She could hear heavy breathing. Could smell the musk and sweat of a man. Fleetingly, Bella wondered if she would ever smell roses again. The apocalypse stank like sweaty men.
It always came to this.
Her body was being dragged across the floor. Pulled by her wrist.
Would she feel it? Would she feel the man violate her?
The routine was familiar.
Strange how they always took you into a private room. Did the men think it was a truly intimate act? Did they want it to be intimate? Maybe there was an animal impulse in some of these men, an instinct which compelled them to mark their possession of another woman’s body in some dark, private corner so that none would see the crime. Men who hadn’t been criminals before the apocalypse were ashamed of the light, and if they could hurt a woman in the dark, not even they could admit that it happened. Better to deny the animal inside of them.
What did it matter now?
There was just enough light left in the day as blue light replaced bright white light, to see the large man’s hair as he picked her up gently.
The color of his hair. Hay. It looked like hay.
She was dropped. She wanted to pull him down. Grab onto his arms and just give herself away. Better to give him what he wants so she could move on. A random woman found in the ruins, a treasure. His treasure.
She lay there for a long time, waiting.
Why did he wait?
Do it. Get it over with. Do it.
“You’re going to be okay,” the blond man said, his voice calm and strong. They always did this. Always tried to pretend like it was a good thing.
“No,” she said.
“We can go somewhere. I don’t know you, and you don’t know me, but I’m heading home. If I just head home, just go somewhere else, I know things will be different. You want things to be different? What’s your name? I’m Bill.”
Enough time passed. She sat up.
Bill watched her.
A man full of lies.
She leapt at him, and he caught her in his large arms. He braced her against his chest, and she wrapped her legs around his waist. The big man lost his balance and fell hard.
“No!” he cried out.
Blood rushed to her head, and her face grew warm. He bucked and tried to throw her off, but her fingers were embedded in his hips. There was no way he could throw her without hurting her.
Her hands had moved and were on his neck. Bill’s neck felt like a block of heavy meat. She wanted to feel him.
His hands gripped her waist, and he easily flung her off. She scrambled to her feet, hardly aware of what she was doing. She was surrounded by the dark, and all she could do was move. She could not think.
“Stop it,” Bill said. He knelt and grabbed her wrists, trying to pin her back, trying to roll her over onto her back. She let him.
“This isn’t what I want,” he said. “This isn’t what we should do. Let me help you, please.”
Bill stopped, sweat from his face dripping onto hers. He was staring hard at something, a glimpse of light catching the blue of his eyes. The pupils seemed to retract inside of his head. She tried to crane her neck to see it, but a part of her already knew. Only one thing would interrupt a man so completely.
In the doorway, a figure.
A shape standing in the doorway.
Bella lay beneath him, her eyes focused on the thing in the doorway. Bill’s sour breath scalded her face.
A little girl stood in the doorway. White dress. Dark stains on the front of the dress. Long hair hanging in clumpy strands, drooping over her slender shoulders.
Bill let her go.
“You can’t,” Bella said.
Bill stood and picked up the girl by her shoulders. Bella kicked him in the shin. He dropped the girl and stumbled back into the room.
“She’s not dead!” Bella screamed, her throat burning. Her throat felt like it was on fire.
“She’s dead,” Bill said. “Get out of the way.”
Bella darted in front of him and barreled over the girl, slamming her into an opposite wall. The dark had made it nearly impossible to see anything.
The smell.
Feces. Urine. Blood. Dirt. Sweat. The girl hadn’t washed for days, and she hadn’t been dead for long. A day ago? Two days?
“Get out of the way!” Bill shouted again.
Bella was thrown aside. Bill’s hulking body blotted out the remaining light that filtered in through the windows. He stepped on a twig.
No.
That was the sound of the dead girl’s neck snapping.
“Oh fuck,” Bill said, half-sobbing. “Oh fuck this. Oh fuck this.”
“There’s another one,” Bella said. “She might still be alive.”
“Oh, God, I can’t do this. Oh shit. Things don’t have to be this way. I just wanted to get out of here. Get home. Just get home.”
“I have to find the other one,” Bella said. “And there was supposed to be a man.”
“Well, maybe they’re dead, too.”
Bill’s voice shook. How long had he been out here in the ruins? Not too long, apparently. She had her breakdown a long time ago. He was turning in an emotional wreck in front of her, something that wouldn’t happen to a hardened survivor.
He was just like Desmond. An avenger.
“Nothing like him,” Brian said. “This man’s a flesh-trader. Why would you trust him? You’ve known men like him. He came here to trade with Angelica. He came here for you.”
She was on her feet.
“Run away,” Brian said. “Get away from this bastard. Just get out, now.”
“Stop it,” Bill said, sniffling, trying to regain his composure. “Just wait, please. I just want to help.”
Dizzy, she tried to settle herself against the wall. The strong scent of decay wafted into the hallway again. It wasn’t just the dead little girl, but something new, something worse.
“Oh, stop it, stop it. Get back!” Bill shouted, his voice reverberating in close quarters. Bill saw something, but what?
