Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3)

by Bilof, Vincenzo

  Vincent wanted to tell him to hold on. Just hold on.

  There were so many hands.

  Vincent roared. He roared against the pain. He roared against himself. He roared against death.

  And Vincent remembered Louis.

  “Suede!” Vincent shouted for the man, and hoped he understood.

  A handgun appeared over Vincent’s shoulder and was pushed against Taylor’s forehead. The old cop’s eyes lit up, and his grimace was replaced with a wide, bright smile.

  Vincent closed his eyes and turned his head.

  The explosion. Hot blood drenching his face. He could feel himself slip over the edge, even as he relinquished his grasp on the dead man.

  He scrambled backward and tried to wipe the blood from his face. He couldn’t hear anything. The world had become a dull throb.

  His body was heaving. Some of the moisture on his face wasn’t blood or sweat.

  “Goddamn it,” he said, and he couldn’t hear himself say it.

  That old man determined that Vincent’s life was more important. And now he was dead.

  He was pulled to his feet. He looked into Suede’s face and knew he was talking, pleading with him. He could make out the words “keep moving.”

  The train seemed to stretch on forever. Forever toward nothing.

  ROSE

  Mina was one fucked-up woman, and Rose had to put up with it inside of her head. Images, memories, and knowledge filled Rose. She had to sift through all the garbage to figure out what was going on, to understand the world Jim had tried to build for the sake of art.

  Rose had control over the awkward body that she had somehow been resurrected into, and Jim had seen fit to dress her up in chains. She lay upon a pile of car interior pieces that were made of plastic, forgotten inserts that would have gone on the inside of a car door.

  She could feel Mina’s desperation and knew she wanted to destroy Jim, but the madwoman was almost buried deep now. Rose didn’t have complete control and didn’t know what she could do when she had it, but she could feel that the undead were on the march toward Jim’s haven. She could see them walking through the streets of Detroit; the undead might be fueled by Rose’s desire for blood.

  Amparo Vega, the woman who had killed her, was still out there. There were other survivors out there struggling against the awakened horde of shambling, rotted corpses. One of them, a woman named Angelica, had died recently, and Rose discovered that Angelica had been the one bringing Jim fresh corpses and fearful refugees in exchange for food.

  Now, Rose listened as the people Jim kept in his stable screamed and begged; they were above her on the roof, and there was a large hole in the ceiling that allowed Rose to stare into the blank sky. When she heard the ripping sound that reminded her of a pillow being opened by a penknife, the screams intensified. Jim was allowing his victims to feel pain.

  A body flopped through the hole in the ceiling, and it was caught by a noose that had been tied around the person’s neck. The body hung, suspended and squealing in pain like a bleeding pig, legs kicking wildly. A man who swung back and forth from the momentum, his hands tied behind his back, the strangling noose around his neck choking off some of his final words. A waterfall of blood gushed from the wound that Jim had sliced across his stomach; viscera and organs untangled from the man’s wound. Stomach, intestine—wet, glistening organs plopped onto the ground in meaty chunks. Another body dropped through the hole, and more blood and organs emptied from the opened stomach.

  Then another, and another; bodies twisting as they dropped from the ceiling, their insides splashing the ground beneath. The metallic smell of blood wafted into Rose’s nose.

  No, this was Mina’s body. She had to remind herself that Jim had condemned her to this existence inside someone else’s body.

  He’s done it before, the demon inside of her said. Every time you die, he moves your microchip into another body. But this time, we helped out a little. We think you’re beautiful. Very, very beautiful. Perfect for Jim.

  A dozen bodies, six dangling from either side of the hole, had been opened. A landscape of plastic parts was painted in blood as gore dripped from the slowly swinging bodies. Piles of rubbery, wet organs looked like afterbirth waste haphazardly tossed about by frenzied abortionists .

  The zombie horde’s distant moaning drifted in through the ceiling, the burning sewage smell of the undead carried by a faint breeze. They were close. Rose knew they were close.

