Jillybean's First Adventure

by Peter Meredith

  “I wanna…go…home,” she said, her pitiful voice breaking with each hitch in her chest. “Let’s forget…all this and…and…go home.”

  Ipes would not hear of it. A handful of rice would last them only a single meal and a disappointing one at that. He made her stop in the next pleasant-looking house they came to. They passed a few little ranch-style houses with Ipes saying, Shoddy, to the first and Trashy, at the second, while with the third he gave it a hmph, though what he meant by that Jillybean didn’t know.

  The fourth was more to both of their likings. It had a welcome mat sitting precisely on the little square of a stoop, flowered curtains hung in the front window and there were four different bird houses set about. None held birds or nests but that was beside the point. The house was nice and Jillybean needed a touch of nice just then.

  Judging by the mess, many others had come through looking for nice. Why do they always tear everything apart? Ipes griped. Why throw the dishes on the floor? Why?

  Jillybean shrugged, already too tired both emotionally and physically to care about dishes. Listlessly, she went through the motions of searching what the rampaging mobs coming out of Trenton and Camden had already searched. She was in the master bedroom on the second floor, looking with glazed-over eyes at the mess someone had made of a nightstand when something caught her attention outside.

  It was a person!

  A real one! This was no zombie. This was a real man. He was bearded but looked clean. His jeans were vibrantly blue and his flannel jacket was black and red checkered perfection. And the way he moved: like a cat, from cover to cover wasn’t at all comparable to the way the monsters shambled or shuffled or lurched.

  “Ipes!”

  I see him. We should be careful because you never know what sort of…Jillybean! Stop! He could be mean or a bad guy.

  She wasn’t listening. Even more than before her run in with Becca Risbon, she needed people, very, very badly. It’s what drove her in a frantic sprint down the stairs, along the hall where the pictures were only a blur and out the front door. She only stopped when the man spun and pointed a rifle at her, and even then, it was only because he was way across the street and she wasn’t really supposed to cross the big street.

  “Hi,” she said with a wave of her tiny hand, as she was struck with an acute case of shyness.

  “Who you with?”

  The simple question brought on a sharp panic. Do I tell him about Ipes? Would he understand that Ipes wasn’t a normal zebra? She began to make a hesitant hand motion, gesturing behind her when something else caught her eye—a flash of red-orange racing at the man.

  Right away she knew what, or rather who it was. “Becca, no!”

  Becca seemed to have forgotten her name. She didn’t even blink those wickedly greedy eyes as she came on. The man, turning from one child to the next, faltered, his trigger-finger stiffening as sharp confusion froze him for just a second too long.

  He blinked once in an overly large and somewhat comic way, then almost too late, he fired at Becca.

  Jillybean had heard guns, big and small for months now. This was the first time one had been fired with her so close and with nothing between her and the gun. It sounded like a giant explosion. The sound was so immense and frightening to the six-year-old that she felt the urge to run, and she even took a step back, tripping over the final stair leading into the house and falling inside the doorway.

  Though she fell, with Ipes squawking in fear as well as indignation about being “mushed,” she couldn’t take her eyes off the scene in front of her.

  As there was all sorts of dark blood pouring down from the top of her head and into her red hair, Jillybean was absolutely sure poor Becca had been shot. Only it hadn’t slowed her down for a second. She came shooting in under the long rifle and attacked the man’s tummy with such unholy ferocity that they both went down in a heap.

  “Son of a bitch!” the man yelled, grabbing a handful of that bloody red hair. Becca was like a rat terrier. She tore through the man’s heavy coat with frenzied determination and already there was fluff or feathers plastered in her blood. But she was small and he was large.

  “Get the…” He thudded the side of the rifle into her head. “Hell…” Again, the rifle smashed her. “Off me!” A final strike, one delivered with all the force he could muster in such close quarters, crushed the side of her head and she went limp. Still snarling curses, he threw her aside and stood staring as he turned his hands this way and that.

