Death and Taxes

By SP Durnin

The end is coming.

Langley, Oklahoma has fallen. The once fortified town was blown to pieces by the mad General Hess and his R.U.S.T army and left abandoned. Not it’s free for zombies to roam its deserted streets. Making good their escape during the battle between the dead and Hess’s forces, what’s left of the Screamin’ Mimi’s crew and the remainder Langley’s residents flee south, hoping to reach the last haven of humanity east of the Rocky Mountains.

But everything they’ve lived through has just been a warm up for what’s to come. The shambling hordes grow more massive by the day, secessionist forces want to add them to their ranks, either as soldiers or breeding stock, and the General is determined to use every resource at his disposal to hunt them down. And to top everything off, it seems a certain crowbar-toting combat journalist and one blue-haired ninja girl died in their fall from the top of Pensacola Dam into the floodwaters eighty feet below.

Surviving the coming battle is a long shot at best, but the crew of the Mimi are used to bucking the odds. Maybe, just maybe, they’ve got one, last fight in them. After all, during the zombie apocalypse the only certain things in life are...

Death and Taxes

• Language: English
• Publisher: Permuted
• Release date: Jul 4, 2017
• ISBN: 9781682615546

Book preview

-For you. From the author-

Endings hurt.

It’s four in the morning, my cigarette is slowly burning down to the filter, I haven’t slept for (three?) days and I’m fairly sure my eyeballs resemble orbs of raw hamburger. As I’m typing this I realize my vision’s gone a bit blurry and, to be brutally honest, I can’t tell if it’s from simple fatigue or if I’m beginning to tear up. I know from actually speaking with many of you readers, that you’ve enjoyed spending time in the strange, somewhat sarcastic, little zombieverse™ I’ve created, and hoped the story would continue on indefinitely. I understand, believe me.

Like many, I’m emotionally invested in the characters originally introduced within the pages of Keep Your Crowbar Handy. I can’t say that’s surprising really, since I’ve literally spent years in their company. I’ve had the privilege of sharing their trials and adventures. Of waking up every day knowing they were going to be part of my life, and feeling all the better for it. Hopefully, I’ve been able to give you that same joy.

This is the reason I must admit something to you now. Bare my soul, I suppose.

I have put these characters through hell. I’ve abused their bodies, traumatized their spirits, and to my everlasting shame—caused them more pain than most people see in two goddamn lifetimes. What’s worse, and the reason I’ve surely dammed myself to sucking hot lava through a metal straw in the afterlife, is that I did so willingly. I sent them to face the terrors that reside in the deepest, darkest, most hellish parts of my back-brain, head on and woefully unprepared. Of this, I am guilty. Though I wish it were otherwise, responsibility for their suffering falls squarely—and oh, so heavily—upon my shoulders and mine alone. For all I have done to them, for all the fear and loss and heartache awaiting them still within the pages you now hold, I am so very, very sorry.

And I hope that someday they will be able to forgive me.

There’s no doubt about it. Jake, Kat, and the rest of their slightly dysfunctional little group have been screwed from the start. But they’ve held their own against murderous psychos, para-military Nazis, half-baked cultists, rogue military units, and (of course) the ever-increasing ranks of the zombie hordes. They’ve fought like lions.

Like fucking heroes.

Looking back at all they’ve faced, I don’t think they’ve done too badly. At all. None of them are perfect. Each is admittedly flawed—some more so than others—but they’ve shown me they possess a crap-load of heart. They’ve more than proven this by the way they care for each other, protect one another, even while slogging hip-deep through all the terror that goes hand-in-hand with battling the hungry dead. And they’re dear to me. That’s why it’s so painful to say goodbye to them, at last. They reside in my heart. Safe within that place you reserve for all you hold precious, for now and always.

So yeah. Endings hurt.

But it’s time.

Time for you to shoulder your bug-out-bag and follow me out into the zombie apocalypse once more, for a final adventure with our friends.

