White Trash Zombie Apocalypse

by Diana Rowland

  The extras clustered around Jane in a strange meet-and-greet zombie fest. At first I wondered why they were so enthusiastic, then I remembered she’d been instrumental in assuring that laid off factory workers were given the jobs. The unaffected grin on her face told me she was in utter heaven as she peered at makeup and laughed at outrageous shambling. I sure as hell hoped Pietro was dating her because he actually liked her and not for some ulterior purpose.

  The pace of activity increased as the crew members readied for filming. Makeup people touched up zombie rot and prosthetic gore, and other crew circulated through the crowd with water bottles and some of the white-wrapped bars. Apparently shambling was hard work, I thought with amusement.

  A sudden shiver of unease ran through me for no reason that I could name, even as an odd noise like soft moaning rippled through the crowd of extras. Mildly weirded out, I surreptitiously palmed a handful of brains from a baggie in my side pocket and got it into my mouth without anyone seeing. At least I hoped not.

  The something’s-wrong feeling increased as I scanned the area. Though filming hadn’t started, extras began to stagger or flail their arms or sway in place. Definitely not normal. I downed another handful of brains as I slipped through the crowd, again glad that I was skinny enough to do so with ease.

  However, I was less than thrilled by my lack of height since I couldn’t see a damn thing. I went still and lifted my head, scenting the air and not caring how strange it looked. Hell, I was surrounded by a bunch of people pretending to be undead. I was the normal one in this crowd.

  Yet my sniffing only confused me more. I caught hints of the distinctive zombie-rot odor, but it came from multiple sources. Not good.

  Another weird ripple of unease passed through me, once again accompanied by a bizarre shift in behavior of the extras. Unnerving groans came from all around me, and a fake zombie nearby staggered and sank to the ground, hands clawing at her face and throat. My frown deepened as the latex peeled away, revealing a square stick-on patch on the side of her neck surrounded by faintly grey skin that didn’t look made up. Baffled, I swung my gaze around, caught a glimpse of one of the makeup people holding a cardboard box in her hand with what looked like more of the strange patches in it along with some of the snack bars that had been handed out earlier.

  I steadied my gaze on the makeup artist, and my heart skipped a beat. It was the petite black woman who’d stolen my blood at the boat launch. A makeup artist who draws blood?

  Realization slammed in.

  The subjects. Philip was undercover with Saberton, and he’d said he needed to stay close to the subjects. I stared around in shock and no small amount of horror as bits and pieces began to fall into place. The extras were being used as test subjects by the Saberton Corporation.

  And now bits of the conversation with Dr. Nikas lit up.

  Fake brains are the holy grail.

  Dangerous to test them on zombies since it risks changing the parasite—like what ruined Philip.

  A way to make temporary zombies…

  Oh my god. The stick-on patches. The too-real looking grey skin. The snack bars. Some sort of research patch on a temporary zombie being fed fake brains? It made a horrible and sick sense. Saberton was temporarily zombifying the extras in order to test fake brains on them. No one would blink twice at zombie extras actually looking a little like zombies for a while.

  Righteous anger flared—not only at the Saberton associates but at Pietro’s team as well. Instead of putting a stop to it and trying to protect these people, they’d had Philip remain undercover so that he could steal whatever findings Saberton came up with and pass them over to Dr. Nikas to use in his own research. People didn’t matter.

  My gut tightened. Brenda Barnes, the cardiomyopathy victim, most likely died from this testing. The adhesive on her neck. It fit.

  An extra staggered in circles nearby, confusion in his eyes turning sharp and feral. Something was going wrong with the temporary zombies, causing bizarre actions and actual zombie-like behavior. Then I felt it. With no obvious cause, a weird, twitchy unease touched with hunger permeated me. Philip. Call it a zombie-mama’s intuition, but I had a bad feeling Philip was the source of the problem with the extras. He was somewhere in this crowd, going nuts and throwing off some sort of weird feeding frenzy pheromone. Damn.

  Turning, I pushed through the crowd of temp zombies around Jane, elbowed one sharply out of the way as it reached for her. “Jane! You need to get out of here.”

  Her brow furrowed as she looked around for some obvious source of danger. “What? Why?”

