The Undead World (Book 6): The Apocalypse Exile (War of The Undead) (24 page)

They were afraid because it was one thing to mow down slow moving zombies, it was another thing altogether to trade shots with an armed enemy. Grey, Neil, and Sadie of course had been in their share of gun battles. Of the rest, only Michael Gates, his brother William, and Connie had been blooded in actual battle, although, in each case, the battles had been brief. Michael and William had fired a few long distance shots at Gunner’s men back at the Piggly Wiggly in Warrior, Alabama.

Interestingly, the only one of the group outside of Sadie and Neil with any real experience was Connie Markson. The erstwhile ex-whore had fought side-by-side with Deanna and had more than held her own fighting one of the Colonel’s squads from the Island during the battle at the church.

The sun was long set and still there was no sign of Captain Grey. Neil checked his watch again and again. That was his nervous tic. Grey had said he’d be back in two hours and on Neil’s thirteenth check of his watch it had been one hour and fifty three minutes. “Jeeze-lou-eeze,” he whispered, looking towards the gym doors.

He jumped slightly when he saw a shadow moving toward him. Relief washed over him until he saw that the shadow wasn’t big enough to be Grey’s. It was Tiffany, one of the women from The Island. In the murk of the gym she glanced around at the “strike team” as Neil had taken to calling them in an effort to instill in them a fighting spirit. The way she eyed the chain-smokers and the pacers, it was clear she wasn’t unimpressed with them as a fighting force. 

“Hey, I want to let you know that all the women voted and we’re not going out to pee unless we have some guns. There are a whole butt-load of zombies walking around this town and a stray might come up here anytime.”

Neil understood. No one liked the idea of getting caught, like Melanie had been with her pants around her ankles, but on the other hand, he didn’t like the idea of giving up even a single gun. He compromised and pulled out the .25 caliber pistol he had retrieved from Joslyn. “This may be small but a head shot will bring one of them down. Just don’t miss.”

Tiffany eyed the tiny gun but didn’t take it. “You got to be kidding. That thing couldn’t kill a badger.”

“Wrong,” Neil said. “This is the gun that killed Ernest and if a seven-year-old can kill a bounty hunter with it, then you can kill a zombie. It’s either this or you take a stick out with you.”

“Can we at least have some of the men act as armed escorts?” she asked. “I’d feel better with a bit more protection.”

Neil checked his watch a fourteenth time and sighed for the thirtieth. “No, sorry. We need to be here for when Grey gets back.” He expected Grey to jump into his plan with both feet and he didn’t want to have to run around the school searching for the “strike team” when the captain got back. “You’ll be fine, Tiffany. We’ve cleared the school and all the grounds already. There’s nothing near us that will hurt you.”

In the dark, Tiffany expressed her dissatisfaction by letting out a long, loud breath. “Fine,” was all she said before grabbing the gun and stomping away, her feet thudding in a hollow manner along the gym floor.

“Maybe we should…” Michael Gates started to say.

Neil cut him off: “We’ll stay here.” His voice was harsh and commanding. “Those were the captain’s orders. I’m sorry, but the women can take care of themselves. We have to be ready to go at a moment’s notice.”

This ended any conversation and the group sat in an uncomfortable silence until Captain Grey suddenly materialized before them a few minutes later. “Everyone here?” he asked Neil.

The smaller man jumped and, if his gun hadn’t been set to ‘Safe,’ he would’ve shot the gym floor full of holes. “Dang! Yeah, we’re here. Jeeze, you scared the crap out of me.”

“Uh-huh,” Grey said, simply. He took out a small mag-lite, twisted it to the ‘on’ position, and then stuck it between his teeth. Next, he unrolled a scroll of paper about two feet square which he laid on the wooden floor and set full magazines on each corner. The paper was pure white.

