The Undead World (Book 5): The Apocalypse Renegades (37 page)

Quickly, the pain grew beyond his ability to control; it began to overwhelm him and to drive him insane. He bucked like mad and began to scream uncontrollably, which meant it was time. He fought his left hand upwards so he could put a bullet into his brain and end the misery. That was when he saw his heroics had been for nothing.

Grey had led Deanna and Sadie from the truck in all the confusion Neil had wrought but there were simply too many zombies. They had not got far before they were surrounded, firing outward in a tight circle. Neil screamed again this time not simply because of the pain but also in frustration and despair.

He tried again to get his hand up, desperate to end the misery, but there was a human leach dangling by its teeth from his wrist and Neil couldn’t get the gun around far enough. With all his strength, he twisted his wrist all he could and strained to stretch his neck long enough so that when he pulled the trigger the bullet would take him away. Unfortunately, no matter what he tried, the angle didn’t look as though the bullet would catch him clean in the head.

But then the pain was too great and he couldn’t take a second longer of it; he pulled the trigger with only one hope remaining, the hope of dying. The gun went off like an explosion, turning the sky endlessly white.

They were surrounded. Her gun clicked empty. It was the most horrifying sound she had ever heard in her life.

It was her cue to exit stage right. She had fought the good fight and now it was time to take the bullet train to heaven. She dug in her pocket for the last bullet, the one Neil had given her, and all the while, tears streamed down her face.

Neil was gone, buried under the horde. He had given them a chance but it had been slim to begin with and, perhaps because they had hesitated when he had shown his true heroic colors, the chance had turned to nothing. Grey had led them into the crowd of undead, racing as fast as he dared, but the zombies had turned too quickly.

They were only a few feet away from the hangar doors when the zombies trapped them. Their guns began to blaze but it was hopeless.

And now, she was out of ammunition all save for the last bullet. It slipped into the chamber with graceful finality. She let the slide snap closed and said, “I’m out. I only got one left.”

Next to her Deanna was digging in her own pocket. “Me too,” she said quickly, as if afraid she were going to be left behind for something important. Grey was still firing, holding back the zombies, but barely.

He wasn’t one to go down easily and when Deanna stuck the pistol under her chin, he yelled, “Wait…look!” For a brief second, he took a hand off the M4 and pointed out past the hangar doors. Jillybean had finally put her last-minute plan into action. The little girl had done something and was now running, dodging in and out of the zombies that were on the airstrip between her and her truck.

Sadie traced Jillybean’s steps back the way she had come and there was only one thing in that direction: the fuel truck. “You don’t think she…”

An explosion that practically blinded her with its brilliance, sucked the air from her lungs and then threw her back to land among the flailing arms of the zombies. The little girl had blown up the fuel truck. It went up like a bomb, a tremendous bomb, one that rivaled a nuclear explosion. Flaming chunks of metal were sent flying in every direction and the pillar of fire rose up in the air as though it would stretch all the way to heaven.

Sadie gaped at it and she wasn’t the only one; a thousand zombies stared upwards with blank eyes and blank minds, their mouths hanging open, drooling. They were transfixed by the sight and for the moment they were heedless of everything else.

The explosion had stunned her and she couldn’t think beyond the fire, but then Grey was there, standing over her. “Sadie,” he whispered. “We can go now.” The zombies were transfixed by the sight and for the moment they were heedless of everything else.

Grey helped her up, and, along with Deanna, they slipped unseen among the horde. They resisted the urge to run; they walked calmly until there was nothing between them and Jillybean and her black truck.

The little girl looked concerned. “Where’s Neil?” she asked in her soft voice. Before anyone could answer, she answered herself, “Who cares? I saved these ones, didn’t I? I’m still the hero.”

The question followed by the odd statement, combined with their emotions, rendered the other three practically mute. Grey’s eyes were watering, and Deanna was swallowing, as though she were choking on a pinecone. Only Sadie was able to squeak out an answer.

“Neil was very brave, honey, but I’m afraid he’s…” Sadie couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence. She couldn’t bring herself to face reality and, it seemed, neither could Jillybean. She pointed into the zombie mass and said, “Oh, there he is.” She sounded slightly disappointed.

