The Undead World (Book 2): The Apocalypse Survivors (4 page)

And still they came on and on.

“I guess I won’t have to worry about a fever,” he whispered. With the heat of the battle, he felt, at least for the moment, somewhat like his old confident self again and he dropped the zombies one after another. This confidence lasted only the span of time it took him to go through the remaining bullets in the gun. When it was empty, his first thought was that he was going to have now keep track of how many times he pulled the trigger.

It would be his last clip and it was very important that the fifteenth bullet be saved for himself. The fever scared him to no end, however the very notion of being eaten alive made his skin crawl.

The only problem was that his last clip wasn’t where it was supposed to be! He yanked aside his coat and stared down at where the third magazine should’ve been sitting in its stiff leather holder. “It was there. I put it right there as always,” he said in a pleading voice, as his bulging eyes searched the grass beneath the feet of the surging zombies.

It wasn’t in sight, but so desperate was the man to find the lost magazine that he let the undead close the distance quickly as he wagged his head from side to side staring intently down. A grey hand took a hold of his jacket while another just missed his face with its sharp talons. They were all around him pressing in close with their long arms reaching and their opens mouths grinning in anticipation of their next meal. Despite his training and his
deep experience Ram was on the verge of real panic. The kind that went hand in hand with madness.

On the edge of insanity, he stepped back uncertainly, and it seemed that the air grew hot and nasty around him so that he couldn’t pull in a real breath, and now as the beasts pressed close and there was no where left to run
. He had a feeling akin to suffocation and the panic grew nearly beyond him. This was because he possessed the certain knowledge that they would drown him in their disease before the eating would commence, and in the end he would be just as they were.

And that more than anything else was what released his mind from its delicate hold on reality.

Chapter 3

Jillyb
ean

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

In a house on Juniper lane that smelled of fried meat and hot ash, a little girl lay curled up in an arm chair drooling onto the sleeve of her coat. In sleep her worries vanished and her face was angelic, seeming to have been created out of the whitest
, smoothest porcelain.

When
a tiny sound came to her she flicked her blue eyes open, yet beyond that remained so motionless that she might have been porcelain indeed. This was how she survived—with a mental toughness light years beyond her physical maturity.

She knew that movement drew the monster's attention. Once
, she had sat, scarcely breathing and huddled like a rock, not three feet from one of
them
and had not been seen. It had taken all her will not to go running off with a panicked scream in her throat. That would have meant sure death.

There on the chair
in the pleasant home, she ran her eyes all around while listening intently; the monsters wheezed or moaned when they breathed. She heard neither; slowly she sat up and it was then that she realized that Ipes was missing again.

"Ipes?" she whispered.

Down here. You dropped me,
he scolded from the floor.
I nearly fell into the fire and what would you have done then?

Jillybean fished the zebra from the floor and poked his big nose. "I would have all the cookies to myself for once. What do you think woke me?"

The wind I would say,
Ipes ventured. He pointed with his flappy hoof at the window, beyond which trees could be seen swaying.

The little girl then yawned and stretched, asking, "How long did I sleep?" She was a child of the digital age and thus was baffled completely by clocks with pointing hands
and very few of them moved anymore; she hadn't known the true time since her father had died.

Only a few minutes,
Ipes replied.
And it's just as well. What would have happened if you had slept the day away? We have exploring to do and you know you can't travel at night.

She knew all too well. Getting up she traipsed along to the kitchen, instinctually knowing in what direction it was. "You thin
k that man left us anything?"

If you mean food, probably not.

Ipes was correct. The drawers had all been yanked and the cupboards were laid open and bare...all save a little white tin. "What's that say?" She held it up to Ipes who squinted his two black beads at it.

Or...
orag...orange-ano,
he said at last.
It's a spice.

Opening the top of the tin she gave it a look. "Orange-
ano? Why would they call it that if it's green?" After giving it a sniff her eyes went wide in recognition. "Momma used to put this in
bascetti
. We should keep it, right?"

