Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3) (34 page)

Vincent stopped to reload, and then she reloaded. Only Vincent didn’t resume their dance. He was looking over his shoulder.

***

Look at Sutter: white suit, chain mail, flamethrower, oxygen mask. Running down to greet the dead with a thunderous laugh. He laughed at all of them, at everything, at nothing. He laughed and approached the crowd deliberately.

“Oh RIIIIIGHT!” Sutter said and half-crouched. “I WANNA ROCK AND ROLL ALL NIGHT, AND PARTY EVERY DAY!”

Whoosh.
A flash of bright heat. Let there be light.

Now this:

Strands of matted hair, thinning hair, catching fire. Bright orange heat stuffed into a narrow hallway, between the towering pillars. The ceiling was several feet high; the flame would not touch an upper floor. Not from here. Not yet.

A river of flame. A bright, liquid river of flame. Flesh
popped
and sizzled. The smell of sewage cooking. Methane? Hundreds of bodies surging forward, suddenly motivated to move faster.

Vincent opened fire.

A familiar
hiss
sparked overhead, and the radiant explosion against one of the pillars rocked dust from the ceiling. Vega turned around and saw the old woman, Mean Magda, loading an RPG.

And then Vega pivoted, knelt, and pumped rounds into targets.

It wasn’t enough. They kept coming. Chattering rapid-fire song and flame did nothing to drive them back. They kept coming.

Nobody was dropping their guns. Nobody was running.

But they were backing up.

“WHEEEEEW!” Sutter laughed madly. “GET USED TO BURNING IN HELL, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

He kept laughing, even as he dropped the flamethrower gear. He dropped the mask from his face. Drew a 9mm.

She had turned her head. Hands tugged the rifle from her hands. To hell with fighting a tug-of-war with a thousand hands. She let them have it, then drew her own 9mm and put a slug into a skullcap. Her rifle disappeared into the sea.

Her ankle sagged against a step. Fingers snuck between the shoelaces on her boot. She fired into the shapes. Another hand in her boot. She fired. Fired. More hands.

Dragged upward, boot wrenching free. One step up. Just enough. She knew who had helped her up and didn’t need to turn around. She knew Vincent helped, because his strong hand was beneath her again, lifting her up and back.

Click.

Time to reload.

“Self-destruct mode!” Sutter shouted. “Hold your grenades, ladies!”

The man in the white suit held only a grenade in his fist, and he attempted to direct traffic back up the stairs. Vega saw Mean Magda fling the RPG into the crowd and grab a grenade from her pocket, then she took the pin out.

Damn. She wanted a grenade of her own.

They had managed to make it back up to the second floor. Vega slipped on blood and landed hard on her left shoulder. A man with a shotgun in front of her fell hard, and an army of hands scrabbled up the stairs and violently grabbed them. Vega snatched the shotgun and squirmed backward, slithering against the floor.

Vincent helped her up, and she checked both 12-guage barrels. Locked and loaded.

The concussion from the sudden blast blinded her. A wave of air punched her in the head, and her ears were ringing. The man who had fallen and dropped the shotgun probably had a grenade in his hand.

She opened her eyes and found a familiar man staring down at her. It took her a moment to figure out who it was.

“Miles,” she barely managed to say.

THIS DIFFERENT CITY

THE CHAMP

Bill rubbed the stubble on his cheeks and looked out the window at the empty street. The street where he had fought and destroyed several of the undead with his bare hands. Now there were only a few corpses twitching in the wreckage, their bones shattered, bodies unable to walk upright.

Why should he feel guilty about anything? That woman had wanted to kill him, and had been more than willing to let him die. Bill kept trying to protect people, save their lives, and they turned their backs on him.

Vega, and now the strange black woman.

She thought the man in the hallway, the screaming man, was him.

Or did she?

The guy certainly looked like Bill.

Bill didn’t sleep. He prayed and stared out the window, waiting for dawn.

What was he really waiting for?

All his life coaches made decisions for him. Teachers, coaches, team captains. He always followed the lead of those who knew better, and he tried his best to work as hard as he could. He hoped he could lead by example.

Draft day. He tried to remember draft day. One of the best days of his life. Sitting at home wearing a suit and tie. Mom and dad. His brother. Cousins. Friends. Priest from St. Gertrude’s. What a day. What a day that had been.

The phone call from his agent.

“Bill.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re a Detroit Lion. Congratulations.”

In the first round, 4th overall pick.

