White Trash Zombie Unchained

“Of course you do,” she said drily. “Driving. Also at least twenty minutes away.”

  Rachel eyed Sorsha. “What about local law enforcement.”

  “Too risky,” Sorsha said quickly. “Potential biohazard, right?”

  In other words, Sorsha was keeping the situation confined to her task force—and a lid on the weirdness. That fit our zombie leave-us-alone agenda perfectly.

  Kyle spoke up. “We have enough personnel to confront her. Fritz and Dr. Charish are currently in the microscope room with two of her techs. The other two techs are right next door in histology. Both rooms are along the hallway around the corner, which means that Reno Larson, who has stationed himself outside those two rooms, has no line of sight on this lab or any of the other rooms along this corridor.”

  Sorsha folded her arms over her chest. “Poor tactics on his part.”

  “Quite,” Kyle replied.

  “Rachel and I need to stay with Dr. Nikas,” Brian said. “Top priority.”

  Sorsha’s eyes flicked from Kyle to me as if assessing her resources. “Unorthodox joint operations are not unheard of in my task force. We know how to . . . adjust the paperwork.”

  What the hell other weirdness did they deal with? Not that I minded. “What’s the plan?”

  “Charish has two bodyguards and four lab techs. If she resists—and I do expect resistance—it will be dicey, even with your special zombie abilities in play.”

  Of course she knew about zombie special abilities. “She also has Billy Upton,” I pointed out.

  “He’s one of mine,” she replied.

  “No way! He seems way too sweet and innocent.”

  Sorsha let out a dry chuckle. “And he uses that to his advantage.” Her phone buzzed with a text. She sobered as she read it. “Charish just made a call to Saberton security. Agent Garner believes she asked for backup and extraction.”

  “Which means we have to confront her right now!” I said, anxiety rising.

  “It also means her backup might arrive before we’re finished with her,” she replied, mouth tight. “That tilts the odds that much more in her favor.”

  Except there was one unique zombie ability she didn’t know about. “What if we had our own special backup right here?” I asked, smile growing.

  She and Kyle regarded me with matching doubtful expressions.

  Sorsha lifted an eyebrow. “And where is this special backup?”

  I grinned. “In the gator room.”

  Her other eyebrow went up. “Are you trying to tell me you wish to use the alligators as backup?”

  “Trust me,” I said. “But we need to hurry. Let’s go!”

  “Hold on,” Brian said. He opened a drawer and pulled out pint-sized packets of brains along with the normal smaller ones. “Tank up and stock up.”

  Kyle stuffed small packets into his pocket and ripped the top off a big one.

  I did the same and gulped down the pint, half expecting the others to start a chorus of Chug! Chug! Chug! and a little disappointed when they didn’t. I lowered the empty packet and let out a pleased sigh as the surplus of brains energized my muscles and tweaked my senses. Nowhere near as supercharged as with a combat mod, but the extra brains would give me the fuel I needed if this confrontation turned into a clusterfuck.

  Once Kyle and Sorsha were ready, I opened the door a crack, pleased to see the hallway was empty, then I slipped out and ran as quietly as possible to the gator room, relieved to find Kyle and Sorsha right behind me.

  Within, the gators were lined up along the fence as if they’d sensed me coming.

  “Hello, darlings,” I murmured. “Time to come out and play.”

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Kyle asked as I unlocked the gate. “You can’t possibly have trained them in such a short time.”

  “I didn’t train them.” I pulled the enclosure door open. “I didn’t have to. They know what I want and will do it for me.”

  Sorsha looked ever-so-slightly uncertain—the first time I’d seen her look anything but cool and composed. But when the gators stayed where they were, she relaxed a bit.

  “I need Biggie and Tupac,” I said, smiling when they lumbered forward and through the open gate.

  The six-footers and the rest of the smaller ones moved to follow but stopped when I made a tsking noise. “No, I only need the grown-ups for this,” I told them. “It might get dangerous.”

  They stared up at me with forlorn expressions. I sighed. “Okay, y’all can come, but you have to stay out of the way.” I crouched between the two big gators and rubbed their toothy jaws. “Let’s get that bitch.”

