The dead were falling. Their numbers had already thinned to almost nothing. Piles of bodies littered the ground. They were slow and cumbersome, and once again, Vincent had killed a whole lot of them.
All. Everyone.
He was just that good.
***
A few zombies around the outer perimeter that couldn’t make the trip with the rest of the stampeding herd were still coming their way.
Vincent stepped down from the Humvee and jogged over to them, his dress shoes clacking against the pavement. His expensive suit was splattered with blood, as it should be.
“You alright?” he extended his hand to Vega.
She shot to her feet and slapped him across the face. Before he could react, she wrapped her arms around him.
“We have to get back inside Operations,” Father interrupted them, “trust me.”
There wasn’t a chance to get pissed off about Traverse; the man was long-gone along with whatever conspiratorial scheme he took with him. General Masters had rambled about government involvement; he might have been more than a paranoiac, driven insane by his love for America and his own terrible knowledge.
“You thought I was dead?” Vincent said when they separated.
He was fishing for a compliment, but she didn’t have the strength to think beyond honesty. “You shouldn’t have left me. That’s the start of a bad habit.”
They ran across the field of corpses together. She nearly tripped over the katana, which was all that was left of Rose besides a few tufts of blonde hair; she might’ve been the bloody skeleton that looked as if it’d been dumped in a pot of spaghetti and sausage. Beside her was the dead-again body of the guy who’d been wearing the shirt with the graphic of the demon and the priest. Vincent stopped to pick up the sword; it was the only weapon they had between them besides Father’s Joe’s shotgun.
“I’m not leaving you,” Vincent said, flicking blood off the blade’s edge. “I let good people who counted on me die. I let Chanell and Louis die. I wasn’t around to help everyone who put me on top. I used to know what loyalty meant—I knew what it was supposed to mean for everyone else. I’m still standing here.”
The priest was already ahead of them. It would be easy to just take off now with Vincent, run away from whatever Father Joe was still trying to do, whatever redemption he was still looking for that cost people their lives. As far as she was concerned, the mission was over. Traverse was gone.
They followed anyway.
Before they entered, Vincent looked at her and said, “Thank me later.”
“For what? We had everything well in hand.”
Inside, a heavyset dead man stood in front of Father Joe, his neck scarred with purple and black bruises, his blood-stained belly hanging over his waist.
“Wait,” Father stopped them, “don’t move.”
At the zombie’s feet was a little blonde girl.
She was holding the dead guy’s hand.
“Alexis?” Father asked.
The girl nodded and looked up at the dead man whose fingers opened to release her. She stood next to the zombie and warily stared at the three blood-soaked strangers.
Only one of them could do it. Father Joe’s hands were wrapped in bits of shirt he’d ripped off a corpse outside, and Vega’s head started to go swimming without her. The headache was creeping in, and her hands felt like there were still guns in them, firing with abandon; tremors wracked her body, and she leaned back against the wall to keep herself from falling. Rose had inflicted enough damage.
The fight was over for Vega.
When Vincent knelt and opened his arms for the girl, Vega was already sliding down the wall. Alexis ran into his arms, and deep down, she knew this was an important moment for the gun dealer. He wanted this just as much as she had wanted to save Shanna. There was a shred of innocence that was preserved, something left over from the dying world that was worth fighting for.
“Mina’s still alive,” she could hear Father Joe’s voice, but it seemed to be coming from another room. “The zombie’s name is Jack. She promised Jack wouldn’t hurt us. She said she was inside him.”
Of course he believed it. The zombie stared at them, waiting for someone to either destroy it or accept it.
“Mina said they made her, did something to her,” Father Joe sat beside Vega against the wall, the strength draining from his body. “She said we can stop that man. She can help us.”
“You’re going to be okay,” Vincent said to Alexis. He wasn’t the kind of guy to make false promises, but everything he’d done so far showed he made good on his word.
***
It seemed like something out of a book; the singing of birds. They were distant, but from where she sat on the roof, she could still hear them.
This moment of silence was earned. The wriggling, crawling corpses that had broken apart all around the base looked like worms struggling through mud. Otherwise, there wasn’t any noise. Most of the dead that could still walk had changed their minds, likely from whatever influence the Jack / Mina thing had on them.
Vincent was down to a black undershirt but kept his dress pants. They sat together and enjoyed the quiet for a long time, bathing in the sunlight and the comfortable silence.
“Those dreadlocks look ridiculous,” she said.
“You didn’t say nothing about the shoes.”
“What about ‘em?”
“Gators. Damn expensive, too. Louis picked them out. Actually, he went with Chanell; they were brother and sister. The shoes were a birthday present.”
“You still have birthdays?” Vega looked at his metal smile, which caught the sun’s light and nearly blinded her.
He ignored her question. “Thought you were going to get more emotional when you saw I was back.”
“I’m still learning what I can give.” She pressed the flat of her hand against her forehead. The headache was just a fact of life, now.
“You feel like putting a damn shirt on?” Vincent asked.
“Why? You jealous? Don’t want any dead people trying to get their hands on this nice meal?”
“You look like a starving chicken,” Vincent said.
