Angel Crawford #2: Even White Trash Zombies Get the Blues

  I managed to get to my feet again and resumed my race to the woods in what was now an awkward shambling jog.

  “Oh, please don’t make me chase you down,” my pursuer called out.

  That’s not Ed, I realized in cold shock, though I didn’t slow down. That was McKinney. What the hell?

  “I have no intention of killing you,” he continued. I risked a glance back. He was a good fifty feet from me, still on the other side of the highway. He’d probably been hiding in the grass. And now I could see a dark car parked a distance away, almost invisible in the gloom. “Right now I’m simply trying to slow you down and weaken you,” he said. “If you resist, I’ll have to keep shooting you, so I suggest you stop and come along quietly.”

  Like that was going to happen, I thought grimly, then jerked as something punched me in the back again. I stumbled to my knees, breath coming in a rasping growl. I looked back at him as he stepped onto the highway. Hunger snarled and flailed as what I now knew was my parasite clamored for resources to repair the damage. Could I take him? How many more bullets would he be able to pump into me before I reached him? Too many. No, my instinct breathed, let him come to you. Then I could put everything into one last attack…I could smell his brain. That’s what I needed to survive this.

  The sudden roar of a car engine and the sound of more gunshots slashed through my grotesque plotting. McKinney jerked and collapsed as time seemed to slow—or maybe it was my perceptions that were completely screwed. It felt like I only had time to blink once as a black Dodge Charger screeched to a stop between McKinney and me. The driver darted out, and I barely had time to grunt in surprise before he scooped me up, threw me over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry, then dumped me into the backseat of his car. In the next instant he was back in the driver’s seat and flooring the gas pedal. I thought I could hear some more gunshots, but at the speed my unexpected savior was going, I knew we wouldn’t be in range for long.

  I curled up on the back seat to stay out of the line of fire, but also to give me a few seconds to fight back the hunger. I could smell my rescuer’s brain, but there was still enough of Me in control to know I was better off letting him live. As soon as I was fairly sure that I wasn’t going to attack the driver, I struggled upright. I looked behind us, but I couldn’t even see my car anymore.

  “I don’t know who you are, but you saved my ass back there,” I rasped. God, my voice sounded like hell. I peered at the back of the driver’s head. “So, who the hell are you, and how did you know my ass needed saving?”

  The driver let out a low sigh. “Hi, Angel. Long time no see.”

  If I’d been able to feel anything, I’m sure I would have felt as if ice had been poured over me. The man who’d just saved me from whatever fate McKinney had in store for me was Ed.

  Great. If this isn’t out of the frying pan and into the fire, I don’t know what is.

  I was pretty sure I could survive jumping out of a car going at—I glanced at the speedometer—ninety-three miles an hour. It would suck giant donkey balls, but with enough brains I’d recover. But I’m already in bad shape.

  “Please don’t jump out of the car, Angel,” Ed said, obviously knowing what my reaction to seeing him would be. “I’m not going to kill you, I swear.”

  I paused in my reach for the handle. “Why the hell should I believe you?” Or better yet, why shouldn’t I let the hunger have its way?

  He slowed to make a turn, then sped up again, carefully checking his rearview mirror. “I need to talk to you.”

  “About what?” I asked, distrust thick in my voice.

  He licked his lips. “About…you, and Marcus…and Marianne.” He looked at me in the mirror. “I didn’t kill her, Angel. I swear I didn’t.”

  “I know,” I said without thinking. “I mean…I had a hard time believing you did. It didn’t make sense for you to kill her.” I ran a hand over my torso. There were two wounds on my stomach where the bullets had exited, but I wasn’t bleeding anymore. That wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Especially since I was extremely aware that there was a nice healthy brain in the car with me. “Ed, you need to let me go. I’ve been shot.”

  “I need to talk to you,” he repeated. “I’m taking you someplace safe.”

  I tried to swallow, but it was getting difficult. “You don’t understand. It won’t be safe for you. I need to eat.”

  His hands tightened on the steering wheel briefly. “Ah. You mean brains.”

