The Undead World (Book 2): The Apocalypse Survivors (27 page)

The man released Neil and ran a hand through his silver hair as if he was relieved. “Only minor sins, thank the Lord! Tell me, Neil. From your understanding of the bible, how many minor sins
equal a major sin?” Neil’s mouth came open and hung there to the great humor of Abraham. He barked laughter and commenced to walk again, taking another turn.

“I’ll help you on this, Neil. Every sin is an affront to God. Every sin is a slap in his fa
ce. Tell me if you were to meet, let’s say the Queen of England. Would it be ok if you just gave her a few slaps? A few small ones that barely turned her cheek red? Would it be ok if I slapped you? Not my hardest. Just a smart one like this.” He lunged at Neil with a raised hand and a sudden rage in his eyes. The smaller man flung up an arm, but the blow did not land. Again laughter from Abraham and this time the gun-toting men who had taken them prisoner joined in as if it was the height of humor.

“Do you see? Do you understand? I fear for Sadie because she is a sinner and what’s worse, she rejects the Word of God. The punishment for this is death. Ah, here we are. I hope you’re hungry.”

“But…” With Neil’s mind spinning over the word death, they came to an open room that didn’t seem possible. It could have been a cafeteria in any high-school or large office—bright and clean with windows opening to a view of a pretty green prairie in a long mural. It gave the impression that they were above ground instead of twenty feet below it.

“I believe we have venison sausage and eggs, if you wish,”
Abraham said, walking in casually and waving to the people. There were maybe two dozen of them sitting at the long tables and the first thing that struck Neil was that not a few of them were leaning toward the chubby side of the scale. More surprising was that they were all clean. Their clothes and their hair and their skin were all scrubbed spotless.

Even Sadie was clean. At one of the tables she sat parked in a wheelchair with her foot elevated and wrapped in bandages. The wrappings were crisply white and matched the dress she wore. Except for her eyes, she never looked so pretty than at that moment. Her eyes were guarded and held a warning for Neil.

“I see you’re being well taken care of,” Neil said with a large fake smile. He came forward and hugged her.

“Careful,” she breathed, too low for any but him to hear.

“Of course she’s being taken care of,” Abraham said jovially. “She will be one of us this afternoon and we take care of our own. There is no hunger in
New Eden
. There’s no crime and no poverty, or racism, or any of the nonsense of our old lives. We are born anew! Tell him, Sadie. Tell your father what you’ve learned.”

One thing was certain, she had learned to be afraid and that was something in such a courageous person. She swallowed with a clicking sound. “Well
, uh, there are over three-hundred people in new Eden. They have a hospital with, uh, twenty beds. They got two doctors and one is a surgeon. And they have generators and, uh, hot and cold running water. I had a bath last night and one again this morning. That was good.”

She faltered and
Abraham said, “Tell him about the people.”

“Oh. They
have, like I said, three-hundred people here and there are nurses and architects and engineers. Things like that.”

“What we don’t have are any lawyers,” the silver-haired man said proudly. “And no politicians and no criminals and no homosexuals and no bankers…” Neil’s eyes flicked to Sadie’s before he was even aware
of it. Abraham caught the look and asked in a sugary voice. “Are you a banker?”

“I? Me? Uh,
no. I was in mergers and acquisitions. We bought and sold companies, depending.”

The man nodded as if he knew all this already. “Depending on what? Profits? By the way we don’t have profits here either. Or losses or overhead, or salaries. We don’t deal in money at all. Hard work is a blessing from God, just as is love and family. Money is worthless to us, as are gold and rubies and diamonds. What we find priceless is the knowledge of God’s love, and the knowledge that it will never change and never grow less. Not for us. Not as long as we reject everything about our former lives. That’s right. We reject everything this country once stood for.”

Despite the fire and brimstone manner of the man’s words, Neil spoke into the pause, “Everything? Even freedom?”

Here
Abraham sneered. “Freedom,” he spat out. “It’s a lie invented by the Devil. All my life the word freedom was tossed about by every conman ever spawned. In all of history who ever had true freedom? I tell you that it wasn’t you, Neil. Nor was it me. From sunup to sundown our lives here in the land of the ‘free’ were governed by rules and regulations, endless laws, and the threat of the police-state. Where was our freedom? Having the choice between McDonald’s and Burger King does not constitute freedom! It was just as well. As man has shown, true freedom and true evil go hand in hand. Look at all the truly free men and you will see the face of evil. Am I right?”

