The Undead World (Book 5): The Apocalypse Renegades (4 page)

As Jillybean began to reluctantly demonstrate her patented zombie walk while complaining under her breath about being stuck shepherding a bunch of noobies through the obvious process of zombie evasion, Neil stood among the thick vegetation on the edge of the black river, feeling the butterflies eat at his stomach. They were voracious fuckers.

“Everyone ready?” he asked.

Big Bill and Deanna were just up the bank, squatting among the overgrowth of plants, not a one of which Neil could name. His one hope that afternoon, besides not getting eaten by the hundreds of zombies lazing in the river, was that none of the plants was poison ivy. He had no clue what it looked like—he couldn’t tell an ivy from a fern and thus did his best to keep his uncovered skin away from everything green. It was a tall order.

“We are good to go,” Big Bill intoned with a voice as deep as night. Deanna looked far from good. She was green with fear at the prospect of the river and literally green from head to toe because of the makeup she was wearing and her camouflaged outfit. Her quivering lip, the quick breath shooting in and out, and the fact that her eyes were huge in her head made her fear obvious.

“If we’re good,” Neil said. “Then I guess it’s time.” He swallowed with a clicking sound and crept out of the brush doing his best not to come in contact with anything living which made it seem like he was afraid of everything. He ducked and dodged and made grimacey faces at the least stem until they made it to the river. There he paused. With all his heart, he wished Capt. Grey was there or Jillybean or Sarah…

He made another louder swallow as he stepped into the river. The river of dead was the only thing that could push the image of Sarah out of his mind. She was always there taking up every extra neuron always a part of every breath in his body. Only when the cold, cold water shriveled his testicles and the dead turned their rotting orbs in his direction could he, for just those brief moments, forget her.

The water was so cold he felt his heart stutter, but he couldn’t react. Reacting would be the human thing to do and a human would be devoured in seconds in that water. Neil moved slowly in, gritting his teeth. He went oh so slow and the crab-like way that would’ve made Jillybean proud. Deanna stepped in stiffly with a barely audible whine mewling at the top of her throat, and Big Bill, huge and green, came plodding forward, lumbering like a Tolkien Ent.

Neil, chin deep in the black water, watched Bill until he was in up to his chest and then he turned and began swimming. The night before he had ridden down the river in a crude Jillybean-fashioned raft, which, due to her diligence, had been a simple thing to maneuver. Swimming was far harder than he would’ve guessed. First, he was fully dressed, and second, if he wanted to make any headway, he had to kick and thrust in a manner that wouldn’t divulge his humanity. He was very quickly exhausted.

“Go…on…” he husked out to Deanna who had paused to give him a look. Although he had entered the water first, he was dragging ass already. Big Bill was three lengths ahead and drawing away. Deanna passed him by and that left him with just the zombies for company. Luckily they saw his green head bobbing and couldn’t tell any difference between it and a head of cabbage.

However, the long “huuh” sound he made with every breath was something else. The sound was like a zombie magnet. He was forced to roll over on his back and just float for long stretches of the river to keep from making the noise and, of course, to keep from drowning out of sheer exhaustion.

It was a long, long swim. Finally, he made it to the western bank two miles downstream of where Bill and Deanna came ashore. Neil crawled twenty feet through the muck that made up the river bank and then laid there gasping, his body no longer green in any way; he was slick with mud and so utterly tired that he could not imagine re-crossing the water a second time under any circumstances.

By the time Deanna and Bill found him he was just about ready to stand. He forced himself to his feet and stood there looking miserable but this did not stop Bill from throwing his head back and laughing; a sound that had the mucus and algae plastered river zombies turning to stare as they slowly slid by. At Neil’s dark look, the big man softened his laugh to a chuckle.

“Don’t worry,” Big Bill said. “There’s nothing around here. No people at least.”

“What about…” Neil began.

“Zombies?” Deanna asked. “The only ones we’ve seen so far were stuck in bogs. We should be fine for a little bit.”