He took the mag-lite from his teeth, blew out wearily, and said: “Alright,” and then blinded each of them in turn. When the light struck Neil, he couldn’t see anything but the brilliance of the beam and yet he felt himself being judged by the veteran soldier and he tried to stand straighter. Grey’s own features were shrouded by the dark. He looked like a figure carved from granite and there was no telling what he was feeling, except Neil knew there wasn’t an ounce of fear in the man.

“Alright,” Grey said, again, after he had inspected his troops. “Hopefully Neil has filled you in on the situation. If not let me sum up where we are: we’re surrounded, the Duke knows who we are and he plans on attacking at some point tomorrow morning. Any questions so far?”

Kay raised a shaking hand. “Are we going to have to fight?”

“Our choices are simple. We can put our fates into the Duke’s hands hoping that he will throw away an opportunity to make a ton of money and cement positive relations with two of his most powerful neighbors, or,” Grey’s voice was deadly serious, “Or we can assume that the thirty five men he’s surrounded us with are here to kill us if we try to escape and that, by morning, he’ll have enough men to storm the school or starve us until we come out, voluntarily.”

“There’s thirty five of them?” one of the ex-cage-fighters exclaimed. A fearful whispering started among the crowd around Grey, and after a few seconds it grew in volume.

“Thirty five is too many.” In the dark Neil couldn’t tell which of them was speaking in the high tone of fear, but it was either Kay or Veronica.

Grey splashed the light in the direction of the group of women and they all shied back from it as though it could hurt them. “I think we need to look at this in a positive manner,” he said. “The number of men out there cements the intelligence we received. It means the Duke indeed knows who we are so if any of you have doubts about fighting, you need to think again. Be aware of this: If you are captured, the cage fighters will be sent back to die in the arena and you ladies will either be sent back to the Colonel or be auctioned off to the highest bidder.”

“That’s positive?” Sadie asked. “I must be missing something.”

A grimace flashed across Grey’s face as he growled: “Yes, it’s very positive. For one, we are forewarned of what’s to come and for two, the Duke has foolishly shown his hand well before all of his forces are here. Really, we should be happy it’s only thirty five men out there. Thirty five is a number I think we can handle. Any more and I wouldn’t like our chances.”

“You like our chances now?” Neil asked, incredulously. His stomach had dropped when Grey said: “Thirty five.” The renegades were outnumbered and outgunned. They were cornered in a school that was trapped in an encircled town that sat in the middle of a vast land filled with enemies. What was there to like?

“Actually yes,” Grey answered, giving Neil a sharp look—a look that said:
Shut up, if you’re not going to be helpful
. “Yes, our chances are good. We have surprise on our side and remember, we don’t have to actually kill all of them or storm the courthouse in order to win. Our objective is escape. Here, let me show you.”

Handing the mag-lite to Neil, he dug in a cargo pocket for a marker and drew a large egg-shaped oval on the white paper. “This is the town, and running right through it is the highway.” He drew the road as a line dissecting the oval length wise. He then drew the school and across the street from it the block of houses. He then drew four ‘X’s, two of them on the street on either side of the school and two more behind the school.

“The ‘X’s are groups of the Duke’s men,” Grey explained. “There are five men per group. In addition to them, here in these houses,” he pointed up the block, “are about fifteen men. They have us boxed in, but don’t panic, we still have the upper hand. All we have to do is neutralize them.”

Sadie raised a hand. “How do we do that?”

Grey drew three lines from the school in a curve that went to the back of the houses. “It’s simple. The twenty one of us will split into seven teams. Three of the teams, led by myself, will act as an assault force and attack the block of homes from the rear to divert attention from the school. At the same time, the other four teams will take up defensive positions opposite each of the marked sites.”

Across from each of the ‘X’s he drew a little line. “When the shooting starts in the houses, the opposition forces at the marked sites will almost certainly advance and, when they do, they’ll run right into our four teams who will be able to take them out, no problem. Keep your shooting under control. If you have a perfect shot, then take it. If not, be conservative with your ammo and keep them pinned down. Are there any questions?”

