“Did he die right there?” Onion-breath asked, his eyes wide.
“No, like I said he was tougher than he looks. He held on for some time and we talked. That’s how come I know it’s him. He told me stuff that only Neil Martin would know.”
“Like what?” the leader asked. He wasn’t nearly as aggressive as he had been only a few minutes before which Neil took as a good sign.
Neil gave him an easy shrug. “Like he knew all about that girl that the River King has. Her name is Sadie Walcott. She’s seventeen and they’re from Hoboken, New Jersey. He also knew about the little girl, Jillybean. I even know the name of her zebra, it’s Ipes. Yeah, once Neil got talking, he just went on and on.”
Now, the leader looked downright uncertain. “He still don’t look like him.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Neil replied. “It’s not like he had ID on him and besides, people look different after they’re dead. Sometimes they look like imitations of themselves. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah, I guess,” the leader said. He still wasn’t convinced, however. “You know you’re going to need, you know, like, verification before you get paid.” He squinted across the base to the murky building where the River King ruled from and then jerked his thumb to onion-breath. “Ron, take him up to see the king and don’t be gone all night. If I have to have to come looking for you I’m going to be pissed.”
Neil hadn’t expected a chaperone and paused, trying to think of a reason to leave him behind but nothing legitimate-sounding would come to him. Ron seemed happy to get away from the guard shack. Smiling, he went around to the passenger side of the truck and climbed in. Neil had a much harder time of it. Since it sat so high off the ground, the truck was a good one to take on zombies, on the other hand, it made for a difficult climb for a one-armed man wearing what were basically high-heeled shoes.
Grunting and grimacing, Neil made it into the cab only to hit the top of the spiked helmet on the doorframe. He was suddenly blind as the wig and helmet combo fell in front of his face. In a panic, he righted the helmet and turned with a lopsided grin to Ron.
Ron didn’t notice anything amiss. “You are gonna make bank off this deal,” he said breathing the sharp smell of onions all over Neil. “That is if that’s really Neil Martin. You sure it is? That guy didn’t look like much.”
“Like I said, people look different when they’re dead.” Awkwardly, Neil put the truck in gear using his left hand. At Ron’s look he explained, “Neil winged me with one of his shots. It still hurts like a, uh…” He wanted to say a bad word, but what the proper one to fit the situation was he didn’t know and he only flailed stupidly.
“I bet it hurts like a cast-iron bitch,” Ron said swearing easily. “I had an uncle once been shot. It tore up all sorts of muscle and bone and cartilage and shit. He pissed and moaned about it for weeks.”
Neil nodded, feeling the helmet and wig shift dangerously. “Yeah it’s something like that.” He hoped the conversation was over, however Ron was just getting started. He blabbed continuously and Neil guessed that Ron was possibly trying to loosen the stench of the onion he had recently gargled with. He talked while Neil drove wearing a squinched up look on his face and sweating up a storm. Like almost everything else, the air-conditioner switch was on the right, totally out of reach.
Thankfully, it was a short drive to the building that housed the arena. Ron gave him an odd look as he swept right past the front doors. “I just think it would be rude to park a truck with a dead body in it right in front where everyone can see. I mean, there’s no reason to be intentionally barbaric. Don’t you agree?”
The odd look on Ron’s face deepened. Neil tried to smile at him and then realized that may be the problem—he was being too civilized. A man in his ‘get-up’ probably wouldn’t care about being intentionally barbaric. The reverse was likely true.
In order to get back into character, Neil changed his smile, bearing his teeth, hoping to appear wolfish in his demeanor. He stopped the truck next to the curb and on impulse rolled down the window and spat, because that’s what these sorts of men did. It was a very pathetic attempt. The spittle didn’t completely make it out the window; it hit the door and sagged down the inside. What was worse was that he accidentally hit the spike on his helmet against the roof of the cab again, shifting the wig. It was now turned a quarter to the right so that a flow of black nylon strands partially covered his left eye.
