Okay, so the giant zombie thing outside was melting into the Depot. There was purpose and intelligence behind all this. The greedy scientist had talked enough shit about Hell and zombie experiments that it was lost on him. A complete waste. And here was all the waste he could ever want or need. More than he could have ever bargained for.
He never really cared why this was happening. But this was just fucking ridiculous. No matter how hard he fought, there was something else.
The sludge collected around his ankles and flooded the steps behind him. There was nothing else to do but move through.
“This one looks like Reagan!” Mean Magda shouted from somewhere behind him. Bullets popped off, and Vincent was distracted by her silly comment. If he looked close enough, maybe he would see faces that he recognized. Faces that he blamed.
“Read my lips!” Mean Magda declared. “No new taxes!”
Reagan didn’t say that, did he?
Bones floating through the black ooze of swampy rot bumped around his legs as he tried to wade up old concrete steps. He managed to circumvent most of the ooze, but everyone behind him was in for a treat. Sutter? Vega? The old woman?
“We’re rolling out!” Vincent shouted down. Bright lights flashed their response, gun smoke drifting up like Catholic incense dedicated to an imperfect ritual.
Where was she?
After how far they had come, there was no fucking way. No way.
Dropping to one knee, he leaned into the AR-15 and felt his teeth vibrate in his face. Pouring bullets into the ooze that leaked through the window and down the stairs, he wasn’t going to let anything get down that stairwell without getting a taste.
Let the bastards eat. Bullet after bullet after bullet.
He stopped to reload. One more magazine.
“Vega!” he called out.
There wasn’t anyone close to him. He was alone in the smoke and glare. Shadows swirled around him. Dust was caught in his throat, and he coughed.
Waiting now. Any second she would charge up the stairs. He couldn’t see a damn thing through the fog of war, and the gunshots were distant, somewhere else maybe. Several floors up or down. But the screams were close.
There she was, charging through the shadows with people behind her, following her. More of Sutter’s men.
“Get your lazy ass moving,” she said.
It was good to hear her voice, and she knew it made him happy.
They made it to another floor, to another abattoir dressed in filthy bodies hanging from the ceiling beams, walls scratched and scarred by graffiti. The looming shadow from the giant corpse outside blackened the entire floor momentarily as people struggled to catch their breath. When the ooze began to fill the windows, Vincent heard a cracking sound that reminded him of an egg, and the smell that accompanied him reminded him of an egg that was rotten. Not one egg. Hundreds. Thousands.
Mean Magda laughed. “They all look like Reagan, don’t they?”
Vincent nodded. She was right. The dead all looked the same. They didn’t look like anything at all. Just skulls and bones rolling through the black rot, a mess of fluids and insects, ruined clothes and swimming eyeballs.
“Tastes like chicken!” Sutter announced from somewhere.
Mean Magda hollered and cut at a rope with a long knife. The bodies hanging from the ceiling had caught fire, bones popped and sizzled, and Vincent thought of the neighborhood barbecue parties; kids ate dog food or deer meat. Black smoke filled the room as the dangling bodies caught fire, bright light raging inside the shadowed chamber. The room looked like the inside of a bloody membrane. The bodies dropped from the ceiling into the pooling mass of rot. The flames spread upon the undead wreckage.
The bone-ooze crept along the floor and drowned a man’s ankles. Vincent watched shapeless mass consume him, peeling flesh away from his face, zombie substance chewing through a man’s lips and eyelids. Tufts of human hair and skin stuffing fleshless skulls. An entire man disappeared into the mush. Swallowed. Chewed up, gone.
Fiery zombies lumbered forward, bodies aflame; they charged forward, the searing heat from their burning bodies causing Sutter’s men to shrink back faster, react quicker. Men screamed as fiery mobs tore at their flesh; they burned while being devoured.
Vincent was going to bring his own heat.
He dropped the AR-15 and drew the Desert Eagle. This was the first time he fired it. It felt good in his hands. Heavy with the weight of power.
