He frowned. “In the middle of the swamp? Naked?” His expression abruptly turned stricken and all traces of humor vanished. “Oh, fuck, Angel, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to joke. Oh, man.”
I flushed and shook my head. “No, it’s okay. I . . . I wasn’t, um, attacked. At least that’s what the nurse in the ER said.” Monica’s words flashed through my head. I wasn’t raped. But I was drugged. I wouldn’t have gotten into his car, and I probably wouldn’t have overdosed. And I was attacked—turned into a zombie against my will. I sure as shit hadn’t been given a choice about that.
Ed was silent for several seconds, then nodded toward the printouts with the pictures. “May I look?”
I pushed them his way. “I haven’t done more than glance at them yet. But I haven’t found ‘Angel was here’ scrawled on the dashboard or anything.”
He chuckled, then started flipping through the pages. After about half a minute he paused, attention fixed on one picture. “It’s funny,” he said. “Marcus was on his way back out to help with the accident—after changing his shirt—when he saw you.”
“Like you said, I’m lucky,” I replied. Then I laughed. “If he hadn’t found me it probably would have been Detective Abadie. And he probably would have pushed me into the ditch!”
Ed’s expression stayed strangely sober. “How did you get the job at the Coroner’s Office, Angel?” he asked, not looking up. His voice sounded odd, as if he was working hard to keep control of himself.
I hesitated, briefly tempted to tell him the fiction about my probation officer arranging it. But I suddenly didn’t want to deal with evasions and lies. “I’m not really sure,” I admitted. “I, uh, got a letter telling me there was a job waiting for me. I asked around a bit, but the most I could find out was a rumor that someone with political connections arranged it for me.” I spread my hands and shrugged. “I don’t know why I would rate that, though. I wish I had a better answer for you.”
As I spoke, his face seemed to cave in, grief flooding in so intensely that it nearly took my breath away. I watched him, baffled. What memories could this picture be dredging up to make him look so stricken? And why would my explanation about my job seem to make it worse?
A few seconds later Ed took a shaking breath and set the picture down. The horrible grief in his eyes was gone, replaced by what looked like a weary acceptance.
“You okay?” I asked tentatively.
“I’m fine,” he said quietly.
“You don’t look fine,” I said, frowning. “Is something wrong?”
Lifting his gaze, he gave me a smile that completely lacked its usual spark. “I, uh, lost my parents in an accident like this. It just hit me all of a sudden.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, reaching to touch the back of his hand. “Is that why you became a paramedic?”
His eyes dropped to my fingers on his hand. He made no move to pull away but I had the weirdest impression that he wanted to. “I suppose you could say that,” he said. “When they died . . . it changed my outlook on a lot of things.” His gaze never shifted from where I was touching him. Suddenly self-conscious, I broke contact and pretended to scratch an itch on my arm.
“It’ll all be fine.” He took a deep breath, looked back up at me. “You’re right,” he continued, tapping the picture. “If you were in the car, you didn’t leave yourself a convenient note.” He glanced at his watch and grimaced. “Hey, uh, I really need to get on my way. Are you going to be here for a while?”
“Sure,” I replied. “You want me to give Marianne the keys?”
“If you could, that would be great,” he said, already getting up from the booth. He fished in his pocket then dropped the keys on the table. “I’ll see you soon,” he said without looking at me, then turned and walked away without another word. I watched him as he climbed into his truck and drove away, then pulled the picture to me—a shot of the blood-spattered interior of the car. Gruesome, to be sure. I shivered and rubbed my arms. It had to be torture for him to work accident scenes. I couldn’t imagine having a job that constantly reminded me of a tragedy in my life.
Marianne walked in a couple of minutes later, gaze scanning the diner. I gave her a wave as I held up the keys, and her expression cleared. She headed my way and slid into the booth, giving me a perky smile.
“So, Ed has you doing his grunt work now?” she asked with a chuckle.