  Seemingly satisfied, he muttered, “Alright,” and wrestled his heavy pack off his back, then pulled off his coat. Even with the beard, Jillybean saw his lips twist in disgust before he took to more muttering, this time so low that all she heard was: “…perfectly good coat. Stupid little…”

  It was then that he appeared to remember there had been a second girl. He tossed aside the coat and looked in her direction, not seeing her at first, because she had fallen or so she supposed. He didn’t have time for a proper search; at that moment, a rasping moan came from up the street. It was followed by more.

  There were monsters coming and they were close. Stark terror shot through Jillybean, and Ipes began calling for an immediate panic and yet the man appeared more perturbed than frightened. As if he had all the time in the world, he shouldered his pack, reached for his rifle and then yelled, leaping suddenly and struggling back.

  Becca wasn’t dead after all. The blows that would have killed Jillybean had only stunned Becca and now her jagged teeth were half an inch deep in the man’s right ankle. He yanked his leg out of her mouth, backed up with a hopping step and aimed his gun at the girl monster. But he didn’t fire. His face took on a look of shocked bewilderment as if never in a million years he would’ve guessed the preceding moments could have transpired.

  He looked down at his leg and then at Becca who was crawling towards him, and then he looked down the street where the real monsters were coming. He still didn’t shoot, he only stumbled off, that bewildered look worse now as he couldn’t seem to close his drooping mouth.

  We can’t just sit here! Ipes said in a frightened whisper. We have to get inside. Hurry!

  Jillybean wanted to race after the man. In fact, she needed to for survivals sake. Her great fear wouldn’t let her, and she slunk into the house, feeling her chickenness pervade her innards as if she had swallowed something greasy. As she went upstairs, Ipes tried to tell her she was doing the right thing or the smart thing, but it only felt like the chickeny thing.

  She was certain she had lost her one chance at having a friend and went to the master bedroom to watch the man leave forever. To her great happiness, he hadn’t left! He had only ducked around an SUV and slipped up into a house cattycorner from the one she was in.

  “I bet he’s nice,” she stated with complete confidence. “He coulda shot Becca and he didn’t. Yeah, he sure bonked her pretty hard, but she had bitted him which everyone knows is wrong. If her mommy or Miss April had seen that, boy howdy, she woulda got in trouble.”

  Jillybean went up on her tippy toes to look for her friend and saw instead that the street was flooded with monsters. Quick as a wink, she ducked back down. After a two-minute wait in which she sat tapping one sneakered foot, she took another peek. “They’re still down there,” she griped.

  You have to be patient, jeeze. Maybe you should consider taking a nap.

  “A nap? Jimney crickets, Ipes. Do I look like a two-year-old to you? Now hush, unless you have a better idea than a stinkin’ nap. Sheesh.” Ipes was properly chastised and sat in a stony silence which loomed largely as Jillybean tried to practice her patience. Sitting still wasn’t her best thing, however and she only lasted four minutes before she took another look.

  “I thought I heard something,” she said, by way of an excuse.

  Sure, you did.

  “What’s that oposed to mean? If I say I heard something then I heard something for all darn it. I think it’s time you went to the corner for sure this time.
” He crossed his flappy hooves and brooded in the corner as she went back to the window and poked her big blues eyes over the sill. Becca was gone or was hidden by the dozens of other monsters shambling about in the street. They were disgusting. Some didn’t have hands or faces, and all of them seemed to have gone to the bathroom right in their pants.

  “See. I told you I heard something. It’s like a parade down there. ‘Cept they don’t have no giant balloon animals or any walking around bands or nothing. And Becca’s gone, too. Ooh, I see the guy.”

  Just as she was, he was standing at a second-floor window, staring down at the zombies. Jillybean thought he seemed unhappy. “Prolly lonely or maybe that bite hurted worser than it looked. That reminds me, I forgotted band-aides when I packed for our expedition! Maybe they have some here.”

