I squeezed my eyes shut and braced myself for the feel of the metal probes shooting into my skin, but before the guard could fire, Dr. Charish’s voice came over the speaker. “Stand down. Leave the subject as he is. We’ll come in to get our samples.”
Relieved, I opened my eyes and resisted the urge to stick my tongue out at the guard with the Taser. He looked more than willing to “accidentally” tase me. However, he stepped back, eyeing me with undisguised distaste. For the first time I realized that Philip and I weren’t exactly a pleasant sight. None of the blood had been cleaned up, and it was starting to congeal to a sticky mess. I swiped at my face with the back of one hand, grimacing as a thick smear of drying blood came away with it. I definitely looked like a monster now, I was sure of it.
Dr. Charish entered, flanked by two more guards. I quickly catalogued them—one had gorgeous blue eyes, and the other had a nose that had clearly been broken a few times.
“Angel, that was absolutely amazing,” she said, eyes shining with a fervor that seemed obscene considering the level of gore present in the room. “The way the parasite works is a study in brilliance. This…this is the work of a lifetime.” She dropped to a crouch beside me, ignoring the fuck off, bitch look I gave her. “I need to get samples from you both now.” She tilted her head. “Tell me, is your reluctance to let Philip go driven by the parasite? Does it feel like an instinctive need, or do you simply not want to be left alone in here?”
“Get the fuck away from us, you psycho bitch,” I snarled.
She reached a hand to Philip, then had to backpedal as I took a swing at her. “Fascinating,” she said with a breathless chuckle. “An attachment between parent and child would explain a great deal, such as why Marcus is so taken with you.”
I set Philip down and leaped over him in an explosive move that could only be accomplished with zombie super speed, and in the next breath I was on Dr. Charish with my hands around her throat.
Aaaaanndd…the next breath after that, I learned just how much it hurt to be tasered.
An eternity or so later the searing pain stopped. I moaned on the floor, distantly aware of a guard helping Dr. Charish to her feet. Shivers of pain echoed through my body, and I could still feel two sharp points where the probes had embedded themselves into my lower back.
“Angel, please,” Dr. Charish said, coughing a bit as she straightened her clothing. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
I let out a dry laugh. “A bit late for that, don’t you think?” Before I could think about it too much I grabbed the two wires and yanked the probes out of my skin. Pain flared briefly, but thankfully settled within a couple of seconds as my parasite worked to repair the damage. That’s a good little parasite, I silently crooned. Too bad a mild jab of hunger came along with the decrease in pain.
“Here’s what I don’t understand,” I said as I crabbed my way back toward Philip. “Why’d you have Ed kill those other zombies? Why not kidnap them the way you did me?”
“I had to prove my research had merit before I could get investors to commit the sort of risk and resources that holding a live specimen would entail,” she explained. “And, if you must know, I had actually intended to have Ed obtain a live zombie for us. But he inexplicably decided to drop out of sight before I could do so.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You called in the anonymous tip about him being the serial killer.”
“Yes. I couldn’t be sure what he was up to, and it was necessary to keep him out of the way. But, in all fairness, he was the serial killer,” she pointed out. “Now hold still while I get samples from both of you.” She cocked her head and gave me a thin smile. “Unless you enjoyed the Taser?”
I grudgingly extended my arm.
“You regrew the bodies from the heads he gave you,” I said.
“Just the one so far,” she corrected absently as she slid the needle into my vein and carefully drew the syringe until it was full of blood. “It takes an enormous amount of brains—and time—for the parasite to regenerate that much tissue.” She pulled the needle free and stuck a piece of gauze on the puncture site.
“Oh, I see,” I said. “You just did the one, but you didn’t have enough real brains, so you tried to use Sofia’s fake brains,” I said. “But something went wrong. That’s why Zeke looked so old and why he died when he fell.”
She let out a soft sigh as she repeated the blood-drawing routine on Philip. “That’s right. It mutated the parasite to where it couldn’t survive. The subject would have died soon even if he hadn’t fallen. But I’ve since modified the brain substitute formula to remove the chance of that sort of mutation happening again.”
