The Undead World (Book 6): The Apocalypse Exile (War of The Undead) (29 page)

“No, Mister Duke, Sir, I’m not chicken,” she replied. “I just didn’t think that the ‘splosion wouldn’t slow you down enough. My guess is that it’ll just make you extra mad and then you would go crazy or something. That won’t help anyone. Not you and not us.”

“You wish to help me?” the Duke asked with a laugh. “Why don’t I believe you?”

Jillybean shrugged, innocently. “Maybe because I have a bomb. It’s never smart to trust anyone with a bomb, ‘cept you can trust me. I don’t want to make you mad. I just don’t want you to go after my friends.”

“That seems unlikely,” the Duke said. “They are worth quite a bit to me. There are bounties from all over the place on their heads.”

“What the bomb is planted on is worth more, I bet,” Jillybean retorted, quickly.

This made the Duke’s eyes narrow. A second later he beckoned Brad closer and leaned close to whisper in his ear. Brad grinned at what he heard and then slunk backwards into the night.

“Darn it,” Jillybean whispered, guessing that they had figured out the short list of possibilities where the bomb could be planted.

Then blow them up!
The other girl cried in an echo that warbled up and down within her mind.
Blow them up, or I will!

This was no idle threat. Jillybean could feel snake-like tendrils spreading out through her body as the other girl started to exert control. “No,” Jillybean whispered. “I’ll fight you and you know what will happen. Our muscles will go slack and the grenade will fall. It’ll blow us up. You know that will happen, don’t you?” Jillybean gave her a mental picture and the tendrils retreated.

With a shake of her head she glanced up at the Duke. He was trying to play it straight, however it was obvious he thought he had Jillybean cornered. There really were only a few places that an experienced soldier like Captain Grey would plant a bomb: the courthouse, the fuel dump and the theater. The Duke’s look suggested that he was going to bide his time until he knew that the bomb had been defused.

“You know where the bomb is, don’t you?” she asked him. He shrugged, however he didn’t have much of a poker face; she knew she was right. “Well, I know you do, so the next question you are asking yourself is: why don’t I blow it up now and then throw my grenade?”

He shrugged, however it wasn’t with nearly the confidence of the last.

“Because,” she continued, “It won’t effect the outcome. If there was one thing that Ipes has taught me it’s that I should follow each possible course of action to its logical conclusion. That’s what he would say if he was here.”

The Duke looked nonplussed at this. “Who the hell is Ipes?”

“Oh, he was my zebra. But that doesn’t matter right now. I think I have followed every action and every word down their lines and I think I know what will happen. You will wait until Brad returns and then take me prisoner. If you act prior to that, then we will both lose so much more.” This was her warning to the Duke that he shouldn’t do anything but wait.

He nodded, almost as an equal to the little girl. She knew she was his equal, but only as long as she held the remote. It would be useless in minutes. She’d still have the grenade and with it she would maybe gain a couple of minutes more.

But only as long as you are close enough to actually threaten someone with it
, the other girl said.

“You’re right,” Jillybean said, moving closer to the Duke. When he backed away, eyeing the grenade, she went to the truck that was only a few feet away. When she had come up, men had been heaving boxes of ammo, water, food and extra fuel into the rear. All of it was still in the back. She rested her grenade hand on the tailgate.

“Well, you are something,” the Duke said.

This didn’t make any sense to the logic-minded girl. If she wasn’t something then she would be nothing and that didn’t make any sense because she was really real. “I am a girl, Mister Duke, Sir,” she told him. “And I am seven now.”

“Shame you won’t make it to eight years old,” he said.

It took her a moment to realize that had been a threat
. Kill him
, the other girl demanded.
Kill him before he kills us
.
Please. It’ll be easy. Just do what I tell you
.

Jillybean hissed: “No!” causing the Duke to raise an eyebrow. He thought she was crazy, a complete whack-a-doodle, but she didn’t care what he thought. He was a mean, old, bad guy and she thought of him as beneath her.

They stood in a stony silence as the minutes passed. Each minute was a victory for Jillybean. The remains of her family were getting further and further away. Twenty three of these precious minutes ticked by before Brad came jogging up and gave the Duke a quick nod.

“Fun time is over,” the Duke said. “We found your bomb and diffused it. Now put the pin back in the grenade or I will have you shot. You have until the count of ten.”

The men of the Azael began to retreat to a safe distance, Brad included. Only the Duke held his ground. In his hand was a .44 caliber monster of a pistol and he had it aimed square at Jillybean. It was very disconcerting.

“I-I just n-need to get the pin,” she said, pointing at the ground a few feet away. She began to edge toward it, her eyes never leaving the fat bore of the gun.