  “Yeah. I have a stash. I just need to get to them—”

  “I’ll get them for you,” he said. “But I need to get you someplace safe first.”

  “Why should I trust you?” I demanded. The rasp of my voice was getting harsher and my tongue didn’t want to work properly. “You tried to kill me and Marcus not long ago.”

  He took another turn, then another. At this point I had absolutely no idea where we were. “I know. But…please. I swear I’m not going to kill you. I have to talk to you.”

  Fuck. At this point I probably didn’t have much choice. If I tried to escape now I’d be so mindless from hunger I’d end up attacking the first live person I came across. A shudder ran through me. No. Not going there.

  A few minutes later he pulled into a long winding driveway that led to a small single-story brick house with no lights on. He drove around to the back, got out, then opened the car door for me. “Do you need help?”

  I shook my head stiffly. “You need to stay back,” I managed, as the hunger tightened my stomach. “I need brains.”

  “Tell me where.”

  I climbed out of the back seat, gritting my teeth against the urge to leap on him. If I told him where the freezer was and this was all part of some wild ruse, he’d be able to destroy my entire stash. I’d definitely be fucked then.

  You’re already fucked, Angel, I silently snarled. “Stor-This on Highway 1291. Unit five three four.” I quickly gave him the combinations to the gate and the unit.

  He gave a terse nod. “That’s not far. Get inside. Keep it dark. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  I headed to the house, but instead of getting back into the car, he threw a blue tarp over it and headed for the garage. “I’m switching cars,” he called back over his shoulder. “That asshole will be looking for that one. Now get the hell inside, please?” He pulled the wide garage doors open, and less than a minute later rumbled off in an old Chevy truck that looked almost as bad as my dad’s, if that was even possible.

  I turned and shambled into the house, praying that I hadn’t made a colossal mistake.

  Chapter 20

  It wasn’t a big house. Not much bigger than my own, though certainly newer and in better condition. My senses were pretty dulled, but the occasional flash of lightning through the gaps in the heavy curtains showed me that the house was almost completely empty of furniture except for a ragged sofa and a folding chair in what appeared to be the living room.

  The thunderstorm had finally made it here, and rain was coming down in driving gusts, but my stomach didn’t give a crap. Hunger gnawed at me, yowling at me to go, hunt, find someone with a brain for me to eat. I felt a tickle on my cheek and rubbed my hand across it only to come away with a three-inch long patch of flesh. Numb horror burrowed through me as I flung it away. My face. That was part of my face! I sat in the middle of the floor and wrapped my arms around my legs, suddenly glad that I was wearing long sleeves because it kept me from having to see skin sliding off my bones. How long would it take for Ed to get back? Would I be so far gone into the hunger that I’d attack him?

  I jerked in surprise as the back door cracked open. I caught a quick glimpse of Ed as he tossed a plastic bag inside and quickly slammed the door closed again.

  A guttural snarl came from my throat at the smell of him, but before I could lunge for the door, I caught sight—and scent—of the packages in the bag. Shuddering in relief, I tore open the box and into the brain-covered pizza, scraping the toppings off to shove into my mouth.
I didn’t need the crust right now. That would only get in the way.

  Sensation began to return, and the hunger settled into something manageable. I reached for the curry chicken next since I knew there wasn’t any chicken in it. A tingle in my cheek told me that my face was putting itself back together. I knew that Ed knew I was a zombie, but that didn’t mean I wanted him to see me rotting and falling apart.

  I waited until the hole in my face was completely closed up before I called out, “It’s okay now. It’s safe.”

  He eased the door open, eyeing me cautiously. I peered at him in the gloom. “I take it there’s no electricity?” I asked.

  “Nope. This is a foreclosure,” he told me. “Been empty for close to a year. And best not to have any lights until we can seal around the windows.” He held up a large plastic bag. “I have a lantern and duct tape. We should tape the curtains down around the windows before we turn on any light. This place is pretty secluded, but no sense taking any chances.”

  Well, now I knew where he’d been staying the past couple of weeks. I gave a nod toward the gun in his other hand. “You planning on shooting me again?”

