White Trash Zombie Apocalypse

Chapter 12

“Babe.”

I mumbled and rolled over.

“Hey, babe,” the voice insisted on continuing to speak. Marcus. Waking me up. Damn him. “I’m sorry, but I have to leave in ten minutes,” he went on. “I work day shift, and I have roll call at six a.m.”

Cracking an eye open, I peered at the clock. Five fifteen. “You’re kicking me out?” I mumbled.

Marcus chuckled softly. “Hell, no,” he said. “You can stay here all day. But if you want me to give you a ride back to your car, you need to get up.”

Crap. Yeah, my car was still in the Walmart parking lot. I briefly debated staying in bed and then finding another way to retrieve the damn thing, but I couldn’t think of anyone else I wanted to bug for a ride—or tell what had happened. And I sure as hell didn’t want to cough up cash for a taxi.

Reluctantly, I opened both eyes. Marcus was dressed and ready to go in his sheriff’s office uniform. It was a somewhat ordinary grey shirt and dark blue pants, but Marcus had his shirts tailored to better fit the v-taper of his lats, and the polyester pants hugged his firm butt quite nicely. Add the whole duty belt and air of authority, and the man frickin’ oozed sexy.

“Fine,” I grumbled. I forced myself to roll out of bed, took the clothing that Marcus held out for me. Same clothing I’d had on the day before, but clean and dry now, I noted. Marcus could be pretty damn awesome. Well, except for waking me up at oh-fuck in the morning.

I managed to dress without too many complaints, and then Marcus drove me in his police car to Walmart. To my surprise he got out when I did, opened the trunk of his car and pulled out a hand-held vacuum.

“Don’t want you sitting on glass,” he said with a smile, and I proceeded to watch in bemused delight as he vacuumed up all the broken glass that littered the interior of my car.

“You just earned yourself some sexual favors,” I told him after he finished.

He laughed. “Do you work today?”

“Nope. I think it’s gonna be a clean-the-kitchen and study-my-ass off day.” I wrinkled my nose. “I know how to party.”

“Sounds like fun,” he said with a mild shudder. “I’ll call you when I get off work.”

“You’d better!”

He kissed me, then watched as I started my car and drove off. I glanced back in the rearview mirror as he climbed back into his cruiser. Yeah, maybe it was time for us to officially become boyfriend-girlfriend. Hell, everyone assumed we were already. And he’d sure as hell come through for me last night.

I made it home to a dark house, with only my dad’s snoring to break the silence. I’d texted him before going to bed last night to let him know I wouldn’t be in and to not worry. He never responded, so he was either annoyed that I spent the night with Marcus or too busy drinking or whatever the hell else he was doing. Screw it. I had a feeling I’d be spending a lot more nights away from home.

For a brief moment I considered going right back to bed, but by this point I was pretty damn awake. Exerting a bit of maturity, I spread my books out on the kitchen table and settled down to work through a practice GED test. That killed a couple of hours, but I managed to pass it by the skin of my teeth and rewarded myself with a mental high-five.

Yet my euphoria faded as the memory of the previous night’s fun and games rose again. Hell, this whole week had been weird, with the attack at the boat launch being the shit-flavored ice cream on top of the crazy pie. Though it had been less than thirty-six hours, it seemed like forever since I was out on that rain-soaked highway with Heather and facing down the company men. Was she recovering all right? Was the Saberton Corporation still looking for her?

Jeez, it’s corporate espionage on steroids. And brains.

I sat back and considered the various connections, then abruptly remembered that I’d planned to call Pietro about Kang’s head. The clock over the stove read nine-oh-five. A more than reasonable hour to call.

Before I could lose my nerve, I pulled my phone from my purse and dialed Pietro’s number.

To my surprise he picked up on the first ring. “Hello, Angel. How are you doing this morning? I was just thinking about you.”

“Uh, hi, Pietro,” I said, trying to recover from the mild shock that he had my number in his contacts. “Better. All the weird weakness is gone, and I feel pretty much my normal self.”

“Good. Glad to hear it.” He said, sounding like he actually meant it. “How can I help you?”

Crap, I probably should’ve rehearsed what I was going to say before calling and sounding like a moron. “Um, I was calling to find out if there’s been any progress with the heads.” It had been six months since his people recovered the zombies’ heads from Dr. Charish’s lab at NuQuesCor—heads of zombies Ed had killed.

“You mean with regrowth?” he asked, again surprising me by actually knowing what the hell I was talking about. I could be talking about heads of cauliflower for all he knew.

“Well, yeah,” I said. “Is anything happening? I haven’t heard any news, and, well, Kang was sort of a friend of mine, and I’d really like to be kept in the loop.”

“The regrowth itself hasn’t been attempted yet,” Pietro informed me. “It will be as soon as the right medium is developed.”

“Right medium?” I asked, puzzled. “You mean what to grow them back in? Why can’t you just put them in a big vat of brains?”