The Duke shrugged. “Fine, but I’m already up to five...six...seven...” Now, she rushed to where she had left the pin on the ground. She tried to snatch it up, however it fumbled out of her shaking hands to clink back onto the pavement. “Eight...nine...”

Behind her, she heard the hammer of the pistol click back. This only made her fingers go even crazier. They shook badly so that the pin was etching up and down as though she was graphing an earthquake. But worse: the pin was tiny, the hole miniscule and the dark made fitting one into the other as difficult as anything she had ever tried to accomplish in so short a time. The pin just wouldn’t go where it needed.

“I got it,” she lied right before he said ‘Ten’. She stayed hunched over the grenade as she looked back at the Duke. Her smile went squirrely as she saw that he still had the gun pointed her way. All she could think about was the size of the hole that thing would put in her.

“Then put it on the ground and back away, slowly,” the Duke ordered.

“I-I...It is, uh, caught on my shirt.” She turned back to the grenade, fearing that it would suddenly squirt out of her fingers. “I’ll just be a second...ok, here it goes. Oh jeeze, I got it.” The pin scraped the hole and caught the edge. She wiggled it into place and then with shaking hands placed the bomb on the ground.

“Move away from it!” the Duke barked. She crawled a few feet away without looking up at him, yet knowing that the awful big gun was trained on her tiny body. “Now, you are going to tell me where your friends are going or I will kill you.”

As that answer was already known, she felt no qualm about blurting out: “Colorado.”

“No shit,” the Duke snarled. He stepped toward her and a second later she felt the metal bore push into the back of her head. “I want to know which way they went, and you’re going to tell me or I’ll splatter your brains all over this street.”

She wanted to lie, only she didn’t know any of the names of the roads they had traveled on and she knew that simply blurting out a random road number would never be believable. She was in such a desperate position that she even turned to the other girl inside her for help.

The other girl had no reply except to rant about the wasted opportunity with hand grenade:
You shoulda killed him. Next time you kill them all!

There wasn’t going to be a next time. The Duke pushed the gun so hard against her head that it seemed as though the gun pushed tears from her eyes. He loomed over her, a monstrous shadow, as he whispered: “I’m going count to three and if you haven’t told me what I want to know then I’m going to pull the trigger. What route are they taking? One...two...”

“I-I don’t know, Mister Duke, Sir,” Jillybean cried. “They never told me which...”

He cut her off by saying: “Three.”

Opening her eyes was a tremendous struggle. Seemingly, they weighed many pounds. She had never felt weaker. Her arms and legs were like great flesh logs that were as long as tree trunks. Her fingers felt far away. They were vague and distant.

Her first attempt at opening her eyes was a failure. She could only get her right lid up and even then everything was dark. Three tries was all she had in her before she was overcome by exhaustion. Deanna fell back to sleep.

Hours went by as she slept in a more natural and healing manner. When next she stirred, there was light, the thin grey light that marked early morning. As before, her right eye came open first, then her left. Neither was able to focus.

There were people, mere blobs. She could hear them talking, they had the slow rumbling voices of whales. She saw them move like bouncing clouds. There was something wrong with her.

“Whaf,” she said, through numb lips. A hand, long and pale white came up to her face. It was so strange that she found herself staring at it and it was only gradually that it came to resemble a normal hand. It was some time before she realized it was her own hand.

“Das ny han,” she whispered. For some reason she was relieved at the realization. She tried to see whether her left hand was still attached to her body as well. It was just like the other except she had even less control; it fell across her face, making her blink and it was some time before she was able to haul her eyelids up again.

An hour had passed between blinks and the grey light had been replaced by a warmer hue. The blobs had turned into humans, though they were fuzzy on the edges. She knew her fingers again; she made weak little fists with them. Even her lips were back to normal.

“I think they’re normal at least,” she said, touching them with the tips of her fingers. They felt slightly puffy but nothing to worry about. She explored the rest of her face with her fingers, discovering that everything about her was normal again...all except her tongue. That felt fat and dry and tasted horrible, like the bottom of a shoe.

“Uugh,” she groaned. Water was needed, badly. She tried to get up, making it to her knees without difficulty, but when she stood it was with all the fine motor control of a newly calved foal. Her legs wobbled and her head began to spin.

In a second, she knew she was going to fall and there wasn’t going to be any way to stop it. She didn’t even have the mental capacity to break her fall with her arms. The floor came rushing up to knock her teeth out of her head, but it stopped a foot away from her face.

“You’re awake!”

Light as a feather, she was lifted and, when her eyes focused on the face in front of her, she saw it was Captain Grey. He was crying fat tear-bulbs.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. She thought he was crying because there was something wrong with her–she certainly didn’t feel like she was completely alright.

Quickly, he wiped his sleeve across his eyes. Embarrassed, he answered: “Nothing’s wrong. I was just, uh, excited. I mean, happy that you’re awake, finally. It’s been two days.”

