The Undead World (Book 8): The Apocalypse Executioner

by Peter Meredith

  “No, I gotta pee. Don’t leave without me, k?”

  “That depends. How long do you plan on peeing?” She grinned and flipped him off, which caused him to chuckle…and wince. The cold air was hard on his lungs, which had been the slowest part of him to heal from his many injuries.

  Every breath came with a wheeze and a pain deep inside and a little cough that he tried to hide.

  “You okay, sir?” Lieutenant Wilson asked after Grey coughed one time too many.

  Grey pulled his shirt up and breathed into it to cut the sharpness of the cold air. “I’m fine. Just a tickle in my throat is all. Hey, good job for putting those boys to work. We don’t need that sort of talk around Sadie.”

  “Speaking of Sadie,” Wilson said, his voice suddenly an octave higher. “Does she have a, uh, a steady man back in the valley?” Grey glared, the only answer he was willing to give. “What?” Wilson asked. “I’m trying to be respectful here, sir. I’m just looking for your blessing to speak before I even ask her out. I’m not asking you as my commanding officer. Everyone sees you and Neil as sort of father figures to her.”

  The word “father” brought to mind, not Sadie, but Jillybean. Sadie had always been able to take care of herself, while Jillybean had been practically begging for someone to love her. Grey had failed her, unable to see past her peculiarities.

  “Sadie turned eighteen last month,” he told Wilson. “She’s her own woman now, she can make her own decisions. You can ask her out if you wish…having said that, if you mistreat her I’ll beat your ass into the dirt.” A cough followed the threat, which only made Grey glare all the harder—he hated the very idea of weakness.

  Wilson hadn’t seemed to have heard the cough, he was totally focused on Grey’s ferocious stare. “Of course, sir. I understand completely and, uh, you can trust me.”

  “Good, now get those men in the truck. Why don’t you and Hendricks take a turn in the bed? Don’t worry, I’ll keep a sharper eye out for falling zombies.”

  They had to wait five minutes for Sadie to come back from her pee break and then they were off again. As Grey promised, he drove with an eye out for overhead zombies whenever they drove through a series of switchbacks. Now that they were higher up, it was rare.

  The real danger they faced were the very sizable hordes that were funneled by the mountains into the narrow roads. Even as few as a hundred zombies could be very difficult and disgusting to plow through, the big tires on the Dodge turning the creatures to sludge. When they ran into larger hordes, they simply couldn’t attempt to go through, it was just too dangerous and with the steepness of the surrounding mountains, there was no way to try to slip around them.

  What they needed was a way to draw them away from the choke points. Sadie didn’t hesitate to step up when they came to the third such horde of the day. She slid out of the cab while Grey was still weighing his poor options.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  Her answer came as part innocent shrug and part question: “What do you mean? You brought me for a reason, hopefully because I can contribute.”

  She started warming up, lunging so deeply that the other soldiers dragged their eyes from a thousand zombies as if they were no more dangerous than a like number of trees. Sadie acted like she didn’t notice—and yet, she lunged deeper and arched her back, making one of the men whisper: “Oh my.”

  Just like their stares, this was ignored as well. “You know our only option is to drive back two hours to that last main road,” she said to Grey. “And there’s no guarantee it’ll be free of zombies, in fact, you know it won’t be. Hey, trust me, I got this. I’ll run up the hill and get them all crazy for me. When they take the bait, you drive on through. I’ll meet you down the road a bit on the other side of the hill.”

  “But…”

  “But nothing. I’ll be perfectly safe. It’ll take them, like twenty minutes to get to the top of that ridge, and by then, I’ll be long gone. I’ll be sitting right here in this truck. You’ll see.”

  It seemed as if he had no choice but to trust her. Without waiting for his permission or any more of an argument, she jogged off down the road, straight at the horde. Grey swore under his breath and then turned off the truck, ordering the men not to move if they could help it.

