One of his hands seized a nearby corpse by the waistband of its tattered jeans and pulled; he corralled another, and none of them responded. They did not resist or fight back. The others did not attack. Their bodies were soft, frail, wet. Or their bodies were dry, brittle, ashen. There was no color in this world. He could not find color in those faces. Eyes looked at nothing. Dead people stumbled drunkenly into him, sleepwalking maybe, dreaming somewhere else. Each body was different. Spiderwebbed strands of hair, shriveled flesh peeling, worms falling out of nostrils. A fly stopped upon the tip of Bill’s nose, but he could do nothing about it.
A mound of corpses were piled around him, limbs twitching, bodies flopping in a mangled pile of sewage-ripe decrepitude. He grabbed them, pulled them down. He didn’t know what he was doing or why. Bill, the Champ, was lost. He was gone.
The dead climbed over each other. They were in a daze, unable to realize they were being attacked. Bill was invisible to them. He didn’t know why he was invisible, but it made everything worse. He wanted to destroy more of them. Even though he wasn’t destroying them at all, it was as if pinning them down was good enough to satisfy his latent desire for pain and combat.
“Why did you do this?” Bill looked to the sky. “Why did you abandon us? This is your war! This isn’t our fight! This isn’t our fight…”
Who was he talking to?
What fight?
Words slipped, emotions coalesced. Rage, despair, hurt. He felt everything he could ever feel in shredded moments.
He had never wanted to hurt anyone, and here he was, hurting the world. Sharing with the world the hurt that he felt now. Nothing but a harmless spectator, a yes-man who loved to play football, a God-fearing man who believed in the power of redemption. After he had watched a girl get raped in a field he needed an excuse to carry on, some kind of way to deal with the world after he had allowed horror and violence to occur in front of his eyes.
Bill was not a hero. He was nothing.
He felt the weight of a thousand dead people pressing down upon him as his cries were drowned out by a mass of bodies that threatened to bury him in the dark of cold flesh. They were upon him. They were upon him, and he could not see.
This was it.
Time for him to go.
He was ready to feel everything. He wanted all of it.
***
Bill thought he was dreaming.
In his dream, he moved several of the corpses aside and casually walked over hundreds of them. Dead eyes stared up at the sky, not at him. His shadow passed over them as he stepped over the corpse-littered street.
But it was not a dream. At least, it was not his dream. He didn’t realize that he was alive, that he was conscious, until he began walking up a fire escape. How much time had passed? He was still alive. Where was Vega? Maybe it didn’t matter. She might be out of his life. Gone forever.
He couldn’t remember how he managed to climb out of the pile, but he made it through. He was here, standing, walking. Was he undead? Was he one of them now?
He inhaled. The dead city’s putrescence filled his lungs.
What a fool he was. How could he dare blame God for what happened? Doctor Desjardins was nothing more than a delusional madman, even if Vega believed that bullshit. God would never allow such evil; man would not be allowed to destroy His vision for the human race. Never. This was all wrong. Even if the undead were some kind of projection from Hell, there would be some kind of rebuttal.
Driven by some remote instinct, he finally stopped walking up the fire escape. He leaned against the iron and looked into the street below. Corpses twitched. Shambled. Otherwise, there was silence. A vast emptiness. As if everything had been shut off. Terminated.
He was alone again.
Continuing up the fire escape, the familiar mix of blood and sweat tainted his lips; fresh blood, fresh wounds, fresh pain.
On the roof, the two figures he had seen running through the street. One woman with her head buried in the chest of another. A woman clinging tightly to a bloodied shape, a lumped form.
Two women. The wounded woman reminded Bill of ketchup smeared over the hood of a white car. Her complexion was dark, but in the dull gray cityscape, her blood was bright red. Her blood was a shocking red. An obvious red. Her face was wet, her body ripped apart.
The woman holding her looked up. Deep brown eyes, her skin darker than the wounded woman’s flesh.
