The Undead World (Book 6): The Apocalypse Exile (War of The Undead) (31 page)

A second truck engine sounded from the other direction

“Quick!” he ordered. He slid down the incline and then hurried up the other side. They were being hemmed in by the Duke’s men—it was the only logical conclusion. A second bit of logic suggested that, since the ditch was the only real hiding spot, it had to be abandoned right away.

He reached back and took Deanna’s hand, pulling her up the steep hill. Travis scrambled up on his own. “Oh God! We’re fucked,” he said in a panic.

“Possibly,” Grey replied—what more was there to say? Fear was a waste of time and energy.

The rumbling of one of the trucks stopped a distance away, while a second truck continued for a few hundred yards and then stopped as well. Grey could picture what was being arrayed against them: fifteen men per truck, strung out in a line of a quarter of a mile. They would, in all probability, advance into the field and catch the three renegades in the open as they tried to cross the next airstrip.

By turning north and hurrying down the drainage ditch as he had, Grey had put his little group directly in the center of a trap which was now closing in on them. He bit back a string of curses and tried to focus. Surviving meant understanding his enemy.

What were the Duke’s men thinking just then? On the macro level, they would be confident that they had the advantage in numbers. On the micro level each man would be nervous at best and downright scared at worst. These were not trained soldiers. They had never tasted combat save against the mindless, stumbling masses of undead. Being shot at in return was a whole other can of worms.

Because of that they would instinctively clump, leaving gaps in their line through which three very quiet and careful people could slip—if they were lucky. Grey’s first job was to maximize that luck.

He risked another look over the top of the grass. A second searchlight had been added to the first. It swept the land north of them, showing Grey more than it showed his adversaries. When the light panned wide, zipping by at the height of the tall grass, it showed an empty field. They weren’t advancing yet, meaning he had time to move.

“This way,” he said, leading them deeper into the trap. There was a metal culvert ahead where a stretch of concrete jutted toward the fence. The Duke’s men would be leery of the culvert. They would crimp in toward it, fearing that it would be the most likely place the renegades would hide. Their line would thin as extra men gravitated toward it; gaps would form approximately fifty yards on either side.

On their bellies they crawled through the grass which seemed to rustle loudly beneath them and yet nothing was louder than Travis’ panicked breathing. He was on the verge of hyperventilating and sounded like he had just sprinted a mile. Grey was just turning to tell him to calm down when guns started blasting the night.

All up and down the Duke’s lines men fired. Grey wasn’t fooled. He had long ago developed an ear for the direction of gunfire and, even though the air hissed inches over their heads with the passage of blazing hot lead, he knew they weren’t being targeted; the firing wasn’t concentrated.

Travis, who was on the verge of true panic, began to heave himself to his feet, obviously ready to run away. Grey didn’t blame him. Three million years of evolution had programmed the flight instinct into him and he was just following his nature. Grey and Deanna had the same instinct, however, Grey’s training and superior intelligence superseded the urge, while Deanna was able to overcome it through trust alone.

Her eyes had been on Grey from the moment they had first seen the light zip across the field. In her eyes he saw only trust. She had put herself in his hands, totally. Trust was another evolutionary trait that allowed humans to bond and form cohesive families and communities. Trust mitigated fear and this was why she wasn’t freaking out like Travis, who, even as Grey watched, began to climb to his feet, ready to flee like a spooked rabbit.

Grey was faster. He gathered his legs beneath him and, still in a squat, launched himself at Travis, tackling him before he could give away their position. Travis tried to fight Grey but there was no way. The soldier had arms like banded iron and his grip could not be overcome by the spastic energy of pure fright.

“Stop it,” Grey said, beneath the last echoes of gunfire. “They can’t see us unless you stand up. Trust me Travis, I’ve been doing this sort of thing for a long time. Trust me and I’ll get you out of here in one piece.”

Over the course of the following minute, Travis calmed enough for Grey to push him on. They started to move not a second too soon. The next time Grey peeked his head up, he saw that the Duke’s men had started forward. They were moving with all the caution of men untrained for the task before them and if the night vision goggles in Grey’s pack had working batteries, he would’ve eaten those men alive.

“Quicker,” he hissed. They needed to move thirty yards in less than a minute for Grey to feel good about their position. Low-crawling wasn’t an easy thing to do under the best of circumstances. Neither Travis nor Deanna were experienced and, time and again, Grey muttered: “Get your ass down.” He knew, from experience, there was a tendency to lift up the longer one crawled. In this case they had about twenty inches of grass as their only cover. “Spread your body out,” he advised. “You’ll stay lower.”

