Nude and twisting in the breeze, Linda whimpered. Her ribcage stretched her dirty skin, feces crusted on the back of her thighs.
When she finally gave in, he spooned writhing maggots into her mouth, pushing the spoon between her lips.
There was so much to do. The process should work this time. Mina’s consciousness was out there, inside the collective existence of the undead. Did she still have awareness? Mina could not be killed, not completely, not now.
Not after what she had become.
There was so much for them to do together.
Maggots frothed out of Linda’s mouth as she whimpered.
“I wonder if I would have pitied you, when I was a child,” Jim said. “It’s so illogical to feel anything for a stranger, for a life that I have not lived, or created, or birthed. Do you understand that nobody will miss you? Nobody will cry for you. It will be as if you never lived. You have left nothing behind on this world that will survive you.”
“Oh God, please, please God please please just stop please just stop.”
Jim shook his head. “Isn’t there anything more important to say? Anything you can think of? Just think about all the wonderful things that have happened to you in the short time you’ve been alive. Think about anything you wish you could have done. Is there a memory you would like to share?”
Nothing but whimpering from Linda.
He sighed. “I suppose I don’t understand. Verbalization affects cognition. I’m giving you an opportunity to feel happy again. See that moment, experience it.”
Useless. A blithering idiot. Hopefully, the procedure would work right away, and none of these defects would be included in the new version of his favorite weapon.
Turning away, he silently made his way down the long, forgotten hallways of the Packard Plant. The crying of a tormented woman was the only sound in that abandoned factory. Long before the near-apocalypse, this place had been a tomb for glass and broken doorways.
For how long would she cry?
Everyone died differently, and every person faced their death differently. So interesting. When they realized they were going to die, they confessed every imaginable sin, every fantasy dreamt.
In the darkness, the woman’s cry echoed through the factory. The world was incredibly dark. Nearly impossible to see at night in the factory’s interior where light, natural or otherwise, had barely touched the shadows since the old machines shut down.
He listened to her cry.
In his fingers he twirled a microchip.
Rose. Her personality was contained within the microchip. A woman designed by his ingenuity. A personality embedded in a microchip, one of the first successful attempts at creating a sort of hybrid artificial intelligence and clone, although there was always the risk that it would backfire, that she would regain her original memories.
Really, he was growing bored. He had been mostly unchallenged in the ruins, except for the bandit girl who saw him regularly with fresh meat. The woman was annoying. She made juvenile, racist jokes to cover up her own vulnerability. Her words offended his sense of taste in language. Angelica, her name was.
It was only a matter of time until someone heard Linda cry.
Outside, there were people who wanted to kill him. People who wanted him. They waited out there, and now Linda’s cries could bring them closer.
Yes.
He heard it.
Voices in the courtyard. The crackle of radio static.
There were no insects, no night creatures besides those scurriers and scavengers who stalked the night. There were other scavengers, too. Waiting in the dark.
His opponent wasn’t a fool.
Jim had always known Sutter was a worthy enemy. He expected it to come down to this, and he was pleased to hear the other man’s voice cut through the night, a deep baritone bursting through a megaphone.
“Jimbo! Jimmy Boy! Wet Jimmy! Wet, limp, sloppy Jimmy. Cold Jimmy. Jimmy the child rapist.”
Jim listened.
“I thought maybe you would get all bent out of shape with that one. Here I am thinking you got an ego. Oh man, oh man, how wrong I was.”
How many men did Sutter bring?
Linda cried out sharply.
“He’s here! Please oh God please please please I’m here God please please please help me, help me…”
“You know, I always kind of felt like we could have been a good team,” Sutter said. “I feel like this is a wasted opportunity. Whatever happened to Richards, anyway? I can’t blame you for killing him. I thought about it, you know. But I didn’t think I could do it as well as you could. I don’t have your sense of style.”
Movement inside the bowels of the labyrinthine factory. Sutter’s people were inside, looking for him. Now, there would be violence. Sutter would have professionals with him, men who survived in Detroit’s ruins because they were men who had left nothing behind and had no future to win save that which Sutter made them believe in. Sutter always managed to train his personal shock troops into faithful followers who adored his personality.
The night was about to become exciting.
Jim watched Linda, her feet dangling, kicking, voice choking. Her body wet with tears, urine, and sweat.
Sutter’s voice echoed throughout the factory. “So, um, Jimmy, I was thinking, you know, since we’ve never been good friends, if I just rip your tongue out of your mouth and eat it. I have dreams about it, Jimmy. I want to sit on your chest, reach into your mouth, and rip your tongue right out of there. I guess I’m letting you know that when I’m breaking your arms, it isn’t anything personal between us. I just want to eat your tongue. Mostly because you remind me of Daniel Craig portraying Sting in a movie about the musician’s life, or based on his life. I fucking hate Sting. Hey, so, let’s talk about killing you.”
“I’m up here,” Jim said calmly to the darkness. Leaning out of the window, he wondered how many snipers were across the street. Of course, they probably wanted to bring him in alive, just like Bob had wanted.