“According to one who knows far more about this than I do,” he said, “a big vat of brains wouldn’t be sufficient. Coming back from a head alone isn’t exactly natural. Kristi Charish was on the right track when using the pseudobrains mix to regrow Zeke Lyons, but she hadn’t tested it thoroughly and, as you know, the results were tragic. Finding the right formula is proving challenging, but we’re getting closer.”

“Oh. All right.” Disappointment curled through me, but I also understood. Zeke Lyons was one of Ed’s decapitation/murder victims, but when he was regrown he came back all screwed up—appearing at least twenty years older, and with a parasite that couldn’t heal the damage from the closed-head injury he sustained after a fall down a flight of stairs.

I resisted the urge to sigh. So much for getting answers from Kang, at least any time soon. “Will you please let me know once you have any news?”

“I will,” Pietro said, “but perhaps you’d like to get some direct answers? Maybe even see the heads yourself?”

I sucked in an excited breath. “Seriously?”

“Completely,” he replied, and I thought I heard a smile in his voice at my delight. “We did lose one, but the others are relatively stable.”

“I would love to see the heads!” Then I bit my lip. “Wait. Which one did you lose? Please don’t say it was Kang’s.”

“No. Kang is stable. It was Peter Pleschia.”

I racked my memory for which one that was. Oh yeah, the pizza guy. “Oh, whew. Er, I mean, not great for him, but…well, you know.” I made a face at my own idiocy. “Anyway. So, when can I go and see them?”

Pietro chuckled. “It’s all right. I know what you meant. Do you work today?”

A thrill of anticipation ran through me. “No. I’m off today, work tomorrow, then off again on Saturday, but I have the GED that morning.”

“I’ll have Brian pick you up at noon today at your place,” he said. “Will that work for you?”

Holy crap. Brian Archer, Pietro’s hard as nails head of security. “Sure!” I said quickly.

“You’ll be meeting with Dr. Ariston Nikas. He heads up all of my research and development operations. He’ll be able to answer your questions much more thoroughly than I can.”

Oh my god. I was going to get to visit a research lab? A zombie research lab?

“That is so cool,” I breathed. “Thanks!”

“You’re welcome, Angel,” he replied warmly. “By the way, apart from your ordeal last night, I heard you were in a pretty serious firefight the night before. Are you doing all right? Do you need anything?”

“Um, no, I’m cool,” I said, weirdly touched at the concern. “Your people gave me some stuff on the scene. And I, uh…” I gulped. “Well, I ate a bad guy.” I killed someone. And ate his brain. Sure, he’d been shooting at me, but…A shiver ran through me. It shouldn’t have been so easy for me to do it. I’d killed McKinney when I was escaping from Charish’s damn lab, but that was different. McKinney was a Grade-A bastard asshole and general all-around Bad Person who’d done terrible things to me and to people I cared about. I’d felt zero guilt when I smashed his head and feasted on the contents.

But the guy the other night…Just because he was working for the other side didn’t necessarily mean he was dipped in sin. Hell, I knew damn well that Pietro’s hands weren’t clean.

My shoulders hunched forward, and my chest tightened as guilt swept in. What the hell kind of monster was I?

Maybe Pietro sensed my attack of sudden remorse; when he replied his tone was surprisingly mild. “You made a decision in the heat of the moment. I’ve heard the reports. If you hadn’t taken him out and utilized the resources he had to offer, Heather would likely be dead now, and those men would have certainly captured you.”

“Right,” I said softly. He was right. I knew that logically, but I also knew I’d probably never shake that sliver of guilt. And that was probably a good thing. If I didn’t feel some guilt and shame, then I really would be a monster. “It’s kinda hard to get used to. Though I guess you know that.”

“Yes, I do,” he replied. “But killing him was a matter of survival for you. And as far as eating him goes, you’d have eaten his brain without hesitation had his body been in the morgue, yes? It’s simply a different setting.”

“Yeah,” I said, subdued. “I’m having a little trouble adjusting to the whole being-a-killer thing.”

He exhaled. “Maybe we can discuss this more later, when things settle down a bit,” he replied, tone gentle. “My people will be occupied for a few days with the aftermath of your encounters with Saberton, but after that we should talk.”

I hesitated. I still didn’t fully trust him, not by a long shot. And the quick and efficient response to the highway incident had shown me quite clearly that Pietro was, well…when I’d half-joked about him being the head of the zombie mafia, I’d probably been underestimating his power and reach.

But I had no doubt he had a lot more experience with dealing with the aftermath of killing someone. And it wasn’t as if I had a whole lot of other people I could spill my guts to. I couldn’t exactly go to a therapist and say, “The thing is, I’m having some guilt issues over the fact that I’m a brain-eating murderer.”

“That would be great,” I heard myself saying.

“Excellent. I’ll tell Dr. Nikas you’ll be coming by shortly after noon.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll, uh, be ready.” I hung up, shaking my head at the awkwardness of my goodbye.

But then I laughed. A year ago I was a drugged-out felon shacking up with my loser boyfriend, Randy. In a couple of hours I was going to see zombie heads in a secret lab owned and operated by the head of the local zombie mafia.

Sometimes life was pretty damn funny.