How the White Trash Zombie Got Her Groove Back (2 page)

Heat crawled up my face at his tone and the unspoken
No fucking way will you make it through a real school. This is as far as you'll ever go in life.

“Actually, I'm going to register for a couple of classes at Tucker Point Community College next term,” I shot back before my brain could engage itself. Crap. I'd toyed with the idea and even made it as far as checking out the college website, but I'd been too . . . well, okay, I'd been too chicken to do anything more. I'd passed the GED by the skin of my teeth—by one damn point, to be exact—and only managed that because I was allowed extra time because of my dyslexia. How the hell could I make it through
college?

Yet I'd gone and said it, which meant that now I was stuck. No way would I give Allen the satisfaction of being right about me, and no way would I disappoint Dr. Leblanc, not with that proud smile on his face.

“Sounds good, Angel,” Allen commented without so much as a glance my way. He made another note on his clipboard, gave Dr. Leblanc a slight nod, and then departed without another word.

The pathologist removed the woman's heart, weighed it, and set it on his cutting board. “I suppose I don't need to suggest that you get in there and show everyone what you're made of?”

I snorted, forced the fierce smile Dr. Leblanc expected from me. “Nah. Got that covered.”

Shit. Looked like I was going to college.

“Now isn't that interesting,” Dr. Leblanc murmured, frowning down at the sectioned heart.

I peered over at the abnormally thickened wall of her left ventricle. “Ventricular hypertrophy?” We saw it all the time in cases of heart disease and high blood pressure, but hardly ever in someone this young. And certainly not where there was barely any space in the ventricle at all.

“I think we can be more specific,” he said. “Cardiomegaly, young, signs of pulmonary edema, asymmetric septal and ventricular hypertrophy.” He ran the probe over the septum in the cross section. “See?”

Not only did I see, but I actually understood everything he'd said. Hot damn! Of course it helped that I was almost positive we'd seen this once before in an autopsy—

Oh, shit.
We
had
seen this before, and now I knew why the woman looked familiar. She'd been one of the extras—a zombie cheerleader—for a movie that had been filmed in the area this past summer:
High School Zombie Apocalypse!!
Another female extra, Brenda Barnes, had died from the very same condition.

“We had a case like this a few months ago,” I said around the sudden chill that gripped my throat.

“Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy,” he said, expression turning grave. “Two cases in a short span of time, and this one just as perplexing as the first.”

An echocardiogram from a few months prior to Brenda Barnes's death had shown no sign of the heart condition, yet she'd died of it all the same. After quite a bit of frustrated puzzling, Dr. Leblanc had finally decided that either there'd been a mixup in medical records or a mistake was made in the echo.

Unfortunately, I had another theory. Several months ago Saberton Corporation was busy performing pseudo-zombie experimentation. They needed a large group of test subjects, and the movie extras fit the bill perfectly. Makeup hid side effects of rot, and behavioral issues were chalked up to acting like, well, zombies. And, of course, none of the extras knew they were part of an unethical, horrible, and utterly evil experiment to test fake brains and who knew what else.

But maybe Sarah Lynn was different and already had the heart condition? The thought that more people would die months down the road because of Saberton's bullshit made my stomach turn. “Anything in her records about it?” I asked, clinging to the slim hope.

“Nothing about any sort of heart condition in any of her records,” he said, dashing my hopes to the ground and stepping on them. “And she has a
lot
of medical records. Lymphoma . . . and two months ago she went into remission.” He let out a sigh.

“She traded cancer for a fatal heart problem?” I didn't like the direction of my thoughts, but I couldn't share them with Dr. Leblanc.

“It does appear to be a supremely tragic twist of fate,” he said. “It's possible some aspect of her treatment contributed to the heart condition. But I'll check everything out thoroughly, especially with the similarity to the previous case.”

And what if he discovers that both were extras in the movie?
The thought unsettled me deeply. Would he report the link to authorities? Would they in turn dig up Saberton and its zombie research? As much as I hated the idea of the Saberton assholes getting away with murder, the last thing the zombie community needed was prying from outsiders.