Michael Gates raised a shy hand. “What happens if they don’t move?”

“Let’s hope they don’t,” Grey replied. “If they just sit there, it means they’re cowards. Give them a few shots to cement that fear. Ok, so we have everyone shooting, it will be at this point that the people in the school will leave the building and get to the trucks. Everyone with me so far?”

He glanced around and saw only shrugs. “Ok, from the moment the four secondary teams start firing, everyone counts to sixty, at which point they will break contact and run for the trucks. The assault force will count to an additional thirty and, at that point, they will also break off the attack and fall back on the trucks and then we just zip out of town. With any luck, it will be a quick, one-sided battle.”

“But...” Neil said. It was all he could think to say. Although Grey had made the plan seem simple, Neil couldn’t get past the idea that, in every instance, their teams were going to be fighting against nearly two-to-one odds.

Grey gave him another hard look. “There are no buts. It will be dark. Our enemies will be surprised at every turn. When they lift their heads, we’ll blow them away and, when they cower, we’ll retreat. They aren’t trained soldiers, either. They will act and react from a position of fear. Our job is simple: instill that fear so we will can to maneuver. Now to break you up into teams.”

Neil was paired with Sadie and William Gates and given the task of stopping the group of men closest to the courthouse. Because there was only one road into the town that wasn’t blocked by a barricade of cars, along with the ring of zombies, they were going to have to head right back through the center of town.

That was just one of the many problems with Grey’s plan. Neil waited until the teams were divided before he pulled the soldier aside.

“Don’t say it,” Grey said, and pushed past. He marched to where Deanna and Jillybean slept on and on. “I’m going to need stretcher teams,” he said to himself. In the dark, Grey had never looked more fierce and yet he was as gentle as if he were handling a snowflake when he checked Deanna’s pulse and lifted back one of Jillybean’s eyelids.

“We need to talk,” Neil said. When Grey only grunted, Neil turned to Marybeth. “Can you give us a moment?”

The second she was gone, Grey said: “It’s the only plan we have, Neil. I know it’s not perfect, but it’s all we have other than trying to fortify the school and hope that a tornado comes and wipes everyone out for us. Really, Neil, you should trust me. I considered everything, even holding the Duke hostage. That scenario plays out even worse. He’s doubled the men around the courthouse and it looks like there are a bunch of new people inside. Likely they’re all armed. We just don’t have the ammo for that sort of assault. So we’ll go with plan A, and it will work.”

Neil wasn’t reassured. Far from it. For Grey’s plan to work, each of the seven teams had to prevail in their own unsupported fights. A failure of one could leave the unarmed renegades rushing out of the school only to be slaughtered. “How many casualties do you expect?” Neil asked. “I noticed that was something you didn’t mention in your briefing.”

“Because they were scared enough already,” Grey snapped. “It could be zero, or it could be upwards of thirty if one of the trucks gets a tire shot out or if we can’t break contact and get bogged down in a real fight.” Neil’s eyes went so wide that the dark couldn’t hide them. “Don’t look so surprised, Neil. This is how war goes. It’s a messy and dangerous business and I sure as hell wish I could tell you that everything will be alright, but nothing has been right for weeks now. We have one choice other than to surrender and that is to fight our way out. Sorry, but that’s the way it is.”

Grey stood, gripped Neil’s slim shoulder for a second, and then walked back across the gym to where his teams were standing in nervous little groups. Neil wondered how many of them would be dead before midnight. It couldn’t be thirty. “Please no,” he said, whispering a short prayer. “Please not thirty.”

How many would be acceptable? Eight? Maybe eight, but which eight? A long tired breath escaped him. He wouldn’t be able to stand even one death. What he needed was another of Jillybean’s miracles. The problem was that even if she were awake, what could she possibly come up with in such a short time?

