Traverse tilted his head and his eyebrows shot up. "Indeed. Allow me to tell you about a poet named Charles Baudelaire…"
"Shut the fuck up! God damn you! Every sick fuck alive thinks the world revolves around them. But here we are! You and I were both born on battlefields. That's where we die. Today, tomorrow, or a year from now. I know why they locked you up, and I know why Mina was there, too. In the end, it doesn't matter."
"Interesting," Traverse said. "Do you believe?"
"Believe what?"
"Egypt."
"What difference does it make? It doesn't change a damn thing!"
"But it does change things. It changes everything."
"No!" Bob growled. "We're still soldiers. We fight because it's the only thing we know. I haven't changed, and neither have you. You're still the same sick fuck I tried to bring down. I remember that night, and you know what I expect, now. You know what I came here for."
Traverse nodded slowly. "I do. And I respect that."
"All my life, this is what I wanted. I always knew it. I don't need a cause or a country. I need war. I'm not here to save the world. I could give a shit."
Traverse tilted his head toward the opposite shoulder and stared at the concrete with his lips curled into a disappointed frown. "I didn't want to kill you. I thought it wouldn't be beautiful. I thought there wouldn't be any point. I wanted you to follow me, because there's still so much to do, so much to see. There are doors to be unlocked, gateways that must be explored. Now, I must end you."
Griggs took a step away from Bob. It had been so easy to kill Richard, and then Nikki. At his apartment, he destroyed his neighbor, Devon, without even thinking twice. He wasted the soldier who tried to rape Vega, and he easily murdered the woman at the house without blinking. Killing had come easy to him in the past few hours, easier than it should have been, but now, he found himself hesitating. He could easily waste Traverse where he stood, but his entire body locked up.
After all that killing, he couldn't pull the trigger now, when it mattered most.
Meekly, Mina said, "Don't hurt Patrick. I used to like him. I mean, if you really have to, I guess I won't mind too much. I might be sad for a second, but maybe it won't even be sadness. Maybe I won't care."
"You've made your decision then," Traverse squared his shoulders. "Even after everything we've been through, you don't want to see the final show. Hell is real, Bob, but I can't open the gates on my own. I thought maybe you would finally see things my way. Oh, well."
Bob spat while he shouted, and a fissure of light opened along the concrete and engulfed the veteran soldier as the sun broke through smoke and cloud.
"There's only one way out, isn't there? I'd piss all over this world to put out the fire, and then I'd light the son of a bitch up again. I was here, and I never asked to be remembered. I never wanted my name on a goddamn tombstone. My blood can run into the gutter. Maybe some flowers will grow. Shit. Life is beautiful for men like us! We know how much it's worth, better than anybody! My wife … she … fuck it."
Bob set his shotgun down, and Griggs understood that Bob wanted it, and all along, he'd wanted Vega to join him in death. He never expected to survive his mission, and victory, for him, would have been empty.
The corner of Traverse's mouth twitched for a moment as if attempting to break into a smile. Bob assumed a fighting stance, and the killer, dressed as a blood-spattered priest, simply walked up to him.
Bob swung and missed. Traverse arched his back and slid himself between a flurry of quick punches. Traverse didn't seem to be moving quickly at all, yet, he easily dodged each strike until he hooked his arm over Bob's and cracked the old man's elbow. Bob didn't scream, though he gritted his teeth and tried to reposition himself for another chance at his foe. Bob's face was exposed to the sky, and Traverse easily turned him while batting away each of his kicks with his other hand.
Traverse brought the side of his hand down upon Bob's sternum, whose entire body then curled inward on itself with the sudden shock of immense pain that no man should have survived. His eyes bulged out of their sockets, and he choked as blood rocketed out of his mouth and over his chin and chest. Traverse dropped him to the concrete, his arm twisted into a pose that was possible only from a broken doll.
"That was the best fight I've had in years," Traverse remarked while looking at Bob, whose head bounced off the concrete several times as he attempted to win the battle against the blood in his throat and lungs.
