Dead Mutt Walking Read online

  Dead Mutt Walking

  A Muttopia Novel

  By

  Elizabeth Blake

  All rights reserved, ©2016.

  No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Elizabeth Blake.

  These stories are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not designed as a replacement for fact.

  Special thanks to Koko.

  The Exalted Series

  God Strain

  Storm-Tossed Devils

  Fate’s Gamble

  Muttopia Series

  Scratch Lines

  The Dog House

  Bait and Bleed

  Dead Mutt Walking

  Silver Maiden

  Judas Wolf

  “Desire is the very essence of man.“

  Baruch Spinoza

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 1

  Koko

  The first day of my new life was off to a rocky start.

  Federal agents posted behind ballistic shields and held the line against a mob spewing insults, spittle, and random projectiles. When crowd control sprayed the rioters with a fire hose, they dispersed like alley cats.

  The security guard at the iron gate assessed me through his gas mask. More feds stood alongside, fully armed and wearing vacant expressions. My truck idled loudly while he scanned my badge.

  “Koko what?” he said.

  “Just Koko. What’s happening out there?”

  “It's Sunday. Business as usual.”

  He scrutinized my credentials. A pause followed while we both recognized his opportunity to give me a hard time. I look like a truck-load of dumb muscle: seven and a half feet tall, surpassing three hundred-fifty pounds. I maintained the bulk despite my age because I did not have a life outside of the gym and law enforcement. My bigness and blackness were off-putting even without the name.

  He buzzed my RFID tag and verified my firearm met federal regulations before letting me pass. Law required all guns to be tagged in order to monitor the device’s activity. The weapon felt more like a nagging crone than protection.

  After parking, I realized he’d sent me to the pedestrian entrance. Instead of driving through the security station again, I used it as an excuse to explore.

  The Federal Bureau of Human Safety building opened immediately to huge lobby with a dome ceiling. A small fountain offered a soothing trickle to accompany the scent of orchids. Classic Beethoven played in the background. Tropical fish swam in oversized tanks while civilians lounged in plush blue chairs.

  The room was a sugar-coated placebo.

  All the feds wore suits, but I had not. Santi, my contact, had said to dress casual and I believed him. Jeans, a black button-down shirt. Now I was wishing I brought a proper jacket.

  A middle-aged woman who’d been arguing with a clerk began to cry. Immediately, a female agent came to lead her away from prying eyes.

  Hard to maintain a Zen façade with women bawling their eyes out.

  A man with curly blond hair, wearing khakis and a polo shirt, flashed baby pictures to an older receptionist. He looked like a civilian wanting information, but I recognized him.

  I prayed he'd put the pictures away before I got there. Not that I didn't like kids, but I didn't want to be forced to mumble complimentary drivel about a jagged-toothed, cross-eyed two year-old.

  “Hi, I'm Keats,” he said. He put the billfold away, thank goodness, and stuck out his arm.

  I shook the hand. His grip was hard and eager. Mine was as soft as I could make it without letting my fingers fall off. Keats shook quickly, absent show-boating.

  “Does everyone call you Koko? No nickname?”

  “It is my nickname.”

  “Oh. What's your birth name?”

  “Koko.”

  “Right. Uh, the elevator is this way. Help me with the muffins and coffee. It's my day to supply the team with caffeine and sugar on account of me only working one Sunday a month. Since you're the rookie, you've been volunteered to bring treats tomorrow.”

  Thirty-nine years old, and I was the rookie again. Climb one ladder only to find myself at the bottom rung of the next. He passed me a box of sweets and a coffee carrier with six cups. As soon as we left the lobby, the music faded, the feel-good décor stopped, and the walls were government issue beige. A change for the better.

  Keats bustled along and spouted questions.

  “What part of Phoenix are you living in?”

  “Sector six. I found a place right off the freeway on the avenue side.” I had arrived yesterday and hadn't unpacked. The neighborhood was desolate. Shoes hung from power lines, acting as calling cards for drugs or gangs. Drive-up liquor stores and pawn shops decorated every street corner. However, the door was solid, the windows had bars, and it offered a lot of space for the price.

  “Stay away from the freeways, I'm telling you. The extra drive will be worth it to live in a better neighborhood. Besides, most utilities, especially electric, are shoddy down Illegal Alley. The walls are like crepe paper. Thugs and felons lurk around in broad daylight. No one follows the curfew. I can't imagine trying to raise children in such places. Do you have kids?”

  God, not the photos. “No.”

  “I've got two.”

  “Congrats. How many agents are on the team?”

  “With you, five. Here’s our floor. Hi, Daisy!” He waved to a middle-aged woman in an unflattering green dress, wearing a headset, and sitting with her cupcake ankles extended. “Daisy is our dispatcher. She handles five teams including ours. Daisy, this is Koko. He's new to us.”

  “Oh, what a cute name. I love chocolate,” she said. “Not a racial thing, mind you. Or a sexual thing. Uh…excuse me, I have a call.”

