Like now.

Jonesy coughed like he was going to barf. "Damn-man! Whoever is raising the zombies needs to get some Glade or something 'cuz that's some sick smelling shit!" he howled in disgust, his tie skewed like a sideways flag.

In my experience death always smelled bad.

The first corpse that was not under my liege came at Jonesy and he swung his arm up and bashed the thing in the jaw, cleanly breaking it under the weight of his new soft cast. The jaw popped off like a hanging door hinge and the blackness of its mouth opened like a cavern of coffin bait. All we were missing were the worms.

Somebody besides me couldn't get the mouths right. Seemed to be epidemic.

"What in the Sam Hill is going on here, Caleb?" Gramps asked, keeping a wary eye on the bear who was rocking its head back and forth, getting ready for a charge while ten zombies began moving toward where I stood with a trembling Jade.

"I don't know," I said unhelpfully.

"Well," Gramps said, "I suggest you get a handle on this undead bullshit before it all goes to hell in a hand basket."

Really...? Huh.

"I think he's gonna get right on that, Mac," Jonesy said, backing up until he touched the hood of Gramps' car, his hand clenching around the snarling bulldog emblem on the front.

"Go for it, Hart," Jonesy enthused helpfully, watching the zombie with the broken jaw shuffle closer to where we were huddled.

When the girl that had started the entire undead mess came out from the middle of the corpses I felt the first surge of death energy wash over us and knew that we were in for it. I'd never felt anything but Parker's. Knew the flavor, recognized it.

Jonesy hadn't noticed her yet because he was busy whining about the rotting sludge that got all over his cast (shouldn't have broken his arm in the Chicken Episode then). "Ah hell..." he yelled in the middle of the Zombie horde, "I've got zombie slime all over my whiteness! It's covering the signatures- damn!" he hollered.

Jonesy looked up, startled when a decidedly feminine voice said, "I certainly can raise a clean corpse but why should I when I can spread the rot all over the top of you boys?"

Jade gave a small moan beside me, and it wasn't the good kind.

"She's not okay, Caleb," Jade said so softly I could barely hear her.

The girl's eyes narrowed on Jade and I put her behind my back.

Bry pulled up in his noisy car and I couldn't believe my luck. Nobody used this road. The Wellers showing up meant two things: reinforcements and a guaranteed beating for Bry.

Now that was true friendship.

Bry got out of his hunk of shit and Tiff followed. Gone was the pretty green blouse and hot ensemble of the reception where that jerkoff Hamilton had gotten himself in even more trouble.

Tiff was in hoodie-readiness.

"Hey man," Bry said, "this is looking bad." Parker just looked at him.

No shit, I thought without an ounce of humor.

Tiff scanned the bear, Gramps, Parker (her eyes kinda widened at his presence) and the small rotting horde before landing on the chick on the Knoll.

Kinda felt like Custer's last stand.

Tiff seemed to decide something, instinctively understanding the situation. "I can take her ass," Tiff said, eyeing her like a prize to be won.

"Try it," Corpse Girl intoned.

Tiff nodded once. "Okey-dokey." A leering grin stretched her face as the wadded gum in her mouth went sailing into the air on a loogie toss that smacked the same zombie Jonesy had bludgeoned earlier... right in the forehead. It was a sloppy bull's eye.

Death by gum.

Here we go, I thought and waded into the melee.

CHAPTER 10

Zondorae

"Ten years working on this contingency and we're just now putting it into play?" Gary said into the microscope, his gaze never straying from the slide beneath him.

Finally, he lifted the pulse glasses that allowed microscopic image viewing, using his integral brain impulse disc to fuel the magnification and frowned at Joe.

Joe lifted the glass, credit-card sized chip, the symbolic helix emblazoned on the front of the crystal by a finely calibrated laser. Without human contact, the symbol disappeared. But with the correct thumb, the symbol appeared.

More security.

There were only a handful of people who had the correct genetic imprint for the symbol to rise to the surface like oil on water.

Zondorae, Kyle Hart and of course, that shitty C-M, Jeffrey Parker.

The Zondorae's had fought against bringing him on. He'd been a problem in the trials. In hindsight, Gary would have done anything if he hadn't allowed his personal snit to maneuver him into giving the real dose instead of the placebo to Parker. Shoulda, coulda, woulda. It had been a poor choice. So Parker of the unstable family and the highest recorded IQ in the test subjects was running amok with full control of sensitive and classified information; for your eyes only.

Parker had eyes in the back of his head. The brothers suspected him of giving away the time continuum to that pack of paranormal brats, with the Hart boy at the wheel.

It had continued to worsen.

Now, the head of their little league was batting for a home run.

Take away what made the paranormals special. They were too powerful to control and didn't seem to be moved in the normal directions humanity had followed in the past.

Coercion by means of money.

No, Caleb Hart's generation liked money but they weren't hungry enough for power. There could not be one without the other.

The Zondorae sibling team had now been tasked with the systematic disassembly of the cocktail. The genetic code wiped.

Of course, it did not mean that in the future they could not be called upon for selective inoculation.

Oh no, their branch of the government would always need soldiers.

Paranormal ones.

Too bad that these kids wouldn't do what their bosses wanted. Better that they were mundanes.

Gary especially loathed that the majority of their directives were in a metaphorical stasis chamber, waiting for Parker to get the sample from Caleb Hart.

To shut down the rogue C-M, Nevaeh.

She would be cleaned. There was really no other option.

