The Apocalypse Fugitives

by Peter Meredith

  See? You can do all this, you have to just take each problem one step at a time. And the first step is putting me up in a tree until this is all over. What do you say?

  "I say don't be silly." She went back to Deanna who was sitting in the truck looking worried. "We need to get close to the bridge. I need my mind shooked up. That's what means I need to get my thoughts in the right order."

  "So much for not getting caught," Deanna said, reaching in her pocket for the keys. Out of caution she stopped the truck a half mile from the bridge while they still had plenty of forest for cover, and she forced Jillybean to jumble her thoughts from there.

  The little girl pursed her lips at the bridge as her eyes darted up and down, picturing the first explosion on the east side. That bomb would be easy to set. They would disguise that pontoon like a big pile of river trash and float it down just as the sun was setting and chain it to one of the eastern supports

  "But the second bomb…" she said to herself. The second explosion would come a couple of minutes later and would have to hit the far west side.

  She pictured the little boat they would have to construct: A pallet, a couple of kayaks or some life vests holding it up, the flashing light on top, maybe even a little siren to make sure it was noticed. Also they'd need an electric motor in back, one they could remotely steer like she did with Jazzy-Blue.

  It was a good plan except creating something like that on such short notice would be a major problem. Also if they misjudged exactly where the boat was in the dark the explosion might not take down the support.

  That is a sticky wicket. I think you're going to have to find another way to blow up the bridge, Ipes told her.

  "Or another way to scare the guards off of it," she said, excitedly. "We can bluff them off!"

  Won't they just come back on the bridge when it doesn't blow up? Ipes asked.

  She was grinning now. "Oh, it will blow up."

  Now twelve hours later amid the roiling zombie filled waters, Jillybean squinted through the dark at the trucks on the bridge; the soldiers were tiny looking but still their panic was evident. "Release the drone," she said.

  There were a few rough-edged parts of her plan. The first, getting the real bombs in place in the low light of evening without getting caught had already been overcome through extreme patience and great camouflage. The next issue was the drone, the dummy bomb that had as its sole function the task of scaring the guards off the bridge. Jillybean had gone over in her mind every conceivable set up for it but she hadn't been able to solve the steering issue with the materials and time she had available. Without steering she decided that a motor wouldn't be feasible either. It could get turned around by an inadvertent bump from one of the monsters or it could putt-putt right on past the bridge faster than they would want.

  So they used gravity instead.

  The drone consisted of nothing more than a wooden pallet with a few life preservers tied around the edges and empty card board boxes under a tarp set on top. To give it a more diabolical air, Deanna had found a pirate's skull and crossbones' flag and draped it across the front for good measure. The lights and siren were found in the remains of a Wal-Mart: total build time: fifteen minutes.

  Deanna flicked on the lights, pressed the button that would start the siren and set it free to float down stream. The surface waters of the Mississippi at Cape Girardeau flowed at just about two and a half miles an hour; Jillybean figured the drone would take eight minutes to reach the bridge, which was plenty of time for the guards to see it and run.

  "It's going so slow," Deanna said. The choppy waters from the explosion was playing havoc with Jillybean's time frame, which, after only a minute she saw worked in her favor. The truck drivers and the guards on the bridge were slow to notice the drone and when they did they were even slower to react to it. Jillybean had assumed that after having one bomb blow up practically in their faces that even the threat of a second would send them running.

  Instead a few of the men actually started shooting at the drone!

  "Idiots," Jillybean hissed from under her poncho. "Even if that was a real bomb they wouldn't be able to hurt it by shooting at it."

  "Not everyone knows that," Deanna said. "We better hope that they figure it out…oh, there they go."

  Most of the soldiers, after taking a few shots started running west to escape the bridge. The driver in the last truck tried to reverse off the bridge, only he lacked the talent to drive backwards under duress for half a mile through a single lane strewn with strategically placed cars. He hit one almost immediately.

