The thought, true though it was, and not yet acted upon, only added to the guilt weighing her soul down.
“I would like that,” she said to the duke after only the briefest of pauses. “I think I could help you pretty good.” And kill you pretty good, a voice in her mind said. It wasn’t Eve’s voice, which meant that it was either another personality speaking or her own mind saying the impossible. She didn’t know which it was and that was more frightening than anything.
A pained grin, one that spoke volumes concerning her erratic mental state, broke across her features. The duke missed it along with the many deadly clues that her young mind and inexperienced face gave away. Foolishly, he said, “Excellent. That’s just excellent. We make a good team, you and I.”
It seemed as if there were two avenues open to her: meek compliance down one lane, and down the other: anger, hate, revenge, murder. Neither appealed to her and yet she couldn’t find any middle ground. “Yeah, I guess so, Mister Duke Sir,” she replied, not allowing herself to go one way or the other.
“And as an added bonus, when I get Deanna back, you’ll have a friend here in Estes. Won’t that be something?”
Jillybean gave him another thin-lipped grin. Yes, it would be something having Deanna around, someone to constantly remind Jillybean of her treachery. We could kill her, too, Eve said in a deadly serious tone. Wipe the slate completely clean and then no one will know what evil, nasty things you did.
There was a certain appeal to the idea. If there was no one around to remind her of the things she had done, she could hide from the guilt eating her up. She could lock the guilt up behind one of those doors in the depths of her mind and never have to think about it again.
That’s a great idea, Eve said. No one will know except you and me. An avalanche of pictures splashed across her consciousness: Jillybean shooting the bounty hunter, David Wolff in the eye and seeing the tunnel into his brain and the whiff of smoke coming from it; Jillybean unleashing the zombie army on New Eden; Jillybean blowing up the barge and the ferry boats and the bridge; Jillybean tossing a grenade at Neil as he crouched in the grass; Jillybean, wearing a cruel smile as she shot Ernest and then again as she gunned down the River King’s men, shooting them in the back.
A cloud of guilt engulfed the little girl. It invaded her lungs and laid so heavily on her that her shoulders slumped. Eve was slowly getting stronger again and it wasn’t fear invigorating her this time, it was the guilt. Jillybean knew it and yet she was powerless against it.
Fear could be fought against, it could be overcome by challenging it. She didn’t think she could fight against guilt.
You could try, Eve suggested. Just tell yourself that all those people you killed don’t matter at all. Tell yourself that it was ok to kill them...of course you’d have to lie to yourself and pretend that they were all evil, right? Because they weren’t all evil, were they? You didn’t even know most of them.
“They were all bad guys,” Jillybean whispered, turning from the duke.
Even that guard on the barge? He could have shot you, but he didn’t and you blew him up. And what about those people in Estes? If it wasn’t for you helping the Azael, their big wall would still be up and they wouldn’t be fighting for their lives behind a few stacked cars. So tell yourself those lies and keep on killing and pretty soon no one will be able to tell you and me apart. Would you like that? Would you like to be me without all the whiny guilt?
A shiver ran straight up Jillybean’s back and Eve giggled again. She watched out of Jillybean’s eyes and knew her time was coming. There would be more blood to shed and more bombs to explode and more fires to brighten her world, and all of it would be like an anchor tied around stupid Jillybean’s legs and she’d sink down into the black where she belonged.
Jillybean heard these thoughts and knew Eve was right.
Chapter 21
Sadie Walcott
Just at that moment, with Grey’s M16 cracking steadily away, Sadie’s guilt matched Jillybean’s in its intensity. She had left a good man behind to die. It was a hard truth to face and, lucky for her, she had plenty of excuses. They repeated themselves over and over like a skipping record: the captain was going to die anyway, he was too big to carry, and she would have been throwing her life away by staying.
The excuses were all worthless and inflamed her guilt rather than assuage it. She sobbed as she ran, her eyes blurred by tears. She could barely see her feet dancing from rock to rock and the camouflaged man with the M4 who was standing thirty yards away, catching his breath after a long climb, she mistook for a bush.
