If he doesn’t die, you’ll have to kill him, the other girl within Jillybean said. We have to find a way to escape.
“Why?” Jillybean whispered.
You were right, before. We can’t go to Colorado. They won’t like us in Colorado. They’ll put us in jail, so we have to kill these two and escape.
Neil had been standing still, wearing an odd expression; he now shrugged his shoulders and said: “I think the water is good. I feel perfectly fine. It’s actually quite tasty.”
Kill him, damn it! His back is turned.
“I didn’t think water had a taste,” Deanna said, making no move toward the water, despite Neil’s declaration and the oppressive heat.
Steal the truck and leave them!
“Shut up!” Jillybean suddenly screamed. In frustration she picked up a rock and threw it at the house. More by luck than skill, she struck one of the rectangular panes in the window. The music of glass crashing down filled the still air and over it, Jillybean yelled: “Just shut up and listen to me. We do this my way, ok?”
Once again, as had happened frequently that day, there was an uncomfortable silence—though it wasn’t uncomfortable for Jillybean. The other girl was quiet, brooding angrily like a stony malignant tumor. “Good,” Jillybean said. Without hesitation, she kinked at the waist and put her mouth to the water gushing out of the rusty spigot.
Neil put a hand between her lips and the water. “Whoa. We don’t know if this is poisoned. It could be slow acting.”
Jillybean pulled his hand away. “I hope it is poisoned,” she said, in a seething rage, speaking to the other girl. “I hope you die. I hope you rot in hell.”
Again the silence and again Jillybean was glad for it. At the moment it represented that she had the upper hand. She drank the water and it was cool and wonderful and good.
Chapter 14
Captain Grey
When he had finally gotten off the twelfth lug nut, he rolled the two-hundred and fifty pound tire away to the side of the road to rot forever—forever in a human sense—the sprung tire would still be sitting there, a tree growing from its trough, long after the asphalt of the road had been eroded into nothing by the sun and the wind, and the voracious appetite of time. It would be there, but not for all that much longer. The rubber would split eventually and then the roots of nature would show that the workings of man, despite his conceit, are not forever. Sooner than anyone could expect, once man’s time is done he will quickly be forgotten. His landfills will become meccas of life, his bridges will be cast down and the concrete jungles of his cities will be swept away, becoming dust once again.
But before all that, Grey, sweating through his camouflage clothing, grunted as he heaved the tire down into a ditch. He allowed himself just a moment of rest, pausing to push his knuckles into the small of his back. The vertebrae cracked in an uneven wave, like a bone xylophone. The sound and the pain in his back had him feeling every one of thirty-five years.
A long sigh, an old man’s sigh, Grey thought, escaped him as he looked far down the road where dust hung in the still air. A car was coming; it was Brad or Neil, heading back. He hoped it was Neil with the water. The last of it had gone to make Eve a distastefully warm bottle of formula and everyone was lying about panting like dogs.
There was another reason why Grey hoped it was Neil: Deanna was with him. When they had left, Grey had been surprised by the sudden feeling of loss and the insane touch of jealousy that had gripped him. It was insane, not because of any out of control rage, but because this was Neil he was feeling jealous of!
It took all of two seconds for Grey to analyze the teenage foolishness inside him: somehow, somewhere, and at some time, he had begun to look on Deanna, not as just another woman in need of being rescued, or another of the renegades in need of being shepherded across the country, but as a real woman. A real, available, in his face, constantly near, and sometimes a pain in the butt, woman.
This completely normal observation struck him as odd and it ran a tinny chord within him, like a warning. It didn’t make much sense if the warning was taken in the context of the old world, which, more often than not, Grey still did as a matter of habit. In the new undead world, where little things were big and big things gigantic, and, where many things that people had taken for great importance didn’t matter a hill of beans, the idea that Deanna could be into him was dangerous.
