White Trash Zombie Unchained

“No!” I ran full out and tackled Douglas as hard as my skinny little ass could manage. The guy wasn’t exactly a lightweight, but I had enough momentum to send us both crashing into a steel storage cabinet.

  Douglas gave a wet, warbling moan that raised the hairs at the nape of my neck then clamped his good hand onto my upper arm. I yelped in surprise, even more surprised when my body remembered a fragment of jiu jitsu and twisted against the grip to free myself.

  “Angel, move!”

  I stumbled aside just in time as Allen and Nick jammed the rolling table against Douglas to pin him against the cabinet. The dead man let out another eerie wail, shoved at the table, then swiped his arm out. Nick jerked his head back and managed to merely get clipped on the jaw instead of walloped. He hissed a curse but held his ground beside Allen. But it was clear they wouldn’t be able to keep Douglas pinned much longer.

  “Heads up!” I snatched the fire extinguisher from the wall then swung it at Dougie’s skull as hard as I could. Except he was over a foot taller than me, and with the table in the way, I only managed to graze his shoulder and smash the extinguisher into the cabinet, leaving an impressive dent. To add insult to injury, the rebound ripped the fire extinguisher from my hands and sent it sailing across the room.

  However, my masterful shoulder graze had riled Douglas up. He let out a spluttering roar and overturned the table, knocking Allen and Nick off balance, then took a lumbering step in my direction, hand reaching toward me like a claw.

  I was cornered, and I wasn’t brained up enough to have super-zombie powers. Sure, I could take a lot of damage but, dammit, I’d just recovered from being in pieces. No way was I going through that again.

  I ducked his swipe and lunged at the tray of autopsy tools. My hand closed on a pair of scissors right before he smacked the tray and sent the contents flying.

  Thunk.

  Douglas staggered. Behind him, Allen stood with the fire extinguisher, poised to deliver another blow. Douglas pivoted with a wet growl and flung his arm up. Allen danced away barely in time. The back of Douglas’s head had a dent like the cabinet’s, but clearly it wasn’t enough to slow him down.

  Like Judd. My mouth went dry. Judd Siler had turned into something horribly similar to this—and that was after I’d removed most of his brain for a desperately needed snack. But I’d left behind the medulla and most of the cerebellum—the parts that made everything work.

  And then I’d defeated him by destroying those essential bits.

  With a fierce shriek, I leaped onto Douglas’s back, wrapped an arm around his neck and my legs around his waist. Fist tight on the scissors, I wedged the point into the base of the dent in his skull. Jammed them in and down, hard. Douglas howled and arched his back, but I shoved the scissors deeper and sawed them in messy circles, as if mixing a really thick milkshake.

  Douglas went slack, then crumpled, face down. Breathing hard, I released my death grip on him and clambered to my feet. Nick stood a couple of yards away, shoulders heaving and fire axe in hand.

  Still brandishing the canister, Allen eyed the prone man warily. “Is he . . . neutralized?”

  “God, I hope so,” I said. “But he will be for sure once we get the brain out. All of it.” I clenched and unclenched my hands, fighting the worry that threatened to swallow me. “Where was this guy found? Which swamp?”

  “Upper Mudsucker Swamp,” Allen replied. “Northeast end, near Pauvre Bayou.” Questions crowded his eyes, but Nick spoke before he could voice them.

  “What the hell do we do with him now?”

  All three of us looked down at the caved-in skull with the scissors sticking out of the dent. We couldn’t simply get rid of the body. Not when he was supposed to be autopsied then sent to the funeral home.

  “Maybe Dr. Leblanc will believe the damage happened in the swamp?” I offered weakly. “Post-mortem injuries?”

  Nick sucked in a sharp breath. “Dr. Leblanc. He’s due back from court any minute now.”

  Allen cursed and yanked the scissors free. “Do the pics. Fast. We’ll get him opened up. Angel, you need to get that brain out ASAP.”

  Together, we wrestled Douglas onto the table. Nick grabbed the camera and took pictures as fast as humanly possible. The instant he finished, Allen started the Y-incision on the chest while I sliced through the scalp and peeled it away from the skull. Nick stowed the camera then hurried to get the room cleaned up so it wasn’t quite so obvious we’d battled a zombie.

