The Queen of the Dead (33 page)

Standing in the firelight, Vincent’s exposed arms were slick with sweat, and both hands flexed on the grips of Uzi machine guns. Clips were shoved into the pockets of his tactical vest; their eyes locked. A glint of metal flashed between his lips.

“Staring at them clips,” Vincent said, nodding at her ammo-loaded vest.

“Not much to look at,” Vega said. “Bob—you met him—he used to say I’d actually be pretty if I bought myself tits. I always figured they’d get in the way of ass-kicking.”

He chuckled. “Some niggas wear fur coats and shit, and they got chains ‘round their necks, wearing suits and jewelry. I ain’t saying I’m a thug, but all those videos and movies… that ain’t what hustlin’ looks like. When I earned it, I wore that shit at home. Wore it on TV, too. I did all that shit when I was washing my dollars with a car dealership. I lived in Grosse Pointe… Vincent ain’t even my real name.”

She wanted to find his shadowed eyes because she wasn’t sure what he looked like. She saw them on the lawn in the morning light, but that was the last time she could see anything. When they were looking for Shanna.

How much time passed?

Vega said, “I’ve seen everything in the light of fire and storm, and there’s nothing but blood and dust. It’s like we’re just voices now, coming out of the shadows.”

Humidity and fluorescent lighting inside the counseling center refocused her attention when they stepped out of the office. The electric hum made her blood sing; she was in battle mode, allowing the monster to step out of its cage. She was just entering another room, but she was alert, and it didn’t feel right. The dead were everywhere, and it was easy to be unlucky. All it took was one bite and she would be like John Charles, the poor bastard.

Vincent swept his machine guns over the furniture-filled spaces, black-bordered inspirational pictures hung on the walls with lighthouses and hot-air balloons, words like ADVERSITY and DEDICATION displayed in bold letters. Anti-discrimination policies were tacked around a receptionist’s window.

The front door opened as if a child were struggling with it. Vega held her breath; it would be smarter to take up a defensive position, and it would have been even smarter if a makeshift barricade had been pushed in front of all the doors. Their fellowship had split apart—everyone went their own way—and nobody gave a shit.

Vega’s finger was glued to the trigger, her eye focused through the optic sight. A man crawled through the doorway, but his grunts and faint chuckles stopped her from blowing him away. The zombies didn’t make so much noise. She had control of her weapon, and steam rose from the black man, who smiled with a mouth missing several teeth.

“That’s the way to do it,” General Masters said, his voice losing its vitality to a tone that seemed relaxed. “Some of that ol’ time shit. Yeah. Like that. Just like that.”

She removed her eye from the sight. The general coughed and spat up blood, but he crawled on, trailing blood along the floor, smoke rising from his charred skin. One side of his face looked like raw hamburger.

He stopped his journey and craned his neck to look at Vega and Vincent. He was bleeding and burnt, and he smiled his crooked grin.

“Are they all dead?” Vega asked. She held no illusions about helping the general, and his smile was enough for her to know he didn’t want it.

“We’re dead when we’re born,” the general sounded like a cat that struggled to cough up a hairball. “We need to know how to live… before we can die.”

Vega knelt beside him and set her rifle aside. She turned him over to his back; he smelled like over-cooked meat. His smile didn’t waver.

“What the hell…” She needed the right words to continue.

“That’s right,” the general said. “Fighting against ourselves. It’s what we do. For my country.” He reached up with his hands and pulled himself up by her collar. She let his hands hold on, his eyes bulging out of his head. “You see it. This is what we’ve always wanted. But the flag, the idea, the freedom, the love… It’s worth this… Worth all of it…”

“You’re bit,” she said.

He released her. “Nobody can hurt the priest,” he turned to his stomach and laid his face upon the ground, the back of his head exposed.

Vega drew one of her Sig Sauers and put a bullet through his head.

The hole in the general’s head was a red eye staring at her. The general was dead. He dedicated his life to this moment, and he was at peace. He found his peace in war. The old man didn’t die alone; he died for love.

Vega shot him again.

“Get it together,” she heard Vincent say, “keep your shit in order.”

A third round punctured the back of the general’s head.

Maybe he would get up again and laugh at her. Share his philosophy of war and country, talk about his undying love for an idea that could be felt. She and Miles used to watch American troops talk about hunting and women, beer and music. It would drive her mad. There was nothing to talk about. They came from a world she didn’t understand, and she hated them for it. Or maybe
she
was the alien.

Her hand shook.

“
Move your ass
,” Vincent said.

Instead of doing the smart thing and moving, she turned and watched John Charles stumble through the door on his wounded legs, balancing himself against the door.

The first thing she wanted to do was ask him how he was doing.

The second thing she wanted to do was look to Vincent to find out if she was nuts. But she didn’t have to.

John Charles didn’t make a sound when he took another step toward them. His uniform was covered in so much blood it looked like he was wearing a red jumpsuit.

He was dead. Yes, very dead.

It would’ve been easier simply to blow him away with the gun in her hand, but she felt like holstering the 9mm and picking up the rifle. As if he was owed John the conclusion only an awesome weapon could provide.

An explosion of glass and the grind of metal pushing itself through dry wall and brick dropped dust into her eyes. The lights disappeared.

Hands grabbed her gun and she stepped back and tripped over the dead general. John Charles landed on top of her and she could smell the blood, as his body writhed against hers. Gunfire flashed from Vincent’s guns, but he wasn’t aiming for the dead man atop her.

Too many times she’d been in this position. Wrestling with the dead—she could hear the sergeant’s jaw snapping at her, blood and saliva dripping onto her face. It would be easy to let the dead soldier have his way with her.

Nothing was easy.

