The Undead World (Book 10): The Apocalypse Sacrifice

by Peter Meredith

  What are you doing, Jillybean?

  “I’m going to get rid of them,” she answered and stomped the gas, chugging the car straight at the Camaro, picking up speed.

  You’ve always been crazy, Jillybean, but I think you’ve gone off the deep end. You know that’ll kill us, too, right? Jillybean? We’re loaded with bombs…if you do this, they’ll all go off.

  Jillybean shrugged. She wasn’t really listening. Her attention was completely on the forward monitor, where she could see Biggie-Three, a little man with a little rat-like mustache, go wide-eyed. He mouthed a scream and then threw himself across the lap of another man in the passenger seat.

  That certainly wouldn’t save him. Nothing would.

  Chapter 49

  Jillybean

  Biggie-Three thought she was going to ram them, however she had no intention of hitting them. With no other option left to her, Jillybean was using the Camry as a bomb delivery unit.

  Fifteen feet from impact, she planted both of her Keds on the brake pedal as hard as she could, stopping only inches from the Camaro. The bomb slid right off the Camry and straight into Camaro’s open window. As quick as she could, Jillybean stuck her car in reverse as the two men sat up, looking shocked and more than amazed at their supposed good luck. Then Biggie-Three saw the bomb. He began reaching for it.

  If he managed to throw it, her plan would be ruined and so, before she was out of range, Jillybean triggered the bomb. The air in the Camry shivered as the concussive force of the explosion struck her like a baseball bat. It left her gasping, and she had to blink a few times to get her eyes focused again. Then, like a drunk needing to think through each action, she fumbled the car into gear with numb hands and ran it up the curb and onto the lawn of the corner house, tearing apart a bush as she did.

  Distantly, she heard the scanner going crazy again. There were five conversations running together in a muddled jumble. One voice managed to rise above the rest. It was Milt. He was the closest and his signal was the strongest. After running through a series of curses, he managed to yell into his radio, “I see them. It’s a…it’s…I don’t know what that is. Fuck! That’s armor! They armored some kind of car. And shit! Biggie’s Camaro is all jacked up. It’s on fire. Fuck…fuck this shit.”

  She had turned back onto 130th Street, heading west. With that last “shit” she could see Milt’s headlights start to drop back. He clearly wanted no part of a running battle with what was basically a small tank.

  That wouldn’t do. For her plan to work, Jillybean needed him to engage. “If you can’t make a horse drink the water,” she said, not quite knowing where she was going with her busted cliche. She found a spot in the road that wasn’t as littered with monsters and burned out cars as the rest of the city seemed to be, and turned her Camry back the way she had come.

  When her headlights blazing into his face, Milt cursed some more and also turned his vehicle around to flee. He drove a newish SUV of some sort and easily outdistanced her.

  And that was fine with her. She would be the first to admit she had gone into the fight unprepared. Stopping the car, she reached into the back seat where three drones were perched on stacks of explosives. Taking a drone and a bomb, she taped them together, but instead of reaching for a second one, she stopped and sighed, suddenly too tired to go on.

  Her brain was numb and sluggish and her soul felt thin, as ghostly as Sadie. She knew she had to keep going, “But I can’t.”

  Let me, Sadie said, and before Jillybean could protest, her conscious self was thrust aside and she fell into an endless nothing. At first, she was afraid of what would happen when she landed, but after a while she found she didn’t even know in what direction she was falling. Eventually, she wasn’t falling at all, but was drifting in a black fog of perfect contentment. The fog felt as though it was slipping into Jillybean, not exactly becoming a part of her as much as it was dissolving her, turning her into nothing.

  She might have faded away completely, except the sound of the dispatcher cut through the nothing like it was coming from a loudspeaker set inches from her ear, “Say again, Templeton. How many trucks?”

