White Trash Zombie Apocalypse

Chapter 3

“Five days and counting,” Nick said with a smile.

I could only groan. For the past few months Nick, my oftentimes annoying but basically good-hearted coworker, had been tutoring me for the GED—the high school equivalency exam. Passing it had been a condition of my probation. But then I’d received my mysterious pardon and suddenly I didn’t have to pass the GED.

Except that I did, for my own self-respect. Hell, having any self-respect at all was a new experience for me, so why not go full tilt, right? Besides, I’d learned that zombies had the potential to live a very long time. Living a hundred years or so as an uneducated loser wasn’t all that appealing to me, therefore the first step was to get my damn high school diploma.

However, being chock full of self-respect didn’t mean I wasn’t totally intimidated by the whole process.

“I’m not ready,” I said, looking with dismay at the pile of workbooks that Nick had forced me to plow through in the past months. “There’s no way.”

His green eyes narrowed. “You won’t be if you keep saying that. You went through the practice test last week and did pretty well, and you’ve been studying your ass off since then.”

I took a deep breath. “Right. Okay. I can do this.” But then my self-confidence wilted. “I’m still so damn slow on the reading part though. I’m afraid I’ll run out of time.”

“And you get slower when you’re flustered,” he pointed out for about the billionth time. “So you need to keep focused on what’s right in front of you and not on what’s left to do.”

“At least I’m good at the math part,” I said. Too bad I had to get passing grades on all of it—math, science, reading, writing, and social studies. But it was only the reading part that had me worried sick.

Nick leaned back and gave me a considering look. “Have you ever been tested for dyslexia? I mean, it’s not that you aren’t smart enough or don’t understand the words.”

I blinked at him. “Um. Isn’t that the thing where you see words backward or something? I don’t think I have that.”

He shook his head. “It’s not always like that. Dyslexia can show up in a lot of ways. Sometimes it’s only noticed because reading is slow for no other apparent reason, then testing can be done to determine if that’s the cause.”

“Well, what difference would it make at this point?” I asked with a slight frown. “I mean, I read slow as molasses. Not sure anything can be done about that.”

“Not much to be done about the slow reading right now, but if you get diagnosed you can probably get extra time for the test.”

“Oh, wow.” I blew out a breath. “Now that would make it worthwhile.” Even if I didn’t end up needing the extra time, it would take my stress level down by a fair amount.

“No kidding,” he said. “I don’t know how long it takes to get tested and diagnosed and all, but it’d be worth looking into.” He tilted his head. “And then you could get tutoring to specifically address whatever issues you have.”

“I have lots of issues,” I said with a laugh.

He grinned. “Yes, you do!”

It was an interesting thought. Could it be that easy? And if it really was something like that, then why hadn’t any of my teachers noticed it and done something about it?

Or maybe they did, I realized. A whisper of memory intruded, of being pulled out of class when I was in fourth or fifth grade to go to the school office and do all sorts of reading and comprehension tests for a round-cheeked woman. It was more than possible that the school had contacted my mother to let her know I had a problem, and she’d simply never pursued it. She sure as hell wouldn’t have exerted any extra effort for me. And my dad had been working on an offshore oil rig at the time. He wouldn’t have known there was a problem.

The pieces fell into place. Damn. Had my mother really done that? It made a sick sense. The testing. All the problems in school. Everything. A wave of anger passed through me. I wouldn’t put it past her. If it didn’t revolve around her, she had no use for it. And damn it, though she was dead and buried and couldn’t hit me anymore, this reading thing still had me in its grip. I needed to know what that testing had been about, and maybe even get a black and white answer about whether or not my mom had blown off the test results.

With a mental sigh, I added “check school records” to my list of things to do.

“Probably too late to get diagnosed or whatever before the test this weekend,” I said, trying to throw off the cloud of my mother’s neglect. “But after I fail this one, I’ll look into it.”

I knew I’d said the wrong thing the instant the words left my mouth. For a guy who wasn’t much taller than me, Nick could be pretty intimidating when he got angry.

His mouth tightened to a thin line. “If you’re so sure you’re going to fail, why even bother?” He stood and picked up the workbook, dropped it onto the others with a thud.

I sighed and tugged a hand through my hair. “Okay, okay. I’m not sure I’m gonna fail. I’m just…” I winced. “I don’t do well on tests like that.”

He wasn’t appeased. “Well, shit. So far, you’ve told me you’re not ready, you’re going to fail, and you don’t do well on tests like this. From what I’ve seen, you were close to ready a week ago, you were within a few points of passing the practice test, and you did perfectly fine taking that one. If you’re not careful, you’ll talk yourself into being a living, breathing, self-fulfilling prophecy.”