They lived, essentially without laws and their old mores were near on useless. Jealousies could be deadly and love, as he had already seen, could be a death sentence more often than not. He told himself he had to tread extremely carefully, but when she climbed down from the cab of the five-ton he caught himself staring. There was a moment when she had one long leg extended, reaching for the ground, while the other was canted, on the fender. Her pelvis was open in greeting and he swallowed like a school boy. His eyes quickly glanced to check to see if she had seen him staring. Her face was cast toward the ground, her long hair, the color of honeyed wheat, collected on one side while the other was free, showing off the smooth muscles and tight tendons of her neck.
In comparison, he knew he looked like a grease monkey. His hands were black, and grime streaked him past his elbows. Around his neck and chest was a horse-collar of sweat and there were disgusting, dark crescent moons beneath his arm pits. His hair was unwashed and long, for him at least, and went in all directions except the one that might have been considered stylish.
Her step was light as she dropped to the road. She was fresh-faced and smiling. Unbelievably, she smelled of lilac.
“You’re clean,” he said. “How?”
“We found water,” she whispered. “Jillybean found it, really.”
Neil came hurrying around the truck. He too was clean, though in his case it did nothing to help his looks. His many injuries were slow to mend and Grey figured that when they did, he would still be without the boyish good looks he’d had before he had tried to sacrifice himself. “Don’t say where we got it from,” he hissed at Deanna. “You too, Jillybean. We keep it a secret. I hope you don’t take offense, Grey but you know better than anyone that loose lips sink big ships…or something like that.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Jillybean said. “Promise. But lips can’t sink a ship, especially not a big one. Icebergs can. That’s what I heard. There was this one ship called The Gigantic and this iceberg ate it and all these people got killed-ed. There was also this…”
Just then, Fred Trigg came rushing up. Behind him were the other renegades, their faces eager for water. They crowded so close that Jillybean slid back, next to Grey, using his large body to shield herself. “I don’t care if we don’t like him,” Grey heard the little girl whisper: “We can’t kill him.”
“Did you get the water?” Fred demanded. It was almost an accusation. He seemed angry that Neil, Deanna and Jillybean had taken the time to bathe.
Neil nodded. “Yes, but…” The renegades pressed forward, en masse, seeming like a mob bent on looting. Neil thrust his hands to the hard blue oval of the sky and put himself between them and the tailgate. “Stop!” He glared. When Grey had first met Neil, a glare from him couldn’t wilt lettuce on a hot summer day. Now the look stopped them and kept them from piling over him on their way into the back of the truck. “Hold on! Form a line. All of you from Michael on move back. Don’t worry we have plenty of water. Everyone will get some.”
In spite of Neil’s best efforts the line formed was more of a shifting blob. Grey watched for a moment, and despite his thirst, which was greater than any, seeing as he had done the most and the hardest work, he left and went back to where he was working on the tire. The axle was jacked up, putting the truck on a slight angle. Thankfully, he’d had help from Michael and his brother getting the good middle tire off and then re-positioned in front. He only had to cinch the lugs down and release the jack.
As Neil yelled and pushed and cursed the renegades into line, Grey picked up the wrench and went to work on the n
uts. He had only just tightened the third of the twelve, when Deanna came up with two full water bottles. “You should’ve been in the front of the line. You deserve it more than they do.”
“Deserve is probably the worst word in the English language,” he said and then took one of the offered bottles and drank deeply. It was refreshingly cool. “Very few people ever get what they deserve. Look at Fred. He deserves a punch in the mouth, and Neil deserves to be treated like a hero and you…” He bit back his words. He had been about to say: you deserve to be treated like a queen. That would’ve been awkward.
“What about me?” She seemed cautiously optimistic at what he might say. “What do I deserve?”
“You deserve better,” he replied. It was an honest answer. He was in a squat, again so much like some ignorant grease monkey, while she stood tall and trim above him. She was beautiful while he was grim at the best of times.
