White Trash Zombie Gone Wild by Diana Rowland Page B

He’ll have the new formula ready to test in a couple of days, and I’ll be back to working security in no time.”
    â€œGlad to hear it.” I smiled, genuinely relieved for him, if not for my own predicament. I moved to the counter by the fridge and straightened containers of supplies. “I saw Marcus, Pierce, Brian, and Kyle earlier today. The FBI is sniffing around funeral homes.”
    â€œThere’s shit stirred everywhere,” Philip said with a shake of his head. “Those four left here about twenty minutes ago.” He moved to a mirror on the wall and peered at the fissure by his mouth.
    My eyes narrowed. “Three hours ago they were supposedly off to the airport.”
    His eyes met mine in the mirror. “Plans had to be shuffled. Pierce showed up here in a
mood
, then he got a call from Rachel. Kristi Charish surfaced in Portland this afternoon. That’s where they’re heading first now instead of the out-of-state funeral homes and other business.”
    I let out a low whistle. After I managed to escape Charish’s lab, the Tribe had captured her and put her to work with Dr. Nikas. Then, a few months back, Nicole Saber—CEO of Saberton Corporation—ordered a major strike on the Tribe, during which they grabbed Charish, along with Pietro, Marcus, and two other zombies. We’d rescued Pietro and Marcus from the New York lab, but Charish and the other two zombies had been sent to the Saberton dedicated zombie research lab in Dallas. The Tribe conducted a raid there and successfully freed a number of zombie captives but failed to recapture Charish. As far as I knew, today’s appearance in Portland was the first time she’d been seen in months. No wonder Pierce had dropped everything to head to Oregon.
    â€œIf they do track her down, are they gonna . . .” I swiped my finger across my throat.
    Philip grimaced, either at my question or his reflection. “I think they’d prefer to capture her. But our security resources are stretched thin at the moment, between Saberton, FBI scares, and the exodus project. Whatever our head honchos decide, they need to do it fast—and without making any waves—so they can move on to the next fire that needs dousing.”
    My mind scrambled back a few seconds. “Wait. Exodus project? Exodus of what?”
    He turned back to me, expression serious. “The Tribe. It’s vital that we have a plan in place in the event the Saberton or FBI shit hits the fan and it looks like we’re close to being exposed. The logistics of how and where to go to ground is the honchos’ big project.”
    I gulped. “Temporarily, right? Until the threat blows over?”
    â€œIf and when we go, we vanish for good.”
    â€œNo.” I shook my head, mouth dry. “It won’t come down to that.”
But it might
. I couldn’t deny the possibility.
    Philip exhaled. “Pierce says he goes through an exodus once or twice every hundred years, on average. Sometimes more often.”
    â€œWhenever regular people find out about his Tribe’s zombie-ness,” I said in dismay. Mob mentality was ugly stuff. “But it’s in Saberton’s best interests to keep the zombies secret. Their hands are dirty. Plus, once word got out, every bio-tech or pharmaceutical company in the world would be racing to study the parasite in the hopes of making billions on cures of diseases and old age.” I licked dry lips. “Saberton wants that monopoly. And they’d likely get scooped on the whole super zombie soldier idea as well.” The ultimate point of Saberton’s secret and inhumane zombie research was to make a buttload of money from the parasite in any way possible. It helped my peace of mind to know that, if push came to shove, I had a passel of naked sex pics of Saberton CEO Nicole Saber that she knew I’d cheerfully upload to every website in the world if she