Angel Crawford #2: Even White Trash Zombies Get the Blues (15 page)

She leaned up against the edge of the love seat and crossed her arms over her chest. “There’s more, I’m sure. Communication among the colonies, and how it manages to
mimic host tissue so extraordinarily well. I mean, you have to really
really
be looking to see something’s amiss.”

Okay, so it looked like I was stuck being a zombie. “What about the brains? Why does it make us crave brains?”

“Prions!” she said with a proud smile. “And this is the basis of what I’ve been working on for the past several years. Prions are indestructible—they’re basically immortal proteins. Your parasitic zombie colony uses the prion proteins as building blocks and for fuel. The best part is, every time the host eats brains, the parasite has a brand new fuel supply. And, since it has its own personal hardwire into the host’s brain, it can tell it to go and get more brains whenever it’s running low on prions. If the host can’t find any immediately, the parasite takes a couple of actions. The first is, it reinforces its presence in the brain and probably takes resources from elsewhere. Now, as the colony starves and has to start shutting down sections, the first systems to go are the host maintenance—hence the decay and dropping bits and pieces. After all, it’s not altruistic.”

“Of course not,” I said weakly.

“Since the prion building blocks it uses are indestructible, the colony is fine at first, but the host tissue degrades, except for the brain—which the parasite still needs to function so it can make the decaying body try to get
more
brains…until it eventually runs out of steam and the host and parasite die.”

I was silent for a couple of minutes after she finished. I didn’t understand all of what she’d said, but I got the basic gist: I couldn’t be cured, and there was something
in human brains that this parasite needed. “And you make fake brains?” I finally asked.

A mild grimace passed over her face. “I’m trying to make a substitute, but it’s proving difficult to isolate exactly what the parasite utilizes.”

“But she’s close,” Marcus said. “And when she gets there, it’s going to change everything for those of us with the zombie parasite.”

I opened my mouth to say that I could see a lot of problems as well, but then closed it. Marcus obviously adored his uncle, and probably wouldn’t take too kindly to me pointing out that Pietro was unlikely to simply give these artificial brains away. Plus, if it suddenly became easy to feed zombies, why not make everyone a zombie? That was a weird and rather horrifying thought. The parasite seemed relatively harmless as long as it was fed, but how did we know it wasn’t controlling us in some other way that we couldn’t sense?

“Sounds cool,” I said instead. “But now that I’ve had the biology lesson of a lifetime, can you explain how the hell Zeke—whose head was chopped off, by the way—showed up at y’all’s lab and looking about twenty years older than he did before?”

Fear returned to Sofia’s face. “I don’t know,” she said as she sank to sit on the love seat.

“Then maybe you can tell me about these ‘zombie factions’ that you mentioned earlier,” I said, looking back and forth between the two of them.

Marcus scowled. “There are other zombies out there who don’t agree with the way Pietro wants us to stay organized. Sofia’s research isn’t complete, but it still represents years of work. If the others get their hands on it,
they could conceivably find another neurobiologist to finish it, and then basically corner the market and control the distribution.”

“Well, are you going to try to tell me that your uncle
won’t
control the distribution?” I said in thinly veiled exasperation. Sofia looked abruptly stricken. Anger flashed across Marcus’s face, but I bulled on. “Tell me the truth—do you think he intends to give these fake brains away—to everyone? Even the ones who aren’t in his ‘circle’?” I made air quotes with my fingers.

A muscle in his jaw twitched. “No, of course not, but he wouldn’t be exorbitant about it. He’s invested a lot of money in this, you know. And he’s not going to take advantage of the others of our kind.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said. “But you’re convinced that any
other
group of zombies would?”

His scowl deepened. “It’s certainly possible. I believe that Pietro is best positioned to organize an effective and fair distribution.”

Your uncle is a goddamn mobster
, I wanted to shriek, but I kept it in. Marcus was clearly in no mood to see any other point of view. Just how deeply did his loyalties to his uncle run? How far would he go to make Pietro happy? And why? Was it simply gratitude for saving his life?

“Okay, that’s cool,” I said as lightly as I could, adding a smile to go along with it. His expression cleared somewhat, which told me that he was apparently buying my abrupt capitulation.
He’s underestimating me
, I realized with a strange sadness.

