The Undead World (Book 8): The Apocalypse Executioner

by Peter Meredith

  The little girl didn’t wait. The moment Neil left the room, she grabbed Ipes and scampered after, moving with practiced stealth along the dim corridors. It took no special genius to figure out that this “delegation” concerned her, and she wanted to hear what was happening first hand.

  It wasn’t much of a surprise to her that it really wasn’t a delegation that stood out front, it was an angry mob. At least three hundred people had gathered in the fading light. They didn’t carry pitchforks like Jillybean had seen in her cartoon movies from before the apocalypse, they carried guns.

  At the sight of them, Jillybean slunk down, away from the window, afraid that if she was seen, the mob would turn on her and kill her. We should get out of here! Ipes hissed. We gotta hide before it’s too late.

  Jillybean didn’t run or hide. She knew these people. As long as she stayed out of sight, she had time. They would talk and talk before they committed to any action. It was a weakness. “Not yet. I want to hear what they’re saying.”

  Along the front of the Stanley was a wide porch, painted a brilliant white where guests once took their tea as they watched the sun set over the snow-capped mountains. Neil stood on the porch alone, looking small but defiant with his balled hands planted firmly on his hips. He was practically shouting at Fred Trigg and a little group of his friends who stood in front of the larger crowd. Because the crowd was loud and boisterous, Jillybean couldn’t make out anything more than an occasional word.

  She had to get closer, and so she slunk down and edged right to the corner of the front doors.

  She’s dangerous.

  She’s a monster!

  She murdered General Johnston!

  And that baby. Don’t forget she murdered her, too.

  This was the background noise that Jillybean tried to filter out to hear Fred Trigg, who was speaking in a sad voice: “I wish it could be another way, but the people have spoken. They are afraid, Neil. This valley isn’t the place to try to rehabilitate a mass murder, no matter how small and cute she is.”

  “I said I would vouch for her. I will watch over and make sure…”

  Fred threw his hands in the air. “Please! We don’t live in a world where you can vouch for another person, not when murders have been committed. You say you can guarantee our safety, but you can’t. Neil, you can’t be governor at the same time as watching her twenty-four hours a day.”

  Jillybean was so entranced by the terrible words that she didn’t hear Deanna slip up to the door, the carpet muting her footsteps. “Come with me,” the woman ordered. “You can’t be here.” Slowly, with clear reluctance, she held out a hand to Jillybean.

  “What are they going to do to me?” the little girl asked, as Deanna whisked her along, heading for a back staircase.

  “Nothing. They won’t do anything, trust me. They’re just scared is all. They’re…” She stopped. They were on the first landing which was wide and open. Even the back staircase was of such opulence that there was a French chaise on one wall of the landing and a plush, comfy looking chair in the corner.

  Ignoring everything around them, Deanna bent down and looked into Jillybean’s eyes, staring intently. When Jillybean finally got too self-conscious to keep up the sustained eye contact and turned her face downwards, Deanna asked: “Are you hearing any voices in your head? Like…like Eve, or someone else?”

  “I hear you.”

  “Jillybean, you know what I mean.”

  “I’m not hearing nothing and that’s the truth. You can ask Ipes. He’ll tell the truth. He says he’s like George Jefferson and can’t tell a lie.”

  Deanna stared for a moment longer and then said: “Good,” before pulling Jillybean along again, heading up and up to the third floor. Once there, she sped them along to the last room of the wing. It faced east where the mountains were just strange dark angles blotting out the stars.

  “Neil won’t let them hurt you,” Deanna said, and yet at the same time, she locked the door and then pushed the bed in front of it. She laughed and added: “Just a precaution.” The precaution also included a pistol which Deanna set on her lap as she faced the door and waited.

  Jillybean expected to be there for a long time, but it was only a few minutes before someone lightly tapped six times on the door, three sets of two. Deanna shoved the bed away and Neil hurried in. He was red-faced and fuming.

