Zombie Ascension (Book 1): Necropolis Now (7 page)

Mina pointed to Jake Wells and noted, "He's not dead."

Jake sat up stiffly, his eyes roving back and forth in his skull.

Traverse's eyebrows furrowed.

"You're mistaken," he announced, though his eyes never left Jake. "He's not breathing."

A helicopter's churning blades beat at the night sky above her head as she watched, helplessly, as Jake Wells returned to life. His limbs jerked and his fingers twitched.

The helicopter's presence seemed to complement the thundering of her heart. Jim said something, but she could no longer hear him. There was only the helicopter and Jake Wells.

As the dead man struggled to his feet with awkwardly cracking bones and an open, airless mouth, Mina dropped to her knees and screamed.

JEROME

The fog hanging over the semi-conscious bodies on the house's floor could have been formed on a battlefield between clashing savages who wrestled and died in the dust. It was a fog borne of some violent need to mutilate the human spirit or a masochistic need to live forever on the fringes of death just to feel alive. More than anything, it was a haze of marijuana smoke.

Jerome lay against a yellow wall. Others who walked over him thought he was dead, until they succumbed to the same universe. After a while, the entire house fell silent, with scattered voices drifting and echoing through Jerome's mind as if it was sleeping in a cave. He would open his eyes for a brief moment, stare at his outstretched feet, and watch the haze roll over him.

The heroin apparatus rested against his brown forearm. Night may have fallen, or perhaps the sun had risen. Jerome was convinced someone died and it wasn't him. The tips of his shoes seemed far away and he thought he would have to swim across an ocean just to touch them.

Could this be the last time? He always asked the question and didn't know which answer he preferred. He was simply making his time in the world less painful. He didn't have his brother's strength. For Jerome, the real world was nothing more than a horrible dream.

It was all Desmond's fault because he coddled him and gave him the money he needed to feed his head. His brother shamed him with success—Desmond had it all: The well-manicured lawn, rose garden, pair of Cadillacs, eight-bedroom house, a girlfriend in Canada. Jerome often thought of the one time he was at his brother's cabin on the lake so he could watch his brother show off a new speedboat. He spent that weekend holed up in a room, heroin surging through his veins while Desmond left him there.

There were several other black people scattered along the floor of the house, some of them sobbing, others laughing. Two haggard women sat on a broken, sagging couch and rubbed furiously at their gums. Bodies seemed to be connected and mixed, shades of brown sweating within the narcotic haze. Doors opened and closed. There was a fight. Grinding bodies writhed against the stained carpet. Someone coughed for a long time.

Fireball walked among them, a barrel-chested thug wearing his sagging jeans and wife-beater shirt. He cradled a shotgun in his arm, and he normally walked around with it during the daylight hours on their street because he was in charge of protecting their neighborhood from the cops. Everyone knew Fireball, but nobody knew how he got his name. He used to be friends with Jerome's mother through the years, and he never seemed to age. Beside him walked a slim man whose handgun was visibly tucked into the front of his jeans over his boxer shorts, his baggy jeans sagging heavily. This was Vincent Hamilton, a former hitman who took over the neighborhood two years ago, ruling it with his collection of automatic weapons and narcotic alliances. His arms were covered in tattoos, and Jerome couldn't help but wonder why he was in the house. Vincent rarely appeared where people might identify him.

After a while, he exited with Fireball, leaving a house full of victims.

Jerome's attention was diverted when a hulking fat woman's cold, dead body was lifted out of the room by a team of cursing toughs. On a daily basis, several bodies were dragged out of the house and deposited elsewhere. There was often a period of awkward silence as the corpse was carried away, and then another body would drop into the vacant spot on the floor, stoned.

Jerome considered himself a lucky man. No matter how desperate he was to score another fix, he never had to give blowjobs at the airport or the bus terminal for cash to pay for his habit. His brother Desmond was always there for him, ready to provide a handout. But soon, he would be carried out and thrown into the trash. 

Hours passed, and he dozed through his druggie haze.

