The Undead World (Book 2): The Apocalypse Survivors (36 page)

Jillybean began to squeeze from her hiding spot—
Wait. Not yet
, Ipes warned.
Count to twenty. Let the man get further away
.

Waiting would have been nice and it would have been safe, but only for her. She knew with a certainty that when Ram caught his breath he would yell out to warn her. When that happened he’d be hit on the head with a weighted hunk of steel and wood by a woman whose blood was primed with adrenaline. At the least, Ram would be concussed and
would have trouble walking or even talking. At the most he would be knocked out. Being knocked out equaled death. Jillybean wouldn’t be able to move him in time to keep him from being pitched out into the street with the monsters.

With all the natural skill in her lithe body, Jillybean stole out from her hiding place just as Ram began to get his wind back.

“Jillybean…”

“Shut it or so help me I’ll bash your head in,” the woman said with the
shotgun raised to strike.

With the sound covering her movement, Jillybean stepped away from the desk and rushed full on the woman with the only weapon she possessed: the black sweater she had grabbed from the apartment.

The charging shadow, which seemed far larger than it really was, caught the woman’s attention. She yelped and, with her heart hammering, she moved with the speed of panic, stepping back and swinging the gun around to shoot. Both actions contained all the commonsense common to panic—there was no room left on the landing to step and within a second Jillybean was too close to shoot with a shotgun.

This didn’t stop the woman from trying both.

Her right foot came down on air just as she pulled the trigger. The shock of the gun blast helped to propel her tumbling backwards down the stairs in a jumble of cries and grunts and sickening thuds, while above Jilly’s head the air fizzed with the passage of the shotgun’s pellets.

B
efore the woman came to bone-breaking crash at the bottom of the stairs Jillybean was urging Ram to get up. “Hurry, Ram. I’ve got you,” the little girl cried, straining with all her might to help him to a standing position. In seconds they were hurtling down the stairs in the dark while above, the man with the rifle came rushing like a hurricane wind.

“Reba,” he bellowed.

Reba was on the landing below, moaning like one of the undead. Both Jillybean and Ram tripped on her sprawled form, but neither fell completely. They had one set of steps to go before light flicked down.

“Reba, shit!” the man cried. With his flashlight and his unbound hands, the man was faster. They could hear his feet skipping down the
stairs coming two, three at a time. It would be seconds only before they were within range of his gun.

“
Jilly, shoot him!” Ram yelled, unexpectedly.

“But I don’t have a…” Jillybean started to explain that she wasn’t armed when the man
above them shot his gun blindly. It sounded like a stick of dynamite exploding. Defensively, he shot again, more or less at nothing but the dark. The bullet whined nowhere near Ram and Jillybean.

“Come on,” Ram said under the noise.

At the bottom of the stairs they burst through the door leading to the lobby. This space wasn’t much more than an open area with two banks of elevators and the door to the stairs. Ram paused to get his bearings and to think of a plan. There wasn’t time.

“Out here, Mister Ram,” Jillybean said pulling him toward the front door.

“But the zombies,” he said.

In the dark he missed her shredded clothes and the make-up on her face. “I’m like you,” she said moving up close. “I’m a zombie, see? And I can act like a zombie, too.”

He gazed down on her fondly. “Zombies don’t smile, Sweetheart. Now we better hurry.”

J
ust as their enemy came tentatively into the lobby, they stepped out into the night. In a second, zombies came at the pair. Ram took the lead, lurching awkwardly and moaning loud and pointedly to make sure Jillybean understood to follow suit. She did, though making sure not to get carried away as he was.

Their disguises worked. In seconds they were part of the crowd that gimped about in front of the buil
ding and when the man with the rifle stuck his head out they acted just like the rest and moved toward him until he retreated back inside.

Only then did the pair act their way back toward Ram’s truck.

“You’re crazy,” Ram said as Jillybean struggled with the wire. His bindings were far too tight for her soft fingers and her skinny, malnourished muscles, but they weren’t strong enough for her mind. Using a flashlight to illuminate the wire, she studied it before pulling out the can opener from her back pack. Using its tiny teeth she was able to grip the wire and use the strength in her entire upper body to loosen them.

“There, you’re free,” she said, rubbing her fingers where the metal had bit. “But I don’t think I’m crazy. That’s what means insane, right? Cuckoo for cocoa-puffs? That’s not me.”

“Then you’re the bravest girl ever,” Ram said. He too sat rubbing his hands where the wire had bit cruel and deep.

“I don’t think that either. I was really
ascared the whole time, especially when that guy shot his gun. My ears still hurt.”

Ram groaned at how she kept refusing his compliment, though he smiled as he did—he couldn’t seem to help smiling at her. “Well you are very brave to me,” Ram told her.

“Ok. You’re brave to me too, except Ipes thinks you’re not very smart coming here all alone like that. You need me, Mister Ram. So don’t try to leave me anymore. Ok? And why do you keep smiling?”