  “She's nice,” Keats said. “New Catholic, and she certainly prefers sweets. Especially those chocolate truffles with salted tops. Helpful hint: if you buy her a box of those before she works double shifts, she’s less likely to curse at you over the radio.”

  I figured we'd go to the office, but Keats introduced me to literally everyone we passed, including the mail carrier. Sure, on my first day I expected to meet a lot of new faces, learn procedure, and get a feel for office politics, but there was a limit. A half an hour to walk across the desert-toned floor divided into large team rooms. The coffee was lukewarm by the time we stopped in the doorway of a large office containing eight desks, four empty. Two men and a female sat around, and I remembered them from a joint SWAT and FBHS raid.

  I first noticed Oracio Gracie, called Rosco. He wore a fuchsia sh
irt, not a color I'd wish on any man. The top few buttons were undone, revealing the valley between his pecs. Cosmetic gym goer, gold jewelry, pretty boy with Hispanic heritage. Quick research had revealed his shooting scores were as jaw-dropping as his shirt.

  Kaidlyn Durant sat Indian-style on her desk, wearing jeans and a black thermal. Her pushed-up sleeves revealed scarring along her forearms, and the high collar didn’t quite cover old tissue damage across the entirety of her throat. Her brown hair was tangled under a Cardinal's cap.

  She single-handedly represented all female agents in the bureau who were both alive and active after multiple years of service. I knew for a fact she had balls. I’d seen her stand her ground against a hoard of starving wolves. She also wrote a rather eloquent reference letter which helped me transfer from SWAT to the bureau.

  She chatted with Andreas Sarakas while he pushed through paperwork. His wrinkled forehead and sullen gaze made me think she was having fun at his expense. Or she was in the way, because it was his desk she perched on.

  “Morning!” Keats said. “Koko has arrived. So have the doughnuts.”

  “How's your arm?” Durant said. I’d forgotten the mild green of her eyes.

  “Good.” I clenched my fist, rotated it, showing a full range of motion. I nearly lost the use of my gun-hand due to a severe compound break. Came close to scouting retirement options. I still felt the injury tighten.

  “Good.” She looked wrecked: weight loss, tangled hair, and tight eyes.

  “Like the crowd?” Rosco dug for a doughnut. “They started early today.”

  “Happens a lot, I take it,” I said.

  “Yeah. It's worse nowadays. Our bag-rate has been down since that vampire made a statement about mutt rights. People forget so quickly. If we're not saving them from the gaping maw of death, they get politically lackadaisical and bitch about taxes. Ungrateful, to say the least.”

  “Hypocritical is what.” Durant finished her old coffee and reached for a new cup. “They discard their freedom for the illusion of security. Not to mention they have no clue about what we do, and how downright un-American it is to pay taxes these days.”

  “We kill bad guys. They've got a pretty good clue about that,” Keats said.

  “Bad guys? What, like cowboys and Indians?” she snipped.

  “They forget what we've done for them,” Rosco said.

  “And to them, if it's convenient,” she said.

  “Whose side are you on?”

  “My side. On account of me always being right.”

  Sarakas gave her the pastries and changed the topic. “Kaid, you'll be showing Koko around.”

  “Huh.” She grabbed two doughnuts and passed me the box.

  “No, thank you,” I said. She narrowed her eyes and emphatically nudged me with the carton. Stared. Waited. With my metabolism teetering on the edge of old, I couldn't eat crap. “I don't want one.”

  “He doesn't want one,” Keats said.

  She wrinkled her nose and passed the box to her left.

  “Do you have Ag rounds yet?” she said.

  I shook my head.

  “If you're with me today, baby, you'll carry more than lead.”

  I ignored the fact that she called me baby. “No probationary period, then?”

  She snickered. “You transferred from active law enforcement. Plus, you’ve seen a mutt in real life. Hell, you tackled one! Your training will be comprised of a thirty-minute law review and a ten-minute weapons test. All you need to do is shoot the bad guy. Try to make sure it's a mutt first, but that's actually optional these days. Isn't that right, Rosco?”

  “Go to hell,” he said.

  “Amateur.”

  “Fabio was a mutt! He was a scuzzy, fuzzy, twitchy homicidal mutt!”

  “He was a coke addict, you twink!” Durant said. “Twitched all the time!”

  “Fuck you.” His face reddened. He slapped a stack of files off his desk and stormed to the door. She opened her mouth and started to follow, likely to get herself shot.

  “Kaid, shut up.” Sarakas grabbed her arm. “Guns were drawn and the dude was twitching. What was Rosco supposed to do? Exactly what he did.”

  “The ass is going nutty.”

  “And you're doing everything you can to push him over the edge. You’re behaving like a snarky little sister who can't keep her mouth shut.”

  “Maybe take your hand off me before I tear out your eyeballs. I know what you're doing.”

  “Are you listening?” He squeezed her arm.

  Her face grew as blotchy as Rosco's, and she pulled out of Sarakas’ grip. She turned and kicked his desk. It slid ten feet and hit the wall, papers scattering, computer continuing its forward momentum. Nice kick.