“I’m sorry,” Bill said. He felt awkward. It wasn’t the right thing to say, but it was all he could say. The only thing that made sense.
Waiting now. Waiting for someone to speak. The darker woman blinked her eyes several times, not really seeing him.
“I’m alone,” he said.
“We all are,” the wounded woman said.
He was interrupting a sacred moment. He was an uninvited guest.
The wounded woman placed a trembling hand on her caretaker’s shoulder.
“There’s two men,” the wounded woman said. “I want to kill them both. I do business with them. Trade bitches like you. But I stopped. Was going to bring you somewhere safe. I didn’t hate you.”
“Stop talking,” the other woman said. “Just rest.”
“At least you’re not telling me everything’s going to be okay.”
“I don’t hate you.”
The wounded woman smiled a bloody smile. “Then you can do me a favor. Kill both men. They’re fighting each other. Sutter’s one of them. Sits at the old train depot with an army. The other guy’s alone. Don’t know his name. He’s at a factory. Called the Packard. These guys… it’s all their fault. They did all this.”
Bill wanted to interject, offer what he knew, but it wasn’t the right time. Not yet. These women didn’t even want him to be here.
“So you have a plan?” the caretaker said.
“We were going to… oh, shit.”
The wounded woman grimaced, and Bill took a step forward.
“Back off!” the caretaker turned to him sharply.
“I like that bite,” the wounded woman said. “There’s a man. Got access to an air strike.”
“What?” the caretaker asked, her disbelief clear.
“A fucking airstrike. We made a deal for it. It’s all set up. Waiting for the call. The guy who has it ain’t worth a shit. Don’t know his asshole from a hole in the wall. Name’s Vincent Hamilton.”
The idea twirled around in Bill’s mind. An airstrike. Vincent had access to an airstrike. How long did he have it? Was it true? Why did he wait to use it?
Vega might have known about it, too.
“There’s a neighborhood…” the wounded woman tried to talk through her pain.
“It’s gone,” Bill said.
The caretaker looked up at him.
The wounded woman groaned. “Don’t matter. Vincent’s got people. Asshole used to be a gangster.”
“I know who he is,” the caretaker said.
“One last thing. I want to be one of those things. I want to know. It won’t make a difference. Might as well let this body get the most out of the world.”
The caretaker was supposed to say something, but she just stared back into the wounded woman’s face. She was supposed to say no. To tell her how she couldn’t let that happen.
“I’m cold,” the wounded woman said.
“I know,” the caretaker said.
“I think it was good to take a long time. To feel it. Get the most out of it. Every breath a fight. Your husband’s probably dead, and you don’t even give a shit. I have a feeling I’ll see you in Hell, anyway.”
The caretaker pressed her hand against the wounded woman’s cheek.
Bill wanted to say something.
Some time during that long stretch of silence, Bill noticed the wounded woman’s eyes hadn’t blinked in a long time. Her chest was no longer rising.
The caretaker stood and looked around. Bill was probably invisible. She turned sharply in one direction and then the other. Seeing the ci
ty for the first time. Looking at the apocalypse with fresh eyes.
“What do you want to do?” he asked.
She snapped her head to him. “What? What do you mean? I want to find my son. A man I married. If I want something that means I am somebody. I am here. I am alive.”
Another one. Another broken survivor.
He could barely string together a sentence after nearly letting a horde of dead people kill him, dead people who wanted nothing to do with him.
Her eyes looked at him again. The whites in her eyes were incredibly bright. “There’s a family here,” she said. “Two little girls, I think. I want to help them. That’s what I want. That’s what I can do right now. I heard shooting. People were fighting out here, and it has nothing to do with me. Maybe you’re a slaver. You have to be, I guess. Right? A slaver? Flesh trader. You said something about the neighborhood… said it was gone. But there’s a family here in this building. A family under our feet. I want to help them. You’re going to stay away from me.”
