The Queen of the Dead (42 page)

“What was the point?” Vincent asked. “I feel like we just won a war, but we didn’t stop nothing, or save nothing. Maybe ourselves. The girl. We did all that to get here, to stop that nigga from flying away.”

“That’s not why we did it,” Vega said. “Not really.”

She dropped her hand onto his shoulder and leaned against him.

“There has to be some beer on this base somewhere,” she said.

Vincent didn’t reply. He seemed content to enjoy the silence, rewarding himself with the sunshine and the company of a woman he respected.

“What next?” he asked a stupid question.

EPILOGUE

Jim sat in the main cabin with twenty heavily-armed and expendable mercenaries. Across from him, Colonel Mike Richards sat with a helmet on his head. Jim turned in his seat to look through the Chinook’s window; his war shrank into a map, the broken city beneath him smoldering while survivors carefully stepped onto their porches and blinked at the sun. Most of the undead had fled from the streets.

(And indeed, the survivors were stepping out into the sun, some of them looking up and wondering about the helicopter that passed overhead, and those who didn’t look had already given up on dependence from others; hope and strength resonated inside of them. Strangers locked hands and nodded to one another, filling the streets to look at the ruins of the world they once inhabited. They stepped fearfully over dead bodies and tried not to look for the faces of people they once knew).

Mina saved them, perhaps unintentionally.

He felt as if he’d eaten fast-food, the grease and salt settling to the bottom of his stomach and weighing him down. He was almost fifty, and he couldn’t believe time in Eloise Fields had dampened his skills. Meditation and exercise kept him sharp.

The feeling in his stomach was uncomfortable.

He allowed the priest to hit him and was rewarded with a sensation that existed only in memory for him.

Pain.

In a matter of seconds, everything he worked to achieve may have been stopped by the meddling priest.

Seconds.

Such was the conundrum that every plan, every strategy, must take into account: chaos and the human variable could overwhelm any angle; a tornado could destroy an art museum and a priest could save the world. 

“The best laid plans of mice and men…” Jim mumbled to himself.

The “colonel” had a puffy face and had grown soft in the middle. His presence was more irritating than gratifying.

Even without Mina and her self-awareness, the video he broadcasted would do enough damage to set the rest of the world on fire. But still…

Colonel Mike Richards offered him a glass of bourbon. Jim looked at it.

“What’s on your mind, Jim?” he asked, withdrawing the offered glass and sipping from it. “You’re worried about Rose?”

“It’s not the first time she’s been killed,” Jim said while staring through the window.

The colonel chuckled. “Yeah, I almost forgot. A combat simulator chip. The first of its kind. Good thing I didn’t design the fucking thing. Cost millions.”

Rose was the least of his concerns. If the chip inside her head was undamaged, it could be retrieved and she’d have no recollection of her death. He killed her enough times to ensure the program’s success. The woman had no use for memories; as long as he remained the center of importance in her program, she could easily be remodeled.

The tiresome colonel wanted to talk. Much hadn’t changed over the years.

“Why’d you wait so long to call us in?” Richards asked.

“A nobler man, a braver warrior, lives not this day in the city walls,” Jim said.

“What?”

The man’s only exposure to Shakespeare was probably
Romeo and Juliet.
Once, the man had been a good soldier. A killer of the first order.

Now look at him.

“Mina’s dead,” Jim said. “I’m curious what your expectations are.”

“Shit,” Richards said. “I spent a lot of money to get your ass out. A lot of money was spent to keep you locked up, too.”

“All a waste,” Jim said. “It means nothing now. Your money… the experiments… the projects… your
plan
.”

Richards could sense he was being backed into a corner, but the bureaucrat that had killed the soldier Richards used to be was responding to Jim.

“Look, Jim, you understand this business. I did the paperwork when we came back from Egypt. I did things the
right
way. I didn’t go on a goddamn killing spree. I cleaned up after you. I hired the people who picked you up and I kept the nut house funded.”

Sweat. Desperation. Richards could still recognize death was imminent, but the sloth that invaded his bloodstream after sitting behind a desk and directing funds and designing missions caused him to hesitate. He should’ve drawn his weapon.

“Mina’s dead now,” Jim’s soft smirk arose, and his blinking slowed. “All the money you spent… wasted, like you said.”

“It’s not over,” Richards said. “I sent people in to pull
your
ass out, not hers.”

“The money…” The word was nice; filled with poison, a twisted variation of hope turned into enslavement to codes and rules, to signatures and dotted lines.

More mercenaries aboard the Chinook. All of them expendable. How much was spent on them? Did any of them want to be heroes?

“I told you I’d never forget Egypt,” Richards said. “I always knew there was a way, and we could have it for ourselves.”

“You did this all… for me. How touching.”

“You’re wounded.”

Jim ignored him. More important matters weighted on his mind. The priest. Mina’s death.

He was unsettled. Displeased.

And curious.

Richards was a distraction from a truth Jim couldn’t let go: zombies wanted nothing to do with the priest. That might be because Mina somehow protected him with her newfound talents, but she didn’t seem to have control of them in the rush of battle. The priest killed her, but why? Did he know from which realm she’d been born?

Seconds could be stolen, retrieved.

