Diana Rowland - How the White Trash Zombie Got Her Groove Back

Following the others in, I could only stare like an idiot for several seconds before I recovered enough to put my things down and explore the suite. Swanky. Elegant. Two bedrooms—one with a king bed and one with a queen—a living room, dining area with table and chairs, a small kitchen, and two bathrooms, one with a tub big enough to swim in. Plus a terrace, complete with patio furniture. The place was half again as big as my whole damn house back home.

Philip transferred brains from the coolers to the fridge. Kyle hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the door, and Naomi flopped onto the sofa.

I picked up a big book off the coffee table. New York: A Photographer’s Memoirs. “Aren’t they afraid someone will walk off with their stuff?” I asked. My vast hotel experience consisted of one night with Randy at Tucker Point’s Sleepytime Palace on our “anniversary.” Everything there was taped, nailed, or glued down.

Naomi answered with a laugh. She wasn’t laughing at me, but only because she thought I was joking.

Allrighty then. I set the book down again as Philip and Kyle joined us in the living room.

“Now what?” I asked.

Naomi glanced at the clock. “Nine thirty a.m. now. The guys are heading out to take care of business. Kyle and Philip will check the security channels, and I’m going to make some calls. Possible targets for later are Saberton Tower, my mother’s condo, or Andrew’s apartment.”

I sat on the couch, then had to control my groan of pleasure at how soft and comfy it was. “It’s Friday,” I said, “which means invading Saberton is out since it’ll be full of pesky employees.”

Naomi nodded. “Right, and unless we turn up something juicy in the next couple of hours, I think the easiest first step is Andrew’s apartment since my mother’s condo has pretty tight security. It’s not likely Andrew would be home in daytime hours, but I’ll see if I can get anything on his schedule.” She glanced around as if looking for confirmation.

“The apartment is the best option,” Kyle agreed. “I assume you have keys or codes to get past security?”

“I have his building and security code,” she said, then bit her lip. “Unless he changed them.”

“He thinks you’re dead,” I said with a shrug, then winced at the brief flash of pain that passed over her face at the reminder. Shit, insensitive much, Angel? “Sorry, I mean he has less reason to change his codes with you dead than if you’d simply defected.”

She straightened her shoulders and nodded. “No, you’re right. And he’s not really a super technical guy. Don’t get me wrong, he’s smart and savvy, but I don’t think it would occur to him to change his apartment codes. After all, I was supposedly killed less than a week after I ran away from Saberton.”

“We’ll keep our fingers crossed,” Philip said then rubbed the back of his neck. “We need rest before we tackle the apartment. I say we get cleaned up, do whatever preliminary work needs doing, then crash until one.”

No one argued. Philip headed to the shower while I quickly claimed the bigger bedroom and flopped face down on the king size bed. See, I was being nice by letting Naomi and Kyle have the slightly smaller bed so that they could cuddle more. Yeah, that was totally it.

I only meant to close my eyes for a few minutes while waiting for Philip to clear out of the shower, but when I opened them again, the clock on the nightstand said 12:07 p.m. Philip lay on his back on the other side of the bed, eyes closed and face relaxed in sleep. I’d never really seen him like this, with the deep lines of pain around his eyes and on his forehead softer, less prominent.

Low voices from the other room told me the others were awake and moving. I eased off the bed, quietly gathered my things, then crept to the bathroom to shower and dress.

“If we’re leaving the car here, does that mean we’re taking taxis everywhere?” I asked as we rode the elevator down to the lobby. We were all rested, clean, well fed on room service and brains, and ready to take on the world. Or at least one small part of the world. Either way, everyone looked a lot perkier now.

Naomi tugged the strap of her messenger bag over her shoulder. “We’ll use some taxis, sure, but it’s a lot faster in most cases to take the subway.”

My mind instantly went right back to my TV-informed knowledge of subways. “Is that safe? ”

She turned an exasperated look on me. “Really?”

Oh. Yeah. Brain eating monsters. We were probably okay. Still, I stuck close after we exited the hotel. Naomi headed down the street in a long, confident stride that the others matched easily but had me practically jogging.

“Hey, I’m working with short legs over here,” I panted after half a block. “I’m going to need more brains at this rate.”

Naomi glanced back, amusement twinkling in her eyes, but she obligingly slowed her pace. “We’re almost at the station anyway.” The amusement increased. “You’re going to love this.”

I didn’t love it. Not one bit. It didn’t matter that I was in a group of mercenaries and zombies, including a couple of zombie mercenaries. The subway scared the shit out of me.

First off, it involved going underground. We didn’t do “underground” in south Louisiana, not with the water table so high. And this shit was way underground. Down several flights of steps through tiled corridors lit with bad fluorescent lighting, finally emerging onto a loud and dirty platform between two sets of tracks where it looked as if a single misstep could send somebody falling onto the rails to be squished by a train—which I knew for a fact really did happen every now and then.

Plus, somewhere down there was a third rail which I’d always heard could kill you with a single touch, or maybe even if you got close enough to it or looked at it sideways. It boggled me that the tracks weren’t absolutely littered with dead bodies and skeletons and other gruesome shit.

And even on the relatively safe platform, there were so many people waiting to cram onto the train! Holy fucking shit, but I didn’t think there were this many people in all of Tucker Point.

On the other hand, I had a feeling no one would notice if I was rotting and bits were falling off. Or maybe they’d notice but wouldn’t say anything. New Yorkers seemed to be really good about making a personal bubble of “I don’t care and don’t fuck with me” around themselves. I guess you had to when you lived in a city with so many people.

The train finally roared up with squealing and screeching and a blast of wind before it. I kept a death grip on the back of Phillip’s jacket as we boarded—which surprised me that we were even doing so since the car already looked packed to the gills. No way could I reach one of the overhead bars above the seats, so I wedged myself between Philip and Naomi, clung to a pole and the jacket and honestly didn’t give a fuck that I probably looked as freaked out as a kitten during his first bath.

I couldn’t see many of the other passengers from my position, but nothing blocked my sharper-than-human sense of smell. Ugh. The odors of cheap perfume, aftershave, old pee, new pee, vomit, and a variety of unwashed body parts merged in a sickening cloud. There were plenty of clean smells as well, but the bad stuff kicked their asses and dominated. I tried breathing through my mouth but that simply allowed me to taste the stench, and I quickly gave that up.

After about three stops the train cleared out a bit, and I didn’t feel quite as “crushed by humanity,” though the smell hung around like humanity’s ghost. Still, I kept hold of Philip’s jacket until we were back on a platform, all the while terrified that I’d lose my grip and miss getting off the train with the others and end up lost in the city forever. Y’know, completely normal and rational fears.