“We didn’t make it in time,” he said, shaking his head, looking dazed. “Or they didn’t see the fire you set.”
Deanna leaned back against the wall, needing to feel something real and solid. “They were caught?”
Neil pointed back at the truck where a scanner sat blinking lights and letting out a warbling tone. “That’s what came over the radio about an hour ago. They’re transporting fifty-seven prisoners and two wounded back sometime this morning.” She gazed past him, trying to recall if that number added up. Neil shook his head having worked it out himself. “It’s right. I hope it’s theirs that got hurt. Too bad it wasn’t the River King. I recognized his voice. He was the one on the radio doing all the talking.”
Deanna’s balled fist thumped against the wall. It hurt worse than it should have. She opened her palm; it was red, hot, and blistered. Opening both hands, she compared the damage done by all the climbing and all the hauling and all the waste of time. She had seven blisters total; all were very large but only one of which was weeping fluids.
“Why does it have to be like this?” she asked Neil, without looking up from her hands. They had begun to shake in fury. “I mean it’s just a river. Why is it so freaking hard to just cross the river? Huh? Why can’t we just go from here to there without being molested and hounded every step of the way?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, in a voice made gravelly by lack of sleep and too much emotion. “Maybe because there are bad guys out there.”
Despite her anger, she smirked at his answer. “You sound like you’re talking to Jillybean.”
“Sometimes it’s easier talking to her,” he admitted. “She’s completely black and white in her thinking. You’re either a good guy or a bad guy. You know what I mean? There’s nothing in between.”
“It must be nice to live in that world,” Deanna said.
He nodded. “Yeah, it’s simple. It’s easy, and in this case it backfired. She can be too simple sometimes. And we both know she’s the only person who could have gotten the group to move from Fort Campbell.”
“She must’ve had her reasons,” Deanna said, coming to the little girl’s defense. Deanna was enamored with Jillybean—she was a certifiable genius after all. It was something hard to question. “We’ve been gone and no one’s heard the first thing from us. You can’t blame her for trying to do something.”
“No, I don’t blame her,” Neil said. “I blame myself. I left without any backup plan, without any way to communicate, without any manner of succession. Whatever happened to them is my fault.” He began blinking his blue eyes rapidly but to no avail; a long tear trickled out of the lower edge of his right eye.
“So what do we do?” Deanna asked. “Everyone is captured or killed but us.”
“Not everyone. There’s Sadie. She’s sort of free. And I would never count out Jillybean. Sure she’s practically cert…” He broke off casting a quick embarrassed look Deanna’s way.
Her brow creased with concern. “Cert? Were you going to say certifiable? That isn’t right, not after everything she’s done for us.”
Neil wasn’t easily shamed. “I don’t know if it’s right or not, but Ipes isn’t just a toy. He’s a part of her; a part of her that isn’t exactly healthy.”
“Meaning what?” Deanna demanded.
“Meaning, she is sometimes delusional, like a schizophrenic.”
Deanna made a face and waved her hand as she if was able to wave away his argument with the motion. “But Ipes isn’t dangerous. He helps her. He usually plays it safe.”
Neil grinned; it was a miserable look on his exhausted face. “Not always. I’ve seen it. Ipes would rather see us all chopped into little bits then see anything happen to Jillybean. He can be dangerous playing it safe because it’s her safety that he’s concerned with, not ours. But if she can control him then we might have a chance.”
Chapter 17
Jillybean
It was still dark, but it wouldn’t be for long. It was that chill part of the night in which dew appeared from nowhere as if by magic. The zebra shivered in the mesh pocket of the little girl’s backpack pleading with her in vain, Jillybean, please, don’t. You’re taking too many chances as is.
The little girl sat in the high grass, a hundred yards from the barge, rubbing her head; it felt better, less “jumpy” when she rubbed it. She had guessed the River King and his men had come by boat—they weren’t the type to dip their toes in these awful black waters, chugged with zombies. They might have been tough in the manly sport of attacking the weary and the barely armed but when it came to true danger, they didn’t have the balls of a little girl. And it hadn’t taken much of a guess to figure out where the boat was moored. It was a bare quarter mile downstream from the now crumbling bridge.
