Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3)

by Bilof, Vincenzo

  Mina was surrounded by hundreds of zombies. The redheaded woman disappeared in the circle of dead people, the mob of decrepit, walking corpses descending upon her with relish.

  Rose stood at the window and watched.

  Mina did not scream.

  This power Rose had, she didn’t understand it completely, but she knew that it wouldn’t be too difficult to enter into the lost memories of anyone who numbered among the undead. Worse, she knew everything that Mina knew.

  Father Joe had made a huge difference in Mina’s life, changing how she felt about everything simply by holding her close, simply by wanting nothing from her but to help her.

  Rose didn’t consciously reach out and touch the window with her fingertips. Her hand pressed against the class, as if maybe she could feel what Mina felt now, whatever it was.

  To feel something. Anything, besides hate and anger. Most of her life she had wanted Jim. For too long, maybe; since this fateful day she relived now in memory, her existence was nothing more than an extension of his. Why didn’t she remember that he murdered her parents? Why didn’t she remember that she had been locked away in several institutions until she found a way to take her own life?

  She killed herself while Jim was trained to become a covert murderer for the government.

  They took her personality, embedded it into a microchip. But they hadn’t really taken her personality at all, did they? Couldn’t they have simply made a completely different machine and insert it into a puppet body, just as they had done to her? Why did they choose her personality? Especially since they negated her entire existence—what was the point?

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  Rose turned from the window and saw Jim sitting on the couch beside her slouched, inattentive father. Jim had one legged crossed over the other, his hands resting neatly on his lap.

  Instead of answering him, Rose looked at the television and saw that Vega lay unconscious. Her vengeance was nearly complete.

  Outside, the zombies devoured Mina.

  “Nothing is obvious,” Rose said.

  “The world is your oyster,” Jim said. “With Mina out of the way, you can do whatever you want. She was never a threat to begin with.”

  Rose shook her head. “This is all just a game. Your game.”

  Jim frowned and tilted his head.

  “It isn’t so complicated,” the demon said. “You were kept around for Jim. They figured you were the little incentive they needed to keep Jimbo in line. And it worked. He brought you back. Several times, in fact. And here we are.”

  Why didn’t Mina scream?

  Rose’s father stared at the television. Her mother stared at a laptop screen.

  “Show me how he did it,” Rose said to the demon. “Show me how Jim brought me back.”

  Demon-Jim smiled, an awkward expression on the face of a man who did nothing but smirk at everything. “Why bother? You know what you want. This filthy world deserves to suffer. How many times did you have to die to make Jim love you? You think he is incapable of feeling love, but he wants to possess you, and that’s the same fucking thing. A need to control, or want, or fuck. All the same thing.”

  Rose looked outside one more time, and then back to Jim.

  “Show me,” Rose said.

  There was a girl in the kitchen, a teenager with a bowl-shaped haircut of dyed, jet-black hair and a spiked choker around her neck, fishnets on her arms and legs. This was her. Hard to believe it, but this was her. No matter how many times she saw this version of flesh that she once inhabited, it made her uneasy. How could she look so weak, so lonely? The girl sitting in the kitchen was a stranger. Rose felt like she was watching a Lifetime television special about the life of a lonely girl who had been picked on by her peers because her parents didn’t love her. Did she suffer from anxiety, depression, insomnia? Did her parents send her to counseling because the pills could serve as a proxy for their lack of interest in raising a daughter?

  The demon sat on the couch next to her father, and this young version of Jim who had so casually been admitted into the home whistled a tune while he walked around the kitchen with his hands clasped behind his back.

  “You should probably leave,” the girl in the kitchen said.

  “Oh, fair Ophelia, there is so much for you to learn,” Jim said. “To be or not to be. To be or not to be.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t think it’s a question. I think Hamlet said the words and realized that it should be a question, rather than a statement of fact. Because it was, indeed, a statement of fact.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you. You’re fucking weird.”

