The Apocalyse Outcasts

by Peter Meredith

  Eventually she had to pull Sadie back. “The candles, Sadie. I lit the candles, you can’t be there. And you look all weird. Are you hungry? We have one more box of mac-n-cheese.”

  “Gross,” Sadie said, allowing herself to be pulled back from the window. “Without milk and butter that ain’t mac-n-cheese. It’s orange crap.”

  Well, how do you like that? Ipes said sharply. We go out of our way to help her and this is how she acts? How ungrateful!

  “Is that what means not saying thank you?” Jillybean asked under her breath. Ipes declared it was. “She’s been sick,” Jilly stated, making allowances for her idol.

  Sadie refused all of Jillybean’s food ideas. She sat on the couch coughing weakly and growing more pale by the second. When Nico came in at nine that evening Sadie launched herself on him and cried. “Sorry,” she said a number of times. “It’s being sick. Whenever I get sick I get extra emotional.”

  Nico didn’t seem to mind. He caught her tears and then laid her down on the couch. When he made the mac-n-cheese she didn’t complain though in Jillybean’s eyes hers was better. The Russian’s mind wasn’t on the task at hand. He alternated between fixating on Sadie and griping about how poorly equipped they were to go on a long journey.

  “Look,” he said, holding up a two quart bottle. It was a little less than half full. “Is all gas that I find. Is not good. And these gun? I have fourteen rounds. What is this good for? Nothing! We should not be in hurry to find Sarah. She has make her decision.”

  “I don’t know what the right thing to do is,” Sadie admitted.

  Jillybean and Ipes looked at each other but neither said anything. It wasn’t Jillybean’s place to as far as she was concerned. She was seven and deferred, generally, to the wishes of grownups. Sadie was different.

  You ever notice that Sadie doesn’t like to make too many decisions, Ipes remarked.

  “Whatcha mean?” Jillybean asked. She had slipped away and was now pulling items out of her pockets that she had collected over the course of the day and setting them next to her bed. Already she had a gold pen, two C batteries that she had tested on her tongue, a handful of crabapples, and a seven-inch rubber band. Currently she was wondering if she could use the rubber band to shoot the crabapples across the room.

  She folds to the dominant personality around her. Remember the night we set those boats on fire? Neil had told her to run away and she did, but you told her to go back and she did that too.

  “So?” Jillybean asked. She stuck a crabapple in one end of the loop and drew the rubber band far back. “Is that a bad thing?”

  No. It’s just a thing worth noting...he paused as she let the crabapple fly. It plinked up against the stove, square in the little pane of glass in its door. Nice shot. Who do you think she will side with? The man she loves or the man she’s accepted as her father?

  “Does it have to be a man?”

  No, Ipes replied. Sadie will listen to you if you come up with a good idea, and you’re just a kid. She also used to listen to Sarah. What are you trying to hit?

  Jillybean had settled down in her nest and was now aiming the rubber band: one loop over her outstretched thumb. “I’m aiming at whatever I hit,” she replied. The band stretched nearly the length of her arm, and the idea of it slipping made her nervous. She could lose an eye as her mom had always warned. But she didn’t slip and the rubber band zipped from her fingers to smack the wall next to the stove. She’d been aiming at the saltshaker that sat on the edge of the oven, two feet over.

  I guess you were aiming at the house, Ipes said. You’re a regular Robin Hood.

  “Stupid zebra,” she grumbled under her breath. She then picked up one of the crabapples. “You think these are any good?”

  I wouldn’t try it; you just brushed your teeth.

  “So? I won’t get a cavity from one little apple-thing.” Without waiting for a response she popped it into her mouth and began chewing. She stopped after two seconds as her face twisted.

  Pretty sour, isn’t it?

  The apple was so fantastically sour that her face continued to turn and torque and she made the noise: “Ooooh.” Normal speech was, for the moment, impossible.

  I bet it’s worse since you just brushed your teeth. Too bad you weren’t warned ahead of time.