  Definitely a zombie. Except it wasn’t “my” kind of zombie. A shambler like Judd, I thought with a shiver and added “panic about the implications” at the top of my to-do list.

  I took the bone saw to the skull, forcing myself to focus on the task at hand and not look at the clock. Or at Nick as he frantically cleaned up blood, shit, and scattered instruments.

  “Samples,” I breathed. “Allen, I need samples. For Dr. Nikas.”

  Dr. Ariston Nikas was the Tribe’s research scientist and the go-to person for all things weird. The ideal scenario would be to deliver the entire body to him so that he could use the resources in the zombie research lab to figure out what the hell had caused Douglas to shamble. But the family no doubt wanted to do the whole funeral thing and would probably notice the lack of a body, so tissue and blood samples would have to do.

  Allen gave a curt nod. “Understood.”

  A distant sound of a door cut through the air. “Hallway,” I croaked. We had less than a minute, even if Dr. Leblanc took his sweet time down the long corridor from the front of the building. I pulled the top of the skull off and tossed it onto the table then slipped a scalpel between brain and skull to slice through the brainstem. As I tipped the brain out into my hands, my gut dropped at the sight of the mangled cerebellum and medulla. No way would Dr. Leblanc believe a blow to the head had caused that damage.

  Allen glanced at the brain as footsteps approached. “We’re fucked,” he muttered.

  Behind me, the door opened. “Good afternoon,” Dr. Leblanc said.

  Go big or go home, Angel. Faking a startle, I fumbled the brain and deliberately let it slip through my grasp to splat on the floor like a balloon full of Jell-O.

  I whirled, wearing the best horrified expression I could pull off. “Oh my god! I’m so sorry, Dr. Leblanc!”

  A grimace flitted across his face, but in the next instant it was replaced by his usual kind smile. “It’s all right, Angel. It’s not as if the cause of death is a mystery.” Before I knew it, he’d crossed to me and pulled me into his arms to give me an utterly lovely and heart-melting squeeze, clearly not caring about my gore-covered gloves. “Welcome back. You have no idea how happy I am to see you doing so well.”

  Guilt tugged at me, but I mentally kicked it aside and let myself wallow in the wonderful embrace—as much as I could while holding my yucky hands away from him. Dr. Leblanc’s hug was as comforting as a warm cozy blanket on a cold day.

  I gave him a smile as he released me. “Yep, I’m all better.”

  “To my eternal delight,” he said. “Mono can be tough to recover from. Kudos for being young and healthy.”

  “’Scuse me, Angel,” Allen said. He scooped the mangled brain into a plastic tub then tilted his head toward the body. “He’s all ready for you, Doc.” He set the tub on the counter beside me then stepped to the autopsy table with Dr. Leblanc.

  Nick casually slipped an empty plastic baggie into my hand before joining the others. I glanced over to confirm he and Allen were holding Dr. Leblanc’s attention. Within seconds I had four small chunks of brain in the baggie, and the baggie in the pocket of my cargo pants. With any luck at all, that would be enough for Dr. Nikas.

  Because if my suspicions were correct, we were going to need all the luck in the world.

  Chapter 3

  While Dr. Leblanc remained occupied, I mumbled an excuse about needing to potty then sh
ed my yucky gloves and slipped out. The brain sample bag squished and shifted in my pocket as I walked. Yech. I’d been carrying human brains around for over a year and a half, but this was the first time I was even a teensy bit grossed out.

  I ducked into the restroom, locked the door, then texted Dr. Nikas.

  Scowling, I fixed my phone’s damn autocorrect.

  I hit send and waited anxiously. The reply came less than a dozen seconds later.

 

  Despite everything, I had to smile at his unflappable manner.

  I waited nearly a minute, then:

  Bleh. Rachel was one of the top security people for our zombie Tribe. I didn’t care for her, and she couldn’t stand the sight of me.

  Which was true. That way I wouldn’t have to actually deal with her.

  He proceeded to list what he needed: tissue samples from every organ imaginable, scrapings from beneath the fingernails, and samples of blood, vitreous, bile, cervical spinal fluid, urine, saliva, and even fecal matter. Ew.

