My Life as a White Trash Zombie

Chapter 24

My cell phone chimed with an incoming text message as I was carefully writing the date on the side of a jar. I stuck the jar in the fridge next to the five others already in there, stood and snagged my phone off the top of my dresser.

Good morning my Angel of Death. Time to go play!

—Derrel

As if in response to his text, I felt a little bump of hunger. Great, I thought with a mental sigh. Now my body knows when I’m going to be more active. It had been a busy week in the morgue, which meant that my stash was comfortably large right now. In fact I was damn close to running out of room in my little fridge. I’d realized this morning that I probably needed to become organized and write dates on the jars to keep track of which ones had been in there the longest. I’d recently managed to pry a small amount of info from Kang, such as the fact that three weeks seemed to be the longest a brain stayed “viable” in the fridge. Allowing any of them to spoil was a waste I couldn’t afford. I had a nice buffer right now, but there was no guarantee that anyone worth autopsying would die in the next couple of weeks.

Look at me, being all responsible and shit, I thought with a low laugh. Hell, if I exerted a little self-control and waited a bit longer between meals, I’d probably never have to worry about my stash again. Kang had also told me that brains could be frozen and still be worth eating after, but my little fridge didn’t have a freezer compartment. And there was no way I was risking putting brains in the kitchen freezer.

I thumbed in a reply to Derrel’s text. My kinda fun. Gimme addy, meet u there.

The hunger nudged at me again, and I hesitated, my hand on the door of the fridge. Yeah, I’d eaten just yesterday and I could surely hold out at least another day before things started to feel dull and lifeless. But I didn’t want any of it to go bad, I rationalized as I pulled a jar out, ignoring the little voice that told me that even the oldest brains in my stash had been in there less than a week. I was going out to pick up a body, which meant I’d be doing a bunch of lifting and carrying. I could start going longer between meals when I wasn’t working. Not today. I took one big swallow before I could change my mind, but even as I replaced the jar in the fridge an old but familiar burn of shame formed in my gut. So much for self-control.

Sighing, I replaced the jar and closed the fridge. I needed to stop being so hard on myself. It was one damn swallow—barely enough for me to feel any difference. And everything else was going all right. In fact I had enough stash that I could afford to try and track down Zeke and give him some. I’d been resisting the idea and finding ways to talk myself out of it, but no new brainless bodies had shown up this whole week. Which meant that either he found a legitimate source, or he was hungry and on the hunt right now.

And if I could somehow prevent another murder, I really didn’t have a choice. It wasn’t a long term solution to the problem of Zeke, but at least it might buy him some time until he could find a source of brains that didn’t involve getting them from living people.

And maybe if I was ever in the same boat, he’d do the same for me.

The address Derrel texted wasn’t so much an address as a general location. Despite the vagueness of his directions—Beaker St, 1 mile south of the hwy—the number of vehicles clustered in one spot let me know without a doubt where I needed to go.

The area was an odd mix of rural and subdivision, with clumps of cookie-cutter houses interspersed with large plots of land complete with cows and goats. Several of the larger plots looked as if they were being developed into more clusters of houses, and a retention pond had been dug on the west side of the road. A dirt berm about five feet high separated the road from the pond and I could see a knot of people in uniform gathered at the top of it. The street was already blocked by a zillion cars, police units, and crime scene vans—far more than had been on the scene for the murder of the pizza guy. This time there were no obvious places to park anywhere near the crime scene tape, and I ended up parking the van damn near a quarter mile down the road.

The road was uneven and full of potholes, and there was no way for me to know how far beyond the berm the body was. The stretcher would probably be more of a pain in the ass than it was worth. After a brief internal debate, I decided to leave the stretcher in the van for the time being and grabbed the body bag, gloves, and an extra sheet in case I was dealing with something messy. One way or another, Derrel and I were going to be carrying a body bag.

Let’s hope this victim is someone nice and small and light. A midget. Yeah, that would work. I hid a smile as I continued on foot toward the knot of people. Then again, I was probably strong enough to carry a two hundred pound body by myself if I had to. I bit back a laugh. Yeah, that would draw some attention—little, scrawny me, all of five foot three and a hundred five pounds soaking wet. SuperZombiePowers activate!

Too bad the superpowers came with insane hunger. Emphasis on the insane part.

My amusement faded, and I began to get a bad feeling as I clambered over the berm and took note of the number of people clustered right beyond the crime scene tape. I’d never met most of them, but I’d seen their faces in the news enough to know that one of the knots of people was the Sheriff and his immediate cronies—which meant that this was some sort of special crime scene: a multiple homicide, or a local celebrity . . . or a kid. My stomach clenched at the last option. There’d only been a few of them so far, but every time we had to do an autopsy on a kid, it damn near killed me. There’d been two infants who’d died right after being born, and a little girl with some sort of birth defect. But the worst had been a twelve-year-old who’d committed suicide. I’d gone into the cooler and cried like a baby after we were done with that one, and when I’d come back out—braced to be teased by Nick—I was weirdly humbled to see that his eyes were red as well. I guess some things fucked you up no matter what.

