Zombie Ascension (Book 1): Necropolis Now

by Vincenzo Bilof

  Vega could feel strength returning to her legs. She tried to put her feet down on the ground; she stumbled into Bob and once again felt incredibly weak. Bob wrapped his arm around her body and threw her arm over his shoulder so he could lead her.

  "Crater…" she tried to say. There was more. She wanted to curse his name for being the prick that he was, but thankfully, his corpse wouldn't rise again. The former detective had blown his head to pieces. She tried to wrap her thoughts around what was happening. There were several things she wanted to say, but when she tried to look up, she saw hundreds of people walking slowly toward them. People who were maimed beyond mortal comprehension.

  Bob and the porn guy quickened their pace. Both men were soaked in sweat and blood.

  Dead people emerged from the shadows. The sky burned. Nobody was left alive to scream or fight. The entire city seemed to be following them, dragging twisted ankles and broken legs.

  They'd crossed over to a suburban street; the neighborhood was composed of homes that could have belonged to a postcard from a fiction writer who dreamt of Armageddon before the dead conquered the living.

  Together, the trio turned and made their way across the street. The city's flame had been swallowed by the abyssal darkness—nothing here seemed to burn. Vega felt like a tourist observing ancient ruins or the ramshackle homes of an Afghan village.

  She wondered how much ammo the three of them had together and how much time it could buy them.

  Her head rolled back on her shoulders, and she looked for the stars that twinkled out of existence as dawn threatened to murder the night.

  JEROME

  He was convinced that he was still asleep. The walls of the church throbbed, and his stomach burned as if he swallowed a match. When his eyes opened and he awakened to find himself alone beside the dusty pews, his eyes never opened—he was simply awake, stepping from one realm of thought to another, one dimension of existence traded for something less preferable. The conflagration of noise hadn't existed when he drifted off to sleep. He remembered thinking that the end of the world was oddly silent. He had been thinking about Desmond—yes, his brother, who was dead. Eaten alive. His flesh consumed.

  The dead seemed to forget that survivors were grouped inside the church. Unlike the movies, where the corpses were drawn to human flesh like bees to honey—an analogy which rambled through Jerome's mind, bees and honey, bees and honey—the dead were easily distracted. They couldn't smell living flesh from miles away, no more than any living man could.

  But now they thundered on the church doors. They scratched against the walls. Jerome could hear them, and he knew he was no longer safe.

  How long had he been asleep? Where was everybody?

  Shouting and screaming within the church were a revelation: he had been forgotten in the midst of some other chaotic moment. The dead may have found their way inside.

  If he could be anything like Desmond for one moment, he would warn the others about Jim. He believed Mina's story, as strange as it was.

  Jerome worried about the little girl, Shanna.

  His bones ached, and needles of pain in his skull made him feel more alive than he had in days. The only way to drive the pain away was to get another fix. Maybe Vincent could help him somehow.

  Jerome steadied himself against the wall and walked deliberately toward the source of rage that echoed throughout the entire church. Whatever was happening had drawn the dead to their sanctuary. A woman screamed, as if the dead were murdering her, her flesh ripped from her bones by human teeth.

  He could hear Derek shout, "Let us in there, you son of a bitch! Let us in!"

  The scream confirmed Rhonda was in pain. "My arm! Oh please, God have mercy! Don't hurt me anymore! I'll do anything…,” she sobbed uncontrollably, while fists pounded on doors. Jerome felt like the entire world was shaking around him, and it was all he could do to keep his balance.

  "Let her go!" Derek roared.

  Jerome found them in the hallway. Derek shoulder charged a door while Rhonda begged and cried. Vincent stood back with his gun in his hand, shouting curses. Where was Rhonda's shotgun?

  Sweat slipped into Jerome's eyes, blurring his vision. Bile burned the back of his throat, and a wave of nausea caused him to stop against the wall and wait for it to pass. Was he the only one who remembered the shotgun? He put his hand out to stop Derek, but nobody seemed to see him. Shanna sat against the opposite wall, her face buried in her hands.

  "Wait," Jerome said weakly.

  "Back up nigga!" Vincent put his hand on Derek's shoulder. "I'm about to shut this mutherfucker down!"

