Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3) (31 page)

One hand on a step. Crawling now up the steps. On her hands and knees, climbing.

She looked over her shoulder and stopped moving altogether. Gasping for breath, salty sweat trickled over her lips. She thought of herself as a messy creature, a frail thing, nothing more than a mouse that had been scampering through a trash heap for a year. And yet she was a meal, an object of desire for the undead and for the living.

More than anything, she wanted to live. She wanted to live as Angelica had lived.

The shadow of Angelica’s corpse approached.

Bella could hear Bill struggling in the hall behind her, stumbling over debris, his fists pounding into the dead-meat flesh of whatever was attacking him.
“Amen!” Bill shouted. “Amen I said! God help me! God, do you hear me? DO YOU HEAR ME?”

Bella turned and resumed her climb.

Her shirt clinging to her chest, Bella felt like she had just climbed out of a lukewarm bathtub. The humid, blood-warm air on the roof greeted her. The sky felt the same as the interior of the building; a dark place, a cavern that smelled like sweat and sewage.

“DAMN YOU! Come on, you fuckers! Come on! COME ON!”

Scrambling on her hands, she tried to stand. Knees buckled beneath her, ankles twisted, and her body surrendered. She was nothing more than a wobbly pile of blocks balanced on a monkey’s skull. Fear had turned her into a sniveling creature.

Alone on the roof without a weapon. The fire escape? Could she try the fire escape?

“Mom, stand up,” Brian said. “You can do it. Come on, stand up.”

Bill shouted again. “YOU WILL NEVER STOP ME! TRY TO STOP ME! TRY TO STOP ME!”

She stopped and tried to inhale a lungful of breath. How would she be able to get down the fire escape if she couldn’t stand? Throat parched, stomach rumbling, her body felt empty. Her body felt like it might be floating away on the breeze, even though there wasn’t a breeze.

There was nothing but the sound of Bill’s voice.

The hazy light nearly blinded her, but Bella could see a colorless figure push up the steps. It didn’t look like a man at all, but a large, twitching insect.

It was a man with a zombie on his back. He sagged to his knees and tried to reach behind him to grab the attacker. Bella couldn’t see his blond hair, couldn’t see his face, but she knew it was a man, and she knew a zombie was on his shoulders, riding him.

A small zombie was on his back. A tiny, childlike zombie with long, wispy hair, like the frayed threads of a burnt flag.

“I tried!” the man shouted. “Please, I tried. Oh God, it hurts. Don’t do this, don’t do this, please, please.”

And all Bella could do was watch as the dead child atop his back pulled on his hair. The hair tore away, likely taking part of his scalp. The zombie quickly dropped the hair from its fingers and dug back into his head to rip more hair while Bill tried to reach for the corpse. He clawed at the creature atop him, but its hands were embedded in his skull.

Another person stepped onto the roof. Thin, feminine body. A haggard shape, moving stiffly, mouth opening and not making a sound. Bella knew who this was, even in the unkind light. All the undead were hungry, and Angelica was no different. Only moments ago, Bella would have been her meal, but now the Angelica corpse was focused on the man with the child on his back. Angelica was truly dead, for any subconscious identification of Bella would surely prompt the corpse to look in her direction. There was nothing left of the hardened survivor.

“Help me,” the man said.

He extended his hand toward Bella, who was several feet away.

This guy was going to trade something for Bella. He was going to own her. He was going to make a deal with Angelica for Bella’s flesh.

“Flesh trader,” Brian said. “You figured it out. That’s what he is. A flesh trader. You know what they do out there.”

“Desmond would help this man,” Bella said.

But she didn’t move.

“Please,” the man said.

Dead Angelica sat down upon the roof delicately as if she were sitting upon a blanket and preparing to eat a picnic in a park. Yes. What a nice family meal. Eat it, you bitch. Eat it, you dead bitch.

Hard to believe she had wanted to help Angelica.

Hard to believe she might have tried to save Bill.

But he screamed loudly. So loudly. And he cried. And he begged.

And when the sun rose and Bill’s carcass was nothing but a collection of scattered bones, she pushed the two zombies over the edge of the roof and watched their heads pop open when they struck the cement. She hadn’t talked to Brian in several hours.