When they had reached a spot that he could only hope would work, they hunkered down with their weapons at the ready, listening with fine-tuned ears to the crunching of grass that marked the enemy coming closer and closer.

Grey took his hand off his M4 to reach out and grip Travis’ shoulder, in what he hoped was a reassuring grip.  He gave Deanna a rakish smile to let her know that he wasn’t worried in the least. In truth, he was pretty sure they were going to die in the next few minutes. The Duke’s men had shifted toward the culvert just as he had expected, however someone had barked an order and the line had dressed itself, to a degree, so that the gap between the men was less than twenty yards.

Still, it was a dark night and the three of them were dressed in shredded rags that blended well with their surroundings. All they had to do was freeze in place and not breathe like a locomotive chugging up a sharp incline, which was exactly what Travis was doing.

The grip Grey had on Travis’ shoulder grew tighter the closer the approaching feet came. They were going to be found out for sure if Travis didn’t shut up. Then, Deanna reached over and put her index finger on Travis’ lips. It was like magic. Travis quieted. Even when the star-shadow of the man swept across their boots, Travis was like a mouse.

In a minute, the danger was thirty yards away and fading.

Travis let out a long breath. Grey did the same, only when he did it the breath was soundless. Now, all they had to do was keep still another minute before crawling forward and slightly to the right. They would lose their five-ton truck and have a long walk back to the warehouse, but given the circumstances it was a small loss.

The minute passed and Grey had just nodded to the others when a whistle blew and a voice began bawling: “Return! You missed them.”

Even Grey was shocked. They were screwed. Lights were sweeping all around them as if they were being directed by the devil himself. Grey could only wonder who it was after them.

Two days earlier:

“...Three,” the Duke said, the gun in his hand as steady as if it had been welded to his flesh. Jillybean squinched up her face, ready for the bullet that would end her life. She hoped that the angels with their harps and their little round baby-bellies and their absurd wings would forgive her for all the bad things she had done. Her concept of heaven was ill-formed to say the least but one thing she knew for sure was that bad people didn’t go to heaven.

Her mommy would be there and her daddy, too. Jane from down the street was a shoe-in because she was always so nice and Squatty, the old monster who couldn’t see straight would be allowed in on account that she had never hurt nobody and it wasn’t her fault that she was a monster.

But Mrs. Bennett wouldn’t be there; she had been mean even back before. Neither of the two bounty hunters would be allowed, either, because they were bounty hunters and that’s what meant they were as bad as anyone. And not Brad, because he had been bad from the beginning, or the Duke, neither. What could be worse than killing a kid?

She was about to find out.

“You are a tough one,” the Duke said, with what sounded like admiration in his voice, as he pulled the big gun away. “A gun doesn’t scare you. I suppose now-a-days guns aren’t nearly as scary as they used to be. Too bad for you, because I know what is scary. Brad! Get some men and clear me a path to the first post.”

Jillybean didn’t know where the first post was, but anything that was scarier than being shot in the head had to be really, really bad.

As usual, she was right.

Horsemen of the Azael came galloping up and forged a wedge straight through the zombies. In their wake, the Duke strode along, pulling Jillybean by the wrist. The second they had crossed the dirt ditch where the zombies had once trudged, the little girl knew where they were going. They had passed the gruesome marker on the way into town and the swinging kicking bodies, hanging by their stretched hands still haunted a distant part of her mind, down deep in that black she had found herself in earlier.

In desperate fear, she began to pull back on the big paw of the Duke, but it was useless. He was a giant, while she was a tiny thing. Sure enough, their destination was the light pole where eight bodies hung from their hands.

“No, please, no,” she begged in tears. Her little body lost all strength at the sight of the zombies with their crazy-long arms and the evil red gleam in their eyes as they stared down at the little girl. He dragged her on, her sneakered feet making parallel streaks in the dirt.

“Tell me where they went,” the Duke answered. “By what route and I’ll let you go.”

That’s a lie
, the other girl inside of her said.

“Help me,” Jillybean pleaded with her. Lies, half-truths, vagaries, and all sorts of deception were
her
strengths. If anyone could squeak their way out of this it was
her
, but it would come at a price. This they both knew. Perhaps the price was heaven.

