“You two don’t strike me as the good ol’ boy deerhunter type,” I said.
Ed chuckled. “And you would be right. But every now and then we feel the urge to give it a try. I think we’re suckers for punishment.”
“My uncle owns a fairly large parcel of land at the north end of the parish,” Marcus explained.
“His uncle owns half the parish,” Ed interjected.
Marcus grinned. “Not quite. But he is pretty well-off.” At a sidelong glance from Ed he chuckled. “Okay, he’s filthy stinking rich. Anyway. He used to take the two of us hunting when we were kids, and now it’s a stupid tradition that we continue.” His mouth twitched into a smile. “Some of that male bonding crap.”
“Uh huh.” I gave them both a dubious look. “Do y’all ever actually kill any deer?”
Ed cast his eyes upward and tapped his chin with his fingers. “Hmm . . . that’s a tough question.”
Marcus gave a laugh. “The answer is ‘almost never.’ Mostly it gives us an excuse to go ride around on four-wheelers, play with big guns, and then spend the next few days picking ticks off our bodies.”
“Wow,” I said. “I am so glad I’m not a guy.”
“It’s much better that you’re not,” Ed said, expression suddenly serious.
I blinked. “Er, okay. Why do you say that?”
“Well, you’d be a very funny looking boy,” he said. “I mean, with the boobies and all.”
I let out a bark of laughter and threw my napkin at him. “You idiot.”
Marcus laughed. “For what it’s worth, I have to agree with Ed, though I won’t use the word ‘boobies.’ ”
“You just did,” I pointed out with a mock glare.
He raised his hands in surrender. “Guilty as charged.”
“So, do either of you have girlfriends who have to put up with you?” I asked, hoping it sounded nice and casual. Because that’s all it was, right? A casual getting-to-know-you question. I hid a grimace. Nope, it was totally desperate and awkward. Ugh.
“Marcus has yet to find anyone to tolerate his presence on a somewhat permanent basis,” Ed said, casting a teasing look at the other man. “But I’m willingly under the thumb of a fine woman who I probably don’t deserve.”
“You might have seen her the other day at the crime scene for the pizza guy,” Marcus said. “She had the cadaver dog. They were looking for the head.”
“Oh, right!” I remembered her. Cute and petite.
“What about you?” Ed asked with a tilt of his head. “Is there a lucky guy in your life?”
I don’t know why I was unprepared for the question, especially since I was the one who’d brought the whole subject up in the first place. “Um, kinda,” I said, fumbling for an answer. “I mean, there’s this guy I’ve been going out with for about four years . . . .”
“Four years?” Marcus said. “Sounds serious. Any wedding plans in the near future?”
“No!” I said, then felt a surge of embarrassment at how quick I was to deny that possibility. “I mean, we’re not that kind of serious. We’re kinda on and off.” Shame flowed through me at my lack of loyalty, but marry Randy? I couldn’t see that happening in a million years. So why the hell am I still with him?
“Speaking of the cadaver dog,” I said in what was probably an incredibly obvious attempt to change the subject, “did they ever find the guy’s head?”
“Not sure,” Marcus answered. “Some hunters found a fire pit out in the swamp that had what looked like skull fragments and teeth, but it was all pretty well burned up. The lab’s going to see if they can do a DNA match to the pizza guy or the victim from Sweet Bayou.” He frowned. “There’s a lot of weird buzz going on about that case. It’s a strange one.”
“You mean other than the fact that the guy had his head chopped off?” Ed said, raising an eyebrow.
Their food arrived then, and the conversation was briefly suspended while room was found on the table for the ridiculous number of plates.
As soon as the waitress stepped away Marcus continued. “It’s looking like a setup of some kind. The guy was delivering pizzas, but the address was a house that had been foreclosed on last year, and empty even longer. His car was found in front of the house, and the bag with the pizza was on the ground in the front yard.”
Tension knotted in my stomach, and I had to force myself to maintain an even expression. “You’re saying he was lured there and then attacked.” Goddammit. Zeke ordered out for a meal all right.
“And he wasn’t robbed either,” Marcus added. “The detectives are trying to figure out if there was anything special about this guy that would have someone wanting to lop his head off.”
There was a brain in it, I thought grimly. Zeke probably chased him down, chopped the guy’s head off, then took his meal and ran.
“That’s pretty weird,” I said, trying hard to keep my tone even.