  Jillybean jumped in her seat and looked around in confusion. She found herself behind the wheel of the Camry driving down 130th Street. “What…what just happened?” She stopped the car and sat there for a few seconds trying to puzzle out what was going on, only she couldn’t. The only thing she could figure out was that she was going the wrong way. She was headed west where the radio signals grew faint.

  “I gotta turn…” she began, but she lacked the energy to speak and work the wheel in circles at the same time. It wasn’t until she was pointed in the right direction that she realized Sadie wasn’t with her.

  “Sadie? Where are you? Why were we…we…” She spluttered in midsentence, remembering the drones she had been taping bombs to. Looking around, she saw that the drones were no longer in the car. In a panic, she jumped out and turned in a circle. Seattle, with its dark city streets, was the most cluttered and dirty city she had ever been in. Monsters by the hundreds lurked among the trash and burned out cars. But other than the usual garbage, the streets were empty. As a last resort, she climbed on top of the Camry, hoping to get a better view.

  All she saw was more of the same—except when she looked into the steel cargo box she had welded in place on the roof. In it, the drones, primed and ready to go, sat on stacks of ANFO. “When did I do…” A glint in the dark caused her to suck in her breath. The sleek Porsche was parked three blocks away and the purr of its engine could be heard as white noise beneath the moans and wails of the nearby monsters. Eyeing the car, warily, Jillybean slid down until the pavement jolted her feet.

  She backed into the Camry and jerked in surprise when Sadie suddenly spoke up, inside her head again. Quick, shut the door.

  “Where were you?” Jillybean asked as she hauled back on the heavy door.

  I was here the whole time, Sadie said. You were just confused.

  Jillybean was still confused. To confirm that she was in the “real” world she touched the steering wheel and the stale, spit-up stained shirt she was wearing. Her eyes went to the monitors and she suddenly remembered the Porsche. “There’s a car parked down the street. I think it was following us.”

  Yeah, I saw him, too, but don’t worry, he’s more scared of you than you are of him. That seemed highly unlikely to Jillybean. The car had a slick, evil look that made her throat tighten. Either way, that’s the direction you need to take, so you might as well go, and this time, go with a little anger. Can you do that? Jillybean didn’t know if she could. She felt that her insides were still drifting in fog; she didn’t have the strength for anger. Yes, you do, Sadie urged. Come on, get angry!

  The little girl took a deep breath, filling her lungs with Sadie’s energy and let out a scream, stepping on the gas at the same time. She aimed straight for the Porsche thinking that she would ram it dead center, only the driver saw her coming, spun in a tight half-circle and raced away at a speed that was unimaginable to Jillybean.

  She even questioned her sanity, thinking her mind was playing tricks on her. Sadie laughed in an echoey gust inside of her head. Naw, that’s just how those cars are. We won’t catch him, but that’s okay. She lifted up Jillybean’s hand and pointed it at the scanner, which was already blaring her position and direction.

  There were now a dozen cars oriented on her; she needed it to be two dozen or more and the best way to do that was to run a roadblock or two. That would get their attention, especially if she were able to triangulate the location of their headquarters. If she headed there to make trouble, they would forget all about her family.

  The first thing was to get back on I-5 and past the roadblock at the 104. She was unhampered getting onto the main highway. Once there, she began to weave slowly through the many wrecks until the road opened up and she could see the cars set purposely across the road a hundred yards away. They were parked tail-to-nose, which would make sma
shing through somewhat difficult unless she got a real good run-up.

  “And why do that when I still have bombs?” She picked up the drone controller and got the engines whirring and the camera working. “Off you go, Chareese. Good luck.” The drone lifted off from the roof mounted cargo hold, moving slowly, like some ancient and odd looking wasp. She sent it straight up until she was sure that it was lost in the night sky.

  This’ll be good, Sadie said. Jillybean could feel Sadie’s grin pulling up the corners of her own mouth. They’re going to crap their pants. I can’t wait. Even with four pounds of explosives slowing Chareese down, they didn’t have to wait long.

