Zombie Ascension (Book 1): Necropolis Now (10 page)

He fumbled with the radio; static screams and gunshots replaced the ordered reports they expected to hear. The radio was useless.

Mina licked at the blood on her lips. She shoved her fingers into her mouth to suck on her bloody fingertips. Her victim's body was still warm, but she felt satisfied. She used to think if she had the chance to eat again, she would greedily devour each inch of flesh and leave nothing but a pile of bones.

Jim drove casually through the fiery city, ignoring the people who ran into the street. Mina couldn't tell if they were alive or dead.

Jim said, "I'm interested to know what foul tragedies deprived you of humanity. While I find a haven for us, share those terrifying images that would shake the soul of a man. Tell me who you are."

Mina briefly explained her story.

"I think you can predict something happened to me when I was a little girl. It shouldn't surprise you," she began.

"My mother died in childbirth and my father abused me.

"Maybe it's all Daddy's fault.

"The doctors at Eloise Fields couldn't cure me, just like they couldn't cure you. There's nothing wrong with us. It's just the way we are. I like being me. The nightmares are scary sometimes, but eating people can be fun.

"Daddy would wear a Halloween mask when he terrorized me. He blamed me for killing Mommy. Whenever he tortured me, he felt the pain too, and it made him feel alive. He used to cry behind the mask. He would apologize and tell me it's all my fault, that I made him do it. Daddy would say he was sorry for being a bad man and I should call the police. He would put the phone up next to my ear and tell me to call. Once, he even dialed the number. I heard someone's voice say, 'hello, hello,' over and over again.

"Daddy wasn't a bad man. It was okay for him to hurt me because it made him feel a little better.

"He used to love horror films. He worked as a garbage man, and I remember his hands were always smeared with grime no matter how much he showered. His fingers felt warm and rough on my body. At night, he would sit down and watch a movie, sometimes with the mask on. Along with nearly every zombie film ever made, he would constantly watch violent horror movies. His favorite was
Cannibal Holocaust.

"I grew up socially awkward. I didn't talk to others in school. I was bullied, but that doesn't matter because my universe was made up of nothing but my father. I didn’t have time for homework or sports because I needed to make him happy, and I would do whatever I needed to put a smile on his face. I poured his whiskey with the breakfast I made for him in the mornings; I did his laundry, ironed his clothes, and cooked his dinner. I was the wife he never had.

"The nightmares were the worst part. I began to have dreams where I would be consumed by a mob of zombies. They would tear me to pieces, and I would live through all the pain. I wouldn't wake up.

"Sometime after I turned eighteen, I stopped eating, though I was always hungry. Nothing could satisfy me. The nightmares became worse, and I was afraid to fall asleep. I became an insomniac.

"I kept wondering what I tasted like in the mouths of the undead.

"One morning, I woke up before my father and stabbed him in the chest with a kitchen knife. I thought it was the best weapon to use so I could easily rip open his soft stomach and eat his insides. I cut off chunks of loose skin and fried them in a pan. I seasoned them with salt and pepper.

"I was tired after awhile, so I took a nap in his bloodstained sheets. When I woke up, I carved out a piece of his thigh and discovered that I couldn't eat him cold.”

"I ran away and found myself in the streets. I didn't have any nightmares for a long time. I ate two homeless men and the nightmares didn't come back for a while.

"Eating people is delightful.

"I was briefly rescued from the street by a police detective, and we made movies together. I really liked him. I remember where he lives. Detective Patrick Griggs won't be expecting me. You have to take me there, please."

Jim stopped the police car within the recesses of a dark, cavernous gloom.

"Your story is an epic narrative," the Artist turned back to her, his face a plastic mask of composure. "I'm going to dedicate a massacre to your beauty."

She looked at the soldier's corpse. The seat was soaked in his blood; the same gore was painted across her jumpsuit.

"He didn't have to die," Mina said absently. "One day, I thought it might be nice if I just ate bad people."

Jim's brow angled inward toward his sharp-edged nose. "Why entertain illusions about good and evil now? You aren't an intelligent girl, Mina. Let me do the thinking for us. I require only your hunger."

Mina understood the kind of person Jim was, and his callousness didn't bother her.

