Read Online The Queen of the Dead by Vincenzo Bilof - Free Book Online Page B

The birds in the sky floated lazily while the human race sorted out its problem below. The sun baked the concrete and waves of heat shimmered in the air. At one point, Jim dumped lukewarm water over her head and handed her a plastic bottle filled with it. She was more delusional without her meds, and the heat, along with the headache, added to her discomfort.
    Patrick came for her. Patrick wanted her, and she left him there, maybe to die. And she felt nothing.
    A tiny shape darted through the street. Maybe it was Shanna. Or maybe it was a dog.
    Smoke, the breath of dying structures, replaced the clouds.
    She collapsed once, or thought she did.
    Leave me here, she wanted to say. Let them have me, at last. Maybe if I die, it will all be over. Maybe they all die with me. This could all be a hallucination, you know. I know what their teeth feel like, and their hands, so one more time won’t make a difference.
    She heard Patrick’s voice.
    I want you, Mina. Like I’ve never wanted anything else before.
    Her voice responded. But you had a wife, and two kids. Didn’t you love them, or want them? What about your career?
    Those were things I thought I wanted. I needed them more than I wanted them. People accepted me and I could do my job.
    Mina wanted to touch him. Do you know who the real Patrick is?
    You’ve shown me.
    She was a killer and a freak show. Jim wanted her to believe differently. He knew everything, and nothing could destroy him. She knew nothing about him, yet she followed him down these streets as she inhaled sulfur and ash. The smell of burning rubber on sun-soaked asphalt, glass shattering, gunfire rattling in the distance and stopping abruptly.
    Blinking in and out, fading as the headache throbbed. If she fell asleep without eating, without taking her meds, she was going to feel them . They waited for her in the realm of sleep. Let them take her now and let the torment end.
    A woman with a bloody face knelt at Jim’s feet and prayed to him. Weeping hysterically, she reached for his hands and begged him to bless her. Jim smiled and knelt beside her. He took her hands into his.
    Seconds stretched into somewhere. Smoke blackened the sky.
    Jim was gone. The stores and the cars, the pleading survivors, the sun, the birds—everything faded into a wall of gray storm clouds.
    The headache subsided, and her sticky, oppressive clothes disappeared. She stood nude and pale, shivering in the dark.
    Waiting for them .
    Worms and maggots crawled within their eye sockets. Rotted black flesh remained in patches along ancient bones. There were no eyes in their skulls. There were no tongues in their mouths. They crawled without legs, their necks craning up to look upon her. They encircled her, their number, legion; their desire for her flesh, unquenchable.
    Mina closed her eyes and let their long fingernails crawl along her flesh. She heard the flies buzzing over their decrepit bodies, and she could smell the rot and the leaking pus. Creeping insects scuttled up her bare legs and around the curves of her thighs. Fingertips traced the edges of her hipbones, teasing her with the idea of death. She squeezed her eyes shut and waited for them. Their bones snapped and popped as they gathered around her.
    Pressure in both her shoulders caused her eyes to flutter open. Blood trickled out from beneath razor-sharp nails that dug deeper. She refused to scream. She opened her mouth to breathe. Heat flared up one of her arms, followed by the intense pain that accompanies the removal of an entire layer of skin. Her shoulders were undressed of their flesh by hands that knew better. Cold, shriveled lips clamped onto her throat…
     
    ***
    When she awoke, her first thought was that she was floating on a sea of her blood. Instead, she was staring up at a white ceiling, and she was lying in damp sheets. She wore only a white gown that was unbuttoned, and a pair of white panties that didn’t belong to her. Sweat shone upon her thighs. She brushed