  Jim removed the serrated bread knife from the knife block. At the table, the younger Rose watched Jim’s eyes trace the edge of the knife.

  “I think this adds a twist,” Jim said as if he were talking to the knife. “This makes things more interesting, I think. This blade is used to cut through entire loaves of bread. A blade that has teeth. A blade not used for slicing, but carving.”

  The girl watched from the kitchen table as Jim casually walked into the living room and stood in front of the television. The father frowned. What was his name? Did it matter?

  Jim approached the father, tilted his head upward, and began to saw away at the man’s throat.

  The mother’s eyes were wide. She watched.

  “That’s enough,” Rose said.

  Demon-Jim cackled. “It’s never enough, darling.”

  Rose felt nothing for these people. She didn’t know them.

  Out there, in the cold wilderness of memories and torment, was a warm voice. A voice tinted with a Latin accent, a voice she recognized.

  “I helped you once, beautiful stranger.”

  Rose opened her eyes and saw her parents lay dead in congealing puddles of blood staining the carpet. The girl still sat at the kitchen table, and Jim stood behind her, bloody hands on her shoulders, gently massaging. The demon-Jim was gone.

  Standing in the corner of the room, his dark features obscured by shadow, was Father Joe.

  “You’re dead,” Rose said.

  Father Joe shrugged. “I guess it’s a state of mind, isn’t it?”

  “You helped Mina, didn’t you? This is your way of fighting back.”

  “There’s no reason to fight,” Father Joe said. “Not after everything you’ve been through.”

  “And I’m just going to keep on being Jim’s bitch. That’s what this is. I’m what he wants me to be. From this moment, this day in my house, I’ve been his. And all my hate and anguish is going to help me be the queen of shit and death. I get to be at his side until the end of time. I get to be his forever.”

  Father Joe’s smile faded.

  “I understand what Mina tried to show me,” Rose said to Father Joe.

  Jim walked into the living room, shoes submerged in blood that collected in puddles while it soaked into the fibers of the carpet.

  “Get over yourself,” the demon said. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself, and get your ass back into the real world.”

  Rose turned her back on him and opened the door. The bright, sunlit street she had seen from inside the house was gone, surrendering to a black sky scarred by glimpses of lightning. Bright flashes illuminated the gathered crowd of zombies that still congested the road.

  ***

  Thunder roar.

  White explosion of lightning.

  Rain began to fall in sheets. The entire neighborhood seemed to disappear behind a veil of night. Houses, cars, lawns—everything was gone.

  Rose was face-down on the cement. Rain pelted her, and she could drink the rainwater as it collected along the walkway that led to her front door. Rose blinked rainwater out of her, and the blurred world spun around her. Lightning and thunder complemented the storm again and again. Her arms were in the water. A flash flood that had taken mere seconds to develop.

  Water splashed ahead of her. The familiar putrescence of the dead mob wafted into her
nose. She could hear them coming for her, even though she couldn’t see them.

  Lightning flash.

  Pushing herself up, she squinted her eyes against a slash of lightning; through the sheets of rain, she could see the retirement home.

  This was her nightmare. She was back in Roseville. Near ground zero.

  Lying in the water at her feet was the same shotgun that had been wrenched from her hands by the mob. Little more than a year ago, and yet it felt like it never happened at all.

  She had been afraid that day. She had been afraid, until Father Joe saved her life.

  “This is my head,” Rose said to the night. “This is my victory.”

  White vibration of light. A hundred faces looked upon her. A hundred faces with flesh peeling from cheekbones, eyes rheumatic, teeth cracked, mouths black and filled with blood. Tongues flickering slowly over crusted lips.

  How many shells were in the gun?

  She committed her feet to the pavement and pushed into the chest of a rotting body. Spinning out of its grasp, she twirled through another pair of arms. She slipped between bodies, letting them touch her, letting them almost get her.

  Slippery, wet hands slid over her skin. The smell of their rotting insides spilled from their open mouths like exhaust from a diesel truck. Noxious vapors from the rotting dead caused her eyes to water, and the curtain of rain blurred her vision.

