Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3) (41 page)

“We just fought an awesome battle and survived,” Sutter said. “Now I know there is a Hell, and now I know that I experienced something very cool when I was alive. I don’t know how I would feel if I knew there was nothing waiting for me when I die. I used to be an atheist, but Egypt changed everything for me.”

“I will not spare your life,” Jim said.

“Good. I would be disappointed if you did.”

“We are a speck of cosmic dust, and it is in our power to destroy ourselves. We have used all of our power to make it happen, and we used Hell as our excuse. But there are questions that cannot be answered.”

“Whatever,” Sutter said.

“You traded people for guns, ammunition, food. You’ve murdered hundreds of people. You made all of these people believe in you, die for you.”

“And so what? Actually, you’re wrong. These people died for themselves. They didn’t die for me. They died because they could. I never wanted to stop you or Richards. Shit man, all I wanted to do was kill zombies and fuck bitches. I’m a mercenary. I own a yacht, a surfboard, a house in Venice, a house in Madrid. I’ve partied with the best strippers money can buy. I’ve seen every level of depravity imaginable. And it still isn’t enough for me. Most of the time I did things just because I wanted to see if I could do it. Kind of like building a sand castle and then destroying it.”

Sutter might be able to handle himself in single combat, unlike the priest, Father Joe. Sutter was intriguing and would prove to be an exciting opponent.

But he was walking away.

“I can see why she likes you,” Sutter said. “You would have been awesome as a porn star. Could have made a good living doing it. Which reminds me: you know I invested money in Patrick Griggs, right? The dude who used to be a cop and became a porn director? The guy who made Mina’s video? I was his investor.”

The big man in the bloody suit stood beside the open doors to the freight elevator shaft.

There was a lump in Jim’s throat. A gust of cool air tickled the back of his neck, even though it was a humid, airless day filled with blood and rust.

“I don’t have any romantic notions about death,” Sutter said. He let the coin slip from between his fingers. Jim watched it plummet to the floor. “I had a lot of fun, man, I really did. Mostly because of you. The last few years have been great. Anyway, gotta go. It’s more fun to see you disappointed right now, because you want to fight. A minute ago you were about to walk right past me, but now you’re going to miss me. Maybe it will help if you knew that I won, and this is how I claim my prize.”

“Don’t.”

“I’ll see you when you finally drop by for a visit.”

With that, Sutter disappeared into the darkness, and his laughter followed him down the elevator shaft.

MINA

The smell of Father Joe’s car was the first thing she noticed when she woke up. The second thing she noticed was that she was a skeleton.

Not exactly an entire skeleton, but half of one.

A scented deodorizer hung from the rearview mirror, a maple leaf that made the car smell like pine. Mina hadn’t been outdoors much in her lifetime, but she recognized the smell of pine, and it reminded her of peace. But she wasn’t exactly sure what peace was.

A crude thing made of nothing but bone, Mina looked at herself and realized how neat it was that she was actually inside a skeleton. Didn’t she die recently? She would probably die a lot more if she kept trying to interfere with Rose and the demon. Better to stay away; at least zombies wouldn’t tear her apart every few minutes. She had that going for her.

But that wasn’t a guarantee.

She was inside her head, and inside of Rose’s head. She was inside the demon’s head. She shared a lot of heads.

Father Joe was in the driver’s seat, and the car was parked in front of Rose’s house. She recognized the house because she remembered thinking how nice the neighborhood looked.

The priest was trying to screw her left shoulder into its socket.

“You’re kind of like humpty-dumpty,” Father Joe said, as if putting together a skeleton was an everyday routine. Especially a skeleton that he talked to, a skeleton that knew it was a skeleton.

She wanted to talk to him. When her jaw moved, she felt a sudden rush of warmth to her appendages, and the warmth flooded her stomach and loins. In the blink of an eye, or the inhalation of breath, there was skin on her bones, and she wore the white night gown that she had worn while wandering Detroit; she had been wearing it the first time she met Father Joe.

“Did the zombies eat me?” she asked.

“Yes, they did. Can you see okay? Do you think you’ll be able to walk?”

“I think I can do anything, can’t I?”

“It’s your imagination.”

“Okay then. I was a skeleton just a second ago.”

“You were.”

“Thanks for putting me back together. It was cute what you said. About humpty-dumpty.”

Father Joe’s warm smile spread across his face. He gripped the steering wheel and looked at the house.

“You want to go back inside,” Mina said.

