The Undead World (Book 5): The Apocalypse Renegades (26 page)

He yelled her name, but there was no answer except more shooting. “Sadie get your ass back here!” When that didn’t work he slipped to the south hall doors while hugging the wall and thanking the gods of architecture that the halls were offset. At the door he snuck a peek and saw her firing from inside a broom closet, keeping maybe five or six men pinned down.

She was doing such an admirable job that Grey figured he only had about a one-in-three chance of dying as he burst open the door, grabbed her by the back of her black shirt and hauled her bodily into the air. Unexpectedly, she began kicking and fighting. “Lemme down! I got this.”

All around them bullets sped by and the air hissed angrily. Grey pulled her through the doors which were splintering and making loud “Crack!” sounds as they were struck over and over. In a second they were through to the lobby where their danger was only slightly less; they still had to pass through five feet of open space that was swarming with hot lead.

Sadie went limp when she saw the body splayed out in front of the stairs. It was an unreal sight, all pink, wet flesh and ribbons of intestines in a pool of blood and chunks of gore. “That’s not…”

“No. Neil is alright. He’s downstairs. Now, hold on for just a moment.” Grey darted his head around the corner. At the sight of him every man jumped back into their rooms afraid of his laser-like precision. “Now!” he hissed to Sadie, pulling her across the open area. There was no time to be coy about the body and the pair ran tracks through the blood and mess. Too late the shooters tried to track them, but again they missed their marks.

“I counted my shots like you taught me,” Sadie said as they flew down the steps. “I have three left with this gun.”

Grey hadn’t counted his. He had no idea how many rounds had been in the gun to begin with, so counting would have been a waste. He answered with a simple, “Good.” There really wasn’t any more time for a longer comment. They were at the second floor in seconds where they found the cage-fighter Grey had sent down, still at his post. The man had his head stuck out into the second floor hall while, hidden by the door, his body went through contortions as if he was five-year-old with a full bladder.

“Let’s go,” Grey said, grabbing him and pulling him back from the breach.

The man was all eyes in a sweat-glistened face. “Oh, yes, thanks!” he said in a high voice, going down the stairs two at a time. “They were starting to look at me weird.”

“That’s because you look weird,” Sadie said. There was a heavy dollop of contempt in her voice. It made no sense to Grey, but again there was no time to say more. Two flights of stairs blurred by under their feet. The three of them had come on so fast that they came on the caboose of the line of cage fighters that had gone down ahead of them.

The Captain pushed through them to find Neil pointing upwards and yelling down the hall. “I said, it was a fight. There were two opposing…”

Grey slapped a hand over his mouth and bellowed for the entire building to hear: “Get your asses back in your rooms while we figure this out! We’ll have men coming by to question everyone. Until then, sit down and shut up….and whatever you do, no more shooting. No one even knows what they’re fucking shooting about.” The absolute authority in his voice had them scurrying back into their rooms.

“That’s how you…” Grey began but stopped as above them came more small arms fire. Everyone flinched but Grey and Sadie. She glared upwards while he smiled like a wolf. If he had to guess, he was hearing men from the two different hallways come together in fear.

“What the hell?” Neil asked. “Did we leave someone behind?”

Grey clapped him on the shoulder and herded him for the door. “That my friend is the fortune of war. Sometimes it goes your way.” Practically on the heels of those words there came another burst of shooting, this time from the direction of the main gate.

“That’s Deanna,” Neil said, running in an odd hobble toward the parking lot on the west side of the building. They all ran for a single black truck.

“Keys!” Grey barked. Neil couldn’t drive. There was something wrong with him. He held his arm tucked up like a fried chicken wing and he minced instead of taking real steps. He didn’t argue about the keys; he tossed them to Grey and then climbed laboriously into the passenger side of the truck. Sadie climbed in behind him and then for some reason, clambered over him to sit practically on the cup holders.

