“Yes,” Fred agreed, “however she is also immature and she’s letting her heart dictate to her brain. It’s clear she loves her friends and it’s also clear that she will risk all of our lives to save theirs.”
There was a silence after the statement, one that even Jillybean didn’t break; the truth of what Fred had said had made her numb all over. Ipes raised a soft eyebrow. He’s right, but of course I’ve been saying the same thing for days now.
“Oh shush,” Jillybean warned, under her breath.
Fred seemed pleased as the quiet drew out; his smile grew as it went on. “So I guess, since there aren’t any more suggestions, we should stay put and weather the storm, so to speak.”
Most shrugged or nodded slightly, agreeing, yet one man stood and cleared his throat timidly, and like Jillybean, he raised a hand to be recognized.
The smile on Fred’s face dimmed in brightness at the sight of it. “Yes?”
“I’m with the girl,” he announced. “We should leave, and as soon as possible.”
“Who are you?” Fred demanded. Jillybean didn’t recognize him either. He was of average height, pale, with no chin whatsoever; it was like the skin beneath his lip just dribbled down towards his Adam’s apple.
He’s not with the people from the Floating Island, Ipes said.
“And he wasn’t one of the prisoners, me and Neil rescued,” Jillybean added. The only group left was made up of the ex-whores of the Colonel’s and it went without saying that he wasn’t one of them.
“My name is Ernest. I’m new,” the stranger said. He gestured to the person next to him, one of the ex-prisoners: a sallow-faced man with dark eyes named Travis Dunn. “Travis, here will vouch for me.”
Travis nodded his head and then half stood. “Yeah, Ernie’s a good guy. We came across him yesterday when we were scrounging on the east side of the base.”
Fred Trigg came to stand over Ernest. He squinted down at him, suspiciously. “How do we know he’s legit? For all we know he’s one of the River King’s hunters.”
Travis had already sat down but in order to answer he went back to his half-crouch. “No way. Look at his gun. It’s a freaking .22 for Christ’s sake. Ain’t no hunter or slaver gonna use no .22. Besides he was alone.”
“Did you check his stuff for a walkie-talkie?” Fred asked. “He could have friends nearby.”
Travis started to hem and haw without actually answering, and it was up to another of the ex-prisoners to admit, “No. He seemed pretty legit so we didn’t bother.”
“Then we should check it now,” Fred declared.
Ernest gave a slope-shouldered shrug and then lifted his pack from the floor and set it on the table in front of him for all to see. “I don’t have anything to hide,” he said. “I was heading west out of Ohio and was looking for a way to cross the Mississippi when I met Travis and his friends. Really, I didn’t know anything about your problems with the River King until they told me. Personally, I think you should hightail it east, you know, maybe head out to Virginia or Georgia. That makes sense to me.” After all the problems they’d had there, the word ‘Georgia’ was taboo among the group and a whispering commenced that Ernest caught. “Okay maybe not Georgia.”
Fred scoffed, “Of course not Georgia.” On his own authority, he poked around in Ernest’s backpack; after a few minutes of ineffectual pawing he dumped out the contents. In the pile there were some extra clothes and some odds and ends: two partially eaten MREs, a Bible with two heavy rubber bands belted around it, and a couple of boxes of .22 caliber bullets; in other words, nothing to tie Ernest to the River King.
Looking disappointed, Fred opened up one of the ammo boxes and fingered the tiny bullets. He grunted, apparently satisfied, and dropped the box onto the pile. Ipes was satisfied as well. He snorted at the sight of the .22s and asked, How did he make it this long using a tiny gun like that?
Jillybean didn’t have a clue. She only knew that Ernest had stood up for her when no one else would and that was good enough. “Could you please, Mr. Ernest, Sir tell us why you think we should leave?” she asked with a good deal of hope in her voice.
