But then my dad wasn’t even home. That made hiding the fact that I’d been shot a whole lot easier, but annoyed me anyway because, damn it, why the hell wasn’t he home? All too easy answer: he was out drinking.

I shoved my wet clothes into the washing machine, dumped a bunch of other laundry in on top of them, and got the load started.

With that taken care of, I took a quick shower to get the mud, blood and other grime off, then tugged on a t-shirt and fresh undies and climbed into bed. But once there, I lay awake, listening to the washing machine churn as though it mimicked the agitation of my own thoughts. Six months ago I’d been kidnapped for zombie research and learned that some people didn’t have a whole lot of respect for zombies. Based on that experience, I thought I knew how high the stakes were for my kind.

But apparently they were a shitload higher, enough so that Saberton was willing to hunt Heather down to either kill or capture her, simply because she wanted to leave them. At least I sure hoped that was the real story. As much as I already liked her, I knew there was always a chance that this whole thing was a ploy to infiltrate Pietro’s organization.

The washing machine finished its cycle with a clunk. Silence ticked through the house, but about a minute later I heard the front door open and shut quietly. Paranoia gripped me. What if it wasn’t my dad? What if the Saberton people knew where I lived and were coming after me?

My heart thudded while I ran through escape scenarios in my head. Out the window would be easiest, then run like hell. No, grab a bottle of brains first…except that my fridge is locked, and—

A muffled curse that was clearly my dad’s voice effectively banished my paranoia. Relieved on a number of levels, I listened to his low muttering as he rummaged through the kitchen cabinets, then a few minutes later I heard him go down the hall and open the washing machine. More muttering, then the sound of him transferring my laundry to the dryer, followed by the thumps and creaks of my dad putting a load into the washer and starting both machines.

Mystified about why he felt the need to run a load in the middle of the night, I remained silent, listening hard, but he did nothing more than go to his own room and shut the door.

I finally fell asleep, lulled by the comfortably familiar vibration of the ancient washer and dryer despite the worries that crowded in my head.

* * *

“You have a maggot on your sleeve,” Derrel murmured.

Sighing, I flicked it off, watched it sail through the air to land on the wood-paneled wall and slide down to the dull-grey carpet.

My day had begun with a pickup from the hospital, then a hospice death which we only worked because the family was arguing about which funeral home to use. The scene we were on now would normally have been a somewhat ordinary suicide of a terminally ill man—advanced pancreatic cancer. He’d written a careful email to his family explaining his decision and expressing his love for them and detailing his wishes for disposition of his body and funeral arrangements. But in a cruel twist of fate, he’d mistyped the email address, and the family never received it. He wasn’t discovered until two weeks after he overdosed on pain meds, by which time he was a yucky, maggot-covered mess.

Which made it impossible to fulfill his desire to have his body donated to science. Poor dude. Couldn’t even have this fucked up illness be good for something.

I brought him back to the morgue and got him logged in and stored in the cooler. Dr. Leblanc informed me that he had court and wasn’t going to perform any autopsies until the next day, which meant I had nothing to do except wait for another call.

The last thing I wanted was time to reflect and think or anything like that. I didn’t want to muse on the incidents of the previous night, or contemplate how right or wrong it was for me to kill and eat that Saberton man. I needed to stay busy and, annoyingly, not enough people were dying to keep me so.

Restless, I went up to the front office and scored points with Rebecca, the secretary, by helping her with filing. That only killed about two hours, and so I went back to the morgue and organized the supply cabinet, made notes of what needed to be ordered and did, essentially, every minor and/or crap job that tended to be put off or avoided.

The grime on the baseboards of the cutting room had been bugging me for a while, and I was down on my knees scrubbing them when I heard the cooler door open.

Frowning, I straightened. “Nick?” I called. “Is that you?” I didn’t think he was scheduled to work today, but who else would be going into the cooler?

After a few seconds of no answer, I stood and moved through the cutting room to the hallway. The cooler door stood open, and when I stepped into the doorway, I saw Allen, hands gloved, standing over a body bag on one of the stretchers. The bag was unzipped, and he appeared to be searching through it.

A stab of apprehension went through me. This was the body I’d picked up from the hospital, and it hadn’t been autopsied yet. But what if someone at one of the funeral homes had mentioned that brains were missing from the bags of organs? I’d never thought it likely that any non-zombie would notice whether brains were missing or not. After all, no normal human in their right mind would look through the bag of innards to verify that everything was there.

