Joe Ledger: Unstoppable

CRASH COURSE BY DANA FREDSTI

“Why are we doing this again?”

“Because Colonel Paxton owes someone a favor.”

Nathan held out a hand to me as I climbed out of the helicopter on unsteady legs, one hand clutching my katana. My legs weren’t the only shaky thing about me. My stomach turned one or two more gentle somersaults even after my feet hit the tarmac, and the whupwhupwhup of the rotors throbbed unpleasantly through my head. Helicopter travel has been on my shit list ever since a copter I was on was sabotaged and went down in zombie-infested San Francisco.

“So we’re paying Paxton’s debt? Hardly seems fair.”

“It’s not,” Nathan agreed. “But it’s SOP in corporations and the military.”

“Huh?”

“Standard operating procedure.”

“Evidently so are acronyms,” I muttered.

Nathan grinned. “Why do you think I went off the grid for so long?”

Nathan’s one of those rough-hewn but handsome types who could be anywhere between forty and sixty. When he smiles it knocks at least ten years off his age, and I can almost see why my mentor, Simone, likes him.

“Now stop bitching and let’s get going. We have people to meet.”

Almost.

Our mission? Fly to a little island off Costa Rica to pick up Brock, the son of some Very Important gajillionaire industrialist or arms dealer or whatever. The kid was bitten when zombies breached the family compound and left for dead by the faithful family retainers during the subsequent evacuation. Only the kid didn’t die.

Can you say very wealthy wild card?

When the dad — who’d been stateside doing business when the shit went down — found out his son and heir was alive and well, he immediately started pulling strings to get him out of Costa Rica. Those had to be some hefty strings to let him commandeer people from two of what were formerly top-secret security organizations — the Dolofónoi tou Zontanoús Nekroús and the Department of Military Sciences — to be what sounded like glorified babysitters.

Nathan and I were supposed to be meeting two operatives from the DMS. Colonel Paxton had told us they were hot shit. Okay, my words, not his, but honestly, he’d practically gone all fanboy when he’d talked about them. Not something I’d ever expected — or wanted — to see from our boss.

We walked across a reassuringly bustling airfield on NAS North Island, located on the far end of the Coronado Peninsula in San Diego. Thanks to quick thinking on someone’s part, Coronado had been turned into a relatively safe zone by blowing up a section of the Coronado Bridge and putting up an effective blockade on the strip of land leading to Imperial Beach. The beaches were patrolled 24/7 to make sure no one infected with Walker’s made it to shore.

“And there’s our ride.”

I followed the direction of Nathan’s pointing finger and stopped short.

“You said there’d be a plane.” I didn’t bother to hide the accusation in my voice.

“That is a plane,” Nathan replied calmly. “Oh. And the thing we flew in on? That was a helicopter.”

Amazing how much sarcasm the man can impart without changing his inflection. You’d think I’d be used to it by now. Of course, you’d also think I’d be used to traveling via helicopter, as I’d had to do it at least a dozen times since the zombocalypse had started.

“I meant a real plane. Not a… a… a Tinkertoy.” I gestured at the little plane sitting on the tarmac at the far end of North Island’s military base. It looked like one of the toy planes my dad collected, not much longer than the copter we’d flown in on, and sure as hell didn’t look sturdy enough for a trip to Costa Rica and back.

“Did I just hear her call my Porter a Tinkertoy?”

I looked up to see a burly black man wearing worn jeans and a green-and-black-checked flannel shirt walking toward us and giving me one hell of a hairy eyeball. He was flanked by two other men, one in his late twenties or so and the other somewhere in his thirties or early forties.

Both men toted an impressive amount of high-tech-looking weaponry, and both wore the type of camo meant to blend into forests and jungles, same as Nathan and me. They were also both blond, but that was the only physical attribute they had in common. The younger guy had to be at least six and a half feet, maybe taller. The very definition of corn-fed.

Assuming a metric shit-ton of corn was involved.

The other man wasn’t as physically overwhelming, but he carried himself in a way that I’d learned to associate with people who could probably kick the shit out of 99 percent of the population. Kind of like Nathan. Same look in the back of the eyes that hinted of dark things that, once seen, couldn’t be unseen.

Nathan shook hands with the black man. “Jack, good to see you. Ash, you’ll be glad to know that Jack is one of the best pilots around.”

“Damn straight I am,” Jack growled, still giving me stink-eye.

Nathan turned to the shorter of the two blond men. “You must be Joe Ledger.”

The man nodded. “And you’re Nathan Smith.”

They shook hands, one of those manly-men handshakes that had the potential to degenerate into an arm-wrestling match unless the men involved were both secure in their masculinity. No arm wrestling ensued and the testosterone levels in the atmosphere remained tolerable.

Ledger and his companion exchanged a brief look and I got the sense Nathan had just passed some sort of unspoken test.

“I’m Ash,” I said brightly. Both men looked at me.

“You’re Ashley Parker, huh?” Ledger’s tone was neutral.

“Um. Yeah.”

“Huh.”

Another brief silent exchange between the two men.

Maybe I was feeling insecure, but I got the feeling I was not what he’d expected. Maybe someone taller?

Whatever, I didn’t need to be a mind reader to know I’d most likely failed whatever exam Nathan had just aced.

