“You got a fuel truck?” Neil asked.
“That’s a-firmnative.” There was a second explosion and then a third. “Oh, that…makes three of them…if they don’t do…quick, they’re going…Oh, too late.” A fourth explosion thundered the night.
The light reached up to the stars and from where they stood they could see half the base; it was crawling with people, some running towards the fires, some running away.
To the east, the entire sky was filled, horizon to horizon with smoke. To the north, there was a battle raging. With all the explosions and the variety of weapons in use, Grey couldn’t tell that it was a zombie on human battle. He figured that Neil and Jillybean hadn’t come alone. And since he was the last person alive who needed rescuing, he felt he had to get off the base to keep their losses to a minimum.
“Let’s go,” Grey said. When he bent over to pick up the M4, his head spun and he almost fell over. Neil had to catch him and of course they did fall over then. Neil had blood trickling from both nostrils and one eye. There was blood in the cracks of his teeth.
“Sorry,” he said and then struggled to stand. “It’s…it’s…Uh, Jillybean? Which way is the pipe? Jillybean? Jillybean? Where are you?”
It was a moment before she answered: “Turn around and go south and then take your first left. Stay close to the houses on the right. Okay, you’re on Jefferson, so go left. Be careful. There’s some people coming up the next block on Fredrick Street.”
Grey hesitated and then went to the last guard. “Help me, will you?” He began tugging the man’s clothes off. Grey was naked and the whip marks were painful and obvious. He couldn’t walk around like that and expect to remain free. In a minute, he was dressed and stumbling along with Neil.
“Hide!” Jillybean suddenly said. “Go to your right.”
The night was noisy with flames and gunshots and the two men didn’t hear the guards coming around the corner. At Jillybean’s warning, Grey pulled Neil down next to a jutting cement porch and watched six men hurry by. They were armed and pointed their guns at everything that moved and there was a lot moving, too much going on to pay attention to every shadow in the fire-lit night.
The group of six came on another group who had been coming up behind Grey and Neil, and before they knew it, the two groups were shooting at each other. It was mayhem. In fact, the entire base was in chaos with new fire-fights springing up everywhere.
“How many people did you bring with you?” Grey asked. “Wait! You didn’t bring Deanna with you, did you? Because if you did, so help me…”
“No, it’s just me and Jillybean. Speaking of which, where the hell is she?” While Neil attempted to raise Jillybean on the radio, Grey sat up slightly to stare in awe at the utter chaos caused by the mad genius of one little girl. It was amazing.
Finally, after a minute of repeating her name, Jillybean came on in a breathless whisper: “Just go around the house. There’s no one back there. And I’d go through the next backyard if I was you guys.”
“Roger that. Keep us posted.” They went around the house and both men were nearly stymied by a six foot tall fence. Neil tried to mount it first, his feet scrambling against the wood without finding purchase. After ten seconds, he let go of the fence and stared at his hands which were crooked like an old woman’s.
Grey didn’t laugh at the sad display and nor did he try to climb it. It seemed too much for him just at the moment. Instead he grabbed one of the planks and pulled with all his strength. When there was a slight gap, Neil got his fingers in and pulled as well. The board came off with a screech that was lost in the noise of all the shooting. They had to pull a second plank away before they could stumble through the backyard.
They were almost too far gone to care who was around them and they tramped through the next yard without looking left or right, both stumbling with exhaustion.
Jillybean was silent when they got to the next street. With the coast relatively clear, they crossed and made their way wearily through two more yards. Neil mentioned that they had to turn north, but Jillybean wouldn’t answer the radio.
“She’s doing a million things,” Neil explained. “She probably getting the pontoon ready right now.”
The little girl came on soon after: “Okay, I see you and you’re not far. The drain pipe is up the block you are on and then halfway down the next. If you can keep cutting through the yards, that would be best.”
