This wild statement caused a muttering to spring up around the fire. It included everyone except Kay, who lay on the ground a foot from Jillybean, crying softly, and Brad, who was staring at the little girl with cold calculations in his eyes, and of course Duke Menis. Menis had seen Jillybean the night the renegades had made their escape—the little girl had been dressed in the mud and rags of her monster outfit.
“It is the only way to get close,” Menis acknowledged.
Paulus threw his hands in the air, crying: “Are you crazy? What she’s saying is suicide and it’s stupid. Weren’t we just talking about not wasting men, unnecessarily?”
“Not so fast, Paulus,” Augustus said. He was eyeing his brother, and Brad Crane; these two were wearing nearly the same calculating expressions. “Is this possible? Does this fool the stiffs?”
“I have seen it for myself,” Menis said.
Brad raised a hand that was wet with Kay’s blood. “And I’ll bet my life that it’ll work. I’ll go amongst the dead with the radio and direct the artillery.” This raised eyebrows all around in what was a comical display, almost as if they were a group of bad actors over-doing a scene.
Eve didn’t have an opportunity to laugh at them. The shared mind was teetering against her. Enraged at the treachery, Jillybean fought her way back into control. It was like waking up from a bad dream, except her reality was just as bad.
For the moment, she was an afterthought and no one noticed her chest rising and falling as she panted like a dog, nor did they see the wild, uncertain look in her eyes. She wanted to run away from her guilt. She wanted to run away from her life. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option.
“You won’t be able to do it,” she said to Brad. “You’re not smart enough. You have to be stealthy, that’s what means extra sneaky. You’re too loud—they’ll get you.”
“They’ll get us, you mean,” Brad replied. “I plan on taking you with me.” This brought on another general stir of surprise from the on-lookers, who were treating what was going on like a soap opera. “You’ll come with me; you’ll do what I say and you will behave, or else I will set the bus on fire with all those women in it, do you understand?”
The idea appealed to Eve. She could picture the flames swamping the vehicle, pouring up its sides as though it was a perverse liquid that could defy the laws of gravity. She could hear the roar of the flames and beneath that the utter despair of the women as they burned to death. She grinned at the prospect and Jillybean found herself grinning as well. Her mind was coming unbalanced again.
Disgusted, the little girl stuffed Eve away, which was sort of like crushing down on the lid of a garbage that was over-flowing with refuse—the imagined screams kept on echoing until she shook her head.
“Ok,” Jillybean said to Brad. “I’ll do it, just...just don’t hurt anyone.”
Brad grinned but made no promises. He unlocked the handcuffs from Kay’s wrist and then kicked the woman one last time. “Go back to the bus and don’t even think about trying to run away.” In the dark, she could have run; however, Brad did not ere in his judgment of the woman. The beatings had cowed her into a sniveling servility and she went to the bus without a glance left or right.
Neither Jillybean nor Eve could understand this. Kay was under no duress. The lives of an entire busload of people weren’t yoked on her shoulders. She could have walked away and have been half-way to Denver by the time the sun came up.
Pathetic, Eve whispered and Jillybean had to agree.
As Jillybean was watching Kay walk away, Duke Menis grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her around to face the king. “Do we have your permission to undertake this mission, your Highness?”
The king glanced once at Paulus before nodding. When the youngest brother began to splutter, Augustus slapped his hand down on the arm of his great chair. “You shouldn’t be angry, Paulus. You should be thanking Menis for having the foresight to bring this little girl along. Without her, I think it is safe to say it would have been a waste of time and resources to haul these guns all the way up here.”
“What about the counter-battery fire?” Paulus demanded. “They were worth it, right...”
“Enough,” Augustus said, cutting him off in mid-sentence. Dismissively, the king turned from his brother to look at Brad. “Why are you still here, Crane? Get your ass in gear.”
Brad bowed and then dragged Jillybean away. When they were out of earshot, he began to grumble. “Why are you still here, Crane?” he mimicked in falsetto. “Jeeze, what an asshole.”
