How the White Trash Zombie Got Her Groove Back

  Kyle’s gaze tore from mine and went to my left. I followed it to where a large metal bowl containing red and brown lumps rested in the corner.

  No. Containing his hands and jaw and tongue.

  A white hot scream of rage tore from my throat. I grabbed the bowl and ran to him. “Fuck. Fuck them. These fucking assholes.” I seized the severed jaw first, ripped open a packet with my teeth. No way would three packets—or even all the brains we had with us—be enough to fix this. “Oh, Jesus fuck, Kyle.” He wouldn’t be able to eat the brains properly, I realized, and so I squeezed the paste out onto the exposed flesh of the jaw, then set it against his face as best I could. “Hold still,” I said as a heavy shudder went through him, but once it passed he held himself motionless, eyes blazing with hatred and anger that I knew wasn’t directed at me. My hands shook as I squeezed the rest of that packet and a second one into his mouth and throat, but fortunately the parasite seemed to know its business. Within seconds the jaw shifted in my hands as the tendons and muscle began to knit together to pull the bone into place.

  As soon as I knew his jaw wouldn’t fall off, I grabbed up one of his hands, ripped open the third packet and squeezed more brain paste out onto the stump of his forearm and the severed hand. I caught myself right before sticking the right hand onto the left arm. That would’ve been a bit embarrassing. I hurriedly grabbed up the other, brain-pasted it, and put left hand to left arm then flicked a glance up to his face. To my relief his jaw continued to adjust and knit back in place, though it sagged open still.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said once I knew his hands weren’t going to fall off. I darted out of the cell in time to see Andrew face down on the floor with his wrists zip-tied behind him, and Pierce bodily shoving Braddock into the room next to Marcus’s.

  “Remember that and come over to the dark side sometime,” Pierce said to the security chief as he slammed the door closed and locked it. I didn’t waste time trying to figure out what that was supposed to mean and instead grabbed the lunch box of brains from the bin and raced back into Kyle’s room.

  His hands and jaw hadn’t fallen off in the few seconds I was gone, but he let out a heart-wrenching cry of pain. I bit off a corner of the baggie and squeezed diced brains into his mouth, relieved to see his tongue move sluggishly to help him swallow, though his hands didn’t seem to be functioning yet.

  From the corridor, I heard the crackle of a radio.

  “Rutledge,” said a voice I recognized as Edwards. “What’s your status down there?”

  “Mr. Saber and Gentry are in with the guests,” Pierce answered in a gruff voice convincingly close enough to Baldy’s to send a shiver through me.

  “Davis and Gordon are running late, but should be here in five. You got anywhere you need to be?”

  “I’m good. Checking new guests into the hotel. I’d pay for the privilege.”

  “Roger that. I’ll be down to tuck them in later.”

  Kyle shifted. “Hate . . . them,” he gurgled, deep anger boiling in his eyes.

  “You and me both, dude,” I muttered, hands shaking with my own fury. While he swallowed brains, I tried keys from the guard’s ring until I found the one that opened the padlock on the chain.

  I turned sharply at a clatter behind me. It was Pierce, pushing the mini-dumpster through the door. His eyes flicked from Kyle’s jaw to his hands to the bloody bowl, and rage tightened his face as he drew the correct conclusion.

  Kyle sucked in a wet breath at the sight of Pierce. “An . . . gel.” Even through the gurgle I heard the alarm and warning in his voice.

  Oh, right, he didn’t know about Pietro/Pierce. “It’s okay,” I assured Kyle. “He’s an ally. I promise. I’ll explain later, but right now we need to get the fuck out of here.”

  Kyle growled low but didn’t resist when Pierce slid his arms beneath him, lifted him gently and placed him in the bin with the tranqed Brian and messed up Marcus. I peered in, disturbed to see Marcus lying with his head lolling and eyes glassy. After eating the bag of brains he should have been better off, more responsive. “Marcus?”

  Pierce answered instead. “He was coming out of the hunger craze then went down. Most likely due to whatever they drugged him with earlier.” He placed a hand on Marcus’s shoulder. “He seems stable for now.”

  “Stable” didn’t do much to ease my worry.

  The radio crackled again.