Jillybean looked up at the monsters, terrified beyond all reason. The Duke would pull her up there by her hands and the monsters would eat her. She would scream and kick all to no use. It would be like a game of bobbing for apples and she would be the apple. They would take chomps out of her and slowly they would whittle her down to the bones.

“You want help?” asked the Duke, “Answer me. What route are your friends taking?”

One of his men came up with a length of rope. The man was young, young enough to see the terror in Jillybean’s eyes and understand it. He swallowed hard, bobbing his Adam’s apple up and down, yet he said nothing. The rope pinched, and the little girl cringed and cried, though not from the rope. The monsters were grinning down at her. They were grey where they had skin left. Where they didn’t they seemed like living skeletons.

The terror that grew in the seven-year-old was too much for her broken mind to handle. She felt a great crack open beneath her feet and then she was falling out of the world. She fell with a whistling that slowly faded as her hearing grew less acute. All sight began to fade as well as she dropped deeper into the dark crevices of her mind.

She thought that she was falling but she was in fact hiding. She hid and there was no one left to take over her mind and body except for
her
.

Eve, the other girl...the other twisted girl, grinned triumphantly. Jillybean and all her stupid niceness was only a memory now. She was able to pull her baby blue eyes from the monsters. She stared coldly at the Duke until his brows came down and for just a second he seemed unsure of himself. “I know where they will go,” she said. “Untie me and I will tell you.”

“No,” he said. “Tell me or die. Those are your choices.”

“And what happens to me if I do tell you?” Eve asked, still as cool as if they were talking at a picnic bench in a park and the sun was out and there were a hundred screaming and laughing children around them and everything was normal again in the world. “The reason I ask is that I want to see Neil and them die as much as you do.”

The Duke’s mouth came open. A grunt that was wholly unconnected to thought escaped him. “What the hell?” he asked, confused. Eve grinned up at him from out of Jillybean’s eyes; her normally smooth face and soft lips twisted in a sneer.

“I told you she was crazy,” Brad said from among the small group of men who had come to be entertained by another death. “She’s bi-polar or schizo or something that there isn’t a name for.”

Finally understanding the extent of the girl’s insanity, the Duke took a step back as if ‘crazy’ was catchy. “Crazy? I don’t care if she’s crazy, I just want to know if she is lying. Will she tell me where they’ve gone?”

Brad studied the little girl for a moment, before saying: “Yeah. She really does hate them. She’ll tell you what she knows, though she might charge a price.”

“I do have a price,” Eve declared. “Get the jerk-face out of here.” She lifted her bound hands to point Brad’s way. “He is a liar. He said I would be a Lady, but that wasn’t true, I know it. So get him out of here if you want to know anything.”

The Duke considered and then waved a hand at Brad in a dainty gesture of dismissal. “We’re wasting time, Brad. Go make sure the trucks are fueled and the men properly armed.”

“Ha!” Eve cackled as Brad frowned. “See you later ass-butt!”

The Duke rounded on her and there was a magnificent air of anger all about him. “That’s enough. Tell me what I want to know or I will string you up right now.”

Jillybean wasn’t completely gone. She was watching everything, looking out as if she were in a deep well where the walls were sticky wet and black. She wanted to scream:
Don’t say anything!
but her courage failed her yet again. Her fear of the rope and the dangling monsters was too great and her words came out as a whisper that barely made it to her own ears.

Eve ignored her completely.
She
was in charge now and she was stronger than ever. “They went south on the same road Brad tookted us here on. Neil isn’t very smart or creative. He’d be afraid to get lost to go any other direction.”

“They’re going back the way they came?” the Duke asked. “How far? What’s their final destination?”

She answered with a roll of her eyes and a: “Colorado, duh.” She then gazed south, somehow knowing where they were going. She pointed again with her two hands. “They’re on that road, only they’re not gonna stay on it for long. They’ll take a different road to Colorado. But they aren’t going to go there tonight. You shooted two of them pretty bad and if I know them, they’re going to stop.”

“Where?” the Duke demanded. Instead of answering, Eve held up Jillybean’s bound hands which had the immediate effect of causing a burst of curses to break from the Duke’s mouth. He yanked out a seven-inch hunting knife, but instead of cutting her hands free he held the knife in front of her left eye.

“Where?” he asked again, in a cold-as-death tone.

She glared at him over the tip of the knife. Not for a moment did she fear the knife or the Duke. That was the good thing about being her and not Jillybean. Stupid Jillybean was always full of fear. Sometimes for herself but more often than not she feared for others. It was stupid.

