White Trash Zombie Apocalypse Read online

  The washing machine finished its cycle with a clunk. Silence ticked through the house, but about a minute later I heard the front door open and shut quietly. Paranoia gripped me. What if it wasn’t my dad? What if the Saberton people knew where I lived and were coming after me?

  My heart thudded while I ran through escape scenarios in my head. Out the window would be easiest, then run like hell. No, grab a bottle of brains first…except that my fridge is locked, and—

  A muffled curse that was clearly my dad’s voice effectively banished my paranoia. Relieved on a number of levels, I listened to his low muttering as he rummaged through the kitchen cabinets, then a few minutes later I heard him go down the hall and open the washing machine. More muttering, then the sound of him transferring my laundry to the dryer, followed by the thumps and creaks of my dad putting a load into the washer and starting both machines.

  Mystified about why he felt the need to run a load in the middle of the night, I remained silent, listening hard, but he did nothing more than go to his own room and shut the door.

  I finally fell asleep, lulled by the comfortably familiar vibration of the ancient washer and dryer despite the worries that crowded in my head.

  * * *

  “You have a maggot on your sleeve,” Derrel murmured.

  Sighing, I flicked it off, watched it sail through the air to land on the wood-paneled wall and slide down to the dull-grey carpet.

  My day had begun with a pickup from the hospital, then a hospice death which we only worked because the family was arguing about which funeral home to use. The scene we were on now would normally have been a somewhat ordinary suicide of a terminally ill man—advanced pancreatic cancer. He’d written a careful email to his family explaining his decision and expressing his love for them and detailing his wishes for disposition of his body and funeral arrangements. But in a cruel twist of fate, he’d mistyped the email address, and the family never received it. He wasn’t discovered until two weeks after he overdosed on pain meds, by which time he was a yucky, maggot-covered mess.

  Which made it impossible to fulfill his desire to have his body donated to science. Poor dude. Couldn’t even have this fucked up illness be good for something.

  I brought him back to the morgue and got him logged in and stored in the cooler. Dr. Leblanc informed me that he had court and wasn’t going to perform any autopsies until the next day, which meant I had nothing to do except wait for another call.

  The last thing I wanted was time to reflect and think or anything like that. I didn’t want to muse on the incidents of the previous night, or contemplate how right or wrong it was for me to kill and eat that Saberton man. I needed to stay busy and, annoyingly, not enough people were dying to keep me so.

  Restless, I went up to the front office and scored points with Rebecca, the secretary, by helping her with filing. That only killed about two hours, and so I went back to the morgue and organized the supply cabinet, made notes of what needed to be ordered and did, essentially, every minor and/or crap job that tended to be put off or avoided.

  The grime on the baseboards of the cutting room had been bugging me for a while, and I was down on my knees scrubbing them when I heard the cooler door open.

  Frowning, I straightened. “Nick?” I called. “Is that you?” I didn’t think he was scheduled to work today, but who else would be going into the cooler?

  After a few seconds of no answer, I stood and moved through the cutting room to the hallway. The cooler door stood open, and when I stepped into the doorway, I saw Allen, hands gloved, standing over a body bag on one of the stretchers. The bag was unzipped, and he appeared to be searching through it.

  A stab of apprehension went through me. This was the body I’d picked up from the hospital, and it hadn’t been autopsied yet. But what if someone at one of the funeral homes had mentioned that brains were missing from the bags of organs? I’d never thought it likely that any non-zombie would notice whether brains were missing or not. After all, no normal human in their right mind would look through the bag of innards to verify that everything was there.

  “Allen?”

  He glanced over at me, eyes flicking to the rag and scrubber in my gloved hands. “Dr. Leblanc has you doing something useful?”

  I bristled, but did my best to hold onto my outward cool. Allen didn’t like me, and I didn’t like him, and that was that. “No, I decided to do it on my own,” I said. “The baseboards have been bugging me.”

  He gave a snort of what might have been either contempt or disbelief. “Good that you’re doing it. No one else would,” he said with the clear implication that no one else would lower themselves to crawl around the cutting room floor. He continued to dig through the bag and around the body. “Saves us from having to call in a cleaning crew,” he added.