All told, six people crammed into the cab and another six squirmed into the open bed. Grey jumped the curb and roared the truck across a two-lane road and then over a stretch of overgrown lawn. It was a fifteen-second drive to the main gate where the firing was like a Morse code message: dot, dot, dot…dash, dash, dot.

“Gimme your gun,” Grey demanded of Sadie, one hand held out to her, and the other expertly steering the car through a stand of shrubs. Before giving up the weapon, she looked around at the base. It was mayhem. There was screaming, yelling, and orders being shouted; people were running in every direction, while others were throwing themselves to the dirt to escape the, mostly random, gunshots that pierced the air.

“I don’t want it anyways,” she said. She looked so pale that he had to wonder if she’d been shot and was losing blood. Once again he had no time to check. Ever since Neil had stepped into the prison, time had gone funky. Seconds felt like they were zipping by as fast as the bullets. The gate and the little shack seemed to fly up at them.

A man with an M4 was crouched next to the shack. He was shooting at a Toyota 4-Runner that was sitting in a space between the two gates. It was a fine target, very large and unmoving; already all its windows were blown out and its tires sagged. Someone behind the Toyota, Deanna presumably, was shooting back, peppering the ground all around the front of the shack with lead like she was planting seeds from a distance.

It was the finest display of bad shooting Grey had ever seen.

He pulled up fast, kicking up a cloud of dirt. The driver’s window faced the guard shack and as the man with the M4 turned, bringing up his weapon. Grey aimed his pistol through the open window, corrected for the unfortunate error in his trigger pull, and shot the man between the eyes.

The truck was moving again before the man hit the dirt. Seconds later, he skidded to a halt next to Deanna. She began to go around the front of the vehicle when there was a gunshot behind them. The men in the back fell all over themselves to find a scant amount of cover and began pounding on the sides of the truck, demanding that he floor it.

There was no way Grey would leave Deanna behind. “Get in!” he barked, flinging open his door. He then turned to Sadie and ordered, “Shift over towards Neil. Get cozy.”

Deanna started to step demurely up into the truck; she seemed at a crossroads as to how to proceed: did she stick her breasts in his face or her ass? A second gunshot, and the skip of a bullet across the hood, decided her; she went with breasts.

With more lead flying at them from out of the dark, Grey couldn’t wait for her to get seated so, with her straddling him, he stomped the gas. The sudden acceleration pressed her warmth and softness into him. It was an awkward and rather intimate position, but one that he found he could live with. What he couldn’t deal with was that he couldn’t see; to correct that, she would have to get even more intimate, at least for the time being. He pulled her down so that she was seated firmly on his groin and then he hugged her to his chest so he could look over her shoulder and drive.

“You’ll tell me if someone’s after us, right?” he asked, playfully. He wasn’t exactly upset with his present position.

She pulled back slightly to see if he was serious. When he smiled, she tried to smile back but it was a line only. She had begun to shake.

“Hey, it’ll be alright,” he whispered. “You did great.”

“It didn’t feel great. I was scared out of my…” Her words were jounced out of her mouth as the truck hit a pothole that was more like a shallow grave in size and width.

“Here,” Grey said, slowing the truck. “Climb on over and sit proper.” When she was off his lap, he felt unpleasantly cold as if he were missing the part of himself that controlled temperature. He shrugged off the feeling and set the truck in motion again, going as fast as the night would allow.

In the back seat, Norman said, “They’ll be coming for us soon.”

“Yeah,” agreed Grey. He glanced across Deanna and Sadie to look at Neil.

“What?” Neil asked.

“What do you mean, what?” Grey growled. “Where are we going? This is your rescue after all.”

Neil shrugged and looked at Deanna who shrugged as well. “We don’t know,” Neil said, speaking for them both. “Our main concern was freeing you.”

Grey couldn’t blame them; it wasn’t like there was a class on rescues. Not even the best had everything planned out. “And Jillybean?” Grey asked. “Where is she?”

After sneaking a look at Sadie’s face, Neil bowed his head and said, “We don’t know. We figure she blew up the boat but...” He paused, swallowing, loudly. “But after that we haven’t had any contact or sign or anything.”

