The Undead World (Book 5): The Apocalypse Renegades (22 page)

“Oh.”

“Oh?” her father yelled at the top of his lungs. “That’s all you have to say? There are eight dead men in that river. Those are more lives on your head.”

“My head?” Sadie gasped. “You guys are the ones who built the raft.”

The River King smiled thinly, his anger barely in check. “And what about the barge? Don’t tell me you had nothing to do with that.”

“Nothing whatsoever,” Sadie replied evenly. Speaking the truth to her father was easy; it was a lie that would be difficult. By the shrewd look in her father’s eye, he believed her this time.

“And what about the fire last night up on the bridge?” He pointed one long accusing finger up at the lone tower; its top was a blackened smudge. Although she had the truth on her side with this one as well, she also had the guilty knowledge of who had actually torched it.

She squinted at the tower as though seeing it for the first time. She shrugged her innocence and said, “I was here the entire time.

“I know you were. That’s not the issue. I want to know who did it and why? My guess is that they were trying to warn the renegade prisoners, which begs the question, how did they know we were coming?”

Here, she was on much firmer ground. “I didn’t even know you were leaving. I sort of guessed what was happening when I saw the boat, but I’m sure everyone did as well, so don’t ask the one girl who has no way to communicate with the outside world.

“No way to communicate?” he asked, rhetorically. He glanced around the room, his eyes running first to her mostly-filled backpack. He snapped his fingers and pointed at it. One of the goons who had been hanging back in the doorway went to it and dumped out its contents onto the bed. There was nothing that would interest anyone in the pile. After nosing through it, the goon said, “It’s clean.”

The River King moved on to something else. Next to the bed was a nightstand and sitting square in the middle of it was Eve’s baby monitor. What was worse, was that in the top drawer was the rest of the baby gear: diapers, wipes, jammies. In the box of wipes was the pistol she had taken from her father’s office. If he found that, she would be in a world of hurt.

Thankfully, the monitor seemed to take up his entire attention. “Is it possible?” he asked, quietly before turning it on. With his back to her the king didn’t see the shiver that ran up her spine. The room was morgue-quiet as everyone stared at the monitor. The king stared in anticipation while Sadie waited in heart-stopping fear.

The monitor remained blessedly quiet. “It’s practically a toy,” Sadie said. “I can barely hear Eve in it sometimes. Speaking of which, I hope you were just being a dick about Eve. You can’t take her away from me.”

“I can and I have,” the King said. He snatched up the monitor and tossed it to the goon. “I want you to sit on this like a fucking mother chicken sits on her eggs. Got it? I want to know if you hear a single peep.” He turned away from the goon and stared at Sadie through slitted eyes. “I am sick to death of your attitude, Sadie. I would stick you in the prison if I didn’t think you would come out with some sort of disease. So I’m going to make this your cell.”

She had no idea what he meant by that but it wasn’t long before she found out. Men came in and nailed her window shut. It would take a pry bar to get it open and she didn’t have a pry bar. She didn’t even have a screwdriver. This left her with two options to escape that evening: go out the door or break the window; one was as impossible as the other.

Breaking the window would alert her guard who would alert more guards and before she knew it the base would be teeming with men searching for her. That was a stupid way to go. Going out the door was a one-shot trick and she had already shot that gun dry. There was no way she was going to be able to dodge around the guard this time and, even if she could, she would be stuck in the same loop: one guard would tell another, who would tell another, and so on. She was out of options for escape which meant it might be better for Neil not to come at all. The only problem was she had no way to tell him not to come.

For hours that afternoon she racked her brains trying to think up a way to get a message to him, but with the dimming sun perched just above the tree line, she had come to the conclusion that she just wasn’t smart enough to figure a way. “Son of a bitch!” she said, savagely, kicking her mattress.

“Shut up in there,” her guard barked from the other side of the door.

She slumped back on her bed, knowing that at any second Neil would try to reach out to her. When that happened, the jig would be up. Her dad would know he was very close to the base and then he would send out his men and Neil would be caught…no, he would be killed. The bounty was for Neil’s dead body and she knew her father wouldn’t pay without seeing the corpse.

