It was gunning around in odd shaped ovals and it was a moment before she figured out that it was trying to run someone over. She could see a soldier sprinting like a rabbit, darting here and there, making quick turns. His face was pulled back in a grimace of terror.
He did not get away.
The Stryker caught him and ground him under four of its tires. It hurt to watch the spectacle and yet the soldier’s death gave Deanna two advantages: first, she cast off the last remaining fear she had over dying and second, the men in the Stryker had been so preoccupied with the soldier that they didn’t notice the Humvee closing fast.
Had she a choice, Deanna would have chosen a head on collision since it offered the surest destruction of the Stryker. A side blow would have been good as well but only because the missile was pointed up and to the side.
Unfortunately, she was stuck with a straight blow to the rear and worse, she had been finally spotted. At fifty yards the Stryker suddenly sped up and its .50 cal began to swivel in her direction. Her only option was to stomp the gas pedal and strike before the gun fired.
At fifteen yards the gun began blazing, looking as if it breathed fire instead of lead. She was going too fast now and the guns couldn’t track her in time. The fat bullets went over her head, the sound of them striking the roof added to the din of the racing engine and Deanna’s own scream. It was her death roar, it was her time to die.
And then she struck with a great crash. The missile erupted in flames and brilliant sparks, which covered the hood of the Humvee and sent a wash of blinding heat over Deanna. There was flame but no great detonation that would spell the end of the Stryker. The missile had built in safety features that kept it from exploding until it reached a certain speed.
Deanna found herself disappointingly alive and still stuck with the job of defeating the Stryker which, other than a dented in rear door and a scorch mark on its bumper looked completely unharmed. It had been turned slightly by the force of the blow and as she watched, its gun began to turn in her direction.
Forgetting everything, she jumped out of the Humvee just as bullets started thocking into the hood. She ran left at a diagonal, knowing there was only one way to be safe from the machine gun and that was to get as close to the Stryker as possible. The gun tried to track her but was a second too slow and she was able to run up to the vehicle and crouch in its shadow.
The Azael weren’t fooled; the Stryker jumped forward and Deanna had to run to catch up, grabbing onto the dented-in door so as not to be left behind where the gun could blast her into goo. The gap between the door and the armor plate was plenty big enough for her fingers...in fact, she suddenly realized, it was plenty big enough for a hand grenade!
If only she had one.
She had left the grenades sitting on the radio and there would be no going back for them, or so she thought. “He’s on the back!” someone inside the Stryker yelled. “I can see his hands!”
The driver stomped the brake and then dug the vehicle into reverse and charged backwards right at the Humvee. He was going to squish her. She barely had a handhold and only a little lip of metal for her right foot—there was no way she could leap to safety. To drop meant to be run over and so she climbed in order to escape death.
Unfortunately, climbing takes strength, skill and time; she had none of these. The best she could manage was to swing one leg up and hook her heel on the door, and then the Stryker struck the Humvee with a squealing of metal on metal. Her grip was jarred loose and she was flung onto the roof of the Humvee to land with a bone-cracking thump.
She saw stars and her lungs fought to take even the tiniest sip of air, but she was alive and she knew if she wanted to stay that way, she had to move.
Groaning, Deanna rolled to her side and promptly fell off the vehicle. Though it hurt all the more, the fall suited her needs, she was right there at the driver’s side. She climbed in ready to grab the grenades and end this; however the grenades were no longer on the radio.
“Oh no!” she cried, staring around at the bloody and ruined carcass of the Humvee. The grenades were nowhere to be seen. It had been a mistake leaving them sitting out. They could’ve bounced out of the Humvee at any time during the rough ride across the wheat field or, more likely, they had gone flying when she had crashed into the Stryker. Either way they were gone and the only weapon in sight was Sadie’s M4 which might as well have been a pea-shooter compared to the hulking Stryker.