JIM

The Artist leaned against the brick wall and stared into a pit of withering corpses. How delicate they seemed from a distance; a pile of meat with worms trembling the surface with their passing. Moist topsoil. Snaking maggot forms rippling over the central mass.

Yes. From atop here, everything was melodramatic. Fences were unimportant, insignificant. High above the kingdom of rot. Atop Michigan Central Station.

Rose had been disturbed, and there was no telling what influence the demon had inside of her. An interesting twist would involve Rose reclaiming her identity. Was she turning her back on him?

This was a challenge to him.

How much did he love her?

There had been sonnets dedicated to less worthy women. The ultimate power is the power over one person. Complete and utter domination of one person, to allow for godhead in that person’s eyes. He was Rose’s god.

Religion had always fascinated him for its complete surrender of will to something invisible. To become a shell, defined by the fear of life. Faith, worship; he could get behind those ideas.

He figured it out.

The dead were breaking apart and reconnecting. Tangling themselves into one monster.

How melodramatic of her.

The fight was going to be interesting. There wouldn’t be another one like it in the history of man, and nobody would see it.

Jim turned on his heel and walked along the roof. He inhaled the foul air and stepped into his enemy’s lair.

The bone man. An old friend of Sutter’s. Expert on poisons, a genetic engineer who figured out more interesting ways for people to die. He had worked on a lot of operations with the celebrated veteran, but he wasn’t a combat expert.

Jim strode into the room with his hands clasped behind his back. How did he appear to the bone man? He certainly didn’t feel older, and sometimes it might help his focus just to get the blood flowing early.

Sitting in a chair, poised over Vega. The bone man jangled a plastic skeleton over her eyes. She was looking at something else. Bone man didn’t bother looking up.

“The air you breathe is deadlier than anything I could do to you,” the bone man said.

“Of course it is,” Jim said. “You’re a professional. I would expect nothing less. You are have trained your lungs and mind for the gas. Same with Sutter. It’s a special brew. I field-tested it before. That’s why you had it in the first place: it was a failed weapon.”

His mind would not be broken. He planted his left foot and straightened his left hand. Focused. Bone man stood and dropped back down. He didn’t see Jim’s hand. Nobody would have. An artery had been severed, and it would take a few moments for the oxygen to completely disappear from the brain. Bone man would live a lifetime of horror in seconds.

Standing over Vega, he looked down into her face. A striking woman, her eyes wide open but somewhere else.

***

A voice echoed throughout the vast, haunted corridors of Michigan Central Station.

“Oh Jimmy boy, JIMMY BOY! COME OUT TO PLAY WITH US!”

Sutter wouldn’t stop until he was dead. Sutter’s version of madness revolved around playing this game with Jim.

Any moment now, he would see Rose. She was here, in this palace of rust and sweat. 

Jim prowled around the Depot, watching Sutter’s army wallow in mental depravity. Sutter had always been an efficient leader, and probably conditioned these men to withstand the emotional burden that too many survivors were saddled with. These men had been professional soldiers before the apocalypse, but now they were truly Sutter’s army.

Men sexually violated corpses regardless of gender. They grudgingly went to work, relieving themselves rather than taking any enjoyment from their actions. They did not smile, nor did they hoot or holler. There was no cheering. They did not encourage each other. Each man dutifully labored, and as Jim watched from the shadows, he began to understand—it was part of their conditioning. Sutter had drilled these activities into them, rendering many of their emotional faculties useless.

None of these men would question Sutter’s orders if they were asked to commit atrocities mankind would have shirked from. Surely they knew there was an idyllic life elsewhere; crates full of corn and salted beef, along with other foodstuffs, were stacked in random places and were not under guard. Jim had participated in trades with people who smelled like fresh soap, with clean clothes on their backs and idealism in their eyes. They traded food to “rescue” the women and children who had been picked up by Sutter’s men. Detroit had become the hub of a new economy as Canadians and survivors huddling in the metropolitan sprawl were captured and traded. Sutter’s men were armed with plenty of ammunition and a few perishable goods of their own; they served as sort of a reconnaissance force in the ruins, equipped with the weaponry to round up survivors and send them into the arms of people who had the items Sutter’s army needed.