“That’s a bad word,” Jillybean reminded him. “But, since you’re bad yourself, it doesn’t matter.”
“Shut your mouth,” Brad said after a quick look down at her. “Or I’ll tape it shut.”
She was quiet as they marched down the road to where the big guns were erected. In the dark, they resembled towering insects from an alien world. Jillybean looked upon them with some trepidation. They had belched so much fire when they had gone off that she was sure that if they went off again with her so close her hair would get burned right off.
As Brad got instructions on how to work the radio and what was to be expected of him as a spotter, Jillybean stood nearby, touching her face where Brad had hit her. Something didn’t feel right. Her head felt lumpy and swollen and her nose was way bigger than it was supposed to be. She remembered what Kay looked like after her beating and Jillybean was afraid she looked the same way.
That’s why we need to kill him, Eve said.
Jillybean glanced over at Brad who was talking to the Captain of the Guns. The captain was a tall, rangy man with hair as long as a woman’s and tattoos like some sort of green-tinted skin disease that seemed to grow up from his chest to strangle his neck. Neither he nor Brad seemed to have heard Eve’s remark.
The little girl turned away and whispered: “We can’t kill him. Think about what will happen to all those ladies on the bus.”
Who cares about a bunch of whores? Eve demanded. You should be thinking about the greater good. What about Neil and Captain Grey and all of them?
“But you hate them!” Jillybean cried. “You’re the one who keeps stabbing them in the back over and over. It was your fault that...”
Brad suddenly appeared at her side. He gave her a shove that sent her to her knees. “Shut up!” he snapped. “While you’re with me you need to keep your crazy yapping in check, do you hear me?”
Jillybean nodded sullenly; the idea of killing Brad was now quite appealing. She guessed that the disgusting desire to hurt him stemmed from Eve, but there was no way to know for sure and she didn’t question it, either way. Brad was a very bad person and she thought that he needed to come to a bad end.
But not yet, she thought. She still had to worry about the poor ladies on the bus. She also worried about Captain Grey and Mister Neil and her sister Sadie, but just not as much. They were strong and smart and fast. They could take care of themselves, even with a big monster attack going on.
Brad thanked the Gun Captain and, carrying a heavy brick-sized radio in his hand, he directed Jillybean back the way they had come. All along the road, they passed groups of strange men. In the dark, they were scary shadows to Jillybean. Shadows that talked in low voices and laughed in whispers. Many had the glowing embers of cigarettes dangling from their lips, which only added to the aura of wickedness that hung in the air around them.
A few watched Jillybean as she passed, their eyes filled with the same perverse desire that she had seen in Baldwin’s eyes. As odious as Brad was, she stayed very close to him and would’ve reached out to take his hand if she dared. His mood kept her from making the attempt.
He was no longer the amiable liar who had steered them in circles around the state of Kansas. He was curt of speech, coldly determined, and quick to anger. He marched them to another tent that was pitched up next to an army deuce and a half, and swept inside. The light blinded Jillybean for a few seconds; however, she didn’t need her eyes to know who w
as in the tent.
“If it isn’t his Royal Highness,” a man said. Jillybean knew instantly that it was Duke Menis’ quartermaster. She knew him only as Jim. On the day that the renegades had escaped from the duke, she had followed him and Brad into the theater where all of the duke’s ordinance had been housed. She could have blown it all sky high, but she had opted to buy the renegades time to get away, instead.
“Shut it,” Brad said, his anger right on the edge of getting out of his control. With the escape of the renegades coupled with the loss of a dozen men at McConnell Air Force Base, Duke Menis had been in no mood to bestow titles on anyone; Brad Crane was not yet Baron Crane as he had expected.
Jim bent into a mocking bow before waving his hand at the tent which was crowded with supplies of all sorts—the majority of it being ammunition, but there was also a crate of C4 and, much to Jillybean’s chagrin, radio-controlled detonators. She hadn’t been able to find any the last time she had searched the munitions storage facility back in the theater.