  She was still in a state of facial contortion when Neil came into the kitchen. “Are you ok?” he asked going down on one knee. “Is there something wrong?”

  “Crabapple,” she managed to say as her eyes started twitching. “Ooooh.”

  “Oh. Those suckers are tart.” She offered him one and he shook his head. “We still have people food. We don’t have to eat like squirrels just yet. Tell me, are you ready for tomorrow? I want to leave first thing.” With the zombie menace being what it was, first thing meant about nine in the morning depending if it was cloudy or not.

  “So you found enough gas?” Jillybean asked. Neil’s face dropped which she read correctly. “But Nico said we shouldn’t go unprepared. You know, without enough gas and stuff.”

  Neil offered her a toothy grin. “We’re ready enough, don’t you worry.” He then gave her a kiss goodnight and tucked her in.

  Jillybean wasn’t fooled in the least by Neil’s demeanor. “He didn’t get any more gas.”

  Not a drop, Ipes shot right back.

  “Do you think they’re going to fight?” she asked. Neil had gone into the living room and his voice was very low.

  Not with their fists, if that’s what you mean, Ipes said with a note of disappointment. In order to hear better, Jilly crept to the edge of the living room and listened.

  “Then you are feeling better, good,” Neil was saying to Sadie. “I want to get as early a start as possible. Make sure you’re all packed.”

  “Da, but first we find fuel,” Nico suggested. “Then we go on journey. We would not want to waste time to go so short way with little fuel we have.”

  “It’s not a waste of time,” Neil said, just off the edge of calm. “We’ve checked everywhere around here for gas and have come up empty. So I think it’d be smart to check somewhere else. The gas we have should get us eighty miles down the road. Who knows what we’ll find there? Greener pastures I hope.”

  “Green pasture?” Nico asked. “What does this mean? In farms?”

  “It’s a saying we have. It means somewhere newer and nicer,” Sadie explained. “And maybe somewhere with more gas.”

  Nico nodded his approval of this. “Da, finding gas is good. Finding Sarah is nyet, not good. She is looking for one-way trip, not to come back. That is her decision. My decision is we should not be go to New Eden. Especially my Sadie. She is nonbeliever. She tell me what this means. Is not good.”

  “We’re all nonbelievers,” Neil said. “It’s dangerous for all of us.”

  The Russian let out a weary, theatrical sigh before saying, “Da, that is all the more reason to stay away. Neil, you give up on baby because of so much great danger and that was smart. I think is smart to give up on Sarah, too.”

  Jillybean could sense Neil’s emotion through the wall. His facial expressions seemed to be shifting with his feelings: denial, anger, self-hatred. “I gave up on her...on Eve, because I knew that to get her back meant one or more of us would die. When I was sick I would lie in bed and I couldn’t decide who I wanted that to be. You know? Who would you choose if you had to trade one life for another?”

  Nico faltered over this question, but Sadie was quick to say, “Myself.”

  Neil smiled at her answer at first, but then he became grim. “Who would you choose other than yourself?”

  The question was met with silence, which only increased Jillybean’s instant fear. She was sure her name was on the top of everyone’s list. It only made sense. Sadie loved Nico and Neil. No one had ever said they loved Jillybean. Neil had adopted Sadie, but no one had mentioned a thing about adopting Jillybean. That left Nico who rarely even looked in Jillybean’s direction and couldn’t even prono
unce her name right. He would not vote for his girlfriend, or another grown up, especially one who didn’t have to be worried about being bitten by the monsters.

  Don’t forget, they tried to trade you before, Ipes said, adding to her fears.

  They certainly had. It was something no one ever talked about however, being traded like a fish at the market wasn’t something she would ever forget. The incident had been brushed under the rug and Jillybean had hoped it was a one-time lunacy on Neil’s part, only now the concept of trading people one for another had arisen again, sending a cold shiver down her back.

  You should pack your stuff and get out of here, pronto, Ipes suggested.

  Before she could respond or react, or question the word pronto, Neil spoke, “You see? You can’t choose anyone else and neither could I.”