  They were happy to comply, and stared at Sadie as she loped easily down the road. She had such a fluid running style, like a beautiful thoroughbred, that even Grey found himself watching. He pulled his eyes away and glanced down at the dashboard and for the first time saw that the needle of the fuel gauge had fallen over to the left and now leaned toward the “E.”

  He decided he would fill up once they met Sadie on the other side of the hill. “How far is she going to go?” he asked. “She doesn’t need to get that close.” She ran another hundred yards until she was toy-sized with the distance and then she began jumping up and down and waving her arms.

  Then without warning, she darted to her left and went at the steep slope on the left-hand side of the road. It was sparsely wooded, but there were enough anemic pines for her to monkey upward. Below her a brigade’s worth of undead charged up after her, swarming over the hill until not a blade of grass could be seen beneath their thousands of feet.

  “Shit,” Lieutenant Wilson whispered as Sadie stumbled. Her feet went out from beneath her and in a blink she had lost, not just momentum, but also fifteen feet of height. She caught a heavy stone that stopped her, however when she used it to pull herself up, it broached the earth and went tumbling down into the mass.

  With a deep breath, she faced the mountain and pushed on. She was young and in good shape and still the zombies gained on her. The ten-thousand foot elevation was nothing to them. They didn’t tire and they didn’t waste energy on fear. If they fell, they tumbled down into more of their fellows.

  Sadie couldn’t afford to slip again, some of the zombies were within ten feet and yet she stopped fifty feet from the top of the hill.

  “Give me my rifle!” Grey demanded, jumping out of the truck. His M4 was handed down to him. He threw it up to his shoulder and scoped the hill, searching for the girl in black and finding her against one of the thin pine trunks. With perfect vision, he could see her chest heaving. She was winded, close to exhaustion, but she was also determined.

  Sadie wasn’t done yet.

  “Are you going to fire, or what?” Wilson asked. He had a rifle of his own in his hands and was ready to start shooting at Grey’s order.

  “No,” Grey answered, watching as Sadie went at the hill again, keeping just ahead of the monstrous horde. “She’ll be fine. Once she’s on the other side there’s not much on this planet that would be able to catch her.”

  Grey handed back his rifle and went to the driver’s side, only before he could get in, Wilson stopped him. “How do we know what’s on the other side of that hill? It could be a cliff for all we know.”

  “Yeah,” Grey agreed. He knew the risks just as Sadie did. “Mount up. Everyone inside. Let’s go!” There were still a number of zombies near the side of the road. They were the very lame and he didn’t expect them to be much trouble. His precautions were for the ones he couldn’t see, the ones that were possibly just around the corner. There could be none or there could be a thousand.

  He figured there weren’t going to be many. Zombies were herd animals. If one went running off, the rest would likely stampede after it without a thought.

  For good or for ill, Sadie was over the far side of the hill. Grey gave the gas pedal a little goose, setting them rolling along the road. He kept the truck rumbling gently along. There was no need to race through the now open section of roadway. They would just end up waiting on Sadie.

  The road ahead of them curved sharply. It followed the river which bent at a ninety-degree angle as it ran up against a formation of granite that couldn’t be worn down. When Grey got to the bend, he had to crane his head upwards and press his ear to the glass to see the top of the walls of rock that rose up aro
und them. The steep hills on either side had transformed into vertical cliffs that loomed, throwing them into what felt like sudden evening.

  Shadows grew so thick that at first the tremendous boulder sitting square in the middle of the road seemed as if it were part of the background rock. The closer they got to it, the more they realized they were screwed. The boulder was too big to push aside, even if they used the truck’s three hundred horses.

  To get around meant possibly going in the river, which was shallow but very fast. The rocks making up the bottom were undoubtedly slick. Within the truck, the men either groaned or cursed their luck.

  “Stop your bitching,” Grey said, slipping down out of the cab. “We adapt and overcome. Hendricks and Raoul, go back a ways and take care of any stiffs that might have been trailing. Keep it quiet. Use rocks. The rest of you come with me.”

