Free Zombie Team Alpha by Steve R. Yeager

“We need to talk, Jack.”
    He rubbed the sleep from his eyes that he hadn’t realized had gathered there and stifled a yawn. Sadly, he also realized that he was now perfectly sober because his mouth tasted as if a rat had slept on his tongue, and perhaps had died there as well.
    “I don’t think we can trust her,” she whispered to him over the droning whine of the engines.
    Cutter had made the same jump in logic the moment he had met the doctor, but it was nice to get Morgan’s confirmation. Dr. Martinez was a very attractive woman, which didn’t necessarily make her bad. It was just something about her attitude. Arrogance and condescension were two traits he found terribly unattractive, and she had them in spades.
    “Why?” he prodded.
    “She’s got those eyes, you know? She’s up to something.”
    “What eyes?”
    “She’s got eyes for you.”
    “Is that so bad?”
    “Yes,” Morgan said, nodding. “I figure she is either nearsighted or just plain stupid. But that’s not what I wanted to speak to you about.”
    “Go on.”
    She hesitated. “I’m not sure we should even be doing this job.”
    Cutter narrowed his lips and set his hands on his thighs. He tried to pivot in his seat, but couldn’t. He wanted to look at her and not have to stare up over his shoulder to do so.
    What? It’s too late . How much more committed can we get? We can’t back out now, he wanted to say, but he figured she knew that already. So what the hell is this about? The whole damn gig had been on her and Gauge. He stared out the window at the blue sky and gray soup below them.
    “Yeah, Jack, I know the money’s good and all, but after doing a little more research, I’m getting an uneasy feeling about this. I mean, what do we really know about this artifact beyond what Sharon told us about it the first time around?”
    At the mention of his wife, Sharon, he cringed a little. It still hurt to have others saying her name, especially now.
    He ran his fingers through his hair and swept it back. “What we know is that we have four million on the line, and much as I appreciate your company, I could be back on the island curled up beside some—”
    “I know that, Jack. But what I’m really wondering is—where did this new artifact come from? Is it going to be as dangerous to get to as the other one was?”
    Cutter nodded in sympathy and shrugged. Yeah, it probably was. So what? “The money makes it easy to look past that. And it was you who insisted on coming.”
    “Yeah, I know. Still. We were searching for this same kind of thing in Ecuador for Pete’s sake. How did another one just like it show up in Russia of all places? And how hard will this one be to find? Those things—the creatures we went up against? They were nasty. They reminded me of zombies, Jack. Like those Walking Dead brains, mmm brains, types.”
    They weren’t that bad . If I had only—
    She kept talking. “We know almost nothing about them too. Sharon was the expert. I just came along to handle the tech. And—”
    She glanced out the front windscreen then back at him. “Why us, Jack? Why were we sent a second time and why now?”
    Why, because we failed the first time? he wanted to say but held his tongue.
    When he did not respond, she squatted lower, next to him. “Why us?” she repeated.
    Cutter leaned sideways and checked on the co-pilot. The man was staring forward, pretending to ignore the very appealing woman crouched beside him, and was struggling to do so. Morgan was an extremely attractive woman in her own way, but she was not interested in men.
    He glanced back down the length of the plane. Gauge was still comfortably asleep in his seat. In the seat in the row behind him, Dr. Martinez had her headphones on and was staring down at her laptop, stern-faced. The screen reflected off her glasses, making twin blue dots in the lenses.
    Leaning closer toward Morgan, Cutter touched her on the knee and said directly into her ear, “I never