How the White Trash Zombie Got Her Groove Back Read online

  To my complete shock, no one asked me to explain any of that.

  Philip jerked his head toward the desk where four big baggies were neatly lined up, a whole brain in each one. “Will those fit in the coolers?”

  “Three of them will, for sure,” I said after a second or two of thought. My mouth watered at the sight and delicious scent as I stuffed three baggies into the coolers. The fourth went into a small duffel I found under the desk, and I had no doubt the brain it held would be eaten long before it had a chance to spoil.

  Philip stepped over Raul and Dan, heaved Kyle up to his feet, then hooked an arm around him for support. Naomi grabbed the coolers, and I scooped up every available handgun and tranq I could find, stuffed them into the duffel, then followed Philip to the front.

  “Uncuff him,” Naomi said to Philip with a frown. “It’ll be easier.”

  “Not until we’re away from here and can get some perspective,” Philip replied in a that’s-my-final-word tone.

  A mulish expression formed on Naomi’s face, but I took her arm. “C’mon, it’s going to be okay,” I told her. She glowered, but didn’t make any further protests.

  A quick peek out the front door showed that Rachel and the rest of the backup hadn’t yet arrived.

  “We’ll take my car,” Philip announced as he headed in that direction. “Kyle, anything in yours we need to grab or should know about?”

  “Jump . . . bag,” he slurred. “Trunk.”

  “Mine’s in there too,” Naomi added.

  Philip fished the keys from Kyle’s pocket and tossed them to me. I impressed myself by not dropping them, then ran to the car and popped the trunk. The only things within were a pair of black backpacks, each a bit larger than a school bag. I grabbed them, closed the trunk and ran back as Philip was folding Kyle into the back seat of his car.

  “This what you meant?”

  “Yesh.” He gave a lopsided nod. Naomi opened the back door on the other side, but Philip straightened and shook his head.

  “Naomi, you’re up front with me,” he said in the same uncompromising tone he’d used earlier. Jaw set, she complied, but it was clear she was getting dangerously close to not putting up with this shit. However, Philip didn’t appear to give a flying fuck about her attitude or morale. He turned to me, pressed a tranq gun into my hand and met my eyes. “You can handle the back?”

  I gulped. “Yeah.” I could, couldn’t I?

  Naomi opened her mouth to protest, but Philip speared her with a look that made the hardness of his voice seem as soft as fluffy cotton rabbit butts. She sat in the front, then glanced back at Kyle with a frown. “This is crazy.”

  “No.” Kyle managed to shake his head. “Is . . . warr . . . anted. I would . . . do same.”

  Naomi subsided at that. Philip and I climbed in, and then we got the hell out of there. When we made it to the highway without encountering Rachel and her team, every one of us let out a breath of relief.

  Philip hung a right and floored it. “With any luck the mess we left at the lab will delay pursuit,” he said. “I figure we have about half an hour lead before they figure out how to track us.” He glanced in the rear view mirror at Kyle and got a nod of agreement. “I’ll head to the spillway, and then we can reevaluate.”

  “Shit!” I dug in my pocket for my phone. “I don’t know if Marcus has heard about his uncle.”

  “He needs to know,” Philip agreed.

  To my annoyance, my call to him rang four times then went to voicemail. After the beep I left a message that was somewhat vague about how his uncle had gone on an “unexpected trip” and that he really needed to call me as soon as possible. My shoulders sagged as the weight of the entire screwed up day finally came crashing in. Back in my old, pre-zombie life, I’d have popped a couple of Percocet or Xanax to take the edge off and make the bad shit seem not so bad. Those sort of meds didn’t work on me anymore, but every now and then there was a tiny part of me that wished they did. Not that I wanted to go back to being a druggie—hell no!—but having the parasite also meant that I couldn’t use legitimately prescribed meds for anxiety or insomnia or anything like that. Yet, at the end of the day, I had to admit it was better that none of that shit affected me anymore, thanks to my parasite. It had sure made kicking the habit easy.

