He was happy to be alive and yet he couldn’t take anymore laughter without medication. As Deanna sat with Grey, holding his hand and smiling into his eyes, Neil took charge of the Tylenol as well as pretty much everything else. He gathered the vehicles, made sure they were topped off, assigned the order of march and drove the lead vehicle.
For the second to last leg of the journey, Grey slept. Not a part of it or most of it, he slept through all of it, and when they made camp outside of Wenatchee and everyone went to search for the last note of Jillybean’s he stayed back to “guard” the vehicles, but in fact slept some more. On one level, he was happy to be alive, but on another, much greater level, he was just plain exhausted.
He was still sleeping when Neil found the last note at the Wenatchee Walmart, one of the few places Jillybean had mentioned visiting the last time she had been through the town. It was a simple note and yet once again, Grey saw his own exhaustion mirrored in the girl’s handwriting:
Hi,
We’re good. 2-522-east end of Snohomish River Bridge at ten at nite.
See you soon,
Jil
In the last note she had misspelled her name and in this one she was so tired that she had shortened it to three letters and even then the ink was light, as if she lacked the strength to press down properly.
“What are we waiting for?” Deanna asked after Grey read the note. She was giddy, practically laughing. The bleak future that she had been facing only twelve hours before had, almost miraculously, turned around. “A ten o’clock meeting will give us plenty of time to sleep and more than enough time to travel. If we cut our sleep short and speed through the Cascades, we can be at the bridge by six tomorrow evening.”
“And do you think she’ll just be sitting there waiting for us?” Neil asked. “I’d say, not likely, maybe fifty-fifty, which aren’t good enough odds to rush things now that we’re so close.”
Grey didn’t think the odds were even that good. “No, Jillybean won’t be at the bridge a minute earlier than she has to be. This is where Sadie died. This is where the slavers are extra aggressive. She will be busy preparing: bombs, smokers, drones, cameras and whatever else she can cook up. If we have extra time, we should be doing the same.”
Neil and Deanna agreed and in the few hours before bed, the group cleaned their weapons, made sure that ammunition was equally spread and discussed tactics in case they were attacked. They didn’t have enough soldiers among them for Grey’s liking and he fell asleep with fear in his belly.
He woke up the same way and as they sped through the beautiful Cascade Mountains, the fear only mounted. He was facing too many variables with not enough assets to cover them all. Perhaps the most dangerous variable of all was Jillybean. She was a frightful opponent and an uncertain ally.
His fears had him antsy right up until they crested one of the final peaks before the highway went rolling down into Seattle.
“It’s just like she said,” Deanna murmured, her eyes sparkling with hope. Far away, past the dark city and across the flat waters of Puget Sound was an island, ringed with lights. “Oh my God, it’s just like she said. Maybe…” She didn’t need to finish her sentence.
He knew her thoughts because he was thinking the same thing: Maybe everything will be alright. Maybe we have finally found a safe place to call home, where we can raise our kids and everything will be perfect and normal just like before the apocalypse.
The hope in her voice was bordering on religious awe. Grey did not disabuse her of that hope. “Maybe,” he said, while inside, he said, Maybe not. There were still too many variables. He would only allow himself hope when they were safely welcomed on the island and he’d had a chance to look over the defenses personally.
Until then, he would worry.
With the drone over head, leading the way, they wormed their way down into the eastern suburbs, but did not get far before they saw the bridge, or rather what was left of it. It had been a double span, but one length of it had completely collapsed and the other looked ready to topple into the water at any second. It wasn’t even a full bridge anymore. There was a ragged gap in it that became more obvious the closer they got. It wasn’t a huge gap, only fifteen feet or so, but that was wide enough to make the bridge impassable.
Neil spun the drone over it for so long that Grey didn’t have to ask. “She’s not on this side,” Neil said. “I don’t see her on the other, but there’s a lot of tree cover so I can’t be sure.”
