“I had a family of my own,” he said. “Everything got out of hand. I lost track of what I was involved in. When you spend so much of your time on work you think is important, and that work pays for the house your wife lives in, it’s just… you just don’t think about any philosophy or anything that goes along with it. You just work.”
Nice of him to invent an excuse for helping spawn a terrible evil.
“You do as your told when you’re on the job,” he said, opening the door to the house for her.
“Your wife must have had a lot of nice things,” Bella said.
“Everything she could ever want. She’s in Hawaii now with my daughter. I was supposed to get out of here with Sutter, but that fat bastard couldn’t keep it together. Went insane.”
There was nothing remarkable about the house. Broken windows and shattered doors. A wheelbarrow filled with cell phones sat against a wall near a table and chairs. There was no other furniture in the room.
Desjardins walked to the wheelbarrow and began sifting through it. “They had guns in here. I know they did.”
The wind was much cooler in the house. Bella could taste a more temperate day approaching with the sunrise, the air easier to breathe, less stifling.
Bella picked up a wooden leg that had been snapped off one of the overturned chairs. The end of it was sharp enough for her needs.
“We get a few guns, head north,” Desjardins said, phones tumbling from his fingers like grains of sand. “I’d say we should head for the U.P., but the Mackinac Bridge is gone. If we go north and wait for the water to freeze, we can walk across the ice.”
He was looking up at the ceiling, pondering the wisdom behind his amazing idea, when the chair leg was shoved into his backside, right where Bella supposed the kidneys to be. Desjardins turned around, his face confused by the sharp pain he felt as she dug into his back. The chair leg wouldn’t puncture, wouldn’t go through, but there was blood—it dripped into his pant legs and over his beltline.
Desjardins shoved her aside and pulled the stake from his back with a grunt. Bella was on her haunches, already scrambling for another weapon.
“What the fuck?” he said to the bloody chair leg in his hand. He didn’t see the chair that crashed over his head.
Why didn’t he look up?
Bella wasn’t strong enough to kill him with one blow. Her arms were rubbery, and it was difficult to lift the chair a second time; she watched Desjardins stagger into a wall, blood dripping from his face while he muttered obscenities. He circled around, hunched over like a wounded dog until he finally dropped at her feet, facedown.
Bella couldn’t lift the chair again.
“Why?” Desjardins moaned.
And now, at last, with the bleeding man in front of her, she began to sob.
“God, please,” Desjardins said, his voice barely audible as he spoke into the floor. “Help. Me. Help.”
Bella’s body quivered through the sobs. Her brain was fogged with images that collided with each other, impressions from violent moments in which Angelica had died. A man on a rooftop, a flesh trader, killed because of her. Brian and the people who chose to follow him. Desmond. Jerome.
“Help.”
The scientist’s body convulsed, and his hands had stopped trying to dig into the threadbare carpet.
An object caught her eye. A device that had been discarded out of the wheelbarrow so casually by Desjardins. A cell phone.
It looked a lot like Desmond’s.
For some reason, she felt compelled to grab it, to try and turn it on. Grabbing it, she pushed the power button and watched it come to life.
The battery icon indicated there was only one bar of life left, and the picture on the screensaver was Coltrane, Desmond’s favorite musician.
Bella tried to go through his text messages to see if any of her last, desperate attempts to reach him made it through. How much she loved him. Worried about him. Cried over him. Begged him to come home. Begged him to return her calls.
After all this time.
Immersed in his world, she browsed through the contents of the phone until she found a video; the preview depicted a woman with wild, red hair, with bright blue eyes staring back at the camera.
Bella played the video.
The redhead was beneath someone, her body moving against the ground as if someone was having sex with her. A moment of jealous rage awakened her emotions. Desmond? Why would he…?
A voice inside of her head. A desperate voice, although maybe it came from the phone’s audio. She wasn’t sure.
A woman was talking.
Patrick. I will always love you, Patrick.
