I thought about this for a moment. Could it be true? Were his parents also zombie hunters? Pietro had certainly made it sound as if there was an organized cabal-type thing. “And you used Marianne’s dog to let you know who the zombies were,” I said.
“Right.” He sighed. “Kudzu is a cadaver dog. If someone smelled like a dead person, that gave me a reason to look into them. Then I’d watch them for a bit, see if they ever started smelling or rotting. I’d sometimes check them out on Lexis Nexis to see if there were any hiccups in their info that would be there if they were older than they looked. That sort of thing.” He stood and moved to one of the windows, peeled a small section of tape back and peered cautiously out through a thin gap.
“Zeke Lyons was one of your victims, right?” I asked. He nodded without looking back at me. “Did you know that somehow he regrew his body?”
Ed whipped his head around to stare at me. “Regrew? What do you mean? Like a lizard regrows a tail?”
“Yeah, except that it was the whole body, with the right fingerprints and everything.” I had a sudden bizarre image of a full-sized head on a teeny-tiny body as it grew back, like a bobble-head doll. “Same head, though. Had a scar on his chin, same as on his driver’s license. And his body was still in its coffin at Riverwood.” I paused. “So, what did you do with the heads?”
He pressed the tape back down. “I don’t know how he regrew a body, but I had to deliver the heads to a drop point.” He flushed. “I, uh, got points for verified kills.” He groaned and raked a hand through his hair. “I don’t know why I didn’t even think to question it. I actually burned the head of the first one I killed, but they insisted that wasn’t good enough, and I had to deliver the heads in order to ensure proper destruction.”
I could feel my eyebrows climbing to my hairline. “And who the hell is ‘they’?”
Ed shook his head. “No clue. My only contact was through that website. God damn it, I thought I was doing this great and awesome thing, ridding the world of a terrible threat.” He looked over at me, eyes full of guilt and agony. “But then you didn’t kill me when you had the chance. And then you even saved Marcus. That’s not something a monster would do.” He stooped, dimmed the lantern slightly. “I’d gone so far off the deep end, it took me awhile to figure out that whoever these other zombie hunters were, they didn’t have the whole story. And then I started, finally, to wonder about the heads.” He scowled at himself. “And that’s when things really went to shit.”
“How so?”
“I used that secret website. Told them I’d been busted but also told them I thought we were wrong about zombies being monsters. And I also asked about the heads.” He gave a dry laugh that turned into a sob. “I snuck into Marianne’s house while she was gone. Used her computer.”
“Oh, no,” I breathed.
He nodded, a stiff jerky motion. “She came home just a few minutes later. I stayed, had to talk to her. God, I missed her so much.” He paused. “I was going to marry her. We’d already talked about it, knew it was what we both wanted. But I knew I had to leave, for her sake.” He let out a shuddering breath. “I told her what I’d done, told her I loved her. Told her I was sorry. I was on my way out the back, when I heard her answer the door.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Then I heard the shot. I ran back…but it was too late. He didn’t see me, but I saw him.” His expression turned grim. “Same guy who shot you tonight.”
I stood. “His name is Walter McKinney. He’s the head of security at NuQuesCor. But…why did he kill Marianne?” I asked, baffled.
Ed’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Maybe they thought I’d talked to her and told her what was going on. Or maybe they wanted to be sure the heat stayed on me to keep me out of their way.” He shook his head. “Or maybe they simply wanted to fuck with me as much as possible.”
“Those fuckers.” I fell silent, thinking. Pieces of the puzzle were finally starting to settle into place. “Dude. You were used. You gave them the heads, right?”
He stared at me for several seconds, then a grim look settled over his face. “They didn’t destroy them, did they?”
