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“No gloves,” he hissed, giving my hand a pointed look. I winced. Oh, yeah. Probably best not to leave fingerprints.
But he didn’t release my arm. “Look at the door frame,” he said.
I followed his gaze, cold settling into my gut at the scrape marks around the lock.
“Lock is broken,” he whispered, grim expression coming over his face. He gave the backyard another quick scan, then—since he did have gloves on—gently tugged the back door open.
“Stay here while I check it out,” he murmured.
“The fuck I will,” I shot back.
He gave me a sharp look. “You’re a big tough zombie,” he whispered. “How can you be afraid to be left out here alone?”
“’Cause I’m also a neurotic chick who’s already been attacked once today,” I whispered back with a scowl.
He processed that, then nodded. “Fair enough. Follow me, and try not to shoot me in the back.”
“No promises,” I muttered.
He snorted in response and slipped inside. I followed and quietly pulled the door closed behind me. The house was utterly silent except for the hum of the refrigerator. The cold feeling in my gut began to increase as we moved through the kitchen and into the living room.
Yet even with the sense that something was really fucked up, it still shocked the hell out of me when I saw Sofia lying in a pool of blood in the middle of the floor.
I stopped where I was as I took it all in. She was on her back with one leg bent up under the other and her right arm flung out to her side. Her eyes were open, and blood tracked across her forehead from where she’d been shot in the head. I couldn’t tell if that was the only wound, but either way she was clearly dead. I’d seen hundreds of bodies before, of course, but I’d always been prepared for it. This time, though, I’d been coming here to lay into her and hopefully find out what the hell was going on. I’d never honestly believed that she’d ever really been in danger.
I let out a shaking breath as I scanned the room. No sign of struggle—just like Marianne’s house—except for a knocked-over can of Coke that had made a large brown stain in the pale carpet. Sofia didn’t keep a terribly neat house, though the mess was mostly clutter, not dirt. I moved over to the table. A desk calendar covered much of the surface, surrounded by stacks of books and magazines. The calendar was at least two years old and covered with notes and phone numbers and reminders. She probably didn’t want to get a new calendar because then she’d lose all the information scrawled onto this one. I could appreciate that mentality. I almost liked her a bit more now that I knew she hadn’t been perfect. Almost.
“We need to get out of here now,” Ed said, grabbing me by the arm.
“Hang on,” I said, peering at one phone number that was circled. Above it was scrawled “[email protected]” The number looked vaguely familiar, as if it was one that I’d dialed a few times. It wasn’t Marcus’s, I knew that much. What the hell did [email protected] mean? Was it an email address? If so wasn’t it supposed to have a “com” or “net” at the end?
I didn’t want to risk touching anything so I did my best to memorize it and the number instead of finding a pen and scrap of paper. Ed tugged on my arm again, but this time I didn’t resist and allowed him to lead me to the back door. He eased it open and did a quick scan, then seized my hand and took off at a run toward the woods. I had no problem keeping up, and when we reached the woods, I pulled the goggles back on as if I’d worn them a thousand times. I didn’t say a word as we returned to the truck, remaining silent until we were well away from the house and the subdivision.
“You okay?” I finally asked.
Ed’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Not really,” he said. “I’ve known Sofia a long time. She could be a real bitch sometimes, but…” His expression darkened. “I’m going to kill that McKinney motherfucker.”
“You think McKinney did it? But I thought you shot him.”
“He was wearing a vest,” Ed told me. Then he thumped his chest with his fist. “So am I, for that matter.”
Blinking in surprise, I took a closer look at him. Yeah, now that I was looking for it I could see a slightly thicker look to his torso beneath the hoodie. I’d been so distracted by the skulls and other goth or emo stuff that I hadn’t even noticed.
Goth…
“Oooooh,” I breathed. Now I knew what [email protected] meant and how I knew that phone number. “Sofia was two-timing.”
“What are you talking about?”
“She was playing both sides of the zombie factions. There was a phone number on her desk calendar that looked vaguely familiar, with what I thought was an email address above it. But it wasn’t. It stood for ‘Kang at Scott Funeral Home.’” Kang, the seventy-year-old zombie who’d always dressed like a twenty-year-old goth.
“Who the hell is Kang?” he asked, sounding slightly exasperated.
“The zombie you killed at Scott Funeral Home.” Yeah, sure, Ed had rescued me and seemed to be changing his ways, but I still wasn’t ready to pull any punches. “If anyone was a leader of another zombie faction it would have been Kang,” I continued, talking it out more for my own sake than for his. “He was old as shit and had a tight hold on the brain distribution from the funeral homes in this area.”
Ed was silent for a moment, face stony. “That’s how I tracked him down. Two of the others had his name and number.”
As sorry as I was for Kang, I still couldn’t help but feel a teensy bit of I told you so. I’d told the damn man that I thought someone was hunting zombies and that he should be careful, and he’d blown it off as “not his problem.” Jerk.
