“Until morning, I can’t do anything but cinch the wound down and dress it.” She used an old shirt as a bandage and a belt as a tourniquet. Begrudgingly, she let him have two of their pain pills. He was then locked in a small cabin near the bow of the boat. By then it was after midnight and they were out on the ocean, a mile from land.
The wind died, the rain became a fine mist and the waves had become only gentle rippling swells; a fortunate turn since none of them had the strength to battle the elements. It was hard enough battling to stay awake. Stu took the first watch and, bundled as he was, almost to the point of being swaddled, he lost his battle and promptly fell asleep and did not wake again until a soft dawn light managed to creep past the thick morning mists.
“That’s embarrassing,” he grumbled, mad at himself. So many terrible things could have gone wrong, but only one had. Stu was just standing and stretching his worn body when he heard soft laughter. He froze in midstretch, realizing that they were either fifty feet from shore or there was another boat very close by.
The laughter was followed by a low murmur and when Stu squinted through the mists in the direction of the sound, he saw the fuzzy outline of a black sailboat.
Chapter 12
Just before Deanna pulled the trigger, she saw something of the boy in Neil again. Up until the moment he had allowed himself to be ravaged by zombies in order to save her, Neil had always been amazingly boyish. It was as if time had come and gone, flowing all around him and leaving him untouched. At thirty-four, when the apocalypse had started, he had still been getting carded at bars.
The bullet wounds and the claw marks and the half-bitten off ear had turned him instantly old. But just as the cylinder of Joslyn’s .38 snub-nosed pistol went around, she saw the boy in the man once again, and her sadness became close to overwhelming. She almost couldn’t watch as she blew out his fried brains…almost.
Survival had toughened Deanna and she knew that if she closed her eyes she would likely only blow off a chunk of his head—and it would take a second shot to finish him. With her teeth gritted, she pulled the trigger and the hammer crashed forward.
Click!
Her hands remained steady, but her heart convulsed in her chest. The gun had dry fired. Confused, she looked down at the gun, and reflexively pulled the trigger again: BAM!
This time it fired, sounding like an explosion which echoed throughout the school, causing the undead to let out howls of rage. The bullet just missed Neil’s nose as it went on to embed itself in the far wall next to the cafeteria door. Deanna was even more confused and this time it felt like her heart had stopped. Once more she looked down at the gun and whispered, “What the hey?” With her ears were ringing, her voice sounded muffled.
Deanna opened the cylinder and saw that Joslyn was one of those strange people who kept the first chamber empty. Deanna closed the chamber and found herself staring into Neil’s open eyes; they were very dark with a tinge of red to them.
“I was having a dream,” he said. “It was a good one of Sarah. We were back in Georgia. In the CDC. With Sadie and Eve. It was nice. Shoot me or let me go back to bed.” He closed his eyes again and in seconds, he was snoring.
“Sorry, Neil. I won’t mess up this time. I hope all your dreams are…are…” She pulled the gun back as something struck her: people didn’t dream once they were bitten. She had never heard of such a thing. There was always a pattern: during the first few hours, they were too frightened to sleep. Then came fierce denial and sullen anger and growing pain. There was always so much pain that sleep was impossible. Normally, they would be in a rage-filled delirium by now.
Which meant what? “Maybe that means he won’t die.”
Filled with frantic hope, Deanna leapt up and turned in a circle, not knowing what to do first. “He’s sick and sick people need medicine.” This was such a no-brainer that she raced for the front door. “He would also need an IV and more pain meds, and a gurney so we can…” She stopped, suddenly remembering the assassin. If she went running around without thinking, the assassin would find out in a snap that he or she had failed to kill Neil. If so, they might make another try.
As if the assassin was somewhere in the dark building, Deanna pressed her back to a wall between two bulletin boards which were covered with faded twelve-year-old notices for math tutors and science clubs and the coming “Winter Snow-Ball!”
“I’ll have to find all the medical items here,” she whispered, remembering all the crazy stuff Jillybean did to the undead. “She had to use some sort of medicine on them.” But was it “normal” medicine? Would it kill a man? Would she accidentally poison Neil? “I’ll just start slow.”
