Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3)

by Bilof, Vincenzo

  MINA

  Mina had thought she had escaped both life and death. She had believed herself victorious over evil; she might be cursed with a consciousness that would dwell forever in the realm of nightmare, but the world would not have to put up with her anymore. People could heal and rebuild. Jim Traverse could no longer manipulate her to satisfy his narcissism.

  Now her head was crowded again with the voices and memories of the dead, and a new presence had invaded her mind and threatened to take over. A presence that could not understand the hellish power that Jim wanted to wield through control over this body.

  The only way to stop Jim was to get involved again; to fight for control over the body that an evil power had somehow created when Jim inserted the Rose microchip into the dead body of a fresh corpse.

  Mina had to figure out where the real world was and where the nightmare began. She had to take control; she was the only one who could stop Jim.

  Thankfully, Rose fought her own battle with nightmare and memory. The poor woman didn’t know exactly who she was or who she had been. Mina had to be brave now, had to finish what she accidentally started.

  She was in her body again, but she was always in her body. In her nightmares, she was in her body. There had to be a way to figure out if she really was in the real world.

  Good luck, you dumb whore, the voice of Patrick Griggs was in her head, but she knew it wasn’t actually Patrick. It was the nameless demon, the demon that could be anybody and nobody.

  Just like in the movies Daddy used to watch, demons resorted to silly name calling when they were desperate.

  Mina ran her fingers through her red hair and was comforted by its texture. She recognized where she was because she had seen it through Rose, when the girl had temporarily taken control over the new body. This was an old, abandoned factory. Dark and grungy, a place that smelled like old blood and masculine sweat.

  She couldn’t think of a way to figure out if she was in the real world. It shouldn’t be possible that she could return to her body; Father Joe had destroyed it. It shouldn’t be possible that the dead walked the earth. It shouldn’t be possible that Rose was nothing more than a personality on a microchip. It shouldn’t be possible that hell was inside of her mind. It shouldn’t be possible that zombies were created when she ate a man while filming a porno, and then someone watched the video and became a zombie.

  Reality was just as insane as she was.

  Kill Jim. That was the only way.

  Only the crazies can save the world, the Griggs-demon said. That’s your theory? Maybe you’re still at Eloise Fields dreaming this whole thing. Maybe you’ve always been just another nutcase in a nuthouse. Maybe I’m not real.

  “Shut up,” Mina said aloud.

  Mina felt stiff and awkward, as if he body wasn’t hers at all. This version of herself had been created when the demon-Rose fusion overpowered the body of a woman named Linda. This wasn’t really Mina’s body to begin with.

  There needed to be a plan, and she needed a weapon. She didn’t know where Jim was, but he believed he had won; he would assume that Rose had complete control over this body, and Mina could easily fool him. Killing him would be easy.

  She remembered the taste of Patrick’s flesh when she ate him. Jim might taste differently; she had no desire, no hunger, for human flesh, but she couldn’t use a gun or any other weapon. Eating him was her best option.

  He would never expect it.

  It was best to wait for him in the dark corners of the Packard Plant where he had left her. She didn’t need to explore his dark fortress; a quick scan of Linda’s memory revealed that Jim had decorated this place with all sorts of macabre displays, and she had no desire to see what Jim created with his murder-art.

  Waiting might not have been the smartest thing she could do: she found herself sinking into the suffering memories of the dead, thousands of voices screaming or whispering their final thoughts before they were brutally murdered at the hands of the undead.

  What she saw made it worse.

  A horde of zombies was on the move, awakening from deep sleep and filled with malicious intent. Rose’s presence had disrupted everything Mina had done, unraveling the fragile peace she managed to create. All over the world, the slumbering dead were on the move. Rose’s hatred for the living pushed them forward.

  In Detroit, a neighborhood was under attack. She saw Vega and Vincent struggle with zombies, and Mina did everything in her power to regain command, to slip inside the dead and pause their assault.

  But it was no use.

  Because you’re not in control at all, the demon said, and its mad laughter followed.

  There had to be another way. She couldn’t let Rose and Jim kill everyone and have their way. Mina could stop them. Mina could stop it all from happening. There didn’t have to be so much slaughter.

  In order to gain control of the undead again, she would have to find a way to get Rose out of her mind.

  She could destroy this body completely. She might be trapped in her own consciousness forever with Rose, but it was worth it. If she destroyed the microchip Jim had inserted inside the brain, then Rose might be gone.

  Jim would still be alive. Maybe he would find another way. If she didn’t make sure Jim was dead, destroying herself was pointless. She might be able to regain control of the undead with Rose out of the picture, and attack Jim with zombies, but there was so much she didn’t know about her power and its limitations. She had a chance to kill Jim now, and she had to take it.

  Mina was proud of herself. She was coming up with a plan all on her own. It might not be the best plan, but she was trying. Father Joe would be happy with her. He might run his fingers through her hair, pat her on the head, offer his friendly smile. It would be nice to see him again. He was the best thing that ever happened to her.

  If only she could find a dead person who knew something about her.

