The Queen of the Dead (30 page)

Nobody was sane anymore. Nobody knew what the hell was going on.

And none of it mattered.

He looked over his shoulder and watched the dead stumble through the otherwise empty parking lot. An old man dressed in a black suit for a funeral stepped on a loose piece of fabric from a pant leg and fell face-first onto the ground. Children wearing their Sunday best stepped over the fallen man, clumps of hair sticking to their well-pressed dresses and shirts, lines of blood staining the remaining flesh on their faces, their gender rendered invisible, save for the clothes they wore to identify them. Something tiny crawled; Jeremy’s eyes didn’t linger to see what it was.

It was so easy to watch them, to stare at their slow approach, as if this was the very philosophy by which they lived their lives before they were murdered by the dead versions of their relatives and friends. How could these slow-moving caricatures of the living bring the world to its knees? They would have to use their hands—they would have to get in close, and Jeremy could fight with his hands. He had the battle-axe, too. He was armored.

Let them come.

But he froze. He didn’t get out of the truck. Instead, he turned around and saw hundreds more of them pouring out of the morning, slipping through bushes and sliding out of open car doors, crunching on glass and kicking up loose paper, staggering into each other or bumping into another stray car and setting off its alarm. Tall and short, small and fat, missing limbs and flesh, they brought their smell with them.

And the distant gunfire had already stopped.

“We have to go back!” General Masters.

“We have to get those people out alive.” Father opened the driver-side door.

General Masters stepped out of the truck and shoved the priest. “Don’t you see what’s happening? We have to kill everybody! It’s the only way to win! Soft men like you are the reason why we can’t win these wars. The only way to destroy them is to kill every last one—bomb them into submission and stand over their smoking corpses.”

Father Joe grabbed the man by the front of his shirt. “Get your act together. I need you! We’ve got enough of those things to deal with
right here
.”

General Masters shoved the priest again and cocked his elbow; Father recognized the coming blow and hit the crazy ex-soldier in the gut with a hard left. The general didn’t seem to feel it; he came back with a right hook that Father easily dodged. The priest came back with another strike to the man’s stomach, but the general still didn’t budge. He pressed his attack until Father fell backward into the arms of a dead woman.

Jeremy opened his mouth to scream for the priest. A shriveled woman wearing an evening gown—which was patterned with blood spots as if they were floral decorations—caught Father Joe and dropped him. She lost her balance and fell on her ass without a sound.

The general leapt back into the truck and slammed his foot on the gas. The tires smoked; Jeremy was ripped off his feet and fell back in the truck, hitting his head and killing all the strength in his limbs.

Through smoke from the churning rubber, he could see the priest sitting dejectedly on the pavement. Two dead people stood over him, but he didn’t seem to be in a hurry to get up. He was watching the truck go.

It was better not to move, but just sit and look up at the sky. To stare at nothing and wait until he had to move. Maybe if he sat there the zombies wouldn’t notice him.

The truck turned sharply and spun into the street. When it stopped, Jeremy was looking upon the barricade again, but the sergeant who saved his life was nowhere to be found; only a few scattered zombies lingered while the majority of them were stumbling back to the nursing home.

The general leapt out of the truck. He laughed maniacally as he pushed corpses aside to climb atop the cars. “I promised Chavo I would die for his son! I promised my country I would die to save it! Yeah! This is that old-time shit, baby! WHOOOO!”

Hands scratched against the lip on the truck bed. Jeremy picked up his axe while something bright flew over his head. Liquid fire erupted in the street a few yards ahead of him.

Fighting a hundred of them was different than killing one. And he wasn’t a killer; he had to kill without flinching, without looking into the face of people who used to go to work and pay taxes. People with families. People who needed to die a second time.

The lip of the truck was pulled down by scrabbling fingers. A lean man with an ice-blue face tried to push himself up, his eyes rolling through his head as if he were a doll.

Their mouths were open and they focused on his shiny armor, but they made no other sound besides their hands scraping against the truck.

Choices were made for him. He couldn’t hear the machine gun or the general’s shouting. He heard Stacy egging him on, telling him he needed to get his shit together and do something for once.

The axe was heavy, and he pictured himself as a lumberjack splitting wood down the middle. He hefted the blade over his shoulder and let his momentum carry it downward into the dead man’s head, pinning his skull against the truck bed. Jeremy could feel the shock in his arms and shoulders. The axe was wedged in the center of its head, and the eyes were still. He ripped the blade from the corpse and kicked its limp body into the crowd.

They wanted to kill him. They wanted to devour him, and he was alone. Stacy was dead, and the general was fighting his own war. Everyone Jeremy had known might be dead. Why couldn’t he just use a gun like everyone else? Why did it have to be a battle-axe?

More fire lit up the street. He didn’t know if he should wait for another zombie to climb in; several of them were getting close, and the truck sagged beneath the weight of a thousand hands grabbing onto the bed. He was surrounded on all sides by the dead, and he would have to cut them all down to get out. In his cumbersome armor, it would be impossible.

But now he had a goal. He wanted to survive, and he wanted to get back into the truck; he was a killer now, and there was unfinished business with Griggs.

***

“What the fuck?”

Father leapt at the sound of Kathy’s voice. There was no time to argue with her. The parking lot was jammed with corpses that immediately looked in their direction.

“We have to get back upstairs,” Father said, “we have to get up there right now.”

Kathy shoved him away from Frank and Macon. “Goddamn you,” she said, “we’ve been trapped up there. I need to get to my parents. Grab that cross from over the door, priest. Do something useful for once in your life.”

“Piece of shit,” Frank said.