Bella was compelled to turn around and make a run for it. She was trapped between his big body and whatever she had slammed into before; her eyes were adjusting to the shadows, but her eyesight was blurred when she swung her head around. Leading back up to the roof, there was more light in the hallway, and behind her, almost nothing. Her eyes had to switch between two spectrums.
“You have to help me,” Bill cried out. His voice sounded weaker somehow, more frail, as if sudden fear had reduced him to a tremulous mess. The strength and confidence that was present only a moment ago was gone. What did he see?
Bill had more than handled the dead little girl.
“Leave him,” Brian said. “You heard the gunfire outside while you and Angelica were struggling. He was out there, fighting through the corpses to get to you. It’s not worth saving him. Other people are probably dead out there, and there might be others, waiting.”
“Desmond would disagree,” she muttered.
“Bullshit,” Brian said.
“I can’t just leave him.”
“Yes, you can.”
“Like you left me?”
“I didn’t leave you. I’m here. I’m right here with you.”
“No. God, no. You’re not real. The only thing that’s real is the blood on my hands! The only thing I know that’s real. I’m covered in it. Angelica’s blood is on my face, my arms. I can smell her.”
“I told you before that Desmond was a fool who is probably dead. He is dead because he was selfish, not because he was selfless. I know he went out to save his brother. I know he chose Jerome over you.”
“Stop it. Just stop it.”
Even though she couldn’t see Brian, she knew what expression he would wear on his face. Her teenage son, lips curled in disappointment, his derisive sneer cutting into her. Every day he confronted her with these truths, ideas that she had denied ever since they spent that first week after her last phone call with Desmon
d, waiting for him to return. Brian had given up two days in. She had always been optimistic, and she knew that he considered it weakness on her part.
And now he reminded her that she was weak, that she couldn’t be as strong as Angelica. That’s why she couldn’t stop thinking about the woman who died in her arms; a woman who was willing to trade her to Bill for a box of creamed corn.
“Wait, don’t leave me here,” Bill said.
The sound of his voice had changed dramatically, although she had barely heard him speak more than a few words. Was there someone else in the room with them? What about the little girl’s father? Was he dead? Was there another child in here, somewhere?
“Save yourself,” Brian said. “Don’t be an idiot.”
If she turned her back on this man now, he might die. Desmond would never have turned his back on someone who needed him. Bella had risked everything to save Angelica; what changed?
“Remember what they did to us,” Brian said. “They made me watch.”
Brian was right. When the flesh traders came, they made her son watch. They also made him…
Don’t think about it.
“They made me watch,” Brian repeated.
Bella turned away from Bill.
“You can help me,” Bill said. “They’re here. They’ve been waiting for us the whole time, oh God, oh God they have been waiting, and now they’re here.”
Had she completely hallucinated Bill, just as she heard Brian’s voice? Her son had never come back from a scavenging trip, but he remained with her. The pleading in the hallway seemed to be coming from someone frantic, someone who sounded frayed.
Bella turned her back on whatever Bill was dealing with. She could hear him shakily muttering a prayer.
“Our Father, who art in Heaven…”
Bella carefully picked her way through the darkness and tried to find the stairwell back to the roof. She tripped several times over objects on the floor. Behind her, Bill kept praying.
Ahead of her loomed a patch of absolute darkness. There should have been a tiny bit more light closer to the stairwell, but whatever light she expected had been swallowed by a deep shadow.
There was only one thing that could be in her way, one thing that had come down from the roof where she had left it. The corpse of the woman she had tried to save for no other reason than it was “the right thing to do.” That should have been good enough. Doing the right thing was always good enough according to Desmond.
And she had left Angelica on the roof to rot, just as she requested. Now, Angelica was here. Angelica hadn’t been afraid of light, hadn’t been ashamed to admit that she wasn’t a good person. What was she like before everything happened? It was pointless to think about it now, especially since Bella was surrounded by the undead. Behind her, and ahead of her. Still, she kept thinking about Angelica’s last words and their fatal struggle in the apartment. Angelica had nearly escaped. Not once had she been afraid.
“You can do it,” Brian said. “Push right past her.”
Bella lowered her shoulder and charged into the patch of darkness. She felt something heavy move aside. The smell of a wasted body clogged her nostrils along with coppery blood.
“Amen!” Bill shouted. “You can’t hurt me, you can’t!”
Bella could hear herself panting in the humid stillness. The shadows around seemed frozen, or maybe they were pictures of shadows. She couldn’t look back; if she stopped to look at Angelica’s dead face, all of her willpower and strength might fade away. On her hands and knees, she scrambled toward the light. Up the stairs. Lungs burning.
One hand on a step. Crawling now up the steps. On her hands and knees, climbing.
She looked over her shoulder and stopped moving altogether. Gasping for breath, salty sweat trickled over her lips. She thought of herself as a messy creature, a frail thing, nothing more than a mouse that had been scampering through a trash heap for a year. And yet she was a meal, an object of desire for the undead and for the living.
More than anything, she wanted to live. She wanted to live as Angelica had lived.
The shadow of Angelica’s corpse approached.
Bella could hear Bill struggling in the hall behind her, stumbling over debris, his fists pounding into the dead-meat flesh of whatever was attacking him.
