“This is your turf,” Bella said. “I get it. Why don’t you join the people you trade with? Who are they? They must think you’re valuable if they’ve kept you alive.”
Angelica was sexy in her own way, with an exotic face which lent itself to the gypsy persona, and she would have fetched a fair price. A month’s worth of food or more, maybe some ammunition, too. How could a woman like that keep herself from the greedy hands of the people she traded with?
Bella allowed her eyes to wander over the wasted skyline and the slow Detroit River. Why didn’t Angelica go south where it was warm? Maybe because everyone else was going south. She liked it here. This was her home, and she relied on herself.
There was an acknowledgement between the two women; they were alone and had survived alone.
But Bella wasn’t alone. Brian was out there, and so was Desmond.
“I think I might let you live,” Angelica said. “I want to think about trading you.”
Angelica was letting her guard down. She wanted to trust Bella. She wanted to trust somebody, anybody.
VINCENT
With a festering skull sitting on the edge of his spade, Vincent thought about the day he stood in the street and gunned down maybe a hundred or so of the undead all by himself.
The funny thing was that he couldn’t imagine how he had done it. He dreamed of it sometimes, though the dream was always false. He couldn’t remember exactly how it all went down. With each passing day, it was becoming more difficult to believe that he managed to pull it off. He had mowed down a crowd of zombies, and now he didn’t even carry a gun with him.
He didn’t carry a gun because he didn’t want to fight them anymore. Vega still didn’t know, but he knew she was pretty screwed up, too. After all the running and fighting they had done, it was silly to think they could barely lift a finger to save themselves, now.
He tossed the head into the back of the waiting pickup truck and resumed picking up the neighborhood’s trash.
A little more than a year ago he was smoking Cubans and getting next year’s Jordan’s delivered to his home. His Mercedes dealership was one of the top ten most lucrative Mercedes dealerships in the country. He had people on the street hustling bricks of cocaine. There were money machines in his office, even though he never used them. He carried a stack of tightly wrapped hundreds in his pocket. He had a Columbian girl he saw in Miami, and he had strippers on voice-dial. He owned four cell phones. Bodyguards. Shook hands with Jay-Z. A former Detroit mayor owed him money. Not a single person he paid money to do any “wet” work was found because he could afford the best professionals. Every single dollar he made was accounted for because he only paid for “business” with cash, and his dealership had been started with a group of investors, all of whom were bought out. He hadn’t lived too lavishly because he was careful not to show off.
Now he was shoveling garbage into the back of a truck.
This was important work. Their garbage needed a place to be incinerated, and it had been a hot topic of debate amongst the locals when everyone in the neighborhood first decided they would be a community and work together to help each other. A few miles from their neighborhood there was a massive sinkhole in the middle of the Lodge Freeway. They were dumping their trash into that massive crater and burning it.
Burning. Vincent inhaled deeply, and his stomach growled. He could smell the burning meat from their weekly barbecue. Families were hanging out in a nearby park, doing their best to pretend like nothing had changed.
“You look like you could use some help,” someone said.
Vincent turned around and found the retired cop, Mike Taylor, standing by the pile of garbage with work gloves on his hands. He brought his own shovel. He wore a burgundy tank top, and his tattered jeans looked like they had been ripped off a corpse, which was likely. Despite being in his early sixties, the old man had a lean, tight body. No loose fat hung from his arms, and his barrel chest could have belonged to a semi-retired professional bodybuilder.
“Looks are deceiving,” Vincent said and turned back to his work. He preferred to be alone. The work kept him busy. Kept his mind occupied.
“Don’t I know it,” Taylor said while tossing refuse into the truck from the end of his shovel. “Tried to get your ass on tax evasion… how many times? Never got it to stick.”
His former career was out in the open now. He wasn’t going to be that person again.
“I don’t remember you,” Vincent said. “You all looked the same to me. Unless you wanted to buy a car.”
Taylor chuckled. “I wasn’t on your case. The Feds loved you though. I remember this one guy… I think his last name was North or Kim or something ridiculous like that… anyway, he managed to infiltrate. Worked his way up through one of your sales teams. Had dinner with you once at a gentlemen’s club downtown. Said you were a nice guy. Said you hooked him up nice. Hooked him up so nice he got a girl pregnant.”
Vincent rested the spade on the cement and leaned against the long shaft; he laughed. He remembered who Taylor was talking about. They had the guy figured for a wire a long time ago.
“We were convinced they were both going to end up in a ditch somewhere,” Taylor said.
“That’s why it didn’t happen,” Vincent said, nodding to himself.
“That’s the only reason?”
“Only one I can think of.”
“You really are a hard fucker. That why you’re not eating? Showing off the muscle, showing people they should respect your for being strong or something?”
It wasn’t too long ago he would have had Fireball or someone else on his staff escort Taylor out of his sight. But there was nothing to gain from such antics now. This man was testing him. Trying to muscle him in a different way.
