The Apocalyse Outcasts

by Peter Meredith

  “Sorry,” Sadie said, feeling the heat of her cheeks.

  There wasn’t a response for over a minute, but finally Grey came on, announcing his presence with a sigh. “Green this is blue. My companion thinks that I was too harsh and that I need to apologize. I’m sorry for yelling. We will be continuing our search and will contact you only if needed. Out.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I guess I was being pretty silly and all. I got the strobe off, sort of. Oh, don’t use the front door when you come back. There’s glass everywhere. Bye.”

  She waited, listening for some response but the radio was silent. Nico told her that coming back on to say “bye” as well wasn’t necessary and Grey wouldn’t do it. “He is follow manual very good.”

  Sadie didn’t think so. She thought Grey was being an uptight jerk and planned to tell him so when they got back. It was hours before she had the chance. They came back tired and cranky, sporting red scratches from tromping through the forest at night. She didn’t need to ask if they were successful at finding Jillybean, Neil’s depression was evident the second he walked through the door. He plopped onto a kitchen chair and began picking at the thousands of nettles that had attached themselves to his sweater vest.

  Grey was standing at the table where Sadie had opened cans of raviolis for them to eat—he had his can empty in under a minute.

  “About the radio,” Sadie said, trying not to falter when he turned his hazel eyes toward her. “I don’t think we have to be so by the book, you know. No one is out there, and even if they were what would they hear? A bunch of blabber.”

  The soldier glared, but after glancing in Neil’s direction he gritted his teeth into an angry smile. “First of all, I don’t blabber. Second, these radios can be traced, very, very easily, and third, you are probably the most wanted person on the planet. Your bounty is worth five thousand. That means you cannot afford to take chances. You have to live with the concept, minute-by-minute, every single day that there is always someone out there! Always someone listening. Always someone searching.”

  “Oh.”

  “Damn right, Oh. Now clear this table. Neil, get me more candles.” The captain spread out a map and stared thoughtfully for a moment. Sadie went to grab the empty can of raviolis but he took her wrist gently but firmly. “I’ll need that.” He marked their position with an X and then drew a circle around it using the can.

  “The circle is five-miles in every direction from this house, what I believe is the furthest distance she will be able go before sunrise. The question is: where is she going? Sadie, you said knew her the best. Where do you think?”

  She wanted to shrug, but stopped herself. It wasn’t the time for indecision, but unfortunately that’s all she had. “I know Jillybean, but I don’t know Ipes.”

  Grey’s brows came down sharply. “Wait…what? Ipes? The zebra? Are you saying that a stuffed zebra is controlling her? Like she has multiple personalities?”

  This time she did shrug but it wasn’t out of indecision. She just didn’t want to admit the truth. Neil spoke for her. “We think so. Maybe it’s an early case, but I don’t know.”

  “It’s getting worse,” Sadie said. “The zebra used to make suggestions to help her out, but at least twice it’s taken over her body. Three times, now, counting tonight. I don’t know where he would go.”

  “Probably somewhere familiar, somewhere safe,” Grey said. “The CDC? Would she go there?”

  Neil shook his head. “I doubt it. She never lived there. It was never her home and was never really safe in her mind. My guess is that she’ll make her way north back to Philly. Only she may not do it right away. She might go south first and then double back. We’re not joking when we say she’s eerily smart. She won’t go waltzing back up I95. It’ll be by back streets and through the woods.”

  “Could she drive?” Grey asked.

  The best answer was: possibly. With Jillybean, everything was possible. Since further searching that night would be both dangerous and useless, the four of them went to bed with the next day’s plans already laid out.

  Sadie would be stationed at a junction of roads northeast of the house in the town of Jackson. Nico would go south to Forsyth, not twenty miles from Macon. Neil would find a good perch to the west in Griffin and finally Captain Grey took the north segment in the town of McDonough.

  There was so much land to cover, over sixty square miles, that Sadie’s heart wasn’t in it as she climbed out of the Humvee just as the dawn was cracking its way between the dark earth and the darker sky.