  The dead were silent, as they were on that day. They did not make noise. Their mangled forms twisted around her, wrapping over her shoulders. She collided with bodies. Touching her. Needing her. Wanting her.

  Father Joe had saved her the first time.

  She was alone now.

  And that was okay. She didn’t need anybody. She didn’t need anyone to help her end this.

  When it was time to lift her shotgun and shove it into a dead-bastard’s open face, the weapon was yanked from her hands. They lifted her into the air, just as Father Joe had hefted her over his shoulder.

  They lifted her into the rain. She opened her mouth, opened her eyes wide.

  This was her nightmare, and she deserved every moment of it.

  You think you can escape me? the familiar, demonic voice spoke to her.

  She is escaping, another voice intruded.

  Mina.

  Rose couldn’t help but smile.

  The demon fought back. Both of you are slaves to the horror we have unleashed upon the world. You did it. You’re responsible. The blood is on your hands, and it will always be on your hands. You wouldn’t dare sacrifice so much power, so much vengeance, for everything—

  “Go fuck yourself,” Rose said as laughter erupted from her throat. She coughed as rainwater and fingers clogged her mouth.

  VEGA

  Who would have known that a dead girl could do so much damage?

  Blood in her teeth, Vega sucked breath into her lungs and clutched at the glass shards only inches away from her. She lay facedown upon a bed of shredded plaster and dusty glass pieces that had once puzzled together the Depot’s windows. Her fingers were traced in blood, knuckles numb, hands unable to close.

  The redhead, the Mina-Rose mash-up, stood over her, the silly katana sword in her hand. The blood-rusted, dull-edged weapon that was nothing more than a decorative piece that should have been sitting on a shelf in a teenager’s bedroom.

  For a long time, the pale redhead didn’t move. She stared at Vega, the sword’s point touching the ground.

  “Any last words?” Vega asked her from the ground, where she was at Mina’s mercy.

  Nothing.

  “I can respect that.” Vega slowly tried to stand, careful not to let the blood loss dizzy her, careful not to let her eyes stray from Mina.

  But what the hell? She was fighting Rose, not Mina.

  “You won’t be coming back from Hell this time,” Vega said.

  A shard of glass in her bleeding hands, Vega cautiously circled around. Rose, or whoever she was, didn’t move. Didn’t so much as flinch.

  When Vega shoved the glass shard into Mina-Rose’s stomach, the redhead didn’t seem to mind at all. Not a sound. Not so much as a twitch.

  “Oh fuck this,” Vega said as Rose slumped over her arm.

  She allowed the woman to drop into the dust.

  Vega’s knees popped as she knelt to grab the katana. “You won’t be needing this.”

  Mina-Rose’s pale face twitched, and a smile bled across her cheek.

  “I have seen Hell,” the undead woman said. “One day, you’ll be joining me here.”

  Vega’s hands squeezed the sword’s grip tightly, the point hovering just over Mina-Rose’s neck. “Is that supposed to scare me?”

  “I want to kill you,” the undead woman said. “I want to take your life away, just as you took everything from me. Only you did me a favor. You did more for me than you’ll ever know. Instead of destroying you, I think it would be better to let you know that I’ll be waiting for you. I can do more to you in death than I can in life.”

  “She’s right.”

  When Vega turned to see Jim standing in the doorway, clothed in the ragged, colorless tatters of a corpse, her blood froze.

  Here he was. Cool eyes half-lidded as if appraising a child. Here he was. She had seen him only fleetingly, on the runaway at Selfridge and at the pyre in the neighborhood. This man had made this cruel nightmare she had somehow survived. Even if he wasn’t directly responsible, she had been dropped into Detroit to find him.

  “Mina’s bloodline is ancient and cursed,” Traverse said. “Her ancestors were mummified when they were still alive. Their… consciousness… cannot be destroyed. They asked for immortality, and it was given to them.”

  “Stay right there,” she said.