I made my way carefully over the uneven ground, breathing a silent sigh of relief when I saw, through the group of people, the lower half of a body lying facedown. Definitely an adult. Damn good. I didn’t even mind that I’d have to carry him over all that ground.

Then the people moved, and I saw why the upper ranks were at the scene.

Oh, shiiiiiiit.

I moved forward toward the headless body, anger and bile filling my gut—at Zeke for not finding another way to control his hunger, and at Kang for his callous acceptance that a zombie could go rogue like this. I knew I was being pretty smug and sanctimonious, especially considering I had a fairly reliable source of brains, but even though the job had been handed to me I still worked my ass off and did what I had to do to keep it. Not like Zeke, who’d stolen from goddamn bodies. What the hell had he been thinking? Why would anyone whose existence depended on a job choose to fuck it up like that?

I shook my head. Yeah, I was fully aware of the irony of my train of thoughts. Maybe I was beginning to learn a thing or two.

“Less for you to carry again, Angel.”

I glanced up to see Detective Roth giving me a sour smile. “Yeah, but this whole losing your head thing is getting old,” I replied.

“Tell me about it.” He ran a hand through his bristly hair and grimaced.

I let my gaze sweep the surroundings. “Who found the body?”

His grimace deepened. “A couple of kids taking a shortcut to their bus stop. High school age, but still. . . .”

“That’ll give ‘em nightmares,” I said with a shudder.

“No shit.” Ben rubbed his eyes. “Fuck. And three headless bodies means we mostly likely have a serial killer, which means the rank is going nuts right now.”

I suddenly felt for him. All I had to do was pick up the body and go. He’d probably be out here all day and all night, and then likely spend a few more hours talking to everyone who lived around here in an effort to scare up any possible clue.

Maybe I could help point him in the direction of Zeke as a suspect. I had no idea how I could do that, but I needed to figure out a way, and fast. Five people were dead—that I knew of—and I had every reason to believe that there’d be more. It wasn’t as if Zeke was going to suddenly wake up one day and decide he didn’t want to eat brains any more. He could have come by the morgue at any time instead of stooping to murder.

And there was no way I could stop him on my own. But can the cops? I wondered. A shiver traced its way down my spine. Even if they found him and arrested him . . . what then? They wouldn’t be feeding him what he needed in jail. He’d rot, and get hungry, and. . . .

“You ready to turn him over?”

I pulled myself out of the spiral of my thoughts to see Derrel and the crime scene tech looking at me expectantly.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Sorry.” Tugging on the gloves, I crouched by the body, trying to position myself away from the messy stump of the neck. I didn’t want blood or anything else gross that might come out of there splorting on me. I took hold of the victim’s hip and shoulder and carefully rolled, then allowed the body to settle onto its back.

Oh Shit. Fuck. Damn.

I straightened, blood pounding in my ears as all of my carefully constructed theories came crashing down around me. White male, dressed in worn and dirty jeans and a faded New Orleans Saints T-shirt that celebrated the fact that they’d been divisions champs around a decade or so ago. Barefoot with mud on his feet and staining the bottom couple of inches of his jeans.

But I was only barely aware of those details. My attention was completely fixed on the Florida-shaped stain on the front of the shirt. Tomato and brain soup.

The crime scene tech leaned in close to photograph the front of the body. Each snap of the flash seemed to slice through me, jarring my thoughts into more disorder. The buzz of conversation between Derrel and the detectives wrapped around me. They would need to get fingerprints. The dog was searching the area for the head. They were considering calling out the dive team to search through the retention pond.

“I know who he is,” I blurted. The detectives and Derrel pivoted to me in unison as if it had been choreographed. If I hadn’t been so off-kilter I’d have probably laughed.

“Seriously?” Detective Abadie said, expression betraying nothing but doubt and impatience that I was wasting their time. “Recognize his face?” The skin around his eyes tightened as he gestured toward the body,

The feeling of being off-kilter suddenly vanished, and I straightened. Maybe a few weeks ago I’d have slunk back and mumbled an apology for wasting their time. But not this time. Now I was annoyed.

“Yeah, seriously,” I shot back. “And I don’t have to recognize his face. I ran into this guy a couple of days ago, and he was wearing the same damn clothes. But, y’know, if you want to be a cocky asstard know-it-all, that’s fine. Don’t let me waste your time.” I crossed my arms defiantly across my chest in emphasis.

