She remembered hearing a murmuring which she had followed until she had found the Duke’s suite. Slow as a turtle she had eased the door back and seen the Duke and Deanna standing very close, talking. Neither saw her and she listened to the strange conversation until she was struck by something so much more urgent than just their chit-chat—it was the smell of something cooking. Forgetting Deanna and the Duke, Jillybean had scampered along, sly as a fox, dodging the occasional guard or wandering man or woman of the Azael, until she came to the kitchen.
The kitchen had once been a break room with little more than a fridge and a microwave, however the Duke had added an electric stove and, beneath a curtained window, a barbeque grille. In the room was the most interesting man. He was spindly and hunched, seemingly made of bone more than anything else. It was as if his skeleton was too big for his body. He reminded her of a praying mantis, but a conniving one. He had secrets that he mumbled to himself as he cut up potatoes and chopped chives and onion. Sometimes he laughed as high as a girl and then poked at whatever vegetable he was reducing to its basic elements.
Jillybean watched him, hoping that he would step out of the room long enough for her to snag something to eat. That was stealing and she knew it was wrong and yet the other girl was demanding it. In her heart, Jillybean knew she would probably have done it anyway without any encouragement from her.
Then the Duke came and Jillybean shied back, hiding behind a well-worn couch where there was a village of ancient gum wads next to her head. She tried to keep from touching these as she listened to the Duke. He said things, she was sure. She saw his mouth move and his lips clap together, however the words drew out into a long, slow motion groan and when she would blink her eyes, the lids closed as slowly as the passing of a day …and then she found herself next to Deanna’s bed with Captain Grey asking her a question.
“Huh?” she replied, wondering what time it was and where she was.
“I said, can you hand me the stethoscope? It’s the thing with the ear-buds right next to your hand.” He seemed put out by having to ask twice, but it wasn’t her fault since she didn’t know where her hands were, let alone what was beside them. She looked down and saw the stethoscope and knew it and its use. She also saw the IV lines and the fluid bag, and the blood pressure cuff and the thermometer and the other medical odds and ends and each she described in her mind and categorized. She could understand these things at least.
She handed over the stethoscope and watched as Grey used it in conjunction with the blood pressure cuff. She saw the needle on the glass face of the cuff moving along as though it were a second hand on a stop watch, but then it jumped and started a hitching descent down to a point where it went smoothly again, going slower and slower.
“90 over 60. Not good,” Grey said and Jillybean understood this only to a degree. The first hitch of the needle had occurred at the 90 mark where it began to jerk until it had hit the 60 at which point it had gone smoothly down the rest of the way. What the numbers, 90 and 60 signified beyond ‘Not good’, she didn’t know.
She asked Grey and he answered and the knowledge of blood volume and the various repercussions of too low and too high registered on her memory, however she couldn’t have repeated a word.
For some reason Jillybean had a great fear inside her. It ate away her insides and made her tummy ache. At this point, only Deanna was known to be sick. Eve was dying and no one knew. She had been given her bottle by Veronica and had her diaper changed by Joslyn, and had been sung to sleep by Anne Gates, who was well known for her soothing voice, and she had been watched over in the back of the first truck by Marybeth Gates, who was standing guard anyway.
And during this Jillybean was afraid and didn’t know why. She stayed with Grey for an hour before Veronica burst in with the news of Eve’s death. Veronica looked like she had been stricken with some disease; she was all white and her eyes were these big balls that were wet as stones that had just been pulled from a lily-pad-covered fishing hole and stuck in her sockets.
“Eve is dead!” she cried.
This started the renegades on their various paths of mourning or revenge or just plain yapping. Everyone seemed to be doing something, all save Jillybean who followed along behind Captain Grey after he had set Neil on watch over Deanna. Jillybean was just an afterthought to him. She was just a shadow, and she felt as useless as one. The baby lolled in Marybeth’s arms. She was perfect as always except she was white, just so awfully white and she didn’t move, even though tears kept falling on her face.
