White Trash Zombie Apocalypse (White Trash Zombie 3)

Brian noticed. “I suspect he will be here very shortly, ma’am. Do you need another packet?”

I shuddered as the wrist pulled back together in a familiar but still eerie-as-hell shift of tissue and bone. “Uh, yeah. If you don’t mind. And an alibi,” I added with a snort.

He took the empty packet from me and tucked it away. “I don’t mind at all, ma’am,” he said and pressed a second one into my hand.

I gave him a grateful smile, then sucked down the contents of the second one. Nifty way to package brains for sure. “That should do it. Thanks,” I said, then let out a sigh. “Damn it. This sure went to hell.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said as he took the empty. “I could see that.” In a smooth move he pulled a business card from an inner pocket of his suit jacket, pressed it into my hand. “You might want to hold onto this.”

I glanced down at it. It simply said “Brian Archer” with a phone number below the name. Nothing else. “Um, thanks.” Cool that I had the number of Pietro’s security guy, though I wasn’t sure if he was giving this to me out of courtesy or because I had a tendency to get myself into trouble.

“Angel!” I heard Marcus call from the direction of the tents. Quickly shoving the card into the front pocket of my pants, I glanced back to see him hurrying our way.

He gave Brian the kind of nod you give to someone you know, then took me by the shoulders. “Are you all right?”

“I am now, but—”

“She’s fine, sir,” Brian interjected. “A little banged up for a moment. She slipped on some mud on the sidewalk after the extras left.”

I closed my mouth and stared at Brian. He was covering for me? Well, I did say that I needed an alibi. I hadn’t been serious, but it certainly made things easier.

Marcus exhaled, tension in his face easing. He gave a nod to Brian then looked back at me. “You sure you’re okay?”

I tore my eyes away from Brian. “Um, yeah. It was no biggie,” I said, more than a little thrown off by the totally unexpected ally.

Brian took a step back, his eyes lingering on me. “I’ll be going now and will let Mr. Ivanov know exactly what happened,” he said with a faint stress on exactly. “Have a good evening, sir, ma’am,” he added with a nod in our direction.

“Thanks for all your help, Brian,” I said with an equally faint stress on the all.

He gave me a slight smile. “Anytime, Ms. Crawford.” He turned and headed off toward the parking lot, pausing on the way to pick up and pocket the forgotten bag of brain chips.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Marcus asked, dropping his hands from my shoulders. “Why didn’t you call me?”

I bristled. Yep, here it was. “There wasn’t time to call,” I told him. “And Jane called Pietro, right?”

Marcus blew out an exasperated breath. “Jesus Christ, Angel, you didn’t know what you were doing, or who you were going after. Some drunk extra? I know you’re strong, but someone else could have handled it.” He said it all in a patronizing tone that slid right under my skin. “And what if it had turned out to be something worse?”

I’d planned to tell him about Philip—if not all the details about the broken wrist and such—but holy crap I was so not in the mood to get chewed out. Annoyed, I edged back from him. “Who else was gonna handle it? Someone who didn’t know it was a zombie and could’ve ended up a victim? I was the only one there who could do something.”

Marcus stared at me for a second. “Wait. It was a zombie zombie?”

I glared right back at him. “Yeah. It was a zombie made up like one of the zombie extras. I don’t know if he really was an extra or just pretending to be.” A zombie pretending to be a zombie pretending to be a zombie. Made me dizzy.

“So you didn’t go after a drunk dude…you went after a crazy, hungry zombie.”

“Yeah. And if I didn’t do something, someone was gonna get hurt,” I said. “And I was tanked.” I scowled at him. “C’mon, Marcus, I handled it, didn’t I?”

“Sure, this time,” he said, eyes dark with worry. “But it could have turned out differently.”

“So can walking out to get the damn mail,” I shot back. “Marcus, I handled it. Can’t you give me a little bit of credit for that?”

“Okay, okay,” he sighed, then gave me a smile. “You’re right. Forget I said it.”

Relief pushed back the annoyance. He was trying, and I had to give him props for that. And it was damn important. If we could ever get past this babying crap, we might actually have a chance to make it together. Okay, yeah, this time it had actually been a teensy weensy bit dangerous, but that wasn’t the point.

I gave him a smile in return, then wrinkled my nose. “Anyway, I’m pretty soaked now, so I guess that’s my sign that I’ve eaten enough.”

He slid an arm around me. “Ready to call it a day and head home? Pietro’s going to get Jane out of here as soon as he knows you’re okay, which I’m sure Brian has already told him by now.”