How the White Trash Zombie Got Her Groove Back

Chapter 30

I blinked awake to a streetlight glowing against a night sky beyond the window. A low rumble I felt more than heard told me we weren’t far from train tracks, and soft classical music drifted from the dining room, a piece I recognized as one of Dr. Nikas’s favorites for busywork when he used his hands more than his head. A glance at a clock on the wall told me I’d only slept a couple of hours or so, but to my relief I felt surprisingly refreshed. Dr. Nikas made some damn good zombie drugs. I didn’t even mind the metallic tang that still clung from his spicy fruity sedative concoction. That stuff would be useful to have back home after a long night on call for the morgue, I mused, then grimaced at the streetlight. If I ever got back home to work and my normal life. Normal for me, at least.

Someone had kindly spread a blanket over me, and I threw it aside and pushed up off the sofa. I didn’t have the luxury of normal yet. Not with Marcus and Kyle in the hands of the Saberton assholes. Though I doubted Pierce was up and ready, I could start getting my own shit together. On the arm of the sofa lay a neat pile of folded clothing which turned out to be a t-shirt and sweat pants. Both looked large enough to swallow me whole, but they were clean, which mattered to me a whole lot more.

Other than the soft music the house was quiet. Gathering up the clean clothing, I crept down the wood floor of the hallway to a bathroom with seventies-era green wallpaper and a toilet in a matching color. Taped to the wall above the toilet was a note, written in Dr. Nikas’s neat and lovely script, that read “Please jiggle handle after flushing.” I couldn’t help but chuckle at the little reminder that even the most amazing people still had to deal with the ordinary.

I set the clothing on the counter then indulged in a wonderfully vicious hot shower. It only took a few minutes to wash off the dried blood and tunnel grunge, but I remained under the spray for a while longer as the knots in my shoulders eased, and I imagined a few layers of stress being washed down the shower drain along with the dirt.

Sufficiently decontaminated, I finished my shower, pulled on the t-shirt and sweat pants and tugged the drawstring at the waistband tight, then gathered up my filthy clothes and went in search of a washing machine.

As I passed through the dining room I found Dr. Nikas sitting at the table and making notes on a clipboard. A large mortar and pestle rested in front of him, along with a variety of ingredients for whatever he was working on. He glanced up with a smile. “There’s coffee in the kitchen, and washer and dryer through the door by the pantry.”

“You’re the best,” I announced as I continued on through the kitchen. Caffeine had no effect on zombies, and I usually opted for hot chocolate these days. But good coffee had its place. I dumped the clothes into the washer and got it going, then returned to the kitchen and poured a cup. After the first sip I let out a sigh of pleasure. Whoever made this pot knew what they were doing.

“Where is everyone?” I asked as I emerged into the dining room.

“Pierce is asleep. Andrew is,” Dr. Nikas hesitated, “resting.” I had a feeling he couldn’t bring himself to say Chained to a bed and scared shitless. “Philip and Naomi are on the way back from the urgent care clinic. She has an air cast and crutches, but thankfully nothing was broken. Brian is off getting equipment for the Saberton raid. I think that’s everyone.”

Hopefully that meant Pierce and Brian had a plan. One that I slept right through, not that I’d’ve had anything useful to contribute. I took another sip of coffee. “Need any help?”

“Angel, you have no idea how glad I am that you asked,” he said then shoved the mortar across the table to me. “You may very well regret it.”

I set my cup on the table and plopped down into the chair opposite him. “I’m pretty much always up for helping you anyway, but right now a little work will keep me from rearranging the furniture or staring at Pietro . . . Pierce until he wakes up and is ready to go.” I peered dubiously at the green sludgy paste in the mortar. “What are we working on?”

He nodded toward a brown glass cough syrup-type bottle at the end of the table. “That’s my kitchen lab version of a super-mod for Brian to use during the Saberton raid,” he explained. “We’re now compounding the carrier for it.” He placed a big bowl full of different dried leaves, seeds, and other plant parts next to the mortar and pestle. “Grind all of that together. Add a little water as needed to keep the consistency of the paste.”

“Y’all don’t have a blender in the kitchen here?” I asked.

