The back door was solid, but also had window panes in it. Silently praying that Kang didn’t have an alarm system, I pulled my jacket sleeve all the way over my hand and punched through the glass in one of the panes. Reaching through to unlock the door, I could feel dimly that the glass had sliced into my hand and arm. But it didn’t hurt. Dark, thick blood welled up sluggishly from the slices then stopped. I tucked my arm further up into my sleeve. I wasn’t about to put myself in any danger of dripping blood anywhere.
I wasn’t greeted with a shrieking siren when I pushed the door open, and I didn’t see a control pad anywhere, so at least that much was going all right. I made my way to the kitchen and went straight to the fridge. He had it well-stocked and it was obvious that he enjoyed cooking, but my zombie super-sense of smell didn’t twig to any stash of brains in there. Still, I opened every container and took a deep whiff to be sure. I checked the freezer next, heart sinking at the sight of about a dozen boxes of frozen pizza but no bags or containers or anything that could hold brains.
This didn’t make sense. Where the hell did he keep his stash? Fighting panic, I prowled through the house, searching for anything that could function as a cooler or a fridge. I thought I struck gold when I found the deep freeze out in the garage, but disappointment threatened to crush me again when I saw that it was full of more frozen dinners.
I stumbled back into the house. If I’d been able to cry I’d have been sobbing in frustration. This couldn’t be happening to me. He had to have brains somewhere. What if he kept them somewhere else? A storage unit or something like that? If that was the case, I was totally fucked. I couldn’t go outside again. I barely made it in here without giving in to the hunger and killing someone. I slowly sat down on the kitchen floor, staring dully at the high quality pots and pans hanging from the rack above the range. Maybe it would be for the best if the zombie killer got me, I thought dully. I didn’t want to be a murderer. Best to take me out before I killed anyone. It wouldn’t be hard to find me. Follow the brains. Hell, if I was hunting zombies, that’s what I’d do—find their food source.
Food.
I clambered back to my feet. Why the hell would someone who loved to cook have so many frozen dinners? I pulled the freezer open and yanked the top box off the stack, noting absently that it was for some sort of diet entrée. Moron. That should have been your first clue. I ripped the top of the box off, pulled the plastic open, inhaled. I hadn’t smelled it earlier because they were frozen and sealed in plastic, but now I knew I’d struck gold.
I didn’t bother heating it. I didn’t care if they were frozen, though I giggled stupidly as I shoved the frozen brains into my mouth. Brain freeze! Sensation returned in my mouth first, protesting the cold that I was forcing into my body. I was dimly aware that there was real food mixed in—rice and meat and flavoring. Properly heated it would probably be fantastic. I didn’t care about fantastic at the moment. The real food in it was almost annoying since it got in the way of the brains, but I continued to cram it into my mouth as fast as I could. Slowly the bliss began to spread through my body, and I found myself crying from the agonizing relief. I felt like one of those shirts that only show color in sunlight—and I was getting a tan now, baby.
I ate until I couldn’t possibly stuff in another bite and the hunger had curled into sated, sleepy comfort. The rest of me followed suit shortly after.
I experienced an instant of sheer panic when I woke and found myself on an unfamiliar kitchen floor. Memory clicked into place a few seconds later at the sight of several empty Lean Menu boxes scattered around me, and I allowed myself to relax a bit. It was still dark outside and the clock on the stove read 3:17. And I haven’t been beheaded by a zombie killer yet, I thought with a shaky smile. Things are looking better.
I crumpled the empty boxes into the trash, then found a large clean garbage bag. That’s probably why I couldn’t find the brains at the funeral home, I realized with chagrin as I dumped the “frozen dinners” from both freezers into the bag. I could barely smell them packaged and frozen like this. Oh, well. I sure as hell wasn’t going to go back to the funeral home and look for them. I had no idea if Kang’s body had been found yet, but considering that no cops had shown up here, I was going to keep operating on the theory that it hadn’t been. Guilt tightened my stomach at the thought of his body still lying in that hallway. But there was no way for me to report the murder without getting myself into trouble, I told myself. Certainly not last night when I was rotting and falling apart. And I couldn’t do it now. What excuse would I have for finding him at three in the morning?
I sent up a silent apology to Kang. He’d have understood. He’d have done the same thing, I thought with a sad smile. He was too much of a mercenary to put himself at risk.