She was halfway down the hall to where Jillybean carried out her gruesome practice when the front door came open. Deanna spun with the gun leveled, but it was only Joslyn. She was framed perfectly in the doorway, her hands curled protectively in front of her chest.
“Hey, it’s just me, okay? I heard the gunshot. Is it done?”
Deanna shook her head and was about to tell her what happened when she remembered what a gossip Joslyn was. If she told Joslyn what was happening, it would be the same as whispering it directly into the assassin’s ear.
“Yes,” she lied, giving Joslyn a perfected politician’s smile. “He’s dead.”
The smile, the lie, and the gun dropping to hang at Deanna’s side calmed Joslyn’s fears and she started forward with her arms out. “I’m so sorry. Here, let me take the gun and let me take care of the body. I’ll get Norris to help. I had been thinking about burying him up in the cemetery, but since he was infected maybe we should…”
“No. I’ll take care of this. He was my friend. If you could send Emily in, please. I want her to be a part of this. I think it’s important, you know? I can’t coddle her.”
“Right, I’ll get her,” Joslyn said, and with a last look over Deanna’s shoulder at Neil splayed out on the tile, she left.
Deanna had no time to waste. She needed a body to truck out of there in full view of everyone, one that was preferably Neil’s size and preferably already dead. On both counts she struck out. The closest she was able to find was a female zombie that was a little over six-feet tall. It dwarfed Neil. Still, it was ragged and skinny, and with a little modifying, it might pass. First, it would have to be put out of its misery.
She had found it in the Computer Sciences room, chained to eyebolts set into the floor. It roared at Deanna and tried its best to tear off its chained arms to get at her.
She was just looking around for something to smash its head in when she heard: “Mom?”
It was Emily. She was already inside and judging by where her voice was coming from, she was with Neil. Deanna raced out of the classroom and around the corner to where the offices were, to find her daughter standing over Neil, both crying and looking perplexed.
“Mom, I think he’s still alive. He just snorted. Where did you shoot him?” Her eyes roved all over him. “You didn’t do it? That’s okay, mom. Someone else will do it. It doesn’t have to be you.”
By then Deanna was right up on her daughter. She whispered, “I don’t think he’s going to change over. Look, he’s sleeping. Infected people don’t sleep, Emily. They never have. Ever. He’s still immune.”
For two seconds, Emily grew excited, then a thought hit her like a bat to the face. “What if Uncle Neil is experiencing a different kind of change? You know, like a slow one. Maybe it might take him a week or something before he goes all the way to becoming one of them.”
“Then we wait a week and see,” Deanna stated, flatly. “In the meantime, I need you to find a place to hide him. The assassin has to think he’s succeeded. And while you’re doing that, I’m going to get a replacement that we can bury.” Emily’s eyes went wide as the haunting screams of the dead echoed around them.
She didn’t ask to help with that job and Deanna wouldn’t have allowed her anyway. Killing any zombie, even one chained hand and foot, was dangerous wor
k. It was also mentally and spiritually trying. Not everyone passed those tests. During the height of the apocalypse there were some who took their own life rather than face the challenge of living, and there were some who only became weaker with every trial.
Deanna had passed her trials eleven years before, when she had been all that stood between the army of the Azael and her crippled, leaderless people. Every problem since then paled in comparison to that, including killing the chained zombie.
Always cautious, Jillybean kept weapons inside, as well as outside, every room that held the dead.
Because she was tall and still strong, Deanna chose an axe and, after knotting up her long blonde hair, she made a mess of the thing’s head with two swings. Next, instead of searching for a key to free the corpse, she used the axe to tailor the zombie to a size more equal to Neil. Kicking aside the hands and feet, she pulled the corpse into the center of the room and ran for sheets.
Once it was wrapped, the corpse took on a sad appearance. It was no longer a hideous monster; it seemed human once again.
