My dad and I huddled close together for warmth and comfort as the helicopter circled the area. Two more times it descended to pluck people from the still-raging waters. The neighbors from across the street who’d called the cops on us more than once for domestic disputes. A single mom who lived nearby and her fourteen-year-old son who I suspected was responsible for the disappearance of tools from our shed. Petty neighborhood squabbles were forgotten as we helped each other get settled and offered comfort as we could.
Finally the pilot seemed to feel that either there were no others needing rescue, or there wasn’t enough room for more. The doors closed, and I felt us gain altitude. I wrapped an arm around my dad, shut my eyes, and tried not to think of this as the end of our world.
* * *
I opened my eyes when we touched down with little more than a light jostling. Whoever the pilot was, he was damn good. The engines wound down, and the silence when they stopped seemed unnatural after the din of before.
When the doors opened, our rescuers efficiently off-loaded us and passed us into the care of waiting emergency workers and Red Cross personnel. It took a few minutes for my surroundings to sink in, and then I registered that we were in a parking lot at Tucker Point High School. About twenty yards from the helicopter, several Red Cross vehicles clustered, one marked Disaster Relief. Tucker Point High was always used as a shelter during hurricanes, so it made sense for it to be used for this as well. A vague and misplaced worry wound through me about how the movie people would do their filming with flood victims sheltering here and getting in their way, but then I decided that the school was no doubt more than big enough to accommodate everyone, and I surely had more important things to worry about. But I didn’t want to worry about the more important things. Not yet.
I kept the blanket wrapped around my waist and an arm around my dad, demanded that someone check out his head and snarled that I was fine. No one seemed to take any offense, and I dimly realized that I probably had an eyes-wide-in-shock look about me.
After asking a few pointed questions, I managed to learn that, earlier in the morning, engineers attempted to partially open the spillway in order to carefully bleed-off the overflowing Kreeger River down Cole Bayou and, eventually, out into the swamp. That would have been fine and dandy and would have caused a few extra feet of water at the most, except that minutes after the first bay opened, the entire aged structure gave way. In one gigantic rush, pretty much all the excess water in the Kreeger River diverted down Cole Bayou. The Army Corps of Engineers was already at work, though the general consensus seemed to be that, at this point, there wasn’t much to do except wait for the river to drop below flood stage.
I hovered near my dad as a medic checked his head, and I listened to a relief worker comment in hushed tones about how the flooding had wiped out a small trailer park. I knew the place—a collection of six or seven trailers with almost exclusively elderly residents. I figured there had to be other casualties as well, but no one had any hard numbers. The only possible bright side was that the worst of the flooding had been on our side of the road since the bayou ran behind our property, which meant that, apart from the unfortunately located trailer park, probably less than a dozen houses had been affected. Moreover, at least half of those were fishing camps that weren’t usually occupied during the week.
“You don’t need stitches,” the medic told my dad, and I yanked my attention back to him. “You probably have a mild concussion, though,” he added.
“I ain’t goin’ to no fucking hospital,” Dad snarled before the medic could even get the suggestion out.
The young man flicked his eyes up to me. I gave him a very slight shrug and shake of my head to let him know that arguing would get him nowhere.
“All right,” he said to my dad. “But be sure to get as much rest as possible. And if you have any dizziness, headache, or blurred vision, let one of the volunteers know as soon as possible.”
Dad grumbled something that sounded like an “Okay,” and with that the medic moved on to treat the tool-stealing teen, who looked like a scared rabbit as he cradled his left arm to his chest.
The sun broke through thinning clouds for the first time in a week as another volunteer took us gently in hand and guided us toward the gym entrance.
Looked like it was going to be a damn beautiful day for the end of the world.
Chapter 18
It didn’t seem right that it could only be ten a.m. Everything we owned was gone. Nothing left but the clothes on our backs, and in my case hardly that. My jacket had been shredded and my shirt had a tree-branch–sized hole in the back. Fortunately I still had my cargo pants with its two precious bottles of brain smoothie.