Two more minutes, Grey thought. He had to hang on for two more minutes and the danger would be mostly behind them. Once in the pipe, they’d be fairly safe and then after a quick swim in zombie infested, frigid waters, he would be home free.
It was the longest two minutes of his life and by the time they made it across the street to the open manhole cover, Grey was barely keeping upright. “The water will wake me up,” he said in a ghostly whisper that echoed down the pipe.
The two were now in the dark, crawling down the pipe. Grey left a trail of blood behind and his vision was fading in and out, and yet when he came to the river, which was still covered in smoke, he rejoiced and hugged Neil.
“Thanks for saving my life.”
“It’s not saved yet. Jillybean? I mean Mouse, this is Cat, come in. Mouse? Mouse? Do you copy?” She didn’t answer. Neil had on thin diving shoes, over which he pulled on a pair of swim-fins. “Wait here. I’ll go see if the pontoon is out on the river like it’s supposed to be.”
He came back five minutes later, pale and frightened. “There’s no sign of the pontoon or Jillybean.”
Chapter 41
Jillybean
The mission was not over. She had seen Neil and Captain Grey drop down into the drainage pipe and, according to the plan, she was supposed to cut the pontoon free, turn on the electric motor and hum the boat through the clouds of smoke until she was opposite of where the pipe jutted out.
But that would have left things incomplete.
This isn’t what you and Mister Neil discussed, Ipes reminded her again. How many times had he said this in the last few minutes, Jillybean didn’t know. She had stopped listening. Well, you should listen now: this is only about revenge and it’s wrong.
“No, it isn’t. It’s about being a necessity is what it is. Now hush so I can think straight.” She was trying to do too many things at once. With a drone overhead helping her along, she was picking her way through a convoluted fight between her monster army and the River King’s men, and at the same time she had a drone following the River King, who was under the mistaken illusion that he was safe. Lastly, she was just landing the drone that had been keeping an eye on Neil and Grey.
It was mentally exhausting going back and forth from iPad to iPad, while concentrating on the battle around her and trying to get where she was supposed to be going.
Each time she switched views, she had to reorient herself. And one point she suffered a slight panic attack when she saw that the River King was no longer in the view. “He can’t be that far,” she whispered, zooming out and moving the drone north, looking for a lone man skulking along.
With a sigh of relief, she said: “There he is. You know what, Ipes? Every hunter should have one of these.”
See? Ipes hissed in her mind. You said it yourself. You’re hunting him. She hadn’t actually said exactly that, but it had been close. Well, you were thinking it. You forget, I can hear your thoughts…and I know what you’re feeling.
“Oh yeah,” she said. “Feel this.” What she was feeling right then was the coldest rage imaginable, one that sent a shiver up Ipes’ back and twittered his ears.
So far on this adventure, she’d been able to coldly analyze situations, weighing every pro and con and seeing the ramifications of her actions down a hundred different tangents. It was this lack of emotion that had enabled her to focus on keeping her and Neil alive.
But now she was truly angry. She had seen a man whipped to death and knew he hadn’t been the first. And she had found out that Sadie was going to be sold in the Ne
w York slave markets—by her own father!
Yes, he deserves to die, Ipes said, but not this way. It’s simply too dangerous. Let him go. After tonight, there might even be a revolt. Someone might do our dirty work for us.
“This isn’t dirty work. It’s right and proper work if it means we can stop people like him. Maybe the next king of the river will think twice about being so bad. And asides, it’s more dangerous to leave him alive. He’s too slippery to be revolted. And asides that, he knows where we’ll be going next.”
To rescue Sadie?
“Of course. Mister Neil will definitely want to try and you know he couldn’t rescue a cat from a tree without my help. If the River King lives, he’ll try to stop us and it’ll be hard enough to take on those trader trucks already.”
But you have a plan, I suppose?
“Sorta one. They blow up like anything else even if they have steel on them. But you’re putting the horse on top of the cart. There’s still the River King and there’s still getting away.”