With two hands, he dropped his glare along the sight and squeezed into a bright orange light. His hands kicked up over his head, and he lost a step back.
An entire head had exploded into a bright fireball, burning shards of skull raining upon a man whose legs were being chewed up; not just his legs, but his wrists and fingers on both hands were being nibbled. An appendage was picked up, something was removed from his body, an insect being picked apart easily in the grip of helplessness. The man’s mouth hung open, blood pooling out of his mouth.
Vincent aimed and exploded the man’s head.
He brought the gun up carefully and blasted open two more, popping them in bright sprays of flame and brain meat.
Griggs probably had fun with this gun, too. Perfect for terminating heads.
Several members of Sutter’s crew decided this wasn’t the place to stage a firefight, and Vincent and Vega shared a look; the walls were closing in, and it was time to get out. Up and out. Get their backs to a wall, and lay down the law.
On the move again. Up another flight of stairs.
Vega ripped a shotgun from someone’s hands. Apparently, she needed the gun worse than he did.
Boom!
Hot rain fell from the ceiling.
Vega pumped another shell into the chamber.
The dude who lost his shotgun disappeared into the murky ooze as it closed in. Vega fired the shotgun again, and Vincent knew he wasn’t standing upright; he was half-crouched, on one hand, scrambling back in a crab walk. His damaged ankle burned.
And there were so many of them.
So, so many of them.
Beneath his hands the floor was slick, glistening. More screams now. Not as much gunfire. Bullet casings rolling down the steps behind him. He almost wanted to tell those casing they were going the wrong way.
Oh no.
He remembered, and put his hands over his head, curling himself into a ball—
Warm burst of air, noise slurped out of his head. Someone had blown themselves up. A warm slab of meat dropped onto the back of his neck. He inhaled too quickly and instantly choked blood down his throat.
Ringing in his ears.
Couldn’t hear anything, but that was okay. He moved up the stairs. Crawled up. Nothing touched him. He passed through dry smoke, coughing and hacking on the way up. When he rolled to the landing, there was a whiff of fresher air, clearer air.
Ahead of him, a zombie had its head buried in someone’s throat. Vincent didn’t recognize who it was. The undead bastard munched away, mouth full of sloppy blood.
The plan was simple: wait till all the dead bastards crowded into this can, and blow the whole thing up with an airstrike.
Here was his future looking right at him. A charred face, oil-black skin hanging loosely from broad bones. A deranged skeleton, its jaw working on another man’s face. Eating. Eating.
“Looks like it’s just us,” he said to the skeletal corpse as it dug its head into the dead man’s messy face and neck.
Mean Magda was racing up the stairs toward him, coughing her way through the fog. “Holy shit,” she said. “You’re still alive.”
Hopefully, she wasn’t about to ask him to start moving again. It felt good to sit for a minute.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Stopped ‘em again. Stopped ‘em good.”
She looked up at the corpse above them, watched the blood drip down the steps. There was a moment of clarity; there was no noise. No guns, no screams. Nothing.
A chunk of meat slowly droppe
d out of the zombie’s chin and slid down a step.
Mean Magda walked past the two and mimicked a gun-shape with her hand, took aim, fired at the zombie’s head. She kept walking up.
“You know why I don’t have teeth?” she asked without looking back.
Vincent stood and thought about drawing the Desert Eagle. There was a good chance he was half-deaf now, anyway. What difference would it make?
But he didn’t have to kill this one.
Vega might still be down there, and this might be a surprise for her. Kill it for her?
Spend the bullet?
Walk back down, and look for Vega?
He walked up. Straight up.
“Hell yeah!” Sutter said, clapping his hands when he saw Vincent. “This is great news!”
The latest battle had taken less than two minutes. Half of Sutter’s army were standing in the hallway, gasping, coughing, sweating.
Sutter flicked a switch.
