The Queen of the Dead Read online

  Her brother’s eyes were bloodshot from smoking and drinking, and his lower lip trembled.

  “Let’s move,” DJ said. “I can’t see shit out there. Just drive.”

  “Remember,” Louis tried to remind her, “that one time when we were in one of the houses. Remember that kid who was lying on the floor. You used to be like that, you know. Both of us were, only Vincent saved our ass. Brought us out of the dark. Vincent was pointing at the kid… his name was Jerome. I’ll never forget that name, because Vincent wanted us to remember. He wanted us to see what we were. There’re people who’re already dead, just walking corpses, man, ain’t worth nothing to nobody, and then there’s people who’re alive, truly alive, and the world was made for those people.”

  Chanell remembered it well. She brought the car back to life and revved the engine.

  “The radio!” Carter shouted again. “We got to know what’s happening!”

  She shook her head. “Hell no. I know what I’m about, and that’s all I need to know. He’s out there on the block, keeping himself alive.”

  The Mercedes emerged onto the smoldering road. She knew no other way to reach Vincent’s neighborhood; they would use the main street, which was bound to be crowded with more of the dead.

  The empty lots and weed-choked sidewalks were visible in the firelight of a burning plaza, where a Subway restaurant’s flame cooked the night sky. More and more shapes appeared in the glowing light.

  “Hold your ammo,” Louis said. “Keep that shit in check. Just keep on driving through. These bitch-ass niggas are slow, and they can’t chase the car.”

  Twitching, legless bodies twitched along the road ahead, and the Mercedes bumped over several of the impossible creatures. She couldn’t think. Just drive, drive right through them.

  “You got this,” Louis said.

  “Fuck these muthas…” in the backseat, Carter powered down the window again.

  “No!” Louis said. “You got to keep your cool! Keep your shit tight, you hear me?”

  “We’re the last ones alive!” Carter shouted back. “Ain’t nobody else! I ain’t going out like a busta’.”

  Carter and DJ began a shouting match, and it was all Chanell could do to keep her eyes fixated ahead. She couldn’t look into the faces of the dead, no matter how many of them were in her way. They crowded into the street, and the passage became tighter. A Cadillac and two other sedans were smashed into one another; she had to stop and throw the car into reverse.

  She could do it. Vincent had loved her strength, the fact that she didn’t take shit from nobody.

  She squealed the tires again. Louis lurched forward and nearly hit the dashboard. Hands slapped against the windows while DJ and Carter struggled in the backseat. The Cristal spilled and one of the guns went off, hitting the car’s roof. Louis reached back and attempted to separate the two drunks.

  “Goddammit!” she said. “Get it together!”

  They approached a burning high school, and orange light which filled the street illuminated the throng of shapes silhouetted against the flame. Hundreds of them milled around the middle of the street.

  “Shit!” Louis saw them, and his eyes widened.

  The struggle in the back of the car ended, and the windows rolled down anyway. Carter leaned out and fired, screaming with the wind in his face as flecks of ash scalded his exposed face.

  A few bodies bounced over the hood, but the thick crowd made it impossible for her to go further.

  Carter’s sharp wail stretched the volume of his vocal chords beyond their limit. Greedy hands tried to rip him out of the backseat, but DJ pointed his gun through the window and fired. Gore splashed DJ’s face and soaked Carter’s body while he continued screaming. Arms stretched through the other passenger window and grabbed DJ’s shirt. While Carter’s body slid out of the car, DJ shot Carter several times.

  “Fuck it!” Louis opened his door and got out, and Chanell did the same.

  Her brother’s wrist twisted while the Uzi sprayed bullets into the faces of people who stood around him. Gunfire lit up his eyes, and Chanell was mesmerized by the bullet casings that rained out of the gun.

  Somewhere, DJ was still screaming.

  She turned and saw them, and all of her willpower, all of her strength, fled at once. Their faces were covered in blood, and chunks of flesh slid out of their mouths as they looked upon her and began to approach, dragging their twisted ankles or broken legs across the cement, their bodies a gory rendition of damnation; they were mutilated and shattered, with pieces missing and clothes shredded.

