The Undead World (Book 6): The Apocalypse Exile (War of The Undead)

by Meredith, Peter

  It turned out not to be the ferry in front of her, nor was it the bridge going up in two thunderous explosions, nor was it the barge disappearing in a huge fireball and a concussive aftershock that turned her brain practically inside out. And nor was it the white hot blast from the fuel tank in front of the hangar where a thousand monsters were converging on Mister Neil and Sadie.

  The heat of the doorknob made no sense because the door opened onto a quiet Missouri afternoon. Across from her was the rail of a small bridge and there was Ernest and herself looking so tiny compared to him. There in Ernest’s left hand was Ipes. Even as she watched he started to simultaneously fling the toy zebra and pull his pistol. Jillybean saw her own face morph into one she hardly recognized. Gone were the fear and the heart-wrenching pain that had played across her small features contorting them in misery. In their place was the anticipation of victory, of blood and of triumph, twerking her features into an expression of unholy glee.

  Down in the abysmal world of horror and black, Jillybean slammed the door closed before her other self could pull the trigger and before she could watch Ipes, her truest friend, sail off forever leaving her so alone that a part of her great heart withered into a seed of blackest evil.

  Jillybean put her back to the door, her breath coming hard and fast. She was back in the room with the cages and the dead hands reaching through the bars, and the steady clip-clip of the shoes and the coming thing that was only slightly less horrible than the bridge.

  He was coming closer and closer, but only his black, patent leather shoes were precise in their details. Shining like there was a light in them, they were as glossy as a new car right off the lot. They were size eleven men’s—she knew those shoes and she knew who they belonged to.

  Her stomach dropped and she ran for the empty cell. With what was coming it was only just and right that she slammed the gated door, locking the door forever, because she knew that the ultimate judge was now upon her. She backed as far from the bars as she could.

  He had come.

  “I’m sorry daddy. Don’t be mad at me, please, please, please. Forgive me.”

  Her father, his eyes red with fever and pain, his skin pale but with a tinge of grey, his cologne fading, almost engulfed by the rotten smell, stood at the bars, glaring down at her with a look of ultimate disappointment. “That’s not up to me,” he said in the raspy voice he used right before he left to die. “I don’t forgive.”

  Chapter 21

  Neil Martin

  The two men waited in the principal’s office, both as silent as the girl between them. Neil found himself staring at Deanna’s profile; she had a tall nose. It wasn’t big, just simply tall. It was regal in its way. He could imagine her with a queen’s crown upon her head and looking down her tall nose at him.

  Why did you fail me? She would ask. Why did you let me die?

  Deanna would be the ninth person to die under his watch. Nico had been the first, then Neil’s beloved Sarah—his chest still felt like there was a lump of stone beneath his breastbone whenever he thought of her—then Big Jim had been shot full of holes, Lindsey had been killed by Sadie, Arlene had slit her own throat and then there was Melanie, who Neil had put out of her misery.

  Then there was the child Deanna had been carrying. She might have been just a fetus, but she was a human fetus. She had been a baby, a person in an early stage of development with a future and a life. She was supposed to bring joy and laughter, and sometimes frustration or tears. She was supposed to live.

  Neil had never understood the entire abortion issue. One woman, who wanted the little thing that was growing in her, called it a baby, while another woman, who didn’t want the little thing growing in her, called it just a mass of tissue; they both couldn’t be correct. Neil knew that the tissue mass was indeed human because, given enough time, it was always a baby.

  And now there was Eve—another abortion, this one simply later than most. Somebody didn’t ‘want’ her and so she’d been killed, just like that. His mind was full of static when he thought of Eve. He almost couldn’t grasp that she was dead and he was afraid of what he would do when he finally allowed himself to come to grips with the fact.

  Deep inside of him there was heavy, stony, uncaring desire for revenge. He wanted to hurt someone. Jillybean’s face flashed before his eyes, but he wouldn’t hurt her even if she had killed Eve because he considered the little girl to be just as much a victim. No, he wanted to hurt those who had hurt him and those who posed a future threat to him and the whole group. Although there were many who fit that bill, Duke Menis was first on the current list. Captain Grey’s idea of holding the man at gunpoint had a certain desirable quality to it; Neil would have the opportunity to spit in the man’s eye.