  “That Fred. Oh, so help me, I feel like…” Neil stopped what Jillybean knew was going to be a threat. “He’s going to force you out of the valley, Jillybean. I’m sorry but he has riled up a few hundred people against you. It’s not even close to the majority of the citizens, but it’s enough to cause trouble.”

  The girl felt her legs start to shake and before she could collapse, she sat down on the bed, Ipes held to her chest, protectively. “Can I talk to them? If they saw who I really was, maybe they’d change their minds.”

  “It wouldn’t work,” Neil said, going to the window and looking out. For once, the view wasn’t beautiful. It was far from it. The hundreds of people had not left. They stood in little clumps all around the hotel, bundled in coats and scarves. They talked, all the while staring up at the building.

  Neil turned from the window and went to the door and listened with his partially chewed off ear. “It wouldn’t work,” he said again. “Fred is a master manipulator. He’ll turn your words against you and whatever character witness you brought forward, he would impugn, ruthlessly.”

  He had used a lot of words that Jillybean wasn’t so sure about, but she got the gist: there was no beating Fred through logic.

  “I don’t really see what he’s gaining from this,” Deanna said. “Is he really that afraid of Jillybean?”

  “Yes, actually,” Neil answered. “But that’s really not the reason. He knows that this will end me if I protect her.”

  Jillybean’s heart, what felt like a tired little stone, sank in her chest. “Do I have to leave tonight?”

  Deanna leapt up from the chair she’s been sitting in, the pistol in her hand, waving as she hissed: “This isn’t fair! We can stop this, Neil. I know my friends will stand up for her and most of the people you brought through…”

  “And the soldiers?” Neil asked, cutting his eyes Jillybean’s way. “I doubt they’ll be persuaded. And that goes double for the civilians who had been here before we showed up. All they know about Jillybean are the rumors. So what does that leave us? A few dozen people who’ll stand up for her out of five thousand.”

  Jillybean blinked in a slow way—it seemed to take the place of thinking just at the moment. Not a single thought entered what suddenly felt like an air-filled head. Right then she didn’t think there was much difference between her and a balloon, and she was sure that a stiff breeze would float her right out the window and where she would end up, no one would know and certainly no one would care.

  Involuntarily, she took three steps toward the door, her feet acting on their own, her eyes huge moist blue orbs. Neil grabbed her arm. “No,” he said.

  Deanna was slower and only reached out once Neil had stopped her. “Hey, sweetie, we’ll fight this, somehow.” Jillybean saw that her smile was all fakery, like the fancy front of a dirty saloon. Deanna had no idea what to do and she was just spouting nice sounding words. “Neil, tell her. We’ll fix this. We’ll find a way, just like as we always do.”

  Neil’s teeth grit together and he looked as though he were biting down on tinfoil. “No. There isn’t a fix for this and the longer I drag this out, the worse it will be for you.”

  “For me?” Deanna asked, her bewilderment showing on her face. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Yes, for you. Let me spell it out,” Neil said. “Jillybean can’t stay and I can’t let her go out into the wilds by herself.”

  Deanna’s brow crinkled, three little lines showing on her brow. “Then send someone with her.”

  It seems so simple for her, Jillybean thought. Just send “someone” as if there were a line of
someones jumping at the chance to leave the safety of the valley with someone who was in all likelihood a murderer. Leave and never come back. It was a prison sentence.

  Neil’s face split into a pained smile for all of a second. “Who could I possibly send? If Grey or Sadie were here, maybe I could send one of them, but only because they love her. But they’re not here and that leaves only me.”

  This statement—this near declaration of love—sent the airiness in Jillybean’s insides twisting so that her stomach went one way and her throat went the other. It squeezed the air out of her and she could only make a high-pitched sound. If she was hearing Neil right, it meant that she might be exiled, but she wasn’t going to be all alone! Neil would come with her. He would look after her!

  As much as he can, Ipse said, quickly, trying to add an element of reality to what felt like fantasy to the lonely girl.

