He was right on all counts all except her being a one-trick pony. Her ladybug backpack was not only prettier than her old I’m a Belieber backpack, it had more compartments as well. There had to be a dozen zippered pocked or meshed-off sections. She kept the things she felt were most handy in the most accessible spots. In a side pocket was a heavy lump.
Switching the remote to her left hand, she reached around with her right, unzipped a pocket and pulled from it a curious item she had picked up at the theater four hours before.
“Is that...Is that a hand grenade?” Brad asked.
“Yeah, it sure is,” Jillybean said. “I have more than one trick, though not like a pony. I don’t think they can do any sorts of tricks. And this isn’t like a magic trick, neither. It’s more like...well I don’t know, a fireworks show.” The rings in all the other hand grenades she had ever exploded had been very tight; she knew there was no way she was going to be able to pull it with the remote in her hand, at least not in the normal way.
She stooped, placed the grenade on the ground and stepped very close to it so that one of her once-white Keds was firmly planted on the ring. With a simple heave of her body upwards, the ring pin came out while she held the spoon on the grenade tightly down with her fingers. Now it was simply a matter of deciding what to blow up.
Blow up Brad, the other girl suggested with sickly eagerness.
“What do you think you’re going to do with that grenade?” Brad asked.
She shrugged. “I dunno, ’splode something? That’s what it’s for.” A man tried to slip around behind her using the dark as cover, however she was deeper in the gloom than the others and her night eyes were sharp. “I’m going to blow something up,” she said to him. “You should be running away.”
The man stopped, measuring the distance between them and sizing up the girl. He clearly didn’t think she would use the grenade. “You should stop him Mister Brad,” she suggested. “And you should tell those people to get out of that truck.” A jut of her chin indicated a black, Ford truck with an extended bed.
Brad looked like he had swallowed something slimy and that it was crawling around in his belly looking for a way out. “Why?” he asked. His eyes kept flicking to the grenade, to her face, and to the truck. His tongue was like that of a serpent’s, it flicked out to lick his lips every half-second or so.
Like a pitcher on the mound with a runner on first, Jillybean looked the man, who had been trying to creep behind her, back to where he had started. She then grinned up at Brad, feeling distinctly unlike herself. Here she was with two bombs and part of her—not the evil part that called itself “Eve”—wanted to just light the place up.
She couldn’t, however. She had two goals that night: stall the Duke’s men long enough for her friends to get away, and to live, free if possible. That meant she had to talk to the Duke and not to Brad, who was only a second rate fellow in the Duke’s employment. And he was a liar. Jillybean didn’t like liars.
“Why am I going to blow up the truck? Why of course to get the Duke’s attention. I have to talk to him about some things that are very important.”
“Then start talking,” a voice boomed.
Jillybean knew that lion’s roar of a voice. She felt like a mouse before the man as he stomped across the pavement toward them. He was in such a towering rage that even the grenade in her hand seemed miniscule before him, as though it would only make a popping sound, and blink a little light and dribble a touch of smoke.
He glared fiercely and her voice escaped out into the night. She opened her mouth but not even a squeak slipped from between her lips. “Well?” the Duke demanded. After a second he glanced at Brad for an explanation.
“She’s one of them,” he said. “She’s a bit delusional.”
“And is that a real grenade?” the Duke asked.
Brad’s insult lit a fire under Jillybean. She thrust the grenade out toward the Duke. “Yes it’s real and this is a remote control for another bigger bomb. Captain Grey planted it and it’s somewhere special in the town.”
The Duke’s heavy brows came down pooling shadows where his eyes should’ve been. Jillybean hadn’t seen anything so scary since she had been thrust down into her own mind. The reminder woke the other girl and she took that moment to hiss: Kill him! Let the spoon go on the grenade, count to three and throw it at him, then run. If they chase you then set off the other bomb.
“I can’t,” she whispered. The truth was that killing in cold blood like this wasn’t something she could do. It ran contrary to her nature, but not that of the other girl.