Country music played through the entire Depot. Floors and floors of country music. Outside, bright spotlights played with the sky. How much longer until dark?
How much longer until the airstrike showed up? Those lights would make a nice target. Sutter wasn’t stupid. His taste in music might be awful, but he was good at the war game. The guy was always thinking ahead.
There were more guns to choose from now, salvaged from Sutter’s dead. Vega passed guns around, her clothes shredded, claw marks on her neck, her eyes faraway.
“Having trouble keeping up?” she asked.
“Well.”
“Well?”
“No trouble at all, Ma’am.”
“This has been one hell of a ride, hasn’t it?”
“I suppose it has.”
“I remember you smoking pot in front of that house. Kicking back in a lawn chair. You must have killed a hundred of them. A sane woman would have fallen for you quickly.”
Vincent smiled, and she smiled, but looked away. She loaded a clip into a 9mm.
“Did you have fun when you were a kid?” she asked.
“Who knows?”
What was the point? He could say that he had wanted to be the exact opposite of the man he became. If he played by all the rules, he would have a good life. No life in the ghetto. Be a dad to children, a husband to a wife. Do all the right things.
The army kicked him out, so he spent most of his life robbing them. He became part of the problem in Detroit, and knew it. Relished it. Money flowed through him. He was inside the city, part of its smell, its glint.
Even that was gone. His rules hadn’t worked out for him, either. Escape should have been the plan. But what if he had been a family man? Would he have lived here with them, or on an army base in another state, another country?
What would Vega be doing?
“Why did the chicken cross the road?” Vega asked.
Vincent couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across his face. There was something about her dry sense of humor that made it worth waiting for. Her sense of confidence made her dangerous, forbidden, beautiful.
He shrugged.
Weight settled upon his shoulder. Fire burned him. Sharp, burning flame inside of his shoulder.
Laughter shook his body.
This was really happening. And it was so damn funny. Why now? Why not?
He was tickled.
Tickled by teeth. He knew they were teeth. His head was warm, as if someone was pouring hot water into one of his ears.
Vega’s eyes were open. He saw her eyes were bigger than he’d ever seen, and he could hear the country music very clearly.
He could feel everything he could ever feel in one second of time. Anger. Disappointment. Betrayal. Who betrayed him? God? He had lived this long, which meant he was going to live forever.
One hell of a ride.
The blood leaked over his shoulder, dripped inside of his shirt, filled his underwear, his jeans.
He lowered his shoulder and allowed the corpse to slip over him. What did it look like? Who could say what he tasted like?
But he couldn’t stop laughing.
At his feet, a decomposing body looked up at him. No lips. No eyelids. No eyelashes. No hair on the scalp. Bald, stretched skin. Tight flesh. Rubber. Burned rubber. A fly buzzed over its head. The fingers on one of its hands were twisted at broken angles.
Why couldn’t it have been Patrick?
Or Suede?
Or Mike Taylor?
Charmane?
Fireball?
Shanna?
John Charles?
Desmond?
Jerome?
Derek?
Father Joe?
Rhonda?
Jeremy?
General Masters?
Anybody, anybody but this. Some random, careless thing. No grudge against him. He was nothing more than meat.
This fucking thing.
THIS THING.
Where was the five-star band? The cheers from the gallery of ghosts—ghosts of people who had wanted him dead. Where was the celebration?
He withdrew the Desert Eagle, finally.
Who should get this bullet?
Vega watched him. She didn’t say anything. She watched him. Was he supposed to ask for her permission?
No use crying over this shit.
Everybody died. It was part of the business of living. The only guaranteed liberty Hell had tried to steal from the human race. Hell, and assholes like Doctor Desjardins, Jim Traverse, Sutter—
This bullet was already spoken for. He pulled the trigger and watched the zombie’s head explode.
And then he bled all over himself.
ROSE
Every hallway looked the same. Every street. Every city. Every sunrise.
The world was quiet.
