My Life as a White Trash Zombie

Chapter 16

The third morgue tech, Jerry, was sitting at the computer in the morgue when I came in the next morning. He lifted his hand in a wave without taking his eyes from the monitor.

“Angel,” he muttered in greeting.

“Jerry,” I replied, mimicking his low, gruff tone. The parody was apparently lost on him though, because he simply kept on with whatever it was that had his attention on the computer.

I put my lunchbox in the bottom drawer of the desk, rolling my eyes when I saw the solitaire game on the computer.

“Anything exciting happening?” I asked.

He gave a heavy sigh. “Busy day yesterday. Dr. Leblanc cut the headless pizza guy yesterday afternoon, as well as a heart attack and an MVA that Nick brought in after you got off.” He closed the solitaire game and pulled up the page that showed which bodies were scheduled to go to which funeral homes. “Those last two will probably be picked up later today.”

I peered over his shoulder at the screen. “What about the Pizza Plaza guy? Anyone picking him up?”

“There’s some sort of hitch with the ID which means official notification hasn’t been made, which also means there’s no one who’s authorized to make the funeral arrangements.” He shrugged, clearly and deeply unconcerned.

“What happens if no one makes funeral arrangements?” I asked. “He stays in our morgue forever?”

He wagged his head in a no. “That would be disgusting,” he stated. “Bodies still rot in there. Just takes longer. Like meat in your fridge at home.”

Okay, that made sense. The morgue cooler was exactly that—a cooler, not a freezer. Early in my time at the coroner’s office, I’d stupidly wondered aloud why it wasn’t a freezer, until it was pointed out to me that performing an autopsy on a frozen slab of meat would be a wee bit difficult. Oh. Yeah.

“So what happens to them? State pays for them to be buried or something?”

His chin dipped in a nod. “Riverwood Funeral Home handles the pauper burials for this parish and they get reimbursed a set amount for each one. They have a plot set aside for the pauper burials—no headstones or anything, though.”

I frowned. “Why not? What, poor people don’t deserve a real grave?”

A whisper of amusement lit his eyes. “They get a real grave. And the exact location is recorded. But there are a lot of people who’d never pay for a funeral if they knew the state would do it for free.”

“Ah. I get it,” I said. “People who want to be able to visit the grave are gonna pay for it. Bet there are still people who don’t care, though.”

“Agreed, which seems fair enough, I suppose. Funerals can be expensive. And are for the survivors, not the decedents.”

I simply nodded in response. We’d had Mom cremated after she hung herself. There’d been no funeral. No one would have come to it anyway.

“That’s what happened with the other headless guy,” Jerry said.

I gave him a blank look. “What happened?”

“No next of kin was found, so Riverwood took him—gave him a pauper burial.”

I sat on the edge of the desk. This was the guy who’d been killed while I was stumbling down the road, high as a kite. Maybe I could milk Jerry for some info. “What was the deal with that?” I asked. “That happened right before I started here. Who was he?”

“He was identified as Adam Campbell—lived in a fishing camp down at the end of Sweet Bayou.” Then he shrugged. “Wrote for magazines—tech articles, that sort of thing. Neighbors said he was a nice guy. Some teenager got lost out there a couple of months ago, and Adam let the search teams use his yard and house as a base of operations. Cooked for them too—big pots of gumbo, crawfish, jambalaya. I think everyone was disappointed when the little teen bastard was found alive and well.” A smile flickered across his face.

“If he was so nice, why didn’t any of those people step up and pitch in for a real funeral?” I asked, frowning.

Jerry pushed away from the desk and stood, grimacing as he audibly popped his back. “Because people suck, and everyone’s always sure that someone else will take care of it.” He glanced at the clock. “Time for me to drag my sorry carcass out of here. Have fun with the stiffs.”

“Always,” I replied as I sat in his seat and pretended to pick up where he’d left off with the game of solitaire.

I waited until I heard his car leave the parking lot, then grabbed my lunchbox and scurried to the cooler. The MVA was scheduled to be picked up by Riverwood, which meant I suffered no guilt as I scooped the brains out of the bag and into my jars. The heart attack I left alone since it was going to Scott Funeral Home. Kang had been a dick, but I wasn’t going to back out of our deal.

