Even White Trash Zombies Get the Blues wtz-2

by Diana Rowland

  And then I’m fucked. Unless Sofia manages to get her fake brain formula right by then.

  Why the hell had I gone off on Allen like that? Yeah, sure, the whole “leave without pay” thing was bullshit, but at least it would’ve most likely been temporary. Life was full of bullshit, and sometimes it was smarter to suck it up and wait for a better opportunity.

  With a sense of complete despair paired with a fair amount of self-loathing, I shut and locked the freezer and the storage unit. I stopped at the first store that sold cheap clothing, bought a t-shirt, and changed out of my coroner’s office shirt. I briefly considered chucking it into the trash, but then changed my mind and shoved it into the trunk of my car. I really had loved the job, and just because Allen and the coroner were jerks didn’t mean I needed to scrub it from my entire life.

  Now if I could only find something that would help take my mind off the complete clusterfuck my life had become.

  I couldn’t get drunk. Drugs didn’t work on me anymore. Even cigarettes did nothing but burn my brains up and make me feel dead. And for that matter, even feeling dead wasn’t an escape since it always came with a hunger that wouldn’t go away until it was satisfied.

  In other words, being bummed and depressed as a zombie sucked complete ass.

  I finally stopped driving and pulled into the parking lot of Lou-Ann’s Café. That was one thing the morgue job had been good for—after so many months of working odd hours I knew where all the good greasy spoons were. Not to mention which ones had bathrooms that were fairly clean.

  Lou-Ann’s had decent bathrooms, and more importantly, a really good key lime pie that would have to be my substitute for drugs and alcohol. I sat at the counter and ignored everyone else around me while I focused on enjoying every bite of the damn pie. I was vaguely aware that someone sat next to me and did his best to hit on me, but I ignored him and kept eating and eventually he got the message and slunk off.

  The waitress didn’t make any attempt to engage me in conversation, which I appreciated more than she could possibly know. I made sure to give her an insanely large tip, and when I headed out I was somewhat calmer. And fuller. And at least I didn’t have to worry about diabetes.

  I was nearly to my car when I heard an aggravatingly familiar voice from behind me. “Look who it is—the cunt from the newspaper.”

  Looking back, I saw Clive’s sneering face. I was pretty sure he hadn’t been in the café while I was there, so I figured he was on his way in. “Get it right, Clive,” I said. “It’s ‘fucking bitch.’”

  He snorted. “I’ll just go with fucking loser. It’s only a matter of time before you end up back in jail, y’know.”

  I rolled my eyes and continued to my car. I’d just opened the door when he spoke again.

  “Maybe you can share a cell with that fuckup loser of a dad you got.”

  Goddammit, but I was getting really sick of people shitting on me and my dad. I stopped, turned, made a quick scan of the parking lot then took two steps toward him. “What did you say?”

  Clive’s mouth spread into a sneering grin. He straightened his shoulders as he closed the distance between us, deliberately flexing and pushing his chest out a bit—which almost made me laugh. I weighed barely a hundred pounds. He was bowing up to me?

  “I said your dad’s a fucking loser—”

  That was all he got out before my fist connected with his face as hard as I could manage. I wasn’t full up on brains, but I was pretty damn close, and I was able to hit him hard enough to send him reeling back, clutching at his nose.

  “You fucking bitch!” he screeched as blood began to fountain through his fingers. “You broke my fucking nose!”

  I grimaced and looked down at my right hand. I’d never really learned how to punch, and it showed. Two of the bones in my hand were clearly bent at angles that weren’t supposed to be there, and blood seeped from a wide cut across my knuckles. It hurt like fuck-all but even as I peered at it, the pain began to fade to a dull background ache.

  Clive let out a wheezing noise that I suddenly realized was him laughing. “You stupid bitch,” he gurgled through his bloody fingers. “I’m calling the cops. I’m pressing charges. And your loser ass will be going back to jail.”

  I lifted my eyes to his. “Okay. Call them,” I said, absolutely loving how calm I sounded. “I’ll wait right here.”

