Denise sighed. “I’m okay with the idea. We’ll pick up anyone we find along the way.” She looked to Jack and said, “I think I’d feel better if I stayed to help. I’ve got some acres in Richmond, a little barn with chickens and goats. It’s a few miles from here, but we can make it. There won’t be too many of those things out that way.”
It sounded like a great idea. Jack could picture himself living on a farm and watching for corpses to step across an empty field. He imagined being at peace, accepting what happened and doing his best to empty the poison his brother had poured into his soul.
“I want to help as many as we can, Officer,” Jim nodded. “God bless you and everything you do.”
Jack noticed the tiny smirk on the man’s mouth.
***
Traffic control towers smoked after being reduced to burning pillars during the initial battle. The majority of the active aircraft was gone, leaving the base looking like nothing more than a large golf course littered with bullets and corpses.
Where all the planes had been, there were only puddles and piles of dead bodies where flies gathered. The sky looked like cranberry Kool-Aid; flame, smoke, and rain over the battered airfield reflected the bloody puddles through which the corpses walked. The concrete looked like the floor of a pig farm, with random tidbits of flesh and clothing splattered all over the pavement. Only a few corpses lingered on the well-manicured, rain-damp lawn.
The runways, like the hangars, were empty. The Air National Guard had taken off. Why were thousands of people abandoned by the soldiers who swore to protect them? Hundreds of men and women had made their last stand, but even more had fled. Was the whole state a lost cause? Did the armed forces pull out only to live to fight another day, or defend a position that was more important?
As Jack jogged behind Denise, the loneliness and desolation he felt when he looked over the airfield nearly froze his limbs. Nobody wanted to save these people, but there was Keefe and the cowboy, and the priest; there was still goodness left. There was humanity, and Jack only wished that he were just as courageous as they were.
And there was no home to go back to.
There were no more screams; only the sound of the falling rain and the silence the dead trailed. Twisted ankles dragged across the runways, body armor splattered with blood, the proud men and women who gave their lives to defend the base at all costs. He knew his underwear was soiled, and his wet shirt clung to his bulging belly, but none of that mattered.
The trio paused beneath a long parking structure where planes were worked on during the day. A lone Thunderbolt jet was parked, and Jack leaned against one of the wheels to catch his breath. Father Jim didn’t seem to be breathing heavily at all.
“How long do you think you’ll survive?” The priest asked them, his hands on his hips while he surveyed the airfield.
The question was odd. Denise glanced over at him and they let the words hang in the damp air until the priest turned around.
“It’s an existential question,” he explained. “How many hours, minutes, or seconds do you have left?”
Denise crouched with the gun hanging from her hand. “Shit, Father. You’ve been spooked. There’s no time to think about things like that.”
“No… time,” Father Jim’s brow furrowed. “Heaven and Hell are real, so time ultimately means nothing if mortality itself has no value. But we’re all slaves to imagination. We picture orchards full of lilacs where mansions or castles are perched beside endless oceans. We are princes and princesses. We’re going to be rewarded for experiencing life. For suffering it. We believe life is a test so we can be rewarded with eternal peace, so we battle the beast within, or demons, or each other for that chance at paradise.”
“A sermon?” Denise asked, gathering her breath. “Father, I think we should just get you somewhere safe. You’ve seen a lot. Hell, we all have. I need you to keep it together for me.”
Father Jim stared at her for a long moment. Slow, shambling corpses had spotted them and were making their way toward the parking structure; in their eagerness, a couple of them tripped over their own feet and fell onto the lawn. The dead were spread apart, but if they waited too long, the zombies would cluster together and become more dangerous.
“I think we should go,” Jack said.
Father Jim sighed. “We will, yes, we’ll go. To the undiscovered country, from which no man returns.”
Denise stood and approached the priest. “You can help a lot of people, people who want to see you, to know you’re okay. I think we need you more than you think.”
“Of course,” the priest said. “They want me to share my vision of hope, and I will. I’ll kill everyone to free them of their curse.”
