Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3) (14 page)

Even when he walked through puddles of glistening blood.

And opened a door.

Flickering shadows thrown by the glare of the television monitor kept him from looking directly at the screen; he looked instead at the blood-spattered walls. He inhaled the foul mixture of shit and blood. The furniture was overturned. He had seen blood before. He had assassinated men who were believed to be invincible. But this did not seem real. There was death all around him, and it did not seem real at all.

Colonel Richards had seen horror in Egypt. Now he looked upon the spawn of that horror, the final outcome of his mortal fear.

A figure silhouetted by the television glare loomed before him. A tall man wearing a suit that hung loosely over a wet body; emaciated and thin, the body could have been a man who had gone swimming in his suit as part of some joking dare. Richards didn’t know what he was looking at.

“Sir,” Richards said, and swallowed.

The face was red and wet. Eyes bulged in their sockets. Thin wisps of hair hung like dead tree branches over the skeletal face.

Richards screamed, and Mina returned to the Packard Plant. His terror followed her, and so did everything he felt at that moment. The bitter failure, the dread, the realization that he had royally fucked up.

Traverse ended up killing Richards. And now Mina had to stop him and the game that these powerful men had played with the lives of precious innocents.

She had learned that men had played with her life, and she was no different than all those who had been lost, save the fact she could do something about it. Patrick would never expect her to act like this, to have good intentions, but he hadn’t known her. Not really. As much as he said he cared about her, she was nothing more than a means to an end for him.

And for everyone who had ever known her.

Except for one man.

***

While time passed, Mina began to think she could completely take over again. But somehow, Rose was buried deeply inside of her, and the demon had latched on like a parasite.

She was happy to discover that Vega and Vincent had survived the onslaught, but there were more zombies coming. The only thing she could do to help was wait for Traverse to come back.

A faint whistling sound echoing through the corridors of the shattered factory alerted her. The Artist was back. Mina nervously played with her hair, and then thought maybe Rose wouldn’t touch it so much; she had to pretend to be Rose inside of her own resurrected body.

Being dead was just as complicated as being alive. She had never been a good person, and had always leaned on others to make decisions for her. Mina was alone now.

All this time waiting, and she didn’t really know how she was going to do it. She didn’t have a plan. She wasn’t strong enough to figure this out on her own. Now it was almost time to act, and she had no clue how to handle a professional killer like Jim Traverse.

He wanted Rose to love him, to worship him.

The whistling was closer. Mina stood and tried to stretch out her stiff limbs, tried to smooth out the tangles from her red hair; she had to think about pleasing Patrick, had to think about what he had wanted from her. If she pleased Patrick and made him happy, he would hold her close and would tell her stories about homicide cases he had been part of. She had to pretend she was going to try and please Patrick.

Accompanying the sound of Jim’s whistling was a series of squeaks. Mina thought of a playground swing set, and for a fleeting second wondered if she could protect children around the world; all she had to do was kill one man, and then she could destroy this body, finding a way to dash the Rose microchip to bits.

Casually whistling a show tune, Traverse appeared at the end of the hallway. He was pushing a shopping cart, and its wheels squeaked. The cart was loaded with something, and in the dark, Mina couldn’t see what it was. She slowly approached Jim, hardly able to keep her balance as her awkward joints struggled to work. Curling the ends of her hair around her fingertips, she pursed her lips and swayed her hips as best she could, nearly falling twice.

Jim stopped and waited for her. He continued whistling.

“What have you brought me?” Mina asked.

Who was she supposed to be? Rose? Or herself? For a moment, she wasn’t sure whose voice she used. She wasn’t sure if she was in the right place. She wasn’t sure if she had ever existed.

“You’ve made a lot of progress in a short while,” Jim said. “I’m surprised you can walk as well as you can.”

“I’m full of surprises. I wish you would touch me again. I’ve been waiting for you to come back.”

“Waiting for me.”

“Yes. It’s been lonely here. It’s not fair that you brought me back and just left me.”

“You died trying to find me. I am everything you want, and I didn’t let you die in vain. I gave you power. I gave you everything I promised.”

Mina felt lost. The words she spoke felt unnatural, as if Rose would never have said them, and Jim knew it. He stood there with his hands still on the cart’s handle, observing her.

“We should spend more time together,” Mina said. “Be with me like you want to. Everything I am is because of you. I would die for you again and again.”

“Yes. You would. You have.”

“Tell me about how beautiful the world is when so many people are screaming. Tell me when we can swim in an ocean of blood together.”

Jim leaned in closer to her and peered into her eyes.

“Your eyes,” Jim said, “are wonderfully green.”

Mina took a step back, and her knee twisted oddly. Her body surrendered as she fell to the ground. She looked up to see Jim standing over her, nothing more than a black shape in the gloom. How many times had he stood over her like this? How many times did he portray himself as a lordly being, a god responsible for every breath she was allowed to breathe?

