Diana Rowland - Even White Trash Zombies Get the Blues

Wow. Apparently a lot had happened while I was gone.

I staggered up over the low wall, hoping that none of the firemen or police were looking toward the river. “Marcus,” I croaked, but there was too much noise. Scowling, I pitched the fist-sized rock still in my hand at Pietro. It missed by several feet, but it did hit his windshield, making a marvelous spiderweb of cracks. All three men turned in unison.

“Hi, boys,” I rasped. “Miss me?”

Marcus ran to me, scooped me up in his arms before I could do more than twitch, then hurried back to the car as Pietro pulled the back door open.

“God almighty, Angel,” Marcus said, sliding in with me and then clutching me close. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“Here,” Ed said, thrusting a blanket at Marcus. “Wrap her in this.”

I lifted my head to look at Pietro as Marcus tugged the blanket around me. His eyes met mine and his face crumpled.

“Angel, I swear I didn’t know that this…” Pietro gestured vaguely in the direction of the factory. “Any of this…I had no idea. I swear.”

I opened my mouth to tell him he was full of shit, to tell him I knew he’d thrown me under the bus, but all that came out was, “Braaiinns.”

Yeah, I was kinda hungry.

Pietro handed me a brain smoothie and then we got the hell out of there. A roadblock had been set up, but Pietro showed the deputy something in his wallet, and was waved on through without any further questions.

I finished the first smoothie and was still in pretty lousy shape, but the other two zombies had apparently planned for the possibility of a high need for brains and had a cooler packed full of smoothies and baggies. The hunger started to fade by the time I finished the third smoothie, but it took me downing two baggies of straight-up brains before I felt even close to “okay.” Damn good thing that Pietro owned some funeral homes.

“We need to talk,” I finally said, relieved that my voice was normal again. “Especially, you, Pietro.” I glared at the back of his head while he drove. “But first we need to go to NuQuesCor.”

“No problem, Angel,” Marcus said. He still had an arm around me which I didn’t mind one bit. “What’s at the lab?”

“Heads,” I said. Ed stiffened and flushed. “I don’t know how many—if any—are still there, but I want to get them back.”

Marcus exhaled and didn’t argue. Not that I expected him to. “It’ll take about fifteen minutes to get there.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Pietro said, pulling out his cell phone.

I narrowed my eyes. “What do you mean? If any of the heads are there, I want them back.”

“And you’ll get them,” he replied, dialing a number. “But you’re looking to break in and take them back by whatever means necessary, right?”

I scowled. “Pretty much. I’m a little tired of playing nice.”

He put the phone to his ear. “Dominica five-oh-four.” A pause. “NuQuesCor in Colomb, Louisiana. Retrieval of any human heads matching the victims of the decapitation murders that occurred in St. Edwards Parish in the last four months. Most likely from the labs of Dr. Sofia Baldwin or Dr. Kristi Charish.” Another pause. “One hour.” He clicked off and set the phone down. “Do you mind if we try it my way first?” he asked me.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” I muttered, leveling a black glare at the back of his head.

“Fair enough,” he replied. “Why don’t we allow Angel to get cleaned up, and then we can say everything that needs to be said over coffee.”

When Pietro said he wanted to give me a chance to clean up I figured we’d stop at a convenience store where I could wash the worst of the grime off in the bathroom and then buy a vastly oversized shirt that I could wear as a dress until I could get home. It’s what I’d have done.

That, however, was not how Pietro Ivanov handled such situations. No, instead he rented a room at the only Hilton in St. Edwards parish, handed me the key card, and informed me that if I wanted a shower I should go on up, and that he would obtain clothing for me.

I stared at him for a few seconds, then silently took the card, went on up to the room, and took the hottest shower of my entire life.

He must have made another one of those mysterious phone calls while I was scrubbing blood and river grime off me, because, laid out on the bed when I emerged was a selection of clothing, various toiletries, and even an assortment of makeup—in my damn color palette even. And, finally, a note on the bed that said that the others were down in the hotel café and to please join them when I was ready. I was tempted to take my damn sweet time, but I knew that this whole mess was far from over, and everyone needed to know what was going on.

In the end it took the four of us talking it out to piece together just how the hell everything had gone down.

First, I found out how Ed came to be there with Marcus and Pietro. It was simple, really. After Ed got my dad to his little safe house in the woods, he went straight to Pietro and said, “You fucking owe me.” And, yes, he used those exact words. To his credit, Pietro did agree that yes, he did fucking owe Ed.

I held back on saying the same damn thing to Pietro. I could tell by the way he looked and acted around me that he was fully aware of that fact. It simply remained to be seen how much he’d truly known about, and what he intended to do about it. And what I intended to do about it, for that matter.

I told them what had happened to me, how I’d been forced to turn Philip into a zombie and how the sweet-faced Aaron had died. Told them how Ed’s plan had paid off, and how I’d escaped. Also told them what I’d seen—Philip rotting far faster than he should have, and the two guards who’d appeared to be turned by just a couple of bites. And, finally, told them that Kristi and her pet pseudo-zombies had escaped and were now dust in the wind.

No one looked happy about any of that.

As for the rest, Pietro explained that Dr. Charish had been good friends with the Quinns as well as being Dr. Quinn’s partner in their neurology practice. After the pair had died, Kristi Charish had taken possession of all of Dr. Quinn’s notes and research, some of which dealt with theories of how a “zombie” parasite could operate. Curious as to why on earth Dr. Quinn would have been pursuing such a subject, she broke into the Quinn’s residence before their possessions could be packed up, and stole or copied as many notes and papers as she could find. Among the stolen papers was a notebook of rambling entries written by Ed’s dad, and under any other circumstance, Dr. Charish would have likely dismissed it as a rather amateurish attempt at writing fiction. But paired with everything else she found, as well as the circumstances of their death…

Pietro gave a heavy sigh. “Kristi is not a stupid woman. She initiated a romance with me, and eventually ‘discovered’ that the zombies were real.”

“Which she’d suspected the whole time,” Marcus said, frowning. “That was merely a way for her to confirm and get the inside scoop.”

“Precisely,” Pietro said, mouth turned down in a grave curve. “And even when the romance fizzled, she made sure to remain close to me. We were friends, or so I foolishly believed.”

“Why didn’t you have Dr. Charish do the fake brain research?” I asked him. “Why Sofia?”

A sardonic smile touched his mouth. “I did. But none of Kristi’s attempts worked, and I eventually banned any further experimentation on any of the zombies within our faction.”

“And this was before I came along,” I said, super sweetly, “so you didn’t have a convenient zombie you wanted to get rid of to throw her way.”