“Son of a bitch,” she said again, this time in a whisper. Neil was only minutes from accidentally springing a trap. She began to rock, saying, “I can do this, I can do this.” She just didn’t know what she was going to do. In the minutes before the sun goldened the tips of the trees, she tried to take stock of what she had to work with: some clothes, a bed, a pillow, and a gun.

“It’s too bad I don’t have the brains of Jillybean, or the skill of Captain Grey,” she said. “Or the luck of Neil. So what do I have?” She knew she had two things going for her: she was fast as hell, and sometimes she really didn’t give a shit. Neil used to think she was brave, but the truth was that sometimes she simply didn’t care what happened to her, or to others for that matter. It had been worse before she met Neil, especially when the apocalypse had first started. Back then everyone had that “me first” attitude. People holed up in their homes and refused to share even a biscuit with their starving neighbors. And who could blame them because where would they get another? When the biscuits were all gone, then they would starve too.

Then she had met Neil, and then Sarah, and then Ram, and Eve, and Jillybean. They loved her and she loved them. It had made her brave for another reason: her courage was born out of an intense fear of losing them. Now that pretty much everything she had and ever loved had been taken away, her fear meter was pegged and her bravery bordered on the reckless, if not foolish.

She realized that she had failed to add one thing to her list of items at her disposal: a bucket of piss.

“Hello?” she said, tapping on the door. It was now locked from the other side to keep her from escaping. “My bucket is full and I gotta take a leak. Normally I would just chuck it out the window, but you idiots nailed it shut.”

“Hold it and shut up.”

It was imperative that the guard should dump the bucket. It was practically her only chance to get him away from the monitor while Neil called. She raised her voice, “I’ll dump it on the floor if you don’t get in here.”

The guard scoffed. “Go ahead and dump it, see if I care. You’re the one who’s got to sit in your stink all day.”

“I already have,” she yelled. “None of you lazy bastards will dump it.” His silence suggested he didn’t care. Her fear began to mount and with it came a crazy feeling. “Fine, if you won’t do it, I will, and I don’t think you are going to like where I dump it.” Although it had been extremely difficult to overcome the sheer disgustingness of it all, necessity had forced her to get used to relieving herself in a bucket. It was especially hard when it began to fill; for the better part of a day and a half the bucket hadn’t been changed out; it was now three quarters full and the reek of it gave her a headache. Gingerly, and with her head turned away, she picked it up and went to the door, and then, very carefully, poured its stinking contents under the crack. Half splashed back toward her but the other half ran under the door.

The guard reacted just as she hoped he would; he exploded in a firecracker string of curses. She could hear his chair grind back and then his feet on the linoleum as they came stomping toward the door. He worked the lock and then slammed open the door.

Sadie dropped the bucket and now pointed out into the hall. “Go get a mop and clean this up,” she demanded, imperiously.

“Fuck that,” he growled. “I ain’t cleaning up shit.” With one giant stretch of his long legs, he stepped over the puddle of urine. “The King says we can rough you up if you get out of line. He says somebody’s got to remind you of your place and I’ve been looking forward to this.”

“He what?” she asked, stunned.

The guard smirked at her reaction. “He said we can beat your ass black and blue just as long as we don’t mess up your face.”

This news left Sadie scrambling for breath. “Uh, that’s okay,” she said as she snatched up a pillow from the bed and held it in front of her. “No one’s out of line, you see? Maybe if you just get the mop I’ll clean it up. No harm, no foul, right?”

“I don’t think so,” the guard said advancing on her. “You’ve been a real pain in the ass and a girl’s gotta know her place.” He was a big man with huge hands; he cracked his knuckles menacingly. He could kill her easily. “I could rough you up, hurt you real bad, or maybe we could arrange a different deal.” He looked her up and down with a man’s hunger in his eyes.

Sadie crushed the pillow to her chest, not knowing which of her options was worse.

“So, which will it be?” he asked. She was sure the beating would be severe and the rape intentionally cruel. She found she couldn’t answer which made the guard even angrier. “Come on, we don’t have all day. Pick one or I will.”