Normally, Eve would have grabbed the tears and inspected them, because everything was so interesting and curious to her. She had always looked on the world and everyone in it as a wonder and an experience to enjoy.
With his mouth clamped down like a vice and his eyes ferocious in anger, Captain Grey took Eve from Marybeth and undressed her and opened her little mouth and looked in, to see her soul, Jillybean supposed. That she was dead made no sense to Jillybean and her own lack of shock over it made even less sense. It was as though she had expected it which was only possible if she had known…
“No,” she said. Standing there seeing the baby looking so beautiful and lifeless at the same time, Jillybean felt as though there was something in her throat fighting to come up. It had all the characteristics of a bull frog. It was squirmy and alive and it kicked, demanding to get out and breathe once again, however, it wasn’t a bullfrog jumping up her throat, it was only her dinner which had been green beans and three spoonfuls of chicken noodle soup. It all went onto the ground except a little which spattered wetly onto her sneakers.
Someone, she didn’t know who, asked if she was ok, but she couldn’t answer beyond a croak that was again so much like that of a frog that she wondered again if something was alive within her—something more than the other girl, the other evil girl, that is. She had done something. Jillybean knew it, and yet when Grey rounded on her, took her by the shoulders and demanded in a harsh, angry tone that she tell him what she had done, Jillybean lied.
“I didn’t do anything.”
Anything that she could remember, that is. All she could truthfully remember was the weird Bone-man and the Duke, and the overheard whispered conversation and then everything went black as night as the other girl took over. Jillybean told herself that all she knew was the black of her mind and the strange and scary silver lines that went down into the darkness where she was terrified to go because down there was…what? What was down there?
Everything, a voice whispered in her mind. Yes, everything, and everything encompassed far too much for one little girl to handle. Down there was where she kept the mind pictures of how her parents had died and how Ram had been turned into a disgusting monster and then drownded while chained to the boat that Jillybean had sunk. And down there was the memory of Sarah, blackened and horrible; Sarah had stood in front of her and had taken a bullet meant for Jillybean.
In the cool light of day, she remembered these things sure, however they were passing memories and faint. Down there in the black of her mind, the memories were strong and the pain of them stung and tasted of poison. They were waiting deep down there, waiting for her; waiting to drown her if she ever went to explore.
And memories weren’t the only things down there. Everything encompassed every fright and fear and tear and scream and horror she had ever experienced. Down there was where every monster that had ever reached for her with their diseased hands, lived. It was where she hid the pain she had caused and the blood she had spilt and the flames she had lit that had roasted living flesh. And down there was where the secret knowledge was kept. Down there was where she kept the knowledge that she was a killer.
She had killed people but hid the fact from herself by stuffing the knowledge deep into the black. Consciously, she barely remembered pulling the trigger of her little gun and killing the first bounty hunter and the same was true with how she had killed Ernest. And she couldn’t remember at all the sound of the screams as t
he ferry boats went up in flames, and the memory of the guard on the barge being blasted into bloody chunks when she had blown it sky-high was simply gone.
But down there the feeling and the noise and the pain were perfectly preserved. It was all there in Technicolor, as was the scary, joyous, powerful feeling which had accompanied the killings. And down there was…was…perhaps it was where her memory of killing Eve was laid out all perfectly preserved in the hateful black of her mind.
It was best not to think about ‘down there.’
“I didn’t do anything,” she had repeated, to which Grey had grunted like bull and then turned back to stare at Eve as if he could see through her white skin and see what had caused her death. Jillybean grew uneasy just in case he could. What was in the depths of Eve’s mind? Were there hidden pictures there as well and was one of Jillybean doing something she shouldn’t have? A shudder that was hidden by the night wracked the little girl.
I didn’t do anything was both the truth and a lie. To Jillybean, the other girl was a real, live person, just as Ipes had been a real, live stuffed animal, just as the zombies were real, live monsters that would eat you. The other girl had done something, but she had done, whatever it was, using Jillybean’s body and for that, the little girl was wracked by guilt.