“Yeah, those bog zombies look even more pathetic than you,” Big Bill said with another laugh.

Neil took one step and then tripped in the gunk, sprawling on his face. Ignoring Bill’s laughter, he grunted and shimmied through the mud like a stunted pollywog. Deanna smirked and then looked away. Once on solid ground, Neil needed another few minutes of rest before he was able to stand.

“So, where to?” Big Bill asked, suddenly a lot less jovial. For some reason, the western bank of the Mississippi seemed so much more sinister than the eastern bank had. Neil tried to tell himself that it was just fear of the unknown that made his movement through the close jungle-like forest so slow.

There weren’t even many zombies around, a mere handful that ignored the three who moaned and schlepped along until the forest opened up; they had reached the edge of farm country. In front of them, the land lay open and ugly. It had gone feral and sprouted only weeds and wild greens.

“We can’t cross here,” Big Bill whispered. There wasn’t the least bit of cover to hide them from human eyes.

They turned south keeping within the bounds of the forest. It was tough going with bogs and standing water diverting them time and again. And it was a miserable hike. The mud covering Neil only partially dried; he felt sticky and completely gross. And to add to that misery, for some reason he had accepted a heavier pack, leaving Deanna carrying little besides a few MREs and some spare ammo. His foolish chivalry meant he was forced to stump along at a glacial pace, while sweat streamed down his face.

Very quickly, it became obvious they weren’t going to accomplish everything they had set out to do, at least not in the time left to them before the sunset. Regardless, Neil kept pushing them on, aiming for the nearest farmhouse, which was barely visible on the horizon even with binoculars. By the time they reached it, he was dragging behind the other two and panting.

“Just a little rest,” he said between gasping breaths.

Surrounding the farm were rank upon rank of winter wheat that would forever go unharvested. The wheat was high enough for Neil to walk normally and not be seen. Deanna, on the other hand, had to bob her head low and Big Bill had to walk with a pronounced hunch to go unseen.

Halfway through the fields Bill stopped to stare across the land. “Maybe the little girl was wrong about there being so many people out searching for us,” he said. “I mean, where are they all?”

“I guess you never once considered the possibility that I could be right,” Neil said, testily, blinking sweat out of his eyes. “Like I said before, there is a very good chance no one is out here. They could be back at the base battling it out.”

Deanna raised a single eyebrow and he read the look easily. “Jillybean is not infallible. She could be wrong,” Neil replied sharply to the unstated doubt. It was true, Jillybean could be wrong.
Then again, I could be wrong
, Neil thought to himself. “But I’m not,” he said under his breath. The bridge was what held the city of Cape Girardeau together. Without it things would fall apart and quickly. He would’ve bet money that the city was bleeding people left and right already.

Neil passed around one of the water bottles in his pack before he declared, “Break time’s over.” Once again he started tromping through the wheat toward the farm; the ground was soft beneath his feet and he was happy to see there were no tracks in the dirt…this didn’t last. After a while, they came across a lane through the wheat that was as wide as a road. It had been created by the passage of hundreds of feet. The prints were shoeless, which meant zombies.

The tracks were heading southwest. Neil glanced in that direction before scurrying across the lane to lose himself in the golden fields.

Farms on the western bank of the Mississippi dwarfed their smaller cousins on the eastern and it was a good half an hour before the three of them came upon the first of the outbuildings. By then the gloom of evening acted as a shroud in the air, hiding them.

Neil had hoped for a full-fledged barn but received only a stunted version instead. It was long and low, housing not cows or horses but tractors and the like. Neil crept up to the building and put his ear to the door. The sound of zombies would have been obvious to the least observant person; Neil heard nothing, but he was still careful.

Between the three of them they had only two guns; Big Bill held an AR-15 and Deanna had her Taurus pistol. Neil had a bat he had picked up in the barracks. He nodded Big Bill toward the door and the big man, slinking with all the stealth of a mastodon, crept up and pulled it back with a grunt. The screech of rusting metal on metal made them all cringe.