“Anyway,” I continued, “the guy was dressed as a security guard.” I shifted my attention to Sofia. “If he really
was working for some other zombie faction,” and good grief but I felt stupid saying that, “how could he have known about your research?”

She swallowed nervously, flicked a glance to Marcus. “That’s a damn good question,” he said, his mouth curving downward into a dark scowl. “Hardly anyone knows that Sofia’s working on this, which means that there’s a leak or mole somewhere.”

“Erm, okay,” I said. Did he know how ridiculous this all sounded?
Then again, the simple fact that we’re zombies is pretty damn ridiculous
, I reminded myself. Why
not
have some sort of spy vs. spy intrigue between the various zombie mafias? “This stuff sounds so interesting,” I said, trying another tack. “I’d love to come see how this all works with you making fake brains.”

She looked briefly panicked and shook her head in a sharp motion. “No, that’s really not possible,” she insisted. “So many of the areas are strictly controlled that it’s not as if I can bring someone in, even for a tour. And I’m not about to make any sort of waves that could draw attention to myself. The lab director, Dr. Charish, has already been wondering why I’ve been pulling so many late nights.” She visibly gulped. “I’m not
supposed
to be working on fake brains for zombies, for reasons I’m sure you can understand. If anyone ever took a hard look at what I was doing, I could get in a lot of trouble for misuse of resources, even if they didn’t know exactly what the goal of my research was.”

I frowned, pondering. “What if Zeke wasn’t after your research? What if someone else there is doing something similar? Don’t you think it would be worthwhile to look around and see if that’s the case?”

“Don’t even think about it, Angel,” Marcus said, a warning tone in his voice.

“What?”

“Sneaking in,” he said, giving me a dark glower. “If you were to get caught trespassing it would violate your probation.”

Shit. He knew the right buttons to push on me. Going back to jail would suck enough as a regular human, but going in as a zombie would suck a lot harder—especially for anyone in my vicinity when I got really hungry.

“I won’t sneak in,” I promised.

“Besides,” Sofia said, “the security has been tightened up considerably.” She frowned and bit her lip. “But Angel has a good point. It’s possible that this whole thing had nothing to do with my projects. Under normal circumstances I couldn’t imagine that anyone would believe my lab was a target for industrial espionage,
but
there are plenty of other projects going on that would be worth a great deal of money to any of our competitors.” She rubbed at her eyes. “I would love to believe that this man was after the work on lipid supplementation or some such thing.”

“And you’re sure no one else at this lab is doing any sort of zombie research?” I asked her.

She gave a dry laugh. “I suppose anything is possible,” she said. “But I think it’s highly improbable that there could be two people at this one lab who are separately working on zombie-related research, especially when almost no one knows about zombies in the first place.”

“Right,” I replied. “Makes sense.” Yet there was still a lot about this whole thing that
didn’t
make sense. Something was bugging the hell out of me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it just yet.

Sofia let out a sigh and stood. “I should be going. I have a lot to do tomorrow.”

Marcus moved to her and gave her a hug. “Call me if you need anything or if you see anything suspicious.”

She replied with a weak smile and a nod. “Absolutely.” Sofia looked to me. “It was lovely seeing you again, Angel.”

Lovely? Um, okay. “Likewise,” I said.

After she left I flopped back onto the couch. Marcus settled in beside me and let out a low sigh. “The drama never seems to end, does it?”

“Something weird is going on, Marcus,” I said. “That dude’s head was chopped off. Can a zombie survive that?”

He rubbed a hand over his face. “I never would have thought so, but…” He grimaced, shook his head. “I don’t know. And I’m too tired to think about it right now.” He leaned over and nuzzled my neck. “But not too tired for other things.”

I grinned despite my stress. “I guess that means you have a fresh batch of pudding?”

He laughed. “You know me so well.” He stood and headed to the kitchen. I turned and watched him go. He was damn good-looking for a zombie. Hell, for a normal human, too. His jeans hugged his ass without being tight, and his shirts were tailored to show the nice v-taper of his lats…

I blinked. “His uniform didn’t fit,” I murmured.