It was difficult to follow her train of thought, her scattered words.
He scratched his head. He wanted to ask her what her name was. The question didn’t seem right, didn’t seem appropriate.
“I’m going to find them,” the caretaker said.
Bill still didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t guess what she wanted him to say, and didn’t even know if it was important for him to know.
For some reason, Bill wanted to hold her hand.
He wanted someone to tell him the violence was over. Nobody else was going to hurt. Nobody else was going to die. He had won. He had won the right to live without so much pain.
The Champ wasn’t going to live forever. Not here on the rooftop of a building that was in the middle of a wasteland. There was peace not far from here. Peace where the darkness hadn’t squirmed its way inside. There were people still untouched by the terror. Remote places, hamlets, roadside gas stations, churches, uncluttered highways, airports, shopping malls, internet service, television, bedrooms, marriages, children, homelessness, criminals, cell phones, traffic laws, athletes, controversy, conservatism, liberalism, socialism, hatred, life, life, life.
“We’re going to let her have what she wants,” the caretaker said. “And you’re going to stay away from me.”
Bill nodded, but he wasn’t sure what he agreed with.
VINCENT
The whole damn atmosphere was hot and still. He felt like he could sweat inside of an ice cube, melt it from the inside with his presence.
“Damn nigga, I can’t carry your ass,” Suede said.
Vincent had nothing to say. Suede might be better off without him. No reason to risk his own life dragging him across the city.
Detroit’s air reminded Vincent of the Iraqi city he had been in years ago, before he tried to do the right thing and paid the price for it. It smelled like charred barbecue and ash. It smelled like the school that had been half-destroyed, the school Vincent had walked into with his squad.
Vincent and Suede ambled through the quiet wasteland, stepping through ghostly labyrinths of parked cars, their boots crunching glass, black stains on the concrete. Despite the silence, Vincent knew the dead were watching. He could feel them. What were they waiting for?
He leaned heavily into Suede several times, his shoulder socket burning, knee sore.
“Don’t know why I don’t wax you,” Suede said.
“Because you’re afraid,” Vincent said. “You don’t want to be alone. Drop the tough attitude. We’re going the same way.”
“We ain’t going the same way. I’m heading back to Sutter. I don’t need you. That was Taylor’s idea. Taylor thought you could help win this shit. Take it back. But you got nothing. I know you got nothing. No more guns left. Or you can’t get to him. You had Taylor fooled.”
Vincent leaned against a car. “Before we do this, you need to bury your grudge. You can’t do this alone, and I can’t. Pretending to be hard won’t do you no good out here. I’m going with you because there’s no place else.”
Suede pushed the cold barrel of his gun against Vincent’s temple.
It wouldn’t be difficult to disarm him and put a bullet into his face, walk away with the gun.
“I take you back, and you’re another mouth to feed,” Suede said. “What would you do? Huh? Come on, man, you know what to do. You’re a businessman. Ain’t no profit in bringing in another mouth to feed.”
“You got me figured out,” Vincent said. “If you’re done being proud of yourself, let’s stop wasting time. Pull the trigger or walk away.”
Men like Suede were common. He needed to pretend to be tough, to act like he was in control, because he wasn’t. He had probably never been in control, not once. Whatever crew he used to run with likely pushed him around. His lovers had likely cheated on him. He was skittish, and now he was pushed to the brink. Now more than ever, he was dangerous.
As Vincent watched the sweat roll down the side of the man’s jawline, he knew what would happen next.
“You ain’t worth it,” Suede said, lifting his gun from Vincent’s head.
“It takes balls sometimes,” Vincent said. “There’s more dignity in walking away. You have control over yourself. You know what you’re doing.”
“I know what I’m doing,” Suede said. “I always know. I got my shit under control. I always got my shit under control.”
“Good. I know you do. You got your shit under control. Now tell me what you want to do. I can’t do it alone. I need your help. I need someone who is in control.”
