Her mommy would be there and her daddy, too. Jane from down the street was a shoe-in because she was always so nice and Squatty, the old monster who couldn’t see straight would be allowed in on account that she had never hurt nobody and it wasn’t her fault that she was a monster.
But Mrs. Bennett wouldn’t be there; she had been mean even back before. Neither of the two bounty hunters would be allowed, either, because they were bounty hunters and that’s what meant they were as bad as anyone. And not Brad, because he had been bad from the beginning, or the Duke, neither. What could be worse than killing a kid?
She was about to find out.
“You are a tough one,” the Duke said, with what sounded like admiration in his voice, as he pulled the big gun away. “A gun doesn’t scare you. I suppose now-a-days guns aren’t nearly as scary as they used to be. Too bad for you, because I know what is scary. Brad! Get some men and clear me a path to the first post.”
Jillybean didn’t know where the first post was, but anything that was scarier than being shot in the head had to be really, really bad.
As usual, she was right.
Horsemen of the Azael came galloping up and forged a wedge straight through the zombies. In their wake, the Duke strode along, pulling Jillybean by the wrist. The second they had crossed the dirt ditch where the zombies had once trudged, the little girl knew where they were going. They had passed the gruesome marker on the way into town and the swinging kicking bodies, hanging by their stretched hands still haunted a distant part of her mind, down deep in that black she had found herself in earlier.
In desperate fear, she began to pull back on the big paw of the Duke, but it was useless. He was a giant, while she was a tiny thing. Sure enough, their destination was the light pole where eight bodies hung from their hands.
“No, please, no,” she begged in tears. Her little body lost all strength at the sight of the zombies with their crazy-long arms and the evil red gleam in their eyes as they stared down at the little girl. He dragged her on, her sneakered feet making parallel streaks in the dirt.
“Tell me where they went,” the Duke answered. “By what route and I’ll let you go.”
That’s a lie, the other girl inside of her said.
“Help me,” Jillybean pleaded with her. Lies, half-truths, vagaries, and all sorts of deception were her strengths. If anyone could squeak their way out of this it was her, but it would come at a price. This they both knew. Perhaps the price was heaven.
Jillybean looked up at the monsters, terrified beyond all reason. The Duke would pull her up there by her hands and the monsters would eat her. She would scream and kick all to no use. It would be like a game of bobbing for apples and she would be the apple. They would take chomps out of her and slowly they would whittle her down to the bones.
“You want help?” asked the Duke, “Answer me. What route are your friends taking?”
One of his men came up with a length of rope. The man was young, young enough to see the terror in Jillybean’s eyes and understand it. He swallowed hard, bobbing his Adam’s apple up and down, yet he said nothing. The rope pinched, and the little girl cringed and cried, though not from the rope. The monsters were grinning down at her. They were grey where they had skin left. Where they didn’t they seemed like living skeletons.
The terror that grew in the seven-year-old was too much for her broken mind to handle. She felt a great crack open beneath her feet and then she was falling out of the world. She fell with a whistling that slowly faded as her hearing grew less acute. All sight began to fade as well as she dropped deeper into the dark crevices of her mind.
She thought that she was falling but she was in fact hiding. She hid and there was no one left to take over her mind and body except for her.
Eve, the other girl...the other twisted girl, grinned triumphantly. Jillybean and all her stupid niceness was only a memory now. She was able to pull her baby blue eyes from the monsters. She stared coldly at the Duke until his brows came down and for just a second he seemed unsure of himself. “I know where they will go,” she said. “Untie me and I will tell you.”
“No,” he said. “Tell me or die. Those are your choices.”
“And what happens to me if I do tell you?” Eve asked, still as cool as if they were talking at a picnic bench in a park and the sun was out and there were a hundred screaming and laughing children around them and everything was normal again in the world. “The reason I ask is that I want to see Neil and them die as much as you do.”