His eyes fluttered open and he moved his head slightly; his jaw rested on his shoulder while he watched another stranger stumble around the room. A heavy woman whose flapping breasts were exposed above a huge belly stepped over a prostrate druggie. Why was she nude? A bush of thick, wiry black hair seemed a vicious spider perched between her tree-trunk thighs. Her dark flesh was mottled with bruises and her eyes were touched with rheumatic red. Her mouth hung open and her unmoving tongue rested at the edge of her lips. She knelt beside a semi-conscious teenager and wrapped her lips around his exposed neck.

The young man shifted uncomfortably and moaned as thin lines of red dripped out of the woman's mouth and slid along his throat. She drew her head back and moved her head from side-to-side like a hungry animal; a chunk of flesh between her teeth slipped out and slid between her floppy breasts, leaving a bloody streak down her belly. She leaned in and took another bite. She chewed on another morsel for a long moment while the druggie bled. He opened his eyes and parted his lips to allow another moan to escape. He turned to the large woman and stretched out his arms. She leaned in again and bit him. He giggled and called out a name Jerome couldn't hear. Someone else in the room coughed.

Jerome watched the strange display of affection. Long after the young man stopped moving, the woman buried her fingers into his stomach and ripped it open. She rocked back and forth, as she pilfered blood-slick pieces from within the exposed body and shoved them into her mouth. Her nude body seemed a canvas upon which swaths of red paint were splashed at random.

The marijuana smoke disappeared like a ghost escaping back into the nether realm to which it belonged. Pressure assaulted Jerome's skull and he felt as if he were emerging from beneath fathoms of dark water; the world's living volume suddenly erupted around him. The noise was a painful, ear-splitting concert in which no instrument—no noise—could be clearly distinguished from the other.

Jerome could feel the stifling warmth within the house. He placed his hands against his ears while the apparatus beside him lay waiting; it was time to renew his subscription to the unreal. He could feel again; he needed to escape from the chaos before it could drown him beneath its reality.

While the woman continued to eat, her meal slowly sat up against the wall. The young man's foot slipped and twisted in the blood beneath his feet, and he fell forward with a bloody splash. He tried to claw his way forward, though he became tangled in the roping intestine that snaked its way out of his open stomach; with each inch that he gained, more intestine was pulled out of his stomach by the carpet.

The woman rose to her feet, her baggy breasts swaying back and forth.

Jerome needed another fix. He needed to be able to close his eyes and shut the world down.

The comedown presented its own challenges. The terrible noise and the sudden presence of a familiar ghost enabled him to summon the strength to scream.

Desmond, his successful brother, stood in the room with his fists clenched, tie askew on his shirt, and his collar open.

Desmond stepped over the crawling, bloody youth who'd been gnawed on and glanced over his shoulder at the lumbering woman. Jerome watched his brother's lips move, but he couldn't hear the words over the mad maelstrom of noise. Desmond was calling out to him, and when he stood over Jerome, he quickly knelt and lifted him to his feet.

Jerome discovered the strength to protest and grunted, "Fuck… you… down…"

His brother spoke but Jerome couldn't hear him. With an arm draped over his shoulder, Desmond carried him past the large woman, who was kneeling beside another sleeper with her mouth attached to a bleeding forehead. The victim giggled, just as the first one had, as blood trickled into his eye.

When Jerome emerged into the street, he quickly decided he was asleep and in the throes of a surreal nightmare.

Jerome managed to groan.

From out of the crumbled, boarded-up houses emerged bandanna-wearing men with guns. They pumped shotguns and handled assault weapons that they normally would have turned on people who lived two blocks away. Instead, they eyed the shambling group of African Americans that shuffled down the street unhurriedly.

The street's citizens stood on their porches and took shots at the slow mob.

War had been declared. But why?

"These bitches are crazy!" someone shouted before firing into the crowd.

"This is happening," Desmond said into Jerome's ear. "You have to let me get you out of here."

"You came…" Jerome tried.

Desmond grumbled, "I don't have anything better to do."

"They're shooting people…" Jerome closed his eyes and wondered if he could fall asleep on his brother's shoulder, as he used to.

"Those aren't people," Desmond corrected him. "I don't know what the hell they are."

