The Undead World (Book 6): The Apocalypse Exile (War of The Undead) (27 page)

“Very carefully,” Grey answered as he heaved the steering wheel as far to the right as possible. The chain was loose enough to allow a ten degree arc either right or left. It meant their turns were going to be great sweeps and it also meant that when Grey had answered:
very carefully
, he’d been lying through his teeth.

The fuel truck swerved far out to the right leaving the streets behind. “There’s a tree...that’s a tree!” Neil cried, as he planted his feet on the dash, bracing himself against the crash that he was sure was going to happen.

“I see it,” Grey said. “I’m not going to hit...” The truck missed the tree trunk by inches but not the very large branches that jutted out from it. The windshield exploded inwards while the side view mirror next to Neil was torn off and the passenger window was punched in. Neil threw himself onto the bench covering his face from the flying glass.

The truck shuddered from the impact but had enough momentum to struggle onwards. Ahead of them on a straight course that lead out of town, the three five-tons trucks filled with the renegades were blasting through the zombies in their way, leaving a trail of mangled bodies.

Neil only gave them a glance, he and Grey had their own problems. In front of the fuel truck was a drainage ditch “Are you going to hit that head on?” Neil asked, grabbing his seat belt. In the dark the ditch was a shadow-line; it could’ve been two feet deep or eight.

“No, at an angle,” Grey answered.

“Oh, good. So, uh, you are going to slow down, at least?”

Grey grinned at Neil and revved the engine louder, but then he took his foot off the gas. “Of course. I’m not looking to kill us. You should know me by...” He jerked in surprise. A spark flashed off the hood. It was followed a second later by the crack of rifle fire.

Neil was slow to catch on. “Was that...”

“Yes!” Grey snapped, dropping his foot back onto the gas and up-shifting. “What the hell do they think they’re doing? If this thing explodes it can burn down this entire town.” He jerked again as something
thocked
into his door. Crouching lower in the driver’s seat he dug in his cargo pocket. “This should give them something to think about.”

In his hand was the remote controller for
Jazzy Blue
. With his own evil laugh, he turned it on and then pressed one of the controls upward. They both chanced a look back. A few long seconds went by and the quick look turned into a long stare, disrupted at last as another bullet whined off of metal.

Quickly, they both slunk down again. With one hand on the wheel, Grey fiddled with the remote until the next bullet hit the truck. “Check the batteries,” he said, tossing Neil the remote. Neil looked at the little black object, saw the red LED light and the panel in the back that slid off with the push of his thumb. It came off easily and he popped out one of the batteries; immediately the LED light dimmed away to nothing.

“It’s not the batteries!” Neil said, from his crouched position. He put the remote back together and then examined the controls: there was a stubby joy stick and a trigger-like button under the right handhold—the go-button he suspected. He started working both, however no manner of clicking or swiveling of the joystick helped in any way. The theater, growing smaller and smaller behind them remained disappointingly dark.

“It must be the range,” Grey said. “It’s a toy; it can’t be all that great.”

Neil cast a quick look his way and gave a nervous chuckle as he asked: “You aren’t going to turn around, are you?”
As if turning was even an option
, he thought but didn’t say.

“No way, not with someone shooting at us. We wouldn’t make it halfway back before this thing went up. We’ll have to think of something else. But first things first.” The ditch was coming and Grey kept the wheel as far over as it would go. Although it was picking up speed with every passing second, the truck was like a tortoise in its course change, they were going to strike the ditch at a forty-five degree angle and it was going to be a hell of a thump.

Grey slid his seatbelt on as well and then grinned over at Neil. “Pray for no sparks,” he joked. Neil took it to heart and started mumbling out a prayer.

They hit the ditch and, even with his seat belt and his hands and feet braced, Neil flew up off the seat as the truck slammed straight down. A millisecond later the nose of the truck shot skyward, but at an angle that could only be described as catawampus. There was a crash from the left side of the vehicle as the fuel truck landed with its right wheels in the air.