  Derek fought him off. "You might hit Rhonda! JIM! DO YOU HEAR ME? LET HER GO, DAMN YOU! DON'T DO THIS! WE HAVE TO BE BETTER THAN THE MONSTERS!"

  Jerome heard the shotgun blast and watched the door explode in shattered wooden splinters in slow motion. Derek jerked backward and his chest and stomach seemed to be covered in red paint. He shook his head back and forth, his dreadlocks waving around his face, and he stumbled backward into the wall and slumped into a pile of mortally wounded man. Shanna screamed louder than Rhonda did.

  Jim poked his head out the hole in the door. "You're all rather ungrateful, I must say. I'm doing my best to contribute to our survival."

  A frying pain sizzled. Steam rose out of the room behind Jim.

  Rhonda had stopped screaming.

  Jim's expressionless face focused on Vincent rather than on the moaning, dying Derek. His face cracked into a smile and rows of neat, white teeth were exposed between his red lips. "You would do well to wait until I'm done here. I thought you a rather interesting man, until you threw in your lot with Derek. He's still alive, I see."

  "Rhonda lied to us," Jim said. "Her weapon is fully loaded, and I found it odd that she was able to use the weapon so well. I learned she was actually a police officer who abandoned her partner. She was undercover, coincidentally, and she was looking for someone named Vincent Hamilton. Did she scream too loudly? I hope she didn't wake the dead."

  Vincent's chest heaved and he kept his gun pointed at the floor. "You're a dead cracker."

  Jim, who Mina had referred to as an artist, turned to Jerome, his eyes black and narrow, a sheen of sweat above his upper lip. Not a single hair was out of place on his head. "Jerome, I would like for you to find Mina. I'm doing this for her, after all. Bring her to me."

  Jerome's stomach growled as the smell of frying meat reached his nostrils. His hands twitched and his nerves rejected his desire to walk.

  Jim disappeared back into the kitchen. Vincent knelt beside Derek.

  "It's okay," Derek choked out his words. "You have to do it, Vincent. You just have to die to be… one of them. Do it, please. I won't be one of them."

  Jerome struggled with his next steps. It was all he could do to stay upright. Mina had been right about the man, and Jerome was too late to warn anybody. If he hadn't been so damaged from the drugs, he would have had the power to do the right thing. He could have saved lives.

  Vincent struggled with his new responsibility. He wasn't the heartless street tough he pretended to be. He tapped his forehead with his gun and stared wide-eyed at Derek's decimated body.

  "You have to take care of Shanna," Derek said, his eyes momentarily flickering to Jerome while the druggie passed.

  He wanted to lie down and die. It was the only way to escape the nightmare his brother had left him in. What was the point of Desmond saving his life? Jerome couldn't get a fix—how could he survive?

  Waves of noise assaulted his ears, and he cringed with each painful step. Shanna's sobbing followed him down the hallway. His face itched miserably, and he leaned against the wall while he walked.

  He could smell the cooking meat, and he thought of ham.

  Mina emerged from a flight of stairs, and she was leading another person behind her by the hand; a tiny old nun in her habit, her head leaning against her shoulder because there was a large hole in her throat.

  "Oh, hi Jerome," Mina s
topped and the nun swooned on her feet. "I was just bringing some friends up from the storeroom. This is Sister Beatrice. She's a zombie. Father James is downstairs. I couldn't bring him up because Sister Beatrice ate his legs."

  Jerome didn't know what to say. Now he knew he was dreaming. He was a slave to his own decimated consciousness.

  Mina led the nun past Jerome and down the hallway. Shanna's scream intensified.

  "Ain't no way!" Vincent shouted. "Get away from her! Get away!"

  Mina let go of the nun's hand. "I just thought we could all be friends. Why not let me eat you, Vincent? Or maybe you could help me find Patrick."

  "Close your eyes, sweetheart," Derek choked out his words to Shanna. "Vincent, take care of it. You have to take care of it."

  Shanna shot to her feet and ran down the hallway past them. Mina stepped aside and allowed the nun to walk toward Vincent, who looked from Derek to the nun, and then back again.

  "Do it," Derek moaned.

