“Fucker,” I growled. There was no way I was giving him any more brains out of my stash.

But if I didn’t help him get brains, was I helping to drive him to more murder? Maybe I needed to do the exact opposite. Maybe I should try and hunt him down and give him brains out of my stash—never mind what Kang said.

Besides, what if this ever happened to me? Sure, I was fed and sated right now. But how could I know that I wouldn’t end up like Zeke if I lost my job and my access to brains.

I didn’t know.

And it scared the shit out of me.

My dad was sitting on the couch when I walked into the house. I stopped dead in the doorway, my hand still on the knob as I took in the sight of him. He looked a bit thinner, or maybe that was my imagination.

He looked up as I entered, a flicker of apprehension—or was it worry?—in his eyes. “Hey, Angelkins,” he said in a low rough voice.

My shoulders unconsciously hunched at the childhood nickname. He always used it when he was feeling beaten down. Maybe it was his way of trying to recapture those glimpses of the past that weren’t made of shit. “Who bailed you out?” I asked, closing the door behind me. It probably wasn’t the nicest welcome home I could have given him, but to his credit he didn’t seem to be surprised by the hostility in my voice.

He looked down at his hands. They were empty—no beer, no cigarettes. “Got a PR.”

Personal recognizance. All he’d had to do was promise to come to court for his arraignment. I’d kinda figured he’d end up getting one. At least that took the pressure off me. I didn’t ask how he’d made it home. I knew he still had a few buddies who’d be willing to give him a ride. He’d done for it others often enough.

“Okay.” I stood there for a few seconds more, then finally decided I didn’t really have anything to say to him. Or nothing that wouldn’t start a whole new round of shit.

I started toward the hallway to my bedroom.

He stood up. “Baby, I’m sorry. I said . . . and did . . . some terrible things.”

His words stopped me, and I pivoted back to him. “I’m not gonna drink anymore, Angel,” he said, meeting my gaze. He looked earnest, but I knew he was saying it right now because he’d been scared. He’d spent two days in jail, and right now he was willing to do or say anything to not go back there. I understood that completely. It was why I’d taken a job in the morgue.

I also knew that after a while that fear would fade. Another week or month or so, and he’d start to forget how bad it had been, and he’d want a drink. I’d heard this announcement before. And I’d seen how well his willpower held out.

But there was no point in throwing that in his face right now. It wouldn’t accomplish anything except to hurt and demoralize him. “That’s great, Dad,” I said instead. “I hope that works.”

I turned away and continued to my bedroom. He didn’t stop me again.

I heard him moving around the house. After a little while the front door opened and closed, followed by the sound of his beater pickup starting up.

As soon as the sound of crunching beer cans faded away I came out of my room and went outside to the big trash can by the side of the house. As I’d suspected, there were several bottles of liquor plus a couple of six-packs of beer. It would be admirable if I hadn’t been through this bullshit before. He’d promise to change, then try and go cold turkey, zero to sixty as soon as possible. No rehab, no counseling or support groups, ’cause he was tougher than that, right?

Except that in a few days he’d start to feel it, and he’d hate it, and he’d get mean and resentful, and somehow it would be my fault that he felt so shitty because he was only trying to get sober for me. And my life would become a complete living hell, or I’d simply avoid coming home. He’d never hit me like that before—once or twice, yeah, but never a full-out beating. It was possible that him snapping like that was a one time thing. It was also possible that it would only get worse from here.

Maybe this time will be different. Too bad I couldn’t make myself believe it. I pulled the bottles and beer out of the trash can, then walked to the shed behind the house and dumped them onto the workbench.

I wasn’t going to sabotage him. I wasn’t going to put it all back in the house or anything like that. But I was sure as hell gonna have it close at hand for the next time the shit hit the fan.

Chapter 24

My cell phone chimed with an incoming text message as I was carefully writing the date on the side of a jar. I stuck the jar in the fridge next to the five others already in there, stood and snagged my phone off the top of my dresser.

Good morning my Angel of Death. Time to go play!

—Derrel

As if in response to his text, I felt a little bump of hunger. Great, I thought with a mental sigh. Now my body knows when I’m going to be more active. It had been a busy week in the morgue, which meant that my stash was comfortably large right now. In fact I was damn close to running out of room in my little fridge. I’d realized this morning that I probably needed to become organized and write dates on the jars to keep track of which ones had been in there the longest. I’d recently managed to pry a small amount of info from Kang, such as the fact that three weeks seemed to be the longest a brain stayed “viable” in the fridge. Allowing any of them to spoil was a waste I couldn’t afford. I had a nice buffer right now, but there was no guarantee that anyone worth autopsying would die in the next couple of weeks.