Deanna grabbed it, regardless, just as the Stryker lurched forward. She was thrown across the seat where she banged up hard against the radio mount. Once again she knew she had to get out before the Stryker got too much separation and was able to gun her down, but as she struggled up, she saw that the Humvee was being dragged by the Stryker. They were caught up together by shards of sprung metal.
This was her chance, perhaps her only chance. She crawled through the broken windshield and out onto the hood just as the Stryker hit the brake, sending her rolling right up against the bent in door.
The gap in the door was so close that she didn’t have to jump. She stood and hooked one arm in the gap while she slung the rifle with the other. Now the Stryker lurched forward and turned hard to the right, losing the Humvee after a couple of seconds. Deanna needed those seconds to get a better grip. She had both hands on the door now and was able to hook her foot again.
One of the Azael was yelling once more, but she didn’t care. She had her face pressed to the crack and she saw a door release right next to her hand. Without hesitation, she grabbed it and the rear door fell open like gaping mouth. Of course she fell as well, rolling in the wheat, the gun digging into her back. There was no time for pain. There was no time for worry or fear. There was no time for anything other than getting the M4 off her back.
She yanked it across her body as her eyes settled in on her target: the Stryker’s gunner who had been caught unprepared as the door fell open. He was out of his seat where he might have been protected. Unbelievably, he raised his hands in surrender as she swung the rifle up.
Deanna’s blood was up and she couldn’t have stopped herself even if she had wanted to—she fired, hitting the evil beast who had been gunning down defenseless men. It felt surprisingly good to see him fall back, screaming. Next she took aim at the driver who tried to turn the Stryker before she could draw a bead on the back of his head.
Too late. Blood exploded from his face, coating his instrument.
“I did it,” she whispered as the Stryker rolled through the wheat for a few feet and finally stopped. “It’s done.”
But it wasn’t. Not yet. That realization struck her just as the unused adrenaline coursing through her veins started her hands shaking. She looked back over her shoulder to where she had come from, past the corpse of the Humvee and the dead soldier who’d been run over. Her eyes went to the trail of smoke rising up out of the forest a mile away.
Grey was back there, dying.
With all her heart she wanted to go back to him, however she knew her fight wasn’t over, not yet. Good men were still being killed and there was an enemy to destroy once and for all. She stood, swaying for a moment as pain rushed across her body. Like the pain in her heart, she ignored her many injuries and trudged into the low Stryker. The two Azael were dead.
That was good except the driver was a bitch to move. It took all of her remaining strength to pull him out of the chair. Once he was flopped in the back, she climbed onto the seat that was bloody and still warm. She started the engine and rode to battle with tears in her eyes, blaring her horn just as Captain Grey would have wanted her to do. All around her the soldiers who had been pinned down, unable to truly fight leapt to their feet, and charged screaming a battle cry that shook the valley.
Chapter 37
Jillybean
She was down to it now. The battle raged outside the canvas walls of the truck like it was heaven and hell finally coming to terms in a great fight. Inside the truck there was a zone of tranquility. It was a p
lace of thought and of prayer. When Jillybean left the truck, she wouldn’t have long for the world. She might die, that was true, in fact she was more than likely going to die.
But even if she didn’t die, she couldn’t live with the guilt of all the bad things she had done. She’d leave that guilt for Eve to bother with. Jillybean would just check out and be done. And so she prayed in the clumsy sweet manner of children who simply wished the world was a nicer place.
When she finished her prayer with: “And I’m really sorry for everything, too,” she stared around at the boxes, letting her unencumbered mind flow. She was going to kill a king, which meant that she had only one chance. Poison wouldn’t work, not in this situation. She was too weak to use a knife or a tire iron against such a big man. A gun would be good however there were none in the truck that was small enough for her to wield.
This left a bomb of some sort—but how to get one close enough to Augustus to kill him for certain. He was surely armed and so too would be his brothers. She had a history of bombs and explosions and those such things and so they wouldn’t let her come walking up with a strange box in her hands.