  Carter’s bullet-riddled corpse lay on the cement, and several of the former people knelt down and tore away at his skin with their nails, raking across his flesh and pulling it away like melted mozzarella. Blood oozed between their fingers as they casually shoved as much as they could into their mouths.

  Chanell’s knees wobbled and betrayed her. She looked up into their faces and she knew that Vincent was going to save her one more time.

  The flames loomed over their heads, and somewhere, Louis called her name, but she couldn’t take her eyes away from them. Hands and fingers upon her shoulders pushed her to the concrete, and she thought of Jerome, lying inert upon the floor of the heroin den. She knew she should fight back, or at least try to stand up, but never had so many people wanted her, or needed her. Vincent had been the only one whose affection was genuine, right up until this morning, when he left the house wearing only a wife beater and jeans. She’d asked him why he wasn’t wearing a suit, as he usually did. She asked him when he was coming back, if she could call him, if he was going to call her, if they were going to have dinner together... questions, questions… he’d closed the door behind him with his 9 tucked into the back of his sagging jeans. He didn’t wave goodbye, and she watched as Fireball drove him out of the driveway and into the city.

  Louis was calling her name.

  They grabbed on to the easiest, most exposed part of her first. They ripped away her clothes, and she could feel the fiery pain warm her head as their hands shredded her and exposed her. Their dry, cold lips wrapped over her flesh.

  A burst of gunfire exploded the top of a corpse’s skull, and chunks of skull and clumps of hair decorated her naked stomach. Another slumped over her legs.

  “Vincent, yes, I’m here!”

  The pain in her shoulder caused her entire body to writhe beneath the corpses, and she opened her mouth to scream while another set of crusted lips clamped down upon her throat. Everything felt wet, and she could smell the coppery blood. She was aware of a tongue that raced itself along her jugular for one brief moment, and she felt the edges of teeth as her skin stretched further than it could, and it seemed to be stretching forever. Within her peripheral vision, she saw a haggard old woman chewing on something while blood dripped over her chin.

  Now that she wanted to scream, she couldn’t.

  GRIGGS

  Whatever happens, we can only do what matters to us.

  Words he’d said while standing in front of Vincent on the lawn less than an hour ago popped into his head, a coda he violated by letting Mina and Traverse escape. He let that bastard take the girl who was supposed to love him, and it was all he could think about while he dragged Vega away from a crowd of zombies.

  Corpses clawed at the armored Stryker tank. The idling vehicle was surrounded, and Griggs was convinced the driver was going to pull away. Griggs and Vincent would have to clear a path to climb over, and the hatch wasn’t open. The thug might be more interested in killing everyone in the tank and stealing it.

  Not that it was a bad idea.

  A hatch popped open on top of the tank and Sergeant Charles appeared. He leveled his M16 and fired controlled bursts at zombie heads, downing them near the front tires.

  Griggs didn’t need an invitation, but Vega wasn’t helping any.

  “Let me go, damn you!” she said.

  Both men loosed their grip on her shoulders, and the gore-soaked woman turne
d on her heels. She was going to run, maybe right into the arms of the dead.

  Thank God, Vincent knew what was at stake: the platinum-mouthed gangster socked her in the gut and doubled her over.

  Vincent held her upright as she scrambled over the front tire and climbed aboard. Sergeant Charles stood on the hull and grabbed her arm, hoisting her up and over. Vincent climbed after.

  The sergeant’s eyes lit up.

  Griggs turned around.

  He grabbed the creature’s throat and looked into its dead eyes. “I’m having a pretty bad day, motherfucker. How ‘bout you?” He shoved the Desert Eagle into its open mouth and pulled the trigger. The entire body jumped out of his hand.

  Shit, that was pretty awesome.

  Griggs climbed over the tire with his ears ringing. Charles and the others had slipped into the tank, and he followed them as the vehicle jerked backward. He closed the hatch after him, while he collapsed onto one of the benches of the infantry transport vehicle that was designed to carry eleven soldiers into a combat theater.