A string of dirty words screamed from the Duke’s mouth and echoed in the night. “Where?” he demanded, throwing her down and leaning over her.

The back of her head hurt where it had struck the road and his knee on her stomach made breathing almost impossible. Jillybean would’ve cried, Eve knew, because she was a weak little nothing. Eve was the tough one. Eve could endure a little pain and a little shouting. She had been made to endure the pain Jillybean couldn’t handle.

“Cut me free and I will tell you,” she said to the Duke. Their eyes locked and her determination was a force. In a second, he gave up his anger, seeing that it wasn’t doing him any good. When her hands were free, he picked her up and set her on her feet with an expectant and somewhat mad look on his face as if he was the one who was really crazy and just seconds from having a cataclysmic meltdown.

“I’ll need a map,” she told him. “Neil will give in and let Captain Grey try to fix Miss Marybeth only she’s gonna die anyways, I know. But he will try and they’ll need somewhere safe to stay.”

“And you think you know where?”

She almost let out an honest shrug which would’ve been bad for her. She was full of guesses, many of them likely accurate now that stupid Jillybean wasn’t guarding all the good knowledge. Now Eve was the smart one. “Yes, but only when I have a map. And I’ll need to come with you, too.”

The strange, explosive look on the Duke’s face morphed into a look of wariness. “Fine,” he told her, “but you’d better come through. And if you even think about escaping, I’ll haul you up there by your intestines.”

He grabbed her by the back of the neck and roughly propelled her up to the courthouse where the trucks were parked. The Duke’s men were all over the place. Some were getting the zombies back into position, while others were getting ready to go into battle. A third group was tending the wounded from the breakout. There were ten casualties all told: four dead, three seriously wounded and who weren’t given much of a chance to survive and three who had suffered only flesh wounds.

Brad broke the bad news to the Duke, adding: “We only have fifty-two men ready to go. We can count on another fifty arriving in the next few hours and another hundred over the next few days. If you want me to call up your Barons I will, but...”

“But what?” the Duke snapped. “But what!”

The volcanic anger caused Brad to step back. “But...all I was going to say is that this may not be the best use of your resources. I mean they may be more trouble than they’re worth. We’ve all heard the rumors out of New York and Jack Wallins saw the remains of the River King’s bridge, himself. They were the ones who blew it up. These people are dangerous, a little more dangerous than I realized.”

“Here’s what you’re missing, Brad,” the Duke said, clapping Brad hard on the back. “I am dangerous, too. Not only do I command armies of the undead, I also have a thousand men I can call up with a snap of my fingers and guess what?” He reached out a long arm and snapped his fingers under Brad’s nose.

“Make it happen, Brad,” the Duke said. “Send out riders to my barons and tell them I want them here as soon as possible. Those miserable bastards out there have something I want. I aim to get her back.”

Brad nodded judiciously before asking: “And your brother, the king? Do we alert him as well?”

“Not yet,” the Duke answered. “Let’s see if we can take care of this ourselves, first.” He looked down at Eve. “You had better come through for your own sake.”

Though she smiled up at him, encouragingly, doubt crossed her mind. It was like a whisper of fear only that couldn’t be possible since she had no fear. It gave her the chills and a shiver ran up her spine. It made no sense, which meant it wasn’t coming from her.

“Stop it right now, Jillybean,” she hissed. “You only think you’re tough cuz there ain’t no monsters around.” The Duke gave her an eye, but also a shrug. He didn’t care a whit about her. Eve saw the shrug and at first she couldn’t understand it, then she felt suddenly brittle as if she were made out of twigs and that anything could break her; her bones would be blown out onto the plains where they would crumble in the first rain.

This thing, this loneliness staggered her. It was a force nearly as strong as fear and it was new to her and it was horrible.

“I said stop it!” she yelled, suddenly, bringing her hand around and striking herself across the face. The blow was loud in her head and sounded like a whip cracking to everyone around her.

The Duke grabbed one of his men. “Watch her. Make sure she doesn’t hurt herself. I don’t want her damaged. It’ll bring down her price.”

The man was the same youth who had tied her hands so painfully. Eve wanted to hate him but all she could think about was her “price.”

You know what that means
, a voice said inside her mind.

“I’m going to be sold.”

A new, unpleasant sensation struck Eve. It was odd, akin to being seasick. She knew what it meant to be sold as a girl...Jillybean had looked up words that sent a new shiver running across her skin. She took a step away from the youth guarding her.