He scoffed at it. “It’s just one stupid…”
It was then that Sadie’s last shot with the grenade launcher detonated the munitions trucks in an ear-shattering explosion. The three of them, Jillybean, Brad and the monster blinked at the harsh flash of light and then paused in place until the sky shook with the rumble of the explosion.
Jillybean didn’t know what the sound was. She understood that it was a bomb of some sort, but she wasn’t experienced enough to grasp the size of the explosion or the distances involved. For all she knew the bomb had gone off right on the other side of the ridge.
“Son of a bitch,” Brad grumbled. “Those idiots. Come on, Jillybean. We got to go back.”
“Why? What is it?”
“People being stupid,” he answered and then started monster walking back the way they had come.
After a glance at the sun dress-wearing monster, Jillybean hurried to catch up. The way was steep and sure enough, when the monster came after them, it went tumbling away into the horde.
Trying to walk against the current of undead wasn’t easy. When they could, they kept to the sloping hills just above the highway. It hurt walking on such a steep grade. Jillybean’s ankles ached after a while and her lower leg, the leg that basically held her up, kept cramping into painful knots. When it happened, Brad would glare like a human, which really wasn’t smart.
What was exceptionally difficult was when there wasn’t a hill on either side. Frequently, and for long stretches, there were sharp, rock walls rising on one side of the road and scary drop-offs falling away from the other. When that happened, Brad and Jillybean were stuck forcing their way through the mob.
Brad had to lead in these circumstances and after the first two hundred yard stretch, he made his way, huffing and puffing, up the next hill. When he left the monsters behind, he turned on Jillybean. “Where the hell is your collar? Huh? Where’s the chain that was around your neck?”
“It was loose,” she answered without looking up. She was afraid that he would see the lie in her eyes if he was looking right into them when she told it. She was convinced that evil people were especially attuned to wrong doing of any sort when it occurred around them. She thought it was a sixth sense, or a super power.
“It was also heavy, for reals. I took it off so that I could keep up with you. I wasn’t going to run away, I swear. I could have if I wanted to, but I don’t want you hurting those ladies on the bus.”
His face was stormy, his brows down over his eyes and his lips were tight together and lined. The mud covering his face only added to the harshness of the effect. He stepped right up to her and threatened with a fist that looked as hard as one of the many boulders around them. “You had better not even think about running away. If you do, those women will suffer and it will be on your head.”
Jillybean was now in a terrible place. She wasn’t sure she could control her thinkings. What would happen if a thought about escaping just poked up out of nothing all on its own? It happened to her a lot. Thoughts or ideas or even little conjectures would suddenly just pop into being inside her head even when she didn’t mean them too. Sometimes she considered herself downright afflicted with thoughts.
As she stumbled along the sides of the hills, trying to keep up with Brad, she did her best to control her mind, which, as it turned out, wasn’t easy at all. Her brain jumped from subject to subject, from bee to rock, to the spacing of trees for optimal growth, to the phases of the moon and the possible reasons it assumed the strange shapes it did. She pondered on the difference between oak leaves and pine needles, rounded pebbles and rough rocks, and why animals had tails and people did not.
And how to escape.
Her mind kept going there time and again, and, when it did, she would cast a furtive glance at Brad’s back, sure she was seeing a stiffening in his muscles or a twitch in his monster gait. Every innocuous move he made convinced her that he knew what she was plotting and before long, she was sweating from the stress she was under.
Fearing that she was dooming the innocent women back at the Azael camp, she tried her utmost to focus on holding her brain in check, and think of nothing whatsoever, however she had never tried to marshal her thoughts in such a way before and the strain was too great.
The river was the key to their escape. No one was watching it at all. The Azael seemed to think that it was too cold and too fast for anyone to try to cross, and besides, the far bank was a sheer, cliff face that ran up the grim flanks of the mountains. It was wet and clung-over with green moss; it couldn’t be scaled by the weak and the inexperienced, and Jillybean was both. Crossing the river wasn’t a means to escape; however, using its energy and direction was. She saw clearly how—they could use the seat cushions from the bus as flotation devices and, in the dead of night, could slip into the frigid, racing waters one at a time. It would be both scary and dangerous to use the big river, but it would work. They could be out on the plains by morning.
The plan popped straight into her head fully formed, causing Jillybean’s stomach to knot up.
Brad took that moment to glance back at her and a most unzombie-like guilty smile broke across her face. His eyes narrowed and a voice inside of her screamed: think of something else!
She dropped her eyes to her hands and at first she was unable to think of anything but the plan and the punishment for thinking of the plan—then she saw her fingers; five on one hand and an equal number on the other. Ten all together. They were basic tools of counting for every child that had ever lived, and Jillybean could remember using them years ago to keep track of items she needed numbered.
This simple thought reminded her of her previous exploration into mathematics and, before she knew it, she was lost in concepts that should have been years beyond her. When next she focused her eyes on something, they were nudging past the last of the zombies and gazing up at the tall angel-winged men on horseback.
“What happened?” Brad demanded. “What was that big explosion?”
“They got the munitions truck,” one of the riders answered. “They got us with a fucking sneak attack.”
