“I won’t ask,” he had said. His testicles had shriveled then as well. Now, with midnight fast approaching and him waist-deep in the frigid waters, he worried that the shriveling would be permanent. Even with the wetsuit, his teeth were chattering, while Jillybean’s lips had a blue cast to them.
But she said nothing, not a word of complaint as she slid into the water and covered her head with her hat. The ice in the water matched the ice in her veins. The only time she showed the least sign of weakness that night was an hour earlier as she was putting grenades into various pockets. She had stopped for a moment, hefting a weighty little green bomb in her palm and said: “I hope I forget tonight, Ipes.”
Neil didn’t like the sound of that and demanded answers. “Sure,” she said in a vague way and started talking, ticking off her plan.
“We go for the boats first. The small one will be the getaway vehicle and we’ll booby trap the two big ones. Next, I’ll move up to the Joint Manufacturing and Technology Center. According to that pamphlet we got from the Davenport Historical Society, it’s the biggest building on the south end of the island. From its roof, I’ll be able to guide you to the MP station that’s marked on your map. If Grey and Sadie are anywhere, it’ll be there. You will go in and rescue them, and then I’ll guide you back to the boat.”
“Oh, that’s simple enough,” he had said, although it didn’t sound simple at all. In fact, it sounded dangerous as hell, especially the part about him having to go into an MP station alone.
But he had known the job was going to be dangerous going in—he just didn’t know it was going to be this cold.
Going into the river up to his neck was one of the hardest things he had ever done. It physically hurt. “Your hat,” Jillybean said. His hat, like hers, had once been a lady’s beach hat, white and gold, with a brim nearly three feet in circumference. It was ridiculous in size and now that it had been decorated in strips of camo, wet cardboard, and fake seaweed from the Driftwood Pub, it was heavy as well.
But it would do the job. Neil, Jillybean and the net filled with their belongings and necessities had been expertly camouflaged to appear as nothing more than floating river trash.
They pushed off into the sluggish current, both of them kicking with their flippered feet—the scuba fins were another of the many items that Jillybean had the foresight to pick out.
Even with the flippers, they both grew tired. The river was three hundred yards across and soon they were breathing too heavily for their own good, attracting the wrong sort of attention. Soggy river zombies had begun to turn their horribly pruned faces toward the floating pile of trash.
“We can rest and drift for a bit,” Jillybean said in a whisper. “We’re ahead of schedule.”
They would kick for a minute and then rest for a minute and gradually, the island drew closer and closer. Even with the dark, Neil could see men walking slowly along the sea wall. They were guards patrolling the island. Had Jillybean taken them into consideration? Neil couldn’t help wonder.
She seemed to read his mind. “For them, the threat is external. They’ll be watching outwards, if they’re even doing much watching. Once we penetrate their defenses, it’ll be like we’re not even there.”
Penetrating their defenses started with getting to the boats on the southern side of the island. As they got closer, it didn’t seem as though it was going to be all that difficult. There were three rather small docks in a little cove and birthed next to each dock was a boat.
Two of the boats were bigger than the docks they were tied to. They were ferries though smaller than any ferry Neil had ever been on. The third boat was a pontoon that bobbed on the river like a piece of styrofoam.
“Keep us from going any closer,” Jillybean whispered. She pushed back her hat so that it sat at a jaunty angle. A bag was stuffed down the front of her wetsuit. Carefully, she pulled out a clunky black object that looked like it belonged on a high-powered rifle. For a minute, she stared through the small end, spending most her time eying a beige-bricked one-story building that stood fifty feet from the land side of the docks.
“Okay, we got at least one bad guy in that building. He’s watching the docks, or rather, that’s what he’s supposed to be doing. I think he’s reading a magazine or something.”
“May I see?” Neil asked. When she handed over the scope and he looked through the eye-piece, he was rather amazed at the clarity. There was a man sitting at a window that overlooked the docks and yet he didn’t look up once from a magazine he was reading by way of a small hooded flashlight.
Neil then scanned the shoreline, looking for one of the patrolling guards, and saw one moving away. He had to be seventy yards off.
“This thing is cool,” he said, feeling a touch more assurance that they could actually live through the night. He held it out to her, but she shook her head.
“Watch the man, and try not to get it wet, okay? It says water resistant on the side, but Ipes doesn’t believe it and neither do I. Whistle if anyone comes or if the guy looks out, K?”
Jillybean started kicking, moving the entire net towards the pontoon. As much as Neil needed to watch the guard in the building, he was utterly curious as to what Jillybean was up to. She was going to sabotage the two ferries, but how? And she had dragged away all of their stuff. How was she going to get it all onto the pontoon? It was far too heavy, almost too heavy even for Neil. And how was she going to deal with the chain and lock running from the boat to the dock?
Neil had scanned the boat and the dock. The metal of the chain looked like a line of white silver through the scope, and the heavy cleat on the dock looked just as new.
Movement to his right had him gasping as he swung the scope. When he saw it was just Jillybean he felt a stupid sense of relief. She no longer had the net and was only hauling a duffle bag along. It was supported by two buoys and yet rode very low in the water. When she got to the rear of the first ferry, she didn’t try to bring it up with her, she only reached in for something in a plastic ziplock bag.