  “This is taking too long,” Grey said. “Go check on her, will you?”

  “Sure.” Neil stepped out into the admin area of the school and stared around. Jillybean wasn’t in sight. “Aw, jeeze,” he whispered, feeling a pain in his gut. With the other girl in her, there was no knowing what sort of mischief she could be up to.

  He was hurrying for the hall that led to the main part of the school, when something to his right caught his eye; it was a thin little leg in pink jeans sticking out from behind a desk. “Jillybean,” Neil said, sharply. He started towards her but the silence of the room, coupled with the fact that the leg hadn’t moved even a hair made him suddenly nervous. An insidious thought wormed its way into his mind: she’s dead, just like Eve and just like Deanne will be, as well

  “Jillybean!” he said, louder, and now his feet scurried forward at a trot.

  The little girl was lying on her back with her eyes closed. Someone else might have thought she was only sleeping, Neil knew better. The little girl had survived since the apocalypse by living life as if she were a coiled spring; she would’ve reacted. “Hey, Jillybean, are you ok?” he asked giving her shoulder a little shake. She didn’t move and her eyes remained closed.

  Neil felt her face, it was cool and dry. “Come on, Jillybean,” he hissed, growing desperate. He tried to find a pulse in her tiny wrist, however he wasn’t an expert in anatomy and his fumbling fingers felt only the thin tendons running from her forearm down into her hand. He cursed and then dropped and put his ear to her chest.

  Her heart was loud and much faster than he had anticipated. Was a fast heart rate good or bad? Neil didn’t know, but Grey would. He scooped up the girl, saddened that she was so light; she should’ve been a bit of a struggle for the small man to hoist up. However she hadn’t been eating well, none of them had in fact.

  “Grey!” Neil said as he barged back into the principal’s office. “It’s Jillybean, she’s not responding. I can’t get her to wake up.”

  Neil laid Jillybean on the blue shag and watched as Grey pulled back her eyelids, checked her pulse, listened to her chest with a stethoscope and then took the knuckle of his index finger and gouged at her chest, yelling: “Jillybean! Wake up!”

  Then he leaned back from her for a second. Neil thought he was going to give up, but Grey was only just beginning. He opened her mouth and inspected her tongue and gums, going so far as to put his nose almost in her mouth as he sniffed. What he was sniffing for, Neil didn’t have a clue.

  Next, Grey rolled up her sleeves and traced her veins from her hand to the pit of her arm. He then checked her neck and behind her ears. When that proved void of results, he undressed her and inspected her legs, chest, pelvis, and, much to Neil’s embarrassment, a two second visual check of her vagina.

  “I don’t know what this is,” Grey said, as he redressed her. “She hasn’t been drugged, at least not with a needle and she hasn’t overdosed on anything. She hasn’t suffered a blow to the head.” He looked back and forth from the tiny girl to the woman he loved, his face growing more and more grim as he did. Finally he asked: “What the hell is going on?”

  Strangely, the fact that Jillybean was now comatose had Neil almost in a panic. If they could get to her, h
e felt that no one was safe. “So what do we do?” he asked, hoping to God that Captain Grey had an answer.

  Grey stared down at the child for a few more seconds before he shrugged and said: “Monitor her just like we are Deanna. There’s not much more we can do for her with the limited supplies we have.”

  “And the attack?” Neil asked. “Is that still on?”

  “It has to be. We’re racking up bodies left and right here, Neil.” Grey stood, his eyes first on the little girl and then on Deanna. He then went to the window and inched back the curtain. When he turned again to Neil his face was rock hard. “We need to consolidate all of our people in the gym. No one should go anywhere without a buddy and the only place they should be going is to the bathroom. I want Marybeth and her daughter, what’s her name? Amanda? Either way, I want those two watching over Deanna and Jillybean. I trust Marybeth.”

