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

“No, I’m cool,” she said tightly. “I’m fine.”

“Okay, then let’s get inside.”

Naomi pivoted and marched up the steps to the door, jabbed the code into the keypad, then jerked when the light flashed red. I kept my mouth shut as she took a deep breath and re-entered the code more slowly. This time the light turned green, and the door buzzed. Relief stark on her face, she pulled the door open and entered with me right behind her.

She moved to a bank of mailboxes and a table that held what I guessed was mis-delivered mail. Scooping up a stack of envelopes, she proceeded to flip through them, but I saw that she was also checking out the locations of security cameras.

I pretended to text on my phone. “Clear?” I asked, voice low.

“Looks good,” she said, dropping the mail back to the table. “Same old system. Not monitored.” She snorted. “The building manager said that if something happens they can pull the recording, but six months ago he was still using a system that recorded on VHS tapes and used the same tape over and over.”

“Cool. I’ll let the boys in.”

“I’ll go hit the elevator.”

I went to the door, opened it and peered out as if looking for a taxi or anything besides the two men striding down the sidewalk. They came up the steps, and I held the door for them as if I was simply being polite.

“Nice to see you again, ZeeEm,” Philip murmured as he passed.

“Right back atcha, ZeeBee,” I replied quietly.

We headed straight for the elevator. Naomi pushed the button for the top floor, and I resisted the urge to hum dorky elevator music. When the elevator stopped Kyle exited first and checked the hallway carefully before moving to a door at the end that I figured was Andrew’s. He pulled a slim wallet from a pocket of his jacket, then crouched and opened it to reveal a set of lock picking tools. I desperately wanted to watch and see how he did it, but I forced myself to be a mature and responsible spy, and instead leaned against the wall in a way that would keep anyone coming into the hall from seeing what Kyle was doing.

It only took about twenty seconds for him to get the knob lock open, but I was starting to sweat our oh-so-casual lounging in the hall by the time the dead bolt finally turned. When Kyle opened the door and slipped into the apartment I moved to follow, but Philip caught my arm.

“Wait,” he said softly. After a few seconds I heard a series of low beeps. “He’s putting the code in for the alarm and hoping Andrew didn’t change it,” Philip continued, then smiled. “If the code’s wrong, it’s easier for us to skedaddle from out here.”

“Gotcha.” I grinned as I had a sudden absurd image of everyone trying to cram through the door at once.

I heard a low ping , and Philip nodded. “ Now we can go in.”

We entered and closed the door behind us. Philip threw the deadbolt and put the chain on, and when I gave him a funny look he simply shrugged. “Habit. I don’t like worrying about someone coming in when I’m busy searching.”

Couldn’t argue with that. I turned and took stock of the place. The apartment was more than a little cozy, but it didn’t feel at all cramped. To the left was a small and neat kitchen with butcher-block counters, glass-fronted cabinets, and an adorably tiny gas stove. Past it and down a short hall a half-open door revealed a bathroom with a claw-foot tub on blue and white tiles. To the right was a little dining nook, and beyond it the apartment opened out into a modest-sized living room, tastefully furnished with antiques—and not the pretentious kind. The entire far wall contained bookshelves, with a desk built into the middle of it. A stained glass picture of flowers hung in front of a large window to the left, and French doors to the right opened into a bedroom, tidy and decorated in warm colors.

I loved it. It was gorgeous and homey and awesome. And not at all the kind of place I’d expected Andrew to live in.

Naomi stood in the middle of the small living room, eyes forlorn and glistening as she turned slowly around in place. “He got rid of my pictures,” she said, the hurt in her voice palpable.

“Naomi,” I began, then stopped as memory rose in a choking wave of sixteen-year-old me ripping up pictures of my mother as my dad struggled to get them away from me, screaming at me to stop, that I was crazy. I’d been sixteen for a whole twelve hours when the officer came to the house to inform us that my mom had killed herself in prison, slit her wrists and bled out before anyone found her. In my sixteen-year-old eyes it was so obvious that he was trying to save those pictures because he loved her more than me, so obvious that he’d smacked me hard to get me to let go of them because he hated me for wanting to destroy them, hated me for being so angry at her for doing this with less than two years remaining in her sentence. At the time all I’d seen was my dad defending her, siding with her once again. He’d taken the remaining photos and gotten drunk and cried over them because—I was certain—he loved her and wished he’d chosen her over me and didn’t give a shit that she’d gotten one last vicious lick in on me by picking that day of all days to kill herself.

And now, looking at Naomi, it felt as if a layer of dried mud crumbled away from the memory of that hideous day. My father and I didn’t know how to share our grief, and so we’d used it against each other and ourselves, and gouged the wounds even deeper.

My mouth was bone dry, and I had to swallow a few times before I could speak. “Naomi,” I said again, “people deal with grief in different ways.” Had Andrew raged and ripped up the pictures of his sister? Had his mother? I couldn’t guess how Andrew might deal with grief. I knew he was her brother, the Saber heir, and that he either tolerated or supported the zombie experimentation, but I didn’t know anything about him beyond that.

“Yeah.” Her mouth firmed, and I watched her push it down to deal with later. “And I have work to do.”

“Where do you want us to start?” I asked.

“Angel, you and Philip can check the bedroom,” she said, getting her focus back. “Bedside table, bottom dresser drawer, and shoeboxes in the closet are places he usually puts stuff. I’ll go through the desk and bookcases, and Kyle can search the living room and in the kitchen.”

“Got it.” I headed to the bedroom with Philip. Maroon and dark green and dusky blue in this room. Bed cover, curtains, and upholstery coordinated with one another, but didn’t match. Not like one of the “bedroom in a bag” deals from BigShopMart. No dirty underwear in sight, though one sock lay half under the end of the bed.

“Put everything back exactly like it was,” Naomi called after us.

I dropped to my knees in front of the nightstand and began going through the books stacked on top of it. Two thriller novels, a book titled Hungry Flesh with a picture on the cover of a rotting zombie reaching through a window, a field guide to medicinal plants, a manual for lucid dreaming, and a big photo book of Reefs of the World . Interesting, but nothing helpful. The drawer held more potential, and I carefully lifted out a big stack of photos and envelopes and placed it on the bed, while doing my best to remember how everything had been arranged.

Still in the drawer were a bunch of smaller items. A little flashlight, a bottle of ibuprofen and another, almost empty, of anti-anxiety meds. Several pens, a remote control, and a hand gripper exercise thing. Oh, and a bottle of lube and several condom packets. Vaguely interesting, but probably not at all what we needed.

I picked up a large, fat envelope from the stack and opened the clasp, wincing when one of the metal prongs fell off. So much for “exactly like it was.” Since I couldn’t fix it, I dropped the bit of metal into the drawer then slid the contents of the envelope out onto the bed.