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

by Meredith, Peter

  At the same time, Sadie didn’t care for the way Neil was treating Jillybean. Once again, he was using her as a tool without regard to what sort of psychological damage he could be inflicting on her.

  Neil noticed Sadie’s indecision and guessed, correctly, what it meant. “We need her to get us all out of here. If we can’t get out, nothing else matters because we’ll all be...well, you know what will happen.”

  Before Sadie could answer, Jillybean said in a small voice: “We’ll all be dead. I know. Don’t worry about me, Sadie. I know what all this means now. And...and I know I’m not like a normal person. The other girl inside me is like Ipes was, except she’s real mean and can take me over whenever she wants. That’s not going to get better unless I can get all of you out of here. Then maybe she won’t hurt people so much.”

  Sadie heard the fatality in her voice. It matched her feelings exactly. They were two young warriors who had gone too far and had killed too much. They were at the end of their ropes and there was still a thousand foot drop below them.

  “Ok,” Sadie said. “Let’s figure this out together.” She held out her pinky. Jillybean didn’t smile at it as she might once have done, instead she grimly latched her own tiny pinky onto Sadie’s.

  “Good,” Neil said. “Now let’s hurry. Captain Grey won’t like a change to his plans if it means involving you, Jillybean. He doesn’t think you’re strong enough, but I do. I think you’re as strong as you need to be.”

  That sounded like a bunch of hot air to Sadie, though she understood. Neil was practically at the end of his own rope and he was quite willing to sacrifice one life to save sixty, even if that one life was as innocent as Jillybean’s...except she wasn’t quite so innocent, Sadie had to remind herself.

  Neil snuck them out a side door, making sure to avoid the route people were taking to relieve themselves in the back of the school. In a minute the three of them slipped out into the night and, despite the dark, they crouched next to some bushes.

  “Are the bad guys still across the street in those houses?” Jillybean asked.

  “Yep and there’s more of them,” Neil said. He told her of Captain Grey’s recon mission and then told her about the battle plan. “I’m afraid of the casualties we’ll sustain. I think if these were trained soldiers Grey was leading we’d have a chance, but they’re just people and too much depends on luck.”

  Jillybean gave a shrug. “It still might work...except he hasn’t taken into account any response by the Duke or by any of the other people in this town. They might join the fight or they might lay in wait like an ambush.”

  “I’m sure he knows all that, but we don’t have enough guns or bullets to add to his plan,” Neil said. “Nor do we have enough people who are capable of acting as a screening force. That’s why we need you, Jillybean. You talked about a bomb? How would a bomb help us?”

  “I would need lots of bombs, but I don’t have what I need to ‘splode them. Has anyone seen my back pack? It has a ladybug on it.”

  Sadie had. “It’s in the school’s office area...are there bombs in it?”

  Jillybean was quiet for a few moments. Her body was rigid and eyes locked on some unidentified point in the middle distance. “They’re my bombs,” she whispered to herself. “So don’t even say that. You wouldn’t know what to do with them anyway.”

  Neil gave Sadie a concerned look over the top of the little girl’s head. Sadie touched Jillybean on the shoulder. “Are you ok?” she asked.

  “Huh? Oh, I mean, yeah. I’m ok it was just her. It was nothing. She likes bombs and wants to blow them up but she can’t cuz she’s not too smart. Anywaaay...” She let the word draw out as she stepped away from the bushes and stared down at the row of houses across from them. She then turned to look up the road towards the courthouse. After a minute, a grunt escaped her. It was one both Neil and Sadie had heard before.

  “What?” Sadie asked. “You have a plan?”

  The little girl turned back to them in a slow-motion twirl. “Most of one, I think. I need a few buckets of mud, all the flashlights we can scrounge up, some scissors or a sharp knife, some of that black electrical tape, and someone to talk Mister Captain Grey into giving me a few bombs.”

  “Bombs?” Neil asked.

  She nodded. “Just a few for…chaos. Is that a word? Yes, for chaos. We need lots and lots of chaos.”

