Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3) (47 page)

VEGA

The Packard Plant was a massive industrial complex full of broken windows and decorated in graffiti. A bridge with the German words
Abreit Macht Frei
—“work makes you free”—painted on the windows connected the complex over a street; the sprawling complex had clearly been abandoned ages ago.

Vega sighed and inhaled the cool air. This was it.

Quiet now. The silence waited for her. She wasn’t made for silence; the fury of war beat inside of her chest to the blood-pumping rhythm of her heart. She felt bad that Bill and Rook had saved her life, only for her to leave them. They couldn’t have known she would have left; if Bill had known, he still would have tried to save her. That’s just the kind of guy he was.

Somehow, he proved that nice guys didn’t finish last after all. He had survived through a lot of shit, and he had zero military training. He and Rook were both normal dudes, save the fact that Bill had been destined for superstardom before Jim and Mina took that away from him.

She had a headache. She was exhausted. More than anything, her body wanted to sleep. Every bone and muscle in her body ached. There was nothing left but the AR-15 rifle in her hands and the Packard Plant in front of her. Nothing else mattered. There was nothing after the Packard Plant, just as there had never been anything beyond Jim. Every mission she had signed up for during her career was the last mission. She never looked ahead. No reason to pick up a bad habit now.

Vincent had always used an AR-15. It was his gun. She wished that she could have felt the way he deserved to have a woman feel for him, and he probably felt the same about her. She knew he did. But neither of them could do it before the apocalypse, and finding emotional common-ground after all the shit they had been through just wasn’t going to happen. The best therapy for both of them was to kick some more zombie ass.

Rifle at the ready, she stalked through an opening in a wall and stepped into yet another dark, ruined building. She tried to tell herself this was nothing more than another urban combat exercise; her target was a living, breathing man.

Jim Traverse was going to die.

She moved efficiently, sweeping the gun over dark corners, slowly walking over debris that had settled into the floor. The air outside hadn’t penetrated the Packard’s dank corridors. There was no odor to this place; she had grown used to the smell of dust and the putrescence of rot, and it was a weakness. If the air had been pure, the place untainted by death, she might have known.

She was growing impatient with each passing second. Why didn’t he mock her, at least? Why didn’t he jump out of the shadows? The longer it took to find him, the more likely it was that she was being lured into a trap. Surely, he knew she was here. She wanted to overestimate him; to assume that every breath she took now could be her last kept her senses attuned, her mind sharp.

This was the first time she had ever been alone on a mission. There were times when she felt alone, but this was the first time she walked into an enemy stronghold without backup, without anyone beside her, or without an exit strategy.

Her fingers were wrapped around the grip tightly, another hand on the foreword grip. She moved slowly, cautiously, up a wrecked stairwell. A glance of light through a window made the dust at her feet look like sand.

On the second floor she looked through a series of broken doorways, one opening revealing the other—a corridor of door frames without doors.

She found the first of Jim Traverse’s macabre displays. A mangled, rotting body embracing another in a similar state of decay. There were several more, each more deranged than the last.

Hanging overhead, a beam with words painted in blood upon it: HALL OF HEROES.

Vega walked among several corpses that had been posed in odd positions, all of them with wooden stakes nailed to the floor in front with a name. She paused at several of them, shuddering at the memories the familiar names conjured in her mind. She saw CRATER, and remembered that he tried. She remembered she had hugged Bob inside of Eloise Fields after Crater had let them inside.

Other names posted in front of other statuesque corpses. BOB. RHONDA. MS. GEORGIA CONE. DEREK. ANGELICA. JEROME. Some of these she didn’t know. She didn’t want to think these were the actual bodies, as if Jim had gone out of his way to locate them and bring them here, but there was no telling how insane the man was.

She came to a long corridor that finally overwhelmed her comfort level with blood’s smell. Dozens of corpses lay atop each other while a legion of flies buzzed around the room, and tiny critters scurried into the room’s corners. Several other bodies hung from the ceiling, necks suspended by nooses. There was large hole in the ceiling, and Vega could easily look upon the breaking clouds. From here, she could wait for blue sky.