“Because I…” Ram stopped in midsentence and his face fell in sadness. “Because I think you’re a very special girl.”

He was going to say something else
, thought Jillybean.

Whatever it was, Ram kept to himself. He grew from sad to grim as they sat there. “Are you thinking about leaving me again?” Jillybean asked, misreading the look.

“No. I‘m just not done saving people. We’re going to New York.”

Chapter 35

Ram

New York
City

Driving on dark streets populated with dead humans and dead cars, led to a premonition of coming death for Ram. He had
, for too long, tight-roped across the knife’s edge; his luck would not last forever. Nor would Jillybean’s.

She lay at peace as the tires thumped and the engine churned
out its white noise. When the trip northeast had first begun she chirped nonstop like a tireless bird, but then the stress of the evening caught up with her. Down dropped her lids to cover over her blue orbs and then her breath stopped forming words, lightly whistling on the outflow instead.

She was beautiful. Even covered in zombie makeup she stirred
Ram’s heart with her button nose, soft cheeks, and pointy little chin. He wanted to kiss each of her features as if she was his own daughter.

With difficulty he refrained.

“Not yet,” he said glancing away from her long enough to correct his course. “Maybe if I live through the night, I’ll tell you that I love you, little Jillybean.”

But not before. There was just too much of a chance that he wouldn’t make it and she was already far too attached. What would it do to her to hear
I love you
from him right before he died? Would she blame herself? Would she push away Neil or any other father figure? What if it just plain messed her up for life? After all, everyone who had ever told her they loved her was very likely dead.

He wasn’t going to take the chance at giving her a complex just so he could die without feeling all alone.

Was that what his feelings for her were all about? Was she just a cure for his loneliness?

Ram couldn’t get a handle on his feelings and while he wrestled with them the city came into sight far to the east. At night there wasn’t much he could see of it. It was simply a horizon of angular shadows
against a starry background. As he drew closer, the empty buildings and the sorrowful wail of the zombies added to the aura of death that he felt surrounding him. It seemed very close now, like an invisible glow coming from his exposed skin and hovering about like a shroud.

The single lane between the endless shambling mounds of grey flesh didn’t help the feeling either. It was as if he was being herded to his doom and so, very uncharacteristically, he followed the lane without once considering deviating from it. If he did, where would he go? New York was h
uge and he had no idea where Neil and Sarah or even Cassie was.

It was true he could get out and walk the streets as a zombie, but for how long? In Philadelphia he had
walked a half-mile and passed two-hundred zombies, which had felt like a lot. Now he knew that it was nothing.

In
New York City the numbers of undead were astronomical. Their smell was like an invisible fog that coated everything, including the inside of his mouth. It made him want to gag.

Why would any human stay here?
Ram wondered. If there was an answer it lay ahead…and not much further ahead. There in his lights were heavy iron gates that undoubtedly led to his destination. Further on he could see a brilliantly lit ship sitting up next to a pier. Across from it, tied to the dock, in tandem, were two Staten Island ferry boats that crawled with live people.

This was it.

Ram brought his Ford to a stop right before the gates, however they did not retract as they had for Neil earlier. When he saw the guard house flicker with shadows he tapped lightly on his horn. The sound stirred up the zombies nearby. In mass, they pushed forward, and so great were their numbers that the metal poles leaned and the fencing bowed dangerously.

“Read the fucking sign, asshole!” someone called out above the moans.

Now Ram saw the sign:

Gates will not open after sunset. No exceptions!

“Son of a bitch,” he swore under his breath. He felt the pressing need to get his fate over with one way or the other and the idea of a delay only added to his anxiety.

Sitting there, with his intuition trending darkly, he forced himself to relax and decided to use the time to come up with a better plan. His only plan at the moment was to go in friendly, smile pretty, and then blast Cassie the moment he saw her, and let the chips fall where they may. It wasn’t a good plan, but having been born with an action oriented personality,
Ram had never been much for plans.

After a few seconds of gazing down at the
brilliantly lit cruise boat, he came up with a new plan. He’d sneak aboard, find Cassie, blow her to hell, and let the chips fall where they would.

“Good enough,” he said as he turned the truck around.

“What are you doing, Mister Ram?” Jillybean asked. She rubbed her eyes and then yawned in imitation of a tiny grizzly.

“I think I found where Neil and Sarah are. Back there at those boats that are all lit up.”

She squinted at the retreating lights. “Then why are we going this way?”

“They won’t let us in until morning,” Ram told her. “I have a bad feeling that Neil is in trouble,
sooo…” He paused after drawing out the syllable and gave her a guilty smile. “So I’m going to find a different way onto the boat while you stand guard with the truck.”

“You mean you don’t want me to come with you,” Jillybean said with her chin sunk to her chest.

“It’s not because I’m mad at you or anything,” Ram said quickly. “It’s just you’re so small and this is really dangerous. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“But everything is dangerous now,” Jillybean said. “And I’m always going to be smaller than you, and I don’t want to get hurt either. But I also don’t want you to get hurt, and neither does Ipes though he doesn’t say it.”