  "Get out of the truck!" Jillybean begged. If the man was still on the bridge when the fake bomb passed harmlessly by who knew what would happen?

  The driver spurted forward only to hit another car and then decided he'd had enough; he jumped out of the truck with the engine still running and began sprinting after the other guards.

  Jillybean shook her head at the near miss and then re-checked the detonator with the big "W" taped on the front. She turned the knob to "Arm" and then waited, feeling her guts squirm like worms. Of all the rough-edged parts of her plan, this was the roughest. No one, not even Ipes, knew what would happen when the western support was blown.

  Would the center section still survive? Or would the stresses pull it down, too? Her argument in favor of blowing both ends was that there would still be three supports in the middle; just then she couldn't help but feel it was an exceedingly weak argument.

  There were a thousand "what-ifs" going through her head when Deanna said, "He's across. Blow it!"

  The "what-ifs" would have to sort themselves out. She took a deep breath and pressed the button. There was an instantaneous flash of light and then the western end of the bridge erupted like a volcano, shooting rock and flame and smoke high into the air. Though both the east and west bombs were the same size, the second bomb blew with far more violence than the first.

  "That was…" Deanna began with a look of amazement. Then she pointed and cried, "Look!"

  The entire decking of the bridge began to crumble into the river starting from the west and moving toward the center span, it collapsed like a row of dominos heading for the tiny looking trucks in the middle. The water surged, turning the river into a tempest, while above, the great, steel cables began snapping, cracking the sky like a demon's whip. The entire structure was shaking and the groan of metal and the crash of concrete filled the air.

  Jillybean stood up, horrified, "Please, stop! Oh, please stop. Please…" Just as she was about to be engulfed in misery, the failure at the western side ended right at the center support practically under the wheels of the last truck. The little girl sat back down looking dazed at the near miss.

  I told you it would work, Ipes remarked. This brought her back around.

  "Oh you are a liar, Ipes," Jillybean hissed. "You said it would all come crashing down. I was the one…"

  "Jillybean!" Deanna snapped, bringing the little girl into focus. "Now's not the time."

  "Ok," she said, quietly, embarrassed. "You can cut the anchor now." They had started with two anchors, both so heavy that there was no sense trying to recover them once they went overboard. Deanna cut the rope and then started the electric motor. She steered them toward where the five-ton trucks sat parked high up on what was left of the bridge. While they hummed along Jillybean pulled the first rocket out of its packaging.

  The rocket was shiny red with flames emblazoned along its length and, counting the three-pronged base and guide-pole, the whole contraption came up to Jillybean's sternum and in her opinion, it was colossally disappointing. It was dinky, flimsy, cheap, and underpowered for their needs. In short it was a toy.

  In order to get the proper rope up to the bridge, Jillybean had envisioned using a much more powerful rocket; what she had really wanted was an "Army" rocket. One of the big ones that could shoot a mile into the sky. That would've been cool. Only they had run out of time to search Fort Campbell properly, and had to settle fo
r the Wal-Mart special that they hoped could handle a payload of twine.

  Jillybean chewed off the plastic covering the twine, tied one end to the base of the rocket and then played out the remainder in a loose heap, securing the tail end to the neck of the electric motor.

  "Drop the anchor?" Deanna asked. The bridge loomed above them and the little girl felt a thrill shoot up her spine as a voice in her mind said: That could come crashing down at any second.

  "Not just yet," Jillybean said. "Almost, almost." She waited until they were out of the bridge's black shadow and then pointed to Deanna. The anchor splashed and a few seconds later the raft shuddered to a halt. "Perfect," Jillybean said. They were about thirty feet from the downstream edge of the bridge; a good angle to shoot the rocket from.

  She dropped down to the rough deck of the raft and sighted up the rocket. It was too perpendicular; she shimmed the front base of the launch pad with a bent piece of cardboard and rechecked the angle and grunted in satisfaction.

  "You wanna look?" Jillybean asked Deanna.