Grey swore under his breath. “I’m sure she’s still alive,” Deanna said, patting his leg.

From the back seat, Norman cleared his throat as a prelude to speaking, “Well, everyone is rooting for your friend and all but we still need to figure out where we’re going and, perhaps more importantly, what we’re going to do. Ole King Shit will have men after us pretty soon and they’ll catch us at the rate you’re piddling along, Grey. You need to pick it up.”

Deanna gave him a swift, ugly look in the rear view mirror. “Your breath is like a sewer,” she said to him. “So why don’t you not talk for a little while.”

Norm began to fume, but was roundly ignored. The other cage fighters knew what sort of man he’d been up to the night the bridge had exploded. He was one of
them
. One of the men who had not only been entertained by the fights, but who had also profited from the deaths.

“There is one place we could go that’s not too far,” Neil said. “It has some supplies but not much. Not enough to last this many people.”

“Well you can’t let us fucking starve,” Norman said, coming closer as he did. Grey’s nose crinkled; his breath did smell an awful lot like ass. Though he was sure he didn’t smell any better.

“No one’s going to starve,” Grey said. “We’ll just ration our stores until we can find more.”

“I might know where we can find all that we’re likely to need,” Sadie said. She seemed troubled. Normally she would’ve had
something
to say about the way Deanna had climbed in the truck, but she had been silent and the pale look hadn’t left her. She glanced back at Norman and the troubled look deepened.

“What?” Norman asked. “You got a problem with me, also?”

“A little, I guess,” Sadie admitted. “You’re Norman Halder, aren’t you? My father doesn’t trust you. Usually that’s for a good reason.”

“It is,” Norm admitted. “Your dad killed two of the guys I came up with. One day they were there, the next gone, as if the earth sucked them down.”

The truck bucked and shimmied through a series of potholes and everyone was quiet as they contemplated Norm’s words. “What do you mean, you came up with these men?” Sadie eventually asked.

Norm shrugged. “You know, made it big.”

Grey understood. With his thick jaw and heavy hands, Norman had the look of a mid-level mobster who would go further only because of his appreciation for violence. “If they were anything like you,” Grey said, “I don’t think you’ll be getting any sympathy from us.”

“Listen, dipshit,” Norm said, in a low, dangerous tone. “You might want to think your words over a bit more carefully. The River King’s days are numbered and who do you think is one of the front runners to take his place? Me. It’s especially true now that I’m out of that fucking cell.”

Plunging his foot down hard, Grey skidded the truck to a halt. “Get out, Mister Big Shot. I don’t owe you a thing.”

Norman sat back, putting his large hands on his knees as if he were already on the throne. “You’re not thinking straight, Captain. This is an opportunity for both of us. The earth seems very large these days, but it’s gonna shrink up once everything shakes out. You’ll see. And when it does your people in Colorado are going to have needs and wants and, in case you don’t know, Cape Girardeau is going to be at the center of it all.”

“How?” Neil asked. “The bridge is gone.”

Grey saw the twinkle in Norman’s eyes. “You know about the other bridge, don’t you?”

“Yes, but…but, how do you know about it?” Norman replied, the twinkle dimming slightly. “Did she tell you?” He meant Sadie.

“No. The River King did. I just don’t know where he’s hidden it.”

Neil slammed his hand down on the dash. “What bridge are you talking about and how on God’s green earth do you hide a bridge?”

“It’s a pontoon bridge,” Grey explained. “It can be broken down.”

“Into how many sections?” Sadie asked, her dark eyes were very large. “Because I might know where they are.”

At Sadie’s declaration, Norman reached across the seat and grabbed her shirt. “Where is it?” he demanded. His eyes were feverish with need; his hand like a claw; he looked like a junkie desperate for a fix.

Deanna jumped back but Sadie snatched the pistol out of Neil’s limp hand and jabbed it up under Norman’s chin. “Care to be number five tonight?” She cocked the hammer back; it was a loud, menacing sound in the cramped truck.