The witty comeback stopped short of her lips. She wanted to talk business with him, to make sense of it all.
“Griggs is dead, I think,” she started. “I don’t know for sure, but I have a feeling Jeremy’s gone, too.”
Vincent didn’t respond. He watched smoke rise above the tree line around the base. He should’ve been able to hear cars jet down the nearby freeway, but there was nothing. Life had stopped.
“There was a lot of blood in one of the conference rooms. There was a porno playing on a TV in the room. You could hear it, but Father said not to go in. He said he… felt something. Jack stepped in front of us and wouldn’t let us go in.”
“You could hear it?” Vincent asked. “A porno?”
“Maybe not. I could hear some moans, and I think I heard a man’s voice, but that’s it.”
“Seems like we missed something,” Vincent said. “We’re out of the loop. Don’t know what’s going on, don’t know why. Don’t know how bad it is.”
“I’m not in a hurry to find out,” Vega said. “They wanted Jim alive, and they got him. We treated it like an escort mission, not a rescue. But that’s what it was the whole time. Someone wanted him out.”
Father Joe wanted to make the trip to Egypt; he was a crusader now, and he believed whatever was happening could be stopped if he could just get to Traverse somehow.
Maybe it was worth fighting for. She felt at peace with Vincent, and she liked him more than she wanted to admit. She couldn’t help it. Maybe she was vulnerable, or maybe the headache was dulling her reason. Bob told her to find a reason to keep going, and she knew what it was she was looking for, now. Shanna was just a part of it; but it was a feeling she didn’t understand but had felt before, long before her father died.
“What was the point?” Vincent asked. “I feel like we
just won a war, but we didn’t stop nothing, or save nothing. Maybe ourselves. The girl. We did all that to get here, to stop that nigga from flying away.”
“That’s not why we did it,” Vega said. “Not really.”
She dropped her hand onto his shoulder and leaned against him.
“There has to be some beer on this base somewhere,” she said.
Vincent didn’t reply. He seemed content to enjoy the silence, rewarding himself with the sunshine and the company of a woman he respected.
“What next?” he asked a stupid question.
EPILOGUE
Jim sat in the main cabin with twenty heavily-armed and expendable mercenaries. Across from him, Colonel Mike Richards sat with a helmet on his head. Jim turned in his seat to look through the Chinook’s window; his war shrank into a map, the broken city beneath him smoldering while survivors carefully stepped onto their porches and blinked at the sun. Most of the undead had fled from the streets.
(And indeed, the survivors were stepping out into the sun, some of them looking up and wondering about the helicopter that passed overhead, and those who didn’t look had already given up on dependence from others; hope and strength resonated inside of them. Strangers locked hands and nodded to one another, filling the streets to look at the ruins of the world they once inhabited. They stepped fearfully over dead bodies and tried not to look for the faces of people they once knew).
Mina saved them, perhaps unintentionally.
He felt as if he’d eaten fast-food, the grease and salt settling to the bottom of his stomach and weighing him down. He was almost fifty, and he couldn’t believe time in Eloise Fields had dampened his skills. Meditation and exercise kept him sharp.
The feeling in his stomach was uncomfortable.
He allowed the priest to hit him and was rewarded with a sensation that existed only in memory for him.
Pain.
In a matter of seconds, everything he worked to achieve may have been stopped by the meddling priest.
Seconds.
Such was the conundrum that every plan, every strategy, must take into account: chaos and the human variable could overwhelm any angle; a tornado could destroy an art museum and a priest could save the world.
“The best laid plans of mice and men…” Jim mumbled to himself.
The “colonel” had a puffy face and had grown soft in the middle. His presence was more irritating than gratifying.
Even without Mina and her self-awareness, the video he broadcasted would do enough damage to set the rest of the world on fire. But still…
Colonel Mike Richards offered him a glass of bourbon. Jim looked at it.
“What’s on your mind, Jim?” he asked, withdrawing the offered glass and sipping from it. “You’re worried about Rose?”
“It’s not the first time she’s been killed,” Jim said while staring through the window.
The colonel chuckled. “Yeah, I almost forgot. A combat simulator chip. The first of its kind. Good thing I didn’t design the fucking thing. Cost millions.”
Rose was the least of his concerns. If the chip inside her head was undamaged, it could be retrieved and she’d have no recollection of her death. He killed her enough times to ensure the program’s success. The woman had no use for memories; as long as he remained the center of importance in her program, she could easily be remodeled.
The tiresome colonel wanted to talk. Much hadn’t changed over the years.
“Why’d you wait so long to call us in?” Richards asked.
“A nobler man, a braver warrior, lives not this day in the city walls,” Jim said.
“What?”
The man’s only exposure to Shakespeare was probably Romeo and Juliet. Once, the man had been a good soldier. A killer of the first order.
Now look at him.
“Mina’s dead,” Jim said. “I’m curious what your expectations are.”
“Shit,” Richards said. “I spent a lot of money to get your ass out. A lot of money was spent to keep you locked up, too.”
“All a waste,” Jim said. “It means nothing now. Your money… the experiments… the projects… your plan.”