Then let me! she demanded. I’ll gladly do it. Think about it, we can kill the Duke. He poisoned Deanna, remember? And he tried to capture everyone. He’s evil, Jillybean. He’s more evil than me. He should die. They all should die. They should burn.
Jillybean was shaken by the voice. It was so filled with the hunger of hate that her teeth hurt.
This quick conversation passed in between blinks of an eye and the Duke was only just reacting to the idea that there was a second bomb in the town. He turned again to Brad. “What’s this about a bomb? Is she for real?”
Brad paused, letting his shrewd eyes bounce to each of the dominant figures in the night. Jillybean guessed that he was looking for the least advantage. “If I had a guess, I would say that she is not lying. There were reports of someone slinking around the town earlier. The soldier with them seemed capable of planting a bomb.”
“And they would leave a little girl to detonate it?” the Duke asked. “That seems very far-fetched.”
The logic of this had Brad second guessing himself. Always helpful, Jillybean raised her grenade hand. “No, they weren’t going to have me ‘splode the bomb, but there was an issue with the range. They were too far away to use the remote and Mister Captain Grey couldn’t come back because he was needed for the wounded and Neil was the leader and Sadie was…well, she is my sister, so she couldn’t go and so I said I would come back to blow up the bomb on account I had been bad.”
Her honesty was enough to convince the Duke. “And so why haven’t you exploded the bomb?” he asked. “You’ve had plenty of opportunity. Have you had a change of heart? Or are you chicken?”
“No, Mister Duke, Sir, I’m not chicken,” she replied. “I just didn’t think that the ‘splosion wouldn’t slow you down enough. My guess is that it’ll just make you extra mad and then you would go crazy or something. That won’t help anyone. Not you and not us.”
“You wish to help me?” the Duke asked with a laugh. “Why don’t I believe you?”
Jillybean shrugged, innocently. “Maybe because I have a bomb. It’s never smart to trust anyone with a bomb, ‘cept you can trust me. I don’t want to make you mad. I just don’t want you to go after my friends.”
“That seems unlikely,” the Duke said. “They are worth quite a bit to me. There are bounties from all over the place on their heads.”
“What the bomb is planted on is worth more, I bet,” Jillybean retorted, quickly.
This made the Duke’s eyes narrow. A second later he beckoned Brad closer and leaned close to whisper in his ear. Brad grinned at what he heard and then slunk backwards into the night.
“Darn it,” Jillybean whispered, guessing that they had figured out the short list of possibilities where the bomb could be planted.
Then blow them up! The other girl cried in an echo that warbled up and down within her mind. Blow them up, or I will!
This was no idle threat. Jillybean could feel snake-like tendrils spreading out through her body as the other girl started to exert control. “No,” Jillybean whispered. “I’ll fight you and you know what will happen. Our muscles will go slack and the grenade will fall. It’ll blow us up. You know that will happen, don’t you?” Jillybean gave her a mental picture and the tendrils retreated.
With a shake of her head she glanced up at the Duke. He was trying to play it straight, however it was obvious he thought he had Jillybean cornered.
There really were only a few places that an experienced soldier like Captain Grey would plant a bomb: the courthouse, the fuel dump and the theater. The Duke’s look suggested that he was going to bide his time until he knew that the bomb had been defused.
“You know where the bomb is, don’t you?” she asked him. He shrugged, however he didn’t have much of a poker face; she knew she was right. “Well, I know you do, so the next question you are asking yourself is: why don’t I blow it up now and then throw my grenade?”
He shrugged, however it wasn’t with nearly the confidence of the last.
“Because,” she continued, “It won’t effect the outcome. If there was one thing that Ipes has taught me it’s that I should follow each possible course of action to its logical conclusion. That’s what he would say if he was here.”
The Duke looked nonplussed at this. “Who the hell is Ipes?”
