The Undead World (Book 5): The Apocalypse Renegades (36 page)

The new girl tried to search her memory for an answer, but she didn’t have memories beyond the earliest. Jillybean saw herself as a baby and saw her parents with over-large faces and muffled voices. These were the new girl’s memories and they were so elemental that they couldn’t be put into words.

There were, however, other memories the new girl could access: Jillybean’s. A baby’s name came immediately to mind.

“I am Eve!” she cried into the radio. It was a joyous cry, one that spoke of happiness at life in the simplest way. That joy opened her up to inspection.

How strange
, Jillybean marveled, as understanding struck her.

The new girl was figuratively, the eldest of all. She was base and primitive. In a way, she was what came first. She could trace her ancestry back to the first humans who had lived on the brink of extinction for tens of thousands of years. She had stolen bread in order to live, she had killed out of desperation, she had lied and backstabbed her way through a thousand generations; she had done whatever she had to in order to survive. She offered no apology, but instead, looked for praise for her actions because if she hadn’t been the callous, evil, bitch that she was, humanity would have failed.

She saw herself as the beginning, but an angry, cheated beginning, who had never been allowed to flourish. But now she was the tip of the spear, she was the blade of the knife. She was everything while others were only there to meet her needs.

Needless to say she was all ego. She was in fact Jillybean’s ego unchecked and she was very dangerous.

“You’re Eve?” the River King asked in a quiet voice. “Ok, Eve, what do you want?” When he spoke the sound of the shooting was closer as if he were standing in the very midst of the battle.

“I want my friends back you piece of shit.” Jillybean’s eyes went wide hearing such cursing coming from her little girl mouth.

“Is Ernest there?” the River King asked, nervously.

Eve glanced over at the bodies. The evil smile on her face was stiff only because Jillybean couldn’t believe it was there at all and was trying to reshape it into a frown, which was more appropriate according to her concept of decorum. “Yeah, he’s here but he’s got holes in him that don’t belong. Kinda makes it hard for him to talk.”

“I see,” the River King said. “So let’s cut to the chase. You want your friends back. Big deal. Why should I give them up? What do I get in return?”

“Hold on,” Eve said. She went to the back of the truck and heaved with all her scrawny might on the extra jerry cans of fuel. It took her a minute to drag them to the side of the bridge. She then dug through the Ladybug backpack until she found a lighter.

“Wait!” Jillybean cried. “You’ll blow us both up.” Her words came out somewhat mumbly; it was strange having to borrow her own lips in order to speak.

“Then you do it,” Eve said.

Jillybean was glad to. Every second she was in command of her own body was a blessing. She ran a trail of gas from the four Jerry cans to a point on the other side of the truck. She then flicked the lighter and watched as the fire ate up the fuel racing towards the gas cans. She closed her eyes and stuck her fingers in her ears a second before there came a whomping explosion and a blast of super-hot air struck her.

The heat was so intense she had to scramble low along the bridge until she was screened by the forest. In her hand the radio was squawking, “What was that? What was that?”

“It wasn’t your bridge,” Jillybean answered. Eve was looking in delight at the fire spooling into the air and for a spell the little girl was back in charge. “But it could be. I could blow them up or melt them. Those are your choices if you don’t leave my friends alone right this moment.”

The River King was silent for a few seconds and then asked, “Where are Tony and Rico?”

“Dead,” Jillybean replied quickly, not wanting to dwell on them for fear of bringing Eve around again.

The River King was cursing into the radio and it was a few minutes before he was coherent. “Listen Jillybean, I am going to fucking slice you open. I want my bridge, now! If you don’t…”

Eve heard the cursing and came rushing into Jillybean’s body. Her personality flared up hotter than the fire. “Are you threatening us? Are you? Go ahead and say one more word and I’ll blow up these bridges right now and you know I will. And you know I will like it, too.” She would like it. Jillybean could feel the urge in her to do it regardless of what happened.

“Don’t, please,” the River King said.

“Then stop the attack right now.”

“I need to hear your terms first.”

“What? What do you mean? My terms are you leave and don’t come back.” Eve was in a wrath but Jillybean knew her terms wouldn’t be accepted as stated.

