The Undead World (Book 10): The Apocalypse Sacrifice

by Peter Meredith

  They were pointed down into the very dark water of the sound which was bad enough, but with the engine frothing and the great gouts of steam swirling up to mix with heavy black smoke, it seemed like they were pointing into a tear in the universe that led straight to hell.

  For just a moment, her courage failed her and she fled up the aisle. There was steam and smoke in this direction as well. She stopped three rows from the rear door where everything was covered in soot and the seat cushions were burnt and melted, and a ream of paper which had fallen from the stack was on fire. Perhaps Amy had infected her with her panic, but for just a second Jillybean felt trapped in a flaming metal cage.

  The need to run straight out the back of the bus came over her, however, through the open back door she had a perfect view of the dock which was already sixty yards away. The truck that had been chasing them was just now easing out onto it while further back, coming down out of the city, were more headlights. There would be no escape in that direction.

  The lights began to converge in on the dock. “And…and I knew that would happen,” she said to herself. Yes, these were the vehicles that had been laying traps. They were the reason why she’d had Todd drive them into the sound. “Okay,” she whispered, feeling the panic subside. “We’re good. We’re good.”

  In truth, they were doing better than she had envisioned. Already the momentum of the bus was carrying them further out than she had expected. She knew that it wouldn’t last, and yet, if the bus didn’t sink right away, the outgoing tide would pull them even further out. She hoped—and estimated—that already they were far enough out that no one in their right mind would come in after them, not without a boat. And no one had a boat.

  Taking a deep breath, she turned from the lights and the dock and the people who had been chasing them. They were in the past, the cold water of the sound was her future. In a perfect world, one in which she had been given enough time and the right materials, she could have sealed up the bus and floated it all the way across the sound.

  In the real world, the bus was already sinking. Pulled down by the weight of the engine, water was seeping up through the floorboards near the driver’s seat. Gradually, it would creep up and up until the sound swallowed the bus whole. It was inevitable. To stave off that moment for as long as possible she had to equalize the weight of the bus as best as she could.

  “All the way to the back,” she said to Sadie, giving her shirt a tug. “Go as far back as you can.” Behind her, practically stepping on her heels came Spot. He looked frightened enough to run right out the back door. “It’s okay, Spot. Stay with Sadie.” Jason and Amy came next, holding hands, and last was Todd, blood coming down from a cut above his right eye.

  Jillybean didn’t know what she looked like, but the others wore stunned expressions, as if they had been slapped in the face.

  Todd pushed his way through the others. He leaned down in the doorway and stared back at the dock; there was a second truck on it now. They both flicked on their spotlights and for a brief moment, Todd was completely exposed and outlined; the perfect target. He dove into one of the blackened chairs near the door.

  He waited there for a moment, possibly expecting gunfire. When none came, he demanded: “This is it? This was your entire plan?”

  “I guess so,” Jillybean replied. “It’s better than getting shotted, at least I think so.”

  Amy peeked her head up to look back. “Maybe they won’t shoot us if we go back.” Todd and Jason both began shaking their heads which triggered Amy to scream at them: “I can’t swim all the way to the island, okay? I can’t and…and I would rather be shot than drown. I don’t want to drown.” She put both hands to her throat. “I can’t…It’s horrible. I can’t do it. Getting shot is faster. Bam, you’re just done.”

  The talk of drowning was confusing to Jillybean. “How would you drown? The water is really kinda calm. See?” She pointed out the window at the sound. It wasn’t as smooth as a pond, but it was close, the water barely rippling.

  A sneer marred Amy’s normally pretty features. “I already fucking told you, I can’t fucking swim that far! I’d have trouble swimming back to the shore from here.” The tide and the last of their momentums was gradually pulling them further and further from shore. They were over a hundred yards from the dock.

  Now Jillybean understood the problem. What was strikingly obvious to her was being overlooked by the others. “We won’t drown. We’ll float.” She went up two rows to where Jason had put all the hand tools she had asked for earlier. Holding up a wrench and a screwdriver she said: “We can take the seats off or maybe just the cushions. They’re made of foam stuff and that’s what means they float.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you say anything before?” Todd snapped as he hurried up to grab the tools from her.