Grey checked his watch. They were six minutes early. “Have everyone stay back. I don’t want to spook her.” As Neil radioed the rest of the vehicles, Grey and Deanna stepped out of the truck and were greeted by a long groan of metal. The bridge, no longer anchored as it was designed was swaying in a gentle cross breeze.
“What are you doing?” Deanna hissed as Grey stepped out onto the cracked roadway. “She didn’t say to go on the bridge.”
He knew better. “She’ll be over there.” He pointed towards the gap. “On the other side.” They walked together, hand in hand and, before they got to the crumbling edge, they saw Jillybean coming through the dark, a tiny, solitary figure.
“Where’s Emily,” Deanna gasped, “I don’t see her!”
Grey didn’t either, not until Jillybean got closer and they saw her holding the baby. Perhaps it was the dark, but the girl seemed to have shrunk, while the baby looked big, long even. Jillybean was struggling under the weight of the child. A few more steps and they were able to see that Jillybean was just plain struggling.
She weaved like a drunk and stumbled constantly over the broken and fissured concrete. “Am I dead?” she asked as she came up. “All I see are ghosts.”
Chapter 47
Jillybean
The break she had taken in Colton had saved her. Had she not slept those eighteen hours, she would have died from exhaustion long before she reached the bridge. During the last three days, she’d had a total of ten hours of broken sleep. It had taken everything she had to keep ahead of her family, who always seemed to be pressing closer and closer as things went from bad to worse for Jillybean.
Minutes after she puttered the Camry out of Sprague, they had entered from the east and in the early morning light she could see the dust being kicked up by the passage of their tires. She had turned to make her way through central Washington and had immediately picked up a nail, blowing a tire. That had been a scary time, trying to change a tire on the long open road in full view of anyone with a set of binoculars or even a rifle scope. She had just hoisted the spare out of the truck when Emily reached her limit.
For days on end, the baby had been a real trooper. She had dealt with the long road trip as well as any baby could, but, as though the “cranky” switch had been thrown, she turned, not just fussy, but seemingly angry. She would go red in the face and scream at any little thing and would only settle down if Jillybean picked her up and rocked her back and forth.
It made the trip a slow hell. When she wasn’t rocking Emily, she was driving, working the drone, and trying to stay sane.
Sadie did her best to help. When the whispers and the screamers got too loud, she would wrap Jillybean in a soft hug with arms that spread like black wings, enveloping her completely. It felt wonderful, and had Jillybean not been so driven, she would still be in the first of those embraces, uncaring that Emily would have long ago tore her vocal cords screeching her brains out.
With determination found in no other child left alive, Jillybean had forced herself out of those perfect hugs every time and had struggled on. It was torture, but at least she knew there would be light at the end of the tunnel. In this case, the light was literal. A few hours before, she had stopped at the scenic overlook and had rocked Emily at the edge of a bluff. Staring out at the distant island with its glowing lights, she had cried until she didn’t have a drop left in her.
The promise of that island was what Sadie had died for and what Jillybean had given up her family for.
“Just
a little longer,” she had told Emily. It felt like a lie as those hours dragged on with Emily crying and monsters punishing their fists against the Camry’s armor, and the whispers escalating.
The whisperers and the screamers were constant now. And they weren’t alone. As Jillybean’s exhaustion began to weigh her down, more and more, and her insanity bloomed. She began to see shadowy things. They were stalking her, even in the daytime when the sun was straight up overhead and her own shadow was a blobby puddle around her feet.
She started seeing them right after she sprung her trap on the men with the pit and the truck who had tried to ambush her. The men had been predictable and easy to kill. It hadn’t taken much: shaped explosive charges, packed with three handfuls of screws apiece, some duct tape to secure them and a stationary video camera so that Jillybean could remote detonate the bombs and not wake up Emily.
Once the men were in the kill zone, she had let loose with the bombs. For her, it was soundless, save for a noise like spring thunder that slipped into the Camry. There was a flash, a brief flare of white light and then smoke that hung in the air for a minute or so. When it cleared, there wasn’t much left to see of the evil men who would have hurt her family. The only thing to see was some pieces of this or that flung about and a good deal of very dark blood.
