A part of its skull was mushed but it was still moving and still trying to get at her. She hurried for another rock. This one was slightly smaller. “Why would you make me forget the blasting caps, Ipes?” she asked the zombie right before she heaved the rock. She missed, sort of. The rock hit the base of the skull where it connected with the neck. There was a wet thump that she grimaced at.
When she cracked her eyes and saw that it wasn’t dead yet she said, “Shoot!” She ran to look for another rock. With the Mississippi so close there were stones of all sizes and shapes to choose from.
She found a good one and hurried back before the monster could recover. “Why would you do that, Ipes? Because you are so smart? I don’t think so. One thing’s for sure, you’re not smarter than me.” The zombie was dead. Its head looked like a pumpkin ten days after Halloween. She didn’t remember having dropped the last rock and yet it wasn’t in her hands.
“Oh, well.” Jillybean turned away and in a second she forgot all about the monster. Her focus was on Ipes and the fact that she didn’t have a blasting cap to work with. It was so aggravating that she wanted to stomp her feet and scream until one appeared. By the barest of margins she kept herself from throwing a tantrum that would have alerted the man on the boat.
“Him,” she said in a low, cold voice, calming at the thought of him. “He can die, too. He deserves it.”
Incredibly, she wanted to slay a complete stranger and, at the same time, without any conflict within her, she considered herself morally perfect. Just then, being “good” in her mind, depended solely on her point of view. At what moment she had begun to think this way she couldn’t remember. The concept of time was a jumble. When had Neil left? Was it the same time that Ram had died? And Sarah, where was she? Was she dead already or was that going to happen soon? Jillybean hoped not. She wanted Sarah back, and Ram too. And she wanted her daddy. And she wanted to kill the River King. And she wanted to get away and be with her friends forever.
Her mind was simply a wild mess of conflicting desires. She wanted everything and she wanted everything now, starting with a perfect explosion. That was supposed to come first. “I think,” she said, doubtfully. She wasn’t sure, and yet the boat was right in front of her, looking very large compared to the little block of C4 in her pack.
“But I can’t use that, damn it!” For just a second she paused at her use of a curse word. Then she again rationalized, “Everyone else says it, why can’t I?”
A distant voice within her murmured, Your father wouldn’t want you to, that’s why.
“Shut up, Ipes,” she whispered, forgetting that he wasn’t with her. “I can say damn it, if I want to.” She wanted to curse a lot more than that. Her mind was so out of control, she couldn’t even think of a way to sink the barge. How could that be? What was wrong with her? It was a big lump of metal just sitting there. It should’ve been a piece of cake to send it to the bottom of the river. Normally, ideas would’ve been popping into her head one after another. Now, she had nothing running through her brain except confusion.
Going down on her hands and knees, she pulled her pack off and emptied its contents onto the dirt in front of her, hoping to jostle something in her brain. Still, nothing came. She touched the C4, pressing her fingers into the soft, clay-like brick. Next she held up every item in front of her face. Each was recognized as a singularity, but for her there was no putting one and one together to make two. The lighter was just a lighter; the tape was just tape. There seemed to be no way for her to use the two together in any simple formula. Not like before.
“Damn it!” she exclaimed. “This is all Ipes’ his fault!”
Forgetting the boat and the bomb, she headed straight back to where she had left Ipes and even that proved difficult. Her sense of direction was off and she walked past without seeing him. She began searching the grass everywhere, but the zebra seemed to have disappeared. Frustrated she went in growing circles until she came across a jumble of discarded items that looked familiar. “My stuff,” she whispered, realizing that she was staring down at her backpack. It sat on the dewy ground and next to it was the plastic bag that held the C4 and the lighter and the tape.
“Am I going crazy?” she wondered staring at it, trying to remember why she had left it all just sitting there. When she couldn’t remember, a shiver ran up her spine. Whatever she was feeling sure felt like crazy.
