She knew how to please him. He arched his back and her body melted into his and moved forward until their momentum carried him to the ground; she was a pro, her body on top of his seamlessly, her messy red hair in his face until she pushed it behind her ears.
“My hair is damaged,” she said around a mouthful of… gum…? It sounded squishy and the juice running down her chin was the color of cabernet sauvignon.
She smiled.
He touched his chest with numb fingers and brought them in front of his eyes. It felt like his legs and arms had fallen asleep. Whatever she was drinking had soaked into his shirt, and maybe it was ruining his sport coat.
Mina’s hips ground against his, faster and faster, her wild hair a splash of red against the emergence of daylight.
Placid faces appeared around her, the circle of dead closing, their smell growing stronger; he was used to it. He smelled them before. He smelled them years ago. He smelled them on his father’s uniform and he smelled them when he picked up his father’s gun from the kitchen table upon which it had been so casually placed.
There were bullets for the 9mm, but he managed to will his right hand to pull the Desert Eagle. A part of him knew he wasn’t going to fire it, even as his mouth opened and blood surged to the top of his head and through all of his muscles, a spasm that caused the gun to slip away, a spasm that caused Mina to scream in delight.
He looked into the faces of the dead and laughed.
“Fuck. You. Fuck. You. Fuck.”
And now it all made sense.
He felt everything.
ROSE
Pigs made just as much noise at the trough. Pieces lifted into the air poured blood onto the concrete like goblets spilling their contents. The blood splashed at their feet, and they pushed each other aside and played tug-of-war for limbs and organs. It was interesting to see them display primal intelligence; they operated like pack animals, and there had to be an alpha among them. One for whom they watched and waited, one for whom they deferred the largest and choicest portions of meat.
Mina Neely, the porn cannibal.
The actress from the video that started it all.
In the files, Mina was the only one who didn’t connect; Rose knew better than to ask. Mina was listed as a “known associate” of Jim’s, but what did he want with her? She was the X factor, the wild card. Why would Jim associate himself with her? The cannibal would have to be of use to him, somehow.
There was no doubt the woman was linked to the undead; the zombies wanted nothing to do with her.
They watched her slather herself in blood and skin, chewing eagerly on the bones of the man who tried to have sex with her.
If she was valuable to Jim, his presence at Selfridge might be a ruse—he wouldn’t abandon an asset. She waited atop a house with a Mossberg shotgun sitting beside her with a handful of shells. Part of her hoped Jim was nearby.
What the hell was she doing out here? Her personal connection to Jim rendered her an ineffective candidate for the mission, according to protocol. She was the desperation move, and for the first time in her life, she wanted more answers about her mission. It didn’t matter if she wasn’t supposed to question rationale; the state of Michigan was allowed to fall apart and a privately-funded mission operated under the belief that Jim was somehow connected.
And then there was the cannibal sex fiend.
Father Joe insisted that Vega and her group would help, but Rose wanted nothing to do with the callous bitch. Let her find Jim and get her ass handed to her on a platter; she had another thing coming to her. When she ran into the crowd of corpses with her black friend, Rose had laughed. The woman was a suicidal mercenary who couldn’t follow orders worth a damn. Rose knew the type; the woman was in it for the blood. She was vulnerable beneath that icy demeanor—easily seduced if Rose needed to try.
Father Joe had mentioned Mina and her strange power, and his theory proved to be true.
The zombies respected her.
When Mina finished her meal, she sat in the street cross-legged, rocking like a bored child. There was nothing left of the victim except for scraps of fabric, two guns, and a cell phone.
“They can see you,” Mina said.
Rose didn’t move. Was she talking to her?
“You’re awfully pretty,” Mina added. “Come down and talk to me. Keep me company.”
“How do I know I won’t get the same treatment?” Rose asked.
“I love Patrick. I wanted to know what love tastes like.”
“And?”
Mina shrugged. “He was my everything, but I don’t want to do anymore videos. I’m somewhere else, now. I’m with Jack.”