All around Neil the people had sat in rapt silence, now they sent a volley of “
Amens” at the man. He nodded before raking his fingers through his hair, displaying a fine sweat at his brow.

He glared down on Neil with wild eyes. “I see your doubt. Think. What is true freedom? The ability to do whatever you want without repercussion, without consequence. Who has that sort of power? Hitler did. And Stalin. And Genghis Khan. Only those with true power can possess true freedom, and look what they d
id with it! They conquered! They enslaved! They murdered!”

After
he accentuated each word by smacking one hand into the other, the room was quiet.

“That’s why we do not give credence to the false notion of freedom. Rather we adhere to the dictates handed down by Our Lord God through his prophet.” He paused, lowering his head so that a silver curtain fell before his face. Still positioned thus he added, “And one of the most important dictates
that the Lord our God has shown through me is the Law of the Denier.”

The room grew still around them, the air heavy with expectation, but it was not exactly silent. Sadie
's breathing was rapid and charged with fear. The man who claimed to be a prophet turned to her. “The law is simple: a denier will be put to death.” He made a gesture to Sadie.

“Amen,” the people gathered said as one.

“No!” Neil cried in anguish. “I mean no, she’s not a denier. Maybe she’s just an Unbeliever. That’s what you called Mark and you didn’t threaten him.”

“Oh, Neil.
I see you fear for your daughter. You don’t want any pain to come to her, it’s understandable. The question is can you understand that I care for her on a greater level than you? I care for her eternal soul.”

“But…”

A sharp look silenced Neil. “One does not say
but
to the word of the Lord,” the man said. “Right now she is an Unbeliever. At noon she will be baptized into the family of Believers. If she denies her faith, then…” He left off with a sad look and a shrug.

Neil was so anxious that his hands started to flutter. “
Won't you give her any time to think things through or even learn what you guys are all about? And what if,” he had to pause to collect himself before he asked, “What if she would prefer to come back home to her family?”

Abraham nodded.
“We are a just people. All believers go through a period called
The Time of becoming
. It’s three months of intensive education, of growing and learning. It’s a very exciting time in a person’s life. Only after
The Time of becoming
can someone be accused of being a denier. Secondly, Neil, look around you. There is nothing like
New Eden
left on earth! The Lord our God showed me the coming doom of mankind and I gathered my followers. They cast aside their worldly goods and began with me this great endeavor. It’s been eight years in the making. Countless hours have been spent excavating, shaping and fortifying every square foot of this valley. We have herds of cattle, and hundreds of goats and sheep. There is nothing that we find wanting.”

“Amen,” the people called.

The false prophet beamed like a tent-show preacher. “Amen indeed! God is on our side, Neil. America is dead, while we thrive! The world rattles in fear, but we sleep snug and safe! We have light and heat and water! Who wouldn’t beg to become a Believer? Neil, I want you and your family to join us. A baby would be such a blessing.”

The little crowd had been worked up by the man; now they waited with baited breath on Neil’s response. “And if I don’t want to?” he
asked as if only curious, as if there was no way he was serious with such a question.

“Then you go your merry way and we will be all the sadder. We are not savages. We don’t conduct orgies or have human sacrifices. Belief is voluntary.”

Neil scratched his head. Had he missed something in all this? “What about Sadie? She’s not being given a choice.”

“God has chosen Sadie,”
Abraham said in a loud voice. “Lenny's mate was taken by the Devil. He was without a woman and we prayed and lo! Our prayers were answered. Harmony and balance were attained. Sadie is a gift from God as surely as the venison on her plate and she will be baptized at midday.”

Behind him Sadie shook her head from side to side along the tiniest arc. Neil caught the movement; it stung his heart. Reaching out a beseeching hand he begged
Abraham, “What if I get you another girl? You prayed for a girl, maybe Sadie isn't the one God meant for you. You said she was headstrong, maybe God meant for you to have another.”

The crowd began to murmur at the suggestion and the
false prophet let them go on for nearly a minute as he considered. Finally he threw back his head, shaking out his long hair; this must have been some sort of cue because the people quieted.

