Her eyes dropped to the card, and I could practically see her memorizing the number. “You mean now?” she said, glancing back up at me. “It’s after midnight.”
“Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure he’s a robot and doesn’t sleep,” I said, then shrugged. “Trust me, those fuckers owe me enough that I can wake a few people up.” I paused. “Unless you want to wait ’til morning and see what happens.”
“Shit, no.” She pulled a phone out of her pocket.
“Yeah.” I reached and put a hand on hers. “And maybe better to use mine. In case yours is, er, tapped or whatever.”
She blew out her breath. “You’re right. I’m not thinking all that clearly right now. I’m usually good in a tight situation, but this has me clamped down.”
“Pretty understandable.” I retrieved my phone from the depths of my purse, dialed. “I’m putting it on speakerphone, but I’ll talk to him first.”
The tinny sound of the ringer filled the car, and a few seconds later: “Archer here.” A hint of hoarse slur in his voice suggested he’d likely been asleep.
“Hey, Brian, it’s Angel,” I said. “Hate to bother you so late, but…remember that chick whose fingers you broke today? Well, she’s here with me, and she wants to, um, defect.”
“The…photographer?” he asked, voice still a bit muzzy. “I don’t understand.”
“Yeah, she works for Saberton and—”
“What?” he demanded, all hint of sleep gone.
Blinking, I quickly put pieces together. “Oh. You just thought she was a reporter or something, didn’t you.” I flicked a glance at her. She gave me a shrug in return, coupled with a pained grimace. I supposed I couldn’t blame her for lying to Brian. If she’d admitted to being some sort of industrial espionage person she probably wouldn’t have escaped at all, and certainly not with only a couple of broken fingers.
“Something like that, yes,” Brian replied, voice controlled once again.
“Okay, well, she wants to leave. Quit. But figures it’s only a matter of time before they find her and, well, y’know.”
I could practically hear Brian processing all of this. “All right, Angel,” he said with zero hint of the stress he was surely feeling. “What does she want?”
I handed the phone to Heather, though I kept it on speakerphone. “You’re up, chick.”
She bit her lip and took a deep breath. “Um, hello, Brian. It’s me again.”
“What do you want, Naomi?” Brian asked. “Or whatever your name is.”
Naomi, huh? I realized that Heather probably wasn’t her name either. Though truth be told, she looked more like a Naomi than a Heather.
She closed her eyes. “Shit,” she breathed. “This was a bad idea.”
“Perhaps,” Brian said, surprising me by the admission. “How about you tell me why you want to leave Saberton, and why you’re afraid they’ll come after you.”
A mix of emotions crawled across her face, tight lines of anger, a lip curl of disgust. “I can’t deal with it anymore—what they’re doing with your kind, with zombies.”
A beat of silence while Brian processed that she knew about the zombies, which meant that she had to be in fairly deep with Saberton. I doubted that the info about zombies being totally real was handed out along with Christmas bonuses. “And you’re interested in…sanctuary with us?” A faintly dubious note crept into his voice for the first time.
She opened her eyes, flicked her gaze toward me. I gave her an encouraging nod. “I…yes,” she said. “They’ll kill me or take me back if they catch me.” She paused. “I don’t want to go back.”
“All right. How long do you suppose you have before they catch up with you?”
“I was on my way out of town when Angel caught me.” Her eyes went to the dashboard clock. “Now, I don’t know. Not long.” The dread in her eyes deepened.
I knew if Brian didn’t agree to this, she was completely screwed. Nice move, Angel.
“I actually believed you were just paparazzi,” Brian commented. I heard a rustling that I figured was him pulling on clothing. “You played me pretty damn well today.”
“Yeah, I did.” She winced, but at the same time there was a teensy touch of triumph. Probably deservedly so, I decided, if she’d been able to put one over on him.
“I’ll meet you in twenty minutes at the corner of Cottonwood Street and Main,” he said, to my relief. “Come alone and unarmed,” he continued. “You will be searched. Thoroughly. No promises or guarantees. This is a meeting only, and I’ll make a decision after that.”