  You have to want control, the demon said. Look at this beautiful display. Jim made it for you. He’s showing you how much he loves you. He put you into a microchip so you could never die. He wanted to admire death through you; you should be thankful.

  Rose didn’t feel anything but confusion. She didn’t even know her real name.

  She knew what Jim had done to Father Joe, and even though she had liked the priest, she felt nothing. She was numb from the shock that her existence was nothing more than another man’s fantasy.

  Mina was using whatever willpower she had left to bring the dead here in one last attempt to destroy Jim and this body. Mina had gambled, had tried to kill Jim first, and it backfired horribly. Rose was too occupied with the tumult of voices and memories to concentrate on whatever power she now wielded. She wanted to know who she was. Killing Amparo Vega would be great, but she had no clue what was going on around her.

  Let Jim earn his life. She didn’t care what happened to her.

  Rose did not feel time pass; she was buried in the past, sifting through images while the demon tried to provide commentary on everything she witnessed. She knew that she had been a teenager when she met Jim for the first time, and he had wanted her from the start. He had wanted to possess her; such was his definition of love. The man was a sociopath, after all.

  She was distracted by Jim’s presence in the room and the groans from the undead mob echoed throughout the ruined industrial park. He carried an AK-47 assault rifle and handguns holstered at each hip.

  Draped over his shoulders and covering his arms were pale strips of flesh cut from Father Joe.

  “This place is a temple,” Jim said. “You are truly a goddess, and I am your devout follower. I will display my devotion to you. No sacrifice is truly worthy of your love, but I will try.”

  This wasn’t the man she remembered. Almost ten years ago, he had been assigned a mission from which he never returned, but he returned and never told her. He had survived the Egypt mission and never came back to see her. All of his promises were broken.

  Rose knew everything Mina knew. Doctor Desjardins, Ron Sutter, Colonel Richards; everything they had done to participate in the apocalypse was in her mind, and Jim’s role in the game was clear. Colonel Richards had sent her into Detroit to find Jim, but only as a last resort. Richards had been convinced that Sutter had failed after hiring a squad of mercenaries to recover Jim.

  She represented his path to power and glory, and now he wanted to revel in bloodshed and violence.

  Jim knelt upon the gore-strewn floor. Always confident in his ability to survive anything. She couldn’t help but admire him and revile him at the same time. She wanted be out next to him, fighting as he had taught her. The rush of combat. Her appreciation for all the destruction she could create. Jim had taught her to create panoramas of violence, to create a scene that witnesses or investigators would never forget.

  Mina’s voice was distant inside Rose’s mind. Distant and desperate.

  He used you.

  I know.

  I understand why he did. I mean, you were pretty when he saw you the first time. He made you pretty after he killed you. I mean, after every time. I think. The memories are confusing. I’m trying to figure it out.

  Get out of my head, bitch.

  You can’t let him win.

  I’m not letting anyone do anything. This body is mine now. This power is mine. You can’t do shit about it.

  I’m going to try. I just want you to learn more about who you are. I want to
help you.

  You’re a fucking psychopath. You ate your boyfriend. You don’t want to help anyone.

  Well, I think you’re a psycho, too. You don’t have to be so mean about it. My doctors used to say it was a medical condition. It’s not our fault.

  A mob of shapes crowded into the corridor. Jim was still kneeling. Members of the undead crowd bumped into each other as if they had meandered out of a building during a fire drill.

  I want complete control, Rose said.

  Why? You’re taking control. I’m not doing anything. The demon has locked me away. I’m down here in the dark. Isn’t this kind of neat?

  I can’t let Jim die. I need him.

  No, you don’t. I learned that with Patrick. He tasted good. You don’t have to eat your boyfriend like I did, but maybe it helps. You don’t know why you need him. It’s like your heart is in control. But that doesn’t sound right. I think that’s from a poem or something. Maybe I’m a poet.

  Rose tried to focus on Jim; she wanted to watch him fight, wanted to see his finesse perfectly executed. She wanted to see the man she had fallen in love with. Was it love? If it was nothing more than possession, that she had wanted to be possessed. She wanted him to need everything she was and everything she could be.

