“You better get going,” she said, finishing her sentence. “They need a leader. They don’t need me.”
“Son of a bitch!” he snapped, still with his hand held up to her. “Don’t be an idiot...” Another explosion hit so close that it shattered the windows in the sedan, covering Neil in safety glass.
She wasn’t being an idiot. A wave of depression and grief had washed over her and now she was three feet beneath its surface and no longer fighting it. She wasn’t suicidal; however she had given up on the idea of running. Her only plan was to kill as many of the stiffs as she could and then...she didn’t know what.
“Get going, Neil,” she said and then shot her pistol at one of the grey-skinned beasts that had somehow managed to slither onto the hood of the car. The gunshot and the flying brain matter only added to the chaos of the battle. The air was dark with an irritating smoke that burned the eyes and her ears rung with the explosions and the bang, bang, bang of her gun. Zombies massed to get at her, surging over each other, mounding higher and higher. She saved her ammo, killing only those that made it to the top.
It was an amazing scene: tens of thousands of zombies fighting to get at her, explosions and flames and smoke and she was standing before it all, alone. It felt good to defy this great mass of death. It felt right.
But she was not alone. Huffing, Neil climbed up next to her. “I think I’ll stay. If this wall falls so does the valley and so does our home. If it does, I won’t really have anything left to fight for.” They shared a look and they each saw the pain of loss in the other. It was a bond of sorrow.
Neil, always the optimist, tried to smile past it when part of the wall, fifty feet to their right, was hit dead on by an artillery shell. There was a flash of intense light followed by a noise that sent spikes into Deanna’s eardrums. The sedan beneath their feet shimmied and shook and both of them dropped to their hands and knees as a rain of debris fell like hail. Deanna’s head rung from the explosion and it felt as though she was moving in slow motion as she turned to see the damage: there was a gaping wound in the wall of cars.
“We should do something about that,” Neil cried. She could tell he was yelling his loudest and yet his words came to her muffled and strangely quiet. “Don’t you th...hey, what’s that?”
In the midst of more explosions, Neil stood staring eastward with his head cocked. Deanna did the same. Above the moans of the zombies and the echoes of the last explosions, the two of them could hear the sounds of another battle. It was far away over the eastern mountains. It was going so hot and furious that it seemed as though two armies were locked in a raging combat.
“That’s Grey,” she said in a whisper. Her voice held disbelief and awe. Only he could have come through, she thought. Louder, she cried in joyous victory: “That’s Grey! That’s Captain Grey!” Forgotten were the thousands of zombies and the partially built wall with the gaping hole in it. All she could think about was the fact that Grey was still alive.
Next to her Neil appeared less ecstatic. “We don’t know if he has completed his mission or not,” he cautioned. “However, we should proceed with the premise that he has. We need to fill that gap and we need to defend this wall.”
Deanna scoffed at the idea that Grey could fail. “I’ll take the hole, you try to get the soldiers and civilians back.” As Neil climbed down from the two cars like an asthmatic ten year old who was never allowed to play outside, Deanna leapt from the roof of the sedan to the hood of a Range Rover with all the ease of a cat.
She couldn’t stop smiling. Grey was alive! Deep in her heart, she hadn’t believed it was possible. The idea gave her an energy she hadn’t known in years and she leapt from car to car with a light and easy step.
When she got to the gap where the cars were tangled and twisted, she realized that it had been a mistake going to the hole in the wall. The zombies were fixated on her completely and by heading to the one weak spot in the wall, she had accidentally brought a flood of zombies right to it.
Bringing up her Beretta and squaring her shoulders in a proper fighting stance, she emptied the magazine into the horde, concentrating on those already in the gap. Bodies piled up, nicely. Still she didn’t have near enough bullets to close the gap with corpses, she had to rely on more than lead.
“Hey you guys,” she called, waving her arms as she walked back in the direction she had come.
