“We need two of those,” she said to Sadie.
The older girl’s eyes bugged. “For what?”
When Jillybean explained, Sadie’s eyes went even wider, but she didn’t argue. Instead she crept back to the crate and after a look around grabbed the heavy cans one at a time. Grunting, she heaved them to the stairs and then lugged them down into the engine room where Jillybean was already standing, staring all around with her blue eyes at squints.
“You ok?”
This time Jillybean snapped right out of it. “Yeah, I was just looking for where the gas comes in for these engine things. Ipes says it’s right over there.” She led the way to the fuel import lines.
“What happens if this stuff explodes?” Sadie asked with a crooked little smile and a little laugh as she began dumping the fuel all over the import lines and the machinery.
“I don’t know,” Jilly said with a shrug. “Ipes says we should get another one of them cans and make a trail out of here and then light it from a distance or we won’t be able to get away in time.”
“This is crazy,” Sadie replied before running up the stairs. When she returned, Jillybean directed her to pour a line of gas in a great loop around the machinery.
“Just like the movies,” the little girl said, holding up a lighter. However before she let Sadie grab it she pulled her hand back as Ipes had another idea, one that made her stomach go queasy. “Really? That’s what you want to do?” she asked. From her pack she pulled one of the hand grenades and rolled it at the gas cans.
“Jeeze,” Sadie said.
“Ipes says it’ll cook off like a bullet. Whatever that means. He says it’ll give the workers something to think about if they decide to get too heroic.” Jillybean calmly bent down and lit the line of gas herself, though it took both of her small hands to do so. “We better go.”
Chapter 40
Neil
New York City
After so many hours chained to the steel deck, Neil discovered that he had long ago run out of any position that he could describe as comfortable. His arm ached where the zombie had bit him and the bones of his ass were two raw points—he turned on his side and tried to fall asleep to the constant growls and moans of Ram. It was not exactly soothing and yet Neil had been without proper sleep for so long that he was actually lulling off to it when a sharp Bang vibrated up from the deck.
Everyone perked up at the noise, even the zombie, which had been slowly tiring at the end of its leash.
“What the fuck?” one of the guards asked. He wasn’t the only one voicing the rhetorical curse. The question was a common one before the cries of “Fire” began to drift down. Neil stood and looked about, however his vantage on the lower deck was extremely limited. The same was true of the three guards.
“One of you should check it out,” the sole armed guard said in a Russian accent. He was one of Yuri’s men and it would take a lot more than a few cries to get him to budge from his post.
“We’re not going any…” one of the men began to say.
Bwammm!
The first noise could’ve been anything: a dropped pallet, or a forklift crashing into something, but the second could only have been an explosion; Neil could feel it through the soles of his shoes. The men only stood and looked to one from to the other in turn. “Someone should do something,” Neil said as the cries of “fire” turned to screams of panic. He was convinced that if a fire broke out he would be left to burn up along with the zombie.
“I’ll go,” one the Blacks said. He wasn’t gone long. “That whole mother-fuckin boat right next to us is covered in smoke!”
“You have to release me,” Neil cried immediately. Already the smell of burning diesel could be detected despite the fact that the wind was running down the length of the boat instead of cross beam.
Neil was ignored, though it was done studiously. It was as though everyone knew he was right, he should be released, and yet no one had the courage to do it. So they just pretended he wasn’t there.
“We should get out of here before the fire spreads,” the one man who had seen the smoke said—there was a twitchiness to his voice that hinted at panic just beneath the surface.
His fellow Black shook his head, “You need to chill, Ron. This is a steel boat; it’s not going to burn.” As emphasis he banged on the hull with a dull thump. “I was in the Navy and I saw a ship like this burn for three days. It never did sink. So chill, we’re going to be just fine. Trust me on this, it’ll be worse if we leave our post.”
No one felt fine and for sure no one chilled. Minutes passed and the smell of smoke only grew and the cries became insistent.