“That gun is out of bullets,” Neil told her, gently easing the gun out of her hand and giving it to Deanna. Out of curiosity, Deanna popped the magazine out and saw a fat .9mm sitting right there staring up at her.

“Would you like to use mine?” Grey asked, holding out a pistol to Sadie.

Neil made a cranky sound in his throat as he reached across Deanna to push away the offered gun. “No. No more killing, especially you, Sadie. We aren’t like this guy or the River King. We can settle our differences without bloodshed.”

“What differences?” Norman said, leaning back and touching his throat where the gun had left a mark. “Everyone wants the bridge. It’s just a matter of who controls it. I just happen to think it would be better for all of us if I did. And I’m not just being selfish. The River King wants you dead, while I would look favorably on any who assist me. You, Captain Grey could be Colorado’s first ambassador to Cape Girardeau. You could cement a relationship between two peoples, one that will help to guarantee peace.”

“I’m a soldier, not a diplomat,” Grey replied evenly.

“Then Neil could do it,” Norman said. “From everything I’ve seen, he would be perfect. He’s very accommodating.”

“Accommodating?” Neil asked. “That’s pretty much the worst compliment I’ve ever heard. Makes me sound like a pushover. Though I suppose diplomacy calls for a cooler head.”

Deanna had been listening in confusion. She knew what pontoons were and she knew that what made them valuable was that they were portable. “We’re being silly,” she said. “There is no reason a bridge has to be set up at Cape Girardeau and even less of a reason for it to be under the control of anyone but us.”

“There is, actually,” Neil said. “It’s the only way we’ll get the rest of our people back. We’re going to have to trade it.”

Norman was outraged. “Trade it to who? Not the River King! For one you can’t trust him, and for two he won’t last. After tonight, he’s a dead man. He hasn’t been able to do anything right.” He stuck out a large hand and began checking off on his fingers: “The bridge, the prisoners, the fire last night, the barge this morning and now us escaping. Someone’s going to put a knife in him and no one’s going to care.”

“I might,” Sadie whispered. Her face was the color of whey. She didn’t look good. “I need out.” Startling Neil, she again crawled over him, hopped out of the truck and hurried to the side of the road where she vomited, sounding like a grunting toad, although she was trying to be quiet because there were zombies nearby.

Deanna had never liked going out at night since the apocalypse. Everything was so much darker than before, scarier too. She could never tell just how close the zombies were; their voices carried hundreds of yards in the still air. And if they came for her, she was afraid to run for fear of getting a stick in her eye or a breaking an ankle in some shadowy chuckhole.

She went anyway, climbing over Neil the same way Sadie had. “I’ll go talk to her,” she said. Neil started to mumble something about family, only the nearness of her breasts to his face seemed to have numbed his lips into incoherence. She stopped him, saying, “No. You’re hurt and Captain Grey should stay here because…” She didn’t much like Norman and trusted him less; she inclined her head briefly towards the backseat. He had to be watched by someone more capable than Neil.

“Ok. I guess,” Neil said.

“It’ll be ok,” Captain Grey put in. “Deanna can take care of herself.”

This caused her to waiver a moment. What had she ever done around him to give him such confidence? Nothing, as far as she could remember. Whenever he was around, his bulk, his stern gaze, his…his presence was larger than life. He just seemed to take over and fill up any room, leaving her sometimes feeling like a spectator in her own life.

And she secretly loved it.

She gave him a smile which he returned, going heavy on the white teeth. Had this been a bar back in the old days that smile alone would’ve have gotten him halfway into her bed. Deanna lingered on it until Sadie interrupted by making a noise that sounded like: Guap!

“I’ll go check on her,” Deanna said, slipping out of the truck.

Immediately, the men in the bed began to whisper questions at her,
Why’d we stop? Why the fuck are we just sitting here? What’re you guys, idiots? There are freaking zombies out. What’s going on?

