With much grumbling the renegades were shooed out of the trucks and back into the raging sun. Before Arlene had been bitten, the renegades would have killed for her, now they were trying their best to forget her. In groups of three, they spread out, but didn’t have to go past the second stand of corn stalks to find her body lying in a pool of blood. Sixty feet from the trucks she had slit her own throat without a sound.
Chapter 7
Jillybean/Eve
They did not make it to the safe zone in Stafford, Kansas. Much to everyone’s annoyance, Brad took them on a winding path that led them all over south-eastern Kansas. The tall, blonde man claimed he was avoiding the mega-hordes, but there was no way to be sure. Neil and Grey could do nothing but gripe and worry over their rapidly diminishing fuel reserves.
Jillybean doubted everything Brad said. Then again, she had taken to doubting everything that entered her ears. The other girl inside of her, the false Eve, was constantly talking or making noise like radio static. It was enough to go crazy over and the seven-year-old was sure she was crazy.
Talking to Ipes hadn’t been crazy because he was real. He had a real body that people could see. Jillybean could remember all of him: the stripes of black and white, his big nose which he didn’t like when she made fun of it, his round belly where the cookies went, his hands which were supposed to be hooves but they were not, and yet they weren’t exactly hands either. They were flat and he used to say he could flip pancakes with them. She missed him terribly.
There was an actual pain in her chest that hadn’t gone away or diminished since he had been thrown over the bridge railing by Ernest. Killing the bounty hunter was the only thing the other girl inside her had ever done right.
“My name is Eve,” she said.
Jillybean glanced around furtively at the others. She could only tell if the voice had been “real” if they looked over at her, or if they stopped talking all at once, or if they pretended not to have heard but twitched all the same. Neil’s hand with a fork full of beans, stopped just an inch from his lips. He pretended to blow on the beans as if they were hot before making a resumption of eating.
“He heard you,” Jillybean said, so low under her breath that no one could possibly hear but Eve. “You have to be quieter.”
No I don’t, Eve spat. Who cares if he heard me? I don’t care. Neil is a shit-fuck-fart.
The pain in her chest spiked and her face contorted. She hated it when Eve called people names, especially bad names like shit-fuck-fart. It was bad, though she didn’t understand exactly how. “Neil is good to us. Look at what he gave us to eat, spaghetti and meatballs, our favorite. He’s eating beans so we don’t have to. That’s what means he’s nice.”
Neil’s fork stopped again and his eyes were tucked to the corner of his face so that he could look at her in a sneaky way. That’s how Eve put it: sneaky. The word echoed through the static making Jillybean put a finger in her ear and twist it about.
“You ok?” Neil asked.
The renegades sat in small groups in the back room of a post office. There was mail everywhere, mostly “junk” mail as her daddy would’ve called it, but there was also normal mail, like letters and post cards. Some people were reading the normal mail but why, Jillybean couldn’t fathom. The letters seemed to make them sad. Some were even crying. Sadie was one of these. The real Eve was lying next to Sadie, grabbing her own toes and making raspberry noises, but Sadie wasn’t even paying attention.
Why isn’t he asking Sadie if she’s ok? the other girl asked. Cuz she isn’t ok.
“That’s none of our beeswax,” Jillybean hissed under her breath. She forced a smile where it didn’t belong and said to Neil: “I’m ok. I’m just tired, maybe. So…where are we?”
Neil shrugged and Grey muttered: “Nowhere…but at least we made crappy time. Whose idea was it to come with these freaking gypsies?”
Next to him, Deanna was leaning against her pack and looking at the stark-white ceiling, which, because of the dark, was a dull grey color. She nudged the soldier with her elbow and laughed. “I believe that was a certain Captain Grey. You and Neil ganged up on me like boys always do, and overruled me. I was the one who wanted to take the long way. We still can, you know.”
“No,” Neil said. “We’ve thrown in our lot with them for good or bad. Perhaps it’ll get better.”
“It won’t, idiot,” Jillybean, or rather Eve, snarled. The little girl gasped at what Eve had said and lowered her eyes thinking that a punishment was coming, only the grown-ups pretended they hadn’t heard.