Surely it should take longer than a couple of hours to wipe out a lifetime of possessions and memories, right?
What the hell are we supposed to do now?
I wanted to fall apart and allow the magnitude of our loss to sink in, wallow and roll around in the grief and anger and unfairness of it. But I didn’t. I had my dad to think of. I had to call work and start figuring out what steps to take. Figure out a place to live until we could rebuild. Or whatever the hell we were going to do.
Maybe that’s what maturity was all about, I mused in a weird numb fog as I pawed through hastily donated clothing for something to wear instead of a blanket. Maybe being “mature” wasn’t just holding down a job and starting a family and buying a house and paying taxes. Maybe it was about putting a hold on your own reactions and needs until after you took care of the people who trusted you.
Maturity sucked.
I found clothing for me and my dad, went into the bathroom to change, then came back out and put a pile of folded sweats on the end of his cot. “Dad, here’s some dry clothes. You need to get out of those wet things.”
“Sure thing, Angel,” he replied, voice low and subdued. He didn’t move for several seconds while the worry that he was broken clenched tight in my chest, but then he finally stood, gathered up the clothing and shuffled to the bathroom. A few minutes later he came back, wearing the slightly too-large sweats and looking even more haggard and vulnerable because of it. In silence, he sank to the cot and laid down, back to me.
Troubled, I left him there and went in search of a phone I could borrow, since the flimsy Walmart bag hadn’t been enough to keep my own phone dry. I soon found a volunteer willing to let me use up her minutes.
Since I was actually scheduled to be at work, my first call was to Derrel. It went to voicemail which told me he was probably up to his eyeballs dealing with the people who hadn’t been as lucky as my dad and me.
“Hey, Derrel,” I said after the beep. “I…I’m not at work ’cause…” Because I was clinging to my dad while impaled on a tree when I was supposed to clock in. My dad and I are only alive because I’m not quite human anymore. “We got flooded. Bad. Lost my phone.” Everything we owned is gone. “I’m at the shelter at the high school. Me and my dad.”
I didn’t know what else to say, didn’t know how to put the magnitude of what-the-hell-do-I-do-now? into a voicemail. After a few seconds of my silence, the phone beeped again, and I disconnected. At least I hadn’t had the Coroner’s Office van parked at my house. Allen would have done his best to figure out a way to blame me for the collapse of the spillway so that he could legitimately fire me for losing the van.
I called Marcus, the ache of wanting him almost painful. So what if he tended to be overprotective? Right now that seemed pretty minor. But his cell phone, too, went to voicemail, and I left pretty much the same message for him as I had for Derrel.
After I returned the borrowed phone to its owner, I got a couple of slices of pizza that had been donated by a local restaurant and made my way back to where the cots were set up. Dad had shifted to lie on his back and stare at the metal beams and fluorescent lights of the gym ceiling.
“Hey, Dad. I got some pizza for us.” I sank to the cot beside his, set the two paper plates down. “You want somethin
g to drink? They have cokes and stuff.”
“Not hungry,” he muttered. “You eat mine.”
“You gotta eat,” I said, worry pulling my mouth into a scowl.
He glanced over at me. “Yeah. Later.” He muttered something I couldn’t catch, then sighed.
I wasn’t all that hungry either at the moment. “Maybe we can put a trailer on our lot,” I suggested. “That wouldn’t be so bad, right?”
Emotions flickered across his face. “Sure. A trailer.”
It all hit me then. I mean, really hit me. The house I’d grown up in, lived my entire life in, was gone. Every picture, every scrapbook, every school paper from when I’d actually cared about school—gone.
I turned away, struggling to hold it together. Now wasn’t the time to break down. I couldn’t do that until I’d solved our problems and figured out how to care for my dad. I sure as hell didn’t need to fall apart here and let my dad think he’d somehow let me down. That would be me letting him down.
