The Apocalyse Outcasts

by Peter Meredith

  “Ma-ma,” Eve said again.

  Now Shondra looked back and her jaw fell open. There was no getting around it. Shondra had recognized her.

  No, Sarah mouthed the word, shaking her head slightly, silently begging her friend not to say anything. Shondra didn’t. She gave the slightest of nods and headed for the door.

  “Ma-ma,” Eve said again and then she was gone.

  It took all of Sarah’s strength just to make it back to the little room that had been designated as the pharmacy. She sat on a blue crate and cried. They were tears of joy—Eve had recognized her and called her Ma-ma! They were also tears of relief—Shondra had recognized her and not said anything…or so she thought.

  The door to the pharmacy opened minutes later and one of the Sisters who had accompanied Eve was standing there. In her hand was a pistol which she leveled at Sarah.”

  “You’re a Denier, a filthy Denier!”

  Chapter 34

  Neil

  Southern Georgia

  As Sarah was experiencing her first morning in New Eden, discovering that to the hierarchy she was nothing more than a number, Neil was puttering about the little house south of Atlanta in an increasingly tense mood. Captain Grey had left on his recon mission before first light and by noon everyone was scared that he had been killed or captured.

  “This shouldn’t be taking so long,” Sadie said. She wasn’t one for pacing, instead she stretched the lean muscles of her legs on the living room floor next to Nico who was laid out on the couch. The Russian was markedly better. He smiled now and was as awake and alert as his pain meds would allow him.

  “Recon is slow business,” he intoned as he had every time Sadie complained about how long the wait was. “Do not worry my Kraslvaya, it will be ok.”

  Neil walked to the kitchen to check on Jillybean—the girl had paused again. She stood slightly bent at the waist with her hand out as if she was about to pet a dog, only there was no dog. For three seconds she stood absolutely, unblinkingly still. Only her thin brown hair stirred at the mercy of a confused back and forth breeze.

  The corners of Neil’s mouth drew down as he stood there, hoping she would click back into place as she had the first time he saw her this way. That had been after breakfast. The next two times, he had watched her stand rigid until he couldn’t take it and had called to her.

  It was the same now. “Jillybean?”

  She came back with a start, as if he had snuck up on her. “Yes?”

  “Um, are you hungry?”

  She glanced at the sun, puckering one eye. “Is it lunch time already?”

  Neil had to force his mouth to keep its little smile in place; time displacement was another bad sign. Sadie worried Jillybean was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Neil thought it was worse than that. When he had first met Jillybean, Neil had thought Ipes was a cute manifestation of what was a justifiable self-defense mechanism. In the last couple of weeks, however, he had begun to fear that she was borderline schizophrenic or was on her way to developing multiple personalities.

  Now, after seeing the strange catatonic lapses he had to assume she was getting worse, if she hadn’t already crossed the border into crazy-ville. The correct, proper, moral thing to do would be to let Jillybean rest somewhere safe for a few weeks. It would have to be somewhere hidden, a lake in the Ozarks, perhaps where she could leave her fears behind and just be a child. And Neil planned to do just that, after saving Sarah and Eve.

  If Sadie knew the extent of the little girl’s problems she would insist on before. She would claim they didn’t need Jillybean’s help, that they were just as smart as she was, and that they could save Sarah and Eve on their own. Neil knew better. Sadie was sweet, and her love and loyalty could never be doubted, however forethought and planning weren’t her strong suit, as she was the first to admit.

  When it came to rescues, Neil didn’t trust her, but he distrusted himself to an even greater degree. Anytime danger had ever put him in the position to make command decisions, he had panicked, his mind crushed by insecurity. Looking back at the apocalypse he thought it was a miracle he had survived.

  He didn’t trust Nico either. The Russian was handsome, strong, and brave, yet he hadn’t shown the slightest hint of anything other than ordinary intelligence. Nor did Neil trust Captain Grey. He was clearly a man with extraordinary skills, great intelligence and years of experience. He had proved himself capable of both taking a life and saving a life, but he was still a soldier. He followed orders without question and there was no telling what the full extent of his orders concerning New Eden were. Perhaps there was a diplomatic aspect to them. After all Grey was a representative of his general in Colorado; it wasn’t far-fetched to believe this general would want to begin forming alliances among the other ragged bands of survivors, even with kooks like Abraham.

