Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3)

by Bilof, Vincenzo

  A third one, this one wearing a police uniform.

  A fourth.

  Fifth.

  None of them were wounded. They were a group of dead people who had been carefully nurtured and prepared for a funeral home display. Except they looked at Bill and opened their mouths.

  He was wrong about most things. His dad always told him he would make the perfect husband someday to a good woman.

  At the NFL Scouting Combine, right before the draft, he had to show off his athletic skills and answer questions about his character.

  Show us how fast you can run, Bill.

  Bill dashed into the street. His sleepless, aching, malnourished body was a shell of its former self. He used to be a powerful specimen of physique and toughness; he was a soldier who could be taught how to fight loyally for the cause. Whatever the cause was.

  More thuds against cars. Wet meat splashing over cars, vomit waterfalls of maggots and rot.

  Where was he going?

  Anywhere. Just run until it didn’t matter anymore.

  Running, running, running.

  His lungs were burning. A new weakness, body slowing down. Pressure on his ankle sent fire up his shins until his knees quaked, and he crashed into a parked van, a tumbling wild beast after being shot by hunters.

  This wasn’t the body he was used to. Everything he had relied on for so long was no longer there. His skills, his strength. Gone.

  Bill reached for the door handle and ripped it open. An act of desperation. They were coming for him.

  Their footsteps were close.

  A body flopped out of the van. The top of the skinless head was missing. Tiny chunks of rubber slipped out of the head. Cradled against the dead person’s chest was a shotgun.

  Bill picked it up.

  Footsteps.

  Single-shot 20-guage. He popped the barrel open and the shell leapt out and rolled at his feet. He looked back and swung the weapon.

  The shock jolted his shoulders and squeezed his triceps. The stock on the shotgun splintered, cracked. He hit something hard, and it didn’t matter because a meaty, sloppy shape struck him in the chest and barreled over him.

  Bill rolled with his attacker and landed atop its chest. He slammed his hand beneath the zombie’s jaw and pushed its head upward into the concrete, crunching its skull against the ground.

  “You fucker,” Bill said.

  He thought of squeezing the juice out of an orange by impaling it and rotating it over a bowl. When he stepped up, he wiped spittle from his chin and decided he couldn’t stop now to catch his breath. His legs pumped, his feet scouring the pavement toward wherever.

  Footsteps again.

  Lungs burning.

  Ahead of him, car doors squealed open on dry, rusty hinges. Shapes poured out from beneath a vehicle. He was close to the freeway now. The freeway was like an ocean filled with trash or the debris from a thousand battleships destroyed in a cataclysmic war. Shapes everywhere, moving, shifting. Shadows slipping through the cracks, oozing from doorways and windows. Hands clambering through hills of human wreckage. Steel girders shifted. The city was waking up. Everywhere, the city was waking up.

  A helicopter had nosedived into the side of a building, rotors bent. A military bird. Was he close to the college?

  Run, keep running. Let them all follow you. Take them all to hell with you. Take as many as you can, because one less zombie might be one more life saved in the future.

  Climbing over cars that had dropped out of a parking garage. A pillar of cars stacked one atop the other. The zombies couldn’t follow, but damn if it didn’t bother him when a quick slice through his palm upon a shard of glass caused his hand to gush blood. He pulled himself up to the roof of the car with one hand, trying to hold his gushing fist against his side, apply some pressure to it.

  Hauling himself atop a car that was only a few yards away from the crashed chopper, Bill felt light-headed.

  If he stopped to see how many were following, he might never look forward.

  Keep going. Run for the end zone. Run out of the whole damn stadium. Run out of your mind.

  Impossible. What he saw was impossible.

  There was a huge gun inside the chopper. A massive gun, a gun that would have been used to mow down entire cities.

  “My God,” he said when he saw the gun was fed by a belt of bullets.

  Picked it up. Positioned himself against the chopper, backed into a wall. Leaned on the trigger.