  “Only if you come after me,” he replied.

  I nodded and kept eating. “Understandable. Did you happen to grab any of the plastic containers? Those have more brains in them.”

  Disgust flickered across his face, but he didn’t voice it. He continued in and shut the door behind him. “I picked up a cooler. I brought as many containers as I could fit into it. What’s the stuff that looks like spare ribs?”

  “Spare ribs,” I said. “I didn’t have room in my freezer at home.”

  “That’s disgusting,” he breathed.

  “Really?” I said through a mouthful of brain and cheese. “I’m pretty fond of spare ribs, myself.”

  He winced. “No, I mean that you have it in the same freezer as all the…” He gestured toward my little picnic. “Remind me to never eat at your house.”

  I grinned. “It’s all wrapped or sealed up. I doubt that any brain bits could possibly get on anything else.”

  “It’s still freaky,” he muttered.

  I wiped my mouth, did a careful physical assessment. My various wounds seemed to be healed up, and my senses were back to normal. Perhaps a little higher than normal. I was well and truly tanked up right now, which I figured was a smart move considering whose company I was in.

  “No,” I said calmly, “what’s freaky is that you’re having this polite and friendly conversation with me, and just a few weeks ago you called me a monster and shot me. Twice.” I gave him a hard look. He had his gun, but I knew how fast I could move right now if I wanted to.

  Apparently, so did Ed. He set the gun and bag on the folding chair before he sat heavily on the floor. “Yeah,” he said in a low voice as he leaned back against the couch. “I did.”

  I stood, brushed myself off. He watched me warily as I moved to the folding chair, visibly relaxed when I pulled the duct tape out of the bag instead of going for the gun.

  “Okay, help me try to figure something out here,” I said as I moved to a window and started taping. “What happened to your parents?”

  Grief and horror skimmed across his face. “The official report said it was a boating accident. But that’s not what it was. I saw it.”

  “Saw what?” I prompted.

  His eyes lifted to mine. “I saw a zombie eating my dad’s brain.”

  I kept my face immobile though I wanted to wince. I knew zombies sometimes killed people for brains, especially when they were hungry enough. I’d been that hungry once—okay, twice, including tonight—and had barely held on to my humanity until I could find brains. “Your mom too? It killed them both?”

  “My mom was shot,” he said in a flat voice. “In the chest. Twice. I could see the…the wounds. The gun was lying on the deck. Then I saw my dad…his head was bashed in. The boat anchor was all bloody and…” He took a shaking breath. “I figure it shot her, then my dad tried to save her, and it turned on him…” He trailed off and squeezed his eyes closed.

  I continued to tape down the edges of the curtain as I turned over what he’d said. “Wait. I’m confused. Were you all on a boat? Where did the zombie come from? How did you make it out alive?”

  “No, no,” he said. “They were out on the dock behind our house. We lived on the Tchefuncte River, and my folks had a pontoon boat that they liked to take out in the evenings. I heard a gunshot, then some yelling and ran out and saw…saw the zombie.” He swallowed. “I didn’t know it was a zombie. I just thought it was some psycho.”

  “Uh huh. And how did the story become a ‘boating accident’?”

  He closed his eyes for a moment. “I ran back to the house and called the cops. Shit, I was seventeen, and I knew no one would believe me if I said a monster was eating my dad. I just told them my parents were dead, that something awful had happened.” A shudder ran through him. “I was hysterical, but still, I knew I couldn’t tell them the truth.” He stood suddenly, though to my relief he left the gun on the chair. “I ran back out with a baseball bat, and…” His hands clenched into fists. “I came out just in time to see the boat going full speed toward a pier on the other side of the river. Saw it crash and burst into flame…”

  “And your parents’ bodies were recovered on the boat?”

  He nodded.

  I scratched my head. “Look, it’s real possible that the zombie did kill your parents, but just on first sniff, I’m seeing some weird stuff about all this.”

  “Of course it’s weird,” he began, but I waved him silent.

  “No, wait, hear me out. First off, why would it shoot your mom but not your dad?”