  “Jenkins. Ms. Saber just got here and says she can’t get Mr. Saber, Ms. Braddock, or Gentry via phone. Who’s still down there with you?”

  Pierce shook his head. “Can’t fake Jenkins. We’re out of time.”

  “Jenkins, do you copy?” A pause. “Rutledge.” Another pause. “Gentry.”

  “Best for me not to answer. That way I can surprise them.”

  “How many more guards are between us and The Fuck Out Of Here?” I asked Pierce.

  “Eleven to fourteen if they stick with the Special Security Team,” he said grimly as he pushed the bin into the hallway and started down the corridor toward the exit. “Grab him,” he angled his head toward Andrew, “and then we can get out of this deathtrap area, collect the package, and reassess.”

  “Package?” I gave him a puzzled look.

  He tapped his chest and gave me a knowing look. Oh. Gentry’s body. The original Gentry, the one now missing a brain.

  I hauled Andrew up to his feet. “You promised to let me go,” he said with an accusing glare at Pierce.

  “You promised to see this through, and last thing I remember is you bolting,” Pierce said. “Now would be a bad time to get me thinking about altering the terms of our agreement.”

  Andrew fell silent and didn’t resist as I hustled him after Pierce. As soon as we were past the security door, Pierce and I both breathed a sigh of relief. Even though we still had a long way to go, being pinned in the Torture Zone would’ve been the worst case scenario.

  A bank of overly bright fluorescent lights lit the concrete-walled area beyond the door. It was as if they’d tried—and failed miserably—to create a sense of sunlight underground. I turned a quick circle to get my bearings and found no noteworthy features other than an elevator and four doors: the one we’d come through, one marked Maintenance, one marked Electrical Room, and the stairwell.

  Pierce called the elevator then blocked the doors open with the bin when it arrived. I sat Andrew down in front of the bin and gave him a Don’t you fucking dare move look.

  “Stairwell door,” I said, “Need to block it too.”

  Pierce frowned. “I’ll dismantle the lock on this side. That should slow them down a few minutes, at least.” He dug a big screwdriver out of the bin and proceeded to destroy the lock control panel, then leaned into the elevator as if listening.

  “Got any change?” I asked as I scowled at the stairwell door. “Coins, I mean.”

  He looked at me blankly, then nodded in understanding. He quickly rifled through Andrew’s pockets, and came up with enough coins for me to penny the door. A couple of stacks of coins wedged high and low between the door and frame would jam it shut. In theory at least. It was a long shot, but it had sure as hell worked on Sissy Collard’s bathroom door during a junior high prank involving a big ass spider in the sink and a rubber snake by the toilet.

  “Good thinking, Angel,” Pierce said with an approving nod as I prepped the coins. “I’ll get the package.” He lifted the lid of the mini-dumpster, reached in, and pulled out the body bag, then headed toward the door marked Maintenance. “Back in a minute.”

  “Got it,” I said, and by the time the coins were wedged in place Pierce was back, with the loaded bag slung over his shoulder.

  Andrew stared. “Who the fuck is that?”

  I ignored him and peered into the bin. “Hey guys, got a body coming in. Sorry.” Kyle shifted to sit up and gave me a weak nod. He’d made an effort to
pull the blanket over his crotch, but his hands were still too weak to untangle the blanket from the tools and bodies. Keeping my expression even and clinical, I reached in and tugged the blanket up for him. I couldn’t do much else for him, but I could at least give him a little fucking dignity. Marcus groaned, stacked on top of the still-tranqed Brian. Worried, I stroked a hand over his hair, then helped Pierce get everyone rearranged, with the corpse at the bottom beneath Kyle.

  “We only have one way out,” I said to Pierce after we closed the dumpster lid. My heart pounded as the weight of the situation hit me. “We lost Brian, and we can’t just walk out with Andrew now.”

  “They still don’t know what they’re dealing with.” He turned intense, calm eyes on me. “For now, we wait. A team will be on the way to check out why no one’s responding. They’ll run into a stuck elevator and blocked stairwell and realize shit’s fucked up. Based on how they respond, we make our plan. They’re fucked if they try one at a time through the elevator hatch. Stairwell is a better option, but ambush outside the elevator upstairs is what I’d do.”

  Oh, great. Ambush. That made me feel SO much better.