  Chapter 35

  “No hissing,” I told the gators, voice low yet stern. “No bellowing. No noise, okay? We’re being sneaky. Now let’s do this!”

  Head high, I started down the corridor, flanked by the two enormous reptiles. Man, if those bitches from high school could see me now!

  snick snick shwuush snick shwuush snick snick shwuush

  I stopped. Sighed down at my eager guardians. Claws and tails made more noise than I’d expected.

  “I stand by my decision to use the gators as backup,” I whispered to the others. “But Reno will hear us coming. Kyle, can you go ahead and take him out?”

  “Consider it done.” He loped noiselessly to the far corner, did a quick peek around, then disappeared from our sight. A second later my zombie hearing picked up a soft “oof,” then silence.

  After a brief, tense wait, Kyle reappeared and gave us the all-clear.

  “Nice,” Sorsha murmured.

  I grinned. “Yeah, Kyle gets shit done.”

  I got my gator procession going again, striding with glorious, reptilian purpose to Kyle.

  “What did you do with Reno?” I asked him.

  “Supply closet and zip-ties.”

  “The techs in the histology room might hear us when we go to deal with Kristi,” I said. “We can help Billy take them out of action so they don’t cause problems for us later.”

  Sorsha merely smiled. “If Billy needs the help, then by all means.”

  Once around the corner, Sorsha pulled the histology room door open. Both techs and Billy looked over at her. Sorsha gave Billy a single short nod then closed the door again.

  Several soft thuds. Then nothing.

  “I think he has it covered,” Sorsha said.

  “Niiiice,” I murmured.

  I slowed the gators as we approached the door to the microscope room. Kyle and Sorsha drew their guns. I took hold of the door handle, focusing on the gators and what I wanted them to do.

  “On three,” Sorsha whispered. “One . . . two . . . three!”

  I yanked the door open and stepped aside. Biggie surged forward, with Tupac right on his tail, and Kyle and Sorsha following. I went in behind them, the smaller gators swarmed around my legs as I strode past computer stations and into chaos.

  Shouts and curses. Gator bellows. The crash of glass. Within a few frenzied seconds, Fritz, Kristi, Hairy Tech, and Beardzilla were at bay against the far wall, hemmed in by the scanning electron microscope and the gaping jaws of man-eating zombie gators.

  “Hands where I can see them!” Sorsha barked. The techs hurried to comply, and even Fritz had his gun drawn, but took his finger off the trigger and slowly lowered it to the floor. Kristi shot him a murderous glare and began rapid-fire texting on her phone.

  “Drop the phone, Dr. Charish,” Sorsha snapped.

  Kristi made one more tap then set the phone on the counter. “What is the meaning of this?” she demanded.

  “You’re being detained for questioning, Dr. Charish,” Sorsha said, keeping her gun on the four detainees while Kyle gave them each a quick but thorough pat-down—removing an impressive number of weapons from Fritz’s person.

  “This is ridiculous!” Kristi cast
a quick glance at the wall clock. Checking to see how long until her reinforcements arrived?

  She sputtered with fury as Kyle zip-tied her hands behind her back, but she was smart enough not to resist. In short order, Kyle had all four detainees restrained and seated in a row in front of their gator guards. He retrieved Kristi’s phone from the counter then passed it to Sorsha with a murmured, “Passcode locked.” Sorsha nodded and slipped it into a pocket.

  “I’ll be filing a complaint with the director of the FBI, Agent Aberdeen,” Kristi spat.

  “You go right ahead and do that, Dr. Charish.” Sorsha gave Kyle a head tilt toward the hall, and he took up a position in the doorway to keep an eye out for trouble.

  “Turn over the cure, Kristi,” I ordered. Gator growls echoed my words.

  She widened her eyes in shocked innocence. “The cure? Are you mental? Ari and I are still working to find it!”

  “Cut the crap,” I said with a sneer. “I always knew you were evil, but I never thought you’d create a deadly epidemic for your own benefit. You started working on LZ-1 right after Rosario told you about Judd shambling. And you’ve been using a double to throw off the Tribe’s surveillance.”