  His forehead creased. “Maybe it was out of ammo.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe. But the next thing is bigger: I don’t see how it could have put them on the boat and sent it crashing into the bridge.”

  Ed leveled a frown at me. “What do you mean? That wouldn’t have been hard at all. Drag them on board, set a fire, jam the throttle, jump off.”

  “No, I get that part. But here’s something you don’t understand about zombies.” I smiled thinly. “I guess I’m sort of an expert witness about this shit now.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “Go on.”

  “Any zombie that was hungry enough to kill someone wouldn’t have had enough…mind to be able to figure out all of that—the getting rid of the evidence stuff.” I moved to the other window and began taping those curtains down as well. “So either someone else did the stuff with the boat, or a rogue zombie was killing people before he was crazy hungry—which I admit is possible, but it seems like he would have done a better job picking his victims. Or, there wasn’t a zombie at all.” I watched him as I said this last one. “Ed, how on earth did you know about zombies back then? What made you seriously consider that as a possibility?”

  “I didn’t. Not really,” he admitted. “After the accident and the investigation, I managed to convince myself I’d imagined it. Shock, hysteria. That sort of thing. After a while I simply accepted that it had been a horrible accident.”

  “What changed?” I asked, frowning.

  Ed grimaced, rubbed at his eyes. “About six months ago I got a package in the mail. It was a notebook—a personal journal of my dad’s.”

  I pressed the tape down on the bottom of the curtain, then got the lantern out of the bag and flicked it on. It wasn’t a lot of light, but it was better than pitch darkness, and enough for me to see what Ed was wearing—black and grey striped pants tucked into studded boots, black shirt with dark red skulls. It also looked like he’d picked up a few more piercings somehow. He definitely didn’t look anything like the Ed I’d known before. “Okay,” I said, “and something in that journal convinced you that zombies exist?”

  “It was only a few dozen pages. Most of the rest had been ripped out. But my dad wrote about how the zombies were real and that the person they used to be was dead and gone and all that wa
s left was a monster.” Even in the dim light I could see the guilty flush crawl across his face. “And, he, uh, wrote about how it was spreading like a plague, and he had theories about how to kill them.” He gave an uncomfortable shrug, not looking at me. “The basic gist was: slow them down then cut their heads off.”

  “And…that’s when you decided to become a zombie hunter?” I asked, my voice thick with disbelief.

  He narrowed his eyes, scowled. “No. No, of course not. I mean, I didn’t know what was going on, and I’d made myself forget what happened on the boat, so I figured this was just some sort of novel or story that my dad had decided to write. I mean, really, who the hell could believe that?” He paused, looked down at his hands. “Then, about a week later, I got another package. This time it was some of my mother’s correspondence.”

  “Wait,” I said with a slight frown. “What kind of doctor was your mother?”

  “Neurologist. She had a practice, but she enjoyed the research end of things more,” he explained. “Anyway, this was printouts of several emails. The recipient was blacked out, so I have no idea who it was intended for, but it was a series of conversations with her going through a number of theories she had on how zombies actually functioned and why they needed brains—”

  “Prions,” I interrupted, perhaps a bit smugly. “The parasite needs prions as building blocks.”

  A grimace flickered across his face. “Um, right. And after reading all that I…I started to realize that I really had seen what I thought I’d seen.”

  I opened my mouth to speak but he held up his hand. “And, no, I still didn’t immediately go out and start slaying zombies.”

  “Then why?” I asked in exasperation.

  He sighed heavily. “It was almost a month afterwards that I got another letter directing me to a secure website. All sorts of passwords and ID verification stuff, and there was a message for me there that told me my parents had been zombie hunters—part of a secret society that had been trying to wipe out the, um,” his eyes flicked briefly to me, “zombie menace before it turned into an unstoppable plague.” He groaned and dropped his head back, covering his eyes with his forearm. “Fuck, Angel, by that time I was so tied up in knots, and so much of it made sense along with the stuff from my parents…I bought it, hook, line and sinker, and told them I was in.”