  “But that was with baby,” Nico said. “Now with Sarah you change your minds. You trade us all for one person. It makes no sense. There is too much great danger.”

  “I can’t keep letting people go without trying,” Neil said. “I can’t keep making excuses for not doing the right thing.”

  There seemed to Jillybean to be a balance in the room: safety versus holding a family together. Nico versus Neil, with Sadie the deciding vote. As Ipes had pointed out, Sadie didn’t like being put on the spot and there came such a long silence that Jillybean could hardly stand it.

  Finally, Sadie gave a half-shrug and committed, somewhat halfheartedly, to both men. “I think actually trying to get into New Eden may be just too dangerous. It won’t be one or two of us getting killed, it’ll be all of us. On the other hand I think we should go after Sarah. It’s the right thing to do to try to stop her from killing herself.”

  “That’s right,” Neil agreed. “That’s why I want to get going early. I want to be able to cut her off before she gets too far south. We should all have out bags packed and…”

  He went on, but Jillybean tuned him out. “They aren’t going to trade me,” she said, feeling slightly giddy and then suddenly very tired.

  I wouldn’t have let them, Ipes assured.

  “And what would a little zebra like you have done?” Jillybean asked, climbing into her nest of pillows and blankets. She was warm and so very comfy that she was on the slip edge of consciousness when Ipes answered:

  You’d be surprised what I can do.

  Chapter 13

  Sarah

  Northern Maryland

  With the late afternoon light striking her dead in the face, Sarah hit the highway fence and went up it like a lion. The lion isn’t known as the best climbers in the cat kingdom. When they have to climb they aren’t in the least graceful; they generally “muscle” it up and Sarah did the same thing. It didn’t help that she climbed the fence almost midway between the supporting posts. The fence yawed inward at an odd angle and then as she got to the top, it rocked back the other way, almost making her lose her grip.

  “Mother fucker!” she cried.

  With that same lioness strength she clung to the wire until she was able to swing a leg over. Then it was just a matter of jumping and listening as cloth tore. She had on a floral shawl that had snagged somewhere and was now in two pieces. In truth, she couldn’t have cared less about her gypsy attire.

  The hundreds of zombies in front of her, and the racing black Jeep behind, kept her focused on what was important: living beyond the next two minutes.

  Sarah ran at the zombies. They were strung out, coming up from the white-trash neighborhood in a long grey wave. She ran at them before they could coalesce into a dense mob. Strung out as they were she hoped to rupture their lines with a few well placed head shots and zip through.

  Her first two shots missed completely and her third only wounded. Sarah realized she had begun shooting from too far away. Now, she ran up until she could see the yellow pus running from their eyes. At this range heads exploded and black blood vaporized, creating a dark mist that hung over the corpses.

  Twelve shots in ten seconds blasted a big enough gap. She raced through the converging mob and into the warren-like neighborhood. The houses here were low rent: paint peeling off the clapboard siding in long strips, shutters hanging askew, window screens held together with duct tape. Dotted among them were little gems, homes where people actually cared, but for the most part the crumbling neighborhood seemed ready made to spawn zombies.

  Out of every home the undead came, on and on; there seemed to be an endless number of them. Sarah shot her Beretta only when she had to. The definition of “when she had to” gradually narrowed as she went through bullets faster than she could reload. Soon she shot only when a zombie was right in her path. The streets were so crammed with the beasts that this happened at every turn.

  She had hoped to be able to dash through the town and into the woods beyond, however there were just too many zombies. Eventually she was forced into one of the little ranch houses, where she spent a futile minute barricading the door only to have zombies blast in the front window.

  Without wasting a moment on thought, she ran for the back door, smashing through it with a bang, like a kid on the first day of summer, eager to see the unfettered world. Sarah’s world was hardly unfettered. There were zombies in the backyard too, and more came spilling around the sides of the house. They were being drawn by the sharp crack her Beretta made when she was forced to kill. But what could she to do? Not to fire it meant being dragged down and eaten.