And there was still getting through the battlefield. Her initial three zombie drones had taken out more than seventy yards of the first fence. Both fences had come down and into the breach charged two thousand zombies.
The homes nearest to the fences had actually been fortified with sandbags and triple locked doors to help withstand attacks by either zombies or humans, but not both. Jillybean had monitored her three remaining monster drones and by chance, much like M&Ms randomly sorting themselves in a jar, they had split up, each heading to one of the houses where the king’s men were frantically firing, taken by complete surprise by the horde.
Jillybean had exploded the drones one after another, taking out the homes and opening a wide hole in the base’s defenses. There was no second line. The River King feared a large military and assumed that his people would step up in case of an emergency.
They were in no position to and soon there were zombies everywhere along the north side of the base. By the time Jillybean decided to kill the River King, there was chaos. She went in as a little zombie, with her iPads hidden under her torn up coat. Every few feet she would kneel and gaze at the different feeds.
Ahead of her, the king’s men couldn’t decide whether to stay or fight, which resulted in pockets of fighters blasting away with everything they had, but also wide lanes where zombies were lurching along without resistance.
Jillybean followed them in and then detoured to intersect the king. He was alone. She watched him from above, seeing his fear. He ran from tree to tree and from car to car, frequently spinning around to stare back the way he had come or to gaze up at the sky hoping to see the drone that tracked him without mercy.
He should have spent more time looking ahead. Jillybean put herself in his path, hiding behind a tree that was wider than a dozen of her. She kept out of sight, watching the king on her screen and gently touching the .38 caliber pistol.
It was fully loaded and warm in her hand. The smell of it was heady strength. It gave a defenseless little girl the same power as a king. Without it she was a victim, with it…she was the executioner.
Jilly…Ipes said, a note of warning in her voice.
“What else do you call it? Murder? Because it’s not. Murder is…”
I know what murder is. It’s just that word, executioner. It’s not you. Try to keep that in mind, ok? Do what you need to do and then be done.
“Nothing more,” she agreed. “But I do have to face him, right? Unless you think it would be okay just to shoot him in the back?” It almost sounded as though she were asking permission.
She knew that confronting him was the right thing to do. It was the right thing only because it added a hint of legitimacy to his death—confronting him kept his death out of the category of murder, or so she hoped. Only time would tell. There was no way to know if tomorrow she would wake up with a new guilt-inspired personality haunting her. She hoped not.
On the screen, the king walked with a pistol in his hand. He couldn’t decide what to point it at. He swiveled it left, right, back and forth. The tree was big enough to hide a man behind and Jillybean was sure the gun would be pointed at it when he came by, so she watched the screen, stepping around the trunk as he passed. He did point the pistol at it, but only for a second and then his paranoia had him aiming at a parked car. The drone was directly above her and so she pressed the down button, letting it buzz to the ground where it landed with a gentle clack.
The king froze in place, the gun held out and pointing at the next car. Jilly’s gun was centered on his back, ten feet away. “Don’t move,” she warned.
His right ear twitched and then his chin turned an inch to the left and she could picture his eyes canted as far over as they could go. She knew he was weighing factors in his mind. Could he turn fast enough? Would his aim be true? And more importantly, how good was Jillybean? Was she just a little girl who had gotten lucky one too many times, or was she really a genius when it came to death and destruction?
The proof of the latter was all around him and with his hand shaking, he slowly pointed the gun upwards. “Jillybean…I can keep you and your friends safe. I’m the only one who can. Are—are you listening? Don’t shoot, okay? I’m turning around.”
“Don’t!” she snapped, her voice high and shrill as an angry bird’s. The piercing voice didn’t stop him, but the cocking .38 did, for a moment.
Both of his hands were trembling, badly. He couldn’t stop himself and turned to look back at Jillybean, who was squatting behind her .38, making herself a tiny target. “Don’t, please,” he begged, looking for mercy…in the wrong place.
