Perry reached for a rifle that had been lying on the floor next to the recliner. Jillybean screamed for him to stop, only he didn’t. She even waved the gun at him just in case he missed it, but he still, almost casually, picked up his gun.
Jillybean fired the .357 from ten and a half feet away, and missed. She even missed the recliner. The sound of the gun had the opposite effect on Perry and Dave. Perry froze with his hand on the gun while Dave went nuts. He’d been under a blanket and now he kicked like mad trying to get up, only he got entangled in the blanket and his spastic efforts were wasted.
The distraction he caused lasted only a second and then Perry picked up the gun as Jillybean advanced on him straining with both hands to squeeze the heavy trigger and keep it aimed at the same time.
When it went off again, it seemed to surprise all three of them. Perry’s eyes were wide circles and his mouth was a perfect “O,” pretty much the same shape as the hole in his chest.
“Fuck!” Dave cried, finally untangling himself from the blanket. He turned to run away.
“Stop!” Jillybean shouted. She didn’t trust that he would run far enough. It was cold and snowy out, and she was sure that he would only run around the house to the truck that had been parked next to the KIA. What if there were guns in there? What if he came back with one looking for revenge?
Dave didn’t stop. He rushed for the front door with Jillybean chasing him. “I said stop,” she said in a calmer voice, but he wouldn’t. He was furiously scrabbling at the locks when she pulled the trigger of the .357. Again, she missed. The strength needed for her to pull the trigger caused the barrel to lift up and she hit the door a foot over his head.
Jillybean corrected her aim, pointing the gun at the back of his right knee and firing again just as Dave opened the front door. She didn’t know if she hit him until he fell into the snow a few seconds later and she saw the blood. There was a shocking amount.
“I said, stop,” she whispered. “You should have stopped.”
She supposed that he didn’t hear her. He staggered off to the side of the house and fell into some bushes. She followed him there to make sure he would die, to make sure that he was no longer any threat to her. He asked to be put out of his misery, but she wouldn’t do it. There were monsters to worry about and the gun only had so many bullets…and he was a bad guy who deserved his pain.
In silence, she watched him die. It took seventeen minutes and she was a shivering mess by the time she walked back into the house.
You did what you had to do, Ipes said from beneath her. She blinked and in the course of that blink, suddenly night became day and the living room with its roaring fire became the Ford Focus with iced-over windows. She fished around beneath the seat and brought Ipes out. Wearing a droopy-eyed look, he patted her hand. They were bad men.
“Yes, but I liked it better not remembering nothing…”
Anything.
“Okay, yeah sure, ‘anything.’ I liked it better when I didn’t remember anything. Maybe next time I’ll go find a different place to stay and then it’ll be like it never happened. Wait, maybe I can do that now.”
I don’t think memory works like that. I think once you remember something, you remember it for always.
“Maybe, but I’m also crazy so I can make my memory do what I want. I’ll show you.” She tramped back the way she came, purposefully not looking at the blood leading from the front door or the body on the couch or the bullet holes here and there.
“Do-ta-do, bah-ba-bah,” she half-sang as she went first into the kitchen to see what sort of food was available. There were a couple dozen cans of beans and soup, but nothing really good. She took a can of soup, opened it and went back into the living room where the fire was only a pile of ash.
It was hot enough to heat the soup and so, carefully, she stuck the can in the ash and then sat back on her heels and waited, again purposefully keeping her eyes straight ahead.
Have you forgotten yet? Ipes asked.
“Not yet. You know these things take time. How long has it been? Five minutes? No one can forget stuff in five minutes.”
They waited a while longer and eventually he said: It might help if that guy stopped staring at you. It’s creepy. Could you close his eyes?
Perry had been staring at her this entire time and it was skeeving her out. So far pretending that he wasn’t there hadn’t helped at all, in fact it had made trying to forget practically impossible.
