The Zero Dog War by Keith Melton Page B

syrup on the black-and-white camera feeds. I winced. How long before that clip showed up on the internet?
    “The zombies didn’t touch the three tellers, who barricaded themselves in a break room, but on this occasion they compromised the vault despite a time lock. This engagement netted him over a hundred thousand dollars. The newest attack took place today at around thirteen hundred hours. I was just briefed on it. The necromancer hit an armored car at one of its scheduled ATM refill stops.”
    “Small-time stuff,” Sarge said. “This guy’s not causing much mayhem.”
    “Not yet. His real goal is this.” Captain Sanders clicked forward to a slide featuring an industrial building. “We have information he’s now incorporated and ramping up operations.”
    “Manufacturing bio weapons?” Mia asked. Her pet demon Guinea Pig-things had curled up around her like drifts of furry snowballs.
    “Gelatin.”
    Silence.
    “I thought I heard gelatin,” Gavin said. “But that can’t be right, because that’s what I’d expect to hear if I was smoking weed, and I’m clearly not smoking weed.”
    “Gelatin is correct. His factory focuses on the manufacture of powdered gelatin products. He’s using the living dead as a labor force, allowing him to run operations for twenty-four hours a day and skirt all OSHA regulations and labor laws, destabilizing the market.”
    Hanzo frowned. “I believe in the sanctity of the free market. In Japan, business is war. As Sun Tzu said, ‘All war is deception.’ Deception is the ninja way.”
    “Sun Tzu was Chinese, you fucking poseur,” Gavin said.
    Rafe scratched at his chin. “Free markets? I only believe in free porn.”
    I could see Captain Sanders’s jaws tightening, could almost hear his teeth grinding together from across the room. If he hadn’t just called me by my first name, I’d have felt some amount of chagrin at how my people behaved. Now I just wanted to yank his chain. Smear off some of that military spit and polish. Show him how we did it merc-style.
    But two seconds later I did a hard mental one-eighty turn. This wasn’t about a pissing contest with Jake. If we lost this client, we’d be screwed. I’d pushed things far enough. Time to grow up and get back on track.
    “Zombie containment and destruction is standard protocol,” I said. “But I get the impression the government’s even more concerned about the economic angle to this.”
    Sanders nodded. “Leaving aside implications of widespread zombie infection, the Zombeconomy, as it’s sometimes called—”
    “I’m not sure I can say Zombeconomy with a straight face,” Mai warned, and Rafe snorted laughter. Squeegee the mutant cat rolled on her back, furry belly up, and farted. All Mai’s pets scrambled to their feet and squeaked in outrage.
    “God, that smells like lighter fluid,” Gavin said.
    Captain Sanders scanned the room with his best Special Forces hard-ass stare. I also made scary faces at my troops. God, what had I started, letting them off their leashes? I swallowed and my throat made a dry click. Visions of vanishing government money danced through my head.
    “Zombification has grim implications for workers in Mexico and China,” Captain Sanders said. “A Harvard business analyst predicts it could collapse the low-wage, high-hour labor market. If the concept of using a zombie work force spreads, the garment industry could be wiped out. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that the phenomenon known as zombie creep will bleed into the US marketplace. First with low-pay, low-prestige jobs, and then working its way up to higher-pay, low-prestige jobs such as used-car salesmen.” He paused, his face grim. “If his business model succeeds, we’re looking at the collapse of current free-market capitalism for all non-zombie entities.”
    “What, no credit-default swaps?” Gavin said. “No hedge-fund implosion? No sub-prime mortgages offered in an orgy of greed and predatory