White Trash Zombie Apocalypse
Chapter 1
Rain. Lots of it. Not yet, but soon. I hadn’t heard a forecast, and I sure as hell wasn’t psychic, but I’d lived in southeastern Louisiana all my life and felt the coming downpour in my bones. Of course, the really dark, ominous clouds helped a bit too.
But that was nothing. Not with zombies roaming the streets of Tucker Point.
Several shuffled along the sidewalk, and a dozen or so huddled together, gruesome and shabby, in front of the Sundown Café, one taking a drag from a cigarette through cracked and bloody lips. Apart from the nearby movie crew, the cigarette was a sure sign these were zombie wannabes and not the real thing.
No self-respecting zombie would be caught dead smoking.
Caught dead. I snorted. But the truth was that zombies were some of the cleanest-living people I knew. Had to be since anything bad for you, like cigarette smoke, drugs, or alcohol, used up precious brains to detoxify the body. And if you didn’t get more brains quickly, you’d start to rot. Not fun. I’d been a pill-popping alcoholic smoker before I was turned. Now the most toxic substance I consumed was coffee.
Well, mostly. Every now and then I still took a quick drag for old times sake.
I drove slowly, watching with roll-my-eyes amusement as the crew filmed a couple of fake zombies shambling after a shotgun-wielding woman. No stereotypes here. No sirree.
The majority of the movie-related activity seemed to be taking place at the back of Tucker Point High School, where school had let out for the summer a week earlier. A couple of eighteen-wheelers were pulled up in the lot on the side, and I saw movie people and equipment all over the blocked-off street ahead as well as on the school grounds to the left.
The cop at the end of the street pulled the barricade aside without my having to flash my badge. My Coroner’s Office van was plain black with no markings, but he’d probably been on enough death scenes to know the routine well enough to expect me. His face registered recognition, and he gave me a friendly wave as I passed through. I gave a polite hand lift in response but had no clue if I’d ever seen him before. It was probably a lot easier for cops to remember the scrawny little blond chick who worked as a bodysnatcher for the Coroner’s Office than for me to remember one cop’s face in a sea of identical uniforms.
I proceeded slowly, trying to get a good look at the movie hoopla without obviously gawking or running into anything. Parked against the curb about a half block down was a white SUV with St. Edwards Parish Sheriff’s Office Crime Scene emblazoned across the side, and right behind it the black Dodge Durango that belonged to Derrel Cusimano, the death investigator I was partnered with.
As I parked behind the Durango, a tall woman with brunette hair bound up in a severe bun and wearing a sheriff’s office t-shirt walked up to the SUV. Maria, a crime scene tech. As I climbed out of the van, she gave me a smile and a thumbs up to let me know she was finished with her work. I returned the smile and gave an acknowledging wave. With rare exceptions, a crime scene tech had to take photos and process any death scene in case there was a need later on to review the specifics. The actual removal of the body came last, after the techs did their stuff and the detectives had a good look at everything. I’d been collecting bodies from all sorts of death scenes for a while now, so I was pretty used to the routine. The techs appreciated that I stayed out of their way while they worked, and in return they let me know the instant I could get on with my own business.
I moved to the back of the van, pulled the stretcher out, and lumped a body bag and a couple of sheets on top, then looked around for my hard-to-miss partner, a big, bald, black guy with muscle to spare. He’d been an LSU linebacker ten or so years back and still looked every bit the part.
I spied him striding across the street toward me with a notepad in his hand. He’d probably been here a while already, gathering information, taking notes, and speaking to detectives and witnesses.
“Perfect timing,” he said after he reached me. “Maria finished processing the scene only a couple of minutes ago.”
“Yep, she gave me the go-ahead,” I replied, then swept my gaze around the area with its bustling activity. Crew members carted fancy equipment here and there, men and women scrambled over set pieces, painting, nailing, clamping, and cutting. A man with deep lines of stress around his eyes consulted the stack of papers on his clipboard and gave instructions—accompanied by a lot of arm waving—to the crew. Apart from the one scene with the shotgun, there wasn’t any actual filming going on in the blocked-off street, but the behind-the-scenes stuff made up for it. And there were fake zombies everywhere. Only about ten or so wore full makeup, but the rest sported the equivalent of spray-on tan, except instead of Sun Kissed Bronze it was Decay Grey.