"You have no idea how you'll get him out, do you?" Griggs asked.
"Fuck no."
It was the last thing Bob said before he dozed off.
***
Griggs watched the dead for a long time while listening to Bob and Vega snore. He drifted off momentarily, but he was shocked back into a world full of bright, glaring daylight. A loud crash in the attached garage caused his heart to accelerate into overdrive, and distant machine gun fire rattled incessantly somewhere in the neighborhood. The few scattered zombies he could see outside were walking down the street purposefully, drawn by the sound.
Bob's eyelids fluttered open and he leapt to his feet.
The door in the kitchen opened, and Griggs already had his magnum in his hands. He peeled his sweaty, blood-soaked body off the couch and walked right into the kitchen.
A figure emerged, and before he could think twice, he unloaded right into the person's skull, creating a sonic blast that concussed his ears as brain and skull decorated the door frame.
"What the fuck!" Vega and Bob both had their weapons pointed at him.
Griggs ignored them for a moment and kept his gun pointed into the darkness from which the corpse emerged.
Bob pushed him out of the way and stepped into the garage while Vega knelt next to the body. The corpse of a large black woman, maybe the woman from the pictures, lay headless on the landing.
"Her skin's still warm," Vega announced. "She was still alive."
Bob cursed. "There's a dead boy in here. Nothing else."
"What do you want from me?" Griggs asked. "She must've known we were here! Why didn't she say something?"
"Because she was fucking scared!" Bob rushed back into the house. He slammed his shotgun against Griggs's chest and pressed him against the wall.
"You got a quick trigger finger?" spittle flew from Bob's lips. "That's the second time you've done that. I won't let you do it a third time. Get your shit under control. I'm a little short on patience!"
"Is that a threat?" Griggs asked calmly. "As you may've noticed, I'm interested in self-preservation. What makes you think I won't take a shot at you when I have a chance? Now that you've made your point, I recommend you make good on your threat now."
"Shut the fuck up for a minute!" Vega shouted.
Bob and Vega finally heard the weapons fire outside.
"Those things probably heard your gun," Bob said, withdrawing his shotgun from his chest. "Whoever's out there is already doing us a favor."
"Let me take a piss," Vega said. "And then we'll find our target, or die trying."
"How's your head feel?" Bob asked.
Vega didn't answer, but instead stared right into Griggs's face. "Stay out of my way and you won't get hurt."
"What's your problem?" Griggs looked at both of them. "You want to take the moral high ground? We don't know what was going on in the garage. You want to be a couple of cowboys and fight the bad guys to save the world, then good for you. You put your soldier bullshit in check, because if what you told me is true, there's nothing left to fight for. If Traverse was so damn important, they would have sent more people in to get him. I don't care how fast your special forces groups are supposed to respond—nobody was prepared for this massacre. You ever wonder what might happen when you don't find Traverse? The two of you going to repopulate the Earth?"
"I know who you are," Vega said. "You're a sick bastard. I know all about your movies, and I know who this girl is you're chasing after." she turned to Bob. "The girl he's looking for is a cannibal, and she was his number one actress in the movies he made."
"I'm glad you're a fan," Griggs said. "You've seen me nude, and I don't think that's fair."
"I don't want this asshole around me," Vega told Bob.
Vega left the room in disgust, while Bob's tired eyes remained locked on the former detective. "You can follow if you want, but I don't need a trigger-happy civilian compromising the mission."
"I like you, Bob. Of course, if you so much as look twice at Mina, I'll blow your brains out, too."
"Fuck yourself."
He was finished arguing with them. They were deluded moralists who couldn't acknowledge the reality of their situation. Hundreds of well-trained men and women were already dead, including cops. Their chances at survival were no better than his. He knew that both of them were action junkies: they needed the mission because they were hurting on the inside, otherwise, they would have abandoned the whole thing altogether. The futility of their situation rendered the mission itself rather silly. Bob had explained that Traverse might somehow be the key to whatever was going on, but what if they were wrong?
He followed the soldiers outside and hung back several yards away. Bob asked Vega questions about her head, and she pretended to be fine.
