My Life as a White Trash Zombie by Diana Rowland

“Busy. Got a job,” I said instead. “Been at it almost a week now.”

  “Cool,” he said as he gave me a hug. He smelled of tobacco and grease. A faint whiff of pot clung to him as well, and I could feel myself mentally focusing on that scent. A faint spark of annoyance passed through me that he didn’t ask about the job. Then again, I was the queen of minimum wage. He probably assumed I was working another convenience store gig.

  “I’m working at the Coroner’s Office as a van driver,” I told him.

  He pulled back and gave a sharp bark of laughter. “You? Touching dead people?”

  “Yeah, well, I haven’t puked yet.” Suddenly I didn’t want to talk about my job. If I started thinking about that, then I’d start thinking about why I was working there. “You wanna go get a drink or something?”

  “I need to finish this up.” He gestured in the direction of the El Camino. “But there’s beer in the fridge if you want to hang around. This won’t take more than about ten minutes.”

  Well, that was the best offer I was likely to get today. I headed into the trailer and snagged two beers out of his fridge. A frying pan on the stove held congealing bacon fat, and the kitchen table was covered with old newspapers and engine parts—both combining to give a faint bacon/engine grease tang to the air. It didn’t bother me. I was pretty used to it since I usually slept over here as often as I could. Randy’s furniture was old and battered, and the carpet had more stains on it than a bum’s underwear, but the trailer didn’t have roaches, rats, or my dad.

  I plopped down on the couch and put my feet up on the coffee table, shoving aside a stack of old Car and Driver magazines and about six remotes. Even though Randy didn’t seem to give much of a shit about his living arrangements, he took his entertainment pretty seriously : wide screen HDTV, Blu-Ray/DVD player, Xbox, and a kick-ass stereo system. Yet another reason why I preferred spending my time over here.

  I didn’t turn the TV on. After the day I’d had, I was more in the mood for quiet. No fights. No insults. Nothing weird or disturbing.

  I’d finished the first beer and was well into the second by the time Randy came in. He headed straight to the kitchen, returning after a moment with a beer in one hand and baggie in the other. He cracked the beer open and took a long swig, then snagged an already-rolled joint out of the baggie and lit it. After several puffs he passed it to me.

  I took a long hit, then tipped my head back and waited for it to take effect.

  “You been to Pillar’s since the other night?” he asked.

  “Nope,” I said, without moving. The mellow hadn’t hit yet, and I felt that if I shook my head it would kill it.

  “Me neither.” He paused. “Gotta admit, I was kinda surprised to see you come by here after all that.”

  Damn. Must have been more of a fight than I thought. I took another hit off the joint as a missing fragment of memory abruptly slid into place. Oh yeah, he’d gone off with some chick, so I’d tried to get back by flirting with a guy I didn’t even know. Then the guy had offered to drive me home, because I was way too drunk to drive. Or too stoned. I didn’t remember drinking all that much. No, wait, the guy had been buying me drinks. But I didn’t leave with him. I was sure of that. There was no way I’d go off with someone I didn’t know. I could be stupid as all hell sometimes, but I knew better than to do that. So instead I tried to walk home. Yeah, that was so much smarter.

  “Guess that’s why I haven’t called you.” Randy was still talking.

  I took another pull on the joint, a hard one, as if I could get it to take effect faster. Why the hell wasn’t I high yet? “Umm, okay.”

  He frowned down into his beer. “You know I didn’t fuck her, right?”

  I blinked at him. “Hunh?”

  “Alison,” he said. “The chick I left with? You came after me, asked where the fuck I was going. Acting all jealous and shit—”

  “I remember,” I interrupted. “And you laughed and said you were gonna go bang her in the parking lot.”

  A grimace flickered over his face. “I was just fucking with you,” he muttered. “I didn’t think you’d believe me. I was going out to take a look at her car. She was having trouble with her battery. Then I came back in and you were all over some asshole. Pissed me off.”