The unshaven men with their cold glares stood near windows and cleaned their guns. They continued with their bodily rituals. They spooned military rations into their mouths while entire boxes of cereal lay scattered among the debris unopened.

He found Sutter sitting in a stairwell with Vincent.

Vincent was at the church on the first night. Little gangster man.

Cloaked in the shadows, he knew Sutter couldn’t see him.

“We were the best killers,” Sutter said to Vincent. “Handpicked, recruited from asylums and prisons. They wiped our memories and trained us, turned us into the best special missions operatives. We were the best. They could have picked you. They probably should have. You’ve survived a long time, but hindsight is 20-20.”

Vincent didn’t reply.

“I like clichés,” Sutter said. “I think they exist for a reason. A part of our language. The things that we can all say and understand, a sort of language that can summarize our emotions and understanding of the world in a way we can all understand.”

Vincent still didn’t respond.

“I know Jim is listening. I know he can hear me. I speak for him. I’ve always been talking to him, even when he isn’t there. In my head, I talk to him. In everything I do. He’s the only one who can appreciate what I do. But that’s kind of how it was, you know. Colonel Richards could appreciate me. So could the others. I’m talking about the team that was dropped into Egypt. Because we were trained for it. Everything we did led up to Egypt. The entire thing was one big mess they had planned. Decades, man, decades. Maybe a thousand years.”

Sutter reached into his pocket and withdrew a cigarette. He struck a match, lit the cigarette, and smoked. He leaned forward and passed it to Vincent.

“I never figured out if they knew who would come back from Egypt,” Sutter said. “I don’t know if they just wanted to wipe us all out, or maybe they hoped I would die, or Jim, or Richards. Fuck man, what do you think of all this?”

Vincent said nothing. He passed the cigarette back.

“You don’t want to be my friend,” Sutter said. “I don’t have any friends. I thought maybe you and I could understand each other. Mike Taylor used to talk about you all the time. Told me you were some kind of gangster back in the day. But I don’t see a gangster. I see a chill guy. Like you got all the time in the world. Don’t need anybody, right?”

Jim listened to the moaning dead outside. How many were out there? How many thousands? What was Rose planning?

“Reminds me of Carlos Santana,” Sutter said. “You know that one song? Goes like: ‘Ain’t got nobody… that I can depend on.’ Yeah, a classic, dude.”

Eventually, Sutter gave up and walked away, leaving Vincent sitting against the wall by himself.

VINCENT

Gray morning. Humid morning. No sun. No sky. Just a nothing morning. Men sitting in circles, snoring. Men pissing out of windows. Guns scattered everywhere. What were they waiting for?

Doctor Desjardins was hanging body parts over the beams in the ceiling. Standing on a ladder, he looked down at Vincent.

“Thought you weren’t serious,” Desjardins said.

“I’m serious.”

“Well, just in case, I found it.”

“Of course you did.”

The scientist stepped down the ladder. A shoulder holster carried the weight of a heavy gun. One that Vincent recognized right away.

“Her gun,” Desjardins said. He unbuckled the holster and tossed it over to Vincent.

“Not her gun.”

“I don’t care. Is it enough?”

The Desert Eagle that had belonged to Griggs. How many times had it been pointed in his face by the former detective?

A part of him wanted to watch the video he made with Mina, just to see it. But once Vincent saw it, he wouldn’t be able to see anything again. Or maybe the zombies could still see everything; brains trapped in skulls they could no longer control.

“Not enough,” Vincent said.

“Look, you’re supposed to be the one with all the ammo.”

“Would you call that irony?”

“Fuck.”

“Not enough.”

Desjardins knelt and unzipped a huge canvas bag.

“Well, come over here and see for yourself.”

Ammunition and an AR-15.

Christmas had come early this year.

Doctor Desjardins stood and shook his head. “I’ve done my part of the deal. You tell me how I can get out of here.”

Last night the scientist had spilled the secrets. He was scared out of his mind. It was only a matter of time until there were too many zombies at the fence, and it crashed down. They were supposed to be trading today. People from another community were going to come and give them food for flesh.

