With Zombies (Assured Destruction #3) Read online

  Assured Destruction

  With Zombies

  By Michael F. Stewart

  Assured Destruction: With Zombies

  Copyright 2014 Michael F. Stewart

  Cover Art Don Dimanlig

  ©2014 Michael F. Stewart

  First Smashwords Edition: 2014

  Formatting by Streetlight Graphics

  www.michaelfstewart.com

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living, dead or virtual, is entirely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  > Gumps tweets.

  It’s 1 AM, on a school night.

  I am waiting for my boyfriend Jonny and don’t want to move from the door, unwilling to leave it unlocked in the dark industrial park. I can barely stand. The last time food passed my lips was more than twelve hours ago. Bruised ribs keep my breathing shallow. My ankle throbs in its cast. Frigid drafts that blow from around the doorframe prop my eyes open. I shift and moan like a zombie. Even my fingers ache with cold as I tweet my Shadownet accounts from my mom’s iPhone, each account representing a different aspect of my personality.

  I’m not sure inviting Jonny is such a good idea anymore. My mom’s in the hospital, awaiting a morning of electrical shock therapy, and my brain is fuzzy with pain meds. My experience with boys amounts to awkward fumbling and sweaty palms in movie theaters. Nothing even close to a night alone with a boyfriend. How long have we been going out? Less than a couple weeks? I am crazy.

  I glance up from the phone when a car rattles past. We don’t see much traffic around here after business hours, but Jonny wouldn’t be driving a car. Snowflakes stream through the glow of the security lights. I sniff. The cold has stripped the air of scents. One of my strays, a calico, threads infinity around my ankles.

  The taut bandages around my chest constrict my lungs and flatten my breasts. Everything hurts, but my head worst of all. I fold to the ground and stuff the cat into my lap to steal its heat.

  As the snow falls, I put away the phone and let my thoughts wander. Will Mom be okay? Am I back on the team at the Ottawa Police Department’s High Tech Crime Unit? Is Peter really the elite hacker CrowBar on Darkslinger? If so, why? And what was my dad into before he disappeared? I’m ready for answers.

  I start when the door jangles open.

  “Hey.” Jonny grips the handlebars of his bike. He wears a blue leather jacket with a white stripe running down each sleeve.

  I smile. Dark, deep-set eyes stare down. They flit to my hospital bracelet, the shirt I wear, the ink smudging my fingers, and the bruises saddling my eyes.

  “Hiya.” My regret at inviting a boy over melts like the snow in his curly hair. Who wants to be alone, right?

  Sweat beads his brow despite the frosty haloes cast around streetlamps. He rode hard, the tire track a thin black snake curving to the entrance through the dusting of white.

  I haul myself up and hold the door as he rolls his bike in, sprocket ticking with the rotation of tires. He leans the bike against the cinderblock wall of Assured Destruction’s retail store. Even from only propping open a door, the entire side of my torso’s aching from the right hook of a child predator. It’s been a long night, and staring at Jonny’s lank body, I suspect an even longer morning.

  I let go, shutting the door, and I snap the deadbolt home.

  Jonny’s hands tremble, his fingers red and blotchy white with cold. I take them between my palms and rub them together. He grips my hand and inspects the black ink staining my fingertips and thumb.

  “Aren’t you the one that’s supposed to be booking criminals, officer?” he asks.

  His lips press in a thin line, eyes still watery with the wind of having pedaled here. His face has a wide-open appeal. Like I know what he’s thinking, and I know he’ll always say it.

  I smirk, having forgotten that I’m wearing Detective Williams’s uniform.

  “Officer no longer,” I say. “I’m off the force … again … I think. Ugh. I don’t know.”

  I want to collapse into his arms but don’t, afraid what it might lead to. I pull back, letting my hands fall to grip the crutches. Maybe I’m not strong enough to show so much weakness. Janus is strong. Janus must be strong. In my mind, images of holding a gun to another human’s skull tumble past. Not eight hours ago I almost killed a man. The thought doesn’t reassure me.

  “How’s your mom doing?” he asks.

  “She’s catatonic,” I say. “Like a zombie … without the energy to eat brains.” It’s not a very good joke and I smile sadly. Jonny’s cheeks have resumed their olive complexion, having warmed, yet his hand still shakes as he reaches out to me.

  I’m feeling dizzy but it’s then I realize that he’s not only quaking from cold; he’s as nervous as I am.

  “Will you be okay here?” he asks.

  “That’s why I called you,” I say, trying to keep him in focus.

  “My mom will kill me if she finds out.”

  “Mine too.” I hear what I say as if I’m underwater and the moment pans in slowmo.

  He’s moving swiftly now, and I know this is it; this is when the gentle boy sweeps in and takes advantage of the isolated chick. The lights go shiny, I faint, and then I’m looking up at a shadow stretching over top of me.

  Chapter 2

  The leather of Jonny’s jacket rests cool against my cheek. He cradles my head. I guess I’m strong enough to show weakness after all. He was only keeping my skull from bouncing off the concrete floor.