He was surprised as well by her sudden appearance. His gun came up and he fired a three round burst, missing high as she flung herself behind one of the boulders jutting up from the top of the ridgeline. The boulder was an oblong that protruded out of the earth to the not so staggering height of four feet.
It was crappy cover in Sadie’s opinion, and wouldn’t keep her safe for more than a few seconds. The shooter, and his friends—she could hear an excited whispering coming from further up the trail suggesting there were a lot more of them—would be able to flank her simply by moving to their right by about thirty feet where there was a lane between the rocks as wide and open as a sidewalk.
Unsnapping two buckles, she had the empty chest rig off in half a second. She swirled it once over her head before flinging it to her left; at the same time, she broke right. After the long morning of running up and down the mountains and fighting for her life, her legs were heavy and she moved without her usual blazing speed, as she headed for the edge of the ridgeline to the west.
She had no idea if there was any safety in that direction, in fact she was pretty sure a steep drop into nothing was likely waiting for her, and yet the alternative: capture at the hands of the Azael and sold off to whichever of her enemies bid the highest, was a worse alternative.
Behind her the chest rig danced in mid-air as bullets caught it and spun it away. Then the gun was turned on her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw it blaze and the air was filled with the sizzle of lead. Eight feet from the edge of the ridgeline, she planted her left foot and hurtled over the rim.
The drop was nowhere near as steep as was needed for the fall to kill her. She landed twenty feet down the hill and with gravity pulling her urgently on, she immediately began to tumble in a flailing ball of arms and legs. Her momentum was slowed as she resembled a pinball bouncing from tree to tree until, with dirt and leaves collecting down the back of her shirt, she slid the final twenty feet, belly up with a perfect view of the sky.
The view was ruined as the black bore of an assault rifle was shoved into her face within a second of her grinding to a halt. She couldn’t seem to look past it. “Go ahead, pull the trigger, dickweed,” she said through gritted teeth. “See what I care.”
There was a moment of uncertainty and she forced her eyes from the bore of the weapon. Standing above her, looking strangely tall and long as if they had been pulled like taffy, were four men.
“What the hell?” one of them asked, clearly surprised at having a girl fly from the top of the ridge to land at his feet. He glanced up at the way she had come, back down at her and then toward his friends; Sadie could look straight up his nose when he did. His nostrils seemed to be in the same odd proportion as the rest of him so that his nose hung everything below it in a shelf of gloom.
“It’s that girl,” another said. “Captain Grey’s friend.” The way he said Grey’s name was with more than a touch of familiarity. He stuck out a hand to Sadie and when she only looked up the very long arm it was attached to with clearly puzzled features, he asked: “Are you ok? Did you hit your head?”
She was sure she had and yet her head wasn’t ringing or in pain, nor was her hearing affected or her sight impaired, beyond the odd angle that she found herself in, which made everything seem elongated. She even recognized one of them.
“Lieutenant Boyd,” she said, noting the bandage that had kept him from j
oining the twenty person team that morning. These men weren’t with the Azael, they were from the valley! “What are you doing here?”
“General Johnston decided to send a supplemental force to help with extraction,” the lieutenant answered as he lifted her to her feet. “Where is everyone else?” From over the ridgeline she could hear the last shots of Captain Grey.
“That’s the Captain!” she cried. “He’s hurt and won’t last much longer.” The men had been standing on the deer trail they had followed that morning. She knew it looped a hundred yards out of the way to the north before coming back to cross right above them. “Come on!” she urged and then attacked the very slope she had just fallen down.
She was unencumbered and, though she was tired, she was filled with a new hope and a new energy. Able to use both hands, she went from tree to tree, making it to the top well before Lieutenant Boyd and the others. Five somewhat confused soldiers waited for her there, two with their guns trained on her. She ignored the possibility of death.
