White Trash Zombie Apocalypse (White Trash Zombie 3)

“Yes, ma’am. Two cars will be there in about a minute or so,” he calmly informed me. “How are you?”

“I’m good for now,” I told him. “I stopped for a bit of a snack. Heather blasted a zombie in the head with her shotgun. She’s hit in the arm, got a hard bump on the head, and she says she’s cold. May have a concussion. And I need to go pull a corpse off the road. Oh, and I got a live one too. Dunno if you want him or not.”

“Most definitely,” he stated, approval in his voice.

I tied off the crude bandage on Heather’s arm, gave her a wink and smile, then moved back over to my former dinner. “I see headlights,” I said to Brian as I grabbed the corpse’s arm and pulled him off the road. “Sure hope they’re yours. I don’t have time to hide this much carnage.” Jeez, two mostly-headless corpses, a shirtless guy with a smashed arm and knee, one injured woman and another with bullet holes in her clothing and blood dribbling down her chin, along with various spent casings and shotgun shells…no, nothing at all suspicious here.

“First one should be approaching now,” Brian replied to my relief. Still, I hurried to pull the corpses and my prisoner behind the cars so that it wasn’t quite so obvious that we’d had a little mayhem party here. Relentless hunger set in as I finished—not unmanageable but damn insistent. The one brain had barely been enough to put me back together, and I’d burned up plenty doing my sprint and whack-a-guy bit.

I picked up the baseball bat as the black SUV pulled off the road about thirty feet from where I stood. A black woman in dark pants and shirt climbed out of the car, gun in hand. She swept her gaze over the area in an obvious assessment, then headed my way.

“Okay,” I said to Brian. “Someone’s here—a woman, tall and black with really awesome braids. And she’s not shooting at me, so I’m thinking this is one of yours?”

“That would be Rachel,” Brian said. “Dan should be there in another minute or so.”

“Gotcha,” I said, keeping my eyes on the approaching woman. “What about Heather? She needs help.”

“We’ll take care of her, ma’am,” Brian replied.

I scowled. That could be interpreted several ways.

“Take good care of her,” I ordered.

“I understand your meaning,” he said. “Angel, Mr. Ivanov requests that you not talk about this incident with anyone until deeper investigation is done. Saberton Corporation doesn’t play around.”

I was tempted to give him the same noncommittal I understand your meaning that he’d given me, but instead said, “Okay, got it.” I didn’t mind an excuse to put off telling Marcus for a while.

I handed the headset back to Heather. She gave me a vague smile and simply held it loosely in her hand instead of putting it back in her ear.

“Ms. Crawford,” the woman said as she held a brain packet out to me. “I’m Rachel. Mr. Archer sent me.”

“Oh, thanks,” I said in thinly veiled relief, then had to hide a surprised start when I realized I couldn’t smell her brain. She’s a zombie too! I quickly tore the packet open and gulped down the contents, mentally rolling my eyes at my reaction. Of course Pietro’s security people would be zombies. Duh. Still, it was cool to finally meet another zombie chick.

Rachel crouched by Heather, looking her over and asking questions, like “Do you know what day it is?” and “Who’s the President?” She glanced back up at me as I finished the packet. “Need another?” Her cool regard flicked over the obvious bullet holes in my clothing.

“I won’t say no if you have a spare,” I told her. She silently pulled another from her pocket and handed it to me, then slipped her arms beneath Heather and stood, lifting her easily with zombie-strength.

Yet another SUV pulled up, and a man in a dark sweat suit who I assumed was Dan stepped out. He gave a nod to Rachel as she carried Heather to her SUV, then looked to me. “Mr. Archer advised one dead zombie, one dead human, and two prisoners. Anything else?”

Two prisoners? Shit. Of course Heather would be a prisoner as well. I grimaced as the rain began in earnest again. Well, at least it’ll wash the blood away. “No, I think that covers it.”

Dan gave a crisp nod, close-cropped sandy hair giving him that security-dude look. He was only a few inches taller than me, though, which translated to pretty damn short for a guy. But he was wiry and moved with confident ease. “We’ll finish the cleanup here then,” he said. “Thanks for the help.”

It wasn’t a dismissal, but it was obvious there wasn’t much more I could do here. Besides, I was soaked to the skin, and my shirt and pants were full of bullet holes. Looks like I’ll be breaking out the mending kit, I thought with a sigh. No way was I going to throw them out simply because I got shot. Since I seemed to have turned into a bullet magnet, that would get expensive, fast.

“Y’all will let me know about Heather?” I asked Dan.

“I’ll make sure someone does,” he said with such conviction that I couldn’t help but believe him.

“Okay, then, um…well, it was nice meeting you,” I said.

He smiled. “Be careful getting home.” Then he turned away to take care of the mess we’d made.

Chapter 9

It was only a little after one a.m., which seemed weird. So much had happened since I left the morgue at midnight, it felt like it should be at least four in the morning. But apparently a psychotic firefight and zombie fest only took about half an hour from start to finish.

The entire way home I struggled to come up with a story that would explain the pesky bullet holes in my clothing in case my dad was home and still awake. My pants and Coroner’s Office shirt were both dark, which meant that the blood didn’t show, but after getting shot and beat up and then shot some more—in the pouring rain—I was looking pretty damn bedraggled.>I lurched closer and raised the bat, focused on the one with the ready weapon. “Drop…gun…or…die,” I managed to slur through the broken jaw, then jerked and nearly went down as a bullet smacked into my hip. Pain flared, and I swayed for a second, but the hip seemed to be willing to support my weight for a little while longer. With an animal growl, I willed myself to close the distance. A frisson of terror passed through the shooter’s eyes right before my bat came down on his head. I didn’t have the zombie superpower thing going on right now, but I sure as hell had the really-pissed-off-bitch thing happening, and even a weakling like me could swing a baseball bat to good effect.