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Major was still riding high on yesterday—the kids' great first patrol, his adventures with Liv, this morning's pancakes—as he set out on today's patrol. The kids knew what they were doing; they'd do it again today. Yes, things in New Seattle were looking up.

It was disappointing to walk up to a scuffle in progress between citizens, but after all, Rome wasn't built in a day. People were just learning to live together, to get along. It would take some time, and some patience.

A young man was holding an older man by the collar—likely the owner of the store they were in front of, based on the way they were both dressed. As Major and his squad approached, the older man said, "Just get out of here! The soldiers are here."

Plastering a smile on his face, Major corrected him. "Actually, we prefer to be called the peacekeepers. How's it goin', fellas?" he said lightly to the younger man and a few of his friends, all of whom turned toward the squad as they came closer.

Once freed from the younger man's hold, the shop-owner stepped up next to Major. "Very bad," he said, answering the question. "They're harassing my customers." He pointed to a garish Z painted in red on the door. "Look what they did."

"We'll take care of the clean-up," Major assured him. He looked at the young hooligans, remaining pleasant. He had stressed that with his squad—don't be mad, don't act like you're here to punish. Just calmly, cheerfully, step in the middle of what's happening and quiet it down. "How about you gentlemen take your business elsewhere?"

The one in front, apparently the spokesman, definitely a loud-mouth, shook his head. "Uh, no. We're real happy right here, thanks. We love the—uh, what's the word I'm looking for? Ambience!" He smiled at Major, clearly thinking he had the upper hand. How he did, when Major and his squad were armed and armored and, oh yeah, practically indestructible zombies, and all the humans had were their soft clothes and their even softer and more vulnerable bodies, Major couldn't imagine.

Behind him, another loud-mouth decided to throw her weight in. "Well, I don't know about ambience," Jordan said, pronouncing it the way the human had, like the sleeping medication, "but you're going to need an ambulance if you don't get moving."

"Aw, relax," Major told her, hoping she would. He felt a bit less pleasant as he returned his attention to the humans, wanting them to know his smile didn't mean he could be discounted. "These guys are smart. They know they can either leave here on foot—or in cuffs."

"You gonna miracle those cuffs on us? You and some girl?" the human leader asked. "I mean, yeah, sure, you guys got guns—but we got guns, too." A couple of his friends lifted their shirts to show the butts of guns tucked into their pants.

"Theirs are bigger," the shop owner pointed out, gesturing toward several of Major's squad, who had put their hands on their weapons and stepped closer to the group of humans. "Shoot them," he told Major. "I'm sick of them. Every day with them. No one does anything." The guy sounded tired more than anything else, and Major put a comforting hand on his arm, nudging him gently toward the shop.

"No, we got this. Why don't you go inside, cool down, we'll get it all figured out."

The shop owner did as he was asked, to Major's relief, contenting himself with glaring at the younger men as he went by them.

The loud-mouth leader looked around at his friends. "You know what? Let's bounce. This place smells like spoiled meat anyway."

The others chuckled at that, and Major, relieved to see they weren't going to have a problem, moved past the group of them into the shop to formally take the shop-owner's statement.

They hadn't gotten far, unfortunately, when Captain Seattle appeared in the doorway calling for Major, who hurried out of the shop to see Jordan, helmetless, chasing down the loud-mouth human leader, who was carrying her helmet under his arm, blowing by other humans as they went. She screamed in anger and tackled the guy, straddling him and punching him in the face. She'd gotten in four good blows by the time two other members of the squad got to her and pulled her off the guy. He was rolling around on the ground, holding his wrist and shouting that she had scratched him.

Major's heart sank. That was the last thing they needed. He got to the guy, holding him down, telling him he was going to be all right.

The human leader looked past Major at his friend. "I'm not going to be a zombie! We made a pact, so do it!"

The friend reached for the gun in his pants.

"No, don't do that! He doesn't mean it!" Major shouted, but the leader was calling out "Do it, do it!" The friend drew and aimed his gun, and might have pulled the trigger if Captain Seattle hadn't pushed him back against the wall and knocked the gun out of his hand, turning him around and cuffing him exactly the way he had been taught.

"Let him go!" the leader screamed. "Let him kill me, please!"

Then Major noticed the very worst part—the third member of the human group with his phone out, filming the whole thing. He called to the guy, who took off running, with his camera, leaving Major on the ground with a human who had been scratched, a soldier who had totally lost her cool, and video evidence that this experiment had gone completely wrong. He'd like very much to be able to tell Chase Graves that he had told him so—but he was pretty sure the person getting the blame for this disaster was not going to be Chase Graves.