I poured tomato soup in on top of the brains and then quickly blended them up with my cheapo handheld blender. It didn’t look terribly appetizing, but at least it wasn’t instantly recognizable as brains.

My appetite gave a soft little nudge as I made my little brain concoction. I knew I needed to try to resist those first nudges of hunger, try and hold out a bit to make my supply last as long as possible.

But not right now, I told myself. I need to be sharp for work, right? I indulged in a few big gulps from one of the jars, then replaced the lid and stuck both jars into the lunchbox with the blue frozen thingies that would hopefully keep the brains from going bad before I got home and could put them in the fridge. I didn’t have a ton of brains to spare, but I also didn’t feel like dealing with the hunger right now.

The doorbell buzzed as I was putting the lunchbox back in the drawer. It was Kang, and he gave me a tight little nod as I stepped back to give him room to push the stretcher in.

“You’re here for Blackwell, Travis?” I asked.

He glanced at the paper in his hand. “That’s right. Is he all ready?” he asked.

I narrowed my eyes into a glare. “Uh huh. He’s all ready. All there. All that good stuff.”

Kang gave a slow nod. “I appreciate that.”

“Yeah, sure thing,” I replied as I turned and headed to the cooler to retrieve the body, not adding “asshole” even though I really wanted to. The urge to run over his toes with the stretcher when I returned was pretty strong, but I managed to resist it. I was even nice and helped him pull the bag from our stretcher onto his.

He buckled the straps holding the bag onto the stretcher, then paused and looked at me. “I didn’t really think you’d keep to our deal. I apologize for misjudging you.”

I shrugged in acceptance of the apology. “Yeah, well, you shouldn’t be so mistrusting.”

His lips twitched. “When you’ve been around as long as I have, you learn that trusts are easily broken.”

“Oh, please. You can’t be much older than me.”

Kang let out a low chuckle. “Yes I can, and I am.”

I frowned at him in doubt. “Oh, really? How old are you?”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Isn’t that a rude question?”

“Give me a break. C’mon, fess up. How old are you?”

“I was seven years old when I lost my parents during the Korean War.”

“Oh. Sorry to hear that.” I struggled to remember the brief smattering of history I’d actually studied, but couldn’t think of when the Korean War was to save my life. There was still stuff about Korea in the news, so maybe it was only twenty years ago or so? I didn’t want to say anything, though, for fear of looking like a complete dumbass. “Okay, well, um, anyway, don’t worry about the brains. I won’t screw you. But can you please answer some questions for me?”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ll do my best.”

“How often do I need to eat brains? I mean, I feel hungry all the time.”

“If you do a lot and are active, you need brains more often,” he said. “In other words, you won’t ever see a zombie exercise. Under normal circumstances you’ll be fine if you eat about a third to half a brain every other day. After a few days without, though, things start to go bad pretty quickly, like a downhill slide. So, if you’re in a job where you have to be fairly physically active, like yours, you’re going to need to eat more often. But,” he said with a gesture at the morgue cooler, “at least you have access to brains.”

“When there are brains to be had,” I pointed out.

“People die all the time, Angel. That’s one thing you can be sure of.”

Sure, but would they die soon enough to satisfy my hunger?

“Okay, next question,” I said. “It’s a virus? Is there a treatment for it?”

He shrugged. “No idea. Virus. Parasite. I don’t know. Maybe a treatment or cure is being worked on. But as far as I know, it’s been around for centuries.”

I pondered that for a few seconds. A parasite . . . what, like a tapeworm? That was too damn creepy. And disgusting. “Okay, well, what about, um, relations.”

He gave me a blank look. “Excuse me?”

I gave a frustrated sigh. “Can we have sex?”

The skin around his eyes crinkled. “Well, we barely know each other, but I’m game.”

“Shit! No. Arrgh!” I could feel my face heating. “You know what I mean.” I scowled at him as he laughed, though a second later I was laughing too. “Okay, I deserved that. I mean, can we—zombies—have sex?”

He grinned. “Yes. But be sure to feed beforehand. It’s much better that way. Plus, you don’t want to risk having bits fall off.”