  Some nice, fresh brain would help take my mind off our crappy situation. I fished the brain out of the duffel, cut it into manageable pieces and divvied them up. Philip and I chowed down as he drove, while Naomi fed chunks to Kyle.

  Philip slid a look at me. “Don’t overdo it,” he warned. “We need you fully alert.”

  “Oberwoo?” I asked around a mouthful of brains.

  “Tanking up puts you at your peak of zombie senses and abilities with no consequences,” he explained. “Over-tank and you’ll get a Super Zombie feeling, but then you’ll crash as your parasite utilizes excess resources.”

  “Oh.” No wonder I always needed a nap after sucking down a big load of brains when I wasn’t Hungry, hurt, or super active. I’d always figured it was the same as the human desire to sleep after a big meal. I swallowed the bite and gave him a smile. “I’m good,” I assured him. Okay, maybe I was a teensy bit over-tanked. Reluctantly, I dropped the remaining two chunks of brain back in the baggie and passed it back to Naomi. After being hit with three tranqs, Kyle could probably use the extra.

  We rode in silence for another fifteen minutes or so before we pulled into the deserted gravel parking area by the river and the spillway.

  “Now what?” I asked after Philip killed the engine.

  Kyle made a low noise in his throat. “Kill me . . . or free me.”

  “No one is killing anyone,” Naomi snapped. Philip pulled a phone from his jacket pocket and started flicking through the pictures.

  I gave Kyle a baffled look. “Why the hell would we kill you?”

  “It’s what happens to traitors,” he said, voice almost back to normal. “Right, Philip?”

  Philip didn’t respond and simply continued looking through the pictures on the phone. Raul’s phone, I realized. Naomi had gone very still, barely seeming to breathe.

  “Are you a traitor?” I asked Kyle, uneasy and unsettled at the tension in the car.

  “No,” he replied evenly. “But my opinion isn’t the one that counts.”

  “Well, then stop talking about us killing you,” I said sharply.

  Philip turned in his seat and held the phone so that Kyle could see the picture on it. The one with K Y drawn in the dirt by Chris. “What do you think?”

  Kyle’s eyes went flat as he looked at the pic. “I appear to be a traitor,” he replied.

  Philip didn’t move. “The physical evidence points that way. The code leak points that way.” His focus remained on Kyle, and I had a feeling he was weighing Kyle’s reactions against my earlier argument in his favor.

  “It’s a setup!” Naomi cried. “Kyle didn’t do this.”

  “Naomi,” I said through gritted teeth as I watched the two men, “would you please be quiet for a few minutes?”

  She drew back, as stung as if I’d told her to shut the fuck up, but she remained silent.

  “Everything points to it,” Kyle agreed, and for the first time I heard the tension in his voice. “I’m not the insider, but I have nothing other than my word.”

  My utter hatred of this entire scenario rose to unbearable levels. “Philip, can I talk to you a sec?” Before he could reply I swung my attention to Naomi. “And can you please promise to chill and not do anything outrageous and, well, Angel-like until I finish talking to Philip?”

  She folded her arms over her chest and stuck her chin out. “For now.”

  I waited until I was out of the car before rolling my eyes at her reaction. To my relief Philip stepped out and joined me about twenty feet from the car.

  “What do
you really think?” I asked him, voice low.

  He grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck. “It looks bad,” he admitted. “But what stops me is that Peterson wasn’t dead. Kyle isn’t sloppy or careless.”

  “That bugged me too,” I said, nodding. “It fucking points to him, hard. Too hard. If Saberton wanted to really fuck us up, this was a perfect way to it.”

  He glanced toward the car. “So ninety percent he’s clean,” he said softly, “and ten percent he’s a knife in the dark.”

  I mulled the whole thing over for a moment, then met Philip’s eyes and lowered my voice even more. “No matter what, we can’t kill Kyle.” The mere thought twisted my gut so hard I knew there was no fucking way in hell I could let that happen. I had no idea if Philip felt the same way or simply felt my utter resistance to that option, but he gave a slight nod. “And if we lock him up somewhere until we figure out what’s going on,” I continued, “we’d have to lock up Naomi too. If this is a Saberton setup, we’d be doing their dirty work for them.”