“Statistics prove you’re safer in a plane than driving in traffic,” Corn-fed said. “You’re a lot more likely to be roadkill than ground jam.”

I stared without love at Mr. Corn-Fed-on-Steroids. His full name, if it was to be believed, was Harvey Rabbit, but Ledger called him Bunny.

“Aren’t you supposed to be invisible?”

Bunny just grinned at me. He and Ledger sat across from me and Nathan in two of the plane’s four passenger rows. Jack had modified the interior so the front and third rows were reversed to face the second and fourth rows, making conversation easier. It also made it a lot harder to ignore one’s fellow passengers.

Thanks a lot, Jack.

To be fair, once Jack realized how deeply I hated flying, he had done his best to reassure me how safe I’d be in his beloved Porter by inundating me with statistics. Factoids involving takeoff and landing performance, payloads, airfoil, and other stuff that rattled around in my head like marbles in an empty can. I paid as much attention as I could, especially in regard to the location of a very tiny bathroom at the back of the plane.

At this point, all I cared about was that the Porter would get us safely from San Diego to Costa Rica and then back again ASAP. The shorter my in-flight incarceration with Joe Ledger and his man-mountain sidekick, the better. They made me feel totally incompetent — and kind of girly — just by their existence.

“So,” I said, desperate to talk about something other than road jam, “other than friends in nose-bleedingly high places, is there a good reason this kid rates such kick-ass escorts?”

“The dad already sent a team to extract him,” Nathan said. “They didn’t come back and both the team and the kid have gone radio silent.”

“Yeah,” said Ledger. “If we’re lucky, it just means communications went down. Some mechanical failure. Rust in the machine. Whatever. If we’re unlucky, we’re looking at the possibility that hostiles have taken over the compound and are holding the kid for ransom.”

“What about zombies?” I asked. “I mean, if they overran the place once, no reason they couldn’t do it again. And I personally would rather deal with zombies. They don’t shoot back.”

“What little intel we could get showed zombie activity in the jungles outside the walls,” Nathan replied. “But none inside the compound itself.”

The plane gave a sudden lurch. So did my stomach.

“Excuse me.” I unbuckled my seat belt and made my way to the bathroom.

When I opened the bathroom door five minutes or so later, I was less queasy but still defensive. So when I heard Ledger say my name, I stopped and eavesdropped.

“Does Ash know how to use those fancy blades of hers?”

“She’s not bad with them,” was Nathan’s neutral response.

Gee, thanks a lot.

“She spent much time in the field?”

“If by ‘field’ you mean zombie-infested streets,” Nathan said, “then a couple of months.”

Ledger gave a noncommittal grunt that managed to convey how unimpressed he was with my credentials. “I’m just a little surprised she was chosen for this particular mission,” he said. “I get me and Bunny. And you’re an obvious choice. But I’m not quite seeing what she brings to the table, other than a weak stomach.”

That was it.

I stomped over and stood next to his seat, glaring down at him.

“Are you one of those MRA types who thinks I should be cooking and all pregnant and shit?”

“Here we go,” Nathan muttered.

Ledger raised an eyebrow. “Did I say that?”

“You implied it,” I snapped. “I get it. You’re a real manly man, built the Eiffel Tower with brawn and steel, and all your furniture is rich mahogany.”

“You forgot all of my leather-bound books.”

I glared at him. I hate being one-upped on my pop-cultural Tourette’s. “Oh, come on,” I snapped. “You don’t think I can do my job because I’m a woman.”

“Actually,” Ledger said with infuriating calm, “some of the best combatants I’ve known have been women. Women who’ve trained for years and, in some cases, been through hell to achieve their skills. You’ve been training for a couple of months.”

Even though I’d been through my own version of hell, I couldn’t argue with him and Nathan didn’t seem inclined to say anything else in my defense. So I did a modified Jan Brady, turning and stomping two feet to the row of seats behind Ledger and Bunny, where they couldn’t see me.

Nathan dropped his voice, but I still heard him. Wild-card hearing and all. “One of the reasons Ash was chosen was because Brock’s supposed to be difficult and his father thought he might respond better to an attractive woman. Ash is good with people.” He paused. “Usually.”

I didn’t have to be a wild card to hear Ledger’s snort, followed by, “Well, this mission is screwed.”

You’re a poo, Ron Burgundy, I thought.

“Trust me,” Nathan said. “She handles herself well under fire.”

Semimollified, I huddled back into the semicomfortable seat, popped two Dramamine, and did my best Hicks impression, falling sound asleep within minutes.

“Ash, wake up.”

“I’m fine,” I mumbled. “Don’t need to stretch my legs.”

This was the second time someone had tried to wake me out of my Dramamine-induced sleep. The first was when we’d made our first stop to refuel somewhere in Mexico. I’d ignored them then and tried to do the same now.

“Ash. You have to wake up.”

Someone shook me by the shoulders.

“We have to jump.”

My eyelids flew open and all cobwebby sleepy thoughts vanished. Ledger’s face was inches from mine.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

He gave a small shake of his head.

Shit.

I scanned the plane. No Nathan, no Bunny.

Instead there was a man in black holding a nasty-looking firearm, business end pointed at me and Ledger.

He grinned at me. A really smug, ugly grin. I’d have wiped it off his face if not for the aforementioned firearm.

Well, shit.

