The Apocalyse Outcasts

by Peter Meredith

  “You sure do,” Sarah said. She hit the gas and began plowing through the undead. It was grizzly beyond her experience, mostly because she decided to turn around. There were simply too many thousands of them in front to trust that their windows would hold up.

  Since she couldn’t gather any momentum, the turn was slow and sickening. Artie’s truck wasn’t one of the mega-cab, extended-bed, workhorse type of trucks. It was a Ford ranger and because of its small size it was having a tremendous time climbing over the grey bodies that fell beneath its tires. It wasn’t long before she managed to high-center the truck on a particularly large mound of the undead.

  “Not again!” Sarah cried, gunning the engine and hearing the tires spin in a high-pitched whine. The ranger rocked back and forth as more of the zombies got hold of the stranded truck, and Sarah realized that it was only a matter of time before the windows would come smashing in.

  This understanding brought with it the cold-steel of panic lancing into her guts. It was a feeling that arced outwards—it clutched her throat, making breathing difficult; it ran down her hands, and they shook as though she were attached to a live wire.

  Strangely, underneath all this fear, there was a single ray of calm within her. Its cause was simply the question that came to Sarah’s mind: What would Jillybean do?

  This wasn’t the first time Sarah was in a high-centered vehicle, and Jillybean had been instrumental in getting that truck unstuck. That had been an easier situation. They’d had time on their side then. Now they had only seconds to work with.

  So, what would Jillybean do?

  “Does this have four-wheel drive?” Sarah asked Artie, as her eyes scanned the dash.

  “No,” Artie replied, simply.

  “Of course not,” Sarah said. “That would be too friggin’ easy.” She stared around trying to find something that would help, something, anything to get traction under the rear wheels. All she had was Artie’s pipe, her backpack, a .38 and a thousand zombies. The panic began to overwhelm the slight sensation of calm, just as the zombies would soon overwhelm them both.

  “Oh, Christ! What would Jillybean do?” She practically yelled this. Her breathing was now practically a dog’s pant.

  The answer came to her from that little pool of calm. Jillybean wouldn’t panic. That was right. The little girl always seemed relatively detached, which probably allowed her to think straight. Sarah took a breath, deep and purposeful.

  “I have to find a way to get something under the rear tires for traction or, I can do what Jillybean did, and weigh down the back.” A small section of the rear window was on runners that would allow limited access to the bed. Sarah could squeeze through it if she wanted to, but since the bed was open it would be suicide. Nor was there anything in the cab with them that was remotely heavy enough that she could throw back there.

  “Beams,” Artie said, slinking lower in his seat. “They’re coated with them. They’re weighing them down and not just in the back. It’s all over them. I don’t like that. No to beams. Just say no.”

  His lunacy grated on Sarah’s nerves, however she still had that Jillybean calm which kept her from lashing out uselessly. Instead she gazed at Artie with cold and calculating eyes. He was only a tool in those denim-blue eyes; the only question was how best to use him.

  Not as sacrifice, not yet. Nor as a distraction—how would that get the truck unstuck? He was too big to fit through the back window to help and all that would do would attract more of them...

  In a blink, Sarah saw a way to get the traction she needed. “I need this,” she said, grabbing the four foot length of pole from Artie’s hands. Normally his insanity lent him strength, now however he was cowering and his fear made him weak. He tried to grab the pole and at the same time he opened his mouth to complain.

  Sarah smashed him in the face with the end of the pole, leaving his nose bent and bleeding. She said, “Sorry,” despite not feeling sorry in the least. In fact she felt empowered. Her first thought at seeing the shocked and dazed look in his eyes was: I wonder if this is how men feel when they win a fight...or rape a girl?

  The thought of rape caused the empowered feeling to diminish. “No time for dwelling on that crap,” she said. Still crouched in the footwell, Artie began to splutter half-formed angry words. Sarah ignored him. Her backpack had been sitting on the console between their seats; she grabbed it, dumped everything out of it onto Artie’s seat, and then stuck it on the pole. She slid back the little square of window behind her, and stuck the pole out.