The Duke’s mouth came open. A grunt that was wholly unconnected to thought escaped him. “What the hell?” he asked, confused. Eve grinned up at him from out of Jillybean’s eyes; her normally smooth face and soft lips twisted in a sneer.
“I told you she was crazy,” Brad said from among the small group of men who had come to be entertained by another death. “She’s bi-polar or schizo or something that there isn’t a name for.”
Finally understanding the extent of the girl’s insanity, the Duke took a step back as if ‘crazy’ was catchy. “Crazy? I don’t care if she’s crazy, I just want to know if she is lying. Will she tell me where they’ve gone?”
Brad studied the little girl for a moment, before saying: “Yeah. She really does hate them. She’ll tell you what she knows, though she might charge a price.”
“I do have a price,” Eve declared. “Get the jerk-face out of here.” She lifted her bound hands to point Brad’s way. “He is a liar. He said I would be a Lady, but that wasn’t true, I know it. So get him out of here if you want to know anything.”
The Duke considered and then waved a hand at Brad in a dainty gesture of dismissal. “We’re wasting time, Brad. Go make sure the trucks are fueled and the men properly armed.”
“Ha!” Eve cackled as Brad frowned. “See you later ass-butt!”
The Duke rounded on her and there was a magnificent air of anger all about him. “That’s enough. Tell me what I want to know or I will string you up right now.”
Jillybean wasn’t completely gone. She was watching everything, looking out as if she were in a deep well where the walls were sticky wet and black. She wanted to scream: Don’t say anything! but her courage failed her yet again. Her fear of the rope and the dangling monsters was too great and her words came out as a whisper that barely made it to her own ears.
Eve ignored her completely. She was in charge now and she was stronger than ever. “They went south on the same road Brad tookted us here on. Neil isn’t very smart or creative. He’d be afraid to get lost to go any other direction.”
“They’re going back the way they came?” the Duke asked. “How far? What’s their final destination?”
She answered with a roll of her eyes and a: “Colorado, duh.” She then gazed south, somehow knowing where they were going. She pointed again with her two hands. “They’re on that road, only they’re not gonna stay on it for long. They’ll take a different road to Colorado. But they aren’t going to go there tonight. You shooted two of them pretty bad and if I know them, they’re going to stop.”
“Where?” the Duke demanded. Instead of answering, Eve held up Jillybean’s bound hands which had the immediate effect of causing a burst of curses to break from the Duke’s mouth. He yanked out a seven-inch hunting knife, but instead of cutting her hands free he held the knife in front of her left eye.
“Where?” he asked again, in a cold-as-death tone.
She glared at him over the tip of the knife. Not for a moment did she fear the knife or the Duke. That was the good thing about being her and not Jillybean. Stupid Jillybean was always full of fear. Sometimes for herself but more often than not she feared for others. It was stupid.
A string of dirty words screamed from the Duke’s mouth and echoed in the night. “Where?” he demanded, throwing her down and leaning over her.
The back of her head hurt where it had struck the road and his knee on her stomach made breathing almost impossible. Jillybean would’ve cried, Eve knew, b
ecause she was a weak little nothing. Eve was the tough one. Eve could endure a little pain and a little shouting. She had been made to endure the pain Jillybean couldn’t handle.
“Cut me free and I will tell you,” she said to the Duke. Their eyes locked and her determination was a force. In a second, he gave up his anger, seeing that it wasn’t doing him any good. When her hands were free, he picked her up and set her on her feet with an expectant and somewhat mad look on his face as if he was the one who was really crazy and just seconds from having a cataclysmic meltdown.
“I’ll need a map,” she told him. “Neil will give in and let Captain Grey try to fix Miss Marybeth only she’s gonna die anyways, I know. But he will try and they’ll need somewhere safe to stay.”
“And you think you know where?”
She almost let out an honest shrug which would’ve been bad for her. She was full of guesses, many of them likely accurate now that stupid Jillybean wasn’t guarding all the good knowledge. Now Eve was the smart one. “Yes, but only when I have a map. And I’ll need to come with you, too.”