The gap was all but forgotten as the zombies fought each other to get at her. A few dozen were shoved through the gap, however the vast majority followed along after her. She kept up a steady stream of nonsense words but it really wasn’t needed; she was very human in their eyes and they were primed to kill, primed to eat her if she made even the smallest slip.
She didn’t give them the chance. Every step was thought out and planted with assurance—she still had something to live for, after all.
Beyond the mountains the fight went on, and down the slope from her, Neil was pointing and stamping his feet in anger. He went so far as to drag some captain up toward the wall. Deanna could see him gesticulating, angrily. Clearly they thought the wall a lost cause, artillery or no artillery.
She turned from the spectacle of Neil screaming up at a man who towered over him. With practiced ease, she reloaded the Beretta and aimed the gun at a stiff who had planted one foot on the face of his fellows and was clawing his way up onto the hood of a Jeep Liberty. Before she could pull the trigger, there was a strange, fantastic flash of light far away to the east.
It was so bright that for a long second it made the sun seem like a candle in comparison. She was shocked by the light and could only stare. Strangely, it had the same effect on the zombies. As one tremendous being, they turned to stare as the brilliant, white light pierced their eyes.
Deanna threw an arm over her face to shield her eyes until the shock wave of the explosion struck her. The air pulsed and the cars shook; next to her the radio antenna of the car she was standing on, let out an eerie zzzzing sound.
“Oh, my gosh,” she whispered. In the east, the blinding light faded to orange and then disappeared to be replaced by a mushrooming cloud of black smoke. “He’s done it,” she said, again so low that not even the now fixated zombies could hear. Suddenly, she was filled with a new fear: who could have lived through that blast?
Chapter 16
Jillybean
Brad had chosen an ideal spot to guide the artillery attack from: low down, with the mountain ridges looming over them, a few hundred yards from the big wall. They were tucked up under a low shrubby kind of tree that had prickled her something bad every time she had moved. It was good cover and, with the land thickly treed, they hadn’t been bothered by the monsters at all.
Nor had the soldiers got them.
Just before sunrise, an entire troop of them had come jogging out of the darkness, running across the field in front of them and up toward the taller hills that overlooked the big concrete wall. They were heading exactly where Jillybean had said they would. Brad had given her a look and a grunt once they were gone, but said nothing.
She had honestly expected a ‘thank you’ though she didn’t know what she was going to do with it once she got it. She certainly wasn’t going to say ‘You’re welcome’ or anything like it.
Brad’s lack of manners made it a moot point.
Now, they were sitting, watching the fireworks. As each shell passed over her head, Jillybean felt Eve grow stronger. She was winning. And so were the Azael. The bombs from over the mountains had destroyed the first wall after little more than a half hour of explosions and fire and smoke. The second wall built of cars, seemed as if it had been constructed by one of her friends back in first grade.
The wind made it wobbly.
The first wall, with its sturdy concrete construction had been formidable, if not illogically placed. The second wall was just silly. She had even gone so far as to suggest to Brad that it was a ruse of some sort. Nothing else made sense considering the elements it was supposed to con
tend with.
Brad had lent her his binoculars so that she could study it. They were comically big on her face. “This isn’t right,” she had said. “They got all them cars sideways on. It’s gonna fall right over.”
And it had.
She watched through the binoculars as the wall went right over after what seemed like no time at all. “There it goes,” she said, trying to figure out what had been the motivation for building such a useless wall. It had plopped right over and then the monsters went stumbling over the remains.
There it goes and there you go, Eve cackled inside of her. When the monsters get into the valley, they’re gonna eat all your friends and then you’ll be all alone with no one to protect you. Her evil laughter had filled Jillybean’s head until the little girl reached up and pinched her own cheek hard enough to bring tears.
Jillybean then tried to find anything to distract her from Eve’s constant voice and saw, in the destruction of the second wall, something entertaining enough to shift her focus. Brad had forgotten that it was his job to call off the artillery, it was still pounding away. She hid a secret grin behind her hand as the Azael’s howitzers blasted the zombies into goo, sending chunks and limbs going everywhere, basically stopping the attack.
