Okay, so another vote against the “Angel is a psycho killer” option. Whew.

My food finally arrived along with a refill of my coffee. The stuffed pancakes were as good and evil as the deputy claimed, and I managed to survive the rest of the meal without looking like a total idiot or doing anything that would make the others realize that I had no business being in that line of work.

But, while I ate, one niggling thought occurred to me and refused to leave me alone.

If I really did break my trunk open, then I would be strong enough to chop off someone’s head.

Chapter 10

All next week I was the goddamn model of a good worker. I arrived at the morgue early to get everything set up and cleaned up. I stayed late to get stuff cataloged or put away.

And whenever I was alone, I scooped the brains out of the bags and squirreled that shit away. I bought a bunch of ice packs, started saving plastic water bottles, and I washed out a bunch of the old pickle jars from underneath the cabinets at home. I also decorated the jars to make it a little less obvious what was in them. Back when I was a little girl my mom and I had done this craft thing where we’d take empty wine or liquor bottles—which we always had tons of—and cover every bit of glass with inch-long pieces of masking tape. Once the bottles were covered in tape we’d smear brown shoe polish all over and then wipe the excess off with a rag, and when we were done we had a bunch of bottles that looked cool and antique—kinda leathery, in a way. At least, they looked cool to seven-year-old me. Maybe I’d loved them because it was one of the few pleasant memories I had of my mother. Funny how it’s so much easier to remember the bad shit.

Then again, there’d been a lot of the bad shit.

I couldn’t decide if it looked dumb or not when I did the masking tape/shoe polish thing to the pickle jars, but it served its purpose. Someone would have to actually open the jars to see what I had inside them. I also went to the dollar store and bought a cheap little hand held, battery-powered blender. Once blended, the brains weren’t really recognizable as brains at all, but to be on the super-safe side, I borrowed a trick from Anonymous Letter Dude and started blending brains up with soup or fruit juice or chocolate milk—stuff that looked normal so that no one would freak out if they happened to open the cooler. I could fit half a brain and about a cup of soup or chocolate milk into each jar or water bottle, and so far it seemed that a jar or bottle every other day kept me from getting smelly. I really wanted to see if brains could freeze and, after thawing, still retain whatever it was that I craved. But I didn’t want to risk putting them in the freezer at home. Either my dad would eat them by mistake, or—worse—he’d throw them out.

Things were going as well as I could possibly expect, considering my circumstances. I had a seriously fucked up diet, but I still ate real food and was starting to get to where I could tell the difference between hunger and Hunger. Plus, the one month mark was coming up fast, and while I’d figured out that I probably wasn’t in any sort of position to tell my boss to fuck off, still, finally getting the straight scoop from whoever’d set all of this up for me was the thought that kept me going. It also helped that I was actually starting to enjoy the job.

Drive a van. How hard could it be, right?

Three A.M. on a Tuesday night and the body in the back of the van was being nice and quiet. Not that I expected it to sit up and start talking or anything stupid like that. But sometimes bodies made weird noises—farts and belches and shit like that—and I was still new enough to this gig that it gave me a bit of a freakout whenever I heard it.

Yep, the freak who ate brains could still get freaked. I had the iron stomach thing going for me, but there was still plenty of other shit that had the ability to creep me right out.

I had the radio in the van on, but the left speaker was blown and Shania Twain sounded more like Axl Rose, so I had the volume pretty low. Still, it was better than silence, especially since it was dark as all hell, and I was in the middle of Swamp Bum-fuck-nowhere on Highway 1790. I hadn’t passed another car in over ten minutes, and I had at least another twenty to go before I hit what passed for civilization in St. Edwards Parish.

So that was my excuse for screaming like a little bitch when I saw someone standing in the road in front of me.

I slammed on the brakes even as I realized that it was only a fallen tree with a branch sticking up that was kind of person-shaped. Person woulda been better to hit, flashed through my head as I yanked the wheel to the left in stupid panic. Really stupid panic, because I was already too close to the tree, and all I did was make sure the van went into a really spectacular flip and roll.

My head smacked hard against the doorframe as the van slammed down on the driver’s side, and for several seconds all I could see were bright bursts of light. The van scraped along the highway with a horrible shriek of metal on pavement, then everything stopped, and all I could hear was the sound of my panicked breathing.