 

 

  I flushed the toilet in case anyone was listening, then hurried to the parking lot to place the baggie on the tire.

  Allen glanced up as I returned to the cutting room then continued with his removal of the liver. At the counter, Dr. Leblanc sectioned a lung. Nick placed a kidney in the scale and recorded the weight on the white board. My eyes went to a red mark on Nick’s jaw where Douglas had clipped him. Damn it, that was going to bruise.

  Tugging on fresh gloves, I moved to the other side of the table from Allen and held skin and fat out of the way while he worked. The normal chatter was gone, held at bay by what we wanted to talk about but couldn’t until Dr. Leblanc left. Fortunately, the pathologist seemed to be too absorbed in his work to notice we were uncharacteristically quiet.

  “Cause of death appears to be drowning,” Dr. Leblanc murmured, setting aside the lung and moving on to the heart.

  The crushing silence descended again.

  I cleared my throat. “So. Whatcha all been up to lately?”

  “Nick is in a play,” Dr. Leblanc said as he made tiny slices in a vein.

  “No shit?” I swung my attention to Nick. He loved theater, but had given it up years ago to meet his dad’s strict academic expectations. “Is that the Less Miserable thing you said you were going to audition for?”

  His mouth twitched. “Les Misérables. I got the part of Marius Pontmercy.” At my blank look, he rolled his eyes. “Marius is one of the main characters.”

  “That’s awesome!” I paused. “Soooo, what did Bear say about it?” Bear was his dad, and hadn’t always been a fan of Nick’s love of theater.

  One shoulder jerked up in a shrug. “He said he’d come see me. The show opens next month.”

  “I’ll be there!”

  He looked away and placed the liver in the scale. “How’s school going? Did you miss a lot of classes?”

  “It’s going pretty good,” I said, only lying a little. My first semester of college was trying really hard to kick my ass. “I started back last week. My doctor said I was okay to attend classes as long as I took it easy.” Actually Dr. Nikas had said, since my mind hadn’t suffered, and I’d recovered enough strength to sit without exhaustion, there was no reason not to return to school—if I let my zombie baby Philip handle the driving and cart me around in a wheelchair. “Plus, it was Mardi Gras break when I got sick,” I added, “so I ended up only missing one week of school.”

  Nick jotted the weight of the liver on the whiteboard. “You keeping up in English?”

  “Yeah,” I lied a lot. “Holding onto a C.” And by C, I meant the lowest C minus possible. I was seriously considering dropping the class, but I didn’t want to tell Nick and risk him feeling obligated to tutor me again—or awkward for not offering. Not to mention, I wasn’t sure how well I’d handle us being alone together. “Biology is fun, even though the professor is a real tool. We have quizzes every damn day, and I think he stays up nights to think of the hardest questions. He’s also not even remotely nice. But he knows his shit, and it’s super interesting. We just finished learning about bacteria.” I grinned. “Found out poop is mostly water and dead bacteria. Our bodies are teeming with bacteria, and for the most part that’s a good thing.” I cocked my head. “Which I guess means we’re covered with corpses of bacteria, too? Yuck.”

  Nick placed the liver on the counter. “They break down and get et by other bacteria. The problem comes during stuff like surgery. You can sterilize a scalpel, but the dead bacteria are still there. The body’s immune system works by identifying certain chemical triggers in bacteria, and the corpses—including the toxins they release when dying—trigger the same response as living bacteria.”

  “That’s why the dead bacteria are called pyrogens,” Dr. Leblanc said without looking up.

  “Wait, I know this,” I said. “Pyro means fire or heat. So a pyrogen is something that causes a fever?”

  He flicked an approving glance my way. “Yes. They cause fevers, among other issues. Even death, sometimes. That’s why heart surgery scalpels go through a process called depyrogenation, which removes all the dead bits.”

  I shuddered. “That’s nasty.”

  Allen snorted. “You’re elbow deep in a body, and you say that’s nasty?”

  “At least I can see this nastiness.”

