Even White Trash Zombies Get the Blues

Chapter 2

“I know I’m the one with the so-called iron stomach,” I said, “but even I think this is seriously disgusting.”

I was under the floor with my head and shoulders in a narrow service tunnel-type thing, just far enough to where I could barely peer around the corner where another tunnel intersected the one I was in. There was a corpse in the tunnel on the left. I couldn’t see a whole lot, but I could definitely smell it, even through the protective mask that kept me from choking on the grit and dust. So could everyone else.

“Flashlight?” I asked, reaching my hand blindly behind me. Someone shoved one into my hand, but the light only confirmed what my nose had tried to tell me. He was about ten feet down—bloated up and completely filling the tunnel. Considering that the tunnel was barely two feet across at best, I had to wonder what could have possessed him to try to squeeze through this narrow space. One arm was extended over his head, and the other looked to be wedged tight by his side. A pool of reddish purge fluid extended several inches along the shaft—a disgusting reddish brown discharge from the mouth and nose. A shiver ran through me at the sight of his mangled fingertips and thin streaks of blood along the side of the shaft. He’d done his damnedest to claw his way out or shift position. Did he suffocate or did he die of thirst? God, I hoped it was the first.

I worked as a van driver and morgue assistant for the St. Edwards Parish Sheriff’s Office which meant I’d seen plenty of death. Most of the time the job was pretty straightforward—someone would die in their home or in an accident, a death investigator and I would come out, the investigator would do his or her thing, and then I would get the body into a body bag and bring it to the morgue where later I would assist the pathologist during the autopsy. It was nasty, smelly, sticky, and sometimes obscene and heartbreaking.

But I loved it. And not just because it provided me easy access to the brains I needed in order to stay…well, “alive” wasn’t the right word. “Nicely undead”? “Not rotten”?

I shivered again, though this time from cold. It was early December, and while it rarely got cold enough to make a northerner twitch, I’d lived in south Louisiana my entire life, and anything below fifty degrees was unbearably chilly for me. Besides, we had plenty of humidity, which meant it was cold and damp. And yes, I was a weenie.

I shimmied my way back out and climbed up through the gap in the flooring. “Look, that whole section is going to have to come apart,” I told Derrel Cusimano, the death investigator I worked with. “There’s no way I can pull him out. He’s stuck.” Supposedly these tunnels had originally been used to route steam pipes throughout the decrepit building we were in, but the factory had been retrofitted numerous times over the last seventy-five years; old pipes had been ripped out and new pipes had been laid, carrying everything from water to data lines. Not all of the old pipes had been removed, either, and I had a feeling that was how my dead guy had managed to get himself nicely stuck. I swept my gaze over the floor. Supposedly, sections of the floor had been designed to be easily removed for access to the tunnels, but renovations and construction had covered most of the flooring with tile or linoleum, which meant that getting to the body was going to require some strong hands and possibly heavy machinery. At least it wasn’t behind a wall. That would have been a disgusting nightmare.

Derrel let out a sigh. “Well, it was worth a try. Fortunately you could get far enough in to see.”

I snorted. “Dude, I don’t think you could even get your head in there.” I worked with Derrel for at least ninety-nine percent of the calls I went out on, but we couldn’t be more different in appearance. He was a former linebacker for LSU. Big, bald, black—a solid wall of meat and muscle. Meanwhile, I was a skinny white chick who had to jump up and down on the scale to get it to register more than a hundred pounds.

He chuckled. “That’s exactly why I need an elf-sized partner.”

“Yeah, well you won’t catch me making toys or cookies.” I tried to dust myself off then gave up. This whole place was so filthy I was only rearranging the dirt and sending it up into choking clouds. I wanted badly to put on my jacket, but I didn’t want to get it messed up, either from dirt or bodily fluids. “How the hell did anyone know there was a dead guy in there?” I asked.

“This place just got bought, and workmen came in to do some cleanup and construction.” He gave a sweeping gesture at “this place.” We were in a factory on the banks of the Kreeger River just south of Tucker Point. In fact, the building was literally on the edge of the river, forming part of the seawall, and the straight drop had surprised me when I’d dared to peek out a window. Supposedly, it had been some sort of big-time car manufacturing plant in the 1920s or 30s and had then been any number of other things, including a warehouse, a movie studio, a factory again—this time for military vehicles—and then some sort of shipping facility. It had been rebuilt and renovated each time, which meant that it was now a bizarre mix of old and new, with nothing really fitting together properly and whole areas that didn’t seem to connect to anything else. I’d had to walk through a defunct office section to get to this portion of the warehouse, and while nothing about a dead body could freak me out anymore, the peeling paint, abandoned office furniture, and broken windows had given me the godawful willies. I figured if zombies could be real, then there was nothing to say that ghosts couldn’t be too.