I heard a low chuckle that I was pretty sure came from Derrel, but I was too busy giving Mike a death glare to confirm it.

Roth let out a bark of laughter. “Hey, Mike, she knows you pretty well!” He gave me an encouraging smile. “Miz Angel, would you please be so kind as to share any info you have with us?”

I dropped my arms and gave the burly detective a sweet smile. “Why, sugar, I’d be delighted,” I drawled. “This guy is Zeke Lyons. He used to work at Billings Funeral Home until he was fired a few weeks back for stealing jewelry off bodies. And I recognize his clothing because he came by the morgue the other day and was hassling me.”

“Are you sure it’s him?” Roth asked.

“One hundred percent? No,” I said. “But I’ll go with at least ninety-nine percent sure. I recognize the stain on his shirt.” No sense explaining why I’d remember a thing like that.

“Ah, my Angel of Death comes through for me yet again,” Derrel said with a grin as he scribbled on his pad. “You are a goddess.”

Roth gave an emphatic nod. “We’ll verify with prints, but that gives us a big head start.” His lips twitched. “So to speak,” he added. Then he gave me a wink right before elbowing his partner. “C’mon, Mike, what do you say?”

Abadie gave a sour sigh. “I’m sorry I doubted you,” he said in the kind of monotone used by six-year-olds when forced to give an apology. “Thank you for saving us from tedious legwork.”

The two turned away to report this information to their superiors, and Derrel sidled up to me, amusement dancing in his eyes.

“My god, Angel,” he said in a low voice. “It was worth getting up early for that alone.” At my perplexed look he grinned. “I’ve been waiting for an excuse to call Mike a cocky asstard for ages. I loved it.”

I laughed weakly. “I didn’t exactly plan it. But sometimes it burns me the way they. . . .” I couldn’t figure out how to say what I wanted to say.

“The way they dismiss you because you’re not one of them? And in your case it doesn’t help that you’re a convicted felon, which in the eyes of idiots like Mike, puts you several levels below him.”

I flushed at the reminder of my history, and Derrel lightly thwapped me on the head with his pen. “Stop it. You’re a smart chick. The people who matter have noticed that fact. Mike’s a dick. Besides,” he jerked his head toward the body on the ground, “you saved me a bunch of work. I’m pretty cool with that.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that, but I was saved by a small commotion from the south end of the pond. I looked over to see a couple of uniformed deputies along with a woman with a dog on a leash—all looking fairly pleased about something. I recognized the woman as the same dog handler who’d been at the other headless body crime scene: Marianne, Ed’s girlfriend.

“I’ll be right back, Angel,” Derrel said. “Unless you need help getting him into the bag?”

I shook my head. “I can handle this one.” I’d learned the trick of rolling bodies into bags my first week. I wouldn’t even need to use my zombie super strength.

He gave me a parting wink, then headed in the direction of the detectives. I crouched and began to wrap the stump of Zeke’s neck in the sheet. So if Zeke isn’t the rogue, who is? I wondered in uneasy frustration. Or maybe I was wrong about the whole thing. Kang said there weren’t very many zombies, so what were the chances of two zombies being hard up for brains in the same area? Then again, I had no idea what Kang meant by “not many.” Could be five, could be a hundred.

I opened the body bag, smoothly rolled the body into it, snapped the toe tag onto the right foot. Probably not a hundred, I decided. There’s no way enough people could die to support that many. I tried to do some mental math in an attempt to figure out how many zombies could live on the number of people who died in St. Edwards Parish, but gave up as soon as I realized I would need to do division in my head.

Pulling the zipper closed, I glanced up in time to see Marianne headed my way, pulled along by a very eager dog.

“You must be Angel,” the petite woman said breathlessly as the dog stopped in front of me. “Ed and Marcus have told me about you. So nice to finally meet you!”

I straightened and gave her a smile. “Hi, yeah, I’m Angel. You’re Marianne, right?”

She bobbed her head in a yes, then dipped her chin toward the dog who was sitting and staring at me intently. “And this here is Kudzu.” She frowned at the dog, then rolled her eyes. “Oh, you silly mutt. She’s not a corpse.”

I could feel the blood drain from my face, but thankfully Marianne kept right on talking and didn’t seem to notice. “She’s a cadaver dog, see? And she’s smelling the body you have in the bag, and probably your clothes as well since you wear them in the morgue, right?” I nodded but she kept on going. Damn good thing since I wasn’t quite sure if I’d recovered the ability to speak yet. “We came out to see if we could find this poor guy’s head, but instead we stumbled across a little campsite where he’s probably been living.” She shook her head. “What an awful, awful thing.” She tugged at the leash and the dog obediently returned to her side.