  Clive fumbled his phone out of his pocket. I watched him thumb nine-one-one on the keypad, listened to him tell the dispatcher that he’d been attacked and was holding the perpetrator—me—and needed the cops to come so that I could be properly arrested. While he did this, I casually reached into my car and pulled my bottle of brain smoothie out of the cup holder. I took several long gulps, resisting the urge to grin as I felt the bones pulling back together.

  “Don’t you fucking try and run from me, bitch,” Clive told me after he disconnected. “They said they have a unit right around the corner.”

  I shrugged and took another pull from the bottle. Might as well finish it off just in case he decided he didn’t want to wait for the cops and would rather take his fury out on me in person. I was careful to hold the bottle in my left hand, and deliberately kept my right cradled against me to make it look as if it was still hurt.

  He fumbled his car open and snagged a towel out of the backseat, held it to his face. “Then again,” he said, “maybe you should run.” He let out a nasty laugh. “Y’ever been tasered? I’d fucking pay money to see that.”

  I set the empty bottle back in the cup holder. A quick glance told me that there was still a smear of blood on my knuckle, which I left there for now. But when the two sheriff’s cars pulled into the parking lot, and Clive took his eyes from me, I took that chance to quickly lick the blood off. Gross, I know, but I didn’t want to wipe the blood on my clothes anywhere it might show.

  I vaguely recognized the deputies who stepped out, but I doubted that they could do the same with me since I wasn’t dressed in my coroner’s office gear anymore. I didn’t say anything while Clive indignantly told them the story of how I’d hauled off and slugged him. He actually stayed pretty close to the truth, probably because it really didn’t need any sort of elaboration. He knew perfectly well that even a misdemeanor battery arrest would violate my probation. And, with the damage to his nose, it could possibly even be considered a felony.

  The two deputies listened to his account with the occasional glance toward me, clearly thinking something on the order of, “this tiny thing broke your nose?” But they let him finish before turning to me.

  “He made the whole thing up,” I said before they could speak. “I was out here making a phone call when he came stumbling around the corner with a bloody nose, then he started babbling about how I’d hit him.”

  Clive puffed up. “Oh yeah? Check her hand! She broke her fucking hand on my nose!”

  I locked eyes with Clive and extended both my hands to the deputies. I didn’t say a word while they carefully examined my knuckles, fingers, and the condition of the various bones.

  They exchanged a look, then turned back to Clive. “Not a damn thing wrong with her hands, sir,” one said. “There’s no possible way she punched you—and certainly not hard enough to break your nose. Why don’t you tell us what really happened?”

  Things really went downhill for Clive after that, though for me it was a truly beautiful thing. I watched in serene glee as he argued, then frothed, then, when they attempted to cite him for disturbing the peace, he fought, which earned him the tasering he’d taunted me about.

  And, on top of all that, they found steroids and painkillers in his vehicle—enough to get him charged with possession with intent to distribute.

  All in all it was the best high I could have ever asked for.

  Chapter 19

  As I drove home, distant flashes of lightning were putting on a spectacular show in the clouds to the west. And, at least for the moment, I was in the perfect mood to appreciate the beauty of it. Ev
ery time I started to think about how badly I’d screwed the pooch with my job, I summoned up the memory of Clive shrieking like a little bitch as the Taser probes hit him. Yeah, I’d lectured my dad about being forgiving and all that shit, but sometimes forgiveness was overrated.

  My phone rang, and I was more than a little surprised to see that it was Sofia. I made a face, regretting my decision to actually put her number into my contacts list. I was in a really good mood right now, and I doubted that she had anything to say to me that would keep that good mood going. And I sure as hell didn’t want to get sucked into a “Let’s do coffee” date or something equally lame. Therefore, I channeled my pettiness and immaturity and let it go to voicemail. That was a decent compromise, right? I was willing to listen to a recording of her. I simply didn’t want to actually talk to her.

  I waited for the ding that would tell me I had a new voicemail, but instead my phone rang—Sofia again. I sighed, dialed down my pettiness, and answered.

  “Angel, I need your help!” she gasped. “Oh my god, I don’t know who else to turn to. I can’t reach Marcus, and there’s someone outside of my house and—”

  “Whoa, wait! Sofia, slow down. Marcus is in Lafayette. What the hell is going on?”

