The buttons were clicked and, quicker than anyone thought, the smoke bombs puffed into life. A second later, one of the green trucks lumbered directly beneath them without slowing, and then came the next only this one began to brake with a heavy grinding noise.
Jillybean watched in horror as the second truck neared the bag with the bomb in it and stopped. Before she could ask what to do, Grey thumbed the controller for the first bomb and the effect was instantaneous. The lead truck seemed to disappear in a flash of orange only to partially reappear, it’s tremendous hind end lifted off the ground, turning and twisting within the smoke and the flame.
The noise of the explosion was deafening. It swept over the three people in the tree like a blistering hurricane wind. Jillybean’s ears rang so badly that she could barely hear Captain Grey shouting: “Blow it! Blow it, Jillybean!”
The first explosion, so close and so terrible, caused the little girl to cringe as she thumbed the controller. The second bomb, sixty feet nearer and without a huge truck absorbing most of the blast, seemed immense even compared to the first.
It blew in the windshield of the truck, flame-broiling the two men in the cab in a blink. The front two sets of wheels melted and the entire truck was turned sideways by the force of the explosion. It was so powerful that it reached out and seemed to grab the tree Jillybean and the others were perched in. The limbs washed back and forth alarmingly and as Neil tried to hold on, he dropped his M4.
With a clatter, it fell directly on top of the third truck whose wheels were locked and screeching. “Let’s go!” Captain Grey cried and dropped the rope. He was flying down it even before the truck had fully stopped.
Although the plan was for Neil to go next, Jillybean was closer and she too went flying down the rope, landing just as the truck shuddered to a halt, spilling her backwards where she flailed for three seconds like a turtle before righting herself.
She was digging for her grenade launcher when Grey cried: “Back blast area clear!” Amazingly, he already had the AT4 perched at his shoulder and was aiming it square into the cab of the fourth truck in line. For a moment Jillybean marveled—her plan was working! Perhaps not in the exact manner she had envisioned, but it was close enough. The first two trucks were disabled, the fourth was a second from having its cab turned into a fireball and the three of them were currently standing on the third.
There was just one thing she had forgotten about the AT4: when it was fired, it shot a cone of flame out the back and there was almost no cover on the roof of the truck.
Chapter 45
Neil Martin
He heard the captain’s cry and for once he put two and two together quicker than Jillybean. She had just stood up twenty feet directly behind the AT4.
“Wait!” he cried as he reached for the girl. There was no wait in Captain Grey and likely, his ears rang almost to the point of being deaf. That’s how Neil’s were. The warning Grey had given had come through muffled and dim.
Thankfully, Neil’s fear of weapons such as the AT4, most guns and really, any bombs, even the smoke generating types, finally came in handy. He had been moving toward the one place of cover when he heard the warning and was shocked to see Jillybean just standing there.
In a flash, he charged the girl and tackled her just as Grey fired the rocket. There was an almost instantaneous explosion and just as instantaneously, Neil was covered in a blanket of scalding air.
He hadn’t gotten the brunt of it or he would have been literally cooked. Grey had the weapon canted so that the exhaust end was pointed slightly up and the deadly end of it was pointed at an angle down at the next truck. Still, the pain of it made him wonder if he’d had his hair singed off the top of his head.
“Oh, thanks, Mister Neil, sir. I forgot about that part of them rockets. I hope you’re okay.”
“I’m good,” he answered getting to his feet, noticing for the first time that the truck was now sitting in a sea of smoke—white smoke rising on the sides and billowing black in front and behind.
While he was marveling, Grey raced past, unslinging his M4. “Let’s go!” He was talking to Neil. The plan from here was simple: he and Grey would kill the people in the cab of the truck, and then, while Neil drove them away, Grey would kill all of the guards in the truck and then, if needed, destroy any trucks following them.
