The sound of the gunshot seemed to shock her from suicidal grief to a dull-faced apathy. She let the gun go without a fight. “Where did she die?” she asked herself. “Yellowstone? Or was that Sergeant Steinman?” In a blithe, uncaring manner as if she were reading from an instruction manual, she began to recite her adventures. Every once in a while, she would interrupt herself: “Wait, did that happen? Did I dream that, too?”
She never answered herself, she just went on after a shake of her head as if to clear it of static. As she spoke she dwindled, turning smaller, becoming weaker and softer, until she was nothing but stained innocence and Neil couldn’t take it anymore. He dropped down and hugged her with the same fierceness that she had hugged him back when they both thought there was still a possibility for happiness. He hugged her as much for her sake as for his. He hugged her until she suddenly drew in a sharp breath and went stiff in his arms. “What? What is it?” he asked.
“It-it’s nothing,” she lied. He could see the lie in her eyes and the little secret smile playing on her lips. She kept looking past him at something behind his right shoulder. He knew what it was—she was staring at Sadie.
He knew better than to turn and look. Sadie wouldn’t be there and Neil would only have his feet knocked out from him again and he knew he wouldn’t be able to take it. His tears were damp on his face but his eyes were achingly dry and if he wanted to keep it together, he had to keep it that way.
“Let’s get inside, okay? There could be zombies around.” He turned to his house, but his feet stumbled after only a step. It hadn’t just been his house. He had shared it with Sadie and Jillybean. Had—that was the key word as far as Sadie was concerned. He’d never share a thing with her again except for the eventuality of an unmarked grave. “We’ll go to Captain Grey’s place. L-let’s take your car.”
He went to the driver’s side, however Jillybean had welded extensions to the peddles. “I’ll drive,” she said, hiding that awful smile. She paused with the door open before getting in and he had to wonder: had she just waited for an invisible Sadie to climb into the backseat?
Neil tried not to look into the backseat as he got in, but his eyes betrayed him and he snuck a peek; there was nothing but the usual Jillybean jumble: books and guns, clothes and drones, tools and bombs. The car reeked of some chemical that reminded him vaguely of sulfur, which made him think of hell, and that gave him the shivers.
“Sorry about the smell,” she said. “It’s the nitro. Dynamite sweats out nitroglycerin, you know. Me and Sadie got it from this mine. Did I tell you about that? Was that real? It was? Good, because that’s an important place. It’s got lots of gas. If we’re getting low, it should get us the rest of the way to Bainbridge when we go.”
In a twitchy move, Neil turned his head to her and then looked back down at his hands, somewhat surprised to see that he was still holding the little gun he had taken from her. “Right, Bainbridge. It sounds nice. Let’s go talk to Grey and Deanna.” He needed another grownup around. Just in case he fell apart, someone would have to watch over Jillybean.
With her perched on a couch cushion and her eyes at a level that scraped the top of the steering wheel, he expected a herky jerky ride, but she was well practiced by then and whisked the Corolla up the main drag through town.
Her sadness was now entirely gone, or more likely, it was being hidden by the mental poison that Neil figured would eventually kill her. Either way, she was all demented smiles as she pointed out the garage where she had built the armored Humvee she called Hank, and she grunted at the sub-station where she and Neil had fought with Shawn Gates, and she asked about her lab and if the monsters were still alive.
“I-I really don’t know. Sorry.”
“That’s okay,” she said, repeatedly flicking her eyes to the rearview mirror. She certainly wasn’t looking to see if they were being followed. “I figured that I would have to redo them anyhow, the experiments I mean. I bet the governor lady will let me. She was real nice and all. You’ll like her, Mister Neil. You two have a lot in common.”
Neil doubted if she even existed, and that went double for half of Jillybean’s story. A town that just happened to have children who her own age? A town where there was a handy priest perfectly positioned to dole out forgiveness for all of Jillybean’s sins? An island that had electricity, a working democracy, and was eager to take in a time bomb like Jillybean?