“They’re doing zombie research at that lab, and they needed zombie brains!” I paced in the small living room. Did that mean Sofia was behind all of this? But surely Pietro wouldn’t have approved of the murder of zombies, even ones that weren’t part of his group. “You chopped off Zeke’s head, gave it to them, and they somehow regrew him a body.” And how would that work? Just give the parasite enough brains to fix things up? I guess if it could repair a bullet hole in Marcus’s head…Wow, those were some industrious little fuckers. “But something went wrong,” I continued. “The body we picked up at NuQuesCor was Zeke Lyons, and he was old—at least twenty years older than he should’ve been. And when he fell off those stairs, he died.” I sat, jiggling my legs in excitement. “Oh my god, fake brains! Sofia’s fake brains! She used them to grow a new body for this dude.” Then I grimaced. “But she said the research wasn’t finished. Why would she use fake brains that she knew wouldn’t work right? That part doesn’t make any sense.”
“Sofia Baldwin?” Ed asked.
I nodded. “You know her?”
“Yeah, we all went to high school together,” he said. “She’s fucking brilliant. How the hell does she know about zombies?”
“I guess Marcus told her,” I said, shrugging. “She’s known since right after he was turned, apparently.”
“Oh.” He nodded slowly. “So…he told her, and not me.”
I grimaced in sympathy. And how different would everything be now if he had confided in Ed? I thought. Would McKinney and Sofia or whoever have found someone else to collect zombie heads for them?
Ed took a deep breath and straightened. “You just said the guy was old and died,” Ed pointed out. “Maybe that’s how she knew the research wasn’t finished. Maybe Zeke was the test subject.”
“I guess that fits,” I said slowly. I had the feeling I was missing something, and it was driving me nuts. I didn’t like Pietro, but this didn’t seem like something he would tolerate one little bit. Maybe some other zombie faction was involved? And had Zeke been trying to escape, or was he trying to break in to get more of Sofia’s fake brains?
“But why did they have me kill the zombies and deliver only the heads?” he asked. “Why not just have me locate them, and then capture them—the way they were trying to do to you?”
“Probably because kidnapping a live zombie is a lot more complicated than simply killing one.”
“Or maybe the whole point was to see if they could regrow zombies?” he suggested.
I made a face. “Seems like it would be just as effective to cut off some other body part to test these alternate brains. But whatever the reason, it does seem like they want a real live zombie now.” I paused, narrowed my eyes. “Which also means that call from Sofia was bullshit.” I quickly explained to him about the panicked phone call from her and was pleased to see his expression darken. “That bitch set me up,” I continued. “How else would McKinney have known to set up his ambush for me on that highway?” I growled under my breath.
“GPS tracker,” Ed stated.
“Hunh?”
His shoulders lifted in a shrug. “I mean, yeah, he clearly knew you were going out to her house and it does sound like she’s behind this, but he wouldn’t have known when and where exactly to set the spikes out unless he knew exactly where you were.” He paused while I attempted to digest this. “It’s how I found you,” he added, doubling my shock. “I put one on your car when I was by your house.”
I stared at him. “Are you serious?”
“Yup. I’ve been following you for the last couple of days,” he said with no trace of apology in his voice. “Kind of funny to think that you probably had two tracking devices on your car.”
“Yeah,” I scowled. “Real funny. Okay, so Sofia lured me out there and…” I straightened as fear spasmed through me. “Marcus. I need to warn Ma
rcus.” I’d told Sofia he was out of town, but if she got hold of him and told him she was in trouble, I had no doubt he’d come running into whatever trap she and McKinney had ready for him.
I automatically looked around for my purse, then realized that everything was still in my car out on the highway. “Shit! I don’t have my phone. Do you have one?”
“I stopped carrying one. Too easy to trace back.” He swallowed harshly. “I’ve grown a little paranoid, y’know.”
“Well we need to go find a phone,” I said, throwing the brain-food I hadn’t eaten back into the plastic bag.
“There’s a pay phone at the XpressMart on Highway eighty-eight,” Ed said.
I stood, hefting the bag. “And once we’ve done that we need to pay Sofia a visit.”
A whisper of a smile twitched at his mouth. “Perhaps you should clean up first?”