What the hell was wrong with this woman? She’d been confined to Eloise Fields with Jim for eating an actor in a low-budget skin flick. There was something missing, something that didn’t quite fit.
“You know Father Joe?” Rose knew better than to jump off the roof just yet. The dead were sitting on the ground and gnawing on the dead man’s bones.
“Father Joe’s a nice guy!” Mina clapped. “You were talking to him
—I saw you.”
File that one away for later. Keep the woman focused on one topic. “He said you wanted to help. He said he trusts you because you’re a good person.”
Mina giggled and stroked her red hair with bloody fingers. “I was good to my Daddy, I think.”
“Will you help me?” Rose asked. “Maybe I can help you. I have a feeling you’ve been used… Maybe you’ve been used by someone named Jim… Do you know who I’m talking about?”
“He showed me who I might be,” Mina said. “I didn’t know I didn’t know, until he told me. Now I have a new best friend.”
“Jack?”
“Jack’s my second-best friend. His brother isn’t very nice. He’s with Jim right now.”
“Jack or his brother?”
“Well… both, actually.”
Rose wasn’t sure if she wanted the answer to her next question. “Is Jim at Selfridge?”
“Yup,” Mina said, “that’s where he is.”
It didn’t help that Mina was insane, but her innocence betrayed a hint of brutal honesty; it was easy to believe Jim was alive, and it was even easier to believe that Jim was creating some kind of “tribute” to Rose with his master plan, whatever it might be. Emotions needed to be reined in, but Jim was closer now. Mina had seen him, maybe even touched him. Did Jim love her?
Jealousy was a fool’s emotion. It would get in the way of the mission, but it was hard to look at the lunatic and not think Jim might be attracted to the woman’s need for flesh. He was an eccentric, and whatever he survived in Egypt transformed him into a rogue murderer who butchered entire families in their homes for no other reason than simply to do it. Was he trying to get her attention all along? Was she too late? Did he fall for Mina instead?
Damn it all to hell.
Mina stood and rubbed her hands on the skimpy white lingerie. “You’re in love with him,” she said. “I can see it in your face. You know Jim. He likes killing people, so maybe you do, too. He left me for dead, but I don’t think he really wanted me to die. I want to know who I really am, and he can help me. You want me to take you to him? You want me to help Father Joe?”
Rose gambled again, “Father Joe doesn’t have a clue what’s happening. We have to get to Jim. He’s the only one who can help us.”
“You
do
love him,” Mina tilted her head. “Do you think the world should end, now?”
Rose didn’t know how to answer the question.
“I’ll help you,” Mina said. “You have to be nice to me. I need someone to talk to. I bet you already know my name—it’s Mina, or maybe it’s… a name I can’t even say. Hard to pronounce.”
“My name’s Rose,” she slid off the rooftop and waited for the zombies to look up at her. They didn’t.
“We’re both looking for something,” Mina said. “Let’s go on an adventure together! At the end, we can help Jack. He needs us.”
Rose sighed. The dead still didn’t pay attention to her.
A flock of birds darted across the sky.
Morning.
***
Mina yammered away. She talked about how much she loved Patrick, who she ate, and she talked about the voice in her head. She talked about Jack, and she talked about her father. But she didn’t talk about Jim.
Pretending to listen was something Rose could do easily; she was trained to be an amicable socialite, but Mina’s strange, disconnected voice was a welcome distraction. Rose was tempted to try the radio again to speak to Jim, but would he answer? What if he didn’t?
According to the raving madwoman, he was alive, and that was enough.
Atrocities in a church. A woman chopped up and cooked. Another man chopped up on a bed. She always feared Jim would succumb to the dark creatures that tittered in his mind, the ravenous craving for violence and bloodshed that transformed him into a modern incarnation of death and fear.
Confirmation that he hadn’t gone soft. His personal evolution was complete. This is the only thing he could become. Rose was pleased, not because he was a monster, but because she knew him. She understood him, and more than anything, she wanted his symphony of gore to be inspired by her, or dedicated to her. She wanted to be at the center of his madness. To be close to a monster that defied human convention.