  “Channel 6. Use it only in an emergency,” Grey said, speaking of the radio hooked to her pack. She traveled light. In her pack were two water bottles, an MRE, a map, and three magazines of 5.56mm ammo. “Lock and load,” he ordered.

  Sadie was familiar with weapons and the M4 was little more than the next generation M16 which she had shot on a few occasions. It should’ve been nothing to pull back on the charging handle, slap a magazine in place and drop the bolt, but this was Captain Grey’s “baby” and he was watching her closely.

  Though his gaze wasn’t sexual she never felt more like a girl than just then. She cleared her throat and began. “Safe on, pulling charging handle…mag in, and let the bolt go. Done.”

  He shook his head. “You didn’t check to see if the chamber was clear. Don’t forget that next time. Now let’s see your stance. Ok, ok…your feet are good but why do you have your elbows tucked? You keep your elbows tucked in only if you’re clearing a room. Out here give yourself a firm base. Alright, I’ll be back at noon.”

  The humvee kicked up dirt and was soon dwindled by distance to the size of a toy. Sadie looked around. There wasn’t much to Jackson, Georgia: some mom and pop stores, a few gas stations, and a couple of supermarkets; certainly not much in the way of sky-scrapers that would give her a good vantage. The best she had was the Butts County courthouse which sported a three story tall tower running up one end of the building.

  She headed straight for it, but had to detour in a sprint as a number of zombies were converging right at her. Sadie normally liked to run, but never liked to do it with a back pack bouncing up and down on what felt like her kidneys and a rifle in her hands keeping her from using the full extent of her sprinter’s body.

  Still, she was very fast and she was able to elude the zombies by running around the block and then back to the court house where another zombie in the shredded-up uniform of a county sheriff had been on its hands and knees, eating the white-heads off the clovers. It hadn’t seen her before and she didn’t see it, now.

  She went to the front door of the court house—it had been beaten down. Sadie raised the carbine and stepped in. Not a second later she heard the moan of the zombie but because of the acoustics in the empty building she didn’t realize it was behind her until it had a grip of her back pack. In whirl, she let the pack slip from her shoulders and, turning halfway around, fired the M4 one-handed like it was a huge pistol.

  There was very little kick as she blasted a hole in the zombie’s head. It flopped at her feet.

  “Why wasn’t Grey around to see that?” she wondered aloud. Hoisting her pack, she stepped over the still warm corpse and went for the tower, finding the door to the stairs destroyed as well. She feared more zombies, but there were none and soon she found herself in an open area at the top of the tower with balconies facing each of the primary points of the compass.

  As she was only a few feet above the tree line, the views weren’t great, especially when she considered the fact that she was searching for a girl barely three and half feet tall. A part of her knew she was wasting her time. Jilly would avoid towns such as this, at least at first. She would cross the fields of heather and slink among the forests of elm and pine.

  Sadie took out her map and studied it for a long time until she realized it was of no help at all. There just too much land to cover and only four of them to cover it.

  “Blue, radio check. Over.” Sadie’s radio said. S
he pulled it out of its flap as she heard Neil say in a nervous voice: “This is silver. Radio-checking over.”

  “Red, radio check, over,” Nico said, trying his best to sound American. Captain Grey had smirked when he had assigned red to the Russian.

  “Green, radio check, over,” Sadie said.

  “This is blue, maintain radio silence. Out.”

  Her shoulders slumped. She knew they were going to do the radio check and still her hopes soared at that first crackly voice that someone had spotted Jillybean already. Trying to stay positive, she went to the east balcony so that the rising sun would warm her. The sun wasn’t up ten minutes before became bored. She went to the other balconies and looked out. Nothing moved but zombies and the occasional pigeon.

  Two sighs later, she broke out the map that Grey had folded so precisely into a five inch square. By ten o’clock she was so bored that she had the map completely open, and was tracing roads absently. It was a Georgia state map and there wasn’t a single location in its borders that Sadie thought would draw Jillybean in particular. She laid it out flat, aligned it with the sun and then stood over it. Squinting downward, she began to wonder if she was far enough east.