“Zeke was trying to escape, wasn’t he?”
Her lips pressed together in annoyance. “Yes, which is why I’ve completely changed the protocols.”
Ha! I was right! Not that it made any difference at this point. But, still, Ha! I was right! “And what happened to the real Norman Kearny?”
She gave me a blank look. “Who…? Oh, right, the janitor. Quite dead and disposed of. Unfortunately for him he was the one person in our personnel files who was the right age to take the fall, so to speak, for the dead zombie, and who likely wouldn’t be missed.” She shrugged. “We didn’t have time to make up a whole new personnel record. Easiest to simply do a bit of identity-switching.”
Well, that explained why the guy at the lab had said there was an opening in the custodial department when I’d pretended to apply for a job. Poor Norman. The really shitty part was that he died for no reason since we figured it out anyway because of the wristwatch.
“At any rate,” she continued, “despite the problems, the regrowth of the zombie was enough to prove that the program had potential.”
“You used Ed,” I said. “You convinced him his parents had been killed by zombies so that he would start hunting them. You didn’t want to get your hands dirty hunting down zombies on your own.” I curled my lip in my best contemptuous sneer.
“Angel, I’m not much bigger than you. I don’t have the brawn, so I had to use the brains.” She tapped the side of her head. “Besides,” she said with a shrug, “it wasn’t a total lie. His dad was killed by a zombie.”
“Yeah yeah, I know,” I retorted. “Pietro was banging Ed’s mom, his dad found out, shot her, and then Pietro killed his dad. Then, since you worked with his mom, you had access to her notes and research.”
Dr. Charish sat back and regarded me with something that almost—almost—looked like respect. “My goodness. Marcus said you were clever. Perhaps I was wrong about why he wanted a relationship with you.”
Right then I silently vowed that at some point I would slug this bitch in the face, hard.
She spread her hands. “Anyway, yes, I approached Pietro and told him what I knew, convinced him that I wanted to continue Dr. Quinn’s research. I could see the greater potential even if he could not.” Her smile was chock-full of self-satisfaction. “Then I bided my time, waiting for the breakthrough that would make my plan possible.”
“Sofia’s artificial brains,” I said.
“Did you know Pietro paid for her entire education?” Dr. Charish asked. “Sofia had an interest in medicine, but he convinced her to go into neurobiology. Supported her the whole way, while making sure she specialized in fields that would benefit him.”
Okay, that was more than a little manipulative, but I already knew that about Pietro. “And you hired her to make sure you could keep an eye on her and what she was doing.”
“Of course,” she said. “And with Pietro’s blessing as well, since it kept her close.” She chuckled. “That made things much easier all around, since it can be unwise to cross that man.”
“I can’t wait to see what Pietro’s going to do to you,” I said.
She lifted an eyebrow at me. “Do to me? For what?”
“For crossing him,” I said. “He told me he’d never allow any of the zombies under his protection to be harmed in any sort of research.”
>
“Angel, I didn’t cross him.” She leaned in close and smirked. “He simply made an exception in your case.”
She chuckled at the stunned look on my face. “Can you blame him?” she asked with a tilt of her head. “He’s been grooming Marcus for bigger and better things for a long time now, and it didn’t take much persuasion on my part to convince him that the last thing he wanted was to see Marcus hooked up with barely literate trash.”
I felt as if a fist had closed around my chest. She stood and raked her gaze over me. “Let’s get you cleaned up and fed, shall we?” she said with a bright smile. “We need you at your best!”
With that she left the room, leaving me to stew in my hate and fear.
Chapter 26
Food was brought in for Philip and me, once again on plastic cafeteria trays. Cheeseburgers and fries this time, and, of course, a side of brains.
The amount of brains they were giving me was generous—which either meant they didn’t know how much I needed, or they expected me to burn them off. Considering how much Dr. Charish clearly knew about zombies, I had a bad feeling it was the second reason.