But there was no way to get in or out.

Doctor Desjardins had told him about the hellish project, and he shared everything he knew about Traverse and Sutter. Everything he knew about the entire damn apocalypse.

Vincent told him how to get out of the city. How to get a treasure trove of bullets. A man would be rich on his own. Things aren’t all daisies outside of Detroit. It’s bad everywhere. Guns made a difference. Bullets were more valuable than bread.

“I was the one who got you in,” Desjardins said. “You were a pain in the ass about it, but I was trying to help you the whole time. Pull you out of there. Sutter’s death is worth millions on the open market right now, and I got the bid for the job. But I’m not an assassin. I trusted you. Gave you an air strike. You didn’t even have to get in close.”

“Air strike? You mean the one I got through that girl? I only dealt with her once. I heard about her. Don’t think Vega ever met her.”

“It’s legitimate. It’s the real thing. Now will you do it or what?”

“Hell yeah. I’m about to do it for free.”

“Good. I’m glad. I figured I could trust you.”

“Head back,” Vincent said. “Spread the word there’s going to be a riot. Tell anyone you see. They’ll know what to do.”

“And what about me?”

“Yeah?”

“They’ll take me to the guns?”

“They’ll take you somewhere. Just do as I said.”

“You’re making me go through the fence.”

“I’m not making you do anything.”

Desjardins looked around, hands on his hips. His head was a on a swivel, as if there was a secret door that could save his soul and take him out of this world that he knew too much about. He wanted out, and there was no way out. He would have to work hard to survive.

“Shit, man, don’t you have compassion? Why don’t you just blow everyone away, help me get out of here? Tell me where the guns are, and I’ll tell everyone where you are. I’ll spread the word like you said. But you have to give me something. Please.”

“What?”

“At least try to make a deal. You’re not making a deal. You’re just sending me out there. I don’t know if you’ll make good on your end. I could get myself killed for nothing.”

“Could get your ass chewed anyway. I don’t have to give you shit. For what you’ve done? This is on you. Squirmy-looking—you’re a snake. You know that? Fucking snake.”

“This isn’t right.”

“Way I see it, I’m giving you a second chance. No reason why I shouldn’t put you down right here.”

He had thought about it. He had decided the scientist would eat a bullet, and that was an easy decision to make. A whole three seconds to figure out if the man was going to live beyond this moment. But he also knew this didn’t have to be about him anymore. The cavalry had been waiting, and they would come. They wanted this.

They wanted their city back.

So he left the scientist and walked upstairs. The rifle was strapped over his shoulder, and nobody bothered to ask him questions. They let the invisible man pass. These men had already decided they were going to die here, and the old train station would become their tomb. And they weren’t afraid.

This was his chance to make amends with Vega. At least say something before he finished Sutter. Give her the Desert Eagle, watch her point it at him? Was he supposed to apologize to her? He couldn’t depend on her to take the gun; things were different.

He could only trust himself.

Sutter was on the topmost floor, standing in front of a window with his back to the stairs. The big guy, bone man, was dead on the floor.

Dressed in his white suit, long beard perfectly straight. Sutter’s glaring eyes focused on something below them, outside. Outlined against the nothing shape of sky, Sutter didn’t bother turning around.

“This is inspiring,” Sutter said. “Holy shit, you have to see this. Come on, Vincent. Take a look!”

Use the Desert Eagle or the rifle?

Sutter gestured wildly. “Come on, dammit! Look!”

“I’ll take another cigarette.”

Sutter removed the pack from his jacket pocket and reached out to Vincent.

As he walked to the window, the dead outside seemed to be groaning louder.

He took a cigarette from the pack and leaned forward when a match snapped to light, allowing Sutter to light the cigarette for him.

“Down there,” Sutter said. “What a badass that guy is.”

Outside in front of the fence, a figure sat on the ground. A nude man with his thighs folded perfectly beneath him, hands planted on his knees, neck relaxed, muscles in his back tense.

Pressing against the fence, hundreds of thousands of dead people clambered over each other. The fence shook. Zombies climbed atop the growing pile of writhing flesh and were caught in the barbed wire. More and more zombies gathered along the wire, some of them flopping onto the ground on the other side. The top of the fence bowed forward. Waves of them. Streams of them were pushing it down. That massive fence.