“Looking good, Jimbo,” Sutter said. “I’d be willing to call off the dogs if you could just step down here, you know, do it all macho-like. Come on down here. Just the two of us, I promise.”
“But I want to kill your men, first.”
Sutter laughed. He sounded like a little boy. A foolish little boy playing in the kingdom of a god.
There was something waiting for Sutter’s people in this factory. Something special Jim kept for just the occasion. And Jim listened for the music that only screaming men could make when faced with mortal terror.
***
The first man who screamed begged for his mother.
The second man who screamed had fired several bullets from a machine gun. An M16 from what Traverse could figure from the sound. A burst of light popped along the distant corridor, which seemed a mile away from where he was perched—in a window, listening, watch, waiting.
Another firefight, more screams.
“What a bunch of assholes,” Sutter said from the darkness through his megaphone. “Wasting ammo. AT LEAST DIE WITH DIGNITY, YOU ASSHOLES! Run for your lives or kill yourselves. Don’t shoot your guns. Let’s be professional about death. ACT LIKE PROFESSIONALS, YOU SCUM!”
“Linda, keep begging for help,” Jim said to his captive before rushing into the darkness.
When he heard the sound of pigs slopping through a trough, he knew how close he was. The blood smell was rich, mingled with the smell of dirt and dust. Fluid splashed the floor nearby, like a bucket of water dumped over someone’s head.
The living dead were eating, and eating well.
Did Sutter’s men have night vision goggles?
Jim knelt, and his fingers found the rifle. An M16. He was standing above the feasting dead. They couldn’t see him. His personal beasts, their hunger absolute.
Once he had infiltrated an enemy hospital disguised as a blind man. His eyes were bandaged, and he had to fight his way through the front door without a gun. But
he ended up with one.
Jim was among the dead now, and they would want him just as much as they wanted the other men. Their lust for flesh was indiscriminate. He could hear the chunks of meat that dropped out of their mouths as they pinpointed his location. The blood smell saturated the air, and Jim inhaled it deeply.
Ever since the first time had taken life, the aroma that accompanied death interested him. Many people enjoyed the smell of a new car or a new pair of leather boots. To spill the blood of another, to witness their vain search for angels in the eyes of the dying—it was its own reward, and the smell reminded him of that victory.
Jim emptied the clip into the heads of the undead—three targets. He took them all down and ejected the clip, letting it hit the floor. Spots danced in front of his eyes from the gunfire burst.
“This hall is clear,” Jim announced. “Come on up.”
From outside, Sutter’s voice blared through the megaphone. “You have zombies in there with you? You are a sick, sick man. How do you sleep at night?”
Jim knelt and found the goggles on the dead man’s face. Sutter had his own commandos? Flak jacket, holstered sidearm, combat knife, undershirt, crucifix pendant on the end of a necklace. He dipped his hands into an open stomach and rubbed his hands in the dead soldier’s warm blood, and then smeared his bloody hands across his face. He put on the goggles and removed the sidearm. He put a bullet into the dead man’s head.
A green world came into focus with the goggles over his eyes.
His opponents were moving slowly in the darkness. Waiting for him to come to them. Sutter was gambling that Traverse would be impatient.
But there really was work to do.
Stomping down the damaged hallway and finding the stairs, he stopped suddenly when a group of rotted corpses waited on a landing. Creatures that had been made by his video, demonic creatures with black orbs where the eyes should be, their lust for violence awakened easily; otherwise, they slumbered. They dreamt in the darkness, and of what, Traverse did not know.
Instead of opening up on them at full auto, he charged into the trio of dead people and tossed it over the stairs onto the next floor. The bodies crumpled over the stairs below, their dead bodies fleshless, light, easy to throw over the edge.
Gunfire pounded the dark below.
One rotten corpse left to throw over. He dropped the M16, grabbed both forearms, and drove the zombie forward and used it as a shield. Nearly sliding down the concrete steps, Jim dropped the shield and dove toward the next landing. He caught himself, rolled against the wall, lay on his side, and drew the 9mm in quick, fluid movements.
Target. Pop! Target. Pop! Target. Pop!
Another. Another.
Another.
Until nobody was left standing.
“Jim? Is that you?”
“Yes.”
“Goddammit. Can I at least have my guns back?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you have to be so difficult? You usually gloat, don’t you? I heard your speech earlier to that poor girl. Why don’t you read poetry to me? Tell me a bedtime story. Come on, Jim. Please?”
He backtracked, pleased with his body’s performance. The spoils of war belonged to him. Sutter would bring more men. The fight wasn’t over.
Time was running out.
“Oh Jiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-iiiiiiiiiiiiiim. Why don’t you come out here? That place is too big to smoke you out. Why do you have to be so difficult? Let’s get this over with, and we can both go about our business killing people for fun.”
Quickly, too quickly, the action was over. Did it happen at all? There was no adrenaline rush, no desire to keep fighting. There was nothing.
He pulled Linda into his arms, set her down on a table, and used his trepan kit on her brain after pulling back her scalp. Sutter remained outside, his taunts nothing more than an added note of chaotic music accompanying Linda’s screams.
