Lying at her feet was a dead man. A nude corpse, long ago stripped of its clothes, a large chunk of the skull missing, both eyes having been ejected from the skull through the other side, as if the force of the killing blow had pushed his brain and eyes out his head.
“We already had his weapons.” She looked at Bill again. “His name was Nick Crater. Tried to rape me. Bashed my head in pretty good.”
Her eyes watered. She chewed her lip. Her chest rose and fell, rose and fell. Bill could see the dark shadows beneath her eyes; he looked at the strands of poker-straight hair that fell over the other side of her face.
“I was fucked up before,” she said, nodding to herself. “Yeah. I thought I was a badass. But my head… he gave me a concussion. I still get dizzy. I black out. Nightmares. And then the rest of this shit.” Her jaw grinding, she looked around, her eyes finding the unmoving trees. “I tried to save a little girl. I tried to do good things, and I’m still here. I’m still standing here.”
She sniffled and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. She walked by Bill without looking at him, and didn’t say another word.
***
Dead bodies in the hallways.
Like everything else, the place had been looted, ransacked. Bill and Vega checked the corners, peered into empty rooms, opened closets. There was no more medicine, no more uniforms; paper lay buried beneath piles of glass, chairs and mattresses were overturned, couches ripped to pieces, the dark stains of violence upon the walls and floor.
“You know what you’re looking for?” Bill asked. The strength in his voice felt weak, slow. The heat was getting to him. His clothes felt glued to his skin, the pack over his shoulders weighed him down, and his back ached. He knew it was dangerous to let his guard down, to take one moment to breathe outside of the safety of the neighborhood, although they hadn’t been safe there, either.
But the temptation was too great. No matter how disciplined he was, he had to sit down. Set the pack down and take a good look at the shotgun he carried, a black pump-action monster. Lucky for him, he had plenty experience hunting with a shotgun back home. He came from a family of hunters; he took a week off from school every year to hunt white-tailed deer. He knew how to handle a weapon like this one, and he was a decent tracker. All the movies and video games he watched involving zombies typically included a shotgun as an efficient head-exploder.
Vega was in another room, and she finally answered him. “Not exactly. I know what I want, but not where to find it.”
He was too exhausted to say anything back. Better to save his breath. The story of a damned woman had drained him emotionally; he was always a good listener and had no ego when it came to offering any kind of advice. He simply listened. But this time, it was too much. For too long he had sheltered himself from reality by acting, by doing whatever her could to help others. He wasn’t bitter that his promising future had been taken from him, because this is what God wanted for him. Being physically gifted and talented was something he was blessed to have, but as long as he remained a good person, worked hard, and did the right things, his gifts could have an even greater purpose. His life wasn’t a waste because of something he never had; if he had worked hard to get to this point in his life, then there was some good in it.
Millions of dollars, a national television audience, his name in newspapers; these things were temporary. His parents always taught him to remain humble, to take everything in stride, that success was only temporary and there is always a way to get better, to become better.
The Champ sat in a room that would have been used for group therapy sessions. He didn’t jump when he heard the click behind his head.
He didn’t jump because he knew the hammer on a gun had been cocked back.
“I’m not moving,” Bill said.
“I know,” a man replied.
Bill remained calm. If the man had wanted to kill him, it would have happened already.
“Any idea how long I have to sit still?” Bill asked.
No response. The attacker wasn’t breathing heavily; he was also calm, in control. Were there others? How many?
If this man already saw Vega…
“Take what you need,” Bill said. “I’ve got food, ammo. It’s yours.”
“No shit,” the attacker said.
So this wasn’t about the supplies. There was a good chance the man had seen Vega, and Bill had to wait. He had to be patient, but he couldn’t do anything risky. There might be more people looking for a woman like Vega—or any woman. They might have the building surrounded.
Vega walked into the room, her face buried in a manila folder.
“Of course there isn’t anything here. It would all be stored in some database. But it was worth—”
“Hello,” the man behind Bill said.
“Really?” Vega tilted her head and pursed her lips as if this was nothing more than an inconvenience. She closed the folder and placed a hand on her hip.
“Don’t make another move,” the man said.
“So you blow him away,” Vega said. “By the time you lift your gun, your head will be gone. Go ahead, and take him. I hardly know the guy. Try bringing your gun up. You could have a hundred guns pointed at me. At the end of the day, you’re dead.”
“It’s not like that,” the man said.
“Not like what? You’ve got a gun pointed at his head. That means you’re ready to pull the trigger.”
“Just shut up a minute.”
“Say something important,” Vega said. “I’m tired, and I have to pee.”
“I worked here. You came here… that folder… you…”
The man’s voice was shaking.
Bill slowly eased himself back and saw the gun out of the corner of his eye. It wasn’t pointed at the back of his head anymore. He brought his arm up quickly, punching the man’s gun hand up. The gun fired at the ceiling, and Bill was able to turn around and punch the attacker hard in the stomach; with the man’s hands clutching his stomach, Bill wrenched the gun away and pointed it at his head.
“How does it feel?” Bill asked.