When he finally noticed, he didn’t seem all that concerned that his own guns were doing a number on his monster army. “There’s a lot more where they came from,” he said with a shrug, pretending that the destruction of hundreds of the monsters and, more importantly, the loss of time and ammunition, was nothing to him.
“I think that’s enough,” Brad drawled into the radio as he casually leaned back among the sticker plants. He even put his hands behind his head, completely at his ease, content that the great, grey river of zombies was surging forward.
Jillybean watched with a queasy, guilty sickness eating at her belly. It made her want to throw up. It made Eve louder in her mind: They are gonna destroy everything and they are gonna eat everyone. Sadie, Neil…even Captain Grey. They are gonna eat him right up! And it’s all your fault, you traitor.
A groan escaped Jillybean and the chain around her neck rattled as she leaned back from the horrible thought.
“Will you stop?” Brad snapped, rolling his eyes at her. “This was all preordained from the get-go. You know what preordained means, right? It means that this was a done deal months ago. The moment Augustus was able to claim Kansas, it was only a matter of time before he came after Colorado.”
Her guilt could not be assuaged so easily. “Still,” she insisted. “People are going to die and it’s my fault.”
Brad yawned and stretched before replying: “People were going to die no matter what. And really, there aren’t going to be that many deaths. I’d say a lot fewer than you think. They aren’t going to fight now that their walls are down. They’ll run away. They’ll go deep into the mountains; maybe to Canada or California. You’ll see. When we get the stiffs cleared out of the valley, there won’t be that many corpses.”
Jillybean made no reply to that. Even if he was right, she was still guilty of betrayal at the very least. The thought gnawed at her and again Eve flared huge inside of her, riding the wave of guilt almost to shore. They are gonna get eated and it’ll be all your fault!
“Stop!” Jillybean hissed under her breath. The little girl looked around once more, again trying to find something to take her mind off of Eve and the tremendous guilt eating her insides. Next to her, Brad yawned again and put his legs out so that his boots poked out from beneath the shrubby tree they were hiding in.
She glanced at him for a second and then turned to look up at the ridge above them. There were birds wheeling in the sky above—just the thing to distract her. She grabbed the overly large binoculars and gazed upwards. The birds were nothing but crows, big and ugly. Even distance didn’t help to make them appear more than what they were: scavengers, eaters of dead flesh.
They are gonna pick apart the leftovers! Eve laughed, gleefully.
The weight of guilt pulled Jillybean’s chin down away from the sky and she found herself staring at the highway and the thousands of zombies. She followed the road with her eyes, past the two destroyed walls as it snaked behind a steep, rocky hill.
When the road reappeared on the other side, it was wide, black, and empty. It shouldn’t have been. There should have been zombies all over it. Brad was quick to notice as well. “Give me those,” he said, snatching the binoculars off of her face. He kept them held to his eyes for minutes before he mumbled: “What the fuck?”
Jillybean assumed the question had been directed towards her. “Maybe there’s a bridge over a river or a small canyon that the Colorado people blew up and now the monsters are stuck.”
Brad pulled the binoculars away from his face to reveal a sneer. “Don’t you think the stiffs would be falling into this canyon? If so, then the rest of them would still be moving forward.” He pointed at the line of monsters all along the road to their left; they were squishing into each other, but not really moving forward at all.
“Hmmm, you’re right,” she agreed. “Well then, maybe the Colorado people could have another wall built behind that hill. That would make sense, ‘specially since that’s where they shoulda builded the first one.”
“Another wall?” Brad’s lip curled at the thought. He grabbed the radio he had set aside. “Wally! This is Brad. I’m going to need some more firepower down here. There may be another wall.”
There was a static-filled pause before Wally’s cranky voice came back, chopped by the distance and the intervening mountains: “…you going…me some…ing coordinates? …I going to have to guess?”