“What can I do for you at this late hour?” Jim glanced briefly at Jillybean before adding: “Do you need a crib?”
“I’m not a baby, Mister Jim,” Jillybean said. Jim’s face registered surprise at hearing his name.
He glanced at Brad. “How the hell does she know my name?”
Brad also looked at Jillybean with an odd eye, but then he shrugged, saying: “I really don’t care how she knows. I need some supplies for a trip. That length of chain for one.” Among the boxes of clothing and the crates of ammo and the stacks of MREs there were many oddities, including rope, tools, tarps and ten feet of half-inch chain.
Jim gave Brad an odd look, but handed it over. The odd look deepened when Brad wrapped one end of it around Jillybean’s neck, attaching it snugly using a pair of handcuffs as a locking mechanism.
“I won’t run away,” Jillybean told him, as she tugged on the chain. For the little girl, the chain was uncomfortably heavy, plus she knew that where they were going, being chained in any manner could be deadly. “I promise I won’t.”
“Come on, Brad, she promised,” Jim said with a smirk.
Brad glared at the quartermaster and muttered: “Shut the fuck up. Now, Jillybean, what are we going to need?”
“To fool the monsters? Not much of this stuff, unless we can have some of those shirty things.”
Jim looked behind him at where she was pointing. “The ponchos? Sure you can have some ponchos, but I’m afraid they aren’t very good at monster-fooling. But they are good if it rains, which it probably won’t. But who knows, I ain’t no weather forecaster or nothing. It could rain.”
“It’s not for the rain,” Jillybean said, grinning at how silly Jim was being. “They’re for camel-uhk…”
Brad, who had hold of the other end of the chain, gave it a yank. “He doesn’t need to know what they’re for,” he snapped. “Now, anything else?”
Normally, she would have made do with mud to turn her pale complexion into something that no longer resembled a little girl’s soft skin; however, there were some camo-sticks in a box, the sort Captain Grey had used when they first met him. Meekly, she pointed to them.
Jim followed her finger, saw what she wanted and reached for them, as he did, Jillybean noticed something else that she needed. There was a stack of forms on a box right next to Jim. Within the papers there were a number of paperclips...paperclips that could be used to unlock the unnecessary collar around her neck.
As Jim reached for the camo-sticks and Brad went to the unkempt pile of ponchos, Jillybean reached out and slapped the paperwork off the box. As she expected, the papers went everywhere. She followed them with a sharper eye than any adult would’ve given her credit for.
She knew exactly where the paperclips landed.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, going to her knees and grabbing handfuls of paper. Right next to her hand gleamed a clip. She slid her hand over it and, just as she did, Jim was suddenly there. He saw what her hand landed on. She had been caught right off the bat.
“I… uh.” Nothing else made it out of her throat. She was not good at lying, especially when it seemed useless. There was no denying what she was doing; she had been caught as red-handed as she could be.
Jim glanced up at the sour look on Brad’s face; when he looked back at the little girl, he said nothing, he only shrugged and acted as though he hadn’t seen anything.
This miniscule touch of kindness deep in the camp of her enemies was almost enough to overcome her. Before she knew it, tears were in her eyes threatening to come splashing out, threatening to alert Brad that something was afoot. Jim widened his eyes, giving her a warning not to over-react.
“Stupid girl,” Jim growled, making a big show of gathering up the papers. When he had them stacked well enough, he tossed Brad the camo-sticks and then went to the ponchos and held two of them up for Brad to see. “All I have is large and extra-large. Are you expecting a monsoon?”
“Give me one of each,” Brad snarled.
The second they were handed over, Brad hustled Jillybean out of the tent before she could say a proper good bye. He kept one hand on the chain and the other on her back as he guided her down the road to a spot where they were somewhat alone. He made a show of looking all around so as not to be overheard.
“So how does this work? You can’t just fool the stiffs by dressing weird, can you?”
“I don’t know about dressing weird, but I know that if you don’t look human exactly, they’ll leave you alone. Oh, and you can’t talk, neither. Really, the more you look and act like a monster the better. And you have to moan, too. There aren’t any quiet monsters. They all say stuff. You know, uuhhh, or muhhh. Stuff like that.”