Denise’s mouth was still open when Father Jim grabbed and twisted her wrist; he used his momentum to swing her around so he could duck beneath her arm and elbow her in the ribs—a loud crack was enough for Jack to know her ribs were broken. The gun went off before it flew out of the officer’s hand and skittered across the cement. The magnum’s shot produced an ear-ringing echo. Jack blinked, and in that motion of eyelids, Denise was cuffed to one of the corner posts that held up the parking structure above their heads.
Before Jack could process what was happening, the priest kicked him hard in the stomach. He doubled over, clutching his gut. Pain exploded throughout his stomach, causing him to gasp while his vision blurred.
The priest was calm. Denise hung limply from the post, her wrist twisted in the cuffs, her head bowed while she coughed up blood.
The dead were still approaching.
“How inconvenient,” the priest remarked while looking at his shin; the magnum’s bullet had grazed his leg, cutting through fabric, blood running down into his black shoe.
Once again, Jack had proven to be useless. He groaned as something inside his stomach twisted and churned. His bowels evacuated whatever was left.
“Cocksucker,” Denise spat, trying to lift her head to look at the priest.
“The inevitable vulgarities,” Father Jim said. “I always wonder what goes on in someone’s head when they know the end’s coming. How does a cancer patient make peace with life, when they’ve been told they have months or weeks left?” He turned to Jack. “I need your shirt, friend. I can’t kill everyone on a bum leg. Besides, at least I’ve given you a few more hours. You don’t have to be eaten. Let the internal bleeding kill you. It’ll hurt for a bit, but you should feel good that you helped the man who put the world out of its misery.”
Jack’s limbs wouldn’t respond as the agony spread through his chest and arms. The priest ripped his shirt off and turned his body over on the cement; the shirt he’d had since he was a freshman in high school was wrapped around the mad priest’s leg to stop the bleeding.
“Nothing else to say?” Father Jim frowned at Denise. “Where’s the confession? The epiphany? This is my favorite part.”
“Not from me,” Denise said. “Made my peace a long time ago. It could’ve happened yesterday, a year ago. It’s all the same.”
“Send my regards to the Devil,” the priest said as he walked into the rain.
Jack still couldn’t process what was happening. A cruel twist of fate, a beacon of hope and humanity in the thunderstorm betraying whatever restoration in the human spirit he seemed to observe. Jerry would be laughing if he saw this happening. Jerry would be happy; he would’ve loved the crazy priest.
After surviving the massacre in the hangar, he was going to die, anyway.
He crawled toward Denise, whose attention was focused on the dead black woman who staggered forward; her head hung over her chest and rolled between both shoulders, her arms hanging at her sides, her soaked tank top and shorts indicating this woman had been enjoying an uneventful summer day when a hungry corpse bit into the back of her neck. There were four others trailing behind her. One of them wore the gear of a Canadian Forces soldier.
“Do they think I’m gonna cry?” Denise croaked.
He ha
d to get to his feet. He had to find a way to save her. This was his time to be strong.
“Forget the gun,” she said. “Last round, nothing left.”
How could this happen? How could this woman die trying to protect him? You fat piece of shit! You deserve to suffer! You deserve to watch her die because it’s your fault anyway. Jerry again, reminding him who he was.
Shirtless, his pale, flabby flesh smacked against the ground while he inched forward. He did all he could to ignore the pain and his brother’s mocking voice. If he was going to die, he wouldn’t abandon her. They weren’t going to die alone.
He could make this choice for himself, and his fearful mind didn’t imagine what it would feel like to have teeth rip his skin apart, hands digging through his innards. He didn’t want to be a part of this shitty world anymore, and if the priest had dealt him a mortal blow, then he would die beside a hero.
Jack reached up and grabbed hold of her neck. He buried his face into her shoulder and surrendered. “I’m sorry… so… fucking sorry. You did all you could…”
He wept because he wanted to. She was a stranger, but these were the tears Jerry wouldn’t let him shed, the pain he wasn’t allowed to feel.