  Jillybean set the drone to hover right above the hood of the center truck. She could see the looks of panic set in a second before she took up the detonator. The blast, a sharp, white light that momentarily blinded the cameras, incinerated the two men in the truck in an instant. It also killed the men in the truck in front of them. The explosion sent a storm of shrapnel, in the form of what had been the back window, ripping through the cab.

  The driver lived long enough to stick the truck in gear. It drifted towards the median as the other bandits peeled away. Even if the driver had lived, he wouldn’t have gotten far. His fuel tank had ruptured and now the back half of the truck was an inferno.

  Look at them go! Sadie cried. Get after them, quick. If we’re lucky, we can follow them right back to their hidey-hole.

  As much as Jillybean wanted to “get after them, quick,” the Camry was slow and she really wasn’t a very good driver under the best of conditions and this was far from the best. Whatever energy Sadie had given her was spent and her reactions were a tenth of what they usually were. She banged back and forth through the debris and within five minutes, she had lost sight of the last truck in line.

  She wasn’t upset; being upset took too much energy.

  You’ll never make it like this, Sadie told her. Let me help you.

  Jillybean wanted to protest, but that was also impossible. She had used too much of herself up in the long journey back and forth across the Rockies, and what she’d had left had dissipated in the soul-grinding chase that she had led her family on. Now, she was done.

  Sadie pushed her aside and she was once again drifting in the dark. This time it was different. Every once in a while, there would be strobes of light or the rumble of thunder. There were even screams that rippled the fog, but she didn’t seem to care. Sadie could have her body and do what she wanted with it.

  “She can kill me if she wants to,” Jillybean mumbled.

  Why would I want to do that?

  “Because I deserve it. Because I don’t care if I die.”

  But I do. Wake up, silly. Jillybean’s eyes popped open and she found herself once more behind the wheel of the Camry. There was a haze of smoke around her— real live smoke. Something was burning, but she didn’t care what.

  “Where am I?”

  She expected Sadie to answer in her head, but her sister was a ghost again, sitting calmly in the passenger seat. We’re close. Maybe a mile. I’ve been trying to nail down their headquarters, but I’m not as good as you are.

  “What are you doing out of me. I need you. I-I don’t think I can do this alone.”

  Sadie smiled. I told you that I’ll always be with you, but I never said I would help to kill you. You can stop now, Jillybean. I think you’ve stirred up the hornets enough, and they are some very mad hornets.

  The torrent of screaming orders from scanner was proof that Sadie wasn’t lying. “What happened? What did you do?”

  Sadie lifted a shoulder in a casual shrug. I kinda took the fight to them. I’m sorry to say I used up the last of your drones and had an incident with one of them big SUVs. It might have been a Navigator, but I’m not sure. Either way, we lost some of the armor and two of the cameras. That’s why I’m telling you to quit while we’re ahead. If we tussle with them one more time, that’ll be it for this baby.

  Jillybean loved the idea of being done. She was desperate for sleep and food and fresh air. She craved these things. She hungered for peace and quiet, only, it was something she would never have. Not until she finished the job. “I want to quit, but I’m not ahead,” Jillybean said. “We’re exactly where we’ve always been, surrounded by enemies.”

  No, you’re wrong. They’ve dropped back. We can skate on out of here and no one will chase us.

  “I’m not talking about me and you, I’m talking about my family. I’m talking about Bainbridge. It may be safer than other places, but as long as they got bad guys surrounding them, it’ll never be completely safe.”

  Someone else can fight them. You’ve done enough. Come on, Jillybean, don’t be like this.

  “Like what?”

  We both know that you don’t care if you die or not. You don’t think anyone loves you.

  “You love me,” Jillybean said, and stuck the car in gear. “And if this doesn’t work out so well, I can be with you. I think that would be good. I think I’d rather go live with you than deal with people anymore.”

  Next to her, the ghost of Sadie sighed. But you won’t be ‘living’ with me. Don’t you get that?