Philip twitched then went still again, eyes remaining closed. I had a feeling he was awake and was trying to get his bearings without giving himself away. And he’d have probably pulled it off if I hadn’t been paying close attention—also known as “bored out of my mind.”
“Hey, Philip,” I said. “There’s no one else in here or the observation room, but I’m sure they’re still monitoring us.”
He opened his eyes and looked at me. I allowed myself a moment of self-congratulation that I was right about him being wide-awake. He sat up, eyes flicking around the room, taking in the blood that covered the floor and us.
“There’s some food for you,” I said with a nod toward the second tray. “Brains too, which you’ll want to eat, I’m sure.”
A flicker of disgust passed over his face, and I almost laughed. “Yeah, I know,” I said. “But your instincts will take over quickly enough.”
“He shot me,” he said in a low voice. Frowning, he pulled his shirt up, but even through the dried and congealed blood it was obvious he was unwounded. He ran his hand over his chest. “That’s amazing.”
“Yeah, it’s fucking miraculous…as long as you’re tanked up.”
“Tanked up?” He gave me a puzzled look.
“Well fed on brains,” I explained.
“Ah. Well that shouldn’t be a problem,” he said.
I lifted an eyebrow. “Uh, right. Well, here’s the deal. The more you exert yourself, the more brains you’ll need. So your days of weight training and ten mile runs are over.”
His brows drew together as he opened his mouth to argue, but I cut him off. “You still don’t get it, do you?” I said. “You don’t need to do all that training anymore. The zombie part of you takes care of being strong and fast, and all it wants in return is brains.”
He considered that for a moment. “But if I had sufficient brains, I could train to improve, right?”
Frowning, I shrugged. “I guess. Honestly I have no idea. I’ve never been much of a fitness chick. And I’ve never had so many extra brains that I would’ve been able to test it out.” Not that I’d want to. I still had nightmares about high school phys ed class. I pulled the second tray over to him. “Here. You need to eat.”
He lifted the plastic fork, hesitated, then dug into the brains.
“Jesus,” he mumbled, an expression of bliss crossing his face.
I grinned. “Yeah. Crazy shit, huh?” I let him eat for a few minutes. “Why on earth would you volunteer for this?” I asked him when he was nearly finished with the contents of the tray. “Did you know what you were getting into?”
A faint smile twitched the corner of his mouth. “Well, I didn’t know I would be shot and then…”
“Eaten?”
“Well…yes.” A bit more of a smile revealed itself. Maybe this guy had a personality after all. “We were told it was an experimental program with a high risk of death.”
“Again,” I said, “why the hell would you volunteer for something like that?”
“Because we were also told that if the procedure succeeded we would be unstoppable.” He ran a hand over his chest again. “Invincible.”
I sighed and leaned back against the wall. “Dude, you really should’ve read the fine print. It’s all candy and roses as long as you have the brains, but just see how you feel after you’ve been without for a few days.” I picked at a flake of dried blood. “This is all about making super zombie soldiers or some shit, right?”
He frowned and didn’t answer, which was all the answer I needed. I smiled thinly. “You look like the kind of guy who’s been in the military.”
“Three tours in Iraq,” he answered gruffly.
“Okay, well, I imagine there’s lots of exertion, right? Now can you see yourself lugging a cooler of brains around with you…?” I trailed off. God, I was slow sometimes. Dr. Charish had found a better use for fake brains than feeding civilian zombies. Zombie super soldiers. Unstoppable and invincible.
Philip didn’t seem to notice my shift in mood. “They’ll take care of me. I have no doubt about that.”
The door swung open, and the man in the suit came in. “Yes, we’ll take good care of Philip,” he said, confirming my suspicion that they were constantly listening in. “In fact it’s time for him to come with us so that we can see what he’s capable of.” Philip scrambled to his feet and stood at attention. I rolled my eyes.
“Take him,” I said dully. “Happy fighting. Rah rah, and all that shit.”