Slowly, she stood up and stared all around her. Her emotions seemed to be shaking themselves out, separating one from another, so that her mind wobbled into each category in a manner beyond her control. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to anything around her. The stump of a tree made her angry. The mud on her shoes made her sad. She laughed at a leaf that came twirling down, it’s edges golden from the sunrise.
She felt as though she were the spinner in a board game and doomed to feel indiscriminate emotions without logic or any rationale. For a little girl with such a concrete view of the world it was horribly upsetting, but there was something worse. Against all of it was a backdrop of blackness that was greater than all her other emotions combined. It was what gave them value and texture. And it was the most horrible feeling in the world.
She was alone.
Chapter 18
Sadie Walcott
Jillybean wasn’t the only one subject to conflicting emotions. Sadie was all over the board as well. Eve had been taken from her, possibly forever. Captain Grey was slated to appear in the arena that evening in another fight to the death, and this, despite the fact that he had a broken right hand. The renegades had been captured and were supposed to be boarding the barge to re-cross the river sometime after dawn.
To cap it all off, she was virtually imprisoned in her room. A guard had been stationed outside her door since the River King had left. Yet, she was not without hope. She had the most complete faith in her friends.
In her mind, Captain Grey was too tough and strong to be defeated no matter what injuries he sustained. And Jillybean was far too brilliant to be captured and if she had been, it was only a matter of time before she escaped again. And Neil…well, he wasn’t brilliant nor a strong fighter nor a real leader, or really much of a man in any way, and yet Sadie was sure that he couldn’t be counted out. After all, he had escaped death time and again.
For proof of her hope, she had the bridge tower fire from the night before. That could only have been set by one of her friends; and she strongly suspected Jillybean as the culprit.
“Pink this is green, Pink this is Green,” she whispered into the baby monitor. “Come in, Pink. Talk to me, Pink.” Sadie had been whispering into the monitor all night long, knowing that if anyone could figure out that she was stuck with no other option but the baby monitor it would be Jillybean.
It was a long night for Sadie. Most of it was spent huddled in a blanket, sitting with the frame of the window creasing the back of her thighs as her feet dangled over a twelve-foot drop to the second story. She had briefly considered making a rope from her sheets and sliding down, however she feared that she wouldn’t be able to climb back up again, and she didn’t want to give away her most obvious escape route for nothing.
“Please, Pink, come in,” she begged, her voice growing frantic as the night began to die.
Finally, at dawn when Jillybean’s mind began to disintegrate and Neil was sitting in the 4-Runner with grit in his eyes, listening to a scanner that was too far away to pick up the weak signal emitted from the almost toy-like baby monitor, Sadie gave up the broadcast. She figured that the monitor would project a mere block or two beyond the heavy fencing that surrounded the base. If Jillybean or Neil was out there, they would probably go deeper into hiding during the daylight hours, which meant that using the monitor would mean just wasting batteries.
“Now what?” she asked the quiet room.
Her options were limited. She could try to sleep or she could stare out the window at the broken bridge. The smoke from the single tower was now just a riffle of grey tr
ickling upwards. She sighed at it before choosing sleep. It was difficult to attain. Her mind would not stop dwelling on the newly caught renegades and what their fate would be; most of the men would become cage fighters and die in the arena, while the women would be shipped back to the Colonel or sold in the markets in New York. What special hell would her father have for Neil and Jillybean?
It hurt to think about that and she was no closer to sleep than when she had first lain down. “They’ll be crossing the river soon,” she said. “And then what?” She was used to talking out loud to herself. When Eve was around it seemed perfectly natural, but now it spooked her a bit and yet she couldn’t stop, especially when she was nervous and she wanted to think something through.
The idea of a rescue crossed her mind, which only added to her anxiety. Any rescue wouldn’t be anywhere near as simple as the last one. When her father got his new bridge operational, he would guard it better than he had before; there was no question about that. Not to mention, he would make sure that any prisoner movements would be a closely guarded secret.