He gave a light chuckle. “A blender would process the materials in an entirely different way. I will also admit to being old school, and there are times I prefer the old methods I know so very well—especially when working outside of a proper lab.”

That made sense. “Is this the mod Brian tested the day everything went to shit?” I asked as I transferred some greyish leaves to the mortar.

“That’s right. It’s designed to amplify desired zombie abilities for a short period of time.” He pulled the cutting board to him and started to carefully mince what looked like some sort of root. “I had to modify the formula to accommodate the ingredients I have available here, but it should still be fairly effective.”

I picked up the pestle and began smushing the leaves into the paste. A pungent but pleasant smell wafted up. “Abilities like speed and strength?”

“Yes, that’s the idea,” he said. “Plus, enhancement of physical senses as well as reflexes. It’s no use having superspeed without the ability to react equally quickly.”

“Right. Like a car going super fast with horribly unresponsive steering.”

He smiled. “Precisely.”

I worked quietly for a while, grinding, adding water and more ingredients, grinding some more before I finally asked the question I was dying to know the answer to, but that scared the shit out of me as well. “How the hell did this happen?” I tilted my head toward Pierce’s room.

Dr. Nikas’s hands stilled. “He chose to transform,” he said, voice so soft I doubted it would carry beyond the table even for zombie hearing. “I have not heard his full story, but his situation must have been dire. He had intended to remain Pietro Ivanov for several more decades.”

I took a moment to let that sink in. “You’re saying that the same way there used to be an original Pierce Gentry, there was an original Pietro Ivanov?” I did my best to keep my tone cool and casual, but inside I boggled. “And Pietro—or whoever he was then—ate his brain and took over his life?”

“Yes, though it wasn’t like this,” Dr. Nikas said. “There was an agreement. The real Pietro Ivanov was a friend and associate whose mortuary business contributed to the Tribe’s brain supply.” He returned to mincing ginger. “He went into kidney failure secondary to diabetes, and our Pietro offered to turn him.” He exhaled. “The original Pietro didn’t want to live as a zombie. However, he came to an agreement to literally give his life over in exchange for care of his family.”

All kinds of questions bubbled up about that story, but they could wait until later. “You said only a mature zombie can do this eat-a-brain transformation thing, right? How old are we talking?” I added water to the mixture and continued to grind.

Dr. Nikas shifted in his seat and glanced around as if someone might overhear. “It isn’t really related to age.”

“Like how I could do a control bite on Philip? That was only supposed to be for mature parasites.”

“More specialized than that.”

“If it’s not an age thing, what is it? What do you mean when you say mature parasite?”

Dr. Nikas picked up the cutting board and scraped the contents into the mortar. He added a pinch of stuff that looked like black salt, then made notes on his clipboard. I was about to give up on an answer when he spoke again.

“Mature zombie,” he said quietly, “not parasite.”

I resisted the urge to say, “Yeah, whatever,” only because it was Dr. Nikas. I wouldn’t disrespect him like that. Besides, if he bothered to make the distinction, it meant there was something to it. “Mature zombie,” I echoed. “What exactly does that mean?”

He weighed some milky yellow powder on the scale then added it to my mixture. “Sulfur. Grind it in to where the paste is an even color, then we’re nearly done.” He settled back in his chair then laid his hands flat on the table. “It means there is no longer anything distinguishable as human-versus-zombie organism. The DNA restructure is complete. A rare success.”

“Uh,” I said while I struggled to make sense of that. “Are you saying Pietro-Pierce-whoever isn’t really human anymore?”

“Physically, none of us are, Angel,” Dr. Nikas said with a certainty that sent a shiver through me. “Not once the organism establishes itself. The changes begin immediately. Pierce and I are perhaps even less human from a purely physical perspective.” His eyes met mine, gentle and troubled and ancient. “I don’t feel any less human than I ever have.”

It took me a minute to get past his claim that we weren’t simply humans infested with a parasite, and then another minute to push aside the useless worry that, if we were so changed, how could we be sure we remembered what it was like to feel human? “So it’s not a parasite?”

