My Life as a White Trash Zombie

Chapter 5

Despite the failure of Xanax, I managed to get a good night’s sleep, and actually got out of bed when my alarm went off. As soon as I made it in to work, my training began in earnest. Nick was an obsessive-compulsive, anal-retentive jerk with no social skills, but he took his job damn seriously and was hell bent on making sure I was totally prepared for anything. For the rest of the week I was drilled, instructed, trained, and learned to fucking death, but I gritted my teeth, managed to keep from bitch-slapping Nick, and actually got the hang of the whole thing faster than I ever expected. It helped that there wasn’t much about the job that was particularly difficult or complicated. The van drivers were also called bodysnatchers, and that’s basically what our job was: Go to the death scene, grab the dead person, stuff’em into a body bag. And if there were ever any doubts or questions, the investigator was there to clear things up.

I’d braced myself for all sorts of gross or weird stuff when it came to the dead people. Rotten bodies, bizarre suicides, that sort of thing. I was ready for it. I was determined not to freak out, no matter what.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the cops.

Cops everywhere, and me trying to keep from looking all guilty and spastic every time one happened to glance my way. I kept having to remind myself I wasn’t in trouble, wasn’t being hassled—I had no reason to instantly get all defensive. And for the most part the cops and detectives ignored me, or at least didn’t give me anything more than the grunt and nod that they gave various other non-cop types who happened to be on the scene.

I’d been on the job for a whole four days before I managed to run into the two detectives who knew exactly what kind of loser I was.

It was Detective Abadie who recognized me first. We were in the front yard of a two-story house in a nice-as-hell gated subdivision. The overweight and out of shape guy who owned the house had apparently decided that having a half-million dollar house meant that he couldn’t afford to hire someone to clean out his gutters. Now he was dead with what looked to me like a broken neck after the ladder had slipped. He’d taken the plunge into his fancy landscaping—complete with rock garden. But hey, his fucking gutters were clean.

Abadie’s dark eyes scanned the area, skimmed across me and then came back, narrowing. He took in the insignia on my shirt—his mouth pursing as if he’d eaten something bitter. Meanwhile I pretended to be focusing on something intensely interesting near the body so that I didn’t have to meet his gaze. But I could still see him nudge Detective Roth and whisper something. It wasn’t too difficult to figure out the general gist of what he was saying. The burly detective turned around, but to my surprise a smile spread across his face, and he lifted his hand in a wave. I couldn’t really pretend I didn’t see it, and it would’ve probably been horrible and rude to ignore it, so I gave him an awkward and hesitant wave back, hoping that it wasn’t one of those cases where he was actually smiling and waving to someone behind me.

Abadie shook his head and stalked off toward his car with the same expression on his face that Allen Prejean had worn—contempt mixed with a healthy dollop of disgust, and a side of disbelief for good measure.

Roth watched him walk off, then looked back to me and gave me a shrug and a smile before returning to his work. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding, tugged a hand through my hair to cover the fact that I was shaking a little. Okay, so Abadie thinks I’m lower than dirt, but Roth seems all right. And the other cops are all pretty much ignoring me.

Sounded like a tie game to me—and that was an improvement over “loser” any way you looked at it, right? Still, I wasn’t in the best frame of mind for what happened that afternoon.

I’d been through another three autopsies since my first day on the job and each time the damn weird-as-hell craving for brains hit me as soon as the skull was opened up. Each time I gritted my teeth and got through it by not looking directly at the brain and by pretending I was somewhere else.

It worked great until we started the autopsy of the guy we’d just picked up, and Nick handed me the scalpel and bone saw and told me to give it a try. I couldn’t pretend to be somewhere else when I was trying to slice through the nasty rubbery thickness of scalp and keep my teeth from rattling out of my head while maintaining something resembling a straight line around the top of the guy’s head. And I had to admit that it was weirdly satisfying to give that skullcracker a twist and feel the crack of bone all the way up my arms. Of course by the time I dug my fingers into the crack and pulled the top of the skull off, my damn mouth was watering like a dog who hadn’t been fed for a week, looking at a steak.

