“Yes!” Neil shouted. Grey was still alive and still acting the part of guardian angel. It was a testament to his skill and training that he had lived this long. “But he won’t last much longer,” he said to himself as he surveyed the facts of their situation as he knew it: they couldn’t sit out there much longer, they couldn’t bust out of the ring of trucks and they couldn’t fight their way out.
He let out a long sigh which Jillybean interpreted correctly. “We’re gonna have to use the bomb,” she said. “Even Sadie thinks so.”
“I don’t mind using the bomb, I just don’t want to be anywhere near it when it goes off.”
“They took my remote, sorry, Mister Neil.”
“Who? Who took it?” Neil demanded. “Was it one of those guys who ran inside?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t see much of anything once I got shotted, but I remember he had on a long tan coat. It was newish, like not all stained up.”
Neil remembered the flash of tan in his periphery. “He went in. Hold on.” Lifting his feet at unnatural angles, he put the Camry in gear with the idea that he would take the car and blast right through the doors. It was a sound idea, however driving the armored car was far from easy. He couldn’t see out of the little slit, and he couldn’t steer with his knees jutting up on either side of the wheel.
Instead of blasting through, he struck the wall next to the doors with enough force that they lost two more panels of armor. Jillybean was moaning in the footwell and the Camry was rolling backwards by the time Neil collected himself enough to stop the car.
“Sorry. That, uh, was a bit of a mistake.” Jillybean couldn’t handle another mistake like that, so Neil turned the car hard to the right and slid up to the door. “Cover your ears,” he told her before sticking the barrel of his Walther PPK into the slot in the armor on the driver’s side. He fired six shots and then kicked open the door, or at least he had planned to, however the door was heavier than expected and it only creaked open, slowly.
Someone fired at him from inside but hit the car door instead. He fired blindly and rushed to the side of the building and ducked down. Bullets were now coming from inside as well as out, smacking against the brick and skipping off the hood of the car. What he needed was more cover fire from Captain Grey, only the battle-hardened soldier was being pinned down by a torrent of rifle fire.
“Right there, Mister Neil,” Jillybean said, pointing from in the car. Neil turned and saw the body of one of the men he had shot earlier. Next to it, lying on its side and dripping gasoline, was a Molotov Cocktail. Grinning, Neil grabbed it and fished out a lighter.
Because of the leaked gasoline, fire engulfed the entire bottle. “Son of a bitch!” he cried and threw the bottle into the building where it shattered. A blast of light filled the night and in seconds it was bright enough to illuminate the battlefield. Neil was shocked at how many men were ducked down in the grass or hiding behind the rows of trees.
“We’ve got to get out of here, Jillybean,” he said, crawling back to the car and holding out a hand. She took one step onto the driveway and promptly fell right over. Neil just caught her.
“Sadie, my legs aren’t working right,” she said to Neil. She was working them as though she were on a bicycle.
“It’ll be alright,” he told her, and then picked her up; she was terribly light and terribly frail. It was like holding a toddler. “It’ll be alright,” he said again, this time talking to himself.
The M4 helped to reassure him; it was compact enough to wield one-handed and, as he entered the burning building with it extended, he felt…average, like he was normal, as tough as any of these guys. For Neil, average was a step up.
Even with the fire roaring away, eating up a couch, the stained carpet that hadn’t been vacuumed since before the apocalypse, and one of the pillars in the main room, he expected trouble. It came quickly. He was not even a step into the room when a bullet smacked the doorjamb to his right.
A quick peek around the corner showed him a man crouched behind a tall, wingbacked leather chair. It was an absurd firing position and, without exposing himself beyond his arm and a few inches of his head, Neil fired the M4 into the chair itself.
“Fuck! Shit, I’m hit!” the man cried out. “Stop, please.”
Neil didn’t know what to do. Wasn’t this a kill or be killed situation? Were they allowed to call “time out” when things turned against them? The part of him that had become “average” wanted to empty his magazine into the chair; the part that would always be Neil wanted mercy.