Neither one of them questioned why the door was closed to begin with. It sat 12 miles south of Cape Girardeau. Had no one checked the barn in all this time? That would’ve been the question on Jillybean’s mind. Neil only thought he was getting lucky, while Deanna and Big Bill were so inexperienced they assumed that lots of doors to a lot of barns would be closed.

Neil paused in the doorway, again listening. There was an expectancy to the air; it made him nervous when there wasn’t any reason to be. He pushed the feeling deep down into his chest and stepped in. Silence enveloped them. He whispered into it, “Deanna, stay here and guard the door.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Guard it against what? There’s nothing around.”

“I don’t know. Just in case.”

“Maybe you should guard the door, Neil,” Bill said. “After all, she’s got a gun and you don’t. I’d rather have her by my side than you and your bat. No offense.”

“I say we all go,” Deanna said. In the semi-dark she squinted at her Taurus and then clicked off the safety. “Really the door was so loud we would know already if anything was in here with us.”

“I suppose,” Neil replied. He looked around the interior of the barn; it was very dark and smelled of oil and wheat dust. The front area, where they were currently standing, was a bay that held different machines, only one of which Neil could name: a tractor. The others were extremely large and looked dangerous to operate. The back half of the barn sat behind a set of double doors that were twelve feet in height.

As Neil was taking this all in, Big Bill started forward with his AR-15 up to his shoulder.

“Not so fast,” Neil hissed. “We clear this room before we go on.”

Bill blinked and stared around at the shadows. “Why? There ain’t no stiffs in here. We would’ve been able to hear ‘em already.”

“We do it because it’s smart,” Deanna said. “Better safe than sorry.”

The big man shrugged as if this was nothing to him. The three moved out; Bill in the lead, Deanna on his right, and Neil bringing up the rear. They went around each of the vehicles and inspected the corners before sidling up to the double doors.

“I’ll do the honors,” Neil said, taking hold of one of the handles. He hauled back on the door thinking that what lay beyond would be more blackness, however the area was lit relatively well by one of the few windows in the low-slung barn. What was more surprising however was the smell that smacked them full in the face.

Decomposing wheat was enough to make a man’s eyes water. There were mounds of it everywhere. It might have once been stacked in rectangular bales, now the bales were soft blobs with nasty pools beneath them.

“What happened here?” Neil wondered. He had no clue about the chemical interactions involved in farming. He lived under the illusion that wheat was a soft gold in color and would remain that way near on forever.

“What do you mean?” Bill asked. “The wheat? This is what it looks like if you let it sit for too long. You ever mow your grass and let it sit in your trashcan? If you leave it for a couple weeks, it’ll stink just like this.”

“Were you a farmer?” Deanna asked. Her pretty face was contorted by the foul odor and she tried to hide her nose behind her hand. When that didn’t keep out the smell, she pulled the collar of her shirt up to a level just below her eyes.

“Naw, I was a lineman for TCO, however I grew up on a farm in Tennessee. This smell ain’t nothing new to me.”

Neil didn’t know what a lineman was and assumed it was some sort of sports reference. He ignored that part of what Bill had said, but he was very eager to hear all he could about farming. He hated the constant danger of scrounging. It was his hope that one day he’d be able to give it up for good; farming was the one obvious method he had to drop his current lifestyle.

“Is it difficult?” he asked. “You know, farming, I mean. The plants just grow on their own, right? I mean once you’ve put down the seeds.”

“Put down?” Big Bill asked with a smirk. “Do you mean planted?”

“Yeah, sure,” Neil said. He didn’t care about the exact terminology; he just wanted to know about the process.

Bill shrugged. “It depends on the scope of what you’re trying to accomplish. Are we talking a garden or 2000 acres? A garden ain’t nothin’ but a real farm is a year-round occupation and, yeah, it involves quite a bit of work.”