The Apocalypse Executioner: The Undead World Novel 8

by Peter Meredith

  And did he care what the cylinders meant to her? With them, she’d finally be able to live free. In one sense, power equaled safety and that wasn’t something a little girl should give up so easily. And why would Ipes want her to? Wasn’t it his job to protect her and to help her?

  If she had the cylinders, people would no longer laugh at her or look down at her. In fact, she could make them bow down to her if she wished, and boy, a large part of her wished for just that.

  She could be queen!

  “But I would never be like that stupid Colonel, Ipes. I would be a good queen. I would help people.”

  How? Tell me how you’d help people with your VX gas? Would you do it by threatening them? Or by using the gas? Think about it. The only power in that gas is an evil power.

  A sudden perfect image slipped into her mind: a grey city filled with grey bodies, lying in horribly contorted positions, their faces frozen in looks of utter terror and pain. The corpses carpeted the city streets as far as the eye could see, and in the middle of the dead city was a little girl with a crown on her head.

  You’d be queen of the dead. And your only power would be the ability to kill more people than anyone else. Is that what you want?

  “No,” she said in a whisper. “But that’s me already. I’ve killed so many. I’m a murderer.”

  No, Eve was a murderer. The people you killed were all justified. Every one of them was killed in order to save your life, a life of another or there was a clear and present danger. Those should be the only criteria in which you take a life. Any other reason is murder.

  Jillybean went to the bars of the first cage and ran her index finger along them as if testing her reality. A part of her wondered if they would part like smoke. Sometimes she didn’t know if she was in a dream, a hallucination or a terrible reality.

  “Okay, Ipes. I won’t use the VX, but I won’t let the Colonel keep it either.” She announced this to the room at large when she came back to the others. “We’ll throw it away or bury it or something. Where are the keys to those cages?”

  The Colonel glowered at the guards when they told her and then said, “Don’t expect me to carry that box.”

  “One of you has to,” Neil said, “and since you were probably all gung-ho about getting the stuff in the first place, Colonel, I think it would only be fair for you to be the one carrying it.”

  “I wasn’t going to use it,” the Colonel replied, feigning innocence that Jillybean didn’t believe. “I only wanted to keep it out of the hands of people like the Azael, or the River King, or…or Yuri.” He faltered as he said this, his eyes flicking to Neil, but he recovered in half a blink. “Those are the true bad guys.”

  Neil didn’t notice the stumbled word or the look. “And now, no one will have it. You should be happy.”

  He wasn’t happy. Ten minutes later, the group left the armory, each of the four prisoners carrying a load of weaponry—the Colonel held the box of VX in his arms. In the light of the still glowing fire the sweat on his face glistened as though he had been doused in oil.

  With the fire roaring on the eastern end of the island, they made their way along the west side and only had to duck away from a single man on patrol, before they made it to the docks.

  Jillybean scoped the area and when she saw that there was still only the one guard in the boat house, she said to Neil. “We’ll head down to the pontoon. Chances are, he’ll come down to investigate who we are, when he does, you pop out and get him. Can you do that?”

  Things happened just as she had foreseen and in one minute, they had another prisoner on their hands. Thankfully, he was very cooperative and showed them where the extra fuel was kept and even helped to load the pontoon up. Neil wanted to take him along, not only to act as an extra hostage, but also because he was very knowledgeable about many aspects of boating and the river in general.

  “No. He stays, and so does Mister Private Blazek,” Jillybean said. “They’re innocent.”

  The boat guard and Blazek beamed as the Colonel grew hot. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded. “Who are you to decide who’s innocent and who’s guilty?”

  She didn’t answer him except to narrow her blue eyes. Haigh, who had trouble looking at anything beyond the grenade duct taped to the Colonel’s neck just five feet away from his face, said, “I didn’t do anything wrong, either. I’m just a bodyguard. I’ve never shot or killed anyone or…”

  “I don’t believe you,” Jillybean stated. “Now everyone get inside so I can tie these two up.” She tied them the same way she had tied the armory guards: showing them the grenade and explaining what would get them killed.

