Diana Rowland - Even White Trash Zombies Get the Blues

I didn’t have much time to wonder about it before Derrel returned from his info-gathering expedition with the security chief guy. As if on cue, the crime scene tech stepped back from the body and gave a slight wave to let Derrel and me know he was ready for us to get on with our part of this whole thing. No one else was allowed to touch the body except for coroner’s office people, yet we had to wait until the crime scene folks finished doing all the stuff they did, which meant there was usually a little dance of cooperation when it came to working death scenes.

Derrel and I stepped forward now and carefully rolled the man over so that Sean could snap pictures of the other side of the body as well as the floor beneath him. The dead man’s grey uniform shirt had been unbuttoned in the front and sticky pads dotted his torso, left over from the EMTs—the only exception to who was allowed to touch the body, since technically it wasn’t a “body” until it was declared dead after the EMTs ran an EKG strip. They’d already come and gone, which was often the case on death scenes. Even unbuttoned the shirt looked overly large on him, and the pants were bunched up beneath his belt. He must have lost a lot of weight recently. Maybe he’d been sick? Not that it mattered now.

“Definitely some serious skull fractures,” Derrel said as he ran his gloved fingers over the man’s head. Pieces moved underneath the scalp in unnatural ways as he carefully probed the injuries. He glanced up at the stairs, a slight frown tugging at his mouth. “He must have tripped? Somehow he came flying down and smacked his head hard. I’m not seeing any blood anywhere else on the stairs.” He glanced up at the tech for confirmation.

“I didn’t either,” Sean said, “but I took lots of pictures anyway. One of the lab employees who was working late here walked through the room just as the guy hit the bottom. He called nine one one immediately, but…” He shrugged.

“But this guy was probably dead within seconds,” Derrel murmured.

Sean took one last shot of the man’s head and then stepped back. “And that’s the last of it for me. Thanks, y’all.”

Derrel gave me the nod, and I went ahead and spread the body bag out on the concrete. The man looked like he probably weighed around one-seventy or so—more than easy enough for me to handle when I was “well fed,” but it had been about a day and a half since I last had brains, and my strength was about what one would expect from someone my size. In other words, total weakling.

Fortunately, Derrel was willing to help without me having to ask. He grabbed the dude under the shoulders, I grabbed him under his knees, and together we got him into the bag with a minimum of fuss. A smear of blood lingered on the tile, and I saw that it had seeped into the grout, making a stain. That’d be a bitch to get out.

Derrel tilted his clipboard toward me so that I could jot the dead guy’s info onto the toe tag—Norman Kearny, age sixty-three—and then I snapped the rubber band around the big toe of the foot that was already shoeless. I did a quick search of his body for valuables, finding only a watch; no wallet or jewelry. After removing the watch and dropping it into a property bag, I retrieved the wayward shoe from under the stairs and stuck that in the body bag as well. It was probably stupid, but I had a feeling that if the shoes were separated they’d never get paired up again, and they’d be doomed to wander the world alone forever.

I started to zip the bag closed and paused. I was fairly brain-hungry right now. I wasn’t ravenous or anything, and I hadn’t reached the point where I was starting to smell or skin was peeling off, but my nose for brains always got better the hungrier I was. And with this guy having a fractured skull, I should’ve been able to smell his brains quite clearly. Hell, my stomach should have been yelling at me to pry the broken pieces of skull apart to fish a handful out and cram it into my mouth right this instant.

But as far as my nose was concerned, there was nothing of interest within the man’s head. Which is probably a good thing , I decided, since treating the guy’s head like a popcorn bowl probably wouldn’t go over well.

Hiding a smile at the thought, I finished zipping the bag closed, then got it onto the stretcher and belted into place. I felt someone come up beside me, but I didn’t need to turn to see who it was.

“You hungry?” Deputy Ivanov murmured.

“Fucking starving,” I replied just as quietly. “It’s been slow at the morgue, so I’m trying to go longer between meals.” My lips twitched. “And somehow last night I burned off a whole lot of brains.” I gave him a sly, knowing look, but frowned as sudden worry struck me. “Why? Do I smell?”

He started to shake his head, then shrugged. “Nothing anyone would notice. I ate this morning, so my senses are probably being overachievers.”

I gave him a light elbow in the ribs. “You don’t have to lie. A good zombie boyfriend tells his zombie girlfriend if she’s starting to rot. Just like you’d better tell me if I have spinach in my teeth.”

He grinned. “Or if your skin starts peeling off?”

“Exactly! That’d be as bad as having my skirt caught up in my underwear!”

He leaned close. “I made a new batch of pudding this morning.”

I gave him a sidelong look. The pudding in question was nicknamed “foreplay”—and was heavily spiked with pureed brains. “Are you hoping I’m hungry or horny?”

“I know you’re both,” he said with a wink.

“So, who was the blond chick you were hugging?” I asked. I think I even managed to do so without sounding jealous. Well, not too jealous.

Amusement lit his eyes. “That was Dr. Sofia Baldwin. I’ve known her since high school.”

“Uh huh,” I said, giving him a mild stink eye. “And did you ever date her?”

He grinned. “Yes, and before you get too green-eyed, she dumped me.”

I gave a sniff. “Well, either she’s an idiot, or I have yet to discover your horrifying flaws.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Or both.”

“Hmmf. We’ll just have to see. Now get out of my way, I have a corpse.”

He stepped aside. “I’ll call later.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll just see if I answer.”

His low chuckle followed me as I pushed the stretcher down the hallway.

The security guard pulled the lobby door open for me and gave me a slight dip of his chin in greeting as I passed him. I gave him an appropriately sober nod in return. The scent of his brains swirled briefly around me, accompanied by a jab of hunger that reminded me I needed to eat soon unless I wanted to start falling apart.

I continued on outside, shoved the stretcher into the back of the van, and then climbed into the driver’s seat. Screw this whole rationing crap. Especially if there was any chance I was starting to smell. That was one thing I was super paranoid about. The bottle of brain-chocolate smoothie in my lunchbox was only partially thawed, but I went ahead and downed what I could. By the third gulp the hunger faded away to be replaced by a lovely feeling of warm energy.

It wasn’t until after I’d put the half-full bottle back into my lunch box and started the van that it occurred to me:

If I’d been able to smell the live guard’s brains, why hadn’t I been able to smell the dead one’s?

The question continued to tumble through my head as I headed to the morgue. My cell phone rang, interrupting my train of thought, but I didn’t even need to look at the caller ID to know who it was.

“I almost didn’t answer,” I said with a smile.

I heard Marcus laugh. “You know you can’t resist my charms.”