Then she disappeared for a minute. When she came back, she was empty handed. She repeated the same thing at the next ferry and then swam back to Neil, who hastily scanned the building and the shore. The man in the guard shack hadn’t budged and the man patrolling the closest section of seawall was leaning against some squat little building, smoking a cigarette.
“Everything good?” she asked.
“Bad guy.” He held out the scope and pointed. She picked him out easily, nodded once and then started gently kicking towards the man. He followed along thinking that her crazy had gotten the better of her, however as they got closer, he flicked his butt out into the river and walked off.
Two minutes later, they got to the six-foot seawall and once again Jillybean began digging in the duffle bag.
“How’d you know he was going to leave?” Neil asked.
“Because he’s a walking around guard,” she answered and opened a new ziplock that held steel tent-pegs which she started shoving into the small gaps in the rock wall, reaching up as high as she could. “I knew he wouldn’t stay, but I didn’t know which way he would go, so going right at him seemed ideal. Now, hush and hold me steady.”
The seawall was in truth closer to a twelve-foot seawall with half jutting straight up out of the water.
Jillybean used her tent-pegs as hand and foot holds, jabbing new ones in every foot or so. When she made it to the top, she didn’t try to take on the concertina wire, instead, she retreated back down, dug once more in her bag and handed Neil a pair of wire-cutters.
He went up, almost falling with every foot hold. He had jettisoned his flippers and now had rubber water shoes on his feet. The thin steel pins dug in painfully, but he remained stoic, after all, Jillybean hadn’t complained.
In fact, he was just happy to have the pins. Before getting into the water he hadn’t even considered the wall as an obstacle. He figured he would scamper up it, no problem, not realizing how few holds there real
ly were or how slick and mossy the rocks would be.
Thankfully his feet held out and then it was just a matter of cutting the wire. It wasn’t difficult at all: four little snicks and the wire sprang apart.
“We’re good,” he whispered. He expected her to hand up the strap for the duffle bag, but she held out the scope instead. Quickly, he looked in every direction and, to his relief, saw nobody. Only then did Jillybean toss the strap to him.
The bag was heavy, but grew lighter as the water drained away. Like only little kids could, Jillybean followed the bag right up, going up the wall as if she were on a ladder. She pointed him across the street to the closest building. “Keep an eye out,” she whispered and gave him a push. Instead of following him, she ran to the right.
Neil stopped, wondering what she was doing, and she shooed him on. “Hide!” she hissed. As he lugged the bag next to a bush, she ran to grab one end of the cut wire and dragged it to the center, pegging it into a crack of the seawall. She then got the other side and pulled the two together, using their own barbs to hook them so that it looked as though the wire had been untouched.
“Genius,” Neil said. He hadn’t thought about the wire, either. He liked to think he would have, but he was hyped up on fear and was having trouble thinking beyond run, hide, breathe.
She joined him seconds later and immediately dug into the duffel once more, bringing out the larger garbage bags that held their clothes. “Can you turn around, Mister Neil, Sir?” she asked. “I have to get dressed and you’re not aposed to look.”
He hadn’t planned on looking and for some reason felt the need to tell her that, but it didn’t seem to be the time or the place, and so he turned. They peeled away the neoprene like it was a second skin and donned dry clothes.
Jillybean had bluejeans, her usual keds, pink socks and a white shirt with red carnations stitched on it. Over this she put on a pink coat that clashed with the carnations but went with the socks.
Neil had picked out a mottled new style of BDUs, black boots…and a yellow sweater vest because of the cold. He gave it a pained look and for once, tossed it aside. The last thing he put on was green paint, smeared across his face. It was supposed to both add to his camouflage and make him look fiercer. Without a mirror, he was afraid he looked like a sad, green clown.
When they were dressed, Jillybean dove once more into the duffle. She handed Neil three sets of handcuffs, a two-way radio, a police X2 Dual Shot taser, a 9mm Beretta with two extra magazines, and a grenade. He took this last with two hands, afraid to drop it.
“Just use the taser if you can,” she said, seeing his fear. “The bomb is for a just in case emergency. But you should really try to be quiet and the bomb is really loud. Oh, and keep your radio on, okay?”
“Sure… I’ll just walk right into the MP station, overpower all the guards and rescue everyone. No problem.” That was the very simple plan Jillybean had concocted, but there was definitely a problem with it: Neil wasn’t an overpowering kind of guy.
Also he was afraid of the grenade. What if it just went off on its own? What if the pin got pulled by accident? What if the timed fuse was broken and it went off before he could throw it?
“You should put that in your pocket,” Jillybean suggested as she pulled out another double-wrapped trash bag. Inside was her backpack and right on top was a white ski hat with a red pom-pom looking like a giant cherry sitting on a cake. All in all, she appeared like a second grader on her way to school.
It was odd to see her so—normal.
“You’re going to stand out,” he said. “What happened to those BDUs you had before?” Earlier, she had taken a pair of shears to the smallest set of BDUs they could find at the army surplus store. She had hacked off most of the fabric of the sleeves and pant legs, and then safety-pinned the rest so she would look half-way normal.