“Because you’re being obvious,” he said. This stunned Jillybean because she would have never used the word obvious to describe herself; maybe it was true of Ipes who could be a bit of a loudmouth but certainly not herself. Ernest went on, “Yes, obvious. You blew up a bridge for goodness sakes. There’s only one place you could get all the material to do that and that’s here. Fort Campbell is the closest military base there is to Cape Girardeau. Trust me, when the River King’s men don’t find you on the other side of the river they’ll come straight here.”
The truth of what he said stunned everyone, including Ipes, into silence. Fred Trigg was the first of them who could spit anything out. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said, breathlessly.
“But where should we go?” Marybeth Gates asked in a frightened whisper.
“Back north,” Ernest answered. “The safest place right now is to get as close to Cape Girardeau as we can. The River King’s men will be widening their search parameters. If we get in close we’ll be overlooked until either the heat is off or you can make a decision on what to do next.”
Jillybean jumped to her feet. “I second the emotion,” she declared.
Fred ran a hand through his greasy hair and couldn’t help being his usual asinine self when he said, “It’s not emotion, it’s just motion and…and I guess I agree, too. All in favor in moving back north?” He raised his hand and in seconds everyone else had as well.
Chapter 7
Captain Grey
Despite the destruction of the bridge and the tremendous bounties being offered, the arena had been full for three straight nights as Grey killed man after man.
He had become nothing more than an executioner. What he was doing was just shy of murder. Grey tried to tell himself that the men he was killing were evil pieces of shit, but that was barely a salve to his conscience. His initial kill had been some guy named Demarco; supposedly the first man to bring slaves to Cape Girardeau and now, clearly, was a rival to the throne. The River King had spun all sorts of grisly tales of rape and torture in Grey’s ear to get him to, not just kill, but to kill with a maximum of bloodshed, because that’s what the people wanted.
“The chief saboteur!” the River King had hissed into the microphone, before pointing up at a white screen. The crowd quieted as the film version of Demarco began reciting a pre-written script in a flat voice, the gist of which was his culpability in blowing up the bridge. The video confession was artless and did not bother to hide the fact that the admission of guilt had been wrung out of the man by torture. Not only was he bleeding, he kept flicking his eyes off camera, nervously.
“Pathetic,” Grey remarked. “Sacrificing this guy won’t placate anyone. Your people are going to want the truth.”
“Don’t be so sure,” the River King replied. “The truth is ugly and points to weakness. If a little girl can ghost her way around the base, blow up the bridge and free a bunch of prisoners right out from under the noses of a dozen armed guards, what’s that say about their safety? That it’s an illusion, right?”
“And you think your people would rather live a lie than face up to reality?”
The River King smirked and answered, “Yes. People lie to themselves all the time and always have. It’s part of the human condition. I thought those Jews were just going to work camps...it’s just a blob of cells, it’s not a baby...it’s just water weight, pass the doughnuts. Sound familiar?”
Grey hoped the River King would be proved wrong, but he wasn’t. At the end of the screening, the people cried out for blood.
With the crowd screaming, Demarco was pushed into the cage opposite Grey. He was thirty-ish, thick, dark hair, bags under his eyes and a little paunch around his gut. He was a good sized man, but not an Adonis by any means. Nor was he a good fighter. He didn’t belong in the cage.
Without the least a
rtistry, he came barreling forward, hoping to grapple his opponent and perhaps smother him with his greater bulk. Grey stepped nimbly aside while at the same time he peppered Demarco’s face with three quick jabs. They were nothing, just little taps to feel out his opponent.
Demarco sneered at the punches and again rushed forward. Grey struck hard and fast, a left and right combination, followed by a round-house kick to Demarco’s lead leg. The man stumbled to one knee.
The crowd went nuts over this, however Demarco wasn’t impressed. “I barely felt that, and those punches? Pathetic. You hit like a pussy.” With barely a pause, he swung a couple of haymakers. Grey let the first whistle on by, but the second he ducked under and then pistoned out with his legs, tackling Demarco. In a blink, Grey was on top of him and raining down punches relentlessly. With his face turning to pulp, Demarco had no choice but to spin and give up his back.