“You asked what I brought back for you,” Jim said. “You should know, dear Rose, that I never stop thinking about you. You lived the life of a doomed Ophelia before, and now I would prefer that you are my Lady Macbeth.”

Jim reached into the shopping cart and grabbed a heavy object that he dropped onto the ground beside her; it plopped down wetly, and Mina instantly recognized it as a human torso with the head still attached.

Mina didn’t want to look.

Jim waited for her to look.

If she hesitated now, he would figure it out. She had never been afraid of a dead body, but she remembered all the times Patrick had given her raw meat, dropping it in front of her like she was a dog patiently awaiting a meal. Jim had once given her raw human flesh. She had wolfed down a man who had managed to survive the first few hours of a zombie apocalypse, only to be eaten alive by a redheaded, certifiably insane, cannibal porn star.

“I knew a fair lady once, her eyes as green as emeralds,” Jim said, the familiar smirk slowly creeping over his lips. “This fair lady had hair the color of wine and skin as white as milk. This fair lady was insane. This fair lady ate people. This fair lady wrapped the torso of a zombie priest to her stomach and walked around with it and gave it a name, treated it like a pet. This fair lady is supposed to be dead, but I look upon her now.”

A shudder electrified Mina’s body.

“Tell me, fair lady: would you hold this dead body close to your chest? Would you lovingly caress the bone scalp? There is no skin on this torso. Can you see it in the dark? Ah, fair lady, I have done much to please you. I have tried to make you happy, to make you realize your potential. I believed in you, fair lady, and now, you would try to take my life.”

Mina heard the voices in her head: the demon and a million others, mocking her, all mocking her.

She tried to talk, but it was no use.

I’m back,
Rose said.
He wanted me, not you. He brought me back, not you. Your body was always supposed to belong to me.

Mina didn’t understand. She had tried to save Rose once. She had tried to help her, and all she wanted to do was save the world. All she wanted to do was kill the man who probably never cared about Rose to begin with; poor Rose was blinded by love.

But as much as Mina wanted to talk, to make Rose understand, she never could argue with anyone, and she didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know how to say it. Control was slipping away. Jim was winning.

He did it all for me,
Rose said.
I know he did. He has many things to tell me. I need to be with him. I need to know if my love for him is real, and you’re in the way.

Jim looked down upon her, tilting his head as if looking at a wounded bird. “Fair lady, you have served your purpose. I have brought you one final gift, a token of my gratitude. I am thankful that you have worked hard, that you didn’t give up on the human race, no matter how damaged your existence is. You are cursed, and it’s not your fault. Still. I know you would appreciate this.”

The Artist removed a thin, leathery object that looked like a mask from the shopping cart, and he draped it over his face. Another object looked like part of a jacket, and he placed it on his shoulders.

Mina turned to the fleshless torso beside her. She smelled the blood.

Around the neck was a priest’s collar.

“He said they used to call him Bloody Joe,” Jim said.

Mina wanted to scream, but the only sound her throat could make was a choking gasp, as her body arched, and the entire world laughed inside of her head. 

THE BAD SECRETS

VEGA

Everything smelled like rain, and she wasn’t sure why. She liked the smell, even though terrible things had happened to her in the rain. The rain brought sound and dulled the shadows to shades of gray, a lens that distorted the ruined city into colorlessness.

In time, Vincent would forgive her.

But this guy. Waiting for her down the road. Backpack slung over his shoulder like he was a hitchhiker, wearing a dumb smile that seemed to reach his forehead.

“What the fuck is this?” she said.

Bill Bailey, pro football player and zombie-fighting hero. A Mossberg shotgun with a camouflage stock and pistol grip in a sheath at his back. Like a true crusader.

“Heard you were leaving,” he said.

“Yeah. Leaving. To be on my own.”

He shook his head. “Don’t worry—I’m not getting sentimental on you. I’m not looking to be friends or live happily ever after. I figure I’m past all that by now.’

“You figure?” she laughed.

He shrugged and looked at the eroded-nickel sky, still air trapping humidity between the ramshackle homes which squatted uselessly along the street.

“Heard you had an excuse for leaving,” Bill said.

“This is the part where I tell you I’m not taking a sidekick. Then I give in and let you follow behind for a while until you save my life and I become thankful for your help, and then we become best friends, and I change as a person, and so on.”

“If you say so. If you’re talking like it’s English class I can say I don’t remember much. Math was more my thing.”

“One Detroit minus one Vega equals one Detroit without Vega. Without you. Goodbye, Bill.”

The football player laughed at the sky. “I can’t change your mind. I don’t want to help you or protect you. You don’t need me. Our little slice of heaven stinks now, and I’m ready to move on.”