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. You’re dead, aren’t you? I can only be inside people who are dead. But you’re inside of my head right now. I’m confused.”

“No, you’re kind of right, I think. You still have all the power you had before, only you’re limiting yourself. You hear only the voices you want to hear.”

She nodded and looked at her hands. Why wasn’t she stroking her long, red hair? She always stroked her hair. It was a habit of hers. Patrick once told her how beautiful she was when she stroked her hair and tilted her head. Patrick had said she reminded him of a princess.

If she only heard the voices she wanted to hear, then where was Patrick?

Dead. She ate him.

As much as he said he loved her, Patrick used her to get what he wanted. Only the demon appeared as Patrick, because she moved on from him. She wanted nothing to do with him.

But she had been having dreams of Daddy in his mask. She dreamt of zombies tearing her apart. She dreamt of young Rose, and young Jim having sex with her after he murdered her parents.

Times have changed. Everyone had used Mina for their own ends. She made the decision to eat Patrick, and she had begged Father Joe to kill her so Jim couldn’t have her. But she underestimated Jim’s plan.

“I know you want to help,” Father Joe said.

“I tried once. I think I made things worse. The demon will stop me if I try again.”

Father Joe shrugged and mumbled something in Spanish. He glanced around the neighborhood as if trying to assemble his thoughts.

She was frustrating him.

Mina hoped Father Joe wasn’t really dead, but then again, he wouldn’t be here with her.

“They made me,” she said. “I think I know what they did, at least some of it. The demon showed me. I don’t know everything, but I don’t think it’s important. I know that my head, or my blood, was some kind of key. I know that whatever nightmares I had were going to pour out of my soul and become real; I know that’s what happened. I know that’s why the zombies are real. The rotted ones came straight from Hell because I’m part of Hell, somehow.”

Father Joe sighed. “You’re on the right track.”

“I’m trying to figure out what you need me to do. I don’t want to let you down. You’re the only person who has been nice to me. Nobody ever treated me like I could do something good. Nobody. I didn’t want anyone like you in my life until I met you. I always thought if zombies actually, you know, really happened, then it would be because of a plague or something like that. Being a zombie would be kind of like being sick. But death is a disease we all have, isn’t it?”

His smile softened, and the contours of his dark face loosened, as if a burden was being taken away from him, a task that he did not have the strength to complete.

“Do you think there’s someone like me who dreams of Heaven?” she asked.

Father Joe rubbed his jaw with one of his big hands. “It’s all a state of mind. Hell, Heaven… you don’t need to see it. You bring it with you. You take it with you wherever you go.”

His words always made her feel good. As long as he kept talking, she didn’t have to experience the pain that came with being herself. Her perception of goodness was corrupted by Daddy, Patrick, Jim, and everyone else who had used her along the way.

Father Joe helped her figure it all out.

“I thought everything would be over as soon as you killed me,” Mina said. “I thought you wouldn’t have to fight anymore. I thought you could live without any of the hurt.”

He leaned forward slowly, easing to her side of the car. He gently patted her nest of red curls and planted a firm, wet kiss on her forehead.

His voice a husky whisper, Father Joe said, “There will always be hurt, and there will always be joy. It’s not about what I want. Don’t try to make me happy. Tell me what you want.”

She would give anything for him to completely lean forward and kiss her lips. Wasn’t this her imagination? Could she make him do it?

But that wasn’t the way Father Joe was. It wouldn’t make sense.

“I don’t want to hurt anybody,” she whispered back to him. “I think we need to stop Rose. She doesn’t want to be part of this. She’s like me.”

“She’s a lot like you. You two have some things in common.”

Father Joe withdrew and ran his fingers through his salty black hair. She wished he would smile again.

Walking across the street was a tall, slender boy with short hair neatly combed over his head. She recognized the young version of Jim. He was crossing the street to Rose’s house, and he walked casually, the idea of murder seemingly not troubling him in any way.

This was before he killed Rose’s parents.

“We have to stop him!” Mina’s voice sounded like a shriek to her ears.

Father Joe shook his head. “Let’s wait for him to go inside. We need to do things differently this time. We don’t have a lot of chances to get this right. We could fight with her forever, but she’s vulnerable right now. She’s trying to figure out who she was, and who she wants to be.”

Mina nodded. She understood exactly what Rose was going through. He was right: she had many things in common with Rose, especially the fact that Jim had manipulated both of them.

