Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3)

by Bilof, Vincenzo

  Alive. Someone alive. Whoever it was could still put him out of his misery.

  “I’m used to it,” Vincent said.

  “You’re used to moping around?” the figure sat across from him in the other chair.

  Gruff and scratchy, the voice of an old man. Sour, warm whisky breath.

  “Where’d you get it?” Vincent asked.

  “An alcoholic always knows where to find it,” Mike Taylor said.

  Both of them were used to seeing in the dark. Used to the shadows and the light-swallowing black. Mike Taylor was an outline, nothing more, but Vincent could hear the whiskey slosh around, could smell it through the open bottle. Taylor extended the bottle to him.

  It burned going down, but damn. Damn.

  “This is where you kept everything,” Taylor said, as if he’d discovered a cave full of long-lost treasure. “Yeah. We spent a lot of time looking for it. Hunting you down. You were a sight in that courtroom. Beat tax evasion. Impressive.”

  “Huh. You were on that task force?”

  “No. Heard about it though. I was a beat cop. Everyone knew who you were.”

  “Who I was.”

  Another swig from the bottle, hellfire down his throat. He passed it back.

  “We tried,” Taylor said.

  “You didn’t try hard enough.”

  “I was talking about us. The block. Those things.”

  “Yeah. Like I said.”

  What is there to say? He didn’t talk when Vega left. He didn’t say enough because there wasn’t anything to say. Nothing could be changed by his words now. Nothing could bring him back to that day in the courtroom, or the people who had died to protect him. The people who had been killed by bullets fired by his guns.

  “Knew a cop named Griggs,” Vincent said. He wasn’t sure why he mentioned it. Taylor was his enemy a long time ago. This man had vowed to put him away; even if he wasn’t on the task force that was assigned to bring him down, Taylor was one of the good guys.

  And Griggs. That asshole.

  But he thought about him often. Too often. The man had been right about too many things.

  “Griggs? Patrick Griggs?” Taylor laughed. “He was a damn good cop, but Jesus. Trigger-happy. Was a little too enthusiastic.”

  Griggs had blown off a girl’s head in a park. She’d been bitten, and the man didn’t flinch. Took her out with one shot from his hand-cannon. Vincent stepped up to him because it was an excuse, nothing more. They didn’t get along. He was a hypocrite, knocking Griggs on his ass for killing a girl while people had been killing each other with guns sold by Vincent’s crew.

  And then Sergeant John Charles was bit.

  Memory: struggling through the mud, running and firing. Past a fence and into a house. Another showdown with Griggs. Thunderstorm shaking the night.

  There had been the first time he tasted Vega’s lips, her damnation a magnet drawing him closer to the cold sweat beneath her chin, along the edge of her neck, upon the curve of her clavicle. A strange thought had occurred to him then, a thought he had again when he made love to her, although it wasn’t really love. It was just sex. Just carnal passion. A flesh exchange involving scant words and even fewer glances. He had wondered if she fantasized about the dead eating her. The way she willingly gave herself to him, her bones aching for violent collision, her hands greedily clutching the back of his skull, the back of his neck, his shoulder blades.

  “What you want?” Vincent asked, suddenly remembering where he was, who he was talking to.

  “The same thing you want. Peace.”

  “You can read my mind? You know what I want? I’m not thanking you for the drink. I’m not thanking you for not arresting me. You got your little town to run the way you want.”

  “At least let me put a bullet into your map so we don’t have to see you again.”

  Another man who was used to being in charge, doing things his way. Vincent never got along with Griggs and never got along with this guy, either. He never mixed well with authority figures, especially ones who had different business objectives, goals that were in direct opposition to his own.

  “This is the best thing that ever happened to you, isn’t it?” Vincent asked. “You did such a good job keeping people safe, keeping up appearances. Detroit’s been making a comeback for the last thirty years, most of that on your watch. How old are you, Taylor?”

