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Major slept hard. He woke to the sound of Don E's snoring from the other bed and the honk of a semi outside the room. Coming gradually to wakefulness, he reached for the clock on the table between the two beds, turning it toward him and squinting at the hands until they made sense.

When the time made its way through the fog of sleep in his mind, he was wide awake instantly. "Wake up!"

"What?" Don E sat up groggily. "What do you want?"

"Your smugglers were supposed to be here two hours ago. Where are they?"

"Relax. They'll be here." Don E slumped back into the pillows, his eyes closing like he was about to go to sleep again. Only then did Major remember that there was supposed to be someone else in the room with them.

"Sloane! Where's Sloane?"

Don E reached out to pat the other half of the bed he was in, as if to point her out. When all he touched was mattress, he sat up, his eyes open for real this time.

Major rushed to the door. Had she fled? Was she out there somewhere in the middle of nowhere? God, how many ways could this mission get fucked up?

From behind him, he heard Don E shouting his name. Seeing no sign of her outside, he rushed back into the room. "Yeah?"

"I've got some good news and I've got some bad news," Don E called from the bathroom. He pointed to the floor as Major joined him in the doorway. Sloane lay on the floor, on a bath towel, blood crusted around her nostrils.

"Oh, no." Major bent to feel for a pulse. "Oh, no, no, no. She's not breathing." He grabbed her by the wrists and dragged her out of the bathroom.

"Oh. Looks like she took two rides on the U-boat," Don E called.

Two capsules of Utopium? Where had she even gotten those? Major thought they'd checked for whatever she might be carrying. He started chest compressions, begging her to wake up as he did so. Don E joined them, grabbing Sloane's arm to check for any signs of a renewed pulse.

"She's dying, man! What are we gonna do?"

Just then, they heard pounding fists on the hotel room door. The smugglers, two hours late and ironically just in time to end the chain of disasters this day had turned into.

Major gave up on the chest compressions. They weren't doing anything anyway. He and Don E exchanged a look of panic.

"Dead girl is no bueno!" Don E hissed.

While that was true, it wasn't exactly helpful. Major looked down at her still face, and picked up her arm, desperately hoping for any sign of returning life. There was none. He looked up, meeting Don E's eyes, seeing the truth there. Only one thing was left—the last thing they had wanted, the thing that was going to keep them from completing their mission regardless. Don E nodded, and Major took a deep breath and drew his fingernail, hard, in a line down the tender skin inside her wrist.

Blood welled up along the line of the wound, a good sign, but nothing happened. For a very long moment, while the pounding on the door continued, while Major and Don E looked at each other in panic, neither with any clue how they were going to explain a dead girl to the smugglers—

And then Sloane gasped and opened her eyes, coughing a little as life returned to her body, so to speak.

Of course, Major reflected looking over his shoulder at the door, where the pounding of fists continued, explaining an undead girl wasn't going to be easy, either.

"What do we do?" Don E asked.

"We? These are your contacts. Go … do what you do."

Don E frowned. Then his face brightened. "You mean charm the shit out of these assholes? Done. Major-man, you are a genius." He patted Sloane on the shoulder. "Just lie here and watch Don E pull this messed-up day right out of the fire."

He stood up, grabbing his shirt off the counter and putting it on, straightening his clothes, preparing himself, and walked past the two of them toward the door.

Sloane sat up. "Is he for real?"

"Surprisingly, yes."

"What happened?"

"You ODed, you idiot."

"Oh." She frowned. "So why am I not dead?"

Major looked at her, while behind him Don E opened the door and started glad-handing the smugglers, leading them out of the room, spinning some kind of wild story about a mission gone wrong in all sorts of ways that weren't actually his fault, offering expensive bottles of booze next time they were in New Seattle. His voice faded as he and the smugglers got farther from the room, and Major looked back at Sloane, who had realized from what he didn't say why she wasn't dead.

"You bastards!"

"Would you rather be dead?" He dimly recalled a time when he would rather have been dead than be a zombie.

"No," she admitted, "but … why didn't you stop me?"

"Stop you? I frisked you for contraband before we put you in the trunk!"

"Yeah, I had it hidden in my bra."

Major sighed. So much for having been a gentleman. Of course, if he had stayed awake and not left Don E to watch her, she'd be safely in the hands of the smugglers right now, and he would be on his way back to New Seattle with his annoying little copilot. None of them had exactly been at their best on this little mission. "Well, you're a zombie now. Hang on, I'll get you a brain tube from my bag."

"Brain tube? Gross."

"It's better than nothing," he told her, watching as she took the first bite. She made a face, but then he could see when the brains hit her system, and she sucked the rest down with gusto.

"Now what?"

"Now we wait," he told her, hoping to hell Don E could get them out of this mess. He had to be good for something, didn't he?