The Zero Dog War by Keith Melton Page A

crunchy on your ass and run you down with the Bradley.”
    “You will rue this day the next time you bleed, kono yarou .”
    Sarge’s voice snarled out of the back. “Shut your fucking holes, both of you. I’ve got some goddamned acronyms for you, you fucking POG POS REMFs.”
    Roughly translated: Person Other than Grunt, Piece of Shit, Rear-Echelon Motherfuckers. Ah, esprit de corps . We had it in such abundance it leaked down our legs. Still, I couldn’t help but yawn for Jake’s benefit, feigning boredom, flaunting my acting skills, eager to see the Green Beret squirm.
    Poor Captain Sanders watched as his briefing died a premature goat-rope death, glancing from speaker to speaker like a tennis match attendee, with his face a mask of dismay. Finally, he looked at me. I shrugged and tried to hide my smile, but didn’t do a very good job of it. Hell, he wanted to be here. Even asked me to attack him for the honor of joining up. Could I help it if I’d found a more effective way to plant my foot in his ass?
    After all, these were mercs, not toe-the-line, into-the-breach-without-a-bitch, salute-and-keep-your-mouth-shut soldiers. Free of hot zones, opinions were like assholes, they all stank, and mercs loved to show them off. Only in firefights did we maintain professional-soldier status. Well, other merc wings maintained that status. I just did the best I could with what God had seen fit to torment me. Still…I’d made my point. Time to get down to business, get this done so I could go drink something with high alcohol content. I cleared my throat to get everyone’s attention.
    Rafe, the very soul of helpfulness, said, “You guys are making the captain cough up a lung.”
    I ignored him. “I suggest we all pay better attention to Captain Sanders. Less collateral damage when you guys actually comprehend our mission objectives.”
    “Thank you, Andrea.” Sanders nodded at me, and I went very still, feeling as if my skin had turned to ice and started to crack. Did that bastard just call me by my first name in front of my team? Sonuva bitch . But before I could channel my outrage, Sanders pushed on with his briefing and I had to bite my tongue. Oh shit we were gonna have such a talk later.
    “Jeremiah Hansen,” he said, “controlling his RCTs, advanced in force through the Beaverton bank’s front doors.” He clicked through several stills from the bank cameras showing a diverse menagerie of zombies swarming into the lobby. He clicked on a video file and four different views of the bank interior came up, a long string of numbers counting off on the screen bottom. No sound, but I watched the bank tellers and a few customers react with terror as the undead tide swarmed toward them.
    Sanders continued. “Luckily, a quick-thinking bank teller rallied the customers and her coworkers and locked everyone in the bank vault, where they remained safe until rescued by SWAT.”
    On the screen, the teller in question sprayed a zombie with mace. The zombie sneezed and one of its eyeballs fell out. The zombie grabbed at her, and she slammed one of those chain-connected pens into its other eye socket. Needless to say, the chain broke too. You go, girl . It was like watching Wonder Woman without the star-spangled panties.
    “Despite the teller’s heroics, the bank and depositors suffered monetary losses of about fifty thousand dollars, judging by FDIC and insurance records.”
    “On March 12th, Hansen struck again at a Chasing bank in the Northwest District. His forces engaged just as the bank opened for business, and there were no customers inside. However, the bank manager, Felix Fisk, was eaten by the RTCs.” The slideshow displayed grim pictures of a Very Mustachioed Rich Man (or VMRM because acronyms are as addicting as popping bubble wrap) in a perfectly cut suit flailing around as a circle of zombies closed around him. Blood spray doused the zombies when they ripped into him, but the blood appeared more like maple