And then, another voice, this one dark and dripping with dangerous intent.
You can join us. Be with us, Bella. Feel with us. Feast with us. Open your soul to us. Yes. Open your soul.
Bella wanted to drop the phone.
A woman’s voice rang out in her head. No! Get away! Run!
Bella’s nose bled, droplets falling onto the phone.
In the video, the redhead had sex with an older white man, strands of hair slicked back over his head, his gaunt face filled with madness. The woman lay as if drugged, allowing whomever it was to have his way with her.
A thousand voices in Bella’s head drowned out her own, and the dull roar in the sky might have been a dull roar in her head. She couldn’t be sure of anything, except that she wanted to say Desmond’s name and could not.
When the redhead was atop the man, Bella could hear his moans of pleasure. The woman leaned forward, and it looked like Kool-Aid washed over the screen.
Bella couldn’t tell where the blood was coming from; if it dripped from her peeling forehead, or if it accompanied the man’s agonizing scream.
The pain Bella felt was incredible.
VINCENT
The slow drip of water. Voices. Noises echoing throughout a long tunnel. Or maybe just memories? Nightmares? Dreams?
Absolute darkness. Maybe Vincent was awake. Maybe he was still alive.
Sharp, fiery hurt in every bone. The fingers on his left hand felt misplaced somehow; he knew the hand was broken. His arm felt like one constant shot of Novocain was humming through his veins. In his right hand, the cold grip of Patrick’s gun was enough to make him think there was still hope for him, yet. Still hope to get up, and do more damage.
While he lay there, he thought about Vega.
Yeah. She had to have made it out. Wherever it was she wanted to go, she was going. Nothing was going to stop her. In all his life, she was easily the strongest person he ever met. Only now did he realize it. Only now did he realize that he had wasted so much of his life being an asshole to so many people who could have made a positive difference in his life.
Time to stop feeling sorry for himself.
That’s what Vega would say, and that’s what he would have told any member of his crew if they were in the same position. If he were Fireball, or Luis, or even Suede; anyone who claimed to work for him wouldn’t get sympathy from him.
Vincent could move his legs. He wasn’t so helpless. His shoulder was sore—he’d been bitten. Any second could be his last.
If only he could see. It felt like he was at the bottom of the cold, dark world, only it wasn’t cold here. It was hot. Hot and humid. Wasn’t this supposed to be Hell? His momma would say life was Hell unless you made it Heaven. Hell was supposed to be a bright, searing pit of torment, but he was down here in the dark, alone. Down here in the dark, far away from Vega, far away from anyone and everyone he had ever known.
Momma was dead. Closed-casket. She paid the price for his success. Street justice found its way into his home when he came back from Iraq and started hustling.
Those were the days.
This darkness, this pit; Vincent’s life had always been this way, and he had to make his own path through the dark. Nobody was going to do Vincent any favors out of the goodness of their heart.
His view of the world brought him h
ere. The way Vincent saw things kept him alive, but maybe he was better off dead. No, that wasn’t true at all. Because there were people like Vega who, in their hearts, still had a bit of good left to fight for. Vincent had fought beside her because she could be what he could not be.
One step into the dark. Another. Vincent couldn’t see anything, but that was probably because there was nothing to see.
Throbbing shoulder, aching bones, dizziness. Ringing in his ears. Vincent was surrounded by the static of distant chaos, and the distortion of his gunfire-battered eardrums. Vincent walked on through the darkness and wondered if he was dead.
A distant rumbling drowned out the faint echo of violence, and he thought of gigantic robots collapsing into the street after exchanging blows with each other. The movie, Transformers, had included shots of the Depot. Megan Fox had been in that movie, and he tried to meet her at a party in New York.
The Depot was falling apart. Steel and brick and stone screamed together in a chorus of destruction. Had Vega brought the whole thing tumbling down? Good for her.