“What happens if the ship blows up?” Neil asked. All eyes went to the ex-navy man for answers.
He was reluctant to answer, perhaps because it was Neil who had asked the question. His friend Ron had to goad him before he would answer, “Diesel doesn’t explode. It burns like a mother, but it doesn’t explode.”
This seemed to calm everyone but Neil, of course he was the only one chained to the boat. “I’ve heard different,” he said in something approaching a babble. “Like in World War two, boats blew up all the time…I mean after they were on fire. That was a thing, I swear it.”
“It’s true,” Ron said, licking his lip. “I heard the same thing. Why the hell are we staying here, Jimmy? We should be getting the hell off this goddamned boat.”
“Chill out, mother-fucker,” Jimmy said. He wasn’t as chill as he wanted to appear. Even in the midnight dark, there was enough light from the dim bulbs overhead to catch the sweat on his forehead. “Those mother-fuckin’ boats blew up because they had mother-fuckin’ munitions on board. That’s why.”
The Russian guard opened his mouth as if a thought had struck that made him want to puke. “Munitions is what they have been loading for the past three hours on that boat.”
They all looked west and each was silent as though trying to hear the sound of munitions about to explode. Instead they heard the beginning of a gun battle. Everyone literally hit the deck.
“What the fuck?” Ron cried as bullets sprayed everywhere clinging off every metal surface. “What the fuck is going on?”
“It’s the ammo cooking off,” Jimmy said. His words were garbled because his face was pressed flat against the deck as though he was being stepped on. “We got to…”
A new explosion, and one with far greater force, shook the boat. This was followed by a series of eruptions like giant hammers. They rang out into the night so that even Ram stopped his moaning and stood as if paralyzed by the sound.
The second there was a break in the explosions, both Jimmy and the Russian dashed for the railing and jumped out into the water. Ron ran to the rail and looked out but could not bring himself to jump.
He turned to Neil and cried, “I can’t swim.”
With the bullets continuing to pop off and muffled explosions shaking the six-thousand ton boat, Ron was practically blind in his panic; right next to him was a life preserver.
Neil pointed at it. “It’ll float. Just hold onto it, and…wait! Don’t leave me!” In the instant Ron had seen the preserver, he had grabbed it and started to climb over the rail. “Please, don’t leave me!” Neil screamed. Ron wasn’t the only one panicked. The very air was beginning to shimmer with the heat of the fire in the next boat.
“I don’t have the keys to the lock,” Ron said. “I’d let you out but I don’t have them.” Once over the railing, the man clung to the side of the boat long enough to say: “Sorry.”
Then Neil was alone…for all of ten seconds. In the time before Sadie and Jillybean showed up, he gave up. He sat on the thrumming deck and looked at Ram. “I’m sorry, too,” he said. “You were the best friend I ever had.”
“Neil!” Sadie said, rushing up. Despite the mayhem she was grinning and crying. She flung herself into his arms and he squeezed her for the span of time it took to take one huge breath as if he could breathe in her living soul.
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br /> “You did all this?” he asked as he pulled back.
She shook her head. “No, Jillybean did.” Sadie pointed at the girl who had been running along looking like an angel—a ray of innocence in a night of terror. Now she was standing just a few feet away and only inches from Ram’s hooked fingers. Her face was frozen in a mask misery as if she were experiencing a thousand deaths in that one second.
Sadie went to her and held her to her breast. “Don’t look at him. It’s not Ram anymore. Ram is in heaven. Do you hear me? Ram is in heaven. That’s only a monster.” Jillybean nodded her head as a fat tear streaked out of her blue eye. “Good girl,” Sadie said and then turned her around and began to dig through her pack.
“Here we go,” Sadie said, holding up a heavy Phillips head screwdriver. She turned, took one step toward Neil and then was lifted off the deck of the boat as the biggest explosion yet erupted. Everyone and everything was thrown to the side—and that included the boat itself. Neil sat up and found the deck leaning slightly toward the water.