  She knew that Ipes was right. Neil wasn’t all that much of a guardian in truth, but he was a thousand, no, a million times better than being alone. She didn’t know whether to cry or scream or laugh.

  Deanna struggled for words as well. The three little lines had sprung two mates and now there was a row of them. “And…and…hold on. Wait. Then it’ll be just me here alone? What if Grey doesn’t come back? Or Sadie?”

  Before anyone could answer, she laughed miserably, high in her throat and there were tears in her eyes, gleaming spheres that stretched until they hung pendulously from her lashes. “I didn’t mean that. I don’t know why I said that. It’s only been five days. Sorry, I’m being silly. I was just hoping they’d be back by now.”

  She laughed a second time, high and gay and strange as if there wasn’t an angry mob outside the window demanding blood and two frightened people right in front of her. “Isn’t that stupid? I just…I just… I guess I’ve got pregnancy jitters or whatever they call it.”

  Neil waited until she had pulled herself together. “They’ll be back soon enough, but until then, I need you to run things. You’ll be acting governor until the next election, which is going to be sooner rather than later, especially when Fred lets it ‘slip’ that I blew all the supplies.”

  The three lines were back on Deanna’s forehead. “He’s going to make it miserable here for us, isn’t he? He’s going to try to drum Grey out of the army, I bet. I’m sorry, Neil but we should never have traded those supplies.”

  Jillybean felt like a bug flitting around a bulb, unable to land, unable to fly away. That one person wanted her, that someone wanted to take care of her in some way, in any way, was so great that she hadn’t been following the conversation as close as she should have been.

  Deanna’s fear for Captain Grey caused her to focus, because she liked him very much. “You guys need supplies? I have a lots of gas and I bet you can trade it for all sorts of stuff. It’s not with me, but I can get it for you.”

  “That’s very sweet of you,” Deanna said, “but we need more than what you have in your car.”

  “I know that, silly. Asides, my car can’t carry it all. I need one of them long cylinder trucks. A fuel truck, right, thanks Ipes. I need one of them or maybe two and someone who can drive them. The sticker-shifters are too tough for me. I tried one once and the car hopped around a little like a rabbit and made a grinding noise that didn’t sound good, not at all.”

  Neil’s face froze in a contorted look, something between puzzlement and shock, as if he was shocked that he was puzzled, or puzzled that he was shocked. “You have that much fuel? For real?”

  “For reals,” she answered scratching her left butt cheek, absently. “But it’s all the way in Missouri and that’s a long ways away.”

  Silence settled over the room as outside, the undercurrent of voices picked up. Neil went to the window, stared out for a moment before asking: “Would that much fuel change people’s minds about Jillybean?”

  Just then he was spotted by the crowd and a rock was thrown, thumping off the wall next to the window. Neil quickly ducked back, almost running into Jillybean who went to the window and stood on tiptoes to look out.

  “I don’t think I want to come back,” she said. “I don’t like those people.”

  “You know they’re not all like that,” Neil said. “Fred’s got them riled up, but perhaps we can use the fuel to change how they look at you, Jillybean. I mean, this was exactly why I gambled our supplies away in the first place. I knew that once you were free of all the danger and the constant running and the scrounging to live, you would be a force that we could, uh, harness for the greater good.”

  Jillybean looked back, confused. “Harness? Like a donkey? Or a slave? I don’t like either idea. And why should I try to change their minds? You know it won’t matter what I do. Fred didn’t do this to them, I did. All the bad stuff I did is why they’re like this, that and my craziness. That’s all they’ll ever see me as: a crazy girl.”

  Neil and Deanna shared a quick look, but the girl’s logic was too spot on to refute. They both slumped, looking dejected. It pained Jillybean deep down to know that once again she was being the cause of trouble. It was because of her that Neil was being forced out of the valley, and it was because of her that Captain Grey was going to lose his job on the council and in the army. And who knew what was going to happen to Deanna and Sadie?

  “I’m going to get the fuel for you,” she said, “but I won’t be coming back. You can have it all and then Fred won’t be able to say anything about missing supplies and you’ll be able to keep your job, Mister Governor, Neil, sir and Captain Grey will be okay, too.”