I shuddered. “Okay, that’s disgusting.”

“It reminds me of an old joke: What did the zombie say to the whore?”

I looked at him blankly. “Um . . . what?”

He winked. “Keep the tip.”

After Kang left, I pulled the internet up on the computer and did a search on the Korean War, then stared at the screen in shock when I saw the dates. 1950-1953. Holy Shit. Kang’s an old man. Had he been surviving by working in funeral homes this entire time?

But he still looks like he’s in his twenties, I thought with growing amazement. Then I sighed. If I’d realized how old he was I would have asked him if he looked young because of the zombie stuff. And how long he’d actually been a zombie. “Don’t be a fool. Stay in school,” I muttered to myself.

Fortunately my job offered plenty to distract me from thinking about my general ignorance. I went out on a pickup of a bum who’d been found dead under a bridge, and then of some lady who’d managed to gas herself in her bathroom by combining bleach and ammonia. I shamelessly grabbed lunch at a drive-thru on my way back to the morgue and scarfed down a burger to satisfy my far-less annoying food hunger, while managing to completely forget the fact that I had two dead bodies in the back of the van.

By the time I made it back to the morgue and got everything put away and entered into the computer, it was close to the end of my shift. Nick would be showing up in the next twenty minutes or so, and the morgue was as spotless as I knew how to make it. I’d remembered to throw the trash from lunch out, but I knew from experience that I should probably check to make sure everything in the van was where it needed to be. Nick was an arrogant pain, and if I’d somehow dropped a single french fry, I’d never hear the end of it.

I stuffed my key card into the front pocket of my jeans and exited out the back door. The door clanged shut behind me as a sickly familiar smell washed over me. I spun around as a jab of adrenaline sent me into high alert. It only took me a second to see the figure crouched in the shadow of the wall, like a lion about to pounce.

But this time I wasn’t injured and alone. And I wasn’t hungry at all.

“You told me to come here,” Zeke said, his voice already beginning to take on an unpleasant rasp. “You said you’d give me brains.” He straightened. He’d changed clothes—now he wore a New Orleans Saints shirt and paint-spattered jeans. They looked grubby and nasty, and I didn’t want to think about how long he’d been wearing them.

A flare of annoyance shot through me. “Yeah, but you didn’t need to scare the crap out of me. Do you get off on that shit?”

“I’m hungry,” he snarled, then he shook his head. “You don’t know what it’s like.”

“Whatever,” I said, scowling. “Y’know, you could’ve killed me that night.”

He bared his teeth. “You’re a zombie. That wouldn’t have killed you.”

Annoyance shifted to anger. “It fucking hurt anyway! And you didn’t know I was a zombie when you caused that accident. If I’d been a normal human that wreck would have really fucked me up.” A cold chill walked through me. “Or was that your plan? Did you want to kill someone?”

He took three long strides forward, but I managed to hold my ground. It helped that I was still totally sharp and focused from my recent meal.

“I saw your van go by,” he said. “I knew it was the coroner’s van, that you’d have to come back soon enough, and that you’d have a body in the back. Why else would you be out at that hour on that highway, except for a pickup?” He paused. His shoulders were hunched in a defensive pose. “I waited until I saw headlights. Saw that they weren’t a car’s.”

“What if you’d been wrong?” I demanded.

He tilted his head. “Then I would have been wrong,” he said in a tone so casual it sent goosebumps down my back.

I spun and started back toward the morgue. He seized me by the upper arm. “You promised me you’d share!” he said, desperation edging into his voice.

I slapped at his arm, almost surprised when I was able to break his grasp. “I know. I’m getting it, asshole!”

He scowled and stepped back into the shadow. I swiped my card and entered the morgue, then retrieved a jar from my lunchbox—the one I’d already taken a few gulps from. Cradling the jar with its stupid masking tape/shoe polish décor, I paused. I’d completely forgotten about this zombie and my promise to him. I probably could have set some more aside if I’d been thinking about it. But my own supply was running low. Besides, it was a promise made under duress, and those didn’t count, right? And surely he was getting brains from someplace else as well. It had been five days since the wreck. He’d be a lot more rotted if he’d been without brains that entire time, especially since I hadn’t given him anywhere near enough to get him fully “fresh.”

