White Trash Zombie Gone Wild (16 page)

He'd have told me everything if it was only about him. But he wouldn't do that with others involved.
IF they're involved
, I reminded myself. I didn't know anything for certain yet. But, damn, the circumstantial evidence was piling up like crazy, and my zombie-senses were tingling.

“Okay. Just remember I'm here for you if you ever get in over your head.” I exhaled. “I'll see you later.”

He mumbled a goodbye then turned and walked back to the others, head bowed.

•   •   •

I stopped at the registration table on my way out, unsurprised to find that Randy's team was signed up for the night hunt as well. Didn't make sense to do so many hunts if they weren't actually having fun. But it
did
make sense if they were doing these stupid things as a cover, to act natural and throw off suspicion.

Fine with me. While they were busy hunting fake zombies, this zombie was going to hunt down a few clues.

I had a few hours to kill before diving in to clue-hunting, since I wanted to be certain the boys would be occupied with the evening hunt while I snooped. That way I could count on at least a solid hour and a half to do my thing. Plus, it would be dark, which was always a bonus when doing a little lawbreaking.

I debated heading straight home to wash the makeup off, but my hunger pangs—both normal and brain-related—were kicking up a fuss. Besides, there were plenty of other people around town with zombie makeup on. I'd blend right in.

Not to mention, Nick was due to begin his mystery dinner meeting fairly soon. He could be secretive if he wanted. Dude was entitled to his privacy. Far from me to pry. Not my style. I
never
butted in where I wasn't wanted. Ever. Yup, I was mind-my-own-business girl. It was sheer coincidence that I happened to be on the road to Crawfish Joe's, and that I had a sudden craving for takeout.

Crawfish Joe's Cajun Cabin didn't look like much—a squat, wood frame building with a corrugated metal roof and colorful fish painted on the walls—but it had a reputation for the best seafood in three parishes. Legend had it that Joe's great granddad spent a week naked and alone in the swamp and came out with the secret recipe for the best seasoning ever.

Nick's car was in the parking lot—good thing, since I was so hungry I was going to get food here whether I could spy on him or not. Inside, half a dozen people waited for tables. Several gave me startled glances, which was when I realized I still had the skull fragment plastered to my forehead. Oops. The overworked hostess seemed relieved when I told her I wanted takeout, and waved me toward the bar. Several patrons occupied stools, and at the far end was a dude with green and white grease paint smeared on his face and wearing overalls spattered with fake blood. He glanced my way and gave me a thumbs up which I assumed was for my own far more professional and awesome makeup job. That or he could see my bra through the rip in my shirt.

A low wall and potted trees separated the bar from the restaurant. I grabbed a spot by the wall and peered through the branches to covertly scope out the customers. It didn't take me long to locate Nick. He sat angled away from me, enough that I could barely see the side of his face. But the mystery caller was . . . Bear?!

Yup, no question about it. The burly owner of The Bear's Den sat across from Nick. Bear had the remnants of a seafood platter in front of him and idly scooped fried shrimp through cocktail sauce. Nick's plate held a soft shell crab sandwich, though as far as I could tell he'd only taken a few bites.

The bartender handed me a menu. I ordered a Catfish po-boy and onion rings, then peered between the plants as soon as she left. Nick and Bear were too far away for me to hear their conversation, but it appeared pretty darn one-sided. Bear was doing most of the talking while Nick shrugged a few times and seemed to be focused on the sandwich he wasn't eating. Though I couldn't see much of his face, Nick's body language telegraphed
I'm not having fun, and I'm ready to go
.

Why had Nick agreed to what sure as hell seemed to be a not-very-friendly dinner? Job interview? Business deal? Maybe Bear was a second cousin, once removed, who Nick was forced to tolerate for the sake of family harmony? Whatever the reason, Nick looked miserable. Great, I was reduced to gawking through foliage at two people enduring a dinner together. Unexciting
and
uninformative.

Nick pushed his plate away then spoke. Bear went quiet and kept his eyes on Nick, but as the seconds ticked by his expression shifted from calm to shock to disbelief and, finally, to stony controlled anger.