“I have asked for harmony and the gift has been given already,” he said, pacing on a short leash; five-feet one way and five-feet back. “Yet I understand about the love a father has for a daughter. The obvious thing for you to do, Neil would be to bring your family back and join us, so that you could always be together. But…but if you will not, I will allow a substitute
, even if it is a baby. Bring us…”

“No,” seethed Sadie, interrupting.

Abraham smiled at her though it was with his mouth only. His blue eyes were hard and cold. “Your mind is curdled by unfounded fear, Sadie. A baby would be loved here and protected! She would have a great life compared to how you live. You scrounge around like rats after crumbs. You’re dirty and ungrateful and suspicious of kindness. And yet for some reason you look down your nose at how we live? We live as God’s children!”

“Amen,” the crowd roared.

“Amen, amen,” he said calming slowly. “I did not say it had to be a baby. My only stipulations are that she comes to us voluntarily and since I have a journey to make that cannot be delayed, she must be here by sunrise. Simple right? If you can do this, Sadie will be free to go. If not she stays and we can only pray that she will not deny our teachings, for her sake.”

Chapter 27

Ram

Chesapeake Bay

Jillybean couldn’t have been more right. They were trapped like a couple of mice. On one side zombies piled up from the midnight-black tunnel and on the other they came at a shambling run down from the bridge. On either side of them the walls were flat panels of cement that were too tall to reach by jumping.

We’re going to die
here
, Ram thought. It had all been for nothing. All his scrabbling and fighting had been wasted. He looked to the little girl at his side, perhaps to apologize for leading them into this trap, but she was staring up at the wall.

“I guess,” she said to the zebra she carried under her arm. “But what about Ram?”

“What is it?” he asked with a feeling of sudden hope…as well as a feeling of foolishness. He was relying on a stuffed animal to figure a way out of the trap. “What’s he saying?”

“I can escape, but you can’t,” she said to Ram. Her eyes were huge and wet,
and as he watched they pooled. “You have to throw me up there.” She pointed at the top of the wall fifteen feet up. A short green fence ran all along the edge except where she had pointed, it seemed to be bent back or broken. “I have to stand straight and stiff in your palm like the acrobats at the circus we saw. You are aposed to throw me, but I don’t want you to get eated.”

Ram didn’t want to get
eated
either, however that wasn’t really up to him anymore. But he could save her. With a single glance he saw what the zebra intended. It could work. Standing on tip toes, with his arm straight up he could reach nearly eight feet, and Jillybean, with her arms stretched could get maybe another five feet. He would only have to toss her three feet to safety.

And then he would get
eated
by a hundred zombies.

“It’s a good plan,” he said, choking on the words. With no time to waste, he rushed her to the side of the wall, snatched the zebra from
her hand and stuffed it in her pack. He then hefted her up to his hip where she began to climb him like a tree until she was on his shoulder. Nervously she stepped onto his palm.

She was quivering like stem in the wind. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I won’t let you fall.” With his left hand he held her stable.

“I’m not afraid for me,” she said as if it hurt to speak.

“Yeah,” he replied softly. The zombies were closing rapidly. Very, very rapidly. “Ready?”

She nodded. He bent at the knees, then launched her shot-put style straight up. She was so light that she made the top edge of the wall easily. There she immediately began to scramble up and over, disappearing from sight.

Ram would have cheered her except the first of the zombies arrived.
The creature wore part of a scraggy white uniform, that of a toll taker. Ram crushed in its head with his bad. A second one grabbed his arm. This had been a woman—it was horribly naked, showing off long, puss-filled lesions which ran up and down its torso. Ram stepped back and whistled the bat at her, Hank Aaron style, nearly taking her head clean off.

He brought down a third
with an over-hand chop. And a fourth; hacking like he was trying to fell a tree with an axe. One grabbed his pack and without thinking Ram gave it up, freeing himself to swing harder and faster. Corpses piled at the feet of the walking corpses, stacking higher until Ram grew frantic.

They were all around him with their ragged claws and their biting teeth. A useless panic set in, turning him from a thinking man into a beast, little better than the creatures that swarmed him. In a quarter second lull in the fighting, he saw a clear area, a circle of cement that was free and open. Pointlessly he charged through the ring
of zombies, desperate to get at it, losing the bat in the process.