  Unexpectedly, Sadie gave him a shove, knocking him into the next seat. “How about instead of being a dick, you thank her for saving your ass?”

  Todd started to glare, but the look passed quickly. “You’re right. I’m just…the bus is sinking and we don’t have time to mess around. I’m sorry, little girl. Okay?”

  “Sure, it’s okay,” Jillybean said reaching for another of the screwdrivers. She handed it to Jason who was crowding in close, eager to get one of the seat cushions off for Amy. “Sometimes I don’t know what people don’t know. And sometimes they don’t know a lot, which is confusing. You know?” She had to tell herself that instead of seeing the nearly limitless possibilities around them, people saw an old bus.

  For half a second, Todd glanced up at Sadie, a question on his lips. Sadie pulled Jillybean away. “Let’s give him some room to work.” As they were in the back of the bus, the only real direction to move to get out of the way was towards the front—towards where the water was creeping up the aisle. It was cold on their feet.

  Sadie stared down as the water covered over her toes. A shiver struck her. “Do you have any ideas about how to stay warm when we’re swimming?”

  Jillybean’s self-taught medical training included the diagnosis and treatment of hyperthermia. She also had an understanding of Newton’s four laws of thermodynamics which had sounded for more complicated than they were, once she had deciphered all the five-dollar words, that is. At the moment, her knowledge, vast as it was for one of her age, was useless.

  To stay warm, they would need a barrier between their skin and the water, one which would inhibit, in Newtonian terms: thermodynamic equilibrium. Without a barrier, they would gradually lose their body heat to the water until they were exactly the same temperature as the sound, which would, of course, result in their death.

  “And we don’t want that,” Jillybean muttered, gazing around at the bus. There was nothing here for her to use. A heavy coating of wax or grease or even lard would have helped a great deal, but they had nothing close to these. “We’ll just have to keep paddling to stay warm.”

  “I was afraid you would say that,” Sadie said climbing up on one of the seats to keep her feet out of the rising waters. “Too bad the bus won’t float us all the way across. Is there any way to make it stay up longer?”

  There were many ways, not one of which was possible with the bus halfway submerged. She shook her head.

  Now, came a waiting game. Sadie and Jillybean waited for the two men to get enough cushions free before the bus sank, while on shore, Hatchet-Joe’s men waited for them to come out of the bus. There were now seven vehicles parked near the edge of the sound and each had a spotlight shining over the bus and the surrounding waters just in case someone tried to slip under the water to escape.

  In five minutes, when the bus was three quarters submerged and their rate of descent was beginning to pick up, someone from shore yelled across the water: “Come on, Todd! We just want the girl. You and your brother can go.”

  “Fucking liars,” Todd said, working a screwdriver as fast as he could. “Don’t listen to them, Amy. Remember what happened to that black girl when she tried to run off?”


  Amy’s chin dropped. When she nodded, it was spare motion and when she answered, Jillybean could barely hear. “Her name was Sheila. Hatchet-Joe wanted to make an example out of her. He had her skinned alive…but he wouldn’t do that to me.”

  “He would do it to Jason,” Todd replied. His eyes were hard and dark, and he glared until the water lapping up to his knees startled him. “Shit, we gotta go. Four cushions will have to be enough.” He stood, backing up the last of the aisle. The front of the bus was filled with water and more was coming in through the windows. Even with the open back door, the sensation of being trapped was beginning to grow in Jillybean once more.

  The more Todd stared at the water, the whiter his face grew. “This is fucked. Jesus, okay, Amy and Jason will share one of the cushions and I’ll take, uh, May on another. Sally and the dog guy will get their own, unless you want to share?”

  There was a pause as Sadie’s pseudonym didn’t register. She blinked as she remembered and said, “Uh, no, I’d rather not.” She sounded embarrassed and looked sheepishly in Jillybean’s direction.

