Zombie Ascension (Book 1): Necropolis Now (8 page)

They're already dead.

An eruption of laughter from nearby caused the creature to stop. It slowly turned away from Desmond.

"I'm Tony Montana up in this bitch!" a familiar voice shouted above the rap music from the Escalade.

The walking corpse leaned backward and pivoted. Hundreds of others stopped what they were doing and began to walk toward the Escalade, which was parked in front of Fireball's house where he stood, a maniacal grin spread across his face. There seemed to thousands of the twisted people, all of them black, and all of them seemingly unable to speak.

Like thousands of ants, they poured out of everywhere and nowhere.

The man who'd been eaten in the crack house in front of Jerome turned away from the brothers and began to walk across the street.

Again, he could hear Desmond's voice in his head.
They're already dead.

Fireball stood on his porch with a chainsaw in his hands. With a navy blue Detroit Tigers snapback hat on his head, his blue Jordan shoes (they weren't supposed to be out until next week, Jerome remembered), sagging jeans, and wife-beater shirt, Fireball's heavily muscled arms glistened with sweat in the glare of his porch light.

Fireball held out the chainsaw in one hand and removed a Black and Mild cigar from his pocket. Using a lighter, he lit the cigar and created a thick cloud in front of his dark face. Several members of the dead crowd circled around him, a few random bullets jostling them as they approached. Fireball pulled the cord on the chainsaw while puffing on his cigar.

He lifted the chainsaw over his head as several creatures reached for him. His arm was grabbed from behind and he nearly lost his balance. The chainsaw was brought down onto a creature's collarbone. A large, gaping mouth bit down on his bicep, just as Fireball was about to wrench it free. He stepped backward and stumbled; the corpse was impaled on his chainsaw, and a storm of gore rained down upon him. He spat the cigar out of his mouth and cackled into the pouring blood.

Fireball tried to twist the chainsaw out of the corpse, but instead, he was caught between the clutches of two other creatures. He tried to shield himself with the squirting corpse on his chainsaw. The attackers pushed the blade down—a group of more corpses piled on until Fireball's tool was lowered. When the chainsaw began to cut into his own thigh, the lifelong street hustler's scream reached a pitch that should have been impossible.

Jerome reached out for Desmond.

They grasped hands. Jerome was lifted to his feet.

The Escalade was stopped in the middle of the street. A mob of greedy, silent undead ripped the driver through his window while his gun fired wildly into the sky.

"Get your mutherfuckin' hands off me nigga!"

The driver disappeared into a bloody mass of arms and arterial spray erupted from out of the savage feast like a geyser, raining gore on the hungry shapes. The gunfire had subsided. The music from the Escalade thundered against the pavement, shaking the windows on the houses on either side.

Jerome felt as if he were still asleep while he tried to keep pace with Desmond as they leapt over fences and sprinted through backyards. Desmond would wait until Jerome could manage; they were children playing a simple game. They had to run from the monsters.

He suddenly wanted to live.

A running car with its driver-side door thrown open sat idling against a curb, with no sign of the driver in sight. Desmond seemed possessed by instincts that pushed him beyond morality and reason; he jumped into the car, and Jerome did the same.

"This isn’t your car," Jerome said.

"True," Desmond said. "It's not my car."

They were officially thieves in a world that could give a shit less.

GRIGGS

Nikki squirmed in the seat next to him while they pulled up in front of the motel in his black Ford F-250 truck.

"I feel like I should get home," she said while a lock of platinum blonde, curled hair fell in front of her blue eyes. "I don't want to leave my son with a sitter while this is going on."

Griggs ran his hand over his thinning hair. He sighed. It was just like her to complain. The riot wasn’t going to stand in his way. They had a video to make, and he invested the last bit of cash in Nikki and her partner, Richard. Griggs needed to inject new life into his studio, Modern Fantasy Films, while his court case against the state of Michigan was pending.

For the umpteenth time, Nikki checked her cell phone for a text message from home. "What the hell?" she clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. "I still don't have a signal on my phone."

"You must have service through Sprint," Griggs said, although he didn't have service on his phone, either. "Look, I'm sure your boy's going to be fine. The riot, or whatever's going on, isn't going to reach the burbs outside of the city."

"But he's not
safe,
" Nikki said.

She was trying his patience. "You leave him alone with a sitter all the time, right? I mean, you have to make money so you can feed him, so you work long nights. So this is no different. I'm sure you've got a good sitter. Now, we have work to do."

"I don't know…" Nikki whined.

"Richard is here," Griggs pointed to the blue Mustang in the motel parking lot. "See? He's just watching the video I gave him." For a moment, his worry returned. He meant to give Richard one of the videos of him and Mina, but in his haste, he may have given him a copy of the same video he gave to the lawyer.

Richard might be watching Mina eat someone.