Neil was certain that Ron had seen all of this. With panic rising in him, he jerked around, fully expecting Ron to be reaching for the gun holstered at his hip. Ron wasn’t. He was smiling, with a laugh building in his throat at Neil’s foolishness, but before it could come out, the same odd look leapt into his eyes. Something worse was wrong than the bumbling attempt at manliness. Neil sat up straighter and looked at himself in the rearview mirror.
The caterpillar-like mustache had crawled half off his lip! One end of it had come unglued and was dangling. Neil turned to Ron, again expecting there to be a flurry of action, however Ron hadn’t made it past the puzzled stage in his thinking. It wouldn’t be long before he figured out that Neil was an imposter.
Neil twisted his torso, lunging for his gun only to stop as he realized he didn’t know where it was. It had been on the seat in which Ron was sitting, and it didn’t make sense that Ron would have sat on it. So where was it? Neil’s eyes tried to find the black pistol against the black interior of the truck with only the stars above to assist him with their feeble light.
Finally, Ron was beginning to suspect something. “Hey, what’s with the mustache? It’s fake isn’t it?”
“Uh, yeah,” Neil mumbled, as his hands swept around the console, searching. He then glanced into the rear of the cab hoping the gun would be sitting there on the backbench. “I, uh, can’t grow one for real it’s sort of…embarrassing…” His words faltered as he reached down into the foot well. His helmet had fallen off his head and along with it went his wig.
With his mouth hanging open, Ron pointed at him, a dawning realization slowly creeping over him. Understanding was only seconds away! Neil went with a stall tactic that had worked with great effectiveness in the second grade. He gestured out Ron’s window and said, “Look!”
In a display of mental maturity that was on par with the simplicity of the trick, Ron turned to look out the window, saying, “What? I don’t see anything.”
Neil did however. Just above the glove compartment on the dashboard was a litter of old papers dating from before the apocalypse. They were sun-washed almost beyond legibility. The pistol was sitting on them like the world’s most dangerous paperweight. In a spastic move fueled by panic, Neil twisted in his chair and practically fell over Ron trying to get the gun before it was too late.
“What are you doing?” Ron asked, still under the thrall of confusion. Even when Neil grabbed the gun, Ron didn’t do anything but push him back to his side of the truck. “Look, dude, I’m not gay, so don’t…”
His confusion had turned to anger, only to return when he saw the gun in Neil’s hand, pointed his way. “D-don’t m-make a sound or I w-will shoot,” Neil stuttered.
Ron began slowly shaking his head while his eyes traveled all around Neil’s face, landing on each feature as though he were trying to figure out if it was real or not. “Like…like what kind of sound?” he asked.
“You know, like a scream,” Neil said. “If you scream, I’ll shoot.”
“I don’t get it,” Ron said. “I think I’d scream after you shot me.” The man’s sluggish thinking was confusing in itself and Neil didn’t know what to say. Ron kept going, “And it’s not like I’m against gays. It’s just not my thing. I like girls, okay? There’s no reason to get all weird about it.”
“What?” Neil asked feeling as though his mental train was being derailed. “I’m not gay. This has nothing to do with being gay.”
“Oh,” Ron said, clearly not believing Neil. “Then what’s with the costume? You look li
ke one of the Village People. Really, if you’re not gay, you’re doing a terrible job not to look like one.”
In anger, Neil tore the rest of the fake mustache off his lip and threw it on the dashboard where once again it resembled a caterpillar. It even moved like one; unbound from the glue it curled up slightly as if injured. Now, Neil pointed at his own face. “I’m not gay. I’m Neil Martin,” he said, as if the two statements were mutually exclusive.
Ron looked over the back seat and into the bed where the corpse of Jeb lay exposed. He then looked at Neil and asked, “If you’re Neil Martin, then who is that?”
“He’s someone who got in my way,” Neil said through gritted teeth. He was hoping for a Clint Eastwood vibe but his voice only sounded like someone holding back a bad case of diarrhea. “If you don’t want to end up the same way, you will listen to me and keep your mouth shut.”
