Vincent listened. There was nothing to say. Taylor had himself convinced. He probably recited this shit in his head every day.
“I put everything into this place,” Taylor said, his voice barely a whisper as he stared at the desolation. “We don’t have to do anything. I know we don’t. But I can’t sit back and let it rot. Not when we can finally save it. Bring it back from the dead.”
“That supposed to be funny?” Vincent asked.
“Let’s get this shit moving,” Suede said, throwing an uneasy glance at Chanell.
“Sweating my nuts off,” another man added.
“Yeah,” Taylor said. “I guess it is supposed to be funny.” He picked up a heavy rock, turned to Chanell, and bashed her head in. Vincent watched her crumple.
***
They were forced to weave between cars; their group had to separate to move quickly through the debris. Sunlight glinted off cracked windshields, and Suede pushed Vincent forward.
He struggled with his wounded gait on purpose.
They were going to walk southeast along the train tracks. An all-purpose route that could keep them from getting separated. But Vincent didn’t hear another plan, didn’t hear what Taylor intended, but he seemed to know where he wanted to take them.
The train tracks seemed empty, some kind of lost interstate in the middle of a wasteland. The dead did not follow them.
In the distance, a low hum. Electricity? Vincent looked at Suede and the others, checking their faces and body language; they glanced over their shoulders constantly, their footsteps quick and light, their bodies bouncing as if they were riding a tide; they wanted to be anywhere but here, out in the open, easy meat.
The hum was growing louder. And on the wind; the smell, growing stronger by the second. Thick and heavy, as if the smell had somehow tainted Vincent’s sweat, lending his taste buds the faint aftertaste of a putrid boil that had exploded in his mouth. He had exploded enough deadheads at close range to know what death tasted like, and he had a mouthful of it now. He grew nauseous, and his stomach rebelled. He clutched himself and fought down the urge to vomit yesterday’s venison.
One member of their crew stopped to retch, his hands on his thighs, body convulsing.
The hum was growing louder.
“We just keep going,” Taylor said, swallowing a lump in his throat. His tired, red eyes were wet and red with the freshness of a bad hangover.
“There can’t be that many of them,” someone said.
“We should go back,” another suggested. “Fuck this, man.”
Vincent stood and watched. They all stood and watched together, enchanted by their own sense of horror.
Upon the ground, a shape rose from the ground. Covered in leaves and dirt, flakes of lost seasons dropped from the putrid form beneath. Carrion insects—worms, beetles, flies—dropped and buzzed, as if the misshapen form had been dressed in the diseased creatures.
Not too far away, another shape sat up.
And then another.
The smell grew worse, and the hum grew louder—as if a wild concert was happening somewhere nearby, and the entire city had been invited.
“We have got to move,” someone said, their voice quaking.
The sound was not a hum, but a loud, collective gasp of putrescence. A terrible, low moan of gas escaping through the broken jaws of dead people; the gas produced by rotting organs burping through the veil of dirt that had buried the sleeping dead over the past year.
Vincent wanted to walk away, but something kept him from moving. He was locked in place, watching the leaves and the brambles drop off the awakening dead.
Taylor grabbed him by the elbow. “I need you. I know you believe. Deep down, you believe. You’re part of this city, just like me. Those things haven’t stopped you, so don’t let them get in the way now. Not when we’re so close. We’ll end this nightmare together, and we’ll finally be able to sleep at night.”
It didn’t make sense. Vincent blinked at him, trying to figure out, staring into Taylor’s time-weathered face. He watched a rivulet of sweat course down the length of his face, from his forehead and through the fissure between eye and nose until sliding over his lips, down his chin, into the earth.
Taylor jerked him forward, and they resumed their walk. They all did their best to ignore the unholy resurrection that was occurring around them.
The humidity crept in, drenching them in sweat and slow movement. The sun hid behind an early-afternoon haze of bright nothing. Taylor instructed them to save their water supplies because they had a long walk before they found a place to stop
Why didn’t they cuff Vincent? Taylor was gambling with their lives; maybe he figured Vincent couldn’t go far, even if he managed to get his hands on a gun and get the hell out of there.
But they were all strapped with as many guns as they could carry. Loaded down with ammunition and cans of dog food for them to eat with plastic forks. They were traveling light.
“Keep your ass moving,” Suede said, his words slurred by creeping heat exhaustion.
“Don’t let me slow you down,” Vincent said. He’d been in worse heat before. In Iraq. His whole life had been one hot, hellish, warzone.
It would be so easy to taunt them, make them lose whatever calm they had left.
Suede couldn’t resist pushing him.
“Louis was loyal to you,” Suede said.
Here we go.
This had been building up for a long time. Better to let him talk.
“He was back at the house with Chanell, and I found her out here, walking around, all fucked-up. She was back at the house—she could have walked, but I bet she tried to find you when she was alive. Tried to come down to the neighborhood. Tried to find your ass. But you were hiding. Where’d you go? Huh? Where’d you hide?”
Vincent didn’t so much as shrug. He kept his eyes forward on the train tracks ahead of them.
“I’m talking to you, nigga. You need to answer me.”
