The Undead World (Book 2): The Apocalypse Survivors (40 page)

Sadie followed right behind and came up smiling. “That was cool,” she said in her normal voice. There was no sense being quiet now, the zombies were mak
ing a hell of a racket. “So what’s next?”

“We change back into people,” Jillybean replied, scanning the vehicles. “There it is, Mister Neil’s rover-thingy.” Keeping low, they scampered to the Rover and found it had been pawed through and everything of any real value had been taken already. Still there were baby-wipes left to clean the makeup off their faces, and brushes to run through their hair, and clothes of Sarah’s for Sadie to change into so that she looked very pretty in Jillybean’s eyes.

Jillybean didn’t have extra clothes to change into except her white dress. Against Ipes strong opposition she happily put it on.

“You’re not going to stand out
at all,” Sadie said sarcastically.

“No one is looking for me,” Jillybean replied. Ipes was quick to point out that Abraham of the doomsday cult would probably snatch her up if he got the chance
to. She chose to ignore the zebra just then, rationalizing: “Besides I don’t have anything else to wear.”

“I guess not,” Sadie said as she watched the people work. They were very methodical, sorting, cataloging, and storing what goods they wanted from each vehicle
. They buzzed quickly through each in a matter of minutes. They were far out-pacing the forklifts which had a line of thirty crates waiting to be picked up and moved.

The six-year-old watched as well. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she asked.

“Probably not,” Sadie said with a laugh. “What I’m thinking is that we’re going to get caught right off the bat if we try to get down that ramp. I guess we could say we left something in our truck?”

“What?” Jillybean asked incredulously. “No, that won’t work. Even in Miss Sarah’s clothes you still look like you, which means we can’t have anyone see you up close. I say we use those wood boxes. We can climb in and get a ride onto the ferry. Should be no problem at all.”

Sadie looked unconvinced. “What happens if they pop open the crate the second we get on the boat?”

“We say we were playing a game,” Jillybean suggested. “You know, like hide-and-go-seek.
They might yell at us but that's about it.”

“Seems like a plan,” Sadie said with her half shrug. “Let’s do it.”

Gaining access to the crates was a simple task as it was only a matter of timing. They waited for the forklifts to bear away their burdens and then they just climbed into the next crate in line. The crate smelled of fuel and oiled metal which made sense since they were sitting next to a little gas-powered generator, while all around their feet were bullets of all calibers crammed into ammo-crates, as well there was a wicker bushel basket filled with roundish objects that caught Sadie’s attention.

“Put these in your backpack,” she said dropping three of the items in among Jillybean’s candles and string and other oddities.

“What are they?”

“Hand
grenades. They’re like little bombs, so don’t even think about using them,” Sadie said with a stern, motherly glare. She hooked two of the bombs to her jeans under her white buttoned up shirt.

Jillybean wouldn’t dare
use them. She was afraid to even move with them in her pack and when the crate was lifted and jostled by the forklift she had to hold her hand over her mouth to keep from crying out.

After a short ride
, the crate was set down in a dark, noisy area. Sadie peeked out and then swore under her breath.

“We’re
on the wrong boat,” she said, opening the top of the crate and lifting Jillybean out. “We wanted the one on the outside of the two. That’s where Neil is.”

Their crate, along with dozens and dozens more, was in an open area of the lower deck. Men and women worked
there: some hefting supplies to other parts of the boat, some directing the forklifts, and others installing a string of light bulbs to illuminate the dim proceedings. For now the dark hid the two girls, but, as an extra precaution, they snuck around to the back of the crates and crouched.

Sadie
poked her head up again to find a way out. “I think we can make a run for it after the next forklift comes in.”

With her pack filled with bombs, Jillybean didn’t want to run anywhere. “How about instead we try to see where those stairs lead,” she said, pointing at
a set of stairs that sat in the middle of the vehicle deck. It brought them dangerously close to where the men were working on the lights, however their focus was on the ceiling.

The older girl nodded and then took Jillybean’s little hand in her sof
t, cool one and led her to the stairs making sure to keep low and quiet. Sadie started up, but Jillybean didn’t follow. She was looking down.

“Those won’t go anywhere,” Sadie said
to her. “That’s the engine room I bet. We don’t want that…Jillybean? Hey, we can’t just stand here, they’re gonna see us.”

Jillybean wasn’t just standing there. She was thinking.

On the next ship, where Neil was, there were guards—according to Sadie probably three or four; too many for Sadie to fight, which meant that in order to free Neil they would need a distraction. A big one.

A fire is big
, Ipes suggested.

