Therefore, why were Zeke and Peter Plescia and Adam Campbell murdered? I knew Zeke was a zombie, I was pretty sure Peter was one, and I didn’t really know anything about Adam, but I sure did have a big ol’ hunch. But let’s assume for the moment that he was. Zombies couldn’t eat other zombie brains, which meant it was doubtful that this was a zombie doing the head-chopping. Or rather, it wasn’t a zombie driven by hunger.

There was only one answer I could come up with.

Someone was hunting zombies.

Chapter 26

I drove home in a cold sweat, arguing with myself the whole way. I was jumping to conclusions. I didn’t know for sure that Peter Plescia and Adam Campbell were zombies. Maybe it’s a serial killer who happens to be going after bums. And pizza delivery guys. And technical writers.

Yeah, right. My hideous gut feeling was that my first theory was the right one.

The churning of my thoughts came to a screeching halt the second I walked into the house.

Horror sliced through me, but I was frozen in place, framed in the doorway as the distinct scent twined around me. I could see the broken glass in the hallway, the liquid and tapioca-like chunks in congealing puddles.

No. Oh, god no. I should have given him money. I should have put a lock on the fridge.

My pulse pounded loud behind my eyes and I could barely hear the rantings of my father. I heard my name. Heard some insults and cursing. They didn’t register. All I could focus on was the carefully hoarded stash now soaking into the already nasty carpet of the hallway.

I felt myself moving forward, every footstep feeling surreal and deliberate. My dad appeared in the hallway, face twisted into anger, one of my jars in his hand.

“You fuckin’ worthless bitch,” he yelled. “Where are you hiding it? I know you got booze! What the fuck is this shit? You tryin’ to poison me?” He flung the jar down to shatter and mingle with the rest.

“Those weren’t yours,” I said, and I shocked myself at how calm and mild I sounded. Inside I was shrieking.

For an instant he seemed shocked as well, but then he rallied. “Everythin’ in this house is mine!” he frothed, desperation and rage battling it out on his face. “If I wanna look for a drink in your room, I will! You took my beer out of the trash. You goddamn druggie.” Misery darkened his eyes for an instant. “Damn you. Gave her up for you. Then you go and turn out like this.” A shudder racked him, then his gaze snapped to me again and his mouth curved into a crooked sneer. “You always have booze, always have drugs. Well, I want a goddamn drink. So where the fuck are you hiding it now?”

I continued walking forward, eyes on him. My chest was clenched so tightly I wasn’t sure how I could possibly breathe, but somehow I kept moving. He’d given up his wife to protect me and then I’d turned out like shit. And whose fucking fault is that? I wanted to scream.

The fury in his face flickered for an instant, and he took a half step back. He flushed as soon as he did and sneered. “You’re on some new drugs, right? I was right to break it all.”

“Those were mine,” I said, still not raising my voice, but I could feel the air vibrate. “Mine. Not drugs.”

“You’re a goddamned liar! I know you’re always popping pills. I heard Clive talking!” he said, taking another step back. “I have every right to go through your shit. I’m your father and this is my house!”

I was in front of him with my hand entwined in his shirt. I didn’t even remember closing the distance between us. “I’m clean. I have a job. And Mom was mentally ill,” I said through clenched teeth. Yeah, he was so worried about me now. Why hadn’t he stopped me from dropping out of school, or hanging out with the shitbags I’d gotten drugs from? No, he simply wanted a damn drink, and he’d used a sudden burst of fatherly concern as an excuse to go through my shit. “I’m not a loser. But you sure as fuck are!”

He let out a gasping shriek, and I suddenly realized that I’d lifted him off the floor several inches and had him pinned against the wall. One-handed.

I let him drop and stepped back, heartbeat slamming. His eyes were wide, the red-streaked whites enormous in his sallow face. The smell of the brains swirled around me like a taunting cloud as we faced each other.

I spun and stormed into my bedroom. The fridge was on its side, door hanging open. There weren’t any jars left in the fridge. He’d done a thorough job of trashing everything in it. I should have found a way to lock it, I thought, then instantly dismissed it. He’d have found a way to get it open—taken a sledgehammer to it if necessary.

I barely noticed that he’d trashed the rest of my room as well. The mattress was half-off the bed, and the drawers of my dresser had been pulled out and dumped onto the floor. I grabbed a plastic shopping bag from the floor and started throwing clothes into it. Jeans, underwear, bras. I made sure that all of my coroner’s office shirts and cargo pants were in there. It took about two minutes to stuff everything I thought I might need into three sacks. That was almost as depressing as the loss of my brains.