Grey immediately latched on, slamming his forearm across Demarco’s throat with a rear-naked choke and in seconds Demarco was just a limp body.
The River King came to stand at the cage entrance. In one hand he held a microphone and in the other was a twelve-inch hunting knife. “Who wants to see this guy’s head come off?” The crowd roared its approval at the idea. The River King smiled and sauntered forward, holding the knife out. Beneath the noise of the crowd, he said, “You brought this on yourself, faking Bone Crusher’s death. You see, now I can’t trust you.”
When Grey kept his hands at his sides, the River King shrugged. “Either his head is coming off or yours is.”
Grey considered his position, dispassionately. He could allow himself to be killed or he could go on killing for the entertainment of a city full of ghouls. On the one hand, his death would be gruesome but relatively quick, and on the other his soul would blacken as it piled up an unknown number of innocent deaths on it…except most of the people he would face weren’t exactly innocent.
“That’s just an excuse,” he said. But there were still innocents involved, Sadie and Eve. He could be their only way out if he just kept his head about him.
“What did you say?” the River King asked.
The captain held out his hand for the knife. “Gimme.” Demarco’s head came off slowly and with a God-awful amount of blood. Grey sawed and sawed, keeping his eyes practically shut and his face screwed into a grimace. When the last string of flesh parted and the head came free, the River King clapped him on the shoulder.
“Hold it up,” he said. “Show it off.”
The crowds whooped it up and Grey threw off the last vestige of fear over his soul. These people were animals…no, worse than that, they were fiends.
When Grey had turned a full circle holding the head aloft, he casually tossed it to the River King who couldn’t dodge it in time. The head left a wet smear on the king’s clothes.
That had been the first execution.
There had been two more just like it on successive days. The last had been Dixon. He had put up much more of a fight than the previous two, even managing to strike Grey twice. These punches didn’t do much other than to mar his flesh with a couple of bruises, however Grey had injured himself in the fight. At one point, Dixon ducked a punch and instead of receiving Grey’s blow flush on the nose, the fist struck him on the hard knot on his forehead, breaking a bone in Grey’s right hand.
Now his hand was swollen and he couldn’t ball it into a proper fist, a fact he did his best to hide from the other cage fighters. If they found out, it would make staying alive that much harder.
The River King was delighted with the injury. “Excellent! You were making the fights look too easy. It makes making any money near impossible. Do you know what the Vegas line was on you for the Dixon fight? Thirty five to one!” He looked to Grey to share in the sadness of it all, but Grey just sat in his cage wearing a weary look.
“What a pity,” was all he said.
“It is a pity that you don’t seem to understand your role here. Your one job is to make me money. If you can’t do that then you’re useless. Now let’s see.” The River King turned to look at the other fighters in the cells. There were an even dozen of them; most sported bruises or ugly jailhouse stitches. A few looked large and tough. The king didn’t choose one of them. “Ben, stand up, let me have a look at you.”
Ben was tall and slim, much like Dixon had been. Grey shook his head. “Too small.”
“Don’t be so quick to judge a book by its cover,” the River King admonished. “Ben here is a scrapper. He used to wrestle and he’s got some of the same ju-jitsu moves you do.”
“No,” Grey replied. He had seen too much of Ben to want to fight him. He was a young and pleasant man, cordial and respectful of others—not the kind of man who deserved to die with Grey’s hands around his throat. “Styles make a fight. No one is going to want to watch the two of us rolling around on the ground.”
The River King considered this, nodding his head gently. “Maybe you’re right. At least this early. It’s too bad Monroe died. That would’ve been a good fight.”
“Maybe you should consider an alternative to fights to the death. You could have the winning fighter look for a thumbs up from the crowd just like in Roman times. You would be able to keep a larger retinue.”
“Nope. Wouldn’t work. You’ve seen the crowd; all they want is blood and more blood.”
“Then maybe the winning fighter should look to you,” Grey suggested. “It would cement your authority over life and death.”