How was she to choose? Her mouth came open but before she could find a word to spit out of it, she heard someone speak behind the guard. “Green this is Blue. Come in Green.” Sadie’s eyes jacked wide at the sound of Neil’s voice, while it took the guard a moment to realize what he was hearing. When he did, his eyes widened.

“You’re fucked,” he said almost gleefully, before turning on his heel and heading for the door.

“Come in, Blue,” Neil’s voice said, through what sounded like a curtain of static.

The guard stomped out of the room, splashing urine uncaringly. Sadie followed along in his wake, still clutching the pillow, not knowing what she was going to do. She stopped at the edge of the pool of urine; the guard had left a large, muddy boot print right in the middle. Sadie couldn’t tell why she stopped. Perhaps it was the helpless feeling that turned her limbs to jelly, or maybe it was the piss itself.

Despite the Goth clothes and the black makeup, she still insisted on gooping on around her eyes and painting on her lips, she could sometimes be extremely girly.

Stepping in the piss was where she drew the rebellious line. It seemed to mark the edge of a barrier in her mind. The guard didn’t seem to have barriers. He reached the monitor and gloated over it as if it were made of gold instead of plastic. In his hands, Neil’s faint voice said through heavier static, “Come in Green. We are all set. The fourteen, ten, twenty-five, twelve is…go. I…the…specified…pl…” The static took over the monitor completely. The guard shook it and then held it up to his ear as the static slowly faded away to nothing.

Sadie grinned. “It’s out of batteries. You shouldn’t have left it on for so long.”

“Who was that?” the guard demanded. “Was that what’s-his-name? The guy the king is after?” An innocent shrug was all the answer she gave. Unexpectedly, he started coming for her. “You have extra batteries. They were in your pack. Boy, when the king hears this you’re dead.”

Yes, she was. It would be direct proof of her treason. The guard stepped over the piss just as she jumped for the nightstand, her hands scrambling like mad for the hidden gun in the top drawer. He was slow to react, and before he was fully turned towards her, she had the gun pointed at his face.

At first, his mouth fell open as the lights from the hall glinted off the nickel-plated slide. Then he smirked once again. “What do you think you’re going to do with that?”

That was a good question and Sadie didn’t have an answer, precisely. She said the first thing that came to her mind, even though she didn’t think it was true, “I’ll kill you if you move.”

“You sure? If you do, everyone will hear you.”

She didn’t know if that was true. The gun was tiny and the bullets were even tinier, the size of a pen’s tip. In her experience, the larger the gun, the larger the sound. With this would it be just a “pop” like a toy? She doubted it. Every gun she had ever fired had been annoyingly loud, if not downright painful. Of course, the question of how loud it was brought up something else: could she honestly pull the trigger? Kill a man in cold blood? And yet what choice did she have?

“Ma-maybe they w-will hear,” she stuttered. She took a breath before finishing, “Maybe they won’t. I wouldn’t take the chance if I was you.”

“Oh, they’ll hear you all right and then you’ll be fucked worse than before.”

He was probably right. “Do you have any handcuffs on you?”

The guard smiled genuinely at this. “Nope. And I don’t got no rope, but it don’t matter because even if I did I wouldn’t let you put that shit on me. No way, because you see, you ain’t got the balls to pull the trigger of that gun, no how.”

She hoped to impress him by drawing back the hammer on the pistol; he laughed at this. Next, she tried to get angry. “You’re going to get on your knees right now!” she demanded in her harshest voice.

“Why should I? If you’re going to shoot me, you’re going to have to shoot me face to face.” He leaned forward so that her target would be even easier to hit.

She leaned back the same amount. Time was slipping away. She felt the sands in the hourglass playing out beneath her feet. It was like she was falling and being swallowed whole at the same time. How long until Neil made it onto the base? Already the room had slipped quietly into darkness while outside the last of the sun was making for a pretty twilight. It would be soon. And how long before he was in desperate need of her help? He had been very vague in the details of his plan. Supposedly, her part was simply standing guard, but she didn’t believe it. Like night following day, she knew he would need her eventually. 