  Taylor stood. “Came by to let you know a girl came looking for you. Don’t got a reason to help you. You’re only interested in yourself, like always. I came by to see if I had to put you away. Can’t say I wasn’t looking forward to it.”

  Funny how he would have blown the man away or had one of his boys work the cop over and send him back to his buddies. How many wire-wearing scumbags had tried to infiltrate his operation, only to end up on the bottom of the Detroit River? A long time had passed since anyone had the balls to stand up to him like this, although Griggs was an exception.

  “I’m waiting,” Vincent said.

  Because he was.

  “You’re not that useless. Not yet. This girl came by to see you. Maybe she had one of your kids.”

  No.

  Vincent cringed.

  “You think we didn’t know about them?” Taylor asked.

  Babies weren’t part of his business plan.

  “Not that it would do us any good. Those kids didn’t have a father.”

  Shit happens. No matter how smart he tried to be.

  This wasn’t the time to think about children. This wasn’t the time to think about anything.

  “Her name’s Chanell,” Taylor said. “Anyway, we’ll keep her safe for you.”

  A hidden threat from another hypocrite cop. All cops were hypocrites by Vincent’s estimation, just like the men who ordered an entire classroom full of refugee children to be shot in a warzone because… why the hell not? What was their reason for it? Casualties are expected, casualties are piling up, casualties are rising with each victory. But there are no victories, there are only casualties.

  “Chanell’s dead,” Vincent said. But there was doubt, and the doubt could not be denied. Louis had told him she was dead, but what if that was a lie? He had always trusted Louis, and he had no reason to lie in the last seconds that remained of his life.

  “Apparently she isn’t,” Taylor said.

  Let him leave. Walk out of here with his head on his shoulders.

  Vincent didn’t think about the children he left out there. A year ago, he never thought about them. Two years ago. Three. How many kids were there? How many women tried to send him word that there was a child, and it was his? He never confirmed any of it, never gave it a second thought. Never did blood tests. The women wanted money, and in exchange they would keep their mouths shut. They didn’t know shit anyway. And besides, those women couldn’t talk if their jaws were wired shut from a baseball bat homerun slam.

  Taylor’s footsteps on the stairs. On the floor above.

  Alone again in the chair Louis had died in.

  “Fuck you, Taylor. And all your cop buddies. Fuck you and your justice. Fuck you and your hypocrisy. Fuck this city and all the people in it. Fuck the army and the government and Vega and Shanna and Jim and Father Joe. Fuck you, Louis. Chanell. Fuck you. This is what we made with our dreams, and we deserved it. This is what we always wanted and always deserved, and we couldn’t stop it. You got something to say to me? Chanell, you got something to say? Yeah, we can talk about it. I’ll hear you out. I didn’t come home. I didn’t come back and get you. I had better shit to do. I had to fight, had to try and save the world. Only I knew I wasn’t saving the world, I was just killing shit. Killing you and the army and everyone I ever knew who wanted to fuck with me, everyone who betrayed me, lied to me, used me. And you want me to come and talk to you. You only come out now because you want something. Maybe another fur coat. Maybe a bullet to the head.”

  He saw the faces of the children he’d been ordered to execute by the U.S. Army, children who
were a danger to democracy and capitalism and truth and justice. All of those children were his children. They were his children because of everything he became and everything they never were.

  Vincent loaded a 9mm and left the house.

  The neighborhood was quieter than before. There should have been music drifting through the windows, snarling dogs behind garage doors or in basements, marijuana skunk-smell, a gunfire pop, cars sliding through the street with their headlights off, people crossing the street, people sitting on a porch. He had lived in places like this when he was a kid, and it became his kingdom; he rarely slept at his lavish Grosse Pointe palace. The people who he trusted to save him had ruined him, and so he ruled his kingdom of rot and decadence, sin and violence.

  Quiet now. A vast nothing blanketed by night.

  Glittering stars at street-level. Vincent squinted; not stars, but sequins. On a dress. A dress slipping between houses. Taylor had said Chanell was here. She always wore a dress that could blind a man, which didn’t take into account the curves that could melt a man’s knees.