For as dumb as Nikki was, her devotion to the little boy at home was almost admirable, if it didn't get in the way of her motivation to make the extra cash she claimed to want. She was a popular stripper from one of Detroit's clubs, and Richard was a bouncer. They didn't have a relationship, but they were willing to film a movie provided Griggs pay them up front, which he did. It was the last bit of cash he had saved up, but if the video got off the ground, it might be enough to re-launch his studio.

"How long is this going to take?" Nikki asked.

"Depends on how good you are," Griggs replied. "I need to know how we should work on your technique. I don't want to waste time practicing a lot of routines while we're filming with Richard. He's in his room watching a movie I gave him so he can learn all the camera angles I like to use. I'm good at what I do, Nikki. My films are bestsellers because I have a vision." He could feel himself about to begin one of his speeches, because his excitement always got the best of him, even though a simpleton like Nikki couldn't understand his artistic vision.

"You have no idea what kind of opportunity we have in front of us," he began. "Modern Fantasy Films doesn't just make sex films. We make sexy
movies.
As long as you follow the script I've written, it will get our audience steamed-up. With this riot going on, I have a plan that could make you and Richard both famous. You can give your son… what's his name…?"

"Danny."

"Danny. Right. You can give him whatever you want. You might be able to quit your waitressing job and just work the night job. You and Richard will make movies for me, or maybe the bigger studios will notice you. You have the body for it; I just need to make sure you have the skill."

"I want to make sure Danny's okay. I don't want him to be scared."

"Jesus fucking Christ. How old is he? You're making a momma's boy out of him. Let him grow up a little. Listen to what I'm telling you: the riot won't reach Roseville. It just won't happen! I paid you, so now you'll fulfill your end of the bargain."

He opened his door and grabbed his video equipment. Nikki opened her own door and slid out of the truck, much to his relief.

A fiery glow scarred the evening sky, but the riot was hardly his concern. He paid for two rooms, and there was business to attend to. Richard was in one room, and in a moment, Nikki was going to show him what her talents were. Of course, he had his own selfish interests at heart.

"If Danny calls, I might have to leave," Nikki explained.

He was already tired of her worries. It reminded him of his own kids and how much he contributed to their ability to loathe him.

His ex-wife never understood why he chose to retreat into the world of imagined sex scenarios with exploited women who were doomed to become lost souls. His entire world revolved around violence and blood, and the other spectrum of debauchery allowed him to escape from the dead bodies of murdered children and jilted lovers. Their mother had raised his sons, who were now teenagers, to hate him, because he was rarely around. They were equally disgusted with his pornography obsession.

When he and Nikki stepped into their room, a pair of jets roared across the sky, rattling the picture window, causing the lamp to flicker after Griggs turned it on.

"Oh, my God," Nikki said, touching her thick, red bottom lip with her equally red fingernail. "I have to get home. Can you drive me back to the club?"

He gritted his teeth. "They have Detroit under quarantine, by now. You won't be able to get back home. If I take you back to your car, you'll be stuck here, anyway. I'm sure there's a curfew, too. We're lucky to have made it to the motel without running into any shit. We're staying here, unless you want to walk."

Instead of arguing with him further, she planted her purse on the nightstand and rummaged through it. While Griggs turned on the camera and set up the tripod, Nikki stared at a picture of her bright-eyed son.

"Clothes," Griggs said. He could feel his temper rising, but he wasn't about to let her ruin this for him. He had the 9mm holstered beneath his sport jacket, just in case. He couldn't allow her to compromise his business, not when he might actually be able to turn his life around.

The camera itself was well-traveled, purchased during a time in his life when he was still married to a woman who learned she couldn't forgive his addiction to porn; the camera appeared in his life just as his superiors in the Detroit Police Department began to grow tired of his eccentricities.

It was his luck to stumble upon a lawyer who was just desperate enough to help him sue the state for his right to show the Mina videos again. Mina was a superstar now, despite the fact that she was locked up in a nuthouse. There wasn't a girl out there who understood him as well as Mina did, nor was there a woman who enthusiastically put every ounce of effort into the videos she made. Mina was almost solely responsible for the success of Modern Fantasy Films, before her little accident.

Nikki squirmed out of her clothes and carefully laid them on the floor. She had a starlet's body, with graceful curves, a pierced belly-button, a butterfly tattoo on the small of her back, and large, plastic breasts that refused to bounce. The scar beneath her left breast was a little too noticeable for Patrick's taste. When they made enough money, he would buy her a new pair, a set that would actually jiggle while she was being screwed.

He thought of Mina again. He remembered the first time she took her clothes off for him. She had stood there with her red hair running down the length of her torso, her hands planted against her thighs. Her white flesh and the red fur between her legs made her look the part of a primal, sex-craved savage who had only recently been stolen from a tribe of cave dwellers and brought into the sprawling city against her will.

