If Grey acted too rashly and without the facts, he could be responsible for starting a war between the Azael and the people of Colorado. Brad had already mentioned that there were tensions between the two groups, however the Duke hadn’t said a thing in their initial meeting or at any point in the last half-day.
With storming the courthouse ruled out, Grey didn’t know what to do, besides getting the hell out of the town. Leaving was the best way to avoid a battle...but he had Deanna to worry about. Traveling could kill her, especially if they ran out of fluids for her IV. “Son of a bitch,” he whispered under his breath. Jillybean’s eyes went wide at the curse. He said: “Sorry,” to her and added: “Could you go find Neil, please. We need to discuss what you’ve told me.”
“Yes, Mister Captain Grey, Sir.” She ran off, leaving Grey to stew. Was Jillybean right? Had someone spilled the beans about who they were? The renegades had been told over and over to keep their lips sealed and they all knew the ramifications of being found out...yet the proof that Jillybean was right sat just outside the window.
Five minutes later, Neil came in looking horrible. He was dead pale and his eyes wouldn’t stop leaking tears. He would rub them with his sleeve every few seconds. When Grey told him what Jillybean had said, he went to the window to see for himself. “I suppose you believe her then?” Jillybean had been shut out of the room, the door gently closed in her face with an order by Neil to: Wait here. Don’t go anywhere.
“Under the circumstances I believe the obvious,” Grey said. “We both know that something’s going on. Deanna is exhibit A and those men watching us, they’re exhibit B. And then there’s Eve.”
Neil flinched at the name and his mouth set in tight lines. “Eve…aw jeeze, Eve. I don’t want to believe it but I don’t think her death has anything to do with the Duke.” He sighed and looked so deflated that he seemed positively tiny to Grey, his shoulders narrow and hunched. A second sigh escaped him, this one was so long that it seemed to age him ten years. “I-I don’t know…I just don’t understand Jillybean and I haven’t a clue about what do about her. Banishment out here would mean a death sentence.”
It seemed there was no question as to Jillybean’s guilt in his mind. Grey had to reluctantly agree. “There’s also her mental state to consider. In the old world she wouldn’t be considered guilty.”
“We don’t live in that world anymore, but…but that’s something I don’t want to think about right now. We have to deal with the Duke, now. We can still use Jillybean. If we fight, we’ll still need her.”
Grey gave a slight shrug. He had never liked “using” Jillybean in any capacity. From the very start, there had been mental issues with the little girl and to him it was obvious that Eve’s death was a direct consequence of “using” Jillybean. “She might have reached the limit of her usefulness,” Grey said. “If we’re going to get out of this, we’ll have to rely on ourselves. And we have to weigh the diplomatic fallout if we use violence in any way. We could be precipitating a war.”
Neil looked out of the window a second time, saw the lurking men and drew himself up once again. “I can’t worry about diplomacy. I have sixty people to protect and guide. If the Azael prove to be aligned with the slavers of New York, or the Colonel, or the River King then I say we have little to fear diplomatically. They are evil and they promulgate evil. If your General Johnston is as good a person as you say he is, then this is all very cut and dried.”
A smirk that was part respect part pain, crossed Grey’s face. “You never fail to amaze me, Neil. We’re in the middle of Indian country, surrounded by armed enemies, with more coming in every hour. We have a crazy girl outside that door who could blow up this building at any moment. We’re on the verge of starting a war and you say this is all cut and dried?”
“You of all people know it is. If there is war over the Duke kidnapping and poisoning innocent travelers then it will be a just war.”
He was right. Grey had a duty to see the renegades through to Colorado and if there was fallout he would pay the price. “So we’re back in it up to our necks.”
“As usual,” Neil agreed. There had been a time when he would’ve had a twinkle in his eye at the prospect of adventure and maybe a little grin to hide his nervousness to go along with it. Now, Neil was stone-cold sober. “So how do we do this? Do we just blast our way out?”