Macon looked as if he were watching his parents fight.

Once again, he let them down. He didn’t save the elderly when he went to the barricade for help, and now Kathy had every right to be upset with him. There was no way he could look at Frank. He hadn’t felt this ashamed since that last fight, when the man outside of the ring battered him with insults.

Sangriento Joe
had made a mess of things again.

As much as the solider, Vega, didn’t want to help, he knew she distanced herself because she cared too much. She was emotionally invested in this fight, and if she was still at the counseling center, she would help them. He needed Mina and her strange power. The people he tried to save had the power to save him.

Instead of reaching for the crucifix above the door, Father said, “We can just stay here for a moment. Look, the plan’s working.” He pointed to the flame in the street beyond. “Someone’s creating a distraction for us. They’ll come back, or we can wait for the crowd to thin out.”

“We’re wasting time,” Kathy said. She pushed him aside and ripped the crucifix off the wall. “Say a prayer. Bless us like you did this cross. Come on, you damn
fool
.”

“Where’s Rose?”

“Who cares? She’s upstairs playing with herself. Pray, or we walk out there and it’s on your head.”

She knew where to hit him. She sensed his weakness and went for it, pounding away where he would feel it most.

There’s always a way out when you’re backed into a corner. Put up the gloves and move your feet.

“I’m going to my parents,” Kathy said. “I can take any of you with me, or you can sit in the middle of the street. I’m sorry. That’s just the way it is.”

“Cocksucker,” Frank said.

Father didn’t want to be there with Kathy and Frank. He could feel his strength ebb as shame and doubt devoured his confidence. Everything was for Frank, wasn’t it? Everything was to satisfy the man outside the ring. God accepted him and forgave him, but Frank had chased him away, chased him into the streets and into the arms of madmen and soldiers.

Maybe he wouldn’t have saved Macon’s life, or maybe he wouldn’t have saved Kathy’s. Did he save Mina? Or Rose?

He swallowed and looked into Kathy’s bright green eyes. Macon wore the smile on his face proudly, and Frank farted again.

“Lord Father in Heaven…”

A thump on the doors behind him nearly interrupted the flow of prayer. The words continued by themselves, running through the humid streets of his past and the sullen eyes of fatherless sons and men wearing hats low over their eyes. Past the sweat-soaked armpits and the smell of garbage rotting in the sun. Past the blood and dust inside the gym. Past the booing crowds where alcohol and piss were one smell, mingled with the sweat of greedy men, desperate men. Past the sweat and the blood of another round. Past the tolling bell.

“Fucking get on with it,” Frank said.

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit…”

“Amen, goddammit,” Kathy said and cracked her neck melodramatically. Without wasting another second, she threw open the doors where a bald man with a wrinkled head waited for her, shirt open down the middle where a tie should’ve been, revealing a black hole where the stomach had been opened for all the juicy organs.

“You’re driving Frank,” Kathy smiled. “Macon, we’re gone.
Finally
out of here. You’ll love my parents. I bet you wouldn’t believe it, but my dad plays Xbox. Loves the
Call of Duty
games.” She threw open the doors and stretched her arms wide.

“You assholes can’t touch me!” she said. “I’ve got God on my side.”

The bald man took a step toward Kathy.

“You see what faith can do for you, Macon?” Kathy’s smile didn’t waver.

The zombie seemed to be smiling, too. The old man tilted his head and opened his arms slowly, as if he were embracing a relative he hadn’t seen in years. Father could hear his bones crack, his navy blue jacket sagging over his shoulders because he had shrunk over the years. A blue thread hung from the bottom of a pant leg.

When his arms wrapped around her, she lifted a few inches from the ground. She didn’t have a chance to scream because the dead man kissed her lips with his teeth and ripped them off. The gun fired into the ceiling and her legs kicked. Blood squirted over her cheeks.

Father attempted to rip her away from its arms. Macon and Kathy were both screaming. Was Frank laughing?

A strange thought occurred to him:
It’s just a cut. We’ll get you into a corner, Kathy, and we’ll get it sorted out. No reason to stop the fight now.

Kathy flailed her arms and the gun fired again. The dead man pulled her away from Father like a child protecting its toy. He could see her bright teeth, but he didn’t see the two other dead people who stepped into the front lobby.

The crucifix was on Frank’s lap.

He let go of Kathy and grabbed the crucifix from Frank. The old man might’ve been smiling. Macon was bravely aiming his gun, his eyes concentrating on the sight. There was a way he could save all of them. He would have to fight.

Macon missed his shot.

Father returned to Kathy’s battle; the old man had buried his face into her throat. She gurgled while gore painted the top of the man’s bald pate. Father slammed the point of the crucifix down into the open spot.

But Frank was unprotected. How stupid could he be? He wasn’t thinking. God, he wasn’t thinking.

“We’ll be okay,” Father said as the corpse fell on top of Kathy. Her green eyes were still open in a mask of blood.

Macon fired again.

There were so many, too many. He could smell their gaseous, rotting bodies, and he could smell the blood. Blood was on his hands again. The crucifix had shattered, but he didn’t see it. He pushed through the crowd, and his heart burned when Macon screamed. He was only two feet away, but it could’ve been miles.

And still, none of the dead noticed Frank.

***

They killed his men because they needed to win the war. They killed his men so they could create the army they have now. But if every man believed in the concept of freedom and love, freewill and democracy, then any war could be won.

General Masters was going to kill all of them.

He was proud of Jeremy. He was holding his own by kicking dead bastards out of the truck and chopping others down with his axe. A true, fearless warrior—he put it all on the line for this moment.