  When they were trussed and sitting as stiff as boards, afraid to move even a muscle, she pointed Neil and the last three prisoners to the pontoon.

  “You don’t need us anymore,” the Colonel said as he stood on the dock next to the boat. He didn’t want to get on the boat; he was afraid to. Jillybean saw it in his eyes. “You could tie us up just like you did those guys.”

  Neil paused behind the Colonel. He gave a glance back at the base where the fire still glowed and for the most part the streets were still empty. He mulled over the Colonel’s words but didn’t act on them. “I don’t think so. You’ll have your men after us in no time. We can’t take the risk. What do you say, Ji…”

  He caught himself from saying her name just in time, but it wouldn’t have mattered if he had. “He knows who we are,” Jillybean said, moving up behind the Colonel and shoving him so that he practically fell into the pontoon. With only three prisoners, each had their own set of cuffs, pinning their hands behind their backs and their balance wasn’t the best on the rocking boat.

  “I don’t, I swear,” the Colonel said, doing his best to feign innocence.

  The cold feeling had such a hold over Jillybean’s heart that she walked past without looking at the man. As he went on lying, she went to the pilot’s seat and sparked two wires together that she had cut earlier that night, back when she didn’t know if she would have the keys or not.

  The twin engines rumbled, good-naturedly. Neil shoved the pontoon from the dock and hopped onto the flat deck, lost his footing and nearly fell into the river where the zombies were thrashing about.

  “Jeeze, that was close,” he laughed, looking embarrassed. When he got to his feet and had a good hold of the low railing, he said to Jillybean: “Okay, punch it, Chewie.”

  “Punch who?” Was this the name of one of the men? And why would she want to punch them? She was sure they deserved a good punching, however her wrists were narrow and particularly weak. If she punched one of the goons, she was sure she would end up hurting herself more than them.

  “That means drive the boat kind of fast,” Neil explained and then amended his explanation a second later: “But not too fast. We don’t want to crash. And go left! There’s a whole mess of zombies in front of us. Maybe I should drive.”

  She thought that was a good idea since she couldn’t see a thing. After setting the throttle to neutral, they quickly changed positions. Jillybean sat at the front of the boat, training a spotlight outwards over the river, trying to spot the bobbing heads of the monsters.

  When she did, she would call out left or right, or LEFT! or RIGHT! depending on how close they were. Running over a monster didn’t hurt the boat, but there was a chance it would hurt the propellers or, more likely, get caught up in them.

  The pontoon came with an odd device that looked to Jillybean like a saw on a pole. It had been designed for trimming high tree branches, but its use onboard the boat was obvious and disgusting. They hadn’t gone two miles before Neil had to put it to use, sawing away the parts of a monster that had got sucked up in the propeller.

  He was as white as the moon as he sawed. It seemed to be taking a long time and so Jillybean looked over the edge. “It would go faster if you killed that thing first,” she suggested. There was a separate tool for that as well—the longest handled axe she had ever seen.
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br />   She wasn’t about to watch this part, either, and so turned to look at the prisoners, who were whispering with their heads bowed close together. They stopped when they saw her looking.

  “You know who we are, or at least you know who he is.” She turned her chin partially toward Neil without taking her eyes from the men. They were sitting on the pontoon’s cushioned benches. All around them were the boxes of armaments they had stolen, while in the back was the net filled with their belongings. Hauling it out of the water had turned it into a complete jumbled mess.

  “I don’t think it matters what I know,” the Colonel said. “You have maybe five more minutes of running before my men come after you, and when they come they’ll be coming in force. And when they catch up to you, if I’m dead, they shoot you on sight.”

  Jillybean’s eyes drifted back the way they had come as she pictured the mayhem they had left behind. She knew that a search for the Colonel was already under way. For the moment, his would be looking for orders, not because anyone would think he had been kidnapped. She also knew that someone, a patrolman probably had to have seen or heard the pontoon leaving.