Missing those two days didn’t faze her all that much mainly because she had thought it had been more like two weeks. “So I look ok?” she asked, touching her face again.

“You look great to me,” he answered and then looked startled that he had answered in such a forward way. After clearing his throat, he added in a more professional voice: “Outwardly you appear as you always have but I should give you a closer inspection. Stick out your tongue.”

Her pale hand snapped up to cover her mouth. There was no way she was going to open her mouth with two day’s worth of built up morning breath coating her tongue. “Some water first, please. And can you ask Marybeth if I can borrow her brush. I’m sure my hair is a complete rat’s...nest. Hey, what’s wrong?”

His face had clouded over and his eyes had darted to the side. Something was wrong and not just with her. Deanna really looked around for the first time since she had awoken. The renegades were in what looked like a very large warehouse. The corrugated metal walls were sixty feet high. There was plenty of room for the five-ton trucks and...and a fuel truck? When did they get a fuel truck?

“Where are we?” she wondered aloud. There hadn’t been any warehouses of this size in the Duke’s town.

“Wichita,” Grey answered.

She was still a little jumbled in the head; she knew Wichita was in Kansas but didn’t know where, exactly. And there was another thing bothering her that was more pressing than the fact that they were in Wichita. “What happened to me? And what’s wrong with Marybeth? I can tell by your face something bad has happened.”

There were bags under the captain’s red-rimmed eyes and he was as pale as she had ever seen him. And his hair! It looked as though he had given himself a haircut with a knife. He told her their story and, as he spoke, she slumped further and further until she was as hunched as the letter ‘C’.

“Kay is missing? And Jillybean? This is a disaster. And I just can’t believe Eve is gone. Eve, I can’t…” Her throat threatened to lock up and her eyes wanted to spit tears. She was only barely able to blink them back. “What about Marybeth? Is she going to die?” Deanna asked in a whisper. Marybeth was on a mattress thirty yards away. Her husband, Michael was holding her hand while her eldest daughter, Anne fanned her with a towel.

“The truth?” he asked, just as quietly. “Probably. The bullet just nicked her liver. It bled like nothing I’ve ever seen and all I can say is that I hope I patched it up right. I’m not a surgeon so I just don’t know. And it wasn’t just the liver. I had to remove about three feet of her small intestine. There will be complications, that’s a guarantee.”

“I’m sure you did the best you could,” she said.

To this, he only shrugged. “I was just going to go down for a quick nap before I headed out. Both Marybeth and Becca are in need of some serious antibiotics.”

“You’re needed here,” Deanna said. “Someone else should go.”

Grey was just about to say something, but he ran a hand through his botched hair and then stopped and patted his head as if he had just remembered that it looked like a wolverine had sharpened its claws on his scalp. Deanna pretended not to notice.

“Uh,” he stammered. “There are teams out right now, but it’s very dangerous. It’s been so hot that the stiffs are lurking indoors and they’re acting...I don’t know, strange. They’re extremely quiet which means our people don’t hear them until it’s almost too late. We’ve had a few close calls. Neil thinks the heat is making them sleepy.”

“Well, I will go with you when you go out,” Deanna said. “I’ll keep you safe.” She gave him a smile, but it felt odd on her face as though her muscles were still not hers to control.

He grinned at her. “I can’t pass up a guarantee of safety from you, but first let me check you out.”

Obediently, she stuck out her tongue, followed his finger with just her eyes, allowed him to inspect her ears, nose, throat and beneath her eyelids. He felt along her neck and spine, but for what she didn’t know. He checked her reflexes with the knife edge of his hand and then he checked her abdomen.

“A little stiff, but that’s to be expected.” The remark went right over her head. He sat back on his heels. “You seem no worse for wear, however, I don’t think you should go out on any of the scavenging missions. There’s no telling if there will be any short term side effects and it would make zero sense to endanger yourself or your team by going into the field too early.”

“And I’ve been carried around for the last two days like a bag of dirty laundry. I feel restless, like I’ve sat around too much already. So…I’m going and there isn’t much you can do about it.” She raised an eyebrow to forestall any argument he might have.

He only shrugged as the air seemed to run out of him like a deflated balloon. “Ok, just wait until I’ve had a few minutes to rest. Don’t go anywhere without me. Promise.”

She promised and he offered only a small smile before he went to his mattress and slept. His mattress was three feet from hers. He was asleep in seconds, breathing deep and even. She found herself watching him as he slept; she couldn’t seem to take her eyes off of him. She studied his features: his strong jaw, shadowed with two days of growth, his nose, thin but with a slight bend to it from a long ago break, his eyebrows, thick and dark. All of this was offset by the strange haircut which gave him a boyish look. It made him look young and less gritty than she had ever known him. She liked it, though she knew he was embarrassed as hell by it.

