After a few more minutes she let out a sigh and leaned over the rail to search for the bottle of vodka. It was intact. She groaned, wanting another drink and wishing she hadn’t thrown it at the deranged man. More than anything she wanted to run down and get the bottle and zip back, however, by her “calculations” the bounty hunter should have been there already.
The fire had been going for almost two hours. If he was anywhere within twenty miles he had to have seen the smoke by now and should’ve been sneaking around trying to find the human amongst the zombies.
For the twentieth time, she checked her watch. It was just after two in the afternoon. Miles to the south of her Neil and Nico were searching in vain for gas for the stranded Expedition, and six feet behind her the bounty hunter took another step closer—like a cat playing with his food.
Another groan from Sarah meant she was just about to sight down the rifle again. It was a habit that she wasn’t at all aware of. The hunter had seen this particular tell of hers three times in the last ten minutes so he knew he was perfectly safe to take one more large step closer.
“Where are you?” Sarah asked, rhetorically.
When the bounty hunter answered, “I’m right here,” from directly behind her she screamed and tried to turn, but he stuck a pistol right to the back of her neck and she froze. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere, Sadie.”
At the name she jerked.
Chapter 17
Sadie
Pinedale, Maryland
The long day spent in the car, topped off by the late afternoon two mile hike had sapped all of Sadie’s strength. She even lacked the energy to cough properly and with every breath she could feel the phlegm settle deeper in her lungs. Even before Neil left the room Sadie knew she would sleep the evening and night straight through.
In fact, she had already begun to snore lightly when she heard a strange voice in the house. The sound penetrated right to her consciousness and she was fully awake when Neil admitted to being a pervert. There was only one reason a good man like Neil would ever say something like that: he was protecting her.
That was her first thought. Her second was: Hide! It’s the bounty hunter! Somehow, they’d been found again, although to be honest, they hadn’t been exactly sneaking down the highway in their big green Expedition, nor had their hike to the little town been anything but a stroll right down the middle of the road with the two men killing the occasional zombie and foolishly leaving their bodies where they fell. They’d been obvious and now they were caught.
Without a real weapon, hiding was Sadie's only option. Luckily, the house seemed ready-made for hiding. The place was a maze of junk and trash. Newspapers, take-out boxes, clothes, engine parts; it sat everywhere in piles or stacks, in bags and boxes or strewn about—everywhere except the room she was in, of course. Though it wasn’t exactly sparkling with polish, it was the least messy room in the house. In all the other bedrooms someone had dumped the contents of the dresser drawers into piles, here the drawers had only been yanked open and prowled through.
She contemplated trying to sneak into another room, but she didn’t know the house at all. If it was a house full of squeaks any movement would be a dead giveaway. That meant she was stuck hiding in the room she found herself in. Under the bed was silly and obvious. The closet was too open; she’d be seen easily. If there had been piles of clothes like in the other bedrooms she could hide in them; after all she was very slim and small, but unfortunately the clothes were still in the drawers.
Duh! She could pull the clothes out herself.
She slid out of bed and tip-toed to the dresser and started chucking clothes in every direction, all except the dark colored clothes which she piled in the corner next to where the dresser hit the wall. As she did this, she caught the words from downstairs she dreaded to hear:
“I’m looking for a young woman named Sadie Walcott,” the unfamiliar voice said. “She’s about your height. Dark hair, dark eyes. She’s with a Russian, Nico Grekov. You know them?”
“A Ruh…Ruh…Russian?” Neil asked, choking on the words. “No, I don’t think I know any Russians. Have we been invaded? Ha-ha.”
The joke fell flat and seemed to arouse even more suspicion. “What’s your name?”
“Me? It’s Ne—Ni—Nor, uh, Norman. I’m Norman. What’s this all about? Why are you after a Russian and some girl?”
“There’s a bounty on their heads,” the man replied. Sadie’s muscles began to quiver. Even with all the clothes she was piling over herself she felt cold at the idea of being caught. Yuri would do things to her before she died, she knew it.