  “Yeah, well, I’m all-around useful,” I said, biting back a more inappropriate response.

  “Job security for now, I suppose.” He closed the bag and turned to the one behind him, the maggoty and somewhat decomposed suicide from earlier today. I watched, on edge. The autopsied one—the movie extra from yesterday, whose brain I’d already harvested—was on the shelf to his right.

  I couldn’t stand it anymore. “What are you doing?” I asked, frowning.

  “When things don’t end up where they’re supposed to be, it’s my job to make sure it’s not a recurring problem.” He unzipped the bag and began to check the dead guy’s hands and wrists, ignoring the maggots. “Yesterday there was an issue over a wedding ring that wasn’t included in the property of a decedent and had somehow been left loose in the body bag. The family was not amused.”

  My frown deepened. “I always inventory the property.” Hell, it had been my meticulous property inventory procedure that helped me figure out that Dr. Charish was up to some hinky shit late last year.

  “This was on Jerry’s shift,” Allen explained, checking the neck and ears of the maggot-covered body. “Haven’t caught you yet with any faults in that area.” There was no mistaking the emphasis on yet.

  “And you won’t,” I replied stubbornly. “I have a system I use to make sure I catch all the valuables.”

  Allen looked over at me, lips pressed into a thin line. “I’m not asking you for your system or your proclamation of perfection.” He returned his attention to the bag, continuing to check the decomposing body for valuables that I’d already removed. “I’ll be doing spot checks, and if everything is where it’s supposed to be, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  “Right,” I said. “I got nothing to worry about.” Probably good that he didn’t ask me what my system was, since it was a slightly altered version of the children’s song “Head, shoulders, knees and toes” that I hummed to myself while going over bodies.

  My heart continued to thump as I watched him search the bag. I knew that if I continued to stand here it would look weird and suspicious. And what if he decided he wanted to check the non-existent wound on my hand? I still had a gauze bandage over the spot, but there was nothing but smooth skin beneath it. I forced myself to casually turn around and return to the cutting room. My palms were sweating within the gloves, but I didn’t change them, simply returned to scrubbing the baseboards, and didn’t dare to relax until I finally heard the cooler door close and Allen’s footsteps heading toward the main building.

  He hadn’t found anything out of place, at least I assumed not. He wasn’t the sort to put off chewing me out if he caught me screwing up. But what the hell would I say if he ever did find out I was stealing brains from the bags? It wouldn’t end well. I knew that in my zombified bones. And I had a sick feeling it was only a matter of time before Allen or someone else discovered my horrific larceny.

  I gave the sponge a savage twist, wringing it nearly dry, and resumed my scrubbing. If only my unease and worry could be cleaned away as easily as the grime.

  Chapter 10

  The minute my shift ended I got the hell out of there. I wasn’t in an “I need
pie” mood, and I sure as hell didn’t want to go home yet, so instead I drove somewhat aimlessly for about an hour and scowled at people who didn’t know how to drive in the rain. I thought about trying to call Marcus again, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell him about Allen and his bullshit insinuations that I was a fuckup waiting to happen. Not to mention my fears that Allen would find out about the missing brains, and I’d not only get fired but be without my food source. Marcus would get mad on my behalf—which was all right, but then he’d start giving me suggestions of how to handle it and what to do. And I didn’t want any of that. Sometimes all a person needed was to vent and bitch, without having to endure advice which would only serve to drive home the fact that it was a horrible situation. I already knew what I was “supposed” to do. Keep my nose clean. Cover my tracks. Don’t give Allen any reason to write me up. Be positive and all that crap.

  Problem was, I’d been doing that. I actually liked my job and had no issue going the extra mile and so on. I showed up early and left late—most of the time at least. But all of that wouldn’t save me if Allen found out about the brains. And it wasn’t as if I could simply stop taking them from the bags—not without dipping heavily into my stash.