  His feet stopped. He was breathing heavily, gun hanging from his hand.

  Remember running through these streets a year ago. Remember defending them, killing for them. Remember coming back with Vega in his arms.

  The former arms dealer walked into the deeper shadows. The darker places. Following the promise of sequins, the idea of Chanell. This was his chance to try again, to apologize for everything he did to everyone. No, he wasn’t going to apologize. All the fighting and killing and cathartic moments had drained him, left him with nothing but a trail of sequins.

  Sparkling night, burning bright.

  “Chanell,” he said.

  It might be nothing.

  But he knew better.

  There was a presence, an animated shape moved by an intelligence that was beyond his understanding. He knew what the presence was because he had always known. He knew what Mike Taylor wanted, and he knew he deserved this. He deserved this because the good guys always win. The good guys always had the upper hand because they could cheat while crediting intelligence and wit, virtue and an understanding of morality.

  The presence moved.

  Clink of chain.

  Explosion of flashlight upon his face.

  They wanted him to see. To know.

  The sequins glistened in the sudden bright light. Worms wriggled in the cavern of a mouth. Wet, writhing creatures glistened in the center where a stomach should have been, and the stench. The smell of her. Not the perfume he was used to. It might not be her. It might be some other dead woman, and it didn’t matter. Like all the women in his life besides Vega and his mother, they were all the same.

  A silver collar was on her neck, a chain drooping into the bushes.

  Did they want him to turn around?

  The pain that followed the pop pop of gunfire took a long time to find him. He’d been shot before, but never at close range, and never in his knees. The ground slammed into him, and still there wasn’t any pain. His legs seemed to disappear from beneath him, as if he were pushed off the edge of a cliff.

  “Roll him over.” Taylor’s voice. “Let him see us.”

  A part of him was pleased. A crowd of hard men carrying guns, hard men who were making their own rules, taking over, running shit. This was business, and Vincent could understand business.

  Taylor was the only white man among them, a gruff cop with nothing to lose. He was Griggs all over again, except he did it better. Except he was more focused.

  “This asshole’s dead in twenty four hours if he doesn’t tell us where his guns are,” Taylor said. “Feed him to the dead bitch. Hell, he’s dead anyway. The sooner he tells us, the sooner we let him eat a bullet.”

  Vincent smiled, and he could taste the blood in his mouth before they knocked him out.

  THE CHAMP

  This is what the apocalypse looks like.

  Not so pretty, unless you’re with a pretty girl. But what does it matter? The pretty girl wants to kill everything, only, well, she can’t exactly do it. Vega won’t admit it, but she’s damaged. She wants to kill things, but it’s difficult for her.

  The apocalypse.

  Bill had been hiding in their little neighborhood, oblivious to the reality. Oblivious to the skeletal bodies, the burnt husks, the broken windows, the cars parked inside of storefronts, the schools that had burned down, the traffic lights that lay in the street, the taste of ash and dust and asphalt. He felt like he was walking through a graveyard or the inside of a skeleton, because there was nothing here, no life-powering organs, no heart. Those who had lived here fought and ran, or fought and died, or they didn’t fight and just died. Bill wasn’t a morose person, but he couldn’t help but feel defeated, or there was a missed opportunity somewhere, a chance to organize and defend the city. Most of America didn’t look like this; there were small towns, wilderness, farmland… Detroit and the surrounding area wasn’t the end result. There were people everywhere, good people, people who wanted to help and rebuild.

  While they walked through the quiet ruins, Vega talked. She wasn’t defensive at all, but opened up as if realizing this was a chance for her to speak to a living human being, a chance she couldn’t neglect.

  Vega reminded him of Milla Jovovich from the Resident Evil movies, even though the two women looked nothing alike. Vega was a relentless warrior who needed an excuse to keep fighting because fighting was all she understood. Bill figured that out about her almost instantly; the more she talked, the more he believed he was right, but wasn’t about to give her any perspective just yet. That might piss her off all over again. She was in a fragile state, but wasn’t everyone?

