. Full disclosure: I loathed elves with the heat of a thousand burning suns.

He lifted the assault rifle and sighted in on Tiffany. The HUD view in my visor swung wildly as Tiffany saw the threat and peeled away, twisting and swooping through the air. The
crack, crack, crack
of rifle fire echoed down the street.

“I can’t get close enough to charm him, over,” Tiffany said.

“Pull back and stay out of range.” My heart thudded with a rapid, dull punch. I had to force my breathing to remain even. I took it personally when bad guys shot at my people.
Very
personally. “We’re going in, hard and hot.”

Gavin snickered, and werewolf Rafe said, “That’s exactly what I told Cindy last night.”

“You two miscreants not hear the captain?” Sarge’s bass-heavy voice rumbled in my ear. “Cut the chatter and that’s an order.”

I smirked at the ringing silence that followed Sarge’s words. There were times I loved that demon. Too bad for my currently anemic love life that he was gay. I keyed the mike again. “All right, people, let’s roll out. Attack plan Theta.”

The diesel engine roared and the Bradley lurched forward, treads crunching on the asphalt as the fighting vehicle rounded the corner of the cinderblock wall, bringing the plant into view. The building stood two stories high, painted off-white, surrounded by an eight-foot chain-link fence, and baking in a concrete frying pan devoid of trees, shade and minimal landscaping.

“Which one is plan Theta, again?” Gavin asked over the com.

Hanzo keyed in. “It is the approach of silence, like wind above the water. The slide through shadows, as the fog creeps in from the ocean on the quiet feet of monkeys.”

“Yeah, because Bradleys are so like ninjas,” Gavin replied. “Or monkeys.”

Mai sounded her usual serene self when she added, “I thought it was the Shattered Jewel Attack. But with ferrets and tear gas—”

“No, no,” Rafe interrupted. “It’s simple. You run on first down, throw on third. Start with Plan Theta, end with Plan Napalm Everything. You guys didn’t read the manual? It even has pictures.”

“Goddammit!” So much for cutting the chatter. When we got back to base I’d hand out some hardcore attack plan memorization as well as a heaping cupful of weeping and gnashing of teeth. “Blow a hole in the wall and drive the Bradley through.”

“Affirmative, Big Mama One,” Gavin said, and then muttered, “Why didn’t you just say so in the first place?” He gunned the engine again and angled across the street, straight toward the plant’s closest wall while I debated the best way to kill him later.

We used the Warhammer version of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, with the Javelin missile system instead of the TOW IIs for its fire-and-forget capability. The boys had painted the Bradley black, added an image of a snarling pit bull on the turret, and covered the back end with bumper stickers. Among them:
Keep honking, I’m reloading.
A large green sticker that read:
A Gun Nut is Someone Who Doesn’t Own One.
And my personal favorite:
Jesus Loves You. Everybody Else Thinks You’re An Asshole.
Mia had painted a bright pink peace sign on the front armor. Her version of a joke. The wind snapped and fluttered the edges of our Japanese warlord banner (Hanzo’s idea) displaying our Rv6-4 insignia, black long sword on a beige field with an inverted crimson chevron.

The Bradley rumbled over the curb, antennae swinging, spewing diesel fumes in clouds of black smoke like a dragon after a bucket of habañero-and-garlic-flavored chicken wings. The dark elf on the roof ran to the edge and began to fire at the Bradley. I ducked inside and slammed the hatch. A couple rounds zinged off the armor. I killed the video feed and peered out the view port, watching as the guy deluded himself that 7.62mm ammo would do anything more than make scuff marks I’d have to clean off later with a magic eraser.

“Suppress that guy,” I ordered. For a moment I wanted to grab the hand station joystick and use the weapon systems to do it myself, payback for his potshots at Tiffany, but I held the urge in check and left it to Hanzo.

The turret swung and the Bushmaster 25mm chain gun angled upward. “Target acquired,” Hanzo said. “Engaging target.”

The dark elf seemed to realize he was attempting the equivalent of poking a rhino in the balls with an electric cattle prod. He ducked back behind the raised roof ledge. Too late. The chain gun spat tungsten APFSDS-T rounds and that section of roof disappeared in a billowing cloud of brown dust and debris. And since APFSDS-T stood for Armor-Piercing Fin-Stabilized Discarding Sabot with Tracer—a long acronym to say depleted uranium death dart not made by Nerf—I knew the bastard was going to feel it in the morning.

“That’s gonna leave a mark,” Gavin confirmed.

“Prepare for assault,” I said. “Weapons free.”

We crashed through the chain-link fence, crushing it beneath our treads. The turret moved again. I glanced at my tactical display and the image relayed to me by gunner Hanzo’s Integrated Sight Unit. At less than a hundred meters this would be pretty much point-blank. We’d be charging into our own shrapnel and right through the smoke, but the Bradley could take the dings.

“Target acquired,” Hanzo said. “One away.”

A Javelin missile roared out of the launcher in a cloud of white smoke and hit the nearside wall. I felt the explosion vibrate up through the metal floor of the fighting vehicle. Shrapnel and debris shot across the pavement, some of it
tinging
off our armor, and smoke billowed out in a roiling black mass. A second later another Javelin launched and slammed into the damaged wall, blowing the gap wider.

We bore down on the jagged opening, what grunts called a mouse hole, at thirty-plus miles an hour. The Bradley crashed through the debris, rocking hard to the right as one of the treads bit into a pile of rubble and scrap metal, and we plunged through the roiling gray smoke. There were no hostages and the surrounding streets and businesses had been shut down and evacuated, so we didn’t need to worry about crushing some poor civilian.