Hugs, handshakes, laughter. A room filled with joy. Hands slapping him on the back. Because he had always believed in doing the right thing. Working hard in school, staying out of trouble, hanging out with the right crowd, treating people the right way, going to church on Sunday.

It was enough to make him forget that he had witnessed rape. He had witnessed it and did nothing about it.

Make a decision.

Lead the way.

The woman who had died on the roof mentioned a train depot. Is that where Vega was? What about the other woman, the one who fled from him and thought he was dead? She was afraid of him and had wanted him to die; she was a different kind of survivor, one who was used to death and horror. Used to doing whatever it took to keep herself alive.

And wasn’t Vega the same way?

Wasn’t he the same way?

Bill tried to shake the memory of his experience in the hallway a few hours ago. Zombie children and a man who had probably watched those children become zombies. The man had been waiting for rescue, holding on to hope. Now, he was dead. Bill could have saved him.

Decide. Where to go? Home?

Vega was uncontrollable, but she was on a mission. Trying to save the world? It wasn’t about saving the world, but if Doctor Desjardins was telling the truth, then there was still a need for good people to step up and help others. Father Joe had done that, putting himself on the line for others. Vega had wanted to find the priest.

No, she didn’t. She had gone searching for her own vengeance. It had nothing to do with Father Joe.

Wayne State University. That last night, working out by himself, a horde of people was rioting at the college. It was on the television. The college had been a hub of activity, with tanks and jeeps and guns. Mike Taylor had even mentioned it once before, but no salvage team wanted to try.

Bill could try.

Tanks.

Careful not to slip on blood, he walked out of the apartment and back to the roof. The roof was clear; only the bloody carcass of a mutilated man was left. Bones amid old spaghetti sauce that had been sitting in the refrigerator for a long time.

Back down the fire escape. In the ruined street. He wasn’t exactly sure where Wayne State was.

He used to hate driving the trash out to the hole in the freeway; the neighborhood had dumped all its trash in that hole, and when he saw Father Joe get hurt out there, he decided he would never allow anyone else to go besides him. Bill survived once; no need for anyone else to try it.

This reminded him of the drive, but now he was on foot and on his own, walking through the streets.

There was no sun in the hazy-white sky, or at least none that he could see.

A heavy piece of metal dropped into the street somewhere.
Clang
. And he stopped to look around. He shouldn’t have stopped; he knew better.

Echo in the valley of death.

Metal again. Echo through the city’s graveyard. The city was a graveyard. There was no color to anything.

Overturned baby stroller. Rusted wire shopping carts. Black spots like holes in car doors. Hoods charred black. Tires sagging. Skeletons sagging in weather-faded clothes.

Bill needed to move. Get out of there, man.

Somewhere nearby, the sound of an animal bumping into a car. Thumped against it, like a bird accidentally flying into the windshield of a race car.

A man climbed over the hood of a car and stood there. Bill immediately knew it was a man. Wrinkled suit. Black shoes dusted with ash and dust. Bald skull. Bald eyes. Large, perfectly straight teeth. Teeth that should have rotted out of its head a long time ago. It opened its mouth, and a stream of maggots dropped onto the cement. The maggots were accompanied by worms, and they splashed against the street.

This zombie saw him. Wanted him. Knew it wanted him.

Was this one of the rotted? He had heard about them—but here, now…?

The creature stared at him, and Bill didn’t move.

He didn’t have a weapon. Why didn’t he think about this?

When another corpse stumbled from between the cars, he noticed a more purposeful gait. Limbs were straight, as if conscious thought operated those dead bodies instead of an animal instinct. Its gaze was directed at the pile of writhing worms and maggots.

A third one, this one wearing a police uniform.

A fourth.

Fifth.

None of them were wounded. They were a group of dead people who had been carefully nurtured and prepared for a funeral home display. Except they looked at Bill and opened their mouths.

He was wrong about most things. His dad always told him he would make the perfect husband someday to a good woman.

At the NFL Scouting Combine, right before the draft, he had to show off his athletic skills and answer questions about his character.

Show us how fast you can run, Bill.

Bill dashed into the street. His sleepless, aching, malnourished body was a shell of its former self. He used to be a powerful specimen of physique and toughness; he was a soldier who could be taught how to fight loyally for the cause. Whatever the cause was.

More thuds against cars. Wet meat splashing over cars, vomit waterfalls of maggots and rot.

Where was he going?

Anywhere. Just run until it didn’t matter anymore.

Running, running, running.

His lungs were burning. A new weakness, body slowing down. Pressure on his ankle sent fire up his shins until his knees quaked, and he crashed into a parked van, a tumbling wild beast after being shot by hunters.