Something at the end of the corridor caught her eye, and she carefully stepped over the bone mounds, mindful of the wayward organs that had probably slipped through the gashed-open stomachs of the hanging people. Vega inched her way closer, beads of sweat slipping between the valleys between her eyes and nose.

A human torso. No arms. No legs. Sitting in a shopping cart like so many forgotten stuffed animals. No flesh upon the face.

But there was a priest’s collar.

And words painted in blood upon a stake.

MY FRIEND JOE.

Vega’s lips tasted cold. She whirled around, suddenly afraid this was the trap Traverse had waited to spring. She dropped to one knee and quickly scanned each crevice, and she nearly jumped at the chance to fire at shadows.

Father Joe was in the shopping cart.

She had known all along there wasn’t much of a chance he was still alive.

And there really was a solid figure standing at the door from which she had come. She waited a moment for her eyes to adjust, maybe a moment too long. Maybe she was one breath away from death. Vega hesitated, and she was still alive. The figure did not move.

The sight was lined up. She pulled the trigger and looked into the bright, hot light from the muzzle of her gun in the dark room. The rifle was on full-auto. She squeezed the trigger and did not let go. She needed to let it go. She needed to stop and think. She needed to get her shit together. She needed to just…

Click.

Click click click click click click click.

There wasn’t anything standing in the doorway. Not anymore. She inched forward and didn’t think about slapping another magazine into the rifle. She wanted to see. She wanted to know. This need compelled her forward; her body seemed to know what to do, even if she didn’t. All of her thoughts had stopped completely. Inside her head, there was nothing.

A body lay in the doorway, and blood had been spattered in several directions. Fresh, dripping blood. The face was completely gone, the person’s likeness obliterated by her gun. She crouched, picked an arm, and looked at the still-warm, pink flesh. It was a man, a man who had been alive a moment ago. Not a zombie.

There was no way to figure out who it was. The face was a bloody mess. A swath of dark hair remained on the dead man’s scalp. She could strip the clothes off and look him over, but for what?

She didn’t know what to do. She sat there with the rifle propped up against the wall. She rested her forearms on her knees and stared at the dead body.

Nothing. She didn’t feel a thing. She had never known what to expect if she ever killed Traverse, and now, even though she wasn’t completely sure, her mind was resigned to the idea that it was over.

It was over, and she wanted to cry. She felt like it would have been appropriate to have another emotional breakdown. A good way to end the longest mission of her life.

She wanted to cry and could not.

Vega stared at the dead body for a long time. After a while, she stood and walked through the gallery of corpses again. She did not take the rifle with her.

When she came back to the dead body that might have belonged to the man who had meant everything to her, she looked up at the sky through the hole in the ceiling. When she heard the distant roar of jet planes, she realized she would not cry for another thousand years. 

“Bring your fucking cameras,” she whispered to nobody.

EPILOGUE

Camped just a few miles south of Cincinnati on a hill, the tiny village made up of tents smelled like barbecue and cook fires. As Bill pushed a squeaky flatbed stacked with supplies through the camp, a boy and a girl ran in front of him, laughing. Bill stopped and a smile spread across his face.

There were a lot of people on this hill, at least two thousand. They had to pick up camp soon and head south. The air had already started to cool with the start of autumn.

Bill wiped his hands on his pants and stepped into Rook’s tent. The guy was sitting across from a small television with a snowy signal, and Rook was trying to adjust the rabbit ears for a clearer picture.

“I can think of better things to use our generator for,” Bill said.

“You forgot what today is,” Rook said.

“I did. There’s work to do.”

“The rumors are true. You should sit down and watch this.”

“Rumors?”

“This is the episode about Detroit,” Rook said. “It’s really happening.”

Rook was satisfied with the television’s signal and sat down in a lawn chair a few feet away. Curious, Bill sat down in the second lawn chair.

Bill didn’t understand it. There were several reality television shows about different cities and the people who were trying to survive in them. There was a show about zombies in Puerto Rico. There was even a show about zombies in Mexico City, and that one was mostly broadcast on the radio.