"You're going to take me to Patrick?" she asked while looking through her window at the fireballs which lit up the sky.

Traverse ignored her question and said, "Despite all the questions one might ask, I only wonder for how long we might be able to enjoy this. Look outside and see what I see."

The corpses walked between the abandoned, weed-choked houses on a forgotten street. They were a composite of a doomed demographic that had found refuge in poverty—they were downtrodden African Americans who'd resisted the society which condemned them.

A foul stench wafted into Mina's nostrils. The corpse which lay against the seats beneath her jerked several times. The corpse belched as gas was expunged from its stomach, causing a long, slow groan to escape from the dead soldier's throat. The soldier turned his head anew; pieces of flesh hung from his throat like loose fabric.

Traverse glanced into the rearview mirror and threw the vehicle into reverse. The sound of war—a compilation of gunfire and screams—poured out of the radio while Traverse looked over his shoulder with his hand on the steering wheel.

Mina screamed.

The corpse reached up and seized a fistful of her hair within his cold fingers. She pushed against the man's chest and briefly looked into the watery eyes of a dead man.

She knew she would never wake up from the nightmare.

VEGA

Corpses poured down the stairs around them, stumbling into one another in the darkness. They carried with them the stench of the freshly dead, feces and blood.

"Clear a path!" Bob shouted.

Miles dropped his hand from the side of his bandaged face, and blood oozed over his chin. With his hand on the trigger of the M16, he made sure a grenade was loaded into the launcher.

"Have a nice fucking day!" Miles fired a grenade into the lobby and laughed as limbs and bodies leapt into the air along with the glowing ball of fire. Vega and Bob both lobbed their own grenades into the crowd.

But nobody in the crowd panicked, or moved hurriedly. Some glanced upward at the soldiers, while others continued to struggle up the stairs slowly.

She couldn't look at them closely. Vega knew if she thought about what she was actually doing, or even stopped to stare at the various fatal wounds, including missing limbs and pieces of flesh hanging from exposed bones, she would freeze up. Whatever else they might have been, they were the enemy.

If she didn't shoot at the corpses, they would kill her.

Miles fired another grenade from the launcher. "Boom! Motherfuckers!"

Bob laughed. "Just like a video game!"

"WOOOOO!" Miles pumped his fist into the air. "Choke on a grenade, bitches!"

His raw-meat face brightened demonically while he flipped off the crowd and hollered curses at them. Miles had become hysterical.

They were in a wilderness of horror and death.

"We have to move!" Bob waved at Vega to follow him, while the shaking Renaissance Center reminded them once again what was at stake. Time was ticking. Even if they made it outside, the building's collapse would still kill them.

Vega was behind Bob while he exploded the heads of three stumbling corpses with his shotgun. Vega still hadn't fired a single shot—the heavy sniper rifle was practically useless, unless she took up a firing position and picked them off one at a time. She almost dropped her beloved weapon so she could unleash hell with her MP5.

When another grenade rocked the lobby, they both looked back and found Miles still firing from above and shouting at the field of burning body parts.

"Get yer ass down here!" Bob shouted.

Several burning corpses approached, unaffected by the pain they should have experienced. A couple of them collapsed as their entire likenesses melted away. Outside the main doors, dozens of dead soldiers milled about, each of them pushing through one another to crowd into the lobby, some of them clinging to weapons.

There wasn't a living thing in the world that could burn without feeling pain.

Bob tossed another grenade behind them at a few stragglers who hung around near the other set of doors. The vast ground floor had two sets of stairs, which they hadn't seen, or even considered.

From his vantage point, Miles had turned around and was firing behind him. Another explosion near the opposite doors was confirmation enough that he spotted the other corpses. Gift shop windows shattered as the storm of bullets swept through the lobby. The dead kept coming.

"Miles!" Bob commanded. "Let's go!"

Vega dropped to one knee. "My turn," she said, salivating at the chance to do some damage. The corpses moved slowly enough, and it was all she could do to ignore the blank, expressionless faces that were visible in the light of flickering flames. Squeezing the trigger on her rifle, she tried to clear a path through the doors for their exit as she popped open several heads with well-aimed shots.

"Now or never," Bob grabbed her by the elbow.