Not everywhere, though. And not here. The demon kept speaking to her. The demon was always there, comforting her, insulting her, showing her memories to break whatever soul she had left.
Jim had wanted her to help him. Selfish bastard. Was he always this way? There would be poetic justice for everyone. Her whole life was nothing but a shadow of his. She was nothing. And the demon constantly reminded her.
This is the only time you’ve ever had control.
Control—a strange idea.
She was a girl once, a girl who loved rock music and was ignored by her parents. Her relationship to them was almost nonexistent. She might not exist at all. A simple way to perceive life, until the strange boy who lived down the street visited her on the beach.
But now. The air tasted like revenge.
Against everyone, everything.
That’s the spirit.
Long hallways. Broken hallways. Jim sitting by himself in front of the Depot. The echoes of painful memories from a thousand realities blinked at her, stars in the vacuum of the mind.
Rose wanted him dead. She wanted him gone. She wanted to taste him in a million mouths. She wanted to kill him again and again and again.
Rose sat in a corner of the Depot’s 16th floor. There were two floors above her. Only two. But she was alone here.
Not really. Sitting across from her… no, it was a mirror.
This was not her. She did not have long red hair and emerald eyes.
What did Rose look like?
Not like Mina, you dumb bitch.
Mina tried to attack her memories. She could hear Mina’s voice somewhere.
But she was snapped back to reality by the damage she caused now. Rose heard the wild, savage scream of a man who was being torn apart. Sitting on a pile of glass, she watched a spider crawl over her fingertips.
Many weapons had been raided from the outlying neighborhoods, and there was one in particular that she knew was here. One that she couldn’t wait to use again.
Because, of course, Vega was going to make it this far. Rose would make sure of that.
The weapon was here on the 16th floor. Underneath a pile of old video games and hunting magazines. Barely sharp enough to ope
n an inflatable life raft, the katana was there, nothing more than a novelty item. Blood along the edge of its blade. Her blood, probably, or the blood of whatever body Traverse had given her to occupy.
Wasn’t that the point? To be his plaything, playmate.
A love story with a dramatic ending, the demon said. True love that will destroy the world. Beautiful. Truly beautiful. How can Heaven deny such a wonderful thing?
After Jim and Vega were both out of her life, the demon was next. Mina could wait.
We’re friends forever. We need each other. Mina didn’t appreciate me. Still doesn’t. Now look at her. I put so much time in that ungrateful girl. Her daddy is not happy with her.
Rose picked up the katana, got down on both knees, sat upright, and shoved the sword into her stomach.
She had no idea she was going to impale herself on the katana. The blade struggled to get through, and she twisted it around.
Nothing.
There was nothing to feel, because she was dead.
Oh, hahahahahahahahahahaha. That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. That’s funnier than presidential erotic asphyxiation. Do you know how many body doubles the United States has used? Hahahahahahahaha. You really thought you were alive? You thought just because you looked alive, you were alive?
Traverse. Her existence was his fault.
His turn was coming.
She remembered something.
There was that time on the beach. A strange boy walked toward her. Rose had bright white skin—almost bleached white? Where was this? Not California. Maybe just the summer. Hot. People on the beach. Rose alone on the beach. Parents were somewhere else. Where?
This might not be true.
She might have had a perfectly healthy childhood, and this was Jim’s warped corruption of her reflection; his own murder-poetry inscribed in her programming.
And he had just walked up, lean, tight, dangerous. Did this boy go to the same school? He looked familiar. She was painting her toenails, happy to be alone. The sun wasn’t so bad. She didn’t hate sunlight or anything like that. She just didn’t have anything to do outside. Painting her toenails was okay.
“You’re the girl down the street,” he said.
It took her a moment to realize he was talking to her. Standing there like that, looking down on her, made out of heat and flesh. Melting sweat. Was he trying to overpower her? She thought maybe she was supposed to be self-conscious, but nothing about his presence bothered her.
Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3) Page 37