The darkness was a desert. Vincent could not see, and he nearly lost his balance several times because the terrain was uneven. It was possible that he passed out several times. Did the screaming finally stop? Vincent’s sense of hearing was warped. Could he still hear gunfire? Sound had become nothing more than the hum of stars exploding light years away, the noise reaching him a billion light years into the future.
When Vincent finally saw the spark of light ahead of him, it was nothing more than a white spot, a stain on his vision. The stain grew larger as he continued to walk. Thirst. Heat. Nausea. Hurt. Soreness. His body was a wet rag of sweat. He felt wrung out.
Despite how dull and gray the sky was, it burned Vincent’s eyes. A light drizzle misted over his eyes, cooling him. Vega’s shirt was still wrapped tightly around his shoulder.
How much longer now?
Patrick’s gun was going to take care of him. Vincent checked the chamber. Empty. He racked Patrick’s Desert Eagle. There was one shot left. One was all he needed.
Do it now?
The gun wasn’t Patrick’s anymore. The fool-ass detective had wanted nothing more than to take care of Vincent himself.
“You get your wish,” Vincent said, and laughed.
Because it really was funny.
Vincent looked upon a brown-red horizon of useless train tracks that were supposed to lead to the Depot. Overgrowth, weeds. A leaning fence. A vast space of nothing until, finally, the familiar abandoned buildings. Structures that had been empty a long time ago.
He was home.
Almost.
***
There should have been a sound in the sky by now. Up there, below the gray wall of clouds, jets should have been roaring in to deliver a payload to level the Depot. If Desjardins never found his crew, then it would never happen. If worst came to worst, Brian, the kid he gave the equipment to, would call in the air strike.
With so much power at his disposal, Brian should have used it by now to help himself, if he wanted. Why would Brian trust that Vincent’s decision to use the strike was better than his own?
Brian probably figured it out by now. Good for him.
Whatever was happening at the Depot had drawn all the zombies; there was nothing in Detroit. Nothing but silence. Parked cars. Empty buildings. Open doorways. Graffiti. Trampled fences. Fire scorched, skeletal trees that would never return to life; branches white, ashen, fragile. Side streets with overgrown lawns guarding desolate houses, a thousand items scattered across the block. A junkyard. A landfill. The smell of rain and diarrheic baby diapers.
Vincent didn’t feel any differently. Sergeant John Charles had begun to feel sick after one of those dead bastards bit his leg. That man had given his life to help rescue a bunch of old folks for Father Joe. John Charles spent his last few hours fighting because that was all there was left to do.
Vincent walked down the road. The silence was tense, as if it waited for something to explode. The silence was in his bones. A large, sprawling city, and nothing was happening.
Not surprisingly, most of Grosse Pointe, one of the wealthiest cities in the country, looked almost untouched. Right on the border of Detroit, the storefronts were shattered and the doors thrown open, but most of the buildings hadn’t been touched by fire. A North Star Produce semi-truck sat in an alley behind a small grocer and a Buscemis, and Vincent tried to remember the last time he had a slice of pizza. A damn long time, that’s for sure. Buscemis was a chain of party stores that had offered thick slices of pizza that would have rivaled the street-corner vendors in New York; once you have a taste in your mouth for the local pizza, nothing else was better.
The squeaking wheels of a tired shopping cart prompted him to look over to the sidewalk. A figure clad in rags and a hood pushed a shopping cart with a tarp thrown over the top. Vincent stopped. The figure stopped.
The wraith-like figure threw its hood back. An old white woman with the hills and valleys of age in her face looked back at him and smiled.
“You got trade?” she asked.
Vincent blinked several times while the question hung in the air.
“Depends on what you got,” Vincent said.
“You don’t look like you got shit,” the old woman said. “Except you got that big gun. I seen a lot of niggers got gold teeth. You got gold teeth? Wouldn’t help none, I’m just telling you a lot of niggers trade their teeth. I seen it happen.”