“Yeah, I don’t mind,” I said. “You missed him by only a couple of minutes. He seemed to be in a real hurry to get out of here.” I paused. “He was looking at some of the pics from this accident and got real upset,” I grimaced. “I feel bad. If I’d known his folks died in a car wreck I wouldn’t have kept all these pics out on the table like this.”
A baffled look came over her face. “They didn’t die in a car wreck. Ed doesn’t like to talk about it, but the story I’ve always heard is that his dad was killed in a boating accident, and his mom committed suicide a few years later.”
“Oh,” I said, suddenly baffled as well. “Well, that’s pretty awful too.” So why did he lie to me? And if they didn’t die in a car crash, why did the picture of the blood in the car trigger such a reaction?
Marianne gave a sigh. “Look, sometimes he can be kind of moody. Whatever upset him probably had nothing to do with his parents at all. I think that sometimes he lets things from work get to him. He’s a fun and funny guy, but he also has a really big heart.” Then she grinned. “Almost as big as his stomach. That boy sure can put away some food.”
I smiled. “I’ve seen him eat. It’s a sight for the record books.” My gaze fell to the picture again. It was taken from the driver’s side and showed the front seats. I could see the passenger seatbelt dangling, obviously unused. Blood lay pooled in both seats, smeared across the doors and soaked into the carpet. It looked as if a pig had been slaughtered.
I jerked my head up to look at Marianne. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“I was saying how Ed can put away an entire pizza on his own,” she said with a laugh. “I always have to order a large one for him and a small one for me!”
Cold shock rippled over me. “Your dog, Kudzu, does it, um, stay in a pen or a kennel?”
Marianne gave me a perplexed look. “Huh? No, she has free run of the house. She’s very well-trained. She’s practically my baby. Why?”
“Pizza Plaza, right?”
The confusion on her face increased.
“When you order pizza, do you ever order from Pizza Plaza?” I asked as I threw the papers into a rough pile. I knew I sounded impatient and a little demanding but I suddenly didn’t have time for niceties.
“Yes.” Marianne narrowed her eyes. “Angel, what the heck is going on?”
I shoved the keys toward her. “I’m sorry. I really am. But I have to go.” I dropped a five dollar bill on the table to cover my coffee, grabbed the pile of papers, and dashed for the door.
I knew exactly what had happened that night. I knew who’d made me a zombie. And I knew who the zombie killer was.
Chapter 34
Herbert Singleton wasn’t a zombie—just an asshole who could only get laid if the girl was too wasted to say no. That piece of shit had slipped me some date rape drugs and taken me for a drive so he could score some one-sided action. I could be charitable and say that he hadn’t planned on dumping me out in the middle of nowhere after raping me—probably in some hotel room, or maybe some local parking lot. But when he saw I was starting to seize or have trouble breathing, he panicked and headed to someplace remote where he could dump my body.
The picture showed a fuckload of blood in the car. Yet the report said the driver had been ejected.
In other words, the report was wrong.
When Herbert lost it on that curve, neither of us were thrown from the car. Maybe Herbert was killed in the accident, but I was still alive—though pretty badly fucked up.
But there’d been someone else out there who’d either seen the accident or come upon it
before I managed to finish dying. Someone who knew me. Someone who thought that maybe I could use a second chance. Someone who made up a story about having to change his shirt so that he could get me away from the accident scene.
I drove like a bat out of hell with one hand on the steering wheel and the other working my cell phone. The dispatcher at the Sheriff’s Office refused to give me any of Marcus’s contact info at first. I finally told her I worked for the Coroner’s Office and lied and said I needed to get his cell phone number for a report. She reluctantly gave it to me but only after putting me on hold for an interminable length of time, during which I was pretty sure she called the Coroner’s Office to be sure I actually worked there and wasn’t some sort of psycho stalker chick who had a major crush on Marcus and was doing a really sloppy job of stalking him.
Okay, I probably did have a crush on him, but if I was going to stalk him I’d be a lot better at it than this.