Well, now I knew where Zeke had been staying. Not that it mattered anymore. “Yeah, I think the cops are freaking out a bit,” I said, relieved that my voice didn’t show any of my earlier shock. “I guess they’re thinking it’s a serial killer.”

Marianne rubbed her arms. “I’ve been making Ed stay at my place every night ever since the last body was found so close to where I live.” Then she grinned. “Though that’s not much of a change from the usual. He has a nice enough apartment over in Longville, but it’s furnished like a dorm room. Whereas I actually have silly things like beds and chairs and couches.”

“And hopefully a large refrigerator, too,” I said, thinking of his incredible appetite, then felt silly for saying it since she’d probably have no idea what I meant by that.

To my relief, she let out a peal of laughter, though she quickly covered her mouth and looked around guiltily. “Oh, gawd, look at me giggling over a dead body. People will start thinking I’m horrible and cold. But, yes, I have a large fridge. That man goes through groceries like nobody’s business! If I ate the way he did, I’d weigh about a thousand pounds!”

Someone called her name, and she whipped her head around. I followed her gaze to see Ed at the top of the berm. He gave me a wave, and I lifted my hand in reply.

“Speak of the devil!” she said. “He’s going to help me take Kudzu on a long run around this area. It always helps to have someone else with me.” She looked back to me. “It was so great meeting you. You’ll have to come over the next time we have a get-together! We have a fish fry or a barbecue at least every other weekend. I’ll make sure Ed or Marcus gives you a call! ” Then she was trotting off with Kudzu before I could do more than give a weak smile in return.

I let out a long breath. One thing was for sure—I needed to stay the hell away from that dog.

To my shock and surprise, Ben and Mike both helped Derrel and me carry the body bag back to the road. Most of the ranking officers had left which meant I could get the van up close so that we didn’t have to haul the damn thing down the road as well. I gave both detectives super nice smiles in thanks, even though Ben was the one who’d stepped up to help and had then guilted Mike into taking another strap. I wasn’t going to bitch. Sure, I could carry it myself, but why burn up the brains if I didn’t have to?

As I closed the back of the van I saw Marcus out on the street talking on his phone, but I didn’t have a chance to do more than give him a little nod and smile. His expression remained fairly grim, though he returned the nod, and I felt instantly silly for being all smiley and cheerful on such a gruesome murder scene. At least Marianne had caught herself and realized how awful it was to laugh at a death scene. Me, I didn’t even think about it. I’d become totally jaded already. I barely thought of dead bodies as former people anymore.

The thought left me cold. Was that part of the zombie insanity? Maybe it had nothing to do with hunger. Maybe it was part of this virus or whatever, and the longer it was in me the less I’d think of people as people, and it would eventually seem natural to want to bash their heads in.

No, I was being completely stupid. I mean, Kang was still pretty normal, and he was old.

Still, it continued to bother me throughout the day—enough for Dr. Leblanc to notice how quiet I was.

“Something bugging you, Angel?”

I looked up from the computer and began to give a general No, I’m fine denial, then paused. “Well, sort of, but I’m afraid you’ll, um, think I’m weird.”

His eyes flashed with kind humor. “Weirder, you mean?”

I gave a weak laugh. “Yeah, more than usual.”

“What’s up?”

I took a deep breath as I tried to figure out how to say it without sounding like a freak. I really liked Dr. Leblanc—not in a sexy way or anything. Ew! But simply as a nice person who seemed to be willing to try and understand me. I trusted him, and even I could admit that I wasn’t the type to trust many people. I could do that bit of analysis on myself just fine.

“Well, I think I’m becoming kinda cold,” I said. “I mean, I pick up these bodies, and I don’t even think about the fact they were once living people. It doesn’t bug me, and I think it should.” I met his eyes. “Shouldn’t it?”

He patted my shoulder. “Angel, you have a tough and crusty exterior, but you have the kindest, mushiest heart I’ve ever seen. You’re not cold. Thinking of the bodies as non-people is simply a defense mechanism your brain engages to protect you from the horribleness of what we have to do. We all do it.” The smile he gave me was warm and gentle. “We crack jokes and we’re terribly inappropriate because, if we focus on the loss, we’ll lose our minds and won’t be able to do what needs to be done.” He gave my shoulder a squeeze. “Besides, I know you’re not cold.”

“How do you know?” I challenged.

“Because you cry when we get kids through here,” he stated. “No one jokes about the kids. Those are the ones that get to us the most.”

I felt a knot form in my throat. “Yeah,” I said, voice suddenly hoarse.

“You’re human, Angel. Don’t worry. I wouldn’t have you here if you weren’t.” He turned and walked away as I stared after him in surprise.

So maybe there were different degrees of monster. I was a monster with a mushy heart.