  “They’re all over us,” Charles reported.

  Vega lay on the bench opposite Griggs and Vincent. Inside the confines of the troop compartment, which was a bright-white display of straight lines and cleanliness, the smell of blood and sweat was palpable.

  Vincent’s chest rose and fell, and he stared at Vega without blinking for several seconds. He rose and tried to look Vega over; she moaned and closed her eyes.

  “Is she bitten?” Sergeant Charles asked from the driver’s seat.

  “I can’t tell.”

  “You’re going to have to speak up!”

  “That’s Sergeant Charles,” Griggs pointed toward the front of the tank. “Maybe you can pull your shit together and thank him for bailing your ass out of there.”

  “Didn’t need it.” Vincent flashed his metal grin.

  “I forgot that you’re a hardass,” Griggs said. “Hey Sergeant, this is Vincent Hamilton. Maybe you’ve heard of him.”

  That got Vincent’s attention. He shot the former detective a hard look and ground his teeth. “If you got shit to say, let it out now so I ain’t wastin’ time listening to your mouth. I got a problem with people who talk too much.”

  Vincent was going to flex his muscle whenever he could; he might not have a high school education, but the man was the biggest arms dealer in Michigan, with warehouses all over the state.

  But Griggs could give a shit.

  “Oh, don’t worry, I love talking,” Griggs said. “Figure maybe I can keep you entertained. I thought it was funny as hell how you managed to scare off or pay the jury when we had your ass on the fire…”

  Vincent nodded. “I got time. You got business with me, then we can take care of it now.”

  “You jokers get a status on Vega?” Sergeant Charles asked. “I only got one pair of eyes and one set of hands, and everything’s glued to the road. This rig’s not a damn race car… I can push it to thirty, and that’s just fast enough to attract a crowd. We’re the first float in a parade, so we need an ammo check, too. I want to be able to make a quick exit if I have to.”

  The former detective was lucky he’d found the tank operator a block away from the church where Bob had been murdered by Traverse. One soldier had survived the firefight at Eloise Fields, and it was by sheer coincidence they happened upon Vega and Vincent. Griggs had hoped they would be able to keep driving through the uncongested side streets with little incident, but Sergeant Charles recognized a pair of survivors struggling with the undead.

  Griggs could give a shit less about Vega or the thug. Pulling their asses out put his life in danger; only a moment ago, he had come to the conclusion he would unlock the ancient power Traverse craved and use it for himself.

  Before his death, Bob had shared the secret behind the outbreak. Absolute power could be his, if he played all his cards correctly.

  So to hell with everyone else. He could use them to get him as far as he needed to go, and drop them all like black-eyed whores.

  “She’s not bit!” Vincent said.

  “That’s not what you said a second ago,” Griggs corrected him. “You said you weren’t sure. If those things bite you, it affects you like a virus. You don’t have to die…”

  Vincent put his hand up. “I said she’s not bit.”

  Vega coughed and drew her knees to her chest. “Bob… Shanna…”

  “I told you what happened,” Griggs sighed. “Bob the Builder’s dead as a fucking doornail. Dead–dead-dead-ski.”

  “And how’d you manage?” Vincent eyed him. “You went to get your girl, didn’t you? Where she at?”

  Griggs felt the cell phone in his pocket and realized he had no desire to tell anyone the phones were working again. “The James-Bond looking-guy took her.”

  Vincent shook his head. “I just watched this woman nearly get herself killed over a little girl she didn’t know. I think to myself that I got to make a decision about my future. This shit around us don’t change people for the better. I’ve heard too many speeches in the last few hours about how people need to work together, but the way I see it, there needs to be one dog in charge of the pack. I’ve always been that dog, but this ain’t my pack.”

  Griggs laughed and clapped his hands. “Nice speech! I wonder what the inside of a prison looks like during all this… man, you lucked out, my friend, lucked out.”

  Vincent shut his eyes. Griggs was ready for the thug’s next move, and he welcomed the opportunity to waste the no-good prick once and for all. His illegal guns had been linked to the deaths of innocent children cut down by drive-by shootings. Griggs didn’t care who lived or who died; Vincent got away with his crimes, and that pissed him off.