“How much is the bounty?” Neil asked, trying to keep the anxiety out of his voice, and failing. “I could use the money. Right? Who couldn’t use more…”
“Shut up,” the man barked at Neil. He then issued orders to two other men who had been so silent that Sadie hadn’t even known they were there. “Search the place. Mac upstairs. Bull take this floor and outside.”
“There’s no one here but me,” Neil said very loudly. Sadie cringed at how obvious he was being.
“I told you to shut up.”
Neil stopped talking abruptly and was so quiet that Sadie could practically hear him listening for her. She wished that he would just act normal but for Neil there was no “normal” setting when he was as nervous as he was.
Sadie could hear footsteps approaching. She could hear them stop at every door; there would be a pause and then the steps would go around the room hurriedly before moving to the next. Then the footsteps came to her room. Sadie went still beneath her mish-mash of clothes. She tried to will herself into being smaller, less noticeable, just another clump of clothes, just like all the rest.
The man stomped to the bed. With a light grunt he bent to peek under it. Next he went to the closet and then, miraculously, he left, heading for the next room. Very quickly, or so it seemed to Sadie, the man had checked every room and was heading back downstairs.
“All clear.”
The man named “Bull” announced the same thing not a minute later. Neil’s sigh of relief couldn’t have been more obvious than if he had said: Thank God you didn’t find her. Luckily, the men seemed to have forgotten him.
“Someone needs to tell the colonel that this is a waste of our freaking time,” one of the men, either Bull or Mac, said.
“Next time we see him, I’ll let you do the honors,” the man who had first spoken replied. “And you, Norman, give me those! If I ever find you with girl’s panties again I’ll cut your balls off. That’s not a threat. I will do it. Are we clear on this, you sick fuck.”
“Yes sir,” Neil replied. “You won’t have to worry about…”
“Shut up,” the man demanded. Sadie heard footsteps going towards the front door but they stopped just at the threshold. “And Norman? One more thing, forget about any bounties. Forget you ever even heard of it. I don’t need a crap weasel like you messing where you shouldn’t be messing. Am I clear?”
“Yes. No bounties and no panties. Got it. Sorry about…”
“Shut up,” the man said a final time before leaving. The moment he did, Sadie climbed out of the clothes she had piled over herself. Since the window in the guest bedroom faced the backyard, she hurried to the room across the hall and snuck to the corner of the window.
Three men were walking across the street in the direction of the McDonald's. They were clearly soldiers; Sadie could tell by their gear and their bearing. They walked noiselessly despite their heavy packs and their eyes scanned constantly.
“Sadie?” Neil called from the first floor.
She popped her head out into the hall and answered, “I’m just making sure they’re really leaving. You should see if Nico and Jillybean are wandering around. We don’t want them to accidentally run into the soldiers.”
Neil went from window to window, looking for the pair, but there was no sign of them. He came back to where Sadie was looking out. “Can you still see the s
oldiers?”
“Barely.”
“They were the colonel’s men.”
“I heard.”
This seemed to shake Neil. “You heard all of it? Then…then…those panties weren’t mine, you know. They were for Jillybean, I swear.”
Sadie snorted laughter at him—it was all she had strength for. “For Jillybean? Like that Barbie?”
He seemed unaware that he had been running around carrying a doll and a soft, brown rabbit. He blinked at them in surprise and now Sadie actually laughed. It turned into a cough in rapid fashion.
“I’m glad you can laugh,” Neil said. “You should have seen those guys. They were scary. Even scarier than the bounty hunter.”
“Then they must have been the scariest guys ever,” Sadie said. The few seconds of laughter coupled with the stress and fright of the last few minutes had Sadie feeling like she about to swoon. Neil saw her begin to blink uncertainly.
“You should go lay down,” he said. “I don’t think they’re going to come back. They’re thoroughly convinced that I’m a freaky perv. It’s probably why they didn’t do a very good job searching and why they were so quick to leave.”