“Technically, no. When I first tried to understand the science of it, parasite was my initial impression, and the term stuck.” He flashed a smile. “Besides, it’s easier to say parasite than mutualistic symbiont with parasitic aspects.” His eyes crinkled with amusement. “In the end it’s merely semantics. A new word such as zombite would better acknowledge its unique function, but old habits die hard.”

Dr. Sofia Baldwin had convincingly explained to me that the parasite healed damage and kept zombies healthy only because it benefited the parasite to have a healthy host. If there weren’t enough brains for it to do that, it saved itself and let us rot. That sure sounded like a parasite to me, but Dr. Nikas knew a billion times more about it than either Sofia or I did.

“Who’s in control after maturity?” I asked. “The not-a-parasite or the human?”

“Neither,” he said. “There is no distinction—a new unified entity with no loss of who one was and is as a person. However, before experiencing it, one cannot even conceive the enhancements to the senses, perception, and overall awareness. Pheromones, taste, global species sensitivity. It’s exhilarating, even overwhelming at first, though totally natural.”

No, not natural at all! I silently protested. Yet in my little zombie heart it rang true, like an instinctual knowing and acceptance on top of eager curiosity. “That sounds more like a living steroid than a self-serving parasite.”

Dr. Nikas beamed. “A well considered analogy, Angel,” he said. “And that is the model I work with now, rather than symbiosis. To put it very simply, the organism is the ultimate mod. It gradually optimizes its target through bio-restructuring until it gets the job done—albeit with some heavy side effects.”

I peered at him. “You said you’re mature too, like Pierce?”

He nodded and extended his hand toward me, palm down, unbuttoned his sleeve and pushed it up to the elbow. “Point to any spot on my forearm,” he instructed.

Baffled, I reached to touch a spot a couple of inches above his wrist. I started to ask what he was doing, then could only stare, mouth hanging open. Like a slow-motion movie special effect, the skin of his forearm rippled and shifted as a scar formed, thick and white, angling across his forearm where I’d touched.

“Whoa.” I stared at the two-inch long defect in the skin. “Have you ever had a scar in that spot?” I asked. Maybe it was a weird parasite-memory thing?

“Never there,” he murmured. A few seconds later the scar rippled and became smooth skin again even as a long and barely healed gash appeared across the back of his hand.

“Whoa,” I said again,

“I am mature, yes,” he said. “Conscious control within genetic parameters.”

I processed that. “In other words, you can control stuff that could change on a normal human, but you can’t sprout wings?” I gave a nervous chuckle.

“That’s correct,” he replied. “And I can’t change my basic blueprint. No higher cheekbones or blue eyes instead of brown.”

It started to make a weird sort of sense. “Unless you—a mature zombie—ate someone’s brain, got a new blueprint, and decided to redecorate.” I watched with continued fascination as he smoothed his hand back to normal—whatever “normal” meant in this freaky context.

“Correct again,” he said.

I dragged my gaze from his hand to his face. “Conscious control. Is that how Pietro made himself look like he was in his sixties? Instead of staying younger-looking like regular zombies?”

“Yes, and it has proven quite useful.” He shifted and looked away “I’ve never had the need to transform or mimic aging. I stay away from people, for the most part.”

With the way Dr. Nikas lived as a recluse in his lab, there was no one on the outside who saw him enough to realize he never aged. The thought of so few people ever knowing him sent a weird and sad pang through me.

Dr. Nikas looked in the direction of Pierce’s room and exhaled softly. “I’ve been with him a long time. Mature zombies don’t tend to stay close together, but I . . .”

“You need him, and he needs you,” I finished for him.

A smile twitched his lips before fading. “He shelters me, and I keep him balanced,” he said. “I was broken long ago. For all of our physical and even mental healing capacity, most psychological or emotional wounds remain untouched, even in maturity.” He pulled his gaze back to mine. “Angel, you know I can’t tolerate a crowded room, much less a public life. With him, I can simply be who I am.”

“What happened to you?” I asked after a moment’s hesitation.

