Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3) (29 page)

“I can’t kill Jim. I can’t kill him. I will look into the face of corruption and die laughing, because it is all we can do. I need you, Amparo.
You
must kill him. You must.”

He dropped her and looked around as if addressing a large audience. He placed the megaphone to his lips.

“This is MY VISION!” Sutter said, and then bent over to retrieve the megaphone. “I MADE THIS! ME ME ME!”

Lying on her back now, waiting for her muscles to uncramp, waiting for the world to stop spinning. Sutter knew what he was doing, all right.

When Rook began shoving a hotdog into her mouth, Desjardins had pinned her down.

***

“THEY CALL HIM THE BONE MAN!”

There was Vincent against a wall, half-asleep, surrounded by a rib cage. No. A cage made of bone, with a spinning bone mobile hanging above him from the ceiling. Vincent wasn’t awake. She wanted to tell him to wake up, but her mouth felt like it was filled with cotton. It wasn’t.

“THE BONE MAN IS AWESOME! THE BONE MAN IS YOUR FRIEND! HE WILL SAVE YOUR SOULS!”

And now, drugs.

ROSE

Hands stretched through the wet strands of her hair. Rose could feel the hands in her hair, and she could hear a million voices in her head.

She opened her eyes and looked at the sky. Cradled like a baby in a baptismal font. Rose felt the hands holding her. Above her the orange sky was being dragged down by the sun.

Her head was propped up, and she looked into Jim’s stoic face. This must be the Detroit River. He had likely bathed her in the ice-cold water. At the very least, Jim was vain, and aesthetics pleased him. He would want her to be clean.

Everything according to his vision, according to his will.

No more visions of lives she didn’t know or understand. All she wanted was to stand next to him, tell him she didn’t hate him, tell him she accepted everything. He had always been her world, had always been the figure that defined her life. He knew it and didn’t care if she said it. But she wanted to. She wanted to tell him. She wanted to tell him over and over again.

She was supposed to be dead.

Shirtless, wet body cut with ancient scars, Jim tilted his head and looked into her face, his hand stroking hair away from her forehead. If only he could pet her like this forever.

“I can hear voices,” she said to him.

“Yes,” he said. “One of those voices belongs to an old friend of mine. A friend who showed me what must be done.”

You’re so fucking hilarious, Jim,
the demon said.

“I think I understand,” she said.

“How do you feel?” Jim asked.

An odd question coming from him. He wasn’t one to feign empathy. There was something he wanted her to tell him.

“I can do this,” Rose said. “I can control them all. I feel it. I can do whatever you want. Whatever you think is best.”

How foolish she was to play right into his hands. How utterly helpless and pathetic. But it didn’t matter; as long as she could be with him it was worth returning to life. It was worth listening to the voices of the dead, and the voice of a demon, and the voice of a madwoman named Mina.

“This is what you always wanted,” Jim said. “A world made in the image of genocide.”

How many times had she died for him? The idea was almost impossible to understand; she had been killed before and returned to life, her consciousness stored in a microchip.

“You didn’t do this for me,” she said.

She dared.

Her upper lip twitched.

Not her upper lip.
Mina’s
upper lip. This was not her body. Remember: this body belonged to someone else. 

“Dearest Rose,” he said gently, “you are always right. I made you to be better than me, to complete me, to do everything I could not. You didn’t ask to live forever. But you came for me. At Selfridge. For seven years you waited for me to come back from Egypt. You waited for me, and you came for me. And you would do it all over again.”

He released her.

This is what you wanted, you dumb bitch,
the demon said.
Go ahead and piss him off when you have him eating out of your hand. He needs you now more than ever. He truly needs you. Idiot.

“This is pointless,” she said.

Her feet were not touching anything. Hands still held her in the river.

But not his hands.

“Tell me why,” he said.

Ice cubed hands clutching her arms, holding her. Dirty, rotting hands were all over her, and there was nothing she could do about it. Jim was no longer holding her. Other hands clutched her. Dead hands.

There was something she could do. These strange powers. Jump into some death-collective and control them. Rose was a spider now, each soul a silk thread. An eternity of silk threads that belonged to her.

She was inevitable.

In a way, she was Death incarnate.

“Now you see,” Jim said.

“See?”

“The power I have given you. I have done everything for you, and you want to doubt me. Haven’t you wondered why I chose to make sure you could never die? I am a narcissist, and I created you in my image. You are the best part of me. I am in love with myself, and you are that image. I cannot be you, but I have… painted you.”

The smirk on his face spreader wider than she had ever seen, touching the edges of a face that used to be impervious to the idea of a smile.

“And I don’t have a choice,” she said. “I don’t have a body. You don’t know what this feels like. You’re not doing me any favors. How could I have ever wanted
anything
but you? How could I ever want to be anything than what you’ve always wanted? I’m not
anything.
I have the right to die.”

Jim’s jawline bulged as it tightened, like egg sac elastic. His eyes were crooked. The sky looked like a dry peach.

What are you doing? Your soul will be assfucked by a train full of faceless murderers. Your eyes will be poked into your skull, pulled out through your mouth, and wound back through your eye sockets, then hooking back down through your mouth, over and over again, until your eyes end up in the back of your throat, dangling.

The demon’s voice fueled a rage she had never felt before; she had never directed frustration at Jim.

“You have felt nothing!” Rose accused him. “I waited for you. You were going to leave me at Selfridge. You weren’t coming to find me. You had
years
to find me. Tell me that Mina was everything you ever wanted. Tell me the truth. She’s in here with me.”

“I preferred you.”

