White Trash Zombie Apocalypse (White Trash Zombie 3)

Her brow furrowed as she looked around for some obvious source of danger. “What? Why?”

Crap. She probably thought the extras were still simply being in character, giving her a little demo. Yeah, well she’s gonna get one hell of a demo if she doesn’t get out of here! But what the hell was I supposed to tell her?

“Um, there’s a labor dispute, and I think there’s about to be a riot!” I blurted, then fought back a cringe. Holy crap, but that was without a doubt the dumbest thing I’d ever said. “Look, you need to get off the set,” I insisted.

A small frown of doubt touched her mouth as she took in the increasingly erratic behavior of the extras. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

I shot a look to her aide. “Get her out of here or…or I’ll tell Pietro you didn’t get her out of here!” Too late I realized the threat was pointless if he didn’t know how much power Pietro held.

Fortunately he at least seemed to understand that the crowd was growing unruly for no discernible reason. He nodded and slipped an arm around Jane’s waist on the opposite side from her cane. “I’ve got her,” he told me, then looked to Jane. “Let’s get you to the car, Dr. Pennington.” He shepherded her toward the barricades, and I stayed long enough to make absolutely sure she was really getting out of the crowd before I turned back to the mess.

Crew members and staff sought to regain order but were losing the battle as the bizarre rowdiness increased. Distantly I heard someone yell to get the cameras running. What the hell? I thought in outrage, though a sensible part of me totally understood that any director worth a shit would want to film a crowd of zombies going nuts. Besides, the director probably had no idea what the real deal was.

I fought my way free from the thick of the crowd, continuing to scan and scent. My gaze passed over a black-haired woman, then went right back to her. She stood tall, scanning the crowd, and didn’t seem at all disturbed by the craziness around her.

I shoved a stumbling extra out of my way as I got closer to her. “Heather?” I asked in disbelief as I peered at her, noting on closer inspection that she was wearing a dark wig over her blonde hair.

Her attention rested on me, and a smile touched her mouth. “Hey, Angel,” she murmured, then went back to scanning the crowd. “I’m in with Mr. Ivanov. Can’t thank you enough.” She looked calm and oh-so-very ready for action.

“That’s awesome,” I said. I figured her minimal disguise was to help keep her off the Saberton radar. “You’re looking for Philip too?” I mentally prayed for her to tell me they’d already found and extracted him, but she merely gave a sharp nod.

“Yep. Me and Kyle—my trainer—were nearby when the call came in,” she told me. “Others are on their way.”

Crap. Philip hadn’t been extracted yet, adding confirmation to my gut feeling that he was the source of the problem with the berserk extras.

I felt his influence—a growing unnatural hunger accompanied by waves of unease, like insects crawling in my skull and sending twitches through my muscles. Unlike the poor extras who didn’t have a clue what they were experiencing, I didn’t have much trouble controlling the compulsion to feed, especially since I was fairly tanked. Yet along with the undesirable urge came something else—a strong sense of Philip, as though I knew where he was without knowing.

I lifted my head and scented the air again. There, to my left. I slipped through the increasingly wild crowd, surrounded by shouts and cries that were far too realistic to be part of a movie.

A fake zombie reached for me, confusion and anger warring it out on his makeup-covered features. I dodged the grab only to be forced to spin away from another who lunged toward me, lips pulled back from rotted teeth. For an instant I wondered if that was makeup or if the extra actually had poor oral hygiene. The latter, I decided as the few teeth in his head snapped together on nothing.

Baring my own—far better—teeth, I shoved the fake zombie back and continued moving toward where my newfound intuitive radar told me Philip was. Another zombie let out a gurgling moan, and a heavier waft of rot hit me like a fist. Shit. This wasn’t one of the extras. This was Tim Bell of the broken nose, and he looked bad, eyes wild and desperate, and flesh shredding for real from his clawed hands. A young woman with only light zombie makeup stood beside him, eyes wide in confusion, but not acting erratically. Maybe not a test subject?

Tim let out a rasping snarl, then grabbed the woman’s arm in a hard grip. She let out a shocked wail of pain, confusion shifting to a perfectly understandable fear. I could easily smell her brains, which meant it had to be driving Tim absolutely bonkers.

“Heather!” I yelled, hoping the woman was within earshot, even as I kicked Tim’s knee as hard as I could. He staggered and let out a bellow, but to my relief he released the young woman. Snarling, he turned on me, a scary, dangerous expression coming over his face. In my peripheral vision I saw other extras grow more agitated as he focused his fury on me. Great. Goddamn pheromones all over the damn place.

The young woman fled through the crowd, but in her place Heather appeared. Her sharp gaze took in the situation and no doubt noted that this particular zombie was waaaay different from the other misbehaving extras.

“Whatcha got?” she asked calmly. Her eyes never left Tim as she pulled out a collapsible police baton and snapped it open.

“He’s a real one,” I told her quickly. “Philip made him, and he’s all messed up.” Tim was obviously hungry, and though I had pockets full of thawing brains, I wasn’t about to waste them on this motherfucker unless absolutely necessary. “The other one Philip made might be somewhere in here too.” Crap. And Philip. Like a nest of pissed off snakes in my belly, I sensed him escalating out of control.

“Oh, right,” she said, brandishing the baton. “We’re supposed to get those two as well as well as Philip.”

I took a step back as she squared off against the very pissed-off Tim. “I need to find Philip,” I said, feeling the urgency of it rise with every passing second. “You got this one?”

“Yep,” she replied with an adrenaline-charged smile. “I got this.”

I gave her one last dubious look, then continued to weave through the seething crowd. More extras grabbed at me, but thankfully, they only seemed to have a touch of the full zombie strength and speed, so a few well-placed kicks and elbows got me past them. I shoved an extra dressed as a rotting cheerleader out of the way, then breathed a curse as I caught sight of Roland, the other Philip-made real zombie. He didn’t have any makeup on, and he didn’t need it. His head swiveled from side to side, lips curled back and teeth snapping together repeatedly. Saliva strung from the corner of his mouth and his eyes shone with madness.

With a roar, he charged one of the camera crew who was trying vainly to restore some order in his little corner of the fiasco. I sucked in a breath. I knew there was no way I’d be able to intervene in time to save the crew member. Yet before Roland could close the distance, a stocky man wearing a shirt lettered “Security” lifted a gun and fired with a familiar whuuush sound.

A tranq gun.

A yellow tuft bloomed on Roland’s chest. He took two more steps and then crumpled onto his face. The man with the tranq gun lowered it, and I got another start of surprise. This was the asshole who’d stepped on my hand out at the boat launch. Turning, I quickly lost myself in the crowd. I didn’t want to get tranqed myself, and I was more than happy to leave him to deal with the neutralized Roland.

My zombie-mama heart lurched, and I froze as an inhuman, snarling bellow cut through the crowd noise. I ducked past another cluster of people and around the corner of the building that housed the concession stand, just in time to see Philip take a Saberton security man by the head and smash it into the cinderblock wall.