“Amen!” Bill shouted. “Amen I said! God help me! God, do you hear me? DO YOU HEAR ME?”
Bella turned and resumed her climb.
Her shirt clinging to her chest, Bella felt like she had just climbed out of a lukewarm bathtub. The humid, blood-warm air on the roof greeted her. The sky felt the same as the interior of the building; a dark place, a cavern that smelled like sweat and sewage.
“DAMN YOU! Come on, you fuckers! Come on! COME ON!”
Scrambling on her hands, she tried to stand. Knees buckled beneath her, ankles twisted, and her body surrendered. She was nothing more than a wobbly pile of blocks balanced on a monkey’s skull. Fear had turned her into a sniveling creature.
Alone on the roof without a weapon. The fire escape? Could she try the fire escape?
“Mom, stand up,” Brian said. “You can do it. Come on, stand up.”
Bill shouted again. “YOU WILL NEVER STOP ME! TRY TO STOP ME! TRY TO STOP ME!”
She stopped and tried to inhale a lungful of breath. How would she be able to get down the fire escape if she couldn’t stand? Throat parched, stomach rumbling, her body felt empty. Her body felt like it might be floating away on the breeze, even though there wasn’t a breeze.
There was nothing but the sound of Bill’s voice.
The hazy light nearly blinded her, but Bella could see a colorless figure push up the steps. It didn’t look like a man at all, but a large, twitching insect.
It was a man with a zombie on his back. He sagged to his knees and tried to reach behind him to grab the attacker. Bella couldn’t see his blond hair, couldn’t see his face, but she knew it was a man, and she knew a zombie was on his shoulders, riding him.
A small zombie was on his back. A tiny, childlike zombie with long, wispy hair, like the frayed threads of a burnt flag.
“I tried!” the man shouted. “Please, I tried. Oh God, it hurts. Don’t do this, don’t do this, please, please.”
And all Bella could do was watch as the dead child atop his back pulled on his hair. The hair tore away, likely taking part of his scalp. The zombie quickly dropped the hair from its fingers and dug back into his head to rip more hair while Bill tried to reach for the corpse. He clawed at the creature atop him, but its hands were embedded in his skull.
Another person stepped onto the roof. Thin, feminine body. A haggard shape, moving stiffly, mouth opening and not making a sound. Bella knew who this was, even in the unkind light. All the undead were hungry, and Angelica was no different. Only moments ago, Bella would have been her meal, but now the Angelica corpse was focused on the man with the child on his back. Angelica was truly dead, for any subconscious identification of Bella would surely prompt the corpse to look in her direction. There was nothing left of the hardened survivor.
“Help me,” the man said.
He extended his hand toward Bella, who was several feet away.
This guy was going to trade something for Bella. He was going to own her. He was going to make a deal with Angelica for Bella’s flesh.
“Flesh trader,” Brian said. “You figured it out. That’s what he is. A flesh trader. You know what they do out there.”
“Desmond would help this man,” Bella said.
But she didn’t move.
“Please,” the man said.
Dead Angelica sat down upon the roof delicately as if she were sitting upon a blanket and preparing to eat a picnic in a park. Yes. What a nice family meal. Eat it, you bitch. Eat it, you dead bitch.
Hard to believe she had wanted to help Angelica.
Hard to believe she might have tried to save Bill.
But he screamed loudly. So loudly. And he cried. And he begged.
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And when the sun rose and Bill’s carcass was nothing but a collection of scattered bones, she pushed the two zombies over the edge of the roof and watched their heads pop open when they struck the cement. She hadn’t talked to Brian in several hours.
JIM
The Artist leaned against the brick wall and stared into a pit of withering corpses. How delicate they seemed from a distance; a pile of meat with worms trembling the surface with their passing. Moist topsoil. Snaking maggot forms rippling over the central mass.
Yes. From atop here, everything was melodramatic. Fences were unimportant, insignificant. High above the kingdom of rot. Atop Michigan Central Station.
Rose had been disturbed, and there was no telling what influence the demon had inside of her. An interesting twist would involve Rose reclaiming her identity. Was she turning her back on him?
This was a challenge to him.
How much did he love her?
There had been sonnets dedicated to less worthy women. The ultimate power is the power over one person. Complete and utter domination of one person, to allow for godhead in that person’s eyes. He was Rose’s god.
Religion had always fascinated him for its complete surrender of will to something invisible. To become a shell, defined by the fear of life. Faith, worship; he could get behind those ideas.
He figured it out.
The dead were breaking apart and reconnecting. Tangling themselves into one monster.
How melodramatic of her.
The fight was going to be interesting. There wouldn’t be another one like it in the history of man, and nobody would see it.
Jim turned on his heel and walked along the roof. He inhaled the foul air and stepped into his enemy’s lair.
The bone man. An old friend of Sutter’s. Expert on poisons, a genetic engineer who figured out more interesting ways for people to die. He had worked on a lot of operations with the celebrated veteran, but he wasn’t a combat expert.
Jim strode into the room with his hands clasped behind his back. How did he appear to the bone man? He certainly didn’t feel older, and sometimes it might help his focus just to get the blood flowing early.
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