  Waving it around, she cried: “Come on zombies, you stupids! Come and get it.”

  Up to this point, the zombies had been focusing their rage on the cab where the two humans sat trapped. Now, a good number of them turned their attention on the pole and the pack. The shrieking words also helped to antagonize them. They seemed to go berserk, climbing over themselves in an effort to get to over the sidewall of the truck’s bed.

  Those that fell became stepping stones for the many hundreds of others pushing forward. Soon, a number of zombies were on the bed and even more were hanging off the end of the truck which began to tilt rearwards, just as she had hoped.

  Sarah pulled the pole back inside, put the truck in gear and hit the gas. She had expectations of the truck mauling over the zombies, perhaps not in spectacular fashion, but in a steady way until they cleared this section of the herd. Reality was different.

  The tires were slow to find traction seeing as they were basically driving over a carpet of human corpses. The truck jounced and lurched as the Ranger shredded up the zombies, spitting out slapping wet sheets of grey flesh and sending up gouts of black blood.

  The undead weren’t moaning as they usually did, they were practically shrieking. Next to her, Artie, concussed and cross-eyed, was ranting about his pole and the beams as he tried to climb up from the footwell. Blood poured from his nose like twin rivers. It ran into the thicket of his moustache where it disappeared, not even reddening his lips in the slightest.

  Sarah couldn’t spare a moment to worry where it was all going. Her world was all chaos and mayhem. She had managed to turn the Ranger around to point back the way they had come, but now there were so many of the beasts in her way, both in front of them and beneath the tread of her tires, that the truck seemed alive in her hands.

  It bucked savagely and, when she least expected, would suddenly attempt to spin in place as one tire or the other would lose traction, slipping in guts. She found it impossible to keep the wheels aligned and, like a sailboat being driven by a crosswind, she found herself side-slipping toward the guard rail. Finally, she ran up against it with a shriek of metal.

  “Hey!” Artie said, somehow finding, if only briefly, a moment of sanity. “Watch the paint.”

  “Doing my best,” Sarah replied through gritted teeth. She fought the Ranger off the guard rail only to have its rear try to swing out. “No! We’re not playing that game.” She swung the wheel into the skid and just like that the tires bit on plain old asphalt and they leapt forward, gaining speed until at last the they were clear of the zombies.

  Clear except for the three in the bed that had managed to hang on and were banging on the glass of the rear window. She slowed way down, and then accelerated quickly. The zombies plodded backwards at the mercy of the momentum change until they hit the tailgate and fell out.

  “Thank you, Jillybean,” Sarah said, after a deep breath.

  Artie thought she was talking to him. “I’m not that. I’m the mayor of Easton.”

  “Yes you are,” Sarah told him. “And I’m Janice...” She realized just then that she didn’t know her fake last name, or anything about this Janice-person she was pretending to be.

  “Sills. You’re Janice Sills,” Artie told her. Whether from his case of the crazies or from the blow she had given him, he sat on the cans of food she had emptied from her backpack, blinking like an owl. “Where are we going? We’ve been this way already.”

  Could he have forg
otten the zombie horde already? With him it was a distinct possibility. “The road was blocked, remember? We have to find a way around. While we drive, you can tell me everything you remember about me.”

  As mayor and year book president back in high school, he seemed to know a lot. He spoke until it was clear they weren’t leaving the city that day. A tremendous west to east migration seemed to be occurring and every road out of the city was packed with zombies.

  “Keep talking,” Sarah said, pretending she wasn’t the least bit afraid. “I want to hear all about me.”

  He nodded vacantly as Sarah took them into the heart of the deadest city in America.

  Chapter 24

  Jillybean

  Western Maryland

  Ipes was in her head yelling. Beside her Neil was hollering. Sadie was screaming and Nico was cursing. Guns were firing and bullets were passing each other, some going south, some going north. Some hit the Explorer, while others blazed by, looking like shooting stars.