“Was that him?” he asked Jillybean, meaning the man with the detonator.
“No, his coat was tan, amember?”
He was still struggling with indecision over the injured man when movement, further inside the building caught his eye. In a blink the gun came up, and as he was peering through the haze, looking for a target, someone took a shot at him from up and to the right where a marble staircase marched grandly to the second floor. He fired back and moved to his left so that the burning pillar was between him and the shooter.
A second later, when he started to look around the pillar, Jillybean said, “No, go left. That’s what Captain Grey would do. Never fire from the same spot. He told you that.”
She was right. Although it was awkward moving left with a gun in his right hand, he caught the slaver aiming away and managed to shoot him in the leg. This fellow didn’t attempt to give up. He went on firing, however his bullets kept slipping well to the right, while Neil’s started low, chipping away at the marble at the man’s feet, and then striking shin, abdomen and throat.
The man tumbled down the stairs, leaving red splatters, while Neil went to one knee and began reloading. “We have to hurry,” Jillybean said, gripping his shirt tighter and giving it a shake for emphasis. “Sadie says the man’s getting away and Grey can’t hold out that much longer.”
He understood her anxiety, time seemed to be racing by. With a grunt, he stood, hitching her higher on his hip, holding the gun out again. Striding boldly out into the lobby, he was on a hair-trigger, ready to kill in a blink, only there wasn’t anyone or anything to kill.
To his left was a guest-services counter, to his right was a fancy restaurant, in front of him was a hallway that ran to the left down the length of the building. Finally, there were the stairs going both up and down. He had no idea which way to go. The man with the detonator could be anywhere.
Left, towards the pro-shop, seemed as good a direction as any, however Jillybean stopped him. “Upstairs. There’s another way.”
“Another way out? We’re not going to find…” He stopped as they heard running feet above them. Neil raced to the stairs, but slowed midway up and crouched behind his M4. Just as he got to the top, a door opened far to his left and three figures burst into the hall. He almost fired, but at the last moment he realized that they were women.
“Son of a bitch, I almost…”
“Hush,” Jillybean said, holding her bloody head at a cocked angle. At first all he heard was the crackle of gunfire from outside and the hungry flames as they spread, but then beneath it he heard voices. They were high-pitched, fearful voices coming from a room ahead and to their right. “In there, quick!” Jillybean cried. He aimed the gun at the door, but Jillybean pushed it away. “Don’t, just get in there.”
If it had been anyone else, he would have laughed off the suggestion. He was still wary, however when he grabbed the knob and flung open the door to a spacious office. It was decorated in pre-apocalypse modern alpha-male: a perfectly positioned desk, gleaming hardwood floors and enough leather-bound furniture to stitch together an entire herd of cows.
There was no one in the room. The voices were coming from a CB radio sitting on the desk.
He’s moving to the right again!
Someone shift left—no, our left, idiot!
I see him, fuck, he disappeared again.
With his heart in his throat, Neil went to the window thinking he would be able t
o see the battle unfolding below him, however he was turned around and found himself looking out on what had been the golf course. People were fleeing out into the fields. He could tell by the way they ran and the fact that they were unarmed that they were women.
“Slaves, right Sadie?” Jillybean asked.
Although she was speaking in the direction of the wall to their right, Neil answered, “Yeah, slaves.” Watching them, he felt a touch of pride well up out of the fear and shock of battle. No matter what else happened, they had done this. The night hadn’t been all about blood and death; they had helped people. “But it’s not enough,” he said and turned for the door.
They weren’t going to find the man in the tan coat, he realized that now. He also realized there was only one way to save Captain Grey and that was to detonate the bomb. “A hell of a distraction,” he said to himself. He wasn’t an expert, but he figured the detonator in the car probably had a ‘go’ button.
He would be killed, but at least it wouldn’t hurt. “Hey, Jillybean, do you think you can crawl? I’m going to put you out back and I’m going to need you to crawl as fast as you…”
“No,” she said, simply. “Grab the CB. We’ll use it to detonate the bomb from far away.”