“Where’s Nathan and Bunny?”

“Last time I saw them was when we stopped to refuel. I left the plane for five minutes. When I came back, they’d been replaced with our friend here.”

My heart stopped.

“Are they alive?”

Ledger nodded. “For now. But if we don’t do what this asshole says, that could change at any time.”

I had a million questions, but enough common sense to not ask any of them other than, “What about Jack?”

The man with the gun sneered at me. “There’s been a change of pilots, too, hon. Now get up.” He jerked the barrel of his gun at me.

I looked longingly at my katana and M4, both propped against the seat next to me, and the man shook his head. “Don’t even think about it, sweetheart. Besides, you don’t wanna be lugging all that shit when you jump.”

“C’mon, Ash.” Ledger helped me to my feet. For the first time I noticed he had a parachute strapped to his back.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I looked at Ledger, hoping against hope this was some really over-the-top macho fraternity-type hazing.

He shook his head again. “He’s not joking.”

“But I’ve never skydived before,” I said, as though that would make a difference.

Asshat laughed and said, “Time for a crash course, hon. And you’d better hurry ’cause you crazy kids are running out of time. You jump in the next minute and you’ve still got a thousand feet of airspace to deploy. Every minute you waste, you lose a hundred feet. Wait five minutes and I figure you two’ll be lawn darts when you hit the ground.”

This had to be a nightmare.

“Where’s my chute?”

Ledger said, “We’ve only got one chute.”

My heart raced, the sound pounding in my ears like bongos played by a meth-head. “No, really.”

“Hey, if you’ve never done this before, you’re better off this way.” Asshat smirked at me. “You guys get a chance to get all close and personal right off the bat.”

Both Ledger and I shot the man the bird simultaneously. First thing we’d agreed on since we’d met.

Asshat gestured us to the side with the gun. “You’ve just lost a hundred feet.”

Fuck fuck fuck.

I looked up at Ledger. “You’ve done this before, right?”

“Yeah. Not a big fan, but I’ll do my best.”

“Hey, I’ll try not to barf on you on the way down if you get us there safely.” I tried to keep my voice from shaking, but failed miserably.

Ledger put a hand on my shoulder. “Okay. This is a BA-18 parachute. It sacrifices comfort for quick opening. In other words, there’s gonna be a jolt. You need to be ready for that.”

“I really don’t wanna die,” I whispered.

“You won’t. Wrap your arms around me and hook them through the harness. Hold on as tight as you can.”

I did as he said, looping my hands and wrists around the chute harness as tightly as possible. My stomach lurched.

“Eight hundred feet.”

Oh, for the chance to wipe the grin off the bastard’s face… with an extra-strong Brillo pad.

“You’re gonna have to jump with me.” Ledger’s tone was quiet yet urgent. “When it’s time to jump, don’t make me drag you. We’re gonna need to get the chute open ASAP, which means we need to work together. Hold on tight, try not to panic, and we’ll make it okay.”

“Promise?”

“As much as I can.”

The asshat with the gun gestured at Ledger. “Open the door.”

“What? You’re not gonna give us valet service?”

“Funny guy. Oh, yeah. Here. You’ll need this.” He tossed what looked like a small black cell phone at Ledger, who caught it easily and pocketed it after a brief glance.

The pounding of my heart almost drowned the sound of the wind when Ledger opened the door. The plane bounced as wind flooded the cabin, increasing the turbulence. I tried not to look at the carpet of greenery some eight hundred feet below.

“Seven hundred.”

Fine. Seven hundred feet below. But I couldn’t help looking. Trees, lots of them, interspersed with splashes of aqua and brown.

“God, I don’t want to do this.”

I didn’t realize I’d spoken out loud until Ledger gave me a reassuring squeeze with one arm.

“Look at the bright side,” he said into my ear so only I could hear him.

“There’s a bright side?”

“He’s not making us use a raft.”

I gave a choked laugh. I hated Temple of Doom. “If you call me Willie, I will kill you.”

Joe looked at me. “You ready?”

“No fucking way.” I took a deep breath, then exhaled. “Let’s go.”

“Good.”

“Six hundred feet.” Asshat tapped his wrist in a time’s a-wasting gesture.

Ledger tossed a salute toward Asshat and shouted, “Nice try, Lao Che!”

My laugh turned into a scream of terror as we jumped.

Ever been on one of those rides at an amusement park where you wait in line for an hour and then are basically hurtling to the ground in free fall?

This was so much worse.

At least I didn’t pay money for it, though, right?

I kept my eyes squeezed shut and held on for all I was worth, which, considering my wild-card strength, was worth quite a bit. Even so, when the chute deployed, the jolt nearly dislodged my grip. I managed to keep hold of the harness as we resumed our drop at a somewhat more leisurely pace.

Maybe we’ll live through this after all, I thought, clinging to Ledger like a baby koala with separation anxiety.

Then we hit the canopy of trees. Branches whipped against my back, legs, and arms. It stung even through the fabric of my shirt and pants. I kept my face buried against Ledger’s chest to avoid getting an eye poked out.

Then our descent stopped with a bone-rattling suddenness. Something wrenched my right arm with white-hot pain and the back of my head collided with something hard—

And the lights went out.

I woke up to a throbbing pain in my right arm, a headache, and the all-too-familiar sound of moaning as something pawed at my feet.