In her mind’s eye she pictured where the stairs down would lead: a room, long and low, but very well lit. Machinery with pipes and knobs and blinking consoles would run from one wall to the other. These were the engines. Engines ran on fuel
, and fuel burned.

“And you want to start a fire?” She could envision the boat engulfed in flames…and people running and screaming. People were going to get hurt.

Ipes was unfazed.
Ram got killed and they did nothing.
They aren’t nice people and besides it’ll be a slow fire with lots of smoke. At least it will start that way. We just need a couple of those gas cans to get it going
.

Sadie was tugging on her shirt and saying something, but Jillybean ignored her, turning to see a line of
jerry cans just feet away on one of the crates.

“We need two of those,” she said to Sadie.

The older girl’s eyes bugged. “For what?”

When Jillybean explained
, Sadie’s eyes went even wider, but she didn’t argue. Instead she crept back to the crate and after a look around grabbed the heavy cans one at a time. Grunting, she heaved them to the stairs and then lugged them down into the engine room where Jillybean was already standing, staring all around with her blue eyes at squints.

“You ok?”

This time Jillybean snapped right out of it. “Yeah, I was just looking for where the gas comes in for these engine things. Ipes says it’s right over there.” She led the way to the fuel import lines.

“
What happens if this stuff explodes?” Sadie asked with a crooked little smile and a little laugh as she began dumping the fuel all over the import lines and the machinery.

“I don’t know,”
Jilly said with a shrug. “Ipes says we should get another one of them cans and make a trail out of here and then light it from a distance or we won’t be able to get away in time.”

“
This is crazy,” Sadie replied before running up the stairs. When she returned, Jillybean directed her to pour a line of gas in a great loop around the machinery.

“Just like the movies,”
the little girl said, holding up a lighter. However before she let Sadie grab it she pulled her hand back as Ipes had another idea, one that made her stomach go queasy. “Really? That’s what you want to do?” she asked. From her pack she pulled one of the hand grenades and rolled it at the gas cans.

“
Jeeze,” Sadie said.

“Ipes says it’ll cook off like a bullet. Whatever that means. He says it’ll give the workers something to think about if they decide to get too heroic.” Jillybean calmly bent down and lit the line of gas herself, though it took both of her small hands to do so. “We better go.”

Chapter 40

Neil

New York City

After so many hours chained to the steel deck, Neil discovered that he had long ago run out of any position that he could describe as comfortable. His arm ached where the zombie had bit him and the bones of his ass were two raw points—he turned on his side and tried to fall asleep to the constant growls and moans of Ram. It was
not exactly soothing and yet Neil had been without proper sleep for so long that he was actually lulling off to it when a sharp
Bang
vibrated up from the deck.

Everyone perked up at the noise, even the zombie, which had been slowly tiring at the end of its leash.

“What the fuck?” one of the guards asked. He wasn’t the only one voicing the rhetorical curse. The question was a common one before the cries of “Fire” began to drift down. Neil stood and looked about, however his vantage on the lower deck was extremely limited. The same was true of the three guards.

“One of you should check it out,” the sole armed guard said in a Russian accent. He was one of Yuri’s men and it would take a lot more than a few cries to get him to budge from his post.

“We’re not going any…” one of the men began to say.

Bwammm
!

Th
e first noise could’ve been anything: a dropped pallet, or a forklift crashing into something, but the second could only have been an explosion; Neil could feel it through the soles of his shoes. The men only stood and looked to one from to the other in turn. “Someone should do something,” Neil said as the cries of “fire” turned to screams of panic. He was convinced that if a fire broke out he would be left to burn up along with the zombie.

“I’ll go,” one the
Blacks
said. He wasn’t gone long. “That whole mother-fuckin boat right next to us is covered in smoke!”

“You have to release me,” Neil cried immediately. Already the smell of burning diesel could be detected despite the fact that the wind was running down the length of the boat instead of cross beam.

Neil was ignored, though it was done studiously. It was as though everyone knew he was right, he should be released, and yet no one had the courage to do it. So they just pretended he wasn’t there.

“We should get out of here before the fire spreads,” the one man who had seen the smoke said—there was a twitchiness to his voice that hinted at panic just beneath the surface.

His fellow
Black
shook his head, “You need to chill, Ron. This is a steel boat; it’s not going to burn.” As emphasis he banged on the hull with a dull thump. “I was in the Navy and I saw a ship like this burn for three days. It never did sink. So chill, we’re going to be just fine. Trust me on this, it’ll be worse if we leave our post.”

No one felt fine and for sure no one chilled. Minutes passed and the smell of smoke only grew and the cries became insistent.

“What happens if the ship blows up?” Neil asked. All eyes went to the ex-navy man for answers.

