I was half-tempted to follow, but decided that would be going too far. And might make Brian really wonder as well, like if maybe she was coercing me into vouching for her. Instead I behaved, took a right out of the parking lot, and headed toward home.
Chapter 8
The rain came down again in a light but steady fall. I cranked up the defroster and prayed that it actually worked. Even cold air helped keep the window fog at bay, and I hated driving at night without decent visibility.
My phone rang about five minutes later, the caller ID displaying a number I didn’t know. I grabbed it off the console and thumbed the answer button. “Hello?”
“It’s Heather. Someone’s tailing me,” she said, only the barest hint of stress in her voice. “Just want you to know…well, in case something bad happens. I’m going to call Brian.”
“Sonofabitch. You’re still headed south?” I couldn’t be all that far away.
“That’s right. Passing Picayune Street right now,” she told me.
I thought quickly as I drove, glad that my job required me to drive all over the damn place, which meant I knew a lot of back road shortcuts. “Okay,” I said as I hung a quick right, “take a left at Grover, and then another on Highway 1790. That’ll get you headed back toward me.”
“Got it,” she said, still shockingly cool considering her situation. “Let me call Brian, and then I’ll call you back.” With that she hung up, and I took the opportunity to hit Marcus on the speed dial and put it on speakerphone. While it rang I grabbed the cooler from behind my seat and snagged a smoothie from it. It didn’t take a genius to know it would be a good idea to be tanked up on brains in case shit got crazy.
As soon as I emptied that bottle, I grabbed the other one and downed it as well, muttering a few choice words as the call to Marcus went to voicemail. I hit the “end call” button since I had no idea what to tell him that would make sense in a message.
The excess of brains in my system kicked in, and the world leaped into sharp focus around me, making it a lot easier to drive like a bat out of hell in the rainy dark. The phone rang as I took a sharp right turn onto Highway 1790. Heather’s number again, I noted. I suppressed the twinge of disappointment that it wasn’t Marcus. He was working tonight, so he was most likely out on a call and couldn’t answer his phone. I jabbed at the answer button, keeping it on speaker.
“Hey! Where are you?” I asked.
“Just turned onto 1790.” she told me, a teensy bit more stress evident in her voice, though I detected an edge of excitement too. This was her true personality. She probably knew damn well she might die tonight, but at least she was doing something. “There are two cars following me now. Brian said to get off the road with you and barricade behind the cars until he can get someone to come help us out.”
I thought quickly. “Okay, I’m coming toward you—almost to the bridge over Bayou Zaire. I’ll pull off the road right past that. D’ya know how many people are in the cars?”
“Only one in the first, I think,” she replied. “Don’t know about the second. Oh, and I have my shotgun, so we’re not going to be completely helpless.”
“I have a shitty attitude,” I offered. “That’s my best weapon.”
She chuckled. “Sounds good. Okay, I’m gonna try and get some distance between me and my buddies. See you in a couple.” And with that she hung up.
The rain picked up, forcing me to set my wipers to mega-speed, and I yelled a curse as the right wiper blade flew off into the night. Thank god for the heightened senses of being over-brained. I floored the accelerator, but my poor little Honda shuddered so badly above eighty that I had to back off a bit for fear of dropping the engine out of the damn thing. Still, I managed to catch a bit of air when I went over the Bayou Zaire bridge—noticing rather absently that the water was overflowing the banks—and came down with a cringe-inducing screech of undercarriage on pavement.
I slammed on the brakes and pulled off the road in an impressive shower of gravel, then angled the car so that we could, hopefully, hunker down behind it and still have a view of the road. I thought about turning the lights off but then realized the highway was so damn dark there was a good chance Heather wouldn’t see me at all if I did.
The only weapon I had—besides my general zombieness—was a baseball bat in my trunk that had been in there when I bought the stupid car. I’d never played any sort of sport that required it, but back before I was turned I’d pulled it out a time or two when assholes thought the scrawny blond chick was an easy target for harassment. I made quick work of digging it out from under the accumulation of crap back there, then shed my raincoat and stuffed it into the trunk. Yeah, staying dry was nice, but all those bright polka dots would make shooting me a bit too easy for the bad guys.
As I slammed the lid closed, I saw headlights coming up the highway, and about half a minute later Heather’s jeep skidded into an impressive bootlegger turn, sending up a spray of water as she pulled in right behind my car. She climbed out of the Jeep, shotgun tucked under one arm as she fumbled a Bluetooth headset into her ear.
“Sweet driving!” I said.
“Ha! That was one hundred percent accidental,” she confessed, eyes bright with adrenaline. “I about shit myself. Thought I was going to go into the bayou.” Her gaze shifted to the highway. Two sets of headlights weren’t far away. She glanced back to me and pointed to the headset. “I have Brian on the line.” Gratification briefly lit her face at the fact that he was willing to provide help even before meeting with her. I was sure she knew damn well that it changed nothing as far as her eventual fate, but it was still cool to see.
Or maybe Brian knows I’m involved and doesn’t want me to get too fucked up because of her troubles. That was probably far more likely.
I breathed deeply, taking in everything with my brain-fueled heightened awareness. The tang of adrenaline and nerves from Heather, the fetid odors of the swamp and bayou, the stench of rubber on pavement and the seared-metal aroma of the cooling engines. Every drop of rain stood out in crisp detail. The roar of the approaching cars twined around me like harsh music. God almighty, I was ready for some action.
Heather’s mouth pursed as she looked toward the Saberton vehicles. “I’m with Angel about fifty yards south of the Bayou Zaire bridge,” she said, and I fumbled mentally in confusion for a few seconds before realizing she was talking to Brian on her headset. “No time to chat, sweetie,” she continued. “I’ll leave the line open.”
I coughed to cover a laugh at the “sweetie.” The hard-faced Brian Archer didn’t strike me as anyone’s “sweetie.” I was liking this chick more and more.
My grip on the bat tightened as I peered through the rain at the two cars. They came to a stop about thirty yards away on the opposite side of the road.
“One in the front car and two in the other,” I told her. “Can’t tell yet if human or zombie, though.”
She slicked her wet hair back from her face with her splinted hand as we crouched behind the cover of the two cars. “I’d bank on at least one of them falling into the not-human category.”
“Well, this will be fun,” I said, eyes on the men exiting the cars. Did they have any idea who I was and that I was a zombie?
No time to ponder that now. I dragged my attention back to the current fiasco. The shotgun under her arm looked like a twelve gauge. “What ammo you got for that?” I asked. “Something better than birdshot, I hope.”