He picked up a scalpel and carefully sectioned the heart while I busied myself with sewing up the incision. As much as I liked Dr. Leblanc, all I wanted right now was to get away so I could process this crap.

After we finished, I returned Sarah Lynn to her body bag and placed the clear plastic bag of organs between her legs. Under normal conditions I'd wait until I was alone in the morgue, then go into the cooler and collect that brain for my own dining pleasure. But not this one. It would stay right there in the bag with the liver and kidneys and other organs. I wasn't about to risk screwing up my zombie parasite by eating a Saberton-contaminated brain. It might as well have been a lump of sawdust for all the appeal it had now.

I tucked the body away in the cooler, cleaned up the morgue and readied everything for the next day's autopsies. With that done, I grabbed my phone from my purse then headed outside and to the other side of the back parking lot. Dr. Ariston Nikas ran the zombie research lab where I worked part-time, twice a week. If anyone had answers about autopsies and zombie research, it would be him, but I wasn't about to risk that someone might overhear.

Dr. Nikas answered on the second ring. “Hello, Angel,” he said, a smile in his pleasantly accented voice. “I was about to call you.”

“Oh? What do you need?”

“No, you go ahead first,” he said. “It must be important if you are calling.”

I checked around me, then lowered my voice. “You remember the movie extra who died from the Saberton experiments a few months back? We just had another case. Sarah Lynn Harper. She was an extra too. Twenty something with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy that wasn't there two months ago.”

“Oh, dear.”

With those two words my hopes for a non-Saberton explanation sank. “You think the experiments caused it?”

“That would be my first theory,” he replied solemnly “It's unprecedented for that condition to develop in such a short time frame. The common denominator for both victims is Saberton.”

“There were a couple of hundred extras,” I said, stomach knotting with anger and dread. Most of the extras had been unemployed, laid off from a factory Saberton bought and closed. The company had promised to rehire everyone once Saberton got some big juicy defense contract, but that had yet to happen. “
All
of those people could die or get screwed up? We have to do something!”

“Philip smuggled enough of the Saberton research data to me that I may be able to develop a counter agent,” he said, referring to Philip Reinhardt, a Saberton employee I'd been forced to turn into a zombie when I was a prisoner in Dr. Kristi Charish's secret lab. Philip turned out to be an undercover operative working for Pietro Ivanov—the head of the local “Tribe” of zombies—and it was because of heroic efforts on Philip's part that Dr. Nikas was able to stay a step ahead of most of Saberton's bullshit.

Dr. Nikas released a sigh heavily tinged with regret. “I'd truly hoped the death of Brenda Barnes had been an isolated incident.”

“I'm with you there.” I began to pace in the parking lot to vent some of my anger and frustration. “But there's something else. Sarah had lymphoma that went into remission after the filming, and when we autopsied her, it was like she never had it. The same shit that killed her, cured her.”

Dr. Nikas fell silent for a moment before answering. “That would be my conjecture. It apparently mimicked the zombie parasite's healing ability, which is . . . remarkable.”

“It'd be cool if it didn't come with the whole dying thing,” I kicked savagely at a pine cone in my way. “Saberton hasn't stopped, have they? They're still experimenting.”

“They have too much invested to stop,” he stated. “They aren't operating in south Louisiana anymore, but I have no doubt they're forging ahead with some form of zombie research. Without Philip undercover with them anymore, my information is sketchy.”

A number of curse words leapt to mind, but I held them back for Dr. Nikas's sake. “So, what were you going to call me about?”

“I have a new protocol ready for Philip that I'd like to start as soon as possible, balancing his parasite with yours. Would you be able to come in at two this afternoon?”

I stopped pacing and tried to think if there was anything I needed to do after work. The drive to Dr. Nikas's lab took about half an hour and burned up gas I could barely afford, but I was willing to do it if it would help out my zombie-baby, Philip. Dr. Charish's stupid fake brains had badly screwed up Philip's zombie parasite, and without Dr. Nikas's work to repair the damage and stabilize him, Philip would've been dead ten times over. In fact, about once a week I volunteered blood and time so that Dr. Nikas could use the zombie mama-baby connection to develop treatments for him.