  A nervous chuckle escaped Neil as he dropped down to one knee so he could look into the little girls eyes. “Maybe you should tell me the plan first.”

  When she explained what had formed in her mind, he laughed, displaying more nerves. Sadie only turned to look out at the town, wondering how many lives would be lost before the sun came up. The number could be well into the hundreds if Jillybean could get her bombs.

  Neil tugged her shirt. “You coming? We’re going to go talk to Grey.”

  She followed them inside and stood silently in the shadows as Jillybean smiled up at the gruff soldier. He only glared at Neil until Jillybean explained what she had seen in the Duke’s private apartment.

  “Morphine,” he whispered. “Yeah, that sounds about right.” The little girl then began to explain her plan but Grey stopped her. “Was it also morphine that killed Eve?” he asked.

  Jillybean jumped a little as if someone had snuck up on her and screamed in her ear. Her lower lip started to shake as she whispered: “Yeah. It-it was morphine, too. In her bottle.” Her eyes were wet and the tears began to pool. Those blue orbs were filled with guilt and they silently begged Grey not to ask any more questions concerning the baby’s death.

  Sadie quickly stepped forward, putting herself between Jillybean and the tall captain. “We understand, honey. Don’t we, Mister Captain Grey, Sir?” She caught his eye and he nodded gently.

  “Yes, I-I think I understand. Uh, so you have a plan, too? Why am I not surprised?” Have you heard mine yet?”

  “Yes,” Jillybean answered in a shaky voice. The relief on her face was obvious. “Mister Neil told me and...and it was good, I guess, only it sounds like one of them soldier plans. And those are real good ‘cept we don’t have any soldiers, you know?”

  Grey acknowledged that he did know this and added: “And how does your plan differ?” Jillybean spoke for five minutes. When she had finished he said: “Damn, that is good, but I don’t see why we need so many bombs, just one will do the trick. If we move one of the canisters of napalm down among the bullets they’ll cook off and it’ll be suicide for anyone to go outside. The only problem is how do we get into the theater to set it? I can’t pick a lock and if we try to hammer down the door they’ll swarm us.”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” Jillybean said. “The back door is open. Before I left I stuck a rock in the locking thingy. You know the little hole on the door jamb where one part of the lock goes into the other? With a rock in there it can’t lock.”

  “Seems like you thought of everything except how to remotely detonate the bomb.” Grey said. “If we can’t do that, we might as well forget that part of it and hope everything else works out.”

  Jillybean took her newly found pack off her back. She pulled her battery operated car: Jazzy Blue from it. “She’s remotely controlled with this little thingy. If we hook up the blasting cap to the receiver unit in the car it should work, though I don’t know if it will. It’s just a guess. And I don’t know how, neither.”

  “Lucky for you, I do,” Grey said, taking the car from her. He turned it over a few times but it was obvious to Sadie that he was dwelling on Jillybean’s plan rather than actually looking at the car. Finally, he said: “We’ll go with your plan, Jillybean. We’ll call it Operation Broken Arrow. We’ll need to reconfigure the teams into groups of two each and they’ll have to be given their new instructions.”

  “I’ll take Jillybean on my team,” Sadie said quickly. She loved Neil and would die for him, but he had become so toughened by the constant pain of their journey that she knew he would use Jillybean up if that was what it took to
escape. “Someone has to look after her.” Jillybean took Sadie by the hand and smiled up at her and Sadie smiled back, though it was with a queer feeling. She was holding the hand of a murderer.

  Then again, she was one as well.

  Grey gathered the others and, to their immense relief, he told them about the change in plans. “I want everyone ready to go as soon as possible. You will need to be dressed and ready to move out when I say the word.” The renegades went right to work while Grey came up to Jillybean and Sadie. “I’ll need the remote control,” he said, holding out his hand.

  “I want to come with you,” Jillybean countered. “I want to see how you connect everything.”

  He shook his head. “No. I’ll tell you all about it when we’re safely on the plains tomorrow. Right now I need your help here. If you could use your brains to rig up a stretcher for Deanna, that would be great.”