Time to screw up your courage and take a firm grip on your brain-basher of choice, because we’re motoring full throttle for the bitter-sweet end of a joyous and tragic road.

Time for one...last... swing of that crowbar.

-S. P. Durnin

DEATH AND TAXES

BY

S.P. DURNIN

A PERMUTED PRESS BOOK

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-68261-554-6

Death and Taxes

Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 4

© 2017 by S.P. Durnin

All Rights Reserved

This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

permutedlogo.jpg

Permuted Press, LLC

New York & Nashville

Published in the United States of America

-CONTENTS-

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Epilogue

I’ve been thinking about how it all went down lately, and I keep wondering if I could’ve done anything different. I’m probably just getting old.

Let me put this in perspective for you. Earlier this year, the human race damn near became extinct. No, Planet Nibiru didn’t show up. No, the North and South Poles didn’t trade places and cause thousand-meter tsunamis, so all those global warming jerkoffs can suck it. Earth wasn’t hit by an asteroid, there were no world-wide swarms of locusts, and aliens didn’t invade to steal our natural resources either.

Actually, now that I’ve had time think about it? I’d have almost preferred aliens. Giant, super-intelligent, space badgers don’t seem so bad after having to deal with zombies.

Yep, you read that right. Zombies. Walking corpses. Brain-eating cadavers or, as Kat dubbed them a while back, Maggot-heads.

A little over four months ago (…Damn. Has it really only been that long?) the recently deceased began reanimating in large numbers worldwide, seemingly overnight. What’s worse, they came back pissed off, dumb as a sack of hammers, and very, very hungry. Needless to say, no one wanted to believe what was happening at first. I mean, who would? Dead people getting back up to eat the living? That’s science fiction to most folks. Then again, I’ve been around. During my career working for the United States Navy I saw shit that would scare you so bad, you wouldn’t be able to fit a stray electron up your sphincter. Especially that mess up in the Ukraine. People think that was a disaster? Hah! Yeah. I’m here to tell you, if what’s sleeping beneath Chernobyl ever wakes up…

Uh, look, you’ll edit that part out later, right? Yeah? Okay… Where was I?

It took a bunch of two-bit journalists and reporters getting their asses torn to bits—live on camera—as they provided coverage of the panic, to wake average people the hell up. Even then, most thought they could lock themselves in their homes (thanks to those government approved Talking Heads). Wait this mess out. That The Powers That Be would come save their asses. Problem was, most of those dipshit politicians were secretly shitting their shorts, hoping the DHS or one of the other Alphabet Soup agencies would come up with a politically correct solution to the crisis. What a fucking crock. They should’ve been telling folks to arm up, and then start making with the assholes an’ elbows for the nearest horizon.

That’s what we did. Eventually. Well, we holed up at my place for a bit first. Kept quiet and out of sight. We were lucky, truth be told. But in the end, we had to make tracks. Finite supply levels, you know? Steel reinforced concrete walls and an armory full of the best toys Uncle Sam can provide don’t matter much when you’re running out of grub.

What? No. Because you don’t need to know where my place was. Look kid, do you have Top Secret clearance…? No? Do you want me to have to snap your neck? Because if I tell you about my little hideaway, that’s exactly what I’ll have to do.

All right then. Moving on.

While I think we did pretty good overall, we still lost a shitload of people. Not as many as most folks did, but still. What? Why don’t you kiss my ass, boy? No matter what anyone says, however jaded you may get in my business, you never get use to that. Losing friends, I mean…

-above excerpt taken from the combat logs of Master Chief George Montgomery Foster, currently in print as the standard United States Undead Combat Field Manual: Survival, Evasion, and Skull-busting for Dummies

-

PROLOGUE-

The thirteen zombies staggered along the riverbank.

