The Queen of the Dead (3 page)

Her hand reached for the boy.

Father slapped it away.

Her hand reached again.

Father slapped it away.

“Macon! Save him, Father. Save my son!”

The truck driver fought with two corpses now. Limbs thrashed between grunts and curses.

The priest covered the boy’s eyes. They were surrounded by the dead.

A burst of blood popped out of the woman’s head. She wavered for a moment, and then crumpled to the concrete.

“Father!” Kathy waved at him with a gun in her hand. “Come on!”

More hands reached, and Father couldn’t see the faces. He could smell the blood and see the bright lights, but he tuned out the screams. Holding the boy to his chest with the hunting rifle between them, he stepped over the dead-again woman while the boy’s father was devoured.

Tears blurred his eyes and warmth ran down his cheeks.

Remembering Ninkovich, he watched as the armored warrior swung his axe around his head. Blood splashed into the man’s dark beard and hair, and he whirled his entire body around in an unbalanced, teetering cyclone that hit everything in its path. The chaotic strike was hardly effective at hitting anything except for Ninkovich, who put his hands up to stop before the edge of the blade swept across his neck. His throat opened and Father thought of Kool-Aid pouring from a pitcher.

Ninkovich fell to his knees.

He couldn’t tell which people were alive or dead. The armored man danced between hundreds of corpses, bouncing between them while swaying drunkenly in the armor.

Until the side of his head popped open. The armored savage stumbled onto his side and crashed in a heap at the feet of the dead.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here!”

Kathy again, a gun smoking in her fist. Father charged forward and ran past her. He had to get back to Frank and the others. He managed to get the boy, and he had Kathy. He’d done some good out here. He had to clear the shock from his system and keep his ass going.

Last round. Three more minutes. The crowd screams, anticipating the final blow, the knockout punch. Someone has to lose.

Not
Sangriento Joe.
Not on Earth or in Heaven.

Now he could feel his blood pumping through his veins. He was aware of his own breath, his heartbeat. For the first time in years, he was excited. Nothing felt better than victory, especially a victory made from bone and blood, fear and violence.

***

“You killed a man,” he pointed out to Kathy while they ran down the street.

“Ask me tomorrow if I give a fuck,” she said.

He set the boy down. Other survivors followed them, beating their feet against the concrete to escape the melee at the barricade. None of them were police.

There was no way he could agree with Kathy’s decision to kill a man. If she could reconcile the decision to shoot a man in cold blood, why didn’t everyone just kill each other? Was it already happening?

Macon didn’t seem shaken up by what he’d seen. Both his parents were murdered in front of him. His face was full of freckles, but there were no tears. He carried the rifle over his shoulder like an expert. The gun’s weight didn’t stop him from keeping pace with the priest.

Dread shapes silhouetted by flames loomed against the horizon behind them. The undead would follow.

“I think we’ll be safe,” he said to Kathy between gasps. “I have an idea. I have crucifixes… if we can just nail them over the doors… maybe… just maybe…”

It sounded insane to his ears, but to question it now would be to question everything he’d already seen, and everything he believed to be true.

Kathy said, “If we can all get crucifixes, maybe I can get back to my parents safely. They need me, Father. You get me a crucifix and I’m outta here.”

Survivors scattered around the compound while Father led Kathy and Macon up to the room where Frank and the others waited. He would keep his promise. Kathy was good enough with a gun, and maybe if he could get back outside and gather all the survivors, he could grab weapons from the failed barricade.

Inside the room, Frank sat in his wheelchair. The walls around him were painted in gore while dead bodies, savagely ripped to pieces, lay on the floor at his feet. Three haggard faces looked at the priest, Kathy, and Macon. One of the bodies sat up, flaps of skin hanging from an old woman’s face.

“You forgot about Mrs. Waters,” Frank said, “you fucking idiot.”