“Ok,” Ron said. The corpse seemed to have affected him. His confusion was gone and he was no longer so fixated on the idea of Neil being gay.
Neil put the truck back in gear and, only using the engine’s idle, he drifted quietly to the prison building and parked on the side where he said he would meet Sadie. It was full dark now; the sun had been down for over twenty-five minutes and yet Sadie wasn’t in sight. “Get out nice and easy,” Neil said to Ron. “And don’t try to run. I don’t have any qualms about shooting you in the back.”
Ron got out of the truck with almost as much trouble as Neil had. He kept his hands up just over shoulder height except when he went to open the door and then he touched the handle quick as though he were testing to see if it was scalding hot. Neil slid over and followed him out into the night where Ron stood staring down at a shadowy lump bundled up against the side of the building. Without the moon’s light, the night was the same, near cave-like darkness Neil experienced every time the sun went down. He was forced to squint in order to figure out that the lump was something other than a pile of trash. It was a person, laid out in a puddle of his own blood.
“Sadie?” Neil said breathlessly, dropping to one knee and touching the corpse on the shoulder. The shoulder was thick and heavy as was the arm attached to it. This wasn’t her. Sadie was thin in the chest and arms. “Oh, thank God,” Neil said, feeling the sweat down his back like an icy breath.
“Is that her?” Ron asked. Like an obedient hound he was standing next to Neil with his hands still in the air.
“No,” Neil said, getting back to his feet and again squinting around at the dark. “But I think this was her handiwork.”
It was an easy conclusion to reach; a warm body found exactly where they were supposed to meet wasn’t much of a mystery. Neil didn’t dwell on why she had killed him. She had to have had her reasons. He only cared about where she had gone. “Don’t move,” he growled to Ron, not realizing that when he wasn’t trying, he came across far more tough sounding. Ron stood planted in place. With his hands stuck in the air he looked like a small, pale, and very nervous tree.
Neil practically forgot about him as he inspected the body and the ground around it. There were three things about the corpse that he found interesting: the first was the fact it had an empty holster beneath the armpit. The second was that there was white fluff on its chest and face. And third was that there weren’t any other blood splatters—it meant Sadie was still alive. Since she wasn’t anywhere around them, Neil concluded she must’ve gone inside on her own.
“What the hell got into her? Has she gone crazy?” he whispered, standing and facing Ron. Belatedly, he realized that his prisoner was still armed. There was a pistol at his hip that Ron could’ve used at any time in the last few minutes. “Turn around,” he commanded.
Ron’s eyes went as large as they could get and they kept shifting from Neil to the corpse. He turned, but did so slowly, cranking his head around to keep Neil in view. “I-I d-don’t think she’s c-crazy,” Ron said in a whiny voice. The pure fear that rippled out of it was strangely greedy and Neil told himself that if he was ever in the reverse position again, and he suspected he would be soon the way his life had been trending, that he would either keep quiet or man up and drop a few “F” bombs.
“D-don’t do me like that,” Ron said, again setting Neil’s nerves on edge. By the timbre of his voice, it was as if Ron was acknowledging he was worthless; not even worth the air he breathed.
“I won’t unless you make another sound,” Neil said, not realizing his words were going to be taken literally. Ron clamped his mouth shut and then sucked in his lips so he was flesh colored from the black holes of his nose straight on down to his shirt collar. Neil smiled at the reaction and took Ron’s pistol, sticking it into his own cargo pocket. “Good. Now come on.”
He gestured with the gun toward the front doors, but as they were black against the black backdrop, Ron just stood there waiting. Neil was forced to nudge him along with the barrel of the gun, eliciting a fear-filled whimper that made it past Ron’s sealed lips.
Neil wanted to admonish Ron for being a pussy but judged that would only make matters worse. “Try to relax. Just walk next to me and put your hands down, you look too, I don’t know, too much like a prisoner. Which you are, don’t get me wrong. I just don’t want you to look like one.”
Ron nodded vigorously, adhering to the “no-talk” rule. The two of them walked around to the front of the building; it was as dark as the night and just as foreboding. It was quiet as well, even the lobby.