  Less than twenty-four hours earlier, I’d charged two gunmen to help save Heather’s life. And now a stupid encounter at work had me worried I might lose my source of brains at any time. Fuck my life.

  I finally drove out to the Tucker Point public boat launch and parked, dismayed to see that the water was well over the dock. Another foot and the whole parking lot would be flooded. Which means they’ll almost certainly open the spillway soon. I was seven years old the last time the spillway was opened. Mom and Dad and I had gone down to the edge of the bayou that ran behind our house and watched in awe as the normally placid Cole Bayou became a churning rush of mud-brown water. But then the water levels had crept up until the road to our house had several inches of overflowing bayou on it, and I got to listen to my dad bitch and moan about people driving too fast through the water and sending waves lapping over our bottom step. Fond childhood memories, to be sure.

  However, right now the high water on the Kreeger River ensured that no one was using the boat launch, which meant it was a perfect place for me to chill and get my head back on straight. Or at least get to the point where I wasn’t about to throw something.

  Exhaling a gusty sigh, I leaned my seat back and gazed up at the worn headliner of my car. Too damn much going on. Three more days until the damn GED. A pain in the ass boss. The usual angst and uncertainty about Marcus. My dad being his typical ornery self. The bizarre situation with Heather, Saberton’s connection with both Philip and Dr. Charish, as well as their disturbing interest in Pietro and others associated with him, including me.

  It was a lot to think about and process, but it was that last item that had me frowning the most. Heather had known Kang—been good friends with him even. And Kang and Sofia had been up to something with her fake brains research that caught Saberton’s interest. Sofia was dead and gone. But Kang…

  Kang might have some answers. Pietro had Kang’s head, and was supposedly trying to regrow it. Or rather, he had “his people” trying to regrow it. Did he really, or was that just a line of bullshit to string me along? I wouldn’t put it past him.

  I glanced at my watch. Five thirty-two. Still early enough to make a civilized phone call to Pietro.

  Rain began to patter my windshield again as I brought the back of my seat upright and reached for my purse to get my phone. Movement flickered to my left, followed by a startling crash and a shower of broken glass as my side window shattered. I let out a scream and instinctively threw up my arms up to shield my face, even as a hand reached through the busted window to hit the unlock button.

  Before I could react, my attacker yanked the door open, fisted his hand in my hair close to my scalp, and dragged me from the seat and onto the wet gravel of the parking lot. I screamed again, this time in pain, and clutched at the hand in my hair. “Let me go!”

  “Been through this before,” my attacker said. Philip! My blood ran cold, and I jerked my gaze up to his face. “But Archer’s not here to save you this time, darlin’,” he continued, voice slightly raspy but with a harsh, uncompromising undertone.

  Terror sliced through me as he dragged me farther away from the car. I struggled harder, kicking and clawing for all I was worth.

  “Bell!” Philip growled at another man as he tightened the grip in my hair. One glance told me this was the other zombie from the Gala—Tim, the crooked-nosed one who’d bitten me. “Get her goddamn legs!”

  Tim Bell. Great, well at least I had the full name of one of my attackers. Didn’t do me much good right now, though. Tim made a grab for my legs, but the rain helped me squirm out of his grasp. I kicked savagely at him and landed the heel of my boot solidly in his chest, forcing him to stagger back a step. Philip locked his other hand around my left upper arm while I filled my lungs and let out a scream. Sure, I’d picked the most isolated spot I could think of to do my mopey navel-gazing, but there was still a tiny chance someone would hear, so I had to at least try.

  Philip snarled and shoved me to my back on the ground with the grip on my arm and hair. Tim got hold of my right ankle, and I let out another scream while I struggled and twisted and kicked and clawed like a crazy bitch. With the way the two men were handling me, any onlooker would think they were trying to rape me, but of all the possible threats to me right now, I doubted rape was one of them.

  Another man stood a few feet away, holding what looked like a walkie-talkie in one hand while he calmly watched the two zombies attempt to subdue me for whatever-the-hell reason. Light-eyed, balding, and…non-zombie, noted the part of me that wasn’t fighting for my life, the hungry part that locked onto the closest source of edible brain. The extreme exertion was burning through my brain reserves fast but, with Philip involved, I knew this had to be a Saberton Corp operation, and I didn’t dare let up.