  Crap. She probably thought the extras were still simply being in character, giving her a little demo. Yeah, well she’s gonna get one hell of a demo if she doesn’t get out of here! But what the hell was I supposed to tell her?

  “Um, there’s a labor dispute, and I think there’s about to be a riot!” I blurted, then fought back a cringe. Holy crap, but that was without a doubt the dumbest thing I’d ever said. “Look, you need to get off the set,” I insisted.

  A small frown of doubt touched her mouth as she took in the increasingly erratic behavior of the extras. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

  I shot a look to her aide. “Get her out of here or…or I’ll tell Pietro you didn’t get her out of here!” Too late I realized the threat was pointless if he didn’t know how much power Pietro held.

  Fortunately he at least seemed to understand that the crowd was growing unruly for no discernible reason. He nodded and slipped an arm around Jane’s waist on the opposite side from her cane. “I’ve got her,” he told me, then looked to Jane. “Let’s get you to the car, Dr. Pennington.” He shepherded her toward the barricades, and I stayed long enough to make absolutely sure she was really getting out of the crowd before I turned back to the mess.

  Crew members and staff sought to regain order but were losing the battle as the bizarre rowdiness increased. Distantly I heard someone yell to get the cameras running. What the hell? I thought in outrage, though a sensible part of me totally understood that any director worth a shit would want to film a crowd of zombies going nuts. Besides, the director probably had no idea what the real deal was.

  I fought my way free from the thick of the crowd, continuing to scan and scent. My gaze passed over a black-haired woman, then went right back to her. She stood tall, scanning the crowd, and didn’t seem at all disturbed by the craziness around her.

  I shoved a stumbling extra out of my way as I got closer to her. “Heather?” I asked in disbelief as I peered at her, noting on closer inspection that she was wearing a dark wig over her blonde hair.

  Her attention rested on me, and a smile touched her mouth. “Hey, Angel,” she murmured, then went back to scanning the crowd. “I’m in with Mr. Ivanov. Can’t thank you enough.” She looked calm and oh-so-very ready for action.

  “That’s awesome,” I said. I figured her minimal disguise was to help keep her off the Saberton radar. “You’re looking for Philip too?” I mentally prayed for her to tell me they’d already found and extracted him, but she merely gave a sharp nod.

  “Yep. Me and Kyle—my trainer—were nearby when the call came in,” she told me. “Others are on their way.”

  Crap. Philip hadn’t been extracted yet, adding confirmation to my gut feeling that he was the source of the problem with the berserk extras.

  I felt his influence—a growing unnatural hunger accompanied by waves of unease, like insects crawling in my skull and sending twitches through my muscles. Unlike the poor extras who didn’t have a clue what they were experiencing, I didn’t have much trouble controlling the compulsion to feed, especially since I was fairly tanked. Yet along with the undesirable urge came something else—a strong sense of Philip, as though I knew where he was without knowing.

  I lifted my head and scented the air again. There, to my left. I slipped through the increasingly wild crowd, surrounded by shouts and cries that were far too realistic to be part of a movie.


  A fake zombie reached for me, confusion and anger warring it out on his makeup-covered features. I dodged the grab only to be forced to spin away from another who lunged toward me, lips pulled back from rotted teeth. For an instant I wondered if that was makeup or if the extra actually had poor oral hygiene. The latter, I decided as the few teeth in his head snapped together on nothing.

  Baring my own—far better—teeth, I shoved the fake zombie back and continued moving toward where my newfound intuitive radar told me Philip was. Another zombie let out a gurgling moan, and a heavier waft of rot hit me like a fist. Shit. This wasn’t one of the extras. This was Tim Bell of the broken nose, and he looked bad, eyes wild and desperate, and flesh shredding for real from his clawed hands. A young woman with only light zombie makeup stood beside him, eyes wide in confusion, but not acting erratically. Maybe not a test subject?

  Tim let out a rasping snarl, then grabbed the woman’s arm in a hard grip. She let out a shocked wail of pain, confusion shifting to a perfectly understandable fear. I could easily smell her brains, which meant it had to be driving Tim absolutely bonkers.