Entire neighborhoods lay unburnt, as birds flapped their wings between silent trees. Gardens were untrampled and cars sat in driveways. Rose felt like a million eyes were watching her, even with only a few random zombies walking through the quiet streets with the sun in their eyes. It would almost be better to walk among the dead; Mina could keep them away. The hidden eyes belonged to intelligences that may have understood that rules and governance had been abolished in favor of carnality and survival.
The looters were dead; the party was over, but how long until these sleepers emerged and wondered? Just another inconvenience, like a traffic jam created by a car accident. Most of these people still had electricity, so they could just wait out the storm. But how many of them wished they’d joined the looting? Were they already whispering among themselves, speculating about what comes next?
And meat was walking through their streets.
Rose knew what the dead wanted. They were predictable. Deadly, but predictable.
She convinced Mina that stealing a car was their best choice.
“The freeways are empty,” Mina said. “We can be at the base in just a few minutes.”
Gas stations had become parking lots for hastily abandoned cars. Apocalyptic fears still bred gasoline paranoia. Maybe people weren’t so unpredictable.
A Marathon station overlooked I-94. Mina was right. The freeway had been locked down during the initial quarantine of Detroit, so it remained empty. Closed for military use, but there was no barricade near the on-ramp. Anyone could’ve hopped on the open road and turned it into a congested cluster-fuck.
A white minivan would be easy enough to hotwire, especially since it was a Chrysler. She slid into the driver’s seat and began to work.
“I’m sorry.”
More babbling from Mina. The girl sat down on the cement and looked up at her with tears in those bright green eyes.
“They’re following us,” Mina explained. “They want the same thing we want. Sandy, Robert, Greg, Mike and Steve, Joe, Hugo, Jordan, and Ashley… so many of them. Following us.”
“I thought they wanted nothing to do with you,” Rose looked around the cars and watched branches sway; dogs barked somewhere. One hand was on the shotgun, her eyes searching through a morning that seemed to stop. If she breathed deeply enough, she might feel the Earth’s subtle revolutions, its shifts in gravity. The finality of its existence.
Nothing moved.
Everything moved.
The shotgun was cold.
“They don’t want to hurt us,” Mina said, “they want to love us. They want to be with us when we find Jack.”
Her lips could hardly move, and through her teeth, the words seethed, “So. Get in. The fucking van.”
A tiny shape emerged in a pool of shadows between cars.
“Okay!” Mina leapt to her feet and jumped into the back of the van.
The door slid shut. The wild card was safe behind tinted windows, even though Mina was unlikely in any danger. There was no guarantee Mina would protect her, and now, when she was so close she could almost taste Jim’s sweat, hear his breathing… so close...
“Explain what’s happening,” Rose cupped Mina’s face between her hands. “Do you command them? Can you tell them to leave us alone?”
“You don’t want to die,” Mina said as if it were a revelation.
Sweat dripped into one of Rose’s eyes and she peered through the passenger window, stepping on a squeaky dog toy wrapped in a blanket.
A child stepped between cars outside, followed by a man, who was followed by another man, and heads emerged, faces, bodies swaying and staggering, bumping between vehicles and bodies, flesh and bone bringing the carrion flies and the ripped faces of people nobody could now remember, or recognize.
“I said we would help you,” Mina said, “for love.”
Run or wait? Jim was at Selfridge and she could just leave this blubbering idiot, maybe do her a favor and blow her head off.
“Do you want to kill me?” Mina asked.
Jim would take care of it. He wouldn’t hesitate.
The sun disappeared.
“Do you think the world should end?” Mina asked, as if she could make the decision herself.
Something smacked against the side of the van.
It was too late.
Was there an answer to the question?
Who could answer it?
“Do you think he loves you?” Mina asked.
Rose closed her eyes. These questions mattered and they didn’t matter. It was time to move on but she couldn’t. Her life was in someone else’s hands; she’d gambled for the love of a murderer.