His leg buckled beneath him. His body was failing him now, at last. The sky spun around his head, and he saw a legion of ruined faces swirling in a kaleidoscope collage. He wanted to vomit, but he would have to sit up, and his brain had fogged over completely. For a moment he remembered Jerome, the junkie in the crack house who had made it to the church where they had met Traverse for the first time. Vincent had never cared for drunks, but he knew what it felt like to be doped hard, hard enough to lose all desire to move.
“What’re you doing? What’re you doing?” Suede shrieked. “Hold your fire! You gotta get out here. You gotta help us out, man! You gotta help us!”
It would be so easy to give up now, but he clutched his leg, tried to roll his body with some momentum toward the fence. Mama had told him to keep fighting, to never let this world beat him down with expectations. He was supposed to just roll over and die now. Just let the dead close in and take what they had always wanted from him.
Suede had run back, was trying to lift him to his feet again. A corpse lumbered into them, bumping Suede. Vincent’s leg twisted beneath him, and the sharp pain made him cry out. His leg felt incorrect, a piece of him that didn’t quite fit.
Flies buzzed around his head. The ground was slanted, the world tilting and spilling into a colorless void. The bright haze blinded his eyes, and he lost sight of the decrepit creatures that had turned away from the fence.
There was no salvation at the Depot. Mike Taylor had sold them a bill of goods, or he had been misled.
So much for taking the city back.
Suede was clutching him tightly, as if Vincent had some secret reservoir of power he could summon now to help them both.
Vincent was helpless. He couldn’t do shit. He began to imagine what it would feel like to have their teeth ripping into his flesh; what it would feel like to be ripped into pieces. He might live through a lot of it, and maybe he should. Maybe he deserved the pain.
“Don’t start praying,” Vincent said, though his tongue felt thick, as if he were speaking around a wad of cotton. “Start fighting.”
A zombie’s emaciated hands were upon Suede’s shoulders as if attempting to pull him in for an embrace. Suede shoved his 9mm into the thing’s mouth and pulled the trigger. The bullet exited the back of the creature’s head, but it remained standing, holding him tight. Suede angled his gun upward and fired again, the bullet exiting through the crown of the skull, and it sagged, its heavy weight dragging Suede down, four legs tangling, twisting together.
Bullets fired from beyond the fence and kicked up dirt.
Vincent grunted against the pain in his leg and pushed the dead man off Suede who was screaming.
“You’re in control,” Vincent said to him. “I need you to be in control for me. Get it together, and get us through that fence.”
The 9mm was lying on the ground beside Suede, and Vincent picked it up.
He was ready.
This battle against the undead was forever. It could never end. No matter how many times he survived, they would be here, waiting for him. They would never stop. They would never relent. They would never back down. Wherever there were people, wherever there might be sanctuary, the dead would be there, too.
And he was completely surrounded by them now.
Suede and Vincent leaned heavily into each other, and Vincent swooned, feeling light-headed. Why couldn’t the bright haze go away? With the gun in his hand, he did not try to take him and fire. If he stopped, it would be over for them.
He tried to shove through enclosing limbs.
“Get outta the way!” someone shouted.
“Hamilton needs to get through!” Another shout.
Warm blood splashed Vincent in the face as if a water balloon filled with it had popped open. A man who had rushed through the fence to help had been grabbed from behind, and in front of him, a dead person’s lipless, black teeth clenched a quivering tongue, blood leaking over a jutting chin from the severed organ. The man’s mouth had become a black hole spouting blood. Vincent could hear him choking. His eyes rolling to the back of his head. Another mouth clamped down on his throat. And then another on his shoulder blade. He disappeared, dragged down like a gazelle dropping under the weight of a lion pack.
Vincent’s ears were ringing.
He had stopped.
All around him, people were fighting to free him from the converging crowd. He stood in the middle, Suede holding him tightly.
He couldn’t even hear the screams anymore or the gunshots. Suede might have been talking, and he couldn’t hear.