“You want the gun.”
“Didn’t say I wanted it.”
“Why wouldn’t I just put you down? Take the whole cart.”
“You think I can read your mind? You gonna do it, then do it, and be on with you.”
She waved her hand at him disgustedly and continued pushing her cart down the sidewalk.
Vincent watched her.
“Stop,” he said.
“You got something to say? Think you can just threaten people? You ain’t been out here long. Where you come from?”
“We had a neighborhood.”
“But not anymore.”
“You want the gun.”
“Maybe I don’t. Things get done out here. You don’t threaten to kill somebody. You want to take something, you take it. I ain’t listening to any of your threats. Ignorant.”
“I’m the one who’s ignorant.”
“Boy, what’re you talking about? I call it as I see it. Niggers stick together. Jews. Sand niggers. Catholics. White women. Kids. Everyone out here try to belong to somebody.”
“But not you.”
“You’re wasting my time.”
She shook her head at him and pushed her cart along.
“Pack of cigarettes,” Vincent said.
She stopped. “You think I’m a fool?”
“Yeah, I do. The way you talk. I don’t know about any rules. This shit you’re talking about ain’t got nothing to do with me.”
The old woman squinted her eyes and stared hard into his face. He returned her stare.
A long moment passed. She threw the tarp over the cart. “You better not ask for a match,” she said.
Vincent walked over to her. “I’m asking for a match.”
She grumbled and produced a crumpled pack of cigarettes that was half-full. Menthols. They cigarettes looked like they had been dropped into a puddle and rescued in a half-ass attempt to salvage them.
“You’re getting a fair deal,” she said.
Vincent shrugged and handed her the gun.
“I got cocaine. Morphine. A dildo with batteries.” She handed him a packet of matches.
Vincent put a cigarette to his lips, struck a match, and sucked on the flame. He blew the smoke through his nose.
“I hate menthols,” he said. “See you around.”
As Vincent walked away, he tried to ignore the harsh wheezing sound that came from her throat that was supposed to be laughter.
***
The sun broke through the clouds, and Grosse
Pointe looked like shit. Kind of funny to see the ritzy neighborhoods full of black houses that had folded inward upon themselves, burned by looters or arsonists. There were more cop cars here than anywhere he had traveled in the past year around Detroit, and a few empty SWAT vehicles told Vincent all he needed to know about how this old neighborhood’s story ended.
Hadn’t it all started here? There were several text messages and phone calls on that fateful evening. It was rare for him to be hanging out on the street, and it was a round of boredom that brought him into a crack house. Fireball had been there, and then, of course, shit broke loose.
Vega had told him once that a whole bunch of people from this neck of the woods were being evacuated from the roof of the Renaissance Center when she dropped in with her squad. No surprise this was the first place to be ransacked by people looking to salvage something from the chaos.
Empty. There wasn’t shit here. No zombies. No guns.
Vincent wandered into the ashy wreckage of a house surrounded by an iron fence. He dragged himself up the driveway and wondered when the sun would go away. Things were a lot easier without the sun.
Birds chirped noisily. Far off, a dog barked. Vincent’s brain was fogged by a dull ache, and he wanted to lie down and rest, to sleep. Thirst clenched his throat. He smoked another cigarette.
The roof was not intact. The couch was blanketed in glass and dust. Rats scurried around as if they owned the place. Maybe they owned everything now. Vincent was shaded from the sun, but the heat was unrelenting. He sat upon the couch and didn’t feel like moving. He could die like this. In silence.
Vincent’s mind drifted into the sky while the birds sang. Was he dying? In a daze, he continued walking down the street, and he engaged in casual banter with an old lady who pushed a shopping cart between the maze of abandoned cop cars. Every car was a cop car.
A dream. He awoke and wished that he hadn’t. Sitting in the quiet, Vincent smoked another cigarette and looked at the black television across from him, its screen spiderwebbed with cracks.
Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3) Page 45