If it’s Tuesday, it must be zombies.

I opened my eyes slowly, waiting for the initial wave of dizziness to subside before checking out my surroundings.

I was sprawled over a branch, my right arm still wrapped around Joe, who dangled from the parachute canopy spread out in the tree limbs above us. My wrist was still entwined in the harness and the weight of Joe’s inert form threatened to dislocate my shoulder.

I carefully extricated myself and took stock of my situation.

Head. Aching, but no double vision or residual dizziness.

Arm. Sore, but nothing that would slow me down if I needed to use it.

Attitude. In dire need of an adjustment.

Sense of humor. MIA.

I looked toward the ground, where a half dozen extra-gooey and rapidly decaying zombies gathered beneath us, flesh oozing off the bones in the tropical heat.

One of the zoms, a tall, skinny one wearing nothing but the tattered remains of blue board shorts, kept batting at my dangling feet. Thankfully it fell short an inch or so from being able to get a good grip and pull either of us down.

“No lunch for you,” I growled, and pulled my feet up.

Sweat trickled down my forehead and in between my breasts under the Kevlar. The humidity was through the roof, and the temperature, even in the shade, had to be in the upper nineties. My ears buzzed and at first I thought it was a side effect from the fall. Then I recognized the sound of insects.

Lots of them.

“And people pay to come here on holiday?”

“Most people stay in nice villas or hotels by the beach.”

I turned back to Joe, who was now awake and evidently nonplussed at being treed above a bunch of zombies. He rubbed the back of his head.

“You okay?” I asked.

“I’ll live,” he said. “You?”

“I am profoundly grateful to not be a red smear on the ground about now,” I replied. I paused and then added, “Thank you.”

He grinned. “Thanks for not barfing on me.”

Something chirped in one of his pockets. He pulled out the little black rectangle Asshat had tossed him before we’d jumped.

“Is it a phone?” I asked hopefully.

Joe shook his head. “Looks like some kind of a GPS device. A little more high-tech than your typical geocaching gadget.”

“That’s the adult version of a treasure hunt, right?”

“Yup. And it looks like someone’s sending us on one.” He pointed to two black dots on the screen. “This is us.” His finger indicated a set of coordinates. “And that’s whatever we’re supposed to find. Looks to be in the general vicinity.

“Gotta get down from here and past this bunch first.”

I smiled and patted the tanto, still sheathed across my chest. “Allow me to show you what I learned in my two months in the field.”

It didn’t take me long to clear out the zombies. They were in pretty crappy shape, what with the hot and humid climate, and they stank to hell and back.

Joe let me do my job without argument. When I’d finished the last zombie, he climbed down from the tree. He looked around and gave a nod. “Good job.”

I shrugged, trying to hide my pleasure at his approval.

He looked at the GPS and set off on a rough trail of sorts through the overgrowth. I followed, still holding my tanto while keeping my eyes on the ground and my ears open for the moans of the walking dead. For the time being, though, all I heard was a gentle chorus of frogs mixed with the ever-present buzzing of insects, punctuated by the occasional bird and monkey call. A black-and-yellow snake slithered across the path and a line of leaf-cutter ants scurried back and forth on a branch, carrying sections of leaves four or five times their size. Large flowers splashed vibrant colors against the green-and-brown background of the jungle.

The whole effect was kind of cool and even pretty, but the heat and humidity were soul-crushing, and there was no shortage of mosquitoes and flies attracted to the sweat now streaming down my face, neck, chest, and back.

“It’s like the Tiki Room at Disneyland,” I commented as we walked. “Except in hell.”

Joe snorted, then gave a satisfied grunt. “Here we are.”

A tangle of colorful flowering vines mostly covered a large white sealed bucket. Upon closer inspection, it proved to be a detergent container, probably purchased at Costco.

Joe studied it for a minute, then reached into the tangle of vines and pulled it out by its metal handle. He popped the top off to reveal two bottled waters, two protein bars. Joe held up the bars with a disgusted look. “Atkins?”

“Well, yay for our waistlines.”

He checked the bottles, then tossed me one. The seal was still intact. I twisted the lid off and sniffed the contents, then took a sip.

Pure, sweet bottled water.

Joe raised a dubious eyebrow as I munched happily on one of the peanut-butter chocolate bars. “You like this shit?”

I shrugged. “I went through the whole no-carbs phase when my ex told me I needed to lose twenty pounds. I kind of developed a taste for these.”

“Your ex is an asshole.”

“I won’t argue that point.”

The GPS starting beeping again.

“Another set of coordinates,” Joe said.

“Maybe this time it’ll be pizza and Coke.”

We walked for another hour or so without talking, the effort of forging through the thick foliage and uneven terrain using most of our spare oxygen. The ground was covered with roots, ferns, and all sorts of plant life, some of which were equipped with sharp thorns. I tried not to think of snakes and spiders hanging from the ever-present tree limbs.

Honestly, this is a vacation destination?

I guess if one could toss out the crocs, mosquitoes, and such and just focus on the admittedly gorgeous butterflies and assorted birds and mammals, it was kind of understandable. But the heat alone was enough to make it a no-go for me. Give me fog and redwoods any day.

Sweat dripped down my forehead, my back, and in between my breasts. The heat was brutal, and even though I tried to make my bottled water last I found myself down to the last inch in what seemed like no time.