This was where Jillybean’s plan was rather weak. The idea that one man could take on seven or eight men in a cramped space was fantasy…unless that one man was Captain Grey. He hadn’t even blinked at the idea of creeping down into the depths of the truck and killing whoever he had to.
Jillybean’s job was to keep out of the way if she could and, in a pinch, act as a distraction.
Neil knew she could take care of herself and so he ran to the front of the truck, just as it lurched to the right. The driver was taking the vehicle off road and there was precious little room to do so. The forest was close and the overhang of tree branches even closer.
Grey threw himself flat and Neil did as well, but he was nearer to the forest side of the vehicle and a branch snagged him. He found the truck sliding beneath him and, amazingly, the branch swept him right off the truck. With a cry, he fell and only his jacket getting caught on a bad welding joint kept him from dropping twenty to the ground, where he would have been left behind or run over.
In this instance, dangling by a torn jacket while getting raked by what felt like a hundred claws as more branches ripped against the side of the truck, was not an entirely bad thing.
Moments after going over the edge, a .50 caliber machine gun started firing and it wasn’t the one on top of their truck. Someone in the fourth truck in line was blasting away, sending tracers inches over the top of the truck.
All Neil could think about was Jillybean and the fact she was exposed to the fire. Grey had been near the front of the truck where there was a drop down from the second floor roof to the roof of the cab. Neil was sure that he had jumped down to get to safety, but there was nowhere for Jillybean to hide.
As soon as the branches ceased trying to peel him from the side of the truck, he tried to scramble up, which for him was not easy. He got a hold of the roof easy enough, but he lacked the muscle to pull himself up with just his arms alone. Scraping and kicking at the side with his feet allowed him to get first an elbow up and then two.
Only then did he realize he was wrong about the lack of cover on the roof; he had forgotten about their own .50 caliber gun turret. It stood four feet tall which was plenty high enough for Jillybean who cowered behind it, waving for him to get down.
Where does she expect me to go? he wondered just as the tracers started whipping his way. He squinched down and scrunched up his face in fear of what he knew was coming, but he didn’t give up his elbow rests because he was pretty sure that if he went back to dangling by his hands, he wouldn’t be able to get back up again.
As he waited, either for a miracle to happen or, more than likely, a quick death, he saw Jillybean scamper around the turret and jump in!
“Jillybean!” he screamed. “Get out of there!” She didn’t listen. She never listened. For a second, he considered calling out to Ipes, who could at least be reasoned with—in spite of his status as imaginary. Before he could say a thing, he saw her brace both of her cricket-legs and heave back with her entire strength on the charging handle of the gun.
A second later: Bam! Bam! Bam! Tracers started zipping back towards the fourth truck in line. She was so small that he couldn’t see her behind the gun, but she was there, firing away, and missing as the tracers streaked by, just a few feet to the right.
Strangely, she wasn’t correcting her aim and round after round went uselessly by. The other .50 caliber turned on Jillybean, hammering the turret. There was a scream from inside and the gun went silent.
Fearing the worst, he scrambled the rest of the way onto the roof. Once on his feet, he started running for the turret, only at that moment, the truck’s driver stomped on the gas, sur
ging faster. Once more, Neil was thrown. He turned half a dozen crazy summersaults and nearly rolled off the truck a second time, saving himself by flattening his body. From above, he looked somewhat like a panicked starfish.
“Jeeze!” he cried as huge .50 caliber rounds passed all around him. It almost seemed like they whispered words to him in a secret language as they winged by.
“Are you okay, Mister Neil?” Jillybean called out.
He had never felt less okay in his life. “I’m good. Stay down. I’ll be right there.”
“What about the plan?” she yelled. “You’re supposed to be helping Captain Grey.”
“I would if I could, but I’m getting shot at in case you haven’t noticed!”
“I know, I’m sorry, but I’m too small to reach the pedals that control the turret. I can’t aim and shoot at the same time. Hey, can you tell me when I’m lined up on the bad guys?”