  Her mind worked like a computer search engine; she had watched Patrick use the internet to look at porn so he could teach her positions and methods, and a single word or image could be used to retrieve all sorts of information. There was so much she could know, so much she could do; this power was extremely dangerous in the wrong hands. If Rose submitted to Jim’s will, the Artist would end up with the power of a god at his disposal.

  I know exactly what I’m doing.

  She heard the voice in her head and knew it was not the demon. Knowledge flooded her brain, along with a name. She knew that Jim knew it, and Rose knew it, and someone named Sutter knew it.

  Colonel Richards.

  Murdered by Jim inside a transport plane and left to rot there, left to exist as a zombie probably because Jim wanted some kind of poetic victory only he could understand.

  Mina delved into the dead colonel’s memory and found herself confronting Doctor Desjardins, a scientist she had encountered in another nightmare. She knew this man was responsible for her upbringing; he had nurtured her as a baby and helped select the madman who would become her father. Desjardins was responsible for her existence and for her curse.

  Through the colonel’s eyes, she saw Desjardins rush toward him. They were both on a stairwell in a military complex. A forbidden place, a place nobody knew about. Colonel Richards’ mind was open to her, and she knew everything that he knew. But this moment resonated. She caught glimpses of his experience in Egypt, but this moment was more arresting than any other. A moment filled with confusion and terror.

  “You have to wait,” Desjardins shouted at him. “Wait. Stop. Listen to me, just listen to me for one moment.”

  “I don’t have time for this,” Richards said.

  “You have to make time, before we don’t have it anymore. Please, just wait. Hear me out.”

  “Wait? Everything we’ve worked for is happening right now. Every piece is ready. Everything’s in place. What’s there to debate?”

  “It’s not that simple. I realize this is going to sound crazy, but we have to stop it. This i
sn’t what I thought it was.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Colonel, you just need to listen to me…”

  “I am listening. You stopped me, and I’m standing here.”

  “Everything is just fucked. The Rose project, Traverse, all of it. We don’t have control. We don’t have any control, and it’s all going to spin out of our hands before we know it.”

  Richards laughed. “I don’t believe what I’m hearing. You’ve spent your entire life doing this, and now you want to back out? You were part of the reason why I was in Egypt in the first place. You’ve forgotten what you’re dealing with.”

  “No. That’s the problem. I haven’t forgotten. I’ve sacrificed everything to get to this point. I have everything I could ever want. My father, and my father before him, and everyone else in my family has worked for this project as far back as we can know. I know how this is going to sound. I know it.”

  “Listen to yourself. You’re babbling. Are you done?”

  “We won’t be able to control what’s going to happen next. All the power we’ve ever wanted isn’t going to be what we thought it was going to be.”

  Richards laughed again. “Okay then. Go home. See your wife. Fuck your mistress. Take a trip to Hawaii until it blows over. You’re thinking about this too much. You’re getting cold feet. You’ve worked hard. Go home, and take a break.”

  The colonel turned his back to Desjardins.

  The scientist put a hand on the colonel’s shoulder and stopped him.

  “Don’t go in there,” Desjardins said. “Let’s think this through. We have too many variables in play.”

  Richards licked his lips and then gritted his teeth. A long time ago, he wanted to erase Desjardins from the program and get someone else. Desjardins knew too much. Even if he had proven valuable, like all of his ancestors, the scientist was off. Desjardins didn’t appreciate their goals. Now that the conclusion was at hand, the scientist wasn’t necessary anymore.

  The colonel pushed Desjardins against the wall and held him there. “You don’t really know what’s happening, do you? Eternity is mine. I’m the one who came back from Egypt. I’m the one chosen to make this happen. You’re just a goddamn puppet. Do you understand? We’ve already dropped people into ground zero. Detroit’s already a mess. It’s happening. Right now, it’s happening. You have no idea what I’ve gone through for this. I was chosen. I was picked.”

  He searched the doctor’s eyes for understanding, but the panicked expression he found there confirmed that Richards didn’t need him anymore. Desjardins was more of a liability. He couldn’t be trusted.

  “Who’s watching the video?” Desjardins asked.

  “What does it matter?”

  “Who’s watching it?”

  Richards smiled. The smile told the story Desjardins feared most: the President of the United States was watching the video.

  “No,” Desjardins said.

  “Yes. You guessed it.”

  “This is madness.”

  “Bullshit, Doc. I’m a soldier. Always have been. War really is hell, and war is coming. The last war, and I’m going to win it.”

  “You don’t know what’s going to happen with the video. You don’t know.”

  “I know enough.”

  Richards released him. Killing this imbecile would be a waste of his time. Traverse was waiting for him, and destiny beckoned.

  “You’ve got seven minutes,” Richards said. “One way or the other, you’re gone after that.”

  Richards turned again and left him on the steps. The doctor’s wild shouts followed the colonel up, but he ignored everything. He didn’t have time for the silly man; victory was at hand.

  Mina saw these images of the past, and dreaded what Richards would face next. She knew exactly what he would see. A part of her was curious because she had never seen what Richards was about to see. His sense of terror and loathing were absolute; she understood his helplessness because she had felt that way her whole life whenever she dreamed.