Most of the people in camp watched these shows. Bill tried to talk to people about it. Why were they obsessed with watching people struggle to survive, when they had all survived a disaster up to this point? And they had no idea where to go next, except south. There was no telling what they would run up against. It was on days like this one that he wished Father Joe was around, or at least somebody with an ounce of Christian goodness in them.

It was like they had all survived an earthquake and wanted to watch shows of other people who were trying to escape from the wreckage.

These shows had their heroes, too. You could tune in and watch people fight against the odds. For that reason alone, Bill thought the shows could be inspiring, providing a shred of hope in a world of despair and suffering. But these reality shows also showed humanity at its lowest point. Bill learned how apocalyptic economies and laws were founded and governed, while entire camera crews were lost along with the people they tried to capture on film.

Parents let their kids watch the shows.

Death couldn’t shock anyone now. Rape and murder were as acceptable as oxygen.

“I don’t want to watch this,” Bill said.

“Yes you do,” Rook said. “Don’t you wonder? Just a little bit?”

“Wonder about what?”

“If she’s alive.”

“I think about it every day,” Bill said.

“You’re a Detroit Lion. That’s your home.”

Bill didn’t have a response to that. Home was in Texas. He never played a single game for the Detroit Lions.

“That’s my home,” Rook said. “Huey was born there too. And my aunt.”

A beer would be nice right about now. The last thing he wanted was to see Vega walking around as a zombie. The last thing he wanted was to go back to Detroit, even if he was just watching the city on television.

He could barely make out what was on the screen, but he could see it was dark and the camera crew was using artificial lighting. Why did they have to be so stupid? How could they possibly benefit from increased ratings? Bill had heard speculation that rich people were in complete control of the world now.

What a funny idea. Rich people in control of the world.

“This is it ladies and gentlemen,” someone said from behind the camera. “We’re here. We’re finally here. Grosse Pointe, Michigan. This is where it started. If anyone has survived out here, they must be traumatized, their souls damaged beyond repair. Will they accept rescue? Can we bring someone out of here alive?”

Bill was on the edge of his seat.

“It’s so quiet here,” the man behind the camera said. “Like everywhere. It’s unbelievable how this place is just like anywhere else we’ve seen. Mansions on either side of us, and they’re in almost perfect condition, folks. As if nothing ever happened here. Wait. There’s one that’s completely decimated. Wow. I wonder why these others are untouched. You have to wonder if people are watching us from behind those windows. Why don’t they just come out? They must know we were coming. We’ve seen people rush out to greet us, but this place looks absolutely haunted.”

Bill closed his eyes. He needed to step outside and get back to work. There was nothing to gain from watching. If he saw her, if he saw anybody he once knew, it would hurt too much. Better to think she was still out there than know for sure.

“I always wanted to live there,” Rook said. “Oh man, look at that. That’s Art Van’s house.”

Bill had no idea what he was talking about.

“My God,” the man on the television said. “This lawn was recently cut.”

Bill stood.

“Wait,” Rook said.

The former football player looked at the television.

“What’s that?” the man on the television shouted. “Light everywhere. Are you getting this? Red light. Is that fire? There’s a house on fire. No. Wait a minute.”

Loud music erupted through the television’s speakers. In Grosse Pointe, the camera was pointed at a long row of shadowed figures highlighted by firelight.

“They’re wearing bandannas over their faces, and they aren’t moving,” the man on the television said. “They have guns. Oh my God, you see this? They’re like an army. And there’s someone on the balcony. Pacing back and forth. Can you hear me over the music? Are we getting this?”

Loud rap music thundered in the Grosse Point night. The camera shook. The man on the balcony stopped pacing and crossed his chest with two machine guns.

Bill heard some of the lyrics.

“If you fuck with us, we gonna start up a riot. I’m a start a riot, I’m a start a riot.”

Rook’s mouth hung open.

Bill walked out of the tent and laughed. He could hear the song’s chorus outside.

“I’m a start a riot, I’m a start a riot.”

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