My left arm began to itch, as if in response to my thoughts about blood samples. The needles the lab used had a special coating on them to keep the parasite from closing the skin and clogging the needle, and ever since I'd started giving blood frequently, a few months back, I'd had this stupid itch. On the other hand, Philip had improved tremendously in that time, which made it worth putting up with a relatively minor annoyance.

“I can come at two,” I said. “But aren't you going out with Pietro today?”

“It's a late day,” he replied. “We're doing dinner instead of lunch, so no worries.”

“That's good,” I said, relieved to hear the “date” hadn't been cancelled. Dr. Nikas didn't get out much, and the occasional outings with Pietro always seemed to do him good. “I clock out of here at noon, so I'll run home and change after that, and see you a bit before two.”

After we said our goodbyes I returned inside and settled in to work on organizing and labeling the shelves in the supply room. Although this sort of busy work usually distracted me pretty well from various troubles and worries, it sure as hell didn't work this time. By the time Nick walked in a half hour later, I'd labeled every shelf, arranged protective gear by color, and lined up scalpel blades by size.

Nick the Prick. That's what I'd secretly—and sometimes not so secretly—called him for the first several months of my time with the Coroner's Office. At some point this past spring he'd become plain old Nick to me. He still had his pompous, know-it-all moments—lots of them—but he'd also patiently tutored me for my GED without asking for any sort of payment, and had been unexpectedly kick butt helpful and supportive after I lost everything in the flood.

He stood in the doorway now and surveyed my handiwork. “Everything okay?” he asked.

“Sure!” I chirped. “Couldn't be better.”

“Right.” He nodded slowly, lips pursed. “Is that why you labeled that box of gloves ‘Hand Cover Things'?”

Shit. I gave a weak chuckle and ripped the offending label off the box. “I wonder how that happened.”

His mouth tightened into a worried frown. “Maybe your dyslexia has developed into preliminary dementia.”

For a second I thought he was serious, then I rolled my eyes and flicked the wadded-up label at him. “You are such an ass.”

“I think that's been established,” he said with a trace of amusement in his green eyes. “And ass or not, I don't believe you.”

“Yeah, sorry,” I said, sighing. “I have some things on my mind and can't focus worth shit.”

“Think you can focus on walking and carrying?” I gave him a baffled look, and he continued, “Doc is swamped, and I thought he could use a cappuccino. Me too, for that matter. You want to go to Dear John's Café with me to help carry?”

“You mean stop this whirlwind of inaccurate labeling?” I asked even as I dumped the label maker into a drawer. I doubted he really needed help carrying stuff, but rescuing me from my self-inflicted mental misery was the kind of gesture that had lost him his prickhood.

“I'm sure the morgue will survive,” he said, then turned and headed for the door in quick strides. Halfway there he hesitated, as if remembering he should have waited for me, and I smiled to myself and hurried after him. As if to make up for running off without me, he held the door and flashed a genuine smile. He wasn't a big guy, only a few inches taller than my not-quite five foot three, but he carried enough attitude for a guy the size of Andre the Giant. I hadn't seen much of Nick since the GED tutoring finished. He usually worked a different shift, but since my awesome partner Derrel was off on vacation to the Bahamas for the next ten days, Nick was filling in for him.

Even though we'd worked together for close to a year, I didn't know all that much about Nick. Aside from making sure people knew he was a pre-med student, he didn't volunteer much personal information. Every now and then I'd ask about his family or what his childhood was like, and each time he would either suddenly realize he had something else he needed to do, or he'd quickly change the subject.

Maybe the two of us weren't all that different. Not that he'd been a loser addict dropout or anything, but maybe being a pompous prick was his way of putting something in his past behind him and saying, “Fuck y'all. I'm here, and I'm cool no matter what.”

Or maybe I was just making shit up to hear myself think.

Outside, a cool breeze made me wish I'd grabbed my jacket. It wasn't cold enough to bother going back for it, but it left no doubt the Louisiana summer was over. We took a shortcut across the back lot then skirted the St. Edwards Parish Courthouse to put us on Dead End Way, a busy avenue that had long outgrown its name.