Didn’t matter. The tears came, and I grabbed for the blanket, pressed a corner of it to my eyes in a stupid and doomed effort to hide the fact I was crying. Damn it. We’d already been barely scraping by, and the only reason we were even doing that well was because the house was old and paid for, which meant we didn’t have a mortgage or rent to deal with. Oh yeah, and because we hadn’t shelled out for flood insurance since we’d never flooded so why the hell would we need anything like that? And what bank in hell would lend me money to buy a new trailer? And clothes and furniture and a car…Fuuuuuuuuuuck.
“Angel!”
I turned to see my dad looking around frantically. “Where’s the jacket I had on?” He stood and began to dig through the blankets on the cot. “Where’s my goddamn jacket?”
Sniffling, I gestured toward the foot of his cot. “In the trash bag on the floor there. Needs to be washed.”
He grabbed the bag and yanked it open. I watched him, frowning.
“What’s so important about your damn jacket?” I asked.
He muttered something about goddamn water as he pulled the sodden jacket out and fumbled through the pockets, anxiety visibly increasing.
“Dad? What’s wrong?”
He abruptly pulled a soggy sock stuffed with something out of an inner pocket and heaved a thick sigh of relief. “Here, Angelkins,” he said, voice shaking as he held it out to me. “You hold on to this.”
Baffled, I took it from him and peered at the contents. Inside was a thick roll of bills.
I jerked my gaze back up to him. “Oh my god, Dad. Where did you get this? How much is in here?”
His shoulders twitched up in a shrug. “Not all that much now with everything gone, I guess. ’Bout twelve hundred. You should hold onto it.”
Holy shit. I carefully rolled it back up. “Where’d you get it?” I repeated. I’d never in a million years suspect my dad of doing anything illegal to get that money, but…damn, twelve hundred dollars was a solid chunk of cash for us.
“I been doing a little work in the last couple of months,” he said, looking down at his hands, almost as if he was embarrassed to be telling me. “Carl Kaster’s been letting me clean up the bar after closing and paying me cash under the table. I was saving it to buy new furniture, maybe a new stove that I’m not always worryin’ is gonna burn the house down.” Pain slashed across his face, then he let out a dry chuckle. “Can’t burn the house down now, huh?”
“I think we’re pretty safe from that,” I said with a strained laugh. “That’s why you’ve been out so late.”
“Yeah,” he said, then shrugged. “Mostly.”
So he hasn’t been going out drinking every night. The “mostly” part clued me in that he was still drinking some, but it sure as hell wasn’t as much as before if he could actually hold a job. The relief that rushed through me allowed a few pesky tears to sneak out, and I pretended to rub my eyes to wipe them away. Didn’t matter that he wasn’t staying totally dry, not right now.
I shifted to sit on his cot and put my arms around him. He leaned into me and let out a low sigh.
“I wanted to make it better,” he murmured.
“It’ll be better,” I assured him, forcing myself to believe it too. “We’ll figure something out. I mean, it’s corny, but we still got each other.”
He pulled me into a hug, then straightened and peered at me. “Now tell me about this ‘medical condition’ that don’t look like any kinda condition I ever heard of.”
“Oh, man.” I blew out my breath, then looked around to make absolutely sure no one was even remotely close enough to overhear. I’d known that someday I’d have to tell him, but, well, I’d sort of hoped that it would be fifty years from now or something. “Last year, right before I got the job at the morgue, I, uh, overdosed and nearly died.”
He stiffened. “You never told me. How come you never told me?”
“Well, because I…” I shifted uncomfortably. “Things were real bad between us then. And also because, well, I kinda did die. Kinda.”
His eyes widened in alarm. “What the hell does that mean? How do you kinda die?”
Shit. This was just as hard as I thought it would be. “Randy and me, we got into a fight.” Randy, my piece-of-shit ex-boyfriend. “I got drunk and took some pills and was sorta flirting with another guy.” I winced. “Turned out he put something in my drink. A date rape drug. Took me for a drive, but I was already so high I started having trouble breathing. The guy panicked and was gonna dump me out in the swamp, but he took a curve too fast and wrecked the car real bad…” I trailed off.