  That left Jillybean as the only person Neil could fully trust...as long as she held it together.

  Fearing that her odd catatonic episodes would lead to something worse, Neil kept her close to him all day and that meant playing with her as the afternoon plodded on. He was subjected to a seemingly endless tea party on the porch, and a game of chase that ended with them both running from a zombie. When she suggested they play dress-up, he took control.

  “Since that zombie left, let’s go skip some stones instead.”

  “Do you mean skip over them? Or do you, like, wanna play hopscotch. That has stones and skipping.”

  “No, I meant throwing them. What you do is...I’ll just show you.”

  They went around the house to the pond and Neil found a stone and chucked it: ploosh.

  “Was that it? That just looked like you threw a rock,” Jillybean said. “Did you forget the skip part?”

  “No, I just got the wrong rock,” Neil said, bent over and wagging his head side-to-side, looking for a correctly shaped rock.

  “There’s a right rock?” Jillybean asked. She squatted with her knees splayed like a pink-legged grasshopper. “What do you do once you throw it? Do we have to fetch it?” She sounded excited at the prospect.

  “No. The whole point is to make the rock skip. Like this!” Just as the first, this one went ploosh and didn’t skip at all. “Son of a...I need a flatter rock.” Neil tried a piece of slate that he whipped side-armed at the pond. It skipped three times before sinking with a plop.

  “It bounced!” Jillybean cried, taking two steps into the water and pointing. “How do you do that? Rocks are aposed to sink, I know it.”

  Neil showed her which rocks to use and how to sling them just right. Jillybean was not a natural. At the start, she threw with her wrist instead of her shoulder and the rocks would drop into the water one after another each with a disappointing ploosh.

  Meanwhile Neil was getting a good rhythm going. His rocks would skip, bound, and sometimes even seemed to roll across the flat surface of the pond. Jillybean loved it and, as it was the only “athletic” event Neil was any good at, he did too.

  They threw rocks until Neil’s elbow was aching and the zombies were creeping down out of the forest toward them. Although she could never get her rocks to skip more than three times in a row, Jillybean went into the house excited to tell Sadie all about it.

  The Goth girl had been trying new recipes out with the food they had on hand which consisted mostly of aging fish and a bushel of apples. She had tried roasting, boiling and finally frying the apples. Fried apples were surprisingly good: tart and sweet in proper measures. Jillybean turned her nose up at the bass and ate a plateful of apples as her dinner. Neil ate the fish to be polite, but worried he would regret it later as it was extremely fishy.

  Dinner was over and the last of the sunlight, a precious gold in a sea of deepening indigo, was pushing feebly through the trees when Captain Grey returned, bringing with him a man dying of the zombie virus. Grey had bundled him in a blanket and bound him with silver duct tape.

  “Beginning of stage 5,” Grey commented, jerking his thumb
to the unconscious man.

  Sadie lifted a shoulder and Neil shook his head. “What’s stage 5?”

  Grey gave them a look of incredulity. “What’s stage 5? It’s the final stage. He’s probably got less than an hour left. Grab his feet, Neil.” Grey took hold of the man’s shoulders and with Neil’s help they brought him inside just ahead of the stumbling zombies.

  “Why...why did you bring him...here?” Neil asked gasping. “Why didn’t you just help him on to the next life out there?”

  “He’s from New Eden,” Grey snapped. “Why else would I drag his soon to be dead ass all the way back here?”

  “Are you going to torture him?” Sadie asked, nervously. Grey rolled his eyes as if the question was far-fetched. Neil didn’t think it was. The Believers were such fanatics that he wondered if even a hellish torture would get them to talk about the secrets of New Eden.

  Nico grimaced himself off the couch and when the man was settled in his place, Grey did the opposite of torture. He cut away the blanket, exposing the man’s head and one of his arms. Next, he force-fed him medicine to reduce his fever and started an IV of Lactated Ringers, adding a morphine drip.