Her Harley-tattooed hand squeezed his wet fingers.
Denise said hoarsely, “You got a brother. I know… I know your eyes. I busted him a couple times for stupid shit. I never forget… but you’re nothing like him.”
It didn’t matter that he was the only one crying. She was strong enough for both of them. He could feel her iron will, her fierce eyes that refused to look away from the black woman who kept coming, feet dragging through the grass. Jack could hear the grass move, the heavy, unbalanced steps being sucked up by mud.
The dead weren’t moved by emotion or martyrdom.
“That woman coming for me, maybe she was a mother and a wife, but she’s still a killer. That priest is going to hurt people. You gotta get his ass. You might have a few minutes left. You can’t let anything happen to Ed or Alexis. Do what’s right.”
Father Jim said he would die. His belly would feel better if the pain inside was ripped out by the dead and devoured. He would be free of the pain, and he’d never have to feel it again. It would be over in just a few minutes. But there was still Ed and his little girl. Just like there had been the cowboy, who fired his revolvers into a crowd of dead with his back to the wall. A man who didn’t owe the human race a damn thing.
“Get yer ass moving,” Denise said.
She had a lot of strength left; she pushed him away with her remaining hand, and he looked at her determined face. Denise was focused on the dead woman, whose shadow passed through the hellish glow from the burning control towers and the eerie sky. The dead Canadian soldier followed on her heels.
Jack grunted and grimaced against the pain; he thought of smoking acid and pictured his insides being cooked in a pan on a hot stove. He held on to his side as if his organs might explode outward. It was nearly impossible to move.
He turned around. The dead woman knelt beside Denise.
“Have some of this, bitch,” Denise shouted. “Come get a taste.” She pulled the corpse forward by the hem of its tank top and shoved its head against the pole. One-handed, she held on to the back of the corpse and slammed it forward with her knees. With a powerful war cry, she wrenched her broken hand out of the cuffs.
She could’ve gotten out, but she waited. She really did make her peace a long time ago.
She was buying him time.
Three human shapes surrounded her. The woman lay twitching face-down on the cement. Jack wanted to go back; she wasn’t going to die!
Denise cold-cocked the Canadian in the head. Ignoring all pain, she whirled and struck another, the details of the battle lost in the darkness and rain.
“HAHAHAHA! That doesn’t even hurt mutherfucker!”
Jack turned away. Her voice followed him; not even thunder could drown her out.
“Is that all you got? Come on and get some more! Does that taste good? Huh? Yeah? DOES IT TASTE GOOD MUTHERFUCKER? DO YOU LIKE THAT? I’M STILL HERE! I AIN’T SCREAMIN’ OH GOD, YOU MUTHERLESS, GODLESS WHORE, EAT SOME OF THIS, EAT SOME, COME ON COME ON COME ON YEAH. TASTE IT. YEAH! HAVE SOME MORE!”
“You’re nothing like him,” she’d said. It was the only nice thing Jack could remember anyone saying about him.
MINA
Not even the creature Traverse left behind to finish her off wanted to taste her flesh. The zombie’s eyes didn’t seem to see her, and as she wandered the streets covered in gore, not a single corpse displayed interest in her. She moved among them as if she didn’t exist. She was a ghost. Maybe she was already dead. Maybe none of this was real, and her nightmare had extended itself into a special hell reserved for her alone.
The rain didn’t wash away the blood, nor did it cure the growling in her stomach, or the nausea, or the shivers, or her aching bones. Her universe was composed of pain. She wandered into drug stores to find her medication, but found the pharmacies bare. She wouldn’t know exactly what she needed, even if she found anything.
The dead ignored her.
Soaked by the rain, corpses walked like pedestrians who were leaving a sports event in which their team had lost and would never win anything again. The dead grasped at walls and hung out in doorways. Scattered screams and gunshots had become familiar, and their absence produced greater terror, like a bill that was supposed to have been paid six months ago. For the last twenty-four hours, genocide had spared no soul of its tragedy.