I blinked, looked down at myself. “Oh. Yeah. Blood everywhere. Good point.”
“There’s bottled water and a change of clothing out in the car.”
I raked a gaze over his own apparel. “Please tell me it’s not goth chick stuff to match yours.”
He gave a dry chuckle. “I would never do that to you. It’s cargo pants and a midriff sweatshirt that says ‘Redneck Princess.’”
“Thank god,” I breathed. “I have a signature look, you know.”
“You’re a style icon, to be sure.”
Chapter 21
My nerves were shot by the time we pulled into the parking lot of the XpressMart. It certainly wasn’t a shining example of the XpressMart franchise. The “pr” and “M” in the sign were burned out, and one of the front windows had been replaced with a large sheet of plywood, on which someone had spray-painted a giant picture of a penis. But the pay phone still worked, and I had a fistful of quarters that I’d fished out of the console of Ed’s truck, though I actually had no clue how much it cost to make a call. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d used a pay phone, if ever.
“I’ll keep an eye out,” Ed said as I dumped coins into the phone. I sure as hell hoped he didn’t turn evil again. I was going to get whiplash with the insane loyalty switching here.
I paused with my finger hovering over the buttons. “Um, do you know Marcus’s number?” I asked Ed with a sheepish grin. “I have him in my contacts. I never have to actually dial it, y’know?”
Ed rolled his eyes and rattled off the digits. I dialed, shifting from foot to foot while I waited for Marcus to pick up. When it went to voicemail I groaned, then mentally fumbled for what to say during the brief outgoing message.
“Marcus, it’s Angel. There’s some weird shit going on, and you need to watch your back. The security guy from the lab shot me and tried to kidnap me, but Ed saved me, and, oh yeah, Ed’s cool now, but I can’t explain that now. But there’s some kind of conspiracy to get zombie heads, and it has to do with Sofia’s research and the zombie factions. Oh! I was totally right about Zeke Lyons. Ed said he gave the heads to someone, and we think they grew zombies back from them. Oh, and Sofia’s a bad guy. Don’t trust her! And anyway, I don’t have my cell phone, I’m on a pay phone, but I’ll try and call you again soon. Just, please be careful.”
I hung up, turned to Ed. “That was total incoherent babble, wasn’t it?”
He looked as if he was biting his lip to keep from laughing. “Well…you’ll definitely get his attention with that message.”
“Ugh. Whatever. I’ll try him again in a bit.” I could feel my expression settling into a scowl. “Lets go find Sofia.”
I had her address in my text messages, but I realized it was more than possible that it wasn’t actually her address and had been given to me to lead me into McKinney’s ambush. Therefore, Ed and I agreed that we should find out for sure. Looking her up in a phone book seemed like the logical first step, but finding a phone book was more of a challenge than we expected. There wasn’t one by the pay phone, and the clerk in the XpressMart simply gave me a vacant look when I asked if she had one. Ed then came up with the idea of finding a computer with internet to look her up, but I reminded him that the library was closed and the only way we would get to a computer at this point would be to break into someone’s house.
After several minutes of argument and increasingly pointless debate, we finally agreed that we should at least go and make sure that the address she gave me was bullshit before we took the step of breaking into someone’s house for the sole purpose of surfing the web. Yeah, we were some serious tactical geniuses, for sure.
Breckenridge Estates was still mostly under construction, and only every fourth lot or so had a finished house on it. It wasn’t very large, either, and pretty much consisted of two long roads that curved off from either side of the entrance, each ending in a cul du sac—which, in a satellite photo, looked like a pair of ovaries. In between the “ovaries” was a swath of woods—green space that was probably used for drainage—which, in a satellite photo looked like, well, bush.
And the only reason I knew this was because Nick had somehow discovered it and made sure everyone else in the office saw it as well. To his credit, this was totally my level of humor, and I’d thought it was hysterically funny. But, hey, if not for that I wouldn’t have known where Breckenridge was and how it was laid out.
