The Undead World (Book 5): The Apocalypse Renegades (2 page)

Jillybean brightened. “Then we’re going to save them?”

“No,” Neil said in a whisper that sank deep.

Word of the outrageous bounties being placed on the renegade prisoners triggered something akin to a gold rush. Out there were sixty people, half- naked and completely unarmed. It was generally assumed that recapturing them would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

The River King happily watched as half his base emptied of every quick draw, hard ass, and would be assassin. Even as Neil was standing at the barrack’s window at Fort Campbell, hundreds of men were racing south, searching all the lands on the western bank of the Mississippi. Some going even beyond Memphis, a hundred and fifty miles south. A few even went north, which made no sense at all.

None dared to cross the river. There were too many zombies, seemingly a never-ending supply of them, drifting down from the north.

Along with the amazing bounty, the River King put out a statement concerning the treasonous sabotage perpetrated, not by a little girl, that was utterly preposterous, but rather by a cabal of terrorists in their own midst!

Regardless of the propaganda, things were tense in the town of Cape Girardeau. There were whispers that the River King had lost control. That he was to blame for the destruction of the bridge. That he had double-crossed the wrong people.

Ernest Smith heard the whispers and was inundated by the propaganda, and he honestly didn’t know what the truth was. He didn’t care all that much either. Whoever succeeded the River King would still need slaves and so Ernest would still have a job. He was easily the best slaver on either side of the Mississippi, which made it seem strange that he stayed behind when everybody else was out hunting.

This oddity wasn’t overlooked by the River King. He even went so far to as to visit Ernest’s home, catching him reading of all things. “What’s up?” the River King asked, his shrewd dark eyes boring in on the rather unassuming looking Ernest. “You have so much money you don’t need to go after easy bounties?”

Seeing as “money” consisted of gas and ammo, there was no such thing as “too much.” Ernest lifted a shoulder which could have meant anything. “I guess I’m not a bounty hunter.”

The answer didn’t seem to suffice for the River King. He glanced at one of the bodyguards who went everywhere with him and then jerked his head toward the stairs leading to the second floor the house. “Take Tony and search the place.”

They could hear the guards upstairs overturning furniture and pulling out drawers. The search made no legal sense. Murder was about the only illegal thing in Cape Girardeau and did the king actually think Ernest had a body stashed in his living room?

“What do you expect to find?” he asked.

“What are you hiding?” the River King answered. He stepped closer to Ernest, staring him right in the eye. The two men were very similar in appearance. Both were slim and on the short side of average; not at all intimidating. In fact, Ernest had the build and temperament of a man who had taught seventh grade English back before the apocalypse, which is exactly what he used to do.

It had been the ideal job for him and he’d had a good life. His friends had been envious of him: a pretty wife, two happy kids, summers off, lots of vacation time during the school year, never a worry about finances and basically endless job security.

Then the zombies had come. They had eaten nearly his entire family: mom, dad, sister, kids. Ernest had survived by finding a ruthless streak in him that he didn’t know existed. He had done things, terrible things, to survive. And he was still doing them, and doing them well.

It was the fact that he gave off the easy-going, teacher vibe that allowed him to get in close to the countless bands roaming the country, looking for a home. He made friends easily; he seemed like a good guy, non-threatening to the ladies and pleasant to down a beer with. Inevitably he’d become accepted and then one day the little band would wake to find themselves in chains. If there were an alpha male among them, Ernest would usually slit his throat to intimidate the rest. They always turned into sheep after that.

“This isn’t about finding anything, is it?” Now it was the River King’s turn to shrug. Ernest read it correctly. “It’s about intimidation.”

“Yes.”

“That begs the question: why on earth would you be trying to intimidate me?”

The River King turned away to begin casually fingering the belongings in the house. Other than the guns and the crates of ammo none of it was Ernest’s. The house was simply a house he had claimed. Not even the pictures on the mantle were his. He no longer owned pictures. The house he’d lived in with his wife had been burned down; Ernest had set the match to it, hoping to torch unwanted memories.