“Yeah, Marianne’s pretty freaked by it too,” Ed said around his cheeseburger. I was shocked to see that he’d already plowed through all of his fries and was nearly finished with his burger. To my relief he took a few seconds to chew and swallow before continuing. “She lives a few streets away. That’s how she was able to be on the scene so quickly with her dog.”
“I don’t blame her,” I said. “I think I’d be freaked if someone was chopping off heads in my neighborhood too.” I continued to slowly pick at the pie while the two men ate, my thoughts still tumbling, though not quite as jagged as before. Kang was right. There was no way I could tell anyone that all of the recent deaths were connected. Going to the cops was out. And I wasn’t qualified in any way to take it upon myself to solve the case and stop the killer, as dramatic and cool as that might sound. It was beside the point that I was pretty damn sure who the killer was. I could probably even find him if I really bent my mind to it. The pizza guy had been killed south of Tucker Point, and Sweet Bayou wasn’t far from my house, but the drug dealer, the lawn mower guy, and my accident had all been out past Longville on Highway 1790—which was right in between Nice and Tucker Point. Hell, maybe I could drive down the highway and wave a piece of brain out the window to see if he’d come running.
The image that summoned almost sent me into a fit of giggles, and I had to fake a cough to cover it.
Great, so I knew who the rogue zombie was, and I could probably find him if I tried hard enough. But what good would that do? I didn’t have the faintest idea how to stop him. Or rather, I did have an idea. And it wasn’t anything I could ever see myself doing.
I’m not a killer. I can’t go there. I won’t do that.
I fought back a sense of anxiety as I scraped up the last pieces of my pie with my fork. Not a killer. Sure. I believed that now. But would I continue to believe it if I ever got hungry enough?
Chapter 23
After parting ways with Marcus and Ed, I drove home. Or at least I thought I was driving home but somehow I ended up out on Highway 1790.
I slowed as I approached the spot where I’d hit the tree. I could see it on the side of the road where it had been pulled aside by road crews. I could also see the long scrape and scar in the asphalt where the van had overturned and slid.
I parked on the side of the road, shut the engine off, got out of my car.
Broken glass sparkled along the edge of the highway, catching the sun in what could have been a lovely display. I shivered, reminded of the way the glass and broken mirrors had reflected the moonlight.
Blood and teeth. Sightless eyes. A head twisted too far. Bones and flesh.
I blinked and shook my head, momentarily robbed of breath by the sudden images. I’d been in another accident. Before the one in the van. I squeezed my eyes shut, struggling to recall, but the scattered memories slipped away as soon as I tried to focus on them.
Opening my eyes, I walked to the tree, shoes crunching gravel and glass. When I woke up in the ER I was convinced that I was seriously hurt. Yet there wasn’t a mark on me, and I was a zombie. If I’d been hurt that badly, surely it would have taken a huge amount of brains to fix me up.
A quick burst of anger surged through me. Who the fuck made me like this?
A breeze swirled along the highway, rustling the grass and briefly quieting the insects. I scowled and rubbed my temples. I hated that I might never find out who made me a zombie. The one-month mark had passed right on by without an explanation or note or anything that might have cleared things up. But now that I’d come this far I understood why the one month thing had been so important. I needed to stick with the job for that long to be sure that I’d be around brains when the drinks ran out, and to be sure I could maintain a supply. Whoever’d decided to get me started in this direction was apparently satisfied with his or her work and had probably moved on to the next victim. Or charity case. Whatever the hell I was.
“Or monster,” I muttered. No, not a monster yet. I hadn’t killed anyone. Not like Zeke. He’d killed those four people. I was certain of it. And if I’d given him the damn body, maybe he wouldn’t have had to kill anyone.
Guilt tugged at my gut even as I tried to fight it off. I couldn’t be responsible for Zeke’s actions. But was he even responsible for his own? Surely he had to be deep into the hunger to be driven to murder. Yet, even as I thought it, I couldn’t help but wonder. Sure, one murder I could see—sort of. But after that. . . . Maybe he’d realized how easy it was.
I frowned. The victim from Sweet Bayou Road had been murdered before Zeke lost his job at the funeral home, which meant that he might have already discovered that it was easier to get his food fresh. And as decomposed as the drug dealer was, he had to have been killed before Zeke caused my wreck. Let’s not forget that he was trying to kill me, too. The guilt vanished, swept away by anger. He didn’t know I was a zombie when he pulled the tree onto the road. He probably figured he was getting a two-for-one deal. The brain in the body bag, with me as a chaser.