Suede nodded. “You got guns? You got the guns Taylor was talking about?”
It was the question that seemed to be on everyone’s mind, but Vincent wasn’t sure he knew how to answer.
“What if I do?” Vincent asked. “We’re going to go to war? Kill all of them? Take over the city? Is that the plan?”
Suede chewed his bottom lip, looked around the silent street uneasily. “That’s it. I’m telling you, that’s it. This is our home. We can run this shit like we used to. This used to be your town. You should want it back. You should want to run this again.”
Vincent wanted to laugh. His town? It was the same as it ever was. If he thought about this place as his, he would have to take the blame for its downfall. For a while, he thought that way, and it buried him. Ruined his chances with Vega. Ruined his chance to be with a woman who cared about him, a woman who wanted him to be the strong man he had always been.
Did Suede want the truth? Maybe the lie would comfort him, provide him a sense of direction, some kind of faith or hope that would keep him going. Men needed faith sometimes, if there was nothing tangible to hold onto.
“We’ll do whatever it takes,” Vincent said. “Just take me to Sutter.”
***
The old Depot always reminded Vincent of a lost opportunity, and sometimes when he looked at it, he thought the Depot looked like a ruined temple perched at the edge of an ancient city that had been dug up by a team of archaeologists.
The fence surrounding the towering structure was topped with barbed wire. Corpses wandered the perimeter, aimlessly walking around. More of them were walking toward the Depot as if they had been invited, or they had simply realized the Depot was a stronghold for resistance from the living.
“Oh shit oh shit oh shit,” Suede said.
He and Suede had stopped moving for too long already, and they could be surrounded in moments.
Vincent had no desire to move. He needed to move, but he didn’t want to.
“We have to go, got to go,” Suede said. “Get your ass moving nigga, we have got to go!”
Suede pulled him to his feet, and they darted forward. Vincent’s damaged knee was stubborn, and he felt a heavy pack full of gear on his shoulders, even though it wasn’t actually there. He was moving too slowly, the fence not getting any closer.
“Open the fucking gate!” Suede shouted. “Let us in! Let us in there!”
Vincent
stopped running.
Slow shoulders, patient eyes, shuffling gait. Heads cracking, awkward, stiff bones struggling to respond to stimuli from Hell. Fingers slipped from the fence. Covered in ash, grime, dust, dirt. Wrinkled, bruised skin. Tattered clothing. No clothing.
The dead had turned to them. The dead saw them.
“We’re not opening up, get back!” someone behind the fence shouted. Vincent couldn’t see anyone moving beyond the fence. Bodies blended together. Dead people stumbled into each other.
Suede had reached the fence, and began to rattle it. “Open up mutherfuckers, open up, open up!” Suede’s voice became a desperate shriek.
Vincent didn’t move.
“Get back from the fence! Get back!”
“Open up this gate or I’m shooting my way through—”
“Get back! Get back, or we put you down!”
Why didn’t they just shoot him?
An odd thought. The only thought that surfaced in Vincent’s mind as he stood there waiting. His eyes stared at the ground beneath his feet. He couldn’t look up, but he could feel their shadows falling upon him, getting closer.
Why didn’t they shoot Suede?
Who were these people?
Who was anybody?
He didn’t know. He didn’t know what was happening. Life had become a force he didn’t understand, a force that dictated everything he did, everything he thought.
This was helplessness.
“I got Vincent Hamilton! I got Hamilton! Open up the fucking gate!”
Gunshots popped. Something slumped, sagged. Vincent looked up and saw a body lying just a few feet away from him.
Shambling toward him, a dead person, sex indistinguishable. A gunshot popped, and the top of the person’s head exploded in a burst of skull shards and dust. The bullet didn’t go through the skull. The dead person attempted to turn toward the shooter. A second shot burst through its face.
Fire touched Vincent’s knee.
Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3) Page 27