Vincent kept walking. He knew Taylor was watching this go down, and he wasn’t about to let his precious hostage lose his life. No way. Vincent had guns, and someone other than Taylor, someone bigger, wanted them too.
Somebody named Sutter.
“You had a whole crew in the neighborhood, fighting the war,” Suede continued. “Lost damn near everybody, and we waited. We figured you were coming out. We needed you. We got split up, tried to get to the house, but they never made it. I know they never made it because you did come back. You came back and made everyone think you were king shit.”
His voice was becoming louder.
Let him pour on the guilt.
“You came back with another bitch after Chanell died for you, man. You didn’t even make an attempt to get back. I know you didn’t because when I found her, I figured it out. I figured it all out. You left our asses in the meat grinder. I watched Fireball get his shit ripped to pieces, and you weren’t nowhere to be found.”
The tracks wound through an industrial park, past streets filled with broken cars and wandering corpses that were suddenly attentive.
And Vincent listened. He heard every word. Through Suede’s words, he could hear the moaning dead.
He wanted to hear it. Some of these things he said to himself, over and over again, over the past few months. After thinking he was some kind of hero for saving Vega during her botched mission.
And Suede kept going. Someone told him to keep his voice down, but Suede must not have heard. Vincent only wished he could look into the man’s eyes while he kept up his tirade.
But Suede didn’t understand the idea of a warzone. He should, but didn’t. Even if he fought during the initial outbreak and then laid low for a while, he still didn’t seem to get the idea that death was everywhere, waiting for them.
“We gotta move,” Taylor said. “Don’t look behind you. Keep moving.”
Someone looked behind them.
“Shit. We gotta move, man.”
“Where we goin
g?” someone asked. “We should just make a run for it.”
“We need Vincent,” Taylor said. “You want to make a break for it, you’re on your own. You stay, and keep this man alive.”
“Fuck this shit!” someone else said.
“They’re all over us. I ain’t doing this. I ain’t doing this…”
Now Vincent smiled.
Suede walked beside him.
“This nigga ain’t going to save us,” Suede said. “Couldn’t save us before. Couldn’t do shit, and here we are.”
“Pick up the pace!”
Vincent nearly tripped over the tracks.
Bushes moved. The moaning was close. The smell more pungent.
“Fuck this,” someone said, and ran ahead.
Vincent was convinced Taylor was going to cut him down, not let him get away with the guns and supplies he carried, but Taylor was smart enough not to do anything more to draw attention to themselves.
They kept moving along the tracks. They passed an industrial building with a parking lot that didn’t have any cars in it, but it was full of dead people with their arms hanging stiffly at their sides as if they expected the wind to pick them up and send them flying. There was a hole in the fence around the parking lot, separating it from the tracks.
No road was safe.
Time was against them: if they took the winding suburban streets they would still have to cross main boulevards to get where they needed to go. This would be the most direct path, at least, Vincent could only assume. But he didn’t know where they were going.
But he knew what was about to happen.
“Oh man, oh man…” someone said.
And here they were, walking over the Southfield Freeway, which wasn’t much of a freeway at this juncture; an auto service shop, a Sunoco, cars mashed into each other at the traffic light, corpses struggling to find their way through the labyrinth of metal and wreckage. A string of power lines were down along the train tracks, along with the long silver transmission towers, broken and scattered across the road, as if all the towers had pulled each other down at once.
“Stay on the tracks,” Taylor said as they maneuvered through cars that were stuck in their path.
Sweat poured from the top of Vincent’s head.
Gunfire. Not too far away. Gunfire and screams.
“Shit,” Taylor said.
The whole damn world might be following them along the tracks. The whole damn world might be closing in. There was nowhere to go. Nowhere safe.
“Damn it!” a member of their crew shouted. Everyone stopped, and they shouldn’t have. They should have kept walking.
An outstretched hand shot out from a car’s open door and clutched the man’s shin. Fingers dug deep and squeezed blood through the denim jeans.
Another member of their crew darted down the tracks, swearing, shouting.
The man whose shin was caught pointed a gun into the car and fired wildly; he leaned on the trigger and his bullets shattered glass and punched through upholstery. He tore his leg loose and kept firing.
“That didn’t take long,” Vincent said under his breath.
“And don’t think about running away.” Taylor pointed his gun at the back of Vincent’s head. “I need you to win this war. Keep going. Keep walking down those tracks.”
Nobody was walking down the tracks. They couldn’t help but break into a run. Taylor stood with Vincent and Suede for a moment too long. They watched the other men run ahead.
In a matter of moments, their group had disbanded.
But Taylor wanted to keep it together, and Suede’s intentions were obvious; he wanted to ice Vincent once and for all.
And now there were three men.
Taylor unholstered a handgun and handed it to Vincent.
“This was the only way you were going to get off your sorry ass,” Taylor said through gritted teeth. “You can thank me later.”
Vincent wasn’t about to thank anybody. And there wasn’t time to stand around and debate the issue. There wasn’t time to get over all the shit that stopped him when Vega’s life was on the line that last time; Suede and Taylor may have done him a favor, but his knee was screwed up. Running was out of the question.