“She’d think of something,” he whispered, peering out into the darkened gym to make sure no one was nearby. At first he gently shook her and hissed into her ear: “Jillybean! Jillybean, wake up! I need you.” When that didn’t work, he shook her roughly and lied: “Jillybean, Ipes needs you. Ipes is here and he needs you.” It was despicable and he loathed himself, but he didn’t stop.

“But not all of this was my fault,” Jillybean said. It was the weakest argument she had ever laid out to her father and it was no wonder he said nothing but only raised a sweat-rippled brow at her. In the cell next to her was a charred beast of a man who openly scoffed.

“Please,” the man said, although how he was able to articulate so well without lips was beyond the little girl. “Are you saying it was someone else who did this to me?” Jillybean could only shake her head in distress; she had no idea who the man was or how he had come to look like that.

“I’m sorry if you were on the ferry, but I was trying…”

He threw what was left of his charred hands in the air and said again: “Please! You can act like you don’t know me but you do. Deep down, you do.”

Jillybean pulled her eyes from the vision of her father and looked at the burnt ruin of a man. There was nothing left of his face save a single eye, a few broken teeth and twin holes where his nose should’ve been. It was a horribly disgusting sight yet she forced herself to look beyond the burns. She had no idea who the person was—there had been so many fires, after all, but then she saw his shirt. It was an army camouflage shirt. That was nothing new, however the fact that the shirt was neatly tucked into blue jeans was different.

“You were on the barge,” she said, in a whisper, remembering the man who had chased her. She had not only thrown a hand grenade at him, she had set a block of C4 off in the barge’s fuel bunker while he was still on board. “You were the guard.”

“I wasn’t just a guard,” he spat. “I was a man. My name was Brian and it wasn’t my fault I was on that barge. It was circumstance, only. You didn’t need to blow me up. I was just following orders.”

Guilt wrapped a hand around her throat and kept her from pleading her case. She turned to her dad; he was half zombie because she hadn’t been able to take care of herself. He had gone out scrounging because of her! He had died because of her, too. Then her mommy had died, and that was Jillybean’s fault as well. Horrified at what she had caused, she backed to the end of the cell and cried.

“Oh, boo-hoo!” Brian snarled. “If I could get at you, I’d give you something to really cry about.”

“I’m sorry, Mister Brian and I’m sorry, Daddy.” she wailed.

Brian’s arm stretching into the cell seemed to get longer, his finger straining to get her. “Fuck you and fuck your crappy apology.”

Deep down she felt she deserved the bad words and the mean face that Brian was giving her. The hate was appropriate, however her Daddy’s continued look of disappointment seemed out of place. Shouldn’t he be mad as well? Why did he simply wear that look of disappointment she hated seeing on his face?

“Answer that question yourself,” he said.

“Huh?” Had she asked that aloud? She didn’t think so. “Well, uh, I don’t know.”

He shook his slowly, rotting head. “Come on. You didn’t even try.”

Even dead he was trying to get her to think for herself.
He hasn’t changed
, she thought to herself, and for that her heart felt a touch of happiness in her misery; she never ever wanted him to change. “Ok, maybe because you were never a mean kinda person and that wouldn’t change just cuz you’re dead and all.”

“That’s partially correct. How do you know what I was like at work or how I was that one time I came home with the front bumper of the car all smushed in? Don’t you think I was spitting mad then?”

She shrugged her thin shoulders. “Probably, but I never saw it.”

“Exactly.”

Her downy brows came down. “What do you mean ‘exactly’? Are you saying that when you’re dead you only act the way I saw you?” He shook his head. “Ok, so do you only act the way you did when I knew you before you were in here?”

The disappointed look vanished and he seemed less like a monster as he smiled. “Yes and that’s because...”

The words: ‘I don’t know’ wanted to jump right out of her mouth, but she knew better; he wouldn’t tolerate that answer too many more times. She was sure she knew the answer. She knew the answer even though she didn’t
think
she knew the answer and she knew this simply because
he knew
that she knew the answer—otherwise he wouldn’t have asked the question. That was the way he used to be...and still was, apparently.