He pulled his sleeve back down and buttoned the cuff, focusing so carefully on the task it was clear he was either gathering up the nerve to tell me the story or attempting to come up with a nice way to tell me to fuck off and mind my own business. “I was revealed as a ghoul,” he finally said. “Zombie is a modern name. Ghoul, in various forms and languages, has been our label for centuries. Our kind were seeds for a great variety of legends of demonic association, sorcery, and macabre desecration of the dead.” He drew an unsteady breath, then reached for the mortar and scraped the goopy contents of the mortar into a smaller bowl. “A very long time ago I lived as a physician and surgeon in Thessaloniki.” His hands stilled, and his eyes went distant as though connecting with that past. “A mob ambushed me—the ghoul who’d been robbing the city’s graves and, more recently, its fallen soldiers.”

“Oh, no,” I murmured, dread rising.

He finished transferring the minced root into the bowl then busied himself with tasting the concoction before adding a final touch of what looked like black salt. I didn’t have to be a genius to understand that he needed a moment to compose himself. I doubted this was a subject he talked about much.

“I’ll spare you the horror of the details,” he said, and I suspected the short version was more to spare himself the horror of it. “The mob. People, friends and associates I’d known for years. So savage. So full of hate.”

A shudder ran through me. Though what he described happened a long time ago, he might as well have been painting a picture of my worst nightmares. Louisiana backwoods justice for the monster that ate Grampa Joe’s brain. “How’d they find out?”

“My wife.” His voice grew thick. “I never told her what I was. When she found a cask of brains in the winter cellar, she exposed me.”

Throat tight, I laid my hand on top of his. If he had told her, would she have been swayed to accept his way of living, or would she have turned on him then and there? It could’ve gone either way no matter how deep the relationship. What if Jane had turned on Pietro? There’d been no time to think about it in the moment, but damn, it could have been disastrous. Double kudos to Jane for being super cool.

Dr. Nikas’s hand trembled under mine as he spoke again. “They forced brains on me as they mutilated, broke, and burned my body by every means they could imagine. And they had vivid imaginations.”

Chilled to my bones, I squeezed his hand, silently grateful he’d decided to omit the graphic details. What words were adequate? None, and so I settled on the simple, “I’m so sorry.”

He turned his hand over and closed his fingers around mine, silent for at least a full minute. “They broke me, Angel,” he finally said in a voice choked with emotion, and I knew he meant far more than his physical body. “I don’t know how long it went on. Forever. Eventually they piled wood and brush around me for a final burning, but it never happened.”

I let out a breath I’d been holding, like reaching the turning point in a book when you know everything’s going to be okay. “What stopped them?” I asked, genuinely curious about what could put a halt to a situation so out of control.

“He did,” Dr. Nikas said with a nod toward Pierce’s room. “He emerged from the darkness like an avenging angel, a mercenary captain and his company. In moments he and his men scattered the mob like dry leaves in the wind. He cut me down, told me it would never happen again. I’ve been with him ever since.”

“Pietro. Oh, wow.”

He wiped a stray tear away with the back of his free hand. “Yes. Strong, capable, fearless, and feared.”

“In other words a badass mofo.” A few days ago it would’ve been impossible for me to imagine Pietro Ivanov as a mercenary captain. But now that he had the form of Pierce Gentry I sure as hell could. And hell, what better place to get a supply of brains than a battlefield? “He hasn’t budged off that badassness one little bit, has he?”

“No, he has not,” Dr. Nikas stated. “The Pietro identity proved quite challenging for him, as he chose to adopt Pietro’s relatively tame and passive lifestyle in order to ensure a seamless transition. It meant he had to enlist others to conduct business he would normally do himself.”

My respect for Pietro expanded. He’d willingly taken on a life that didn’t suit him for the sake of securing a steady—and mostly non-violent—source of brains for his people. He sure as hell wasn’t a squeaky clean, shiny hero, but he was turning out to be a tried-and-true tarnished one. “With you as his sounding board and moral bullshit meter, you two seem to make a good team.”

Dr. Nikas laughed. “When he listens to me.” He kept hold of my hand even though the tension had eased. Between his story and what I knew of him from the lab, I had the feeling he truly was a people person, a healer who couldn’t be around people, and probably had little physical contact with anyone. How sucky was that?