“Why didn’t you just use the one in the car?” he griped as he set her down on the desk. He slung his rifle, picked up the boxy CB and then resettled the girl on his hip. As he did, her eyes slipped in and out of focus and her head rocked back and forth slightly. For a moment he thought she was going to vomit and, as they were almost nose to nose, he leaned back a bit. “You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m just dizzy, Sadie. But go. We have to hurry.” She wasn’t wrong. The shooting from outside was dropping in tempo at about the same pace that the fire inside was growing.
Neil ran down the stairs, taking them two at a time, flinching as he ran. The heat from the fire felt as though it was blistering his exposed flesh. Jillybean had her face pressed into his neck and he could hear her whimpering in pain. Then they were down the next flight and heading into the lower level, where everything was dark, save for twin squares of light at the end of a corridor.
It was the way out. He ran for it as fast as he could in a frantic sprint—the CB was squawking: We’ve got him now! Jay-Tee keep him pinned down. Don’t stop! Don’t stop!
Captain Grey had seconds left.
Terrified for his friend, Neil burst through the door and the night air sent a chill down his sweaty back as he paused, looking around. Jillybean pointed and practically screamed, “There! Go!” Although fields of wheat and carrots and beets had been sown on the fairways of the golf course, the sand-traps hadn’t been touched. The closest was fifty yards from the building. Neil sprinted for it as fast as he could.
“How do I…” he started to ask, the second he dropped into the sand.
Jillybean grabbed the radio and turned the knob. “Cover your ears,” she said and pressed the send button. She screamed something, but Neil had no idea what. The bomb she had built exploded in a blinding flash that was followed up a millisecond later by a hurricane of flame and searing heat and a mind-jarring noise that shook the walls of Neil’s soul.
He was crushed into the side of the sandtrap with Jillybean balled into him as what had once been the center of the building blasted outwards. Huge hunks of marble, spears of timber, burning furniture and God only knew what tore through the fields, leveling almost everything and burning the rest.
The trees nearest the building were uprooted and tossed into the air, while those up to a hundred yards away were stripped of their leaves and, in some cases, their bark as well. The world seemed to be on fire and the night was bright as day.
Numbed by the shock, Neil lay there gasping for a full minute before he even tried to stand, and when he did, he felt dizzy and weak. His head rang and rang with the echoes of the explosion and the only truly coherent thing he understood was that they had to get away.
Despite the power of the bomb, he knew people had lived. That’s how it was with slavers; they were like cockroaches.
“Jillybean? Jillybean? Hey, look at me.” Her eyes came open, yet they lolled in their sockets and she could do nothing but mumble in a semi-state of consciousness. He was forced to carry her and once more he was amazed by how frail she was.
Slowly, he tromped away from the battlefield and through the dead streets of Seattle and by the time they neared the bridge, Neil began to be afraid for her. She had slipped back into unconsciousness and not even calling her name had any effect. Huddled in the shadow of the onramp were a number of shops, one of which had been a twenty-four hour pharmacy. Like pretty much the rest of the city, it had been ransacked and was a tremendous mess.
Although anything resembling an opiate had been taken, not much else had been looted. Neil laid Jillybean down and then fumbled around in the dark until he had an armful of first aid supplies. As gently as he could, he washed the blood out of her hair until he saw where Hatchet-Joe’s bullet had grazed her. It was a two and half inch gash, high up on the side of her head above her ear.
“Oh, that was close,” he whispered, holding pressure to the wound.
“My CB was hooked to the car battery,” she said in a little voice.
That she was awake at all gave Neil a start. He had been kneeling next to her head and now he torqued his entire body around to see into her face. She had a listless, smacked-in-the-face sort of look. “Huh? What’s this about a CB?”
“Sadie said that you wanted to know why I didn’t use the one in the car. It wasn’t portable and that’s what means we would’ve dieded if we used it.”