“I’m sure she’s great,” he said without enthusiasm. He tried to smile and managed to show a bit of teeth for a brief moment. He lacked either the will or the energy for more, and a large part of him envied the girl. Reality had given her a hard slap, but she had recovered, slipping back into the fairytale world she had been living in for who knew how long? For her, Sadie was still alive. As always, she wore her mental illness like armor. It protected her. Neil had nothing to shield him from the pain. His heart felt like an open sore that bubbled acid into his soul.
Crazy sounded really good just then.
Jillybean knew exactly where Grey’s house was and her eyes grew smile-lines around the edges. “Do you think Emily is awake?”
Neil hoped not. There was no way Deanna would let her anywhere near the child when she was in this condition, and who knew how the rejection would affect her. “Probably not,” was the best he could do. Deanna would have to figure out how to deal with Jillybean. Neil had his own troubles.
Softly, he tapped on the door and when Grey answered they locked eyes, and the soldier knew. And that was as far as Neil could go. His composure started to slip and the tears came hot. He had held it together long enough to deliver Jillybean to another adult.
“Hi, Jillybean,” Grey said. He had a genuine smile for the girl, however it was screwed on so tight that if it got any tighter, something would snap. He looked past her, at the car, at the night and once more at Neil. The smile became strained to the breaking point. “I-I bet you have quite the story for us. Are you hungry?”
“I think I’m always hungry nowadays for anything ‘cept canned soup or canned vegetables, or anything from a can, really.”
“We have some bread. Deanna made it this morning. Come on.” They went on to the kitchen, leaving Neil in the foyer on his knees and sobbing like a child.
Chapter 39
Jillybean
The armor of Jillybean’s insanity that Neil so misunderstood was incomplete and patchy. In some instances it was thin, causing only confusion in her, and in other places it was thick, hiding reality from her. Sometimes it was like a dream in which the world she lived in seemed to run parallel to the real one. In hers there was always something out of place, whispers where there should have been silence, bloody scalpels in a vase instead of flowers, wood screws in the bottom of her soup bowl.
Sometimes when she lived in this dream world, every breath carried with it a whiff of fear.
Walking into Captain Grey’s living room was like walking into one of those dreams. Sadie lurked in the corner of the living room like a forgotten shadow, while Neil, normally a social butterfly, hung out in the foyer alone making snuffling noises. After a manic hug from Deanna that snapped the vertebrae along Jillybean’s spine, the woman retreated a few steps with an apprehensive look on her face. She put herself squarely in the path to her daughter’s nursery and wouldn’t budge.
Only Grey seemed truly real to Jillybean. Only he and Jillybean seemed to dwell in both the insane and the sane worlds, simultaneously. Despite their size and age difference, the two were very much alike. They were survivors in the gritty way, the hard, hard way that was different from the others. Sadie was a runner, not a fighter, Neil lucked his way through the afterglow of civilization, Deanna could always rely on her beauty as a last defense.
Jillybean and Grey were killers. One used her brain and the other his physical skill, but when it came right down to it, they were efficient and deadly killers.
Grey set her down on a couch and sat opposite from her on an ottoman, his elbows resting on his knee
s. “Your hair has grown,” he said to her, touching a strand.
“You have new scars,” she replied, pointing at one on his neck. It was pink and jagged, the size of a large caterpillar and for a moment she was sure it would crawl right down his shirt, but she blinked and it was still there. “We heard rumors about you,” she said, pulling her eyes from the scar and forcing them onto Grey’s face, which seemed to float above his body. She was having trouble with her peripheral vision—the room seemed to be in motion around them, like the walls were squiggling.
With a big breath she focused and said, “We heard that you found a lot of troubles.” For a moment, his eyes flicked away and Jillybean saw through his tough exterior to the haggard, haunted man beneath and recognized they had one more thing in common besides their ability to kill. “You came back alone,” she told him. “I’m sorry.”