  She glared. Her eyes boiled with anonymous, unfocused rage. Last fall, when we hunted poachers together, she had acted more professional.

  “You need silver,” she said. “I’ll be back.” She grabbed two more doughnuts and stormed out the door. Sarakas looked at me and shrugged.

  “There usually isn’t this much drama,” Keats said. “It's been a long day.”

  It was nine in the morning.

  “We’ve had a rough year,” Sarakas said. “Lost some colleagues. Worse, Durant has become an easy target for every sociopolitical psycho in the city.”

  “Heard about the bomb,” I said.

  “And the body parts?” Keats waved an uncomfortable hand across his chest. “Someone dismembered several women and wrote Kaid’s name on the remains.”

  “Next time, it would be easier to eat the doughnut,” Sarakas said. “She distrusts people who don't like junk food.”

  Rosco returned when the coast was clear. He carried files, and his temper seemed to be in check. “Dude, I think she’s knocked up.”

  Sarakas snickered. “Not possible.”

  “You saw that hunk of meat she's been f—”

  “Hey,” Keats said.

  “—seeing,” Rosco finished.

  Sarakas laughed like he knew what kind of panties Mother Theresa wore. I didn't care how much the broad ate, provided she did her job and didn't distract anyone from business. If she was pregnant, she better know when to call it quits, because I didn't want to work alongside a weepy, hormonal woman wielding both a temper and a gun.

  Sarakas’ laugh got on Rosco's nerves.

  “What gives?” he said.

  “Nothing.” Sarakas turned around and fiddled with stuff on the desk. His coloring looked Italian or Greek, and his muscle was the practical sort. Tall, slim waist, triangular. He carried three guns: one on each hip and an ankle holster behind the hem of his jeans. He passed me an earpiece for communication.

  “Koko, choose an empty desk. Santi will load you up with potentials, and you'll make house calls in your spare time. We go out in pairs or threes to monitor cases, troll the neighborhoods, and respond to calls. Rounds, emergency response, and paperwork. Over and over, the paperwork.”

  Durant returned and gave me a heavy box of ammo and spare mags. She’d noted my firearm and pulled accordingly.

  “Carry four spare mags and one in the breach. At least four on your person at all times. Hell, even in the shower. Bureau keeps the Ag rounds in lockup. You receive a weekly allotment based on your usage and kill rate. Load up.”

  She watched as if she didn't trust me to load a mag, and then I realized she was interested in how I handled the bullets, checking to see if I had the fine motor skills after a compound fracture in my forearm.

  “Lykos are unpredictable,” Sarakas said. “Some take three bullets, some take thirty-three.”

  “I’ve heard the term lykos and mutt,” I said. “Which is appropriate?”

  “Lykos is the polite, official term meaning wolf,” Durant said. “’Mutt’ is a lot like saying ‘nigger.’”

  “Kaidlyn!” Keats chastised. “You can't say that to Koko.”

  “Why?”

  Keats hissed the obvious. “He's black!”

  “The
n he should understand the import,” she said.

  “Sorry,” Keats said to me.

  “I'm good. Go on, Durant.”

  “It’s a modern slur. Use the term lykos in official paperwork, which you will file every time you discharge your weapon, engage a potential, or make contact with blood contaminants. Blood contact requires pictures of the area and skin, which is why the camera on your phone automatically uploads to our office database. No porn, please. Got it?”

  “No porn.”

  She grabbed another doughnut, like her seventh, and I figured either she was pregnant or had a tapeworm.

  “Let's go,” she bossed. “Scoot, scoot.”

  As a woman in a man's world, she probably felt required to be a bitch: throwing her weight around, seeing what I'd give her, testing my mettle. I waited long enough for her to start thinking about what she'd do if I didn't move. Her eyes narrowed like she’d kick me. Finally, I lumbered out of the office.

  We took the stairs to avoid the lobby, which was fine by me. In the parking garage, I took the lead.

  “The heck are you doing?” she said.

  “My vehicle is over here.”

  “Nice try, but I'm driving. Get in the truck.” She hooked her thumb at a silver truck built like it might go head-to-head with a freight train.

  “Nice,” I said. “Mine's bigger.”

  She snorted. “I bet it is.” She got in and didn't leave me much of a choice. If driving made her feel better, fine. I came to do a job, and she would not rile me. I climbed in, happy my knees didn’t bump against the dash. Our elbows rubbed when she put the truck in gear, and we simultaneously withdrew.

  We navigated the parking garage and pulled out onto the street. The crowd regrouped after another hose-down. A woman holding a Dogs don't have souls sign slapped a woman holding a God's Creatures Are Precious sign. Hair-pulling and scratching ensued.

  “The PETA chick is totally going to win.” Durant laughed. “Vegans are freakin' mean. A hundred-percent off their rocker, too. Mostly, they win. Until the Methodists show up.”

  The PETA woman drew first blood with a hay-maker to the other woman's brow. Broke skin above the eye. The red gush startled them both, separated the fight, and then the religious one lunged. They tussled on the ground. A lavender pump flew through the air. The crowd joined, and it became an all-out brawl.