While hundreds upon hundreds were swept away by the torrent raging down the normally calm waterway of the Neosho River, not to make landfall again until they tumbled and floated well south into the Robert S. Kerr Reservoir, only a few of them had actually managed to claw their way from the floodwaters. They felt no relief over avoiding their brethren’s fate, they weren’t able to feel—in either body or mind—for their brains had been laid waste. Personalities burned away by the awful fever that followed being bitten by one of the dead, and falling prey to the horrid infection that followed. Now this baker’s dozen were nothing more than carnivorous automatons. Slowly decaying, biological murder-machines, who knew nothing of mercy or compassion. Possessing only the most basic of animal desires. The drive to feed on warm human flesh. Oh, they would attempt to consume any living creature that didn’t run away quickly enough. That was certain. Even now, a quintet of heir moldering brothers and sisters were feeding on the carcass of an unfortunate bull elk not half a mile away. They dipped their arms into its belly, pulling the poor animal’s innards free and stuffing its ropey guts into their gnashing maws without the slightest bit of hesitation. If there was a glimmer of remorse within their piss-yellow eyes as they chewed at the tough muscle on the elk’s flank, it was well obscured by their feral hunger.

The thirteen knew nothing of this, however. They didn’t notice the moon rising behind the boughs of a nearby aspen grove to the east. They paid no attention to the roar of the flood passing to their left. They didn’t feel the warm, wet summer grass beneath their ragged feet. They were dead. The only thing rattling around in their maggoty skulls, the only thing they would ever know, was the terrible hunger.

The hunger was all.

Moving awkwardly along the bank, the creatures tripped and stumbled on fallen trees, hidden roots, and half-concealed rocks as they roamed onward. They didn’t have any type of plan or destination, for their minds were less than those of mayflies. The zombies simply walked in the same direction they’d been facing when they’d crawled from the river. They paid no mind to their surroundings save for what was immediately in front of them, and then only so far as to determine whether or not it was prey. They knew boulders didn’t breathe, they knew trees didn’t bleed… But what they didn’t know, was that they were not alone.

Something watched them as they staggered about.

The hunter was indistinguishable from the shadows. It squatted unmoving twenty feet off the ground the crook of a mid-sized walnut tree, where a large limb met its trunk. While the rotting creatures wouldn’t have considered using a deadfall to climb into the canopy, the seething thing that glared down at them from among the leaves wasn’t burdened by that limitation.

It felt the cool night air and knew darkness meant advantage. Zombies couldn’t chase what they couldn’t see. It moved silently down the limb, feeling the rough bark under its hands as it reached the deadfall, and began creeping down the leaning tree on all fours. Walking corpses couldn’t find what they couldn’t hear. Stinking river mud liberally coated its skin and clothing, leaving only a pair of burning eyes to flick about as it marked the creature’s locations. Maggot-heads didn’t chase what they didn’t smell.

The hunter closed on the rear-most ghoul, a desiccated figure that was little more than a skeleton within its comically large and threadbare Carhartt overalls. Half its throat had been torn away long ago, and a foul scent—reminiscent of vinegar fermented within the anus of a dead sewer rat—trailed behind it in a sickening miasma. Anyone else would’ve vomited until they saw toenails floating in the puddle at their feet, but the muck-caked hunter was only focused on the slow anger burning in its guts and ignored the stench. It waited until the trailing zombie passed beneath it. Then it sprang.

Rain had been falling for hours, soaking the surrounding countryside through and deadening ambient sounds. The hunter would’ve smiled if shoving a knife through the zombie’s skull as it dropped upon the thing hadn’t been so worthy of attention. The rotting ghoul never knew what had killed it (again) and, after pulling its knife free, the hunter faded into the underbrush. Remaining unseen by the ghouls was paramount. It couldn’t risk being discovered, at least not yet. Twelve more of the creatures was more than it could comfortably handle at that particular moment, and it had to be quick.

