How the White Trash Zombie Got Her Groove Back (White Trash Zombie 4)

Naomi glanced my way, smile twitching. “Don’t make me stop this car.”

“Can I drive? You should let me drive. I’m a very good driver.”

“No.”

“I really am a good driver,” I insisted. “Never even got a speeding ticket.”

Naomi chuckled. “I’m sure you are, but . . .” She scrunched up her face. “You can’t take this personally, okay? But if somehow the Tribe or Saberton found us on the road and tried to cause trouble, it’s probably better if it’s either Kyle or me driving.”

“I hate it when you make sense,” I grumbled.

“There are a couple of books in my bag down there by your feet,” she said. “You’re welcome to ’em.”

I dug through what she had. “I can’t believe you don’t have Passion of the Viking.”

She laughed. “Oh my god, would you believe I’ve actually read that book?”

“No way!”

She grinned. “Yes, way. I’m a total romance novel fiend.” She nodded toward the bag. “Try Kilted Pleasure. It’s even better.”

I dug it out, and contentedly lost myself in the perils of Lady Stonewall.

Fourteen pages into the hijinks of the rogue Rory MacTavish as he tried to win the heart of the bonny Lady Fiona Stonewall—while she apparently wanted only to find out what Rory wore under his kilt—a slightly brilliant idea hit me.

“Krewe,” I announced. “We can call ourselves the Krewe since we’re not really the Tribe right now.”

Naomi gave me a doubtful look. “Crew? Seems a bit boring. Why not gang or herd or gaggle—”

“Murder,” Kyle murmured from the back seat, eyes closed. “Like a murder of crows.”

“Murder? Really?” I asked, surprised. “That’s what a bunch of crows is called?” I shook my head. “That’s really weird, but I don’t mean crew like a road crew. Krewe—like the groups of people who put on Mardi Gras parades. So, y’know, a bunch of people who are wild and fun and might even cause some trouble.”

“A krewe of zombies,” Philip said with a smile. “That actually makes sense.”

Ridiculously pleased with myself

, I once again submerged myself into the book.

At some point in the afternoon Naomi left the interstate in what seemed to be the absolute middle of nowhere. When I asked her where we were going she simply responded, “More supplies,” and then proceeded down a narrow country highway even deeper into Nowhere. About half an hour later she pulled into a gravel parking lot in front of a building that looked even more ramshackle and run down than Randy’s garage.

I peered at the weather-beaten sign and the hay stacked in a big shelter off to the side. “Maybe this is too nosy, but what the hell do we need from Gatlin’s Feed and Seed?”

Naomi grinned as she leapt from the car. “Wait and see. And don’t touch anything.”

I clambered out at a much less enthusiastic pace, then followed Philip and Kyle inside. Gatlin’s Feed and Seed was pretty much exactly like every other feed and seed store I’d ever been in, which was good since I loved feed and seed stores. There was something about the rich scent of mulch and soil and hay and grain that seemed to sing with life and growth.

Memories whispered to me as I trailed my fingers along the racks of seed packets. My mother had loved these stores as well. Every Friday afternoon, back when I was in kindergarten, she’d bring me to one not far from the house and let me pick out a packet of flower seeds, and then we’d go home and plant them somewhere around the yard. By the time I started first grade the yard was a crazy and glorious jumble of every type of flower that could grow in south Louisiana.

She didn’t take me to the feed store as much during first grade, with weeks and then months between trips. Then one day in spring I must have asked to go once too often. That was the first time she hit me, as far as I could remember—a sharp smack across the face that left a red mark on my cheek for over an hour and a stain on my trust in her—a stain that never faded.

Yet the flowers remained, most of them perennials that stubbornly returned every year despite shocking neglect. And even though I never forgot that slap, I also could never forget how she would go and sit in the back yard, in the middle of those flowers, as if that was the only place she could find a moment of peace from the chaos in her head.

Kyle and Philip idly poked around racks of dusty farm tools while Naomi moved to a back counter and spoke in a low voice to a grizzled man with an impressive beer gut beneath threadworn overalls. About half a minute later she glanced back and beckoned to us.

I obediently followed the boys over and even gave the man behind the counter a nice smile. He returned a toothless one then gestured, with a hand missing its last two fingers, toward a door behind him. Naomi thanked him, and then we all went through the door and into a storeroom filled with what must have been every piece of broken crap from the last fifty years. Lamps, typewriters, three-legged chairs. Junk.

The hell? Mystified, I looked around, certain I was missing the point of this—especially since the other three simply stood in the middle of the storeroom as if waiting for something.