  Richards had no idea what was going to happen next, but Mina knew. She knew because this was a memory. She felt his ego swell when he handed his identification to someone at a security desk and entered the room in which the president was watching a porno film. The president was watching Mina eat a man.

  As the colonel walked down a long, narrow corridor, Mina thought how sad it was that Detroit had been left for dead as soon as everything started. The colonel was in a security bunker, deep below ground, a place where the president had been secreted away in preparation for an event of near-apocalyptic proportions. He was being briefed now on a mission he never would have guessed at, a disaster that had been thousands of years in the making.

  Richards heard the screams echoing down the corridor, but he thought it was just coming from the video. He had no idea that the screams were ahead of him. He had no idea that he had underestimated Jim Traverse, and his entire plan would come to nothing bur sorrow and ruin for millions of people. He had no idea that the president and his advisors were the ones screaming; the possibility that something could go wrong was beyond him. In his mind, he had won. It was over.

  Even when he walked through puddles of glistening blood.

  And opened a door.

  Flickering shadows thrown by the glare of the television monitor kept him from looking directly at the screen; he looked instead at the blood-spattered walls. He inhaled the foul mixture of shit and blood. The furniture was overturned. He had seen blood before. He had assassinated men who were believed to be invincible. But this did not seem real. There was death all around him, and it did not seem real at all.

  Colonel Richards had seen horror in Egypt. Now he looked upon the spawn of that horror, the final outcome of his mortal fear.

  A figure silhouetted by the television glare loomed before him. A tall man wearing a suit that hung loosely over a wet body; emaciated and thin, the body could have been a man who had gone swimming in his suit as part of some joking dare. Richards didn’t know what he was looking at.

  “Sir,” Richards said, and swallowed.

  The face was red and wet. Eyes bulged in their sockets. Thin wisps of hair hung like dead tree branches over the skeletal face.

  Richards screamed, and Mina returned to the Packard Plant. His terror followed her, and so did everything he felt at that moment. The bitter failure, the dread, the realization that he had royally fucked up.

  Traverse ended up killing Richards. And now Mina had to stop him and the game that these powerful men had played with the lives of precious innocents.

  She had learned that men had played with her life, and she was no different than all those who had been lost, save the fact she could do something about it. Patrick would never expect her to act like this, to have good intentions, but he hadn’t known her. Not really. As much as he said he cared about her, she was nothing more than a means to an end for him.

  And for everyone who had ever known her.

  Except for one man.

  ***

  While time passed, Mina began to think she could completely take over again. But somehow, Rose was buried deeply inside of her, and the demon had latched on like a parasite.

  She was happy to discover that Vega and Vincent had survived the onslaught, but there were more zombies coming. The only thing she could do to help was wait for Traverse to come back.

  A faint whistling sound echoing through the corridors of the shattered factory alerted her. The Artist was back. Mina nervously played with her hair, and then thought maybe Rose wouldn’t touch it so much; she had to pretend to be Rose inside of her own resurrected body.

  Being dead was just as complicated as being alive. She had never been a good person, and had always leaned on others to make decisions for her. Mina was alone now.

  All this time waiting, and she didn’t really know how she was going to do it. She didn’t have a plan. She wasn’t strong enough to figure this out on her own. Now it was almost
time to act, and she had no clue how to handle a professional killer like Jim Traverse.

  He wanted Rose to love him, to worship him.

  The whistling was closer. Mina stood and tried to stretch out her stiff limbs, tried to smooth out the tangles from her red hair; she had to think about pleasing Patrick, had to think about what he had wanted from her. If she pleased Patrick and made him happy, he would hold her close and would tell her stories about homicide cases he had been part of. She had to pretend she was going to try and please Patrick.

  Accompanying the sound of Jim’s whistling was a series of squeaks. Mina thought of a playground swing set, and for a fleeting second wondered if she could protect children around the world; all she had to do was kill one man, and then she could destroy this body, finding a way to dash the Rose microchip to bits.

  Casually whistling a show tune, Traverse appeared at the end of the hallway. He was pushing a shopping cart, and its wheels squeaked. The cart was loaded with something, and in the dark, Mina couldn’t see what it was. She slowly approached Jim, hardly able to keep her balance as her awkward joints struggled to work. Curling the ends of her hair around her fingertips, she pursed her lips and swayed her hips as best she could, nearly falling twice.

  Jim stopped and waited for her. He continued whistling.

  “What have you brought me?” Mina asked.

  Who was she supposed to be? Rose? Or herself? For a moment, she wasn’t sure whose voice she used. She wasn’t sure if she was in the right place. She wasn’t sure if she had ever existed.

  “You’ve made a lot of progress in a short while,” Jim said. “I’m surprised you can walk as well as you can.”

  “I’m full of surprises. I wish you would touch me again. I’ve been waiting for you to come back.”

  “Waiting for me.”

  “Yes. It’s been lonely here. It’s not fair that you brought me back and just left me.”

  “You died trying to find me. I am everything you want, and I didn’t let you die in vain. I gave you power. I gave you everything I promised.”