“They can’t see me,” she said to Ipes, hoping to calm him. “Especially since they aren’t even looking.”
The night before, she had watched from the cover the woods as the River King’s men had closed in on the school, cutting off all escape, trapping the renegades in a vise. At the time she had gritted her teeth in anger, both at the evil ways of the River King, and also at the renegades for their stupidity. They hadn’t stationed any lookouts; they hadn’t designated an armed response team. They hadn’t even picked out an evacuation route; in her eyes they had no damned sense at all.
There had been some sporadic shooting, some screams, and then a good deal of yelling as the River King collected his lost property. For an hour, Jillybean had sat among the vines and bramble of the overgrown forest, sniffing lilac and pine as well as sniffing back tears and all the while the River King’s men sorted and tagged their prisoners. They then went to work cataloging the items in the trucks, exclaiming loudly at the explosives amassed by Jillybean.
“I hope you blow yourselves up,” she had cranked in a whisper. Ipes raised an eyebrow but said nothing. He continued his silence even when the idea of blowing “something” up wouldn’t leave the girl’s mind. She began to fixate on the idea. “If I can blow them up then maybe everyone won’t blame me.”
This isn’t your fault, the zebra said. You tried to change their minds about the route, remember? And you suggested the lookout and told them to hide the trucks. No one will blame you.
Just as Neil would do hours later, she continued to blame herself, regardless. “It was my idea to come north. They never would have come along if I hadn’t talked them into it. You see? But if I could just…” Her gritted teeth relaxed slightly into a grim smile worthy of a veteran of a thousand battles as an image flashed in her mind. The vision was of bombs going off in a spectacular explosion that reached nearly into space.
You have just one bomb, Ipes said. In fact, it’s really not all that big. Almost a waste to even try to set it off. We should probably just ignore it, or better yet, we should leave it here next to this tree where it’ll be safe and sound.
“What are you talking about?” Jillybean demanded, squinting at him. It wasn’t a rhetorical question. Ever since she had seen the River King’s black boots, she had been having trouble piecing her thoughts together properly. One second she would be filled with the idea of revenge and death and…and other bad stuff, blood stuff. In the next second, she’d be keening sadly because she was alone. Very, very alone. The world seemed awful big and she was a tiny thing.
The duality of her mind was aggravating and disorienting. Strangely, it made her want to lash out in anger at the nearest being: Ipes. She wanted to blame him for everything, only she couldn’t. That’s because I was right, he said, pointedly. Just like I’m right about us getting out of here.
Ipes had pleaded for them to head back to Fort Campbell just in case Neil had escaped. The toy zebra’s idea was vetoed. Jillybean had other plans sloshing back and forth in her mind. She was hell-bent on either a rescue or great explosion of revenge. The problem was that a plan for either wouldn’t come to her. “I’m not close enough,” she said, and then began tramping through the dark, h
illy woods, heading westward toward the river.
The zebra infuriated her by trying to steer her in the wrong direction. Time and again, she found herself marching down the wrong gully or along a ridgeline that stuck up out of the earth like a dinosaur’s spines, but she wasn’t fooled for long. Memories flashed through her mind as above her the big dipper turned a gentle circle in the night sky and all the while the two stars on the end of the constellation pointed at the North Star, which, according to a dusty old clip of a memory, showed the way northward.
Duh, Ipes said. But knowing which way is north doesn’t mean you know where you’re going.