“Captain Grey’s in trouble. Follow me.” Weaponless, she ran back the way she had come, sprinting so fast that her chest burned. There was no way she could make it in time. It had been five minutes since she had left him with the Azael closing in on his position. They had to have surrounded him by then.
Sure enough, a half mile away she could see the Azael climbing the rocks just above where she had left Grey to die and one was already standing and bring his weapon up to his shoulder. He looked like an ant with the distance and she knew that only the best marksman with finely tuned scoped rifles could hit a man from that range. She had to hope that one of these soldiers was that good a shot.
She pointed at a sergeant who seemed the most experienced. “You! Kill that man!” She swung her arm towards the Azael. “The rest of you with me.” At a sprint, she took off without looking to see if any of them were keeping up. Happily, the sergeant began to shoot his rifle, though he didn’t sound like a marksman.
In her mind, she equated the word marksman with sniper, and that she equated with assassin, which she pictured as a cruel and coldly calculating man. She expected the soldier to fire single shots and kill with each, instead he shot at the Azael with a spray of bullets, emptying the gun in seconds. Whether the man was killed or even hit, she didn’t know. He did drop down, out of sight which she considered a win.
It meant Grey had a chance. She raced along the deer trail, feeling the cool wind burn in her lungs as her legs began to stiffen and her heart thundered. Tree branches whipped by, sometimes within inches of laying an eye wide open, but she paid the branches no mind. Dodging them was a waste of energy and she didn’t have any to waste.
She ran full out for three minutes and felt each painful second. Then she crossed over the last rise on the ridgeline and there, below her was the dell she had left Captain Grey to die in. He wasn’t dead yet. He was curled behind a rock the size of an end table, trading shots with a dozen of the Azael who were ranged in a semi-circle on the south side of the ridge.
Around her, the soldiers who had made the run with her, threw themselves behind cover, but she did not. She stood in the open with her arm outstretched and pointing as if her finger was a weapon itself. Immediately the Azael turned their guns on her and sent a cascade of bullets flying her way. She didn’t even flinch, though why she stood there so exposed was beyond her. A part of her felt invulnerable. So many of her friends had died and yet, impossibly she had always lived—even when Cassie had killed her by drowning her in the East River, Sadie had managed to live. It made no sense, unless she was fated to be the last person left alive on the planet, something that seemed horribly sad to Sadie.
It took one of the soldiers to save her from her own delusions or survivor’s guilt or whatever it was making her stand there waiting to be killed. He was rugged as most of them were, and wore a day’s worth of stubble on his cheeks, and he was not at all gentle about saving Sadie’s life. One moment she was standing there like a fool and the next she was dragged down like a wounded gazelle. She went face first into the dirt with a heavy knee planted square in her back.
“Get off!” she gasped in a wheezy breath as she struggled against his bulk. The knee made it impossible for her to take a full breath or to move.
“It’s for your own good,” the soldier told her. “Now hold still so I can aim.” He fired three times from the unpleasant kneeling position before ducking back down and sliding off of her. Just in case, he kept one hand tight on the collar of her shirt.
She gulped down air until she could spit out: “I have to get to Captain Grey. He’s hurt.”
“You’re going to have to give it a minute. He’s caught in a crossfire. Anyone who tries to go out there won’t last ten seconds.”
He was right, the Azael were flocking towards the dell from the south and the east, while the soldiers were racing in from the north. Grey was in the exact middle of the battle, bleeding out onto the rocks. A few feet from him was Morganstern’s corpse. He looked like he was sleeping despite the hurricane of metal passing three feet over his head.
At first it looked as though the Azael were winning the battle. There were twice as many of them and they didn’t seem to care how much ammunition they expended. The sound was amazing and terrifying.
The soldiers were far more disciplined and circumspect. They rarely fired more than a single shot at a time and they never rushed their shots. They seemed far too relaxed in Sadie’s opinion. One man would pop up from cover, take a shot and disappear again, then another man would take his turn. Worse, their shots weren’t particularly well aimed.