"We can't leave Miles!" she wrenched herself away from him. From a standing position, she tried to scan the floor where Miles battled, but no targets were visible. Miles's M16 rattled off round after round, the flashes brightening the silhouette of her comrade.

She turned around to run back up the stairs. There was no way she could leave Miles behind. He'd saved her life in Afghanistan; leaving him now would be tantamount to betrayal.

She stopped to waste several fiery corpses that were making their way up the stairs. She would just have to destroy every one of them to get to Miles.

"Let's go!" she called out to him. "We're leaving!"

"You're missing the party!" Miles stopped firing for a moment. "Look at all my new friends! Look at how many people I've killed! Holy shit! HAHAHAHAHAHA! Yeah! WOOOOOO!"

She could hear him slap a fresh clip into his rifle. The battle rush refused to let him go, and unless she pulled him away, he would let himself die. She knew that feeling all too well, and more than once, Miles had been there for her.

Only three steps back up the stairs, her ankle was yanked back and she stopped and turned her weapon on a leering face. She pulled the trigger and the face exploded at close range. Sudden pressure on her shoulders forced her to look up at another one of
them,
and she brought her gun up…

But there were so many hands. There were hands on her ankles, and hands on her shoulders. Where did they come from? She squeezed the trigger on her rifle, but the gun was jerked upward. In the darkness, she couldn't see them. They were nothing more than shapes. Hundreds of them, hands, fingers, were everywhere. She lost her footing on the steps as she slipped in blood, but the hands held her upright.

For a moment, she thought of Christ and the lepers. The needy hands, the people who needed to be healed. Her bullets could heal them, if only they gave her chance. 

She could see flames, and in a world that was far away, she could hear Miles firing without abandon. All she wanted to do was save him.

Daddy wouldn't have wanted her to be afraid. Not now. Not ever.

Their teeth scraped against the Kevlar, and their nails ripped at the fabric on her arms. She could feel herself being lifted higher by the hands, and she held her breath.

She refused to scream.

The explosion, and the warm splash of sticky blood all over her face, brought her back to reality. Searing hot chunks of skull rained down upon her face with the second explosion, and she could feel herself falling through the forest of vicious hands. She fell forward right into a powerful embrace, and she was dragged back into the lobby, and another blast told her what she needed to know.

"Bob," she said into his thick chest.

"On your feet," he said gruffly, dropping her to the floor so he could pump another round through his shotgun.

"Miles…" she wiped blood away from her face.

"On your feet, goddammit!" Bob shouted again as he obliterated another skull while he backed up, turned, pumped, and fired again. "ON YOUR FEET SOLDIER!"

Vega shot back to her feet and fumbled for the sub machine gun. She brought it up and fired at a burning crowd. She glanced back up at Miles and discovered he was still alive and fighting. She swept her gun over the corpses with her finger on the trigger, and she felt the old battle lust fill her blood. She had been waiting for this, and now, she could kill as many as she needed to.

"We have to move!" Bob moved toward the front doors. "We have to go! Move out, Vega!"

They rushed toward the doors while Miles continued his rampage. Bob swung his shotgun like a club in a wide arc at some of the slow, featureless figures.

"FUCK YOU!" Miles shouted above the war.

She turned around.

Vega took a step back into the lobby.

"Now, Vega!" Bob shouted after her. "Move out!"

Miles had turned back around. A hand reached out for his face and ripped the bandage away; she could see his damaged face again, alight in the radiance of fire and war. He was reloading his weapon, and he paused for one moment to look straight into Vega's eyes.

This was his moment, and they both knew it.

With a free hand, he rubbed the blood from his wound around the rest of his face and neck. He made a show of grabbing a grenade from his jacket and holding it in his fist. With the M16 in one hand and a grenade in the other, he turned back to the reaching hands and roared.

She'd seen it before: a warrior making peace with death.

Vega turned around and found herself in the middle of Hell.

Outside, Jefferson Avenue was a sea of flame. The people mover above the street had collapsed into the avenue, and military vehicles were scattered on both sides of the broad avenue; blood-spattered Humvees and trucks sat behind barbed wire that was decorated with twitching corpses. Hundreds of camouflaged soldiers clung to weapons that dangled inches above the concrete from their dead fingers. The city seemed an inferno rivaling the heat of Afghanistan's endless deserts. All breath was nearly choked from her lungs as she inhaled thick smoke.