  “Don’t worry,” Jillybean said. “Dogs like water, don’t you, Spot?” Spot barked, clearly the happiest of the group. Even though this was her plan, Jillybean wasn’t happy at all. There were factors that were beyond her control. “So…so do you think they’ll shoot at us?”

  Todd didn’t answer right away. Once more he bent to look through the rear door, squinting into the spotlights. “We’re pretty far away, but not out of range. Hmmm, I’d say it’s fifty-fifty. They might shoot. They might not. I know I wouldn’t waste bullets for the sake of killing someone. Either way, we can’t wait here. Come on, kid. Let’s do this.”

  He went first, sliding into the water up to his armpits. “Son of a bitch that’s cold. My balls just shriveled. Shit.” Jillybean hesitated until he worked the cushion back closer to the sinking bus.

  The water was indeed startlingly cold. She tried to be dainty about getting in, however there was no time and she ended up getting half dunked before she could get her pointy elbows up onto her section of the cushion. Todd’s shoulders were so wide that he took up most of the three and a half feet of vinyl covered foam and plywood.

  Amy and Jason paused for a second at the door, watching to see if the cushion would sink him, but as Jillybean knew it would, it floated just fine. The pair, trying to get on their cushion at the same time were more awkward about getting into the water and both got drenched head to toe. Spot didn’t hesitate and jumped in. Sadie shoved a cushion in his direction and it was a relief when he climbed partially onto it like a human would.

  By now the bus was sinking so quickly that Sadie didn’t have to actually jump into the water. She placed her cushion in front of her on the water and simply laid down on it and began paddling with her arms as if it were a surfboard. “Let’s get going,” she said in a whisper. With the spotlights behind her, her face was formless and black. It was as if there was a hole in the light, one that could speak.

  It gave Jillybean the shivers. What they could all hear coming from shore made the shivers worse. They were maybe a hundred and twenty yards from the dock, but as the night was dead silent, the conversation of Hatchet-Joe’s men carried to them easily. They were arguing whether to shoot the little group while they still could.

  One man said: “I got a bead on the back of Todd’s head. We kill him the others will come back.”

  Next to her, Todd began kicking his feet, frantically. Jillybean tried to help and in the process lost both of her magenta cowboy boots. They sank away into the depths and she wondered: Will that be me if they miss Todd?

  The others were kicking as well, all save Sadie, who stroked with her arms. Jason kept looking back into the light. “We should spread out,” he whispered to the others.

  Todd groaned and muttered: “Fuck,” under his breath.

  “That’s a bad word,” Jillybean said, casting a raised brow in his direction. He looked as though he was going to argue, but she beat him to it, raising a finger at him. “No. It’s a bad word and I’m a kid. You don’t say bad words in front of kids. That’s a law, I bet. Or it should be. And no, we shouldn’t spread out. That’s what means you’re afraid, Mister Jason. You’re afraid that they’ll accidentally shoot you and I guess I am kinda a lot afraid of that as well, but we shouldn’t do it.”

  “Hopefully you’re not calling him a coward,” Todd said. “If you are, then you owe him an apology. Spreading out is smart. No one else will get hurt. You go and be with your friend if you want. Don’t worry about me.” He put his head down and kept paddling with his legs.

  Jillybean was tempted to leave him to die if that is what the bad people wanted, only that seemed wrong to her. If that had been her, she wouldn’t want to die alone and sad. “Do you think they would shoot a kid like me?”

  “I doubt it. It would be kind of useless to.”

  The answer was as cold as the water swirling around her stockinged feet. Regardless, it was the answer she was hoping for. “Get on your board like Sally,” she said, finally remembering to use the fake name. She treaded water while he spun the cushion lengthwise and heaved himself into a laying position onto it. As fast as she could she grabbed hold of him again. Treading water in jeans and a light coat wasn’t easy and it had taken everything she had to keep her chin above water.

  “Help me up, will you please,” she asked, after failing to climb up onto him on her own. When she was on his back, she straddled him as though she were riding a dolphin. “Don’t shoot!” she yelled as loudly as she could back towards the dock. “I’m just a little girl!”

