Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3) (30 page)

Jim had showed her how to summon the dead and march them toward a buffet of living flesh. How far was her reach?

Rose cast her mind into the vast pit of voices, her senses tumbling through a dark void where images collided; behind every final prayer and plea for mercy, Rose glimpsed Mina. The woman was always there. Mina was everywhere, her physical shape dominating Rose’s perception. A trail of red, flowing hair and the glare of emerald green eyes was in every dark hallway, every field of half-slumbering corpses, every wrecked landscape. Mina was everywhere.

A reminder that she did not physically exist, yet here she was.

Power flowed through her, knowledge saturation shocking her thoughts into silence. Everyone who remained now as a corpse—every walking zombie had a story trapped within their murderous shell. Every story filled her, slithering into the synapses of her own memory and transforming her ability to know and recall. Mathematical formulae, criminal enterprises, discreet love affairs—Rose was barely aware of the dark tide of needless information that pressured her into a state of confusion.

Isn’t it wonderful?
the demon asked.

The infernal voice awoke her sense of direction and purpose. Secret government designs. Plans. The political machine’s ultimate dream. Her mind wandered through corridors, a shadowed labyrinth where secrets were doomed to languish, rendered useless forever. Clandestine assassinations. Coups. World-annihilating weapons. Otherworldly technologies.

She was close.

There was so much she could know, and none of it mattered. Rose was a god now. Yes.
A god.

The demon’s laughter accompanied the wisps of Mina’s blood hair, trailing through the damnable images.

Only one thing mattered to her. This was personal. Power-be damned; it was useless without a purpose, and Jim’s purpose was not her purpose. No. She was a person trapped in a nightmare, though she had always existed in a nightmare and hadn’t known until now. The realization of her life’s many falsehoods possessed her.

And then, she
saw.
Men in lab coats gathered in a room with white walls, a swaddled baby girl lying in an incubator. The baby was Mina. The men standing over her—names floated to Rose from somewhere, as her mind filtered through the information. Her mind was an engine, sorting through the data of a billion dead souls that still walked the earth.

Doctor Desjardins.
A scientist. But that’s all she could learn. Everyone who knew him or anything about him must have been completely incinerated. Was this the man who engineered the apocalypse?

Information about the Egypt mission filled her mind. She knew the names of the agents who had died and those who lived.
Colonel Richards.
Of course. He sent her into Detroit to rescue Jim. And a man named Ron Sutter. Was Richards dead? It seemed she couldn’t find his corpse or anyone who had known him.

Sutter. He was still alive. He was here in Detroit at the ruined Grand Central Depot. And Doctor Desjardins was with him along with another name she knew, another name she could never forget.

Amparo Vega.

Sweet, sweet vengeance,
the demon said.
Remember what it felt like to have that sword push through you? And then our family ripped you apart. Think deeply, and you’ll remember how it all felt.

No.

There was more. More information. She knew who Mina was and what happened to her. She had a general idea what happened in Egypt and in missions before it; the Bubonic plague, World War II, the French Revolution, the final sack of Rome—all of them attempts at manifesting the apocalypse as the sacred powers who controlled the world’s governments created one nightmare after another. Mina was not the first of her bloodline to be bred and trained to destroy the world, only the latest.

I have always been here,
the demon said.
You might not be the prettiest filly I’ve worked with, but I suppose it doesn’t matter. If you fuck this up, I’ll still be here. I am eternal.

What was the demon called? What could she learn about it?

Don’t even try that bullshit. I’m in here with you. You want to know my name? It’s ROSE. AGENT ROSE.

What could she learn about herself? What was her real name?

She searched deep, casting her net far and wide. Death and desperation filled her; she felt the pain of people who had been ripped apart, hands and teeth digging into flesh. So many people had watched the living dead hold their own dripping innards, undead mouths filled with blood. Death had been violent and terrible for hundreds of thousands of people around the world.

But nobody knew her name. Nobody had seen her before.

She was just Rose. Agent Rose.

But now she had enough names, and she knew where to find most of them. If Jim wanted her so badly, he would have to destroy legions of the creatures he helped create just to see her again. He would have to undo the massacre with his bare hands.

The undead carried her through the streets of Detroit toward Grand Central Depot.

BELLA

After all this time, she wasn’t going to let it happen again.

Bella had to ignore the big blond muscle-head while she charged into the building. Her world consisted of the family that had been in this building. The father with his two little girls that Angelica had been watching.

Angelica was dead.

“She deserved to die,” her son, Brian, said.

“Nobody deserves to die like that,” she said, running down the dark stairwell. What floor was the family on? There would likely be a barricade on the way down, maybe several. Scant rays of light from the hazy sun touched the darkness with shards of brightness.

“You’re going to let her become one of those things?” Brian asked. “Just let her walk around and get another chance to kill you?”

There was no use arguing with Brian, because he wasn’t actually there.

Bella ran through a hallway until she smacked into something solid, a bright flash bursting in her eyes as her head hit a wall. She must have hit the barricade, and her exhausted body was in no hurry to respond to her desire that she get up and keep going.