“Oh, he was my zebra. But that doesn’t matter right now. I think I have followed every action and every word down their lines and I think I know what will happen. You will wait until Brad returns and then take me prisoner. If you act prior to that, then we will both lose so much more.” This was her warning to the Duke that he shouldn’t do anything but wait.
He nodded, almost as an equal to the little girl. She knew she was his equal, but only as long as she held the remote. It would be useless in minutes. She’d still have the grenade and with it she would maybe gain a couple of minutes more.
But only as long as you are close enough to actually threaten someone with it, the other girl said.
“You’re right,” Jillybean said, moving closer to the Duke. When he backed away, eyeing the grenade, she went to the truck that was only a few feet away. When she had come up, men had been heaving boxes of ammo, water, food and extra fuel into the rear. All of it was still in the back. She rested her grenade hand on the tailgate.
“Well, you are something,” the Duke said.
This didn’t make any sense to the logic-minded girl. If she wasn’t something then she would be nothing and that didn’t make any sense because she was really real. “I am a girl, Mister Duke, Sir,” she told him. “And I am seven now.”
“Shame you won’t make it to eight years old,” he said.
It took her a moment to realize that had been a threat. Kill him, the other girl demanded. Kill him before he kills us. Please. It’ll be easy. Just do what I tell you.
Jillybean hissed: “No!” causing the Duke to raise an eyebrow. He thought she was crazy, a complete whack-a-doodle, but she didn’t care what he thought. He was a mean, old, bad guy and she thought of him as beneath her.
They stood in a stony silence as the minutes passed. Each minute was a victory for Jillybean. The remains of her family were getting further and further away. Twenty three of these precious minutes ticked by before Brad came jogging up and gave the Duke a quick nod.
“Fun time is over,” the Duke said. “We found your bomb and diffused it. Now put the pin back in the grenade or I will have you shot. You have until the count of ten.”
The men of the Azael began to retreat to a safe distance, Brad included. Only the Duke held his ground. In his hand was a .44 caliber monster of a pistol and he had it aimed square at Jillybean. It was very disconcerting.
“I-I just n-need to get the pin,” she said, pointing at the ground a few feet away. She began to edge toward it, her eyes never leaving the fat bore of the gun.
The Duke shrugged. “Fine, but I’m already up to five...six...seven...” Now, she rushed to where she had left the pin on the ground. She tried to snatch it up, however it fumbled out of her shaking hands to clink back onto the pavement. “Eight...nine...”
Behind her, she heard the hammer of the pistol click back. This only made her fingers go even crazier. They shook badly so that the pin was etching up and down as though she was graphing an earthquake. But worse: the pin was tiny, the hole miniscule and the dark made fitting one into the other as difficult as anything she had ever tried to accomplish in so short a time. The pin just wouldn’t go where it needed.
“I got it,” she lied right before he said ‘Ten’. She stayed hunched over the grenade as she looked back at the Duke. Her smile went squirrely as she saw that he still had the gun pointed her way. All she could think about was the size of the hole that thing would put in her.
“Then put it on the ground and back away, slowly,” the Duke ordered.
“I-I...It is, uh, caught on my shirt.” She turned back to the grenade, fearing that it would suddenly squirt out of her fingers. “I’ll just be a second...ok, here it goes. Oh jeeze, I got it.” The pin scraped the hole and caught the edge. She wiggled it into place and then with shaking hands placed the bomb on the ground.
“Move away from it!” the Duke barked. She crawled a few feet away without looking up at him, yet knowing that the awful big gun was trained on her tiny body. “Now, you are going to tell me where your friends are going or I will kill you.”
As that answer was already known, she felt no qualm about blurting out: “Colorado.”
“No shit,” the Duke snarled. He stepped toward her and a second later she felt the metal bore push into the back of her head. “I want to know which way they went, and you’re going to tell me or I’ll splatter your brains all over this street.”
She wanted to lie, only she didn’t know any of the names of the roads they had traveled on and she knew that simply blurting out a random road number would never be believable. She was in such a desperate position that she even turned to the other girl inside her for help.