  I heard her take a shuddering breath. “I think I’m in danger. I keep hearing sounds outside my house.”

  “Have you called the cops?” I asked.

  “Yes!” she wailed. “I called them, and two cops came and they checked around the house and they said they didn’t see anything. But ten minutes after they left I started hearing it again. I…I think someone is maybe just trying to scare me.” She gulped. “And they’re succeeding. I know we barely know each other, but is there any way you could…come over here?”

  You have got to be kidding me, I thought with unchecked annoyance.

  “Please,” she said, voice cracking. “I know it’s stupid, but I’d feel so much safer if…if you could come by for a bit. The cops won’t stay but…”

  But I’m a zombie and hard to kill and could actually offer a bit of security. I sighed. “Okay.” Shit. When did I become so nice? “Where do you live?”

  “Oh my god, thank you thank you! I live in Breckenridge Estates. I’ll text you the address.”

  I racked my brain for where the hell that was. Oh yeah, it was a new subdivision out off Highway 1790. “Okay, I’m probably only about ten minutes away.”

  “I’ll be watching for you. Honk when you pull up, okay?” she said. “I don’t even want to peek out the window at this point.”

  I bit back a frustrated sigh. “Sure. See you soon.” And then I disconnected before I could be pulled into more paranoid angst.

  But is it really paranoia? I had to wonder. There was definitely some weird shit going on. And if I had to be honest with myself, my dislike of her stemmed mostly from our encounter at Pietro’s…and, if I really had to continue being honest with myself, from my jealousy of her and her friendship with Marcus, even though I didn’t believe for a second that the two were anything more than friends. Didn’t matter. I envied their closeness, however platonic it was.

  I mused on this as I drove—easy enough to do since there wasn’t much else to occupy my attention out here. Highway 1790 ran from one end of the parish to the other, with a big stretch in the middle through woods and swamp that I affectionately called Bum-Fuck Nowhere. Back in my don’t-give-a-shit days, I used to come out here and get whatever car I was driving to its top speed—which was awesome when I was in a Camaro that Randy had been fixing up, but was pretty damn lame in my Honda.

  I didn’t stick strictly to the speed limit, but I did my best not to go more than ten miles per hour over. Which was probably a damn good thing when I saw something shimmering in the road ahead of me. Unfortunately I was still almost on top of it before I saw the glint of spikes.

  I slammed on the brakes out of pure instinct, but I was already too close for that to do any good. A second later the road spikes ripped through my front tires with a bang that I felt as much as heard, quickly replaced by the shriek of metal on pavement and the thump of rubber slapping the side of my car.

  I fought the steering wheel and pulled the car over to the side of the road, gasping raggedly in reaction. What the fuck? Why would police spikes be out here with no cop car in sight? No cop car means it’s not cops, I told myself. I was on a straight and empty stretch of road with at least fifty feet of knee-high grass on either side before it turned into scrub marsh and scattered trees. A perfect ambush spot. I needed to get the hell out of there, and my only option was to run for it and hope to lose whoever was after me in the marsh. Gators. Giant Squid. Oh, man, this is gonna suck.

  My purse was god-only-knew-where on the floor, along with my phone. I automatically reached for the water bottle of brain smoothie, cursing as I remembered that I’d finished it off after punching Clive and hadn’t replaced it. I was still pretty tanked up, but it sure would have been nice to have some extra on hand. ’Cause I had a feeling I was about to burn up a whole lot.

  Bolting out of the car, I took off at a sprint for the woods on the other side of the highway. I heard a gunshot and bit back a screech of panic as I increased my speed. But the next gunshot came with a searing pain in my left calf that sent me sprawling into an awkward tumble on the asphalt.

  It’s Ed. My thoughts whirled frantically as I stumbled back to my feet and started running again. He’s finally come back to finish me off.

