Zombie Ascension (Book 1): Necropolis Now (21 page)

Vega left the room in disgust, while Bob's tired eyes remained locked on the former detective. "You can follow if you want, but I don't need a trigger-happy civilian compromising the mission."

"I like you, Bob. Of course, if you so much as look twice at Mina, I'll blow your brains out, too."

"Fuck yourself."

He was finished arguing with them. They were deluded moralists who couldn't acknowledge the reality of their situation. Hundreds of well-trained men and women were already dead, including cops. Their chances at survival were no better than his. He knew that both of them were action junkies: they needed the mission because they were hurting on the inside, otherwise, they would have abandoned the whole thing altogether. The futility of their situation rendered the mission itself rather silly. Bob had explained that Traverse might somehow be the key to whatever was going on, but what if they were wrong?

He followed the soldiers outside and hung back several yards away. Bob asked Vega questions about her head, and she pretended to be fine.

The distant machine gun fire had finally stopped.

Birds chirped while smoke still plumed into the morning sky. Cars were parked haphazardly in the street or inside of houses where they had crashed. The concrete was stained by drying crimson in several spots. Paper floated on the slow breeze.

The corpses seemed destitute and lonely.

Bob and Vega walked quickly along the street to avoid wasting ammo on them, but Griggs didn't see any reason to worry. Instead, he took a deep breath and inhaled the taint of ash on the morning air, mingled with the smell of meat that had been left out to rot in the sun.

Peace reigned over the boarded-up crack houses and the shattered windows. Bullet holes had riddled idle, fuel-drained cars that sat with the doors thrown open. A bicycle lay sideways in a pool of blood. A sleepy cat that was sitting on a porch yawned while the man hunters passed. Encroaching weeds damaged water-deprived, brown lawns. It was going to be another oppressive day, perfect for lying around the house and sitting in front of an oscillating fan.

The dead began to disappear from the neighborhood, and Griggs thought something was wrong.

They stopped when they saw hundreds of corpses piled on top one another, scattered across the street like dominoes that had been pushed over by a child and were forsaken for another amusing toy.

Marijuana smoke drifted over the makeshift graveyard. Bob and Vega allowed Griggs to catch up to them. Together, they stepped over the mangled dead and found a skinny black man sitting on a lawn chair in front of a house, smoking a huge blunt with a wide smile on his face, revealing two rows of shiny, platinum teeth. An AR-15 with an attached scope was propped up against the side of the chair. His arms were sleeved in colorful tattoos.

"You having a little fun?" Bob asked him.

"This shit's tight," he croaked while trying to hold his breath.

They waited for him to exhale a cloud of smoke. He held out the blunt to Bob. "You down? Can't smoke it all myself."

"I admire your handiwork," Vega said and stepped toward him, though she didn't take him up on his offer. He remained in his chair and took another long drag on the blunt. His black tank top was emblazoned with the famous red Air Jordan logo.

"Nothing else to do," he said while looking up at Vega with red eyes.

"I'm Vega. That's Bob, and that guy's Patrick. What's your name?"

He frowned for a moment and stared at Griggs. He said, "Don't matter anymore… name's Vincent."

"You did this by yourself?" Bob gestured to the corpses.

Vincent shrugged. "Ain't that hard. Just walk up and pull the trigger. Don't matter how many of them you see. Gotta keep moving. Don't need an army to deal with it. No reason to hide."

"Do you know where there might be other survivors?" Vega asked calmly.

Vincent looked down for a long time while Vega shifted her stance impatiently. Griggs understood that she dealt with war-shocked civilians before. The street was devoid of any more corpses besides the ones that lay at their feet. One man had somehow destroyed them all with a passionate vengeance.

"My whole crew…" Vincent's hands shook, and he dropped the blunt into the grass. Vega knelt down and picked it up.

"You're Vincent Hamilton?" Griggs suddenly felt compelled to ask. He had seen the man's face in mug shots before, and he never thought he'd be hanging out with the notorious felon.

Vincent shrugged. "I didn't say that. What’s it to you?"

"We want to help," Vega said, handing the blunt back to him. "Tell me what I can do."

He looked up at her. "You ain't here to rescue nobody. That's all you got with you," he nodded at Griggs and Bob.

"You're right," she replied. "But we're here, and we don't want to just leave you behind."