The distant machine gun fire had finally stopped.
Birds chirped while smoke still plumed into the morning sky. Cars were parked haphazardly in the street or inside of houses where they had crashed. The concrete was stained by drying crimson in several spots. Paper floated on the slow breeze.
The corpses seemed destitute and lonely.
Bob and Vega walked quickly along the street to avoid wasting ammo on them, but Griggs didn't see any reason to worry. Instead, he took a deep breath and inhaled the taint of ash on the morning air, mingled with the smell of meat that had been left out to rot in the sun.
Peace reigned over the boarded-up crack houses and the shattered windows. Bullet holes had riddled idle, fuel-drained cars that sat with the doors thrown open. A bicycle lay sideways in a pool of blood. A sleepy cat that was sitting on a porch yawned while the man hunters passed. Encroaching weeds damaged water-deprived, brown lawns. It was going to be another oppressive day, perfect for lying around the house and sitting in front of an oscillating fan.
The dead began to disappear from the neighborhood, and Griggs thought something was wrong.
They stopped when they saw hundreds of corpses piled on top one another, scattered across the street like dominoes that had been pushed over by a child and were forsaken for another amusing toy.
Marijuana smoke drifted over the makeshift graveyard. Bob and Vega allowed Griggs to catch up to them. Together, they stepped over the mangled dead and found a skinny black man sitting on a lawn chair in front of a house, smoking a huge blunt with a wide smile on his face, revealing two rows of shiny, platinum teeth. An AR-15 with an attached scope was propped up against the side of the chair. His arms were sleeved in colorful tattoos.
"You having a little fun?" Bob asked him.
"This shit's tight," he croaked while trying to hold his breath.
They waited for him to exhale a cloud of smoke. He held out the blunt to Bob. "You down? Can't smoke it all myself."
"I admire your handiwork," Vega said and stepped toward him, though she didn't take him up on his offer. He remained in his chair and took another long drag on the blunt. His black tank top was emblazoned with the famous red Air Jordan logo.
"Nothing else to do," he said while looking up at Vega with red eyes.
"I'm Vega. That's Bob, and that guy's Patrick. What's your name?"
He frowned for a moment and stared at Griggs. He said, "Don't matter anymore… name's Vincent."
"You did this by yourself?" Bob gestured to the corpses.
Vincent shrugged. "Ain't that hard. Just walk up and pull the trigger. Don't matter how many of them you see. Gotta keep moving. Don't need an army to deal with it. No reason to hide."
"Do you know where there might be other survivors?" Vega asked calmly.
Vincent looked down for a long time while Vega shifted her stance impatiently. Griggs understood that she dealt with war-shocked civilians before. The street was devoid of any more corpses besides the ones that lay at their feet. One man had somehow destroyed them all with a passionate vengeance.
"My whole crew…" Vincent's hands shook, and he dropped the blunt into the grass. Vega knelt down and picked it up.
"You're Vincent Hamilton?" Griggs suddenly felt compelled to ask. He had seen the man's face in mug shots before, and he never thought he'd be hanging out with the notorious felon.
Vincent shrugged. "I didn't say that. What’s it to you?"
"We want to help," Vega said, handing the blunt back to him. "Tell me what I can do."
He looked up at her. "You ain't here to rescue nobody. That's all you got with you," he nodded at Griggs and Bob.
"You're right," she replied. "But we're here, and we don't want to just leave you behind."
"There was a little girl," he began and stopped himself. "Shanna. I ran after her. I ain't no hero or nothing. I just … I lost her out here. I think I know where she is, but she's afraid, you know? She's seen what living people can do."
"I need you to stay with me," Vega said excitedly and knelt on the grass next to the thug. "Hold on to my hand," he immediately grabbed her hand. "There. Hold it tight. Look at me, Vincent. Can you tell me about the little girl?"
"You said his name's Patrick?" Vincent glanced over at Griggs.
Griggs stepped past Bob, who continued to monitor their surroundings.