  She couldn’t see the minute details on each zombie, but she knew that Mina had compelled them to move forward; they were every bit as deadly as the mob that had found her outside of the retirement center before Father Joe saved her life. They were every bit as malicious as the crowd that had gathered on the tarmac at Selfridge, right before Vega ran a replica katana sword through her stomach.

  Jim won’t help you, Mina said. You’re upset. We can help each other. Let’s work together.

  There was power enough inside of her to control the fate of the world. She just had to know how to use it. She wanted to know who she was, who she used to be. She wanted to know what she could become.

  Inside another woman’s body.

  Where was the demon? The demon might be using Mina’s voice. Anything was possible if she could be resurrected over and over again. If the dead could walk. If the world had fallen apart.

  But she could see. Cast her thoughts all over the globe to see that most major cities did not look like Detroit. In fact, almost everything was as it should be: under control.

  There was something else. A terrible truth that was finding its way into her brain, something that Jim did not know.

  In the real world, the dead stumbled upon Jim’s hall of gore. They slipped on blood, falling into each other as they clutched at meaty organs that lay upon the ground. They eagerly stuffed their faces, and the indigestible food slipped through open throats and fleshless jaws, so that the pieces were picked up again and chewed by rotted mouths. Many of these corpses did not have internal organs of their own; their feast slipped through exposed rib cages.

  Jim was calm and collected. Jim was ready. He aimed the AK-47 from his kneeling position and opened fire with short, precise bursts.

  If only she could be with him.

  But she was with him, only wrapped in chains.

  She barely had the strength to talk, much less the strength to fight. She didn’t have complete control over her new body, and she felt uncomfortable. Still, it would be worth it.

  The people Jim had killed—the ones dangling from the ceiling—were awakening with newfound desire to consume the flesh of the living. They swayed, their legs kicking above the heads of a legion of corpses that swam through blood and viscera, bodies toppling over each other as skulls erupted from Jim’s bullet-spray.

  He was precise. Always precise. Method and discipline had always dictated the efficiency with which he dispatched targets. Clearly, he wanted to show off, to show her that he was still the man she had known, the man who had made her.

  This was his power against hers, and he was proving dominant. He was proving that he could not be stopped, that his will was absolute. Gray brain matter exploded through skull shards as zombies piled atop each other, slippery organs rolling through claw-like hands.

  Rose tried to speak.

  “Wait.”

  Jim dropped his sight from the rifle’s barrel. He glanced at her as if he questioned whether or not he heard her at all.

  “Wait,” she repeated.

  He lowered his rifle and stood. “I have waited my entire life. I cannot know if I am talking to Rose or Mina. I cannot know or trust what I see or hear. I have dedicated a symphony of slaughter to the beautiful thing that is my adoration for Rose.”

  “I waited… you must wait…” she couldn’t seem to focus her words. There was more she wanted to say, more she wanted him to understand. There were things she wanted to ask, conversations she wanted to have.

  A boiling emotion inside of her wanted vengeance against all life, and that included Jim. Vengeance against God and Heaven and any asshole divinity that had seized control of her life. Vengeance against Vega for taking her life. Vengeance against mankind for evolving into such a wretched race. She wanted to be with Jim and wanted to destroy him at the same time. He had made her into this thing that she had become, and all of her disgust had been part of the same philosophy that he had pushed into her soul.

  Anger. Hate.

  Time for complete annihilation.

  Give the audience what they paid for, the demon said.

  She thought about a word.

  RAGE.

  Zombies collapsed, their chattering hands no longer opening and closing over slippery entrails.

  RAGE.

  Joints disconnected from their sockets as if an invisible engineer played with a pile of broken bones. Reanimated bodies cracked and snapped apart, a sound that emulated the cracking of clamshells by a hammer, or a thousand walnuts being pressed by a slow piston.

  RAGE.

