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Marcus grinned. “It’s true. Everyone knows that nothing bothers you on a scene.”
“But that’s not true!” I blurted in surprise. I could feel my face heating, and I quickly jabbed a fork at my pie in an effort to cover my sudden embarrassment. I kinda liked being thought of as hardcore, but I wasn’t keen on being known as some sort of heartless robot. “Stuff bothers me,” I muttered.
“Easy, Angel,” Marcus said, touching the back of my hand briefly. “No one’s implying you’re cold or made of stone. You’re as human as any of us.” He offered me a slight smile. “Please trust me when I say it’s a good thing when cops and paramedics say that you’re tough.”
“I don’t feel tough,” I said, unable to completely keep the sour note from my voice.
“Yeah, well, you fake it well,” Ed told me, then smiled at the waitress as she poured his coffee. “Thanks, ma’am.”
“So what are you two up to today?” Yes, I wanted to change the subject.
“Deer season opens this weekend,” Marcus replied. “We’re going to go check out the property where we usually hunt and make sure everything’s in order.”
The pie was good, but I had the faintest hint that I was missing something in the flavor. Then I realized. A day without brains is like a day without sunshine. My last brains had been early yesterday.>But Kang merely gave a slow nod and shoved his hair out of his eyes, grimacing. “It definitely sounds like a possibility.” Then he let out a string of curses that made my eyebrows go up. “Sorry,” he said, “but shit like that makes it tough on all of us.”
I hesitated. “You know about the wreck I had, right?” He nodded, which didn’t surprise me. Everyone knew about the damn wreck. “Well, it was caused by Zeke Lyons, who used to work at—”
“Billings,” he said with a nod. “I know him. Stupid stubborn ass.” His eyes narrowed in anger. “He was trying to get the body in your van?”
I nodded. “And possibly more, I think. I mean, he didn’t know I was a zombie until after he’d caused the wreck.” Then I snorted. “Hell, I didn’t even know I was a zombie until then. That was the first time I’d ever seen another one.” I fought back a shiver at the memory—the sick horror that I might become like that some day. Rotted. Desperate.
“I ended up giving him some of the stash I had with me,” I went on, swallowing back the lingering unease. “He came by the morgue, and I gave him more, but,” I grimaced, “he was a bit of a dick, and he hasn’t been back since.”
“You don’t need to fucking give your stash away, Angel,” he told me. “Zeke knows he can buy from me.”
“With what? He doesn’t have a job anymore, remember?”
Kang’s lip curled. “He should have thought of that before he screwed up the job he had.” He shrugged. “But even so, I’d be willing to work something out with him.”
I spread my hands on the table, gave a slight nod. “That’s cool. Zeke said he was set up, that he didn’t steal anything.” Were you the one who cost him his job? I thought. I didn’t want to come out and say it, though. I wasn’t quite ready to piss Kang off.
He snorted. “Of course. The guilty man is never really guilty. He was lucky they only fired him.”
“Well, maybe whoever’s doing this is someone new,” I suggested. “I mean, if I hadn’t been given this morgue job, I don’t know what I would have done.”
The scowl stayed on Kang’s face as he leaned back. “And that’s exactly why there aren’t many zombies. You don’t make one just for shits and giggles, because the next thing you know you have dozens of them, desperate for brains. And brains are pretty hard to come by without causing a fuss, as you know.”
My mouth felt dry. “So, how bad does it get? The hunger, I mean. Would any of us be driven to kill to get brains?”
I could see that Kang wanted to deny it, but I’d already seen the wince of discomfort. “It can get bad,” he admitted. “And the hungrier you get, the less control you have. You’re not . . . you’re not you.”
“Have you—” I clamped my lips shut on the question. “Never mind. I’m sorry.”
He exhaled a long slow breath and didn’t answer. That told me more than I wanted to know. It could happen to me. If I got hungry enough, I wouldn’t simply die. I’d become a monster first.
“Is there anything that can be done?” I asked, fumbling for anything to say to get past this horrific topic. “I mean, about this, um, rogue. Whoever it is.”
Kang looked up, and it seemed to take him a couple of seconds to focus on me, as if I was drawing him out of a terrible place. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t exactly have a directory of the local zombies.” His shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Let’s hope that whoever it is sticks to killing losers and old farts.”
A flare of anger coiled in my belly. “Wait. That’s it? Sit back and hope he doesn’t kill anyone important? Kang, that’s bullshit.”
“What the hell do you want me to do about it?”
“I don’t know! You’re the expert here. You said yourself that this sort of thing could draw unwanted attention to us.”
“So would making a big stink about deaths that are completely unrelated in every other way. There’s no link except for the missing brains, and that’s easy enough to explain away.” His face twisted into a sneer. “Go on, I dare you to go to the police. Tell them that these people were all killed by the same person.”
“Go fuck yourself,” I said dully. I hated him right now, but I also hated the fact that he was right.