Neil felt the truck pitch to the left and he was able to look down on Captain Grey and he was sure that the truck was going to flop over on its side as a prelude to exploding in a fireball that would flash-cook them both. But then the truck tilted and came crashing down on all six of its wheels. They bucked and shook but the truck remained whole.

“Thank you, God!” Grey yelled and fed the beast of a machine more gas, quickly shifting into third. The other trucks were well ahead and to the right, so the captain took the truck on a slow curve. As an added bonus, they were out of range of whoever had been shooting at them and in two minutes they pulled up behind the last truck.

Neil was out in a heartbeat, rushing forward, his newfound excitement over their escape dying in his soul—someone was screaming in pain. It was a woman and her pain was his pain. He had screwed up again and one of the people in his flock was hurt. Sadie met him with Jillybean tagging along behind and Ricky running up. “Who is it?” Neil asked.

“Marybeth. She was gut shot,” Sadie said. “There’s blood everywhere.”

“I got one, too,” Ricky said. “Becca. She took one in the leg. It’s bleeding like a mother. Also…Kay didn’t make it back to the trucks and the guy she was teamed with didn’t know what happened to her. They got separated.”

“What about the explosion?” Jillybean asked.

Neil glared at her. “Not now. This is more important.”

Grey shook his head. “Actually the explosion is just as important as the wounded, maybe more so. We need to slow the Duke’s men down or we’ll never get away. Their horsemen will get the zombies under control in a few minutes and then they’ll be hard after us. The problem is we’re out of range for the remote. I think I should go back and set off the bomb.”

Michael Gates had come jogging up. He was ashen-faced at the news of his wife. He grabbed Grey with both of his meaty hands as if the captain was going to go sprinting away right that second. “No. You’re the only one who can save Marybeth. You’re staying. Send someone else.”

“Michael’s right,” Neil said, jutting his chin out in his best impersonation of manly courage. “I’ll go.” Whoever went would have to go on foot and the trucks couldn’t afford to wait for them to return. It would be a one way trip.

Sadie stopped him. “No. You’re the leader and this is a suicide mission. It only makes sense that someone who is, uh, disposable should go and I think that should be me. I’m the fastest runner. It makes sense.”

Neil began to shake his head but then Jillybean spoke up in a tone that was like metal on teeth. “I’m going. This is all my fault anyways.” She turned suddenly and spoke to a patch of ground to her right. “I know what I’m doing. We can’t go back with them. They’ll only put us in jail and you don’t want that, right?” 

“You’re not going to jail, Jillybean,” Neil said.

Jillybean stood her tallest and blurted out: “I should, I…I killed Eve…I mean the baby. I killed her.” This was met with a stony silence as eyes flicked all around. The little girl wasn’t done: “And I told Brad about who we were. He promised me a horse if I did. All of this is...is my fault. I should be the one who goes back.”

Although Neil had been almost certain that Jillybean had been Eve’s killer, the blatant confession was like a mule-kick to the stomach and, on top of that, was the admission of her culpability with regard to their present state of flight. Neil floundered for words, but couldn’t find any that made sense. He couldn’t possibly send a seven-year-old back to die and yet he couldn’t think of anything that made better sense.

They were all dumbfounded. Only Sadie had the moral courage to speak up: “But that wasn’t you, Jillybean. That was the other girl.”

“So?” Jillybean answered. “Me or her it doesn’t matter. She won’t ever, ever stop. She’ll kill you all and use me to keep her safe. This is the only way. Asides, she wants to see the explosion. She hopes it will be big.”

The little group flicked their eyes each to the other, no one coming out with an argument to refute Jillybean. Neil knew it was wrong but, at the same time, sending anyone was wrong. They all deserved life, except for maybe Jillybean. She had murdered. It hurt to even think about it, but if she stayed and they managed to make it to Colorado, what would happen to her? They had banished Clara Gates for less.

