Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3) (16 page)

Bella could take this woman’s life right now.

She waited.

And listened to the dead outside.

Moaning. After all this time, how could they? They have changed. They are driven, willing, and wanting.

All this time, to get this far, this close to Desmond.

Angelica stirred.

The woman sat up and looked at Bella, bruises already forming on her face, her bottom lip fattening. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand and grinned at Bella.

“Do it,” she said.

“Do what?”

“It’s what you wanted all along. It’s how we survive, right nigger? Life is too valuable to trust anyone. You know that. You’ve lived this long. You’ve killed. I know you’ve killed.”

Bella smirked.

“Come on nigger. Right between my eyes.”

And Bella looked at the woman’s dark face. This was a woman who was ready to die every day; every moment was borrowed in this damaged-mirror reflection of the world they had come from. Nothing was guaranteed. Nothing was safe. Should they have lived their lives like this before? Was this life’s most important lesson?

Deciding whether someone should live or die.

This power. This moment.

Bella dropped the rifle and slid it across the floor to the other woman.

Angelica looked at it.

“Of course not,” she said.

Bella smiled. “It would be doing you a favor.”

“Fair enough. You’re a hard woman.”

Silence for a moment. Angelica’s eyes drifted to the gun.

“That’s the closest you’ll ever get to a compliment,” Angelica said. “You decided you want to stay alive. You want to do this together.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Right. I guess now we pray or something, right? I’m in the mood to get the hell out of here.”

This was the kind of woman who always had a plan, always had a way out. She stood, grabbed the rifle, and didn’t look at Bella, didn’t even seem to consider it. The danger had passed.

VINCENT

Louis had sat in the same chair, with the same look on his face. Vincent didn’t understand the look at first. He thought Louis was angry with himself for letting his life’s story end after being attacked by zombies. Yeah. Zombies. How silly it all sounded in the beginning. Would it matter if they came up with a different name? Some people tried. Louis didn’t have time to try. Louis had sat in this chair because he wanted to say goodbye. He wanted to know it was worth it. That he didn’t spend his whole life working for a two-bit gangster, only to ask that same gangster to help him die.

It wasn’t anger.

The shelves in the room were bare. The place used to be a mess of guns and ammo. Now there was almost nothing.

Vincent was left with nothing.

He had put his gun beneath Louis’s chin and pulled the trigger.

That was a year ago.

Vega had been here with him. She stood and watched. What was the expression on Louis’s face? Not anger.

These guns belonged to the neighborhood. House wasn’t even registered under his name. This wasn’t all the guns. Not by a long shot. Nope. Why would he have all of his supplies out in the open? There were crusaders in City Hall who wanted to change Detroit, and they thought they could start from the outskirts, tear it down, shrink the city, work inward. Pull down a house like this one. A house the neighborhood needed.

What was the expression on Louis’s face?

Think about it a while.

Vega was gone. Was she really gone? Maybe she was upstairs.

A door opened in the house. Upstairs, footsteps.

Good. Let them come. Let them come down, and drag him to Hell. He couldn’t fight them anymore. He knew he couldn’t fight them anymore because he didn’t want to. His body didn’t want to. There was something in him, something that stopped him. Something that kept him from fighting when their tiny hamlet was ripped down; when everything he helped rebuild was chewed up by the dead.

And they took Vega from him.

No good blaming others. It was his fault. His business. His neighborhood. He came back here to protect it, to bring it back, and people followed him. They wanted what he was selling. He gave them hope, and someone brought drugs. He gave them hope, and he gave them guns, and they began smoking it away. Injecting it into their bloodstream. Disappearing into the spaces where nothing bad could happen. Places where nothing bad could find them, touch them, hurt them.

Footsteps on the stairs.

How would it feel? He always wondered. He dreamt about it, those rare nights he actually slept. What their teeth would feel like. What death would feel like. Did they feel anything when he put bullets into their skulls? Did they know what they were doing?

Time to get out of the chair, and fight for his life. Get out of the chair, and grab a gun. Die upright, like a man.

Or sit down and rest. Rest, and let them take what they want. He could keep fighting, keep running, but there would always be something else to lose. Like Vega. She was gone now because he couldn’t keep fighting, or keep running.