The little girl took a deep breath and, coming up out of her crouch said in soft voice as if reading from a list: “Mister River King, sir, you killed five soldiers by whipping them to death and they did nothing wrong. And you sold your daughter into slavery, which was really mean. And you did all that stuff from a few months ago when you put everyone in jail.”
“Yes-yes, that stuff happened b-but it wasn’t all m-me,” he replied, his hands coming down.
“Get them up!” she hissed, threatening with the pistol.
“Why? You’re going to shoot me anyway.” His hands came down to just in front of his chest; the gun still pointing up. “This is crazy. Don’t you realize why I sent Sadie to New York? To keep her alive. It was the only way to save her. And those poor men? Did you see the crowd? They were the ones who wanted them to die like that, not me. It was the judgment of the people.”
The hands came down a little further. “Maybe if we could come to some sort of compromise, in which we work to end the barbarity, we could finally have peace. You have to believe me. I didn’t want any of this to happen. Where is the profit in it?”
He had a slick delivery and a way of turning things around to make wrong seem like right and down seem like up. In a courtroom, the tactics most certainly have worked, but Jillybean was still possessed with a tremendous anger.
“I saw you,” she hissed. “I saw how you took pleasure in their deaths. I saw…”
“How do you know what you saw?” he cut in quietly, a strange and sudden concern for her etched into the lines on his face. “Sadie told me about you. She told me you are…unwell. That you are seeing things and hearing things that never happened. This-this is one of those times, Jillybean. You’re suffering from a-a psychosis. It means you’re not well in the mind.”
Wait…what? Don’t listen to him, Jillybean! Ipes cried. He’s lying. He did all that stuff and Sadie would never say you had a psychosis.
Jillybean hesitated and the River King went on in a sad voice: “Look at you. You have a gun pointed at me. What sort of child carries a gun? It’s not healthy, sweetie. Put it down before you do something you regret.”
“I would never regret killing you,” she answered, a snarl on her lip. “Even Ipes thinks I should.”
“Is that Ipes the zebra? Since when do zebras talk? Since when do stuffed zebras talk? Come on Jillybean, you have
to know that none of this is real. You’ve been living in a fantasy ever since your parents died. You do remember how they died, right?”
“Of course,” she said with a touch of anxiety running through her. He was right that zebras didn’t normally talk and he was right that she had been a little crazy before, but she was better now, she was almost sure of it…almost. “My daddy got scratched and got the monster fever and my mom stayed in bed and stopped eating and wasted away into being dead.”
A look of pain washed over him. “No, I’m sorry, that’s not what happened. Don’t you remember the car crash? Your dad died right away, but your mom was in a coma. Do you know what a coma is?”
Her eyes were huge and her head began to sway back and forth on its own. “It’s what means you go to sleep and you don’t wake up.”
“Exactly. And do you remember what happened to you?”
“I wasn’t in a car accident,” she said, but was suddenly unsure of herself, the ground beneath her feet no longer so firm. How did she know she hadn’t been in an accident? When Eve had control of her mind, lots of stuff had happened that she hadn’t known about until later. And she had just missed a whole block of the last summer. And she had done something to the Colonel, but she didn’t know what.
“You were in the accident and since then you’ve been living in a dream world…this dream world. You tell fantastic tales of adventures and zombies and narrow escapes. And sometimes you act out these fantasies and people get hurt. You don’t want anyone to get hurt, do you?”
Confusion gripped her. “No, of course not. I never want people to get hurt, but they do and…”
Jillybean stop it, Ipes said, quickly, desperately. He’s just trying to trick you. He’s messing with your head so you won’t kill him.
Jillybean fished out the zebra from the inner pocket of her monster coat and glanced down at it. “Was I in an accident?” she asked him. It was true there had been times when her head hurt for no reason. Was that from the accident? “Did that really happen or is this really happening?”
The Undead World (Book 8): The Apocalypse Executioner Page 42