Joe looked at his brother. "Parker will get the sample. We'll combine his code with the key," he lifted the slide again in emphasis, "and we will have the slate-wiper." Joe landed a weighted gaze on Gary. "Too bad we can't off Hart. I hate that little prick." Joe nodded in agreement. Hart was not an even tempered individual like his father, but volatile.

Kyle Hart and his belief in goodness had ultimately been his undoing. He simply believed that who he worked for was motivated in the same way that he was. It always amazed Gary that someone as brilliant as he knew Kyle Hart to be would miss the fundamental deceit and guile present in the human population.

Of course, Gary always thought from his own perspective. It was the only one that mattered.

Gary looked at Joe over the rims of the pulse glasses. "Hang in there, Parker will have this final mission."

Joe looked at his brother with a grim smile. "That's well and good. If," he raised a pudgy finger in the air, "the other AFTD and he don't compare notes."

Gary shuddered.

Joe gave a dismissive shrug. "Don't fret, what are the chances of the three of them having a pow-wow. After all," Joe gave a level stare at his sibling, "she's certifiable."

"True," Gary said. "But I'll feel better once she is out of the equation."

*

manipulation

Christopher & Amanda

Christopher wiped the sweat from his forehead, its burning pathway making his vision waver as it found the deep holes of his eyeballs. He looked at the pulse clock in the medical clinic he'd broken into and figured he had roughly three minutes to sub out the pulse dose of birth control for the harmless placebo.

This was their third infiltration.

His partner pulsed the change with deft and nimble fingers, her thin sheet of fingerprint skin disintegrating before his eyes. Not that it mattered. It was the best prosthetic of fraud that money could buy. Slap on the threaded skin of the high security thumb of your choice, use it for a total of ten depressions, and it harmlessly melted into the skin of its host.

Quick, effective... and in this case, deadly.

He looked at Amanda and grinned. Things were Grade A Fucked up.

The Graysheets, as they were so affectionately referred to by the group of paranormals that his group would ultimately save, wouldn't have their way regardless. His source within the Helix organization of morally corrupt scientists would find their contingency plan blown to hell by a mixed pair of mundane and paranormal who believed.

It didn't matter what their cause was.

Yes, The Code would remain in effect. The paranormals would continue into perpetuity. With or without the blessing of the Graysheets. They'd started this little party and the mundanes would finish it.

Evolution had just gotten a kick in the ass, courtesy of the failsafe of humanity.

Amanda packed her gear and gave Christopher a nod.

They were done, never to return again. The third time was the charm.

Christopher put his false skin onto his thumb and pulsed out of the med clinic.

It was widely used by paranormals.

Its services were free to everyone under and at the age of emancipation and true adulthood. He smiled under his black hood as he and Amanda melted into the shadows of the building.

As quietly as they'd come, they left.

No one would know of the subtle changes they made until it was too late.

After all, even the Graysheets couldn't explain away infanticide.

*

Caleb

As the girl on the hill descended, I got a real look at her; an angular face with brilliant blue eyes that missed nothing. Her azure gaze flicked over the assembled group, her zombies making a loose triangle behind her. The one with the gum stuck on his forehead shambled after her with a grotesquely awkward and jerky gait.

His jaw was still all crooked and hanging.

"Caleb," Jonesy said.

"Not now, Jones," I replied.

"Is she like a bad-ass zombie girl or just a douche?"

Like that distinction mattered right now?

Gramps answered for me and I didn't need to say anything. "Mark Jones, let us stay on task: an unknown AFTD has brought the dead. Caleb and," Gramps looked at Parker with a small frown, "my relative of unknown origin cannot contain said 'zombie girl'."

"Huh?" Jonesy wailed, readying his cast like a weapon.

"It's two bad ass C-Ms against a rogue," Bry explained as his sister went for the jugular on the new chick.

Right, pretty snappy for Bry.

I watched Tiff snap a punch off at the chick's face and the closest zombie latched onto Tiff.

Tiff wasn't a screamer but I could tell she wasn't a fan of being grabbed. It didn't matter that it was a zombie (those had an almost natural feel to me know). It was After Carson and that was enough. She bashed her elbow in a slick little defensive jab that just about knocked his block off.

"Shitty job on the zombies," Parker said in casual observation.

The girl was rubbing her jaw from Tiff's swing as her zombie got his neck broken by Tiff's elbow.

"And you're so perfect?" she said, those blue eyes flashing in a way that told me buy your bucketful of crazy here.

"Okay," I began, keeping my eye on the bear, who was staying where he was. For now. "Why are you here and who the hell are you?"

"Don't know if that matters, Caleb," Gramps said. "It's not necessary to get caught up in the 'why' of the thing. Let's just react."

"Yeah, that," Jonesy agreed.

"It's solid reasoning," Bry said, watching with semi-interest as Tiff worked her way through zombies that were almost too rotten to fight back.

"Listen, I won't kill all of you if you'll listen." She looked at Tiff. "Except you, you're kinda a bitch," she said to Tiff, rubbing the small knot forming on her jaw.

"Piss off, you lippy bitch," Tiff said, cracking the zombie that plowed into her.

Parker barked out a laugh. "It's you that will get the stay of execution as I'm not so thrilled with my current employers. Call off your dogs so we can chat."

Chat?

Gramps laughed. "That's all well and good but this will cause a stir if we don't get the corpse parade and damaged vehicles out of the way." He looked at the conjurer of undead bullshit as he so eloquently put it and scowled. "You injured a fine vehicle, young lady. Very distasteful character trait."

"What?" she asked in a pissed off snarl.

"No respect for personal property, of course," Gramps said as if that basic fact should have been obvious to all that existed in His Presence.