  Jillybean was petrified by all the commotion. At Ipes’ suggestion she had dropped down into the footwell and now she held her arms tight around her knees, refusing to poke her head up to see what was happening. She was a little ball of very soft flesh and easily broken bones. Like a ball, she bounced when the SUV suddenly jumped.

  It was the front tire exploding as a bullet struck it.

  Neil screamed louder, uselessly crying: “Hold on!”

  What was there to hold onto that couldn’t be shot away? Despite the rhetorical question that had popped into her head, she looked around for something to grab, however it was too late. Neil swerved the Explorer straight off the highway.

  Caught in a crossfire, it was his only choice. With an ear-shattering screech of twisting metal, they laid a fence full over and then went rushing down a steep embankment.

  “Lookout for the trees!” yelled Sadie.

  “I know,” Neil said, fighting the SUV, and trying to turn it. He succeeded so that for a brief second, they were traveling parallel to the hill and not straight down it. Then the blown wheel colluded with gravity and the Explorer tipped onto its side, and then rolled over onto its roof.

  Jillybean lost track of which way was up or how many times they spun. She was too busy bouncing like the little ball she was. Holding on was not an option for her, and it was likely a good thing that she didn’t try. She simply went with the flow until the vehicle came to rest in an upright position and she found herself sitting in her seat and wondering how she got there.

  Around her the Explorer had been transformed. Every window was broken; the roof was squished down and dented in all sorts of ways. They no longer had a hood covering the engine. It had simply disappeared, as had both side mirrors and the radio antennae.

  Amazingly, the engine still ran. When their sideways revolutions had been checked, the engine made a sound that was half-growl, half- scream, like a cat in the middle of a fight. It then chugged and spluttered, again like a cat, this time one bringing up a fur ball, then, happily, it found a soft purring rhythm.

  Behind Jillybean, Sadie was coughing and Nico was still cursing in a muttery sort of way. Next to Jillybean, Neil stared around as if surprised to find he was still alive. Up on the highway the sound of shooting went on.

  “Go, Neil. Drive,” Sadie said. She was feeling her face with the tips of her fingers and working her jaw around as she spoke, so the words came out warbly.

  “Yeah,” he replied. His hands shook and seemed unsure of themselves. He acted as though he had never driven before. First he touched the steering wheel, then the keys, and for some reason he looked at the pedals on the floor as if they might have become switched, gas for brake, with all the tumbling.

  Finally, he gave the gas a press and they began to rattle away through a spare forest of pine. They made such a clamor that Jillybean looked back to see if they were leaving pieces of the Explorer behind.

  “They do not follow yet,” Nico said. He too had been looking behind them.

  After they had progressed maybe a mile, Neil suddenly blinked and asked, “Is anyone hurt?”

  Mumbles were the reply, except for Nico, who said, “I have scratch. Is nothing.”

  Sadie leaned over the seat to see about the scratch. In a remarkably calm voice she said, “He’s been shot. In the arm. We’ll need to stop in a little while as soon as we can.” Her voice might have been calm, however her face was bloodless and her lip quivered.

  “Ok...ok, we’ll stop,” Neil said. “Just not yet. Can anyone see them? Are they coming?”

  “I said, they do not follow,” Nico grunted. “They fight each other.” The sound of the gun battle echoed among the trees, gradually growing fainter as they put more distance between them and the highway.

  “Thank God,” Sadie said.

  “Thank you, God,” Jillybean said, obediently. She knew what God was. Back in the Before, in the time of Mommies and Daddies, she had gone to Sunday School and to church. Not everybody did, but she did. She had worn a white dress with a yellow ribbon for a belt and she remembered the white shoes she had worn had to be cleaned a lot because she always scuffed them.

  You also had a pink dress and a flowered one, remember? Ipes asked. She remembered. The pink had been worn on Easter, when they hunted for eggs. Ipes had sat in her basket with a lap full of jelly beans.