The captain squinted, staring past the wall and picturing the layout of the town; it wasn’t promising. They were surrounded by who knew how many men and beyond that was a ring of zombies that could be used both as an offensive weapon and a defensive shield, and beyond that was seven hundred miles of open prairie. The obstacles were daunting and his assets were shady. “We either need a tremendous distraction, or we need to take the Duke hostage.”
“Will holding the Duke hostage work?” Neil asked. “Personally, I think it will depend on whether his people love or fear him enough. If they don’t care one way or the other if he dies, then we’ll be screwed. I think we should go with a distraction. I know you don’t want to, uh accept Jillybean’s help, but she’s extremely resourceful and can be the difference. She has been before.”
“And what about her insanity? More battles may deteriorate her mental state to an even greater degree.”
Another long sigh escaped Neil before he said: “I hate to say this, but it may be too late for her.”
Grey’s eyes flashed at this and for just a moment the fury he felt at the Duke was turned on the small man before him, but then the truth of his words sunk home. Grey had hoped to find a refuge for the little girl in Colorado but that looked less and less likely every day. “This is all moot. I’m not exactly an idiot. I can come up with my own plans.”
Neil nodded once, his face as grim as it had been since Sarah’s death. “Yes, but…” he started to say.
“There is no but,” Grey snapped. “I am a West Point trained Army officer.”
“And she is a genius at destruction,” Neil shot back. “We might be about to start a…a shit storm and there isn’t anyone else I’d want to be planning a war with than Jillybean. All I ask is that you listen to her. She might have some good ideas.”
This didn’t sit well with Grey at all, but at the same time he felt foggy in the brain. His love lay in a coma next to him, his eyes burned from lack of sleep, and his emotions were as quick to come as his logic. He couldn’t get past the idea of storming the courthouse and sticking a gun in the Duke’s face, in fact he wanted to shove his M4 eight inches down his throat and demand answers. After a deep breath, Grey put out a hand and rested it on Deanna’s chest between her breasts. Her heart was there, it thumped gentle and slow. Its rhythm was like a metronome that wanted to set him in a trance. “Fine,” he said. “Bring her in.”
Right off the bat Jillybean piped up: “So, how are we going to build the bombs?”
The girl’s voice was sweet as any seven-year-old girl’s had ever been and yet Grey cringed at the question. “Bombs aren’t the answer, honey.” Though what the answer was he didn’t know. He had to escape a compound full of armed men and then escape a ring of zombies, and then he had to traverse seven hundred or so miles of enemy territory. Bombs wouldn’t help. He needed fuel and a whole lot of luck.
“Then what is the answer?” she asked in genuine confusion.
That was the question. If he had a trained squad of soldiers, the answer would be a combination of stealthy assassinations on the Azael lurking in the buildings opposite of them, coupled with a lightning fast attack on the men lingering around the school. Once this was accomplished half the squad would lay down a covering fire on the courthouse while the other half commandeered the gas truck at the edge of town. This would be followed up, seconds later with the renegades taking to the five-tons and blasting a hole in the ring of zombies and escaping.
It was a fine plan, except for the fact that he didn’t have a single trained man he could trust. Neil was about it, but only because Grey knew he would follow the pla
n or die trying. None of the other renegades, save maybe Sadie and Deanna, if she had been awake, were even close to being battle ready.
“Um, I don’t know just yet,” Grey admitted. “I haven’t completed a proper recon yet.”
“Then you don’t know if bombs are the answer or not,” Jillybean said. “Even she thinks we need bombs.”
Grey felt an ugly shiver cascade down his back. It was part fear and part fierce anger. “Maybe we shouldn’t go any further until we find out exactly what she knows about all of this. I get the feeling that what she knows would help us tremendously.”
Jillybean dropped her chin. “She won’t let me know. I think it’s cuz she was bad.”
Neil closed his eyes and they remained closed as if he would strangle the little girl if he had to look at her for one more second. “Jillybean,” he said quietly. “The lives of sixty people hang in the balance here. You have to tell us what you know. I promise we won’t be mad.”