  “All right. We let him go and keep our eyes open.” He shook his head. “It’s a risk, but my gut says he didn’t do it.”

  “I agree,” I said, to both parts.

  Naomi and Kyle watched our approach as we returned to the car. “Okay, we believe you,” I said.

  Naomi sagged in relief, and I realized she’d known what the stakes were for her as well. Something flickered in Kyle’s eyes—disappointment or grief, though neither made sense—but he gave a slight nod and smile. “You mean the odds fell in my favor.”

  “Whatever you want to call it.” I said with a shrug. Damn, but I hoped we weren’t making a huge mistake. “Now, can we please figure out what the hell to do now?”

  I stepped back as Philip helped Kyle out of the car and removed the cuffs. Kyle breathed a sigh of what I guessed was relief and rubbed his wrists.

  “I appreciate your trust,” he said.

  Philip opened his mouth to reply, then closed it. A shudder crawled over him, right before he shot a hand out to seize my arm in a hard grip. I staggered, taken by surprise and off balance as he yanked me behind him.

  To my horror, Philip pulled his gun and leveled it at Kyle and Naomi. “Get out of here!” he ordered, voice strained and laced with stress. “Both of you, get the hell away from here!”

  “Philip, no!” Just like the incident by my house! His finger on the trigger stopped me from grabbing his arm. Kyle could survive most bullet wounds, but Naomi was a shitload more fragile. “Philip, please, stop!” I shot Kyle a frantic look. He remained stone still, assessing everything. Behind him I saw Naomi edging toward the tranq gun I’d left in the back seat. I caught her eye and shook my head. No guarantee the tranq would work on him with his altered parasite, and every chance it could make him worse.

  “Go!” he shouted, teeth bared. I shifted to stand beside him, placed a hand gently on his arm while my heart pounded like crazy.

  “Philip, no, they can’t go,” I said. “We need them. Don’t hurt them.”

  He blinked, and I watched him come back to himself. Horror and dismay crawled over his face as he looked down at the gun and saw where it was aimed. Swallowing hard, he lowered it and took a shaky half-step back. “Damn.”

  “Philip, give me the gun please,” I said, voice quavering.

  He flipped the safety on and passed it to me, butt first. “Damn,” he repeated.

  “What was that all about?” Kyle asked, dark eyes on Philip.

  Philip’s expression turned grim and bleak. “It’s an adverse effect of a treatment I had this morning. Dr. Nikas was abducted before he could finish it and isn’t here now to correct the problem.” Hands tight at his sides and back tense, he turned away and walked to the edge of the parking lot, misery practically rolling off him.

  Aching for him, I carefully held the gun and tried not to show how much my hands were trembling. If he’d shot Naomi . . . I shoved the unwelcome thought away. “We need to find Dr. Nikas before someone gets really hurt,” I said. Sick worry rose in a choking wave. “We need to find Pietro and the others too. We need to. We don’t know if Rachel and Dan and the rest of them are going to try—especially for the two drivers and the security guard—and even if they do, we know there’s an insider. Someone gave those Saberton thugs the codes to get in.”

  Kyle’s gaze remained on Philip’s back. “Without Mr. Ivanov, the Tribe will falter,” he stated. “And without Brian,” he shook his head, “the organization of the remaining security and teams is crippled.”

  And what will happen to me if the Tribe falls apart? I selfishly wondered. It was more than a cool part-time job. It was security that went beyond money or brains. Once Marcus moved away, would I have anyone around who understood me? I knew I was being crazily self-centered, but fuck, sometimes it was called for, right?

  I moved to Philip, not caring that the others were watching or could hear me. “We need you,” I murmured, and bumped him with my shoulder. “We’ll get through this. Don’t make me bite you again.”

  A weak snort of laughter escaped him. During the mayhem that occurred at the filming of High School Zombie Apocalypse!!, Philip went berserk, and I’d followed through on a bizarre urge to sink my teeth into his shoulder. Weird as hell, but it calmed him right down.