When he arrived he found the circle was nothing special or magical and its zombie lined edges closed on him like a vise. He screamed and bashed through the line again, feeling nails rake across his jacket. He
didn’t care. The virus no longer caused the least fear. They could scratch him all they wanted. It was their gaping, putrid mouths that had his mind spazzing.

Without proper management from his brain, basic survival instinct took over.
He ran around, sometimes leaping, sometimes kicking, sometimes screaming uselessly until his voice was hoarse and his throat burned with the ragged breath shooting in and out of him. And then above all the ruckus he heard Jillybean scream.

“
Raaaaaam!”

In
that instant his panic left him and before the little girl finished drawing out his name in what seemed like an endless piercing tone, he was completely focused on everything around him: he noted that the zombies had filled up both directions of the bridge/tunnel—and the area he had been going crazy in was now so dense with the creatures that it was a wonder he hadn’t been pulled down already—and that Jillybean had not been idle on the top of the wall. Somehow she had managed to drag a broken piece of fence to the edge and now it hung out like tartan tongue.

She screamed something, maybe an encouragement
to try for the piece of fence, or perhaps a warning that he was within inches of being smothered. He didn’t know. His focus, which had been all-encompassing a second before, narrowed to a beam: all he saw was the fence ten-feet off the ground and the ziggy line through the zombies he would have to run to get at it.

In other words: the easy part.

The hard part would come after he leapt up and grabbed the fence: he would still have to climb up it, while he was horribly exposed, hanging like a worm dangling from a hook, well within reach of the zombies. For how long? Ten, fifteen seconds?

The darkest part of his mind saw clearly what would happen in two scenarios. In the first he would dash forward, only to be met by surging zombies before he could even make
the attempt at leaping for the fence where upon he would be swarmed and eaten alive.

In the second scenario he would weave through the undead and make a Michael Jordan-
esque leap catching a hold of the fence and before he could even begin to climb he’d feel zombie claws gripping his legs and ankles. He’d be pulled down swarmed and eaten alive.

The choices weren't good, but they were better than just standing there and being swarmed and eaten alive.
Without thinking, Ram took off, letting his subconscious dictate his path through the zombies who reached out and tore at his clothes as he passed, slowing his momentum, giving the short sprint a slow motion nightmare quality. Still, he was young and strong and he made a leap that wasn’t in the least graceful…it was powerful enough however. His fingers found the lower edge of the fence and hooked on.

Just like in
scenario two he found his legs immediately attacked.

Unlike in scenario two
, Ram went wild, kicking this way and that, feeling facial bones snap and eye sockets cave. But, as expected, a particular tough and large zombie caught a hold of his shoe. Ram kicked hard and swung away.

As he swung back, he knew
he couldn’t keep this up. With all his kicking he hadn’t progressed an inch up the fence and already the bite of the wire was worrying his fingers loose. If he didn’t find some way to relieve the pressure on his hands and get out of reach quick he would be a dead man.

As he swung back toward the big brute he kicked again but this time the blow struck the thing’s chest and an idea shot from his brain to his foot like lightning. He planted that left foot on the
zombie’s collar bone and then his right went on the crown of its head and in this way he stair-stepped right out of reach.

He was up the
remaining part of the fence in a few seconds. Wearing a smile of relief, he was prepared to give Jillybean a huge hug, but she wasn’t in sight.

“Jillybean!” he called in desperation.

“Oh, hi,” she said from almost at his elbow. She had been bent over in a little crevice among the rocks. Now she struggled up bearing a stone as large as she could carry. “You made it! I’m so happy and Ipes won’t believe it. He thought you were a goner. Hold on.” The rock was getting heavy so she pitched it over the side where it sounded like it crushed something squishy. “I was going to save you with that rock.”

“You save
d me with that fence. Was that Ipes’ idea? Or yours?”

The zebra was
lying on its side in the rocks. Jillybean picked him up. Dusting off his bottom, she said, “The way he talks you would think I don’t have
any
ideas. It is a wonder I can tie my shoes without him.”

