The Zero Dog War (11 page)

“Eyes!” I yelled.

Sarge, Rafe and Tiffany turned their heads away from the doorway to protect themselves from the blinding light. I focused my concentration down to a pinpoint and flashed off a super-amplified pulse of light inside the room, high enough up that it wouldn’t hurt anybody. I glanced aside at the last instant, still shielded by the wall, and saw the flare paint a brilliant white column on the ground in the shape of the doorway. The spell might not produce concussion or sound assault, but it was as blinding as a hundred simultaneous lightning strikes.

Sarge charged through the entry as soon as the flash vanished. Rafe followed on his heels, covering a supporting sector, and Tiffany and I brought up the rear. We had to clear the entrance immediately, one of the most dangerous bottlenecks, where we’d be silhouetted against the gray daylight and highly visible from inside the building.

We quickly cleared the corners, found no hostiles, formed up and advanced deeper inside. I made a mental note for the After Action Report about our good muzzle control—nobody swept anyone’s head with a gun barrel—and our smooth dispersal, but had the uneasy feeling I’d just jinxed us by thinking about it.

We swept through the rest of the building, clearing room after room. No Mai and no other “zombies”. Outside, the high-pitched chattering and the hiss and splat of paintballs intensified. I risked a look past the doorway. The Bradley had drawn fifty or so squirrels out of cover and engaged them.

I signaled, and my team advanced out of the building. We opened fire on the squirrels running around the Bradley, setting up a vicious crossfire. Dozens of squirrels went tumbling with blue paint splotches covering their fur. Soon there were no enemy targets left to engage.

“All right,” I said over the com. “Blue Team One form up. Let’s go. Blue Team Two, cover us, over.”

“Roger that, out.”

We swept toward the second building. I stopped at the doorway and crouched down, ready for another dynamic entry. Sarge and Rafe both covered me as I gathered energy for another flash spell. I set it off, just like last time, and we charged inside with the same deployment as before.

Four squirrels stumbled around the central room in a light-addled daze. In seconds they were covered with paintball splatter. We fully advanced into the large central room, which spanned fifty feet across easy and had three interior doorways, one at each wall.

Mai appeared in the east doorway, dressed in black, wearing a dark cloak with the hood up and a paintball face mask decorated with kanji symbols. A mass of black squirrels surrounded her. More squirrels filled the other doorways—a furry black carpet of them. Mai swept up an arm and pointed toward me. The squirrels surged forward in a chittering wave from all three sides.

We opened fire. I shot three paintballs at Mai’s head, but the squirrel surge rose up like a barrier and a couple furry creatures took the hits instead. The front line pressed too close, and I had to adjust my fire to the nearest threats. For a moment we held them off with accurate, concentrated fire.

I emptied my hopper and Rafe, Sarge and Tiffany covered me while I reloaded. Paint layered the walls and floor in vibrant splatters. Then Rafe went down under a swarm of battle-cry squeaking furballs on our right flank. The air sang with the pop and hiss of paintballs, the nonstop chittering and Mai’s maniacal laughter.

We laid down suppressing fire in each sector, but the squirrels still pressed forward in a relentless banzai charge.

“Fall back!” I yelled over the radio. “Blue Team One fall back to the Bradley.”

We retreated steadily backward behind a hail of cover fire, but before we reached the entry door, Jake, Gavin and Hanzo pushed in behind us and opened up with supporting fire.

The squirrel charge withered and broke up under the new assault. Before Mai could escape, I sighted in on her and shot three times. A squirrel launched itself in the air, taking one paintball, but too few squirrels remained to block them all. I hit her with two paintballs, one in the chest, the other on her face mask. She raised her hand and called, “I’m out!”

The remaining pets stopped their charge and swarmed back in a huge furry sea to tumble and play at Mai’s feet. Mai pushed back her hood, pulled off her face mask and began to tickle them and coo over their paintball-splatter wounds. The scene drowned in cloying cuteness…and yet the show didn’t come with an airsick bag.

“Primary target neutralized,” Sarge confirmed, still carrying a paintball gun in each hand. “Mission accomplished.”