The other girl had no reply except to rant about the wasted opportunity with hand grenade: You shoulda killed him. Next time you kill them all!
There wasn’t going to be a next time. The Duke pushed the gun so hard against her head that it seemed as though the gun pushed tears from her eyes. He loomed over her, a monstrous shadow, as he whispered: “I’m going count to three and if you haven’t told me what I want to know then I’m going to pull the trigger. What route are they taking? One...two...”
“I-I don’t know, Mister Duke, Sir,” Jillybean cried. “They never told me which...”
He cut her off by saying: “Three.”
Chapter 27
Deanna Russell
Opening her eyes was a tremendous struggle. Seemingly, they weighed many pounds. She had never felt weaker. Her arms and legs were like great flesh logs that were as long as tree trunks. Her fingers felt far away. They were vague and distant.
Her first attempt at opening her eyes was a failure. She could only get her right lid up and even then everything was dark. Three tries was all she had in her before she was overcome by exhaustion. Deanna fell back to sleep.
Hours went by as she slept in a more natural and healing manner. When next she stirred, there was light, the thin grey light that marked early morning. As before, her right eye came open first, then her left. Neither was able to focus.
There were people, mere blobs. She could hear them talking, they had the slow rumbling voices of whales. She saw them move like bouncing clouds. There was something wrong with her.
“Whaf,” she said, through numb lips. A hand, long and pale white came up to her face. It was so strange that she found herself staring at it and it was only gradually that it came to resemble a normal hand. It was some time before she realized it was her own hand.
“Das ny han,” she whispered. For some reason she was relieved at the realization. She tried to see whether her left hand was still attached to her body as well. It was just like the other except she had even less control; it fell across her face, making her blink and it was some time before she was able to haul her eyelids up again.
An hour had passed between blinks and the grey light had been replaced by a warmer hue. The blobs had turned into humans, though they were fuzzy on the edges. She knew her fingers again; she made weak little fists with them. Even her lips were back to normal.
“I think they’re normal at least,�
� she said, touching them with the tips of her fingers. They felt slightly puffy but nothing to worry about. She explored the rest of her face with her fingers, discovering that everything about her was normal again...all except her tongue. That felt fat and dry and tasted horrible, like the bottom of a shoe.
“Uugh,” she groaned. Water was needed, badly. She tried to get up, making it to her knees without difficulty, but when she stood it was with all the fine motor control of a newly calved foal. Her legs wobbled and her head began to spin.
In a second, she knew she was going to fall and there wasn’t going to be any way to stop it. She didn’t even have the mental capacity to break her fall with her arms. The floor came rushing up to knock her teeth out of her head, but it stopped a foot away from her face.
“You’re awake!”
Light as a feather, she was lifted and, when her eyes focused on the face in front of her, she saw it was Captain Grey. He was crying fat tear-bulbs.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. She thought he was crying because there was something wrong with her–she certainly didn’t feel like she was completely alright.
Quickly, he wiped his sleeve across his eyes. Embarrassed, he answered: “Nothing’s wrong. I was just, uh, excited. I mean, happy that you’re awake, finally. It’s been two days.”
Missing those two days didn’t faze her all that much mainly because she had thought it had been more like two weeks. “So I look ok?” she asked, touching her face again.
“You look great to me,” he answered and then looked startled that he had answered in such a forward way. After clearing his throat, he added in a more professional voice: “Outwardly you appear as you always have but I should give you a closer inspection. Stick out your tongue.”
Her pale hand snapped up to cover her mouth. There was no way she was going to open her mouth with two day’s worth of built up morning breath coating her tongue. “Some water first, please. And can you ask Marybeth if I can borrow her brush. I’m sure my hair is a complete rat’s...nest. Hey, what’s wrong?”
The Undead World (Book 6): The Apocalypse Exile (War of The Undead) Page 31