I called Marcus, cursing when it went straight to voice mail. I left a message asking him to call me as soon as possible, stressing that it was really important. But I had a feeling I was wasting my breath. Somehow I suspected that Ed wasn’t going to give anyone the chance to warn Marcus that he was in danger. Ed—who somehow knew about zombies and who realized the pizza delivery guy was one when Marianne’s dog indicated that he was a corpse.
He’d seen the blood in the picture from the accident scene and realized that I had been in the car. He knew there was an explanation for how I’d survived, realized that Marianne’s dog had indicated on me because I was a corpse—not because I handled corpses. And that wasn’t the first time he’d found a zombie that way. He’d probably been part of that search team on Sweet Bayou Road when that teenager went missing, and Adam Campbell had been so hospitable to the search teams. At some point Ed saw Kudzu indicate on Adam.
Ed had also realized that there was only one person with the motive and opportunity to turn me into a zombie—one person who obviously also had the means to do so. And who had a relative with the connections and influence to get me the job I needed.
That explains the grief, I thought, sick with worry. He realized that Marcus—his best friend—is a zombie. And for some reason he feels compelled to kill zombies. I didn’t know why, but I knew I was right. But would Ed really be able to bring himself to kill his best friend?
That wasn’t something I was willing to gamble on.
Unfortunately, right now I was dead in the water. I didn’t know where the hell I was going. I had no idea where Marcus lived, and I was damn positive there was no way I’d be able to squeeze that info out of the dispatcher. I even called information, but I wasn’t very surprised to find he was unlisted and unpublished. There weren’t many cops who made it easy for people to find them. I could understand that, but right now it was pissing me the fuck off. Shit, at this point I wished I was a psycho stalker who followed him home from work and that sort of thing. At least then I’d know where he lived.
Wait. I was being stupid. I needed to slow down and think this through logically.
Marcus was off-duty. He was going to be off for the next couple of days. He and Ed were supposed to go hunting. Ed wasn’t going to chop his head off at his house. No, Ed would want to do it someplace remote, where he could find a way to make it look like an accident, or dispose of the body.
I drove to the library as fast as I could get away with. I’d learned a trick or two from working with Derrel, and the one that was most useful to me now was the trick about how to find information. I still wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer when it came to computers, but I was hoping I didn’t need to be.
There were several empty terminals in the library computer room which saved me the trouble of physically tossing someone off of one.The computer was slow as molasses, and I jiggled my foot impatiently as the website loaded, but thankfully the parish website had been designed with idiots like me in mind, and the link for the property tax search was clearly marked on a nice big button.
Pecking out the letters as quickly as I could, I typed I-V-A-N-O-V, praying that the uncle who owned the land they always went hunting on was on Marcus’s father’s side. If he had a name other than Ivanov, I was out of luck. And so was Marcus.
My luck held. There was a listing for an “Ivanov, Marcus.” But more importantly, there was also an “Ivanov, Pietro,” for a large chunk of property at the north end of the parish.
Fingers shaking, I pulled up Google Maps, stuck in the address of Uncle Pietro’s property, printed out the resulting map, and got the hell out of there.
I knew there was still a very real chance I was completely wrong, and Ed wouldn’t bother going all the way to the north end of the parish. It was quite possible that he was currently in the process of taking Marcus out to some nearby back road for some head-lopping. But if that was the case, I had no chance of finding them in time anyway. So I might as well commit to stopping him where I think he might be.
Yeah, I know, my logic left a lot to be desired. But my intuition screamed that I was on the right track. I knew the murder of a cop would be taken a hell of a lot more seriously than that of a pizza delivery guy, or a mortuary worker. It wasn’t fair, but it was the truth and Ed knew it, which meant that he needed to find some way to make it look like an accident. Like, say, on a hunting trip. In the middle of bum-fuck nowhere.
Before hitting the road I’d quickly made up two bottles of brain “slush.” Those were now filling the cup holders in the console, plus I had the cooler full of “brain food” in the back seat. Even though I was already pretty full up on brains, I went ahead and sucked down one of the slushies while I drove like a madwoman and prayed that there weren’t any state troopers on the back highways. I’d never gone this far overboard on brains before. It would have been an insane waste under normal circumstances, but right now I didn’t give a fuck about conserving my stash. I only wanted to be sure I was fully tanked up, but as soon as I tossed the empty bottle aside I discovered something amazingly cool. Suddenly my senses were sharper than they’d ever been in my life, and my reflexes could have given Dale Earnhardt a run for his money.