Neil knew he had an obligation to protect the innocent and the weak. Jillybean was neither. “Go,” he said in a husky voice. “Take the remote and run.”

They watched Jillybean accept the remote as if it were the
Holy Grail
and run away, her shredded yellow dress flapping and her long brown hair streaming. When she was gone, the group of adults toed the pebbles on the road for a few seconds before Neil said: “It’s done. Now we have to get moving. I’ll drive the fuel truck.”

Sadie couldn’t seem to stop shaking her head. What they had done was wrong. It was more than wrong, it was evil. They had let the most vulnerable of them go to take the biggest risk. It should’ve been…

“It should’ve been me,” she whispered, as the little group broke up. Grey ran to the third where Marybeth was still making awful noises, Ricky hurried to the second and Michael to the lead, but only after Neil had pushed him on.

“Marybeth will be fine,” he told Michael. “Trust Grey. He’s the best chance she has and besides, no one else can drive the truck. So if you want your wife to live, you’ve got to do your part.” Sadie thought this was cold of Neil and yet, once again, it was what had to be done.

Everyone left for their trucks leaving the Goth girl standing there. She didn’t know where she belonged. A part of her wanted to run after Jillybean and take the remote back to the Duke and blow his ass to hell. She knew that would certainly mean her death, and probably a bad one at that. At the same time, there was a part of her that just didn’t care about anything. That part of her was tired of her life.

“Come on, Sadie!” Neil hissed. The other trucks were beginning to pull away. With a last look at the town, she went to the fuel truck and climbed in. She was about to complain about how Jillybean had been treated, however one look at the interior of the truck left her breathless. There were bullet holes and shards of glass and black blood and tree branches and...a chain on the steering wheel.

Neil ground the gear into first as she stared. “How the hell do you steer?” she asked.

“Not very well,” he answered. “Thankfully, I won’t have to do much steering for a while.” In front of them, the road was straight as an arrow.

Again Sadie looked back. They were two miles away and the town was just a dark, irregular hump in the distance. She watched for ten minutes, waiting for the bomb to blow up. Captain Grey had set it and she was sure that it would light the sky for miles.

But there was nothing.

“Oh, crap,” Neil said. Sadie glanced to the front and saw that the other three trucks were turning south on a main road. Neil slowed and turned the wheel as far as the heavy chain would allow. It wasn’t far at all and Neil’s wide turn sent them into a field of wheat in a long crescent-shaped sweep.

“We need to get this God-forsaken chain off or we’ll be caught for certain,” Neil griped. “Look around for some tools or something.”

The cab was so strewn with debris that it wasn’t easy to find anything. “We don’t need tools,” Sadie said, “We need Jillybean. I bet she could get that chain off in a jiffy.”

Neil looked down at the wheel and then took a quick peek under his seat at the ring-bolt. “No. Jillybean couldn’t get this off. We need a torch or a saw or something to cut the chain.”

“Well there’s nothing in here,” Sadie replied. Her answer had been short and Neil glanced over at her right before they finally came up on the southern road.

“I’m sorry about Jillybean,” he said in a whisper. “I really am, but I’m also sorry about Eve and Marybeth and Becca and Kay. Really, I’m sorry about all of us. Escaping like this in the middle of the night, people shooting, and dying and...and the fact that we might have just started a war; it’s all on Jillybean. And you heard her: she can’t control it any longer.”

Sadie knew all this. She had made her one plea to go back, only she hadn’t put much of a fight into it especially after Jillybean had opened her mouth. Now, her soul was swimming in guilt. She faced the broken window, letting the wind whip her short hair back and forth; it also dried her tears.

“Where are we going?” Neil asked, more to himself. The question made Sadie blink. There had been a map in the glove compartment, her hands had shuffled right over it without thinking. Now she grabbed it and, after flicking on the dome light, she saw that it was a map of Kansas. There were a number of red marks and routes traced in highlighter on it.

