Zombie Ascension (Book 1): Necropolis Now Read online

  Miles's lips inched upward along her neck. Her muscles instantly relaxed, and she drifted backward into the sheets, her senses suspended in freefall. Her legs curled beneath her until he moved them aside. She became his doll, and she was posed at his whim.

  Vega could hear the disordered reports of looting and violence. She heard about children who disappeared. Her eyelids fluttered open briefly, and she saw the picture of an African American girl with a bright smile appear on the screen. The girl's name was emblazoned beneath her picture.

  SHANNA.

  IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION PLEASE CALL THIS NUMBER.

  She closed her eyes as more names were recited as part of a litany of shattered innocence, victims lost in the violent struggle for control of the city's streets.

  Why should she feel bad for a little girl? Nobody came back to rescue her when she was young. Daddy sacrificed himself for some obscure political cause, leaving her to a world of ghosts and war. Out in the desert, she always turned her back on the screaming children and their teary-eyed mothers. Fuck them.

  After the two soldiers melted into a sweaty mess in the sheets, Miles shut his eyes and dozed, while Vega continued to watch the news. The little girl with the big smile seemed to linger on the screen, and the tired mercenary thought she could hear her father's voice somewhere, calling her into his bedroom to say goodbye.

  ***

  Their brief nap was interrupted by a knock on their hotel room door.

  A Beretta M9 appeared in Miles's right hand, and he was as alert as he'd been, and it was as if he'd never fallen asleep at all. "We weren't that loud, were we?"

  Vega stood in her underwear and shouted, "Qué pasa con la revolución?" she hoped the phrase, "What about the revolution?" would be answered by their team leader. If the reply came, there was going to be a mission.

  There was a long pause. Miles frowned and kept both hands on the semi-auto, while Vega stood completely still.

  On the other side of the door, a gruff voice said, "La revolución está vivo," (the revolution is alive and well). "Now open the fucking door and cut the shit."

  Miles dipped his head back and allowed his mouth to hang open in relief. Vega had to tell herself not to run to the door.

  In the hallway stood Bob Fields, their liaison for all contracts. He was known simply as Bob, and whatever strange and tragic past he owned remained shrouded in mystery. Bob often went with Vega and Miles on several missions to be sure they wouldn't fuck anything up and cost them money. He didn't look anything at all like a special forces hardass; with his potbelly stretching his black tee-shirt past his waistline and a neatly-trimmed, bushy white beard reaching down to his chest, he looked more like an old biker who'd rather be sitting at the bar with a beer.

  Bob pushed his way past her. "Get some clothes on, you pigs," he growled at them. "We roll out in two minutes. You did one thing right, for once: got yourselves a place next to an airport." His eyes looked up at the TV.

  "Take a good look," Bob said. "We're going to be in that shit-hole soon enough."

  Before either Vega or Miles could ask questions, Bob said, "Gas ain't cheap, kept the motor running. Get your shit and let's go! You'll be briefed in the chopper."

  Bob was always a pain in the ass.

  They dressed and Bob drove them to the airport in his rental car. He didn't say much because he likely had the Intel and gear for the mission all in one spot. Bob was trustworthy—his missions always yielded enough money for them to feed their habits.

  When they approached the CH-149 Comorant helicopter on the runway, which waited for them at the airport, rotors thundering, Miles couldn't resist saying, "I forgot the Canadians even owned helicopters."

  "This is all that's available," Bob replied. "It's being used for evac, and I was lucky to find it. This was a last-minute scramble."

  Vega understood something else about the Canadians flying them out to Detroit: government money was being spent on their mission, which meant the situation was desperate.

  Inside the chopper, they found their gear and immediately suited up in their gray urban camouflage. All of their weapons were U.S. military issue. Vega was proficient with a sniper rifle, and she was quite pleased to see an M25 waiting for her. An MP5 submachine gun and a complement of hand grenades rounded out her personal arsenal, in addition to the Beretta and combat knife she already carried. Miles was given an M16 assault rifle with an M203 grenade launcher and several grenades, while Bob brandished a black Benelli M4 shotgun and his own assorted grenades. Flashlights were mounted on their primary weapons.

