The Apocalyse Outcasts

by Peter Meredith

  “Because it’s hidden,” Sarah answered, the truth lending strength and conviction to her words. “Most of the buildings are underground. Only the fields of wheat and corn and all that are above ground.”

  He began nodding at this, but then his eyes flew open wide, and he ran from the room only to come back with a bible. “Here it is! It’s in the gospel of Matthew: That it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophet saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden since the foundation of the world. They’re underground! I get it now.”

  “Are you a Christian,” Sarah asked. The bible gave it away that he was, but she asked the question in a quiet tone, as if her great hope was countered only by her fear that he wasn’t.

  “Yes,” he answered and there was awe in his voice.

  Here was her salvation. Not only would he free her, she was sure he would accompany her south and in that way she would be able to pass the doors to New Eden and find her baby. All she had to do was play her cards right.

  “Me too,” she said, again truthfully. “I think the government has taken their war on Christmas and turned it into a war on Christianity.”

  “I know it has,” Artie said, eagerly. “That’s what this is all about! It’s the beams and the cell towers of the government. It’s turned the Christians into the undead. Wait, I got it!” he cried suddenly and raced a circle in the room with his hands in his hair. “It makes sense now! The government…” Here he came very close to Sarah and dropped his voice to a whisper, “…The government is in league with Satan. It’s the only way this could have happened. The undead are his minions. I know.”

  “Yes, and now they’re after us,” Sarah said, adding fuel to the lunatic’s fire. “They’re after the only Christians left.”

  “By God, you’re right,” Artie said. He looked at her and for the first time seemed to notice that she was still trussed up. He produced a knife and began to saw at the ties that bound her. “You’re not alone, now.”

  “Thank God,” she said and again meant it. The relief at having her hands freed was glorious, fantastic, wonderful, and lasted only thirty-two seconds. Then the pins and needles of returning blood flow struck. It was torture. “Oh, jeeze. That hurts so bad!” Sarah cried. In seconds her agony was such that she was writhing on the floor.

  Artie watched this with growing alarm and came to, what could only be considered, an insane conclusion: “There must be a chip in you! It’s probably going to self-destruct.” Before these words could even register in her pain-stricken mind, Artie had his knife out and was bending down to her. “We got to cut it out of you.”

  The glittering edge of the blade focused her like nothing else could. “No,” she gasped, between gritted teeth. “It’s my circulation coming back. Rub my arms, please.”

  He recoiled at the idea. “I can’t. Remember Beth? I have Beth. She’ll get better and then she’ll come back. You can’t…”

  “Uhhh!” Sarah cried.

  Artie stepped further back and held the knife up in front of him. “Beth wouldn’t want me to touch you. It’s a chip. I know it. I had one, too but I cut it out. Look.” He yanked off his hooded jacket; underneath he wore a stained and acid smelling grey t-shirt. He pulled up his left sleeve and showed a red-purple wound that couldn’t be more than two weeks into the healing process.

  “You probably have two chips,” he added. “And maybe some wiring running between. We’ll have to get it all. It’s the only way. I know.”

  “No, no. It’s passing,” she said, forcing a fake smile onto her face and trying to ignore the pain induced nausea that was threatening to bring up the precious water in her belly. “I feel better now. It’s just the circulation returning. I’m fine. Can I get some more water, p-please, and some Chapstick.”

  “Chapstick. Beth had some sort of balm for her lips,” Artie said, growing calm and staring at a wall. “I always thought it was funny. She had such thin lips, like two pink lines that went around her mouth. That’s all. But for some reason she always put on the balm. I used to joke that she had nothing to get chapped.”

  Sarah was barely holding it together. “Yeah, could you get that?”

  When he left, she went back to groaning and rocking. Luckily for her, his search for lip balm took ten minutes and by the time he returned the worst of the pain in her hands and arms had subsided. The rest of her was another story. She had second degree burns on her face, neck, and hands. Even her scalp was blistered and bright red beneath her bad haircut.