“I don’t know. Shut up,” Deanna snapped. “We’re trying to figure some stuff out, ok? In the meantime, hush.” They grumbled over this but she had already tuned them out so as to concentrate on the brambles and the branches and the nettle vines doing their damnedest to trip her up.

Sadie wasn’t deep into the brush. She was standing with her palm flat against a great monster of shadow. It was an immense tree with a dark trunk five feet in width. Between the blackness of the tree and her black, Goth clothing, Sadie’s white hand stood out, as did the vomit splashed on the trunk; it was greasy looking like oil on tar. Deanna pretended not to notice it.

“Hey Sadie,” she whispered, stepping over a root that was the size and shape of an anaconda.

The girl in black turned. Her face was strange the way it seemed to float out of the background. She slid the ghost-like hand across her lips and then shook her head in confusion.

“We haven’t been introduced. My name is Deanna Russell. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Oh. You’re one of the whores, aren’t you? I-I mean one of the ex-whores. Sorry.”

“I escaped from the Island if that’s what you mean,” Deanna replied, stiffly. The word whore was like a stomach full of glass—it hurt, and it scarred. Being a whore wasn’t like any other “job” in the world. She could never stop being one. It was as though she were branded right down to her soul by it.

“I didn’t mean anything,” Sadie said. “I just…just…” Her ghost hand swept up to her face again and she sobbed behind it.

“It’s okay, I’m not mad.” Deanna touched her on the shoulder, softly. “Did something happen?”

Sadie’s breath began to hitch. “I-I don’t know. Yes, I guess, but…but it shouldn’t be this way. I shouldn’t be so…I shouldn’t care. This is the apocalypse and evil people should die. Right? That’s the way it should be. I knew it, but there was so much blood. The guy on the stairs, I just shot him and there was so much b-blood. He was like...like if you knocked over am-milk jug. It all came chugging out of his head. Like gloop, gloop…”

“Oh, hey,” Deanna said, grabbing Sadie and pulling her close. “You have to forget it. Those men had it coming to them. They were evil. You are right about that.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Sadie whispered, sniffling up something wet. “I have to pull it together, I know it, but that guy’s blood is stuck in my head.” A new wave of nausea struck her; she clutched her stomach and began breathing heavily like a woman in labor.

“Are you pregnant?” Deanna asked excitedly like some overwrought teenager.

This sobered Sadie up quick. She swallowed, loudly, and it seemed she swallowed her breath; her panting stopped abruptly. “No, of course not,” she said in a rush. “Why would you ask that? Do…do I look pregnant?” Sadie was stick-thin and, other than the vomiting, she seemed like any other teenager.

“No, I was just wondering.” That was a lie. Deanna had been hoping. Hoping she wasn’t the only one having to go through this so soon after the apocalypse. She had a thousand fears. Where would she find a doctor? What would happen if the baby was breech? What if it had the croup or was colicky? Or worse, what if it came out a zombie? What if it ate its way out of her?

A long shudder rolled up her back. The twitching muscles stopped as something snapped in the forest not far away. Instinctively, Deanna dropped into a crouch. Sadie was relaxed about the sound at least; she only peered briefly into the shadows and then looked down at Deanna. “Zombies make more noise than that, and my dad’s men could never have gotten here so fast. It’s probably a squirrel.”

Deanna, who didn’t think squirrels were nighttime creature, wasn’t so easily calmed. “Yeah, we should be getting back anyway, but only if you’re all right.”

Sadie’s face was shiny with tears, but she lifted a single shoulder in a half-shrug. “I think I have to be, because that’s the way it is now. I have to remember that. And I have to remember I can’t be a girl anymore. It’s like it’s no longer an option. Girls have to be…different, you know? We can’t be like we were. I can’t cry over this stuff.”

Deanna, who felt like crying every day, said, “That’s easier said than done.”