She lay there for a while. She couldn’t shake one idea: Angelica was dead. The phrase ran through her mind over and over again.

“You’re covered in her blood,” Brian said.

Desmond would approve. He would have risked everything to help Angelica. Angelica had been a monster, in the end; a monster Bella tried to save.

She could hear heavy breathing. Could smell the musk and sweat of a man. Fleetingly, Bella wondered if she would ever smell roses again. The apocalypse stank like sweaty men.

It always came to this.

Her body was being dragged across the floor. Pulled by her wrist.

Would she feel it? Would she feel the man violate her?

The routine was familiar.

Strange how they always took you into a private room. Did the men think it was a truly intimate act? Did they want it to be intimate? Maybe there was an animal impulse in some of these men, an instinct which compelled them to mark their possession of another woman’s body in some dark, private corner so that none would see the crime. Men who hadn’t been criminals before the apocalypse were ashamed of the light, and if they could hurt a woman in the dark, not even they could admit that it happened. Better to deny the animal inside of them.

What did it matter now?

There was just enough light left in the day as blue light replaced bright white light, to see the large man’s hair as he picked her up gently.

The color of his hair. Hay. It looked like hay.

She was dropped. She wanted to pull him down. Grab onto his arms and just give herself away. Better to give him what he wants so she could move on. A random woman found in the ruins, a treasure. His treasure.

She lay there for a long time, waiting.

Why did he wait?

Do it. Get it over with. Do it.

“You’re going to be okay,” the blond man said, his voice calm and strong. They always did this. Always tried to pretend like it was a good thing.

“No,” she said.

“We can go somewhere. I don’t know you, and you don’t know me, but I’m heading home. If I just head home, just go somewhere else, I know things will be different. You want things to be different? What’s your name? I’m Bill.”

Enough time passed. She sat up.

Bill watched her.

A man full of lies.

She leapt at him, and he caught her in his large arms. He braced her against his chest, and she wrapped her legs around his waist. The big man lost his balance and fell hard.

“No!” he cried out.

Blood rushed to her head, and her face grew warm. He bucked and tried to throw her off, but her fingers were embedded in his hips. There was no way he could throw her without hurting her.

Her hands had moved and were on his neck. Bill’s neck felt like a block of heavy meat. She wanted to feel him.

His hands gripped her waist, and he easily flung her off. She scrambled to her feet, hardly aware of what she was doing. She was surrounded by the dark, and all she could do was move. She could not think.

“Stop it,” Bill said. He knelt and grabbed her wrists, trying to pin her back, trying to roll her over onto her back. She let him.

“This isn’t what I want,” he said. “This isn’t what we should do. Let me help you, please.”

Bill stopped, sweat from his face dripping onto hers. He was staring hard at something, a glimpse of light catching the blue of his eyes. The pupils seemed to retract inside of his head. She tried to crane her neck to see it, but a part of her already knew. Only one thing would interrupt a man so completely.

In the doorway, a figure.

A shape standing in the doorway.

Bella lay beneath him, her eyes focused on the thing in the doorway. Bill’s sour breath scalded her face.

A little girl stood in the doorway. White dress. Dark stains on the front of the dress. Long hair hanging in clumpy strands, drooping over her slender shoulders.

Bill let her go.

“You can’t,” Bella said.

Bill stood and picked up the girl by her shoulders. Bella kicked him in the shin. He dropped the girl and stumbled back into the room.

“She’s not dead!” Bella screamed, her throat burning. Her throat felt like it was on fire.

“She’s dead,” Bill said. “Get out of the way.”

Bella darted in front of him and barreled over the girl, slamming her into an opposite wall. The dark had made it nearly impossible to see anything.

The smell.

Feces. Urine. Blood. Dirt. Sweat. The girl hadn’t washed for days, and she hadn’t been dead for long. A day ago? Two days?

“Get out of the way!” Bill shouted again.

Bella was thrown aside. Bill’s hulking body blotted out the remaining light that filtered in through the windows. He stepped on a twig.

No.

That was the sound of the dead girl’s neck snapping.

“Oh fuck,” Bill said, half-sobbing. “Oh fuck this. Oh fuck this.”

“There’s another one,” Bella said. “She might still be alive.”

“Oh, God, I can’t do this. Oh shit. Things don’t have to be this way. I just wanted to get out of here. Get home. Just get home.”

“I have to find the other one,” Bella said. “And there was supposed to be a man.”

“Well, maybe they’re dead, too.”

Bill’s voice shook. How long had he been out here in the ruins? Not too long, apparently. She had her breakdown a long time ago. He was turning in an emotional wreck in front of her, something that wouldn’t happen to a hardened survivor.

He was just like Desmond. An avenger.

“Nothing like him,” Brian said. “This man’s a flesh-trader. Why would you trust him? You’ve known men like him. He came here to trade with Angelica. He came here for you.”

She was on her feet.

“Run away,” Brian said. “Get away from this bastard. Just get out, now.”