Her shoulders straightened, and as I watched, it was as if all the previous desperation fell away. She knew damn well she might be walking into her death, but that was a far cry from being on the run.
“Understood,” she said, voice stronger. “I’ll be there.” She paused as if wanting to say so much more, but all she said was, “Thank you.”
“Twenty minutes,” Brian repeated and hung up.
I let out a breath. “Hey, that sounds promising, right?” I said.
She continued to look down at the phone for a few more seconds before handing it back to me. “It does. More than I had before.”
“You’d better get going,” I told her. “It’ll take you close to twenty minutes to get to that location, and the roads are really bad tonight with the rain.” I dug through my purse and came up with a pen and the back of a receipt. “Here’s my number.” I scrawled it onto the paper and handed it to her. “Call me if you need anything, okay?”
She took it, and once again I watched her commit it to memory. “Thanks.” She gave me a small smile. “Maybe I’ll see you around sometime.”
“I hope so,” I said fervently. I glanced out the window. “Rain’s letting up. Lemme get out of here so you can hit the road. Good luck.” And with that I snatched up Brian’s card, ducked out of her car, shut the door, and raced to mine.
Her headlights came on as she started the Jeep. She didn’t move for several seconds, and I had to wonder if she was actually going to go meet with Brian, or if she’d head in the opposite direction. But then she pulled out and turned left onto the highway—heading toward Cottonwood and Main, I sure hoped.
I was half-tempted to follow, but decided that would be going too far. And might make Brian really wonder as well, like if maybe she was coercing me into vouching for her. Instead I behaved, took a right out of the parking lot, and headed toward home.
Chapter 8
The rain came down again in a light but steady fall. I cranked up the defroster and prayed that it actually worked. Even cold air helped keep the window fog at bay, and I hated driving at night without decent visibility.
My phone rang about five minutes later, the caller ID displaying a number I didn’t know. I grabbed it off the console and thumbed the answer button. “Hello?”
“It’s Heather. Someone’s tailing me,” she said, only the barest hint of stress in her voice. “Just want you to know…well, in case something bad happens. I’m going to call Brian.”
“Sonofabitch. You’re still headed south?” I couldn’t be all that far away.
“That’s right. Passing Picayune Street right now,” she told me.
I thought quickly as I drove, glad that my job required me to drive all over the damn place, which meant I knew a lot of back road shortcuts. “Okay,” I said as I hung a quick right, “take a left at Grover, and then another on Highway 1790. That’ll get you headed back toward me.”
“Got it,” she said, still shockingly cool considering her situation. “Let me call Brian, and then I’ll call you back.” With that she hung up, and I took the opportunity to hit Marcus on the speed dial and put it on speakerphone. While it rang I grabbed the cooler from behind my seat and snagged a smoothie from it. It didn’t take a genius to know it would be a good idea to be tanked up on brains in case shit got crazy.
As soon as I emptied that bottle, I grabbed the other one and downed it as well, muttering a few choice words
as the call to Marcus went to voicemail. I hit the “end call” button since I had no idea what to tell him that would make sense in a message.
The excess of brains in my system kicked in, and the world leaped into sharp focus around me, making it a lot easier to drive like a bat out of hell in the rainy dark. The phone rang as I took a sharp right turn onto Highway 1790. Heather’s number again, I noted. I suppressed the twinge of disappointment that it wasn’t Marcus. He was working tonight, so he was most likely out on a call and couldn’t answer his phone. I jabbed at the answer button, keeping it on speaker.
“Hey! Where are you?” I asked.
“Just turned onto 1790.” she told me, a teensy bit more stress evident in her voice, though I detected an edge of excitement too. This was her true personality. She probably knew damn well she might die tonight, but at least she was doing something. “There are two cars following me now. Brian said to get off the road with you and barricade behind the cars until he can get someone to come help us out.”
