Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3) (7 page)

“Come and get this shit,” Vincent said.

The zombie’s jaw clenched tightly until teeth cracked, popping out of the dead mouth like loose stones sliding down from a mountaintop.

“How many children are dead because of
you
?” Vincent asked. “That was your video. You said my guns killed children. Your movie killed EVERYBODY! You killed everybody! You did it. This is your fault. You did all of it.”

The corpse grabbed Vincent’s shoulders. That dreadful breath was in his face again.

“How many children have you killed, mutherfucker!”

Vincent stuck his gun inside its open mouth and angled the barrel upward.

“Answer my question. How many children have you killed?”

He squeezed the trigger, and the top of the rotted corpse’s head was jettisoned. Holding Vincent’s shoulders, it sank into the ground and nearly brought him down with it. But he kept his gun pointed at that familiar face. There weren’t enough bullets in the world. There weren’t enough bullets to kill every single one of these things. There weren’t enough guns.

Griggs had said Vincent’s guns were responsible for killing children.

Vincent shot it between the eyes. He shot its empty eye sockets. Then he just fired into the shape of its face. He fired until he heard the dry
click.
Then he dry-fired. Again and again.
Click click click click.

The gun dropped from his shaking fingers.

Maybe he cried. His face was wet and he didn’t want to stand. He didn’t want to turn back and look at the people who stood there and watched him.

His hands were empty. His hands were empty, and he picked up the empty gun, but it seemed to weigh more than it should have, more than it could have. He dropped it again. Tried to pick it up, watched it slip out of his hand.

Those things he had said. He sounded ridiculous. Words that he never rehearsed, thoughts he never realized.

Now he couldn’t pick up the gun.

The smoking wreckage of a damaged face lay beneath him.

On his feet again, he turned to the crowd and walked away from the house. Where was Taylor? Bailey? What about Suede? A lot of people were watching him and he didn’t know who they were. They were all strangers. Everyone was a stranger, and they silently watched him walk away from the violent scene.

“Taylor,” he stopped in the middle of the street. He couldn’t see the old cop, but it didn’t matter, “you tell Sutter he knows where to find me if he wants something.” He spit on the ground and walked toward a slender figure that stood in the middle of the street.

Vega. He was supposed to have returned to her well before sunset, well before Taylor and Bailey shared stories and liquor with him. Her eyes were wide, not blinking. A blanket was wrapped over her shoulders even though it was impossibly humid.

He grabbed her by the waist and walked her back to their house. She did not say anything, nor did she touch him in return.

ROSE

Rose felt like she was spinning on a cheap amusement park ride.

There was laughter inside of her head, and it didn’t sound like her voice. The voice sounded like someone else’s, as if she were listening to loud music through headphones.

That madwoman, the redhead. It was
her
laughter, a childish cackling that filled the darkness. Rose just needed to wake up, open her eyes. Rose had watched the redhead eat a man and lick her lips afterward. The redhead, Mina, had wielded some kind of terrible power over the dead, and now Rose could hear her laughter. 

Nausea tickled her stomach, and she saw Vega again, standing in front of her; Rose looked into Vega’s brown eyes. Vega’s eyes looked down, and Rose followed those eyes. She saw Vega’s hands on the handle of katana sword. The sword was inside of Rose’s stomach. The tip had slid through her back. Something moved inside of her stomach. Shifting. Blood poured over her own hands as she clutched the blade. Vega breathed into her face. Hundreds of people surrounded them.

The people who crowded around were not alive.

An airplane. She could hear the twin engines roar nearby.

Selfridge Air base.

Amparo Vega was killing her.

This couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t real. Time to wake up.

Get out of my head!

Whose voice was that?

It is so crowded in here. What-ever shall we do?

The demon’s voice. Yes, a demon. How did she know that a demon was talking to her?

When she sat up in the darkness, she tried to clear her head, listen to her own voice, but her thoughts weren’t clear.

Vega had killed her.

Rose remembered the pain. She grabbed at her stomach, looking for the wound, and found a long, horizontal scar. She was surrounded by darkness, yet she could see.

She knew there were other people inside of her head, and she was supposed to be dead. But anything was possible, wasn’t it? Jim had saved her. That was the only explanation, the only thing that made sense.

She had been close to Jim. He had planned to take her away on his airplane. He waited for her.

No. He wanted Mina. Jim had been dragging Mina toward the transport plane at Selfridge Air Base, dragging her through a horde of zombies on the runway.

