Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3) (11 page)

“You’re a coward. There are people out there who can’t fend for themselves. Children, entire families, and you’re trying to stop me from killing those dead fucks out there. You’re doing this for your own reasons. It has nothing to do with helping people.”

“That’s not right. That’s not right at all.”

“Really?” she could see the anger in his eyes beginning to cool. His fight with her was a fight that he was having with himself. “I bet you’re a hypocrite, aren’t you?”

Instead of replying, he listened closely to the screams outside. There was a battle raging, and he had taken himself out of the fight.

“Go to church every Sunday?” she said. “You’re the type who goes because you’re always racking up the sins, and you can’t help yourself. You try to be righteous, but that doesn’t get you anywhere.”

“You don’t know me.”

“You want to help? Then get out there, and fight with me.”

His grip did not loosen on her arms, but his face twisted through several emotions.

There was no telling how unstable he was. She felt her own adrenaline crash, and the desire to go back out there and look into those dead eyes and hungry mouths was fading just as quickly as it had seized her. Bill had stolen her away from the battle rage, and in his arms, she had weakened, once again becoming the helpless wretch that she saw in the mirror every day.

His arms had felt strong wrapped around her, and she wanted that comfort again. Vincent wasn’t able to hold her like that anymore, instead preferring the comfort of shadows and sleeplessness. Did she really want to go back out there and start firing away? The fight against them was never going to end. They had lulled themselves into a false sense of security, and they were paying the price for it. How could they believe the hungry dead were just going to leave them alone? She didn’t understand what motivated the zombies or what created them; how could she possibly let her guard down?

She hadn’t let her guard down. Everyone was her enemy when they died. Her enemy was everywhere. Her enemy was death, and there was no escape.

“I don’t know what to do,” Bill finally said.

The screams and battle cries had become more distant. Had the dead overrun them at last? Maybe Vincent finally got his shit together and picked up a gun. Or maybe he was dead. As much as she wanted to feel something for him, she felt absent, removed.

Bill released her and sat against the overturned couch. She didn’t get up, but lay there, feeling a moment of peace settle over them, a silence that quieted her boisterous mind. Think about nothing. Feel nothing. Be nothing.

It seemed so easy.

She had been living her life this way forever, since her father got himself killed for his own selfish cause. And now she watched Bill run his fingers through his wild, blond hair, the look of puzzlement on his face evident in the flickering glow of flame through the windows.

“Welcome to war,” she said to him.

And to herself.

BELLA

Angelica spent most of her time staring at the wandering corpses that littered the football field. Even when she pretended to be asleep, she sat in a chair with her eyes half-open.

Ford Field was probably the most unlikely place for one person to hide in, but it made sense. Bella stared at the football field as one might stare at an aquarium of exotic fish. The football field was littered with trampled hospital tents and cots decorated with various dark stains; hundreds of lazily shuffling dead people were attired in medical, police, or military uniforms. A half-hearted attempt had been made to help save lives, but it had proven costly, taking emergency workers off the streets and dropping them into a sealed meat-grinder. The zombies weren’t milling around the stadium’s seats; it would be easy for an organized group to saunter in and slaughter the corpses and retrofit Ford Field as a fortress, since it could provide shelter during the winter. Maybe its size was daunting, and the smell of spoiled fruit was more heavily concentrated around Ford Field and the baseball stadium, Comerica Park. There had been a Tigers game going on when the outbreak started, and thousands of people had trampled over each other through Comerica and the nearby streets, only to jam it up with a maze of cars. Bella had stayed out of the streets of Windsor during the first few days, and had watched television (although Desmond wouldn’t have approved) reports. She remembered seeing the chaos and wondering how people could possibly differentiate friend from foe.

Angelica didn’t say much, and it would have been easier for Bella to just move on and look for survivors on her own. She knew it was dangerous to hide for too long; the longer she stayed in the dark, the harder it was to motivate herself to go back into the ruins.

Why did Angelica bother sharing food with her if it was such an inconvenience? It was easy to think maybe the woman had cracked, but the same could be said of anyone.
Cracked
. A world full of cracked people.

Inside the suite high above Ford Field, Angelica had a mini-pharmacy stocked with sleeping pills and anxiety pills and pain killers and vitamin supplements. Peanuts and beef jerky and pretzels. Fruit snacks and black licorice. Boxes of noodles and granola bars. Canned food. A gasoline-powered generator she never used because she didn’t want to make noise and draw attention to herself. She had oil. Clothes stamped into the floor.