  She was also dehydrated to a degree she had never known before. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Artie was at his sanest when he was busy with a task, such as fetching water, or making a bed for her to sleep in. When he was idle, his mind went to bizarre and frightful places.

  Frequently he would forget who she was. When that happened he would stalk about, threatening her with his pipe until she could convince him that she was Janice from down the block. Apparently there was some sort of physical resemblance between them, or at least there had been—Janice had become one of “them.” Sarah made sure not to dwell on that.

  Instead, she reinforced the name Janice at every opportunity. She dreaded the idea of getting to New Eden only to have Artie drop the name Sarah Rivers.

  Sarah slept fitfully that night. This was due in part to the pain, but a larger part was due to Artie, who could not control his crazy. He ran about the house at the oddest times and would leave in a rage at others, and always he would mutter to himself.

  He was an average-sized man, with the insanity-fueled strength of a giant. His mental state also made him altogether fearless; there wasn’t a zombie he wouldn’t crack over the head with his pipe if it got in his way. Strangely, perhaps because he was only barely human at this point with his wild beard and fiercely burning eyes, the zombies didn’t go out of their way to attack him.

  Thus Sarah was basically safe from everything but Artie. She slept with her door locked and the dresser pushed in front for added protection.

  At dawn, when Neil was standing in the kitchen of the ramble house eight miles away, trying to swallow the left over fried carrots, making retching noises as he did, Artie left. He didn’t give any indication of where he was going or when he would be back. He just left.

  The four hours he was gone was the best sleep Sarah had. Despite the rest, she awoke in pain, was light-headed and thirsty as if all her drinking the night before had simply flowed right through her—and she had to pee very badly.

  With the light of day, she discovered she was in a boxy, two-story home just off the main street, a few blocks from where the Kinkos fire was winding down. It wasn’t much of a suburban house except for the kitchen which was bright and airy, and very clean; impossibly clean. It unnerved Sarah the way every chrome surface shone, and how every window was clear as the morning air and how not a speck of dust was visible to the naked eye.

  The rest of the house was as ignored as the kitchen was cared for. “This must be Beth’s place,” Sarah surmised, standing in the doorway of the kitchen. She resisted every urge to find out if there was anything in the fridge to eat, fearing that Artie would know if she stepped one foot in the room. It would send him over the deep end, she was sure.

  She nosed about the rest of the house until she found a jug of water in the master bedroom. In seconds she drank it down completely, and then went back to bed. When the sun was directly overhead, Artie came back in a foul mood. He stomped around the house complaining about the grass being too long in a neighbor’s property. Sarah thought it best not to say anything until he calmed down.

  “Hello? Artie?” she called when his yelling had been reduced to a low angry murmuring. “It’s me, Janice.”

  He came flying up the stairs, three at a time and from the far end of the hall he pointed his pipe at her. “What are you doing in my house? Why aren’t you home with Bob? If Beth knew…”

  All at once his crazy eyes flew open and he began to nod at he
r. She nodded back, saying, “Remember the Prophet down south? You were going to come with me?”

  “So he could fix all of this,” he said. “So he could fix my Beth…and all the rest. Then the lawns will be right again. And the hedges. Paulson’s hedge is too tall and it’s hanging over the sidewalk. I tried to talk to him about it, but he is one of them. He got the beams, bad. They must be soaking into his skin.”

  “I bet they are, the poor guy,” Sarah said, striking a note of compassion. “We have to hurry if we have any chance of saving someone that far gone. Do you have a car and some gas?”

  He gave her a sharp look. “Why? Why do you want to know? I’m the mayor, not you, Janice. It’s my responsibility to see that the resources of the community are used right and proper. It’s a public-fucking-trust, Janice!”

  With an effort she kept the smile on her face, though she couldn’t help taking a step back. “Of course it is, Artie. But in order to save the community we’re going to need to go south. We need a car or something.”

