Zero Hour (Expeditionary Force, #5)

by Craig Alanson

“Deciphering the lyrics to ‘Louie Louie’ by the Kingsmen. To work up to that task, I started with Michael McDonald, he was the singer for the Doobie Brothers. That joker was not exactly the king of enunciation, if you know what I mean. After I had my fill of that crap, I tried Bob Dylan. Brilliant songwriter but, damn, what a marble-mouth singer. After revising my computational model fourteen quadrillion times, I was able to understand eighty three percent of Dylan’s songs. Except his live albums, those are a lost cause. Truthfully, even to get to eighty three percent I did a lot of guessing. When I was ready, I tried the ultimate challenge: ‘Louie Louie’.” “And?”

“Uh, maybe?” I could not remember. “Probably, yeah.” “Apples are picked from August through October, unless you’re getting them from someplace like Chile. When you see an apple from a US grower in June, that apple could be ten months old. It was picked green ten months ago, put into cold storage, then the supplier used a gas like ethylene to force it to ripen. It may look ripe and it might not even be mushy, but after ten months, most of its nutritional

“You’re right, Skippy. It’s a sad thing when bread goes bad,” I shook my head sadly. “First you notice the vodka in the liquor cabinet is getting watered down, because bread has been drinking it and topping off the bottle with water, like you wouldn’t notice. Then bread starts stealing cash from Grandma’s purse to buy drugs, and it’s all downhill from there. What’s worse is when there’s an empty chair at the Thanksgiving table because bread is in prison, and everyone is awkwardly not talking about it.” “What?” He sputtered. “Joe, what in the hell are you talking about?” I winked at him. “You are slow this afternoon, Skippy.” “Huh?

Homeboy? When Skippy said it, somehow it didn’t sound right. It was like the Queen of England opening a speech from Buckingham Palace with ‘What up, my bitches?’.