A figure walked down the stairs into the dark. A figure with heavy steps.

Get up now.

“Turn a goddamn light on,” the figure said.

Alive. Someone alive. Whoever it was could still put him out of his misery.

“I’m used to it,” Vincent said.

“You’re used to moping around?” the figure sat across from him in the other chair.

Gruff and scratchy, the voice of an old man. Sour, warm whisky breath.

“Where’d you get it?” Vincent asked.

“An alcoholic always knows where to find it,” Mike Taylor said.

Both of them were used to seeing in the dark. Used to the shadows and the light-swallowing black. Mike Taylor was an outline, nothing more, but Vincent could hear the whiskey slosh around, could smell it through the open bottle. Taylor extended the bottle to him.

It burned going down, but damn. Damn.

“This is where you kept everything,” Taylor said, as if he’d discovered a cave full of long-lost treasure. “Yeah. We spent a lot of time looking for it. Hunting you down. You were a sight in that courtroom. Beat tax evasion. Impressive.”

“Huh. You were on that task force?”

“No. Heard about it though. I was a beat cop. Everyone knew who you were.”

“Who I was.”

Another swig from the bottle, hellfire down his throat. He passed it back.

“We tried,” Taylor said.

“You didn’t try hard enough.”

“I was talking about us. The block. Those things.”

“Yeah. Like I said.”

What is there to say? He didn’t talk when Vega left. He didn’t say enough because there wasn’t anything to say. Nothing could be changed by his words now. Nothing could bring him back to that day in the courtroom, or the people who had died to protect him. The people who had been killed by bullets fired by his guns.

“Knew a cop named Griggs,” Vincent said. He wasn’t sure why he mentioned it. Taylor was his enemy a long time ago. This man had vowed to put him away; even if he wasn’t on the task force that was assigned to bring him down, Taylor was one of the good guys.

And Griggs. That asshole.

But he thought about him often. Too often. The man had been right about too many things.

“Griggs? Patrick Griggs?” Taylor laughed. “He was a damn good cop, but Jesus. Trigger-happy. Was a little too enthusiastic.”

Griggs had blown off a girl’s head in a park. She’d been bitten, and the man didn’t flinch. Took her out with one shot from his hand-cannon. Vincent stepped up to him because it was an excuse, nothing more. They didn’t get along. He was a hypocrite, knocking Griggs on his ass for killing a girl while people had been killing each other with guns sold by Vincent’s crew.

And then Sergeant John Charles was bit.

Memory: struggling through the mud, running and firing. Past a fence and into a house. Another showdown with Griggs. Thunderstorm shaking the night.

There had been the first time he tasted Vega’s lips, her damnation a magnet drawing him closer to the cold sweat beneath her chin, along the edge of her neck, upon the curve of her clavicle. A strange thought had occurred to him then, a thought he had again when he made love to her, although it wasn’t really love. It was just sex. Just carnal passion. A flesh exchange involving scant words and even fewer glances. He had wondered if she fantasized about the dead eating her. The way she willingly gave herself to him, her bones aching for violent collision, her hands greedily clutching the back of his skull, the back of his neck, his shoulder blades.

“What you want?” Vincent asked, suddenly remembering where he was, who he was talking to.

“The same thing you want. Peace.”

“You can read my mind? You know what I want? I’m not thanking you for the drink. I’m not thanking you for not arresting me. You got your little town to run the way you want.”

“At least let me put a bullet into your map so we don’t have to see you again.”

Another man who was used to being in charge, doing things his way. Vincent never got along with Griggs and never got along with this guy, either. He never mixed well with authority figures, especially ones who had different business objectives, goals that were in direct opposition to his own.

“This is the best thing that ever happened to you, isn’t it?” Vincent asked. “You did such a good job keeping people safe, keeping up appearances. Detroit’s been making a comeback for the last thirty years, most of that on your watch. How old are you, Taylor?”

Taylor stood. “Came by to let you know a girl came looking for you. Don’t got a reason to help you. You’re only interested in yourself, like always. I came by to see if I had to put you away. Can’t say I wasn’t looking forward to it.”

Funny how he would have blown the man away or had one of his boys work the cop over and send him back to his buddies. How many wire-wearing scumbags had tried to infiltrate his operation, only to end up on the bottom of the Detroit River? A long time had passed since anyone had the balls to stand up to him like this, although Griggs was an exception.

