Even White Trash Zombies Get the Blues (White Trash Zombie 2)

Ed rolled his eyes and rattled off the digits. I dialed, shifting from foot to foot while I waited for Marcus to pick up. When it went to voicemail I groaned, then mentally fumbled for what to say during the brief outgoing message.

“Marcus, it’s Angel. There’s some weird shit going on, and you need to watch your back. The security guy from the lab shot me and tried to kidnap me, but Ed saved me, and, oh yeah, Ed’s cool now, but I can’t explain that now. But there’s some kind of conspiracy to get zombie heads, and it has to do with Sofia’s research and the zombie factions. Oh! I was totally right about Zeke Lyons. Ed said he gave the heads to someone, and we think they grew zombies back from them. Oh, and Sofia’s a bad guy. Don’t trust her! And anyway, I don’t have my cell phone, I’m on a pay phone, but I’ll try and call you again soon. Just, please be careful.”

I hung up, turned to Ed. “That was total incoherent babble, wasn’t it?”

He looked as if he was biting his lip to keep from laughing. “Well…you’ll definitely get his attention with that message.”

“Ugh. Whatever. I’ll try him again in a bit.” I could feel my expression settling into a scowl. “Lets go find Sofia.”

I had her address in my text messages, but I realized it was more than possible that it wasn’t actually her address and had been given to me to lead me into McKinney’s ambush. Therefore, Ed and I agreed that we should find out for sure. Looking her up in a phone book seemed like the logical first step, but finding a phone book was more of a challenge than we expected. There wasn’t one by the pay phone, and the clerk in the XpressMart simply gave me a vacant look when I asked if she had one. Ed then came up with the idea of finding a computer with internet to look her up, but I reminded him that the library was closed and the only way we would get to a computer at this point would be to break into someone’s house.

After several minutes of argument and increasingly pointless debate, we finally agreed that we should at least go and make sure that the address she gave me was bullshit before we took the step of breaking into someone’s house for the sole purpose of surfing the web. Yeah, we were some serious tactical geniuses, for sure.

Breckenridge Estates was still mostly under construction, and only every fourth lot or so had a finished house on it. It wasn’t very large, either, and pretty much consisted of two long roads that curved off from either side of the entrance, each ending in a cul du sac—which, in a satellite photo, looked like a pair of ovaries. In between the “ovaries” was a swath of woods—green space that was probably used for drainage—which, in a satellite photo looked like, well, bush.

And the only reason I knew this was because Nick had somehow discovered it and made sure everyone else in the office saw it as well. To his credit, this was totally my level of humor, and I’d thought it was hysterically funny. But, hey, if not for that I wouldn’t have known where Breckenridge was and how it was laid out.

I shared my wisdom with Ed as he drove, deeply disappointed when he failed to see the extreme hilarity in the layout. Oh well, maybe it was something that had to be seen to be appreciated.

As we entered the subdivision Ed put his hand on his gun, and I slouched down in the front seat of the truck.

“There’s the address she gave me,” I said, peering up over the dash at the very ordinary brick ranch-style house. I frowned at the blue Mazda in the driveway. “And that’s her car.” Guess it wasn’t a bullshit address after all.

I started to tell Ed not to pull into the driveway, but he obviously had a healthy dose of common sense and simply drove on past the house. I didn’t see any movement behind the curtains as we drove by, but there were other ways for her to be watching out for us. Surely by now McKinney would’ve let her know I’d escaped. But would either of them be expecting me to come here?

“This could be another ambush,” I told Ed as we rounded the curve.

He gave a terse nod. “That occurred to me as well. There’s a bag behind the seat. Has night vision goggles in it. I’m going to park on the other side of that green space, and we can approach through the trees.”

I leaned over the back seat and saw a black nylon tactical bag. It was a lot heavier than I expected, and when I got a look at the contents I saw why.

“Holy shit, dude.” Not just night vision goggles, but also a variety of handguns, ammunition, road flares, and what looked like a stun gun. “Can I just say how glad I am that you’re doing the good guy thing right now?”

Ed smiled tightly, but shame flashed through his eyes. He parked the truck in an empty driveway in the left “ovary,” grabbed the bag and got out. I scrambled out after him, then had to struggle to keep up as he took off at a lope toward the trees. About a dozen feet into the woods he stopped and crouched, fished out a pair of the goggles and handed them to me. I took them gratefully since I could barely see my hand in front of my face.

The world leapt into green and black focus, just like in the movies. “These are so cool,” I breathed.

“Can you shoot a gun?” he asked.

“I’m not a great shot or anything, but I know which end to point at the bad guys,” I replied.

“Good enough.” He pressed the butt of a pistol into my hand. I couldn’t see details with the goggles on, but it wasn’t a very large gun. Some kind of automatic. Bigger than a .22 but smaller than a .45. And that was about the extent of my gun knowledge.

He began moving through the trees, and I followed, doing my best to be quiet but certain that we sounded like a pair of rampaging elephants. It probably took us close to fifteen minutes to get through the stretch of woods, part of which was a swampy section that we had to wade through, soaking us to our knees. I kept scanning but didn’t see anyone lurking in the woods lying in wait.

We dropped to the ground a few feet from the other edge of the woods and watched the house for several minutes. Finally Ed turned to me and pulled his goggles off. “Too much light around the house for night-vision now,” he said in a barely audible voice. I quickly tugged mine off, then had to blink a few times to get used to normal vision again.

“I don’t see anyone,” I said, doing my best to match his low volume.

“Me neither.”

I took a deep breath. “I don’t smell anyone either.”

He shot me an uncertain look. I shrugged and smiled sweetly.

“Uh, okay,” he muttered. “Well, I think we should go for it.”

We shifted into crouches, then moved quickly through the back yard and pressed ourselves up against the house. I edged to the door and started to reach for the handle, but Ed grabbed my arm before I could touch it.