"Just want to… boat on the lake… cabin…"

Sporadic gunfire erupted all over the street as the stumbling crowd of people dispersed and walked slowly toward the porches. The street's defenders retreated into their homes, but not all of them made it; a savage scream over the battlefield caused several guns to stop firing for a moment.

Jerome watched as one man danced to the rhythm of an AK-47 barrage which passed through and hit a woman behind him. Both people kept walking, their attention seemingly focused on those who shot them. They didn't so much as bat an eyelash.

Windows shattered as thugs and gang members took up defensive positions inside their homes. The sleepy people kept coming, no matter how many bullets rattled their twitching bodies.

The ghetto had become a war zone.

They didn't move like normal people. They walked stiffly and their limbs were bent at awkward angles while fresh bullet wounds refused to bleed. They stepped silently over the unkempt lawns. They tripped over cracks in the concrete. They stopped near cars and lifted their arms as if they were nothing more than tools—sledgehammers—and pounded against the windows. There were no working streetlights; instead, porch lights were turned on to illuminate the strange scene.

They moved as if they had no reason to move. They moved as if they were somehow… absent.

"These niggas ain't dropping!" Jerome heard.

Desmond leaned his brother against the brick wall of a house that seemed to be at war with overreaching weeds.

"You have to let me help," Desmond gasped. "Everything you see is happening. This is real, and I came to bail your ass out."

"Always a fucking hero," Jerome croaked.

"Maybe. Or maybe I just have this guilt-complex thing. This is where you yell at me and say I abandoned you after Mom died. Go ahead. Tell me you don't need my money anymore and you don't need rehab. I'm listening, so get it all out. Do it now so we can move on with our lives."

"We've done this before. Let me rest here."

"Great! So you're tired of fighting. Maybe you're willing to work with me, this time! All you have to do is walk."

Jerome blinked. "If it's such a problem… why you got to come? Ain't no hero… just, go home or something, man."

Desmond gritted his teeth, a sign he was about to begin one of his tirades. "Let me tell you how it is. The whole damn city's on fire. I had to cross over Woodward to get here, and everybody's rioting or looting. But see, it all happened so quickly… I keep telling myself it isn't happening, but here we are. Anyone who stops to think or ask questions ends up dead or walking around like one of those things in the street. Cell phones don't work and the military's got the whole city shut down. The only thing I could do was get you out of here. There's no time to figure this out. Just got to keep moving, keep living. You understand what I'm telling you?"

Jerome continued to blink.

"Remember when I promised you I would live my life, no matter what?"

No response.

"I told you I would fight my way to the top just to prove I could do it. I did it for me. I want to live no matter what's happening, and I need you with me."

"You always want to save me, man," Jerome finally said.

Desmond shook his head. "I'm not interested in quitting. Not now. This shit is nothing compared to what you and I've gone through."

"Leave me here. This is where I belong."

"I'm dead if you just want to sit here. I'm not going anywhere, either. You can go ahead and kill yourself, but can you kill your brother?"

A black Escalade vibrating from the power of an expensive sound system appeared in the street. The tinted windows rolled down while sparkling rims spun within overlarge tires. Two men poked their heads out of the SUV and opened fire on the crowd, their guns foolishly turned sideways for "gangsta-style" shooting.

When Desmond finally made the pronouncement, Jerome's faith in the dream was still unshaken.

"They're already dead!" the lawyer shouted into the ghetto.

Jerome's blood froze.

One of the corpses stepped around the corner and appeared in front of them; the teenager who had been eaten by the fat woman in the drug house, with a gaping hole in his stomach and fresh blood smeared on his jaw.

"What do you wanna do?" Desmond asked his brother. "Stay here?"

"Is he going to eat me?" Jerome asked sleepily.

Desmond furiously removed his necktie. With his fists clenched, he breathed deeply while rap music pounded against the backdrop of illegal weapons' fire.

"This is it! This is how you wanna go out!
Look
at that thing! Jerome, look! The damn thing's gonna rip my face off! Is this what you always wanted? You want to see your brother lose it all?"