  “I do too, but...” Neil started to say, only Grey held up a finger.

  “I wasn’t done. Next I want all the men to meet me here when I get back. Wait, not Fred Trigg. That guy’s a waste of oxygen. I’ll take Joe Gates, instead. He may be young, but he’s tough. Of the women I want Sadie, Veronica, Kay, and Connie. They’re about the only ones that can hit the broad side of a barn with a gun.”

  Neil, who could only hit a barn if he was up close to it asked: “What about me?”

  Grey snorted. “Of course you, unless you’ve changed your mind about busting out of here.” Neil shook his head and Grey said: “Good. I’m going to do a recon of the area. We are completely in the dark here and if we have any chance of escaping, we’ll need to know what the Duke is up to. If I’m not back in two hours, fear the worst.” Wearing a grin at Neil’s startled expression, the soldier swept out of the room moving with the stealth and grace of a jungle cat.

  The smaller man already feared the worst. They were in a lion’s den, surrounded by enemies with more coming in every hour and Grey was suggesting a gun battle as the answer to their problems. Neil went to the window and looked out; the Duke’s men were still in place, while a fourth person had joined the little group sitting under the oak down the street.

  He thought for a moment about Jillybean and her desire to get a hold of some bombs. Did she have a plan, or were explosions just her fallback position for every emergency? With her zonked out there was no way to know. Neil couldn’t see how a bomb would help. The Duke’s men were too spread out for a single bomb to make any difference. They needed a tank, but all they had was one Rambo-esque super soldier and a bunch of suburban survivors.

  Neil gathered the group of renegades in the gym. He sent out two teams to fetch Jillybean and Deanna. When the renegades saw that Jillybean was unconscious as well, a fear-babble commenced. He didn’t blame them. It felt as though something evil was in their presence, something stalking them. He had thought it was Jillybean and her alter-ego but with her in the same state as Deanna, Neil had to cast his suspicions elsewhere. The problem was that the renegades were an open book; he could see that they were all quite obviously and truthfully afraid.

  The answer to what was stalking them lay elsewhere.

  “Quiet down!” Neil said, raising his voice. “First off, we don’t know what’s…”

  Fred Trigg interrupted suddenly, demanding: “Where’s Captain Grey. What does he have to say about what’s wrong with her.”

  There was that waste of oxygen that Grey had referred to, Neil thought. “He doesn’t know either….and we have a worse problem than Jillybean. It seems that one of you has spilled the beans to the Duke about who we are.”

  There was an immediate uproar with everyone demanding to know who the culprit was. Neil hissed them into silence and then said: “We don’t know and for now, it doesn’t matter who talked. We’ll figure it out eventually and when we do that person will be dealt with. That said, right now we have to deal with the repercussions. The Duke has been bringing in more men all day and we suspect that he will attack at dawn.”

  Sadie raised her hand and when Neil gestured to her, she said: “He won’t attack, not unless he has to. He’ll surround us with enough men that we’ll just have to give up without a fight.”

  “Possibly,” Neil acknowledged, “however, we do intend to fight.”

  Michael Gates also raised his hand. “But we don’t have near enough guns or ammo. And there aren’t any real fighters among us, except Captain Grey, that is.”

  Some of the cage fighters who had been rescued from Gunner bristled over this, and yet the truth was, there wasn’t a soldier among them. The closest was Ricky who had hunted a few times back before the apocalypse had struck. He was a fair shot with his rifle, but he had no experience when it came to someone shooting back at him.

  “Regardless,” Neil said. “The plan is to fight our way out. It’s our best chance at escape. So, I’m going to need Sadie, Veronica, Kay, and Connie as well as all the men, including you, Joe to come with me.” Ten-year-old Joe Gates eyes bugged wide and he stepped back at first, looking like he was about to run away but, quicker than Fred Trigg, he collected himself and marched along with the other members of the Gates family: Michael Gates, his brother William, William’s son Cody and his nephew, John who was fifteen but always huddled with the men as if he were indeed part of the men’s team.