And here she was stuck; she was at least stuck on the right end of a gun, though you wouldn’t know it to look at her and the guard. He was confident that she wouldn’t pull the trigger and she was afraid he was right.

“You’re not fooling anyone,” he said. “You walk around here like you’re tough but in truth we both know you’re nothing without your daddy. He would’ve shot by now. But I’m guessing you ain’t never shot no one before. Not in cold blood anyhow. And you won’t do it now, no ways. You ain’t no killer and besides, I didn’t do nothing to be worth killing over.”

And that was the problem. The guard was a jerk, but not one who deserved to be killed. Maybe he would’ve beaten her or raped her, but maybe not. There was no way to know and she couldn’t hang a death sentence on somebody for what might have been. And yet with him just standing there, it meant that Neil was every second closer to his own death.

Suddenly, an idea came to her from out of nowhere; if she couldn’t kill the man… “I can knock you out,” she said, gaining some control of the situation. “Get down on your knees.” She glanced around the room looking for something heavy enough to do the job of knocking the man unconscious in one quick stroke. The room was practically barren; the only thing weighty enough was her nightstand. Unfortunately it would require two hands to lift which meant it was basically useless. Without her gun pointed at him, he would either run away or punch her in the face.

It wouldn’t have mattered if she’d had a baseball bat, he openly laughed at her request. “There ain’t no way I’m getting on my knees. Not for you and not for that pissant gun. Shit, it looks like a fucking toy.”

“It’s real and it will kill,” she said, forcefully, hoping to instill in him the idea that, yes, she would kill him with it no matter what it looked like.

He didn’t seem worried in the least. “Whatever. I can’t stand around here while you figure out your place in the world, which by the way is in the fucking kitchen.” To her surprise, he turned his back on her and headed for the door. She was left to follow after, feeling stupid and confused. At the puddle of urine he paused; it seemed to have grown in their brief conversation. In the second it took for him to size it up she was there behind him.

The one thing she couldn’t allow was for him to leave. She jabbed the pistol against his spine.

“You won’t do it,” he said, confidently and yet he didn’t move either. His hands had come up to just below shoulder height. It must have been at least a little bit frightening to have a gun in his back. It was frightening to Sadie. She could feel the nub of his vertebrae against the stub of the pistol. It sent a chill along her arm. Her choices were crystallized inside of her: kill the guard or let Neil face who knows how many of the River King’s men on his own. One or the other. There was no middle ground. She couldn’t pull the trigger and blast out his spinal column, paralyzing him. That would be a criminal death. Nor could she shoot him in the leg and leave him. He would just drag himself downstairs and raise the alarm.

She had to kill him. That was her only choice. Suddenly, the weight of the choice caused butterflies to explode in her chest where their swirling became contagious. They caught in her stomach and shoulders, before passing to her arms and finally into her hands. Somehow the guard could sense a change in her however he didn’t fully understand what it meant to him.

“Hey, maybe your dad won’t be as mad as you think. Maybe he’ll let you off easy with just a spanking.” He tried to give a little laugh but it was strained and came out garbled like he was choking on it.

That he was suddenly not being an asshole made her job that much harder. “No!” she hissed, digging the barrel into his spine. “This isn’t about him; this is about what I have to do. If I don’t kill you, my friend will die.” The way her words struggled out of her throat, like they were crawling over broken glass, finally convinced him that she was serious. Slowly, he turned around, his hands held just a touch higher than before.

“Don’t do it. Don’t shoot. Look, I mean it, for your sake. They’ll hear the gun and then where will you be? If you kill me, not even your daddy will be able to protect you.” He tried on a new sort of smile, a sick one that made his face look misshapen, like a stone gargoyle leering down from a church ledge.

In her left hand, she held the pillow. It had been completely forgotten until that moment. She brought it up slowly, placing it in front of the gun. Both it and the pistol shook. It would muffle the shot, maybe not all the way, but perhaps enough to keep anyone from hearing.