The bartender brought my food out all nicely packed up, and I dragged my eyes from Nick and Bear long enough to hand over my debit card. When I resumed my spying, Bear was speaking through clenched teeth with an expression of Pissed to the Max. Not so unexciting anymore. I scooched my chair over a smidge to get a potted ficus between me and their table in case either of them glanced in my direction. Nick held his hands up, palms toward Bear, but whatever he said wasn't enough to placate Bear, who jabbed a finger toward the door in a clear
We're taking this outside
gesture.

What the ever-loving hell?

Shoulders slumped, Nick stood and headed for the door, his expression an awful mix of humiliation and anger and despair. I snatched up the menu and held it up to shield my face, but I had a feeling I could have been dancing naked on the bar and Nick would have been oblivious.

Bear tossed bills onto the table and stalked after Nick. The bartender was busy taking a drink order, my debit card in her hand. So much for following the men outside and maybe finding out what was going on. I clamped down on my impatience as the bartender dealt with a spill before she finally ran my card. She looked frazzled when she brought me the bill, so I added a decent tip then grabbed my food and left. It was only my amazing self-control that kept me from shoving an onion ring into my mouth before I was outside.

I dug in the bag for one as I walked across the parking lot then stopped in surprise at the sight of Nick's car, still parked in the same place and unoccupied. Weird. I'd expected both Nick and Bear to be long gone by the time I finished paying for my food. Or maybe he left with Bear to—

Muffled shouting issued from a big pickup on the far side of the lot. I stood between two cars, riveted in place by shock as I watched a red-faced Bear rant at Nick in the passenger seat. Snatches of the tirade drifted through the pleasant spring air.

“. . . pea-brained decision . . .”

“. . . how dare you . . .”

“. . . plans don't include . . . whiny bullshit . . .”

Nick sat with his shoulders hunched, not yelling back. Or even talking back, as far as I could tell. In all the time I'd worked with him, I'd never seen Nick cowed by anyone. He was usually confident to the point of arrogance.

At last Bear wound down and finished with a
Get the hell out.
White-faced, Nick almost fell out of the big truck as he complied, staggered a step, then pushed the door shut before stumbling off. Bear watched him go then slammed his hands against the steering wheel in either frustration or rage. In the next instant the truck engine revved, and Bear sped out of the lot.

Nick fumbled his keys from his pocket and dropped them. The thud of metal against asphalt shocked me out of my daze. I lurched forward.

“Nick?!”

His entire body tensed as if I'd punched him. Face flooding with color, he snatched the keys up and hurried to his car, acting as if he hadn't heard me. He yanked his door open and practically dove in, but I poured on the speed and wedged my body between car and door so he couldn't close it.

“Angel, I gotta go,” he gasped.

“Nick.” I groped for words, a way to tell him I understood, that I knew how it felt to be called worthless and stupid and worse.

Nick's hands shook and his breath wheezed as he groped in his messenger bag. Damn it. I also knew how shitty it was when an outsider saw—when the private pain became public shame.

I pulled his inhaler from his bag and pressed it into his hand. Waited for him to take a puff, then another. His breathing eased, but he continued to tremble and was as pale as death.

“Nick,” I said. “How do you know Bear?”

His distress increased to agonizing levels, as if he'd break into a million pieces if touched. He shoved his keys into the ignition and started the car. “I gotta go,” he repeated, still refusing to meet my eyes. He reached for the door, but I didn't budge.

“Please listen to me,” I said, trying my best to project calm understanding. “I know a little about—”

“
YOU DON'T KNOW SHIT!
” Nick screamed, face blotchy and eyes wild. “Get out of the fucking way!”

Goddammit, Angel
. I'd pushed too far. Shit. I should have known better. I used to get pretty goddamn defensive when people tried to reach out to me. Throat tight, I stepped back and closed the door for him then walked away. Behind me, tires squealed on the asphalt as Nick peeled out in an eerie echo of Bear's departure.

As soon as I was in my car, I pulled out my phone. “Okay, Bear,” I muttered. “Who the hell are you to Nick?” I had a gigantic suspicion, but I needed to be sure.