For a moment, pain clouded his eyes. It didn’t last. He blinked it away and was able to give her a grim smile and a pat on the hand—and there was the difference between a mature adult who had been trained as a soldier, and a child who had been on her own for too long. He would have his own ghosts to deal with, but they would come later, for now, he kept it together. Her ghosts were all around her and she couldn’t seem to get the idea that one didn’t belong.
“Have you heard anything about Digadio’s team?” he asked. “Any rumors about them?”
Jillybean glanced to the corner. “I didn’t hear anything, Jillybean,” Sadie said. Unlike the whispering that went on around Jillybean, Sadie was just as loud and clear as a church bell, yet neither Deanna or Grey so much as blinked. They acted like they couldn’t hear Sadie or even see her, and what did that mean?
The part of Jillybean’s brain that should have been freaking out over this was oddly muted. There was panic in her, but it was hard to tell what it was about. It was drowned out with all the whispering and what sounded like the hiss of radio static with only a few garbled words coming through.
And although Sadie’s voice was clear, she really wasn’t. As always, she was dressed in black and her hair was black and her eyes were blacker than black and, while Jillybean was watching, the girl seemed to fade into the shadows. “No,” Jillybean whispered, leaning forward, closer to Sadie, almost forcing the goth girl to remain present by lasering in on her.
Jillybean didn’t just want Sadie alive, she needed her to be alive. During the last two weeks, with every step, with every mile driven, and with every yard of every wind-sprint, the little girl had been more precariously balanced than any tightrope walker who had ever lived. Unknown to her, she had been balanced on a razor’s edge and it had cut her deeply. She needed Sadie. Yes, Jillybean now knew on some level that something was dreadfully wrong, but whatever it was, it was nothing compared to her need.
She knew that if Sadie faded away, then she would fade away as well. She would fade just like her mom had, staring into space and slowly dying…
Grey snapped his fingers in front of her face. “Jillybean? Hey, I thought I’d lost you there. You said, no? You haven’t heard anything about Digadio’s team?”
All she knew was that Digadio had left Estes while Hank the Humvee was still being gassed up. She shook her head. “That’s okay,” Grey said, although clearly it was not. “Let’s talk about what happened to you. Where you went, who you saw, that sort of thing.”
Jillybean thought she was going to recite pretty much the same story that she had given Neil. She thought she could have handled that without the same amount of confusion as she had shown earlier. But Grey did not want a “story,” he wanted a debriefing. He wanted exact details concerning every little aspect of her trip and when she tried to gloss over any part, he was right on her, grilling her as if she had done something wrong.
How many of slavers were there? What were their weapons? Did they have secondary weapons? Were their weapons clean? Camouflaged? Marked in anyway? Such as a tick-marks for a kill count? From what direction did they come and did they leave in the same way? What was the time of each attack? Was it cloudy? Sunny? Raining? Was there a single leader or an obvious chain of command. Were orders followed without question? Did the men grumble or complain?
And on and on, and then back again just when Jillybean was ready to pick up the threads of her story. In her opinion, the questioning was counterproductive. She began to question herself on stuff that had been rock-solid in her head. Yes, there were some things about Sadie that were a little fuzzy, especially near the end of the journey, but hadn’t Doctor April given Jillybean a medbag? That had really happened, she was sure. And the dynamite, hadn’t that come from the mining camp? And the bus, hadn’t it floated? Or had there been a bus at all?
“Yes…yes, I’m sure there had been a bus.”
“Good,” Grey said. “And what about the power at Bainbridge. Did you see the solar panels or the wind turbines, or was that all Sadie?”
In the corner, Sadie was mouthing something, only she was in a new shadow and Jillybean couldn’t tell what she was trying to say. It was more than a bit distracting. “Um, um, it was Sadie who told me about them. Or the governor, I think.”
“And the monster that killed Sergeant Steinman? How big was he again?” Now Grey had a shadow across him as well. His questions were like an ice pick in Jillybean’s head. “Was he wearing any clothing? Was it part of a uniform? What about the others? Were there five or six. You’ve said both.”