  They ritualistically put on their flak jackets with the IFAK in its sealed plastic container packed behind the body armor. Vega marveled at how much gear they actually had. She spread black face paint over her cheeks and face. A long time had passed since her last night mission, and the added element of risk enhanced her sense of anticipation. She preferred to be a little lighter on her feet, but all the extra gear heightened her excitement.

  "Heavy shit, boss," Miles said. "No night vision goggles? Helmets? What's the op?"

  They trusted Bob enough to suit up before they agreed to the mission, and they were extremely eager.

  Bob looked at them, and Vega always found it amazing that the gear never hid his girth. He looked heavy and off balance, but she knew from experience that he was a damn good field commander. He always kept his cool and never did anything stupid.

  "We expecting help?" Vega asked.

  "We're meeting another crew on the ground near the target," Bob replied. "An old friend of mine named Nick Crater, and he'll have about thirty hand-picked men, maybe more. I was supposed to go with them, but I wanted to bring the best mercs I could find for the ride."

  Miles smiled, "Aww, shucks. That's awfully kind of ya to think of poor ol' Miles and Vega."

  "You got something better to do?" Bob's bushy white eyebrows furrowed over his bright eyes. He and Miles got along as a matter of course; they respected each other, but their personalities often clashed.

  "I've heard of Crater," Miles sat back and looked at Bob as if he were calling his bluff. "He's a loose cannon, and he's not exactly a merc, either."

  "If you stop running your mouth for a damn minute, I can start."

  Vega was growing impatient with Miles, too. He never knew when to shut the hell up. Then again, any man who could doze after snorting lines of coke might never be satisfied with the answers that life tried to provide.

  "That shit you saw on TV is live. Detroit's on fire and every swinging dick with a gun is going to be there for the big show. This is it, the real deal. We're not the only mercs going in there."

  "Who hired us?" Vega asked.

  "Classified."

  "Listen, boss, this bird is practically fucking civilian…" Miles began.

  "We're not expected back," Vega interrupted.

  "Cut the shit," Bob looked straight at her. "Now, listen up. We’re going to be dropped on the roof of the Marriott at the Renaissance Center where this bird is supposed to evac VIPs. Bunch of white boys in suits."

  "It's right on the Detroit River," Miles said. "But wouldn't there be a safer place for evac?""That whole area's locked down, and the city's under quarantine. We're only being dropped in because that's where this bird is headed, and I couldn't get any other transport closer to our actual target."

  Miles nodded. "I getcha, boss. But what the hell's going on?"

  "A riot."

  For a moment, an uncomfortable silence settled between the trio, while the helicopter pounded the sky toward Detroit.

  "If the city's under quarantine, they're trying to contain whatever's going on," Miles mused aloud. "Do we expect our drop to be hot?"

  Bob nodded. "We're looking for one specific target. His name's James Traverse, former Special Forces. We're pulling him out of Eloise Fields, a nut hospital. The guy skinned an entire family alive and hung their skin on the wall." Bob paused for a moment, grinding his teeth. "He called it art."

&nb
sp; Bob had an iPad with a picture of their target on the screen. He passed it around between them; with blank eyes and black hair combed over the side of his head, Traverse hardly seemed a soldier at all. Not a single line of age or stress creased his hairless cheeks.

  "A lot of Intel on this guy's classified," Bob said. "We know he was in Egypt with an entire team of commandos who were wiped out. He reported what he found, but none of that's available to us, either. Whatever happened right after, he made it back to the States… he went AWOL. When they arrested him for murder, it was only because he wanted it."

  "It says here he helped train Delta Force," Miles whistled, impressed. "What the hell's he doing in a civilian hospital? Why didn't he get erased? He was missing for seven years, according to this!"

  "He was wanted alive," Bob replied. "That's all I know."

  Miles put his hand up. "Hold on, let's recap: we're going through the riot to extract a former Special Forces guru… from a mental hospital? This is a Special Forces job! If this guy's that important, the job wouldn't be entrusted to mercs."