But that wasn’t the worst part. No, the really bad part was that I froze—stood there with half the guy’s skull in my hands and stared at the pinkish-grey flesh. Didn’t snap out of it until Nick smacked me on the arm.

“Angel? You’re not done,” he said, eyes narrowing. “Are you about to puke or something?”

I took an unsteady breath and tore my eyes away from the brain. “Don’t be stupid,” I snapped, a hell of a lot more sharply than I meant.

It didn’t seem to faze Nick though. He simply gave a snort and jerked a thumb toward the brain. “Then keep going. Did you forget what to do?”

I scowled behind the mask I’d put on to keep from breathing in bone dust. “It’s not fucking rocket science. I was only looking for a second. Gimme a damn break.” With that I set the top of the skull on the table and fiercely set about removing the brain from its former home—and a teensy bit grateful to Nick for pissing me off enough that I could get through this.

Maybe that’s what I need to do, I thought as I grimly set the brain on the scale and wiped my hands. Distract myself. Do whatever it is guys do to keep from coming too soon. Baseball scores or some shit like that. Not that I’d ever known a baseball score.

Still the fact that I’d frozen like that had me more than a little freaked out.

I made it through the rest of the day, but when I finally climbed into my car I knew without any doubt at all that I didn’t want to go home just yet. I tried calling Randy again, but when it rolled to voice mail I didn’t bother leaving a message and simply headed to his house. I was used to him not answering the phone since he was usually out working in his garage.

Randy lived at the end of several miles of long and narrow rural road. There were only a few houses on the entire road, and the rest of it was dense pine forest. At night it was creepy as all hell, though during the day it was practically scenic—until you made it to the end.

Randy lived in a trailer—which really wasn’t so bad since it was actually a pretty decent trailer, as far as trailers went—but the part that really killed the “scenic” aspect was the ramshackle garage. Made of corrugated sheet metal and god-only-knew what else, it was over fifty years old and looked it. Randy’s daddy had worked out of it as an auto mechanic until he’d met a lady and moved to Houston with her a couple of years ago. Now Randy was the mechanic, though sometimes I suspected he had a side business going on when it came to cars. After all, the guy who’d sold me the stolen Prius had been a buddy of his. It hadn’t been worth the trouble, though, to accuse Randy of knowing it had been stolen. It wouldn’t have made any difference at that point.

Randy was out front when I pulled up, his tall, lanky body under the hood of an El Camino. He lifted his head as I got out of my car, a puzzled look crossing his face before it was replaced by his usual lazy smile.

“Hey, babe,” he said, wiping his hands on a rag. “Didn’t think I’d see you around here anytime soon.”

I paused and frowned. “Why?” I asked, right before another memory flickered into place. We’d had some sort of fight that night I’d ODed, though I hadn’t the faintest idea what it had been about. It couldn’t have been too serious, since he didn’t act like he was still mad or anything. But we never had fights about anything major. Sure, we argued, but it was always stupid crap like me getting pissed because he was paying too much attention to how short Ida Miller’s skirt was or him thinking I was banging every guy who looked sideways at me.

He lifted a shoulder in a mild shrug. “After that scene at Pillar’s the other night,” he said, confirming my memory of some sort of argument. “I been worried about you.”

I bit back the urge to ask him why the hell he hadn’t called in the past few days if he was worried about me. I was feeling good. I sure as hell didn’t want to get over one fight just to get into another.

“Busy. Got a job,” I said instead. “Been at it almost a week now.”

“Cool,” he said as he gave me a hug. He smelled of tobacco and grease. A faint whiff of pot clung to him as well, and I could feel myself mentally focusing on that scent. A faint spark of annoyance passed through me that he didn’t ask about the job. Then again, I was the queen of minimum wage. He probably assumed I was working another convenience store gig.