He proved he wasn’t a coward, and he wasn’t hard on the eyes. With his unruly blond hair that should have been tucked beneath a football helmet, icy blue eyes that were supposed to look straight into a camera while he talked about teamwork and sportsmanship. A little bit of a drawl underlined his speech. He was smart enough to know it was a mistake to stick around the neighborhood, and he had also been smart enough to keep his mouth shut and help when he was asked. Men like him would have made special ops; he could have been a Ranger or a SEAL. God had given the good ol’ boy just enough charm and talent to become a pro football player and fight wars on television.

“I’m not saving the world,” Vega said.

“Who is? Anyway, I’d like to ride south, go back home. And I’ll get there. Don’t know what I’ll find, but I’ll get there.”

She noticed his quick, warm smile.

“I’m looking for a man,” she said, and stopped herself. She wanted to say more. She wanted to say that she’d been hunting Traverse her whole life.

Bill shrugged again. “Suits me. Just riding the highway for a bit. I’ll go with you a ways and then split.”

Traverse was in Detroit. The man had returned; she never understood the mission that brought her here, but Traverse had made things worse with his pre-rotted bastards; people who died and rotted away in seconds while watching a sex tape that featured Mina.

Vega had put it together in her head, rehearsed the entire plot that tugged at the edges of heaven and hell. Griggs had been looking for the redhead, and the girl had some kind of power to jump into zombie heads and tell the whole damn mess of them what to do, how to act. Vincent had told her before that Mina was a famous porn starlet that had eaten a man on film, although nobody had seen it before. Mina had been sent to Eloise Fields, the same nuthouse Traverse had been sent to after he had been captured at the end of his seven year run from the government—he had been killing people in gruesome ways all across the country and had earned himself the nickname, The Artist. Nick Crater, who had tried to rape Vega and gave her a still-lingering concussion, had mentioned the asylum was owned and operated by military interests. Traverse had apparently plotted to have himself incarcerated there so he could meet her. Whatever Mina was capable of, Traverse knew about it and wanted to use her.

Did Bob know why he spent years of his life hunting the man down, only to be ordered in to rescue him?

Traverse made his own Mina video and shared it with the world. Somebody sent that assassin, Rose, to bring Traverse out of Detroit. Somebody wanted Traverse badly. The same someone who landed at Selfridge and bailed Traverse out.

Father Joe worked with Mina; trapped inside of a corpse, she could hear him and silence the savage hunger that howled within the living dead, but she couldn’t stop the ones Traverse had created with his video.

Now, after a year, the zombies went nuts. For no damn reason. Father Joe had believed that Mina was long gone, faded out somewhere.

Their little hamlet had been ripped to pieces, and then Father Joe disappeared.

And there was something else.

Not including Bill Bailey, a cowboy who wanted to hit the turnpike and ride it down to Texas.

“I should warn you that my aim is for shit these days,” Vega said.

Bill smiled warmly again. “Don’t plan on doing too much fighting. Got walking to do and some living along the way.”

Let him follow. As long as he didn’t get in the way, and he didn’t have any common interests, he was harmless. He was down-to-earth and simple, with a heart that was big enough to fill his large frame. The guy used to attend Father Joe’s service every Sunday and had nothing better to do than surround himself with goodness.

There wasn’t much of a trail, but there was enough for her. Start from the beginning to find the end.

As long as she could get her hands on Traverse—she just needed one more shot. There was a chance, just a small chance, that maybe killing him could do some good. Bringing him down might make a difference.

Traverse was here, in Detroit.

He told her so.

***

Survivors with enough energy and desire to keep moving were piling bodies onto a pyre outside the church. Service was ongoing, the first after the slaughter. The estimated number of dead increased by the hour, a number ruined by speculation and fear mongering. But who was left? Why were people burning the dead instead of spending time with God, time that was set aside for the community to pray together?

And why was the fire right outside of the church?

Vega stared into the flame, hesitant to go inside and listen to Father Joe’s sermon. After years spent wallowing in the shadow of her father’s death, it was still difficult for her to go into a church. Father Joe was a damn good human being, almost too good, and she could use some of his positive words to help her get past the difficult decision she was about to make.

“You okay?”

She turned around and found a lean man wearing a black Detroit Tigers cap over his eyes. He wore leather work gloves on his hands, and his blue jeans were soiled; his arms hung like knotted rope from a plain T-shirt with its sleeves cut off

What did he want? The same thing all men wanted from her, only Vincent wasn’t hovering over her. Not that she needed him; she could more than handle herself and everyone knew. They had
seen
it last night.

“Sure,” she said.

“Can’t say how many we’ve burned, but it’s pretty isn’t it?”

His slow grin seemed to hide a private joke. His hands on his hips, he admired the pyre, the product of hours’ worth of hard labor.

“If you say so,” she said.