So was discussion. They were surrounded already.
Gunfire. Screams.
The moaning of the damned.
Vincent turned and headed down the tracks.
“The fuck is going on?” Suede asked.
“You can shoot me later,” Vincent said.
“Grand Central Depot,” Taylor said and grabbed Vincent by the elbow, helping him limp along. “That’s where Sutter is. That’s where the troops are. If anything happens, you need to get there. They need you. This city needs you.”
This city never needed him.
But he wasn’t about to let the city kill him.
Stopped in the middle of the tracks was a train, and pouring out of the cars on either side were the mangled, half-chewed remnants of decayed human beings. A large group of them was huddled together, slurping and chewing, the wet, sloppy sounds that pigs made when they ate from a trough after going a day without food. Some of the corpses stood, blood and pulpy flesh matter dripping from their mouths and slipping through their fingers.
“Get your asses on top of the train,” Taylor said.
He had every intention of going through these bastards.
It was as good a plan as any.
Taylor positioned himself behind his M-16 and filled the dead things full of lead.
Vincent couldn’t climb up himself. Suede was going to have to make a decision.
But first, he had to make it to the train. He was still several feet away, and he couldn’t move. He watched the dead things stand, watched their eyes lock onto him as their bodies shook and rattled from bullet-spray. He had a gun in his hand, but he didn’t lift it.
Here he was again.
Stopped.
Frozen.
He stopped looking at their faces, at their various states of undeath, because it didn’t matter. They were all the same: they were the enemy. But now he looked at them. Just like he looked at that classroom full of kids in Iraq.
One corpse was missing its entire face, nothing but a lower jaw and shards of bone, the top of its head like a helmet keeping the brain inside. Tendons and bone moved through tattered clothing. It looked more like an unfinished machine.
Here was another. Head sideways because a chunk of muscle and flesh had been ripped from the neck. A woman, stringy hair still flowing from the shriveling flesh of the decaying thing. No, it wasn’t a thing. It was a dead woman who belonged in a grave. Her stomach was a wide-open hole, and between her legs a long tendril flapped, too thin to be intestine, too short to be anything else but a ropy placenta, crisped and dried from the rot of time. Flies buzzed through her stomach. Worms and maggots dripped from the hole.
They had been slumbering in the dirt. Something woke them up, startled them back into the waking world.
Where was everyone?
Mike’s gun sounded like it was far away.
“We have got to go!”
It was Suede, pushing him, pulling him toward the train. Vincent dropped the gun Taylor had given him into the dirt. What a waste of a good weapon.
Vincent tried to climb up the side, and Suede boosted him up. From the top he could see the other men, the survivors who had worked with Taylor to bring Vincent across the city. He could see them only because he could track the crowds of zombies that hunted through the brush, and the bright flashes of gunfire through the trees. The dead were relentless. No matter how far they ran or for how long—they couldn’t fight forever. Their ammunition supply was limited. And instead of running, these men stopped and fired until they were dragged down by a pack of corpses.
And the dead were everywhere. The dead were converging.
“Give me a hand!”
Vincent didn’t think twice. He dropped to his good knee and helped Suede up the side of the train c
ar.
Mike Taylor had stopped firing. He dropped his gun instead of reloading it.
Vincent knew what he was thinking.
He knew the feeling.
It didn’t matter if another gun was wasted, dropped.
Vincent stretched out his hand.
“Taylor!”
“Leave the motherfucker!” Suede said.
Taylor drew his sidearm and fired into a zombie’s face. Another. He turned and grabbed Vincent’s hand.
“Hold me down,” Vincent said, hoping Suede would hear him, help him.
Pressure on the back of his legs. On his bad knee. Pain he needed to ignore.
The old cop tried to scramble up the side of the car. His hand was slippery, his feet frantically trying to find purchase somewhere, anywhere. He wasn’t focused. He didn’t use his weight. He almost dangled from Vincent’s hand.
“Drop the gun,” Vincent said.
Taylor dropped the gun used both hands to grab Vincent’s. Vincent’s other hand joined, turning their desperation into one sweaty fist.
Taylor was coming up.
Pain in Vincent’s shoulders, legs, hips.
Sweat dripped into his eyes.
Taylor was rising, his eyes were narrow. The gray whiskers on his face were prominent, the dark shadows beneath his eyes visible in the bright sun which erupted through the blank, humid haze. The smell of mud and metal, an explosion of sunlight shuttering Taylor’s eyes while he grunted.
Sudden resistance.
“Oh,” Taylor said, and his eyes widened into circles of hurt.
Taylor’s body shook, trembled. The dead were pulling him down, and Vincent held on tightly. He could taste the salt on his lips, and his shoulders felt like they were on fire; he was stretched downward over the edge, and he could see the reaching hands grabbing onto the retired cop’s legs.
Mike’s face shook. Spittle flew from his lips, and his hot, sour breath filled Vincent’s nostrils. The smell was blood.
Ripping. Tearing.
“Ick,” Mike said, though it was more of a sound.
Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3) Page 23