  He bumped that shoulder into mine, then turned and walked back with me to Kyle and Naomi.

  “How do we find Pietro and the others?” I asked. “Do we have even the slightest clue where they might be?”

  “It would most likely be Dallas or New York,” Naomi said.

  Kyle gave a solemn nod in response. “They weren’t taken for ransom, and Saberton has major operations in both cities.”

  “Great,” I said. “How do we know which city?”

  “The R&D labs are in Dallas,” Naomi said, forehead creased in contemplation. She tapped her chin as she considered. “And the corporate offices are in New York. No lab though.”

  “All right, so we go to Dallas?” I asked.

  “The immediate use is likely for research,” Philip said. “Dallas certainly makes the most sense.”

  But Naomi held up a hand. “You’re right—the two drivers and the guard are most likely in Dallas. Probably Dr. Charish as well However, there’s a solid chance that my mother ordered Mr. Ivanov taken for retribution or some other personal reason. If so, then he might be in New York, since that’s where she stays this time of year.”

  Great. Everyone had some bit of personal knowledge to help except me. I wanted to ask questions, but I had a feeling I’d end up being one of those people who asks the stupid questions that everyone already knows the answers to and simply ends up slowing the whole thing down.

  “We don’t have enough manpower to check both,” Kyle said, then lifted his head and snapped his fingers. “Flight plans. They’d have flown him to New York if they took him there. Naomi, how hard would it be to check if a Saberton jet left here and, if so, where it went?”

  She smiled. “Not hard at all.” She walked a few feet away and started doing stuff on her phone. I moved off in another direction and once again tried to call Marcus. Again it rang and then went to voicemail. Frustrated I hung up without leaving a message and instead simply texted him. Something happened 2 ur uncle n doc. Need to talk 2 u ASAP!!!!

  My heart leaped when it dinged with a reply message. I know. Pursuing possible lead and keeping head down. You ok?

  Relieved, I quickly thumbed in a reply. I’m ok. with some others. where r u? need to join up.

  Can’t join up. Risky. About to leave town. Will explain later. Need to turn off phone soon. Stay safe. I love you.

  I stared at the last three words, heart in my throat. Even after being dumped, he still cared. Finally I texted my reply. Love you too.

  “It’s New York,” Naomi crowed in triumph, jogging back to the others. “Flight pl
ans confirmed it. Time to get serious now. First things first, we need to ditch all the phones.”

  “Phones can be tracked,” Kyle said with a nod of agreement.

  “Right.” I tore my eyes from Marcus’s text. “I’ll turn mine off.”

  “Not good enough,” Naomi said and held out her hand. “With the right technology it can still be tracked, even without a battery. Hand it over.”

  The look in her eyes stopped me. “What are you going to do?” I asked, suspicious.

  “Smash and toss,” she said.

  “Are you crazy?” I clutched my phone to my chest. “This is a brand new phone!”

  Philip looked at me, expression grave. “And we’re talking about our lives. A phone is replaceable. You aren’t.”

  “Yeah, well I bet you three make a fuckload more money than I do!” I retorted. “Y’all can smash your phones, but I don’t see why I can’t hide mine somewhere so I can get it back after all this shit is over.”

  “It’s just a phone,” Naomi said with a roll of her eyes.

  “Did the Tribe give you your phone?” I demanded.

  “Well, yes—”

  “And the rest of you?” I stabbed the two men with my glare, and they gave grudging nods. I swung my attention back to Naomi. “I’m not as stupid as you seem to think, and I get that we need to ditch the phones, but shit’s only replaceable if you have the money to replace it. I have a goddamn mountain of debt right now because I had to replace everything.” My stomach roiled with tension at the memory of the flood and the aftermath. “I’d rather not make that mountain any fucking higher, so forgive me if I’m not all excited about tossing away something that isn’t exactly cheap. I spent half a week’s salary for my phone.” I started to go on about the fact that I had two pairs of jeans to my name because, instead of buying a third pair, I decided to buy dishes that actually matched each other, but Naomi jerked her hand up to stop me.