She was about to congratulate herself when she saw her first shadow.
It was just a blur on the screen and was there for only a second, but she feared that it was one of the men who was somehow still alive. For ten minutes, she watched both the feed from her drone and the stationary camera, but saw nothing more. To be on the safe side, she took her .25 and went hunting, moving as silently as any of the real shadows around her.
The ambush was far worse in real life. The gruesomeness of it assaulted her. Even in the dark, the blood glistened and shined like oil and the shredded flesh hung like tattered sails in the trees and the bodiless heads had somehow rolled to a stop in such a way that they could stare at her as she picked her way through the carnage.
Jillybean was close to hyperventilating when that first shadow came again, flitting from one tree to an another, she emptied her gun at it and then ran, helter-skelter back to the Camry with the echoes chasing her.
Rewinding the digital feed had shown her the truth: there had been nothing in the forest. “Okay,” she had said, simply. It wasn’t news to her that she was crazy.
That lucid moment did not last. The shadows came frequently and the more they came, the more they began to resemble people. By the time she reached the bridge, the real world had ceased to exist. She was in hell.
And the only thing that made any sense was the baby, the bridge and Sadie, who reminded her over and over that the journey was almost done, and for her to hold on.
She had meant to spend the time between when she got there and the arrival of the others, preparing for the biggest fight of her life. The bandits in Seattle would have to be dealt with if her family had any chance at getting through to Bainbridge. She should have been setting up traps, roadblocks and prearranged ambush sites.
Instead she spent it huddled beneath a tree with Emily in her arms, whispering, “They’re almost here, they’re almost here,” over and over again, while Sadie stood over them with her arms, now more like black wings, spread around them both.
When the long lines of trucks and SUVs finally snaked down out of the hills, Jillybean was suddenly struck by a terror worse than anything that hell could devise. After all this, she would now have to face their wrath and their hate. It was her judgment day. The thought became too much for her and she couldn’t budge from beneath the tree.
“They’re gonna hate me, Sadie.”
No, they love you.
“I don’t think they can love me anymore,” Jillybean said, her tears dripping from her chin to land on Emily’s face. “Not after this.”
Okay, maybe, but that was never the point, was it? You didn’t do this to get them to love you, you did this because you love them. Now, get up, it’s time. Suddenly the infant was as heavy as an anchor and Jillybean staggered. Don’t forget the rope, Sadie reminded her.
Jillybean had long forgotten it and, just then, she lacked the strength to pick the coil up. She reached down and took one end and began walking.
It seemed that the souls of hell didn’t want her to leave. As she walked, they zipped past, howling curses into her ears. Sadie would do her best to shoo them away, but there were always more, so many that Jillybean didn’t see the edge of the broken bridge until her toes were hanging off into nothing.
When she looked up she saw Captain Grey and Deanna standing across from her. “Am I dead?” she asked them. “All I see are ghosts.”
“No,” Deanna said, desperately. “You’re alive, so please stop or you’ll fall.”
Jillybean didn’t want to fall. She was afraid of falling. That was a rational concept, the first she’d had in many hours, and it led to a second. “You want Emily.”
“Yes,” Deanna said, eagerly. “But just hold on. How do we get around to you?”
This reminded Jillybean of her plan. They were supposed to stay to the east. She had it memorized: “Highway 203 to 18 to the 5 to 16, across the bridge and then all the way around. That’s the safe way to go. You can’t come over here. It’s too dangerous. But I have a rope.” She held up the end she had dragged along.
“I’ll get the car seat,” Grey said and then ran off, disappearing into the dark, leaving Deanna and Jillybean alone. They stared at each other.
Tell her you’re sorry, Sadie suggested. She stood next to Jillybean, the only ghost on the bridge.