  “Should I call an ambulance or something?”

  I manage a moan as I struggle to sit forward.

  “Any more bandages and I’ll be a mummy,” I say, and then with the cold of the floor seeping through my jeans and into my bones, my head in his lap, I explain what happened last week. He knows a lot of it, but I try to recall everything, starting from the beginning, and he listens, but doesn’t ask a single question, only listens.

  I tell him about how I cracked a credit card fraud case but then traded the information with the banker in return for a break on our mortgage payments. I explain how the cops had this weird hazing ritual where they gave me a fake laptop and told me it was a serial killer’s and I was supposed to profile it—and I did. But it turned out to the police chief’s old laptop and he fired me for thinking he was a murderer. And finally, I talk about last night.

  Last night I saved Hannah from shooting a stalker and maybe something worse, taking her own life. I held her gun. Pushed the barrel of a Glock 22 against a man’s head, aiming it at his brainstem, and pulled the trigger. Started to pull the trigger … there’s a big difference. One’s messier. When I’m done, Jonny swears.

  “Have you eaten anything? What can I do?”

  I shake my head. “Bed,” I say. Janus is fairly strong.

  With one arm around his neck and the other clutching a crutch, we limp to the elevator. I live in the computer recycling facility that my mom and I run. The elevator takes us to the office floor we’ve turned into a home.

  “I bet this wasn’t quite what you expected when I invited you over.” My laughter is too high pitched and strained as the doors reveal a wide-open floor delineated by a couch, side tables, a recliner, an old IKEA table and some lamps. Open space is a good thing for a ho
me with a wheelchairer like my mom.

  Jonny doesn’t seem so nervous anymore—he’s stopped quaking. Out of the corner of my eye I see him rake his fingers through his hair. Then things begin to blur. My body sways, but I’m too tired to do anything about it.

  Darkness has been hunting from my peripheral vision. It closes in for the kill.

  Jonny doesn’t seem to notice. From far away I hear him talking: “Nope, but that’s okay. Not that you’re okay. I’m sorry about your mom and—”

  I go boneless.

  Jonny half carries, half drags me backward to bed. My shoe pops off from the friction against my heels. We’re so romantic. Me a sack of potatoes, him wheezing under my weight, thin arms finally giving out so that I flop on to my mattress. The ceiling spins, its galaxy of glow-in-the-dark stars swirling.

  And I realize I didn’t call in the cavalry for desire, I did it out of desperate need. He bends, hooks one arm beneath my knees and the other my armpit, and hauls me deeper onto the bed.

  “Do you want me to stay?” he asks.

  “Yep,” I manage.

  “I have to be home before my mom wakes up.”

  With my dad gone, my mom hospitalized, and me lying in a dark warehouse, I’ve never felt less alone in my life.

  “Don’t forget …” I start to remind him to set the alarm, but I’m already dozy.

  In the office formerly allocated to the Vice President Sales, we spoon, me shuddering with cold, Jonny talking about what happened at school and ideas for graffiti designs, everything except questions. Finally my quaking subsides, and the jumble of my thoughts quiet. I sleep.

  When I wake, light from the windows streams in; winter’s pale glare hurts my eyes but fails to warm. Jonny rolls over and a cool swirls between us.

  “Jonny,” I say. “Your mom!”

  It’s like he’s leaping up to catch a wave: suddenly he’s crouching, arms out. “My mom!”

  “I’m late for school,” I shout. I can’t be late. The principal’s latest email was clear. If I miss one more day, I need to retake the semester. That’s not going to happen. Can’t happen.

  I have fifteen minutes. My chest explodes with pain as I swing my legs to the side of the bed.

  I bear down on the agony, reminding myself what it was for and that not five miles away my mother is in a psychiatric ward, being chemically paralyzed, preparing to suck up a gajillion volts of electricity in the hopes of jumpstarting her happiness.

  “We can do this,” I lie.

  Over the next five minutes I treat Jonny to the least sexy changing of clothes ever, me flopping around on my bed, trying to yank jeans past a cast and my butt, then his obvious disappointment when he helps change my shirt only to discover an impenetrable breast-eliminating bandage and a bruise that makes me look like I lost a fight with a giant squid.

  My car’s been towed to the police department, so I grab the keys to my mom’s van and a banana. I don’t know why I didn’t think of the van before. Detective Williams says I can’t drive with my cast. But if I’m too handicapped to drive, then surely I can drive a handicapped van!

  As I scrape the frost from the windshield, Jonny rubs his fist against the back to clear it, huffing breath on to his fingers to warm them.

  Trin, our only employee, arrives to cover for me while I’m at school. He drives a white electric scooter and reminds me a bit of Snoopy from the Charlie Brown cartoon the way he’s wearing aviator goggles beneath a black helmet with a spike on top, scarf stringing out behind him.

  “Take down the Red Baron on the way here?” I ask.

  He pulls his helmet and arches a penciled-on eyebrow.

  “Don’t mind me,” I say.

  “How iz your mom?” he asks, the Haitian accent making him sound a little like French royalty.