“The fact that you aren’t out there, worries me,” the River King said. “It’s not normal. It’s out of place. It makes me think you’re here for another reason.”

“That I might be looking to kill you?” Ernest asked. The blunt words made the River King smile as a snake might. It was a dangerous look. “It’s the only conclusion I can come to about why you’re here bothering me. After all I hear the rumors. People talking that you’ve gone soft, that maybe we need someone new.”

“Who said that?” the River King demanded in a soft voice.

“Everyone, but you already knew that. It’s why you upped the bounty on all the escapees. It’s obvious you’re trying to buy your way out of trouble. It’s also why you’ve made so many arrests. Is that why you’re here, now?”

“No,” the River King answered. “Arresting you would be a waste of time. You’re too much of a loner to be seen as a rival for the throne. It’s your skills that make me nervous and the fact that, as I said before, you’re still here. It doesn’t make sense.”

“I don’t do bounties. It’s as simple as that. It’s not how I work.”

“How do you work?”

That was the question many wanted to know. How did Ernest Hemmingway Smith bring in so many slaves to the market? When he went out on the hunt, he invariably came back with a few on the leash. “It’s not by trying to take on sixty people by myself,” he said.

Another sharp look from the River King. “They’re unarmed. For you they would be easy pickings.”

“Maybe they
were
unarmed, but it’s been a couple of days. I’m sure they’ve picked up a weapon or two. And I’m surprised that you of all people would call them easy.” Ernest felt he was on thin ice with that comment.

The River King smirked in reply, looking more like a pirate than ever. “I’d call them all easy except the girl, Jillybean. She’s the linchpin. Without her they are just a bunch of sheep.”

“Nice mixed metaphors,” Ernest said, purposely treading on toes. He didn’t care for the concept of royalty and made sure to tweak the king every chance he got. “Maybe you should make her bounty higher than the rest, say six-thousand? That might get me out there, especially if I saw half upfront.”

“You can get her?”

Ernest knew it wouldn’t be easy even finding them. If the girl was really a genius, there was a good chance that she would have had a fleet of vehicles ready to go to top off the escape—they could be in Canada by now. But if she wasn’t a genius, if there was someone with her pulling the strings, then she was simply a child and was oh, so vulnerable. Ernest knew children very well.

“I can get her if she’s within two-hundred miles. And if the bounty is six-thousand.” The two locked eyes in a test of the River King’s desperation. If the prisoners escaped in spite of the massive bounties he would look even weaker than if he had just let them go.

“Get her,” the River King said.

Ernest wasted little time. The second he collected his initial payment of three thousand he left to stash it in one of his safe houses. These weren’t safe for people. No, they were very unsafe for people as they were booby trapped up and down. They were safe for his money. He had four houses, each loaded down with between six and ten thousand. His preference was for ammo because of its portability.

A Ford F-350 sufficed to haul away his retainer and it was also more than adequate to tow his boat. Months before he had stashed a boat on the western bank of the Mississippi. He had put it where no one would search for it, in another boat: a rusted out barge that the River King’s men had smashed huge holes into.

The barge was stranded on the edge of the silt flats which would turn boggy in the rain. It had been dry enough in the last week for the Ford to slog its way right up to the stern. Ernest wasn’t quick to get out of the truck; there were zombies. Three of them. They turned toward him, and he breathed a little easier when he saw that they were covered in thick muck, making them slower than usual.

“The .22,” he said under his breath as he ducked back into the cab and pulled out the light rifle. Most people thought of it as a kid’s gun. It was why Ernest could pick up ammo for it at a twelfth of the cost of the standard 5.56 NATO round. Yet, in the hands of the right person it could kill just as well. It was only a matter of range and precision.