It’s because they’re stupid. We both know what daddy would’ve done. Probably washed our mouth out with soap, I bet.
“He would never have done that to me,” Jillybean said under her breath once again. “Maybe he would’ve done it to you, but not to me, because I know how to behave!” Her voice had crept up and Neil heard. He suggested that it was time for sleep even though it wasn’t much past nine. Jillybean was very tired but also nervous. She was waiting for the adults to go to sleep. When they did, she would walk among them like a ghost, creating mischief or spinning evil, as she had the night before.
She was stronger than Ipes had been and Jillybean was afraid what night would bring. She was afraid that she wouldn’t be able stop her this time.
Around her, the grownups were settling down; conversations died or drifted into quiet whispers and their eyes were closing or blinking slowly. With every second that passed they were closer to sleep and to death. Jillybean felt it as a certainty. She would not be stopped. She was evil. She hated with a feeling like a rotten tooth. It throbbed in Jillybean’s mind. She hated Neil. She hated the way he stared at her and pretended to care when all he really cared about were the stupid sheep preparing for bed in the back storeroom of the post office.
And she was jealous. The feeling made Jillybean sick; it made her want to puke up bile and the ugly, mottled green grease from the root of her body. She was jealous of the real Eve with such a passion that it hurt Jillybean’s heart.
The little girl knew she couldn’t be left alone that night. She knew that she had to be watched at all times or something bad would happen. She wanted to warn the others, only the other girl in her wouldn’t allow it. Don’t do it, she cautioned. You won’t like what I’ll do.
Jillybean tried not to let her fear show. “Whatever you do to me, you’ll be doing to yourself also. I’m not ascared.”
We’ll see, was all she said in answer, which only made Jillybean that much more frightened. But afraid or not Jillybean would not be intimidated. She had to let the others know that she had to be watched over as though she were a criminal, one of the bad guys. She raised her hand and the other girl growled in her mind: Don’t do it, I swear!
“Excuse me?” Jillybean said, speaking rapidly. “Would it be ok if I slept with the guar...” In the middle of the word: ‘guard,’ Jillybean’s throat clamped shut as if a giant had seized her by the throat and was squeezing the air out of her.
“You want to sleep where?” Neil asked. He was right next to the little girl and he jerked when her hand shot out and began slapping his shoulder. “You ok, Jillybean?”
The storage room of the post office had nothing to illuminate it save for the pale beams from a quarter-moon filtering in through windows covered in old dust. The fact that Jillybean’s face was blossoming into red went unseen.
“What’s wrong?” Grey asked, sitting up. Jillybean could only shake her head. She had been caught with a lung-full of air and now it felt like her body was swelling and that her chest was a balloon about to pop. She fell back onto her blanket, hoping to relieve the pressure swelling her. When she looked down the length of her body, she looked normal, but that couldn’t be, she could hear her ribs expanding with tiny cracking noises, as though hairline fractures were worming outward through the bone.
“She might be having a fit,” Neil said. He knelt over her, peering into her face. With his injuries and the dark, he looked like a monster, but o
ne with kind eyes. “Jillybean! What’s wrong? Can you talk?” The little girl couldn’t talk; she wouldn’t allow it. Neil took her by the shoulders and gave her a short, violent shake, and yelled: “Jillybean!”
Then he was shoved out of the way by Captain Grey. “I need light,” he barked. Sadie kept one nearby so she could attend to the baby at night. She slapped it into Grey’s outstretched hand. Then Jillybean was blinded as the light struck her wide-flung eyes. Grey loomed over her, a strange dark-shadowed giant with a single blaring white eye.
There was a chorused gasp at what the light displayed. “She’s choking,” Deanna cried. Grey handed her the light and then bent over Jillybean. Her jaw had been locked in a half-state of openness and now she felt Grey’s fingers on her teeth as he pried her mouth to its widest. Next she felt a heavy finger smush her tongue down. He took the light back and turned it this way and that. Beyond the light, Jillybean could see his concern growing. “There’s nothing there.”