"He didn't touch you," Griggs suddenly intervened, though he regretted it. He'd been nothing more than an afterthought, and now, Traverse looked up at him.
"It was more beautiful than I could've anticipated," Traverse sniffled and wiped his nose. He stared at Bob for a long time, and then said, "He knew he was going to die, and he wanted to feel it. He wanted to experience it from a man he knew was his superior. I'm very pleased." He knelt down, picked up Bob's shotgun, and began to pilfer ammo and grenades.
"He's still alive," Griggs pointed out.
"Yes," Traverse replied. "He has three minutes, at least. Most men would have been dead already. He should be quite proud of himself."
The corpse that was attached to Mina opened and closed its jaw several times. "Maybe Patrick can come with us," she said.
Traverse stood with Bob's gear, his eyes still studying the dying man. "I'm sure he's quite the interesting man. After all, he stood by and watched Bob die." His cold eyes looked to the former detective, who didn't flinch or look away. "You may follow, if you wish. You may like what we find along the way. It will be quite… profound. It will test the limits of your imagination."
Mina put her hand on Traverse's arm. "The video… the one I made…"
Griggs swallowed. He didn't want this truth to be real. He didn't want to know what she was going to say.
"I told you to make sure nobody ever watched it," Mina said to Griggs. "I've learned a lot about myself. This is all partly my fault, and partly Jim's."
"Yes," Traverse said. "Hell is real, detective. Mina's told me all about your work, and while I admire your depraved mind, I wonder why you didn't destroy the video. Mina's soul is the temporal gateway on this plane to one of the gates… but that's all beyond you."
The Desert Eagle felt cold in his hand.
"Would you like to use it?" Traverse nodded at the weapon. "You're surely faster than I am, at this range."
He couldn't answer. The full weight of the world crashed upon his shoulders. He remembered Frank, the pot-smoking veteran who had been hammering away at his wife's corpse in front of the apartment. Griggs had reacted much the same way, ignoring reality and reveling in the bloodshed. But none of this was possible. Not zombies… not Hell…
He turned away from the scene, and Mina waved as she was led away in her nun's habit toward the gray Ford Focus. "Come and see us, Patrick. It'll be fun! We can make another movie together!"
Before she slid into the passenger seat, she asked Traverse, "Do you think I still need my medication? Jake used to always have it ready for me at this time…"
Griggs watched them drive away. A small group of corpses around the church were temporarily distracted by the car, but then turned and found the filmmaker again, standing in his bloody clothes with the gun in his hand while the sun was once again overcome by the polluted heaven. He'd professed emotions he never thought he would admit to, and Mina shunned him. He always knew she was damaged, but now she was completely gone.
There was nothing else left.
He knelt beside Bob and said, "Tell me. Traverse. Egypt."
The first thing Bob managed to say before dying was that Vega must never find out.
When the veteran finally expired, his wet lips hung open. The pink flecks of gore in the long, wiry beard reminded Griggs of a child's attempt to color within the lines. The dead soldier's thick chest no longer heaved, and he seemed lost in a drunken slumber.
"No," Griggs closed his eyes. "It's not true. It can't be true. You son o
f a bitch… what have you done?"
What Bob told him couldn't be real, but he only had to look around himself. He had only to think about what he had seen. He had spent most of his life among the dead; he had always been careful not to get blood on his boots, and he could spend his private moments hidden from the prying eyes of his wife while he watched the debasement of the flesh take place on his computer screen. Society never had a place for him. No man with morals could stand in the glare of moonlight and wonder what he might have for dinner while standing over the corpse of an adulterous wife.
This was the perfect place for him, the perfect world. It was made for him, and he no longer wanted it.
Griggs pushed his gun against the flesh of Bob's forehead.
"Goddamn you," the former detective closed his eyes and turned his head when he squeezed the trigger.
He screamed against the blank sky and against the birds that fled their refuge in the trees, beating their wings furiously away from the dreadful kingdom of the dead.