Look at me, being all responsible and shit, I thought with a low laugh. Hell, if I exerted a little self-control and waited a bit longer between meals, I’d probably never have to worry about my stash again. Kang had also told me that brains could be frozen and still be worth eating after, but my little fridge didn’t have a freezer compartment. And there was no way I was risking putting brains in the kitchen freezer.

I thumbed in a reply to Derrel’s text. My kinda fun. Gimme addy, meet u there.

The hunger nudged at me again, and I hesitated, my hand on the door of the fridge. Yeah, I’d eaten just yesterday and I could surely hold out at least another day before things started to feel dull and lifeless. But I didn’t want any of it to go bad, I rationalized as I pulled a jar out, ignoring the little voice that told me that even the oldest brains in my stash had been in there less than a week. I was going out to pick up a body, which meant I’d be doing a bunch of lifting and carrying. I could start going longer between meals when I wasn’t working. Not today. I took one big swallow before I could change my mind, but even as I replaced the jar in the fridge an old but familiar burn of shame formed in my gut. So much for self-control.

Sighing, I replaced the jar and closed the fridge. I needed to stop being so hard on myself. It was one damn swallow—barely enough for me to feel any difference. And everything else was going all right. In fact I had enough stash that I could afford to try and track down Zeke and give him some. I’d been resisting the idea and finding ways to talk myself out of it, but no new brainless bodies had shown up this whole week. Which meant that either he found a legitimate source, or he was hungry and on the hunt right now.

And if I could somehow prevent another murder, I really didn’t have a choice. It wasn’t a long term solution to the problem of Zeke, but at least it might buy him some time until he could find a source of brains that didn’t involve getting them from living people.

And maybe if I was ever in the same boat, he’d do the same for me.

The address Derrel texted wasn’t so much an address as a general location. Despite the vagueness of his directions—Beaker St, 1 mile south of the hwy—the number of vehicles clustered in one spot let me know without a doubt where I needed to go.

The area was an odd mix of rural and subdivision, with clumps of cookie-cutter houses interspersed with large plots of land complete with cows and goats. Several of the larger plots looked as if they were being developed into more clusters of houses, and a retention pond had been dug on the west side of the road. A dirt berm about five feet high separated the road from the pond and I could see a knot of people in uniform gathered at the top of it. The street was already blocked by a zillion cars, police units, and crime scene vans—far more than had been on the scene for the murder of the pizza guy. This time there were no obvious places to park anywhere near the crime scene tape, and I ended up parking the van damn near a quarter mile down the road.

The road was uneven and full of potholes, and there was no way for me to know how far beyond the berm the body was. The stretcher would probably be more of a pain in the ass than it was worth. After a brief internal debate, I decided to leave the stretcher in the van for the time being and grabbed the body bag, gloves, and an extra sheet in case I was dealing with something messy. One way or another, Derrel and I were going to be carrying a body bag.

Let’s hope this victim is someone nice and small and light. A midget. Yeah, that would work. I hid a smile as I continued on foot toward the knot of people. Then again, I was probably strong enough to carry a two hundred pound body by myself if I had to. I bit back a laugh. Yeah, that would draw some attention—little, scrawny me, all of five foot three and a hundred five pounds soaking wet. SuperZombiePowers activate!

Too bad the superpowers came with insane hunger. Emphasis on the insane part.

My amusement faded, and I began to get a bad feeling as I clambered over the berm and took note of the number of people clustered right beyond the crime scene tape. I’d never met most of them, but I’d seen their faces in the news enough to know that one of the knots of people was the Sheriff and his immediate cronies—which meant that this was some sort of special crime scene: a multiple homicide, or a local celebrity . . . or a kid. My stomach clenched at the last option. There’d only been a few of them so far, but every time we had to do an autopsy on a kid, it damn near killed me. There’d been two infants who’d died right after being born, and a little girl with some sort of birth defect. But the worst had been a twelve-year-old who’d committed suicide. I’d gone into the cooler and cried like a baby after we were done with that one, and when I’d come back out—braced to be teased by Nick—I was weirdly humbled to see that his eyes were red as well. I guess some things fucked you up no matter what.