Under a Graveyard Sky

* * *

Faith stepped out of cover, aimed carefully and zapped the zombie in the back with the taser.

“Nice,” she said as the zombie dropped to the floor. She darted forward and slammed the narcotic injector into the back of its thigh, holding it as she thought the instructions indicated.

She was rewarded by the two and a half inch needle driving through her thumb and a gush of tranquilizer squirting onto her facemask.

“Shit!” she screamed, hopping around and shaking her hand. The needle steadfastly refused to exit her thumb. “Cock-suck… Fuck! Rat turds! Ow!”

She grabbed the injector and pulled it from her thumb, tossing it across the corridor.

“Well,” she said, shaking her hand. “At least it’s num…b. Mum… Oh cap… No… No…bad…”

The zombie was getting to its feet, which was the bad part. Besides being slightly stoned by the small dose of tranquilizer that had gotten into her system. And her right hand flopping uselessly.

“Very bad,” she said, drawing another taser left-handed. She couldn’t get her usual dead-on targeting since she was getting a bit of double vision. “I think he’s about…”

Which was where he was. The zombie let out a screech and dropped to the floor, spasming. Again.

“Perfect,” she said, then wondered why there was blood dripping on the zombie’s back. She looked at her hand and thought it through. There was blood. Dripping. From her thumb.

“Blood pathogen,” she said, drunkenly. “Not good.”

She pulled off the tactical glove, and the rubber glove under it, and looked at her thumb. It was swollen, bleeding and discolored.

“Is that normal if you AD yourself with an injector?” she asked the empty corridor.

The answer was another zombie howl from the south.

And the zombie was getting up. Again.

She pulled out her last taser and fired, hitting it in the groin.

“I said stay down!” she said to the hissing and whimpering zombie.

“This is soooo not good,” she said, finally injecting the zombie and then fumbling in a taser reload with one hand flopping useless. She could hear zombies heading her way by the flop-flop of their bare feet on the concrete. “I really, really need to start allowing adult supervision… And reading the directions more carefully. And eating all my vegetables… They need these in semiautomatic… With a magazine…”

She turned and fired the reloaded taser just in time to stop the zombie coming from the north. There were two more in the other direction…

* * *

“Durante,” Kaplan said, holding up the office phone. “Your girlfriend’s calling.”

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” Durante said, working on paperwork. Turned out that even in serial killing there was paperwork. Time sheets, materials… It just glossed over a lot of stuff.

“That would be the boss’s niece,” Kaplan said, grinning. “She wants to talk to you.”

“What now?” Durante said, picking up the phone.

“Line two.”

“Hey, Faith, how’s the filing going…? Uh, huh. How’d you get an injector stuck in your thumb…?”

Kaplan spun around in his chair and quirked a “Spock” eyebrow.

“And how’d you run into a zombie…? And you got the taser where…? And you ran into this zombie…? Uh, huh. Uh, huh. Okay… Okay… Sure. You just stay right there, okay? We’ll be down in a jiffy. Yeah. That would probably be best… Uh, huh. Bubye now.”

He hung up the phone and looked at the wall thoughtfully.

“Problems?”

“Roll the full tac team to level B-9, section forty-two,” Durante said, standing up carefully. “Loaded for bear. And I mean right GOD DAMNED NOW!”

Then he hit the door running…

* * *

When Tom got there it was all over but the flex-cuffing. Faith was still up on the air-handler, wrapping a bandage around her thumb and there were nine, count ’em, nine zombies, male and female, on the floor. At least two, considering the cranial damage, involved the blood splattered crowbar resting next to her.

The security team wasn’t bothering to flex-cuff those.

“Hey, Uncle Tom,” Faith said in a mixture of nervous and cheerful voice. “Did you know your basement was absolutely overrun with zombies? I didn’t.”

“Wasn’t really aware,” Tom said, carefully. “Need to talk with Brad from building security about that. Faith…aren’t you supposed to be up in the filing room?”

“Yeah,” Faith said. “About that… Filing’s not really my thing. And with the bad thumb and all…” she said, holding up the appendage.

* * *

“Hi,” Faith said, hanging her head. “I’m Faith. I’m supposed to help with the mail…”

* * *

“Uh, oh,” Steve said, watching the approaching boat.

The anchorage they were in was designated open. They weren’t in a channel or anything. It was an out-of- the-way spot on the Hudson on the Manhattan side. But Harbor Patrol seemed to want to stop by.

“Stacey, police visit,” Tom yelled through the hatch. He’d had watch.

“Roger,” Stacey said. She quickly picked up the ready weapons, two Saiga shotguns, two pistols and an M4 semi-automatic carbine and began emptying them. That was simply a matter of dropping the magazines and storing them. Then she proceeded to lock all the weapons in their containers.

By the time the boat pulled alongside, everything was locked down. And she and Steve were both in respirators with nitrile gloves on.

“Harbor Patrol,” the loudspeaker boomed from the small trawler. “Permission to come aboard for health and safety inspection…”

“Granted,” Tom said shouted. It was muffled so he waved for them to board. Not the best way to talk to police, wearing respirators, but they’d managed to avoid the flu so far and the vaccine wouldn’t yet have taken hold. “Stacey, paperwork?”

“On it,” Stacey said, shoving the last pistol case into a locker and locking that.

“Good afternoon, sir,” the lead officer of the two man team said. His nametag read: Torres. They were clearly bothered by the respirators but they were wearing nitrile gloves. “First question, are there any weapons on board?”

“Yes, officer,” Steve said. The two officers’ body language went immediately to “defensive.” “We’re an associate security contractor for one of the onshore banks. We have quite a few weapons on board for that reason.”

“Contractors,” Officer Torres growled. “Great. Just flipping great.”

“May we use a certain amount of discretion in the conversation?” Steve asked.

“Anything you say we’re required to restate if so asked,” the officer said.

“Discretion in that is all I’m asking,” Steve said, grinning. “We’re a back-up jump plan for some executives. In the event that things get bad enough that protection from law enforcement breaks down, the weapons are for protection of the executives.”

“How many?” Torres asked.

“With the weapons and ammunition, I’m sure you’d use the term ‘arsenal,’” Steve said, smiling again. Stacey handed him the paperwork for the weapons as well as the stamped form that they had registered as security contractors in and for the State and City of New York. The form included a list of all registered weapons ammunition and “paramilitary equipment.”

“Jesus Christ,” Torres said. “Arsenal is right. You can’t have all this stuff sitting in the harbor!”

“Included in the paperwork is my BATF FFL license,” Steve said, calmly. “As well as my certification as a Class III firearms instructor, tactical firearms instructor and law of weapons instructor. My wife is a tactical