MINA
It was better here, down in the dark, away from all the hurt. Mina cared about all the people who had died because of her afflicted mind. She cared that some of them could love or feel. Cared that some of them could have families. Cared that some of them could live as she had not been able to live. No need to be selfish; she had the power to hurt, and the power to do nothing.
Her mind was no longer jumping into other dead bodies. Maybe she could live forever, but she didn’t have to see the world crumble.
It’s not so easy, the demon said to her. You know I won’t let you hide. Not when we can do so much together.
Mina didn’t want to do anything.
You want your questions answered.
No, she didn’t.
Your mind is not yours alone. Your soul is not yours alone.
Mina was sitting in Eloise Fields again. In a blue gown in a sterile room, a television monitor hanging from the ceiling in a corner; one of those shows where doctors had melodramatic relationships with one another while arguing about the morality of the non-existent Hippocratic Oath, and once in a while, they would be trying to save someone’s life in a pulse-pounding surgery scene. Nothing else in the room besides a round table, four plastic chairs, and the muted television.
Her long red hair. She missed it. It was clean and smelled like the cheap shampoo they let her use at Eloise Fields.
“What do you think?”
Gillette aftershave, Marlboro cigarettes, slicked hair thinning over his scalp, brown sports jacket, jeans. Stomach just pushing against his waistline. Leaning back in his chair, even though he wasn’t sitting there a moment ago.
She tried to think of something to say.
“Well?”
“Patrick,” she said.
“Do I get an apology or what?”
“Um.”
“At least tell me why.”
“Wait. You’re not Patrick. I ate Patrick.”
“You did. You ate me. And here we are.”
“You’re not in Hell. I’m not in Hell. I don’t think so, I mean. I think I loved you, but I didn’t love you. I loved Patrick for a little while, but not you. I think I loved him.”
“I am Patrick.”
“No. You’re the voice inside my head.”
He crossed one leg over the opposite thigh and tapped the cigarette against his shoe.
“So if I’m a voice in your head, then you’re not here, are you?” Patrick asked.
“I’m insane. I don’t think I should spend time trying to figure things out. You can do the thinking for me.”
Patrick nodded. “Fair enough. You don’t think I’d be in Hell right now?”
Mina shrugged. Father Joe had talked with her when she was inside Jack’s body, and she had listened. Jack had wanted to protect a little girl and kill his evil brother, but he had to do it as a zombie and with Mina inside of his head.
It would have been easy for her to jump into another corpse, but Mina had listened to Father Joe talk about the true meaning of faith. She listened to him confess his apprehensions, as if she could act as a liaison between him and God, as if she could somehow validate everything he believed in. For hours he spoke. He wept. He laughed. He talked about killing a man in the boxing ring. He talked about guilt; God might have chosen him to survive, might have chosen others to die, might have chosen this fate for the world. He said it would be inhuman to feel nothing, to simply convince oneself that intelligent design or a cosmic plan had inflicted this upon the human race, and he should just accept it as a man of faith. It was inhuman to rationalize genocide, no matter what you believed. Hell was real, and she was supposed to be an envoy, a gateway, a conduit of pain and suffering.
She chose this darkness now. She chose her own hell. Father Joe could focus on helping people instead of fighting zombies. As long as she put all the zombies in the world to sleep.
“I don’t care,” Mina said to the demon who looked like the man she had once loved. “Patrick wanted to hurt people.”
“Since when did you decide to become a moral compass
?”
“I don’t know what’s right or wrong, but I know my hair looks pretty. I think it looks pretty. I haven’t seen my hair in a long time.”
Patrick grinned and exhaled a cloud of smoke through his nostrils. She thought of a dragon breathing flame, a dying dragon.
“You’ve killed people,” Patrick said. “You were also my whore for a little while. You sold your body to me, and I made money. Lots of money.”
“I did it for you. Because you were nice to me. I know I don’t feel bad or anything, but I know that people shouldn’t just die for no reason. I’m dead inside. I know I’m dead inside. But some little girls are out there are alive, and they want to be princesses.”
Patrick extinguished his cigarette on his shoe and stared at Mina. She played with her red hair, felt its thick, wavy strands between her fingers.
“Take a look at the screen.” He pointed to the monitor hanging in the corner. “Look at what your subconscious is doing to you. You’re lucky to have such a wonderful mind.”
Patrick would never speak like that. In the dark he would look into her eyes, trace the edges of her open mouth with his thumb, hold the back of her neck with his other hand while pushing, pushing, pushing into her. And he wouldn’t stop. He often called her by his ex-wife’s name or a mistress he once had, but not always.
“You’re the other voice,” Mina said. “The demon.”
“Okay, you got me. But this is all I had to choose from. Your head is filled with this guy. He slapped you around and turned you into a sex slave, and you wanted it. You can’t convince me you don’t enjoy blood and pain.”
“That’s not true. I don’t feel good things, but I know other people do.”
“So you’re cured! You’re not insane!”
“You don’t have to be Patrick. Be someone else.”
The demon slammed his hands onto the table. “I am your nightmares. I have always been inside your head, waiting to share your flesh. We inherited each other. We are children of annihilation.”
Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3) Page 4