Anger pulsed through her mind. It was an immense thing, obliterating her thoughts, but just as quickly as it came, it dissipated. She blinked for a second, righting her mind, before pointing, first at the North Star, and then to her left. “Oh, yes I do know where I’m going. If that’s north, then that way’s west. I saw the map, Ipes. West is where Cape Girardeau is and where the river is.” It was also where she would find the boat; she knew it, and a great part of her knew she had to do everything she could to keep the renegades from getting on the boat. If they boarded it, there’d be no stopping them from crossing the river where they find themselves back in the prison; she was sure she would never get them out of there a second time.
No, she had to kill the boat before the River King got there. If she could, then she’d have more time to plot and plan; that is if she could find a way to straighten things out in her mind. Something was wrong in her thinkings. Her brain was sort of malfunctioning as she thought it. It was hard for her to describe other than to say her mind was as jumpy as a frog on a hot pan. Sometimes she was hot with anger, and a moment later, she would be cold with fear. And it didn’t end there, it was as though her insides were fighting a strange, seesawing battle: Hide—devastate! Cry—rage! Run—fight! For every Ying there was a Yang. She was sad then happy. One minute she was filled with bitter resentment and hated everyone, and then just as quickly, she felt hopeless at the idea of being all by herself once again.
You’re too stressed out, Ipes told her. You’re afraid and alone and all your friends and family are gone. That’s why your mind is reacting the way it is. What you need is to find a safe place to rest.
“No, what I need to do is find a way to rescue them,” she said. Determinedly, she had plodded through the forest until she came to the river’s edge. Behind her, the sky was a deep purple, while in front, the last tower on the bridge smoked like a tired chimney. There was no sign of Neil. In zombie mode she went up and down the bank, listening for him and looking for clues; she heard and saw nothing other than the barge. It was all dull steel and rust, with hulls that jutted five feet out of the water. It was some sixty feet of ugly metal and slapped on tar. A portion had been run aground on the bank while the rest stuck out into the river, piling soggy, river-zombies along its lee edge.
This is the boat? Ipes was astounded. You actually think it floats? I don’t think you should trust it, Jillybean.
He sounded innocent but it was an innocence that wasn’t justified. “You’re full of fakery,” she said when she couldn’t take his nonsense about needing to run and hide and rest. “You talk about stress and all, but look at what you did to me back at the school! You took me over and I couldn’t even move.”
I saved your life, Ipes reminded her.
“Well, if you try it now, I’ll fight you and you might drown us both.” Despite the strange torrents of emotions running through her, she was dead set on blowing up the barge, or at least sinking it. That meant she would have to go into the water once again. It would be a dangerous enough swim even without the zebra’s interference.
She opened up her backpack and looked at the single block of C4; sadly, it didn’t seem like enough to blow the whole thing to smithereens, but she figured it would put a big hole in the boat, one that would sink it for sure. She pulled out the C4 and placed it on the ground next to Ipes who suddenly became as quiet as a church mouse. She didn’t trust his silence for one minute.
“What?” she asked him, aggressively. Ipes gave her another one of his innocent looks. She didn’t trust them either. “You’re up to something I know it.”
I’m just sitting here, he said. She glared at him even harder than before and he begged her, Please, you are starting to scare me. You have to try to relax. You’re very upset. Think about it, you…you might get a cramp.
“And the River King might show up at any second, too.” She paused and gazed eastward, saying, “I wonder what’s taking him so long?”
She didn’t dwell long on how she was able to beat the River King back to the boat. Just as before, her mind and emotions leap-frogged; puzzlement shifted to anger, which, not long after, gave way to unaccountable fear. Her hands shook as she dug through her belongings, pulling out everything from the backpack. One of the items was a Ziploc bag that she carried pencils in; she dumped them out onto the ground and then placed the C4 in the bag along with the wiring and the detonator. Then the bag went into the empty backpack. Next, she poked about in the rest of her accumulated treasures and picked out scissors, tape, string, a screwdriver, a lighter, and a little bottle of superglue.