Jillybean broke eye-contact with Deanna, dropping her chin. “I am sorry,” she said. She was actually answering Sadie, but Deanna thought she was speaking to her.
“It’s okay,” Deanna answered. “It’s okay, but you’re still pretty close to the edge. Can you just maybe step back a few feet. There you go, thanks.” Jillybean was now fours steps away; the two resumed staring at each other until Deanna strained an uncomfortable smile onto her face. “We’re not mad or anything. We were just worried.”
See, they weren’t mad, Sadie said. Isn’t that great?
“She’s lying,” Jillybean told her. “How could they not be mad? Deanna, especially. I stole her baby for all goodness sakes.” She snuck a peek at Deanna across the gap and found her gaping at her with her mouth open.
“Who are you talking to?” the woman asked. Before Jillybean could come up with a lie, Deanna said, “Never mind, it’s not important. What is important is that you two are both safe, and I mean that.”
Jillybean wanted to believe that was true and at the same time she needed for it to be another lie. She was about to pit herself against several hundred bandits, a fight she wasn’t prepared for. It would be easier going to her death if she had nothing to live for.
The slap of running feet could be heard just then and out of the dark came Captain Grey carrying a car seat and Neil barely keeping up. They ran to the edge where the bridge ended and as Neil tried to catch his breath, Grey studied what they had to work with to get his infant safely across the chasm.
“Stand back,” he ordered Jillybean. “I’m going to toss over the car seat. Don’t try to catch it, just let it hit the ground.” He brought it back and, as though he had done this a thousand times, sent the car seat over in a perfect low arc. It bounced on its bottom and then tumbled. Deanna gasped, perhaps picturing her baby already in it.
Grey put a hand out to her. “It’s going to be okay. The car seat is still good, it’s strong. Now, Jillybean put Emily into the seat and buckle her in tight. I mean really snug her down tight. Yeah, just like that. Next, we’re going to tie a timber hitch. Do you know how to…”
“Wait,” Deanna cried, her hands out, one towards Jillybean and the other towards Grey. “Are we going to do it like this? Emily could fall out, or the knot could come undone. No offense Jillybean, but…but the rope could be slippery.”
For the first time since Colton, she smiled, remembering Chis Turner, young and handsome, his hair flowing in the wind. She sighed. He was made up, a fake person, but that didn’t mean the memories weren’t real.
She was standing there, lost in thought, a dreamy smile on her face when she heard her name being called over and over. “Jillybean, hey, look at me,” Deanna was saying. “Okay, hey, I thought I lost you for a second. I can’t do this rope idea, it’s insane, so I need you to tell me how to get across. Is there another bridge or something nearby?”
Jillybean started to nod, but then remembered the bad guys and how ruthless they were. “It’s too dangerous. You’ll die. Anyone who crosses the bridges will die.”
Neil had finally caught his breath and was able to ask, “Did you do something to them? Did you boobytrap them somehow?”
Tell him, yes, Sadie said, speaking quickly. It’s a lie, but it’s for his own good. Sadie was right. Other than Emily, Neil was the most vulnerable person she knew. He was small and slow and weak. His only defense lay in the thinnest veil of luck and that couldn’t last.
“Yeah, it’s trapped,” she said.
“But you could untrap it, right?” Deanna begged. “For Emily’s sake. To keep her safe. A…a rope is not a good idea. Knots sometimes fail or come undone, especially when it’s dark out. You can’t see and something could happen and…”
She was becoming hysterical and loud. Beneath her voice were the whispers that had faded away. They were coming back. Fear gave them life and panic made them hungry.
Jillybean stuck a finger in her ear and wiggled it hard until she could think straight without the whispers interfering. “We don’t have to use a knot, Miss Deanna. Watch.” She dragged on the rope until she had all thirty feet of it collected in a spill at her feet. She then looped the rope once around the handle of the car seat and pulled until the middle of the rope was centered on the handle.
The Apocalypse Sacrifice: The Undead World (The Undead World Series Book 10) Page 50