“Becaaaaause,” she said, drawing out the word, giving herself time to think of a reason why he could only be as she remembered him down in this crazy place. Was it because he was just a memory? That couldn’t be right since she had never seen him looking like half a monster before, and she had never seen Brian as a charred and angry, talking corpse. Though it was a safe assumption that anyone blown to bits and then put in a jail cell would be very angry.

Was that it? Was Brian an amalgam of memory and assumption? Rather than answer the rhetorical question she blinked, thinking it was strange that she knew the words amalgam and assumption at all when she couldn’t ever remember them being used around her. Her mind pictured Neil; he was always using big words around her and it was likely...

“Stop it,” she hissed to herself. She had more important things to think about. Was Brian an amalgam of memory and assumption? If the hypothesis were true, why couldn’t she imagine her father as an angry man? She had to assume that he had been mad at times. He had to have been mad the time he smooshed up the car and he had to have been mad when he got bitted...

“Bitten,” her father corrected.

Again she looked at him oddly. Had she been speaking out loud or could he read her thoughts? “Doesn’t matter,” she murmured; she had a thought problem to work out. Why couldn’t she picture her father as a bitter and angry man, like Brian? A glance in her Daddy’s direction confirmed what she thought she would see: ever so slowly he was losing the grey tint to his skin and his eyes were gradually turning from yellow to white again, just like she remembered, and just like she wanted.

There was the answer:
he’s not angry
because I prefer to remember him as the nicest man who ever lived
—she thought to herself—yes that was it.

Her father nodded and with a smile asked: “And so what does that tell you about your surroundings?”

“I can control parts of it,” she said. When he again raised an eyebrow, she knew it wasn’t the full answer. “I can control all of it?”

His face fell and the grey threatened to come back. “I’m afraid not. We are in your subconscious as you might have guessed, but then again we are in
hers
as well.” He pointed a finger upwards. Jillybean looked up and saw that the ceiling of the prison had disappeared. Far above were the twin lamps of her eyes; they were impossibly far away.

“How can I be sharing my subconscious with
her
,” Jillybean said. The thought was disgusting. Again, her father lifted his eyebrows indicating that she was to figure it out on her own. The little girl slumped in defeat and exhaustion. “Just tell me. I’m tired of thinking.”

“Ok, darling, I’ll tell you. You share the same subconscious with her because you share the same mind. She’s you.”

Jillybean stepped back away from her father with suspicion clouding her normally sweet face. What he was saying was a lie.
Eve
was someone else.
She
was evil.
She
was mean and nasty and horrible. There was no way they were the same person and only a liar would say otherwise and as her father wasn’t a liar this couldn’t be him. “She’s not me,” Jillybean hissed. “She is a monster who only tookted me over. Like Ipes did that one time.”

“He did it more than once,” her father said. “And do you know how he could do that?”

Jillybean’s eyes began to dart back and forth, looking pretty much everywhere save up at her father’s face. Was he suggesting that Ipes had been in her? Was he saying that Ipes wasn’t real? “I don’t know how he did it,” she said stiffly. “He never told me.”

“That’s because you knew. You knew where his voice came from. It’s not like he had lips or a tongue. His words came from you because his thoughts came from you. You created him because you needed him to keep the loneliness at bay, and to drive away your fears. He was in here helping you.”

“No,” she said, taking a little step back. Just then she couldn’t have managed more; her legs felt wobbly beneath her. “No, he was real. He had a body. He-he was a z-zebra.” She could picture her old friend, perfectly: his little ears, his big nose, his beady black eyes, and his spiking mane. He had been real, she knew it—
But he was a toy
—a voice spoke in her mind—
before your mommy died he had been just a toy
.

