Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3) (35 page)

BELLA

The sun was out there somewhere. Good thing she didn’t have to put up with it. The city was a desert. Ash and bone and metal. Worst of all, Brian didn’t want to talk to her anymore.

How could she blame him?

Wandering through Detroit, alone and thirsty. Starving. Covered in dry blood. Not for the first time in her life, she wondered how alike a zombie she was. An easy target for anyone looking to snag a woman to trade on the open market. Even though she had just evaded a flesh trader, she had to act like they were everywhere. She couldn’t just stroll along.

There didn’t seem to be any zombies here. The city had emptied, drained all the living dead into a vortex of genocide; the zombies could have been moving in one direction. For what? Angelica had mentioned Sutter, but that meant nothing to her. He was a flesh trader, too, according to her.

In the distance, the faint echo of distant gunfire. There would have to be a huge firefight to echo through the silent streets.

Windsor had looked like this. Windsor still looked like this.

The parking garages had spilled cars, dumping them into the avenues below. Upturned vehicles piled atop each other, walls of metal and glass. Burnt husks of black metal. Entire pyres of motor cars had lit up the night not too long ago, and a fog lingered.

She might be the last person left alive.

For her, there had been no other city besides Detroit. Desmond was supposed to be here. Probably trying to help his junkie brother. His Cadillac had been left on the Ambassador Bridge. There might be cities beyond Detroit, but there was nothing else for her.

She could wander around like this forever.

There was a battle somewhere. Roll of thunder. An explosion? A distant storm?

“Hello?”

A man’s voice in the ruins. Echoing.

“I know you’re here. Come out. I came to get you. Vincent Hamilton sent me.”

Vincent Hamilton? She knew that name. Familiar, but in the great scheme of things it probably didn’t matter. If she knew the name, it was part of another life, a life that was far gone.

Bella walked up a hill of garbage and metal. At the top of the hill she saw a man running in front of the Spirit of Detroit statue. The statue had been defaced with apocalyptic graffiti, but it remained intact. The man running around in front of it jumped up and down, waving his arms in the air.

“I’ve already thought about killing him,” Brian said.

It was a relief to hear his voice. When she glanced over at her son, he was older; jaw patched with black stubble, taller, gaunt, a machine gun strapped over his shoulder.

“Well,” he said.

This wasn’t the Brian she remembered.

“Thought you would be pissed when you saw me,” Brian said.

His voice was deeper.

“Thought you would be mad,” he said. “I don’t know if I wanted to see you again.”

Her son was saying this to her.

“I’ve had a lot of guilt, but I know you’ve got something to say. It hurt me, too. You were all broken up.”

Her tongue was sticking to the roof of her mouth, even though her mouth felt dry. Her throat was dry. Where was the sun? It was terribly hot. Every bead of moisture for a thousand miles clung to her body, wrung from the walls of the dead structures around her.

“Okay, so you’re not saying anything,” Brian said. “But look at that guy. Will you look at him?”

“Yes.”

“He’s looking for us, and we’re bringing him in. I already know what he’s going to say. I already know what we’re going to do to him.”

Bella didn’t understand what he meant.

“Just hold on a minute.”

“What—”

“I didn’t think you were going to talk to me again after what happened to Angelica.”

Brian blinked rapidly. “Hey. Mom.”

“You were disappointed I tried to help her. Thought I was going to become a monster. And I was. I watched that man die. Watched the entire thing.”

“Hey.”

“You let me do it. You’re just as bad.”

Bella had figured it out. The truth wasn’t as uncomfortable as it should be. When had she started to go insane? Was she insane now? Did she make this whole thing up? Did she see Desmond’s Cadillac on the bridge?

Brian had really left her. Yes, he had left her. And he didn’t come back. She had been wandering around thinking he was still alive. But of course, it was more probable that he wasn’t alive, and she had admitted this to herself many times. Now this was just fucked up. It wasn’t fair. She had come this far, and didn’t know how far she had come at all, or where she was.

Brian was really standing in front of her.

Her son put a hand on her shoulder. “I had to get away from you. I had to get out.”

“You weren’t coming back for me.”

“I doubt it. I know something about survival you don’t.”

“Bastard. Don’t you know—don’t you have any idea—”

Knees weakened, blood drained into her wrists. The air was sucked out of her mouth. She fell, and Brian caught her. A group of men scrambled over the hill, all of them carrying automatic weapons.

***

The place used to be a sports bar. Memorabilia of legends, legends nobody was around to worship, icons hanging from the walls. Michigan sports heroes. Dusty tables were propped up, booths had pieces of dry wall, paint flakes—swept aside.

A hundred men. Maybe more. Men and women. Armed, and ready for war. They didn’t have much to spare, but they shared food and water with Bella. Helped her out, introduced themselves. Introductions were short; these were survivors, after all, and they knew better than to get close to people.

Brian was among them, and they had brought the man into the sports bar. The man who had been shouting and running around in front of the Spirit of Detroit statue. The guy looked like he was used to a living as if money was never a concern, a man who rarely faced adversity.

Bella recognized the stock of Molotov cocktails lined up beneath the bar. What was the point? She had learned a long time ago that fire only slowed the dead. They didn’t feel pain, though their remains might weaken. Walking corpses that were on fire and still coming for you were more dangerous.

These people were amateurs, or they were arrogant. Either way, it was only a matter of time. Their voices were jovial, with chatter that included projections for winter weather and places they could visit that might be safe. But they had something to do.