She tried to concentrate but found her head hurting. “He was naked, I think, or he might have had pants on, I don’t remember. But he was big. Like a giant and he was strong. So strong.” The vision of Steinman’s death played out in her mind, culminating in the gunshot that killed him. Jillybean jumped when the crack sounded in her head as if someone in the room had pulled the trigger.
A hand came down on her shoulder and for a moment, Jillybean expected it to be Sergeant Steinman standing behind her, ready to get his revenge. But it was only Neil. “I think we’ve heard enough,” he said, his voice husky from crying. “She’s told her story and I believe that you had offered her some bread, Grey?”
In a blink, the cold interrogator that Grey had become morphed back into her old friend. Grey smiled and said, “You did great. I brought back some peanut butter. Would you like a peanut butter sandwich?” He took her by the hand and walked her into the kitchen. Sadie was already there, sitting at the table, tapping the fingers of both hands on the wood as if she were typing a letter.
“Yes, please,” Jillybean whispered. When she sat down across from Sadie, she tapped the table as well, partially to cover up the sound of Sadie’s tapping, but also to reassure herself that the table itself was real. Nothing else seemed to be.
“I’ve eaten half this jar since I’ve been back,” Grey told her as he worked the knife across the bread. “It was supposed to be for Deanna, but I can’t help myself. I’ve just been so hungry.” Jillybean’s stomach growled at the sight of the open-faced sandwich. “If you want more, help yourself. I think the grownups have to talk about things, okay?”
She dug right into the bread which was soft and fresh, while the peanut butter had the consistency of icing. It was wonderful and she ate it, not at the table, but kneeling next to the kitchen door with her ear to the crack.
“What are they saying?” Sadie asked. “Have they mentioned me?” She had peanut butter on her breath and when Jillybean looked down at her bread, she saw that it was already half-eaten.
“Hey! Get your own. It’s right there. And so far, no. They’re talking about our trip.”
She didn’t quite understand their discussion, especially after she had gone over things so many times. Neil asked, “How far do you really think they got?”
“At least to Washington,” Grey answered. “I’ve been there and she described the Cascades perfectly. And this Colton place sounds real enough. For me, the question is, do they have a real doctor? We could have used one in California.”
Deanna let out a sigh. “I don’t see ho
w we can believe anything she says. Remember Chris? If you ask me Colton and Bainbridge seem like the same deal. Together, they’re far too perfect.”
“That’s what I thought,” Neil agreed. “But there’s so much detail to her story. When it was Chris, she made him sort of like Ipes, just sort of around advising her while she went on her adventures. If this is the same thing, then she might have gone all the way to Washington and back. I-I just don’t know how far Sadie made it.”
As if she was sitting right next to him, Jillybean could hear the rasp of Grey’s beard as he rubbed it. “If she can invent a complete person, why can’t she invent a hundred? And she didn’t have to invent Sadie, she just had to pretend that she didn’t actually…”
His words were suddenly cut off by a loud noise. It started off as a distant but very distinct howl that made her jump. Then it built until it was like the scream of a tornado. In confusion, she looked around for Sadie but the goth girl had disappeared. Where she had been standing was the peanut butter sandwich, lying face down. She went to reach for it, only her balance got turned around and she found herself falling not towards the floor but into a deep abyss that was made up of darker and darker shadows.
She fell and fell until she realized that she had actually fallen asleep. The night had turned to day. There was a golden glow around a heavy velvet curtain that told her the morning was soon to be the afternoon. She knew the curtains were made of velvet and not felt, because this was her own room and the bed she found herself in was her own soft bed.
At first, she just laid there, soaking in the sensation of “home.” It felt right being there. It felt perfect until a shadow moved to her right. Looking over, she gasped as she saw a figure standing in the corner.
The Apocalypse Sacrifice: The Undead World (The Undead World Series Book 10) Page 41
