My Life as a White Trash Zombie (7 page)

“I can’t.” I tugged free of his grasp. “Sorry. I gotta go. I have work tomorrow. Y’know? That job I won’t last at?”

“Are you actually pissed at me about that?” he asked, a frown forming between his eyes.

“No! I’m not,” I insisted. “I just need to get home. I can’t screw this up.”

“Sure. Whatever,” he muttered. He didn’t reach for my hand again and shifted his attention to the TV. For a brief instant I wanted to go ahead and pick a fight, simply to see if that would snap everything back into focus. Get him and me all riled up and see if that could somehow get him to act like he gave a shit if I was around. We’d yell and scream, then we’d make up and get high and fuck.

And I’d oversleep and lose my job,
I thought. I knew myself too well.
But it’s only a job, right? Whoever wrote that letter can’t have been serious about the whole go-to-jail thing. . . .

I shook my head, scowling. God, I was weak. How could I even be considering risking it?

Yeah, well, I needed to give a shit about going back to j ail.

“I’ll, um, see you later, babe. Okay?” I said.

He grunted something that might have been a yes. I left to the sound of him changing channels.

The ringing of my phone jerked me out of a nightmare—
rotting flesh and crawling maggots, reaching hands and flesh dripping off bones.
I struggled to shake off the lingering horror as I groped for my cell phone, almost grateful to be woken up even though it had to be obscenely early, since I could see through my crooked blinds that it was still dark outside.

I finally found the answer button. “Yeah?” I croaked.

“Good morning!” my partner, Derrel, said in an insanely cheerful voice. “I need my Angel to come out and play.”

The display on my nightstand clock showed 5:10. Ugh. Being on call sucked the big one. My usual shift didn’t start until eight A.M., but twice a week I was on call, which meant that if anyone died in the middle of the night, my ass got to go pick them up and bring them back to the morgue. On the other hand, it also meant that I took the van home after my regular shift was over on those nights, which saved me a few bucks in gas money.

Still, waking up this early was just wrong. “Why can’t people be reasonable and only die after eleven A.M.?” I whined.

“You’re cute when you’re cranky. I’m texting you the address. See you there!”

I’d been on the job two weeks, and I still hadn’t thrown up. I had no idea where my iron stomach had suddenly come from—because I sure as hell never had one before—but considering some of the gross stuff I’d seen and smelled, I wasn’t about to complain. One of the bodies we’d brought in the day before had been a decomp—the decomposing body of an old man who’d died in his trailer about a week and a half earlier. I seriously thought I was going to pass out from the smell, and I damn near ran screaming when I saw there were maggots crawling in his mouth and nose. The only reason I didn’t was because Nick the Prick was also there, and I knew he’d tell everyone I’d wimped out. And, once again, I wasn’t going to go to jail because of his smarmy little ass.

I’d been partnered with an investigator named Derrel Cusimano—a big, bald, black dude who’d been a linebacker at LSU a decade ago and looked like he was still perfectly capable of stopping the rush. He’d been a death investigator with the Coroner’s Office for about five years and was as friendly and nice as Nick wasn’t. He didn’t seem to give a rat fuck that I hadn’t finished high school or that I was on probation or that I was twenty-one years old and didn’t have a clue what to do with my life. He simply did his job and cracked inappropriate jokes when the general public wasn’t around and teased me about my bleached-blonde hair. Somehow when he gave me crap about being redneck trailer trash it was funny instead of mean, perhaps because he gave everyone equal amounts of crap. Plus, he consistently referred to Nick as an “over-privileged cocky asstard” which pretty much made him my hero, despite the fact that he was disgustingly cheerful at five in the morning.

I put my phone back on the nightstand, then ran my fingers through the tangled mess of my hair. The desire to lie back down was damn near overpowering, but I knew if I did I’d be asleep within seconds. And fired within hours. I’d been warned several times that “failure to respond in a timely manner to a call-out” was grounds for immediate termination.

“Only two more weeks to go,” I muttered with a scowl as I forced myself to get up from the bed. Then again, so far this job sure beat the hell out of working as a clerk at a convenience store. Though the convenience stores had fewer maggots. Usually.