  “Then get the fuck off of him!” someone called back.

  Todd had been paddling from the moment they got into the water. Now, he was moving with more efficiency since he could use a swimmer’s stroke. Slowly he was pulling out of range. Jillybean waited to answer, counting slowly to ten. With a deep breath she yelled: “I can’t, I’ll drown.” Quieter, she told Todd: “I’m actually a pretty good swimmer, when I have on a proper bathing suit, that is. When I was a kid, I was a tadpole. That’s what means someone who used to take swim lessons at the Holly pool. That was back in Philadelphia. It was really very nice and I miss it something awful.”

  “Never heard of it,” he grunted.

  Save for their heavy breathing, they were all quiet as they waited for a reply. They hoped for a new shout and they feared the crack of a gun. What they got instead, was, at least at first, disconcerting: the spotlights clicked off, leaving them in the dark.

  “I think they were confused by our presence,” Sadie said. “I take it there aren’t any little kids with Hatchet-Joe?”

  “None,” Amy said. “But now we have you guys.” She laughed and sobbed at the same time: “I can’t believe we got away. I can’t believe it. They were all over us and I was sure they had us, and now…I guess this isn’t perfect, but there’s Bainbridge, right there.”

  The island with its brilliant lights was a beacon of hope at least for the others. Jillybean was troubled. The water bothered her. It was cold and it was very dark, darker than any water she had ever seen. It also tasted horrible. “Why is this water so yucky?”

  “It’s salt water,” Todd explained, taking a moment to rest. They were becoming spread out. Sadie was in front by about ten yards, while Jason and Amy were much further back. Todd waited for them to catch up, lying on the board. “Puget Sound is connected to the ocean, so try not to drink it.”

  That was the problem, she realized. It had been two years since she had been to the ocean. Ram had taken her and had let her play in the surf. That water had been grey. This black water was much worse. Anything could be hiding in it and she had the sudden feeling that there was something beneath them. Something big.

  She wanted to ask if there were sharks in Puget Sound, but before she could, that something big came rushing up out of the depths. It was a shark, a huge one. One that could eat her in a single chomp. It surfaced right in
front of them and when it opened its mouth she saw its endless white teeth. There were thousands, each pointed like arrows.

  With a violent swish of its muscular tail, it launched itself full on them. Jillybean screamed and like a coward jumped from Todd’s back, leaving him at the mercy of the monster.

  Chapter 26

  Sadie Martin

  As Sadie was unencumbered by a little girl as Todd was, and not uselessly insane like Spot, and not having to make up for Amy’s inherent laziness the way Jason had to, she found the paddling cold but not exactly strenuous. She was just turning sideways on to wait for the others to catch up, when Jillybean suddenly screamed and leapt off Todd’s back.

  When she came up spluttering and clawing at the water to get away, she looked nothing like the “tadpole” she would mention on occasion. She looked like a terrified house cat.

  “Jillybean!” she cried, paddling towards her as fast as she could.

  Todd was closer and in two strokes of his long arms, he caught up with her. “Hey, what’s wrong?” he asked, grabbing her up by the back of her jacket and hoisting her up. She went wild, scratching and twisting in his grip. “Hey, it’s just me. I won’t hurt you.” When she saw who had her, she clung to him, staring all around, her blue eyes huge and round, and unblinking.

  “There was a shark,” she hissed in a whisper as if she didn’t want the shark to overhear her. “It was h-huge.”

  “A shark?” Todd asked, looking down in the water. “Are you sure it was a shark? Maybe it was just a big fish. Or it could have been a dolphin. Here, get on up just in case.” Todd let her scramble up onto his back once more. This time she made sure to keep her feet out of the water.

  “It was a sh-shark. Dolphins don’t have so many teeth. I seen plenty of dolphins in books, you know. It was a shark like from Jaws. I never did see that movie but I saw a poster and it was just like that. D-din’t you see it? It was right in front of you. I thought it bitted you.”