The words hung in the air of the morgue. Nick had gone from being a pain in my ass and a pompous jerk to being someone I could actually confess my insecurities to. We weren’t quite friends—at least not the sort of friend I’d hang out or see a movie with—but I trusted him, and I knew he had my back. It was almost as if he’d decided that since I wasn’t a threat to any of his own ambitions, he was going to do his best to help me with my own. And I liked to think that his association with me helped “unprickify” him a bit, which might even have helped him finally score his recent promotion to death investigator.

“I’m scared,” I admitted, dropping my head into my hands. “I’ve worked really hard to not be such a damn loser anymore, y’know?”

Nick moved behind me. A couple of seconds later I felt his hand on my shoulder in an almost hesitant touch. “You don’t need to be scared, Angel,” he urged. “You don’t have to do this for anyone but yourself anymore. Worst thing that can happen, the absolute worst, is that you’ll need to retest.” He gave my shoulder a light squeeze. “Compare that to all the other bad shit that can happen in one day, and maybe it won’t be so scary after all.”

I turned my head to look up at him, gave him a smile. “You’re right. Thanks.” I knew all too well how much bad shit could happen in one day, and failing a test wasn’t even on the same scale. “It’s really not the end of the world if I fail.”

“Nope, it’s not.” Then he put on a grumpy expression. “Except that you’d have to spend that much more time with me. That should be motivation enough to pass.”

I laughed and gave a mock shudder. “Oh, god help me!”

“Yep, you’re in trouble.” Then he cleared his throat and lifted his hand from my shoulder as if he’d suddenly remembered he was maintaining the contact. “Enough moaning. I’ve got work to do.”

“Yeah, moved up in the world from bodysnatcher to big bad investigator,” I said with a smile.

“It’s about damn time they recognized my worth,” he said, only half kidding as he headed out and back to the main building.

I rolled my eyes and bent my head to continue studying.

About half an hour later Allen Prejean, Chief Investigator for the St. Edwards Parish Sheriff’s Office, walked past the door of the office, gave me a sour look and made a point of checking his watch as he passed. Scowling, I deliberately waited another minute before putting all my books away. I still had three minutes before my shift technically started. I wasn’t stupid enough to do my tutoring and studying on company time. Or rather, I wasn’t stupid enough to do so in front of Allen. I studied in the van or in the morgue late at night all the damn time.

Allen had worked for the coroner, Dr. Duplessis, for close to fifteen years, long before Duplessis was elected. As a former paramedic who was studying to be a physician’s assistant, he’d supposedly already been offered a position with Dr. Duplessis’s private cardiology practice once he graduated, and that day couldn’t come soon enough for me. Allen certainly knew his stuff when it came to death investigation, and he ran the office well enough. But he was also a dick. His call schedule seemed to be set up specifically to inconvenience me as much as possible, and he made no effort to be discreet about my drug history when requiring job-related piss tests—which I somehow ended up “randomly” selected for every damn month. There was no doubt he disliked me intensely, though I didn’t know whether it was a simple thing of not liking me because of my felony/pill-popping/loser background or if there was some other, more specific, reason. I knew he’d love to find an excuse to fire me, so I did my damndest to keep my nose clean, obey every goddamn rule, and go the extra mile when needed. And not simply because I needed this job for the access it gave me to my brain food supply, but more because there was no way I was letting Allen Prejean win.

After getting my books and notes packed up, I left my borrowed study space and headed through the building to the morgue. The only body scheduled to be autopsied was head-squished guy from the movie set, and after garbing myself in scrubs, shoe covers, plastic smock, paper apron over that, hair cover, and latex gloves, I made quick work of getting him out of the cooler and into the cutting room. Sometimes it cracked me up to go through the whole rigmarole of protecting myself from biohazards. I sure as hell didn’t need to worry about Hepatitis or HIV since my parasite took care of that. There’d been plenty of times when I’d eaten brains straight from the body bag, while still protectively garbed—another one of those things that I did by-the-book, since ignoring safety protocols was a fireable offense.

Blood from Mr. Brent Stewart’s smushed head had pooled in a sticky mess inside the bag, and when I pulled him from the stretcher onto the metal table the bag slid as well and poured a gooey stream of blood onto the floor. I let out a bunch of nasty words, sopped up as much as I could with towels which then went straight into the biohazard container, then fetched the mop and bucket to get the rest of it up before Dr. Leblanc arrived. I’d barely finished emptying the bucket out and putting the cleaning stuff away when the pathologist came in.