Jillybean wasn’t about to touch him. She settled on throwing Dave’s blanket over him, which still didn’t help. She could feel his eyes bore through the blanket and lock onto her.
Eventually she got up and explored the house, finding all sorts of interesting things. Each of the men had claimed a portion of the living room and each had a little cache of what they considered their personal property. All of them had naked-lady magazines, which Jillybean pushed aside without looking closer.
She was after the guns and the bombs. The men had been scavenging around the base for long enough to acquire all sorts of stuff. The neatest of which were the claymore mines, the hand grenades and the M79, what she called a “bomb shooter” that seemed to have been made with a child in mind. With an overall length of just over two feet, it looked like a miniature shotgun and was exceedingly simple in its construction and use.
Jillybean pressed a single latch on the side and it fell open, showing her where one of the stubby “bomblets” would go. Wearing an impish smile, she slid one in.
What are you doing, Jillybean? Ipes’ voice held both early onset panic and a warning tone.
“Just making sure I know how to work it. It’s not like it comes with instructions…oh wait, it does!” Along with nearly two dozen little bombs there was a box for the bomb shooter and in it were actual instructions.
Excitedly she read them, memorizing each detail. When she was done, she held the weapon up and sighted down its length, a grin on her face. “I like it. This is even better than my old guns.”
Well, it doesn’t make you a soldier and you should be careful with it. I wouldn’t keep it loaded, especially in the house.
“Jeeze, you sound like my…” The word mom got hung up on her tongue. She hadn’t thought about her mom in ages and now she could barely remember her face. Here she was hoping to forget ol’ dead Perry with his staring eyes, but it was her mom she couldn’t picture with the same clarity that she used to.
“Do I lose all my memory when I try to forget stuff? Cuz, if so I don’t want to do it. I’m sorry about Dave and Perry, but they kinda got what they deserved…except for maybe Dave, but I don’t know.”
I don’t know how memories are made and unmade. I think they’re like pictures like you see in some of the older homes. Remember that old grandma’s house? Some of her pictures were faded and I bet that one day there won’t be anything left but empty frames sitting on the walls.
“That’s kind of sad. Well, I wanna keep my memories, so I’ll just have to find a different coping mechanism. You hear that brain?” she asked, cocking her eyes at an upward angle as if she could see into her own head. “Find another way.”
After a moment of waiting, Ipes asked: Did it say anything?
“Naw, it’s probably still thinking.” She let her brain think and as it did, she went around the house collecting all the stuff she thought would be useful. A very small .38 caliber police special that almost fit her tiny hand, bullets, food, more guns and gas were the obvious things and they had first priority. Next, she grabbed pillows and blankets, and her charging gizmo from the other car.
She wanted to take the batteries out of the truck, but they were too heavy and she didn’t want to waste time setting up a pulley and winch system to remove them.
Finally, with the last bit of the room left in the KIA, she added firewood. A blizzard on the prairie could very well kill her if she wasn’t prepared.
As the sun began to set, she took a hammer from the garage and smashed in the KIA’s t
ail lights and the blinkers and the dome light inside. It would be an eight hundred mile journey and every one of those miles would be driven in the dark and she couldn’t have the least thing give her away.
Chapter 14
Sadie Walcott
She was caught dead to rights. The man was twelve feet away with a gun pointed at her. That should have been enough for her to admit defeat, but she was awful pig-headed when it came to losing, and this was the ultimate loss.
Her hands went up, and at the same time she bent slightly forward, her legs becoming tense springs beneath her. She knew she couldn’t outrun bullets, but she hoped that a slaver wouldn’t just shoot an unarmed person. Of course they may not know I’m unarmed, Sadie thought.
“Hey, I don’t have a gun on me or anything,” she said. “I was gonna steal one, only you scared me half to death. Ha-ha.”
“You’re a girl,” he said, in surprise. “Boy-howdy, I wasn’t expecting a girl.”