  “Does it really matter where I am?” she wondered. “If I was Jillybean, or Ipes I should say, where would I go and why?” The first answer and really, the only answer was: home to Philadelphia, and the why was obvious, so that left the how. “How would I get home?”

  It was a stinking long walk, one that would daunt even Jillybean.

  Would she drive? Sadie was sure Jillybean could rig some sort of device that would allow her to run the gas and the brakes and steer at the same time. However Sadie didn’t think she would drive even if she could. The trip south had been so harrowing that Ipes probably wouldn’t chance it.

  “And that only leaves what, biking it?” Her first inclination was to dismiss the idea because the trip was too far and just as hazardous as driving, however she knew that Jillybean and Ram had ridden a bike for part of the time on their way south. Whenever Jillybean talked about that time her face would light up and she would smile at how much fun they had or she would laugh at how awful a sailor Ram had been.

  “Son of a bitch,” Sadie gasped realizing where the little girl was going. Jillybean was heading east for the ocean, Sadie was suddenly sure of it. “Blue this is Green,” Sadie practically yelled into her radio. “I am switching locations to…” she looked down at her map and saw the perfect spot. “To Mon…um, I mean, I’m switching spots to a position east of me.”

  She had almost blabbed out very dangerous information, going against rule one: someone was always listening.

  “Green this is Blue. How far east, over.”

  Sadie consulted the map. She was heading to the town of Monticello. It was a virtual hub of roads and if Jillybean was going straight east to the ocean she would likely pass near or through it. “Five miles.”

  “Affirmative, out.”

  She didn’t waste a second wondering what that meant. Sadie hitched her backpack, snugged it down tight on her shoulders and jogged down the stairs and out into the warm Georgia air. She ran straight down route 16. It was a two-lane blacktop, bordered by farms, fields, and forests. The scenery made for a pleasant run and she didn’t pause once for a rest or a drink until she came up on the outskirts of the town of Monticello.

  There she slowed trying to look in every direction and down every street, thinking that it would be hard to spot the little girl, and it was. However spotting zombies behaving strangely was easy. There was a group scuffling around a parked Volkswagen Jetta. They were so focused on the little car that they didn’t see Sadie at all, and so, sweating up a storm, she slipped up behind them. From about fifteen feet away she saw a lump in the front seat covered by a sheet.

  “There you are,” Sadie whispered. Now all she had to do was kill four zombies.

  Sadie raised the rifle and pulled the trigger. The bullet took the ear off one of the zombies and skipped off the top of the Jetta. “Shit,” she murmured and then adjusted her aim. The next three bullets dropped three of the zombies, but her fourth shot missed high and the fifth made a gaping wound in the last zombie’s throat as it charged her. It was still alive, but it went down and that was good enough for Sadie.

  She walked around it and tapped on the Jetta’s glass. “Alright kid. The jig’s up. License and registration.”

  Jillybean pulled back the sheet and glared up at her. Her eyes were bloodshot and there were dark circles beneath. She didn’t look well.

  “You ok?” Sadie asked.

  “Go away.”

  “You know I can’t do that, Ipes. I want to protect her too, and if you ask me, tromping across the country alone is about the most dangerous thing you could do.”

  “More dangerous than breaking into New Eden? I really doubt it. By the way, that one monster isn’t dead. It’s getting closer.”

  Sadie glanced back. The bullet had done something horrible to it; it could only use one side of its body, yet it was dragging itself on, gnashing its teeth.

  “Come on, Jilly, let’s go. I don’t want to waste a bullet on that thing.”

  Ipes shook Jillybean’s head. “No. I’m not going with you. Sure you could try to force me, but that won’t be good for her and I’ll just run away again.”

  “Can I at least get in the car?”