  “Heather!” I yelled, hoping the woman was within earshot, even as I kicked Tim’s knee as hard as I could. He staggered and let out a bellow, but to my relief he released the young woman. Snarling, he turned on me, a scary, dangerous expression coming over his face. In my peripheral vision I saw other extras grow more agitated as he focused his fury on me. Great. Goddamn pheromones all over the damn place.

  The young woman fled through the crowd, but in her place Heather appeared. Her sharp gaze took in the situation and no doubt noted that this particular zombie was waaaay different from the other misbehaving extras.

  “Whatcha got?” she asked calmly. Her eyes never left Tim as she pulled out a collapsible police baton and snapped it open.

  “He’s a real one,” I told her quickly. “Philip made him, and he’s all messed up.” Tim was obviously hungry, and though I had pockets full of thawing brains, I wasn’t about to waste them on this motherfucker unless absolutely necessary. “The other one Philip made might be somewhere in here too.” Crap. And Philip. Like a nest of pissed off snakes in my belly, I sensed him escalating out of control.

  “Oh, right,” she said, brandishing the baton. “We’re supposed to get those two as well as well as Philip.”

  I took a step back as she squared off against the very pissed-off Tim. “I need to find Philip,” I said, feeling the urgency of it rise with every passing second. “You got this one?”

  “Yep,” she replied with an adrenaline-charged smile. “I got this.”

  I gave her one last dubious look, then continued to weave through the seething crowd. More extras grabbed at me, but thankfully, they only seemed to have a touch of the full zombie strength and speed, so a few well-placed kicks and elbows got me past them. I shoved an extra dressed as a rotting cheerleader out of the way, then breathed a curse as I caught sight of Roland, the other Philip-made real zombie. He didn’t have any makeup on, and he didn’t need it. His head swiveled from side to side, lips curled back and teeth snapping together repeatedly. Saliva strung from the corner of his mouth and his eyes shone with madness.

  With a roar, he charged one of the camera crew who was trying vainly to restore some order in his little corner of the fiasco. I sucked in a breath. I knew there was no way I’d be able to intervene in time to save the crew member. Yet before Roland could close the distance, a stocky man wearing a shirt lettered “Security” lifted a gun and fired with a familiar whuuush sound.

  A tranq gun.

  A yellow tuft bloomed on Roland’s chest. He took two more steps and then crumpled onto his face. The man with the tranq gun lowered it, and I got another start of surprise. This was the asshole who’d stepped on my hand out at the boat launch. Turning, I quickly lost myself in the crowd. I didn’t want to get tranqed myself, and I was more than happy to leave him to deal with the neutralized Roland.

  My zombie-mama heart lurched, and I froze as an inhuman, snarling bellow cut through the crowd noise. I ducked past another cluster of people and around the corner of the building that housed the concession stand, just in time to see Philip take a Saberton security man by the head and smash it into the cinderblock wall.

  Well, shit, I thought. This is bad.

  Chapter 23

  As the body fell, Philip dropped into a crouch, tore the man’s skull apart, and began to stuff chunks of brain into his mouth. His entire body jerked every few seconds as though jolted by electricity, and his dead-grey face was plenty horrifying without any movie makeup. He screamed in anguish through a gory mouthful, spattering the pavement with blood and brain bits.

  Really, really bad. “Philip!” I yelled. “Philip, it’s me, Angel!”

  His hands curled like claws as his eyes snapped to mine, and to my dismay I saw nothing of Philip in them. Hell, he barely looked human. I felt my own lips pull back in an answering snarl. How the hell was I supposed to help him…or stop him?

  “Angel, I have your back,” said a calm male voice from behind me. “I’m Kyle Griffin, and Mr. Ivanov sent me.”

  Kyle—Heather’s trainer. “Gotcha,” I said without pulling my attention from Philip to glance back. I moved forward, then paused as Philip stood, breathing heavily, gore dripping from his hands and mouth. He tilted his head back and let out an eerie wail that slid through me like a blade of ice. The hair on my arms stood on end as the zombie extras echoed the cry in poor, though equally disturbing, imitation.

  If I’d had any doubt that the temp zombies were reacting to Philip, it was gone in that moment. Hopefully that meant if I could calm Philip, the rest of the commotion would settle down before anyone else got seriously hurt or worse. Yeah, no problem. I drew a deep breath and let it out, fixing my gaze on Philip as I shifted closer to him. “Easy there, big guy,” I murmured.