Emily stared at it with her mouth gaping. She had never seen a real corpse before, at least not like this. Two years before, a young woman named Lilly had fallen asleep one night with a headache and had never woken up again. Emily had caught just a glimpse of her in her gleaming casket before it was weighed down and sunk in the sound. She had looked as though she were still sleeping, and Emily had to fight the ugly desire to go shake her and yell in her face.
She had no such desire concerning the body wrapped in the sheet. If she were to shake it, there was a chance it might come alive again. It had once before, after all, and so did every corpse in her nightmares.
“You take its…” Deanna began, nearly saying feet, except it had no feet. “Down there.”
It was the lightest part of the body and she only had to carry it outside. Still, she was winded by the time they set it down on the sidewalk in front—she had been holding her breath, secretly afraid it would spring out of the sheet.
From there, her mother took over and soon the body was hustled out of sight. “Chains and weights,” Emily could hear her mother. “Neil was never a stickler and since he was infected, we may have to hold off on a service until tomorrow.”
For the moment, the assassin seemed to be forgotten by everyone, except eleven-year-old Emily, who lingered in the dark school, alone except for vicious giant zombies and perhaps one smallish one. She had not chained Neil but was beginning to think it would be a good idea. There was still a good chance he would turn.
The only room she could find with chains and locks ready to go was the Computer Sciences room, where her mom had left a huge pool of blood, two hands and two feet. It looked like a murder room. A shiver of fear ran up her back and if there had been someone she could turn to for help, she would have left to get them in a blink. There were only three people she trusted for this sort of thing: Neil, Jillybean and her mom.
“It’s on me,” she whispered. Moving into the room, she made a face, her nose squinching and her full lips almost disappearing as they pursed. The look remained in place during the cleanup, and for some time after as the bleach fumes were strong enough to induce a headache.
Neil remained asleep as she dragged him from the closet where she had hidden him in and hauled him by one foot to the Computer Sciences room. It was only when she had cuffed him that he cracked bleary eyes.
“W-What are you doing?” he mumbled, sounding like his mouth was full of marbles. His eyes were fiercely red, and his tongue looked almost crimson. Like a demon, she thought as she jumped back.
“I was just trying to, you know, help you.”
He tried to stand and that was when he noticed the handcuffs. He gave them a rattle and then pulled at them with all his might. He had never been a strong man and just then was no different, yet his veins stood out and his teeth were clenched tightly and barred. “What the hell!”
“It’s for your own good,” Emily replied, backing further away. “You-you might turn into one of them.” She pointed back toward the door, where the howls of the zombies echoed throughout the building.
“Then kill me and be done!” he yelled, “Or not. I don’t care. Just don’t stand there staring at me with those hurt blue eyes. Oh, poor me. Mister Neil is being mean. How can I ever live being perfect just like my stinking mother? What? Are you going to cry? Then do something about it and shoot me!”
He was definitely turning now, but shooting him was out of the question. “I would, ‘cept I don’t have a gun.”
Neil jutted his chin toward the bloody axe. “You can use that. You can be like…what was her name from when we were kids? Mary? Miss Mary had an axe and gave her father forty whacks…no it was something like Miss Mary took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one. Ha! That was it.” His grin was maniacal.
“You know what you have to do,” he said. “Take the axe and give me forty whacks.”
She didn’t know whether she could give him even one. The thought was both horrible and consuming, so much so that she didn’t realize how much danger she was in. Neil’s hands were chained, not his feet. While she was staring at the axe, he kicked her in the back of one knee. Her leg immediately buckled and before she knew it, she was falling backwards into him.
In a flash, his legs were wrapped oddly around her; one across her shoulder, the other around her waist. The heat of his fever radiated off him like she had backed into a small fire. She tried to escape, but he squeezed with his legs, crushing the air out of her lungs.
“Now, whatchu gonna do?” he whispered. His breath coursing along the nape of her neck was shockingly hot. “I’ll tell you what, you’re gonna give me those keys or I’m going to take a big chunk out of your pretty little neck.”