“They didn’t go with my socks. Hey, can I have the scope, now? We gotta get going.”
After taking one last look around with it, Neil handed over the scope and they split up. Jillybean made her way through a parking lot and then hurried across the main road that ran down the center of the island. Her destination was a four-story building a block down the road. From a tower on its roof, she would have an excellent view of most of the island, including the direct approach to the MP station a half mile away.
With her rifle scope, she’d be able to warn Neil of any danger coming his way. It wouldn’t give him a free pass, but having her as his “eye in the sky” would help.
Crouched between two cars, he waited in a growing sweat for her to get into position, and it seemed like an eternity before the radio crackled: “Bird’s in the nest.”
“Roger,” he said into his radio. They hadn’t discussed any sort of code names, or any procedure or really anything beyond the plan’s outline. Was he supposed to wait for her or get detour directions if there was a bad guy…
“The road is clear. You can go.”
He supposed that answered at least one of his questions. “Roger,” he said again before taking a deep breath and slinking along the parking lot until he got to the road where he paused. It seemed like a very long stretch of open asphalt. Anyone looking out a window of one of the many buildings lining the road would be able to see him, no problem.
“Why am I going this way?” he muttered. Wouldn’t it have been better to take a side street? More than likely, but it was too late to change the plan, so he continued in his slinking manner, keeping very close the first building which turned out to be the base commissary. Like a burglar in an old time movie, he kept his back to the wall until he came to a window and then he crawled past.
“What are you doing?” Jillybean asked through the radio. “Just walk normal. You look like a suspicious and that’s what means people will look at you weird and ask questions.”
“Walk normal, easy for you to say,” he muttered to himself as he left the “protection” of the building and went to the sidewalk. He tried, but he just couldn’t make himself walk normally. It was almost as if a pole had been shoved up through his spine. He couldn’t seem to turn to look in any direction.
His feet moved but the rest of his body was fused in place. His eyes bounced from one side to the other trying to see in his periphery without being obvious. He could only hope that Jillybean was doing her job.
In this odd, disjointed fashion he walked two blocks through the midnight streets of Rock Island. He wasn’t the only one out, however. Just when he was getting comfortable, Jillybean hissed into the radio: “Hide!”
Neil froze for a full three seconds as he stared around. How was he to hide if he didn’t know what or who he was hiding from? Finally, he ducked down next to the back bumper of a parked car. Not a second too soon, either.
A kicked rock bouncing on the sidewalk just in front of the car sent Neil’s heart into his throat. Whoever it was, wasn’t more than ten feet away. Close enough for Neil to hear the man’s lighter as if he had thumbed it himself.
Neil reached for his pistol, wondering why he hadn’t had it out to begin with. It was halfway out of his pocket when he remembered that he was supposed to be stealthy, so he switched the Beretta to his left hand, nearly dropping it in the process. He froze again, his right hand on the butt of the taser, not really in any position to use either weapon.
Slowly, he ducked down until he could see the man’s feet—he was wearing boots. Did that mean he was a guard? If so, which way would he turn?
He turned to the right, towards Neil, strolling down the sidewalk which was just feet from where Neil cringed with his head turned and two useless weapons clutched in his fumbily hands.
The man was a guard. He carried a rifle slung loosely over his right shoulder and a cigarette in his left hand. If he had even average speed, he’d be able to have it pointed at Neil before Neil could get one of his weapons in a proper grip.
Neil almost went for his weapons as the man drew abreast and lifted a hand. He thought he’d been seen but the
man was just raising his cigarette to his lips where it flared like a red star, illuminating the tattoos on the man’s face.
And then he was past the car and the cringing man, walking slowly away. When he passed the next intersection and was just a shadow, Neil took better hold of his weapons and hurried from his “hiding spot.”
The radio, now stuck deep in a cargo pocket crackled: “You’re in the clear.”
“That’s what you said before,” Neil muttered, feeling the shakes invade his arms, his hands and his chest. His breath rattled in his lungs as he walked and he was still so freaked by nearly getting caught that when Jillybean contacted him again, he jumped.
“Don’t walk with your guns out. You’ll be a suspicious again. Just walk normal.”
He understood. There was still a slight chance that he’d be mistaken for just another soldier going about his business, but a soldier going about his business with a drawn Beretta and a taser would be too suspicious to ignore.
The Beretta went in one pocket and the taser the other, and now Neil walked with his shoulders hunched almost to his ears, his hands itching to grab his weapons. In the next quarter mile, there was no need to draw either, but once he was at the MP station he took both out.
The building was two stories high, about forty yards long, but not very deep, making it somewhat of a rectangle set in between two other buildings. The front of the building didn’t face the street. Neil had to walk along a sidewalk where his presence would most certainly be questioned if he were seen.
He went to the side of the building and put his back to it, listening intently for any sound, however he could hear nothing. Either the construction was too good or the building was deserted, and he didn’t believe it was deserted. It didn’t have that sort of feel.
The Apocalypse Executioner: The Undead World Novel 8 Page 30