I thought quickly. “Okay, I’m coming toward you—almost to the bridge over Bayou Zaire. I’ll pull off the road right past that. D’ya know how many people are in the cars?”
“Only one in the first, I think,” she replied. “Don’t know about the second. Oh, and I have my shotgun, so we’re not going to be completely helpless.”
“I have a shitty attitude,” I offered. “That’s my best weapon.”
She chuckled. “Sounds good. Okay, I’m gonna try and get some distance between me and my buddies. See you in a couple.” And with that she hung up.
The rain picked up, forcing me to set my wipers to mega-speed, and I yelled a curse as the right wiper blade flew off into the night. Thank god for the heightened senses of being over-brained. I floored the accelerator, but my poor little Honda shuddered so badly above eighty that I had to back off a bit for fear of dropping the engine out of the damn thing. Still, I managed to catch a bit of air when I went over the Bayou Zaire bridge—noticing rather absently that the water was overflowing the banks—and came down with a cringe-inducing screech of undercarriage on pavement.
I slammed on the brakes and pulled off the road in an impressive shower of gravel, then angled the car so that we could, hopefully, hunker down behind it and still have a view of the road. I thought about turning the lights off but then realized the highway was so damn dark there was a good chance Heather wouldn’t see me at all if I did.
The only weapon I had—besides my general zombieness—was a baseball bat in my trunk that had been in there when I bought the stupid car. I’d never played any sort of sport that required it, but back before I was turned I’d pulled it out a time or two when assholes thought the scrawny blond chick was an easy target for harassment. I made quick work of digging it out from under the accumulation of crap back there, then shed my raincoat and stuffed it into the trunk. Yeah, staying dry was nice, but all those bright polka dots would make shooting me a bit too easy for the bad guys.
As I slammed the lid closed, I saw headlights coming up the highway, and about half a minute later Heather’s jeep skidded into an impressive bootlegger turn, sending up a spray of water as she pulled in right behind my car. She climbed out of the Jeep, shotgun tucked under one arm as she fumbled a Bluetooth headset into her ear.
“Sweet driving!” I said.
“Ha! That was one hundred percent accidental,” she confessed, eyes bright with adrenaline. “I about shit myself. Thought I was going to go into the bayou.” Her gaze shifted to the highway. Two sets of headlights weren’t far away. She glanced back to me and pointed to the headset. “I have Brian on the line.” Gratification briefly lit her face at the fact that he was willing to provide help even before meeting with her. I was sure she knew damn well that it changed nothing as far as her eventual fate, but it was still cool to see.
Or maybe Brian knows I’m involved and doesn’t want me to get too fucked up because of her troubles. That was probably far more likely.
I breathed deeply, taking in everything with my brain-fueled heightened awareness. The tang of adrenaline and nerves from Heather, the fetid odors of the swamp and bayou, the stench of rubber on pavement and the seared-metal aroma of the cooling engines. Every drop of rain stood out in crisp detail. The roar of the approaching cars twined around me like harsh music. God almighty, I was ready for some action.
Heather’s mouth pursed as she looked toward the Saberton vehicles. “I’m with Angel about fifty yards south of the Bayou Zaire bridge,” she said, and I fumbled mentally in confusion for a few seconds before realizing she was talking to Brian on her headset. “No time to chat, sweetie,” she continued. “I’ll leave the line open.”
I coughed to cover a laugh at the “sweetie.” The hard-faced Brian Archer didn’t strike me as anyone’s “sweetie.” I was liking this chick more and more.
My grip on the bat tightened as I peered through the rain at the two cars. They came to a stop about thirty yards away on the opposite side of the road.
“One in the front car and two in the other,” I told her. “Can’t tell yet if human or zombie, though.”
She slicked her wet hair back from her face with her splinted hand as we crouched behind the cover of the two cars. “I’d bank on at least one of them falling into the not-human category.”
“Well, this will be fun,” I said, eyes on the men exiting the cars. Did they have any idea who I was and that I was a zombie?