“Jillybean will just have to think of something new.” Sadie’s faith in Jillybean’s genius was utterly complete and yet she knew that the little girl wasn’t a mind reader or possessed clairvoyance. She couldn’t just think up the location of the new bridge or pluck from thin air the schedule of prisoner’s transfers.
Sadie was stuck on the thought of the bridge as the key to their escape. “It has to be south of here, somewhere,” she mused. It was, she assumed incorrectly, fixed and something that could be targeted if only she knew where it was. “Possibly Louisiana.” She struggled to envision a map of the US and couldn’t name the state just south of Missouri. Whatever it was, she felt it would be too close, while to the north was the Colonel. He was too powerful and to wily to let a bridge remain uncontested. The bridge would have to be far to the south, and in her mind, she pictured one that was only partially destroyed, one that could be repaired without too much effort—her father was definitely a ‘not-too-much-effort’ kind of guy.
Sadie began to pace, bothered by the entire concept of a new bridge. How was it possible? What were they going to do with all the people? Were they going to pick up the entire base and move it to wherever this new bridge was located? If so, that meant there would be plenty of spots along the way for Jillybean to set up some sort of rescue. If she knew where it was, that is.
She paused her restless movement, realizing that knowing the destination was only part of the puzzle. “But what about the route? There’s got to be more than one way to get to wherever the bridge is and my dad will try to be devious in the roads he takes.” This mental obstacle was more than she could overcome, so she bypassed it using simple faith. “Jillybean will be able to figure it out, I just have to get her the location. And there’s no time like the present.”
In fact it was the perfect time. Once her dad returned, acting the part of a spy and finding out anything would be a zillion times more difficult. The only question was how she was going to elude her door guard. She couldn’t kick this guy in the ‘nards. Word had gone round about what had happened to Randy and now the guards were extremely jumpy around her.
Again, the window seemed to be the ideal way out. And, again, she had to wonder what would happen if she was caught going that way. Would her father put bars on the window? Or would she be confined to a dark, windowless cell with locks on the door? Since neither option was anything but bleak, she chose the door. Moving with all the stealth she could manage, she tiptoed up to it and cracked it; the guard, a big goon with hairy knuckles and skinny legs that supported a very muscular torso, sat on a folding chair six feet away.
She had hoped that he would be snoozing but his dark eyes were fully alert and staring right at her. “Oh. Hey, Mark. I didn’t want to disturb you just in case you were, you know, sleeping or anything.”
“What do you want?” he growled.
“I have to use the bathroom,” Sadie explained, doing a little dance in place. “And I hate using the bucket. It’s gross.”
By his bland, uncaring look Sadie knew he was unmoved by her plight. He made no move to get up and escort her to the bathrooms. “No can do,” he said, simply.
Sadie made an even greater display of urine-induced squirming. “But, like I said, it’s really, really gross.” By now, she had squirmed her way into the hall. The hall wasn’t long; there were maybe, twelve steps between her door and the door that led to her father’s bedroom. A few feet beyond that was a stubby flight of stairs that had been artlessly constructed out of rough pine and lacked any sort of covering; they hadn’t even been stained. Mark’s chair was only a few feet away from them, in a perfect position to block her way if she was ever struck by the fool notion of escape. He barely reacted when she nudged further into the hall. He raised a single eyebrow that, by itself, seemed to convey the question: are you sure you want to do that?
At the look, she slumped her shoulders and at the same time she took a few tappy-steps, suggesting she was at the extremes of her urinary tolerance. He shook his head and pointed at her door. “Bucket,” he ordered.
“Fine!” she grumped. Wearing a mantle of defeat, she opened her door, stepped back into the room, and then set her feet. Nice and gently the door swung closed. A fraction of a second before it clicked shut she threw herself against it, bursting through, catching Mark settling back. In three steps Sadie accelerated faster than most people would ever run at their top speed. In a blur, she was beyond Mark’s reach and flying down the stairs, her feet barely touching them in her eagerness.
