Read The Down Home Zombie Blues for Free Online

cargo door of the vehicle suddenly flew open. But no weapons turrets protruded, nothing lethal emerged. She slowly let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding and watched him transfer the small black boxes to the rear cargo area. The long box went in too. She was considering how to take him from behind when—damn! damn!—he stepped back to the door on the navigator’s side, bent over, and came out with the T-MOD in his grasp.
    There it was. She had to take possession of it now. It shouldn’t be difficult. He was a nil, a civilian. She was an expertly trained military commander with the element of surprise.
    She rose in one smooth, swift, practiced movement.
    And her scanner screeched out an intruder alert.
    Zombie.
    So much for keeping a low profile.
    “Run!” Jorie screamed at him, her heart pounding in her throat as she tabbed the laser in her right hand up to hard-terminate. “Run!”
    She grabbed her other laser and barreled across the lawn. “Drop the T-MOD! Run!” A sickly green glow formed in the night gloom off to her left. She laced the spot with both her lasers, aware that the stupid nil was still standing there, T-MOD in his hands, staring at the expanding portal.
    Just as she reached him, the green cloud erupted into hard form maybe two maxmeters away, about level with the top of the high hedge. Its diameter was small. Bliss luck, she’d done some damage but she hadn’t stopped it. Yet. She fired off three more bursts, then swung around to face the nil, bringing her micro-rifle across her chest as she did. “Drop the unit, damn you!” Her breath came in hard gasps. “That’s a zombie. It’ll kill you!”
    The man stared down at her. And then Jorie remembered: the entire universe did not speak Alarsh.
    But that was the least of her problems. The zombie had arrived.
    She swung back as it slithered like molten green liquid out of the hole in the night sky. The man behind her uttered something guttural. She could feel his breath against her hair, could feel the hard tension of his body against her back.
    “What in hell is that?” she heard him rasp—in passable Vekran—as the zombie snapped into solidification. Its serrated jaws gleamed in the moonlight and its three sunken opticals pulsed red, strafing the darkness in all directions. Four clawed appendages, long and multijointed, clicked. Energyworms undulated and writhed over its tall, angular body.
    “Zombie,” she said, her breath still harsh. She shoved her pistols back into the holsters and whipped her Hazer micro-rifle forward. “Okay, big boy. Now we play rough.”
    She fired as it lunged for them, the rifle’s energy almost blinding as it crashed against the void substance of the energyworms. She squinted her left eye closed, viewed everything through the filtered ocular on her right.
    The zombie howled, slashing at her with its upper claws. But it stopped advancing.
    Swinging the rifle down, she strafed its legs with a blast. The grass around it immediately blackened. The zombie tottered for a moment. She aimed for its topmost eye, but missed as it jerked sideways. “Damn!”
    It lashed out with its lower right arm. She caught the movement almost too late. “Down!” she screamed in Vekran. She dropped to her knees, prayed the man behind her understood and copied her movement.
    The zombie’s long arm snaked out, ripping through the roof of the land vehicle, sending jagged metal hurtling across the lawn. Damn, this one had extenders. She hadn’t seen that mutation in a long time. She’d have to adjust her attack, especially as neither Herryck nor Trenat was there to help create a diversion or watch after the nil.
    The nil. Another worry. The vehicle behind her was still shuddering, clanking from the contact. “You alive, nil?” she shouted over the noise.
    “Yes!”
    “When I say run, you run. Understand?”
    “No, wait!” He spoke quickly.
    She couldn’t follow his strange version of Vekran, couldn’t catch