“Uhhhh? That works?” His question made no sense to Jillybean.
“Not just uhhhh. You have to do it all. You know, the walk and the arms and the look. The monsters are real dumb, but they’re not that dumb. They’ll sniff you out if you don’t do it all at once. Really there’s only one way to get it right.”
“And that is?”
Jillybean wanted to laugh at the silly question, but Brad still had the dangerous look about him. “You have to practice, of course.” He seemed as though he was going to balk at the suggestion, but, abruptly, he shrugged and allowed her to teach him everything she knew about how to be a monster.
There really wasn’t all that much to it beyond the big three: having the right costume, staying in character, and being brave. This last was what tripped up most people; any display of nerves was generally a dead giveaway to the monsters.
Brad displayed a talent for mimicry and his costume, a mudded-up face and a shredded poncho was weak, but good enough. The only thing left was to practice with real zombies, only Brad argued that they didn’t have time. He explained they had four hours to cover ten miles of mountainous and zombie-filled land.
The first two miles zipped by as Brad commandeered a 4x4 truck; they drove it up the winding highway until they came to a group of men sitting around a fire. Off to the side of the road, hitched to the guardrail, was a row of twenty horses, each chomping oats out of nose-bags.
Jillybean wanted more than anything to go pet the horses; however, she knew better than to try. Brad was completely mission oriented. “Who’s in charge?” Brad asked.
One of the men held up a hand. “I am Baron Graves. What do you want?” Like all of them, he wore armor like a knight; it caught the orange glow of the fire and seemed to burn from within.
“I need a horse,” Brad answered. “A fresh one, preferably one with a good nimble step.” When Graves opened his mouth, Brad answered his question before he asked it: “King’s orders. How much further until things jam up?”
Graves pulled a stick from the fire and pointed up the highway with the lit end. “A mile or so.”
The answer caught Brad by surprise. “That’s it? One mile? We’ve had contact for six hours, why aren’t they further along?”
“Who knows?�
�� Graves said with a shrug. “Our job is to herd the stiffs up the highway. Who knows what’s stopping them. My guess is that the soldier-boys don’t want to get eaten and are putting up a fight. Big surprise, right? So what’re you going to do with one of my horses?”
“Take it to Estes,” was the simple answer. “Someone has to spot for the artillery.”
This caused heads to shake and a few chuckles. “You’re going on a horse?” Graves asked. “That’s suicide. They’ll see you from a mile away and put a hole in your head like that.” He snapped his fingers. It was a dry sound, like a twig cracking.
“That’s a chance I have to take,” Brad replied. “Now, let’s have that horse.”
No one asked about Jillybean. They gave her and the chain she wore around her neck questioning looks, but as Brad was in a sour mood and in a hurry to go, no one said anything. In no time the pair was mounted on a great black beast of a horse. Jillybean felt as if she were ten feet in the air.
She sat in front of Brad and was able to run her fingers through the horse’s mane and she was able to touch the surprisingly hard muscles of its neck. She was even able to talk to it, at least at first.
When they had trekked upwards for the mile that separated the drover’s camp from the main host of zombies, she was forced to say, “What a good boy,” one last time and then she threw the hood of the poncho over her head and became just a silent green blob.
In front of them, stretching as far as the eye could see were approximately two hundred and fifty thousand zombies. It was a mind boggling display. They filled the highway from end to end and then overlapped it and filled both shoulders of the road. Behind them in a single line were twenty more of the drovers on horseback.
They were tired men; they sat in their saddles with their backs bent and their long spears carried listlessly. Normally they used the spears to drive the zombies on, but it was clear, even to Jillybean, that the zombies weren’t going anywhere. They were pressed into the gorge cut through the mountains with little room to even breathe.
Brad wanted to take them right into the stinking mass. It seemed utterly impossible.
The Apocalypse War: The Undead World Novel 7 Page 10