“She doesn’t care if you get mad,” Jillybean said, her voice pitched even lower than his. “She doesn’t even care about the sixty people.”
“Maybe she would if she realized that she is one of those sixty whose lives are in danger,” Neil replied, finally opening his eyes. Gone completely was the old Neil, the sweet husband, the caring dad, the clumsy nerd. It appeared to Grey that the hard world had finally killed off the old Neil. This Neil was hard and cold and dangerous. “I’ll make it a point to ensure that she is one of the sixty.”
The threat didn’t faze the girl. Jillybean grew more sad. “She says you’re not smart enough.”
“Then you have to help us, Jillybean,” Grey said, dropping down to her level and taking her scrawny shoulders in his large hands. “You have to find out what she knows. Can you do that? Can you help us out?”
“I don’t know how. She’s too strong.”
There were tears in her blue eyes and she appeared so miserable that it just about broke Grey’s heart. Even Neil lost some of his edge. “She may be stronger but you’re smarter and braver, Jillybean,” he said. “And you have to do this. If you care about any of us you have to find out what she knows.”
Grey said nothing to this dangerous guilt trip. There was a chance that Neil was sending her over the edge permanently, but Grey was silent. He had to weight the sixty lives that were on the line and the possibility of war against the mental state of one poor girl.
“I’ll try,” she said.
Chapter 20
Jillybean/Eve
The little girl didn’t know where to start. She certainly wasn’t going to make the attempt with two adults watching her so intently. “I’m going to, uh, go out in the other room if you don’t mind,” she said to them.
“Sure, but don’t try to leave the building,” Neil warned. “It could be dangerous for you. We don’t know what this Duke fellow is really planning.”
It doesn’t matter where you go, the other girl said inside her skull. What’s going to happen is that I’ll stick you down in the black where you deserve to go and then I’ll come back and tell them a big fat fib. What do you think about that?
Jillybean didn’t want to think about that, only she couldn’t seem to help it at all. She locked her lips shut and hurried for the door. Once in the front office of the school, she went to one of the desks the secretaries had used and shrank down behind it. In the gloom she asked in a whisper: “What kind of fib?”
Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll tell them that it was you who killed that stupid baby and not me. I’ll be all weepy and pretend to be sorry and then they’ll hate you just like they hate me.
The words stunned Jillybean. Not the fib part but the confession of murder. “You killed her? You killed Eve?”
I AM EVE!
The words thundered in Jillybean’s head. She put a hand out to the edge of the desk but already she was losing the feeling in her fingertips. She was taking over. Jillybean tried to fight it. She tried to use the psychic scream she had used a few days before, however She matched it scream for scream and Jillybean’s head rang like a bell.
That’s not going to work, the other girl said. Not this time.
The force of the twin screams caused Jillybean to fall over onto her side on the dusty tile. “What did you do to her?” she asked. She was half in control of her body and half in the strange blackness that would soon bury her. It was a crossover transitional phase and, for just a second, she saw a scene that was part-memory and part hazy horror: A little girl, who was skin and bones, with knobby knees and hair that hadn’t seen the pokey end of a brush in days, stood in the back of a darkened truck.
In the gloom was a bundle of blankets and on them was an infant. The baby was naked save for a diaper; her arms and legs splayed and flung, her hair was damp with sweat. The back of the truck was hot and windless. The baby was thirsty.
The little girl knelt and placed a bottle between the baby’s tiny lips. Instinctually, the infant began sucking, as her eyes rolled like marbles in their sockets; a moment later those eyes flicked open and she pulled back from the bottle. It tasted funny. It wasn’t normal. After a pause, the little girl tried again, placing the bottle in the baby’s mouth.
“Go on you stupid shit-fart,” the little girl crooned in sing-song. She was smiling and the baby knew the smile and trusted the girl. The baby was stupid and the baby died.