The former detective felt drunk when he walked away a few feet from Bob and sat down on the curb. Everything Bob had told him had reduced his universe to a mere speck. He felt incredibly small and confused. He felt compelled to tell someone, anybody, that he had been wrong about everything. Griggs was nothing more than a bloodthirsty monster, and if Bob was right, then his soul was already committed to eternal torment.
Where could he go? What could he do?
He removed his cell phone from his pocket and discovered that he finally had a signal. Who could he call? Who might still be alive?
Griggs couldn't overcome the bout of hilarity that possessed him. He laughed until tears flooded his eyes.
Who would care to listen to his lamentations about the apocalypse?
It had been so easy to kill, but he couldn't kill the man who stole Mina from him.
Sitting there on the curb, he watched the dead walk toward him while the Magnum hung from one fist, the phone in the other.
The lawyer. He was hardly a friend, but at least he knew about the video. Whatever had happened, Griggs wanted to know that it wasn't true—the video didn't have anything to do with what happened.
"You want to see something funny?" Griggs spoke to the corpses that were only a few feet away. "I'm going to tell my lawyer that I'm the one who caused all this. ME! I DID IT! With a little help from my lovely actress, I ended the world with a porn video!"
Much to his surprise, he heard another phone ring nearby when he pressed the "Call" button. He stood up and dragged his feet sleepily along the pavement that had been soaked in a tide of blood.
The cell phone was real, and it waited for him to pick it up. His lawyer, Desmond Hunter, had been here, near the church.
Griggs picked up the phone and understood at last that the world had ended.
VEGA
She knew that Shanna was a little girl and she needed to be saved. It was all she needed.
Vincent led her through the shattered neighborhood, his arms hanging dejectedly with all the resolve of wet clothes hanging from a line. He was already disconnected from the show, but Vega didn't need him for anything other than the girl, whoever she was, wherever she was.
Bob was certainly disappointed in her because she betrayed him, but he would get over it. She only hoped he found what he was looking for in Traverse, but their paths were fated to diverge. She understood this as His will. All her life, she'd been waiting for this moment, this test of her faith. She tortured herself and committed her body to a struggle that could never be won, yet, Detroit finally offered her the chance to desire selfless action.
She wasn't about to take any chances with Vincent. "Keep walking ahead of me," she said with Crater's M16 in her hands, "or beside me."
Vincent smirked. "I know what this is about. Truth is, a few hours ago I would have been thinking about it. I might already have you on the ground by this point. Way I figure it, the game has changed." He shook his head and laughed at something only he understood. "I always lived by my own rules, but the ones I never followed before seem to matter more than they ever did."
Vega didn't have time for his epiphany. "That's nice. That doesn't mean I trust you."
Vincent shrugged. "You believed what I told you. I could have been making it up."
"You didn't."
"No."
Vega sighed. Her head still pounded, and her patience was growing thin. She didn't want to admit that she made a mistake, but Shanna meant everything to her. "I believe you were allowed to live for a reason. This is what I have to do. Do you understand?"
The thug smirked again. "It don't matter what you believe, as long as you have something to believe in."
"Whatever you say. I need to know where Shanna might be."
"Don't know where she is," Vincent finally said, shaking his head. He stopped walking and they stood on the corner of a main street that had become a maze of smoking cars and lingering shadows. The breeze had already disappeared, succumbing to a heat that might suffocate the last remaining life out of the domestic animals that fled the madness of their dying owners.
Vega bit her lip. "Is this a bunch of bullshit?" her finger was poised over the trigger of Crater's M16. She had been too eager to look for the girl, but Vincent might have wanted the same thing Crater wanted, only he might have a crew waiting for the time to strike.
Vincent spoke lazily, his forehead shining with sweat. "Look, I ain't playing games. You shoulda just left me back there. I did everything I could to find her."
"No you didn't. You gave up, or else we wouldn't have found you."