At the bottom, she found herself blazing down the long second floor corridor. It’s thick, plush carpet felt good under her feet, adding a slight bounce to her step as she raced. For the first time in days, she felt good—she was born to run. The corridor ended after only sixty yards, right when she had hit her perfect stride; it didn’t matter, she had left Mark far behind.
In front of her were the wide, marble steps that led to the first floor; she skipped down them like the teenager she was, finding herself just outside the arena where people paid to watch men fight to the death. The building was extremely and somewhat unnervingly quiet, except for Mark of course. He was breathing so loudly that she could hear him from the floor below. Before he could take one step on the stairs, Sadie was running again, zipping in and out of corridors, heading for her father’s office.
He would be subtle, she knew. He had secrets, many of them she was sure, and the more important they were, the more likely that they would be hidden in plain sight. Even the fact that his office door was left innocently unlocked suggested she was on the cusp of knowing everything he was trying to keep secret. She went directly to his desk and opened the top, right-hand drawer.
“Nothing ever changes,” she whispered, seeing an old newspaper lying there. She pulled it out and saw, just as she had expected, a stash of girlie magazines. They sat, eight deep, each more disturbing in their filth than the next. Wearing a grimace that suggested extreme nausea, she pulled them out, one at a time, using only the tips of her fingers as if they were contaminated.
Just like in the old days, the real prize would lie just beneath. Years before, it had been her dad’s black book—the little day planner that held all the phone numbers of the women he had cheated with. Sadie had found that when she was eleven, instigating yet another fight between her parents. A few days later he had moved out and at the time she had been glad, yet every day since she had regretted it. Her mom had become addicted to television and butter pecan ice cream, a pairing that left her sad, fat, and desperate. Her dad, on the other hand, grew even more lecherous, which culminated in him being treated for four different STDs simultaneously.
A year later, he had dragged his sorry skin back home and, for a time, things were “normal” again—right up until Sadie had gone snooping once more. Something hadn’t felt right and she needed to know. His modus operandi, both in regards to his tom-cat ways and the odd, open man
ner in which he hid them had not changed.
“Still the same,” she sighed, pulling out the last X-rated magazine. Beneath it was another newspaper, which she pitched onto the pile with the others. Under that were pens, paperclips, sticky notes, rubber bands, and the like. “What the hell?” she hissed, digging through the usual crap found in an office drawer; there was no black book. Quickly, she went through the rest of the drawers, again finding nothing of value.
Fearing that she had escaped her room for nothing, she sat back in the leather chair and began drumming her fingers on the desk. She knew him; he had secrets, she was sure of it. Just as she was sure that he wouldn’t trust himself to remember them all. It wasn’t just the bridge he was keeping secret. He would also have stashes. In the old days, the stashes would be in secret bank accounts or piss-smelling bus lockers or rented storage spaces. Her father had been a bit of a hoarder, though not in the traditional sense. Once he had won a Jeep Laredo in a poker game and squirreled it away in someone’s garage. Another time he had conned some old geezer out of his retirement and stuffed the cash in a gym locker.
This would be the same, only this time the stashes would consist of guns and gas, food and fuel, and who-knew-what else. “So, where are you hiding them?” The answer should have been right in front of her face. On the wall directly across from her was a big, rectangle of a map of the United States. There was a single, blue thumbtack almost directly in the middle of it. Quickly, she jumped up to see where it pointed: Cape Girardeau.
“Son of a bitch!” The pin was useless, as was the map. She leaned in closer, squinting at the map, searching for the smallest mark, dot, or circle. Unfortunately, it was just a map, completely devoid of anything that would give away the bridge’s position. “Then I must be missing something,” she said, turning from it and scanning the desk for writing. When that didn’t work, she picked up the skin-mags and, with the greatest distaste, flipped through them.
The Undead World (Book 5): The Apocalypse Renegades Page 16