The strange, explosive look on the Duke’s face morphed into a look of wariness. “Fine,” he told her, “but you’d better come through. And if you even think about escaping, I’ll haul you up there by your intestines.”
He grabbed her by the back of the neck and roughly propelled her up to the courthouse where the trucks were parked. The Duke’s men were all over the place. Some were getting the zombies back into position, while others were getting ready to go into battle. A third group was tending the wounded from the breakout. There were ten casualties all told: four dead, three seriously wounded and who weren’t given much of a chance to survive and three who had suffered only flesh wounds.
Brad broke the bad news to the Duke, adding: “We only have fifty-two men ready to go. We can count on another fifty arriving in the next few hours and another hundred over the next few days. If you want me to call up your Barons I will, but...”
“But what?” the Duke snapped. “But what!”
The volcanic anger caused Brad to step back. “But...all I was going to say is that this may not be the best use of your resources. I mean they may be more trouble than they’re worth. We’ve all heard the rumors out of New York and Jack Wallins saw the remains of the River King’s bridge, himself. They were the ones who blew it up. These people are dangerous, a little more dangerous than I realized.”
“Here’s what you’re missing, Brad,” the Duke said, clapping Brad hard on the back. “I am dangerous, too. Not only do I command armies of the undead, I also have a thousand men I can call up with a snap of my fingers and guess what?” He reached out a long arm and snapped his fingers under Brad’s nose.
“Make it happen, Brad,” the Duke said. “Send out riders to my barons and tell them I want them here as soon as possible. Those miserable bastards out there have something I want. I aim to get her back.”
Brad nodded judiciously before asking: “And your brother, the king? Do we alert him as well?”
“Not yet,” the Duke answered. “Let’s see if we can take care of this ourselves, first.” He looked down at Eve. “You had better come through for your own sake.”
Though she smiled up at him, encouragingly, doubt crossed her mind. It was like a whisper of fear only that couldn’t be possible since she had no fear. It gave her the chills and a shiver ran up her spine. It made no sense, which meant it wasn’t coming from her.
“Stop it right now, Jillybean,” she hissed. “You only think you’re tough cuz there ain’t no monsters around.” The Duke gave her an eye, but also a shrug. He didn’t care a whit about her. Eve saw the shrug and at first she couldn’t understand it, then she felt suddenly brittle as if she were made out of twigs and that anything could break her; her bones would be blown out onto the plains where they would crumble in the first rain.
This thing, this loneliness staggered her. It was a force nearly as strong as fear and it was new to her and it was horrible.
“I said stop it!” she yelled, suddenly, bringing her hand around and striking herself across the face. The blow was loud in her head and sounded like a whip cracking to everyone around her.
The Duke grabbed one of his men. “Watch her. Make sure she doesn’t hurt herself. I don’t want her damaged. It’ll bring down her price.”
The man was the same youth who had tied her hands so painfully. Eve wanted to hate him but all she could think about was her “price.”
You know what that means, a voice said inside her mind.
“I’m going to be sold.”
A new, unpleasant sensation struck Eve. It was odd, akin to being seasick. She knew what it meant to be sold as a girl...Jillybean had looked up words that sent a new shiver running across her skin. She took a step away from the youth guarding her.
He put out a long arm and reeled her in. “You want a real slap?” he asked. “Cuz I’ll give you one if you even think about running. You got it?”
At this threat, Eve felt the familiar fire that had brought her to the surface. With Jillybean’s power of observation, she studied and memorized his features. Then she set him on her list. She would kill him the first chance she got.
“I got it,” she said, through gritted teeth, Jillybean was still inside her making noise and bringing up crap that was best left undisturbed, but Eve was still strong. Let that stupid Jillybean mess around in her mind. It made no difference. “I’m still in charge and that’s the way it should be.”
This she mumbled so quietly no one heard all except for the little girl inside of her who realized she had made a big mistake. The Duke had never intended to string her up. Jillybean had been tricked and now she was alone in the Great Blackness. Her father was gone as were the cages filled with the people she had killed. There were no doors, no nothing. She was alone with no way out.