“Asshole,” Brad muttered, staring at the radio. He then thumbed the mike: “Watch your language, Wally! You forget who you’re your talking to. I’m going to make Baron for this. Now, drop those rounds about three hundred yards further than you had been.”
Wally’s response was so garbled that it couldn’t be deciphered. Brad sighed in exasperation and then repeated: “Three hundred yards further on!”
They waited a minute and then thunder sounded from over the mountains. The shell missed, landing short, and so did the next two. “You need to shoot at a steeper angle!” Brad barked into the radio. There was no need to be quiet now; the zombies were completely fixated on the explosions, their normally blank faces showing something akin to religious awe.
Using the radio, Brad walked the artillery right up over the hill and very soon there was smoke brewing up from behind it and Jillybean, using the binoculars, could see people running away down the highway toward the broad valley.
Soon they’ll be all dead, Eve said. Soon you’ll be a murderer just like me!
Jillybean squeezed her eyes shut, hoping that Eve would just go away. The other girl inside her laughed at the feeble attempt. Next Jillybean tried to pinch herself again. It didn’t work and Eve grew stronger.
“Fine,” Jillybean seethed. “How about I strangle myself?” In despair, she threw herself to the end of her chain. The metal bit into her flesh as though it had hungry shining teeth; she gagged and choked, her world turning fuzzy and grey. She would have succeeded in killing herself if Brad hadn’t reached out and pulled her back to the ground.
“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded. “Sit there and stop marking yourself up. You’ll fuck up your resale value worse than it already is.” At first, she didn’t know what he was talking about, and then she touched her face and felt the swelling where she had been hit.
You’re ugly, now, Eve said. You’re ugly and no one will want you.
“Good,” Jillybean said, under her breath. She didn’t want to be sold anyway. Who would want that? Not her. She didn’t want to be someone’s slave.
Eve’s laugh inside of her was booming. You’re already a slave. If you doubt me, ask yourself what’s that around your neck?
Jillybean felt the cold metal; the hard snake gathered under her chin. The heavy links weren’t just tying her in place
, they were weighing her soul down like an anchor. They were a constant reminder of her place in the new undead world.
“They’re coming off right now,” she seethed in an angry whisper. Brad was already back to ignoring her and didn’t see her dig out the paperclip she had stolen the night before.
In no way was she an expert at picking locks, however she had seen the key that had gone with the cuffs and it had seemed a simple shape to copy. In seconds, she had bent the paperclip to approximate the key, stuck it into the lock and began working it back and forth, and side to side.
It clicked open just as the first gun shots could be heard from over the mountains back the way they had come. Brad spun around, sending a cascade of small rocks bouncing down the hill in front of them. “What the fuck?”
Once again, Jillybean felt compelled to answer his rhetorical question: “Your place with all your men is under attack. That’s what I think.”
“No, fucking, duh,” he snapped and then raised the radio back to his mouth. “Wally? What’s going on? Wally? Wally?” The radio remained quiet and lifeless as did the artillery. For a nearly a minute, Brad stood, staring east as the morning brightened and the unseen battle continued.
With his back to her, Jillybean didn’t even have to sneak as she slipped the chain off. She let it slip into the carpet of dead leaves. The handcuffs were different. She heaved them as far down the hill as she could and gave a little jerk of surprise as they smacked into the back of the half-rotted head of a monster. It turned and caught her staring.
They were locked eye to eye for a full second before it started scrambling toward the shrubby tree. “Uh-oh,” Jillybean said. She turned to Brad. “Excuse me, Mister Baron Brad, sir. There’s a monster coming. I think it may have seen us.”
“Huh?” He glanced behind him at the ugly creature in the tattered remains of a sundress. Its hair was scraggly and matted with leaves, and its filthy, bloodstained bra perfectly held its left breast, while the right hung free.
The Apocalypse War: The Undead World Novel 7 Page 16