The pack went on her back and then she settled her zombie shirt over that, hiding it. “This is it,” she said, gazing at the boat, seeing the zombies scraping at the edges, trying to claw their way up. She suddenly noticed that there was a man on the boat. The fact that he might get blown up or drown, kept needling its way into her thoughts and she kept pushing it deeper into her mind so she wouldn’t have to consider the ramifications of murder. Internally, she rationalized: he’s one of them.
“Don’t try to stop me,” she growled at the zebra. By now, the first rays of the sun were turning the eastern sky orange and Ipes was no longer a striped blur. “Stay here and be good,” she said him. She was about to turn away when something in his beady black eye caught her attention. She gave him a closer look and saw he was hiding something!
“What is it?” she demanded. Again he produced a look of innocence. The fury was instantly back, spewing ropes of hatred out of her seven-year-old soul; it was a horribly, marvelous feeling that she could not comprehend beyond the barest minimum; it scared her, but the fear was nothing compared to the black ocher feeding upon itself and growing with every breath. Only the closeness of the barge prevented her from screeching at the top of her lungs at the zebra: What have you done?
It was for your own good, Ipes explained.
From the terrible haze of fury came a single thought: the bomb. He had done something to it. She tore off her pack and stared in at the contents. Everything seemed all right: there was the C4 and the detonator and the wiring and the…
“The blasting caps,” she gasped, realizing she was missing a key ingredient to her bomb. “You made me forget them!”
That’s not entirely true. You forgot them all on your own, I just didn’t remind you, which is different. And really, you don’t want to do this. Remember the last time you killed, remember the bounty hunter? You went crazy afterwards. You wandered around for hours in a daze and it was only a miracle that you weren’t eaten by a monster. I couldn’t have that happen to you again. Now, since you can’t blow up the boat, we should get out of here.
Jillybean remembered the bounty hunter. Those few minutes had been a terrible time for her. Sarah had been murdered in front of her eyes and Jillybean had in turn murdered the bounty hunter. Sometimes she still dreamed of it. They were nightmares that were horribly true and exact in every detail. In them she always heard Sarah’s dying sound and felt the heft of the cold pistol and saw the unending hate in the bounty hunter’s eyes, the willingness to kill even in the last seconds of life when it shouldn’t have mattered. When she woke, she still felt those eyes. They searched for her from the dream world and she always hid beneath her blankets when they did.
The fear of those nightmares caused her a moment of doubt, however just like everything els
e going on in her mind it was short lived and quickly replaced. “You are a traitor,” she seethed in a voice that was far too cruel to be coming from such a little girl. “And you can stay here and rot for all I care.”
She turned on her heel and literally stomped away, leaving her best friend in the weeds. “He is just a stupid, is what he is! Fluffy-headed and dumb and…” She was making too much noise and a monster moaned and angled her way. A part of her wanted to kill it like a grownup would; with a gun or a bat. A bat! She could imagine how satisfying that would be, crushing its head with one of them.
But she didn’t have a bat; she didn’t even have a gun, all she had was a useless bomb that wouldn’t blow up. Forgetting the monster, she turned to glare back the way she had come. Already, Ipes was invisible in the tall grass. “You’re lucky I didn’t throw you in the river!” she hissed. Whether Ipes heard or not, she didn’t know; the monster certainly heard. It charged her, all flailing arms and spastic legs. It tripped over a very obvious log and struggled to right itself. The little girl, just three and half feet tall and spindly in body, sneered at it, knowing she was its superior in every way, wishing she was big so she could kill it properly.
If Ipes was there, he’d be crying: Run before it can get up.
“No, Ipes,” she said. “I can kill it. I want…” She wanted to kill it, and strangely she didn’t find that strange. Seeing the zombie prone before her, struggling to get up made her feel like she was staring at a great big present on Christmas morning. There was a rock nearby; it was the size of her head and she knew she couldn’t throw it more than a foot or two, but she could drop it. With the monster trying to crawl at her she hefted the rock with a grunt and then let it go so that it fell on the monster’s head, making an indescribably ugly sound.
The Undead World (Book 5): The Apocalypse Renegades Page 15