“Hundreds of millions of people. I can feel them. You can’t tell me this is what you wanted. All this hurt. All this rage. I can feel them. They’re out there. Souls or memories… I don’t know what they are. But I am everywhere and I am here with you. I have nothing and everything…”

Words took over. Mumbled words that probably didn’t mean a damn thing. If she closed her eyes she might tumble backward into the darkness. Drown in the cold place that waited for her. A place she deserved.

Carried along the battered riverfront by the dead, her limp body was passed between rotted hands. The riverfront looked like the remnants of a ragtag army of homeless people had made their last stand with the river at their backs.

Rose knew.

Their voices were telling her.

Head filling with their pain.

Could she know everything?

Could she see everything?

The dead homeless men had found a home here in the River. Yes, this is their home now. In the cold, in the dark.

In the silence.

Jim waded through the water, following her path. “I know what it feels like to know that death isn’t possible,” he said. “To go through all these years having shared death with so many others—but my ego won’t allow me to just let someone kill
me.
Instead, I have become more efficient. I have become more efficient because of
you.
I thought I could look at the more terrible version of myself, test myself to see if I could destroy that which I could never be. But you brought out the worst in me, and I needed to make you into something that would survive along with me.”

“I almost believe you, but you keep talking about yourself.”

His persona was larger than the entire universe, and it had consumed her, blinded her. Nothing more than a fleshy golem, a creature made of everything and nothing. She could never be unique, never had been. She was an extension of Jim Traverse.

And she wanted it. Hands carried her along the trashed riverfront, and she wanted him to take her, to grab her, to need her.

“How will I prove myself?” Jim asked, and his voice was far away now. “Shall I destroy the world and leave us alone? Total obliteration. A kingdom of the dead. This is what I have wanted to give you. I want to give all of myself to you.”

“Not to me,” she said. “To
you
. For
you
.”

“Then I will destroy everything myself,” he said. “I had thought this wasteland would be your theme park. We could have done this together.”

The hands carried her away.

Real smart. Let him try to rescue us.

One voice above them all.

Let us tear him apart. Mina had believed in goodness, but there is no goodness. There is only flesh and blood. Let us have it all.

Why did she play this game with him? When all she wanted to do was be with him, admit that she
wanted
to live for his philosophy. Everything he said was true, and that was okay. There was nothing wrong with devotion. There was nothing wrong with having faith in one person’s love.

What if he was telling the truth?

If he was telling the truth, then he would kill everyone to get to her.

Nothing would stop him.

He would prove himself. They could stop pretending and simply be with each other. No murder poetry or icy reflections.

***

Rose journeyed into several dead minds, voices whispering inane desires, last wishes, final confessions before the onset of death.

Rose saw the world through the eyes of the dead, and looked upon the living. Through the eyes of the dead, she found a man in Detroit, a man close by, a man who glowed.

No, he didn’t glow. Not really. There was a warmth to him. There were only a few glowing souls brightening her corrupt nightmare-vision, scattered like beacons across the globe, and there was one here, in Detroit.

A tall blond man, heavily structured body with hammer arms. Solid. She thought of him as solid.

Rose looked at him through the eyes of a corpse. A corpse that would consume his flesh.

It should be obvious; there is nothing worth salvaging in this world, nothing worth saving. Only a few people walking this planet who are comfortable with their own sense of goodness. This is why the human race must be destroyed. Don’t you understand? Look into this man’s eyes.

Rose looked deeply into the blond man’s blue eyes.

He is desperate, and he knows that he is alone. He is a strong man, but there aren’t many like him. Not enough. Not enough to preserve a careless race. We seek perfection. We seek purification. Jim believes in our vision. This is your vision. What you see, what you have always believed, what you have always needed.

Had Rose really wanted to help create a world of suffering and death? It was hard to believe she had been so morbid; Jim was her lover, and his words and ideas were radical, nothing more than the ruminations of a man obsessed with himself. Wasn’t it right to indulge him? To listen to him? To believe in him?

This was her fault. Her confidence in Jim gave him reason enough to pursue whatever hellish, unreal apocalypse he managed to help unleash. She cared nothing for this world, and nothing for this blond man who stared back at her. She cared nothing for a world that couldn’t even give her a name.

She didn’t know her real name. Was it Rose?

The only name you need is the one he gives you. You are all names. You are everything that is dead, and everything that will be dead.

And in whose body was she now? She stared at the blond man with the eyes of the dead, and they were not Mina’s eyes, and they certainly were not her eyes.

Her eyes. A strange idea: she didn’t know the color of her real eyes. Maybe she had never known.

Love is blind.

If only the demon would shut the fuck up.

Memories flooded Rose’s mind. A name floated through her consciousness.
Angelica.
Brothers. Sisters. Large family gatherings in parks and in basements. Laughter, hugs, smiles. Floral-print dresses. Lipstick. Hairspray. Mascara. Children. An army of children laughing in a forest of legs at a family gathering.

Angelica.

This woman was dead.

The dead had nothing new to say.

The blond man’s glow wasn’t going to save him.

***

The hands of the dead carried her across Detroit, and she didn’t know where she wanted to go. She could control them, yes, but what did she want?

One word came to mind: vengeance.

Against everyone and everything. The world
should
suffer for creating people like Jim. The world should
pay
for allowing men like him to manipulate her, control her, bend her soul to his every whim. Fuck the American government and everyone else who tried to engineer this disaster for their own benefit.

At last, she deserved answers.

With billions of people dead, there had to be a way to access the information she needed. If it was so easy to jump into the faded mind of any walking corpse, it stood to reason that she didn’t have to be at Jim’s mercy anymore, or the demon inside of her.