  “To save Beth,” he said in a whisper. “Yeah, I have a car and lots of gas. The town hoarded everything in Chris Potter’s storm shelter because of all the filthy thieves that came out of Baltimore. They were a plague, worse than the zombies. They were like locusts: eating and destroying everything in their path. I always thought Potter was crazy for being so afraid of storms, but he was right to be afraid of a storm of humans.”

  As Artie told it, Chris Potter had lived on what had once been the edge of town. He had owned farm property that he had sold in huge chunks to builders who had thrown together so many subdivisions that, in eight years he was no longer on the edge, but rather right in the middle of town. Potter had kept an acre for himself and under a portion of that was his “storm shelter.” It was really a high-tech, multi-room man-cave that he used to get away from his constantly yammering wife.

  It was large enough to throw fantastic Super Bowl parties in and, what was better as the town saw things, its doors were sod-covered and set into the ground. They were practically invisible unless one knew where to look.

  The bunker held an astounding amount of fuel, both gasoline and diesel. In one back room there were fifteen huge barrels of the stuff. There were also stacks and stacks of crated weapons of all kinds, most of them completely useless. The only ammo left in the entire town was forty rounds of .38 caliber ammunition.

  Sarah picked up a Smith & Wesson revolver and loaded it as Artie watched. “Just in case we run into that spy again,” she explained. Since her companion was too unstable to look after the care and maintenance of his own beard, Sarah pocketed the remaining bullets.

  There were many other items available: medicine, lanterns, candles, seeds, and tools. Of food there wasn’t a single chip or can of corn.

  The two of them worked at bringing up one of the drums of fuel from the bunker, and then about two in the afternoon they went for Artie’s truck. It wouldn’t start. The battery was dead with little possibility of revival.

  Because of the “beams” and the supposed liquid and volatile nature of electricity, getting a new battery charged up on Artie’s generator took far longer than it should have. The sun was dipping on a murky evening when they finally had everything ready to go, however with all of their tinkering and Artie’s frequent cries of “Look out, the beams!” there was a sizable zombie problem around them.

  Just like Neil, who was only a few miles away, Sarah decided to put off traveling at night and vowed to get an early start in the morning. The delay was nearly as painful as her blisters; she had been without her baby for thirty-eight days now and every second longer was a knife twisting in her heart.

  Chapter 22

  Sadie

  Pinedale, Maryland

  Sadie woke to birds outside her window doing their raucous Spring thing and making a racket fit to wake the dead. Cuddled up beside her, with a heavy arm thrown across her chest, Nico snored on, oblivious.

  He was a log in the mornings, slow to stir, slower to get his mind in action, long in his urinating. The man was a river of pee first thing in the morning. This silly thought brought a smile to her face and stricken with love she hugged his arm.

  A mumble of Russian escaped him which she took to mean: Too early. Taking his arm back, he rolled away.

  “Da,” she agreed, utilizing her mastery of the Russian language to its fullest.

  Normally, she liked nothing better than to slumber the morning down to its dregs, but she judged by the bird activity that they were already late. She gave Nico a shove and when that didn’t stir him in the least she slapped his bare bottom.

  “Nyet,” he growled. “Mya Chopa bolit.”

  “Whatever that means,” Sadie replied.

  He rolled onto his back to reply: “It mean, I have nice ass. So no hit.”

  She laughed fondly and smiled at the hunk of man. He began to snore again a second later. “I know one way to wake the pee-pee champion.” Sticking out an elbow, she leaned her full weight upon his bladder. This brought a grunt and a Russian curse from him before he grabbed her and held her to the mattress, lying over the top of her, nose-to-nose. That he could pick her up effortlessly, or pin her with only a single one of his strong arms always sent a warm thrill through her.

  He held her easily as she squirmed with all her strength. When she finally went limp, he kissed her and said, “Good morning.” The view from the window: a bright sun and the sky the color of a robin’s egg suggested it was.

  “I hope so,” she answered. Despite the pretty morning and his strong arms, she began to feel the hollow nervousness that had accompanied most mornings since she had died.