There she was, standing among the dead bodies: Mrs. Jane Waters, who was supposed to receive her final sacrament from Father Joe. She chewed scraps of flesh in her mouth like someone might gnaw busily on beef jerky.

Father couldn’t look away from the dead faces that were stuffed with chunks of human skin. Blood dribbled over their chins like creamy salad dressing, slipping over lips and dripping onto the carpet.

Kathy fired her gun. 

CHANELL

(Eight Hours Ago)

The black Mercedes S-Class peeled rubber along Woodward Avenue while the engine roared. A figure standing in the middle of the road stopped and looked into the bright headlights. Most people would have moved. Most people, if they could think, if they could reason, would have moved the hell out of the way.

The corpse flipped heels-over-head and slid off the hood.

The Mercedes navigated through the maze of burning cars. The drivers and the passengers had stepped out of the vehicles and now stood in the street, their flesh charred, their hair singed, their eyes lidless, and their twitching, skeletal bodies moving through the smoky haze.

Chanell always wanted a Mercedes, and it was even more fun to drive the stolen car with Tyga’s, “Do My Dance” rattling the doors and windows. Her brother, Louis, leaned out the passenger window and sprayed his Uzi into the faces of shambling corpses. The rear windows were rolled down, and the other members of their crew, Carter and DJ, both opened fire with their Berettas. The combined gunfire was louder than Tyga’s beats, and Chanell slowed the car to a crawl so they could spend their bullets.

All they needed to do was find Vincent; these were his guns. Cops didn’t come around their block, what with Fireball taking care of shit. If they could find Fireball, they could find Vincent, and if they could find Vincent, they could go to war.

Carter and DJ reloaded while corpses dropped alongside the car. Chanell sped through a gap and drove along a dark stretch of road. They had to get downtown if they wanted to find Vincent. They had passed Highland Park through a makeshift barricade of abandoned cop cars. Damn fools couldn’t keep Detroit on lockdown.

To the left and right, the side streets were as dark as ever without working streetlights, and a tall, gothic cathedral burned next to a Baptist church. There was a break in the crowd of corpses in the street, as many of them had been dropped by gunfire.

Chanell looked back at DJ and Carter while her brother, Louis, reloaded in the passenger seat. She pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. She was pissed that her weave was ruined; it was the first rational thought she had in the past hour.

  DJ uncorked the bottle of Cristal and took a long draught, while Carter checked their weapons.

“All we got is 9 millimeter,” he announced. “Not much left. Gotta conserve…”

“Fuck that!” Louis turned around. “Keep sprayin’ these muthas… gotta take it all back! This shit’s ours!”

Chanell could feel her sweaty palms shaking against the steering wheel. Her body was numb, and she needed a moment to calm her nerves. She had always been a clear-headed woman, even when she had sunk into a world of depravity and lust before she found the man who saved her life.

With the crowd of dead behind them, she parked the car along the curb. Like Vincent, she loved this city, from the pot-holed streets that were never plowed during the winter, to the casinos where they would roll up together in a black stretch Hummer. She loved it when he draped a mink coat over her shoulders and they ran the roulette table together. She didn’t mind when some cheap-ass hoes hovered over his shoulders while he gambled. Vincent belonged to her, but he was a man of power and respect. He needed the dime bitches to keep up appearances, but she was the one he shared the dream with.

He would go legit. One day, the people would love him. Once all the crews were united under his guns, the violence would stop. He had the money to make a run for it, so once he had the votes, being mayor wasn’t a stretch. Not for him.

Nobody knew him like she did. He was in the city so much that everybody thought he lived there, but they had a home together in Grosse Pointe. When all the shit came down, Chanell couldn’t wait to see him again. It didn’t take much for her to argue with the loyal men who hung around their house that they needed to find their boss. They already lost Chris, who crashed their Escalade into a tree.

“Y’all need to
keep
your shit together
,” she said. “We’ve got to stay focused. I don’t want you getting so twisted that you can’t even see straight!” She knew she was the only sober one among them.

