Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3) (43 page)

VEGA

Who would have known that a dead girl could do so much damage?

Blood in her teeth, Vega sucked breath into her lungs and clutched at the glass shards only inches away from her. She lay facedown upon a bed of shredded plaster and dusty glass pieces that had once puzzled together the Depot’s windows. Her fingers were traced in blood, knuckles numb, hands unable to close.

The redhead, the Mina-Rose mash-up, stood over her, the silly katana sword in her hand. The blood-rusted, dull-edged weapon that was nothing more than a decorative piece that should have been sitting on a shelf in a teenager’s bedroom.

For a long time, the pale redhead didn’t move. She stared at Vega, the sword’s point touching the ground.

“Any last words?” Vega asked her from the ground, where she was at Mina’s mercy.

Nothing.

“I can respect that.” Vega slowly tried to stand, careful not to let the blood loss dizzy her, careful not to let her eyes stray from Mina.

But what the hell? She was fighting Rose, not Mina.

“You won’t be coming back from Hell this time,” Vega said.

A shard of glass in her bleeding hands, Vega cautiously circled around. Rose, or whoever she was, didn’t move. Didn’t so much as flinch.

When Vega shoved the glass shard into Mina-Rose’s stomach, the redhead didn’t seem to mind at all. Not a sound. Not so much as a twitch.

“Oh fuck this,” Vega said as Rose slumped over her arm.

She allowed the woman to drop into the dust.

Vega’s knees popped as she knelt to grab the katana. “You won’t be needing this.”

Mina-Rose’s pale face twitched, and a smile bled across her cheek.

“I have seen Hell,” the undead woman said. “One day, you’ll be joining me here.”

Vega’s hands squeezed the sword’s grip tightly, the point hovering just over Mina-Rose’s neck. “Is that supposed to scare me?”

“I want to kill you,” the undead woman said. “I want to take your life away, just as you took everything from me. Only you did me a favor. You did more for me than you’ll ever know. Instead of destroying you, I think it would be better to let you know that I’ll be waiting for you. I can do more to you in death than I can in life.”

“She’s right.”

When Vega turned to see Jim standing in the doorway, clothed in the ragged, colorless tatters of a corpse, her blood froze.

Here he was. Cool eyes half-lidded as if appraising a child. Here he was. She had seen him only fleetingly, on the runaway at Selfridge and at the pyre in the neighborhood. This man had made this cruel nightmare she had somehow survived. Even if he wasn’t directly responsible, she had been dropped into Detroit to find him.

“Mina’s bloodline is ancient and cursed,” Traverse said. “Her ancestors were mummified when they were still alive. Their… consciousness… cannot be destroyed. They asked for immortality, and it was given to them.”

“Stay right there,” she said.

Traverse stepped forward. “Hell is nothing more than a human nightmare. Shamans and other holy men tried to find a way to bring it here, to give humanity the nightmare. It happened before. Plagues, wars, genocide—nightmares that became real. Mina was part of that bloodline, a descendent of a line that has always been experimented on, tortured, and bred since her ancestors were imprisoned. When her mind opened to Hell, it was a freak accident.”

Headache in full force, Vega’s body sagging beneath the weight of fatigue, and she didn’t have any bullets; not the best way to meet her nemesis. She had her rusty replica katana.

He circled around her, and she watched him move gracefully, easily. Long-limbed, moving like a slow-crawling spider.

“This is all so very interesting,” Vega said, “but I have to cut you up. Hope you don’t mind.”

“I’m not opposed to your proposition,” Traverse said, “but I wonder what you really want.”

“Stay where you are. Don’t come any closer.”

“Don’t be pretentious. Your life is mine to do with as I please. I will offer you a solution, and in return, I will give you an opportunity to complete your mission.”

“The only person who owns my life is me. You’ve got some dying to do.”

“Bob Fields meant a lot to you, and you to him. I learned something interesting about his death, something interesting about myself. I learned that life can be rather boring without obstacles; I am a man who requires an antithesis.”

“Fuck all that noise. Let’s get this over with.”

“Bob wanted a beautiful death. As did Sutter. Their egos would not permit otherwise. I can give you the same. I have something special in mind for you, if only you’ll work with me.”

Quivering in her hands, the sword looked rather silly compared to Traverse’s confidence. His complete and utter belief that he would not be killed. He stopped moving and held his hands up, a smirk on his lips.

“You would like to see Father Joe again,” he said.

She took a step back over Mina-Rose.

“When you are well-rested and better-prepared,” he said, “our little dance will be much more fulfilling for both of us. You truly are a beautiful creature, Amparo.”

From the floor, Mina-Rose laughed. “Oh, Jim. I know what you’ve done to me. I know what you’ve taken from me. You’re giving up now because you know you shouldn’t have given me a chance to learn how much of an evil bastard you truly are. You made me. You did this to me—”

“Sounds like the two of you have something to work out,” Vega said.

Traverse crouched down beside Mina-Rose and gently stroked her cheek with his knuckles. “Dr. Frankenstein could not have been more proud of my efforts. Rose’s existence is fused with that of Mina’s, and I could not have predicted the physical outcome. Rose will be limited and will not be able to inhabit other bodies. But I cannot know what will happen if her body is completely destroyed.”

“You’re guessing,” Vega said.

“To some extent.”

“Destroying her won’t change a fucking thing.”

“Hell is with us. Mina’s nightmare is with us, and we are helpless. The only one who can overcome the nightmare is Mina. Her reality must no longer be a nightmare. Mina will have to regain control of the nightmare, and I know she has already allowed Rose to take over.”