“What the hell was that?” Sadie cried.
Neil shook his head to clear it before saying, “There was talk about a missile launcher. Someone had one, maybe that was it.”
“Are we going to sink?” Jillybean asked. “Ipes says that a missile can sink a boat.”
“Let me have that screwdriver,” Neil demanded. The ring on which his chain was looped was attached to the deck by four screws. If he could loosen them, he’d be free.
Sadie watched him grunt at the resisting screws for only a few seconds before she said, “I’m going to go get Sarah or Eve, or both if I can. Meet me north of here at Ram’s truck. Jillybean knows where it is.”
“Shouldn’t you take her with you?” Neil asked. He gave a little sideways smile and added, “We might just sink.”
“She’ll be safer here. There are life preservers against the rail and Neil…you’ll be fine. Remember you’re a hero. Get yourself free and get north.” Taking only a moment to kiss them both, Sadie then ran off and Neil watched her go, noticing the deck was tilting even more as she fled.
“I better hurry,” he mumbled. With gritted teeth, he went to work on the first of the screws, fighting with all of his strength against the rusted metal.
“Try hitting them with the butt of the screwdriver,” Jillybean said in a voice of an army captain. “It might loosen them.”
Neil banged on each with a growing anxiety in his gut. What if they didn’t come loose? What if the ferry sank with him still attached? The thought lent him strength. With both hands on the tool he twisted with his full power not realizing that the screws hadn’t been loosened in twenty years and were so rusted in place that for all intents and purposes they were welded to the deck. He twisted until the skin of his palms tore and still, nothing happened.
For a moment he sat panting until an old soda can rolled past him. Struck with a feeling of dread he watched it gain speed until it hit the metal wall. Only then did he notice that the ship’s list was at thirty degrees. It was beginning to get so steep that Neil had to plant his palm on the deck to keep from sliding down.
The metal was hot under his hands. There was a fire in the deck below his!
“You have to go, Jillybean,” he said. “Leave me here. Go get a life preserver and…” Even as he pointed toward the water he saw a blue-green sheen floating on its surface. A second later, flame spread from around the side of the boat to light up the night like a giant’s torch. Jillybean’s one escape route had been cut off.
“The fuel tanks must be ruptured,” Jillybean said in a ghostly voice. It was like she was empty and the air just whistled out of her in the form of words.
“Son of a bitch!” Neil screamed in anger.
Jillybean shook her head at this as she leaned further back to compensate for the growing list of the boat. “That’s a bad word.” Her voice had transformed into such softness that it was a wonder Neil could hear it. Butterfly wings made more noise and yet the sound, in all its oddness came to him, drawing his eyes from the growing fire to her tiny form. She was utterly still and staring down at Ram, and yet Neil was certain that she wasn’t seeing him.
“We’re going to die,” she said in the soft lilting manner of a child in a dream.
“No, we’re not,” she answered herself in a deeper voice. Neil’s skin flashed with goose bumps at the voice that was coming from her full lips. It was Ram speaking. “There’s a way to get out of this. Find it, but you have to hurry, Jillybean. Look around at what you have to work with and find a way out.”
She stared around at the tilting boat for three seconds, her blue eyes huge and unblinking. She then pulled off her “I’m a Beleiber” backpack and searched through it. Of all the things that she could have pulled from it he was surprised to see she had a pair of scissors in one hand and in the other was a green item that had Neil blinking in wonderment.
“Is that a hand grenade?” he asked.
“I need your shoelaces, Neil,” she said in her Ram voice. “And hold this for me.” Jillybean slid the clip of the hand grenade onto Neil’s belt and then before he could splutter nonsense about having a bomb sitting on his hip, she left.
The tilt was bad now and getting worse. The entire boat, groaning as if in mortal agony, was slowly tuning on its side, forcing the little girl to walk with her left hand running on the deck. She went across what had once been car lanes searching back and forth with scanning eyes.