They watched him saunter up to the door and politely push the button for the doorbell as if he were nothing more than a young bachelor coming to visit his date. It was likely part of his game. When a man opened the door, Mina wished that she could hear what Jim said to him. He seemed poised and confident, his hands clasped firmly behind his back. There wasn’t anywhere for him to hide a weapon, because his jeans were tight and his plain T-shirt wasn’t baggy enough to hide something that might be tucked into his waistband.

Such a gentleman.

The man allowed Jim to walk into the house.

“We’re just going to walk in,” Father Joe said. “Rose will be able to see you and talk to you, but she’s the only one. She won’t be able to see me. This is her memory.”

“But you’re coming in with me, right?”

“Of course.”

He reached out and took both of her hands into his. When he squeezed her hands, she wished he would never let go.

They stepped out of the car and walked into the house. All the furnishings were familiar, except they were splattered with blood. She hadn’t taken a good look at the house the first time she came through, but now she noted the family pictures that included a husband and wife, but no children.

A football game was on the television, and the man sitting on the couch wearing a pair of gym shorts and a New England Patriots jersey was the same man who answered the door to let Jim inside. There was nothing remarkable about him. A woman sat in a recliner on the other side of the room, a laptop propped open in front of her. The furniture was covered in blood, but nobody here was dead yet. Nobody had been slaughtered.

From where she stood in the living room, Mina could see Jim standing in the kitchen, talking to the younger Rose, who was eating a Hot Pocket and thumbing through a magazine.

Mina turned to the television.

Instantly, she recognized the athletic figure of Amparo Vega. She also recognized herself, but she was wielding a sword and attacking Vega with it. Vega was using a piece of glass to defend herself, fending off the fake-Mina’s sword thrusts.

“That’s happening now,” Father Joe said from behind her.

“Then that’s Rose,” Mina said.

Rose, in Mina’s body, moved around Vega like a ballet dancer with deadly intentions. Blood streamed down Vega’s hands from the glass shard. Vega was out of breath, her shoulders slumping.

It was only a matter of time.

Mina charged into the kitchen past the ghostly parents.

“I thought it would be nice if I came by to visit,” Jim said to Rose while he paced around the kitchen, his hands behind his back. He pretended to be interested in the kitchen’s layout, studiously observing the cabinets and the fruit bowl on the counter.

“You came by to visit,” Rose said without looking up from her magazine. “You can leave now.”

“That’s not a polite way to treat an admirer,” Jim said.

Mina felt awkward, out of place, but she had to do something. She had to try.

“Don’t talk to him,” Mina said. “He’s going to kill your parents!”

Rose looked up from her magazine to Mina. “What’s your point? You think they care?”

Jim was no longer walking around the kitchen, but had stopped completely, as if frozen in time. From the living room, Mina could hear savage grunting from the television as the two warriors traded blows.

“You care,” Mina said. “Jim turned you into me. You don’t want to be me. I know you never asked for it. You never wanted to be someone else other than you.”

Rose pursed her lips. “That almost makes sense.” She returned to her magazine, and Jim resumed his survey of the kitchen.

Mina wasn’t in control, despite the fact that Rose had been resurrected to appear as Mina in the world of the living. She had never been a strong woman, so how could she convince Rose to deny Jim? To keep him from doing the inevitable?

Father Joe was right behind her.

No, he wasn’t. He was not standing behind her. Where did he go?

But Mina could see the television, and on the screen Vega lay on her stomach, panting, face and hair drenched in sweat.

Time was running out.

She turned back to Rose and shouted at her. “Dammit Rose, look at me!”

Rose looked up again, and time froze around them again.

The loudest Mina had ever spoken to anyone before. The most assertive she had ever been, and the confidence had come from the idea of hope, from the idea that Father Joe was right beside her, guiding her. But he wasn’t there at all.

Rose stood from the table. “I’m comfortable with this conversation,” she said calmly. “I haven’t looked in a mirror, but I know I wouldn’t recognize myself. Everything I do is shapeless. I think and feel, but I am shapeless. I have gone insane. I am just like you, Mina. Jim is going to kill my parents. I know what happens next. I know what happens to me.”

“I could have killed you,” Mina said. “Jim would have never found your body. You and I were in a van, and I could have killed you. There isn’t anything left of your soul if you let him win. The demon is controlling you. I know the demon. I know the things he says. You have to listen to me!”

The young version of Jim turned to Mina, his stone-cold glare becoming fierce and full of hate. Jim was never one to show a lot of emotion.

“You stupid bitch,” Jim said. “What do you know about anything? You had your chance. You gave it all up! You had a chance, and you threw it all away.”