“Hmm,” she murmured, her eyes going over the assembled crates: claymore anti-personnel mines and grenades by the bushels and stacks and stacks of bullets, and more of the napalm that filled the truck with a heavy chemical smell. She also saw the C4, the blasting caps and the detonators, but what good would they be if she couldn’t get close?
These were the same questions she had been wrestling with all the day before and she hadn’t come up with a good answer then and one didn’t come to her now.
“Then it’s plan G then,” she said. The plan was weak, she knew it. Everything else up to this point had been borderline genius and that included all the dozens of contingency plans she had come up with. However, the final act came down to a threat and a hope, and death of course. Maybe the king’s death if she was lucky, but her own death was the plan’s likely conclusion—this she kept from Eve.
It wasn’t difficult; Eve didn’t care about details. All she wanted was to kill and to see an explosion and to be in charge of their body once and for all. Jillybean was going to give her everything she could ask for and so she didn’t interfere, she only lurked in the shadows like some sort of great hairy-backed monster.
Though she did come out when Jillybean put on the dress. I like it. I will be a princess, finally. You were never a princess, Jillybean. You were always the toad.
With all the evil that had built up in her soul, she felt like a toad, but she didn’t say anything. She ignored Eve and went down her mental checklist: ensure that the detonator is in the off position, remove batteries as a secondary precaution, insert blasting cap into one block of C4 and add receiver, ensure that the frequencies on the radio and receiver match, add batteries to detonator, and then turn the radio on. The bomb was ready to go.
Next came the string: two lengths went tight around her waist with the ends dangling against the back of her legs. A hand grenade was attached to each.
After a glance in the backpack, Jillybean picked out the doll and looked into its china blue eyes. It was so pretty that despite the urgency she hesitated as an idea came to her: “Maybe I can live in the doll when this is all over.” She thought about Ipes and how the toy zebra had been just that, a toy before Ipes came to live in it. So maybe...
That’s not going to happen, Eve said. I’m not going to keep you around running your gums all the live long day. Besides, I like the doll. I’m going to keep it for myself.
Jillybean grew suddenly angry: “No! The doll is special. Neil said never to give it to you.”
Neil isn’t here, is he? And soon you won’t be either.
This took the wind out of her sails because it was completely true. Eve chuckled, happy to have caused such misery and Jillybean was tempted to set aside the doll and let it get blown up with the truck, but it really was too pretty to be destroyed and Neil had told her to keep it.
Taking the doll and the detonator, Jillybean climbed out of the back of the truck and, with a final sigh, began walking toward the front of the line of trucks, her face a reflection of the despair in her heart. After a minute there was an explosion in the valley as the Javelin team blew up one of the Strykers. Jillybean didn’t know what the sound portended; however, the man in the truck she was walking next to looked nervous which seemed about right. They had expected the valley to be filled with zombies, not soldiers.
No one said anything to the little girl in the white dress; they only stared. She didn’t look around or say anything either. She was on a mission. Feeling like a church bell with the hand grenades clapping against the back of her legs, she marched up the steep hill toward the ridgeline just as a new firefight broke out to the northwest along the ridgeline to add to the huge din of battle.
She couldn’t imagine that it was her apocalypse sister fighting a desperate one-sided battle against odds. In fact, Jillybean would’ve been amazed that the fight was going so poorly for the soldiers. She marched up the hill fully expecting King Augustus to be out of his mind that his army was being destroyed.
The view at the top told her an entirely different story and made her mission a hundred times more urgent. She was practically running when someone shouted: “Stop that girl!”
There were thirty men and one woman, the king’s personal attendant, standing near the sharp-faced cliff overlooking the valley. Seven were the king and his brothers while the others were high-ranking officials. Brad Crane was among them and he was quick to aim his rifle at Jillybean. She stopped and raised a single hand in the air, hoping that the detonator could be seen.