  Vincent blew the dying man's brains out against the wall. Derek's head slid to the side and the blood on the wall glistened with chunks of brain. Vincent pointed his gun sideways at the nun and blew a hole through the back of her head. The nun crumpled, and Vincent shook his head frantically.

  "Fuck fuck fuck!" There were tears in his eyes and he leapt up and down like a petulant child. "You stupid bitch! Damn it! FUCK!"

  Jerome held his stomach and leaned against the wall. Derek was dead. Mina was insane. Jim was a psychopath. Desmond was dead. All of these things somehow made sense. They were acceptable facts, because he could have anticipated them if he weren't a fragmented human, a rendition of his brother's likeness.

  He closed his eyes while his head spun around the stars. Shanna still screamed, somewhere, beyond rainbows and realms best left undiscovered. Tonight, a little girl might die. Vincent shouted and cursed, and Jerome couldn't help but smile. Yeah. Maybe Vincent could get drugs.

  Maybe Mina was a drug unto herself.

  ***

  Jerome's body shuddered while his smile stained his lips. The inside of his eyelids became orange fireballs, burning against his retinas, and yet, he remained. Stoned or hopefully stoned. His mother admonished him for being a piece of shit. His brother asked him how he was doing and gave him money because he didn't know what else to do. Push the needle in. Surrender to oblivion.

  Shanna screamed for years, while Jerome's smile touched opposite oceans. He was a man between walls, or at least, he was a man made up of walls. Without such a discernible border, he was nothing. Boundaries defined him.

  His eyelids seemed to open of their own volition. He was curled up on the floor near a puddle of blood. He stretched his aching neck and glanced down the corridor to see Derek, only a few feet away from him, lying against the wall as if he were asleep. The big man was covered in gore.

  The lights were off, yet sunlight filtered in through every open pore and through each door's cracks. He could smell breakfast cooking somewhere. Flies buzzed around Derek, yet the dead man didn't seem to mind because there was a hole in his head.

  Jerome stood and stretched. A nun lay dead in the hallway, face down, forgotten. Blood and rot mingled with the smell of meat. Jerome felt alive and awake, his body responding in ways it hadn't before he passed out.

  "Desmond?" he called out. His throat was parched. He needed water, and he needed to eat.

  After shaking his head several times to clear the cobwebs and rubbing his eyes for several seconds, he walked down the hallway again. He'd been there before, in another lifetime. He had a headache but he hadn't been drinking; of this he was sure, because he wasn't a fan of alcohol. Drugs were another thing altogether.

  Now it all becomes clear.

  The crack house. The nude woman eating a guy who was just minding his own business, trying to escape life by exploring a variation of death. Running. A moment in a garage. A dead boy. A church. Desmond's corpse opened and exposed for the sun to burn. A church. Mina. Something impossible and deadly in the middle of a shaking church. Vincent shouting after a crying little girl.

  "No," Jerome uttered a single word of protestation against the fucked-up world. "No! Desmond! I'm still alive!"

  A face poked into the corridor from one of the rooms. A statuesque man who may have lived during the fifties or during the Roman Empire. His black hair was combed neatly to the side, yet his unblemished, shiny cheeks were cherubic and firm.

  "You're finally awake!" Jim shouted at him. "Breakfast is served! I worked hard to make dinner for you last night, and you rudely passed out. I forgive your lack of manners, but only if you're willing to grace us with your presence. Thankfully, Mina was hungry last night, and was able to make sure we didn't have leftovers. Considering that we're in the middle of an apocalypse, you should be grateful for every meal you can get. Come on!"

  Jerome stepped over the dead nun and walked past Derek. His entire body shut down momentarily; he froze as fiery pain surged through all of his limbs and along the length of his spine. He gritted his teeth and planted his palms against the sides of his head. There was no escape from the pain of living. A spider scampered along the ceiling above him, and he knew, beyond a doubt, that he needed another fix and it wasn't going to come anytime soon.

  The tiny kitchen included Jim standing over a pan with cooked chunks of meat idling in grease, waiting to be consumed. The walls had been slashed with arcs of blood. The entire room had been painted with red stains that dried and crusted over in places, creating rainbows of red; scarlet, crimson, and ruby—even the ceiling had been touched with the Kool-Aid stains of blood. The kitchen could have been the size of a small bedroom or a large bathroom: there was only the stove, a dishwasher, fridge, and four tiny cabinets.