At some point in her vigil, she fell asleep. She didn’t think that was possible since she had already slept for two days, but then she was awake again and blinking in puzzlement, her mind slow to focus. There were voices around her only they were mumbles as though she was hearing them from underwater.

Deanna sat up and the motion seemed to stop the voices; more blinks and her eyes grew more attuned. William Gates stood with his mouth in its usual propped open position. Ricky was there, half listening and half giving Sadie a lecherous eye. Sadie was pretending not to notice. 

The Goth girl was in her customary black garb. Unlike Grey, who looked years younger, the Goth girl no longer looked like the teen she was. A decade of worry and fear and sadness had descended upon her. It was a wonder she hadn’t gone grey overnight at the loss of Eve. Sadie had been dependent upon the baby to help her deal with her own issues and now that crutch was gone.

Normally, she would’ve turned to Neil, however he had gone through a transformation in the two days that Deanna had slept. There was an obvious wardrobe change, yet the big difference was his eyes. They were still baby blue, but the soft, almost naïve, look she was used to was gone, replaced by something hard and steely. It was a look that left no doubt that, although Neil was a small man and delicately cast, there was a depth and strength to him. Deanna also saw that he possessed a reserve of anger she hadn’t known before, and there was a coldness to him that was frightful if seen full on. She caught only a glimpse, but it was enough.

Grey was first to notice that she was awake. He caught her eyes but said nothing. Neil was talking and there was a sharpness to his voice that was as new as his outfit.

“I’m sorry, Grey, but we have to wait until sunset,” Neil said in a voice that brooked no argument. “The truck I saw was definitely one of the Duke’s. I remember it clear as day. They either know we’re here or they’re scouting. One way or the other, we can’t afford to give away our position no matter what.” Grey bristled and Neil’s eyes grew colder still. The smaller man wouldn’t back down. “No matter what.”

The soldier wasn’t so easily cowed and he knew Neil’s soft spot. “Even if means more deaths?”

Neil was a block of ice. “Yes.” Grey set his teeth for a fight but Neil held up a hand. “We have three hours before sunset. Use that time to get your teams up to speed with what they can expect. Three hours won’t…” Neil stopped abruptly as he saw that Deanna was awake and watching him. The ice in him thawed in a blink. It was disconcerting. Was she looking at Neil or some strange politician?

“How are you feeling?” he asked, with the warmth of his old self.

“I’m good, thanks. I just feel like so much has happened that it’s just…weird. I mean look at you.”

Neil glanced down at himself. He was wearing fatigues that he had cut at the wrists so that they wouldn’t hang half a foot over his fingertips. A belt cinched the baggy camouflage trousers at his waist. A green bandanna dangled from his neck as though he were one quick move from robbing a bank. The biggest difference in his attire was in his footwear. Gone were the crocs. In their place he wore sturdy Army regulation, jungle boots.    

“I guess it was time to give up the sweater vests,” he said. “They never served their purpose, anyway.” There was enough of the old Neil for him to glow a shade of pink as he admitted: “The truth…I thought they made me look bigger. You know, stronger. That’s why I always wore the thick ones. But that doesn’t matter anymore, does it?”

No one had an answer for this. Deanna would’ve disagreed. Projecting strength was even more important now than before the apocalypse. Now, a man needed to provide and protect, while a woman…well, Deanna wasn’t sure what a woman’s role was in this new undead world. Babies weren’t valued in the least and neither was a college degree or her knowledge of books and current events or her smooth, sophisticated banter that had made her a hit at dinner parties.

For a second Deanna found herself floundering, while Neil, this tiny man who was maximizing every talent he possessed, only smiled at her, making her seem smaller than he was.

“No, I guess it doesn’t matter anymore,” she said, wearing what she felt was a pathetic grin.

Grey saw through it, though he couldn’t guess as to the cause—even after a year she still felt lost and grasping at who she should be or what she should be doing with herself. “You ok?” he asked, concerned.

“No…I’m good. It’s just Neil in army clothes! What’s the world coming to?” She gave a little laugh. The others laughed along with her. For a moment, Sadie dropped the ten years hanging over as she punched Neil on the arm hard enough for him to wince.

“Ok, that’s enough,” Neil said, rubbing his arm. “You each have your jobs. Let’s do them and get out of this in one piece.”

They nodded, all save Deanna who was sure she didn’t have a job, just as she was sure she didn’t have a role. Neil left first, then William, and Ricky. Sadie watched them walk away and then sighed as if under a ton of bricks. “See you in a couple of hours,” she said and then left. She didn’t go far; there was a mattress lying on the ground against the wall. She sat on it with her knees at the height of her chin and dug through her pack.