  Jillybean smirked as though she knew Sadie’s mind better than Sadie did, which might have been true. Still she unlocked the door and scooted over. “Thanks…are you hungry?” Sadie asked, ditching the rifle in the back seat and opening her pack. “I have one of those MREs. It’s got cheese and crackers, your favorite.”

  “Sure, and while I eat you can tell me how wonderful it is being with your little group of outcasts. You can tell me how much you care for Jillybean and how you’d never put her in danger.”

  Sadie had been unzipping her pack, but she stopped. “First of all, I never said you were going into New Eden and second, we do care for you.”

  The little girl laughed at this. “Here we go. Where do I start? Miss Sarah though I was such a strange little girl that she couldn’t even look me in the eyes. Nico thinks I’m a tag-along brat. Mister Neil…he likes everyone, but he doesn’t love everyone. He’s committed to his family. That’s who he loves. He’ll die for them but not for me. And that leaves you, my ole pal Sadie. Do you love Jillybean? If you can say it right now so that I’ll believe it, I’ll let her go. I’ll let her make her own decisions based on what her heart tells her and not her head.”

  This was a terrible spot for Sadie. Admitting love was the single most difficult thing she ever did. Growing up, she couldn’t remember once saying I love you, even to her own family and they hadn’t said it to her, either. Love was a word that she only used in emergencies and though this constituted an emergency she knew she wouldn’t be able to pull it off with enough sincerity.

  Yet she had to try. Her mouth came open, she nodded, laughed a little awkward laugh, raised her index finger as if she was going to make a point, and all the while the word love refused to come. She wanted it to come. She knew she loved Jillybean but the word wouldn’t pass her lips. Finally, in a fit of anger she said, “This isn’t about love, this is about fear. This is about Jillybean and all the things she’s afraid of. She has a powerful mind. It’s so powerful that she can invent you to save her from everything that scares her.”

  “Of course this is about fear!” the little girl snapped. “Fear is an emotion, just like love, and with Jillybean her love is constantly being rejected, it’s constantly being stepped upon. However, her fears grow with each passing day. Picture a sailboat. Her fears are the anchor that holds her back and love is the wind that propels her forward. Which is greater?”

  “For you, Ipes, fear will always be greater,” Sadie said. “It’s because you don’t understand love. You were born out of fear and so that’s all you ever see. You don’t see the love that’s all around her.”
r />   “You love Jillybean?” she asked with a soft, golden eyebrow skeptically arched.

  “I do,” Sadie said in a whisper. It had taken a lot just to admit it aloud.

  “Then say the words. It’s been over a year since anyone has told her they loved her. How long has it been for you?”

  Nico said it all the time and Sadie distinctively remembered Sarah saying it before she left. Neil only rarely said I love you, however his actions spoke louder than words and Sadie didn’t doubt his feelings in the least. “A few hours, I suppose,” she admitted. Jillybean wore a smug look that bothered Sadie. It turned the little girl ugly. “I think I know why I can’t tell you that I love you. It’s because I’m talking to Ipes. Let me say it to Jillybean.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t. She very perceptive and you’ll only disappoint her and make things worse.”

  “If she’s so perceptive, she’ll know the truth,” Sadie shot back.

  “Then say it,” the little girl said. “I’ll be listening.”

  Suddenly Jillybean blinked in confusion and then started working her jaw as if it had been locked shut. “Where are we? This isn’t New Eden.”

  “No, it’s not. I need to tell you something.” Sadie had to pause and an embarrassed smile crept over her face. “I, uh, just wanted to say…”

  Bamn! The two girls jumped as a grey fist smashed against the driver’s side window. It left a smeary streak as it pulled back. Sadie glanced out and saw the zombie she had shot—only now she noticed how terribly big it was. She began crawling into the backseat to get the M4 when the fist smashed again, this time breaking the glass. A hand grabbed her leg.

  Jillybean screamed and then Sadie heard the passenger door open and her little steps flying away. “Shit!” Sadie grabbed the M4 and tried to turn around but she was being pulled out of the car through the window. “Shit! Jillybean!”