“Allen?”

He glanced over at me, eyes flicking to the rag and scrubber in my gloved hands. “Dr. Leblanc has you doing something useful?”

I bristled, but did my best to hold onto my outward cool. Allen didn’t like me, and I didn’t like him, and that was that. “No, I decided to do it on my own,” I said. “The baseboards have been bugging me.”

He gave a snort of what might have been either contempt or disbelief. “Good that you’re doing it. No one else would,” he said with the clear implication that no one else would lower themselves to crawl around the cutting room floor. He continued to dig through the bag and around the body. “Saves us from having to call in a cleaning crew,” he added.

“Yeah, well, I’m all-around useful,” I said, biting back a more inappropriate response.

“Job security for now, I suppose.” He closed the bag and turned to the one behind him, the maggoty and somewhat decomposed suicide from earlier today. I watched, on edge. The autopsied one—the movie extra from yesterday, whose brain I’d already harvested—was on the shelf to his right.

I couldn’t stand it anymore. “What are you doing?” I asked, frowning.

“When things don’t end up where they’re supposed to be, it’s my job to make sure it’s not a recurring problem.” He unzipped the bag and began to check the dead guy’s hands and wrists, ignoring the maggots. “Yesterday there was an issue over a wedding ring that wasn’t included in the property of a decedent and had somehow been left loose in the body bag. The family was not amused.”

My frown deepened. “I always inventory the property.” Hell, it had been my meticulous property inventory procedure that helped me figure out that Dr. Charish was up to some hinky shit late last year.

“This was on Jerry’s shift,” Allen explained, checking the neck and ears of the maggot-covered body. “Haven’t caught you yet with any faults in that area.” There was no mistaking the emphasis on yet.

“And you won’t,” I replied stubbornly. “I have a system I use to make sure I catch all the valuables.”

Allen looked over at me, lips pressed into a thin line. “I’m not asking you for your system or your proclamation of perfection.” He returned his attention to the bag, continuing to check the decomposing body for valuables that I’d already removed. “I’ll be doing spot checks, and if everything is where it’s supposed to be, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“Right,” I said. “I got nothing to worry about.” Probably good that he didn’t ask me what my system was, since it was a slightly altered version of the children’s song “Head, shoulders, knees and toes” that I hummed to myself while going over bodies.

My heart continued to thump as I watched him search the bag. I knew that if I continued to stand here it would look weird and suspicious. And what if he decided he wanted to check the non-existent wound on my hand? I still had a gauze bandage over the spot, but there was nothing but smooth skin beneath it. I forced myself to casually turn around and return to the cutting room. My palms were sweating within the gloves, but I didn’t change them, simply returned to scrubbing the baseboards, and didn’t dare to relax until I finally heard the cooler door close and Allen’s footsteps heading toward the main building.

He hadn’t found anything out of place, at least I assumed not. He wasn’t the sort to put off chewing me out if he caught me screwing up. But what the hell would I say if he ever did find out I was stealing brains from the bags? It wouldn’t end well. I knew that in my zombified bones. And I had a sick feeling it was only a matter of time before Allen or someone else discovered my horrific larceny.

I gave the sponge a savage twist, wringing it nearly dry, and resumed my scrubbing. If only my unease and worry could be cleaned away as easily as the grime.

Chapter 10

The minute my shift ended I got the hell out of there. I wasn’t in an “I need pie” mood, and I sure as hell didn’t want to go home yet, so instead I drove somewhat aimlessly for about an hour and scowled at people who didn’t know how to drive in the rain. I thought about trying to call Marcus again, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell him about Allen and his bullshit insinuations that I was a fuckup waiting to happen. Not to mention my fears that Allen would find out about the missing brains, and I’d not only get fired but be without my food source. Marcus would get mad on my behalf—which was all right, but then he’d start giving me suggestions of how to handle it and what to do. And I didn’t want any of that. Sometimes all a person needed was to vent and bitch, without having to endure advice which would only serve to drive home the fact that it was a horrible situation. I already knew what I was “supposed” to do. Keep my nose clean. Cover my tracks. Don’t give Allen any reason to write me up. Be positive and all that crap.