It took another twenty minutes for the hunter to whittle their numbers down. A trio fell under its knife before becoming lodged in one of their smut-smeared heads and it had to abandon the blade. Two more dropped, brains leaking from pulped skulls, as it used the back of a rusty hatchet it had found to smash them behind their ears. One it kicked back into the river as zombie tried to scale a sharp incline along the bank. The hapless horror was swept quickly away by the floodwaters without nary a groan. Four it shadowed through the soggy trees and took one-by-one with another blade it had stripped from…

No. No time to think of that now. Two remain.

The hunter moved like a ghost, dodging through the trees as it closed on the final pair while trying to avoid detection. Normally, only two of the creatures wouldn’t be difficult to deal with, but the last few hours had taken a toll. His limbs were starting to respond like they’d been filled with concrete, he couldn’t see out of his right eye because of the gash on his brow that leaked crimson down his face, a spot on the right side of his back felt as if it was being twisted with a pair of hot channel locks, and there was a pronounced ringing in the hunter’s ears. Shaking his head clear, he attempted to bring his awareness back into focus on the present. The hunter stopped to crouch among the scraggly branches of a stunted dogwood tree and took in his surroundings with growing trepidation. The creatures were still stumping on ahead, swaying noticeably while they crossed the uneven and waterlogged easement that tapered gently down to a small, serviceable boat dock. The ghouls passed a rack of canoes and a few rowboats stored next to the wooden launch without paying them attention, but they didn’t seem to be inclined to move their smelly asses along. They began roaming the clearing before the dock, seemingly content to stay in the opening near the river rather than slogging back into the trees.

That didn’t please the hunter at all. After a few tense minutes of watching them shuffle about, he couldn’t wait any longer. Those two needed to die, now. He had much more important business to be about.

Rising to his feet, the hunter stepped out into the clearing. Two grey faces swiveled towards the movement and the jaws of the creatures dropped, unleashing their trademark gurgling moans from ruined throats when they saw him. While their eyesight wasn’t good, thanks to thousands of minute scratches upon their corneas—and not actually blinking since their demise—the zombies could still determine a living, breathing human from unappetizing columns of bark, sap, and summer-green leaves. The sight of one set their primitive instincts humming. Blackish drool ran freely from their mouths to drip slowly off the flesh of their ragged chins, coating their already ruined clothing with even more unspeakable foulness as they approached.

After waiting for them to creep closer, the hunter reached over his shoulder with one hand. The dead didn’t even notice the strap running up over his right shoulder, nor did they pay any mind to the scabbard riding his back. They didn’t recognize the sound of metal on metal as he drew his weapon, and the creatures definitely didn’t feel threatened as he took a firm grip on its pommel. They couldn’t have cared less.

The first came within three yards of the hunter and he leapt forward, sending steel out in a blur to meet dead flesh. One of its outstretched hands and half of one arm went flying, right before the six-hundred-year-old steel blade separated the thing’s head from its shoulders permanently. The razor edge cut through flesh and bone alike, shearing onward in a sweeping arc that sent half-congealed blood out like a fetid fan to coat the front of the ghoul in the first one’s wake. Its now-headless body dropped like a marionette whose strings had been cut, not even twitching as the creature’s knees buckled and it fell truly dead to the grass.

The remaining zombie was a bit more robust than its unlucky compatriots. It closed on the hunter almost at a trot and was on him before he could bring his blade to bear again. As the things grotesquely flayed hands closed on his shirt, the hunter dropped the weapon to hold it off.

This one was strong. Easily one of the heartiest he’d encountered, despite its condition. In life, the zombie had been a hard-working man. A carpenter by trade, dedicated to his family and to providing for them, whatever it took. If his brain had still been able to access the memories of his life, the creature could’ve taken comfort in the fact the man he’d been had managed to save his family before he was turned. He’d met his fate getting them to Langley, two days after the initial outbreak. One of the newly-risen dead had taken a mouthful from his left shoulder just as they’d fought their way to the refuge gates. The man he’d been made sure his wife and daughter made it inside, then he’d walked back towards the creature filled streets to the north armed with nothing but a shovel. He’d spent the next five hours killing every zombie he crossed paths with until, too weak and feverish to continue, he’d taken refuge in the loft over a small diner. He’d passed the following morning, then risen shortly thereafter to begin his carnivorous roaming.