  “No,” Neil shot back. “I won’t have you out there all alone. We’ll get the gas and then…”

  Jillybean held up a tiny hand, silencing him. “I won’t be all alone. There are people out there who like me and think I’m nice. I’ll live with them.” In truth, there was only Granny Annie, whom Jillybean wasn’t all that keen to go live with. She was old and a little weird and her luck with the monsters wouldn’t last forever. She would be eaten eventually and Jilly would be all alone again.

  There was also Lauren and Tristyn in Scottsbluff, two people she had never met before but with whom she felt a certain bond with, all because of the perfect home they had left behind that Jillybean had slept in. She felt she owed it to them to try to find them and let them know that the dad of the family, Jack had never come back to read his letter.

  Who knew if they would like her and Ipes, especially after she delivered such bad news. Either way, she would take the chance. It was better than living with so much guilt—it was obvious to her that Neil wanted to stay in the valley. She saw that he liked it here, that he liked being the governor and she saw that he was good at it, too.

  There was no way she could live with herself knowing she had forced him into a miserable lonely exile.

  “I just need someone to come with me who can drive a truck,” she said and smiled, in a sweet, lying manner. To change the subject, she said: “You know what else? One of my teeth is loose. See?” She opened her mouth and wiggled a molar with her tongue.

  Chapter 26

  Neil Martin

  A part of Neil didn’t believe Jillybean. He feared that she was making up this “old friend” of hers for his and for Captain Grey’s sakes, but a larger part hoped that it was true.

  If there were people who didn’t know her violent past, then there was a chance she could eventually let all the evil things she had done die in a long forgotten memory. Hell, he could barely remember anything from when he was seven, a flash of an image here a flash there, perhaps that could be her as well.

  “Ok, Jillybean, tomorrow we begin one more adventure together. Once we get the gas, however, we’re not coming back here. I want to see this Granny Annie for myself.”

  “She’s real, I promise. And she’ll be glad to meet all of you, but she might try to steal some of your stuff. That’s just the way she is.”

  Neil said that was: “Good,” though he didn’t know what he meant by that. He then s
ettled her into the room and sent Deanna to fetch the last of their supper with instructions that Jillybean was to eat both portions. Her bones protruded at every angle which couldn’t be healthy.

  As Deanna went for the food, Neil sent for Fred and the rest of the council. “You want to have a meeting without Deanna?” Fred asked, a grin on his face, looking as though he had won some sort of contest.

  “There won’t be any votes being taken so there’s no point,” Neil replied. “I’ve just come to announce a few decisions. Jillybean will be leaving the valley first thing in the morning. I will be escorting her to the home of a women in Oklahoma who knows Jillybean and has offered to take her in.”

  “And who will be acting governor?” Fred asked, his greedy eyes all aflame.

  Before Neil could answer, Colonel Mires, the acting Commissioner of the Army asked: “Why are you going? Shouldn’t you appoint someone to escort her?”

  “Like who? Someone from the military? I think that would be abusing my authority. I’d send Fred, but he can barely take care of himself.”

  “Ha-ha,” Fred laughed, sarcastically. “Why don’t you ask for volunteers? Oh, right, that would just make you look weak when no one stepped up.”

  The colonel surprised Neil as he glowered at Fred. “Who could call braving the wilds for the sake of a troubled little girl, weak? I would volunteer myself, but Grey gave me specific instructions. I will ask around among the men to see if there are any who would go.”

  “There’s no need,” Neil said. “There’s a second reason I am going.” He paused to take a steadying breath. He hated to lie and wasn’t good at it. “There have been questions concerning our supply situation. What many of you don’t know is that the war with the Azael has left us in a very weakened state…”

  Fred jumped in: “And Neil pissed away a lot of what we had left to find out where Jillybean was. He’s put us in a terrible position, one that we may not recover from without a change in leadership…if you ask me.”