  The question would have to be answered some other time, possibly when she ran out of bullets. Sarah took off through the weeds and the year-old dog crap that lay crumbling in the sun. She ran for a waist-high, chainlink fence that separated one ill-kept backyard from another, and vaulted it awkwardly, landing on her hands and knees, drawing blood from one of her palms.

  Still, she had put a barrier between her and the greatest portion of her pursuers. The zombies crushed up against the fence but few could find a way over it. Those that did were more or less pushed over the top to go face first into the grass of the next yard.

  Sarah had been gasping for breath and backing away from the horde but as the first fell into the yard she turned and ran. With her heavy pack swaying, and the rifle banging against her shoulder bones, and the split shawl flapping, she was a slow runner and only just made it to the next dinky little house ahead of the zombies.

  Thankfully, she found the back door unlocked, a situation she remedied the moment she rushed into the house. The lock was flimsy and the door had a hollow core—it wouldn’t last, but neither would Sarah, at this rate. Desperate to catch her breath and reload, she pushed a chair in front of the door and dropped onto it. Almost immediately the door was attacked with great thumps and splintery crashes.

  As she fumbled out a box of ammo and began sliding bullets, one after another into the Beretta’s clip she hummed quietly, nervously, trying to match the cadence of the sound of the battering. She paused as the she slapped the clip back in place. Next she took the empty clip that she had automatically pocketed and began refilling it.

  “Mother, mother, mother, what’s going on?” she sang the old Marvin Gaye song, the words quivering as they left her throat. Behind her the door began to come apart under the assault. With forced calm, she willed the bullets into place. To her right, in one of the back bedrooms, glass shattered. “Shit!” she cried. She then began to rock as she worked and sang: “What’s going on? What’s going on? What’s…” Her song faltered as a section of the flimsy door just behind her back broke away and a grey, scabbed-over hand reached in.

  Leaning forward to stay out of reach, Sarah finished topping off her clip and then, after taking a deep breath, she fast walked to the front door and flung it open. A zombie fell inside. It had apparently been pushing on the door to get in and now it was sprawled at Sarah’s feet. She didn’t waste a bullet.

  Instead she stepped around it and went outside to squint into the low, raking light of the dying afternoon. She found herself in someone’s front yard. There was a street,
some cars, a broken bike, and many, many zombies. They stared at her for all of a second before she was at it again, once more, running for her life.

  There was no going back. She plowed ahead, using cars and hedges and now another house as a means to keep out of reach of the throngs of dead. She left one street behind, only to find another just like it. And then a third where she couldn’t run fast enough and she had to resort to using the Beretta again.

  When it went off she noted how it seemed to spit flame—the sunlight was fading rapidly and when it was gone out of the sky…

  “Shit,” Sarah cursed. She had to find shelter, a place to hide, or fortify, or anything, before the dark came to claim her. It was unquestioned: the undead ruled the night. Her fear spurred her on and she passed two more streets the hard way, climbing fences and dodging the dead.

  Then she came to the edge of the subdivision, where the houses ended and the woods began. There was a stretch of rodent prairie a hundred yards wide between the two. It was blessedly empty. There wasn’t a single zombie to be seen in the gathering evening before her.

  Normally, the woods were not a place she would consider safe, but it appeared that all the shooting she had done had drawn them into the little subdivision.

  “The woods couldn’t be worse than this,” she said under her breath. She was wrong. After only a few steps she saw the last light of the afternoon glint off of something in the woods. It was something darker than the coming shadows. It was the black Jeep. As she had wasted time fighting her way through the neighborhood, the bounty hunter had just skirted it altogether to wait for her on the other side.

  The thought of the bounty hunter struck a dirty chord in her heart. Zombies were evil, inherently so. It was fundamental to their nature; in other words they couldn’t help what they were. It was impossible for them to try. On the other hand, Sarah knew the bounty hunter to be purposefully, thoughtfully cruel. He was also fearfully determined. Sarah didn’t want to find out what lengths he would go to in order to discover Sadie and Nico’s location.