A tiny park in the middle of their neighborhood hosted their weekly barbecue, where people brought whatever meat they had managed to salvage from the various trips out into the city, or wherever else they could try to scrounge things up. Vincent watched as a woman walked two children down the street toward the park, both of her hands occupied with one of theirs. Those kids were about to enjoy eating barbecued dog, cat, rat, frog, rabbit, robin. A couple families had venison because the deer population was running around unchecked, although it didn’t make it any easier. There were plenty of dead deer in the streets, too. And there was competition.
“They don’t need to respect me for anything,” Vincent said.
“But you were important here,” Taylor said. “These people knew you, and some of these houses were dope houses. This was your turf. And now people from all over are finding you because they hear that you have guns and that you can protect them.”
Vincent stopped shoveling. He looked down at the pile of garbage, and a part of him wanted to snap. But what would that solve? It was about time someone said these things.
But a man like Taylor didn’t start conversations like these out of boredom. It was smarter to keep this conversation going. To find out what Taylor wanted.
Not even Vega wanted to have these conversations. He always felt like they should talk, but it wasn’t easy. He worried she would kill herself, even though she had never tried. He expected it would be out of the blue, and she would want him to try and stop her. Why would she want that? He wasn’t sure. There wasn’t much he was sure about anymore.
“I don’t know if they’re expecting something from me,” Vincent said. “I don’t know what they would want. I didn’t ask anyone to come here.”
He realized that he wanted to talk. He wanted to keep talking to Taylor. It felt like now he might be able to see through the heavy fog that had settled over his mind.
“We’re all just pretending, aren’t we?” Taylor asked. “When it comes right down to it, I mean. You’re trying to hide, like you always used to hide. You hid in plain sight. Everyone knew who you were, what you were capable of. Some people stayed out of your way. Those who didn’t weren’t in your way for long. You had the Bloods in your pocket
…”
“What are we talking about?” Vincent stopped him. “I’m over here shoveling and then you come by and need to run your mouth. I didn’t come to you. You want something—don’t waste my time, or yours. Ain’t like we’re going to live forever.”
“I’m selfish, Hamilton. Just like you.”
“Yeah?”
“I want to know if you’re pretending to care. I don’t assume because I don’t know what goes in your head. We’re not going to try to empathize with each other, revisit the ghosts of all of the people we’ve lost. See everything that’s gone. We have people trying to talk this shit out right now, and we’ve got people who want to climb up the walls. People who want to blow their brains out. How many suicides have we had? How many people have walked away?”
Vincent shrugged. “Didn’t know we were doing a headcount.” He shoveled more garbage into the pickup truck’s bed. “People got their own way of dealing with this. You’re asking a question, and then you keep on talking. I don’t know what the real question is.”
Taylor used his forearm to wipe sweat from his brow. “Haven’t seen you at church. You like that priest? Father Joe? You helped him out before, didn’t you?”
There wasn’t much for him to say on the subject of God. There never had been much for him to say. His mother didn’t raise him that way. He never questioned, never gave it much thought. He used to think about it when the army was in the process of discharging him, but he buried those questions, buried those thoughts.
“He happened to be around,” Vincent said. “People like to hear him talk. I don’t see a problem with what he’s doing. He’s doing something good.”
“I’m trying to figure you out. You’ve got a lot going on in that head of yours. A lot of people underestimated you. They had a habit of underestimating criminals. It takes a certain kind of intelligence, a certain kind of courage, to pull off what you’ve pulled off.”
“Okay, just say it. You want something.”
“If you really want to help people, you can’t do it here. Look around you. Everyone here’s waiting to die.”
“Fuck you talking about? Looks to me like there’s a barbecue. We’re shoveling trash. You want to set up laws and ordinances, shit like that. You want to start this thing over.”
“And you don’t.”
Vincent tried to think about Taylor’s intentions. The old cop was still playing a game, and Vincent knew how to play it. A part of him was interested. He could smell a deal; Taylor had a proposition for him.
What could he do for Taylor?
Right before Taylor opened his mouth, he figured it out.
“We happen to be in the suburbs,” Taylor said. “There’s people everywhere, waiting this thing out, struggling. You’ve heard the stories about Sutter. You’ve heard about the people who are trading women and children for food.”
“Keep talking.”
“I don’t know what you want, but you’ve got the means to do it. You have guns. The stuff you have here in the neighborhood isn’t all you have. I know it. A lot of people know it, or think they know it. Use them. Do something with them. You want to take this city for yourself, you have to go through Sutter. With him, or against him. You need guns to keep your turf. And if that’s not what you want, take those guns and go north. To Canada, or somewhere else, because nobody’s going to wait for you to hand the guns over.”
Sutter. Vincent heard the name before but it didn’t mean a whole lot to him. Everyone else saw him as an important figure, and until now, he wasn’t sure why. They had been talking about him, wondering what his next move would be. What did Sutter want?
Taylor had talked with Sutter. They were trying to strike a deal of some kind. Otherwise, Taylor had nothing to gain by coming to him about the guns he supposedly had. Taylor was a smart man was trying to plan his next move.
Both men shoveled silently for a moment, and their thoughts were interrupted when they heard a shrill whistle. They both looked up and saw the lumbering football player, Bill Bailey—the Champ—walking toward them with a familiar bottle and some paper cups. Crown Royal. A full bottle.