And he was willing to take the chance that I’d be killed in the wreck. Suddenly I didn’t want to think about where else he was getting brains.

I returned outside and handed him the jar. “It’s all I have right now,” I lied. “I was out of work for close to a week,” I added with a scowl.

He ignored the jibe and tugged the lid off the jar, eyes closing briefly in bliss as the scent of brains washed over him. Then he looked back at me with a puzzled look. “Tomato soup?”

“Trying to keep it from being so obvious, y’know?”

“I hate tomato soup,” he muttered, but he stepped back and held the jar with both hands as he drank the brain-soup down. I watched, morbidly fascinated as color returned to his skin. A few drops escaped the corner of his mouth, dribbling onto his shirt to form a Florida-shaped stain. Finally he lowered the jar and gave a sated sigh.

“Ah, god, that’s good,” he breathed as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then wiped his hand on his shirt “Even if it was tomato.” He held the empty jar out to me. His eyes were whole and clear again. “When can you get me some more?”

I stared at him, then snatched the jar out of his hand. “More? Are you serious? That’s all I have right now.”

A muscle in his jaw clenched. “That’s not going to hold me for long.”

“Hey, it’s your fault I had to go through most of my supply,” I continued, pissed. “That wreck fucked me up. I could have lost my job!”

A snarl twisted his mouth. “And then you’d know what I’m going through.”

“Yeah, well, fuck you.” I’d balled my free hand into a fist without realizing it. “You stole jewelry off dead bodies. That’s fucking sick, man.”

A scowl curved his mouth. “I didn’t steal anything. I was set up.”

“Oh, right,” I scoffed. “By who, the zombie mafia?” But even as I said it, a sliver of doubt managed to work its way in. Kang had been awfully hostile until he’d been sure I wasn’t going to hurt his business.

Zeke’s eyes narrowed. “You could call it that. Some people couldn’t handle competition. Besides, we eat brains! That’s sick.”

“That’s for survival!” I retorted. “That’s life or death.” Or undeath.

He took a step forward and fear flashed through me. He’s going to try to take my keycard so that he can get into the morgue, steal my brains.

“I’m not going to let myself rot away,” he growled. “I’ll—”

“Hey! What the hell’s going on?”

I never thought I’d be so relieved to hear Nick’s voice. Zeke pulled back from me, scowling. I didn’t dare turn around, but I could hear the morgue door swing shut and Nick’s footsteps as he walked up.

“You okay, Angel?” he asked, coming up beside me. I flicked a glance his way. His stance was totally aggressive, in a bantam rooster kinda way. His eyes were fixed on Zeke in what was probably meant to be a menacing glare.

“Yeah,” I said, voice a tiny bit shaky. I thought about saying something else, like Oh, he’s just leaving, or He’s an old friend and was stopping by, but I didn’t. I felt no desire to give Zeke any excuse or out.

Apparently, neither did Zeke. With a final glare, he turned and then headed off in a jerky run.

As soon as he was out of sight I let out an unsteady breath, then almost jumped in surprise when Nick laid a hand on my arm.

“You really okay?” he asked, and I was shocked once again to see real concern in his eyes. At my nod he dropped his hand. “That guy’s a complete weirdo. Always asking how many bodies we have in the cooler. Kooky stuff like that.”

That was as good an excuse as any. “Yeah, that was weird.” I gave him a tentative smile. “Thanks. Dunno what would have happened if you hadn’t come out right then, but . . . thanks.”

The smile he gave me was the most genuine one I’d ever seen from him, and he actually puffed up a bit with pride. It probably wasn’t often that he could be the knight in shining armor. “Yeah, well, no prob. I got your back.”

Neither of us seemed to know what to do next and an awkward silence descended. “I, uh, should probably get back inside in case Riverwood calls,” I said with a jerk of my head.

“Oh, yeah, sure,” he replied, seemingly as grateful as I was that the moment was over. “Don’t forget to clean the van out before you give me the keys. There were donut crumbs all over the seat last time.”

I masked a grin and headed to the van, strangely relieved that this Nice Nick wasn’t going to be the new norm.