Neil’s original plan was for both him and Sadie to go in with guns, if not exactly blazing, at least out and ready to spit lead. Now, he stepped timidly into the lobby using Ron, who once again had his hands raised, as a human shield.
The lobby was empty and darker than it should have been. Normally, there was a guard posted there with a candle burning on the desk, but just then it was abandoned and the candle was out. On the air was the smell of smoke—candle smoke—as well as the scent of a recently fired the gun. It was an odor that couldn’t be construed as anything else, which made the fact that there were quiet conversations going on down the hall all the more strange. The voices were distant, cutting in and out, coming from the dorm rooms. But where was Sadie or the guard? And how come the building wasn’t a-buzz after someone had fired a gun?
“Look,” Ron said, gesturing with his crooked elbow. There was more of the same white fluff that they had seen on the body outside scattered on the desk. Its significance was lost on Neil, but he knew enough to follow the trail. Fearful of what he would find, he leaned across the desk and discovered another fresh corpse with its face set in a permanent state of shock that only the flies and worms would ever alter.
“Oh, Sadie,” Neil said under his breath. He was afraid that he’d find more bodies and he was even more afraid of what the killing was doing to his daughter. In his view, she was “susceptible.” There was no other way to put it. Sadie was young and still forming her personality and so far every indication suggested that when it set, she would be a reflection of whatever element had last molded her. Because of her friends in school, she had been a goth-punk. At the beginning of the apocalypse, she had been a thief because of a nasty piece of work named, John. She had been a daughter thanks to Neil and Sarah, a sister because of Jillybean and a mother because of Eve. Would she be a cold-blooded killer due to poor timing on Neil’s part?
She could be. Sadie was fearless and fast as lightning and, thanks to her real father, burdened with a genetic predisposition for relying on the instinct of self-preservation rather than firm moral underpinnings. In the year since he had known her, Neil had done his best to teach her and yet his lessons were constantly being undermined by the reality of life: the world was dangerous and nice guys never won.
Neil pulled his eyes from the body behind the desk and tried to tell himself she’d be fine. “If we can escape, she’ll be just fine,” he said, heading for the staircase.
Two flights up, he found further evidence that she wouldn’t be: another body. It was crumpled and contort
ed in death. There was only a small hole in its head and yet the amount of blood that had gushed from it was amazing…and disgusting. The pool of red overflowed the entire landing, falling in a red river down the stairs. Ron made mealy noises in the back of his throat as he left tracks through it.
Neil paused over the body, noticing this one hadn’t been armed. Had she even considered the possibility of not shooting him? He wasn’t big; he would’ve made an ideal hostage to help her get past the guards above. Had that entered her mind or had it been shoot first and…
“I know why there’s fluff all over the place,” Ron said excitedly, interrupting Neil’s thoughts.
“What?” Neil asked, trying to catch up to the words. Fluff? Was there a reason to care about it? The third body had some in its hair but what did it matter?
“Look,” Ron said, gesturing with one of his raised hands at a square pillow sitting just up the stairs from the body and the lake of blood. One side of the pillow looked as though a dog had shredded it up while the other only had holes with burn marks around them. Sadie had used it as an improvised silencer. It was smart, but heart-breakingly sad; she had come to kill. That wasn’t like her and Neil was afraid to find out what had caused the change in her.
Had she been threatened? Probably, but she was personally brave to a point that sometimes she acted as though her life was worthless. A threat hadn’t done this to her. Perhaps rape or torture had turned her. Yet she was the River King’s daughter. Who would dare? No one. Which left only one thing that would cause her to go on a rampage: a threat to her loved ones. Neil hadn’t shown up on time: maybe she had thought he’d been killed; Grey was fighting for his life on a daily basis; Jillybean had tried to hijack a boat that later exploded, and Eve had been taken from her. From a certain point of view, Sadie didn’t have much to lose anymore.
The Undead World (Book 5): The Apocalypse Renegades Page 24