  Philip let out a animal cry of torment, arching his back and clenching his fists, and sending the extras into an unnerving wailing frenzy. A tremor wracked him, and he swung his head toward the source of the cries, a new fever lighting his eyes. Ah, hell, this is Not Good.

  Movement caught my eye. I flicked my gaze away from Philip barely long enough to see the asshole Saberton dude who’d tranqed Roland come around the corner of the building a few yards beyond Philip. His face set in determination, he gripped the tranq gun in his right hand.

  Crap. I snapped my focus back to Philip and closed half the distance between us, while somewhere on the sidelines the sensible part of me wondered what the hell I was doing. “Hey! Philip!” I called out, trusting that Kyle would take care of Saberton Dude while I distracted Philip from the masses.

  As though on cue, a tall and lanky black man strode from behind me toward Saberton Dude, everything in his attitude and posture announcing that he was going to take this company man out of action and there wasn’t a damn thing anyone could do to stop him. Kyle Dangerous As Fuck.

  “Stay back, asshole,” Saberton Dude ordered Kyle, raising the tranq gun. Kyle kept moving, apparently not giving a shit about the tranq gun. The man fired, and scored a hit in the shoulder, but Kyle didn’t even slow.

  Well, not for two steps anyway. Then he stopped and stared down at the dart in his shoulder with an expression of shock and disbelief. It sure looked like he’d expected to have some resistance to the tranq. Realization hit me. The new tranq. The same stuff that knocked me out the other night rather than simply paralyzing me. I couldn’t help wondering how the hell Kyle could have a resistance to normal tranqs, but now wasn’t the time to explore that little mystery.

  Kyle crumpled to the ground, still looking surprised and more than a little annoyed. A smirk of satisfaction crossed Saberton Dude’s face, but it quickly shifted to a wide-eyed, holy-crap face as Philip screamed and turned toward him, blood from the dead Saberton man still wet on his face. He swung the gun around to point at Philip, fired, and struck him low on his left side.

  Oh, hell no! My zombie-mama-bitch pro
tective instinct flared hot and bright. With a snarl I ran and dove at the asshole. Saberton Dude’s eyes widened as he caught sight of me, and he tried to back pedal into a position to fend off Philip and level the tranq gun in my direction, but I slammed into him while he was still off balance, all ninety-eight or so pounds of me driving him back and over an equipment rack to land heavily on top of him.

  Philip gave another tortured scream that slashed through my senses like a tumble of razor blades. Again, the extras picked it up and echoed it.

  With a harsh growl I ripped the gun out of Saberton Dude’s hand. “You don’t touch him!” I yelled.

  He seemed surprised by my strength. Maybe he hadn’t dealt with female zombies before? But he recovered quickly. “Get off me, you crazy bitch!”

  “I’m not crazy!” I snarled. Baring my teeth, I drew my hand back and punched him hard—backing it with plenty of zombie-strength.

  His jaw broke with an extremely satisfying crunch followed by his gurgle of pain. Grinning with far too much satisfaction, I pushed up off him, then stomped hard on his hand.

  “Okay, maybe a little crazy,” I muttered. “And payback is definitely a bitch.”

  I turned away as Heather ran up, baton in her right hand dripping with what sure as hell looked like blood. For a second I almost felt sorry for Tim.

  Nah, not even a second.

  Her eyes flicked around, taking it all in: the dead guy with his head smashed open, Saberton Dude down and moaning, Kyle down and very still, and Philip with a dart protruding from his side—most certainly not down—looking even more pissed off and crazy, and now moving toward the extras.

  “Here,” I said, and tossed her the tranq gun. “But don’t shoot Philip with it. It’ll make him worse.” I didn’t wait for a reply. I yanked a bag from my pocket and gulped down some more brains, then ran after Philip and literally shoved the half-full bag into his face. He gave a weird hissing howl, grabbed the bag in hands still crooked like claws. He sucked the contents down and let the empty bag fall, but to my dismay the animal-crazed look still filled his eyes. He lurched toward the extras again and let out another scream-cry.