  Jim watched, the smirk on his face a brutal scar caused by his scorn for humanity.

  Bones connected. Joined. Made something new.

  RAGE.

  Something better. Something beautiful. Something horrible.

  Rising through the mess of blood and death, a monstrosity jumbled together in the red hallway that lay open beneath a blank sky—open like the gaping stomachs of Jim’s hanging, eviscerated victims. Here, in the stomach of the world, a creature that was a puzzle of bones and teeth, of wandering eyes and opening hands. Spinal cords had snaked around each other, and a dozen dead faces adorned the appalling beast. Dozens of hands, fingers, toes, elbows, shoulder blades—here was an assembly of bones and faces, a lump of flaking, withered flesh adorning bones that looked like they had been pulled out of a dumpster filled with chicken bones that had been discarded after a family-friendly fried chicken meal.

  RAGE.

  Oh, that’s cute, Mina said. And kind of scary. I wonder if I ever dreamed of it. I wonder if something like it ate me in one of my nightmares. I think I would let it eat me. I am so used to pain. So used to how it feels. I would want to try something new. I think you have to try something new once in a while.

  Jim nodded his head at the beast. “I am impressed.”

  He dropped the assault rifle. Predictably, his ego took over. He wanted to see what he was capable of against a new foe.

  The Artist drew his handguns and casually put a bullet into each skull, his aim careful and true.

  The beast flopped. Defeated.

  “Such potential,” Jim said. “I think I can trust you. I hope that I have inspired your creative impulses.”

  She didn’t really want to kill him.

  What did she want? She didn’t know anything, except that she had been trapped inside of bodies that did not belong to her; this was not the first time, although Mina had been destroyed, too. Now, she shared a body with a madwoman, a demon, and a nearly unfathomable number of dead people.

  She wanted to break him down into a sniveling mess. She wanted him to beg for her affection. She wanted him on his knees, and she wanted to be inside of his head. She wanted his consciou
sness; it was the only way to completely have him, and have him forever.

  RAGE.

  And the anger was still inside of her, sitting at the bottom of her soul and threatening to surface. If only she had the strength and desire to say everything. If only she could tell him what needed to be said.

  Her mouth stretched open. Her lower jaw extended lower than it should have, and her body convulsed. Shivering violently, her body heaved against the restraining chains. A thick, watery substance burned upward through her stomach, roiling out of her throat, and exploding out of her mouth. Black and oily, a pile of liquid rot filled with pus and blood had been vomited out of her body.

  Along the bloody floor, bones slowly melted together into a thick, black liquid that congealed, a sticky mess of rot.

  Jim holstered the guns and looked at her.

  “Hate,” she said.

  VEGA

  “If you were an asshole with a lot of guns and people on your side, where would you stay?”

  A question like this would have been right up Vincent’s alley, but the poor bastard wasn’t around, and the Champ was her best shot.

  He shrugged as they walked through the street which was surprisingly empty of unlife. Bones and rags lay in charred repose along the concrete. Suicidal, white-collar corpses dangled from the windows from which they had hanged themselves, twitching in their weather-beaten clothes as if they awaited tides of natural erosion. Several people had the idea at the same time, it seemed, to hang themselves for all the world to see. Vega had seen these suicides a year ago when the bodies were still fresh.

  “Someplace tall,” Bill said. He looked at the ground as they walked, probably wondering if he should have made his confession to her, maybe even seeing the rape happen all over again. Maybe now he felt the guilt that he had buried for most of his life. There was no time to feel sorry for him, and if he felt sorry for himself, they were in big trouble.

  Vega stopped walking. “Look at me. This shit all around us has a way of getting into your head. I know it does. I’m fucked up five million ways to outer space, man. And that’s the part I’m struggling with. We can’t unsee this shit. You can’t unsee what happened, and now you’re getting it all mixed up with your feelings about what you see around you now. You’ve done a hell of a job trying to pretend, Bill. I know you have. You’re a tough fucker, but now that you’re standing here with me, I’d hate to see you get your face ripped off.”