Sadie poured over the map, losing herself in it. The lines and squiggles, the roads and trails were easier to comprehend, than leaving a little girl to fend for herself. At first the tiny words were bleary but, after running a black sleeve across her eyes she was able to focus

“I know where we are” Sadie said, finally. One of her black-painted nails traced a line on the map. “This is I-77. That town back there was
Ringwood Station
. Here look, I’ll steer.”

She snugged over to him and held the chained wheel while he squinted. “Oh I see now; here we are, a little over an hour from Wichita. We don’t want to go there.” They had a rule about avoiding the big cities. The reasons were obvious: there were always thousands of zombies and frequent obstructions in the roads made making any u-turn a perilous undertaking. “Find us a route around the city,” he said.

When she had one, he revved up close to the third truck in line and gave it a beep of his horn. When it slowed, Neil passed it and did the same thing until he was leading the pack. Then he drove until he saw a house that was sitting close to the side of the highway. He pulled across from it.

“I got to get this chain off somehow,” he explained. “First, let’s see how Marybeth is doing.”

He jogged down the line of trucks using a weird hopping gait and it was then Sadie saw that he was missing one of his crocs to which she only said: “Huh.” She didn’t go running after him, instead she climbed atop the cab and then up onto the great metal cylinder of fuel. The liquid inside was still sloshing back and forth in the chamber, making the truck rock gently.

The chemical smell was eye-watering and yet she barely noticed. Her eyes were far away to the north, searching for any break in the night, any glow that would indicate a fire. All around her the horizon was deepest black. What did that mean? Had the bomb been a dud? Had Jillybean been killed before she got close? Had she been captured?

“Would they torture her?” Sadie asked the night.

Below her she saw Neil coming back with a limpy jump every other step. Sadie climbed down before he could see her and ask what she was doing. The fact that there wasn’t an explosion meant that Neil’s decision had been the wrong one. It meant another death on his shoulders.

“How’s Marybeth?” she asked, leaping the final few feet down to the cement.

Neil shook his head and whispered: “She might have been hit in the liver. Grey needs ten minutes to stabilize her and clamp off a bleeder. Will you come with me to that house?”

There was no need to even ask. “Of course.”

Together they stepped over an aged, wire fence and made their way along rows of squat shrubs that were ill-tended and growing wild. In the dark, Sadie couldn’t place the plants, though it didn’t matter. There wasn’t time to pick anything.

The farmhouse was a sad little building which had to have been decrepit even before the apocalypse. Its roof was worn and the shutters next to the windows were crooked and missing slats. The door, thin and hollow-cored, had been shouldered in and hung at an angle from a single bent hinge. Weeds jutted up through the peeling porch planks.

Neil went first holding off on using his flashlight until he paused at the door to listen for the telltale moan of zombies. The place was quiet and so he risked light and it was a good thing he did. The floor was littered with glass and broken china as well as the contents of every cabinet and drawer that hadn’t been considered valuable by the looters who had come through.

“I’ll find you another shoe,” Sadie said. “Wait here.”

With her own flashlight illuminating the interior of the house she crunched across the faded hardwood floors of a short hallway. To the right was a sitting room. Dust hung in the air and collected on the aging Ethan Allen furniture. There was a body on the floor. Bugs and critters had long ago reduced it to bones and an ugly carpet of hair around a bare skull. There were the remains of a dress shrouding it.

“Hope there was a man in the house,” Sadie mumbled. A single sensible black shoe was the only footwear in sight. It seemed even too small for Neil’s small feet.

Neil’s luck wasn’t very good that night. The woman, the late Edith Crenshaw had been a widow who had many years before donated all of her late-husbands clothes to charity. The closest Sadie could find for a fit for Neil was an old and dirty pink slipper.

It is what it is,” he said and then shuffled, probably much as the dead Edith used to, out to the garage where he ran his light over a workbench that was not only dusty, but also cobwebbed to such an extent that it was obvious Edith hadn’t touched the tools at all since her husband’s death.