“You should save some of that,” Joe cautioned.

I knew he was right, but I was so damn thirsty I didn’t care. Still, I capped the bottle, leaving that last precious inch inside.

The GPS beeped. Joe studied the coordinates and led us through an impossibly thick grove of large-leafed trees that brought to mind dinosaurs. The smell was thick and vegetal, with an underlying tang of decay wafting from the ground. Our feet crunched on mulched leaves, dying flowers, and—

My right foot punched through something, the impact releasing an odor I was way too familiar with.

Ah yes, dead zombie.

“That’s just nasty,” Joe said.

I pulled my foot out of a female zombie’s abdomen, the flesh falling off my boot like pulled pork after a day in a slow cooker. It wore the remains of a peasant skirt and tank top. Its eyes were still open, milky corneas sunken into yellowed, blood-streaked whites. One of the signatures of Walker’s. A single gunshot wound punctured its forehead.

I wondered who’d shot it way out here in the middle of Cannibal Holocaust territory. Before I could say anything, the GPS got mouthy again and Joe pointed toward a tree a few feet behind me, where another white bucket hung suspended from a low-hanging branch.

“I’ll get this one.”

I stepped toward the bucket, feeling something brush against my ankle.

Three things happened at once.

Joe yelled my name.

A rotted hand clutched my shin and I slammed down hard on my hands and knees. My tanto skittered off a few feet away.

Something swept over me with a whooshing sound and slammed into the tree in front of me, where it stuck.

The owner of the rotted hand gave a plaintive moan. I looked down and saw another gooey zombie, a female, in the remnants of what was once probably a very expensive white linen dress. Maggots wriggled happily inside three large puncture wounds in its chest. It reached for me, gaping mouth releasing several buzzing flies.

Just when I thought things couldn’t get any grosser or more stinky.

I used my free leg and shoved the thing away with one kick of my booted foot, retrieved my tanto, and put it out of my misery.

The cache itself looked harmless enough. It sat in the middle of a clearing on top of a log. Just a wooden crate latched shut.

Further investigation showed no trip wires and no Rube Goldberg — type booby traps. I still didn’t trust it.

“What do you think?” I asked Joe.

He gave the crate a sharp rap on the top with his knuckles and was answered by a muffled moan.

We looked at each other, and then Joe kicked the crate off the log with enough force to splinter the lid and disengage the latch. The crate landed on its side, the lid bouncing open to disgorge the contents.

A head rolled out onto the ground along with a few oblong objects wrapped in plastic. Several large, disgruntled tarantulas scurried out as well. I swear one of them hissed at us before skittering into the undergrowth.

The head came to a stop, facing us. Impossible to tell if it had been a man or a woman when alive, it had a half-eaten tarantula in its mouth, several hairy legs drooping over the zombie head’s chin.

No wonder the others had been so pissed off.

I put a blade through the head’s brainpan and picked up one of the plastic-wrapped items.

“Twinkies?”

Joe and I looked at each other.

“Oh, come on.” He shook his head. “Think someone’s seen Zombieland a few times?”

“I hate Twinkies,” I said glumly.

“Cool. I’ll be Tennessee and you can be Cleveland. ’Cause, y’know, I like Twinkies and I’m sensing you can be a bit of a bitch.”

I was about to retort but noticed something sticking out of the crate. “Hey, there’s something else in there.”

Joe took a look and gave a little whoop. “Now we’re talking!” He reached down and plucked the object from the crate.

“What is it?”

“A KA-BAR.” He held up a leather-sheathed knife that had to be more than a foot long, including the handle. “This’ll come in handy.”

Thunder cracked and suddenly the skies opened up to release a torrential downpour. The kind of rain that fell in sheets rather than drops and made it impossible to see more than a few feet in front of you. I held my water bottle out for a free refill and enjoyed the feel of the rain sluicing the sweat and dirt from my hair and body. Joe did the same, but only after retrieving the Twinkies and squirreling them away in his pockets.

The rain stopped as suddenly as it had started. Joe and I trekked through more jungle in what was now an oddly companionable silence, listening to the ever-present sounds of birds, monkeys, and frogs, along with the occasional zombie moan and the now familiar beeping of the GPS.

It was only about fifteen minutes before the beeping sped up.

“I think we’re close,” Joe observed.

“You think?”

“That’s sarcasm, right?”

I grinned. “Ya think?”

The beeping sped up, like R2-D2 on speed.

“Definitely hot.”

I followed Joe as he followed the GPS into a grove of what I thought were banyan trees, with big arched roots that vanished into brackish, brown water. A river.

Joe knelt on a patch of damp earth and examined a dark burrow at the base of a large banyan. The roots looked like some Cthulhian nightmare, wood tentacles intertwined and frozen in midwrithe.

“You really gonna stick your hand in there?” I peered dubiously into the dark hole, visions of Peter Jackson’s version of the insect life on Skull Island dancing in my head.

Joe must have had similar visions because he pulled out his KA-BAR.

After unsheathing it, he poked the business end of the blade into the hole, immediately rewarded with a sharp metallic sound. Nothing squealed, hissed, or moaned. This was a good thing.

Joe poked around a little more. Nothing came scurrying, crawling, or slithering out of the burrow, so Joe reached into the hole, pulling out an olive-drab metal container about the size of two lunch boxes.