Bella didn’t know what to say or how to say it. They sat awkwardly and silently. They were alone with their ghosts; to unleash them, to speak of them, would give them life again.

“You think he’s out there?” Angelica said while sitting in her chair.

She didn’t know how to answer. Angelica was going to stomp on her reality, crush it underfoot. The question itself told Bella all she needed to know; Angelica kept her alive because she wanted to punish a survivor for staying alive.

Was it easier to take the bait and let this play out?

“This isn’t something we’re going to talk about,” Bella said.

“No?”

Angelica stared at the football field.

Bella had spent one sleepless night in the suite, watching Angelica, wondering when the betrayal would come. It wasn’t a betrayal if she expected it; there was something to be said for predictability. People were easy to understand as long as you could accept that everyone wanted the same thing you did, but might be more desperate. They might be more
cracked
inside.

“I fed you,” Angelica said. “Entertain me. Tell me stories about your bravery. How you fought the evil zombies to find your knight in shining armor.”

“I don’t want to play games with you. It was nice of you to let me live and all. I want to be on my way.”

Angelica smirked. “Go then.”

Bella knew she wasn’t going anywhere. This woman had spared her life, and there was a reason why. Angelica had invited her into the sanctuary, the place where she watched her nightmares unfold from the comfort of plush seats. Bella knew it was better to give a maniac like Angelica just a taste of power; once Angelica became comfortable enough, she would loosen her grip. There might be a spark of humanity inside of the flesh trader somewhere, and Bella could find it. Desmond had taught her to have faith in people, to trust that people inherently want to be good rather than bad. Bella wasn’t about to change the way anyone perceived the world, but she could at least try to buy herself the time she needed to find the man she loved.

She was so close.

“I know he’s out there,” Bella said. “It doesn’t have to be complicated, does it?”

“What’re you talking about?”

“I’ve been lectured before about blind faith and having a purpose to stay alive. Desmond used to give me those lectures before everything happened. Then my son gave me the lectures.”

“Your son.”

Angelica seemed to be tasting the idea. Was it familiar to her? There was a chance Angelica had a son of her own, a boy lost to the horrors of anarchy. Here was a woman who probably wanted revenge upon the entire human race for whatever tragedy had befallen her.

Bella knew better than to ask too many questions. Her own sorrows were enough, and she couldn’t carry the weight of others. She had seen the implosions, the mood swings, the suicides. There were unspoken limits; empathy was a fool’s game.

Angelica sat up, still focused on the football field. “You’ve been lectured about blind faith. That’s funny. I don’t have time for that shit.”

“What shit? Faith or lectures?”

Angelica sighed and changed the subject. “I can watch them from here. Just watch them. Nobody thinks to come here. Maybe everyone thinks it’s a graveyard. The whole world’s a graveyard.”

The woman stretched, revealing her stomach’s tight wall of muscle.

“You want to leave this behind?” Angelica said. “This mansion? Don’t have to go nowhere. Do anything. Just rot away. Like them, y’know?”

“You must be good at rotting. I’m good at leaving.”

“It ain’t like that.”

“Ain’t like what?”

“You came in on your own. From Canada. From across the bridge. A woman by herself walking across the bridge. Nothing between here and Alaska except for that bridge.”

“What do you know about it?”

Angelica stood. “Enough. One woman walking into Detroit to find a dead man. Probably someone with one of my bullets between their eyes.”

It was coming now. Angelica was just as nuts as everyone else. Surviving was its own kind of death. She was someone she hadn’t been before, and she didn’t mind being who she was now. Like Bella, but with a gun and a football stadium.

“You’re telling me you survived on your own,” Angelica said. “You think any kind of place, anywhere, they’re just going to treat you like you’re treasure.”

“I expect to survive,” Bella said.

Angelica shrugged. “Tough girl. So tough. You want to go hunting for your man by yourself? You know what this place is like. Like every other place you’ve been.”

“I’ll find him on my own.”

It was hard to believe anyone who survived for so long wouldn’t contemplate killing Angelica as Bella did.

Kill her and keep everything.

But where did this come from? Did she always think this way?

Angelica wondered it too. Maybe wondered if Bella was thinking it. If they were both thinking it. In these awkward silences there were murder plans taking shape, a moment in which you could predict how someone might scream.

She used to think about the noises Desmond would make during sex. The things he would say afterward. The things he said the first time they had sex. The way he looked, the things she tried to guess at. All that shared sweat was taken from her. All the comfortable silences were lost.