He would have to go back.

“Mina doesn’t matter as much as you think,” Richards tried, but it was too late. He must be weak or stupid, otherwise, the Richards who survived Egypt with him was dead. “So what if she’s dead? It
worked.
We don’t need her anymore. We didn’t know what the hell was going to open her head… I mean, did you know it would be a video?”

“A government project that was started and dropped years ago,” Jim wanted to make this worth his time. Here was the introduction before the curtains were drawn back from the stage.

“They gave up on it because they thought what we found in Egypt
contradicted
what they believed,” Richards slammed the rest of the bourbon down his throat. He then drained the glass he’d offered Jim.

“Money, like you said, wasted.”

“And here we are. We can finish this. We’re close.”

“We’re right where we started,” Jim said. “In a chopper, on our way to Egypt.”

“You’re fucking nuts, you know that?”

Sometimes, they get angry. Sometimes, they weep, or beg, or ask for long-dead parents to save them. They pissed themselves. They prayed.

Men who knew they were going to die, men who faced the gallows and couldn’t turn back from its inevitability.

Colonel Richards. The other man who returned from the first Egypt operation.

The smirk on Jim’s face widened.

A long time passed since he quoted Edgar Allan Poe.

“It was night,” Jim said, “and the rain fell; and falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was blood.”

The mercenaries were fast, but it didn’t matter.

Jim stood, pulled Richards to his feet, spun him around, drew his sidearm, and walked the colonel a few feet down the center as mercs leveled their weapons. There was shouting.

How many times had he lived in this moment? Years ago, his heart would’ve been racing. He would’ve been over-analyzing the situation and preparing himself to fail. To die.

He would give anything to be afraid, to believe there was a chance he might not succeed.

He fired the gun, pushed the colonel forward, crouched down, and leapt up, grabbing a merc’s M16. The colonel was only a few feet away and stumbling forward in that eye-blink’s worth of time.

Shooting everyone was boring. It wasn’t beautiful.

Within moments, the Chinook was heading back to Selfridge.

The End

Read on for a free sample of Bleeding Kansas: A Zombie Novel

From Detroit, Michigan, Vincenzo Bilof is the recipient of SNM Horror Magazine's Literary Achievement award in 2011. A member of the Horror Writers Association, Vincenzo is the author of The Zombie Ascension series and “Nightmare of the Dead”. His latest book happens to include aliens; “Gravity Comics Massacre”, available from Bizarro Pulp Press. A novel written as a collection of poems, “The Horror Show” is another one of his nonsensical works.

When he's not chasing his kids around the house or watching bad horror films, he reads and reviews horror fiction, though his tastes are more literary. He likes to think Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and Charles Baudelaire would be proud of his work. It’s possible the ghosts of Roberto Bolano and Syd Barrett are playing chess at his dining table. Forthcoming projects include “Japanese Werewolf Apocalypse”, and “Vampire Strippers from Saturn”. When he’s not writing awful biographies in third person, he works as an editor for Bizarro Pulp Press. You can check out his blog here:
http://vincenzobilof.blogspot.com/

Gonzo is his favorite Muppet.

1.

This is it, the day we’ve been looking forward to for so long, and it’s not starting well. Claire wakes up feverish and phlegmy, too sick to drive me to the airport. There’s not much to say but sorry, hope you feel better, before she crawls back into bed.

The next thing I know I‘m loading my luggage into the trunk of the cab because it turns out the cab driver should have called in sick himself. “Hey, sorry, man, you know how it goes!” he says. “Ya don’t work, ya don’t get paid!”

“Tell me about it,” I say, settling into my seat.

“Airport, huh?” The cabbie sneezes wetly, brings his hand up after the fact. “Where ya headed?”

“Kansas City.”

“Kansas City! Kansas City, here I—!” God help me, he’s trying to sing that old song but a burst of coughing cuts him short. I pull a handkerchief from my pocket and cover my nose and mouth.

He composes himself, sniffs loudly. “So what’s out there?”

“Job interview.”

“Yeah? All the way out there? I hope they’re paying for it!”

“Oh yeah.”

“Must be nice! Wish I could get a gig like that!”

“Me, too.”

“Ha! I hear ya! So whatcha been doin’ all this time?”

“Unemployed.”

“Oh. Nowhere?”

I have to wait for him to finish his latest coughing fit before I can answer. “Pretty much.”

“You don’t seem all that enthusiastic about this.”

“Lot on my mind.”

“Oh.” A short, barking cough, followed by a long, gurgling wheeze. “Yeah. It’s tough out there.”

“Yeah.”

“So how long you been outta work?”

“Long enough.” Four years, but who’s counting?

“Me, I got to work, know what I’m sayin’? I’d go crazy stayin’ at h—!“ The driver explodes into another round of coughing, his entire body bucking and convulsing behind the wheel. It’s all he can do to keep his eyes open to see the road.

After a terrifying stretch of seconds in which I wonder if he’s going to run the red light we screech to a halt, the taxi’s rear swerving with the force—“Here, you want a piece of none-of-your business to chew on?” I say. “If I don’t make this flight my house goes into foreclosure and my family is homeless as of next month! If you can’t make it to the airport, I need someone who can!”