  His entire body shook and everything in front of him became white, bright, smoky. Firing into the air. Firing into nothing. Bullets were churning it all up, turning it into nothing. Eating reality, letting the whole scene disappear behind a veil of smoke and gunfire. He gritted his teeth. He gritted his teeth and swept the gun in a semi-circle orbit of screaming metal.

  A looming shape in the bullet-glare stopped him. His teeth vibrated in his jaw and his arms were shaking, but he needed to see the thing that came toward him now. A towering, monstrous thing that he had to stare at; he stared because he couldn’t figure out what it was.

  His first thought was: his mom would never believe him if he told her.

  He didn’t have a second thought.

  It was a giant skeleton with dozens of arms and heads. Maybe not dozens, but at least several, because he couldn’t exactly understand what it was, or how it could exist in the first place. By now, though, he knew better than to question. He knew what it wanted.

  “They put the backup quarterback in the game,” Bill said.

  And when he said it, he wasn’t afraid.

  “Okay then,” he said.

  With that, he leaned on the trigger again. He gritted his teeth and let the bullets do what they were meant to do.

  He couldn’t see the giant skeleton through the bullet storm, and he didn’t need to. He didn’t care what he destroyed, as long as he destroyed it. There was no reason to hesitate or rethink anything; the gun might have been doing damage, or maybe he didn’t do anything. He wouldn’t know until he was dead, or he was out of ammo.

  The chain gun was still spinning, but the gun had gone dry. Bill released the trigger and peered into the smoke.

  There wasn’t even a giant. There was nothing. Not a thing.

  His hand was slick with blood.

  Bill dropped the gun and used his shirt to wipe sweat from his face. When he turned around, he performed the sign of the cross upon himself.

  Behind him, sitting in Wayne State University’s parking lot, was a huge tank.

  BELLA

  The sun was out there somewhere. Good thing she didn’t have to put up with it. The city was a desert. Ash and bone and metal. Worst of all, Brian didn’t want to talk to her anymore.

  How could she blame him?

  Wandering through Detroit, alone and thirsty. Starving. Covered in dry blood. Not for the first time in her life, she wondered how alike a zombie she was. An easy target for anyone looking to snag a woman to trade on the open market. Even though she had just evaded a flesh trader, she had to act like they were everywhere. She couldn’t just stroll along.

  There didn’t seem to be any zombies here. The city had emptied, drained all the living dead into a vortex of genocide; the zombies could have been moving in one direction. For what? Angelica had mentioned Sutter, but that meant nothing to her. He was a flesh trader, too, according to her.

  In the distance, the faint echo of distant gunfire. There would have to be a huge firefight to echo through the silent streets.

  Windsor had looked like this. Windsor still looked like this.

  The parking garages had spilled cars, dumping them into the avenues below. Upturned vehicles piled atop each other, walls of metal and glass. Burnt husks of black metal. Entire pyres of motor cars had lit up the night not too long ago, and a fog lingered.

  She might be the last person left alive.

  For her, there had been no other city besides Detroit. Desmond was supposed to be here. Probably trying to help his junkie
brother. His Cadillac had been left on the Ambassador Bridge. There might be cities beyond Detroit, but there was nothing else for her.

  She could wander around like this forever.

  There was a battle somewhere. Roll of thunder. An explosion? A distant storm?

  “Hello?”

  A man’s voice in the ruins. Echoing.

  “I know you’re here. Come out. I came to get you. Vincent Hamilton sent me.”

  Vincent Hamilton? She knew that name. Familiar, but in the great scheme of things it probably didn’t matter. If she knew the name, it was part of another life, a life that was far gone.

  Bella walked up a hill of garbage and metal. At the top of the hill she saw a man running in front of the Spirit of Detroit statue. The statue had been defaced with apocalyptic graffiti, but it remained intact. The man running around in front of it jumped up and down, waving his arms in the air.

  “I’ve already thought about killing him,” Brian said.