  A dull thud and muffled voices came from the stairwell door. I spun to face it, tense, and twitched at another thud.

  “It’s holding for now,” Pierce said from behind me.

  A face appeared in the little window in the door, then the man’s eyes widened, and he ducked down. More muffled voices.

  I glanced back to see Pierce lowering the gun he’d pointed at the window. “Now they know what they’re dealing with,” he said as he pulled out his phone. How the hell could he be so calm? “We have a few minutes while they scramble,” he continued. “I’ll call Dr. Nikas to give a sit rep.”

  I gave him a blank look. “A what?”

  “Situation report,” he clarified. “Dr. Nikas and Reinhardt need to know our status and might have some new info.”

  “Oh, right, gotcha.” I moved over to the sullen-faced Andrew and crouched just inside his personal space. “Did you see what they did to Kyle?”

  A muscle in his jaw twitched, and he gave me a slight nod. He didn’t look away, though a faint flush of what I sure fucking hoped was shame crept up his neck. Behind me I caught bits and pieces of Pierce’s conversation with Dr. Nikas.

  “No, he’s out. Tranqed . . . No antidote that I could find . . . Right. Got it . . . Marcus is barely under control, and I think they gave him something as well. Weaker than he should be . . . No, Brian never got to use it . . . Right. All three syringes should still be on him . . . Yes, of course . . . No, it would take too long for him to get here . . . Griffin . . . Griffin’s in very bad shape.”

  I kept my gaze locked on Andrew. “You’re okay with that sort of thing?”

  His flush continued to rise, but along with it came that damn defensive wall I’d seen before. He lifted his chin arrogantly. “It was a foolish move, given the circumstances.”

  “A foolish move,” I repeated, almost as disgusted by his need to be superior as by his choice of words. Behind him I saw the lid of the bin lift and an arm snake out, a red line around the wrist that had yet to fully heal. The fingers moved in jerks, still not fully functional, but they worked well enough to grip Andrew’s hair.

  I kept my face impassive as Andrew let out a strangled cry of horror and tried to scramble to his feet.

  “Fooooolish,” Kyle rasped, using his hold on Andrew as leverage to haul himself up and partially out of the bin. Andrew twisted, squealing like a kid in a carnival haunted house, but with his hands secured behind him he couldn’t pull free. I stood and shifted back a couple of feet to avoid getting kicked by Andrew’s scrabbling feet, and bit my tongue to keep from laughing.

  “Foooolish,” Kyle breathed, wet and burbly, and pulled his face close to Andrew’s. His stench rolled over me as blood and ichor dripped from his mouth and onto Andrew’s neck. “I . . . am feeling . . . foolish.” He shifted closer, and Andrew screamed. I almost felt sorry for Andrew, since this had to seem like a scene from a horror movie. Almost sorry. Okay, not really.

  Then again, in the next instant, I saw he had a real reason to scream. Kyle had his teeth clamped on Andrew’s ear and probably the only reason he hadn’t bitten it off yet was the weakness of his jaw.

  “Kyle, he’s Naomi’s brother,” I said mildly. “Take it easy, for her sake.”

  Kyle loosened the bite, and I noted that the top half of Andrew’s ear already hung oddly and dribbled blood. “No promises,” he growled, but he released Andrew with a shove before flopping back into the bin.

  Pierce hung up behind me. If he’d noticed the altercation, he’d seen no reason to intervene. “I’ll get the mod syringes off Brian.” As he spoke he pulled a second phone from his pocket. “Mine,” he said as he handed it to me, and I realized he meant Gentry’s. “Try calling Saber. Stall her or make a deal for him.” He gestured toward Andrew without looking at him. “Do what you can.”

  “Got it.” I turned on the phone then started scrolling through Gentry’s contacts, somewhat surprised that there were only a dozen or so and none for Nicole Saber. I opened my mouth to ask Andrew for his mother’s number, then closed it as I saw a contact with the name CEOILF.

  CEO I’d Like to Fuck? No way.

  I quickly checked the text messages between Gentry and CEOILF. “Ohhhhhh myyyyyyy goddddddddddd!”

  Pierce turned sharply, in the process of lifting the still unconscious Brian. “What? What’s wrong?”

  “Dude! You were banging Nicole!”

  Andrew jerked in shock. “What?”