  Traverse stepped forward. “Hell is nothing more than a human nightmare. Shamans and other holy men tried to find a way to bring it here, to give humanity the nightmare. It happened before. Plagues, wars, genocide—nightmares that became real. Mina was part of that bloodline, a descendent of a line that has always been experimented on, tortured, and bred since her ancestors were imprisoned. When her mind opened to Hell, it was a freak accident.”

  Headache in full force, Vega’s body sagging beneath the weight of fatigue, and she didn’t have any bullets; not the best way to meet her nemesis. She had her rusty replica katana.

  He circled around her, and she watched him move gracefully, easily. Long-limbed, moving like a slow-crawling spider.

  “This is all so very interesting,” Vega said, “but I have to cut you up. Hope you don’t mind.”

  “I’m not opposed to your proposition,” Traverse said, “but I wonder what you really want.”

  “Stay where you are. Don’t come any closer.”

  “Don’t be pretentious. Your life is mine to do with as I please. I will offer you a solution, and in return, I will give you an opportunity to complete your mission.”

  “The only person who owns my life is me. You’ve got some dying to do.”

  “Bob Fields meant a lot to you, and you to him. I learned something interesting about his death, something interesting about myself. I learned that life can be rather boring without obstacles; I am a man who requires an antithesis.”

  “Fuck all that noise. Let’s get this over with.”

  “Bob wanted a beautiful death. As did Sutter. Their egos would not permit otherwise. I can give you the same. I have something special in mind for you, if only you’ll work with me.”

  Quivering in her hands, the sword looked rather silly compared to Traverse’s confidence. His complete and utter belief that he would not be killed. He stopped moving and held his hands up, a smirk on his lips.

  “You would like to see Father Joe again,” he said.

  She took a step back over Mina-Rose.

  “When you are well-rested and better-prepared,” he said, “our little dance will be much more fulfilling for both of us. You truly are a beautiful creature, Amparo.”

  From the floor, Mina
-Rose laughed. “Oh, Jim. I know what you’ve done to me. I know what you’ve taken from me. You’re giving up now because you know you shouldn’t have given me a chance to learn how much of an evil bastard you truly are. You made me. You did this to me—”

  “Sounds like the two of you have something to work out,” Vega said.

  Traverse crouched down beside Mina-Rose and gently stroked her cheek with his knuckles. “Dr. Frankenstein could not have been more proud of my efforts. Rose’s existence is fused with that of Mina’s, and I could not have predicted the physical outcome. Rose will be limited and will not be able to inhabit other bodies. But I cannot know what will happen if her body is completely destroyed.”

  “You’re guessing,” Vega said.

  “To some extent.”

  “Destroying her won’t change a fucking thing.”

  “Hell is with us. Mina’s nightmare is with us, and we are helpless. The only one who can overcome the nightmare is Mina. Her reality must no longer be a nightmare. Mina will have to regain control of the nightmare, and I know she has already allowed Rose to take over.”

  “Two things. One: fuck all this shit, it’s confusing. Two: let’s cook the bitch and move on, because we’ve got business to take care of.”

  Mina-Rose laughed again. A frenzied scrabbling sound accompanied the laughter; it sounded to Vega like an army of rats. Thousands of them scratching along the floors below and on the stairs.

  Not rats.

  Jim began to snap Mina-Rose’s bones. The dead woman laughed as Jim worked on her mangled body as if he were snapping open crab legs to get at the meat. He snapped her shoulder blades, her legs; he twisted her ankles and wrists. While Vega watched the door, he crunched the digits on her hands, bent them into incorrect angles.

  The noise was getting louder, and Mina-Rose laughed harder.

  Vega was out of bullets. Nothing but this ridiculous sword.

  Then the dead crowded through the doorway, dead limbs twisting around through the tufts of stretched hair and ripped clothing, some of their hands intertwining through the open rib cages of other zombies, their dead bodies one mess of shape and rot.

  Vega dropped the sword.