The cocktails might not be for zombies.

“I want to hear what the man has to say,” someone in the room said.

Voices quieted down, and she watched her son stand over the runner. Brian must have wielded some authority over them. How did he rise up through their ranks so quickly? It would have taken a few acts of bravery—or stupidity—to prove himself worthy of their faith.

“So you said something about Vincent Hamilton,” Brian said.

Bella watched her son interrogate a man.

Totally unlike him.

This wasn’t real.

Who was she to argue?

“He’s at the Depot,” the man said. “You’re the people from the neighborhood. Right? The people we traded with. I’m with Sutter. You know Sutter, right?”

“Okay.”

“Yeah. Well. Vincent told me to come find you. Wanted you to—”

“Interesting. What’d you say your name was?”

“Hold on a minute.”

“We’re not taking orders from anyone. We’re heading out of here. You can have this fucking place.”

“Such language. You haven’t even told me your name! Why can’t you be civil?”

Brian turned his back to the man and sat down at a table. He talked with people around him, a jury deciding this man’s fate. What was there to decide? Why was it such a big deal?

Because they were an army.

And almost everyone in the room was black.

Was that part of it? Was that really part of it? Did a mob need a common thread like skin color to unite, to work together?

Clearly, she was blind.

Brian sat up from the table and everyone quieted down again. This was supposed to be her son, slowly acquiring confidence and learning how to become a man, but that wasn’t exactly right. Nope. He was only sixteen, wasn’t he? That’s right. Just a teenager. But this version of her son was a man. A survivor.

She didn’t know this young man.

“I’m going to tell you a story,” Brian announced to the room. “I’m going to tell you a story about my father because you’ll see why I feel the way I do. Nobody has to agree with me.

“My father left me and my mom. Happened when I was young. I’m sure a lot of you went through the same thing. My mom’s standing in the room with us. Right there.”

Heads turned.

“Desmond came into my life when I was a little older. He was a lawyer, and my mom loved him. I thought he was a good guy. A fighter. A lawyer, but he still had ideas about fairness and justice. He treated me like I was part of the… he treated me like I was there. Like I mattered. But anyway, he had a brother named Jerome who was a junkie. And Desmond did everything for Jerome. And, of course, Jerome shot it all up his arm, or whatever he did.

“Desmond used to always say that Jerome was spending time in crack houses. Said he had to go in a couple times and get him. He said he knew who ran those crack houses, said he would love a chance one day to see the asshole in a courtroom. He said this guy helped ruin Detroit, helped make it a shithole because he was a greedy prick. Killed people for money. Pretended to be some kind of gangster. Sold guns. Drugs. Women. I’ll never forget his name. Desmond said his name a lot. His name was in the papers, too. Even in Windsor, where I lived, we heard about him.

“His name was Vincent Hamilton.”

People shifted around uncomfortably.

“Now wait a minute,” the white man put his hands up. He tried to back up toward the door, but someone figured it out and stood in his way. “I don’t care what you think about him. Fuck Vincent, okay? I don’t care. I did what I was supposed to. He said you would know where the guns are, and I could have some. I mean… I risked my life… I came to find you… I thought...”

A round of laughter in the room.

“What you’re saying,” Brian said as the room quieted, “is that Vincent sent you to tell us to bail him out, and that you would get a bunch of guns in the bargain? You’re looking at all the guns. He gave them to us already. But your ass ran away. Does Vincent want us to bail him out, and then he can be like a king or something? A king of the wasteland?”

Laughter again.

“You’re welcome to come along,” Brian said. “We’re not giving you shit. Brian’s my name, by the way.”

“I don’t understand,” the man said. “Wait. Hold on a minute.”

Brian laughed, and others laughed with him. “What is there to understand? We’re not feeding you. We’re not giving you a weapon. Follow, if it means that much to you. Or you can leave right now. Go back, and tell Vincent to suck a dick.”

Now Brian smiled as people slapped him on the shoulders. He had ignited an emotional component, a reason to get out and start over somewhere else. Vincent had helped make Detroit a pit of despair and waste before the zombies. It felt good to escape. It felt good to have direction.

Freedom.

A gun was offered to Bella.

This was really happening, wasn’t it?

But they couldn’t just leave. Not with Desmond out there.

Bella waved the gun away. She wanted nothing to do with it.

Dust dropped from the ceiling.

Brian had walked through room to stand in front of her. “See? I didn’t want to go. You can be mad at me. You of all people should know what it takes to survive. If I stayed with you, I’d be dead. Maybe you would be dead, too. I wasn’t ready for either.”

She was supposed to feel something now. Did she let him down? He had wanted to leave her. He thought she was going to get them both killed.

Was she really that far gone?

What about now?

When Bella looked into her son’s eyes, it was difficult to recognize the man he had become. She didn’t know this man.

Brian grabbed her hand and squeezed.

“We can still do this together,” he said. “I think we can do it. I didn’t think so before.”

“What changed?”

“Me. I changed. I can keep you alive.”

“But you weren’t coming back for me.”

He released her hand and looked away. “You act like it was easy for me. You act like it was easy for me to live with you, the way that you were.”

“You did things, Brian.”

“And you let me. You watched. You didn’t stop me.”

“What they did to us...”

“Stop it. Just stop it.”

“It’s not that simple. You’re my son. Look at me, goddammit!”