“Shit, sorry, doc,” I said as I hurried back into the cutting room. “Had a blood spill, and I don’t have your tools set out. Gimme five minutes and I’ll be ready for you.”

“Not a problem, Angel.”

Dr. Leblanc was in his fifties with thin blond-grey hair, and sharp blue eyes that often sparkled with humor. He was unimposing physically—medium height and build with a bit of flab around the waist—but I knew he was tough as nails when it came to standing up for what he believed in. “You’ve spoiled me by usually having everything ready half an hour before I’ve even finished my morning coffee.” His eyes crinkled as he smiled at me. “In fact I don’t think I’ve ever seen you running late before. Is everything all right?”

“Yep!” I replied as I set out his implements: scalpels, scissors, saw, forceps, rib shears, syringes. “I was studying in the investigator’s office. Had another tutoring session with Nick this morning.”

“Ah, of course. Five more days.” He pulled smock and apron on, tugged on gloves. “Nick’s been helpful?”

“Oh my god, more than helpful,” I said fervently. “There’s no way I could afford to pay a tutor for the amount of time he’s worked with me. And he’s actually really good at teaching this stuff. I mean he’s not, er, his usual self.”

Dr. Leblanc’s eyes flashed with amusement. He knew exactly what I meant. There was a good reason why I used to mentally refer to Nick as “Nick the Prick.”

“You make him want to be a better person,” he said with only a trace of facetiousness.

I responded with a soft snort of derision. “Hardly. I think he simply enjoys the challenge of filling my blank slate.” I shook my head. “Anyway, it’s pretty amazing he’s willing to help. A year ago I’d never have imagined I’d have so many awesome people supporting me.”

“You were just waiting for your moment to shine,” he replied. He moved to the table and peered down at Mr. Stewart, assessing.

“Helps that I had so many people giving me a hand up along the way,” I said with a shrug.

He glanced up at me. “That only works if you have your hand up and reaching.”

“Well that’s damn near poetic,” I said with a laugh.

He gave an answering grin. “I blame the formalin fumes.” He picked up a scalpel. “Let’s find out if there was anything amiss about Mr. Stewart’s death.”

Except for the crushed nature of Mr. Stewart’s head, he seemed to have been in excellent health. The autopsy went quickly, and I drew and packaged up blood, urine, and vitreous samples for later toxicology testing. The conversation I overheard at the stadium, about the death possibly not being an accident, replayed itself in the back of my mind, and the autopsy didn’t help put it to rest. While Dr. Leblanc had no problem listing the blunt force head trauma as the cause of death due to the extent of the crushing damage, he fully admitted there was little way to determine if it had been accidental or intentional.

After he finished and left to go write up his notes, I returned Mr. Stewart to the cooler. It bothered me that we might never find out if he’d been murdered, though I knew there’d be slim chance the killer would ever be found and prosecuted, even if we knew for sure. Lots of murders went unsolved, and I had no doubt there were plenty of accidental deaths that weren’t, or overdoses that had been helped along.

I guess all we can do is the best we can, I decided.

The rest of my shift was busy enough to keep it from being boring, but I was glad to leave when it was over. Lightning flashed through the dark clouds of the late afternoon sky as I slipped out the back exit of the morgue, and I felt a bit of relief that the rain had taken a break for the moment. I started toward my car, then almost had a heart attack as a figure moved from around the corner of the building.

“Angel,” the figure said, and it took me a couple of heart pounding seconds to recognize the speaker.

“Jesus Christ! Ed?”

He moved closer. “Yeah, sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“That’s cool,” I said, taking a deep breath to get my pulse under control. “I know you can’t exactly saunter up to the front door in broad daylight.” Ed was wanted for multiple murders. Yeah, he’d killed those people—all zombies—but he’d been played and manipulated pretty heavily by the ruthless Dr. Kristi Charish. She’d convinced him that the “zombie menace” needed to be eradicated and that killing known zombies would be a good and noble thing to do. It didn’t help that he’d seen a zombie kill his dad about a decade earlier—which Charish knew all about and gleefully exploited. The truly tragic part was that she only manipulated Ed into becoming a serial killer because she wanted zombie heads for her own screwed-up research. Bitch.

