“I’ll be right back,” she said and headed for the garage.
The old woman mistook what she was after and said: “That’s not necessary, dear. I admit, I used some of your flour, but I also used my Crisco and syrup and a lot of other ingredients. And I didn’t use very much at all, just a few cups. I thought it would be a nice surprise.”
Jillybean turned back to the old woman, her mind quite spun around by the cookie and the confession and the wonderful smell of the house. “You…you used my flour? You took it, you mean. That’s stealing.”
Granny Annie shook her head. “I don’t know if I’d call it stealing since I used it for you. The cookies are for you, dear. Remember, you said that you wanted to use the flour for cookies? I saved you the trouble and look how good they turned out. I don’t mean to disparage you, however, baking takes practice and you might have wasted that whole bag of flour trying to make cookies half as good as this.”
“You’re right, I think,” Jillybean admitted, calming quickly. “I just wish you had waited and showed me how to make them.” She was sure she could learn the basics of baking from a cookbook, but she was also sure she could learn a great deal more from a lady who had taken a hodgepodge of odd ingredients and turned out such wonderful cookies.
“Don’t you worry your shaggy little head about that, I’ll show you with the next batch, dear.”
Jillybean forgot all about Ipes as she stepped forward eagerly. Granny Annie frowned at her. “We aren’t going to make them now, dear. A baker’s dozen should last you a week, if not longer. You know it’s almost winter. We should be thinking about conserving what we have because Oklahoma can get brutally cold on occasion.”
“Conserving?” Jillybean asked. She knew the word, of course, however she was thrown off by the pronoun “we” which had been used just before it.
“Oh yes. We have to be careful with our supplies. But don’t worry, we have a good start between us. I have an entire pantry of preserves. Have you ever canned anything, dear?”
“I caught a bumble bee in a jar once,” Jillybean answered, “but my mom made me put it back in the garden.”
Granny Annie laughed at this, her overly large dentures nearly falling out of her mouth in the process. “No, dear. I’m talking about canning fruits and vegetables. It’s a way of keeping them from spoiling for a long time. I can teach you how.”
“I don’t think I have time for that. I have to teach myself how to weld before sunset. Is canning a long process?”
“It is,” the old woman said as she made her way to her kitchen table and eased into a chair. “It’s a long process and one that can’t be taught in a few hours. You’re going to have to stay with me, dear. I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist on it. I can’t in good conscience let a five-year-old wander around the country without adult supervision. There’s just too much bad stuff out there.”
Jillybean’s hand slipped into her pocket and found the grip of the .38. “I’m seven,” she declared. “I’m a May flower…and I’m sorry, Miss Granny Annie ma’am, but I can’t stay here. I have to go find my family and I have to go today. You can’t stop me.”
An image bloomed in her mind…an awful image of blood and flashes of light leaping from the .38 and an old lady lying on the floor, staring up at the ceiling with odd cloudy eyes. Jillybean squeezed her eyes shut as hard as she could and when she opened them again the kitchen was as it was supposed to be, or nearly so. There was silence in the room; a tense silence on Jillybean’s part and a sad one on Granny Annie’s.
After a few moments, Granny Annie asked in a voice that was close to begging: “Will you come back to visit me when you find your family? I’d like to meet them and…and maybe we could spend some more time together, then. I can show you how to bake and to can preserves and you can tell me about your adventures.”
Now it was Jillybean’s turn to grow sad. Her adventures weren’t the type you shared with someone whose first name was “Granny.”
“I’ll visit if I can…but hey, why don’t you come with me to Colorado? There are a whole lots of good people there. You could be a baker or a canner-person. I don’t know if they have any grannies in the Valley and they probably need some.”
She shook her head, her loose jowls swinging gently. “No, I couldn’t. Thanks, though. It’s just I couldn’t make the trip. It’s too dangerous. And my back has issues. I can’t sit in a car for very long. And what happens if my boys come for me? If they showed up while I was gone, I’d never forgive myself.”