Scrawny and ragged, a middle-aged man with slashes of white cutting through his thick mane of hair.
“How many others?” Bill asked.
“Nobody,” the man said while clutching his stomach.
“How many?”
“Just me.”
“Bullshit.”
“Look, just wait, please. I’m sorry. Just wait a minute. I’m sorry about the gun. I needed to talk to you. I needed to talk. Please.”
Bill circled around the captive and saw Vega with her rifle up, the attached flashing allowing her to scan corners with her eye trained behind the sight.
“He’s either desperate or stupid,” Vega said. “It would take both for him to be alone. Hanging out around here for no reason.”
“Just stop it,” the man said with his hands up. “I can explain. If you quit your bullshit and let me talk, I think we can help each other out.”
They waited for him. Any minute now someone else would jump out of the shadows.
“I worked here,” the man said. “My name… my name’s Brad. Doctor Brad Desjardin. Look, I have my ID. I still have my ID. It’s in my pocket.”
“You carry your ID with you?” Vega asked. “Why would we care?”
“You don’t know me, but I was in the neighborhood. I was there when everything fell apart. I know who you are, and I know what you want. I didn’t figure it out until you came here. I mean, I didn’t know. I came back here. I came because I didn’t have anywhere else to go. But I saw you with him. I saw you…”
Vega frowned. “What the fuck? Get your shit together.”
“The Artist. I saw him talking to you. He was… he was my patient.”
Vega lowered the rifle. Her shoulders relaxed. Bill lowered the doctor’s gun.
***
The doctor sat in one of the group therapy chairs and spoke. After fifteen minutes passed, Bill attempted to rela
x again. He decided he could at least trust this guy; nobody else was going to show up and ambush them but still, he couldn’t let his guard down again.
The long day began to settle into twilight, as shadows extended and the bright day’s strength waned and surrendered to birdsong and blue. Mosquitoes attacked and tiny creatures scuttled through the wreckage.
“Damn convenient you were here,” Vega said. “Considering I was, you know, hoping to find some information and all.”
“I know how this looks,” the doctor said. “But this is where I worked. The neighborhood that you all had set up—it’s not exactly far from here. And I saw him. I saw him after the attack.”
“What’s your point?” Vega asked.
“I know what he was, and you came here. You came here, and I have to assume that you know something. That you want him. And I know what he was. I know who he is.”
Vega sighed.
Bill scratched the bottom of his chin. She was clearly intrigued and wanted to hear more or else she would have wasted this guy by now. Vega didn’t seem interested in taking unnecessary risks.
But she was in charge. This was her fight, and he was just along for the ride.
“So who is he then?” Vega asked. “There isn’t much paperwork on the guy, and he was your prize.”
“Why do you want him?” the doctor asked.
“You’re in a position to ask questions? You pointed a gun at Bill’s head. You came at us, and you’re trying to say you have good intentions? Let’s talk about your intentions.”
The doctor glanced at Bill, then at Vega.
“I can tell you he’s out there. But you already knew that. We’ve been working on a project, a special project, for years.”
“Go on,” Vega said.
“Things are going to get worse, not better. The Artist—Traverse—he isn’t finished. But you’re obviously looking for him. We were waiting on a team to come get him when things started. We were supposed to try and hold the fort, keep everything in check, but it got out of hand too fast. By the time those orders came through, it was too late. You were on that team, I think.”
Vega tilted her head. She wanted more.
“It’s a military weapons project. It hasn’t been a number one priority for years until Traverse got involved. The money, all the research; it was never directly funded from the government but from someone else. I don’t know who, nobody knows. But they’ve been trying to make this happen, trying to make the connection… for almost seven hundred years.”
“What connection?” Vega asked.
Bill didn’t like where this was going. Secret government agencies and experiments. He was a patriot through and through, and he hated conspiracy theories; both of his brothers were in the service. His grandfather was in the service. As much as he didn’t want to hear it, these might be horrible truths he would have to accept. Just like the world he lived in now, the world he tried to deny existed. The human race was always full of selfish people, but it seemed to be every man for himself now; Bill had enjoyed living in their little neighborhood because it gave him something to do, and he could help others. He could ignore the fantasy world, the hell-world that awaited him outside the borders of that makeshift village. They had a priest, they had guns, they had order. But when he heard Mike, the old cop, talk about the future, and when he watched the others argue back and forth, he understood that he needed to accept some human failures.
“Hell,” the doctor said. “A connection to Hell. It exists. It’s real and it’s hungry. But it’s not what we’ve always been taught. It’s not a place.”
The doctor stopped to assess their reactions.
“Keep going,” Vega said.
The doctor he struggled to articulate his research. “Hell… it’s a state of mind. Modern psychology was devised to find it… to understand it. What we understand as madness, and all of these psychological disorders… the human mind carries Hell with it. Wherever we go, our minds are… half-submerged in Hell.”
“I want the short version of all this,” Vega said. “Someone wanted to open Hell and get all kinds of power, blah blah blah. We’ve heard this shit before.”