  When Sadie was younger, even during the early part of the apocalypse, she had greeted each day as the beginning of an adventure. Then Ram had been killed right in front of her, and Eve had been sold as an infant bride, and Sarah had been beaten and raped. The worst, in Sadie’s perspective was when she, herself had been killed.

  Now, she woke up everyday worrying: what would happen next?

  Would someone die that day? Would they be shot or would a zombie get in a lucky scratch? Would they get robbed again? Would they stumble on Sarah’s dead body? Would the bounty hunter finally catch up to them? All these questions hit her just like they did every day since she had been held under the green water of the East River, but this time was different. Sadie didn’t get the feeling that someone had just walked across her grave.

  Maybe I’m better, she thought. Or getting better. There was still the nervousness in the pit of her stomach, after all.

  Aloud she said, “There’s no time for smooches. We were supposed to have an early start.”

  Wearing a wolf’s smile, he leaned in and kissed her deeply. Jillybean interrupted with a knock on the door.

  Sadie knew each of their knocks: Jillybean would tap from low on the door and the sound was so light that it would carry eight feet and no more. Neil would knock twice and then listen at the door. Sadie could practically hear him hoping that nothing sexual was going on. Nico was loud, hitting the door with his fist as if to punish it. When Sarah was with them she would knock once, say Hello, and then wait exactly two seconds before coming in, whether she had been invited or not.

  That had always bothered Sadie to no end—and just then she missed it terribly.

  “Come in, Jilly,” Sadie said when Nico had rolled off her. As usual, Jillybean entered the room slowly, her blue eyes hyperaware of everything. “I see Ipes is being good this morning.”

  She carried both the Velveteen rabbit and the zebra. The night before she had been glum and it had just been the rabbit. “He says he’s learned his lesson and will try to be more helpful.”

  “That’s good,” Sadie said. “I miss the old Ipes coming up with crazy plans. Does he have one for getting down to Atlanta before Sarah?”

  Jillybean shook her head. “Nope. He doesn’t think it’s possible since she’s had such a long head start. That reminds me, Neil says to get you tw
o sleepy-heads out of bed. We’re apose to be leaving soon.”

  They had little to pack and thus were sitting in the Explorer fifteen minutes later. Neil drove, singing: “On the road again. I can’t wait to get on the road again…uh…on the road again…I guess I don’t really know that song all that well.”

  Next to him in the passenger seat, Nico smiled in a strained way. “It was good. But this is better. Is Russian song for travel. Is called Into Dark Forest.”

  He sang it all the way through and it was very long. Or at least it seemed that way. It wasn’t a dark dirge as Sadie had expected, but it also wasn’t peppy enough for an American girl raised on Lady Gaga and Pink.

  Jillybean offered her rendition of Old MacDonald next and as expected her version of Old MacDonald featured a zebra and a rabbit. Unexpectedly it also had elephants, otters, and fish. She had them rolling with laughter as she sang in all seriousness: “…with a bloop, bloop here and a bloop, bloop there…”

  “I think that’s what fishes say,” she said, not at all worried that they had laughed. “Ipes says they don’t say anything because they are aquatic. That’s what means living under water, but I can speak under water. It doesn’t sound all that clear and I have to be careful not to breathe in but I can talk a little.”

  Neil had her sing it again as if she were underwater and that was even funnier than the first version because of her complete seriousness in the matter. This time it was the elephant’s trumpet spraying spit that had Sadie crying with laughter.

  It was Sadie’s turn to sing next, but she refused, saying she was tone deaf. “I don’t want to break the mirrors.”

  “Can that really happen?” Jillybean asked. Neil explained that it could but not because someone was a bad singer, only if someone was a very powerful singer. “You could use your secret voice,” Jillybean suggested. “That won’t break anything at all.”

  Sadie lifted a single shoulder in her version of a shrug. “I don’t have a secret voice. Wait, what’s a secret voice?”