The guard knew what the pillow would be used for and he tried to laugh it off, but it came across as bad acting: “Ha-ha.” When Sadie failed to smile his mouth began to twitch. “Please, I didn’t do nothing.”

“But you will,” she said, swallowing what felt like a pinecone the weight of a brick. “No matter what you promise, I won’t believe you.”

The guard was getting desperate. “But…but...you can’t do this in cold blood. It’s not right. And…and aren’t you supposed to be good? Aren’t you a good person?”

“Am I?” Just at the moment, she was sure she wasn’t. She had to kill; there was no other way around it, which meant she was a killer. Her hand knew the truth. It had become steady, like a killer’s would. The rest of her was confused. When she said, “Get on your knees and it’ll be over quick,” her lower lip jabbered up and down and her stomach rolled continuously, threatening to hurl.

Fear had grown huge in the guard. She could see it in his eyes. “Hey, come on. Please, please don’t.” He was practically blubbering. It was embarrassing for him and as painful as a heart full of thumbtacks for her.

“The back of the head is the best,” she said, outraged by her own words and hating her lips for speaking them. “It’ll be quick, lights out. It’s either that or I shoot you in the face.”

“Oh jeez, son of a bitch. Come on, Sarah, I didn’t do anything to you.”

Sadie blinked in confusion. Did he just call her Sarah? Was that on purpose? “My name is not Sarah!”

His face turned the color of very old yogurt. “Stacy? It’s Stacy right?”

She closed her eyes in a long blink. She was going to have to kill him. There was no changing it. When she opened her eyes again she said, “Yeah, it’s Stacy. Now get on your knees.”

Again, he tried to laugh, but it came out in a huffing sound that had no strength. His face contorted into an amalgam of expressions, all of which added up to him looking sick to his stomach. Sadie began to lift the gun and his expression changed; he screwed up his face so that the skin was tight on his cheek bones. It was his last bit of dignity, defiance, courage.

“No. Shoot me here, now, if you’re going to do it.” He had shoved all in and now it was her turn to put her soul on the line.

“This is for Neil,” she said. It was as if her stomach and nerves were tinged in silver that was running a current of misery up from her soul.

The guard began to whine, “I don’t know no Neil. I never done nothing to him or…”

Sadie screamed and pulled the trigger. The sound of the gun through the pillow was a muted bang-fump! Then there was a red mist that hung in the air for a brief second as the guard, the no-named, unknown man, who’d had the misfortune of being on duty at the wrong time, fell back with a bewildered look crossing his face.

At the exact moment she pulled the trigger Sadie went numb. Her hands might as well have been made of air for all she could feel of them and her feet were distant memories. Her stomach rolled over but in a way that made it seem like it was someone else’s problem, and her mind was flat, like a board. She had murdered.

“But I had to. It was a life for a life,” she tried to tell herself. “It’s a wash.” She was trying to convince herself that she was saving Neil, and that what she had done was simply a cancellation of two opposing forces: cat versus mouse, ice and fire, day and night. She tried to tell herself that she had killed so that Neil might live, but it wasn’t working.

Slowly she looked down at the guard; he wasn’t nearly as dead as she had expected him to be. There was a hole in his head that spat out blood in timed increments, like Old Faithful.
Spoot!
One, two, three,
spoot
. One, two, three,
spoot
.

The next little spout took a four count and the one after that made it to five. Then it was over. No more blood. There was only the guard staring up at her, blaming her with his dead eyes. “Life for a life,” she said.

First, the pillow fell to the floor, and then the gun. The sound of it clattering brought her around. She couldn’t just stand there, Neil had a plan to rescue Captain Grey and he needed her help, even if she was a killer.

She began walking for the door, snapping something under her foot. She was sure it was a bone in the man’s hand; she leapt away and cried out. Then she saw it was Eve’s monitor; the front face was broken off and cracked. The sight of it brought her around even more. “Shoot!” she said dropping to one knee beside the dead guard and picking up the pieces of the monitor. They wouldn’t go back together. It was forever broken just like the guard. “The one way to contact Neil and I go and step on it.”