The Undead World (Book 10): The Apocalypse Sacrifice

by Peter Meredith

  Then Sadie began to fade. Soon, Jillybean was running both the controls for the drone and for the Camry, something that had been difficult to do in the relatively civilized Cascade Mountains. Now they were in a new range and the road she chose was narrow, twisting, and far more dangerous. She knew there were bandits in these mountains, but she didn’t know where.

  The thermal image was a fine device, however she discovered that it had its limitations; it couldn’t see through walls or even into cars. She hadn’t gone far into the rugged hills, just east of the Idaho border, when she came to the tiny village of Helmer. She knew its name because there was a sign on the road and had this been before the apocalypse and her daddy was driving, they would have been through the town in a blink.

  At twelve miles an hour, she had plenty of time to see the couple of dozen homes and the Helmer Store & Cafe which was all there was to the town. She even had time to see the road blocked by a stack of cars. This was nothing new; many towns had tried to erect something in the face of the monsters. This one had a well worn path just to the right.

  From above, she saw that it ran through a hundred yard strip of forest and then back to the road. She was extra cautious and moved along at half the pace she had been and yet, because of the armor and the grainy view from her monitors, she didn’t see the run of sturdy twine stretched across the path. If she had, it would have been a surprise to her that it ran, not to some elaborate trap, but to a heavy church bell that had been set up in the trees.

  Its toll was loud. The sound struck the armor of the Camry and Jillybean felt it through the steering wheel. It made her wonder if this was what a submarine captain felt like when his ship was pinged with sonar. And just like one, Jillybean was virtually blind and had to rely on outside sources.

  She hit the brake hard enough to wake Sadie. “I thought I heard a bell,” she mumbled. “Are we in Colton already?”

  “No,” Jillybean said, her eyes going to each of the monitors in turn and then to Agnes’ feed. The screens showed nothing out of the ordinary. She sent the drone higher—still nothing around them but empty forest and a few farms beyond that. “Someone set up a bell, like an alarm, I guess. Keep an eye on Agnes, will you?”

  Sadie took the controls and the iPad, while Jillybean locked her eyes on the screens, unsure of herself. Once they were through the forest, the road would open up and then they’d be safe and yet, if there were traps at all, they’d be hidden somewhere in the forest and not after.

  The smart thing to do would be to back up and go around Helmer completely. Jillybean was just checking her rear monitor when Sadie said, “I got lights behind us on that road! It’s a truck!” She showed Jillybean the iPad. The vehicle had pulled out from one of the worn down homes set back from the side of the road. It was seventy yards away and moving slowly towards them, as if the driver was unsure of committing to an attack.

  The obvious thing to do was to barrel ahead and get back to the main road. It was so obvious that Jillybean wasn’t keen to do it. “Anything ahead of us?”

  There was a three second delay before Sadie got Agnes positioned correctly to spy ahead. “Nobody on the road, if that’s what you mean.”

  It was. A clear road ahead was good; still she didn’t rush forward. The armor around the Camry allowed her the peace of mind to think, not that it took much thinking to see that the real danger lay ahead. It’s where the trap would be.

  If it was a bomb, it would be a low-yield, fragmentation bomb like the one that had taken out Hank the Humvee. But more than likely there would be spikes set in the road or a log or something set on a wire that would fall and block their path. One way or the other, the bandits would be looking to get the contents of the car intact with a minimum of bloodshed.

  “Because they’ll want to do stuff to us,” Jillybean said, her mind flashing to that night in the trader’s truck. With just that one image, her stomach began to ache as if she had been punched low down in the belly…very low down.

  “Hold it together, Jilly,” Sadie warned. “You still have options.” She did, but they weren’t many. Going back had never been an option and that left going forward or abandoning the Camry…and Sadie altogether, something she wouldn’t ever do. And that left what? Taking out the obstacle in front. Simple. She hoped it was a bomb. Even though she had plenty of them, it gave her a bit of a twisted thrill to be able to use one of the bad guys bombs against them.

