White Trash Zombie Apocalypse (White Trash Zombie 3)

“Totally,” I said. “But can someone call Marcus and let him and my dad know I’m okay and might be a while?”

Dr. Nikas glanced at Brian, who gave a nod.

“I’m on it,” he said, pulling out his phone as he stepped into the hallway to make the call.

Jacques returned and set up an IV with several bags flowing into the tube thingy in Philip’s arm.

I frowned. “How do you keep his body from healing up around the IV?”

Jacques didn’t look up from his adjustments. “Needle and catheter have a camouflaging coating that keeps the parasite from reacting to it. Dr. Nikas’s development.” He stuck three patches on Philip’s chest and switched on the heart monitor, then stood and retreated to the computer workstation.

Dr. Nikas filled a syringe from a vial and injected it into the saline bag. “Philip, as soon as this bag finishes, I’m going to set up a drip of a new formulation. It’ll take a couple of hours, but let me know immediately if it makes anything worse.”

“Yes, sir,” Philip murmured, eyes already drifting closed. “Thank you.” He already seemed to be better, and I had to hope it wasn’t simply my wishful thinking.

Dr. Nikas stood and returned to Kyle. Carefully, he picked up the container holding the dart that had struck him. “Excellent, Kyle,” he said. “This will give us a cleaner sample to analyze and hopefully a better idea of how this tranquilizer operates.”

Heather’s lips twitched. “Way to take one for the team, Kyle. We can tell everyone you got tranqed on purpose.”

Kyle muttered something I couldn’t hear, but I had no doubt the gist of it involved curse words.

Dr. Nikas gave Kyle’s shoulder an absent pat, then turned and headed toward the doorway, expression hardening.

I had no shame, and I quickly grabbed one of the packets of brains Dan had left for me and sucked it down. I was pretty sure Dr. Nikas was about to confront Charish, and I wanted some super zombie hearing right about now.

It kicked in barely in time.

“Tell me what happened to Philip,” I heard Dr. Nikas say in a calm, even voice. Lucky for me, Charish had apparently been lurking just beyond the doorway. No wonder Philip had nearly lost it.

“I don’t know. He’s always been unstable,” Charish replied, and even though I couldn’t see her I had no trouble picturing the frown laced with the perfect amount of professional concern.

“What happened when he came here last night?” Dr. Nikas asked.

“Oh my god! Can you believe he showed up here?” she said, outrage thick in her voice. She huffed out a breath. “Begging, no less. He wasted all the supplies you’d left for him and claimed he was starving. I gave him some simply to get him to leave and keep from totally compromising us.”

Dr. Nikas remained quiet for a few seconds before asking, “Why in god’s name did you not give him more?” My zombie super-hearing picked up footfalls, and I easily pictured him stepping closer to her. “Did you think he was lying about being hungry? That perhaps he sold the brains I gave him on the street like pain meds?”

He didn’t sound so calm anymore.

“No!” Charish said. “He obviously wasn’t rationing properly. I gave him two, and Saberton fed him as well. He simply had to hold it together for a couple of days, that’s all.” She made an aggrieved sound. “Why would I waste valuable resources on a stupid zombie grunt, and an expendable one at that?”

Holy fucking shit, I thought, stunned, She did NOT just say that!

“Stupid…zombie…grunt?” Dr. Nikas bit the words out, and the anger in his voice sounded utterly foreign coming from him. “You call a highly skilled man who volunteered for extremely hazardous duty, suffered your botched efforts, and who managed to endure agony and extreme hunger without undue complaint a stupid zombie grunt?”

I heard a clatter, and I figured Dr. Nikas had backed her into a counter or something.

“I…I don’t understand,” Charish said, for the first time sounding a little afraid and genuinely perplexed. “You were going to terminate him tomorrow. And…volunteered? What do you mean? For what?”

“Terminate?” Utter astonishment laced the word. “I never had any intention of terminating him! You don’t terminate your own people!” Dr. Nikas drew a shaking breath, obviously struggling for calm. “Why did you give the accelerant instead of stabilizer?”

“I didn’t!” she cried.

“You are lying,” he said through clenched teeth. “The two are kept in separate locations, look completely different from each other. Tell me why you sent an operative back into the field with a substance that could damage him and his mission.”

“I thought he was just a mule,” she replied, voice cracking in a way that told me she had tears going on now. Bitch. I glanced around the room to see that I wasn’t the only one carefully eavesdropping. Brian stood by the wall, arms folded over his chest and eyes closed, but his jaw was clenched so tightly I thought he might break a tooth. Kyle’s eyes were on the doorway, brow ever so slightly furrowed. He probably wasn’t tanked up to where he could hear it all, but enough to get the gist.

“I didn’t know he was an operative, I swear,” Charish continued, crying now. “You said you were going to ‘take care of him,’ and I thought you meant kill him.” She sniffled. “Ari, I was so tired that night, and upset that he’d come to the lab. Anyone could have followed him!”