  She left the window in a tearing hurry and went scrounging in all the places a person would keep band-aides. There were none to be had, however she did find a half a bag of cherry cough-drops under a bathroom sink and when she came back she had one bulging out each cheek.

  Ahem, Ipes said, pointedly.

  “Ahem yourself, Mister Smartypants Zebra. Are you gonna be good?”

  He said he would, so she released him from the corner. She even went so far as to offer him a couch-drop which he turned down as it wasn’t chocolate chip flavored.

  She then went back to the window. The man was still there, looking as unhappy as he had before, and the monsters were still there and they never looked anything but unhappy.

  Four hours later, when Jillybean woke from a long and accidental nap, the scene was the very same. “Wha? What’s happening?” She was fuzzy-headed, still wrapped in a fraying curtain of sleep. “Did he leave?”

  No, but you did. You took a trip on the nappy-time express. Ipes laughed so hard at this that his blue shirt rode high up on his belly. I thought you were a big girl?

  “You better zip it, for all darn it.” She threatened him with a fist little bigger than an egg. Despite its lack of real menace, he pantomimed drawing an imaginary zipper across an equally imaginary mouth. “That’s better. It was your fault anyways. No one wants to hear about the great zebras of an-quick-ity.”

  Antiquity.

  “Where-ever, and it’s not the point. Zebras aren’t the best at every single thing in the whole world, and I really don’t think they invented any lights or nothing. In fact…”

  A sudden, shrieked curse, one of the real bad ones Jillybean wasn’t even supposed to guess the meaning of, blared out from across the street, making her jump. She poked her bit of a nose over the sill, expecting to see something other than the monsters going in circles. Other than the top of his head, little could be seen of the man in the house. He was still at the window, however he had his head down and looked to be laughing.

  Or crying, Ipes noted.

  There was no need for Jillybean to wonder exactly what he might be crying over. There was always something. She felt like crying ten times a day. Luckily, she had Ipes who always told her a funny story or played games with her or told her about the Zebra Kings of Siam, of which there had been many, each prone to bravery and klutziness in equal measure.

  Jillybean watched the man for a long time and he was indeed crying. She started crying as well and no amount of Ipes’ silliness helped since she wasn’t crying for herself.

  The man cried for an hour and then paced around the room for another hour. His growing aggravation was not just felt across the street but in the street as well. Another curse, a crash, and breaking glass had monsters heading toward the house. Gunshots roared out one after another.

  Then nothing.

  “We should go home,” Jillybean said, in a stunned whisper.

  We can’t chance it. All that racket will bring more of them. Ipes could be annoyingly correct most of the time. Now, he was frightfully correct. Jillybean lost count of the number of monsters that came lurching and moaning from all directions. They brought with them a rotting stench that had the dozen or so cough-drops in Jillybean’s belly threatening to come up.

  She found it wacky that the man did nothing but shoot the monsters one after another. Since he had so many guns and bullets he could have tried running away, but he never did. “What’s wrong with him?”

  The moment the question was out of her mouth, she wanted to take it back. Her bellyful of cherry cough-drops began to slosh and heave as if there was a great red sea inside of her being brewed up by a storm of nerves.

  He’s dying. She swung her head violently toward the zebra who was sitting on the bed with his flappy hooves resting on the pudge of his belly. He’s becoming one of them. You know, a monster. Becca bit him. You saw that.

  She realized that she didn’t just see it, she had caused it. First, she had freed Becca and then she had managed to distract the man just as she had attacked him. “I did this,” she said, hearing the words in her ears in an echoey sort of way as if she were outside of her head and yelling through a tunnel at herself.

  No, you didn’t! You didn’t make Becca a monster and you didn’t make that guy come here. You were just trying to do the right thing. You should always try to do the right thing. Are you listening to me, Jillybean?

  It was her daddy’s voice coming to her in that same echoey way. She stared around as the room spun and spun and the gun shots roared out and the zombies wailed and moaned…before she knew it, she had fallen, bouncing off the bed and landing on the plum-colored carpet where she immediately puked up a great gout of red fluid.