“Yes, you made him up,” her daddy said. “He was just a ghost of your subconscious like me and like her.” Again, he pointed upwards. Jillybean’s chin canted up and her eyes followed the line of his finger. He went on: “A mind that’s damaged or subject to incredible stress can do these sorts of things to protect itself. You created Ipes because you needed a way to deal with your fear of being alone. That first bounty hunter started a fissure in your mind and, with every subsequent danger, that fissure grew, until Ipes was thrown away. With Ipes gone, there was nothing left in your mind to protect you so you created
her
in order to deal with the dangers in this world.”

“And I made her?” That seemed altogether impossible. Eve was evil in a way that Jillybean could scarcely comprehend.

Her father tilted his head in a manner that suggested he doubted her words. It was an ‘Are you sure?’ sort of look. “Really? You don’t know evil? Look around at these cages.” They were filled with her victims. “You know death and you know pain. And you know evil with the intimacy of a lover.”

“But not all of this is my fault,” Jillybean said stamping her foot. She pointed at the burned corpse of Brian. “That man worked for the River King. He was going to turn me over to him if he caught me. And those people,” she pointed over at a group of wretches, some of whom had burns and others were wrinkled in way that suggested they had spent a lot of time submerged beneath the water, while others had holes in them or large chunks missing—they were people who had died when the ferry boats sank. “Those people threw things at Ram and they let him get bitten and they cheered when he turned into a monster. They were the evil ones.”

“And them?” her father asked, pointing to a particularly shredded-up group.

“You know who they are,” she said fiercely. Their robes gave them away as being Believers. “You know who they are and what they stood for and what they allowed.”

“So it was ok to kill them or let them get eaten by monsters?”

Jillybean opened her mouth to denounce them but there was one thing she was certain of: no one deserved the death they had suffered.

Her father smiled in his old kindly fashion. “That is correct,” he said, “and that’s why you created
her
. My Jillybean isn’t a killer and never was. She was supposed to go to the second grade, and have friends, and play the part of the Scarecrow in the school play, and bring home pictures to hang on my walls, and straight-A report cards to go on the refrigerator. My darling, little Jillybean was never supposed to be put in a position to kill or be killed and so you made her.”

Realization started to slip in: Jillybean saw Ipes as he really was, simply a toy. His lips never moved and his eyes never blinked. His words were her words, only they had been retrieved from a part of her—
your subconscious
—the voice said. Yes, that part. The part of her she didn’t quite understand; the part of her she was in at the moment.

“So why am I here?” she asked. Again, her father gave her ‘The look’. She knew the answer. She sighed, a sound that wisped up from her soul. “I made her to deal with the harder things in life and now she’s too strong for me to control?”

“Sorry, but yes,” he said. “She is you, only she’s the part of you that was never ever supposed to happen.”

Those were nice words but they soothed her little. “And can I get rid of her like I lost Ipes?” Another of his irritating eyebrow lifts told her she wasn’t going to be so lucky. “So how do I stop her? She’s stronger than me. I mean, really, really stronger.”

“I wish I knew,” her daddy replied. “She’s stronger than you because she has to be everything you are not. You created her to hurt people, to kill them. You created her to thrive in a world that wasn’t made for seven-year-old orphans. She’s strong but so are you. You are the original Jillybean. She’s only a flawed copy. You must fight her with everything you have or she will kill again.”

Thoughts and images flashed in her mind: her hand snapping up a shiny pistol. Ipes flying through the air and her thinking that the toy wasn’t important; her life was in danger and she fired the gun with all the compassion the rain showed for the mountain. Another image: the grenade and the block of C4 taped together and thrust down the hole where five-hundred gallons of diesel was stored—yes, the guard would die, but other lives, lives that were more important to her, were on the line…the same line that stretched from the grenade pin to her hand. She was so close when it blew up that she thought her mind had exploded along with the barge.

There were other images, however they came in a blur and she didn’t try to understand them. The images came with varying degrees of pain; needles that dug into her flesh searching for the nerves that ran right up into her soul.