He was reluctant to answer, perhaps because it was Neil who had asked the question. His friend Ron had to goad him before he would answer, “Diesel doesn’t explode. It burns like a mother, but it doesn’t explode.”

This seemed to calm everyone but Neil, of course he was the only one chained to the boat. “I’ve heard different,” he said in something approaching a babble. “Like in World War two, boats blew up all the time…I mean after they were on fire. That was a thing, I swear it.”

“It’s true,” Ron said, licking his lip. “I heard the same thing. Why the hell are we staying here, Jimmy? We should be getting the hell off this goddamned boat.”

“Chill out, mother-fucker,” Jimmy said. He wasn’t as chill as he wanted to appear. Even in the midnight dark, there was enough light from the dim bulbs overhead to catch the sweat on his forehead. “Those mother-fuckin’ boats blew up because they had mother-fuckin’ munitions on board. That’s why.”

The Russian guard opened his mouth as if a thought had struck that made him want to puke. “Munitions is what they have been loading for the past three hours on that boat.”

They all looked west and each was silent as though trying to hear the sound of munitions about to explode. Instead they heard the beginning of a gun battle. Everyone literally hit the deck.

“What the fuck?” Ron cried as bullets sprayed everywhere clinging off every metal surface. “What the fuck is going on?”

“It’s the ammo cooking off,” Jimmy said. His words were garbled because his face was pressed flat against the deck as though he was being stepped on. “We got to…”

A new explosion, and one with far greater force, shook the boat. This was followed by a series of eruptions like giant hammers. They rang out into the night so that even Ram stopped his moaning and stood as if paralyzed by the sound.

The second there was a break in the explosions, both Jimmy and the Russian dashed for the railing and jumped out into the water. Ron ran to the rail and looked out but could not bring himself to jump.

He turned to Neil and cried, “I can’t swim.”

With the bullets continuing to pop off and muffled explosions shaking the six-thousand ton boat, Ron was practically blind in his panic; right next to him was a life preserver.

Neil pointed at it. “It’ll float. Just hold onto it, and…wait! Don’t leave me!” In the instant Ron had seen the preserver, he had grabbed it and started to climb
over the rail. “Please, don’t leave me!” Neil screamed. Ron wasn’t the only one panicked. The very air was beginning to shimmer with the heat of the fire in the next boat.

“I don’t have the keys
to the lock,” Ron said. “I’d let you out but I don’t have them.” Once over the railing, the man clung to the side of the boat long enough to say: “Sorry.”

Then Neil was alone…for all of ten seconds. In the time before Sadie and Jillybean showed up, he gave up. He sat on the thrumming deck and looked at Ram. “I’m sorry, too,” he said. “You were the best friend I ever had.”

“Neil!” Sadie said, rushing up. Despite the mayhem she was grinning and crying. She flung herself into his arms and he squeezed her for the span of time it took to take one huge breath as if he could breathe in her living soul.

“You did all this?” he asked as he pulled back.

She shook her head. “No, Jillybean did.” Sadie pointed at the girl who had been running along looking like an angel—a ray of innocence in a night of terror. Now she was standing just a few feet away and only inches from Ram’s hooked fingers. Her face was frozen in a mask misery as if she were experiencing a thousand deaths in that one second.

Sadie went to her and held her to her breast. “Don’t look at him. It’s not Ram anymore. Ram is in heaven. Do you hear me? Ram is in heaven. That’s only a monster.” Jillybean nodded her head as a fat tear streaked out of her blue eye. “Good girl,” Sadie said and then turned her around and beg
an to dig through her pack.

“Here we go,” Sadie said, holding up a heavy Phillips head screwdriver. She turned, took one step toward Neil and then was lifted off the deck of the boat as the biggest explosion yet erupted. Everyone and everything was thrown to the side—and that included the boat itself. Neil sat up and found the deck lean
ing slightly toward the water.

“What the hell was that?” Sadie cried.

Neil shook his head to clear it before saying, “There was talk about a missile launcher. Someone had one, maybe that was it.”

“Are we going to sink?” Jillybean asked. “Ipes says that a missile can sink a boat.”

“Let me have that screwdriver,” Neil demanded. The ring on which his chain was looped was attached to the deck by four screws. If he could loosen them, he’d be free.

Sadie watched him grunt at the resisting screws for only a few seconds before she said, “I’m going to go get Sarah or Eve, or both if I can. Meet me north of here at Ram’s truck. Jillybean knows where it is.”

“Shouldn’t you take her with you?” Neil asked. He gave a little sideways smile and added, “We might just sink.”