Eve heard her misery and laughed, though she did so under her breath. She was starting to understand what other people thought of as crazy and she didn’t like the word applied to her. She wasn’t crazy and she didn’t need Jillybean to do her thinking for her anymore.
It made her feel superior.
Stupid was occurring all around her and it was difficult not to point it all out. The Duke’s men were mostly young and seemed to rely on guess work to order their lives. Here it was the renegades had been gone for over thirty minutes and they were still not ready to go. The Duke began to scream them into the trucks.
Quite naturally, Eve went to the first truck, a big green army one, and began to climb in as her escort made useless noises of indecision. “I can’t very well find your prisoners from in the back of one of these things,” she said slowly as if explaining something to a younger child. “It is why I’m here.”
“Right,” he said, but still didn’t look convinced.
A minute later, the Duke climbed up into the driver’s seat. Eve was forced to slide up next to him as Brad and her escort, who was named Jimmy, also climbed in.
“You had better be able to find them,” the Duke mumbled again, putting the truck into gear. He tapped his horn lightly and then progressed at a slow speed down to where the horsemen were driving the monsters back.
“I can’t make any guarantees,” Eve answered. “You guys took so long, they could be halfway to...” the name of anywhere suddenly slipped her mind. She couldn’t even remember where she was born. It was Jillybean in her head, acting stupid again, trying to make everything difficult.
“...halfway to being gone forever,” Eve said.
“Don’t remind me,” the Duke groused. “Just find them or I will string you up.”
The threat washed right over her. She only feared being sold to some weirdo and even that fear was starting to fade. If it came to pass, she’d deal with the weirdo in her own way images of wickedly sharp knives came to mind.
The Duke flipped on his headlights when the last of his trucks had passed the monster barrier and their speed picked up. Eve was quiet, seeing everyth
ing in the high beams, taking mental notes: speed, direction, land features, monster patterns. They drove for ten minutes, passing the occasional dirt road. It wasn’t until they sped past another, paved road that she saw something out of the ordinary.
In the headlights she saw just a simple monster staggering down the side of the road. It seemed mesmerized by the light and made no move to come off the shoulder to get at them.
“Turn around,” she said. “We’ve gone too far.”
“How do you know?” the Duke was quick to ask.
Eve mulled the question: was it easier to say: Because I know or was it better to explain the simple manner in which monsters moved? Whether it was toward prey or just in their daily meanderings, monsters acted in a manner consistent with Newton’s first law of motion: A monster either remained at rest or continued to move in a straight line unless acted upon by an outside force. Had Neil come through here, the monster would’ve been in the road and not walking parallel to it.
“Because I know,” she said. Though Jillybean liked to explain things so she could teach others, Eve liked the idea of having secret knowledge. It made her important. “Turn around.”
“I can’t believe I’m taking orders from a fucking kid,” the Duke snarled as he slowed and made a three point turn.
He turned at the last intersection and sped south with his lights blazing. Fifteen minutes later Eve saw trash that was not in sync with their surroundings. “Stop!” she ordered. This time the Duke didn’t argue and the truck shuddered to a halt. “Get out,” she said to the Duke. His only argument was a shake of his head, yet he complied.
The four of them walked back to the trash. Eve squatted on the side of the road, Jillybean’s knees jutting out in that frog-like manner of hers. “They were here.”
“How can you possibly know that?” the Duke asked. “I get the feeling you’re just running us around in circles so that your friends can get away.”
The question seemed ridiculous on its face. “How do I know? The real question is: How come you don’t? I get the feeling that the little squirrel you call a “brain” must have run out of nuts. Look! Bandages, with fresh blood! It’s still wet. Weren’t you listening when I told you that two of them were hurt? Lucky for you they’re not far.”
The Undead World (Book 6): The Apocalypse Exile (War of The Undead) Page 34