“Yeah, but I have my friends and I have Neil, who’s like my real dad, you know?” She smiled, grunted out a little laugh, then and added, “Man, if I was pregnant, I would hate to see how weird Neil would get. First he’d be mad and then he’d lecture me and then he’d be picking out baby names and trying to marry me off!” She giggled but it wasn’t wholly natural; the deaths were still too close in her mind.

“Sounds like Neil,” Deanna replied, wishing she hadn’t brought up the subject of babies in the first place.

“Could you image being pregnant, now?” Sadie asked. “What a freaking horror that would be. Having Eve is a blessing, but she’s one of a kind and she came to us, you know, already out. I couldn’t image being pregnant and trying to run from zombies when I was big as a house.”

“Me neither,” Deanna said. Desperate to end the conversation she pointed back to where the truck was parked and gently pushed Sadie. “We got to go. And we should be quiet, you know? We should stop talking.”

Sadie began walking; her foot hit a hidden something and she stumbled into Deanna who flinched at her touch. After Sadie’s dreadful words, it was as though a jinx lay over her like a dark cloud looking to flash its poisonous lightning at the first target it could reach. Deanna steadied the girl and then, when she turned for the truck, Dee quickly wiped her hands on her pants.

One of the men leering in the back of the truck said, “You two share a special bathroom movement?”

Another laughed, saying, “Even with the end of the world happening all around us, girls still gotta take a squat in pairs. Why is that?”

“It’s a mystery,” the first answered.

Sadie rounded on them. “It’s a mystery you’ll never figure out, limp-dick.” This caused a burst of muffled laughter.

“Everything okay?” Neil asked. There was a worry in his eyes that woke something in Deanna: jealousy. The ugly emotion felt like a creepy thing lying under a wet, mossed-over log, peeking its buggy eyes out, asking with a split tongue,
Who’ll take care of you, Deanna? Who’s going to take care of your baby? Sadie has Neil, who do you have? Are you gonna do it all by yourself? You gonna feed her, bathe her, hunt for her, fight for her, build her a safe home? All by yourself? How’re you gonna do all that with her sucked up on your tit?

“We’re fine,” Deanna said, weakly as if it was she who had just been throwing up in the woods. “Just some, uh, bad food, right Sadie?”

The teen nodded while in the cramped back seat, Norman clapped his hands. “Good. Let’s get to the bridge. The sooner the better because, if I know Ole King Shit, he’s going to realize he’s down to it now. With everything that he’s fucked up so far, only the bridge will save him and if he gets there first we don’t got dick.”

Grey turned on the engine and gave a quick glance at Deanna. Maybe because the voice in her head had poisoned her confidence, she sat up straighter and smiled uneasily, feeling as though they were at a drive-in and part of an awkward group where they were the only singles among the others. She felt stupid beyond belief. Why was she smiling? What part of their situation called for a freaking smile?

Of course he returned the smile, and his spoke of calm and inner confidence, which was only natural; he wasn’t the one who was going to be a blimp pretty soon, trying to pass himself off as a bloated zombie. He could smile because he wasn’t going to be burdened with the prospect of trying to feed a baby while trying to feed himself.

“You okay?” he asked of Deanna.

“Yes, why wouldn’t I be?” She was seconds away from tears. She could feel her eyes begin to birth two huge drops. A thought pounded her soul: what if she had twins? The tears came. She pretended that the trees passing by were of the greatest interest, while swirling black thoughts invaded her mind—if she had twins, she would have to kill one, there were no two ways about it. She’d pick the smaller one. That’s how nature intended. She’d use a hammer and make it fast.

Her teeth started to rattle like chains and she sniffed, loudly, causing everyone to look at her. “It’s nothing,” she said to the unasked questions floating in the truck.

“It’s okay,” Grey said. “We’ve all been there.”

The whore in Deanna, the one she thought was dead, reared its painted face and threw a pretty smile over her misery. That part of her knew what she was willing to do to survive: pretty much every degrading thing she could think of. That part knew what a pretty smile she had, and she used it. “I’m fine. I’m fine. So where is this bridge?”