  Bill liked the Resident Evil movies, but never imagined he would end up fighting zombies alongside a Jovovich-type.

  They walked along the weed-cracked street casually, as if there was no reason to hurry, nowhere special to go. They skirted the heart of the city and stayed in the suburbs; they both noticed there weren’t any flesh-eating cannibals roaming around, even though they had been riled up and attacked their sanctuary. Vega explained a couple of her theories, and Bill didn’t think she was nuts.

  Vega told him there was a woman who had some kind of control over the undead, and she inhabited the minds of the zombie legions. She didn’t have any power over the rotted creatures that had watched the video firsthand, but the woman, Mina, had managed to stop all the victims from attacking more people. Father Joe had some kind of relationship with Mina, and the woman had been killed, only to remain inside the minds of the undead. Vega believed that something changed Mina’s mind—not a something, but rather a someone, the same someone who likely kidnapped Father Joe. The same someone Vega had been hunting since she dropped into ground zero.

  She told Bill about Jim Traverse. He’d heard about the killer before; he had watched a serial-killer retrospective once that briefly mentioned the Artist.

  And Bill listened. While they strode through the shattered land, she talked about people she missed, people she cared about. She talked about men named Bob and Miles; she mentioned a detective named Griggs, whose gun she carried now; the man had saved her from being raped by another mercenary.

  And when she finally sighed, they paused in their mid-afternoon stroll through the apocalypse.

  “I’m an idiot,” she said. “We were right there; I was there twice. I was supposed to be worrying about Traverse, but I was focused on staying alive. I’m sure there are files in that place, some reason—something—that can give me answers. The answers were never important until now.”

  “Way I figure it,” Bill said, “you were doing what everyone was doing. You weren’t sent in to investigate, seeing as how someone knew why they wanted him and what they wanted to do with him.”

  Vega nodded at the building ahead of them.

  The blackened, twisted corpse of a helicopter in the parking lot. A concrete field of corpses. Sunlight blinked off the hulls of metal bullet casings. A pickup
truck had crashed through the front doors. The trees that shadowed the parking lot did not move. There was no breeze.

  The sign on the overgrown, weedy lawn: ELOISE FIELDS.

  Vega smiled.

  “There were trucks here,” she said. “Humvees. Guns. I came back here once with Vincent for the guns, and I’m still not sure why we did it. He had plenty of weapons. I guess we didn’t want anyone else to get them. The trucks were here.”

  “Vincent mentioned this place to Mike,” Bill said. “A while back. I remember them talking about the trucks. I came out here before. Looks the same. Wasn’t shit here. Figure Sutter’s people got to it.”

  But Vega didn’t seem to hear him. She looked around as if the landscape were a movie theater screen, her eyes actively scanning for visual memories.

  “It was a military hospital,” Vega said, and choked. She chewed her bottom lip.

  Bill was beginning to understand.

  “This place had a purpose,” she said. “And you know… this shit… it’s always the same. Always. Trying to find another way to win some war. An easier way, a cost-efficient way. There’s always more power. More things to own. More things to want.”

  He knew she wasn’t finished. He waited.

  She walked toward the asylum, her eyes scanning the ground.

  “They made this place. Someone made this place because they wanted this to happen.” She talked to herself as if remembering a dream.

  Vega walked toward the building, and Bill followed. He walked quickly so he wouldn’t lose her; he felt protective over this woman, someone he barely knew, and it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter if she was a complete stranger.

  Standing in front of a blood-smeared wall, Vega stared at the ground. The fingers in her left hand clenched into a tight fist. Her right hand, holding the magnum, shook slightly.

  Bill waited.

  “Look at him,” Vega said and turned around, looked at Bill. “Here he is. I didn’t know I wanted to see him again. I never was the sentimental type.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Come over here.”