“I’m waiting,” Vincent said.

Because he was.

“You’re not that useless. Not yet. This girl came by to see you. Maybe she had one of your kids.”

No.

Vincent cringed.

“You think we didn’t know about them?” Taylor asked.

Babies weren’t part of his business plan.

“Not that it would do us any good. Those kids didn’t have a father.”

Shit happens. No matter how smart he tried to be.

This wasn’t the time to think about children. This wasn’t the time to think about anything.

“Her name’s Chanell,” Taylor said. “Anyway, we’ll keep her safe for you.”

A hidden threat from another hypocrite cop. All cops were hypocrites by Vincent’s estimation, just like the men who ordered an entire classroom full of refugee children to be shot in a warzone because… why the hell not? What was their reason for it? Casualties are expected, casualties are piling up, casualties are rising with each victory. But there are no victories, there are only casualties.

“Chanell’s dead,” Vincent said. But there was doubt, and the doubt could not be denied. Louis had told him she was dead, but what if that was a lie? He had always trusted Louis, and he had no reason to lie in the last seconds that remained of his life.

“Apparently she isn’t,” Taylor said.

Let him leave. Walk out of here with his head on his shoulders.

Vincent didn’t think about the children he left out there. A year ago, he never thought about them. Two years ago. Three. How many kids were there? How many women tried to send him word that there was a child, and it was his? He never confirmed any of it, never gave it a second thought. Never did blood tests. The women wanted money, and in exchange they would keep their mouths shut. They didn’t know shit anyway. And besides, those women couldn’t talk if their jaws were wired shut from a baseball bat homerun slam.

Taylor’s footsteps on the stairs. On the floor above.

Alone again in the chair Louis had died in.

“Fuck you, Taylor. And all your cop buddies. Fuck you and your justice. Fuck you and your hypocrisy. Fuck this city and all the people in it. Fuck the army and the government and Vega and Shanna and Jim and Father Joe. Fuck you, Louis. Chanell. Fuck you. This is what we made with our dreams, and we deserved it. This is what we always wanted and always deserved, and we couldn’t stop it. You got something to say to me? Chanell, you got something to say? Yeah, we can talk about it. I’ll hear you out. I didn’t come home. I didn’t come back and get you. I had better shit to do. I had to fight, had to try and save the world. Only I knew I wasn’t saving the world, I was just killing shit. Killing you and the army and everyone I ever knew who wanted to fuck with me, everyone who betrayed me, lied to me, used me. And you want me to come and talk to you. You only come out now because you want something. Maybe another fur coat. Maybe a bullet to the head.”

He saw the faces of the children he’d been ordered to execute by the U.S. Army, children who were a danger to democracy and capitalism and truth and justice. All of those children were his children. They were his children because of everything he became and everything they never were.

Vincent loaded a 9mm and left the house.

The neighborhood was quieter than before. There should have been music drifting through the windows, snarling dogs behind garage doors or in basements, marijuana skunk-smell, a gunfire
pop
, cars sliding through the street with their headlights off, people crossing the street, people sitting on a porch. He had lived in places like this when he was a kid, and it became his kingdom; he rarely slept at his lavish Grosse Pointe palace. The people who he trusted to save him had ruined him, and so he ruled his kingdom of rot and decadence, sin and violence.

Quiet now. A vast nothing blanketed by night.

Glittering stars at street-level. Vincent squinted; not stars, but sequins. On a dress. A dress slipping between houses. Taylor had said Chanell was here. She always wore a dress that could blind a man, which didn’t take into account the curves that could melt a man’s knees.

His feet stopped. He was breathing heavily, gun hanging from his hand.

Remember running through these streets a year ago. Remember defending them, killing for them. Remember coming back with Vega in his arms.

The former arms dealer walked into the deeper shadows. The darker places. Following the promise of sequins, the idea of Chanell. This was his chance to try again, to apologize for everything he did to everyone. No, he wasn’t going to apologize. All the fighting and killing and cathartic moments had drained him, left him with nothing but a trail of sequins.

Sparkling night, burning bright.

“Chanell,” he said.

It might be nothing.

But he knew better.