“God, Angel,” he breathed, guilt and pain carved into his face. Things had been horrible between us back then. The bickering we did these days was nothing compared to the ugly and sometimes violent fights of before.
“I woke up in the ER,” I continued after a moment. “Naked and not a scratch on me, even though I remembered being hurt bad.” I shook my head in an attempt to dispel those nightmarish memories. “And there was a bag of clothing and a six pack of, well, drinks like I have now, and an anonymous note saying I had to take a job at the morgue or I’d go back to jail.”
His eyebrows drew together in a frown. “That’s like something out of a movie. What’s in those drinks?”
My gut clenched. Of course he’d want to know. What “nutritional supplement” could give me super-healing ability and mega-strength? Throat tight, I shook my head. “I don’t want to tell you. You…you’ll never look at me the same.”
“You’re my Angelkins,” he said, voice suddenly firm, and I nearly melted at the nickname. “When we were in the attic, you said that, no matter what, you’re still my Angelkins. That’s all that matters.”
A shiver went through me, and when I spoke it was in a voice barely above a whisper. “Dad, I work in the morgue so that I can eat…” I couldn’t say it. “I…I got made into something that night, and it saved my life.” I gulped, blurted it out. “I’m a zombie.”
“A what?” He shook his head.
My fingers dug into the canvas of the cot, and I stared down at the floor. “If I don’t eat…brains,” I nearly choked on the word, “I start to rot and fall apart and get real hungry for…more brains.”
He stood, backed a step away, mouth working in what sure as hell looked like revulsion. I shouldn’t have told him, I realized with sick dismay. Telling him had been a horrible mistake. I should’ve lied, come up with some other explanation. Any other explanation.
He rubbed a hand over his face, expression a painful mix of shock, disgust and, strangely, belief. He’d seen it, after all. Seen me heal up before his eyes. “All this time?” he finally asked, voice hoarse. “Almost a year?”
Throat tight, I nodded.
He fell silent again, eyes on the floor. The sick despair coiled into a thick lump in my gut, but I fought back the urge to start crying again.
His gaze came back to me, and there was a hint of desperation in his voice when he spoke. “You don’t
have to…kill people, do you?”
Shaking my head, I could only be grateful he’d phrased the question the way he had. Have to? No. Not to eat at least. The unwelcome memory of a baseball bat crushing a skull rose, and I shoved it away. “No. That’s why I work in the morgue,” I told him. “I get the…I get what I need from there. From people who’ve already died.”
Stark relief showed on his face. “Okay,” he said, exhaling, tension visibly leaving his body. “Okay, that’s good. We’ve had ups and downs.” He paused. “A lot of ups and downs. And right now, you and me, we’re on an up.” He hesitated, and his eyes sought mine. “Aren’t we?”
I took an unsteady breath. “You’re okay with a zombie daughter?”
“Don’t have much choice about it, right?” His head dipped in a nod. “You’re my Angel. So, yeah. Guess I’m okay with it.”
I managed a wan smile. “It really did save my life. I would’ve died in the car wreck for sure, even if the overdose didn’t kill me.”
He sighed and came back to sit beside me again, put an arm around me and pulled me close. “Then however it happened, I’m glad, ’cause you’re here now, and I didn’t have to bury my baby.” His voice broke on that last part, and I had to wipe a few tears of my own away. “But you’re not dead,” he said, “so why d’ya call yourself a zombie?”
Frowning, I considered the question, then shrugged. “What the hell else would you call someone who has to eat brains?”
“Huh,” he said, mouth pursing. “Okay, y’got me there.”
I leaned my head on his shoulder. “There’s, um, one more thing you should probably know,” I said after a moment. “The little matter of who turned me.”
“You mean the one who made you into a zombie?”