  It was a relief to hear his voice. When she glanced over at her son, he was older; jaw patched with black stubble, taller, gaunt, a machine gun strapped over his shoulder.

  “Well,” he said.

  This wasn’t the Brian she remembered.

  “Thought you would be pissed when you saw me,” Brian said.

  His voice was deeper.

  “Thought you would be mad,” he said. “I don’t know if I wanted to see you again.”

  Her son was saying this to her.

  “I’ve had a lot of guilt, but I know you’ve got something to say. It hurt me, too. You were all broken up.”

  Her tongue was sticking to the roof of her mouth, even though her mouth felt dry. Her throat was dry. Where was the sun? It was terribly hot. Every bead of moisture for a thousand miles clung to her body, wrung from the walls of the dead structures around her.

  “Okay, so you’re not saying anything,” Brian said. “But look at that guy. Will you look at him?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s looking for us, and we’re bringing him in. I already know what he’s going to say. I already know what we’re going to do to him.”

  Bella didn’t understand what he meant.

  “Just hold on a minute.”

  “What—”

  “I didn’t think you were going to talk to me again after what happened to Angelica.”

  Brian blinked rapidly. “Hey. Mom.”

  “You were disappointed I tried to help her. Thought I was going to become a monster. And I was. I watched that man die. Watched the entire thing.”

  “Hey.”

  “You let me do it. You’re just as bad.”

  Bella had figured it out. The truth wasn’t as uncomfortable as it should be. When had she started to go insane? Was she insane now? Did she make this whole thing up? Did she see Desmond’s Cadillac on the bridge?

  Brian had really left her. Yes, he had left her. And he didn’t come back. She had been wandering around thinking he was still alive. But of course, it was more probable that he wasn’t alive, and she had admitted this to herself many times. Now this was just fucked up. It wasn’t fair. She had come this far, and didn’t know how far she had come at all, or where she was.

  Brian was really standing in front of her.

  Her son put a hand on her shoulder. “I had to get away from you. I had to get out.”

  “You weren’t coming back for me.”

  “I doubt it. I know something about survival you don’t.”

  “Bastard. Don’t you know—don’t you have any idea—”

  Knees weakened, blood drained into her wrists. The air was sucked out of her mouth. She fell, and Brian caught her. A group of men scrambled over the hill, all of them carrying automatic weapons.

  ***

  The place used to be a sports bar. Memorabilia of legends, legends nobody was around to worship, icons hanging from the walls. Michigan sports heroes. Dusty tables were propped up, booths had pieces of dry wall, paint flakes—swept aside.

  A hundred men. Maybe more. Men and women. Armed, and ready for war. They didn’t have much to spare, but they shared food and water with Bella. Helped her out, introduced themselves. Introductions were short; these were survivors, after all, and they knew better than to get close to people.

  Brian was among them, and they had brought the man into the sports bar. The man who had been shouting and running around in front of the Spirit of Detroit statue. The guy looked like he was used to a living as if money was never a concern, a man who rarely faced adversity.

  Bella recognized the stock of Molotov cocktails lined up beneath the bar. What was the point? She had learned a long time ago that fire only slowed the dead. They didn’t feel pain, though their remains might weaken. Walking corpses that were on fire and still coming for you were more dangerous.

  These people were amateurs, or they were arrogant. Either way, it was only a matter of time. Their voices were jovial, with chatter that included projections for winter weather and places they could visit that might be safe. But they had something to do.

  The cocktails might not be for zombies.

  “I want to hear what the man has to say,” someone in the room said.

  Voices quieted down, and she watched her son stand over the runner. Brian must have wielded some authority over them. How did he rise up through their ranks so quickly? It would have taken a few acts of bravery—or stupidity—to prove himself worthy of their faith.

  “So you said something about Vincent Hamilton,” Brian said.

  Bella watched her son interrogate a man.

  Totally unlike him.