Knowing nothing—and not caring—about the creature’s history, the hunter strove to knock the thing from its feet. The zombie wasn’t cooperating, though. It fought to move its broken teeth closer to his face, wanting nothing more but to sink chipped enamel into the first living human it had encountered in nearly two months. That was fine, because the hunter didn’t feel like going along with that program and was sick of pussy-footing around with the nasty thing.

Forming his right hand into a straight-fingered spear, the hunter jabbed it sharply up under the creature’s jaw. His fingers rammed through the sickly tissue over its Adam’s apple, sank in deep, and he took a firm grip on the right of the creature’s mandible. Then, using his left hand to thrust the thing away by its breastbone, the hunter gave a swift yank and ripped its lower jaw free.

Much of the zombie’s throat and the skin of its upper chest tore away, along with the entire lower half of its face. Yellowed cheekbones saw the light of day as its cheesecloth-fragile epidermis shredded, giving the once-good man’s body a visage only seen in nightmares. The hunter could see the thing’s severed trachea there in the hollow where its collarbones met. He could smell the rot wafting up as its moldy lungs attempted to push air through vocal cords that weren’t there any longer.

And he didn’t give a damn.

After fending off its clumsy attempts to latch onto him again, the hunter knocked the zombie’s arms away. He surged forward to take a crushing grip on its spine though the gaping hole in its throat, picked it up with the anger-fueled strength of one arm, and slammed it bodily down to the wet turf. The thing wasn’t even stunned. It continued trying to grab and bite and feed, even with its jaw laying thirty feet away where the hunter had flung it in his rage.

That really pissed him off.

He’d had enough of these things. These hellish revenants and their never-ending attempts to kill—and turn—anyone unfortunate enough to cross their paths. He was so tired of running and hiding and fighting every, single, goddamn day. Most of all, he was sick of looking at them.

Groping at the earth quickly with his free hand, the hunter found a river rock the size of a large eggplant, drew back, and smashed it against the zombie’s forehead. Its skull parted with an audible crack, but the thing kept pawing at him, so he brought the rock back up and hit it again. That seemed to inhibit its motor skills because the corpse began waving its arms drunkenly, not even trying to get a grip on his person any longer. The rock continued to rise and fall, first pulping the creature’s left eye and zygomatic arch, then its frontal lobe. He continued his assault, beating on the thing until its brain-holder was nothing more than a goopy, reeking mess of mush covered bone, then the hunter collapsed on his side next to it.

He pulled back on his rage and moved away from the dead creature on all fours. Now that all immediate threats had been removed, his body shook in the after-effects of so much adrenaline being dumped into his system and he struggled to get his wind again. As much as he wanted to, there was no time for him to lie there, panting in the mud and the blood and the already cold, wasted flesh. There was no help around, and—as the old adage went—the hunter had miles to go before he slept.

Almost numb with exhaustion from his terrible game of hide and seek with the dead, the still trembling man pushed up unsteadily from the soggy turf and levered himself to his feet. His world spun for a few moments before finally settling down as he staggered towards the riverbank. More specifically, straight for the rack of flat-bottom canoes near the swollen Neosho. Upon reaching the boats, the hunter clawed earth away with his aching hands and grasped the lip of one canoe. The one lying upside-down on the sodden, muddy goop, where only one end had a small gap in the mud to allow air into the cavity below. It was there the hunter concentrated his efforts. Finally working enough room to get a grip under the metal lip, the shaking man slowly tipped the canoe over on its side.