Ipes agreed and she stored it away in her pink backpack. The pair then went through the rest of the house quickly, finding only
one thing worth reclaiming: a four pack of D batteries that Jillybean didn't want to take because they were heavy.

They're for flash
lights, don't you know,
Ipes told her.
And you can't see in the dark.

"Neither can you,"
Jilly shot back.

Yeah
, but I'm not afraid of the dark, like some people I know,
Ipes said pointedly, to which the girl only replied:
Humph
. Nonetheless she took the batteries. After that she decided to go home. Slipping out the back door she made her way around the side of the house just as she had come, only now there was a strong wind to contend with. It masked the fact that a monster had wandered close.

She neither saw the rotting skinned thing nor heard it until it was practically on top of her. Only her natural instinct of survival kept her whole. The little girl went from a tentative mousy walk to a
flying gazelle sprint in a fraction of a second, eluding the zombie only to nearly run into the arms of another that had been sleeping on its feet in the shade of an elm across the street.

Stifling a useless shriek, she darted around a minivan parked in the street and then slithered under it crawling like a gecko with Ipes still in the crook of her arm. This sometimes worked with the brainless monster
s who were easily confused when their prey suddenly disappeared. This time it didn't. One of the monsters, a thing that seemed to have spider-like long arms came down to street level and was just thin enough to wriggle under the minivan, while the larger of the two came down on hands and knees to stare at Jillybean hungrily.

"What do I do?" she asked Ipes. "Do I try a magic marble?"

After turning his fuzzy head back and forth at the two monsters, Ipes said,
Not yet. Get a marble ready just in case and squinch to the front.

She was only too glad to obey. It meant getting further from both the monsters. When she crawled away, the one on all fours got up and she could see its feet as it came around to cut off any escape attempt.
Now!
Ipes hissed in her ear.
Throw the marble behind it.

With a backhand motion she whisked the marble out into the street. Immediately the bigger monster turned and stared at the marble
as it skittered away. Unfortunately the one already under the van, the one with long squiggly arms, kept coming after her.

Over there,
Ipes pointed.
Don't worry, you'll fit.

What he had pointed at stopped Jillybean cold. It was a storm drain, a black hole in the earth that led down into the worst nightmares of her imagination. In her little kid mind, she envisioned grotes
que horrors living there—after all, monsters walked the earth in broad daylight, what sorts of insidious things lurked in the dark and wet where light would not venture.

"Ipes, no," she said in an uncharacteristically whiney voice.

Now!
he thundered in a manner that was so much like her father's.

Only this could have got the scared little girl moving. She crabbed her way as fast as she could to the gutter and slid into the storm drain
with no room to spare. Her hands caught something on the wall that felt like a metal bar and held on as she pulled her legs in as well. This left her dangling above what looked like a drop into an endless abyss.

Let go!
yelled Ipes. This time however the power in his fatherly voice wasn’t enough and the girl refused to release her grip. Then a clawed hand, grey and scabby reached down from above and began fishing about, searching for her. Only then did she drop—twelve feet straight down—and had there not been an autumn’s worth of moldering leaves at the bottom of the shaft she would’ve been injured.

Instead she sat in a thick gloom, looking up at the groping hand, wishing that it would go away. It didn’t. Instead the monster’s arm could be seen and then its shoulder, and finally it scraped its nasty head through the narrow opening and stared down at the girl.

Now Jillybean traded her fear of the dark for the more urgent fear of being stuck in a constricting tube with a monster. Before it could come further in, she was up and feeling about the walls of the catch basin. In seconds she found a gently sloping secondary tube. It was a feederline. She went down it on her hands and knees, crawling along as fast as she could. She hurried because the pipeline wasn’t small enough for her needs; the monster was a skinny one and would be able to fit as well.

The tube only went so far and then it branched into a much larger one. It was what was called a
trunk line and was so absolutely black that Jillybean hesitated. It was the dark of hell and the sight of it going on for infinity turned her soul cold.

In the gloom behind her came an odd
tha-dunk sound and then the rustle of leaves.
It’s coming
, Ipes warned.