  "No, I trust you. So far your plan is working great."

  This was said so earnestly that Jillybean felt heat crept up her neck and she was sure that the night and her monster make-up was hiding the pink in her cheeks. "It's pretty good so far, I guess," she mumbled. "We should step back."

  There was very little room to do much in the way of stepping. Their "ship" was nothing more than two sheets of plywood hammered to the four largest logs the two of them could manage to roll to the river's edge. They had built their raft in the lee side of a half-submerged barge which had protected them from the river zombies floating by. Jillybean had envisioned a much grander vessel than the ten by ten heap but once again, time had been against her.

  Still it floated, the deck was secure, it was flat enough for their needs, and the wood railings kept the zombies from getting at them. Being undersized as the raft was there wasn't room on board for the two of them, along with sixty ponchos, sixty life vests, two anchors, three rockets and seventy feet of pre-knotted climbing rope.

  Again Jillybean was forced to improvise with the easiest materials to find and so towed behind the raft were four wooden pallets, buoyed by empty milk jugs. Each of the pallets floated, barely, beneath the weight of carefully stacked ponchos and life vests.

  When Deanna moved as far from the rocket as she could get and pulled the hood of her poncho over her face, Jillybean yelled, "Look out up there!" She too covered herself before pressing the ignition button on the remote controller.

  Super-heated air and smoke blasted from the tail of the rocket, billowing Jillybean's poncho as it shot upward trailing the length of twine behind. "Go! Go! Go!" Jillybean shouted, cheering it on as it arced beautifully over the bridge. Quicker than she thought possible the hundred feet of twine played out—there was a "Twunnng" sound and the rocket jerked strangely and fell out of the sky to land somewhere on the bridge.

  We did it! cried Ipes.

  "Yes," Deanna said, holding up her hand for Jillybean to slap it, which she did grinning happily. "I can't believe everything worked. I'll never doubt you again, Jillybean."

  "It's not over yet, they still got to drag up the climbing rope without cutting the twine. Hey!" she shouted up at the bridge. "Did you see that rocket? It's got string on it. Hello? Anyone? You got to pull up the rope."

  There was silence from the bridge. "Why aren't they answering?" Deanna asked.

  "They can't be dead," Jillybean answered. "The trucks were fine. Maybe you should yell. Grode-ups always yell louder than kids."

  Deanna tried with the same results. The two of them stared at each other thinking the same thought: what if the prisoners were chained in the trucks?

  Chapter 38

  Captain Grey

  Cape Girardeau, Missouri

  Grey knew the explosion was Jillybean's handiwork; she had watched him build the bombs and had stored away the information like a squirrel hoarding nuts; as well he knew the explosion hadn't been meant to benefit him. His best guess was that she must have timed it to help Neil and the others.

  Of course that didn't mean he couldn't profit from it. Around him the spectators began to babble to each other: What was that? Was it a bomb? Was it the fuel dump?

  Soon the packed theater was loud once again as people tried to leave. The River King rushed out on stage. "No, stop! Please, order. Let's all settle..." The crowd ignored him and forced their way out of every exit. The River King threw up his hands. "Someone find out what just happened!" he screamed at his guards.

  "You know what happened," Grey said, hooking his fingers into the cage. "That was Jillybean and if I know her she's not done yet. Giving up would be the smart thing to do unless you want to lose everything."

  "Bobby shut this bastard up," the River King ordered one of his men. "Get the fighters locked up and get rid of that." He pointed at Davis who was playing possum on the floor.

  Grey was hustled back to the box office where he found the other four fighters sitting around, while standing, looking nervous, were the guards. Grey gave each of the fighters a knowing look and the slightest of nods; to a man they grew tense and shifted positions, readying themselves to spring into action. Each knew the arena was a death sentence and were ready to escape at the first opportunity.

  "What was that?" one of the guards asked when Bobby followed Grey in.