The 9mm was in his hand, and his hand hung at his side.
Another man had an assault rifle ripped from his hands. Fingers reached over his shoulders and grabbed his upper jaw, pulling him back. He resisted, and another set of hands entered his mouth. Hands fought for control of his head and tore his cheeks, peeling skin like a rubber mask stretched over a bloody surface.
A rush of foul air stung Vincent’s nostrils.
Suede yanked Vincent’s hand, trying to pry the gun from his fingers. Both men tumbled, fell.
“I need it!” Suede said.
Vincent could hear again. The gun was no longer in his hand. Shadows everywhere. Darkness everywhere.
Suede was suddenly wrenched off Vincent.
Vincent crawled, scrambled on his hands and knees. He could not look back. Charging forward, he broke through a barricade of legs. A body fell in front of him, and he attempted to climb over whoever, or whatever, it was. Driven to live, driven to push forward, driven to run away. He could not fight. He had wanted to fight, but he could not.
Limbs intertwined with his, and still he pushed through. Fingernails raked across his skin, and he did not turn back. He did not look at whatever was beneath him. On his hands and knees, dirt and blood in his mouth, he rushed toward the opening in the fence.
A pair of black leather boots were in front of him. That was his destination.
When he reached the boots, he rolled to his back and looked behind him. He could see Suede’s dark face encased in hands. Suede reached through a wall of dead people. His mouth was wide. His eyes were wide. His teeth were bright white. Veins had popped on his forehead.
A burst of heat around him was accompanied by searing bright light.
Woosh!
Just as suddenly as the light and heat billowed around him, it stopped. Suede had been swallowed by a gout of flame, slender limbs becoming fiery silhouettes. Another rush of heat, and more flame engulfed the crowd. Someone screamed. A lot of people screamed.
Vincent looked up.
Wearing the leather boots, a stout, thick bearded man stood with a flamethrower cradled in his arms like a beloved child. He wore goggles over his eyes that reflected the burning collection of bodies.
“Oh yeah!” the man with the flamethrower said without looking down at Vincent. “Burn, baby, burn! WOOOO!”
He swept the flamethrower over the crowd again.
“Close the fence!” he said. “Enjoy the lights! Hahahahahahaha! YEAH! Watch them fuckers burn. Yeah. YEAH!”
Another fountain of flame poured over the group outside the fence as the gate swung close.
The man with the flamethrower looked down at Vincent, fire dancing in the goggles.
“Oh shit, you must be Vincent Hamilton,” he said. “The one and only. Or maybe I just killed Vincent. Are you Vincent?”
He reached down with a gloved hand, and Vincent grabbed it.
The man let go when he looked up and saw a burning person clutching the fence, screaming.
“OH GOD IT BURNS OH GOD PLEASE OPEN THE GATE PLEASE—”
“Goddammit,” the man said, dropping his hand from Vincent’s. “How rude.” He fired the flamethrower again, pouring liquid flame upon the screaming man.
“OH MY GOD PLEEEEEAAAAASE!”
“I sure hope that’s not Vincent,” the man said as the burning victim slipped from the fence, a spider curling into itself, crumbling.
> “It’s not,” Vincent said.
Mouth parched, Vincent tried to swallow.
VEGA
She was inside the train station, lying on the floor of what might have been an office at one point, but was nothing more than a broken cube of glass, dust, and drywall. This place had been abandoned for a long time; why hadn’t it been torn down? Detroit had probably marked its ruins as national treasures instead of condemning them.
And she could hear the dead moaning.
“You like football?” Rook asked. He sat next to her and tried to take care of her, giving her water and doing his best to keep her awake. “You better like football. Huey liked football, and he’s dead because of you.”
Heat stroke? Was she going to die from heatstroke? A funny way to go, considering.
Rook didn’t stop talking about football or Huey.