Sadie turned, expecting to see a smallish zombie, but instead saw the bloody mess of a man. He came limping out of the horde. It was Neil, streaming blood and looking like he’d been bitten in a hundred places. Her soul erupted in joy. Neil was still alive! When he was beyond the zombies, she rushed at him and crushed herself into his one-armed embrace.

“Ow,” he said with a little whimper.

“Sorry,” she whispered, wiping tears away with the sleeve of her shirt. “Are you hurt bad?”

Captain Grey pointed out that there wasn’t time for an adequate answer. “The fire is dying lower. We should get out of here.”

The five of them crammed into the truck Jillybean had provided. She was in the backseat with Sadie and Neil, wearing an odd look. She seemed disgusted by Neil’s bloody appearance.

“You ok? Are we still sisters?” Sadie asked, holding out her hand, pinky extended to the little girl, looking for their customary ‘pinky swear.’

Jillybean eyed the pinky, her lip curled. “I’m not going to touch that so you can put it away.”

The little girl was being exceptionally rude and Sadie opened her mouth to snap at her, but paused, and then gradually closed her lips. Jillybean had changed. There were brooding, dark circles under her eyes and a tic working in one cheek. She was gaunt, with a haunted look about her, and yet there was steel in her as well, but it wasn’t an admirable thing. It was sinister and cold.

“You okay?” Sadie asked.

Jillybean eyed her close, looking for a motive for the question. “I’m not hurt, if that’s what you mean.”

Grey cleared his throat. He was pelting away from the air strip at top speed. “Maybe this isn’t the time for questions,” he said. “Maybe this is a time for rest.” He gave Sadie a quick look in the rearview mirror suggesting that she not press the little girl anymore.

In silence, they drove through the town and pulled over just a mile or two past it where the River King had left the trucks and pontoons sitting in the middle of the road. Not far beyond that, there was a sooty little fire going, spitting out a weak black smoke that was smudging the sky. A few feet away were three corpses.

Jillybean stared at them, completely stone-faced, except for the fact that she leaked tears steadily.

Grey saw the bodies and sighed wearily. “We’re not done yet,” he said. “We’ve got to move these pontoons. We got to hide them until we can get our people back.” Grey, Deanna, and, despite his injuries, Neil, each drove one of the great trucks. Sadie followed along with Jillybean; the silence in the pickup was unnerving. The little girl next to her had all the animation of a stick. Sadie kept glancing at her out of the corner of her eye and it was sometime before she picked out what was wrong.

“Hey, where’s your friend, Ipes?”

The little girl didn’t even blink. “Who?” she asked in a flat voice.

“What?” Sadie took her eyes from the road long enough to see if Jillybean was kidding: her expression showed that she wasn’t. “You know, your zebra? Wears a blue shirt? Makes a lot of smart aleck comments?”

“Oh him. He’s dead. He drownded.”

Sadie got goosebumps at the monotone way this was spoken. There was something definitely wrong with Jillybean. Sadie was afraid for her but couldn’t speak to anyone about it.

Captain Grey pushed them to their physical limits. They parked the pontoons near a cabin in the woods and then, without a pause for rest, he forced them to go back for the remaining bridges they had left on the side of the road. Thankfully, he chose to leave the ones in the hangar where they were, figuring that he had enough to bend the River King to his will.

He was correct in this. The River King had been so terrified of Jillybean’s destructive capabilities that he had retreated to his base to await the demands of the little girl. He was honestly surprised to hear his daughter’s voice the next morning.

“I’m glad you’re alive,” he said, stiffly.

“I bet,” Sadie said sarcastically. “I bet you’re falling all over yourself in happiness.”

“Come on, Sadie. You have to know that I love…”

“Save it for someone who cares. The only thing I want from you is a ‘yes’ to our demands. We want everyone back, including Eve and Melanie.” Sadie had no idea who this last person was, but she seemed to be important to both Grey and Deanna. “And we want two hundred gallons of diesel, twenty assault rifles, two thousand rounds of ammo and two thousand cans of food.”

“What?” the River King practically screamed. “That wasn’t part of the deal I made with Jillybean.”

“I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.” She thumbed off the “talk” button and glanced to Neil. “How was that? Too tough?”

“It was perfect,” he said, attempting a smile. It was ugly. Before passing out from blood loss and exhaustion, Captain Grey had put a hundred and fifty-eight stitches into Neil. He had been bitten twenty-seven times including one that had taken off the pinky on his left hand and another that had ripped off the top of his right ear. There was a line of stitches crossing one cheek and another along his hairline. He looked like a mini-Frankenstein.

