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Tupac snorted then splashed out of the pool and toward me, followed by the smaller gators. The entire group lined up side by side along the fence, snouts pressed against the chain link. All but the smallest two bore wounds like Biggie’s. Grrrr. “Are y’all okay?”
They opened their mouths in unison and joined their gatory voices in a growly warble, eerie yet strangely familiar. I peered into their gaping jaws. Not a single one had a missing or broken tooth in the front. The snaggle-tooth gator that bit Douglas Horton was still out there somewhere.
I moved down the line, petting each for a moment, only to have them fall silent at my touch, one by one.
“All right,” I said and withdrew my hand from the littlest one at the end. “Y’all need to back away from the fence now. We don’t want Kristi to see this and wonder what’s going on.” I waggled my hand, and the gators turned and lumbered away. I should have been shocked, but I wasn’t. Of course they listened t
o me. In a convoluted way that made irrational sense. After all, I was their mama. Grandma? Revered Ancestor?
Without thinking, I tipped my head back and growl-sang a long warbly note. The gators answered with a soft moan-song of their own.
As their weird crooning died away, another sound intruded from down the hall. Coming this way. Thap-thap. Kristi. And another set of steps. No-nonsense.
Sorsha Aberdeen? Shit. If I left the way I came in, I’d run right into them. There was no place to hide unless I wanted to brave the razor wire defense around the pen and trust that my babies would hide me.
Which left a hard sprint to the door on the far wall.
I reached it even as my zombie hearing told me the two women had paused to talk right outside the door. The only word I caught was alligators, but the second voice definitely belonged to Sorsha. Craaaap. I shoved my fob against the lock and prayed it would work on this door.
The lock clicked. I yanked the door open and darted into what seemed to be a small library with a computer work station—thankfully unoccupied—then pulled the door closed behind me, just as the Kristi-Sorsha door swung open. Pulse racing, I listened to make sure there was no alarmed cry of, “Aha! Someone fled through that door over there!” or the equivalent.
Nope. Just murmured conversation. Crap. Now I wanted to know what they were saying. I pressed my ear to the crack between door and jamb and willed my darling little parasite to give my hearing a boost.
“I don’t understand,” Sorsha said. “How are these alligators connected to the outbreak?”
“It’s quite straightforward, really,” Kristi said, managing to sound only a little pompous. “The first case to present was Beckett Connor, who suffered a minor alligator bite the day before he died. When I heard that, I sent my people into the swamp to bring back any infected alligators they could find. These specimens weren’t hard to spot. Look at the color, the eyes. Obviously they were infected with LZ-1 or a related strain.”
“Obviously,” Sorsha replied, tone impossible to read. “Have you determined anything from studying them?”
“Ah, well, I’ve only had the specimens since yesterday, and there are many other avenues to explore.”
“I see. This is all very interesting.” Sorsha paused a long moment. “The whole affair reminds me of . . . zombies.”
“Yes, isn’t it fascinating?” Kristi trilled a laugh. “The parallel to movie zombies has certainly crossed my mind.”
“I’m well aware of the ‘Louisiana Zombies dash One’ designation for LZ-1, Dr. Charish. Amusing.” She didn’t sound one bit amused. “I’m more interested in whether you’ve seen anything zombie-like before. Anything at all.”
Shit. What was Sorsha’s angle?
“Before this?” Kristi laughed again, but it verged on nervous. Not her typical smooth-operator style. “Movies, once or twice. Not my cup of tea, really.”
“Mm-hmm.” Pages flipped. “What can you tell me of the other researchers here? Ariston Nikas? Has he been helpful in your research?”
Helpful? I ground my teeth. It made him sound like he was Kristi’s assistant.
Not that Kristi did a damn thing to dispel that notion. “Ari has been an absolute godsend,” she gushed, and I could practically see her putting her hands on her chest and batting her eyelashes. “His assistance has allowed me—”
“Um, lady?”
I whirled and landed in a fighting stance. A slender black man around my age stood in a doorway on the other side of the room. He wore a lab coat over jeans and a Star Wars t-shirt, and carried a coffee cup. And he was shorter than me, which took a lot considering I was barely five foot three.
“You’re not allowed to be in here,” he said, though he didn’t seem too bent out of shape about it. He took a sip of his coffee. “This is a secured area. If someone else sees you, they’ll ask me why I didn’t call security. So you should go.” He waggled his hand at me exactly as I had done to the gators. “Or I’ll have to call.”
“I can’t leave the same way I came in,” I said, straightening from the silly fighting stance.
He cocked his head. “Were you sneaking around in the LZ-1 suite, too?”
“No! I work over there, but I, er, didn’t want to run into my supervisor.”