Marcus turned and gave me a questioning look. “Did you say something?”

I stood up. “Marcus, if you were going to go to the trouble of infiltrating a research lab that had fairly decent
security, wouldn’t you at least make sure you had a uniform that fit properly?”

He returned and set the bowl of pudding on the coffee table. “I suppose, but—”

“Don’t you see?” I said, suddenly excited. “He wasn’t trying to break in. He was trying to escape! They’re doing something at that lab with zombies! Maybe that’s how he grew a new body!”

Of all the possible reactions I expected—interest, doubt, delight—I sure as hell didn’t expect annoyance.

“Angel, this is getting ridiculous,” he said, scowling. I stared at him in surprise as he continued, “You’ve got it into your head that this lab is the center of some great zombie conspiracy, and it just doesn’t make any sense! Is this about Sofia? Are you jealous of her?”

I actually spluttered for several seconds. “Wait. What? Is that what you think this is? Why the hell would I be jealous of her?” Then I narrowed my eyes. “No, really, tell me why I should be jealous of her. Is something going on?”

“No, damn it! Nothing’s going on. But you seem really intent on painting her as some sort of bad guy or evil genius.”

“That’s not what I said!” I stared at him, hurt. “I said something weird was going on at the lab. I never said it was
her
. And why the hell won’t you believe me? Why the hell won’t you trust me or believe me about
anything
?” I may have been shouting by that last word.

“I believe you about stuff that’s believable, Angel! Stop being such a child!”

“A…a child?” I stared at him. “You didn’t believe
me about the dead guy being a zombie. You didn’t believe me about the holdup—and I think maybe you still don’t.” I stood and grabbed my bag. “Fuck you, Marcus,” I said as I headed toward the door. “I hope you and your mobster uncle live happily ever after together. After all, you believe everything
he
tells you, and you sure as hell
do
everything he tells you to do!”

I slammed the door behind me. I had no idea if he was trying to follow me, but I didn’t look back to see. I climbed into my car and sped away, surprised to find that even though I was upset I didn’t feel any desire to cry.
Is that my parasite protecting me?
I wondered.
Or am I simply becoming less and less human?

I might not have felt like crying, but I sure wasn’t a happy, cheerful camper either. Plus I wanted chocolate, which told me that at least one part of my human side was still working perfectly fine.

Back before my zombification I’d have most likely headed to any one of the many bars that I frequented, downed a painkiller or three, and chased it with some sort of alcohol with maybe a joint as dessert. But apparently my little parasite got unhappy when I did shit like that and made it use up prions or whatever to clean all that junk out of my system. Even though I was only just now learning the why of it, it hadn’t taken me long after becoming a zombie to figure out that when I did stuff that was bad for me, I rotted a lot faster.

So instead I headed to Double D’s Diner, where I ordered a bacon cheeseburger, fries, a chocolate milkshake, and a chocolate mousse pie for dessert.

The waitress grinned as she jotted down the order. “Now that’s an
I don’t give a crap
meal if I’ve ever seen one!”

I managed a smile. “Yeah, that pretty much nails it.”

The woman cocked her head and gave me an appraising look. “Lemme guess, you just dumped your boyfriend?”

I let out a short laugh of astonishment. “How on earth…?”

She winked. “Easy. You looked too bummed to be celebrating something. So this is a comfort food thing. Best guess was a boyfriend.”

I smiled. “And how’d you know that I did the dumping?”

She gathered up my menu. “Because usually, when the guy does the dumping, I see the girls eating tiny salads—either because they hope to get him back, or hope to snag another guy to make the first one jealous.” She rolled her eyes. “Screw that. Life’s too short to be with someone for the wrong reasons.”

After she headed off to get my drink, I considered what she’d said. Life was too short for most people, but for me it was potentially too long.

I pulled my GED study guide out of my bag but then just stared at the cover. I’d never
ever
considered going to college. That was so far out of the realm of possibility that for pretty much my entire life even the thought of it had been laughable. But now…why the hell not? In fact, if I was likely going to be living an absurdly long time, it seemed even more important that I should find a way to make my life a lot more comfortable. I sure as hell didn’t want to be delivering pizzas when I was seventy.