  Before she could check out what lay ahead, she had to slow down the truck coming up behind them. Taking up one of her smoke bombs, she lit it and tossed it behind the Camry. In seconds, it was as if one of the Seattle clouds had descended on the forest, masking everything in grey. Jillybean ran forward, a flashlight in her hand, her eyes going back and forth, scanning for the trap.

  She figured that it would be subtly hidden; a wire, or some leaves mounded across the road; something small. Instead she got a tarp twenty feet long and fourteen feet wide. It had been painted to match the dirt road and was so well done, that in the dark she walked right onto it.

  It sagged inward with her fifty-five pounds and hurriedly she jumped back. It wasn’t a subtle trap at all. It was an immense one, designed to swallow an entire vehicle. She pulled back one edge of the tarp and saw a sharply dug pit, too sharp for a person to climb out of.

  The trap was well designed and Jillybean couldn’t see a way around it, not with the thirty or so seconds that she had left before the truck came. “I’ll have to use my bombs,” she said, not at all feeling the slightest bit of elation that sometimes came with the idea of blowing things up.

  In this instance, the bombs were a weapon of last resort.

  Over the last few days, she had been so busy trying to save Sadie that she had done nothing to modify the Camry. It had no offensive capabilities whatsoever. Even the drones were useless as they were currently configured.

  If she wanted to use the bombs, she would have to throw them. Unfortunately, they weighed four pounds apiece—she couldn’t throw them beyond their blast radius. They would be as deadly to her as to her enemies.

  Chapter 35

  Jillybean

  The smoke had become so thick, so quickly, that Jillybean almost blundered into the Camry. It was a dull, mottled grey hunk of metal sitting in a cloud of billowing grey and only its symmetry in the midst of the chaos kept her from barking her shin on the jutting, armored bumper.

  Beyond the car, the rumble of the truck’s engine was very close. Its headlights were beginning to burn through the smoke making them look like dragon eyes. She wanted to run from them, but there was still Sadie to worry about. With her heart speeding in her chest, she scurried around the side of the car and climbed in, making sure to lock her door once she was inside. “They dug a huge hole up ahead. Right about there,” she said, jabbing a finger at the iPad in Sadie’s hands. “Is there anyway around?” There wouldn’t be, of course. It was a trap and what good would it be if someone could just putter right around it?

  They both stared in vain at the iPad until Sadie said, “Run. You gotta run away. They won’t want me when they see how injured I am. They’ll leave me alone.”

  “I have the bombs…”

  “No!” The sharp word had Sadie coughing lightly and it was in a whisper, probably the most she could handle, that she went on. “No, I’ve seen them. You made them too powerful and too heavy. You’ll probably blow us up along with them. No, you have to go, before it’s too late.”

  Running away really was the best plan; it might have been the only plan with any chance of success. Jillybean saw it clearly: she would take off through the smoke and hide out on the fringes of the little town, using Agnes to keep out of reach of the bad guys. Then, when things died down a bit, she would double back to save Sadie. There was only one major flaw with her plan: What if they just killed Sadie out of hand? Or what if they decided to rape her regardless of her terrible wound?

  Sadie looked worn and haggard from the pain, not even close to her usual,
pretty self, but since when did that ever matter to the vile thugs who preyed on women? If someone would rape a scrawny seven-year-old, there was no telling what people were capable of.

  Because of her wound, if Sadie were raped, she would die. If she were thrown out of the Camry and left to fend for herself, she would die. It was as simple as that and Jillybean had already decided that she would rather die herself than see anything happen to her sister. “I’m staying with you and we’ll, uh, we’ll figure it out.”

  “No!” Sadie snapped. She tried to push Jillybean out of the Camry, but was so weak and Jillybean so distracted that the little girl barely felt the hand on her arm. “Go,” she tried again, using all the strength left to her. “Get out of here.”