Louis shook his head. His chest heaved from the adrenaline which surged through his veins. The Kevlar he wore beneath his blood-spattered Tigers jersey was useless against the nightmare creatures that roamed around Woodward.

“You don’t even know what those things are. We just know they ain’t on the same team. The lockdown didn’t work. Look around you—they tried to protect this city, keep everyone in, and everyone out.” He stared at his lap and sighed.

DJ whispered while looking through the rear window. “We can’t just sit here and wait for them to come get us.”

Carter slammed the Cristal again “You know what those things are. You know
exactly
what they are.” He passed the bottle to Louis, who took down a swig.

“Why’re we stopped?” DJ asked. “I want to get to Vincent just as much as you, but we’re not gonna make it by sitting here. We need to
move
.”

Chanell turned back to the steering wheel, but instead of turning the key in the ignition, she stared. Vincent always took care of her; she’d lived on government checks and needles in her arm, until Vincent woke her up to reality. Until he made her realize how strong she could be, and how beautiful she was.

There was so much fire, so much chaos—what if he was hurt? What if one of those
things
got him?

Louis put a hand on her arm. “You can do this. We need you to drive, okay? Hey, look at me.”

Her brother’s eyes were bloodshot from smoking and drinking, and his lower lip trembled.

“Let’s move,” DJ said. “I can’t see shit out there. Just drive.”

“Remember,” Louis tried to remind her, “that one time when we were in one of the houses. Remember that kid who was lying on the floor. You used to be like that, you know. Both of us were, only Vincent saved our ass. Brought us out of the dark. Vincent was pointing at the kid… his name was Jerome. I’ll never forget that name, because Vincent wanted us to remember. He wanted us to see what we were. There’re people who’re already dead, just walking corpses, man, ain’t worth nothing to nobody, and then there’s people who’re alive, truly alive, and the world was made for those people.”

Chanell remembered it well. She brought the car back to life and revved the engine.

“The radio!” Carter shouted again. “We got to know what’s happening!”

She shook her head. “Hell no. I know what I’m about, and that’s all I need to know. He’s out there on the block, keeping himself alive.”

The Mercedes emerged onto the smoldering road. She knew no other way to reach Vincent’s neighborhood; they would use the main street, which was bound to be crowded with more of the dead.

The empty lots and weed-choked sidewalks were visible in the firelight of a burning plaza, where a Subway restaurant’s flame cooked the night sky. More and more shapes appeared in the glowing light.

“Hold your ammo,” Louis said. “Keep that shit in check. Just keep on driving through. These bitch-ass niggas are slow, and they can’t chase the car.”

Twitching, legless bodies twitched along the road ahead, and the Mercedes bumped over several of the impossible creatures. She couldn’t think. Just drive, drive right through them.

“You got this,” Louis said.

“Fuck these muthas…” in the backseat, Carter powered down the window again.

“No!” Louis said. “You got to keep your cool! Keep your shit tight, you hear me?”

“We’re the last ones alive!” Carter shouted back. “Ain’t nobody else! I ain’t going out like a busta’.”

Carter and DJ began a shouting match, and it was all Chanell could do to keep her eyes fixated ahead. She couldn’t look into the faces of the dead, no matter how many of them were in her way. They crowded into the street, and the passage became tighter. A Cadillac and two other sedans were smashed into one another; she had to stop and throw the car into reverse.

She could do it. Vincent had loved her strength, the fact that she didn’t take shit from nobody.

She squealed the tires again. Louis lurched forward and nearly hit the dashboard. Hands slapped against the windows while DJ and Carter struggled in the backseat. The Cristal spilled and one of the guns went off, hitting the car’s roof. Louis reached back and attempted to separate the two drunks.

“Goddammit!” she said. “Get it together!”

They approached a burning high school, and orange light which filled the street illuminated the throng of shapes silhouetted against the flame. Hundreds of them milled around the middle of the street.

“Shit!” Louis saw them, and his eyes widened.