With a mighty effort, Jillybean forced her lips closed. Eve was action and anger and selfish greed, she wasn’t one for negotiations. “Let me,” Jillybean whispered. Her lips were suddenly supple and her face slack. “Mister River King sir? I want you to pull your men back. That’s first. Then I want our people back. All of them, including Eve.”

“What?” the new Eve said, breaking in. “We don’t need them, especially not a baby. She’s useless. Just get Captain Grey.” Jillybean could hear the reasoning behind this request echoing in her head: Grey was the toughest and everyone else was useless fodder.

“No,” Jillybean said.

“Yes!” Eve demanded, growing stronger.

Jillybean felt the power and the source within her. It was brutish. It couldn’t reason very well but it could be reasoned with. “You’ll be a hero,” she said. “They’ll be like, real nice to you. You want that, right?”

“A hero?” Eve asked. With Jillybean’s help she was picturing a parade with cheering people. “Yeah, I can do that, I guess.”

“Good,” Jillybean said quickly. “Let me do all the talking.” She thumbed the radio’s talk button. “We want all of our people or I burn the pontoon. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” the River King said. “I guess.” He came across as a mopey child, sounding even younger than Jillybean.

“Ok. Call a cease-fire and take your men back to Cape Girardeau. We will contact you tonight about where we’ll make the exchange.”

“Fine. We’ll do it, but I can’t guarantee the safety of Neil and the others. They’re surrounded by a whole shit-load of stiffs. If they die, you can’t hold me responsible.”

But you are responsible
, she wanted to say, however that would only prolong things and if her family was in danger she needed to get there as soon as possible.

“Fine,” she replied. “Just go!” There came a brief moment when they could hear the River King shouting for a cease fire and then the radio went silent.

Jillybean started running around the forest.

“What are you doing?” Eve asked. “This isn’t being a hero.”

“I need a stick! Two would be better but there may not be time.” The gunfire west of them slacked off considerably, meaning the River King was pulling back, leaving Jillybean’s family alone to deal with a horde on their own. There was no time for Jilly to tie sticks to her legs; she would have to use a single long one and take her chances.

When she found a length of an old, grey limb, she raced back to the bridge and dug in Ernest’s pocket for the keys to the truck. As she did, the paralyzed guard watched her.

“D-don’t leave m-me,” he said, shooting spittle.

The proper thing to do was to put him out of his misery, but she knew Eve wouldn’t allow it. “Sorry,” she said, jumping up to run for the truck. She took one step and then stopped. The river was right below her. What if Ipes had made it to the bank? What if he was caught up on a low hanging branch? What if…

“What if a whale ate him?” Eve asked and then laughed.

Jillybean scanned as far down stream as she could see; he was gone. The little girl began to cry and Eve was forced to pull her to the truck. “Come on! You have to make me a hero.”

She was still sniffling when Eve started the truck, then came an awkward moment when she looked in the mirror. Jillybean only saw herself: teary blue eyes, pale skin showing from beneath the mud camo, mussed brown hair with leaves sticking out of it.

Eve squinted the blue eyes at herself. “I’m so small!”

“Yes, that’s why we have the stick. Now, stop fighting me. I know how to drive and you don’t.” What would Ipes have said about that? He would’ve made some sort of funny joke, Jillybean was certain.

All Eve said was, “I’m the hero, you know.”

“You sure are,” Jillybean said absently. She had turned the engine over and was trying to poke at the gas pedal with the long stick. The process of driving in this manner was extremely taxing and more frightening than she could’ve imagined. Braking was barely possible. It took upwards of ten seconds to relocate the tip of the stick to get it on the brake and then it took all of her might to slow the truck.

Jillybean was stuck with three options: go, go faster, and run into things. It did make the trip through town quick. She followed the sound of the gunfire which led to a small airport. The runway was long enough that she was able to get the stick on the brake in time. She threw her entire weight on it, gradually slowing the vehicle about fifty yards beyond the third hangar.

It was surrounded by a thousand monsters. Some were tearing down the walls, while others were climbing all over themselves trying to get at the desperately battling humans. Zombie bodies were heaped in mounds that had grown to the height of the 5-ton trucks.