  Jillybean blew out a big sigh of disappointment when Grey took the remote controller for the car and left. Sadie nudged her. “Come on. We have to get ready and we have to figure out how to make a stretcher.”

  “That’s easy,” Jillybean said. She pointed at a small stage stood at one end of the gym. Where two large flags, the Stars and Stripes and the state flag of Kansas, hung from wooden poles. “You can use them. There’s a heavy duty stapler in the office area on the second desk on the right. All you got to do is staple the flags to the poles. I’m going to go with Captain Grey.”

  “No,” Neil said, pulling her back by the ladybug bag. “You will obey orders, young lady, just like the rest of us. If you sneak up on him he might shoot first and ask questions later.” When Jillybean hesitated at the idea of being shot out of hand, Neil gave Sadie a quick look that said: Watch her!

  Sadie understood. There was no telling what Jillybean would do when she wasn’t being closely watched. Thankfully, all she did was pout and argue with herself. She also threw her yellow dress over her pink outfit and then shredded it up. Then she slathered herself with mud until she looked like something that had crawled out of a grave. Sadie did the same until she was practically unrecognizable.

  The drying mud was itchy and the coming fight made her anxious but the wait wasn’t long. Captain Grey came back more quickly than anyone expected. He appeared out of the dark, right next to where Deanna lay on her new stretcher, still in her deep sleep. Kneeling next to her, he bent over her face so that Sadie thought he was going to kiss her, however he was only checking her respirations. “Ten, yes. That’s much better.”

  Already covered in dirt or grime, Grey was ready for action. He went to where his hand-drawn map was laid out on the floor. “Okay, gather round. It’s almost go time.” He began pointing to spots on the map and assigning teams to each. When he was done, he sat back and gazed at each of them in turn. “This is very simple and it’s something we’ve all done before. Are there any questions?”

  Despite the fact that the plan played to the strengths of the renegades, which Grey listed ironically, as being a natural inclination to avoid battle and a mouse-like mindset, they were nervous. Kay raised her hand and asked, timidly: “Do we meet back at the trucks fifteen minutes from now or fifteen minutes from when we start? I don’t want to be left behind is why I ask.”

  “And what about us?” Michael asked, indicating his nephew John and himself. “We’ve got the furthest to go. We’re at the other end of town. It’s like a mile away. It’ll take us fifteen minutes just to get there and another fifteen to get back. We’re going to need some sort of signal.”

  Grey was quiet as he considered this, while next to Sadie, Jillybean dug in her pack. “You could use this,” she said, holding up what looked like a gigantic hand gun. “It shoots light up into the sky.”

  “A flare gun,” Grey said, not bothering to question where she had picked it up. Her genius at finding handy items was on par with her genius at blowing things up. “Ok. Here’s what we’ll do. I will send you out in teams about a minute apart, starting with Michael and John. When you get to your positions do not wait. Start right then. When you see the flare, make it back here as fast as it’s safe to do so. We will not leave without each of you.”

  He stood and pointed at Michael. “Check your flashlight.” Michael shone the beam at the floor for a second and, after a nod from Grey, left. Each of them in turn, a minute apart, flicked on their lights and then left. Sadie and Jillybean were last. They had the closest section which was, supposedly, the easiest.

  Unlike the other teams who left the gym with beads of sweat blooming on their brows and their eyeballs looking like twin cue-balls in their mud-caked faces, Sadie and Jillybean stepped out into the night as calm and resolute as a pair of veterans. Compared to the idea of fighting their way out, Jillybean’s plan was a walk in the park—a very, very dangerous park, but a walk nonetheless.

  The pair slunk, low and slow, in the tall grass and crawled past the five Azael men who were sitting on a hill overlooking the south side of the school—they were exactly where Captain Grey said they would be.