  They were both killers. The punk was burning up inside because he had power and lost it, but he could still be of use. It would take a killer to survive all the killing.

  If Bob wasn’t lying, there was a way Griggs could have the power to kill everybody.

  “Now you can do something about it,” Vincent said. “Nobody cares about another dead nigger in Detroit. It’s always been this way, right?”

  “I feel like we can be friends,” Griggs said. “We’re both businessmen, right? You sold AK-47s to teenagers, and I made porn movies with a cannibal. I think if we just sit down over a meal of fried chicken and watermelon, we can hash this thing out, make it work.”

  Vincent looked down his nose at the former detective. His black Jordan tank top sagged over his well-toned shoulder blades, wet with blood and sweat. The tattoos on his arms bulged whenever he moved his long arms. He held the AR-15 with its scope pointed at the floor toward the tip of his bloody shoes. He flashed a platinum-coated smile at Griggs.

  “I think I’ve seen one of your movies. The redhead… yeah… Y’all got some fucked up shit going on, but I see that look in your eyes. I know what a killer looks like. I got a clear head about things, and the way I figure it, shooting each other up ain’t helping matters.”

  Griggs thought about meat slapping against a brick wall as the tank passed through the ranks of the dead. Thousands of hands beat against the hull.

  As much as he wanted Mina before, Traverse held the key to something far more worthwhile. If he’d known then what he knew now, he would have wasted Bob himself and left with Mina and Traverse. With the video on the flash drive in his pocket, he could experience the ecstasy of ultimate power if he followed Traverse’s trail. All the infernal power at his disposal would guarantee the enslavement of women; they would bend to his will and he could experience their flesh as much as he needed to, whenever he wanted.

  Even Vega could be his.

  Vincent had a plan. “Sergeant, I suggest you stop this rig. I’ve seen this play out before. They’ll lose interest if something else comes along. If we just chill for a bit, they’ll leave us alone. They’ll forget.”

  Sergeant Charles nodded. “I’ve seen what you’re talking about.”

  The tank slowed and the sergeant cut t
he engine. He turned around to face the three ragged survivors while they all listened to the frantic clawing—their sanctuary was under siege. Griggs took slow, deliberate breaths to calm his nerves. He checked his ammo for the 9mm and the magnum.

  “How much you got?” Sergeant Charles whispered.

  Griggs shrugged and straightened his bloodstained sport coat. “A little, not much. It doesn’t make a difference though, because we have a one-man army right here. Vincent wasted a hundred of those fuckers by himself. Wait: was it one hundred or two hundred? Dude was sitting on his porch smoking weed like nothing happened. Let’s just send him out there to take care of the crowd.”

  “You like to start shit with people?” The sergeant glared at him.

  As soon as Griggs found Sergeant Charles, he was impressed by how composed the man was. The sergeant was a thirty-something warrior and a hardened veteran with a square jaw and a wedding band on his ring finger. His eyes were tinged with red; had he slept? For everyone, it had been a long night, and an even longer morning.

  Griggs put his hands up. “I want to live just as much as you do, Sarge.”

  The soldier looked like his face couldn’t move the muscles that could crack a smile. A patriot, then.

  Silence again. The smell of must and blood was like an old man’s stale breath.

  Even if they could outlast the siege, as Vincent suggested, starting up the tank again would only attract them again. Griggs couldn’t help but think about Bob’s notion that the whole city would be bombed to shit any minute.

  Sergeant Charles moved beside Vega and attempted to check her over.

  “One of your buddies tried to rape her at the asylum,” Griggs said. “He knocked her block off, and she wasn’t feeling too great after that.”

  “Fucking Crater,” Sergeant Charles shook his head. “Guy was a prick. Worst CO I’ve had. What happened to him?”

  Griggs almost said, I blew his brains out.

  “I saved her life,” Griggs said.

  The sergeant looked at Vincent and his AR-15. “You know how to handle that weapon?”