There were blood-curdling screams coming from inside the hangar.

“Maybe I don’t want to be a hero all that badly,” Eve said. “I’m not going in there.”

“You sound like Ipes,” Jillybean mumbled. Half her mind had been stolen from her, but the other half was on the problem in front of her. There were too many to kill, and going into that mess as a kid-zombie to rescue her friends wouldn’t work. If she were taller or a better driver she could distract them by driving the truck up close, but that would only work for some of them.

What she needed was a
big
distraction. “Too bad I burned up all my extra gas, I coulda…” Her eye caught sight of something about the three hangars that she hadn’t noticed before. “One of these things is not like the others,” she sang softly. “I need a bomb.”

“Ok,” Eve said. “A bomb sounds like a good idea.”

It was a strange battle all round. One second they were winning and in the next, they were losing. Then the zombies came and they were hard pressed to save themselves being caught between two forces. For nearly five minutes, Neil was pinned down by a sharp-shooter and was forced to shoot his pistol between his legs at each zombie that somehow managed to climb up the back of the bed.

Grey had taken care of the marksman. He also kept the River King’s men from manning the fifty caliber machine guns for more than a few seconds at a time. He was hell with his M4.

The horde of zombies swelled to fearsome numbers a few minutes later, which turned the tide back in their favor. They went after the River King’s men who were forced to ward them off with a wall of lead. This gave the trapped renegades precious seconds to find each other and to reload.

Deanna suddenly appeared on the truck next to theirs. She had a pistol stuffed down the front of her pants and in her hands she held what looked to Neil like a fancied-up M16. She sprayed hot lead into the zombies between the trucks sending zombie bits flying everywhere.

“Cover me!” she yelled, leaping down to the hangar floor. Grey fired at the River King’s men, while Neil fired down at the zombies swarming at her—almost killing her in the process. His left-handed aim was atrocious.

“You almost took my ear off,” Deanna said, when she had climbed to safety. “I felt something hit my hair.”

“There was a zombie,” Neil had said, not mentioning that it had been three feet to her right and that he had jerked the trigger, instead of squeezing it fluidly the way Grey was always going on about. Either way, he was glad he hadn’t killed her.

With her help, they turned the 5-ton into a bulwark against the zombies. They were relatively safe until the River King himself showed up with an extra fifteen men.

Then the tide had turned once more. The extra men mowed down the zombies, leaving a clear path to fire into the hangar. There were so many bullets flying around, that the four of them on the 5-ton, didn’t have to shoot the zombies. Anytime one managed to get its ugly, rotting head above the sidewall, it would take two or three rounds and fall away.

Neil crawled over to Sadie and sheltered her with his body; he felt as though he wasn’t good for anything else.

Then came the explosion.

“Jillybean!” Neil shouted with joy.

“Are you sure it’s her?” Sadie asked, not daring to hope.

Neil popped his head up for a flash, just as a coil of black smoke rose up a few miles to the east. “It’s her. Explosions and fire, coming in the nick of time, who else could it be?”

They were indeed saved for the moment. The River King’s men stopped shooting and to everyone’s joy they took their shot-up Humvees and raced away. The joy did not last.

Without the River King’s men to distract them, the zombies focused squarely on the remaining renegades. There were only six left alive. On one 5-ton truck were Neil, Sadie, Deanna and Captain Grey; on another were Norman and Salvatore—the first was bloodied and the second looked like he’d been crying.

All around them were countless zombies.

They came on, uncaring of the death dealt out from above. They were slow and stupid, and Neil was sickened by the monotony of slaying them. “Fish in a barrel,” he said. The deaths were easy, and yet each zombie that fell back with their brain shot out meant the renegades were that much closer to losing the battle. It meant they had one less bullet and it meant that the mounds of corpses was that much higher and the humans that much easier to get to.

“We’re running out of ammo!” Salvatore screamed over the moans and the shooting.

“So are we,” Neil yelled back. The crate of magazines was now three-quarters empty. At the rate they were going through ammo, it meant they had less than ten minutes left.

Salvatore’s situation was dire. “I’m out!” He cried a minute later. Norman gave him a look, but kept firing. “Give me some fucking ammo, man!” Salvatore practically shrieked.