  “You think you can save him?” Neil asked. “Really?”

  Grey sat back on his heels and ran a camouflage-painted hand across an equally green painted face. “That’s about the dumbest question I ever heard. What’s that smell? Apples? Do we have any left?”

  While Sadie got a plate for him and Jillybean a bottle of clean water, Grey told them what he had discovered. “We’re screwed. New Eden is locked up tighter than a frog’s ass. Those silos might as well be called what they really are: guard towers. They have 360 degree views, gunports to cover every angle, and very likely, communication gear allowing them to call in reinforcements. I got up close, but you guys don’t stand a chance.”

  “I can be pretty sneaky,” Jillybean said. She stood next to him holding the bottle of water like a pale, female version of Gunga Din.

  “Yeah? Can you sneak past ten thousand stiffs? There is a very active horde of them all around New Eden. I mean a freaking big horde. I found them hundreds deep in a belt around the perimeter. It didn’t make sense why they were arranged the way they were until I found these.”

  From his pack he extracted a number of light fixtures. As Nico and Neil inspected them Grey inhaled his plate of apples and sucked down the entire bottle of water.

  “They are lights,” Nico said. “You say they attract zombies. How?”

  “All I know is that they’re strobe lights. I couldn’t tell you why it attracts them since we’ve always been more interested in not attracting them. However I can tell you why the lights are being used. The zombies act as a first line of defense and as an early warning system. If I was to attack New Eden I would need a company of rangers and by the time we fought our way through, the loonies inside would be prepared for us.”

  As her water-bottle holding duties were no longer needed and the lights looked to be just lights, Jillybean had drifted over to the man on the couch and was inspecting him. He had begun moaning and now that he was being rapidly infused with fluids he was no longer cherry-bright with the fever.

  “He’s not from New Eden,” she stated. “He’s from another place.”

  “Wrong,” Grey told her. “I found him a hundred yards from the southernmost tower. He was yelling at them to let him back in. All I could get out of him was that he still believed. He probably screwed up and they booted him.”

  Jillybean touched the man’s sweat-beaded forehead and leaned in close to sniff him. “Nope. He’s from someplace else. He’s smells real bad. They have bathes and showers there in New Eden. Sadie said so. And look at his hair. He’s like a cave man. We learned about them in school, they ate dinosaurs and pulled girls around by the hair. And look at his clothes. They are real all dirty and old; they dress clean, the Believers do. So that means this guy is from someplace else.”

  Grey sighed, preparing to give his rebuttal when the man on the couch opened his eyes. Jillybean leapt back in fright, but the man only seemed confused. “Where am I? Where’s Beth?”

  “I’m Jillybean.”

  This statement would confuse anyone and the man was no exception. He only blinked with huge, glassy eyes at the girl until Captain Grey nudged her away from the couch.

  “Hi there. I’m Captain Grey. You’re safe here, ok? We won’t hurt you. Can you tell me your name?”

  “Arthur Higgs,” he said around a thick, dry tongue. He tried to swallow, but only made odd clicking sounds. “I’m the...I’m the...I thought I was a mayor, but I’m not. Right? Isn’t that right? And Beth is dead isn’t she?” None of them present knew and so none of them answered.

  “She’s dead,” he whispered. “And I’m dying. I can feel it crawling inside me. Like the beams...wait, there aren’t any beams are there?”

  “None that can hurt you, Arthur,” Grey told him. “Are you from New Eden?”

  “No, I’m from Easton, Maryland. Can I have a drink? I’m so thirsty.”

  Jillybean ran to fill the water bottle and Neil came closer to the couch. “Hi. I’m looking for my wife, Sarah Rivers. Have you seen her? She’s about my height, and has long blonde hair, blue eyes. She’s very pretty. Have you seen anyone that looks like that? She was in a white Honda Accord. Does that ring a bell?”

  Arthur only shook his head, his eyes losing their focus. Neil went back to the dining room table and tried not to let the tears come.