Yet his answer was not based on appearances at all. Of all the renegades, she was the only one who had grown as a person in the time he had known her. Neil might have become a stronger leader, but he was also beaten down, his innocence degraded and his cheery outlook replaced by suspicion. Jillybean was damaged goods. Where there had been fine cracks in her psyche there was now a deep gorge of crazy. Michael Gates had gone from a not so great leader of his people to a quiet worker bee who never contributed the least idea to the group. And Sadie looked to have practically given up. Her innocence and her zest for life had been washed away by all the blood she had spilt.
Only Deanna had grown. She had gone from being a cringing whore to one of the most valuable members of the group. She was smart, engaging and protective. In Grey’s eyes, she practically glowed—this thought set off another warning bell within him; this one making even less sense than any other.
“I don’t think I will get better,” she said, a little sadly. His mind had been wandering and at first he thought she meant that she was sick, but that clearly wasn’t the case. Then what did she mean? he wondered. Was it her life in general that she was talking about getting better, or was it something more specific? Something closer. Something that had to do with the way she was looking at him steadily with her even blue eyes…
“Uh, Mister Captain Grey sir?” Jillybean was suddenly right beside him. He had been staring so intently up at Deanna that his vision had tunneled and he hadn’t seen her walking up.
He tried to grin his way past his embarrassment, only at the sight of the little girl, his grin faded away. Her face was pinched and her were eyes narrowed in a look that was curdled hate. “Yes?” he asked, cautiously. She seemed on the edge again, where she could suddenly turn ‘evil’ for want of a better word—no other word fit so well.
“The people are being real stupid. No one is acting as lookout. They’re all just drinking. That’s not right. I would tell Neil, only he’s already busy trying to keep them from drinking all the water before they waste it.” This was spoken in a rush. She had barely paused for a breath and each word had been neatly clipped so that the next could begin as quickly as she could manage to form her lips.
Grey sighed and was about to heave himself up when Deanna put a hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “No, you’ve got work to do here. I’ll take care of this.”
“Thanks. I shouldn’t be much long…”
Jillybean interrupted him: “Not her. She’s weak and stupid…no she’s not. You’re stupid!” Jillybean shouted. She stuck her balled fists on her hips and glared off to her right. After a moment, she grunted as if to say: you better not say anything more. She then said to the two adults. “I’m sorry about her. She’s very mean and bad, and I hate her very much.”
“It’s ok, Jillybean,” Deanna said. “We understand. I’ll take care of this.”
Grey watched as Deanna started directing people away from the water. She set watchers at the front and rear of the three trucks and Grey thought she was doing a fine job, but Jillybean only glared and muttered, alternating between strident anger and an evil hissing: “She’s doing it wrong! She’s a stupid bitch is why. You have to let me kill her. No, never, but she is doing it wrong. You’re right about that. They’re just sitting there, which is a real waste. It’s because they’re as stupid as she is.”
“Jillybean?” Grey asked in a gentle voice.
She didn’t hear. She was in too deep in conversation with herself. As Deanna finished directing the group away from the truck with the water, the little girl walked right past her and to the other renegades.
“Wrong!” she cried. “Why are you all just sitting there?” Her voice carried off into the corn and maybe for miles on the still air. She seemed to be in a volcanic fury over the apparent laziness of the renegades. “Are you waiting for someone else to do your thinking and your work for you? Look at those fields of corn! There’s enough food to last us months and you’re just sitting there like morons! Get up! You small ones,” she said, pointing at Joslyn, Anne and Joe Gates, “carry the guns and guard the others. You big ones, take off your shirts tie the ends and fill them with the corns. When you have enough, there is a fence that’s wooden right down the road. Break it up and bring it here. There isn’t a lot of firewood for cooking on the prairie. When you’re done with that come see me for more instructions.”
The little girl, just a tad over forty three inches in height and thin as a reed, astounded the renegades, Captain Grey among them. Her voice was that of a cockatrice, shrill and angry, piping out of her thin body like steam from a kettle, however it was her anger that had them staring in amazement. Her blue eyes popped out of her head and her fly away brown hair was so unbound by normal convention that it gave her the appearance of a tiny budding witch.