This was all the incentive she needed to get moving again. Stepping into the
trunk line—it was large enough for her to stand stooped over—she turned to her left, feeling the curved walls of the drain and regaining a bit of her composure, which was considerable for a six-year-old. Still her hands shook and her lower lip jabbered up and down as she walked along.

Behind her were odd sounds like the pattering of webbed feet. They
echoed, loudly at first but eventually grew faint.

“I think he went the other way,” she whispered.

The zebra shrugged, a move lost by the dark.
Or he’s squatting back there waiting for you to come back. Either way we have to go on, and whatever you do, don’t drop me.

Jillybean understood, there was an awful rotting smell wafting through the darkness. “Is this sewer for poop?”

I don’t think so
, Ipes replied.
It smells more like a dead animal, or one of the monsters, so we should be very quiet
.

That made sense, so Jillybean went into mouse mode, giving up speed in the name of silence. Time beneath the earth had little meaning and she could only mark progress by the number of large side openings she passed. Each gave her a queer turn and she was afraid to venture down any, thinking that they would only mean getting lost for good.

Of the smaller feeder tubes that went upwards there were surprisingly few. Nonetheless she explored each, finding three blocked with gratings, while one had a zombie practically standing in the gutter next to it.

Each time
, Jillybean slunk back to the trunk line and the wretched dark, carrying on in the direction she had been. Doggedly she walked like a hunchback for what felt like hours, growing ever more tired, while simultaneously having her fear ebb away.

“If we keep going
, how am I going to make it back home again?” she asked her friend. This particular anxiety grew with each step.

Maybe we shouldn’t try
, Ipes suggested.
We didn’t leave anything behind except for some pine needle soup.

Jillybean pictured the house: her own bedroom with the flowered wallpaper and the carefully arranged Barbie dolls; her parent’s room with the mummified body of her mother hidden under layers of blankets; the attic where she had made her
nest and where the rest of the stuffed animals sat patiently waiting.

They aren’t real
, Ipes said, reading her mind as he could whenever the whim struck him.
They’re not like me as you know
.

She walked on for a bit, her tiny feet making less sound than her fingers did as they c
aressed the walls. “What about daddy? What if he gets better and comes home?” Ipes sat tucked in her embrace and said nothing. He waited instead for Jillybean to answer her own question. “He’s not coming back is he?”

No
,
he’s not
.

Jilly
walked on, not saying anything, thinking of her dad and, to a lesser extent, her mom. She had always loved her mom, but it was her father to whom she had been especially close. Ever since his disappearance she had clung to the hope that he would return one day like he used to: with presents in hand and a huge back-breaking hug for her.

From her lips a sigh ran out into the dark only to be answered by a low moan.

All thoughts of her father disappeared.

Don’t say a word
, Ipes said in such a low voice that she had to wonder if he even spoke the words aloud or that they had originated somewhere in her mind. Either way it was wasted advice since even her breath had become stuck in her throat as surely if she had swallowed her acorns.

Gently now
, he said.
Turn around but don’t let
…

Too late. As she had turned, her
Power-Puff
backpack scraped against the invisible wall making a noise that could only be defined as human made. Almost immediately there came a quick thumping and slapping from down the trunk line. It was a quirky noise and the girl could imagine the monster crawling like a giant mechanical insect right at her.

Jillybean fled, running with one hand above, to keep her head from
whacking on the low ceiling, and one hand on the wall.
There’ll be an intersecting tunnel soon. Hurry!
Ipes cried.

She couldn’t hurry any faster. Even before the zombie she had been tired and now only a minute into her race she felt the air in her lungs burn and soon a stitch seemed to stab into her side and yet the monster came on without pause and it drew steadily nearer until Jillybean began to make a fear-filled noise in her throat as
terror built—she wouldn’t make the other tunnel, it was too far.

With the monster huffing jus
t feet behind her, Ipes cried,
Drop the back pack, but don’t drop me!
She let it fall and within two strides there came an odd sound behind her as the monster found the backpack. In the dark, it attacked the pack without a second thought, thinking there was a little girl still attached.