Jillybean was beyond frantic; she was even beyond panic. She was in a stage of fear that was utterly mindless. Her eyes were beginning to dim and her heart, which had been going a mile a minute, was slowing and now each beat was accompanied by a stab of pain. She was going to die. The other girl was going to kill her to keep her from talking.
Do you understand now? the voice said into her head—it seemed awfully far away and so too, did Captain Grey. He had shrunk and the edges of his face were soft and fading. He was yelling something about a scalpel, only Jillybean didn’t know what that was and Ipes wasn’t around to pull the word from her subconscious. Her hands had been on the olive drab t-shirt he always wore under his BDUs, and now her fingers lost all their strength and slid down his chest with a whisper of cotton. You see what I can do? the voice said. You see that I can kill you whenever I want? You will listen to me or I will walk you off a cliff or have you eaten by the monsters. Do you want me to do that?
Suddenly, the giant hand that had been crushing her throat pulled away and air rushed into her lungs. She gasped once and then immediately cried out: “No, I’ll be good, I promise, I’ll be good.”
In surprise, Grey swung back to her and she threw herself into him and sobbed in misery. “Hey, it’s ok,” he said, stroking her hair. “You are good, ok? Ok? Can you tell me what happened just now?”
In Jillybean’s head the other girl, said, No, you won’t tell.
Even if she had been allowed to, Jillybean couldn’t have spoken a single word just then. She crushed her face to his chest and cried like she hadn’t since the day she had found her mom dead in her bed with her skin stretched drum-tight over the bones of her face. That was also the day that Ipes had first spoken to her.
Don’t be afraid of her, the stuffed animal that she carried in the crook of her arm had said. You should hug her and tell her that you love her. She won’t hurt you, I promise.
Jillybean hadn’t reacted in fear to the voice. For one it had seemed like the most natural thing in the world for the zebra to speak, and for two she was too...numb wasn’t the right word, though it was close. She was too broken. Her father had left her to die and her mother had given up on life. Outside her home she saw the world she had known crumble away—her friends from the neighborhood: Janice and Becca and Paula and even Billy from across the street, had all been eaten or had run away until it was just Jillybean and her mommy who never said anything and only stared at the ceiling and who daily grew less.
When she was nearly dead, about a week away, Jillybean couldn’t stay in the same room with her for very long. Her mommy started to look like she was becoming a scary skeleton. The bones of her face began to protrude, becoming more and more obvious, and her eyes sunk to become twin caves. Jillybean feared that when her mommy died her bones would leap out of her spit skin and start dancing around the room with a clinking sound. In her mind, her mom’s skeleton would be very, very hungry since she had not eaten anything in so long. The skeleton would want to eat Jillybean, even though she was also mostly just skin and bones.
All that wintry day, Jillybean had kept away from the room with her mommy’s nearly dead body in it. That was wrong because at that point her mommy wasn’t dead and she needed water to live, but Jillybean was afraid, and her fear escalated as the day passed over into the gloom of evening. Then she heard a voice in her head: She needs you. She’ll die without you. The voice had been calm and confident. It was the voice of Ipes, though she wouldn’t know that until her mommy actually died a week later.
In that week, the skeleton of her mommy had become ever more pronounced as though it couldn’t wait for her mommy to die so that it could get out, but still, Jillybean had trudged up the stairs performing her duty as a daughter. Even at six years old, she knew what was expected of her. It was almost the same as it was for an infant. Her mom needed to be changed and washed and then Jillybean would dribble water into her mouth. It would take an hour for her to finish a cup.
It was never just pure melted ice. At that time she still had a few crackers left and a little meat and a package of mixed vegetables that she took from the freezer and let sit to thaw. The freezer had lost all its power long before, just like the rest of the house, but Jillybean kept it packed with ice or snow from the yard, though at that time, the freezer was almost all ice with very little food and the cabinet next to the oven where her mommy kept the cans properly faced and in alphabetized order was empty, save for the dust that always crept over everything.