Horrified, Jillybean felt the frog-puking sensation begin in the back of her throat, however it was distant and soon wouldn’t be a problem. She was slipping away, slipping into the blackness of her mind. The one word question: Why was first on her lips but she cast it away. She knew why. The other girl was evil—pain and unhappiness was all she knew.
Instead, Jillybean asked: “What did you...put in her bottle? In mid-sentence she slipped away from her body and her question became a lone echo that faded like smoke from a candle.
There was laughter in the darkness, an evil snigger, and then the words: “That’s for me to know and you to find out,” were spoken in her mind and maybe into the real air up above. Jillybean’s essence drifted down into the blackness of her mind where she knew she would be engulfed so completely that she and the black would fuse into one until she ceased to be. In truth, it was a comforting feeling, like dying in your sleep. Whenever she took control, Jillybean would slip into the cocoon of darkness where she didn’t have to know or think.
It was better than the alternatives: there was up where she could both see and feel the hate and the insanity of the other girl, or there was down where the memories waited to destroy her completely.
Yes, it was better snugged in the nothingness of in-between...however, Jillybean was supposed to be finding things out. Things that would save Deanna and Neil and the others. She fought the closing blackness. It wasn’t a heroic fight by any means. She spazzed in fear, kicking and screaming until she could see the twin lamps of her eyes above and the silver lines descending into the blackness below.
With all her heart she wanted to go to the eyes and see where she was and hear the evil lies the other girl was telling, and yet that would be a waste of time and she didn’t think they had all that much time to waste. Still she hesitated. The lies and the evil girl were far preferable to what waited down in the black. She dithered, stuck by fear and a sense of duty.
She knew that if Ipes was still around he would have told her to: focus and stay on track. Captain Grey would have said: be brave, Neil would have said: I trust you. Sadie would have said: I wish I could go with you and share the adventure, and Deanna...Deanna couldn’t say anything.
That was why Jillybean was here. She was supposed to be finding out what happened to Deanna...but how? Where was she supposed to look, exactly? And what if the other girl didn’t know anything?
What if...the memory of the Duke’s spindly cook suddenly came to her. Memories pulled up from the subconscious by a normal waking person are never distinct. They are target focused with everything in the periphery hazy with unimportance.<
br />
The memory feed straight from the subconscious is far different.
The spindly cook was a giant and the knife he wielded was longer than any sword. The smell of the onions on the chopping block was sharp, making Jillybean’s face warp, while the cook’s mumblings were loud as though he were speaking into a bullhorn: He wants steak at ten o’clock, so he gets steak at ten o’clock. Steak and taters and asparagus and wine. He’s going to get fat is what will happen. He will be a fatty-fatso, but not me. No, not me. Never gonna be fat again. No one likes a fatty-fatso.
Jillybean tried to hide from the monstrous cook and to her surprise, the angle at which she saw the cook, changed; she really was hiding. There was a sofa the size of a van that she slunk behind and there were gum wads as large as pumpkins hanging from the back of it. The gum was strangely swirled like cold magma only on each was a flat space and there were thumb prints bigger than dinner plates on them. The detail was fascinating.
She found herself staring and then came a rumbling beneath her Keds—someone was coming. It was the Duke! He was even bigger than the cook. His head reached almost to the ceiling and the ceiling was high enough to fit a normal house beneath it! I must have her, he cried and Jillybean cringed from the booming sound. His face was flushed with a greedy desire.
The pretty one? the cook asked.
Of course, the pretty one. She fascinates me and I don’t know why. You have to help me. I need to separate her from the others. I need her alone on a more permanent basis. And...and there is another issue, I need you to take care of. She’s pregnant.
The cook didn’t bat an eye, though he made a face of disgust as if women with babies coming out of them were physically repulsive. I have what you need on both counts and one will mask the other, he said and then went to a drawer and started placing pill bottles on the counter, muttering over each one. Finally, he grinned and dug out a handful of blue pills only they were too big for even a lion to swallow.
The Undead World (Book 6): The Apocalypse Exile (War of The Undead) Page 22