  Jillybean held her back, easily. She had one part of her mind on the image coming from Agnes’ thermal video feed, while the other was mentally inventorying what she had at her disposal to work with: her standard set of tools, a roll of fourteen gauge wire, six double A’s, four C batteries, the extra drones, her clothes and some cans of Dinty Moore soup.

  And, of course my bombs and a couple of handguns. That was about it. As dismaying as that was, she felt a sudden calm take hold. That had been her own voice talking in her own head, which for her, in a situation like this, felt sort of new and old at the same time.

  With the stress of rape and death hanging over her head, this was the perfect time for her boundless crazy to come roaring back and ruin every chance at escape, but it didn’t. She was finally, finally sane. Just in time to die.

  Her clear thinking mind saw the truth: her bombs and guns were just about useless in this situation. The only time she was any good with a gun was when she had the element of surprise on her side, and there’d be no surprise, now. And the bombs…she blew out in disgust at the thought of them. In this case, bigger was definitely not better. She had let her lust, her hunger for explosions, get in the way of practicality.

  None of what she had in the Camry would be any good facing off against these sorts of men. The guns and the bombs weren’t even good as a threat. Who would be afraid of a young woman who was only a hard sneeze away from death and a little girl who everyone knew was crazy?

  A smile, perhaps a seemingly insane one judging by Sadie’s sudden look of alarm, slid up the corners of Jillybean’s mouth. “The answer is in the question,” she whispered, realizing she had the ingredients for an escape. “Everyone should be afraid of a crazy girl.”

  The words had just left her mouth when the Camry was jolted from behind. The monitor showed a truck’s grill and little else. “Damn it,” Sadie said, listlessly. “They’re getting out of the truck. So? Do I need to say it? Being crazy is not a plan. Even when you were a little, you know?” She stuck out her hand and rocked it back and forth. “You always had a plan.”

  “Not this time,” she said and picked up one of the bombs, weighing it in her palm. It was made up of three sticks of dynamite, a blasting cap and a radio detonator all taped together. In the cupholder was what looked like a small radio with a stubby trigger jutting from its side. The trigger sat beneath a lid of plastic that was hinged on top. She armed the bomb and then set the controller to standby.

  “I’d be crazy to use this,” Jillybean said, “but if they don’t leave, I’d be crazy not to.”

  Sadie looked at her slant-eyed and confused. “So, what does that mean? Are you going to use it, or not?”

  Jillybean shrugged. “If I do, we’ll all be vaporized. That’s what means all our little molecules will just come unglued from each other and we’ll shoot all over the place. It probably won’t hurt all that much, ‘cept for like a second. Which isn’t bad if you ask…”

  The truck thudded into them again and a muffled voice came through the armor. “Get the fuck out of there!” Their eyes went to the iPad, which showed the ghostly grey figures of seven men crouched around the Camry, guns pointed.

  “We could just sit here,” Sadie suggested. “This thing is pretty sturdy, the armor, I mean. It’s bulletproof, right? We’d be like a turtle safe in our shell.”

  “They’d just push us into the ditch or smoke us out. Speaking of which, we should move forward to get out of the smoke so they can see better. Yes, I want them to see better. What good is a threat if they don’t see the threat as all that threatening? It’ll be okay, Sadie. Try not to worry.”

  Jillybean had no idea if her plan would be okay at all, however her head was clear of voices and her mind was clicking along, running down possibilities: If I say this, then they will say that. If I do, this they will respond like so. Like a chess master, she was seeing a dozen moves into the future.

  Her opening gambit was as simple as queen’s pawn to E4, she started the Camry slowly rolling forward. Her opponent’s response, as expected, was to keep pace, men on both sides and the truck crawling up behind, blocking all retreat. They guessed that she would hit the lip of the pit and stop. Instead, she stopped just shy of it.

  They were out of the clouds generated by her smoke bomb and Jillybean could see the knowing smiles on the men’s faces turn sour as she stopped. They would be wondering how she knew about the pit and there would be the first inkling of worry running through them.