No time to ponder that now. I dragged my attention back to the current fiasco. The shotgun under her arm looked like a twelve gauge. “What ammo you got for that?” I asked. “Something better than birdshot, I hope.”
Heather put the shotgun to her shoulder. “I have double-aught buckshot in here. Should do some damage,” she said. “Too bad someone broke my fucking hand,” she added in a loud voice as if to be absolutely sure that Brian heard through the open line, forcing me to mask another laugh. But there was no undercurrent of malice or condemnation in her voice. Instead her eyes were bright with an odd mix of humor and eager readiness. I sure hoped she survived this. This was someone who’d probably be fun as hell to go out drinking with. Not that I drank anymore, but, y’know.
The headlights of the other two cars went abruptly dark, and Heather muttered a curse. Our own headlights were angled away, and the steady rain added to the poor visibility.
But my zombie-vision picked up where normal vision left off. “Two coming up on our right,” I told her, voice low. “One’s crossing the highway to the left. Looks like he’s gonna try to flank us.” I glanced toward the bayou. “Thank god the water’s high. That’ll make it tougher for him.”
“I’ll take whatever advantage we can get at this point,” she muttered.
“The two coming at us have guns,” I told her, hefting the bat. “You put a couple of shots their way, and then I’ll do my part.”
The words were barely out of my mouth when she fired the shotgun, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. Recovering after a stunned second, I leaped up from the crouch and vaulted over the hood of the car. As soon as my feet touched the ground, I broke into a dead run toward the oncoming men. The heavy schick-schick of Heather pumping the shotgun preceded another blast. A thrill of murderous satisfaction ran through me as one of the men gave a sharp cry of pain and clutched at his right leg.
And then I was right on top of them. I swung hard at the injured one and managed to whack him solidly in the shoulder. Bones crunched and flesh yielded beneath my zombie-strength assault. He screamed and went down hard, while I did my best to nail the other shooter on the backswing.
The second guy wasn’t a zombie either, but he was still fast enough to avoid the arc of my bat and get a shot off. Hot fire seared through my gut, with the sharp report of the gun echoing like an afterthought. “Goddammit!” I yelled as I staggered back a step, then I bared my teeth and brought the bat down hard on his arm. His gun clattered to the pavement as he gave a strangled cry of pain. I delivered a devastating
blow to his knee, and he let out a harsh scream as he went down.
The blast of the shotgun ripped through the air again, and a second later I heard Heather yell, “Zombie!” I spun in time to see her fire again. The man—zombie—loping toward her staggered a bit at the second blast, but in the next breath was on her and slammed her to the ground beneath him, her head thumping hard on the asphalt.
“Shit!” I broke into a run, even as the zombie wrapped his hands in Heather’s shirt and hauled her upright. She tried hard to swing a punch at him, but it was clear she was dazed from the head-thump.
I poured on the speed to get back to her. I didn’t have training in anything resembling hand to hand fighting, but I’d been in enough scraps and street fights to know that the will to win could turn the tide. I still had the bat in my right hand, and I made a charging swing to clock him in the back right across the kidneys.
He staggered and let out a roar of pain. It didn’t drop him, as I’d hoped it would, but he lost his grip on Heather. She stumbled back as he turned on me, his face twisted with fury and hands clenched into fists.
“Batter up, motherfucker!” I cried out as I swung again, this time at his head. Unfortunately, even injured he still had a fair amount of speed. He moved inside my swing, grabbed my arm and took me down to the ground in a foot-sweep thing that probably would’ve been cool as hell if I hadn’t been on the receiving end of it. Twisting frantically, I slammed my booted foot into the side of his knee, which put him off-balance enough that when I swung the bat at his other knee the blow sent him to the ground.
He had some serious fight skills and was on me in a heartbeat, but I had a black belt in dirty-fighting-bitch. Heather had scored a direct hit on him with the shotgun, and holes peppered his torso. Snarling, I forced my hand into a wound in his midsection, widening the hole more, then curled my fingers around anything I could and yanked hard.
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