“Just wait until you’ve been around the zombies for a while,” she said with snort. “Besides, this way if it turns out we still need her, we can just throw some brains at her and she’ll be good as new.” She chuckled. “I can keep her as a test subject forever, if need be.”
And that’s when I stood up.
See, Ed’s idea had been brilliant and disgusting. He was a paramedic who knew anatomy and how to stitch wounds; I was a zombie with the ability to heal without a scar. And the perfect place to hide a stash of brains was, of course, in my abdomen.
McKinney’s stomach shot had actually helped me out by piercing one of the sausage casings of mushed brains that Ed had stuffed inside me—which, for the record, had not been a fun experience at all since anesthesia didn’t work on me. But oh, it was all so worth it now. After being shot I’d had to curl in on myself and do a bit of quick digging to pull the other tubes open and squeeze the brains out before the parasite could repair the damage, but while Dr. Charish and the others were yammering, I was busy getting tanked up to the max—three brains worth. I didn’t even need to eat the brains. The parasite didn’t give a shit how it got what it wanted. This was a sure-shot delivery system.
And I was the motherfucking predator now. I’d felt this way when I’d saved Marcus from being killed by Ed, and it had taken all the will I had to hold back and keep from doing everything I could to stay this way.
But right now I had no intention of holding back. Sweet zombie Jesus, I was fucking invincible.
They could see it, or sense it in their puny little hindbrains. Pure panic filled Dr. Charish’s face, and even McKinney went pale. She stabbed at a button on the keyboard in front of her and an alarm started hooting in the hallway.
My lips curled back from my teeth in a feral grin. “Zombie Super Powers, activate, you fucking bitches.”
I went for McKinney first. Even though I desperately wanted to smash through that window and take down Dr. Charish, I was a smart predator and knew that McKinney was the one who posed an immediate threat to me. Plus, I didn’t want to waste energy on smashing things too soon.
McKinney had enough training to go for the “fight” instead of the “flight,” but it didn’t matter. I got to him before he could squeeze off a shot and wrenched the gun from his hand with an adorably sweet sound of breaking bones. Okay, so I might not have actually pulled the gun from his hand before doing the wrenching.
He was tough—I had to give him that. He let out a choked cry of pain, but a snarl of determination curved his mouth. His other hand was already going for his ankle, where I figured he likely had another weapon.
I punched him hard in that determinedly snarling mouth, crushing lips and teeth. He staggered, but before he could fall I seized him by the side of his head. He tried to swing at me, but I batted it aside easily. I gave him my best evil-predator-bitch smile as he struggled to focus on me.
“Yeah, I’m a zombie, you motherfucker. And I’m also a person.” I slammed his head hard into the window. “I’m a woman.” I slammed it again. “And a daughter.” And again. “And a really fucking cool chick!” Oh what the hell, one last time, for good measure.
I let him drop and grinned at the bloody spiderweb of cracks in the glass. The room beyond the glass was empty and a distant sound of running footsteps echoed along the hall. The predator inside me keened in pleasure. A hunt. This would be fun. But first…
I crouched over the body of McKinney. His skull came apart easily since it was already fairly shattered, and I quickly gulped down the contents. While I ate I yanked off his belt and looped it around my waist. It was far too big but I threaded it through his holster and managed to tie the long end around the buckle so that it wouldn’t fall off. He also had a phone—unfortunately, with no signal. Either we were in the middle of nowhere, or we were in a big metal building. Or both. I clipped that onto the belt as well. I probably looked ridiculous but I didn’t give a shit.
My gaze shifted to the body of Aaron. “Sorry, sweetheart,” I murmured as I smashed his skull against the floor. “Just think of this as me avenging your death.”
After I finished I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. It came away bloody, and I stood. Time for the monster to bust herself out.
Chapter 27
McKinney had another gun in an ankle holster. It was a small thing that only held eight rounds, and I used them all to bust through the thick window. My room was locked, but the door of the observation room stood wide open. I kept McKinney’s other gun with me. I wasn’t much of a shot, but since I figured I was up against at least half a dozen guards I needed every edge I could give myself.
Right now my senses were at superpower levels, and I could literally scent the direction they’d gone. Unfortunately, Dr. Charish and Suit Dude had a good head start, and that damn hooting alarm was apparently the grab-everything-and-get-the-hell-out signal.
I came out of the observation room and saw Dr. Charish by the door at the end of the hallway, urging two guards loaded down with computer equipment to hurry the hell up. She turned and saw me, then gave a little shriek of horror as she dove through the doorway and put her shoulder to the door to get it closed. I dug in hard, running faster than I’d ever run in my life, but it clanged shut just seconds before I reached it. I slammed hard into it in the hopes of forcing it open again, but only managed to do something unpleasant to my shoulder as a heavy click told me the door had latched and locked.
Scowling, I rotated my shoulder while I assessed the door and the surrounding frame. I briefly thought about trying to shoot out the lock, but then grudgingly admitted that shooting the lock probably wouldn’t work at all the way it did in the movies. Besides, I’d seen something through that heavy door before it closed. It was all clean and white and new paint where I was, but outside that door was another story entirely—rust and grime and broken windows.
And I knew exactly where I was.
I could hear voices beyond the door, so I leaned close and listened.
“She won’t get through that,” Dr. Charish said. She was breathing hard, but she sounded calmer. Apparently she was pretty confident that I was stuck. “It doesn’t matter now. We intended for this facility to be temporary. That’s why we built it out in this shithole. We have Philip. It’s time to move on to the next phase.”
The government dude responded, but they were moving off, and I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying. Unfortunately, my busy little parasite was fixing up my shoulder instead of keeping me in super zombie mode. Damn it.
I wasn’t getting through that door or the walls, I knew that. But there was another way out that these assholes probably hadn’t counted on. At least I sure as hell hoped they hadn’t.
I ran back to the observation room and yanked at the edge of the carpet. I didn’t know a lot about computers, but even I knew that a super secret government lab wasn’t going to advertise its presence or risk being hacked with a wireless network. And, perhaps they’d even use the conduits that were already in place.
I grinned as I saw the floor panels beneath the carpeting. As I’d suspected and hoped, the cabling for the computers and cameras and stuff had been strung through the service tunnels beneath the floor. And they’d even been nice enough to not screw the floor panels back down again. I was sure they’d never imagined that their prisoner would know about those tunnels.
Damn good thing I’m a skinny little bitch, I thought as I shimmied through the narrow tunnel. And also a damn good thing I wasn’t claustrophobic. Or afraid of the dark, since it was black as utter pitch in the tunnel. I continued to listen hard as I slid myself along while doing my best to ignore the dirt, dead bugs—and live bugs—and occasional dead rat. After a few minutes I was pretty sure I was beyond the section where I’d been held and which was now locked down. Now I simply had to keep going until I could find a way out.