Read Online Saint Pain (Zombie Ascension Book 3) by Vincenzo Bilof - Free Book Online Page A

letting her guard down. She wanted to trust Bella. She wanted to trust somebody, anybody.

 
    VINCENT
     
     
     
     
     
    With a festering skull sitting on the edge of his spade, Vincent thought about the day he stood in the street and gunned down maybe a hundred or so of the undead all by himself.
    The funny thing was that he couldn’t imagine how he had done it. He dreamed of it sometimes, though the dream was always false. He couldn’t remember exactly how it all went down. With each passing day, it was becoming more difficult to believe that he managed to pull it off. He had mowed down a crowd of zombies, and now he didn’t even carry a gun with him.
    He didn’t carry a gun because he didn’t want to fight them anymore. Vega still didn’t know, but he knew she was pretty screwed up, too. After all the running and fighting they had done, it was silly to think they could barely lift a finger to save themselves, now.
    He tossed the head into the back of the waiting pickup truck and resumed picking up the neighborhood’s trash.
    A little more than a year ago he was smoking Cubans and getting next year’s Jordan’s delivered to his home. His Mercedes dealership was one of the top ten most lucrative Mercedes dealerships in the country. He had people on the street hustling bricks of cocaine. There were money machines in his office, even though he never used them. He carried a stack of tightly wrapped hundreds in his pocket. He had a Columbian girl he saw in Miami, and he had strippers on voice-dial. He owned four cell phones. Bodyguards. Shook hands with Jay-Z. A former Detroit mayor owed him money. Not a single person he paid money to do any “wet” work was found because he could afford the best professionals. Every single dollar he made was accounted for because he only paid for “business” with cash, and his dealership had been started with a group of investors, all of whom were bought out. He hadn’t lived too lavishly because he was careful not to show off.
    Now he was shoveling garbage into the back of a truck.
    This was important work. Their garbage needed a place to be incinerated, and it had been a hot topic of debate amongst the locals when everyone in the neighborhood first decided they would be a community and work together to help each other. A few miles from their neighborhood there was a massive sinkhole in the middle of the Lodge Freeway. They were dumping their trash into that massive crater and burning it.
    Burning. Vincent inhaled deeply, and his stomach growled. He could smell the burning meat from their weekly barbecue. Families were hanging out in a nearby park, doing their best to pretend like nothing had changed.
    “You look like you could use some help,” someone said.
    Vincent turned around and found the retired cop, Mike Taylor, standing by the pile of garbage with work gloves on his hands. He brought his own shovel. He wore a burgundy tank top, and his tattered jeans looked like they had been ripped off a corpse, which was likely. Despite being in his early sixties, the old man had a lean, tight body. No loose fat hung from his arms, and his barrel chest could have belonged to a semi-retired professional bodybuilder.
    “Looks are deceiving,” Vincent said and turned back to his work. He preferred to be alone. The work kept him busy. Kept his mind occupied.
    “Don’t I know it,” Taylor said while tossing refuse into the truck from the end of his shovel. “Tried to get your ass on tax evasion… how many times? Never got it to stick.”
    His former career was out in the open now. He wasn’t going to be that person again.
    “I don’t remember you,” Vincent said. “You all looked the same to me. Unless you wanted to buy a car.”
    Taylor chuckled. “I wasn’t on your case. The Feds loved you though. I remember this one guy… I think his last name was North or Kim or something ridiculous like that… anyway, he managed to infiltrate. Worked his way up through one of your