The explosion behind her, inside the Renaissance Center's massive, iconic motel, jarred her. In the back of her mind and in the depths of her heart, she knew it was Miles. She knew he was gone.

She couldn't stop to think. Her life depended on it.

She followed Bob, weaving between the desperate arms of the dead, daring herself to keep her eyes fixated on the path before her. They moved slowly, and all around her, she could hear the steel screeching in protest as clouds of dust billowed through the street in the wake of sudden explosions. Corpses wearing the armor of well-trained soldiers squeezed off random rounds from the weapons that were still in their hands. A barricade of bullet-riddled, burning cars on either side of the barbed wire blocked the street; the wire sagged beneath the weight of several corpses that were stranded along its length. Bob climbed over the roof of a Hummer, and Vega followed him. He ran across the roofs of the forsaken cars, and neither one of them stopped to look into the murdered faces of the greedy dead.

They ran down Brush Street where only a few corpses lingered, gouts of flame pouring out of parking garages while several blaring car horns added to the discordance. Vega looked back over her shoulder once at the Renaissance Center, and could see the fountain of flame partly obscuring the iconic GM logo near the top floors, where the helicopter had crashed.

His name flashed through her mind, and it followed her footsteps, chasing her down Brush Street.

Miles. Chris Miles.

The entire world seemed to be screaming all at once. There were voices that cried out for God, and Vega sourly wondered how many people found Him only at the end of their lives after spending the years He gave them in sin. They deserved this; the human race had made their world a godless place full of pornography and video game murder.

They continued to run down Brush past empty parking lots and another massive, burning parking structure. Their feet beat upon the cracked concrete in the darkness as tiny groups of corpses lingered on the street, looking for someone to drag into Hell with them. The buildings were made of red brick, and they seemed as if they would survive the disaster; a tavern with iron bars over its windows was unscathed, while the Food Plaza across the street was a burning pyre of potato chips, magazines, energy drinks, and alcohol.

Right before they reached Congress, which was the next city block, a pickup truck with shiny, spinning rims slowly crossed the intersection. Bob and Vega instinctively dropped to the cement and put their hands over their heads. Sitting in the back of the large black truck was a group of African American teenagers with AK-47s, firing at every corpse they could see. Vega glanced up from her position and could see the bandannas on their heads, the flash of metal in their teeth, the illegal weapons in their hands. Marijuana smoked drifted thickly over the street. Their bullets brought a few corpses to the concrete, and they continued their drive down Congress.

The soldiers slowly rose to their feet. They needed to stop and breathe. They needed to collect themselves and collect each other. The nightmare they found themselves in separated them, somehow. Bob always remained a few feet ahead, a beacon of humanity in the desolate wasteland of the dead. The situation seemed beyond their power to comprehend, and Vega felt incredibly small, as if her mission meant nothing in the grand scheme of things.

"Bob," Vega called out in a voice that sounded weaker than she wanted it to. "Stop, for just a minute."

He crouched down in the middle of the street while Vega jogged up to him. Several bodies littered the boulevard, some of them on fire. A few yards ahead of them loomed a five-story courthouse, a Roman-baroque building that now burned, like everything else. It would have been a beautiful display of Detroit architecture with all of it sharp edges and slender windows. Vega glanced down Brush and saw most of the skyscrapers in the financial district burning.

Vega was out of breath, and her lungs smoldered. "We need to stop and figure this out. Are you listening to me? We need to regroup."

Bob's eyes darted in several directions. "Yeah." He nodded. "Yeah, okay. We can do this." He grabbed Vega's arm above the elbow. "Maybe another block. Okay?"

Relief flooded through Vega's system. They were human again.

Overhead, a helicopter pounded the sky, invisible through the clouds of smoke and ash.

Thousands of people screamed or fired weapons or wept. Fire cracked and popped, while old structures collapsed beneath the weight of shuddering steel. Cars churned their tires and crashed into storefronts. Vehicles slammed into each other, and a large semi-truck barreled down the sidewalk and pushed cars out of the way while glass and steel rained on the trailer.