Like most everyone else, she didn’t sleep that night. The only person who did was Deanna and she didn’t wake in the morning like a normal person would.
Captain Grey was haggard and bitter by first light. He didn’t see evil in Jillybean; he saw it in the Duke. The soldier would curse under his breath and bunch his muscley arms whenever the Duke came in to check on Deanna. To Jillybean, Menis looked genuinely concerned. “You will have to stay until she is better,” he insisted.
The morning wore away and Jillybean grew bored and restless. Wracked by an unknown guilt, she had an urgent need to be away from people. She slipped from the school, unseen and walked around the town and saw immediately that something had changed in the town—there were more people, a lot more people than there had been the day before. They were all men and they carried guns. She also saw that the monsters who walked in their endless circle around the town had multiplied. They were now a wide and deep river of odiferous, rotting flesh.
No one else seemed to notice. The renegades were busy. Neil wandered around the school in a daze trying to comfort everyone when it was clear he was the one most in need of comforting. Grey was busy watching over Deanna. This mainly took the form of him holding her hand and staring at her. Sadie was busy hiding in the back of the corn truck, and the rest were bleary-eyed, yawning or busy napping after the long, stressful night.
They napped while the trap closed around them.
“What were the Duke and the Bone-man talking about?” Jillybean asked the air. She stood in an alley down from the old theater with the strange wording on the marquee that she didn’t understand. She paused after the question and perked an ear, hoping that the other girl would answer. When, after three seconds went by and there was nothing coming as way of an answer, she tried again: “Listen, we’re being trapped by the Duke. Can’t you see it?”
Again a pause, but the other girl refused to speak. She was hiding inside Jillybean. She was hiding from the truth. “You’re hiding because they’ll know it was you who put Deanna in a coma and it was you who killed Eve.”
I am Eve, the other girl said inside her mind. I am the only Eve, now. I am the baby, now. I’m the youngest and the cutest and now everyone will only pay attention to me.
Was that why she had killed the baby? For attention? “What did you do?” Jillybean asked and a shiver went up her spine as she waited on the answer. The voice of the other girl had changed. She spoke in a higher register and there was an affected lisp to her words as if she were trying to sound younger, which she did, though it didn’t make her sound any less evil.
That’s for me to know and you to find out.
“Why that is so childish!” Jillybean hissed like an angry tea kettle. “We are seven-years-old! We don’t say silly...” She heard the sound of voices coming from around the corner of one of the buildings and a second later there was the sound of glass crunching and the tinny sound of a can being kicked across cement. Quick as a squirrel, Jillybean ducked behind a green dumpster and squatted against a wall that smelled like pee-pee.
“That’s up to the Duke, not me. A hundred rounds apiece is all I’m permitted to give you, Brad.”
Jillybean peeked around the edge of the dumpster and saw the man who had guided them to their current predicament. He was once again dressed as an angel. His armor shone bright and his wings arched tall and beautiful—they did not match the sneer on his face. “First off, you address as me as ‘your lordship’ or ‘sir’,” Brad said as they came into the alley and began walking towards the theater. “I have been made a Baron for this, as you know full well, Jim. And second, I have fifty men coming in tonight and I want them ready to go when this kicks off. You don’t want to be messing around in the dark, do you?”
The little girl, who was naturally eaten up with curiosity, crept after them and, thanks to Brad’s wings, which were large and rustled loudly, she went unseen and unheard.
“Like I told you before, your highness,” Jim said, adding a mock bow in Brad’s direction. “You need to talk to the Duke. He only lets me give out so much per person, and if I have to do it at night then I do it at night. We haven’t had an incident with the stiffs in weeks besides a stray or two, so stop wetting yourself like a girl. So, do you want yours now or when your men arrive? It really doesn’t matter to me.”
Brad snapped: “Now, of course. I’m not getting up at three in the morning. That’ll be all you.”