"What about it?" Griggs asked, flexing his fingers over the magnum's grip. "I know who you are, Hamilton. I worked in Homicide. A couple years ago, I had a body that had been wasted by one of your guns. You're a hard man to get."
Vega shot to her feet. "Get back and stay the hell out of the way!"
Vincent shook his head. "Ain't nothing, anyways. Just all coincidence. Going to smoke this shit till my lungs burst. Ain't going nowhere. This is my home, you feel me? I thought I'd seen it all. Everybody's wasted. I missed out on the party, tried to be a nice guy. Thought I would be safe in a church. Can you imagine that? A church. But those dead mutherfuckas ain't too worried about us. We were safe for a minute."
"Keep talking," Vega said. "What happened at the church?"
Vincent laughed and began to ramble. "You want to go there and find out what can happen? There's a sick nigga there with a crazy redhead… I wanted to get out. Wanted to leave. That man had no expressions on his face."
Vincent stood up from his lawn chair. "I ain't going back there. I know what you want, and I ain't going. You want to help people, but there ain't nobody left to help. Rhonda's dead. Derek, too. Fuck all that."
"Nobody said you had to go back," Vega said. "You'll help me find Shanna. Bob's going to the church because he's looking for the man you described. Tell him where it is."
Griggs laughed. "So you're going to catch the ultimate badass all by yourself, Bob?"
Bob reprimanded Vega. "That’s not the plan. We roll in together."
Vega thought about her reply, and then ran her hand through her black hair. She sighed then, and said, "This isn't about Traverse. Not for me. Not anymore. God is giving me a second chance."
"A second chance at what?" Bob shouted at her. "We came here to do a job, goddammit!"
"No, you came here to do a job. You almost let me die out there, remember? At Eloise Fields? You let Miles die—remember that?"
Bob gritted his teeth. "Dammit, Amparo… we're close…"
"That's all you have to say?" Vega said. "We're not going to change anything. Crater was right about a lot of things. We're not safe from ourselves. The greatest military in the world isn't fighting the war against zombies. Don’t you get it? The zombies are a joke."
"Traverse might know something…" Bob started.
"Who wants him?" Vega asked. "Who were you and Crater working for? If the government wanted Traverse, they would be here. They didn’t hire us. Unless you've been hiding something from me."
"Don't back out of this. We're not finished!"
"I'm finished. You wouldn't understand, because there are things I never told you. This is something I need to do. The choice was already made for me. I'm sorry."
The moment seemed entirely awkward; Bob ignored him, and a strong, warm wind picked up amid the silence of the surreal, smoky morning. Vega and Bob stood looking at each other, their gray fatigues stained with blood, their war paint smeared and faded.
"Back at the Renaissance Center…" Bob hesitated.
"What?" Vega stared him down.
"You called out for your father. You looked at me and said his name when I pulled you out there. You forgot I did that. I didn't."
She looked away. "Shanna's out there. I came all this way for a reason and it has nothing to do with Traverse. I'm sorry."
"Her name's Mina," Griggs said to Vincent. "Right? The redhead."
Vincent took a long drag on his blunt. He coughed out a cloud. "My nigga Fireball used to keep all the heavy shit here in this house. Still got some ammo inside. Maybe something for that shotgun you got old man." His eyes flickered to Griggs for a moment. "Mina's fucked up, you know that?"
"I'm going to that church," Griggs announced. "The only thing I have left—the only person left alive who might give a shit about me is there. That matters to me. Whatever happens, we can only do what matters to us."
Bob was confused. He hadn't expected Vega to make a decision that would separate them. Griggs could tell the man's loyalties were torn. He believed in his mission, yet, he wanted to be there for Vega, and he knew she couldn’t be persuaded to change her mind.
It was clear that Vincent had been deeply disturbed by his encounter with Traverse. Griggs couldn't help but wonder if Mina was okay. She was an unsettling person herself, but there was nothing false about her. Mina reveled in truths and failed to comprehend any standards that had been imposed upon others.
"I'm ready to do this," Vega announced. "Vincent, you have ammo?"
"I ain't going back to that church," he replied.