Jillybean knew her boys would never come for her. They were dead. Another silence settled over the room. Jillybean could tell that Granny Annie was preparing to make another attempt at persuasion and so she cut the old lady off.
“I have to go.” It wasn’t a lie. The sun blared directly in through a west window, telling Jillybean that it would set in the next two hours. She had to get to the hardware store before it did. Jillybean started heading for the garage.
“Wait!” Granny Annie cried. “Your cookies. I’ll wrap them up for your trip and I have some extra cinnamon for you. For some reason everyone forgets to take cinnamon, don’t ask me why.”
Granny Annie bustled about, packaging the cookies and the extra cinnamon and some salt and two jars of black berry preserves. “They give me the trots,” she declared.
In Jillybean’s mind, that didn’t seem like a bad thing since she knew, as everyone did, that trotting was the same thing as running. “Thanks so much…would you take a gift from me? I have some extra flour, I guess, and some sugar. You wanted that before.”
A momentary longing swept over Granny Annie’s face, but it lasted just a blink before it turned to one of reluctant pain. “No, I couldn’t. It wouldn’t be right.”
With gratitude, Jillybean took a pendulous plastic bag filled with preserves and cinnamon and all sorts of what not. She dangled it from the crook of one elbow as she accepted the plate of cookies that were wrapped like a mummy in cellophane.
“I’m glad you were nice,” Jillybean told Granny Annie. By this she meant: I’m glad I didn’t have to kill you for being evil and taking my stuff.
“I’m glad you were a good little girl,” Annie countered. “I miss that in people, goodness.”
They hugged, awkwardly, each wanting what they couldn’t have. After, Jillybean went to the KIA and Granny Annie went to the garage door, making a production out of stooping and pulling it up.
Don’t be mean, Ipes scolded. He had been sitting in the front seat of the KIA all day and yet didn’t seem the least bit upset about it. That’s not a ‘production.’ She’s getting tired. Do you think she bakes cookies every day? Getting all that wood and preparing everything probably took a lot out of her. She is really, really old.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Jillybean whispered out of the corner of her mouth. With Granny Annie standing right there, smiling, showing her overly large dentures, the little girl didn’t want to appear too crazy.
I know what you meant. You think she wouldn’t stoop to a little showmanship to have a little company? She has to be lonely, just like you.
“But I’m lonely by choice,” Jillybean countered as she gave a last wave before sticking the KIA in reverse. When she reversed, whether in a garage or an open field, she did so with her full trust in God, not in any skill that she possessed. She put the KIA in reverse, gritted her teeth, hit the gas, and closed her eyes, hoping that the car would go straight back.
Something banged as she tore yet another groove into the side of the KIA, and yet, she made it out into the sunshine. With the help of two monsters whom she plowed over, she was able to stop before she rammed the bushes that marked Granny Annie’s property line.
With more care, since she could see where she was going, she turned the little car as if it were an ocean liner. Even with power-steering, she had to go hand over hand and just barely made it out onto the street. She looked back for Granny Annie, one last time, however the bushes blocked th
e view completely.
You should get going before you change your mind, Ipes suggested. The car was silent during the short trip to the hardware store. Ipes didn’t even mention the cookies, though he eyed them on the sly, or so he thought.
“You can have some,” Jillybean told him. Despite how delicious they were, she was somewhat apathetic to them. Just then, she was somewhat apathetic to everything. “Did I make a mistake by not staying?”
She expected Ipes to be all over the idea of staying with a lady who could bake as well as Granny Annie, however, Ipes shook his head. She’s right about winter out here. And supplies will be hard to come by. And she can’t live forever. It’ll be lonely when she dies.
“Yeah,” Jillybean answered as they pulled into the wide expanse of parking lot. The town was devoid of humans and so the little girl dressed as a minimalist monster, doing just enough to fool any she might come across.