  “Shockingly poor,” I say. “But she’ll have more energy soon.” No one gets the joke.

  There’s an inch of fresh snow on the ground. I know from doing the bills that my mom never paid the last snow plowing service—not to mention the mortgage. This winter, it’s me and Trin and two shovels to clear an acre of lot.

  “Ready?” Jonny asks, holding a red hand to his cheek, having stowed his bike in the back of the van.

  “Giddyup,” I say and wave to Trin, who flips the store sign to Open.

  The morning reeks of optimism I don’t feel.

  While turning the key in the ignition, I say, “Thanks, Jonny.”

  He winks. “What are boyfriends for?”

  And for once, I’m beginning to understand. Over the past week I made out with Jonny every chance I got, thinking that’s what a boyfriend was for, or needed anyways, and I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy it, but this … this is way more. For once, I think I might trust someone who isn’t an avatar.

  The engine rumbles to life. My mom’s van has modifications so she doesn’t need the use of her legs to drive it. Although she’s had it for years, this is a first for me.

  “How hard can this be?” I say, putting the van into drive.

  Jonny braces himself with his feet up on the dash.

  “You’re picturing that YouTube video with the guy with no legs or arms driving with his chin, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” I say, resting my chin on the steering wheel. “That was awesome.”

  Chapter 3

  > Heckleena tweets.

  Jonny giggles.

  “Hey!” I exclaim as the van slowly rolls out of the driveway. “Did you just tweet from my account?”

  “It’s Heckleena’s, not yours,” he says.

  I try to slam the brakes, but my mom has a protective plate where the pedal normally would be so that one of her foot-twitches doesn’t accidently hit the accelerator. I need to use the hand controls, but first I have to find them.

  “No, seriously, Heckleena, Frannie, Tule, Gumps, JanusFlytrap, and Hairy are all my Twitter accounts. Don’t ever do that again.”

  I’d be even more forceful if I wasn’t worried about the approaching stoplight—the one with the cars whizzing past—and my inability to think under pressure. The window wipers start swishing.

  “Sorry. I—” Jonny begins.

  “Jonny—” I say.

  He waves me off. “I said, I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s not that. I don’t know where the brake is.” I run my fingers over the steering wheel. “Brake!” I say. You’d think a handicapped van would have voice activation.

  The phone rings. I’m expecting a call from Detective Williams, but now’s not a good time.

  “Do you want me to get it?” Jonny asks.

  “No, I want to stop!” I’m rolling slowly, but the light’s only half a block away.

  “Haven’t you ever watched your mom drive?”

  I have. She’s always fiddling with her left hand. My fingers close around the hand controls to the bottom left of the steering column.

  I pull. The car lurches forward.

  “That’s the gas!” Jonny yells.

  “But there’s nothing else, just the one handle.”

  We enter the intersection, both of us screaming. I brace for impact.

  Behind, someone honks.

  I open my eyes to see that we’re sitting in the middle of the crossroads before a green light. The incline was enough to slow us to a stop.

  “I should have biked,” Jonny says.

  The car honks again, but I’m afraid to do anything without knowing where the brake is.

  “Here.” Jonny holds up the screen. A video plays from YouTube.

  Hi, I’m Russ, and I’m here to show you how hand controls work. You might be a little nervous, but don’t worry. Driving with hand controls is easy and safe.

  Someone leans on their horn and I lean into the video.


  Your lever controls both the gas and the brake. Just pull to accelerate and push to brake.

  “Push to brake, push!” Jonny yells. “Pull, go!”

  The tires screech and we’re back on a quieter street.

  I test the brakes and Jonny jerks forward in his seat. The belt across my chest is a ribbon of fire.

  “It works,” I manage.

  “You and cars. Like I said, should’ve biked.”

  With the controls down, we park in the school lot without incident. Jonny jumps down from the van and kisses the ice-frosted pavement.

  “Ha, ha, ha,” I say.

  “Who’s joking,” he replies while retrieving his bike. “You’re like a cat. Some day you’ll run out of lives.”

  The gray sky is slate, looks like more snow tonight. I check who called. Detective Williams. With my phone stuck in the police evidence locker, I’d given her my mom’s number. She didn’t leave a message.

  Williams is my police force sponsor. Without her help, the next 1945 hours of my free time—*I’m laughing and crying*—will be spent ladling soup to the homeless. Not that I have anything against the homeless, I’d just rather be out fighting crime.

  “Can I see you tonight?” Jonny asks as we head for the stairs leading to the school’s glass atrium.

  I pause. Probably for too long. “Yeah, late though, I need to visit my mom and then drum up some business. Make the mortgage payments and all.”

  “And how are you going to convince people to destroy more hard drives?” Jonny asks. And I can hear him add in his head, Particularly since you had a habit of not actually destroying them.

  “When I went to the banker for help on the mortgage, he might have been a jerk, but he did tell me that Assured Destruction used to be a lot more profitable. I checked, and he was right. When my dad left we lost a whole bunch of contracts. Today I’m hunting the largest customers we ever had. I’m hoping to see if I can’t win them back.”