“It’s an ammo case,” he said.

“Ammo doesn’t usually slosh, right?”

He set the box down on semidry ground next to the root and flipped the latch up with the knife, opening the case the same way. Miracle of miracles, nothing exploded, and no poisonous snakes, spiders, or frogs slithered, crawled, or hopped out.

Joe dumped the contents on the ground.

Two more bottled waters, more energy bars, and a party-sized bag of potato chips, which Joe snatched up before I could touch it.

“You’re gonna share, right?”

He ripped the bag open, grabbed a handful of chips, and then held the bag out to me.

Junk food had never tasted so good.

“Seems to me,” he said in between bites of salty, greasy goodness, “that whoever set up this gaming board doesn’t want us dying too quickly.”

“Gaming board?”

Joe nodded. “Haven’t you noticed? This whole setup is like one big Dungeons and Dragons game. You find treasure in one room, and traps in another, and—”

The water in front of us exploded in a geyser of brown-and-white foam. Joe threw himself into me, knocking me to the ground as a reptilian nightmare snapped huge jaws shut in the spot where I’d been kneeling seconds before.

A scale-plated tail thrashed, spraying mud and water all around, and what had to be at least a ten-foot crocodile twisted around faster than anything that size had the right to move. I just knew it was looking for me. I lay on my back in shock, stunned at the impact of Ledger and the jungle floor, not to mention the sight of this thing bearing down on me.

Before its jaws could close on my leg, Joe grabbed it around what passed for its neck, looking like something on the cover of an old Men’s Adventure magazine. All torn shirt, muscles, and… well, crocodile wrestling. Croc and Joe rolled over in the mud several times before Joe managed to shove the point of the KA-BAR in one of the thing’s eyes.

It thrashed for a few seconds, churning up mud with its tail and feet in its death throes before finally subsiding into stillness. Joe lay sprawled with the croc across his thighs and hips, one arm still looped around the croc’s neck, the other hand still holding the handle of the KA-BAR. When the croc didn’t move after a good five minutes, Joe finally unclenched his grip, still half-pinned by one very heavy dead reptile.

“You really did build the Eiffel Tower out of brawn and steel, didn’t you?” I observed.

Joe shot me the bird without bothering to look at me.

I heard the moan before I saw the zombie dragging itself on its stomach out of the water. It had been a well-built man, the sodden remains of khakis and a black T-shirt still clinging to its body. Its degloved fingers grabbed Joe’s ankle, using it to haul itself out of the mud and water with a squelching sound. One of its legs was missing below the knee, deep gouges in the thigh where some nasty-ass teeth had dug in.

Joe gave a surprised and disgusted yelp and tried to pull his leg free from Swamp Zombie’s grasp, but couldn’t manage it what with being pinned by however many pounds of dead croc. It would be difficult for the zombie to bite through the leather and khaki covering Joe’s lower parts, but there was plenty of exposed meat on his arms and torso, and I had a feeling the zom smelled blood. Joe tried to pull his KA-BAR from the croc’s eye socket, but it was wedged in too tightly for him to extract from his position.

My turn to save his ass.

I rolled to my feet in what I’d like to say was one smooth movement, but what was in reality an awkward, painful lurch. Just as the thing opened its mouth to sink green moss — covered teeth into Joe’s shoulder, I jammed my forearm into its mouth, giving a yelp of pain as it chomped down right above the Kevlar guard into my wrist. I grabbed my tanto and jammed the point into one rotting ear before the zombie managed to tear out a piece of flesh.

“Son of a bitch,” I muttered as it flopped down across Joe and the croc.

I shoved it off to one side, then lifted up the tail end of Mister Croc so Joe could extract himself. He then grabbed the hilt of his knife, braced one foot against the zom’s body, and pulled the blade free.

“You’ve been bit.”

I shrugged. “Occupational hazard.”

“You’ve been bit!”

The we’re truly fucked tone in Joe’s voice made me look up. The knife in his hand and regretful expression on his face made me step back.

“You’re not planning on using that on me, right?”

“I’ve seen what this shit does to people, Ash. It’s almost as bad as being eaten alive. Do you really want to go through that?”

“Wild card, remember?” I peeled back the sleeve of my right arm and held it out for Joe’s inspection. The scars of my original bite mark were still clearly visible.

“A small percentage of the population is immune to this shit,” I added. “A very small percentage.”

Joe shook his head. “I guess I thought it was too good to be true.”

“Well, I wouldn’t call anything about the process ‘good’ other than the not dying part. It hurt like hell.”

I retrieved the water bottles and held one out to Joe. He ignored it in favor of checking out the corpse. He flipped it onto its back, the movement accompanied by a slight jingling. Then he yanked the dog tags off Swamp Zombie’s neck, studied them up close, and then looked at me.

“Well, shit. Say hello to a member of the last team.”

This was not a good thing.

“How did he die?”

Joe shrugged. “Far as I can tell, a croc got him. No bullet or knife wounds.”

“And his teammates?”

“Either zombies or croc chow about now, I’m guessing.”

“Do you think this”—I gestured at the croc—“is part of the game?”

“Given the placement of the cache?” Joe gestured toward the estuary. “I’d say it’s the equivalent of rolling the dice and either getting lucky or getting eaten.”