His companion lay unmoving in the mud below it.

Relief nearly stole the remainder of his waning strength away and the hunter’s knees dropped into the mud. He cautiously lifted the limp form up until it was nearly cradled upon his lap then proceeded to wipe the glop from his companions face as best he could, desperately searching for a pulse at her carotid artery. Though still unconscious, the slow thumping beat against his fingertips revealed she was still alive. He clutched her tight to his chest and pressed his swollen face against her hair, unmindful of the half-dried gunk that coated his cheek. He wasn’t too clean himself, but he wouldn’t have cared regardless.

After he’d snatched her from the river’s embrace, he’d cleared the water from her lungs on the muddy bank with life-giving breaths and frantic chest compressions, all the while screaming to the gods like a raving lunatic. Howling for them not to take her. Once she’d begun breathing on her own, he’d hidden her beneath the canoe to search the area, discovered the ghouls lurking nearby, and set out on a mad assassination mission. His friend would have slapped him into next week for attempting the task, but the hunter hadn’t been thinking very clearly at that moment.

He rocked her limp form, sobbing quietly against her hair as his body shook and demanded rest. The rain was still coming down and, as he huddled trembling and weak, it began sloughing the mud from their battered bodies.

Under his cheek, bright blue hair began peeking through from beneath the grime…

-CHAPTER ONE-

Rachael Norris wanted to bang her head against the interior hull of the Mimi.

It had been nearly three days and there’d been no sign of Jacob O’Connor or Katherine Cho, so hope of their survival was fading fast. Three days since General Winston Hess and his big damn band of bastards had attempted to take Langley for their own, prompting Jake’s party to dish them out an ass kicking.

Well… Truth be told, the horde of zombies they’d let into the fortified town had done most of the work. The nasty things had stumbled lengthwise through Langley, and walked into a virtual wall of steel-jacketed rounds as they attempted to reach Hess and his aggressor force. The horde had suffered monumental losses—to which they’d paid no mind at all—and continued their advance. Until that is, Hess began unloading on them with his own monster-sized MATTOC (Mobile Armored Troop Transport and Command vehicle). The heavily armored juggernaut had turned the crowd into hundreds of flesh-based Jackson Pollock’s in minutes, along with the easternmost defensive wall of Langley.

That had nearly caused George Foster—navy lifer turned clandestine fixer in resident—to pop a blood vessel. He’d been operating under the belief that his baby, the Screamin’ Mimi, was one of a kind. His transport was segmented like a trio of subway cars and longer than one of those triple-trailer eighteen-wheelers that ruled the highways before the modern world had been turned into one, big, all-you-can-eat, zombie smorgasbord. It rode on heavy independent axles, sported massive combat grade, run flat tires, and its nose was an eight-foot-tall blade like the prow of a snowplow on steroids. There was only one method of entry or egress on the Mimi, a large C130-style hatch at its rear end, and the titan’s hull was nearly an inch thick. Also, a life-sized, 1950s-circa, hand-painted, pin-up girl with dark hair riding a bomb was emblazoned on the port side, or the driver’s side of an American automobile. Finally, the entire outer hull was the most hideous shade of bright, Pepto Bismol pink any of their little group ever had the misfortune to lay eyes upon, but Foster brushed off their continuous wisecracks. Each of them knew his ugly baby had saved their bacon more than once. It rammed through zombie hordes and steel gates with equal ease, thanks to the frictionless SEP-skin (Synthetic Electron Polymer) coating on its hide. It had become their transportation, their fortress, their weapon of last resort.

Their home in the hell brought about by the zombie apocalypse.

George blew kisses at it. All the time. Most of his friends found it pretty disturbing when he did so, but none—save Rae—ever voiced their discomfort. George had glared at his buxom counterpart for uttering such blasphemy and patted the Mimi’s hull, mumbling to the machine that it would always be his Number One Gal, because she was pretty and quiet.

