White Trash Zombie Apocalypse (White Trash Zombie 3)

He lifted my hand, pulled the towel away enough to allow him to peer at the wound. Crap, I thought again. I wasn’t tanked enough for it to have healed on its own at all. Then again, that was probably good since it would’ve been really tough to explain why I’d been bleeding only seconds earlier.>In the living room, a young, teary-eyed brunette in jeans and a t-shirt stood with her arms hugged around herself. The roommate, no doubt. Ginger. That’s what Derrel said her name was. I heard the click of a camera shutter, and a peek down the hallway told me that the crime scene tech, Sean, was still working.

The young woman looked over at me where I stood by the stretcher. “This is horrible,” she said, voice quavering. “She was so happy.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said, hating how empty the words sounded. But I never knew what to say to the bereaved. I usually didn’t have to say anything, since Derrel was the one to handle that stuff. He always knew what to say. For that reason alone I wasn’t sure I could ever be a death investigator. I’d fumble it and say something inappropriate, or worse, start crying along with the grieving friend or relative.

But apparently my empty phrase of condolence was all right. Ginger let out an unsteady sigh and shook her head. “She’d just gotten a break, and then this. It’s like a cruel joke.”

“What kinda break?” I asked.

Ginger dabbed at her eyes with the wadded up tissue in her hand. “She’d been unemployed for nearly a year—one of the first to be laid off by the factory. Then she got the call to be an extra in High School Zombie Apocalypse!!”

“Two exclamation points,” I said, then instantly regretted cracking a joke about the movie.

But a small smile touched Ginger’s mouth. “She used to laugh about that too. Pretty silly, I know. Still, the laid off workers were given first dibs. Sure, it’s temp work in a goofy movie, but it paid well, and an extra grand or so makes a big difference when you’re barely scraping by, y’know? Brenda said it was like winning the lottery for a bunch of folks.”

I nodded in understanding. Barely scraping by and I were old buddies.

She sighed and crumpled the tissue in her hands. “And even beyond the money, she was having the time of her life. They’d even talked to her about doing a small part in another production.”

“I bet being in a movie totally rocked,” I offered.

She smiled a bit again. “Whenever Brenda got home she’d tell me all the cool little details.” She reached for a stack of pictures on the coffee table, pulled three out and handed them to me. “Look, here she is with and without makeup.”

The first showed a petite redhead, grinning and waving in front of one of the movie set trailers. The second was a smiling zombie with a maggoty gash in the grey, rotting flesh of her cheek, and the third, that same zombie with slack face reaching toward the camera with convincing movie-zombieness.

“That’s really cool,” I said. “Looks like she was having fun.”

“She was one of the featured zombies,” Ginger said with a touch of pride in her voice.

I peered at the photo. “Was she at the Gourmet Gala last night? Some of the extras were there for a promo thing.”

Ginger nodded. “She sure was. I talked to her when she got home, I guess at about eleven or so. She said it was a blast.” Her face fell again. “God, and now she’s dead. This is so crazy.”

Was Brenda a real zombie like Tim and his friend last night? I wondered. But if so, surely she wouldn’t look like a normal dead person now. I itched to get close to the body to find out for sure, and to my relief Sean stepped out and gave me the nod that told me it was okay for me to do my thing.

Luckily, Derrel chose that moment to return inside, so I was saved from having to say something like, “It’s been great talking to you, but now it’s time for me to put your roomie into a body bag”—but, y’know, less insensitive.

Derrel gently guided Ginger to the couch to get more information about Brenda’s next of kin, and I made my escape to the easier company of the dead chick.

There she was, on her back on the bathroom floor, looking as if she was asleep except for the utter stillness and half-open eyes. She definitely wasn’t a zombie either. No whiff of rot, and I was barely hungry enough to smell a regular, unzombified brain within her skull.

I made quick work of getting her into the bag and, as she was slender and short, I didn’t need Derrel’s help to get her onto the stretcher. I draped the dark blue Coroner’s Office cover over the body bag, then wheeled the stretcher out while Derrel kept Ginger occupied. Even though it was obvious a body bag lay beneath the sedate cloth, it still offered a bit of shielding from the emotional impact. Derrel and I were pretty good about doing our best to make sure friends and family didn’t have to see the body being removed. That was one of those “final” things that tended to hit people pretty hard.

By the time I got outside the rain had slacked off to a sluggish drizzle—still annoying after so many days of rain but better than the earlier deluge. I tugged my raincoat back on, then pushed the stretcher and its burden to where I’d parked.

A flicker of movement down the street caught my eye as I shoved the stretcher into the back of the van. I closed the door and turned, mystified to see a blond woman with a camera aimed in my direction. That’s the same chick who was taking pictures of me on the movie set. What the hell?

Though I knew damn well she saw me looking at her, she didn’t lower the camera and no doubt got some great photos of my scowl. A few seconds later, she turned and strolled casually off in the opposite direction.

Shit. Every muscle in my body screamed at me to chase her down and demand to know why the hell she was taking pictures of me. But leaving a body in the van so that I could run down the street was a sure way to get fired.

As if the universe wanted to help me make up my mind, lightning split the sky, followed immediately by a crash of thunder that shook the van. I jumped and let out a squeal, then dashed for the driver side door and climbed in. Yeah, I could probably survive being struck by lightning, but it would hurt like a sonofabitch.

About two seconds later rain slammed down in a deafening roar on the roof of the van. Fine, I could take a hint. No chasing down mysterious photographers today.

But as soon as this rain let up? All bets were off.

* * *