“The boss thinks you’re pretty, but I don’t see it. He told us you could be a cheerleader one day, but I told him the Lions don’t have cheerleaders. But I got his point. He thinks you’re important. And the boss is a good man. A very good man.”
Time drifted, and she drifted. Between stages of delirium and shivering. Rook kept her wrapped up in fresh blankets. At one point, she thought she could hear shouting and gunfire outside the window but decided it was a hallucination, a memory etched in her soul; she kept thinking about the Bushmaster and the fact that it was a damn good gun that she had lost.
She wasn’t wearing the Desert Eagle either.
Occasionally, a voice shouted through a megaphone somewhere in the ruined train station. “DO NOT GANG RAPE THE SOLDIER!” a voice spoke through a megaphone. “ONE AT A TIME, PLEASE!”
She hadn’t met the man behind the voice, but she could guess that it was Sutter.
Vega finally looked out the window and saw hundreds of the dead gathered around the fence, climbing over each other and getting stuck in the barbed wire. From her vantage point several stories up, she could see hundreds of lazy, slow figures making their way toward the station.
The announcements were the worst.
“JIMMY IS COMING! AFTER WE KILL JIMMY-BOY, THE WAR IS OVER! CORNFLAKES FOR EVERYONE!”
These people were flesh traders. Deep down, she knew it to be true.
What did they get in return when they traded a woman or a child?
A child. There had been that little girl Vega had given to Angelica to keep her safe. Angelica had promised the girl would be safe.
“You ever trade a little girl for a box of Cheez-Its?” she asked Rook.
“I don’t trade. The bone man does the trading. The bone man and the boss.”
“So you’re just a bystander.”
“Nobody’s a bystander. I didn’t say I was.”
Vega shivered, wondering when she was going to finally die. All that battle rage, and here she was. She had tried to get herself killed in combat, and this is what she deserved.
Would she know what it felt like to die? Would she experience it? Would she see the world through dead eyes?
“Have some of this,” Rook offered her food from an MRE. She could smell it. She knew the smell of an MRE miles away, and it was nice to smell it. An MRE was familiar; it meant order, preparedness, organization.
Why did Sutter’s people have military rations?
What was up with the miniguns in the main hall?
She sat up and had a bite, and her taste buds were pleased; she had never been happier to have an MRE.
“Huey loved these,” Rook said.
“What was he like?”
“He was my friend.”
“I’m sorry about what happened to him. I bet he was a nice guy. You guys both liked the Lions?”
“Yup. Do you?”
“I don’t follow it much. You have a favorite player?”
“I get what you’re trying to do. Make me feel like you’re a nice person. Make me feel like I can trust you.”
“You got me figured out. You’re a smart guy, Rook.”
Rook narrowed his eyes at her. “You think I’m stupid because I like football. You think I’m stupid because that’s all I think about or talk about.”
“I don’t think you’re stupid at all. I think you’re a nice guy. You think it’s my fault your friend is dead, and you’re still helping me.”
“It is your fault!”
“I said I’m sorry. I didn’t ask you guys to bring me here. I didn’t ask for you to feed me. I didn’t ask for these goddamn blankets.”
Rook’s gaze wilted. “Oh. Well, we still can’t be friends. No matter what.”
“Okay. If you still want to talk about football, I’ll listen.”
Without further conversation, Rook helped her eat. He seemed focused and troubled, as if she had confused or challenged the way he thought about things.
Several men walked by, all of them eyeing her body, sizing her up. They made obscene gestures and licked their lips, but nobody tried anything. They carried military-grade weaponry and stalked through the corridor with measured steps, communicating to each other with hand gestures and glances instead of words. These men were professionals. What the hell were they doing here?
Either Rook was respected, or these men had better things to do; Vega knew soldiers would have found Rook an easy target for their derision, but they left him alone.
“PLEASE MAKE SURE HER FACE IS UNMARKED!” the voice said through the megaphone.
“Is that Sutter?” Vega asked.