“A bonfire in the middle of the street,” he said, looking around as if seeing everything for the first time. “It reminds me of a wild forest fire. You ever seen a forest fire? Like the ones they get in California. Detroit looked just like it. The fire was so high, it looked like it was touching the moon.”

The man was odd; his movements were methodical, carefully orchestrated. He seemed to be searching the top of his head for words, fingers slipping from his hips and into the belt loops around his waist. A long spire of flame crackled behind him. The corpses in the pyre had become skeletons filled with the heat and light of the flame.

Organ music thundered into the street from the church.

“There were people who wrote stories about heroes,” the man said. “Poems, plays, novels. Newspapers needed their heroes. What you did yesterday—I wonder if there’s anyone who will write about it. Anyone who needs it written.”

She shook her head from the heat of his gaze, the glare of the fire. “Sorry. I don’t know you, buddy.”

His grin was nothing more than a fleeting smirk. He extended his hand cordially, and she grasped his cold fingers. “Jack,” he said. “Grew up round here. Couple blocks away, actually. I’ve managed to stick around, keep my head on my shoulders.”

“Obviously.”

“Obviously. Yeah. You’re Vega.”

Jack waited for an apology; she was being rude to him. His presence was an unexpected disruption, a rift cracking through the confusion and self-loathing. Instead of feeling sorry for herself and rehearsing what she want to say to Father, she was intrigued by this stranger’s odd reflections. She couldn’t think of anything to say. Clearly, he was a sober man, and he wasn’t interested in fear; throwing the dead things into the fire was nothing more than something to do, an old responsibility that had worn itself thin from routine.

Surrounded by flame, church music drumming the concrete, a gothic army of monsters marching upon stone to the battle hymn of nightmare.

“You could write it,” she said, because she wanted to talk. She couldn’t walk away from him without finishing whatever conversation he started. She couldn’t walk away without satisfying whatever was supposed to happen between them.

Jack’s eyes caught the flame-shine. “You would be a modern Aeneas, or perhaps Odysseus. Sadly, I don’t think anyone would read it. I don’t think anyone around here wants to do much of anything except die.”

She had no idea what he was talking about, and his rigid posture made her feel uncomfortable. It would be nice if he walked away and talked about poetry and stories to someone who cared; here was another dope-fiend tripped out on apocalyptic visions and horror dogma. He was close enough for her to know he wasn’t drunk, but his gaze suggested he was staring across an ocean only he could see. An ocean drunk on hellfire.

“Are you sticking around?” she asked.

He shrugged and looked around, appraising the neighborhood. “Am I sticking around? I suppose we all have our part to play. Whether we’re supposed to die or watch children become chicken nuggets, someone has to see this, or we wouldn’t know it was happening.”

“Chicken nuggets? Are you serious?”

Shanna had been running through the streets with her and Vincent in pursuit, and like so many other children, she became a meal for the gluttonous dead. Griggs had saved her life then, too. Like he had saved her from Crater. Nobody deserved to die this way. Nobody deserved to be eaten alive. Nobody deserved to have their body thrown into a fire like a paper plate tossed into a campfire.

Jack had reminded her that life wasn’t so cheap. That she had cared for Shanna, a girl she didn’t know but had risked everything to save. While she’d been sitting around with Vincent and suffering the malaise of the past, the people in this neighborhood, the survivors, quietly rotted away. They had seen too much death to take life seriously.

He ignored her question and nodded at the church. “Nice place. I knew a few people who died inside there, a couple of them in the street, right here. But you wouldn’t know that if I hadn’t told you.”

“You remember their names?”

She didn’t want his answer, and she didn’t want to ask him the question in the first place. He challenged her conscience with his careless outlook and his smug demeanor, that roguish smirk and pair of firelight-devouring eyes. She had to know if he was human; each second with him pissed her off, mostly because she was just like him. Too many people dead who didn’t have names.

“No,” he said. “I don’t remember. Did you know anyone who’s burning now?” He pointed to the bonfire. “It’s a beautiful idea: if there isn’t anyone to mourn us, do we still need to live? A rose by another name is still a rose, but is it still a rose if we don’t know there is a rose?”

She inhaled and could smell the burning dead. Why couldn’t she smell them before? Their stench was more pungent because she knew those bodies used to be alive. All the smoke and ash she inhaled over the last year; the burned city had corrupted her lungs, but the bodies that burned in front of her now didn’t smell like the city. The bodies didn’t smell like the fires she had run through while Bob led her into the city. This was the smell of boiling blood and over-cooked steak crusted and charred, blackened and shrunk.

Enough time was wasted on Jack and his poetics. The odd man had awakened something in her, an awareness she had buried but wanted to resurrect, an awareness she had for fleeting moments in her life.

An awareness of mortality.

“Nice to meet you, Jack.”