“Anyway,” he said, “the workmen smelled something funny. One of the guys was convinced it was more than just a dead rat and called the cops.”

I nodded. There was something about “dead human” smell that was different than “dead rodent” smell.

“Cops could smell it too,” Derrel went on, “so they called out Marianne and her cadaver dog. The dog went right to that spot in the floor and stared down at it. Bingo.”

“Cool,” I said, keeping my voice neutral as I scanned the warehouse for the petite woman and her dog. I spied her sitting on the steps to what had probably once been the foreman’s office. I quickly looked away before she could see me looking at her and make eye contact. I wasn’t quite ready to talk to her yet. What the hell was I supposed to say?

Derrel frowned at the opening in the floor, seemingly oblivious to my angst about Marianne. “Just wish I could figure out why the hell this guy decided to climb through there.”

“Stealing copper, probably,” I said.

He turned to me, lifted an eyebrow.

I grinned. “Not that I would know anything about any sort of larceny—” I chose to ignore his amused snort. “—but copper is pretty damn valuable, and I bet this guy was trying to use the tunnels to get into one of the closed-off sections in case there was any scrap metal he could go through.”

Derrel pursed his lips and nodded. “It’s amazing the things I learn from you.”

“I’m full of useless knowledge.”

Now was the time for people with more brawn than I to take care of dismantling the floor. I stepped back and found a spot to wait that wasn’t in too many shadows, then had to bite back on a squeal as a hand came down on my shoulder. I spun to see Detective Ben Roth standing beside me.

He gave me a grin. “Damn, Angel, when are you going to put some meat on your bones?”

“When you make me a sandwich, bitch,” I retorted as I worked to get my pulse under control.

He snorted. “It wouldn’t help. I’ve seen you eat. You must have the metabolism of a goddamn hummingbird.” He grinned and patted the spare tire at his waist. “I’m more of a penguin myself. But, hey, this penguin can bench his bodyweight and pass the departmental PT test with flying colors.”

“And eat an entire muffaletta in one sitting,” I added.

“I excel at the important things!”

“Yeah, well, I’d kill to have something resembling curves,” I said, patting my nonexistent ass. The main reason I could stuff my face all I wanted was because, as far as I knew, I couldn’t get fat. And not because of an amazing metabolism, either. Okay, that was probably part of it, but some of it was due to the fact that I wasn’t—technically—alive.

He chuckled and dropped his hand, but then his expression grew more sober. “I guess you’ve heard about Ed?” he asked.

“Marcus told me earlier this week.” I did my best to keep my expression neutral with maybe a touch of “damn that’s fucked up” in it.

Ben blew out his breath. “I guess I should be glad that we have such a strong lead on who the murderer is, but it doesn’t do us much good with him still in the wind.”

I gave a cautious nod. “You think maybe he’s in the area?”

“Nah. I think he’s long gone.” He grimaced. “Marcus is taking it hard though.”

My gaze drifted to where the deputy stood on the other side of the long room. Marcus Ivanov looked like he’d stepped from the pages of an ad for “Hot Russian Men!” if such an ad existed. Dark hair and eyes, tall with just the right amount of muscle and barely an ounce of spare fat. But beyond the awesome good looks, right now he looked like one would expect a man to look who’d recently found out that his best friend was most likely one of the most notorious serial killers this area had ever experienced: shattered, maintaining a tough façade, determined to get through the whole ordeal with the help of his friends and coworkers.

I had to hide a smile. Deputy Marcus Ivanov deserved an Oscar for the performance he was giving.

Two weeks ago Marcus’s best friend, Ed Quinn, had disappeared during their annual hunting trip. At least that’s the story Marcus had given the authorities when the two of us returned to town. The reality was quite a bit harsher. Ed was a zombie hunter who’d been methodically hunting down zombies and chopping their heads off. After discovering that Marcus and I were also zombies, he’d tried to kill us as well. I’d saved Marcus’s life and defeated Ed…and then gave Ed a choice: he could run, or I could eat him. Well, eat his brain. And I probably wouldn’t have actually killed him and eaten any part of him, but Ed hadn’t known that.