Sadie said. Neil sighed, finally feeling something inside beyond the thrum of the explosion—a painful ache of loss. He sat back against one of the shelves and said. “Okay, good. That was smart. I don’t want to dieded.” Gradually, they lapsed, not only into silence but into unconsciousness as well. Neil tried hard to stay awake, only he was gripped with an overpowering lethargy.
He had no idea when he passed out, but when he woke, the sun was on the verge of crossing above the horizon. The world to the east was glorious and golden. It was truly awesome and yet Neil felt nothing but tired, with a hint of dread creeping up at the edges.
“I’ll be right back,” he told Jillybean. “I gotta check the bridge.”
“Take me with you…please,” Jillybean said, trying to sit up. “Me and Sadie don’t want to be alone.” Neil swallowed hard and a fresh wave of pain swept him at the mention of his daughter.
Jillybean tried to stand on her own and although her wobbly legs could support her, she couldn’t walk faster than a shuffle, so Neil carried her again. The bridge was empty. They stood on it in full view of the world for half an hour and with each passing minute, the dread Neil had been feeling grew. He could see on Jillybean’s face that she was feeling the same thing.
“He woulda been here by now,” she said.
She was, as always, right. Grey would have crawled across broken glass to get to the bridge if that was the only way. And, whether he had gotten there first, he wouldn’t have left except to go back to see if they had been injured, and that would not have taken so many hours.
This perfectly logical line of reasoning led to only two conclusions: Grey was either dead or dying. Neil bent down and scooped up Jillybean and began hustling off the bridge. “I’m going to need you to lay low for a little while. Stay hidden, okay? I’ll be back as soon as…”
“He’s dead,” she said, tears in her eyes.
“No, he’s probably just hurt.”
“He’s dead,” she insisted. “The ‘splosion on the other side of the building was worse. It was where the bomb was.”
“No,” Neil shot back.
She shook her head and then grimaced. When she opened her eyes again, she had her head tilted away, looking at an invisible Sadie. “That’s mean, Sadie. I’m not going to say that. I’m not, I’m…okay, fine. I’ll ask, but he won’t like it.” Jillybea
n let out a little breath and said, “She wants to know what you’d do about it if he is hurt. If he’s lying under the rubble of debris and slowly dying, what would you do? All the bad guys that lived through the bomb will be there, too. They’ll kill you, Mister Neil, and neither Sadie or I want you to die.”
Neil had no answer to that and was silent until they made it back to the pharmacy. He set her down in a chair in the lobby and unslung his M4. He had eight rounds left. “It doesn’t matter. I have to see for myself.”
“But Sadie says…”
“I don’t care what Sadie says!” he yelled. “She’s not real and she’s not a ghost. She is dead. My daughter is dead.” He was suddenly choked up, on the verge of tears and he had to turn away.
“And so is Mister Captain Grey,” Jillybean said, listless and sad, her eyes cast to the floor. “And you will be, too if you go back there in broad daylight. And then I will die.” He turned back to her, not knowing if he wanted to yell again, or hug her, or what. She didn’t seem to care what he did. She shrugged and added, “That’s what Sadie says and I think she’s right. Without you, no one will love me. They’ll only blame me.”
“Jillybean, that’s not true…”
She laughed miserably. “Yes, it is. Deanna will blame me. She’ll never love me now, no matter what I do. She won’t even like me, even though this wasn’t my fault. She’ll hate me.”
Neil wished he could refute any of what she had said. He knew in his broken heart that his friend was dead, and he knew that he would die if he went back to try to find him. Of course, he also knew it was exactly what Captain Grey would have done for him. But they were different. Grey was a man who could hold off a hundred enemies long enough for his friends to escape. He was also a man who had lived in and for the moment. Neil had never been able to do that and, as a father, he had never wanted to. As a father, his life wasn’t his to give up so easily.
Jillybean was his responsibility. She was injured, physically and mentally, and she would die if he left her.
The Apocalypse Sacrifice: The Undead World (The Undead World Series Book 10) Page 55