The faint stench of rot wafted by me as I shambled down the hall to the bathroom. Great. Another rat died in the wall. The house I shared with my dad was . . . well, “piece of shit” was a pretty accurate description. Single-story with a tin roof and rotting front steps. Half the windows were cracked and had been repaired with duct tape, and the other half were so dirty you could barely see anything through them. I kept telling myself that one of these days I’d bust my butt and at least get the kitchen and bathrooms properly cleaned but somehow never quite found the motivation to do so. I kept things wiped down enough so that it wasn’t completely toxic, but there was no way I’d ever be comfortable having anyone over.

I did my business in the bathroom, squinting in the mirror after I washed my hands and face. The light above the sink was on but my reflection looked washed out and grey. Not too surprising considering the obscenely early hour, but the flowered wallpaper looked faded as well. To add to the joy, my toothpaste’s usual minty freshness wasn’t terribly minty, and I even double-checked to make sure I wasn’t trying to brush my teeth with something nasty like anti-itch cream.

Maybe I was coming down with something
.
I’d felt like this after leaving Randy’s last week—so faded and low-energy that after I made it home I’d cheated and downed one of the energy drinks, even though I was only supposed to drink them every other day. But I hadn’t overdosed, and in fact had felt fine the next morning.
Or maybe I’m simply allergic to being awake at five A.M.
That was more likely.

I swiped some deodorant into my pits, then wrinkled my nose. The stench was in here as well. I couldn’t seem to smell anything else, but I could sure as hell smell whatever it was that had died. I sniffed around in an attempt to trace the source of it, then on an absurd whim took a deep whiff of the back of my hand.

Oh, gross.
It was me! I’d showered before going to bed, but apparently the funk from yesterday’s decomp had clung to me more than I’d realized. Derrel wouldn’t be pleased if I took too long to get out to the scene, but I figured he also wouldn’t be thrilled if I smelled like roadkill.

I took a quick shower and toweled off, then sniffed my arm again. It wasn’t nearly as bad, yet there was still a lingering aroma of
something dead
that clung to me. No time for another shower, though. I spritzed on a flowery body mist, but I might as well have been spraying water on my bod for all that I could smell it. I scowled and resisted the urge to give myself a second spritzing. If my sense of smell was off, I’d be running the risk of knocking Derrel over with the lovely combo of
something dead
plus
way too many flowers
.

My stomach rumbled as I returned to my bedroom to pull on cargo pants and a Coroner’s Office shirt. I yanked open the door of the little fridge to pull out a bottle of the coffee-drink stuff before remembering that I’d downed the last one two days ago. Or was it three?
Damn.
That bump of feel-terrific energy would’ve been pretty nice right now. Closing the fridge, I got down on my hands and knees and reached up under my bed, feeling for the pill bottle wedged between the springs. I pulled it out, pried the top off, snagged out two white, oblong pills. The rest went back into the bottle and the bottle to its hiding place. Coffee-drinks weren’t the only things that could give me a boost. I pulled a beer out of the fridge, washed the pills down, and stuck the open beer back in the fridge. It’d be flat when I got home, but it was better than wasting it.

Holding my shoes in my hand, I walked as silently as I could to the front door.

“Where the fuck you sneakin’ off to at this hour?”

Shit. I turned to see my dad sitting in the stained recliner, an open beer in his hand. More empties were piled haphazardly beside the chair. He was probably at the bar last night, got kicked out when they closed at four A.M., then kept going when he got home.

“I’m not sneaking out,” I replied. “I got called out to work, and I was trying to keep from waking you up.”

His mouth curled down into a scowl. He was only in his late forties, but a couple of decades of booze combined with a ten-year-old back injury from his time on an offshore oil rig, had him looking a lot older. A scraggly beard tried to cover his sagging jowls, and his light brown eyes seemed perpetually glazed. He had on the same battered jeans he’d been wearing the day before, wedged above his bony hips and under his slight pot belly. No shirt. Just pale, flabby chest and spindly arms.