  Bob was losing his patience. "I'm going to make this crystal-clear for you: this guy didn't want to be found. He was found only because he wanted it."

  "You're not telling us a damn thing!" Miles shouted. "Why do they want this guy so badly? None of this shit makes sense."

  "You put that whining in check, soldier, or you can flap your arms and fly your ass back home. You want a mission; well this is it. Right here. Right now."

  Miles sat back and shook his head several times.

  The hardware, the chopper, the job, the number of military personnel involved—it sounded more like a suicide mission, but for what?

  For the first time since they started working together, she didn't trust Bob.

  She listened to the chopper's journey through the sky over Ontario. Vega always did her best to think about God rather than the mission ahead of her. She was fortunate enough to have the strength to forget the faces of every man she'd had to kill, because each face was replaceable with her father's. She didn't fear her own death, but the resurfacing of old emotions confused her. Why had she been thinking about her long-dead father after sex with Miles? Another job was exactly what she wanted moments ago when she stared at her scarred body in the hotel bathroom, but this latest mission was hardly ideal.

  She chose this life for herself; Vega never questioned or wondered whether she was happy with her life, so why start now?

  Miles routinely checked his weapons, a nervous habit of his when he didn't know what to do. Was he thinking the same thing?

  "How do you figure our odds?" Vega surprised herself by asking the question.

  "Same as it ever was," Bob replied. "Afterward, we do what we always do: blow our money on beer and strippers. What's your problem? The two of you getting married and having a baby?"

  Miles laughed. "Boss, I can't speak for Vega, but I feel like my ass is getting dropped into a meat grinder. They said the man on the news, at the bank, was sick. He fucking bit a security guard. You want us to go into a riot in an American city and expect us not to wonder what the hell's going on?"

  Bob leaned forward, spittle flying from between his reddened cheeks while he shouted. "You people don't know who the hell you are. Vega, you're a Jesus freak who kills like a Satanist, and Miles, you got a thing for white powder. But soldiers like us don't retire. Once you kill a man, there's no going back. We're going in, goddammit, and we're going to blow some shit up."

  Miles clapped his hands. "Just tell me what to shoot, boss, and thy will be done."

  Vega couldn't help but smile. "Well, Jesus still loves you, Bob, no matter how much you look like a fucking bum."

  The team erupted in uneasy laughter, and Vega performed the sign of the cross over her forehead, chest, and shoulders.

  ***

  They could see the clouds of smoke obscuring the stars, which should have been visible in the evening sky. They seemed to hover over the black Detroit River while the chopper's radio noise grated on their ears with static and unintelligible shouts. The pilot tried to turn the volume down and asked for orders to be repeated. Bob grumbled and made his way to the cabin to talk with the pilot to communicate their orders.

  "The boss is hiding something, this time," Miles slid next to Vega. "He's holding back. He's got a vested interest in Traverse. He wouldn't have been hired for the job otherwise. Think about it: Traverse is important, so why do they trust Bob to go in and get him?"

  "Did I ask you what your feelings were?" Vega asked him with her eyebrows raised.

  "Well, I'm the sensitive type, one of the nice guys, you know? Maybe if you ask me nicely, I'll tell you all kinds of things."

  "Maybe I don't care."

  "I already knew that," Miles looked away from her with regret in his eyes, his demeanor suddenly serious. He turned back to her and smiled his old shit-eating grin. "We just jumped at the chance to kill something, didn't we? We're both junkies, you know. We were just having the time of our lives a few minutes ago, and now we're about to see action. But this shit happened quickly."

  "Don't try to get philosophical about it. It's not your style. I hate talking. The gun talks better than I do."

  "Shit, United Nations, we get done with this, jump back in the hotel, and then you can talk to me in Swahili all night long. Just don't get your ass killed. I'll protect you."

  She laughed at that one.

  "Look down there," he pointed to Detroit. "Looks just like I remember it—shitty."