  "Dunno," Bobby answered. "An explosion?" He was a strong man, but a dull one and his face suggested he had reached the limit of his thinking with his obvious answer.

  "No fucking duh," the guard replied. "Someone should go see what's happening."

  It fell to Bobby. He left, leaving the number of guards equal to the number of prisoners. In spite of the fact that the prisoners were weaponless, Grey didn't think he would get a better chance than this; all he needed was for one of the guards to look away for just a second.

  A bare minute later, Jillybean came through once again. The second explosion was much closer than the first and far more violent. The building shook from the initial blast and reverberated with the thundering echoes. The courage of the guards wavered and the one closest to Grey looked at the ceiling as if expecting the building to come down on top of him.

  With hands that could barely be followed, Grey snatched the AR-15 from the guard's limp grasp. Without pause he turned slightly and shot a crushing front kick into a second guard sending him reeling. As guns were leveled at Grey, the other prisoners leapt up and grappled with the guards.

  The fight was sharp and extremely short. The fighter named Rizz had managed to wrest a gun from one of the guards, while Chesser and another guard had wrestled to a draw. The two sides had fought their way into a Mexican standoff with a pair of guns each.

  Grey, who had a gun pointed at his chest, chuckled. "This same thing happened to me on my second tour in Iraq. You'll never guess who won."

  He'd been talking to the guard who had the gun trained on him. The man had begun to sweat. "You guys?" he answered.

  "No. We had one dead and another wounded. But do you want to know why we lost?" The guard nodded so weakly that really he just lifted his lower lip twice. "It's because we had something to live for, while those terrorist fuckwads didn't care about dying. Do you see the connection to your current position?"

  The guard wobbled his head a little, which Grey assumed meant: no. "Just like our soldiers back in Iraq, you have something to live for. But we don't. If we give up, we die in the arena. Sooner or later each of will be beaten to death. Would you like to be beaten to death?"

  Again the wobble was his only answer. "Me neither," Grey said, calmly. "I'm much rather get shot to death, wouldn't you?"

  Another wobble, only this time the guard found the strength to whisper, "No."

  "But that's what's going to happen if you don't hand over your gun. I'll shoot you in the face and then you'll shoot me. Do you want that?"

  "No."

  "Then hand over the gun and I swear nothing will
happen to you."

  The guard nodded and lifted the muzzle to the ceiling. Quickly a fighter with a strange plated beard resembling a viking's, took the weapon. Grey didn't know if he was O'Dell or Grimes.

  With odds now three to one, the last guard gave up his weapon. "Rizz, guard that door," Grey ordered, indicating the door to the front of the box office where tickets were sold. He then snapped his fingers at Chesser. "They have zip-ties on them. Bind their hands and feet."

  "Not yet," the bearded fighter said. Without warning he raised the stolen rifle to his shoulder and shot one of the guards through the stomach. The shot was so unexpected and so extremely loud in the small room it shocked everyone into a moment of paralysis. They all stood with their ears ringing as the wounded guard grabbed himself, cradling his stomach with both arms. Grunting, he slowly lowered himself to the floor much like a woman far along into her pregnancy would.

  "What the hell?" Grey demanded. Giving into his first inclination, he dropped down to one knee to inspect the wounded man.

  "Get away from him," the bearded man said. The rifle in his hands was still partially raised and pointed at the guard.

  Grey pushed it away. "No, damn it! I gave them my word that they wouldn't be hurt."

  "I didn't give my word. I swore I would kill him. I swore I would make him suffer for what he did to my brother. If you knew anything about this bastard, Grey, you'd be on my side. You'd be cheering me..."

  Just then the door to the cashier room opened up as the promoter, still sharp in his navy-blue suit came rushing in. "What's going on in...here?" He faltered at the unexpected sight of the guards with their hands in the air.

  "Get on the floor!" Grey yelled. Without even thinking his gun had snapped to the ready position and was aimed at the man's heart. "Rizz, get the damned door like I asked."