  Unarmed, they piled out of the truck. Hendricks, a pale Irishman, was just reaching down for a rock when movement out of the corner of his eye stopped him. “Captain!” he hissed, taking a step back.

  On the dry side of the road was a run of scrubby bushes and tall grass. Hiding within it were two men, both in camouflage and both carrying M16s. They had been crouching, but now they stood.

  Grey spun around and as he did, he caught more movement on both sides of the boulder. Two more men crept around it, aiming guns, and there was a third higher up in the rocks. The last had a deer rifle that Grey could swear was aimed right at his forehead.

  “Well, this is a special day,” said one of the men who had come from behind the boulder. All the strangers were rather nondescript: loose and raggedy camo, straggly beards that went high up on their cheeks and hung well below their chins, filthy, long hair that blended with the beards. They were a dirty lot of bandits…or so Grey hoped.

  “Special indeed,” the man who had spoken continued. “First our little zombie problem takes care of itself and now our little web has managed to snag an entire squad of Estes-testes.”

  “If you know we’re from Estes, then you should know to turn around and head on out of here,” Grey said. “We have two companies scouring the area, probably looking for you. We had rumors of bandits working the area and we were sent out to capture and kill them.”

  The leader of the group wasn’t fazed by the lie. “Am I supposed to be scared? Why should I be when I have six hostages? Or should I say I have six new fighters for the arena? We were hoping to snag us some women, but you’ll also do.”

  In a very quick minute, Grey’s squad was trussed hand and foot with stiff plastic zipties, and herded into a waiting van that had been parked around the bend in the road. Grey’s threat must have carried some weight, the Dodge truck was stripped of their belongings and then driven into the river at a spot where the walls cast the deepest shadow.

  “One of your helicopters would have to fly right into this canyon to see that truck,” the leader of the slavers said. “Ain’t nobody going to find you now.” He started to turn away, but a thought struck him. “Hey…how much do you think they’d give for you guys? You know, like a ransom.”

  “Nothing,” Grey said, the truth coming out of him in a whisper. Neil had nearly emptied the treasury—there was simply not enough to pay one ransom, let alone six.

  Chapter 8

  Jillybean

  Though it was only seventy miles distant, it took the little zombie two days to travel to Fort Leonard Wood. The first day was spent endlessly searching for fuel in the desolate scrap of Missouri, where houses decayed, hidden from the world in an ever-thickening forest. It was a tiring and trying experience for Jillybean.

  As she was alone and exposed, breaking out of her monster character could mean her death and so she monstered her way slowly along, checking every house she passed, collecting dribs and drabs of fuel from lawnmowers and gas-powered weed-whackers, and, every once in a while, from the little red jugs that every garage seemed to have. The jugs were, for the most part, bone dry, but a few still had a trickle.

  Eventually, she collected four gallons. It was impossible for her to carry all of it at once and so she left a little here and a little there, hidden under porches mostly.

  It was night by the time she felt she had enough and so she nested in some old granny’s house. Even after a year, the house smelled of “grandma” in a sad, generic sort of way. There were also frilly lace doilies on all of the end tables, and pictures in the hallway, and the bed in the master was neatly made. It only had one pillow at the head, which made Jillybean feel even sadder.

  Had the granny died alone somewhere on the road outside her house, running for her life, her dentures clicking up and down? Were her children dead and her grandchildren as well? “Probably,” Jillybean whispered, picturing a mangled and half-eaten toddler in footsie pajamas lying discarded and forever forgotten deep in the forest.

  Let’s not go down that road, Ipes said, steering her away from the pictures on the nightstand. There’s only unhappy thoughts where it leads. Instead, let’s see this house for what it is—it’s perfect.

  “How so? There’s no food or nothing.” The front door had been kicked in ages before and the kitchen and pantry ransacked. Nothing else had been touched because it was a granny house, after all.

  I bet there’s candy and maybe more. You saw the pictures. The lady who lived here had to be at least two hundred years old. She’s got stashes. It’s what your daddy used to call ‘depression era’ thinking, whatever that means. Remember what he used to say about his own grandma? Remember the hidden Tootsie Roll story?