“Exercise over.” I yanked off my face mask and wiped the sweat from my forehead and cheeks. Damn. Things had gone dicey at the end. “Good job, people. Mai, what was up with the deranged laughter?”

She smiled and shrugged. “Don’t all dark lords do evil laughter? I was just trying to simulate our experience.” She lifted a spattered mostly blue squirrel and kissed it on the nose, getting paint on her lips.

Disgusting. “Yeah, well, leave off next time, it gives me the creeps. And stop kissing those things. You’ll get a disease.”

Rafe shifted back to human form and stood there naked. “How many pets did you summon anyway?” Dozens of teeth marks covered him, fading fast as his werewolf healing abilities kicked in. “Looked like thousands.”

“Only a couple hundred or so. I wanted it to be realistic, like a true zombie horde.”

I glared at bare-assed Rafe. “Didn’t I tell you to start packing some boxers on these missions?”

“But, Captain, where can I put them when I shift?”

“I don’t care. Wear them on your head if you have to.” I turned back to Mai. “Nice work taking him down. You almost had us.”

“You did such a good job, Mai.” Tiffany clapped her hands, beaming a thousand-watt smile. “It was so
thrilling
.”

Anyone else and I’d have thought they were trying for ironic or mocking, but I could tell from the pleasure shining on her face that she was sincere. It made me strangely happy. “We all did a good job.”

“Except for Rafe,” Gavin said, leaning against one of the wall struts. “Who ended up zombie chow.”

“Yeah, well, I might have gotten eaten, but it felt damn kinky with all those little furry things running all over my body. And the love bites.” He shuddered (I strove not to notice something else flopping around) and growled, and wiggled his eyebrows in a most absurdly obscene way. “I think I’m in love.”

“Rafe,” I warned, “too much information. Hanzo, get over here and finish healing his bites. And bring a blanket, I think he’s in shock. Mai, send your pets home. I don’t want to have to feed them. Gavin, go put away the Bradley before we burn up all the diesel.”

“Hey, Captain,” Gavin said. “We could roast the squirrels and save on food—
Yow
!” Gavin twisted around to stare down at his ass. A black squirrel dangled from one cheek, biting through his fatigues. “One of those little buggers bit me!”

Mai snapped her fingers and the squirrel detached and scampered to her. She picked it up and touched her nose to its tiny twitching nose. “Oh, now you’re going to need mouthwash, little heart. How many times do I have to tell you? Don’t bite things you’d never eat.”

“Hey, thanks, Mai.” Gavin held his injured ass cheek. “The love is much appreciated.”

“Enough chatter.” Sarge’s frown turned his chiseled face and jaw into something dark and forbidding—a mix of Easter Island statue and escaped nightmare from a Goya painting. “You heard the captain. Hard chargers back to base camp. Clean up and double-time it. After Action Report in thirty minutes. Now
move
.”

The troops scattered. A moving carpet of fur followed Mai toward a clearing where she could teleport her Death Pets back to their home dimension. A curious person might wonder where they came from. I was decidedly not curious—not about that anyway. The rest of the Zero Dogs filed toward the Bradley parked outside.

Jake stood near the west doorway. He’d been quiet the whole time. I gritted my teeth and fought back a sudden nervous twinge. I didn’t want him talking over me, but too quiet made me uneasy.

“Walk back with me?” I jerked my head in the direction of the door.

A slow smile spread across his face. “My pleasure.”

I had the immediate stomach-drop feeling I’d made a horrible mistake, and it started to rain.

Captain Sanders and I stood in the drizzle, watching as everyone else piled in or on the Bradley. Mai ran out from the tree line alone, her hood up, water beading on the fabric and running down the edges, making me wish I had a cloak of my own. I’d always hated the sound of rain tapping on my helmet. Damn rain. I’d already considered reneging on my offer to walk with him, but I didn’t want to look like I carried the wussy gene somewhere in my DNA.

Sarge paused before raising the ramp. “Coming, Captain?”