For a long moment, he couldn’t answer. The truck was turning from the road and heading out into the field, and it was all Neil could do to stay on the truck and not get thrown into the path of the flashing bullets. At one point, there was a steady river of bright orange passing so close to his cheek that he could feel the heat—he was pretty sure he screamed.
It felt as though he had been out in the open and exposed for ten minutes when it had really been less than one. Then suddenly, amazingly, the bullets stopped coming, they had made the turn and now there were too many trees to shoot through.
Neil sat up, looking around like a person who had just had a tornado pass over him. He felt a giggle working its way up his throat, but Jillybean spoiled it by popping up from the torn up turret and yelling: “Help Captain Grey!”
“Right,” he said, mostly to himself, jumping to his feet. He was halfway to the front of the truck when, for the third time, he was sent flying. The truck was plowing ahead and without warning, it decelerated sharply.
Like a rag-doll, Neil went tumbling forward, fell off the front of the roof of the truck only to land on the roof of the cab. He almost fell off of that as well when the truck took a hard turn to the left. It seemed the smart thing to do was to spread himself out like a starfish once more, but he had to rethink this plan when there came a gunshot from in the cab and a hole appeared in the metal next to his head.
Perhaps thinking that lightning never struck twice in the same spot, Neil stared down into the hole to see a strange mash of arms and legs flailing about. Grey was fighting somebody! Neil crawled to the edge of the cab and looked over and yes, Grey was fighting some hugely fat slug of a man who looked to be trying to crush Grey with sheer bulk.
There was a second man but he was slumped in the footwell of the passenger side—he seemed to have drowned in a pool of his own blood.
Grey saw Neil and yelled: “Shoot him!”
It was only right at that moment that Neil realized he hadn’t seen his M4 since he’d been up in the tree. “Uhhh,” he said, “I think I dropped it.”
“Damn it, Neil!” Grey shouted, shoving the fat man’s hands to the side as there came another gunshot. A second hole appeared in the roof of the cab. Grey let go with one of his hands long enough to heave the steering wheel back to the right. Instead of trying to grab the man’s wrist again, he elbowed the man once, twice, three times in the temple.
The man seemed dazed and Grey was able to get some sort of fancy hold on his wrist and slowly bent it back so that the gun was pointed out the passenger window when it fired a third time, blasting out the glass.
In the middle of the fight, Grey gasped: “We don’t have a lot of time…the other truck is coming…you’re going to have to get to Sadie…I’ll take care of this guy and…see if I can outrun the other truck. Go.”
“Uh, yeah, sure,” Neil said. How the hell am I supposed to do that? he thought. I don’t have a freaking gun.
But Jillybean probably did. There was never knowing what she had in that big bag of hers. In fact, as Neil wove his way unsteadily along the rocking roof of the truck, he saw the little girl pulling out the last of her drones. It was smaller than the others and she had named it “Petie.”
“Do you have a gun I can borrow?” Neil asked, grabbing the side of the turret and holding on. It was the first steady grip he’d had since dropping from the tree, and he didn’t want to give it up.
The revolving turret had taken a nasty beating. There were fat holes all through it, which begged the question: how had Jillybean survived? Possibly curled up at the bottom where there was a steel lip about five inches high that encased an odd porthole.
It was the way down into the bowels of the truck or, as they were about to find out, the way up. Jillybean was just setting down the drone when the handle of the portal began to turn.
She scrambled for her M79 grenade launcher, throwing it up to her shoulder just as the portal opened. Neil’s eyes popped wide open, and he was about to scream: Jillybean, no! But he didn’t. She knew perfectly well that a grenade shot from this distance would kill them all—she had to be using it just to scare the man coming up.
He was bald save for a fringe of hair horseshoeing his head. Where the hair had fallen out, he had long ago covered his flesh with tattoos. There were more tattoos covering the knuckles of his right hand. Neil could see them perfectly as he gripped a 9mm handgun.