  “Yeah,” she replied looking around the place, eyeing the little cubby of a house more closely. The living room was central and she went there first, spinning one long, slow circle. Scratches on the arm of the couch, little white hairs sprinkled about. “She had a cat.”

  Her tummy rumbled as she went back into the kitchen, the one room in the house that had any sort of mess. There was a spray of dried spaghetti noodles that crunched under foot. Quickly, she dropped to her knees and began to scrape them together in a dusty pile.

  There weren’t many, not even enough to fill half a ziplock sandwich bag. Regardless, the bag went into her pocket. Nothing else was obvious. The door to the pantry stood open, showing the world barren shelves. The refrigerator was closed and it was a mistake to open it. The only thing in it was a mural of green mold that covered the walls, and a stench that leapt out at Jillybean.

  Ipes threw a hoof over his bulbous nose. What? Did you think that everyone who checked this house before you forgot to look in there?

  “Just trying to be thorough. It’s not like I enjoy cat food any more than you do.”

  You don’t know if they even have any…and really the seafood medley isn’t bad. Anything has to be better than the liver you’ve been eating.

  “You got that right,” she answered, heading across the kitchen where the cat bowl sat right under a row of cupboards. She could guess that someone who was two hundred years old probably wouldn’t want to travel far just to feed a cat. Jillybean pictured the cat as being a frail thing as old as the old lady.

  Sure enough, there was a blue bin in the cupboard, so filled with cat food in the shape of salmon that she could barely lift it.

  We have won the lottery, Ipes said, his beady eyes entranced at the sight and his big nose working overtime at the smell. What are you waiting for? he demanded when she didn’t immediately dig right in. Are you thinking you wanna mix the cat food with the spaghetti? Cuz that would be weird. Spaghetti and cat balls? Sounds gross.

  “I’m checking for mold, dorko.” There wasn’t any she could see and so she tried a piece, finding it, as expected to be both stale and flavorful. She grabbed a handful and went through the home, her little feet leaving little tracks in the plush carpet. As she poked about, she popped the cat food into her mouth like they were peanuts and she was belly-up to a bar with a beer in front of her and the Phillies on the tube.

  They found the expected stash of sweets in
the old woman’s bedroom. On a shelf in her closet were a number of bowls. One held loose change, one held pens and paperclips, and one held eight pieces of hard candy.

  “Her going-out candy,” Jillybean whispered, picturing the old lady placing precisely two pieces in her purse before she left to run her errands. Always two pieces and that meant there would be more close by. Her eyes slid over the room. Everything had its place. Everything was neat and organized. A crinkly bag of hard candy would never be left out for someone to see. No, the old lady couldn’t have that—even if it meant having to bend all the way down under the bathroom sink eight shuffly steps away.

  Under there was where the messy things went. Jillybean pictured it all: the open bag of cotton balls she had bought back in 2008 was down there, the comet with dusty green powder all over the lid sat nestled with the other cleaners, while tossed on top was a blue sponge as hard and warped as an old shingle.

  In front and somewhat separate from the other odds and ends was the bag of multicolored candy. Its open top, neatly folded because, of course she never knew who would look under there and for what reason.

  The old lady would never have believed a seven-year-old girl could have guessed each item and their placement without ever opening the cupboard doors.

  She was wrong about two things: the sponge was green instead of blue and the top of the candy bag wasn’t neatly folded…well it was actually, however, Jillybean hadn’t guessed that two clothespins had been used to clamp it shut.

  Despite Ipes’ begging and her own demanding urge, Jillybean refrained from popping one of the hard candies into her mouth. Only after the cat food became too cloying for her to take even one more bite did she unravel a single piece of candy and savor it until it was nothing but a sliver.

  The remaining candy went into her backpack, causing Ipes to exclaim: You are mental! She didn’t argue, though she felt saner than ever. Ipes went to the corner for saying under his breath: Yeah, you’re a regular forty-eight card deck.