  Yeah, I’d believed him. It wasn’t as if he’d never cheated on me before, though now I could see that doing so in the middle of our night out together would have been a stretch, even for him. And I’d overreacted like a moron, trying to make him jealous. I remembered that much, though I couldn’t for the life of me remember who the other guy was. Hopefully I hadn’t made too much of an ass of myself.

  “Well, it was a dick thing to say,” I told him.

  “I know,” he said with a wince. “Sorry. So how’d you get the job?” It was pretty obvious he wanted to change the subject, but that was fine with me. If we kept hashing over what had happened at the bar we’d probably end up in another fight.

  “Umm, through my probation officer,” I said after a second of mental scrambling for an answer. I wasn’t totally sure why, but I didn’t want to tell him the truth about the whole thing. Maybe ’cause he’d want me to explain, and I didn’t know how to? “It’s a weird gig, but kinda cool, too. And it even has benefits.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  I nodded. “After three months I get health insurance, and if I stay ten years I get vested in their pension plan.”

  He laughed out loud. “The day you keep a job for ten years is the day I grow a twelve-inch dick.”

  “Fuck you,” I shot back. “That doesn’t even make sense. Besides, you’re one to talk.”

  He grinned and gave me a light punch on the arm. “I know, that’s why I said it. You and me, we’re too alike. Hell, I’ll be shocked if you can keep this job long enough to get the health insurance.”

  I scowled. “Gee, thanks for having so much faith in me.”

  “Aw, c’mon, Angel, lighten up. It’s not that. You like to do your own thing too much to stick with the same job for so long.”

  And what the hell was my own thing? Whatever it was, so far it sucked.

  “This is shit pot,” I announced after a moment, stubbing out the half inch of joint that was left. Normally I’d smoke it down as far as possible, but I still wasn’t feeling any buzz. Didn’t seem to be any point to smoking the rest of it.

  He shrugged without looking at me as he picked up a remote and turned on the TV. “So get your own.”

  “Seriously,” I said. “I don’t think that’s pot. I’m not feeling a damn thing from it.”

  He flicked a glance my way. “It’s the same goddamn bag we started the other night. You liked it enough back then.”

  I grimaced, then stood.

  “Where y’going?” he asked.

  “Dunno.” I rubbed my arms. Everything felt weird and faded, like the world was turning into a black and white movie. And the dialogue and music on the TV seemed flat and tuneless. But I wasn’t feeling the beer or pot at all. I was still cold sober and I didn’t want to be. “Home, I guess.”

  “Nice.” His mouth curled into a mild scowl. “You come over and drink my beer and smoke my shit and then leave? What’s up with that?” He grabbed my hand and gave it a small tug, then offered a sly smile. “C’mon . . . stay.”

  I hesitated. I liked sex with Randy, even though we were so on-again off-again that I’d pretty much lost track of whether we were dating or not. After almost four years, we were so damned used to each other that whenever we were together we ended up in the same comfortable patterns.

  And I knew what part of that pattern would be. I’d stay, we’d screw, then we’d get high on whatever he had around, and I’d probably oversleep.

  “I can’t.” I tugged free of his grasp. “Sorry. I gotta go. I have work tomorrow. Y’know? That job I won’t last at?”

  “Are you actually pissed at me about that?” he asked, a frown forming between his eyes.

  “No! I’m not,” I insist
ed. “I just need to get home. I can’t screw this up.”

  “Sure. Whatever,” he muttered. He didn’t reach for my hand again and shifted his attention to the TV. For a brief instant I wanted to go ahead and pick a fight, simply to see if that would snap everything back into focus. Get him and me all riled up and see if that could somehow get him to act like he gave a shit if I was around. We’d yell and scream, then we’d make up and get high and fuck.

  And I’d oversleep and lose my job, I thought. I knew myself too well. But it’s only a job, right? Whoever wrote that letter can’t have been serious about the whole go-to-jail thing. . . .

  I shook my head, scowling. God, I was weak. How could I even be considering risking it?

  The same way I’ve risked everything else in my life. By not giving a shit. Or getting so fucked up I couldn’t give a shit, even if I wanted to.

  Yeah, well, I needed to give a shit about going back to j ail.

  “I’ll, um, see you later, babe. Okay?” I said.