  “Sorry, Neil,” Grey said gripping his shoulder. “It wasn’t going to work even if she was in there. We would need an army to break in. Chances are she is alive and well but stranded between here and Philadelphia looking for gas.”

  Neil didn’t believe that for a second.

  “Here you go, Mister Arthur.” Jillybean held out the bottle. Arthur drank noisily. He blinked with each swallow. The movement was mechanical rather than human and more than a bit distressing to look at. Jillybean stepped back. “What are you doing way down here? Were you trying to get into New Eden?”

  His head went one way and his words went the other. “Yes. I remember now. Me and my friend Janice were hoping to be healed or protected or something. But they only took her because I was...” He stopped with a confused look.

  “Because you were bitted?” Jillybean asked.

  “No, because I was crazy.” His words were fading in strength and his eyes started to droop. “I remember it like it was a dream. I was so afraid of crazy stuff; beams and electric water. I remember raving all the time. I was crazy, crazy, crazy...” His voice faded to nothing but then he blinked as if being startled awake. “Not anymore, now I’m dying. Just like Beth. It’ll be good to see her again. It’s been so long. So, so long. So long since I could think straight. That’s why they didn’t take me. I couldn’t think straight and I was a danger.”

  Jillybean’s lips were pursed and cocked to the side as she listened to Arthur. “But they took Janice?” she asked.

  “Yeah, they said she had great faith. She believed that guy was a prophet, but he was crazy. And the people were crazy too. I was crazy, yes. I thought I was the mayor of Easton, but they thought he was a god. Even...Janice thought that. Even...”

  His eyes lost their focus and his lips stopped moving in the middle of forming a word. Captain Grey checked his pulse. “He’s going pretty quick. Neil, let’s move him to the garage.”

  “What’s in the garage?” Jillybean asked.

  Neil wanted to answer her, but his throat was too tight. Where the hell was his wife? Where in the world was Sarah Rivers? Had she got to New Eden days ahead of them or Arthur? Or was she stranded, out of gas in some piss-ant little burg? If so, which one? There had to be over a thousand little towns between them and Philadelphia. The thought of dragging Sadie and Jillybean in a dangerous search of each was overwhelming.

  Sadie answered the little girl. “Mister Arthur is going to turn into a monster soon and I know it might be sad, but Miste
r Neil and Captain Grey are going to have to stop that from happening. Do you understand?”

  Jillybean nodded as Neil grabbed the blanket near the ankles and Grey the shoulders. “I get it, but it’s not so sad. It’s what he would want. That’s what I think. I’m just glad he was able to tell us where Miss Sarah is before he turned into a monster.”

  Neil dropped Arthur’s feet with a light thump. “What? When did he say that?”

  “He didn’t,” the captain growled. “Now get those feet.”

  Neil ignored him. He rushed to Jillybean full of excitement. “What did he say about Sarah? All he mentioned were two people named Beth and Janice. Is Sarah one of them? It’s Janice, right?”

  “I think so,” Jillybean answered. “Miss Sarah is real smart. She probably knew she couldn’t go to New Eden as herself so she made up a name: Janice. And she can’t go looking like herself neither, so she probably cut her hair or is wearing a wig. And she probably has eye-changeable contact things for her eyes. That’s what means they can change your eyes to a new color. Before the monsters came, my Aunt Alice wanted to get them because her eyes were kaka-brown. That’s what she said.”

  “There’s an awful lot of probablies and very few facts in your theory,” Grey noted.

  “Yes Sir, I guess, ‘cept I don’t know what facts or a theory is,” Jillybean said. “Does it mean I talk too much? My old teacher Miss Monfit said that, too.”

  “Don’t worry about any of that, just tell us what you think,” Neil said, turning Jilly away from Captain Grey to keep her from being distracted by the air of authority that built up around him whenever he challenged anyone.

  She seemed unnerved by Neil’s desperation and leaned somewhat away as she said: “I think Janice is really Miss Sarah. Mister Arthur said he was crazy for a long time and that he was raving, that’s what means he shouted a lot. And he said he was a danger. I don’t think anyone but Miss Sarah would go anywhere with him.”