“We’re going out,” Angelica said. “Staying alive takes work. All this wealth doesn’t come from sitting around and watching
Desperate Housewives
all day. Although I do miss that show.”

There was a hint of tenderness in Angelica’s voice, as if she were trying to recover a fragment of personality that she protected so that she wouldn’t become vulnerable. She wanted to trust Bella.

Angelica might have been an experienced survivor, but she was at the end of the line. They both knew it.

“What if I don’t come?” Bella challenged her.

“What the fuck kind of question is that?” Angelica’s said. “Go ahead, and wander around by yourself in Detroit, see what happens. You think I care what happens to you? I’m doing you a favor. You’re going to get caught out here without me, and then what’ll happen to you? Dumb bitch.”

Angelica began packing up her gear, her pouty face too obvious; she wanted Bella to come along, but on her terms.

Bella was worth more alive. Life wasn’t so cheap because life was a commodity. A possession. Something that could be bartered and squandered.

Bella and her son, Brian, had traded nearly everything to survive. Nothing was sacred in this wasteland world. Angelica knew it and knew that Bella would follow.

***

Angelica made the rules, and the rules were simple. Bella was a product, a piece of valuable merchandise, and if she tried to run off or fuck with Angelica in any way, she could become broken merchandise.

Bella knew the rules by heart.

“If I had a gun we wouldn’t be in this spot,” her son Brian had said the first time they were held captive several months ago.

Being a captive was like playing a game. The first time involved men who wore denim jackets with patches on them. Men who had guns of their own, and cigars, and cocaine, and heavy metal music, and a collection of skulls on posts staked into the dirt outside the house. She remembered them. She remembered all of their faces. She remembered what they did to her.

“If we can live without guns we can concentrate on living,” Bella had said.

“What?”

Angelica snapped her head around. They squatted in a derelict apartment, part of Angelica’s pre-planned route through the streets, a zone that was probably filled with traps.

“I didn’t say anything,” Bella said.

“The hell you did. Mumbling to yourself. Said something about having a gun. You can get that idea out of your head.”

Outside, morning blue, slow and lazy. The sun following time into the day, lagging behind the silence and the calm.

Paint had peeled from these walls a long time ago. The dust and cobwebs had claimed rulership over the stuffy air. A large rocking chair rested beside the window, and Angelica sat there, a lord of ruin and quiet, rocking slowly. Not even a wooden creak on the floor. Mahogany wood dusted white with the crumbs of drywall and lumber.

“What’re we waiting for?” Bella asked.

“Don’t ask questions.”

Bella could recognize the forlorn look of loneliness in Angelica’s distant gaze; she had been alone for a long time, or else she would have moved faster to get rid of Bella. The loneliness was taking its toll. Angelica was corrupted by the silence and needed the savor this time with Bella.

Angelica was weak. She had days left, if not hours. An excuse to die was all she needed to join the other survivors who tried to make deals with Bella and her son.

And Bella was still here. The others?

“Just be patient,” Brian had said once. Something that reminded her of Desmond, because his father wouldn’t have bestowed any virtues upon the son he hated.

“You’re always right,” Bella had said.

Angelica’s eyebrows darted up. “I’m not always right. I’m always dangerous. There’s no such thing as right or wrong. Just dead or alive.”

“You’re a walking textbook of clichés.”

Lips twisted, jaw clenched, Angelica’s head shifted between her shoulders uncomfortably as if she realized it was too big for her body.

“You counted the people you saw die when it started?”

Bella thought it was an odd question. “I was in denial. Like everybody else. But I remembered something my—”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Bella shook her head. Desmond’s ghost was safe with her.

Angelica shifted in her seat again.

“See that apartment outside?” Angelica nodded to the open window.

Bella could always smell
them
. She could always smell the rot; eggs rotting inside the stomach of a dead animal. Everywhere smelled like this, and everywhere followed her.

A silent façade of closed windows. Old brickwork mashed together when Detroit was a paragon of power and capitalist enterprise. Nothing spectacular.

“There’s a man and two little girls,” Angelica said. “Don’t know how long they’ve been there, but they’re making it. He goes out and salvages, and he’s careful, quiet. I think he saw me once.”

“And you’re sitting here… why?” she didn’t like where this was going.

“I usually wait for the move. Survivors always make one desperate move and get themselves killed. They do something stupid like try to raid a supermarket or rob a larger group of survivors. The move always happens if you wait long enough and watch for it. There’s no reason to waste bullets, risk making noise and attracting attention—just know where the survivors are, and wait from them to die. Go in and grab whatever’s left.”