I shared my wisdom with Ed as he drove, deeply disappointed when he failed to see the extreme hilarity in the layout. Oh well, maybe it was something that had to be seen to be appreciated.
As we entered the subdivision Ed put his hand on his gun, and I slouched down in the front seat of the truck.
“There’s the address she gave me,” I said, peering up over the dash at the very ordinary brick ranch-style house. I frowned at the blue Mazda in the driveway. “And that’s her car.” Guess it wasn’t a bullshit address after all.
I started to tell Ed not to pull into the driveway, but he obviously had a healthy dose of common sense and simply drove on past the house. I didn’t see any movement behind the curtains as we drove by, but there were other ways for her to be watching out for us. Surely by now McKinney would’ve let her know I’d escaped. But would either of them be expecting me to come here?
“This could be another ambush,” I told Ed as we rounded the curve.
He gave a terse nod. “That occurred to me as well. There’s a bag behind the seat. Has night vision goggles in it. I’m going to park on the other side of that green space, and we can approach through the trees.”
I leaned over the back seat and saw a black nylon tactical bag. It was a lot heavier than I expected, and when I got a look at the contents I saw why.
“Holy shit, dude.” Not just night vision goggles, but also a variety of handguns, ammunition, road flares, and what looked like a stun gun. “Can I just say how glad I am that you’re doing the good guy thing right now?”
Ed smiled tightly, but shame flashed through his eyes. He parked the truck in an empty driveway in the left “ovary,” grabbed the bag and got out. I scrambled out after him, then had to struggle to keep up as he took off at a lope toward the trees. About a dozen feet into the woods he stopped and crouched, fished out a pair of the goggles and handed them to me. I took them gratefully since I could barely see my hand in front of my face.
The world leapt into green and black focus, just like in the movies. “These are so cool,” I breathed.
“Can you shoot a gun?” he asked.
“I’m not a great shot or anything, but I know which end to point at the bad guys,” I replied.
“Good enough.” He pressed the butt of a pistol into my hand. I couldn’t see details with the goggles on, but it wasn’t a very large gun. Some kind of automatic. Bigger than a .22 but smaller than a .45. And that was about the extent of my gun knowledge.
He began moving through the trees, and I followed, doing my best to be quiet but certain that we sounded like a pair of rampaging elephants. It probably took us close to fifteen minutes to get through the stretch of woods, part of which was a swampy s
ection that we had to wade through, soaking us to our knees. I kept scanning but didn’t see anyone lurking in the woods lying in wait.
We dropped to the ground a few feet from the other edge of the woods and watched the house for several minutes. Finally Ed turned to me and pulled his goggles off. “Too much light around the house for night-vision now,” he said in a barely audible voice. I quickly tugged mine off, then had to blink a few times to get used to normal vision again.
“I don’t see anyone,” I said, doing my best to match his low volume.
“Me neither.”
I took a deep breath. “I don’t smell anyone either.”
He shot me an uncertain look. I shrugged and smiled sweetly.
“Uh, okay,” he muttered. “Well, I think we should go for it.”
We shifted into crouches, then moved quickly through the back yard and pressed ourselves up against the house. I edged to the door and started to reach for the handle, but Ed grabbed my arm before I could touch it.
“No gloves,” he hissed, giving my hand a pointed look. I winced. Oh, yeah. Probably best not to leave fingerprints.
But he didn’t release my arm. “Look at the door frame,” he said.
I followed his gaze, cold settling into my gut at the scrape marks around the lock.
“Lock is broken,” he whispered, grim expression coming over his face. He gave the backyard another quick scan, then—since he did have gloves on—gently tugged the back door open.
“Stay here while I check it out,” he murmured.
“The fuck I will,” I shot back.
He gave me a sharp look. “You’re a big tough zombie,” he whispered. “How can you be afraid to be left out here alone?”
“’Cause I’m also a neurotic chick who’s already been attacked once today,” I whispered back with a scowl.
Angel Crawford #2: Even White Trash Zombies Get the Blues Page 18