“What are you doing, Neil?” he asked himself. Was he really going to let a six year old girl rescue him, employing a hand grenade of all things? “You’re a smart man. You went to Columbia for goodness sakes, surely you can figure a way out of this.”
He looked around to see what he had to work with: a sinking boat surrounded by fire. And his shoelaces. And a hand grenade. And…and he had no clue how to make an escape or what on earth Jillybean was doing. Yes, a hand grenade could blow off the chain, however he was attached to it; barely four feet away.
“Just don’t think about it,” Neil said to himself, going to work on undoing his laces. He decided that if Ram had trusted her he would as well. From a certain point of view, it was an easy decision since he had no other choice. As he got the first lace undone Jillybean knelt and began working at something with her scissors.
By the time he got the next lace off she was hurrying back with a circle of metal, the rust of which was marring her dress. Only he seemed to notice or care.
“There’s no time for this,” she said, fearfully, in her own little girl’s voice.
“No time for what?” Neil asked.
Jillybean ignored him completely. “Why can’t I just…” she started to say, but then she cocked her head to listen.
Neil realized she was taking orders from either her zebra or Ram, on some ghostly level. He had to resist the foolish temptation to ask her what he was saying.
She began to nod. “I suppose I understand…”
Just then she almost pitched forward down into the water as the boat heaved again from some unknown reason. Neil snatched her, almost dropping the disc in the process. With his hands occupied he slid to the end of his chain.
“Uaghh!” The noise ripped from his throat as the metal dug into the soft flesh of his neck. Jillybean regained her footing and shoved him up with all her strength, while he kicked with his feet.
“I’m g-good,” he said a second later when he could breathe. “Go do what you need to do.”
What she needed to do was to get a shirt, a roll of tape, and a candle from her backpack. Neil could only sit and wonder at how that was going to help in anyway. She went right to work, showing him. Since the boat was now at a sixty-five degree angle, Ram had fallen to the end of his chain as Neil had and was now almost choking. What prevented the zombie from strangling to death was that he had his hands up under the chain.
Jillybean simply slid down on her bottom so that her feet landed on Ram’s broad shoulders. She was practically sitting on his
head. He turned to look up and, in mid-growl, she shoved a thick candle in his mouth. A second later she threw the shirt over his head, and then in three quick passes wrapped it there with the tape.
“Oh,” said Neil, comprehending. She then slid down Ram’s body until she was at the rail where the fire was licking up. Moving as fast she could she ran for the next life preserver on the short wall. For a single dreadful moment, Neil was sure that she was going to leave him and he felt a monstrous panic explode in his chest, but then she turned daintily and made her way back.
With one hand holding the preserver, she used Ram as a pseudo-ladder. He sort of kicked a bit, but with his head and hands bound he couldn’t hurt her as she climbed up him.
“Lift your foots, please,” she said to Neil a second later.
“What?” Neil asked. She had the life preserver at his feet and wanted to run it up around his body. His mind was a whirl of thoughts and still he was clueless. Did she think he couldn’t swim? It was his neck that was the problem, not his hands.
“Lift them, please,” she demanded. “Hurry, or the boat will fall over on us.” He did his best to lift his legs, then his butt, and then his torso as she worked the heavy foam circle up his body before running it along the chain all the way to where it attached to the ring. With the last of the tape she secured it there above his head.
“Shoelaces,” she said, holding out her hand. He lifted them to her and, along with the tape, she made a little basket out of the life preserver. Now the boat was practically at eighty degrees. It rocked from unseen explosions, making Neil slip to the end of his chain where he began to choke. The sound of his gagging went unheard by Jillybean. Around them, the boat was buckling with metallic screams.
By luck Neil found a seam in the decking that hadn’t been there moments before. He was able to stand on the tiny ledge and gasp.
Jillybean didn’t have time to pity him. “Give me the round metal thing!” she cried. Somehow he had kept a hold of it.
The Undead World (Book 2): The Apocalypse Survivors Page 37
