Dead Sexy (3 page)

I sucked in a deep breath. Damn. I was actually thinking about working with a Biter. Worse, I was considering working with a representative of the United States government.

The same bureaucratic organization that had told my dad he couldn’t have a heart transplant. It wouldn’t have been an issue in the old days, but—ever since the dead had started rising—they’re so worried about contaminating the blood supply, the only way to get a blood transfusion these days is through a private supply.

My father had died sucking for oxygen, all while Uncle Donny was pacing in the other room. Worrying about his brother. Offering to provide the only solution possible. My father hadn’t wanted to be a Biter—some horror movie zombie hanging on past his time—he’d wanted to die clean.

It had almost broken my mother.

“There’s not a chance in hell,” I said. “I don’t work with dead men, and I definitely don’t work with Feds.”

Curved lips set into a thin line. “I could make things difficult for you. Running a funeral home? I can slow down your paperwork, send extra inspectors.” There was a slight pause. “You won’t get far without a license.”

“My hunting license?” Fear clutched my heart. My breath was coming faster now. I’d gone through a battery of tests before receiving my license for ‘Specialty Handling of the Undead.’ It had been worth it. These days, I brought in close to half of the funeral home’s income all by myself.

The dead man laughed. “Not your hunting license. Your business license.”

My throat went dry. My lungs seized up. If we lost the funeral home’s business license, my mother’s head would explode. Literally. Uncle Donny and I would be picking up debris for a week.

I put my hands down on the desk, hard.

Could he really do it?

Probably. A Biter with a gun—who could have himself released from police custody—wasn’t someone to mess around with. It would be a mistake to underestimate him.

“I can get you in to talk with a guy at the morgue. After that, I’ve got a yoga class in Midtown, and I’ve got some supplies to buy.” Zombie bait to catch little Andrea Mitchell. “You want to talk payment?”

“A hundred and fifty an hour. I’ll double it if you let me go to your yoga class.”

“Not a chance in hell.” A hundred and fifty an hour was already more than my standard rate. I’d have to do some fancy footwork to keep my mother from seeing the government check, but at least she’d be happy about the money.

I stood up slowly and took stock of the situation.

If I was going to hit the morgue, I needed to refill my bag with supplies, wash my face, pull a brush through my hair, and throw on a pair of jeans.

The morgue attendants like me in jeans. I’ve got a tight ass, and they’re men.

“I need half an hour to clean up and change. You want to go wait in the car?”

“I’d prefer to wait in here.”

I rolled my eyes. “Not an option.

“Okay, I’ll go talk to your Biter. What did you say his name was?”

“Donny, and he’s not my biter. He’s my uncle.” And, despite being a ‘first waver,’ Donny wasn’t particularly talkative. He could grunt out a few words when the situation called for it, but he was nothing like D.S.—Thomas, only now I couldn’t think of him as anything but those bold red initials—maybe I’d been wrong.

Maybe he was human.

But there was the creepy way he’d lifted the car off of me and the cool touch of his hand against my skin…

The way he hadn’t taken a single breath through our entire conversation…

He was definitely dead, which meant my regularly scheduled life was completely done for.

4.

“Gemma, you’re looking good.”

All morgue attendants are creeps—they spend their days sorting through dead bodies and restraining brand new Biters—but Hickory Pickens is almost human. I went to elementary school with his sister, Moira, and my mom knows his mother. He gave me a long, lingering look, concentrating on the line where my black tank top met the slope of my breasts and my tight jeans cupped my thighs. “Very good.”

“Thanks.” I bit my lip to keep from rolling my eyes. “We’re here to ask a few questions.”

“We?” He glanced past me to where D.S. was lurking in the shadows. “You’re hanging around with a Biter? Since when?”

“Since I needed someone to do the heavy lifting.”

Hick’s gaze never left D.S. His lips pulled back into a thin smile. “He’s got a shifty look to him, Gemma. You need an assistant, let me set you up. I’ve got a dead secretary in holding who’ll be ready for prime time in a couple of days. You train her up, she’ll be able to get your coffee and type a hundred words a minute.”

“I like my guy,” I shifted uncomfortably.

“He’s a zombie.”

“He’s got a name.” I insisted.