“Now tell him where the drop off point is,” Grey said. She was about to speak into the radio when he stopped her. “And we need medicine; specifically painkillers and antibiotics.”

After briefly whining, the River King caved to the demands, and from there things moved quickly. The River King was on his last legs and needed the bridge to stay in power. He gathered the supplies, floated the prisoners across the river on something that resembled Noah’s ark—it was improperly waited in the keel and, once afloat with everyone on board, promptly fell over on its side. Thankfully it floated. The crew of the
Titanic
, as Michael Gates called the boat, found a way to paddle the thing, and after an hour, it ground up on the edge of the river. The fifty-seven prisoners were finally on their way to the rendezvous site.

And during all of this, Jillybean was moody, snappish, and quick to point out every character flaw in Neil and Sadie. She was perfectly complementary to Grey and acted reserved with Deanna. “Give her time,” Neil suggested. “She’s grieving over the loss of Ipes.”

To Sadie it seemed like more than grief. The little girl had glanced at the freed prisoners and had only one word to say: “Pathetic.” When the baby was brought forward and everyone cooed and smiled at her least movement, Jillybean had only curled her lip. “I’m the hero. You’re nothing,” Sadie heard her whisper to Eve.

There was no time to dwell on this, however. No one trusted the River King. Grey waited for the last minute to radio the coordinates of the hidden pontoons, and then they raced out of there in a convoy of five vehicles. The Captain led the way in the black pickup truck and behind them were the 5-tons.

Jillybean got the shivers when they pulled away. The shaking was so bad it bordered on convulsions. No one knew what to do and so they kept driving; eventually the shivering died away, but the girl remained wooden in her appearance.

As the hours passed, they dozed. All, that is, except Captain Grey. He drove them steadily southwest—it was the wrong way, but everyone had agreed to it in order to throw off any pursuit. The baby was the first to wake and with a drooly smile on her happy face, she crawled over Sadie to get to Jillybean.

The little girl came alive in an instant, shoving the baby and yelling, “Get that thing off of me!”

“Calm down, it’s okay,” Sadie said, trying to soothe her. “It’s just Eve.”

Jillybean snarled, “No it’s not. I am. I am Eve, not her.”

Sadie’s stomach crawled, seeing the hate in little Jillybean.

“How about I take Ev…I mean
the baby
up here with me,” Deanna said from the front seat. The truck was quiet after that. Instead of talking, everyone shot each other concerned looks.

Jillybean remained on edge until they reached the outskirts of Little Rock where they made camp in a factory that had once made coat hangers. Safe and protected, the group built fires to cook over. The flames entranced Jillybean. She cried steadily while staring into them.

After a while, Neil decided to try to talk to her. “Do you feel like sharing what happened?”

She nodded, gently. “Ipe…I mean my best friend is gone. He got drownded.”

Softly, Neil touched her on the shoulder and said, “Oh Jillybean, I’m so sorry to hear that.”

A fearful look crossed her face. “You shouldn’t call me that anymore it makes
her
mad. You should call us Eve.”

“Ok Eve, maybe you should go to sleep now. You need your rest.”

When Neil told the others what had happened, Captain Grey said, “It’s definitely PTSD. If there’s a cure, it’s keeping her out of any action. She needs to stabilize her life.”

“Let’s hope we’re done with any more action,” Deanna said. It was wishful thinking on her part. They were a thousand miles from the base in the Colorado mountains and there was danger in one form or another in every one of those miles.

The next morning, they turned northwest and drove slowly along with only bathroom breaks interrupting their pace. By sundown, they were north of Battlesville, just across the state line into Kansas. The land was filled with gentle hills and sprawling farms. The renegades found an oversized barn on a lonely homestead to bed down in for the night.

They woke to the sound of the undead. There was a great wailing and moaning coming from all around them. Neil and Grey were the first up. “Check the back,” Grey said. “I’ll check the front.”

Sadie went with Neil and when she saw the horde she felt like crying, or punching a wall in anger. “Not again,” she said. She should’ve known better. She should’ve known that every mile from here to Colorado would be fought over. She should’ve known her days of  blood and battle weren’t over yet.