  Tim got hold of my other ankle and made a move to straddle my legs which I thwarted with violent thrashing. Twisting, I tried to sink my teeth into Philip’s arm, but he shifted away before I could do more than graze his skin. He abruptly released my hair, but the instant of relief vanished as he shoved his hand into the center of my chest and pressed down hard.

  “No one to hear you,” Philip said in a hard, cold voice. I fought to get a full breath, continued to punch at him, but he was smart enough to keep his head pulled back from my crazy-desperate flailing. In my peripheral vision, I saw the Saberton guy pull a gun, but getting shot seemed like a minor threat compared to other possibilities. Like becoming Charish’s zombie guinea pig again. That blood-chilling thought inspired a whole new wave of desperate thrashing.

  Philip’s breath hissed noisily through his teeth as he did his best to pin me down. “This is going to happen,” he told me, lip curling. “It’ll be a lot easier on you if you cooperate. I can go either way.”

  “I’m not…gonna just…let you take me!” I gasped out. Squirming, I managed to get a leg free and landed a hard kick in Tim’s face. He bellowed a curse, then threw himself bodily across my legs.

  I punched again at Philip but didn’t have much power behind it. Growing fatigue weakened my efforts, and the hunger tightened its hold on me. Even as a zombie, I could only maintain this level of resistance for so long.

  Beside me, the Saberton man scowled and switched to a different gun. Philip saw it, shot a quelling look at the man.

  “Do not tranq her yet,” he snarled. “You’ll ruin it.”

  Ruin it? Yet? I fought back a sob of frustration as my struggles grew less and less effective. The two zombies simply had to let me tire myself out, and then they’d be able to do whatever the hell they wanted.

  Philip shifted to straddle my chest, put his knees heavily on my shoulders and sat back, pinning me solidly. With Tim on my legs and Philip anchoring me shoulder to hip, all I could do was flail my forearms. After a fe
w seconds of that useless waste of energy, I lay still.

  “Please…don’t,” I gasped, a sob of frustration welling in my throat. I didn’t know what the hell they had planned for me, only that it wasn’t likely to be anything I’d find fun and relaxing. Didn’t help that it was starting to rain harder, and I couldn’t do anything to shield my face. Like goddamn water torture.

  “It’s going to happen,” Philip repeated. “Nothing you can do about it.” Though he’d been steady enough before, he’d obviously burned through some brains while wrestling with me, and the results weren’t pretty—or normal. His head twitched violently to the side every few seconds, and I felt a tremor shake his whole body. He looked over at the Saberton guy. “It’s clear. She can come in.”

  Saberton guy nodded. “Clear,” he said into his radio.

  I scrabbled again for a few more seconds, then gave up as I utterly failed to shift the two zombies even a bit, much less off of me. Breathing harshly, I felt my lips curl back in a snarl as I memorized the Saberton man’s features, then shifted my attention to Philip. “What’s going on? This is all you’re good for? Attacking women half your size?”

  He gave me a cold smile. “Merely following orders, Angel.” Another heavy twitch jerked his head to the side. “I volunteered, remember?”

  “Not your best life decision,” I managed to sneer, pointedly following the abnormal head movement with my eyes. Even as I did so, my gut clenched at the evidence of pain in his eyes and the severity of the ugly twitching. A weird desire rose to help him, to ease his suffering. What the hell?

  Something flickered in his expression but was gone before I could identify it. “I’m not the one pinned on the ground,” he retorted.

  Asshole had a point.

  The scent of a tantalizingly delicious brain teased my nose, and I snapped my gaze to the left as a petite, black woman carrying what looked like a tackle box and wearing a dark blue raincoat approached. My fear spiked again as I tried to determine what the hell these people were up to. She moved cautiously to my left side and knelt out of reach of my hand. My heart gave a sick thud as she removed a rubber tourniquet thing from the box.