She had eaten the last of the mustard the week before, holding the spoon before her with a shaking hand. When nothing but air came when she squeezed the bottle, she had taken a knife to it, cutting it down the middle, before licking its innards until the flavor was gone and only yellow plastic was left.
Then her mom had died.
Death held a particular fear for the little girl. In her extensive experience with death, it wasn’t as permanent as she wished. And it was evil. It made dead people evil. Her friend Becca was always very nice but then she had died and took to walking around the neighborhood wearing the same dress every day. Jillybean saw her eat a man. She had been with a bunch of other evil dead people and they had eaten a man who had been running down the road screaming like a girl. He screamed when Becca ate him, too.
That was why she was so afraid that week before her mommy died. Her mommy had lain in bed with her cheeks sunken and her skin like a layer of paint on her skeleton, especially around the deep, dark hollows of her eyes. Her lips were no longer full, but reed thin and always peeled back so that her teeth showed. With her gums receding, her teeth looked very long.
On the day her mommy died, Jillybean stood in the bedroom doorway just as she always did, watching to make sure that her mommy’s chest rose and fell, because that’s what meant being alive. Only, her chest didn’t move that day. For five long minutes, Jillybean stared. She stared and stared and didn’t notice the tears running down her face or the pain that grew inside of her until Ipes spoke from the crook of her arm.
The pain started as a noise in her mind. It was white noise that slowly deafened her with its silence, until it filled her head completely that she couldn’t bear it, and when she finally “broke,” she didn’t even notice.
Her mind broke from the fear. She had been, for some time, so dreadfully afraid that it couldn’t be put into words. Now, she was broken and she was alone. The little girl was alone in a way few people had ever known. Even prisoners locked away in solitary confinement saw their jailers at feeding times and they heard the whispers and moans of the other inmates, but Jillybean was utterly alone. She was alone in a dead house, on a dead street, in a dead neighborhood, in a city filled with dead neighborhoods.
Just then, standing in her mother’s doorway, she knew she would be alone forever. Alone, except for the undead. They would always be there outside her window, waiting to eat her.
Those were the last thoughts she had before she broke.
The pain and the sorrow and the damage of that break
went unfelt and unremarked and the only sign of it was when the zebra in the little blue shirt with the words: Too Cute! on the front suddenly spoke: Don’t be afraid to hug her. She’s still your mother and she would never hurt you. Even now.
Jillybean heard and obeyed. She walked on spider-thin legs to the bed and performed her final duty. She cried at her mother’s passing and cried nearly ceaselessly during the days that followed. Having Ipes around made it tolerable and she grew and she healed but the scar of her break was ever on her mind. There had been no way to know how weak that scar actually was because she always had Ipes.
She had relied on him, even when she had Ram; and she had been smart to. As proof of her wisdom, the strong Ram had died and Ipes was still there. When Sarah had been murdered, putting her body in front of Jillybean, protecting her, Ipes was still there. And when Jillybean had shot the bounty hunter, and when she had blown up the bridge, and sunk the barge and the ferry boats, he was there.
Ipes was always supposed to be there, but then Ernest had pitched him into the river. Just like that, her friend was gone. In that moment, her mind cracked wide open and hate came pouring out in the form of Eve.
Gone was the kind and wise-cracking zebra. Gone was the part of her that kept the silence and the loneliness at bay. Gone was the part of her that taught her patience and respect and caution and love. In its place was this low creature that knew only want and lust and need and fury. It was everything Ipes wasn’t. And it was stronger than Ipes. It was stronger even than Jillybean, as it had just proved.
As Jillybean sobbed in Captain Grey’s chest, it was She who whispered into Jillybean’s ear:
YOU CAN’T TOUCH ME.
YOU CAN’T HURT ME.
YOU CAN ONLY SUBMIT AND
BECOME ME.
Chapter 8
Captain Grey
Grey slept, if “slept” was indeed the proper verb for what consisted of little more than lying in a stuporous heat with his eyes mostly closed, with Jillybean just inches away.
The Undead World (Book 6): The Apocalypse Exile (War of The Undead) Page 9