  Altogether, including Joe Gates and the four women, there were twenty-one people in the group. Neil cut it down to twenty. “Oh, sorry Fred. We need you to stay and look after the uh, the, uh, school.” Fred huffed a little, however everyone saw the relief in his eyes as he started to turn away. Neil stopped him. “And I need your gun. In fact, round up all the guns, will you?”

  “Wait, no,” Fred said, planting his fussy hands on his hips. “How am I supposed to defend myself, uh, I mean, the school without a gun?”

  Neil’s face, scarred as it was, showed complete indifference. “I’m sure you’ll figure something out. Maybe sticks? I don’t really care. I just want the guns and the ammo for the fighters.”

  “I’m sorry, but Joe is not a fighter,” Michael grumbled, showing his concern by the depth of the creases in his forehead. “He’s only ten and I’m sure most of the other women can shoot as well if not better than he can. I don’t mean to be a jerk, Joe, but it’s true.”

  “And we aren’t fighters either,” Veronica said, gesturing to the other women who stood grouped close to each other, all, that is, except for Sadie who stood apart from everyone. The teen had an odd look about her. To Neil, she seemed apathetic as if she figured she would die in the coming battle and that it was ok with her. She was pale and cold, looking like the killer she feared that she had become.

  As horrible as the look was, Neil preferred it to how most everyone else appeared: scared shitless.

  Neil had to change those looks in a hurry. “All I know is that Captain Grey asked for every one of you especially. Really, you all should be flattered. Bear in mind that he knows your strengths and weakness; he’s not going to ask you to do more than you can handle. We need to trust him and we need to trust each other.”

  Sadie took a step forward and cleared her throat, just as Neil frequently did before making an announcement. “Captain Grey has got us this far,” she said. “Him and Neil have brought us through fire and battle and zombie hordes and everything else that God has thrown our way, so you all need to try to relax and follow his instructions.”

  Relaxing was wishful thinking. The renegades as a group, had yet to be truly tested in a straight up battle, and they all knew they wouldn’t get away from the Duke without a hard fight. They were jittery and wore their fear openly. The group sat in the darkening gym, nervously smoking, or pacing or cleaning weapons that were already so clean as to be practically sterile or they checked their ammo that had been re-triple checked more than once.

  They were afraid because it was one thing to mow down slow moving zombies, it was another thing altogether to trade shots with an armed enemy. Grey, Neil, and Sadie of course had been in their share of gun bat
tles. Of the rest, only Michael Gates, his brother William, and Connie had been blooded in actual battle, although, in each case, the battles had been brief. Michael and William had fired a few long distance shots at Gunner’s men back at the Piggly Wiggly in Warrior, Alabama.

  Interestingly, the only one of the group outside of Sadie and Neil with any real experience was Connie Markson. The erstwhile ex-whore had fought side-by-side with Deanna and had more than held her own fighting one of the Colonel’s squads from the Island during the battle at the church.

  The sun was long set and still there was no sign of Captain Grey. Neil checked his watch again and again. That was his nervous tic. Grey had said he’d be back in two hours and on Neil’s thirteenth check of his watch it had been one hour and fifty three minutes. “Jeeze-lou-eeze,” he whispered, looking towards the gym doors.

  He jumped slightly when he saw a shadow moving toward him. Relief washed over him until he saw that the shadow wasn’t big enough to be Grey’s. It was Tiffany, one of the women from The Island. In the murk of the gym she glanced around at the “strike team” as Neil had taken to calling them in an effort to instill in them a fighting spirit. The way she eyed the chain-smokers and the pacers, it was clear she wasn’t unimpressed with them as a fighting force.

  “Hey, I want to let you know that all the women voted and we’re not going out to pee unless we have some guns. There are a whole butt-load of zombies walking around this town and a stray might come up here anytime.”

  Neil understood. No one liked the idea of getting caught, like Melanie had been with her pants around her ankles, but on the other hand, he didn’t like the idea of giving up even a single gun. He compromised and pulled out the .25 caliber pistol he had retrieved from Joslyn. “This may be small but a head shot will bring one of them down. Just don’t miss.”