Needless to say, he’d decided to run. Marcus and I did our best to make it look like the two men had become separated in the woods, and then we returned to civilization and dutifully reported Ed missing. It probably hadn’t been the best possible plan, but it was the best we’d been able to come up with considering the circumstances.

The one part of it that we’d both hated was the fact that a search party would have to be organized, and we’d have to play along with it while money and resources were spent on a pointless search. But at the last minute providence smiled upon us. Before the first man-hour could be wasted tromping through the woods, activity was discovered on Ed’s credit cards. Moreover, surveillance video clearly showed him at a local sporting goods store purchasing camping and hunting equipment as well as an eyebrow-lifting amount of ammunition.

At that point the entire thing had been viewed as out of character for Ed, but the authorities had no choice but to simply shrug and chalk it up to a possible early mid-life crisis. After all, there was nothing illegal about a grown man suddenly deciding to go on an extended camping or hunting trip. But a few days ago an anonymous caller tipped off the cops that Ed was responsible for the recent series of decapitation murders. Within no time at all search warrants were obtained, and incriminating evidence in the form of bloodied clothing was found in his apartment.

But the real mystery was that Marcus had sworn up, down, and sideways that he hadn’t called in the tip. And I certainly hadn’t. So who the heck could have known Ed was the killer? And, more importantly, did they know that the victims were zombies?

“It’s tough for Marcus,” I told Ben. “He’s known Ed most of his life. I just hope Ed is really gone.” I gave a shudder that I didn’t have to fake.

Ben scowled. “Yeah, well I want to catch him before he does it again.” He muttered a curse. “It fucking kills me that he was under our noses this entire time.”

I didn’t trust myself to speak so I simply gave him a sympathetic grimace as guilt curled through me. I’d let him go. And I wasn’t so convinced Ed was long gone. I’d scared him off, but I found it hard to believe that he would have picked up and relocated, leaving two “monsters” like Marcus and me to roam free.

Despite my reluctance I found myself looking over toward the cadaver dog and handler who’d been called in to help locate the source of the dead body smell. The petite woman was still sitting on the steps to the foreman’s office, her dog sitting patiently at her feet. Part of me wanted to avoid talking to her at all costs, but I knew that was the coward’s way out. And while I was really damn good at being a coward, I was trying hard to change my ways. Besides, this woman sure as hell didn’t deserve to be shunned by me or anyone else simply because she was Ed’s girlfriend, and I knew she was having a tough enough time of it as it was.

Forcing a friendly smile onto my face, I made my way over to Marianne. The sun was low enough in the sky to paint a broad swath of the floor in jagged shadows as it filtered through broken and grime-streaked windows, and I had to shield my eyes from the glare of the sun off the river as I approached.

She looked up as I neared, eyes wary and haunted.

“Hey, Marianne,” I said. “Hey, Kudzu,” I said to the dog as I scratched its head. It gave me what had to be a puzzled look. Kudzu was a cadaver dog, and I had a feeling I confused the hell out of it. I smelled dead, yet I kept moving around.

“Hi, Angel,” the dark-haired woman replied, wariness fading slightly.

“How you holding up?”

“Shitty,” she said with a wavering smile. “But at least they seem to be done questioning me.”

I gave a grimace of sympathy. “Yeah, Marcus had to go through that as well.” It only made sense that, as soon as Ed was established as a suspect, the people closest to him should be grilled in case there was anything they could add to the investigation and search for him. I could only imagine that it was even harder for Marianne since they surely had to wonder if she’d been involved in any way. But apparently she’d requested to take polygraphs and voice stress analysis or whatever the heck was used nowadays in order to prove her innocence, and it had been enough to clear her of any suspicion.

Personally, I was relieved that she didn’t seem to be involved. I didn’t know her all that well, but from what I’d seen she seemed to be a genuinely nice person. It was bad enough that I’d been snowed by Ed. If Marianne had also turned out to be a zombie killer I’d have been seriously pissed.

A loud crash made us both jump. I spun to see that the workmen had peeled up an entire section of flooring and tossed it aside. “Time for me to get back to work,” I said. On impulse I leaned in and gave her a quick hug. “Hang in there. Shit gets better.”

She seemed shocked at first, then relaxed and returned the hug. When I released her she gave me a grateful smile. “Thanks, Angel. Maybe we can do lunch or something sometime…?”

“I’d like that,” I replied, only lying a little. I’d feel much better about hanging out with her once I knew for certain Ed wasn’t lurking somewhere close.

Squaring my shoulders, I made my way back to help separate the corpse from the wreckage. At least I had the legendary iron stomach going for me.