“It’s the sweater vests, Neil. Only child molesters still wear sweater vests.” She meant it as a joke, however she appeared so drained and listless that he barely cracked a smile. Instead he wore a look of worry as he led her back to the bed where she was asleep in seconds.
It was the dark of late evening when she was gently shaken from sleep by Nico. He held out her pills and a glass of water. The water had a metallic tang to it that was unpleasant. He made her drink it regardless and as she did, he ran one of his heavy hands through her short hair.
“Kiss better,” he said, touching his warm lips to hers.
This earned him a smile. “That was nice. I must be cured,” she said.
“It will take more than just one kiss to make my Sadie better. You is must rest.”
“If she needs more kisses I can kiss her, too,” Jillybean said. She’d been standing by the door watching and because the house was so dark, Sadie hadn’t seen her. Now she came forward like a pale angel.
“One more kiss should do the trick,” Sadie said.
Jillybean puckered her lips to the size of a penny and when she pulled back she left a little spot of wet on Sadie’s cheek. “I can go get Ipes if you need another kiss. Right now he’s in timeout for being mean to the Velveeta Rabbit.”
Despite her weariness, Sadie grinned at the word velveeta. “No, it’ll be ok. I just need more sleep.”
“What of food?” Nico asked. “Are you hungry?” Behind him Jillybean’s eyes shot wide and she began to shake her head in a clear warning.
“No, thank you,” Sadie told Nico. “Just sleep.”
After a final kiss he left her. Jillybean made as if to leave as well, but she turned away from the door and tip-toed back to Sadie. “You don’t want what we had for dinner. It was fried carrots.” She made a face at the memory. “It was really blechy tasting, specially when Neil promised they would taste as good as French fries.”
“At least he tries.”
“Yeah, sometimes too hard. Hey, do you want to sleep with the Velveeta Rabbit? He’s super soft. Here, feel.”
Sadie’s first inclination was to decline the heartfelt offer, but the rabbit was incredibly soft, and Jillybean seemed to really want her to take it, and she was practically asleep anyway. The Goth girl fell deeply asleep with the rabbit tucked just under her chin.
Hours later, she and the sun stirred the morning at about the same time. Sadie stretched and yawned, still clutching the rabbit, and it was a second before she realized that her yawn had been full; her mouth wide and gaping, and that her lungs had expanded in their old manner. Excited, she took a deep breath in, coughed once, more from a tickle in her throat than from phlegm, and then breathed out in a rush.
She did it again and this time there wasn’t even the little cough. “I’m getting better,” she said with a smile. Still holding the smile to her face, she went down to the kitchen and discovered Neil eyeing the eleven cans that constituted their main source of food. On the counter were a few wiggly, unappealing carrots, an onion with spots that were so deep they looked more like veggie-cancer, and six packets of ketchup.
“Good morning,” she said brightly.
He replied in kind, adding: “Since you’re up first, you get first crack at the vittles. Sorry, there isn’t much to choose from.”
“What about you?” she asked. “You were up before me. You should get to choose first.”
He waved her words away. “I already ate. I had the leftovers from last night. Fried carrots aren’t that bad.” As he spoke, his hand stole to his stomach and began rubbing it as if the carrots weren’t sitting well; he didn’t seem to notice he was doing it.
“I’ll have the cream of corn if you don’t mind. Do we have any salt?”
He nodded and said, “And pepper, courtesy of our local McDonald's. Sit down while I get the fire going again.”
Neil had banked the fire the night before—it was a simple process of pushing the hottest coals and glowing logs to the corner of the fireplace and gently covering them with a layer of ash to hold in their heat. When he tapped away the ash and gently blew on the coals they glowed orange even after six hours. He then began adding paper and kindling, then larger hunks of wood and in two minutes the fire was going merrily.
Sadie was blowing on her hot corn when Jillybean came down sporting the latest style of bed-head: the tornado. She smacked her lips and blinked blearily until she saw the rabbit next to Sadie’s bowl.