There were none in the tremendous warehouse-sized store. She stood just inside the entrance listening for their tell-tale moans until she decided it was safe to flick on her flashlight and hurry to an overturned kiosk. The glossy covers of the books gleamed under the light as she pawed through them, glancing quickly at their titles and setting them in two proper piles: keep and don’t keep.
Although she was there to learn the art of welding, she was also interested in a variety of subjects and she kept books on carpentry, plumbing, and electricity. There were two books on metal working and she took the one with the prettiest pictures back to the doorway, sat in a stream of warm sunlight with the book across her knees and began reading.
It didn’t take her long to figure out that arc-welding wasn’t the way to go. It required electricity to generate enough heat to melt the metal rods which basically acted as glue.
The store had gas-powered generators, which of course used gas, which she didn’t have in great supply, perhaps just enough to make it to Colorado.
Another welding method was through the use of an acetylene torch, however the store was out of acetylene.
There’s soldering, Ipes suggested, pointing at one of the pictures from the table of contents. It looks pretty simple.
“Oh, yes, it uses fire. I like fire. Electricity is a little scary. You never know when it’s gonna jump out and zap you. Member back in the old days? Mommy used to always tell us to keep away from the plugs and never to have a toaster in the bathtub, though I never wanted to anyways. Who would want to eat toast while taking a bath? It could get all soggy.”
Ipes, whom Jillybean had accused of being part zebra and part chicken on more than one occasion, heartily agreed with her about all of it, including the toast. I don’t care for fire, myself, he added, but a little flame is better than a lot of monsters.
Gathering the propane torch and the soldering supplies was easy, however finding the right piece of metal was not. It had to be the right size to fit over the window and still allow the door to open. Her choices were too big: four foot by four foot, or too small: one foot by one foot.
She needed a size in the middle, which meant a trip to another hardware store or… “I can solder four of the small ones together so that they overlap making a two-by-two piece.”
The little girl was quite the sight, squatting over the pieces of metal like a frog with her knees jutting and her soft face made stern by concentration. After a few mistakes where she used too much heat and boiled away the soft soldering metal, she got the hang of it and quicker than she would have guessed, she had the covering ready for her window.
Getting that attached was a little more difficult since the window frame on the car door wasn’t exactly flat. It had been through at least three crashes and now it was bumpy and crooked and she couldn’t get the metal cover to sit on it evenly. And she couldn’t get it to stay in position; it kept wanting to fall down, and when it did it clanged loud enough to draw a crowd of walking dead.
Jillybean ran and hid among the giant shelves that stretched to the ceiling. In the gloom of the building, she could see the beasts walking around, staring off into space.
Maybe we should run out the back, Ipes suggested.
“Maybe they should run out the back,” Jillybean countered. The hardware store had all sorts of items that she could use to attract the attention of monsters.
Moving like a ghost, she went to the painting section and gathered materials: paint thinner, clean tarps, long-handled roller brushes. Weighed down, she made her way to one of the back doors and opened it with her back.
The monsters saw the sudden influx of light and came charging, leaving Jillybean very little time to douse the tarps with the paint thinner and hang them on the roller brushes. She had hoped to be able to make a scarecrow of sorts, but all she had time for was to lean them against a dumpster and run a line of thinner to her hiding spot behind the door.
When four of the monsters were out back, she lit the line of paint thinner and jumped back. It flared so quickly that it almost caught her hair on fire.
The flames sped along the ground to the paint brushes and then foomp! the white tarps went right up. The flames were bright as flares and crackled so loudly that soon all the monsters were outside doing what they did whenever they saw fire: they stared with slack jaws. Jillybean used the distraction to slip inside and shut the door behind her.
She was alone now and had to come up with a way to hold the metal cover in place while she soldered it in place. Walking along the rows of shelves, beaming her light all around, she had a hundred ideas burst in her mind like popcorn, none of which had anything to do with the car—a tree house with running water, homemade cranes for lifting heavy objects, perhaps into the tree house, watermills to generate electricity and move water to distant fields, fish farms made from inch-thick poly…
Hey, concentrate! Ipes cried. What about securing the metal to the door? Wasn’t that what you’re supposed to be doing?
