The Descent Series, Books 1-3: Death's Hand, The Darkest Gate, and Dark Union (The Descent Series, Volume 1) (67 page)

“You can take time to grieve,” he said.

Elise stood and hugged the box to her chest. There was one other box, too. That was all that remained of Betty’s life—two banker’s boxes in a half-empty apartment.

He followed her to the front door.

“I don’t need time,” she said. Her voice was dead again. The tears were gone. “What would I do with time? Wait for Him to find me? Throw myself on the floor and cry? Waste my time wishing that Betty hadn’t…”

Her lips sealed shut before the last word could emerge.

James reached for her again, but she pushed away from him, opened the front door, and stepped onto the stairs.

She glared at the horizon. The tops of the casinos downtown were visible just over the trees. There was no sign of the city mirrored above—not so much as a waver in the air.

“Let me help you,” James said. “Please.”

Elise shook her head. “I can’t handle this. Any of it.”

She walked down the stairs, and James watched her disappear into the blazing sunlight.

P
ART
O
NE

The Murder

September 2009

M
ichele Newcomb’s body
was still dying, but her mind was long gone. She was convinced the desert hated her bright yellow SUV, and the oil it dribbled onto bare rock six miles away. It hated the fingers that ripped roots from the earth as she crawled through sparse foliage. It hated the trail of browning blood she left in her wake.

Michele believed that the harsh, hostile world hated everything about her, and it was glad that she was about to die alone.

Her throat was raw and dry. She tried to suck in air to soothe her burning lungs, but the motion made her chest jerk. Her abs ached from the force of it. Blood rose in her throat like bile, and it spattered over her lip.

Michele took another hard breath—coughed blood again—and squinted, trying to focus on the world above the sagebrush. The cruel sun bore upon her back like an iron pressed to her flesh. The world was white. Her eyes burned.

Something dark loomed at the edge of her vision. Silvery mirages danced with the promise of water.

Her bloody fingertips dug into the soil. She crawled forward two inches. Pain ripped through her as the injury tore wider.

The gunshot wound didn’t even hurt anymore. That had faded quickly, relatively speaking. The real pain was the knife wound—and the knowledge that the one who delivered it was walking free.

She had to tell Gary what happened. He had to know the truth, had to finish the job before it was too late.

Michele groaned and dragged herself forward another two inches.

She coughed up blood again, but not as much as before. She quickly began to miss the moisture of blood in her mouth. Her dry, swollen tongue hung uselessly over her cracked lip.

Another two inches. The shimmering mirage receded, but the shadow didn’t.

It was a building. A real building.

Still a hundred feet away.

Her hand sought something to grip. She found a rock and clenched it. Something scrambled over her fingers—probably something venomous. It didn’t bother biting her.

Two inches.

Michele pressed her face to the scalding earth, and if she had possessed any remaining moisture in her body, she would have wept. A gasping sob jerked out of her mouth.

She reached for a handhold and found nothing.

“Help,” she croaked out. Her voice was tiny.

Her other hand touched a bush.

Two more inches.

She tried to focus on the building instead of the pain. It had to be there, but she couldn’t see that far anymore. The bright desert was growing murky and dim. How could it still be so hot if it was becoming dark?

Michele couldn’t blink anymore. Her eyelids were sandpaper.

Two inches. And another. And another.

She ran out of strength for two inches, so it became one, and then a half inch, and then just millimeters.

But eventually, after an eternity, Michele’s fingers touched something cool.

A blurry line of shadow crossed the hot ground in front of her.

She looked up and saw a window. The rusted tin sign said that the gas station was closed. If there was a gas station—even one that wasn’t open—a road had to be on the other side. She didn’t see the wind-torn curtains, or the shattered posts that marked its anterior boundary. She didn’t see the broken pumps that had been dry of gasoline for fifty years. She also didn’t see that the road on the other side was empty—and had been for months.

All Michele saw was a building, and the “closed” sign that would say “open” if someone flipped it over, and decided her crawling was done.

With a final burst of strength, she flopped onto her back. The heat pounded into her bare wound. Dirt stung the open blisters.

“Thank you, God,” she whispered to a burning sky.

Gary was going to find her. It wasn’t too late after all. She could still tell him the truth.

But it was all so distant.

Michele just had to wait for the owner to open the store. Then she would get a soda—diet, of course. Maybe she could have a scoop of ice cream after she washed her face in the bathroom, which would be cool and air conditioned. The owner could loan her a quarter to call Grandma—but Grandma was dead—and then the team would pick her up.

Everything would be okay.

Sunshine. Grandma smelled like sunshine.

Michele’s hand rested in the cool shadow, and she managed to shut her eyes. Her lips bled as they spread into a small smile.

She died at peace with a belly full of flies.

F
or the first
time since January, a car approached the gas station. It was a shiny black monster with nearly-opaque windows, and it had cost more to purchase than the land on which the gas station stood.

The car stopped beside the pumps. Three forms clad in black stepped out.

“Over here,” said one, leading the others to the side of the building. He was young and stringy, and his hair was densely curled in kinky ropes.

A man pushed past him. His hand rested on the gun at his belt as though it was another appendage. The butt was engraved with his name: ZETTEL.

He kneeled beside the body of Michele Newcomb. She was barely recognizable as a woman, or even a human. She resembled meatloaf. The swarming flies seemed to agree. Zettel rubbed a finger on her cheek and found the blood was fresh. “We were only a minute too late,” he growled.

The third person huffed. She was almost as muscular as Zettel, and equally undisturbed by the body. “Just fucking great. Should we bring her back?”

“No.” He scowled at the younger man. “This is your fault, Flynn. We’re not bringing her back. You got that?”