“How were you expecting me at all?” Sadie said, doing her best to keep her tone neutral, almost to the point of being conversational in the hope of lulling the man into a sense of security. It seemed to be working as his gun came down slightly. It was no longer aimed right at her face, but only in her general direction.
“You got a loud truck. You can hear that sucker for miles in these mountains. But I never expected a girl. You shoulda turned around and went back to the valley. That’s what I woulda…”
The springs in Sadie’s legs sprung. She had gotten all she needed from the brief conversation. He knew she was “just a girl” and an unarmed girl at that. He wouldn’t shoot and that meant she had a big advantage.
Her legs powered her from standing still to twenty miles per hour in three seconds, while behind her the slaver let out a cry: “She’s here! It’s a girl. Doug, she’s headed for you!”
Not anymore, I’m not, Sadie thought as she darted to her right and began to climb the wall of the gulch. It was a much easier climb than the two she had already been forced to make that day and she was halfway up the forty foot wall before the man she had run from came puffing up.
“Get down or I’ll shoot!” he yelled.
“I doubt it,” Sadie answered. “If you miss, you’ll have wasted bullets and if you hit me then you won’t be able to sell me, right?”
His quiet reply of: “Fuck,” was pure frustration. Sadie grinned as she heard the sounds of the man slinging his rifle before he started up the gulch.
“Brian! I don’t see her,” Doug called from the throat of the gulch. “She might be climbing up the walls. Brian?”
Behind Sadie, Brian was huffing badly, the altitude getting to him. “Of course…she’s climbing…the walls. She’s heading east. Get Pecos and Mike. We’ll block her in.”
Sadie doubted they’d be able to, especially if she killed Brian. She didn’t know kung fu or have ninja skills, so a fair fight was out of the question, but she could drop a rock like nobody’s business. Twelve feet from the top of the hill she found a rock the size of a soccer ball, half buried in the dirt. A couple of good tugs and it came loose to bound down at Brian.
It wasn’t as smooth as a soccer ball and the hill wasn’t nearly as even as a pitch. The rock tumbled right at Brian, but at the last second it clipped something and bounded up, just nicking his head.
“Mother fucker! What the fuck? What the fuck! If you try that again, I will shoot you. I promise you that.” To be on the safe side, he angled behind one of the scrubby little pines that grew up out of the side of the hill. Because of the hard angle and the rockiness of the slope, none of them would ever grow into much more than what they were now.
Since the chance of braining him with another rock was now slim, Sadie put her efforts into escaping. She crested the hill and found herself on a small plateau overlooking the town of Poudre Park. There really wasn’t much more to it than being a relatively open area along the Poudre River.
Altogether, there were sixty homes, one church, a few sad businesses that had somehow held on right up until the apocalypse, and a gas station that appeared to have been partially burnt to the ground.
There were also a few dozen zombies wandering around. Sadie headed right for them, slipping and sliding down the hill. As she jogged, she pulled her jacket partially off so that one sleeve dangled off to the side. In the dark it somewhat resembled a third arm which wasn’t exactly normal, but that was the whole idea. She also threw in a limp and a low moan.
The zombies accepted her as one of their own without hesitation as did Doug and Brian who stayed high on the hills, afraid to come down among the undead. They yelled back and forth to each other: “Do you see her?”
She wanted to limp and fake her way to safety, but two trucks rumbled into life and spun through town, trying to cut off any escape. In order to blend in, she charged the trucks along with the other zombies. It was twenty-five minutes of going back and forth as the slavers searched for her, never realizing that she was chasing them.
The two trucks kept out of reach of the zombies and eventually they split up, each racing to either end of town, guarding the one road that passed through it. They disappeared from view and the moment they did, they cut their engines and switched off their lights. She could picture them propped up under blankets watching the road with gimlet eyes.
This was what Sadie was looking for. She was sure they wouldn’t expect an unarmed girl to go back to the house where the Valley soldiers were being held prisoner. They would expect her to run away, which was silly because where would she go?