I peered at him. When I first met Ed Quinn he looked like the typical boy next-door—tall and slender, reddish brown hair, scattering of freckles across his nose. After he went on the run he went goth as a disguise—dyed his hair black and spiked it, sported a variety of piercings, and dressed in skull-adorned clothing. Now he looked…ordinary. Dark brown hair in a conservative and boring style. Khaki pants. Dark blue polo-style shirt. Even the freckles were gone, either bleached away or hidden beneath a layer of makeup. I wouldn’t look at him twice, which was probably the point, I realized. “How are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m okay. I mean as okay as I can be while being hunted as a serial killer.”

I winced in sympathy. “I guess no one’s come up with some brilliant way to get you cleared of all that yet, huh?”

Ed exhaled, shook his head. “Nope. Never will be cleared legally,” he said, regret tingeing his voice. “Maybe a little redemption if the heads can be restored.”

“Yeah. That would be great, for your peace of mind and for them.” After the fiasco with Dr. Charish, I’d insisted that Pietro recover the zombie heads from her lab with the hope that the bodies could someday be regrown. Dr. Charish had done it once, though not with complete success. But I hadn’t heard squat about the heads in the past six months. I made a mental note to check on that soon.

Ed gave me a resigned shrug, and I could tell guilt ate at him. “Thankfully, Pietro has kept me well-hidden from the law.”

“But you can’t stay hidden forever,” I pointed out.

To my surprise a slight smile touched his mouth. “Actually, I can,” he said. “Not here, though. I’m leaving the country tonight. Pietro’s got me set up in Costa Rica. New identity. Fake passport and everything.”

“Oh. Wow.” A sharp pang of loss went through me. I definitely considered Ed a friend. Sure, he’d tried really hard to kill me, but he then made up for it by helping me out when I was kidnapped by Dr. Charish. “Costa Rica, huh?” I fought for a smile and struggled to be happy for him. It really was the only option that made sense, and Pietro certainly had the resources to make it happen. “That’s awesome,” I managed, then bit my lower lip, met his eyes. “Will you ever come back? I mean…will I ever see you again?”

“I don’t know,” he said, expression suddenly bleak. “Pietro and I talked about it. I’m going to have some plastic surgery.” He grimaced, rubbed his eyes. “I think I need some time away to get my head together. It’s been nothing but stress and confusion for a long time.”

“Yeah, it’s been pretty weird,” I agreed, then sighed. “I’m gonna miss you. I mean, I know I’ve barely seen you these past few months, but I’ve always known that I could see you…and now you’re going so far away.”

“I’ll miss you too,” Ed said. “That’s why I wanted to come say goodbye. I was really hoping you’d come out before I had to go.”

A warm fuzzy feeling went through me that he’d waited here. “Thanks,” I said. “I’m really glad you came by. Maybe you can write. I mean, using your new name and all.” I frowned. “What is your new name?”

He chuckled. “James Clement, and no, I’m not used to it.”

“James.” I laughed. “Yeah, that’s weird. You don’t seem like a James.”

“I know, but I can’t complain,” he said, shrugging. “Pietro really came through for me.”

I made a sour face. “Well, he kinda owed you, big time.” Pietro had been the zombie who’d killed Ed’s father. Of course that was right after Ed’s father had killed Ed’s mother because Pietro was sleeping with her. Yeah, major zombie soap opera stuff.

“He does owe me,” Ed agreed. “But owing and paying are two different things. I’m glad he didn’t take the easy road and get rid of me.”

“Oh shit,” I breathed, shocked at the idea. “I never even thought of that. Yikes.” A shudder ran through me. “Damn. Yeah, I guess that would’ve been a lot easier. Says something about Pietro, I suppose.”

“Exactly.” He gave me a smile. “Give me a hug. I’ve got to get out of here or I’ll miss my flight.”

I wrapped my arms around him, hugged him tightly while I tried not to cry and failed miserably at that. “You be careful,” I sniffled. “And you’d better write. I want postcards, dammit.”

Ed gave me a squeeze and kissed my cheek. “Don’t worry, sweetie. You can’t get rid of me.”

I finally released him and wiped at my eyes. “You’d better go.”

“Yep. And I’m going to be sweating bullets until I get through airport security,” he said. “I’ve been assured that I don’t need to worry, but damn.” He flashed a grin.

“If you get caught I’ll bust you out,” I promised, echoing his grin.

He laughed. “Deal. But let’s not think about that.” He kissed my cheek again. “Gotta run. Take care, Angel.”

“Always,” I replied softly as he turned and hurried to a waiting car. Was it possible to be happy and sad for someone at the same time?

With a sigh, I headed for my car, happy and sad…but mostly sad.