Nikki was nothing like Mina. Not a single millimeter of hair appeared along her tanned body. Not for the first time, Patrick was sure that Nikki would be boring, and he would have to do a lot to train her.

"Well?" Nikki spread her hands out impatiently. "Are we going to do this? I don't have all night."

Griggs hesitated. He wasn't as prepared as he should be. Nikki did nothing to provoke his need. Mina had been so willing, so ready to please. Nikki was truly a paid actor, nothing more. He thought he would still have fun with Nikki, considering how her body fit the prototypical mold for a porn star. All the women in the videos he loved so much were always willing to please.

Mina used to throw her hair back and squeal with delight because she knew he liked it.

He unbuckled his belt because he was thinking of Mina, and it seemed to be enough to prompt a desirable response. How many lonely nights did he think of Mina, now that she was gone? Even in the end, she didn't blame him for what happened. She loved him more than ever.

"On your knees," Griggs said. "Do a good job, and don't waste my time. It needs to go all the way to the back of your throat, and you need to make noise. Your eyes need to be big and wide when they look up at the camera. You have to keep it slick. Spit on it occasionally and use your hands on it. Be friends with it. Pretend like the two of you are dating."

She got down on her knees in front of him, and Griggs turned on the camera.

Right away, he realized she was nothing like Mina.

He never needed to be sarcastic with Mina. He found himself wanting to be genuine with her, even though it was so easy to take advantage of her willingness to please. He told her things he never told his ex, and he found himself wanting to make love to her without the camera.

Mina would tell him about the wild nightmares which gave her a taste for human flesh. Griggs hardly believed her, but she refused to sleep unless he gave her raw meat. He knew her mind was damaged from countless travesties her father had visited upon her, but he never fully understood that she really did dream of the living dead. He couldn't soothe her, no matter how many times he told her they were just nightmares. Her affection couldn't be bought with trinkets or clothing. She didn't eat anything besides raw, uncooked meat. Only one thing could drive the dreams away from her troubled mind, and Griggs thought that maybe he could help her. He wanted to make her happy, and he would do anything to see her smile.

He used to think that if he listened to her describe the nightmares, maybe she would feel better. No matter how many times she described the pain that she felt when the corpses ripped her limbs from her body and chewed vigorously on her flesh, Griggs shuddered. Her nightmares were vivid and disturbing enough to make him nearly believe her.

The camera would run until the there was no more memory left on the memory stick. Long after they finished their scene, they would lie awake in the dark, and Mina would tell him about the horror she endured whenever she closed her eyes. He promised he would protect her; he would love her and never let anything happen to her so long as she worked for him. She would eat the raw meat he brought home, though she said the meat only made the nightmares more bearable.

Later, he would use editing software and cut those private scenes out of the film. He deleted all of them. Even then, he knew it was only a matter of time before everything fell apart. His life was too good to be true.

While Nikki moaned and worked, he grabbed a fistful of her hair, and he could hear Mina's voice from somewhere out of the terrifying past.

***

"You promised you would never hurt me," Mina licked her bloody lips. Her tongue darted over her gore-stained fingers.

"You recorded the whole thing," was all Griggs could say.

Mina slid her slender, nude body from the sheets in which puddles of blood collected within the folds as if chili had been spilled all over the bed. The nude corpse in the sheets seemed to be floating on a red sea.

Griggs had seen his share of corpses, but for the first time in his life, entire body froze while his mind screamed.
No, no, no.
He couldn't believe his eyes. It wasn't right. It wasn't
real.

"There's nothing more powerful than my devotion to you," Mina spoke, though her voice always seemed to be a recording of another woman's voice being played at a slower speed. She crawled over the bed like a savage cat. "You haven't been feeding me. I can't help it. I might eat you, one day. You didn't believe me."

"I gave you the raw meat, and I knew… I only came back because I don't want another man to have you. This is my fault… you killed him. You… ate him."

She stood in front of him with blood up to her elbows. "You have so many great ideas, Patrick. You've been so nice to me, but I can't be alone with anyone else. I didn't think I was actually going to eat him, but I was awfully hungry. I can sleep tonight, and I won't dream."

"I'm sure he tasted like chicken," Griggs tried to maintain his grip on sanity. He took a step back while she took a step forward.

"You can't watch the video," Mina said. "Please don't watch it. I felt something I never felt before; something behind the camera lens, or maybe in the air. Something terrible."

"It's called murder," Griggs explained. He wished he were wearing his 9mm. He had to tell himself that if it came to it, he would defend himself against her.

Mina swept her tongue over her bloody upper lip again. "I like it. It really is tasty; better than chicken. Promise you won't watch the video. Destroy it."

"This is my fault," he repeated.