At thirty feet, the little bullet could barely penetrate the thick frontal bone of the skull. The temporal bone was a different story. As the zombies worked their way around the front of the truck, Ernest shot them one after another. The rifle crackled with each shot, a high thin sound. This was another reason he liked the .22. It was a quiet killer.

With this minor zombie inconvenience taken care of, he moved onto a major one: crossing the river. With many a low curse, Ernest manhandled the boat onto the trailer, tied it down and then went in search of a proper boat ramp, one that was at least partially hidden by vegetation and as zombie free as possible.

After scouting out four spots, he settled on one that was “good enough.” The spot was in an area where the river was particularly wide, almost a mile. This thinned out the zombie menace some, however it wasn’t secluded in the least, meaning the Ford would have to be left out in the open.

He didn’t like it. Sure, there were many millions of abandoned vehicles in the world, yet the Ford had been obviously taken care of; it would be a magnet for anyone just happening by. Still, as a one-man operation he was left without a choice, so he backed the Ford down the ramp until the fishing boat lifted off the trailer.

With his gear already sitting in the boat, he killed the Ford’s engine and quickly climbed out. “Holy fuck,” he said, upon seeing the river zombies converge. They were like piranhas. Easily a hundred of them were churning up the water as they “swam” awkwardly at him. Any second grader could swim faster and yet there were so many zombies that they didn’t need speed. They had formed a wall, hemming in the boat.

“Gotta move, gotta move,” Ernest hissed, as he started untying the boat from the trailer. The first rope knotted under his fumbling fingers and, without hesitation, he ripped out his bowie knife and cut it. He didn’t bother trying to untie the other two; he used the knife on them as well.

Letting out a little grunt, he shoved the boat off the trailer and jumped in. Then it was only a matter of getting the engine going while he was surrounded by undead. With batteries being dubious after so long, he had chosen a motor with a pull starter. It took five heavy yanks and an equal number of nervous looks in the zombie’s direction before the engine caught.

The zombies had closed to within ten feet, turning the water white as they splashed chaotically. There were so many of them.

Wearing a grimace, Ernest gunned the boat right at them and then when he felt the first thump under the keel he killed the engine so that the props wouldn’t get hung up in twisted zombie flesh. The boat drifted over them; he could feel the thump of their heads on the metal beneath him as he went.

Eventually, he slowed, as they clung to the boat. Long arms reached for him and grey fingernails scritched on the metal looking for purchase. He had to bring out a paddle to fend off the heartier ones to keep them from capsizing the boat. That was a real danger and could have been easily accomplished if there had been even a hint of cooperation among the undead, however the weight of a dozen zombies on one side was balanced by a dozen on the other.

Ernest hammered at their hands until enough fingers broke for them to let go, and at the first opportunity, he re-started the engine and eased the boat forward. Although he did his best to steer clear of the zombies, there were some lurking under the black waters, bloated and foul. Twice he felt the prop glog on something unspeakable. When this happened, he’d kill the engine and drift while he poked the grey and red zombie mush from the propellers with the end of his knife.

With the truck being such a telltale clue that a boat was in the water, Ernest rode up stream for a few miles before heading for the eastern bank. It made for a surprising long and sickening ride. He actually said, “Thank God,” when he finally pulled the boat up under a stand of low-hanging willows.

With the drooping boughs shrouding him, he donned his battle dress uniform and then painted his face in shades of green to match the clothes—good camouflage and a slow step were the best defense against the stiffs. Once he was decked head to toe, he slipped off into the brush in search of the right vehicle. It wouldn’t take much of one. Among a mess of gear in his boat were a new car battery and four five-gallon jerry cans filled with gasoline.

In one hand he hefted the battery by a strap and in the other he took one of the jerry cans. Grunting, he started pushing through the high river grass. There was a frontage road that ran very close to the river, barely a hundred yards away. The nearest home was a half mile further than that; by the time he reached it, his arms were in agony and sweat ran down his green-painted face in what felt like small streams.