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Sorsha didn’t act the least bit surprised or disbelieving, confirming my hunch that she’d known all along. “I never said you were a monster,” she said mildly.
I dropped my hands and glared. “What am I to you, then? A menace? Do you think zombies need to be wiped out or detained—for the safety of others?”
“I don’t support genocide or unlawful incarceration.”
Man, she was good at evasive answers. Yet it sounded like she was fine with zombies—or anyone—as long as we didn’t break any laws. That looked great on the surface, except for one pesky detail: I’d broken a shit-ton of laws, both minor and major, from defiling a corpse all the way up to murder. So, yeah I was probably still fucked.
Except that she seemed to be focused on Kristi at the moment, and that was all right by me.
“Fine,” I said coming to a decision. “You want to know the truth about the serial killer?”
“Angel!” Brian took a step toward me.
“Can it, Brian,” I snarled. “Do you seriously think she won’t figure it out? Hell, she knows most of it already!”
Dr. Nikas nodded once. “It’s all right, Brian. Angel, go on.”
I gave him a grateful look then returned my attention to Sorsha.
“Yes, Ed Quinn murdered those people, and yes, they were all zombies, but he was manipulated and brainwashed by Kristi to think zombies had killed his parents and that all zombies were murderous monsters.” I went on to explain how Kristi had learned about zombies over a decade ago from Ed’s parents, and after they died, her lies convinced Ed that his parents had been zombie hunters, and that he needed to avenge them and honor their legacy by collecting zombie heads. “Kristi wanted those heads for her own research,” I said. “But she also wanted a real live zombie test subject. Me.”
Sorsha considered my words. “Interesting,” she said after a moment. “When you came out of the cooler earlier, you mentioned something about a double. Of whom were you speaking?”
; “Kristi Charish,” I said. “I think she’s been here since Monday. A jet came in to Tucker Point Airport that afternoon with one passenger—a brown-haired woman. Kristi is blonde. No obvious connection, right? Wednesday at midnight another jet arrived, with a blonde woman who looked like Kristi and a man who fit the description of her bodyguard Fritz. In fact it probably was Fritz. Soon after that, a brown-haired woman departed on the first jet. However, my source at the airport says that it wasn’t the same woman who arrived Monday. I believe Kristi came in on Monday, wearing a brown wig, then her double arrived Wednesday midnight, pretending to be Kristi, and then put on the brown wig and left on the first jet, her job done. Which means Kristi was here before the LZ-1 epidemic began.”
Brian shook his head, but I spoke before he could. “I know you had eyes on her, Brian, but how close were they?”
He hesitated. “Apparently, not close enough.”
“That matches my own intel,” Sorsha said, surprising me with the nugget of information—and annoying me that she’d known all along.
“Fritz Colton has been working for Dr. Charish for the last month,” Brian said. “He’s a top notch freelance security pro who’s always with her public persona—whether Dr. Charish herself or her double—in Chicago. That consistency strengthened the deception.”
I wrinkled my nose. “And gave Kristi the freedom to do her LZ-1 lab work, with no one the wiser.”
Sorsha regarded me. “And how are you connected to this epidemic, Angel?”
The safe answer would’ve been that I was merely helping to find a way to save the victims. But I had a feeling Sorsha would know I wasn’t telling the whole truth.
“I’m the source,” I said, squaring my shoulders. “For the original strain, that is. Everyone who’s been infected after Deputy Connor has a mutated strain: LZ-1. The original strain happened when I . . .” I grimaced. No need to go into the whole bit about my addiction. “My zombie parasite got damaged.” Yeah, that was good enough. “Anyway, Judd Siler was hunting me because he knew I was a zombie. I bit him and got away, but he tracked me again the next day and got shot. I ran to the swamp because I thought Marla was on my trail. But then Judd came after me—dead. I mean like half his head was missing. So I, uh, dispatched him—total self-defense, y’know? And then I guess the alligators ate his remains and ended up infected.”
“Who is Marla?” Sorsha asked.
“A German Shepherd. She . . .” A thought was banging around inside my brain, evading my efforts to pin it down. “She’s a cadaver dog—wait. Dr. Nikas, what did Jacques tell you when he called?”
Dr. Nikas rubbed his face with both hands. “That upon close examination, the puncture point in the bite on Nick is larger and far more precise than that of a typical mosquito, and that it carries traces of both inert and activated LZ-1 as well as Aedes albopictus saliva. Damning enough on its own, but Jacques’s subsequent analysis of the water bottles revealed the presence of certain proteins that can stimulate LZ-1 into full activation. If Nick’s presumed bite is representative of those on the other victims, I cannot help but accept that these are, in truth, inoculation sites.”
Sorsha’s eyes widened. “You believe it’s being deliberately spread?”
Dr. Nikas dipped his head in a sober nod. She typed a text message.
Rachel muttered a curse. “So Dr. Charish and Saberton—”
I jerked a hand up. “Wait.” That damn thought was still bouncing around like a coke addict in a mosh pit. “Just, wait.”
Sorsha had been in town during Mardi Gras because of the Zombies Are Among Us!! short film. A film containing real zombie clips that Kristi had given Rosario—her then-lover and patsy—to pass on to the studio. Rosario, who’d nearly outed me with Marla at the Zombiefest, where the short film had premiered to promote the movie High School Zombie Apocalypse!!—the movie that starred Justine, who had an ex-girlfriend sneaky and paranoid enough to bug her apartment. Sneaky. Kristi could teach a masterclass in sneaky. She was the kind who would . . .