That
bitch
.

Jealousy. No reason to be jealous, but she was. Jealousy was such a foolish way to feel. Embarrassing, undisciplined. If Jim knew, he would dismiss her, leave her. He had better things to do than play her emotional games. A man who predicated his existence on methodical self-control would not allow jealousy into his life.

Names popped into Rose’s head. Names, faces, places. Images flooded her brain. She tried to make sense of everything, as if she were trying to watch an action film that was moving forward at thirty times the speed. Noise accompanied the images, too much noise for anything to make sense.

Rose just wanted to open her eyes. To
see
. This was clearly all a nightmare, and she knew this. How could she know she was experience a bad dream and not wake up from it?

Please, I just want to die.

A fourth voice. Her name was Linda. How did Rose know?

Voices in her head.

Other people.

A demon. Mina. Linda.

Memory: Linda sitting with her back against a fountain in a shopping mall. Sitting, she watched as dead people pounded on the doors outside.

Zombies.
The word seemed strange to Rose, unreal, but she knew it meant something.

The zombies pounded, pounded on the doors. The other survivors had thrown Linda out, left her in the lobby as bait. They were all going to try to leave, go out the front door after luring the dead inside. They had used her up. Her body had been used up by the men. Rose knew these things about Linda even though she had never seen her before this moment.

“Turn around,” a voice said from behind her.

A dark-skinned woman. Not Vega. Exotic like her, but not her. A sniper rifle with laser optics resting in the crook of her elbow. The gun was nearly as tall as her. 

Rose rubbed her eyes. Memories in her head. So many memories. Was she Rose? Was she alive again? How?

She didn’t know. She just didn’t know anything.

Mina wasn’t really in her head. Not anymore, at least. Mina might be dead now, swallowed by her own nightmares. Rose understood this idea but wasn’t sure how she knew.

You know because I’m telling you. We are together. We are friends now. Nothing can tear us apart. Take a look at yourself. How pretty you are. So pretty.

There should be a hole in her stomach.

There wasn’t a hole in her stomach.

Cold skin. Pale. Long hair.

Oh no.

Long, wavy hair. Red hair.

“No,” her voice croaked, only it wasn’t her voice.

Not possible.

“Mirror,” she said to the dark. “Mirror. Give me a mirror.”

She had to know for sure.

He wasn’t expecting this hahahahahahaha. Oh, the look on his face. Her body is forever, just like her mind. Look at her body. So pretty, so pretty. Don’t you know he fucked her in this body? Mina remembers.

“I’m not her!” Rose said.

Thin, knobby knees. Bone legs. Concave thighs. Her fingers danced down the length of her rib cage.

This was not Rose’s body.

“It’s true.”

Jim’s smooth voice. He was here, somewhere. But where was
she?

“You’ve been in many bodies,” Jim said. “I’ve never seen anything quite like this happen before. I am… amused.”

Rose wasn’t breathing. This was nothing more than a surreal nightmare. She had to accept that this wasn’t happening, and she wasn’t trapped in Mina’s body, nor did she have all these memories that did not belong to her.

There had been a mission. She was supposed to find Jim in Detroit.

“I didn’t expect these results,” Jim said. “Perhaps this is your punishment, because it is certainly my delight.”

Even though she couldn’t see him, she could feel him. She had walked across Detroit to find him, but instead encountered an emotionally unstable priest and the redhead, Mina. She also encountered the woman who killed her.

She was supposed to be dead.

Rose was dead.

And Jim was here. Watching her.

This body wasn’t hers. This life didn’t belong to her. Jim spoke again, but his voice was an echo.

Swirling. Swirling. The darkness swirled around everything. Starlight trailed like fingernail scars upon concrete. Rose was near an open window. She was near an open window, and the darkness beyond was touched by thin horizons of light. The summer air carried with it the smell of damp lumber and mildew.

Was she awake now?

This body was not hers. This was Mina’s body.

“I’ve waited for you,” Jim said.

“You did this to me.”

“No. I did it for you.”

This skin. This body. This hair. Not hers. Not hers.

Vega had shoved the sword into her stomach, and she bled out.

And there had been hands. So many hands.

“Let me show you,” Jim said.

Where was he? His hand wrenched her head back, a fistful of her crinkly red hair in his fist. He was behind her, but she couldn’t see him. How long must she wait? How long had she been dead?