“They’ve all got names. They’re still zombies.” The venom in his voice made me blink in surprise. Hick wasn’t exactly a poster boy for Biter rights, but I’d never thought of him as a bigot before.

Biter prejudice wasn’t exactly new. Hell, I didn’t exactly get the warm and fuzzies about dead people hanging around the place myself. In a perfect world, the rising never would have happened. There would be no Biters. No, zombies.

In a perfect world, my dad would still be alive.

This isn’t a perfect world. The Biters are here, and we have to live with them. That means living in the same neighborhoods, driving the same streets, and occasionally working together. I glanced past Hick towards a pair of Biters in ugly green scrubs moving a corpse from a stretcher onto a refrigerated shelf. The morgue attendant definitely had enough exposure to the undead to get over his dislike.

Maybe it was something about D.S. specifically? The Biter hadn’t done much since entering the morgue, but there was definitely a tension between the two men. They were staring each other down like two-alpha predators viewing each other across the tundra.

Men. I rolled my eyes. They might as well take them out and measure them.

“We’ve got a question,” I said.

Hick crossed his arms in front of his chest. “What do you want to know, Gemma?”

Luckily, D.S. had prepped me on the way over. I leaned forward slightly, giving the morgue attendant another peek down my shirt. “I need to look at the release records.”

The hum of the morgue refrigerators filled the air. The tile basement was cool. The only natural light came from narrow windows near the ceiling. Everything else was illuminated by yellow fluorescent light, including Hick’s square jaw and dimpled jaw.

On a scale of one to ten he was a solid eight, not breathtaking, but certainly capable of holding his own on the cover of ‘Morgue Attendants Monthly.’

D.S. was a twelve. Not that I was keeping score.

“Release records are private, Gemma. They go straight from here to the local DUA office.”

“Where I can request them from the government. Come on, Hick,” I wheedled. “I’m just looking for a photocopy of the registration form I sent in last month. Don’t make me drive to Toledo.”

“It’d be a pity to see your ass leave town,” Hick allowed slowly. “Especially when there are so many other ways you could be spending your time…”

The dead man coughed. Not exactly the easiest move in the world, given the lack of oxygen in his lungs. I turned in his direction to give him a dark look.

D.S.’s cheeks were flushed. His lips twitched up at the side. Like he was trying not to laugh.

“Why not a date?” I grinned at Hick. The morgue attendant might not make my panties wet on sight, but he had a job and a pulse. I could do worse.

“Tonight?” Hick asked.

“It’ll take me a while to get through the files,” I said. “How about tomorrow?”

The dead man had stopped trying to hide his laughter. His jaw had gone tight. For the first time all day, he looked downright murderous.

He didn’t say a word.

Not while I made arrangements to meet up with Hick the next night. Not while the morgue attendant was leading us into the records room.

D.S. maintained his deathly silence even while the other man was giving me a too friendly hug goodbye.

“I can’t wait for our date,” Hick said with one hand on my ass. It looked like he wanted to start things right there in the storage closet… and he didn’t care who was watching.

I bit my lip nervously. “You can stick around if you want. I could use some extra help going through the files.”

Hick looked at me. He looked at my perky breasts, flat belly, and curved hips. He looked at the poorly sorted storage room full of file folders. “Sorry, I’ve got to be out at the front desk. In case we get an intake.” He bolted from the room.

D.S. didn’t say a word… Until the door squeaked shut.

“You’re not going on a date with that guy.”

“What’s wrong with Hick?”

The dead guy’s jaw clenched for a moment. “First, he spends too much time on his hair. Never a good sign.” He started to count off on his hand. “Second, he’s smug. He’s smarmy. He’s got horrible taste in cologne—.”

“He’s alive,” I interrupted airily. The Biter looked like he’d been slapped. Hard. All the bluster left his face.

“He’s short. You can’t go out with him. I forbid it.”

“Thanks, Dad,” I rolled my eyes. “You going to give me a curfew while you’re at it.”

“You’ve got a smart mouth,” he growled.

I was trying to think of a comeback, but he’d already turned to the piles of boxes. “What are we looking for?” I asked.