  Kristi gave a little sniff. “Having a look-alike isn’t a crime. But spying on me is! You zombies are the criminals.” She glared at Sorsha. “They’re the ones you should arrest, Agent Aberdeen.”

  “I’ll be sure to look into it,” Sorsha replied with zero inflection. She holstered her weapon then stepped back and began texting, managing to keep an eagle eye on the detainees while her thumbs flew over the phone screen.

  “Obviously the Tribe had good reason to spy on you,” I told Kristi. “And I know you bugged Marla. It’s how you knew where to go in the swamp, and why you wanted my medical records, as well as a certain person’s blood.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Her lips quivered as if holding back a laugh. “Did you seriously just accuse me of planting a listening device in . . . in a dog? Oh my, that is rich!” She met my eyes. “I didn’t bug the dog, Angel. I didn’t need to. I put the pieces together because I’m smart.” She snickered with a nasty edge that clearly said And you’re not. “Pierce Gentry was my informant in Saberton. Then, not only did he suddenly stop sending updates, but he inexplicably defected to the zombies’ side. Because, by some strange twist of fate, he’d actually been a zombie all along? And, by some insane coincidence, this all happened in the same timeframe when Pietro Ivanov miraculously escaped the New York lab—except, oh no, he then died in a plane crash.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m boggled that anyone bought that ridiculous story. I went back to Gentry’s latest physical exam and had no trouble confirming he most definitely had not been a zombie. It didn’t take much for me to conclude that Pietro had the means to change forms—an ability I’d seen no evidence of in all my years of zombie research. Of course I wanted his blood!”

  Fuck. That made sense. And now Sorsha knew what mature zombies could do. And that Pierce Gentry used to be Pietro Ivanov. I mentally crossed fingers she’d remain our ally and that the info wouldn’t come back to bite us in the ass. “Well, what about the swamp and the gator hunt?” I asked, scowling. “Sure was convenient y’all found the accident site and made it there before we did.”

  Kristi tilted one eyebrow up. “Winds and tides. You know . . . science.”

  Crap. Same way Marcus had figured it out. “Yeah, well, how’d you find out about Deputy Connor’s collapse? Or Douglas Horton coming back to life, so you even knew to look for gators?”

  She flicked a glance at the clock. “That was indeed via a bug, though not in the dog. It was where your people never thought to scan—in your darling boyfriend’s car.” She gave me a mock-pout. “The poor thing. I hear he’s feeling a bit under the weather. Along with all of his daddy’s little survivalist friends. And Daddy, too, before long.”

  I held myself back with sheer force of will, but the gators bellowed and snapped in response to my homicidal fury. I took grim pleasure in how Kristi paled and squirmed back. She was spilling all the beans with an FBI agent present, which meant Kristi felt certain of a timely rescue. I felt certain she was going to lose a few teeth before this was done.

  “One way or another, I’m going to wring that cure out of you,” I said through my teeth. “Maybe I should let a gator have one of your hands? Or a foot? Maybe both. I don’t think they’ve been fed yet today.”

  Tupac growled deep and ominous. Hairy Tech screwed his eyes shut, and the scent of hot piss hit my nostrils.

  Kristi took a long look at the clock then bared her teeth in triumph. “You’ll be far too occupied with other matters very . . . soon.”

  A heavy whump shook the building.

  “What the hell was that?” Sorsha demanded even as the fire alarm started hooting.

  Kristi batted her eyelashes. “I think your friends might need your help, Angel.”

  Kyle took off at a dead sprint toward the main lab.

  “Go!” Sorsha told me. “I’ve got this.”

  “Don’t let them leave!” I ordered the gators then raced after Kyle and activated a combat mod.

  Kyle had likely done the same, besides having a good head start on me. By the time I rounded the corner, he’d already made it to the main lab door. He yanked it open, stepping back as smoke and an odd fog rolled out, then he charged in. Farther down the hall, Reg burst out of the cell culture room and sprinted into the lab after Kyle.

  I poured on the speed and followed them in. The fog was already dissipating, and I realized it was a waterless fire suppression system, used in places where water would fuck up sensitive equipment and computers.