  He grunted something that might have been a yes. I left to the sound of him changing channels.

  Chapter 6

  The ringing of my phone jerked me out of a nightmare—rotting flesh and crawling maggots, reaching hands and flesh dripping off bones. I struggled to shake off the lingering horror as I groped for my cell phone, almost grateful to be woken up even though it had to be obscenely early, since I could see through my crooked blinds that it was still dark outside.

  I finally found the answer button. “Yeah?” I croaked.

  “Good morning!” my partner, Derrel, said in an insanely cheerful voice. “I need my Angel to come out and play.”

  The display on my nightstand clock showed 5:10. Ugh. Being on call sucked the big one. My usual shift didn’t start until eight A.M., but twice a week I was on call, which meant that if anyone died in the middle of the night, my ass got to go pick them up and bring them back to the morgue. On the other hand, it also meant that I took the van home after my regular shift was over on those nights, which saved me a few bucks in gas money.

  Still, waking up this early was just wrong. “Why can’t people be reasonable and only die after eleven A.M.?” I whined.

  “You’re cute when you’re cranky. I’m texting you the address. See you there!”

  I’d been on the job two weeks, and I still hadn’t thrown up. I had no idea where my iron stomach had suddenly come from—because I sure as hell never had one before—but considering some of the gross stuff I’d seen and smelled, I wasn’t about to complain. One of the bodies we’d brought in the day before had been a decomp—the decomposing body of an old man who’d died in his trailer about a week and a half earlier. I seriously thought I was going to pass out from the smell, and I damn near ran screaming when I saw there were maggots crawling in his mouth and nose. The only reason I didn’t was because Nick the Prick was also there, and I knew he’d tell everyone I’d wimped out. And, once again, I wasn’t going to go to jail because of his smarmy little ass.

  I’d been partnered with an investigator named Derrel Cusimano—a big, bald, black dude who’d been a linebacker at LSU a decade ago and looked like he was still perfectly capable of stopping the rush. He’d been a death investigator with the Coroner’s Office for about five years and was as friendly and nice as Nick wasn’t. He didn’t seem to give a rat fuck that I hadn’t finished high school or that I was on probation or that I was twenty-one years old and didn’t have a clue what to do with my life. He simply did his job and cracked inappropriate jokes when the general public wasn’t around and teased me about my bleached-blonde hair. Somehow when he gave me crap about being redneck trailer trash it was funny instead of mean, perhaps because he gave everyone equal amounts of crap. Plus, he consistently referred to Nick as an “over-privileged cocky asstard” which pretty much made him my hero, despite the fact that he was disgustingly cheerful at five in the morning.

  I put my phone back on the nightstand, then ran my fingers through the tangled mess of my hair. The desire to lie back down was damn near overpowering, but I knew if I did I’d be asleep within seconds. And fired within hours. I’d been warned several times that “failure to respond in a timely manner to a call-out” was grounds for immediate termination.

  “Only two more weeks to go,” I muttered with a scowl as I forced myself to get up from the bed. Then again, so far this job sure beat the hell out of working as a clerk at a convenience store. Though the convenience stores had fewer maggots. Usually.

  The faint stench of rot wafted by me as I shambled down the hall to the bathroom. Great. Another rat died in the wall. The house I shared with my dad was . . . well, “piece of shit” was a pretty accurate description. Single-story with a tin roof and rotting front steps. Half the windows were cracked and had been repaired with duct tape, and the other half were so dirty you could barely see anything through them. I kept telling myself that one of these days I’d bust my butt and at least get the kitchen and bathrooms properly cleaned but somehow never quite found the motivation to do so. I kept things wiped down enough so that it wasn’t completely toxic, but there was no way I’d ever be comfortable having anyone over.

  I did my business in the bathroom, squinting in the mirror after I washed my hands and face. The light above the sink was on but my reflection looked washed out and grey. Not too surprising considering the obscenely early hour, but the flowered wallpaper looked faded as well. To add to the joy, my toothpaste’s usual minty freshness wasn’t terribly minty, and I even double-checked to make sure I wasn’t trying to brush my teeth with something nasty like anti-itch cream.

