Chapter title is from song by Alice in Chains.

17

Rooster – Alice in Chains

There were three messages from Garth sitting on her phone.

If nothing else, the crazy pitter-patter of her movements on the GPS would have tipped him off that something was seriously wrong. The speed at which she was switching up locations read "getting my ass chased all over to hell and gone" more than "methodically tracking something down and killing it." And Garth wasn't a hunter for nothing.

Zee stared at the screen. She figured she had less than three hours before Garth tried again, at which point she was either going to pick up or be saddled with reinforcements, and she wasn't altogether sure reinforcements were a good idea. Hunters were a pragmatic lot; there were more than a few of them who wouldn't be above parking Toby out for bait, again, just to flush Mother out of wherever she was holed up.

And considering they would be doing that over her dead body, she was really not keen on the idea.

Toby slept on through dinner, worn out. She watched the deep evenness of his breathing as he lay curled up in a tight ball beneath the covers. A shock of hair fell over his eyes. They would need to get that cut soon; the back ends now fell to his shoulder.

The unfamiliar consideration gave her pause. He'd finally given her enough information to go on—and what she had found was, in a word, problematic. Kathleen Donovan had crashed her car into a telephone pole three months ago, trying to avoid a floating zombie, leaving a sole surviving son. Toby. Lieutenant JG Matthew Donovan had been lost in action a year ago in Afghanistan. The county had sent Toby to Father Laughlin's children's home because they could find no other relatives.

She stared blankly at a spot on the wall. Getting Toby back to some semblance of normal, of family, was out. If this Mother zombie went to the trouble of causing the accident and then claiming Toby from the children's home once, she would do it again. The thing was psycho and fixated. The only way to make sure Toby was safe, was to get rid of the creature chasing him.

Her lips tightened. Whether she liked it or not, Toby was the target, which was the same thing as bait. Whatever the word, he was in the crosshairs of the zombie horde. Getting rid of them wouldn't be easy. Short of firebombing the zombie's nest, which was a thought, there was no way she was going to be able to face down sixteen of those things and make it out in one piece. One of them was problem enough.

And then what? Even supposing she managed, by some miracle, to get rid of the zombies, she couldn't put the kid back into the system. Even the kindest of intentions and the buffer of wealth were no protection against the things that haunted your sleep. The pleading in Toby's voice when he had asked if she believed him was all too familiar.

Restlessly she stood, phone in hand. She needed help. Someone had to watch the kid, and it had to be someone who knew one end of a sawed-off from the other. And then there was no way to get out of telling Garth about the vampire eating zombies, and that was a red flag if ever there was one. If she bailed or failed, whoever got saddled with the mess would need to know. Hell, she needed to know what exactly Travis had found that prompted him to go to that spot in the first place.

The phone in her hand vibrated. Garth's check-in window had shrunk to two hours since his last call—he was worried. She walked into the small bathroom and closed the door most of the way to keep from waking Toby.

"Garth."

"Zee." Garth breathed with relief. "Travis?"

"Not yet." The odds were against him, but she didn't know for sure.

"What's going on?" Garth's voice focused with concern. Her reputation for efficiency preceded her, in this instance, unfortunately. Any vagueness in her replies was going to tip Garth off.

"Zombies."

"Contagious zombies?"

Zee paused to consider the things she knew.

"Don't think so. Don't know for sure." She could feel the hairs on Garth's neck standing up at the absence of information in her words. She took a silent breath before adding calmly. "Found them snacking on vampire."

"WHA?" Garth's voice shot up and intensified with alarm. He made a worried humming noise.

His response answered the question of if he'd ever heard of anything similar. Guess not.

"Travis update you at all?"

Garth made a despairing snort. That was a long shot. "Witch?"

"Is there such a thing as a zombie witch?"

Garth inhaled. It sounded like an ugly combination even just saying it. Witches were bad enough by themselves.

"Never heard of one." Garth's reply was distracted. "We need to get you some backup."

"Not Ferdie."

There was a tiny pause as Garth considered her words. One, that things were bad enough she wasn't arguing. Two, normally she had no problems with Ferdie, but nothing got between Ferdie and the target of the hunt. Collateral damage was something he accepted without blinking, in the name of the greater good.

"Right." She could hear Garth thinking across the line. "Call you tomorrow."

"Yeah."

There was another pause from the other end at her conciliatory tone. "Zee?"

She was off pattern, and she knew it. She was probably setting off more alarms in Garth's head with every word she uttered. She could sense he was on the brink of asking if things were okay before he thought better of it.

"Tomorrow."

"Yep." She disconnected before she could give anything more away. She had a few more calls to make.