With no truck, no gas, and no weapons, going on the offensive was probably her safest course of action. Just then it seemed better than the alternatives: either dying of hyperthermia or exposure, or becoming a snack for the thousands of zombies between here and the Valley.
Leaving the pack as half went one way and the other half went the other, she headed back to the gulch, moving in the shadows. Her plan was to sneak up on the house, slip in and use her speed as well as the element of surprise to disarm whoever had been left to guard the prisoners.
It was a sound plan and in her black attire she melded so perfectly with the night that no one saw her and she made it to the little house without anyone raising the alarm—even the man who had expected her to do just this didn’t see her.
He was practically invisible himself hiding in the brush on the side of the road. Invisible, but not silent. He had a case of the sniffles and every thirty seconds or so he would snort back a run of snot that threatened to slip out of his nose.
Sadie cursed under her breath. Her plan was ruined; there was no way she could take on two armed men with any expectation of winning. Using even more care to remain silent, she eased back the way she had come, only to almost run into a man on foot hurrying back to the house.
Fortunately, she heard his huffing breath before she saw him and she stole beneath a pine tree where the needles on the ground muffled her footfalls. Hoping that his appearance would signal a change in the dynamics, Sadie crept after.
“Smitty? Smitty? Where are you?”
“Shut the hell up, I’m right here. Why aren’t you out looking for the girl?”
“I was just wonnerin’ if you saw her, is all.”
There was silence for a few moments and then Smitty said: “Yeah, she’s right here sucking my dick. Don’t be an idiot, Doug. If I saw her, I think I might have said something.”
“Well, there’s just a lot of stiffs out tonight and we only have the two trucks and me and Brian are on foot you know and what if somethin’ happens?”
“Then scream. Now, get your ass back out there and find her. You know a girl is worth all these guys put together.”
Sadie hid again as Doug literally tiptoed past. He had a military rifle of some sort that he pointed here and there, looking ready to kill the first squirrel to show its head. Sadie considered trying to sneak up on him, but figured that he was too wired, which would make her chances slim to dead.
And yet, all of her chances seemed to run along those lines. She had to get lucky or somehow make her own luck. The latter was likely her only option…unless she could use some sort of Jillybean type plan, only that would mean using her head.
“Hmmm,” she said, turning the noise into a grumble. She wasn’t good at using her head. She was good at sudden violent action in which her gift of speed would give her the edge. “I’m also pretty sneaky, but sneaking up on some of these guys is too dangerous…at least the ones on foot.”
But not the ones in the cars—the thought brought with it a little bit of a Jillybean-esque plan. She could use the zombies to get close to the trucks and then…what?
“I’ll figure that out when the time comes.”
As creeping in the shadows wasn’t the fastest method of travel, she adopted a moan and a limp and went straight down the road, seeing Doug freeze in fear on the side of the gulch’s steep wall. She could hear the rattle of the sling of the gun against the stock as steady as a clock.
It was strange to find someone so afraid of a lone “zombie” after a full year of being around them and yet, there were some among the Valley soldiers who had quit the soldiering life rather unexpectedly in the last few months. No one ever said anything when this sort of thing happened. The soldiers simply became farmers or tradesmen and that’s who they were.
Everyone has their breaking points, Sadie mused, hoping she would die before she ever reached hers. She didn’t have much in the way of skills outside of her speed and her bravery. Yes, she could do menial labor, but for some reason she found it degrading, which was really silly, and yet, wasn’t she the daughter of both a king and a governor? Shouldn’t her destiny be correspondingly greater?
When Neil had tasked her to hunt down Jillybean, she had jumped at the chance. Alone in the wild with just her and her wits had been a freeing experience for her. No one had judged her. No one had looked down on her spiked hair with a raised eyebrow, or commented that she could now choose her “own” clothes if she wanted.
The Undead World (Book 8): The Apocalypse Executioner Page 13