“Oh that’s easy. We can use some Liquid Nails and a caulk gun. We’ll just glue it into position, no problem. Boy, I might have to rethink the whole tree house idea. I could live in a hardware store. There’s just so much stuff!”
Her excitement dimmed a moment later when a yawn struck her. She’d only had six hours of sleep and now she faced another long night of driving. Using the caulk gun, she slapped the metal in place over the broken window and, although the glue set quickly and the metal plate seemed exceptionally sturdy, she soldered it in place as well, though this was mostly for the practice.
After gathering a few battery-operated tools and a 9-volt charger that she could plug into the KIA she set out once more, hoping to knock off another two hundred miles from her trip. By sunrise, she hoped to be most of the way across the northern strip of Oklahoma.
It was endless hours driving through endless country. At three in the morning, she crossed the Arkansas River after detouring far north in order to make the crossing where there was nothing but brown scrub shooting up from a frozen brown land. Then she detoured south again to skirt around the minor town of Newkirk that had a pre-apocalypse population of twenty-three hundred.
Even that felt like too many people to chance. She stuck to the loneliest roads on the map. They were so empty that she was able to “race” along at twenty-one miles an hour with just the moonlight guiding her.
One road in particular was so empty that there weren’t even monsters on it. She saw a herd of deer, two raccoons, a skunk, and what might have been an opossum, only she didn’t know what one looked like. The road was so empty and the trip so easy that when headlights suddenly flicked on behind her, she just about had a heart attack.
Instinctively, she hit the gas and spurted ahead. Just as instinctively, she knew that it was no use. Even if the KIA was a sports car, she wasn’t much of a driver and the car behind her was flying to catch up. She was going to be caught.
“Maybe they’re friendly,” Jillybean said, grasping at straws. “Maybe they’re more ascared of me than I am of them.”
I d
on’t think there is anyone that is that scared, Ipes replied. If they were that afraid, they would have stayed hidden and needed a change of underpants.
“That’s not funny,” Jillybean snapped. It was true, it just wasn’t funny. “They’re getting closer. Do you think they can see me?” The lights seemed very far away, maybe a half a mile, it was hard to tell in the night.
Perhaps. Go faster.
She looked down and saw that the KIA was doing forty-four. She had never gone that fast before. Still, she nudged the gas pedal further down. When she looked up from her feet, her eyes went to the rear-view mirror instead of the road and she ran over something with tremendous thump that caused her to jerk and scream.
The KIA slewed to the right, its tires running over the rumble strip on the edge of the road with a thrumming that made it seem as if the car was coming apart. Jillybean’s scream reach new decibels until she fought the car back to the center of the road.
Her foot came completely off the blocks glued to the gas pedal, and gradually, her speed bled away until she was doing a manageable thirty-eight. The car behind her was now less than a hundred yards off. “Ipes,” Jillybean asked in a frightened whisper, “what do I do? They’re going to get me.”
Like you said, they could be friendly.
“And if they’re not?” They both knew that friendly people weren’t likely to chase a car for no reason in the dead of night.
Then close your eyes if they do anything bad to you. Close your eyes and think only good thoughts. Close your eyes and go somewhere else.
Jillybean couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She glanced over at the zebra, but he refused to look up. “You want me to go crazy in the brain, again, don’t you? What if I’m gone for years? What if they do things to me while…” She couldn’t bring herself to finish her sentence.
Then you won’t know and that’ll be good.
The car was close now, its high-beams blinding Jillybean every time she looked back. It had begun to blare its horn; they wanted her to pull over. “It won’t be good,” she said in a whisper. She knew the bad things they would do to her. They wouldn’t care if she were a little girl or not—evil people never did.
The Apocalypse Executioner: The Undead World Novel 8 Page 18