  Jillybean paused, letting their thoughts run as far as they could. They were eyeing the armored car now, seeing it clearly for the first time, and the seed of worry grew. Who could make such a car? Someone who’d been around the block a time or two, probably. Someone who had faced his share of bandits and had lived. The worry seeds sprouted thin, spidery roots.

  “I said, get the fuck out!” There was a thumping on the side of the car. “Get your asses out, but nice and slow. Do you hear me?”

  “Bring Agnes down,” Jillybean commanded. “Let them know we’ve been watching them.” There was a small chance they would shoot the drone out of the sky, however bullets were too valuable to be wasted and, with their prey supposedly trapped, Jillybean guessed they wouldn’t see the advantage in taking out the drone. She was right.

  When the drone descended to twenty feet and the propellers sounded like a thousand angry bees, she and Sadie had a great view of seven up-turned faces. Sadie then sped Agnes away and Jillybean could sense the doubt grow. Who was running the drone? Were there other cars out there? Have we bitten off more than we can chew?

  They were getting worked up, but once they saw little Jillybean and sickly Sadie they would relax. They would smile. There would be jokes and they would elbow each other, perhaps whispering, “Dibs.” They might even try some sweet playacting to make it seem like being a sex slave wasn’t all that bad. They did that sometimes; to assuage their own guilt, Jillybean guessed.

  Then they would see the bomb.

  Before opening the door, Jillybean took a deep breath and let it out in a shaky blow. It was one thing to envision the scenarios in her head, it was another to step out into a dark night with a half dozen guns pointing her way.

  When the long breath was expelled, she cracked the door by an inch. She could see the men on her side of the car suddenly flinch behind their guns.

  “Slowly, slowly,” one of them chanted. “Open that door slowly and no one will get hurt. There you go. Shit. It’s a girl.”

  She guessed that they were all staring at her, but had no idea. Piercing flashlights blinded her—and that was okay. It was important that they see her and what she carried. It didn’t take long before the lights were on the dynamite sitting in her open palm.

  “What’s your name?” she asked the man who had told her to go slowly. She could see him now and although she had been a surprise to him, he was pretty much as she had expected. As with so many of the slavers hunting the wild lands, he was part animal in appearance; shaggy and filthy. A cigarette dangled between his lips and it was Jillybean’s fervent wish that it would light his beard on fire.

  “I’m going to need you to put that down,” he said, his tone very soft. He spoke as if he thought the volume of his voice could set off the bomb in h
er hand. The bandit, so close to the dynamite that he could smell it, was afraid and that was good.

  Move, countermove. His was a wasted move. “Why should I?” she asked. “The bomb is just as deadly on the ground as it is in my hand. It could kill us all in a blink, but really, it’s not the important part, you know. This is.” She held out the detonator. “You shoulda asked me to put this on the ground.”

  He tried to smile around his cigarette, but it was more of a grimace and only showed his yellowed teeth without making him seem any more friendly. “Yeah, okay. Why don’t you put that down, too?”

  The completely expected response on his part further calmed the little girl and when she grinned it was only partly an act. “I don’t think so, Mister…you never told me your name.”

  “My name isn’t important. What is important is that you put down that fucking bomb, right this second.” He had partially lowered the gun in his right hand, but now he raised it up, aiming at her face. They were six feet apart; there was no way he could miss. She wasn’t worried. This bluster on his part was only a diversion. He wanted her alive, and wasn’t she “just” a little girl? Shouldn’t she be easily cowed by his size and menacing air?

  “You’re right,” she said. “Your name is not important. What’s important is my name. Don’t you recognize me?”

  He squinted at her, twitched the cigarette to the side of his mouth and said: “No. Should I?”

  She was momentarily taken back. So far on this trip she hadn’t been able to walk ten feet without people guessing right away who and what she was. “You really don’t know me? What about her?” She pointed in at Sadie who was sitting in the passenger seat of the Camry, her face white as a ghost’s, a Sig Sauer pointed out at the bandit.