“She came back,” Duke Baldwin said with a laugh. He was a perfect rainbow of scarves and, to Jillybean, he looked absurd. “What a moron! Menis, I thought you said she was smart.” The others laughed, all but the king.
“What’s in her hand?” Augustus asked.
Brad had been eyeing the black device as well. He edged forward, warily until he saw it clearly and then he turned back to his king. “It’s a remote detonating device. For a bomb is my guess, knowing her.” This stopped the laughter and the smirks dried up.
“Menis!” the king thundered. “Fix this. She is your problem child.”
“No,” Jillybean said in a clear voice. “I’ve come to deal with you, Mister, King, sir. Stop this fight right now or I’ll blow up all of your ammunition.” This was the “dream” plan: he would realize he couldn’t fight without ammunition and he would give up and go away. The problem was, he was so obstinate that she thought it farfetched that he would agree. Still she thought it worth a try.
Augustus strode forward and looked at the girl from twenty feet away; he seemed nervous about getting too close, which is exactly what she needed him to do in order to kill him. The grenades were heavy as bricks and she could only throw them so far. “You’re threatening my ammo? Huh. I would’ve thought that you would’ve threatened me. That would’ve made more sense. Go ahead, blow up the ammo. My men have enough to finish this fight. But know this, if you do blow it up, I’ll carve you into pieces and all them stupid whores as well.”
He snorted at her and then backed away to see what she would do. What could she do? If she detonated the bomb, they would hurt her real bad, but they probably would anyway and, if she didn’t blow it up, then Kay and the sex-slaves wouldn’t know better to run away and would probably get caught. Blowing up the truck was her only real option, besides, Eve was clamoring to get out and clamoring for some fireworks. Eve became so excited that Jillybean’s hands started to go numb as the other girl strove to take over.
“Hold your horses,” Jillybean said in a soft tone, speaking to Eve. She couldn’t blow up the truck willy-nilly; the plan had to be followed. Since Eve was just as weak as Jillybean was, Jillybean still had to get closer. She stepped forward until Brad raised his rifle.
“That’s far enough,” he said, “unless you plan on giving me that detonator which I would
if I were you.”
“No, it’s important.” Jillybean was suddenly filled with peace. This was as far as she needed to go; Eve would do the rest: she’d blow the bomb and under the cover of the confusion she would get closer to the king and use the grenades—Eve was dying to. “You may want to cover your ears, Mister Brad, sir. Go ahead, Eve.”
Jillybean released the grasp she had on her own flesh and let the evil thing inside of her loose. She came rushing up, greedy for air and for a vision of the world and to live. Eve was hungry for life, but also for death. She was a primal force, a natural force. She was a mixture of all the hate and anger and jealousy and gluttonous self-indulgence in Jillybean’s soul.
Her desires could not be controlled or denied.
Eve grinned like a crazy person and thumbed the switch, hoping to see the world go up in one great explosion—the effect was immediate and the noise awful. It rang in their ears and Jillybean shuddered. She had not yet been drowned in the depths of her own soul; Eve was too focused on other things such as setting the world on fire, to worry about one little, useless girl.
The ammunition truck seemed to leap into the air as it exploded in a tremendous fireball. A secondary explosion, one that was made of pure white light followed close behind, blinding everyone.
“Yes!” Eve cried.
Augustus strode forward and Eve, still grinning like a hatter, started fumbling at the back of her dress for one of the grenades. Before she could get one loose, he smacked her across the face hard enough to send her sprawling. The world tilted all around and her eyes went in and out of focus.
“You bitch!” he seethed, kicking her in the side and stomping her thigh. The pain was so sharp that Eve couldn’t breathe for half a minute.
Breathing like a bull, Augustus stood over her; however, she was forgotten for the moment. He was staring down at the long line of trucks and seeing only the one on fire. This seemed to confuse him until he declared: “You’re a liar as well, aren’t you? You only had the one bomb.”
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