Chapter 17
Sadie Walcott
When the twenty tons of high explosives and white phosphorus went up in a snap-snap-snap triple explosion, it incinerated a hundred men in a blink. It warped the barrels of the howitzers, twisting them so that they appeared to belong in a Dali painting and not on a battlefield. The five-ton trucks that had housed all the extra ordinance were reduced to fist-sized chunks of metal, rubber, and glass fused into bizarre shapes.
A minute before, the field had been waist-high with green, mountain grasses, now it was on fire from end-to-end. The men of the Azael were running away, those that were still alive, that is. With the tall grasses burnt down to the hard pan of the earth, an amazing number of contorted and shriveled bodies were visible scattered here and there.
Fearing that the injured Captain Grey was one of them, Sadie turned back to where she had left him and saw that yes, he was alive and yes, he was on fire. Feebly, he was beating at roiling orange flames running up his right leg. Without any consideration for her own safety, she was up and racing at him. In two seconds, she had cleared the twenty yards between them and, as she had no fire-fighting equipment with her, she threw herself bodily on his legs, smothering the flames with her torso, her hands, and the dirt she scraped up and threw on him.
If she was burned, she didn’t notice. The flames eating Grey’s uniform were out and that was all that mattered.
“You ok?” she asked. The two words ran together into one that sounded like: U-k?
It was a second before he could answer. His eyes were glassy and unfocussed; his head lolled as though he was drunk and his hands floundered around like a man looking for something lost in the dark. “Me?” he slurred. “Yeah…yeah, I’m good.”
He wasn’t good. The blast had caught him full on. His face had been flash-burned to a bright red, his brain concussed by the aftershock of the e
xplosion and he had a new second-degree burn on his leg to go with the holes in his body from four different bullets.
“Leave me,” he said through cracked and parched lips.
“Fuck you,” she said, and for the first time in weeks, despite the misery baking into the pores of her skin, she felt like herself. “Come on.” She stood and looked around. Nothing was familiar; it was like she had been transported to some plane of hell. There was a tremendous crater where the trucks had been and the field had been transformed into a burning nightmare. The only thing that made sense were the mountains. They pointed the way home.
She planted one foot next to Grey’s shoulder, took hold of him with both hands and then heaved him to his feet, not noticing his weight which was twice her own. It was a feat she could never have replicated—Grey wasn’t the only one who was feeling the effect of the blast—she was acting on instinct and that instinct told her she had to get out of there, fast.
He sagged against her and she accepted his weight draped across her shoulders as though he was little more than a child. “A little further,” she said when he tripped not a dozen feet into their journey home. They were nonsense words. There was still ten miles between them and safety.
“One step at a time,” she encouraged him. Gradually, she coaxed him across the fire-strewn field, avoiding the spots that were still raging. For some time, they seemed to be the only ones left alive on the face of the earth. Everything around them was either angry orange and searing, or black and sooty, billowing a haze of smoke that caused her to weaken and stumble.
Then, out of the smoke, another stumbling figure appeared. It was charred and hideous; she took it be a zombie that had been too close to the explosion. It came right for them without slowing. Her M16 was up and pointed so quickly the eye could barely follow the motion. As she braced for the jarring sensation guns always produced, her trigger finger squeezed down. Instead of the bang! she was expecting, the gun only produced a tiny click.
She was out of ammo!
Before she could throw Grey off of her and desperately attempt to flip the magazine around the zombie spoke. “Hey, it’s me, Morganstern.”
“Oh,” Sadie said. She couldn’t be blamed for not knowing. His apple cheeks were covered in soot, his normally soft, brown hair was plastered to his skull on one side of his head and stuck up in spikes on the other, while his uniform was filthy black in places and seared to a fine char in others. She could only guess at what sort of hell-creature she appeared to be. “Where’s...uh, where’s the other guy you were with?” she asked.
“Rob’s dead,” Morganstern said, breathing out the words. “Took one to the head. Here, let me help you.” He came up under Grey’s other arm and basically took all the weight off of her. She wasn’t going to argue. The adrenaline rush of battle was fading and there was still a long way to go.
He took so much weight off of her shoulders that she basically gave the captain over to him. She took his weapon and slung it across her back and then she did the same with Grey’s. Next she flipped her magazine around and pulled back on the charging handle.
“I think I’m ready to...” A distant gunshot caused her to jerk around. She stared back across the field toward where the Azael had their camp strung out along the highway 34; there was a blinking light which was followed a second later by the sound of more gunfire. “Are they shooting at us?” she asked.
Morganstern started hauling Grey away, saying, over his shoulder: “Of course they are. Don’t just stand there, come on.”
She followed them deeper up the wooded slopes of the ridgeline and in seconds the burning field was out of sight and the gunfire tapered away to nothing. Then they were trudging back the way they came, drinking in the cool air.
Grey was a bleary and mumbling load for Morganstern until they came upon a mountain stream that was only a few feet in width and a foot deep. It made a noise that was a cross between a gurgle and a chuckle.