  “Isn’t it supposed to be Easter, now?” she asked. Her insides felt quivery from the accident and the shooting. She had supposed that the feeling would diminish, but it hadn’t. Instead it had grown like a balloon that wanted to pop. Perhaps to counter this swelling sensation, she felt an overwhelming need to talk: “It’s spring, right? So that means Easter and the Easter Bunny. When’s he supposed to be here? Do you think he got turned into a monster? I don’t think so since we don’t see normal rabbits being monsters. Maybe I should ask the Velveeta Rabbit...”

  Neil interrupted, “Shush.”

  The sound of the guns had ceased. Now Jillybean didn’t feel swollen. She felt small and, wanting to get even smaller, she shrank down in her seat.

  “Is this as fast as we can go?” Sadie asked. In spite of the shimmying and the shaking, and the clanking and the wheezing of the Explorer, they were making steady, though not spectacular progress.

  Neil tried the gas and everything became worse. “I have to slow down. I’ll shred the tire and who knows what else if I don’t.” He eased up on the gas, but the Explorer never recovered. A new thunking noise from within the engine heralded its doom and after a half-mile the engine seized up.

  It had been their intention to jump out of the vehicle and put some distance between them and it before either the bounty hunter or the colonel’s men found them, however not a single door still functioned. They were forced to climb, very carefully, through the broken windows to get out.

  “I’ll take the backpack with the food, and the axe, and one of the fuel cans,” Neil said. “Sadie, if you’ll carry the shotgun and some of the water.”

  “I can carry some things,” Nico said. He was grey in the face, and held onto a tree to stay upright. His statement was ignored by everyone.

  They’re forgetting the battery, Ipes mentioned.

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Jillybean said. “Hey, Mister Neil, you’ll need the battery out of the car. Amember how long it took to find this one?” It had been a task of over an hour to cull through hundreds of cars to locate one that still had any juice left to it.

  “We don’t have time,” Neil said.

  “And it’s too heavy,” Sadie added.

  Ipes blew out through both of his wide nostrils. If they don’t take the battery...

  “Then they should leave the gas,” Jillybean finished the zebra’s sentence. “How about if I help you guys?” she asked them.

  “You’re going to help?” Neil asked. “The battery weighs almost as much as you do. You’ll never get it five feet and I don’t think I could carry it more than a mile.”

  “I’m not gonna
carry anything,” Jillybean said. “That’s silly. You and Sadie will carry it all, and it won’t be that tough.”

  Their looks of incredulity were fascinating to her. Couldn’t they see that everything they needed to transport their gear was right in front of them?

  “Whatever we do, we must hurry,” Nico said. “We don’t have much of head start. Is not good.”

  Jillybean jumped right into action. She directed Neil to pull the battery out of the Explorer and then she picked out a good sapling for Sadie to chop down with the axe. When the sapling was hacked down and shorn of its branches it was essentially a rough pole. This they hung with the backpack, a gallon of water, a five gallon gas can, and the battery hanging by its strap.

  It was a heavy load at ninety-five pounds, but when Neil took one side of the sapling, and Sadie the other, and settled it on their shoulders it wasn’t bad at all.

  Nico took the shotgun in his good hand and Jillybean hefted the axe to her shoulder like a continental soldier. “Let’s go,” the little girl said as though she was in charge. For lack of a better idea, they walked in the direction of the slope, letting gravity assist them. Even with the sapling distributing the weight, Sadie and Neil were soon sweating.

  “We’re lucky the battery had a strap,” Neil said. “Otherwise we’d be screwed.”

  What does he mean by that? Ipes asked. He was right there when Nico put it in the Explorer to begin with. Do you think he forgot? How can you forget about something so obvious?

  “I don’t see how he could have,” Jillybean answered in a whisper. “It hasn’t even been a day. Maybe he’s not good with observationing things. Grode-ups rarely are.”

  “Hey, Jillybean,” Sadie said. “What are you whispering about?”

  “Only stuff. I was just talking with Ipes.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather talk with me?” Sadie asked in between large breaths. Jillybean, who was very much enamored with the older girl, slowed down to walk beside her, and looked up at her expectantly. Sadie shifted the pole to her other shoulder.