“I’m working at the Coroner’s Office as a van driver,” I told him.

He pulled back and gave a sharp bark of laughter. “You? Touching dead people?”

“Yeah, well, I haven’t puked yet.” Suddenly I didn’t want to talk about my job. If I started thinking about that, then I’d start thinking about why I was working there. “You wanna go get a drink or something?”

“I need to finish this up.” He gestured in the direction of the El Camino. “But there’s beer in the fridge if you want to hang around. This won’t take more than about ten minutes.”

Well, that was the best offer I was likely to get today. I headed into the trailer and snagged two beers out of his fridge. A frying pan on the stove held congealing bacon fat, and the kitchen table was covered with old newspapers and engine parts—both combining to give a faint bacon/engine grease tang to the air. It didn’t bother me. I was pretty used to it since I usually slept over here as often as I could. Randy’s furniture was old and battered, and the carpet had more stains on it than a bum’s underwear, but the trailer didn’t have roaches, rats, or my dad.

I plopped down on the couch and put my feet up on the coffee table, shoving aside a stack of old Car and Driver magazines and about six remotes. Even though Randy didn’t seem to give much of a shit about his living arrangements, he took his entertainment pretty seriously : wide screen HDTV, Blu-Ray/DVD player, Xbox, and a kick-ass stereo system. Yet another reason why I preferred spending my time over here.

I didn’t turn the TV on. After the day I’d had, I was more in the mood for quiet. No fights. No insults. Nothing weird or disturbing.

I’d finished the first beer and was well into the second by the time Randy came in. He headed straight to the kitchen, returning after a moment with a beer in one hand and baggie in the other. He cracked the beer open and took a long swig, then snagged an already-rolled joint out of the baggie and lit it. After several puffs he passed it to me.

I took a long hit, then tipped my head back and waited for it to take effect.

“You been to Pillar’s since the other night?” he asked.

“Nope,” I said, without moving. The mellow hadn’t hit yet, and I felt that if I shook my head it would kill it.

“Me neither.” He paused. “Gotta admit, I was kinda surprised to see you come by here after all that.”

Damn. Must have been more of a fight than I thought. I took another hit off the joint as a missing fragment of memory abruptly slid into place. Oh yeah, he’d gone off with some chick, so I’d tried to get back by flirting with a guy I didn’t even know. Then the guy had offered to drive me home, because I was way too drunk to drive. Or too stoned. I didn’t remember drinking all that much. No, wait, the guy had been buying me drinks. But I didn’t leave with him. I was sure of that. There was no way I’d go off with someone I didn’t know. I could be stupid as all hell sometimes, but I knew better than to do that. So instead I tried to walk home. Yeah, that was so much smarter.

“Guess that’s why I haven’t called you.” Randy was still talking.

I took another pull on the joint, a hard one, as if I could get it to take effect faster. Why the hell wasn’t I high yet? “Umm, okay.”

He frowned down into his beer. “You know I didn’t fuck her, right?”

I blinked at him. “Hunh?”

“Alison,” he said. “The chick I left with? You came after me, asked where the fuck I was going. Acting all jealous and shit—”

“I remember,” I interrupted. “And you laughed and said you were gonna go bang her in the parking lot.”

A grimace flickered over his face. “I was just fucking with you,” he muttered. “I didn’t think you’d believe me. I was going out to take a look at her car. She was having trouble with her battery. Then I came back in and you were all over some asshole. Pissed me off.”

Yeah, I’d believed him. It wasn’t as if he’d never cheated on me before, though now I could see that doing so in the middle of our night out together would have been a stretch, even for him. And I’d overreacted like a moron, trying to make him jealous. I remembered that much, though I couldn’t for the life of me remember who the other guy was. Hopefully I hadn’t made too much of an ass of myself.

“Well, it was a dick thing to say,” I told him.