They took everything that looked like it might have some value: a hammer, two screwdrivers, a hack saw and a ratchet set. Neil also saw an axe and after testing its edge, he slung it on his shoulder and grinned at Sadie.

Neil had never looked worse, she thought. It wasn’t just his mismatched and strange footwear, or his torn sweater vest, or the mud and ugly scars on his face, it was in his sky blue eyes where he looked so awful. He no longer had the boyish and naive optimism that Sadie had fallen in love with. What remained was a hard-edged pragmatism that was chilling to see.

Still he tried. “Let’s get that chain off. I bet it will be a piece of cake.”

It would be if Jillybean was here
, Sadie thought to herself. These sort of mechanical obstacles were one of her strong suits. She would’ve noticed the twenty foot length of chain that Mr. Crenshaw had used to pull stumps out of the ground. Crenshaw’s chain was twice the width of the ringbolt holding the fuel truck chain in place. The little girl would’ve known that the power of the Cummins 240 horse power engine in one of the five tons combined with the strength of Crenshaw’s chain could’ve snapped the bolt off in a second.

Neil put his faith in an old hacksaw and his somewhat undersized arm muscles. When they got back to the fuel truck, he went right at the chain instead of the thinner and stationary ringbolt.

Sadie watched for a moment and then said: “I’m going to check on Marybeth and Becca.” As she passed the five ton trucks, she saw the renegades loitering. “Someone should be keeping watch,” she said. “Joslyn climb up there and keep watch, will you please.”

Joslyn took a look up at the tall truck and smirked. “I’m not going up there.”

Sadie rounded on her, filled with a sudden rage. “If you won’t climb up there then get your dumb ass out of here.” Her hand was on the butt of her Glock and she was within a quarter second of whipping it out and shoving into Joslyn’s mouth.

“Who died and made you boss?” Joslyn asked.

These were the wrong words to say to Sadie right at the moment. The gun was out before Joslyn could blink and cracked the woman across the cheek a half-second later. She went down on her back and lay there with her hands up, defensively. Sadie felt a moment of regret but bit it back.

“You want to know who has died? You want me to give you a list of everyone who has died because someone was lazy or stupid or just plain unlucky, or do you want to get your ass up on that truck before someone else dies?”

Joslyn began scrambling to her feet. “Ok...ok, I’ll do it. Ok.”

Sadie glared until Joslyn was mounting the cab. She then turned to stare at the renegades who had witnessed the incident. With the fire in her dark eyes and the gun still in her hand, no one said a word.

“Good,” Sadie said and holstered the weapon and then marched off toward the last truck. Behind her were whispers. She hadn’t done anything to cement her position in the group; she didn’t really care.

When she got to the rear of the last truck, she went to William Gates and asked in a quiet voice: “How is she doing?”

The usually quiet William, staying true to himself, only shook his head but there was a glint of tears on his cheek that caught in the star light and spoke volumes. Sadie would have to see for herself. She took Jillybean’s betrayal as a failure on her part. They had been sisters after all and as the older sister, she should have done more to protect Jillybean.

The back of the truck was peopled to a greater extent than Sadie would’ve guessed. The entire Gates family, minus William, was huddled around a moaning lump on the floor. The sounds coming from the lump were so low and guttural that it seemed as if they were coming from an animal and not from sweet Marybeth who had never raised her voice as far as Sadie knew.

Becca was there as well. She was a quiet thing and in the month Sadie had known her they hadn’t spoken once. She had been one of the fifteen or so women who had been freed from the rape-room in the Piggly-Wiggly. She had been carried to the last truck by her friends and now, they stood around her, hunched by the low ceiling of the five-ton, and wept as though she was on her death bed. Becca fed into the depressing atmosphere and cried with more strength than any.

When Sadie peeked in at Becca’s wound, the Goth girl wanted to give her hardy slap. It was fair to say the wound was probably painful, but it wasn’t
that
painful. Captain Grey had to stop what he was doing from time to time and ask her to quiet her “caterwauling” before she attracted every zombie from miles away.