“That’s Jim,” Sutter said. “Oh man, we’re going to get to kill all of those things. Isn’t that awesome?”

Vincent sucked on the cigarette and discovered he needed to drop some of the ash. The cigarette had burned to nothing between his lips, all the way to the filter. He let it slip out of his mouth.

Sutter had picked up the megaphone. “That a boy, Jimmy! WOOOO! Let’s do this the right way! YEAH, BABY! YEAH!”

Heart fluttering, blood cold.

There were so many.

Climbing right over now. All of them. Coming toward the train station.

“It reminds me of Black Friday,” Sutter said. “The day after Thanksgiving. One big sale all across the world. One big SALE! Hahahahaha. YEAH! But hey, you know, that metaphor’s been kind of worn out.”

There wasn’t anything to say to this goofy bastard.

“Let’s kill every single one of them,” Sutter said. “Then you can watch me kill Jim, and then I’ll kill you? Is that cool?”

There were no words.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Sutter assumed Traverse was going to survive.

And assumed they were going to survive.

Vincent positioned the AR-15 on his shoulder and lined up a target. He adjusted the scope.

At the edge of his vision, his scope found a beehive.

No.

He leaned back from the sight.

He didn’t want to look again.

First, it seemed like a buzzing shadow, and then he could hear the collective snap of a thousand bones as the giant stepped through Rosa Parks Boulevard. Zombies flooded backward, drawn to the shape, bodies twisting into a vortex of twirling appendages snapping into place, ground into the machinery of a giant that formed the outline of a hulking, towering body. It seemed almost mechanical, but as pieces flaked away, broken through the mess of rot, Vincent thought he was looking into the exposed belly of a dying rat. A close-up of festering disease. Its presence caused his skin to cool, his breath stopping in his throat. There was nothing like this. There was nothing like this ever, anywhere. He felt like his body was being dipped into a pool of liquid waste. A toxic sludge of rot and melted plastic.

“Absolutely amazing,” Sutter said. “This is the coolest fucking thing I’ve ever seen, man, and I’ve seen a lot of shit. I’ve infiltrated entre cells of ISIS members and ruined them from within. I got inside. I liked it when they found me. I wanted it. I was never going to get an official mission after that ever again. But I made it just to see this. Yeah. Hell yeah.”

In a way, Sutter was right.

The baddest against the meanest.

The lumbering giant scooped a fist shape down into the street. The arm reared back.

“No fucking way,” Sutter said.

Vincent ducked and braced for impact.

The building shook, and Vincent thought of a wave striking the side of a ship; there was a tiny moment between impact and the water actually splashing over the prow.

Black goo and bone shards splashed through the windows above him. A wad of zombies had been thrown at the entire train station. Pieces had rained through, splashing mildewed and rotted clothing—along with maggots and teeth—along the entire floor. The walls dripped with a black slime of wetness mass, as if the corpses had all just emerged from the bowels of a swamp.

A skull looked up at him.

Vincent didn’t even aim. One burst from the familiar assault rifle, and the skull burst like a light bulb.

There was something he wanted to say, but wasn’t sure what it was. Another shape was moving out of the corner of his eye, and he pivoted, fired. He was accurate, precise.

“We need to get downstairs!” Sutter said, stepping over piles of undead muck. “Get down a few floors, try to hold the lobby. That’s where most of them will be.”

“Hold up. You already know we don’t go anywhere until I know where Vega is.”

“Oh, it’s like that, huh? All touchy-feely? She’ll be down there too. That’s why this is going to be a lot of fun. I’m sure Doctor Desjardins gave you the air strike information, right?”

Nothing was ever so simple. Sutter was a professional. Vincent had to give the guy credit.

“It’s going to be a lot of fun, I promise,” Sutter said. “This is one of the greatest battles in human history, my friend. We get to die in it.”

Vincent didn’t care for the plan. A few things had to happen before he was going to cash out. Business, first.

“The lobby,” Vincent said. “Vega first.”

Sutter grinned.