Rae currently sat at the communications station of their heavily-armored RV, sweating through her tank top in the sweltering heat as she fought with the Mimi’s transmission array. The lush woman had vainly been trying to contact the only (friendly) survivor colony they knew about east of the Rocky Mountains, but all of her efforts had come to naught. It was infuriating. Her own equipment was working per spec, the Mimi’s hydrogen power plant was cranking out enough juice for her to punch a signal through to Mars for God’s sake, and she hadn’t found anything amiss with the small broadcast antenna on its hull either. There was no reason they shouldn’t be able to speak with the refuge in Pecos Texas, and attempting to figure it out was driving her bat-shit bonkers. Hell, at this point, she’d rather be having another argument with her primary source of irritation, George Foster.

That was a worrisome thought. The aging warrior was infuriatingly crass, extremely rude, had virtually no conscience to speak of when it pertained to achieving a goal, and didn’t possess a politically correct bone in his body. She had to admit though, while approaching his seventy-fourth year on Earth, George Montgomery Foster still possessed the physique of a man half his age. Oh, he carried a few extra pounds, but only a few. Hard work combined with strenuous exercise had a way of keeping you fit, and George had been no stranger to either. His chest remained deep, even though his hair had long gone far more salt than pepper. His tattooed forearms remained massive, his waist still (relatively) lean, and the cords in his rather bulky shoulders rippled noticeably as he knelt at the front of the drive unit. Clad in only his fatigue bottoms and a pair of combat boots, he torqued away with a large ratchet on one the bolts that held his driver’s seat to the floor.

Rae tilted her head thoughtfully, fingers poised over the keyboard, momentarily distracted by the older man’s sweat-soaked back while she watched him work. She marveled at the muscles tensing under his skin, mentally berating herself to remember the fact that he had no filter between his brain and his mouth. She remembered that during one of their girls’ nights while recuperating in Langley, some of the other women in their party had noted George showed a striking resemblance to the actor Stephen Lang. At the time Rae brushed said observation off because—let’s face it—he was a bit of an ass.

Well, more than a bit

For example. They’d attempted an impromptu party once at the Mooney’s Sunset Bar and Grill back when Langley was still standing, with a few cases of Beefeater Kat’s team had scrounged and a karaoke machine. Feeling pretty good after a few Mooney Mimosas—vodka mixed with Tang, peach schnapps, and a little Rum 151 —Rae had sung Love Shack by the B-52’s with Elle and Bee, and they’d received a near-standing ovation.

George however had stumbled back from relieving himself in a bush outside, crappy mimosa in hand, and asked, What the hell was that racket? Sounded like the mating cries of a retarded, Mexican Sasquatch…

Needless to say, the party had gone downhill from there.

He still cut a fine profile though.

Still no joy?

Foster’s voice snapped her attention to the present. What?

With the radio. He waved absently over his shoulder with one grimy hand without turning, still focused on the stubborn bolt.

No. Dammit. I have no idea why either. Rae crossed her arms, leaned back in her seat, and glared at the stubborn console. "It’s like there’s no one to receive our broadcast, but we know that’s not the case. I managed to connect with one of the HARP satellites earlier, and Pecos is still secure. Hell, I saw people and vehicles moving around! They’ve got to have a radio set-up somewhere. Maybe the guy on shift was taking a siesta or something."

George snorted. Fer two weeks? Not likely. I know you’ve had a lady-boner at the thought of makin’ contact with ‘em to check if Allan an’ Maggie an’ Gertie made it down in the Beechcraft, but it’s a waste of time. I’d have told ya’ that, but you’da just thrown a fit an’ called me some more not-so-flatterin’ names.

And just how do you know I’m wasting my time? She demanded.

Fixer Training 101, hot-stuff. George rose, tried to shake his seat with one hand and, satisfied with its stability, jammed his ratchet back into the ever-present satchel on his