  This wasn’t real.

  Who was she to argue?

  “He’s at the Depot,” the man said. “You’re the people from the neighborhood. Right? The people we traded with. I’m with Sutter. You know Sutter, right?”

  “Okay.”

  “Yeah. Well. Vincent told me to come find you. Wanted you to—”

  “Interesting. What’d you say your name was?”

  “Hold on a minute.”

  “We’re not taking orders from anyone. We’re heading out of here. You can have this fucking place.”

  “Such language. You haven’t even told me your name! Why can’t you be civil?”

  Brian turned his back to the man and sat down at a table. He talked with people around him, a jury deciding this man’s fate. What was there to decide? Why was it such a big deal?

  Because they were an army.

  And almost everyone in the room was black.

  Was that part of it? Was that really part of it? Did a mob need a common thread like skin color to unite, to work together?

  Clearly, she was blind.

  Brian sat up from the table and everyone quieted down again. This was supposed to be her son, slowly acquiring confidence and learning how to become a man, but that wasn’t exactly right. Nope. He was only sixteen, wasn’t he? That’s right. Just a teenager. But this version of her son was a man. A survivor.

  She didn’t know this young man.

  “I’m going to tell you a story,” Brian announced to the room. “I’m going to tell you a story about my father because you’ll see why I feel the way I do. Nobody has to agree with me.

  “My father left me and my mom. Happened when I was young. I’m sure a lot of you went through the same thing. My mom’s standing in the room with us. Right there.”

  Heads turned.

  “Desmond came into my life when I was a little older. He was a lawyer, and my mom loved him. I thought he was a good guy. A fighter. A lawyer, but he still had ideas about fairness and justice. He treated me like I was part of the… he treated me like I was there. Like I mattered. But anyway, he had a brother named Jerome who was a junkie. And Desmond did everything for Jerome. And, of course, Jerome shot it all up his arm, or whatever he did.

  “Desmond used to always say that Jerome was spending time in crack houses. Said he had to go in a couple times and get him. He said he knew who ran those
crack houses, said he would love a chance one day to see the asshole in a courtroom. He said this guy helped ruin Detroit, helped make it a shithole because he was a greedy prick. Killed people for money. Pretended to be some kind of gangster. Sold guns. Drugs. Women. I’ll never forget his name. Desmond said his name a lot. His name was in the papers, too. Even in Windsor, where I lived, we heard about him.

  “His name was Vincent Hamilton.”

  People shifted around uncomfortably.

  “Now wait a minute,” the white man put his hands up. He tried to back up toward the door, but someone figured it out and stood in his way. “I don’t care what you think about him. Fuck Vincent, okay? I don’t care. I did what I was supposed to. He said you would know where the guns are, and I could have some. I mean… I risked my life… I came to find you… I thought...”

  A round of laughter in the room.

  “What you’re saying,” Brian said as the room quieted, “is that Vincent sent you to tell us to bail him out, and that you would get a bunch of guns in the bargain? You’re looking at all the guns. He gave them to us already. But your ass ran away. Does Vincent want us to bail him out, and then he can be like a king or something? A king of the wasteland?”

  Laughter again.

  “You’re welcome to come along,” Brian said. “We’re not giving you shit. Brian’s my name, by the way.”

  “I don’t understand,” the man said. “Wait. Hold on a minute.”

  Brian laughed, and others laughed with him. “What is there to understand? We’re not feeding you. We’re not giving you a weapon. Follow, if it means that much to you. Or you can leave right now. Go back, and tell Vincent to suck a dick.”

  Now Brian smiled as people slapped him on the shoulders. He had ignited an emotional component, a reason to get out and start over somewhere else. Vincent had helped make Detroit a pit of despair and waste before the zombies. It felt good to escape. It felt good to have direction.

  Freedom.

  A gun was offered to Bella.

  This was really happening, wasn’t it?

  But they couldn’t just leave. Not with Desmond out there.