AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He winced. “Yeah, well, that was fucked up. Everything that coulda gone wrong did.”
I shook my head. “No, the first thing that went wrong is that I believed something that was too good to be true.”
He let out an exaggerated breath. “Shit happens, but this—”
“No, Randy!” I interrupted. “Shit doesn’t just happen . Someone has to make a boneheaded decision first. And y’know what? I happen to like my job.”
Anger darkened his eyes. “Look, Angel, I’ve put up with a lot of your fucked up, neurotic shit over the years. I’ve given you crash space whenever you’ve wanted it, and listened to you whine about how your folks were so awful. You’re being pretty selfish here.”
“Selfish?” The word exploded from me. I was aware that people near us had turned to look, but I didn’t care. “Jesus, Randy, if I was caught, I’d go to jail! Did you even think about that?”
“Don’t give me that holier-than-thou crap,” he said, sneering. “Clive says you haven’t bought anything from him in almost two months. And there’s no way you went cold turkey and quit using. So I know you’ve been skimming those pills from work. What’s the deal? You’re already selling ’em on your own? You don’t want to give me a cut after everything I’ve fucking done for you?”
Fury seared through me, white and hot. “Don’t you ever fucking accuse me of that,” I said, voice low, intense. “I’ve never stolen anything from work, especially not drugs. I’m not using any more. I’m trying to turn my life around. Maybe you don’t understand that, but that’s not my problem, and I’m not going to let you drag me down anymore.”
Randy let out a harsh bark of laughter. “Me, drag you down? That’s rich. Man, you’ve become one hell of an arrogant little bitch. Oh yeah, you’re such a model of goddamn virtue. Is that why you went off and fucked that guy you met at Pillars the last time we were there? How much didja make off him?”
I stared at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”
His eyes narrowed. “When you left with that dickwad who’d been buying you drinks all night. I went out to see what the fuck was going on, and your drunk ass was all over him. You told me you wanted a good hard ride. And then the two of you peeled out in his Porsche.”
Bitter flashes of memory clicked into place. “I don’t remember much from that night . . . but I didn’t fuck him.”
He snorted. “Yeah, sure.”
I shook my head, feeling almost dizzy for an instant. “No,” I said, more memories suddenly crowding in. I hadn’t tried to walk home from the bar. “No, I was talking about his car. I’d never ridden in a Porsche before.” I dragged my eyes up to him. “You’re the one who’d been ignoring me all night for that other twit. He bought me a couple of drinks.” I stared at him as shock and betrayal surged through me. “I was falling down drunk, and you let me go off with him? Did you know him? Did I? It didn’t occur to you to watch out for me?”>I made a quick detour to a McDonalds and did a quick washing up in their bathroom. I changed clothes as well—into cargo pants and long-sleeved shirt, simply because those were the first things I grabbed out of the bags containing my worldly possessions. There was no way to wash my hair, so I simply brushed it back as neat as I could manage. If this thing with Randy didn’t pan out into a place to live, my next move was going to be to join a gym. Not because I had any desire to get fit—which didn’t really matter anymore now that I was a zombie—but for less than a hundred bucks a month I’d have a place to shower and change clothes every day. I’d still have to sleep in my car, though. And I’d have to buy a freezer and keep my brains in a storage unit.
Okay, so what if I’m too broke to live on my own, I thought fiercely as I pulled into the parking lot of the diner. It’ll suck, but I’ll get through it. Still, it would definitely make my day if Randy could find me a place to sleep other than my car.
After making sure the cooler was tightly closed in the trunk, I headed inside, inhaling deeply of the scent of waffles and eggs and coffee. As tanked up on brains as I was, breakfast was going to taste fantastic.
Randy was in the booth farthest from the door, seated so that he could see anyone coming in. I slid onto the cracked vinyl seat across from him and gave the waitress a smile as she stepped up.
“Coffee, orange juice, three pancakes, two eggs over easy, bacon, and grits,” I rattled off, hiding a grin at the memory of Ed ordering a similarly massive amount of food.
“Damn, Angel, when did you last eat?” Randy asked with a laugh as the waitress scribbled down the order and hurried away. “There’s no way you’ll eat all that.”
I shrugged. “I’m hungry.” The hunger for real and normal food felt insanely tame compared to the clawing of the Hunger. And when I was Hungry, it was tough to eat real food since I could barely taste anything. Food only tasted decent for about one day out of three unless I had an unlimited supply of brains. I wasn’t about to waste this opportunity to actually enjoy it. And this place had good, southern, comfort food, dripping with butter and calories—worth gorging on. Why the hell couldn’t I crave something less weird than brains? Chocolate zombie, that would be cool. Must have chocolate . . . .
I turned the giggle into a cough, then looked over at Randy. “Okay, what gives?” I asked.
He started to speak and then paused as the waitress returned and poured my coffee. I added milk and sugar, cupped the mug in both hands and sipped. Coffee zombie would make more sense. I looked at him expectantly.
“Damn, you look like you’ve never had coffee before.”
I smiled slightly. “I’ve decided to appreciate the good things in life.” Especially since I wasn’t always able to experience them. Besides, I needed to make sure I continued to eat real food to keep me from needing the brains quite so often, right? Kang’s warning about burning up the brains came back to me, and my throat tightened briefly at the reminder of him. Kang and I hadn’t been the best of friends or anything like that, but I felt as if I’d lost a companion in arms or something equally dorky.
I was on my own now with this whole zombie thing. Flying solo. Fuck it. I could do this.
Randy gave a shrug. “So I was talking with Clive and telling him about your job. And some of the stuff you told me.”
I looked at him blankly. “What stuff? About the bodies?”
He leaned forward and a chill of foreboding came over me. “No, I mean what you were telling me about,” he lowered his voice and flicked a glance around, “the pills.”
I kept my hands wrapped around the mug as an uncomfortable knot began to form in my stomach. “Yeah?” I couldn’t make myself say anything else. I knew where he was going with this.
“Yeah. He said that—” He abruptly paused and straightened as the waitress returned and slid a plate of pancakes and a bowl of grits onto the table in front of me.