  Bright balls of red and orange flame climbed out of the city's maze of streets. The buildings were lightless and tiny flashes, which she recognized as gunfire, winked in and out of existence. Through the darkness, the flames highlighted streets packed with cars, and crowds milled about as if waiting for something to appear in the sky.

  "Nice place to raise a family," Vega noted.

  Miles whistled. "Looks like the entire damn city's hot. I've seen a couple riots. Were you in Iran during the protest? That was a shit-storm, but this looks fucking wild. It looks more like a damn war. It unraveled pretty quickly here."

  "Air traffic's a mess!" Bob shouted back to them. "Everybody's in on the action. Hold on to your asses for a damn minute while we get clearance to land."

  Vega was focused on the Ambassador Bridge and the gridlock.

  "Move in closer to the bridge!" Vega shouted to the pilot.

  Bob argued with the pilot for a moment, and the chopper dropped altitude.. She watched as an army of ants climbed over burning cars on the Ambassador Bridge toward a military barricade. There were thousands of people, running heedlessly, were trampling over each other to get to the barricade. They clambered over the barbed wire while soldiers ruthlessly followed their orders and opened fire upon everyone and everything.

  Miles whistled again and said, "Holy. Fucking. Shit."

  "Playtime's over!" Bob shouted back to them. "Saddle up!"

  Bob looked through the window at the scene as if seeing it for the first time. His jaw clenched tightly and he ran his fingers through his wild, tangled gray hair.

  Vega saw the seventy-two floor Marriott Hotel in the middle of the Renaissance Center. Smoke and flame burdened several floors. In the street, the familiar flashes of gunfire were absent among the barbed wire and police vehicles which blocked the streets. Large clusters of people ambled about.

  She habitually checked her gear once again while Miles did the same. Bob handed them their headsets.

  "That's not military personnel beyond the barricades," Miles stated the obvious.

  "I couldn't hear what the status was," Bob explained. "Mostly static coming over the line, but it sounded like a civilian twit. Didn't know how to properly operate the radio. Tried to get someone else on the line, but we got a few aces in the clouds here who said they're backing off and awaiting orders. Couldn't get much more than that."

  "So you didn't actually get clearance to drop us in," Vega said, "because there's nobody left to g
ive it."

  Bob pumped his Benelli shotgun.

  A wayward chopper lifted off from the roof of the Marriott, which was a cylindrical spire of burning glass. The city's inferno was mirrored within the entire hotel's length, coloring it in the shades of violence and war. Scattered lights on some of the floors were indication enough they still had power. A red signal flare on the roof revealed a group of civilians who tried to flag them down by desperately waving their arms over their heads and jumping up and down.

  Bob opened the chopper door.

  Vega put a hand on his shoulder; she had to shout over the wind and the chopper's rotors. "Look at me, dammit!" she shouted. "There might not be a C.O. down there! You're looking at the same thing I see! We don't know how much time we have before this shit reaches the hospital! Let's pick up our target and get the fuck out of here!"

  However, she knew his old loyalties had never been severed. She'd experienced his diffidence toward mission objectives in the past; when it came down to an opportunity to save American lives, Bob modified the parameters of their job to satisfy himself.

  For once, Bob provided a rationale behind his actions. He kept his attention focused on the people below as the chopper slowly descended. "These could be VIPs!"

  Miles shouted back. "And they might not! How do we know they're not hostiles?"

  There was no place for the chopper to completely land on the roof, even if there wasn't a group of people waiting to be rescued. The chopper hovered a few feet above the roof, and Bob motioned for Vega and Miles to jump down. After they landed in a crowd of panicked, weepy civilians, Bob threw a ladder out of the chopper and leapt after his comrades.

  Right away, Vega understood the situation was completely wrong. She knew from experience these people didn't care about the appearance of gun-toting soldiers, because they feared not everyone could fit on the chopper, and there might not be another one coming. While Bob shouted for a C.O., the crowd pushed the soldiers out of the way.

  They found only one soldier on the roof, a National Guardsman who leaned heavily into an older man wearing a bloodied polo shirt and khakis. The guard was pale and his eyes were bloodshot, but when Bob stopped them, he seemed wounded only on his arm.