They took me back to “my” room, let me shower the blood off, gave me fresh clothes to change into, then left me alone. I didn’t know what time of day it was or how much time had passed since I’d been taken, but I curled up on the narrow bed and fell asleep as soon as I closed my eyes.
It might have been half an hour or ten hours later that I woke up, but either way I felt fairly rested. I lay there quietly, ignoring my need to pee while I listened, doing my best to get some sort of clue as to where I was.
The place smelled like new paint, but beneath that there was a faint scent of rust and brackish water. My first instinct was to wonder if I was on a ship or barge or something, but if that was the case, I thought that surely I’d be able to feel some sort of motion or rocking, even if it was docked. Instead I could hear and feel an occasional low rumbling, as if a truck was driving by. Great, so I’m close to a road. Yeah, that really narrows it down.
It didn’t matter. The important thing was to break the hell out however I could. Then I could figure out where I was and how to get to safety.
And warn Marcus.
A fierce ache squeezed my chest at the thought of him. I still wasn’t completely certain of my feelings for him, and I knew it was far too soon to think about whether I was in love with him or anything like that. But I did trust him. We had issues to work out, but I was absolutely certain that he would never throw me under the bus. Pietro was the one who’d betrayed me. I didn’t fit into his bigger plan for Marcus and whatever schemes he had going.
I let out a low laugh. His bigger plan was tiddlywinks compared to what Dr. Charish was up to. I couldn’t imagine that he had any idea. He loved his power too much. There’s no way he’d want to have to answer to some government or corporate type.
The light abruptly increased. They knew I was awake. I sat up and raked my fingers through my hair as a guard I didn’t recognize entered with another tray. Brown eyes, mole on his chin. I mentally tallied the number of different faces I’d seen so far. At least half a dozen, plus Philip. Maybe not so low-budget after all?
There was a slice of brain on the tray again, which didn’t fill me with a warm fuzzy feeling. If they were feeding me so much it had to mean that they had more tests or other bullshit planned.
I ate quickly, then attended to my various personal needs. McKinney and two guards came in as I finished a
nd marched me across the hall again. For an instant I thought perhaps it was a different room, because every speck of blood had been cleaned up. But no.
Dr. Charish was on the other side of the big window, of course, as well as two other lab-coated people I hadn’t seen before. The blue-suited man wasn’t there. Beside Dr. Charish was a new observer: mid-forties perhaps, dark-skinned with an angular face, wearing a black suit that was a somewhat nicer cut than blue-suited guy. I got the unmistakable impression that this was who Dr. Charish was working with. Or for. This was who was really interested in this whole super zombie soldier thing.
“Morning, Doc,” I said, baring my teeth at her. “Who’s your new pal?”
“Good morning, Angel,” her voice came through the speaker above me. “I trust you slept well?”
“Like the dead,” I answered.
She chuckled low in her throat. “Funny. Well, let’s see what you can do for us today.”
The door opened. A sick feeling began in my gut that increased to near panic levels as McKinney and a black man in white t-shirt and grey sweat pants walked in.
Clenching my fists by my sides, I watched in helpless rage as McKinney pulled his gun.
“No, not again,” I pleaded. I looked over at the doctor. “I can’t do this again!”
“Well, you’ll need to give it the old college try then.” The doctor’s voice chirped from the speaker. “Oh, wait. You didn’t go to college, did you?”
Fury burned through the sick feeling. I’d never killed anyone in my life, but I was more than ready for her to be the first. “Don’t shoot him,” I pleaded with McKinney. “You don’t have to do that. I swear I’ll try.” I turned to the new dude. “You do know that’s what he was going to do, right? He shot the last guy on the gamble that I could turn him into a zombie.”
The new guy’s expression didn’t shift, but I saw a muscle in his jaw leap. “Yeah,” I continued. “That’s right. You have to die for this to work.”
McKinney lifted his gun, pointed it at my head. “He knows how the soldier program works. Just do it.” Except he slurred the word soldier oddly.
Even White Trash Zombies Get the Blues wtz-2 Page 22