“I’ve got the DUA registration list for the last two years. We need to do a sampling nod find out if all reported deaths are being properly registered. If you’re right—if the dead really are coming back here—then we’ll need to figure out where they’re going. If they’re not coming back here at the same rates, then, we need to figure out why.”

“Maybe people have just gotten smarter about letting Biters get ‘em.”

“That’s happening all over. It still wouldn’t explain why the numbers are so low in Detroit.”

Whatever. I grabbed a box and started rummaging through. The files were in no particular order. Typical bureaucratic nonsense. “You got any particular way you want to do this?”

“Try to find everything from last year.” He pulled a shiny new smartphone from his pocket. “I’ll take down the information and check it against DUA records.”

A pile of papers was creaking precipitously nearby. I put out a hand to shift it back into position, and something crashed in the back of the room. “Why don’t you dig out the files? It’s not like you can get hurt if something falls on you.”

“Sorry, I can’t give you access to our servers.”

Of course not, I rolled my eyes and started to pick my way through the room.

Paperwork. I hated paperwork.

I made my way to the back of the room and made my way forward from there. By the time, I’d made it back to D.S. I had two broken nails, dirt in my hair, and a stack of paper two feet high. I was hot, sweaty, and thinking about ditching my yoga class.

“Find anything?” I asked.

“Names. Lots of them.” D.S.’s mouth curled in disgust. “I’ve only gotten through the first two months. I’ve found a little more than two-dozen people who died here without being registered.”

“Let me see.” I grabbed the pack of folders from his side and began to page through them. There was no pattern that I could see. They were all different races, religions, and creeds. Sixteen men, nine women. No children, but these days young Biters are the exception. Not the rule.

All the folders had the same familiar notation in the corner. The scrawled writing, I saw on every piece of paperwork that came through the funeral home.

They’d opted for private registration. It cost a bit more than the filing fees charged by the government, but it was worth it.

When we register a Biter, we track the paperwork, smooth over all the rough edges, and make sure they look good in their ID photo.

“Did they all go through the same funeral home?” I asked. D.S. didn’t bother answering. Once a dead body is checked out of the morgue, there’s no telling where it’s headed. The system is built on trust… and the fact  no Biter would be caught undead without a registration card.

After the government had decided dead people could still be citizens, they’d passed a full series of laws establishing limits and protocols. The rule against the undead carrying guns was the least of it. A Biter’s only valid form of identification was their registration card. They needed it to work, travel, and register to vote. Heck, they had to show a registration card to get into a bar. The same way I had to show my driver’s license.

Not that I’d ever been a stickler for following the rules. “What about fake ID?”

D.S.’s gaze narrowed. “You know someone who does that kind of work in the city?”

I had a few bone-chilling ideas. “Maybe. There’s a guy I can ask. Tomorrow. Right now, I need to go to the store.”

“You need to buy a sexy new outfit for your big date?”

“Better, I need to buy Biter bait.”

5.

Most Hunters like to use raw beef to catch rogue Biters. It’s cheap, plentiful, and easy to get. Then there’s a guy in Flint, who uses live animals. Dogs. Cats. The occasional squirrel he catches in his backyard. He says that Biters can tell the difference between living meat and dead. They can feel the heartbeat.

The Biter I was hunting had been a little girl only a few days earlier, so I went to Whacko World.

Every kid in Southeast Michigan knows about Whacko World. It’s a Detroit institution. Four levels of fun, farce, and frantic parents trying to make sure little Jimmy made it out of the ball pit.

I’d had my sixth birthday there.

And my seventh.

And my eighth.

And now my best friend worked in Whacko World’s Krazy Kitchen. “How many burgers do you need?” Cindy asked, taking a long drag on her cigarette in Whacko World’s back alley.

“A dozen. Maybe more. As many as you can get me. I don’t care what they look like, as long as they smell good.”

“Wait around the side of the building, and I’ll see what I can do.”

Cindy is living proof  high school has nothing to do in real life. Back at Ye Olde Senior High together, she was the most-popular girl in school. Chestnut curls, blue eyes, and bubbly as hell. Head cheerleader. Homecoming Queen. Prom Queen. The cherished girlfriend of the varsity quarterback. I just knew her as a head of curls to aim spitballs at in English class.