"There was a little girl," he began and stopped himself. "Shanna. I ran after her. I ain't no hero or nothing. I just … I lost her out here. I think I know where she is, but she's afraid, you know? She's seen what living people can do."

"I need you to stay with me," Vega said excitedly and knelt on the grass next to the thug. "Hold on to my hand," he immediately grabbed her hand. "There. Hold it tight. Look at me, Vincent. Can you tell me about the little girl?"

"You said his name's Patrick?" Vincent glanced over at Griggs.

Griggs stepped past Bob, who continued to monitor their surroundings.

"What about it?" Griggs asked, flexing his fingers over the magnum's grip. "I know who you are, Hamilton. I worked in Homicide. A couple years ago, I had a body that had been wasted by one of your guns. You're a hard man to get."

Vega shot to her feet. "Get back and stay the hell out of the way!"

Vincent shook his head. "Ain't nothing, anyways. Just all coincidence. Going to smoke this shit till my lungs burst. Ain't going nowhere. This is my home, you feel me? I thought I'd seen it all. Everybody's wasted. I missed out on the party, tried to be a nice guy. Thought I would be safe in a church. Can you imagine that? A church. But those dead mutherfuckas ain't too worried about us. We were safe for a minute."

"Keep talking," Vega said. "What happened at the church?"

Vincent laughed and began to ramble. "You want to go there and find out what can happen? There's a sick nigga there with a crazy redhead… I wanted to get out. Wanted to
leave
. That man had no expressions on his face."

Vincent stood up from his lawn chair. "I ain't going back there. I know what you want, and I ain't going. You want to help people, but there ain't nobody left to help. Rhonda's dead. Derek, too. Fuck all that."

"Nobody said you had to go back," Vega said. "You'll help me find Shanna. Bob's going to the church because he's looking for the man you described. Tell him where it is."

Griggs laughed. "So you're going to catch the ultimate badass all by yourself, Bob?"

Bob reprimanded Vega. "That’s not the plan. We roll in together."

Vega thought about her reply, and then ran her hand through her black hair. She sighed then, and said, "This isn't about Traverse. Not for me. Not anymore. God is giving me a second chance."

"A second chance at what?" Bob shouted at her. "We came here to do a job, goddammit!"

"No,
you
came here to do a job. You almost let me die out there, remember? At Eloise Fields? You let Miles die—remember that?"

Bob gritted his teeth. "Dammit, Amparo… we're close…"

"That's all you have to say?" Vega said. "We're not going to change anything. Crater was right about a lot of things. We're not safe from ourselves. The greatest military in the world isn't fighting the war against zombies. Don’t you get it? The zombies are a joke."

"Traverse might know something…" Bob started.

"Who wants him?" Vega asked. "Who were you and Crater working for? If the government wanted Traverse, they would be here. They didn’t hire us. Unless you've been hiding something from me."

"Don't back out of this. We're not finished!"

"I'm
finished
.
You wouldn't understand, because there are things I never told you. This is something I need to do. The choice was already made for me. I'm sorry."

The moment seemed entirely awkward; Bob ignored him, and a strong, warm wind picked up amid the silence of the surreal, smoky morning. Vega and Bob stood looking at each other, their gray fatigues stained with blood, their war paint smeared and faded.

"Back at the Renaissance Center…" Bob hesitated.

"What?" Vega stared him down.

"You called out for your father. You looked at me and said his name when I pulled you out there. You forgot I did that. I didn't."

She looked away. "Shanna's out there. I came all this way for a reason and it has nothing to do with Traverse. I'm sorry."

"Her name's Mina," Griggs said to Vincent. "Right? The redhead."

Vincent took a long drag on his blunt. He coughed out a cloud. "My nigga Fireball used to keep all the heavy shit here in this house. Still got some ammo inside. Maybe something for that shotgun you got old man." His eyes flickered to Griggs for a moment. "Mina's fucked up, you know that?"

"I'm going to that church," Griggs announced. "The only thing I have left—the only person left alive who might give a shit about me is there. That matters to me. Whatever happens, we can only do what matters to us."

Bob was confused. He hadn't expected Vega to make a decision that would separate them. Griggs could tell the man's loyalties were torn. He believed in his mission, yet, he wanted to be there for Vega, and he knew she couldn’t be persuaded to change her mind.