“I know you want to stop Traverse. Uh… he was sent on a mission.”
“To Egypt,” Vega said, “and it changed him.”
“He was already involved. He helped create a project, a sort of consciousness-insertion program. Someone thought we could figure out how to open Hell, how to make it available to us, to harness the power of nightmare… and I don’t know. I don’t know everything. I know what Hell is supposed to be, but I don’t know what kind of power anyone could… get… but Traverse found out, and instead of sharing the information… he became The Artist. He changed. We assume he did his own research while he was on the run. We assume he was caught because he wanted it, because he knew where he would go. We wanted it, and so did he. He needed to be close to the project, and we needed him close. And Mina… we worked on her for years. We made her. She is… a product.”
“She’s dead,” Vega said.
“Not exactly. I didn’t know how bad it was. I didn’t think she would figure it out. When the dead started to withdraw, I knew that she knew, that she made the connection, the connection we’ve been waiting for. And when they attacked, I knew something was wrong. And when I saw Traverse talking to you, playing with you, it started to make sense. You see, he found a way to bring Mina back, to use her, to control her. It could only be him. Unless Mina just suddenly changed her mind and decided to wipe everyone out… but that’s not the case. I don’t know how Traverse did it, or what he did. But he figured out what we… what I was supposed to… he figured out what…”
“I get it,” Vega said.
“Doctor Desjardin,” Bill started, “you’re the one with the most knowledge, right? That’s what I’m guessing. And you happened to survive. You lived, and you didn’t tell anyone this. How come nobody came to get you? How come there wasn’t a rescue team for the doctors, for the scientists—how come you’re not important enough to save, even if you know all this? How come you’re not important enough to kill?”
The doctor looked to Vega and then back to Bill. “They have the files. Everything was uploaded. It’s only a matter of time before Colonel Richards sends in Agent Rose. She was the program that Traverse designed. She was a person he had a connection to in the past, and her personality was imprinted on a microchip. It was something we’ve been doing for years to create soldiers, men and women without memories. She’s their last resort. I’m surprised they haven’t sent her in already…”
Vega leaned back in her chair. The doctor had avoided Bill’s question, and Vega seemed to be appraising the last bit of information. Who the hell were Richards and Rose? What did they have to do with anything?
Instead of asking him, Vega shrugged. “Yeah, you’re a lucky one, that’s for sure. You know where Traverse is? You want to help us find him? Seeing as how you were experimenting on him and all that, seems like you might be here to help him. You might want a taste of whatever he’s after.”
“No, no, it’s not like that. I swear. It’s not like that at all. I’m just telling you, warning you. There are a lot of people involved.”
“And you want to help? What’s your stake in this? You probably made a good living doing what you did, and it didn’t seem to bother you none until now. Am I right? You were helping people figure out how to kill people, how to get power from Hell, right? Now you’ve changed your mind. You just conveniently show up with all this information.”
“Okay, I know how it seems. Just… hear me out. We can find him. We can stop him.”
“We?”
Vega aimed her rifle at the doctor’s head. He flinched, his hands up, bottom lip quivering. Bill stood too.
“You want Hell so badly,” Vega said, “you can write me a letter from there, tell me about the weather.”
“That’s not the right way,” Bill said.
“What?”
&
nbsp; “I don’t know what’s going on. I can’t make sense of this, but shooting him isn’t going to make anything better.”
“Who said I wanted to make things better?”
“I think I understand what you’re going through… ”
“What? Are you kidding me? You understand what I’m going through? Watch his head explode, and tell me what you understand.”
Vega’s eyes flickered up, over Bill’s head.
The smell.
“Remember when that gun went off?” Vega asked. She picked up her pack and hauled ass out of the room.
A rush of putrescence filled Bill’s nostrils and throat. Cold hands gripped his biceps; he lost his balance and fell backward over the chair, a dark shape following him to the ground. His first thought was that he was lucky not to impale himself on a chair leg.
In the descending night gloom, he could barely see the thing on top of him. He couldn’t see, and he didn’t want to see. All he needed was the shape. Long fingernails scraped across his arms, drawing pain and blood. With one hand he managed to fasten his fingers around the creature’s neck, and his other hand found the doctor’s gun on the floor. He pushed the gun beneath the zombie’s chin and pulled the trigger. A bright flash blinded him temporarily, leaving stars where the shadow had been. The corpse sagged atop him, and he quickly pushed it off.
When he stood, he found Doctor Desjardin pointing the shotgun at his chest.
“Really?” Bill asked.
“You understand,” the doctor said.
“I understand you don’t know how to use it.”
“At this range it doesn’t matter.”
“More of them behind me.”
“And at the window. More of them outside. More coming now.”
“We have two choices.”
“I like the one where we run like hell,” the doctor said.
Bill nodded and picked up his pack. He’d worry about grabbing the shotgun from the doctor later.
He stopped for one moment, and he saw several shapes meandering down the corridor, bumping against the walls.
For the first time, he heard them moan.
Bill grabbed Doctor Desjardins by the arm and dragged him through the dark hallways.
Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3) Page 19