“This is extra dangerous,” Ram tried to explain. “It’s the kind of dangerous that I may not be able to come back from. Do you understand?”

“You mean you might die,” Jillybean said, her face starting to twist beneath the make-up. “Then don’t do it! Stay here with me.”

“What about Eve? And Sadie and Miss Sarah and Mister Neil? They could be in trouble right now. And even if they’re not, somebody has to stop Cassie.” Somebody has to be
good
. That was the real reason behind his foolish heroics. Ever since the apocalypse, the concepts of
good
and
honor
and
duty
seemed to have been thrown out the window.

“But what do I do if you die?” Jillybean asked. Her lower lip stuck out and quivered while her eyes grew bigger and wetter with every passing second.

“Come here,” Ram said, gathering her into his arms. “Don’t worry about that. You are such a smart and brave little girl that I think you’ll be fine. Just make sure you keep Ipes near. I can tell that he helps you be smart. And he’s a good friend, right?”

“Yes, b-but he’s not the same as having you,” she said with her thin chest beginning to hitch. “I’ll b-be all alone again.”

“Yeah,” Ram breathed. He had no idea what to do. On one hand it would be insane to take a six-year-old with him into what could be a gun-battle. On the other hand to leave her all alone in a city plagued with so many zombies was horrible and cruel.

There was only one person he could turn to for advice. “What does Ipes say you should do?”

Ipes always had an opinion. Jillybean paused, as if actually listening, sniveling up buggers and wiping at her tears uselessly, since more followed in a steady trickle. When the zebra was done she cried even harder.

“He thinks you should stay in the truck, doesn’t he?” Ram asked
, holding her.

She nodded without looking up. “He says people are mean, while zombies are just monsters. He says I should take my chances with the monsters. They’re easier to understand and easier to handle.”

“Ok,” Ram whispered and patted her leg, glad that he had been let off the hook. It was a decision that he couldn’t have made on his own. “Ipes is very smart and I know he makes you very smart too. We should listen to him.” His use of the word “we” had him thinking a ridiculous thought. “What does Ipes think I should do?” Ram asked. He even glanced down at the stuffed animal as if expecting the zebra to speak.

Jillybean nodded gently, her face growing resigned. “He says if you don’t go to help Neil, no one will. And he says
I shouldn’t try to stop you. He says I have to let you go and hope that you make it back.”

Ram marveled at the answer. What part of Jillybean’s six-year-old brain was mature enough to formulate such a response
? Was she channeling her father through her subconscious? Was she naturally precocious? Or had her intelligence blossomed due to the extreme conditions she found herself living in?

The answer didn’t matter. He hugged her fiercely for a moment and then pulled back to look at her. Despite that her eyes still dripped tears, she smiled bravely and he hugged her a second time so that she wouldn’t see that his own eyes had grown misty.

He cleared his throat and said, “Ok,” before setting his face forward and putting the truck in motion once again. They back-tracked, looking for a stretch of fencing on the east side of the lane that he could bash down. Since all the fences were reinforced with stalled-out cars, Ram had to drive further than a mile to find a spot.

“Buckle up, Sweetheart,”
he warned told Jillybean. He then floored the truck and sent it spearing through the fence in a great crash and shriek. The fence wasn’t his only obstacle. The Ford jounced over the undead like a tractor carving up a New England field.

Eventually he came to a place near the river where the dead were fewer in numbers. Ram stopped the truck and the two of them hid
under a sleeping bag as the zombies came up to inspect the vehicle. When they didn’t see humans they moved on.

“It’s time,” Ram said, after peeking above the edge of the door to mak
e sure the coast was clear. “I should get going. Now remember, if I don’t make it back…listen to Ipes. He’ll know what to do.”

Jillybean agreed she would. “Are you
ascared?” Jillybean asked. She clearly was scared for Ram.

Ram had to smile at the realization. “You’re scared for me, but I’m sacred for you. We’re funny aren’t we?”

She smiled sadly. “Butterfly-kiss for luck,” she said, and came right up to his face so he could feel the subtle wind of her breath. A second later her giant lashes whisked up and down on his cheek. It was the greatest thing he had ever felt in his life.

“
Your turn,” she said, pulling back and then presenting her cheek to him.

He had never done this before,
though he guessed he did it right when she began to giggle.

“Ok, time to go,” he said again. He didn’t want to go. He wanted to tell Jillybean that he loved her and that he would take care of her and that they could go away and be a family. He would be the dad and she would be his little girl. Instead he squeezed her hand and said, “Bye.”

“Bye,” she said right back in a little voice.

He left then, and after looking back once and seeing her tiny upturned face staring out the truck’s window he couldn’t force himself to look back a second time. Whatever noble reason he had for leaving couldn’t compare to the idea that he was abandoning a little girl on a dark night in a city of the undead.