Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3) (17 page)

There was a presence, an animated shape moved by an intelligence that was beyond his understanding. He knew what the presence was because he had always known. He knew what Mike Taylor wanted, and he knew he deserved this. He deserved this because the good guys always win. The good guys always had the upper hand because they could cheat while crediting intelligence and wit, virtue and an understanding of morality.

The presence moved.

Clink of chain.

Explosion of flashlight upon his face.

They wanted him to see. To know.

The sequins glistened in the sudden bright light. Worms wriggled in the cavern of a mouth. Wet, writhing creatures glistened in the center where a stomach should have been, and the stench. The smell of her. Not the perfume he was used to. It might not be her. It might be some other dead woman, and it didn’t matter. Like all the women in his life besides Vega and his mother, they were all the same.

A silver collar was on her neck, a chain drooping into the bushes.

Did they want him to turn around?

The pain that followed the
pop pop
of gunfire took a long time to find him. He’d been shot before, but never at close range, and never in his knees. The ground slammed into him, and still there wasn’t any pain. His legs seemed to disappear from beneath him, as if he were pushed off the edge of a cliff.

“Roll him over.” Taylor’s voice. “Let him see us.”

A part of him was pleased. A crowd of hard men carrying guns, hard men who were making their own rules, taking over, running shit. This was business, and Vincent could understand business.

Taylor was the only white man among them, a gruff cop with nothing to lose. He was Griggs all over again, except he did it better. Except he was more focused.

“This asshole’s dead in twenty four hours if he doesn’t tell us where his guns are,” Taylor said. “Feed him to the dead bitch. Hell, he’s dead anyway. The sooner he tells us, the sooner we let him eat a bullet.”

Vincent smiled, and he could taste the blood in his mouth before they knocked him out.

THE CHAMP

This is what the apocalypse looks like.

Not so pretty, unless you’re with a pretty girl. But what does it matter? The pretty girl wants to kill everything, only, well, she can’t exactly do it. Vega won’t admit it, but she’s damaged. She
wants
to kill things, but it’s difficult for her.

The apocalypse.

Bill had been hiding in their little neighborhood, oblivious to the reality. Oblivious to the skeletal bodies, the burnt husks, the broken windows, the cars parked inside of storefronts, the schools that had burned down, the traffic lights that lay in the street, the taste of ash and dust and asphalt. He felt like he was walking through a graveyard or the inside of a skeleton, because there was nothing here, no life-powering organs, no heart. Those who had lived here fought and ran, or fought and died, or they didn’t fight and just died. Bill wasn’t a morose person, but he couldn’t help but feel defeated, or there was a missed opportunity somewhere, a chance to organize and defend the city. Most of America didn’t look like this; there were small towns, wilderness, farmland… Detroit and the surrounding area wasn’t the end result. There were people everywhere, good people, people who wanted to help and rebuild.

While they walked through the quiet ruins, Vega talked. She wasn’t defensive at all, but opened up as if realizing this was a chance for her to speak to a living human being, a chance she couldn’t neglect.

Vega reminded him of Milla Jovovich from the
Resident Evil
movies, even though the two women looked nothing alike. Vega was a relentless warrior who needed an excuse to keep fighting because fighting was all she understood. Bill figured that out about her almost instantly; the more she talked, the more he believed he was right, but wasn’t about to give her any perspective just yet. That might piss her off all over again. She was in a fragile state, but wasn’t everyone?

Bill liked the
Resident Evil
movies, but never imagined he would end up fighting zombies alongside a Jovovich-type.

They walked along the weed-cracked street casually, as if there was no reason to hurry, nowhere special to go. They skirted the heart of the city and stayed in the suburbs; they both noticed there weren’t any flesh-eating cannibals roaming around, even though they had been riled up and attacked their sanctuary. Vega explained a couple of her theories, and Bill didn’t think she was nuts.

Vega told him there was a woman who had some kind of control over the undead, and she inhabited the minds of the zombie legions. She didn’t have any power over the rotted creatures that had watched the video firsthand, but the woman, Mina, had managed to stop all the victims from attacking more people. Father Joe had some kind of relationship with Mina, and the woman had been killed, only to remain inside the minds of the undead. Vega believed that something changed Mina’s mind—not a something, but rather a
someone
, the same someone who likely kidnapped Father Joe. The same someone Vega had been hunting since she dropped into ground zero.