The renegades were so surprised that, instead of jumping to her demands, they simply stared. All save for Fred Trigg, that is. As usual, he looked as though something had soured his liver. “Who do you think you are to boss us around like that? We have a leader and it isn’t you.”
Jillybean turned her snarl toward him only to have a hand clamp down over her lips. Neil held her, for the moment, in check. “I am the leader here, but that doesn’t mean I know everything or that my wisdom supersedes that of others. Jillybean has pointed out a few obvious acts that it would be smart to attend to. We should be thanking her, not arguing with her. Now, Fred, everyone, get moving, like she suggested. I want three hundred ears of corn and thirty beams of wood in the back of these trucks before Brad gets back.”
Some of the renegades grumbled at first at the idea of work with the sun beating down, but with nearly sixty people going at the tasks, they doubled what Neil had asked for in half an hour. He went among them encouraging them but also telling them to make sure to keep the new food and water a secret from Brad, if at all possible. He was sure there would be a “fee” involved for picking produce that otherwise would have rotted on the stalks.
Many of the renegades, without being asked, even crossed to the other side of the road to pick the beans from the shrub-like plants. It was guessed that they were soybeans though no one knew for certain. During this, Jillybean stood apart from the rest, alternating between a moody muttering and a blank stare in which she seemed catatonic.
“That is the saddest thing,” Deanna said to Grey.
“It’ll be better when we get to Colorado,” he answered, though he didn’t know for sure.
Brad arrived soon after. This time he came in a Dodge pick-up truck, its bed filled with gallon jugs of water. His three scarf-clad women went among them offering the water at outrageous prices, only to be politely refused every time. Having left the renegades to swelter in seeming dire thirst for two hours, they were clearly perplexed that their water was turned down.
“We can make it a while longer without your water,” Neil said. “Maybe if you were fair about your prices we could talk. Until then, please point us west, so we can get to Colorado.” Brad was far from pleased and, instead of going straight west, they went north, passing a number of the
mega-herds being driven along by more of the winged riders. Interestingly, among the thousands of zombies were hundreds of cows, trudging along kicking up a cloud of dust.
“I miss steak,” Neil said after his stomach rumbled loud enough for everyone to hear.
“I like hamburgers,” Jillybean said. She was leaned well over Neil, resting an elbow on the door, her little nose pressed against the glass. “Ipes used to say ham came from pigs and hamburgers came from cows, which never did make no sense. But I know that milk comes from cows for certain. It’s in their unders. I know because I read it in books. I miss milk and cereal, and chocolate milk.” She sighed. Neil also sighed, as did Deanna.
“I wonder how much they would charge for a cow,” Deanna said, “Probably a ton.”
Grey knew it would be an outrageous amount. The very thought was unsettling. “The Azael have grown very powerful. Maybe too powerful. It’s one thing to control the passage of the plains, but now they have legions of undead under their dominion. And if that isn’t enough, they have herds of cattle and a seemingly endless supply of corn and other crops.”
“And yet they try to nickel and dime us at every turn,” Neil griped. “It’s greedy is what it is.”
Jillybean shook her head slowly as if in a dream and then spoke as though she were a ghost with barely any breath and less life: “No, it’s human nature. It’s mean and nasty and also it’s ascared. Brad and them, they’re ascared of running out in times of…of…famine. I don’t know that word, but it’s the word Ipes would’ve used, only he’s dead now and I have a human nature in me. She’s angry and afraid of everything. I don’t like her. She wants a cow to eat, though she doesn’t know how to cook it. She hates everyone, including Brad and his three whores. That’s a bad word, I know, but she calls them that.”
At the word whore, Deanna went stiff next to Grey and he couldn’t help but stiffen as well, knowing what she had done to survive. He was sure it would be a taboo word to the day she died. He wanted to change the subject to something cheery, unfortunately he couldn’t find anything to be cheery about. Compared to the Azael, the people of Colorado were very weak and he knew human nature better than Jillybean. Weakness invited attack. Weakness was all the excuse some people needed to perpetuate evil.
The Undead World (Book 6): The Apocalypse Exile (War of The Undead) Page 15