“Anything I can help with?” Nick asked after we crossed and started down the side street toward the shop.

It took me a second to realize he was referring to my lack of focus. “Nah,” I said. “Personal stuff. I'll get over it, but thanks anyway.” I couldn't exactly tell him I was worried about the long term effects of unethical zombie research on innocent people.

“You always shake bad shit off in no time, so I bet you'll be doing better before the day's out.” For an instant he looked embarrassed by his own words of encouragement, then he cleared his throat. “Maybe some hot chocolate will perk you up. My treat.”

I gave him a warm smile. For all his Nickitude, I appreciated the decent person and friend under it all. I kind of suspected he liked me, but he seemed to be totally respectful of my relationship with Marcus, and he'd never said or done anything to make me feel uncomfortable.

“Thanks,” I said. “Don't mind me. I'm just moody.” I hesitated, then forged on into scary territory. “I sorta told Doc I was going to sign up for college classes next term.”

His head snapped around. “At TPCC? That's a big step.”

I stuffed my hands in my pockets, his shock confirming my suspicion that it was a big and
stupid
step. “Yeah. I should probably back out and wait until I have more tutoring under my belt with Jennifer.” And that could be a while since the dyslexia specialist cost a fortune. I had to space out my sessions in order to pay for them. Hell, for that matter, how was I supposed to pay for college?

“No!” Nick commanded, bringing my near escape from college to a screeching halt. “You can do it. No point in putting it off. And, uh . . .” He trailed off and seemed to find the sidewalk ahead very interesting.

The guy could be kind of cute when he got flustered. I hid a smile. “And what?”

“Maybe I could help out,” he blurted a little too eagerly, then backpedaled to a more casual, doesn't-matter-to-me tone. “I mean, you know, if you get stuck on something.”

My smile slipped out as this particular worry faded away. “I'd like that,” I said and meant it. “Though I still don't know how I can afford tuition.”

“Financial aid,” he said firmly. “Grants, scholarships, loans. I'll help you with the applications.”

Well, there went my last remaining excuse. “Okay, so do you think I should take Introduction to Life Sciences or Biology one-oh-one?”

“If you want the credits to really mean something, take one-oh-one. Life Sciences won't transfer to a four year school.”

“Wait.” I blinked, then shook my head. “A four-year? I haven't even thought about that.”

Nick shrugged and lifted his chin in his I-know-all-about-this posture. “No point in wasting time,” he declared. “Better to have credits that transfer than not. It's the only smart choice.”

I gulped. One-oh-one was sure to be a lot harder than Life Sciences. “I guess that makes sense,” I said weakly, wishing it didn't.

“Of course it does,” he said as he opened the door to the shop. A delicious mix of smells flooded out—coffee and chocolate and all sorts of baked gooey things. “I'll order. You want anything besides hot chocolate?”

“Since you're buying, I'll have one of those cherry cream cheese pastries,” I replied with a grin. “I love those things.”

“You got it,” he said and joined the line by the counter.

Dear John's Café offered good beverages, pastry, and snacks, along with plentiful booths and decent free Wi-Fi. But its claim to local fame was the paper enshrined on the wall near the register—a Dear John letter that actually started off with “Dear John.” The letter had been written to the owner, John Hickey, ten years ago by his wife when she left him for his brother's ex-wife. According to local legend, after a heavy drinking binge and a night in jail, John realized it was the best thing that had ever happened to him, quit his insurance sales gig, traded in his Lexus for a Toyota, downsized his house, and invested everything in the café. Who the hell knew if any of it was true, but it made a good story, and great coffee and a solid business model made for a booming business.

“Angel,” a woman called from the far end of the shop.

I looked toward the voice and saw Pietro Ivanov and Jane Pennington cozied up in a half-circle booth by the back wall. Jane gave me a warm smile and gestured for me to come over. A pleased tingle ran through me as I waved and returned the smile. It still floored me that anyone as cool as
Congresswoman
Jane Pennington wanted anything to do with little old me. She even called me on occasion when she wanted to poll “ordinary, everyday people” for opinions. I was far from either, but I wasn't about to tell her that.