She told Bill about Jim Traverse. He’d heard about the killer before; he had watched a serial-killer retrospective once that briefly mentioned the Artist.

And Bill listened. While they strode through the shattered land, she talked about people she missed, people she cared about. She talked about men named Bob and Miles; she mentioned a detective named Griggs, whose gun she carried now; the man had saved her from being raped by another mercenary.

And when she finally sighed, they paused in their mid-afternoon stroll through the apocalypse.

“I’m an idiot,” she said. “We were right there; I was there twice. I was supposed to be worrying about Traverse, but I was focused on staying alive. I’m sure there are files in that place, some reason—something—that can give me answers. The answers were never important until now.”

“Way I figure it,” Bill said, “you were doing what everyone was doing. You weren’t sent in to investigate, seeing as how someone knew why they wanted him and what they wanted to do with him.”

Vega nodded at the building ahead of them.

The blackened, twisted corpse of a helicopter in the parking lot. A concrete field of corpses. Sunlight blinked off the hulls of metal bullet casings. A pickup truck had crashed through the front doors. The trees that shadowed the parking lot did not move. There was no breeze.

The sign on the overgrown, weedy lawn: ELOISE FIELDS.

Vega smiled.

“There were trucks here,” she said. “Humvees. Guns. I came back here once with Vincent for the guns, and I’m still not sure why we did it. He had plenty of weapons. I guess we didn’t want anyone else to get them. The trucks were here.”

“Vincent mentioned this place to Mike,” Bill said. “A while back. I remember them talking about the trucks. I came out here before. Looks the same. Wasn’t shit here. Figure Sutter’s people got to it.”

But Vega didn’t seem to hear him. She looked around as if the landscape were a movie theater screen, her eyes actively scanning for visual memories.

“It was a military hospital,” Vega said, and choked. She chewed her bottom lip.

Bill was beginning to understand.

“This place had a purpose,” she said. “And you know… this shit… it’s always the same. Always. Trying to find another way to win some war. An easier way, a cost-efficient way. There’s always more power. More things to own. More things to want.”

He knew she wasn’t finished. He waited.

She walked toward the asylum, her eyes scanning the ground.

“They made this place. Someone made this place because they wanted this to happen.” She talked to herself as if remembering a dream.

Vega walked toward the building, and Bill followed. He walked quickly so he wouldn’t lose her; he felt protective over this woman, someone he barely knew, and it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter if she was a complete stranger.

Standing in front of a blood-smeared wall, Vega stared at the ground. The fingers in her left hand clenched into a tight fist. Her right hand, holding the magnum, shook slightly.

Bill waited.

“Look at him,” Vega said and turned around, looked at Bill. “Here he is. I didn’t know I wanted to see him again. I never was the sentimental type.”

“Who is he?”

“Come over here.”

Lying at her feet was a dead man. A nude corpse, long ago stripped of its clothes, a large chunk of the skull missing, both eyes having been ejected from the skull through the other side, as if the force of the killing blow had pushed his brain and eyes out his head.

“We already had his weapons.” She looked at Bill again. “His name was Nick Crater. Tried to rape me. Bashed my head in pretty good.”

Her eyes watered. She chewed her lip. Her chest rose and fell, rose and fell. Bill could see the dark shadows beneath her eyes; he looked at the strands of poker-straight hair that fell over the other side of her face.

“I was fucked up before,” she said, nodding to herself. “Yeah. I thought I was a badass. But my head… he gave me a concussion. I still get dizzy. I black out. Nightmares. And then the rest of this
shit.
” Her jaw grinding, she looked around, her eyes finding the unmoving trees. “I tried to save a little girl. I tried to do
good
things, and I’m still here. I’m still standing here.”

She sniffled and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. She walked by Bill without looking at him, and didn’t say another word.

***

Dead bodies in the hallways.

Like everything else, the place had been looted, ransacked. Bill and Vega checked the corners, peered into empty rooms, opened closets. There was no more medicine, no more uniforms; paper lay buried beneath piles of glass, chairs and mattresses were overturned, couches ripped to pieces, the dark stains of violence upon the walls and floor.