  The sun was setting by then and the cough-drop/stomach acid concoction looked exactly like blood.

  “Ipes, help me, I’m dying.” She crawled away, moving towards the door thinking she would crawl home and die in her bed, just like her mommy had died in hers.

  We can’t go yet, Ipes told her. Remember, I’m supposed to be helping you. Listen.

  Obediently, she paused, her head cocked. There wasn’t much to hear. The gunshots had stopped and so had the moans. The only thing she heard was the crying. Jillybean had always been sensitive to the pain of others and she found the strength to stand once more and make her way to the window.

  The man was in the street, surrounded by twenty or thirty dead monsters. “I-I did my part,” he said, just loud enough for Jillybean to hear. “You’re welcome world. And now it’s time. It’s time. Jesus, it’s time…but not here.”

  He staggered inside. There was a thirty second pause, followed by a flash and a last gunshot. Jillybean waited and waited for him to appear either in the window or the street or anywhere. He never showed. “Where’d he go?” she asked Ipes. “Should we go try to find him?” Ipes only sighed and she suddenly understood, at least as much as she could understand. “He shotted himself?”

  Yes.

  “Can we please go home now?” she begged.

  No. He had a bag. He must’ve had food.

  “Hold on,” she said, blinking, her head still tilting. “You want me to steal? First I made him suicide himself and now you want me to be a stealer person?”

  What I want is for you to live. You have to have food, or you’ll die. Besides, I bet that man had filched all sorts of stuff from here and there. It probably wasn’t his in the first place. It’s the same as those cough-drops you ate. They weren’t anyone’s anymore so it’s okay.

  This made more sense and it was with a minutely clearer conscience that she shouldered her Power Puff backpack and went out into the evening. Jilly-mouse was in charge and she scampered with all the care in the world across the broad street. She was a taut spring, ready to run at the first sign of trouble, however when trouble came she did not run. She paused on the stoop to look into the living room window and there was the bearded man, sitting on a heavy, leather reclining chair, his feet up, his jaw, once again slack, his eyes closed as if he were asleep and a hole in the side of his head.

  The sight flipped a switch in the girl’s much abused mind and she froze, unable to either step in or leave. To step in
was to confront her guilt. To leave was to die. It was too much for a six-year-old and she was still standing there when a monster lumbered up the road, drawn by the gunshots. It was a big one, wide both side to side as well as front to back, and it was tall, over six foot. It would be able to eat most of Jillybean in one bite.

  It spotted her and came charging around a vague lump of a minivan that took up the entire driveway.

  She wanted to run but her fear was too powerful. She had been afraid every moment of every day for months now, however just at that second, her fear had grown beyond her ability to cope. It rooted her in place. Ipes screamed and screamed, but his shrill little voice was nothing compared to the colossus of panic inside of her. And it was nothing compared to the monster. It was too big, too strong and too fast.

  On top of all of that, there was nowhere to run. The yard was enclosed by a black iron fence too high for her to climb over. She was trapped; the best she could do was slip from the stoop and cower in some scant bushes next to the house.

  I’m going to die. Of all the voices she heard in her head and there were more than just Ipes’ and her daddy’s, this one was a first. It was her own. Once again, she had that strange out of body experience when the beast, a truly wicked creature that looked ten-feet tall to the tiny girl, got around the minivan. There was nothing between her and it. She felt her heart stop dead in her chest.

  She had hit the very pinnacle of fear. Even if a million more monsters came she couldn’t absorb one more iota of dread. The thought, I’m going to die, came again and it was spoken inside of her with the utmost truth. There was no hero hiding in the shadows waiting to dart out and save her at the last moment. She had no secret weapon that she could whip out and blast the creature apart. There was no meteor plummeting right toward it at that very moment.

  It was just the two of them, alone.

  The monster had only one play in its playbook: it charged with a bloodcurdling roar—and tripped over a crack in the cement, falling on its face in such a cartoonish manner that Jillybean heard a distant chuckle; Ipes she assumed.