“What the hell are they doing?” Sadie demanded of the soldier who had pulled her down. “They aren’t even hitting anything.”
“Look again,” the soldier grunted. “Look behind us.”
She turned, and at first didn’t see anything and then just as one of the closer soldiers popped up and fired, someone unseen fired from beneath a fallen log. Sadie spun to see one of the Azael suddenly pitch forward.
“And look to your right,” the soldier next to her said. “Down the hill a bit.” A quick peek showed her a squad of men scurrying along the ridge while behind them three men had their guns aimed waiting for any enemy to show their faces. “We hold their attention here, while those men flank them. Then while the enemy is engaged on the right, we move a force up on the left.”
“And what do I do?”
“Nothing,” he answered. “Except don’t get killed.”
Doing nothing wasn’t her style especially when her friend was hurt and dying fifty yards away. Sadie watched the battle unfold and, when the Azael’s right flank was engaged, she moved up with the men assaulting the left. One of the soldiers gave her a quizzical look as she moved forward empty handed in a crouch.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asked.
“Waiting my turn,” she answered. She understood the tactics involved, however she was consumed by the idea that Grey would die before she had chance to get to him. It made her reckless and she was only waiting on the chance to be completely stupid.
That moment occurred when the first of the soldiers was shot. He was hit in the right shoulder and though he bled like a stuck pig, he seemed more angry than in pain. “Lucky, fucking shot!” he yelled. He was just in the process of switching his weapon to his left hand to continue fighting when Sadie leapt up and charged over to him.
“Hey, chill,” he said. “It’s just a flesh wound. No reason to be a fucking hero.” In answer she grabbed his M4. “What the fuck!” he cried and tried to snatch it back.
The wound was worse than he let on and Sadie pushed his left hand away with ease. She even grabbed two extra magazines from the soldier’s chest rig. “I won’t hurt it, don’t worry,” she said, indicating the gun.
Before he could find words that weren’t curses, she was up and sprinting. In the last five minutes her muscles had a chance to rest and now she was almost at full speed as she leapt do
wn into the dell where Grey was lying. The Azael gunned for her but as they did they opened themselves up to a withering hail of bullets from the soldiers who fired with near impunity.
A dozen Azael were killed in Sadie’s sprint and she made it to the rock Grey was huddled behind, unscratched, though she had lost the tip of one of her spiked locks to a very near miss.
Grey stared at her with glazed-over eyes. “Sadie.” His voice was hoarse and so quiet that the gunshots going off all around them nearly drowned out the one word salutation.
“Hey.” She didn’t know what else to say. How are you doing? seemed moronic, as did: What’s up?
He replied: “Hey. What…what’s going on?”
This lack of awareness was a bad sign. It was a sign that shock was setting in. His body was reacting to the massive bleeding by shunting blood from his extremities and to his core. Loss of mental acuity was a classic symptom as was the shaking in his hands. He held his hands close to his chest as though he was freezing.
“You’re going to be ok. You hear me? Just stay still and…” She stopped as she saw the pool of blood he was lying in. It was perfectly smooth as if someone had spilled a gallon of paint. The first thing she thought was that he had been shot again—and he had been. There was a fresh groove notched in his forearm, but that wasn’t where all the blood was coming from.
Desperately, she searched his body. Looking for a new bleed and discovering that the bandage holding his bicep together had slipped off. “Ok…Ok I see the problem,” she told him. “I can fix this.”
Fixing the bandage meant exposing herself. She didn’t hesitate. Sitting up with bullets snapping off the boulder and cracking the air all around her, she shoved the bandage back over the gash in his arm and then leaned her knee on it, causing him to groan.
“Stop being a baby,” she said as something tickled the nape of her neck. A bullet had passed so close it had parted the wispy little hairs which had been in need of cutting for months now. It caused a chain reaction as an involuntary shiver went down her back as her subconscious envisioned what would have happened if the bullet had been a half inch lower. It would have severed her spinal column at the base of her skull, paralyzing her but leaving her perfectly aware of her surroundings.
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