This wasn’t the body he was used to. Everything he had relied on for so long was no longer there. His skills, his strength. Gone.

Bill reached for the door handle and ripped it open. An act of desperation. They were coming for him.

Their footsteps were close.

A body flopped out of the van. The top of the skinless head was missing. Tiny chunks of rubber slipped out of the head. Cradled against the dead person’s chest was a shotgun.

Bill picked it up.

Footsteps.

Single-shot 20-guage. He popped the barrel open and the shell leapt out and rolled at his feet. He looked back and swung the weapon.

The shock jolted his shoulders and squeezed his triceps. The stock on the shotgun splintered, cracked. He hit something hard, and it didn’t matter because a meaty, sloppy shape struck him in the chest and barreled over him.

Bill rolled with his attacker and landed atop its chest. He slammed his hand beneath the zombie’s jaw and pushed its head upward into the concrete, crunching its skull against the ground.

“You fucker,” Bill said.

He thought of squeezing the juice out of an orange by impaling it and rotating it over a bowl. When he stepped up, he wiped spittle from his chin and decided he couldn’t stop now to catch his breath. His legs pumped, his feet scouring the pavement toward wherever.

Footsteps again.

Lungs burning.

Ahead of him, car doors squealed open on dry, rusty hinges. Shapes poured out from beneath a vehicle. He was close to the freeway now. The freeway was like an ocean filled with trash or the debris from a thousand battleships destroyed in a cataclysmic war. Shapes everywhere, moving, shifting. Shadows slipping through the cracks, oozing from doorways and windows. Hands clambering through hills of human wreckage. Steel girders shifted. The city was waking up. Everywhere, the city was waking up.

A helicopter had nosedived into the side of a building, rotors bent. A military bird. Was he close to the college?

Run, keep running. Let them all follow you. Take them all to hell with you. Take as many as you can, because one less zombie might be one more life saved in the future.

Climbing over cars that had dropped out of a parking garage. A pillar of cars stacked one atop the other. The zombies couldn’t follow, but damn if it didn’t bother him when a quick slice through his palm upon a shard of glass caused his hand to gush blood. He pulled himself up to the roof of the car with one hand, trying to hold his gushing fist against his side, apply some pressure to it.

Hauling himself atop a car that was only a few yards away from the crashed chopper, Bill felt light-headed.

If he stopped to see how many were following, he might never look forward.

Keep going. Run for the end zone. Run out of the whole damn stadium. Run out of your mind.

Impossible. What he saw was impossible.

There was a huge gun inside the chopper. A massive gun, a gun that would have been used to mow down entire cities.

“My God,” he said when he saw the gun was fed by a belt of bullets.

Picked it up. Positioned himself against the chopper, backed into a wall. Leaned on the trigger.

His entire body shook and everything in front of him became white, bright, smoky. Firing into the air. Firing into nothing. Bullets were churning it all up, turning it into nothing. Eating reality, letting the whole scene disappear behind a veil of smoke and gunfire. He gritted his teeth. He gritted his teeth and swept the gun in a semi-circle orbit of screaming metal.

A looming shape in the bullet-glare stopped him. His teeth vibrated in his jaw and his arms were shaking, but he needed to see the thing that came toward him now. A towering, monstrous thing that he had to stare at; he stared because he couldn’t figure out what it was.

His first thought was: his mom would never believe him if he told her.

He didn’t have a second thought.

It was a giant skeleton with dozens of arms and heads. Maybe not dozens, but at least
several
, because he couldn’t exactly understand what it was, or how it could exist in the first place. By now, though, he knew better than to question. He knew what it wanted.

“They put the backup quarterback in the game,” Bill said.

And when he said it, he wasn’t afraid.

“Okay then,” he said.

With that, he leaned on the trigger again. He gritted his teeth and let the bullets do what they were meant to do.

He couldn’t see the giant skeleton through the bullet storm, and he didn’t need to. He didn’t care what he destroyed, as long as he destroyed it. There was no reason to hesitate or rethink anything; the gun might have been doing damage, or maybe he didn’t do anything. He wouldn’t know until he was dead, or he was out of ammo.

The chain gun was still spinning, but the gun had gone dry. Bill released the trigger and peered into the smoke.

There wasn’t even a giant. There was nothing. Not a thing.

His hand was slick with blood. 

Bill dropped the gun and used his shirt to wipe sweat from his face. When he turned around, he performed the sign of the cross upon himself.

Behind him, sitting in Wayne State University’s parking lot, was a huge tank.