  Jerome had a difficult time understanding exactly what was lying against the fridge, but he took a long second look. Piles of skeletal limbs still clad in yesterday’s tattered clothes were piled on top of one another. The skull had been scraped free of flesh, while the fillings in the teeth were touched by a ray of red light, which poured through a tiny, rectangular window that was positioned over the sink, a window splashed with blood. The room was stuffy and damp—the kitchen wasn't immune to the effects of the humid, sticky morning.

  A mane of red hair poked out of the mess. Mina was wrapped in Rhonda's skeleton.

  Although he hadn't eaten anything in days, Jerome's stomach rejected liquid chunks, and he turned outside of the door as his entire body heaved. When he finished, he could still smell the kitchen's gory horror; feces mixed with blood and body odor.

  "Well?" Jim planted his hands against his hips. A bloody axe rested against the wall near Rhonda's shotgun.

  Jerome realized he was staring into the room through a large hole that had been shot out when Derek was brought down. He opened the door and stepped in. His stomach growled again, but he didn't want to beg.

  Jim gestured toward the skillet. "Rhonda was quite an interesting woman. I would have eaten her myself, and actually, Mina here would have eaten all of her, but I managed to convince her that we should save some for you. I worked hard to chop Rhonda up into pieces, and I would be remiss if Mina was a bit selfish and refused to share this special occasion with someone else."

  "Uh…" Jerome didn't know what to say.

  "Don't act like it's a big deal," Jim said. "If you want to refuse my hospitality, then let this be your last moment of peace. Most people discount me as a generous person, but I'm nothing but generous. I understand the limits of sensation and pleasure, and I explore them. I share them. Rhonda wanted to survive the world's end, but I told her she was a fool. She was already dead, you see. There's no room left in the wasteland for idealists."

  Jerome stared at Mina, who planted her hands neatly on her thighs and blinked like a child who was willing to learn about the world through the experiences and stories of a beloved hero.

  Jim continued. "Why do you hesitate? Civilization has been destroyed. I wish you could behold the genocide in all
its glory. But we're here. Alone. I've done my utmost to make sure you're comfortable before you die. I've cooked for you, but you're not very thankful. This is disconcerting, to say the least."

  "I don't know what to say," Jerome confessed. "I don't want to die."

  "I'm afraid that can't be helped, for anyone, really. Your brother died gruesomely, didn't he? But it would seem there was no other way for him. His martyr complex was obvious."

  Jerome swayed on his feet for a moment, unsure how to react. Jim was dangerous, and his dementia knew no boundaries.

  "Rhonda gave her life for you," Jim said. "If you don't eat, Jerome, you'll starve. Don't let her sacrifice be for nothing."

  "I'm not about to eat Rhonda. You say all kinds of shit like you know what you're talking about, but you're just crazy, man."

  "You've got me dead to rights," Jim shrugged.

  "You shot Derek. He's dead."

  "This is true," Jim Traverse smirked. "Maybe you want to say a few words to remember him by."

  "Where's Vincent?"

  "Chased after the little girl. Who cares?" Jim scraped the pan and seized a chunk of meat with his fork. He shoved it into his mouth and rubbed his hands together to remove the grease.

  "Tell you what," Jim said around a mouthful of food. "I want to see something beautiful. Rhonda was a vibrant woman, and very much alive until I chose to make her death a memorable experience. Jerome, you're going to fuck Mina, and then you're going to eat her. Since you don't want Rhonda, maybe you need something more… alive?"

  Jerome took a step back out of the room. "You're crazy."

  "Why don’t you say something original, for once? I know how to make your pain go away. I can give you what you need."

  Jerome shook his head frantically. "No. I don't believe you. It ain't working out this way."

  "It hurts, doesn't it? Your entire body longs for just a taste. Your brain seems to weigh hundreds of pounds inside your skull, and it hurts. You don't want to move but you must. You want to sleep but you can't. Everything seems to be moving too fast for you to comprehend. It's only going to get worse, but you already know this, don't you? You've battled it before. But now, there's a limitless supply. It's all there for the taking."