There was no way he could have missed the grenade launcher or the little girl and it must have been her tiny size, the button nose, the sweet blue eyes that hid the sometimes murderous creature within that prompted him to ignore the grenade launcher and lift the gun.
This is it, Neil thought as he saw Jillybean’s lips draw in and her eyes narrow. If he knew her at all, he knew she wasn’t going to let that gun come all the way up and as she started to squeeze the trigger, he could do nothing but squinch his face in anticipation of the blast.
She pulled the trigger without hesitation, there came the usual odd, hollow thump sound as the grenade was shot out of the barrel and then a crack as it raced straight between the man’s eyes. The grenade left a half-inch deep divot in the man’s forehead and then bounced away—without exploding!
Neil couldn’t believe their luck and was shaking from his near death experience. For some reason this seemed like a closer call than almost getting turned to goo by the .50 caliber.
“That was a freaking miracle!” he crowed.
For just a second, Jillybean looked at him as if he had gone bonkers. “What are you talking about?” she asked and then darted forward to grab the man’s handgun before he slid down into the depths of the truck.
“The grenade,” he explained. “It didn’t go off. That has to be some sort of sign.” So far, the plan had been a little sketchy with too many near misses. The grenade not going off had to be a precipitous omen.
The little girl held out the pistol to Neil. “A sign? No, Mister Neil, there were instructions, on paper, you know, like in little writing. The bombs don’t go off unless they travel thirty feet and he was only two feet away.”
Suddenly deflated, Neil said: “Oh.”
“I wouldn’t have shotted it, if it woulda blowd up. That would have been silly.” She clicked a few buttons on the drone and two on her iPad and asked: “Are you ready?”
“To go down there? I guess.”
She then handed him a radio. “Just follow my instructions and…” She paused and looked back across the field to where the last truck was just pulling out of the great plumes of billowing smoke, looking like some sort of alien beast. “And hurry. Mister Captain Grey is not an expert at driving these things and I’m going to need you.”
“Then let’s go,” he said, looking once at the pistol, checking to see if the safety was off. She turned on the heli-drone and set it hovering over the portal until she could see the picture from the mounted camera. “It’s straight down and there’s a guy to the right…”
The “guy” fired twice at the drone hitting it with his second shot. The device turned on its side and then flopped onto
Neil’s lap as more bullets whizzed up.
“Crap!” Neil hissed, leaning away from the portal. “Now what do we do?” He knew what he wasn’t going to do: he wasn’t going down into that portal for anything. And that included for Sadie. As much as he loved her, it would be quicker and less messy to just shoot himself in the head.
Besides, he had Jillybean. He could tell she was already thinking up a new plan. “Can you gimme me that?” She pointed at the drone and he handed it over without hesitation. In three quick moves, she broke the mounting for the camera. It was a small thing, the size and shape of a baseball.
With more bullets zipping up at them, she placed the camera at the edge of the portal and gazed at the iPad. “Okay, I have two bad guys at the bottom of the stairs and kinda to the right. Do you see them?” She showed him the screen. Mostly he saw shadows and flashes.
“Can you shoot them from here?”
He sat back. “What do you mean? Like using the camera as my aimer?” She nodded and he nodded back. It was worth a shot.
She had pulled back the camera for a moment and whispered: “One, two, three, go,” and placed it back at the edge. He saw the men clearer now: they stood out as grey figures against a darker background. They were crouched side by side, aiming their guns and when they fired, the screen bloomed white.
“Move,” he hissed and as she pulled the camera back, he stuck the gun in the portal and fired four times, using the ladder as his azimuth. His blind aim was spot on. There was grunt and cry. Someone fired from within, but none of the bullets came close to the portal. Neil tracked them across the roof.
These were the shots of a dying man. Jillybean stuck the camera into the opening again and the feed confirmed two more men were down on the deck. She spun the camera in both directions—there were two others bracketing the ladder but further back, neither would get too close.
The Undead World (Book 8): The Apocalypse Executioner Page 46