  How long before that was called in? Would it be investigated? And if so, with everything else going on, how much of a priority would it be given? Once they decided to start searching for real, how long would it take until they cut through the locks chaining the other two boats in place? Jillybean had taken the keys from the boathouse and had tossed them into the mighty Mississippi.

  This led to the question of how long would it take them to hot wire the first boat? And lastly, how long before they accidentally detonated the first trap Jillybean left behind?

  “I say we have closer to twenty minutes,” she decided. But in this, the Colonel knew his men better than she did. Five minutes later, as they were once again chugging downriver, the skyline to the north was suddenly lit with a brilliant orange and black light, and seconds later a rumble like thunder rolled over them.

  “You can slow down,” she told Neil. They had just triggered the first of her booby traps and she was sure that if there were men on the second ferry, they’d be running to get off of it as fast as possible. It would be some time before anyone would venture taking a boat off the island.

  She went to her backpack and, squatting down in front of it, pretended to look for something within it. “Ipes,” she whispered. She was still filled with ice, but there was a whisper of fear in her that she guessed stemmed from the proximity of the VX gas. It was the very nature of temptation for her and she had to guard against it.

  Still, she knew what had to be done, but she didn’t like it. “Please, make me forget this,” she whispered to the zebra.

  That’s up to you, he answered. Maybe you won’t do anything that you will need to forget.

  “I don’t think that’s possible.” The little girl stood up with the .38 in her hand. She let it hang against the side of her blue jeans where it wasn’t obvious. With a deep breath, she went to the prisoners. “What’s his name?” she demanded of the Colonel, pointing with her free hand at Neil.

  His grey eyes locked on her blue ones. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. You’ve stolen my stuff and you’ve made your getaway. You can let us go now. That would be the smart play, get out while you can.”

  There was no getting out now. She was in neck deep and so was Neil…and so was the Colonel, though he didn’t seem to know it. “It does matter or you wouldn’t be lying.”

  “Okay, it doesn’t matter to me, but I suppose it matters to you. Either way, let us go. Keeping us would be…”

  “His name is Neil…”

  The Colonel interrupted, suddenly screaming and wild-eyed. “I don’t care what his name is! If you care that it remains hidden, then don’t say it.”

  “Please, don’t say it,” Neil pleaded.

  “Because if I say it, we’ll have to kill them?” she asked. “He already knows. Remember, he had Sadie p-risoner and when he was naming off the ‘real’ bad guys, he faltered saying Yuri’s name. He faltered and looked at you, Neil. That’s when he put it together. He knows you and Sadie were together. And since Sadie came here with men from the Valley, it would be nothing to figure out that’s where you came from.”

  Neil was staring intently at the Colonel, who was staring with gritted teeth at Jillybean. Finally, Neil dropped his head and sat back in the pilot’s chair. “It’s done now, so I guess it doesn’t matter.”

  In the space of one clunking beat, sudden rage melted the ice holding Jillybean’s heart. “No, it does too matter. He knows you, Neil. He knows where you came from and if we let him go he plans on doing something about it. That’s the reason he has to die.”

  “You were going to kill him one way or the other, weren’t you?” Neil asked in a soft voice.

  Her little mouth came open in an instant denial, but the lie wouldn’t come. She hadn’t planned on any of this. The Colonel had just fallen into her lap, however from the moment she had set eyes on him, she knew that he would have to die.

  He was a deadly scorpion, but then again, so was she and when two scorpions came together, there was only one winner. That was the base, deadly nature of the world…and yet, despite having a million reasons to kill him, all she could feel was the guilt of a murderer. And this was only made worse with Neil looking at her with despair in his blue eyes.

  “I worry that you haven’t changed,” he said, his voice still quiet, still filled with sadness.

  “I have,” she pleaded, her soul still mired in guilt.