“Are you, uh, all done with the Velveeta Rabbit?” the little girl asked. “Can I have her back? Ipes is lonely you see. He might be in love.”
“I won’t get in the way of love,” Sadie said, handing the rabbit over. “By the way she was very soft, and I think she might have curative powers. I feel so much better today than yesterday.”
Once Ipes explained the word “curative” to her, Jillybean was pleased to no end. “The Velveeta Rabbit is magic? Maybe she was a magician’s rabbit? Maybe there’s a magic hat around here somewhere. And maybe there’s a wand! That’d be cool.” She began to dash off but remembered she was hungry just in time. At the doorway to the kitchen she turned and asked, “Mister Neil, can I please have that squiggly pasta in the can for breakfast?”
“It’s rigatoni, and yes, you may.” She was gone in swirl of brown hair and flashing heels.
“Are you ever going to tell her that the rabbit’s name isn’t the Velveeta Rabbit?” Sadie asked around a mouthful of corn.
“Not if I can help it,” Neil replied, popping the lid off the rigatoni. “I think it’s darling. It’s too bad Sarah…” He stopped in midsentence, his face squinching up.
Sadie patted his hand and said, “She’ll warm up to Jillybean. We just have to find her before she gets to New Eden, and knock some sense into her.”
“She has all the sense in the world,” Neil said. “She has the sense of a mother protecting her baby.”
“At the expense of everyone around her?” Sadie asked, pointedly.
“Yeah,” Neil replied, turning quiet. “I can’t blame her for trying to rescue Eve, even if it kills her. I’m not going to pass judgment, because in this there are no good choices, only hard choices. We got screwed. Somewhere along the way we got screwed or we messed up.”
“I don’t think we messed up. Is there anything you would have done different?” Sadie asked. “Would you have stopped Sarah from going to New York? Could you have?” To this Neil shook his head. Sadie had to agree. Sarah had demanded to go in an attempt to find one daughter, only to have another taken from her.
“I’m afraid it’s going to be more of the same,” Sadie said. “Even if we find her before she gets to New Eden, she won’t listen to reason. She’ll go regardless and…” She didn’t want to finish the sentence and didn’t really need to.
Neil emptied the
rigatoni into a sauce pan and set it over the fire. With his back to Sadie he said, “We don’t know what will happen when we find her, but we have to try.”
“We have to get gas first,” Sadie said.
More than food, fuel was dictating their lives. It had always been scarce however lately it had become nearly impossible to find. The town they found themselves in didn’t seem like it would produce more than a few ounces.
Every single car, truck, and tractor had its gas cap off. The group tried garages for spare fuel cans. They checked lawn mowers and weed-whackers and even the single snow-blower possessed by the town. All were dry.
It was midday and they had progressed from one end of the town to the other and each of them was getting hot and irritable. All save Jillybean. She had her cheeks puffed by a pair of acorns and she went here and there with all the forethought and care of a butterfly. Eventually, she decided to turn her thoughts to what the grownups were getting all grumpy over.
She went to the closest car, a sad little Volkswagen Beetle sitting on saggy tires, and poked the vapor gasket back to the gas tank and looked in the dark hole. She gave it a sniff. “Ew! There’s gas in this one. It stinks.”
Neil was too tired to entertain the girl’s notions. “You’re just smelling the fumes. All the cars have fumes. That doesn’t mean there is any gas in there.”
“Ipes say it should. He says that gas fumes come from gas.”
“In this case Ipes is wrong,” Neil said. “Even empty gas tanks smell like that. It’s a residual odor.”
“What would gas tanks smell like if they had fuel in them?” she asked.
Sadie, who had parked herself in the shade of tree, had to laugh in spite of the fact that she was dragging worse than any of them. She was getting better, but she wasn’t all the way there yet. “I don’t think she’ll stop until you give her a demonstration.”
The Apocalyse Outcasts Page 14