One year,
the demon voice said.
Give or take a week or two. You like your new body? Believe it. Believe this is happening. The sooner you believe, the sooner we can have our fun.

She had died to be with Jim, and here he was. Through death, and somehow, she was in another woman’s body; she could be with him. She had paid a price, and her mind was everywhere at once. She was not in control.

“Look at me,” Rose said. “Let me see you.”

“Will you beg?”

“I don’t…”

What could she say? She was with him. In a body that didn’t belong to her, but still, she was with him. He brought her back. She meant something to him.

Better to be with him than to be nothing. Better to be with the man she wanted more than anything than to be gone from this world.

His grotesque desires were the catalyst behind her transformation. In his scheming mind, he likely planned this out. She was never meant to be with him, at least, not in the body she knew. Her arms and legs were stiff and awkward, as if she was wearing a snowsuit that was too tight on her. If only he would hold her, tell her everything was going to be okay.

“Now you will see,” Jim said.

His voice.

His voice was everywhere.

“Tell me why,” she said.

“Why.”

“Tell me.”

“There is nothing to tell you.”

“I waited for you to come back. And you left me to die. I know you left me to die. Tell me. I deserve to know.”

“Deserve?”

“You survived Egypt.”

“My flesh survived.”

“Don’t be so fucking cryptic. You watched me die at Selfridge. You were with that girl. I know who she was. I can hear her… she’s in my head… what have you done?”

Jim had survived that mission and never came back to find her like he promised, and here he was, playing his poetry games with her. They had made no commitment to each other; she was not entitled to his attention or whatever he gave her that passed for love. Whatever it was they shared, whatever it was they had tried to define or not define—he would deny it all now. But he brought her back from the dead somehow, so he must feel something in the depths of his cold soul.

She had wanted him to love her, to say that he loved her, to say that she meant everything to him.

Jim’s fingers manipulated her head, slowly twisting it around to face a jagged mirror. In the mirror, she did not see her face.

She saw Mina’s face.

“This is not my face,” she said. “Whatever you’re doing to me…”

“Are you going to pray now?”

“Why would I pray? What have you done to me? What have you done?”

“Some of your victims have asked you the same question. How did you respond? How shall I respond? Your mind is nothing more than a persona I have designed. You are my weapon. You are my edge.”

She watched him slam the mirror into her stomach. She watched as it cut into Mina’s stomach, not her stomach.

Our stomach.

The demon spoke. The demon was inside of her.

So it wasn’t all a nightmare. It wasn’t just a nightmare. Real. This was real. The end of the world was real, Jim was real, the demon was real, Mina’s nightmares were real. Mina’s memories were real.

There was no sensation as the mirror cut into her stomach. Jim churned it against the skin, and she grabbed his wrists. Now she could see his face. Now she could see Jim Traverse.

Instead of looking at him, she watched the mirror’s edge cut. Deeper and deeper into the stomach.

“You are more beautiful than you have ever been,” Jim said.

If the darkness could make a sound, it would be the sound of his voice.

She didn’t know who she was.

We know who you are.

Linda’s memory was gone.

Mina was gone.

We’re all here with you.

The green eyes of a dead woman stared through the face that Rose now controlled, a face that she now owned. She looked at Jim. She looked at him and wanted his hands all over her. She wanted the heat of his body pressing her, pushing her, pushing into her. She wanted everything he could do to her. Everything he had ever done to her. Every crime. Every sensation. Every confession.

Perfectly-chiseled bone structure. Eyes made of glaciers. Jim Traverse had promised her genocide if they could be alone to walk along the broken skulls of a murdered civilization. Hand in hand, they would walk through the smoldering ashes of each city. Paris, London, Tokyo; he had written a poetic treatise once on the stinking pit of Mexico City, its writhing squalor of disease and crime. While Rose and Jim both assassinated people for money, they were never far from each other’s minds. At least, he had convinced her of such.

How could two people so devoted to murder be so devoted to each other? Rose had always questioned it, and now she had become a victim of his madness.

Jim tried to set the jagged mirror inside of her stomach, his hands removing slippery, wet organs that had already begun to rot. Where did the organs come from? They were Mina’s organs, weren’t they?

The rebirth was complete,
the demon said, wonder evident in its voice.
Together, we can show him how much you are willing to love him.

Mina’s ropy intestines were between Jim’s fingers, like coiled noodles in a tomato soup mix. Ropy stomach organs slipped over his hands and flopped into the bloody hole that used to contain her stomach.