  He shook his head, gazing at the prisoners as if the sight of them caused him pain. “I don’t know. You have a mine taped to your chest. Honey, that’s not normal. And what you did to those men, tying them up with live grenades, that’s cruel. What if one of them slips? What if one of them flips out? You will have killed them.”

  For a moment, she didn’t know what he was talking about. Hadn’t he been watching? “But I didn’t do it for reals. Didn’t you see? I showed them the grenade but didn’t attach it. I lied. See, this is the same grenade.” She showed him the one grenade she’d had all night. “I thought it was a waste of a perfectly good bomb. And the mine on my chest wasn’t real, neither. I took the guts out of it to make the remotely detonated bomb. This is just the cover.”

  She tapped it and a hollow sound popped out of it as if she had struck balsa wood with a xylophone hammer. She even peeled away the tape to show him the empty mine.

  The Colonel cursed, but Neil laughed at the sight of it, but it was only for a second. He grew serious and asked: “But you were going to kill him no matter what, weren’t you.”

  The answer was a resounding YES, however she couldn’t say that feeling the way she was, that is, feeling human and vulnerable. She let the ice fall over her soul again, masking the real Jillybean. “Yes, because I do what I have to do. Ipes says it’s okay. The Colonel is a clear and present danger.”

  “Yes, you’re right, he is,” Neil answered. With a long, dreadful sigh, he reached down and picked up the giant axe. The Colonel glared at it, however the two body guards began yammering about fairness of all things.

  Neil, the pained expression hanging on his face like the drapes on a hearse, said in his most authoritative voice: “Colonel Williams, for the attempted murder of Sarah Rivers, I sentence you to death.”

  In answer the Colonel only clenched his teeth, locking his jaw tight and staring at Neil as if he could kill him with his gaze alone. Neil ignored the look. He sighed again as if it was a preamble to every statement. “And you two,” he said addressing the bodyguards, “You two are hardly innocent. You were both in New York. I remember you. You were there when Sarah was raped and when Sadie drowned, and you did nothing to help.”

  “That’s not a crime,” one said, while the other cried: “I was following orders!”

  The whining washed over him, leaving nothing but pain. Another long sigh. “Stand at the railing and we will make it quick,” Neil said. He swallowe
d with a clicking sound that everyone heard. “You’ll get a bullet to the head, which is better than your victims ever got. But if you stay where you are and keep whining, I’ll use the axe and throw you over in pieces. It’s your choice.”

  Even Jillybean with her ice-cold soul was taken back by the pronouncement, but she stepped up, showing the .38 to the men. Neil’s eyes widened and he gave her a look and a tiny shake of his head that said: Please put that away.

  She wished she could, however, she simply didn’t trust Neil. Mutilating a bound man with a giant axe was, sadly enough the only thing she could expect him to accomplish without hurting himself or falling in the river.

  Jillybean stepped up next to the rail, clicked open the six-shot police special to show the prisoners that this time, she wasn’t playing around.

  “You, Haigh,” Neil said. “Come on. Let’s get this over with.” He was almost begging for Haigh to take his death like a man. It was a terrible thing to ask and Haigh didn’t comply.

  He knelt with his hands behind his back pleading in an incoherent babble, tears dripping down his once tough face. Neil raised the axe and gave him a whack with the blunt end, striking him on the shoulder near the neck.

  “I’ll turn it around, I swear,” Neil almost screamed. It was hard to tell who was more afraid.

  Haigh and the other guard huddled on the flat deck of the boat which was carpeted with a green bristle, like a fake putting green. They tried not to look at the axe in Neil’s trembling grip, but their eyes went to it time and again, drawn uncontrollably.

  The Colonel didn’t blubber or whine. He alternated between making overtures, promising great sums, and stating with complete confidence that Neil didn’t have the balls to kill him.

  “Ipes?” Jillybean asked. The ice was on her like a block, thick, heavy and unmoving. The men had to die. They were whining and cringing now, but that would change the second they had the upper hand. They would become deadly and cold, themselves.

  Ipes sighed exactly as Neil had and said: They are a clear and present danger. I wish it was easier.