“But why?”

Something glinted in a beam of sunlight that had managed to sneak through the trees. It was a very small video camera hooked up to a branch.

Somewhere, someone was watching us.

Joe shook his head. “Just when you thought reality TV couldn’t get any worse.”

I stared at him in disbelief. “This kid’s parents have influence with the DZN and DMS. So this rescue mission has to be a legit one, right? I mean…”

My voice trailed off as Joe shook his head. “It may have started out that way, but it doesn’t mean someone else hasn’t stepped in.”

“One of your enemies or one of mine?”

He shrugged. “You tell me. I have a few.”

“I thought I’d killed mine,” I said.

Joe gave a laugh that held little amusement. “Don’t you hate it when they keep coming back?” He dug in his pocket and then groaned.

“What?”

Silently he held out the GPS, which looked as though it’d been stomped. Or possibly rolled on by a very heavy crocodile. I stared at it.

“Well, shit.”

“Yup.”

“So what now?” I asked.

“Find the kid and get the hell out of the jungle before it gets dark. And if we see any more cameras?” He took out his knife, reached up, and shattered the lens with one solid blow. He smiled grimly and finished, “Smash the shit out of them.”

Joe’s plan seemed simple enough, but it turned out to be one of those “easier said than done” types of things. The jungle seemed endless and both Joe and I suspected we were, if not going in circles, at the very least retracing our steps. Our worst fears were confirmed when we found ourselves at the edge of the banyan grove. Several of the dead croc’s buddies had dragged its corpse down to the water and were chowing down on it.

“Let’s keep going,” Joe said in an undertone.

I nodded silently, blinking back tears of frustration. Then I froze as I heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps somewhere close by. Not the shambling, staggering gait of a zombie, either. These footsteps were even and purposeful, and headed in our direction.

I grabbed Joe by the arm, pointed in the direction of the footsteps, and then pulled him behind a clump of trees where we’d be hidden from view but could see anyone or anything approaching. To his credit, he didn’t argue or question my actions, and by the time we’d taken cover, the footsteps were clearly audible.

Two tough-looking men in jungle camo and combat boots strode into view, both armed with rifles. They stopped midstride and cursed in Spanish when they saw the crocodile convention at the edge of the water.

One of the men pointed to the broken camera up in the tree and cursed again. I recognized the words hijo de puta and nudged Joe in the ribs.

“That’s you,” I mouthed.

The other man pulled what looked like a replacement camera out of a canvas bag slung across his shoulder and tried to hand it to his buddy, who shook his head vehemently. I didn’t blame him — the old camera was mounted in a tree uncomfortably close to the feeding crocs.

They argued for a few minutes until the second man reluctantly set his rifle against a log, took the camera, and cautiously approached the tree, his attention on the reptiles. Meanwhile, his pal trained his own firearm on the crocodiles.

Which meant neither of them was paying attention when Joe quietly snuck out from cover and snagged the discarded rifle.

“¡Hola, amigos!”

Both men whirled around, the first raising his rifle to shoot. Joe beat him to the punch, however, firing two shots in rapid succession that hit the man in the chest and sent him staggering backward straight into the crocodile buffet. He screamed amid the grunts and roars of at least a half dozen crocs fighting to get the best bits while their food was still alive.

Joe trained the rifle at the man with the camera, who stood frozen in place.

“You’re gonna take us back to your boss now,” Joe said in a deceptively casual tone.

The man evidently understood English because he snarled something along the lines of “Go fuck your mother.” I was pleased I’d retained something from my high school Spanish classes.

Joe smiled. It was the kind of smile that made smart people run in the opposite direction. This guy was not smart.

He spit something else that hadn’t been covered in Spanish 101. Joe responded by putting a round about an inch above his head.

“Try again.”

“He’ll have me killed!”

“Maybe,” Joe said calmly. “Maybe not. But I’ll shoot you in the kneecaps and leave you here with your friend.” He pointed at what remained of the man’s partner.

The man blanched, his skin growing pale under his tan.

“So,” Joe said. “You wanna take us to your leader?”

Less than a half hour later we stood outside of a ten-foot wall, hidden in the deepening shadows of twilight as our new buddy unlocked an iron gate. There was a driveway and a motorized gateway big enough for vehicles, but we wanted a less conspicuous entrance.

As soon as the gate was unlocked, Joe gave our friend a sharp rap on the back of the skull with the butt of his rifle and left his unconscious body outside the wall. I raised an eyebrow at that and Joe shrugged.

“He’ll either wake up before a zombie finds him or he won’t. It’s more of a shot than he would have given either of us.”

“Works for me.”

Joe locked the gate after us. We found ourselves on the edge of a large courtyard with a large-roofed carport across the way. At least a dozen guards patrolled the area.

“How do we get past these guys?” I whispered.

Joe grinned. “Allow me to show you what I’ve learned during my time in the field.”

“Nicely done,” I said. I wondered briefly if any of the guards Joe had put down would be getting up again, and then decided I didn’t give a shit.

Joe gave a small nod. “Whoever planned all this may be smart, but he or she didn’t make allowances for his game pieces to break the rules.”

“That sounds oddly profound,” I commented.

“I know.” Joe looked pleased with himself. “Next I’ll be opening up my own line of fortune cookies.” He pointed toward a doorway in the carport. “This way.”