Flynn stared at his feet, trying not to blink so his tears wouldn’t fall.

A fourth man jumped out of the SUV with trash bags and a saw. “I’ve got the corpse! Who wants to be on scrubbing duty?” Boyd asked, far too cheerful for such a hot day.

“We’re not cleaning this one up. The coyotes can have her.” Zettel fisted the boy’s collar and jerked his face down. “Hear me, Flynn? She’s going to the animals. They’re going to eat her.”

“It would have been too late days ago,” he said, voice trembling.

The woman got in the driver’s seat again. “Come on. Let’s get out of here before the animals get us, too.”

Their SUV kicked up a trail of dust in their wake.

The coyotes didn’t settle in to eat Michele until nightfall.

P
ART
T
WO

Debts Owed

I

I
t was a
miserable day. The temperature had reached one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, there was no wind, and Anthony Morales had been trying to sell his Jeep to random assholes from Craigslist all afternoon.

“What the hell have you done to this thing?” asked potential buyer number three, who claimed his name was “Buddy,” and was as thick in the waist as a baby elephant.

They stood in the shade of a high-rise apartment building, which funneled heat directly toward them over rippling asphalt. Anthony hoped that parking his Jeep in an alley stained with oil, covered in trash, and overlooked by barred windows might make his car look a little less offensive in comparison. Instead, the Jeep looked like it belonged in one of the big green dumpsters.

Anthony rubbed a hand down his face and left behind a greasy smear. “There were pictures in the ad.”

“Is that what I asked? No. I asked what you did to it.”

“I told you. I’m a mechanic. This was my hobby vehicle.”

Buddy snorted. “Is your hobby beating it with a goddamn crowbar?”

Anthony tried not to feel wounded. The Jeep was his first car, and it had been through a lot with him in the ensuing years. Sure, the bumper was missing, the upholstery was ripped, and the body was thoroughly dented. That was what happened when you drove through a cemetery full of zombies. But the engine was great and the tires were new. He had put a lot of love into it.

“Do you want it or not?” he asked in a dull voice.

The buyer walked around the Jeep again, his considerable girth swaying with every step. “I’ll give you three hundred for it.”

“I’ll only take twelve hundred.”

“You kidding? Three hundred is a good deal for this piece of shit.”

Anthony’s patience was gone. “Okay. Fine. Sorry to waste your time.”

He climbed into the Jeep, but Buddy leaned on the hood to prevent him from moving to a shadier spot. “Five hundred.”

“Now you’re wasting
my
time.”

“Come on. You can’t seriously think it’s worth twelve,” Buddy said.

Anthony’s girlfriend came around the end of the alley at that moment, sparing him from having to think of a response that didn’t use words like “insulted” and “asshole.” Elise’s curls were pulled out of her face in a thick braid, and she wore faded shorts, a tank top, and sneakers, yet still managed to look like a Greek Fury as she stalked down the alley.

She was followed by a teenage boy and his mother—potential buyer number four.

Elise glanced at Anthony. “Is he buying it?” she asked, jerking a thumb at the fat man, who smoothed a hand over his sweaty pate as he took a long look at Elise’s legs.

“He’s trying to get it for five hundred.”

“Get out of here,” she told Buddy. “We’re done with you.” He opened his mouth, and she didn’t seem interested in discovering if it was to argue or make a counter offer. She turned the full force of her stare on him and said again, “Get out.”

Buddy waddled his elephantine mass toward the street with a flip of the bird.

Why didn’t Anthony have that kind of gravitas? Someone was always screwing with him, whether it was over the sale of his Jeep, the cost of labor at the shop, or the grades he got on his college papers. Nobody screwed with Elise.

Of course, she also wasn’t much of a salesman.

“This is it,” she said to potential buyer number four, who was watching the alley like she expected muggers to jump out at any second.

Anthony jumped down to join them. The mother had contacted him by email that morning to see if he thought the Jeep would be good as her teenage son’s first car. “Hi,” he said, wiping his palms dry on his jeans and holding out a hand. “Thanks for coming all the way downtown. I’m—”

“Twelve hundred,” Elise interrupted. “Firm.”

The mother looked doubtful. “I don’t know…”

“What happened to that thing?” the boy asked. He had braces and a Grateful Dead t-shirt.

Anthony’s heart sank.
That question again
. He prepared to give his response about it being a project car, but Elise spoke first. “We drove it through a cemetery of zombies. There used to be a cowcatcher on front, but it crumpled after hitting the first dozen bodies.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

The mother shot Elise a long-suffering look. “Does it run?” she asked, sounding exhausted.

“Perfectly. And insurance is cheap,” Anthony said.

“Great. I’m sold.”

She pulled out her wallet as her son pumped his fist in the air. He jumped in the driver’s seat and ran his fingers reverently over the wheel, like he had just gotten his first Porsche. Anthony resisted the wild impulse to push the boy away from his car. Twelve hundred dollars was more money than he and Elise had possessed for weeks.

“You can bring it to my shop if anything goes bad in the next month or two, but it shouldn’t be a problem,” he said, exchanging a business card for a small stack of twenties. “I just replaced the tires and transmission. Everything is in perfect condition.”

“I don’t really care,” said the mother. He spread the paperwork out on the hot metal of the hood, and they each signed it. “Anything to get him to leave the house for once. Maybe he’ll even get a few friends.”

“This sound system is totally sick!” her son enthused.

“We installed it for use in a mass exorcism,” Elise told him, leaning her elbows on the door. Anthony groaned. It was the truth, but nobody would ever believe her. The miniature zombie apocalypse in May had been treated like a natural disaster in the mainstream media. But Elise didn’t seem to care. She smiled a little as the kid swung the wheel around.