“Nah, I’ll walk back. I want to go over some things with Captain Sanders.”

Sarge glanced at the gray, dripping sky and smiled. When he smiled it changed his face again. It lost the forbidding aspect and became downright striking in an otherworldly way, like some twilight-skinned warrior who’d wandered out of Valhalla. I waited in dread for another wink, like in the conference room meeting with Harker, but he just gave Jake a half salute. Jake returned the half salute and added a half smile. Something passed between them, leaving me to feel left out, as if they’d been talking about me with group telepathy and I’d been disconnected from the party line.

Our black Bradley took off toward the garages with its antennas swinging and the banner dangling in a sopping wet bunch. A belch of diesel fumes flavored the air in its wake. With the rumble of the engine gone it seemed very quiet. We began to walk side by side toward the distant house. I cut him a sidelong glance. “So what was that all about?”

He raised his eyebrows but didn’t answer.

“Don’t play dumb with me. That bromance look between you. That brothers-in-arms thing. Some kind of male-bonding moment? Or something else?”

He looked at me as if I’d escaped from a mental institution or a live children’s show. “I don’t know.”

I stared at him.

He shrugged. “He handles himself like a professional. That’s all.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, and I know I could get in trouble for asking, but you’re not gay, are you? I mean, there’s no problem if you are, Sarge’s gay and I love him to death. But I’m only looking out for him. He’s involved in a long-term relationship with a wonderful guy, and I don’t think Shawn would appreciate the flirting.”

He watched me, again not answering.

Irritation flooded through me in a hot surge. “Let me ask it another way, before I have to break out my interpretive shadow-puppet routine, ’kay? I’m not trying to be a CB’er, but on the DL, I don’t think Shawn, Sarge’s SO, would appreciate the competition.”

“What the hell kind of acronyms are those?”

“Cock Blocker. Down Low. Significant Other. Try and keep up here. Someday you’ll have to merge with the fast traffic on the intelligence freeway.”

A grin spread across his face. “Don’t worry, I’m not gay.”

“Oh. Because I thought…”

His eyebrows lifted again and he tilted his head, regarding me, seeming to revel in my discomfort. Hell, it had been an honest question, though I’d been out of line, and part of me damn well knew it.

“I think you’re reading a little too much into this, Captain Walker…maybe on purpose?”

Me purposefully reading too much into something? The man had to be a conspiracy theorist. I cleared my throat. “So. You’re not gay then.” I felt like fidgeting and clamped down on the urge. “So…you don’t have a problem with gay people, do you? I mean, because
I
have a problem with people who have a problem with gay people.”

“Not at all.”

“I mean, with don’t ask, don’t tell, and a bunch of testosterone, sometimes people get a little prejudiced—a little, you know, as if I’m offending your manhood.”

He grinned wider than ever. The bastard was clearly enjoying himself. “My
manhood
is just fine, thank you.”

Heat crept up my neck to my cheeks. Don’t blush, don’t blush,
don’t blush, goddammit
.

“Ah. That’s good to hear,” I said. “I mean, not that I care. Not that I wondered about your manhood at all, either as a concept or otherwise. So…how about that training exercise? I think we pretty much ripped shit up.” I tried to laugh and ended up sounding like a drowning peacock.

He was merciful enough to finally let me off the hook. “Not bad.”

“High praise coming from you.”

“Still, there are definite areas to improve. Your people are good, react quickly, take orders well—in the field anyway. But there’s a lesson to be learned here.”

“And what’s that?” I couldn’t keep the edge out of my voice. We passed beneath a canopy of interlaced evergreen branches, and our boots whispered over the fallen needles. The sharp scent of pine and wet earth lingered around us. I took a deep breath, fighting to keep myself calm and steady as she goes.

“You’re lucky Blue Team Two came in to back you up,” he said. “Otherwise you would’ve lost more than just Rafe.”

“Lucky?” I kicked a pinecone and it bounced off the sandbags and into a cluster of mushrooms. “Hardly. That was the plan, remember? I asked you to cover me. Besides, we’d already gained the upper hand.”