  I could hear footsteps behind me, the loping pace of someone who knows that they don’t need to run their prey down. Something hard hit me in my lower back, and I fell again, landing heavily on my hands and knees in the gravel of the highway shoulder. Pain flared briefly, but then it faded to a dull sense of pressure even as everything around me shifted to a greyscale monotone. I could still see and hear and smell, but it was as if everything was abruptly dialed back to the absolute basics. This gunshot wound was obviously a lot worse, and my body was abandoning all those extra resources right now. I wanted to scream at it that it needed to put all the energy into my legs, because once my head got chopped off it wouldn’t make a difference.

  I managed to get to my feet again and resumed my race to the woods in what was now an awkward shambling jog.

  “Oh, please don’t make me chase you down,” my pursuer called out.

  That’s not Ed, I realized in cold shock, though I didn’t slow down. That was McKinney. What the hell?

  “I have no intention of killing you,” he continued. I risked a glance back. He was a good fifty feet from me, still on the other side of the highway. He’d probably been hiding in the grass. And now I could see a dark car parked a distance away, almost invisible in the gloom. “Right now I’m simply trying to slow you down and weaken you,” he said. “If you resist, I’ll have to keep shooting you, so I suggest you stop and come along quietly.”

  Like that was going to happen, I thought grimly, then jerked as something punched me in the back again. I stumbled to my knees, breath coming in a rasping growl. I looked back at him as he stepped onto the highway. Hunger snarled and flailed as what I now knew was my parasite clamored for resources to repair the damage. Could I take him? How many more bullets would he be able to pump into me before I reached him? Too many. No, my instinct breathed, let him come to you. Then I could put everything into one last attack…I could smell his brain. That’s what I needed to survive this.

  The sudden roar of a car engine and the sound of more gunshots slashed through my grotesque plotting. McKinney jerked and collapsed as time seemed to slow—or maybe it was my perceptions that were completely screwed. It felt like I only had time to blink once as a black Dodge Charger screeched to a stop between McKinney and me. The driver darted out, and I barely had time to grunt in surprise before he scooped me up, threw me over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry, then dumped me into the backseat of his car. In the next instant he was back in the driver’s seat and flooring the gas pedal. I thought I could hear some m
ore gunshots, but at the speed my unexpected savior was going, I knew we wouldn’t be in range for long.

  I curled up on the back seat to stay out of the line of fire, but also to give me a few seconds to fight back the hunger. I could smell my rescuer’s brain, but there was still enough of Me in control to know I was better off letting him live. As soon as I was fairly sure that I wasn’t going to attack the driver, I struggled upright. I looked behind us, but I couldn’t even see my car anymore.

  “I don’t know who you are, but you saved my ass back there,” I rasped. God, my voice sounded like hell. I peered at the back of the driver’s head. “So, who the hell are you, and how did you know my ass needed saving?”

  The driver let out a low sigh. “Hi, Angel. Long time no see.”

  If I’d been able to feel anything, I’m sure I would have felt as if ice had been poured over me. The man who’d just saved me from whatever fate McKinney had in store for me was Ed.

  Great. If this isn’t out of the frying pan and into the fire, I don’t know what is.

  I was pretty sure I could survive jumping out of a car going at—I glanced at the speedometer—ninety-three miles an hour. It would suck giant donkey balls, but with enough brains I’d recover. But I’m already in bad shape.

  “Please don’t jump out of the car, Angel,” Ed said, obviously knowing what my reaction to seeing him would be. “I’m not going to kill you, I swear.”

  I paused in my reach for the handle. “Why the hell should I believe you?” Or better yet, why shouldn’t I let the hunger have its way?

  He slowed to make a turn, then sped up again, carefully checking his rearview mirror. “I need to talk to you.”

  “About what?” I asked, distrust thick in my voice.

  He licked his lips. “About…you, and Marcus…and Marianne.” He looked at me in the mirror. “I didn’t kill her, Angel. I swear I didn’t.”

  “I know,” I said without thinking. “I mean…I had a hard time believing you did. It didn’t make sense for you to kill her.” I ran a hand over my torso. There were two wounds on my stomach where the bullets had exited, but I wasn’t bleeding anymore. That wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Especially since I was extremely aware that there was a nice healthy brain in the car with me. “Ed, you need to let me go. I’ve been shot.”