“I know,” he said with a wince. “Sorry. So how’d you get the job?” It was pretty obvious he wanted to change the subject, but that was fine with me. If we kept hashing over what had happened at the bar we’d probably end up in another fight.

“Umm, through my probation officer,” I said after a second of mental scrambling for an answer. I wasn’t totally sure why, but I didn’t want to tell him the truth about the whole thing. Maybe ’cause he’d want me to explain, and I didn’t know how to? “It’s a weird gig, but kinda cool, too. And it even has benefits.”

“Oh yeah?”

I nodded. “After three months I get health insurance, and if I stay ten years I get vested in their pension plan.”

He laughed out loud. “The day you keep a job for ten years is the day I grow a twelve-inch dick.”

“Fuck you,” I shot back. “That doesn’t even make sense. Besides, you’re one to talk.”

He grinned and gave me a light punch on the arm. “I know, that’s why I said it. You and me, we’re too alike. Hell, I’ll be shocked if you can keep this job long enough to get the health insurance.”

I scowled. “Gee, thanks for having so much faith in me.”

“Aw, c’mon, Angel, lighten up. It’s not that. You like to do your own thing too much to stick with the same job for so long.”

And what the hell was my own thing? Whatever it was, so far it sucked.

“This is shit pot,” I announced after a moment, stubbing out the half inch of joint that was left. Normally I’d smoke it down as far as possible, but I still wasn’t feeling any buzz. Didn’t seem to be any point to smoking the rest of it.

He shrugged without looking at me as he picked up a remote and turned on the TV. “So get your own.”

“Seriously,” I said. “I don’t think that’s pot. I’m not feeling a damn thing from it.”

He flicked a glance my way. “It’s the same goddamn bag we started the other night. You liked it enough back then.”

I grimaced, then stood.

“Where y’going?” he asked.

“Dunno.” I rubbed my arms. Everything felt weird and faded, like the world was turning into a black and white movie. And the dialogue and music on the TV seemed flat and tuneless. But I wasn’t feeling the beer or pot at all. I was still cold sober and I didn’t want to be. “Home, I guess.”

“Nice.” His mouth curled into a mild scowl. “You come over and drink my beer and smoke my shit and then leave? What’s up with that?” He grabbed my hand and gave it a small tug, then offered a sly smile. “C’mon . . . stay.”

I hesitated. I liked sex with Randy, even though we were so on-again off-again that I’d pretty much lost track of whether we were dating or not. After almost four years, we were so damned used to each other that whenever we were together we ended up in the same comfortable patterns.

And I knew what part of that pattern would be. I’d stay, we’d screw, then we’d get high on whatever he had around, and I’d probably oversleep.

“I can’t.” I tugged free of his grasp. “Sorry. I gotta go. I have work tomorrow. Y’know? That job I won’t last at?”

“Are you actually pissed at me about that?” he asked, a frown forming between his eyes.

“No! I’m not,” I insisted. “I just need to get home. I can’t screw this up.”

“Sure. Whatever,” he muttered. He didn’t reach for my hand again and shifted his attention to the TV. For a brief instant I wanted to go ahead and pick a fight, simply to see if that would snap everything back into focus. Get him and me all riled up and see if that could somehow get him to act like he gave a shit if I was around. We’d yell and scream, then we’d make up and get high and fuck.

And I’d oversleep and lose my job, I thought. I knew myself too well. But it’s only a job, right? Whoever wrote that letter can’t have been serious about the whole go-to-jail thing. . . .

I shook my head, scowling. God, I was weak. How could I even be considering risking it?

The same way I’ve risked everything else in my life. By not giving a shit. Or getting so fucked up I couldn’t give a shit, even if I wanted to.

Yeah, well, I needed to give a shit about going back to j ail.

“I’ll, um, see you later, babe. Okay?” I said.

He grunted something that might have been a yes. I left to the sound of him changing channels.