It was clear that Vincent had been deeply disturbed by his encounter with Traverse. Griggs couldn't help but wonder if Mina was okay. She was an unsettling person herself, but there was nothing false about her. Mina reveled in truths and failed to comprehend any standards that had been imposed upon others.

"I'm ready to do this," Vega announced. "Vincent, you have ammo?"

"I ain't going back to that church," he replied.

"I'm sick of standing around," Bob grumbled, apparently convincing himself that it wasn't worth arguing with Vega over her decision. He was disconnecting himself from the situation. In his mind, she was already dead.

"Bob…" Vega tried to talk, but she realized it was useless. They were beyond words, now. Everything they'd endured to that point had culminated in her choice.

"I'll take any shells you have," Bob said and handed Crater's assault rifle to Vincent. "I'll trade you. There's some ammo for it. Not much, but some."

Vega refused to give up. "This comes from somewhere within me, where my dreams are kept. If Shanna's alive, I have to do this. She needs me."

"I get it!" Bob snapped at her. "I don't care. Good luck to you."

While Vincent retreated into the house for a moment, trailing marijuana smoke behind him, Griggs was intrigued by the strange interplay between the two soldiers. Vega's thick eyelashes lay closed over her eyes while she stared at a corpse beneath her boots. A few vagrant zombies stumbled over bushes down the street, making their way toward them with vague interest.

Otherwise, there was only the silence.

WORLD WITHOUT END

Bob and Griggs approached the church with their weapons drawn. A gray Ford Focus, nondescript and unreal, seemed deliberately parked in front of the church. A helicopter thundered overhead, but nobody saw it. Griggs held his magnum while his sport coat billowed behind his hips. Bob, his face dripping with sweat, his mouth open without any noise spilling out, held his shotgun with his ammo belt full of the shells Vincent had given him.

There were only a handful of zombies clustered around the church, but if there had been more, they likely moved on already.

A man stood in front of the church steps. He was bringing an axe down upon the neck of a zombie, stopping only to wipe sweat from his forehead with the back of his sleeve. He stopped and waved at Bob and Griggs when he noticed them. Sitting on the steps behind him was a woman clad in a nun's habit, and he was dressed in a priest's black suit. He leaned against the axe and waited.

The nun rose from the step and stood beside the priest. Griggs stopped his jaw from dropping: wrapped around the nun's body was the legless torso of a zombie in the likeness of a dead priest, its arms dangling above the cement.

Griggs brought his weapon up, but wasn't sure if he knew what to shoot.

"No," Bob said. "That's him. He comes back alive."

"Gentlemen!" Traverse, in his priest attire, greeted them. "Bob! It's good to see you again! You've finally come to join me! I knew you would eventually see things my way!"

"Traverse," Bob said. "I'm not here to dick around."

"You're all that remains? How disappointing. I was under the impression that finally, my old friends at the Pentagon believed me. I wanted an army, but they gave me you. I think of myself a little more highly than anybody else does, but that's always been the case."

Traverse dropped the axe and motioned to the dead bodies around him. "I got a little bored while I was waiting for you," he said. "Destroying them isn't a whole lot of fun. They don't appreciate anything, so they don't care about the axe as it falls upon them. Bob, do I still owe you a beer?"

Mina looked up at Patrick from beneath the habit. "Hi," she said.

"I came for you," he said to her. "We can be together, now. Come with me."

"I like Jim," Mina said. "He likes to do beautiful things. Do you want me to apologize to you? Because I think I'm going with him."

The zombie that was attached to her chest rolled its head back and forth.

"This is Father James," she pointed at the corpse, picked up one of his arms, and waved it at Griggs. "He's trying to say hello. He's dead, though."

"Your girlfriend's fucked up," Bob said. "Do you mind if I blow her away?"

Griggs swallowed and kept his eyes on Mina. "You're all I have left. Richard and Nikki are both dead. I … I fucking killed them. I did it because I made a mistake. I did it because I know I need you. I screwed up. I'm not the person I thought I was, or pretended to be. I think I like to
kill
… I think maybe it suits me."

Traverse stepped in front of Mina and ignored her lover's plea. "I need you to pursue me, Bob. Chase me to the ends of the world. You've no idea what has been unleashed. You don't know why they want me alive."

"And I don't give a shit," Bob spat. "I've seen it all, and I've heard it all. You're coming with me."

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 of 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?