The owner of The Bear's Den turned out to be Owen “Bear” Galatas. And a search on people associated with that name turned up Nicholas Galatas. Before tonight, I never would've guessed it in a million years.

Bear was Nick's dad.

I sat in my car for several minutes, nerves jangling as I struggled to process the entire incident. It didn't help that it hit way too close to home. My mother had been mentally ill, and I'd been the easiest and closest target whenever she lashed out. She'd gone to prison for it and died there—committing suicide on my sixteenth birthday. But life hadn't turned perfect when she went to jail, not when my dad was an alcoholic who had no idea how to keep a screwed up kid in line. He eventually resorted to slaps when he reached the end of his rope, though by that time I was old enough to get away from him until he could sober up and cool down. But the emotional abuse and outright neglect were a lot harder to escape.

Dad was better now, god almighty so much better. My zombification had helped him damn near as much as it had helped me, and we'd broken the horrific cycle of Angel-fucks-up followed by Dad-doesn't-know-how-to-help which would inevitably lead to Dad-gets-pissed.

Bear didn't appear to be mentally ill like my mother was and, if he was any sort of addict, he hid it damn well. Not that either was a requirement or excuse to be abusive. Bear was scary and intimidating under ordinary circumstances. I couldn't imagine being on the receiving end of his anger.

Yet there was every chance that what I'd witnessed was an isolated incident. Parents and kids argued for all sorts of reasons. Even the most well-adjusted families had the occasional screaming match—which was one of the reasons why Pierce worried about family members of zombies being in the know. Nick never mentioned his family or personal life, but then again neither did most of my other coworkers, not in any sort of depth. How was I to know if there was a pattern of abuse—verbal or otherwise—from Bear? And, if I did know, what the hell could I do about it?

Thoughts stewing, I drove out to the park behind the municipal auditorium. Dusk turned the western sky purple and maroon as I sat on the hood of my car. And, while I consumed my monthly quota of fried food, I continued my internet search of Bear Galatas.

It was common knowledge around these parts that Bear was a survivalist who preached the virtue of preparedness. What I hadn't known was how serious he was about it. A frequent contributor to
Survive This!
magazine, he wrote articles on everything from how to escape handcuffs, zip-ties, and duct tape to the increase of martial law in the U.S to how to grow a survival garden. He even had a popular blog called “Bear Talk” where he discussed how to prepare for and survive various catastrophes, from house fires to hurricanes, terrorist attack to alien invasion.

I added this info to my own observations of the man. Big, tough guy, smart and confident enough to run a very successful business, a planner with strong opinions, and openly dismissive of anyone he deemed a slacker. Worked out hard, and a big believer in mind-and-body strength.

Shit. And then there was Nick—not at all big and tough and strong who no doubt embodied everything that Bear considered wimpy and worthless. But damn it, Nick was smart. Surely that was an important survival trait?

Worry for Nick gnawed at me, but I had zero idea what to do to help him. Maybe I could talk to Derrel—without naming any names—and get his advice.

Nothing else I could do right now. Damn it.

Frustration simmered as I continued home, but by the time I arrived, I'd wrenched my thoughts back to murder-clue hunting. In the bathroom, I peeled the skull fragment off my forehead, then attacked the makeup and glue residue with makeup remover, baby wipes, and cold cream. It probably would have been quicker to claw my skin right off, eat brains, and grow my face back, but I figured mopping up the blood and flesh bits would burn more time than I saved.

It was full dark by the time I finished removing all of the makeup. I checked my watch, changed into dark jeans and a black t-shirt, killed another fifteen minutes with a skim-through of my Biology notes, then got my ass in gear.

Zombie Spy Powers, Activate!

•   •   •

Judd lived in Bob's Trailer Park, a rundown shithole with a dozen lots and a driveway that had more potholes than level ground. The owner, Bob, was a real prince who dealt meth on the side and by some miracle had yet to be busted for it. The residents were the kind of people who either didn't give a shit about the nasty conditions, or were desperate enough to tolerate them for the cheap rent. Judd wasn't desperate. He simply preferred to spend his money on the finer things in life. Guns. Pot. Prostitutes. Antibiotics. Judd had lived there the longest of any of the residents, and was one of the few with anything resembling a steady—and legal—job.