"Fuck it. What could I do with her? How could I help her? I ain't no good, you know. Don’t know the first thing about kids. I know money, and dope. I know the streets. That's it."
"And you thought maybe you could pull a Scarface and kill as many as you could until they brought you down, but you were left standing. How'd you do it? A group of well-trained commandos couldn't do what you could do by yourself."
"Maybe because I knew I was going to die," Vincent replied.
"Help me find her."
"Yeah. Huh. She came this way. She's out here, somewhere. This is where I lost her."
She put a hand on his shoulder and forced his eyes to look into hers. "If you see her, no matter what… you tell me. You tell me and let me take care of it."
Vincent licked his bottom lip and looked away. He waved at the wreckage with his AR-15. "You might as well just call out for her. She ran beneath a car, and just kept going. She's got her own reasons for giving up on the whole idea of being saved."
Vega didn't waste another second. "Shanna!" she called. "SHANNA!"
Vincent laughed. "Seen this shit on TV before, know what I'm saying?"
She ignored him and walked down the road. She refused to see the lurking creatures that seemed extremely interested in both her and Vincent.
"Hey," Vincent said.
"I know," Vega said. "SHANNA!"
"You ain't paying attention…"
"I said I know!" she growled at him. "SHANNA! I'm here to save you!"
Her heart raced as the dead approached. They bounced against one another, a sliding, oozing mass of bloody limbs and exposed bone. Time was running out. Hundreds of them poured out of windows and stepped out of cars. They emerged from the doorways of abandoned houses as if they'd just awoken from a long, dreary nightmare. They were killers without conscience or ethics.
"We're about to do this," Vincent's voice shook.
"Not yet," Vega said while the thug followed her along the river of burning concrete beneath the boiling hot sky.
All around them, the dead awoke.
"You got a death wish," Vincent said.
"She's alive," Vega believed it in her bones. No matter how many of the creatures surrounded her, she wouldn't relent. In the light of day, their faces were more horrific, their unreality all the more profound. She could smell their blood and their rot, their feces and their sweat. They had b
een murdered in desperation, their mouths full of the screams they were doomed to swallow.
"I'll kill every last one of them," she said.
"I know you will," Vincent said.
He surprised her. Why didn't he run away? Why didn't he give up, or at least try to hurt her? Vincent was nothing like any other man she'd seen. He was more of a soldier than he might realize.
Before these last few hours had passed, she never felt incredibly mortal. Not in Afghanistan, when Miles had saved her life. In the streets of Detroit and in front of Eloise Fields with Bob, she knew she might die.
"SHANNA!"
"One more time around," Vincent said. "I'll do this dance until I collapse. I'm ready."
"Hold your fire," she said. "You said you lost her out here?"
"That's what I said."
"You're sure?"
He mumbled, "I'm high as shit. Ain't sure about anything. Ain't afraid of no dead people. I do what I do."
"Answer the question!"
Vincent positioned his rifle against his shoulder and swept it over targets as they began to close in. "No. I'm not sure of anything. Except these bullets."
The weapon rattled as he poured firepower into the fearless mob. Several bodies collapsed against one another, and a few made it to the pavement, but the crowd didn't stop. As one slithering organism, the dead, whose faces were still full of the color only the living could betray, pushed each other out of the way and climbed over cars.
"Hold your fire!" Vega shouted at him. "SHANNA!"
Vincent was impressive with his AR-15. He moved and reloaded like a professional, and she could tell by his posture that he likely had some military experience. He was adept at keeping the gun level while he took slow steps backward, his jeans sagging below his hips to reveal his plaid boxer shorts.
She began to recite the Lord’s Prayer while Vincent rained death upon the city's population. Heedlessly, more and more of them emerged; they encircled the infamous gangster while he reloaded and moved, though he was a step too slow.
There were no more grenades. No more second chances. She had ammo for the M16, and a little bit for the MP25. It was time to lay all the cards on the table.
Zombie Ascension (Book 1): Necropolis Now Page 23