“No,” Norman said, pointing his gun Sal’s way. “It’s not my fault you can’t shoot for shit.” The look on his face was altogether pitiless. Sal turned from it, his face a blank horror.

Neil saw this play out and was stirred enough to glance down at their remaining ammo—a dozen or so magazines and clips. Neil hesitated.

Captain Grey mistook the meaning of the hesitation. “Don’t try to throw the ammo left-handed, Neil. You’ll only waste it. Give them to me.” He bent and grabbed three of the magazines.

“Wait,” Neil said, grabbing his arm. “Don’t. Look at the trouble
we’re
in.” He pointed his pistol at the surging throngs of the undead. They filled the hangar and there were more outside. Their numbers were uncountable, while the ammo was nearly gone.

“Do unto others, Neil,” the captain intoned. “If that was you over there, wouldn’t you want me to share?” Neil couldn’t refute the question and reluctantly stepped back and watched Grey chuck the first magazine. It wasn’t like throwing a baseball or a Frisbee, it was somewhat like throwing a combination of both and his first attempt curved right of Salvatore and came up a few feet short. The man could’ve reached out to snag it but he kept his arms in close to his chest.

The magazine bounced off a zombie’s head, right in front of him. “Damn it!” Grey cursed. “You got to try or I won’t throw another.”

“Just get it to me, please.”

Grey tried again, this time with more strength. Trying to make sure he didn’t make the same mistake, he almost overthrew. Salvatore leapt up and knocked the mag out of the sky. He scrambled and then slammed it into his rifle and shot a pair of zombies that had made it over the sidewall. This reminded Neil of his own duty and as Grey threw the last magazine, Neil ran to the front of the truck and emptied his gun trying to hold back the horde.

“I got this,” Grey said, killing three of them in quick succession. When they fell back, they didn’t fall far—the mound was almost as high as the side of the big truck. Grey didn’t seem too worked up over the situation. “Don’t you feel better about yourself? Giving to those less fortunate?”

Neil glanced over at the other truck and saw Salvatore already reloading the second magazine. “Less fortunate? How am I any better off than them?”

“You got me on your side,” Grey said, with a wink. He opened his mouth to say more, but Salvatore began to scream. The other truck was being overwhelmed; there were zombies in the bed with the two men and Sal was being chewed on.

Quick as lightning Grey shouldered his M4, peered down the scope and began killing the zombies on the other truck. Ten shots were enough to make a temporary difference. For Salvatore the problem was permanent; he’d been bitten. No matter what he’d be dead in a few hours.

“This is your fault!” he screamed at Norman. The big man only stared back, breathing hard, his gun at the ready. “Don’t worry, Norm, I won’t shoot you. That would be too good for you.”

“Hey,” Norman said, gesturing with his chin behind Sal. “Watch your six.” The zombies were re-mounting their assault and already three were crawling into the truck bed.

“No,” Salvatore said in a whisper that was somehow heard throughout the hangar.

“What do you mean no?” Norman demanded.

Salvatore touched the wound at his neck and showed Norman the blood. “I’m done for. And it’s your fault. And you’re going to pay.” He turned away from Norman to stare at the sea of zombies, as he did, his hands pulled the full magazine out from the lower receiver of his weapon and chucked it at the stiffs.

“What the fuck?” Norman raged. On Neil’s truck, Sadie and Deanna paused to watch the spectacle.

From his front pants pocket, Salvatore dug out his last bullet, slid it into the chamber, charged the gun and put the barrel to his temple. He was going to shoot himself and allow Norman to be swallowed up by the horde.

Norman had other plans; he shot Sal first, putting a hole in his back, low down. Guts and blood blew out the front of the Salvatore’s belly. He went down on his hands and knees, screaming in pain.

“Fuck you,” Norman said to him as the zombies attacked the helpless man. Norman then climbed up onto the cab and went back to the task of staying alive for a few more minutes.

Everyone on Neil’s truck was mesmerized by the scene, everyone but Grey. “Keep shooting, damn it!” he ordered.

Just then, a black truck slid into view, coasting along the tarmac in front of the hangars. It was going slower and slower and eventually stopped so that only the back bumper could be seen.