Richards could sense he was being backed into a corner, but the bureaucrat that had killed the soldier Richards used to be was responding to Jim.
“Look, Jim, you understand this business. I did the paperwork when we came back from Egypt. I did things the right way. I didn’t go on a goddamn killing spree. I cleaned up after you. I hired the people who picked you up and I kept the nut house funded.”
Sweat. Desperation. Richards could still recognize death was imminent, but the sloth that invaded his bloodstream after sitting behind a desk and directing funds and designing missions caused him to hesitate. He should’ve drawn his weapon.
“Mina’s dead now,” Jim’s soft smirk arose, and his blinking slowed. “All the money you spent… wasted, like you said.”
“It’s not over,” Richards said. “I sent people in to pull your ass out, not hers.”
“The money…” The word was nice; filled with poison, a twisted variation of hope turned into enslavement to codes and rules, to signatures and dotted lines.
More mercenaries aboard the Chinook. All of them expendable. How much was spent on them? Did any of them want to be heroes?
“I told you I’d never forget Egypt,” Richards said. “I always knew there was a way, and we could have it for ourselves.”
“You did this all… for me. How touching.”
“You’re wounded.”
Jim ignored him. More important matters weighted on his mind. The priest. Mina’s death.
He was unsettled. Displeased.
And curious.
Richards was a distraction from a truth Jim couldn’t let go: zombies wanted nothing to do with the priest. That might be because Mina somehow protected him with her newfound talents, but she didn’t seem to have control of them in the rush of battle. The priest killed her, but why? Did he know from which realm she’d been born?
Seconds could be stolen, retrieved.
He would have to go back.
“Mina doesn’t matter as much as you think,” Richards tried, but it was too late. He must be weak or stupid, otherwise, the Richards who survived Egypt with him was dead. “So what if she’s dead? It worked. We don’t need her anymore. We didn’t know what the hell was going to open her head… I mean, did you know it would be a video?”
“A government project that was started and dropped years ago,” Jim wanted to make this worth his time. Here was the introduction before the curtains were drawn back from the stage.
“They gave up on it because they thought what we found in Egypt contradicted what they believed,” Richards slammed the rest of the bourbon down his throat. He then drained the glass he’d offered Jim.
“Money, like you said, wasted.”
“And here we are. We can finish this. We’re close.”
“We’re right where we started,” Jim said. “In a chopper, on our way to Egypt.”
“You’re fucking nuts, you know that?”
Sometimes, they get angry. Sometimes, they weep, or beg, or ask for long-dead parents to save them. They pissed themselves. They prayed.
Men who knew they were going to die, men who faced the gallows and couldn’t turn back from its inevitability.
Colonel Richards. The other man who returned from the first Egypt operation.
The smirk on Jim’s face widened.
A long time passed since he quoted Edgar Allan Poe.
“It was night,” Jim said, “and the rain fell; and falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was blood.”
The mercenaries were fast, but it didn’t matter.
Jim stood, pulled Richards to his feet, spun him around, drew his sidearm, and walked the colonel a few feet down the center as mercs leveled their weapons. There was shouting.
How many times had he lived in this moment? Years ago, his heart would’ve been racing. He wo
uld’ve been over-analyzing the situation and preparing himself to fail. To die.
He would give anything to be afraid, to believe there was a chance he might not succeed.
He fired the gun, pushed the colonel forward, crouched down, and leapt up, grabbing a merc’s M16. The colonel was only a few feet away and stumbling forward in that eye-blink’s worth of time.
Shooting everyone was boring. It wasn’t beautiful.
Within moments, the Chinook was heading back to Selfridge.
The End
Read on for a free sample of Bleeding Kansas: A Zombie Novel
From Detroit, Michigan, Vincenzo Bilof is the recipient of SNM Horror Magazine's Literary Achievement award in 2011. A member of the Horror Writers Association, Vincenzo is the author of The Zombie Ascension series and “Nightmare of the Dead”. His latest book happens to include aliens; “Gravity Comics Massacre”, available from Bizarro Pulp Press. A novel written as a collection of poems, “The Horror Show” is another one of his nonsensical works.
When he's not chasing his kids around the house or watching bad horror films, he reads and reviews horror fiction, though his tastes are more literary. He likes to think Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and Charles Baudelaire would be proud of his work. It’s possible the ghosts of Roberto Bolano and Syd Barrett are playing chess at his dining table. Forthcoming projects include “Japanese Werewolf Apocalypse”, and “Vampire Strippers from Saturn”. When he’s not writing awful biographies in third person, he works as an editor for Bizarro Pulp Press. You can check out his blog here: http://vincenzobilof.blogspot.com/
Gonzo is his favorite Muppet.
1.
This is it, the day we’ve been looking forward to for so long, and it’s not starting well. Claire wakes up feverish and phlegmy, too sick to drive me to the airport. There’s not much to say but sorry, hope you feel better, before she crawls back into bed.
The next thing I know I‘m loading my luggage into the trunk of the cab because it turns out the cab driver should have called in sick himself. “Hey, sorry, man, you know how it goes!” he says. “Ya don’t work, ya don’t get paid!”
The Queen of the Dead Page 31