She bucked him off, stood, planted her boot against his neck, and destroyed his face with a three-round burst from the rifle. There was enough firelight through the window to see the sergeant’s existence end once and for all. A chunk of hair matted to skull stuck to her boot.

When Vincent stopped firing, she could hear a man’s agonized scream through the walls of the counseling center.

“Is Griggs still here?” she asked Vincent.

“Fuck do I know? Do we care?”

For a moment, she saw Crater straddling her hips and heard the blast that sounded like an M80 firecracker. Griggs had saved her life.

And Vincent had saved his.

If they left now, she would be leaving a man behind. As much as she loathed him, he was part of their crew. Her twisted version of morality and God-guilt had backed her into a corner, but there was one thing she knew, one thing that made the decision easier.

“He chose his path,” she said. “If we bail his ass out, that won’t mean he’ll come with us, and this path is mine alone. I didn’t ask you to come along, but you’re here. You made a choice, and so did he. Let’s go.”

***

The trail of bodies might lead them to the priest. With the lightening sky, Vega thought about Shanna again and the fight to save her in the early hours of a new day. Dead bodies on the pavement, slumped over the hoods of cars, lying atop each other in parking lots—General Masters had come this way.

Hundreds of zombies made their way to the counseling center, following the path of destruction. Many of them were on fire, their flesh melting and sizzling like sausage on a grille.
Pop, pop,
the flames sounded like an orchestra that used bubble wrap as its primary instrument.

An explosion added to the chaos, and more followed. A chain reaction set off by rupturing fuel tanks. There was a war going on without any combatants. Bodies covered nearly every inch of the street as they approached a wall of fire that looked like it had been used as a barricade. Burning cop cars and other emergency vehicles were at the center of the conflagration.

Jeremy, the general, the priest, and the sergeant, walked these streets to save strangers. John Charles and the general were both wasted. Jeremy was a nice enough guy, but being nice wouldn’t save him. Maybe he and the priest made it?

“The barricade was a distraction,” Vincent said while they weaved through zombie traffic. “John would’ve been up there, drawing those things away with fireworks so the priest could get away.”

Even though he was stating the obvious, it needed to be said; their suicidal plan may’ve worked. Vega couldn’t remember the last time she went to a concert, but the crowd in the street reminded her of a dispersing audience leaving the venue. There were just as many dead-again people lying in puddles of blood. Water from the rainstorm drained into the sewers.

The water was red.

Her feet had to keep moving. They were closing in, hundreds of them. Grannies in their bath robes and slippers, people whose crotches and chests had been ripped out, skin peeled from their skulls. Heads rolled, and they drooled blood. Crooked fingers without skin, skeletons charred by fire with bright eyes squirming in their heads. Pale blue skin, black, bright white; they were rotting. Some of them moaned, a low prayer by a crowd of people devoted to the consummation of flesh.

Their hands reached for her; adrenaline kept her moving. It seemed they were endless. She couldn’t catch her breath. Her body twisted through them, slipping through stretching arms; she had to keep her balance, or she’d fall right into them. They closed in; her heart told her she was on a rollercoaster ride, but her mind told her fire was following her footsteps.

There was a break. They were spread apart, and she inhaled.

Vega shoved them aside, pushing through them without wasting a bullet. They were spread apart, but she lost sight of Vincent and felt her pulse race. Her neck stiffened, and her knuckles turned white on the grip of the rifle. Where the hell was he?

As soon as her feet stopped, a pair of gooey hands cupped her chin from behind her. She darted out of the creature’s grasp and slammed her rifle into the face of another. It didn’t matter what they looked like, or what they used to be.

But where was Vincent? No gunfire and no scream.

“Vincent!”

And no response.

She looked over her shoulder. The sky was pale and the cloudy ceiling threatened to break apart. Her heart would stop racing if she heard his voice, or heard the sound of his gun, or at least a scream. Would he leave her? Would he just take off?

The gate to the retirement center was wide open, and she walked through a parking lot with a dense population of undead, a scattered group of old people crawling because their bones hadn’t worked properly in years.

Another glance over her shoulder. Look left, then right. Back around. Where the hell was he?

But she couldn’t stop. She was finally alone. Bob, Miles, John, and now Vincent. Everyone was gone.

Legs moved in tune with her heart, beating furiously against the pavement. She had wished the priest managed to accomplish his goal, but now she hoped he was inside one of these buildings—which one? Where would he be?

“Fuck,” she exhaled her word.

She almost ran past them, but she looked twice at the man who sat with his elbows resting on his thighs, his fingers entwined in a fist. Behind him was an elderly man sitting in a wheelchair. The priest didn’t look up when she stopped; he could have been dead, but when the elder cackled, Father looked up.

“What the
hell
are you doing?” she asked, huffing and puffing.

“Hell,” Father said, his sad eyes staring at the blood-soaked steps. He sighed and started again. “I suppose Hell has everything to do with it.”

“What’re you talking about?” Vega approached. “You’re just sitting here. I lost Vincent. I don’t know where he is! Are you listening? John and the general are dead. Is this it? Is this all that’s left?”

“Listen to this bitch,” the old man said.

Vega lifted Father up by his collar and held him close. “Goddamn you, what
is
this? Everyone’s DEAD! Are you
listening?
Are you waiting for God to send you a fucking message?”

She dropped him onto the steps.

What a waste. She looked back at the parking lot; she wanted Vincent to be safe. No—she
needed
him to be safe.

“Jeremy…?” Father started, looking up at Vega. When she didn’t reply, he said, “There were more of us. A woman, Kathy. She’s lying over there, and a boy… I think Rose is still alive. She came down here a minute ago, and I told her where you were. She said she knew you. I don’t know which way she went.”