“Stop it,” Bill said, sniffling, trying to regain his composure. “Just wait, please. I just want to help.”

Dizzy, she tried to settle herself against the wall. The strong scent of decay wafted into the hallway again. It wasn’t just the dead little girl, but something new, something worse.

“Oh, stop it, stop it. Get back!” Bill shouted, his voice reverberating in close quarters. Bill saw something, but what?

Bella was compelled to turn around and make a run for it. She was trapped between his big body and whatever she had slammed into before; her eyes were adjusting to the shadows, but her eyesight was blurred when she swung her head around. Leading back up to the roof, there was more light in the hallway, and behind her, almost nothing. Her eyes had to switch between two spectrums.

“You have to help me,” Bill cried out. His voice sounded weaker somehow, more frail, as if sudden fear had reduced him to a tremulous mess. The strength and confidence that was present only a moment ago was gone. What did he see?

Bill had more than handled the dead little girl.

“Leave him,” Brian said. “You heard the gunfire outside while you and Angelica were struggling. He was out there, fighting through the corpses to get to you. It’s not worth saving him. Other people are probably dead out there, and there might be others, waiting.”

“Desmond would disagree,” she muttered.

“Bullshit,” Brian said.

“I can’t just leave him.”

“Yes, you can.”

“Like you left me?”

“I didn’t leave you. I’m here. I’m right here with you.”

“No. God, no. You’re not real. The only thing that’s real is the blood on my hands! The only thing I know that’s real. I’m covered in it. Angelica’s blood is on my face, my arms. I can smell her.”

“I told you before that Desmond was a fool who is probably dead. He is dead because he was selfish, not because he was selfless. I know he went out to save his brother. I know he chose Jerome over you.”

“Stop it. Just stop it.”

Even though she couldn’t see Brian, she knew what expression he would wear on his face. Her teenage son, lips curled in disappointment, his derisive sneer cutting into her. Every day he confronted her with these truths, ideas that she had denied ever since they spent that first week after her last phone call with Desmond, waiting for him to return. Brian had given up two days in. She had always been optimistic, and she knew that he considered it weakness on her part.

And now he reminded her that she was weak, that she couldn’t be as strong as Angelica. That’s why she couldn’t stop thinking about the woman who died in her arms; a woman who was willing to trade her to Bill for a box of creamed corn.

“Wait, don’t leave me here,” Bill said.

The sound of his voice had changed dramatically, although she had barely heard him speak more than a few words. Was there someone else in the room with them? What about the little girl’s father? Was he dead? Was there another child in here, somewhere?

“Save yourself,” Brian said. “Don’t be an idiot.”

If she turned her back on this man now, he might die. Desmond would never have turned his back on someone who needed him. Bella had risked everything to save Angelica; what changed?

“Remember what they did to us,” Brian said. “They made me watch.”

Brian was right. When the flesh traders came, they made her son watch. They also made him…

Don’t think about it.

“They made me watch,” Brian repeated.

Bella turned away from Bill.

“You can help me,” Bill said. “They’re here. They’ve been waiting for us the whole time, oh God, oh God they have been waiting, and now they’re here.”

Had she completely hallucinated Bill, just as she heard Brian’s voice? Her son had never come back from a scavenging trip, but he remained with her. The pleading in the hallway seemed to be coming from someone frantic, someone who sounded
frayed.

Bella turned her back on whatever Bill was dealing with. She could hear him shakily muttering a prayer.

“Our Father, who art in Heaven…”

Bella carefully picked her way through the darkness and tried to find the stairwell back to the roof. She tripped several times over objects on the floor. Behind her, Bill kept praying.

Ahead of her loomed a patch of absolute darkness. There should have been a tiny bit more light closer to the stairwell, but whatever light she expected had been swallowed by a deep shadow.

There was only one thing that could be in her way, one thing that had come down from the roof where she had left it. The corpse of the woman she had tried to save for no other reason than it was “the right thing to do.” That should have been good enough. Doing the right thing was always good enough according to Desmond.

And she had left Angelica on the roof to rot, just as she requested. Now, Angelica was here. Angelica hadn’t been afraid of light, hadn’t been ashamed to admit that she wasn’t a good person. What was she like before everything happened? It was pointless to think about it now, especially since Bella was surrounded by the undead. Behind her, and ahead of her. Still, she kept thinking about Angelica’s last words and their fatal struggle in the apartment. Angelica had nearly escaped. Not once had she been afraid.

“You can do it,” Brian said. “Push right past her.”

Bella lowered her shoulder and charged into the patch of darkness. She felt something heavy move aside. The smell of a wasted body clogged her nostrils along with coppery blood.

“Amen!” Bill shouted. “You can’t hurt me, you can’t!”

Bella could hear herself panting in the humid stillness. The shadows around seemed frozen, or maybe they were pictures of shadows. She couldn’t look back; if she stopped to look at Angelica’s dead face, all of her willpower and strength might fade away. On her hands and knees, she scrambled toward the light. Up the stairs. Lungs burning.