With one last admiring glance at the trail of devastation Joe had left behind us, I dashed after him through the door. Sometimes it’s nice to not be the only badass in the village.

I guess I was expecting all sorts of James Bondian villain traps, like sensor-activated laser-beam death rays and stuff, so the inside of the compound was bit of a letdown. Lots of high-beamed ceilings and tiled floors in a classic Spanish-style square, with a courtyard in the center, the better to keep the structure cool in the oppressive Central American heat.

We found what — and who — we were looking for at the back of the square. Two more armed guards stood on either side of double doors, looking all serious and tough and like something out of Commando, but thankfully without the tacky leather and chain-mail getup the villain had worn.

I hate tacky villains.

I didn’t bother offering assistance, instead hanging back and watching Joe make yet more flunky hash out of the poor suckers standing guard. Once again, he made it look like no big deal, like Bob Ross painting happy little trees in seconds. Except kicking butt instead of painting.

Okay, analogies are not my strongpoint.

Once the two guards were made happy little unconscious guards, Joe and I snagged their M4s. Joe made an after you gesture at the doors. I grinned and went inside in my best I’m a stealthy ninja imitation.

I was expecting a roomful of more armed guards, but the room appeared to be empty except for a bank of security monitors, each showing a different jungle location.

Joe held up a finger in front of his mouth and then pointed across the room.

Seated in a replica of Kirk’s captain’s chair on the Enterprise was a kid in his midteens who looked as if he were going through a particularly awkward adolescence. Shock of dark hair falling over an acne-studded forehead. Slightly overweight in a doughy way, with an unhealthy pastiness that screamed too many video games and too much junk food.

Like the Twinkie he held in one hand.

It could only be Brock.

Oh, that little motherfucker.…

Brock frowned as he stared at one of the screens… which was conspicuously blank. He hit a button and the screen went from blank to a close-up of Joe and the butt end of his knife. It re-rewound farther to show an unpleasantly familiar location — the tree and estuary where Joe and I had nearly been snacks for Crocozombie. The entire fight for our lives played out in high-speed reverse as we watched. Then, with a push of a button, the speed slowed to real time and we watched the whole thing from beginning to end.

“Totally awesome,” the kid said, giggling.

Can you say psychopath?

He frowned as the tape went blank again.

“That should be up again by now. Stupid assholes. Dad was right. Can’t trust these stupid natives to do anything right. Oh well.” Brock shrugged and went back to viewing the screens, stuffing another Twinkie in his mouth.

“Come on, I know you’re out there, Ledger,” he muttered, pushing buttons on the console in front of him, the video feeds changing with each push. “And where’s that tasty ass of yours, Ash?”

Tasty ass?

Oh, this little fucker was so going down.

“I’ll handle this,” I told Joe.

“Be my guest.”

I marched over to the console behind Brock and spun the chair around so he faced me. I yanked the headphones off his ears, leaned in close, and growled, “I’m right here, you little shit.”

Brock gave a yelp and fell out of his chair, landing hard on his out-of-shape, not-so-tasty ass. He stared at us in outraged disbelief. “How did you get in here? You’re not supposed to be in here! I’m totally gonna fire all my stupid guards.”

I grabbed him by his shirtfront and yanked him to his feet. “And you’re not supposed to try and kill the people sent to rescue you.”

He smacked my hands away and glared at me. “I didn’t ask to be rescued. I like it here. Besides, Dad only wants me back because I’m a stupid wild card.”

I grabbed him by his shirtfront again and shook him. “Did you kill Nathan and Bunny?”

“No,” he said with a note of petulance only an entitled teenager could summon. “They’re locked up until it’s their turn to play.”

“Play? You’ve killed people!”

The little creep had the nerve to shrug as if his little half-assed Hunger Games were no big deal. “You guys are supposed to be good. You’re supposed to be the best. That’s why my father sent you, right? Because you’re the best. The last ones he sent weren’t that good. So they died.”

My eyes narrowed. “You’re gonna show us where Nathan and Bunny are. Then we’re gonna get a plane here to take you back to California. Although I’d rather leave you here with the crocs.”

“How about you stay here with me?” Brock looked me up and down in a way that made me long for a steaming hot shower. “You. Me. That tasty ass of yours. We could—”

I coldcocked the kid with a right cross that knocked him out and back into his captain’s chair. He’d be out for a while.

Joe gave me a thumbs-up and grinned. “What do you know, Ash. You really are good with people.”

Dana Fredsti is an ex-B-movie actress with a background in theatrical combat (a skill she utilized in Army of Darkness as a sword-fighting Deadite and fight captain). She is the author of the Ashley Parker series, touted as Buffy meets The Walking Dead, as well as what might be the first example of zombie noir, A Man’s Gotta Eat What a Man’s Gotta Eat, first published in Mondo Zombie and edited by John Skipp, and more recently published as an e-book by Titan Books. She also wrote the cozy noir mystery Murder for Hire: The Peruvian Pigeon, is coauthor of What Women Really Want in Bed, and has written several spicy genre romances under the pen name Inara LaVey. Additionally, Dana has a new urban fantasy series, Spawn of Lilith, with Titan Books, the first coming out in 2017. She also has a story in V-Wars 4: Shockwaves.