She walked but didn’t know where she was going. Her head was filled with the tired rambling of a thousand voices. She heard Daddy, Jim, Patrick, Jake, Jerome; she heard Vincent and Rhonda, Shanna and Derek. She was back at the church and then standing outside the church. She heard Desmond’s voice in a garage, hollow and angry at the same time. She was in her cell and she was out of her cell. She was having sex in front of a camera, and there was another voice.
A voice that spoke very clearly, as if it came from behind her.
What does your soul long for?
She didn’t know how old she was. Blank spaces occupied her history; lying on her back while her Daddy gave her chores to do—walking through alleyways until a man in a sport jacket grabbed her hand and led her to a strange place, a man who became Patrick. Videos and long nights, conversations in the dark. A bed turned into a lake of blood, the police removing her from the scene. Maybe there was a trial. A cold cell with her hands folded neatly between her thighs, patiently waiting for Jake to come back with a message from Jim, who admired her.
Her life, collected in pieces.
Now you know who you are. Now you know what you are.
Patrick was out there; he showed her what it meant to be a woman.
Sleep or death. Rain or blood. Expensive cars abandoned to a wasteland of metal. Burnt husks lying inert in skeletal vehicles, fire rending the fleshless corpses unto a state between barbecue and ash. Blood draining into the street with water. Paper and clothes soaking into the concrete, stamped there forever. A random burglar alarm from a store or a car provoking a response from wayward zombies who seemed bored with existence.
Exhausted from life, Mina wrestled with a corpse and pounded on it with her fists. A dead policeman, a young man with his throat torn out and half his face missing. The dead man refused to respond to her plight, and she wept upon its shoulder, holding tightly to the unbalanced corpse. She sobbed into the uniform until her tear ducts were dry, the water on her face drowning her emotion in uniformity with the rain.
She dragged her poisoned body across the Gratiot Boulevard, with all its storefronts and gas stations, car washes and fast food restaurants. This used to be one of the streets where kids would cruise around on a Friday night, looking for a party or a quick thrill, showing off music systems and hydraulics, while cops watched from parking lots. Innocence faded into the thunder, dying with the rumble.
Zombies marched toward shopping centers where pe
ople had taken refuge; the screams of the newly-murdered drifted along the street and settled into the damp air. Early evening filled the clouds with new darkness, as Mina shuffled along the street with her bare feet, wondering if she should eat, wondering if she was already a zombie. What was the difference? She’d eaten part of the man Jim gave her, so her stomach was supposed to be full.
You will never be satisfied.
Water flooded some of the suburban side streets, as trees and electrical lines still burned, while a gift-set assortment of cars in blue, red, gold, and white lay crumpled against each other, the might of man’s ingenuity and craftsmanship wasted. The machines were better off dead. No amount of rain could stop the world from burning.
Walking, walking, and walking. Firelight reflected in rain puddles. She felt like she was back in Detroit, liquid fire reflected in the black sky, still blanketed by clouds. Explosions or thunder—it was all the same.
When she heard a voice calling from across the street, she confused it with the mocking beast in her head. How long had she been wandering? Where was she in this desert of death, where the asphalt had been painted in blood? She kept walking.
“I know you’re still alive.”
A man’s voice filled with powerful reassurance, like a man who narrated a trailer for a new comedy film starring Seth Rogen or Adam Sandler, maybe even both of them. Walking, still walking.
“I know you can hear me.”
Nobody was alive out here, least of all her.
“I can help you.”
Stay away from him. He’ll kill us both.
A shape stepped through fire-mirrored puddles, a broad-shouldered man whose face radiated the heat of the ashen ruins around them. A smile stretched beneath his crooked nose, and his hands were folded in front of him like a compliant monk or eager car salesman. Around them, zombies tripped and fell over curbs or bumped into car doors that had been hastily thrown open ages ago, in another lifetime.
A priest, like Jim. Only this was the real thing. Maybe.
The Queen of the Dead Page 17