I was lying against the driver’s side door, partially suspended by the seatbelt. I’d only been wearing it because I knew I couldn’t risk getting written up for not wearing one in a Coroner’s Office vehicle. Score one for the rulebook, I thought with a wheezing laugh. Half the windshield had pulled free like a banana peel, and I could see the crescent moon and about a million stars. Muggy air flowed in and a mosquito buzzed near my ear, probably drawn by the blood I could feel trickling across my forehead. Part of the doorframe had buckled and twisted inward, and it wasn’t until I unpeeled my fingers from the wheel that I realized my left arm was badly broken, complete with a jagged end of white bone shoved through the skin of my forearm.

I stared at the end of the bone for several seconds, still trying to process what had happened. I wasn’t exactly the go-to gal in an emergency. I was usually the one who freaked out enough to need a good hard slap. But there was no one here to slap me.

My phone. Yeah, I could do that. I could find my phone and call for help. And then I needed to find my lunchbox.

The end of the bone seemed to take on a surreal glow in the moonlight. “Damn,” I murmured. It wasn’t all that long ago that the sight of blood—anyone’s blood, not just mine—would have had me puking and close to fainting, yet here I was staring at the end of my arm bone. “That is seriously disgusting.”

Sudden worry clutched at me. How much trouble was I going to be in for wrecking the van? If I lost this job, I was dead meat.

I fumbled for the seat belt release. It sprang free, and I let out a strangled scream as I crumpled against the door and banged the broken arm hard. Curling my arm to my chest, I lay there and took several deep, gulping breaths. It hurt like a bitch, but I knew too damn well that it could have been a lot worse. I could already feel that bizarre fading of sensation creeping through me, and right now I was more than happy to have the edge taken off.

I winced as a sharp tug of hunger replaced the pain. First priority was to find my lunchbox. I peered uncertainly at the end of the bone again. Would the brains heal that up? Or did I need to set it or something first? I shivered despite the warmth of the night. I’d lost a lot of my squeamish fears, but I was pretty sure that setting my own broken arm was still one of those “Oh, hell no!” things.

One thing at a time. Find the lunchbox. Find my phone. Call for help. Whether I could heal myself up or not, I was still in a real mess.

The creak of the back doors cut through my flailing thoughts. Relief hit me like a wave as the door banged down against the pavement. Someone saw the wreck. They’ll help me. I struggled to my feet, but the van-on-its-side thing had me all disoriented, and it took me a couple of seconds to find my balance. The whack on my head and the blood running into my eyes didn’t help. But I was coherent enough to see the figure crouched on the open back door of the van.

“Hey, man. Can you call 911?” I said. “I need some. . . .”

I trailed off as the stench hit me.

Rot. Death.

I knew that smell.

Oh, god. It’s true.

The figure shifted forward, its breathing a low, rasping growl. I could only make out the silhouette, but it was enough.

Terror shot through me and my eyes fell to the stretcher and body bag, now lying cockeyed against the wall of the van. That’s what this . . . this thing wanted. I knew that. This creature had probably dragged the tree into the road to make me stop.

Panic jabbed through me. I could maybe explain away the accident, but there was no way I could explain losing the body.

“No!” I struggled to get up and around the damn seats. “Get away! You can’t have it!”

It ignored me and grabbed the black plastic and pulled, but the bag was still belted to the stretcher and the whole thing was pretty well jammed into the corner. That bought me a few more seconds. I could see it better now. Male, probably white, though the face was too decomposed to be completely sure. One eye was clouded over and dark teeth were visible through a bloodless gash in one cheek. Its hands had ribbons of skin trailing from them and several fingernails were missing.

That . . . is a zombie, I silently shrieked to myself. Holy fucking shit. That’s a motherfucking zombie, and this shit is real.

I didn’t dare think about what that meant. I wanted to curl up and moan in horror, but I didn’t have time for that shit. I couldn’t let this thing—this zombie—get my body. Pain twinged somewhere deep in my chest as I clambered over the seat, but I barely noticed it. I lost my balance but somehow managed to fall on top of the bag and the stretcher without crushing my broken arm any further, though my vision went dark for a couple of seconds from the flash of new pain. I wanted to lie there for a minute and wait for the nausea and dizziness to fade, but the zombie growled and tugged harder.

“Let go!” I said, gasping the words out. “Get out of here. You can’t have it!” I wrapped my good arm through the bars of the stretcher and did my best to pin the bag down with my skinny-ass weight. I didn’t know how much good it would do. The zombie was still damn strong, even as rotted as it was. It was probably hungry as all hell too, I realized—which meant it wasn’t about to give up.