  Not that it mattered. The computers were twisted, smoking heaps of plastic and metal. Cold nausea gripped me. Kristi had blown them up to destroy data.

  I pushed back the sick fear and assessed the scene. Rachel was ripping apart the remains of a computer with her bare hands, blood running down her face from a long gash on her forehead. Brian had his back to me—with a dozen or more bits of shrapnel sticking out of it. He was trying to feed brains to Dr. Nikas, who had numerous gashes on his face and chest.

  Dr. Nikas, who was cradling a bleeding Portia.

  “Oh god, Portia!” I dropped to my knees beside her.

  She coughed, pink foam bubbling at her mouth. “Ari . . .” she wheezed.

  “I’m here, Portia,” he said, face contorted in pain and grief.

  Brian leaned close to me. “She was right by Kristi’s computer when it blew. The charges were small, but the pressure wave hit her hard.”

  I nodded, sick. That was how explosions killed you—a wave of pressure that battered your internal organs. She was going to drown in her own blood.

  “You have to save her, Dr. Nikas,” I told him. Begged him.

  “I don’t know if I can,” he said, agonized. “The cancer. The injuries. And . . . I will not without her consent.”

  “You have to try!” I took her hand, terrified at how light it seemed. “Please, Portia. Let him try and save you.”

  She coughed again and brought up blood. “I . . .”

  “Portia!” I wanted to squeeze her hand but didn’t dare. “You’d be a zombie, but you’d have a chance to live.”

  “Ari . . . ?”

  “Yes, dear one?” He touched her cheek.

  “Yes . . . give me . . . the chance,” she whispered. “Give us the . . .” Her eyes lost their focus.

  Brian shoved two open brain packets at Dr. Nikas. “You have to heal before you do anything else.” He’d probably been trying to get the distraught man to take brains since the explosion.

  Dr. Nikas took both packets and devoured the contents, eyes never leaving the dying woman in his arms. He pulled her close and placed a gentle kiss on her forehead then shifted to bite her trapezius. With a low growl, he gave a sharp tug to part the flesh then
went still, breathing softly through his teeth.

  What was he doing? Had he changed his mind about turning her? When I’d turned Philip Reinhardt and Andrew Saber, I’d slavered and shredded flesh like, well, a monster.

  But when I’d tried to turn Kristi’s next test subject, the instinct never rose. What if that was happening with Dr. Nikas? I clenched my hands together to keep them from shaking. Kang had told me my instinct failed because I’d recently turned Philip. But what if Dr. Nikas was exhausted and depleted from so much work? Or what if something else was wrong, and he couldn’t save her?

  Brian set Rachel’s half-full container of fresh brain chunks beside Dr. Nikas. I unclenched my hands and forced myself to breathe. The next stage of turning required brains to help transfer and nourish the parasite. After I’d finished the rending-and-tearing stage with Philip and Andrew, I’d chewed brains then spat and bitten them into the numerous wounds I’d created. But Brian didn’t look at all uncertain, which told me Dr. Nikas’s behavior was normal. Maybe the process simply wasn’t as gruesome for a mature zombie.

  Dr. Nikas released his bite-hold on Portia’s shoulder, still cradling her limp form close. He took a hunk of brain, chewed it, then clamped onto the wound again, all neat and tidy and controlled. If I hadn’t known better, a casual glance would have made me think he held her in a lover’s embrace.

  But was he cradling a dying woman or one about to start a fresh life? Only time would tell. I looked away to give them a semblance of privacy as well as to distract myself. Kyle helped Rachel dismantle computers, removing hard drives and flash storage in the hopes of salvaging info. Reg gathered and organized scattered files with fierce efficiency.

  “What’s the situation with Dr. Charish?” Brian asked.

  I turned to him. “We have her locked down and—” Long slivers of plastic were embedded in his left cheek and eye, injuries he’d clearly ignored while taking care of Dr. Nikas. “Dude, you’ve got something on your face.” I licked my thumb as if ready to wipe off a bit of dirt.

  He let out a strangled laugh. “Just need a little spit and toilet paper, and it’ll come right off.”