  Dr. Leblanc set the heart aside and lifted the somewhat-smushed brain from the tub to the counter. I watched, barely daring to breathe as he frowned and peered more closely. At least his focus was on the frontal lobe and not the medulla. So far.

  “Allen, will you get a spinal fluid sample as well?” Dr. Leblanc gently prodded the brain.

  “Will do,” Allen replied. He gave me a speaking glance then added to Dr. Leblanc, “Do you see something?”

  “I won’t be certain until I can look at the samples under a microscope,” Dr. Leblanc said. “But I believe there’s inflammation. I maintain drowning was the cause of death, but he might have been suffering from some sort of encephalitis when he died.”

  Or after he died, I thought grimly.

  Allen retrieved a sample of cervical spinal fluid, squirted it into a vial and sealed it, then placed it with the rest of the samples. The fluid was cloudy—which even I knew wasn’t normal.

  While Dr. Leblanc finished, Nick and Allen did cleanup, dawdling over every task. Meanwhile, I took my sweet time sewing the body up, using big, looping stitches since I was going to have to pull them out anyway to get the samples Dr. Nikas wanted.

  After what felt like an eternity, Dr. Leblanc shed his gloves, gathered up his notes, and left the cutting room. Unfortunately, we could still hear him moving around by the computers.

  I retrieved a cold pack from the first aid kit, cracked it, then thrust it at Nick. “Put this on your face.” He let out a quiet scoff but obeyed.

  Allen lifted an eyebrow. “What, no ice for me? Maybe I got a booboo, too.”

  I smiled sweetly. “You already have the chill of your ice-cold heart.”

  Nick smothered a laugh. Allen heaved a long-suffering sigh.

  A chair scraped in the other room, and we froze. Finally, footsteps retreated down the hall, and the door at the end creaked open and banged shut.
/>
  Immediately, Allen pivoted to face me. “Okay, what the actual fuck was that?” He flung an arm out toward the body. “I’ve never seen a zombie act that way. Was he just really brain-hungry?”

  I frowned at the corpse. “I’m not sure what his deal is, but he definitely wasn’t brain hungry, considering he came after me. My kind of zombie goes after real human brains. The times I’ve been really crazy hungry, I could smell a human a block away.”

  Allen’s brow furrowed. “You can’t eat a zombie’s brain?”

  “I suppose I could, but it’s about as appealing as eating a human brain was before I got zombified.” I shrugged. “A lack of brain scent is one way to tell if someone’s a zombie.” I stopped. “Hang on.” I yanked the top off the tub with the mangled brain and took a deep whiff. “Huh.”

  “Enlighten us?”

  “It has a brain scent, but it’s kind of not quite right. Like how lunch meat smells a bit off a day after its expiration date.” Yet Judd’s brain hadn’t smelled or tasted odd when I ate it. Then again, I’d smashed his skull open less than a minute after he died. Still warm and fresh.

  Nick swallowed. “Do you, ah, have a desire to eat that?”

  “No. Not in the slightest.” I replaced the lid, unsettled and not sure why. The smell of the brain wasn’t repulsive, but the idea of eating it was. “It’s definitely not a normal human brain. Or a normal zombie brain. Hell, he’s not a normal zombie, period. I mean, my kind doesn’t mindlessly shamble like that dude.”

  But Judd did. I held back a shudder.

  “Why did you want to know where the hunter was found?” Allen asked, watching me closely. “Do you have a theory about why this guy shambled?”

  I hesitated, torn about how much to share. Screw it. They needed to know. They were allies, right? “More like a hypothesis. Y’all remember Judd Siler?”

  “His face was all over the news right after Mardi Gras,” Nick said. “Wanted for murder and kidnapping. Big manhunt, but he’s still at large.”

  “Well, they ain’t gonna find him,” I said, “’cause he’s dead. Twice. He tried to kill me out by Lock Three, and I bit him—just a regular old bite on his arm. The next day, west of Mudsucker Swamp, he attacked me and ended up getting shot dead. Not by me,” I hurried to add. “I, uh, needed the fuel, so I busted his skull and ate his cerebrum. But later that night he came after me as a shambler—even though he was missing the top of his head. I had to rip out his cerebellum and medulla to kill him for real.”