Ram laughed—it was half relief and half because she was so button-cute. She went on talking about the zebra for a few minutes, all nonsense of course, and while she did Ram checked himself for scratches. Thankfully his tough
leather jacket had resisted every fingernail.

Euphoria had a good hold of him until he saw a
string of zombies picking their way through the rocks toward them. The man-made island consisted only of the bridge/tunnel highway and a rocky hillock. His euphoria dissipated in the chilly rain and Ram sighed looking out at the grey sea.

“It’s gonna be cold,” he murmured.

Jillybean's lips thinned in anxiety. “Can we maybe go back. You know, sneak along the edge of this island thingy and then make a run for the land.”

Even if they could get past the mass of zombies heading their way, i
t would be a long run, one that he could make if he was alone. There was no way Jillybean could make the run. If she tried she'd die; something he wasn’t going to allow to happen. “Naw, it’s too far,” he said. "We’ll swim to the other island, it's only about a half a mile…” Her leg began an anxious shimmying dance and her lips compressed so much that they practically disappeared. “I’ll carry you if you can’t swim,” he assured her.

“I can swim a little. I had swim lessons at the Holly Pool,
by the supermarket. They used to do swim lessons for the
Tadpoles
, that was me, a Tadpole. It was at like early in the morning and it was cold, but that looks really cold and I don't like the waves. I can't swim in waves, I think. Ipes says I can't neither."

He assured her once more that he would carry her if needed
—and it was needed very quickly. Choppy, churning waters, coupled with trying to swim fully clothed turned out impossible for Jillybean and a torture for Ram, especially when he added the weight of a six year old and her sponge-like Zebra.

When she began to sputter after barely twenty-yards, he turned over on his back and pulled her onto his chest. For the next hour he slogged backwards in a one-armed, monotonous, and very slow manner. It would have been quicker to sink to the bottom of the bay and walk through its black mud.

By the time he reached the other island he could barely keep their heads above the water. They both struggled to shore: Ram's muscles quivered with exhaustion, while Jillybean's quivered with early onset hypothermia. She sat on the rocks and hugged herself while Ram went to investigate the highway as it emerged out of the tunnel.

More zombies. They dotted the bridge and
, like drunken guards, they went back and forth in erratic lines. The sight of them crushed Ram's spirit. He had spent almost the last of his energy fighting to get to a little rocky island that was, for all intents and purposes, the exact match of the one he just left.

What was perhaps worse was that in the distance at the edge of his vision he could see another little island where the bridge ended and the highway again slunk down beneath the water.

"Why did they build a bridge like this?" Jillybean asked. He had stared at the impossible route he had chosen for them for so long that she had come wandering up and now she reached out and held his hand. Her fingers were like ice. "It really doesn't make sense and Ipes is too cold to talk or he'd tell me."

"I think it's because we have a navy base near here and they can't get the super big boats under the bridge
," Ram explained. "So they built a couple of tunnels and sent them under the water. And now the boats can float on past. It's an engineering marvel, except they didn't engineer it very well with zombies in mind. Look. See all of them out there?"

"Yeah. Ipes is afraid."

"I am too," Ram lied. The truth was that he was too tired to be afraid. "Do you think you might be able to swim some more? I mean without me carrying you?" She shrugged without looking up, meaning she would try but wasn't going to guarantee the results.

"
But I'd rather we just take that boat instead," she said, pointing off to the right.

"There's a boat?" Ram demanded. He didn't wait for an answer and took off, hurrying over the thousands of head-sized rocks that made up the little island.

There was indeed a boat: a dinky sailboat of fifteen feet in length that looked part zombie itself. Its hull appeared to have gone over rocks like cheese over a grater, and the sail was in tatters, flapping uselessly in the wind. Even the boom, the pole that jutted out perpendicular to the mast and held the lower part of the sail in place, was bent near in half.

Ram couldn't believe his
good luck.

Careful not to accidentally set it free back in
to the Chesapeake, he climbed onboard and began to inspect his new treasure. There wasn't much to it: in a storage compartment at the back of the boat he discovered two life preservers, an anchor and chain, and fifty-feet of thin cord. In the bow was a crawl space and it too held some items: a heavy fishing pole and tackle box, rags—mostly old t-shirts, a couple of buckets, and a sail repair kit.