“Two things. One: fuck all this shit, it’s confusing. Two: let’s cook the bitch and move on, because we’ve got business to take care of.”

Mina-Rose laughed again. A frenzied scrabbling sound accompanied the laughter; it sounded to Vega like an army of rats. Thousands of them scratching along the floors below and on the stairs.

Not rats.

Jim began to snap Mina-Rose’s bones. The dead woman laughed as Jim worked on her mangled body as if he were snapping open crab legs to get at the meat. He snapped her shoulder blades, her legs; he twisted her ankles and wrists. While Vega watched the door, he crunched the digits on her hands, bent them into incorrect angles.

The noise was getting louder, and Mina-Rose laughed harder.

Vega was out of bullets. Nothing but this ridiculous sword.

Then the dead crowded through the doorway, dead limbs twisting around through the tufts of stretched hair and ripped clothing, some of their hands intertwining through the open rib cages of other zombies, their dead bodies one mess of shape and rot.

Vega dropped the sword.

Mina-Rose was still laughing.

Traverse didn’t so much as bat an eye.

“At the Packard,” he said to Vega calmly, without looking up from his work. He looked like he was doing nothing more than tenderly petting a dog, only he was breaking the bones of a woman who kept laughing.

Back up. Get the hell out of there.

She had enough of an adrenaline rush from all the day’s action, and now she wanted to live. More than anything, she wanted to run, to get away. No need to give herself to these animals. Get out of there. Run.

There was nowhere to go.

The shape of chaotic limbs and stretching, snapping jaws pushed into the room.

Vega jetted through the dust and smoke, the moaning dead behind her. As she charged past a mold-encrusted window, a foreign object caught the corner of her eye, and she stopped.

“Oh,” was all she could say.

A tank. A beautiful, armored tank. Sitting outside, the cannon slowly rising. Someone was operating it, and they were going to bring some heat.

She felt the first blast rather than heard it; her ears felt like pillows had been stuffed against the side of her head, and all sound was muffled. The ground disappeared beneath her. Hot air rushed into her lungs, and her stomach seemed to jump into her chest.

Vega tumbled into a pile of wooden planks. Horizons of blood were cut across white dust, while soot filled her throat.

Trapped here. Hanging in a tight crevice, suspended between two floors.

Not like this.

It was supposed to be on her terms. Not like this.

She couldn’t turn her head in the confined space. There was nowhere to go. Nothing to do but die. 

Their fingers reached for her, nails ripping at the skin on her arm. She was doing everything in her power not to cry out, not to scream, not to become a blubbering mess in the face of mortality. She would not pray.

Vega felt the blood run down her arm. Blood flowed down to her hand and dripped over her fingertips.

“Take my hand,” Traverse said. He was above her, hand stretching out for her.

“If Hell is real, I’m going to get another chance to kick your ass.”

“The Packard Plant. I’ll be there, waiting.”

Breath was knocked from Vega’s lungs as something heavy punched her in the stomach. She felt like she was underwater, all sound muted by a layer of tide, distance, and darkness

Her body didn’t want anything to do with movement. She was fading. Even the pain was distant now. Hands refused to close, eyes refused to open. The ringing in her ears made it impossible to truly hear anything.

If she could think of something, she would. There was an emptiness in her mind, a comforting silence. Rest. Rest now.

When the ground disappeared beneath her and she felt herself falling, she was glad it was finally over.

***

Warmth. Daddy’s arms had been warm. Vega had been snug in his arms once. A long time ago. He smelled like cheap soap and cigars, and his big hands were smooth.

In Heaven, there was a man standing over a fire. The flame edges were bright enough to cast spidery shadows; bright enough to illuminate the tall figure who stood over her. He was talking, and she couldn’t hear him. The room looked like the interior of a broken reception room in an office building. Is this where they were going to judge her, give her a list of sins? Was that Daddy standing over her?

Vega turned her head and saw that a tank was parked outside in the street. If Heaven and Hell were inside of her all along, then of course there would be a tank, some kind of twisted metaphor for her mercenary career.

Daddy’s strong arms. How nice he smelt. Why didn’t he say anything? He didn’t have to. She was in his arms, and it was a sort of forgiveness, an acknowledgement of everything he had done to her by leaving so soon, and everything she had become in the wake of his absence.

Food was pushed into her mouth, and she opened her eyes. There was a big man standing over her, shoving food into her mouth on a plastic spoon. Tasted like creamed corn. Shadows swirled around the room.

Fading out. Fading in.

Flames cracked, whipped around a beat-up reception room. A tank sat in the street outside.

“Wriggle your toes,” a man’s voice said.

She coughed, turned her body away from the flame’s light. Better to rest.

“Wriggle your toes for me.”

“Suck a dick.”

“Come on, dammit, wriggle your toes.”

“Dead girls don’t wriggle their toes.”

“You’re not dead. You’re here with me. It’s Bill.”

Bill?

The football player.

She adjusted her body, turning back around to him, her eyes slightly open against the bright pain of uncomfortable, hot light. A fire was kindled in the middle of the room over broken chunks of wood and cardboard.

“You need to eat something. You need to drink.”

“Tired.”

“Don’t fall asleep. You need to stay awake. You might have a concussion.”

“Story of my life.”

“You can thank me for saving your ass.”

“Thanks, but no thanks.”

Bill muttered something and walked away. The valiant football player had saved the day. She was still alive, her head buzzing from delirium waves.

Alive. Still alive.

Oh, God. Vincent was dead, wasn’t he? A lot of people were dead. It would never end. Killing Traverse or Mina-Rose changed nothing.