“You know what you’re looking for?” Bill asked. The strength in his voice felt weak, slow. The heat was getting to him. His clothes felt glued to his skin, the pack over his shoulders weighed him down, and his back ached. He knew it was dangerous to let his guard down, to take one moment to breathe outside of the safety of the neighborhood, although they hadn’t been safe there, either.

But the temptation was too great. No matter how disciplined he was, he had to sit down. Set the pack down and take a good look at the shotgun he carried, a black pump-action monster. Lucky for him, he had plenty experience hunting with a shotgun back home. He came from a family of hunters; he took a week off from school every year to hunt white-tailed deer. He knew how to handle a weapon like this one, and he was a decent tracker. All the movies and video games he watched involving zombies typically included a shotgun as an efficient head-exploder.

Vega was in another room, and she finally answered him. “Not exactly. I know what I want, but not where to find it.”

He was too exhausted to say anything back. Better to save his breath. The story of a damned woman had drained him emotionally; he was always a good listener and had no ego when it came to offering any kind of advice. He simply listened. But this time, it was too much. For too long he had sheltered himself from reality by acting, by
doing
whatever her could to help others. He wasn’t bitter that his promising future had been taken from him, because this is what God wanted for him. Being physically gifted and talented was something he was blessed to have, but as long as he remained a good person, worked hard, and did the right things, his gifts could have an even greater purpose. His life wasn’t a waste because of something he never had; if he had worked hard to get to this point in his life, then there was some good in it.

Millions of dollars, a national television audience, his name in newspapers; these things were temporary. His parents always taught him to remain humble, to take everything in stride, that success was only temporary and there is always a way to get better, to become better.

The Champ sat in a room that would have been used for group therapy sessions. He didn’t jump when he heard the
click
behind his head.

He didn’t jump because he knew the hammer on a gun had been cocked back.

“I’m not moving,” Bill said.

“I know,” a man replied.

Bill remained calm. If the man had wanted to kill him, it would have happened already.

“Any idea how long I have to sit still?” Bill asked.

No response. The attacker wasn’t breathing heavily; he was also calm, in control. Were there others? How many?

If this man already saw Vega…

“Take what you need,” Bill said. “I’ve got food, ammo. It’s yours.”

“No shit,” the attacker said.

So this wasn’t about the supplies. There was a good chance the man had seen Vega, and Bill had to wait. He had to be patient, but he couldn’t do anything risky. There might be more people looking for a woman like Vega—or any woman. They might have the building surrounded.

Vega walked into the room, her face buried in a manila folder.

“Of course there isn’t anything here. It would all be stored in some database. But it was worth—”

“Hello,” the man behind Bill said.

“Really?” Vega tilted her head and pursed her lips as if this was nothing more than an inconvenience. She closed the folder and placed a hand on her hip.

“Don’t make another move,” the man said.

“So you blow him away,” Vega said. “By the time you lift your gun, your head will be gone. Go ahead, and take him. I hardly know the guy. Try bringing your gun up. You could have a hundred guns pointed at me. At the end of the day, you’re dead.”

“It’s not like that,” the man said.

“Not like what? You’ve got a gun pointed at his head. That means you’re ready to pull the trigger.”

“Just shut up a minute.”

“Say something important,” Vega said. “I’m tired, and I have to pee.”

“I worked here. You came here… that folder… you…”

The man’s voice was shaking.

Bill slowly eased himself back and saw the gun out of the corner of his eye. It wasn’t pointed at the back of his head anymore. He brought his arm up quickly, punching the man’s gun hand up. The gun fired at the ceiling, and Bill was able to turn around and punch the attacker hard in the stomach; with the man’s hands clutching his stomach, Bill wrenched the gun away and pointed it at his head.

“How does it feel?” Bill asked.

Scrawny and ragged, a middle-aged man with slashes of white cutting through his thick mane of hair.

“How many others?” Bill asked.

“Nobody,” the man said while clutching his stomach.

“How many?”

“Just me.”

“Bullshit.”

“Look, just wait, please. I’m sorry. Just wait a minute. I’m sorry about the gun. I needed to talk to you. I needed to talk. Please.”

Bill circled around the captive and saw Vega with her rifle up, the attached flashing allowing her to scan corners with her eye trained behind the sight.