  Maybe I was coming down with something. I’d felt like this after leaving Randy’s last week—so faded and low-energy that after I made it home I’d cheated and downed one of the energy drinks, even though I was only supposed to drink them every other day. But I hadn’t overdosed, and in fact had felt fine the next morning. Or maybe I’m simply allergic to being awake at five A.M. That was more likely.

  I swiped some deodorant into my pits, then wrinkled my nose. The stench was in here as well. I couldn’t seem to smell anything else, but I could sure as hell smell whatever it was that had died. I sniffed around in an attempt to trace the source of it, then on an absurd whim took a deep whiff of the back of my hand.

  Oh, gross. It was me! I’d showered before going to bed, but apparently the funk from yesterday’s decomp had clung to me more than I’d realized. Derrel wouldn’t be pleased if I took too long to get out to the scene, but I figured he also wouldn’t be thrilled if I smelled like roadkill.

  I took a quick shower and toweled off, then sniffed my arm again. It wasn’t nearly as bad, yet there was still a lingering aroma of something dead that clung to me. No time for another shower, though. I spritzed on a flowery body mist, but I might as well have been spraying water on my bod for all that I could smell it. I scowled and resisted the urge to give myself a second spritzing. If my sense of smell was off, I’d be running the risk of knocking Derrel over with the lovely combo of something dead plus way too many flowers.

  My stomach rumbled as I returned to my bedroom to pull on cargo pants and a Coroner’s Office shirt. I yanked open the door of the little fridge to pull out a bottle of the coffee-drink stuff before remembering that I’d downed the last one two days ago. Or was it three? Damn. That bump of feel-terrific energy would’ve been pretty nice right now. Closing the fridge, I got down on my hands and knees and reached up under my bed, feeling for the pill bottle wedged between the springs. I pulled it out, pried the top off, snagged out two white, oblong pills. The rest went back into the bottle and the bottle to its hiding place. Coffee-drinks weren’t the only things that could give me a boost. I pulled a beer out of the fridge, washed the pills down, and stuck the open beer back in the fridge. It’d be flat when I got home, but it was better than wasting it.

  Holding my shoes in my hand, I walked as silently as I could to the front door.

  “Where the fuck you sneakin’ off to at
this hour?”

  Shit. I turned to see my dad sitting in the stained recliner, an open beer in his hand. More empties were piled haphazardly beside the chair. He was probably at the bar last night, got kicked out when they closed at four A.M., then kept going when he got home.

  “I’m not sneaking out,” I replied. “I got called out to work, and I was trying to keep from waking you up.”

  His mouth curled down into a scowl. He was only in his late forties, but a couple of decades of booze combined with a ten-year-old back injury from his time on an offshore oil rig, had him looking a lot older. A scraggly beard tried to cover his sagging jowls, and his light brown eyes seemed perpetually glazed. He had on the same battered jeans he’d been wearing the day before, wedged above his bony hips and under his slight pot belly. No shirt. Just pale, flabby chest and spindly arms.

  “Between your phone and the shower, no way to sleep around here.”

  “Yeah, well, sorry.” I dropped my shoes on the floor and shoved my feet into them. “Next time I won’t even bother trying to be quiet since I obviously suck at it.” What the hell did he need to be rested and alert for anyway?

  “That sicko job of yours paid you yet?” He peered at me as he lit a cigarette. “Or you already spent it on pills?”

  Crouching, I yanked my laces tight. “I haven’t been paid yet,” I lied. “Maybe later this week.” I really didn’t want to get into it with him right now. He expected me to give him half of any money I made to cover my “rent” and expenses, which was a load of bull because this stupid old house had been paid for over a decade ago, since it had actually belonged to his parents, and he got it when they died. Plus, he got his disability check every month—also a load of bull—which covered utilities and food and stuff like that. He only wanted my money so he could go get drunk.

  It was beside the point that I usually spent my money on getting drunk—or high. It was my damn money, so it should be my damn buzz. Right?

  “So, how much do necro-freaks like you get paid?” He asked, still watching me intently.