The good thing, for me at least, was that I seriously doubted any of Judd's neighbors would call the cops if they saw weird crap going on since everyone here had something to hide. The bad thing was that the neighbors would likely just shoot anyone they deemed suspicious.

In other words, I needed to be super-ultra-sneaky. I parked a street over, ate a packet of brains, jumped a ditch, and cut through a thin stretch of woods. At the edge of the trees I watched, listened, and scented. Neither of his neighbors on either side were home, and I thanked baby Jesus for that little advantage. Both the front and back doors of his trailer were locked with padlocks, but that didn't bother me. I'd been here a few times before, back when I was dating Randy. Though, at the time, I'd hated hanging out with Judd, I was glad now that I'd listened to his dumb ramblings about escape routes and secret trap doors in case of terrorist attacks. Because, god knows, if I was a terrorist, a piece of shit trailer park in bumfuck Louisiana would
totally
be my first target. Totally.

After tugging gloves on, I crept up to the back of Judd's trailer, crouched, and peered beneath it. Cobwebs and trash and way too many bugs made a nasty, creepy jungle, but at least it was relatively dry. Though I had a mini-flashlight in my pocket, I didn't dare use it outside where it could draw attention. Lucky for me, the recent top off of brains gave my vision a decent boost, and I spied a difference in the floor near the very back of his trailer.

Judd's idea of an escape hatch wasn't fancy—nothing more than a two foot square hole covered by a piece of plywood and an area rug. I had no trouble shoving them aside to shimmy into the trailer, then took a minute to brush spiders and other yuck off me. Ugh. I'd been through nastier places, but that didn't mean I had to like it.

No bed or dresser in this room. Old mail and miscellaneous trash littered a floor that had never known the sweet kiss of a vacuum. A gun safe hunkered in one corner, and a matte black crossbow that looked like the lovechild of an assault rifle and Satan's longbow hung on a rack beside it. A workbench covered in reloading equipment and fletching supplies took up the entire back wall, and on the opposite wall hung a huge image of Bear in camouflage gear and toting an axe, surrounded by posters of naked women with guns. Wow. Talk about hero worship. Ew.

I did a quick search of the room and found a vast collection of porn, but no murder weapons or bloody clothing. The gun safe seemed to mock me. That was the most logical place to stash evidence, and its big lock would keep out anyone who didn't have the combination or major explosives. I didn't have any explosives, but I did have experience. I'd been on a lot of crime scenes in the past year and a half, and I knew that a whole lot of people didn't trust their memory. In less than two minutes I found the scrap of masking tape on the underside of the workbench, and in another thirty seconds I pulled open the safe in triumph.

“Well, crap.” So much for triumph. Guns of every possible variety were cram-packed into the safe, but no machete, no blood, and no car keys or anything else that might have come from the murder victim Seeger. Annoyed, I shut the safe door and locked it. There'd been no room to spare in the safe, so maybe he hid stuff elsewhere?

I proceeded through the trailer, searching as quickly and carefully as possible. The second bedroom held Judd's bed and dresser along with a three-foot high pile of dirty laundry that I forced myself to root through. I even got on the floor and peered under his bed, and found only a collection of cum-crusted socks and several pounds of weed.

The kitchen was surprisingly clean, and I realized I hadn't seen dirty dishes or food in any of the mess elsewhere in the trailer. That explained why I hadn't seen any roaches. Okay, so Judd was gross, but he still had standards. Nice to know. I dutifully checked the cabinets and found jack squat of interest, then moved on to the last room—a marginally tidy living room. But disappointment reigned as I turned up nothing but enormous dust bunnies under the couch, and desiccated Cheetos in the cushions.

Crap! My hopes of getting this done nice and quick vanished. Failure here meant I had to check out Coy's place, and it would take me at least fifteen minutes to get there. Still, it was that or give up the search, and I wasn't going to do that. Not if there was any chance Randy was involved or that a clue about the murder might surface.