“She’ll be safer here. There are life preservers against the rail and Neil…you’ll be fine. Remember you’re a hero. Get yourself free and get north.” Taking only a moment to kiss them both, Sadie then ran off and Neil watched her go, noticing the deck was tilting even more as she fled.

“I better hurry,” he mumbled. With gritted teeth, he went to work on the first of the screws, fighting with all of his strength against the rusted metal.

“Try hitting them with the butt of the screwdriver,” Jillybean said in a voice of an army captain. “It might loosen them.”

Neil banged on each with a growing anxiety in his gut. What if they didn’t come loose? What if the ferry sank with him still attached? The thought lent him strength. With both hands on the tool he twisted with his full power not realizing that the screws hadn’t been loosened in twenty years and were so rusted in place that for all intents and purposes they were welded to the deck. He twisted until the skin of his palms tore and still, nothing happened.

For a moment he sat panting
until an old soda can rolled past him. Struck with a feeling of dread he watched it gain speed until it hit the metal wall. Only then did he notice that the ship’s list was at thirty degrees. It was beginning to get so steep that Neil had to plant his palm on the deck to keep from sliding down.

The metal was hot under his hands. There was a fire in the deck below his!

“You have to go, Jillybean,” he said. “Leave me here. Go get a life preserver and…” Even as he pointed toward the water he saw a blue-green sheen floating on its surface. A second later, flame spread from around the side of the boat to light up the night like a giant’s torch. Jillybean’s one escape route had been cut off.

“The fuel tanks must be ruptured,” Jillybean said in a ghostly voice. It was like she was empty and the air just whistled out of her
in the form of words.

“Son of a bitch!” Neil screamed in anger.

Jillybean shook her head at this as she leaned further back to compensate for the growing list of the boat. “That’s a bad word.” Her voice had transformed into such softness that it was a wonder Neil could hear it. Butterfly wings made more noise and yet the sound, in all its oddness came to him, drawing his eyes from the growing fire to her tiny form. She was utterly still and staring down at Ram, and yet Neil was certain that she wasn’t seeing him.

“We’re going to die,” she said in the soft lilting manner of a child in a dream.

“No, we’re not,” she answered herself in a deeper voice. Neil’s skin flashed with goose bumps at the voice that was coming from her full lips. It was Ram speaking. “There’s a way to get out of this. Find it, but you have to hurry, Jillybean. Look around at what you have to work with and find a way out.”

She stared around at the tilting boat for three seconds, her blue eyes huge and unblinking. She then pulled off her “
I’m a Beleiber
” backpack and searched through it. Of all the things that she could have pulled from it he was surprised to see she had a pair of scissors in one hand and in the other was a green item that had Neil blinking in wonderment.

“Is that a hand grenade?” he asked.

“I need your shoelaces, Neil,” she said in her Ram voice. “And hold this for me.” Jillybean slid the clip of the hand grenade onto Neil’s belt and then before he could splutter nonsense about having a bomb sitting on his hip, she left.

The tilt was bad now and getting worse. The entire boat, groaning as if in mortal agony, was
slowly tuning on its side, forcing the little girl to walk with her left hand running on the deck. She went across what had once been car lanes searching back and forth with scanning eyes.

“What are you doing, Neil?” he asked himself. Was he really going to let a
six year old girl rescue him, employing a hand grenade of all things? “You’re a smart man. You went to Columbia for goodness sakes, surely you can figure a way out of this.”

He looked around to see what he had to work with: a sinking boat surrounded by fire. And his shoelaces. And a hand grenade. And…and he had no clue how to make an escape or what on earth Jillybean was doing. Yes, a hand grenade could blow off the chain, however he was attached to it; barely four feet away.

“Just don’t think about it,” Neil said to himself, going to work on undoing his laces. He decided that if Ram had trusted her he would as well. From a certain point of view, it was an easy decision since he had no other choice. As he got the first lace undone Jillybean knelt and began working at something with her scissors.

By the time he got the next lace off she was hurrying back with a circle of metal, the rust of which was marring her dress. Only he seemed to notice or care.

“There’s no time for this,” she said, fearfully, in her own little girl’s voice.

“No time for what?” Neil asked.

Jillybean ignored him completely. “Why can’t I just…” she started to say, but then she cocked her head to listen.

Neil realized she was taking orders from either her zebra or Ram, on some ghostly level. He had to resist the foolish temptation to ask her what he was saying.

She began to nod. “I suppose I understand…”

Just then she almost
pitched forward down into the water as the boat heaved again from some unknown reason. Neil snatched her, almost dropping the disc in the process. With his hands occupied he slid to the end of his chain.