“That was Jillybean,” Grey said. He had scoped the truck with his M4. “She’s driving with a stick.”

Sadie leaned as far as she could over the side of the 5-ton, her right ear dangerously close to the outstretched arms of the zombies. “I can’t see anything. What do you think she’s going to do?”

Grey shrugged and looked around at the hundreds of zombies. “I don’t think there’s anything she can do. She’d need a nuclear bomb to clear out this many stiffs. Deanna, look out.” The woman glanced back to see zombies clearing the sidewall. Grey fired into them, sending blood and oatmeal-like brains flying.

When it was safe, he tried to give her his usual confident smile; it came out strained with his teeth grit together and the lines at the corner of his eyes pronounced. He was scared, which meant Neil should’ve been doubly so…and he was. Jillybean had only a minute or two in order to concoct some fabulous plan that would rid them of hundreds of zombies.

It wasn’t possible. That was the scary truth and there are too many scary truths floating around in Neil’s head to be considered just then. Their ammo situation was one of these. Sadie ran to the crate to grab a clip for her pistol and stood over it blinking, her lips moving, making soundless words.

“What is it? Neil asked.

She held up the gun to him. “I’m out. We don’t have any more bullets left for it. What’s that mean?”

It meant Neil had to save two bullets; one for him and one for her. He paused in his battle to jack the slide back. A hunk of metal leapt up into the air. He tried to catch it like Grey would’ve, but his shoulder limited him and it clinked on the bed. Embarrassed, he picked it up and held it out to her.

“But…but there’s still Jillybean,” she protested. “She’ll, you know, save us, right?” She always had before and so there was hope. It felt like the hope of traipsing through a mine field without getting blown up. It felt like hope balanced on a razors edge— it was the hope of fools and yet, they had nothing else.

“She’ll pull through,” Neil said. He forced the most artless, plasticine smile onto his face. It was so fake that it was a lie all by itself. Sadie chose to believe it, and really what was her alternative? It was that or the truth: that their last bullet would be fired in seconds and they would have to either resort to suicide or succumb to the foulest death imaginable.

“Here,” he said, holding out his gun to her. “I can’t shoot left-handed anyways. You might as well put it to good use.” They exchanged guns. Neil took hers, with its single bullet and wondered when was going to be the right time to stick the barrel of it in his mouth. Was it when the others were down to their last bullets as well? Was that the polite thing to do? It certainly didn’t feel like the heroic thing to do.

Neil felt far from heroic. The others were shooting and fighting to live while he was just standing there. What would Grey do if he was out of ammo and wounded? Would he just stand there like an idiot and wait for the inevitable? Would he wait for a seven-year-old to try something that would, in all likelihood, end up getting her killed? Or would he do something substantial? Something that would help his friends?

Deanna picked out the last magazine from the crate. Thirty bullets left. They had less than a minute.

“Grey would do more,” Neil concluded, realizing he had only one role left in his life and it wasn’t going to be as a bystander or a spectator to the deaths of his friends. He took a great breath and yelled above the din, “Hold your fire.”

The three who had a chance at life stopped to stare at him. Sadie was mouthing words but Neil couldn’t hear. He should’ve been afraid, but he wasn’t. His fear had melted out of him at his decision.
At least it will be quick
, he said to himself.

He jumped up on the roof of the cab so that every zombie in the hangar could see him. There came a pause, one that was filled with expectation from everyone including the undead. Before jumping into the throng, he turned to his friends. “They’re going to rush at me and be distracted. Try to find a way through.”

“What are you doing?” Sadie demanded.

There was no time for an explanation, just as there was no time for a rescue. Neil screamed his battle cry so that it echoed along the steel walls of the hangar and then he leapt as far out as possible to land among the undead.

He needed to buy his friends time and so he flailed and kicked with everything he had, but they were like piranhas. The dead raced to engulf him. Their mouths were everywhere and the pain was sharp; he was somehow able to ignore it, at first. Pain was secondary; he only cared about breathing and holding his head up long enough to keep the beasts focused on him. There were teeth on his back and his arm and on his face. He felt them rip into his neck and tear out his hair.