My Life as a White Trash Zombie

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.

Hungry.

I scanned frantically around the back of the van. Crap was everywhere—my purse, extra body bags, boxes of latex gloves, sheets and plastic for really messy bodies. . . . I finally saw my lunchbox, lying open and empty. Oh, shit.

The zombie gave the body bag another hard yank, and I let out a shriek as the stretcher and I slid forward. Then I saw what the movement had revealed—a plastic bottle wedged in the corner.

Releasing my death grip on the stretcher, I snatched it up. “Here! You can have this!”

The zombie merely snarled and tugged again, nearly dislodging me. My pulse slammed with barely controlled panic. One more tug and we’d all be out on the pavement and, as hurt as I was, I’d have no chance of fighting it off. I clamped my teeth around the cap of the bottle and twisted, performing the fastest one-handed bottle-opening I could manage.

I spat the cap out and I thrust the bottle forward again. “Take this!” I tried to wave it under the creature’s nose but only managed to spill some of it onto the body bag.

It worked anyway. The zombie froze, nose twitching. Then its good eye locked onto the bottle. It let out a low growl, rotting lips pulling back from even nastier teeth.

“Take it!” I pleaded, still holding the bottle out. “Just don’t take the body. Please. I’ll lose my job!” Not that the zombie cared, I knew. It looked like it was too far gone right now to listen to any sort of reason.

The zombie snatched the bottle from my hand and tipped it back, draining the contents in a matter of seconds. Shuddering, it dropped the empty bottle, then crouched again and wrapped its arms around its legs. I watched, hope and terror doing the tango in my gut.

After about half a minute he lifted his head. Most of the rot had receded, and already I could tell he didn’t smell anywhere near as bad. And now I knew who he was. Zeke Lyons, and he worked at Billings Funeral Home.

No. Used to work there. He’d been fired about two weeks ago when he was caught taking jewelry off the corpses—which explained why he was in his current state. I tasted bile on the back of my tongue. Two weeks without brains . . . and he was a rotted mess.

“More,” he rasped.

I shook my head, frantic. “No. I can’t give you any more.” My voice sounded shrill and thin to my ears, and I knew I looked and smelled terrified. I’d stopped him for the moment, but I’d also made him stronger. I could only hope he was coherent enough to listen to reason now. “I can give you more tomorrow, okay?” I said, nearly stammering. “Come by the morgue tomorrow.”

He flexed his hands, looking down at them. They were whole again. He looked almost normal. Disheveled and dirty, but now he simply looked like a bum, not the walking dead. “I’m hungry now,” he said in a snarl, then his gaze snapped to me, both eyes whole and clear. And blue. He probably wasn’t bad looking at all when he was whole.

“What are you?” I had to force the question out. I didn’t want to hear the answer. I didn’t want to know it was true.

His eyes narrowed. “Zombie,” he said, then gave a dry laugh that sounded like tearing paper. “You’re new.”

I gave him a shaky nod, nausea roiling in my gut. I was still lying on top of the stretcher, clinging tightly with the one hand. I didn’t trust him to not snatch for the bag again.

“I remember when I was new.” His voice was so low I could barely hear him. “Starving all the time. Like this.” Desperation glittered in his eyes. “You won’t share.”

“I will! I swear!” Panic surged as he reached for the bag again. “But not if you take the body.” I was babbling, struggling to get the words out to make him understand. “If I lose my job I won’t be able to help you.” And I’d be screwed too, but I knew he didn’t care about that.

A flicker of light in the distance seized my attention. “There’s a car coming,” I told him. “Please, go. Run! Come to the morgue and I swear, I’ll give you more.” I was crying now. “Please.” I didn’t know what else to say.

He jerked his head around, lip curling at the sight of headlights far down the highway. He let out a low hiss, and I could see the two survival instincts battling within him—his current, desperate need versus the fear of discovery.

Fear won, and a second later he spun and loped off into the swamp.

I wanted to sag in relief and curl up into a ball, but I wasn’t in the clear yet. I was a mess and I needed to do something about it. Being out of work because I was injured would be as bad as losing my job.

I pushed myself up to my knees and began frantically shoving body bags and other crap aside. My broken arm screamed in pain even through the dulling of my senses, but my panic was a lot louder. There’d been two bottles in the lunchbox. The other one had to be somewhere around here.

The approaching vehicle was close enough for me to hear the engine by the time I finally spied the second bottle wedged behind the driver’s seat. I grabbed it and repeated the trick of opening it with my teeth, chugged it back as fast as I could, shaking it to get the thick chunks at the bottom.

I sagged against the wall of the van and closed my eyes. A lovely warmth spread through me, coupled with the eerie sensation of my bones sliding back into place and the skin of my arm and forehead knitting back together. Then the sensation faded and a jab of hunger spiked through me.

I opened my eyes and let out a low sigh of relief. The bone wasn’t sticking out of my arm anymore, and I could sense that it was pretty much back together though not fully healed by a long stretch. And when I lifted my hand to my forehead, I could feel my skull through the break in the skin, but at least now it was only a gap of a few centimeters instead of several inches. I’d probably been hurt worse than I’d realized. One bottle wasn’t enough to deal with it all.

Might be better this way, I tried to convince myself. It would be pretty damn weird to be covered in blood if there wasn’t a scratch on me. I simply had to hope to god that I wouldn’t be forced into taking time off for medical leave. If I still had a job at all.

My stomach twisted again as I crawled over the body bag toward the back door. I almost laughed as the scent of the body inside it hit me, and I pushed back the brief urge to rip open the bag and take care of the deep