“I need...” Grey said in a whisper before kneeling down next to the running waters. For two minutes, he guzzled the cold water and splashed himself until he was soaking wet. Then, gently, he peeled back the burned uniform, exposing his lower right leg; the flesh was blistered and raw, but could have been worse. He grunted at what he saw and then made to stand, but went lightheaded and had to be held up by Morganstern.
“I’m good,” Grey said when his eyes could focus. He glanced back the way they had come and asked: “Where are Dornier and O’Hannon?”
Morganstern shook his head. “Don’t know. Probably dead. They had stopped shooting about a minute before the explosion.”
“We need to go back and see,” Grey said. “We don’t leave men behind.”
Again Morganstern shook his head. “No, we can’t, not this time. I’m sorry sir, but if they were uninjured, they would’ve been here by now. That means they’re either too hurt to walk or they’re dead. I can barely carry you and I don’t think Sadie would be much help moving guys the size of Dornier and O’Hannon. If we go back, we go back to die, not to save anyone.”
“Then leave me,” Grey ordered. “You and Sadie go back.”
“I’m not one of your soldiers to order about,” Sadie told the captain, her fists planted firmly on her hips. “I’m not going back and neither is Morganstern. It’s a stupid idea. Now, you two get going. I’ll cover our retreat.” She picked out a tree that was large enough to hide behind and then leaned up against it with her weapon pointing down the slope.
Grey let out an exasperated breath. “If you’re going to do this, do it right. Where is your fallback position and how do you plan on getting to it without getting shot? Where are your fields of fire? The forest in front of you is too thick and while behind you it’s too thin to provide cover. Come on, Sadie, use your head.”
“Sorry,” she mumbled. “I’m not used to doing this sort of thing. Maybe, you guys should show me a good spot.”
“Sure,” Morganstern said. “Don’t listen to the captain, you’re doing great, so far.”
With Grey leaning heavily on Morganstern, they led the way up the hill. Sadie walked with her head turned part way around; she could hear whispers coming from the woods behind them and she expected another shot to ring out at any second. It made her walk with a terrible itch between her shoulder blades where she figured the bullet would hit. The feeling was dreadful and her feet want to run, screaming away at top speed.
But she would not leave Grey to his fate.
Two hundred yards up the slope, Grey pointed at a fallen tree; its trunk was so big around that it would take two people to wrap their arms around its girth. “There’s your field of fire right in front of you,” Grey told her, pointing with his good arm at the relatively sparsely covered hill side they had just tromped up. “Wait until they’re in the open area before shooting. Aim low and don’t waste your ammo. They’re going to want to flank you to the right. When they shift in that direction, wait until they show themselves through those trees before you fire. Then get low and scoot back around the bend of the hill. Got it?”
With her hands starting to shake, she didn’t trust her voice. She nodded and gripped her gun tighter.
“I should take our weapons back,” Morganstern said. “Just in case.”
Just in case? She didn’t like the sound of that, still she fumbled their guns off her back and, after handing them over, they left her, huddled against the downed tree. “They won’t go far,” she told herself. “It’s not like they’re going to abandon me or anything.” She tried to laugh the thought away but it persisted and she kept glancing over her shoulder to check their progress until they were out of sight.
Turning her attention back to the steep hill in front of her she was shocked to see men walking up the slope toward her. It was the Azael. Some were dressed in the flowing and wild scarves, while a few were in camouflage; none were foolish enough to come dressed in their angel costumes.
Sadie centered her sights on a group of three men in camo,
thinking that once the shooting started they would be far harder to spot than the men in the scarves. Also, since they were walking so close together, she figured that if she missed her target, she might hit one of the others by mistake.
She didn’t miss. The 5.56 mm round zipped across the sixty yards in a blink, catching a man just below his navel and blasting out through his right kidney. Without any hesitation, she snap-fired at the next man over without really aiming and, if he hadn’t started to dive to his right, she would’ve missed him. He moved straight into the path of her bullet and caught it in the chest.
By the time she had brought the M16 back to the left, the Azael were throwing themselves to the dirt and scrounging for cover. The men in camo seemed to disappear, but two of the scarf-wearing men stood out in comparison to the yellow and brown grass. She fired four times at them; one of them cried out in pain and the other just laid there, unmoving except for his foot that twitched in an ugly manner.
Then bullets started blazing in her direction. The tree she was crouched behind thumped as bullets struck it. She could feel the vibration of each come up through her cheek. There were so many bullets hitting the trunk or flying right above it that Sadie was afraid to move.
But she had to. They would flank her if she didn’t and there was little to protect her to the left and right. Having been in a few gun battles, she knew enough not to just jump and start shooting. Keeping lower than the edge of the trunk, she skittered to her right where the branches of a nearby pine tree hung so low that they were almost touching the downed tree trunk.
Slowly, she stretched up over the trunk until she was able to see the entire hill below her. It was alive with flashes of fire and smoke. It crawled with men. Some were moving to her right where there was more cover, while others were hunkered down and sweeping the tree trunk with gunfire.
She brought the M16 and blasted it at the men trying to flank her. They were about fifty yards distant and because of the terrain, her hyped-up state, and the fact that she was literally scared stiff by everyone trying to kill her, she missed with all five of her shots.
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