Vincent could feel the grin splitting his face. “Goddamn,” he said.
As a matter of principle, he stayed away from alcohol most of the time because it would make you sloppy, stupid. But the day had been long and hot. It had been a long time since he had a drink.
And he wanted it. Badly.
***
They drank and watched the sunset. Their heads buzzed, and they had to piss multiple times. Bill was going to drive the truck out full of trash tomorrow to the hole. So nice of him to volunteer.
There was laughter. They shared stories. They talked about what they thought was supposed to happen next in their lives before everything was interrupted. Taylor had grandkids and wanted to live long enough to see them get through college. Bill was going to try to impress the coaches so that he could fill in and earn a spot on the Lions when someone went down with an injury. Vincent had listened but didn’t say much about his intentions or his past. It was a habit of his to be careful, even if he wasn’t running a criminal enterprise anymore.
But he listened to them, and it felt good to sit on the edge of the truck bed. This was time dedicated to laughter, to old-fashioned ball busting. Bill had plenty of stories from college, and Taylor had dealt with his share of dumbass criminals.
Vincent stepped away and pissed into a ditch. Only a few yards away, he could see a house full of candle flames flickering in the shadows behind draped windows. The neighborhood was quiet, the barbecue long over. There were power generators set up around the neighborhood, but they weren’t used often; gasoline was in short supply, and the generators made a lot of noise. The quieter the neighborhood was, the easier it was to identify if something bad was going down.
He watched the shadows inside the house. He was trying to decide whether or not he liked Taylor and Bailey, or if he just respected them. It probably didn’t matter.
It felt like the air on the back of his neck was standing straight up. Something panted nearby. A dog?
All over again, he was a little boy awakening from a nightmare and sitting up in bed, wondering if he had really been asleep.
“There you are,” someone said.
Vincent was holding his dick. He shook himself and promptly zipped.
“Hey,” the voice said again, impatiently.
Vincent turned and could hardly see the shape in front of him; the light of the house’s shadow wasn’t strong enough to illuminate the street. Suede was standing in front of him, the guy who worked on Vega’s dove tattoos. A former career thug who had worked the streets in one of Fireball’s crews, although Vincent had never known the guy until the past few months.
“Nigga, you need to have a good reason,” Vincent said, trying to deepen the edge to his voice. He wasn’t supposed to be afraid, but he was jumpy. It would be easy to blame the alcohol; he should have been less jumpy, more alert.
“Look man, there’s something going down,” Suede said, his eyeballs shifting quickly. He looked over his shoulder.
“What?”
Suede’s voice cracked. “Those things, man. You know. You know what I’m trying to say.”
“No, I don’t know. Get your shit together.”
“Those mutherfuckers, those things. Those things are here. Those things are here man, I’m telling you.”
Vincent grabbed Suede by the shoulders. “Hey, look at me. Look right at me. You high? You on shit?”
“You gotta see this. You gotta help.” Words reduced to a state of whimpering.
The darkness seemed to be spinning around Vincent’s head, a tangible thing that vibrated, trembled. The twilight sky quaked and his hands trembled.
He reached into the waistband of Suede’s jeans and removed the 9mm. The weapon was cold; there hadn’t been any gunshots in the night.
A bullet in the chamber. Safety off. Full clip.
“Show me,” Vincent sai
d.
Although he could feel his feet touch the ground, he seemed to float through a narrow corridor of shadow and darkness, of starlight and moonlight, of shaking sky and a silent suburban street. He was drunk.
So many dark houses. Silent houses. Black windows. Invisible lawns. Moans from somewhere. People screwing or praying. People gripping each other tightly, huddled in corners. People sitting up in bed, sweating. People staring from behind black windows.
This should be easy. But why did he have to do it? The Champ was probably capable, if the stories were true, and Taylor knew how to use a gun. Suede had to come and get him.
“There,” Suede said, his voice shaky. “In there.”
They were standing in front of a dark house. Smell of dirt. Insect chatter. More insects than there should be.
But he could smell them, could taste them. Yes. It was true. Blood. The air tasted like blood.
Vincent had felt this way the first time he was in a combat zone, waiting for his officers to direct him; there might be landmines in the Iraqi city, snipers, children with grenades.
Vincent was frozen all over again, just like that first day. Standing in front of a dark house, his body unwilling to do anything. The insects were so damn loud. There was too much noise in this kingdom. There should be silence. There should be nothing.
Vincent was not in control. His body moved forward, guided by a principle he didn’t understand. These were monsters he had destroyed time and time again. Why couldn’t he just get this over with?
His hand was on the door, and he gently pushed it open.
Thick blood smell, as if were inside a rotting factory with its taint of sweat and rust. The air was hot, stale. He could taste the stillness on his lips, and the heaviness inside the house made him even more aware of the cold grip on the gun in his hand.
Standing on the threshold, he waited. His eyes adjusted to the deeper shade of darkness. He glanced up a nearby staircase and could see the cigarette burns on the carpeted steps; Suede was behind him, a flashlight in his hand slowly roving over the details of the house. The place looked normal.
Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3) Page 6