I grinned and increased my speed. Zombie super powers could come in handy at times.
It was a good thing I had those heightened reflexes and senses. If not for them, I’d have totally missed the twisted sign by the little dirt road. Slamming on the brakes, I somehow managed to wrench the car around in time to make the turn without going into the ditch.
I could see fresh tracks in the mud which relieved my worry that I might be headed in the wrong direction, but my poor little Honda shimmied and gave out some ominous noises as I forced it over the ruts and through puddles. This road was meant to be navigated by a truck with much higher clearance, and certainly not at the speeds I was attempting. I was barely a mile down the road when the car gave a sudden lurch into a rut, and I came up hard against the seat belt.
“No! Shit!” I jammed it into reverse, but I could hear the tires spinning. I was stuck, and good.
Shutting the engine off, I quickly thought through my options and plans. Hell, I didn’t have a plan other than “warn Marcus.” He was the one with the gun and the training and all that stuff.
But all of that would be useless unless I could actually warn him. There was no way he’d be expecting an attack from his best friend.
My eyes fell on the second bottle of brain slush. I twisted around to look at the cooler in the back seat.
I smiled my best bad-bitch smile. Oh, yeah. I was about to burn me some brains.
Chapter 35
I’ve never been anything remotely resembling “athletic.” I’m pretty sure the very few times in my life when I actually made myself run were only after much threatening from gym teachers—back when I still went to school and suffered such fates.
But if running had ever felt like this I don’t think I’d have ever stopped. I raced down the road like the mutant lovechild of a gazelle and a cheetah—far faster than I�
�d have been able to drive it, thanks to that second bottle of brains. Now I figured I had maybe ten more minutes at the pace I was going before I crashed and started to rot.
Luckily it was only about a minute later that I reached the large clearing at the end of the road. A couple of hundred yards away Marcus and Ed were busy loading gear onto two four-wheelers. Saving the day with brains to spare! I thought in euphoric glee.
They turned in unison at the sound of my running footsteps. Marcus’s eyes widened in surprise. “Angel! What on earth are you doing here?”
Ed looked surprised as well, but his expression quickly turned wary and for good reason. I was still running all out and had no intention of stopping until I’d knocked Ed on his ass. “Marcus!” I yelled as I charged toward them. “I know you’re a zombie and you made me! Ed does too and he’s—”
A loud bang slammed through the clearing, cutting off my words as I went crashing to the ground in an awkward flailing sprawl. Pain jabbed hard and deep, and I gasped raggedly as I struggled to get back to my feet. For some reason I couldn’t get a deep breath. The clearing swam around me as I scrabbled upright. I needed to warn Marcus and stop Ed. I needed to breathe. Why couldn’t I breathe?
I heard a second bang and something hit me hard in the chest. There was a sense of pain but it felt strangely removed. I coughed and blood bubbled out of my mouth, copper-metallic taste fading almost as soon as it hit my tongue.
Oh. That’s why I can’t breathe. I could only stare at the pistol in Ed’s hand as I sagged first to my knees, then onto my side on the ground. Color and sensation faded with the speed of a whirlwind. I made one more try to get enough breath to yell a warning to Marcus, but it wasn’t happening.
Marcus wasn’t stupid. The simple fact that Ed had shot me was warning enough. He lunged for the rifle on the four-wheeler with amazing speed, especially considering he had to be wondering what the fuck was going on.
But Ed already had his gun in his hand. I could see indecision sweep across his face, but in the next instant it was gone, replaced by rabid determination. He swung his arm around as Marcus’s hand closed on the rifle. Another shot slammed through the clearing, and for a split-second I thought Marcus had won and gotten his shot off first.
My Life as a White Trash Zombie Page 25