“Ha!” the River King exclaimed, smacking his hands together. “I like it. Excellent idea, Grey.”
“I’m glad you like it. Now, do me a favor and let me see Sadie.”
The king ran a hand through his black hair and eyed Grey closely. “Why?”
“Because I want to see that she’s being taken care of properly. I won’t fight unless I see her with my own eyes.”
The king considered this for a time and then shrugged as if he didn’t care. “Fine, but don’t think for a second I’m oblivious to your true motivations. You’re hoping to escape. You’re hoping that Jillybean will come through with some sort of silly rescue plan. Maybe I should put your mind at ease. I know exactly where Jillybean is. Even as we speak, she’s heading right for Cape Girardeau, leading all sixty of the escapes right back to me.”
“What?” Grey asked in a whisper. This news hurt worse than anything he’d felt in the arena. “Jillybean wouldn’t…she wouldn’t do that.”
“Oh, yes she would. You seem to forget, Grey, that she’s just a kid. Maybe she’s got some natural intelligence, but beneath that, she’s just a kid and thus very predictable. Too bad for Neil and the rest that they put so much faith in her, but lucky for me. By this time tomorrow, I’ll have my prisoners back, and thanks to you, I have taken care of most of the riff-raff around here who could’ve challenged my authority, and in three day’s time I’ll fetch my new bridge and cement my power forever. Not bad. I could almost thank you, Grey. Without you, none of this would have happened.”
Chapter 8
Jillybean
Ernest seemed particularly attached to Jillybean. As they prepared to abandon Fort Campbell, he was always hanging around her to the point that Ipes became agitated. The zebra, who was lounging on top of Jillybean’s pillow with one of his hooves tucked behind his head, said, It isn’t normal fora grown man to take such an interest in a seven-year-old girl; everyone knows that.
Jillybean, who had been flattered by all the attention the older man had given her, replied, “He’s just nice is all. He at least thinks I’m smart, not like some zebras I know.”
That’s not the point. All this attention is not what anyone, including your daddy would say is natural, Ipes said. Who knows? Maybe he’s one of those pedophiles. There’s no way to really tell, not until it’s too late.
“Oh stop,” Jillybean said, irritably. “If there’s no way to tell then you can be mis-insulting him for nothing. And that’s not nice at all. That’s what I think. So
far he’s just been a nice person and I think you’re being jealous. Now, stop being such a lazy bones and make yourself useful. Help me pack.”
Packing required little more than her going through her Ladybug backpack and ridding it of the odds and ends that were taking up too much room and only adding to the weight of it. So far she had set aside a neon yellow water pistol, a stapler with a butterfly decal on top, and a white dress that wasn’t the one Ram had found for her way back when. That dress she had lost when the River King’s men took her I’m a Belieber backpack. But it was close enough and at the last minute she decided to keep it. Before putting it in its plastic bag she had folded it as neatly as she could manage, which meant it was very wrinkled.
Ipes looked at it quizzically. A replica of another dress? Will you ever wear it? he asked.
“That’s not the point,” she answered. “That dress was a gift, maybe the nicest gift I ever got.” She paused, thinking about the day she first met Ram. He had been tied to a tetherball pole and had been within minutes of being eaten alive by little kid monsters. The image of his face in her mind caused her throat to go tight. He was supposed to have died with her that day; they were supposed to have been monsters together for all time. But now only he was a monster.
With her lips pressed tightly together, she placed it on top of the other oddities in her pack. “And I can pretend it’s the same, so it stays. You never know, there could be, like a ball with dancing and music and such. I want to be prepared just in case.”
Sure, that could happen, Ipes said, sarcastically.
In Jillybean’s mind, it could definitely happen. The possible limits of what could happen ended at her imagination, which was near on limitless. She could easily envision a ball in Colorado once they had made it safe and sound. Neil would be there and he would do a father-daughter dance with Sadie. And Captain Grey would dance with Deanna because they were both tall and pretty.
The Undead World (Book 5): The Apocalypse Renegades Page 6