Chapter 13
This will never work in a million years, Ipes declared with his usual negativity whenever explosives were involved.
“You’re in luck, it’s not even ‘splosives, not really. Just because it can ‘splode doesn’t make it an ‘splosive.”
The zebra threw up his floppy hooves in exasperation. I’m pretty sure that’s the very definition of explosives. And look! Right there on the tanker are warning signs, and sure my eyesight might not be as good as a hawk’s, but it’s good enough to see the big fire warning sticker.
“Yeah, I see the fire warning sign, too, you big dunce.” She wiped the sweat from her forehead—accidentally leaving a smear of oil in place of the sweat—and pointed her screwdriver at the sticker. “It’s a warning about fire, not ‘splosions, sheesh. You ever see a plane ‘splode before?” It had been a year since the beginning of the apocalypse and already their memory of planes jetting across the sky on a near constant basis was fading. Now the sky generally sat blue and empty, save for the occasional cloud or bird.
“No, you haven’t, and they used to fly around chugged full of this stuff.” The seven-year-old waited with her hands on her hips for Ipes to reply, which he did in a sullen manner.
Fine! Play mini-scientist, just count me out. If you could be so kind as to drop me back off at the hotel and fetch some cookies along the way, that would be great.
Jillybean gave him a fully-disappointed Humph! which blew the hair from her face. “Cookies!” That called for a second Humph! They hadn’t seen cookies since Missouri. “It’s almost like you’re trying to rub Saltines into my wounds.” She didn’t have wounds exactly, just scrapes on her knees and palms from crawling through a drainpipe to escape a big jerk of a monster that had tried to eat her that morning—and why anyone would waste perfectly good Saltines putting them on wounds was beyond her.
“You can stay right where you are, mister. Watch and learn.” She had gone dizzy in the head getting the jet fuel from the truck and into the large drum, where the fumes were now shimmering the air. Carefully she carried a gallon-sized gas tank of it to her first test vehicle: a 2010 Honda Accord.
The
moment she began to pour the foul-smelling stuff into the car’s tank she regretted her choice of apparel yet again. The sundress was a stunning vibrant yellow and offset the hand-stitched daisies perfectly. Had she been going to a church picnic or a family reunion or even second grade picture day she couldn’t have chosen a better outfit. What it was not good for was hot-wiring cars and siphoning gas.
Already there was a nasty old smudge on it just above her tummy. And she had gotten rust stains on her bottom from sitting on the fender of the gas truck, and now some of the jet fuel jumped right out of the nozzle and put some stinky stains right where her boobs would be, if she had boobs that is.
“Oh man,” she grumbled, her face scrunched from the smell and the general unhappiness surrounding what had really been a fine dress. Once the jet fuel was in the tank, she put all her measly weight against the small car and began pushing it back and forth to mix the normal gas and the jet fuel. She understood that the act of pouring it in had done most of the job and Brownian Movement, the erratic random movement of microscopic particles in a fluid, as a result of continuous bombardment from molecules of the surrounding medium, would do the rest, however she had a seven-year-old’s mentality and if something wasn’t stirred with a stick or shaken until it frothed, it just wasn’t stirred proper.
“That should do the trick,” she said, a minute later, unconsciously wiping her stinky hands on the pretty sundress. “Now is T-minus go time. I just need…” Just then she saw that Ipes was gone. He had been sitting on the hood of the Accord and now he had disappeared. “Ipes? What are you up to?” She walked around the car, more annoyed than frightened. “You aren’t mad, are you? We’ll get cookies on the way home, I promise.”
He didn’t make a peep. She bent down to look under the car. He wasn’t there. He had run off! “Which is just like him,” she grumbled. “At least he didn’t take the keys.” They were sitting on the ground in the middle of her very long, thin shadow. It was a strange shadow and it was only then that she realized it was still morning…or had just become morning. She couldn’t remember, she only saw that the sun was just coming up out of a haze that enclosed her, the Accord, and the back half of the aviation fuel truck. It almost seemed as though there was nothing beyond the haze, as if it went on forever in all directions.
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