Fuming in annoyance, I turned to leave but stopped as my gaze fell on a small table in the corner. It held an ancient computer that I didn't think Judd had ever used in all the time I'd known him—probably because he bought it cheap and second-hand, and only later discovered that whatever part it needed to connect to the internet was busted. He'd insisted he was going to fix it, but that was at least four years ago. Not surprising since Judd had less computer smarts than me, which wasn't saying a whole lot. I hadn't bothered to check the computer during my search since it didn't seem like a place to hide evidence of murder but, beneath the dust, a red light winked on the front of the computer tower.

A tingle started at the base of my spine, spread up as I moved to the table. Papers cluttered its surface along with a yellow legal pad and a bubble pack for two USB flash drives—with one drive missing. Penis-shaped flash drives, because this was Judd.

What was so important that Judd decided to crank up this dinosaur? I wiggled the mouse and was rewarded with a Windows ME screen. It took me several frustrating tries to find a list of his files, but as far as I could tell everything was several years old. There also wasn't a damn thing on the computer that looked to be worth saving onto a flash drive.

My eyes dropped to the legal pad, and the tingle increased. I grabbed up a pencil and rubbed the lead over the surface of the paper, like I'd seen in every detective TV show. Words appeared, light against dark, and I had to bite back a whoop of delight. Hot damn. The shit worked! Now I could see exactly . . .

zombie heal

zombie turn

zombie speed

“What the . . . ?” Comprehension seared through me as if I'd grabbed a live wire. These matched the filenames on Grayson Seeger's printout. If Judd knew the filenames, he either had a second copy of the list, or—

I tugged a crumpled receipt from beneath the penis drive package. It was from the XpressMart with a time stamp of four-nineteen p.m. today. He wouldn't need to buy a flash drive if all he had was a printout of the list. The only thing that made sense was that Judd somehow had the actual files themselves.

I chewed my lower lip as the implications came together in ugly patterns. Judd must have gotten the files from another flash drive—and the most obvious suspect was one belonging to Seeger. Shit. Judd had bought the penis flash drives between the afternoon and evening hunts. In other words, he checked out the files on Seeger's drive and
then
decided he wanted a copy—so badly that he ran out and bought flash drives during the break between hunts. What the hell could've been that important?

Mouth set, I continued rubbing the pencil lead over the paper.

zombie feed

zombie frenzy

“Frenzy” was circled. Could be Judd saw the
Zombies Are Among Us!!
trailer this afternoon and thought that the zombie_frenzy video file—the one I suspected matched up with the film—was interesting because lots of locals were in the big melée scene.

zombie turn 2

The last was underlined four times with a heavy hand. I chewed my lower lip as I pondered those fierce underlines. The sneak preview today hadn't shown anything that matched up to that filename, but I figured the full mockumentary would. I'd find out for sure at the Fest tomorrow. I rubbed lead over the last few inches of the paper.

ANGEL

The pencil slipped from my fingers.
What the shit?
My pulse stuttered, and my mouth went bone dry. My name. Why did he have
my
name listed with the files?

Panic sent waves of cold running over my skin, and my thoughts jabbered like a room full of angry people. I stumbled back from the table and pressed both hands to my stomach. My name on a page of zombie crap. He knew. Judd knew. It was over. I needed a dose so I could chill and figure out what to do. I—

“Stop it!” I gasped, both frightened and furious at myself. “Stop being
stupid!
” This wasn't me, wasn't the Angel who'd remade herself. This stupid freakout was Old Angel, the one who couldn't handle shit and took the easy way out. I didn't
need
a dose. Not for this. Goddammit, I'd survived worse.

The panic gradually crumbled as I forced myself to breathe, steady and deep. The mad galloping of my heart slowed to an unsteady trot. Straightening, I moved back to the table. There, see? I could handle this. No need to freak out. Without the panic gibbering in my ear, I had no trouble thinking of any number of perfectly logical reasons for why my name was on the paper. Judd might have written it on the pad earlier, and it had nothing to do with the files at all. Or could be he wrote my name down because he spotted me in the
Zombie Frenzy!!
clip of the mockumentary. Hell, maybe he met some other chick named Angel and wanted to hook up with her.