“Between your phone and the shower, no way to sleep around here.”

“Yeah, well, sorry.” I dropped my shoes on the floor and shoved my feet into them. “Next time I won’t even bother trying to be quiet since I obviously suck at it.” What the hell did he need to be rested and alert for anyway?

“That sicko job of yours paid you yet?” He peered at me as he lit a cigarette. “Or you already spent it on pills?”

Crouching, I yanked my laces tight. “I haven’t been paid yet,” I lied. “Maybe later this week.” I really didn’t want to get into it with him right now. He expected me to give him half of any money I made to cover my “rent” and expenses, which was a load of bull because this stupid old house had been paid for over a decade ago, since it had actually belonged to his parents, and he got it when they died. Plus, he got his disability check every month—also a load of bull—which covered utilities and food and stuff like that. He only wanted my money so he could go get drunk.

It was beside the point that I usually spent my money on getting drunk—or high. It was my damn money, so it should be my damn buzz. Right?

“So, how much do necro-freaks like you get paid?” He asked, still watching me intently.

“Dunno, Dad,” I replied, keeping my attention on the laces of my sneakers. “It’s a special program . . . part of my probation.” More lies. Yesterday I’d been handed a check for my first week’s pay, and I’d about died when I saw the amount. More than double anything I’d ever made anywhere else. I had no intention of ever letting him know what I was making.

“Sounds fucked up to me,” he said. He took a long pull on the beer and chased it with a drag on his cigarette. Ash dribbled onto his hollowed chest, but he made no move to brush it away. “Why the fuck didja sign on for this? Why can’t you keep a real fuckin’ job? Or is that the only place that’d take a pillhead?” He scowled. “Only a freak would wanna touch dead bodies.”

“Well I guess your daughter’s a freak,” I shot back as I stood up. “What does that make you, huh?” It wasn’t the first time he’d called me names. “Freak” was pretty tame by his standards.

I stalked away from him and yanked open the pantry in the kitchen, muttering a curse as a couple of empty pickle jars tumbled out and rolled across the kitchen floor. One of Mom’s “things” had been saving and washing out jars in case she ever wanted to make jelly or pickled who-the-hell-knew-what. I’d never seen her do anything of the sort, which meant we had a couple hundred empty jars stuffed under every cabinet in the damn house. One of these days I was going to actually get around to throwing them all out. Probably about the same time that I cleaned the rest of the kitchen. Yeah, any day now.

I’d eaten pizza last night, but my stomach was acting as if I hadn’t eaten in days. There wasn’t much food in the house, but I managed to find a packet of Pop-Tarts that didn’t look too old. That would have to hold me until I finished at the scene. I was already running late.

My dad muttered something obnoxious under his breath as I headed to the door but I managed to make it out of the house without getting sucked into any more father-daughter bonding. I started to climb into the van, then paused at the sight of an envelope stuck under the windshield wiper. Frowning, I snagged it from beneath the wiper. It was a simple plain white envelope, sealed shut, with nothing written on the outside. I hesitated a few seconds as an unpleasant sense of foreboding shimmered through me, then I ripped it open and unfolded the piece of paper within.

What the fuck?
My entire body went cold and my hand shook as I stared down at the note. I had absolutely no doubt that it was from the same person who’d sent me the letter in the hospital. This person obviously knew me and knew where I lived, but it wasn’t the stalker aspect of it that had me freaked out right now.

It was that they had to know what I’d been craving.

I crumpled the note into a tight ball and shoved it deep into a pocket. My heart pounded in a combination of terror and anxiety as I started the van and headed out. No, that was insane. How the hell could anyone know that I’d been fighting the urge to chow down on . . . brains?

Yet what else could the letter possibly be referring to? Usually if I craved something, I ate it. Simple. I didn’t need anyone else to tell me it was okay and that I should go for it.

But I’d been craving
brains
. The smell was like chocolate and cookies and biscuits and gravy and everything else that was delicious. It damn near drove me crazy every time I had to touch one. I’d been fighting the cravings the way I’d never fought the urge to take drugs or get drunk.