  Even when they were safely passed the men, Sadie and Jillybean remained only stealthy shadows that went unseen. Ten minutes went by and the moans of the zombies grew louder with each step and, veterans or not, it wasn’t easy for the two to purposefully walk towards what could be a horrible death. They steeled themselves and crept forward until the river of zombies, walking in their endless circle, was right there, thirty yards away.

  The smell was atrocious, even more so than usual. The zombies’ non-stop march around the town had cut a run, two feet deep into the dirt, which was filled with an ugly mud composed of urine and feces. There were close on ten thousand of them and the only thing keeping them going round and round was the pressure of those walking behind and the fact that they lacked the wit to do anything but follow the beast in front.

  If they slowed or strayed, for whatever reason, the winged horsemen would prod them back into line with their spears. Not many horsemen were needed to keep their perpetual motion going. The Duke kept his town dark and quiet during the night—there was no reason for the zombies to stray from their infinite path.

  Sadie thought the entire idea of the ring of zombies was a stroke of genius. It would take a concerted attack by a few hundred soldiers to break the ring of grey meat and on the flip side, the horsemen could goad the zombies into a mass attack. Yet, there was a flaw in the genius idea that Jillybean had picked up on. The zombies were a double-edged sword if someone had the guts to wield it.

  “Ready?” Sadie asked when the closest horsemen had slowly clip-clopped almost out of sight.

  Jillybean raised herself up so that she could peer over the tall grass. A deep breath was followed by a quiet: “Yep.”

  They both had flashlights. With a quick nod from Sadie, they started flashing them at the ring of zombies. The zombies reacted immediately. They surged from the rutted road and came stumbling right at them as fast as they could. In seconds, the arc of the circle in front of them had disintegrated completely.

  “Holy crap,” Sadie hissed. She would never in her life get used to the idea of not sprinting away when a horde of zombies bent on eating her alive, came at her in a run. The sight of them charging gave her a jolt. It was like a reminder of life. Since she had plugged Lindsey between the eyes, she had been going through the motions of living. This vague semi-life had culminated with Eve lying dead in the gym, wrapped in towels.

  The baby had died, and Sadie had cried but it had felt forced. It was like she was only going through the motions of grief, as if she were nothing but a bad actor. She had thought that she didn’t care whether she lived or died, but now with the zombies bearing down on her, she knew that she cared. She cared a lot!

  “It’ll be ok,” reassured the seven-year-old, in a low voice. “Just be a monster like I taught you back in New York. Come on.” She started walking straight away from the zombies swarming at them. The little girl took on a lurching, stumbling gait that was an exact replica of the beast
s coming after.

  When Sadie was slow to imitate her, Jillybean angled slightly away and clicked her flashlight a few times over her shoulder. The undead beasts changed course as well, giving Sadie a few seconds to collect herself. The teen went into her own routine: arms out and hanging as though suspended by invisible wires from the clouds above, her legs lurching like she was on the rolling deck of a sailboat in a typhoon, and moaning like she had just puked up a quart of vodka and a basket of bar fries onto the bathroom floor of her mom’s house.

  She became one of them, meaning they ignored her completely and kept going after Jillybean. At first, Sadie thought that this was no big deal, because this was Jillybean, after all. She was letting them get close and closer and...Sadie gasped as she realized that something was wrong. The zombies were no longer fooled and were within feet of attacking the little girl!

  Sadie clicked her light on and off and the entire mass of grey beasts, like a formation of bombers, changed direction as one and came on in a great press. Sadie’s eyes bugged. They were practically running and, as much as she wanted to run as well, she couldn’t. Her cover would be blown; she would be human in their eyes and thus free game.

  But to continue to stagger along in her pathetic charade was an invitation to be pulled apart and eaten alive. Closer they came and with an iron will, she kept up her pretense. But still they came straight for her. She decided she would give it a few more steps and then she’d run. It was a hard decision since it would mean leaving Jillybean all alone in the middle of a zombie horde. As well it meant she would open herself up as a target for the zombies coming from every direction. The other teams were doing their jobs and the ring of undead was collapsing in on the center of town—very soon there wouldn’t be anywhere to run.