I turned to leave and stopped dead at the sight of my dad in the doorway of my bedroom. We stood there looking at each other for what felt like forever, though it was probably only a few seconds.

“Where you goin’?” he finally asked, voice low and cracked.

“Anywhere but here,” I threw back at him. “You’re a worthless, drunk, mean piece of shit. I don’t need to be where you’re gonna slap on me, or tell me what a fuckup I am. You’ve always hated me because Mom went to jail, but that wasn’t my fucking fault! And y’know what? I don’t think I’m as much of a loser as you think. I got me a job, and I’m getting my shit together. I don’t need you.”

He visibly flinched at the harsh words, then silently drew back. He looked suddenly old, wrinkles caving into canyons on his face. I stormed past him and headed out, slamming the door behind me like an eight-year-old. The house shook and a shingle slid off the roof and landed with a plop in the overgrown grass.

I climbed into my car and gunned it out of there. I looked back in the rearview mirror, expecting to see my dad in the doorway, watching me go, like you’d see in one of those tearjerker Lifetime movies, but the door stayed closed.

I was crying by the time I reached the end of the driveway. By the time I hit the highway I totally hated myself.

Who was the loser here?

Chapter 27

Hunger prodded me, as if to taunt me about the loss of my brains. I let out a harsh laugh—yeah, I was brainless—then scrubbed at my face with the back of my hand and made myself take several deep breaths. Great, so I finally stood up to my dad. Told him all the things that I’d been wanting to tell him. Told him stuff I knew would hurt him. Now I felt like total shit, and I had no place to go.

I slowed down to the speed limit. The last thing I needed was to get pulled over. Plus, it wasn’t like I was in a hurry to get anywhere. Where the hell was I going, anyway? I could probably afford a hotel for one night, but more than that would eat my savings up pretty quickly. I needed to be thinking like a damn grownup. Budgets and shit like that.

I pulled into the parking lot of a SpeedE Mart and tugged my phone out of my purse. I started to punch in Randy’s number, but then I hesitated. I barely even thought about him anymore. I said he was my boyfriend, but when was the last time he called me? My finger hovered over the keypad as I chewed my lip. Okay, so we’d never had that sort of super-deep, madly in love kind of relationship where we called each other up and talked on the phone just to talk. Mostly we hung out together. It’s comfortable, I admitted to myself. But who else was I going to call? Marcus? I let out a bark of laughter. Yeah, right. Even if I had his number, there was no way I was going to ask him to get involved with my fucked up personal life. He’d already seen enough of that. Besides, he’d probably get on me again about getting away from my dad.

Well I was finally away from him. Go me. Now what the fuck was I supposed to do?

I sighed and finished punching in the number.

“Hey, Randy,” I said when he answered. “I’m fighting with my dad. Can I come by?”

He greeted me with his usual hug and kiss then went back to working on a Toyota Camry. I went on into the trailer, dropped my purse on the end of the couch, and stood there for a moment, looking around as if I was seeing it for the first time.

Randy’s trailer was far from nice, but it was a shitload better than my house. Still, he had dishes piled up by the sink and laundry in a pile in the hallway. It had always been like that, I realized, but this was the first time I’d really seen it. Maybe it was because I’d spent the last couple of months where half my job was cleaning—and I didn’t mind it. Or maybe it was that I’d finally had the chance to see that most normal people didn’t live like complete pigs. In the past several weeks I’d been inside dozens of houses. I’d been in million dollar homes and barely standing shacks, and I’d seen the difference between the places where the people took pride in themselves and their homes, and the shit dumps—like where I lived with my dad. And the price of the house didn’t mean a damn thing.

I was drying the last dish when Randy walked in. He gave me a funny look.

“What are you doing?”

I stacked the plate in the cabinet. “Doing your dishes. Duh.”

He gave a dry laugh. “Okay. Just never seen you do that before.”

“I figured I’d help out, y’know?”

“Um, okay. If you say so. Doesn’t fucking matter to me.”

I found myself scowling. Did anything matter to him? I used to love how laid-back he was. About the only times he ever seemed to get worked up was when another guy showed interest in me, and even that never lasted for long—only until he was sure I wasn’t going anywhere. Then he’d be back to being all calm and laid-back, comfortable, with everything the way he liked it.

I was beginning to see that “laid-back” was simply a nice way of saying “doesn’t give a shit.”