  Pierce almost dropped Brian back into the bin, denial in his eyes before he remembered he had to play Gentry in front of Andrew. He nodded once, tense. “Right. More info that way,” he said, improvising quickly. “And she was hot for it.”

  Grinning, I skimmed through the texts, then checked Gentry’s pics on a whim. “Oh, dude! Pics and all! In the front lobby?” I looked back up at Pierce. “You animal!”

  “Just doing my job.” He gave me an exasperated glare that Andrew couldn’t see and continued to search Brian for the syringes. Andrew simply looked horrified.

  I was more than happy to twist this particular knife, especially since the taunting was a healthier way to channel my anger and fear than, say, punching him in the nose. “Oh, snap! A crotch shot!” I crowed to Andrew. “You came out of there!” His mouth worked soundlessly, flush deepening to crimson.

  “Angel,” Pierce growled softly.

  “Oh, right. The call. Sorry.” I’d give Pierce shit later about how his persona’s penis had been in Nicole Saber.

  I returned to the contact list and dialed her number. Time to channel some more stress and worry into a bit of trash-talking. Luckily, I was damn good at that sort of thing.

  She picked up on the second ring. “Pierce. You fucking asshole. What the hell is going on?”

  Sounded like she’d heard the news Gentry had switched sides, and was appropriately freaked that her loverboy had duped her. Good. As much as I wanted to fuck with Andrew for not opposing the shit Kyle and Marcus went through, I wanted Nicole to fucking suffer for being responsible for it in the first place. “Nikki, darling!” I trilled. “It’s been so long, sweetie. We have got to get together for coffee someday soon!” I began to gloat about the naughty pics, then stopped. I’d save those for a special occasion.

  “Crawford.” She snarled my name, managing to pack disdain and disgust into the one word. “What do you want?”

  “Ooh! A pony? I’ve always wanted a pony!” I gushed, getting into the spirit of it. “Or, if I can’t have that, then maybe you can clear a passage for us, and in return I won’t eat your darlin’ son’s brain.” I covered the mouthpiece and spoke in a stage whisper to Andrew, “Don’t worry, I won’t eat your brain.” I paused and grinned. “I’ll let Kyle eat it!”

  He g
lared but cast a fear-filled glance toward the bin. His bitten ear still trickled blood down the side of his neck.

  Nicole remained quiet for a moment. “Agreed,” she finally said with icy calm. “Bring him up, and we’ll escort you out.”

  “What about my pony?” I asked brightly. Since she had zero reason to believe otherwise, Nicole surely assumed that Gentry-the-traitor was human. She thought she was dealing “only” with zombie-me and human-Gentry. Not to mention, she figured we’d be dragging butt as we wrangled a bunch of out-of-commission zombies.

  “You’ll have to wait on that one,” she replied, voice still cool though a bit stiff.

  “Darn it! Santa says the same thing.” I heaved a tragic sigh. “Thing is, Nikki, honey, I don’t have a lot of faith that you’re really going to let us out of here.”

  Pierce straightened with what looked like a slim waist pack in his hand, then got all three zombies arranged in the bin as comfortably as possible before he closed the lid.

  “I can’t afford to lose Andrew,” Nicole replied, loading her voice with resignation and a touch of anger. “I’ll play your game.”

  She was a good manipulator, but I had her pegged. I covered the mouthpiece again. “Hey, Andy, she says she can’t afford to lose you. Am I correct in assuming she’s full of shit?”

  He lifted his eyes to mine, and I saw behind his wall of arrogance, to the pain and despair that came with being a pawn in a brutal game. Welcome to the fucking club, I thought.

  “She can’t afford to lose me,” he said. “But right now she can’t afford to lose you people even more.” He let out a shaky breath, eyes bleak. “She’d rather win with me dead than lose with me alive.”

  In that moment I actually felt a glimmer of sympathy toward him. To survive, he had no choice but to accept enemies as allies.

  “Sorry, dude,” I said quietly, meaning it. I uncovered the phone. “Hey, Nikki, honey, about this whole playing-my-game thing. See, I think you’re chock full of shit. And Botox too.”

  “You little piece of worthless trash,” she hissed. “Bring Andrew up, and you go free. Otherwise, you’ll force me to take radical action.”