Maybe she didn’t ask. She faded in and out. Sometimes, when she blinked, Rook was there with her. Sometimes he was not, and she could still hear his voice. He sounded a lot like Miles, the first person she lost on her mission.
Dehydration. Cold. Her muscles cramping up. Her body felt cold even though her skin was searing hot. The headaches were back, her most loyal friend in her apocalyptic seasons.
Her mind wandered to thoughts of Bill and Vincent. Why hadn’t she just followed Desjardins to this place from the start? Oh, yeah: her ego. That’s what it was. A moment of ego or pride. Who was she to be the icon of morality? Desjardins was no worse or better than her.
She wasn’t out here to find Father Joe or save the world. She was out here for herself.
How strange it was to make the transition atop that rubble hill; one minute, blasting away with the Bushmaster, and the next dragged down by Rook and company. She had barely resisted. Did it even happen at all? It seemed like a long time ago, or maybe it was a dream she had.
Not that it made a difference anymore.
“Are you thirsty?” Rook asked.
Vega nodded her head.
She felt his rough hands on the back of her neck. A putrid breeze wafted in through a broken window.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked him.
“Helping you? Because I want to win.”
“Win?”
“The war. Against the zombies. The boss said our enemy would make one grand move, and we would bring all the enemy here, to the castle. We’re going to fight them here. We’re going to die here.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
“You don’t have to. The boss said you’re going to help. I sure hope so. I really hope so.”
“You wanted to die here with Huey.”
“He was my friend.”
Vega wondered if there was anyone left she could call a friend.
“We’re going to kill more zombies,” Vega said. “I promise.”
“I know you will. And then football season is going to start back up.”
***
Vega’s eyelids fluttered, and she was not cold. The headache lingered, but her head felt clearer.
“It’s time.”
She could see Rook clearly, a bright morning glare illuminating his scruffy cheeks. He wasn’t looking at her, but rather staring at a stack of cards in his hand. He flipped through them, lingering a moment on individual cards, turning them over and reading information on the back.
“Time?” she a
sked.
“The boss said we have to get you up there. He would come down, but he said you should meet the bone man, too.”
“How long have I…?”
“Oh. Um, overnight. Did it seem longer?”
“I don’t know. What’re those? Football cards?”
“Yeah.”
Rook was melancholic, holding the cards in his hand and looking through the window above Vega’s head.
She listened carefully and realized the moaning had intensified. The dead were growing in number outside, and the expression on Rook’s face was all the confirmation she needed.
“How bad is it?” she asked anyway.
“Huey should be here. He talked about this. He said there would be thousands of them coming for us. Thousands.”
Vega managed to stand, and she could see that Rook had decorated the former office area with egg crates with stuffed lions wearing Honolulu blue Detroit Lions jerseys; boxes of sports cards were neatly arranged, and several jerseys hung on coat hangers from the top of a doorframe that did not have a door.
“We have to go,” Rook said, turning his back to the window.
Heat stroke wasn’t going to completely fade in a just a few hours. The headache remained, and she felt sluggish and sweaty. If they had to walk upstairs, the heat might get to her again.
“We got a working elevator,” Rook said.
“Good idea.”
“I know you judge me.”
He turned around and stared at her, and his accusation caught her off guard.
“Judge you how?”
“Losing Huey made me think about things. We were Huey Lewis and the News. That’s what the guys called us. Huey and I grew up together. We love Detroit. We love this city. It’s our home. We both worked for Ford, too. We made good money. Had families. I’m not about to tell you my sob story, because I know we all got one. But football has been my drug. I don’t do what everyone else around here does. Huey didn’t, either. That’s why we were the best salvage crew the boss had.”
This guy was taking the loss of his friend hard, and he was starting to figure out that he was alone. Huey and their future martyrdom had kept him going, and he was desperate for someone to talk to. His relationship with the old lady, Mean Magda, probably wasn’t the greatest, and Vega was a substitute for the man who had been sacrificed to rescue her.
Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3) Page 28