Dr. Nikas squeezed my hand then reluctantly released it. A wave of sadness swept through me as if I’d lost a comfy blanket, and I took a deep breath to shake off the feeling.

The sound of the garage door rumbled through the house, and about half a minute later Brian came in from the garage. He wore a leather jacket over dark jeans instead of his typical suit, which was so out of character I’d have probably passed right by him on the street without recognizing him.

“That was a pain in the ass, but it’s done,” he announced.

I stood and stretched as Dr. Nikas poured the pale blue contents of the bottle into the bowl of glop. “Did you bring home something fun?” I asked.

“Sure did,” Brian said. “A cargo van and a small dumpster.”

“Do I want to know what this plan is?”

“Probably not,” he said with a wink.

I rolled my eyes. “How about the basics of what we’re up against.”

“Our best estimate is at least a dozen of Saberton’s Special Security Team,” Brian told me. “In general, they’re hardcore pros handpicked for company loyalty and willingness to do whatever is required.” A muscle in his neck briefly tensed. “Out of the SST, a select few who apparently have an extra dose of fuck you about human rights are assigned to work directly with zombies.”

“Zombies don’t even count as human to them,” I said with a black scowl. The memory of my own capture was still crystal-clear, including how much Mr. Perfect Eyebrows and the others had gotten off on humiliating and abusing me. “I hate those fuckers.”

“No argument from me,” Brian said, matching my scowl. “Some of them use torture as entertainment. I’m ready to bury the lot.”

“I’ll bring the shovel,” I said. “What’s next?”

“A chat with Saber. Want to come with me?”

I gave him a dubious look. Chatting with Andrew wasn’t exactly on the top of my list of fun things to do. “Depends. What are we talking about?”

Brian’s smile faded. “I had a talk with Mr. Iv—Gentry. We need to put a little heat on Saber to determine where he stands concerning his sister.”

“You mean so we know whether or not Naomi should see him in person?” At his nod I continued, “No matter what, I think he needs to be told his mother knew Julia wasn’t dead. That should piss him off and rock the happy family when he goes home.” If he goes home, I added silently. That wouldn’t happen if Pierce considered him a serious threat. But Brian’s broad smile told me I was right on target. “What about Naomi?” I asked. “She needs to have a say in this.”

“When she gets back from the clinic,” he said. “My hope is that our little interview will help her decide what to do.”

“Gotcha.” I was totally happy to gather info to help Naomi out, especially since it was a lot like being nosy, which I was already pretty damn good at.

“Not to mention, I figure this could be a good start to your training,” he added.

“Training?” Was I supposed to run around the house a few times before talking to Andrew? I gave him a baffled look. “I’m lost.”

“After you outed Dr. Pennington’s bodyguard, I promised both you and him that I’d cover the basics,” Brian explained. “Interview and interrogation isn’t really a basic, but it’ll help you think on your feet, and it’s as good a place as any to start.”

“Oh! Right.” Whew, no running or pushups. Yet. “Sure, totally up for it.” Especially if it could keep me from having another incident like the one with Victor and Jane.

Brian’s expression grew more serious. “We also need to see what information can be wrung from Saber that will help us rescue Kyle and Marcus.”

“As long as I get to do some of the wringing,” I said with a glower. “Anything besides Pietro’s change-of-body off limits?”

“No, that’s the only info that needs to remain completely hush-hush,” he said. “But you have plenty of other ammunition.”

“I know lots of shit that he doesn’t,” I said then looked down at myself. Baggy sweatpants and a T-shirt that swallowed me. Pretty unimpressive. “Let me throw my clothes in the dryer first.” The pants had a bullet hole in the ass, and the jacket and shirt were burned and melted in the back from when I got stuck beneath Naomi’s car in the Saberton parking garage, but it would still be a better look than my current one. I’d have to find a way to score some less-damaged stuff for the rescue raid though. Maybe I could be Naomi’s personal fashion doll again.

“I’ll make a sandwich for our guest while you do that,” Brian said.

“Don’t put anything weird in it,” I replied as I trotted off to the laundry room.

Brian’s chortle followed me. “Not promising anything!”