"I'm sick of standing around," Bob grumbled, apparently convincing himself that it wasn't worth arguing with Vega over her decision. He was disconnecting himself from the situation. In his mind, she was already dead.
"Bob…" Vega tried to talk, but she realized it was useless. They were beyond words, now. Everything they'd endured to that point had culminated in her choice.
"I'll take any shells you have," Bob said and handed Crater's assault rifle to Vincent. "I'll trade you. There's some ammo for it. Not much, but some."
Vega refused to give up. "This comes from somewhere within me, where my dreams are kept. If Shanna's alive, I have to do this. She needs me."
"I get it!" Bob snapped at her. "I don't care. Good luck to you."
While Vincent retreated into the house for a moment, trailing marijuana smoke behind him, Griggs was intrigued by the strange interplay between the two soldiers. Vega's thick eyelashes lay closed over her eyes while she stared at a corpse beneath her boots. A few vagrant zombies stumbled over bushes down the street, making their way toward them with vague interest.
Otherwise, there was only the silence.
WORLD WITHOUT END
Bob and Griggs approached the church with their weapons drawn. A gray Ford Focus, nondescript and unreal, seemed deliberately parked in front of the church. A helicopter thundered overhead, but nobody saw it. Griggs held his magnum while his sport coat billowed behind his hips. Bob, his face dripping with sweat, his mouth open without any noise spilling out, held his shotgun with his ammo belt full of the shells Vincent had given him.
There were only a handful of zombies clustered around the church, but if there had been more, they likely moved on already.
A man stood in front of the church steps. He was bringing an axe down upon the neck of a zombie, stopping only to wipe sweat from his forehead with the back of his sleeve. He stopped and waved at Bob and Griggs when he noticed them. Sitting on the steps behind him was a woman clad in a nun's habit, and he was dressed in a priest's black suit. He leaned against the axe and waited.
The nun rose from the step and stood beside the priest. Griggs stopped his jaw from dropping: wrapped around the nun's body was the legless torso of a zombie in the likeness of a dead priest, its arms dangling above the cement.
Grigg
s brought his weapon up, but wasn't sure if he knew what to shoot.
"No," Bob said. "That's him. He comes back alive."
"Gentlemen!" Traverse, in his priest attire, greeted them. "Bob! It's good to see you again! You've finally come to join me! I knew you would eventually see things my way!"
"Traverse," Bob said. "I'm not here to dick around."
"You're all that remains? How disappointing. I was under the impression that finally, my old friends at the Pentagon believed me. I wanted an army, but they gave me you. I think of myself a little more highly than anybody else does, but that's always been the case."
Traverse dropped the axe and motioned to the dead bodies around him. "I got a little bored while I was waiting for you," he said. "Destroying them isn't a whole lot of fun. They don't appreciate anything, so they don't care about the axe as it falls upon them. Bob, do I still owe you a beer?"
Mina looked up at Patrick from beneath the habit. "Hi," she said.
"I came for you," he said to her. "We can be together, now. Come with me."
"I like Jim," Mina said. "He likes to do beautiful things. Do you want me to apologize to you? Because I think I'm going with him."
The zombie that was attached to her chest rolled its head back and forth.
"This is Father James," she pointed at the corpse, picked up one of his arms, and waved it at Griggs. "He's trying to say hello. He's dead, though."
"Your girlfriend's fucked up," Bob said. "Do you mind if I blow her away?"
Griggs swallowed and kept his eyes on Mina. "You're all I have left. Richard and Nikki are both dead. I … I fucking killed them. I did it because I made a mistake. I did it because I know I need you. I screwed up. I'm not the person I thought I was, or pretended to be. I think I like to kill… I think maybe it suits me."
Traverse stepped in front of Mina and ignored her lover's plea. "I need you to pursue me, Bob. Chase me to the ends of the world. You've no idea what has been unleashed. You don't know why they want me alive."
"And I don't give a shit," Bob spat. "I've seen it all, and I've heard it all. You're coming with me."
Zombie Ascension (Book 1): Necropolis Now Page 22