  “I get it. I might be in hell and you would never be there. It’s why I gotta do this. I gotta make at least something right.” Jillybean didn’t quite know how she would do this. All she had were a few pistols, an armored car that was falling apart, and one mega-bomb.

  And one radio scanner which also had a ‘send’ button and a microphone. “Hmmm,” she said, a spur of the moment idea coming to her. She stopped the car and got out to survey the damage that Sadie had talked about. The front was dented so badly that all the welds in the armor were cracked. Worse, a huge panel of metal had come off the passenger side.

  Sadie was right, the Camry wouldn’t survive another encounter, which ruined her not very good semi-plan of crashing through whatever defenses they had in place, finding their headquarters, and blowing it up.

  “They’re going to have to invite me in, instead.” She ducked back into the Camry and picked up the mic. “Hello Dispatch? Come in Mister Dispatch.”

  The hubbub of male voices cut away as if Jillybean’s voice had a knife’s edge to it. “This is Dispatch. Who the hell is this?”

  As he spoke, Jillybean watched the scanner readout. She was getting closer. Before answering, she glanced at the map, but had no idea where she was.

  We’re heading east on Thomas Street, Sadie told her. They’re a little north of us, but how far east I don’t know.

  “Then I need to keep them talking,” Jillybean murmured under her breath. She counted to thirty, hoping he would speak again. When he didn’t, she asked, “Who is this? Is this Hatchet John?”

  “It’s Hatchet-Joe, and yes, it is. Who is this and who are you with?”

  If Jillybean had a million dollars, she would have bet it all that Hatchet-Joe had a scanner of his own and that he was trying to pin down her location. “My name is Jillybean Martin. I’m in-famous. That’s what Governor Rowe called me. That’s what means famous for being bad. It’s kinda the same as you.”

  “It is,” he agreed. “So, Jillybean why have you been driving all over my city making trouble? Did Rowe send you?”

  The scanner’s signal grew with each word. “No, she didn’t send me. She’s not going to want me when she finds out that I kidnapped a baby.”

  “You kidnapped a baby? Why would you do that?” His shock was tinged with a hint of disgust, which affected Jillybean more than she would have guessed. It was one thing when a good man, such as Neil Martin sounded like that, but when someone as evil as Hatchet-Joe looked down on her, it made her feel like garbage.

  “For attention, I guess,” said through a long sigh. “Either way, everyone’s mad, but that’s kinda to be ‘spected, right? You don’t take a baby and think it’s gonna be alright.”

  Hatchet-Joe was quiet for so long that Jillybean guessed that he was busy on other channels, relaying her position. Fi
nally, he asked, “So, do you have the baby with you?”

  Jillybean stopped short—his signal had faded slightly, which meant that she was moving away from his broadcast point. He was north and east of her, but only by a few blocks. She turned north. “No. The last time I saw her, she was on some bridge.”

  “Some bridge?” Hatchet-Joe asked, incredulously. “You don’t even know which one?”

  She did, actually but there was no reason to give him any excuse to take his focus off her. Besides, his disgust had been even more obvious and her pain was all the greater. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” she moped. “They’re not going to want me, but maybe you do. I can work bombs pretty good. Do you need a bomb…uh, a bomb-smith? I could build you guys all sorts of bombs.”

  Once more he was quiet, this time for close to half a minute. “Maybe,” he said, finally. “Why don’t you first tell me what you were doing tonight. I don’t take kindly to people barging into my city and blowing up my men.”

  “Oh, that. Well, they were in my way, of course. And they were mean. People should never be mean, ‘specially to me or my friends. So, what do you say about the bombs? I got nowhere to live and no friends left. I need a place.” She sounded completely sincere, mainly because she hadn’t lied once. She had stolen a baby and she was sure that everyone hated her, except for maybe Neil, and even if he did like her, she didn’t think she’d be allowed to live on Bainbridge. She hadn’t even lied to Hatchet-Joe. Asking if he wanted her as a bomb maker wasn’t the same as telling him she would actually make bombs.