Jim grunted as they came up to a side door. As Jillybean slunk behind an old car, Jim fished out a set of keys from somewhere among his multi-hued scarf outfit. He chose one among them and opened the side door of the theater. “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” he said with a wide grin and then walked past a curtain hanging just on the other side of the door.
Jillybean didn’t know what napalm was but she could smell something with a pungent chemical odor waft from the theater. It was so strong that it made Brad’s face squinch. With his eyes at squints he took off the harness that held his wings, leaned them against the side of the building, and then stepped through the door. Rabbit-fast, Jillybean darted from her hiding place and sprinted to the door as it closed. She was twenty feet away but it swung in such a slow, ponderous arc that she was just able to dart inside before it thudded home with a loud metallic thump.
Brad was inches away with only a thick velvet curtain between him and Jillybean. “Is that really napalm I’m smelling?” he asked. “It smells like gas.”
“Duh, it’s jellied gasoline,” Jim said. “Of course it smells like gas. Now, come on. The NATO rounds are all down by the stage.”
A stage where plays and musicals could be put on was thirty yards down a sloping aisle. The two of them tromped down to where hundreds of wood crates were stacked to the ceiling. Jim went to the first crate he came to and pried back the lid. He then pulled a smaller box from the crate. This was made of metal and its lid creaked when he opened it. “Here you go,” Jim said, handing over five smaller objects. “If I can get a signature?”
There was a rustle of paper, but Jillybean wasn’t watching. Like a specter of yellow, she had slunk from behind the curtain and was now crawling on her hands and knees through the theater seating. Why she had followed them through the door, she couldn’t tell. She was acting on instinct. Something was happening, something that required more men and more bullets. Even to the seven-year-old that something was obvious. They were going to try to capture the renegades and she was going to stop them—somehow. She was afraid, of course, however the unknown guilt eating her up forced her on.
“What’s that say?” Jim asked.
Brad growled, “Don’t be a dick. That says Baron Crane. My title, remember?”
&n
bsp; Jim snorted. “This title business is freaking gay. Me, I’d rather have the money. Think about how much those girls are worth and I’m not just talking about selling them back to the Colonel, either. I mean selling them in New York or even to some of the Azael in North Platte. I’m betting you could get a thousand a head, easy, and all you got for them is a stupid, worthless title. That’s funny!”
“A title is better than you think. I am the lord of a town now and I can charge the people there taxes and fees. If the town grows, which it will, I’ll be way ahead than if I just turned them over for the money. Hell, I could be a duke someday and you’ll still be a lowly store keeper. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a ton of things to do before tomorrow’s little surprise.”
His armored boots thudded up the aisle and Jillybean slunk down low, her cheek pressed against the floor, her nose an inch from an ancient Ju-Ju-be the original color of which might have been either red or orange. When the door thunked closed a second time, Jim muttered something that sounded like a curse and there came a grunt and the sound of a heavy box being dropped. Jillybean reached out for the Ju-Ju-be. In the dim light it looked dusty but well preserved like a tiny exhibit from a museum.
Try as she might, it wouldn’t budge. It was stuck to the floor as if it had been fused there.
“Fifty men at a hundred a pop is...” Jim paused to calculate. “Five thousand. And there are nine hundred per drum, that’s...shit. I hate long division.” He went on muttering numbers for some time while Jillybean worked at the Ju-Ju-be. The numbers prevailed over the candy.
Jim counted out five thousand rounds in increments of fifty and then he left, turning off the lights and locking Jillybean in the dark.
Her sudden fear made the other girl stronger and she said: We should leave too. You can’t stop the Azael. There are too many of them and their land is too big. They’re not like Yuri and Abraham and the stupid River King. You won’t be able to escape them with a few explosions and a quick getaway. They’ll follow you and hound you and if you do make it to Colorado they’ll get you there.
The Undead World (Book 6): The Apocalypse Exile (War of The Undead) Page 20