Pausing at the back door, I grimaced at the broken glass. That looked suspicious as all hell. I sighed and swept my gaze around. I’d been a moron and gone all over the place with no gloves. Screw it. If by some chance the cops came here and found my prints, I’d just lie and say that Kang and I were friends and I’d been here before.
Working quickly, I swept up the glass and dumped it under the empty frozen dinner boxes in the trash. Next, I fashioned a repair for the back window out of duct tape and cardboard that would hopefully have any cops believing it was old damage. After all, what intruder would bother to patch the hole they’d made in glass? Plus, if they searched the house, they wouldn’t find any valuables missing.
I hefted the bag of brains, locked the back door at the knob and closed it behind me, took a deep breath to see if anyone was nearby. I blew it out a second later with a roll of my eyes. Zombie super-smell didn’t work anywhere near as well when I wasn’t starving. Yeah, well, I’ll gladly trade not-rotten for super-smell, I decided as I took off in a sprint for my car. I was fully tanked up now, and even with what was probably thirty pounds of frozen brain-dinners weighing me down, I ran like the wind. I figured it was better to look suspicious because I was running with a garbage bag than to look suspicious because I was walking with a garbage bag, because at least there’d be less time for anyone to notice me while I was running.
My car was still where I’d left it. A moment later I was driving away, grinning in relief and triumph.
Chapter 31
Making my getaway was the first step. But now I had a bag full of frozen brains, and this was south Louisiana. Even in late October it could get pretty warm during the day, and I sure as hell didn’t want to lose a stash of this magnitude.
I found an open gas station that sold cheap styrofoam coolers and bought way more ice than I probably needed. I pulled the plastic bags of brains out of the cardboard boxes so that I could fit them all into the cooler, and in short order I had the whole lot iced down. I figured I had maybe a day or so before they thawed.
Okay, Angel, you have a cooler full of stuff that is vital to your fucking survival. Which meant that I needed to make some hard decisions. Hard decisions weren’t my strength. Avoiding them was my usual method, but that would prove pretty disastrous here.
As far as I could tell, my current options were to a) magically find an affordable and non-skeevy apartment within the next day, b) take Randy up on his offer, c) go back and deal with my dad, or d) rent a storage unit and sleep in my car until I could figure out a better solution.
I returned to the same spot in the park where I’d waited before going to see Kang, leaned the seat back and closed my eyes. It wasn’t really that hard to make a decision, I realized. Sure, I wasn’t exactly thrilled to be planning out how to handle being homeless, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it was really the only option that left me with any self-respect. I wasn’t prepared to deal with my dad, I couldn’t afford an apartment, and living with Randy was . . . well, there was so much baggage attached to that it wasn’t even funny.
Did I even love him anymore? I frowned. I’d asked him if he loved me but hadn’t really thought about the other half of the equation.
I don’t think I do. A strange pang went through me. I’d called him my boyfriend for so many years that I suddenly found it hard to believe that he might not be anymore. So what was I supposed to do now? Break up with him? Or just let it drift away?
I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew I was jerking awake at the sound of my cell phone, and sun was shining right onto me. I squinted against the glare and fumbled for my phone. This spot that was so lovely and shady later in the afternoon was in blinding sun at—I glanced at my watch—nine A.M. Wow, I must have been wiped out. Maybe my body needed the rest to recover from being so rotted?
I finally dug my phone out of my purse, more than a little surprised to see Randy’s ID. Some of that synchronicity Dr. Leblanc was talking about.
“Hey, babe,” he said after I answered. “Where y’at? I got an idea that might help you out with your whole living situation.”
I scrubbed a hand over my face. No doubt he was going to ask me again to live with him. I knew I didn’t want to, but I’d been hoping to avoid actually telling him that. Confrontations weren’t really my thing. But why would he be calling me up to press the issue? Pursuing me wasn’t his thing either. “Um. I’m in Tucker Point. What’s up?”
“Thought of a way you could get your own place.” He sounded pleased with himself and a little amused, which put my defenses on alert. A tiny knot of tension unwound as I realized he wasn’t going to pressure me about moving in with him, though a silly little twinge of disappointment replaced it. Even though I’d admitted to myself that it was over between us, it would have been nice to be wanted like that.
I took a deep breath, pushed the stupid disappointment aside. “Randy, I swear to god, if this is some big joke about me giving blow jobs in the Pillar’s parking lot—”
“No! It’s not that. Meet me at Double Ds. I’ll tell ya what I got.”
I hesitated, then sighed. “Sure.” What else did I have to do? Maybe he had a line on a place I could rent that wasn’t complete shit.